One Young Fool in Dorset (20 page)

We sat our exams in the heat of summer, sitting in
long rows in the school hall, teachers pacing up and down to check
that nobody cheated. Our pens and pencils were in transparent
plastic bags, and if we dropped something, or we wanted anything,
we had to raise our hands.

“How did you do?” we asked each other afterwards.
“Could you do number 3? It was impossible!”

It was a long wait for the results, and I wasn’t
looking forward to receiving them at all. Meanwhile, we were all
going on Work Experience.

I’d given my future career some thought, and had
accepted the fact that I would never be a vet. I wasn’t really
smart enough, and anyway, I had dropped all my science subjects. I
thought becoming a zoo keeper was probably a bit fanciful, and
again, I had no science or biology training. An artist or writer?
Nowhere near talented enough. So what was left?

I decided that teaching would suit me very well.
After all, to steal George Bernard Shaw’s words, “Those who can,
do; those who can’t, teach.”

That meant I needed ‘A’ Levels to get into a Teacher
Training College, as they were called then. But first, I could go
on a week’s work experience in a school to see what it was all
about.

What should I wear? I wanted to look fresh and
businesslike so I opted for a white blouse and grey skirt.

I was sent to help in a reception class. As I
watched the teacher welcoming each four-year-old and taking
instructions from the parents, I felt completely out of my
depth.

“Please make sure Susan drinks her milk today.”

“Can you check that Johnnie doesn’t pick his plaster
off?”

“Maria has an odd pair of plimsolls in her PE bag.
Does Scott have one of hers?”

“Colin’s really worried about the letter ‘A’.”

“Please don’t let Mark eat any cheese, it makes him
sneeze.”

How could she possibly remember all that
and
spend a day teaching? Wanting to be a teacher was madness! There
must be less stressful careers.

A tiny warm hand slid into mine. I looked down. An
earnest little face framed by light brown curls gazed up at me.

“Hello, what’s your name?”

“Hello, I’m Vicky,” I said. “I’ve come to help your
teacher this week. And who are you?”

“I’m a kangawoo today. You can be a kangawoo too if
you like. Why do kangawoos bounce?”

And I was hooked. Yes, I wanted to be a teacher,
however hard that was going to be.

The morning flew past in a flurry of songs and
activities. Not a second went by when I wasn’t busy doing
something, whether it was taking a child to the toilet or packing
up crayons. I soon wished I’d worn flat shoes, and chosen to wear
trousers instead of a skirt.

I had an hour for lunch and my friend, Iris, and I
met. She was doing her work experience in another class in the same
school. Our plan was to go to a local cafe to get something to eat.
There was a small, greasy-looking cafe round the corner, so we sat
down and ordered.

Both of us were talking nonstop about our morning as
the food arrived.

“A little boy in my class disappeared,” said Iris,
picking up the tomato ketchup dispenser, a red plastic squeezy fake
tomato.

“Did you find him?”

“Yep, we were all looking for him—this tomato sauce
isn’t coming out—and it turned out he’d climbed into the old
newspapers cupboard and gone to sleep.”

She laughed and gave the plastic tomato a hearty
squeeze with her thumbs. It must have been blocked by a plug of
congealed sauce, because the ketchup suddenly shot out in a hard,
red jet.

I gasped as it hit me full in the face at pointblank
range. It momentarily blinded me in one eye and dripped down my
face, off my chin and down my white blouse. I was speechless. It
was so awful that we both started laughing uncontrollably as we
used a mountain of paper serviettes to try to clean me up. It was
no use, of course.

I ran to the Ladies Room but the damage had been
done. No amount of dabbing with water was going to improve matters
much. I gave up with my white blouse but rinsed my face. I looked
in the mirror, and a squinty, bloodshot eye stared back at me.
Tomato ketchup has spices and vinegar as ingredients, and my eye
was red and smarting.

The teacher blinked as she looked me up and down
when I returned to the classroom.

“Whatever happened to you?” she asked. “You look as
though you were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight at the OK
Corral.”

I loved my week of work experience and it cemented
my decision of what I wanted to do after I left school. I would
train to be a teacher. My friends also had interesting experiences
at their respective placements, but for some, their experiences put
them off pursuing a particular career.

My classmate Sue had always wanted to be a vet and
was delighted that she would be helping in a local veterinary
practice for a week. Her family’s home was full of animals, and she
was sure that training to be a vet was her future.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Well, the first day was okay… I helped behind the
reception desk answering the phone and booking appointments and
stuff.”

“And then?”

“Well, the vet said I should watch a routine dog
castration.”

“Oh! Yuk!”

“I know! Anyway, he asked me to stand at the
business end of the operating table so I could see everything that
was happening. It was a big dog they were doing, a boxer. They
anesthetised it and laid it on its back, legs akimbo. Then they
covered it all up with a sheet except for a square where its, erm,
bits poked through.”

Sue shuddered at the memory and I pulled a face in
sympathy.

“So then the vet started operating, and I didn’t
want to watch him slice, so I stared hard at the bit of sheet next
to what was going on. I didn’t actually look at what the vet was
doing at all.”

“So did you get away with that?”

“Nope! There was a kind of splat, and the vet said,
‘Get that for me, Susan.’”

“Oh no! What was it?”

“One testicle had kind of shot out and went skidding
across the floor. I didn’t have any choice, I had to get a tissue
and pick it up.”

That was the end of Sue’s dream to become a
veterinarian. I heard from her many years later, and she was then a
very successful stockbroker working for an investment bank in
London. Go figure.

* * *

Next came the agony of opening the long brown
envelope that arrived in the mail, containing examination results.
I couldn’t bring myself to open it, but let my mother do it as I
sat on the stairs hugging my knees.

“
Ach,
they’re not too bad,” she said. “You
have seven ‘O’ Levels, all A, B or C. You failed Geography. Never
mind, you have enough to continue with ‘A’ Levels.”

Well, that was a relief!

I know I should have been thinking about studying,
but I was beginning to follow in Marion Ford’s footsteps. No, I
didn’t plaster on make-up and false eyelashes, but my mind was
often occupied by the subject of
boys.

19 The Animal Sanctuary

I
lost myself in day-dreams so romantic and
unlikely I should have written them down and turned them into
fanciful novels. I imagined I was going to meet my Prince Charming
everywhere. Perhaps he’d be a guest at the hotel where I was a
chambermaid? Or perhaps I’d bump into him on the train to
school?

When neither of those things happened, I decided I
needed to widen my circle of places I frequented. Wareham couldn’t
offer much. I didn’t want to go back to the Youth Club, but I could
go to the cinema. It wasn’t a big one, in fact, the Rex’s claim to
fame was that it was the smallest cinema in the south of
England.

Of course I never met my Prince Charming there, but
I did see some movies that I still recall today. I saw
Cat
Balou, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Finian’s Rainbow, Half a
Sixpence, The Love Bug
and the Beatles’ films. I usually went
on my own or with Annabel.

I don’t remember my parents ever going to the
cinema, except on one particular occasion a few years before, when
the whole family went. The film was
The Sound of Music
with
Julie Andrews. I couldn’t understand why we were going to see it,
as it was so out of character for my mother and father to go to
‘the flicks’. I also couldn’t understand why my mother had a
strange expression on her face throughout, and why she was so quiet
afterwards.

As I write this, nearly 50 years later, I understand
why the movie must have been so painful for her to watch. I have
told the story in
Two Old Fools in Spain Again
.

How clearly I remember trips to the Rex cinema in
West Street! The performance always began with the gaslights
dimming, then the red velvet curtains swishing apart, revealing a
silver screen. First we watched a ‘B’ movie and advertisements,
then the gaslights were turned up again and ice creams were
sold.

Back in the 1960s, I once saw a little mouse by my
feet, sitting up and nibbling a piece of popcorn it was holding in
its front paws. Annabel and I affectionately called the cinema ‘the
fleapit’, even though it was a place we loved to go.

When the gaslights dimmed again, my heart pounded
with excitement. Now the real performance was beginning! Above our
heads, cigarette smoke swirled in the rectangular stream of light
from the projectionist’s room at the back, and music filled the
hall. It was beginning!

I’m delighted to see from research on the Internet
that the Rex never became a bingo hall as so many other cinemas
were doomed to become. It is still going strong and has a website
of its own. It is a little cinema with a long history and masses of
character, beloved by locals.

I have to confess that it was at the Rex that I
viewed my first ‘naughty’ movie. The film was certified as an ‘18’
so I had to dress up and try to look older. To my relief they
didn’t question my age. I sat with huge eyes and watched Jane Fonda
strutting her stuff in
Barbarella
.

In an attempt to broaden my horizons, and maybe meet
my Prince Charming, I decided to look for another part-time job.
Making beds and cleaning bathrooms was not really my idea of fun,
and I was tired of being a chambermaid.

“I’m sorry,” I told my boss, “I’m handing in my
notice.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that too, are you quite
sure? I do have a list of girls who will jump at the chance of a
job here.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Give it to Janice Parry, I don’t care.

I was lucky, something perfect
did
turn up.
It was a job that, though lowly paid, I would adore and keep until
I left home two years later. I became a helper at an animal
sanctuary in the depths of leafy Dorset.

And I loved it.

A little mini-bus collected me and the other workers
early in the morning. We trundled up hill and down dale until we
arrived at the gates of the sanctuary. Dogs barked as we drove in,
and ponies lifted their heads to stare.

The sanctuary was divided into different sections.
There were the kennels, a cattery, a Special Care unit, a horses
and ponies section, and goats. Everybody had their favourite
section to work in, and the manager did her best to keep us
happy.

I wasn’t confident in the kennels. Some of the dogs
had been abandoned or abused, but others had been given to the
charity because they were problem dogs. I now know that a ‘problem
dog’ is rare; it’s far more likely that the owner is at fault and
is to blame for a dog’s bad behaviour. However, the dogs seemed to
sense my lack of confidence.

One of the long-term residents of the kennels was a
Jack Russell named Pepper. He had a slightly deformed leg, probably
as a result of abuse, and was renowned for his bad temper. He had
bitten most members of staff. As soon as I approached his kennel,
his lips would peel back and a low snarl rumbled from his depths.
If I stepped closer, he would explode into a bristling, snapping
demon, hurling himself at the wire fence in a frenzied attempt to
shred me into little pieces.

“I don’t know how you cope with Pepper,” I said to
Big Denise, another worker, one day. “I can’t get near him, I’m
sure he wants to kill me.”

Denise was hugely overweight, but along with pies
and cake, she adored animals.

“Pepper?” she asked. “He’s a lovely boy, as long as
you don’t show any fear. Come and watch how nice he can be.”

I hid as Denise approached his kennel. Pepper was
lying down, chin on his paws, eyes watchful. The second he saw
Denise, he leapt up, his lips already drawing back, daring her to
come closer.

“Hello Pepper, how are you doing? Good boy! Fancy a
walk?”

Pepper stood stock still, staring as she came
closer. But he wasn’t snarling.

“Good boy!” said Denise as she reached his door and
unlocked it.

Pepper’s ridiculous white stump of a tail began to
twitch, then wagged furiously.

“Good boy!” said Denise as she snapped his leash to
his collar. “Come on, boy, let’s go for a walk.”

And off they both trotted, Big Denise waddling and
Pepper limping but happy.

I tried to copy Denise’s example, but Pepper wasn’t
having any of it. As soon as I appeared, he became Demon Dog again.
It wasn’t just me, he was the same with every member of staff
except Denise, and I’m afraid he didn’t get walked on Big Denise’s
days off.

I helped to hose out and disinfect empty dogs’
kennels, but I rarely worked with the dogs themselves. This suited
me, as there were other sections in the sanctuary I much preferred
to work in.

One section I particularly enjoyed was the Special
Care unit. Apart from two long-term residents, one never knew what
creatures were going to be in need of special care. Many of our
patients were native Dorset wildlife.