Colleen Smith

IF YOU haven’t already done so, go and see the Gormleys. It’s wonderful.

It’s free, although being Torbay there is the obligatory overly-expensive car park, followed by the equally obligatory parking fine slapped on by the mad, OCD parking attendants.

It’s my first parking ticket of the year and I now know I’m not paranoid.

They are watching me! They hide in bushes, little groups of them and they’re sneaky, so I never see them really clearly, but I swear they look like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, with giant pocket watches and NCP hats — only bigger, like Harvey.

This time they must have been hovering over my windscreen in Abbey Gardens, waiting for the second hand to pass the hour.

I think I heard them howling with glee and doing high fives as I dashed back to the car park.

I’ve been good for months and months (or mumps and mumps, as my daughter always mis-pronounces it).

I’ve paid every extortionate car parking fee (it must be hundreds of pounds over the year). Sometimes I’ve had to sprint through the town, elbowing old ladies and babies out of my way, in a maniacal, menopausal sweat to get back to the car park in time.

I’ve bought my resident’s parking ticket to be allowed to park outside my own house (thank you, thank you, thank you Torbay Council, how kind).

I’ve had to buy books of £1-a-go tickets so visitors can park outside my house in the parking zone.

And let me tell you, now all my teenage daughter’s friends have passed their driving tests it’s costing me a fortune.

The girls were all blithely helping themselves to tickets in the mistaken assumption they were free.

To make matters worse, if they come for a sleepover they have to use one ticket until midnight, and another after midnight, or they get a parking fine in the middle of the night.

It’s true, the parking attendants must sleep in the drains, with the rats, waiting, waiting, waiting… ready to pounce at any time of the day or night.

When my daughter had her 18th birthday it cost me £2 per teenager per night, just for them to park within walking distance (never mind the fizzy pop, food and fake fur).

I am only allowed 30 of these tickets for the whole year.

I have had to tell my daughter to ration her friendships. Be more choosy, I say, we can only have 30 people visit a year (15 if they stay over).

And that includes tradesmen. And relatives. We must choose wisely.

“How much do we like her?” I ask, whenever she mentions a friend’s name. “Maybe she was OK when her mum used to drop her off, but now that I’m paying £2 a night, I’m starting to wonder if she’s value for money.”

It was lucky my 50th birthday coincided with that one, magical weekend when the council saw sense (did I imagine it?), and all the car parks were just £1 for the whole weekend.

It meant I could invite all of my friends and people could stay over and not get up at the crack of dawn and rush out and stuff handfuls of pound coins into the council coffers (perhaps when all the little Gormleys are gone they should convert the Spanish Barn back into its original use as a tithe barn, where they used to collect wheat in taxes, and just fill it with cash from the parking machines).

OK, I know, I’m exaggerating just a smidgen. But it’s making me laugh. And I know if I get a parking ticket it’s my own damn fault. But I know I’m not alone in this: parking tickets make your blood boil.

I stayed with a friend in the New Forest last year and residents can buy a parking pass for short stops in council car parks for something like £12 and it lasts for a whole year!

The enlightened view is it helps residents and it helps the local economy because people can nip into town.

Can you remember the joys of being able to nip into town? Back in the olden days, younger reader, you could pop to the bank in your lunch hour.

You could park right outside Woolworth’s and rush in for a birthday present. Imagine.

We had shops and free parking right in the town centre, not just at The Willows.

And when I was in Denmark, visitors could have a free permit for short stops in car parks for the length of their stay.

The enlightened view there was it encouraged more holidaymakers. The very idea!

Enough. Enough of my ranting. I wanted to write a nice, appreciative column about all the little Gormleys or, to give this art work its proper title, Field for the British Isles.

I know there has been some mild controversy over whether 40,000 little clay men looking up at you in a room is or is not art.

But I personally found it moving and it made me think, and so it fits my definition of art.

I liked the way they seemed to be waiting and expectant and slightly hopeful: looking up at us humans and holding their breath, as if they believe there is a slim chance we might be on the brink of getting our act together and not cocking up the whole world after all.

The Spanish Barn looks mighty and imposing, as if it’s found a proper purpose again, shaking off the shadows of that nasty fortnight during the Spanish Armada when 397 prisoners were captured and held prisoner there.

On leaving Field for the British Isles, Antony Gormley has also installed a series of ghostly white footsteps, made of felt, which lead from the barn to symbolise the path trodden by the white Canons who built the abbey in the 12th century.

We followed the footsteps and visited Torre Abbey for the first time since its restoration.

Again, if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s really worth it.

The £6.5million, three-year restoration project has transformed it.

I loved the way the new big glass and steel additional staircases and corridors open up the dry, dusty interior without damaging the sense of history.

I have admitted on this page before that, as children, a friend and I found a way into the Pavilion during its disused years, and often used to climb in across the roof to play on the stage and behind the wings.

And now I must also admit my older brother and I used to shin up scaffolding and climb over the walls and run around among the gravestones in Torre Abbey’s medieval cemetery.

I can remember him daring me to lie down in one of the empty graves.

And I have happy memories as a child of Sunday walks with my parents to Torre Abbey’s gardens.

So it was a shock to discover there is no longer free access to those gardens and the magnificent glasshouses.

I had assumed once the restoration was complete, the gardens would be open to the public once again. But you now have to pay 70p to go through the new Abbey entrance.

While it’s lovely to see the gardens looking all spruced up and well-cared-for, as they used to be back in the 60s, it’s wrong that it’s no longer free.

MY EYES hurt. My ears hurt. My head hurts. My body clock is cocked-up and I think I’ve got dysentery.

I’ve just experienced the madness that is Glastonbury for the first time — and I loved every muddy minute.

First things first — the toilets. Yes, everything you’ve ever heard about how vile they are is totally true.

There are two types of loo at Glasto. There are the normal portable loos that look like the Tardis (with the trade name which I’m not allowed to use or we might get sued, but cleverly takes the two words portable and loo, and squashes them up to make a new, short word).

As I’m not allowed to use that word, I’m going to call them Portapoos.

There are row after row of Portapoos lined up in ranks around the main stages like an invading army descending the hillside.

There were so many that at first I thought that nice Mr Eavis had got us one each.

And for the first half-day or so the Portapoos seemed the civilised choice… especially when you compared them to the alternative, which were basically giant tanks with toilet cubicles suspended above them. Let’s call these the Tankipoos.

The Tankipoos are painted green metal. And some have big daisies painted on them as if this may help disguise the overpoweringly putrid smell. It doesn’t. Not at all. They are disgusting. But by the second day the Portapoos are all backed up and I have no choice.

To get to the Tankipoo you have to climb up rickety metal steps and open the green metal door and at first glance they look like a normal toilet, with a seat and everything.

In one way I am relieved that I don’t have stand up and look down the hole into the tank. But it’s tricky going to the toilet without looking, breathing in or out, or making any physical contact with the seat.

A friend bought a She-Pee off the internet (it’s a sort of funnel which enables woman to pee while standing upright). But she wet herself twice and gave up.

I used five packets of wet wipes in as many days (and showered once, in the communal Greenpeace solar showers).

Next — the music.

We had one organised day, when we numbered one to eight the bands we wanted to see, and must have walked 10 miles doing it. That day ended right in the middle of 100,000 people watching Bruce Springsteen for more than two and a half hours. It was a truly wonderful experience.

And then we had a day where we wandered lazily around and trusted to synchronicity and everything just worked out perfectly.

We started in the hippy Green Fields and walked up to the Stone Circle. From the distance we could see people letting off paper candle balloons. Every time one floated prettily into the air, a tremendous roar gradually built and spread around the whole festival site.

It looked mellow and chilled out from the distance. But when we got there, I was fascinated as we had to step our way through thousands of young teenagers breathing in balloons filled with gas (out of silver canisters that looked like the ones from a soda siphon).

We ended up dancing to a brilliant band (no idea who) in Trash City until 3am.

And we had one wasted, hungover day when we slipped around in the mud and missed half the bands we wanted to see because we didn’t have the energy to rush around.

And then there was MJ day. It was about 10.30pm on Thursday when a wide-eyed teenager came up and earnestly asked ‘Is it true? Is Michael Jackson really dead?’

We laughed. What a great rumour to spread at Glastonbury.

But we could hear Michael Jackson music thumping out somewhere in the distance and the girl looked distressed and insisted that she had to know if it was true and for some reason she decided that we were the people who had to help her.

I’ve no idea why, because she admitted that she wasn’t even a fan. But that’s the other big thing about Glasto.

There’s this huge hippy vibe. Everybody’s nice all of the time. Wasted and drunk and off their heads and smelly some times — but still nice.

Even the security guards. On the outside they look just as fierce and surly and aggressive as ordinary security guards. But if you ask them for directions, they’re all sweet and helpful and overly protective like big daddy bunny rabbits.

So we stood in the middle of one of the packed metal walkways and asked everybody if they’d heard that Michael Jackson was dead. And within two or three minutes we’d confirmed it was true.

He’d died of a heart attack, which was strange, because the Glasto grapevine seemed to be more efficient than the real news gathering media out in the real world, which took another 12 hours to confirm the story.

As I went to sleep in my tent that night it was fascinating to listen in to all the conversations and hear news being spread the old-fashioned way, from tent to tent, by word of mouth.

That’s the other thing about camping at Glastonbury. You are squashed so close together (imagine the entire population of Torbay all camping together at Cockington) that you can hear hundreds of conversations as you try to sleep at night.

I’m not quite sure why being at Glastonbury when Michael Jackson died had such significance, but it did. Apparently within 24 hours they were selling T-shirts with the slogan ‘I was at Glasto 09 when Michael Jackson died’ or an even more tasteless ‘Jackson Four’ logo.

Suddenly every sound stage was playing his music and remembering the artist before his gradual disintegration into Wacko Jacko.

Over the next three days dozens of diverse acts paid their own musical tributes, all describing how they’d grown up listening to Michael Jackson and trying to emulate his sound and dance moves.

Poignantly the final scheduled event on the main Glastonbury programme was a tribute disco to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tamla Motown label where The Jackson Five started their musical career (with barely-more-than-a-baby, little brother Michael already stealing the show).

The Queen’s Head tent filled with thousands of jubilant festival goers, all determined to celebrate our last few Glastonbury hours and Motown’s 50th birthday and Michael Jackson’s early music in proper party style. We danced and sang ourselves hoarse.

And then we had to take the tent down in a thunder and lightning storm.

I’d packed my coat earlier in the day and was wearing shorts and wellies and got so wet that you could see my pink spotty knickers through my shorts.

But the good news was that we got to the car before the crowds (nobody else was stupid enough to take their tent down in the rain) and got off site with only a half-hour traffic queue.

It was a weird and wonderful experience. And I’m hoping to go back next year.

I’VE finally had the sex talk with my son.

With my older girls it was easy. They always asked me questions from an early age and I answered them as fully and honestly as I could. It all seemed very healthy and straightforward.

But my son is eight and was still putting his fingers in his ears and running away whenever the subject came up.

Then a few weeks ago he came home from school looking troubled and, in a slightly disgusted voice, told my new man they were going to be doing sex education at school saying, hopefully, ‘You don’t think mummy will let me do sex education do you?’ and looked downhearted when he was told ‘Oh yes, I expect she will’.

The next day he came home with a letter from school and told me he wanted me to sign the form excluding him from sex education lessons.

I can’t remember his exact phrase, but he used the word ‘inappropriate’, which just doesn’t sound right, coming from an eight-year-old.

So at bedtime I decided it was time we had a long chat and, despite him still insisting he didn’t want to know, I told him about sex.

Obviously I didn’t want to jump straight into the bodily functions stuff. But I think I may have lost his attention somewhere in my preamble.

Then there was the normal amount of giggling whenever I named body bits and eventually he seemed to take it all pretty matter-of-factly, without much comment.

Except that when I got to the end, he was still insisting he didn’t think I should be letting him do sex education in class.

Something was bothering him and it took me a while to work out exactly what it was.

Then finally all became clear when he said, ‘Yes, but what am I going to have to do in sex education?’

No wonder the poor child looked so concerned. He thought there was going to be some sort of practical element to the lesson. It made me remember a particularly funny Monty Python sketch with John Cleese playing a teacher demonstrating sex with his naked wife in front of a class full of bored teenaged boys, who are all yawning and looking out of the window and sneaking peeks at their Latin grammar books.

After I told him he wouldn’t have to DO anything, apart from try not to giggle too much, he went off to bed perfectly happily.

But the next morning I thought I’d just double check whether he now felt he understood the basic facts. He shook his head.

So we had another chat and he said, wisely I thought: “I can see I’m going to have to wear a lot of protective body armour when I’m bigger.”

And then, just to be sure he had finally understood, I told him one last time exactly which bit went in which hole and finally it seemed to dawn on him. He looked doubtful and said: “It must take a lot of complicated manoeuvres to get to that stage.”

That’s one way to put it.

But it did make me realise that he’s been playing too many war games — body armour, complicated manoeuvres — it sounded more like we’d been discussing military tactics for Call of Duty than love, sex and relationships.

My older daughters and I were trying to remember if they had had formal sex ed at primary school, and we couldn’t remember.

Maybe that’s because it wouldn’t have seemed much of a big deal to them.

I do vaguely remember a friend who had two little boys asking to go into school to see the sex ed teaching material before agreeing to her sons joining the lessons.

At the time I couldn’t really see why she was so concerned. But now, seeing the huge difference between my own three children, I do wonder if the classroom is the right place to teach young children about sex.

However carefully the lesson is handled, there is often no telling what’s going on in children’s heads. The same words can mean entirely different things to each of them, and my son certainly came home with a few very confused ideas.

IN complete contrast, it’s been my middle daughter’s 18th birthday.

She’s just finished her A-levels and is probably off to university in September.

I am immensely proud of her and will miss her like hell when she goes.

But in the meantime we had some celebrating to do.

Coming of age has more to do with getting legal ID to go out clubbing than the key to the door nowadays.

She decided it would be fun, as her birthday was a Sunday and a bit of a quiet night on the town, if she and all her friends went out in fancy dress.

The theme they hit on was cave women. Off we went to Percy’s in Newton Abbot and bought metres of fake fur.

They all came around for a barbecue and spent Sunday afternoon creating Barbarella-meets-One-Million-Years-BC cave girl outfits.

They had been upstairs for about an hour when I went to check on the progress of the costume-making. Apart from a mountain of mess on the floor, and one skirt, they weren’t getting far fast.

I remembered I’d made my oldest daughter a similar outfit four or five years ago and sure enough (she never throws anything away) we found it and used it as a prototype.

The easiest way, we discovered, was for the girls to stretch the fur around them and hold it in place, while I sewed them into the outfits.

It was working fine, they looked great. But the problem was that I was dressed in jeans and they were all skimpily dressed. The sun had graciously decided to shine and I was boiling and wanted all the windows wide open, while they insisted they were freezing.

In the end (I had had a glass of champagne with the birthday cake by then) I decided the answer was for me to strip off too and wear my other daughter’s old cave girl outfit.

I must point out the costume fitted her when she was about 15. She is only eight stone and a size eight now. And she was smaller then.

Let’s just say it’s lucky fake fur is stretchy.

Despite that, it was preposterously minuscule. It (and the champagne) made me giggle.

You must also realise I was under a certain amount of strain by that stage, given that the occasion meant spending the day with both my ex and my new partner.

It was all very grown up and civilised (well they were, I was completely juvenile), and only slightly odd now and again.

Probably the atmosphere wasn’t helped by the fact I was running around dressed in little more than fur undies.

Given that the girls’ costumes needed so little fabric, we were left with a remnant large enough to make a Fred Flintstone (possibly more Barney Rubble) style off-the-shoulder costume for my youngest son.

I wanted to get a photo of all of us together in our cavemen outfits, and so I was still wearing my disgracefully revealing, ridiculously silly outfit and making his last costume as the other partygoers arrived.

I had to breathe in a lot and probably looked a bit of an arse, but it was fun.

The girls, meanwhile, looked stunning and had a lovely (and legal) night on the town.