THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NORMAL

Anecdotes and ruminations from my childhood

When I was about four years old I came to a shocking realisation about the world around me. It was very abrupt and it coloured my world vividly from that moment onwards.

Let me try to illustrate!

My family lived in a tiny three roomed first floor part of an old beat up house in Islington, London. It was 1956. The remaining houses on that street were all tired, old and shaken up by bombs that had fallen during WW2. There were huge craters filled with broken bricks and the debris of broken homes, but there were also a few old trees scarred by fire, valiant in their recovery providing homes for beautiful magpies and pigeons.

Source: https://friendsofim.com/2020/05/11/well-meet-again-bomb-damage-destruction/

I played in the road outside the front of our house with many other children. There were very few vehicles in those days. Occasionally a horse and cart would appear selling coal or collecting rags and old furniture. My father had a motorbike and the sound of it would always trigger me to run home to greet him.

One sunny day, I was sitting on the steps at the front of the house when Mr. Pritchard, who lived upstairs, arrived home from work. He sat next to me and showed me his pack of cards. Every card showed a different pretty naked lady. Later, when I mentioned this to my mother she paled significantly and questioned me about the cards. I had not been particularly interested in them, so was not able to say much. Seeing my mother naked was a regular thing in my life. We all bathed in a tin tub by the fire in the living room every Sunday evening. That was our normal.

As usual, my father arrived home on his motorbike that evening and my parents were exchanging whispers while my younger brother and I played at their feet.

Suddenly, my father hurtled out of the door and ran up the stairs. We heard him shouting at Mr. Pritchard. Then there was a scuffle and Mr. Pritchard rolled down the stairs until he landed outside the toilet door. My father jumped over him, dragged him up, smashed him with his fists and threw him down the next flight of stairs.

Mrs. Pritchard was screaming and running down the stairs towards us, but my mother stopped her, knocking her glasses off her face. They smashed on the floor in front of me.

My brother and I stood in the doorway of our kitchen transfixed with shock. We did not understand what was happening at all. Our normally happy parents were raging and violent. It was unfathomable to us.

I learned one very important thing that day and it made perfect sense to my childish mind. I did not dare tell my parents the truth about anything any more! I could not trust them to react calmly. I suppose that in modern parlance, we could say that I had been traumatised by that event.

Traumatised into lying?

I think so. From that day on I never told my parents what was happening in my life. I answered their questions with platitudes and narratives which fitted their expectations. That became one major aspect of my “normal”.

This habit extended to all adults except one and that was my paternal grandmother. She was utterly trustworthy and I was able to tell her anything because she proved over and over that she was keeping my secrets. It was her idea that I should write all my thoughts down in a journal. When I was about seven years old she provided a blank book for the purpose.

Slowly, over the following years I filled the pages with poems and dreams, visions and observations. Most of them were illustrated with colourful drawings when words failed to convey the images I was conjuring. The journal became a repository of my most private thoughts and I hid it carefully from everyone.

In 1961 my mum arrived at my school unexpectedly. She said that she was taking me to see a doctor. I was confused by this. I was not sick. We caught a bus into Romford town centre and walked to an unfamiliar part of town. We stopped outside a building with a brass plate on the door. It said the name of the doctor and this word: “Psychiatrist”.

Inside we sat in a waiting room and silently I began to panic. At nine years of age I knew what that word signified. It meant that my mother thought I was crazy. But why?

As soon as I entered the doctor’s room I spotted my journal open on his desk. The rest of the room is etched into my memory in technicolour. There was a jumble of books and papers, some comfy chairs, walls full of paintings and an elderly man peering at me over his gold rimmed spectacles.

My heart was pounding in my chest and I could hear the blood pressure thudding like a machine in my ears. I was rigid with a maelstrom of feelings. Rage that my private book was here and fear that this man could lock me away for life.

Scenes from Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre flooded my mind. In that book, Bertha Rochester had been kept locked in an attic by her husband and I had wondered if she had been driven insane by such a cruel fate.

To quell my rage and fear was my priority in that instant. I decided to employ my old favourite strategy when dealing with adults. I decided to lie to him. I would pretend to be one of my school friends and answer all questions in the way that she would. I relaxed a little and smiled sweetly at the doctor as I sat down in a chair opposite to him.

Without mentioning my journal, this man asked me many questions, performed a word association test and directed my attention to a couple of spatial tests with blocks and shapes. Then he produced a swatch of papers saying, “Have a go at this!” He gave me a pencil and I worked my way through an interesting series of written puzzles which I now know were an Eysenck IQ test.

When I finished the final section I handed the papers over to him and said, “That was fun!”. While he was checking through it I focused on a large beautiful painting on the wall. It helped to calm me.

The doctor asked me if I liked horses. I was more interested in the artistic technique than the subject, but to be polite I replied in the affirmative. The doctor then made a remark which revealed how little he knew about the real world. As he guided me back to my mother in the waiting room, he said, “Perhaps your parents will buy you a horse one day!” and I had a hard job not bursting out laughing. My parents could barely afford to put new shoes on my rapidly growing feet, let alone a horse between my legs!

As soon as we were outside on the street I asked my mother how come my journal was on that man’s desk. She told me that she had found it hidden under my mattress and had taken it to the headmaster of my junior school because she thought it was incredibly clever. She told me that she was very proud of me for producing such a book. The headmaster had set up an appointment for me to be seen by that doctor. I told her that I wanted the book to be returned to me.

No matter how many times I raised the subject, that journal was never seen again and, because of the betrayal by everyone involved, I never created another one. I shut down.

It was decided by all these interfering adults that I was “not normal” and would benefit from a good grammar school education. My father objected because he foresaw additional expense for fancy uniforms and travel costs and because he did not consider educating girls to be as important as educating boys. My mother bristled at this ignorance stating, “Educate a woman and you educate her children!”

My opinion was never consulted. Common sayings at the time were “Children should be seen and not heard!” and “Empty cans make the most noise!” Nobody actually cared what I wanted.

When it was decided that I would go to a school for girls some miles away, I realised that I was to be separated from my friends. My closest friend was a boy from my junior school class called Terry and he was preparing to go, along with everyone else, to the local secondary modern school. Thankfully, Terry and his friends made a point of meeting me after school every day until we all reached the age of thirteen in 1965.

It was a normal warm spring day and I arrived at our local park just in time to see an ambulance crew carrying a stretcher which they hastily loaded up before racing away with lights and sirens blazing.

There was a small crowd of teenagers around the monkey bars so I ran over to find out what had happened. They were all in tears. Terry had fallen from the top while joking around. They said he had landed on his head, broken his neck and was dead.

😔

I was not allowed to attend his funeral. My mother said that it would be too much for me as I was already inconsolable. I never went to the park again. I felt as though I had grown very old.

I had outgrown childish things.

I became silent and numb. All the things I had shared with Terry fell out of my life. My bike rusted in the shed because there was nobody else as keen on exploring and following maps. I never took all my encyclopaedia out of the cabinet and spread them all over the floor on rainy days. My skates stayed in their box and I began to do my homework at the local library rather than go home.

The following summer was glorious.

My father, feeling guilty for leaving our mother and the family home for another woman, took my brother and I to Durdle Door in Dorset for a long camping holiday. My father and his girlfriend were spending all their time together which left me free to go swimming and wander about on my own.

I met a small crowd of teenagers and joined them. One guy of eighteen had a motorbike. He took a big interest in me and we began a holiday romance. I never told him that I was only thirteen! He lived in Essex too, so when we got home we kept in touch by phone.

Concocting an elaborate deception, I told my parents that I was visiting a school friend who lived in Harold Wood or playing tennis with another who lived in Gidea Park. My parents were divorcing at that time and were so caught up with their own problems that they did not pay close attention to my activities at all. When I disappeared from the home for weekends, I think they were relieved that they did not have to feed or worry about me.

Clifford was a budding photographer who worked for Reuters in London. We met up for dates and our favourite place to go was the Marquee Club in Soho where we saw and heard the new bands like Fleetwood Mac, The Herd and The Who. At home, I was feverishly making new outfits for this very adult venue, inspired as I was by the bohemian fashions and fellow clubbers like musicians Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Phil Collins.

It was impossible to buy the kind of clothes that I envisioned at that time so I would buy second hand old fashioned lace tablecloths and soft velvet curtains to create dresses from them. I stopped wearing shoes. I experimented with lavish makeup to pass for eighteen at the clubs. I never had any money and drank only water so Clifford was not burdened with the costs.

After a few months, Clifford cooled off because at thirteen, I was not willing to spend the night with him and so, eventually his calls dwindled away. I was happy to bunk the trains and travel up to London alone. My elaborate deceptions became reality when I actually did spend many weekends with my school friends and this double life continued until I left school and London in 1969.

Nobody really knew me.

Thinking back on it all, I can’t help but notice that I was lying to almost everyone throughout my childhood. I was feeding them the narratives they wanted to hear and I was conducting a completely private life.

Instead of writing and drawing my dreams and visions in a journal which could be stolen, I was living my dreams fearlessly and storing them in my heart.

I became bolder year on year but was this normal?

What IS normal, anyway?

🤔

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ONWARDS!
xx