So what do you want to know? Um, so I’m uh, 42, I’m married to a 66 year old so he’s 24 years older than me – obviously – and um this is my second marriage and we live in London in a small flat, um, but I grew up in the countryside so I’m missing the countryside a lot. And I trained as an actress and I work as an actress sometimes and my husband is a musician so we’re both freelance – have a freelance life and …yeah, that’s it really. That’s it.
So I grew up in a very small village and it was just a long road basically. Um, and um we had to go to school on the bus, my sister and I – my sister’s 18 months younger – and we went to another village, adjoining village, to school so we had to get the bus every day. So we had amazing childhood in that we could roam free. And make huge mud pies in the fields and go off and pick flowers and just, and we’d go and… there was a particular wood in the spring that was just completely covered in primroses so we used to go and get huge bunches of primroses. The church was a quite central sort of contact for us – we went to choirs in the school village and my local village and I used to bell ring and play the church organ and um…so that was quite a centre point, We also had a village hall where we had you know, flower shows and barn dances and harvest festival and, um, fancy dress balls and things like that. Um we used to go on holiday to Devon camping, so it was all very sort of country oriented.
My grandparents on my mother’s side lived in the local town and um I had a particularly close relationship with my grandmother – not so much with my grandfather. But great memories of going to stay overnight with my granny and lying in bed with her and playing a game where her back would be turned to me and I’d be writing on her back and she’d have to guess what the word was. And um, she was just lovely, just a lovely lady. And so yeah, so children’s parties – we used to have children’s parties and parties at my granny’s and trifle and also my granny’s sister, Auntie Ivy, she lived probably around 15 miles away and we used to go and see her a lot and she had a stream running at the bottom of her garden, and she used to be mad on flowers and she used to have amazing flower displays outside her cottage, and we used to go fishing up the spring just at the back of her garden. And she used to love kids and she didn’t have kids of her own she had an adopted son but she used to love kids and she was quite eccentric and wacky. And we’d have marmite and crisp sandwiches with triangle, you know those triangle cheeses? Dairy Lee cheeses – we used to have sandwiches and she always used to have special plates for us and special tiny knives with different coloured handles and things, yeah. She also had a house, that the back of the house was like one storey– so the land was built up at the back and we used to play a game where we used to run up her stairs, jump out of the window at the back, run around into her backyard, and then come into the front door again. And one day I um, I got my lip caught over the washing line in the backyard (laughs) – so I was like hanging. And I used to be very accident prone, and so I’d jump out of trees and my teeth would be embedded in my knees and things like that. I was just very awkward – very tall and slim and gangly and not very aware of my body. I was very very skinny, and tall – very long thin legs. I was very musical, so I always used to play in lots of bands and orchestras and sing in lots of choirs – yeah so quite idyllic really.
My parents were together throughout that time. Um there’s a couple of instances where my – they must have had big arguments and I remember crying desperately that my dad wouldn’t leave. They did used to argue quite a lot. My dad’s sort of quite quiet – he’s from Belfast originally and he’s quite quiet until he’s sort of really pushed and then he just blows up. My mum is quite an angry lady as well so that was quite hard, yeah quite volatile, and um yeah, sort of quite violent at times, yeah. They’re both still living – they were quite young when they had us so my mum’s just 64 – something like that and my dad’s 65 and they’re still married, yeah.
I think living in a village, you know, obviously animals around, cows calving in the front fields, so we always sort of knew that side of things, bulls in the field and that sort of thing. I don’t think my parents had sex very often to be honest, I don’t think I ever heard them have sex and we had bedrooms very very close and we always used to have the doors open and there was a landing so yeah (laughing) I imagine they only had sex a couple of times in their lives – but maybe that’s me not really wanting to imagine that… but my mum was always a bit strange about male anatomy and I never saw my dad in the nude, ever. I saw my mum but never my dad. I think my sister might have done because my sister was slightly more pushy than I was in terms of sort of like going into the bathroom. But I never, don’t think I ever, saw my dad. And my mum was always sort of a bit weird about it, she didn’t really like to talk about it – or she’d talk and it’d be giggling or laughing at the male anatomy – something like that you know. So that’s obviously had an effect. And then when I was about to get my periods and my mum shoved me into the front room with a book that I think she’d probably read as well, you know like a leaflet that probably came from some medical centre or something, and shoved me in and said “well, that’s what it’s all about” and I read this book (laughs) and that was about it. No discussion, not really, although if my sister was asleep I would creep downstairs and watch things like The Duchess of Duke Street or, and there was sort of like, um, I think she was a king’s mistress, and um, and Poldark, and they were sort of – well Poldark was a bit of a bodice ripper, you know. And so I think that’s where my education came from. And I used to read a lot um and read quite advanced books for my age so I think again probably my education came from that. And I used to have fantasies about doctors, being treated by doctors and the doctors falling in love with me (laughs). So very much a feeling of wanting to be…I suppose dominated is a bit strong a word but, having a strong man, yeah, and I think I probably read Mills and Boone and historical novels like Jean Plady and things like that you know, and so that’s where it came from. And then obviously at school and… Ok, school? Yeah…
Um, I think I was always quite a flirtatious person, even in primary school. And I used to get on very well with boys rather than girls – I used to have much closer friendships with boys. But there was always a bit of a violence thing, a bit of a sort of dominating thing going on with boys like hitting them with rulers and things (laughs). And um school, we had a caretaker and we used to creep into the boiler room sometimes and under his seat, his cushions, he had lots of porn magazines and we used to get them out. At school, yeah (laughs) yeah. That’s quite bad isn’t it, really? I mean you know, in this day and age you sort of think oh my God he would have got sacked for something like that now. I just remember the boiler room really smelling of central heating, the oil smell of central heating and then these magazines we used to get out and laugh at and put back quickly in case he came back.
Um, so, school…I can’t remember having a boyfriend when I was at primary school, um but secondary school…because I was so thin and skinny I wasn’t really, I wouldn’t say that anybody really fancied me until quite, quite far into secondary school. Although there were a few bits and pieces I think. But sort of speaking to people now, people were saying they were really besotted with me. Like I just got in contact with an old school friend and he said oh I just though you were absolutely gorgeous, so I don’t know… It only really – only really when I got to 6th form and I thought it was so amazing. A guy who had had to come back into 6th form to retake his A levels – so he was upper upper 6th and I was lower 6th, and he had a beard. And we started going out and you know, on a Friday night we’d go out to the pub, do the pub-crawl. So me and another couple and this guy, and I just thought, it was just so cool to be going out with this guy. And that’s when we started to sort of explore, I suppose physically, a lot of kissing – a lot of fumbling in the back of cars. Oh there was another guy in the village who used to take me out a bit, um, and sort of a bit of fumbling under the conker tree down the road. Which I was really really upset about – about the tree not about the fumbling – because this conker tree, we used to go to the pub and on the way back from the pub there’d be a bit of fumbling an kissing under this conker tree. And um, I had a dream about this tree about a year or so ago, and I went back to the village to see my parents and the tree had been cut down, just after I’d had this dream about it. Incredible. It’s like this tree had cried out to me – it didn’t want to be cut down. Anyway and yeah, so that was sort of lower 6th form up to that point.
I don’t’ know if I even thought of my virginity as virginity, or um, I remember with this guy in the 6th form we got very very close to having sex, to the point where we were naked in bed. And then I think his parents came back actually, which is a good thing because we had no protection whatsoever and, but his parents came back or something happened. I think at one point I said what if I get pregnant, what if I get pregnant? And that was it with this guy. About this time I know that I felt I was really ready. I was ready to have sex definitely. Um it was like; yeah it was a physical need to experience it and to share that with somebody else. It was about my emancipation. My mum was really difficult at this time and uh, when I’d be going out with Jeremy, at the last minute she’d change her mind. I get all dressed up and then he’d arrive at the door and at the last minute she wouldn’t let me go out. So I think it was all connected with that – almost like ARGGGH! Yeah, yeah. So I didn’t think of it as ‘my virginity’ or something to be given away it just felt it was the right time. And also I was 17.
So it was about the same time, and I think Jeremy had gone off to university and his parents I think were going through a difficult time, and um, so we didn’t really – after he went to university he didn’t really contact me or, you know, it just sort of fell apart – fizzled out. I was doing English at school, English, History, and Music and um we had a fantastic English teacher, he was incredibly inspiring, quite intense, quite…um there were stories about him in school of throwing kids out of his class, you know, literally physically throwing them out. So he had this aura about him of being quite strong and, but he was also obviously really great with kids. You know, he loved teaching and he was one of, I suppose, a fresh group of young teachers within the school – although he’d been at the school a long time. He happened to be my tutor when I was 13 at school and um so I’d known him, had a teacher student relationship with him for quite a long time. And I got to 6th form, we were doing DH Lawrence – oh God – his autobiographical one – Sons and Lovers, we were also doing, what Shakespeare did we do? I think we were supposed to be doing Anthony and Cleopatra. And we also did TS Elliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. And we went to Nottingham, a few of us, about three of us, to set up a trip for the rest of the school to go, and so we’d go…I think it was all girls in our class, and we’d gone and stayed over night in a hotel in Nottingham and we’d done the whole trip around Nottingham and Eastward. And then another trip when me and another two girls had gone to Canterbury to organise a trip. And, um, in the mean time he’d started to have a relationship with one of the girls in our class, Mary, and I was sort of friendly with her and another girl Amanda in my village, although it was friendly, you know, you fall out and you… and over the summer between lower 6th and upper 6th, over that summer I found out from Amanda that Mary had been having a relationship with Martin, the teacher. And I think Amanda thought I knew, but I hadn’t known, and I was really really shocked, but it also set my mind thinking about, oh well if she can do it, so can I. And I had to go to his office for some reason and um, I can’t remember exactly but I think he started to talk about Mary and I started to cry that he’d been treated so badly by her.
And then there was a poetry evening, we used to have poetry evenings in the library, and he’d started to write poems with the names of girls down, you know, so the title letter of, you know, was a line of the poem. And there was a Mary poem and something else. God, he was taking such a risk, you know? And then we went on this trip, and he started saying things in the car like ‘Oh those poplar trees remind me of you because they’re tall and slim’. And then it transpired that the other two girls, I don’t know whether this was deliberate or not, but the other two girls were dropped off before me. And I went back to his house. And it was really, it must have been really late, I don’t know how late it was but it felt really late. And he read me a poem that he’d written about me. Um, which was:
‘Grasping your hand would be delicate,
It’s as fine as a rainbow and its rain.
Nuances of feeling could not fail to be transmitted
Naked and vulnerable, exquisite to enchantment,
Ignorant of your own beauty,
Easing my heart with your tears glow.*
Something like that anyway. And he read me this poem in his study in his house and I think at one point I just said ‘Make love to me’. And he did, and that was it. And I’m really glad that it was somebody like him that knew what he was doing so that it was a pleasurable experience. Yeah it was pleasurable, incredibly so, and intense and amazing. It was just amazing. And um so I am really grateful that it was somebody like him. If I think back now to a 17 year old and a 30 year old – if I think of people that I’ve worked with who are 30 in a school and they have made comments like ‘God, some of these 6th formers are so gorgeous’ and I see that you know, 17 year old/30 year old I think it’s just – it’s not on, it’s just not on. And I can see how my mother would’ve been very upset, was very upset when she found out. She did find out yeah.
So we had a relationship for a while. I don’t know how long it was. It was probably like from I don’t know, I don’t quite know how the events happened, but maybe when I went back to upper 6th that’s when it started and then by the autumn, we’d been seeing each other but by the autumn it had all come out. Either Mary, the other girl found out, or her mother, or Mary found out about it – but then all hell broke loose. We had a very strong Catholic headmaster and a very religious deputy head teacher and for some reason it all got into the papers as well, into the national newspapers. It could only have been like three people, from what they knew in the papers, it could have been Mary or her mother, it could have been the headmaster or it could have been Martin himself. Now I don’t think he would choose to do that. So I was, uhhh, I think Mary was interviewed, I was hauled out of class to be interviewed by the deputy headmistress who gave me a really hard time and I wouldn’t say anything to her. I made up all these stories about how he was helping me through some health problem or something, um as I was hauled out of the history class I was in, the history teacher said to me – sort of knew what had been going on and said to me basically there but for the grace of God go I, so he…I subsequently found out that he, you know, was doing similar things with girls at the school.
Um, then I was interviewed, I think I was interviewed by the deputy and the headmaster and I think because I wouldn’t talk to them I was expelled, or thrown out of school. I phoned my vicar and said, ‘oh please pray for me, please pray for me’ in a very melodramatic way, and then found out, like a year or so later, that he was also, you know, had designs on me as well. It was just like, Oh God!
So my mum found out about it when two Sun newspaper reporters in macs, with cameras around their necks, you know, archetypal, knocked on the door and said we’d like to talk to your daughter about an affair she’s having with her English teacher. And I had to say, “Mum, I’ve got something to tell you.” And my sister delivered the papers in the village, as you know I come from a tiny village, so it was on the front page of the Sun, and probably the Daily Mail and my sister had to deliver the papers – we didn’t get any sleep that night, my sister had to deliver the papers the next morning with this story about her sister on the front page. And for a while we denied it and said that Mary had created this fuss and I think it became obvious to my parents that it was all a big lie. Martin had to resign and he disappeared to London, and I was left to go to school the next day. He was head of 5th year and because he was such a great teacher they all loved him. So they thought that I was the reason that he’d got expelled so when I went in to school I was like, you know, I was the worst thing ever. Um and you know, obviously the teacher’s ... AAAARGGH! It was just awful! Reporters camped out in our local town and used to try to get the waitresses who were all 6th formers to talk about the whole thing. He went to London and I went back to school, and it was just… And because Anthony and Cleopatra was deemed too be too sexually explicit and romantic or whatever we had to do, what did we have to do? Winter’s Tale – where the husband basically gets, where his wife’s executed or something because of her infidelity (laughs)– I don’t know – anyway…
So we did still see each other after he moved to London. And he had to go to the Ministry of Education and he got the best of three options which was - he got a severe warning never to do it again but he could go straight back to teaching - which he chose not to do. Um, but he went and did youth work for a while and then eventually, you know, he’s gone back into teaching. He’s a teacher now again.
And for at least a couple of years we were together. Yeah. But it was very tempestuous, um and yeah, and sexually it was… in fact I was very mixed up, obviously, and there were other people involved and it just became a horrible mess. A horrible mess. With me as much to blame, well probably more to blame – not blame but you know, responsible. And my mum even now just cannot. I wouldn’t be able to mention this guy’s name in her house. And sort of 17 years on she was still going on about how I’d ruined her life.
(Long pause) They still live in the same village and… sorry (breaks off crying)
I don’t know whether it’s still legendary in the village, but I think for my mum it certainly is.
I think he came and spoke to my parents. We sort of tried to do this thing where the relationship had developed after this had all come out, you know, uh. So, but then I did do my A levels and I managed to pass English (laughs) amazingly enough. And I spent about a year after with him, after 6th form with him and we lived together in another town where he was working, which I don’t think he was very keen about. I think I did have my own place but you know, I was sort of clinging, you know, I suppose I was clinging to him. And then I ended up going to – no – then I had another relationship with somebody that…oh yeah, during this time we joined an amateur dramatic society, he and I, and I had a relationship with another older guy, um who had two kids. And there was real rivalry between Martin and this other guy and uh, you know, and that sort of broke it up. Yeah. And then I ended up, yeah, and then I went to college after that. To drama college.
It’s just my parents, because it’s such a small village and my mum, she had placed all her ambition, her hopes, on me. My sister academically wasn’t as… I think…she was dyslexic but it was never diagnosed and so at school she didn’t do as well as I did, so my mum had placed everything on me. I was up on this pedestal and then when the pedestal was sort of knocked from underneath me because of this, you know, this terrible thing – “terrible” in inverted commas, thing that I’d done – brought disgrace and shame on the family and you know, she couldn’t hold her head up in her community. Um, you know, that was it, you know. And my sister ran away to London as well because of it, because my mum was so caught up with the whole thing that I think my sister felt completely neglected. My sister got into drugs and alcohol and ended up, yeah, in London in quite a desperate situation for a while. And um, yeah. So, although it was a great first experience of sex, the repercussions of it are immense, huge.
Because I had such a great first experience, I suppose I’ve always felt fairly free, fairly free about sex since. Um, and yet I’ve ended up with a significantly older man, you know, there’s obviously a father thing going on there. You know, always looking to men to sort of be dominated in a way or, looked after or…yeah, yeah. But also seeing sex as quite a powerful thing. Um, something that I can control with. And um…which is not necessarily healthy. Yeah.
And then I went to Drama College and I met Richard who was one of my tutors (laughs) but very close to my age, but again in a position of authority, a position of power. And I knew it wasn’t right, and I knew I used my, I used my sexuality or my feminine wiles, or whatever you like to call it - I knew I used that to trap him or to have a relationship with him. And um we got married quite soon after we met and I think it was partly to do with wanting to be legitimate and wanting my parents to get off my back. To do something that was supposedly a normal, respectable thing to do. But it didn’t last very long at all. I had an affair quite soon after we got married. And he found out very easily so I was obviously wanting him to find out. I had an affair with somebody I think was possibly younger than me. And we had a very joyful sort of fun time together.
And uh, yeah so from there I moved in with a gay guy and just went out on the town and went to lots of gay clubs and you know had a sort of normal time for a bit. Just going out and clubbing and yeah…and then I met David – so I was about 26 when I met David. And uh, I was doing some backing singing and he was in a band. And I thought, he looks nice, I’d like to get to know him. Yeah, so, that was that. We were together a couple of years before we got married, yeah, about three years – 2 and a half years.
My relationship with my parents was never the same after the Sun knocked on the door, I mean it was never very…it was never a very easy relationship anyway, particularly with my mother, but it’s never really been the same since. We were, you know, close in terms of we did lots of things together but it wasn’t a good relationship really anyway so…
They are accepting of David – ish I think. I mean he’s older than my father actually, a couple of years…a year older than my father. But he’s, because he’s got such a different outlook he’s got a very youthful spirit and because of the work he does, you know, he’s much more street wise and he seems like completely a different age anyway, so, yeah.
And I still see Martin, yeah. And he’s having a baby in May, at the age of, so he’s 13 years older than me, so he’s 55 and he’s just having his first baby in May. He’s not married, no. He’s had a string of relationships that he falls in love and they leave, and he falls in love and they leave, and recently he had one that was, he sort of had a nervous breakdown over. But I just heard out of the blue that he’s now with a woman called Eleanor and they’re having a baby in May. I did say to him, you know, despite everything that happened you know, I was really pleased that he was the first one, that it was a good experience.
I don’t think I would change it if I could – I wouldn’t want all the other stuff that went with it but I wouldn’t change it – no because I was ready – I was ready. I was ready to have sex with someone.
How would I advise my own kids if I had them? Oh God (Begins to cry) I don’t know. I don’t know why that upsets me. I don’t know. I suppose cause it’s such a precious thing. That I would hope that it would be the right time, and the person, and it would be the best way possible. That they were in control of the situation. I have a friend whose mum got pregnant when she was 13. It’s a guy; he’s the child of that pregnancy. And you know before this recording we talked about sex education. It is about relationships too. Is there a right age? God it’s so hard isn’t it because it’s such an animal act as well and it’s so instinctive and yet we have all this knowledge and wisdom, or not, as well. Plus all the added things about sexually transmitted diseases– all this other stuff that is, you know, not about the beauty of it. Oh… I just…when somebody knows and they’re in control, I suppose. Yeah.
I do wonder how it would have been if I had gone all the way with Jeremy, you know, that had happened, and we’d done the normal thing like he’d gone to University and I’d go and visit him or, you know, cause I sometimes do wish I’d had the normal thing. Normal. Whatever normal is. I remember somebody that I worked with once said that his mum was really great with them and she talked about sex and she just said it’s the most fantastic feeling ever if you’re with the right person. I just wish, I sort of wish that my mum had great sexual experiences because I can’t imagine that she has. My grandmother was quite…I think my grandmother actually…her husband had an industrial accident which left him impotent, I think, although I’m not completely sure. So for a lot of their married life she didn’t have sex, but she had a very jealous husband. And she worked in a doctor’s surgery – she was beautiful, you know, and very attractive, very smiley, sparkly eyes. She was very attractive to other men and I think my granddad was very jealous. So I don’t think she was actually married to…well she was either… I think they did want to get married but, you know, because of the problems in the relationship, the physical relationship I think she felt very frustrated. And then my mum I don’t think really wanted to marry my father either, so… marry my father? I think it was just, you did it. He was there and that was it. She doesn’t really stand up for what she wants I don’t think. And so uh, yeah. Whew!!!
*The poem has been slightly altered to maintain anonymity.
