Another Memoir Extract: TRAVEL

1993 : Sitting by myself, wearing white leggings and big T-shirt; bare feet up on the opposite seat, boots under the table and a pile of library books in front of me. I’m watching a man with dark hairy arms, in the seat next to my feet. He has a pinky ring on his left hand and a sturdy beard buried in The Scotsman. Long hairs seep out of the neck of his cotton shirt. I wonder about his hands, how the long fingers would feel on my neck, tangled in my hair. Men like women with long hair. The glint of gold on his collar bone brings me to my senses; I can’t bear a man in chains. A child is grizzling further up the carriage - please let them get off at Berwick. Farmers are out hosing their fields. Still in the flat countryside of England, windbreaks of young trees laze in the beating sun. Fields of rape-seed turn the landscape into a painting with pylons etched between long looping power lines like suspension bridges.

Our table is littered with Yorkie bars, plastic glasses and orangeade. We were lucky the train was empty. I’d forgotten to book seats and had been worried but soothed with the idea of us all in separate carriages. Lee, Paul and Claire spread themselves out around the car but are now sitting together playing cards.We have become civilized travellers. I used to be the-mad-woman-on-a-train, screaming at my children under my breath, between my teeth and kicking their feet under the table. It was a case of, ‘Sit there, be quiet, give him that, leave her alone, don’t say things like that, look at the sheep, there’s the seaside, don’t, you’re the oldest, don’t talk to him then, play cards, shut up, leave me alone, give him some paper, see the mist rolling in, no you can’t, just because, shut up and sit down, Jesus Christ, you’re disgusting, blow your nose, I don’t know, another hour, watch my coffee, WILL YOU GIVE HER SOME PAPER!

'‘There’s the sea!’ Claire stands up. We’re coming up to Berwick. I like coastlines; see myself as The French Lieutenant’s Woman standing on the edge of land, pointing my tragic but beautiful face out to sea, watching for my future; waiting for something to happen. I want a house where the air is on the move: not stagnant - well-travelled air and a great expanse of sky. Sometimes I stand on the pier at Tynemouth. I’ve never been further than one night in Amsterdam.

Lee is 16, Paul 12, Claire 11…and I’m still alive. I dreamed the other night that I was smoking; I haven’t smoked for six years. The skin on my fingers is white/pink – nicotine stains long gone, nails white-edged. I dream a lot; sometimes they’re so strange I fear for my sanity – not the usual crazy feelings but real questions. I once dreamed that I halved Claire in two, put the bottom half inside the wardrobe and sat the rest of her up in bed. A day or two later a loud knocking on the door made me so afraid of what I’d done. I imagined a social worker at the door demanding to see my daughter. I tried to put her back together but the bottom half had withered slightly. Selotape held her together for the interview, which I don’t remember and everything turned out all right! I don’t know why I halved her in two.

A gypsy told my fortune last week. I saw her coming but couldn’t make my body avoid her. She grabbed my hand and talked fast with a strong Irish or country accent into my face. I couldn’t break free and could feel passers-by watching us as we stood beneath the hot air vents in the shopping centre. She said everything would be okay, that someone long-dead watched over me, that a man loved me and I would move house but not far. I kept asking her how much it would cost and she continued talking. As she tucked a small bunch of lucky white heather into my fist she asked me for three pounds. I couldn’t speak throughout the spiel, my chest was bursting into my throat. She took the money and I walked hard for the Haymarket exit, stumbled into Northumberland Street gasping for breath, trying to hold off tears. Why am I crying? I said to myself over and over again.

I glance at the children, ‘Look at the cows, they’re lying down. That means it’s going to rain.’ Lee is teaching them to play Chinese Patience. They’re not listening to me. I press my face to the window as the train curves. I can see its head and tail until my breath clouds the glass. Berwick is behind us now, only half an hour to Edinburgh. We spent a week in Berwick when Claire was one – she had her first birthday in a sand pit. The beach was impossible; it reeked of rotting seaweed, fumes waving up the cliff to keep us away from the edge. How many edges can there be in any one life?

WOMEN-IN-TRAINING

My dead friend’s daughter has started blogging, and is posting her childhood diaries; she’s just reminded me of a scene between me and Roseanne in Manchester. We were both pregnant; I was six weeks ahead of her, relaxing after a bath one evening, when her husband came panicking at my door.
‘She needs you. You have to come right now.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘She’s locked herself in the bathroom. I don't know what's wrong with her.’ For all the rush to get me up there he didn't seem really worried. She was standing up, moving around and not in any pain.

So I got dressed and followed him up the road, and it was quite a walk. When I arrived she dragged me into the bathroom and pulled out a breast.
‘Look at this!’ she squeezed the nipple and little white bubbles appeared.
‘Oh, it must be milk,’ I said. We stood there, glued to the spot, wondering at this change – I don’t think she was even showing then, must’ve only been a few months. ‘You’ve dragged me out of the bath for that?’

Innocents abroad didn’t do us justice; we were twenty-two in 1976 and hell-bent on living life. We’d met a pregnant woman and wanted to be just like her – and that was that; we told our men that babies were on the menu and they had no say in the matter. Unfortunately, some months later, I decided I didn’t want to spend my life with this particular man and orchestrated an argument so I could walk out with no comeback.

Stupid, dumb but definitely not blonde, we stumbled through that year; she got married and gave birth, I gave birth and got married (to a different man). We knew nothing about ourselves or our bodies and were disgusted when a midwife suggested we breastfeed – it wasn’t fashionable then and we thought she must be from the 19th century. I don’t know how we survived…how the kids survived us is a miracle!

MISSING MUM

When I was looking after my mother I didn’t have time to wonder when she would die; a client who calls me for tarot advice often asks me when her mother is going to die. The first few times she asked this I got a perverse pleasure from saying, ‘…not any time soon.’ There is also a man who puts this question to me about his wife; he’s been waiting for her death a long time. This all sounds bad but I really do understand where they’re coming from and just how difficult it can get – and how madly insane you can end up; the day I got my mother into a wheelchair taxi and onto the ward I had my clothes on inside-out and back-to-front, and my hair hadn’t been brushed for days.

I think that one of the hardest things to manage is that decision of just how much you can or should stand in any situation, especially when mental illness is a factor whether we’re talking about plain old senility or something more serious and dangerous – and senility can be full of missiles and snapping teeth! I know, I’ve been there, but it’s the insanity and total confusion of the whole scenario that drives you onward, until there’s no difference between you and the person you’re looking after – I know that I was off my trolly and when a social worker answered my plea for help I fell into her arms in the kitchen. I had a crazy mother on one hand and three teenagers on the other; there was no escape and up until then, no help that really helped.

It makes me sad now, thinking about that time and I thank the gods that it didn’t last long; she went out like a whirling dervish, my mother, and it’s taken years to relegate the memories into something softer. It’s easier to see the real woman she’d been; the mother and wonderful grandmother is now slipping out of the cracks to catch me in tears.

TWITTERING IN CYBERSPACE

So, where is all this going? Is it because I want to be a legend in my family way down the line? I would be reaching back at them through eons; imagine something from a space movie, kids doing biography projects or some kind of social history through the ages like The Flip-side of Dominic Hide. Actually, I just caught a repeat of that last week…must look for the second part on BBCi before it’s gone, but it might’ve been on another channel, in which case I’ve probably missed it. That character’s reason for going back in time to 70s London is to study bus routes!

All my witterings travelling in time; I can just see future scholars trying to understand my choice of similes in the race to avoid clichés – it’s like a complete second language in idiom. I will not be explained; I want to be different, unusual and absolutely unexplainable; I want to be indecipherable by future literary historians; I want to make them laugh with a quizzical smile on their faces. What would they make of my Ode to Chocolate?

Right now, I’m doing this for me, and just like Everest, it’s there to be climbed; this mountain of Ethernet and the blogging world is the melting pot we were promised in the 60s – pop songs can be prophetic! I must find a YouTube link for that song so you can listen to it here. It’s an added bonus that my heirs will be able to investigate this for whatever reason – I should do a rant about the price of everything then they’d have that information at their fingertips. I remember searching for prices of food and cigarettes in the 70s; it was for a project (probably a novel) I was working on in the late 80s that proved very difficult.

The autobiography is great fun; I love searching for just the right movie clips and music to create the atmosphere of the late 50s; it’s keeping me focussed on one particular time, seeking out the memories, those early and vague glimpses of my life then before I slip back farther to who my parents were and where they came from, though now that everyone is gone my memory is more than a little hazy but I don’t want to dig deeper – someone else can do that. I am forcing myself to stand still in that period until there is nothing left, before I go on to the fun and naughty tales of my older childhood.

And blogging now; all this twittering filling cyberspace can only get better; I have read some younger bloggers and been astonished at their wonderful writing which I’m sure is because blogging exists and is cool in their world. Blogging is doing education a favour in that its encouraging reading and writing, thinking and commenting in many ways and forms that might not have happened.

A LITTLE BIT OF MEMOIR

In my safe childhood I was allowed to play outside, by myself, unsupervised, all day; hours and hours spent catching frogs, climbing monkey-puzzle trees, killing water rats and boiling dead bees.

Life in Carnwadric was quiet but interesting; right across the road from us was an old internment camp that used to house Italian prisoners of war. In it there was a big empty house on the hill, a forest, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries, rose bushes and tall daisies, wild onions and, according to my little brother, dead Germans! There was also a row of little brick buildings that we called ‘The Zig-zags’, we thought they were probably dog kennels. We played house in them; they were just the right size for us. We’d sweep them out, and using spare bricks we found lying around, build furniture; little armchairs and sofas, with a table. Suburban Glasgow rocked; I had mystery and adventure inside and outside – the inner provided by Enid Blyton with The Secret Seven, and The Famous Five. I was so envious of the lives dealt out to these characters and always frustrated that I couldn’t re-create them in my own; my mother wouldn’t have a shed built at the bottom of our garden, nor would she buy enough ginger beer to serve to me and my friends; lemonade had to be good enough for us.

I went to stay with a friend in Stirling for a week and returned with the knowledge of how to build a den; so my friends and I began to dig a hole in the back garden, stacking up the clods of earth – they would be the walls, then we would lay a piece of corrugated iron across the top for the roof.

‘GET THAT CONTRAPTION OUT OF HERE!’ old-bag-upstairs shouted.

She always spoilt our fun, or complained whenever we did the slightest little thing. The den was finished and we were just about to have our first meeting of The Secret Four when she screamed. My father rapped on the window for us to come in. So, that was the end of that. Being seven in 1961 was very difficult; adults were the enemy and something to avoid at all costs – or play tricks on to get revenge. We leaned milk bottles full of water against her door, knocked and ran back into our house, back to the jigsaw in the big bedroom table. On Saturdays my father watched horse racing on the TV, with the sound up; he always took our side when Mrs Ratbag came complaining, but he told us off for annoying an old woman, even though she was a pest.

MOVING PICTURES

My grandmother dreamed of a sailor at the bottom of her bed - he never spoke. She looked forward to his beaming smile during the long sleepless nights, alone in a city centre flat - a daughter for every day of the week to ration sleeping pills and Codeine. She sang about sin and spat at Ian Paisley on TV.

Her grave is a mile from my bed, but she won’t leave me alone. I hear her singing in our spare room flinging up cold cotton sheets, calling for drains to be bleached, complaining about the men on my walls. 'Valentino!’ she’d sigh. ’Now, there was a man.’ She wore black and red to his funeral.  

Religion was an extension of her old age pension. Nuns followed her home. She begged from priests, and charmed local bobbies in the middle of the night, wrapped up tight in flannelette and tweed wandering Glasgow Cross, searching for a sister lost in time.

When she died, my mother found money taped to the wall behind the Pope, enough for a hundred fish-suppers in front of Late Call and a blazing gas fire to tartan her shins.

My grandmother is a frail fairytale, missing from my mirror. I didn’t know her face would disappear - I was young, couldn’t see past my own fifteen years. I remember her buttery hair, tidy, with natural oils, scraped back, pony-tailed. How will I know who I am? There are no pictures, only vague memories, fleeting.

DEAR TEACHER

Mrs A, Mrs B and Mr C, you won’t remember me, and you’re probably dead by now anyway, but I must inform you that you were in the wrong business; there was no love of children in the ranting and terrifying tirades that you poured over our little primary heads. Somewhere in your lives you all took a wrong turn or were following a path that you should never have been on. I see you raising your hand with a ‘but’, but the fact is you are three out of perhaps six or seven teachers. You are the only stars of this show – none of the others left a mark either physical or mental on me; they are invisible. Almost fifty years ago, Mrs A, you made me stand in the corner of a cold cloakroom, alone, for swapping my blue pencil with the red one given to the boy behind me. I was four years old and you were my first experience of the education establishment; you certainly left an impression on me.

When I was seven, you, Mrs B, dragged me up the dining hall backwards by the ponytail, because I had done something awful, diabolical even; I licked mince gravy off my knife. I was a quiet and tender little thing and you were the monster from the black lagoon. There was no comparison in my reading matter; I don’t remember vile creatures in Enid Blyton tales. While I was asking my mother to serve me and my friends ginger beer and sandwiches at the bottom of the garden, you were the reality that was breaking into my life. Home and literature was a haven from the only school bullies I knew– the kind that didn’t need to wait at the gates; they got you in public, these 007s with a licence to maim.

I haven’t forgotten you Mr C, or the first time I felt your leather strap slap up my tiny wrists; I might’ve been eight or nine, and my crime was eating a banana in the lines. I’d probably been so busy playing that I’d forgotten to eat it at the correct time. You ordered me to come to your classroom which was full of eleven-plus students, all sniggering at me standing there, waiting for my punishment, aware of all my flaws. I had to be brave, ignore them and pay attention to your swaggering thick belt; I stood and took the two great whacks while trying to control my face. I didn’t cry; I stared wide as you verbally justified the beating and sent me back to my own class. I had that few minutes to get myself in order to face my friends, to pretend that it was nothing, that I was tough and cool before cool meant cool.

And then there was the day you belted the whole class, Mr C; I had finally reached the top, was a member of the eleven-plus, and looking forward to leaving for secondary school. We were usually quiet and studious, in your presence – there was no other way to be, and live. It began to snow, huge, soft flakes, and we stood up to see it. Of course you thundered that we should sit down, and we did at first, but when the blizzard really began to swirl we rose up again and were deaf to your threats; it was exciting. You must’ve thrown an enormous tantrum, I don’t quite remember that part but suddenly you had the whole class in a curve around the room, about thirty of us. You calmly walked along the line and belted every one, except for the class favourite who was crying, you told her to sit down; she was the fairy from the top of the tree. We were belting material; she was far too fragile for real life.

The three of you sent me out into the world with a hatred of teachers; a dislike of loud voices and discord – to this day I still have a little of the people-pleaser in me. When my first child was starting school, I walked the corridors, listening for raised voices, for the teachers who couldn’t command respect by just being kind and working at interesting lesson plans. I hope your kind are dead and gone; there is more pain in mental torture than physical – in life I learned to fight back with my tongue rather than my fists…so I did learn something from you after all, but should I thank you for that? Is it you I should thank for my cynicism, my quick wit and acid tongue? You battered a good Scottish education into the bones of me and I do thank you for that – perhaps the madness in your methods was thumped into you.

CALLING TIME

1973

I’ve teleported myself back to The Muscular Arms; this was a pub in Glasgow, not the nickname of uber-hunk. I was 18/19 and working in the super-coolest bar in the city; life was absolutely marvellous, and after my deflowering I was some kind of confident, as a woman. It’s a Pizza Hut now, but back then there was nothing like it. They’ve changed the name of the street and it’s now Nelson Mandela Place; my brain can’t retrieve the old name. A lot happened in my 1973; the main thing being the death of my father. I’d spent most of the time mooning around in the deep and meaningful words of The JeanGenie, Daniel and Happy Xmas War is Over

I don’t know what the theme was supposed to be in the main bar, probably just whacky: there was half a car (yellow beetle I think) on one wall; Rupert the Bear hung in a corner; and a dummy dressed like an old man leaning on the bar, became the cause of many one-sided arguments because he wouldn’t accept drinks or cigarettes or join in a song. I grew up in that job; that was where I learned to love coffee. For years I’d tried it with and without sugar or milk but just couldn’t get on with it, and then suddenly, coffee was the new chocolate! I felt at home and surrounded by family; there were parties somewhere every weekend – my mother reported me missing because I’d been gone for days…but she hadn’t contacted work. I’d either borrowed or bought clothes and continued life as normal but ended each night at a different party, waking up on strange sofas.

The Starlight Lounge, upstairs, had an ornamental stage with Fred ‘n’ Ginger stepping out in a dance (it might not have actually been them, but dancers anyway). It was all romance, sparkle and shadows up there. I think I only ever worked lunch in The Starlight. The specialities I remember were hot beef sandwiches and oxtail or tomato soup – fabulous combinations. Then we would go round to Diggs (the other coolest place to be seen) and eat cheesecake; their cheesecake was a seriously crumbly base and very soft creamy-cheese with great dollops of strawberry or cherries and sauce. My father was in and out of hospital every three weeks; he loved my long skirts and laughed till he couldn’t breathe at the make-up. We had to lock up the dog whenever he came home because he couldn’t take the weight of happy animal. I loved telling him the tales of my many mistakes.

When the new bar on the second floor opened, the theme was a surprise; even we didn’t know what it was going to be. They had opened up the old close (stairs and landings), keeping the original tiles on the walls and the old wrought-iron banisters; it was a journey into the past, to a version of old Glasgow. Oor Wullie’s Bar had a gigantic mantelpiece as a gantry, complete with a pair of wally dugs on each end, and high up on the wall was a beautifully decorated toilet cistern – you pulled the chain to ring the bell and call, ‘TIME.’ People would wait by the bar, hoping to see us pull that chain. Across the ceiling there was a pully (washing line) hung with huge bloomers, vests, bras and socks. I loved working up there but never used the toilet to call time.

I often ended up in the tiny basement bar by myself; it was a kind of mellow and quiet space that I was definitely too young to appreciate; I wanted to be in the midst of all the action. My father was the only one who could answer my question, ‘What’s a pink gin?’ A couple had come to the bar and while she sat down he got the drinks. Well, I searched that bar for a bottle of pink gin and neither he nor she told me any different; they obviously hadn’t a clue what it was either. So she had to have something else. None of the other staff knew; we were all too young to know something as dead as pink gin.

TRAVELLING

I’ve been on the road for years, well the best part of five, and the idea of settling on solid earth is fascinating; my mind is running with streams of images and the possibilities are endless – there will be no patterns on my walls; I want to be surrounded, in that new place, with memories. I also dream of organisation and industry...from me. Hope lives here.

19th April 2005
On a Virgin train to Bristol

Grey clouds under white; the sky is thick with British summer-time. I’m travelling backwards; there’s more time to think about what’s before you, like tiny lambs that are just a crumb on the landscape, and screaming fields of rape blaring at you. Across the world a grandson is stomping around beneath a blue sky and I’m on my way to join him. This trip, I’ve learned to tell the difference between the songs of the robin and the blue-tit, and a larch tree from a birch (not silver – I’m not that bad). Also I was reminded how to make a white sauce; I haven’t done that since I was in school. I come away from this month in Devon a wiser woman.

May 18th 2005
Back to work in lovely Budleigh Salterton

It always surprises me when I arrive at a new place that even though the house might be sparkling and clean there are basic stuff that isn’t done; when I got here the out-going carer was listing and worrying about everything and anything, but the mugs were stained and the fridge full of white-label food! And the washing-up liquid was watered down again. I like her but she is bringing the client down to her level rather than keeping them at the level to which they are accustomed.

May 21st 2005

I'll do a writing exercise to jump-start the novel again; haven't touched it for many, many months - every time I decide to work on it I change the format or the focus or some bloody thing or other; I can't even get to the middle of it never mind the end! I'm not just a lazy writer; I'm a lazy everything; artist, potter, photographer. The job I do to earn a living consists of me keeping the elderly company in front of their telly! I try to be some kind of productive by crocheting or sewing patchwork - life is just too diverse. I can't finish anything, except blankets.

June 2nd 2005
Budapest for Bree’s hen-party.

The first meal I had was Chinese! Lovely, and only 900ft which included a glass of beer; that’s about £2.43, in a little fast-food buffet just along from St Stephen’s Basilica. So far, I’m not terribly impressed with the city. My hotel is pretty crumbly and tatty, in fact quite a lot of the place is like that - Budapest could do with refurbishing. Now I’m sitting at a pavement café and have just paid 700ft for a cup of tea! It was Earl Grey though. I’ve got to sort this money out. I think bloody Travelex have done me; I just don’t know where it’s all gone, and now I’m confused about the value of the forint.

1st December 2005

God knows what I’ve just eaten on this plane…and what the hell is Emmental cheese? At first glance I thought it said elemental. There were 14 E numbers in that sandwich, and it tasted like nothing, with a hint of ham. 7 euros for a sandwich and a cup of tea!

Jan 1st 2007
Three weeks in Glasgow

Again I wonder what the hell I am doing, wandering around the world, homeless, rootless, when I’m fast approaching sixty; and then I think, I’ve got years to sit doing nothing in some old-folks home. Though I’m sure I’d have them all doing arty-crafty stuff and turn the place into a growing concern, selling artwork, greeting cards and performing poetry. I’m beginning to fall apart; tomorrow, someone at the gastroenterology department is going to chuck a camera down my throat and check for inappropriate behaviour of my body against itself. I’ve been tidying out some of my life, trying to remember stuff and get it written down for my children, and I have got rid of a lot of junk - but I keep buying more.

April 29th 2008
From my cave

I might have stopped moving, for now, but I’m still travelling in my mind; I see the lovely new flat, the stretch of floorboards and empty walls – Loch Lomond, are you ready for me?

A BIT MORE OF THE PAST

1993 (from my journal, still on the train)

‘There’s the sea!’ Amazon stands up. We’re coming up to Berwick. I like the coastlines; see myself as The French Lieutenant’s Woman, standing on the edge of land, pointing my tragic but beautiful face out to sea, watching for my future, waiting for something to happen. I want a house where the air is on the move: not stagnant. Well-travelled air and a great expanse of sky. Sometimes I stand on the pier at Tynemouth, looking out to sea. I’ve never been further than one night in Amsterdam.

TocToc is 16, Musician 12, Amazon 11…and I’m still alive. I dreamed the other night that I was smoking; I haven’t smoked for nine years. The skin on my fingers is white/pink – nicotine stains long gone, nails white-edged. I dream a lot; sometimes they’re so strange I fear for my sanity – not the usual crazy feelings but real questions. I once dreamed that I halved Amazon in two; put the bottom half inside the wardrobe and sat the rest of her up in bed. A day or two later a loud knocking on the door made me so afraid of what I’d done, that there would be a social worker at the door who wanted to see Amazon…I thought I’d lose her. So, I went to put her back together but the bottom half had withered slightly. I managed to stick her together for the interview, which I don’t remember, and everything turned out alright! I don’t know why I halved her in two.

A gypsy told my fortune last week. I saw her coming but couldn’t make my body avoid her. She grabbed my hand and talked fast with a strong Irish or country accent into my face. I couldn’t break free and could feel passers-by watching us as we stood beneath the hot air vents in the shopping centre. She said everything would be alright, that someone long-dead watched over me and that a man loved me. She said I would move house but not far. I kept asking her how much it would cost and she kept talking. As she tucked a small bunch of lucky white heather into my fist she asked me for three pounds.

I couldn’t speak throughout the spiel; my chest was bursting into my throat. She took the money and I walked hard for the Haymarket exit, stumbled into Northumberland Street gasping for breath, trying to hold off the tears. Why am I crying? I said to myself over and over again.

I glance at the children, ‘Look at the cows, they’re lying down. That means it’s going to rain.’ TocToc is teaching them to play Chinese Patience. They’re not listening to me. I press my face to the window as the train curves; I can see its head and tail until my breath clouds the glass. Berwick is behind us now, only half an hour to Edinburgh. We spent a week in Berwick when Amazon was one – she had her first birthday in a sand pit; the beach was impossible; it reeked of rotting seaweed, fumes waving up the cliff to keep us away from the edge.

A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST

1993 (from my journal)

Sitting by myself, wearing white leggings and big T-shirt; bare feet up on the opposite seat, boots under the table, and a pile of library books. I’m watching a man with dark hairy arms. He has a pinky ring on his left hand, and a sturdy beard buried in The Scotsman. Long hairs seep out of the neck of his cotton shirt. I wonder about his hands, how the long fingers would feel on my neck, tangled in my hair. Men like women with long hair. The glint of gold on his collar bone brings me to my senses; I can’t bear a man in chains. A child is grizzling further up the carriage; please let them get off at Berwick.

Farmers are out hosing their fields. Still in the flat countryside of England, windbreaks of young trees laze in the beating sun, fields of rape-seed turn the landscape into a painting with pylons etched between long looping power lines like suspension bridges. Our table is littered with Yorkie bars, plastic glasses and orangeade. We were lucky; the train was empty – I’d forgotten to book seats and had been worried, but soothed with the idea of us all in separate carriages. TocToc, Musician and Amazon spread themselves out around the car but are now sitting together playing cards.

We have become civilized travellers. I used to be the mad woman on a train, screaming at my children under my breath, between my teeth and kicking their feet under the table. It was a case of, ‘Sit there, be quiet, give him that, leave her alone, don’t say things like that, look at the sheep, there’s the seaside, don’t, you’re the oldest, don’t talk to him then, play cards, shut up, leave me alone, give him some paper, see the mist rolling in, no you can’t, just because, shut up and sit down, Jesus Christ, you’re disgusting, blow your nose, I don’t know, another hour, watch my coffee, WILL YOU GIVE HER SOME PAPER!'

HEADY DAYS 1969

I saw a sign in the local shop for dry cleaning; it costs £5.30 per item. Seeing that notice took me back to 1969, when I thought I was a woman - a fifteen year old piece of skin and bone with no breasts. Out in the wonderful world; my first a job was in a Glasgow boutique. Walls painted black, clothes rails hooked on chains that dangled from the ceiling and music on a loop so that we all knew which song came next; My Cherie Amour crawled through our minds, Proud Mary boomed, and Back in the USSR banged. We boogied Bad Moon Rising and blasted Alright Now out of the open glass doors; we were the biggest attraction in the street.

I was the youngest on the staff, and last in, so it became my job to take the shop-soiled merchandise to be cleaned at the nearest launderette with a dry-cleaning machine. I’d get on the subway with my bag, and a little pile of money. It was a good skive and got me away from the manageress! Shetland wool crew-necks had black lines across the shoulders from dust and customers’ grubby fingers, sliding the hangers along and along. I got to read my Mills&Boon in peace for an hour and smoke loads of fags before smoothing and folding and stacking the laundry back into the bag; the fumes from the chemicals would turn my head. Later in the day I’d have to iron everything and return them to the rails. I often wonder if shops still do that; or do they just sell off the soiled and damaged stuff cheap. That was another thing; I had to make repair whenever I could, invisibly – burst seams, hems, replace buttons…I even had to dye something once, I think; perhaps it had faded from being in the window. I’m sure I had to sign the official  secret’s act.

After a couple of months, and with a few wage packets under my belt, I became a fashion statement. We would strut out at lunchtime, and sail through Central Station to the chip shop - sure that everyone was staring at us and turning green with envy at our daring style. We wore midi skirts, maxi skirts, tightly-fitted corduroy bell-bottoms and long-sleeved, narrow T-shirts with stars on; were made up with Miner’s Face Shapers and Rimmel Black Tulip lipstick (my father told me that if I ever collapsed in the street people would think I’d had a heart attack…my mother was mortified every time I left the house). We could only afford chips for lunch; most days I brought in bread for the toaster upstairs; I needed all my money for cigarettes – Players No10 were the cheapest, and if I paid child’s fare on the bus to and from work I could afford a pack of 20 a day. Sometimes I just stared out of the window and didn’t have to pay at all.

The Look was everything; I’d never been so stylish in my life. At one time we all had page-boy hairstyles, and we’d dot a few freckles across our noses with a brown eyebrow pencil. False eyelashes spiked from top and bottom, like long spiders’ legs; underneath we’d either draw or paint spiked lines – eyes were the thing. I have a vague memory of leaning on the handbag counter and looking up at boys who’d come in with their girlfriends. I thought I was stunningly beautiful, and, the sad look was in. When I was sixteen I assumed the world had been created just for us. It was a private club and we were the only members; no-one else could ever be as fabulous as us - except those who could afford to shop at Biba or Busstop.

The window dresser began to train me up, and the window became my stage; I would strike a pose, sitting on the floor at the feet of my mannequins…a doe-eyed dreamer, catching the attention of passing boys, sailors and unbeautiful teenagers. A new girl took over the dry-cleaning, though I still spent a lot of time at the ironing board, getting the packing-creases out of window stock. After many months I felt I was in control of my environment; choosing colour themes and styles gave me the confidence to argue with the manageress about sale items of the wrong hue going in my display. She didn’t have a creative bone in her whole body. I stormed out of my beautiful career and took a job in a café on West Nile Street. It was late 1970 and things were never quite the same again.

FASHION IN MY CHILDHOOD

When I was about ten, I made myself a skirt with a piece of red felt; I sewed it into a tube, hemmed the top and threaded elastic through for the waist then I hemmed the bottom with white cotton! Mum had taught me how to do a back stitch for seams, but hadn’t impressed upon me the importance of using the same colour cotton for invisible hemming. I didn’t notice the little white stitches dotted around the hem…and was out in the street, wearing my creation, in a flash. When my mother spied me posing in this MINI she dragged me inside and made me take it off…AT ONCE! I couldn’t see what the problem was…it was beautiful. She eventually raised the hems of my dresses a few inches, which didn’t make any difference at all; they still covered my knees…this would be about 1964 when it seemed that the whole world noticed what you were wearing.

She made all my clothes; another bone of contention in later years when fashion reared its ugly head. I hated almost all of the clothes I had to wear, but I do remember a pretty summer dress that had merry-go-rounds on it; that dress was made immortal in a patchwork quilt. Sundays were horrible; I was dressed nicely, and forced to wear a straw hat with flowers on the brim…the hat stayed on my head with the help of elastic string under my chin that itched and drove me crazy. I tried leaving that hat everywhere but there was always someone busy enough to find it for me. I even tried throwing it into the burn but the wind skited it along the bank and it landed safe on the grass. I spent half my time running away from those hats. I was sent off to Sunday school every week, wearing my hat. And, when every other child in the place was showing her knees below her dress, mine were ten inches up and under dresses that practically reached my ankles – this was definitely not fashionable!