It was while I was nursing that I met and fell in love with my first proper boyfriend, whom I shall call DT.
It was a sublime period in which I staggered about the wards, completely knackered after nights of unbridled sh***ing, even falling asleep during the morning note session on one occasion, after which I was taken aside for a lecture on the restorative power of sleep.
I had discovered sex, in a big way, but it hadn't all been smooth going; it took me at least three days to lose my virginity because I was so tense: clamped shut, I suppose.
At one point I seriously questioned whether I had a vagina at all. However, after those three days, there was no stopping me.
For a working-class girl, meeting DT was a revelation on every level. He came from a wealthy, middle-class family, where people read the Daily Telegraph, ate spaghetti bolognese and drank wine.
They called dinner, lunch; tea, supper. It was like entering a foreign country.
In September 1969, DT went to Manchester Polytechnic to study sociology. I was heart sore, and any will I had left to continue nursing disappeared.
Every day that I had off was spent getting to Manchester. On one visit I confided to DT that I wanted to become an actress, whereupon he told me there was a drama course at the poly and why didn't I apply? I did.
On my next trip home, with my brothers and my dad pre-warned and strategically positioned in between my mother and me, I broke the news.
'Mum? I'm giving up nursing. I want to be an actress.'
'Oh, Gad, what have we reared? You'll be in the gutter before you're 20!'
I thought she might lunge at me, but then Dad said: 'Well, the more you are against it the more she's going to want to do it.'
My brother Tommy joined the fray. 'Dad's right. There's no point in her staying in a job that makes her miserable. She should go for it now, while she's young.'
'Acting!' said Mum, with the down-turned mouth that she used to convey utter contempt. 'You've been watching too much television! May the great God look to me! Acting!'
We set up home in Manchester in a bedsit that shared a bathroom with two other flats. Embarrassment followed me, as it always did.
One evening, just days after we moved in, I arrived home, thrilled at my new life, to see that a small envelope had been posted under our door. At first I thought it was empty but then I saw a small square of folded paper.
When I opened it out, it contained a little clump of dark pubic hair and on the paper was written in neat, small handwriting the words: 'Found in the bathroom. Yours, I believe.' It was unsigned.
I
was mortified. It was obviously meant for me as DT had gorgeous, bright red hair. Someone must have used the bathroom immediately after me and. . . Oh, it was too awful to even contemplate.
I didn't use the bathroom again for about three months, choosing to wash standing at the sink in the freezing kitchen.
My parents, even my father, thought that I was still living with a friend from school and that DT was living elsewhere. It would have been too much, on top of abandoning my respectable career in nursing, to tell them the truth.
So when they finally came to visit me, there was a frantic hiding of all things DT, but what I failed to do was put away my birth-control pills, which my mother's hawk eyes spotted straight away.
She never said anything; it was my brother Tommy who told me years later how she'd seen them on the bathroom shelf and was somewhat miffed at me, thinking I'd pulled the wool over her eyes.
My drama studies included making Greek theatrical masks out of plaster of Paris, and one day we were sent home with the necessary materials to practise.
Usually people made casts of their arms and legs, but I decided DT could provide a far more interesting appendage.
The first step, in order to facilitate easy removal of the cast, was to apply Vaseline, and, as you might imagine, this produced an effect that made the appendage more conducive to the application of the plaster.
It looked marvelous, and we were both thrilled. Half an hour later, when it was nail-tappingly dry, I gingerly began to try to slide it off, but this brought a huge scream from DT.
I couldn't understand it, having slathered him with Vaseline, but on closer inspection some body hairs were embedded in the plaster.
I tried to get my kitchen scissors between the plaster and DT's body, but they were too big. I then tried to employ a pair of nail clippers, but they were too cumbersome. DT was now in a total panic.
'We'll have to go to hospital. They'll have to cut it off!'
'Isn't that a bit drastic?' 'What? No, I mean the plaster! This isn't funny.'
'Calm down. Someone will have some nail scissors.'
'Oh, Jesus.' I eventually had to knock on our downstairs neighbor's door and tell her I needed a small pair of scissors 'to trim my boyfriend's beard'.
These did the trick, and the cast came away completely intact. It took pride of place on the mantelpiece for months.
In the summer of 1973, DT and I decided that we would marry. Everyone was thrilled; my mother approved and DT bought me a gorgeous antique engagement ring, set with turquoise stones.
But one night, just three weeks before the wedding day, I shot up in bed in the middle of the night, filled with only one, very certain thought.
'Oh, DT . . . I'm so sorry!' I couldn't get out any more than that. I was paralyzed by gulps and sobs.
'What? What is it, love?' He sat up and put his arm around me. Eventually I managed: 'I can't get married. I'm just not ready.'
And I knew it to be right because the relief was enormous, as if something had been surgically removed, something that I hadn't even registered as being a problem, but now that it was gone I was light as air.
But I loved DT and hurting him was painful. 'Look, DT, I just really, really can't do this. I don't want us to split up. Let's just carry on as we are. I just don't want to get married.'
And finally, he stopped asking why. We lay there in silence and then, 'DT? Can we still go on the honeymoon?'
Well, we were going to Lisbon and I couldn't give that up, and neither could he. We split up for good the following year, going through a wistful little ceremony where we divided up our few domestic acquisitions.
I can see them laid out on the floor of my bedsit, with DT and me looking sadly down at them. We focused our pain on the washing-up bowl, which, if not exactly fought over, was definitely the subject of some discussion, although not enough to prevent us from being good friends thereafter.
After finishing my studies, I was taken on by the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool to replace a member of the cast of a pub show titled Flash Harry. I played, among other things, the mother of a flasher.
Alcohol played a large part in these pub shows. In fact, I don't know how we functioned. A great deal of beer, in my case bottled Guinness, was swilled and I don't think I ever did one of those shows properly sober.
One night, in the packed little bistro underneath the theatre, I was up at the bar when a guy grabbed hold of my hand. 'How would you like to go on a magical mystery tour?'
He handed me what looked like a tiny bit of lead from a propelling pencil, stuck between two pieces of Sellotape.
'Here y'are, Queen. Want to come on an adventure?'
'What is it?' 'A tiny piece of heaven. It's a tab of acid.' 'What do you do with it?' 'Stick it in your mouth and swallow. It's totally harmless. Go on, what are you scared of?'
'I don't know. What will it do?' 'It'll just make everything bright and fun for a couple of hours. Go on, I dare you to enjoy yourself!'
Before another thought could enter my head, I slapped my palm across my open mouth, propelling the thing to the back of my throat. One swallow and it was gone.
Twenty minutes later, unaware of what I had done and unprepared for the consequences, I collected my coat and joined the group as they bundled out into the street.
We had walked no more than a few yards when I had to stop to tie my shoe. As I bent my head, everywhere around me was flooded a bright crimson, staining the whole of my field of vision, like blood through water.
When I stood up it disappeared, as if it was being sucked back up into my head. And so the trip began.
We went on what was probably, for the others, a normal night out down the Dock Road and into town, in and out of pubs, but for me was a succession of bizarre and alarming freak shows; the whole world was an out-of-control circus.
At some point
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I had no sense of time
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I said goodbye to the others and headed back to my bedsit where I began to wonder when the nightmare would end.
I tried to make tea in the little kitchen but became utterly distracted by a sweater that I had washed earlier and left scrunched up on the draining board; like a scene from a horror film, it appeared to be seething with worms.
I then realized that it was an hallucination, and that the worms were simply fibers sticking out of the wool.
I lay on my mattress on the floor. My whole body was vibrating with a ferocious, uncomfortable energy, my muscles jumping and restless. My attention was grabbed by a poster of Marilyn Monroe on the wall.
Abruptly, with an unpleasant, wet snap, Marilyn's tongue whipped out of her mouth.
It was long, black and forked, like a snake's, slithering maniacally around her face. Just as abruptly, it was sucked back in again.
Desperate to occupy my fizzing mind, I stared up at the ceiling and began creating my own cartoons upon it.
Anything I wanted appeared instantly in beautiful Technicolor: clouds and forests, waterfalls, Tom and Jerry, Sylvester the cat.
About eight hours after it began, the trip finally started to come to an end
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and I knew with a cast-iron certainty that this would never happen again.