Funny how life comes along and knocks the wind out
of your sails as well... Another TV show took that little story away from
me when Bill Oddie was asked "Who Do You Think You Are" and he talked
about moving from Rochdale to Birmingham in the 60s and his mum being in an
asylum for most of his childhood... So who was the mystery woman who looked
after Baby Sarah??!
After the Town Flats, we moved to Smallbridge and I
became a Big Sister. That's a really important role, and I was given
extra responsibilities as I got older. Like going to the shop for my dad.
I can't have been more than 5 or 6 but I remember being allowed to walk
from Louise Gardens up to Low Hill, buying the paper, being told I couldn't
spend any of the change, buying a ha'penny icepop and then realising outside
our house that dad would know when he counted the change that I'd gone
completely against his instructions.... Oh No!! Now I was going to be in
trouble... So I knelt on the footpath and tore out the tiny bit of newspaper
that bore the price of the paper (right outside our kitchen window,
maybe not quite so clever after all!)
I don't remember getting into trouble that day, so
either Dad didn't notice the hole in his paper, or he laughed to himself at the
lengths his little girl had gone to, to try and cover her tracks for spending a
whole half of a penny!! I wasn't always quite so smart though, and I
remember getting a few more spankings thanks to my sticky fingers over the years
- never much money, and I've no idea now why I did it, but I did grow out of it
and I promise your pennies are more than safe while Adult Sarah is around -
although I may well be guilty of encouraging people to part with their money in
the quest for some fun in their lives and I'll never apologise
for that. Everyone should spend a bit of money on themselves now and
again - we deserve to be treated occasionally, and if we won't do it for
ourselves, who will?
Living in Smallbridge was brilliant! There
were children on my street and around the corner who I could play with (although
I did have many a nightmare about getting lost on that estate, because all the
houses look the same and most of the streets have exactly the same layout - at
least to 4-7 year old eyes!), parks where we could play on the swings,
ponds where we could find frogspawn to bring home to a bucket in the back
garden (and then freak out, scream and run away when they grew up to be
frogs!), the Round Library that had tiny little chairs for tiny little kids
to sit and look at the kids' books while Mum was choosing her latest reads in
the boring grown up section, and story time with the Librarian during the
holidays. She was nearly as good at reading stories as Mum and Dad were,
and there were other children just as enthralled as I. That shared
experience is important I think - a good story is a good story, but when you
can share it with other people who experienced it, it immediately gains the
potential to become a great story!
Living Next Door to Alice by Smokie has just come on, so here's the first diversion... It's
only a little one though, I promise! Our next door neighbour then was
called April, not Alice, although I do think the lady in the bungalow
opposite might have been called Alice... I remember that Mum used to go
and check on her occasionally and make sure she was ok, and whenever I've heard
reports about old people being mugged in their own homes it's still to
this day Alice's bungalow that I imagine...
But we did have a beautiful grey cat called Smokey!
I loved her, and when she was pregnant she pulled up the carpet in the
corner of my bedroom to give birth to her kittens <3 She left home not
long after that to live with a couple near the shop on Low Hill, but we kept a
black kitten who later became known as Gnasher because she used to chase and
then bite Mum and Dad's toes through the blankets when we were all relaxing in
their bed on a Sunday morning listening to music while Dad read the papers (twinge
of old guilt again about that ice pop!)
I do also remember coming back from the shop with
my dad though; he didn't always send me by myself! I can clearly remember
how pretty Smallbridge was in those days, and I had a great view from my seat
on Dad's shoulders as he bounced me up and down whilst whistling the theme tune
from Laurel and Hardy! That tune always takes me to the sloping path
between the trees, with a view of the flats to my left, our house on the other
side of the bushes and down at the bottom of the path. The garages at the
side of our house and the old factory at the back of the houses at the bottom
of the steps - we weren't allowed to play near the factory, but that didn't
always stop us!
I remember the excitement of the Fire Brigade
turning up outside the library one day. Somehow, a Reliant Robin had lost
control and crashed into the stone embankment next to the subway. I never
did get my young mind wrapped around how exactly a 3 wheeled car had managed to
crash and burst into flames - surely it had contained a little old man in
glasses the thickness of Jam Jar Bottoms and he should only have been driving
at about 15 miles per hour?? I seem to remember my dad telling me the man had
escaped the inferno, was fine and only the car had been damaged, but I have no
idea whether that was the truth, or sanitised for my own protection - either
way, I liked the story, and even 10 or more years later I could still make out
the scorch marks on the stones there!
I went to Alice Ingham Primary School (oh,
here's Alice again!) and was able to walk
to school with two boys from my class. I was always a really good little
girl, but they showed me how to be a bit of a naughty girl... I knew I wasn't
allowed near the stream on the other side of Wardle Road, but I still went
there with them, and almost scared myself to death when I fell off the rope
swing and tumbled into the water - not particularly because I was hurt, but
because I was wet so my Mum would immediately know I'd disobeyed her... No!!!
I didn't want to disappoint Mum, and it was all my friends' fault, not
mine! Hmmm... funny how young minds work eh? Anyway, on one of our
independent walks to school, the boys had picked up a HUGE padlock from a
little workshop that used to be behind the big house opposite the library.
I remember the house being built, and then it being turned into a nursing
home of some sort, but I can't remember the name of it... Anyway, that padlock
ended up in my school bag. I hadn't had anything to do with the actual
theft of it, but I was harbouring stolen goods...
Everything was going really well in my little life
of crime (I was probably about 6 at this point!) until I put
my bag down on the kitchen floor while Mum was making my butties, and she heard
the clang. CLANG!!! Indeed! I had to tell her the whole story, and
she marched me down to the workshop to hand the stolen property back, and I had
to apologise to the owner. I was mortified. Horrified. Humiliated.
And I never intentionally stole anything from any shops again, workshops
or otherwise (those tights in 1985 accidentally walked out of Top Shop
with me, I totally forgot I'd picked them up and only noticed I was still
clutching them between my other shopping bags when I got to the Sheep at the
entrance of the shopping centre! Sorry Top Shop!!)
Mums can be very clever creatures you know.
Mine taught me at an early age that actions have consequences, and facing
them is part of acting in the first place. I may not have fully
understood that lesson at the time, and it may well have hurt me, but it was
well worth learning and I'm glad it happened when I was 6. The outcome
could have been very different if the lesson had been left until later in life!
My Mum was very clever indeed. She taught me
how to read, the value of escaping into stories, and how my imagination was my
greatest gift - she made clothes for us, cut our hair, cooked our tea, baked
cakes (and once she even baked a plastic pan from my toy kitchen set
that I'd put in the real oven and forgotten about - oops!) and made
sure that we knew how to behave in public. She taught me that some words
aren't for children to use - a good example of this was the day we sat down to
tea and I tried to show off my new language skills - I was always really proud
when I learnt a new word or technical term and wanted to show it off at the
earliest opportunity so that I could receive a bit of the praise I always
craved for being such a clever girl... Just as Mum and Dad were tucking
into their roast dinner, their darling little 5 year old piping up with "Ooh!
Look at that bird shit on the window!" was enough to cause a bit
of choking and spluttering, followed by an explanation as to why little girls
should call it "bird poo" and not use that S word!
I wish I could rewind to that moment now and see their real reaction!
Frustrating times, but mostly a LOT of fun!
We played out a lot, and even in my dreams we all played together in the
square outside our house because I'd dream that a gigantic dog came to play
with us. In my previous blog about Dreams I thought he was an Old
English Sheepdog, but now I seem to think he might have actually been a Saint
Bernard, because I think he had an actual beer barrel on his collar (as
opposed to a miniature barrel of brandy) which makes the scale of him
much easier to imagine... We had a lot of imaginary fun riding around the
square on our local pet dog!
