Victoria Wood revives some memories, by Elizabeth Kay

The winner of the nationwide
school magazine competition, 1960

I have just read Let’s do It: The authorised biography of Victoria Wood, by Jasper Rees. This is a long book, because it details just about everything she ever wrote and performed. And even though I’d heard and seen so much of it before, I still found myself laughing out loud at her extraordinary inventiveness and wit. Her work ethic was phenomenal – she often wrote all night to fulfil a deadline, but she also expected everyone else to be just as dedicated. Her dialogue had to be spoken exactly as she wrote it, no improvising, and she had a go at most forms of writing. She was a terrific musician, and played the trumpet as well as the piano. I think the most autobiographical sketch of all was the one about Chrissy, the 14-year-old schoolgirl who sets out to swim the channel. Her parents are interviewed about the forthcoming ordeal, and it is assumed they will be in the support boat – however, they’re planning on a day out, maybe going to see a play in London. Asked if she’s worried about the following day, Chrissy admits she doesn’t like the dark, and part of the swim will be at night. She’s also concerned that if she reaches the French coast she’ll be at a bit of a disadvantage, as she doesn’t speak French. She did woodwork instead. She sets off alone, with some sandwiches and a carton of drink in a duffle bag. Eight days later an no one knows where she is. Her parents are blithely unconcerned. “Oh, I’m sure she’ll turn up somewhere, slow but sure, that’s our Chrissie.” “I expect she’s just swimming around somewhere, looking for a nice beach.” And that’s the impression we get of Victoria’s childhood. The youngest of four, she’s on her own once her elder siblings have left home, and seems to have been left to her own devices for much of the time, and not really fed or clothed all that well. Her parents really don’t seem to care, they're busy with their own concerns, her father writing scripts and her mother furthering her own education - and even once she’s started having some success they’re not really interested. It started me thinking about where such amazing creativity comes from, and why. I used to define it to my students as the ability to bring together two or more previously unrelated concepts, and to think – how would everyone else depict this? And how can I be different? Victoria did this over and over again. 

    Wanting to be different and stand out, does, I think, come from a recognition that you don’t think quite the same way as everyone else, and that it’s an attribute that has value. It can be prized by teachers, and it can be resented. At a junior school I attended for 18 months I had a wonderful headmaster, Mr Hayes, who realised that I had come late to a class which had already cemented their friendships. I was different – I was the smallest, and nearly the youngest, my father was Polish and I had a surname that nobody could spell or pronounce - Krzewinski. My mother was always known as Mrs K, so Kay we all eventually became. I was left-handed, and the only child of parents old enough to be my grandparents. I didn’t make any friends. Mr Hayes entered me for every artistic or literary competition going, and I won quite a lot of them. After the 11+ exam the top class produced the school magazine. We had our own printing press, and all the illustrations were done with lino cuts. That year we won the nationwide school magazine competition, and we were in the newspapers and on the radio. I was ten years old, and they chose one of my poems to front the article. This is it:

Apart from the fact that leopards don’t howl, I remember being particularly pleased with the double meaning on spotted, and the way I split up the sentences. That school had the good teacher. The bad one was at my senior school, and I have to admit I was no angel. In the first year I had the part of the Red Queen, in the class production of Alice in Wonderland. I revelled in that, because I really had to act as she’s a very spiky character. In the second year everyone was moved around into different classes, which remained the same for the next four years. That class had a large gang in it which controlled everything, as they had the numbers whenever anything came to a vote. Consequently, although I loved acting I never got another part in a class play. They would promise me one, then change their minds the day before. The English teacher had no idea how things worked, and my little gang of three became quite rebellious, as we had no other way to complain. The incident I remember most clearly was when I decided to try something a little experimental in one of my stories. It was about an escaped tiger, and I switched scenes at crucial moments to raise the tension. It came back with a red line through the whole thing, and the comment “you can’t do this”. Ten years later I re-wrote it as a radio play, and had it broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Sadly, the teacher had died by then so I couldn’t gloat. But the upshot of that story was, that when we had to line up to say which A levels we wanted to take she took one look at me and said, “English? You? I don’t think so,” and that was that. As was my ambition to go to university and read English. I went to art school instead, which I have to admit was the place to be in the 1960s, and where all the good bands came from. And it didn’t stop me writing.

The march to Siberia
c/o Russian soldiers,
by my father

All these memories came back when I read about Victoria Wood’s early years. I wasn’t neglected at home, the way she was; my Polish father was a wonderful man who I miss a great deal. He was full of incredible stories about his arrest by the Russians during the war, and his long walk from Siberia to Palestine. His paintings are in the Imperial War Museum.

 
Writers are forged in many different ways, from the sheltered life of Jane Austen to the harrowing diary of Ann Frank. Long live the variety of human experience, and may AI perish from a particularly nasty virus.