Love and the time bomb

In April 1974, we fell in love and that was that; well
not quite: Whilst your Dad was pontificating down the
Employment Exchange, wearing his psychological chains
of office, as an Executive Officer with the Civil
service, and your Mum was cooking dinner for that
shower of priests, we were frantically sealing our love
for ever.

I'd gone in to school to get my mark, then skiddadled
over to you in my revision time. Fortunately for us,
you had recently been expelled from school, so we had
time galore on our hands; can't think now how the hell
I managed to get any O'Levels; you already had yours
(being a year older) but had lost your spot in the
sixth form for going into school hung over. You were
such a delight to me and I to you; it was pure heaven
to be suddenly loved and I would have done everything
and anything for you, except go to a Rod Stewart
concert. Suddenly and somehow we were alone in their
house and then in your bedroom and then in your bed
with no clothes on. It was so easy and so simple and
that was that. All so quick. If my mother had known,
but she didn't, except I guess now that she probably
did, because my mother is all seeing and all knowing
and I admire her for that. Back then I was dumb enough
to think she could have the wool pulled over her eyes.
She said you were a useless long haired pratt, and I
treated this outrageous insult with the contempt it
apparently deserved. I ignored her.

And all our love was consumated to the sound of Rod
Stewart; well there had to be some concession to my
obsession with you. If loving you is wrong, I don't
want to be right. It was so romantic and there was
never any question from that moment forth that we were
as one. We'll be getting married I exclaimed at which
you looked stunned, at which I cried, at which you said
of course we will. We never had any other turmoil; just
that one scary moment where I thought you might have
just been playing out the usual male teenage getting
your end away bollocks. Not that I could have thought
of it so bluntly in those days. You and I had only
kissed each ther. Until it all blew up years later.
with a bang.

Everyone was having sex. Everyone. Well not everyone,
but anyone who was someone of any stature was in a real
relationship; no-one wanted to just be a one night
stand. I didn't that's for sure. I had you and that was
how it was going to stay. And you wanted to keep me
too. Did I care that your weird sister thought I wasn't
good enough for you ? Did I care that your other sister
who'd never even been kissed despised you and took
every chance to catch us together ? Like hell I did.
Young love, first love. Well I wouldn't go quite so far
as to start quoting Donny Osmond. But you get the idea.
We were invincible and nothing was going to blow us
apart.

It's not easy to tell this in a straight line
because looking back is never like that, is it ? The
point is we were having the time of our lives, though
my parents were suffocating me and pretending you were
marginal, I knew this was the real thing. I left home
and threw away my delusions and we began to
plan for the wedding.

In those days, which sounds like my Granny talking,
bless her she's been dead for twenty years now, but in
those days it absolutely was not the done thing to just
go and live with someone. I have to say I began to
think this might be a damn smart thing to do. You went
a whiter shade of pale at this suggestion and it was
you who now began to pursue the marriage quest. We
bought a ring, though of course it didn't compare with
Gordon the moron's single diamond for his whirlwind
romancing of your sister; I chose a Victorian sapphire
from Robert's Jewellers on New Street and it cost the
whole of your month's salary, which made it even more
romantic. I think it made you feel a bit sick, but you
understood that such sacrifices had to be made, and
that your commitment had to be wrapped decorously
around my finger. It was gorgeous and timeless just
like our love.

Funny how time slips by and chokes the last bit of
romance from our hearts.

Debbie wasn't a bit friendly when I first met her, so I
should have followed my instinct really and kept my
distance. Then the last twenty years would have been
different, surely ? But I chose, in my stupidity, to
make friends with her. She's not to be blamed exactly,
but she does have to be given her rightful place in my
history. She's only four months older than me, not that
tall, with long hair; she looks like Alice in Wonderland.
She's mentioned first but she won't be revealed until later, because
the others came first.

Chris was gorgeous and a little aloof when I met him;
aloof when I married him; aloof when I left him; even
more aloof after he met Debbie. Strange how things
panned out. I never would have guessed it. Tall and
gorgeous, at sixteen, I loved every inch of him, his
blue velvet jacket and his lovely long hair, which he
was constantly brushing or washing. I even loved his
spots, which he was constantly examining or squeezing.

I didn't meet Martin until after it had all gone pear
shaped. But I had heard all about him from Debbie's
lips. He suffered most.

Martin was a one time guitar player in a rock band in Manchester, in
his youth. Only trouble is, it was a Christian rock band. Whilst this
was enough to
enamour the teenage Debbie, it didn't cut the mustard
once it was part time and unpaid; it wasn't good enough
for Miss Fussy Pussy; once her husband was working as a
fulltime postman instead of playing the sexy rock star,
he lost his appeal; tramping the streets of England on
bitter winter mornings, to put a crust in his family's
mouth, just didn't have the same kudos at all, in
Debbie's born again Christian eyes.

Rebecca is Martin and Debbie's beautiful blonde haired
daughter. Well that's how I remember her. Though twenty
years on, I don't know how she looks these days. She
was a quiet five year old with long blonde hair and
t-bar shoes when I knew her. I guess this English rose
must have suffered too. I haven't seen her for almost
twenty years, but I can still imagine her if I try.

Jacob is the second child of Debbie and Martin,
depending on who's telling the story; you could call
him one of those shifting truths. I guess he'd suffer
too, if he knew the truth. Jacob is as dark as Rebecca
is fair. Chalk and cheese. Like Debbie and Martin.

Don't forget me.

I got to be in this unenviable position, of having too
much information, very early on, and one by one they
have taken the blame and placed it at my feet. Wrongly.

Christopher, my child. The first child I had with
Chris. We were just nineteen when he was born. So grown
up or so we thought. Named after Chris the husband and
Chris the grandfather; though not without a struggle, a
tussle. I just could not see the logic of so many
people being called Chris. Five and a half pounds of
little limbs and hair lying in an incubator, being
helped to breathe.

John, named after my father. My second child, also a
boy: Weighing in at 6 pounds 13 ounces after a long
hot labour on an early June day; Tuesday's child is
full of grace; sleepy babe and full of smiles, still.

Patrick.

Memory changes perspective but he really has been there all along,
through the thick and the thin. He knows all of the people so far. He's
married now, but back then he was a Robert Redford lookalike, and he
made an exceptionally good looking priest. Not that I noticed. I was
too obsessed with Chris. But of course that was before it all went
wrong. That was way back.

Anne

Anne was away, living and working in Ireland when I met Chris. She had
never had a boyfriend. Tall with soft blonde curls and a lovely face
she spent her nights knitting until she met Gordon the moron and
married him, after six months, in a wedding cake dress. Anne, the legal
secretary with top marks all the way through school, and Chris, her
spoilt brat of a younger brother, were sworn enemies. Get yourself a
decent boyfriend she yelled at me, one who'll treat you properly.

His other sister Pat, was four years older. She was a toxic bitch. She
used to make me try on her dresses and then say I was too skinny, too
fat, too tall and too uptight. I didn't deserve, she said, her brother.
She was training to be an anaesthetist. She spent every night sitting
with her head turned into the wall drinking cans of lager and watching
late night films. Modelled herself suddenly on Martina Navratilova. The
only male she loved was her brother. She loved the Robert Redford
lookalike priest too. She said my breasts were too big for my
age.

It was the seventies and Pete and Chris were a pair of
cool cats, in Oxford bags. Or so they thought. Well
they were, and that's a fact. They thought it, I
thought it, Marian thought it. Marian and Pete have
made it through, though they met at just 14; 30 years
later they're still mad about each other and have the
home, the kids, the car, the holidays and love. Yes.
They have the love, though I dare say they have never
really had much money. They have each other.

Pete's Dad died young, emptying the bin ( I think) and
his mom was definitely before her time. They had three
daughters and Pete, third born, was named after his
Dad. They were all clever with tantalisingly dark long
hair, Pete included. All the girls went to the same
Grammar school as me; Chris and Pete went to the same
one as Dave and John.

Pete's family were the only people I've ever met to own
a pony whilst living on a Birmingham Council estate.
Pete's sister loved animals and they kept
their pony tethered up in their coal shed outside.
They lived near Pype Hayes park and took it for a
canter every morning, mucking it out with hay and
stuff. I don't know how they did it. That's the kind of
Mum they had. She let them live; they could have
parties and sleep together (when thirty years ago that
was a big deal) and tell the truth. They didn't have to
pretend. They stuck together through thick and think.

We had some mad parties at that house.
No-one thought anything of Pete's mum being there:
Christmas lights, sausage rolls and lots of slinky
music, boys getting drunk, girls dancing, and lots of
people asleep on the floor next morning, whilst bacon
wafted through the house and the pony trotted around
the municipal park.

Lesley was never, in truth, my cup of tea. But she did
go to my school so there was an unspoken allegiance,
and because we were all young and basically friendly,
we all got on with it; but mostly we only tolerated her
because she was John's ( snobby) girlfriend, when they
weren't splitting up, which they were, constantly. She
was no beauty but she had money, style and
intelligence. And an unrivalled superiority complex. In
other words, she thought she was better than the rest
of us. Little Miss Snot.

John was divine. He was one of ten children. His older
sisters and brothers were either at university or
training to be teachers. He had film star looks and an
intoxcating wit and sense of humour; John was tall,
dark and handsome; and silent, when Lesley was around.
Not that I noticed.

Dave was funny and intelligent. He's rich now. I hadn't heard
from him for twenty five years when he wrote to me, out
of the blue, last Christmas. Hasn't changed though he's
not a blade of hair on his head these days, or so he
says. I took a look at his company web site, media of
course, and they all look exceptionally happy. That's
the intoxicating mix of money, love and success. I
imagine it feels good.

Those four young men. Dave, Chris, Pete and John had a
couple of things in common: They hated their all boys'
Catholic school and they all worked together for a time
in the NCP car park. Just before the scandal broke.

You can't really think of Pete without thinking about
Marian. Marian was the fly in Lesley's ointment. She
was honest and unpretentious and like the boys she
worked in the car park. They had some fun. I didn't
mind, but Lesley did. She just couldn't bear it; she
was consumed with an unconcealed passionate jealousy;
she just couldn't bear to be away from John for a
moment. John was taking his A' levels and so was
Lesley, and it was during one of their many breakups
that I met Lesley on the bus, one Monday afternoon, all
dolled up, with musk, hairspray and blue eyeliner. She
was unusually friendly that day, not that she was ever
rude to me; she saved her major insults for Marian;
well for behind Marian's unsuspecting back really,
where she constantly complained about Marian's
discussion of her period pains with John; this was
tantamount to a sexual infidelity on John's behalf, in
Lesley's warped view; Marion did, it's true, suffer
terribly, and John and she were the best of buddies, to
Lesley's chagrin. Pardon the pun, Lesley. Poor old
Lesley was cooking on oil over that intimacy. Little
did she know that John used to rub Marian's back with
his taut hands. As if. Well maybe, but I'm not telling.

They were all swines to the little old Irish guy who
worked at the carpark; they thought it very funny to
get him to make tea with those new fangled things, tea
bags. All four of them would struggle into the wooden
hut to watch Macguire snip the corners off each tea
bag, then watch him pour the teabags into the pot, and
fill it up with hot water. They're great, he'd say;
saves you the bother of a spoon. They wept tears of
laughter at his innocence. Especially John.

Marian's Mum died when she was young, I think about 11.
A neighbour moved in on her Dad, whilst Marian's mother
was dying, nasty stuff really, and soon moved herself
in, lock stock and barrel. She was the worst stepmother
a girl could have, both cruel and wicked. She wouldn't
even let Marian drink water from the taps at home. Who
will believe this ? But it's all true. Marian had to
leave home at 16 to stop the beatings and the cruelty.
Her father didn't see it or believe it when he was told
about it, so she had to leave. Marian went to live in a
small bedsit in a big old Victorian damp house and Pete
painted it car park yellow.

Dave, Chris and Pete modelled themselves big time on
Rod Stewart. They all had long layered hair, with spiky
bits on top. Pete had the longest locks of all, flying
crazily away into the wind. Chris washed his hair at
least twice a day, thus destroying his sebaceous
glands, no doubt. Hair was the major issue in those
days, incidental as it might seem now. Dave's hair was
the same colour as Chris's and cut in the same
inimitable Stewart style. Sometimes, people mistook
them for brothers, though one was short and one was
tall (You couldn't help but doubt their respective
Catholic mothers' fidelity, until you met the mothers).
Hair was everything back then. But John was ever chic,
with short back and sides; his hair was timeless and
stayed cool. Until it all dropped out. I hear he's
completely bald now. The lovely John, finally, smooth
all over.

But I digress. This is not a story about hair. This is
a story about life in all its glorious technicolour. A
kaleidoscope.

When we were young I didn't know Debbie. I only met her
later, after the breakup with Chris. She didn't so much
cause it, as make it worse. A hundred times worse.

Back then, in 1974, those 4 teenage sex machines were
busy using their hectic intellects to run a right little racket at the
NCP Carpark:

All tickets were issued on entry and
collected on exit, by the four boy wonders, using blank
(un-numbered) tickets; the boys quickly worked out that
by keeping a bag of change hidden in the tiny little
wooden hut that masqueraded as their office, they could
just pocket the money, literally, never need to open
the till, and make a bomb out of their bright idea.

This was before the days of computerised tickets and
CCTV. Now of course they would be caught on camera,
stuffing countless tickets down their long blue and
white, Birmingham City (John up the Villa claret and
blue ) football socks. Now, they would have been banged
up in a youth detention centre for their treachery.

Instead, back then, in the halcyon days of our youth,
they were simply awash with money and erotic
attraction. Until one day, on one of their carefully
constructed rotas, they were caught at work, within
school time, by one of their deadliest teachers, who
put an end to their money tree; he wiped the smile
off their smug little faces; that stopped the meals,
the clothes, the taxis and the mad nights out; the
clubs, the Rod Stewart concerts and the love bites.
They were so glad, some months later, when the Car Park
manager was suddenly featured on the BBC teatime
national news, for running off to Spain with ?3,000
pounds. They were even gladder when he got blamed for
their embezzling. It was all over the tabloids.

John and Leslie were suddenly getting married. They
were only 18. Lesley was somehow having a baby. Just as
John was about to go to Leeds to study history, Leslie
ruined his life. John disappeared swiftly into thin
air. He insisted she'd been taking the pill; apparently
he had given them to her himself at seven o'clock each
evening (vigilant ?) to hide them from her parents'
prying eyes; but she swore now that she'd had a tummy
bug.

John's Mum and Dad were away on holiday in a caravan
and he quickly followed them on a moped to Scarborough.
Rumour was rife and Lesley was said to be threatening
suicide. Their wedding was definitely one of the most
miserable I have ever witnessed. She had handsewn the
dress; well she would. She even made her own bouquet, with flowers from
her parents' garden; and her veil was her
sister's. Lesley's father looked devestated outside the church. John
hadn't even got a suit; he was wearing a jacket belonging to his older
brother, one of the teachers. John's face was whiter than white. There
was no smiling, no singing, no
bells ringing and no reception. Only the family were
invited back to the house for the finger buffet.

By the time their daughter was born, seven months
later, the happy couple had settled into a lovely
council flat in a tower block, and John was tramping
the streets as a milkman. Lesley was (just a spoilt
brat) busy throwing chocolate Readybrek up the walls
and demanding an automatic washing machine, a car and a
tumble dryer from her mother, who of course succumbed.
Lesley's father died from a heart attack, two weeks
after the shotgun wedding; he was only 58.

John had a crazy brother called Paul, a wild card who
no one would have dragged up the aisle. I heard a
rumour that he had sex at the back of the church with a
girl he hardly knew, one Sunday evening during mass, in
the very same church, his brother hd married in. At the
time I dismissed this as fiction.

When Chris was working or robbing the NCP Car park, I
was whiling away my summer holidays in Mansfield shoe
shop, with a load of girls from St Paul's. The manager
was a shit called Mr Gent. He spent his days
instructing us all to hold our hands behind our backs,
to push our chests forward and to force every single
customer to purchase polish. What a tosspot. But back
then I didn't even know that word. I only knew he was a
creep. I worked on every floor in that damn shop. They
had this weird system of putting money into a tube with
the receipt and sending it down to the ground floor,
where it would be taken out of the internal money lift,
then the penny change would be whizzed back up, moments
later, along with the customer's receipt. Women always
waited for their receipt and change; but men didn't
give a damn about either the penny or the receipt. This
is because they never brought shoes back to complain.
Now I understand that complaining about such things is
the work of women. So soon we had our own secret bag of
pennies, and were copying our good old role models
down at the NCP carpark; making good the injustice
between what we were paid and what we truly deserved.
We were big time happy then with the money we earned.
We didn't think this was robbing; rather we saw this as
putting that bully in his place. Not for paying us shit
money, but for asking us to push our chests (rhyming
cockney) out to sell his shitty shoes. He got
commission, we didn't. Until we awarded it to
ourselves.

So the shoe shop, the car park, the schools, the hair,
the velvet jackets and the Windsor pub were the main
ingredients in our lives. Funny, I almost forgot the
Windsor.

Chris was not flavour of the month with my parents;
mainly my mother who can smell shit when it's put in
front of her. But since I wasn't flavour of the month
with her myself, her view back then, quite rightly,
held no sway with me, whatsoever. His long hair and
velvet jacket were red rags to my bullish mother. My
father, though he would deny this detail now, would
stand, on my mother's instructions, outside our house
and peruse his watch casually, as Chris walked up the
path; then he would say Good evening Chris. Always, the
same rigmarole: May we (in full swing now )
synchronise watches ? Oh the glory of parental power -
how some get carried away by it. Too good to be
forgotten.

I don't know, truly, what the rest of our
friends were doing, because for a few years, John and
Lesley and me and Chris were suddenly busy being young
parents. We followed on right behind them, although I
was not pregnant before we married; that took a few
months. This was not a problem to us , on the surface. That they are
somehow, now, years later
(fuck knows how) still together, whilst Chris and I are
sadly not, does not fool me. Truth is stranger than
fiction. Believe me.

In 1974 on a Thursday in November, I was babysitting
for one of my teachers at their arty house in Water
Orton; not a real village, but just outside of my
Council estate, anything was convincing. They had paid
more than seventy pounds, over twenty years ago, for a
lamp shade so I was secretly sure they were insane.
Anne and her moronic husband Gordon, oh how paths
intertwine, were living in marital bliss in the same
village, strangely. I was only sixteen and a half when
we heard the news on that crisp and dark November
night, which I remember as clear as a bell; Mike and
Celia were in the pub and although it doesn't matter
now to people, back then it was a horror story. Chris
was with me; we had been devouring each other, as
usual, as teenagers do, when they're young and in love,
when we heard about, The Bomb.

That bomb changed things, killed people and blew our
minds. But years later, our lives were blowing up too,
in a different way of course, but we weren't ready for
it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
After I broke up with Chris, I met up with Debbie and
she slowly let me into her very pear shaped circle of
trust. Martin (no 2), one of Debbie's 3 boyfriends, was
in pole position (a motor racing term denoting
supremacy), yet he was not allowed to visit her except
under cover of darkness; (this is where this story
starts to get more complicated now ) because Martin was
black, and to distinguish him from her now
unappreciated husband, she referred to him as Black
Martin.

All the neighbours ever saw, according to urban myth,
was Black Martin's marble eyes, through her bedroom
window, popping into view as he moved slowly and
tenderly, up and down, up and down. He was still only a
child, not yet 18 and only half way through his
A'Levels. But his physical height impressed Debbie and
so she bit the bullet, deluding herself that he was in
fact, almost a man. He'll do, was her catchphrase, for
now. Black Martin's mother had a hairdressing shop on
the Bristol Road South, and once or twice Debbie got to
drop him off outside there; that was as close as she
ever got to being part of his family circle.

This grieved her and so, in contrast, she included
Black Martin on her visits up north to Manchester to
see her mother. Black Martin did however, have to sleep
a la sofa, in order to persuade Debbie's mother that he
was in fact just a hired hand, some kind of an exotic
swarthy young male au pair.

Debbie's parents were divorced; her father, a butcher
spoiled his daughter in a number of ways: By driving to
France and buying her a new Citreon, where they were
cheaper; and so she happily roamed planet man in her
spanking new taxed and insured love mobile; he spoiled
her by filling her freezer with pork chops, beef
joints, legs of lamb and sausages galore; and finally
he indulged her by taking her on exotic holidays.
During one of her periods of depression, which mirrored
her own mother's angst filled spells, father and
daughter whizzed off to Madeira to enjoy sun sand and
sangria; you'd like my Dad, she used to say; he's an
attractive older man with a string of shops, a big car
and lots of money. Debbie really wished he wasn't her
Dad. I could see that, because he fitted her own
template of the perfect male, big time.

Her mother, she said ( and I had no reason to doubt her
then, whilst I have a whole host of them now) was an
alcoholic who lay in bed during daylight hours and had
a string of men. She was obviously a woman of action
because she habitually hired taxis to take letters
across Manchester to her lovers. More money than sense;
wonder if she uses e-mail these days. So Debbie's
mother had a string of lovers and her father had a
string of sausages. I digress.

Debbie's mother inherited a small fortune,
once her father, a Manchester clockmaker died and left
her this unexpected legacy. Like her mother, Debbie
loves to drink, and with so much money knocking around,
I take a guess that they must have cracking livers in
that family.

Debbie liked everything about Nick, number two
concubine, except for his wimpy body, his lack of guts,
his boring voice, his tales about his crazy ex-wife who
never worse knickers and sat cross-legged on their
sofa, his ineffectual steady lifestyle as a computer
operator at the University, his lack of a car, his lack
of height; most of all, his lack of spunk. On one of
her less pragmatic days, she invited him to move in
with her. He had just sold his marital home and had
pockets full of dosh; she let him see out the week. By
then he had moved all his best furniture, plants and
kitchen appliances in to her domicile; she refused to
let him take them when she suddenly turned against him
on the eighth night. And so for a couple of years, he
lingered in her life, sitting around her kitchen on the
odd nights Black Martin was allowed to sleep at home
and study for his science A'levels; she sometimes slept
with Nick, to keep him in order, she said. Nick was a
soft pratt but he was kind. He didn't ask for Adam
back, his fig tree that had spread its luscious ivy
green leaves along her window ledge; he didn't ask her
for the four poster bed or the chesterfield settee; he
let her sip from his cafetiere for some years to come;
in return for an occasional grope and lunge in the
dark, he paid the house insurance and took her out for
expensive meals to the Great American Food Factory in
the middle of Birmingham City Centre. And on Sundays,
she met him for baltis. What a girl.

Then there was the Jewish man who she left Martin
for, briefly; he'd set her up in a flat and then
after three months, she decded he was too old, though
loaded; so she went home and kicked out Martin and his
elderly mother (who had moved up from Portsmouth to
help her postman son keep things ticking over). In a
moment they were out, living in bedsits, police called;
she had no compunction about these swift scene changes;
she had begun to worry me. Then there was Rupert the
photographer who snapped the kids for catalogues and
let her keep the clothes in return for the odd shag,
and a bit of vegetarian dahl. Now she liked him and
could see the point in waiting around, briefly to see
how things might pan out with him. The whole cabozle
was blown apart when she met Chris in my house one
Friday morning.

Pete and Marian and me and Chris (even though we were
apart, it was far from resolved ) were going to see
UB40 at th NEC in Birmingham. Debbie was heaving with
jealousy because she hadn't been invited. I could have
got her a ticket but by now, the truth was only too
plain to see. I really was getting edgy about the way
she operated, though I found it hard to judge her when
I was friends with her; I didn't see that as my divine
right. But it was my friend Bernadette who said, watch
her, she's no Alice in Wonderland. Somehow though, she
got herself invited along.

God life had become bloody complicted. From being the
proverbial happy couple we had moved into this separate
life of access and distressing phone calls. And now
Debbie had begun to cast a very long shadow. I had to
distant myself from her.

I didn't know any of the people Debbie knew when she
was married, so I never got any information from anyone
about her, except from her own sweet mouth. But I had
begun to notice that she had no friends at all. To be
fair though, she had just broken away from a born again
God crunching bunch, so that seemed reasonable. Martin
used to collect the children every other weekend and
she made the best of these sabbaticals.

About this time, I wrote to Lesley and John. I
was beginning to pine big time for the way life had
been; Once we had broken up, We never asked or wanted
anyone to choose between us, we just wanted to
stay friends with everyone. I received a spidery letter
back from Lesley telling me that she didn't feel able
to see me, not at the moment. Life was just so hectic;
what with this school club and that playgroup and then
there was her part time job at the dairy and John was
tied up looking after the two children on Saturdays
whilst she was at work. Best not visit then. I'll bet.

She had the tightest most pinched and perfect fairy
handwriting I have ever seen in my life. John had
graduated on demand (the previous year, before me and
Chris had broken up) from milkman to computer operator
at the Co-op dairy. Good for John. God job Debbie
didn't meet up with him; he was definitely full of
spunk. John took things into his own capable hands one
day when he sat down to write that letter demanding to
be allowed to work in the dairy office. John told them
he had bunions and so could sadly no longer tramp the
streets of Nechells delivering full cream milk,
potatoes and orange juice; it was one of those diverse
kinds of dairies that delivered half a hundred weight
of coal as a byline. He threw in the fact that he had
three A'Levels and that probably secured him his place
working alongside Liz. Liz was married to Dave.
Lesley turned her friendship wheel towards this
couple once she began to spend heady days in the Co-op
offices, on a part time basis on a Saturday, whilst
John played the good Daddy role at home. Now, instead
of spending Saturday evenings with me and Chris they
had begun to spend them with Liz and Dave. Things had
certainly begun to change with Lesley once she started
working there too. Miss Snot who had tied herself down
with two babies in twenty months had suddenly
discovered the joy of working. We were both good cooks
but she enjoyed stunning people with horsd'oevres of
all sorts late at night. There was an overlap for about
six months when they saw us and Liz and Dave. Lesley
was pregnant with baby number three, can't think what
the hell she was trying to prove and to whom; they had
bought a house with money from her mother and John was
forever creosoting fences, painting, feeding babies and
making cups of tea; he was no sop just an active
father. This wasn't quite the status quo in our house
with Chris. I digress, again. But it was about this
time, just after John had been promoted to the suited
and booted brigade to Lesley's utter delight, that the
reality of our mutual domestic situation started to
kick in for us all really. I didn't know Debbie then or
or Black Martin or white Martin, or Peggy his mother.
They all ended up in a right pickle too, but that came
much later.