SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE Episode 4

"Do you want the good news, or the bad news?"

We couldn't afford a honeymoon and both returned to work on the Monday after our wedding day.
The hastily bought plain wedding bands were glistening on our fingers as we worked towards our mutual objective, that of buying our own home. We resented the rent money that disappeared from our income, even though it was a very reasonable rate at the time.
Our family from Glasgow stayed for the rest of the week and we visited them, spending our evenings with them as much as we could.
Tony's job quickly took him to work on the Norwich town hall which was a long and complex roofing contract causing him to take lodgings there through the week.
I carried on slogging my way to London on the train but the long hours were draining me of energy and I began to search for work in Clacton.
I went to a couple of interviews but the salaries were abysmal - I could not believe how bad they were.
Eventually, I found a job working for a plant and bulb supplier on the outskirts of Clacton. It involved a lot of responsibility, responding to complaints and gardening enquiries. The salary they were offering was a little better and I negotiated it even higher. It worked out on a par with my existing job when I calculated the high travel costs I was incurring by working in Wapping.
I tearfully worked out my notice and bid a fond farewell to Annie, the tea lady who shared so many of my deepest secret wishes. She dabbed her eyes, as she cut up my farewell party cake, "I will miss you, Fran!" she sniffled "I know you will be alright, that Indian Maharajah said so, didn't he?"
She had been ecstatic when I had got married because I wore the necklace that she gave me for the occasion and because she had followed my romance with great interest.
It was sad to leave her because, above all the people I worked with, she had been like a mother-hen around me, making sure I ate well and always telling me off for working so late into the evenings, repeatedly telling her nephew, my boss, what a wonderful hard worker I was.
He would wink at me "If Annie approves, you must be excellent!" Apparently she did not approve of him very much because he was late in the mornings and frequently would disappear for hours during the day!
I have never worked anywhere that had such a wonderful atmosphere between the staff as that place.
It was a great experience.

Tony acquired a bike for me. It was a black heavy framed ancient bone shaker of a thing, with a wicker basket on the front. I didn't ask where it came from, it wasn't wise to question gift horses.
I rode it all the way to my new work place in the next town along the Essex Coast and I really enjoyed that part of my day, unless it was raining of course.

I collected several good encyclopaedias about gardening and plant life in general and set about advising clients and responding to complaints, which were very few considering the volume of trade the company was doing.
I liked the people I worked with but I missed the fun we had at the Wapping offices.
I didn't need my language skills any more and I missed that so much that I borrowed fiction books in French and Spanish from the library, to keep fresh and to avoid losing the ability, just in case it became useful again in the future.

Tony and I were very happy in our little cottage, with our dog Dylan and his buddy-cat Nicki. After six weeks of marriage I came home from work one Friday night to find a note saying that Tony had taken a weekend job with Sid and the Filthy Few as security guards at the Weeley Pop Festival. His brother appeared shortly after that to take me there.
I had no idea what to expect, I had never been to a festival before.
When we arrived I was overwhelmed by the size and noise of the crowd, I had never seen anything quite so intense!
I was dropped off at the main gate and eventually found my best mate, Sid and his biker buddies who were working as the security there.
One of them gave me a lift on his motorbike all the way around the perimeter of the festival to the back stage entrance and there, finally, I found my husband.

Here is a wonderful archive of photos of that festival, which was to be the first of very very many that we attended from the 70s to the late 90s.

http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/weeley-festival.html

Tony dragged me away from the gateway, asking the biker to replace him on the backstage entrance. He dived under the stage which was just a mess of scaffolding erected in a field, with scaffold boards above, where a deafening roar of music and the crowd blocked all other sounds.
He pushed me to the rough ground and made love like he had not seen me for years! It was typical of him. Just like the first time, no ifs no buts. It was happening and I went along with it.

When we came out from under the stage I straightened myself out and blushed because the biker friend was grinning at us, knowing full well what had been going on. Tony went back to his security position and I went to find us some food and drink. There was barely room to move out in the crowd but some enterprising people had set up makeshift stalls selling burgers and hotdogs, coffee and soft drinks.
The prices were a bit eye-watering but there was very little choice.

We got home eventually, exhausted on the Sunday evening and as we were getting ready for bed Tony gave me a massive wad of money.
"Put that in the savings!" he said proudly as I gaped at it. "Where did you get all this?" I asked. Tony lied like a demon and always glittered when he did it. "Gate takings!" he said and I questioned no more.
He drove back to Norwich early the following morning to continue with his roofing contract and I banked the cash in my lunch break. The girl who served me in the bank looked astonished at the hoard of cash. She knew me well from the local discotheque.
Her name was Lorraine Freeman, also known as, Freebody. She also had a way of glittering, like Tony, but it was the crafty expression on her face that made me do a double take. She questioned me about the money as she entered it into the deposit slip and signed it off.
I avoided her questions because she was a well known gossip locally, but I made a mental note of her interest because this was one woman I had never trusted.

Within a couple of weeks I burst a button from the waistband of a skirt. I was a bit shocked by that because I had not changed weight or size since I was about 14 years old.
The following morning the smell of our morning teapot made me violently sick.
Every morning after that for three months I was violently sick to such an extent that I have been unable to drink tea ever since!
My waistband was on an elastic band between the button and the button hole. There was at least three inches change in my waist measurement when I popped into the doctor's surgery for a pregnancy test.
The result was very positive.
I was expecting our baby and I could not wait to get home to tell Tony the news!
He was overjoyed.
"It's a boy!" he declared confidently.
"How on earth can you know?" I giggled at his silly expression. But he looked really strange as he said:
"Remember the Maharajah guy?" and I did, instantly.
Of course, how could I forget? He had said that I would marry and have a very important son.

The morning sickness relented after the third month had passed and I started to make myself some loose fitting dresses. I was popping out of all my clothes and decided to put them away until after the pregnancy was over rather than risk stretching them all out of shape.

The only thing I did not replace was my huge maxi length dark green woollen coat. I loved that and it was the only really warm coat I had.
It was failing to fasten by the time I reached the six month point and I was still cycling to work in the February of 1972 during a windy, snowy slushy early morning when the hem of my coat flapped wildly in the wind and caught in the back wheel of my bike.
I crashed to the ground right in front of a builder's truck.
The poor man skidded but controlled his vehicle somehow so that it came to rest inches from my legs. My bike was almost under his wheels. He jumped out of the van and helped me to my feet. He looked pale and shaken but when he saw that I was pregnant he was furious.
He told me off for risking myself like that and I knew he was right.
I walked the rest of the way to work that day and when Tony phoned during the afternoon I told him about the close shave I had experienced.
"That's it. I have had enough!" he said, "I don't want you riding that bike any more! I will pick you up from work tonight."
When he arrived he slung the bike into the back of the van and we drove home with him lecturing me about my gross stupidity.
I only had a few more weeks left to work before I took maternity leave so I agreed to be dropped off at work at silly o'clock in the mornings when he left to go to his roofing sites.
I never saw that bike again.

When I was finally forced to spend my days at home with Dylan and Nicki they were delighted until I started a dressmaking business which meant locking them out of the front room while I cut out fabric on the floor in front of the fire.
I made wedding dresses, business suits for ladies and unusually shaped dresses for a hunchbacked customer who could never buy anything off the peg. I loved making clothes for her, it was a challenge and she was so happy to have custom made original outfits to wear, which fitted properly, for the first time in her life.
I made all the things I needed for my pram and the cot we had bought.
I made myself even more extremely large dresses.
I was expanding so much I really thought I would split open!
I could balance a cup of tea on my belly, provided that the baby was resting.
He was a kicker.
His little feet would be visible stretching my skin and he would cause me to wet myself unexpectedly when he wriggled about.
A day came when I was getting off a bus from town, with my arms full of shopping.
I got caught somehow and landed flat on my stomach on the rain-soaked pavement.
My knees were a bit scraped but I got up quickly in pure embarrassment and scurried away from the concerned people fussing over me at the bus stop.
Once into the house I sat very still, holding the shopping bags, waiting for my baby to kick.
He did not.
An hour ticked by and Tony came home soaking wet from his day on the roof.
He walked into the lounge and was taken aback by me sitting frozen, still holding the shopping bags.
"I have killed the baby!" I squealed and burst into huge racking sobs. I jumped out of the seat to hug him.
Just then the baby kicked him in the stomach and he laughed "He's fine, he just scored another goal!" he said, grinning and hugging me tight.
We put the shopping away and I attended to my scabby knees. I cannot tell you how much of a relief it was to feel my bladder being shoved about again!

Just before I was due to give birth I was struggling home again with the shopping in the rain, too afraid to get on a bus. One of Tony's many workmates, a chippy I believe, stopped to give me a lift home and I was really grateful as I dried the rain from my face.
"Whose baby is it?" he asked.
I turned to stone.
"Pardon?" I said stiffly. He turned to sneer at me as we drove up the road. "Well, you sleep with all the jocks don't you?" he slung in my direction.
I reminded him that I was married to Tony and he just laughed.

The following day Tony relieved him of his bad manners.
I heard that he was in hospital for some time.

The due date passed and a further fortnight of waddling like a duck, feeling like I would explode and struggling to get into or out of chairs ensued.
I thought it would never end but then the sheer inevitability of the birth would overwhelm me with nervous tension.
I had been knitting a birthing blanket according to Navajo Indian traditions. I had started it when I first knew that I was expecting a baby, had finished the knitting and was now edging it with tassels and applying cute motifs all over the surface.
It was a lovely shade of lemon. In my dreams I had seen a podgy ginger haired boy of about 18 months dragging it around a garden with him.
One night Tony insisted we made love as usual and I felt an odd twinge.
I didn't mention it because he was doing his usual thing, about to fall asleep on top of me.
Bad habit that.

I woke suddenly with the first full contraction at one in the morning, I had been asleep no more than an hour I guess. I waited and watched the fluorescent hands of the clock tick by. Wham, another pain hit me hard and I slid out of the bed, which did not disturb his highness in any way at all.
I went downstairs and made a couple of cups of coffee and, despite another contraction, managed to get them up the rickety cottage stairs to consume in bed.
It was the 25th of May 1972, Whitsun bank holiday weekend, exactly 9 months since the Weeley Festival.
Tony reached some sort of consciousness and I calmly asked him to drink his coffee because the baby was coming.
He took the cup, looked a trifle confused but began to drink.
Suddenly, he put the cup down jumped out of bed and started pulling his clothes on in such a rush he almost fell over with one leg in his jeans.
"What do I do?" he asked, looking like a rabbit in headlights.
I had gone over what to do at least four times before but he was completely panic stricken and his brain simply was not in gear. I told him to go to the phone box, phone the maternity hospital to warn them we were on our way. Collect the van from the car park and bring it to the front of the house.
He gulped his coffee, swore to himself when I leaned back against the wall panting through the next contraction and then scooted down the stairs.
He came back for the van keys. He was utterly in a whirl.
Finally, he got me to the maternity hospital, which was a converted large house in Clacton at that time.
The reception nurse ascertained that this was my first delivery and advised him to go home to sleep. Not to worry, he would not miss the birth if he phoned in the morning, was the advice she gave.
As soon as he left I started to contract like there was no tomorrow and I was quickly bathed, shaved and bunged in a ward bed because another girl was giving birth in the delivery room and she was screaming the place down.
I remembered the birthing instructions from the Navajo Indian book I had been reading and set about meditating myself away from the pain. Nobody disturbed me and I floated blissfully away….

At 7am a nurse was slapping my face yelling "Wake up! You are delivering!" but all I could feel was pins and needles in my eyelids. Everything else was still at a distance and I resumed my meditation.
They somehow got me onto a gurney and rushed me into a tiny box room where the emergency spare delivery bench was. I was hoisted on and legs lifted onto supports just as the first feeling to push came along.
I went with it and the baby's head came into sight. The nurse was great, handing me the gas and air mask which I immediately handed back to her - crushed.
I had squeezed it instead of sucking at it.
Whoops.

Every pain had me swearing like the Londoner that I truly am at root.
The air was blue with my foul language!
I did not scream. I swore.
Like a fishwife.
Whoops again.

Suddenly the nurse told me to stop pushing because the baby was holding his arms across his chest and was gripping his wide shoulders. There was no way to get the rest of him out.
She said "Don't push, you will tear yourself, you must wait for the Doctor to come and cut you!"
I considered that logic for all of a micro second and dismissed it as ridiculous.
The next sensation to push came and I imagined I was giving birth to an elephant; I gave it everything I had, with every muscle I could muster.
There was a tiny sound like ripping paper, no sensation except pure relief as the baby shot into the nurse's arms along with all the multicoloured slimy water that was trapped behind him.
She laughed as she stood there, dripping. "I knock off in ten minutes!" she said, "Thanks for that!"

The baby, facing away from me took his first long deep breath without a cry, stretched out purposefully in a star shape until all his fingers and toes flexed as far as they could possibly go. I saw that he was a boy very clearly. His muscle tone was astonishing.
He folded himself back into the cross-armed pose that he was born in and soundlessly slept.
They examined him, weighed him, wrapped him, pricked his heel and still he made no sound. The baby they finally handed to me was huge. Nine and a half pounds, very long and with the muscle definition of a wrestler.
The nurse joked that he was as big and ugly as Desperate Dan, the comic-book character and, looking at his bruised face, flattened nose and mis-shaped head I had to agree.
He was pot ugly at birth. I have to admit.

At 8am Tony phoned the hospital to hear that his son had arrived only ten minutes before and he raced to see us.
By the time he arrived I was sitting in bed doing my make up and my hair.
I wanted him to think that the whole business had been a walk in the park, so I did not mention the one stitch I had because of the small tear.
I asked the nurse as she stitched me how many stitches I would have needed if I had waited to be cut by the doctor. I winced when they said that it would have been maybe a dozen or so. I thought then that I had made the right decision to go with nature and take the risk.

Tony was escorted straight to the nursery to see the baby first and finally, he came to my bedside where he gasped with surprise.
"You look like you have been to tea with the Queen!" he said as he reached inside his leather jacket to give me a totally flat bunch of multi-coloured sweet peas that he had stolen on the way.
No amount of persuasion could restore those delicate blooms to any sort of normal shape and they gave the entire ward a great laugh for the next few days.

The first time I heard our Desperate Dan cry, he was in the nursery in the room below me. I recognised the voice immediately! It was so loud, so furious and so relentless, it just had to be him. A nurse came racing breathlessly up the stairs holding him out in front of her. He immediately latched onto the breast and suckled greedily. Silence reigned once more. It was a great relief all around.
Our eardrums were still reverberating when he let out his first burp.
I could already see that this boy was a miniature version of his father, dodgy manners included.

I asked Tony to phone our parents with the news and to tell all our friends, which he did. Except he only told Jai, Alan, Chas and Peter, his brother. They all arrived together to visit in the afternoon. They drank my coffee and ate my sandwiches.
I didn't have the heart to stop them. They were having such a great time!

The carer who returned for the plates and cups gave them a bit of a lecture, but they just grinned and slobbed out all over the bed, laughing at their own cheekiness.
They were such a rough looking bunch, with long hair and stubbled faces, always dressed in denim, almost as if it were a uniform. Very few people ever argued with them. A nurse made a remark about only 2 visitors at any one bed but they completely ignored her. She gave up the idea.
The staff were very relieved to see my mother arrive the following day, a semblance of normality pervaded the atmosphere that afternoon, thankfully.

The Whitsun bank holiday weekend that year was sweltering.
By the time I was permitted to go home, a full 7 days later, I was stir crazy from being stuck indoors. Tony brought our darling dog, Dylan, to the grounds of the maternity hospital several times, because he was pining and refusing to eat. I leaned out of the window and called him so that he looked up and could see that I was safe.
I missed him too, he and I were so very close.
When we finally got home, Tony carried the baby while I went ahead to greet Dylan but, before I could touch him, he shot straight past me and was desperately reaching up Tony's legs to see the baby.
He knew. All along he had known and now he was no longer ‘our’ dog. Now he was Desperate Dan's dog and he remained at Dan's side, on guard at all times, from that day on.
Tony announced, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" as I dropped our bags on the sofa. I looked at him, waiting. "Nicki had kittens the same day that you had Dan" he smiled ruefully.
I waited some more. "She had them in the wardrobe on the bottom of your wedding dress! I haven't moved her off it yet!" The dress was ruined of course, but the four kittens were so gorgeous and Nicki was so proud, what could I say except "Oh wow!"?
Dylan delightedly wagged his tail because suddenly our little family of four had become nine and he was in charge of security. He never once let us down either, but that is another story, for another day.