Sample

In The Beginning

In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined what the future had in store for me.
     I was born in 1935 and by the time I was 4 years old World War 2 was starting, so I didn’t have a very conventional childhood. My sister and I were shipped off to Cheshire to one of my father’s childless brothers and his wife so that we wouldn’t have to spend every night down in the air raid shelter. At this time we lived in the flat above the family business and the council had commandeered the cellars underneath to be made into public shelters. They had cut a hole in the pavement and put a staircase down for access to the underground cellars; this meant that we weren’t getting any sleep because everyone was talking and singing and generally trying to take their minds off the bombs flying overhead. 
     In the early part of the war a great deal of damage was done to the lower part of Broad Street, where we lived. Our shop was just far enough up the street to be saved from any damage, but at the time it seemed as though the whole of the city would be flattened. So that’s why my sister and I were sent off to Tattenhall and a very quiet country life.
     I had been born into a family from Lancashire. Grandpa Salisbury had come to Birmingham at the start of the 1920s to seek his fortune. His daughter (my mother) was the daughter of a man who as a boy had worked at the age of 10 in a cotton mill in Blackburn and then was allowed to go to school in the afternoon. There is some wonderful old film that had been discovered by workmen demolishing a building; it was restored and shows amazing scenes shot by Mitchell and Kenyon. They were famous for shooting moving film of the ordinary people out and about on their High Days and Holidays in the North of England in the late 1800s. They were the first filmed record of sporting events and Bank Holiday outings. They also captured little boys coming out of the factories; it is shocking to see that child labour was still around so recently.
     I am sure that my grandfather was amongst those little rag-a-muffins.            
     I treasure the film that I was able to copy off the television to hand down to my grandchildren.              
     So, by 1935 things had begun to be very comfortable - until 1939, when the bombs started falling.
     Grandpa Salisbury had come from Kendal in Cumbria, where he had learned his knowledge of pork products and was a master curer of York hams, which he supplied to hotels in London. Wanting to extend his scope, he decided he needed to move to the Midlands, where the Victorians were making the pavements of gold and he could capitalise on his expertise. He bought a shop in the most fashionable street that was the main access to the shopping centre and when he had started to become successful he bought three acres of land 15 miles out of the city and built his dream house. He was an austere man who had never wasted money, and so the house was a complete move away from his previous cautious ways. To outward appearances it was an extravagant, luxury house, with balconies and arched windows; and even a huge stained-glass window at the head of the highly polished staircase, which extended up two floors high. The floors were teratso throughout the ground floor, except the kitchen, which strangely had a parquet woodblock floor. The furnishings were from London and a vast sideboard with a wall-to-wall mirror filled the huge dining room. Unfortunately, central heating had not been included in the plans and in winter it was like an ice box and every room had to have a coal fire lit in it. So, all that glittered was not gold.
     As a 5-year-old child, the place terrified me: everywhere was so huge and outside there were no street lights, just black darkness that filled the world. I only realise now, looking back, that even if I had lived in the city the streets would still have been dark as by now everyone had to put up blackout curtains and there were no street lights in case the bomber aircraft used them to find their way to our cities. So it was to here that my sister and I returned when it was considered safe, but even so I was glad to be back home.
     My father, who was the eldest son of a farmer/butcher in Tattenhall, a village near to Chester, was sent to Birmingham to learn the art of curing and other processes related to pork. He met my mother and never returned to Tattenhall to take back the knowledge or his rightful position as eldest son.
     He continued to be Grandpa’s right-hand man for the rest of his life, but never really took over the full running of the business as Richard Salisbury lived until he was nearly 90 and continued to go to work every day. By that time my poor father had had enough; the “Old Boy” had worn him out and he retired to the seaside.
     So, from a very undistinguished period at a very expensive private school (Margaret could do better) and a rather disrupted home life. Food and clothes rationing hadn’t really allowed me much scope to form any style or understanding of sophistication as it had been pre-war and I was too young to remember the Roaring 20s. By the time I was 18, leaving school was something of a dilemma.
     I didn’t really have any great expectations, except a strong desire to get married and have my own family. I loved cooking, but it still wasn’t fashionable to do as a career and my parents were modern enough to insist on some attempt at a job until Mr. Right came along. So it was decided that I should start Nursing. That was something socially acceptable, and so it was that I started at The Eye Hospital and, after 9 months of living like a nun, I plucked up enough courage to tell my mother that I couldn’t stand another moment of it.
     Fortunately, I had very liberal parents and they allowed me to return home and managed to get me an apprenticeship with a hairdresser. I very soon found this was just being a dogsbody to the “stylists” and I was not learning anything productive to do with any aspect of cutting, colouring or perming. What I did learn from the resident beautician was that her job was much more appealing.  So I suggested to my mother that it would be a good move for me to go to London and train. After some wheedling and cajoling, it was agreed that I could go, and then some interviews were arranged at three of the possible schools that ran courses in Bond Street or Bayswater. I chose the Jean Reid School of Beauty Therapy at Queensway, Bayswater, and was overcome with excitement until my ever-patient parents said that I must live in a Youth Hostel at Marble Arch to help keep the cost down. However, I felt they had been so sympathetic to let me get this far that I must be sensible and co-operate. I was sure that in no time I would talk them into some better arrangement.

In spite of a year in London at a beauty therapy school, I returned to Birmingham physically still a fat schoolgirl at 19. I had not benefited from the sophisticated life that should have turned the duckling into a swan. I don’t think that sharing a room with assorted females in a YMCA at Marble Arch greatly contributed to a metamorphosis and living on a shoestring didn’t allow me to take in much in the way of culture - even the cinema was too expensive for many visits - but just walking around London was awesome to me and satisfied my soul at that tender age. The highlight of the week was a visit to the salad bar in the basement of the Cumberland Palace Hotel. It was a revolutionary concept at that time where one could eat as much of the 50 or so choices of salads as possible followed by a huge piece of gateau and coffee for 4/6p, and all this in the glittering surroundings of one of the top hotels in London.
     Another of our cheap thrills consisted of ‘tangling’ with the prostitutes down Park Lane, where we used to stroll for a coffee when funds allowed. These strangely uncommon creatures would leer at us and hiss ‘gerorf our pitch’.
     We eventually found another hot-spot that we could sometimes afford: that was the 100 Club in Oxford Street, where the very thin George Melly let his vocal hair down in the wildest way I have ever encountered. Backed by Humph Lyttelton, they were both sweating like race horses all evening. It was the most exciting thing of all.
     When the year was up I was surprisingly ready to return to Birmingham. I felt mostly relief to be in safe surroundings amongst friends and family, and this outweighed any loss of the bright lights. Anyway, Birmingham was quite a wonderful place in 1953. It still had great style and a wonderful feeling that the war was really over and anything was possible. There was a Marshall and Snelgrove and Barrows and Patterson’s Tea Rooms where ‘ladies’ went for lunch or tea and really dressed up with beautiful suits, hats and expensive matching shoes and handbags, and town was a very glamorous place with lots of busy, exciting people and places to go. So my return from London was just the start of the best part of my life. Getting the job at Greatorex was a great achievement, as it really was one of the top five salons in the city at that time. My shyness and fatness were masked by the illusion of being a beautician trained in London and I thought my heart would burst on the first day I started work.
     In 1953 I returned from the London College of Beauty Therapy and took the position of Junior Therapist in a seemingly very luxurious salon. The lady who owned the salon was also the Head Beautician. It didn’t take very long for me to realise that I was to be a below-stairs dogsbody, at everyone’s beck and call – from sweeping up cut hair to going for the lunch rolls and sorting the laundry. Oh well, everyone starts somewhere. The rest of the staff were very aware of their positions in the pecking order and made no bones about using the latest arrival as a skivvy. I was still young enough to feel grateful for a position in such a prestigious salon and I put my best foot forward in the hope of gaining approval by always being ready and willing, so that I might eventually be rewarded with more responsible tasks. After six months I had made a lot of friends and was having a lot of fun out of work hours.
     I will say at this point that I had always been a misfit at school and in general I always felt different to all my associates, and now that I am older I think it was something to do with my parents not being from Birmingham, so I didn’t have the local accent. As a child I had a northern accent, as both my parents were from Lancashire; but when I went to a private school I began to lose any remnants of a northern accent. The year in London also helped.
     I can only remember that this was the one thing about me that attracted the attention of our head stylist. Male hairdressers were just beginning to become very popular and were much in demand with the rich clients who loved being ‘taken over’ by someone who they imagined would transform them. So I was overwhelmed when he started to single me out. He assumed the role of Svengali.
     He took me shopping for ‘grown up’ clothes (I still wore flat shoes, a tweed coat and shoulder bag - not his idea of glamour!). Then he oversaw what I was having for lunch, as I was still rather plump. The next step was to cut and colour my hair red. I had never had so much attention in my life. I was in heaven and in love. He counted every calorie that went into my mouth and when that wasn’t having much effect he marched me off to buy the latest thing in torture for large ladies – the Playtex rubber all-in-one living girdle. I went into the changing room and heaved myself into it. It felt as though I was trapped inside a giant Marigold rubber glove; but anything to please, so I put my clothes back over the top and went out to wow my man! We paid, left and set off to the cinema. We spent every spare minute in the cinema in those days. I soon started to feel very uncomfortable and so hot I thought I would pass out, but I managed to stagger in the dark to the ladies’ loo, where I tore off the crippling, hideous garment, only to find that I had got it on back to front - though, quite frankly, I don’t think it made much difference! I stuffed it into my handbag: I couldn’t face putting it back on. I crept back to my seat and whispered to ‘the great man’ what had happened. We went into such a fit of hysterical laughter that we had to leave the cinema.
     We had such a lot of fun; in spite of his bossiness, he really only wanted to turn me into a glamour girl – for my own good (I think). It was a lot of fun for a couple of years, during which I suppose I did do some 'growing up' and experienced my first heart-break. He soon moved on to his next ‘victim’, who was truly a very natural beauty and very soon I was hoping to make my escape.
     Gradually I seemed to be doing a few pedicures (the most hated of the therapist’s jobs) and manicures, but all the time I was looking for an escape route.

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