My first relationship was, in my opinion, everything a first romance should be. Innocent, all-consuming and completely unrealistic. He was tall, long haired, with a penchant for hard rock and kissing in public. I was a little bookworm who thought stripy socks, frilly skirts and Converses were the height of fashion. Naturally we were besotted. Many a long afternoon was spent in his tall, white house, mostly cuddled in front of the computer watching music videos or cocooned on the sofa.  He would sit and pick away at his guitar with calloused fingers, and I would hug my knees and watch, convinced that life could not get any better.

Getting along to the general theme of this blog, I should point out that very little food was consumed during these sunny days. He never ate much at all, but drank Coca Cola on tap ("my expensive coke habit" he used to call it) which for me, who found all this an alien idea, was a cause of incessant worry. I even brought him breakfast on more than one occasion. Though I barely ate there either. Somehow, when caught up in that delicious whirlwind of pubescent hormones, we simply weren't hungry. What did we need food for?

On the one or two occasions when the room (literally) started spinning and we realised that we hadn't eaten or drunk in 8 hours, we always called upon the same things. Toast and peanut butter (always prepared directly on the surface without a plate,  my mother would have died) and the occasional crunchy apple (straight from the bowl, never washed first). He had a particular way of "cooling down the toast," grasping it in one hand and swinging his arm back and forth through the air with a goofy look on his face. I thought it was hilarious.

We were (as I imagine many other couples are, at 16,) convinced that we would be together for life. I even remember a discussion about what colour to paint the walls of our house. Or rather our garret. He would be a musician, and I would be an actress, so our imminent poverty was an accepted fact. "But I won't care," I told myself one spring afternoon, when we'd finally escaped the house and were lying, eyes closed, on the garden swing seat; "we only need each other to be happy." Then, after a moment: "That is, as long as there are apples and peanut butter. Then we'll be just fine."  What perfect simplicity.