base where you worked seemed sprawling and, as I recall, a large part of it was empty and virtually derelict. There were plenty of big old buildings that must once have been – what? Billets or meeting rooms or training areas or messes or something? It was like being in a spooky episode of The Avengers or The Prisoner where someone nearly always ends up in a deserted military base doing plenty of fast running and hiding and dodging. The perfect location for a teenager to get up to eight kinds of no good. And sorry to say, Dad, we did. We had secret parties where I was introduced to the mixed blessing that is sweet cider. We had romantic liaisons behind the doors of storage cupboards. (Most of these were innocent fumblings resulting in flushed frustration, nothing more.) We had terrifying seances where we tried to summon up the spirits of dead relatives. I once attempted to connect with Grandad McCarthy and was utterly petrified when the glass on our home-made Ouija board hurtled around accurately spelling out various clues about our family which no other soul there could have known. I was shaken to the core by this creepy, seriously weird experience, but I didn’t feel I could share it with you and Mum because it was so supremely bad to have done such a thing. Had I opened up a sinister portal through which my dead grandfather had been reluctantly sucked into our earthly plane? Was he going to haunt me from now on? Was he attached to me like some kind of astral teasel stuck on my jumper? I was freaked out for a while but lots of reassurance in the form of heavy petting with David Eccles alleviated my spiritual burden somehow. Ain’t it always the case?! I have never fully understood what happened but I have learned enough to keep a respectful distance from any inexplicable phenomena since (except for watching Most Haunted of course, of which I am a devotee). This explains why I have never tried to communicate with you through any of these odd channels which I find too eerie and strange to understand. I do hope you haven’t been sitting on the other side of that spiritual portal for these past 30 years, staring at the backside of a closed door waiting for someone to buzz you in. That would be awful. If that’s the case, Dad, just lock up, turn off the lights and go to bed cos no one’s comin’! Maybe we’ll see you in the morning … Who knows.
Do you remember taking me to look around Caistor Grammar, my first experience of senior school? I only spent a year there but I had a good time except for the hideous weekly cross-country torture. Why do schools insist on hurting children with ugly running kits and near-death experiences of exercise which is too demanding? Has anyone ever died of PE? I think I did, several times. At the least, I learned to reject any suchlike activity in adult life. Thanks, school. Otherwise Caistor was just fine. It was , however, the venue for my first criminal activity. There was a sweet shop just outside the school gates and, yes, I can hear you, I know how little the return is on sweets, especially when kids are nicking the profits. As the granddaughter of a newsagent I knew all this and I knew it was wrong because you had impressed that on me at a very early age, but what you didn’t know is that it was mandatory. Like a Herculean task, it was expected of you as a measly first-former to steal sweets for the older girls. You were a cretin and a smell if you didn’t and you would also be forced to suffer the humiliation of being actually killed, which I didn’t relish. So, you see, Dad, I stole in order to live. That’s entirely different to stealing because you’re just a greedy immoral grubby little twat, isn’t it? That’s my defence for my initial sticky-fingeredness. I have no such justification for what happened next.
There was an officer’s daughter called Heather (not her real name. Her real name is Hannah Black). She was big and bold and brave. She loved stealing. It was
Do you remember taking me to look around Caistor Grammar, my first experience of senior school? I only spent a year there but I had a good time except for the hideous weekly cross-country torture. Why do schools insist on hurting children with ugly running kits and near-death experiences of exercise which is too demanding? Has anyone ever died of PE? I think I did, several times. At the least, I learned to reject any suchlike activity in adult life. Thanks, school. Otherwise Caistor was just fine. It was , however, the venue for my first criminal activity. There was a sweet shop just outside the school gates and, yes, I can hear you, I know how little the return is on sweets, especially when kids are nicking the profits. As the granddaughter of a newsagent I knew all this and I knew it was wrong because you had impressed that on me at a very early age, but what you didn’t know is that it was mandatory. Like a Herculean task, it was expected of you as a measly first-former to steal sweets for the older girls. You were a cretin and a smell if you didn’t and you would also be forced to suffer the humiliation of being actually killed, which I didn’t relish. So, you see, Dad, I stole in order to live. That’s entirely different to stealing because you’re just a greedy immoral grubby little twat, isn’t it? That’s my defence for my initial sticky-fingeredness. I have no such justification for what happened next.
There was an officer’s daughter called Heather (not her real name. Her real name is Hannah Black). She was big and bold and brave. She loved stealing. It was
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