Feffina

'Write what you know'. I'm attempting to write about childhood and family; it's coming out light, which is not my usual style.

PART ONE

 

My parents are great story tellers, even of their life before they met; Mum the rich hippy that ran off to live in a tepee, my Dad breaking in to chemists to steal and sell on drugs. I remember him saying “took ‘em long enough to catch me though”. Apparently one night he used the same taxi and asked to be drove in a circuit to each local chemist. He’d break in, return to the taxi with the stolen goods and move on to the next. Even when they did arrest him, he came away with a good tale to tell. After getting drunk the evening before his court date, a friend put a glass of orange juice on the bedside table to help alleviate the hangover the following morning so he was presentable for court. However, after waking with a thirst and downing the entire pint glass of juice, Dad discovered that this ‘friend’ had played a prank and spiked the juice with more alcohol, leaving Dad to stumble to his court hearing in no fit state to present himself.

            Piecing together the snippets of comical stories, it seems that both of my parents had come to the end of a line somehow, before choosing to escape their past and share a future. Mum was with a clingy and aggressive boyfriend she’d been dating since high-school. I’ve heard passing remarks about this guy, but the story she’s told a few times was the incident where he put a tab of acid in her banana, giving mum a hellish first trip where she thought she was dying. Dad, on the other hand, had been slogging away at a factory to support his wife and two kids. His pastime was stock car racing. However, searching out his wife after one of his more successful races, he discovered that she had been cheating on him with the leader of his stock car racing team. This drew an end to their relationship, and he became tangled in a car-smuggling project which was set to head in a convoy to Iran. As it happens, my parents were introduced at a party (at house with a stream directed through its front room, belonging to a lane renowned for its hippies where time ceased to exist). Although my mum had never been abroad before at this point, she decided to accompany my dad.

            I suppose that spontaneity, that freedom, was the beginning of their relationship. And it’s been a pivotal core of their decisions together ever since. This is evident from the stories that continue from that point, even those that have me in them. For instance, one particular tale I’ve often enjoyed is set in a caravan we lived in when I was only a few months old. This caravan was situated in a forest, idyllic; they fed squirrels of their steps each morning. One night, we’re all woken by the sound of helicopters and apparently it’s the police, who have mistaken my dad for a murderer based on a photography that bore a resemblance. Having realised their mistake (dad was missing an identifying tattoo), in order to not humiliate themselves completely in returning with nothing, they decided to raid the caravan anyway. They ended up arresting my dad for the small amount of weed he had on him at the time. B******s.

            Well, this world of my youth, under my parent’s influence, was full of hope and excitement. Their stories inspired my dreams, and we created more stories as a family unit. I have since been called ‘the umbilical cord’, hinting at my closeness to my parents.

            I often wonder if my own life will ever match up to what they’ve told me of their own. We’re of different times; perhaps that’s it.

           

My beginnings at school immediately seemed to distinguish me from others. Not only was there a communication gap (a combination of being unfamiliar to English culture, raised with different values, and used to interacting with adults), but I felt that the obsessive routines, the pettiness, the bullying were part of a new world that I felt alien to. I don’t think I’d ever encountered the idea of unhappiness or cruelty. I remember feeling quite overwhelmed when they showed us ‘The Snowman’ at Christmastime. Not only was I hugely moved by the film, but bewildered by the concept that the teachers were intentionally trying to upset us. I remember one ‘home time’ walking down the slope to the gate where the parents congregated. I was chatting to a friend and slipped over, but apparently I bounced back up with a huge beam across my face.

 

Keeping a diary for so long has made me understand the way in which we crystallise our own memories, threaten to turn them in to something static by learning to tell them well. And I wonder about the extent to which we’re all a character in our own story.

 

When I was a little over one, my parents decided we’d all move to Portugal. They piled luggage on either side of my car seat and we set off overland. They had a plan to set up a business in property.

           

PART TWO

           

Grassmere Avenue, Warrington, Cheshire. Full of beginnings, first friendships; feeling at odds with my environment and yet managing to find a sense of home there.

I don’t remember missing Portugal, or my thoughts drifting back to memories, despite the fact that Portugal had been my world, and I had great freedom there to explore that world i.e. I ran off a lot on my own and found wells or chased dogs and ended up being taken in by friendly strangers who insisted on feeding me.

Someone might read dissatisfaction in to the fact that I more frequently retreated to fantasy worlds, and spent hours on weekends searching for four-leaved clovers so I could wish my surroundings in to a magical world of sweets. Or was it simply my imagination developing?

 

At Grassmere, a lot of the darker aspects of life seeped in to my play with these kids, because of the area we lived in.

 

I remember the cold concrete as you entered our block of flats. There were grey slab stairs, two sets and the windows on the ground flood had wire mess in them and were a greasy yellow shade, like nicotine. If I was alone I’d always take a breath and then run up those stairs all at once, as if someone was chasing me. As soon as I was running up them I could imagine some shadow grabbing at me from behind. I only felt safe again when I got to our front door.

 

In my bedroom I had a line of teddy-bears on my windowsill; their fur was turning white on one side where they’d been bleached by the sun.

 

My first glance inside our flat – which would be our first long-term home in this country after moving from pub to pub, living in rooms of other people’s furniture, feeling lost inside a bedroom cluttered with an older girls toys – I was stood at the doorway with my parents, staring down the corridor. The carpet was torn and covered in smashed glass. It didn’t look inhabitable to me and I just got a pervasive sense of violence and abandonment - very different to the worn dereliction of Portuguese property which seemed mystical and loved in their erosion. The glass was an indication of the ominous climate we were moving to, but we managed to keep all that on the outside of our home, our space. Inside felt safe from the moment we moved in, and still hold a strong nostalgic aura for me.

 

My memories tell me that I never compared one place to another, one life to another. I had trust in my parents, and my optimism seemed endless. It seemed as if I just adapted to wherever I was put and that’s a trait I would like to hold on to. I now find great comfort in movement, and unfamiliar environments.

 

The views from each window were similar - lines of grey pebble-dashed blocks of flats, each with its own small rectangular lawn. These lawns somehow managed to combine a feeling of clinical regimentation (as if there was limited space or money for such indulgences, and each had been painstakingly measured as to not go over budget) with an inexplicable feeling of contamination. Kids rarely played on the grass, but there was one exception; a small field visible from my bedroom window. It was placed in the centre of a square grid of flats which gave the impression that it was walled in. Every evening I’d lean out of my bunk bed to watch the older kids congregate on this field for a game of football. I’d try to make out the words of the gossip between teenage girls. In the daytime, this field was taken over by us younger kids for games of chase, and occasional rounders (there was a collection of four trees that marked out the bases). There was also a blossom tree towards the end of the field nearest my window, and somehow I really loved that tree. It didn’t seem to fit there.

 

 

Though it was the scummiest, unsafe area I’ve ever lived, at the time I never wanted to leave. It had become how and I was apprehensive of change and where it would take me.