Life Story
Well, where do you begin to talk about a life? First memories? Can you actually trust them ~ you were, after all, very young when they happened, and that was a long, long time ago?
I was born in what was then a fairly small town in Northamptonshire called Kettering, on a new council estate at the opposite end of the town to the hospital ... hence, why I was born at home. My father was a shoe worker (joined the RAF at the end of WWII and his fondest memory was a ride in a Lancaster bomber during a training run). My mother met Dad when she was evacuated during the war from Tyneside. I have an older brother and sister and a younger sister. (I'll add more about them at a later date, once I know they are happy to be included.)
Kettering is a lot bigger now (I won't go into the old "when I was your age all of this was fields" speech, but it is actually true) and a lot more impersonal. The council estate I was born on is called the Grange Estate ~ because, I was told, there used to be a farm on the site ~ even a windmill. Now long gone.
I know that during the hateful-80's (Thatcher's era) council estates were demonised ~ another selling tool for the government as they privatised the lot! This created a sub-group of people who couldn't wait for their parents to pop their clogs so they could get their hands on these newly-acquired, solid, properties where they could live for free on Mum & Dad's life insurances ... until the money ran out, then they'd spawn buckets full of kids and live on benefits whilst feigning some incurable illness so they didn't have to work. Then, once they had reached late middle-age, they succumbed to the fate of their parents, as their own offspring shoved them in a home (using their pretend illnesses as excuses for why they couldn't look after them), then became mini-landlords themselves, renting the property out at extortionate rates to cover their own mortgages ... or, in some cases, to give them capital to fund their own "portfolio" of properties. Two to three generations, and the Tories had their support-base for the future.
But anyway, back to the Grange Estate. While it was still council-run, was a bloody good place to live. It typified the "don't ever have to lock your front door" way of living. Everybody knew everyone else ... even the local criminals were hard-pushed to make a living, because if anyone was ever robbed, the locals would be round to their door before the police had a chance to act. The local bobby ~ Bob Bullock, as it happens ~ knew everyone on the estate ... even those whose families had absolutely no history of any criminal activity. When a criminal act was perpetrated, he knew where to go ... all the usual suspects were in his little black book.
It was only when the council houses started to become privately owned that the trouble began. The new owners made themselves out to be superior to those who didn't have the means to take advantage of Thatcher's give-away prices. They'd remove the loose uniformity of council houses to show everyone they had bought their home. Bright blue front doors ... little extensions on the front for entrance halls ... even a small conservatory ... anything to be "different" ~ because to them "different" meant "better".
And the ones who bought their houses but could only just afford to do so were no longer subject to the rules and guidelines of the local housing authority, so we began to see piles of cars on their front gardens, being worked on or left to rust ... rubbish piling up, etc. Instead of being the "new working class elite", they became a level of "privileged plebs", lording it over those who were still working their nuts off 45-50 hours a week for a pittance in the shoe and leather factories.
Political enlightenment ...
I remember ... I must have been about eight years old, or close to it ... accompanying my mother to one of her cleaning jobs one summer. The house (dormy-style, if I remember rightly) was on a slip road near the town centre ~ a road full of fine, if not enormous houses. The couple who lived there had very good jobs ~ he worked in London and she was in local government, or similar.
Our family was still going through rough times. It was the late 60's, but there was very little "swinging" going on in Kettering! I remember asking my mother ~ who spent a lifetime working her fingers to the bone, scrimping and saving to find enough money to make sure the kids never went without (even though she often did herself) ~ why it was that she was cleaning someone else's house, but there was nobody to clean her's for her ... particularly when it was obvious that she needed the help more than those she was cleaning for. I honestly can't remember what her answer was, but definitely remember the look on her face after I asked the question. It felt to me like it was something she'd never considered before, but once said, she could not fully comprehend the reasons why things should be the way they were.
It wasn't anything particularly profound, but the fact that I recall it as one of my earliest memories ... or at least one of the earliest that remains with me to this day ... is perhaps because I view it as having been the dawn of my political enlightenment. It is almost as if, at that moment, I decided that the world was not fair, and that ~ when I was old enough ~ I must do what I can to make it a fairer place. Looking back now, although I can feel pride in some of the things I've done, and the fact that (in spite of Mum's belief) I've never changed or mellowed those views regardless of age.
School Days ...
My infant and junior years were spent at Grange Primary School in Kettering. A fairly new school, built at the same time as the housing estate was, it had a good reputation and some damn good teachers ... on the whole. I have a vague memory of when one teacher, Miss Wilson I believe, ordered me out of an infant class for "being naughty" (what I did escapes me), but then forgetting I was there after dismissing the class at the end of the day.
My mother headed into the school to see what was keeping me ~ accompanied by the headmaster ~ only to find me still standing outside the class. I believe mum erupted over that one.
Our year/class was overcrowded, so myself and some others "jumped" a year ~ from the first year infants to the third. Not a very useful move and certainly not helpful to a youngster who already found it difficult to make friends. We were suddenly taken away from the ones we'd made and propelled into a class where we met with a little resentment at being the "young 'uns" learning at a higher level. They did manage to move the brightest of us though, and all everyone seemed to handle the learning side of it well enough.
Unfortunately, I never really had any friends during those years ~ we got a little of the resentment from those in the class we'd left as well, so missed out all round. And, to compact it all further, when we reached the final junior year, we were stopped from taking the 11-Plus and moving onto senior school a year early ~ we had to do that final junior year twice! A ridiculous scenario, which impacted heavily on all our development. (I haven't seen much over the years of those who were moved with me, but as far as I am aware, or remember, the girls handled it better than the boys, who remained mostly friendless or became fairly insecure characters.)
Having passed the 11+ with flying colours (2nd highest) my next five years were spent at Kettering Grammar School. In honesty, the earlier days at Grange Primary had not prepared us for this ...
Apprenticed ...
After screwing up the last two years of grammar school, I knew it was too late to get myself into university (despite my brother's best attempts to induce me to try harder ... wish I'd listened!) and my father said there was no way I was going into a factory like he had to, so the only option was to follow my brother's lead and try for the print trade. (There was also the other underlying fact that my family could never have supported two children at university, and my younger sister, who was already a talented artist, might miss out if I went first. I'm glad it didn't turn out that way.)
There was a job going at a local, tiny print shop as an Apprentice Machine Manager. I was offered the job long before I was due to even sit my exams, simply through having been grammar school educated (it did have some perks, after all). I started working there part-time whilst sitting my GCSE's and CSE's, not really bothering much on the revision side for any of them ... after all, this smart arse already had a job! My Geography exam, for instance, consisted of seven subjects on which we had to give long-winded answers. When I realised my knowledge of four of these topics were ones I'd never even heard of, I decided to write a sentence or two on each, then got up, handed back my paper and went to leave the room. When the teacher overseeing the exam said I couldn't leave less than 30 minutes into a two-hour exam, I told him: "Sod that, I've got to get to work!" ... feeling proud at the fact, though probably impressing him at my being a twat. I think he had the high ground on that one.
Funnily enough, they still gave me a 17% score for that exam, though it still ranked as a "U" grade. However, I did get passes on my French, English Literature, English Language, Physics, and Maths. For the latter I was forced to take the CSE rather than GCSE, because the teacher ("Dixey" Deans) said I was more likely to get a pass that way. When my CSE score came back at 98% ~ and I was told the CSE paper was harder than the GCSE that year ~ I did feel like punching Dixey's lights out ... however, this never happened.
So I began my working life at 50% wages as a print apprentice ~ holding down other small jobs to give myself a living wage (I think my first weekly wage packet came to just under £20, of which I gave £5 to my mother for my "keep" ~ she wouldn't take any more, though I wish she had). I also did bar work at a local club, covered bars at special events, did some design work (by print or by caligraphy) and anything else I could grab.
The main job was at V.B. Pike Printers. From there I moved to complete my apprenticeship at Central Printing Works, stayed a couple of years after, then moved on to the local newspaper office, a short time managing a studio in a general print shop, before going back to the local paper. When my time was done at these ... and following many other life changes, I moved to London to work ...