“Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin!” Episode 2
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AMY:
[Laughing] We called her Double Denim.
INTERVIEWER:
And why was that?
AMY:
Because everything she wore was denim. Literally. Everything.
ALIX:
Hi. My name is Alix Summer. Thanks for joining me for episode 2 of my new podcast, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! where I interview a woman called Josie who I met when we were both celebrating our 45th birthdays in the pub two weeks ago. Last week we talked about how Josie met her husband, Walter when she was only thirteen and he was forty. This week I wanted to talk to Josie about something very particular about her appearance. Josie is an attractive woman with masses of chestnutty hair and arresting dark brown eyes, but that’s not the first thing you notice about her.
Because the first time I met Josie and every time since, she has been exclusively wearing denim clothes and accessories. When she arrived at my studio for the first time, she was even carrying Fred, her beloved tiny Pomchi, in a denim carrier. I was curious to understand her obsession with the stuff.
ALIX:
So. Denim. Are you happy to talk about that today?
JOSIE:
Yes. Sure.
ALIX:
So, I’ve noticed that most things you wear are made of denim and I’m curious about that. For example, today you are wearing a denim skirt, with a pale blue top and denim plimsolls. Your handbag is made of denim and your dog is in a denim dog carrier. Do you have a story, or a theory? About your love of denim?
JOSIE:
Yes. I wasn’t sure at first when you mentioned it last week. I wasn’t sure what the reason was. I think I always just thought I liked it because it’s practical, you know. Easy. But you’re right. A denim jacket is one thing – everyone has a denim jacket. But denim accessories are another thing completely and you know, in my bedroom I actually have denim curtains. So clearly there’s something going on. And I think it’s got something to do with the early days of my relationship with Walter, you know. I was wearing a denim jacket the first time I went out with him. I wore it a lot during the first couple of years we were together, and it became, for me, almost a part of our love affair. Always there. On the back of a chair. Or hanging off my shoulders. He’d put it there for me, if the sun went in and I got cold, just put it there. Like I was a princess or something. And then one day he picked it up and cuddled it and sniffed it and said something really cheesy like: “This jacket is you, it’s just you.” Something to do with my essence being inside it? Something to do with the smell? And he made the jacket sound so powerful and important, and it made me feel like the jacket was maybe lucky, in some way? Had brought us together? I don’t know, it all sounds so stupid when I try to explain it. But after that I think I always made sure I was wearing something denim, so that maybe the way Walter felt about me then might last forever.
[pause]
ALIX:
I believe you brought some photos along today, of you and Walter, when you were both younger.
Shall we have a look at those now?
JOSIE:
There aren’t many. Of course, this was pre smartphones, so we only took photographs with cameras and obviously, back then, well, we were kind of still a secret, so we weren’t exactly snapping each other here, there and everywhere. But I found a couple. Here.
ALIX:
Wow. [Alix laughs drily] Wow! Walter was quite a hunk.
JOSIE:
He really was.
ALIX:
You look so young. So very young.
JOSIE:
Well, I was. I was young. I was. . . It’s crazy, when you think about it.
ALIX:
So, if you could go back to thirteen- year- old Josie, just before she met Walter, what would you say to her?
JOSIE:
I don’t know. I really don’t know. Because in some ways, being with Walter all these years has been the making of me, you know. Having the babies young. Having something solid in my life. Having something real, when other girls my age were running round being fake and ridiculous, searching for things. But on the other hand – on the other hand, I do wonder, I wonder quite a lot, especially now that the girls are grown, especially now I’m middle- aged and Walter is getting old and . . . [PAUSE] I wonder what it was all for, you know? I wonder what else might have been. And actually, all things considered, I’d probably tell thirteen-year- old me to run for the hills and not look back.
ALIX:
How did your mum feel about you dating Walter?
JOSIE:
Well, she didn’t know.
ALIX:
She didn’t know?
JOSIE:
No. We didn’t tell her until my eighteenth birthday. And in fact, we told her we were engaged. Told her we were going to get married. Told her I was moving out. Walter was there. He said there was no way he’d let me do something like that unsupported. And I genuinely had no idea how my mother was going to react. No idea if she’d laugh or cry or scream or call the police. But she just sighed. She said to me, “You’re an adult now. I can’t make your choices for you. But, Josie, I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.” And then she took hold of my face, like this, inside her hand, so hard it almost hurt, and she stared hard into my eyes and said, “Remember you have choices.” Then she let go of my face and left the room, slammed the door behind her. Me and Walter just looked at each other. Then he took me out for dinner to an Italian restaurant on West End Lane. Went back to his after and never went home. My life had actually begun. Or at least that’s what I told myself. That’s what I believed. It’s only now that I can see how wrong I was. That I was just handing myself from the hands of one controlling person to another.
ALIX:
Walter controls you?
JOSIE:
I suppose so, yes. In some ways. But don’t all men?
ALIX:
VOICEOVER:
I wanted to ask Josie more about this aspect of her relationship with Walter, but I could tell she wasn’t ready to go there yet, so I changed the subject.
ALIX:
And what about your daughters, Erin and Roxy? Tell me about them…
JOSIE:
Oh, you know. Erin, my oldest, she’s always had some problems. Not quite sure how you’d describe it, really. The teachers called it global developmental delay? But I didn’t agree with that. She was just a bit lazy, I think. A bit passive? Hard to get a reaction out of her. Hard to know what she was thinking. And then Roxy was the opposite. Oppositional defiant disorder, the teachers called it. I think I did agree with that. You could never tell Roxy anything. She would never, ever comply. She was always angry. Used to hit me. Hit her sister. Just the angriest, angriest child. So between them, with their problems, no, it wasn’t the happiest of times. And high school was no better, of course. Walter couldn’t cope with them. He was away a lot. He’d been made redundant by the company he’d been working for in London and ended up getting a much better job with an electrical company that worked mainly out of Scotland and the Northeast. So he’d be away for days on end, just back for the weekends. I have to say, I liked it. For so many years I’d existed only as half of a couple and as a mother. I had never been alone, not really. You know, before the girls were born, I didn’t even have a key to our flat. I just used to have to wait in for him to get home from work. Just wait in, all day . . . so I liked those years when Walter worked away during the week, when it was just me and the girls. We were happy. We were free. I let the girls be themselves, gave them room to breathe. But then Walter would get back at the weekends and, well, everything would change. And not in a good way.
ALIX:
What do you mean?
JOSIE:
Well, his temper. You know. We were all a bit scared of him.
ALIX:
Was he violent? With the girls?
JOSIE:
Not then. No. But he was rough. He’d push them about. Especially Roxy. But not violent. That came later. [Josie sighs loudly] I have not been a good parent. I have not been a good parent.
ALIX:
What do you mean?
JOSIE:
I just mean . . [sigh] I let bad things happen. I didn’t stop them. I just let it all happen.
FADE
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ALIX:
We stopped there. Josie had to go to work. She’s a seamstress, working at a repairs place near Kilburn tube station. Our sessions are always brief. But I needed to know more about this strange dynamic between her and her much older husband. I wanted to meet Walter. So I invited them over for dinner. Tune in next week to find out how that went.