by DJ Black
These days you can find out about almost anything on the Internet. So if you have a strange personal experience and think you may be a little odd, it doesn't take long to find out that you are not the only one in the world to be obsessed with Singer sewing machines or whatever it happens to be.
But back in the 1960s the world was a different place, and if your secret quirk happened to have a sexual dimension then it was so much more confusing. Therefore when my life was turned upside down, it took a long time to get my head straight as I seriously thought I was a freak.
What are you talking about, Janice? Let's start from the beginning, as Aunt Alice would have said. I learnt the hard way to listen to Aunt Alice so here goes.
I was born in Gateshead as Janice Armstrong and in 1963 I was 19-years-old and had just completed my journalism part one qualification from a correspondence course and a bit of unpaid volunteering. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to change the world, or at least get to write about it. However, being an inexperienced girl in a northern town was not the best place to launch a career in writing.
In fact the only two newspapers within travelling distance of home both turned me down without an interview when they found out I was a woman. OK, well maybe I would have had a bit of a chance if I had been a woman but a teenage girl had no chance.
I got a job in a flower shop of all things and wrote to just about every newspaper in the country for a staff position as a writer. After six months, I had only three offers of an interview, all of them in London.
You have to understand that for a Tyneside girl in 1963, London was the other side of the moon. Sure, it was cool and happening, but it was also dangerous and expensive to get to. That was my father's view anyway.
Despite my best efforts to persuade him, I had already missed two interview dates before I could even get him to discuss it. Then mum remembered her Aunt Alice. At that time, there were only three things to know about Aunt Alice. Firstly, she was not really my mother's aunt, but a distant cousin. Second, she was a widow and therefore respectable. And thirdly, and most importantly for me, she lived in London.
To cut a very long frustrating story short, it was finally agreed that I could go to London for an interview if I stayed with Aunt Alice. Nothing was decided about what would happen if I got the job; I think my father was fairly certain that it wouldn't come up anyway.
It was a Friday when I finally set off and I was to stay with Aunt Alice for the weekend. It was a long journey and naturally I was excited as I had never been further than Grey Street in Newcastle on my own before.
London was a shock. It is big. Now Newcastle is big, but London is, well, bigger. When it started getting a bit built up with more and more buildings when I was on the train down, I asked a man where we were.
"Oh this is the outskirts of London," he said.
So, naturally, I started putting on my coat and collecting my bags and got ready to go. Twenty minutes later the train was still dashing through large railway stations and showing no sign of slowing down, let alone stopping.
When the train finally arrived at Kings Cross, I suddenly realised that finding Muswell Hill and Aunt Alice was not going to be all that easy.
My father had impressed on me that I should only use buses as I would only get lost on an underground train, and taxis were far too expensive. I explain all this only to demonstrate how naïve I was.
I could not find a bus to Muswell Hill after an hour of walking the streets with heavy bags, so I got on a bus going to Stamford Hill, assuming that all the Hills were probably near one another. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Eventually, after walking some seriously grim looking streets, I sat down at the roadside and burst into tears. After a while, a taxi driver stopped and when I told him my plight he got out grabbed my bags and, despite my protests, drove me to Aunt Alice's.
I think I actually asked him if he knew Aunt Alice, not understanding how he could possibly know where to take me otherwise.
"Are you sure you are supposed to be out on your own?" he said as I gratefully paid him a small fortune once we had arrived. He growled in a voice like the cockneys in the films, adding, "If you were my niece I would give you a bloody good hiding."
Despite father's old-fashioned thinking, I had never been spanked as a child, but the threat from this complete stranger was oddly thrilling.
Aunt Alice turned out to be much younger than I'd expected. She also turned out to be rather more severe.
"Where have you been, girl?" she scolded as she took my coat. "You were expected hours ago."
I was used to elderly relatives being kind like my Gran and offering tea and cakes and saying 'never mind you are here now, love,' so Aunt Alice was a bit of a shock all round.
Her house was not what I expected either. It was in a very posh area compared to Gateshead, but she only had the top part of the house. I had never heard of a flat before, except in connection with the new tower blocks.
At first I did not like it. There was no television and everywhere looked too nice to live in. I felt like I was living in a museum. Aunt Alice tried to make conversation but I realised we had little to say to one another. She had never heard of Coronation Street or Juke Box Jury and thought that Mick Jagger may have been one of the Beatles.
My job interview was not until Monday, so on Saturday I took my life in my hands and ventured into central London. This time I armed myself with an A to Z and although I kept getting lost, I did manage to find myself again.
As well as the Tower of London and Parliament Square, I found Carnaby Street and the West End. I knew then that I was never going home.
My interview was a disaster. It was obvious from the start that I was grossly under qualified and my complete lack of local knowledge was going to be an insurmountable hurdle.
I was completely dejected as I walked back to the tube station to catch the not so very confusing train home. I stopped off at a trendy new café to console myself with a last cup of coffee among the London in-crowd.
The café was advertising for a waitress and I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. I applied and they asked me to start the next day.
Now I knew I could not tell mum and dad or Aunt Alice that I hadn't got the reporter job, but I reasoned that if I told them something that was not entirely in line with the complete truth then I could work at the café until a real journalism job came up and I wouldn't have to go home.
"They want you to start tomorrow?" Aunt Alice was incredulous. "What kind of newspaper is this? Surely they can give you at least a week's notice. Where are you going to live?"
I just pulled a face and then suggested that I could easily find a flat like hers in the local newspaper.
"Oh my god, how on earth did you get a job on a newspaper, even a small local?" Aunt Alice shook her head in amazement. "You will just have to stay here until we can find you something more permanent. And I will see this easy-to-come-by flat before you even think about agreeing to paying rent."
I could not believe my luck, and only just remembering to thank her, told her I could not wait to phone mum and dad.
"I think that I had better talk to your mother first," she insisted. "This is going to be a bit of a surprise."
Father was not happy. In fact he threatened to come and fetch me home. Aunt Alice was actually an ally here and she calmed him down and persuaded him to let me try it. I didn't know then, but she realised that I was so badly qualified for a job, that she assumed I would be let go after a few weeks at most.
The rest was surprisingly easy to pull off. I left for work each morning as Aunt Alice would expect, but instead of going to a newspaper office, I headed into Islington and reported for work at the café. The hours were a good fit and even the pay was better than that of a trainee reporter.
After a few weeks, Aunt Alice and I were getting on fine and my father had stopped asking me when I was coming home. Furthermore, I was beginning to realise how little about anything I really knew and so consequently was starting to know almost as much as anybody else.
Weeks turned into months and 1963 turned into 1964. I was no nearer finding a writing job, but I was starting to make friends and was becoming part of the crowd. People had even stopped making fun of my northeast accent as I learnt to avoid northern slang in favour of local street talk. I even remembered to take home copies of the newspaper I was supposed to be working on, explaining that juniors like myself did not get by-lines. I just made up stories about what part I had played in getting this report or that feature. Aunt Alice seemed satisfied and I was very pleased with myself.
I have no idea how long my deception might have lasted had it not been for Aunt Alice's interest in antiques.
Islington in those days was a poor area yet to experience the joys of gentrification, a completely different area than it is today. However, there were a few up-market antique shops just off Upper Street and, unknown by me, Aunt Alice was a regular visitor to one shop in particular.
One day I was serving coffees to the in-crowd and trying to keep up with the latest gossip when I turned around to see Aunt Alice sitting at one of the tables. For a moment, I hoped I could duck out the back until she had gone, but she looked up and right at me. I realised, the café not being her usual type of haunt, that she had probably seen me through the window and had come in to confront me.
"Hello, Aunt Alice," I ventured nervously.
"Good morning, Janice," she replied through tight lips. "Undercover are we? Or are you working on a feature on low-life café society?"
"No, Aunt Alice," I admitted, blushing. "I work here."
"Did you lose your other job?" she pressed.
"Not exactly."
"You never got the job did you?" she said sadly.
I just shook my head and pulled a face.
"So all these months you have been lying?" She was angry.
"No, I..." I did not know what to say. I truly had not thought of it in that way up until that moment. "I have been looking for writers' jobs, this is just temporary."
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