Where Cats Have No Tails (bp coyle)

I found out about love the day after my wedding.

It was 1978.  We were in Douglas, capital of The Isle of Man, where the cats have no tails and flogging was still legal, and maybe still is.

She was with her husband at the same B&B as I had gone to with my new wife.  She was the most beautiful person I had ever laid eyes on.  We were all assigned to a breakfast table along with an elderly couple.

‘We’re on honeymoon,’ announced my wife.

‘How sweet,’ said the old lady.  ‘We’re celebrating our fortieth anniversary.’

‘Marvelous,’ declared my wife.

‘Oh God,’ gasped the woman I was rapidly falling for.  ‘I mean,’ she clarified, ‘That’s incredible.’

She somehow managed to both blush and look like she was biting her tongue hard to suppress outright laughter.  She was sitting on my right and she placed her hand on my knee and gave my a sly smile.

That was when I knew for sure, this was the woman I wanted to spend forty years with, forty decades.

I arrived on that strange little island with my wife.

I left ten days later with somebody else’s.

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