Seduction was simple, but the ardour was harder...

Overcome with emulsion, fruitcake finally loses her cherry…

In common with the fathers of many teenage girls, my dad was determined that I would reach a ripe old age and die in a state of chastity, or at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time. Ironically, he was also responsible for any success I had in attracting the opposite sex. I needn’t have wasted my time making up my face, parading around in the latest fashions (the ra-ra skirt still haunts me!), or drenching myself in the kind of perfumes that promise lust on the bottle but only deliver the desire to take in the air at the nearest public lavatory in order to find something more fragrant. No, what really had them flocking to the front door were the eighty or more pints of beer my dad would brew every week.

He’d try to put on a relaxed front, and my sisters and I were always allowed to take our friends up to our rooms, but if a lone male was in attendance he’d make frequent appearances at the door with vast plates of sandwiches, and what seemed to be enough beer to have made Oliver Reed turn pale.

He briefly let down his guard when I had my appendix out, presumably thinking that having just had the operation I’d not be up for indoor sporting activities, but I’d been visited in hospital by a lad who’d only ever noticed me in my daydreams before, and I wasn’t going to let him get away in a hurry.

After using all the powers of feminine seduction I had at my disposal (well okay, I admit it – I told him about the beer!), he made it to the shrine to Formula 1 racing and Starsky and Hutch that was my bedroom, and it was evident from the look in his eye that he had an ulterior motive for his presence. A rapt expression settled across his features, and he turned to me and said fervently “I could decorate in here! Why don’t you buy some paint and wallpaper? Awwww, please!

My knees stopped in mid-tremble. This wasn’t what I’d been led to expect at all. I’m hardly your average romantic heroine, and wouldn’t want to be, but I was pretty sure that at this point I was supposed to be being swept off to some paradise of physical ecstasy. I’d never heard of anyone who’d been swept off to the Great Mills D.I.Y. store in the grip of passion before.

Still, love is blind, and so must I have been, if only for deciding to live with the wallpaper that was hastily chosen that very afternoon in my rush to see him demonstrating his stripping technique. Every evening for a week, I watched with increasing desperation as he painted, pasted and papered, but not even the lure of my dad’s home brew would tempt him to get down to the kind of activity I had in mind.

I’d abandoned hope by the time the work was completed. He’d done a good job though, and I was about to say as much when he mumbled something incomprehensible and hurled himself at me. In a split second I’d gone from standing admiring the walls to lying on the bed gazing winded at where the ceiling should be, had it not been suddenly eclipsed by the massive bulk of the Demented Decorator. Thus it was that my first sexual encounter took place among a pile of wallpaper off-cuts, with the heady scent of polycell lingering in the air. Romantic it wasn’t.

After a very brief period of fumbling, I felt the benefit of the only tool I’d been interested in seeing him using all week. I REALLY felt it. And then I didn’t. The next thing I knew, I was staring after the back of his head as he fled down the stairs in embarrassment, following a performance that had been lengthy in comparison to the lifespan of a snowflake on a bonfire.

I really couldn’t complain though. My wallpaper was skillfully matched at the seams, my paintwork boasted a high gloss finish, and the new carpet had been expertly laid even if I hadn’t. I still see my ‘first’ around from time to time, and think of him with great affection. He might have been no great shakes in the sack, but I’ll always be able to say that he was good in the bedroom!