The Jackie Generation

The voice belongs to a 50 something bimbette. Blond hair threatened into place frames the face with gold clad bulging eyes and pink lipsticked mouth, out of which comes the ceaseless noise. I wonder why it never stops, endless mumbles which get louder when it wants us to snap to attention.

Too many years of loud music have rendered me somewhat hard of hearing. I always tell the voice I wasn’t aware that it was addressing me, so that I don’t have to be drawn into its shapeless world.

 The voice troubles me, I can’t place its owner who lives in Bristol but doesn’t have that West Country twang. There’s a falseness, its hiding its origins, I know because, because is becoorse.

 I learn to hate the voice, it criticizes my clothes, tucks me in and its hands touch my body uninvited. Its only been sending shrill messages for a week and I already need to escape. The pink hole is open more than it is shut and after a short while I move my desk to the other side of the room, for some much needed peace. The voice mutters under its breath only to rise to a nasty hiss when it demands ‘how dare I move’ it snarls and threatens me.

 It’s too late I lose my temper; its snotty falseness grates me. The voice has landed on a nerve and jars me; the code imprinted on the ganglia, bullets in place the voice pulls the trigger. I can never hear it again without the bile rising.

Its another day, I am deliberately ignoring it. It rises higher lamenting the journey to work, no one is listening, the monkey screeches louder as if to declare ‘you will listen to me’. We all, my colleagues and I continue to tap tap on our computers; no one lifts their eyes, for to catch its eye will give it life. Its stops, silence, but the lingering echo wraps itself around each of us, rubbing harsh salt into our ears. I daren’t look up, until the extra tap tap of its keyboard is added to ours.

Eventually my bladder betrays me and I try to sneak across the uncarpeted room, past its desk. No chance. ‘Oi missus’. The pink circled hole opens and the brittle irritating false notes clatter out. The commentary on the inadequacy of the last person it had barked at flies over my head. I rush by and out of the door. Silence. The temptation not to return is great and I linger by the coffee machine, take a deep breath and eventually head back, I fly through the door and straight to my desk. Tap tap.

We place bets on when will the voice leave, its only been with us a few months. I write its name on a piece paper and stamp on it, then burn it gleefully hoping that my magic incantation will bring the leaving date closer. No such luck. In the office voice speaks differently to the men it wants to manipulate, its light and fluffy, it tinkles girlishly and coo coo’s like a dove. To the women who its thinks are beneath it, it is harsh and wintery, sharp like broken glass as it cuts you with its demands. To the women it perceives as equal it rallies along with jokey anecdotes and giggles sympathetically to their problems and plight. People complain about the voice, it is shocked and sniffles to show that it has feeling. No one cares, too late the damage is done and the voice must leave.

Copyright : Jacqui Malpass : 2008

Ask anyone to draw a frog and it would almost always be green, ask them where their green frog came from, they would probably shrug and say from a pond; ask where the pond is they probably wouldn’t know. The red eyed green tree frog comes from Latin America which sounds so much more exciting than a market in Kettering, but that’s exactly where my red eyed green frog came from. Frog was found in Kettering market on Wednesday lunchtime sometime in the early summer of 1984.

I came to be in Kettering not through choice I was here on a course, learning Pegasus an accounting software package. Leaving Wales the day before in my dark blue company car I was excited and so desperate to get out of the office, 3 whole days away in a hotel. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy being in the modern offices occupied by Dawn Computers, but I had joined as a trainee sales person and after being tortured by the chauvinistic Graham for 4 long months I couldn’t take it any longer. I had headed nervously into the general managers office and looked imploringly into his deep blue eyes and asked to be transferred to the training department, thank goodness he was sleeping with the receptionist otherwise there might have been a price to pay. I must have tugged at his heart strings because he let me move upstairs to join May and Eva straightaway. And so with my background in accounts I was quickly booked onto the course.

The journey to Kettering was uneventful, out of Wales via the M4, across country to the M5, M5 to the M6 and then onto the M1, not much to see just endless grey tarmac and a colourful collection of cars occupied by boy racers to pit my wits against. In just 3 hours I had arrived, it was dark and the historical relevance of this town slipped by me in my eagerness to get to the hotel and have a gin and tonic on the company. The 3 storey 16th century red hotel was tatty and the musty smell reminded me of stale damp washing, not quite the luxury my young mind had conjured up. The following day I was wakened by the sun as its warm rays stole through the gap in my flowery curtains burning a line across my face. The shower dribbled on me, the white rectangle of soap didn’t lather and the tiny pink towel barely covered me, what was breakfast going to bring I laughed as I dressed?

An hour later I was out into the street and walking the short distance to the equally old office perched on top of a glass fronted shop and there I sat for two whole days without venturing out. By day three, sheer boredom drove me outside and an aimless wander placed me at the edge of the market. The sheer thrill of seeing the stalls perked me up and I rushed from each looking at the assortment of bric a brac, time was running out when out of the corner of my eye something green glinted against the sun. There was green frog, its bold red eyes filling my imagination of a time of nipped in waists, voluminous skirts pushed out with layers of net. I could see green frog adorning a short boxy jacket with just one big button at the neck, ¾ sleeves, finished with fresh white gloves. Possibly, the smart sophisticated owner would have had a chignon and pill box hat?

As green frog sat in my hand the owner told me how just 3 weeks ago he had walked up the wooden stairs of the otherwise empty building and there sitting in the middle of the floor was a box, lined with a newspaper from the 50’s, all of the contents brand new, with a note explaining that they were samples made in 1951, he didn’t know who had left the box and as he had no need of them they were all to be sold. I didn’t need a green frog but I wouldn’t be back and it was old with an undiscovered history. A fiver later green frog was mine, wrapped in white tissue and placed in a plain brown bag. I tucked the bag safely in my handbag and walked quickly back to the course, only a few hours left and I could take green frog home.

Copyright : Dale Darley : 2008

I don’t remember who put the ghetto blaster next to the John’s grave, all I heard was a click and the tune filled the still air. I do remember the day, it was a warm spring day, the sky was clear and pale blue, just a few stripes of white, the warmth of the sun touching our faces, the leaves on the trees just starting to bud and even though the birds were twittering away without a care in the world it seemed a still and silent day. Certainly all of the people, friends and family gathered around the grave seemed quiet, lost in thought.


As the lyrics Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try started to fill the air, my heart was abruptly torn wide open, a deep searing pain filled the space between my breasts, my throat constricted as I swallowed hard, fighting back the hot tears that were starting to prick my eyes and roll down my pale cheeks. As the words Nothing to kill or die for hit my ears, the tears simply pored forth. In the background, somewhere, there was a wailing woman, her pain raw and obvious. It took sometime to realise who it was. It was her. The one he had died for.


My mind wandered back to my wedding day, John the only black face amongst what seemed to be hundreds of white friends, it was over 20 years ago and we weren’t so cosmopolitan then, so it was unusual. Oh he was so handsome, you just wanted to nibble him. He and several others looked gorgeous in white tuxedos, holding the bride, me high in the air, across their hands, squeals of laughter, as they tried to in unison to pick me up and hold me there as the photographer snapped us. I am sure I was quite light, some 2 stone lighter than today and without the laughter lines.


He DJayed that day, twice, playing my favourite songs, whilst everyone got wasted, it was a good day. I could see myself demanding he play Wonderland, laughing, he said ‘I know I know’. You see he always played it for me when I was in the clubs, he knew it was my song. He was best friends with Billy next door, so I often saw him and he would always laugh and say ‘come on Dale' when I fell out with what became my awful husband.


The final bars of the song And the world will live as one bought me back to the day. Click the music stopped. A deafening silence, suddenly filled by birdsong bought me out of my reverie. Shocked faces looked at each other, as John’s mum asked in a loud brave voice ‘you are all welcome to come back to the house’. The wailing women was still crying, uncontrollable, perhaps the dreadful truth had finally hit her.


I don’t remember what they fought over, all I know is that on that night, the night he decided he could take no more, that his life was futile, he wrote a few notes, delivered a birthday card to a friend. Later we found out that it said ‘remember me as I was’. That night, he placed the noose around his neck and stepped off the chair. I don’t know what the sound would have been, in my imagination, I can hear a crack and a gurgle as the breath died in his throat, but I don’t know really. Did he in his final moments wish he could step back on the chair, now just out of reach.


All I know is that on that day, I went to my very first funeral; I stood at the open grave of a beautiful man, dead before his time, listening to a great song, one which will never be the same again. A short while later, laying in my bed alone after yet another fight, cruel words still stinging my ears, I imagined that John was there saying once again ‘come on Dale’. He wasn’t of course, but it cheered me to think that he was there, he didn’t come again.


The following year I was passing the cemetery, it was a clear and still spring day, much like the day I went to my first funeral, my mind lost in other thoughts, my car pulled over as if by itself outside a small shop, I looked out of the window, freesias, innocence and friendship, in buckets. With a handful in my hands I walked across the road into the graveyard, I must have memorised where the grave was, counting the trees I wandered along the path, there he was on the left, where we had left him just over a year before, John. I laid the flowers down, no message, stared at the headstone, what could I say? No words came. With one backward glance I walked away, never to return. I didn’t go to another to another funeral for over 20 years.

Standing back from the road, I can see my home, tendrils of ivy skulk over rotten windows, embrace solid grey stones, overhead the empty attic window stares uncaringly.

Cold chill, sepia autumn light, highlights leaves fading from green to gold falling silently to adorn the frozen grass.

The front door, blue-grey, dirty from the endless stream of cars which pass it by, adds to the melancholy.

It opens to my home, exposing the warm colours, inviting. Lingering smell of times gone by, now masked by scented candles.

Can you hear the silence and feel the peace?

Disturbed only by the whirr of the computer and tapping of keys, communicating with a digital world.

Gazing out of the window I can see the rambling garden, filled with remnants of the life I once lived.

Escaping from my other life, this, is the place where friends and I come to hide and to seek solace, to sip a chilled white wine, to chatter.

I have loved it here, I disengage, let go, pass on, fill with memories, my home, only bricks and mortar, to a future which lies elsewhere.