Good Beginnings

 

Marten's Grove Park

So this post is the first of several that will be more of a memoir format, not that anything really interesting happened until I was 17 (Clean cut grammar school prefect starts joyriding in stolen cars and discovering sex with a gorgeous drug dealer met in The Venue in New Cross - not earth shattering off the rails stuff but pretty exotic for a square dweeb from sleepy Barnehurst in Kent, England).

I was born on an apparently scorching hot August day to loving "normal parents." Mum is still alive, but Dad died 15 years ago. They met when they were both working at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, courted for a short time and married in the local Catholic church. Their first home was in Blackheath but by 1974 they had decided to put down roots in a 1930s semi in Bexley. My brother came first and I followed three years later. There was nothing exceptional about my birth, the only noteworthy thing being that the ward sister wrote my name on the bed chart when asking my mother what name was bestowed up on me....and she gave me the French spelling of Clare. I am pretty pleased she did as 5 years later 20% of my infant class was called Claire and by the time I moved to junior school I had became pretty smug about the omission of i. 

My childhood is one of happy memories growing up in Barnehurst, a small district of Bexley. Bexley is a London borough but also classed as Kent. This always confused me and still does. I decided that if I was to ever go on Blind Date and Cilla asked me where I was from I would proudly say South East London as it sounded more edgy than Kent. School days passed easily as I seemed to be naturally bright and later passed the 11+ test without even realising its significance. My winter evenings were filled with reading Enid Blyton, paint by numbers, Dr Who and as many American films I could find on TV.  ET, Flash Gordon and Flight of the Navigator still rank in my all time Top 10. I'm not really sure I should publicly admit that but I do in the spirit of not giving a F what people think of me...seems all us 40 somethings develop that cavalier attitude. Anyway weekends were spent setting Sindy up on a parachute or zip line with her boyfriend Action Man and launching them in a steamy clinch out my brother's bedroom window for flight down to the veggie patch where they'd get down and dirty. I considered Barbie a bitch and Ken too fake to have a place in my collection. I spent Sunday afternoons doing homework and taping the Top 40 with Bruno Brookes. I'd then bath by the warmth of a paraffin heater and then be fed pilchards on toast despite my protestations. Every single week. 

Spring and Summer days were long and mostly spent with my friend Alison from number 21 and a collection of other kids from up and down the street. Years composed of bike rides, football, den building, air raid shelter exploration, ghost hunting and as we got older boy stalking, perfume making and performing as Bananarama on back garden patios. Some of the best days were those spent at the local lido in Marten's Grove Park. And one of the worst days was the day my mum, brother and I packed up our picnic and towels, but arrived to the lido to find it filled in with concrete. I think I actually cried while mum paced up and down cursing the local council for not having the balls to warn the local community or even talk about options to save it. 

Those years were all good wholesome stuff with foreign holidays thrown in every year. And frequent weeks sojourned in our caravan on the Kent coast at Reculver. That caravan is what ignited my love of the sea and will be covered in more detail later as it has proven so pivotal to my life. I am very lucky and I know it now, if I didn't at the time. It really was a childhood where everything went right. And by aged 12 I knew I wanted to be a journalist. It was Katie Adie who inspired me. And though I never did become the next Katie Adie I did meet her nephew at York University. Apparently she is as nice in real life. Thank goodness that perception hasn't been shattered for me.