Four

Bliss in Kent. Too young still for school, only child, run of the
house and my mother. Our beautiful, long garden, all grass and apples
as it should be in Kent. Walking round to the shops with Mum, a little
parade of late fifties shops, butcher, barber, the Co-op, all with men
in white coats who seemed very cheerful, sane and friendly. They were
really like that then, you didn't need Camberwick Green or Postman Pat.
Walking home again through the bluebell woods with real bluebells and
feeding the ducks in the stream. Tea, jam and bread and Listen with
Mother, falling gently asleep to the sounds of my Dad coming home from
work.

Things were changing. Mum got a job. They put me in nursery school -
horrific. Other children! The toys all grubby from their sticky hands,
a pathetic junk-filled tiny garden, crawling with brattish other
people's children. The most disgusting lunch I'd ever had, greasy mince
slopping into anaemic mash. I stood by the front window waiting
desperately to be collected. The stupid nursery woman told my mother
that I'd have to learn how to mix. No way! I refused to speak, wouldn't
eat, threw a tantrum in my bed. Next morning my mother phoned her new
job and gave it up.

Early that summer one of the Gods sent a message. I was in my perfect
garden, late afternoon, bees buzzing round mellifluous flowers, when
nature very suddenly turned on me. The deep blue sky turned almost
black in half a minute and in the distance I heard an explosion. I ran
to the back door. It was locked. Another half minute and it was now
almost completely dark. Then everything flashed for a second followed
swiftly by the loudest, most earth shaking noise I'd ever heard. I
bashed furiously on the back door as large blobs of water began to
strike me from all angles. Finally my mother came running to the door
and let me in. She looked pale. It was a Kent storm. For the next hour
or so we cowered together in the living room, no electricity except the
uncontrollable lightning. This deluge signalled the end of my early
childhood and the beginning of the contrariness of life.

Within two months we had moved to Hertfordshire, I'd turned five,
started school and might just have well been on another planet. At
least I got it all over with at once. I didn't know which thing to be
most traumatised by, so I didn't really have a trauma, just complete
bewilderment. I didn't know that I'd never see my beautiful garden
again, that for the rest of my life I'd often try to return there in my
head and my dreams and that I'd never, ever sleep quite as peacefully
again as I used to before the storm.