Love Is In The Air So If You Leave Me Can I Come Too

I was on a forum earlier, and the thread that I stumbled on was ‘Why bother getting married?’

There were a few answers tossed back and forward, and it really caused me to think!

I remember the time that I met ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’, and the impact that she had on me at the time! (I must have had one on her too, because she’s still here!).

She’s a bit younger than me, and was a ‘bopper’ when John Paul Young, or JPY, was at his peak.

Young had a number of hits, probably the best remembered being ‘Love Is In The Air’, which was revived in 1992 for the movie “Strictly Ballroom“. (“Love Is In The Air” was first released in 1978).

When my wife and I met, I wasn’t really looking to get romantically involved, and I have to admit that I was looking elsewhere at the time…

We became friends though, and it was that friendship that eventually led to a deeper relationship.

Often times, when people think that “Love Is In The Air’, it’s romance that’s hanging around, which is to me, a sort of fantasy.

While I am a romantic (not much of a ballroom dancer, but an expert in the old ‘Town Hall Crawl’ as practiced by generations of Aussie blokes before me!), I believe that building a relationship involves commitment, and going forward with our eyes wide open.

We spent hours talking about our dreams of the future, and a whole range of related stuff.

We were always very agreeable, and in fact had never had an argument until the night before the wedding.

Where better to have a full on ‘blue’ than in front of the pastor who was going to marry us the next day?

He just sat there, grinning like a cheshire cat, saying that he’d been waiting for it, and that it had to be a good one because it was our first.

And it was a doozy, though not enough to cause things to fall through, because we had been building a good foundation.

Apart from our friendship, the other key in our relationship has been a good sense of humor!

Our punchline has always been ‘If you leave me, can I come too’. Which to us, basically means we’re here, together, and that’s it.

It’s a covenant that we made, and have had the grace to be able to keep.

At the risk of being like one of those old musicals where people break into song at the first, and every, chance they get, I’ve included the song that inspired that punchline!

Aussie group “Mental as Anything” released ‘If you leave me, can I come too’ in 1981.

The original ‘Mentals’ were made up of:

• Martin Plaza: (Martin Murphy) vocals, guitar.
• Reg Mombassa: (Chris O’Doherty) lead guitar, vocals.
• Andrew “Greedy” Smith: vocals, keyboards, harmonica.
• Peter O’Doherty: bass, vocals.
• Wayne “Bird” De Lisle: (David Twohill) drums.

The group last toured, with a changed line up, in 2007.