I was a fairly normal kid despite everything. I think the thing most people took away after meeting me was I was very shy. Painfully shy. My godmother tells me every time I see her that I’d be the kid in the room hiding in the corner behind a book – though it’d be a while before I could read.
I remember that wanting to be a girl was just part of the background of being me. I can’t remember when it started, it just seems as if it was always there.
( I saw a thing the other day where a young transgender Youtuber said the difference between transgender and gender non-conforming is that a trans child will say they are a girl (or boy) while a GNC child will only say they want to be a girl (or boy). This is utter bullshit. I never felt able to say that I was a girl at any point in my childhood - but only had this desire to be a girl and a deep feeling of regret which never went away and only deepened as I got older.)
I have only strange half memories - or even, memories of memories of my very early life in my parents flat in Keyham. Keyham then, quite a rundown part of Devonport, bordering with a huge estate known as Swilly – or North Prospect. The following is just an impression of the memories, direct or indirect, that I still hold from those days.
My mum reading me a story when I was 2, maybe 3 – the book was a picture book and there was one page that fascinated me – I think it was a snow-scape, and showed a town and a hill with people skiing, sledging, etc in a Where's Wally sort of way. Mum tucked me in for sleep. I lay for a short while and then picked the book up and started looking at this picture – I enjoyed losing myself within it. But this time I felt instantly guilty, as if I betrayed my mother’s loving act of tucking me into bed and turning off the light.
Guilt is a very strong part of my life – right through.
Riding my bike, with stabilisers, around the kitchen, which looked over the back yard, eating Quavers – cheesy snacks - while playing a plastic, brightly coloured, spinning top game, sneaking into the living room behind the sofa so the big old black and white t.v couldn’t “see” me. I was genuinely terrified of the t.v. when it was turned off. Maybe it was the reflections, or the lifelessness of something that is usually like a window into the world. It was huge and stood on legs.
The long staircase leading up from the little front door tucked in next to the shop-front. The back lane which stretched away up hill outside the back yard gate. Steps that led down in the yard – presumably to the shop. Mint plant in a pot. Cobbles in our street. The railway cutting at the bend in the east end of the road, a big green grit container, and then the road stretching up the hill.
We had a tortoise and a cat. And a dog which I don’t remember at all. The tortoise got out once and we thought we’d lost it for good; we’d already lost the dog. Turned out the neighbour had it and it came back with a little paint on it’s shell. We had a yard out back, my mum used to keep lots of potted plants. I used to eat from a mint plant that grew in a pot in the yard. I remember a kitten getting stuck on our wall and my Dad had to rescue it.
Strange now to think how young my mum was at the time. Just 21 to 24.
I played with the boy next door who was called Steven too. He had a sister, like I did; my memory tells me she was called Lisa, like my sister, but who knows, they were both popular names of the time! We kids had a row one day and I ran indoors upset because we weren’t friends any more - soon blew over. Memory also tells me they moved away to Scotland.
We lived above a shop (long converted to yet another flat) and mum used to take me to get sweets in there. The man had big jars of sweets up on shelves. He let me try a lozenge once and I hated it and remembered the taste for years afterwards. Then one day I tried a Fisherman’s Friend and realised what it was that I had been given; and no wonder I hated it as a toddler. A railway ran down one end of our streetand I remember a big green grit box at the corner; at the other end was the dockyard gate. We lived halfway up a hill amongst rows and rows of terraced houses.
There was a park nearby. We had to walk across it to get to my nursery school. Mum gave me a yellow plastic, vintage car in a perspex box which I had till adulthood, but which fell apart gradually over the years.
Keyham was, at that time, a really deprived area. Highlighted as one of the poorest in Western Europe at that time
Devonport was dominated by the docks in those days. Lots of men in work clothes, lots of windowless pubs and betting shops with grey looking men walking in and out. Very adult and very male places that fascinated and frightened me. Adult's places, especially men's places felt like a very forbidden zone to a kid back then, compared to my own (step) daughter, growing up 25 years later, who felt confident about joining in with the adult world from a very young age.
I still dream about Devonport. The landscape changes but the things that remain constant are the major landmarks, the Tamar Bridge, the railways lines, the Dockyard, red buses, grey buildings.
Devonport was full intimidating granite buildings. A lot of the granite buildings were dockyard buildings or the dockyard wall.
Chemists still had those big coloured jars in the window...there was one I would see regularly. It was near where we lived and somehow wormed it's way into my deepest earliest memories, and even dreams, so much so that when I see these jars today - very rare - it triggers something inside of me and in some way takes me back to when I was just a baby.
One of the earliest dreams I can remember – probably a little later than this period. I woke up in an empty house and wandered the streets for an age. Managed to find a friend to talk to and told him I was dreaming – the first lucid dream I can remember having. Couldn;t go certain places – plague. It was set around Devonport and seemed to be pointing towards a future where I would lose my family. Of course we all do but not usually all at once except because of our own deaths. Through my life I would dream a lot of this area – the hills, the grey houses, the bridges and valleys, the sea off in the background.
I remember Routemaster style buses in Plymouth and wondering why they always had to park so close to each other (it did really bother me - but nowadays I think it was just an illusion based on the size of the bus compared to the completely reasonable space left between them :-D) – being given ticket rolls by the conductor to play with. We lost our dog (Sally?) off the back of a Routemaster - but I don’t remember that. She ran off and we never saw her again. Maybe she hated her name - I wouldn't blame her. (I often wondered what happened to her. Hope some other family took her in and she had a nice life. Probably would have died of old age around 1980 when I was 13/14).
Meeting my grandmother in town for coffee (not me, my mum), playing with leaflets and deposit books in the bank, looking at the fish in the market and the animals in the pet shop.
Plymouth's Pannier Market
I also remember starting at nursery school, the walk there and back, the austere looking granite building and the men – grey and forbidding looking men’s places now largely gone – pubs, working men’s clubs and betting shops, with blanked out windows. I remember being really daunted that one day I might be expected to enter that world. I enjoyed being with my mum and being part of the female world. Small children really are part of the world of women – especially in such a gender separated society as the UK was then. Leaving it was traumatic. Re-entering it at age of 45 was like going home.
While the nursery school no longer exists as far as I can tell, my primary school seems to be thriving still. The pool has gone but there are still two split level playgrounds. The higher one was for older kids - and presumably the school building too - I assume I would have gone there ages 7 to 10.
I'd get into a lot of trouble at school for not having the right attitude. When i was diagnosed with autism in 2003, my mum had to be interviewed about what i was like early on - stuff I wouldn't know directly - and she talked about how i was a very happy and bright kid until i started school, and after that i seemed permanently depressed. I remember hating school.
I did have a friend in the bigger half of the school who I think was looking out for me a bit but we didn't really see each other much. I used to look up to that higher playground and think I'd be up there one day. We moved before that though. I really don't think I was at that school for long because I was 5 when we moved so maybe I wasn't even there a year. I used to day dream, look out the window and think about stuff, including being able to go in the pool which was in the playground in those days. I think I was fairly sociable even if i did keep getting told to sit in the corner for not paying attention.
Plymouth History Project
Plymouth History
Swilly 1988
No comments:
Post a Comment