Crush

‘”What we want to know, to settle a bet, is, have you always fancied somebody ever since you can remember? Answer truthfully please.”

            I was obliged to admit this was the case. From a tiny child, ever since I could remember, in fact, some delicious image had been enshrined in my heart, last thought at night, first thought in the morning. Fred Terry as Sir Percy Blakeney, Lord Byron, Rudolph Valentino, Henry V, Gerald du Maurier, blissful Mrs Ashton at my school, Steerforth, Napoleon, the guard on the 4.45, image had succeeded image. Latterly it had been that of a pale pompous young man at the Foreign Office who had once, during my season in London, asked me for  dance, had seemed to me the very flower of cosmopolitan civilisation, and had remained the pivot of existence until wiped from my memory by Sauveterre. For that is what always happened to these images. Time and hateful absence blurred them, faded them but never quite obliterated them until some lovely new broom image came and swept them away.

“There you are you see,” Mrs Chaddesley Corbett turned triumphantly to Lady Montdore. “From Kiddie-car to hearse, darling, I couldn’t know it better. After all, what would there be to think of when one’s alone, otherwise?”’

Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford               

I love this quote so much I couldn’t bear to trim it down like a normal person and just typed out nearly a page. I thought about it the other day after I’d had a dream about my teenage supercrush. I think the dream was sparked by the book I was reading where a woman meets her ultimate crush from school as an adult. I was basically obsessed with the person I had a crush on. I really had no idea what he was actually like, I just chose his face to be the face I used when I imagined what boys would be like if I knew any (I went to an girls school a knew no boys from the age of 11 until I was nearly 17). Looking back on it now it seems so ridiculous! I think of my lovesick younger self with affection and amusement but at the time it was so real and important to me. I was sure if I just did the right thing when I was walking home from school, the only time we saw any boys, he would fall instantly in love with me. Several times I tried to give up on it and just have an obsessive crush on a celebrity instead but I found it too boring! I always new it would be brushed away and something new would take its place. 

I’m glad I didn’t ever speak to him again, reality is death to crushes and it would have been heart-breaking if I’d found out he was a dickhead right at the height of my crush. Crushes are like cobwebs: you only need little fragments of information that you can build upon with your own ideas and projections, but no matter how much you build, or how detailed your imaginings, it can all be swept way for the next one.

Here are some of the crushes I’ve had in my life (listed in the style of Fanny from Love in a Cold Climate):

John Major, a boy from reception, Michael Hilton, Colin Firth as Mr Darcy The supercrush, Jesse Spencer, the boy who played the Slytherin Seeker in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The actor who played Matt in Love in a Cold Climate, Jeff Buckley, Henry Cavil and Sam Heughan