When I was six, our Dad moved us; himself, our Mum, my brother and I from the place I was born in Liverpool to a new house in Runcorn which was over the other side of the Mersey River in Cheshire. A new start.
We'd been sharing Mum's Mum's council house with her and Mum's two brothers, one of whom was away at sea as a merchant sailor for long periods, but since it had only three bedrooms, one of which was of the size that warrants the term box room, it was a little over-crowded even when he was away.
( It really didn't feel overcrowded to me as a child and I had a lovely time there, playing in the long back garden and doing all the craft activities Mum and Nana dreamed up to fill the many rainy afternoons. I know that Nana loved us living there with them and was heartbroken when we moved, as was I. Each member of the family worked at making it work and thinking back, the extra income Dad must have provided would have been welcome since one of my uncles had very low paid work driving a hospital van and the merchant seaman one gambled all his wages on the horses as soon as he got home - after giving Nana housekeeping and if he ever did win, he treated us all, which was actually fairly frequent. )
So it was an exciting new start tinged with sadness.
The story goes that the Liverpool 'overspill ' kids coming in to the schools in Runcorn New Town were considered very bright and sharp. Some of the teachers found us a breath of fresh air and good for the local kids, others probably thought some of us were a bit cheeky and full of ourselves. And we sounded different.
I must have had a sort of Scouse accent but my parents spoke quite carefully and I had learned early on which words were swearing and out of bounds to me, nevertheless, I was bullied for being ' posh ' which I found utterly bewildering.
Older girls would follow me into the toilets to intimidate me. Others would follow me home, taunting me and occasionally thumping me. Mum told me to take sweets in and make friends with them, but that wasn't what they wanted. They wanted me gone, or quiet.
Despite all this, I made some friends. I waged actual war, having physical fights in the playground with anyone who bullied anyone, but not me. I didn't care about the people who bullied me. I learned to blot them out by being very still and quiet. One girl tried very very hard to turn everyone against me, periodically forming a gang, linking arms with anyone who wanted to join in and parading round the playground singing ' we're not friends with .... ( insert my name ) ' and quite alot would join in and on those days I would just stand on the periphery, watching, probably with my fists clenched, I can't remember exactly how I felt now.
It all came to a head in the last year of juniors when she propositioned me for a fight outside of school on some wasteland with a sandstone outcrop and beautiful yellow blooming, spiky gauze bushes just outside the school gates. Not wanting to seem afraid, I agreed and the whispered excitement was so loud in the classroom it caught the attention of our teacher who said in front of the whole class ' ( insert my name ) I thought you were better than that. '
And so I was shamed, aged ten, into not fighting.
I don't even put it in my writing.
I've always written and to some extent made tentative attempts at making art and as I get further and further away from the half way point of my life, it's becoming more and more important to me.
The need to understand who I am and why I've made the choices I've made is becoming increasingly urgent. I cannot write about anything or anyone else until I've done this work.
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