IN the 1970s I shared a red-brick Victorian end of terrace two-up two-down house with two or three new teachers. It had no heating, and an outside loo that you reached by walking through the "bathroom" though that was only the corridor with an extra door and a bath under the stairs. Rent for each of us was something like £30 a month.
Eee! it was cold. We got ourselves a paraffin
heater to supplement the two bar electric heaters - both were fire hazards.
Once, working in my bedroom, the cardboard behind my heater bent over it and
caught fire in front of me. I had to grab the damp towel I'd just had round my
head and used it to put out the fire. Another time, our visitor, Angela thought
she'd warm the downstairs with the upstairs paraffin heater and despite it
being lit she bounced it down each step of the stairs. But paraffin was cheaper than
feeding the meter.
One of the upstairs bedrooms
was quite big with two windows, so someone had put up a partition splitting it into a couple of bedrooms. I had one and June the
other half. Bernie had the back bedroom. We could hear each other fairly
easily, especially June's cockney boyfriend, Tony. When he got cross, his
language was interesting, especially when he objected to us neutering a little
boy kitten. He was very fond of June. They'd been a couple since early
college days. Officially he didn't live with us, the landlord not wanting men
tenants, but Tony had teaching practice somewhere near so he moved in with us
for several months. Two people in a single bed room - it was a bit
crowded but we all got on.
One day early spring, June
received an unexpected letter. She told Bernie and me that it was from Dave,
someone she'd gone out with for a few weeks in sixth form. He had never forgotten
her and would like to meet. Within weeks, the two were engaged and Tony had to move
out. One sunny Saturday, June disappeared for the day and Bernie and I helped a distraught Tony to
pack his stuff.
Bernie had her own boyfriend
troubles. She'd had a rotten boyfriend at college who'd broken up with her in the
last term, and she missed him a lot. One evening she called me, (June was out
with Dave), "Liz, I can't stop it bleeding." She'd cut her wrist.
"Call John" she wanted. No. Instead we went to the local A&E
where she told them that she'd fallen through a plate glass window while they
put loads of stitches in her left arm. She'd missed doing serious damage by
millimetres.
To distract her, the following weekend in the heat of a summer's evening we went out to the cinema. The adverts were more memorable than the film, showing us a cool ski slope. So we planned ourselves a sking holiday the following Christmas. We went to Mayrhofen in Austria. (I started German evening classes, acquired some skill in the language and a would-be swain). Bernie had the latest sking gear - lovely stuff, but it turned out that she didn't like sking so she gave all the gear to me. She sat alone in the hotel and I enjoyed the fresh air, having my first Christmas lunch by myself at the top of a mountain. Wwe enjoyed the apres ski together.
At the end of that school year, June moved back to her mother's so she could save for their wedding, and Bernie, despairing for John, moved back to her native Wales. I had to find new flatmates, or move into a single room offered by a local convent.
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