Drowning in the Shallow End Read online

  The incident led to the first of numerous trips to the children’s ward at Blackpool Hospital, which always struck me as an unpleasant and unwelcoming place. This early opposition may have been a consequence of a natural squeamishness on my part, or it may have been due to the fact that any hospital stay invariably meant being parted from my family. Time away from home always created a mountain of unease for a little lad with self-esteem as fragile as the much documented East-West relations.

  The final part in this ‘trilogy of unremembered events’ was forged from another confidence-condensing tale, again recited with relish at the slightest excuse for a family gathering. Coincidently this resulted in another unwanted trip to Blackpool Hospital. Amused relatives loved this particular story about how I was institutionalised for five weeks with severe pneumonia. To be fair, I’m sure their enjoyment wasn’t due to some twisted pleasure gained from how seriously ill I’d become, but instead because many of them found it hilarious that this particular medical intervention led to me developing an irrational fear of butchers. The escalation of an unexplored phobia meant I gained notoriety locally as the little Mellor lad who stubbornly refused to set foot inside any establishment which sold meat. It seems I was petrified of the butchers, associating their white coats with the ones worn by the all-too-familiar hospital doctors.

  If the probable annihilation of mankind, a distressing near-drowning and the development of an extreme aversion to hospitals all sound rather traumatic for a tiny toddler, the good news was that I had no recollection of any of these seminal moments. While I certainly went on to become a tad nervous and may have lacked a bit of social confidence; I was also full of imagination and retained a positive outlook on life. Generally I believed that, over time, things would work out well. Indeed most of my later recollections, the ones generated from events I can actually summon up for myself, always seemed far more palatable. The only exception to this rule was the infrequent appearance of a niggling separation anxiety which peppered parts of my otherwise unremarkable childhood.

  My earliest authentic memory probably resonated because of the intensity of feelings it created. At the age of five, I was sent with my older sister Erin, to a strict Roman Catholic school in nearby Lytham St Annes. I worked myself up into a terrible state, blubbering and wailing all the way there, terrified at the thought of being abandoned by my parents. To make matters worse (according to my own unreliable recall), Erin and I were then greeted by a flock of austere nuns who swept down on us with black gowns trailing behind them like the Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings. My first recollection was steeped in terror, screaming at my mother, pleading with her not to leave me with these cold and uncaring monsters. Their presence terrified me so much that it required four of them to forcibly prise me away from her and carry me kicking and screaming into the classroom. Holy Mary, Mother of God. It was neither the happiest introduction to my school days, nor to the introduction to religious enlightenment that some of my family may have wished for.

  While my adoration of Pennie Fenton would one day reach almost biblical proportions, it is fair to say I didn’t really commit myself to much of a spiritual life. Far from being blessed with a sense of ‘calling’, I always felt rather burdened by a purpose I’d yet to discover. This lack of spirituality contrasted strongly with my dad’s mother who lived just up the road from us and was generally regarded as the matriarch of the Mellor family. As a deeply spiritual woman, it was probably her suggestion that we should be sent to the Catholic school in Lytham. Regardless of this faux pas, I still loved Nan dearly and considered her to be a kind and loving woman, perhaps the best of all of us. I admired her for her strong sense of faith, which appeared to be immovable. She talked a lot about the Catholic Church but never in a righteous way. Most of what she said was probably beyond me or, quite frankly, rather dull to a little lad with a short attention span; however I recognised that her firmly held beliefs provided her with something the rest of us didn’t have.

  “You are in charge of the life you’ve been blessed with,” she’d say.

  “Always work as hard as you can at school Charlie. Get some qualifications, but bear in mind that true wisdom will only come when you improve your ability to cope,”

  “You and your sisters will be happiest when you learn to accept who you are - warts and all - and appreciate the healing powers of forgiveness,” Heavy.

  It would take me half a lifetime to really understand just how profound these words really were.

  Nan was always supportive. The much embellished story about me being scooped out of the swimming pool, like a prize goldfish from the ‘hook a duck’ stall at the local funfair, was recycled by family members for years. It was only Nan who ever expressed any concern about the event, periodically reminding everyone that faced down, it was quite possible to drown in only a puddle of water. How right she was.

  A woman of slender frame, she combined a prodigious work ethic with a subversive sense of humour. Always busy, she’d learned through necessity to become a proficient multi-tasker. How I enjoyed watching her scream obscenities at Kendo Nagasaki wrestling on the telly on a Saturday afternoon while earnestly vacuuming her modest house. A woman to trust and believe in, she lived by a set of moral principles and was both honest and upfront. Importantly, as my sisters and I approached our teenage years, she was the only person I knew who ever hinted that we’d once had another sister and the only one who ever implied that this ‘absent-other’ had once been a part of our family. Unfortunately, these occasional well-intentioned inferences made little impact on me or my sisters because they were so at odds with what was happening at home - where no reference to another sister was ever allowed to be made.

  Grandad was a much quieter and more serious person, but still managed to create a strong impression. His hair was the nearest to blizzard-white I’d ever seen on anyone. Not grey or silver, but completely without colour, as if he’d once been terribly shocked by something. When he did speak, his word was always the last on a given subject. He was an extremely proud man who was highly respected in the local community and worked long hours to elevate his family from the grinding poverty he had endured as a child. Although fiercely proud of his Scottish roots, Benjamin Mellor was labelled a Sasanach by his relatives the moment he decided to move to England in search of work. He said very little to us ‘wee bairns’, except perhaps to warn us never to come back from the local playground ‘with clarty breeks’. By the time I realised this wasn’t actually somebody’s name; I was probably old enough to stick my grubby trousers into a washing machine for myself. I think he intrigued me, partly because of his slightly austere demeanour, but also because whenever he was agitated, Ol’ Ben reverted back to his native dialect. On these occasions he became completely incomprehensible.

  When Ben started dating Nan in the 1930s, their relationship attracted disapproval in their small Lancashire town because he was three years younger than her. Resolute, they ignored local outrage and with no regard for the judgements of others, got engaged and set about making plans for a simple family wedding. Ironically it wasn’t the chants of ‘cradle-snatcher’ which caused them concern, but instead their own inherited religious beliefs. On hearing news of their engagement, Ben’s family immediately ostracised him. While his fiancé‘s parents were staunch Catholics, his own family was High Church of Scotland, itself affiliated to the Protestant Church. The thought of the two denominations coming together (and in England) at that time was probably about as pleasing as a mixed race union in the deep south of America. Undeterred by parental disapproval, they persevered. For years after their wedding, Nan sent thoughtful birthday presents to all of her husband’s relatives, enclosing long descriptive letters of how they were doing along with an open invitation to visit - only to have every gift returned un-opened. In acknowledgement of her selfless determination to reintegrate the two families, her husband was written out of his parents’ will and treated like a pariah.

  Years later in the 1950s my p
arents also created controversy. They had met on a train and were instantly drawn to each other. Following a six month courtship, Mum discovered she was pregnant. In an absurd coincidence mirroring the turmoil caused by my grandparents’ relationship twenty-five years earlier, Mum’s Protestant parents opposed their marriage on religious grounds. In an attempt to ingratiate herself with the wider Mellor family, Mum promised to convert to Catholicism. It was a decision which resulted in her being excluded from her own family, who had little to do with her from that point onwards. Things change but remain the same.

  Tensions between the famous work ethic of the Protestant church combined with a genuine fear of purgatory gained from my adopted Catholic dogma, guaranteed I would ‘work really hard at fostering a sense of crushing guilt’. Although my upbringing wasn’t particularly holy, there was an undercurrent at home of what I could only call ‘mild religious angst’ which was probably a legacy from these experiences. For me, this subdued tension resulted in a deep suspicion of all the established creeds and a desire to explore alternative explanations for what makes us who we are. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, my impending dysfunctional relationship with Miss Fenton was probably in part, an expression of this dissatisfaction.

  We were invariably strapped for cash during the sixties and so big family outings were infrequent events. I fondly remember the commotion caused by news that diminutive entertainer Jimmy Clitheroe was attending a local fete and would be signing autographs. The appearance was just on the back of his most celebrated film role as Tom Thumb in the comedy Rocket to the Moon. Friends, family and neighbours were all beside themselves at the possibility of meeting the four-foot-three star of radio and television who, although in his mid-forties was still able to pass for an eleven year old boy. I was as enthralled by Clitheroe and the contradictions the pint-sized celebrity presented; as I would be eleven years later by Pennie Fenton. Seeing a grown man inside such a small body was perverse. Hearing his high pitched voice made you believe he really was the primary school boy he dressed up to be. Ignoring all the other attractions, we queued up with dozens of fans for hours to meet the Lancastrian celebrity. Face to face, I remember unconditionally approving of the modest little man who, like me, looked very young for his age. Treasuring my two minutes, I instantly decided I too would like to be an actor – or at the very least appear on television when I was older. Not so much for the glamour or for the money, but instead for the possibility I might one day capture even a fraction of the positive recognition which ‘the boy who never grew up’ had been afforded on that sun drenched afternoon.

  Prior to Pennie getting her impressively presented talons into me, the only time I can remember being at all unhappy was shortly after this idyllic day. Around the age of eight, I was told that I was being sent to a nearby preparatory school in Blackpool. On hearing the news, all the horrors of being hoisted from my mother’s arms by that herd of nuns came flooding back. These fears were amplified ten-fold, when I discovered I was expected to attend as a boarder and would only be allowed home at the end of every term. Because I’d shown some promise at school, my parents had taken advantage of an RAF bursary scheme which funded a place for one child at public school each year. While the stated driver was to improve the standard of education received, I couldn’t help feeling I was being punished in some way. Excluded from the family unit, extricated from the place I lived. I wondered what I had done that was so awful that it merited this extreme sanction.

  To say I wasn’t fond of the experience would be an understatement. I hated being left at the school at the start of every new term and was always terrified I wouldn’t be able to cope – or worse still, was consumed by a niggling worry that I would never see my parents again. Dissent was therefore always part of my boarding school days and for over two years I sulked, moaned and bleated, pleading with my parents to change their mind and let me return home.

  When they did finally relent, any sense of relief was marred by the unsettling news that Dad had just been transferred to a different RAF station. So, before I was able to wedge either one of my shiny size four shoes back into the living room door; the whole family was preparing to pack up and leave. Within six weeks of returning home, we’d sold up and bought a rather grand Georgian town house nestled in the shadows of Ripon Cathedral. This impressive building was much larger than any of the other properties we’d lived in – perhaps five times the size of our Lancashire home. For no logical reason I automatically regarded its dominating presence as a symbol of permanence. Standing in the garden on the day we agreed to buy it, I peered upwards to the highest point of its towering structure - thinking the bigger the build, the more likely we were to hang around for a while. Happy days.

  Following success in the 11+ exam in 1974, it was agreed I would attend the local grammar school while my sisters would go to the nearby secondary modern. Ripon Grammar School had an excellent academic reputation and its' somewhat draconian approach to teaching reminded me of life at boarding school. Mum and Dad moaned about everything they needed to buy to enable me to attend, the exhaustive reading list and the cost of the prescriptive uniform which was only available from a single overpriced supplier in Ripon. One oversized wool overcoat had to be bought, two school blazers, a couple of sets of cricket whites, running spikes, three pair of grey flannel trousers, eight pair of branded socks. Biros were not allowed to be used anywhere in the school; instead all pupils had to use a traditional fountain pen, filled only with navy Quink ink. Even these pens became a form of status symbol, with a hierarchy of nibs prevalent across the school.

  “You - new boy, do you use a Sheaffer, a Waterman, a Parker pen or an inferior economy brand?”

  Or, “Is your pen filled from an ink reservoir or have you used a cartridge system?”

  In terms of the nib, “Have you opted for iridium, gold plated version or the more common steel variety?”

  From an early stage it was evident I’d never get my head around this type of mindless one-upmanship and very soon the common biro began to represent everything I aspired to be.

  Un-phased, I cycled to school each day, studied hard and bided my time. I was optimistic that just around the corner, I was about to meet a number of kindred classmates. In reality this would take a few more years to materialise, but did turn out to be worth waiting for. This was the group who would introduce me to Pennie Fenton and through her my real education would begin.

  Biding my time, I rekindled my interest in public speaking. Inspired by both a terrific English teacher called Miss Carrick and fading memories of Jimmy Clitheroe, I made attempts to overcome my reluctance to assert myself and for three or four years in a row auditioned for small roles in school productions such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and The Death of a Salesman. The desire to appear on television like my boyhood hero, had remained undiminished even after hearing the tragic news Little Jimmy had taken an overdose of sleeping tablets on the day of his mother’s funeral. These amateur school productions were seen by only twenty to thirty obliging parents, but soon exposed a problem with my master plan. It quickly became evident that I struggled to deliver lines in a way which was clear enough to be understood. Projecting my voice to the most sympathetic live audience available (who were sitting centre-stage, inside an acoustically balanced school hall), I was consistently hampered by a slightly hesitant disposition. It seemed that while I enjoyed the acting side of things, I lacked almost all of the oratorical skills required to succeed. Labouring to disguise my unease, I reluctantly decided that the theatre might not, after all, be the ideal platform for presenting my particular range of talents.

  3. The Shores of Lake Wobegon

  Miss Carrick was a young and progressive teacher. She was well travelled and enjoyed listening to an American radio show called A Prairie Home Companion. Towards the end of each term, if we completed our work on time; she would play us taped recordings of the variety show which had been airmailed to her by relatives in the States. As each of the shor
t recordings ended, she’d ask provocative questions to her spellbound audience about the social and moral issues which had been presented. One debate in particular really captured my imagination. It was about a fictional town which was regularly featured in the programme, called Lake Wobegon. This was ‘...the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve… where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average[1]’. An entire English lesson was devoted to exploring whether or not we thought it would be a good thing to live in a place like Lake Wobegon. The class was split into two teams and each group tasked with putting forward the most persuasive argument. For me this was easier than acting. There were no lines to learn, no parents to watch you fall. In my mind, if you believed in what you were saying, the words flowed easily. Opting, therefore, to be spokesperson for the group who were arguing that Wobegon might not necessarily be the ideal place to live; I constructed what I thought was a compelling case for why this utopic vision was an anathema.

  Even as a teenager, I could see that the majority of my studious classmates expected, sooner or later, to outgrow their own limitations. In the main they thought, as the years progressed, their lives would improve as each of them strove to develop themselves and gradually iron out any minor personal niggles. I had never shared this particular aspiration. Instead, for most of my short life, I’d positively revelled in the knowledge my own long list of shortcomings appeared to be eminently durable. I therefore welcomed the opportunity to speak out and challenge what I regarded to be a flawed assumption. My position was that Lake Wobegon (or woe-be-gone) sounded like a grotesque place to live. Its promise of a bland and vacuous existence only served to reinforce a risible human tendency to overestimate personal capability. During the heated debate which followed, our vastly outnumbered team demanded to know what name could instead be given to a town where everyone underestimated their own potential. A community filled with like-minded people who shared the same deep seated desire to down-play their own effectiveness. Now here lay a much more interesting proposition.