My memoirs. Memory 18. Attraction

Technically, I’ve been engaged to be married three times.

The first time was more an ultimatum than a proposal. There was never a ring. The embers of that relationship cooled to nothing shortly afterwards.

The second time was a rather dramatic apology for an affair. There was a ring made out of twigs. The next affair revealed itself while the half made wedding dress hung in the wardrobe.

The third time was more a polite request than a proposal. A ring came eventually to make up for the original offering of a brass tiger. It’s a long story that hasn’t ended yet: that engagement was to my husband who I’ve been married to for 14 years. The brass tiger sits on a shelf in the hall.

What I’m trying to convey here I suppose is I’m not the kinda gal that inspires grand gestures in the opposite sex. I’ve never been on the lists of most popular girl in the class. I’ve never received a mystery valentine. I’ve never received a valentine at all aside from the three relationships above. Nobody is going to write me a song or a poem. I say these things not because they cause me distress. It’s noteworthy because how the world engages with you does over the years shape a little bit of who you are. I am broadly happy with who I am and broadly have been most of my adult life. Things were, however, a little different when I was a little younger.

I didn’t attract any kind of attraction until I was nearly 15. A clumsy kiss. A quite sweet, awkward, very fumbly and ‘Rotherham’ moment in a subway, ‘I can’t find the hole, Abby’.

At 16, came a sort of awakening at a party. My boyish hairstyle had grown out. My breasts had grown out. My glasses had been thrown out, replaced by contacts and suddenly people in the room looked as I walked by. At 16 1/4 I met my first none-engagement scenario above. He was handsome, gentle, sweet, kind for the most part and I’m glad he popped my cherry shortly afterwards.

Now 15 and 16 seems too young a time to be dipping a toe into these things but back then I felt so behind…eternally trying to make first base. So silly. So sad to feel under that (self imposed?) pressure. I’m glad I’m over all of that.

I did have a very strange time for just one long, hot summer. I was in my mid twenties (the year I had the ring made of twigs) when I fleetingly, inexplicably became ludicrously sexually attractive. A man who didn’t know me crossed the road to say I looked beautiful; a man left me his phone number and a saucy message on the back of a train ticket; a man I was walking near for a while embraced me in a deep (reciprocal) kiss that seemed inevetable the moment I crossed the road towards him. We then went our separate ways without saying a word.

A vague work acquaintence declared his love. A female friend seduced me. A married man became far more a part of my life story than he should have. And everybody looked as I walked by. It wasn’t poems and songs. I don’t really know what it was all about. It was – if in parts shameful – fun.

That year gave me an insight into what it must be like to be the pretty girls, the beautiful girls, the quirky petite girls. Now as I approach 50, I look back on it more as a bemusing time than a time I crave to be back within.

How am I ageing? OK I guess. I have a husband who never judges how I look, what I wear, what I eat. Which should all be a given but as the man with the ring of twigs taught me, it isn’t.

I could take better care of myself. I need to exercise more. Make my hair appoitnments. Address the 1970s pube situation. But overall I feel not just at ease in my body but very much a part of my body. I am it, it is me and I’m proud and most of all privelaged at what I’ve been able to do, physically.

I don’t really care if I don’t light up a room when I walk into it. I’ve learned I can light up someone’s evening just by listening to them and looking them in the eyes. That’s the sort of thing most people are craving when I meet them these days. Is that an age thing or a sign of the time thing? You tell me….maybe via a poem, or even a song 😉

My Memoirs. Memory 17. Alcohol

Go hard or go home. Anything sinful, bad for you, against public healthguidelines: if you’re going to go in go in deep.

A salad bag from McDonalds? I’m not here for the 5 a day. A vape? I’m not here for tutti fruity. An alcopop? A low percent wine? A no percent beer?

No.

Thank.

You.

My first tippsy time was on a fourth year (yr 10) school trip to Belgium. Someone declared the pubs had a lower age limit than the UK. Whether they did or whether the bartender just didn’t care is by the by; a good portion of my 24 exposure fuji film was me in a Belgium bar, pint of Jupiler in hand.

I remember the cool of it. The fizz in the nose of it. The bitter trail it left from the back of my tongue, to my tonsils, down my throat until it hit my belly and lit a small fire.

After that school trip, I had a crowd of sorts. We’d meet up before the pop and crisp nights run 7pm – 10pm at local nightclubs. We’d buy a bottle of Thunderbird or Cinzano Bianco, head up an alleyway and neck it before entering. Burning. SLightly thick in the throat. A vile taste with a delightfuly quick hit. We were not toying here with trying a drink. We were diving in, head first, catching our breath, swimming and splashing and sometimes almost drowning together.

Budweiser, snakebite, blastaways. Every mouthfull made it clear to your brain and your body what was coming next. It was all consuming.

Uni, we’d neck neat Archers. Soon the heat of that wasn’t hot enough. I moved to vodka and lime (no soda).

After uni, no quaffable Prosecco for us. It was acrid cava, cheap wine and headaches. Drinking fast, and drinking more and drinking more. Even when I could afford the good stuff, I’d make it hit hard. I remember a night out with a friend at the Royal Exchange in London where I ordered Woods 100s chasers to go with each glass of champagne.

I loved the jolt of it. The promise of it. The violence of pouring the poison into my belly knowing that because of it the night could take any number of unexpected turns all the while knowing that in the morning I’d feel like crap.

I don’t drink each day but when I do drink I drink too fast and too much. I drink a lot but I can’t hold my drink. I’ll be the first to go when sharing a bottle of wine. Flushed cheeks. Flushed chest. A bit of a hyper high. When younger, the hyper bit, the taking the risks bit, the anything-for-a-laugh bit would last until 11ish after which time I’d crash out or cry with no clear idea of what I was crying for.

Early twenties, I got better at riding the wave and staying up all night on the stuff. I can still manage that now if my mood’s right, my time of the month’s right, my diet’s right. I know I shouldn’t, but I still love nights like that.

My last big drinking weekend was a hen do full of people who I knew but not well who came together like joyous sunbeams, excited at the thrill and the location and the likemindedness of the group. The booze hit good and we partied and danced and laughed and and barely slept and didn’t cry.

At one point, the early morning conversations woozily moved on to worry about the generations after us. What they are dealing with. How shitty they seem to have it. How it’s impacting their mental health. How down they often are. The world they’ve got to deal with. The self doubt and self harm.

We looked at the empty bottles, our smudged makeup, our glassy eyes and realised we’ve been self harming all our lives really. It’s just that when we did it, we managed to make it – at least in parts – feel like fun.

And that’s the thing with booze that tastes of lemonade and vapes that taste of raspberries: they’re hurting you but without the hit, the release, the pleasure of the pain.

I know it’s wrong to recommend a bottle of vodka over a one off alcopop. I know booze is not the answer to a mental health crisis or anxiety or stress. I don’t wany my kids doing what I did. Doing what I do. We should strive for a life where we do less bad shit and look for more helpful ways to help us deal with the bad shit life throws at us. But if we must have a blow out, a release, the hit of someting that is ultimately doing us harm, it must at least come served with a side plate of fun.

My Memoirs. Memory 16. The Big White Van

When we were still quite small, Mum and Dad bought a VW camper. Not the 1960s split screen model but only a little newer and still one of those ones that are coveted these days.

I am not sure that I recall the first time we went out with it but I feel like I do because mum and dad tell the tale of heading out to Wales, Angelesy in it and it rained…and rained…and rained. What I do remember is that someone they met up with had Divali sweets. Bright, colouful, salivatingly exciting to look at. I reached into the tin, put one to my lips to be met with URGGH. Coconut.

Seatbelts schmeetbelts back in the 80s, at least in the back of the car, so longer term journies the back was turned into a bed and my two brothers and I were laid down in the back with our blankets, our sweets, later their gameboys and my walkman.

We were each allowed to take ‘a couple of cuddlies’ for the ride. One holiday, my mum packed, we went to pick dad up from work and headed south to the ferry in france for dad – at the first stop – to be met with tsunami of teddy bears: we’d somehow managed to sneak every one we owned in while mum was packing the food.

Holidays, we only ever ate out the last meal to much ceremony and fanfare, my dad carefully examining the menu on the wall of each restaurant: we ate out once a year, the choice was important. The rest of the time was BBQs, baguettes, picnics, little packets of cereal and gross UHT milk. Mum prepared evening meals for on the road. She’d cook a beef bourginon, freeze it and we’d arrive in the Dordogne for it to be fully defrosted. It’s funny, mum’s cooking doesn’t feature much in my memories but anyone who can stock a van with good food to see a family of 5 through for two weeks must have had some sort of a knack.

The van took us to cornwall and devon but the holidays I remember most are to france. Trying not to touch each other when sunburnt, sand in the cushions, an eclectic array of music in the cassette player and a massive tupperware filled with boiled sweets.

In those pesky early teen years, Big white VWs were not the cool accessory they are these days, not in Rotherham at any rate. We’d start the journey with me lying flat on the back to get up past the Brecks, through Wickersley and onto the M18. Once on the motorway, up I’d sit, excited for the family holiday time ahead.

There must have been all manner of sleeping configerations throughout the years. It was a pop top with two hammocks. I slept there, opposite my littelst brother. My middlest brother got a makeshift bed laid across the passenger and drivers seats. Towards the end of the era of family holidays, his head stuck out one window, his feet out the other and each turn would lead to him putting the hazzards on. One holiday pulled up in a layby on the way home, the flashing lights, the hooting of an owl, and tired parents led mum and dad to a night of thinking we were being invaded by Hell’s Angels.

One year, we tried a trip to Paris. We drove down the Champs Alysee, found an underground carpark just along it, headed down only to find the van too tall to enter. Cue mum hopping out, standing central on the busiest road of one of the busiest capitals and stopping the traffic so Dad could reverse out. My Job? Keep the brothers QUIET at ALL COSTS. We rose to the occasion.

Once at the Loire or the Dordogne a 1970s orange and blue tent made it’s appearance. That was mine and my brothers’ home while on the campsite with mum and dad retiring to the back of the van.

As well as being a key feature of summer holidays, the van played a starring role on Christmas eve. My middlest brother was prone to acute asthma attacks at any time of excitement so mum and dad built in a drive in the van, a picnic and a walk to keep up occuppied and tire us out.

We kept up the tradition of heading off in the van, cuppa soups, baked potatotes, cooked sausages wrapped in foil, Christmas songs blaring out, all singing top of our lungs until I was quite old. Old enough to see the bemused, confused amusement-come-fear in the eyes of my adult boyfriend. You only realise how weird your christmas traditions are when they are viewed through the eyes of a newbie.

It would break down a lot, as these things do. But in those days, engines were something people could fix rather than weird computer based things. Someone always came along to help.

It stank of petrol – the fumes from the engine somehow pumping through into the vents that circulated the air.

It was noisy and rickety and prone to rust. When the Beastie Boys became a thing it became an actually liability and my dad had to take the VW logo, sculpted in metal and attached to the front, off. He hid it in the garage for fear of it becoming someone’s blingy jewelry.

Like me, my mum, dad and my brothers the van was brash and flawed, generally reliable put prone to the odd demand for attention. It was part of the family and I think I speak for all of us when I say how much we miss it.

My Memoirs. Chapter 15. Music.

Unlike my Dad, I wouldn’t win many pub quizes, I can’t just pick up a guitar and get a decent tune out of it and I can’t tune things or harmonise by ear. But just like me Dad, god golly I love the music..

My Dad came of age when the Beatles starting making a noise and I don’t think any of us who weren’t around at the time will every fully appreciate the shift it what it was to grow up pre and post Beatlemania and the profound impact it had on the kids who saw it happen.

Like many kids at the time my Dad, his brother and a couple of mates formed a band. The guitars hanging on the wall and the playing of the pianos aren’t things I remember now and then; they are just things that are, so integral they are to my life.

You know when someone loves musics when, like my dad, they are open to all of it. We’d go on holiday in the big white van – a VW camper- and we’d all be able to pick some music to take.

Nothing was out of bounds. My wham tapes were allowed and there also be the Beach Boys, the Eagles, Eurythmics Queen, Terrorvision, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Green day, Meatloaf, and more and more and more.

Dad was in a CD club at work. This meant a group of about 12 people who once a month would take it in turns to buy a CD. It would be past around all 12 people who would make a pirate tape copy of it and also listen to it and they’d compare notes on what they thought. Dad would listen to everything with an open mind and open ears and that attitude is one of the few things that made my tricky early teens a lot more bearable.

Each Sunday, we’d listen to the chart show all together. Passing judgement on which songs we liked and didn’t. It was never personal: never, ‘your taste is rubbish’. More just which things we liked and which things we didn’t and why and in that way it openned conversation,

Dad would listen out and tell me the weeks he thought it was worth me recording the charts. I’d sit there with my radio cassette player for a couple of hours, finger on the record button, capturing the best ones as they came on. I’ve still got some of those tapes in the garage.

My own music taste did, as a result, grow up eclectic and music is now something I listen to in order to enhance, not change, my mood. I know how to do angry music, sad music, joyous music. I love feeling things – the good and the bad – and I love how music is the salt and pepper that brings out the flavour of life.

I can’t tell you my favourite songs. There are some songs I never tire of: Fleetwood Mac’s You Make Loving Fun, Isley Brothers Summer Breeze, Donna Summers I Feel Love, INXS one of my kind, Pulp Babies..goodness…actually…there are lots…there’s not enough room to list them all.

So yes, I can’t tell you my favourite songs because there are too many to list here. But I can take you on a quick potted history of my music collection.

It started with Wham obvs, I was more a Wake me Up Before you Go GO Gal than a Wham Rap person, although Wham Rap is more my bag lately. I moved into Erasure and then I had a very strange period of listening to Dina Carol (when I thought that must be what love felt like) and Madonna’s Erotica when I thought that must be what sex felt like).

As I grew, I grew into the Levellers. They were my first proper concert where I went with cousins not parents. For my 16th birthday, some girls clubbed together and brought me Nirvana’s nevermind and that was not just a musical awakening but a personal one too: I started to realise I could belong. Music let’s you in like that.

Then there was Suede and pretty soon after I was knee deep in Britpop. As Brit pop died music felt a little shite for a while so I started discoveing classics like Blondie and Sade and got a little into soul and the like: angie stone, Lauren Hill. Erica Badou.

Now, I love the funk and soul vibes, northern soul, old skool 90s club and R&B (that I never cared for at the time but bloody love it now). Foo fighters appear often. Gah. I can’t list it all: if it’s on, and I’m in the mood for it, I’ll listen. Nothing’s off limits…although I do struggle with whiny men with guitars and overly-wharbling women.

There’s another shift now in how kids listen to music. I don’t get how to connect over it anymore. It feels so individual. So fleeting.

I love the access I have to any album on my streaming service but I miss sharing the art work and lyrcics from the CD box, thinking hard to choose, browsing the rack. I miss listening to the chart show with someone who wasn’t there to judge but who was just there for the music.

My Memoirs. Chapter 14. A little bit poorly

I’m a little bit poorly today. It got me thinking of the other times I’ve been a little bit poorly. Because I’m a little bit poorly, I can’t think much beyond that. So here are memories of being a little bit poorly.

1. When I lived in the shop, in the bedroom with the blue hue, tucked in tight beneath the sheet. A cold. I got hold of the tub of Vicks and rubbed it all over little ted, my cuddly. The room stank to high heaven. I’ve still got little Ted. The smell of vick still makes me feel immediately a little bit better.
2. In 2nd year of infants. When I got the chicken pox. I was trusted with the chamomlile myself and felt so grown up. I returned to school still a little bit fragile. My friends looked after me in the sun and I felt special and liked.
3. 1st or 2nd year juniors. I got flu. Proper flu. My parents must have been looking after my brothers (both of who were prone to being proper poorly at the time. One of them, Great Ormond Street poorly), so I went to stay and nanna and grandads. Sat on the sofa in my dressing gown. Just loved. Sugar to help the bitter medicine I had go down.
4. 4th year juniors. Suddenly, every time I bent down I thought my head was going to explode. I represented the school at swimming feeling like that. We won. THe day after, I was vomitting, flashing lights behind my eyes made it hard to find the bathroom. It was sinusitus. In my absence, I was mentioned at school assembly for doing well for them despite being ill. I was welcomed back by a small group of peers like a war hero.
5. Lower sixth. WHen i discovered soft, shiny knickers but could only afford the man made fibre ones I discovered thrush.
6. Lower sixth. When I discovered how much some young men like soft, shiny knickers. I discovered cystitis.
7. Early twenties. An earache so bad. A week of investigations found nothing but then a dentist found a bad tooth masquarading as ear pain. Assumably my tooth new that my fear of dentists would make me try to ignore it if i new it’s true identity.
8. Early twenties. Meeting the cutest little twins with the ugliest bout of norovirus. Making it to the toilet just in time the next day at work. A week off at home with flat lemonade and the relief of not having to travel to a job I felt out of my depth in.
9. After my first son was born, flu.
10. After my secon son was born, flu.
11. After my third son was born, flu that turned into pneumonia that hospitlised me for a couple of days. I must have been so ill. However, I only remember the sweet relief of a bed to myself, people bringing my food and sleep…even sleep in a ward with people hacking their guts up… I slept better than at home with three kids under four.
12. DUring covid, covid obvs. Poorly enough to feel wretched but in the grand scheme of things not too bad.
13. Now, sat on the sofa, warm ribena, under blankets, poorly enough to not feel obliged to tidy up and allowed to have the telly on the box set that i want to watch.

Little bit poorly for me isn’t nice but always evokes feelings of relaxing, letting go, being warm and being cared for….must learn to get me some of those vibes next time I’m feeling fit as a fiddle.

Night x

My Memoirs. Chapter 13. Chlorine

I’m not a small girl.

Five 10 in flats, sturdy legs, broad shoulders. On land I can be clumsy, uncoordinated. When quite young I went to gymnastics: the head coach pulled my mum to one side and in a Gray’s Anatomy tone cast his eyes downwards and whispered, “we don’t think she’ll ever walk on the beam.”

But in the water? In the water I can fly. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved being immersed in baths, showers, pools. I learned to swim young, taught at Herringthorpe leisure.

For those of you who remember the Brittas Empire, the Brittas Empire had nothing on Herringthorpe. We had the tipsy receptionist who fell in the main pool, the group baptism in the baby pool, the smell of chlorine, vinegar, piss and booze and an adults only pool side ‘beach’ where they could smoke a fag on the loungers after a half hour on the sun bed.

There was a wave machine a steep slide and the most peculiar addition of a sea monster made of lumps of round concrete: fall off to the right, smash your head in in the shallows, fall to the left likely drown legs akimbo head underwater.

I progressed well at swimming and also I loved it. Soon after, I joined a small club in Chapletown – a town between Rotherham and Sheffield and close to Harley where my Nanna and Grandad retired initially. After morning training, we’d got to Nanna’s for porridge before being dropped off at Junior School. After evening training we’d stop at the chippy, “Chips wrapped with scraps please. Lots of vinegar.”

I broke a few records, won a few medals and it was decided I should move to a bigger club with a more serious vibe. Rotherham Metro here I come. Transitioning to Rotherham metro came at the same time as transitioning to Secondary school. Neither went that well. But I swam well, made the squad and pulled my weight in the relays.

Through Rotherham metro, doors were openned to foreign exchanges. I stayed with a family in Holland a couple of time and once we went to Canada. In Canada, I ended up staying with one of the wealthier families with basement rooms and a swimming pool. It was autumn and crisp and blue skied and red mapled and beautiful.

They showed us Niagra falls, in return we showed them Derbyshire in the rain. I am not sure if was a fair swap but we all got on well.

For a while I was doing great, shaving time off my 100ms, heading towards making the nationals. Soon though, something went wrong. Each training sessions I was lapped…and lapped….and lapped again. Each race I’d go slower than the year before. The harder I trained the slower I got.

Looking back, given my never ending puberty, it seems likely I was trying to grow but was training too hard for that to happen. I was constantly exhausted and constantly starving. I remember creeping downstairs in the middle of the night scavaging for food and the only thing I craved was sugar sandwiches.

By the time I was about 15, I dropped into a squad for people-who-fancied-still-swimming-but-couldn’t-be-arsed-with-training-8-times-a-week-plus-gym-sessions. There, I bumped into an old friend from Juniors, Stephen.

When we’d been at Juniors, Stephen and I were even…er….Stevens when it came to swimming. We knew this because back in the 80s Rotherham had numerous small swimming pools attached to community libraries. There was a sign at each pool saying that UB40s could go swimming for free and for a long time I was perplexed as to what the singers of the admittedly very catchy tune Red Red Wine had done to be welcomed into the 20 metre by 10 down Mowbray Gardens.

Because of the pools, all the schools could have regular swimming lessons and Stephen and I would go and race and he’d win all the the crawl and fly events and I’d win all the backstroke and breastroke ones. When I saw Stephen 4 or 5 years later, he beat me at everything, by miles. It drove me insane that I was born with this body that no matter how hard i tried I could never be as strong or as fast as I would have liked. On the plus side, a friend from that squad introduced me to a load of boys with strong, fast bodies and I soon came to terms with how things turn out.

At 16, training as a pool attendant seemed the logical choice. Being a lifeguard is surprisingly boring. Until it isn’t. The naughtiest child I have met to this day, f-ing, blinding, pelting off at speed when told off…but you couldn’t blow your whistle and shout ‘no running’ because he only had one leg. The naughtiest man I have ever met who turned up with his son and – to make his son laugh – decided to chuck everything in the pool: balls, floats, ropes, life rings. Even the spinal boards. Once, we found a bag of speed in the changing rooms. Once, I left the takings of the till on the desk behind the glass partition only for some kids to find a stick, hoik it out and nick the lot.

At uni, I tried to join the swimming club but it was a treck away and bars and booze beckoned. I did get a small tattoo of a dolphin in the crease at the top of my thigh and while I am bit over tattoos these days, I’m still quite fond of that.

A few years ago, we lived in the UAE for a little while. There were pools and laggoons and oceans and for a while, bouyed by the water and the likeminded people who joined me in it, I felt like myself and at peace with myself in a way I haven’t felt in years.

As for now? I don’t swim as much as I’d like these days and as a result my shoulders are seized up, my belly grows, my legs feel less fluid. My mental health could likely be better.

I miss it but something stops me. It’s all made into such a palarva isn’t it? Having to book. Having to have a padlock for the locker. Having to share the pool with kids having lessons cos every hour’s a chance to claw back some of the money that leisure centres drain out of depleted budgets. And after all that, the getting changed in the cold, the plasters on the floor, the wet toilet seats, the smell of wee, to top it all off, to add insult to injury, there’s not even a bloody chance of bumping into UB40 once you get there.

My Memoirs. The Microwave.

I remember the arrival of the microwave in our Rotherham home more vividly than I rember the arrival of my two brothers. I love my brothers a lot.

The lights and sounds of the microwave felts like a logical, high tempo next step in the family kitchen where eating mid week felt chaotic at the best of times. Milk would be left out. Crumbs would gather. My brother and I could be found arguing about who got to read the back of the cereal pack: life before iphones wasn’t all imaginative play and conversation, I can assure you.

As we spilled milk, made crumbs, kicked each other under the table, the microwave looked on. It seated itself set back just a little from the head of the table on top of the fridge. No tucking it into the corner betwixt wall and work surface. None of that ‘make it look like a part of your cooker’ nonsense.

We tried everything in the microwave. . The flapjacks were flavoursome. The mash was inedible. The Chocolate Trio I tried to melt set on fire. Big chip fans in our house, my mum was over the moon when mccain invented microchips. That is until she tried them, “The thing with chips, really Abby, is that they need to be fried in lard.”

For a brief moment in history, nuclear families were hopeful that nuclear cooking was going to be as revolutionary as moving from washboard to washing machine. Mum and Dad were working one full time job and at least four part time jobs between them at the time. They’d frwquently pass like ships in the night, dad getting home on the bus from Sheffield about sixish, sometimes heading out later to collect the pools money. Mum was out the door teaching kids to swim, kids to do gym, leading a disabled swimming group in the evenings.

Whoever wasn’t working was taking me swimming training five nights a week or to piano and my brothers to whatever they were up to at the time. Like most families most places, there were pressures on time that microwave cooking promised to ease.

Was the microwave able to create more time? No. It was a kitchen appliance, not a time machine. Nevertheless, it’s gentle hum very quickly found itself harmonising with the sound of the clatter of car keys, the packing of swimming bags and the shouts of ‘time to go’. Bright, loud, and with a charged, pent up energy it fitted right in.

My Memoirs. Chapter 11. Secondary School

Where primary school was sunshine and cherry blossom punctuated with moments of pure, white snowfall, secondary school was foggy and damp and biting cold. And I am not just saying that for dramatic effect: it struck me smack between the eyes when I sat down to write this that the meteorological backdrop of my attending Wickersley comp reads ‘gloomy’.

I hated secondary school.

Six weeks earlier, we’d been playing tiggy bob down, wearing odd, neon socks, enjoying learning, enjoying childhood, enjoying playtime. In secondary school, there was no play time and there was no playground, “It’s a yard, it’s break and don’t look at my sister” that from one of the five of us from Herringthorpe who went up to Wickersley together.

Nowadays, 12 – 15 year old me would be diagnosed with social anxiety and possibly a little depression. I’d likely be considering dying my hair blue.

I think I’m glad I’d got through it without a diagnosis, that I worked things out, that I went through it to be who I am to day blah blah. But also, it would have been nice to know I wasn’t alone in how I felt or at least to understand why i was feeling what i did.

Some of my anxiety was absorbed from my mum. I must have shown traits of social awkwardness: they fought quite hard for me to go to a school with a six form so I wouldn’t have to transition again after another five years. This was at a time that nobody fought that hard to go to any particular school. I can’t remember feeling that socially awkward before I left primary. Maybe that’s because the adults around me managed it on my behalf.

I do know that – while I was late developer (periods starting between my 14th and 15th birthday. Breasts going from A cup to C literally (and I mean literally) overnight – the transition to secondary collided with spots and greasy hair and hormones. I do know now that my hormones cause me anxiety and restless nights a little depression and a feeling that nobody wants to be bothered by me. I think essentially I had severe PMT for 2 – 3 years before my periods came in regularly and that this clouded how i perceived everything i was experiencing at the time.

For a long time, I was convinced I was ostrasiced, bullied, belittled. But when I think back on it, I am not sure that I was. I can actually remember a lot of good people trying to reach me in friendship. I remember some very funny moments, times that should have hung together as a happy experience.There was a heaviness hanging over me, though, a fog and I couldn’t reach out of..

I put on a front for a lot of it. Not in the first year – I think I looked like a startled lamb. I’d still regularly get mistaken for a boy by adults, I had my cheap, wire frame glasses and a green Head bag when I should have gotten myself a pink Puma one. At the school disco, people were wearing kiss me quick hats and finding someone to snog at the slow dance at the end. I still wanted to skid on my knees on the floor and make up routines to Mel and Kim songs.

When my periods became regular, things settled a little..at least for 3 weeks of the month,

I started to realise I could make people laugh and I saw some of the upsides of growing up. But the fog would still descend regulary: I’d become down, withdrawn and effectively ghost people who could have been life long friends if I could have managed that hormonal roller coaster better. To be honest, I didn’t even know I was on a roller coaster – it’s only from this vantage point of decades later that I understand what was happening to me,

‘Lucky’ for me, once I turned 15 nobody was mistaking me for a boy. There wasn’t an offlicence or a pub or a club in the land where I couldn’t get served (fun fact, I have never been ID’d). I discovered the burning, warm comfort of THunderbird, of Archers, of snakebite. The only friend for life I left school with was booze. I promises, that’s not as tragic as it sounds. Still, it’s noteworthy.

My Memoirs. Chapter 10. Kylie Minogue

When Kylie thought maybe she fancied Jason Donavon in real life, I thought maybe I might did too.

When Kylie met Michael Hutchinson and found out what it was like to totally fancy someone, I was totally finding out what it was to fancy someone when I was listening to Michael Hutchinson.

When Kylie was at the pinnacle of her Indi career, floating around on a stream with Nick Cave, I was wading knee deep through Indie myself.

And when Kylie was peak sexy, peak infatuating, peak infatuated with whoever it was she couldn’t get out of her head, I was learning what it was to reach the peak with inappropriate infatuations myself.

t Like a fish in water that doesn’t know it’s wet, Kylie’s the water that’s been around since my hormones started to fire up and she’s still here now that they’re stalling a bit. She’s never been my favourite artist. She’s never been an artist I’ve though about that much. It’s just serandiputous that when I wasn’t sure which bit of my life to write about today, I turned on the radio and a recent interview she did with Scott Mills came on. It suddenly became clear that since I started to clumsily transition into womanhood, she’s always been around, the tune I’m absent mindedly humming in my ear.

I couldn’t stand her in the I should be so lucky days. I was curious about her in her Michael Hutchinson days. I was proud of her in her Nick Cave moment and I thought she was at peak sexy in her I Can’t Get You Out of My Head days: whatever I’ve been feeling about Kylie, at any given time in the last 30 odd years, is pretty much the same as I’ve been feeling about myself.

Now, in her Padam moment, I am seeing her have another huge moment, reaching a new audience, embarking on a new adventure, doing new things in unknown places. I can see Kylie’s embarking on something new. I feel I am about to too. What will it be? I don’t know. But as kids grow up, parents grow old and I grow older, some things are about to change: that’s a given.

Look, reader, I’m not delusional – I know I clearly have very little in common with our Kylie. But she’s one of those golden threads that weaves through all the scraps of my memory, pinning them together into something that feels like it adds a little meaning even if, like a stock aitken and waterman song, there was never really anything meaningful there at all.

My Memoirs. Chapter 9. Death

**Mentions suicide**

We went to a funeral today so now’s as good as time as any to bring up the thing that brings life meaning, right?

Death’s coming at us not thick and fast but thicker and faster. Two years ago, I went to five weddings. This year, two funerals and at least one more likely before Christmas. There’s a film in there somewhere, but I don’t have the energy to think about that right now.

We know, don’t we, that we are shit at death. I like to think one of the reasons for that is that we don’t have as much practice as we use to…in the olden days…with the plagues and the wars. Although that can’t be it – there are still plagues (covid) and wars everywhere

So why, with all our conscious practice of the thing are we – as a species – so crap at it? Maybe we aren’t crap at death. Maybe we are just unbelievablly brilliant at missing people terribly when they’re gone.

I walked into the new millenium with parents, siblings, friends and all the grandparents (both on my mum’s side, my dad’d mum on his) alive and kicking

It seems a strange, and hopefully not disrespectful thing to say but I honestly believe that started to change when September 11th changed everything else.

It feels od to bring 9/11 into this given I didn’t know anyone who died or know anyone well who knew anyone who died in those attacks. But we all of us had a telly and that day we saw with our eyes thousands of people killed and later we heard with our ears them desparetly hoping they wouldn’t be. It changed things and put life and death into greater focus. And, like I say, soon after – in my life – other people started to die too.

A boyrfiend of mine around that time, a friend of his died of suicide. The last time I saw him I was hammered in a place in town now called the Stage Door. The SOul Cellar before that. What was it before that? I was sat down, slightly hazy, slightly wobbly and all I could focus on were his tree trunk thighs clad it stone washed jeans. A strong, honest, loved man who felled himself. Nobody who knew him was the same after that. People very rarely are.

My nanna’s sudden death. Painless for her. Still painful for me. Unfathomable for my grandad who started chain smoking until he died too, well before his 80th birthday.

My Grandma, 98, who just got tired I think.

My cousin’s son. Went on holiday with a friend at 18. He never came home. I don’t know my cousin well but i send her so much love everday.

My friend. Breast cancer.

And lately, two incredibly cose friends of my husbands, one died of cancer another likely suicide.

And more, and soon more, and eventually everyone.

I always thought death was an absence of life but when i went to say goodbye to a dead person once, there was something there. I could feel it. It had a gravity of it’s own. Death is something. It’s not nothing. That is, it’s something for the people left alive.

Once we’ve gone? Why would it feel any different to how it felt before we’ve arrived? Why would it feel like anything at all?

I try to use funerals as intended: as a way to remembered, rejoice, reflect, grieve. I appreciate the formality of that rite of passage. The release of the wake. That first night’s sleep after it all when you feel that the practicalities at least have been put to bed.

I spoke to one of my best friends at today’s funeral. Talked about dying wishes. Cremation for me, please. Play list to follow. Eulogy? The potted history bit? Well, it’s our friends dying that prompted me to start writing these memours – you’ll find what you need here.

The bits people add to explain what you added, what you brough to the party. ‘She wasn’t a dick;’ is what we decided today would be a good enough engraving on any gravestone. What a better place the world would be if we could all hand on heart be defined by that. At the moment, I’m at ‘She often wasn’t a dick.’. Must work on that.

I must do as well as C___who reminded me of the importance of travel, being intersted, sharing my knowledge and embracing my kids.

Of Z…who taught me the importance of loyalty, close family, helping friends with the gift of our time.

J____who reminds me to get outside each day, take my shoes off to feel the grass between my toes. I need to move my body more now that she can’t.

For Grandad, who taught me honesty, hard work, the joy in the smell of the earth.

For Grandma who taught me determination, to keep growing my mind. Tokeep learning, cos I can.

For Nanna who taught me the futility of angry arguments.

I want to write an inspiring eulogy now and spend the rest of my life trying to live up to it. There must be more to it than not being a dick.

My Memoirs. Chapter 8. Grandma

Towards the end of Junior school, the teachers started to strike a lot. They still did the standard lessons but nobody was around for extra curricular stuff like the end of year play or certain lunch times. For lunch times, therefore, we had to head home. I am not sure if it was every lunchtime of Fridays. I assume it was Fridays because I’d head to Grandma’s and she’d make me fish and chips.

It was unusual to just be me on my own with Grandma in her small, red bungalow. We didn’t chat much those lunch times. Just watched telly, ate her home cooked fish and chips and then headed back to school. But it was good.

The small, red bungalow, one of many in…what’s it called…sheltered accomodation? Everyone there had their marbles and were well enough to take care of themselves but there was a warden on duty who would check in twice a day and cords in each room to pull if you fell or were having any other sort of crisis.

The bungalow had a narrow corridor from the front door. One step, and to the left was a box room that I always remember full of furniture. I think it had a bed in. I think I maybe stayed over once or twice. A step to the right was grandma’s room. More dark, wooden furniture and a high bed.

For a while, after Grandma had been burgled by a smack head (I assume it was a smack head – no self respecting non smack head criminal would rob old peope while they slept, surely). she had a plank of wood next to her bed with nails she’d hammered into it. Dad removed it, pointing out that if she ever confronted anyone with it they’d just take it off her then gawd knows where we’d be.

Another step forward, to the left was the bathroom where she inexplicably had a selection of soft toilet roll and that tracing paper stuff. Who would choose the latter? Was the soft stuff for guests?

And then a final step forward and you were in what was quite a large kitchen overlooking Herringthorpe playing fields. We’d go for Sunday dinner quite often if memory serves me right, squished around the drop leaf table in the kitchen. Meat was well done in those days. Gravy was plentiful and tasty.

Next to the kitchen was a small living room, sideboard and bar gas fireplace and tucked away was a large store cupboard full of anything that might come in useful. This was Grandma’s response to the war -to never throw away anything that might come in handy. Turns out paper bags and rubber bands were particularly coveted.

She had a few ornaments, some brass knick knacks and books, encyclopedias and dictionaries to help with the crossword. For a while she had an electric keyboard that she learned to play.

While Nanna’s home made me feel like I was with someone at peace, Grandma’s made me feel like I was with someone with a pent up, driven energy and lots to do. She channeled that into her crossrwords, reading, baking her bread, cooking her meals and into her family.

There was an…I don’t know what…an underyling frustration or dissapointment there? She was bright, healthy, practical but for much of her life she was left caring for others. Her mum was one of those who had her running around after her

Florrie (my great grandma) goes down in family lore as a bit of a battleaxe. I am not sure she could read and write. Did she go to school? Doubtful and if she did, at some point early on she was hoiked out to work in service. Her employers lived at Clifton park and the house is now a museum where for a while the main attraction was an albino toad.

If Florrie and her daughter were at all like me – and something i can’t put my finger on makes me think that they were – I am not suprised they were frustrated. These were bright, strong women. There were no wasted opportunities here. There were no opportunities to waste.

Grandma would sometimes recount a story of being taken to the moors as a small girl and recalled the feeling of freedom. She was also, I think, quite fond of the war: not the brutal anhilation of millions of innocents side of things but the chance it gave her to get out and work at the local firestation.

Even though she was fit and strong I was – when a small child – constantly convinced she would drop dead due I think to the shock of white hair she had. Like me, she had two younger brothers. Apparently, she turned white very quickly when her middle brother died.

I think her children (three boys, like mine) gave her a lot of pride and joy and when I see how they looked after her and enjoyed her company throughout her life, I feel optimisitc for my future relationships with my sons.

I wasn’t emotionally close to Grandma in the same way as I was to Nanna and Grandad but I enjoyed running down the slope of grass to her front door, the smell of boiled veg and baking and watching her drink her strong tea from a pint mug. I particularly enjoy memories of boxing day with her, the family gathered around my aunt and uncle’s house, opening presents, my dad and uncle making her chuckle by weighing and sizing up their respective gifts to see who she’d given most to.

At one point in her life, one of the ladies at the big posh house was considering taking Grandma on the Grand Tour with her. I think this was the olden days equivalent of interrailing. I think the lady died and Grandma couldn’t go. I imagine she was hugely dissapointed but not hugely surprised. I imagine she didn’t think things like that could happen to her anyway

Things like that could happen to me. I’ve had a lot of opportunities come my way. I’ve made the most of many but I’ve wasted, god I’ve wasted, others and I feel a shame at the stupid decisions and the things I could have done but didn’t with all the privelaged stuff I’ve had.

There was a lot of ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ and ‘have tos’ in Grandma’s life. She came in with very little and she left – materially – with only a tiny bit more. But in her long life here she raised three kind, clever men. Men who were respectful to women, who were hands on dads, who can (and are willing to) cook and tidy and clean and fix things.

They were all around to help out and hang out with her until the end, which came when she’d finally had enough of it all just before she turned 99. She probably didn’t think things like making it to 100 happened to her either.

I wish I knew more about what Grandma thought and felt about her life. The one things I feel I do know though is that if Nanna was my warm safety blanket, Grandma remains my steel core.