LITMIR.BIZ

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with a rock band even before your first day at school?

      Mum had had a varied and dramatic childhood herself. My Grandad had been working as a civil servant in London when he decided he wanted a better life for his four kids than a council flat in Wandsworth, so he got transferred to Bristol and bought a little house in the country for them all to live in. He was keen on the idea of women getting an education and Mum was bright and did well at school, so it all went well until she was sixteen and she and Grandad fell out. Two powerful characters meeting one another head on, I guess: lots of middle-aged testosterone and adolescent hormones flying around and neither of them willing to give way. It ended up with Mum being chucked out of the house and spending a couple of years living rough, sleeping under the pier in Weston-super-Mare, or on other people’s floors until some friends of the family took her under their wing and helped her fulfil her dream of going to the Guildhall. Maybe that experience was the reason why she didn’t go completely mad when she found out how I was living later on in Brighton. She’d been through the same thing herself and knew that there are worse things than not having a home of your own when you’re young and finding your way in the world. People worry too much about where they are going to sleep each night; something usually turns up.

      Mum was a bit of a romantic right from the start, always dreaming of how life should be, but things never quite seemed to work out right for her in the early days. Maybe she was just a bit too feisty for her own good. But if she hadn’t been so feisty maybe she wouldn’t have survived all the ordeals that were to come, and maybe she wouldn’t have fought so hard to get me a fair deal when everything started to go wrong.

      The council estate Mum and I were living on in Peckham was a bit rough. I guess it was the sort of place the council put people who they had to house in a hurry (people like my punky single-mum for a start). Other people on the estate weren’t always quite as capable of keeping things together as she was. Quite a few of them had pretty much totally lost the plot.

      There was a nine-year-old kid living a few flats down, for instance, who used to come knocking on the door each day begging for food. He was looking after his eight younger brothers and sisters because his mum and dad were both alcoholics and not much good for anything. Mum would always give him something, and one time we went down to their flat for some reason. I was shocked to see how they were living, with pigeons roosting in the bedroom. Most of the kids were naked, rolling around on the floor, not even speaking properly, just grunting at one another like they had been transported through time from the Stone Age. Even when they were dressed their clothes stank of piss.

      Their mum came round one evening and told us her husband had been taken into hospital and asked Mum to look after all the kids for her while she went to visit him. She didn’t reappear till the next day, by which time Mum and I had rummaged through all my old clothes and found new stuff for them to wear while their own clothes went through the washing machine, several times. One of the girls had knickers that were so old they disintegrated when she took them off. Her mum accused Mum of stealing them once she got her home and discovered they were missing. It turned out the dad hadn’t been to the hospital at all; they’d just gone down the pub together.

      Everyone on the estate was fed up with the family’s constant begging and after a while their flat was burnt out and they had to be re-housed in a new area where they could start afresh. The mother came back to visit us later and told us that the smallest baby had died of an ear infection. I was really upset, having looked after it for that day and got to know it.

      ‘Ah,’ she casually dismissed my tears. ‘I can always have another one.’

      The dad took a bit of a fancy to Mum and came to the door having tried to drown out the smell of unwashed clothes and beer with gallons of cheap aftershave, and told her he had £110 saved in the bank and thought they should get together. Mum went mad, yelling at him that if he had that kind of money he should be spending it on his children, not on trying to get his end away. I was shocked, I’d never seen her so angry about anything. I was really glad I had her to look after me rather than some of the other women I saw around the place.

       CHAPTER THREE

       BABY MINDERS

      Mum’s biggest problem, once she had me, was finding affordable babysitters when she went to work. I don’t think people ever minded having me because I was always a pretty happy kid, but most people around our way had enough trouble caring for their own children, never mind someone else’s. There was a lovely Indian family who I used to stay with quite a lot. Mum even bought a set of bunks so I could sleep over there without putting any of them out of their beds. Their mum was called Rosen and she made great curries.

      Mum took me out with Rosen’s kids one day and a white van driven by a couple of men cruised past. One of them leant out the window and shouted abuse at us, assuming we were all Mum’s children, spitting at her before accelerating off. I couldn’t understand why anyone would be so horrible to a woman with small children. Mum tried to explain to me about racism and how some people hated other people simply because they had different-coloured skins. I remember it making me feel sad, but also puzzled because I really liked people who were different and new, interesting and surprising. I liked Rosen’s family because the women wore swathes of brightly coloured fabric and their house was full of exotic smells. I liked the way they talked with their musical-sounding accents and the pictures they had on their walls.

      Bit by bit over the coming years I learnt about the National Front and their hatred of anyone who wasn’t like them. At the same time I was aware I was also growing to be more different, and therefore more vulnerable, myself. Mostly I liked the way I was, but I didn’t always like the reactions I got from other people.

      When I was about four, Mum went on another short tour with the Communards, and left me with a different local family for a few days. When she came back she found me playing on my own in the car park outside their house. The lady who was supposed to be looking after me had left her front door open so she could watch me, but had fallen asleep on the sofa. Mum went berserk, ranting and raving that anything could have happened to me while she slept. She must have been very torn between her need to make money, her love of music and performing, and her maternal urge to look after me herself all the time.

      The same family had a pit bull terrier. I always loved dogs and wanted to cuddle them all the moment I saw them, but this mean bastard had other ideas as I threw my arms around its neck, and sank its teeth into my face. Luckily it missed my eye but it ripped open my top lip and there was blood everywhere. Mum was there at the time and rushed me down to the hospital, where we sat for several hours with her holding my lip on, waiting for the surgeon. I was shaking uncontrollably and crying but Mum always stayed incredibly quiet and calm in these crises, although she fainted dead away once the whole thing was over.

      When the surgeon did eventually get round to us Mum and four nurses had to lie across my body to stop me fighting him off as he set to work with his needle and thread. She made them put in an extra stitch after they thought they had finished because she was so determined I wouldn’t end up scarred, which didn’t endear her to them, or me at the time. Despite her best efforts there’s still a tiny scar, but you can hardly see it.

      The babysitting problem was eventually solved by the intervention of Mum’s cousin, Poofy-Cousin-Marcus, who had already helped bring up his brother’s four kids when his brother was away at sea, so he knew what he was doing when it came to nappy changing, kids’ meals and nursery school runs. He was totally happy mincing around the kitchen all day, scrubbing and bleaching. He stayed with us on and off for years and I caught him slipping money under my pillow when my first tooth came out and was convinced from then on that the tooth fairy was a balding poof with glasses and painted-on eyebrows. He was great, throwing himself into the role of nanny with gusto and filling all my criteria for being different, interesting and funny. He was completely happy gossiping with the mothers at the school gates, or showing off how white he had managed to get

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