he doing, Mum?’
‘He’s being dirty.’
So from then on, whenever Big Puss ground away on my teddies or sometimes even me, I would shout, ‘Mum! Big Puss is being dirty! Big Puss is being dirty!’ And Mum would come in with a tea-towel and shoo him away: ‘Dirty cat! Dirty cat!’
I didn’t know what being dirty was – I still don’t think I do – but anyway that’s when I first came across this thing ‘being dirty’, and I learnt it off a big horny ginger tom.
Like most families, the father thinks he rules the roost but it is the mother who is really in control. After my younger brother Gary and I had tired of pleading with our parents for a tortoise, we moved onto dogs. We wanted a pet dog. Dad instantly set out his stall: he wanted a ‘big dog’, a man-dog, a dog that if it was human would enjoy a pint and stare at the barmaid’s arse as she bent down for the cheese and onion crisps. He must have felt pretty emasculated then when we came back with Minstral.
The only way I can describe Minstral is for you to imagine the kind of dog that Paris Hilton has poking out of her handbag at those Hollywood premières. Minstral was a gorgeous little mongrel a few months old with the most expressive face going. His mother had been a pedigree King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, the breeder told us snootily, but a dirty Jack Russell called ‘Rusty’ had sneaked through the cat flap and raped her. It seems the mother had brought shame upon his council house and wanted nothing to do with its bastard offspring, so we took it off his hands.
Contrary to what you might think, Dad and the bastard dog bonded and from that moment on they were inseparable. They would go to bed at the same time, rise at the same time and go for drives together, with Minstral sitting obediently in the passenger seat. The partnership got so intense that Mum thought the dog was resenting her. So much so that she phoned the vet to say that Minstral was giving her dirty looks. I was horrified. I envisaged the vet nodding sympathetically – ‘Yes, Mrs Carr, that’s right, Mrs Carr’ – while trying to switch on ‘speaker phone’ so everyone in the clinic could listen to this ‘weirdo woman’ in a love triangle with a mongrel.
From that moment on, Minstral and Mum both battled for Dad’s affection; it was a battle that would last the next thirteen years. At least Mum still had her figure; Minstral’s had gone to pot, as every morning Dad would proudly walk him to the newsagent and feed him his body weight in Milky Ways. It’s a classic case of an owner killing the dog with kindness, but his argument was that Minstral would look up with those little expectant eyes, and Dad just couldn’t resist forcing what was to a dog the equivalent of a selection box down the poor creature’s throat. The dog must have been good with the old expectant-eyes trick because when I did them to Dad (usually mid-cross-country run, pleading with him to stop) he just ignored me and made me touch another tree, while I was gagging for a Milky Way.
* * *
It’s typical, really, that although I was hearing whispers at school that I was not like the other boys – and I don’t think it was because of my birdwatching – the penny never dropped. A few times I had wondered what they meant by the catcalls, and of course now I know, oh yes, I know now very well what they meant. These cringeworthy moments hover in my memory glowing bright pink in neon shouting, ‘Yoo hoo, over here – remember us.’ Sometimes I was guilty of turning the most mundane tasks into ammunition for the bullies.
Every child loves ice cream, and I was no exception. Whenever the hypnotic melody of the ice-cream van would be heard in our cul-de-sac, time would freeze as every child would first run to their mum and dad and shout, ‘Mum, ice-cream van – can we have one?’ and then run to get their shoes. On one occasion, I couldn’t find my shoes and blind panic set in, because I really wanted a 99. All I could find were Mum’s knee-length zip-up leather boots. I thought, ‘Sod it, I’ll wear those.’
By the time I’d put them on the right feet, zipped them up and found a handbag to match (joke), I could hear the ice-cream van’s engine starting up. I ran straight out of the front door to find my fears were confirmed – he was pulling away! As fast as I could, I chased the ice-cream van through my whole estate in high-heeled boots, shouting, ‘Stop! Stop! I want a 99!’
It was only when I sat down on the kerb, slowly unzipped the boots and coquettishly sucked the flake, that I thought, ‘God, you’re sexy!’ – no, I thought how ridiculous I must look. This was confirmed by the number of neighbours staring and kids giggling.
I knew they were thinking, ‘That’s Graham’s son.’
* * *
Times changed, and when I was eight we stopped going to the freezing wasteland of Great Yarmouth for our holidays and started going on five-hour car journeys behind a string of caravans to Beverley Park in Torquay. That five-hour journey would sometimes take six if my violent car sickness kicked in and I had to vomit on the hard shoulder.
You can imagine the relief when we finally pulled up at Torquay and saw the sun and the crisp blue sky.
‘They call this the English Riviera,’ Mum said, turning round in her seat and smiling at me.
I was amazed. Unlike Great Yarmouth, it really did look like it did in the brochure. (In Great Yarmouth I think they’d superimposed a sun and toilet facilities afterwards.)
Now we were holidaying down south we were joined by an extra person – Nanny Tot. She should have been called Nanny Carr, but my Granddad Wilf was so tall he was nicknamed Tot and it stuck. Nanny Tot didn’t come to Great Yarmouth with us, as she lived in Newcastle, so if she had wanted to get blown around and pissed on, she could just have gone to Whitley Bay, which was cheaper and nearer. When Nanny found out that we would be going to Devon and it would be free, she decided to tag along.
Nanny Tot was a lovely lady, but frugal to say the least. If she could get out of spending money she would do it. One mention of pocket money would have her diving for her panic button. Once, when I was a baby, she bought me a dress because it was cheaper than a pair of trousers. Gary insists that’s where my ‘trouble’ started.
Every kid is excited when their Nan comes to stay, and we were no exception, but the excitement was doubled because we were going on holiday with ours – yeah! We would collect Nan from the National Express coach station ready for our journey onwards to sunny Devon. She would get off the coach and reach into her bag.
‘Here you are, love. Here’s something for you.’
It would be half a packet of Opal Fruits each – if we were lucky. Sometimes we didn’t get them at all, because if Nanny Tot ever saw a disabled person or someone with learning difficulties, she would put her hand in her bag and whip out our sweets. I remember once in a café Nan going to give a paraplegic my uneaten chips. And if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, Mum then told her off loudly, saying, ‘They want to be treated as equal. They’ve got rights now.’
Nan’s generosity with our sweets to less able-bodied people had a sliding scale of its own – a brain tumour: a whole box of Rowntree’s pastilles; limb missing: Fry’s chocolate cream; retarded: Bounty; while a stutter would equate to two segments of a Terry’s chocolate orange.
Sadly, Nan’s tightness actually affected her hearing.
‘Can I have 50p to have a ride on the donkeys?’ I begged.
She smiled sweetly and carried on with her crossword.
‘Please, Nan!’
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