John Edward Cooper’s Notes

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Ann Nurse

Early Days

Saturday 31st October 1964
 1. My first kiss was with a girl called Ann Nurse. It happened one Saturday evening (specifically on 31st October 1964) when I was 14.
 I had travelled from Thornton with Chris to visit his old home town Grimsby for my first time, and it was getting towards the end of our stay there. The whole time that we had been there, we had been wandering around in Grimsby and Cleethorpes, looking out for girls to try to get off with.
[See My first visit to Grimsby — Thursday, My first visit to Grimsby — Friday and My first visit to Grimsby — Saturday.]

 2. And on the last evening, as we were strolling along Victoria Street, Grimsby, we spotted two suitable young ladies in front of us. As we approached them, we took out cigarettes. “Have you got a light?” we asked them.
 “No, we don’t smoke,” they answered.
 So we said, “In that case—”, and took a box of matches out of a pocket and lit the cigarettes.
 A very corny chat-up line—but it made our intentions clear.

 3. We set off walking with them, and drifted more or less into pairs, Chris walking beside one, Jennifer Ballard, and I beside the other, Ann Nurse. Though that’s how it was turning out, I thought that Jennifer was the more attractive of the two, and Chris, Ann. That’s life, I guess! Jennifer had a nice figure—she was well endowed (shall we say?) at the chest—and Ann was the slimmer of the two. Ann had darker hair than Jennifer. She also had a red birthmark, but it was only slight; I can’t remember where exactly it was now.

 4. They had to visit Jennifer’s Auntie Sue’s house off Garden Street in Railway Terrace. (The terraced houses there are now pulled down.) So we tagged along with them to the door, and afterwards we walked down Garden Street, over the level crossing, and turned left into the passage that leads to the station.
 5. Just before a left-hand bend in the passage, Chris and Jennifer stopped, and started snogging. So, just reaching the corner, beneath a gas-lamp, I said to Ann, “Come on!”, and nervously attempted my first snog on lips slick with pink lipstick. I didn’t know how to do it properly, and there was a sucking noise. After we had done it, I didn’t know quite what to say, so said in a deliberately silly voice, “Good evening!” (Was there a character in a TV comedy show at that time who said that?)

 6. We strolled on, and there was more kissing before we parted, presumably at Grimsby Town station forecourt. There was a certain sense of pride of achievement on my part as Chris and I wiped lipstick off our mouths so that his Aunt Joan and Uncle Gordon, with whom we were staying, wouldn’t see it, before we walked off to get a bus.
The following afternoon…

Perhaps December 1964
 7. My actual words used, to bring about the desired snog with Ann, were, “Come on!” In perhaps December 1964 I was with Collinge at a “beat night” in a church hall in Cleveleys (could it have been Cleveleys Park Methodist Church?), and when Collinge got off with a girl who was in the crowd there, I said, “Come on!” to her friend, but she refused quite vociferously.
[1]
[1] This last event also appears in Beat Nights: Perhaps December 1964.
Ann Nurse is also mentioned in Another letter from Chris.


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