Memories

We were not allowed to have a bath. You would think that having moved into a flat which not only had an indoor toilet but also boasted a separate bathroom we would have been allowed to use this wonderous thing. The flat we had lived in previously didn’t have such luxury. There we had to share the outside toilet with the other families on the landing and it did not have a bathroom. The flat only had two rooms, a living room with a scullery and a bedroom. The flat we moved to was on the forth floor of a block and Mum made the bathroom out of bounds the minute we moved in by filling the bath with soiled nappies (my sisters, not mine). Once a week she would take us to the local baths where you paid a couple of pennies for the use of hot water and a bath. This was not in Victorian or Edwardian times, but in the Swinging Sixties. My mum might have been worried about the cost of taking baths at home although I don’t think we were exactly poor. Certainly working class but not poor. My Dad had a good job in a factory and my mum always had nice new clothes. I think she worked once, for a couple of weeks, in a sausage factory. Nonetheless we were never allowed to have a bath, instead we had to have a ‘wash down’. I was only allowed to wash my hair once a week and even then I was only allowed to use half a sachet of shampoo. Conditioner hadn’t been invented, and even if it had been I would never have been allowed to use it. My mum only bought red Lifebuoy soap, Signal toothpaste and black hair dye. These were the only items, along with my dads razor, in the bathroom cabinet. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I rebelled and took a bath every night and washed my hair (unless I was having a period, as apparently you risked death by washing your hair at that time of the month). I was a very smelly child. And I wore National Health glasses. It is a wonder I had any friends.


My mum didn’t like cooking either. So if she had to cook it would be done grudgingly so that bits would be burnt, other bits would be raw and all of it was unappetising. The fridge was always empty – apart from a pint of milk. When I met my friend Kitty I was amazed to see the inside of her mum’s fridge, filled with cheeses, cold meats (in Tupperware! So posh), salads and soft drinks. It was a relief when my dad left and mum gave up cooking. The Chippie provided for my dietary needs.

My mum was very fussy about housework but not at all concerned about home comforts. The carpets were threadbare and the furniture had seen better days. Even when she could afford it mum would never spend money on things for the home. I was always embarrassed about asking friends home. They lived in homes with fitted carpets and G Plan furniture. My room in the flat near Lambeth Walk was empty except for a bed. My baby sister must have been in my mum and dads room. I don’t remember any toys and certainly no books. But I must have had toys. There is a photograph of me with a lot of dolls but this was taken at my Nan’s home so I suspect that was where my toys were. I did have a special doll, Bella, that must have lived with me because I would have been inconsolable without her. My Nan used to make her the most wonderful outfits. When I was 7 we moved to a flat in a tower block and I remember I had toys there. I had an Etch-a-Sketch and Spirograph which I loved. I never had a Sindy (too expensive) but I did have a Tressy doll. I also had a Silver Cross dolls pram (must have been a gift from my grandparent) before we moved but my Dad used it to move some items to the new flat and it broke under the weight. I know I was mortified.

My Mum and I spent one Christmas in Ireland when I was about 11. On Christmas day I didn't have any presents to open as they were all in London (as was my Dad). No one thought to buy me anything to open on the day itself and I remember watching my cousins excitingly opening their gifts and one of them allowing me to have a go on the Spacehopper that Santa had delivered. When I got home I was given my present, a Lilliput typewriter which I loved. But by the end of the week it had been hurled across the room and smashed to bits by my dad who had got annoyed by the tap tap tapping noise it made as I typed. My next door neighbour Jeanie had been given a typewriter too (the more expensive Petite Typewriter) and she used to let me have a go on hers until we fell out when she stole my Tressy.

My Nan used to buy me colouring pencils, magic markers, pads of paper and I loved staying with her because she played with me. She loved Scrabble and we would spend hours playing this, it was the travel version (Travel Scrabble) so it even came on holiday with us. My grandparents took me to the South Coast, Dorset and the Isle of Wight. My Nan would cook me tasty meals, my Grandad would take me everywhere with him. Every Friday night the 'Evening News' would publish a ramble and each weekend grandad would cut it out and we would walk it that weekend. My main memory of him is walking with him in bluebell woods singing 'Ive Got Sixpence' http://www.retro-lyrics.com/lyrics/ive-got-six-pence-lyrics-364.html and I don’t remember them ever shouting at me and they certainly never smacked me.

My Dad would play cards with me now and again. He would always play to win and would get very angry if I won a hand, which hardly ever happened as he was an excellent player and I wanted him to love me.

When I was 6 I asked if I could go to school on my own and my parents said ‘yes’. The journey was about a mile and took me across two main roads and a few less busy ones. Maybe they were looking rid of me. I used to go to the shops to buy dads paper when I was 5. On the way back I would walk along pretending to read it so that passers by would be impressed - 'look at that little girl reading the paper - she must be a genius'! When I was twelve I took over cooking Sunday dinner (the Chippie closed on Sundays). My mum would have had me up chimneys if London wasn't a smoke free zone.

Although my dad had a car I don’t remember ever being in it with him. Not surprisingly as he had a Bubble Car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_car. This gave way to a Ford Zodiac  which I had to spend ages at the window to make sure no one nicked it. The only time I remember being in a car with him is after he and mum had split up and he took me to Southend in a beautiful blue Ford Cortina.


The toiletless flat was next to the factory where my dad worked. I used to see him as me and mum walked back from the shops and I loved the smell of sawdust and how kind his workmates were to me. I used to pick a pretty white flower (bineweed!) that grew on the fences surrounding the bombsites to give him. The firm used to give the children of its workers the most wonderful Christmas parties with lots of food and Santa would bring us amazing presents. One year they thought I was a boy (having a unisex name) and I got a tool kit. But the best thing was they would take us to the London Palladium to watch the pantomime. My mum came one year and embarrassed me by screaming ‘Malcolm I love you’ when the singer Malcolm Roberts came on stage in the 1971 production of Cinderella.

It is shocking that I never had any books. The only one I can remember is ‘Kittens with Mittens’ which I think belonged to my sister. When we moved to the flat in the tower block I joined the library and a whole new world opened up for me. A world of Hans Christian Anderson and Enid Blyton. I used to love going to that library. The children’s area was in the basement and was my favourite place to be. In fact I was exactly like Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’. And my mum and dad weren't very different to hers either.

Why am I sharing all this? Well kids, you aren't interested in this stuff now but one day you will be. I am going to ask my mum to talk to me about her childhood. She never has very much to say about it but I want to know what her home was like, what she was like in school, what her relationship with her parents was like and how things changed when her mother died. My mum was just 6 when her mum died and left a family of four children, my mum the youngest, with their father. Maybe that is why she struggled as a parent.

My mum came to England to be bridesmaid for her oldest sister and she never went back 'home' to live. She met my dad and they married. She was 23 and he was a mere 20. When I asked her why she married him (having been told she had never loved him) she said 'I fell in love with his mum and dad.'

10 months after they married I came into their life and for my mum this meant life was over. She hated being a parent, saw me as the reason she was trapped and spent the next 17 years telling me she hated me, I was stupid, ugly and that she tried to abort me but chickened out at the last minute. Abortions in 1960 were illegal and very risky and I know she tried drinking lots of gin in order to go through with it but it didn't numb her enough to put herself in the hands of back street abortionist. 'I wish you were dead' was the mantra of my childhood.

Even in my darkest moments I am always glad she failed.

I would have loved to have grown up in a proper house. With a garden. In a proper family. I would have loved to have had a pink bedroom filled with books and games and toys. I would have loved to have come home from school and be greeted by the smell of home cooking, to a mummy who smiled sometimes, kissed my cheek, and was happy to see me. I would have loved to chat to her about my day, show her my homework, be told how clever I was. How pretty. I would have loved to have been run a bubble bath (Matey) and told to make sure I washed behind my ears. I would have loved a dad who took the time to talk to me,  to sit me on his knee and read to me. I would have loved to have got through one day without being hit, without shedding tears.

'When I was Seventeen' http://www.top40db.net/Lyrics/?SongID=73059 I ran away from home and from everything I had ever known. Well everything except the being hit and shedding tears bit.