Confusion

People I Mixed Up

and wondered why history and the world was so confusing

Mary Queen of Scots and Mary 1

Ingmar Bergman and Ingrid Bergman

Jim Morrison and Van Morrison

Henry Ford and Henry Fonda

WC Fields and Gracie Fields

Harold Godwinson and Harald Hardrada

Sophie Mirman and Ethel Merman

Thomas Cromwell and Oliver Cromwell

W C Fields and O C Handy

John Legend and  Bill Legend

Martin Hannett and  Martin Rushent

Palmers Tally Ho and Adnams Tally Ho
       OK This is a beer not a person,  (but don't  get them mixed up), one is stronger than the other.

Hiding in the cupboard

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It was the summer holidays and my parents had arranged that Sheila came to play with me while my they went out to work. Sheila was the daughter of Win and Bob, and she had two brothers David and John, and an older sister called Maureen. Later on Maureen's new boyfriend, called Peter, introduced me to the group Pink Floyd and let me listen to their new album called Dark Side of The Moon which is the most fantastic album in the universe ever, except maybe Electric Warrior by T Rex. I thought that this was all really great and that I had arrived in the most bohemian world I could ever be in.

John later became a glass blower for nuclear waste at Dounreay Nuclear Power Plant and my dad later took photos of him blowing glass for a trade magazine. I was fourteen then, and I think it was 1973. But I digress, let's go back to the summer holidays.

Sheila and I played in my bedroom with dolls and card games, and went through my collection of board games. We were playing by my built-in cupboards and I had the idea of going in them to hide while Sheila closed the door on me. I knew that my dad was due back soon and we concocted the idea of writing a “kidnap” note along the lines of “Dad, I have been kidnapped and taken away, you will get further instructions soon”.

We left it sellotaped to the bedroom door and tucked our bodies in side the cupboard, giggling and heaving with delight. We waited a little while in expectation and then heard his key in the lock downstairs, as entered into the hall way. All was silent. We heard him look round downstairs and then running upstairs; you knew it was him as his money always rattled in his pockets.

He came in the bedroom. We held our breath and looked at each other, with a glee of fear as he ripped off the note, sighed loudly and ran downstairs again. We burst out of the cupboard and giggled loudly. The front door slammed and he drove off. I then realised he was going to pick my mum up by car from her morning part-time job as it was lunch time.

I then got a cold stab of fear as to how he would be reacting when when he got back with my mum. He wasn't very pleased and my mum told me that it was a good joke but I should have told him immediately that it was a joke before he left to pick her up. Later on we watched the evening news; milk had gone up a penny a pint and he was upset over that, then he looked at me and stuck his tongue out at me.

We had boiled eggs for tea.

Marbles

My parents often used to leave me alone in house due to working and shopping commitments; I was compliant, uncomplicated and quiet which were qualities they encouraged. I had many hours to fill,  empty hours that dragged on and on until their key turned in the lock again.  I had imagination so my games were mythical, magical, dark and poignant.

I had a collection of glass marbles and these became companion people, characters in my world.  We had a normal new town staircase, carpeted in the middle with spaces of wood either side where the more economical narrow carpet to save money didn't go. The space on the right became a fantastic run in which to allow marbles to run from the top of the stairs to the bottom.  Let them go with a small  push at the top and they would bounce down each tread to the bottom making resonant music on each wooden tread, bouncy sounds that increased 'til the marble arrived on the hall floor at the bottom.

The floor was made of marley tiles, black, hard and shiny with slight cream marbelling.  Most new town houses had these floors, cheap and easy to install in their thousands in the early 1960's.  One of them at the bottom of our stairs had a dent in.  It has always had this: as far back as I remember it had always been there and was a brilliant little dip in which a marble could sit.    I had a beautiful marble with a different coloured glass middle of light aquamarine blue which I called the Princess and who was the daughter of the King.  The King had lost his wife, the Queen, but he still had his daughter whom he loved very much.  She was fragile, intelligent, sensitive and extremely beautiful.   

She had been kidnapped by the bad nasty marbles who had boring ugly centers in their glass

spheres, the surfaces were more pitted and scratched because they had lived rougher, violent lives due to their evil nature. They had ganged together and imprisoned the Princess in the marley tile dip and forced her to stay there.  They walked to the top of the stairs  and waited in turn to each roll of the top step down the uncarpeted run to see if on landing if they could crash into the  Princess and knock her out of the hole, to hurt her and scratch her.

The King had been captured too and he was forced to stand to one side to see the marbles trying to hurt his daughter; to see how many bruises and tears she suffered. He felt so much pain and anguish and felt helpless to free her.  He was tied up and had no army; this disappeared along with his wife. After a while I got fed up with this, so the bad marbled stopped bouncing down the stairs and the Princess was locked up, separately from her father.  They were never allowed to be together.

Except the day I forgot to clear up properly and left the Princess in the hole.  My father came home with a shopping bag and discovered the marble by treading on it and slipping over, skidding down and smashing down, twisting his ankle and scattering the tins of baked beans and packets of signal toothpaste.  After  that I had to be more careful with tidying up.