EPILOGUE

At long last, the torment was over, and at the age of almost 15, I gladly parted company with school and went to work as an office junior in the mailroom of a wool exporting firm, Stroud Riley, Ireland, down in Canal Road, Bradford, which I enjoyed far more than the classroom, and, what's more, it paid, a whole 2 pounds 10 shillings a week, of which I kept 10 shillings for myself, the rest going to Mum for my board. I felt that I was rich beyond my wildest dreams! In a way I was. With my first week's wage I bought my first ever pair of jeans, something that had always been my biggest dream, though well beyond my family's ability to pay for. Nobody told me it was the beginning of a life of paying for everything myself! At least not until a couple of years later, when I discovered that boys had pockets, and were paid more than girls, and after all, were not as gruesome as previously regarded.
After a few months at Stroud Riley, I became aware that more affluent friends were earning 3 pounds 15 shillings working in factories, half as much again as office work was paying. This doesn't sound very significant, but seeing it in today's terms, if you were earning $500, and you had a chance to earn $750, you probably wouldn't hesitate any longer than I did.
Against the advice of my parents, I left the office, and went to work for AIS in Lidget Green, repairing boiler suits. Strange to say, I found this factory atmosphere more fun than an office, mainly because I made friends much more quickly there. These workmates were so unlike the snobby office juniors I had been mixing with that for the first time in my life I found I could enjoy life outside the confines of my home, and I still have fond memories of the place.
The work was undemanding, allowing for much interaction with workmates of all ages, religions and nationalities, and my horizons were immeasurably broadened. I worked closely with Jamaican and other West Indian people, and to this day the sight of a Rasta dreadlock takes me right back there. Working with Scottish workers gave me a broad insight into the Glasgow dialect, enabling me in later life to have no trouble at all in understanding Billy Connolly's incredible monologues.
It was while working there that I made my abortive venture into the world of crime. A friend, Brenda, had left a packet of cigarettes lying around, so, feeling very daring, I slipped them into my pocket, and professed ignorance when Brenda missed them. However, during the afternoon, my conscience began giving me a real telling off, and I had to flee my work station in tears. Brenda, being the nearest person, came chasing after me in concern, upon which I handed her the cigarettes and confessed all. She called me a silly bugger for getting so upset about a packet of fags, and forgave me my trespasses. It was my last attempt at crime, as it wasn't as much fun as the movies made it out to be.
One very black day on the factory floor, the news came in that Buddy Holly had been killed in a plane crash along with Richie Valens and the Big Bopper on a snowy night. My friends and I cried long and hard over that, to the amusement of older workmates who didn't share our devotion to Buddy. This was particularly hard for me, as only a year or so earlier I had gone with my sister Helen to see him perform at the Alhambra theatre in Bradford. It was an electric performance, during which I was so carried away that I carelessly inflicted a cigarette burn on my new dress, bought especially for the occasion. (Don't worry, I gave up smoking many years ago!)
It was during this time between school and marriage that my sister Helen, cousin Jean and I went out dancing once a week to the local hop, in company with a few friends, and parental authority reared its ugly head. Don't get me wrong, my Dad was a very good father, and a pretty reasonable kind of a bloke, except for an over-protective attitude toward his daughters. We saw it as a streak of Puritanism, and though we loved him dearly, at times we considered him a little Hitler. Although my mother doesn't figure in this particular anecdote, I should mention that we simply adored her too.
One of Dad's rules was that my sister and I must be home by 11 p.m. at the latest. This meant leaving the dance early to catch the earlier bus. We could never make Dad understand that it would be far safer to wait until the end of the dance and all come home in the same group of about 8 that we went with. He also never understood that if we were going to misbehave, we weren't going to wait for the clock to strike a certain hour!
Eventually of course, we found a way around this unreasonable demand, without being grounded for weeks. We'd stay to the end of the dance, catch the later bus home, then we would dash into the local fish shop, usually empty at that time. We would arrive home past curfew time with supper in hand, and apologise for being late "But the fish shop was crowded Dad, we couldn't help it!"
We never knew if he ever rumbled our little scheme, but I do know that we ate a lot of fish suppers when I was in my teens!
However, worse was to come. Our young brother David suddenly got old enough to start going out on the prowl, and one night Dad said to David, in my presence, "Don't forget lad, if you're not in bed by 11 o'clock, give it up and come home!" Dad couldn't see why we were upset, because this was before the days of Germaine Greer, and Dad was probably still blaming the Suffragettes for all the world's ills!
Worst of all, David was given a house key, whereas I, getting married straight from home at the age of 19, never owned a door key until after I got divorced, at the age of 30!
Inevitably, I drifted from factory to factory until I ended up married. A stint at a bakery opened my eyes to some lax standards in hygiene, and I couldn't eat Swiss rolls for years afterwards. The job had its compensations though, the main one being that on the way to morning tea, I had to pass the conveyor belt that contained sponge cake halves that had just been covered in chocolate. Being allowed to eat all we wanted at work, it became a habit to pick up a cake on the way past to scoff with my cuppa.
Early summer provided us all with a treat we had never dreamed existed, access to unlimited strawberries. We had to put 3 berries into the cooked tart shells, then pour strawberry jelly over them. Our pockets were constantly stained red during the strawberry season, as we carried off our booty to go with our morning tea. The bakery must have had to order in more than twice the number of strawberries actually needed, to cope with our greed. The canteen sold lots of tea and coffee, but with all the freebies on offer, it probably did little trade in food.
A stint at the English Electric factory in Thornbury proved very educational, in that I learned newer, funnier versions of traditional songs. We'd have the whole factory floor singing lyrics like:

Little Boy Blue come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where's the little boy who looks after the sheep?
He's under the haystack with little Bo Peep.
Or
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Her knickers all tattered and torn.
It wasn't the spider who sat down beside her,
But Little Boy Blue with his horn.
Or
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jill came down with half a crown,
But not for carrying water.

These pseudo nursery rhymes were all sung to the tune of "The Happy Wanderer", which lent itself to abuses that its composer would never have dreamed could occur, and which probably breached all kinds of copyright laws to boot.
My taste buds received an education there too, when Jean came back from lunch one day and told us she'd just eaten a meat custard. She had to endure lots of scoffing until we all went to the nearby bakery the following lunchtime and saw for ourselves. As you may have guessed, this was our introduction to the quiche!
My teenage years were so wildly different to my childhood that I could have moved into a different world. From an unhappy schoolgirl whining my way to school, I turned into a person who had it all, enjoyable jobs, good friends, the odd romance or two, and a little money to spend. Only one thing could end this idyllic existence, and that was marriage. But that's another story!

Childhood's End!