Sitting at the top of the Stairs

Waiting for Freddie

I used to sit at the top of the stairs – and watch the moon through the stained glass window. One piece of glass was missing, and I always wondered what colour it was. Around three in the afternoon, the sun would shine through the skylight onto my bedroom door, and if I pushed open the door slightly, the colours took on a different shape, but if I opened it fully, they disappeared, wouldn’t come into my room. It frightened me. The nuns told us we could only see the light if we were good, but what did it mean if I saw the light briefly and then it left?

I saw the patterns at weekends or holidays, the times Freddie, the Italian ice-cream man came. The man I dreamed about - handsome, like a pop star, and he smiled at me, only at me. I didn’t want to share him with anyone, but once I caught him smiling at my best friend, Alice. She’d come to call for me one Saturday and I didn’t want to go out to the van with her because she was prettier than me so I didn’t want Freddie to see her, but she insisted. She was hot she said, and an ice-cream oyster would be just the thing. She had a new dress, pink gingham, and Freddie told her he had a photo of Brigitte Bardot in that same dress and then he SMILED at her. It wasn’t like the way he smiled at me, and she had a stupid look on her face as she smiled back at him.

She told him she often went to his parent’s coffee bar by the station and why hadn’t she seen him there? I tried to say my dad didn’t allow me to go into coffee bars or I would have been there too, but he was already telling her when he would be there. Then for the rest of the afternoon she wouldn’t shut up about him. She was cluttering my mind, taking over my thoughts of Freddie. He was mine. I should never have let her meet him.

At school the nuns told us we should never think impure thoughts about boys, in fact we were not to think about boys at all, unless they were our brothers, or going for the priesthood or both, in which case we could pray for them. I hugged my thoughts about Freddie to myself, except when I confessed them on Saturdays, because I knew I had to take holy communion on Sundays. I didn’t pray for him because I couldn’t do that and think impure thoughts about him, God would get too confused, and I thought I was probably confusing him already and that’s why the colours from the skylight didn’t make it all the way into my bedroom.

Alice didn’t stop talking about going to the coffee bar to see Freddie when we met at school on Monday. I told her she would have to go to confession, but she gave me one of her looks. Not long after that she left school, but I had to wait until end of term. Alice started work in a hairdressers, so I didn’t see much of her after that, except once on a bus where she told me that she didn’t have a religion but if she ever did it would be Catholic because priests can’t get married and therefore don’t have worldly distractions. I said that was daft because once a Catholic, always a Catholic. She stared out of the window and ignored me for the rest of the journey into town. When we got to the square she shot down the steps and off the bus so fast that by the time I got there she had been swallowed up by a permanent wave of hairdressers, who tottered off towards a jazz club in their stilettos. She didn’t look back and I realised then I could never be part of her world now, she’d grown away. But at least I had Freddie to myself again.

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I read ‘Lady Tan’s Circle of Women’ by Lisa See. Inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China, this is a beautifully written insight into the lives of elite and their servants at that time. it explores the culture and mores, some of which needs a strong stomach and unsqeamishness (is that a word?) about feet because there are some detailed descriptions of foot binding. having said that the research is compelling and the story fascinating.

Still Life (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Book 1) by Louise Penny. Detective story set in a small Canadian village, bit too cosy for my liking. There is now a series on TV but I don’t know which station, only that it’s not BBC. Don’t think i’ll bother with the rest.

I watched the first episode of Series 2 of The Responder. BBC1. It starts as convolutedly (am I making up words today?) as the the first series, but stick with it, Martin Freeman is superb as the police officer falling apart.

I also watched the first episode of Granite Harbour BBC1, which is a bit tame (not very granity) but that maybe because it’s on at 8pm, before the watershed.

I watched again, something I rarely do, The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett with Maggie Smith in the title role. it’s a superb piece of acting, writing and direction and if you haven’t seen it, then do. It’s on Iplayer.

In the cinema I saw ‘One Life’, with Anthony Hopkins playing (brilliantly) Sir Nicolas Winton, who, as a young man in the months leading up to WW2, rescued 669 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. It must have been difficult to get enough of an angle to make the story exciting on film, because much of his time seemed to be fighting bureaucracy and raising money, but it was compelling. I loved Helena Bonham Carter’s role as the young Nicolas’s mother too.

You won’t very often hear me say i’ve been to a gig, (was gigging, am giggable, enjoying giggably, or here in France, giggament), but I did on Saturday. I saw Eric Clapton at the M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool. He’s still got it and has a fabulous band backing him too, but the big surprise for me was the support act. Those of you as old as me will remember Amen Corner, with their frontman Andy Fairweather Low. He has his own band of very talented musicians, The Low Riders, backs other bands and his voice hasn’t changed. What a good night that was!

That’s all for now folks. Thanks for reading or listening and hope to see you next month.