My Madder Fatter Diary (33 page)

Friday 4.10.91

8.28 p.m.

The end of my year off. The end of an era. Leaving Stamford tomorrow for Hull.

I could go on forever and I frequently do but I’ll just say this. I have been blessed with so many things but I have the best mates in the world and I can make some new ones too!

We’ve gone from down and out to actual progression and there’s always hope.

Sunday 6.10.91

12.31 a.m.

Currently sat in E11, Ferens Hall room with Saul. He lives across the way and is very Welsh. He’s rolling a joint. I’m not having any but he is lovely. Next door is a classic called Mish. Leaving Essex was the best thing I ever did. A second-year burst in and started to rifle through my underwear earlier. I told him to bollocks. He apologised and left. I’m not having people looking at my bras. Especially as they are SHIT. As soon as I get my grant I’m going sexy bitch.

I can be happy here I think. I think I can stay.

8.10 p.m.

BLOODY HELL! Bryan Adams is STILL number one. This is a bloody piss take now. I’m going down the union.

What happened next . . .

 

I'm thinking you are probably after a happy ending. You want me to lose loads of weight, stop being loopy and marry Haddock. Or at least get a snog off him.

There is a happy ending. But it might not be the one you want.

In fact some of you may have skipped here just to find out what happens with Haddock. Turn back and read ALL of it. I had to go through it you know. It's the least you can do.

Anyway . . .

Let's go through things one by one.

 

My weight. My weight went up and down. I was 14 and a half stone. I was eight and a half stone. I've been every size and every pound in-between. You know what – being skinny solved NOTHING except the fact I fitted in a pair of size 10 velvet hot pants from TopShop for 2 weeks in 1992 (It was a rave thing). Weight is a number that I choose to react to. I've been skinny with a lousy man and fat with a lovely man. Does it make you feel better when you lose weight? It might. Will it solve all the problems you had with your self-confidence and men in the first place – no. The number on the scales can move but trust me – your head can stay in exactly the same place. Sort your head out before you sort anything else out.

I didn't have the therapy I really needed till I was 28. I found a wonderful counsellor and we worked together for two years. Do I still have anxiety and OCD? Yes. Sometimes. It's a bit like being an alcoholic. It's always there and it will come and bite you on the arse when you're stressed or when you least expect it. But I manage it and I'm never afraid to ask for help. Nor should you be. Your doctor has heard worse. We are all a little bit mad.

My mum says I can tell you this now. She's a manic depressive. She hates the term bipolar. It doesn't sum up for her the amazing highs and terrible lows. By the time I was born she'd already had shock treatment for it. The signs were there. By anyone's standards marrying a Moroccan bodybuilder and having him tattooed on your bottom not long after divorcing your gay second husband is rather . . . manic. In her words she was ‘on one'. I've seen her brilliant manias and I've seen the price she pays with her depressions. She's a fantastic woman who KNEW that I would need a challenging life to keep me well. She has been and continues to be a wonderful mother – though she still drives me mad. She has supported me in telling my story and in everything I do. As have my brothers and my dad. He's only got one leg now after smoking 40 cigarettes a day for over 60 years. It wasn't the fags though he says. It was years of working in drafty factories that upset his veins.

There's no point arguing. He's 76. Just get him 20 John Player Special.

 

What else? The man who molested me went to prison for abusing other girls in an historic abuse case. The police were brilliant. You shouldn't be scared to talk to them either. And if it has happened to you I'm so, so sorry. What happened to me was really minor but it affected me greatly. I shiver when I think of people who go through sustained, serious abuse but it's never too late to stop people. Talk to someone.

I'm still best friends with Mort. We've been through it all together. I borrowed her birth plan just like I copied her history homework. Some friendships are just magic aren't they? Dobber is still one of my dearest friends on earth and Battered Sausage is still gloriously Battered Sausage. So many other people in this book are still in my life and they make it brilliant.

And so to Haddock.

The thing about Haddock was – he was the opposite of everything I was, yet he
seemed
to feel exactly the same way. Where I was fat, he was thin. Where I was plain as day, he was handsome as hell (I'm looking at the pictures now and he was. He was fit, and frankly he didn't know it). Yet he appeared sometimes to be as troubled as me. This is all assumption. As much as he was my friend, he was also a TOTAL fantasy figure. Perhaps I read it all wrong at the time, but there seemed to be something deep-rooted that he didn't like about himself at the time. I can tell you now, apart from the usual atypical adolescent failings, there was nothing to dislike. There really wasn't.

Time passes. You know what it's like. You lose touch. I doubt the poor bloke could even remember my name. He was a big part of my life; but in his I doubt I caused as much as a ripple.

I thought about him from time to time. I went to Leeds and I hoped I would bump into him. I didn't. There were no deliberate Haddock stalking trips, but I was there at the same time that he was, plenty of times. I was always seeing other people. More often than not, I wanted to see him more than the people I was actually seeing. I didn't call him though, because calling him up out of the blue would have just been too weird. I lived in fear of him guessing – because that would have been the worst rejection of all. I walked round Leeds hoping he'd save me from messes I'd got into but he never appeared. Probably a good thing.

Sometimes in the early 90s we were at the same parties, but we never really talked. We just said ‘hello' and took the mickey out of each other.

There was one time at Fig's house. I think. I say I think because I might have read it wrong, but I think he might have tried to get off with me. It was a sleepover. 1994? Christmas time. I was drunk. He was drunk. We were in Fig's front room. Fig and Dobber were snogging. Battered Sausage was snoring. Haddock and me were having a play fight. Then it went weird. I remember saying the words ‘No, let's just stay friends' or some other clichéd nonsense. Perhaps he hadn't really tried. My little insecure fat girl reached up and said ‘It's bloody Haddock – of course he didn't try to kiss you.' He stayed on the floor. My inner insecure fat girl dragged me back alone to the sofa.

Lame. Lame. LAME. YES I KNOW. I REGRET IT. I was scared to my bones but perhaps I had read it wrong and perhaps some things are never meant to be.

I stayed awake for hours. I heard his heavy breathing. I looked at him in a heap. I thought about how much he made me laugh every time I saw him. I thought about his kindness. Understated. Real. I'd had a long term relationship by this point. It had been fairly disastrous. Here was someone four years on that I still thought about. I still liked him. I really liked him. He was single. I was single.

I stayed rooted to the sofa.

And that was that.

Haddock fell from my life like sand through my fingers, like Bros from the charts.

These things happen. Who gives the Berlin Wall a second thought these days?! Things that were enormous parts of our life get forgotten. Once Haddock had been everything . . . and then he was almost nothing.

 

The diaries themselves followed me round everywhere. To halls of residence, to houses shared with other students, to flats shared with lovers. They came with me wherever I went. I never looked at them. I just never wanted them to be found by other prying, piss-taking eyes. I didn't want other people to see my excruciating tales of unrequited love, of madness and of sexual frustration. I kept them with me simply to keep them safe. Every November 5th I meant to put them on the bonfire. I just never got round to it.

And that was that. Again.

Until . . .

I had a funny feeling about Nottingham. On a train on the way to that interview at the University of Sheffield in late 1990, we pulled up at platform 4 of Nottingham station. I had to catch my breath. I will never be able to explain why, but I had a feeling. It was not specific, but it was overwhelming.

Six years later, almost by accident, I ended up there. Everything happened in Nottingham for me, long after everything in this diary had ceased to be relevant. Friends, lovers, job. That city and me just clicked. And it's where I met my husband Kevin. Quite frankly the best bloke in the world. You wouldn't be reading any of this if it wasn't for him. He stopped me from throwing all the diaries out and encouraged me to share them.

 

One Saturday night in late 2000 or early 2001 (I can't remember the date but I remember the events like it was yesterday), I was walking back to our flat with Kev in the centre of the city. Nottingham on a Saturday is packed with hen parties, stag parties, drunk teenagers, and merry twenty-somethings. It's manic – you walk against a tide of people whatever direction you are going in. We were walking across by the Theatre Royal when I saw him: a face among a million other faces. I hadn't seen him for years. I have no idea why he was there. He didn't live there. I shouted out his name. He hadn't changed much. I think in a perverse way I had wanted him to have morphed into a minger – a balding, middle-aged stereotype. He hadn't.

Conversation went as thus:

 

ME: HADDOCK!

HADDOCK: Oh my God – Rae Earl!

(HUG)

ME: I'd like to introduce you to my husband Kevin – he's Australian!

HADDOCK: (to Kev) You've got a good one there . . .

 

I said something I can't remember, then he said:

 

HADDOCK: Come for a drink?

ME: Mate, I have to go – I'm working at 6 a.m.

HAD: Please come . . .

ME: Sorry mate – I've got to go . . . See you soon.

 

He disappeared and mumbled something.

 

That was the last time I saw him.

 

‘You've got a good one there'

‘You've got a good one there'

‘You've got a good one there'

 

It was throwaway . . . but it felt like one of the biggest compliments of all time.

I couldn't sleep that night. I had to explain to Kev about Haddock.

Kev said: ‘Why?! Oh WHY didn't you go for a drink with him and tell him what he had meant to you?!'

But I couldn't. It belonged to another age. What was I going to say? ‘Hello Haddock. How's life? By the way I was in love with you when I was 17? You made me feel better about myself at a time when hardly anything else did? You have still got the best arse I have ever seen'?

 

Besides . . . the Haddock I bumped into isn't the Haddock I knew, or even the Haddock I thought I knew. The Haddock I knew now has his own happy ending. I know this because when the first book came out I had to ring him up and warn him what was about to be revealed. That was an interesting conversation. He genuinely had no idea. Anyway Haddock finally realised he was a handsome, witty sod, with a great backside. He put any demons he had to bed, married a fantastic woman and has lovely children. And no – he is not an insurance salesman. He does something as I suspected far more wonderful than that. But don't go looking for him. He's very private. He wants to stay anonymous and I think that's bloody right. Let's leave him to the contented, great life he deserves.

Anyway, seeing Haddock in Nottingham that time set me on the world's biggest nostalgia trip. I dug out these diaries. They were still in a ‘Walkers Newsagents of Stamford' bag and shoved between my GCSE certificates and a shoebox full of Smurfs (Mum never threw them out). I read them cover to shabby cover.

They tackle everything I felt about my life then; but there's one thing that seems to come out of them. One ‘something' that is behind all of my diaries. It's a something I thought was exclusive to me at the time, but it wasn't. It was relevant then and it's still relevant now. It underpins all of this and everybody mentioned in the diaries.

We all feel fat, ugly and bad about ourselves sometimes. Irrespective of what we really are. And if we've got any sense we do two things. Firstly we love ourselves and that's our responsibility. Then we find people and things that make us feel even better about ourselves. Because most of us are the same – all we want to be is loved.

It's what I was looking for, it's what Haddock was looking for, what my mum was trying to find, what all my friends were looking for. Even the ones at school you think have it all sorted don't. I know that because after the first diary was published they wrote to me and told me that they felt like I did then. We are all just after being loved and appreciated. Fat, thin, gay, straight, male or female.