First Day in the Rain

The Americans attach so much significance to one's passage through High School. People who've attending private schools in the UK appear to do the same. But we don't tend to give similar weight to "senior school" if you're in the comprehensive system. Now that we're getting older and a tendency for nostalgia and reminisence has started to kick in, a "favourite memory from your school days" trend is starting to emerge - perhaps aided, uniquely, by facebook. Perhaps it wouldn't have emerged without facebook and school days nostalgia would be confined to the small niche who've taken the time to join a old boys/girls society. Who knows in this facebook-dominated world.

Anyhow - my first day at senior school. It was raining.

My mum was insistent that I would walk to school - start as you mean to go on. However, S's mother had other plans - especially as it was p**sing it down. She had a green Triumph Acclaim - as did we (it was inherited after my grandfather died and was our first car with electric windows - a real sign that we had finally arrived - I was later to put a rather large dent in the back passenger door as well as burn the seat upholstery with a carelessly-discarded cigarette).

I was already "different" from the other kids in that my school blazer was from the original school outfitters in North London rather than being from the new one in the local department store - the identifying feature being a "properly" embroidered badge rather than an iron-on one.

And we walked, S and I, into school and headed straight for an undercover walkway, of which there were many linking the various school buildings together. This particular area was packed full of children waiting, in the dry, for the day to begin. And the first person that I bump into is my brother. My brother and a couple of his friends.

They were laughing at me.

I ignored them and took a left into the school building and the assembly hall.

I have little memory of the headmaster's welcoming address. All I can remember is hoping upon hope that when the class allocations were read out that I wouldn't be in 1R. We had already received word, via S's sister, that 1R would be the bottom stream - the thickos. I was a little nervous in this respect because I didn't feel that the entry exam had gone particularly well for me - it was on the same day, incidentally, as the one and only time that our home football team made it to the FA cup final . We lost. The maths had been terribly easy. The "english" exam was a fill in the gaps affair. S felt that it had gone well (and this was later proved through his being selected for the Top Class (from which he was later demoted)). The fact that for one of his answers, he'd said "Washington" where I'd said the answer was "marvelous" gave me particular cause for concern. Given the fact that I was a certified "swot", the impending sense of forthcoming injustice was becoming too much to bear.

And which class was I summoned to join?

1R.

Go on, have a good cry

As I said, I was terrible at football. Indeed, I was terrible at all sports.

A direct result, I feel, was that there were many times when I was subjected to significant isolation. Sport is about being part of a team or a group. Not liking sport can result, perhaps, in the opposite.

Not that I remember this as being particularly painful but I'm sure it was the case. And besides, being isolated and alone at school can be about more than just not liking sports.

I would usually find my place in the order of things though. Sometimes it would be as a referee of a football game (until I sent one too many people off). Sometimes it would be just me and the new girl, sitting under the massive tree in the school field on the edge of the football pitch, swearing like sailors. On other occasions it would be just me and the psycho kid from nursery playing epic Star Wars-like adventures in the wasteland behind my parent's house (now a housing estate). Or it would be when every kid in the class came out from having their lunch and asked me what I was playing and whether they could join in. "We're playing at keeping order on the playground - your position is over there - keep order!" came the answer. That particular game didn't last very long.

Does an almost encyclopeadic memory of these sorts of childhood events constitute "dwelling unhealthily on the past"?

Crying, knee deep in "sinking mud", terrified as to what it reaching my neck would involve. Watching "the snoggers" in the local park. Making elaborate mazes in the long grass in the aforementioned wasteland. Watching the wasteland being dug up and seeing the first new residents move in. The fact that one of the new arrivals was a kid my age who was occasionally prone to wearing mesh, see-through black tee-shirts. See a kid gluesniffing down by the stormdrain in the park. Scaring some girls in the small woodland next to the stormdrain by whispering their names from up a tree. Losing the cat and looking in the woodland for her. The cat coming back. The Mayor coming to school and asking us if any of us were in the cubs. We were all in the scouts by then. Playing "The Entertainer" in the school hall whilst two of the girls from my class acted out a chattering mime to the music. One of them's dead now. Standing on a podium after having sung "away in a manger" as a solo for the second time, waiting for the applause that I was assured was going to come and didn't. Every birthday being marked by spanks from a metre rule, over the teacher's lap. Mrs R crying with laughter at the image of Charlotte trying to spin her web. Telling on SM for sniffing a PrittStick. My brother crying at the thought of having to deliver free papers to a road with lots of dogs. Country Dancing. Being good at Country Dancing. Sledging. Running as fast as I could. Running away from the kids half way down the street who wanted a "toll" to pass - the penalty for non-payment being a stone thrown at your back as you cycled away. Falling off SB's bike outside my house and my mum asking if I'd damaged the bike. Falling off my own bike and needing stitches. Not wanting (screaming that I didn't want to) to go to get the stitches done. Having ringworm. For ages. The cat nearly getting put down for "giving" me ringworm. My brother catching it too but a more common version. Mine was special. Never really believing in Santa. Or the toothfairy. Water fights in the street. Stick Insects. Being obsessed, for a limited period, about how old I was going to be when my parents died. Being obsessed, for a limited period, about the fact that my limited savings of £102 were never going to be enough to buy a house of my own. Spanking the cat. Spanking the monkey. A lot. Being disappointed at the inconvenience of something "resulting". Tickles. Debaggings. Iced Buns after Dad got home from golf. Chicken in a Basket at the golf club. The magician at the golf club. The smell of the golf club. Scary Mr T. Scary Mrs B. The particularly scary dinner lady.

When it was all over, on my last day at junior school, with so many more exciting and scary things ahead, with my pink school progress book sitting in my lap - finally in my possession for good - I felt sad. I felt as if something was lost that would never be gotten back.

"Go on, have a good cry" said my Mum.

Video Nasties at Breakfast

I wasn't able to watch the film Assault on Precinct 13 again for over 25 years.

My parents were pretty liberal about the sorts of things we were allowed to watch on TV - they weren't the sort of 70s parents who thought that Tiswas and Grange Hill were going to corrupt their children (I knew some kids who had parents who thought that ITV was inappropriate in its entirety). We were allowed to watch all sorts of films and TV that were well beyond our reach in legal as well as accessibility terms. I still suspect that our viewings of 70s/80s american sex comedies were my parents' attempt at sex eduction.

And so it came to pass that Assault on Precinct 13 was rented from the dodgy bloke up the road who ran a video rental operation from his tobacco-smelling front room (until one of his technologically-challenged neighbours reported him and he had to transfer the whole shebang to a disused car sales forecourt on the other side of town).

Now, Assault on Precinct 13 was one of those films that was upsetting all sorts of people at the time. It wasn't quite being labelled a video nasty in the ways that Driller Killer and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were, but it was close.

My mum was working nights that week. She was working in the old folks home opposite the mental hospital. She'd come home smelling cold and slightly damp. She'd often cycle there and back on this awful, second hand, folding "ladies" bike. It was a light, metallic green.

So my dad, in her absense, let my brother and I watch this quasi-video nasty. But it was slightly longer than we expected it to be and our bed time came and we were sent to bed before the film finished.

He said he'd let us watch the end in the morning. And he did.

Big mistake.

Get up. Get dressed. Have breakfast. Go to school. That was the drill in the morning in our house.

Nowhere was "catch the last ten minutes of the video nasty you were watching the night before" part of the agreed routine. Mum came home during the said ten minutes and all hell broke loose - not because we were watching people getting shot, maimed and burnt alive by unrelentingly violent LA (?) gang members. But that the "proper" schedule wasn't being adhered to.

God she was angry. She was particularly angry at my dad. She was seriously, seriously angry.

The strength of her disapproval and the enormity of the conflict between my parents that the situation had created caused me a level of gut-twisting anguish that I have always, in a pavlovian fashion, associated with that movie.

I wasn't able to watch it, or consider watching it, without feeling a little (or a lot) of that gut-twisting anguish, for something like 25 years.

It's not actually that good a film.

Dad

So - to complete the picture. I've already mentioned the plywood fort offering and of course the golfclubs moment. But the majority of my dad memories are something like this.

My brother's O Level results. I clearly remember that Dad kept on going back to the sideboard, where the results slip was perched against the clock. He'd keep going back and he'd pick up the slip and smile. Clearly so pleased. Clearly so proud. They were, admittedly, very good results.

My GCSE results. My mum suggested that I call him to tell him my results. They were, admittedly, very good results. "Is that what you were hoping for?" was the response.

"How do you spell [such-and-such]"? "How do you think it's spelt?"

A crashing smack on the backside for (I thought) innocently questioning the fact that my brother was still playing the same piece in his piano lessons that he had been for months. The result was not only the said smack but also a tearful appearance, from around the corner, and the proclamation that "we can't all be f**king Liberace". No smack for the swearing - or for the suggestion that Liberace was the epitome of pianistic excellence. It was the 70s after all.

Sitting on the ottomon, watching his back as he shaved. Waiting for the moment when he'd splash water on his face, rub his face with the towel, and quickly turn around, roaring like a monster.

Screams of delight.

Mum

I'm sure this isn't going to be the last time that I talk about my Mum. Indeed, she's already featured.

This isn't, I think, going to be one of those stories about an unnaturally strong attachment to a mother. For much of my childhood my mother appeared tired, impatient and angry.

That's because she was clearly all of those things.

She was working hard (nights as a nurse, a stint as a dinner lady - making ends meet kinds of things) whilst trying to make the time to be there for her family.

She could be wildly unreasonable (I will always remember a blow-up she had at me because I'd not done something that she'd forgotten to ask me to do - "I'm not psychic!" I shouted at her..."well you should be!" she shouted back!) but she could be gentle and poetic too (singing songs about Fred in the back seat of the car....putting together imaginative games for me and my friends at parties where you had to pretend to be different types of firework).

A lot of the time she seemed so disappointed. Life's letdowns were so crashingly tiresome but, at the same time, inevitable.

There's one memory that's always stayed with me.

I always knew that she was brainy and that she'd wanted to go to university but wasn't allowed to by her parents. I remember asking her how she felt about "having" to cook and clean for these three boys all the time instead of "going out to work like Dad". She said that that's what she was meant to do - that it was her lot in life.

I felt so sad for her. It seemed so wrong.

Waving goodbye

I can seriously only remember two things about nursery (pre-primary school). Firstly - there was the fact that every day, my mum would drop me off at the front door and say a quick goodbye. I'd then go to each and every window of the building, waving goodbye to her as she walked back down the street. I'd be devastated if she didn't turn around and wave at each instance.

The second is me sitting, cowering in a teepee with Carl, whilst a psychotic and hyperactic kid called Nicholas ran round and round the outside beating the walls of the tent with his fists over and over again. He was constantly out of control like this. He wore white trainers with green go-faster stripes on them. He's divorced with two children now.

Oh yeah - one more thing. Coathooks with animals on them.

What's your earliest memory?

Why do so many biographies feature (or even start with) the line "my earliest memory was this..."? Does anybody really remember something like that with any repeatable precision?

Surely it's a matter of a recollection here, an image or word there. Or maybe it's just me.

For me, yes, it's a number of things.

My mum hanging my teddybear by their ears on the washing line - I'm handing them out of the window to her.

Me sitting in the pushchair - it's Winter and there's a front to the pushchair to keep me in and keep me warm - and it starts trundling down the steps in the back garden towards the gate because the brake hasn't been applied.

Going into the kitchen before bedtime, wearing my PJs, to say goodnight to my dad who's on the floor making a fort for my brother and me out of plywood. It's got battlements and a portcullis which goes up and down thanks to a piece of string that's going to be broken in a couple of weeks time.

Rolling around on the floor of my recently cleared bedroom singing "playroom...playroom...playroom".

It's just one or two memories. I'm not sure if any of them are the first or the earliest. I can't think of anything else or anything more precise.

Do they say something about me?