Stepping into my future
I was 15 and had recently changed best friends. Cyndy had been my partner in crime (literally) for four years, since we started our secondary education on free state scholarships at the prestigious Maynard High School for Girls in the autumn of 1969. By 1973, there was a stern warning notice on the staffroom wall announcing that if either of us committed another wrong, we would be expelled. My poor father had been summoned to the school to discuss my bad behaviour with the headmistress more times than he cared to remember. The reason he had this responsibility was because he passed my school on his way home from work. When, at my worst age, 13, I announced that I intended to leave school at 16 and head for London with Cyndy, my father told me in no uncertain terms that I would stay on until I was 18, even if he had to carry me to school every single day. When he found out that Cyndy and I had been stealing make-up and other sundries, he grabbed all the stolen goods from my cupboards and burnt them on a bonfire in the garden. When I was 13, my parents later joked, their hair turned grey.
At 15, perhaps affected at last by my parents’ firmness and loving care, I came to my senses. I had 2 years to knuckle down before my O’ levels. It wasn’t that Jenny Cross was an angel, although she certainly looked like one, with her long, blond, wavy hair. She appeared angelic at school and to her parents but did things behind their backs, like smoke and drink and hang out with boys. However she was a conscientious student and on that first day of the first term of my lower fifth year I sat beside her at the front of the class, much to the disappointment of Cyndy and the surprise of all the teachers. Looking back, I realise how much cruelty we inflict when we switch best friends. Cyndy must have been devastated by my behaviour. However, her life continued to be fraught with difficulties for decades, whereas, as predicted by the headmistress in all those conversations with my dad, I turned out “alright”.
Mrs Cross, Jenny’s mum, was not at all impressed with Jenny’s latest choice of friend and told her to stay away from me. She was a teacher herself and knew a teacher at my school, who had told her about the warning notice on the staff room wall. My reputation had spread far and wide!
When I told my mum about this she turned into one of those fierce tiger mothers you read about nowadays and demanded the Cross’s phone number. Although my mum was working class and the Crosses were professional middle class folk, my mother did not beat about the bush. She was a secretary in a primary school and mixed with these types of people every day. Apparently she persuaded Magda Cross to give me chance as, in fact, I was “quite a nice girl underneath it all”. Magda agreed. Henceforth I became a frequent member of the Cross’s household and we all got along famously.
One day in the late spring of 1973, I had just popped over to visit Jenny when Magda made her announcement. In August they would be travelling by car all the way to north eastern Spain for a family camping holiday on the famous Costa Brava! They would be accompanied by their eldest child, Jonathan, but he wouldn’t be staying with them in Spain for long as he (Latin and Greek A’ Levels and then on to Exeter College, Oxford to read Classics) would be off visiting the classical sites of Italy and Greece with an Oxford tutor. Jenny also had a younger brother, Richard, who was 10 and the same age as my brother, Shaun. There would therefore be a space in the tent in Spain and a space in the back of the car on the way back to England. Would I like to fill those spaces and join them in Spain? However, there was a catch. I had to make my own way there.
When the invitation was put to me, I almost exploded with joy and immediately got on the phone to my mum, who was at home with my brother, her sister, Una and Una’s four children. I asked her if I could go away with the Crosses and she didn’t hesitate for a second before saying yes. I don’t know of any other mother who would have given her consent to a 15-year-old travelling alone from London to Girona on multiple trains and a ferry but she knew me well; she’d brought me up to be independent and street-wise and knew I could handle it. More than anything, she wanted me to experience more of the world. My parents had never been abroad and probably never thought they would. The miracle is that my father also gave his blessing for the trip when he returned from work.
What about money? After the initial euphoria, my parents realised that they had very little and couldn’t really pay for much, apart from the one-way ticket and my passport. But the Crosses were kind and also socialists (as were my parents) and assured my parents they would pay for my camping fees in France and Spain, all my food and for the ferry crossing back to England. So I saved my wages from my Saturday job (at 15 I was earning 50p for half a day as a Saturday girl in the trendy high street boutique, Chelsea Girl) and managed to scrape up some extra pennies here and there. I remember mowing the Cross’s lawn in my platform shoes for a generous payment! They were incredibly kind to me. My grandparents gave me what they could in the way of holiday pocket money and Mum took me to the travel agency to buy my ticket. It cost £12 to travel from London, Victoria to “Gerona”, as it was known in those days. This included a train from London to Dover, the ferry crossing, a change of train in Paris, a couchette for the night train and a change of train at the French/Spanish border. I still have the ticket. My mum and I were asked if I required a smoking or non-smoking compartment. In unison we gave different replies. Mum then put her foot down. She said that she was paying for the ticket and her decision was final. I thought I’d be able to smoke in the corridor anyway so I didn’t mind.
I also had to get my first passport. My parents had never had or needed one. In those days, the amount of money you were taking on holiday had to be recorded in your passport and couldn’t exceed a certain upper limit, irregardless of the length of time spent in the foreign country. In 1966, the Labour prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had imposed a limit of £50 per adult (which would be worth over £600 today). Each child could only take £15. I had bought £10 worth of pesetas and this was declared in writing at the back of my passport.
We would be staying in a campsite called Kim’s Camping at a beach called Llafranc on the Costa Brava. A few years previously the Crosses had travelled to Fréjus on the French Cote d’Azur and had driven along the coast to the Costa Brava, discovering the littles coves and fishing villages served by the inland town of Palafrugell; Tamariu, Llafranc and Calella. They loved it so much, they were determined to return. In those days we said Lia-frank or Lafranche and Pala-FRUgal. All the English-speaking visitors did. We also said we were going to Spain, where they spoke Spanish. We had no knowledge of Catalunya or Catalan. Franco, Spain’s fascist dictator, was still alive in 1973. Spain was a remote country, almost unknown, apart from its stereotypical costas, flamenco and bullfighting. Sombreros were de rigueur and bought by many English tourists, who could be seen wearing them at the ports, border crossings and airports. After all they were far too big to stuff into your suitcase! The idea of the sombrero had travelled 9,000km across the Atlantic from Mexico but had never once sat on a Spaniard’s head! Didn’t the tourists know that? And how many ordinary Mexicans wore such flamboyant headgear?
Before leaving in July, the Crosses came to my house to pick up all my luggage for the camping trip. We had each been given a large plastic laundry bag for all our clothes and accessories. I still have the list of items I put into that bag and if I am feeling low, I like to get it out and have a laugh. My laundry bag was full to overflowing and little did I know I wouldn’t need much more than a bikini and a pair of beach sandals for the whole trip! I must have stuffed my entire wardrobe in there along with all my toiletries and make-up. Several pairs of chunky platform shoes had to be tucked in around their luggage and not once did they raise their eyebrows and ask me to remove anything. I had never felt the heat of the Mediterranean sun. An English summer for me meant warmth but also cold, rain, clouds scudding across the sky, the sun going in and out and wind. What did I know about the climate further south? The Crosses drove off merrily with their car full to the brim and said they would see me in Gerona!
The day arrived when we all got up early and Dad, dear Dad, got behind the wheel with my mum in the passenger seat and my Nan Baitup (Mum’s mum) my brother and I on the back seat. Now the drive to London in those old, pre-motorway days was like a trip to the moon. It seemed so far away and took hours to get there on the still-beautiful A roads which cross the green and hilly countryside of Devon and Somerset and then wind east across the south of England, passing the Salisbury plains and Stonehenge. Dad would have been puffing at his pipe and Nan smoking her cigarettes as we trundled along but luckily Nan didn’t burn a hole in her cardigan as had happened once before when her discarded cigarette end blew back in through the car window.
Mum and I had enough time to have our photos taken at Victoria station in one of the black and white photo booths. Dear god! They must have been so worried about me! But having never done such a journey, I doubt if they had a full realisation of what I was about to undertake. I wasn’t in the slightest bit nervous, just brimming with excitement. Like them, I had no concept of the challenges of foreign travel!
For my journey of 36 hours I was wearing a pair of brushed velvet flared trousers, a shirt, a jumper, a brushed velvet jacket, plimsolls and socks! This was perfect for an English summer but I had no idea of the heat that awaited me and hadn’t brought a change of clothes! All my clothes were in a car boot on a campsite in Spain.
My train pulled in and I said goodbye to my dear family. We all held on to each other, crying inconsolably. I said I would write. We had no idea that the post took up to 10 days to get from Spain to England! Phoning was inconceivable.
I found my non-smoking compartment. There was only one man in there and he looked at me in a strange, creepy way. “Oh good”, I thought, “I can’t stay here with that weirdo! I will have to change to a smoking compartment!”
I waved out of the open window in the corridor until my cherished family disappeared from view. I sniffled for a while, blew my nose and wiped my tears. Then I lit a cigarette.
Leaning out of train windows would be be my favourite activity for the next 36 hours, even though there were notices under each window sternly warning passengers of the danger. Strangely enough, it is only the Italian version that comes to my mind. Every European train had four translations of the same message:
“E pericoloso sporgersi’
“Ne pas se pencher au dehors”
“Nicht hinauslehnen”
“It is dangerous to lean out”
I have since read that É Pericoloso Sporgersi! is the title of two films, and has fascinated generations of train travellers. It is always the phrase they remember of the four. There was no warning in Spanish. This is because the Spanish rail gauges/widths were different from the rest of Europe and those European trains had to stop at the Spanish borders, as I was about to discover.
After 36 hours of leaning out of train windows, my long hair would be standing around my head like a wild, tangled bush but I didn’t care. It was exciting enough to be leaving London for the Kent coast and the ferry port of Dover. My life as a solo traveller had begun!
thewhistlinggypsy 