Richmond Park

The next day Lemmy called asking me if I’d like to go out that afternoon.  I can’t even tell you how happy and excited I was…

He came to get me like a proper date.  He was very gentlemanly, but Mrs Johnston, the owner of the flat who took in students from the Royal Ballet School was skeptical none the less when she saw him, with his long hair, Edwardian suit, and small pink rectangular shaped granny sunglasses perched on the end of his nose, but not so much that she stopped me from going.  She was a self-appointed “guardian” for me as well as the other girls I went to school with.  She had prohibited me from going to an anti- Vietnam War rally in London earlier that summer, perhaps a good thing, since later that night on the telly I saw my friend, whom I would have been with, in the midst of a violent confrontation with the police.
Lemmy and I  walked to the Warwick Road entrance to Earls Court station and took the tube out to Richmond Park.  As we wandered around the park holding hands I have little memory of what we saw that day.  I only remember him.  He did all the talking.  I nervously answered his many questions about myself and my life as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School, working hard to appear cool and aloof.  Lemmy was very respectful of my shyness, and gentle with my innocence.  He looked into my eyes and was genuinely interested in what I had to say.  I was mesmerized by everything he said.

He guided us off the paths into a wooded area of the park, talking about the bracken rustling in the breeze, the leaves crunching beneath out feet.  As we came into a clearing, a field of long wispy grass where Lemmy suggested we sit for a bit, the English sun shone down on us.  We were soon stretched out on the ground at his suggestion, looking up at the sky.  The  yellow grasses swished around my head as I laid back, ankles crossed and hands under my head.  We lay there silently for some time, watching the clouds.  I may have seemed relaxed, but I was not.  I wanted so much for him to like me and  I wondered what he was thinking about me.  Here I was, alone with a man I hardly knew, who was clearly someone special, and I felt breathless with anticipation.  Now Lemmy was over me looking intently into my eyes.   And like the day before, he was kissing, and kissing, and kissing me more.  It was so gentle, so romantic, so dreamlike.
Later that summer, Lemmy wrote a song that described a day just like this:

“Once on a green day, I was in long grass,and you came rustling silently by.
                                                                                                                                        I caught your long hand, fingers of satin, and in the long grass together we lie.
                                                                                                                                  What are you thinking, kissing me softly?  Where does you mind go when you are here?                                                                                                                                ‘It’s nothing, really’ your only answer, or does your minds’ eye shed lonely tears?”
And I had said exactly that, on that beautiful day, in response to Lemmy’s wondering about the distant look in my eyes.  “It’s nothing really.”

I was already hopelessly in love.  I fell in love with him the moment I laid eyes on him the day before on Earls Court Road.