reactions

something i read in someone else's blog made me want to write about this.

when i was a kid i lived in a flat. we were on the middle floor of 3. downstairs were a couple call mr and mrs dobby. he was a tailor and had a built up shoe on one side where his leg was a lot shorter. above us was a woman called mummy lucy and her son per who would have been about 15. i used to wander down to the dobby's flat and they would give me bourbon biscuits and white bread and butter. their flat was immaculate, with doilies on the plates and net curtains. mummy lucy's flat was dark and chaotic and not all that clean. she was a big woman with a fruity sort of voice, quite posh for our estate.

at the back was an enclosed garden shared by all the flats. there were rotary clothes lines and dustbins. there were a row of brick sheds. my dad kept his motorbike in ours. alongside the block was a path which led to a gate into the front. this was so the binmen could get in to empty the bins.

the whole garden was overlooked by the flats on two sides. the only bits that were not were the bin room and the path down the side.

one day i was playing on the lawn. i would have been about 6. per from upstairs came and asked me if i would help him with his homework. this sounded important so i said yes. he took me round to the path at the side. he had some plasticine. he said he had to make moulds of things. we started by doing moulds of the bricks on the wall. then we did other things, like keyholes. then he said that his biology homework was to do moulds of bits of bodies. he pulled down my knickers and made several moulds of my fanny in plasticine. i was not very comfortable with this but i didn't like to say so.

at some point my mum called me for tea. when i went up to the flat i told my mum and dad that i had been helping per with his homework. my mum asked about it and i explained about the plasticine and about the biology homework.

my dad jumped up from the table and went red. "i'll kill him!" he shouted. my mum asked me to get some milk from the larder. when i came back into the room my dad was sitting back down. my mum told me she would speak to mummy lucy and explain that per had to do his homework on his own. she said that if he asked me to help again or asked me any other things that were not comfortable i should tell her and she would speak to mummy lucy.

later my mum went upstairs. my dad and i watched telly. when mum came down she said that mummy lucy had been very helpful and that per would do his homework indoors from now on.

at the time this event did not register as anything very major. my dad was always losing his temper. looking back i realise that the way my mum dealt with it taught me an important lesson. if things happened that i didn't like i could tell her and she would make them stop.

i think if my dad had run upstairs and beaten per up it would have horrified me. i would probably never have told anyone about that sort of stuff ever again.