The Moving Times Of Caroline Proudly

By Caroline Proudly

Caroline is 16 when she suddenly decides that her perfectly normal and loving home life is absolutely and completely intolerable. Suddenly moving out of home in 1988 is the beginning of a 13 year journey.

Outside the house where she has rented a room, she is left standing on the pavement clutching a yucca plant and gulping at a lump in her throat, as her father pulls off without so much as a goodbye. Although Caroline’s pride means that she wouldn’t ever admit that her decision to leave home may not have been so wise or well thought out, her naivety about the perceived joys of freedom are very apparent. Her independent life begins with very little money, no job, a room in a horrible house, a lecherous housemate and a very short fling with the landlord.

As the journey continues, the passage of time has no significance. Always with the ability to find the humorous side, each address marks another chapter in Caroline’s life and is the backdrop for the people she meets and the events that occur.

Accommodation varies from unheated rooms and houses with wheel-less cars jacked-up outside to Regency flats and rural cottages. Transportation means vary from a single use bicycle, to Betsa and the faithful Dwanetta. Flatmates vary from a lovely Brummie and a singing nun to a dying dog, a ginger laminator, a 3 nippled geek and an accidental spell with a local drugs baron. Events vary from harbouring boarding schoolgirls, exercising racehorses, the occasional rave, trading in shampoo and marmite on toast to looking for stolen laundry, going undercover and self-defence with a hockey stick.
Jobs vary from not having one to shop work, bartending and au pair through to getting a toe on the corporate ladder. There is infatuation, and love from various sources so there is also disappointment, and breakups by varying means and for various reasons. Education varies from a bit of formal study to a large dollop of the University of Life. The latter being the real reason Caroline left home in the first place – to grow up in her own way through her own experiences with no-one else to blame but herself and the interesting hand that life deals along the way.

Caroline moves home 19 times, only to find that the 20th move takes her to the last place she ever expected to be. Back where she started.

As Caroline pulls up outside her childhood home, this time, there is nowhere else she would rather be. Greeted by her father’s calculation that she must have been driving too fast to have managed to get there in record time meant that the shade of rose starts to fade fast from her ‘tinted glasses’. As he peers into the car and launches into a ranting monologue about the fact that she has more stuff than he has room to store, he may as well rip the glasses from her face and stamp on them.

Things aren’t always as they seem...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caroline Proudly
• Release date: Mar 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463994726

Caroline Proudly

Born in 1971, Caroline grew up in the small rural village in the South of England. Well before taking the good old 11+ exam she had already been labelled ‘stupid and a non-achiever’. Failing the exam as predicted, her parents manged to get her into a private school. At the age of 14 Caroline was officially diagnosed as dyslexic. In 1988, having scrapped through her GCSE’s, a week into A level she decided to drop out and leave home at 16.Not that surprisingly, her rather ambitious and not very well thought out idea, of becoming a poet on a desert island, did not come to fruition on any level! So, whilst continuing to work to pay the rent, Caroline completed 2 A levels in a year, allowing her to secure a place to do a Degree as a mature student. The third year’s work placement, spent in France, wetted her continental appetite.After graduating with a Desmond 2:2 and working in London for several years, Caroline decided to take 6 months off in Paris – after a lot longer than that, she finally made it back to England.Having spent the next 13 years at a senior management level and doing nothing but work, it was time to take stock. Time to see if there was something that could be done with all the scribbles and notes of the last 30 old years! The result? The Moving Times of Caroline Proudly...

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CONTENTS

Rose Cottage, Bilton, Fitchestershire

55 Peer Road, Fitchester, Fitchestershire

Flat 5, 23 Regent Road, Fitchester, Fitchestershire

Flat 2, Oaken Lodge, Ronsellier, Fitchester, Fitchestershire

23 Saint Albert Street, Fitchester, FitchestershireC6

10 Donald Drive, Fitchester, Fitchestershire

2 Henry Place, Fitchester, Fitchestershire

28 Twine Close, Gitterlums, Hullenshire

42 Saint Philips Road, Hedgley, Hullen, Hullenshire

L’Ecurie, Bieseux, France

La Petite Maison, Bieseux, France

52 Rue Cuvier, Paris, France

42 Saint Philips Road, Hedgley, Hullen, Hullenshire

18 Heath Road, London

20 Shield Street, London

Hockett Manor, Nr Waranwell, Moretonshire

Top Floor Flat, 55 Ashdown Street, London

Flat 2, Mount House, 98 Dormore Road, London

Flat 6, 47 Kelly Avenue, London

Rose Cottage, Bilton, Fitchestershire

Chapter 1

Rose Cottage, Bilton, Fitchestershire

My mother’s community spirit meant that she had the Fitchester Echo delivered five days a week. She, in fact, had every local paper delivered. Her logic was, from the newspaper’s producers right down to the village paperboy, she was supporting the local economy. Consideration for the environment didn’t come into the equation. On the rare occasions when my brother’s cricket team had won a match, he would flick hopefully through the sports section to see if he had got a mention. On Valentine’s Day, after diner, my father would read out the sloppy ‘love announcements’ in a stupid voice. I only picked up the local papers to move them from the porch to the fireplace and my mother, only to start the fire on cold evenings.

As a precautionary measure, in case one of my brother’s chickens were ill, my mother flooded the kitchen, my father ran over a pheasant on the way home from work or I remembered to put my riding boots out to dry off, about 3 days’ worth of papers were always stored in the fireplace.

My pleas to be allowed to apply for the lucrative role as the village papergirl were denied by my parents on the grounds that my homework was more important than pocket money. I wasn’t like my friends. I didn’t want money to buy the latest ‘Cure’ or ‘Simple Minds’ album. I needed money for something far more important. Although I frequently made it clear that I had not inherited my mother’s sentimental feelings for ‘our community’, neither of my parents fully appreciated the magnitude of my desire to get away from it. Driven to lowly behaviour, I started stealing my brother’s egg money, which he kept in a stack of clay pigeons until he had enough to bank. In an attempt to maintain some dignity, I worked on a strategy of never taking anything larger than a 50 pence piece and on any given day not to take more than the total of 50 pence. By the end of a couple weeks my brother’s meticulous accounts were in turmoil and in order to concentrate on finding the discrepancies, he employed me to feed the chickens and deliver the eggs. My job and the higher than agreed salary situation continued until I was caught ‘with my hand in a clay pigeon’.

I wanted out. I needed out and I was determined to get out. Suddenly I was delighted that Mother thought more about supporting the community rather than the woodland that surrounded us. The subliminal effect of years of briefly being exposed to the Fitchester Echo weekly boasting of a property section, gave me the opportunity. My stealing, chicken feeding, egg delivering and the sudden discovery that my mother had for years been paying £10 a month into an account for me, gave me the means.

Desperation made the days seem like years. Finally, the designated property section day came around. As it wasn’t Valentine’s Day and it wasn’t the cricket season, I was confident that the missing pages would go unnoticed. Even so I was terrified at my parent’s reaction of their ‘little goose’ flying the nest and I remember discretely tearing out the extensive property section, which to my excitement spanned half a page. Sitting on the floor in my bedroom with my back against the door, I had a forbidden cigarette and studied the adverts. I highlighted a couple of two-bedroom flats in nice locations before I noticed the rent. Quickly, I skipped down to the more reasonably priced house share section and convinced myself that living all alone would have been too lonely anyway. I made a list of questions that I needed to ask and with the list and adverts up my sleeve, I went back downstairs. As I went through into the sitting room I rhetorically asked if I could use the telephone.

That evening was a typical after diner scenario. My father was sitting at the dining room table reading the Telegraph and munching on an apple. My brother was studying in his room and my mother was washing up to Radio 4’s ‘Brain of Britain’. When I came back out of the sitting room, noting that it was the shortest call that I had made in his living memory, my father asked whom I had called. Without realising it, he had set the scene perfectly for a dramatic justification of why, after 16 years, I could no longer bear to be at Rose Cottage. I exploded with a barrage of accusations: they spied on me, I had no privacy, no liberty, no rights, the very life in me was being sucked dry by the mundane life they forced me to lead!

As my mother came into the dining room I was announcing with excessive volume and excitement that as a result of all of that I was moving out. My father’s response was that he would be glad to see the back of me. My mother’s was to burst into tears and threaten to call the police as I was a minor. As a row broke out between them, I was stuck in the middle of shouts of ‘Well, I will not be spoken to in that manner. As far as I am concerned, I am throwing her out!’ and ‘If you do, I will never forgive you and I will pack my bags too!’ The shouting was redirected in my direction, ‘And how do you think you are going to pay the rent? You won’t be able to live off a Saturday job!’

Actually, now I’m not going to school any more, I can get a full-time job.

There was a moment of horrified silence as my parents tried to take in what I had said. Helpfully I add, I haven’t been all week. I did pop in on Tuesday, but only to tell the headmaster of my decision… The reaction to my revelation was enormously loud.

The commotion brought my brother down from his room and as he stood at the bottom of the stairs to assess the situation, he screamed at me, You’re always causing trouble. How am I supposed to study with you causing trouble and upsetting everyone all the time?

Glaring at him, I calmly assured him that it would be the last time. I am leaving…going…forever and I mean FOREVER! I shrieked as I pushed past him and ran up to my room.

Chapter 2

55 Peer Road, Fitchester, Fitchestershire

The frosty effect of the barney lingered in the air. Daddy hadn’t been lying when he had said that he would be glad to see the back of me, however he didn’t physically throw me out. Not one to go back on his word, the next day I had a mumbled explanation that he was asking me to leave but would show compassion as long as I moved out as quickly as possible. My mother didn’t call the police or pack her bags, but according to my brother’s account of things, she didn’t talk to my father for some time after the row.

I don’t remember going to see the house, but I do remember approaching my father and explaining that only with his help could I physically move. A mixture of wanting to get rid of me and wanting it to seem like he was throwing me out created a small logistical contradiction in his mind. He overcame that by helping me move, but by being stubbornly unhelpful in the process. He sat in the car as I loaded everything in. He drove his over-packed car to Fitchester and then sat in the driver’s seat pretending to be asleep whilst I hauled full black dustbin liners up the stairs to my new bedroom. When I slammed the boot closed, he started the engine and drove off without a word. I have a lasting memory of being left on the pavement, outside number 55 Peer Road, holding a huge yucca plant and gulping hard at a lump in my throat.

I sat on my bed still clutching the plant like a security blanket until the lump in my throat subsided and the anticipated excitement of feeling finally free filled me. Having gently positioned the yucca in the only suitable place, I ripped open the black bags and unpacked.

To people who didn’t know where Peer Road was, I described it as ‘Sacville’. To those who might of, I phrased it as ‘Near Sacville but on the right side of Rodden.’ The second description was nearer the truth. Peer Road fell just beyond the niceness of Sacville and whilst it wasn’t officially in Rodden, it may as well have been. The street blew with sweet wrappers and the only feature that distinguished one house from the next was the number and very occasionally a vulgarly coloured front door. Otherwise the grey facades were depressingly identical and characterless.

One of the first afternoons after I had moved in, I heard a huge commotion in the street outside. Terrified, I crept over to the sitting room window and discreetly peeked through the gap between the net curtain and the window frame. To my relief it was nothing more than a rabble of unruly school kids making their way home. As I watched them pass, cross over the main road and finally disappear into Rodden, for the first time I noticed that a large strip of brown parcel tape held the windowpane together. As I mused over the bizarre fact that I hadn’t noticed it before I realised that, as a result of the overgrown excuse of a front garden, it wouldn’t be visible from the outside. Inside, the smoke-stained net curtain hid it from view. That strip of brown tape caused a general awareness with regards to my new surroundings. The sitting room smelt of an unpleasant mixture of damp and dirty socks. The kitchen had seen better days even before it had suffered from a small fire. The backdoor was charred and clutched only half successfully at the dirty glass. A flap of a Walker’s crisps box wedged in between the two, prevented the gales from blowing in but caused an eerie whistling even with a slight breeze. Sitting on the counter, usually there were several plates with the congealed remains of beans on toast.

Although I had been rudely awoken from naivety by the unforeseen damage deposit and advance rent, my mood was kept light by my new-found freedom. My pleasures were limited to the smaller things in life. I revelled in the ability to be able to eat when I was hungry rather than when it was the set time to eat, even if it meant that it was a bowl of pasta with melted butter that I had to cook myself. I savoured openly enjoying a cigarette, even if my budgeted packet of 10 every two days meant that I couldn’t actually have one as often as I would have liked to.

The deposit and advanced rent had also reduced my calculated jobless existence from three months down to two. Three months had seemed like ample time to find gainful employment; two months didn’t seem very long at all and the weeks seemed to pass with frightening speed. The reoccurring vision of my father driving off without a word, too much pride to allow myself to run back to Mummy even in a crisis and just one month to find a job, caused panic. The days seemed like years as again I waited in desperation for the appropriate day when the Fitchester Echo could help me. Finally, ‘Job Day’ came around and without any work experience and certainly no intention of entering into the plumbing or electrical trade, I contacted a couple of shops that were advertising for sales consultants. With the interviews under my belt and a job offer, I waited impatiently for the nice shoe shop in Ronsellier, offering the best salary, to call me back. Desperate not to lose out on the other offer I decided to call the shoe shop. With an ‘incoming calls only’ phone at the house, I went to the nearest phone box with a pound’s worth of 10p pieces. Over the deafening noise of the traffic outside, I diplomatically explained my situation and that I would like to establish if I was still being considered for the job at the shoe shop. To my extreme delight, there and then, on the spot as I stood nervously on the end of the phone, they took me on. With the remaining 10p pieces I called the other shop and politely declined their offer. The relief that I had been saved from a potential life on the streets caused me to practically skip back to number 55. On the way, I popped into the corner shop and lavishly bought a ‘Happy Shopper’ pot of pasta sauce and a packet of 20 Silk Cut.

The lack of heating and the long dark winter evenings drove me to hibernate in my room. The furniture in my bedroom consisted of a single bed and an uneven makeshift desk. The sloping piece of MDF was propped up against a window, which was inadequately covered by a much too small, dark green velour curtain. There was no room for a chair but the beds close proximity to ‘the desk’, overcame the real need for one. My yucca’s leaves fought against the corner walls that restricted them and my clothes hung in a wardrobe outside on the landing. A redundant wire hung from the middle of the ceiling and the light switch, which presumably had once operated it, had been sellotaped over. The up-tipped head of my small reading light projected, what I thought was, an ambient glow. With a limited selection of music, I spent hours repetitively playing Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen.

With my first pay packet from the shoe shop I invested in a second duvet and another hot water bottle. I came across a discount bookshop and with my second pay packet I frivolously bought myself the complete works of Oscar Wilde, Jane Austin and Thomas Hardy. After a few months, I had enough money to start going out, but there was no bus that went anywhere helpful, and I certainly hadn’t enough beer money to waste on taking taxis. An evening of calculating brought me to the conclusion that to invest in a bicycle would be the solution. The result was a 20th hand ‘sit up and beg’ bike that I bought from a shop at the top of Ronsellier. Delighted with my purchase, nervously I started to wobble my way back to Peer Road. I tried to convince myself that with practice the horrible feeling of vulnerability, which every passing car caused, would diminish. As I negotiated the first and only roundabout on the way back home, car horns deafened me as I cut through their paths. Shaken up, I pushed my bike the rest of the way home. After that ordeal, the bicycle remained chained to the front garden’s railings until someone nicked it.

My next strategy was to initiate an entertaining at home programme. My invitations included ‘bring a bottle of red and a warm jumper’. My regular guest was Jonathan, an adorable black boy whom I had known for a long time. The frequent evenings spent together moved our friendship into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. After a romantic dinner on the end of my bed by the ambient light of the up-tipped reading lamp, there was knock on my bedroom door. I opened it to find my brother standing on the brightly lit landing peering into the gloom at us. The moment of pleasure that a family member had come to visit me was ruined when without a greeting he screamed at me. I‘ve been banging on the front door for five minutes! I’ve just walked straight into the house and you didn’t hear a thing! I could’ve been anyone… I could’ve done anything… I don’t know…stolen your crockery or something! I could see his point but the idea of being the victim of a menacing attack by a crockery thief amused me. Jonathan knew my brother from the pub but had clearly never seen his protective brotherly side and so looked petrified as result of his outburst. For Jonathon’s sake I overrode my desire to point out that I had a strong man to protect me in any possible event of the house being under attack. After a serious promise to increase my security conscience, by locking the door, my brother calmed down. The reason he had popped by was to see if I wanted to go for a drink. Glancing discreetly at the second bottle of red that was still close to full, I declined his offer on ‘our behalf’.

Jonathan and I were sound asleep when the noise of banging woke us. Throwing on a dressing gown, I ran down to the front door. As I opened it, Sid my elusive housemate, who I thankfully rarely saw, was throwing up in bushes next to the front door. Although I was furious, his paralytic state meant that there was clearly no point in expressing my displeasure at having been woken. As I crawled back into bed and was getting comfortable, I realised that Jonathan was gone. I hissed his name in the dark and waited for an answer. Turning on my lamp, I hissed his name again. Wondering if maybe he had gone to the bathroom, I went out onto the unlit landing to check the status of the bathroom door. It was open and the bathroom was in darkness. The wardrobe door creaked open and all I saw were the whites of two terrified eyes staring back at me from between my hanging clothes. As I dragged him back into bed I couldn’t contain my laughter. All he kept repeating was, …If that had been your brother, he would have killed me! I know he would have done…I saw him earlier… You’re his baby sister…He would have killed me if that had been him and he had found me in bed with you… Dead, that’s what I would be!

We did continue to see each