An older mum when I was born I missed her most productive years when she was a British version of the American musical dream, creating Fame long before it arrived here. With a huge dancing school producing pupils and row upon row of smiling perfect girls in sailor style bows and frills. She enthralled proud mums and promised a new future for their would be Ginger Rodgers and budding Fred Astaire's . Becoming affluent and savvy and full of promise in her late teens by her early twenties she had become disillusioned and craved the pull of the stage.
We skipped along the wooded edge of the field and into "The Skitters" our private woodland playground as it seemed, following my leader , my leader, my leader, following my leader everywhere we go. The tune plays today in my head and I see her flowing auburn hair and hear her laughter dancing in the wind.
She loved Peter Pan and just like a pied piper all the local children followed our trail, raising an arm, or bobbing down or jumping over an unseen obstacle. I'm sure we were viewed as an oddity among the rest of the small town where grown ups were just that whilst we lived in a whimsical, fantasy land full of whatever we wanted to create, songs and dances, pictures and dens or poetry anything was possible.
A puppet like four year old with part of the bed sheets tied in my hair and vermilion dots in my eyes I was pulled along bus, train and taxi "stop here!" we pulled in outside a row of brightly coloured shops with large dummies, lollies and bright toys. I sat in the back as the intrigued driver watched with a bemused look on his face (not his usual cab ride I would have bet) and then she swooshed in with a flat plastic bag and tuts of "It will have to do". It was only as I was placed central to a room full of people that the contents of the package became apparent and I looked in horror at the largest plastic blow up dog I had ever seen and at least twice my size which sat foreboding in the bottom right hand of the stage. With diligence I duly performed "How much is that doggy in the window" falling over trying to pick the prop up won the day, I cant remember getting home just mum being happy, me losing all my medals and being surrounded in a whirl of characters that had come to life from the pages of the night time tales mum read to me.
And so we floated in protective bubbles keeping out the drab grey everyday existence in a glossy, grease painted make believe world which wasn't to last.
