Auntie. First crush. First beauty. First awe.
1. Cottage Cheese & Tesco Survival (circa 1981–1982)
My age: 8–9
Belinda’s age: 16–17
Texture: early 80's Reading, Adam Ant on 7 inch, UB40 rising
I had an auntie called Belinda.
“Bel lin da unfurled off my tongue like beauty.”
She was sixteen or seventeen then — still practically a girl — but already moving through the world like someone who had lived three lives. Big curls in her hair, jeans pulled tight, striped cardigan, Adam Ant’s Stand and Deliver still echoing from 1981. She played Bob Marley’s One Love, the beginning of my lifelong love for him and then UB40.
She was a young mum — far too young — and my first memory of that sits in Reading town centre, at The Butt Centre. The hexagon wall, the place where the deadbeats gathered. Tesco then was small, the first food supermarket, with those blue‑white‑red bags — the sea‑through butcher‑bag type. She had a baby in the pram, which I pushed, proud and important. She loaded the underneath with the things she needed, then placed a few items in a basket — the ones we paid for.
When we left, she pulled out a full picnic from the hidden stash. We sat on the wall where the drinkers sat — one of them was my grandfather, Pop. All funny, all jokey, all kind, all drunk. Her dad.
I ate cottage cheese for the first time in my life. I adored it instantly, tasted heavenly.
(it was my moment and she had done it for me , it felt precious if a little mixed feelings)
My first shoplifting experience.
My only shoplifting experience.
(That’s a lie — I’ve remembered another.)
It wasn’t stealing.
It was surviving.
She had learned how to live because she’d had to stand on her own two feet long before most teenagers.
I really loved Belinda.
2. The Immac & The Staircase (circa 1983–1984)
My age: 10–11
Belinda’s age: 18–19
Texture: Immac, burgundy rinses, lace up jeans, Adam Ant silhouettes
We had just moved to Whitley. She came to stay after a fight with her mum. She was my mum’s stepsister — one step away through Pop Tim, whose real name was Tim McCoy, I think. I have no written records. Memory is all I have.
She got in the bath. She was outward, bold, magnetic. I was in love with her — I must have been about eleven.
She covered her entire body in Immac. Legs, arms, even her eyebrows — which caused a mini disaster (not that it affected her bounce in any way). Then she came out of the bathroom with black burgundy rinsed hair, real curls all around the outside, a parting down the middle. She wore jeans she had sat in the bath to shrink tight, laced up the front with actual laces. An Adam Ant style blouse tucked in. Big boots — almost Puss in Boots energy.
“I sat on the stairs waiting for her to come out, staring at her in amazement. She waltzed past me in a cloud of Impulse, hairspray, and the warm sweetness of heated rollers.”
I wanted to be Belinda when I grew up.
3. The Fur Coat in the Tin Bath (circa 1984–1985)
My age: 11–12
Belinda’s age: 19–20
Texture: fur jackets, tin baths, teenage survival, early 80's violence
Her child’s father had mental health problems — what would now be called schizophrenia. There was violence. That was the era: so many of my mum’s sisters in violent marriages or relationships. But Belinda was different — she had become violent too. They had to flee. It had become too much.
I remember going with her to the house she lived in — a small place somewhere in Reading. The bathroom wasn’t inside; the toilet was out the back, an outhouse. I was young — maybe eleven — but I don’t know exactly.
“My mum had given her a fur jacket. In the 80's, fur was in — Catalogue fashion, the Freeman's / Little-woods era, ridiculously overpriced purchases that took forever to pay off. My mum was a single mum of four; how else would she have had a fur coat? Belinda worshiped that coat and wore it like a status symbol / cat walk model.”
We arrived to collect clothes or belongings — I don’t remember what.
But when we walked into the front room, everything what little she had was smashed.
In the middle of the room was a metal tin bath — the kind from old films — filled with cold water.
Floating in it was the fur jacket.
She didn’t say a word.
But I felt the devastation.
It was a treasure, and he had ruined it.
(This memory is like a Tracey Emin art piece, and when I’m famous I will recreate it for my Tate exhibition — a strong, powerful piece to my jigsaw.)
4. Kings Meadow & The Bag Strap (circa 1982–1983)
My age: 9–10
Belinda’s age: 17–18
Texture: river teenagers, early 80's summers, danger under the surface
https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/blog/reading-bridge-1923-2023-2
Kings Meadow was where the teenagers went — the bridge, the river, the heat of an early 80's summer. I was nine or ten, still small, still scared to jump from the middle like they all did. Belinda was seventeen, maybe eighteen, already living a life far older than her age.
They would line up in a row — it blew my then‑mind. I stood with them once, ready to jump, holding hands like they did, but I was too afraid. I chickened out. She stopped the taunts, and I walked back down the steps and watched them swim to the side. Afraid for them, but also computing how high it actually was. Depth and perception as a child is almost irrelevant — but I knew better. It was the not‑seeing that terrified me, the risk of it. Like weighing up the diving board at the swimming pool — another story.
We sat by the river with a picnic of sorts. The older kids were throwing themselves off Reading Bridge, splashing, shouting, showing off. Belinda joined them — she always moved like she belonged everywhere. We were sunbathing by the park when, to cool off, she dove in.
No one noticed her bag went in with her.
The strap wrapped around her ankle underwater, caught on something. She didn’t come back up. We stood watching, waiting, expecting her to surface with a laugh. But she didn’t.
Her boyfriend dove down, broke the strap, pulled her up. She burst out of the water with a huge breath, alive again. Blue‑faced, we all lay back out in the sun like it hadn’t happened. ND me panicked. And then — in the way of our family — we all went home. No one told anyone.
She was so young. Seventeen, maybe eighteen.
I was a child watching a girl who was already living like a woman.
She was so young. Seventeen, maybe eighteen.
I was a child watching a girl who was already living like a woman.
Footnote: Belinda —
She was my first crush, my first love, the first woman I was ever in awe of.
I don’t have a single photo of her — nothing to hold, nothing to study, nothing to anchor the memories except the memories themselves.
The dates in my story are probably slightly mixed up.
I know I didn’t stay at my maternal Nan's house until I was around seven or eight — because of the alcoholism, because of my mum’s fractured relationship with her.
And the truth underneath all of it is this:
we were just little girls playing the part of women in a society that has always failed women.
Belinda wasn’t grown — she was a child forced into womanhood before she ever had safety.
And I was a child watching another child try to survive. Paint by numbers ,
But this is the truest order my memory gives me.
And I honor it. So she's never forgotten.
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