The fabulous life of Vanessa Walters

Somethings you never knew about Vanessa Walters.
Some people think because of the way I speak and because I have had a good education that I’ve had some sort of silver spoon life. I also find that because I dress girly and because I’m fairly shy and polite in public, that some write me off as a Paris-Hilton type airhead. Sometimes it works for me, to be underestimated – other times I find it irritating – especially when these comments are coming from malicious underachievers who don’t really know anything about me.
They’ve seen me in a club or with other friends and just make lazy assumptions about the kind of person I must be. I’m someone who always tries to celebrate the achievements of others. I also aim to be sweet and friendly to be people I meet but find my kindness is very much taken for weakness.
E.G There’s this guy – malicious underachiever – he’s the kind of jesus sandal, bead-wearing, dashiki know-it-all who walks around like the poster child for black empowerment. I come across this type of person often and the encounter is usually disheartening. This particular guy believes that if you don’t have afro hair and you don’t walk around in loose-fitting overalls that you are not intelligent.
I once offered to help him with a mentoring drive he was running (bearing in mind I am a twice published author with several plays staged, a law and French law degree and a job working for the Financial Times). He looked me up and down and said in front of other people rudely, ‘Maybe you could hand out flyers’.
He is a philosopher poet of sorts and his poetry is good – I just don’t get what qualifies him to look down on others because of the way they look. He hasn’t won any awards. His poetry hasn’t made him rich or won him a battalion of fans. He’s just an average Joe trying his luck like anyone else.
When I was 16 I wrote my first novel Rude Girls,which was published a year and a half later. This made me well known as a writer and slightly famous at the time but did not change my life. But that’s when the ‘silver spoon’ comments began creeping in.
I’ve found this very surprising as I don’t set out to speak ‘posh’ although I’m privately educated. I think I speak ‘London’. – maybe a bit newsreader but I wouldn’t call that posh actually. I guess its my own fault then that I’m assumed to have had the life of Riley.
Ha! If only!!!!
I had a pretty shit childhood. I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong. But I came from your typical single mom, social housing household. We never had any money – never had a TV (oh people love to hate me for this – they think that was soooo middle class and intellectual of my mum. Actually we were just broke!). We never had a car or a shower or central heating or even carpet! We had lino throughout the house lol! It was bright red. We didn’t have a hoover (the lack of carpet thing). My mum was never there.
She used to leave me alone at nights to go to her evening classes and once got into trouble with the police over it after a paedophile got my phone number and started harassing me.
Santa Clause never visited me. Neither did the tooth fairy. My mum kept an axe behind ‘our’ bed just in case someone broke in and a special belt in the wardrobe with which she used to beat me when I got out of hand – which I did a lot. I was rude and very inquisitive. Actuaylly, I’m proud of her for disciplining me. The thought of the belt kept me out of trouble when she wasn’t around, which was pretty often.
I was very loved – by her and my grandparents. My father couldn’t and still to this day doesn’t really give a shit whether I’m dead or alive, hoeing myself on a street corner somewhere or starving to death. He certainly never calls to check. When I was 21 he called me to say we shouldn’t bother with a relationship but should say hi if we see each other on the street then keep going. That just about sums up our relationship. When my mum asked him for financial help – he told her to get on her hands at knees at Kings Cross station – that she would have a better chance of getting some money there. I don’t know why he was such a bastard. Certainly I don’t remember him ever being nice. Just cold, distant and weird. We haven’t spoken since 2003 when I tried to commit suicide (I just couldn’t take my wonderful life of Riley anymore) and am very ambivalent about speaking to him again. It was bad for my health.
My mum always dressed me in Tomboy clothes. They were the cheapest – she got them second hand from charity shops – ha! I used to get so excited when we went trawling through those charity shops on a Saturday morning .
Those photos are on Facebook now. Some of my school friends put them up. That’s bitter sweet. I mean, its my childhood, right. I loved being a kid. But there’s something aftertasty about seeing yourself dressed as a boy when you’re pretty sure you were a girl. That’s why I’m extra girly now. I love pinks and skirts and heels and hair extensions and lipgloss. Some people write that off as airheady. I guess they have no way to tell but I’m just living a childhood dream that I could be beautiful. Sorry if that steps on your toes – not!
What else – oh yeah. My mum, she always used to leave me places and turn up real late to pick me up. She was a single mum, she was always chasing her own tail. In the school playground, watching the world go by from 3.30 till 5, 6, 7. One day I was there must be till 8pm and my class teacher took me home. Jimmy was there. Oh that’s a whole nother story – the ageing boyfriend my mum never ever admitted to. He was wearing nothing except a towel around his waist. My teacher asked me if I wanted to go home with her or stay with Jimmy unitl my mum got back. I went home with my teacher. It was everything I dreamed a home could be. There was carpet and everything was clean and nice. I went to my ‘own’ bed with lovely clean sheets and I had a lovely sleep until the next morning when I went back to school and realised my mum had been in a lot of trouble.
I moved school to Moss Hall. Loved Moss Hall. They had an afterschool club and so instead of watching the world go by, I’d watch TV until 5,6, 7 o’clcok when my mum remembered she had a daughter. (Okay, she was at work – but still!) I learned about jam and peanut butter sandwiches here and fell in love with a beautiful boy called Daniel. Of course he never looked twice at me – unless it was to play football. I was dressed as a boy, remember?
Anyway, so much to moan about – so little time. I guess I was always quite smart. As well as second hand clothes, I got second hand books, lots of them at less than 10 p a pop. I also learned to be a fast reader in WH Smith. We’d hang out there for an hour on Saturdays. It wasn’t like Borders – they didn’t let you sit down and the security guard sometimes came over and told you to stop reading. But anyway, those were some of my best times – speed reading standing up in WH Smith. I once skim read a whole Enid Blyton Chalet School book in about an hour.
When it was time to go to secondary school my mum was determined I was going to go to a ‘nice private’ school – and chose Queen’s College on account of the fact that it seemed very exclusive and City of London on the account of the fact it seemed very popular. I got into both but she chose Queen’s which was a mistake because it wasn’t very exclusive or academic but she did her best . it was still better thant he school down the road.
People at school will probably be surprised to read this. I was adept at glossing very quickly. The girls seemed so wealthy to me (but actually just daughters of corporate lawyers, accountants and Harley Street doctors) – I just started pretending life was great.
Obviously no-one ever came to my house so I just never told them me mum and Jimmy all slept in the same bed with axe behind it – that my teeth were crooked because mum never bothered to take me to the dentist – that my feet developed terrible bunions because my shoes were second hand and ill-fitting. God – its just like Angela’s ashes isn’t it?
After Christmas, I’d make-believe the presents I’d received (I rarely got any – even from my mum). I’d bully mum into giving me money for presents for my classmates even though they didn’t give me any. I was just desperate to keep up the facade, you know. That was my struggle – keeping up with the Joneses as much as I could.
When I was 16 and awash with book money - which I quickly frittered away in an orgy of new clothes and teenage gadgets (no-one helped me manage my money) I suddenly noticed the silver spoon thing. I never invited friends home because at that time, we were all sleeping on two mattresses in one room. We had a desk in another room for me to work and half a bed frame in the living room which was a sofa. But it was taken for snottiness, coldness. I was considered silver spoon and distant.
This is especially true of my few ‘local’ friends who went to local comprehensives and also had disfunciotnal families. But no-one seemed to be living the hard knock life we were living. I don’t know how come we were so poor. My mum tried to get it together – she took the teacher training course but then found the work too stressful. She failed her ACCA four times- then didn’t have any money or confidence left to keep going. She never passed a driving test and her evening classes never seemed to amount to much. She’s a smart woman – I guess being a single mum and trying to have a career was just asking too much. She was on tranquilisers for many years. This was pre-prozac. The comedown from these was horrific - she used to throw plates at me, broken glass, shoes. Boxes. I still have tiny scars from some of these battles. She once turned me out of the house at two in the morning in my night dress for something pretty minor. That was one of the few times I called my dad for help and he called mum and talked her down.
Mum had a kid for an African dude who I really liked but never stuck around long enough to see his daughter. He never came back and never sent a photo although he did write once. His name was Orphan – appropriate enough for the child he left behind. Anyway – life’s little irony – he broke all our hearts, especially my mums. She hit the tranquilisers hard after that and I don’t think she ever recovered. She’s so bitter and weird now. It makes me really wary of men. The rest, the poverty, the trouble with social services, the working two crap jobs to put second hand clothes on our backs – that was just like life’s little adventure compared to having her heart broken. It really makes me cry for her thinking about that.
Moving on now. So Jimmy died when my sister was about 3. I loved Jimmy to death. Even though by this time he was about 70 and covered in scabs from his psoriasis and a frail blind skeleton because of his diabetes. I didn’t visit him enough. He was in an old people’s home far away and I was too busy being spending my book money and trying to have a life. He taught me a lot of things and even though people looked down on us because we were poor and black and crap at life – he educated me and gave me values and pride in myself – not for being pretty or having things but for being smart and curious about life.
Anyway, so Jimmy’s dead and its me my mum and my sister and I know what you’re thinking – when does the silver spoon bit happen? LMAO.
I do sometimes find it hard to get close to people. I always have to hold stuff back – keep things secret that I’m ashamed of, like the number of men I’ve slept with or what my life is like- and then I think I secretly resent them for having such nice lives with nice mummies and daddies and nice families and homes and nice memories - not of being run at with broken glass or turfed out of home at 2 am when you’re fifteen and having to go to school the next day and pretend you were all up playing monopoly or something.
I’ve not earned a million bucks or won major awards or had a super duper high flying career and my lack of confidence has often held me back. But I am proud of my achievements. My two published novels and recent poetry collection. My plays. I’m currently working for Reuters in Paris - I have my own apartment just off Boulevard Haussman. I’m engaged to a really nice man who treats me like a princess and really supports my work. I have a few truly great friends, who have been my friends for many years and hopefully many more and I’m really hopeful of achieving my dreams of having a proper family, security, love, warmth and contentment. Being left alone at nights has left me chronically afraid of the dark. I hope I can conquer this and some of my other fears.
Writing this has been very cathartic for me. I hope its been interesting for you too.