AS ONE DOOR SHUTS, ANOTHER DOOR CLOSES

Well, you will, I am sure, be as surprised as I was to see Norah’s comment.

Just as I was about to plunge into the abyss of despair, up pops a face from the past, with a possible solution to my immediate problem.

Actually, I hardly know the lady; she was, as she has intimated, a friend of my ex wife: the lesbian. It appears, however, that she has broken free of that demon’s clutches, and so it is time for me to put my mouth where the money is – so to speak.

I am, therefore, taking up her father’s offer for Wynorrin. This will kill several birds with one, well aimed, stone. Sir Charles Sponce (or Charlie, as I am sure I will soon be calling him) has appointed me resident caretaker/administrator of the Wynorrin Conference Centre. This means free board and lodgings for the foreseeable future – plus a generous salary.

So I shall be back in my old home, and I am sure the comfort and security thus afforded will now enable me to concentrate on my autobiography. I have not mentioned this before, but my literary and media agent (Walter Greenbaum, of Greenbaum Associates) has been badgering me for months to “Get the old finger out, Georgie love, I got three National Dailies fighting for serialisation rights.”

So you may not be hearing from me for a while. I am, however, taking the unusual step (having cleared it with Walter) to give my readers here in Blogland, little ‘taster’ of what promises to be a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.


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THE BOY’S STORY

Chapter I


“My mother groaned, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt:”

I don’t know if William Blake’s words accurately describe my entry into this “dangerous world.” But I was later informed by my mother “I nearly died having you.” Now if I were a psychotherapist – which I am – I would say that that might have had some bearing on my subsequent “guilt” problems.

Anyway, I was born during one of the worst thunderstorms Yorkshire had ever seen. My mother was living in Lancashire at time, so it didn’t really affect us; but it was in all the papers.

A little mining village called Haydock, (in what was then Lancashire, but is now Merseyside) had the privilege of welcoming me into the world. Alas, no plaque adorns the outside wall of the “two up, two down”, in whose front bedroom I first made my appearance. The day may yet come.

All my family were miners, except my mother: she was a spot-welder. No, she wasn’t really – I don’t know why I said that. My dad used to be a miner but - as he told me later - one day he saw a collier get crushed by a runaway tub. And he made a promise to himself that if he ever saw the light of day, he would never again go back down a mine; he never did. He became an insurance agent.

When I was five years old the Second World War started. As I said, I had a fully developed ‘guilt complex’ at an early age, but I don’t think I saw the start of hostilities as being my fault. But my dad seemed to think it was his business to do something about it. He joined the Air Force; apparently telling my mother before he went “I could lay on Hitler wi mi cap”. Actually, it took him until 1945 to do it, so I did not see him again for the next five years.

In those five years a lot happened in my little life. Events, which – I was to learn later, when I studied psychology – helped shape my malleable personality.


The Little House Slightly Off The Prairie

I lived in a house with three women. (something I have never since been able to replicate)

The three women were: my mother, her mother (my grandmother) and a female cousin who was ten years older than me. I slept in the front bedroom with my mother, and Winnie (my cousin) slept in the back, with my grandmother.

Such a sleeping arrangements would be frowned upon today, and I have no doubt they were less than healthy – mentally or physically. Incidentally we did not have a bathroom: we had a lavatory at the end of the yard (my family was posh compared to the people across the road: our lavatory actually flushed – whilst the houses across the road had a privy midden which was emptied every so often by a man with a horse and cart).

Having a bath was an event rather than a routine. Water was heated in something called a copper and then laboriously ladled into a zinc bath, dragged in from the shed. You bathed in front of the fire (which also heated the copper – being a mining village, coal was plentiful).

I can’t really remember, but I suppose you must have been given some privacy in your ablutions. Although I do recall visiting my friend across the road, being invited in, and there was his mother having a bath in front of the fire. It was the first time I had seen breasts: hairy ones, at that!

The house must have had elastic walls, the number of people it could contain. I dimly remember ‘uncle Jack’; he was my grandma’s brother (don’t ask me where he slept!) and he had a ‘bag’ (I still have a picture in my mind of this strange, and rather sinister contraption being taken off, or put on – in the kitchen). I don’t know how old I would have been – two or three maybe – and I was not given any explanation. I realise now that ‘uncle Jack’ must have had a colostomy.

I never knew my grandfather. He worked in the pit, and it killed him – slowly. My mother used to tell that, as he grew older, when he came home he was so exhausted that she would have to wash him. This was in the days before ‘pit-head’ baths.
Strange then, that years later, she was heard to remark to her one of her sons, ‘Evan, hard work never killed anyone’. My uncle, quick as a flash, retorted ‘No, mother, but it’s made some a queer bloody shape.’ That’s working-class humour, for you.

We had a tiny room called a ‘pantry’, where all the food was kept – and prepared. Nobody had a fridge: we had a ‘meat-ssafe’. This was a sort of cupboard, the doors of which had panels of zinc mesh, to allow air to circulate and, at the same time, keep out the flies. I can also remember sides of bacon being hung in this place. Later on, when I took up photography (aged about twelve) the pantry was also my ‘darkroom’ – until a kind man (more of him later) built me a proper one, in the shed.

Yes, we had a shed – and a coal shed, too. The coal shed didn’t have a door, and the cats (my grandma had three) used it as a lavatory. The smell of cat shit comes wafting back, over the years, as I type this.


(to be continued)