When things were simple

I got an email today from someone I knew when I was six. She wanted me to fill in a few blanks from when I was younger, like what I did after we left each other at school, why I've got a New Zealand and British passport e.t.c. So, I wrote this, which in turn reminded me, things were a lot simpler in those days.............

The Beginning

1969 - The Two (Very Different) Worlds Collide Years

A naïve, twenties something trainee teacher goes to New Zealand, when people, just didn’t go to those sort of places. With just a few pounds in her pocket, this naivety was bordering on stupidity.



In the same year, a happy go lucky, laid back, sarcastic, thirties something sufer come lifeguard come mechanic come accountant was going through his normal routine, surfs up at 6am, travel to work, bit more surfing, and a little bit of sleep.



After all, when you live on the beach in New Zealand, that’s what you tend to do.



1970

The naive young woman is driving back from her school when the car breaks down. At that moment the laid back man receives a call from his garage. He tuts, he was going to miss the surf, this call out had spoiled all that. Maybe tomorrow, thinks Mr Cooper.

1971

Whilst driving on the deserted roads, observing the sheep and lack of people, the tyre bursts on the Moris Miner driven by the trainee teachers friend. The deserted roads change from a beauty to a terror. Thrown out by the car, the young teacher is left for dead.

1973

Now, after hearing that her daughter had been officially ‘dead’ for three minutes on the other side of the world, the mother makes sure her daughter returns to England.

1974

“Do you, Mr Cooper, take Miss Andrea Heathcote to be your wife? In doing so do you agree to swap the surf of New Zealand for the sewage infested Thames Estuary of Essex? Do you agree to swap the deserted roads of Auckland for the traffic jams of Southend? Do you wish to swap your surf club for the tennis club of Southend? And with that, he did. In a matter of minutes, Essex in England, not Auckland in New Zealand would be where I began my life



1978 - Born with a noose around my neck

No, I was. The fantastic hospital in Essex was really professional. Whilst my mum was in labour, the midwife was standing outside having a cigarette. I was born with a blue head, not because designer babies were in fashion in those days, but because my umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, causing me to nearly die just as I was alive. And just as I was dealing with that trauma (I gave the midwife evils don’t worry) I was rudely introduced to the big wide world. With a slap from my sister.



1978-1984 - The Cheeky years

I really didn’t have a care in the world. I slept when I wanted, I drank anything, hey I even ate anything, no reason to be fussy then. And the good thing about being a kid was that I could get away with whatever I wanted to. That’s what I guessed having a big brother and sister was all about. If I wanted to write all over the walls in bright red crayon, I could. And when a rather angry parent looked at me accusingly, I could just point out my sister and claim innocence. After all, I was a helpless young kid, more to the point, I was the youngest child, and the youngest child gets away with these sort of things.



And it didn’t just stop with in house misbehaviour. If I wanted to say to my teacher at school “I’m glad you fell over, you deserved it!” I could. Of course, with hindsight, it would have been better to consider the feelings of my mum, after all, I was saying this to my mum’s boss, the head teacher.



If I wanted to say to my mums friend “I don’t want your bike, I think it’s disgusting” then I did. It was the wonderful age of saying what you actually thought, without fear of hurting anyone’s feelings, after all, I was just a little kid. I’ll just leave my mum to do the blushing for me, after all, it was her responsibility over what came out of my mouth.



1984 – The Teachers pet

My first experience of school. St Hilda’s. Why couldn’t it last like this forever? Now, for a start my teacher was my mum. That was great. I could still paint all over the desk and blame someone else, I never got in trouble. Not only was my mum the teacher, this school just happened to be full of girls.



Now, if I understood the concept of hindsight then, it would be have been perfect. Having girls fight over my attention should have been utopia. It's just I did'nt know it. Girls just used to give me things to get my attention. It was great. At the age of six, I had my first girlfriend, with the pick of a dozen girls. I just could'nt fail. it’s just I didn’t know it at the time.




1984 – 1985 First Proper School

So being teachers pet and being swamped by girls did not last. Although some things didn’t change. “I don’t want to hold your smelly hand” I said when the lady who came to pick me up tried to escort me across the road. But that was the great thing, no need for manners, a guilty consciousness. I was far too young for that.



But it was time to wise up. The girls were getting a lot smarter. Instead of trying to buy my affections with hand held games, they became a bit more deceptive. “Close your eyes, we have got some a secret to whisper in your ear” they say. Of course, the concept of trust and mistrust were hardly formulated at that age, I trusted everyone. If a man came up to me with a big bag of sweets I would have probably thought he was the best thing since sliced bread (or transformer toys then). Instead of whispering that ‘secret’, two girls would kiss me on the cheek and run off. If only it could always be like that.



And with the notion that I couldn’t trust everyone, I also learnt some other valuable lessons. Sometimes you get kicked in the balls. Well in this case it wasn’t getting kicked, more getting hit. A long range, ownerless stone, found its way straight to somewhere I have since realised is a place where boys fear the most. It was the first time I had cried, and cried, and cried. Despite the fact that I cried like a baby that day, the present day scar still makes me realise, I didn’t so too bad in those circumstances. Big grown up men had cried at an awful lot less.

(1985 – 1988) – The only one wearing school uniform

I turned up on my first day at Westborough Primary in a lovely navy blue jumper, fitted with a smart blue tie and light blue shirt. Which all sounds great, except that all the kids were not wearing school uniform.



Despite being a nice kid, I was also a complete and utter bastard at the same time. Like the time I deliberately sent a kids new toy car down the drain pipe, and didn’t even say sorry. In my opinion, it was the drains fault for being too big.

I was really starting to endear myself with the local kids as well. When asked out by a girl who was a friend of a classmate, I said “No, because you are repulsive”. It went down fine, probably because none of the kids knew what the word meant. To be honest I didn’t even know what the word meant, but that doesn’t make it any better now.



It was the no bullshitting time of my life, it’s just I didn’t realise it at the time. I said what I thought because nobody had told me not to. When I was standing in the playground I didn’t stand there and think “Yes, but she will say no?” when asking out Anna Smith. Nor did I think about the long term compatibility factors, it was much more simple than that. Would she play football at break and did she have any nice pencils I could nick? I wasn’t looking to see whether she was projecting the right body language, responded to my paper notes in less than a day or give me subtle hints. If I got a valentines day card from her in the cardboard letter box and she wanted to sit next to me in class, then that was it, no more questions.

Simple Days. Happy days.