Where Did It All Go Right? (25 page)

In July ’75 I came down for a record five days during the school holidays: Lego, yogurts, Rummy,
two
Cokes at a pub, and staying up till 9.30 to watch
The Squirrels
.
⁷

This was not a case of my own parents trying to get rid of me – I’d long since stopped being the little sod – though I expect they were happy enough to have one less mouth to feed for a couple of days. No, the Lovat Drive arrangement seems to have become routine because it suited Nan and Pap and it suited me. On the face of it, Simon seemed to benefit too – after all, no Andrew meant more attention for him from Mum and Dad. Knowing that I would inevitably be spoiled while I was away, they spoiled Simon in return (to a sensible degree, of course). For instance in August 1973, when I got back from a four-day stay he’d been allowed to start collecting football stickers in my absence. He nearly had the page of Arsenal already. He
was
still bitter of course (not that he expressed it at the time), partly because he couldn’t understand it.

I was a Nanny’s boy. Since Pap would be at work if I went there on weekdays, it was Nan who had the lion’s share of me. Even if she was pottering in the kitchen making treacle tart and listening to Jimmy Young (‘What’s the recipe today, Jim?’) she still had me about the place, like a surrogate son I suppose, a surrogate angel. Don’t all grandparents subconsciously treat their grandchildren as their own? It would make sense. All the advantages of being a parent again, without the hassle or the commitment or going up the school.

I was happy: if it meant missing my friends for a couple of days, at least I got lots of drawing done at the little fold-out table in the living room (I considered it
my
table, just as the spare bedroom was
my
bedroom). Here at Lovat Drive was
a bit of peace and quiet
, something you don’t usually appreciate as a kid, but I soon learned to. There was plenty of time to go down the field and ride my bike when I got back to Mum and Dad’s. I think being packed off to Nanny’s was a sophisticating influence on me. When we weren’t playing Scrabble (they had the Deluxe), we watched grown-up telly like
Columbo, Kes
and – a strangely ultra-vivid memory, this –
The Shoes of the Fisherman
(a 1968 epic starring Anthony Quinn as a Russian bishop who becomes Pope, which taught me about the white smoke).

I bonded with Nan over mid-afternoon telly like
Houseparty
,
⁸
and
with Pap over the strawberry nets at the allotment. I was their pidge. They even took me away for long weekends to Blackpool, easily the most glamorous place on earth, where we stayed in a
hotel
(years before Jersey). We rode on a tram, thrilled to the illuminations, went up the Tower and saw Mike Yarwood and Freddie Starr live. I ate my first toffee apple in Blackpool (and promptly threw it all up again). It was like a filmed montage designed to convey fun, leisure and abandon.

So it was a win–win situation – at the time. I only became self-conscious about the bare-faced injustice of it all vis-à-vis Simon when I grew up a bit and stopped going down Nanny’s. How they must have hated that day, when I was suddenly too grown-up to want to go down Lovat Drive any more – when I didn’t ‘lovat’ any more. The day my voice broke. That was the day they had to wave parenthood goodbye for ever and accept mortality’s fate.

The ritual continued through 1976 (a four-day stay in August: ‘Pap got me a load of paper, a
Whoopee
and three Tempos’; three days in October: ‘I had four fresh cream chocolate éclairs today’), 1977 (February: ‘Had chocolate éclairs for tea’; August: ‘I helped Pap do the potatoes’) and 1978 (January: ‘Nan, Pap, Mrs Hanson and I went up Harlestone Furs for a blow’;
⁹
August: ‘We watched
Out
,
¹⁰
it was magic’). But in 1979, it was suddenly and without ceremony all over. My age – 14, a
funny
age – had caught up with me, and the allure of cards,
Columbo
and tonic ran out, superseded by punk rock, girls and hanging round the shops.

Without any of us realising it (although Nan and Pap must have sensed it coming), the Sunday to Tuesday I spent at Lovat Drive in August ’79 was my last ever stopover. It had it all: trifle, a visit by Dean, a trip to Auntie Jean’s,
Moving Target
,
¹¹
and Litchborough
Garden
Centre. But that was it. Goodnight, Nan, goodnight, Pap. They were my own personal grandparents no longer, their privileges were taken away, no more access, no more weekends. I was off to chat up Cindy Offord, listen to The Ruts and get hot under the collar when Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip came on
The Kenny Everett Video Show
.

It was a difficult time, especially for Nan. I started to wear my hair spiky, a very real cause for concern. I still visited Lovat Drive, but only with the rest of the family, and like any teenage Kevin, I could think of about twenty places I’d rather be than at my grandparents’ house. Boo-oring.

* * *

Where had the
nice
Nanny and Pappy been all this time? (Talking of whom, it’s clear to me now that I innocently distinguished them as
nice
because it’s Simon who wanted to know – to him, they probably were the
nice
ones.) Well, even though we never once slept over at Adnitt Road, we were there without fail every Wednesday during the school holidays for dinner and tea and a walk in the park – more ritual, more institution. Though of course I had to share Nan and Pap C with Simon and Melissa, and share we did. No dangerous favouritism here. A comic for one, a comic for all.

Was it dangerous though? In the final analysis, did the routine act of spoiling me actually
spoil
me? (As in: you’ll spoil your dinner.) I think not. It drove no wedge between my brother and me – we were great mates through it all, even though he admitted to me recently that it did trouble him as a child. It didn’t turn me into a little public schoolboy, demanding a hand of Rummy and a glass of beer at all hours and greeting every parental injustice with a snivelling cry of, ‘Well,
Nanny
lets me!’ In fact, my regular disappearances seemed to help maintain the equilibrium of the Collins household. No lasting harm was done. Not even the two Blackpool mini-breaks in ’73 and ’75 – on both occasions much play was made of buying everybody presents while I was on the Golden Mile (soldiers for Simon, a book for Melissa, a flower holder for Mum).

My special relationship may have pushed Pap C and Simon closer together (what use did he have for a Pap who watched the
war
go by from a factory in Jimmy’s End?). But they were old combat-buddies to start with. Pap C saw some of himself in Simon.

Nan Mabel and Pap Reg saw some of Brian in me. Uncle Brian was the proverbial apple of their eye, the eldest and their only son (Mum and Auntie Janice used to have to share a bed as kids, while Brian had his own room – the room I would eventually come to think of as
mine
). It was a hard day for them when Brian finally got married and left home. Though older than Mum and Janice, he was the last to fly the nest; he had been a resident of Lovat Drive for 30 years. He also worked within walking distance at the Express Lifts factory as a draughtsman and he would still pop back to Nan’s for lunch when he was married. The force was strong in this one, and he clearly left a big hole, particularly for Nan. I was a substitute Brian.

It all makes sense, as these things invariably do. Philip Larkin advised to ‘get out as early as you can’ in ‘This Be the Verse’, but Brian obviously never read it. He did it in his own time.

I ‘got out’ of Nan and Pap’s at exactly the right time. Our relationship never really soured, even during punk. Nan would whittle about my appearance, especially when I discovered hair dye at 16, but I remained her favourite to the end, and Pap and I belatedly bonded over our socialist ideals, his deep-seated, mine ‘discovered’ at college. We were very much isolated within the family, but that made the bond stronger.

I carried on making birthday cards for the both of them right through college, because to have stopped would have been taken as a snub. (I was under no pressure to make cards for the
nice
Nanny and Pappy, although I drew them a cracking caricature for their golden wedding which I hope compensated.)

I’ll be honest, some of these cards I made for Nan M and Pap R are pretty good. They are surprisingly satirical, many of them gently taking this piss out of Nan’s ways. After some impersonal early efforts, with Top Cat (‘love from Andrew, Boss Cat, Spook, Fancy, Brain, Choo Choo and Benny and Officer Dibble’),
Monster Fun
influenced spooks and Peanuts characters on them, they begin to feature cartoons of Nan and Pap themselves. For instance, on the occasion of Pap’s 60th birthday I have pictured
him
addressing a union meeting; ‘What do we vote, brothers?’ he is asking the assembled flat-capped ‘workers’. Open the card and he is being blown off his platform by their response: ‘We vote that we wish a happy 60th to Brother Reg!!’

The Christmas card for 1979 lampoons Nan’s recurring fantasy about me being a choirboy. In the drawing, spiky-topped, I am singing from a book marked ‘Punk Hymns by S. Vicious’. Inside there’s a PS under the greeting: ‘Don’t forget to show this card to Mrs Brinclow and Mr and Mrs Burt and all the girls at Guild and all at Lovat Drive.’ A cheeky reference to Nan’s tendency to show me off which became postmodern when, presumably, she showed it to Mrs Brinclow and Mr and Mrs Burt and all the girls at Guild. (Perhaps she never did!)

In 1981 I have combined Nan’s 60th and Pap’s retirement into one huge card – with a poem for each occasion (what am I, the Poet Laureate now?). In Nan’s half there’s a Marks & Spencer gag (‘I hope you like this card – you can’t take it back!!’), and in Pap’s it’s more union laughs (‘Now Brother Ward/Will never get bored/If you want to see Reg/He’ll be cultivating veg’). I have by now turned them both into serviceable cartoon characters. They were flattered of course, and despite her reputation for being highly strung, Nan took all this ragging in good spirit. The same year’s Christmas card sees the pair of them snowbound, inching along in Pap’s car with Nan giving it the full whittle: ‘Ooooh, Reg. Careful. Watch this bit. Oooh-er. There’s no salt on this road. I’m all worked up. Watch it, Reg. Be careful!! Slow down a bit. Not so fast. I shall get no sleep tonight. We’re late, Reg. We’re missing
Blankety Blank
, Reg.’

What fun we had at Nan’s expense. By 1982’s birthday card I am mocking her neuroses relentlessly, comparing myself (‘the arty one’) with Simon (‘the army one’). In cartoon form we stand side by side, me with my henna, drumsticks and rolled-up jeans, Simon in cadet uniform and ‘smart regulation haircut’, saluting if you please. ‘In a few years,’ runs the legend beneath my likeness, ‘when he’s a star you’ll be proud of him.’ Under Simon it reads: ‘In a few years when he’s an officer you’ll be proud of him. What more could you want?’

It borders on the tragic, this card. Simon and I have both signed it (‘from your two lovable grandchildren’), and yet of course, it’s all my own handiwork, so I was in line for all the praise anyway. There’s so much hope and optimism in this card – not that I would be a ‘star’ (doing what?) or that he would be an officer, but that Nan Mabel would be equally interested in our fates. I’m desperately trying to make her proud of my brother, pushing his very real achievements like a PR. It would all be for naught.

She was proud of me when I became, if not a star, a published journalist – although she’d have preferred it if I could have managed this without leaving Northampton and the family’s immediate orbit. As I said, Simon moved to Folkestone, then Colchester, then Hanover with his job and not once did Nan lament the distance. He made Corporal, but she wasn’t proud of that.

She also denied her own passing years after 60, which I always thought was deeply sad, although we made a big joke out of it at the time. ‘Don’t throw away this piece of work,’ says 1981’s card, ‘I’ll re-use it next year (and the next)!’ If only. ‘62 again?’ asks her 64th birthday card. ‘And you don’t look a day over 64 …’

The message inside also hints at something subtly heartbreaking to me now, as I sit here moist-eyed and return everything to Pap’s folder:

Simon’s in the army, I’m in college and Melissa’s growing boobs!!

We’re growin’ up
.

Had I no empathy for an elderly lady’s feelings? Was I intent on rubbing salt into Nan’s inner wounds with all this loose talk of things past? Was this my under-the-counter payback for what she and Pap had done to me with their undying love?

Or was it just a set-up for the punchline?

Could be worse – I could be growing boobs
.

1.
Early in 2001, Pap wrote a piece about his schooldays for an anthology published by the National Organisation For Adult Learning. It makes fascinating reading. He writes vividly of life in the 1920s, his father a clerk in the goods yard at Northampton Castle Station but still unable to afford to take the family on holiday every year. His mother ‘cried all night’ when their landlord told them he was selling the house they rented on Glasgow Street, but his father decided to buy it. He recalls in great detail a holiday on the Isle of Bute – travelling there by paddle steamer and visiting a sugar factory at Greenock – and taking his father’s flask to him during the General Strike at his temporary office in a house ‘against the old Star public house’ (he was secretary of the Railway Clerks Association). ‘On Fridays my mother got me to call at the Maypole shop which was close to the school, to buy a piece of currant, rich fruit or cream cake plus a pound of fresh butter. Also on Friday after school, we used to visit Agutters at the corner of Talbot Road and buy a 1d hot sausage.’ Pap sent me a copy of the booklet,
Learning Now and Then: Memories of Education through the Years
in June 2001, obviously proud of being in print. He should have been writing a book, not me.