Teddy Bear
I would sometimes bring my teddy bear in my school bag when I was in first class. He was eight or ten inches tall, white torso and face with black arms, legs and snout. He slept in my bed every night.
I found another one about two years later and they were friends. My teddy bear was bought for me by my sister who got it in the broken sweet shop in Camden Street on our way home from school. She bought my brother, Jack, one and a half years younger, a wooden pencil case. She was six years older and it was her pocket money she spent.
I shared my problems with these two teddies. We would talk under the covers. They were so so special. Such comfort I got from just seeing them.
As an adult with four children, they were still by my side up in my bedroom, on a shelf. I had two cats at this stage, Muffy and Bagpuss - mother and daughter. Over the years, these two ladies had injuries. Muffy had an eye taken out because of infection and slept beside me, the whole night in my arms. Bagpuss was poisoned by someone when she was a year old, then injured by someone when she was fourteen or fifteen. Both girls were given their wings when they were sixteen years old - together. And it was devastating. My first awful decision I had to make. In burying them, I felt I had to grow up. I put the two teddies in with them.
I still have other teddies and even got a Steiff from my daughter last Christmas. He’s on my bedside locker. Love him. My mother knit them for us. I have all of them too. And I crochet them now for my children.
My red wedding dress was £50 from Principles. Our weekly rent was £90, so the amount for the dress seemed extravagant, a splurge on a whole other scale. John used the second-hand wool jacket I had bought as a student in a thrift shop in Amsterdam.
In 1994, we were the first in the family to get married in a registry office. John’s aunt kept murmuring through the proceedings. “Oh, this is really nice.” “It really is nice,” “I wasn’t expecting this, very nice.” It was as if we had our own personal narrator for the event.
It was nice and it was short, within ten minutes we were married and back out on the street. I had never dreamed of the white dress, the church wedding.