A Real Penny Dreadful.
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Dandruff, it was having such awful dandruff that let him down.
Everything was going well right up to that last moment.
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There we were, snuggled together on the front seat of his car and he was kissing me.
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Oh God, What a marvellous kisser he was.
Tongue halfway down my throat, stubble rasping my face, an overwhelming smell of Old Spice. and then Zap. Big Nada.
He had just been edging over to subtly tickle my ear with his tongue, which was something I usually loved, but the mood was gone. Nothing. I had cooled off. Instantly.
I wished him a goodnight, and before I knew it, I was opening my front door and swallowing with disappointment.
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I crept quietly up the front stairs past Mum and Dad’s bedroom door and fumbled into the living room.
Oh God, what on earth was the matter with me.
I had been angling after him for many weeks, every time I went dancing at the Majestic Ballroom, and now I had spoiled it.
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Frustrated. I had got out my mirror and propped it up on the settee cushions, ready to do my nightly blemish search, when I suddenly saw it all again, the dandruff gathered upon his shoulders like an assembling army.
Oh hell, what if I had put my face into all that muck I saw, standing out in white battalions upon his black velvet collar, and glowing brightly under the streetlights.
No wonder that it had put me off. You didn’t see that on Cliff Richard did you!
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What a rotten let down.
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Some of the local guys had stopped using the old wet look hair products, in order to get a more natural sort of style, and that particular guy had ended up with a real problem..
Come back Brylcreem, all is forgiven.
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Anyway, no good giving up until you are dead, as somebody or other was always saying to me.
Or was it…no good giving up or you are dead anyway!
But you get the general meaning I hope.
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Quickly I rubbed off all my make-up with Astral Cream and settled down to pull out my eyebrows and squeeze spots.
I did appreciate that 1.30am was a little late to start with that, but I had always make a point of doing it every day.
After all, a little care now saves a lot of heartbreak later.
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Bloody hell, listen to me. It drives me mad when everybody keeps telling me their rotten old sayings, and now they have become a part of me.
That’s the trouble with life. You have to go along, doing all sorts of things you don’t want to do.
Living where you don’t want to.
Knowing people you would rather not know, and then they all add a bit to you, making you into someone that you do not want to be.
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Anyway, on with the tasks to be done, before the comforts of bed can be gained.
But there was always one thing that I really dreaded doing, even after seventeen years.
The back door always opened noisily and I would then stand there looking out into a pitch black back lane. It should never have been like that but the street lights had not worked for as far back as I could remember.
Then, down the back stairs tentatively, to make sure that the yard door was well bolted, before a murdering rapist could dash in and finish me off without a struggle.
Then it was time to venture into the awful outside toilet.
Honestly, I hated that. During the day I could hardly bear to sit down in there, for fear of big spiders or rats or whatever, but in that blackness i could have been sitting on beetles or slugs and squashing them onto my skin, or some huge creepy-crawly thingy could have been winding down on a sticky thread, to reach my face just about then.
Oh Lord, it would end the same way that it always did, with me jumping up terrified, before frenziedly dashing back upstairs without doing anything at all.
It’s a wonder that I was not permanently constipated.
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When the back door slammed loudly behind me, echoing in the still night, I would stand horrified, because I had forgotten that we lived in a rented upstairs flat and the harridan in the flat downstairs was the owner.
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She wanted to get rid of us and she was as objectionable as hell.
‘Sitting tenants’ were probably the most foul swear words she could ever imagine.
She thought nothing of coming outside in the yard, late at night when I came in, and shouting “Put that bloody light off!”
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Wasn’t that pathetic. It was like living in fear of some bloody feudal overlord, but it is no word of a lie.
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My father was always telling me to make no noise. Never answer her back. Don’t slam the door, etc.etc. and ex-bloody-cetera!
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For fun, I went once a week to the ‘Club A GoGo’ on Percy Street, and then I got a Taxi back home, an expense which I would share with my friend Valerie as she lived not far away from me.
Things had been rotten one particular night and there had not been many lads in the club at all, so we hadn’t scored, hard as we tried.
I got home about 2am and then went into the kitchen to clean my teeth before going to bed bed, and that rotten old cow came out into the yard and shouted to “Put that light out”.
Well, I put it out and stood there shaking, in case my dad came out to clout me one for upsetting her.
My teeth finally unclenched as I lay there in my bed, teeth uncleaned, trembling with the sheer injustice of the whole situation.
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In later years I told my Dad the this story but he poo-pooed the whole thing.
Viewed back through the viewpoint of having owned the flats himself for several years, history was now a rosy colour…”Rubbish girl, you don’t know what you are talking about. Lovely woman she was. Wasn’t she Mam? Oh yes, lovely woman her.”
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One night I was lying in bed listening to the rain pouring from the gutter and I tried to remember the earliest moments in my life.
It is funny really, but I am always reading about people seeming to be able to remember things from about their second birthday, or even younger, but I am not able to remember anything at all.
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Early school seems to be just one large blanket of being afraid.
I was afraid of the roughnecks who would thump you for looking at them
Afraid of one scary teacher who looked like a gypsy, with long black hair and a tight red dress, who had a very quick hand with a wooden ruler on the knuckles for any wrong answer with the mental arithmetic.
Afraid to use the outside brick toilets in the playground because of the horrible little boys who lurked there waiting, but I never found out what would happen ‘cos I never went into them, unless it was during class and I was desperate.
You were supposed to go at playtime you see, and not disturb the class during lessons, but I preferred to get hit for for always asking rather than risk the other.
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Isn’t it funny, now that I am writing this it seems that I spent a lot of my life being afraid to go to the toilet.
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We used to go to the ordinary schools till we were eleven in those days and then we had the chance of sitting the 11+ exam and a escaping to a Grammar or Secondary school.
I can never remember any conversations about that at home in those far away days.
I think that we kids were mainly nuisances that cost money and wore out shoes too quickly, and I reached 11 without really understanding what it was all about.
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I can especially remember one much older girl from those times, not her name unfortunately, but her whole air of rabid viciousness and low intelligence.
She used to make a point of talking to me and I was too afraid of her not to listen.
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She told me one day that a girl in her class had started bleeding during lessons, and had had to go home, and she snickered knowingly.
I asked her innocently what the girl was bleeding for and was told that she had a cut at the top of her legs, this accompanied by snorts and shrieks, these growing even louder when I said diffidently that I hoped she would be better soon ‘cos it must have hurt a lot.
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This odious creature then began inviting herself to our flat at lunchtimes, and I, coward to the end, brought her home.
It was at this time that my mother had got herself a job and she left us kids to ourselves quite a lot.
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Well, after a few lunchtime visits, this girl took me to a newsagents and told me to steal some chewing gum and give it to her or else.
Terrified, I did as I was told, and then gave her the stolen gum which I had nervously removed from my my baggy sleeve.
It was quickly, if noisily, consumed and I was grateful that the ordeal was over.
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This was not to be however, because through her good offices I was to make my first acquaintance with blackmail.
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I will set the scene for this by telling you that I spent quite a few of my early Sunday’s visiting ‘en-famille’ with an old aunt of my father’s, called Lily.
She was a tiny, autocratic, white haired lady who had at one time been the cook to a very middle class family and therefore she felt quite within her rights to lay down the law to the rest of the family, in regard to the correct modes of behaviour amongst the better classes of person, to which she expected everyone to aspire.
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Pleasingly, during these visits, I acquired many nice little gifts. Pretty fripperies and such. Most especially one necklace which I considered to be most wondrous.
It was composed of large luminous blue beads graduating from the tiny ones near the back clasp, right up to the very large ones at the front.
Each bead most miraculously contained a complete pink rose. It may have seemed ordinary to an adult, but to me, who had never seen such a thing before…it was true beauty.
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I kept these treasures in a toffee tin, behind the old sewing machine in my bedroom, and looked at them regularly whenever I was particularly lost or hurt.
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But unfortunately, on her next visit to my home, this horrid teenage Medusa found the tin and viewed the contents, permission neither asked nor given.
Upon my being made to understand that that this was the price of her silence about my theft, she selected a small item and we returned to the school.
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This scene was re-enacted regularly over the succeeding days and eventually nothing was left but my beloved necklace.
As her squat, short fingered hand removed this item into some grubby pocket on her person, I felt that my heart would break and I burst into the most loud and bitter tears.
She bullied and punched me until I stopped and we both went back to school.
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The next day, after crying most of the night, I went to school filled with some strange new bravado.
I became sullen with her and refused to speak.
She, being wise in the way of the world, seemed to accept this quite calmly and gradually left me alone more. I was amazed at this, as I had expected to be nipped and punished for such temerity.
But now, looking back. I see that she simply recognised me as being thoroughly squeezed dry and of no further use to her.
I also think that there was some desire in her, perhaps unrecognised, to enjoy the sadistic elements of the situation as well as the material ones.
It had proved typical of me that, now, when I had lost everything, I went bravely to the paper shop and proffered 2p to the proprietor, telling him that he had forgotten to charge me for some chewing gum one day.
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So ended an experience in life which could have been aptly entitled ‘Crime Does Not Pay’.
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I was a very pretty little girl at this time, as family photographs show. My skin was very dark, as were my eyes and especially my hair.
This was always well tended to by my mother, who washed it weekly and brushed it dry, so that it shone and crackled like something alive in it’s own right.
I think that it was the longest hair in the school, being quite easily sat upon.
It was indeed a glowing claim to beauty in anyone’s eyes.
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This then was the state of me and my world when 11+ Exam time came along.
As I told you before, I had no great knowledge of the meaning of it all. It was just another exam except that it was a bit more important.
I knew this because we had a dark little Jewish girl in our class, whose parents had apparently been paying for extra tuition for her in the evenings. She also seemed worried to death all the time.
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The exams came and went as things always do.
I found out that I was at the top of the Secondary School list and this seemed good to me, but soon my future changed again, because my parents received a letter to say that I was being offered a place at the Grammar School, which had not been taken up by the child who had been the first choice.
My parents seemed pleased that both of their children would now be at Grammar School.
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The teachers spent the day of the exam results telling everyone that they could have done better and they could have revised harder, but I cannot remember much about it now, except for the little Jewish girl.
She came to school with one morning with her hands red and swollen up, because her parents had strapped her most cruelly for failing to attain even a secondary School pass.
Poor kid, even then it occur ed to me that there is always somebody worse off, no matter what happens.
For the first time in my life I was aware of the feeling that I possessed something of value to other people. I enjoyed it.
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Because I was such a serious child, and inclined to worry about details, and cross every bridge about one hundred times before it was necessary, my academic good luck caused me many sleepless nights.
Hate it as I might, at least the school I was attending was a known place. I conjured up all sorts of fears about my new school. How would I get there. What would I wear. Would anyone speak to me and would I ever make a friend.
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As soon as the book of rules and regulations arrived, I read it through from back to front. One ominous paragraph stuck in my mind. It said that ‘All hair must be at least 1″ above the collar at all times. Failure to adhere to this ruling etc. etc.’.
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I worried myself sick about this, day after day, until at last I decided that I should have my hair cut off before school started, it seemed to be the only solution to the problem.
I pestered my mother to get my hair cut off, nothing else would do.
When she asked why, I just said that I wanted it cut.
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Don’t ask me why I did not just put it in plaits or a bun, because I don’t know.
It just did not occur to me that the rules did not have to mean that hair had to be short, and as no one realised that something was wrong, no one said that it would be all right to do that.
So my mother duly took me to a horrible back street hairdresser nearby, called ‘La Belle Cheveaux’ or ‘Lady Be Lovely’ or some such inappropriately named place, and it was cut. Not as I recall, with any great talent or care, just each still- plaited length chopped off at the top and a horrible thick fringe chopped in at the front.
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Oh God, instant ugly.
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I cried with shock, only to be told with great and justified irritation “”Well, it’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
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It really is so funny.
The countless times in my life when I have done exactly the opposite thing to what I truly desired, because I was too afraid.
All the time that I spent hidden in the crowd because I was too afraid to take any kind of step at all.
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There is a another very early memory indeed, of an incident which happened while we were on a holiday, in a place called Cullercoats, on the north east coast.
I am unsure of my exact age at the time at the time. Perhaps six or seven.
We were walking past the Tynemouth Outdoor Swimming Pool, when they started to announce a competition that was just about to begin, presided over by a beautiful, blonde British actress called Jill Day.
It was to find the little girl who most resembled a very popular child film star of that era, called Mandy Miller.
You may remember the actress. Or would such a little girl be called an actrette! She had long pigtails and a little nose. People had always said that I looked just like her, so I knew that I could have won and got the prize.
My parents were egging me on, and I realize now how disappointed they must have been with their stupid little child who could only stand crying and saying “I won’t, I won’t, ‘cos I don’t want to.”
I did want to of course, the proof being that I can still clearly see and feel the frustration of being so shy and devoid of confidence.
It was about this time, funnily enough, that I fell deeply in love.
Oh, I know people say that children have no real sexuality, but they do have deep feelings.
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Every year, when we went to Cullercoats, we stayed at an upstairs flat in a fisherman’s cottage near to the beach. I think that it cost 17/6 a week and I thought that it was heavenly.
There was an attic to the place and it could be accessed. It had missing roof slates and therefore it was full of pigeons and these could be heard cooing and flapping all the time.
My parents slept in an old sagging bed in the tiny living room and my brother and I were put in a little bedroom just off it.
This was the complete flat, apart from a teeny little kitchen. Very primitive but we loved it
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I slept on an old green plush chaise longue,which really prickled you through the sheets, and I used to lie awake at night looking up at a big picture of Christ knocking upon the door of your heart and he was pictured wearing wearing a crown of thorns and carrying a lamp.
Somehow it made me feel safe and protected even though the family was not religious in any way.
In the downstairs flat lived the landlady and her husband. A fat and pleasant pair.
I always remember being particularly fascinated by the thousands of flies present in their living room. The sugar bowl would lie open on the table all day long, liberally dotted with flies like moving currents. Yet no one ever seemed to suffer any ill effects at all from this close association.
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The reason for my amazement being that my own father was always paranoid about there being flies in the house.
At the slightest hint of buzzing, he would stalk about the room armed with a tightly folded newspaper, until the offending creature was duly tracked down and smashed to death.
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To get back to the point.
This landlady had a grandson who seemed to stay at her house most of the time because his mum, who lived around the corner, had lots of other children. At least that was the impression that I had at the time.
I think he was about sixteen years old then, but he was very small in stature, with crispy light brown hair and I think hie eyes were a bluey-green, and he sometimes had a stubbly face.
He was a member of The Boys’ Brigade
I liked him a lot because he would smile at me, and speak to me nicely, whenever he saw me.
I was very used to him because we had gone there since I was about five and he had always been around.
Well this particular year, I remember that he and I sat talking on his front doorstep while his Grannie and Grandad were out, and then suddenly everything suddenly seemed to go still, as if time had changed. There were dust motes dancing in the passage and the inside of the house seemed all black and cool. The air was hot and all the traffic and bird noises seemed muted.
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He turned to me slowly, raised a big calloused hand to my chest and pushed me backwards onto the passage carpet.
He seemed poised above me for an age, then slowly he lowered himself across me and put his lips gently onto mine.
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It was not truly a sexual act, but it seemed to cause a strange awakening as if everything had changed forever in those few moments.
He sat up again and we laughed and talked as usual, and time moved on again.
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The holiday ended and we made the usual train journey back to the grey walls of the town.
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The same yet, changed.
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J
More mentions of my brother,,,and more…….and more...and more….and yet more
.Tynemouth now.