Tag: Nostalgia In Waves – Volume Two

The Joy of Warmth

Winter in 1970’s Britain was grim, not just because of the endless strikes, heartless politicians, cheesy glam bands and creepy disc jockeys but because…it was cold. It seemed to snow more too. Lots of slippery fall on your bum kind of ice. My dad putting socks over his shoes to get to work in one piece kind of ice. Long, dark, harsh, unforgiving winters. Winters of discontent. A decade of discontent. That’s how I remember it. Cold winters didn’t stop in the 70’s. They iced up the early 80’s too.

Around this time, in the early 80’s, I lost count of the number of times we were sent home from school due to burst pipes and malfunctioning boilers. School would shut because of the cold, that’s how cold it was. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen often enough. I’m not sure it was worth the early stages of frostbite. I walked home from freshly closed schools with feet like blocks of ice. Even when I sat with my feet right up against the gas fire, trying to thaw them, it would take at least half an hour before I could feel them again. The numbness was scary. It’s a nasty, queasy feeling when your feet are divorced from your legs. It’s difficult to take your shoes off when you can’t feel your feet. They are heavy and phantom at the same time. Once the shoes were off, it got a little easier. It took another half hour before I could feel my feet. Surprised I didn’t lose a few toes, or a foot or two.

Not quite so scary or dangerous as frost bitten feet, but just as Dickensian, were the nights. We didn’t have central heating. The only heat was in the form of a gas fire in the living room. It was so cold in my bedroom at night, that I used to wear six layers of clothing in bed. Here is what I used to wear on a nightly basis when I was a teenager :

1st Layer -Nightdress

2nd Layer -Dressing gown

3rd Layer- Thin short cardigan

4th Layer -Slightly thicker short cardigan

5th Layer -Slightly thicker cardigan than the last one

6th Layer -Thick, chunky, long Starsky and Hutch style cardigan, with woolen belt.

The bed had about eight or nine blankets on it. There were no duvets in those days, well, not in our house.It was cold but it was a veritable tundra in the nether regions of the bed. My feet could not even dare to plumb the freezing depths, not even three quarters down. It would be like plunging your feet into a cottony fridge. I would say halfway down was the cut off point. I would curl into a foetal position. The feet had to stay high. Difficult when you’re five foot eleven and you have to stay in that position for the whole night.

Maybe sometimes, as the night progressed, the feet would be able to go a little further down. Although it was a slow gradual process, little by little, over time, I could warm up layers of cold further down in the bed. By morning, the conditions down there would be temperate at least, but of course, by then it would be too late. Time to get up.

Some part of me hankers for that, well, maybe not that, but elements of the past simply because I was young and my whole life was in front of me. It’s the past and I’ll never have it again. The past when all said and done can seem safer than the future, no matter how depressing or miserable it seemed. Why would I want that again? I don’t. It’s just that nostalgia can seem fuzzy and warm, despite the cold.

It sounds like I have a cold feet problem but if I did then, I certainly don’t now. Thanks to central heating, hot flashes and thermal lambswool socks, I now have toasty warm feet all day and all night long! Hurrah! A happy ending!

The Joy of the Tomboy

I would follow my brother and his friends around, like a
puppy. I didn’t know how to make friends. I was like a magpie in
that way, trying to acquire something I hadn’t earned. If friends
are real and have integrity and honesty, they are a lot more
precious than what the magpie sees shining out the corner of his
eye, and thinks, can I have a share in that?
I had followed my brother when he had gone to meet one
of his friends. I must have been about seven or eight. My brother
was a year older than me.
We sat cross-legged in a circle, triangle really, on a
grass verge. The friend said, as if I wasn’t there, ‘Why is she here?
Why can’t she stop following us? Why can’t she get her own
friends?’ That kind of thing.
I was a very quiet, shy sort of follower and I just clung to
them like a limpet, yet my brothers friend must have thought, and
rightly so, that I was cramping their style. I shouldn’t be there!

It didn’t start off that way, but it got tiring for them after a while,
quite understandably, ending up in a general
dissatisfaction with the status quo. I theorise, even at that early
age, my brother allowed it, dare I say, encouraged my trailing
along because he enjoyed the idolisation. Some older brothers
may gladly forgo all the intimacies of boyhood friendship, if the
baby sister becomes a public and ardent admirer.
I completely bought into that tomboy thing, whether it was
through sheer desperation to be accepted and belong to a group or
maybe I genuinely enjoyed playing football. Perhaps I’ll never
know but I loved getting covered in mud and grass and didn’t
mind cuts and bruises.
I do remember being a dirty tackler. My methods were
questionable. I must have been aware that I was female on some
level and could get away with some things, tackling wise, that the
others couldn’t, thus making any game I was in, unfair, but it was
generally just kicking around. During one kick around, I
remember I was at some friends/neighbours house and they had a
sprawling overgrown garden, with what seemed like dense
vegetation and a wild wood at the end, probably grossly over
exaggerated by an overactive and childish imagination.
At one point during the game, the ball went into the
overgrowth. I went in immediately to retrieve it and was pulled
back by one of the boys in the game. He looked at me in horror.
‘You can’t go in there.’ he said. ‘You’re a girl.’
This was a defining moment for me. I felt a myriad of
emotions all at once. I was afraid. I couldn’t work it out. Next
moment, I was arrogantly amused. I knew something he didn’t.
He was misinformed. Next moment, I was indignant, singed by
his prepubescent sexism, shocked and confused by his youthful
chauvinism.
Next moment, I felt disappointment, then bitter dismay
and lastly an inexplicable sadness. My life flashed before my eyes
in that instant. Limitation and femaleness seemed to suddenly be
inexorably linked. I knew I could have got that ball without any
harm or injury and I can’t remember whether I rebelled and went
in, or hung back, temporarily weakened by the fact that I was
someone who couldn’t go into a few bits of weeds and bushes to
retrieve a football.
Many years later, the event crossed my mind, but now all I
saw was concern in sincere and honest eyes.
He was looking out for me…maybe, maybe not. After all, he didn’t know me enough to genuinely care about me. It was probably all about social mores, either a natural protective instinct on his part or something he’d digested culturally in his young and tender years. He was genuinely alarmed at the idea that I should go and get that ball from the dense and thorny
undergrowth. I hadn’t met him before that day and I haven’t met
him since. He was just a kid and so was I.