RED SHOES
Coming downstairs just now I was struck by Charlotte’s, bright red Doc Martin boots that she had just taken off after we got back from Monty’s farm, with its bouncy pillows, go carts and assorted animals. It was one of those rare adventures when all four of us could be together because Dash the dog was being looked after by someone else.
I wandered around the farm, still sleepy from a busy week and mainly remember Wendy’s shrieks when my bouncing besides her made her fall over on the bouncy pillow, or Charlotte, drawing busily at the picnic table while Wendy and James giggled at the wee boy who, each time his mum wasn’t looking, attacked his wee brother and then looked good as gold when the mums looked up from their conversation. Or maybe the children poking leaves through the chicken coop to giggle at the pecks they got, possibly the memory of them calling on Thelma and Louise, the two apparently ultra- friendly, pigs who were fast asleep on the straw of their pen.
Charlotte is a Doc Martin girl though I am not quite sure how I would describe one; long, thin, pretty, artistic, quite into style but also very much not. Dismayed by make up, or nail polish. Maybe not a Doc Martin stereoptype as she is determined to remain a young girl for as long as she can, still cuddling her fluffy toys and her mum, still watching Disney films, still finding boys yucky; especially her brother. Much more likely to climb in trees than sit with a phone in a café. But from the vantage of a nearly sixty year old man she does look very cool in those Doc Martin shoes.
It would be nearly forty five years ago that I came across Doc Martins. A shy, quiet fifteen year old who had just encountered the wonder of punk music. I was a very, very, bad punk. It didn’t help that I lived in a boarding school at the time and that I was too embarrassed to say the names of bands like the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks or the Slits and hoped never to be invited or have the means to go to a gig. The thought of being spat on horrified me, the thought of pogoing mortified me.
In boarding school we had to wear uniform and get up at the sound of a bell, go to bed at the sound of a bell and change classrooms through the day at the sound of a bell. Our days were regimented from dawn to dusk, most evenings were occupied doing what we called prep. But I do remember free time looking at magazines for punk accessories; which my friends bought and I never thought of buying. The black Doc Martins some of them got did appeal though. They just managed to slip under our dress code.
For some inexplicable reason I was the second person in the school to get a punk hair cut. We improvised. A group of pale teenagers gathered in the hall hacking chunks out of my hair; never quite happy until I had what seemed almost like a skin head cut, which we were fairly sure we didn’t want. I became a slightly bemused tourist attraction after that.
I remember a couple of nights later, one of the other boys burst into our dormitory sending out sheets of flame from his deodorant can that he lit with a lighter, while waving a razor blade in the air; shouting that we had
“No fucking idea about punk.”
He was right, I didn’t. but I loved the music. There was something that grabbed me inside when I heard it, filled me with a wild excitement. But I was more like Charlotte than an anarchist. I was happiest walking the river side alone when we had breaks in class or time off on the weekends, or if not that, reading books alone. I found it easier to be polite and quiet and sometimes almost kind than to swear and smash things. Though when I turned sixteen and was legally allowed to smoke, I did join the others in the trees down the road to smoke cigarettes, with one of us always keeping an eye out for the teachers who, if they caught us, would have us suspended and I did find myself slumped at my desk after Sunday afternoons drinking cider and martini in a field on the hill opposite the school.
I have written elsewhere about some of the horrendousness of that school, but now I think of it, for a short time, before I was taken away from it, I had some wonderful friends. We were as innocent as most children are, despite what happened there and the culture that permeated it. We still found eating sweets exciting and still got sent for runs in the chill winter wind and some of us still crept off of the rugby pitch at the top of the hill to hide in the tall grass when the sleet got too cold to bare. We craved our Mummies and Daddies and we treated the music we liked much like we would have done stamp collecting.
We were just at the cusp of growing up, just growing into our bodies, just growing into life.
When I left the school I still had my very short hair cut and remember my surprise and upset when some older boys gave me a fascist salute in the streets of Brighton, not understanding that skin heads were seen as racist; not really understanding what racism was.
I also remember at the new school; Nicole and Rachael enquiring after the swastikas that covered my jotter when they joined me at my desk in the library, where I blushed to be in their company and made confused attempts to say it was outrage at the system. That was when Nicole befriended me and later told me that she and Rachael were Jewish and explained the holocaust and apartheid; introduced me to Ann Frank, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy even, one amazing night, invited me round to dinner at her incredibly vibrant and noisy home.
I was never brave enough to invite her back to my house. In those years we never invited anyone back to our house.
When I say at fifteen and sixteen we were just growing into life I have to admit that that growing took a very long time. At twenty I was still attempting to shave with scissors because I was too shy to ask for razors in a chemist. In my late forties I found out for the first time that I could make friends in my own right and that some people liked me. In my fifties I discovered relationships where arguing is a rarity and kindness a given; where dogs get cuddled and the children are so loved that they have learnt to swear while still remaining fresh and optimistic and delighted with their Doc Martins just because it feels to good to have bright red comfortable shoes that their friends are all a tiny bit jealous of.
(Photo: Charlotte's Doc Martins, Geilstone Gardens, september 2022)
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