Lucia, and my date with Peter Finlay

And thanks to you Lucia for being so good to my bro and nephew and niece, and so totally unlike my ex sister in law. My family all think you are the bees knees and are as happy as I am to see our new Stephane, out of the sect at long last..

Such a shame you couldn’t make it to Di Pao Grace and Steph, serà para la proxima. And what about all the rest of you Edron flakeheads, what’s your excuse? The rain? Mark no ibas a venir con toda tu familia?

I do remember Pete Finlay because, apart from being mates with my brothers and coming round to Pedernal for lunch a lot (Stephane who suffers from chronic amnesia is unlikely to remember any of this but they also went on camping trips together and Jerome remembers him well), he used to scare the daylights out of me every break time when I overheard him and Anthony (Harrap i think?) quietly discussing their plans to blow up the moon.

One day he scared me even more by asking me (at break) if I wanted to go for a milkshake with him at Tomboys San Jeronimo after school. He used to wear a big puffy red jacket that matched his red puffy cheeks. That day they seemed even redder. I was torn between the unquestionable appeal of a Tomboy vanilla milkshake session, and the awkwardness of finding myself alone with this tall, questionably sane, sixth former. I was only eleven, and painfully shy at the time. So after a long, cringe factor eleven, silence I mumbled yes and went back to the football pitch to drown my angst. I tried not to think about our impending tête a tête but from then on felt the weight of doom in my stomach which only got heavier until the 1:30pm bell rang and i made a run for the pitch again thinking (oh the innocence) that if I extended the usual after school cascarita long enough he would for sure get fed up of waiting and leave. But every time I looked up he was there, hands in red puffy jacket pockets, shuffling between the tuck shop and those metal bars we used to sit on, spectacled eyes most persistently on me… chivalrously waiting for us to finish our match. A picture of patience.

An hour and a half later there were only two of us left on the pitch, and then, of course, only me. I considered the odds of him not noticing if I continued the match by myself, moi against moi, and realized there was no way out. I was going on a Date to Tomboys with Peter Finlay. Looking intently down at my football I ambled off the pitch, and together we made our way out through the grayish school gates and across the cobblestones to his long white American fifties style car. He gallantly opened the door for me, those old car doors that weighed two tons and would slice your shin in two if you didn’t put your leg out the way in time, and I settled uncomfortably into the passenger seat, trying to take up as little space as I could while he proudly revved up the engine and shifted into gear. I must admit that melded into the overwhelming malaise was an element of pride too to be sitting in the front seat of a sixth former’s cool car.

Now it can’t have been a very long journey from Campestre to San Jeronimo, but he might as well have driven to Tulum. I’m not sure how the conversation went but can guess it flowed about as smoothly as something that hardly flows. I vaguely remember the atmosphere lightening up a touch when we were actually sitting on our orange and blue plastic stools, pensively nursing our milkshakes. We must have been there a good ten minutes, and then he drove me safely back home and we went our separate ways.

Interesting interview you posted Tanya. My mum always told us he was a mythomaniac and we never believed her...

Saludos a todos,
Sandrine