Dinner for two

We talk almost constantly, as we struggle out of coats and scarves and take our seats either side of the wooden table. It's a couple of months since we last met up so there's plenty to catch up on, but as we each pick up one of the oversized menus to choose our food, I'm momentarily side-tracked by thoughts of childhood friends. I don't ever remember going out for a meal as a child, not even with family; the very idea that anyone back then would have suggested an outing involving dinner makes me smile.

I think of a time when friends were just there, wherever you happened to be; sitting next to you at school, running alongside you round the field by the bin-sheds down the flats, standing beside you peering into the muddy ripples of the river in Belair Park. In the days before mobile phones, in a world where ballet lessons and after-school activities were something other people did, there wasn't any planning or scheduling involved; it just happened.

Conversations were about the people and the situations you all knew; your teacher, the girl in class whose Dad hit her with his belt, whether or not you were really going to kiss Terry Jackson. Friends changed quickly, you fell out and fell back in again and a 'best friend' was more a state of mind than a matter of fact, but friendship itself was a constant.

I don't know when it started to change, perhaps it was when we all left school to go off in different directions. After that, families and relationships, new jobs and places to live, there were so many reasons why keeping friends suddenly became 'keeping in touch'; why constant became intermittent.

Yet the first half of our evening follows a defined pattern, as we each share news of our other halves and homes, of ex-colleagues in common, of current work burdens and future holiday plans. Conversation flows, it's collaborative and comforting, but then as the plates are being cleared, I realise there's been something in the tenor of our talk that's changed. When I've spoken about holidays, it's been less about future adventures and more about the places I might never get to see. We've made reference to failing eyesight and aching limbs, I've even mentioned retirement.

Then comes the moment when I lean forward to make a confession. But it's no tale of infidelity or misbehaviour, no shocking scandalous gossip,

"I've bought a new pillow."

Almost as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realise the mistake, I'm already cataloguing myself as an old woman.

But then she smiles and offers up her own secret.

"I've got an electric blanket."

And then I remember that thing about friendship; about finding things in common, having a partner in crime, and I realise that maybe times haven't changed that much at all.

Maybe it's because

It's the city of my birth, and even though I live in the countryside now, I've never lived more than thirty miles from its centre. Whenever I stand on Waterloo bridge and see the sun glinting on the river, I get a rush of pride that this is my town; that I can call myself a Londoner.

Yet there will always be times when I feel like a tourist. Afternoons where I wander around bewildered; craning up at tall buildings, rushing past my reflection in shop-front windows. I still traipse down crowd-filled streets because I've never learned the quiet short-cuts, still shop in over-priced chain stores because I've never found the secret alternatives.

Philip has often teased me for my inability to find my way around. When he first arrived here, he took the time and trouble to learn the streets, to look for the places he wanted to eat or shop or simply spend time. He walked and walked, until the roads had formed their own pattern in his brain, until he'd formed an affinity with his adopted city. Growing up in London, I just took it all for granted. Or hopped on the tube.

Nowadays, part of the challenge in finding my way around is that my understanding of the geography is totally based on London Underground maps. My only way of working out the route between two locations is by interpreting the coloured spaghetti of the tube.

But at the same time, I have my own, ever-so-slightly bonkers, theory of tube travel in London. It's based on the miles I've walked, swapping between one line and another, along corridors,  through tunnels, up and down escalators, threading my way between rushed commuters, striding past unappreciated and unappreciative buskers. I sometimes believe that it's all a big conspiracy.

Just imagine that, by the time you reach your train, you've actually already walked the distance to your destination. Could it be, that the trains shake and move in the dark, but don't actually go anywhere? That the tube companies entice you in, with their promise of speedy travel, only to use you as a captive audience for the adverts pasted just above eye-level. Have you ever wondered why those adverts are so carefully positioned exactly where you end up looking, as you try desperately to avoid eye contact with the people sitting opposite. As you sit there, in over-crowded, over-hot, carriages, desperately waiting to be set free at your destination, have you ever questioned why it takes so long to travel just a mile?

Or could it just be, that my antipathy to tube travel has more to do with the fact that most of the subterranean railways criss-cross their way beneath north London, leaving those of us who hail from the south-east, forever grateful to red buses and black taxis, fundamentally mistrusting the notion of underground travel in any form at all?

Staying over

It's sometimes blindingly obvious - that link between childhood fascinations and grown-up obsessions. It takes no effort at all for me to trace the journey from standing with my Dad, on the terraces at Crystal Palace football club, to standing with Philip behind the goal at Bromley FC.  It's almost as easy to see how my my love for Formula 1 racing started when we walked beside the wide tracks of the one-time racing circuit in Crystal Palace Park, or listened to the roar of the engines from the back door step at home.

It isn't always quite as simple to understand the impact of the things we never did, those things that went unnoticed and unremarked at the time.

Looking back I think we must have been fairly self-contained as a family; the characters in my memory bank are always my parents, grandparents and sisters. Apart from an occasional aunt and uncle, I don't remember any other visitors. Perhaps there were friends of my parents who made quiet calls after I'd gone to bed, but if they did, there were never any traces of their presence the next day. And, apart from the time when my Nan was really sick, I never, ever, remember anyone coming to stay.

No childish sleepover ending in a top-to-toe bed-share; no late night dinner party leading to a blanket- draped figure on the sofa. No strange coats thrown over the banisters at the bottom of the stairs, no odd toothbrushes in the bathroom, no politely embarrassed conversations over breakfast.

Our house wasn't big; five of us and only three bedrooms, but it never felt too small to me, certainly not like Maria from school, who lived with her six brothers and sisters in one of those tiny houses overlooking the cemetery. We didn’t have central heating, but hardly anyone I knew did then –we were used to the winter frost on the inside of the bedroom windows, to cowering under the wall heater in the bathroom, to sitting in the kitchen with all the gas rings blazing to keep us warm while we ate. But the house was always clean; properly clean. not just a tidy-away-the-newspapers-and  flick-the-hoover-round clean. 

I never asked then, and I wouldn’t dream of asking now, so I'll never really know why nobody came to stay.  But in the midst of all that didn't happen, I somehow missed out on a whole heap of life lessons, on the etiquette of staying over.

I never quite grasped how much cleaning in advance is a good thing or when to stop; I could never see the boundaries between thoughtful hospitality and force-feeding. I never learnt when it was ok to admit to tiredness, to suggest it was time for bed; and I never understood the proper arrangements for getting up in the morning or agreeing the order for the bathroom. I couldn't work out if it was better to take in a cup of tea and risk waking people too early, or to wait until they decided to surface and risk leaving them feeling ignored. I never reached that state of relaxed happiness where you know your guests are having a grand time and you can stop trying to fend off their boredom and disappointment.

For years I shied away from inviting people to stay; in my head I invented all sorts of reasons why it was a bad idea or simply inconvenient. 

This weekend I learned something I never found out as a child; if you invite good people because you enjoy their company, you end up enjoying their company. Your new house begins to feel a bit more like home and you start to see the place where you live with different eyes. You might even begin to feel a strange sense of pride that your village has the only listed duck pond in the country and the largest scale model of the solar system in the world. It might not even matter if you don’t quite get the etiquette right, you could still have a simply lovely time.

And this weekend we did.

The power of a long thin envelope

I'm not sure exactly when it was, but I must have been about ten years old when I first discovered the power of a long thin envelope. Up until then, the only mail I'd been remotely interested in was the stiff square variety that turned up at Christmas and birthdays; cards containing at worst a gaudily coloured wish and at best a folded five pound note.

This envelope was different. It was cream and important looking, with a typed label on the front. Though I knew it was about me, it wasn't addressed to me, so all I could do was wait for my Dad to open it, wait for him to read it, then watch him pass it to my Mum to do the same. All I could do was watch while they looked at each other and wait until they finally looked at me.

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Some months earlier there'd been discussions about secondary school. This was in the days when the Eleven Plus was still widespread, when children were categorised, classified and labelled on the basis of a three-part test. My big sister had already passed hers and was attending the local grammar school, but I wasn't daunted. I'd spent most of my life playing word games and doing puzzles; I knew the smug satisfaction of getting a sum right,  demonstrating my comprehension skills, predicting the next shape or number in a series.I was one of those sickening kids who actually liked tests; I positively looked forward to it.

So that was when my parents upped the ante. I've no idea who first suggested I might sit for a scholarship to James Allen's Girls' School, a local independent fee-paying establishment. I don't remember if they asked me what I thought, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, I couldn't have expressed a view; nobody I knew had ever gone there, or was ever likely to do so.

The scholarship exam was in three parts, two rounds of tests, and for those who did well enough, a final interview. My memory of the tests is hazy and mixed up with later experiences of exams, but I'm pretty sure we had to sit in a huge hall with tall windows. The first challenge was probably finding my seat - walking down the long rows to find an empty chair at one of the wooden fold-up tables, taking my seat while looking around at the other girls, watching them place their pencils neatly on the table-tops.

I must have done ok. I got through the first round of tests and then the second one. A few weeks later,  before I'd even really thought about it, I was on my way to an interview.

Nowadays, if someone I knew was going to an interview I'd tell them to prepare, to think about the questions they might be asked, to imagine themselves in the role. Back then, the whole thing still bore no relation to reality. I don't think it even occurred to my parents, with their misplaced trust in my innate ability, that I might need some guidance or practice. It wasn't until the imposing lady with the stuck-up voice enquired haughtily of my entirely healthy, but distinctly adenoidal south London accent, "do you have a cold?" that I started to realise I might be out of my depth.

My nasally-toned answers to her questions became monosyllabic. After a while she waved a hand grandly towards a large gilt-framed picture propped up on a chair -"'talk to me about this painting Sharon. Describe to me what you see. Tell me what it makes you think of". At that point I think we both knew we were wasting our time.

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I'd worked out that a letter of acceptance would come with lots of information about uniform and books, about kit-bags and fountain pens. And that would mean a thick, padded envelope.

So when the long thin envelope arrived, I already knew what it contained. In the time it took for my Dad to open it, read it, then pass it to my Mum to do the same; before they'd looked at each other and then at me; before I'd even started to feel guilty for disappointing their hopes, I'd already learned that the power of a long thin envelope is the power to dash down dreams you didn't even know you had.

The shed

A few nights ago I dreamed of our garden shed. It wasn't the timber-slatted, flower-pot-and-cobweb filled refuge of an aged pipe-smoker. Neither was it an eau-de-nil painted summerhouse, with gingham curtains and a wide verandah. This shed was brick-built and square with a flat roof; a utilitarian council-house issue of the early 1960s. It stood in the garden of our house in Croxted Road, just a few yards away from the kitchen, and for nearly twenty years it was the first thing I saw whenever I opened the back door.

For hour after hour when I was a girl, I'd play two-balls against the closed shed door, the pounding of the tennis balls on the wood, marking out time to one of the rhythmic songs I'd learned at school; each line accompanied by the appropriate actions as I practised throwing and catching, throwing and catching.

"PK penny a packet, 
first you lick it, then you smack it,
then you stick it to your jacket
PK, penny a packet"

In my dream the door was open and I was peering into the gloom of the shed's interior. It was a bit like looking at any memory, clear at the centre, but dark and fuzzy the further you go into it.

In my mind, there was a coal bunker just inside. Though the house was newly built when we moved in and I don't remember there ever being a coal fire, I could swear there were a few shiny black nuggets in its corners. Did I imagine the square of old faded carpet laid out on the hard concrete floor under our feet, where we played 'shop' on rainy days when it was too wet to stay in the garden; where we'd pile up toys for sale and take it in turns to press down the keys of the brown and cream plastic till to ring up the prices.

I pictured a folded up wigwam leaning against the wall and the old Silver Cross pram, which we used mostly for pushing our dolls, but sometimes for carrying the docile ginger cat from two doors down, who didn't mind being dressed up. Behind it was a heavy black tricycle and somewhere in a corner there must have been the abandoned pogo stick that I tried so hard to master yet never managed to cling on to for more than two springs.

In the shed of my dream there was no sign of my sister's chopper bike and no images of us huddled on the doorstep each night after school, polishing our shoes before we could go indoors. Nothing had yet been cleared to make way for the stacked cages of the guinea pig stud farm, those small substitutes for the ponies my sister really wanted. And my selective memory edits out the times I took friends home to ridicule her as she spent hour after hour training guinea pigs to jump over tiny makeshift fences in her garden gymkhanas. My older sister tells me she locked me in the shed once until I wet my knickers, but that event is firmly erased from my consciousness.

Memory is a tricky thing; even more so when it's shaped by a dream, so it's hard to be sure how much of what I recalled is true. The shed always seemed dark, I don't think there was a light or any electricity and there was only one small window high up, but in my mind's eye hanging on the far wall, was a framed print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, shining out like a gold tooth in a gaping mouth.

A north-south divide

I'm a South London girl, through and through. Those of you reading this from other parts of the country, or indeed the world, might not realise the enormous difference between being just a Londoner and being a South Londoner. I know lots of countries have a north-south divide; with one half of a country deemed to be more prosperous, productive and progressive than the other. I know I've occasionally made an ever-so-slightly derogatory comment about my beloved's birthplace being in the north of England. But the truth is, in my heart, the north-south divide centers on the River Thames. All the good people live south of the river, the others, well they're just Londoners.

I'm fiercely proud of the few square miles where I grew up. Who needs London Zoo when you can feed the ducks in Dulwich Park? Who'd want a dip in the Serpentine when you might swim all day at Brockwell Park Lido. Why crane your neck to admire the Docklands skyscapers when you could gaze up at the Crystal Palace Tower and pretend you're in Paris?

None of my family still live in the area, so nowadays there's very little reason to go back. But once in a while, when I'm brave enough to take the car into London, I'll go slightly out of my way to follow the route of the no.3 bus, slowing down as I pass our old house in Croxted Road, and again when I hit the congestion of Brixton High Street.  Then I'll remember the shopping trips to Brixton with my Mum, me traipsing around behind her while she did her shopping; bored, but comforted by the knowledge that we'd always end up going to Marks & Spencers for chicken-flavoured crisps and a packet of iced biscuits.

My first ever Saturday job was at Clark's the Bakers in Brixton's Electric Avenue.  Wikipedia tells me now that the street gained its name from being the first in London to be lit by electricity. I didn't know that then, but I did know the different names for all the types of bread; from farmhouse to bloomer, split-tin to baguette. I remember the way our fingers got sticky from the cakes, then black-sticky from handling the money, and I know how horribly smug I was that I could add up the prices in my head while others needed to jot them down on the back of paper bags. I haven't thought about that job for years, but as I write this, I can still picture the brown and white checked overalls we had to wear; a bit like a doctor's housecoat, only nasty and nylon. I can still sense the feel of sticky fingers on synthetic fabric.

And when I think of working at Clark's I can't help but remember my first ever boyfriend. Eddie lived in Brixton, and on Saturdays he worked in Electric Avenue. I never minded tidying up the trays of belgian buns and doughnuts, when it meant I could look up to see the tall grinning Irish lad, selling yams and green bananas from the market stall outside. After work, it was so much nicer waiting outside Woolworths for the bus home, when you had someone warm to wait with.

Perhaps the relationship was doomed to last only as long as my job at the bakers, but it wasn't helped by events on the night my Mum threw a party, on a river-boat on the Thames. Copious amounts of free drink and the gentle rocking of the waves proved too much for Eddie and he ended up being sick over the side of the boat. It might perhaps have been ok, if I'd known before then about the false tooth he wore. The one right at the front. The one that flew out in a stream of vomit, into the river that night.

At the time I was mortified and even though the tooth was soon replaced, I could never look at him quite the same again. Many, many years later, with the benefit of hindsight and perhaps a slightly less shallow perspective, I can be much more forgiving. Who knows, maybe his nausea had nothing to do with the drink, perhaps it was the strange foreign air he was forced to breathe on leaving South London and entering that no-man's land of the Thames, the great north-south divide.