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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The man in the raincoat

Most grandchildren say “You should write your memoirs, Gran.” What they mean is that you should write about what it was like in the “old days” The days when we had no TV, Cell phones, Credit cards, passenger planes, plastic disposable nappies, heart transplants and the pill. Well, my children, if you want to know about those days you can read a book, or watch a movie. This book is not about tin baths hanging on the wall of the outside loo, this story is about how I came to be ME

I do not recollect being born, during the depression in 1926, but my father told me that, although it was May, he battled through the snow down country lanes carrying a lantern, to fetch the midwife. There was only one bedroom in our bungalow and so my father had to sleep on the settee while the midwife slept with my mother for the first three nights. I already had a sister, aged three and a half, who had been christened Elaine Gloria, but we always called her Glory. Sometime in her adult life she became known as Jane and so, for the rest of this narrative, that is what I will call her. I was unaware that we lived in relative poverty because my mother loved me and fed me and kept me warm. She loved me until the day she died at the age of 98.
My earliest memory? It was of a man, a stranger. “What’s your name, little girl?” he asked. “Cymfia.” I replied. “And how old are you?” “I’m six”. “My word, you are a big girl for your age!"

As I turned to walk away he grabbed my little hand, forced it onto his exposed penis and kept it there until he had ejaculated. He made a gurgling sound as I ran away as fast as I could, home to my mother. I can still see him today, fawn raincoat, flat cap, faceless. My mother was enraged. She went charging out into the fog brandishing a thick wooden stick used for poking the washing around in the boiler. She would have killed him. The police were called and I did not know how to describe what had happened because I had neither the experience nor the vocabulary, and they had no dolls to use as indicators! The policeman was kind. “Don’t worry” he said to my mother. “She will forget in time”. You were wrong, Mr Policeman, she never did forget.

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