Three Barmaids

Once there were three barmaids.

Not just run-of-the-mill barmaids, of average looks and charm. No, no, these barmaids were all head-turningly beautiful. And they all worked in the same pub. It was a very good pub anyway, but the three beautiful barmaids elevated it to being one of the best pubs in the world ever.

They were of rather different ages, and each beautiful in a rather different way; but each of them was very, very, very beautiful.

One was the mother-figure of the trio (though probably not more than 30), a little more mature and savvy than her friends, and probably the one I should have fallen for most heavily, the one who would have been the best match for me (though I was probably a year or two younger than her).

Another was skittish and feisty, and wore her hair severely short (I've always had a weakness for hairstyles that highlight the nape of a woman's neck). In most circumstances, she would have been the one I would have fallen for most heavily.

But the last one, the youngest one, was the sort of girl you wish you'd grown up next door to and been in love with since the age of 8. She came from Cornwall, of course (long known as the home of the prettiest girls in England, if not the world); and her name was Sally.

I was for a while so pitifully smitten with Sally that I actually became tongue-tied whenever she was serving. I am not normally given to shyness, nor to indecisiveness in choosing my drinks; but whenever I went up to that bar and was greeted by Sally, my mind went blank and there would be a painfully long pause while I fumbled for the words I needed.

This did not go unnoticed by the other two barmaids (although I think it did by dear, sweet, innocent, barely-out-of-her-teens Sally), and they would tease me about it gently but persistently.

The really terrible thing about this recollection is that I now realise I had got to know them well enough that I probably could have asked any one of them out (with a reasonable chance of success!). I just never got around to it, somehow. Maybe I couldn't get over my feeling that it is taboo to ask a barmaid out. Maybe I was just too paralysed by my infatuation with the lovely Sally. Maybe I was too afraid of possible rejection. Or maybe I just couldn't choose between them.

In fact, I think, I was inhibited by the fear that if I started going out with one of them, I would lose the frisson of flirtation with all three of them.... and the atmosphere of that wonderful bar might be compromised by that.... it might cease to be one of the best pubs in the world ever.