A Fucked Up Life in Books. Литагент HarperCollins USD

Sue Townsend, it just made me keep an incredibly cynical diary for the next two years.

      Mum had made all these plans for stuff to do in Gibraltar. Gibraltar is not that big at all, so once we’d gone up the rock and looked at the monkey things (scary, grabby, I didn’t like them) she decided that we were going to get on a ferry the next day and have a trip over to Tangier in North Africa. A very common thing to do after you’ve spent a day in Gibraltar, apparently.

      Gibraltar, if you’ve never been, is very, very English. Tangier is not very, very English. It was very foreign and exciting and frightening. I’d never been abroad before and nipping over the water to North Africa was my first experience of being completely surrounded by a difference culture and way of life.

      I loved it. We wandered around the markets, and ate some weird food, and watched a bloke with a snake do some weird shit, and stroked a camel. It was brilliant. Then we went into an indoor market thing, where Mum and my brother went off to look at rugs, and I was left wandering around some pots.

      A man approached me and asked me where I was from. I told him that I was from England. He nodded and looked very thoughtful. He asked my age and where my Mum was. I told him and pointed to the room with all the carpets in.

      He said, ‘Come with me.’

      I walked with him up to my Mum. He introduced himself to her as a very rich man and then pointed to me.

      ‘I like your daughter. She is very beautiful. How much for your daughter?’

      My Mum laughed. ‘She’s not for sale.’

      He looked puzzled.

      ‘I want to marry your daughter when she is sixteen. I take her now and pay you. How much?’

      Mum laughed a little less easily this time and told him again, no.

      He looked thoughtful.

      ‘I give you thirty camels for your daughter.’

      My Mum’s eyes bulged. She turned to me.

      ‘Thirty camels! Thirty fucking camels!’

      ‘Mum, what the fuck are you going to do with thirty camels?’

      She looked back at the man and said again, no.

      He upped his offer. Forty camels.

      ‘FORTY CAMELS! Forty FUCKING camels!’ she said to me, a kind of weird pleading look on her face.

      ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘you are not selling me for forty camels to this man. You don’t need any camels. Where would you keep forty camels?’

      ‘I could sell them!’ she said, seemingly delighted that she’d found a solution.

      Time to put my foot down. ‘Mum, if you sell me to this man I will never speak to you again.’

      She looked at me for a long time, and then turned to the man and told him for the last time:

      ‘No.’

      We left the weird indoor market and got back on a ferry over to Gibraltar. Mum drank a lot of wine. My brother and I stood out on the deck watching North Africa vanish.

      I still don’t know whether she actually would’ve sold me.

       Angela’s Ashes

      I was fifteen years old when after many doctor’s appointments and consultations I was referred to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for breast reduction surgery. (I’m not really comfortable with that term. When talking about it I am much more likely to say ‘when my tits got chopped off’.)

      We travelled down on the train, arrived at the hospital, I was poked and prodded at and then put in a bed on a ward with other women who were waiting for various kinds of cosmetic surgery. Then my family went home and I began to unpack my bag.

      The book of choice for this trip was Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. Before I left home a family friend named Anne had shoved it at me saying, ‘I saw the film of this, it was quite good. You don’t really like films, do you? I got you the book.’ I unpacked this, and my clothes, and my toothbrush, then got in to bed and began to read.

      After about an hour, I was visited by the surgeon. He wanted to talk some things through, so we did. He told me that I might lose sensitivity in my breasts, that I may not be able to breastfeed my children if I ever chose to have any, that he was confident that this would fix my depression and sore neck and back, that my breasts may still grow after surgery, and that the worst case scenario was that I could die from a blood clot, but he didn’t think that likely.

      This is almost twelve years ago now. I was a lot slimmer but the same height. Standing at a mighty five feet and rocking a size eight figure, my 28G tits looked ridiculous, and made me very sad. I was worried about the operation, of course, but I knew that the feeling afterwards would override any discomfort, and hopefully make me a little bit more confident and social. Maybe my tits would turn black and fall off, who knew? I did feel in safe hands with the surgeon, though. He seemed like a nice enough man.

      Now, as you may or may not know, Addenbrooke’s is a teaching hospital. This means that student doctors and nurses from The University will pop along every so often to get a lovely bit of hands on experience.

      So there I was, in my hospital bed reading Angela’s Ashes when my surgeon comes back.

      ‘I’ve got a couple of students that I’m going to bring in, okay?’

      I had already consented to this by signing a bit of paper, and didn’t see the harm anyway as soon these tits wouldn’t be mine anymore.

      However, when he said a couple, what he actually meant was seven. Five boys and two girls. He unbuttoned my rather fetching hospital gown and pointed at my tits with his pen. I have no idea what he was saying to the students but they were all fucking entranced by my chest as he gabbled away telling them what he was going to do and how it was going to look. Then he got a big pen out and did some scribbles around my nipples. I looked down.

      What the fuck is he going to do to me? I wondered. The scribble was an incredibly arty shape.

      Mr Surgeon then invited a couple of the student to have a draw on my tits. I watched them – you should always watch anyone who is drawing on your tits. The first one stepped up and drew what looked remarkably like a cock and balls on one tit. The surgeon hmmmmed and the next student came at me, pen in hand and drew an even bigger cock and balls on the other tit. A lovely fat cock, it was. I was vaguely impressed. I’ve always loved drawing penises. He tentatively looked up at the surgeon for approval.

      ‘Very good,’ he said. He was right. It was very good.

      They all left, thanking me nervously, and I picked up my book again and read all evening, right through to the end.

      I had my surgery and it was fine. However, twelve years on, the combination of putting on some weight, and the fact that I did a considerable amount more ‘growing’ from the age of fifteen to eighteen means that my tits almost completely grew back. I don’t mind though, they look fucking fantastic now that I’m old enough to appreciate the power of a pair of good tits.

       Stark

      Like most people I knew at the time, when I turned 16 I started working in a high street clothes shop on weekends and after school so that I would have money for all the important shit I needed like cider and fags and condoms.

      Unlike most people I knew at the time, instead of going outside and talking to people on my breaks, I used to stay in the staffroom and read Ben Elton books. I fucking loved Ben Elton. He was my first real dabble with swearing in books. If I finished a book on a break, it was just a five minute walk to the bookshop to get another. On one lunch break I nipped out and bought Stark and sat pissing myself in