The time I didn’t record Coronation Street

I honestly can’t place this one. I know I was still at school when it took place. I did google it, but since I couldn’t remember the characters’ names, I couldn’t place the episode. For the non-Brits, “Corrie” is the nickname for Coronation Street, the longest-running soap on TV.

To my mind, it was the episode where Raquel got murdered and it was super sad because she was pregnant at the time. I remember it as thugs broke in and beat her to death or something.

But apparently Raquel’s still alive decades later. So I really don’t know who got murdered. Also, I can’t seem to find anyone getting murdered in the early 90s, except for Samir, and he’s the wrong gender.

Anyway, let’s just all agree that it was a Very Special Episode, but I have demonstrably forgotten the reasons why, and I’ll place this at age 12, because I don’t remember smoking while this happened, and I picked up that nasty habit early. Don’t worry, I’m an ex-smoker now, and on my last checkup, the nurse said my O2 stats were “fantastic”.

So, Mother went out and left the VCR set up to tape it. However, it was showing late at night, because it was a Super Edition or maybe some sports thing was happening, and that left me unable to watch a video in the interim. So, I turned off the timer, watched a movie, and then put her blank tape back in the player, and carefully recorded Corrie, pausing during the ad-breaks, so that Mother wouldn’t have to fast-forward.

When she came home, I was quite pleased with myself.

Until, of course, she tried to watch it. Instead of recording ITV, I had recorded one of the other three channels, and she was livid. I was immediately mortified. I’m good at technology. I always have been. This was a rookie mistake, and I should have double-checked. I apologised profusely and repeatedly, but got nowhere.

The rage that was unleashed was absolutely unprecedented. She could not stop screaming and shouting about how selfish and hateful I was. She acted as if I had deliberately set out to wound her as deeply as possible. She called me a “selfish useless lump” and raged about how mean I was.

Side note: I’m sure that my mother is very proud of herself that she never once called me “fat”. As if being a stupid/useless/ugly/lazy “lump” is in any way a subtle clue that she hates the way I look. I feel qualified to make this assumption, because she once told me that she had never abused me, because she’d never hit me.

I mean, the fact that she has hit me, on two separate occasions, and one of those times she repeatedly hit me with a walking stick as she chased me out of the house, kind of undermines her point. Even if she refuses to admit it ever happened.

But her experience was: Granddad hit NMum = Abuse; NMum shouts and screams at, gaslights, and emotionally manipulates me = NOT Abuse.

But tonight was not either of those occasions. Tonight while berating me for not loving her enough to do something as simple as record a TV show for her, she marched over to the phone, picked it up and told me she was calling Social Services to take me away because she just had no more to give such an ungrateful and hateful child who didn’t love her.

This is another reason I’ve placed it at around age 12. Because this threat worked. After awhile, I grew tired of it, and really grew sick of telling her how much I loved her under such duress, so I went all bolshy and said, “Fine! Call them!” which stopped this silly charade.

But back then, this worked. I was in hysterical floods of tears, begging her not to send me away, and that I really did love her and all that. Do you see how I had to add “and all that” after “love her”? That was deliberate. I couldn’t just leave that sentence as it was, because it just turns my stomach that I was forced to say these things under threat of being kicked out. I have to dilute what I said. Back then I was effusive. I said all the things she wanted to hear, like she was the best mum in the world, and I was a terrible daughter, and… well, if you’ve come here looking for war stories from the NParent trenches, you know the drill.

She didn’t talk to me all night and the next morning.

All this, because a child made a mistake.

And of course, if I pointed out that other children were allowed to make mistakes, she trotted out, “Why don’t you go live with them, if you love your friends’ mothers so much? You hate me, don’t you! You think I’m a terrible mother!” Cue more crying and reassurance that she was a superb parent.

When I got home from school the next day, she was like, “I bought us some Walnut Whips as a treat.”

This was also the year I came home from a school trip to find that she’d bought new curtains for me, and installed a TV in my room.

I mean, she didn’t hook the TV up to an aerial, and it was the 90s, so it was a large, expensive ornament that didn’t pick up anything, but because she’d spent so much money – “Over one hundred pounds,” she told me – I immediately understood that asking for it to be actually useful was a step too damned far. [Adjusted for inflation very roughly, £100 = £255 in 2023, so a lot for a single person on a low income]

It always baffled my friends when they visited. “Can we watch TV?” they’d ask. “No, it’s not hooked up,” I would reply. And they’d just look at me like I was completely unfathomable.

Life with NParent, amiright?