Wish You Were Here

In the early 1950s, sixteen-year-old Lynda Mansell lives in a small English seaside town with her widowed father Hubert and younger sister, Margaret. Feisty, outspoken, and bawdy, Lynda likes to shock other people with her histrionic behaviour (bicycling at the boardwalk with her skirt hiked up, inviting young men to compare her legs to Betty Grable's) and vulgar speech (her favourite insults are "Up yer bum" and "Cock Off") which alienate her from her peers and her sister. Her father finds her employment at a variety of places, including a ladies' hair salon, a bus depot, and a fish and chip van, but her behaviour always loses her the job. Hubert, with whom Lynda has an adversarial relationship, unsuccessfully tries to correct Lynda's behaviour by taking her to a psychiatrist. Flashbacks reveal Lynda was close with her late mother.