I can clearly remember when that feeling disappeared. It was when my sister Kelly arrived. I was a bit pissed off when she came along, because I was used to getting all the attention. But when she was born, all I got was a packet of fruit pastilles from my Auntie Maureen and no more spooning on the sofa. As you can imagine, someone like me needs a lot of attention but what chance did I have against a screaming baby? None. I can remember feeling a bit lost and lonely: my sisters had each other, Mum and Dad had each other, and who did I have? No-one. All I had was my MFI bed and my first panic attack.
Rennie, my oldest sister, would make me sit and tickle her feet until we both fell asleep. There were many nights when I ended up asleep at the foot of her bed and many more nights when I was woken by a loud Beep-Beep-Beep, the sound of Tania’s bedwetting alarm. You see, she had a weak bladder and couldn’t keep it in; as soon as she started to wee the bed, the wee would hit a metal mesh underneath the plastic sheet beneath her bed sheet. Every time she moved in the bed, it sounded like she was crushing a plastic bag.
Me, Kelly and Rennie at the beach on one of our holidays.
The alarm would wake Mum, who would put me back in my bed, and I would go back to sleep feeling less lonely, until the next night when it would all be repeated. This continued until I was about 25. No, I’m lying – Tania only wet the bed until the age of 19.
Mum was an absolute clean freak – most families wake up in the morning to the smell of toast, we woke up to the smell of disinfectant. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then bleach was her holy water.
When we went downstairs each morning before school, Dad would already have left for work. At this time he was working on building sites – he was known for the large number of bricks he could carry on his hod.
We had to sit on the sofa in the living room. Nanny Downer would be in the cupboard on her commode, farting away while we all laughed. She would shout at us from inside the cupboard, ‘What are you laughing at out there?’
Then she would shout at Mum, ‘Patsy, Patsy, what are they laughing at out there?’
Only Nanny Downer called Mum ‘Patsy’. The more we laughed, the more Nanny Downer laughed, and the more she farted. It was not her fault, it was caused by the medication she was on, bless her.
Why was Nanny Downer in the cupboard on her commode? You might well ask. Her illness had left her too weak to walk and she could not get up and down the stairs. So, Dad decorated the shoe-and-coat cupboard downstairs, where we also kept the Hoover. He gave it a lick of paint and put some pictures on the wall, with a nice floral border in the middle.
Fortunately, Nanny Downer didn’t have to stay in the cupboard too long. She eventually got a warden-controlled flat around the corner, with a fully fitted loo, and we got our cupboard back. The shoes and Hoover had never had it so good – a cupboard fit for a commode!
Anyway, back to my mum’s cleaning regime. We were on the sofa because the kitchen floor would be wet from a good old scrub. There would be Shake’n’Vac all over the three-tone shagpile carpet, which was brown and cream with black flecks. This accompanied our orange leather sofa and mahogany-stained wood panelling, which Mum had sprayed with Mr Sheen, ready to be wiped down. The smoked-glass mirrored tiles on the walls would also be cleaned with vinegar water to bring out their shine.
Only when the kitchen floor was dry and we had been sufficiently intoxicated with the fumes of every cleaning product she could find a surface for, were we allowed to sit down for breakfast, which had to be a rushed affair.
No sooner had Mum put the plate down than she was taking it back to wash, dry and put away. While my two sisters were at school and I was at playschool, Mum would pop off to Bourne’s pie factory, where everyone in the town seemed to work, to do a quick shift. She was that manic and obsessed with cleanliness that she couldn’t leave the house without it looking as though no-one lived there.
This was not a once-a-week event, it was an everyday occurrence. Sometimes my sisters and I wonder why we have the habits we do, such as our neurotic addiction to cleanliness. Don’t get me started on the hypochondria and panic attacks. No, actually, do – we may as well start that here, because it’s an ongoing process that will keep popping up throughout this book, as it pops up throughout my life.
When we were kids, Mum would take us all to the doctor’s if one of us was ill and she would claim that we were all ill. She would say, yes, they’ve got a sore throat – he’s still got it, she’s getting it – even if we didn’t. We would all be put on penicillin – I don’t know if people have penicillin any more, do they? I remember it had to be kept in the fridge; it was milky white in colour and I remember enjoying the taste of it. We used to have it that often, we didn’t need Mum to supervise us with the dosage: we knew exactly how much to take.
Honestly, when I was 12, I thought I had a womb and was about to start my period because I just did everything my sisters did. I’m so glad they used towels when they started and not tampons, otherwise I would have really been in trouble.
As I said, I did everything my sisters did, and that’s how my dancing days started – they went dancing, I went dancing, and I just kept on dancing …
3
Doreen Cliff School of Dance
I don’t think my sisters really wanted to go dancing. It was just that Mum wanted to get rid of all three of us on a Saturday morning so she could go shopping along with the rest of the town. Doreen Cliff School of Dance, at the Braintree Institute, must have been making a bloody fortune – when I say every kid in the town was there, they really were. Well, the girls and me.
Before I went to Doreen Cliff’s School I was already doing my own thing. I was always loose – I could always do the splits, not technically correct, but my legs were quite rubbery. I can remember as clear as day lying on my front on our shagpile in front of the TV, getting high on the Shake’n’Vac that the vacuum cleaner couldn’t quite reach.
I liked rocking back and forth on my front as I lay in front of the TV and before I knew it, my feet had gone over my head and I had one foot next to each ear. Mum freaked out – I think she thought I had snapped in half and you can imagine what must have been going through her mind. Penicillin wouldn’t fix this one! But I just rolled out and was as right as rain.
So, when I got to Doreen Cliff’s I enjoyed putting myself in a ball in acro class. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it’s a bit like contortion. Well, it was at Doreen Cliff’s School. She would bend you into any shape she wanted and of course she loved me. A boy with that facility! I was already grabbing attention at age five.
It didn’t take me long to get into the swing of things at Doreen Cliff’s – as soon as I got a pair of Lycra tights, that was it. I loved it and I couldn’t wait for Saturday mornings. I remember I would wake up before the bleach had hit the kitchen floor, with my bag packed and ready to go.
Now, the Braintree Institute isn’t really that big. I only went back there a few months ago as Doreen was retiring after 45 years, but I remember when I was five how grand it all seemed. The main hall had a stage with big red curtains, which was only for end-of-year shows.
Our classes were held upstairs, in dusty, cold rooms with grey lino floors. Remembering the smell of the cold concrete walls and the plastic lino still makes me smile now. As soon as I walked through the doors I felt happy and excited, and I couldn’t wait to continue what we had been doing the week before.
I loved the work we did and I was eager to progress. Early on I learned that if you practise, you can improve, and I did – I got better, week after week. I was stimulated and felt that it was for a reason, even though I didn’t know what the reason was. I didn’t have to try, it just happened. I could perform any task I was set and I had no idea at the time that this would be my career.
In contrast, I remember I hated my first day at primary school and every day after,