Diary Of A Single Baby Boomer Bitch. 2
Without Prejudice
The reason I know I am a Baby Boomer is that I was born when the only entertainment we had as kids, my plethora of siblings and I, was a radio. And a record player that played black vinyl discs that were operated by an arm, lowered carefully on to the outside swirl. A swirl that looked like a licorice swirl when they were available along with Choo Choo bars.
We would watch as our little baby brother aged eighteen months would run around and around the Lino covered kitchen table endlessly to One Little Two Little Three Little Indians. We had no idea why this song excited him so much, but excite him it did and we laughed hysterically every time he did it.
Mum would be busy in her corner of the kitchen preparing doughnuts with her new Sunbeam Mix Master, it had a doughnut hook. The batter scooped out and then placed into boiling hot fat and magically doughnuts appeared brown and glistening to be then covered in Demerara sugar and eaten. The motto in our house of seven kids, S.O.S. Stretch Or Starve.
The saying invented by our Mother who had been in the R.A.F.. She had a fluty trilling Joyce Grenfell voice when answering the phone and dropped to broad Yorkshire when she was in a fit with us annoying kids. We knew very early not to ask what was for tea.
"Shit with sugar on " would be the reply.
Jackie, my older Sister, would retort back
"Again ? " and walk away.
I who was five years younger had a vivid imagination, and thought of turds glistening with sugar and refuse to eat anything except cream of tomato soup and scrambled eggs, cooked until they were very dry. George my older brother by nineteen months, took the stretch or starve rule a little literally and apparently stole my bottles of formula out of my crib, drank them and put them back empty. By the time I was old enough to stand I was a Biafran look alike.
That part of me never changed. Nor my younger brother David, we both looked like Biafrans, when little. George was called " nuggety" and Jackie was always a chubby child. I could never wear her dresses, not that I wanted to wear hateful dresses as a child. But once Mum managed to place one on me and it fell over my frame like an empty sack. White and candy pink it was and it dragged almost to the floor, slipping over non existent hips.
I preferred a faded pair of red Jantzen's bathers that I wore with nothing else. When I was about 10 my Mother bought me a Tartan pinafore which I wore to death. One big fat girl at school, an only child, asked in front of friends one day,
" Do you only have one dress ? "
And everyone sniggered. I was humiliated beyond measure, especially as at that time I was " Top Girl " and went home in a rage. My Mother then took me to Prestons department store and booked up on the " account " new dresses, a pair of new bathers and a white tennis skirt. For Rounders, the girls team of which I was the Captain. We were all pretty sure " The Account" wouldn't be paid anyway, and after a while we would move again when letters of demand came in.
The reason I know I am a Baby Boomer is that I was born when the only entertainment we had as kids, my plethora of siblings and I, was a radio. And a record player that played black vinyl discs that were operated by an arm, lowered carefully on to the outside swirl. A swirl that looked like a licorice swirl when they were available along with Choo Choo bars.
We would watch as our little baby brother aged eighteen months would run around and around the Lino covered kitchen table endlessly to One Little Two Little Three Little Indians. We had no idea why this song excited him so much, but excite him it did and we laughed hysterically every time he did it.
Mum would be busy in her corner of the kitchen preparing doughnuts with her new Sunbeam Mix Master, it had a doughnut hook. The batter scooped out and then placed into boiling hot fat and magically doughnuts appeared brown and glistening to be then covered in Demerara sugar and eaten. The motto in our house of seven kids, S.O.S. Stretch Or Starve.
The saying invented by our Mother who had been in the R.A.F.. She had a fluty trilling Joyce Grenfell voice when answering the phone and dropped to broad Yorkshire when she was in a fit with us annoying kids. We knew very early not to ask what was for tea.
"Shit with sugar on " would be the reply.
Jackie, my older Sister, would retort back
"Again ? " and walk away.
I who was five years younger had a vivid imagination, and thought of turds glistening with sugar and refuse to eat anything except cream of tomato soup and scrambled eggs, cooked until they were very dry. George my older brother by nineteen months, took the stretch or starve rule a little literally and apparently stole my bottles of formula out of my crib, drank them and put them back empty. By the time I was old enough to stand I was a Biafran look alike.
That part of me never changed. Nor my younger brother David, we both looked like Biafrans, when little. George was called " nuggety" and Jackie was always a chubby child. I could never wear her dresses, not that I wanted to wear hateful dresses as a child. But once Mum managed to place one on me and it fell over my frame like an empty sack. White and candy pink it was and it dragged almost to the floor, slipping over non existent hips.
I preferred a faded pair of red Jantzen's bathers that I wore with nothing else. When I was about 10 my Mother bought me a Tartan pinafore which I wore to death. One big fat girl at school, an only child, asked in front of friends one day,
" Do you only have one dress ? "
And everyone sniggered. I was humiliated beyond measure, especially as at that time I was " Top Girl " and went home in a rage. My Mother then took me to Prestons department store and booked up on the " account " new dresses, a pair of new bathers and a white tennis skirt. For Rounders, the girls team of which I was the Captain. We were all pretty sure " The Account" wouldn't be paid anyway, and after a while we would move again when letters of demand came in.
