Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

going to Oxford. I didn’t try to explain. Neither of us thought that was odd because in Winterson-world it wasn’t odd.
    There she was with her new electronic organ and her home-built CB radio and headphones the size of alien-life detection devices.
    There I was with my friend Vicky Licorish. I had already warned Mrs W that she was black.
    This was a great success to begin with because Mrs Winterson loved missionary work, and seemed to think that my having a best friend who was black was a kind of missionary endeavour all of its own. She went round to veterans of Africa and asked, ‘What do they eat?’
    The answer was pineapples. I don’t know why. Are there any pineapples in Africa? In any case Vicky’s family was from St Lucia.
    Mrs Winterson was not a racist. Hers was a missionary kind of tolerance, and as such it was patronising, but she would not hear a slur against anyone on the grounds of colour or ethnicity.
    That was unusual at a time when Pakistanis had begun to arrive in noticeable numbers in white working-class towns where employment was already in short supply. Then, as now, nobody talked about the legacy of Empire. Britain had colonised, owned, occupied or interfered with half the world. We had carved up some countries and created others. When some of the world we had made by force wanted something in return, we were outraged.
    But the Elim Church welcomed everyone and we were taught to make an effort for ‘our friends from other shores’.
    When Vicky and I arrived in Accrington, Mrs Winterson gave her a blanket she had knitted so that Vicky would not be cold. ‘They feel the cold,’ she told me.
    Mrs Winterson was an obsessive and she had been knitting for Jesus for about a year. The Christmas tree had knitted decorations on it, and the dog was fastened inside a Christmas coat of red wool with white snowflakes. There was a knitted nativity and all the shepherds were wearing scarves because this was Bethlehem on the bus route to Accrington.
    My dad opened the door wearing a new knitted waistcoat and matching knitted tie. The whole house had been reknitted.
    Never mind. There was no sign of the revolver. Mrs W was wearing her best teeth.
    ‘Vicky,’ she said, ‘sit down. I’ve made you cheese on toast with pineapples ’.
    Vicky assumed this was some Lancashire delicacy.
    The next day there was gammon and pineapple followed by tinned pineapple chunks. Then there were pineapple fritters and pineapple upside-down cake and pineapples and cream and Chinese chicken and pineapple ands pineapple and cubes of Cheddar on cocktail sticks stuck into half a cabbage wrapped in tinfoil.
    Eventually Vicky said, ‘I don’t like pineapple.’
    This was a terrible mistake. Mrs Winterson’s mood changed at once. She announced that the next meal would be beefburgers. We said fine, but we were going out that night to eat scampi and chips in the pub.
    About ten o’clock we returned to find Mrs Winterson standing grimly at the gas oven. There was a dreadful smell of burntness and oil and fat and meat.
    In the little lean-to kitchen Mrs Winterson was mechanically flipping over some black things about the size of buttons.
    ‘I’ve been cooking these beefburgers since six o’clock,’ she said.
    ‘But you knew we were going out.’
    ‘You knew I was cooking beefburgers.’
    We didn’t know what to do so we went to bed – Vicky upstairs and me in the front room on a blow-up lilo. The next morning at breakfast the table was set. In the middle was a pyramid of unopened tins of pineapple and a Victorian postcard of two cats on their hind legs, dressed up as Mr and Mrs. The caption was: ‘Nobody loves us.’
    As we were wondering whether to run straight out to work or risk making toast, Mrs Winterson burst in, snatched up the postcard, and threw it back down on the table. ‘That’s your dad and me,’ she said.
    Vicky and I were working at the mental hospital over Christmas; the vast Victorian pile where I had lived and worked during my year off. It was laid out in extensive grounds, with its own fire engine and social club. It was home to the deranged, the dangerous, the damaged and the damned. Some of the older residents had been locked up for having a baby, or trying to kill a baby, and some had been locked up with their babies. It was a strange world, both solitary and social.
    I liked working there, cleaning the wards of vomit and shit and serving meals from giant tin trays. I worked twelve-hour