link to bkmark

Back to Chapter 1

Back to Chapter 2

Back to Chapter 3

Link to Chapter 5

DOWN TO LAST PLACE

Chapter Four
Electrocution Lessons

    It was just after we moved to Timperly that I came in, to be told by my brother -
 

    "You're going to have electrocution lessons. I heard Mum and Dad talking" He said, in his best 'I know a secret type of voice'.
 

    "What do you mean electrocution lessons?" I asked in puzzlement. I had never heard of 'electrocution lessons'. I wondered if they were like ballet lessons. I had had a few of those in Cheadle and quite enjoyed them except for missing out on Saturday mornings, playing forts and pirates, with our beds as the boats.
 

    We had swimming lessons in the local baths on Tuesday afternoons
after school and I loved those. I was very disappointed to find they were 'elocution lessons' and nothing to do with electricity but were instead to teach me how to speak properly.
 

    As far as I was concered I already spoke very well and according to some people, far too often and for much too long so I was not to happy to find out I was to lose my Saturday mornings again, into the bargain.
 

    The only consolation was that the lady lived in Sale, three door down from Aunty Freda and Uncle Harry and I got to visit them afterwards. The point of this was to eradicate an embarrassing lisp, which still made me sound like a baby. My parents were worried that my speech impediment would make me a target for bullies, which were around even in those days.
In fact, being’ the kid with the lisp; was not half as tease-worthy as being the kid with the lisp, who has to have elocution lessons’
 

    “Come on love! You’ll be late for your elocution lesson.” Mum would say
as every other kid was getting ready to go out and play on Saturday morning I had to dress up smart and be taken for my lesson, which being a tomboy, I hated.
 

    Sitting there, in a silly dress with that darn big bow on top of my head, saying.
 

    "Papa’s car is a Jaguar." and “Seven, saucy, sausages sizzling in a saucepan.” especially as my Dads car was an old Austin and everybody knows that you don’t cook sausages in a saucepan. It was quite good fun learning to do tongue twisters though, like: - Betty Botter bought some butter but the butter Betty Botter bought was bitter.
 

    Betty Botter bought some better butter, she put it with the bitter butter, to make the bitter butter better, than the bitter bit of butter, Betty Botter bought before. It was a long time ago, but I think I got it right.
 

    I still have fun with "Red leather. Yellow leather" repeated three times
is the best.
 

    I had two years of wasted Saturday mornings. Followed by five years of speech and drama classes after school and I still had a lisp as bad as ever. Years later I had a riding accident and lost my two front teeth. When I returned from the dentist, with my new front teeth, my husband said.
 

    “What’s happened to your lisp? It’s gone!” I was amazed to find it really was gone, in one hour, after thirty years and I never lisped again.
 

    Trisha and I used to love to make club houses in the cellar, like a secret society. We’d temporarily fallen out with the boys and decided that this club would be girls only. I bought a 'John Bull printing set', with club funds [mine and Trisha’s pocket money) and tried to think up a name for our club.
 

    We wanted something original but not too long. It took us several hours to decide and agree on a name and then we set about the long business of printing out membership cards and making badges.
 

    We decided to really splash out on the badges and raided our Mum’s sewing boxes for embroidery silk, beads and even found some gold braid. It took us hours to sew the two matching badges and we fixed little safety pins to the back so we could pin them, proudly on our shirts. When we were finished we went upstairs to show our Mums what we had made, fully expecting them to be awed by our brilliance, we were quite put out when they both collapsed in fits of giggles
 

    “What are you laughing at?” we asked in injured tones. As we looked at our hysterical Mothers. Of course it was our club’s initials.
 

    ‘Secret Ladies and Girls Society’. My Mum, when she could regain her composure, explained that it would not be a good idea to walk around with the word SLAGS on our badges. Crestfallen, we returned to our club to think of another name and change our badges accordingly.
 

    We decided to keep it simple, this time and just call it the Womens Club. Surely we couldn’t go wrong with badges that simply said W.C. could we? We changed all stationary and proudly painted our club initials on the door.
 

    Then we went upstairs for our tea proudly, wearing our new badges. I began to show my Mum my new club badge. I was bewildered when she burst out laughing again and so did Trisha’s mum. We didn’t bother with clubs again for ages and ages, a kid can only stand so much ridicule.
 

    My brother and I were beginning to make friends at our new school, and so after school we would go and meet them. At the time my brother and his mates were keen on train-spotting and would go to a place called Skeleton Junction, to watch the trains go past.
 

    I never could see the point of this occupation, but the boys would spend hours watching the trains and writing the numbers down in their little notebooks, as if their lives depended on them, and the fuss they would make if they ever saw the same number twice, well you would have thought they had won t pools.
 

    I don’t remember whose idea it was to stand on the tracks and play chicken with the trains, but you know how kids are when someone says
 

    “Go on I dare you”. That was all it took to have the boys risking their lives. When someone said
 

    “Are you going to have go Marjie?” Said one of the lads.
 

    “No. I’m not going to.” I replied and that would have been that, except someone said-
 

    “She doesn’t have to. She’ only a girl.” ‘Only a girl ‘ I thought. I’ll show them and deaf to the warnings that they shouted after me. I ran to the track and stood my ground as the huge goods train roared towards me. When the train was too close for comfort, I went to run away but I could not move; my silly sandal had got caught under the sleeper and I was trapped.
 

    It was too late to undo the buckle and free myself, I had only one chance and one second to save my life. I yanked off the shoe, snapping the buckle in the process and ran clear of the track. After the train had gone, I retrieved my broken sandal, to the sound of loud cheers from the other kids. John’s only comment was
 

    “Don’t you ever do anything like that again. I thought you were going to be killed, what would I have said to Mum if I had to take you home in bits."
Of course nothing was said to the grown ups about my adventure and the railway chicken game was never played again as no one would ever be able to beat my death defying record at it.
 

    Real courage, however was needed to face my Mum with a brand new pair of sandals ruined. I told Mum the buckle had just broken while I was playing, which was the truth, wasn’t it? Mum was furious [with the shop manager] and managed to persuade the shop to replace the sandals, after threatening to write to head office about their shoddy workmanship, [which saved my naughty little life. Thank God for shoddy workmanship, said I when I said my prayers that night.]
 

    Trisha’s cellar was much more interesting than ours because her grandma had lived in the house for her whole life the cellar was full of things collected over generations. We spent many blissful hours poking through it all. There were boxes of old clothes and curtains etc. which we used for dressing up, and a whole roomful of things to use as props when we went into our theatrical era.
 

    I loved the theatre, although I only been to one proper play and a few pantomimes, I was completely stagestruck. If one has artistic ambitions for  ones children to become actors, musicians, dancers or whatever, take them to the theatre when they are very young. Let them overdose on the atmosphere and the glamour of watching an artist at work.
 

    Do not wait for them to show an interest in a subject before letting them experience it at close hand but if they do show an interest in something, encourage them, give them all the help and support you can. Never laugh at their childish dreams or scoff at their nieve ambitions for greatness.
 

    Believe in your children, help them to believe in themselves and always let them know you have faith and confidence in their ability, no matter how far off the realisation of their goals might seem.  We started putting on plays for our parents and the other children. We wrote the scripts ourselves and everyone had to sit quietly, even bored older brothers and watch as we performed them.
 

    They had one good quality, they were mercifully very short. To Trisha these games were only games, as she had no ambitions of an artistic bent, she wanted to be a secretary in her Dads firm. I wanted to be a Film star or a singer or maybe a dancer, dancing Swan lake, like Margot Fontayne. Even being a circus clown would be better than an ordinary office-type job, anything in front of an audience  would suit me even if it meant being poor.
 

    To this end, or maybe just for the fun of it, I would spend hours working on scripts and little comedy routines. I was given a portable radio for my seventh birthday. I remember it had a battery the size of a brick, being one of the first transistor radios. I used to put it under my bedcovers and with the volume really low, I would listen to all the evening comedy shows on the light program and the plays on the BBC Home Service, which is now radio 4.
 

    In the morning I would write down all the best jokes that I could remember and learn them off by heart. My Mum used to say that if only I could learn my school work half as well, I would be top of the class.
 

    Trisha and I became as close as sisters, in spite off going to different schools. That Summer our parents decided that both our Families would take our Whitsun holidays together. We were overjoyed and could hardly wait For the holiday to start.
 

    Trisha’s Dad, Ted was very keen on sailing and had promised our Dad that that he would teach him how to sail a dinghy. We went to a place in NorthWales, called Deganwy, it is just across the bay from Conway castle and very sheltered making it a safe place to swim or sail.
 

    We had all been having swimming lessons since we were 5 years old, as a kid I would have quite happily lived in water, as long as it was not for washing in. If I had my way humankind would have stayed in the sea with the dolphins and the whales. I would have had a few harsh words to say to whichever ancestor made that fateful decision to crawl up onto the shore and grow legs.
 

    The First morning we went down to breakfast, all togged out in our brand new “suitable off sailing” outfits, keen and eager For our First try at sailing. Of course I’d had my ‘seven year old' ideas of what it was going to be like but they had not included the boredom of waiting ages for the boat to be got ready. Then waiting for my turn, of course the boys had to have first go, then my Dad, [looking an absolute scream in his ‘smart' shorts]
 

    “Be careful! Harry” warned my Mum [did I mention she was the original worrier princess, long before Zena] who had visions of us all getting drowned or eaten by sharks or at the very least stung by jellyfish.
 

    “Don’t worry Ann, I’ll look after him.” said Ted. Trisha’s mum just got on with her knitting. I think Ivy had long since given up waiting for her turn on the boat, saying she was just as happy to watch. Ted pushed the boat into the shallows and deftly jumped in.
 

    “Careful! how you climb in Harry! Use the opposite side to me so you don’t tip us over. That’s the way now slowly” Dad sat down but as he did the boat swung round and the whole lot turned turtle, both Dads were thrown into the water.
 

    “What happened are you alright?” said Mum as they walked back to the beech soaking wet and dragging the boat, which had to be emptied before any more sailing could be done.
 

    “I changed my mind, I decided to have a swim instead.” said my Dad.
I realised that sailing might be fun after all, especially if it meant that we got to watch grown ups making idiots of themselves. By the end of the holiday, my Dad was completely hooked on sailing and so was John but to tell the truth, I never really got into it that much.
 

    I could not see the point of sitting on a wet bit of wood holding piece of wet rope; sailing up and down the same stretch of water. Only to end up back in the same place. When I travel I like to go somewhere.
 

    On one of the days, probably one when there was no wind, we all went for a drive to see Snowdonia and the pretty little villages on the other side of the mountains. When he was a child my Dad had spent his holidays there, on the Llynne Peninsular’. We were enchanted by the beautiful little fishing village, Abersoch and the still unspoilt Welsh countryside around it. We would only leave after making our parents promise to take us back there soon.
 

    The first thing Dad did when we returned home was, buy a sailing boat, a fourteen foot dinghy called a 'Graduate'. It was named Judy, after the the previous owner's wife and as it is 'bad luck' to change it, Judy it stayed. Secretly I thought it should be called the Maggie Ann after me and Mum, rather than some woman we didn't know but that was just my humble opinion.
 

    From that day onwards, Sundays were never the same again. In the
spring and summer, Sundays were spent at Winsford Flash, a small stretch of water between two river in Cheshire. Winsford is in the heart of the salt mines and all the buildings are built in the Tudor style, half-timbered.
 

    I was told it was to help them float in case the underground sea that caused the salt mines, should decide to return. I was never sure if this was true, my Mum told me it was and I have no reason to doubt her but it just sounds a bit far fetched. I just can’t imagine it would work but then I am not an engineer. In the Winter Dad would sandpaper the boat and varnish it, to have it ready for summer.

Back to chapter 4
 

 Trisha and I became closer friends than ever, during that holiday so if for any reason she was unable to come out to play I would miss her badly and not know what to do with myself. I could play with my brother but John being older and a boy had reached the age where he thought that girls were really silly and what he said was automatically right, regardless of what I thought was fair so games with him would sometimes end in a quarrel.
 

He would be off with his friends, since they got bikes, fishing or doing boy things so quite iften I would be left alone at home. I was happy to play with Trisha and leave the boys to it, their games were all football and fishing these days and they were getting too big to play with us girls anymore.
 

 One week, Trisha had to stay indoors, because she was ill, I kicked about like a lost sardine, For a couple of days, then at last Trisha came round with her mum, I was thrilled to bits to see her well again.
 

 “Now Trisha you are still not completely well yet so no running about and no skating or ‘pogo sticks’, just play quietly together in the front garden where I can keep an eye on you from the window, and if you start to Feel ill again come straight back in. I want you both to promise me faithfully” Trisha’s mum said, firmly and made us both promise faithfully. Which we gladly did, relieved at last to have company.
 

 “We promise.” Trisha said, pulling a face of disdain as her Mum kissed the top of her head. I promised too, I could see Ivy was very worried about Trisha. I liked Trisha’s mum and was so pleased to have my mate back, not skating was a small price to pay. I took my skates off and put them on the wall behind me.
 

 “What do you want to play? You choose, as you’ve been ill, we can play cards or would you like a game of Monopoly?” I asked, offering to fetch the board.
 

 “I want to play on my skates but Mum has put them away, till she says I’m better enough. It’s not fair.” Trisha said sulkily.
 

 “Don’t worry it’s only till tomorrow and there are plenty of other things we can do. Come on there must be something else you’d like to do?” I said trying to cheer her up.
 

 “Marjie, I could borrow your skates. Just to wear. I wont skate I’ll just put them on for a minute.” She pleaded and sulked and I knew she would skate in them once she was wearing them. She couldn’t resist it.
 

 “Trisha! Don’t be daft if your mum saw you in them she would never believe that you had only put them on, just to sit there wearing them. It doesn’t make any sense. Come on cheer up, lets think of something else to do. I don’t want your mum to catch us breaking our promise.” I said, as firmly as I could.
 

 “Mum would never know, I would take them straight off again honestly I would.” Trisha started to cry.
 

 “NO! Please Trisha, don’t cry. We haven’t seen each other all week. Please, let’s not argue. You promised your mum and so did I that you would not skate, if she let you go out to play.” I said but she started getting cross.
 

 “Why won’t you let me? You are not wearing them are you? You’re just being mean. I only want to put them on for a minute, I won’t be your friend anymore if you don’t let me wear your skates. Honestly I won’t. You’ll be sorry if don’t let me.” She pouted. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen Trisha like this, I wondered if it was because she was still ill, but whatever it was, I could not break a promise.
 

 Just about that point Trisha’s mum came out to see if we were alright, she must have been watching from her living room window.
 

“Are you alright, Trish? you aren’t feeling dizzy again are you?” Ivy said.
 

 “No Mum, I feel fine. We are just sitting here talking quietly. Aren’t we?” She gave me a warning look, as if to say not to tell on her, as if I would get my best friend in trouble with her mum.
 

 “Has Trisha been very ill?” I asked. Hoping to keep her there as long as I could, to give myself a break from the whining Trish.
 

 “Yes Marjie, she has. I have had to call the doctor out, and he said to keep her in bed but she was so fed up. I thought it would do no harm to let her outside to sit in the sun for a while, as long as she doesn’t tire herself out running about.” She said, with a concerned look.
 

 “She might get worse again if she gets overtired and then it would be even longer before she is well.” Ivy explained. All the time her mum was there Trish was all sweet and happy again. I hoped that her mum coming out like that would make her stop pestering to have a go on my skates.
 

 Her mum made us both renew our promises but the very moment she went back inside Trish started again, regardless of her promise.
 

 “Please Marjie. Now that my Mum has been out to check she won’t come out again for at least another half hour so you know we won’t get caught?”
 

 “Trisha getting caught isn’t the point, we promised your mum and you know the second she looks out of the window and sees no sign of you sitting there, she will be down stairs to check and then we’ll both be in trouble. Your mum would tell my mum and then neither of them will ever trust us again. Let’s play a game or do something indoors.” I  said, hoping to take her mind off skating but she just sulked.
 

 “Mum said I have to stay by the window so she can see me.” She said.
 

 “Well call up and ask her if we can play indoors.” I suggested.
 

 “She said not to keep calling up and ringing the bell. Please Marjie, let me wear your skates. OK! Just one skate each. That would be fair, wouldn’t it?” She pleaded again. I did not know what to do for the best, it was a horrible situation but I had worked hard to keep my parents trust and did not intend to throw it away, no matter how good a friend Trish was.
 

 “What would I say if you got ill again through me letting you skate, I’d never forgive myself. I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I let that happen would I?” I said, trying to appeal to her good sense and I have to say this was very unlike Trish to be so selfish she was usually the sensible one who kept me out of trouble. I didn’t understand why she was being so peevish and whiney. I realise now it was the illness.
 

 It was a horrible afternoon and I was thoroughly glad when her Mum came out to say her tea was ready and took her back inside with her. She never stopped going on the whole time. I just put it down to her still being ill and not herself. I looked forward to seeing her the next day, when I was sure she would forgive me for siding with her mum and understand that I’d said ‘no’, for her own sake as much as my own.
 

 The next day early, I went next door to see how she was and rang the doorbell.
 

 “Is Trisha well enough to come out play today?” I asked when her mum opened the door. I could see Trisha’s outline through the glass of the door, but
 

 “She is, but she is not coming out to play with you today or ever again.” Her expression was strange, I was mystified, until she went on to say:
 

 “Trisha has told me what you said about me. That I’m mean, cruel and horrible. No! don’t you dare say you didn’t say it. Trisha said you would deny it; she has told me what a terrible liar you are. You are a wicked spiteful two-faced little monster. And, I don’t want to see you  with my daughter ever again.” Mrs Walker said bristling with rage, adding that we could say goodbye, if we were quick.
 

 “Now I’ll give you both, two minutes to say ‘Goodbye’ or whatever you want to say to Trisha. As long as you never talk to each other again.” She almost spat the words at me.
 

 In my short life, I’d never seen such venom. She marched off and never looked back as she stomped up the stairs. I began to shake violently, with shock and then anger. I stood with my mouth open, not able to speak for a moment.
 

 I was stunned, I’d always liked Trisha’s mum and had never said a word against her, so I looked at Trisha in bewilderment as I heard her mum run up the stairs to their flat.
 

 “What on Earth did you say to your mum, Trish and why?” I asked, hoping I was having a nightmare and would wake up at an moment.
 

 “I told you that you would be sorry if you didn’t let me wear your skates!” Trisha said, in a mocking voice. I could not believe my ears, how could she throw away our friendship for the sake of a half hours skating? It was such a stupid reason, over which to lose a good friend.
 

 “Don’t you dare try and tell my Mum that you didn’t say all that because she won’t believe you. I bet now you wish you’d just let me wear your skates, don’t you?” Before I had chance to say anything her mum called down to her to come upstairs; the two minutes were up. Trisha slammed the door and stomped up the stairs.
 

 I was left standing alone on her porch. I walked sadly back but looking round and up at the window I could see my ex-best friend grinning through the glass at me with her tongue out and her thumb at her nose, outstretched fingers waggling.
 

 I was glad my Mum had not been around to hear me receiving all that abuse. She would have been hurt for me and would have gone round to try to sort it out. I knew enough to know that it never could be, sorted out.
 

 Even at the tender age of seven I knew the power of words and once said cannot be unsaid. It was my first experience of injustice and I found it just as unpleasantly hurtful, as disappointment, embarrassment, worry or fear. Worse perhaps because it contains an element of all of them.
 

 I thought that Trisha would never be allowed to play with me again. I went upstairs, lay on my bed and cried and cried. When I stopped crying for my lost friend and all the fun we would never have now, I got out my notebook and wrote down the whole episode, word for word, trying to make some sense of it all.
 

 Trisha seemed so pleased with the way her plan had worked, I wondered if she had thought about the long term consequences at all. I just hoped that when she stopped being so pleased with herself, she would realise how much she had hurt me and  her mother and regret it.
 

 I wanted to be angry at Mrs. Walker (I would never call her aunty Ivy again) but I couldn’t blame her for believing Trisha after all she was her daughter and I was just the little girl next door.
 

 I knew that Trisha would never be able to own up to her Mum and tell her the truth, so that was that. For the rest of the school holidays I wandered about with no one to play with. I told my Mum that we had, had a quarrel but I didn't say what it was about. Why should my Mum have to suffer as well as the rest of us.
 

 After a long time Trisha did come round to call for me again, as if nothing had happened but we could not be as close as before. Neither of us ever mentioned it again but we both remembered and it was like a partition between us. I always wished one of us would have had the guts to talk to each other about it and sort it out. That way we would have had a chance to put it behind us and start again.
 

 The strangest thing was the way Mrs. Walker behaved, as if the whole thing had been a figment of my imagination. She never once apologised (or even offered forgiveness) so I have no idea whether she had learned or more likely guessed the truth.
 

 I wondered if she had decided to give me the benefit of some lingering doubt and was sparing us all the embarrassment of a further confrontation. Had she realised that she had overreacted to the whole situation.
 

 It taught me an important fact, which as a parent, I have made a rule. Do not react to what children say until I know the whole, true facts and have heard both sides. This is probably why I have so few grey hairs and saved myself countless nasty moments. This could be the subject of another book perhaps.
 

That Summer Trisha’s brother Vic, failed his  *“Eleven Plus” and so had to go to the local secondary modern. A fate worse than death apparently so Trish’s parents made the decision to send Trish to the little private school called The Forest School. It had a wonderful reputation for getting almost all its pupils either into Grammar School or a scholarship to an even better school.
 

 My parents were very worried by this because Victor, while not as brainy as the Williams boys David and Ian, was still quite bright. My parents felt that if Vic could fail, there was a real possibility of John or I also failing. It was not such a remote possibility, even clever children had been known to buckle under the stress of so much of their future riding on one event, that their minds just went blank.
 

A friend of mine failed the eleven plus but the same week, passed the much harder entrance exam to the prestigeous Manchester High School for girls and won a scholarship. The same girl had an IQ. of 135 at the age of fifteen and eventually passed about five A-levels. So much for the eleven plus.
 

(*The ‘eleven plus’ was an exam taken by all British children, until the 1970’s when comprehensive schools replaced the old ‘Grammar Schools’ and ‘Secondary Modern Schools’ system.)
 

 That term I went all out to make other friends at Navigation Rd. and two new girls started at the same time. Anna and Rowena became good friends to me as they lived quite nearby, they were sisters who had been at Forest School, a private school in Moss Lane. Their parents had to take them out when the fees increased.
 

 Their Mother was my Mums hairdresser and as I loved doing my Mums hair I used to go with her and watch and learn as she wielded the scissors and comb, so I already knew them when they turned up at my school, and they soon became my best friends.
 

 Anna was nearer my age while Rowena was one year older than me and we had many interests in common. We used to go to the little woody marsh, which lay between our two homes and study wildlife, which was there in abundance.
 

 Rowena would make notes and sketches of everything we saw and soon had me making a Nature Scrapbook, she showed me how to press flowers. She appreciated my ability to make detailed drawings of everything we studied.
 

 She also taught me about calligraphy, the art of penmanship and showed me how to use a dip-in pen with a brass nib. Rowena showed me how to cut a quill, from a goose or swans flight feather, using a small sharp, pair of scissors or a craft knife. (If you would like to try this, ask your local park keepers to look out for moulted feathers, in the springtime or keep an eye open at the local duckpond).

Our notes and pictures really looked very good drawn with a quill pen and pasted with our dried flowers into a big scrap book. Using old wallpaper to make outer covers so they looked like a real books.
 

 That Autumn after pestering her for years, Mum finally agreed to let us have a dog of our own. Instead of me having to borrow Aunty Freda’s dog.
 We got in from school one day and there on the floor of the kitchen was the most beautiful daschound puppy we had ever seen, Mum had got it from a breeder and we both fell instantly in love with him. Mum liked the name Humphrey and we kids were too ecstatic to argue about it so Humphrey it was.
 

 Mum had bought him bowls and showed us how to feed him and we could not believe our eyes when later that first day he picked up his bowl in his teeth and took it over to the sink where Mum was running water to do the dishes.
 

 I was dying to take him out to show him off to my friends but Mum said he was too young to go out yet and to give him a few days to get to knew us before bringing our friends round to see him, so we had to wait a week or so.
 

 When the week was up I went round and brought Anna to meet our new puppy at our house, she fell in love with him as everyone did. Mum let us play in the living room as there was more room in there and we played with him for hours Anna had tea with us and watched as we fed him his dinner, then we went into the living room to let him eat it in peace.
 

 While we waited we started showing off the gymnastics we had learned at school doing summersaults and handstands while Mum watched. Suddenly there was a scream from Mum just as Anna landed rather badly Humphrey had sneaked back in, to find us and Anna had landed on top of him crushing his skull and he was dead.
 

 I can’t describe how we all felt especially Anna, who felt to blame for the accident. My Mum drove Anna home reassuring her all the way that it was nobody’s fault. It was just an accident but Anna who loved animals, and had cried for days when her cat had had kittens and one of them died, was inconsolable.
 

 John and I could not understand why the puppy we had waited our whole lives for could have died after just ten days with us. Mum tried to console us by saying we would get another puppy one day but we both said that we didn’t want another puppy, we wanted Humphrey back.
 
 

 Christmas was getting close and this year we were expecting even more relative than usual, but even Christmas could not put Humphrey to the back of our minds It was a couple of months since he died but I would still wake up in the night and cry a few tears after dreaming about him.
 

During daytime however, we would behave normally so our parents thought my brother and I were recovering well from our tragedy. They hoped that all the excitement of Christmas would help us to get over losing him even more.
 

 It was fun to share a room for a couple of weeks, especially at Christmas. Two weeks was about as long as it took to start to get on each other's nerves. We both loved having lots of people around and put our brother/sister arguing on hold, like two generals calling a truce for the Christmas celebrations.
 

 To make space for the ten or more relations, spending Christmas with us, John slept in my room. The first night, he woke me up in the early hours, with the sound of him sobbing into his pillow.
 

 “What’s wrong Johnny?” I asked. concerned for my older brother.
 

 “Nothing!” He snapped, embarrassed to have been overheard. “Go back to sleep.” I tried to respect his request and his privacy. I had not seen my brother cry for years and it worried me. I knew what it was about. Humphrey, of course; it still upset me but I was an eight-year-old girl and I could cry all I wanted.
 

The same thing happened the next night and every other night. Even on Christmas Eve. John made me promise again, not to tell Mum or Dad but I was going to have to break my promise and tell Mum.
 

 “I’m going to tell Mum, you can’t go on like this Johnny, it is worrying me.” He was very cross and upset at my threat
 

 “Look if you told Mum there is nothing she could do is there It will just make her worry and then she’ll tell Dad and then he’ll worry and in the end it will spoil Christmas for everybody. There is nothing they can do about it they can’t bring him back, can they? Anyway I’m not crying about that, it’s the cut on my foot, it really hurts me at night time.” He reasoned.
 

 I could see his point about spoiling Christmas and worrying Mum and Dad but I just could not bear my big strong brother to be so unhappy and go on doing nothing. The more I tried to comfort him the more upset it made him and he made me promise faithfully, not to tell Mum or Dad. After a particularly bad night, I could not hide from my Mother, the fact that I was very worried about something.
 

 “Mum, I’m worried about John, he keeps waking up in the night crying!” I burst out in tears myself at the memory of his sobs, which he had me burying my head and pretending not to hear.
 

 “Do you know what it’s about?” Mum asked. Sitting down to give me her full attention.
 

 “He says that it is his foot is hurting him, where he cut his toe last month but its not really that. His foot his almost completely healed, I think he is still very upset about Humphrey. Mum, he made me promise not to tell you so please don’t tell him that I told you. I know there is not much you can do I suppose but I had to tell you. I didn’t know what else to do.” I said, relieved that I told her.
 

 I was upset about Humphrey too but being a little girl, I had done my grieving openly and liberally, at the time and since until now I was almost over the worst of the pain. John had tried to be brave, like he felt a big boy of ten and three quarters should be and buried his sobs privately, in his pillow at night.
 

  I do not know if this is a general rule but I think boys are quite often more sensitive than girls, they simply try to use more control, over displaying their emotions.
 

 “Don’t worry we won’t tell John that you told me. Just leave it to me, I’ll sort it out.” She gave me a cuddle and then sent me out to play.
 

 “I think we are going to have to get another dog, Harry love.” Mum told Dad when he came home that night.
 

 As soon as all the relations had gone home, Mum took John and I to choose another puppy. She drove us all over the place to this breeder and that to try and find something we both liked. The main criteria from Mum’s point of view, was any dog we liked as long as it wouldn’t moult.
 

 Mum had done her homework, she knew which breeds would moult and which had to be clipped. I wanted a mongrel, just to have something different.
 

 “I want a cross between a Rin-Tin-Tin dog and a Lassie dog.” I said.
 

 “The trouble is, that we would have to know someone with a collie who wants to breed it with an Alsatian. The owners would not want to breed mongrels, that they would have trouble giving away when they can breed with another pedigree dog and make money from a litter of valuable pedigree puppies.” Mum said, and went on to add.
 

 “Apart from that we wouldn’t know whether it would moult or how big it would grow. It could be bigger than either of it’s parents and with mongrels the problem is knowing which dog is the father.”
 

 “Why wouldn’t we know which dog was the daddy dog?” I asked in bewilderment.
 

 “Because the mummy dog would have met him on her own and wouldn’t be able to tell her owner which boy dog was the father.” She said firmly, trying to stifle her embarrassment.
 

 “What about a beagle, they only have very short coats so moulting wouldn’t be a problem.” Mum said, trying to change the subject before the questions got too awkward. Moulting was the last thing we cared about. We looked at the beagle and it was sweet but it was nothing like a Lassie or a Rin-Tin-Tin dog.
 

 We looked at Staffordshire terriers, wirehaired terriers and cairn terriers, which I didn’t like because it growled and snapped at me but John loved it, until it growled and bit him too. Patiently Mum took us to every breeder and every kennel, in the area. If John liked one I didn’t, and vice versa. The problem was trying to find one dog, to fit three different ideal images.
 

 When it began to look like an impossible mission, we found a poodle puppy. Now neither of us had ever liked poodles, we had always thought they were soppy dogs but as soon as we saw that chocolate brown ball of fluff we both fell in love with him. He took to us immediately, jumping playfully all over us, as if he had known us for years. His little pink tongue flapped and licked our hands as he tried to jump up and lick our faces too.
 

 “Don’t let him lick your faces, kids. He probably has worms and you don’t want to catch them off him. I want you to be very careful to wash your hands after touching all these puppies and until he has been wormed try not to let him lick you. And never let dogs lick your faces.” Mum said, by way of ‘Lesson One’ of our training to be good pet keepers.
 

 “How has he got worms Mum? Can we really catch them? How will we know if we get them? Can we see them?” We both asked, in that grim fascination, all kids have with the less delicate side of nature. I t seemed we were getting more than one pet. We were getting the puppy and the puppy’s worms.
 

 His Kennel Club name was Wee Beau Drummel, but we called him Bo Bo. From day one though he was a one-man dog, and the one man was Mum. He would not leave her side. John fed him and I took him for his walks.
 

 I walked that puppy for miles and every time he would not walk willingly away from home, having to be carried, chivvied or dragged. On the instant we turned back towards home, he would gallop along ahead of me, dancing on the end of the lead, gasping and wheezing as his collar cut off his air supply.
 

 When he got closer he would add yelps and squeals of joy to the gasping and wheezing, which would get hoarser and hoarser, as his yelps and jumps and howls got more frantic, the closer we came to home. I calculated that he must be walking at least seven miles to every mile I walked.
 

 Running first away and then running back for the joy of running back away again. He could not wait to get back home, to Mum. If Mum came with us he would 'high step' perfectly in time to her steps, like a chocolate brown miniature, Fred Astair; keeping tightly 'to heel', anticipating her every move.
 

  If Mum went out and left him with us, he would stand at the front room window and wait listening for the sound of her car. He could hear her fifteen minutes before she turned into our road. For that fifteen minutes he would yelp and howl and run from the kitchen to the dinning room and back to the living room, yapping and barking like a dog gone mad.
 

 When she walked in the door he would leap at her and jump into her arms wagging his tail as if he was going to wag it off. He loved us all but for Mum, he would have done anything; he adored her.
 

 Trisha eventually, seeing me out skating than our aerodrome sized front drive, came over and asked me if it was O.K. if she brought her skates out to skate with me. She said nothing about our quarrel and I was just glad to have her friendship back.
 

 “Of course you can.” I said. It seemed plain silly not to be friends, especially as we did get on well together.
 

 And that was that. I knew she would have to come round after all she had nowhere to skate except the pavement, and skates were her greatest love, and mine. Our house had been a driving school and so, had a huge driveway, where the students could practice three point turns and reversing.
 

 Trisha told me all about her new school and showed off her posh new uniform. Then I told her that I was glad she liked it because I was going to start next term. She looked at me in disbelief and accused me of making it up, but I wasn’t, my parents, not to be outdone, had put my brothers and my name down to start at The Forest School, the next term.

 So at long last Trish and I were going to get our wish to be at the same school. Before we started though Dad took us all abroad For a sort of mini grand tour. We went all over the Continent, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany.

 We spent five or six weeks and saw Switzerland briefly From across Lake Cob Lenz.*(Check Spelling) We had a wonderful time but to tell the whole story, of Dad tracing long lost friends he knew from during the war. It would take up a whole book by its self, so I will leave out the rest and carry on from when we returned to England to start our first term at Forest School.

 The headmaster and headmistress were a married couple, Sylvia and St. John Hoogewurth [I hope I spelt it right) or was it Hoogerwurth, I can’t remember. They met at University but as there was a twenty-year age difference I don’t think they were students at the same time, no one ever said.

 He taught Maths, and she taught English and they were the best teachers I ever knew. When I first started I was in the second year, the right year for my age but I was well behind the rest of the class. To help me to catch up Mr. H. gave extra lessons for an hour every night after normal school hours were over.

 There was no extra charge for this facility, Trisha was also having extra lessons, as she was a semi. new girl too. and so was John, as he didn’t have long until his ‘eleven plus’.

 It didn’t take me long to catch up with the rest of the second year, but I enjoyed the extra lessons so much that I carried on having them, I soon got promoted to the third year’. When I would have gone into the third year, Mr. H. said I might as well go straight into the fourth year, and take my ‘eleven plus’ a year early.

  Mum said there was little point going to Grammar School a year early when I could not go to university until I was 18. Mr. H. was right though, he was thinking of the expense to my parents, especially if they chose to send me to a private secondary school. He knew there were ways round the age barrier to university, and that my folks were not wealthy and were making sacrifices to send us to private school.

 Mr. and Mrs. H. had a way of making children want to learn, they made it fun. They also made us believe that we had a destiny to fulfil and that we were all special. Mr. H. would draw a circle on the blackboard and make a line half way through.

 “The bottom half of this circle are the people who have failed their ‘eleven plus’ and the top half are the people who have passed, they each number, fifty per cent of the population. The bottom half will be factory workers and will be paid a wage decided by their boss, the top half will be management and they will be paid according to what they are worth, but above them will be the top twenty five per cent.”

 “Among them will be the bosses and the people who will run things for the other seventy five per cent, and they will be paid whatever they want to earn.”

 “If you are willing to take full advantage of this, work hard and when you have worked hard work harder, the choice will be yours. You can do whatever you choose to do and choose something you love doing.”
 

Mr. H. was 5Ft 2ins in height and as wide as he was round, he had steely grey hair and a toothbrush moustache. His eyes were grey and bulgy like a frogs but nobody ever took the Mickey out of him, not even behind his back. One or two people did question how he managed to make Mrs. H. fall in love and marry him despite the fact that she was clever, rich and absolutely gorgeous.
 

 A natural blonde with cornflower blue eyes, she was Danish or Norwegian on her mother’s side and on her father's side she was related to a family of bankers. Her skin had a luminous, velvety quality. She needed no makeup, with naturally pink cheeks and only wore a dab of red on her lips when it was the school Speech Day.
 

 When we were learning about the Vikings Mr. H. would say

 “If you want to know what a Viking Princess would have looked like, just look at my wife Sylvia.” He was right too, she did look exactly like a Viking Princess. They seemed very much in love and had four young children the eldest was my age and the youngest was the baby Avril, who was about one year old.
 

 I really enjoyed school for the years I was there especially as now I could stop the Saturday a.m. Elocution lessons and take Speech and Drama at school. The teacher for these, was drama school trained and a budding actress. Miss Cooper was gorgeous in a glamorous Film star way. She had us reading plays and taught us how to read poetry. Most of the class already spoke nicely, [i.e. without any accent.]
 

 Miss Cooper taught us to listen to accents and helped us to analyse and copy them. If we had an accent she told us to be proud of it and use it at home, then to put it away for public use.
 

It was taken for granted that we would all grow up to be famous for something and would need to be able to speak in public, in a way that would be understandable and give a good impression of our upbringings.
 

 Every term the class would put on a little play for the rest of the school she taught us how to apply grease—paint and do our hair with powder to make us look old, she got us all involved in making costumes and gathering props from home or wherever, we all loved it and we all loved Miss Cooper.
 

 In spite of John only being there a year Mr. H. made him Head of Jordan House and deputy head boy. I think it gave John quite a confidence boost to be so highly regarded. Perhaps that was the idea but with only twelve or thirteen, to a class one stood a much better chance of being chosen for those honours. I began to get more confident too and actually began to speak the way all this was teaching me to
 

 “Yes Mum she is a nice girl but awfully fart.” I said one day and was hurt by my parents reaction to my attempt at talkin’ proper. Mum explained that fat was pronounced FAT not FART, not even when you are trying to sound like your posh new friends. I pulled a few gaffs like that before I got the hang or were they garfs?
 

 Dad had promised us that he would take us back to Abersoch on the Lynn Pen in N.Wales. and we were not going to let him off. Despite being taken to The Black Forest in Germany and all over Europe. We still kept on about Abersoch. The first Whitsun holiday after we started at Forest School was spent in a cottage that Dad had rented in the tiny village next to Abersoch called Myntho
 

 It was set into the hill above the bay and From the top of the hill was a view of the whole of Snowdonia across Cardigan Bay, if we turned round we had a view of Hell’s Mouth (Porth Niger Check spelling) and Niven Bay. It was a couple of miles from Abersoch Beach but that was only a short drive on empty roads.
 

 I was very keen on bird watching at the time so the sight of a cuckoo, not just the sound of it was thrilling, so was the nest of wrens which the Farmers daughter showed me when she was showing me a short cut, back to the cottage with the milk, still warm from the cow. With cream half way down the bottle
 

 The cottage had no electricity, but that was all the more exciting to we kids we had a transistor radio, and a wind-up gramophone. There were only two records, Nat King Cole singing Walking my baby back home, and The Woody Woodpecker’s song. In the evenings we would play cards or go to visit Friends of ours in their caravan in Porth Tocyn.
 

Or the grown ups would go to the village for a drink at the Vynnol Hotel, where the owner was a friend of Fred Signey. Geoff Signey was my brother’s best friend and they lived four doors along from us in Timperly.
 

 They also had a sailing dinghy. Surprise! Surprise!
By the time this holiday ended our two families were very good
Friends, especially as they came, originally from Newcastle and had grown up know a lot of the same people that Mum knew.
 

 I was determined not to lose my old friends Anna and Rowena, just because I was at a new school, so when Dad came home from work with a new bike for each of us, a blue one for John and a red one for me I was overjoyed. I was now able to be at their house in five mine and as they both had bikes we could go on our nature watching outings and explore further afield than on foot.
 

 One day we went to the frog pond, in the garden of a big old empty house. It was Spring and we hoped to watch the frogs spawning, then go back each day or so to until the tadpoles hatched. The water was teeming with life apart from the randy frogs there were water-beetles, the whirligig kind. We had to be careful not to get bitten by these, they were two inches long with huge mandibles and an egg timer pattern on their backs.
 

 There were other water insects like water-boatmen with their two big oars. We drew careful pictures of them to take to the local reference library. We would look up their names and find out what we could about them and their life cycles.
 

 All went as normal until the Summer holidays started, we turned up at pond to discover hundreds of dead and dying frogs. They were lying all around the house in varying stages of desiccation. As the days passed the body count got higher and higher but we could find no reason for the tragedy.
 

 Rowena the oldest and bravest dissected some of the bodies and showed us how their spine was broken in almost every case, yet they had little damage to the skin, we wondered if some virus to blame perhaps caused by inbreeding or could the water be polluted or was some predator to blame.
 

 Eventually we decided to keep watch, it didn’t take long the second day, from our hiding place, we finally saw for ourselves what was killing the frogs.
 

 A group of boys arrived on bikes and carrying catapults, they collected a frog were easy to catch) and putting them into their catapults, fired the poor creatures at the roof of the house, the idea being to see if they could fire them high enough to reach the other side.
 

 Some boys preferred to  aim for the windows, letting out loud cheers if they managed to break the glass. We were horrified we had never seen such cruelty and the sound of the Frogs screaming as they were thrown through the air haunts me to this day
 

We ran out of hiding place and attacked the gang of boys and even though we heavily outnumbered we fought like amazons in a futile attempt to stop the carnage. It was hopeless the boys were much bigger than we were and they began to pick up sticks and stones to beat us off.
 

 Exhausted we jumped on our bikes and beat an honourable retreat. We could not forget about the horror of what they had done. We had to think of someway to stop what we saw, as cold-blooded murder of helpless harmless beautiful creatures. What could three little girls do against six or seven big boys.
 

 It occurred to me that if we couldn’t win by force surely we should be able to outwit these cruel vandals. We each went off home to see what we could think up overnight. I asked John to see if I could get help from him and his friends but they had some fishing trip planned.
 

 Even my parents did not understand why I was so upset and suggested I should not go back to the marshes again, if it meant coming home with my clothes all torn and covered in mud. I began to cry (The female, last resort) but it was no use, we girls were going to have to sort out these boys ourselves.
 

 The next day I met up with Anna and Rowena and we set off for the pond, this time we were ready. It was not long before the boys turned up on their bikes only today, we had left our bikes well hidden. We stayed put until we were sure that they were too involved in their game to be watching their bikes. We sneaked to where their bikes were all chained up together.
 

 Anna kept watch, while Rowena and I set about our plan. We punctured their tyres and using a chain key undid their chains and removed a link from each one.
 

 I knew we were taking a big risk, but someone had to do something to save the rest of the frogs. We gave ourselves a head start and then shouted that we had seen someone trying to steal the bikes then we ran.
 

 We never saw the boys again so I suppose our plan worked.
 
 

 When it was raining we would go into the empty old house to shelter, and we decided it would be an ideal place For’ a game of hide and seek.
 

 Rowena was oldest so we let her be the First seeker, Anna and I went off to hide, I went down to the cellar and Anna went up to the attics. We could hear Rowena count.
 

 “Coming ready or not” I heard her shout from the hail, as I hid in the cellar I could hear Rowena coming down the cellar stairs, she was trying to scare us
 

 “I’m coming to find you.” She said in a mock ghostly voice with lots of ooohhs! as she got to the cupboard door, in the cellar, I knew I was found so I jumped out of the cupboard and shouted, “BOO!” Rowena nearly jumped out off her skin but then she saw it was only me and we both laughed.
 

 Then we heard a loud scream from Anna upstairs, we ran up the stairs to see what had happened to her.
 “Anna what’s the matter we heard you scream.” Anna’s face was white as a sheet and she was shaking like a leaf.
 

 “I was hiding in a cupboard in the attic and I could hear you two downstairs. I held my breath to listen but I could hear breathing in the cupboard with me. Then something touched my arm, I screamed and opened the cupboard door but the cupboard was empty, there was nothing there at all.” Anna said and she did look badly scared.
 

 “It must have been a cobweb or something.” Rowena said.
 

 “Or a fly” I suggested, trying to calm Anna down.
 

 “Cobwebs don’t breath do they? I could hear someone breathing in the cupboard with me.” Insisted Anna, almost in tears.
 

 “Well there is no one else here. Unless it was a ghost!” Laughed Rowena.
 

 “Rowena, ghosts don’t breath. They are ghosts because they stopped breathing.” I said getting nervous too.
 

 “How do you know they don’t breath. If they didn’t know they were dead, they might still breath, thinking they still had to. You don’t know, do you?” Rowena said.
 

 I had to admit that I didn’t know, not for sure that ghosts don’t breath, we were mulling it over, as we walked towards the front door. Anna did not want to stay in the old house after her weird experience. We decided to leave but before we reached the door we all heard a loud crash from upstairs then more bangs as if someone upstairs was looking for something important.
 

 We just ran we didn’t go back upstairs to see who or what, was up there because we had been all over the house and no one else could have come in while we were there. We would have heard them or seen them. We ran as fast as we could and we never went inside the house again, well not for a long time.
 

 I often wondered about that day and if somebody was having a joke on us. Anna could never be persuaded that there was nothing in that cupboard with her that day. We had all heard the noises upstairs, like things being thrown about but there was nothing to throw about; the house was empty.
 

A few months after I went back to look and in the daylight I saw an old pair of fire bellows under the cupboard. When Anna got in the cupboard her weight must have squeesed the last bit of air out of them, sounding like heavy breathing. As she fled from the room the vibrations must have disturbed the old fold-up card table that was leaning against the wall. It now lay flat on the floor, having taken a few moments to fall.

______________________________________________________________________
 
 

 I had always loved reading and wanted to be a writer or an artist but the thought of writing a whole book was daunting. When I discovered poetry I tried writing a few poems just to see if I could. I was quite pleased with the results for an eight year old they were not bad; for a first attempt.
 

 Mum however thought they were wonderful, (I suppose that is MUMS and kids are stuck with it). She took them and showed them to Mr. H. He said that they were very good, but no eight year old could have written them.
 

 “Mr. Hoogerworth, I was in the room when she wrote them. I can assure you that they are all her own work.” Mum said, annoyed at his suspicions.
 

 “Oh! Mrs.Kirkpatrick I was not suggesting that she had help, but are you sure that she could not have read them when she was younger and then remembered them and thought that they were out of her own head.” He said, patronisingly.
 

 “Mr. H. My daughter is only eight she has only been reading for three years and everything she has read was bought by me I would have recognised them if I had read them to her and I know which books she has read since she learned to reed.
 

 “I can assure  you that she has never read anything even remotely like these poems.” Mum said emphatically  Mr. H. asked Mum if she would mind if he kept a copy off them and he put them into a folder with my name on it, every essay or composition that I wrote was copied and put into the folder and by the time I left, four years later it was two inches thick.
 

“One day in the future when you are a famous writer, the contents of this folder will be worth a lot of money, and my wife and I will have it as our nest egg when we retire.” I laughed at the thought of being a famous writer, but Mr. H. was quite serious.
 

 When I had been at the school a few months one of the girls I had liked least in the beginning, gradually became one of my best friends and when we were both put into the fourth year early. We sat together because we were the youngest in the class. Mr. H. said that we had better stop arguing with each other because he had a theory and according to his theory, Ginette Holland and I should be best friends not enemies.
 

 I suppose he was using reverse psychology on us. He said our I.Qs were identical so we should be better able to understand each other than anyone else could. He would not say what score we had reached, just that it was very high and we should stop fighting and start helping each other by being friends. Of course he was right [usually was).
 

 Mrs. H. taught English and every weekend our homework, was to write an essay. Most of the class wrote the usual stuff but I would write stories. If they were good enough Tuesday’s lesson would begin with me reading out my story to the rest of the class. It was more fun than learning about verbs and nouns.
 

 I ensured this by writing a serial. It was about a little dog called Buster and his adventures, as a stray trying to find his original owner.
 

 This story and others eventually became a regular feature on essay reading days, earning me prestige in a school where the daughter of a plumber had to hold her own against the children of wealthy and professional people. In the end I began to do better than just hold my own, I ended up joint top of the class with Ginette Holland, who as the local grocer’s daughter was also very competative and keen to show the 'posh kids'.
 

A new family had moved into the cottages between the tree houses and the rest of Moss Road. We called our house and the others on the very wooded part of Moss Road the tree houses because they were all named after trees. The father, who was quite old to be a parent and mother were Irish and had a six year old daughter called Josephine. They had just come to England and were waiting for a council house.
 

The cottages were old farm worker's homes from years ago, when Forest School had been the big farm house back in the 17th century. We once found a date on one of the beams in the roof of our classroom 1640 I believe it said.

bookmark and link to top
 

The cottages were tiny, with a tiny kitchen and one cold tap and a living room, as small as the average bathroom. Upstairs were two tiny doll sized bedrooms, the larger of these was just big enough to fit a small double bed. One could sit on the bed and open the door, window or turn off the light all without moving. They had no electricity, hotwater or a bathroom and only and outside toilet in a tiny backyard.
 

The little girl had been looking very lonely playing by herself so feeling gracious and at a lose end myself, I invited her to play with me.
 

"Hello! My name is Marjorie. Would you like to come and play with me?" I asked her. Her eyes widened with awe.
 

"Moi name is Josephine Bernadette O'Leary and oI would luv to cume and play wittch you. You live in dat gra'it big howse wid t'e big droive, do ye not? Oi've seen you on dose skates. Oi'd luv to try dat ska'iting lark, dat looks fun. So it does!" She answered in a thick Dublin brogue, that fascinated me.
 

"Have you not got any skates? You can wear mine, they will shrink down to your size but you need harder shoes, they won't clip onto those." I said pointing to her skimpy sandals. Her little face went from a ray of sunshine to a little black cloud.
 

"Oi'll leave de skaitin den. Oi don't want all der bodder of changing me shoes." She said. I was a bit puzzled. Changing shoes couldn't be that much trouble. Perhaps her Mum was busy and Josephine didn't want to disturb her, I thought to myself.
 

"What size shoes do you wear?" I asked her, as I remembered a complete set of 'outgrown' footware,  cluttering my bedroom cupboard.
 

"Three un a half." She answered. I told her to wait and I ran in and came back with two pairs of stout shoes. One pair fitted perfectly and the other pair was a bit big.
 

"Can Oi really have both of dees luverly shoes. Oi've never had such beyootiful shoes in moi loife. Tankyou Mrs. Kirkpatrick and dere loike brand new. Can oi go 'n show me Mammy?" She was so grateful I was very touched and heaven knew they'd never fit me again. I was glad to have found them a good home. Poor little thing, she had been too embarrassed to tell me she had no other shoes.
 

She was a sweet little girl and bright for her age. We soon forgot the age difference and played happily for the rest of the day. When I went in for my tea, I was telling my Mum about my young new friend.
 

"Of course they are only 'working class' but they are very nice." I said over tea that evening. Mum stopped eating and slowly put down her fork.
 

“I know you're trying hard to fit in with your posh friends at your new school but don't you think you might be turning into a bit of a snob?” She said with a hint of disaproval.
 

"How dare you talk like that about people. There is nothing wrong with being a ‘working class’ family. Who on Earth do you think you are? We are all working class in this family, you included.” I thought she was joking. I had no idea that we were working class, surely not, not us, no never.
“Are we really working class?” I asked in disbelief still hoping it was a joke.
 

“Yes! Love we are and we always will be. We only have the life we have because your Dad gets up at seven o’clock every day and goes to work. He works darned hard so you and John can have a better future.
 

If you work hard and pass your exams, you may grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever you want to be but never forget, that hard work is what made everything possible. Not talent, not influence or connections or even being clever, none of that will do you any good unless you also work hard."
 

"The worlds greatest genius would only achieve mediocracy at most, without a lot of damned hard work and self-disipline; sheer hard work, will do more than talent or luck." Mum continued.
 

"Nothing you get from any other means will bring you happiness. Even if we won the football pools or some rich uncle left us a fortune. There is no amount of money big enough to make anyone happy by itself. To be happy you have to be proud of everything you do and the way you do it.” Mum said, as she offered me a lifetimes wisdom but I was still reeling from the shock of finding myself to be 'Working Class'.
 

I had been certain we must be at least ‘middle class’. How could we be working class. I was at a private school and we lived in a big house and Mum had a home help. I pointed this out to her.
 

"Why do I have a home help?" Mum asked me and I thought for a moment.
 

"Well is it so I can go to 'coffee mornings' and 'fashion shows'? Or is it so I can go to work?" She prompted. I saw what she meant.
 

Mum explained that the bank lent Dad the money to buy the big house and until it was paid for [in about twenty years time], we didn’t really own it. The cars belonged to the firm, if the firm folded both of them would have to go.
 

 Surely it was Dad's business, at least he owned that but no. Mum explained that as a limited company, the firm was an entity unto itself, it paid Dad a wage and if it was sold, most of the profit would go to pay the firm's overdraft. Dad would have to go back to being a plumber and work for someone else.
 

To say all this 'reality' was a shock, is putting it mildly. I went up to my room, my security dented if not exactly shattered and thought hard about what my Mum had told me. I thought back to the little flat over the shop in Jackson Street and how far we had come since then and how hard my Dad must have worked to get us here. I decided that if we were working class it couldn’t such a bad thing to be.
 

That Summer Dad took us to see a caravan he had bought but he didn’t tell us until we got there that it was sited on a farm half a mile from Abersoch beach. It was not a big caravan by some standards, it was only four berth but we loved it. It was like living in a Wendy-house. We spent all our school holidays there, as well as some weekends.
 

It was set in the hillside just below the farm house with a glorious view of Cardigan Bay and the Snowdonian mountain range, rising up into the clouds behind Cricieth and Porth Madoc.
 

 When we were there I would spend every minute I could in the sea swimming, which along with skating and horseriding, was my greatest passion as a child. I hated it when Mum called me out of the water for my lunch [sausages, onions and tomatoes, fried on a primus stove on the beach was my favourite] Then they would not let me get back in the water again for thirty minutes, in case I got cramp.
 

We were always the last family to leave the beach in the evenings. I would pretend not to hear them calling me to come out of the water, to get dried and dressed so we go back to the caravan for our dinner.
 
 
 
 

Search for Family | Children | Mother | Parents | Father | Christmas | Friend | School | Grown-ups | Home | Daughter Webmasters earn more money per click!

Back to top of 4
 

Link to Complete Chapter 5