From Virtue to Reality: A Story of Sex, Survival, and Success

By Sandra Hobson

Sandra Hobson's journey, from her role as a Stress Management Consultant to becoming a Town Mayor, TV Actress, Radio Presenter, and an Entertainer all across Europe, is a captivating saga of a life lived to the fullest. Having faced the harrowing battle against cancer not once, but three times, Sandra's s

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Media Reviews
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781961395343

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Copyright © 2023 by Sandra Hobson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-961395-35-0 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-961395-36-7 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-961395-34-3 (E-book Edition)

Book Ordering Information

The Media Reviews

99 Wall Street #2870

New York, NY, 10005 USA

www.themediareviews.com

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Chapter 1: Life at home

Chapter 2: My first job in Show Business

Chapter 3: Striptease Clubs in London

Chapter 4: Living in Mayfair

Chapter 5: Violence and abuse

Chapter 6: Cabarets on the Continent

Chapter 7: Saturday Night in the Blauen Bock

Chapter 8: BlauenBock Part II

Chapter 9: The Love of my Life

Chapter 10: Diplomas Galore

Chapter 11: Running a Brothel

Chapter 12: Picking up the pieces

Chapter 13: Home at Last

Chapter 14: The first Time

Chapter 15: My Guests

Chapter 16: What has she got?

Chapter 17: The ladies in waiting

Chapter 18: Headline News

Chapter 19: Contemplation’s

Chapter 20: Retirement

Chapter 21: My Around the world adventure

Chapter 22: Getting Back on Track

Chapter 23: A respected member of the community

Chapter 24: Lightning Strikes Twice

Chapter 25: My Personal Tsunami

Chapter 26: Such a lot of living to do

Chapter 1

Life at home

Fear, being beaten and feeling different from other children, knowing that it wasn’t really my home, are the first things that come to mind. We were three adopted children all from different parents. Three of the many unwanted children who flooded adoption societies at the end of the war. My father and his wife were apparently unable to have children and to this day I believe that some higher power was right in it’s decision to make them infertile. Nobody that violent or unstable should be let loose with children, and I often feel it is a shame that the adoption society was unable to see through the upper middle class facade of decency and respectability that my father presented to the world. However over a 5-year period, he succeeded on three occasions to adopt first me, then my brother and my younger sister. We all had dark tanned skin, which fitted well with his mixed marriage as a Negro to a white North American with Indian heritage, from Tuskeegee, Alabama. I was the only one with frizzy Afro-Caribbean hair. Strange as it may seem, even very young I understood that it was a distinct disadvantage to have frizzy (nappy) hair. My parents gave out the message that it never looked nice was a lot of work to manage and it was an outward sign of being unacceptably different. Black in a country where black people were shunned

Most of the time we spent trying not to upset him as we all lived in fear of his terrible temper. Unbelievably he was widely known as an extremely good doctor and it was not until years later at his funeral that some of our friends, who had also been his patients, admitted that they knew that something was wrong. He could turn from being a caring and compassionate family doctor to a patient and their children, into a raving maniac, all but frothing at the mouth, in minutes when dealing with us. As children we spent most of our time trying to avoid him and his vile temper and living in fear that the slightest thing we might do wrong would upset him.

My father came from a dysfunctional family and he repeated the cycle himself. His mother left a very domineering husband and took her son with her when she moved to New York. As a single mother I can imagine bringing a son up alone was no easy task. It was in the era of a lot of racial conflict and apart from feeling its influence as he grew up, (he had to suffer difficult times when he worked as a bellboy), it left a strong impression on him. On a daily basis we were preached that life was very hard for coloured people, that we had to be that much better than everybody else because as there were at that time no other coloured people living in our area, we would always be watched wherever we went. This was true. We were known as the doctor’s children and I in particular felt that I was always being talked about. Everything I did got back to him sooner or later.

My first school was a private PNEU (Parents National Education Union) one and I often came home in tears after being taunted in the playground about my skin colour and frizzy hair. Our friends were few, many being discouraged from coming round by my father’s enthusiastic suggestion that they do some homework with us before we were allowed out to play.

Daddy came from Panama. As a Negro he was very colour conscious and had a bad complex about his race and how coloured people were treated at that time. To anglicise us as much as possible he insisted on our speaking accent free, Oxford English. Mummy was an American from the South, Alabama, where the cotton fields are. She was mixed race just as we all were. She was part Negro and part Indian and she spoke with a southern drawl which he hated. He was always correcting her. It was through her that I learnt a lot about the States. She was a timid, submissive person unable to cope with daddy’s bad temper. She lived in an open house. Guests were welcome any time. If he had not been such a cantankerous old man she would have enjoyed a much better social life.

I wrote to the adoption society begging to be allowed to leave this miserable home but I never heard any thing from them. I’m sure mummy never posted the letters, which I sadly entrusted to her.

My independent spirit showed and as much as possible I refused to obey him. I hated him. He made a point of spoiling any kind of party or holiday. Next door to my present home is a lovely young family with two young children who spend a lot of time with me. They have the sort of home life I would love to have been brought up in. Neither of our parents would play with us. Daddy was too busy and only interested in our studies. Mummy, who liked swimming seemed too self-conscious to do that or any other sports or hobbies with us. We never had anything like aunts, uncles, cousins or any other family. I never even knew daddy’s exact birthday. My talent as an entertainer emerged, when my sister and brother used to creep into my bed while he was ranting and raving and hitting mummy. To comfort them I used to make up stories. As soon as I was old enough I used to climb down the drainpipe outside my bedroom window and go out on my bike without him knowing. I used to bribe my sister and brother with sweets not to tell him I was gone. A lot of what happened at home I have blanked out of my mind. Eventually we were all kicked out of the house one by one. At 17 ½ years I was the first to go and forbidden to keep in contact with them, so it was many years later that we met up again at his funeral.

Fortunately, as a young girl I was allowed to go to ballet classes which I loved and I used to enjoy making up shows in my mind. When I was a teenager I spent hours in the lounge begging mummy to take us all away from him. How strange that many years later I would also be in a violent marriage and realise how hard it is to escape from such a situation. It took me 24 years! She used to write articles for magazines and by the time she had a book published she was very ill and suffered a stroke. Her book although written as a novel was really an autobiography describing the life of a downtrodden wife. Her stroke, according to my siblings, was partly his fault and as if to erase the guilt he banished her to a nursing home miles away. Mummy, obviously no longer fitted his picture of respectability and died alone, bedridden and senile. Her death in 1983 (April) came soon after one of my brother’s monthly visits but none of us were told of her demise because father considered it to be our responsibility to contact Matron for information. At this time I had no contact with what was left of the Kerr family and it took my brother a lot of searching to find where I was performing on the continent.

The thing I used to love doing was dressing up and dancing and singing on the sloping roof of the garden shed. This faced a large vegetable garden and was separated from the main road by a high privet fence. It never occurred to me to be shy although I’m sure that people in the houses opposite could see me. The cultural side of life came from mummy. She used to take me to the theatre in London and I loved the atmosphere.

Getting my first tutu was a special event and I loved every minute of my dance classes. I always got top marks in exams in that subject much to my father’s disgust. His non stop whine was, it was more important to study, saying that beauty, clothes and costumes or dancing were not important as they would never lead to a career.

If he did anything with us it would be athletics to prove how fit he was. Even that was a serious business and not any fun. Nothing we did was ever good enough, even when we got top marks, which I did in all academic subjects. With reluctance I have to admit that he did provide a good education but I would rather have had some affection and been able to have fun with him as I saw other kids do with their parents. Even on holiday studies came first.

On top of that, to make life tougher, he had to be a pacifist, atheist and vegetarian, which meant we had special food at school, which made us easy prey for bullying by classmates.

Once a week there was a treat when we went up to London on the day he visited his patients in hospital. Sometimes I would go with him to the hospital and on the wards. He seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable for a ten year old to see things like operating theatres and all the gory samples of aborted mis-formed foetuses displayed in the hospital lab museum. Other times I went shopping with mummy. She loved the big department stores. When I think back she must have really missed the big stores in the States. On a really good day we might be lucky enough to have high tea in the Dorchester or Grosvenor Hotel. There were several vegetarian restaurants in London and we often ate in those. I always thought the food tasted ghastly.

The last ritual on the way home was a trip to the movies usually in Tooting or Streatham but the time that stuck in my memory was a visit to the flicks in Putney. We had never been there before and I don’t think we went back there again

Daddy often took me with him when he made home visits as well. Each of us had tasks to do at home. When mummy was (ill!) beaten, I used to answer the phone, open the door to the patients, and deliver the medicine to people’s homes. That I hated, because lots of people had loud barking dogs which frightened the hell out of me. The worst job I had though was polishing the huge red tiled porch every morning before I went to school. My hands got raw and that red stuff stained just about everywhere. It felt like a scene from Scrooge. Pocket money was scant and we were always being told how grateful we should be and how lucky we were to have been adopted by him. I really don’t remember hearing him say he loved us. His favourite saying was it was all for our own good. There was always something for him to get angry about and he thought up the most spiteful ways of punishing us. I can hear the phrases he repeated all the time I lived at home You’ll never amount to anything, or what is going to become of you or If I don’t beat some sense into that ungrateful child she’ll come to no good. Remember you’re black and life is very hard for coloured people in this country. You’ll have to work twice as hard as a white child.

To spite his wife he would often take me down to the caravan in Christchurch on my own. That meant taking my exercise books as well so that I could study and not waste time. He made mummy so nervous that she never learnt to drive and could not even read road maps properly. A bit like the hapless neighbour in Keeping up Appearances.

The Beaulieu Gardens campsite in Christchurch, became a regular place for us and we made friends with the Blackmore family who owned it. We all liked it at the campsite and I remember how appetising the food in other caravans would smell. Things like bacon or minced beef or sausages. We were so brainwashed though about the dangers of eating meat that it was more than our lives were worth to eat any. Of course because it was something he had forbidden it was something I had to do and I was always frightened he would smell it on my breath. These days all three of us eat meat and enjoy the occasional drink, which was something else that was totally taboo. Until recently my brother also smoked yet another thing that would have given him apoplexy.

Money was not a problem as he earned quite a bit. So we travelled abroad a lot. In fact we spent many long holidays in France and were bought up to be bilingual. We went to an expensive French school in London and before he trusted us enough to get there by bus and underground we were chauffeur driven to school.

Mummy loved clothes and we had a special dressmaker who used to sew things for her, and on special occasions such as his violin concerts, party outfits for us. I think daddy saw himself as an undiscovered musical genius. He played piano and violin and gave concerts in the Wigmore Hall in London. I believe the money went to the orphanage from which we came. This was the one occasion when he didn’t complain about fancy clothes because we were on show of course and the picture of the perfect family had to be maintained.

When it suited him we were kept up until all hours way past midnight. Hearing him pound away practising on the piano or violin used to sound like fury let loose. To this day the sound of classical music, especially violins conjures up the bad times at home, and makes me feel uncomfortable; it always presaged a beating or some other sort of punishment. His face would be screwed up as if he was in some agonising pain. He always looked angry with deep furrows on his brow. At each concert he always became hyper and mummy tried ineffectively to calm him. At his insistence I also learnt to play the piano and violin quite well, but sadly today I cannot play a single note, as I blanked most of this traumatic episode from my memory. I won a lot of silver cups for my efforts, which were proudly displayed in the waiting rooms.

Life at home for me was a constant battle of wills. I don’t think he had ever considered the idea that we were individuals with minds of our own. I’m sure he thought, take three orphans, give them a good education and they will turn out exactly as I want them to be. His plan was for me to become a doctor. I had no say in the matter at all. There was a time when medicine interested me but when it started to take over my life completely so that I was hardly ever allowed out to play, I revolted. At fifteen he pulled me out of school and kept me at home to coach me for my GCE’S at O level and A level. Although he never gave me any credit for my achievements, I did well and passed 7 O levels and then a year earlier than normal 3 A levels. There was no escaping the relentless hours of study with very few breaks and precious little time to play or go out with friends. I have always been a night owl and did a lot of last minute cramming late at night by candlelight. After each exam there was an inquisition into my exact answers. I must have been a sucker for punishment I suppose because I used to get the same sort of treatment when I was married. I allowed my husband to put me through the same torture after each show. Until one day I said Why the hell don’t you go on stage and do it yourself. He was constantly putting me down saying that Without him I would land in the gutter and that he had taught me everything because I had no talent.

My father had a large surgery with two waiting rooms, a dispensary and consulting room. Apart from a huge desk was a long massage table on which patients would receive their injections, sun lamp treatment or minor surgery such as the removals of warts, cysts or anything, which did not require major surgery. He even taught me on an orange to remove a wart from his hand and then stitch up the skin afterwards when I was about twelve years old. What a difference from the casting couch I was enticed onto later in life. It was on this couch that he meted out the toughest punishment. He would demand that I lie on my stomach and bare my bottom. At first he used his hands to spank me as hard as he could so that my bottom would be stinging. When this did not have the desired effect he started to use his leather belt or a cane. At first I used to scream in the hope that the neighbours would hear and come to the rescue. But even though I’m sure they did hear there is no way they would have done anything since he was respected, but known to be a formidable man not to be messed with. Plan B soon kicked in. The stubborn streak in me showed itself and instead of screaming I tried to stifle my cries as much as I could. I did not want to let him get the better of me. In my mind I was wishing all hell would be let loose and kill this wicked man. Futile cries from mummy Oh Errington don’t be so hard on the children, made no difference at all. On the contrary she would get the same treatment. Another favourite way to punish us was to say yes that we could go to a party, but that we would have to leave very early before the fun began or at the very last minute when we were getting dressed to go he would change his mind. He would then lie on the phone about why we could not make it.

Food at home was a nightmare. We were forced to be vegetarian. Mummy was a terrible cook anyway and not very inventive with what we were allowed to eat. Lots of freshly made meuseli, or lentils or nasty tasting nut rissoles and vegetarian sausages were our daily menu. At the local health food store she bought things like frubran, cashew nuts, and almonds which were always bitter .It always smelt musty in that shop and there were a certain type of people who seemed to shop there, somehow weird and not like normal people. Today’s equivalent would perhaps be the anti establishment groups. Although I now grudgingly accept some of his theories on food and diet it meant that as children we had to