GENESIS
I had a happy childhood. Free, within reason, to gleefully roam all over the place and discover all manner of things: slow worms, lizards, amazing butterflies, smoke canisters, spent ammunition, used parachute flares, training grenades; the every day stuff that young boys would find irresistible. In many ways it had been quite idyllic despite the fact that we lived in a tin hut. But it was a big tin hut, previously housing two families in small surroundings, now housing one in somewhat larger style. There was no heating other than the electric fires or paraffin heaters my parents bought and I doubt the space between the tin cladding and the inner board lined wall contained much more than air. If it did it was probably asbestos because in those days ‘health and safety’ was for scaredy cats. The floors were covered in ancient lino which was split and curled in many places making it adventurous to walk around in bare feet and early morning winter days were spent trying to scrape the thick ice from the inside of the windows just so you could see what the weather outside was like. We had two front doors, two back ones and two corrugated tin enclosed back yards, one of which doubled as my fort. My big brother and I shared a bed at the far end of the house and slept with our dressing gowns on, sharing the rubber water bottle. The whole ensemble was complimented by our duffle coats and a thick, itchy blanket. Around mid Spring we ditched the itchy blanket.
My father, a soldier, had fought in the Malayan Emergency and the Korean War, which he hotly denied starting. He later took part in the British response to the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya before settling for the more sedate life of being one of the British Army’s elite school of weapons experts, the Small Arms School Corps (SASC). These were the people who, as the Military websites stated, ‘were responsible for maintaining the proficiency of the Army in the use of small arms, support weapons and range management’. They also taught the Army’s weapons instructors how to be weapons instructors.
I’m proud of the fact my dad had been one of the top 100 shots in the British Army seven times in his 12 year career with the SASC and had, one year, been the Army’s best shot with the Sterling sub-machine gun (SMG). My own, meagre, ability with weapons couldn’t be compared with his but there was enough in the genes to give me a bit of a career as a police firearms officer and I might have had a somewhat more successful career as a ‘shootist’ in the Territorial Army (TA) had I remembered what he told me, earlier in the car park at the Army’s Northwest District Skill At Arms meeting, one day at Altcar Rifle Range.
I hadn’t asked for the advice. He simply came up to me, held a licked forefinger in the air and declared, “At six hundred metres put the left hand edge of your foresight on the right hand edge of the target,” and then walked off. Sound advice, as it turned out, but unfortunately I didn’t call it into play until I only had four rounds left. But what rounds they were! I then compounded my error by failing to clear the weapon properly and letting one loose down the range.
I’d have got away with it, had it happened just before the whistle went, the one that signified the allotted time for firing had ceased, but I couldn’t even get that right.
The Officer from the SASC (my dad’s old unit) stood before me and said, “Negligent discharge. What’s your name?”
Standing at attention, I answered, “You know my name, Uncle John.”
He smiled. “I know I know your name Paul but we have to go through the formalities.”
And so I was led back to the Ranges’ main office by ‘Uncle’John, one of my dad’s best friends. Unfortunately, he was unable to resist the urge to tell anyone we met on the way who knew Dad the mortifying truth that Frank Addy’s youngest son was a complete idiot. I was marched in and presented to the Range Superintendent who sat alone in his office. Dad looked up from his desk, smiled and said, “Hello, John. What’s he bloody done, now?” Oh how we laughed!
Although I can recall one or two snippets of life from when my father had been stationed in Germany; a trip on the NAAFI bus with my mother and playing on the pavement outside our house on a very hot day, it was from Hythe in Kent, where the SASC were based, on England’s southern coast overlooking France some 26 miles away (and viewable on a fine day) that I had most memories of my childhood and for many years it was where I told people I ‘came from’.
It was an ideal place to grow up. The summers were always hot and glorious and full of adventure. With a gang of like minded kids from the married quarters area, which was close to the firing ranges bordering a long strip of the coast, I would rise early and descend upon the range hut at the entrance to the training area to check the notices which were pinned there indicating the dates and times live firing would take place. On the approach, we would check if the red flag was flying for this we knew indicated the ranges were in use and that “No Unauthorised Persons” were to proceed further. We knew we weren’t ‘authorised’ because essentially the sign said for us “No non dads beyond this point”.
If the flag was flying we would revert to plan B which was either play football or cricket on the army football pitch nearby or run madly up and down the small assault course that was even closer.
The extra special attraction at the assault course was Mr Broadbent who worked in the nearby elongated wooden hut which contained not only the apparatus to hold the straw filled sacks used for the soldiers to practice their bayoneting skills but also the sacks themselves. Not only that but it also held targets, paste containers and the multi coloured patches used to cover the resulting holes in the targets following each shooting practice. The place smelled wondrously of creosote and glue and sometimes there were un-pasted targets which Mr Broadbent would allow the gang to paste up with the patches. A visit to Mr Broadbent’s was always followed by a nice cup of tea, specially brewed by himself, and a slice of his wife’s very tasty fruit cake. Mrs Broadbent was apparently very keen that Mr Broadbent didn’t get hungry mid morning and was under the impression that he was a bigger man than he actually was so there was always more than enough fruit cake to go round. After second helpings Mr Broadbent would unceremoniously announce “Right you’ve had your lot and I’ve got work to do so bugger off”. He was, despite his brusqueness, a nice man and the kids all loved him.
If the flag wasn’t flying, and our check of the notices revealed the availability of the ranges for our sole use, me and the gang, which had no discernible leader, would back track down the approach road and disappear into the adjacent wood from where we could infiltrate the training area without being seen. The Range Warden who lived in the little wooden house next to the official entrance didn’t seem to fully understand the unwritten ‘rules’ and would, if he saw us entering by the front gate, deny access.
The journey through the woods would almost invariably consist of a jungle patrol, each member on special alert for Japanese snipers. It was well known, through our in depth knowledge of Hollywood and British war films, that Japanese snipers were particularly adept at hiding absolutely anywhere.
Upon safely negotiating this first hazard we would scamper across the open ground in an arrowhead or an extended line formation, as we’d seen our fathers do, before reaching the safety of the gorse bushes from where we knew we could move freely without being detected.
The best time for a range excursion was always following an Army night firing exercise, for that brought a wealth of treasures. Not only would we collect the empty cartridge cases that had been missed during the soldiers end of night clean up and the clips that connected them into belts of ammunition for the machine guns but also the occasional torch or packets marked Biscuits (Fruit) together with tubes of greengage jam discarded from an army ration pack by some overfull squaddie together with small half drunk bottles of lemonade.
For such finds as a torch, ‘finders keepers’ ruled but food and drink was always shared out with military precision, as if a besieged garrison, whilst we sat patiently reconnecting the empty cases and belt clips. When complete the resulting bandoliers made us look like Pancho Villa, the Mexican folk hero. I felt sure he would have been proud.
Then there were the parachutes from the parachute flares used to light up the ‘battlefield’ for the previous night’s firers. Finding one of these was like winning the FA Cup. It would be held aloft as the finder danced around taunting the others, for we all knew its worth as barter. One parachute was worth at least three ammo belts, easy! It was not unusual to see the lucky finder staggering home, almost drunkenly, under the weight of bartered bandoliers.
The most dangerous items found were part of the army’s pot flares. We knew a spent pot flare when we saw one (and in fact never found one that wasn’t, such was the thoroughness of the Army clean up in relation to these items). We would deftly remove them from the metal stakes they sat on for it was the stake that was the prize and usually two prizes because normal practice was that there would be another one a short distance away and it was this stake onto which the almost invisible wire from the pot flare would be attached. Anyone walking between the two stakes would in all probability trip over the wire which would cause the flare to activate and light up the surrounding area. Theory and practice was that defenders would place the flares out, noting the locations, and train their weapons, normally a machine gun, on them and when tripped unleash hell in that direction. When used on night firing it was normal for the flares to be placed so that they would be tripped by the tactically approaching troops in order that they could practise their drills in reaction to an ambush.
The stakes themselves consisted of a main length of thin solid metal sharply pointed at one end. This was the part that was to be driven into the ground. Welded to it were two L shaped pieces of similar metal, one facing upwards and the lower one facing downwards. The lower L helped to stabilise the stake when it was driven into the ground. The upper held the pot flare.
The overall shape of the stake made it ideal for use as a form of ‘Tommy’ gun as far as us kids were concerned and we would charge through the undergrowth shouting “Brrrrrrrrr, Brrrrrrrrr” in emulation of the sound a machine gun makes totally oblivious to the danger that the sharply pointed ‘weapon’ undoubtedly possessed. It was, I’ve often thought, a miracle that no one had ever been speared during the close quarter combat that followed such death defying frontal assaults.
Often, we would sit and watch the soldiers being given instruction on the field that doubled as a football and hockey pitch and which lay between the married quarters and the entrance to the ranges. Sometimes they would just be throwing the white practice grenades from the pits that were dotted around the periphery of the field whilst on other, more exciting, occasions they would be receiving instruction in the safe handling and use of the simulated grenades known as ‘Thunderflashes’. These were ostensibly tubes of hardened cardboard containing gunpowder and an integral fuse that looked like the chocolate brown head of a match and they were ignited in much the same way except the striker, a solid piece of material that looked like the brown stuff on the side of a box of matches, would be drawn across the fuse. The thunderflash would then start to hiss and would be thrown varying distances depending upon the ability of the thrower. Shortly after there would be a very satisfying ‘BANG’ and an even more satisfying cloud of smoke.
We were rarely chased away from these demonstrations simply because the Instructor would almost invariably be one of our fathers who would solemnly tell us to sit at the back and far enough away from the soldiers so as not to be a distraction to them. This was serious stuff.
One of the favourite lessons was ‘Camouflage and Concealment’. On these occasions the gang would double back to the range road and into the rear of the bushes from where we could infiltrate the hiding soldiers’ positions. It was now that the game began. In simple terms, we would engage our victim with a friendly, seemingly innocent, conversation. Things like “What are you doing?” or “What’s that gun called?” Having beguiled some hapless talking bush we’d go for the jugular with a “Got any sweets?” For the most part the soldiers were amicable and readily supplied the necessary, accompanied by a friendly “Now off you go, there’s good lads”. Occasionally, a soldier who wasn’t having a good day would tell us to “Fuck off” whereupon one of us would start to indicate to the class at the opposite end of the field where the miscreant was hiding. This would bring an immediate pleading response which would only end when the question, “We said, you got any sweets?” was answered with good grace and quick supply. Soldiers always seemed to have something they didn’t realise they no longer wanted in their pockets so on receipt of a few boiled, sticky sweets or, if lucky, a Mars bar (whose chocolate was mottled white through prolonged storage in a ration pack) we would move on to another victim. Three or four was enough to satiate our evil intentions and retiring to the back of the little ‘wood’ of bushes, we’d sit in the grass and ration out the proceeds before moving on to the next adventure. In winter things were a bit more sedate but the ranges, in our minds now the Russian Steppe, still needed regular patrolling.
On days when there’d been heavy snowfall we’d play ‘find the trench’. The winner was the one who successfully leaped forward into pristine snow and promptly disappeared from sight into one of the wood lined pits used for grenade throwing. You might think they’d be the loser but we didn’t quite see it that way. Surprisingly, none of us ever got seriously injured.
If we were at a loss for something to do in the spring and summer, after football, cricket, dutch arrows and general exploring we’d go down to the nearby terminus of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway (one time reputedly the smallest public railway in the world), buy a platform ticket and bother the drivers of the small, but perfectly formed, trains until they thrust cotton waste at us and told us to wipe the engine down. Once or twice they even used us as labour to push the turntable around so the incoming engine would be ready for its next outgoing trip. Other times, we’d simply head down to the adjacent Military Canal, pool what cash we had and hire, on a very short lease, an Indian canoe which we’d paddle like maniacs up and down until the man called us back in.
The halcyon days of my little life in Hythe were interrupted when Dad was posted to Penicuik, in Scotland. Edinburgh lay only 15 miles away and so began my Scottish schooling at a primary school in the ‘hamlet’ of Milton Bridge.
At this time in history, corporal punishment and mental torture were popular in the teaching world, none more so than in Scotland.
The headmaster was essentially a decent man but felt that discipline was important. The Scots had a penchant for the strap, a belt like device with a specially manufactured split in the end in order to inflict maximum pain. It was applied to the palm of the hand. The good thing about getting the strap from Mr Naismith was his accuracy. There were no wild swipes to the wrist or fingers, no second attempts, palm of the hand, whack! Ouch! Done. He did, however, believe in applying maximum force in an effort to prevent further need. The punishment was usually applied in the entrance hall which led to what seemed to be a very long corridor. I was always grateful he had no need of a run up.
Off the corridor lay a few more classrooms and what I can only describe as a small exercise area where we were weekly forced to perform ‘Scottish dancing’. As a direct consequence of this activity, to this very day, I have to be pissed as a newt to perform any form of dance movement.
The mental torture employed was to refuse you permission to remove your chair from your desk until you had answered a question regarding the ‘times table’. Now, whilst I was pretty good at 1 to 6 the problem was that everyone else was as well.
An early form of what would now surely be considered racial harassment against the token school Sassenach was the teacher’s inability to recognise me until we hit the 7 to 9 times tables. Basically, these were my weak point and, to be honest, nothing has really improved. To this day, I can tell you that 8 times 8 is 64 but before and after that I’m knackered unless I take my socks off. When we hit the 10 to 12 times tables I was back in my element but, seemingly recognising this, the teacher threw in the 13 times table just for personal pleasure. At that point in my life I wasn’t sure that such things were legitimately allowed to go that high.
Another form of messing with our heads was denying us the opportunity to buy a McVitie’s ‘Royal Scot’ biscuit. At milk break time in Scotland you could, if you’d remembered to take your money, purchase some of these delicious biscuits to go with your milk. Our previous teacher had allowed us to run up a modest ‘slate’ if we’d left home without the necessary cash but all of a sudden the new one wouldn’t have it. Then came a double blow, McVities, obviously in league with our very own version of Cruella de Ville, changed the packaging from round to ‘squared off oblong’ which meant 4 biscuits less in a packet and then they had the impudence to charge the same price. This meant, for some reason I’ve never been able to work out, that we were rationed to two biscuits each and they cost twice as much. I suspected the 13 times table.
All in all though, it was a decent school and the head, despite his propensity to use the strap, was a likeable chap.
But there were other attractions and adventures. The disused railway line, the abandoned station, the railway tunnel and the railway viaduct over the local golf course, from which we would drop small clumps of cinder bound weeds onto the heads of the golfers below, whilst lying dangerously close to the edge.
There were the ponds in the village of nearby Auchendinny, fed by the River Esk, where there were plenty of minnows, sticklebacks and frog spawn to be found. There was the North Camp, a collection of mainly wooden creosoted buildings which served as accommodation for members of the TA on their weekend and annual camps. A former Prisoner of War camp, it was irresistible to every kid in the married quarters from the age of 6 to 14, particularly when the TA parked their vehicles on the former parade square. Then we’d descend upon it and explore almost each and every vehicle whilst keeping a careful eye on any sentry posted to guard them. It was on one such occasion that I found and devoured a most satisfying half eaten fruit pie from the front seat of a jeep.
When not occupied, the camp was guarded by a series of watchmen, known to us as ‘Watchies’, all of whom appeared to be in an advanced state of decay and all of whom were no match for we battle hardened veterans of hit and run. When not staging various un-named battles of World War 2 we’d let ourselves into selected accommodation huts and play various games, usually consisting of someone marching up and down with a clipboarded inventory shouting derogatory ‘Army’ type remarks at the others who were being ‘made’ to perform somersaults over the collection of mattresses we’d dumped on the floor.
Then there was ‘the Bing’, a Scottish word for ‘pile’ or ‘heap’ which is exactly what it was, the spoil from the defunct coal mines of the area. An elongated ‘L’ shape, the part nearest the entrance was seemingly the oldest for it had an abundance of bushes large and small growing from it. The far end was devoid of such and was covered only by clumps of grass making it unattractive.
The Bing was where we all spent many happy hours charging up and down its steep slopes emulating the ‘taking’ and defending of Korean hills and German or French Alps, whilst on other occasions it made an excellent hill top fort from which anything reasonably manageable to get up there in the first place could be rolled back down into the sword wielding hordes intent on conquer. We transformed the Bing, eventually, into Iwo Jima by digging shallow pits into its crust and shielding them with slatted wooden covers we’d constructed from bits and pieces scrounged from the Council Road Works site at its base. We’d camouflage them with grass and bushes before someone would slip inside ready to ambush any probing patrol or full on frontal assault. The Bing was put there for us and we knew it.
After 3 years, we were posted back to Hythe where I attended my brother’s old school, St Leonard’s C of E primary which caused me and his former teacher, Mr Bishop, some confusion one day when, in the short corridor between the two ‘old arse students’ classrooms, he pulled me to one side and asked what I was doing back there again. Don’t get me wrong, it was a friendly encounter. I tried to tell him that I’d never actually been there in the first place but he was convinced that I had so I felt the need to agree with him and said it was my father’s fault because he was in the Army. It was seat of the pants, spur of the moment stuff and it was the best I could do. He looked at me with a hint of sadness as if realising his former brilliant student had contracted some form of regressive condition. For me, it was probably my first encounter with the onset of senile dementia because I’d never thought my brother Graeme and I looked alike, he was a stick thin Mike Nesmith (of the group the ‘Monkees’) lookalike whilst I was a fatter faced cherubic looking pain in the arse to most people apart from my mother who quite clearly was either deranged or a saint.
The good news was there was no strap at St Leonard’s. They believed in tradition, so Mr Skinner, the balding rotund headmaster, used the cane instead but I’ll give him his due, he only used it as a last resort, when a stern talking to had failed to sufficiently impress. I was the beneficiary of two consultations with him and was mighty grateful for his lack of enthusiasm for a good thrashing. I hadn’t done anything amazingly wrong like burning the school down or dealing in drugs, the sort of things that became very popular in various cities in later years, but I and two others had twice left the school at lunchtime without permission.
The first time was when we skipped down the alley way that led to the local fruit and veg shop to buy an apple and a carrot each. The second was when we wandered off to the local high street, coming back with a copy of ‘Itchycoo Park’ by the Small Faces, bought from Woolworths, and some action figure clothing from the local toy shop ( I’d weighed in my ‘Tommy Gunn’ soldier figure’s medal cards to get him a free pair of pants and a jacket). On this second occasion, the cane was flexed and waved around a few times for effect until we tearfully promised solemnly never, ever, ever to do it again, ever.
There were many good things about St Leonard’s. Our teacher, Mr Vincent, was a lovely man who made every lesson interesting. He’d also spend many afternoons reading the brilliant stories of C S Lewis to us.
Also, the school had a fantastic football kit of green and white hoops, white shorts and hooped socks, the football strip worn by the mighty Celtic who’d just won the European Cup. I still struggle to convey the pride and energy (having spent three years in Scotland) that pulling that jersey over your head caused. Sadly, it didn’t always improve our playing. To be fair, our pitch, on the common opposite the school, did consist of turf shyly clinging to a shingle base with divots and bald patches all over the place, especially in the goalmouths which were really ‘shallow graves’ filled with stones. But, having said that, ours was one of the better school pitches, at least it was flat. We used to play another school, I think it was Saltwood Primary, and their pitch couldn’t have been more than 30 metres in length with goals that were ridiculously wide whilst the crossbar was equally ridiculously low. It made for high scoring games where the goalkeepers were usually the highest scorers.
Another place we played at had a pitch with a big dip in the middle which was compounded by it being on the side of a hill. If the ball went out of play on the downhill side it was a three hour walk and a bus ride to get it back. I realised the problem when our manager called me back and gave me a packet of sandwiches and fourpence to phone home. After that I switched to playing centre half.
It was at this school that I passed my 11+ to enter Grammar school without really knowing what I was doing. In fact I was bitterly disappointed that I wouldn’t be going to the local secondary school with my mates, the added attraction being my brother was a prefect there so I expected some protection. Instead, I was sent to ‘The Harvey Grammar School’ in Folkestone, just up the coast, with the school swots Martin, Stephen and Michael. It turned out they were all splendid chaps and their studiousness rubbed off on me. Apart from the ritualised torture of the first week, I loved the place and the only remarkable thing that happened to me was I once bought a packet of crisps, from the woodwork and metal work annexe’s own ‘tuck shop’ which consisted of water and two soggy crisps, nothing else. Had I known then what I know now I could have dissolved into feeling ‘offended and bullied’, sued the bottoms off Smiths and retired to a beachfront villa in Barbados but I just went to explain and they gave me another packet.
Harvey Grammar School was where I began to live the life of my heroes Jennings and Darbyshire from the novels by Anthony Buckeridge and, although the school didn’t take boarders, it was everything I imagined the dynamic duo’s school to have been. For the most part the teachers were hewn from the same rock that Buckeridge’s school masters had been fashioned; disciplined yet benign whose lessons were always interesting and often entertaining. The school was imposing and built on two levels. To me it was how a school should look.
In the first week, tradition dictated that the ‘newbies’, who were cleverly distinguished from others by their shiny little faces, shorts, new briefcases and caps, had to be corralled into a corner of the quadrangle opposite the Tuck Shop and unceremoniously half crushed to death, seemingly by the entire school. Having survived this on three occasions I decided to delay any further attempts at visiting the Tuck Shop until the following week. Life was good and I thrived. I was, as far as I was concerned, quite simply living the ‘dream’.
It wasn’t to last though and, after 12 months of dreaming, we were sent to Warminster, on the edge of the Army’s Salisbury Plain training area, prior to Dad’s final posting in Lancashire. A temporary placement, it meant I would have to change schools, either attending Frome Grammar or going as a boarder to another just outside the ‘metropolis' that was Preston. My parents sought the advice of a teacher from my brother’s school. I briefly overheard some talk about a different ‘syllabub’ and dismissed it because I wasn’t really bothered what desserts they served with school dinners. I later discovered not all schools taught the same way. It depended upon which ‘syllabus’ they were using. Consequently, when Mum and Dad were kind enough to ask me what I wanted to do, I decided I didn’t want to emulate Jennings and Darbyshire too much so chose the comforts of home.
My first day at Frome was a bit of a shock. The school was nothing more than an over large bungalow. Where was the top floor? Furthermore, I still hadn’t made my peace with the brown blazer and yellow striped tie I’d been made to wear. In my opinion, whoever decided this was proper school uniform was quite obviously unhinged and it didn’t take long to discover that instead of seamlessly meshing in with the rest of the kids the difference in the syllabus meant I didn’t have a clue what any of the lessons were about. It’s like I’d entered a parallel universe. In the first French lesson, Pierre wasn’t in the garden anymore, the little sod had wandered through the dining room, left the house altogether and was visiting the railway station and various shops. The world had gone mad. If that wasn’t bad enough, maths lessons consisted of buggering about with ‘statistics’ and being overly concerned with ‘topology’. I’m still not absolutely certain what that actually is but it had something to do with the London Underground map, for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom. What happened to fractions and equations ?
I was lost and my defence mechanism was to imitate various teachers and be the class clown. Luckily, the summer holidays were quickly upon us and I’d managed to be in two different schools and syllabus’s before I’d even got out of the first form. After the holidays, same subjects but mostly new teachers. It gave me opportunities with some to avoid their classes and hide in the toilets reading the Beano. I’m fairly sure there was at least one teacher who didn’t even know I was absent because he’d never met me in the first place.
Thankfully, the temporary placement dragged by fairly quickly and I arrived at Hutton Grammar School, near Preston. The Lancashire Police Headquarters was only a couple of stone throws away. This was more like it. They even still had a few boarders. Looking at their accommodation I was more than happy to be a ‘day boy’.
There’s always a downside, though, and I spotted this one straight away. The sign on the gym door advised that all rugby boots and cricket footwear should be removed before entering. Sod all about football boots.
Now, I wasn’t a novice to rugby, we’d started playing it at Frome so I had a pretty good idea what it was about. It had been introduced by an enthusiastic teacher who I didn’t want to disappoint so I’d turned up and pitched in. It was the total absence of the ‘beautiful game’ that made my heart sink.
Cricket was no problem but it had lost its attraction to me once I’d seen the devastating effect it had on a fielder at ‘silly mid on’. He’d received a superbly struck cricket ball to the head and I’d never seen anyone collapse so efficiently. They’d carried him off on an old door and it was weeks before anyone saw the chap again. Worse still was the discovery the school also conducted lessons on a Saturday morning. If I thought that was over the top, the bad news just kept on coming because if you showed a modicum of skill at rugby you were press ganged into one of the school’s teams and that was Saturday afternoon taken care of. It was a six day week!
I’d hoped to play the rugby dope but within a short time I had to show my ‘prowess’ at the game because I felt my life was in danger if I didn’t. Having been placed, initially, in the lowest set for ability, the first few games proved this was a very dangerous place to be. Most, if not all, of my team mates when standing still appeared normal decent human beings but once set in motion, they lost all coordination of their limbs. This made being tackled by any one of them a nightmare. They would launch themselves haphazardly at the holder of the ball; arms and legs and hands everywhere resulting in the vanquished left on the ground bleeding from multiple facial scratches and clutching their testicles trying not to vomit. I decided I wasn’t going to die. Not here! Not yet! I summoned up everything I’d learned and unleashed it with a vengeance. The games master couldn’t figure out what had happened. In another age he would’ve probably had me drug tested. Promotion followed swiftly and I joined the elite band of boys who played on the far field. They knew the rules, testicles were off limits. Unless, of course, you were in a scrum.
Although this school had the same syllabus as my first, I struggled to recover the time spent avoiding lessons and, through a series of practical jokes and unfortunate incidents, I became one of ‘the usual suspects’ for a number of scholarly sleuths. I always felt this was somewhat unfair but had to admit I hadn’t helped my cause any. The ‘tin tack on the teacher’s chair’ caper hadn’t been thoroughly ‘risk assessed’. In the comics I’d read, this’d always been hilarious, even if the teacher had spotted it. In fact, I was amazed he hadn’t. I was fairly convinced I’d made it obvious. Unfortunately the teacher, whom I actually liked, failed to use his observational skills to their full potential and sat down on it almost with a flourish. Right up until that moment, until hearing that awful scream, I thought he was playing ‘the game’ then, sadly, I realised that having an 11/16ths blued sterilised upholsterer’s tin tack pierce your buttock wasn’t actually funny at all. I promptly owned up, well, maybe not that promptly. He threatened the entire class with a month’s detention. No one said a word. The solidarity of my peers was heart warming. Even the twins who were the class swots and shove halfpenny champions said nothing, not even a subtle inclination of the head. In my very own Spartacus moment, I bit the bullet and stood up. For the next four weeks I did my ‘time’ sat in a classroom, occasionally with one or two other dopes but mostly on my own, writing seemingly endless lines. I’d have to tell my parents something so I told them I’d been staying behind to play tennis. They bought me a second hand racquet.
It was the same with the unfortunate incidents. I’d no intention whatsoever to repeatedly break the windows in the art block. I always thought that if the school authorities had mended and extended the fence in the old tennis courts my efforts, during the lunch hour, to emulate Liverpool’s Emlyn ‘Crazy Horse’ Hughes’s blistering runs and cannonball shots would have ended more happily. The fact I always owned up, many times reporting it myself, seemed to get overlooked. There was no time off for good behaviour at this establishment. Usually, my punishment was to spend my detention tidying the place up, brushing the floors and picking up bits of unwanted pots. Finding myself in a dusty room littered with bags of powdered clay at the start of my ‘career’, I was caught eyeing up the kiln in the corner. The art teacher told me not to remove a stopper that was tantalisingly sticking out of it halfway up because it would cause heat loss and possibly ruin the pots within. He then left, probably to mend a window. Alone, it was too much. I peered in and felt the heat gush out taking my eyebrow and eyelashes with it. It’s amazing how long it takes these things to grow back.
The times were changing and the ‘skinhead’ look was in amongst the really tough boys but we were only mock toughies so we generally decided the ‘suedehead’ look was preferable and sartorially superior – barathea blazers, military buttons, button down shirts and ridiculously wide parallel trousers and brogues if you could afford them. On the plus side, it allowed us to look more attractive to the less violent girls.
Up to this point, my mum had always insisted on choosing my shoes for me from a discount shoe shop in Preston called Tommy Ball’s. No doubt, he and the staff did their best to ensure the pairs hanging from racks against the wall were the same size but Mum seemed to have the knack of finding those that weren’t. Consequently, I spent a lot of time wearing ill fitting fake crocodile skin winkle pickers which gave me corns. With the advent of my intended new look, I was desperate to ditch the shoes and get a pair of something more appropriate so Dad gave me a black pair of ‘Bata’ toe capped shoes issued to him by the Army’s quartermaster’s stores. The storeman must have wondered why my dad’s feet were shrinking but thankfully he said nothing. They were comfortable with a wide fitting and soon my corns and the accompanying funny walk disappeared. They helped me settle into the third form and, together with a new, long at the sides, short on top haircut, I looked sufficiently mentally unbalanced for people to think I was ‘well hard’. Having assumed the shoes were ‘steelies’ (steel toecapped), the hard knocks from the fourth and fifth forms gave me a respectful distance and some welcome acceptance. My increasingly sullen looks complimented the overall effect.
I succeeded in making it through to the fifth form virtually unscathed and even acquired a real live girlfriend who suggested a new ‘just over the collar and stylishly parted in the middle’ hairdo which simply enhanced my reputation for being one of the right guys, which is sort of what brought about what comes next.
Midway through 1973, I and some others had a lucky escape. Having seen some tartan decked Irish individuals at the Liverpool FC matches some of the chaps from the year above, together with some selected people from my year, decided to form a ‘tartan gang’. Now, in hindsight, none of us clearly understood the full implications of a tartan gang. We just knew they wore denim, looked dead hard and sometimes wore tartan, usually a scarf. The idea was to improve on this and trim the pockets and collar of your wrangler jacket with some natty red tartan, thoughtfully purchased by one of the chaps. I was asked to join. Now, to be honest, I’d probably struggle to fight my way out of a wet paper bag and once had to be rescued by said girlfriend’s ability to swing a handbag and place a well aimed kick, but I’d discovered even then that image counts for a lot. Suffice it to say, I was honoured to have even been considered and if I stayed away from youth clubs my secret would be fairly safe.
One evening, whilst visiting her, there was a knock at the door. We were babysitting her younger brother and little sister and took a while to answer. At the far end of the close, silhouetted in the street lighting and strung out in a line, stood six individuals. Parallels, wrangler jackets and tartan. The theme from ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ was playing in my head. An emissary walked to a halfway point. My girlfriend went to meet him. I’d made the mistake of excitedly telling her of my invitation and knowing one or two of the individuals she’d decided it was never going to happen. I was banished to doorstep guard. There was a short conversation, the emissary retreated, the gang turned as one and disappeared into the dark.
When ‘chided’ a few days later about how ‘your bird won’t let you out’ I said the first thing I could think of. “I was on a promise!” I lied. I was immediately forgiven.
Luckily, before I could ‘sign up’ by appearing in public, before I’d found someone who’d sew the tartan onto my jacket, before I could beg, steal or borrow the money for a pair of much sought after Fleming’s jeans, the tartan bedecked Bay City Rollers hit the charts with a vengeance and the rest is history. Realising the incongruity of being ‘dead ‘ard’ whilst dressed as a Roller’s fan, the tartan came off the others and the matter was never spoken of again.
My scholastic career ended with four ‘O’ levels out of nine taken: English Language, English Literature, Art and Geography, all oddly enough the only lessons I enjoyed. I felt fairly chuffed though as I’d only achieved three in the mocks. Still, it wasn’t enough to save me.
The school motto was ‘Aut Disce, Aut Discede’ translating as ‘either learn or leave’, something I’d been blissfully unaware of until years later, so it was no surprise to anyone but me when the Headmaster cut his losses and refused to take me back for even one more year.
I was now in the jobs market but opportunities for a well spoken, well read, painter and decorator who knew his way around were few and far between and so I applied for a job at a well known steak house as a washer up.
The ‘interview’ with the manager took place on the stairs. I had a haircut reminiscent of Slade’s Noddy Holder and was wearing stack heels, a penny round purple fake Ben Sherman shirt, fake Prince of Wales check 22 inch parallels and a real Wrangler denim jacket with Slade lyrics written on the back in felt tip pen. I left ten minutes later having been told to report back at 2pm to the ‘Steak Bar’, ask for ‘Ross’ and to tell him I was his trainee chef for the night.
I spent an interesting late afternoon and evening helping Ross cook steaks, chips and mushrooms for dozens of customers. A trainee manager, he showed me the card system they used that basically taught anyone how to cook the meals in each ‘bar’. There were even pictures to show you how to dress the plates with watercress, lemon (if fish was served), tomato halves and the food itself.
I can confirm that this was a marvellous system which worked a charm because the following evening I was on my own as head chef of the Plaice Bar, upstairs cooking Rump steak, Gammon and eggs and a nice bit of fish (plaice of course) all served with delicious chips and an appropriate garnish.
I survived for a week before another trainee manager, who was actually the resident chef, returned from his hols and resumed his position. Apparently the actual company rules said I should be supervised for a few weeks before being let loose on the public but there had been some sort of dispute the morning of my interview; the relief chef telling them all where they could stuff it and storming out, hence my instant promotion based entirely on needs must and my gullible face.
Barry, my new mate, look like Oliver Hardy without the moustache. He seemed to know what he was doing, generally speaking, but had a tendency to slosh the chip oil all over the place and to ignore the containers collecting fat from steaks cooking in the open grill, resulting in the contents spilling on the floor where, mixed with the chip oil, they formed a fat based version of an ice rink. If you walked in as a normal human being you were flat on your arse. I suppose comedy was just in Barry’s blood.
I made a few suggestions, most of which he dismissed as being impractical for some reason or other, so we ended up using flattened cardboard boxes to give us something to safely stand on. Had we known we’d almost invented the skateboard how different our lives might have been.
The kitchen was open plan; customers could see the chefs from the waist up. I’m fairly certain Michael Jackson was a customer one night and left with a great idea after seeing Barry and I gliding effortlessly from one end to the other.
Within a few weeks I was again on my own. I’d learned a lot in that time. Gone was the greasy floor, cardboard and overflowing fat containers. I’d learnt the system and had a routine, the floor was dry, the walls clean and you could lean on the counter, affecting an air of superiority, without having to wring your sleeves out. Some nights were quiet, but by midweek it was warming up. Friday and Saturday were hideously busy; parties of 25 or more were not unknown, all wanting to be fed at the same time. I’d become the culinary world equivalent of a plate spinner. I was nearly 17 years of age.