Spectacles
Page 7
No, it bloody isn’t!
Mum:
Have a look at it!
Dad:
It’s not pink!
Mum:
Yes, it is!
Dad:
It isn’t! It’s pinkish …
Yes. As pinkish as blancmange. As pinkish as baby sick. Pink. Ish.
So, back to our ‘holiday’ to Brighton. We are in the car and my mum is screaming, ‘Bert! MIND THE SIDES!’
Here is the thing. When Mum and Dad decided more
MAJOR WORKS
were needed, they opted to splash some cash on a garage. Our local builder Pat, as always, was on hand to help. Now Pat was a lovely man, but on the official cowboy scale he ranked somewhere between Billy the Kid and Buffalo Bill. He had many skills, but mathematics was not, it transpired, one of them.
In his build calculations Pat had made a key error. He made the garage too narrow at the front, and even more narrow at the rear. Once constructed, we discovered that the inside of the front half of the garage was just four centimetres wider than the total width of the car, but hey, that was roomy compared with the back.
‘Shit. Want me to bin it and start again, Ann?’ Pat had said blithely on discovering his mistake.
‘Not at all, Pat,’ said Mum, with a passive aggression I have, apparently, gone on to inherit.
Mum and Dad could have parked the car outside the house, on the roadside, but no. They had paid for that garage and they were damn well going to use it. Parking meant painstakingly edging the nose of the car inside, until the backs of the wing mirrors hit the entranceway. Only the bonnet was hidden from view, the rest of the car stuck out, proudly, arse to the elements.
In order to exit safely without scratching the paintwork, it would routinely take my dad a good two or three minutes from turning on the engine to finally hitting the road.
Back to our ‘holiday’. It’s 5.33 a.m.
Dad: We’re off! [Putting the gearstick into reverse]
He edges out of the garage at roughly the speed of evolution.
Mum:
[shrieking] You’re clear on the left! Watch the wheels!
Dad:
We’re off! [Again, as if trying to convince us]
Mum:
Bert! MIND THE SIDES!
5.36 a.m. The excitement of departure over, tiredness would hit me, whereupon I’d black out.
We would arrive in Brighton around 6 a.m.
Let me tell you, 6 a.m. wasn’t the romantic time it is now, with people making artisan bread, taking Bikram yoga classes and sipping on their barista’s best Chai latte. NO. This was the 1970s, and 6 a.m. was a brutal hour. Nothing was open, no one was out, and no fun whatsoever was to be had.
‘Are we here?’ I murmured.
‘Is it morning yet?’ whispered Michelle.
‘Would anyone like a Marmite sandwich?’ said Mum brightly, holding aloft something brown and sweaty wrapped in cling film.
‘What now?’ moaned David, in and out of consciousness.
‘We wait,’ said Dad like some kind of Fair Isle-wearing ninja. And wait we did. We waited and we waited. Occasionally we’d drift off, only to be woken by a savoury waft as Mum unwound the cellophane to check on the mummified sarnies beneath. We waited for THREE HOURS until the shops opened. I say shops; it was actually only one shop we were interested in – the fudge shop.
Finally, nine o’clock would come and the fudge shop would open. We’d run in, buy a block of rum and raisin and rush out. Thirty seconds later it was all gone.
Then came the sugar rush.
As we hit peak hyperglycaemia, we’d get booted out of the car for some enforced ‘fun’. This took the form of swimming. Brighton is famed for its sole-splitting pebbled beaches; what’s perhaps less well known was the sheer volume of dog shit and used needles on them in the mid 70s. We’d pick our way through the obstacles, with the promise of the black sewage-streaked waters of the English Channel in front of us. Happy days.
‘Help me, Mum. Please! I’m dying!’ I’d say, shivering pitifully on the shingle after my brief dip.
‘Nonsense, it’s refreshing,’ said Dad, who hadn’t set foot anywhere near the water.
‘Sandwich?’ said Mum, proffering a boomerang of bent dough with Stork margarine oozing from its sides.
It took me the best part of a decade to realize why we’d leave so early. It wasn’t because Dad wanted the A23 to himself (and he’s welcome to it), and it wasn’t because they were worried all the fudge from the fudge shop would get eaten if we didn’t queue outside from six in the morning. No, Dad wanted to leave early so he could be home in time for 12.15 and Grandstand.
By the time midday struck we’d all be back home, comatose, with ripped feet and spiked insulin levels. Whereupon we’d pass out again until the sound of the vidiprinter and Dad’s wailing (as Charlton Athletic got held to another no-score draw) echoed round the lounge.
By 5 p.m. we were awake again, somewhat bewildered, wondering if we’d made the whole thing up.
‘You ready for tea?’ said Mum. ‘It’s Marmite sandwiches …’
OLD SOUTH WALES AND THE NEWSAGENT OF DOOM
One year, we tried to have an actual holiday. You know, a holiday – where you go away for somewhere longer than six hours. Dad had decided it was high time we visited his favourite place in the whole world – Wales – specifically the Gower. So far, so glorious. But, because this is Dad we’re talking about, this wasn’t going to be your normal tourist pilgrimage to the gorgeous sands of Pobbles, Three Cliffs or Rhossili Bay. No. Dad wasn’t interested in beaches or countryside or scenery or any of that nonsense. The only reason he was going, and by extension we were going, was because he wanted to find a newsagent.
‘What do you mean, a newsagent? We’ve got one of those down the road,’ shouted Mum, on learning of our destination.
‘It’s a special one. In the Gower.’
‘Why on earth do you want to find that?’ said Mum.
‘I went there as a boy. I want to see if it’s still there.’
‘Was it a particularly nice newsagent?’
‘Perfectly pleasant, thanks. Now I’m going to get the car out. I’ll see you outside in ten minutes.’
And that was that.
Our accommodation was a static in a 1970s caravan park. For those unfamiliar with statics, they have all the worst aspects of caravanning without the one redeeming feature: mobility. I can remember the tang of chemical toilet, the endless grey concrete, but most of all I remember the rain. I have never known rain like it. It started raining the moment we arrived and it did not stop for one single second until we left. It was the sort of rain that ate at your bones. The sort of rain that turned the sky to slate, so that day was indistinguishable from night. It drummed relentlessly on the roof and hit the windows like hysterical toddler tears.
It rained so hard that my eardrums held the memory of it for weeks. You know when people have a leg removed yet still have a sense of it being there, post-amputation? A phantom limb? Well, I had the same sensation with the sound of rain. Even after the deluge the echo of it lingered faintly in my eardrums.
In these conditions the static caravan quickly went from what we had hoped it would be – an occasional base – to a full-time prison. Within hours of our incarceration, the five of us had descended into open warfare. We screamed and shouted and lashed out. After one particularly fraught exchan
ge, Dad chased me in circles around the minute lounge area with a hairbrush, like a coiffeur Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Mum ended up having to pacify him with a lukewarm Fray Bentos pie.
After three days of breathing each other’s stale air, we finally donned full waterproofs and headed out for our trip. The fury of the rain on the car roof meant that all conversations inside had to be bellowed at full volume.
Mum:
WHERE IS THIS NEWSAGENT?
Dad:
WHAT NEWSAGENT?
Mum:
THE ONE YOU’VE DRAGGED US HERE TO SEE.
Dad:
I TOLD YOU – IT’S IN THE GOWER.
Mum:
BERT, THIS IS THE GOWER! THE GOWER IS SEVENTY SQUARE MILES! YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE MORE SPECIFIC!
Dad:
WELL, I THINK WE SHOULD KEEP LOOKING – TRY SOME OTHER STREETS. I MAY HAVE GOT IT WRONG.
We carry on. Mum lapses into silent fury. Dad circles the roads for hours, slowing at every shop.
Mum:
[barking, as dusk starts to fall] DO YOU THINK IT MIGHT HAVE SHUT DOWN? IT WAS THE LATE 1940s LAST TIME YOU VISITED …
Dad:
FINE. WE’LL STOP THEN. LET’S JUST PULL OVER AND GET THE KIDS SOME CRISPS.
We drive for another hour. It transpires every single newsagent in Wales is shut.
Dad:
I WONDER IF THE CHIP SHOP I USED TO GO TO IS STILL HERE?
Not one of us replies.
Sometime in my early teens my maternal grandparents decided to move, like so many other nouveau riche, to the Costa del Sol. I never really understood how they made their money, only that they ran a car dealership in south London and that my granddad was in the Masons. To my mind, the Masons was an organization so scary it ranked somewhere between Opus Dei and the Ku Klux Klan, where hooded men sat around and whispered about the Rotary club or how to influence the planning guy at the council.
I loved the idea of Granddad being in a secret society, especially since someone at school told me the Masonic induction ritual involved holding a compass in your right hand while dropping your trousers. Why I had no idea. Perhaps Masons were required to be able to find north in all situations, including when caught in flagrante. Anyway, if it is true, it’s one in the eye for all those who say that men can’t multi-task.
From looking at my granddad, you’d deduce one of two things: he was either a car salesman or a Caucasian Huggy Bear impersonator. He was permanently encased in sheepskin and always behind the wheel of a Mercedes. On Sunday he and Grandma would turn up for lunch in a brand-new car, straight off the forecourt. Next week a different one would get a spin. I am not one for cars, but even to this day I get a visceral thrill from seeing a vintage Benz – the bulky SEs, the pillar-less coupés and my favourite, the 1969 280SL in black with cognac interior. Strange how we fetishize our past. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the car I drive, but the thought of that one …
My grandparents bought a flat several floors up in a whitewashed high-rise in Torremolinos. Yes, my friends, they were living the expat dream. England had gone to the dogs, while Spain was a promised land of whitewashed high-rises, displaced bank robbers and knackered beach donkeys.
We visited just before my fourteenth birthday. It was my first time on a plane. It was the first time I’d seen the sun. I immediately went from Nosferatu to lobster, before peeling and turning Nosferatu again.
We lived off rugby-ball-shaped loaves of pan rustico, which would go from fresh to stale in twenty minutes. We drank Fanta through straws, which made it automatically 100 per cent more exotic than the same stuff we’d guzzled out of cans back home. At night we would wander in T-shirts along La Carihuela staring at the craftsmen and their stalls – a toothless man selling statues made from torn Coke cans, a hippy with amber eyes and skin like tobacco leaves, weaving strips of leather into bracelets. It was unbearably exciting, the bustle, the heat, the energy. What’s not to love about a country where even the question marks fly in the face of convention¿
By the time I finished school I had travelled to London, to Edinburgh and to most of the fast-food outlets of the Costa del Sol. That was it. I was no different from my parents, whose sole lifetime excursion, excluding those I’ve mentioned, was a brief trip to Malaga. I’ll let them take over.
Dad:
We were on a bus.
Mum:
It was heaving. Full. Rammed full of Spanish.
Dad:
Who else was it going to be full of? We were in Spain …
Mum:
I had you [Me]. You were ill.
Dad:
She’s always ill …
Mum:
I think it was whooping cough.
Dad:
It was a cold.
Mum:
It was whooping cough. I did all the checks.
Dad:
Anyway, I had David. And he suddenly started kicking off and screaming, so I thought I’d pick him up. I held him up in the air. Cut a long story short, he pissed in my face.
Me:
Pissed in your face?
Dad:
Yes.
Me:
What? What, did he have no nappy on? Was he just a naked baby on a bus?
Mum:
You have to remember, Susan, it was the 70s.
Me:
Well, what happened after that?
Dad:
Well, everyone stared at me. And I smelled. And then it dried. And then I think we went back home. Is that right, Ann?
Mum:
[very quietly] Yes.
Their honeymoon they also recalled in loving detail.
Dad:
[getting down his dossier from the shelf and reading from it] Seventh of October 1967, Paguera in Majorca.
Me:
Thanks, Rain Man.
Mum:
The Hotel Bahia Club. We still have the ashtray from it.
Me:
Why?
Dad:
Good question.
Mum:
Because it hasn’t broken yet.
I love that. That sums up my mum in one sentence. Why keep something? Because it isn’t broken. Retain until destroyed. Cling on until obliteration. Never give up, never surrender. Ann Perkins is the veritable Buzz Lightyear of all things, including love. I often think to myself, Why do they stay together, these two people – through thick and thin, through depression and anxiety, through sickness and health? And there is the answer. Because, as stretched as it may be, it simply hasn’t broken yet.
It was my relationship with Rob that really opened the doors to international travel. He was a man of the world, having been to Portugal and everything. A year before the sadness of that clinic in Florida we headed off for a holiday in Los Angeles.
Rob and I decided to visit all the theme parks we could whi
le we were there. Perhaps subconsciously we wanted to do something innocent and childlike together in the midst of the increasingly grim realities of adulthood. It was a terrible idea. I’d had an overwhelming fear of roller coasters ever since John Daniels’ dad detached his retina that time so anything more rigorous than a teacup and saucer ride is guaranteed to render me giddy with terror. As we approached the entrance to Six Flags Magic Mountain, I started to feel anxious.
Me:
I hate rides, you know I hate rides …
Rob:
This isn’t a ride, I promise you.
We join a snaking queue of hopped-up adolescents, nervous and not sure what to expect. Sure enough, as we get nearer the entrance, I see the telltale health disclaimers.
Me:
[suspicious] What’s this ride called?
Rob:
It’s not a ride! Stop worrying!
Me:
Yes, but what’s it called …
Rob:
ISN’T THIS FUN! [He shouts in what I take to be an attempt to mask the screams coming from above]
Me:
Why does it say you have to declare if you have a heart condition?
Rob:
Oh, you know Americans …
It was too late. No sooner had my eyes seen the legend FREE FALL than I was bundled by a joyless teen in a branded T-shirt into the cart. As we started to move, all became clear. Rob had got me there on a technicality. No, it wasn’t a ride, it was a drop. A sheer drop. A high-speed zero-gravity drop to the centre of the earth. The bars clamped down on my knees, and up we went, up to more than a hundred feet.