When we moved to Southgate, I was 6 and changed schools to the very lovely little Our Lady of Lourdes RC primary in Arnos Grove. For part of my first year there, I actually got picked up and driven in by my Infants 3 teacher, Mrs Green. But at some point my mum made an arrangement with another school mum called Peggy to take us there by tube. This required a walk to Oakwood station (nearer than Southgate) and a two stop journey on the Piccadilly line. Peggy was Irish, with the strongest of accents (think 'filum' instead of 'film') and two sons, each a year younger than me and my brother. That year seemed a gulf. Those two boys were pretty bloody wet, smack-arse-faced, like real-life versions of the 'Softies' from 'The Beano' (the swots that Dennis the Menace bullied). Not that they would have read 'The Beano'. John - the oldest one - preferred 'TV Comic' which I considered with contempt to be babyish. Not quite as babyish as the fact that his younger brother slept in a cot at the age of 4 or 5 years old. That was Thomas. He had an accent as strong as his mum's, maybe because he didn't talk to anyone else. When a tube train arrived at the station, he'd shout out where it was bound. He'd pronounce Cockfosters as Cockfodders and Arnos Grove as Arnot Gove. That killed me and my brother. I'm not sure what accent John had, because he never spoke. Except when he was crying about his mum not buying him TV Comic. Later in life it dawned on me that together their names made 'John Thomas' as in slang for a willy. They really were a couple of willies, the poor buggers.
My first memory of arriving at Our Lady of Lourdes was being buddied up with some weird kid called Alan. Being called Alan was weird enough at the time. All Alans were bald middle-aged men. I might be wrong about his name, but sod it, most of these memories could be unreliable, so let's still call him Alan. He had the straightest teeth you've ever seen. Like someone had taken an electric grinder to them. And the third respect in which he was weird was that he refused to ever eat snacks at playtime, saying that his mum told him it would spoil his appetite for lunch. I soon negotiated my way out of that situation and Alan left the school soon after. I suspect his mother home-schooled him. You would if you were the sort of fucked up parent who called your kid Alan and denied him snacks at playtime.
In the equivalent of Infants 3 these days, 7 year old kids are made to do SATs; but this is nothing compared to what we had to do as Catholic kids in the 70s. First Confession! Because by 7, you've clearly accumulated enough sins to need to purge your burdened soul of them through verbal exposition to a priest. Unlike normal confession, which happened in those traditional wooden cubicles, our first one was alone with a priest in the vestry. Not something you'd write to Jim'll Fix It to ask to do. There was lots of time spent in class preparing for this moment. Nothing practical like self-defence, but just some old shit about Jesus and families and how we are born with sin and basically fucked if we don't confess everything bad we do. We had to fill in a special book as preparation with pictures and writing. What the book missed out was a list of suggested things to confess. Because at 7 years old, you just aren't sure what counts. Did Knock Down Ginger count? Did laughing at Alan's funny teeth count? What about finding pleasure in seeing a 6 year old kid throw a wobbler because his mum won't buy him TV Comic?
In the end I went for the same unspecific term that everyone else used - I confessed to having 'bad thoughts'. (Luckily the priest didn't reply with, 'Well, funny you should say that...' and I got away with 3 Our Fathers and 5 Hail Mary's)
Thursday 9 April 2020
Tuesday 7 April 2020
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 8 - Playing out, gingers and dicing with death)
Playing out was cool. It was much cooler than playing out today. Generation X, the poor bastards, don't know what they're missing. Instead of having your playing out controlled by over-protective parents, or just over-zealous parents, or just misguidedly dutiful parents, no one controlled our playing out beyond being told to go out and if you were young (like under 4) you had to stay within shouting distance from home. That was when your mum shouted your name to say it was time to come home, about 10 hours later, and you'd hear her from anywhere.
'MICHAEL! DINNER!'
The best games were when you watched a film the night before and spent the next day recreating it with your mates. Action films, obviously. Like 'The Dirty Dozen' (which needed improvising when there were only 4 of you playing out); or 'A Bridge Too Far' where the garage roof substituted for a bridge. Some films were a bit harder to recreate. 'Jaws' lost its essence when translated to the Green outside the house. 'The Omen' was an interesting one to do. I think the apocalyptic Biblical symbolism and nuances of plot exposition were lost on Philip, our neighbour. He was a bit thick.
Less imaginative or complex - and therefore more appealing to Philip - was when we played 'Knock Down Ginger', where you'd knock on a stranger's front door and immediately run away, hoping they wouldn't see you. The generation before us called it 'Knocking Dolly out of Bed', but we were less derogatory in terms of objectifying women as 'Dolly birds' so we picked on 'gingers' instead. Nowadays, you wouldn't even say 'ginger'. Nor would you knock on someone's door and run away. Both of these now cause offence. But that was always the point. I suppose a modern version would be called, 'Knock down whatever the occupant chooses to self-identify as.' Doesn't have the same ring.
Next to our row of houses was a very small, walled wooded area, with a few bushes and trees and an electricity generator. There was a sign on the fence saying, 'DANGER' which in the 1970s meant, 'PLAY HERE.' We loved playing in what we called 'The Danger', climbing on top of the generator, trying to open its doors, shoving metal into it in an effort to make it explode. You'd get these public information films on TV in those days that showed kids the possible consequences of doing shit like that, or playing on railways, or climbing electricity pylons. Great films, which gave us lots of ideas for what to do. Public information at its best.
'MICHAEL! DINNER!'
That gave us a playing-out radius of about 2 miles from the house. And you'd climb out of a tree in some nearby park, missing some of the branches on the way down due to the encroaching darkness of the evening and sprint home. Yes, 'sprint'. You youngsters try sprinting after playing out for 10 hours. I don't mean that sort of sprint you do from your parents car to the McDonald's queue. I mean, a 2 mile sprint in the twilight towards your house, because you're eager for some spaghetti bolognaise or a tin of chicken in white sauce on toast.
The best games were when you watched a film the night before and spent the next day recreating it with your mates. Action films, obviously. Like 'The Dirty Dozen' (which needed improvising when there were only 4 of you playing out); or 'A Bridge Too Far' where the garage roof substituted for a bridge. Some films were a bit harder to recreate. 'Jaws' lost its essence when translated to the Green outside the house. 'The Omen' was an interesting one to do. I think the apocalyptic Biblical symbolism and nuances of plot exposition were lost on Philip, our neighbour. He was a bit thick.
Less imaginative or complex - and therefore more appealing to Philip - was when we played 'Knock Down Ginger', where you'd knock on a stranger's front door and immediately run away, hoping they wouldn't see you. The generation before us called it 'Knocking Dolly out of Bed', but we were less derogatory in terms of objectifying women as 'Dolly birds' so we picked on 'gingers' instead. Nowadays, you wouldn't even say 'ginger'. Nor would you knock on someone's door and run away. Both of these now cause offence. But that was always the point. I suppose a modern version would be called, 'Knock down whatever the occupant chooses to self-identify as.' Doesn't have the same ring.
Next to our row of houses was a very small, walled wooded area, with a few bushes and trees and an electricity generator. There was a sign on the fence saying, 'DANGER' which in the 1970s meant, 'PLAY HERE.' We loved playing in what we called 'The Danger', climbing on top of the generator, trying to open its doors, shoving metal into it in an effort to make it explode. You'd get these public information films on TV in those days that showed kids the possible consequences of doing shit like that, or playing on railways, or climbing electricity pylons. Great films, which gave us lots of ideas for what to do. Public information at its best.
Friday 3 April 2020
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 7 - Everybody needs bad neighbours)
There were 6 tall houses built against each other in our cul-de-sac, Linden Way. So everyone knew each other. I say 'knew' in preference to 'like'. I think the only actual proper friendship between anyone was my mum and Margaret, next door.
At number 92 there lived Alan and Leonie and their daughters (slightly younger than me and my brother) Deborah and Emily. I thought the whole family was weird. And I based this judgement on some very conservative and prejudiced thoughts. For one thing, their living room was painted white. What the fuck was that about? This fit with my perception of Alan as some king of hippy. Not a long-haired hippy, as he was bald as an egg, but a hippy in terms of being a bit wet, a bit of a limp lettuce leaf, a bit corduroy and sandals. I once had a religious argument with him in which I refuted his beliefs as an Anglican in defence of fair less accommodating and self-righteous Catholicism. I failed to understand how it could be that he was Church of England and his wife was Jewish. That made no sense to me. Other kids might have learnt a lesson from this fact, in a sort of To Kill of Mockingbird way, you know, about not judging people without knowing the facts. But not me. That white-washed living room proved I was right about the whole weirdness of that family. And I'll never forgive Emily for eating our strawberries, which were growing against our adjoining fence. Her being 2 years old at the time doesn't excuse it. That's out of control behaviour.
At 96, the other side of us, was Les and Margaret and their 4 boys, Gary, Steven, Jonathan and Philip. Les was a copper who helped out the scouts jumble sales by collecting stuff for them in his big black van and then helping himself to the best bits. He had oily slicked back, dyed black hair, like Reg Varney in On the Buses. Margaret was a nice woman, but scared me after the incident in which she told me off for pooing behind the garages. The older boys were skinheads. The younger ones weren't close friends of ours, but convenient acquaintances to do stuff with. Jonathan was alright, but Philip was feral, spending his whole time with his shirt off (skin peeling from sun burn every summer), climbing trees and snotting and pissing everywhere. He once ate a worm.
At 98 lived Ken, the doctor. Nice bloke. Too clever and too straight-laced for anyone else to be close friends with, but everyone liked him. Spent all his time in his garden. If your ball went over and damaged his flowers, he'd merely discuss the issue in a positive manner with you like a soft primary school teacher. Eventually, he found a similarly simpering wife and she moved in with him.
At 100 was Eddie and Edna. Eddie was a copper (because like our house and Les's, his was Police-owned). He was a bit scary and gruff spoken, but tended to chuckle a lot. We made sure our ball never went into his garden. I can't remember Edna. I think like a lot of 1970s wives she stayed home and did stuff, fuck knows what.
At 102 were the rich couple. Mr and Mrs Adams. We assumed they were rich, because they replaced their front door for a flash wooden one with a brass knocker and because they just looked snottily at the rest of us all the time. (You could forgive them doing that to Philip, they must have thought he was a savage.) They had a high fence on the far side of their garden and trees that afforded them some privacy, so our ball never went in there and you couldn't see what they were up to. Sipping champagne and eating caviar we assumed. Mum once drove the car straight into their high wooden fence, knocking it over. She was learning to drive. She switched from manual to automatic after that.
At number 92 there lived Alan and Leonie and their daughters (slightly younger than me and my brother) Deborah and Emily. I thought the whole family was weird. And I based this judgement on some very conservative and prejudiced thoughts. For one thing, their living room was painted white. What the fuck was that about? This fit with my perception of Alan as some king of hippy. Not a long-haired hippy, as he was bald as an egg, but a hippy in terms of being a bit wet, a bit of a limp lettuce leaf, a bit corduroy and sandals. I once had a religious argument with him in which I refuted his beliefs as an Anglican in defence of fair less accommodating and self-righteous Catholicism. I failed to understand how it could be that he was Church of England and his wife was Jewish. That made no sense to me. Other kids might have learnt a lesson from this fact, in a sort of To Kill of Mockingbird way, you know, about not judging people without knowing the facts. But not me. That white-washed living room proved I was right about the whole weirdness of that family. And I'll never forgive Emily for eating our strawberries, which were growing against our adjoining fence. Her being 2 years old at the time doesn't excuse it. That's out of control behaviour.
At 96, the other side of us, was Les and Margaret and their 4 boys, Gary, Steven, Jonathan and Philip. Les was a copper who helped out the scouts jumble sales by collecting stuff for them in his big black van and then helping himself to the best bits. He had oily slicked back, dyed black hair, like Reg Varney in On the Buses. Margaret was a nice woman, but scared me after the incident in which she told me off for pooing behind the garages. The older boys were skinheads. The younger ones weren't close friends of ours, but convenient acquaintances to do stuff with. Jonathan was alright, but Philip was feral, spending his whole time with his shirt off (skin peeling from sun burn every summer), climbing trees and snotting and pissing everywhere. He once ate a worm.
At 98 lived Ken, the doctor. Nice bloke. Too clever and too straight-laced for anyone else to be close friends with, but everyone liked him. Spent all his time in his garden. If your ball went over and damaged his flowers, he'd merely discuss the issue in a positive manner with you like a soft primary school teacher. Eventually, he found a similarly simpering wife and she moved in with him.
At 100 was Eddie and Edna. Eddie was a copper (because like our house and Les's, his was Police-owned). He was a bit scary and gruff spoken, but tended to chuckle a lot. We made sure our ball never went into his garden. I can't remember Edna. I think like a lot of 1970s wives she stayed home and did stuff, fuck knows what.
At 102 were the rich couple. Mr and Mrs Adams. We assumed they were rich, because they replaced their front door for a flash wooden one with a brass knocker and because they just looked snottily at the rest of us all the time. (You could forgive them doing that to Philip, they must have thought he was a savage.) They had a high fence on the far side of their garden and trees that afforded them some privacy, so our ball never went in there and you couldn't see what they were up to. Sipping champagne and eating caviar we assumed. Mum once drove the car straight into their high wooden fence, knocking it over. She was learning to drive. She switched from manual to automatic after that.
Thursday 2 April 2020
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 6 - Those 3 toilets again)
Our house in Linden Way had 3 toilets. One on each floor. And they each took on a different role and thus developed a different environment from the others.
The ground floor toilet was mainly used by me and my brother, as it was the most accessible if we were outside playing. That meant that we were usually in a rush. You know how kids are. You don't want to stop playing, so you hold it in until your bladder has expanded to the size of a space hopper or until your turtle head has nearly eaten an hole in your pants before you run panicking to the loo. The rushed approach to the use of this utility meant that the walls were often splattered, a bit like when you shake a bottle of Coke before opening it. You lose the first mouthful in the post-cap-removal explosion.
The kitchen was also downstairs, so you'd expect my mum to use this loo, but I have no memory of her doing so. This might be because she successfully hid from us the fact that she ever used any toilet ever or perhaps she wisely went upstairs to the middle floor loo to avoid the carnage her sons often left in the downstairs one.
The middle floor toilet neighboured the living room and also had the bath tub that we chose to use. Given that mum bathed us in the early years in the house (I'd like to say weeks, given that I was 6 years old when we moved in), her mere presence helped keep this room in a more hygienic condition. As trips to this toilet tended to be whilst watching TV in the next room, they were unrushed and civilised. I say 'civilised' but all my memories of either of us brothers skidding our pants so badly that we'd take them off and hide them behind the sink are from the middle floor toilet.
Finally, there was a top floor toilet. It had a bath, but this was never used. Probably because this toilet smelt somewhat pissy. Like both other toilets, this one had no external wall and no window and so it relied on an extractor fan to clear any steam. (From the bath, that is, not from a wee.... although, sometimes, well, you know). It was flanked by both our bedroom and my parents' bedroom, so it was the toilet that was used during the night. The extractor fan was too noisy for any of us to put the light on, so we slashed in the dark. The floor was carpeted, so inevitably the first 10 seconds of a Jimmy was silent as you'd desperately adjust your aim until you'd hear the reassuring splash of spray on still water. I'm sure that on more than one occasion, mindful of the futility of hitting the target first time, I opted for the easier and wider receptacle of the bath tub. Perhaps another reason for never using it for its proper function.
(I know I've written about this before, but didn't check back, because I was in a rush to finish and go for a poo.)
The ground floor toilet was mainly used by me and my brother, as it was the most accessible if we were outside playing. That meant that we were usually in a rush. You know how kids are. You don't want to stop playing, so you hold it in until your bladder has expanded to the size of a space hopper or until your turtle head has nearly eaten an hole in your pants before you run panicking to the loo. The rushed approach to the use of this utility meant that the walls were often splattered, a bit like when you shake a bottle of Coke before opening it. You lose the first mouthful in the post-cap-removal explosion.
The kitchen was also downstairs, so you'd expect my mum to use this loo, but I have no memory of her doing so. This might be because she successfully hid from us the fact that she ever used any toilet ever or perhaps she wisely went upstairs to the middle floor loo to avoid the carnage her sons often left in the downstairs one.
The middle floor toilet neighboured the living room and also had the bath tub that we chose to use. Given that mum bathed us in the early years in the house (I'd like to say weeks, given that I was 6 years old when we moved in), her mere presence helped keep this room in a more hygienic condition. As trips to this toilet tended to be whilst watching TV in the next room, they were unrushed and civilised. I say 'civilised' but all my memories of either of us brothers skidding our pants so badly that we'd take them off and hide them behind the sink are from the middle floor toilet.
Finally, there was a top floor toilet. It had a bath, but this was never used. Probably because this toilet smelt somewhat pissy. Like both other toilets, this one had no external wall and no window and so it relied on an extractor fan to clear any steam. (From the bath, that is, not from a wee.... although, sometimes, well, you know). It was flanked by both our bedroom and my parents' bedroom, so it was the toilet that was used during the night. The extractor fan was too noisy for any of us to put the light on, so we slashed in the dark. The floor was carpeted, so inevitably the first 10 seconds of a Jimmy was silent as you'd desperately adjust your aim until you'd hear the reassuring splash of spray on still water. I'm sure that on more than one occasion, mindful of the futility of hitting the target first time, I opted for the easier and wider receptacle of the bath tub. Perhaps another reason for never using it for its proper function.
(I know I've written about this before, but didn't check back, because I was in a rush to finish and go for a poo.)
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