Touching From a Distance Read Online Free PDF Page A

sixteen she had fractured her skull when she fell off her horse. Helen was unconscious for three days and took two school terms to recover.The idea of someone learning to speak, read, gain their memory and walk, let alone get back on the horse and ride again, made Helen all the more attractive to Ian. He embellished her story and retold it several times, which gave me a vision of Helen as Heidi’s friend Clara. Helen puts it down to Ian’s fascination with drama, but nonetheless his admiration for her obvious courage was central to their friendship. Helen was sure that the ordinary held no magic for Ian and, though he never actually said it outright, she suspected that he found the idea of dying young magic in itself and was not surprised when he carried it through.
    On 23 December 1972, four of my friends – Gillian, Anne, Dek and Pat – decided to hire the Scout Hut on Fence Avenue and hold a double engagement party. Pat remembers Ian as a joking, laughing person to whom music was the only thing that really mattered. Ian rarely introduced his friends to his family. He would tear downstairs, push his friends into his room, lock the door and put the music on. Ian arrived at Pat’s party in a stupor and confided to me that he had a bet on with his friends that he would be able to kiss the most girls that night. Consequently I spent the remainder of the evening introducing him to all of my school friends. Finding it very amusing, they all acquiesced.
    Before we parted, Ian asked me to go out with him and invited me to a David Bowie gig at the Hard Rock in Manchester. What thrilled me was not particularly the opportunity of going out with Ian, but more the chance to get out of Macclesfield and to be included in a crowd of people who didmore than catchthe train to Stockport for a weekly shopping trip. I was looking forward to seeing Tony again, though I never got the chance to ask him why he dumped me so unceremoniously as he kept his distance.
    Ian was a big Bowie fan and had already managed to spend time in his dressing room at one gig. He had David Bowie’s, Trevor Boulder’s and Mick Ronson’s autographs, one of Woody’s broken drumsticks and a spare guitar string. Bowie was playing for two nights and as Ian and Tony had tickets for both nights, Ian arranged for his friends to pick me up and take me to meet him for the second gig.This was the first time I had been to a proper gig. I was even excited about the support band, Fumble. I loved their rendition of ‘Johnnie B. Good’, not realizing that every rock band covers that song. When Bowie emerged wearing a one-piece printed outfit that resembled a legless babygro, we all gazed up in complete adoration. The stage was so small that he was extemely close to the audience, yet no one dared to touch his skinny, boyish legs.
    Ian had had only one serious girlfriend before me. Bev Clayton was tall and slim with large eyes and waist-length titian-coloured hair. Yet from that night on, I was Ian’s girlfriend and stopped even looking at other boys. I felt honoured to be part of that small group. For a short time I did not regard Ian as an individual, but as a party of people who were fun and exciting and knew more than me about life itself. I didn’t realize that Ian’s King’s School friends were also receiving their first introduction to David Bowie, Lou Reed and perhaps the seamier side of Ian’s ethereal world.
    I had attended primary school in the village of Sutton, in the hills of Macclesfield. My childhood weekends had been spent looking for birds’ nests, building dams across the river Bollin, and feeding orphan lambs. By the time I met Ian, I had abandoned my push-bike and stopped attending the church youth club, but was still leading a quiet existence. Suddenly, life seemed one long round of parties, pop concerts and pub crawls. It was a whole new scene for me and, like Ian, I gradually began to move away from my old circle. Ian never hid his interest for