Looking back down the dry and dusty path of my life I am forced, wincingly, to acknowledge the exceptional number of embarrassments I have experienced. The worst are those where I did not appreciate at the time that anything embarrassing was happening. It is into that barrel of pickled limbs I delve tonight.
It is 1971 and we have gathered at my Nan’s house for a Sunday dinner. Once we have eaten the adults move into the kitchen to clean up and chat and my sister and I are deposited onto the big sheepskin rug in front of my grandparent’s television which buzzes and hums with electricty.
We have been buffed and polished to perfection, our hair combed until it has lost all strength and falls limply over our foreheads. Our cheeks are red from being rubbed at desperately with a hankie onto which my mother has very kindly spat. We have each demonstrated our unfailing good manners and discussed our school work in clear voices and with feigned enthusiasm. We have even choked down the vegetables that my grandmother has reduced to watery pellets of pale goo with her new “pressure cooker”. Our parents are thus reassured that we have met the demanding standards that my grandparent have set and my mother is toasting happily in the glow of the approval of her parents-in-law.
The film my sister and I are watching is a colouful fantasy called “Jack the Giant Killer”. In a scene which grabbed at my young imagination, the beautiful and virtuous princess is imprisoned by an evil wizard named, presciently, Thatcher. Whilst the princess struggles, her arms fastened by shackles above her head (the better to accentuate her chaste bosom), Thatcher approaches her holding a large Swarowski paper weight from which hypnotic lights emanate. The lights bring about a transformation. Her clothes loosen, her hair becomes disarranged, her fingernails grow and her new leer suggests (correctly) that she has become very very wicked. Without quite understanding why, this scene spoke to me. It induced a whole new set of sensations that utterly bemused me.
I trotted off to the kitchen to find my parents. As I reached the doorway, my Nan beamed at me and asked solicitously “What is it little Moobs?”
“I have a question Nanna”
“Do you indeed?” My ancestors exchanged smiles and made little nods to each other. My hair was ruffled affectionately.
“What is your question little man?”
“Why has my willy gone all stiff?”
There was a silence so profound it seemed to suck the light from the room, broken only by the sound of my mother dropping a teacup into the sink.