Where Did It All Go Right? (8 page)

To the north we never went much further than Northampton’s main artery, the Wellingborough Road (‘Welly Road’ in local parlance). That is, apart from the occasional mooch around Weston Favell Centre – aka ‘Supacentre’ – an out-of-town shopping and leisure complex opened in 1974 that was clearly way ahead of its time. And crap. Even a committed mooch never took long: the shopping centre itself had a Tesco’s, a coffee shop (and we never went ‘for a coffee’, even as teenagers –
never
), a WH Smith with an alluring downstairs record department, and a novelty shop where, in the summer of 1978, I bought a large
Close Encounters
badge with
the
change Richard Angerson and I had left after fetching some Tesco’s shopping for his mum. (He bought a badge too – can’t remember what kind – and his mum had a right go at us for this act of frivolity when we got back. Cuh. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Mrs Angerson, we could have spent it on fags and Top Deck!)

To be fair, the complex did also take in a church and the pocket-sized Lings Cinema, whose poor man’s habit of showing new films about six months after the ABC in town would only start to matter to me in my mid-teens; and a leisure centre which was mainly a swimming pool – again, no interest as a hang-out until my mid-teens when we used to go and idly watch people swimming from the ‘viewing area’ which also sold cans of drink we had no money for.

Due east, it was another big road, the brilliantly named Lumbertubs Way, that hemmed us in, and to the west, ‘Abby Park’ (Abington Park), opened 1897. So not only did we have access to our own field, there was a sprawling, well-appointed, 126-acre municipal park within easy cycling distance. More grass, more trees, more water, and, let me tell you, untold delights. Never mind the things Roy Batty says he’s seen in
Blade Runner
– attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate, yeah, yeah – Abington Park had its own museum (admission: free), a playground, three duck-and swan-filled lakes (one with rowing boats on it), a bandstand, a spinney, a nine-hole miniature golf course, conkers galore in season, tennis courts, a bowling green, a sort of quite-easy maze, an aviary containing peacocks and parakeets, and ice-cream vans all summer long. It was blinkin’ Xanadu.

These days kids demand bowling alleys and pizzas and Daytona Racing and multiplexes and things that need batteries. When I was a kid – when it was
all fields
– we were happy as Larry with a bike, some wellies, a gun-shaped stick and the remote, tantalising possibility of a Funny Face lolly. It’s not that we were easily pleased – the parameters of pleasure were different. Bits of tree and lollies were all that were available. The advent of Space Invaders at the Westonia chip shop in the early Eighties was too late for me – hormones were starting to make me feel self-conscious about ‘playing’ by then.

* * *

But there was another side to me. I was also a delicate, lavender-scented creative little flower. I liked drawing from an early age. Adults told me I had a talent for it. I spent a good part of my boyhood sitting up at the living-room table hunched over a pack of felt-tips and a stack of headed notepaper which Dad had snaffled from work. (Much of my childhood artwork has a National Provident Institution logo in the top right-hand corner.) Drawing was, by its very nature, a solitary pursuit – like putting together
Wacky Races
jigsaws or painting soldiers with Humbrol enamel paints, two of my other beloved pastimes away from the field.

It was Simon who would progress from a childhood playing war games with rifle-shaped sticks to patrolling the streets of Armagh with a loaded weapon as a young man, while my career drifted back inside the house and to the felt-tips.

Like many other boys before and since, Simon and I were both in the imaginary army, ranked equal, devouring comics like
Warlord, Valiant
and
Battle
, and films like
The Longest Day
and
Cockleshell Heroes
. We would recreate scenarios from those films with our Action Men, and I guess that penknife burrow in the riverbank was probably a foxhole if it was anything at all. However, only one of us kept up the military theme into and beyond our teens.

I don’t know exactly when the desire to create eclipsed my need to wade through streams hoping to catch a glimpse of the nonexistent water rat. It’s the education system that forces these choices on you: are you an academic achiever or captain of the football team? Are you – in old money – O-level or CSE material? It’s streaming that eventually pulls you out of the stream. Simon was less good at passing exams than me, and the armed services offered him a career where other skills are more useful – like killing a goat, folding things neatly and laying down your life to stop
those Russians
. He was going to be allowed to wade through streams for a job. Meanwhile, I had a knack for remembering facts under exam conditions and ended up in the sixth form and higher education.

Before school really starts to mould and shape you – and these days the assessment and unnatural selection begins just the other side of the cradle – you remain a primal being, attracted by the good earth.

I used to cover my hands methodically with the dust off the soles of my shoes at school then lick it off. I mean it. You might need to call Mr Proust again. I had a soot fetish too. (That’s
soot
fetish.) In the days before central heating I used to love it when the man came to sweep the chimney. He was fascinating to watch, attaching all those extension poles to his brush and pushing it further and further up the flue while the living room was shrouded in sheets. It was also a major kick to go out the front with him and check that the brush had emerged from the chimney. But the real attraction was the soot. I loved the dry throat you got when the room was full of coal dust, and the feel of that fine powder on your hands. I can’t say for sure if I actually ate the stuff, but the desire was there. I never bat an eyelid when pregnant women hunger for coal.

I can feel eyebrows being arched as I confess this. We’ve already established that getting dirty is normal and I’m just trying to make the point that the ‘civilising’ influence of age actually goes against primal impulses … but I sense that I’ve lost one or two of you.

I didn’t go around snacking on filth. I lived in mortal fear of treading in dog’s muck – even in those wellies – and my taste for floor-dust and chimney powder was not something I shared with anyone. I knew it wasn’t the
done
thing. Spitting into your dusty hands and rubbing them together at school was an under-the-desk activity. But I will say this – when I’m digging the garden now, I like nothing better than to cast aside the spade and use my hands and feel the soil under my nails.

You can take the boy out of the field …

1.
Intriguingly, ‘puttock’ is listed in the
Dictionary of Slang
as meaning ‘an unpleasant person’ or prostitute. Hey, we are all prostitutes.

2.
It was bigger boy Jeremy Moss who eventually taught me what ‘mastipation’ was (his word). It involved ‘white stuff’ and was beyond my ken completely. Another Jeremy – Skoyles – revealed to me in Art once that if you touched a lady’s bosoms it made your willy go big. Again, this seemed like some wild fantasy and I busied myself with my papier mâché.

3.
Not me. I never did have a paper round. I once helped David Hirst (I think) deliver some Spar leaflets door to door, a breezy task made stressful only by barking dogs jumping up at letterboxes. There was no money in it.

1973

Selected Extracts From My Diary

A MURKY GREEN
Leeds Permanent Building Society desk diary, spiral-bound and encased in a vinyl dust-jacket. Very smart – Dad clearly got sent it at work. The Leeds Permanent crest on the front bears the motto
‘SAFE AND SOUND’.
How very apt. It contains information on all the company’s branch offices, and tells you that ‘no-one may invest more than £10,000 in the Society’, which was a lot of money in 1973. This was the first diary I completed the whole way through
.

Monday, 1 January

Yesterday I came to Nanny and Pappy’s house to sleep. I saw Norman Wisdom on television. Nanny has got a lovely colour television (so have I).

Thursday, 4 January

Today Dean (my cousin)
¹
came to our house. And me and my brother watched
Land of the Giants
and
The Flintstones
on our colour television. Nanny Mabel bought me some coloured paints.
²

Wednesday, 10 January

Today Paul Milner brought his magic set to school and he had me as an assistant.

Thursday, 11 January

Today I went to Catherine Leese’s party. Cathy Knight
³
went too and loads more. I won a game but I’ve forgotten what it was.

Sunday, 14 January

Today me and my brother went to the park with Dad. We put our old kit on and we both played dirt collectors.
⁴

Thursday, 25 January

Nearly every day my tooth bleeds and today was one of those days so it means that soon my tooth will come out. I have had one tooth out on its own and I have had five teeth out at the dentist, that makes six altogether.

Monday, 5 February

Today Anita Barker came to watch the television. Mine is a colour telly and Anita hasn’t got one. We saw
Pardon My Genie
on it.

Saturday, 10 February

Today I bought myself a
Buzz
comic. It’s a new comic and it is very good. I got it instead of
Cor!!

Monday, 12 February

Today my tooth started wobbling. It will come out tomorrow because I’m taking some toffees to school for lunch.

Tuesday, 13 February

My tooth didn’t come out but it is much looser now.

Saturday, 17 February

Today I had a horrible cold but that wasn’t the only horrible thing, I had a horrible Lemsip.

Saturday, 24 February

Today I went to Kelvin Lay’s
⁵
party. I had a smashing tea, it was the best tea I’ve ever had.

Thursday, 1 March

Today my dad bought a new car, it was a white Viva. Our old one was a browny yellowy colour and it was a Viva as well. I haven’t rode in it yet but Simon has.

Thursday, 8 March

Today I went to Jeremy’s party and we had a super tea. My tooth fell out. It didn’t really fall out, somebody knocked it out at school. And Pappy gave me a magazine and it had a poster of The Sweet inside.
⁶

Friday, 9 March

Today Andrew Sharp
⁷
brought some strawberry bon-bons to school and he let me have four or five of them and they were very nice. And this afternoon David Edwards let me have a gobstopper and that was the first one I ever had.

Saturday, 10 March

Today Dad and me went to town and I spent my birthday money on a Slade poster and it’s smashing.

Sunday, 18 March

Today Dad let me stop up to play my new game I had for my birthday. It is called Mastermind it is really for grown-ups but we know how to play.

Thursday, 12 April

Today when I was playing on our tractor
⁸
I fell off and I scraped on the ground. My leg is burnt and it is all blacky brown.

Thursday, 26 April

Today I swapped one of my Top Teams, Kenny Dagleish, for Pat Jennings and Rodney Marsh and Milner gave me Emlyn Hughes free and Richard Griffin
⁹
gave me David Hay and Paul Madley free.

Tuesday, 1 May

Today when I was walking home from school Jeremy Moss came rushing up and he said he had just seen David Boulter run over by a motorcycle and his leg is broken and it is quite flat.

Friday, 4 May

Today I saw
The Grumbleweeds
on telly and it is great. There are jokes, impressions and two special guests every week and there is Maurice, Albert, Robin, Graham and Carl. Carl is my favourite.

Monday, 7 May

Today I stopped for school dinners for the very first time but I took sandwiches and you sit on a special table if you have sandwiches. If there’s no room you sit on another table.

Friday, 18 May

Today a new series of
It’s a Knockout
. It was Woodstock v Bicester, I wanted Bicester to win. They did. The score was B 14 and W 8. They had some crazy games.

Sunday, 27 May

Today it was a very sunny day and me and Simon went over Maria and Justine’s
¹⁰
and we all played in the paddling pool and Simon fell off the slide and his head was bleeding.

Monday, 4 June
Holiday

In the afternoon we went to the Model Village at Yarmouth then we went to the Aquarium and in the evening we went to
the
Joyland fair with Maria. I went on the snail ride, a round-about, some bumper cars, penny slot machines and we all went on a novelty Noah’s Ark, there was a little monkey, a hall of mirrors, little model scenes and the boat swayed about.

Thursday, 7 June

Today in the evening me, Dad and Simon were going to the waxworks but it was closed so we went to the Joyland fair and when we came back to the car Dad bought us an ice cream and they were a foot high counting the cornet and it had a flake in it.

Monday, July 9

Dad bought us a cricket bat. We got our school reports, I got grade A in English, grade B in reading and grade A in maths and they are about the best grades you can get.