Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell Read online

  Wakefield Press

  Born and bred in Scotland, Alison Whitelock left behind the mountains and rivers and ballads of bonnie Morag when she was thirty years old. A fan of Patsy Cline and the occasional pineapple tart with a cup of PG Tips, she lives with her endlessly patient chain-smoking French husband Thomas in a trendy suburb of Sydney they simply can’t afford. While she enjoys brown rice, tofu and organic produce, she continues to shave her legs and refuses to wear Birkenstocks, especially with black ankle socks and khaki shorts. She has no children to speak of unless you count her cats Angus and Nellie. Poking seaweed with a stick and running away from the smell is her first book. Her da hopes it will be her last.

  Wakefield Press

  1 The Parade West

  Kent Town

  South Australia 5067

  www.wakefieldpress.com.au

  First published 2008

  This edition published 2013

  Copyright © Alison Whitelock, 2008

  All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the

  purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under

  the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission.

  Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

  Edited by Julia Beaven

  Cover designed by Liz Nicholson, designBITE

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Whitelock, Alison, 1964– .

  Title: Poking seaweed with a stick and running away from the smell /Alison Whitelock.

  ISBN: 978 1 86254 988 3 (ebook: epub).

  Subjects:

  Whitelock, Alison, 1964– .

  Girls—Scotland—Biography.

  Children—Scotland—Biography.

  Family—Scotland—Biography.

  Dewey Number: 941.10850092.

  FOR MUM

  Contents

  1

  Retard dad

  2

  Arsehole on a tandem

  3

  A real pea souper

  4

  My best pal

  5

  The banana box in the attic

  6

  The day Fiona got a brain tumour

  7

  Let’s all go to the Clyde

  8

  The one about my da being quite musical

  9

  The milk round

  10

  If you’ve got leaving on your mind

  11

  Nanny wears a beanie and Grampa joins the circus

  12

  Uncle Chick and his flaking skin

  13

  Christmas Day was always the worst

  14

  Andrew and Donald

  15

  Is that for your porridge or are you going to plant crocuses in it?

  16

  Vladimir’s deli and my bare arse

  17

  Right there in God’s house for Chrissake

  18

  Mum’s big knob

  19

  Me, Maggie and Susan

  20

  Buster’s weekend by the sea

  21

  Rona fills her lungs at the caravan

  22

  Dandy the pony and the blue rosette

  23

  The day my da took our ponies to the glue factory

  24

  The houses that Bruce built

  25

  My new best pal

  26

  A fine Johnny

  27

  Joan Crawford’s lips

  28

  The Bonnie Prince Charlie

  29

  Brief encounter

  30

  The longest knife in the cutlery drawer

  31

  Swinging in the gentle breeze

  32

  Diagnosed one minute, dead the next

  33

  Mum tries to kill my da using out-of-date tranquillisers

  34

  Cock-a-leekie

  35

  Oh no, my da’s no’ got cancer

  36

  A bottle of Laphroaig

  37

  My da’s cherry buns

  38

  Brief conversations with my da

  1

  Retard dad

  My brother Andrew’s written a song and he’s putting a band together. He just calls himself ‘Andy’ and musicians are queuing up to play with him. Andrew’s been really angry for a long time and great things can come out of talent and pain. This song he just wrote, he says it’s amazing, says he plays it every single day and even he’s not fed up with it yet. He calls it ‘Retard Dad’ and says he’ll be playing it at the Glastonbury Festival next year on the newcomers’ stage. Andrew’s first gig at Glastonbury, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m so proud of him and if you knew what Andrew had been through, you’d be proud of him too.

  My da was a crazy man see, and he made our lives ­miserable. He killed a puppy once when we were young—kicked it to death right there in front of us. He resented every animal that we ever brought home and we were animal daft, always bringing home cats and dogs and ducks and donkeys and anything we found in the street that looked like it might be in need of a good home and often others that weren’t in need of a good home at all.

  Lots of bad stuff happened in our lives, but one of the best things that ever happened was that finally, at the age of 59, after 40 years of abuse, Mum found the courage to say ‘no more’. She threw a few bits into her tartan holdall, put the dogs and the cats into the back of the car and finally she left him. And I’ve never been more proud.

  After she was gone I thought about him and through the cracks in the doors of my mind I could see him there at home by himself, with nobody. He’s wishing he’d been a better father, that he’d been there for us, that he could remember our birthdays for Chrissake. And next thing I know my eyes are welling up and a lump’s appearing in my throat and I start thinking about how things could have been and what a waste of time that is.

  Mum though, she’s making up for wasted time. She’s bought herself a wee flat and a fancy wee car, and she’s started placing discreet ads in the lonely-hearts columns in the local paper. She’s decorated her new pad on a jungle theme, so African masks and elephant trunks adorn the walls. Her life-size sculpture of a Zulu warrior holding a spear she carted back from the south of France wrapped in a sleeping bag, stands in the corner and doubles as a hat stand, and two bongo drums sit at each side of her king-size bed and double as bedside tables. She’s finally getting to express herself and she’s doing it in style in fabrics and furs, in sculptures and in masks, and she doesn’t care what anybody thinks. This is freedom and Mum likes the taste.

  And every so often, in her wee dark moments, she thinks about how life might have been if she hadn’t met him and she’d taken that interior design course instead. And she thinks about all the years she’s wasted and what she should have done and what she could have done before she met him and got saddled with three kids, four dogs, five cats and a donkey called Annie.

  She’s coming down from Scotland for another visit to Sydney soon. She comes down twice a year to see us and last time she brought a fifteen-foot blow-up Santa Claus you plug in and it lights up the garden.

  Some people might be embarrassed by what their mums do, but me, I couldn’t be prouder. She’s the best thing that ever happened in my life and I wouldn’t change her and her fifteen-foot blow-up Santa Claus for all the bongos in the world.


  2

  Arsehole on a tandem

  She was wearing her Audrey Hepburn hat and gloves to match and a pair of winkle pickers that would take your eye out soon as look at you. And she’d bought herself some stockings too, with a line up the back, and she turned the head of every boy she passed in the street.

  After mass that Sunday she stopped in at Angie’s sweetie shop for a stick of Wrigley’s to chew on the long walk home. When she came out of the shop she couldn’t help but notice the strange man sitting on the tandem at the side of the road, by himself if you don’t mind. She unwrapped her stick of Wrigley’s pretending she didn’t notice a thing and she’d no sooner set off on her long walk home when the strange man was cycling up alongside her. ‘Arsehole on a tandem,’ she thought, as she tried to hide her confusion at seeing a man riding a tandem on his own. Then the man who would one day be my da jumped off his tandem and stood sweating before the woman who would one day be my mum and Mum said to him, ‘Well, it’s no’ often you see a man riding a tandem by himself.’ And the man who would one day be my da blurted out he’d seen her standing behind him in the queue at Angie’s sweetie shop and that he’d fallen in love with her right there and then—and without taking a breath he asked Mum if she would go out on a date with him the following Saturday night. Mum, well she didn’t know where to look, and so she said yes but if he didn’t mind, could he leave his tandem at home.

  My da was the happiest man alive when he got back on his tandem and that’s when he decided he was going to marry Mum and that he would ask her that Saturday night right after their date, if it was the last word he spoke.

  The Saturday night came and my da was already waiting outside The Roxy when Mum arrived at six o’clock. He’d Brylcreemed his hair for her and put on some Old Spice and Mum felt sorry for him when she saw he’d cut himself shaving and left the toilet paper stuck to the wound. They hooked arms and walked up the steps to The Roxy looking just like a proper couple out on a date on a Saturday night and my da made a fuss of Mum that first night all right, buying the tickets and the choc-ices and everything. When the movie was over he wanted to escort Mum back home all safe and sound, but she wouldn’t hear of it ’cause the bus that would take him all the way home was just across the road from The Roxy. So they walked together to the bus stop where she waited with him in the cold, and as they waited a thick fog descended upon them and the street lamps gave off an eerie yellow haze, much like the haze they’d seen just moments before in Psycho when Anthony Perkins goes up to the scary looking house to see what the hell’s wrong with his mother.

  Mum was beautiful in this light, as he knew she would be in every light he saw her in thereafter, and he knew he was lucky she’d agreed to go on a date with him. He also knew if he didn’t ask her to marry him that night, it was only a matter of time until she discovered that he was a complete prick and dump him forever. He was dying for a fag but he’d wait until after he’d asked her to be his bride so his breath would be fresh in case she decided to kiss him passionately in the excitement of their future together. But the man who would one day be my da was scared. Scared she’d say no, that she’d laugh in his face and say something like, Me, marry you? You’re fuckin’ joking aren’t you? Scared the number 64 bus would come when he’d only half the question out, scared he’d be ridiculed and left cycling on his tandem without a wife until the end of time.

  His heart was thumping hard now and my da felt dizzy and intoxicated by the love that he felt for Mum. His excitement mounted and suddenly he was unstoppable. His desire to have her as his bride knew no bounds and in the heat of the moment, my da took Mum in his arms, lifted her off the ground and swung her lovingly around in a circle, and all the while his eyes never left hers, just like in the American movies they sometimes showed at The Roxy on a Saturday afternoon. My da turned Mum full circle and he’d no sooner placed her lovingly back onto her own two feet when something terrible happened, something he wished he could have prevented more than anything, something their children and their children’s children would write about in years to come. It was at this—what should have been—most romantic of moments, that my da unfortunately farted. Not a silent unassuming kind of fart, but more a fog-horn kind of fart and, sure, it was foggy, but that one solitary, seemingly innocent fart ruined everything. He clenched his buttocks, albeit too late, but he clenched them nonetheless and he stared at her, his eyes wide in ­disbelief. And she stared back, her eyes wide in a similar kind of disbelief. And nobody said a word.

  After an eternity, they heard the drone of the 64 bus as it made its way through the yellow fog. The bus stopped and its doors flew open and my da raced onto the bus, leaving Mum behind in the eerie yellow haze. He headed straight to the back of the bus, took out his packet of Woodbines and slumped down on the red vinyl seat. With his right cheek pressed against the window, he drew long and hard on his Woodbine and stared out into the fog and he wished he could have disappeared into it. And the cool windowpane did little to soothe his troubled mind.

  3

  A real pea souper

  Of course she ended up marrying him and how could she have said no when she felt so sorry for him with the toilet paper stuck to his face and then the fart when all along he’d intended to propose. Really, she should have seen the signs right there and then, that the future she was about to sign up for was not exactly what she was hoping for. But Mum never reads the signs, ’cause she prefers to believe what she wants to believe, rather than accept what’s obvious and staring her right in the face.

  Mum looked beautiful on her wedding day when Grampa gave her away, and he wore a yellow rose in his button­hole that he’d pinched from the rose bush that grew just behind his greenhouse. Nanny made a garland for Mum’s hair from Grampa’s pink and white rose bushes and when she placed it on Mum’s head, her long blonde locks nestled themselves between the buds and her pale-green eyes came alive. Her wedding dress was made of white lace (and my how it burned that day years later when she set fire to it), and the jewels around the neck sparkled in what little spring sunlight there was on offer that Friday the thirteenth of May. When the organist played the first few notes in ‘Here comes the bride’ she walked inside, arm in arm with Grampa, and her smile lit up the chapel and Grampa was more than a little sad to be giving away one so beautiful to one who wasn’t unlike Anthony Perkins himself.

  It was two years after they’d seen Psycho that my sister Izzy was born at Beckford Lodge Hospital in Hamilton, twelve miles from Glasgow, in a nice white sterile environment with all the best of medical care. And two years after Izzy was born, it was me who appeared, and another two years after that, it was Andrew.

  I was expected on 9 November 1964. Once Mum’s contractions started, she yelled out for my da to get the doctor and so he jumped from the couch and grabbed the keys for the single-decker bus he’d got cheap from Hamish at the bus depot, pulled on his donkey jacket and ran as fast as he could out into the night. Nine months had passed already and he knew she was going to have to drop it soon, what with her barely able to unload the lorry these past few weeks when the coal got delivered.

  Mum’s mum had a feeling it would all happen that night and so she took the number 73 bus to the Dalton Road end and walked the four miles to our cottage at Back-O-Hill, out there in the middle of nowhere, and far away from a nice white sterile environment and all the best of medical care. Back-O-Hill means ‘back of the hill’, but there wasn’t any hill, just fields and windy roads and our stone cottage right there in the middle of the green.

  ‘It was a real pea souper that night,’ Mum said. ‘Couldnae see two feet in front of you.’ It was much talked about, the fog that year; they still talk about it today. They called it the worst pea souper of 1964 and I think they may even have written a song about it, I mean it was a big event at the time.

  My da raced into the thick darkness and tried to remember where he’d parked the bus and he swallowed the fog like lumps of cotton wool as he groped through the p
ea soup trying to find the door handle, and when he found it he nearly pulled it off its hinges as he yanked it open and jumped in. ‘Start for fuckssake will yae!’ he growled as he pumped the accelerator. It started, thank Christ, and he turned on the headlights, though he may as well have not bothered for all the light they gave off. Straight ahead, he drove, with his nose stuck against the frozen windscreen, peering through a spot where the heat of his own breath had melted the ice, then onto the windy road and four miles to town where Doctor Cassidy was tucked up in bed sound asleep, delivering babies the last thing on her mind.

  He was no sooner off into the fog than Mum’s contractions got really serious and, quick as a flash, Nanny was boiling pots of water and gathering up linen from all corners of the house. The telly was blaring in the corner and Coronation Street came on and Mum watched it to try and keep her mind off giving birth to me. In and out, she focused on her breathing, in and out, just like Doctor Cassidy had told her.

  The first half of Coronation Street came and went and Mum, still trying to keep her mind off the pain, started singing out loud with the adverts as they came on.

  Abercrombie biscuits are the best,

  In your tummy, they digest,

  In the bathroom they go west,

  Abercrombie biscuits are the best,

  Try some—tomorrow!

  Mum was in a world of her own making up her own lyrics and Nanny looked on thinking pain can sometimes make people behave in strange ways.

  The second half of Coronation Street was about to start and Doctor Cassidy still hadn’t made an appearance. Mum called out to me in that dark belly of hers, ‘Please just wait, will yae! Just calm yourself wee yin!’ But unfortunately I couldn’t wait and suddenly my head started to appear. There was a lot of pushing and shoving going on, with Nanny there waiting for me yelling out instructions that Mum didn’t dare disobey—until with one final almighty push, the perfect delivery took place right there in the kitchen of our cottage at Back-O-Hill.

  Nanny cut the cord and held me in her arms while Mum lay there on her back, worn out and glad it was all over. When Nanny handed me to her wrapped in a shawl, Mum held me close to her chest and whispered in my ear that I was an impatient wee fucker and could I no’ have waited for Doctor Cassidy to arrive. I’m still impatient today and you know how families are, they don’t let you forget anything.