KIPPER

The truth is that when you are the oldest child, any stories that your parents tell you about when you are a baby have to be accepted on faith, because there is usually no other witness.

I am the oldest of four girls and as we are three years apart, almost exactly, I can remember the ‘thing’ about each of my sisters that makes them special. Josie walked at 8 months, Juliet could sing the national anthem at 2, and Jess was so strong at 3 that she could carry Juliet, who was 6 at the time, around on her back.

And what was my thing, that everyone remembered? That I was slow to talk and when I did, I struggled to make proper sounds. And the effects of this difficulty have stayed with me my whole life.

Hello, my name is Jane. When I was four years old, I was on holidays at Toukley with my parents and baby Josie. We always went to the same place, a sprawling guest house near the beach which had a courtyard in the middle where every morning, the landlady would leave a tray of mugs and a big aluminium pot of tea and the guests would wander out in their dressing gowns, sit in the sun and have a cuppa and a natter.

The landlady’s husband, whose real name I can’t remember, would take us out on his boat so the dads could go fishing. Because it was his boat everyone called him Skipper, but I called him Kipper. It was around this time that my family started calling me Kipper, then friends of family, later on my sisters’ boyfriends, sometimes my own boyfriends, my husband and then my children, because they though it was funny. This morning my granddaughter Persephone, aged 4, called me Kipper.