CHAPTER 9

Want a race Mr Bus Driver?

I never had bothered building a go-kart, because Jack and Toby had one each. You see, you couldn’t really use a DIY go-kart on you own, as someone needed to push while the other steered.

And then you took turns steering or pushing until you came to a street going downhill, then it was a case of going as fast as you could to travel as far as you could.

We would often race each other, bicycles included, smaller kids on two or three wheeled scooters, all of us taking up the width of the road, racing down a hill in the back streets where we lived.

On the way home on the 53-bus coming back from visiting an Aunt and Uncle that lived at Pets wood, we passed the pub called the Green Man at the top of Blackheath Hill. The big pub had been demolished and was mostly a pile of bricks now.

I thought to myself that there could be some overlooked lead pipe amongst the brick and wood rubble that had been overlooked by the demolition gang.

Me and the lads could rescue the heavy metal piping and get some cash together for a day out, or a trip to the swimming baths during this hot summer school holiday.

So, the next day I rallied Jack and Toby, and we all went straight to the top of Blackheath Hill and the demolished pub site. We stood on the large pile of bricks and wood in the hot morning sun wondering where to start.

ME: Why don’t we split up,

JACK: yeah, I’m going over there near the road,

TOBY: OK, I’m gonna start by the side of the old pub garden wall,

ME: I’ll start somewhere in the middle, over there,

We all go off in different directions and start kicking and pushing bricks and rubble aside, digging down to where we each think the old lead water pipe could be.

We had done this all before on demolition sites around Greenwich, as there had been lots of WW2 bombed out houses and slum terraced pre 1800’s housing that had been knocked down by the council over the years that we had rummaged.

TOBY: Wait! Stop! Over here!

We all run over to where Toby is. Toby has now crouched down to the same level as the mess of old bricks covering the demolition site

TOBY: Listen!

We all crouch down and quietly listen,

JACK: Hissing! Hissing water!

We all dig down though the old bricks and find the end of a lead pipe leaking a fine spray of water. We dig back along the length of pipe until it vanishes into gravel that is too deep for us to retrieve, but there is around four meters of pipe exposed which will do us very nicely.

We bent the pipe over and banged it down flat with bricks to seal it where we were going to break it off to stop it leaking. With the pipe now broken off and sealed better than it had been before, we now we needed to transport it to the scrap metal merchant. We found an old complete dumped double size pram that had big wheels at the back and smaller ones at the front, it was the type that had suspension, and had a big hood.

ME: This pram is going to be my go-kart after we have used it to lug this lead pipe to the scrap metal shop,

JACK: I’ll help you make it,

TOBY: I’ll help as well,

We put the folded pipe in the pram. Because it was a big pram and for fun of it, two off us sat inside, while the other pushed it.

The pram had a brake that if you released it a little you could control the prams braking. So halfway down Blackheath Hill Toby wanted to do the brake controlling while Me and Jack sat in the pram.

Toby being small tried to sit under the pram and hang on while controlling the brake. We moved the pram onto the road because we needed to cross over to the other side. Toby released the brake when there was no traffic. Then Jack, who was facing backwards starts to panic,

JACK: OH! OH! FUCK! Tobes has fallen off!

We pickup speed very quickly…

The pram is vibrating and wobbling very badly, and we are in the middle of the road with the pram wheels either side of the roads white centre line. Toby is now up and running down the middle of Blackheath Hill unable to catch us.

We can see that there is a bus stopped at the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill. Then, suddenly the back wheels and axle depart the pram and the back of the pram crashes down on its chassis.

Orange sparks shoot out the back of the pram as its chassis grinds down on the road surface. We pass the red bus on its right-hand side while it is stopped at the traffic lights.

We stop next to where the bus driver sits. The driver looks down at Me from his open sliding door, then looks at Jack facing backwards then looks back at Me again. The driver makes a tutting sound and crosses his head then drives off as the lights turn green.

Me and Jack cannot believe what had just happened, but we needed to get off the road, so we quickly got out the pram and lifted it up and off the road and onto the pavement. Toby came rushing up with the prams back wheels and axle that he had dodged the traffic to retrieve.

The old pram was left outside the scrap metal shop with its broke bent back wheels inside the cradle with the hood left up. We went swimming at Ladywell baths that day, and had chips and pies to eat from the chip shop. I never did make my go kart.