CHAPTER 3

A DANCE WITH A HOT GIRL, BUT I GOT THE HOT BUM

We were nearly in our teens now, and we started to hang out as a larger group of friends with girls. I never thought of us as a gang really, but it was.

As we all got older, we did more adult recreational things, like go swimming, or go out for the day someplace, and almost always we would all have differing opinions of what to do next or where to go.

Sometimes we all split up into smaller groups because the girls that started hanging around us wanted to go to look at clothes in shops, and the boys simply didn’t want to do that.

During the summer we would all go to Charlton swimming lido. And go to Ladywell indoor heated baths in Lewisham during the wintertime.

But a good alternative was Greenwich swimming baths. The swimming pool and buildings were really old and still had the original big iron bathtubs and other facilities from the 1930’s.

It never got really busy there, because it was very dated, but for our gang that had little money it was good, and it was cheap enough just to go there and cool off.

During the wintertime there was no pool heating at Greenwich baths, so the pool was covered over with wood like a ballroom floor to make it into a skating ring for Roller Skating.

You could hire skates there very cheaply, but you had to get there early, or you couldn’t get your own size, and then have to get a shoe size skate two sizes to big.

At one point we had all tried smoking, and there was always someone with a cigarette or two that had been “borrowed” from their Mum or Dads packet of 20 ciggies.

There was always someone who could supply a match to lite the shared around cigarette.

I favoured Swan Vesta Redhead Matches, as theses were not like regular safety matches that needed the special surface on the side of the matchbox required to strike the match. You could ignite these Redhead matches on any rough surface. I had several of these matches in my back pocket this evening.

Me and Mike were meeting the rest of our roller-skating demolition team buddies outside Greenwich Baths that evening.

As we walked along the pavement towards the baths, we could see the gang sitting down on the steps outside, just waiting for us two to turn up so we could all go in together.

Four boys and four girls all push and shove at the skate counter to get the best skates. The best skates were ones that had round wheels rather than the damaged square wheeled ones that had massive flat spots on them that clanked and wobbled when you skated on them.

So why were the roller skates damaged like that? I will tell all later! 

The boys all knew the girls from school, and they all lived close by. The girls started going roller skating the same time as we did. 

The girls all skated together in pairs like you would if you were a grown-up man and women. And the boys… well, we just fucked about, until one day we realised that there was a prize for the best pair of “artistic skaters”. 

At the time there was a prize of a single (a 45) pop record of your choice from the current top 10 in the pop record charts. 

On discovering that a prize could be won for winning a skating competition immediately stopped us boys goofing around. We started doing some serious roller skating and dancing techniques, we observed each other and tried to do better. 

As boys would, we ended up chasing each other around the ring and skid the skates across the wooden surface hard into the corners trying to knock each other over. But this stopped the wheels on the skates turning and wore a big flat spot on the skate’s plastic wheels. 

Next thing you knew as you skated around your leg was vibrating like you had a trapped nerve in your knee, and everyone was looking around to see who was making an echoing drum roll noise across the echoing wooden flooring caused by your skates wheels flat spots, and this fucked up the skates badly.

One of the girls called Nikki grabbed my hand as I was skating around, she was in the year above me at school. She was tall with dark hair, pretty, and a good skater.

NIKKI: Look, Leo! if we win the competition my Mum said she will get me my own skates, and you can have the pop record,

ME: I don’t have a record player,

NIKKI: Well sell the record! or get a record player then!

I think, Fuck! I must be stupid; I could sell it or get a record player!

ME: Ok!

NIKKI: I’ll show you some moves, and you copy me,

She does some pirouettes and then does some crossed over leg moves,

ME: Fuck off, I can’t do that!

NIKKI: Don’t swear, how are we going to win then?

ME: Why don’t you do all that stuff, and I just hold your hand and move from your left side to your right side?

NIKKI: Ok, that might work,

ME: And I get to choose the Boogie nights single by Heatwave if we win,

NIKKI: OK,

We practice openly on the skating ring to all my mate’s disbelief as they watch us pass by again and again continually improving our technique. It’s then announced over the speakers that the competition will start, and we all have to get ready with our partners.

I see my gang sitting down around the skating ring outskirts, they are amongst the other observers who had decided not to take part, but to watch instead that night.

A dozen pairs of competitors join me and Nikki to take our places on the roller-skating floor, and the pop music “Booker T. & The MG's - Time Is Tight” starts.

It starts off good and we seem to rule the floor, or at least Nikki does, I just move across behind her, back and forth, back and forth.

We seem to be doing well, I can see the other competitors looking around and giving us dirty looks, good! But just as the music comes to an end, she unexpectedly grabs both my hands and spins herself and me around fast and then lets me go.

As I travel backwards across the roller-skating ballroom floor unable to stop, and onwards to an unknown oblivion, I briefly look right.

I see all my mates standing in a line looking at me with surprised expressions on their faces as I pass them by in reverse, with both my arms outstretched.

As my unplanned and reversed journey continues, I see all my mate’s heads turn around to look at Nikki, I see them all raising their hands and start clapping and woof whistling at her.

Still traveling backwards at an unreasonable speed, I suddenly trip-up and slam down onto my bum and skid to a halt, where the collection of swan vesta matches self-combust and ignite. The red head matches had burst into flames in my back pocket.

A big puff of smoke then heads away upwards from around my lower body that surrounds me like a big grey doughnut.

I sit and watch it has it then slowly forms into an atomic bomb looking mushroom cloud above my head that drifts away into the cavernous gable roof and fades away.  

Anyway, Nikki got new roller skates from her Mum and Dad, and I got the pop record I wanted. I walked home from roller skating slowly that evening, laughed at all the way by my so-called mates, with a gapping burn hole in the back of my expensive Levi jeans. I also had a left burnt bum cheek that hurt like fuck and took ages to heal.