In 1971 I was 15 years old. The big thing to do on a Sunday afternoon was to go to Ringwood Iceland Ice Skating Rink which meant a bus ride to Laburnum Station followed by a train ride to Heatherdale Station which was the closest to Iceland.
I tried to look as good as I could at that age making sure my jeans weren’t ironed and I didn’t have sweat stains under my armpits. I was fond of a pink shirt I used to wear. My friends and I would go round and round to the latest pop hits. One afternoon I went down onto the icy layer of water and the dye on my jeans bled into the shirt so that was the end of the pink shirt/blue jeans look.
The aim was to get a girl to hold your hand as you circled the rink. Preferably one that wouldn’t fall over and bring you down with her. We all heard stories of the poor kid who fell over and had their fingers sliced off by a speed skater.
One day someone did hold my hand. And we skated together for ages. And she lived somewhere near me. So her friends and my friends caught the train to Laburnum and then walked all the way up Middlesborough Road to the garage on the corner of my street. There was a phone booth on Fulton Road and we stood together in the small space and I showed her how you could ring a number that played the hit of the week. That week it was “Come Back Again” by Daddy Cool. It was like a summer day and started to get warm inside that small space. We stepped out and she told me she had to go and so she and her friends walked off. My friends went back to their side of Middlesborough Road. It was a perfect day. I never saw her again. I always looked out for her in Iceland but to no avail.
And the Daddy Cool record was playing everywhere I went. And it sounded so good on the transistor radio.
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