Listen With Mother

Listen With Mother

For some reason I have very clear memories of my early childhood. Like the time I ran to put a penny in a collection box, one for polio research. It was in the shape of a boy with a twisted leg and an iron attachment to support it. Nobody would want to see a model of a deformed child in a high street these days, it would put people off their shopping.

Running back from the collection box I recognised the hem of my mother's red coat, reached up and grasped her finger. "I'm not your mummy, dear," said the surprised woman. I had to admit that my mum's face looked different, but she was correct in all other particulars, so I wasn't about to let go. Then my other mother arrived, this one had the right face too, and I went with her instead.

I had mighty struggles with the Barber Blacksheep song. I must have heard it on Listen With Mother. My first iteration was: Barber Blacksheep, have you any war? As a child I wasn't too particular about meaning but did like things to sound nice. I adapted the second line so it didn't offend my aesthetic sensibilities:

Barber Blacksheep, have you any war?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags four.

The song was a puzzle to me for years, specially when I started to look for meaning in words. In my mind it was linked to the striped barber poles you still used to see in the late fifties.

One Christmas I had a ride on Santa's sleigh in Selfridges. The setup was quite elaborate, with moving scenery to give the impression the sleigh was going somewhere. It certainly fooled me. I was excited to see where we would end up and was very disappointed to find we were back in the boring old shop.

Another time I had a go on a children's seaside ride where I sat in a car that went around a track. I had a steering wheel in front of me and was surprised at being given so much responsibility. I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to steer well enough to stay on the track. I concentrated hard at the first corner and kept the car perfectly on course. I was very pleased with myself. By the time I'd gone round a few more corners I'd cottoned on to the fact that the car would follow the track no matter what I did with the steering wheel. It made me sad that I hadn't been trusted to keep the car safe after all. I lost interest in the ride after that and didn't want to go again.

Once I became separated from my mother in the street somewhere close to my home. Seeing me standing alone, a woman came up and asked where I lived. "Eastcote," I told her. I didn't know why the woman was interrogating me but I was pretty sure I'd given the right answer. "It's all Eastcote," she said, waving her arms around. She seemed annoyed.

Uxbridge was a mythical place for me because my grandad told me that was where all the railway lines crossed. I wanted a train of my own and imagined myself driving it to Uxbridge, then choosing lines that would take me wherever I wanted to go. In the meantime I made my own Uxbridge with wool in place of railway lines.

I invented a flying train that only came out at night. I drew a picture of it and showed it to my mum. When I explained the picture she said it must be an aeroplane because there was no such thing as flying trains. I didn't believe she knew every single thing there was in the world since the world was even bigger than London, so I insisted that flying trains were real. I hoped one would land in my sandpit but it never did.

Once my gran was looking after me and I ran off towards the main road. Grandma almost had a heart attack seeing me run towards the traffic. I returned a few moments later and reported, "a big lorry looked at me." At the time I was very keen on cement lorries, which I called cemix menters.

Sometimes I used to go and stay with my gran in Christchurch. After shopping we would go and play crazy golf. One of the courses had a semi-circular bridge that was just for decoration but we would turn it round so players had to hit their balls over it, which was impossible because the sides were so steep. We'd stand outside the course and watch people getting crosser and crosser. Eventually my gran would take pity on them and tell them how to put the bridge back. They didn't always believe her.

The other thing I loved to do was to catch fish with a net. There was a stream that ran close to the priory. The fish were all very small, so once I tried fishing in the river. I trod on a flatfish hiding in the mud and fell over. I saw where it stopped and got it in my net. It was too big for my jamjar, only its head would go in, so I had to leave it behind. I wanted that fish and took a bigger jar next time, but I never saw it again.

On my first day at Lady Bankes Infant School I was given a wooden farmyard jigsaw to assemble. "What's that called?" asked the teacher, pointing at one of the animals.

"A piggy," I informed her. She should have known that herself.

"Don't be so silly," she retorted. "Only babies call it a piggy. It's a pig."

I had it on good authority that the animal in question was a piggy. Who should I believe? When she asked me about the moo-cow I said I didn't know.

Cheese pie. That was one of the lunchtime offerings at Lady Bankes. I detested it. Dinner ladies tried to make me eat it and I'd hide it anywhere I could. Sometimes I went home with cheese pie in my pockets. I complained about it at home. My dad said, "do you like cheese? Do you like pie? Then you must like cheese pie." I asked if he liked sausages and custard. He said that was different. A surprising number of things are different when you're a child.