Let me take you to the
very beginning, well the beginning of my life not that I remember it of course.
Who can truly remember their own birth? I know that there are those who claim
memories of passing from dark to light but I subscribe to the ‘childhood amnesia’
school of thought but not as Sigmund Freud’s explains. So, I have the facts but
not the experience.
My birth certificate
records that I was born in Clepthorne Hospital on the 11th August
1960 and given the name I would keep for twenty-six years. My parent’s names
are listed alongside my mother’s maiden name. Little did she know that her
maiden name would become a vital part on online and telephone banking in the
new century. The registrar has a name from a previous era - Mr Mordecai Graves.
The first real
memories I have are probably from the age of three although I can’t be sure. It
is Christmas and if I close my eyes I can smell the warmth from my dressing
gown against my neck. It is tied too tight around my waist with a purple cord
so as to fight the cold as my father tries to light the fire in our best room.
The tree is a mass of coloured light and at the bottom paper shines from the handful
parcels there. I can still feel the innocent excitement of that simple life. Oh
to feel like that again.
Sounds and smells can
trigger the strongest memories and so I can actually date one of my earliest recollections
because the ‘soundtrack’ for my fourth birthday was the number one in the
charts. A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles was everywhere. I had no idea how
influential their music would become at the time. I just remember my mum and
dad singing along and me dancing by standing on his slippers as he ‘twisted’ me
by his arms.
I suppose I had a
happy childhood. Certainly what few memories I have suggest that. I suppose a
psychologist would suggest that I may have repressed some trauma but if I have it
is so deep I am happy to leave it buried. However, what happiness, safety and
confidence I felt in life was about to change in September 1965. Its impending
arrival was signposted by the fitting and purchase of my first ‘real’ shoes.
Uncomfy, repressive and ‘to be looked after not played in’. A metaphor for what
was to come.
School. One simple
word. A word that had been spoken in the house for weeks in slightly hushed
tone. It had gradually been introduced to me as a place where I would meet
other children and make friends and learn things like how to read. What was
supposed to be encouraging had quite the reverse affect on me. I didn’t want
friends, I was happy alone and I liked my mother reading to me. I wanted
everything to stay as it was but I had no voice in my life.
Perhaps the first day
at primary school is my strongest early memory or mental scar - being left by
my mother in a strange place with what felt like hundreds and hundreds of
children. The bigger ones running about bashing into the smaller ones while I
huddled against the wall nearer some of the grown ups who had stayed to see
their child into their first class. I know now that my mother left because she
was crying and didn’t want to upset me. At the time I just felt deserted, lost
and alone.
The teacher Miss
Malone was old and smelt funny, well she didn’t smell like my mother and she
could have been forty. She also believed that boys should be brave so my tears
of shock at my desertion cut no ice. I was left to cry whereas girls were
brought into the folds of her dress to be comforted and cuddled. My first day
at school taught me my first lesson – life is unfair. I have never witnessed
anything since that day that has made me change this five year old’s view.
As the first day
progressed I played with a number of children, probably equally unnerved, but who
seemed so confident and settled in my eyes. Many of these classmates would
travel with me for the next six years of my school life, some longer still. I
would love to be one of the people who can say they are still in touch with
childhood friends but I am not. Has it left a gap, I don’t know but it is only
writing this that some of their names and faces come back to mind and perhaps I
am a little sad.
Lunch was another
world. I can still remember collecting a plate of what must have been food but
did not resemble anything I had seen or eaten at home. Sitting at a round table
with seven others from my class I watched the boys dive in like big cats
devouring prey. I cut and put a piece of the pink stuff they seemed to enjoy
into my mouth. It seemed to both swell and dry the inside of my mouth at the
same time. I could feel tears coming to my eyes again. The girl next to me
whispered ‘don’t worry,’ in a voice that must have been a mimic of her mother.
On the lunch table
were plastic beakers of different colours – red, blue and green. Some had the
edges chewed by previous users clearly desperate for moisture. The water was
kept in a jug on the table that was made from a shiny metal and coloured a rosy
pink. Other tables had gold or blue ones. They seemed magical but they were awful
to pour from and when full too heavy to control. The water tasted different to
home, metallic. Everything was different and I didn’t like it
The afternoon seemed
to go on forever. I had, at that age, no sense of time and couldn’t read a
clock so it just felt it would never end. Finally a bell sounded and we were
told to go and get our coats. We were led out of the classroom and into the
playground and by the gates we could see adults waiting. The sun was behind
them so it was impossible to see who was there. I just prayed my mother was
waiting. As we got nearer I could recognise the colour and pattern of her coat.
I ran towards her with overwhelming joy of release.
The Impersonal
Autobiography – (the recollections of no one) 13
Walking home I
wouldn’t let go of my Mother’s hand. I thought I would never let go of her
again. Still, I had done it, I had gone to school and now that it was out of
the way I was free to be at home every day from now on. I still remember the
feeling of utter desperation when my mother explained I would have to go every
day. I ate my tea in silence and went up to bed wondering what I had done that
was so wrong they would punish me like this.
Day two at school was
not better. Some of the children in our class had older brothers and sisters
already at the school. For them it all seemed so easy their fear had been
rubbed away by having a network of support from the moment they went through
the gate. For me some form of hope represented itself in the figure of the girl
called Janet. Her words at the lunch table were the only kindness I could
remember from day one. I found myself standing by her side as the bell rang.
I have only ever felt
true trepidation twice in my life. The second time was years later as I reached
out my arm to shake on the deal to buy the scrapyard in Applemere. That was the
deal that changed my life in so many ways but it’s from a later chapter. This
trepidation was about knowing that once I stepped over the gateway into the
playground the nightmare would begin again. I was about to run when a hand held
mine. I turned to see Janet smiling at me.
Why she ‘adopted’ me I
will never know or understand but her friendship got me through the early days
and weeks of school. It was through her I was able to make friends with others.
It was through her I was able to navigate the emotions created in me by our
teacher Miss Malone. It was through her I found I could begin to enjoy parts of
the day – particularly playtime where our fantasies were allowed top take
flight.
They had reserved a
new nightmare for the second day. It was a clever trick as the nightmare came
hidden inside the shape of a lovely dream. I now know it would have been mid
morning when it entered the class room. Two children were asked to be ‘milk
monitors’ and carefully carry in a crate of small bottles of milk for us. I
loved milk, loved the creamy chilled taste fresh from the fridge. I collected
my bottle and straw, pierced the lid and took a long suck of the liquid. Oh the
horror of milk warmed by the sun, the nauseous smell of it slightly turned and
we were expected to drink it all, every day.
It would be easy to
spend too long on the first few days of school. Suffice as to say they seemed
to last forever and I hated them. However, as we all tend to do, I developed
coping mechanisms and mine was to retreat into my mind and a life of fantasies
and hope. In between escaping into dreams I found the learning process of the
classroom mixed. If I was interested I was engaged, if not it flowed past me
like water around a rock. I suspect some of the problems I was to encounter
later were sowed in this ‘switch on, switch off’ mental state.
By the end of infant
school I had a few friends. I had readjusted my relationship with my parents
who, in my eyes still, had still let me down badly by sending me there and
replaced them with one true soulmate - Janet. She had saved me and been my
support through the last three years. It was the start of my dependency on
women to give me a sense of worth, value and safety. I had playmates who were
boys, three in particular who were close but already by then I had already
developed another ‘me’ who could be with them.
By now TV had begun to
play a part in my life. The safety and familiarity of the radio was replaced by
this new demanding stranger in our home. I was fascinated and would spend as
much time as I could making friends with it and its programmes. I can still
remember the arrival of ‘Magpie’ and my mothers insistence that it was not as
good as Blue Peter whilst I quietly developed a crush on Susan Stranks. Every
programme was a delight until the news came on.
Having got to the top of
the infants we were as Kings and Queens of all we surveyed. The change to
Junior School was another upheaval. Juniors cast us back to the role of foot
servants. Smallest in the playground we were magnets for a new forms of
bullying. The Chinese burn and the dead leg became a daily ritual and trial.
How lovely if I could say that when we got to the final year of the school we
did not carry on in such a way but I would be lying.
I don't have
particularly strong memories of Junior School. I can remember getting in
trouble and I think that clouds my perspective. I think I enjoyed it. I was
reasonably popular, reasonably clever and reasonably sporting but still with
the tendency to sink into my thoughts or as my reports would say ‘tends to
daydream’. It was here in my head that my real life existed, here I was at my
happiest.
I don’t know what
possessed me to steal five cigarettes from my Father’s packet but I can still
feel the trembling in my legs as I walked carefully to school with them loose
in my pocket alongside an almost empty box of matches. I walked carefully because
I believed if I had run there was a chance of spontaneous combustion. The day
dragged interminably until Janet and my three ‘friends’ began to make our way
back home
It’s hard to remember
that in those days most children walked themselves to school and home. No four-wheeled
tanks crushed the roads delivering and taking the tender lives protected from
the fears the media nurture. On our walk back we passed a small corporation
garden with three large overgrown bushes in the middle. It had been a ‘home’ to
successive children’s clubs and adventures. Today it was going to be ours. As
we sat in a circle on the dusty muddied roots I produced the matches and
cigarettes to a collective drawing of breath and light giggle.
Three cigarettes had
split in my pocket and refused to light although we couldn't understand why but
two did and we passed them round to each other much as one would the rarest
fragile art. Each light puff brought tears to our eyes, a fuller draw would
produce coughing and shaking. I don’t believe any of us enjoyed the experience
and we were probably relieved when we had finished with them. We now had two
matches left and devilment in our hearts. Pushed deep into the bush we could
see an old magazine.
The magazine was
reached for and dragged out and we were preparing to light it when Ian realised
that it was filled with pictures the like of which we had never seen. I believe
it was called ‘Razzle’ or ‘Parade’ but it was an instant introduction to the
world of naked ladies. The confusion that the images sent racing around my body
was matched by the redness in my face when I looked at Janet. I think we set it
on fire in an attempt to reverse time to before we all felt so awkward in each
others presence. The smoke attracted the attention of a passing adult who
shouted at us. We ran home and I spent the night both trying to forget and
remember the pictures I had seen.
It was in the last
year of Junior school that sudden changes came. Teachers started to call me and
other boys in the class by our surnames. I immediately believed I had done
something wrong. I am curious as to what comes first – paranoia or situations
that foster paranoia but there is no doubt that change from the warm
familiarity of my first name to the brutal unheard noise of my second had an
impact. It turns out it was the teachers preparing us for secondary school. I
just wish they had explained that as it would have eased the impact – possibly.
Another change that
swept the class like a Mexican wave was puberty amongst the girls. Shapes
changed as did behaviour adding more confusion for me and many of the boys who
didn’t have older sisters. Even Janet was affected and playtimes no longer felt
the same. She was becoming a woman and I was still a child with childish ways.
She drifted in the groups of girls who would stand a talk whilst I played games
with the other boys. The act I had perfected to allow me to seem like one of
the ‘gang’ was now beginning to cement itself around me.
The start of the final
term of Junior School was one of sun, fun and confusion. There was however one
particularly memorable event. We had been taking a test each day for a few
days. It had been fun and without threat but suddenly one morning we entered
our classroom to find the desks re-arranged, two new pencils in the wooden
valley, fresh rubbers and a sheet of white paper in the middle. “It’s the
11plus,” said Janet. I didn't know what she meant but the tone of her voice
told me I should be scared. My friendly worn wooden desk had become the
executioner’s block
‘Turn over your
papers,’ Mrs Kelly spoke in a voice I didn’t recognise as hers. I didn't
realise then but our performance would not only affect the rest or our lives
but also how she would be regarded in local education circles. Such were my
nerves that when I saw ‘name’ on the top of the paper I was unsure as to what
to write. However, once I settled down it was really rather fun and I was
slightly saddened when I had finished before Mrs Kelly said, ‘put your pencils
down’. I looked round a sea or worried faces. Once again I was an outsider.
