Smith - Beginnings

BEGINNINGS

BY

L.T. Smith

BEGINNINGS

I COULD TELL you what has happened. But for you to understand, I need to take you back right back. To 1974.

When people talk about the 70s, they will fill your head with free love, drugs and rock and roll. Actually, that sounds pretty good, especially the free love part.

But what Im going to tell you is initially from the eyes of a six year old me, funnily enough. I know you want to put this down, but bear with me. We all like to peek into someone elses life however boring it may be.

So. Lets find our setting.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then Ill begin

SUMMER 1974. HOT, sticky and filled with promise. Days filled with nothing but what my imagination could conjure up and that could be pretty frightening. Streets were packed with children on school holidays, playing tiggy-it and kerby, and avoiding cars as they raced to retrieve an errant ball. Space hoppers were the new black.

I was six years old. It was Levenshulme. Once an affluent part of Manchester, but now filled with students and ethnic minorities. Old radios blasted Shang a Lang and Puppy Love into the street. Mothers bawled at kids climbing the fence to the railway tracks where they would flatten pennies, completely unaware that they could be flattened too.

I loved my childhood. Loved it in a fucked up way. We were poor dirt poor. I came from a family of five brothers and two sisters, all older than me, and all avoided me like the plague. Except Jo of course. She was sixteen months older than me, and my idol. Her role on this earth was to be my surrogate mother, and to this day she still holds that place. We were like Siamese twins, but without the shared organs. Even our farts smelt the same. Uncanny or what? But Jo still brags that hers dont smell (they always did, but I tried to ignore it and closed my mouth sharpish). We looked completely different, but relatives still confused us, and my mother had to resort to colour coding to differentiate. Of course we mixed and matched outfits just to be little bleeders, and Jo hid her pink-rimmed National Health glasses at family gatherings as the final straw.

Kids. Gotta love em.

Well I have told you this much, I might as well introduce the other spawns in my family. Five brothers urgh! Every girls nightmare, and if you met them you would understand why. Patrick, aka Sniffer (which characterises his approach to the opposite sex), is the eldest son. Simon, who is fondly known as Ebenezer (need I say more?), is the second eldest. Brian was the third, and in the words of my mum, is such a bloody liar. He was the one where the doctors after the birth, advised my mother to use birth control in the future.

No such luck. Aiden popped out, much to the disdain of my mother, who initially disowned him. Pity she didnt stick to her guns. But then came the crowning glory. Queen Angie, Queenie, Dammer, Screamer. Who is this bundle of fun? I hear you ask. My big sister, sometimes wonderful sometimes a psycho which I found out the hard way. She was a git to all of us when playing chief babysitter and tyrant, when my mum worked at the nightclub. Over the years our relationship has grown stronger though probably because now I can protect myself.

The last brother finally came what a prize! Alan. Our Adge. Skid mark. Yup Skid mark, on account of the very fancy designs in his underpants. David Hockney watch out abstract (f)art.

Then it was Jos turn (short for Joanne) the last but one. She had a myriad of names but Bulber and Mazda were the main two. Reason being her head was uncannily shaped like a light bulb, and it looked like her body was constantly having brilliant ideas.

Now me, I had a fine selection of nicknames. So many in fact I had trouble remembering my real name, which didnt add to my appearance of intelligence. Primarily I was known as Bergans (left outside the butchers of the same name for five hours, and not missed until tea was being dished out) and Chunky (generic name with the rest of the family). I introduced myself as Chunky. Other names sneaked in - Henry the Eighth no I wasnt a fat polygamist with syphilis or a beard. It was just the way I used to eat, you know, like it was the first morsel that had passed my lips in ages.

But wait. I think I need to go back just a little bit further you know, complete the picture of the darling child I was. Ill totally understand if you dont want to read anymore, but please believe me it does get better!

I was born (very David Copperfield-ish - not the magician - the sponging whining fucker Dickens wrote of), in the year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Sixty Eight. To say I was a beautiful baby would be a lie. I was very long, very ugly, with a bald head, and eyes like a Lemur. Of course I developed into a fat toddler but still with very large eyes, which, fortunately, enabled me to see in the dark when the Electricity Company cut us off.

I was the last of the bunch. One look at me and my mother finally cried No more! Years later, she admitted that if the umbilical cord had not been attached, she would have sworn I wasnt hers. Angie loves to recall the day that they brought me home from the hospital. Her job was chief guard, standing at the front door like a bouncer, barring entrance to the neighbours: As not to frighten the womenfolk and kids. This tale is told at every opportunity, usually between hysterical laughter and finger pointing (in my direction where I would sit glowing). She loves to retell it, like the Ancient Mariner, as she feels cursed to regale it over and over again. She even takes on the features of the decrepit old seaman dribbling accompanying the overexcitement and spitting.

My mother used to bounce me and Jo down the road in a dilapidated pram, (Jo, who was cuddly, beautiful and always had a ready smile), trying to avoid well-wishers in her path. Jo, of course, removed peoples attention from my owl-like eyes, but on the occasions she wasnt present, the focus of the admiration went on the pram. I didnt care as long as they left me alone to chew through the plastic mattress at the base. It was bliss on raw gums cool, yet satisfying.

I wasnt the bravest of children. I was even scared of a rabbit once. Yes. You read that right - a rabbit. You may think that rabbits cant hurt you, but they can, as I will prove.

There was a woman who lived up the road from us. Weird bugger. Smelt of bleach and cigarettes. Well she was a creative soul and a bit of an animal lover and I mean bit. In her back garden she had erected a majestic centrepiece consisting of soil, broken bricks and bottles. It was beautiful in a soily, brokeny bottle and brick kind of way almost modern art .. and very underrated by the rest of the community

The hutch itself sat pride of place, resembling an Anderson shelter sawn in half and decorated lovingly with chicken wire. I can remember it as if it was yesterday it was class. My sister led me up to the monument that proved women should never be given free reign with a drill. (This was the 70s and I can be Politically Incorrect just this once). All it took was the aid of climbing gear and (in the words of a Blue Peter presenter), a responsible adult.

The ascent began.

Never in my young life had I been so scared. Thoughts flitted through my mind of what terrible monster would be imprisoned in a fortress like that. So, being an idiot, I started to back off, caught my heel in a broken Dandelion and Burdock bottle, fell backwards onto an artistically smashed house brick that was coyly peeping from the middle of the mound and gashed my head open.

Of course , the wailing started. Many of the elderly residents thought the Germans were invading, as they had been secretly and quietly preparing for years. Have you ever noticed that children initially cry with no sound? Their mouths stretched to capacity, eyes dry, but not a sound to be heard. Then suddenly a low whine is discernible, culminating into the loudest, most annoying howl audible to mankind (heaven knows how dogs cope), and the waterworks go into overdrive.