The Life of Lee (7 page)

The estate was always buzzing with activity. At weekends, we would be out the back of the flats in a small play area. It was nothing special, just some swings, a see-saw and a roundabout, but to us it was Thorpe Park. Competitions would always be on the go between the various kids from all over the estate.

It’s amazing how fearless you are when you’re a kid. You never believe anything will happen to you when you’re out playing. One game involved pushing a swing as high as possible and then leaping off, trying to wrap it around the top crossbar. Unfortunately, one on-looking kid got a bit too close, and the swing hit him full on the head – bosh! – knocking him into the middle of next week. They carried him off to hospital. But the next day, he was back at the playground, his head all done up like a mummy. To me, he looked just like the Invisible Man.

‘God!’ I exclaimed. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah. Me mum just shouts that me bandage is in the way and she can’t see the telly.’

‘Well, take it off! You’re invisible, ain’t you?’

‘Piss off, Evans.’

I think that’s what he said – I mean, it was muffled.

Then there was a kid who got too near the see-saw while about ten lads were going mental on it. He trapped his leg underneath it – you could hear the snap right across the estate. He was back the next day too, playing football on crutches.

Bonfire Night was always a massive occasion for us. Every year, the estate would stage a bonfire the size of which would make the Great Fire of London look like a carpet burn. The mammoth bonfire construction would begin in earnest weeks in advance, presenting every house and flat on the estate with an annual opportunity to ditch the rubbish the dustmen wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. So it mostly consisted of old tyres, paint cans, sump oil, aerosol cans, old couches and chairs piled and stuffed into a framework of surreptitiously lopped-down local trees. At that time of year, all the trees in our area looked a bit sorry for themselves, like they’d been roughed up by gangs of local youths armed with saws and choppers, who would set out across the fields to gather not just branches, but whole trees from miles around.

By the time we’d finished, it was like a Brazilian rainforest clearing. I pitied the trees; you’d see them there with chunks missing, trying to do a Bobby Charlton-style comb-over to cover up the gaps. A bunch of kids would drag all the wood back and then await directions from Keith, an absolute master of bonfire building and a real leader amongst the boys on the estate. He would order a bunch of kids to erect the wood into a tepee shape as tall
as a large semi-detached house. The bonfire structure was so big that we could climb inside it and roam around at will. It was so densely packed with branches and household tat that you could even lose your friends in it. You could hear them shouting, but you’d spend twenty minutes trying to track them down, like a potholer squeezing through the gaps to find his mates.

Unable to afford any sort of firework display, residents would club together and purchase a small box of standard fireworks. Of course, somehow a few of the kids would produce a couple of the ones the grown-ups didn’t want us to have. We found all that ‘reading the instructions and standing well back’ bullshit boring, so we burnt those. A bunch of us would hang around outside the newsagent’s for hours waiting for a grown-up we knew and accost them to go in and buy a Jumping Jack or a couple of bangers. Even having just one banger would be a thrill. It would be carefully stowed under my bed for weeks prior to the big night, hidden away from my parents. Then, every now and again, I would retrieve it from its hiding place and stare at it, excitedly envisaging a bang loud enough to create a shockwave visible from space. I could imagine people on distant planets asking each other, ‘What the hell was that?’

As we all stood around watching one of the grown-ups methodically go through the whole rigmarole of following the Firework Code, without warning someone would throw a lighted Jumping Jack at our feet and burst out laughing as we all scattered in a panic, the firecracker leaping and throwing out sparks on the floor. I would love to wrap a polythene bag around a stick, set light to it and
watch it drip, drip on to the grass. It made a kind of laser sound as it dripped. In my mind, I was a bomber pilot dropping ordnance.

Then, after all the grown-ups had got bored and shoved off, the action would really start. A kid would rush up as if he had news of a gold rush and reveal under his jacket a box of shooting fountains. These were fireworks that when lit shot out different-coloured fireballs with such force that, if aimed at a charging rhino, they would drop him on the spot. And in the hands of a bunch of fearless kids, these babies were lethal weapons. They were our equivalent of rocket-propelled grenades.

The most fun game was to light your fireworks all at the same time and let battle commence. It amazes me now that no one got seriously hurt, because these things were flying all over the place. If a ball of red-hot flaming gunpowder hit you, it just seemed to bounce off.

But, then, fate is strange. There we were, being complete maniacs with these fireworks, and it was a young girl innocently standing next to the bonfire who got seriously injured. As we fired balls of gunpowder at each other, I glanced over at the bonfire and spotted Debbie, one of the prettiest girls on the estate. She was standing near the fire, away from a group of girls. She was just looking into the now-glowing embers while her friends cheered us on and dared us to fire more accurate shots at each other. I stared briefly at her, thinking how beautiful she looked as she was lit by the glow of the fire, when suddenly there was an almighty explosion that engulfed Debbie in flames. Everyone stopped in their tracks. The whole mood changed in an instant.

Silence.

Then Keith shouted, ‘Shit!’ He ran over to Debbie, who was now lying on the floor, having been flung back from the fire by the blast and stunned. Steve shouted to two of the other kids to go and get someone. The boys ran towards the block of flats shouting, ‘Mum, Dad … !’

I stood trembling as I looked through the crowd of kids now assembled around Debbie. She lay there smoking, her face and clothes all burnt up. ‘What happened?’ shouted someone frantically.

We all looked to Keith, who replied, ‘Some idiot put a bastard aerosol can in the fire!’

Just as he said it, there was another huge bang from the fire. Everyone scattered, apart from a couple of kids who managed to drag Debbie a few feet further back.

An ambulance came and took Debbie away. I heard she went back to school eventually.

That incident certainly taught us a more sobering lesson than we ever learned from the Firework Code.

Some kids on the Lawrence Weston Estate had brilliantly inventive minds. Just like magic, every week a kid would appear with a new form of transportation.

There was the trolley made from pram wheels, some scaffold planks and some string, the skate with a board nailed on top that, without even thinking, we would ride down the steepest of hills, and old motor bikes that we would race across the back fields. Sometimes, we would try to emulate Evel Knievel by setting up a ramp made from a door, then seeing how many kids we could jump over. Happy times.

One day an old pram was found. It’s difficult now to comprehend how these things – like an old motor bike or wheelchair – would turn up, but they always did. They were just left some place, and if you left something on the estate, the kids would have it away in a flash. If someone was throwing something away, then it was a given that you could do whatever you wanted with it, it was up for grabs.

It was decided that this new cast-off pram should be pushed really fast with someone in it. It was great fun watching the terror on someone’s face, clinging on for dear life in this treacherous makeshift vehicle.

Everyone else had had their turn being pushed really fast by about five kids, going down a very steep hill with no means of stopping. Now it was my turn. But just as I slipped in, another kid, who had found a cardboard box, suddenly put it over my head. So I was now boxed in, which made it even scarier because I didn’t know what was going to happen. It would just have egged those lads on if they’d heard cries of fear from inside the box.

So they began pushing. It immediately felt really fast, owing to the fact I could only glimpse the pavement through a small gap between my legs. There were two holes at the front of the box, and if anyone had looked through them, all they would have seen were two terrified eyes staring back. As I bumped and jogged around inside the box, I could hear through the laughter and revving tank noises that one of the kids, Jimmy, had picked up a bamboo stick. He then had the great idea of making it even more like a tank by pushing the stick through one of the holes.

I peered out to see Jimmy running beside the careering tank, trying desperately to find the holes with the end of
the stick. The bamboo finally came through the hole and Jimmy let go, shouting, ‘Lee, get hold of the stick, it’s your gun …’ I frantically tried to grab the end of the stick as it bobbed around in front of my face. Then the stick jammed into a pavement slab and jolted back into my eye socket. Aaargh!

The pain was furious. The pram stopped dead, its brakes being the inside of my skull, and I flew forward like a pole-vaulter – ‘Look, Ma, no hands …’ Up I went, still in the box and still in the pram, surrounded by five now-laughing, hysterical boys. I landed with a bang and just lay there, in the darkness, realizing I had a stick wedged in my eye.

I quickly shouted to the boys outside the box. ‘Don’t move the stick!’

I could hear their concern. ‘What? What’s the matter, Lee?’

‘The stick. It hurts, it’s in my eye …’

Jimmy looked under the box and, in a panicky voice, gave the others a quick diagnosis. ‘The stick’s in his eye.’ Hearing the confirmation, I burst out crying. Suddenly, I heard Jimmy say, ‘We’ve got to –’

‘Got to what?’ I thought, forgetting the pain for a moment.

Without warning, Jimmy pulled the stick from my eye and out of the box.

Instead of crying, I screamed in pain. But I emitted no noise – it was more of a primal scream. All the oxygen was pushed out of my lungs. I stopped breathing for a moment and lay there. I was pulled by my feet from the box and, upon feeling the daylight, I took a huge gasp of air into my
lungs. I couldn’t see anything; everything had just gone white. Jimmy picked me up and carried me home.

I wore a patch over my eye for months, and to this day still get bouts of intense pain at the back of my eye after writing for long periods. It always reminds me of that day.

Thanks, Jimmy.

The pram incident was typical of the sort of stunts we would pull on the estate. We were fearless. Another popular game was ‘I Dare You’. Those must be the three most dangerous words ever spoken in the history of pre-pubescent boys. You throw down the gauntlet to any little bum-fluff bollocks under the age of sixteen when you say those words. You know he’s going to do it for you or die trying.

Some scrawny kid with a dirty face who, having recently tired of pulling the legs off a passing insect, would randomly approach you. Holding a plastic bag in one hand, he would enthusiastically advertise that he reckoned he could put it over his head until he just about stopped breathing. Of course, this would draw a crowd, all eager to see if he really would nearly kill himself. Afterwards, he would actually be proud if we told him that he’d nearly died.

‘You nearly died.’

‘Did I? Did I nearly die? Fantastic!’

And if he didn’t back up his boast, he would just get a bunch of groans. ‘You said you were nearly going to kill yourself, but you didn’t!’

I don’t know why the government wastes millions of pounds of our taxes on employing scientists whose job it seems is to carry out some pointless experiment that will only answer the question ‘How much more will our
research bill be next year?’, when there have been kids – or, as I like to call them, pioneers – mostly by the name of Clive or Darren, who have been doing a great deal more complex experiments on every housing estate across the land since housing estates began.

They have been answering the real scientific questions that will in time actually benefit our country, important questions such as: ‘’Ere, Clive, if I put this gerbil in your mum’s microwave, do you reckon it’ll burst?’

RRRRRRRRRRRGH … DING.

‘Darren, look, it sort of melted!’

For some curious reason, every kid had some sort of speciality, a party piece. The list was an endless litany of sadism, physical abnormality and abuse.

‘I bet I could eat that dog poo.’ Even dogs would stare in disbelief at that one.

‘Let’s see what happens when you put this firework up that cat’s arse.’ (On firework night, the cats on our estate were petrified, choosing to walk around with their backs to the wall.)

There was always that tiny spud of a kid who could fit his whole hand in his mouth. One lad round our way could reach up and actually put his foot in his gob. Another boy could turn his eyelids inside out, so he looked like Fu Manchu.

‘You could kick me in the balls right now, and I wouldn’t feel anything.’ That was it, a line of foot-limbering lumps was formed, and the spot-kicking aimed towards the seed pouch began.

One day, while I was hanging around the swings with a bunch of kids at the back of the flats, picking our noses,
smoking Consulate cigarettes and spitting, one of the lads suddenly announced, ‘’Ere we go. I got a beauty brewing up ’ere.’

Everyone was immediately excited, enthusiastically cheering and rushing to huddle around the boy as he quickly bent over. Then a cigarette lighter was produced and lit like a pilot light in readiness next to his backside. After a short pause during which the lad wiggled around, manoeuvring the air pocket trapped within, he gave a little heave and a push and –
Flbbbbrrrrrrrrrrroooww!
A gigantic fart was forced out through the narrow cheeks of his bum and a burst of fire shot out from the back of his trousers like a flame thrower illuminating our little faces – to massive cheers all round.