When it came to the mock exams, I failed miserably. Taking the same paper again, my result was even worse the second time, even though the questions were the same. The school decided that I shouldn’t take Maths ‘O’ Level and I heartily agreed.
It was 1971, an exciting time. The Range Rover had been introduced, making Ivy the Land Rover look like something from a museum. We saw the first electronic calculators, massive things with blinking LEDs. Hot pants appeared, shocking the older generation. And Great Britain was preparing to make a monumental change.
Back in 1824, Lord Wrottesley proposed an utterly crazy idea in parliament. He suggested that Britain’s currency should be decimalised. Such a foolish notion was roundly rejected, of course. What? Lose the guinea, shilling, half-crown, sixpence, ha’penny and florin? Unthinkable!
But now, more than one hundred and forty years later, Britain was on the verge of doing exactly that.
At first, three new coins were introduced into the old system: the 5p, 10p and 50p coins. That meant that on Decimal Day (or ‘D Day’), the general public had already learned three of the six new coins.
Banks were closed on Wednesday, 10th February, until the morning of Monday 15 February, to enable everything in the clearing system to be processed. Customers’ accounts were converted from pounds, shillings and pence, to decimal. These conversions were carried out manually, as most bank branches were not yet computerised.
Then, on February 15th, 1971, it all happened. I remember it was quite a smooth process as the government had done a good job of educating us before the day, and prices in shops were displayed in both new and old prices for a long time before and after ‘D Day’.
However, some of the old folk complained bitterly, and I even overheard my mother asking my father, “Ach, yes, but how much is that in real money?”
A menu showing both prices
We sat our exams in the heat of summer, sitting in long rows in the school hall, teachers pacing up and down to check that nobody cheated. Our pens and pencils were in transparent plastic bags, and if we dropped something, or we wanted anything, we had to raise our hands.
“How did you do?” we asked each other afterwards. “Could you do number 3? It was impossible!”
It was a long wait for the results, and I wasn’t looking forward to receiving them at all. Meanwhile, we were all going on Work Experience.
I’d given my future career some thought, and had accepted the fact that I would never be a vet. I wasn’t really smart enough, and anyway, I had dropped all my science subjects. I thought becoming a zoo keeper was probably a bit fanciful, and again, I had no science or biology training. An artist or writer? Nowhere near talented enough. So what was left?
I decided that teaching would suit me very well. After all, to steal George Bernard Shaw’s words, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
That meant I needed ‘A’ Levels to get into a Teacher Training College, as they were called then. But first, I could go on a week’s work experience in a school to see what it was all about.
What should I wear? I wanted to look fresh and businesslike so I opted for a white blouse and grey skirt.
I was sent to help in a reception class. As I watched the teacher welcoming each four-year-old and taking instructions from the parents, I felt completely out of my depth.
“Please make sure Susan drinks her milk today.”
“Can you check that Johnnie doesn’t pick his plaster off?”
“Maria has an odd pair of plimsolls in her PE bag. Does Scott have one of hers?”
“Colin’s really worried about the letter ‘A’.”
“Please don’t let Mark eat any cheese, it makes him sneeze.”
How could she possibly remember all that and spend a day teaching? Wanting to be a teacher was madness! There must be less stressful careers.
A tiny warm hand slid into mine. I looked down. An earnest little face framed by light brown curls gazed up at me.
“Hello, what’s your name?”
“Hello, I’m Vicky,” I said. “I’ve come to help your teacher this week. And who are you?”
“I’m a kangawoo today. You can be a kangawoo too if you like. Why do kangawoos bounce?”
And I was hooked. Yes, I wanted to be a teacher, however hard that was going to be.
The morning flew past in a flurry of songs and activities. Not a second went by when I wasn’t busy doing something, whether it was taking a child to the toilet or packing up crayons. I soon wished I’d worn flat shoes, and chosen to wear trousers instead of a skirt.
I had an hour for lunch and my friend, Iris, and I met. She was doing her work experience in another class in the same school. Our plan was to go to a local cafe to get something to eat. There was a small, greasy-looking cafe round the corner, so we sat down and ordered.
Both of us were talking nonstop about our morning as the food arrived.
“A little boy in my class disappeared,” said Iris, picking up the tomato ketchup dispenser, a red plastic squeezy fake tomato.
“Did you find him?”
“Yep, we were all looking for him—this tomato sauce isn’t coming out—and it turned out he’d climbed into the old newspapers cupboard and gone to sleep.”
She laughed and gave the plastic tomato a hearty squeeze with her thumbs. It must have been blocked by a plug of congealed sauce, because the ketchup suddenly shot out in a hard, red jet.
I gasped as it hit me full in the face at pointblank range. It momentarily blinded me in one eye and dripped down my face, off my chin and down my white blouse. I was speechless. It was so awful that we both started laughing uncontrollably as we used a mountain of paper serviettes to try to clean me up. It was no use, of course.
I ran to the Ladies Room but the damage had been done. No amount of dabbing with water was going to improve matters much. I gave up with my white blouse but rinsed my face. I looked in the mirror, and a squinty, bloodshot eye stared back at me. Tomato ketchup has spices and vinegar as ingredients, and my eye was red and smarting.
The teacher blinked as she looked me up and down when I returned to the classroom.
“Whatever happened to you?” she asked. “You look as though you were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight at the OK Corral.”
I loved my week of work experience and it cemented my decision of what I wanted to do after I left school. I would train to be a teacher. My friends also had interesting experiences at their respective placements, but for some, their experiences put them off pursuing a particular career.
My classmate Sue had always wanted to be a vet and was delighted that she would be helping in a local veterinary practice for a week. Her family’s home was full of animals, and she was sure that training to be a vet was her future.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Well, the first day was okay… I helped behind the reception desk answering the phone and booking appointments and stuff.”
“And then?”
“Well, the vet said I should watch a routine dog castration.”
“Oh! Yuk!”
“I know! Anyway, he asked me to stand at the business end of the operating table so I could see everything that was happening. It was a big dog they were doing, a boxer. They anesthetised it and laid it on its back, legs akimbo. Then they covered it all up with a sheet except for a square where its, erm, bits poked through.”
Sue shuddered at the memory and I pulled a face in sympathy.
“So then the vet started operating, and I didn’t want to watch him slice, so I stared hard at the bit of sheet next to what was going on. I didn’t actually look at what the vet was doing at all.”
“So did you get away with that?”
“Nope! There was a kind of splat, and the vet said, ‘Get that for me, Susan.’”
“Oh no! What was it?”
“One testicle had kind of shot out and went skidding across the floor. I didn’t have any choice, I had to get a tissue and pick it up.
”
That was the end of Sue’s dream to become a veterinarian. I heard from her many years later, and she was then a very successful stockbroker working for an investment bank in London. Go figure.
* * *
Next came the agony of opening the long brown envelope that arrived in the mail, containing examination results. I couldn’t bring myself to open it, but let my mother do it as I sat on the stairs hugging my knees.
“Ach, they’re not too bad,” she said. “You have seven ‘O’ Levels, all A, B or C. You failed Geography. Never mind, you have enough to continue with ‘A’ Levels.”
Well, that was a relief!
I know I should have been thinking about studying, but I was beginning to follow in Marion Ford’s footsteps. No, I didn’t plaster on make-up and false eyelashes, but my mind was often occupied by the subject of boys.
19 The Animal Sanctuary
I lost myself in day-dreams so romantic and unlikely I should have written them down and turned them into fanciful novels. I imagined I was going to meet my Prince Charming everywhere. Perhaps he’d be a guest at the hotel where I was a chambermaid? Or perhaps I’d bump into him on the train to school?
When neither of those things happened, I decided I needed to widen my circle of places I frequented. Wareham couldn’t offer much. I didn’t want to go back to the Youth Club, but I could go to the cinema. It wasn’t a big one, in fact, the Rex’s claim to fame was that it was the smallest cinema in the south of England.
Of course I never met my Prince Charming there, but I did see some movies that I still recall today. I saw Cat Balou, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Finian’s Rainbow, Half a Sixpence, The Love Bug and the Beatles’ films. I usually went on my own or with Annabel.
I don’t remember my parents ever going to the cinema, except on one particular occasion a few years before, when the whole family went. The film was The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews. I couldn’t understand why we were going to see it, as it was so out of character for my mother and father to go to ‘the flicks’. I also couldn’t understand why my mother had a strange expression on her face throughout, and why she was so quiet afterwards.
As I write this, nearly 50 years later, I understand why the movie must have been so painful for her to watch. I have told the story in Two Old Fools in Spain Again.
How clearly I remember trips to the Rex cinema in West Street! The performance always began with the gaslights dimming, then the red velvet curtains swishing apart, revealing a silver screen. First we watched a ‘B’ movie and advertisements, then the gaslights were turned up again and ice creams were sold.
Back in the 1960s, I once saw a little mouse by my feet, sitting up and nibbling a piece of popcorn it was holding in its front paws. Annabel and I affectionately called the cinema ‘the fleapit’, even though it was a place we loved to go.
When the gaslights dimmed again, my heart pounded with excitement. Now the real performance was beginning! Above our heads, cigarette smoke swirled in the rectangular stream of light from the projectionist’s room at the back, and music filled the hall. It was beginning!
I’m delighted to see from research on the Internet that the Rex never became a bingo hall as so many other cinemas were doomed to become. It is still going strong and has a website of its own. It is a little cinema with a long history and masses of character, beloved by locals.
I have to confess that it was at the Rex that I viewed my first ‘naughty’ movie. The film was certified as an ‘18’ so I had to dress up and try to look older. To my relief they didn’t question my age. I sat with huge eyes and watched Jane Fonda strutting her stuff in Barbarella.
In an attempt to broaden my horizons, and maybe meet my Prince Charming, I decided to look for another part-time job. Making beds and cleaning bathrooms was not really my idea of fun, and I was tired of being a chambermaid.
“I’m sorry,” I told my boss, “I’m handing in my notice.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that too, are you quite sure? I do have a list of girls who will jump at the chance of a job here.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Give it to Janice Parry, I don’t care.
I was lucky, something perfect did turn up. It was a job that, though lowly paid, I would adore and keep until I left home two years later. I became a helper at an animal sanctuary in the depths of leafy Dorset.
And I loved it.
A little mini-bus collected me and the other workers early in the morning. We trundled up hill and down dale until we arrived at the gates of the sanctuary. Dogs barked as we drove in, and ponies lifted their heads to stare.
The sanctuary was divided into different sections. There were the kennels, a cattery, a Special Care unit, a horses and ponies section, and goats. Everybody had their favourite section to work in, and the manager did her best to keep us happy.
I wasn’t confident in the kennels. Some of the dogs had been abandoned or abused, but others had been given to the charity because they were problem dogs. I now know that a ‘problem dog’ is rare; it’s far more likely that the owner is at fault and is to blame for a dog’s bad behaviour. However, the dogs seemed to sense my lack of confidence.
One of the long-term residents of the kennels was a Jack Russell named Pepper. He had a slightly deformed leg, probably as a result of abuse, and was renowned for his bad temper. He had bitten most members of staff. As soon as I approached his kennel, his lips would peel back and a low snarl rumbled from his depths. If I stepped closer, he would explode into a bristling, snapping demon, hurling himself at the wire fence in a frenzied attempt to shred me into little pieces.
“I don’t know how you cope with Pepper,” I said to Big Denise, another worker, one day. “I can’t get near him, I’m sure he wants to kill me.”
Denise was hugely overweight, but along with pies and cake, she adored animals.
“Pepper?” she asked. “He’s a lovely boy, as long as you don’t show any fear. Come and watch how nice he can be.”
I hid as Denise approached his kennel. Pepper was lying down, chin on his paws, eyes watchful. The second he saw Denise, he leapt up, his lips already drawing back, daring her to come closer.
“Hello Pepper, how are you doing? Good boy! Fancy a walk?”
Pepper stood stock still, staring as she came closer. But he wasn’t snarling.
“Good boy!” said Denise as she reached his door and unlocked it.
Pepper’s ridiculous white stump of a tail began to twitch, then wagged furiously.
“Good boy!” said Denise as she snapped his leash to his collar. “Come on, boy, let’s go for a walk.”
And off they both trotted, Big Denise waddling and Pepper limping but happy.
I tried to copy Denise’s example, but Pepper wasn’t having any of it. As soon as I appeared, he became Demon Dog again. It wasn’t just me, he was the same with every member of staff except Denise, and I’m afraid he didn’t get walked on Big Denise’s days off.
I helped to hose out and disinfect empty dogs’ kennels, but I rarely worked with the dogs themselves. This suited me, as there were other sections in the sanctuary I much preferred to work in.
One section I particularly enjoyed was the Special Care unit. Apart from two long-term residents, one never knew what creatures were going to be in need of special care. Many of our patients were native Dorset wildlife.
All too often we had orphaned baby hedgehogs found by members of the public after their mother had been struck by a car. These little things, or hoglets as they are called, were helpless and would have died without our care. Most were so tiny that a whole litter of four or five could easily fit in one hand. They were adorable with their little pink hands and feet and their soft beige spines.
Each baby needed to be fed a special milk formula, and there was no room for mistakes. The formula had to be dissolved, but never whisked, or it would add too much air to their tiny tummies.
I was taught to warm the feed to room temperatur
e and then deliver it by placing the baby on a towel on my lap. It was tempting to put the hoglet on its back, but we were taught to keep them the right way up, on their feet, to prevent them from inhaling the feed and drowning.
Then, very gently, we pressed the plunger of the syringe so the feed squeezed out drop by drop. Some hoglets took ages to get the idea and meals were a long process. Others attacked the syringe with gusto, guzzling the feed as though desperate. We had to keep it slow and steady, even with the greedy, excited ones.
After a meal, the tiniest hoglets needed to be toiletted, and as they had no mother to help, it was our job. We dipped a cotton bud in almond oil and gently stimulated the area under the tail to encourage them.
A hoglet
Baby hedgehogs are very cute and I discovered their favourite place to be was up my sleeves. If I put my hands in their box, they’d make a beeline for my sleeves. If I let them, and there was enough space, they would snuggle down in there and fall asleep. Extracting them, however, was much more challenging. They refused to leave and suddenly became all spiky and difficult to handle.
Of course the baby hedgehogs grew fast and it wasn’t long before they no longer fitted up my sleeve. However, if I kept my arm still for long enough, the hedgehogs would content themselves by thrusting just their heads up my sleeve, leaving the rest of themselves hanging out. Then they’d sigh, settle down and fall asleep.
Hedgehogs may be wild creatures, but our baby hedgehogs still had to be introduced slowly to their natural surroundings. Having been raised and weaned indoors, they hadn’t yet encountered grass and soil. It was our job to introduce them.
I would gently place them on the grass and watch. Bug-eyed with surprise, at first the babies stood stock still. Then they tried walking but the grass made it difficult and they clearly didn’t like it. I could almost hear them thinking, How do I get off this horrible stuff? Then they’d pelt towards my feet and clamber up, gripping my laces with their tiny claws.
Once established on their shoe island in the middle of the sea of grass, they became a little braver. First one, then another would sniff the blades of grass, and even taste them. Then they would test it again with their feet, always making sure at least one foot was on my shoe in case of emergencies. This continued for a while but after a few visits, the babies became more confident and romped outside as happily as in.
One Young Fool in Dorset Page 14
