Part One - Sunday's Child
I
was born on Sunday April 7th 1974 in Gravesend Hospital in Kent. I weighed 8lbs 2oz and came
into the world at 7.30pm after a 4 and a half hour labour. To set the
scene, 1974 went like this: Terry Jacks' Seasons in the Sun was number
one the week I was born. The day before I was born ABBA had won the
Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo. Stephen King released
Carrie, Nixon resigned and the IRA were busy blowing everything up. Lord
Lucan went on the run, McDonalds opened its first restaurant in the UK
and the three day week was introduced to save electricity.
My
mum and I came home from hospital a week after my birth. 'Home' was a
tiny house crammed full of people. There was me just a babe in arms, my
mum and dad, my nan and grandad, and my uncle. There were 2 and a half
bedrooms. I say that because the third was a box room, barely big enough
to get a bed in. From what my mum told me, times were hard back then -
no one really had any money in those days and most of the year the bedbugs were the most well fed of us all. No one went on foreign
holidays and people made do with what they had. My nan and grandad had 5 hungry mouths to feed, so there was no spare money. 4 of them had left home by the time I was born. My
grandad worked at Blue Circle cement works in Swanscombe, and when my
aunts and uncles were grown up my nan got a job in a paper sack factory.
The house was damp and cold but hearts were warm. My nan was a feeder when she had the money.
No matter what else lacked, she showed her love with food. I don't
remember much of the first 5 years of my life, except to say at
Christmas my nan put on a hell of a feast, with a roast for lunch and a buffet tea. There'd be vinegary salmon
sandwiches, cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, lovely thick ham
from the butcher, and proper butter in sandwiches, not margarine - my nan
didn't have any truck with margarine. I remember the waves in the butter from the serrated edge knife she used. It's funny how you remember the little things.
When I was 3 we moved to Dartford, to a poky little house - 3 up, 2 down with a spit of a front garden and a bigger back garden with a concrete monolith in, dumped there by a lazy council worker and left for years. (We used to climb on it, until I slid down from the top and cut myself the entire length of my leg.)
We had a gas fire in the living room and a coal fire in the kitchen to heat water and that was it. Winters were brutal, and we usually got a donation of warm winter blankets from the Salvation Army as we were piss poor. My dad was around on and off for the first 5 years or so of my life, but he was too young. They both were - he was 21 when I was born and my mother 19. Exactly a year, one month and 2 weeks after me came my brother. The marriage fell into disarray and my mother - a principled woman - wanted out. It wasn't easy to divorce in those days and my dad certainly didn't make it easy. Kids can always pick up tensions and I'm not sure what was worse, having my dad there and them arguing or not having him there at all. By the time I was 7 and my brother 6 they were divorced. After that I didn't see much of my dad at all until I was 17. More on that later.
