Edmondscote Road part 4
THE DESTRUCTION FACTOR
Some are born destructive, some are made destructive but for me somehow destruction sought me out. An early example would be the occasion of the amazing farting balloon. It was a rare occasion where Val and I were playing cooperatively together in the lounge. We had discovered a few remainders from Christmas and we were inflating and releasing a rather long balloon that shot around the living room making extremely rude noises. This appealed greatly to our well developed intellects but we had reached the stage where neither one of us wanted to blow the thing up any further because it was dripping with spit from previous inflations and we were running short of breath. Typically, to outdo me, my sister put on a brave face and decided she wasn't bothered. She would give it one final huge inflation. She shook it dry and wiped it clean, took several deep breaths and the thing expanded to bursting point. It was a magnificent effort but doomed be the cause of much anguish.
With a gleam of smug triumph Val released the weapon and it left her hand like an arrow from a bow. It did one magnificent loop the loop and like a darting snake, shot along the length of the sideboard. In its path lay a very tacky Venetian gondola made from gilded brass wire. It held six orange glass tumblers that had never been used. I can be honestly critical of this ornament because Val and I had bought it for Mum from her own catalogue, as a Christmas present. It had cost fourteen shillings and sixpence and owing to its enormous price was a joint gift received, with muted admiration by my mother on Christmas morning. Before either of us could dive to save the thing from the manic balloon, it shot along the remaining length of the sideboard as though propelled by a five hundred cc outboard motor. On reaching the end, it sailed gracefully through the air and landed on the hard wood surround of the floor shattering its load into a thousand fragments.
Time stood still as Val and I exchanged horrified glances. Time stopped standing still as a Valkerie thundered into the room from the kitchen with dripping rubber gloves. This vision summed up the situation in a trice and thumped me across the back of my head hard enough to generate the smell of burning rubber from the friction of contact. I reeled, not so much from the blow as from the injustice of the misguided retribution. 'It wasn't me,' I bawled and, to give her her due, Val concurred that she had been the culprit. My Mum hesitated for only a second before she came out with 'Well that's for all the things you've done that I've never caught you doing!' It was no wonder that justice wore a blindfold. My sister was not even spoken to about the incident. She meekly collected a dust pan and brush and cleared up the mess. I bear the mental scars to this day. I believe that beneath her initial shock Mum was not too sad to see the ghastly gondolier and his six orange glass tumblers sink into oblivion.
My early life was dotted with such incidents. My first attempt at frying eggs involved the cooker needing to be dismantled to find the yolk. I had cracked the egg, as per instruction, but due to my inexpert hands and total disregard for caution, the shell slid gracefully into the pan as the contents disappeared through the various holes on the electric stove. It seemed to slither and slide into every possible nook and cranny, sticking and solidifying limpet like to each surface it encountered on its downward journey.
When Pam Jones came, with her new boyfriend to baby sit, I volunteered to make the drinks. As I entered the newly painted kitchen it must have been the smell of the fresh paint that went to my head. I knew my sister liked her strawberry, Corona drink really fizzy so I shook the glass bottle long and hard. On unscrewing the cap the pressure from the freshly agitated drink blew the top clean out of my fingers and a fountain of bright pink cola hit the newly painted ceiling of the kitchen with a ferocious fizz. It continued to arc in all directions as it rapidly emptied its contents all over the new paintwork that Dad had taken such time and care over the previous week. I let out a yell of horror as I unintentionally did an impression of a victorious formula one champion. Poor Pam and her boyfriend spent the rest of the evening trying to clean strawberry surprise off Dad's latest decorating job. They did not succeed and the final effect reminded me of an early sixties, hippie record cover. It was not a hit.
Why my parents ever bothered to do home improvements with me around I'm not sure. Once I managed to spill bright, blue Quink, fountain pen ink all over my new green bedroom carpet. It was less than a week old and, unlike my pathetic attempts at covering up the gaping hole in the ceiling, this time I managed to delay the discovery of the stain by nearly a year. This was done with some clever reorganisation of the furniture, which I told my parents was to go with the new image of the carpet. They bought it. The delay of discovery only partly minimised the wrath that was brought down upon me. I had blotted both the carpet and my copybook.
I suppose my greatest destructive moment, when I was really young, was on a 'real' camping adventure with John Bowler. Now real campers camp outside and as infants we had spent plenty of time camping indoors. I owned a magnificent, bright yellow, red Indian tee-pee. The joy of camping in it was that it took no longer than thirty seconds to erect. It was a large circular cloth draped over four bamboo canes. That was it. No guy ropes or fly sheets. It was totally impractical and could only be used outside on windless days with a zero chance of rain. It could be picked up and placed anywhere but our parents would never let us camp in the field by the river and Mum even refused to let us camp in our own back garden as it had access from the field and 'anyone could be prowling about at night.' John's garden however was secure. It was surrounded on both sides by neighbours' houses and at the far end it opened out into a circular plot about twenty five feet in diameter. It was ideal as it was surrounded by a fence fronted by a large, impenetrable, damson bush which we could use for emergency food supplies. They tended to have disastrous effects on our digestive systems if eaten in quantities so we had to ration ourselves accordingly.
So this was it. Our first over-night camp. It was the days before sleeping bags so we had filled the tee-pee with blankets and pillows. Beneath, we had placed a very greasy piece of tarpaulin, as plastic sheets were not readily available either. It had always been my Dad's philosophy to let me try something and learn from my mistakes so, when we proposed to light a fire, both our Mum's felt it was not a good idea. Both Dad's however felt at eight we were old enough to know the does and don'ts of making a camp fire. In fact most of the kids on the estate had been lighting fires since the age of six. It was finally agreed that if we were going to have a fire it must be at the top of the main lawn, surrounded by bricks, away from the fence and the tee-pee. That way no harm would be done. Good theory.
And so it was that, after cooking some burnt eggs over a very smoky fire, John and I settled down in front of the dying embers as the sun sank slowly in the west. True pioneers we had ventured almost twenty yards from John's house and the spirit of the cowboy and space adventurer still beat unsatisfied above our churning stomachs. The mixture of burnt fried eggs and unripe damsons does not encourage the digestive tracts to act normally.
John decided he must use the toilet and disappeared into the darkness. I poked the fire lazily with a stick until his return idly watching the sparks fly up in the current of heat and die in the blackness of the night. He came back hauling a five gallon cannister of paraffin that his Dad used to fill the stove in their kitchen. The intention was to get the fire going a bit brighter as it was now starting to feel distinctly chilly. We used broken egg shells to flick paraffin onto the embers and the result was very satisfying. Flames licked up into the air and the bursts of heat warmed our cold bones. It was at this point that I had the bright idea of using bicycle pumps to squirt paraffin across the fire and pretend to be soldiers with flame throwers from the second world war. My Dad had always told me they were the most hated of all the soldiers and were given no mercy if caught. I always reckoned that if you had ten gallons of highly flammable liquid on your back and a gun to shoot it at the enemy you must be pretty stupid to get caught in the first place.
It wasn't long before we had obtained two old cycle pumps from John's shed and were gingerly squirting paraffin across the fire at each other from opposite sides of the flames. Now this was pretty dangerous in itself but as kids we knew no fear. Remember that the night is dark and that John's garden was on a slight slope leading down to his house. In the excitement of seeing the flames lick across to within inches of our feet we must have missed the thump of the open can falling over. What distracted us or who knocked it over will never be established. It must have gurgled for quite a long time slowly spilling its contents across the hard, dry grass, for in a split second a final squirt from my flame thrower across the fire caught the seeping liquid as it spread across the lawn and instantly thirty square feet of lawn burst into flames.
Now a burning lawn is not an easy thing to hide and it wasn't long before John's Mum and Dad could be seen dancing frantically on the far side of the flames. Their faces were lit like demons from hell. We were cut off at the top part of the garden and wondered if we dashed back to the tee-pee and hid under the blankets they might think that it had been someone else sabotaging our camping trip. Nope, not very likely. It was decided that the second best course of action was to act like heroes and we dashed through the flames stamping heroically to extinguish the problem. The fire burnt itself out very quickly and the charred remains of what was once quite an attractive lawn could only be seen in the misery of the early morning.
We didn't complete our first outside camp. I was frog marched back across the road to my house with my tee-pee stuck under my arm. Mum and Babs Bowler, John's Mum, spent a healthy half an hour in hysterics and Dad gave me a clout and sent me to bed. It wasn't a real belting and I felt that behind the heavy hand there was a modicum of empathy that seemed to understand the nature of the great outdoorsman.
SLEEPERS AND WEEPERS
As I mentioned earlier we were within easy reach of two main railway lines and like magnets they attracted us with the sights, smells and sounds that they offered. As kids we lived through the transition from steam to diesel. We were all for progress and thought the new cream and green livery thundering past was the future and the future was good. Looking back now we watched the death of a dynasty and the romance of steam vanished before us as we broke every possible rule and regulation issued by the railway companies. Barbed wire, walls and fences could not deter our adventurous spirits as we diced with danger by the gleaming steel lines.
To reach the Western line we had to cross the river by whatever means was at our disposal. We crossed paddling aluminium water tanks, punting old doors, swinging on ropes stretched from bank to bank and on one or two occasions we even thrashed our way across using branches as buoyancy devices. We could not resist the lure of the railway track. We ferried ourselves across on one occasion using a decrepit raft constructed from pieces of fencing, building planks and floatation units ranging from oil cans to beer bottles. The ensemble was held together with builders’ twine and hope. It rattled and shook as we launched it and it twisted and groaned within our grip. Eddie paddled across first and we fed out the line attached to the stern so that we could pull the thing back once he had climbed off on the far bank. We then gingerly pulled the empty craft back whilst Eddie held on to a line at his end. I crossed next and Bobbie joined eventually without mishap.
It is at this point I offer the severest warning to any young reader. To go anywhere near a railway line is insane and I am not proud of these activities. If nothing else, by now you may have realised that I was easily led, foolhardy and lucky to be alive to relate these stories to you. Keep away from railway lines they are VERY dangerous. I’m sure this advice was offered to me on many occasions but I was naive to the point beyond stupidity.
To reach the lines was a major achievement and various animal tracks had been made through what was thought to be impregnable bushes by previous expeditions of kids who had hacked, burrowed and scratched a path to the line. One of our great delights on reaching the tracks was to lay coins on the rail and wait for the next engine to pass. The finished results were quite impressive and were good currency in the school playground when it came to trading for marbles, food or cigarette cards. There was a problem in their manufacture in that the passing train would often lift the coins from the track and throw them further down the line and it would take a good deal of searching to locate the newly pressed money. Sometimes we could lose all the treasure and return penniless, scratched and dirty from the ordeal.
On one such venture, as we crossed through the long grass of the field heading towards the line, Eddie spotted a rabbit and without warning, threw himself onto the unsuspecting creature and, unbelievably, caught it firmly in both hands. I had never seen anything like it before, or since, and his agility and quick thinking impressed me greatly. It’s dirty grey and brown body writhed and twisted in his sure grip and it let out such pathetic screeches that Bobby and I pleaded with him to let it go. Quickly he closed his hands on its hind legs that were beginning to tear gashes in his arms and clothes and once it could not fight back the animal lay gasping for breath, wide eyed next to his torn shirt. Both Eddie and the animal panted in unison and my grudging respect for the captor started to rapidly diminish when he outlined his intentions for his prey.
He proposed tying the rabbit to the line to see what effect a steam engine might have on it. We screamed our protests but he was older and bigger than both of us and justified his intentions with the logic that rabbits are pests and that there could be no quicker way of killing one. I had never considered rabbits a pest and pointed out that the field we had caught him in was rough grazing and that there was no growing value in the land. Logic was not about to win the day and I knew I was on to a losing streak when Bobby chirped in to support his big brother, probably because he would have been thumped into oblivion when they got home if he hadn’t. They moved off in the direction of the tracks and I tagged along reluctantly. I had a sick curiosity as to what was about to happen and I didn’t want to be accused of backing out. To be branded a coward on our estate was to be ostracised for life.
The smell of oil and metal always greeted the visitor to the railway line. There were no plastic bags, crisp packets or other everlasting wrappings littering the line. The occasional sheet of newspaper or used johnny could be seen and now, with the distance,of time the world seemed a much cleaner place. To reach the track we scrambled down a short, steep bank of brambles and nettles. Begrimed, exhausted with hearts beating in anticipation of the impending execution we sat silently for a few minutes considering the enormity of the crime. We were shaken from our reverie by the thunder of a passing express. Hot air was forced past our faces and atoms of grit buried themselves into our eyes and faces with the force of the blast. The ground beneath us rumbled and our bodies shook in unison. Now for Bobby and me this was no problem and we picked the grit from our hair and eyes. Eddie, however, was still gripping tightly to his victim and was unable to remove the debris that had hit him and his eyes began to stream.
To me this was the opportunity I needed. These days I suppose most kids would be horrified by the thought of someone mutilating a wild animal but as a child most of my acquaintances seemed intent on destroying any wildlife within air rifle or catapult range . No bird, rodent, cat or dog was safe in the vicinity so the report of the rabbit’s execution would only enhance Eddie’s reputation amongst the gang. I may have been no use in a fight but I could often escape a thrashing by talking my way out of a situation. I pounced. I asked Bobby in a loud, sneering tone what he thought all our mates would think of Eddie if they found out he was crying over killing a rabbit. It was a dangerous gamble and involved me making a very hasty retreat back up the embankment heedless of the scratches and stings from nettle and gorse. Eddie had leapt to his feet to thump me and in doing so loosened his grip on the captive which in one desperate writhing movement broke free and sped quickly across the track and disappeared. Being the cause of the escape I became the quarry and hurtled my way back to the river chased by the two brothers.
I had enough head start and adrenaline to reach the river before either brother had crested the slope behind me and I wrenched the rope free from its mooring and leapt onto the raft with unseasoned haste. My desire to escape a thumping from Eddie overrode my fear of the grimy depths of the Leam. This was my final error of judgement that day. The builders’ twine, which was the essence of the vessel’s stability, snapped and slipped in a number of places. The raft disintegrated beneath my knees and I slipped gracefully through its centre into the cold, uncomfortable river. As I went under I saw a beer bottle glug and sink in sympathy and the remains of the raft dispersed themselves in concentric circles around my submerging head.
I surfaced quickly, kicking off from the slimy river bed. A strong hand had grabbed my collar as I scrambled for the bank. Eddie, the rabbit killer, the torturer, the lapin assassin had saved me. His anger had dissipated seeing me torpedo through the raft and he could barely breathe as he was laughing so hard. His reputation would live long and grow with the apocryphal tale of his heroic rescue. I am not sure to this day he ever intended to go through with the execution.
SHOCKER
I cannot remember ever having formal science lessons in my primary school. We had the regulation nature table where I had secreted my unwanted milk. We would spend fleeting moments observing, discussing and drawing the metamorphosis of tadpoles and stirring the poor creatures around rapidly with our pencils when Miss wasn’t looking. We made bark rubbings from trees when the weather was warm and our teachers decided they needed a break from the classroom. We would file out into the gleaming sunshine from a gloomy classroom and squint at the day. It was a glorious treat to be free from the those four walls, even if it meant spending the whole time breaking the points of our crayons and tearing the paper on the roughened carcass of an old oak tree that stood in the lane at the side of the school.
We did not have playing fields at Milverton County and were severely hampered when it came to playing soccer matches with other schools as we only experienced the bounce of the ball on concrete. We were not experts in the sliding tackle or the heroic dive of the goalkeeper because of the nature of concrete and its damaging effects upon the skin. The playground did not offer the greatest scope for our science lessons either and the only memorable practical we ever had involved Trevor Rothwell bringing to school a pump action, water powered rocket. It was not the greatest lesson of science I had ever experienced It consisted mainly of Mr. Harrison and Trevor repeatedly filling, pumping, releasing and collecting the aforementioned missile while the remainder of the class slowly lost interest after the third launch. Things brightened up moderately when the launch pad somehow toppled during the final countdown. The rocket, instead of shooting into the sky with a majestic fart of water squirting out of its rear end, flew at an angle of ten degrees to the horizontal scattering the class like swirling tadpoles to avoid being speared by the wayward projectile. It hit a pane of glass in one of the classrooms and cracked it from corner to corner.
We spent the rest of the day fantasising about the possibilities. What if it had smashed straight through the window and killed the teacher? What if it had hit one of us and killed us? Would you come to my funeral? Do you think we would have had a day off in memoriam? Would you have beaten up Trevor Rothwell if it had killed me? It was a far cry from the intended discussion on water pressure, velocity and trajectory that I’m sure Mr. Harrison had planned.
No! Science wasn’t the strongest subject at Milverton County Junior School and so I had to discover the great world of Physics, Biology and Chemistry for myself. I was given a standard chemistry set that most boys of my generation received at one time or another. I was fairly young when I given it as a birthday present and despite Nobelian efforts I never managed to complete an experiment successfully but I did spill various chemicals onto various floor coverings until my mother finally took the kit away and stashed it in the rubbish. I made one interesting discovery during this very early stage as a scientist. I observed, by practical demonstration, that the design of the test tube holder had a serious flaw. Its narrow base was stable only on a north - south axis. If I touched the tubes in an east - west direction the whole piece of apparatus was doomed to fall. I am still of that opinion today and feel there must be a market somewhere for a test tube holder with a cross-shaped base. Had this design been introduced before my foray into the world of science I may have kept my treasured Chemistry set and the world could now know how to turn base metal into gold.
My experiences into the world of biology were long and varied. I concentrated mainly on human anatomy and the destruction of life forms. Some of these experiences I have detailed earlier and others I may mention later but it was the world of Physics that gave me the greatest satisfaction. Like most kids I was fascinated with how things worked and was encouraged by my Dad to dismantle and assemble machines if it was safe and sensible to do so. He would often come home with an artefact from work or something that he had managed to buy in the Thrift Shop. Once he arrived with a set of second world war Morse code tappers and I spent hours learning the various dots and dashes with John Bowler. We never really had a wire long enough to make the exercise worthwhile and the nearest we got to communicating this way was when he locked himself in our bathroom and I shut myself in my bedroom and we tapped away contentedly. It would have been far more effective to shout through the two closed doors but with a little imagination we could save the world from the Nazi threat or let each other know that it was time to leave the planet to avoid the impending giant asteroid collision.
The greatest fun I had with physics was when I carried out illicit experiments. One of my greatest achievements was when I wired up a toy intercom system to the speaker in the television. My intention was to listen to all the programmes I was missing. I always had to go to bed before my sister and as soon as I was old enough to realise I resented this tremendously. The intercom ruse was my compensation. On one of the rare occasions when my mother was not in the house I unscrewed the back of the T.V. and connected two wires to the loud speaker. The wires were black and thin and were easily hidden in the casing of the television stand. After replacing the back of the set I hid the wires under the carpets all the way back to my bedroom. The television was situated in a corner of the room which made the exercise easy. By the time I had finished there was not a bulge or exposed wire to be seen and to cap it all I could even run the wire beneath my bed so that the receiver could be easily hidden from view.
Joy of joys. I put up no protest at going to bed that evening and settled quickly under the blankets to listen to the shows. However, there was an unexpected bonus from my activities. Not only could I pick up the sounds from the television programmes but the T.V. speaker itself acted as a microphone and I could hear every sound my parents and sister made in the lounge. Oh glory! Every conversation could be monitored but I had to be careful. If I were ever to mention an item of gossip I had overheard through my spying system then the game would be up.
It is a dangerous thing being able to overhear conversations that are not intended for one’s ears and I could have heard all kinds of unpleasant things about me. But that is the nature of the self-centred child. Why didn’t they talk about me? My enthusiasm for covert monitoring began to wane very rapidly and I resented the intrusion of their conversation into the dialogue of the T.V. programmes.
Now my master receiver had a volume control and a broadcast button on it and to relieve the monotony I would depress it quickly and await the results. It caused a clicking sound to emit from the television downstairs and generated much puzzlement amongst my family. The first night I tried this my Mum thought there was someone tapping on the window and I could hear my Dad gingerly pulling back the curtains to see which unwelcome visitor was treading down his plants to peck at his window. It caused me great amusement to hear the various suggestions as to where this sound was coming from. They ranged from death watch beetle to the cheap quality of coal they had had delivered cracking in the fire. Like all gamblers I eventually overplayed my hand and started making breathing noises into the set or scratching my nail over the mike at my end. It caused great consternation but what I failed to realise was that at some juncture Mum and Dad had decided that the fault lay with the television and had called Radio Rentals to check it out. AAAAAAAaaaaaaggghhhh!
It did not take the technician more than two seconds to spot the offending wires and relate the problem to my parents. All hell broke loose and my equipment was confiscated and destroyed. 'Don’t you know how dangerous it is to mess with electricity?' 'We don’t own this set it is only rented. If you had damaged it we would have had to replace it! Where do you think we are going to get the cash for that?' 'But....' It was no use arguing. I had became too clever for my own good and had to pay the price.
I knew how dangerous electricity was because earlier that year I had dismantled one of my transformers on my electric train set to see how it worked. I removed the metal cover with a small screwdriver and looked at the array of coils, wires and magnets that managed to reduce two hundred and forty volts down to twelve. The components smelt warm, dusty and hummed with mystery. I prodded the large black rectangle situated in the centre of the base with my screwdriver. In my ignorance I did not realise that this was a magnet and the screwdriver was gripped hard in its field. I was amused by this phenomenon and repeated the sequence. Unfortunately my screwdriver slipped and as I grabbed I must have touched some live part of the device as a shot of power punched its way through my body like an express train. My arms straightened by involuntary reaction and I was thrown across my bedroom without my feet touching the ground. I lay stunned and silent on my bed thinking what might have been the result.
I unplugged the transformer and replaced the cover. My lesson had been learned and I was lucky to escape so lightly. It would be a long time before I messed with mains electricity again but my curiosity for science never diminished.
DOG DAY AFTERNOONS
Why is it that when I look back the summers seemed warmer and the winters always crisp with frost or snow? Is my memory playing tricks or did we really experience true seasons that distinguished themselves in defined units? I could walk to school in October and see the piles of autumn leaves gathered by the road sweepers inviting me to leap in or kick them into the air. They lined the paths like sentries in regular heaps awaiting the lorry to collect them. The trick was to only kick dry piles as wet leaves do not fly or crunch, spin and float. Wet leaves make you slip, very hard and ruin your trousers. My trousers, like all my friends trousers, were short ones that reached the knee. They were grey, rough flannel and were held tightly around my skinny waist by an elasticated belt that clipped together at the front with two 'S' shaped hooks. I think the theory was that it was so much cheaper to treat a grazed knee than to repair a torn pair of trousers so we shivered our way through the autumn gusts, winter frosts and spring storms with our knees shivering and goose pimples dotting our thighs.
Winters seemed darker and colder than now. Roads were quieter and paths less busy. Large icicles would hang dangerously from the railway bridge and struggling station staff would be seen occasionally knocking down the lethal daggers with long poles. We watched admiringly as the slivers of ice plummeted to the pavement below and smashed into a million fragments. The rest of our journey home was spent in fantasising about what effect a two foot icicle would have if it made a direct hit on an unprotected head.
Spring was probably the most unpredictable time of year. Just as we thought we could walk to and from school without our duffle coats, the frost would return and our less than ample bodies shivered home through a biting northerly wind. If we wrapped up warmly in the morning we could just as easily finish up parched and sweating by the time we arrived home because of an unexpected warm spell.
It was the Summer that held the prospect of long, glorious, unfilled days. Time stretched before us as groups of kids played in, on or around the river. Some kicked a ball on the soccer pitch and perfected their skills of spitting, swearing and fouling. Others built dens out of piles of grass that had been freshly cut and heaped along the edges of the field. Seeds, pollen, straw and weed matted their hair and inched its way down the backs of shirts and blouses. No-one I knew suffered from hay fever or asthma. We would have grass fights or throw grass darts at each other that would stick to our clothes. Some kids could make fabulous sounds by holding a blade of grass between the balls of their thumbs and blowing hard. Spears were made from heavy headed bull rushes and we would often cut ourselves on the razor sharp edge of the reeds as we collected our weapons.
Those with more energy would gather vast quantities of the cut grass and build a circular fort of green. Sides would then be chosen to attack or defend and battle would commence. The air would be thick with flying balls of grass and heaps of ecstatic, sweaty children would roll and grapple in the chaos that followed a successful attack. Eventually one poor soul would be singled out for torture and they would be pinned to the floor as handfuls of grass would be stuffed relentlessly down the neck, inside the belt or up the legs of the trousers. I suffered this treatment on more than one occasion and discovered that the only effective response was to stop struggling and let them do their worst. The victim emerged from the melee looking like an overstuffed scarecrow, unable to breath successfully owing to the constricting pressure of clothes on the chest and stomach. It was all good humoured stuff and towards the early part of the evening things would quieten down and we would swap rude stories or play 'true, love, dare, kiss or promise.'
I thought this game was stupid but always joined in. How was anyone to know if they asked a truth question that I was telling the truth.? I very rarely told the truth anyway so I couldn’t even be sure myself. I didn’t love anybody so I could easily get out of that one. I broke promises on a fairly regular basis and most of us had forgotten what had been promised by the end of the game anyway. The only really exciting aspect to this game was dare and most of us would have been just as happy playing a game called 'dare '. However there were one or two girls in our company who enjoyed 'love' element of the game and some of us were humiliated into kissing or forced to be kissed by the more daring nymphets on the estate. My first kiss was with a close neighbour called Viv and it involved her taking me into the bushes, throwing me onto my back and sitting on my stomach whilst she kissed and licked my face for what seemed like an eternity. I could have only been nine or ten and I did not find the experience satisfying or arousing. What followed were anxious days of waiting for Viv to have a baby because I knew that was how they were made. I think Viv knew better because she made no reference to the event and seemed to be very casual about being pregnant.
Dare was the best choice of all and it was great fun inventing more and more outrageous tasks for people to perform. There were those amongst us who thought that daring someone to show us their willy was the ultimate in entertainment. I’d seen my willy and I wasn’t that impressed so I wasn’t going to be too impressed with anyone else’s. The girls’ anatomies did have a certain fascination for me although there were only two girls who dared go this far and once I’d seen them once the novelty soon wore off. No, it was the more spectacular dare, the dare which required fortitude, inventiveness and derring-do that made the heart skip a beat and shot metal into a boy’s veins.
Scrumping apples from the Victorian House was one sure fire way of turning the stomach. A number of us, in the past, had tried but failed. We knew there was a witch and a murderer who lived there. He had a cane and an old bull terrier that prowled the far reaches of his garden. It snarled and gurgled malevolently if it even heard us whispering on the outside of the gate. We had looked over the wall now and then but never dared venture to climb in. It was Dennis Woodhead who nearly died of fright one day when we gave him a bunk up to see if he could reach some apples growing temptingly close to the top of the wall. The wall itself was around eight feet high and the top was capped with rounded concrete into which was buried shards of broken bottles. It was almost impregnable. As Dennis struggled to grip the top of the wall without tearing his hands to shreds his face met that of the old witch who, unbeknown to us, was atop a pair of step ladders about to prune the tree. She let out a screech of rage. Dennis responded with a screech of terror and we tumbled into a pile at the base of the wall, scared senseless by what just occurred. Before we had chance to turn tail and run the old witch began hurling stones and earth over the wall that fell in showers upon our unprotected heads. We scrambled free and ran off swearing revenge.
It was on the occasion of a particularly daring set of dares that we reached the point where three of us were dared to collect twelve apples from the Victorian House and return within the hour. Dennis, John and I had all refused kisses or promises earlier in the game and were therefore commissioned for this task. It would involve a high speed cycle to Rugby Road and an almost unplanned assault on the garden risking rabid dog, mad axe man and the curse of the devil woman in the process. It was a task that had to be done and we set off with heavy hearts and second hand bikes to reach our goal. Even the Lone Ranger, Zorro or Flash Gordon had never faced a peril like this before.
We arrived within five minutes at the stone wall and pondered our fate. Who was going to leap in and how were they going to get out? We permeated all the possibilities. It might mean that three would go in and only two might return. The best idea we could come up with was to cover an area of broken glass with some old clothes or sacking. One of us would be vaulted over and begin throwing fallers over the wall to the other two. Before the dog brought our volunteer down or they were turned to stone by the witch, a second volunteer would lean over the wall in an attempt to pull the first brave adventurer back from the brink of extinction. It would work! There was however one fatal flaw. None of us was willing to be the apple thrower and time was running out.
The sun was getting lower in the sky as we bickered over who was best for the job. Dennis insisted it couldn’t be him because the old lady might recognise him from before. This was a lousy argument as she didn’t know who he was in the first place and secondly he was likely to captured and killed anyway so what difference did it make? It was a lousy argument but he pointed out that he was both older and bigger than both of us and therefore it wasn't going to happen regardless. We felt that there he’d got a point. Whether the point was he was stronger and would be more able to pull us back over the wall or he was stronger and would more likely give us a thump if we didn’t shut up, we never discussed and so we were down to two.
It was to be decided by pulling straws. It was the only fair way. A fairer way would have been three straws but that argument was closed. Dennis went in search of two straws and we sat quietly, about to decide the almost certain demise of a mate. I’ve never been the luckiest of gamblers and short straws seem to gravitate towards me. This day was to be no exception. My heart sank as we compared the two blades. It was me for the high jump. But for once this was not going to be my unlucky day for at that moment, as we looked in silence at each other, me with heavy heart and the other two thinking, 'Let’s throw the idiot over the wall and run for it anyway!' a man hobbled up the path with an old bull terrier waddling by his side on a lead. He looked at us puzzled for a moment and said, 'Hello boys. Do you want some apples?' I could have kissed the ugly, slobbering face of his bull terrier with joy. 'I’ve got a garden full of fallers and it kills my back to pick them up. If you clear them for me you take what you like.'
In seconds we had wheeled our bikes into the garden through the wrought iron gate at the front of the house. We spent around fifteen minutes hurtling around the small orchard piling the bruised and rotting apples onto the compost and making a significant pile of relatively undamaged ones for ourselves. Dennis looked apprehensive when the old lady came out of the kitchen door with three glasses of pop and some digestive biscuits but she made no sign of recognition. We drank gratefully and stashed the biscuits into our pockets. I think we were only meant to have one each but we were too excited to think manners. The old man disappeared into the potting shed and came out with two old hessian sacks. We filled them with our treasured apples and wheeled our bikes in cumbersome fashion back to Edmondscote Road.
On our way we talked about our good luck and what we should tell the others, who by this time had seen each other's genitals at least twice, kissed each other at least twice and had promised undying fraternity at least twice to the assembled company. We decided on the best lie we could. It was a story of bravery and fortitude where three gallant heroes ran the gauntlet of canine ferocity, harridan curses and shotgun fire to capture our prize. It was a tale of sneaking into potting sheds to steal sacks, of finding a secret entrance that we swore we would never reveal to another living soul and a tale of snapping twigs and creaking gates that very nearly brought about our capture. It was a tale long in the telling, wide in imagination and riddled with inconsistencies. We scoffed large quantities of apples as the sun finally sank and most of the company were as sick as dogs that night because they had eaten too many of the fallers. I'm not sure we ever revealed the true unfolding of events. It was a dare to remember.
ON THE BANKS OF THE COOL SHALIMAR
My bike held the key to freedom. It opened up the town for exploration and made journeys effortless that once seemed endless. I had borrowed friends’ two wheelers and was quite competent but my mother fussed and worried herself so much that it wasn’t until my ninth birthday that I finally managed to persuade my parents I would not be crushed, dismembered or squashed on my first outing.
Dad had paid another visit to the Thrift Shop and had bought me a rather nice russet coloured cycle. It was as heavy as all other bikes were heavy in those days but it was my key to the big, wide world. Although second hand, it gleamed as it leant against the coal shed. Its straight handlebars and leather saddle were practical but stylish. Dad must have spent hours polishing and oiling it because when I span the back wheel around with the pedals it clicked and hummed in a most satisfactory way taking a full minute to come to rest. The brakes had been tuned to be efficient without being too sharp. I had once seen Johnny Woodhead fly over his handlebars when applying his front brake too heavily and we had to carry him and his wrecked bike back home to the horror of his parents who appeared more concerned about the state of his bike than the growing lump on the back of his head.
I wheeled my machine into the October sunshine and straddled the cross bar with secret pride and cycled joyously up the road planning all my journeys for the coming month. There were no helmets for cyclists, in fact in those days you were considered a bit of a wimp if you wore a helmet on a motor bike. We didn’t use padlocks either. They were unnecessary. If you found your bike missing on the estate it was assumed that someone had borrowed it and in all cases I can remember the machine was returned undamaged to its original location.
We weren’t into wheelies or bike acrobatics although we did enjoy hill climbing and jumps. Our bikes were too cumbersome to throw around but their sturdiness gave them a life expectancy far greater than some more modern racing cycles. I was not allowed to travel to junior school on my bike and I resented this greatly. The Rugby Road was considered too deadly and in those days bikes were only ridden on the road. If you were seen riding on the path by a policeman there was a strong likelihood of being stopped. I was once even pulled over for scooting my bike along the path. I was threatened with dire consequences for not using the public highway and for not having lights. My justification for scooting on the path was because I didn’t have any lights but this seemed to be an inadequate defence. We were scared of the law and I pushed my bike the rest of the way home.
My Dad thought it was a good idea to fit lights after my brush with the law and installed a Thrift Shop dynamo to the rear of my frame. The unit itself was a huge chromium plated barrel that sprang onto the tyre with a resounding click when first engaged. It had the effect of dragging on the back tyre and the friction made pedalling twice as hard. It wore a track into the wall of the tyre itself and made a humming noise that could have attracted bees from a radius of five hundred yards. It was cumbersome and embarrassing and I tended to avoid using it at all costs.
My fist major outing was with John Bowler. We had arranged to go out to Old Milverton village. It was only a couple of miles away but in all our nine years we had never explored its possibilities. This was where Trevor Rothwell lived and we arranged to meet him to explore a local farm. We had never been to a farm before and the prospect was very exciting. Old Milverton is now practically part of Leamington Spa. The estates have slithered their way along the Old Milverton Road and it is now almost impossible to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. But for our adventure we had to cycle to the top of Princes Drive. Push our bikes across the dangerous Rugby Road and then cycle, most of the way downhill, into the Old Village. A journey of two miles but worlds apart. The smells and sounds were country sounds. The fields and hedgerows were strange and inviting. The village church seemed quaintly English and of great importance to our inexperienced eyes. Tired horses leaned over gates, their matted manes buzzing with flies. Cow pats littered the road that led to the milking parlour and we hesitantly made our way up the drive that led to the farm.
Trevor greeted us enthusiastically. He was a village boy and us townies rarely paid a call. He showed us where to leave our bikes and we proceeded on a grand tour of the farm. It was one of the most enjoyable days of that year. We dipped old jam jars into the large pond where brightly coloured dragonflies hovered and skimmed over the glistening surface. Strange birds squawked and chirruped in the bushes as we climbed the trees looking for old nests and deserted eggs. We climbed towers of hay by the barn and threw ourselves off into the loose piles below falling like the diving crows that swirled and cawed above our heads. We watched fascinated as the vet arrived to inject the cows and pull strange growths off their bodies and from inside their ears. We reverently entered the churchyard to brush moss off the gravestones and read the dates of the dead villagers who rested beneath our feet. We even entered the church itself and smelt the mix of damp walls and dusty cushions. It echoed eerily as we made spooky noises to frighten ourselves and we read about the missionaries who were in even more remote places than Old Milverton doing good deeds and saving souls.
On leaving we burst into the sunlight and headed for a nearby field. It was here that we found a large, drainage pipe running through an embankment. It was around fifty feet long and six feet in diameter. The floor of the pipe was covered in vast quantities of slurry and mud which must have reached a depth of two to three feet because their remained only the top half of the pipe visible as we looked through. It would have been easy enough to climb over the embankment, walk the fifty feet or so and rejoin the outlet on the other side but John and I were struck with the idea of making a foray through the channel to see if it could be done. Trevor was not so enamoured and thought the whole project ridiculous. We worked it out that it would probably take ten to fifteen minutes to wade our way through the mire and he could wait at the other end with our shoes, socks and trousers. Reluctantly he gathered our clothes together and headed off. We stepped hesitantly into the channel that led to the pipe. The mud was cold and cloying as it squeezed itself between our toes. We were buried up to our knees before we had reached the mouth of the pipe and already our legs were dragging with the strain of pulling our feet from the slime to move gradually forward.
The far end of the tunnel could be seen as a small semi-circular light and it invited us onwards. Slowly, bravely, majestically we trudged our way into the gloom. Strangely the mud did not smell, in fact it had quite a refreshing feel to it. There was no hint of effluence or garbage and the air inside the tunnel felt clean and cool compared to the sticky heat outside. By the time we had reached the half way point the mud was covering our waists and we regretted not removing our underpants. There would be some explaining to do when we got home. This central point in our journey was the turning point of our confidence. What began as a stroll had started to turn into an epic struggle against exhaustion and panic. We were at the point of no return but our skinny legs were really beginning to feel the strain. The mud seemed to grow thicker and its grip tightened on our failing muscles. The light was too dim to see the worried looks on each other's faces but the tremulous quality of our voices as we tried to make light of the situation gave the game away. We were both literally and metaphorically in deep shit!
We could hear Trevor’s voice urging us on from the far end of the tunnel but the harder we struggled the more bogged down we became. There was probably around twenty feet left to go but my limbs had begun to tremble with fatigue and my whole body began to shake involuntarily with cold, exhaustion and fear. Trevor offered to go for help but we insisted that he did not. There was no way we were going to be humiliated by being dragged from a mud filled hole in our underpants! It was John who finally decided on the only sensible course of action. Now up to this point only our under wear was filthy but to escape from the grip of the channel of doom John suggested that we swim across the surface of the mud the remainder of the way. This would, of course, involve us being completely covered from head to foot with the sticky substance but it seemed our only hope. The mud was of such a consistency that to swim it meant almost crawling across its surface. Once we had wrenched our lower bodies to the surface, and in the process covered ourselves from head to foot in slime, we scrambled the remaining distance to the exit where we thankfully threw ourselves wearily to the bank and panted and shook in the warm sun.
Trevor tried very hard not to be amused by the sight of us lying there with mud in every crevice, orifice, follicle and pore. We needed time to warm up before we cleaned ourselves up. This was yet another grave mistake for, as we lay there panting and dozing fitfully in the sun, what we didn’t notice was the mud drying like clay on our skin. I first realised what was happening when I tried to open my eyes and failed. 'I’ve gone blind!' I yelled as my lids finally popped open. John and I knew there was little time to lose before we would be baked into statues and for years to come be exhibited in school assemblies as icons of foolhardiness and impetuosity.
With Trevor in our wake we headed back to the pristine pond where we had dipped for minnows earlier in the day. Unhesitatingly we plunged in and began washing the clay from our bodies. Hair, ears, eyes, nose, nothing escaped our attention. By the time we had finished we now smelt of stagnant pond water but at least we had escaped the dreaded killer mud. We washed our shirts and underwear in the pond and dried ourselves in the sun before slipping on our clean, dry socks, shoes and trousers. We cycled back to Leamington with our wet clothes draped over our handlebars in the vain attempt of drying them before we reached home. There was no getting away with it as we were too tired to stay out any later. Our appetites and an overwhelming desire to be clean forced us back home. We both agreed on a story about falling into a pond from a broken branch and were duly punished and sent to bed after the sweetest of baths.
We certainly left our mark in old Milverton and it had made its mark on us. The tunnel to this day could still contain imprints of desperate, young boys' dirty hands on the damp walls and I wonder how long it was before the balance of nature took to right itself in the beautiful pond in which we had washed away the mud and fear.