Bonkers: My Life in Laughs

by Saunders, Jennifer

  ‘What’s that for?’ I asked.

  ‘For dancing.’

  ‘We’re not doing dancing.’

  ‘Yeah, but when we have this lesson, the teacher lets us bring our records in and do dancing.’

  ‘Right.’

  I decided to negotiate.

  ‘OK. You do some work and then, at the end, you can do dancing.’

  By now, we were halfway through the lesson anyway, and after a short spell of ‘work’ the records began to be played. There was nothing I could do. After about ten minutes, they got bored and turned to me.

  ‘Why don’t you dance, Miss?’

  ‘No, no. I don’t dance.’

  ‘Yes you do. Come on, Miss, DANCE.’

  So I danced and danced, to cries of ‘Dance, Miss! Dance!’

  It took me a moment to realize that the classroom door had opened and standing in the doorway was Miss Dawn French. She had witnessed the whole thing. Her school had closed that day and she had decided to pay me a visit. Everything she had thought about my commitment to teaching was confirmed, and to this day I haven’t lived it down.

  Dance, Miss! Dance!

  Still in the egg, and I can now hear that, outside, the hatchers are starting to form some sort of primordial society. Squeaks and gibbon noises and grunts.

  I open my egg, just enough so I can have a look. I was right. Quite a few are taking this very seriously indeed; some are gathering the newspaper shells of other people’s eggs, and fights are breaking out. I can see JoBo’s egg, and she is watching me. The look in her eye says, Really, Foffy, do we have to?

  I shake my head. Not yet …

  At the end of term every year at Central, there was an actors’ cabaret where actors and actresses could show off their special skills – singin’ and poncin’ about. Dawn didn’t like most of the actors because they really didn’t want to be seen mixing with the teachers. We were considered slightly beneath them, and only the secure ones would ever break the pose. She still feels the hurt, and if you ask she will give you a twenty-minute rant on the subject. So she decided, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, that we should perform at the cabaret. The Menopazzi Sisters had their first gig. By now, we had embellished the leotards by sewing nipple tassels on to the back, as if we were wearing them back to front, and had put white make-up all over our faces. We put flour on our hands and feet, to represent resin. You have to use resin for grip if you’re performing a dangerous circus act. And believe me, this was dangerous.

  The actors’ cabaret was invaded by student teachers on our course, who came to watch. After a couple of guitar strummers and singers and poetry readers, we were on. And, I have to say, I think we stormed it. We got our first real audience laughs, and that is the greatest feeling. Like the nicest tickle. I like that tickle. I’ve always liked that tickle. And once you know you can get a laugh, it’s absolutely addictive. It’s a very nice feeling, making someone laugh. It kind of makes everything OK. And even the actors laughed! We could afford a bit of a swagger next time we walked through the lobby.

  When the next cabaret came along, we had really worked up an act: a reprise of the Menopazzis, followed by two American characters we wrote a sketch for. Double stormer. Dawn had had her revenge on every actor who had ever spurned her advances in the coffee bar. You know what? You may be actors, but you are just not funny!

  So, there we were, at the end of the third year, poised for a comedy future – but it didn’t happen immediately. We had never actually considered taking it further. Dawn went off to become a teacher, while I moved into a house in Chelsea with JoBo. Dawn and I kept in touch, but we believed that that part of our lives was over. And it was, for a while.

  I have hatched and deserted my eggshell, and am watching from the sides.

  There are the grunters, and the softly weepingers, and the completely-no-imagination-at-allers, just sitting still. It’s silly, but not at all funny, and eventually it winds down. No one is quite sure where we are supposed to go with this.

  We look around. The teacher who set the whole experiment has pissed off. He has gone to the pub.

  TWO

  I am sitting on the steps outside the small house that I’m sharing with JoBo in Glebe Place, Chelsea.

  JoBo has just gone up to the King’s Road to buy a paper, so we can do the crossword. We have nothing else to do. We don’t have jobs. The house was rented from the Church Commissioners by JoBo’s boyfriend, and we have been allowed to stay in it while he is abroad. It is shabby, to say the least, and becomes shabbier the longer we live there. The whole house is slowly collapsing due to dry rot. There are holes in the stairs where feet have gone through. Throughout the house we have to tread quite carefully in order not to find ourselves a floor below.

  Where the plaster has fallen off the walls and the original rotted wattling is exposed, we pick it off and burn it on the fire to keep warm. No, this isn’t Dickens’s time: it is 1980. By the time JoBo’s boyfriend returns a year later, very little of the original house remains. We have even burned some of his old law books that we found in a cupboard, because we can’t afford coal.

  We sleep in a room together on two single mattresses on the floor. There are no curtains, but there is a cupboard that we don’t use. We hang everything on something that’s standing in the middle of the room. It’s covered in so many clothes that we have no idea what it is. Turns out to be the Hoover. But we don’t hoover. In fact, we can navigate our way to our mattresses by following a path that we have made through the thick dust on the carpet with our feet.

  JoBo has rented out two other rooms in the house. Maggie, a teacher, and Sarah, then a secretary, are our housemates. They actually have jobs, but don’t seem to mind the squalor. We also have a cat called Spider. As we have very little money, we often split a tin of pilchards with Spider.

  This is going to sound awful. JoBo and I realize we should sign on, but cannot be bothered. The Social Security office is a long way down the Fulham Road, and that kind of energy is lacking. We are layabouts. We get up late, do nothing, talk a lot, scrounge drinks in the pub and then sit on the step.

  Sometimes we’ll go up the King’s Road to see if anyone’s about. I once saw Blondie in the grocer’s.

  When JoBo comes back from the shops, she will hopefully have got a copy of The Stage so that we can look for jobs. What we would really like to do is work on a cruise. Be entertainers on a cruise. Yes, you have to work, but you are on that cruise having a cruise.*

  JoBo’s friend Fi Cotter Craig (who would become a TV producer, but at this moment is a secretary) often comes over in the evening. It’s an easy house to get into. There is a wire coat hanger behind the empty window box and you just slide it through the letter box and pull the latch. We don’t have keys. Fi sometimes gets us work in her office, stuffing leaflets into envelopes, for which we actually get paid. But, generally, money is tight and food scarce. Our favourite dish is frozen peas with margarine and pepper. Belinda PB pops in sometimes with leftover food packages from her directors’ lunches, which keep us going for a while.

  The other day, when we were really desperate, JoBo came up with a plan. She had to drop her cousin back at her old convent school in Hertfordshire and I was to come with her. While JoBo was taking the girl in and keeping the nuns occupied, I was to get out and go round the back of the school to the vegetable garden (JoBo drew me a map) and steal vegetables. I was terrified. When JoBo was out of sight, I followed the map round to the veg garden. If spotted by a nun, I had to appear nonchalant and admiring of the garden. I was wandering around with a huge basket and some plastic bags trying to look innocent. I find that so hard. It’s a bit like when you have to use cue cards in a studio to help with lines that you keep forgetting. On ‘Action’, I make a point of not looking at the cue cards, in case it seems like I’m looking at the cue cards. Which completely defeats the point. Anyway, I got as far as the runner beans and filled a couple of bagfuls, but lost my nerve when it came to actually pullin
g things out of the ground. I know I don’t believe in God, but what if he was watching?

  I sensed JoBo’s disappointment. We had runner beans to eat for the next two weeks.

  I like sitting on the step and watching the world go by. I’m quite happy on my own and always have been.

  We were given a lot of freedom growing up; the biggest punishment was not being allowed out. The worst words I could ever hear were ‘You can’t go outside today.’ Outside, I could do whatever I wanted: ride a bike, poke around with a stick, build a den, climb trees. I never had to tell my parents where I was going; I just had to be back for mealtimes. My parents never fussed. Nobody did then. You just sort of got on with it, really.

  Growing up in RAF camps is comparatively safe. They are gated communities and there isn’t a lot of traffic. We spent all day outside riding bikes, roller-skating and going to the perimeter fence to watch planes taking off. I would be quite happy to spend all day watching planes taking off and landing; quite happy to have a deckchair on a roof at Heathrow and see the aircraft coming in and out.

  My mother never felt the need to check up on us constantly. The final RAF quarters we lived in were in Melksham, and they were nowhere near a runway. A whole camp had been demolished, leaving only the officers’ quarters. Our address was 2OMQ (officers’ married quarters), The Old Hospital Site, Melksham. To get to the houses, you had to drive through the overgrown remains of buildings; it looked like an atom bomb had been dropped. Tiny streets named after aeroplanes were lined with rubble – Vulcan Avenue, Hastings Way, Lancaster Drive. In the middle of the site was the old parade ground, a vast expanse of tarmac where people were taken to learn to drive. We went there sometimes in the car, and my father would let us steer. I have never lost that bug. Even now, if someone else is driving, I feel the urge to ask if I can steer.

  The old site may have looked like a nightmare, but to us children it was heaven and we cycled around it whenever we could. We made dens in the shells of buildings and were thrilled by the amount of rude graffiti that we found on the walls. At night, the site became quite a different place, judging by the number of used condoms that had been tossed into the hedges.

  When I asked my mother if she had ever worried about us, she said, ‘Not really. I thought you were all probably quite sensible.’

  Sadly, this is true. My fourteen-year-old self’s diaries make a fairly humdrum read:

  Friday, 28 January 1972

  Barnaby rolled in mud. Received a letter from Fiona. Had needlework, did nothing. Mrs Dodd away. Thank god. Had a French lesson. Mrs Cross let us listen to tapes and look at pictures. Gave a letter to Stephen Okell who said he did not like Gill. Mucked out stables. Barnaby rolled in mud again. Have made up a code. Ate some AYDs. Radio sounds terrible.

  Saturday, 29 January 1972

  Put ponies out. Snowed slightly. Going into Chester to look at a flute. Bought it.

  Groomed and rode. Took him out on the road. Watched telly. Ate enormous tea.

  Watched Cliff Richard and The New Seekers on Songs of Praise. Man Utd lost 2–1 to WBA. Went to bed at midnight.

  Thursday, 3 February 1972

  Windy rainy night. Wore my new black boots. Forgot to do my Biology. Handed my German in on wrong pile. Oversewed my straps in needlework.

  Started pouring with rain. Had my flute lesson. Did Telemann. Mum picked me up. After watching The Vera Lynn Show went to bed.

  Am apparently in bad mood.

  As I said, the much-anticipated teenage diary written in code was also disappointing. The first line I cracked was ‘I really want a velvet hacking jacket.’ Why was this a secret?

  Home, from the age of thirteen, was Acton Bridge in Cheshire. The Grange was a large, red-brick Victorian house that sat squarely on a small hill, overlooking a millpond. It was idyllic. The area itself was quite industrial, but you wouldn’t have known it when you were there. Occasionally, on a clear night, you could see the lights from Ellesmere Port and, if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, you might get a faint whiff of burning oil. About three fields away was a big railway line, but it wasn’t close enough to bother us really; the house was in its own little bubble. It had a huge garden, which my parents filled with vegetables, shrubs and specimen trees, with paddocks beyond. They were both great doers, and it was the first garden that they could see through to fruition. To reach town you had to walk down to the end of a long lane and then get on the bus, which provided the perfect excuse not to socialize.

  I was a quiet child. I was a watcher. I liked to stare. My mother said I would often wander off and be found staring at people a little bit too closely, and have to be removed.

  My mother dressed me and my brothers in similar outfits when we were little. It made sense as we did the same things. We rode bikes, climbed trees, made bonfires and dens. I wanted to be a cowboy and I always wanted a tommy gun for Christmas. I would still quite like a tommy gun for Christmas.

  It was great growing up with brothers. I think it gave me a competitive edge. Not the kind of competitiveness that girls have with each other. I know about that, because I have witnessed it, first hand, with my daughters. If you have an argument with your brothers, you have a proper fight and try to hurt them and then forget about it. You don’t sit and sulk and spend every mealtime giving each other ‘the evils’, and then perhaps bopping them hard on the head with a teaspoon.

  We always had rusty old motorbikes lying around that my brothers had got going, and we raced them around the fields. We did timed courses and small ramp jumps. Anything they could do, I wanted to do, and generally I wanted to do it faster.

  Tim went away to school but would come back home in the holidays. His room was on the top floor at the back of the house and was always neat. There were Yes posters on the wall and a bit of Salvador Dali. He listened to Pink Floyd and David Bowie, while I was still into David Cassidy but moving towards a total T. Rex obsession. When Tim was back at school I would go up to his room and see if there was any chocolate. Tim was picky and always cut the fat off his ham, and never finished his Easter egg. He would hide it, and other chocolate, in his sock drawer. Sock drawer? I mean, that was the first place I would look! If you’re looking for anything, the first place to look is in the sock or knicker drawer. Little by little, the egg would be eaten. With each nibble I thought, Oh, he won’t notice that, until there was nothing left but the wrapping.

  Peter, my middle brother, was three years younger than me. He was the most daring, and the naughtiest, a tall, handsome free spirit, and always wore a huge grin. He wasn’t academic and went to the local Secondary Modern; but he was immensely practical and, when he wasn’t off being naughty, he would be tinkering with machinery and chopping down trees. He was intensely infuriating and hugely lovable.

  My youngest brother, Simon, set out his stall fairly early on in life. He was always a wonderful host. He had immaculate manners and an old-fashioned demeanour. At the age of twelve, he would wear a bow tie and a jacket and greet guests at the door. I know many of my friends mistook him for a butler. He would take their bags and ply them with drinks.

  When people ask, ‘Are you a close family?’ I always think, Yes, we are, but we just never talk about it. Life at home was peaceful and uncomplicated. And full of animals.

  For as long as I can remember, we always had animals. Whenever we moved to a new posting, it was accompanied by rabbit hutches, aquariums, hamster cages and a tortoise in a cardboard box. We had terrapins, newts, gerbils, hamsters, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, stick insects, pupae ready to hatch, a cat and a golden retriever. I recently asked my mother if she minded the menagerie and she said she didn’t; in retrospect, I think it was her who wanted them, really. She was a biologist, like my grandfather, and had studied at St Andrews University.

  An only child, she had spent half of her young life in Scotland (her father was also in the RAF). Here, she had learned to skin rabbits, gut fish, and plough with heavy horses. She had grown up with a real passion
for nature. She had, and still has, an encyclopedic knowledge, though she has always been modest about it. Flowers, leaves, insects: you name it, she can name them. We used to go on long walks, find leaves or insects that needed identifying, bring them home and get the books out. I have seen her pick up a rabbit with myxomatosis and put it out of its misery with a quick twist of her fingers.

  It was she who instilled a passion for animals into all of us. When my father was posted to a staff college in Camberley, Surrey, we lived in a lovely big officers’ quarters, and at the bottom of the garden were some old tree stumps, full of holes. Our favourite game was to put our hands in the holes and see if we could pull out a toad. In the spring they would be full of stag beetles. My mother would always make us examine them and work out the differences between a stag beetle and an ordinary beetle. By the time I had left home, she had become a biology teacher at a local school, and had never been happier.

  At school, I used to love the biology labs – the tanks full of locusts and fruit flies, the bulls’ hearts and eyeballs all ready for dissection, and the skulls and skeletons of various animals. I was very disappointed when I eventually discovered that the human skeletons they have in schools are actually fake! Not real dead bones at all, dear reader.

  When I found myself in the first year at George Ward Comprehensive School in Melksham, I quickly learned that if I made friends with the biology teacher, I could go down the ‘Can I look after the mice?’ route at break-time, thereby avoiding the huge playground full of huge children for whom first-years were an easy target. The added bonus of being the Mouse Looker-Afterer was being allowed to take the mice home for the holidays. Lovely big white mice. It was summer, so they could live in cages in the shed with the rabbits.