AFTER MADNESS - CH 1 : 5 - I Don't Like Crowds.

There were other things that I have snapshot memories of. The man on the stage came to the edge after he had cut the woman's head off and held up what I believe to be one of the organs of the woman . Whatever it was was covered in blood and I think the man bit into the thing in his hand. Everyone was cheering.The woman had miscarried I believe. I'm not positive but Margaret had a story about this too. She claimed that when I was a toddler she had been pregnant with twins but claimed her husband, my "father" had pushed her down the stairs and she'd miscarried. (There are no twins in our family, whether that proves anything...) She also had stories of how, in the war, the Japanese would cut open pregnant women and torture the babies. She said they would hang the foetuses from a washing line using the grip reflex that all babies are born with to see how long they could hold on and other terrible things.

There were people of all ages there in the hall, from very old to very young and they were a howling mob. I have images of babies being torn to pieces by the younger people while the adults went for the woman's body on the stage. I think they ate bits. I could never stand the sight of raw meat until recently; not the sight nor feel, but particularly not the smell of it. When I got married I had to wear rubber gloves in order to make the dinner. When I was at the high school I refused point-blank to touch the meat in cookery. I had to cross the road if I passed a butcher's shop. I could never bring myself to break up a chicken carcass because it looked too much like a dead baby's chest. I still only buy Chicken in pieces, breast or leg. I NEVER eat offal.

(I have not now, nor have I ever had an ethical objection to meat. I know full well that if we didn't eat cows, sheep and pigs then our countryside would be totally bereft of animals. People would not get fields of fluffy lambs etc because it would not be cost effective for the farmer. Byebye farm animals, hello rapeseed.)

The psycologist wondered about false memory but I told him that I always remembered. I can remember being three or four and saying to Margaret,
"Can't I go back to my real mummy?" I told her, "Its not that I don't like you but I really want my own mummy."
Margaret went ballistic. I remembered the person who loved me. I told Margaret I could remember being wrapped in a blanket and feeling very loved in the person's arms. I never felt like that with Margaret. Margaret claimed that it must have been a woman called Joyce who looked after me when I was a baby. I don't think Margaret was in the earning bracket for a nanny, more likely SHE was the nanny and Joyce was my mother, if that was her name.