I feel very fortunate having had err fabulous childhood in Jersey in the Channel Islands and my parents decided to move there when I was eight and prior to that we lived in London so going from a city centre suburb to a little town in Jersey which had beaches pubs parks and freedom was fantastic and there was me my brother and my sister and i’m the eldest of what was three at the time and we just played on the beaches everyday while it was nice and it was amazing total total freedom
my parents had bought this cafe in the centre of the main town of jersey St Helier and because they were so busy building this cafe and trying to build this business we were left to our own devices and it was fabulous and we felt very very lucky
with every everything good theres also bad because when the winters come in Jersey and the island closes it becomes very solitary and very very quiet and when um a group called madness bought out a song called Ghost Town and you’ve got the bales of hay rolling down the streets that was how we all felt of Jersey in the winter but we had a saviour and that was our youth club which happened to be next door to our cafe and this youth club did lots of activities from walking around the island to raise money for charity to staying in the Martello tower camping at weekends and having BBQs that was just fabulous and then they bought a yacht and we all went sailing around the island and we sailed to France on this yacht and that was just the most amazing experience and I’ve got some really fond memories of those trips
My little brother was then born in Jersey and that became four children then two boys two girls and John is the only Jersey born in the family quite funny actually mum thought she was going through the menopause cause she was forty five and the doctor told her she was sixth months pregnant so she had only three months to get used to the fact that she was having a baby with three other children a cafe six cottages and four rooms to rent out I think she had enough on her plate poor woman umm
I finished school at fifteen cause in Jersey you can at the time um I left school got myself a job in an office felt very fortunate to get that job um worked there for about a year and got bored um got in with a crowd of season workers on the island and I decided to start working in hotels which seemed more fun and I know its a bit chaotic but it was good and I worked in these hotels became a waitress and a chambermaid and then unfortunately a disaster in the family my brother closest to me he hung himself at sixteen poor boy very confused he didn’t know if he was Arthur or Matha and decided that he didn’t want to find out if he was Arthur or Martha so he decided to hang himself and that was pretty pretty traumatic in a small island where you knew everybody and that was the deciding factor for me to leave the island cause I couldn’t stand seeing it on the front of the newspapers anymore and ur so I came to London with the crowd of season workers and worked in a hotel in London and er that was er very other experience and thats probably not for this project but I would highly advocate Jersey as a fabulous place to bring children up just for the freedom factor of being on the beaches all day until the sunset into the evening and picking blackberries and just being free that was my total memory of it fabulous
Was it difficult leaving Jersey?
No because of the circumstances but I say no it must have been because when I look back um at the time British caledonian used to do flights from Gatwick airport to Jersey for £20 return and when cause I was a chamber maid in this hotel in London I used to do shifts and every three weeks you got seven days off and for those seven days I used to fly back to Jersey so yes it must have been harder than i realised and er but dad made that easier for me cause he used to give me the £20 back a bottle of vodka and some cigarettes cause I smoked at the time and er it was worth going home just for that and of course the food cause I was fed for seven and I’m sure as a student you know what thats like because we only got food at the hotel we didn't get food at our digs so we’d get breakfast and lunch or whatever we could scrounge from the hotel for food we’d get other than that it was a tub of coleslaw but um so yeah but I think from memory I did that from eighteen and by the time I was twenty one I stopped going back to Jersey so I must have then integrated into life in London yeah cause thats when I became a driving instructor yeah
And um how would you describe your relationship with your family?
Um distant probably is the easiest way to explain it cause because of this cafe I cause I’m the eldest I was expected to look after the three children because mum and dad were just too busy and then we were all expected to help in the cafe so we all had our jobs and mine was doing the dishes in the back cafe my brothers cause he had the nicest writing was to write all the menus um Susan was to clean the tables and john was too little so he didn’t have a job but it was chaotic and then we had to give our bedrooms up and all sleep in the lounge because mum used to rent our bedrooms out to make money in the winter cause the cafe was closed which as a child you don’t really understand I understand it now but at the time I didn’t and that was quite confusing and the only time we ever had family time was Sunday afternoon lunch and that was enforced on us because that was the only day the cafe was closed and we’d all have lunch around the table and that was really surreal and I can really remember when I was about thirteen and my mum saying well this’ll be the last summer you have to do this because next year you’ll be off doing what you want to do with your friends and it was like freedom again yeah
Do you think your childhood has changed how you are now?
Um I don’t know if it’s changed how I am now um I wouldn’t change anything thats happened cause its all made me who I am um I think its made I don’t know if thats why I’m a gypsy if that is why I like travelling and living in caravans um and maybe thats why I don’t have any possessions because we could never have possessions and when we did have possessions because of all the lodgers the house got burnt down three times it got burnt down so three times we lost everything so its a its yeah I suppose you ju you just decide that really the only thing in life is you and no-one can really take you away from you and you are the most important thing and you are but and then so are all the people who are close to your life they are what make your life the people that you surround yourself by and its people thats important in life people because you couldn’t do anything without people and you find out who the important people are when your life is up against the wall um and you need people to laugh with and laughter is the greatest the greatest remedy of everything is laughter so and I probably thats why I like living in the sun could be actually yeah thinking about that I do like being here and I live being near the sea I like we like walking by the sea that is very we find that very calming and very soothing and we enjoy nothing more than having a coffee and just watching people and the sea so it could be stemmed from my childhood in Jersey it could never thought about it
And then the last one, um, do you think that how you were bought up changed how you bought me up?
Yes I wanted to be there for you which is why we decided that I would work part time when you were old enough to understand that I was around because when you were little I worked full time and once you became a little person I wanted to be there I wanted you to have friends home I wanted you to have sleepovers I wanted you to have parties I wanted you to have all those childhood things we never had because mum and dad couldn’t do it and I never understood why they couldn’t do it but they couldn’t because of the business it just wouldn’t have worked so we never had sleepovers we never had parties we didn't have all the things that I would class as a normal childhood um but I had other things so I I just wanted you to have more of what I thought was a normal childhood um for as long as I could sustain that for you and then of course life takes over and things change which it did um I didn’t want to do as much moving around as we did when you were little but it was just how life was unfortunately circumstances and sometimes you’ve just got to go with them and we did but um I’ve got some fantastic memories of your childhood sleepovers parties craft making you don’t remember any of that well I do I remember them they used to call me the pied piper cause I used to be always walking back from your childminder when I picked you up when I finished part time and there was always a gang of you coming back to ours always a big crowd yeah
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