I was just a typical child of my time, I suppose – open to everything. I was being a teenager: curious, rebellious, in quest of the forbidden. You heard about these hip clubs in London from a friend who had heard it from another friend who had actually been to one. The names alone took on a magical talismanic quality: the Marquee, Ronnie Scott’s. I used to come up from school and go to clubs when I was about 16. I was dazzled by this scene, rudimentary as it was. I was just a girl from the provinces, going up to the big city to see what it gives. I didn’t know anybody, I was alone and unapproachable; I never spoke to anyone. I was putting together a persona out of a lot of diverse elements. The 1960s hadn’t happened yet, there were only hazy intimations of what was coming. I thought maybe there was a bit more to it than shuffling around smoky clubs and I was hell-bent on being there when it happened, whatever it was!
Somewhere in the back of my mind I had made a decision to leave home, to break away. My mother never suspected this. I’ve always laid my plans very secretively and never let anyone in on them, which more often than not has turned out to be a mistake. I didn’t know that it was possible to talk things over with people and not lose everything in the process – I thought the minute you confided anything it would be gone or they would try to stop you. This was definitely true of my mother. I learned very young to conceal my innermost thoughts from her.
5. The writer says that when she went to clubs in London
A she found that they sometimes fell short of her expectations of them.
Bshe felt that she was too young to fit in properly in them.
C she unconsciously began to develop into a different kind of person.
D she felt that the future would bring developments that would be more exciting.
6. What does the writer say about her mother?
A Something she later learned in life did not apply to her mother.
B She inherited a lack of openness with others from her mother.
CShe never revealed her private feelings to her mother.
D Her tendency to be secretive stemmed from a desire not to upset her mother.