And it was another kind adult who came to my rescue on the day when Brett couldn’t resist pushing me, fully clothed, into the swimming pool. Mum loved to swim, and long before we moved and had a pool of our own installed she sometimes took us with her to the local pool. On this occasion, aged four, I was standing beside the pool and wearing a pretty cotton dress when Brett gave me a shove and I hit the deep end. I remember the water closing over my head as my skirt floated up around me: I sank down and down until, thankfully, strong arms grabbed me and I was hauled out, choking and spluttering.
The incident so terrified me that I could never bear having water over my head and I refused to take a shower until I was 15, prefering baths. I did eventually learn to swim but despite my best efforts, the phobia has remained with me and even now I won’t go in the sea, if I go to the beach.
Of course Brett, who was only six himself at the time, had no idea how much this would affect me. He probably didn’t even stop to wonder whether I could swim: he himself was a good swimmer and he and his friends would push one another into the pool without a second thought, to emerge laughing and splashing. I’m sure he expected me to do the same. When my father built our swimming pool in the back garden (which was in itself hilarious as he and a gang of my boyfriends dug the foundations), it was all done to the right specifications but Dad didn’t bother to seal it and although it was quite a large pool we would often come down in the morning to find half the water had disappeared. We’d fill it up again and again, but half the water would be gone by the next day – no one ever worked out where it was going. Despite this, the pool gave us a lot of joy and we had many noisy parties.
Funnily enough, my father hated water and never went swimming, so perhaps my fear was genetic and being pushed in simply made it worse. He built the pool for Mum – it was she who loved swimming – and she was an excellent swimmer and even took part in synchronised displays. You know, the kind where you put a peg on your nose and perform a graceful underwater routine in perfect synch with others.
After the swimming-pool débâcle, Brett turned his attention to acrobatics and insisted I join in as his assistant. He liked to make me stand on his shoulders or balance on his knees as he floated on his back and he would also spin me round, faster and faster, by my wrists or ankles. I was always wary of this but he was my brother and so I had no choice. Usually, I would become terrified halfway through the trick, at which point he would insist I carry on.
Things came to a head, literally, one day as I attempted to balance with one foot on his knee. I wobbled about, lost my balance and came crashing down, hitting my head against the sharp corner of a wall. My forehead was sliced open and blood gushed everywhere, but even as I sat howling with pain, I knew Brett was for it and I would get all the sympathy. Most probably terrified, he tried to mop up the blood on my face with the sleeve of his jumper. Mum came running in from the kitchen to witness this gory scene while I of course lapped up every minute of it.
She rushed me off to our local doctor, whose name happened to be Hutchinson (the same as ours). In those days you had the same doctor for most of your life and all the family went to him. As Brett cowered in the corner, the doctor cleaned me up and decided my injury looked far worse than it was. I had to have stitches, though, and I still have the scar. The doctor made sure Brett was well and truly sorry while I revelled in the drama of it all.
Although I liked our doctor (who was stern but friendly), the dentist was altogether another matter. The first time my mother took me to see him I was placed in an huge black leather chair and there were shiny instruments everywhere. A man in a white coat opened my mouth – which I closed again very sharply, catching his finger. He shouted something at me and then the next thing I knew there was a hissing sound and an enormous black mask loomed in front of me. I tried to get out of the chair but an ugly fat woman, sweating profusely, held me down and the mask was put over my face. Then came the smell of the gas – a metallic stench that made me feel quite sick.
The next thing I knew I was waking up with the fat woman poking at my shoulders. As the dentist bent down and peered at me with his foul breath and strangely bad teeth, he said, ‘Come on, girl – open your mouth,’ and tried to prise my lips apart. The projectile vomit hit first him and then the wall in front of me with such velocity that it must have been the equivalent of a turbo-charged paint stripper. Disgusted, they threw me out and told my mother not to bring her ungrateful little brat back. The whole episode was truly a Little Britain nugget.
As for Brett, he could be my tormentor but he was also the big brother who looked out for me. So when he went away looking so small in his smart red and grey uniform, with a big trunk stashed in the back of the car, I felt very sad. Without him there to thump up the stairs or shout down from the landing, the house fell silent and still. More than ever, I began to rely on my imaginary world, having endless conversations with make-believe friends.
I could have asked friends over, and sometimes I did, but mostly I played on my own. And there were always adults around: my grandparents came over a lot and often looked after me when Mum and Dad were out, but they tended to leave me to get on with my own games.
I adored my grandparents. My maternal Grandma Nancy (whom I called ‘Nanna’) was always very elegant and dressed beautifully. I remember her in a blue dress with a little collar and cuffs, pearls around her neck, her pure-white hair neatly permed. Her skin was baby-soft and remarkably unlined, probably due to the healthy additive-free food they ate plus the fact that she didn’t smoke, drink or sunbathe. She was kind and loving and adored dancing, while Granddad was tall, creative and very emotional.
When I stayed with them for dinner Nanna always gave Granddad his meal first. Like the three bears, he would have the biggest dinner, then Nanna and then me. If it happened to be something I really liked, such as mashed potato, I would look longingly over at Granddad’s huge portion until Nanna went out to the kitchen, whereupon he would quickly spoon some of his mash onto my plate and wink at me as she came back in. I loved their bed: it was a proper sprung one and when you were in it you rolled into the middle. And I also adored their open coal fire – I have lovely memories of nestling in Granddad’s lap in my woolly dressing gown on a winter’s night and listening to the sounds of Nanna knitting, the fire crackling and cheeky schoolboy Jimmy Clitheroe on the radio.
Mum was always close to her parents so they came to us almost every weekend and often I would go to their house in the school holidays when she had to work. Nanna and Granddad also came with us to our caravan, which was on a permanent site on the East Coast, between Skegness and Mablethorpe. I absolutely loved that caravan: to me, it seemed the perfect home with everything we needed packed neatly into tiny spaces and seats that turned into beds at night. For me, it was heaven – a proper grown-up dolls’ house.
Later, we started to go abroad for holidays and Mum once drove the pink-and-white Cresta all the way to Spain – which took a few days and was quite something then. We used to go and stay in Tossa de Mar, north of Barcelona. At that time it was just a small village with one hotel so they certainly hadn’t seen anything like this enormous flashy car with wings on the back driving into the little sandy bay. I think they believed we were aliens because the villagers would simply stand and stare. Our hotel was a gorgeous 1920s building, very glamorous, which was used as a location in an Ava Gardner film. I’m glad I got to see Spain when it was so unspoilt.
When we moved to our house in Burton Joyce, I had to leave Dorothy Grants (which was some distance away) and instead was enrolled in the little village primary school, where I stayed until I was 11. Though saddened to leave the school where I’d been so happy, one consolation was the fact that we now had stables at our house and I soon developed a life-long passion for horses. Indeed, I was crazy about them and lucky enough to have a horse of my own. My first horse was a sturdy mountain pony called Tinto, a bay with a black stripe down his back, and I loved him dearly. Patient and friendly, I felt he was my best friend and, yes, I would talk to him for hours. On very hot days he would sometimes lie down in the paddock behind the house and I would go and lie on his tummy.
I