Love is just a four letter word

I was trying to think of new small baba stories to tell you and, would you believe, my mind has gone completely blank. Not a single moment from childhood or growing up came to mind - well only ones the really were unprintable. I feel a little bereft - I thought there was so much more to say. There probably is: just the wretched medication making its effects known to me.

So, bit of a loss. Don't really want to bang on again about depression. Then I thought, what about happy love stories? Not obsession and pointless Petrarchan pouting but the real thing. There were one or two. Well, two.

In the middle of the misery and obsessions there was a real relationship. A lovely man - Pico Bobb. I would love to find him too and know how he has fared over the years. I wasn't a particularly good girlfriend - given as I was to hopeless causes. And he was, in truth, 'too fond' and I kind of took that for granted. But, for a time I was part of two - another person and I. So I do remember what it felt like. Truth? Suffocating.

Maybe it is a character flaw that I find the real thing so hard. My other lover was here in the UK. IN 1973 I made a break for freedom and tried to earn my living in London. I got a job at an advertising agency on Kensington High Street and lived at YWCA on Draycott Avenue. Right in the thick of things in Chelsea and Kensington. My obsession at the time was another singer in a band - a man called Steve Beck. We met through Dubby, who had taken on the job of getting the band their first recording deal. Steve's mum was from Calcutta and he and his brother David had been headliners at Trincas when small as the 'Baby Beatles'.

It was the era of glam rock - of Bowie and Bolan. Freddie Mercury was just learning how to be a Killer Queen and David Essex was going to make us all stars. Anyone touched with stardust will always get my attention and Steve was no exception. Amoral, egocentric and charismatic - was there any way I would or could resist? Strangely yes because I had already fallen into what seemed a nicely impossible relationship with one of the bands' roadies, Phil. He was at the tale end of a too young marriage to an older woman and we feel in lust, love? Something that seemed very real at the time.

This was my grown up relationship - public displays of affection, waking up side by side, holding him when he cried over the death of his father and being in complete shock when he arrived in London having left Wales and his wife behind. A friend from Calcutta, Carol Bobb (yes, cousins) arrived and we all got a grotty flat in North London while Steve pounded the pavements looking for the record deal.

It was both the best and worst of times. We were young and the cold, rats and hunger really seemed to be a kind of adventure. Carol and Steve got together and with a fifth friend, Wayne we settled in to communal living. Phil was grown up - he was an electrician and had organised a job before he came down to London. The rest of us flounced in and out of jobs like angry butterflies - I left the ad agency after being told that they were sad I had not been more involved with my filing! I still find that a futile and sterile goal. Steve worked, intermittently, for British Rail on Clapham Junction but faltered when asked to shovel the remains of a suicide victim from the track. Carol found a tax rebate that kept us in food and fags for several months. And through it all I would go with Steve around the various record companies looking for that break that was always just over the horizon.

We went daily. To Rocket, just set up by Elton John, to RAK, where we would meet Hot Chocolate and Suzi Quatro, to EMI where I would see the newly famous Freddie Mercury tottering, on platforms the height of the Empire State Building,  straight into the unopened plate glass entrance doors and waspishly refuse help for what was clearly concussion. To Chrysalis, where Steve was asked to write a song for Hank Marvin in that year's Eurovision - instant writer's block as you can imagine. And every night back to Phil and, what a friend recently described as, the warmth and comfort of a human touch.

Where did it all go wrong? Me I'm afraid. All those days with Steve and I became more and more involved. Carol hated it  - Phil said nothing but the nights became a battleground where he would try to make me admit I loved him most. But I didn't.  Finally it all came to a head with Carol taking a bottle of Valium and being rushed to hospital - Steve, cringingly, singing Sedaka's Oh Carol with tears running down his face and Tony and Phoebe ( by now art students and together) arriving to take me away and arrange my flight home.

Phil took me to Victoria and didn't once ask me to stay- so I left. We saw each other a few times after that - always, how can I put this, very physical reunions, but nothing really cerebral. In the end it was both too much and not enough and when the phone rang I  would avoid it until it stopped ringing altogether.

So there you are  - there were two men who loved me - what a shame I was so flawed and could not love them back.