Even if it's only goodbye.
We just can't reconcile ourselves to the prospect of having FIONA STUART pass us by without giving us a wave or a smile or a word. You know how it is. You see a girl, an absolute eye-catcher, when you're rushing home from work so that you'll be in time for the twice-weekly serial on Channel 4 and suddenly it's gone.
What's gone?
All that urgency to catch the twice-weekly pay-off.
Suddenly you don't care anymore. You've just seen the most beautiful girl in the world, and you'd give up your fortnight on the Italian Riviera if only she'd speak to you.
She could, like Fiona, be just eighteen, with the kind of smile that makes you feel you've only been standing on one foot for the last two hours. You learn to raise your hat and introduce yourself and tell her what a knockout you are in company.
But she passes you by.
You realise instinctively she doesn't like guys who are knockouts.
You walk quietly away and jump off a bridge.
Love at first sight is the most agonising emotion in the world.
Span No 141 - May 1966