Zelda

Contents

Acknowledgements

I FIND IT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to express in words my gratitude to the many women who have, over the years, added to my personal development. There was a time when there were few of us and Joan Bray spent night after night with me in exhaustive dialogue. You made me think Joan, you made me seek the answers and by doing so you added to my courage, confidence and growth.

I am reluctant to acknowledge by name the many wonderful women who contributed to my being, for fear of overlooking a single one. To show gratitude for your individual contribution is impossible, yet I wish to thank you all for what you have given me.

Many thanks to Adriana Palamara, Barbara Wishart and Beata Peisker for your invaluable advice on the manuscript.

I wish to thank Selma who encouraged and inspired me into having my book republished and writing the Afterword.

Thanks also go to her family who helped with the typing and research when needed from Melbourne.

Many thanks to Jean Taylor for sending me material when requested and for your beautiful warm smile.

Thanks also to Ché Stockley, Sue Spunner and Barbara Creed, to Bon Hull for your contribution on the Health Collective, to Jan Harper for assistance with information on non-sexist children’s books.

And many thanks to Ron for your support.

— Zelda D’Aprano, January 1995.

Author’s Note

WHEN RE-READING the preface to my book prior to this edition, it became obvious that, due to the changes which have taken place in the intervening years between 1977 – when the book was first published – and today, some of the details recorded no longer apply. Nevertheless, most of what I wrote is still relevant and necessary to this work, hence my decision to retain the preface in its original form.

This edition includes an Afterword which records in detail my experience of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It expands on the information provided in the first edition and also includes new material.

I have recorded this information to ensure women’s history is not lost. I urge other women to write of their experiences of the Women’s Liberation Movement so that there is a continuum set up for all women in Australia.

Preface

ON NUMEROUS OCCASIONS when addressing various groups of people on all topics associated with Women’s Liberation, it was suggested that I should write a book on the experiences of my life. It never occurred to me that there was anything significant about my life to warrant recording, until the incident which happened towards the end of this book took place. This incident did not occur by chance, but was a deliberate act and this event forced me to take stock of my life and acknowledge the validity of my experiences. After giving the matter a great deal of thought, I decided that it was necessary for this book to be written.

Many women are now deeply concerned about the problems which confront women in our present day society. They wish to create a society where women will obtain total fulfilment and, to make this possible, they bring forth suggestions of methods by which they think this goal may be achieved. On frequent occasions the suggestions made are not new and have failed when attempted in the past. But because there is no record of the attempts which were made, it is impossible for women of today to evaluate or analyse these experiences in order to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

I have detailed several years of my involvement in the trade union and political struggle to indicate the depth of commitment and what, if any, benefits for women can be gleaned from our participation within these structures. It is also necessary, in light of all these activities, to analyse whether or not they brought about any changes in society.

My life, when looking back, seems to have covered four phases. The initial and the longest period was the unquestioning phase, then a period of questioning with no answers. Next was the feminist phase where I was both questioning and obtaining some answers. It was only when moving into the liberationist phase that almost everything fell into place.

Working-class women very rarely write books because of our inability to write at the level required by male established literary standards. Nor are many books written about the lives of working-class women because our lives are considered to be too humdrum.

When first trying to decide whether this book should be written, I was unprepared and too afraid to expose myself to the monstrous power of our male dominated society, so I asked a young feminist writer if she would be interested in writing a novel about my life experiences. She was delighted with the prospect. However, after reading a rough draft of the manuscript, she said it was impossible for her to undertake this task. Never having endured most of my experiences, she was unable to put herself into my skin and feel my pain in order to write the novel. She suggested that I alone must write the book.

I then submitted the draft to a woman involved in the publishing field and sought her advice on obtaining the services of a ghost writer. Again I was disappointed. After reading the material, she advised me to write the book myself, as a ghost writer would, with the best intentions, refine the material. She continued to say that if I was to record the details as they were recorded in the draft, it would be unsuitable for publishers as, according to male established standards, it was impossible to combine personal experience with political experience. I gave the matter a great deal of thought but was unable to reconcile myself to the need to cut myself in two pieces.

My thinking led me to the bookshelf and I gazed at the numerous books before me. Why, why, I kept on asking myself, cannot a book record all the details of human life and involvement? There before me were books on history, economics, wars, revolutions, industrialisation, trade unions, etc., and novels. I picked up a book on the lives of one hundred famous people and glanced through the pages. Of the hundred people featured, only seven were women. Apart from the date of birth, birthplace, places of education, military academies, etc., and the date of death, no other personal details of the men’s lives were recorded. All emphasis was on their achievements, even if the achievements resulted in the destruction of human lives through war. For days on end I pondered this problem until everything became clear.

Almost all people, given the circumstances, can perform heroic deeds, however, hero-worship is a sickness of the patriarchal society. All people have strengths and weaknesses, but because men wished to preserve an untarnished image and remain immortal with this heroic image, they created history. A record only of their achievements.

Maybe Napoleon suffered from haemorrhoids and perhaps it was during a painful bout of this condition that he made the fatal mistake of deciding to invade Russia. Churchill could have suffered from continual flatulence and maybe his wife was pleased when he took himself off to his mistress so she wouldn’t have to endure the advances of the oaf. Was Stalin a wife beater and did he arrange the disappearance of one of his wives? Who knows, Abraham Lincoln may have suffered great mental depression because he was impotent?

Men refused to disclose the truth of their being and created a schism in books. It was necessary for them to divide personal experiences from political experiences, denying that both were one, in order that they could remain secure in their glory. They wrote and continue to write the history books and are able to eulogize each other in glowing terms. Even the worst offenders, like Hitler, are paid the respect of being recorded for posterity.

Because there is more to life and living than is recorded in history books, the novel provided the place in literature where human experiences could be portrayed. In the anonymity of the novel men were safe and all emotions, human frailties, weaknesses, illnesses and hangups could be recorded. No man would ever recognise himself as the ogre in a novel. Autobiography and biography almost always record the lives of important people (mostly men) and, again, only the good image is projected; a denial of the reality.

Over the centuries many women have achieved various forms of political, scientific and cultural gains, but they have been ignored, unrecorded or ridiculed because they didn’t conform to the male-established standard of the housewife– mother role. The lives of these women differed from the established standard and this behaviour was not to be encouraged. Even the novel almost always portrays the housewife–mother role as being the only ‘normal’ role for women.

The novel became the only place in literature where women could express their pain and suffering and we too are safe in the anonymity of the novel. Although many of the details recorded in novels are based on fact, false names protect the authors from being destroyed. In order to protect themselves from exposure and retain their untarnished image, men created libel laws, and libel laws protect only those in power. Women have no power and no image, therefore we have nothing to lose.

Until women write truthfully of their personal experiences and involvement in the outside world, we will continue to be ignored and unrecorded, and generation after generation of young women deprived of this information will continue to make the same mistakes.

The male standard of literature has made respectable the recording of their total mismanagement of our world and its resulting calamities. We read of the hungry two-thirds of the world’s population. We read of the distended stomachs of starving children in Biafra, of the thousands of women raped in Bangladesh, of the thousands of women and children in Vietnam whose flesh was burned from their bones through napalm bombs. But never are we permitted to read of the natural functions of women’s bodies. Women in books never menstruate, nor are troubles associated with our reproductive organs ever mentioned. These aspects of women’s reality are considered by men to be loathsome, not nice and not respectable. Because these standards have been established for so long, women too, when writing books, have conformed to the male rules.

I refuse to conform to the established standards by men for literature and will portray my life and experiences as they occurred. Many experiences of my life have not been detailed within these pages and, although they added to my development and understanding of what life was all about, they would, if recorded, only have increased the size of the book without contributing to the overall politics of the work.

I have written this autobiography without the assistance of a ghost writer and with all my imperfections as a writer. Should men or their power structures, now or in the future, destroy a woman because she dares to write truthfully of her experiences and involvement in society, we will know why women are absent from history.

1

OUR HOUSE WAS A SINGLE-FRONTED COTTAGE in the slum area of Carlton. There were no distinctive features to differentiate it from most of the small cottages in Carlton, with the long narrow passage passing the two bedrooms and the central living room leading into the kitchen. Dad erected a small room adjoining the kitchen which served as both bathroom and laundry; the old wood-burning copper providing the hot water for our baths and washing of clothes.

The old slate roof was an original part of the dwelling and constantly leaked when raining. The slates seemed to take turns in sliding out of position and in every room dishes and pots were placed in strategic positions during the winter months to receive the drip, drip, drip of the rain as it found its way through the ceiling. The house was flanked on one side by a single-storey shop which was a mixed business, and on the other side by a high timbered fenced-in yard. Within this yard stood a sturdy galvanised iron shed where hard millet brooms were stored under lock and key.

Early every morning, several men would line up at the shed to collect a broom, then set off to sweep the gutters of Carlton. These men were referred to as susso men; men who, because of the great unemployment at that time, were on sustenance payments and were employed to clean the gutters. Towards the end of the day, they would return to lock the brooms away until the following morning. As a very young child, I can recall their old clothes, worn boots, and the weary look on their faces.

During 1937–38, the people in the shop next door added another storey to their building, and the local council sold the block adjacent to our house. A block of flats was erected on the site and our house was now in constant shadow, for the sunshine could no longer penetrate the side windows.

I was born in January 1928, one year before the great economic collapse, and I entered a world of uncertainty and poverty.

Poverty was reflected within our home; the worn pattern on the lino was faded through the constant wear of feet and, only on the edges or under the few odd pieces of old furniture, could the richness of the flowers be detected. It was a great day when mum scrubbed and polished the lino, and we kids would plead with her to let us get the old rags out of the bag and slide up and down the passage to make it shinier. This game kept us occupied for several hours and, while doing it, we assumed every pose from champion skaters to riders in a sleigh.

The three of us, Sara, Leon and I, slept in the one room and an unemployed distant relative slept on the couch in the living room. When Leon grew to an age when it was considered indelicate to sleep in the same room as his sisters, he was transferred to the couch in the living room.

The narrow front verandah of our home was the window to the world around us and, while gazing about, we could see the constant fights taking place outside the hotel opposite where women came to prevent their husbands from spending sustenance payments or meagre pay envelopes on alcohol. The shop next door was a focal point where people came to purchase their few needs which were usually placed on tick;¹ the shopkeeper would be lucky if his customers were able to pay the bill at the end of the week.

When we were of pre-school age, mum would tie a cord around the iron gate to prevent us from running on to the road. The verandah then became a cage from which Leon and I peered through the iron bars at the passing parade. Several older children walked past on their way to the shop and, as they did so, they observed us peering at them, Jew, Jew, you bloody Jew, they yelled. We were too young to know what Jews were, but the manner in which this was said made me, being two years older than Leon, aware that we were being attacked. When the children returned from the shop, mum was approaching the verandah and she heard me yell, Jew, Jew, you’re a bloody Jew.

1. Buying something on account and paying it off when possible.

Mum realised what must have transpired and took us into the house. She was upset by the indignities her children were forced to endure. Life was so cruel. She hadn’t wanted to come to Australia.

Mum was born in Pinsk, a tiny village on the Polish-Russian border and was orphaned at the age of six. An aunt, who no longer wanted the responsibility of this unwanted child, sent her to relatives in Palestine and there she grew up to be their domestic servant. She attended school for only six months of her life and was unable to read or write; the burden of illiteracy was something she carried throughout her life and which constantly made her feel inadequate.

With the dowry provided by her uncle (little recompense for the many years of work), she married Sol in Palestine and he immediately made plans to migrate to Australia, the dowry money being used to pay the fares. Lea was averse to leaving the only relatives she had for she felt insecure and threatened, however, Sol assured her that they would remain in Australia only for three years.

The motive for Sol’s desire to migrate to Australia was prompted by other considerations apart from those which could have been of benefit to his family and future. He, too, was an orphan at the age of fourteen and was left financially responsible for three younger brothers. He carried this burden for many years and hoped that, upon arriving in Australia, he could appeal to the sympathy of an aunt and uncle already living here to assist him in bringing his brothers across. He thought that Australia would provide better opportunities for the entire family and eventually they all settled here.

Five months after their arrival in Melbourne the first child Sara was born. She was followed, at two-yearly intervals, firstly by twin boys who died within their sixth week, next by me and then by Leon, my younger brother. Lea knew she would never return to her beloved Palestine nor would she ever see her relatives again. The passing of years, nevertheless, did not destroy her passion for the old homeland which yearned in her heart.

When they arrived in Australia, Sol and Lea were practising Orthodox Jews and carried out the laws of the religion to the letter. Mum told me in later years that, when we were babies, she often placed a bible under our pillows as we slept to protect us from the devil while she ran to purchase something from the shop. However, from the time my mind records events taking place in our home, my parents had ceased being orthodox and were conducting what could be called a typical Jewish home; our meat and milk dishes were no longer separated, but we ate kosher meat.

Sol was a tradesman; a coachbuilder and wheelwright, and was extremely fortunate to have employment, even though it was a three-day working week. He worked very hard in order to keep his job and maintain his family; his work often entailed the repairing and maintenance of the Carlton and United Brewery wagons. Jobs were scarce and money was even more scarce.

Lengthy discussions on poverty and wealth never ceased in our house, and I recall a great deal being said about so many people being poor while very few were rich. I realised there was little money in our home. All the people in our vicinity had no money, and I came to understand that when adults talked about poverty and being poor, that we ourselves were poor. Clothing was provided when absolutely necessary and we always wore hand downs, except on the rare occasion when it wasn’t possible to obtain a hand down and the purchase of a new garment was necessary.

When our shoes required mending we would have to miss out on school, for to possess two pairs of shoes was a rare luxury. On one occasion, after dad had for some time inserted cardboard into my shoes to delay repairs, one shoe was sent to the boot repairer while I remained home from school. There was insufficient money to have both shoes completely soled, so one shoe had a small patch of leather placed over the hole. This type of repair created a large lump under the sole of the foot and remained there for several days until the shoe had worn even. However, by the time this occurred it was usual for the other shoe to have worn through.

One evening, while in bed, I awoke screaming with fright. Mum and dad raced into the bedroom, turned the light on, and there I was in a tangle of bedclothes having fallen through the centre of the bed. There was a tremendous hole in the wire base and, because there was no money to purchase a new base, dad had placed a sheet of three ply over the hole. The sheet of wood had slipped away from the hole, and thus the calamity. Even secondhand furniture was too expensive to buy.

Sara was four and a half years older than me and was not interested in playing with Leon or me, so I played with Leon who I dearly loved. He had large brown eyes and the most beautiful brown curls and I would enfold him in my arms, squeezing and kissing him until he would, after much protesting, begin to cry and appeal to mum for help.

When Leon started school, mum sought employment to subsidise the family income and, because she was totally unskilled industrially, she came to an agreement with a local eiderdown manufacturer to teach her to hand-sew eiderdowns. During the first week, she plied her needle and thread without a knot and practised the skill required for her to become proficient. At the end of the week, the boss who was an acquaintance of the family, and knew our circumstances, paid her four shillings. Mum was embarrassed and refused to take it for she had not produced anything, but he insisted that she accept the money and so she had her first pay which was spent on a pair of socks for each of the children. From then on, she worked part-time in various factories and became a skilled finisher in the clothing trade.

Mum was an excellent cook and, with the added money now being earnt, she spent what time she had in the kitchen preparing many beautiful Jewish dishes. We had very little but mum saw that we ate well, even when on many occasions it meant buying food on tick.

I attended Lee Street State School and soon became aware of the susso kids. Although I didn’t know why they were called susso kids, I had a vague idea that these children were even poorer than we were as, every now and again, they were asked to step out after general assembly in the school grounds and were given free school books. It was obvious by the reaction of the other children that it was very shameful to be a susso kid, for if you happened to be one of them you were looked upon as some kind of inferior being.

Many of the children attended school during the winter months in sandshoes without socks. Their feet were blue and, while knowing how fortunate I was to have socks, I felt tremendous anguish for these children for I could see they were suffering from the cold.

I now knew my family was poor, but I could not understand what being rich meant. On attending two film matinees where Shirley Temple was the star, I observed that the houses in these films were very big and beautiful and the people all wore magnificent clothes. Servants appeared to do all of the work and their style of living in no way resembled my life or that of the people living around me. These must be the rich people mum was always talking about, I thought. Yes, they must be rich people, but they were not cruel in the films, they were very nice and kind. Yet, I asked myself, how did they get the money to buy their beautiful homes and live as they did? It must be as mum said, I thought, they must have workers working for small wages in their factories and shops, after all, dad works so hard and we are poor, so, I reasoned, mum must be right.

As time passed and I grew older, the conversation in our home became more and more troublesome to me. Mum seemed to be arguing with everyone. She was adopting left-wing political views which continually caused arguments and words such as working-class, capitalist, exploitation, profit, war, and Depression became a normal part of our vocabulary. There seemed to be no joy in the home, only arguments.

Dad, in order to escape from a home of poverty and need, was spending more evenings away playing cards. On the rare occasion he was at home, his card-playing friends called in, so there was more card playing. Maybe his continual absence was the reason mum sought outside interests.

Although mum began to reject religious dogma, her new ideology was based on the theory that communism was intent on putting into practice what the ten commandments proclaimed, the difference being that what religion only theorised, communism would put into practice. As her basic philosophy in life was, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, it required no profound motivational or ethical shift when she gave up her religion in favour of communism. She was warm and emotional and would often cry when told of injustices perpetrated upon the poor by the powerful interests. She bristled with anger at the liberty these beasts were given to inflict such suffering on others. Thus her involvement with left-wing causes was a natural one and no one could restrain her from expounding her views. The only moments free from this harangue in the home were when there were no visitors.

There were always a lot of arguments between my parents over money; there always seemed to be arguments over everything. At a very young age, I recall lying in bed night after night unable to sleep because of the arguments coming from the front bedroom. I would lie there, tense and fearful. Then one evening I heard my father, with voice raised, threaten to kill us all. I was petrified and afraid to go to sleep. I heard dad get out of his bed and leave the bedroom. I listened to his footsteps as he came down the passage to the kitchen. I then heard the cutlery drawer being opened. As I heard the sound of rattling cutlery, I wanted to scream but was too overwrought to make a sound. I waited for him to come in and cut our throats. He went about preparing himself some supper which he often did when returning home late after being out playing cards. I then realised what he was doing, but I could not sleep.

The weekly ritual of bathtime was an ordeal for mum. After chopping the wood and chips to get the fire going under the copper, she would patiently stoke the fire, waiting for the water to get hot so she could ladle it into the bath. After convincing us that we had to have a bath, heated arguments arose as to who was going to have the first, second or third bath as we were all aware that the first had a clean bath while those who followed would have piss in the bath. Mum, in her relentless patience, would finally clamp down, for to have given in would have resulted in cold water and no baths.

Mum would sometimes take us for a walk and the route taken was always the same: along Rathdowne Street, to Elgin Street, then along Lygon Street to Tilley’s corner. We would gaze in the windows of the shops, admiring the vast array of beautiful goods on display, goods that we could only admire from a distance. After feasting our eyes on the unattainable, we would cross over to the other side of the road and walk home. I felt secure holding mum’s hand as we walked but, of course, as there were three of us I sometimes missed out and was disappointed.

With dad being absent from home so often, I enjoyed snuggling up to mum in her bed for she was soft and warm. It was only on rare occasions that dad seemed to be happy, but at odd times he would come into our bedroom while we were in bed and sing to us. He had a fine singing voice and I would enjoy listening to the beautiful songs and respond to his feeling of well-being. When he stopped, I would plead with him to continue for these moments were very rare and the only opportunity I had to feel close to him.

Our household always seemed to have extra people in it, for my parents could not turn away the needy, resulting in what seemed to be a constant stream of unemployed men sitting down to a bowl of soup, borsch, or at least to some bread, jam and a cup of tea. These men were migrants; some of them were bachelors, others were married and hoped to earn enough money to bring their families here. They were desperately lonely men and missed their families deeply.

In retrospect, it all seems so strange: we were poor, yet both mum and dad were generous in their hospitality to others. No person came to our home without food of some description being offered. My parents were similar to Aboriginal people: we had almost nothing but our food was shared.

Mum decided to formally join the Communist Party and discussions in our home took on further dimensions. The overseas events created great concern and mum, in her usual passionate way, wanted to know at any minute of the day what developments were taking place. Her inability to read prevented her from discussing current events or theoretical concepts in any explicit way, and she reduced all the discussion down to clichés such as religion is the opium of the people, or capitalists are parasites on the backs of the workers, and they cause wars.

My only escape from these serious voices was on the street with the kids, retreating into the bedroom, or playing in our poky backyard. I was accepted into Leon’s peer group without any difficulty and spent many hours building pirate ships, trains and aeroplanes from fruit boxes, old chaff bags, the kitchen chairs and assorted other bits and pieces. I do not recall ever being permitted by the all-male group to be a captain of the pirate ship, train driver or pilot but, nevertheless, I joined in all the games with a great deal of earnestness and imagination and the group accepted me, even though I was a girl.

When looking back, I sometimes think that my early acceptance within this male group may have caused some of the contradictions and confusion which beset me in later years when being rejected by the adult male structures. Some of my favourite games were chuck the tin, tick tack, hidey or tiggy, and I felt quite at home with all the boys in the street. Mum became very cross on one occasion when she discovered that Leon and I had cut her broom handle off to make a tick tack set. We were most unpopular, to say the least!

When the weather prevented us from participating in outdoor activities, I would sometimes prevail upon Leon to play mothers and fathers and the one and only doll I ever possessed became the baby. We would rapidly tire of this game and made several attempts to coerce the cat into lying in the pram, but these efforts were always unsuccessful. I preferred to make things for my doll and took great delight in designing and creating all types of garments out of rags and old clothes. European people come from countries where woollen blankets are a luxury possessed only by the wealthy. My parents had a huge feather eiderdown on their bed and I made my doll an eiderdown, even covering it with a white loose cover to prevent it from becoming soiled.

There was no money for toys and when dad agreed to allow Leon to buy four ball-bearing wheels to enable us to make a pushcart, there was great jubilation. With the pushcart completed, I took part in the races as both pusher and driver, and my ability was never questioned or rejected. It was great fun to line up together at the top of the incline in our street. All ready for the take-off, we waited until someone shouted, ready, set, go, and we would race down the hill as if our lives depended on the outcome. I became an accomplished marble player; bunny hole was my speciality and I accumulated three hundred and seventy-five marbles — this was apart from the marbles given to Leon.

Our home was the meeting place for all the kids, there being nothing of any value in the house to spoil or ruin, for while we sometimes entered the homes of our friends we were forced to sit quietly, which we found restrictive and soon became bored.

We were at a friend’s home when Leon first witnessed a baby being breast-fed. On leaving the house, he immediately turned to me and, in a shocked tone, asked, did you see what that lady was doing? I replied, yes, all babies are fed that way. I wasn’t, he retorted. Yes you were, I insisted. I was not. All right, we’ll go home and ask mum. So we raced home and as usual, mum was in the kitchen. Mum, I asked, when Leon was a baby, did you feed him up here? and I indicated the breasts. The only term I knew for these parts was tits and, in this situation, I was too embarrassed to say the word so resorted to the gesture. Yes, said mum, all babies eat that way. Leon was sickened. He placed his hand on his stomach, bent over, and put on a gagging act. He was almost ill at this horrific enlightenment.

It is with deep feelings of remorse and guilt that I recall the disregard we had towards mum in our reluctance to interrupt our games to eat our meals. She would call us and we would pretend we didn’t hear until, in her exasperation, she would come forth with two school rulers placed together and only then would we dash in. We didn’t play up when dad called us, for we knew we would get a whack across the head if we dared ignore him. We would sit at the table under sufferance, hastily devour the food before us, and dash out into the street again to continue our games. It now seems such a wasted effort for mum to prepare such time-consuming dishes for us, yet she was happy to see us eating.

Sometimes Leon and I would walk to where dad worked, as we enjoyed watching him work. Dad was short and thin in stature, and the veins on his hands and lower arms swelled as he grasped the large pair of tongs to retrieve the red steel from the fire. Placing the piece of red steel on the anvil, and holding it in position, he would pound the hot steel into the required shape with a large steel hammer. Small sparks of red steel would scatter in all directions and the sharp piercing sound of steel crashing on steel was deafening. As the steel cooled off, he would poke it into the fire in order to soften the metal and again he would pound it into shape. When the right shape was attained, he plunged the metal into a trough of cold water and this process created a hissing and gurgling sound until the metal cooled off. I was always fascinated by the huge bellows and would ask dad to pull on them so that I could watch the flames grow higher among the coals. I was interested to watch the entire process which dad used and the slow methodical tradesmanship he applied until the wagon was ready for the road.

Huge and magnificent draught horses were brought to a yard near dad’s work and I would watch the farrier shoeing the horses. I couldn’t help feeling that this process was cruel and that the horse must suffer pain but it stood there patiently while Bill the farrier, with his back to the animal, drew the hoof between his knees, placed the hot metal shoe against it and gently pounded the shoe into shape. A strange odour pervaded the air as the heated shoe burnt the surface of the hoof. After obtaining the correct shape and cooling the shoe in water, he proceeded to nail the shoe to the hoof.

Dad would have his card-playing friends around and pursued this pastime for what seemed interminable hours. Mum provided them with supper and fruit, but not without a price. She reasoned that with the Spanish war at its peak, she must attempt to raise urgently required financial assistance for the Spanish Relief Committee. She requested that the winner of each game place threepence in a plate. This was little recompense for the suppers provided but, after two visits on this scheme, the friends ceased to call and only resumed their visits when the free suppers were restored.

The world situation was very foreboding. Italy had attacked Abyssinia and justified this barbaric onslaught as bringing civilisation and Christianity to a pagan section of what was once part of the Roman Empire. Japan was already committing atrocities in China with the intention of conquering this vast land, and the Spanish Civil War ceased being a civil war when German and Italian arms were sent in to crush the people. This provision of foreign arms was also an opportunity to test new weaponry, for these powers were already preparing ahead; they had big things in store for us.

It was during this period that the building of the flats next door proceeded and I had my first puff on a cigarette. Our peer group purchased several cheap brand cigarettes and we hid amid the construction work for the great experience. What a disillusionment. I became quite ill, but was too afraid to let on to the group for fear of losing their approval. Mum did all she could to prevent us from being rejected by other children and when they returned from the fish and chip shop clasping newspaper packages of chips, mum, who vehemently disapproved of dripping, would fry chips in oil, wrap them in lunch wrap, then newspaper and give them to us to take out in the street. She loved us dearly and no effort for us was too great.

The one and only aspect of the peer group which consciously displeased me was their choice of films. When we first began to attend matinees, the violence of the serials and films terrified me. In order to escape from the cruelties and horror being screened, I would slide down in my chair or crouch down between the seats. To block out the terrifying sounds, I placed my hands over my ears. But, of course, I would not tell the group of my feelings towards these films. I later adopted the attitude that I didn’t like pictures and preferred to remain home and spend my pennies on sweets. I now wonder how many males fabricated similar tales to preserve the peer group approval.

While young, I was never aware of being different to boys. My acceptance by Leon’s peer group, my ability to play all of the boys’ games and my ignorance of the birds and bees, made me a young person rather than a young girl. My first encounter with the sex difference was when I was ten years old. Together with three boys, one of them Leon, we went for a walk to Princes Park. While playing there, we approached a young man about eighteen years of age who happened to be walking through the park pushing his bicycle beside him. We began to ask him for a penny and joked with him about giving us a penny each. The young man gave the boys four pennies on the condition that they were to go to the shop for ice-creams while I had to remain with him until they returned. I immediately sensed that something was wrong but felt foolish in my fears, for they were based on intuition alone, and I felt that the boys would not understand these fears, so I stood there watching them run off.

When they were out of sight, the young man undid his front trouser buttons then took hold of my hand and attempted to place it inside his trousers. I didn’t know what he wanted me to do, but I sensed there was something wrong and ran off home as fast as I could. I did not breathe a word of this to mum. The boys eventually arrived home completely undisturbed and asked me why I nicked off. They said they looked but couldn’t find me, so they ate my ice cream. They didn’t for one moment consider that I could have been in any danger. I told them I got tired of waiting and left for home.

At school the work seemed reasonably easy and I put little effort into it; it was something all children had to do, and I did it. On reaching the fifth grade, a new system was introduced into the school where the best pupils from the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades were placed in the one room and under one teacher. This was called the special tutorial class and we were considered to be the elite of the school. For some reason or other I wasn’t at all flattered or pleased by this sudden elevation. I actively disliked the teacher and the new situation for, besides having his favourites, he was unnecessarily sarcastic, and a reactionary.

I was at this early age, due to my home environment, already arguing about politics, and we immediately clashed on this ground. This was my first lesson in authority and politics, for I quickly learnt that when anyone in authority says that politics are not allowed, what they really mean is that only their politics are permitted. I was also in a position where, because I was placed among the most intelligent kids in the school, I had more competition and was forced to make an effort. I was reluctant to put time into anything unless it pleased me and playing games was preferable to doing homework.

It was during this period at school that my sister, brother and I all developed head lice (poor people’s disease). Mum was nearly driven frantic in her efforts to eradicate this pest. She always prided herself on her clean home, for while the rich cling to their money, the poor cling to their cleanliness, their last vestige of dignity. She lined us up night after night, soaking our heads in kerosene, combing our hair with a fine tooth comb or using some other concoction recommended to rid our heads of this affliction. The three of us had long, thick, curly hair which made the task more difficult and we resented having to sit there patiently while mum cleaned and combed. We alleviated this suffering by insisting that