by Wade, Calvin
“Hey Jemma, slow down!”
Roger Bannister didn’t have to carry a schoolbag either!
As I gasped for breath outside the Perkins house, Amy opened her front door.
“Quick, come in, you look like a drowned rat! Mum can you get some towels for Jemma, she’s absolutely soaking!”
Ten minutes later, after a good rub down from Mrs Perkins, a cup of tea and a Chocolate digestive, I was ready to get myself dressed up for the party. Amy and Kelly had already sorted out my clothes and make-up earlier. Kelly had given Amy my pink leather mini with black leggings, my cropped white lace blouse and my white lace fingerless gloves. Amy crimped my hair and she must have put a bottle of mousse and a bottle of hairspray on it. I remember thinking that it looked “mega”!
“How come you’re here so early? I was so shocked when I saw you running up the road! I wasn’t expecting you until eight!”
“CC gave me lines and said I could go as soon as they were done!”
“Well, I’m not complaining! I can tell Martin we can go a little bit earlier now! Do you want some Thunderbird?”
“Be rude not to!”
So, Amy rolled out a bottle of blue Thunderbird from under her bed and the pair of us took turns to swig it out the bottle! Not very ladylike! By the time we told Martin we were ready to go, in drinking terms, we were already well on our way!
Amy gave her Mum a hug goodbye and promised her she would be back by one. Mrs P even gave her the money for a taxi home. Vomit Breath would never have offered me money for a taxi and if I had dared to ask her, she would have given me a clip round the ear for insolence. Mrs P was great, Vomit Breath was a complete nightmare.
Martin took his “X” reg blue Ford Escort out the garage and Amy and I clambered in. We both got in the back. Amy wouldn’t have been one of the prettier girls in our year, she was only tiny with red hair and freckles that gathered together in clusters below her eyes and over the top of her nose, but she looked really stunning, she had a navy blue floral dress on with a loose black tie and white and black striped trousers. Her outfit really suited her. Martin was a pretty fast driver and as he sped along the back lanes of Ormskirk, Amy and I squeezed each other’s hands in drunken excitement. We were going to a party and it was going to be absolutely awesome!
We passed St Bede’s school and took the second left at the roundabout at the bottom of Holborn Hill, by the fire station, into Asmall Lane. Ten minutes and we’d be there and the real fun would begin! It was still a wild old night, the wind blew, the rain continued to fall and Martin’s wipers squealed out in exhaustion.
All of a sudden, I had a sense of unease. It’s difficult to describe the feeling that came over me, but something, a sense of foreboding, made me look out of Amy’s side of the car. A split second later, I was yelling out in a drunken, high-pitched scream that temporarily lifted Martin out of his seat,
“SSSTTOOOPPPP!”
Martin hadn’t long passed his driving test so he was used to doing emergency stops but given the conditions, it was impressive how quickly we came to a standstill. I suppose his car had been trying to fool us that it was shifting along, but we were probably not doing more than thirty.
“What’s the matter”, Amy asked concerned, “have you forgotten something?”
I pointed. Within a second, the colour drained out of Amy’s face. Our evening was about to take a dramatic shift in direction and we both knew it.
Richie
Five years after the date that wasn’t at Park Pool swimming baths, my success rate with girls remained zero since the glory days of 1977! This was more to do with lack of confidence than ugliness. Despite a daily battle with acne, that involved TCP, Clearasil, Acnidazil, dry skin cream, tablets from the GP and two carefully positioned fingers around any protruding yellow heads, I had matured into a tall, reasonable looking, blond haired teenager, with a gold stud earring (left ear only) and a flick in my hair that Tony Hadley and Simon Le Bon would have been proud of. The blond hair was thanks to my sister, Caroline -otherwise it would have been greasy brown hair. In 1986, my other sister, Helen, had done something none of the Billingham clan, to my father’s knowledge, had ever done before. She had gone to University. Helen had always been mature beyond her years. She was a female version of Jim, without the smugness and had, therefore, not been dazzled by the bright lights of Southport and Liverpool, once she had hit alcohol consuming age. She would sometimes head out drinking with friends, but she liked the quiet, local pub, finish at eleven, environment of Ormskirk, rather than the busy, nightclub, finish at two with a kiss or a kebab, environment of Southport. To put it bluntly, Helen was very pleasant but a little unadventurous. A bookworm. The studious type. She passed nine “O” levels with “A”s and “B”s and then four “A” Levels with B’s and C’s. She was accepted at Lancaster University to read Economics.
Lancaster University was ideal for Helen, as it appeared to me to be pretty much Ormskirk on campus. A close knit community of people (in this case, students) without the bright lights of a major city.
In October 1986, as my mother sobbed heartily, we all squashed into the Sierra Estate, with Jim in the boot and took Helen up to Lancaster. On the way home, Caroline was brimming over with excitement, she had lost a sister, but for the first time in her life now had a bedroom that she could call her own.
Caroline and I were the closest siblings. Growing up, we hadn’t been particularly close, but once she hit fifteen, Caroline developed a wild, independent, rebellious streak and I just thought she was fantastic! Much to Mum’s dismay, she had each ear pierced several times, wore more make-up than Boy George, had a steady flow of weird looking boyfriends and a record player that Spinal Tap would have been proud of as she played everything at volume eleven.
When Helen shared her room, Caroline would spend a lot of time out of the house, at friends or boyfriends, but once Helen went, the friends and boyfriends came to us. Dad was a little bit intimidated by Caroline, so he used to send Mum in to battle.
“Go and tell her to switch that bloody rubbish down, Dot!”
“Dot, that new boyfriend’s been up in Cal’s room for ages, go up will you and check he isn’t giving us a grandchild!”
One of the things Caroline and I had in common, was an interest in music, or even a passion for music. Caroline had an eclectic taste, which meant some of the stuff she was into, was brilliant, but some of it was bloody awful! Amongst her particular favourites were Scorpions, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, INXS, Throwing Muses, Pink Floyd, Marillion, 10,000 Maniacs and Al Stewart (“only the early stuff ”). I thought they were all great, but she also liked T’Pau, It Bites, Terence Trent D’Arby, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, all of whom I thought were absolutely terrible! To be fair, with Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, I just didn’t get them when I was fifteen and reluctantly had to admit to Caroline, later in life, that I had become a huge fan of both.
With Jim being a super nerd, I used to wander into Helen and Caroline’s room pretty frequently just to get away from him and my bond with Caroline just strengthened from when I was fourteen onwards. Caroline was a mousey blonde like me, but had gone a lot fairer, which she initially explained was down to the summer weather (Dad had barred her from having her hair highlighted, saying it was a complete waste of money – the words pot, kettle, betting slips and black, spring to mind!). One day though, I was in her room with her, listening to Al Stewart’s “Love Chronicles” (which Caroline told me was the first ever song to mention the “f” word), when the true source of the colour change was revealed.
“How come your hair used to be the same colour as mine and now its really blonde?”
“The sun’s been on it.”
“Get lost! Do you not think the sun would have reached mine too? I haven’t been wearing a bandana!”
“Yeh, but I’ve been squeezing lemon juice into mine!”
“No, you haven’t!”
“I have. Look next time I’m sunbathing, you’ll se
e a raw lemon next to the sunbed!”
I started sniffing.
“What’s that smell?” I asked.
“What smell?”
“Oh, I know! Bullshit! Heaps of it!”
I smiled at her.
“Come on, Cal, what’s made it so blonde? Billy Idol’s hair’s darker!”
Caroline smiled back at me.
“Promise you won’t tell?”
“Promise!”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Do it!”
I crossed my heart.
“THIS!”
Caroline went to her wardrobe that was decorated in posters from Smash Hits and all the rest of her magazines and under a mountain of scrunched up clothes, she scooped out a red and white plastic bottle, which said “Sun In” on it.
“Every couple of weeks, when I wash my hair, I put this in it.”
I looked at her puzzled. I washed my hair every day.
“Do you only wash your hair every two weeks? Do you donate grease to the Acropolis?” (the Acropolis was Ormskirk’s finest fish and chip shop).
“No, dimwit, I wash my hair three times a week, but I only put “Sun In” in it every two weeks”.
Now I understood.
“Right!”
“And that stuff makes you go that colour?”
“It’s just gone a bit lighter every time I’ve used it. You should try it!”
“Me?”
“Why not? You’re the same colouring as me, you just said so. Next time you have a shower, come in here before you dry your hair and I’ll put it in for you! You’ll be a blondie like me, Richie! The girls will be chasing after you!”
“Why do they chase after you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Will Mum and Dad not wonder what’s going on, if we both end up blonder than Debbie Harry?”
“Who cares?”
I thought about it. I didn’t care. Mum wouldn’t say anything anyway, she’d probably tell us we looked great. Dad would moan at us, but that’s what Dad did. If we were blond haired, he would moan, if we were brown haired, he would moan, if our hair was black and had white horses painted into it, he would probably back us to win the 4.30 at Goodwood. Then, when we lost, he would moan at us!
I had an adrenalin surge, I was ready to explore my wild side!
“OK, I’ll do it! Shall I have a shower now?”
“You might as well. You smell ready for one, B.O boy!”
“Sod off!”
I trotted off for a shower. After a quick soaking, I put on my dressing gown and headed to Helen and Caroline’s room with wet hair and an appetite for my first taste of “Sun In”. Blond hair could definitely make a difference with the girls.
Caroline went through the safety procedures like a Sun-In hair hostess.
“If you start putting this on yourself, don’t put it on your pubes”. She wrapped a towel over my dressing gown.
“Why would I put it on my pubes? No-one will see them but me!”
“I tried it.”
“You’re mad!”
“I know. It turned them bright red!”
“You’re a loony!”
“You haven’t heard the best bit yet! Don’t you dare tell anyone this, but after I did it, I shaved my bikini line into a heart shape, so I’ve got a big red heart down there now!”
I don’t know why Caroline told me that. I wish she hadn’t. I wasn’t 100% sure what a female looked like naked. I had never seen a porn film and had only really seen pre-teenage girls with nothing on. When I was conjuring up an image of a naked woman, I didn’t suddenly want to get a mental picture of my sister’s red heart. At the time, it made me feel a bit nauseous, but I have to admit, a few years later when Nirvana released a song called “Heart Shaped Box”, it made me erupt in a fit of giggles.
“Kurt Cobain’s written a song for you, Cal!” I joked.
I’m sure that song must have been about something dark and serious and intense, but even now when I hear it, despite everything, it brings a cheeky smile to my face! Still, back in the moment, the Sun-In went in, the hairdryer went on, the brown hair went a shade lighter and a few months down the line I was as blond as Caroline, but never as red. Red was Liverpool, I couldn’t have done that!
As the 1980’s prepared itself for the 1990’s, Caroline and I confided in each other about every romantic development in our life. This pretty much meant that Caroline confided in me about everyone she did anything with and I confided in her about everyone I would have liked to do something with.
When Caroline lost her virginity to Andrew Cullen, one summer evening in Coronation Park, (“to the tune of rats scurrying”), I was the first person she told. I guess Andrew Cullen knew before me, but I was the first third party.
“How did it feel?” I asked intrigued.
“You know sometimes when you have a poo and it’s a really big one and you wonder how you’ll ever get it out? Well it was like that but the other way round.”
Not exactly the description I was hoping for! If the porn industry ever wanted to sell the sexual concept to teenage boys, they would be well advised to steer clear of employing my sister.
“Does that mean it felt good or bad?”.
“It was a relief. Nothing special, I guess it’s like wine.”
No-one but Caroline could describe your first sexual experience like poo and wine. She was talking rubbish. I didn’t have a clue what she was on about.
“What ARE you on about?”
“Well, have you ever tasted wine?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“No, it was horrible.”
“And what did Mum and Dad say when you said it was horrible?”
“They said it was an acquired taste.”
“Exactly! I reckon sex is an acquired taste. Not great at first, but after a while you get used to it.”
That made sense.
As I said, as time elapsed, Caroline had lots to tell me. I fantasised. She fulfilled. There were loads of other boyfriends. Caroline didn’t sleep with them all, but she did sleep with a few and she added to her wine analogy, saying sex was also like wine because there were some fine wines that tasted great and others that stank! That made me feel as nauseous as her red heart. If the only sex you know about is your sister’s, it is not good.
None of Caroline’s boyfriends really lasted longer than a few weeks. She also once said (as you can see she was a girl for analogies), “Lads are like pick and mix sweets to me. I just want to taste every one!”
In the summer before Caroline went into Upper Sixth, things changed. She started dating a lad called Nick Birch, who was to become a long-term boyfriend. Nick was a year older than Caroline, he was a Grammar school kid like ourselves, but had left after Sixth Form. Caroline ran into him again at the “Rock Night” at the Floral Hall in Southport and they both quickly fell “Head Over Heels” in love.
Nick had a mass of black, frizzy hair and always wore his denim jackets with his Metallica, AC/DC and Motorhead patches. He was heavily into motorbikes too and him and his older brother, Mike, were often seen and heard biking around Ormskirk. I have no idea how he managed to get his helmet over that mass of hair!
As well as Nick and Mike, there was also another brother, Joey, who was in my year at school. Joey wasn’t one of my mates, but he was OK. At school, there were the trendies, the nerds, the in-betweeners and the D-Gas boys (D-Gas stood for “Don’t Give A Shit”). I was an in-betweener, not really a nerd, not really a trendy, Joey was a D-Gas boy. He was into his bikes, like his brothers and just wanted to leave school as soon as he’d done his C.S.E.s. I often remember him sneaking through a broken panel at the back of a part of the school called Ashcroft and smoking in the garden there with the rest of the smokers. Rumour had it that he also smoked a bit of weed too. Our paths didn’t cross too often, but I quite liked him and I’m sure he c
ould tolerate me too, we just didn’t have much in common. That was of course, until his brother and my sister started dating, but even then, we didn’t speak much.
In March, nine months after Caroline and Nick started dating, his Mum and Dad buggered off on holiday somewhere for their “Silver Wedding” and stupidly, left their house in the “safe” hands of three mad biker boys, who were low on intelligence but high on pot. When Caroline told me the Birch boys were going to have a massive party one Friday, during their Mum and Dad’s holiday, I wasn’t the least bit surprised. I could just imagine about three hundred bikes and mopeds parked on the front lawn and three hundred crash helmets in the hallway.
For some reason, Caroline wanted me to go to Nick’s party with her.
“No thanks, Cal. It won’t be my scene at all.”
“Come on Richie, it’ll be a laugh”.
“House parties are never a laugh. They normally involve gatecrashers, pissheads, fights and broken glass.”
I was old before my time! Caroline sometimes called me “Dad” as I had a greater sense of maturity than our biological father and was forever warning her to be careful, particularly sexually, but I also warned her to be careful with drugs and when riding on the back of Nick’s bike. Caroline loved danger whilst I steered away from it.
After some gentle persuasion though, I agreed to go to the Birch’s party. Although I initially had reservations, the fact was, it was a party, there would be girls there and no “proper” adults. Realistically, I guessed it wasn’t likely to be my scene but any opportunity whatsoever to meet a decent looking girl, was always one I wanted to grasp with both hands.
Rumour had spread like wildfire around Ormskirk Grammar School that the Birch’s were having a party, it was the worst kept secret since Charles and Di’s engagement or since Emma Marley in fourth year was pregnant the previous year (she was really skinny then it looked like someone kept blowing a balloon up in her stomach). Loads of people said in Fifth Form and Sixth Form that they were going to check out the Birch’s party. In our year, only the nerds opted out, the “trendies”, the “inbetweeners” and the D-Gas boys were all up for it, the latter were always going to go as it was Joey’s party, but the “trendies” presence was going to have a positive effect on the quality of girls present.
