Fifty Years Ago: Sunday 29th August 1976
(Gosforth, Age 14:11)
My teeth were still hurting.
Two days earlier I’d spent over three hours in the dentist’s chair. I wore an orthodontic brace and the dentist had decided to make adjustments. Wires had been cemented to my teeth. He wanted to break off some of the brackets and move them, drill and clean my teeth. I’d thought forty-five minutes tops. Instead, the time I’d expected to spend with Julie-Anne had been flushed down a rinsing bowl.
Now the forced movement of the teeth, encouraged by the application of elastic bands, was causing the pain. I had earache too, though there were many variations on pains that I differentiated as earache, migraine, sinus pain or toothache. Surely it all derived from what was taking place in my jaw.
I woke sweaty in my bedroom above the kitchen. For a bit of a change I had pushed my bed under the window. I could open it and have a draught on my face. I liked that. It was as if I were asleep under the trees, or in a tree.
Certain pains had no cure, short of pain medication. There were foods too, usually highly processed, and certain additives, preservatives or colourings that could set off my earache.
I had porridge and a fried breakfast. Comfort food. If I felt miserable, a lot of food was a distraction, and a fried breakfast was a Sunday indulgence.
I made a hot-water bottle and wrapped it in a towel to hold against the side of my head. It was the ordinary rubber sort with a screw-in stopper, about the size of a small occasional cushion. We would wrap them in a towel, maybe a tea towel and sometimes a knitted jumper.
Then I watched TV.
I could literally watch the TV when there were no programmes. I would put it on and stare at the Test Card: the girl wearing an Alice band, with a piece of chalk and a doll. I would sit close to the colour television and put my thumb, index and ring fingers together, leaving a tiny space through which I could pick out the colour pixels. I marvelled at how a red, yellow and blue dot could make up all the colours.
I continued clearing work in the garden.
This had already become a project over several days: removing the scraggly old plum tree in the back garden. It still served a purpose because we had a hammock attached to it, but Mum had instructed me to clear it. Chopping down a tree often became a plea to have something meaningful to do.
I wore green wellies for all tasks in the garden, with jeans, a T-shirt and an old jumper. If it rained I had a Parka jacket. I worked on the branches and stump. Despite the teeth and the earache, the work was a distraction. I was outside, doing a physical task, with a sense of immediate and lasting achievement. Tools cleaved and cut away. Most satisfying.
I worked until eleven.
Then coffee: instant, full-fat milk, no sugar, with a couple of digestive biscuits.
At some point I had Yorkshire pud — Granny’s Best.
Granny notoriously struggled with Yorkshire pudding, or at least could only make them properly in her own oven. Sometimes Mum made some for Granny to heat up. We had ours on the same plate with the rest of Sunday lunch: crisp edges, soft centre, gravy soaking into it. Beautiful comfort food.
Granny and Grandpa had come over to keep an eye out for me. They went home in the afternoon and I had the house to myself overnight.
I had written down Gambit, but that wasn’t on until the following day. I probably hadn’t written the diary for a couple of days and had got the days confused.
I continued clearing.
There was satisfaction in being able to see what I had done: branches and stump being removed, something altered by my own effort rather than merely talked about. It gave me somewhere to put myself when my jaw hurt.
Then I tried the flamethrower out on the dead berberis.
It wasn’t really a flamethrower. It was a paraffin weed burner, though flamethrower was a much better description of it. It was a sort of bronze or beige colour and entirely metal, with a tank at one end, a metal pipe and the burning nozzle. There had to be some adjustment for the intensity of the flame.
When we were much younger, under close supervision, we’d watched Dad get it ready and light it. With him gone, we were quick to use it, just as we were quick to use the Flymo. Mum left the garden to “the men”: Dad when he’d been around, and since then me, my older brother and Grandpa.
There was no supervision now. I may even have been home alone.
The berberis may not have been dead at all. After a summer of drought it looked dead, which was good enough to make it a target for me to burn down.
Using the flamethrower was exciting. It was adult, dangerous, technological and faintly military, while at the same time being nothing more exotic than garden equipment.
By the time I’d finished I had soil, sweat, smoke and the smell of paraffin on me, and scratches as well. I had a bath and washed my hair.
We rarely took showers. I remembered Dad once standing in the shower in jockey shorts trying to wash the dog, but baths were normal. For shampoo there was Fairy Liquid — mild green! Standard for washing children and their hair.
There was a spot on my cheek which my parents had worried might become a problem when I started shaving. I’d barely got that far. It hadn’t been a problem.
I rang Julie-Anne.
I liked to keep in touch. I liked the sound of a young female voice. Her voice.
Her number was in my orange pocket address book. Ringing could feel like pulling the arm of a one-armed bandit — a bit of a gamble. Would she be there?
Julie-Anne and I were boyfriend and girlfriend of the platonic, attached kind. We could talk about school, holidays, people we both knew, plans to meet and nothing in particular. She wasn’t one for demonstrative shows of affection. That didn’t stop me wanting to hear her voice.
There were times when I would find a way to put the right music on in the background to soften the mood while talking to her. The problem was that she liked David Soul and I didn’t.
Afterwards I watched TV. Sunday evening might mean The World About Us, David Attenborough, or Space: 1999, Martin Landau on Moonbase Alpha.
Then I listened to records: David Bowie, Elton John, Cat Stevens, Abba, Genesis, Jethro Tull.
My teeth had hurt, my ear had hurt, I’d spent part of the day working at a plum tree, attacked a possibly living berberis with a paraffin flamethrower, had Granny and Grandpa keeping an eye out for me and then been left with the house to myself.
I slept content.
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