by Tanya Burr
In the run-up to my GCSEs, I had glandular fever and it was awful because I just felt so tired the whole time. Even when my friends called the house phone to speak to me, I was too tired to pick up and just lay in my bed or on the sofa feeling rubbish. As a result, I didn’t do much revision for my exams. I wanted to go to my exams in my pyjamas but, obviously, I wasn’t allowed! In the end, I did make it in and finished high school very happy with four A grades and six B grades. I celebrated a month later by dancing the night away with all my friends at the school prom.
Maddie and I went to a sixth form college in Norwich city centre called Notre Dame. Tasha, Kate and Emma were still at high school but we made a great group of friends, including Vanessa. I remember on my first day, we were all sitting on the floor in the reception area and I saw Vanessa. We made eye contact and she looked really friendly. I went up to her and said hi and we quickly became friends. I studied English, Classics and Psychology for A-Level. During the first year, I didn’t have a very good time because I had another bout of anxiety and ended up missing quite a lot of my lessons.
By the time the second year came round, I was starting to feel quite uninspired by learning, but Kate who had been in the year below in high school came to Notre Dame and we were so happy to be together. I just gradually stopped feeling so anxious. We really got into music and started going to loads of gigs at UEA, where they have a big auditorium. We were really into indie music, like Larrikin Love and The Rifles. After I started earning pocket money at the farm shop, I liked being able to buy myself clothes and I got a job at Starbucks at the weekends.
One night Kate and I went to a house party, which was hosted by a guy we’d met at a Babyshambles concert the week before. Not realising that cool people only went to house parties at about 10 or 11 p.m., we turned up super-early at 8 p.m. and a cute guy wearing braces (holding up his trousers!) opened the door and he spent the whole night talking to us, so we didn’t look like losers who had no friends. That guy’s name was Jim. It turned out he had been in the year above me at my sixth form college but we had never met. He says now he remembers some of my friends but not me and that I didn’t recognise him! We had loads of fun that evening and swapped numbers and agreed to be friends. I obviously didn’t realise it back then, but that chance meeting with Jim would change everything.
MY TOP 10
NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
1. WHEN HEIDI AND MOLLY HAD PUPPIES
I was terrified of dogs when I was tiny. My grandparents on my dad’s side were dog breeders and we used to see them a lot, too. I was always a bit scared of the hundreds of dogs at their house, so to help me get over being afraid, my parents got a King Charles Cavalier called Heidi. Later we got Molly and they both had puppies. Mum was like the midwife in our conservatory and I watched both sets of puppies being born. Heidi’s waters actually broke on me when I was cuddling her! I remember one of Heidi’s puppies was really tiny and we didn’t think it would make it, but Dad wrapped some cotton around its belly button really tightly and it survived. We called it Cotton and it ended up being the fattest puppy in the litter!
2. MAKING PLAY-DOH PEAS
When I was little, we used to spend hours playing with Play-Doh at our dining room table with all the children my Mum child-minded and it never lost its appeal. Mum always made her own version with flour, salt, oil and water and would then add food colouring and we had one or two different colours each week, which she would keep in Tupperware pots in the fridge to keep them soft. I recall making a lot of peas and carrots!
3. THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS
Christmas morning as a child was so magical. Before we went to bed, we put out a mince pie and brandy for Father Christmas and a carrot for the reindeers on the mantelpiece and then went upstairs and laid our stockings out on the ends of our beds. I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing the stocking full of presents. That feeling of excitement is just one of the best! Even now I have to ask Jim or Mum to make sure they put my stocking out while I’m asleep, so if I wake up in the night I will be able to see it. One year, when I was about six, I wanted a really special toy bear I had seen and also this massive bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk in Woolworths. To me it seemed about half a metre long, although it probably wasn’t that enormous, but I just had to have it! I got both those things and I was so happy. I ended up naming the bear Curly Bear.
In the morning, Tasha and I would always take our stockings and open them in my parents’ room. After that, we would go to the top of the stairs because the tree was at the bottom; we’d see loads of presents there and know Father Christmas had been. Mum and Dad would turn all the lights out apart from the ones on the tree, so it was like something from a Christmas film. Nanny and Granddad would drive over and we’d have bacon rolls and croissants for breakfast and open all our gifts. Later in the day we would go over to my nanny’s and she would cook a traditional lunch with turkey and all the trimmings. I still think it is the best meal ever!
4. SNOW DAYS
When we were off school because of the bad weather and snow, some of the children in the village would come round to our garden, where we would start massive projects like building a fort out of snow. Sometimes, we jumped over the fence at school and built a snowman in the field behind it. Afterwards we would cuddle up on the sofa and watch films or make pancakes. I still love it when it snows.
5. GRANDDAD’S EPIC BEDTIME STORIES
If we stayed at my grandparents’ house overnight or if they were at our house at bedtime, Granddad read to us and often he made up stories. They were always totally epic and he would include us as characters and places that we knew, which made it extra-special!
6. WHEN KATE MOVED TO TASBURGH
When my friend Kate moved to Tasburgh, Emma and I decided she seemed like a lot of fun – a really nice girl that we wanted as our friend. We wrote her a letter saying, ‘You’re more than welcome to be our best friend now’, and gave it to her at the bus bays in the school. She invited us to her house and told us her address but didn’t say when to come round, so one day Emma and I just decided to set off from where we lived in Upper Tasburgh to her house in Lower Tasburgh. It was quite a walk and took us about half an hour. When we turned up, the house was gorgeous and had a huge back garden with a trampoline and no gate between the front and the back. We knocked on the door and no one answered, but we couldn’t resist playing on the trampoline, so we went round the back and started playing on it. Suddenly all these cars pulled up on the driveway and all her family and extended family started getting out. It turned out that it was her dad’s birthday and they had been out for lunch to celebrate. Her mum had no idea who we were and probably wondered what was going on! Kate explained and we were then invited in for birthday cake – I don’t think they had much choice! We have been best friends ever since.
7. DARTMOOR STEPPING STONES
While we didn’t have any foreign holidays when we were growing up, sometimes we went to stay with my godparents, Veronica and Peter, who I was super-close to. They lived down in Devon and we travelled on the train together and stayed at their house. We spent our time on Teignmouth Beach and looking around the nearby villages, but my all-time favourite thing to do when we were there was to go to Dartmoor. We did lots of walking and hill climbing and sometimes went paddling at Spitchwick Common. My highlight, however, were the stepping-stones across the river near Badgers Holt. They are huge stones that form a bridge from one side of the river to the other and you have to be really careful that you don’t fall in. It always felt like a real adventure.
8. THE AMAZING DRESSING-UP BOX
We often went to Banham Zoo when we were little, and at the weekends there would be a car boot sale in the car park. So while Mum took us to see the animals (apparently I was obsessed with the penguins!), Dad would wander around the sale and come back with loads of things for Tasha and I, like original Charleston hats, floppy felt hats from the 1970s and authentic vintage brooches. When
we did our plays, everyone would use clothes from the special dressing-up box.
9. BIKE RIDES TO NANNY AND GRANDDAD’S
Nothing was ever casual with me; I was always looking for a project of some sort. Every time we cycled to Nanny and Granddad’s with our little group of friends, I would try to make us beat our previous timing. One day during the school holidays I had my friends to sleep over because I wanted to cycle there at 6 a.m. the next day. I was determined to do it and made Emma and Tasha stay on the floor in my room so I could wake them up with cold flannels! When we arrived at Nanny and Granddad’s at 6.30a.m., they were a bit surprised to see us.
10. SOUTHWOLD TIMES
We always used to spend a lot of time at Southwold, which is about forty minutes’ drive from our house. The town has a beautiful, sandy beach and we spent a lot of time there growing up. Mum and Dad have a caravan there now and we try and stay there every summer.
List your top ten memorable moments with your family …
List your favourite school memories …
List your top ten childhood heroes …
MY TOP 10
SONGS
THAT WOULD BE THE SOUNDTRACK TO MY LIFE GROWING UP
Like most people, music is a big part of my life. Writing this list of tracks was really hard because there is so much music that I listened to growing up, but I’ve tried to pick the top tunes that remind me of childhood and my teenage years.
1. RIGHT SAID FRED: ‘DEEPLY DIPPY’
This song reminds me so much of my dad when I was little. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had sung it to me every day. He used to put on quite a performance, with all the different voices, high bits and crazy moves!
2. THE BEATLES
It’s impossible for me to pick out one of The Beatles’ songs because we listened to their albums all the time at home. Both Mum and Dad were massive fans and Dad was always singing around the house. The tracks that stand out the most are ‘All You Need Is Love’, ‘Help’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.
3. THE BANGLES: ‘ETERNAL FLAME’
I knew the lyrics to this when I was so young and Mum thinks it is because she used to listen to it the whole time she was pregnant with me. We had it on an old-school tape and used to play it on repeat in the car.
4. SPICE GIRLS: ‘2 BECOME 1’
I loved the Spice Girls and wanted to be Posh Spice. I remember watching their videos and trying to impersonate all of Posh’s dance moves.
5. RADIOHEAD: ‘KARMA POLICE’
When I was a bit older, I had this on repeat in my bedroom constantly and would play it on my MP3 player on the bus with my friends. As a teenager you have a lot of crazy emotions and it was like this song had been written for my fourteen-year-old self.
6. NIRVANA: ‘SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT’
This was a house party song that I would always put on when we went to house parties when I was a teenager. I was crazy about Kurt Cobain.
7. KELLY CLARKSON: ‘BEHIND THESE HAZEL EYES’
This makes me think of working in the farm shop because it used to come on the radio a lot and I would carry my wind-up radio singing along at the top of my voice when no one was around. The shop was divided by an archway and on one occasion, I was in the back and I was belting it out, and when I got to the front, there was a queue of customers. So embarrassing!
8. ELLIOTT SMITH: ‘ANGELES’
After school most days, my friends and I talked to each other on MSN Messenger. When you went online you could see who was online and what music they were listening to. That was how I developed a lot of my music loves as a teenager, including this song.
9. BLOC PARTY: ‘BLUE LIGHT’
I love the entire Silent Alarm album but this track is my favourite. It reminds me of around the time I first met Jim and when we used to hang out together in the early days. Kate and I went to a Bloc Party gig at UEA and weirdly it was before I met Jim, but Kate remembers him being there.
10. COLDPLAY: ‘SPARKS’
This is my song with Jim and we used to listen to it all the time. He always used to write the lyrics ‘I saw sparks’ in cards he wrote for me. I have saved them all.
List the top ten songs that would be the soundtrack to your life growing up …
Quite soon after meeting Jim, we became an item and fell in love. He was studying for a psychology degree at UEA and was living at home in Norwich and we spent a lot of time together at his house. From the first time I went to his family home and met his mum Judy, twin brother John and older sisters Sam and Nic, I loved being there. The house was always busy and everyone had their partners over all the time. Having always been the oldest one at my home, it was nice to be somewhere where I was the youngest.
Jim’s sisters Sam and Nic, who are about ten years older than him, are trained make-up artists. At the time Sam had just had her daughter Lily so I never saw her wearing make-up, but I looked at her work around the house and her make-up portfolio, which was incredible. Flicking through the pages and seeing all the different looks she had created, I was so impressed. Nic was working at MAC at the time in the city centre and her make-up was always flawless; she never looked anything but stunning.
On one of the first occasions that I stayed over, I realised that I hadn’t brought any face wipes with me to take off my make-up. When I asked Jim if he could get one for me from one of his sisters, he told me to ask them myself. Slightly nervously, I went into Nic’s room and along with some face wipes, she asked me if I wanted some make-up for the next day. I remember not being that bothered, thinking it might be a bit of concealer or something but she gave me a full face of amazing high-end make-up, including a MAC Mineralize Skinfinish, which was all glittery. She let me keep the compact and I still have it in my make-up collection now, though I should probably throw it out as it’s so old!
Nic did my make-up for me for my sixth form prom and it was one of those ‘wow’ moments. I was completely transformed and felt really pretty for the first time ever! Apparently I always asked them loads of questions about how they achieved different looks and why certain products were better than others. I remember once we were going on a family trip to one of Jim’s aunties for a barbecue and Nic was doing her make-up in the front of the car and I was sat in the back mesmerised by what she was doing. I knew then that I needed to learn to apply make-up like that for myself.
Originally I had planned to go to Leeds University to study for an English degree and had applied and got in but, by that point, I knew I wasn’t going to go because beauty and make-up was the path I wanted to take. It was a big risk but I’m so glad that I took it. I started to assist Sam and Nic on jobs, like weddings at the weekends, and at other events, such as London Fashion Week shows and TV shoots. I found the whole experience of being on set so exciting, inspiring and creative. There was always cool music playing in the background and I was in awe watching Sam and the photographers at work. It felt like the type of environment that I would love to work in. Sam and Nic ran five-day intensive make-up courses and I went on one and learned so much. They also gave me loads of one-on-one lessons.
By then, Jim and I were inseparable and spent all our time at his house as it was closer to his university and the town centre, where we both worked. His mum Judy became like a second mum to me. In the centre of town, there is an independent department store called Jarrolds where Judy worked in women’s fashion, Jim had a part-time job in the art department on the top floor and Nic was working at the MAC counter in the make-up department. They all said that it was a good place to work and that the staff were treated really well, so as soon as I left school I decided to get a job there. Obviously, I really wanted to work on one of the cool make-up counters like MAC or Laura Mercier, but those jobs were pretty hard to come by. The first job that came up was on classic toiletries, where they sold brands like Roger & Gallet, Floris and Yardley. Judy and Nic advised me that if I worked there I would be right by the make-up and so I would be the first to know about a
ny job openings. Also, that if I showed them I could work hard, then I would give myself the best chance of getting a job on one of counters. So I applied for the job and was offered it.
While I was working on classic toiletries, the first job that came up was on the MAC counter. I had my heart set on it and when I didn’t get it, I was devastated. But after only three months on classic toiletries, a job came up at Laura Mercier. The brand is really creative, Laura Mercier is really hands-on and, unlike lots of other beauty brands, they really teach their staff about their products and how to apply them. Everyone who works there is called an artist, rather than just a salesperson, which was important to me as I was much more interested in the creative side than selling products. If you use great make-up techniques, that sells the product itself! When I was offered the job I was delighted and, very quickly, I felt like I was learning loads. They had these fantastic make-up artists, who freelanced for Laura Mercier and who came up from London to teach the staff about using their products. There was one girl in particular, called Katy, who really helped me a lot with things that I didn’t feel very competent in. I always used to use all the customers to practise on. For a while I struggled with applying liquid eyeliner, so one Saturday I thought I would spend the whole day asking if customers wanted to sit on my stool and have their make-up done so I could practise. That day I sold quite a lot of liquid eyeliners!
