Read Online That's Another Story: The Autobiography by Julie Walters - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Julie Walters
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number 26 smelt of fresh paint, clean carpets and lavender furniture polish. Every object, nook and cranny was dust-free and polished to a military shine. On one occasion, having returned in the evening with fish and chips for our dinner, we were told, ‘Don’t bring chips in th’ouse, they’ll make th’ouse smell.’ Once inside, we were encouraged by my mother to speak in little more than a whisper. Breakfast was a self-conscious, almost silent ritual, where the crunch of toast was deafening, the only other sound being the restrained scrape of knives on plates, the careful clink of cups on saucers and the occasional swallowed murmur of voices. It was as if we were guarding some terrible secret, the secret being, I suppose, us.
After breakfast we would gather our things for the day, because we were not allowed back in until the evening. If the weather was fine - that is, if it was not actually raining - we would walk down to the North Shore and my parents would ensconce themselves in a couple of deckchairs, both of them, whatever the weather, fully dressed, my father on occasion wearing a suit, albeit with sandals and socks. I would strip down to my stretchy, ruched bathing costume, having underdressed back at the B and B, in order not to have to go through the embarrassing palaver of trying to change on the beach and not show your nether regions to hundreds of other people. It was bad enough at the end of the day, wobbling about on one foot as you tried to remove a sodden swimming costume, then pulling your knickers on, dragging them up over damp, sand-coated skin, made sore from the salt, and all this whilst attempting to keep an inadequate towel wrapped around your vitals.
I would run off to the sea, dodging in and out of deckchairs, with my mother’s cries of ‘Don’t go out too far!’ hanging in the air after me. A few years previously, before I was born, my brother Kevin, who would have been two at the time, had nearly drowned in a deep pothole at Sandersfoot, but was saved by a family friend, himself only a boy at the time. He had held on to Kevin after seeing him in trouble, until my father reached them after running flat out without a thought for himself across jagged rocks and stones, cutting and scraping his feet and shins as he went. Then, with terrible irony, when he was a young man my brother’s saviour was himself drowned, after being swept away by a freak wave whilst on holiday. So my parents were ever vigilant when any of us were in the sea, my mother sitting awkwardly, with her neck craned, a squinting, hawkish look on her face, and my father sitting up straight and shielding his eyes, watching continuously until we came out. Then Dad would half get up and wave frantically so that we could spot them amongst the heaving throng.
The Blackpool sea was always grey, even on the odd occasion when the sky was blue, and during our last holiday there I found little brown particles floating in it. Luckily it was on the way home that I brought this up and my brother, his head as ever in his carrier bag, informed me in a muffled voice that the said particles were in fact shit. I don’t think I’ve ever swum in the sea without first checking it for excrement since.
In the event of inclement weather we would walk down the Golden Mile. In a small bag slung across my shoulder would be my spending money, saved from pocket money, and gifts at Christmas and birthdays from aunts, uncles and friends of my parents. The Golden Mile was an exciting string of shops selling tacky tourist trash: ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hats, sticks of rock, plastic miniatures of the tower, all sorts of incongruous items made out of sugar, such as bright-pink, giant baby’s dummies, false teeth, or women’s breasts. I remember on one occasion, whilst we were taking our late-afternoon stroll along the prom, seeing an elderly woman sucking, I presume innocently but nevertheless with great enthusiasm, on a pink phallus, wrapped in a bit of
After breakfast we would gather our things for the day, because we were not allowed back in until the evening. If the weather was fine - that is, if it was not actually raining - we would walk down to the North Shore and my parents would ensconce themselves in a couple of deckchairs, both of them, whatever the weather, fully dressed, my father on occasion wearing a suit, albeit with sandals and socks. I would strip down to my stretchy, ruched bathing costume, having underdressed back at the B and B, in order not to have to go through the embarrassing palaver of trying to change on the beach and not show your nether regions to hundreds of other people. It was bad enough at the end of the day, wobbling about on one foot as you tried to remove a sodden swimming costume, then pulling your knickers on, dragging them up over damp, sand-coated skin, made sore from the salt, and all this whilst attempting to keep an inadequate towel wrapped around your vitals.
I would run off to the sea, dodging in and out of deckchairs, with my mother’s cries of ‘Don’t go out too far!’ hanging in the air after me. A few years previously, before I was born, my brother Kevin, who would have been two at the time, had nearly drowned in a deep pothole at Sandersfoot, but was saved by a family friend, himself only a boy at the time. He had held on to Kevin after seeing him in trouble, until my father reached them after running flat out without a thought for himself across jagged rocks and stones, cutting and scraping his feet and shins as he went. Then, with terrible irony, when he was a young man my brother’s saviour was himself drowned, after being swept away by a freak wave whilst on holiday. So my parents were ever vigilant when any of us were in the sea, my mother sitting awkwardly, with her neck craned, a squinting, hawkish look on her face, and my father sitting up straight and shielding his eyes, watching continuously until we came out. Then Dad would half get up and wave frantically so that we could spot them amongst the heaving throng.
The Blackpool sea was always grey, even on the odd occasion when the sky was blue, and during our last holiday there I found little brown particles floating in it. Luckily it was on the way home that I brought this up and my brother, his head as ever in his carrier bag, informed me in a muffled voice that the said particles were in fact shit. I don’t think I’ve ever swum in the sea without first checking it for excrement since.
In the event of inclement weather we would walk down the Golden Mile. In a small bag slung across my shoulder would be my spending money, saved from pocket money, and gifts at Christmas and birthdays from aunts, uncles and friends of my parents. The Golden Mile was an exciting string of shops selling tacky tourist trash: ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hats, sticks of rock, plastic miniatures of the tower, all sorts of incongruous items made out of sugar, such as bright-pink, giant baby’s dummies, false teeth, or women’s breasts. I remember on one occasion, whilst we were taking our late-afternoon stroll along the prom, seeing an elderly woman sucking, I presume innocently but nevertheless with great enthusiasm, on a pink phallus, wrapped in a bit of
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