My mother formed ranting action groups that held meetings in our kitchen – usually consisting of just her, my father (smuggling in a book on Renaissance philosophy) and old Sister Gwendolen. They mounted campaigns, picked up litter, lay on the road to divert Heavy Goods Vehicles (also good reading time for Dad) and fought to keep bus services going. She took the council to court, refusing point-blank to pay our rates, and won the case, becoming the first person in legal history with the right not to pay rates. The local police all knew her by her first name (Julia) as she called them a couple of times a week over some incident or other that she had attempted to sort out: the ten-year-old glue-sniffer she found lying in his own vomit, the skinhead brandishing a weapon – Put the gun down, young man!

Nothing intimidated her; not even the man who jumped out from behind a tree as she and I were walking the dog in a particularly secluded part of the litter-filled, bombed-out, brambled green space further down the road. He was masturbating furiously at us. Look at me! Look at me! he cried proudly, clenching his prized possession in his plump fingers. My mother pushed me behind her (I was stock still, utterly mesmerized by the sheer monstrosity of it) and stepped right up to him and said in the voice she reserved for truly bad behaviour, Shame on you! Put your penis away, you disgusting little man! To my amazement, the disgusting little man promptly burst into tears and stuffed that thing away. It turned out he was indeed ashamed of himself, and she spent the next twenty minutes comforting him on a tree stump while I kicked some used condoms about. Are you getting the picture, Dr. R, of where I’ve come from, of who this woman that bore me is?