Rebel rebel
Thanks to the legend that is Salena Godden for reminding me of my One Track Minds talk in February 2022.
Thanks to David Bowie for giving a voice to the freaks and the misfits.
Here’s a recording of my ramble from back then:
And here’s the text:
You’re about to hear my life story in 10 minutes.
Which is 6.7 years per minute. So I’d better get a move on.
More accurately, it’s the first 20 years.
Just 2 years per minute. Still, better get a move on.
For little Kay, home is above a shop near Hillsborough, Sheffield.
Near the Sheffield Wednesday football ground.
Any Owls supporters in?
If there are any Sheffield United supporters in, best you keep that to yourself.
We share a tarmacked back yard with 3 other families.
I like to climb the wall between our yard and the next where Fraser lives, he’s a bit older than me.
Fraser is the polio kid with calipers on his legs. That polio vaccine came just a year too late for Fraser.
He tries so hard to get up to join me on the wall. I try to help him up.
At home in the attic I play with Matchbox, Corgi, Dinky lorries and diggers
Build Meccano machines and bridges
Set up the Hornby trainset, a new track layout every few days
And put the finishing touches to the stencil on the Airfix plane.
I like boys toys. (Not to be confused with toyboys. That came later.)
Sure, I have dolls, and sometimes I even play with them
I lay them out in an imaginary hospital ward
And inject them with my “polio vaccine” a syringe made from a biro and a darning needle.
(Don’t try this at home).
I like creepy crawlies too. Prefer caterpillars to butterflies. Still do.
I have a pet spider named Tarquinius that I keep in a box so that I can watch how it spins a web.
And, yes, I ate a worm for a dare and then made the darers pay me money to watch me do it again.
For Peter, in my class at Oakwood Collegiate School, home is a very different place.
A semi-detached in the posh suburb of Dore, with front and back gardens and lots of space.
Peter sneaks into his parents’ room, teeters around in his mum’s high heels.
Puts on her lipstick and her jewelry …. hears his dad come home
hastily wipes his face and puts the shoes away
picks up a Matchbox racing car and makes the obligatory “brrrmmm brrrmm” sound
slides down the bannister to say “hello dad” as boisterously as he can.
Peter and I spend a lot of our time together at school.
At playtime sitting on the wall between the girls’ and boys’ playgrounds
He gazes wistfully at the girls as they skip and play hopscotch
I lean towards the boys with their running and wrestling and wish for studded football boots, for shorts and long socks.
(Yes we had separate playgrounds for girls and boys, and, no, the Taliban were not involved).
They call me a TomBoy. They call Peter a NancyBoy
Interesting that I am assigned another gender, while he gets away with just another name…
But somehow my Tomboy label seems less damning, more affectionate than his “Nancyboy”.
Peter and me. On the wall. We’re outsiders, looking in.
Sometimes, not often, a posh girl will invite me to her house
I walk up their garden path and stand at her front door,
not sure how to be, who to be.
Her mummy (who doesn’t work like mine does) opens the door
And I look into the carpeted hallway.
I’m an outsider, looking in.
I’m a tomboy, and I’m common. …from the wrong side of town
And I’m clever. Well, good at exams anyway.
So I get a scholarship to a boarding school down south.
Down south. 1964.
Apparently there’s an “r” in the word “bath” that I never knew was there. But if I don’t say barth, I’m a skinny ribs, tacky tomboy who’s also vulgar and common
It’s not long before the other girls start to grow boobs. Which never happened to me. I’m a flat-chested, skinny ribs, tacky, vulgar, common tomboy
Along comes Twiggy – a glimmer of hope for us skinny girls.
But there’s a couple of important differences between me and Twiggy – she’s on the inside, she’s in the magazines AND she has a pretty face
Whereas I, apparently, look like Robin Gibb.
Not even the handsome one from the Beegees.
Finally, I’ve had enough, and I get myself expelled and find myself in a grammar school back up north.
“What are you going to do for A levels, Kay, art or science?”
Yeah!
“No! Which, you have to choose.”
Why?
“You can’t be both. You have to be one thing or the other.”
So here I am studying Physics (2 girls, 18 boys), Maths, Chemistry (4 girls, 18 boys), Biology 8 girls. Because Biology is girl science.
Flat chested, skinnyribs, vulgar, tacky, common, ugly, tomboy, swot, brainbox. Yeah, nothing but a box with a brain.
And that one thing that I could control, to get me on the inside, that “r” that I put in “bath” and “cup” and “fuck off”. That southern accent now has me all the way outside again.
Looking in. Listening in. Tuning in.
I managed to tag along with the cool kids to the disco at the Marquis of Granby in Bamford,
all lied about our age to get in
the music starts and I hit the dancefloor.
And then I realise I’m the only one moving.
Everyone is looking at me, even the DJ.
Seems I’m supposed to wait for a boy to ask me to dance (without an “r”).
That’s not going to happen to a skinnyribs, flatchested, southern swot who looks like Robin Gibb.
So now I’m a show-off slut too.
And the mean girls dancing in a circle around their handbags, they’re not going to let me in.
1972. The skinnyribs, flatchested, southern, show-off, slut, swot got into uni in London to study Biochemistry (where girl science meets boy science)
I’m off. The outsider is heading out. Expecting to be the outsider again…
But not this time. In London, I’m embraced by the freaks, the queers and the nerds.. The girls with short hair and the boys with long hair.
There’s an art college across the street, and we scientists and the artists are one.
Here, the freaks, the ones who don’t even think about what the insiders are thinking and doing, the outsiders aren’t “outside”, they’re everywhere.
London loves me and I love it back. Still do.
I don’t have to get in a box to be at home in London.
Don’t have to choose who to be or how to be. I can be me.
1974, 48 years ago, on a freezing cold night in February
in a club on the top floor of an abandoned warehouse in the World’s End, when Chelsea was cool,
my face is a mess, I never learned to put on lipstick like Peter did, and I don’t even own a dress.
The 8-bar intro started up.
That night in ‘74 I hit the floor before the first bar was finished.
I stopped waiting to be asked 2 years ago..
No, you may not “have this dance”, this is MY dance
By the time the lyrics start, I’m surrounded by the queers, the gays, the freaks, the tomboys, the nancy boys and the drag queens.
We love dancing and we look divine.
An outsider looking in is forever an outsider.
We’re the outsiders, looking out.
And an outsider looking out, that’s a rebel.
Thank you Mr Bowie for teaching me the difference between an outsider and a rebel
Rest in rebellion, Mr Bowie.
kay scorah. 