Seaweed for breakfast: my childhood in a cult, part 2
So there we were, living in the middle of nowhere. We weren’t at school, and we weren’t really being taught at home, either. I mean – there were some textbooks. We did a bit. Every so often a Schools Inspector would rock up from the Council and check we could write our names and do a few sums and that we weren’t being neglected. Mainly, though, we paddled around in the pond or climbed trees or began elaborate sewing projects that we did not have the skills, materials or patience for.
I was obsessed – obsessed – with reading. It was a cruel irony, then, that one of the things The Message really didn’t like was for people to read for pleasure. If you were reading the Bible or one of The Message’s pamphlets or one of the books written by Ellen G. White (you can Google her too if you like – the Message folk didn’t half rate her) then everything was fine. Borderline books were things like atlases, photojournals about the natural world, and for some odd reason, any of Jane Goodall’s books about her life at Gombe with the chimps. Nudging into the “probably offends God but we’ll think about that later because after all, animals are involved” box were Gerald Durrell’s accounts of life in Corfu and of his later life building a zoo. Those got banned in the end, but I managed to read them all first. And then in the “satanic, definitely evil, at risk of having you banished or turning you into a murderer” section, there was absolutely everything else. Biographies of the non-godly; any and all fiction; story and picture books for children that didn’t deal exclusively in Bible parables or animals; everything.
Here are some other things The Message told my mum that God doesn’t like: cinnamon. Chilli. Paprika. Coffee. Tea. Chocolate. Sugar in any form. Alcohol. Meat. Fish. Eggs (although this rule got abandoned when everyone at The Message headquarters got ill with what was obviously some kind of deficiency and God thankfully dished out a bit of extra guidance so that the parameters could be extended, phew). Cream. Dairy products in general, in fact. Games, if not specifically non-competitive and very educational. Popular music, or indeed any music that was not Radio 3 or hymns. Entertainment of any kind. Toys that didn’t serve a clear educational purpose. Slip-on shoes. Anything that seemed “wordly”.
One by one, things would disappear from the house or the cupboard or the toybox, new rules would be introduced, and thus we’d be made aware of another restriction. We were expected to be grateful because God had made us aware of the new rules, and because we were busy obeying them now, so we’d be going to heaven. Lots of less lucky children wouldn’t even have the option, so we needed to count our blessings. (Blessing-counting was a big thing for The Message. Blessings should be counted daily, if not hourly, and do NOT get me started on how much blessing-counting would accompany the appearance of a rainbow). I’ll be honest, though, I didn’t feel especially lucky. I tended to feel more like I had had quite a normal life in London which I’d enjoyed and now it was unrecognisable and had far fewer books in it. No day was ever any different from any other day.
Meanwhile, my father remained unmarked by the religious experience. I will never understand why he allowed my mother so free a rein on her bannings and banishments, but at least he made it clear he didn’t agree with them. “God hates alcohol,” we’d cheep, and he’d say “I’m fairly sure he doesn’t. Have you asked if he’s ever tried a cold lager on a hot day after doing an awful lot of lawn mowing?”. “God is our doctor so we don’t need medicine,” we’d gravely inform him, and he’d say “Well, I’m not so sure. Let’s have a secret trip to the doctor’s and get all your inoculations anyway, just in case God’s a bit busy to make sure you don’t get measles. No need to tell your mum.” He was benign and gently mocking, but he didn’t contradict. If my mother intercepted a parcel from a grandparent sending me, say, a copy of Little Women, and put the sinful book straight in the bin, my father would not retrieve it – but he would never inform on me if he noticed that I had sneaked it into a wardrobe and was reading it by torchlight.
The years went on, and our lives grew further and further from the lives of other children our age, but because of all the banishments, we had very little contact with the outside world and thus no idea how weird we we really were. We sort of knew, but we couldn’t fully understand, that other children’s mothers didn’t buy bags of dried seaweed and make seaweed scones for breakfast, or that it was possible to own a My Little Pony that you hadn’t found marooned on some rocks in a local stream. (We fucking loved that My Little Pony, it was our favourite toy. It was so deliciously worldly, but no one could stop us having it because we’d found it in Nature. As I write this, I’m suddenly wondering if my father actually hid it for us).
Anyway, if we’d been under any illusions about the weirdness, they were about to be well and truly shattered. When I was twelve, I made my usual impassioned annual plea to be allowed to go to school, and for some reason, my mother listened. We went to look round schools (for these tours, I was of course wearing my usual brown Birkenstocks. It was the 1990s. Let us say no more about this) and I got special permission to leave school early on Fridays in winter, so I’d be home in time for the start of Sabbath. That had been the last hurdle, so I was allowed to go. I was thrilled. I was so excited. Even when my mother bastardised the uniform list and sourced me some random rogue items because she disapproved of so much polyester, I was still delighted.
And then the momentous day finally rolled around and I loaded a silver Thermos full of lentil soup and a chunk of homemade oat bread into the multicoloured rucksack I’d been given when visiting The Message headquarters in Germany. (I’ll say it again. It was the 1990s. Pop-Tarts and Findus Crispy Pancakes were food goals. No one had heard of artisanal loaves). And thus equipped, I flagged down the school bus and headed off for my first day of formal education, out in the World.
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