the early years
I don’t actually remember much before I was 4 and a half… theres a picture of me riding a donkey in my parent’s house and I must have been around 4… but I don’t remember it. Oddly enough though, I can remember what I had for dinner on my first day of school… fish fingers and chips and peas. Before I started school proper I went to nursery for 4 months. It was there that I first met the guys in my year that would cause so much hassle for me later on. They took an instant dislike to me. I have no idea why…I wouldn’t say I was much different from anyone else, specially then… but they did. Someone told me once that they look for an easy target when things like this happen…im not so sure that I ascribe to that theory, cause then that leaves the questions ‘why was I a weaker target than everyone else?? What is this fundamental flaw that sets me apart from the rest?’ For those four months, I began to accept what was ‘normal’ for me. That I wasn’t allowed to play with anyone else, or use the same activities. I never questioned why at that point, I just went with it.
Four months later I, along with most of the people in the nursery went to school. Mrs Race’s class. She was immensly tall, but she was fair, and kind, and she would tell people to ‘share’ if she saw them not doing so. The way school worked was that the infants had the smaller playground, with their apparatus, and the juniors theirs, and the field was anybody who wanted it, but generally, the hill on the infants side was usually left for the infants. Because all the infants shared a playground, it wasn’t long before I met the second set of people. Even at 5 years old, distinct cliques were in existance. There was the girls, who were all obsessed with barbie dolls and their hair, and being a bit of a tomboy I really wasn’t interested, and neither were they… they all thought that there was something wrong with me because id rather play with the cars with the boys.. Then there was the sporty boys, which was probably the group that I was closest to fitting in with. They would play with the cars, and play tag, and a weird version of football that only infants can play *and* know the rules instinctively – more often than not they’d let me join in, but not too much because I was a girl and they were’nt totally sure that I was just a ‘spy’ from the girls. Then there was the rest of the boys, - all of these cliques spanned across the whole of the infants so people from both years were in each. The clique with the other boys, were soon plotting and scheming in general, but soon things began to turn nasty. The nature of the estate I grew up on meant that you grew up early, so by 6 you’d usually had a fight if you were that way inclined. The Y2’s began to introduce the means of violence as a tool to cause fear and intimidation and a general ‘get you what you want’ thing to the Y1’s, who were keen to try this out. It worked. Not just on me… on everyone, but still that fascination with me was there, and the Y2’s had cottoned on to it as well. The fact that a lot of these guys were related just didn’t help probably. So my lunchtimes and playtimes tended to consist of me trying to find a suitable hiding place before the other people appeared, or if I was feeling brave, id go surround myself with the ‘sporty boys’ who were intimidated enough by the others to not defend me, but they were still fairly happy for me to join in with for the time being.
As these guys grew in their new ‘skill’ they got more daring, and stupid things like the cubes used for addition/subtraction would get thrown through the air at me when the teacher wasn’t looking. It was around this point that I began to realise that actually this might not be normal for everyone, but still I just accepted it as such.
The move into Y2 should have improved things as the influence of the guys in the year above should have ended there, but for various reasons it didn’t. The other major influence on Y2 was the teacher. Mrs Jackson. I’ve tried really hard to think of something positive to say about her, but there wasn’t anything. The bottom line was that she was violent and abusive. This was to the class in general, but she picked out her people for ‘special treatment’. That year there were two of us. Myself and a boy named Adam. It started of quite tame. She would keep us in all the time because we ‘had’nt done enough work’ At first I didn’t question this, and actually I didn’t mind, cause it kept me out of the playground, which had started out with violence this year.
But soon it began to get stupid, and she would begin to hit us. She was an expert at it. She knew how hard to hit so it would hurt for a long time but not bruise,and also where to hit so if it did it wouldn’t show. She also hit other people, and would often kick people as she walked past when we were working.
The worst thing was though was that the example that she set to the class, including the guys was that this was okay, and it was okay to hit people. So things began to get worse, and when I got let out I would spend my lunchtime running away from these guys. The problem was that they were sprinters at that age, and I was a distance runner.. so more often than not they caught me. My parents went in once or twice when I came home covered in bruising but I was labelled as a ‘clumsy shild’ which sempt to satisfy them.
There first day of that year which is firmly etched on my memory was a day in november of that year. As the weather was nice we had been allowed back on the field, and as usual I was being chased, and I was caught. This time it had been preplanned, and the now Y3’s were in on it. I was dragged across the yard by my feet, and got some lovely scrapes to show for that, to the hill, and over the brow out of sight where the Y3’s were waiting. The sporty boys had seen this happen, and overcame their own fear to go and fetch a teacher as they could see that this wasn’t a good thing, so I felt confident that it would end fairly soon so did the worst thing I could have done. I tried to stand up to them. The Y2s held me down on the ground while the Y3’s commenced a beating the likes of which I had never known before then. I lost two teeth that day on that hill- as far as I know they are still there. And then I saw the Michael, one of the sporty boys returning over the top of the hill saying ‘look theyre there’, and then disappearing. The teacher that had turned up was Mrs Jackson. She stood and laughed and watched as this took place. Then as the bell went she told the Y3’s that they had ‘done a good job’ and proceded to drag me back to the classroom. Of course I didn’t tell anyone. My parents, credit to them that day realised that something wasn’t right, and smelled a herring when my mum had been to talk to Mrs Jackson who had said that everything was fine, and it was just ‘typical tomboyish behaviour on my part… ‘
The second day I remember in vivid detail from this year was the middle of February of that year. Mrs Jackson was in a foul mood and taking it out on everyone, but especially us. That morning, she’d grabbed me by the upper arm so hard that she gave me a hairline fracture. That afternoon, having kicked ,spat, swore, and still not inflicted enough on her class she picked up a chair and threw it at Adam. It hit him on the head and he fell to the ground, unconcious. I honestly thought that he was dead, and that I would be next. But I wasn’t. She had been seen by several parents who went and reported it. She was given the sack on the account of those witness testimonies of that afternoon, and a doctors report on my arm.
At this point my parents took me out of school, and I went back two weeks later, into the year above, in the hopes that this would help. I’d cope with the work fine, but now I was with a bigger group of people who by now hated me. And in the junior yard there was no-where to run to and no-where to hide. It was at this point I made a concious decision to stop trusting, and to stop hoping that things would improve, as this was obviously my fault so I was stuck with it, and I began to harden myself to it. I created a world where I could go when I was getting beats, or being verballed and I ‘d hoped that when they saw my apparent fear or hurt from what was happening they’d lose interest and stop, but that didn’t happen.
Having created this little world, I began to live there. More and more, and it was at this point that the school mistook my behavoiur, rather than admit that something was seriously wrong, they instead wondered if I was just bored with the work, so they left me to my own devices as long as I did the work which was set, which I did very quickly. It was at this point that my affinity with music began to appear, as I had been given free reign over the Y3 area, and this was encouraged, so id finally found a way to escape at lunchtimes, but there was still playtimes, and the number of people who disliked me grew. The girly girls had gotten to the age where bitching took place so I got that, and the sporty boys were realising the value of universal acceptance, so were much less keen to allow me to join in. P.E became a nightmare as most thigns required a partner, and no-one would be mine because it would taint them.
So this was the normal… outside of school, I tried to just stay in my room, but my parents wanted me out of the house now my sister was born and home after being born 6 weeks prematurely and being really ill. They were concerned with that which was fair enough as ‘I wasn’t planned, I was an accident’ as they were so fond of reminding me of and I just got under their feet. So after school id go and hide somewhere, usually up the tree with the thickest foliage or under the stairs on the flats we lived in. When there was no-one there id venture up to the swings round the corner and play, but it wasn’t that often that there was no-one there.. and eventually this was cottoned onto by people who would hide with the intention of luring me onto the playground so they could ambush me. Needless to say it didn’t work for too long. I ended going back to school, to sit on the hill cause no-one thought of looking for me there…
By this point the ‘mob’ as they will now be referred to had begun to hang around with older boys, who, frankly, should have been locked up… things began to get creative now. Over the next 3 years I had stones thrown at me, I was jumped several times, had sticks thrown at me, was beaten with sticks twice. And the oldest boys had been watching me so knew what I did and when. I did still go back to the playground… and they knew it. They also knew which swing was my favourite. And sabotaged it. They got hold of a hacksaw and cut through the chains but not quite, so I went along, and had a swing, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air on a swing seat no longer attatched to a swing, landed on my chin, and got the first of my big scars.
The other hugely inventive thing they did gave me another scar. I saw Shaun of the Dead a few weeks ago and couldn’t watch that part of the film, I can’t explain why…
It was the bit where they were ‘playing’ with the zombie, and got out his record collection. Innovative, and funny, but I experienced that first hand. I had a vinyl record thrown at me, and it had been deliberately given sharp jagged edges which sliced me open. It was the weirdest wound ive ever received, as it was 4 inches wide and a good 2cm deep but didn’t bleed at all.
[ The only injury I have to beat that was self inflicted. Anything *isn’t* possible when you’re eight. Going upstairs on one rollerskate racing your cousin to the top isn’t possible. You are likely to fall, and if youre me, smash your head on the edge of a radiator at the bottom. The scar from that is in plain view but not noticable as it is the whole of my parting. That I can laugh at now… ]
The other three incidents of my primary school years that stick out for me are the following:
The first was the most permanent. The older guys in this mob of around 25 people, who were a good two or three years older ambushed me on the shops, hustled me to the dingy back of the hardware store, told me that if I made a sound they’d kill me, and got out the knives to prove it, and proceeded to kick the crap out of me with steel toe cap boots. This has left me with permanent bruising and chipped bones on both shins, and a constant reminder of exactly most of the people in my life thought of me at that time.
The second was being thrown out. Quite comical looking back on it in some ways, but in other ways it really isnt. It was christmas eve, and my sister then aged 5 was up really late talking non stop about when father christmas was going to arrive, and being quite tired I turned round and said ‘look if you don’t stop talking about him and go to sleep he’ll just not turn up… ‘ I still don’t think there was anythign that harsh about what I said- my parents told me that plenty of times in previous years, but my sister started screaming at the thought of no presents and told my dad who mustve thought someone was dying that id said she wasn’t getting any christmas presents, to which he threw me out in my pyjamas into the snowy night… sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I had just set off walking… as it was I hid under the stairs, scared as heck. Half an hour later my dad appeared outside the door telling me to get my arse up there or start walking. So I went back, and got slapped but I found out where I stood that day.
The third was not really that major but it sticks out… having had a really hard lunchtime – got loads and loads of verbal that I couldn’t quite block out and pushed off the bars and generally tormented I decided that I wasn’t having any more of it, and so I went home, except no-one was in so I went and hid in a flat neighbours outhouse.
No-one noticed that I’d gone.
Four months later I, along with most of the people in the nursery went to school. Mrs Race’s class. She was immensly tall, but she was fair, and kind, and she would tell people to ‘share’ if she saw them not doing so. The way school worked was that the infants had the smaller playground, with their apparatus, and the juniors theirs, and the field was anybody who wanted it, but generally, the hill on the infants side was usually left for the infants. Because all the infants shared a playground, it wasn’t long before I met the second set of people. Even at 5 years old, distinct cliques were in existance. There was the girls, who were all obsessed with barbie dolls and their hair, and being a bit of a tomboy I really wasn’t interested, and neither were they… they all thought that there was something wrong with me because id rather play with the cars with the boys.. Then there was the sporty boys, which was probably the group that I was closest to fitting in with. They would play with the cars, and play tag, and a weird version of football that only infants can play *and* know the rules instinctively – more often than not they’d let me join in, but not too much because I was a girl and they were’nt totally sure that I was just a ‘spy’ from the girls. Then there was the rest of the boys, - all of these cliques spanned across the whole of the infants so people from both years were in each. The clique with the other boys, were soon plotting and scheming in general, but soon things began to turn nasty. The nature of the estate I grew up on meant that you grew up early, so by 6 you’d usually had a fight if you were that way inclined. The Y2’s began to introduce the means of violence as a tool to cause fear and intimidation and a general ‘get you what you want’ thing to the Y1’s, who were keen to try this out. It worked. Not just on me… on everyone, but still that fascination with me was there, and the Y2’s had cottoned on to it as well. The fact that a lot of these guys were related just didn’t help probably. So my lunchtimes and playtimes tended to consist of me trying to find a suitable hiding place before the other people appeared, or if I was feeling brave, id go surround myself with the ‘sporty boys’ who were intimidated enough by the others to not defend me, but they were still fairly happy for me to join in with for the time being.
As these guys grew in their new ‘skill’ they got more daring, and stupid things like the cubes used for addition/subtraction would get thrown through the air at me when the teacher wasn’t looking. It was around this point that I began to realise that actually this might not be normal for everyone, but still I just accepted it as such.
The move into Y2 should have improved things as the influence of the guys in the year above should have ended there, but for various reasons it didn’t. The other major influence on Y2 was the teacher. Mrs Jackson. I’ve tried really hard to think of something positive to say about her, but there wasn’t anything. The bottom line was that she was violent and abusive. This was to the class in general, but she picked out her people for ‘special treatment’. That year there were two of us. Myself and a boy named Adam. It started of quite tame. She would keep us in all the time because we ‘had’nt done enough work’ At first I didn’t question this, and actually I didn’t mind, cause it kept me out of the playground, which had started out with violence this year.
But soon it began to get stupid, and she would begin to hit us. She was an expert at it. She knew how hard to hit so it would hurt for a long time but not bruise,and also where to hit so if it did it wouldn’t show. She also hit other people, and would often kick people as she walked past when we were working.
The worst thing was though was that the example that she set to the class, including the guys was that this was okay, and it was okay to hit people. So things began to get worse, and when I got let out I would spend my lunchtime running away from these guys. The problem was that they were sprinters at that age, and I was a distance runner.. so more often than not they caught me. My parents went in once or twice when I came home covered in bruising but I was labelled as a ‘clumsy shild’ which sempt to satisfy them.
There first day of that year which is firmly etched on my memory was a day in november of that year. As the weather was nice we had been allowed back on the field, and as usual I was being chased, and I was caught. This time it had been preplanned, and the now Y3’s were in on it. I was dragged across the yard by my feet, and got some lovely scrapes to show for that, to the hill, and over the brow out of sight where the Y3’s were waiting. The sporty boys had seen this happen, and overcame their own fear to go and fetch a teacher as they could see that this wasn’t a good thing, so I felt confident that it would end fairly soon so did the worst thing I could have done. I tried to stand up to them. The Y2s held me down on the ground while the Y3’s commenced a beating the likes of which I had never known before then. I lost two teeth that day on that hill- as far as I know they are still there. And then I saw the Michael, one of the sporty boys returning over the top of the hill saying ‘look theyre there’, and then disappearing. The teacher that had turned up was Mrs Jackson. She stood and laughed and watched as this took place. Then as the bell went she told the Y3’s that they had ‘done a good job’ and proceded to drag me back to the classroom. Of course I didn’t tell anyone. My parents, credit to them that day realised that something wasn’t right, and smelled a herring when my mum had been to talk to Mrs Jackson who had said that everything was fine, and it was just ‘typical tomboyish behaviour on my part… ‘
The second day I remember in vivid detail from this year was the middle of February of that year. Mrs Jackson was in a foul mood and taking it out on everyone, but especially us. That morning, she’d grabbed me by the upper arm so hard that she gave me a hairline fracture. That afternoon, having kicked ,spat, swore, and still not inflicted enough on her class she picked up a chair and threw it at Adam. It hit him on the head and he fell to the ground, unconcious. I honestly thought that he was dead, and that I would be next. But I wasn’t. She had been seen by several parents who went and reported it. She was given the sack on the account of those witness testimonies of that afternoon, and a doctors report on my arm.
At this point my parents took me out of school, and I went back two weeks later, into the year above, in the hopes that this would help. I’d cope with the work fine, but now I was with a bigger group of people who by now hated me. And in the junior yard there was no-where to run to and no-where to hide. It was at this point I made a concious decision to stop trusting, and to stop hoping that things would improve, as this was obviously my fault so I was stuck with it, and I began to harden myself to it. I created a world where I could go when I was getting beats, or being verballed and I ‘d hoped that when they saw my apparent fear or hurt from what was happening they’d lose interest and stop, but that didn’t happen.
Having created this little world, I began to live there. More and more, and it was at this point that the school mistook my behavoiur, rather than admit that something was seriously wrong, they instead wondered if I was just bored with the work, so they left me to my own devices as long as I did the work which was set, which I did very quickly. It was at this point that my affinity with music began to appear, as I had been given free reign over the Y3 area, and this was encouraged, so id finally found a way to escape at lunchtimes, but there was still playtimes, and the number of people who disliked me grew. The girly girls had gotten to the age where bitching took place so I got that, and the sporty boys were realising the value of universal acceptance, so were much less keen to allow me to join in. P.E became a nightmare as most thigns required a partner, and no-one would be mine because it would taint them.
So this was the normal… outside of school, I tried to just stay in my room, but my parents wanted me out of the house now my sister was born and home after being born 6 weeks prematurely and being really ill. They were concerned with that which was fair enough as ‘I wasn’t planned, I was an accident’ as they were so fond of reminding me of and I just got under their feet. So after school id go and hide somewhere, usually up the tree with the thickest foliage or under the stairs on the flats we lived in. When there was no-one there id venture up to the swings round the corner and play, but it wasn’t that often that there was no-one there.. and eventually this was cottoned onto by people who would hide with the intention of luring me onto the playground so they could ambush me. Needless to say it didn’t work for too long. I ended going back to school, to sit on the hill cause no-one thought of looking for me there…
By this point the ‘mob’ as they will now be referred to had begun to hang around with older boys, who, frankly, should have been locked up… things began to get creative now. Over the next 3 years I had stones thrown at me, I was jumped several times, had sticks thrown at me, was beaten with sticks twice. And the oldest boys had been watching me so knew what I did and when. I did still go back to the playground… and they knew it. They also knew which swing was my favourite. And sabotaged it. They got hold of a hacksaw and cut through the chains but not quite, so I went along, and had a swing, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air on a swing seat no longer attatched to a swing, landed on my chin, and got the first of my big scars.
The other hugely inventive thing they did gave me another scar. I saw Shaun of the Dead a few weeks ago and couldn’t watch that part of the film, I can’t explain why…
It was the bit where they were ‘playing’ with the zombie, and got out his record collection. Innovative, and funny, but I experienced that first hand. I had a vinyl record thrown at me, and it had been deliberately given sharp jagged edges which sliced me open. It was the weirdest wound ive ever received, as it was 4 inches wide and a good 2cm deep but didn’t bleed at all.
[ The only injury I have to beat that was self inflicted. Anything *isn’t* possible when you’re eight. Going upstairs on one rollerskate racing your cousin to the top isn’t possible. You are likely to fall, and if youre me, smash your head on the edge of a radiator at the bottom. The scar from that is in plain view but not noticable as it is the whole of my parting. That I can laugh at now… ]
The other three incidents of my primary school years that stick out for me are the following:
The first was the most permanent. The older guys in this mob of around 25 people, who were a good two or three years older ambushed me on the shops, hustled me to the dingy back of the hardware store, told me that if I made a sound they’d kill me, and got out the knives to prove it, and proceeded to kick the crap out of me with steel toe cap boots. This has left me with permanent bruising and chipped bones on both shins, and a constant reminder of exactly most of the people in my life thought of me at that time.
The second was being thrown out. Quite comical looking back on it in some ways, but in other ways it really isnt. It was christmas eve, and my sister then aged 5 was up really late talking non stop about when father christmas was going to arrive, and being quite tired I turned round and said ‘look if you don’t stop talking about him and go to sleep he’ll just not turn up… ‘ I still don’t think there was anythign that harsh about what I said- my parents told me that plenty of times in previous years, but my sister started screaming at the thought of no presents and told my dad who mustve thought someone was dying that id said she wasn’t getting any christmas presents, to which he threw me out in my pyjamas into the snowy night… sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I had just set off walking… as it was I hid under the stairs, scared as heck. Half an hour later my dad appeared outside the door telling me to get my arse up there or start walking. So I went back, and got slapped but I found out where I stood that day.
The third was not really that major but it sticks out… having had a really hard lunchtime – got loads and loads of verbal that I couldn’t quite block out and pushed off the bars and generally tormented I decided that I wasn’t having any more of it, and so I went home, except no-one was in so I went and hid in a flat neighbours outhouse.
No-one noticed that I’d gone.
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