Fight for the right to FLIRT!

JENNI MURRAY warns one of life’s innocent pleasures is under threat

OUR eyes met as he brought up the rear of the procession after holy Communion. We were all of 15 years old. Along with the other choirboys, Lawrence followed the vicar down the aisle of St Mary’s Church and passed the pew where my friend, Linda, and I were sitting.

he smiled. I fluttered my eyelashes, blushed and nudged my friend as he passed. he looked up. he’d noticed me! Yes! And the glint in his eye suggested the attraction was mutual.

My heart was beating faster as we left church. And there he was, loitering with his pal, Tony. They’d divested themselves of their choristers’ robes in super speedy time. Linda and I sauntered past with a studied lack of interest, heads held high. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ he called. ‘Oh, all right then.’ We couldn’t have appeared more casual, although our knees were so weak we weren’t sure we would make the short walk to the cafe.

But we got there, ordered our coffees — and settled down to tease, joke and dance around each other.

We were playing the oldest game in the book — flirting — slowly and carefully establishing a mutual attraction before venturing anything more.

eventually, Tony asked Linda if he could walk her home and Lawrence extended a similar invitation to me.

There was a short alleyway just before my home, hidden from Mum’s prying eyes.

Lawrence leant towards me as we said goodbye, and my first kiss happened right there. It was every bit as exciting as I’d hoped it would be.

That first love affair didn’t last long. They rarely do at that age, but I’ll always remember those thrilling afternoons of flirting. It was a craft, an art. An old- fashioned, harmless game played since time immemorial. A skill to be learned and honed in a setting of good manners and mutual respect. No one got offended, no one got a slap in the face.

No one was left tearful, traumatised or seeking legal redress decades later.

We knew the boundaries and grew expert at reading signals — a tool, I’d argue, that’s as important as any in one’s social interaction arsenal. YeT

it’s one I fear could be slowly dying out, leaving young people woefully ill- equipped. The assault on flirting is happening from two fronts. First, there’s the clamour over accusations of sexual harassment dominating headlines daily.

having lost their fluency in the language of flirtation, and seeing unwelcome encounters hailed as criminal acts, is it any wonder we hear young people expressing anxiety about how their intentions will be read?

Perfectly nice boys are asking themselves: ‘Is it OK if I try to hold her hand? Will she think I’m harassing her? Will I be hauled before hR if I tell someone in the office I think she looks good in that dress?’

At the same time, girls are worrying how their own behaviour will come across.

This troubling, daily stream of revelations about inappropriate sexual behaviour from those in positions of power has left them paranoid and defensive.

how will that smile/saucy joke/ skirt cut above the knee be interpreted? Is she ‘ asking for it’ if she agrees to join a colleague for a drink after work?

Then, of course, there’s the digital age. The proliferation of online porn warping young people’s perceptions of relationships beyond recognition. Young men raised to see women as a totally compliant series of buttons to be pushed at a whim.

At the same time, more social interactions are happening online. Who’s got the time to indulge in hours of wordplay when you can simply open a dating app or website, scroll through a list of images, and click on the face you like most?

The new way is easy, yes, and you never have to risk being rejected face- to- face. But isn’t it all horribly clinical? What’s more, if you don’t spend time working out whether another person fancies you, too, you may never learn to spot the signs that they are, or are not, interested.

I can well imagine today’s young people becoming so attached to the easy sexual encounters of the internet that they never bother to learn the rules of acceptable flirtatious behaviour. With all this against them, will anyone be surprised if young people stop approaching each other altogether?

It was with sadness that I heard a young woman, in a critique of the online dating scene, comment that she’s got to the point where she regards every male who approaches her in real life as a potential weirdo. These worries never troubled me in my youth — we all shared an easy sense of how to flirt without crossing lines that would have left anyone feeling uncomfortable. It’s simply not true, as some have claimed in recent days, that harassment and abuse were tolerated back then, or that anyone confused them with good honest flirting. In fact, the women’s movement began to call out this kind of predatory behaviour in the Sixties. Any man with half a brain should have known for a very long time that you don’t put your hand on the knee of a woman half your age — unless said young woman has made it unmistakably clear she’d rather like it. If you have misread the signals and she says NO, the absolute rule is ‘No means no’. So it strikes me that it’s up to us oldies — who learned to read the signals from earliest youth, interacting in person not from behind a smartphone screen — to make clear to younger folk how to enjoy a little flirtation without landing in hot water.

We must make it clear that flirting is not abuse as long as it’s an enjoyable game shared equally between two people. The eyes meet. The face flushes. Bodies lean towards each other. As long as these symptoms occur on both sides, no accusations of inappropriate behaviour will ensue. Only then should matters be taken to the next stage.

Which brings me to a magnificent flirt I will never forget.

Fast forward 15 years from that church service and I’m 30. I go to a party thrown by a friend on a summer’s evening. We dance till dawn, but it’s not until we gather around the huge table for breakfast that I spot the young man opposite.

he’s a dead ringer for Marlon Brando. Rough features, nose once broken in a rugby match, broad shoulders, denim shirt. It’s a classic case of eyes meeting across a crowded room — and then the flirting begins.

eventually, we had to part, and I later discovered he’d been too scared to ask for my phone number in case I said no. he got it from the host and called me an agonising three days later. Thirty seven years on, David is still my husband.

These two brief but crucial moments in my life illustrate the sheer joy of flirting. The delicate back-and-forth, the negotiations that start almost before you are aware of them — and the potential to form a deep and lasting connection that starts with a single glance, a cheeky word or a teasing joke.

Please, let’s see flirting for what it is: a national treasure that needs to be preserved for future generations.