I call it Bill Taylor's 33rd Covid-19 diary entry but there have been more than twice as many, posted daily at his Facebook page and avidly followed by his friends there. The story of how Bill and Lesley met is a good one, made better by his amusing memories of the early part of their romance. The first photo was taken goodness knows how long AND promoted their friend Dale Brazao to offer the comment that gave me my headline. The second recalls our much more recent holiday together - remember holidays? - in Havana. The third has an explanatory caption ...
Red-letter notes from the trenches:
If you’d told me on June 5, 1973, that 47 years later I’d be hiding from the world in a house in Toronto with an American woman I’d only met a couple of days earlier...
I’m not saying you could have knocked me down with a feather. But it wouldn’t have taken a brick, either.
Maybe half a brick.
Among my legion of deficiencies are a non-existent sense of direction and no memory for dates.
Lesley, especially on foot, has a formidable built-in GPS. Put her in a strange city with a map in her hand and I’d follow her anywhere.
Well, I sort of have to.
As for dates, she has a frightening knack for remembering them, especially birthdays. Tell her once and she’ll never forget it.
“It’s so-and-so’s birthday today,” she’ll say.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“I’m not entirely sure. But I know it’s their birthday.”
So while I do, of course, remember the occasion, I take no credit for knowing that today was the day I took her to see a rather lovely waterfall in North East England.
High Force, for those who are familiar with it.
Lesley was a journalism student in Connecticut and had come to my newspaper, the Northern Echo in Darlington, to do a summer internship.
It wasn’t exactly legal but the editor, who marched to his own drum, told her to tell the immigration officer she was on vacation and she’d be paid under the table.
I was a bit of a reprobate in those days. I was off when she arrived but everyone, from the editor on down, told her to stay away from me.
We met when she needed to use a typewriter that I was asleep on. She woke me up, I introduced myself – an instinctively polite reprobate – and her eyes kindled with interest.
Like, oh, you’re… him. (We’re all the kids our mothers told us not to play with.)
A day or so later the paper decided to run a photo of her and I was assigned to write the caption.
Lesley had left for the day so I met her for a drink to get the information and phone it in. When the pub closed, we were still talking so we went back to my apartment and sat up all night. Still talking.
We both had the next day off and that’s when I took her to see High Force. And then in the evening to an Italian restaurant for dinner.
The rest, as they say, is history.
She moved in with me that night – no, we never ever dated – and when, a few weeks later, she returned home to Pennsylvania, I was on a plane 11 days behind her.
I think she told her parents I’d followed her home and could she keep me?
That was then and this is now. A lot of water under a lot of bridges.
Here we are in a small rowhouse in the middle of a block off Queen West, holding our own but not quite knowing what’ll happen next. Taking it day by day.
That’s what a pandemic does to you.
I really, really wish the coronavirus had never happened. But if I’d known 47 years ago what I know now… would I still be here?
In a heartbeat.
Caption at the https://rollingstonesphotosfromphilly.wordpress.com/ site reads" Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger walks with UPI reporter Lesley Ciarula Taylor toward the East-side stands in JFK Stadium for a photo shoot. Jagger visited Philly for press conference to announce the 1981 “Tattoo You” Tour itinerary, which would kickoff in Philly a month later. WMMR’s John Bloodwell (green shirt) is visible in the background. © Roger Barone 1981
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