Beginning with an echo from the past.

Do you ever wonder who you are?...show of hands?...yep we all do.

When I was a small child I has a fixation with houses. I would make imaginary houses in the garden out of bricks and rocks, just the one layer ,of course, to map out my palace and in my house would be all the things I loved. Dolls, teddies, my favourite sandals (actually my only pair of shoes) half a plastic tea set and maybe the odd biscuit. In my play house I was the law, I made the rules and keeping it spic and span with my imaginary broom was an obsession. I can remember my house being invaded one sunny afternoon by my younger brother and a bucket of worms. 'They're dirty' I screamed and I pushed him away. This brought my mother scuttling from the kitchen to shout at us both in her annoyance. She returned to the kitchen after threatening to beat us with a stick and was even more annoyed to find the said worms sloshing about in the bottom of the sink with the washing up!!! My brother always lived on the edge and still does.

I cannot remember if we did indeed take a beating for that but we did take many in our childhood all with an assortment of implements. My mother had an electric airer for the clothes. For some strange reason it was called a 'flatly'. It was a tall metal box with a flat metal lid, about the size of a refrigerator. Inside were several slim wooden poles in which one draped damp washing. The gadget was then plugged in and as it warmed up it aired the clothes. The sticks, or 'flatly sticks' as we called them could be removed and it was these my mother used as her primary weapon of assault on our behinds. Next came the softer but no less deadly slipper. An old one discarded by my father. I still scorn his large feet as their size contributed to the surface area of the leather used to sting the backs of our legs. To be fair, along with punishment came a fairly efficient and well organised childhood. We were well fed and despite my mother's exhaustion and 'bad nerves' there was a fair smattering of love to be had albeit weighted heavily to the oldest child.

My father was a product of the times. He was, and still is a man's man. Hardworking, laddish in his youth and tough. Both my parents suffered from what I liked to call 'sixty's syndrome'. We lived in South East London in the mid 1960's and times were extremely hard. My father was a drinker and used to beat my mother and I guess that's why she used to beat us. I can remember being stood outside the pub with my brother and sister. We were given a glass bottle of coke and a straw and sometimes a packet of crisps and there we stayed until after dark. My mother actually realised this wasn't good for us and so my father went to the pub alone.

Money was tight, we lived in rooms and I can just about remember how dire it truly was. There was always someone shouting or crying or being told off or hit in our house. We were forbidden to speak at mealtimes as my father ate. If any word was uttered, he would pretend that he were choking on some imaginary morsel and we would be terrified. As I got older, it occurred to me that sometimes I wished he actually had of choked to death. Not a view I feel now as he is just a harmless old man, but back then things were very different.

My imaginary houses gave me a sanctuary when I was a child. They were places of safety even though the walls were barely 3 inches high. Sometimes a couple of chairs and a table cloth provided a shelter or a quiet corner with a few cans of soup and the side of the garden wheelbarrow. I swear that when I stepped inside their invisible walls I could hear nothing but peace. Order and safety were restored.

I have always been insular. I left home at 17 and a half, married young and had two children of my own. I stayed in an unhappy marriage for almost 18 years before I decided to quit. Yes I married someone like my father. A drinker and mans man, liar and cheat as it turned out...worse than my father in fact...

And now the children have gone I live alone, except my house is now a real house with solid walls in a quiet unassuming suburban street. Its neat and peaceful and I have become a grown up version of that little frightened girl, hiding out and pretending that the rest of the world doesn't exist. Sometimes it is as if everything that happened to me actually happened to someone else. I was just the voyeur of my own life. How strange that is to know. Our childhood shapes us and makes us who we are. I am still not sure if I like myself but I guess that's all there is.