Author: Dr Jean Pain

Categories
Autobiography Teens

The Worst Time In My Life

My years at school from 11-18 were by far the most unhappy in my life. My school work and my love of music were the bright spots in my life. This is the short list starting with the mildest up to the worst of my distressed state.

  • A cold and uncomfortable and constantly untidy house.
  • Getting to school in overloaded buses and trams with bad-tempered conductors twice a day there and back.
  • Having no-one to talk to about what interested me except for some company with my sister.
  • The constant squabble about money between my parents.
  • My difficulty in dealing with the bodily change in my adolescence.
  • My feeling that I must take full control over myself with no guidance whatsoever.
  • My fears for my brother who was an unusual child from the time he was born.

Because of my intense sensitivity I was so upset by what was going on in the war, especially in the concentration camps, that I often wondered whether life was not worth living when such dreadful things could happen.

There were three levels of state schools. I was in grammar school, where the aim was to get as many pupils as possible to university. Mary went to commercial school, The Palatine School for Girls, otherwise known by the pupils as the Pallyringworms, where the children were mostly trained as secretaries or nurses, although a few managed to get to university and teacher training colleges, which then ran two-year courses. Mary went to Goldsmith’s College before it became a university and Colin went to senior school where only basic learning was given and all the pupils left when they were fourteen. They had to get anything they could find to earn money.

Since, as any sensible person ought to know, teachers are not necessarily the best judges of intelligence, Winston Churchill and Einstein, for example, were not recognised for their genius in their early schooldays.

Mary and I went on the same bus to school and then we parted company to get on different transport. Mary and I were very different people, I loved to do my homework but she would do as little as she could get away with. Mary went upstairs to sit with her friends, all squashed together on the back seat copying each other’s homework. I sat downstairs on my own with my finished homework tucked in my satchel and a pious look on my face.

Getting on to the bus was a feat in itself. Every conductor’s priority was shouted out as the doors opened. “Forces first, workers second and schoolchildren last.” Their priorities were right in view of the fact that winning the war was the most important thing.

Everyone was overworked in those days. Bus conductors were always bad-tempered. The women were the worst. They wielded their power officiously and without pity. We often had to stand waiting for several buses to go past, full up, before we could get on. We had to do this journey, to and fro, twice a day, because there were no school dinners until after we left school.

Sometimes Mother had dinner on the table and other times she did not. More than once we found her sitting there, the breakfast things still on the table, in a trance, trying to work out where the money had gone. More than once we ran off to get some food so that at least we could eat something before getting back to school. We had to ask the shopkeepers to put the money on Mrs Barker’s slate. They all knew Mother, some way or other she always managed to pay her debts, but the shopkeepers always grumbled.

Mary and I learned a good lesson. Both of us manage money well and never, ever did we get into debt or borrow money from other people. My psychoanalyst, many years later, told me that a bad example could be just as useful as a good example.

Categories
Autobiography Teens

The Enigma Of Mother

Mother became less and less able to go out as her health deteriorated. She had suffered from bad legs since I was five years old. It was very common to see women in bandaged legs in those days. She had chronic ulcers supposedly resulting from varicose veins. This particular complaint is not prevalent today. I wonder why? Every generation seems to have a popular disease. Now it is all heart attacks, stress and so-called mental illness.

One of the common sights of our later childhood in Rayleigh was Mother washing bandages, drying them in front of the fire and winding them first round her hands and then on her legs. I found the sight of her ulcers sickening. I decided there and then that whatever I chose to do with my life I did not want to be a medical doctor.

I often wished my body could be made of stainless steel, like a machine kept nourished by oil rather than by blood: cleaner and more efficient. From a very early age I had two outstandingly powerful and frightening dreams. The first began when I was about five and ended when I was twenty-five.

I am watching a screen. On it is a matrix of shining, silver machinery, working perfectly. Suddenly something starts to go wrong. There is a slight slip in the right-hand corner. I know that little by little every part of the machine will be destroyed. Before the end I always woke up in a panic. So great was my fear that it took at least a half-hour to recover.

The strangest thing is that my first son had the same repetitive dream when he was a child. He didn’t tell me about it until he was grown up. I could understand it in his case because machinery has always fascinated him. The strangest thing of all was that my dream ended soon after my son was born and it never returned.

During my ‘teens another recurring dream began. I am walking through a dark wood and suddenly become aware that I am being followed. I turn around and see a glinting-eyed witch chasing me. In her hands are big loops of cloth: bandages. I know I have to run very hard to get away from her. Sometimes she captures me, sometimes not. I usually awake just as she reaches me and begins to wrap the bandages around me from the feet up. There is the same feeling of panic that I felt in the first nightmare.

I felt that I should end up bound like an Egyption mummy, unable to move or cry out: a living death. I didn’t have to be a genius to interpret this dream.

It is a wonderful example of an important message from my unconscious mind: It contains a perfect example of a Freudian pun and a warning to me that I must psychologically free myself from my mother for good. Years later I understood why I had a great fear of becoming a “mummy” myself and why I had an aversion to dolls and babies.

Having loved my mother so much in my early years it was very difficult for me to accept, as I grew older and wiser, that I did not like her in many ways, especially when she complained to us about our father.

I couldn’t wait to get away from home and after I married we went to Venezuela and I ended up with three children. I, who thought mistakenly that I did not want a family, changed my mind. I still managed to have a career as well. I was determined that I would never cause the pain to my children that I felt in my own first family. Step by step, with a continuous search to understand myself better, I discovered what was good for me and what was not. That is what the rest of this book is about. How it is possible for us, if we are dedicated enough to learn to think for ourselves to find the right paths for ourselves and lead a satisfactory life.

Categories
Autobiography Teens

Mother In The Money

Blackpool was crowded right through the war. It continued its tradition as a favourite holiday playgtound for the Lancashire mill workers who came for their annual Wakes Week. People who had never heard of Blackpool before the war came for their holidays too, because the southern beaches were cut off by rolls of barbed wire to protect us from invasion. Walking along the promenade in the height of summer you would never believe there was a war on had it not been for the number of men and women in different kinds of uniform. At night time there was no doubt, for instead of the brightly coloured illuminations of peace-time a black pall would descend.

The blackout restrictions were strictly enforced. We were allowed torches with very weak batteries so that we would not get entirely lost in the dark. Parents did not worry about children coming home from school in the winter. The sense of camaraderie was strong. People watched out for each other, especially when they saw children on their own. Air-raid shelters abounded at street level.

We had one right outside our house. The only purpose they ever served was as a hiding place for courting couples and a platform for sergeants drilling their squads of new recruits on the promenades. Soldiers, airmen and a few sailors thronged the streets alongside Wrens, WAAFs and ATS girls. Many were foreigners from Europe who had escaped to join up with us. Later on the American G.I.s arrived.

All these people had to live somewhere. There was never enough accommodation. During our first year in Blackpool a billeting officer from the RAF called on all the houses in our street looking for rooms for airmen, some of them accompanied by their wives. Mother, without asking Father , said “yes”.

We had a succession of young couples during the training periods before the men were sent for operational duties. Mary and I had to give up our room for the damp spare one at the back of the house.

When we got back from school we entered into conversations with the incumbent wives, usually on the stairs. They had little to do while their husbands were out being trained. They were mostly newly married and liked to talk to us about their love-lives and we encouraged them. There were many gaps in our knowledge of what went on in marriages. They didn’t talk to Mother. Probably she was too busy or perhaps they were frightened of shocking her. Like most mothers at that time she was afraid to talk about such matters to her daughters. I never saw pregnant women. They were very good at concealing themselves or perhaps I didn’t know what the signs were.

When the airmen had finished their training and left, Mother found a new source of income. The number of holiday-makers increased. Blackpool was famous for its numbers of boarding-houses. During the summer there were plenty of customers. Mother kept all the money she earned for herself except for what she gave us for helping her with the work of looking after the guests. In winter visitors were sparse and once again Mother complained that Dad did not give her enough money. She often borrowed from Mary and me. I found ways of earning a penny or two by making all sorts of little things such as toys, purses and necklaces made of sea-shells, especially at Christmas time.

So much of the government’s money went into the war effort that things that were considered not to be necessary were scarce and I found a ready market.

Categories
Autobiography Teens

Hopes And Fears For The Future

When I was fourteen my form teacher told my father that I ought to go to university. He said “People like us don’t go to university”. From that moment onwards I made up my mind. I thought to myself “I am not like you and I will go.” I won a county award in the sixth form for my work on the French scholarship paper and was allotted a good grant which meant I did not have to ask Father for a penny. I then felt my future was assured.

When I was young I avoided old people apart from my uncles, aunts and grandparents who were in a class of their own. The ones Mother visited didn’t smell good and complained constantly. I thought they must live miserable lives. My father talked about taking a job in the Civil Service with a pension. I had no intention of working for anyone else, especially in an office. I knew I must find work for myself where I could be fully in charge of my own life.

In any case, sixty is light years away when you are fourteen, so pensions seemed irrelevant. I had many ideas of what I wanted to do and I knew I was capable of extraordinary achievements.

Decades later I realised with surprise and horror that old age was on the horizon. I was fifty and had led a varied and enjoyable life. A dear friend of mine who was fifteen years older then me said that he regarded every day as a bonus for him. He had nearly died twice, yet he lived on and enjoyed life in good enough health until he was nearly ninety.

“I don’t like getting old” I said.

He replied, with a twinkle in his eye, “It’s better than the alternative!” He was right. Ever since the war was over I was convinced that I would reach thirty if I was lucky. I was so horrified by all the new instruments of destruction, especially the atom bomb, that I was certain it was inevitable that a third world war would happen soon and if it did and both sides used this bomb, it would be the death of our species. We have had several smaller wars but to my amazement the instruments of death which were the most powerful were not used.

I am at heart optimistic, but I also have bouts of extreme anxiety from time to time. I like to know the truth of situations as far as that is possible. I have always taken risks to be able to do what I want. My gift of imagination has made me a spotter of opportunities that very few people recognise. It has also cost me to always consider worst case scenarios, so that I have an alternative plan if everything goes wrong.

Now in my early eighties I still keep myself busy reading and writing and researching. I am lucky enough to have a small circle of friends and family with whom I share similar interests.

Categories
Autobiography Teens

Bullying Tactics

My sister was still in primary school. Every Friday night Mother would take the three of us to the cinema. One evening we were all ready to go except for Mary who hadn’t turned up. Her school was only five minutes walk away. I went off to fetch her. I went in through the main door and walked to her classroom.

To my surprise she was sitting at her desk writing. Her teacher was sitting at her desk. What was going on? I began to feel angry. Being a Collegiate girl gave me a feeling of power. I announced firmly “I have come to fetch my sister. We are all waiting for her at home so that we can go out.” My tone of voice brooked no denial.

“Run along dear” the gorgon said turning to me with a smile. “She has just finished.” My sister rose joyfully from her seat and almost ran from the room.

“Thank goodness you’ve come” she said. “I don’t know how long she would have kept me. And did you notice she called me dear? She has never done that before!”

This was the teacher who so terrorised her by hitting her on the hand with a steel ruler when she couldn’t do her sums; that when she had gone through college and was a qualified infant teacher herself

she still had feelings of dread when she had to teach number work.

Mary loved boiled sweets. We all got a penny on Saturday. It is typical of both of us that I spent mine usually on one walnut whip and ate it at once. Mary bought the cheapest of boiled sweets, ate one and put the rest away to last out for the week.

One day when she wasn’t there I rummaged through our chest-of-drawers to see what she was saving now, sometimes it was money and sometimes sweets. What was my motive? I didn’t like boiled sweets. I wasn’t a hoarder and I wanted to understand why I was so different from my sister. What I found was a surprising number of sweets, not all that she liked.

I tackled her with it when she came home. She was naturally indignant that I had touched her things. “Never mind that” I said “who are those sweets for?” She turned red, blustered a bit and burst into tears. I knew something was wrong so I continued to question her.

She admitted that she was being bullied at school by one of the girls who had come over from Germany without her parents. She had wheedled her way into Mary’s sympathies by dramatising her story and getting her to buy sweets for her.

At first Mary did this willingly, then the child began to put pressure on her. She was frightened. I persuaded her to stop all this at once. I was very protective of my little sister. I told her I would sort the child out if she gave any more trouble. It worked.

As Mary grew older she learned how to use her tongue to prevent bullies from bothering her. It didn’t happen to me because I was (rightly) considered to be an oddball, so I was left alone.

Categories
Autobiography Teens

A Real Friend At Last

Our magazine ran for nearly a year and then we both got tired of doing it. Our friendship came to an abrupt end. We had little in common instead of writing.

In the second year a new girl, Bella Rose, came into our class. Her father was also a civil servant and her mother was French. She loved to draw and paint especially Arthur Rackham-style fairies. With so much in common we soon became good friends.

Unused to the unwritten laws of friendship I dropped Rosalind like a hot brick. I had no idea what I was doing. I simply ceased to notice her existence. She, however, did not forget mine.

One day when I was in the cloakroom on my own I was seized from behind by my skimpy black plaits and my head twisted round to confront a small face distorted with hatred. Sharp black eyes bored into me and without a word she used all her puny force to bang my head against the clothes hooks.

I was taken by surprise. Suddenly she stopped as abruptly as she began and fled. She never spoke to me again. It was a short, sharp lesson of human jealousy. If I had learned all my lessons so quickly I would have been a walking encyclopedia.

Bella and I remained friends until she left at sixteen to go to Art School. I was always welcome to tea whenever I liked. She was an only child. The house was always neat and clean. Her mother was constantly knitting clothes for her. She was a good cook and I could practice my French with her.

We met every Saturday to play tennis. I was never any good at sports, but tennis attracted me. I lost most of the time but that was one of the prices I paid for the friendship.

We all create a mask for ourselves which gives us the opportunity to hide from other people our dark side. The thicker the mask the more we hide our true selves from the world. The more content we are with ourselves, for better or for worse , the less we worry about what others think of us and the more we reveal our natural identity. When this happens we make deeper and more lasting relationships.

There is nothing like having an opponent who is good enough to win to bring out anger, hatred , envy, fear of failure and tantrums, such as flinging down the racquet after making a mistake. I never played well enough to beat Bella.

I have always been very competitive in the things I do best. As I grew older and realised just how good I could be in academic subjects I gradually discovered that I was my own best friend and my worst enemy. Now, I trust myself enough to recognise the value of my own work, whatever other people might think.

The secret is to learn new things from others only when they fit in with our particular way of creating. My friendship with Bella lasted for four years then we went our own separate ways doing very different things.

Categories
Autobiography Teens

The Joy Of Learning

I turned up for my first day at grammar school in my brand new uniform. The colours were navy blue and light blue. The hat had a Russian look: a round cap with a tassel on the left resting on my shoulder.

The class years were divided into A, B and C. I was put into B. My teacher, Miss Hughes, was sallow and looked tired. Everything she did and said was laconic.

First she took the register. She not only asked for our names but also what sort of work our fathers did. My magic camera was ready poised to inform me why this was necessary. I soon found out. She made no responses to most of us but I remember three in particular. The first was “Oh you are the doctor’s little girl” . The second was to me “Ah you are an evacuee and your father is a Civil Servant” and then she passed over very quickly the child who said her parents ran a fish and chip shop. The tone of voice said everything. This was my first encounter with social snobbery. I realised also that there was some status accorded to the Civil Service about which I knew nothing except that we had very little money. At that stage in my life I was beginning to understand that the reason we were poor was because my Mother could not manage money.

Miss Hughes then distributed books to us all. I was amazed at the great pile placed on my desk, and they were all brand new including a water-colour paintbox. And all for me! I loved painting and looked forward eagerly to get going. We also had exercise books of different kinds. I couldn’t wait to start my lessons. We had rough-note books to put down our ideas and homework books for keeping track of what we were doing at home. We were told to write only with fountain pens and to be very careful not to spill ink into our desks.

After all the dreary stuff in primary school I could now get down to brass tacks: real learning: geometry, algebra, Latin, French and English grammar. I looked forward to homework and often did more than I was asked to do.

Miss Hughes did not comment on my being an evacuee. At that time I was probably the only one. Soon after, more arrived and when there was enough of us, we were put into an additional Class 1 X. I soon knew from my maths lesson that X is an unknown quantity and indeed we were. I was only in that class for less than two years. At that time most people believed the war would soon be over and we foreigners would return to where we came from. Of course this would not happen. I was at last in a group I could get on with. We were all outsiders. The most outsider of all was Rosalind Keil who was Jewish and had come to England from Germany some time ago with her sister but without their parents. She must have learned English long before because she had no foreign accent.

Rosalind and I shared a common love of writing stories. Together we produced a class magazine. Rosalind wrote a never-ending story where every instalment left the hero (or heroine) in dire straits. I wrote bits and pieces including advice on make-up. Everyone in our class read this work and waited eagerly to get the next one. There was a sense of camaraderie in that group that I had never experienced before.

Categories
Autobiography Early Years

Finding My Way

Father loved the sea. He had got used to taking long walks along the promenade before we arrived. Now we went with him. To the north there was an area laid out with fake rocks that linked the lower with the top promenade. We loved clambering about there leaping from rock to rock to see how far we could jump. Nearby there was a flower bed laid out like a clock.

If we walked in the other direction we would pass first the North Pier and the Central Pier and finally the South Pier.

This part was called The Golden Mile. All the entertainments were artificial, quite the opposite from Rayleigh where I always felt bathed in nature. Whilst at first I was fascinated by the variety of side-shows, shops and mechanical games I soon tired of them and greatly missed feeling close to natural landscapes.

In September I began my first term at The Collegiate School for Girls. This was a comparably new school which celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary when I was in the sixth form. It did not last much longer after I left.

Twenty years after I took up my first teaching job in a new comprehensive school. A few years later the place was closed and converted into a business centre. Did some of my contempt for my experiences of our educational system cause these schools to whither and die?

Looking back I have much to be grateful for although I was far from happy there. As in most schools there were only a few inspired teachers. But they made a strong impression on me in my favourite subjects, languages and mathematics. There was always a sharp division between teachers and children. Games and PT I abhored and went out of my way to avoid as much as possible. I was incredibly inventive in escaping them most of the time. Mother helped by writing me spurious notes.

Much later I spent only five years teaching in two schools, the second a girls’ grammar school, for one reason only. I had just returned from eight years in Venezuela with my two small sons and I badly needed to do some useful work apart from taking care of my children. As a university graduate with an honours degree I was equipped to teach and it was the only kind of work I could do where I could spend time with my boys during evenings, week-ends and school holidays.

Very few schools taught Spanish, which was my academic subject. All schools seemed to have difficulty in finding maths teachers. I had received a distinction for maths in my school certificate and I loved the subject. I was taken on. In my first school I had a wonderful head of department who was a good teacher and a kind man. The headmaster and deputy head were hopeless. The children had no respect for them. They had no idea how to maintain discipline but my boss was very good at it. The worst class consisted of fifteen year old boys who did not want to be there at all. Apart from that class I didn’t do too badly. In fact I found that I enjoyed giving individual help to children who had fallen behind and couldn’t catch up.

Those years as a teacher were useful to me but I soon knew that I must find something to do for myself. Since I have always been a rebel I knew that whatever I did I must be in control of my own work. I didn’t like working in groups, I was much better on my own. From that time on I have followed the entrepreneurial path and I never looked back.

Categories
Autobiography Early Years

Farewell Paradise

It was my last year in primary school. I was entered for the 11-plus exam and I passed, but instead of going to Southend High School, I went to the Collegiate School in Blackpool. In those days going North was like going to another country. I moved from paradise to somewhere I did not want to be.

The journey by train up to Blackpool seemed to last forever. All I remember about it is the noise of the train and the clouds of steam at every station, with their outlandish names like Crewe and Warrington. Father met us at Blackpool North Station. I remember how pleased I was to see him and he us.

We went straight to his digs and stayed overnight there. The next day we went to our new house where the van was waiting to unload. I was reminded of London, but without the beautiful trees in the streets. There was no sign of nature. Everywhere there were rows of ugly brick houses of the late Edwardian type. There was a very small garden. We had enough room.

Why did we have two front doors? I soon knew why. The climate was very different. The frequent storms were ferocious. Gales would whip up the sea and huge waves would force their way over the protective sea-walls and crash into the houses and hotels on the promenade. Huge glass windows had been known to smash into pieces once this fierce weather got under way. I have never seen so much rain in my life.

The first time this happened when I was returning from school it was as much as I could do to get the front door open. Once inside there was another battle to get it closed. Only then could we open the inner door and shut it again or else the demon wind would hurl itself through the house and cause havoc.

Coming from the South of England where people kept themselves to themselves it was a cultural shock to arrive in the North where everyone seemed to be interested in everyone else. The first intimation of this was the next morning when the milkman walked straight into the house without knocking. Mother, who always dressed downstairs in front of the fire, let out a cry that brought us running as she hastily tried to make herself what she called ‘decent’

“Just come to say welcome to your new home. How much milk do you want?” Mother recovered quickly and responded with one of her ‘Lady-of-the-Manor’ smiles.

“First pint to new customers free” he replied, thus endearing him to her forever. Neighbours followed suit and came to see us with cries of “You there love?” Mother had never been called love before. Where we came from the most daring of bus-conductors and shop-keepers might use the term “ducks” but “madam” was customary.

The natives had trouble understanding us. How odd! We were the ones who spoke “proper English” or so we thought. They didn’t agree. They called it “cockney”

Mary and I were at first not allowed to take part in school plays because of the way we spoke. However all that died away when Blackpool was overwhelmed by more evacuees and British and foreign members of the armed forces who soon began to pour in for their training.

Categories
Autobiography Early Years

Signs Of War

Signs of War by Catherine PainOur lives changed overnight. Everyone bought evil-smelling black-out material to make curtains for all the windows to blot out the light at night. Gas-masks were issued to everyone including babies. They had a special kind with Mickey Mouse faces. I didn’t think they would mean much to babies once their heads were inside them. The masks were issued in cardboard boxes attached to string so they could be carried over the shoulder. I hated their rubbery smell and felt claustrophobic when I put mine on. Great was the fear of poisonous gas which was first used at the end of World War One. Happily they were never needed. For a while everyone carried them everywhere, then they just faded away. My cardboard carrier came in useful once or twice when I was travel-sick on buses.

Father was a civil servant in The Customs and Excise Department. His offices were in London. The greatest effect on our family was his evacuation to Blackpool. He lived in digs for a while but in June, 1940 we joined him there. He accepted this departure with some reluctance. This pleased me because I felt reassured that he really cared about us. The immediate effect of his going was that of a thundercloud lifting. We had Mother to ourselves and we felt free. We laughed and made merry and did silly things without Father’s inhibiting presence.

He faithfully wrote individual letters to all three of us children with special pencil drawings at the end. This was a different Father from the one I knew. Distance lends enchantment to the view. I realised how true this proverb was. His fundamental care for us shone through leading to a more open interest in what we were doing. I answered all his letters and enjoyed this new way of communicating with a difficult parent.

I have noticed throughout my life that those who have suffered in childhood from a lack of love and attention find it difficult to express their deepest feelings to the people they love most. It is much easier to open up from a distance. Words are cheap. A mistaken belief is that women in particular want to be told they are loved. What people say and what they do are two different things. We all need to focus on deeds, not words. Most people seem to be unable to do both at the same time.

Father came home for Christmas . We were pleased to see him. It was then he began to read Dickens to us starting with “The Christmas Carol”. Because the stay was short we were unable to get back to our old patterns of family behaviour.

This was the time of the Phoney War when we were blinded by false hopes that nothing much had happened so it would all soon be over. Little did we realise how bad things would get. Yet we should have known, because the Civil Service sent all the families of their evacuees to live in Blackpool too.

I was about to lose my paradise in the country for good and to begin one of the worst periods in my life. Not because I had been badly treated, far from it. The physical and emotional difficulties in adolescence together with my hyper-sensitivity to the sufferings of so many innocent people, killed off all traces of religious belief once and for good. The saving graces for me were my love of learning, my constant thoughts and efforts to understand why human beings could behave so badly and above all else the healing power of classical music, especially Beethoven and Schumann. Somewhere, somehow there were invisible powers for good. It took me a long time to understand that this power was already there inside me and that we have to understand that there will always be forces of good and evil and that they exist in all of us. I prefer to call them negative and positive. As many of our greatest men, especially C.G. Jung, Spinoza and Erich Fromm have told us, we must experience both sides of everything and understand them if we want to make the most of life. It is no good trying to be good nor trying to be evil. Take either of these too far and they will turn into their opposite.