Tinkerbell Schneider is my porn name.
Trixie McVay is the old gits.
You can find yours by taking your mothers maiden name and your first pets pawname.
My mother’s family were all tailors – hence Schneider -but to get accepted in 1930’s England my grandpa anglecised them and turned them into Taylors. I was brought up in a bi-lingual household. Cockney and Yiddish
When the teacher asked us what our favourite part of the chicken was I shot my hand up and said,
FLIGL.
Unaware that my Anglo Saxon tutor didn’t know my arse from my ‘elnboygn’, or my ‘tuchus’ from my elbow.
Navigating through my childhood took resilience and pluck. I was a lonely child, wild hair, brown skin and a propensity for overthinking. I counted the roses on my bedroom wall paper and felt sorry for the doll at the end of the line. I was forever jumping out of bed and rearranging the dollies so that the one at the end got a chance to be huddled in the middle of the pack like penguins.
When we lived in London we had a budgie. I cant remember it’s name. I sneezed on it. My father left a note in the bottom of its cage, he’d found the bird on its back, rigor mortice had set in. The note said plainly that my streptococcai had killed it.
My father never minced words.
When we wee rehoused we got Tinkerbell. A delightful little tabby kitten. I sprayed her with perfume so she smelt like baby powder. We lived in one of twelve newly built council houses. A private road, a slither of green, then a main road opposite very old cottages. We were on farm land, we were forever digging up old bits of crockery wedged into the yellow clay soil.
Tinkerbell didn’t understand the concept of cars. All be it they were few and far between and mostly old Fords. She didn’t understand that as a little tabby kitten, smelling of baby powder, with a bell round her neck, she was not enough of a deterrent for the 358 double decker green bus that trundled from St.Albans to Borehamwood every hour.
My mother never forgave herself for Tinkerbell’s demise. We, of course blamed her.
Then my father rescued a hound from a flat in London. He brought it home. The hound was fierce and feral. My father, a boxer, would wrap a rope round his bruised knuckles, attach it to the dogs neck, then take it for a walk. You could here the growling of the dog as my father attempted to control it. When the RSVP man came, in his little to van, he bundled the dog in the back, slammed the doors shut, clicked the padlock and as the hound howled he said.
‘My word he is frisky.’
Legend has it that the dog bit through the padlock and escaped.
When the old git and I set up home here in the wilds of East Sussex I thought I needed cats to go with the image of country life.
The first two, Dinah and Kipper – one black one tabby – brought in mice. I stood on the kitchen table, called the actor in Manchester, he was on Coronation Street at the time, and yelped that the house was full of dead mammals.
‘What do want me to do?’ he said in his Northern accent.’I’m 255 fucking miles away’
I cried and then Kipper got run over.
Weeks later there was a knock on the door, a stranger holding Dinah wrapped in a blanket, looked forlorn. She’d got mangled. Vets weren’t that expensive then so we had her rewired and she lived for a long time until she went the way of Kipper.
Time passed, and a woman accosted me in the supermarket and asked me whether I wanted two kittens. I had no idea why she asked me but we drove to Tunbridge to a house that was less than charming. Two little kittens were living in the back of a sofa. We brought them home.
Oscar and Emmy. The most beautiful pair. I wanted a third called Bafta but the ‘oosbind put his foot down.
They lived until they didnt and then we got a cat a long black cat that purred ike a Lambretta scooter..
The dawter was at nursery school in Tunbridge Wells. Big White House, well heeled and mostly blonde. I was called in
‘We need to talk about your daughter. She says you have a cat called Penis’
‘No’ says I
‘She insists you have a cat called penis.’
‘Ah!’ I laughed.’We have a cat called Willy’
My dawter ever polite.
Willy went to live next door with Nannie Jean. He visited after Sadie, his side kick, died. He came, stroked the door and died the same day.
Other cats have come and gone, we now have Sidney Arthur, named after Siddhartha the Buddha, they were born in the same day. Sid knows when to sit close. He’s very independent but he’s not too shy to lie on his back and demand a belly rub.
The pet that stole our hearts was Jackson the golden Labrador.l bought him for £75 quid from a family up the road. He was the runt of the litter. He was the dawters Christmas present. She was seven, she cried when we gave him to her. He smelt of sweet biscuits. He was put in a cardboard box with a hot water bottle, a blanket and a ticking clock. He was mild mannered and sociable.
Jackson was the dog who jumped through the dog flap to cough, always barked ‘please’ and slept on our bed. Jackson was forever picking me up when I tripped on our walks. He was loved by everybody and had a girlfriend called Florence, a Spinone.
Jackson was covered in lipstick kisses and lay in front of the fire like a real dog does. Everybody knew him. With his big paws and wet nose.
The old git taught him to count to five and he would lie under the kitchen table when we ate.
Jackson was from a happy time in our lives, from a time of youth and vigour, when there was a shape to the day. I yearn for him and then. I thought he would go on forever. But alas old age took him.
When he died even the vet cried.