Vale of health

The 2nd girl – or woman, as I’d learned to call the other sex, this being the early 80s – I went out was ALSO called C, which is the name of my sister, a coincidence that has Freudian – but hopefully not criminal – overtones. She was boring and unhappy, a combination that underwhelmed me at 22.

She was the flatmate of a (sort of) friend of my sister’s and I met her on a group walk on Hampstead Heath, from which I went straight home with her. Easily done, because she was housesitting for her aunt in the Vale Of Health.
She was still a student, doing an MA in (I think) the films of Jean Renoir. I, by contrast, was a PUBLISHED film reviewer, soon (March) to be working for City Limits…
She lived in a (crap) basement flat in Richmond Crescent, Islington, opposite the family home of up-and-coming Labour MP Tony Blair, which is when I 1st heard of him. Her flat was owned by Mrs Stone, who owned all sorts of (crap) properties round there and is now either 1) a multimillionaire or 2) dead.
I remember 2 good things about the 2nd C: 1) her love of 70s soul and 2) a story she once told about her elder brothers, twins, who gave her/their mum a hash cookie, and she proceeded to sit on the floor and become VERY talkative…
In August 1986 a sexy Iranian girl/woman – with whom I’d long had a postcard relationship – came over from Paris to go to the Notting Hill Carnival. I lied to C to be able to go to it with the Iranian (whom I failed, again, to go to bed with…). And I thought: What am I DOING??
And promptly chucked C(2).
And never gave her a backwards glance…