Sundays are some of my favourite ever family memories. There would be a constant whistle in my nanny’s house on a Sunday: the kettle would permanently be on the go as there was always at least nine of us wanting a brew. Drinking strong cups of Yorkshire tea from the age of five must be a northern thing; I think all that caffeine does something to your brain and makes you instantly friendlier. Me and my cousin Keegan (who is two years younger than me) would be asking for our Sunday dinner to be put in a bowl because the dogs would be trying to get to our plates and the gravy was that watery it would be spilling all over the carpet. We didn’t want to risk spillage because we didn’t want to get in trouble and not be allowed a slice of Arctic roll.
Ah, the joy of all of us sat around, winding each other up. Ever since I can remember, my family have always been brutal. Slating each other, character building as my mother would say. In our family, the more you love someone the more you insult them. A loving conversation and a sign of affection on a classic Moffatt Sunday would go like this:
Uncle Danny: ‘You alreet like, dick lips?’
Dad: ‘Aye, sound, shitty arse, how’s work gannin’?’
Auntie Kirsty: ‘Toffo, pass me the salt from the side of the couch, lizard neck.’
It has always been this way in the Moffatt household. I learnt from a very young age that no one is realer than your family. They compliment you behind your back, but criticise you to your face. That is real love! In all honesty we are just like the Royle family when we are all gathered together. Now I don’t mean Her Majesty, Prince Philip and the other lovely lot. I mean the TV show where they would all sit around the telly and natter – Jim Royle, Denise Royle and Antony (the lazy streak of piss). My mam reminds me of Barbara; she’s the glue that holds the family together, and bless her she always seemed to be running around like a blue-arsed fly when I was a kid.
However, our work ethic is completely different to TV’s Royle family. It’s crazy, as a kid I actually remember being annoyed about my mam and dad always being at work. Other kids in my class got picked up by their parents. Some of my friends whose parents had split up got to see their dads for a whole weekend. But my dad got up when only owls should be awake: 5:30 a.m. his alarm would go off, and still does go off at that time to this day, as he needed to go off on his shift as a welder. My dad would leave home when it was dark and come back home when it was dark, six days a week. I felt like I’d only see him for an hour a day.
My mam and me would wake up at about seven in the morning. I would sit up in my cosy bed while my mam, without fail, would be singing tunefully, ‘Good morning, good morning, here’s your mam to wake you up. Good morning, good morning to you!’ I would rearrange all of my Beanie Babies that I’d got free as a toy from my McDonald’s Happy Meals (1996 Maccy D toys were the best) before skipping down the stairs. Me mam would get ready for work; she worked in retail at a shop called Etam. My school uniform would be laid out nicely pressed for me and I would wave my mam off as she jumped on the 1B bus and go to my friend Kyle’s house where his mam would take me to school.
‘It’s not fair,’ I’d shout at Mam and Dad later, as I’d storm up the stairs at home, wishing they would lose their jobs so they could spend all their hours with me. It’s only now as an adult that I realise I was the one who wasn’t being fair. I didn’t give my mam and dad the credit they deserved for how hard they grafted. That’s why every day I just try and make them proud; it’s my way of saying thank you.
If I ever was ‘naughty’ as a kid, like when I’d storm upstairs, I had a system that would always get me back in their good books. I’ve actually passed this knowledge down to my little sister Ava (there’s a fifteen-year age gap between us but don’t worry, I’ll be chatting lots about this little tinker later). What I’d do is I would write my parents a heartfelt letter complete with illustrations of love hearts, and I’d sometimes – if I had done something really bad – lick the paper so it looked like my tears had fallen on it.
The letter would normally read:
To the greatest mam and dad in the world,
I am so so so sorry for what I have done.
I think it would be best for all of the Moffatt
family (Mam, Dad and the dog Glen) if you
took me back to the shop you bought me at and
swapped me for a better kid. I am packing my
bag right now.
Love you and miss you already
Scarlett xXxXx
I would then quickly run down the stairs, shove the letter underneath the living-room door, give three loud knocks and run back upstairs. I normally had to only wait by my bag on the landing – packed with the essentials of my Noddy toy, a spare pair of pants, some Roald Dahl books and a coat – for about three to four
