I have been quite well-off,in my time. Now I am poor. In fact, I was born without a bean or stitch to my name. This situation was rectified by my Great Aunt Jaqueline, known in the family as " Jacque The Knitter". Baby clothes these days are slender and shapely garments, with whizzy velcro fastenings and amusing legends written over them;"Crack Whore" and "AntiSocial Already", that sort of thing. In my dim and distant babyhood, we were stuffed into serious knitted gear the second they wiped us off. If you look at baby pictures of the 1950's (and why would you?);you will note that all babies were born in black-and-white. In addition to this,they all look frighfully cross, and more like Churchill than is strictly necessary. This is because they were, to a baby, rammed into hand-knitted pastel cardies, rompers, and bizarre woolly bonnets shaped like the Taj Mahal. You didn't have scans and things then,so the poor mite's sex was a surprise.You got what you were given, and you decked it out in gender-neutral lemon. To this day, I consider that lemon is a useless colour and cannot abide it. Then you were put firmly into a huge leathery pram, and left out in the garden. Fresh air was considered important;something else I have never cared for.I prefer to take my air when it has been in and out of a few other people first.
Born into a clan of wildly-knitting nurses and high-minded teachers, opportunities for both movement and bad behaviour were limited, but it seems that I was an ingenious baby, and found several ways to "scald my Mother's heart", as her Irish mother would say. One of them was to hang upside down in my pram,like a lumpily-knitted bat,until my face went purple. And when I got teeth, I was a bad biter. I also,it pains me to admit, ate worms, ants, and the dog's Spiller's Shapes Biscuits, earning the nickname "Rob-The-Dog".
My brother, when he came along five years later, was an angelic baby. White-blond and frail, he kept Alder Hey Hospital in business for the first few years of his life,with a series of ailments which included a hole-y heart. This forced me to raise my game; as he was getting far too much attention,and I retaliated by becoming adept at having showy accidents. He stopped being frail abruptly at the age of three, and is now two separate gorillas. I have remained reckless and clumsy, as previously described. My outstanding mishap was falling into the Electric Eel Pool at Chester Zoo. The piranhas must have been on holiday.Mind you, they would never have chewed their way through all that knitting. My Dad pulled me out, an action which he loudly and repeatedly regretted as I grew older and increasingly irritating.
We never had any money;but we did have prosperous relatives on my Mother's side;her sister having married a wealthy businessman. We had Sunday Tea every week or so; at their Mossley Hill residence. To my brother and I, their lives seemed astoundingly opulent.The house was always warm, there was a "domestic" who ensured it smelt of lavender floor polish, and they had four sorts of cake AT ONE TIME. My brother bought this house as soon as he was a solvent grown-up, and has made it even more stately.
The Giant Boy used to attend a private school,when we first moved back to Liverpool. "Hogwarts" was charming to look at, and despite massive fees and frankly peculiar sumptuary laws, he did like it. When I became redundant, he had to leave.I struggled on for a bit,but eventually ran out of things to sell,and it was clear that no-one wanted to employ me and quite possibly never would.So I was fortunate enough to get a place for him at a good-ish state school. I thought he would not suffer from the social pressure of having friends whose parents could afford things for them that I really couldn't; however many items I sold on E-Bay. However,children are very good at creating their own class systems and distinctions,despite all egalitarian attempts on the part of well-meaning institutions to eridicate such things. So now we have school uniform. But some uniforms are more uniform than others. I am informed that a school coat; (the thing that was four foot long in gaberdine and didn't fit you until the sixth form) must be some designer nonsense that costs £200.00. Brands and styles of shoes are studied with an attention to detail that would shame Peter York. And let us not even begin to discuss the electronic accessories without which no 14-year-old boulevardier can possibly exist.
I must say, the GB does realise that his Ma is a pauper. He has observed me lurking around supermarkets waiting for them to appear with the "Reduced" labels too often not to be keenly aware that we are boracic. . He doesn't make too many demands.He had better not,either, I have warned him that I would pick up the needles at once and start knitting Cruel and Unusual School Jumpers.
Born into a clan of wildly-knitting nurses and high-minded teachers, opportunities for both movement and bad behaviour were limited, but it seems that I was an ingenious baby, and found several ways to "scald my Mother's heart", as her Irish mother would say. One of them was to hang upside down in my pram,like a lumpily-knitted bat,until my face went purple. And when I got teeth, I was a bad biter. I also,it pains me to admit, ate worms, ants, and the dog's Spiller's Shapes Biscuits, earning the nickname "Rob-The-Dog".
My brother, when he came along five years later, was an angelic baby. White-blond and frail, he kept Alder Hey Hospital in business for the first few years of his life,with a series of ailments which included a hole-y heart. This forced me to raise my game; as he was getting far too much attention,and I retaliated by becoming adept at having showy accidents. He stopped being frail abruptly at the age of three, and is now two separate gorillas. I have remained reckless and clumsy, as previously described. My outstanding mishap was falling into the Electric Eel Pool at Chester Zoo. The piranhas must have been on holiday.Mind you, they would never have chewed their way through all that knitting. My Dad pulled me out, an action which he loudly and repeatedly regretted as I grew older and increasingly irritating.
We never had any money;but we did have prosperous relatives on my Mother's side;her sister having married a wealthy businessman. We had Sunday Tea every week or so; at their Mossley Hill residence. To my brother and I, their lives seemed astoundingly opulent.The house was always warm, there was a "domestic" who ensured it smelt of lavender floor polish, and they had four sorts of cake AT ONE TIME. My brother bought this house as soon as he was a solvent grown-up, and has made it even more stately.
The Giant Boy used to attend a private school,when we first moved back to Liverpool. "Hogwarts" was charming to look at, and despite massive fees and frankly peculiar sumptuary laws, he did like it. When I became redundant, he had to leave.I struggled on for a bit,but eventually ran out of things to sell,and it was clear that no-one wanted to employ me and quite possibly never would.So I was fortunate enough to get a place for him at a good-ish state school. I thought he would not suffer from the social pressure of having friends whose parents could afford things for them that I really couldn't; however many items I sold on E-Bay. However,children are very good at creating their own class systems and distinctions,despite all egalitarian attempts on the part of well-meaning institutions to eridicate such things. So now we have school uniform. But some uniforms are more uniform than others. I am informed that a school coat; (the thing that was four foot long in gaberdine and didn't fit you until the sixth form) must be some designer nonsense that costs £200.00. Brands and styles of shoes are studied with an attention to detail that would shame Peter York. And let us not even begin to discuss the electronic accessories without which no 14-year-old boulevardier can possibly exist.
I must say, the GB does realise that his Ma is a pauper. He has observed me lurking around supermarkets waiting for them to appear with the "Reduced" labels too often not to be keenly aware that we are boracic. . He doesn't make too many demands.He had better not,either, I have warned him that I would pick up the needles at once and start knitting Cruel and Unusual School Jumpers.
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