Advent calendar 20 - Mistletoe kiss...

Who would you most like to kiss under the Mistletoe? Years ago my sixteen year old self would have answered immediately Miss Taque.

Miss Taque, or Helen as I came to call her, was our school art teaching assistant. She was training to become a teacher at a local college and for a couple of months was sent to my school to get a little experience. I had what you might call a bit of a crush on Miss Taque, but of course I was a schoolboy and she was a teacher and at twenty or so, a real woman.

I watched her from afar for weeks. So many weeks that, as Christmas approached, there were only a couple left before we broke up for Christmas and Miss Taque went home never to return. It had to be done.

I found her in the art room at morning break. She was tiding away some papers. I walked up to her, reached into my pocket, and took out the small piece of mistletoe I’d bought from the greengrocers on North Street.

‘Christmas kiss Miss?’ I asked nervously holding it above my head.

She smiled and much to my surprise kissed me. It wasn’t a big kiss, but it wasn’t a peck and I carried that kiss around with me all over that Christmas, keeping it close to ward off the cold.

I bumped into her a few months later on the Aylesbury bus and we went for a coffee like you do. We got on well and I saw her a few of times after that. We met for a drink in Oxford, went to the pictures, and wandered the art galleries. It was fun for a while, but it wasn’t going anywhere and then one day it just stopped as we both moved on.

Sometimes I wonder what might have been. There was only four years between us, but at he time it seemed like a generation. I’ll never forget my mistletoe kiss though.