Forever Is Over (2 page)

I was an early starter with women or should I say young girls. I
’
m
talking about a long time ago here, back when I was six years old, in
1977, the year of the Queen
’
s Silver Jubilee.

Anna Eccleston was the first girl that ever caught my attention. I
don
’
t think Anna started Aughton Town Green County Primary in first
year infants, or if she did, I didn
’
t notice her, as I was too busy pining
for the school bell that signified my ordeal was over and I could venture
out and seek my Mum
’
s re-assuring hug. By six though, I
’
d very much
settled in to the school routine and decide
d Anna Eccleston was the
girl for me.

Looking back, Anna Eccleston wasn
’
t an overly pretty girl, but she
was an athletic, outgoing, tomboyish girl who liked chasing me and
catching me during
“
Catch A Boy, Kiss A Boy
”
. This was always going
to find favour with me! I wasn
’
t the only boy she chased, I could name
half a dozen others too, but she devoted more time to chasing me than
anyone else, so I did the decent thing and tried my damnedest not to be
caught for a little while, but then somehow managed to appreciate when
she was on the verge of moving on to chasing another boy and at that
point, I would accidentally-on-purpose allow myself to be grabbed!
Faye Williams and Sophie Leigh were different, I would run to the
ends of the earth and back to avoid being caught by them, especially after
being caught by Faye once. Her kiss was all teeth, spit and bad breath,
but Anna Eccleston was worth being caught by! I clearly remember the
sense of anticipation after being caught. Around the perimeter of the
playground was a wall, which must only have been a couple of feet high
or sixty centimetres in today
’
s half-metric world, which was there for
children to sit on. Behind the wall was the school field, which was only
accessible after a three week dry spell, but the field sloped down to the
playground which meant that, providing it was dry, you could sit on the
wall, then lie back horizontally onto the grass. Anna Eccleston would
therefore take you to the wall, sit you down, push you back so you were
virtually horizontal, then jump on top of you and plant an almighty
smacker on your lips! I don
’
t really rememb
er whether the kiss itself was
pleasurable, the nastiness of Faye Williams kiss lingered longer, but the
whole dominance routine was fantastic!

So, as far as I can recall, pretty much every day followed that routine
and 1977 was a great year! In a sign of things to come in late childhood/
early adulthood, this feminine feast was followed by a famine. Even
though I say it myself, I was an adorable six year old, very blond, blue
eyed, very bowl headed, cute lisp and cuddly. What more could a six
year old girl want?

Problem was, I didn
’
t stay cute. I probably didn
’
t do myself any
favours with my temper tantrums either which were generally followed
by a flood of tears. In 1978, I was a proud member of the
“
Dennis The
Menace Fan Club
”
but when I lost an eye off my Gnasher badge, all hell
broke loose, especially when Miss Fletcher, our acoustic guitar playing
teacher, would not stop the
“
Yellow Bird Way Up in Banana Tree
”
song
to send a search party out to the playground. There were forty two kids
in the class at the time and I still think to this day that if she had sent
a dozen of us out on a playground mission to find the missing eye, she
would have still been able to have a good sing
along with the other thirty.
OK, maybe I shouldn
’
t have tried to smash her guitar, but she started
it, I was just retaliating!

The
“
Well, she started it!
”
theme, or just as regularly,
“
Well, he
started it!
”
theme, was
also a common one in our home. I had, and still
have, two older sisters, Helen, who was two and a half years older and
Caroline who was eighteen months older and one younger brother, James,
who was ten months younger than me. The girls shared a bedroom, as
did James and I. In our room, there was a battle for supremacy. We were
regularly stealing each other
’
s toys (footballs, Action Men, Bionic Men,
darts, go-karts
etc) or wrestling (I was Big Daddy, he was Giant
Haystacks)
. If we weren
’
t battling with each other, James and I would
be conspiring together against the girls, putting their dolls in the oven
and baking them, drawing beards on th
e pin-ups they had blue-takked
on their walls from Jackie or Tammy magazine, putting spiders or ants
in their ice creams, pretty much anything we could think of to liven
up the day!

The girls would often chase us around the house trying to kick or
punch us and then Mum would chase them with a rolled up newspaper
whilst they would shout,

“
Well, they started it!
”
.

We were the little ones, so often our crimes
went unpunished!
With regards to the age gap between James and I, it dawned on me
in
my early teens that James must have been unplanned as I knew no
woman on earth would think,

“
Right, my baby is four weeks old now and my bits have just about
recovered from having that enormous head coming out of them. Time
for another! Come over here big boy and show me some spunk!
”

I remember one evening asking my Mum in my own diplomatic
style,

“
Mum, was James a mistake?
”

My mother, Dorothy, a lovely woman with less tact or diplomacy
than any man or woman I have ever met, replied in her dulcet Scouse
tones,

“
Yes Richie, he was! A bloody big mistake! It was your father
’
s fault,
I had just
returned to some semblance of normality downstairs ,(at the time
I thought by
“
downstairs
”
she was talking in terms of our home, so I
thought she meant she had just managed to get the lounge and kitchen
tidy again) when your father caught me in a weak moment and persuaded
me that even Mary could not get pregnant again four weeks after giving
birth!

Mind you, you were all bloody mistakes! Every single one of you!
No-one would have planned to have four under fours and with your father being neither use nor ornament, its surprising I didn
’
t have a
nervous breakdown!
”

Back to the barren years! As far as I can remember 1978 to 1981
did not bring a single kiss to my door unless it was delivered by a family
member or an overbearing family friend. My swansong with Anna
Eccleston was first year juniors when our class were on the school field
playing
“
The Farmer wants a wife
”
. Anna was the farmer and she chose
me to be her wife, every memory points to Anna being the trouser
wearer in our relationship! After that, nothing, I had become less
blond, my mother now described my hair colour as
“
ash blond
”
, less cute,
less lispy, just as bowl headed and more tempermental, but the main
factor in my lack of success was a lack of interest. A new love had come
into my life and that love was football.

Women say men cannot multi-task, but boys can
’
t either. I didn
’
t
have room in my heart or my mind for both football and girls, so I went
for the sensible option and it wasn
’
t girls! It was Everton FC!

I was an Ormskirk girl, born and bred. I was the eldest of my
mother
’
s two daughters and throughout
my single digit years, I have
no recollection of being anything other than a little toughie. I was
brainwashed into this both by nature and nurture.
I started my school days at Greetby Hill Primary School, the largest
primary school in Ormskirk and soon found my tomboy manner was
appreciated by the boys but less so by the girls! I could climb trees, kick
a football and throw a punch better than any boy at Greetby Hill! I
don
’
t recall ever having a birthday party of my own, nor do I remember
attending any of the girls parties, but I recall several five-a-side football
parties at Burscough and Skelmersdale Sports Centres! Every party,
I was the
only girl, but whilst the other
outsiders like the fat kid, the
square one and the snotty nosed one were always the last to be picked,
I was first choice or even the child that was doing the picking!

As my childhood progressed, I remained tough but lost the tomboy
label. Once I hit eleven, my periods started, my breasts grew and the
boys no longer treated me as one of their own. The girls did not welcome
me into their fold either, so I became trapped in
‘
No Man
’
s Land
’
! I
remained there from aged eleven to fift
een, with only one true friend
and a younger sibling around to retain my sanity. Fortunately for me,
at fifteen, I did the ugly duckling trick and the boys began to sit up
and take notice. I was once again the girl that every boy wanted to take
to parties, but for entirely different reasons the second time a
round!
I suspect they now wanted me to be doi
ng other things to their balls
rather than kick them!

I suppose, in every teenage girl
’
s life, there comes a time when some
shallow, brainless, infantile, adolescent lad, who has a penis for a brain,
tries to pressurise them into forsaking their virginity. In my life, this
time came at sixteen years old, in Fifth Form. It came in the form of
Billy McGregor, heartthrob of my year and pretty much all the Sixth
Form girls too. Billy McGregor was in Upper Sixth and was universally
ranked
“
gorgeous
”
!
I was not
stupid. I knew Billy wanted
to sleep with me for two
reasons and two reasons only. The first was lust. As stated previously,
boys think with their todgers and I had become a decent looking young
girl, so naturally I understood my vagina had magnetic charms to a
penis. Second reason was bragging rights. Billy McGregor was a cocky,
self-obsessed, arrogant lad and wanted to share the intimate details of
his experience with his spotty, less successful mates. Billy knew the girls
liked him but what I reckon he wanted more than anything was for the
boys to like him too. I don
’
t mean fancy him, of course, I just mean admire him. As far as I remember, most lads in Sixth Form thought
Billy McGregor was the ultimate dickhead. Some of them were jealous,
some of them just wanted to be him, but mainly the reason most lads
thought he was the ultimate dickhead was, quite frankly, because he
was!