Double Jointed

 

          When I was ten it appeared to me that there was a great deal of kudos to be gained from having hypermobile joints.    The girls who crab-walked, turned cartwheels and did handstands at the drop of a hat were reliably liked and admired by others and were often described as Double Jointed in tones that indicated this was a state close to spiritual enlightenment.   Of course I had little idea as to what such enlightenment actually meant in everyday terms but I would have greatly enjoyed just a smidgin of the admiration and acclaim that seemed to accompany body flexibility.   It was definitely a Girl Thing because the boys gave most of their attention to football and fighting at playtime and at the time it appeared that most other ten year old females were able to perform advanced gymnastics at the drop of a hat.   I now realise that this probably wasn’t accurate at all and that even the ultra-flexible ones were simply attention seeking in order to keep those of us who clearly lacked this facility in our place.  Back then middle childhood was undoubtedly a minefield and even at the time I couldn’t help wondering why the ability to read and spell and put commas in the correct place couldn’t become more worthy but during my time wending a path through the quagmire of primary school this was never to be the case.

          I was always a reliably sedentary child and viewed most sporting activities with some horror and this attitude did not change much as I grew into adulthood.  There was no doubt whatsoever that my only interest in the acquisition of enough athletic skill to manage a cartwheel was for the obvious glory that accompanied it.   However, the hankering after body flexibility did not go away with the passage of time and was made more acute when my father noticed my shortcomings and commented that Molly from number 31 was a Great Little Gymnast and that I would need to practice hard to catch up with her.   I retorted much too quickly that I had no wish whatsoever to catch up with her but he simply laughed and said he didn’t believe me.   If Molly had not been my very best friend I might have begun to dislike her at that moment but fortunately that did not happen.  However, over the next few weeks I was to pay a great deal more attention to the manner in which she effortlessly executed her daily handstands against the end wall of Aunt Elsie’s sweet shop in Tooley Street.   There was no doubt at all as to her prowess and little possibility of me catching up.  

          It was to be she who made me aware of the athletic horrors that lay ahead in the form of the moderately well equipped gymnasium at Colyer Road Girls’ Secondary Modern School which she was to enter a year before me. She was most impressed with all that the school had to offer and at the end of her first week we sat together on top of the Springhead Road railway bridge wall whilst she fully acquainted me with a comprehensive list of its merits.   The bridge was a favourite spot for significant dialogue and we felt important once sat astride it with the added excitement of the occasional passing beneath us of engines en route to Dartford, Woolwich Arsenal and London Bridge.   Springhead Road was formerly called Leather Bottle Lane which somehow or other we knew but we had no idea that York Road had formed part of Barrack Field on the east side of the lane and were unaware of the larger history of our surroundings.  Troops had been quartered in this area during the Napoleonic Wars precisely where St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School stood, and still stands, alongside the railway and perhaps this is why the place felt somehow meaningful when there were matters of importance to be debated.  For us, at the time, everything concerning the rites of passage into the Secondary Modern School was noteworthy.  

          Molly announced that the place was exactly like a boarding school except you didn’t have to sleep there!    I should point out at this juncture that we had read a great many Enid Blyton school stories but apart from that were woefully uninformed regarding boarding schools.     I volunteered that not sleeping there sadly made midnight feasts a virtual impossibility but she thought they were not entirely necessary and in fact it was much more important to have prefects and games captains and absolutely essential to have a head girl.  None of these positions she pointed out were in evidence at St Botolph’s.    She became impatient when I started talking about the lack of organised games at our primary school and that I thought that was one of the best things about it.  Although I admired those rosy faced active girls who rushed around throwing and catching balls the thought of joining in the so-called Fun horrified me.    Colyer Road Secondary Modern Molly further explained, after a dramatic pause, did not actually have Lacrosse or Tennis like Malory Towers but it did have Netball and Rounders which she now concluded was far more sensible.  And what’s more all pupils were in Houses and wore associated coloured bands when put into teams.   She was in Keller House and had a blue band – and had I heard of Helen Keller?  I was silent and picked at the dropped stitches in the red and blue jersey my mother had knitted and that I was attempting to grow out of as fast as possible.

          It was at this stage that she began to tell me about the exciting gymnasium that was called The Gym for short exactly the same as in First Term at Malory Towers.  There were extraordinary bits of equipment there with names like The Horse and The Buck and all the students were instructed to line up and hurtle towards them, the object being to fling themselves onto or over them.   Molly’s eyes went misty in exactly the same way as they did when she discussed the latest Doris Day musical – she said it was fantastic fun.   It sounded alarming to me.   I wanted to ask what happened if you couldn’t quite manage the exercise but restrained myself.  Instead I wondered if the classes were compulsory or whether they could be treated more like a hobby.   She gave me to what I later learned was a withering glance.  

          Within a short time of entering the school myself the following year I was to discover remarkably rapidly that the part of the syllabus known by the acronym PE and fitting into the timetable twice weekly was unsurprisingly as compulsory as mathematics.   The activities that shaped each forty minute class were exactly as had been described and there was much more besides including a range of balls and hoops with which to play a variety of fast moving and unpleasant indoor games.  

          The PE teacher was a slightly overweight young woman with red curly hair called Miss Finch.   She wore what I, and many of the adults around me it later transpired, considered to be a rather indecent outfit that appeared to have been originally designed for children under the age of three.   As she accompanied us on our daily walk to the senior school cafeteria each lunchtime we were able to witness how much attention this mode of dress attracted from workmen cleaning windows, on building sites or simply riding bikes.   One day we were shocked but delighted when a dustbin man advised her in very loud tones that she was a dirty cow and to put some clothes on.   Miss Finch stood a little straighter and simply tossed her curls.   Margaret Snelling who was walking beside me said it just wasn’t practical for her to keep changing in and out of the gym dress and that ought to be obvious.   This slight dilemma of dress certainly made the walks to and from school dinners more eventful than they might have been.

          During my two years at the school I was never able to overcome my abhorrence of PE, Netball and Rounders and consequently Miss Finch and I were destined never to Get On.   In fact I very soon formed the opinion that she went out of her way to embarrass and humiliate me.   I had no aptitude whatsoever for anything she tried to teach us and was not willing to make even the slightest effort so I can hardly blame her.   And although I would not have admitted it at the time all the gym activities so dear to her heart seemed inherently perilous to me and the entire sphere of physical activity filled me with dread.   Alongside Mathematics there was no subject I feared and loathed more. 

Considering this it was surprising that many years later when dancing alongside others at Murray’s Cabaret Club I had been able to learn the often intricate steps with moderate ease.   Even more astonishing and further on in time as the mother of three young children I suddenly found to my considerable surprise that I was able to crab walk.   This greatly impressed my eight year old daughter but oh what I would have given to have been able to perform this trick when I had been around the same age!   I’d like to say that I was then able to effortlessly add handstands and cartwheels to my adult repertoire but to be honest I wasn’t courageous enough to give them a go!