I remember one time at Blackpool, the night before a big competition, we went to see the circus in the Tower. Now they had no lights on during the performance and I needed the toilet midway through, so my mam came with me. This was way before mobiles had proper torches so we were trying to find our way down the stairs with nothing but the glare from a Nokia 3310 screen. BAM. I fell from top to bottom. My mam carried me to the toilet to check how injured I was, worried whether I’d be able to perform the next day. But as soon as she saw me in the light she started howling with laughter. The reason my bum hurt so much was because a couple of false nails (they get everywhere) had somehow ended up being embedded into my arse cheek from the fall. She had to literally prise them out.
Saturday would come, first day of the competition weekend. We’d had our fun on the Friday and now it was time to put everything we had practised in the last year into these two days. My competition ritual would begin with me eating my own bodyweight in breakfast (I’d buzz if there was black pudding) at the hotel, knowing I’d not be able to eat anything else for the rest of the day as I’d be so nervous. This would be followed shortly after by a dance poo – a nervous poo that can only be described as shitting through the eye of a needle. We all may look glamorous in our beautiful gowns and 1950s Hollywood glamour make-up and hair but let me tell you, every dance competition’s toilet absolutely stinks and is stained with dancing skid marks.
I’d also love to buy or find a lucky charm: a penny, a stone, a hair clip, which if I didn’t come first would be quickly thrown away as that would be the reason I didn’t win – I’d found a jinxed charm, just my luck. Blackpool Nationwide weekend was the biggest competition of the year (although it felt like the biggest weekend of your entire life). Me and me mam would laugh at what we would call the Blackpool bun brigade. At about 7.30 a.m., the Winter Gardens was just swarmed with an army of girls with buns in their hair and you could literally smell the Elnett hairspray before you could see them. Everyone was the colour of antique mahogany furniture with their hair slicked down (a little trick we would do is use black shoe polish to make your hair shinier), and you’d see kids as young as five with more make-up on than Lily Savage. It truly is a spectacular sight.
It’s only as I’ve got older that I have realised just how many sacrifices were made in order for me to dance. My mam would work her arse off in Etam for a whole month and a half and that wage would go on a dance dress that I would wear twice. My dad would work overtime to pay for private lessons and trips to competitions. I mean I sacrificed my skin – my skin is literally stained orange from all the tan. But to me, winning or getting in a final was my way of saying thank you to my mam and dad, because if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have been able to do the sport that brought me so much happiness, and has given me such great memories and lifelong friends.
My favourite memory of a dance competition was when I had just turned fifteen and we were at the nationals. This is the day I remember changing how I presented myself to the world – not just the dance world but school too. It’s the day I grew in confidence. I was tanned up to my eyeballs as per usual. I had a beautiful monochrome dress covered in Swarovski crystals (a second-hand dress but no one needed to know). My make-up was inches thick. I had gone for the theatrical look and admittedly I was looking more like Marilyn Manson than Marilyn Monroe, but I wanted to stand out. There were just under a hundred people in my section and we were whittled down throughout the day. When they called my number for the final six I was overwhelmed. I had never made a national final before, only ever the semi-finals.
I waltzed, foxtrotted, tangoed and quickstepped around the dance floor. I was in my element. Then it came to the Viennese waltz – this dance is basically spinning on a constant loop for three minutes. The speed we danced I thought at one point my actual head was going to come off, we were literally going about 90 mph and I feared my head was going to spin right off and roll off the dance floor. Luckily for me, necks are quite sturdy and as you know my head is still intact to date.
When the dancing was over and all 2,000 spectators were on their feet ready to find out who had won, I grabbed my mam and dad’s hands. ‘I’m not bothered where I place, I just can’t believe I got in the final,’ I told them. When they announced sixth place and it wasn’t my name and number I remember squeezing my mam and dad’s hands. ‘This will be me next.’ But it wasn’t. They announced fifth, fourth, third and now it was time to find out who was runner-up. Now I always say in dancing I would rather come third than second. The reason being, you get the applause of the person’s family and dance school who have just found out they have won. Also rather than people congratulate you they are almost sympathetic: ‘Aahh, next time maybe,’ or ‘Oh, you were so close.’ It’s like, HELLO! I just came second!
They announced second place and I couldn’t even hear who they announced for the thunderous noise of clapping from my dance school. My dad, who never gets emotional, definitely had a little tear in his eye (either that or a sudden case of conjunctivitis). I had won! It’s been the only time I have ever won the nationals but I don’t care. I feel so lucky that I got to have that feeling of picking up that trophy.
Dancing was my escape. When times were hard, when the bullying started, when I felt alone, I would dance. It’s like I would plunge into a fantasy world, escaping everyday worries and stress. I didn’t become a different character or an alter ego like Beyoncé and Sasha Fierce when I danced, I became the real Scarlett. Well, the Scarlett I wanted to be. The one who didn’t give one flying fuck about what other people would say about me, the Scarlett who didn’t care about the bullies or people saying I was weird. Dancing gave me a lot of confidence, it was the one thing I knew I was good at. It helped me not to care what other people said; so what if I was a bit different? I could dance. It’s where my true friends were, it’s what made me the happiest and where I was most able to truly be myself.
We all have that one thing we are good at. Whether it be a skill, humour, or simply being caring. Focus on your positives. Remember what Einstein said:
‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish
by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life
believing that it is stupid.’
Chapter Five
BIKES AND BELLS
The largest rideable bicycle has a wheel diameter of 3.3 metres (10 feet 10 inches) and was built by Didi Senft from Germany. Gut gemacht!
Forcing yourself to smile when you’re sad will actually elevate your mood. Thanks to endorphins from smiling, ‘fake it till you make it’ actually works.
The classic Disney character Goofy is not a cow, nor a human, he is an anthropomorphic dog who wears a snazzy orange turtleneck.
I once read somewhere that your teenage years were meant to be the greatest years of your life. They’re having a laugh, aren’t they? It was the six-week holiday before starting secondary school and one thing after another went wrong. The year 2001 was a difficult one for me. One day in particular changed my life.
I remember the whole thing like it was yesterday. My mam was going round my auntie’s house for a cup of tea. ‘Can I come with you, Mam? I’ll ride round on my bike,’ I said.
‘Course you can but make sure you wear your helmet,’ Mam requested.
‘Come on, Mam, I start big school soon. I don’t need a helmet.’
She gave me that look, that look that every mam possesses; her eyes were telling me you better put that bloody helmet on or there will be hell to pay.
Perching myself on the black foam seat of my bike and wearing my gherkin-green helmet, I rode up and down the quiet street, ringing my little bell like I had done so many times before, humming Aqua’s ‘I’m a Barbie Girl’. I was loving life. I have always been a cautious character so I was riding around slow enough for kids to brisk-walk next to me.
Then I heard a screech of tyres as a car came speeding round the corner. I swerved, making sure I was at the side of the road. Ever
ything suddenly went into slow motion. What could have only been thirty seconds of my life felt like I was stuck in a time loop that was never going to end. The car bumped the back of my bike and I could see it speed off through tear-filled eyes. As I flew over my handlebars I remember squeezing my eyes closed. Screaming on the inside, please don’t hurt, please don’t hurt! Knowing I couldn’t stop the inevitable fall.
I felt the impact on my chin first as it smashed onto the concrete floor, followed by my teeth. I didn’t know what had happened but I just remember wanting the pain to stop. I thought my teeth had gone through my gums. I had shattered my front two teeth on the gravelled road. My once favourite white Tammy Girl top was now crimson. Some girl called Kayleigh screamed so loud my mam and auntie came out of the house to see what was going on.
My mam was screaming, ‘Oh, help! I don’t know what to do!’ I remember some of the kids in the street trying to pick up the shards of my teeth to help me while my mam was in hysterics calling the dental surgery for an emergency appointment on my auntie’s landline.
My mam grasped my hand in the taxi on the way to the dentist. ‘It’s going to be OK. It could have been so much worse if you hadn’t had that helmet on, Scarlett. We have to focus on the positive, sweetheart.’
I sat back on the black leather dentist chair wishing I were sitting anywhere but there. ‘How many injections am I going to need?’ I could barely even make out what I was bleating out myself.
The dentist, as most adults do when you’re younger, directed all of his answers to my mam. ‘Scarlett is going to need eight injections, and the nerves in her front right tooth are going to have to be removed. This will result in this front tooth quickly turning black as the tooth is technically dead. Due to the gums and teeth having so much trauma she will probably have to wait until she is around eighteen to twenty-one before she can get veneers. I would start saving now as they’re very expensive.’
I looked at my mam who appeared as a blur because of all my tears. I endured the pain of the injections. Wishing so loud in my brain, if only I could quickly turn back the clock and not go round the street on my bike. I knew that once I sat up from that dentist chair I would probably not have the confidence to smile for a very long time.
In fact it was a whole decade of my life before I smiled again. Even when I wanted to, I didn’t. I haven’t got one photo with my grandma (my nanny’s mam) Frieda (God rest her soul) where I am smiling. I haven’t even got photos with my little sister when she was a baby or a toddler where I am smiling showing my teeth. I would talk with my hand over my mouth in the hope no one would notice my horrendous teeth. I would look down when people spoke to me, probably looking like such an ill-mannered teenager. I had no confidence with boys for years – I mean, who would want to kiss me? The only rare occasions I did smile in front of others was when I was dancing at competitions. But that was me playing the most confident version of me.
Not being able to walk into secondary school on my first day and smile at the other kids was hard. If the monobrow eyebrow slapped across my face wasn’t enough, I had now been blessed with black goofy teeth that looked like they were having a party without me. I had a pale, freckled, chubby-cheeked face that emphasised the fact puberty had hit and I had a faint black tash. I honestly looked like a brunette Helga Pataki from Hey Arnold! (I was watching beautiful blondes like Christina Aguilera in ‘Lady Marmalade’ music videos and that’s what I aspired to look like at the time.)
For the first year of secondary school my front teeth were half the size they had been. When I was finally given caps on my teeth they were very bulky and the right tooth was still black. This gave the bullies a lot of leverage for nicknames. Some of them were actually quite inventive, I was impressed: Polystyrene Teeth, Cap-tooth Scarlett, Chessboard Teeth, Black Tooth, Scruffy Teeth – and the most original one of all, Goofy.
I remember daydreaming that one day I would wake up like they do in the movies and I’d be beautiful. My teeth would be as white as Simon Cowell’s in Pop Idol. My hair would be silky and poker-straight, I’d have perfectly groomed eyebrows, the tash would be gone and my tan would look like I’d been dipped in liquidised gold.
But even my ‘ugly duckling turning into a swan’ daydreaming came down with a crash. Not long after the accident I was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a type of facial paralysis. The doctors said it could be because of the trauma of smashing my teeth. Now I am under no illusions that there are worse afflictions to have but at the time, being eleven years old and starting secondary school where it is so looks-orientated, it was just soul-destroying. I couldn’t even dream about being pretty because it was just one thing after another.
When the Bell’s palsy struck I remember staring in the living room mirror, screaming and screaming. ‘Mam! Dad! Help, help!’ One minute I was fine and the next minute I felt my whole face collapse. I could barely open my left eye; it drooped so much that it looked like I was winking. My mouth slouched and I could barely string a sentence together. It’s like I was fighting with my own face, my own tongue, to get my words out. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get my face to go straight again. I couldn’t even force my eye open. I was utterly petrified. I honestly, at that moment in time, thought I was dying. I remember feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience; I could hear the blood rushing around my body. I stood grabbing my face with both hands, trying to manipulate it back to how it looked before it slouched. Literally pulling at my face, pinching it so hard I was making it red. ‘Go straight, go straight!’ I screamed. There was nothing I could do, I felt like I wasn’t even in control of my own muscles.
My mam thought at first that I was playing a prank; she honestly thought I was joking. ‘Stop it now, Scarlett, it’s not funny,’ she snapped. I couldn’t even speak. I was inconsolable. She then realised I was not putting it on. My dad grabbed my coat and my parents took me to the hospital where the doctor diagnosed me with Bell’s palsy. This condition has the symptoms of a stroke but it causes temporary weakness or paralysis of the muscles in one side of the face.
After my initial diagnosis we all had to sit back in the waiting room of the paediatrics department surrounded by paintings of clowns and smiling faces on the wall. The doctor entered the waiting area. ‘If you’d like to follow me …’ We were now all crammed in a very small hospital room. I can’t remember details about the room, just that it was very small and stuffy, but I do still remember what the doctor looked like. He was my dad’s height (five foot seven), his clean-shaven skin was as smooth as a baby’s arse and he had kind eyes. (You know what I mean, sometimes you can meet people and their eyes look right through you. Like Katie Hopkins, for example, if you look closely at her eyes they look sad, like she just needs a good cuddle. But this doctor, he had the eyes of a gentle man, he had David Attenborough kind of eyes.)
‘If you can take your socks and shoes off, Miss Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll pop you on the scales. I just need to explain something to your parents about why we need to do some blood tests. Now it is nothing to be scared of, I promise it will only feel like a scratch.’
I smiled, without showing my teeth. I was so relieved that the doctor was so kind.
The doctor continued calmly talking to my parents as he prepared me for the blood test. ‘We need to do these tests as on rare occasions Bell’s palsy can be an early manifestation of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia,’ he said.
I had no idea what any of the words meant and I’m so pleased I didn’t. It’s only now I look back I understand why my parents got so upset. My dad had just recovered from a rare skin cancer just four years before. So I know the thought of his little girl having to have tests for that awful C-word – cancer – was heartbreaking. My dad picked up my sock, held it to his eye and started to cry.
‘Come on, Dad, my socks don’t smell that bad.’ I smiled weakly, trying to cheer him up. Even though I was nervous and confused at what was happening I just wanted to hear my dad laugh, not cry.
&nbs
p; I remember when my dad got diagnosed with cancer, although now it feels like that part of our life was just a distant nightmare. It started when I was nearly eight years old and we were all sat on the sofa eating sausage casserole and watching Gladiators (it’s so weird how you remember minor details). My mam saw a small lump on my dad’s back as he was just chilling in his joggers. There was no freckle or mole around it so my mam tried squeezing it, thinking it was a spot. But a few weeks passed and it started getting bigger and my mam got worried and forced my dad to go to the doctor’s about it.
That evening when my dad got back from the doctor’s he seemed really relaxed. ‘The doctor said it was a cyst and to just keep an eye on it,’ he said. But my mam kept checking it constantly as she just had a bad feeling about it. She made him go to the doctor’s again a month later as it had got even bigger. ‘It’s just a cyst, Betty, stop worrying. They’re going to remove it, I’ve got an appointment for two weeks.’
I now get so angry – if the problem had been properly diagnosed when my dad had originally gone to the doctor’s, he wouldn’t have had to go through all the agony he went through later. By the time he went to have it removed at the surgery, the doctor said it was too big and it needed to be taken out at hospital. ‘We are just going to cut a piece of the lump now and send it for a biopsy, Mr Moffatt. This will take around ten days and hopefully we will be in touch with good news,’ the doctor told him.
A few days later, me and my mam were sat on the back seat of the 1B bus, being rebels. I can’t remember where we had been, but my mam got a call from my dad at work. ‘This isn’t going to be good news, I can feel it,’ I remember her saying when she saw it was his number.
Me Life Story Page 5