As I am about to embark on my 40th year I can’t help but look back on my life and ask myself the question, ‘Am I where I thought I would be at 40?” The answer is simply, no. In recent months I've found myself thinking back to my former decades with a nostalgia that I've never experienced before, and I realise that for each decade of my life I was quite a different person, distinct from the decade before, and with a different expectation of where I would be as I entered my 4th decade. So, as I find middle-aged-dom begin to unfurl its arms and embrace me I have decided to take a journey back through the decades and visit myself at ten year intervals, to remember who I was then, what consumed my world, and what my aspirations I had for my future. And you’re coming with me…
The years were 1984-5; my 10th year…
At 10 years old I was an extremely average child with shockingly red, messy hair and lots of freckles. My dad always referred to me as precocious, but I’m not convinced he knew what the word meant because I was anything but exceptional. I was far from popular at school, but not intelligent enough to be a geek. I was in some kind of no-man’s land as far as school clique statuses go, and in fact, I wasn't a big fan of school altogether. I went to an all-girls private school and had done since the age of 3. My best friend in school was called Paula, and I used to love to stay at her house because her mother would let us eat digestive biscuits with Philadelphia Cream Cheese on them. It was the first time I’d ever tasted cream cheese and I loved it. The girl I liked least at school was called Catherine. I don’t know what it was I didn't like, but she just rubbed
me up the wrong way. Ironically, years later she became my best friend and still is to this day. My best friend out of school was called Sarah. She lived across the road from me, went to the local state school, and was four days younger. Like me, she had red hair and we looked like sisters. We’d been best friends since (her) birth and spent many birthdays together, including our 10th. My mum took Sarah and I into the city a few days before my birthday and she bought us matching outfits; a little shorts and t-shirt set with a picture of ballet shoes on the shirt. Mine was pink and Sarah’s was blue. I secretly coveted Sarah’s outfit because my favourite colour was blue, but my mum’s favourite colour was pink, and as such I had a wardrobe full of pink clothes. All I wanted for my birthday was a really big dictionary. I loved words and learning the meaning of them. However, my birthday always fell around my parent’s busiest time of the year for work, and as such, I’d usually end up with whatever mum and dad could get off the toy shelf at the local supermarket on the actual day. This was the first birthday that I remember them getting me exactly what I’d asked for! It was a good year.
1984-1985 saw me buy my first single; it was the Ghostbusters theme tune. The big chart toppers that year were Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Wham! and Lionel Ritchie. Everyone was really excited about the Live Aid concert, and I remember watching the whole thing live on TV. That was a big thing because back then the TV rarely broadcast live concerts. Because of this, ‘Feed the World’ became the second single that I bought. Sarah and I set up a stall on our street and sold jumble and bric-a-brac to raise money for Live Aid.
We raised £30. All my friends began donning over-sized white t-shirts hailing ‘Relax’. But, I hated the baggy 80’s clothes, loathed leg warmers, and despised the big hair. Instead I opted for leggings and jumpers, and you’d more often than not find me curled in a corner reading a book rather than watching Top of the Pops. I was an awkward child and books provided me with an escape from a world I just never felt I fit into properly. I loved horses too and desperately wanted one, but settled for riding at the locals stables every weekend. There was no TV after midnight; all stations would shut down until 6 am unless there was a special event. The country was going mad for the latest electrical ‘it’ item; the microwave, and kids up and down the country were asking Father Christmas for Rubik’s Cubes, The Slinky, Cabbage Patch Dolls, and Scalextric. I developed my very first crush in my 10th year; on Sylvester Stallone. Don’t laugh! Back then he was a hottie, and never more so than in my favourite film of that year; Rocky IV. The crush died abruptly when he married Brigitte Nielson who I thought look like a tank. Snickers bars were called Marathons, Starburst were called Opal Fruits, and everyone was supping on the latest, newest drink; Cherry Coke. I remember a girl at school telling me she drank Cherry Coke everyday and I thought she was so cool because we were only allowed it on super special occasions.
It was during this year that the English pound notes were taken out of circulation and replaced by coins. I remember telling my brother that I didn't like them and that I thought they would be a fad. The least-liked British coin, the Halfpenny (nicknamed the ‘ha’penny’), also was taken out of circulation this year. The only Britons that liked the ha’penny were kids. You could by two sweets for 1p (one pence = one cent) thanks to the ha’penny. I remember the day after it was taken out of circulation I went to my local grocery store and saw that all the ha’penny sweets had been bumped up to 1p. I thought it was a rip-off and refused to buy any more penny sweets. It was also the year that the coal miner’s strikes began, which would signify a seismic shift and divide in Britain, and British politics. I was too young to understand the implication of it all at the time.
This was also the year that we moved to South Africa. Ok, moved might be a slight exaggeration. The intention was there, but it didn’t come into fruition. Instead, it ended up being a very, very long holiday that took me out of school for some time. It was 1985 and all over the news in Britain were horrific scenes of battles on the streets in South Africa as people fought against apartheid. My older brother begged us not to go, but my parents seemed on a quest to find somewhere new to live. Just the year before we’d spent many months in Spain with the view to moving there before they changed their mind and we came home. You see, my parents were firm believers in life experiences being a valued source of education. Both of them had grown up in the war years and had left school by the time they were 12 to work in the factories. They had no formal education, and by the time we were 8 they could no longer help us with our homework as we had far surpassed them. We went to school with the offspring of doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, Professors – all very erudite and able to assist their children with their homework. Mum and dad realised that by comparison my brother and I often suffered because of their lack of schooling. However, what they lacked in education they made up in pure graft, working hard, providing a good home, and taking us all over the world. If they couldn’t figure out fractions with us, they’d take us to deepest, darkest Africa and give us an experience that could never be taught in any text book.
We started off in Johannesburg, the capitol. This is where my ‘Auntie Molly’ lived. She was actually my mum’s best friend from school, but we had to call her Auntie. I was really looking forward to seeing her as I’d always liked her. I was surprised when we arrived in Jo’Berg; everything seemed so calm, and placid. There were no riots, petrol bombs, or mass demonstrations at all. In fact, it was a very different picture to what we’d seen on the news back in Britain.
Auntie Mollie lived out in the leafy suburbs of Jo’Berg. She had a lovely bungalow style house, a swimming pool, a built in cinema style TV, and a slave. Yes. You read that correctly. She had a slave. Her name was Mary, and she was from the Zulu tribe. She lived in a building at the back of the house that could best be described as a converted outhouse. It was a 6’ x 4’ red-brick room with a toilet and sink in the corner, a small stove, a few hooks on the wall to hang her clothes, a shelf with a pitcher and bowl to wash
herself, and a cup and bowl to eat from, and a bed that was raised on stilts because in her tribe they believed that if the Loki Toki man came in the night and hit his head on the bed as he passed underneath that they would have bad luck for many years to come. Looking around this dismal squat I figured the Loki Toki man must have hit his head many times for her to be living like this. She worked from 6am to 8pm everyday and had to purchase her own groceries and make her own food in this room. Once a month she had to go back to her tribe to have her travel and work permit papers updated. It would take a whole day to get to and fro from her tribe, so she never had time to see her family when she got there. She would be docked a day’s wages for this trip, but without the updated papers she wouldn’t be allowed to travel, take any public transport, or work. She never had any vacation time unless her masters were away and then she was permitted to either stay, or go to her tribe, but either way she wouldn’t get paid. And she earned an absolute pittance, but every penny except for groceries she sent back to her family. I remember one day I wanted a cup of tea and went
into the kitchen to make it. Auntie Molly ordered Mary to make it for me. ‘White with one sugar please’ I said begrudgingly. I resented being forced to use Mary. Unfortunately, Mary mixed up the salt and sugar. One taste and I spat it out, and cringed as I did so because I knew there was no hiding it from Auntie Molly’s beady eye. Sure enough, poor Mary got the brunt end of Aunty Molly’s temper and as she received a harsh response to such a simple mistake my heart went out to the poor girl, and hardened against my Aunt. She was British born and raised and we did not tolerate this level of cruelty to another person at home. We did not have slavery, and this was not acceptable. Just because she was no longer in Britain did not mean to say she should be any less British. I was only young, but even I knew this was very, very wrong.
We left Auntie Molly’s house (for which I was very happy about) and we set off on a tour of the country. I have been on many holidays in my life, but none have stuck in my memory as much as this trip. It was an amazing, eye-opening, life-changing experience. We went through Swaziland and visited many different tribes along the way, each with their own customs. They had little in wealth but they seemed so genuinely happy. Round houses could be seen dotting along the highways, and these were rentable for the night. They were called Rondavels and the beds were in the middle of the room. We went Ostrich riding, and learned that a male Ostrich mates for life with one partner, but the female ostrich finds another mate as soon as the male dies. I saw my first great white shark that had been caught in the waters we’d just been swimming in. We had to take Malaria tablets and they made me so sick that I stopped taking them and I then came down with a mild form of malaria. We flew to Mozambique in the ricketiest plane that I’ve ever been on and we sailed down the Zambezi River to watch the sunset. As soon as the sun passed over the horizon we were plunged into
darkness for there was no twighlight there. We trekked through the jungle to get to Victoria Falls. Everybody ate Biltong; a type of Ostrich jerky. It was foul. We drove through opulent cities full of wealth and white people, and then on the outskirts of the city we’d drive through shanty towns full of corrugated sheet housing and black people. Everywhere we went there was such a marked transition between rich and poor, white and black.
Everything was segregated. There were separate toilets, drinking fountains, bus stops. In all restaurants and hotels, the staff were always black, and the clientele were always white. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before in my life, or even learned about in school. Whilst the country was beautiful and beguiling, it was hard to have a good time when you saw the attitudes and treatment that were occurring all around you. It was so alien to all of us, to the life we knew back in England. We refused to show any biased towards the black people, but we were shunned by the white people for our attitude.
My most poignant memory is catching the 12-hour train to Durban. It was a long ride for my brother and I and so we went off to explore the train. At the very back of our section there was a door that said, ‘BLACKS ONLY’. This only piqued our interest even more and we went through the door. On the other side, there was row after row of hard wooden benches nailed to the floor. The car was overcrowded and smelled badly. People were sat on the floor because the benches were full. A man carrying a baby looked up and saw us standing in the doorway. He got up and came over
to us. I thought he was going to tell us off for being in his car, so I started to back out of through the doorway. As we moved into the ‘white section’ a ticket collector came up behind us. He saw the black man and pulled what looked like a stick, or truncheon from his side. He raised it over the black man’s head and began threatening him with it if he didn’t move back into his own carriage. The black man scurried back into the car and I heard him say, ‘I just needed some milk for my baby.’
I later found out that this non-stop 12 hour train had a dining car, velvet seating, private carriages, pull down bunks, toilets, showering facilities, and a bar. But only if you were white. If you were black you spent 12 hours in an overcrowded carriage with hard benches, one communal toilet, no running water, and no food.
After some months in Africa my parents decided we should come home. It was never discussed, but I knew the reason that we were leaving was because we could never adhere to the Afrikaans way of life. We were British, and it was just not in our mindset to be able to condone, or tolerate the things that we saw out there. We arrived home late in the summer and England had put on her finery to greet us. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the vista was resplendently verdant with flowers piercing the landscape, and people of all colours walking on the street side by side. It seemed like utopia by comparison to where we’d come from.
I enrolled back in the same school, much to my great chagrin and life continued much as it had before…until the morning of October 12th 1984. I woke up and wandered through to my parent’s bedroom, as I always did. It was a Friday and a school day. Good Morning Britain always showed a Popeye cartoon between 7.25am and 7.30am and we’d climb into mum and dad’s bed to watch it before getting ready for school. Their TV was on but there was no cartoon today. Every channel (all 4 of them!) was dominated with the news of the IRA Bomb exploding in the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party Conference. The scenes on the TV were devastating; a building ripped to shreds, bodies being pulled out of rubble, people crying and screaming in the street. Growing up in 70’s and 80’s Britain we were used to emergency evacuations from stores and venues due to suspected Irish bombs, and we’d been taught in school what to do if we saw an abandoned package, and people had passed on stories of them exploding, but this is the first time I’d seen one, albeit on TV. And suddenly, the Irish threat seemed so more real and scary than it ever had before. (In later years most Britons, including myself, experienced evacuations and explosions firsthand as the bombs and threats became more frequent, widespread, and randomly targeted.)
Eyes glued to the telly, I remember asking my dad, ‘She’s not dead, is she?’, and he replied, ‘No, they didn’t get her. Thank God.’ And, I breathed a sigh of relief. Margaret Thatcher was still alive.
My love of politics started in 1979. I was five and it was the night of the National Elections. The country seemed to be abuzz. I might have been young, but even I could tell there was a feverish temperament to these elections. My dad was glued to the TV all night watching as results rolled in. Soon enough, it was time for my bed, but I begged to stay up and watch the elections. I admit it, I didn’t want to actually watch the elections, I just didn’t want to go to bed. Dad piped up in my defense and said I should be allowed to stay up and watch ‘history in the making’. I had no idea what he was talking about but it sounded exciting! Well, it wasn’t. It was as dull as dishwater, but my father’s captivation with it was intoxicating, and I wanted to be a part of that. Every time a result for an area was announced with a blue marker he’d shout out, ‘Go on Maggie girl!’ Every time a result was marked in red he’d holler, ‘You left-wing nutters!’ Who was this Maggie that so enthralled my father? She sounded like my kind of girl!
‘Is Maggie the favourite to win, dad?’ I remember asking.
‘Actually, no, she’s not.’
‘Then how do you know she’ll win?’
‘Because she’s what this country needs.’
I fell asleep at some point in the night, and woke the next morning in my bed. My thoughts flew to Maggie and I raced into my parent’s room. Dad was already watching TV and there was a lady on the screen stood outside a black door. She was wearing a blue suit and waving her hand.
‘Did she win dad?’
‘She did, love. Maggie won. First female Prime Minister. This is going to be the beginning of a whole new Britain.’
From that point on Margaret Thatcher was always referred to as ‘Maggie’ in our house, a name which the rest of the nation adopted for her too. She was a familiar figure in our house, like a member of the family. Dad followed Maggie’s career avidly, and I was always sat at his side. Dad and I stayed up all night in 1982 when Maggie sent troops into the Falklands Islands to win them back from the Argentine invasion. We stayed up all night for the 1983 elections, which Maggie won again. It was after these elections that a new opposition leader was installed to fight her; Neil Kinnock. I remember every time this man came on the TV dad and I would yell, ‘Neil Pillock!’ (On a side note, I saw Neil Kinnock in Parliament recently, and he smiled at me. Just his face brought so many memories from my childhood and I could barely resist the urge to shout out our nickname for him! For American friends a ‘pillock’ is a British slang term for a stupid person.)
But, on that day in 1984 our Maggie showed a new kind of resolve. The bomb had been meant for her. It had missed its target but it claimed several other lives, left people permanently disabled, many injured, and demolished a hotel. The attack happened at 3am. At 7am she requested that a local clothes shop open early so that people could buy new clothes as everyone had lost everything in the collapse of the hotel. By 9.30am, just 6.5 hours later, she addressed the country from the Conference. Everyone had expected her to cancel the Conference in the aftermath of the bomb, but her defiance was another Churchillian moment in her premiership which seemed to encapsulate both her own steely character and the British public's stoical refusal to submit to terrorism. This was the defining moment when I realised what I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to be Prime Minister, and more to the point, I wanted to be Margaret Thatcher.
I was very lucky to grow up in a woman’s world. It’s not a phrase you here often, but it was very true for me. I came from a very matriarchal family with a mother that ruled us with a rod of iron. I went to an all girls’ school with mostly female teachers, and a very formidable headmistress. The Head of State was the Queen, and the leader of my country was Margaret Thatcher. If ever there was a time in British history for women to soar, this was our time. Because of these influences in my life I feel I was never destined to be a wallflower, and I knew that even when I was 10. My near-40 year old self might have fallen spectacularly short of the 10 year old me's aspirations, but I'm OK with that. How many do people do you know that ended up in the profession they'd chosen in their early years? At least my juvenile dreams were large and bold.
I feel privileged to have grown up and experienced such a life-changing, historical period. It is these early influences that shaped my awareness, ambitions, passions, and character. Looking back now and thinking of that time, I remember trying to figure out what I’d be like at 15, 20, 30, or 40. I just couldn't wrap my head around it at all. It was just too, too far away for my young brain to comprehend. The most I hoped for was to be married, for my best friends to still be Paula and Sarah, to have two kids; a boy and a girl that I was going to call John and Jill, lots of dogs and horses, live in a big house, and earn lots of money.
Oh, and of course, be Prime Minister.
