Being Discriminated Against

 Judy was clearly outraged when she regaled her audience of three in Coffee Club with the details of what had happened.   As for that audience, we sat in horrified silence, flat whites and long blacks untouched for the moment at least.   It would be true to say that the entire episode depressed us and made us understandably edgy.   Anna maintained that it was decidedly unfair whichever way you looked at it and we were being picked on just because we were old.  Jo nodded in enthusiastic agreement but added that she rather worried there might be something we were getting wrong because in New Zealand 2023 - it was late November last year when this happened - it just didn't seem right.   By the time we got around to drinking the coffee it was barely warm.    Then someone from an adjacent table who had heard the discussion was hovering over us telling a tale of her own but hers involved a list of items she might buy from the supermarket whereas Judy's list had been one of animals.   

It all happened when Judy was sent a reminder to apply for her driving license to be renewed as she was about to become an octogenarian - in fact she had planned a celebration party.  She needed a supporting medical certificate she told us which seemed simple enough but that was where the problem began because she was told she had to complete a test - a Cognitive Test which the nurse proceeded to give her.   The test seemed quite straightforward to begin with and she confidently believed that if she still remembered the Times Tables impressed upon her at that primary school in Opotiki all those years ago, all would be well.   She certainly knew which day of the week it was and the date and could even recite the months of the year backwards.  The list of thirty animals is where she fell down, she was quite confident of that.  And the address of someone she had never heard of who lived in a Wellington suburb had also tripped her up.   Nevertheless she had not expected to actually fail!   But fail she did and was now without a driving license which meant that future coffee meetings would have to be held much closer to where she lived in Meadowbank.    She added in a small, depressed voice that when she thought about the unpleasant incident she concluded that it had very little to do with driving and a great deal to do with discriminating against the elderly.   

Over the following weeks it was surprising how many similar relicensing horror stories were to be related in low voices by octogenarian applicants.  Such tales were rife in the ranks of local Probus and U3A members and even the library Book Club was not totally exempt.  The prevailing reaction was universally one of disbelief as those who had been found wanting enumerated the areas where their lives would now be altered - how would they get to Church on Sunday? - get to the supermarket? - visit the library?  It was all very well to advise them to use the buses, take an uber, organise a lift but it wasn't always possible.  George said glumly that he supposed staying at home from now on wasn't going to be the end of the world but it did rather seem that way;  he admitted that he had been a car owner since the age of eighteen and in fact had never boarded a bus in his life.  When he was growing up, he said, there had been no buses.   

And it did rather seem that in New Zealand, the oldest members of local communities were being singled out in a way that was likely to have a devastating effect upon their overall psychological well-being.   Raising the topic, somewhat tentatively on social media platforms Failure stories began to creep from every corner, invariably accompanied by feelings of humiliation and outrage, occasionally retold with humour.  Peter recalled that he had perhaps provoked his Examiner - when she requested that he draw a clock he had  done so after establishing whether she would prefer Arabic or Roman numerals.  

Overall the feeling amongst those who had failed to meet the grade was confusion and distress coupled with a degree of shame.   Several months spent at home watching afternoon TV did nothing to improve matters.  As one they agreed that it would have been far preferable to have re-sat the old fashioned driving test where three point turns and reversing around corners were the points of horror.   Judy, whose experience began this saga says at least it incorporated something concrete relating to the ability of the candidate to drive a vehicle.

I have to be honest because with a re-licensing of my own looming up I have become pre-occupied with repeating the months of the year backwards and listing four legged animals in the shortest time possible.   I've even added interesting choices to my list such as the Kinkajou and the Sloth just to try to make the task less monotonous.   My fervent hope though is that this side-lining and discrimination of the over eighties will before long be totally abandoned.  

  

  

The Fly in the Ointment

 There was a time when I was overwhelmingly attracted to the idea of becoming As One with the Beat Generation.  At that stage of my life achieving such a goal from the wastelands of industrial North Kent in the late 1950s seemed hopeless despite the fact that I had read Jack Kerouac's On The Road from cover to cover.

To be fair I had only the vaguest concept of what the Beat Generation was aiming for as a counter culture but I was aware that aligning myself with it would hopefully mean that I would become part of a movement that I was assured influenced literature, music and art.   I had made it my business to discover a little about Alan Ginsberg since I read somewhere that he and Kerouac were great friends.   However, all I really knew was that he was a poet and at seventeen years of age I was not yet familiar with his poetry except that he had recently written something called Howl, a portion of which I hoped to memorise.   I had already realised that there were times when quotes increased status - or it could simply have been that I had not so very long ago left Miss K Smith's Wombwell Hall Language & Literature class behind me.

I was spectacularly unsuccessful when it came to tracking down any Beat Generation Visual Art - as in paintings that were easy to relate to.  When cautiously investigating William S Burroughs, said to be another friend of Kerouac, I was relieved to find he was also a visual artist.  In the end I didn't have much luck familiarising myself with his work either but I did find The Naked Lunch relatively easy to read, if a little bewildering.

When I cautiously began to investigate the kind of music I should be listening to as a Beat devotee it was clear I would be safe enough with Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, neither of whom I particularly admired, but at least they were easily located if you tuned to the correct radio station.

Overall, lurching myself into what I saw at the time as an ultra-fashionable intellectual movement was more complicated than I had originally anticipated.  I felt I was trying to embrace a swirling chaos of societal rebellion that I wasn't quite ready for.  The open expression of sexuality was not quite the liberating force I had been promised.  I came rapidly to the conclusion that I needed to remain cosily repressed for a while longer.

You could say that in a small way the outer reaches of the fashion industry saved me from simply ditching the original plan;  by way of shoes - winklepickers in particular.   Daphne Davis who had I think at one time also been a Wombwell Hall girl, and who now certainly caught the 8.10 to Charing Cross from Monday to Friday, was observed on Platform 2, wearing a formidable pair of black winklepickers, the first I had seen in Gravesend.   She said she had bought them in a little shop in Covent Garden and gave me explicit instructions as to how to find the place.   Within days I became the proud owner of an identical pair although I had recoiled a little at the price, being more familiar with the footwear on offer and price range at Bata. 

When a short time later, fearlessly fashionable Daphne was seen wearing an impressively weathered duffel coat she revealed the whereabouts of what she described as an Army Surplus Store in the depths of Victoria.   I couldn't wait to descend upon the place and by the next Friday afternoon I had equipped myself with a similar garment.  It was refreshingly cheap and lasted for years, my brother inheriting it for bird-watching wear on the North Kent Marshes.   That was all in the future of course and over the next immediate months Daphne and I made very sure we did not sit too close to each other on the 8.10 train because to be brutally honest even we realised we looked rather like refugees from a strange post-war cult as far as our fellow passengers were concerned.  It was becoming clear that not a great many of our teenage peers had a similar yearning to join the Beat Generation.  I hesitantly began to wonder if I might be a trailblazer.

The problem seemed to be that rejecting societal norms to embrace rebellion was always going to be a problem whilst living in York Road, Northfleet.  The project had to be shelved until I could transfer my life to a London bedsitter.  In the interim I concentrated on absorbing as much of the language I would need for the future as possible and using it boldly.  Thus I tossed forth jargon such as ..... groovy .... square ...... dig it ....cool cat ......daddy oh .... with finesse and became a Saturday afternoon regular at the first coffee bar to open in Harmer Street where I was hopeful that my mastery of the lingo would earn me respect.

By the time I had added a black turtle neck sweater to my wardrobe and read Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse I was definitely beginning to see myself as an impressive independent thinker and had almost turned my attention towards the Hippie lifestyle which I was told was alive and well in the bed-sitters of West London if not yet glimpsed in Gravesend.   This also coincided with the demise of the winklepickers which to be honest had never been entirely comfortable.

It was a relief to abandon Ginsberg and his like, mostly because I had never felt entirely comfortable with the precepts and principles their disciples seemed to expect and the high level of debate demanded.    The ensuing Hippie lifestyle seemed a great deal more relaxing though I was assured that it had grown out of that which Kerouac and Ginsberg aspired to.

By the time I had moved to Notting Hill and acquired a bearded boyfriend called Adrian who had recently dropped out of University, I had decided that as far as any intellectual Bell Curve was concerned, I was barely on it, a D stream beginner in fact.   I now wore kaftans and beads and talked about being alienated from a London society that was dominated by materialism and repression.      I became interested in accessing spiritual guidance completely outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition and embarked upon a study of Astrology, spending hours in all night cafes observing the rather wonderful Ernest Page who seemed possessed of an uncanny knack of human perception.   It seemed an altogether far more relaxing lifestyle than that the Beat Generation had offered.

I might have been with them still if the Hippie Movement still existed had it not been for the wholesale acceptance and promotion of the recreational use of hallucinogenic drugs - marijuana and LSD in particular.   I was never entirely happy about this manner of expanding consciousness and so avoided indulging wherever possible.   In the final analysis it was my rejection of mind altering substances that led to me retreating further and further from what had initially seemed an idyllic lifestyle.    But as my mother would have pointed out, just when you think things are perfect, that's when you find the fly in the ointment!

Third Anniversary

      I have been a widow for very nearly three years and that significant third anniversary looms just head like maths homework on a sunny weekend when I was fourteen years old.  I don't quite know why three years seems so momentous but it does.  I've always thought there was something special about the idea of three.    I should have come to terms with all the misery by now but I haven't and to be totally honest I never really expected to.  There is sometimes great consolation in bouts of sadness.

      I still talk to him when I'm out walking, especially when tracing the paths of those walks we did together and I've largely stopped caring that passers-by are apt to give me strange looks.  This time a year ago when walking in London nobody even noticed such minor eccentricity or perhaps if they did they considered that despite my advanced age I had somehow or other managed to equip myself with an ultra-sophisticated mobile phone system that needed no obvious physical manifestation.   When home alone I still converse with him - about books and History Channel docos and even suggest restaurants he might have once upon a time liked to try with me and where I hesitate to go alone.  I still look around me at those he knew well, studied alongside or worked with and then at times I shamefully wonder why it is that they are still here and walk among us and he is not.   And yes, I am well aware that such thoughts are not in any way healthy.

      When I married him it did not occur to me for a second that I would have such difficulty when the time came to finally relinquish him.  That was essentially a time far into the future and in any case for me it wasn't a marriage entered into out of love or at least not love in the way I had previously experienced it.   I married him because he was clearly a good man, a decent man - and an interesting man.   And furthermore because I thought he would treat my four year old son well - and he did.   And because I thought if we had further children he would not favour them ahead of my first-born - and he didn't.  And because I thought that he loved me - and he did.  And added to all that, if I am to be brutally honest, I don't think anyone else had ever shown any inclination to marry me, had ever asked me, had ever admired and desired me as much as he did.  His commitment to me was an intoxicating mix and I thought it was in my best interests to accept him whilst he still felt that way, before he had time to see sense and change his mind. 

      His family was appalled, particularly his poor mother, to witness her only child suddenly encumbered by a woman with a son born out of wedlock from London of all places.  Understandably she found it difficult to be welcoming.  The only point in my favour was my Roman Catholic background because she was a pious woman who never missed Sunday Mass.   Her unmarried but definitely more worldly-wise sister was of a different opinion despite never having moved far from the confines of several South Island, New Zealand towns throughout her life and despite her even more devout nature compelling her to attend Mass on a daily basis if humanly possible.  She maintained that only Good Girls had babies and added, somewhat shockingly, that Bad Girls got rid of them!   She had already been won over by four year old Patrick, then at his most charming.

      The general antipathy did not restrict itself to family and initially a few friends and colleagues were not over-enthusiastic about me either.   There was a general feeling that he could have done better.   One assertive Ward Sister (hospitals still had them back then) even went so far as to darkly hint that New Zealand doctors generally speaking reserved themselves for the nursing profession when making marriage choices.  She made it sound as if he had somehow let the side down, that the nurses of New Zealand had been dealt a rather unnecessary blow.   I found myself nervously almost commiserating with her at one stage for she was a formidable woman with a reputation for running her wards with a rod of iron.  

      Despite the teething problems and the reservations of friends and family, the many predictions of doom and gloom, we were married for forty-eight years.  During that time we had momentous arguments, huge disagreements from time to time during which we hurled accusations and obscenities one to another but the magnificent thing about my greatly loved husband was that no matter what had been said or done in the heat of the moment he never, ever held on to grudges not for a single second. 

      On that Sunday morning three years ago when he died sadly he was completely alone and for me then the silence and the separation became stifling and stretched endlessly before me.   I thought I would never again be able to breathe deeply.  In the ensuing days and weeks I thankfully embraced Covid for abbreviating and truncating the ritual that follows death, preventing much of that which is customary and expected.   I was incapable of doing the things that culture and society generally demand and so there was no funeral, no ceremony of any kind either then or since.   And because I am aware that much of the usual procedures are for the living I wish it had not been so and that I could have done better.

      For three years I have crammed the days and weeks with things I must do, people I must see, organisations I must join, books I must read and those I must write and I have waited for the pain to pass.   Largely it remains like toothache, piercingly acute at times but mostly a dull throb in the background of a life filled with inconsequential activities.  

      I am inordinately comforted by the continuing sadness displayed by Patrick who remains desolate at losing his greatly loved stepfather.  I am suffused with joy when people say how like her father Sinead is, how she seems to embody so many of those same qualities of kindness and concern for others.   A little of the man I came to dearly love so obviously lives on in his daughter and reminds me why I never want to entirely rid myself of my own pain.  It allows me to hold him close.

      I told you it wasn't healthy didn't I?

      

      

Best Friends Remembered ......

 Even though some of us may fight against it, friends seem to become ever more important as we progress through life.   On the other hand it would be true to say that those you thought you were unable to live without when you were much younger can be somehow outgrown with the years as you develop as an individual and circumstances change.   You might even be left wondering what it was that drew you together in the first place.   But some people simply don't seem to have a Use By date and they are the ones destined to occupy the space of Best Friends.

Molly became my Best Friend when I was three years old and remained so for most of my childhood.   She was also my first friend, some months older than me and I always saw her as ultra-sophisticated and oozing life experience.   I still think she was a most unusually imaginative and creative child, emerging determinedly from the poverty stricken depths of those grimy North Kent streets with a positive attitude that was always hard to suppress.  We played together and exchanged confidences on a daily basis and we were never bored.  When we were still very small our favourite game was making perfume with the aid of flowers purloined from the backyards of those dedicated towards beautifying their surroundings.   We definitely had no idea why this activity made us less than popular.   Molly thought it might be because the flower growers were fearful we might be aiming to sell it and make our fortune.  However, we soon discovered the joys of creating vast dioramas with the chunks of chalk that lay all around us and for years we decorated local walls and pavements in a manner that might well have been the envy of Banksy himself. 

We were dedicated readers but in no way high-brow or even intellectually curious and our reading matter of choice was Enid Blyton, later coupled with film star magazines.   By the time she was ten Molly had already allowed Doris Day to become her alter-ego and a year or so later we had both decided on careers in acting and/or writing, or perhaps both.  Molly's innate optimism meant that we didn't consider for a moment that we might have to reach these goals via shifts in Woolworths or the typing pool.   

Neither of us was considered suitable as academic prospects for the local Grammar school despite my father's firm conviction otherwise and so we were shunted on to Northfleet Girls' Secondary Modern.  Because of the way our birthdays fell Molly was in the year above me and had already regaled me with the exciting fact that it was exactly like being in an Enid Blyton boarding school with Form Captains, Prefects, lots of rules about where you could and couldn't walk, and a headmistress called Miss Dennis.   The only fly in the ointment was that you couldn't actually sleep there so there was no possibility of a midnight feast.

I came across my next Best Friend at my next school, Wombwell Hall, where I went to learn shorthand and typing.   Joyce was in no way similar to Molly and she became my friend largely because neither of us were popular enough to be included in the groups of those who were.   We were still friends during our first year in the workplaces of central London and it would be true to say we were a very bad influence on each other.  We changed our names to Lyn (her) and Toni  (me) and took as many sick days off as humanly possible meeting up in the Ladies in Trafalgar Square to apply make-up and pretend we were showgirls.  Later we ran away from home and slept rough in North Kensington for several weeks before the misery of the early onset of winter drove us back to normality.   Joyce's parents decided that her friendship with me was the precipitating factor in her descent into delinquency and we were then forbidden to see each other which was a good thing.

For several years I had no Best Friend but a great many acquaintances, none of whom I liked terribly much and I'm sure they felt the same about me.   I met Michelle at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho where we both felt important, alluring and glamourous because we were allowed to be part of the cabaret.   It was for me a dream come true and I was convinced that I was at last on the way to stardom.  I'm not sure that Michelle felt the same.   She was older than me and had worked in night clubs for a number of years whereas I was a raw beginner. I was thrilled that she seemed keen to be my new Best Friend, though we had little in common.   It was she who introduced me to Vidar the man who was to have a disastrous effect upon my life and with whom I fell precipitously in love.   I can now see that Michelle herself had become accustomed to living a life largely devoid of friends and between her demands upon my time and those of the man who now dominated my affections there followed five years where I tried to please both of them and eventually failed completely of course.

The most significant Best Friend of my adult life was Stella who had a bedsitter on the floor below mine in Onslow Gardens, South Kensington.  She and I took to hitch-hiking in a big way and our weekends during the summer of 1962 were spent determinedly travelling out of central London and into the depths of Surrey or Sussex and once, over a Bank Holiday, as far away as North Wales.  A little later, as confident and seasoned hitchers we decided to head to France and Spain, inexplicably taking Maggie, another young woman from bed-sitter land with us who was in the latter stages of pregnancy.  You might say that we made curious and foolish decisions.   In Northern Spain we were given a lift by a priest who was alarmed by Maggie's obvious condition and took us to a convent he knew of in the Cantabrian Mountains directing the nuns to care for us until he returned.

He never did return but the nuns did as he directed, even delivering Maggie's baby and eventually getting rid of us via yet another passing priest who was intent on spending a few days of rest and prayer on his journey South.   When he resumed his journey we went with him and eventually returned to London via sea from Gibraltar.   Maggie's baby therefore had an interesting start in life.   She had been named Trini because she was born on Trinity Sunday and this choice had pleased the nuns enormously.    We all thought it was the least we could do.

Stella remained the most significant Best Friend of my life until her death from Multiple Myeloma in the early 1990s.  I still miss her.  She and I went on to share a flat together in Paddington which at the time we described as Maida Vale.  We had both become single parents, each of us delighted to defy the conventions of the time, convinced we were superlative mothers.  We had long decided that children lucky enough to have mothers as perfect as we obviously were, did not need fathers.  It was to be years before we began to rethink this conviction.  Meanwhile we lived a life of some ease, babysitting for each other, ensuring the children were exposed to all that life could offer and that we could afford, and engaging in gentle activism by pursuing the Rights of Single Mothers.   

Later I went on to get married to a New Zealander, move countries and have more children.  My friends became the people I met at playgroups and kindergartens, ballet classes and Children's Chess Clubs.   As a somewhat mundane wife and mother I had stopped having Best Friends and people became easier to relinquish because overall they lacked importance and the relationships were not as necessary as they might once have been.    Sometimes this seemed a pity but it is only more recently that I've begun to consider what it was about those individuals who still stand out in memory as Best Friends that made them so special.  Why is it they will never be forgotten?

A FIVE POUND FINE

 At a community discussion meeting recently I found myself confronting a number of long discarded memories about unacceptable behaviour.  I still vividly recall those signs on Public Transport that disappeared decades ago but were intended to discourage spitting in public places.  The prohibition signs were common on the North Kent buses I regularly travelled on - DO NOT EXPECTORATE and warned that the fine was a hefty five pounds.  This was undoubtedly a relic from a time when the practice was believed to spread tuberculosis and surprisingly spitting in public places was still a criminal offence until 1990.  I do wonder however, how many people found themselves facing a fine of any description.

Five pounds was a huge sum of money when I was a small child, not altering its status greatly as I matured into a teenager, although at some stage during that time the white cotton paper note that whispered and rustled importantly had significant changes wrought upon it.  It diminished in size, became blue and the sounds it made when transferred from one hand to another were infinitely less exhilarating.

When Molly began her first job at Featherstones, Parrock Street, Gravesend she couldn't wait to tell me about the customer in the veiled velour hat who had paid for her purchase with an actual five pound note!   Not one of the new-fangled blue ones that were rapidly to lose a little of their magic, but a genuine crisp and crackly white one, passed importantly across the glass counter top before her fifteen year old self, eyes wide with astonishment.  It was the very first note of such denomination she had ever seen.

I couldn't say I had ever seen one either, at least not close up and with any reliability.  Some years previously I had caught a glimpse of one when the mysterious aunts from Greece descended upon 28 York Road out of the blue in search of my father and causing my mother a great deal of emotional distress.  The black taxi they arrived in was astonishingly paid for with the fluttery white note causing excitement also for the driver who took some time to negotiate the change required.  Exotic in fur coats and silk dresses, high heels, with nails long and painted and bearing names like Aunts Wilhelmina and Mariella they intruded upon our lives for just one afternoon ensuring glimpses of the possible glamour foreign climes might offer for years to come.

To return to the cautionary signs on the 496 and 480 buses and the warning of enormous fines, I was always completely confused by them primarily because I had no idea what `expectorate' meant and it was never adequately explained to me.  When my reading skills developed sufficiently to be able to sound it out in a halfway comprehensible way I managed almost immediately to confuse it with `exaggerate' which naturally enough resulted in even more misunderstanding.

As a seven year old at St Botolph's School I was accused by Mrs Johnson on playground duty of grossly exaggerating what I saw as the unacceptable behaviour of Jennifer Berryman.  It was never a good idea to exaggerate she warned, because it could quickly become a habit that would lead me into trouble.   With the chilling fear and trepidation that only an over-imaginative seven-year-old can feel I was for several days excessively concerned that the information should not be passed on to my mother who might then be required to pay the resulting five pound fine.  At that time the enormous sum represented more than my father's weekly wage and my part in such a sum being demanded of us might well result in me being termed as Beyond Parental Control.  This was something my mother in particular frequently described me as and I knew that there were special places where children like me could be Put Away.

Confiding this fear to Molly, nearly one year older and generally a lot more worldly with rather better reading skills, she was of the opinion that if we knew of no-one who had encountered such a fine for gross exaggeration we could safely assume it was unlikely to happen.  A day or two later she thought I might have mispronounced the word anyway and it was probably exterminate which of course threw up similar confusion as did her alternative suggestions - eliminate and interrogate.  I was somewhat reassured, however, because her life experience definitely surpassed my own as did her familiarity with long words.

The misinterpretations continued until we learned somehow or other that to expectorate was simply to spit and nobody was all that keen on those who indulged in that habit particularly if they had experienced more than a passing acquaintance with TB.

All this recall surrounding DO NOT EXPECTORATE came back to mind ever more vividly last Wednesday when more than one neighbour gave their opinion when discussing the difficulties of assimilating those from differing cultures into present day society and the habits we definitely expect them to abandon.

POCKET MONEY MIGHT MAKE THIEVES

 There was no doubt at all about the general monotony of life in 1950 in our corner of North Kent.  It was something we were completely accustomed to, relieved only for some of us by extravagant dreams for the future.  And most of the more rational of us didn't even bother with the dreams, instead preferring to dwell upon what our meagre pocket money might buy on Pay Day which for some reason was usually Thursday.  Once my father returned from North Africa and was safely employed at Bevans Cement Works I was supposed to receive pocket money because I needed to understand the value of money, that's what he said.  However I learned not to rely on it because more often than not it was curtailed because of some misdemeanour.   I'm not sure if Molly from number 31 received pocket money at all but on the other hand she had the kind of mother who bought comics and pear drops from Simms' shop so the deprivation didn't hit her quite as hard as it hit me.

  It was girls like Barbara Scutts and Rita Jenkins whose mothers made embroidered Dutch bonnets and angora boleros for them to wear on Sundays, those whose pocket money status was obvious simply by looking at them - they were the ones receiving a penny for each year of their lives on a regular basis!  And besides that they loudly discussed with each other the items and delicacies they might buy next.  That can be quite irritating when you're nine years old and desperate for sticks of liquorice wood or locust beans from the shop on The Hill at Northfleet.  The fact that the occasional wriggling inhabitant could be found in the beans was beside the point and in any case Billy Elliot who appeared to be more knowledgeable than the rest of us, the wrigglers simply amounted to a bit of extra protein.  I did not of course know what protein was but it all sounded more than believable.  My innate longing for money became even stronger when lurid pink balls of bubble gum became available from the same shop which was located very conveniently on our way to school.  It did not escape my notice that Barbara and Rita of the angora boleros were the first in our class to blow plastic looking bubbles!

  I knew there was no point whatsoever discussing any of these money problems with my mother and at that stage I tried not to speak too much to my father.  Later I learned that my mother's favourite sweet treat as a child had been gobstoppers that changed colour as you sucked them.  She claimed that she once nearly choked to death on one and it might have been true as she seemed to regard any sweet item consumed between meals as dangerous.  Meanwhile I became ever more consumed with fury that I was not to be accorded the same prestige as nearly choking to death would give me.  I decided that the only avenue left was theft and that was when I began to steal the odd coin or two from the pockets of my father's work jacket.

  I did not begin this journey into crime lightly.  I told myself it was important to be fair to him but of course I didn't actually believe that but there was no way in the world I wanted to be caught and that particular thought caused me sleepless nights.   I developed a system where I only carried out the pilfering every second week, extracting only pennies or halfpennies making sure to juggle the days.  I can now see of course that I was possessed of all the hallmarks of a career criminal even though I would like to shift the blame onto my mother and her family, most of whom took petty theft in their stride without too much comment.   My own ill gotten gains were spent faithfully in the shop on The Hill on liquorice wood and locust beans in the kind of quantities that became extremely satisfying.   I was at times even moved to share the booty with those classmates I most detested simply to demonstrate how generous I was.  I could not help noticing, however, how tentatively Barbara Scutts accepted bubble gum, examining it carefully before putting it into her mouth as if she suspected me of lacing it with Ricin.

  My poor trusting father failed to notice the thefts even when I stripped him of two pennies and one sixpenny piece on one occasion in order to finance the purchase of a blue Alice Band as a birthday gift for Margaret Snelling who now sat next to me in Mr Clarke's classroom.  The complication of what resulted from that rather rash purchase, however, was what gave rise to the sudden halt in further thefts and all because of the bicycle she had just inherited from an older cousin.

  Margaret had been so appreciative of the Alice Band that she rapidly decided we were now close friends, inviting me to her nephew Philip's second birthday party in the kitchen of her house in Stonebridge Road where we ate jelly and ice cream and little cakes with pink icing.  Because I was not accustomed to parties that celebrated birthdays I was delighted of course.   I was less delighted when she took to riding over to our house on Saturday mornings to say hello and completely horrified when she did so one day actually wearing the Alice Band, especially when my mother admired it.

  For what seemed for ever it was as if time itself stood still as I waited in rising panic for the executioner's axe to fall.  But strangely the moment passed without further comment and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Wiping my clammy hands on my clothing I became at once aware of the rapid beating of my heart and immediately resolved to abandon my career as a straightforward thief.   I would from that day forward no longer steal from my family.  Instead I began to purloin bus fares and Brownies subs money together with the Sunday Mass penny for the plate.  

  Looking back I can only be amazed at this complete lack of conscience particularly when just a few years later I chose to be totally condemning of my brother's fall from grace, particularly his thefts from our mother.  I also realise that the only reason it was my father who became victim to my own thefts was because I was all too aware that being without conscience herself and with years of petty theft behind her, my mother would have realised the truth of the situation immediately!

It all seems very odd now, entering a life of crime simply to finance an overwhelming desire for liquorice wood and locust beans.  I was sharply reminded of it a few days ago when a neighbour's grandchild proudly showed me a gobstopper in his mouth that changed colour as he sucked it.   I think I even warned him to be careful because I knew someone who'd nearly choked to death on one! 

  

ASSAILED BY AGE

One of the more minor problems that accompanies old age is that there isn't really an acceptable term for it.  Senior Citizen doesn't really cut it no matter how carelessly it is thrown into the conversation.   But that's beside the point really because the major irritation of old age is that it descends upon the victim unnecessarily swiftly and silently, almost in slippered feet.   One minute you are carelessly in your late fifties and definitely middle aged and the next you are contemplating the inconvenience of cataracts and paying great attention to the rising cost of winter heating.  

When you become a Senior Citizen younger Citizens particularly those related to you by blood all of a sudden assume Rights over you.  They begin to invade your personal space whether you like it or not albeit in small ways at first.   They might make hurried visits to you during which they assume it's perfectly acceptable to switch off the radio programme you were half listening to, open all the windows and inspect the fridge just to acquaint themselves with what's inside.  If you fail to complain immediately within a week or two they will not only handing out advice as to how you can improve your life but expecting it to be promptly acted upon. 

Conversation changes especially discussion and debate on world affairs, matters upon which due to your great age you have always assumed you know a thing or two.  This may now be replaced by mini diatribes during which you are advised what in fact you may now believe if you want to be listened to at all for more than a minute and a half.     

But essentially none of the above, vexing though it all may be, needs to provoke murderous reaction.   What is much more likely to inflame the kind of rage that may well later be described as an episode of homicidal mania is when a bone in wrist or foot is for some reason or other damaged and a well-meaning neighbour queries in the kind of tone that should be reserved for a survivor of The Somme, if perhaps you slipped in the shower.  That might be bad enough but to add insult to injury your reply regarding the bus that came to a sudden halt may be ignored!

Or when the weather report advises unexpected showers and you sensibly take the folding walking stick out with you and yet another acquaintance strides in your direction to announce loudly and as if they are speaking with a two-year-old that it really is a Splendid Stick you are carrying! 

It all adds up to a sudden streak of social insensitivity perhaps but then again maybe when you join the ranks of those who are old you are no longer entitled to civility or charm.