This is the third painting in my ‘Strange & Sometimes Troubled Memories’ series.
‘We Were Quite Poor’ acrylic on canvas board 30 by 40cm.
There’s a Monty Python Sketch called ‘The Four Yorkshiremen’ where the characters are trying to outdo each other with increasingly ludicrous tales of their poverty-stricken childhoods. When I hear that sketch, I imagine that’s how I must sound when talking about my upbringing and I wait for a voice in my head to play down my recollections with one word, ‘Luxury.'
I was ‘dragged up’ on a sprawling council estate in the city of Bradford in the north of England. The houses, more spacious than you might expect, were doled out into close-knit streets, unwelcoming to outsiders. Small packs of stray dogs and grubby children scuttled around, yelping and barking.
At the south end of the estate a dirt road took you past a lovely little pub which down the years would turn into an unapproachable drug den, there, the road narrowed into a path which led into huge woodland, beautiful in my memory, if it wasn’t marred by the tales of unthinkable things that were rumoured to have taken place within it.
At the other end of the estate a main road curved up towards nicer areas where the better people lived. There was a little shop that sold overpriced essentials and a faded papershop around the corner. Across a quiet little road, a large patch of grass, strewn with dog shit, led between houses to our road.
The people I remember living close to us were, ‘Fur coat and no knickers’ a lady who lived with the angriest Yorkshire Terrier in the world. This little beast which I inventively named ‘The Yappy Dog’ would chase and terrorise me daily. A lady called Maggie or Margaret or Phillis, would often stand at her gate surveying the surroundings with contempt, she always had a cig stuck between her thin lips and wore curlers and slippers to go to the shops.
There were a handful of other mushrooming families baring surnames notorious to the locale, I would try and keep my distance from their sinister children. One of those Victorian street urchins was hanging around me one day, observing me play with my, ride-on, plastic red tractor which I loved more than any person. I’d drag it up the incline of the footpath which ran along the road outside our gate then hurtle downhill, thrilled with a little reckless independence. The scratter’s eyes widened and he whisper-shouted ‘Chuddy’, his pigeon eyes having spotted a little hard pink tumour of discarded chewing gum on the pavement, he snatched it up and popped in his wonky mouth, working it back to wet plasticine. When humans invaded my personal space, my energy spiked as it tried to protect me and even the smallest interactions were a feat of endurance, With clenched fists, I wished them away in my head. The next day my tractor was gone, later I spotted it in the street food kid’s garden.
My mum’s friend who lived across the road, had overly tanned clammy skin and thick matted hair that looked like she’d stolen it from a department store mannequin. She had deep lines set in her face, mapping out her struggles and padded purple bags under her eyes. She once neglected to lock the bathroom door when she used our toilet and poor little me happened to walk in, just at the worst moment. I saw she had another wig that matched the one on her head and I was slightly traumatised. Both her and my mum seemed to delight in my embarrassment.
Right next door to us, uphill, lived a woman who was lovely but appeared to be in a constant state of worry, she was quiet, kind and delicate, she wore pretty dresses and seemed like she didn’t belong there. Even at my young age I sympathised with her plight.
Our other immediate neighbours were a caring older couple, with identical bodies but different heads. They lived with their two large adult sons of unknown (to me) disability. They would refer to them as ‘Handicapped’ and other idiots on the estate would use nastier terms. The large irregular lads confused my small irregular mind as I couldn’t fathom the cause of their differences, their unpredictable movements and sounds would startle me. They seemed to enjoy life though, cooing and pouring affection over their cats and dogs whilst playing in their well-kept back garden, and they even had a tortoise with their address crudely Tippexed onto its beautiful shell. It’s reptilian old man face would pull lettuce from their careful fingers and munch whilst staring off into the distance. I remember summer days spent helping them look for it when it had somehow made a dash for freedom, it always turned up in the end.
My dad wasn’t around at this point and my mum didn’t work. As I got older, I would resent my parents spawning us children without the funds or nous to do so responsibly. I’ve spent my life trying to recondition my crushing mindset of lack, which could be seen as a character-building blessing if it wasn’t twinned with the obstacle of inherited defeatism.
My partner often pokes fun at me, saying I must have been switched at birth, with tastes above my station, like an estranged snob. Still now, illusory thoughts rattle around my head, fluctuating between superior, inferior and unholy messiah complexes (symbolised in the painting) before thudding back down to ground like a crumpled worm dropped from a soaring bird’s beak, embittered by the idea that this pauper should’ve been a prince.
In those days, if you didn’t pay your electricity bill, you were cut off, I’m not sure if they’re allowed to do that these days. We were without power often, sometimes for months at a time, once, for a whole winter. We were fortunate though as we had a gas stove in the kitchen and a coal fire in the living room, so always had food and warmth.
After dark we would sit around the warm glow of the fire, and lit candles were strategically placed around the room. Sometimes we’d spear bread onto forks and hold it close to the flames. The smell of it toasting was homely and once done, we would smear it with butter and jam for supper.
The downstairs walls furthest away from the fire had black and green mould, creeping up from the skirting boards like an infection, as the damp seeped in. Wet wallpaper would be sliding of the surface of the plaster and slugs congregated amongst the folds.
I remember waking up in the morning and the house would be frozen, the fire not yet lit, chaotic foliage patterns were brushed across the icy windows, and the thought of getting out from under the layers of mismatched warm blankets made me shiver.
In the earlier years we didn’t have a TV. Later we would get one from ‘Tellybank’, a company who extorted cash from the poor in exchange for shiny goods on rental purchase. The humpbacked telly was acquired with a small deposit but then required feeding with 50p’s into a greedy slit at the back to keep it alive. It would turn itself off when the coins stopped coming, usually at the most exciting part of a program, the family groaned in unison. A friendly little geezer would come and empty it once a month and if there weren’t enough coins collected inside, he would need extra payment. This kind man often let my mum delay the payment if she promised to settle the balance the next month, sometimes we’d have to hide and pretend we weren’t in when she spotted him walking down the street.
Things like this seemed normal until a friend would visit, then tell everyone at school, the next day, about our weird poor house. When I state friend here, or in any of my writing about my childhood, I mean some kid who had decided that I was their friend and I’d have to tolerate them, whilst detesting their company.
My mum made the most of things by begging, borrowing and sometimes stealing. She would also grow food in the back garden, like, potatoes, peas, radishes and green beans, she always put good hearty food on the table. My brother and I would sneak pea pods and break them open with our earthy fingers, popping the little sweets straight out into our mouths and mum would go mad when she saw how many were missing.
She also cordoned off two little sections of the garden for my younger sister and I to cultivate into our own little worlds, making small fences here, or miniature rockery there, and planting seeds to watch them grow. My sister stomped mine into oblivion in an act of cruel revenge for something I’d said or done to cross her.
There was a tree in the bottom corner of the garden which in certain seasons would shed its bark and bleed red sap and we swore it was haunted.
My mum would sometimes send my younger sister and I out at night with begging letters to trudge around the houses of preselected neighbours, chosen for their likeliness to be charitable. We’d creep up a front path, knock on a door, which would be opened by someone looking straight ahead and then down, surprised by these night children. We’d smile without saying a word and hand over a note. This process would be repeated until one of them felt sorry enough for us to part with a fiver, tenner, or just coins. Sometimes we’d have to wait and they would pass over a replying note to give to our mum.
On Sundays it was bath night. A large flat, hard plastic, tub that once was red but had turned a greyish, scratched-up, pink, would be placed in front of the ‘real fire’. My mum would then heat pans of water on the gas hob and fight against their tide as she held them between two tea towels to bring in the living room and fill the tub. My siblings and I would take it in turns to undress in front of everyone else and get in the warm water. My older brother and sister would go first and see to their own routine, whilst my younger sister and I would be roughed up with a soapy flannel by my mum, getting in those nooks and crannies. We’d share a towel to get dry which warmed between uses on a chair in front of the fire. Then it was into our cosy pyjamas.
I was a bed-wetter (right up until my teens) so would often go through this ritual as a solitary humiliation in the mornings too, as my siblings ate their cereal at a red wooden table. Sometimes there wasn’t time for basic hygiene and I was sent to school stinking of piss, which when combined with the scent of the talcum powder that had been puffed down my pants, enhanced rather than masked the pungent odour.
It wasn’t all bad, my Grandparents had a caravan not far from a small town called Carnforth near Morecambe in Lancashire, where we would go on holiday. My mum would surprise me by not telling me, we were 'off on our hols' until we were on the train. I was easily deceived, even though my family were hauling a bunch of luggage between them, as I was so lost inside my own head.
Trains terrified me with their noise, bulk and speed, the space between the platform and the train was a death trap waiting to snare me, mind the gap! I remember my Mum telling us never to put any part of our anatomy out of the windows, she’d once been on a train at night and a lad had poked his head out, when another train flew past, he fell back into the carriage with his head half ripped off, hanging by a thread, was what she said. I’d be frozen in fear, playing this image on a loop in my mind for rest of the journey.
At Carnforth station, an out of place chain link fence ran the whole length of one platform. That was where the high-speed trains would pass through, a little warning would come over the Tannoy, unnoticed by me, so my mum would have to warn me of what was about to happen but it never prepared me enough. The power and improbable speed of those giant blue and yellow machines hurtling through as they blasted ‘Ner Naaaaaaa!’ with their horns, would suck the life right out of me in complete terror.
The five of us, mum, a brother, two sisters and me, would then set of on the long walk to the caravan site. This involved a lovely stroll up an old dirt track which ran alongside the ‘Steam Museum’ where I could see wonderful old trains which were cartoony and not scary at all. The smell of tar, oil and machinery drifted on the summer breeze, and I inhaled it greedily.
Our ramble then took us past a shimmering river which entranced and calmed me. We would play ‘Pooh sticks’ from a rusty metal bridge, the structure of which scared me a little. At the point where the riverside path ended, we crossed a larger stone bridge which marked the beginning of the dangerous leg of the trip.
We had to walk approximately a mile and a half along a winding country road, which seemingly had no speed limit. We moved along on the right-hand side to face oncoming traffic (like you’re supposed to), my mum at the front, the smaller kids in the middle, ‘single file!’ and my older brother and sister at the back. Cars and lorries would hurtle past as we hugged the side of the road which bordered a woodland. Each passing vehicle would be another breath-taking horror for me. We had to be especially careful on blind corners, inching around until my mum got a clear view.
We sometimes did this journey at night when coming back from a day trip to Morecambe, with its constant threat of a quicksand death, often walking the whole seven and a half miles to save money, the excursion, once we left the lights of the towns, a dark nightmare. The horrible country road with its cats’ eyes to my left and the petrifying abyss of the unknown black woods to the right, the headlights of the cars were then a momentary release.
The glow of the caravan site was welcome and warm. The texture and trudging sound of decorative aggregate under foot filled my belly with joy. One of the only frightening things about the place was that it was situated in an old quarry, once a boulder had dislodged itself in a storm and completely flattened the bedroom end of one of the statics, luckily the owners weren’t inside. Also there was a rickety staircase made of wood clambering up the hundred foot, south side of the rock face, which we had to traverse often to get to the closest village. The structure was coming away from the side of the rock in places and had steps missing revealing a vertigo inducing drop between the treads. We then had to cross a field containing a huge muscly grey bull. My family seemed to find all this quite funny and just took in in their stride.
So apart from the underlying constant fear of being crushed, falling to my death, or suffocating in quicksand on days out, it was my favourite childhood place to be. Few young people visited and the heavenly little site was filled with slow-moving, quiet, old folks who fawned over me For some reason I would never wet the bed on holiday, it’s as if my body knew that I felt happier.
My mum would make the best chips in the world using a deep fat fryer, leaving all the windows of the caravan open. She would give them to us in newspaper cones so that we could pretend we’d been to the chip shop.
I think my love of rain came from those holidays, walking along damp soft paths between dripping trees in the woodland, wearing a yellow raincoat with the hood up, then tramping back to the cosy caravan with the rain clattering on the metal roof was bliss. Sometimes in the morning I’d be woken by a different patter as a hare used the top of our caravan as a short cut, I’d peak through the curtains and see it make an impossible run up the face of the quarry between those precarious giant stones. I loved that place, away from home.
Back in real life, I’d ask my mum questions like, ‘What if the world blows up?’ and she’d just say ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen’ I’d reply ‘How do you know?’ and she’d say ‘I just know OK’ and I’d know she didn’t know and I’d resent her lying to me.
I had terrible abstract recurring nightmares from as young as I can remember, which gradually went away when I neared my teenage years. I used to wake up screaming and even then, be so distraught as I hallucinated dream monsters, who were escaping from my sleep world and leaking into the room, coming through the walls. I'd be screaming 'They're coming to get us, they're going to kill us!' My younger sister who I shared a room with, told me later, that she always thought there was something wrong with me, growing up... there was.
Later, in my twenties I was managing to earn decent money and paid for therapy to try and combat my excessive drinking, drug use and manic behaviour. The kind lady who was my therapist was soft cosy and warm to my eyes and she wanted to give me regression hypnosis as she thought that having traumatic night terrors at such a young age meant something bad had happened to me.
She had a lovely gold brown cat which for some reason had extra toes on each foot which looked like thumbs. He used to sleep on my legs whilst I was lying supine on a comfy massage table with a blanket over me as she tried to put me under. She’d get me to follow a pen with my eyes whilst she moved it over my head and talked in soft dreamy tones. It never worked. My brain just struggled and thrashed.
I remember telling my mum about this during one of our infrequent, uncomfortable phone calls, her reply was strange for two reasons, the first being that she usually just feigned listening to me then carried on talking about herself, the second because her reply was ‘You don’t want to mess with that stuff, my friend got regressed and she found out loads of stuff that totally messed up her life, and none of it was true anyway and not that anything ever happened to you.’ I thought that was a weird response.
My mum eventually remarried. My stepdad was a hardworking, unavailable man, a painter and decorator like my now beloved Bella. When I was around nine years old, he moved us off the estate, up the road to a nicer house. I’ll always be thankful of that. I never felt at home on that estate, unlike my sturdy northern family, I was soft as shit. After a while, I didn’t feel at home in Bradford either, there were too many people in my life that I didn’t want to know. The lure of living in anonymity in a far away city was too seductive.
One time I was in Nottingham and just as I boarded the coach to Bradford, I saw the one departing for London and promised myself that it would be the last time I headed in the wrong direction. I’m not saying Bradford or the people living there are bad, it’s just, sometimes you wanna go, to where nobody knows your name.
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