Orange mortar and scapegoats

When one of the Clarke girls started going out with Jonny Weetabix it caused a bit of a scandal.  This was a measure of how far we'd come - the chat was about Jonny's suitability and not Liz Clarke's heritage.  When pushed, I'd characterise Jonny as above Baby Harry (a terrifying 8 year old who threatened anyone he could with his Alsatian dog and ruled the whole of Coltman Street) on a par with Peter Frame (who got expelled from school at 8, 10, 12 and possibly other times) and a good bit below David Petty (who was largely harmless but did cause me actual bodily harm when the dart he was throwing into the air somehow landed in my forehead about an inch from my eye.  I pulled it out, ran in crying and then went swimming - worrying that the hole in my head would let the water in. It didn't.) 

The Weetabixes - not their real name, obviously - lived behind our house and my mother said we shouldn't hang out with them because they didn't get washed properly and they were people who lacked ambition. 
"Ambition?" I'd asked but only because my mother's reasoning often defied any logic and I was in the mood for entertainment.

"Yes," she said, "They eat Weetabix for breakfast, dinner and sometimes tea.  They share 2 fish between 8 of them and they don't believe in reading. And they go out in the rain without their anoraks." My mother held great store in anoraks which is why she almost killed my sister when she accidentally (on purpose?) lost her brand spanking new anorak a few months before somewhere under the flyover.  My mother hit her with a milk bottle that time (she was washing them out before putting them on the step at the time) and rhythmically beat out the phrase, "How could you lose it?" over and over on her legs.  KM couldn't say.  And, if my mother had bothered to ask me, I couldn't either, even though I was probably walking behind my sister.  As penance, KM had to wear my mother's anorak which buried her and made her look like something the cat dragged in.


"Perhaps they don't own anoraks?" I said.

"That tells you everything you need to know," my mother smirked.

That was conclusive then.

I'd been in Jonny Weetabix's house - and I was amazed how little furniture they had and the fact they could draw on the walls.  I thought he was mostly a bit stupid, the kind of boy that got the blame for things even when he hadn't done them and who didn't care either way: it was attention, and attention, even as life's perpetual scapegoat, was better than no attention at all.
 
"One final thing," my mther began again, "they're trash.  They threw a dozen old shoes into our yard, which their mother denied - where else could they have come from?  And they chucked over a rat.  A dead rat.  What kind of people do that?"

"I don't know," I said, and I didn't.

"Trashy people," she said, "The Frames might be stupid, but they're not trashy."

"Stupid?"

"Yes. I told her my maiden name was Davies-Smith, Jackie Frame said - "Oh, we might be related, I'm a Davies."  I said, "It's Davies hyphen Smith." And she said, "What's a fucking hyphen?"

"Right," I said, not being overly certain about hyphens myself.

"What's Jonny been up to? He been putting his hand up for stuff he hasn't done again?"

"He's going out with one of the Clarke girls, Liz I think."

"I'm surprised Ernie would let that happen.  He loves those kids and wants the best for them."

You can read the rest of the first part of this here