Forever Is Over

by Wade, Calvin

  I remember one evening asking my Mum in my own diplomatic style,

  “Mum, was James a mistake?”

  My mother, Dorothy, a lovely woman with less tact or diplomacy than any man or woman I have ever met, replied in her dulcet Scouse tones,

  “Yes Richie, he was! A bloody big mistake! It was your father’s fault, I had just returned to some semblance of normality downstairs ,(at the time I thought by “downstairs” she was talking in terms of our home, so I thought she meant she had just managed to get the lounge and kitchen tidy again) when your father caught me in a weak moment and persuaded me that even Mary could not get pregnant again four weeks after giving birth!

  Mind you, you were all bloody mistakes! Every single one of you! No-one would have planned to have four under fours and with your father being neither use nor ornament, its surprising I didn’t have a nervous breakdown!”

  Back to the barren years! As far as I can remember 1978 to 1981 did not bring a single kiss to my door unless it was delivered by a family member or an overbearing family friend. My swansong with Anna Eccleston was first year juniors when our class were on the school field playing “The Farmer wants a wife”. Anna was the farmer and she chose me to be her wife, every memory points to Anna being the trouser wearer in our relationship! After that, nothing, I had become less blond, my mother now described my hair colour as “ash blond”, less cute, less lispy, just as bowl headed and more tempermental, but the main factor in my lack of success was a lack of interest. A new love had come into my life and that love was football.

  Women say men cannot multi-task, but boys can’t either. I didn’t have room in my heart or my mind for both football and girls, so I went for the sensible option and it wasn’t girls! It was Everton FC!

  Jemma

  I was an Ormskirk girl, born and bred. I was the eldest of my mother’s two daughters and throughout my single digit years, I have no recollection of being anything other than a little toughie. I was brainwashed into this both by nature and nurture. I started my school days at Greetby Hill Primary School, the largest primary school in Ormskirk and soon found my tomboy manner was appreciated by the boys but less so by the girls! I could climb trees, kick a football and throw a punch better than any boy at Greetby Hill! I don’t recall ever having a birthday party of my own, nor do I remember attending any of the girls parties, but I recall several five-a-side football parties at Burscough and Skelmersdale Sports Centres! Every party, I was the only girl, but whilst the other outsiders like the fat kid, the square one and the snotty nosed one were always the last to be picked, I was first choice or even the child that was doing the picking!

  As my childhood progressed, I remained tough but lost the tomboy label. Once I hit eleven, my periods started, my breasts grew and the boys no longer treated me as one of their own. The girls did not welcome me into their fold either, so I became trapped in ‘No Man’s Land’! I remained there from aged eleven to fifteen, with only one true friend and a younger sibling around to retain my sanity. Fortunately for me, at fifteen, I did the ugly duckling trick and the boys began to sit up and take notice. I was once again the girl that every boy wanted to take to parties, but for entirely different reasons the second time around! I suspect they now wanted me to be doing other things to their balls rather than kick them!

  I suppose, in every teenage girl’s life, there comes a time when some shallow, brainless, infantile, adolescent lad, who has a penis for a brain, tries to pressurise them into forsaking their virginity. In my life, this time came at sixteen years old, in Fifth Form. It came in the form of Billy McGregor, heartthrob of my year and pretty much all the Sixth Form girls too. Billy McGregor was in Upper Sixth and was universally ranked “gorgeous”! I was not stupid. I knew Billy wanted to sleep with me for two reasons and two reasons only. The first was lust. As stated previously, boys think with their todgers and I had become a decent looking young girl, so naturally I understood my vagina had magnetic charms to a penis. Second reason was bragging rights. Billy McGregor was a cocky, self-obsessed, arrogant lad and wanted to share the intimate details of his experience with his spotty, less successful mates. Billy knew the girls liked him but what I reckon he wanted more than anything was for the boys to like him too. I don’t mean fancy him, of course, I just mean admire him. As far as I remember, most lads in Sixth Form thought Billy McGregor was the ultimate dickhead. Some of them were jealous, some of them just wanted to be him, but mainly the reason most lads thought he was the ultimate dickhead was, quite frankly, because he was!

  If this gives you the impression that I hated Billy McGregor, then it’s the wrong impression, I didn’t, I liked him. It was no teenage crush, ‘liked’ him was as far as I could stretch it, but I dated him for seven weeks largely because there were at least seventy five girls at school, who would quite happily have chopped my feet off with a cleaver so they could slip into my shoes. Billy was tall, dark haired and blue eyed, the perfect Rob Lowe combination. He was also athletic and pus free. Given most of the lads in our year and Sixth Form could have filled a two litre bottle of Coke with the pus from their foreheads alone, this was some achievement. God had dealt Billy McGregor a fine set of cards, it was just a pity that he knew it. He was used to getting what he wanted and what he wanted during our seven week relationship, was to take my bloodied sheets to “The Wine Bar” in Ormskirk and hang them over the first floor balcony for all to see. I kept feeling like I was the girl in that Meat Loaf song (“Paradise By The Dashboard Light”) who was getting felt up by the guy who was trying to get to all the bases and then score a “Home Run”. Difference was, in that song, the girl wanted the lad to love her forever and I certainly didn’t want that from Billy McGregor! I knew that I didn’t want to lose my virginity to him. In my life, things have always been done on my terms. I didn’t want to be in the “Billy McGregor Stole My Cherry Club” which at that stage probably already had about fifty three members or I suppose one member and fifty three broken hymens.

  So, other than looks, I was simply going out with him because I could and I knew this drove the majority of the other girls at school mad! I would have won no popularity contests amongst the bitches of Ormskirk Grammar School, so I could not have thought of anything that would have given me more pleasure than the pleasure I derived from watching their collective faces when I walked out of school and down Ruff Lane, hand in hand with the person they most desired. I savoured the jealous rage cooked up by every female onlooker. The bitches of Ormskirk Grammar School had a cauldron bubbling over with hatred and resentment every time I kissed his honey lips! I loved it! Even writing these words now, many years later, about their displeasure, still sends a tingle down my spine!

  Despite his over inflated ego and testosterone, Billy was pleasant company when it was just the two of us! I know I said he was “The Ultimate Dickhead” but I just meant he was the ultimate dickhead when he was in a gang of lads. He wasn’t the sharpest of Rambo’s knives, but even at the time, I liked him like a parent likes their three year old son, he was pretty cute, he was entertaining but he still had a lot to learn about life, so despite him stropping around and throwing tantrums, I knew it was unhealthy long-term just to give him what he wanted!

  There were further complications. Even if I had wanted sex with Billy McGregor, I was not 100% sure I quite understood everything sexually, well enough to feel comfortable doing it and the last thing I wanted to do, was to close up like a clam or a Venus fly trap and lock Billy’s willy inside! I could just imagine Billy and I having to waddle down to the pub, in some bizarre wheelbarrow motion, to tell my idiot of a drunken mother that we were off to hospital!

  That was the problem. I had no-one to turn to for sexual advice. I had a no good, pisshead mother, who would have probably suggested bringing some of the lads back from “The Ropers Arms” to teach me a few tricks if I had been to her for sexual advice. I did not have a father, not one I had met anyway and although I had a grandmother, who I referred to as “Tut”, as t
hat’s all she ever did when she came round to our house, I thought of her as a sourfaced old cow who despaired of my mother and thought Kelly and I would be better off in a foster home than being brought up by our Mum. To be fair, she was probably right, but in the same way I thought of “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” when I was kissing Billy McGregor, when I saw “Tut”, I thought of that tune from the “Wizard of Oz” that plays when Almira Gulch (The Wicked Witch of The West) cycles by threatening to take Toto away from Dorothy. I always thought back then, that if I was ever allowed a dog, I would have called him Toto!

  Incidentally, Kelly is my sister (probably half-sister as I can’t see any man being daft enough to sleep with my mother twice - unless they were equally drunk and had blotted out the first time). When I was sixteen, she was thirteen years old. Kelly was loving, beautiful and a diamond in the field of crap that my family was. At thirteen, I had only just bought Kelly her first tampons (Mum was too hungover to make it to Spar) so obviously I couldn’t have turned to her for sexual advice.

  So, as a sixteen year old, what did I not know about sex? Obviously I knew the basics, I wasn’t totally naïve! “Vomit Breath”, as I had christened my mother when I was fourteen, had shipped enough men into and out of our house (and her vagina) over the previous few years, that I had had many eye witness encounters of forgettable (for them), fumbling sex. I had also had a bit of “hands on” experience of the warm-up act when necking Barry Pounder at an Aughton Tennis Club disco and become a victim of his infamous, wandering hands. Nevertheless, I did not know everything. At sixteen, I was still not quite sure where sperm came from or rather where they came out from. I know this sounds really, really, stupid, but let me try to explain what I mean.

  Down below, girls/women had three entrance and exit points, but as far as I was aware, boys only had two. Each one of a girl’s exit points has a specific duty, one to poo, one to wee and one for creative duties (blood, sex, babies).Thus, if boys only had two, I figured out one had to be a multi-tasker, either that or there was another hole I was unaware of. After giving it a lot of thought, I deduced that the hole at the end of the penis obviously had a dual role, but it struck me as very odd. How did the male body know when to release what? I was not sure. Was it size dependent? For example, erect penis = sperm, limp penis = urine? This would make sense, but I was not sure that was right. I really did not get it!

  I cursed my luck. I thought I would probably be the girl who slept with the lad whose body malfunctioned and we’d have to dispose of a condom overflowing with wee. Obviously an additional complication that scared me was the condom “putting-on”, but I expected the likes of Billy McGregor to have had plenty of experience on that score. When it was my time for sex, I decided I would pretend to look the other way when the condom was going on and then slyly glance back to watch.

  For all I knew the sperm/urine thing could have been a common, unspoken problem, and concluded that potentially this was where the expression,

  “He doesn’t know whether he is coming or going” came from!

  I suppose the simplest solution would have been to just ask Billy, but I worried that any talk about sex may have given him the impression that I was up for it and I was not. Definitely not! I knew I would not be comfortable until I knew what I was doing and how everyone and everything was functioning! I realised it was a bit of a chicken and egg situation though, how would I know what I was doing until I had finally done it!

  Questions about male genitalia and questions like,

  “Who’s Fitter - Matthew Broderick, River Phoenix or Rob Lowe?”

  Answer - Rob Lowe (dark hair, blue eyes - winner every time), took up all my thinking time at school and proper study took up very little. I just wasn’t interested in schoolwork.

  Questions about John Betjeman and friendly bombs falling on Slough were boring! How could bombs be friendly? I just didn’t get that at all!

  Betjeman was earth shatteringly dull, but Jane Eyre (and whichever Bronte sister wrote about her) was even worse! Who gave a monkey’s whether Mr. Rochester had his wife stuck up in the attic and wanted to trade her in for Jane Eyre? I didn’t! I concluded that even if it was true, it was hundreds of years old so they’d all be dead now anyway, so let’s just move on. I applied the same logic to R.E! I only changed my mind on that when I was in my twenties. English Literature was my least favourite lesson though, as I found the teacher, Miss Caldicott, to be the mistress of monotony and dullness. I knew I was going to fail all my “O” levels, but Vomit Breath did not tell me knuckle down, far from it, she encouraged me to leave homework and school work well alone.

  “There’s no way on God’s Earth I’m putting you through two years of Sixth Form when you could be paying your way to help me and Kelly out”.

  She was a charmer my mother! Get a job, Jemma! Helps with the school uniform for Kelly and the large scotches and ciggies for me! Heart of gold? Sadly not. More like a big, fat, decaying black heart. I hated her. Hated her more than I can put down in words.

  Richie

  I was born an Evertonian. My Mum was an Evertonian, my uncle was an Evertonian, my Granddad was an Evertonian, so before I could walk I was a brainwashed blue. My Granddad started buying me a season ticket in the Lower Bullens from when I was seven years old until he became too old to go when I was twenty one. They don’t ban Senior Citizens at Everton, he just found the walk to the train station and the climb up and down the stairs too much once he got to his late seventies! Bizarrely though, any real interest in going to the game was triggered by my first ever trip to a football match which was at Burnden Park, Bolton.

  My Dad is originally from Bolton. Growing up I wasn’t close to my father. I wanted to be, but from Monday to Friday he was working, he was a Regional insurance rep, Saturdays he was either at the bookies or watching the racing on TV, then on Sundays he would strop around, cursing his luck and re-counting his stories to anyone who would listen about the horse in his accumulator that let him down.

  “If COMPLIANT LAD had a longer neck, our family would all be sunning it up in Barbados now”.

  My Dad wasn’t a bad man. He was, in many ways, a good one, but he loved his horse racing and unfortunately, too often, he put his own vice before his family. Even more unfortunate for me was that I later discovered gambling was a genetic affliction.

  In 1984, my mother decided enough was enough and issued an ultimatum, “the horses or me”. I’m sure if it had been a straight choice, he’d have probably packed his bags and headed off to watch the 2.10 from Haydock in peace, but the “me” included four children he loved dearly. He may not have made a huge amount of time for us, but there was no doubting he loved us dearly so from that day forward he stopped gambling, well, so my mother thought, anyway! In actual fact, all he did was gamble far more discreetly than he had ever done before! He spent more time at home, we did more as a family, Peter O’Sullevans commentaries stopped echoing around the house every Saturday afternoon and he learnt to hide his disappointments rather than share them.

  Back in 1978 though, my Dad was still an open and honest gambler. Gambling came first, family second and Bolton Wanderers a close third. As a child, Dad was apparently a decent inside-half although I don’t recall a single day he kicked a ball with me. I do, however, recall him being a massive Bolton fan.

  “I promise one day I’ll take you and James to Bolton”, he used to pipe up. Even at seven, I knew not to believe him, this man made more promises than Noel Edmonds made swaps. For those of you too old or too young to remember, Saturday morning was Swap Shop time, in our house it was anyway, as my mother banned Tiswas which was on the other side, as she deemed it to be “too aggressive”. James hated that decision, I wasn’t bothered, I preferred Swap Shop! With Swap Shop, you had to phone Noel Edmonds and Keith Chegwin and tell them what useless bunch of crap you wanted to swap for something fantastic. I still remember the phone number. 01-811-8055. Anyway, Dad made promises all the time that came to nothing.

>   “Father Christmas will be bringing Choppers for you and James this year and a bloody great big dolls house for your sisters.”

  He didn’t.

  “Jimmy in the office was saying he’s just bought his lad a goal with a net for the garden. I think I’ll get one of those for you boys and I promise I’ll come out there with you and we’ll have a bloody good kick about”.

  No kick about, no goal either!

  Dad said things. He didn’t mean them, he just said them, so even at that age, I didn’t get excited as I knew it meant nothing, unless of course, the sentence was finished off with a ,“’cos I’ve had a win on the gee-gees!”

  If Dad won on the horses, he was the happiest, most generous man in the world. When he won, it was like God turned the egg-timer over and he evolved from a sour-faced grump, infrequently seen, to an all singing, all dancing, one man cabaret. Helen, the oldest and wisest of his offspring, deemed it to be his “three hour happy window”. Good things happened in the “happy window” and one Friday he must have nipped into the bookies after work, fortune must have been on his side, as he arrived home that Friday evening with three tickets to Bolton Wanderers against Wolverhampton Wanderers, for Dad, James and I. I remember James asking if it was a local Wanderers derby!

  James wasn’t into football much then, nor is he now and at the time, although I told everyone I was an Evertonian and collected Panini stickers, I didn’t quite understand the older kids obsession with football either, but the most exciting part of the announcement was that James and I were going to be spending the whole day with our Dad. Our Dad, a man who generally focused five minutes of his day towards us, was going to focus his whole day on us well, us and Bolton Wanderers anyway.