Cloudland

Even in 1963 Cloudland was an anachronism, a relic of earlier times when ballroom dancing was not considered daggy, when Cloudland was a plush venue for folks who felt no embarrassment at wearing heavy, prickly-worsted, high-waisted cuffed trousers, invariably dark grey and fusty, or floor-length bouffant petticoated skirts (these options being strictly determined by gender in those days). 

But for testosterone-driven, post-adolescent males who had been too preoccupied with sport and alcohol consumption to plan ahead, it was the place of Desperate Last Resort for picking up a partner for a college social function. 

And in such circumstances, any partner who could reasonably be assumed to possess at least some of the primary and secondary characteristics of a female was better than no partner at all.

Therein resides my excuse for my attendance at Weirdo Central (Cloudland) one Saturday evening in 1963.

The young lady victim whom I persuaded to accompany a total stranger to a University College social event was, apart from being unbelievably naïve, a pleasant girl with no outstanding physical features apart from untidy, frizzy blonde hair (this description is, of course, code for an unremarkable bustline). 

And she was clearly very intelligent, although this was not a plus in the context of being a date for a college social, where stimulating conversation was not on the agenda.

It turned out that her father was a barrister in the city. Whilst an older version of myself would regard this information to be a big plus, it was not then a consideration in my short-term ambitions for interaction with individuals of the female persuasion.

(It was only much later, when I began to ponder the future, that the genetic contribution of a putative mate-for-life became important to me. It was not an insignificant consideration for me that the multiplicity of desirable characteristics possessed by the eventual Mrs Clibrig, apart from her breath-taking beauty, included a polymath father (MSc, MA) who was head of Biochemistry at a major teaching hospital and who was fluent in several languages.)

My partner at the college social may not have been the subject of salacious interest from my fellow collegians, but was clearly a female.

She lived with her parents in their posh home in a posh suburb on the opposite side of the river to the University. 

This unfortunately fitted neatly into the definition of "G.I." (Geographically Impossible) for a car-less university student.

But I must say that, at the end of the evening, as I walked her down from college to the river ferry, such impediments to a longer-term relationship were far from foremost in my mind. 

Even accounting for my moderately elevated blood alcohol level, she looked very fetching with the moonlight glinting softly in her frizzy blond hair. 

We shared a chaste kiss (unchaste enough to prompt me to decide to accompany her across the river) and boarded the ferry. 

I suppose there must have been some physiological shunting of blood from my neocortex to more inferiorly situated anatomical regions, as it didn't occur to me that the last ferry crossing of the night wasn't a return trip. 

The return trip (on foot) to college from the posh home in a posh suburb via the city was about 14km. 

I never saw her again.