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Hotboy has been badgering me to post the dramatic old black-and-white photograph of a Teutonic ex-girlfriend. But after hunting everywhere for it today, I realise that I must have thrown it out in my last big clearout. Oops! Just when I finally have a use for it!

Never mind. I had already decided that it wouldn't be ethical to blog the whole story alongside a picture that would identify her. But now that the photo is lost, I'm free to tell all. Like the proverb says: for every door that closes behind you, another one opens up.

I was a bombed-out student working as a machine-minder in a factory in small-town Germany. One of the young women who sorted nuts and bolts had striking long red hair and a knowing smile. I got chatting, and it turned out that she had just split up with her fiancé, whose name was robmcj, just like me. Or Rob von J in German. We seemed to get on well, though it was only much later that I found out that my main qualification in her eyes was my name. And I confess I wasn't too interested in her personality either.

She agreed to visit me in my tiny rented attic room. Well, I had been chaste, platonic, monastic, sobrietic, celebratious, what is the correct word I'm looking for? Anyway, I hadn't had sex for a year. So within a short space of time we were in my bed and within an even shorter space of time I was "overcome" if you know what I mean. Understandably, she wasn't pleased, and a few days later her family were threatening a shotgun marriage.

She and I would meet daily at the factory, mainly to discuss pregnancy matters. At weekends we would get together in the back seat of her car, and she would use her hands, if you know what I mean (I'm not sure about Blogger's policy in this area) while she kept up a conversation with her mates sitting in the front seat, quite a skill I suppose. I wonder what they were talking about.

If you read age 17, windswept and interviewed, you may notice an audience-participation theme in my early development. What does this mean?

When the pregnancy test finally happened and was negative, I became celibate (that's the word I was looking for) again, for a long time. Eventually I returned to Scotland, to begin discovering the true version of that proverb. For every door that closes behind you, another slams shut in your face.