Sally Sally Sally Sally. Oh my goodness Sally. Now there’s a name to conjure with. Sally Lowther would not be to most peoples taste . A real “Salt of the earth” type woman, and usually looking as though most of the earth is clinging to her. I have heard our Sally described as “Dog rough” Well. She’s no Princess Diana that’s for sure. Sally is proud of her heritage. She’s from traveling stock and will tell anyone who’ll stand long enough at her front gate to listen, all about her days in the trailer. She was the “ Hook a Duck Lady” in the traveling fair. These days the local kids would shout “Hook a Duck Silly Sally” or something vaguely similar beginning with F. Sally stands at all of four foot eight and a half. Almost as round as she is tall, with two tone hair. Half grey, half black. She religiously dyes her hair jet black once a year on New Years Eve. On this momentous occasion she is also known to take a bath too (Whether she needs it or not!) She is somewhere in the region of fifty years old. Though is not too sure of her exact age herself. She has led a hard life, and no mistake. The years have not been kind to her. You could be forgiven for estimating her age to be about one hundred and three. Deep crevices ingrained with muck line her face. The focal point of said face are little piggy black eyes, that gleam with an evil merriment when she’s in the act of imparting a juicy bit of gossip to some passer by. The Poor sod furious that he never took the long way round, knowing that he would not be quick enough to cross the road and escape when Sally’s front door opened. Sally has no teeth. Well that is to say, she has teeth, but they are not usually kept where they should be. The lucky teeth are usually to be found in her knicker draw being kept warm by Sally’s long legged, once white, thermal bloomers. This woman has a natural aptitude for guerning, while in the process of telling one of her “you’ll never believe this...” stories, her face contorts to the most horrifically frightening gargoyle like countenances ever witnessed. Her lips peel back, Latex-like from her mouth, and her huge gums with the little button bit at the front seem to jump out at you. Sally has never worn a Bra. Her ample bussom, rolls pendulously, as she sticks them over the front gate to ...GOSSIP. So there they hang. Looking rather like two amputated leg stumps, jiggling animatedly as she tells some tale. Her old and rather washed out, long suffering Jumper straining at the seams to keep those monstrous breasts, to some degree contained. She is often to be seen with her work overall (blue check, very serviceable), on over her jumper and aged skirt, and on the rare occasion that she bothers to actually flick her fag ash, she lifts out her overall pocket and flicks it into that. Her podgy feet are encased in brown ankle boots. The kind that very old ladies and Gypsies wear. Sally fits snugly into either category, despite her not yet having eight decades behind her. The boots zip up the front and are fur lined with a sort of brown fur collar round the top. Sally has a rare and oft practiced talent. She can stand at her front gate talking with a fag hanging out of her slack mouth, and can smoke almost an entire cigarette before the offending ash falls unfettered down her front. Sally doesn’t halt in her tirade of words, and her poor captive listener jolts suddenly out of mesmerization, as the ash falls to sit in a grey smudge on Sally’s fat breasts. How many pairs of eyes have been held captive over the years by Sally’s ever growing stem of fag ash? Well that’s anybody’s guess. Sally only goes out socializing in the evening once a year. Yes you’ve guessed it on New Years eve. That evening she becomes the queen of the silver dollar. She dyes her hair, and brushes out all the matted knots and tatters. Then she attaches a large, plastic flowered comb to each side of her head. Her face is scrubbed, well if not exactly clean, then scrubbed with vigor, and painted with garish reds. Much as a child would paint her face, too much, too thick, too RED. Then the piece-de-resistance. Her teeth. Now Sally with teeth is a sight to behold. Suddenly her personality changes. Her posture straightens. Her accent takes on the clipped hopefully upper-class tones that she tries desperately to adopt. Unfortunately Sally and the Queen of England would differ on the correct pronunciation of much of what comes out of that offensive mouth.. “Aaarold Daahling ‘ow is your good lady wife t’day.’as she come out of the ‘ospital yet?” Still not quite the perfect Lady she realizes, but she’s trying. Bless her she is TRYING. I’m sorry to harp on about those teeth but they really are a something to witness. They were made I’m sure, for a large cart horse, for they are certainly far too big for Sally’s mouth. Sizable and stretched though it is. They are like brilliant white tombstones. Apart from the huge front left incisor which is sparkling yellow gold, polished until it glints in the light, and dazzles everyone within a three mile radius. If they stood Sally on Hoad monument, she could guide the ships safely into harbor, especially as she has the dulcet tones of a fog horn to match. Our heroine only drinks once a year, but boy does she get her years worth. The night usually ends with her being escorted manually from some pub or other after she’s hauled her four foot eight and a half frame up onto one of the tables, fists thrust menacingly before her, and threatening to fight “anybody man enough” to take her on. Her little legs dangle marionette ish in the air, boots flailing, mouth Cursing, and there she dangles, hung between two doormen as they drop her onto the pavement outside. She lurches unsteadily to her feet then wobbles, weeble like into the gutter to throw up. Her teeth leaving her mouth with the velocity of a bullet. At some point throughout this elegance she pees herself. Rivers of urine leaving the tracks of their muddy banks down her chubby legs. “It was a good night weren’t it?” she leers at her husband,as she wipes the residues of vomit from her mouth with the back of her sleeve. After loosing that which, she worked very hard to consume. She is content to stagger homeward. Happy, purged and toothless. Only to send her poor little husband out to find and retrieve said teeth from some coagulating pool of vomit the next morning. One year he wasn’t so lucky. One of the neighbourhood mongrels had got to the teeth before he did. Sally was one of lifes workers. She had never claimed a penny in benefits, and was out of the house by five am, every Monday through Friday. The bent tired little woman could be seen, trudging a mile or more up the road to the local school morning and evening. Hail, rain or shine. Sally never missed a shift. She was a cleaner at the school, and though the brunt of all manner of practical jokes and name calling, the kids loved her. The poor headmaster had long since given up trying to get Sally to curb her colourful use of the English language in front of the little darlings, and as the school emptied at the end of day, oft could be heard Sally’s Northern twang bellowing ...”I’ll ‘ave yer, yer rotten little buggers. I’ll tek the skin of yer pink arses”. The teachers would shudder visibly, and look around nervously to see if she was approaching. Eyes darting round the classroom with only one escape route, desperately searching for somewhere to hide should the need arise. Only when satisfied that the coast was clear would they continue with their marking. Sally was a quandary, for although she was always grubby, and her house was a disaster area, She never seemed to stop cleaning. The house was a mess! Where did all the cleaning go? It’s a mystery easily equal to that of the Bermuda Triangle. Once a week Sally would pull out her old twin tub, complete with scrubbing board and mangle. The weekly ritual of boiling up the weeks wash would begin. It would bubble away for hours and yet the result was grimy grey sheets, hung out for all the world to see on her overstretched washing line. They looked as dirty after three hours boiling as they had when taken off the festering beds. The front room of the house was her “Parlor”. The Parlor was polished and hoovered once a week. Then it was not entered again until the following weeks polishing and vacuuming session. The Parlor was a shrine to “`Portant visitors” not that she ever had any important visitors. Still on the day they chose to come Sally was ready for `em. The buggers wouldn’t catch her out. The Parlor housed her huge collection of Royal Dalton fine china and figurines, an impressive collection indeed valued at thousands of pounds. And yet some days Sally couldn’t afford to put food on the table to feed her family properly. The kitchen was the hub of the house. All life was lived either in the kitchen, or hanging in gravity defying stance over the front gate. The kitchen was a large room with an open fire, and was dominated by two enormous German Shepherds. The “lads” Rebel and Rusty were not the most hospitable of creatures and after a few hospital visits by bitten neighbors, nobody was now invited into the nether regions of the Lowther household. Blackened cups littered the dining table. A tarnished tablespoon is used to sugar the tea, the same oversized spoon has been used for some time without washing. Filled with heaving mounds of coffee blackened sugar and then plunged into the tea and coffee cups, so that the spoon has lost all shape and definition. It is now deformed with crystallized tumors of hardened stained sugar all over it. The fire hearth is spilling over with ashes, and bits of old wood. The main decoration on the hearth is dozens of old fag butts discarded by Sally as she sits in her comfy battered chair pulled up close to the fire. She has never bought a twenty pack of cigs in her life. Yet she smokes at least sixty cigs a day. She has progressed from her John Players filterless, To the more Modern Embassy No 1. As she takes each cigarette out of the ten pack, she snaps off the filter, so that she can better taste the `bacca , spitting occasionally into the back of the fire to dislodge the pieces of tobacco that get trapped in her throat. Sally lives her life from Sunday to Saturday. Existing in her cocoon of filth and hardship. only for the joy of a Saturday afternoon. Setting off two hours early ensures her a place at the front of the queue amassing outside the pensioners hall. Her black eyes glint with the savagery of a hunter. Sally is fighting fit, and gawd help anyone who dares to cross her. It is the weekly Jumble sale. She buys all her clothing from the weekly “rummage”. “Goin’ ‘t the Rummage t’day Daisy. Good stuff from them posh lot at the Queens”. As soon as the doors are opened, Sally becomes “Ma, Lowther, the meanest, keenest dude in old Ethererston”. She will fight to the death over a child’s cardigan. She has no little girl, but it’s “Good stuff” and for no reason other than that it can’t be passed over. She gets into a head to head with Daisy `adder, pronounced Haddow to the rest of us. Each woman has a sleeve, neither one is going to give way, and the slanging match ensues. Both ladies are in their element and have not been this happy since the previous week when each was fighting with someone else over another cast off treasure. Sally finally wins.Coming away from the “fight” victorious with heaving bags. Some of the booty inside which she has paid for, but the vast majority of other peoples cast offs has been shoved hastily into her bag as she distracted the stall holder. This can’t of course be classed as stealing. After all its only “someone else’s old junk” On arriving home she would examine her treasures. When she pulls out the Cardigan that she has no use for she gives the situation some thought. Turning the garment this way and that in her gnarled hands. Reliving and once again savoring her victory over Daisy. The moment of triumph as she handed over the hot 50 pence piece which had been clutched in her hand in anticipation of her victory.”Oh I know” she thinks “I’ll give that to Daisy `Adder for her little girl. she’ll love that”. Sally has a heart of gold. Would help out anyone in trouble. Welcomes an endless stream of tramps into her garden to have tea and the last plate of stew and dumplings, leaving her to eat jam and bread later, but that’s our Sally. The Salt of the Earth.
Copyright © 2000 Sue (Sooz) Simpson |