Edmondscote Road part 3
GOING DOWN FOR THE THIRD TIME
Eddie and Bobby Clarke lived quite a long way up the road and I first met them down by the broken pipe. This was a place where fresh water dripped continuously from a twelve inch concrete pipe into a small pool before sliding over a two foot, red brick weir into the river. It lay directly across the playing field from the bottom of my garden and was an endless source of fascination. The little pool was often used by young fishermen who could afford a rod and line but not a keep net as it was used to house their catch temporarily. Quite often they would leave the fish in this murky pool and I would spend many a happy hour trying to corner them with my bare hands and return them to freedom. I sensibly stopped doing this when I saw Eddie Widkin's dad savaged by a small pike that had been lurking in the muddy water.
Eddie was the elder of the two Bobby was three years younger. I was the same age as Bobby. They were both blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned lads with a Scandinavian mother. Bobby was chubby cheeked and overweight while Eddie was tall and muscular. Bobby often giggled for no apparent reason and at first I thought he may have been a bit soft in the head. Eddie was more brusque and direct with a wonderful vocabulary of swear words that he didn’t hesitate to use when his brother's giggling got on his nerves. He wasn't averse to using his strength either. We would both take him on in wrestling matches in the long grass and he threw and clawed at us until, wounded and winded, we could take no more.
Eddie sometimes led us into situations that were a bit beyond our scope. Not long after I had got to know them, Eddie took his brother and me over to the railway arches to look at a couple "doing it" in a builder's shed. Bobby and I tried to look impressed but it wasn't until years later that I worked out they hadn't been wrestling. Eddie made suggestive comments and did strange things with his groin whilst Bobby and I nodded knowingly, understanding nothing. I even joined in with Bobby's nervous giggling.
Once Eddie, Bobby and I discovered an old aluminium water tank. It was around eight feet long, two feet deep, open at the top and covered in rivets and seams. On the base, at one end was a two inch hole that had been attached to an outlet pipe. The joy of this discovery knew no bounds for, with a little imagination and some secure bunging, we had a boat!
The River Leam at the waterfall is thirty yards wide but for most of its course through Leamington the river is only ten yards across. The only sporting folk seen on the river were the occasional canoeists and these were few and far between owing to fairly regular incidents of pollution at the time. We would sometimes arrive on the bank to see scores of dead or dying fish gasping in the poisonous brown foam that was making its way slowly down stream. It was heart breaking. It was amazing how the river recovered as, before long, we were back fishing and landing good sized fish.
Owning what was soon to become a boat posed a number of serious problems. The first was where to hide it since we were not the only children to frequent the banks of the Leam. The second was getting the tank below the level of the waterfall without being seen. Thirdly and most difficult was how to make good the seal around the plug hole.
Moving the boat was hard. We didn't dare risk floating it over the weir tied to a rope as it would probably sink. Our solution was to drag it along the bank to a secure spot in the nettles and wild raspberries that were inaccessible to most kids. We would have to do this at night to avoid being spotted and the usual route out of my bedroom window via the concrete porch was put to good effect.
One dark April evening we met as arranged and heaved the tank to its destination, foot by painful foot. We had only one torch between us, one that changed from red to green to yellow depending on which plastic tube you slid over the bulb. Eddie did most of the work, Bobby and I making gallant efforts to support him. It seemed to take hours although it was probably no more than thirty minutes. The hardest and most uncomfortable part was negotiating the stinging nettles and raspberries in the dark. The following morning I looked as though I had measles. We continued our efforts at camouflage the next day and made our treasure invisible to prying eyes.
We worked on making two oars out of old builder's planks. They were rough and full of splinters but proved to be quite effective in steering and manoeuvring the boat. The problem of bunging the hole caused the greatest problem. No amount of wedging or stuffing with old leather shoes or sacking served to seal the hole completely. We tested our attempts by pouring river water into the boat but the water poured through every time. The most successful seal in the end consisted of the top of a rubber wellington wrapped around a ball of cloth wedged firmly into the hole by banging it home with half a house brick. The device still leaked but we felt that the speed of the leak was insignificant for any trip of under an hour and we could always bail if necessary. We were ready to launch.
There was no ceremony, no flags or life jackets. Like Jumblies we went optimistically into the unknown. The problem proved to be finding the correct balance of bodies. With a flat bottomed vessel any movement on deck caused wild rocking and we learnt quickly from our mistakes. We all realised that if the craft overturned or took in too much water she would not float and could not then be salvaged. Bobby's demented giggling subsided into a satisfied smirk as we lurched from bank to bank. We eventually cruised downstream in a leisurely manner towards the dark woods on the far bank. This was uncharted territory. So near and yet so far if you had no means of crossing the river. We made land safely and scrambled up the bank. We secured the tank to a tree and set off to explore the woods that had tempted us for so many years.
Had we not found an old air raid shelter we might have returned without difficulty. At the corner of the wood we discovered a small brick dome which concealed a large and inviting underground room. There was no way of climbing down into the shelter as the floor was ten or fifteen feet below but Eddie was not to be denied. By hauling a long, gnarled tree trunk and lowering it carefully through the hole he provided an unsteady but effective ladder for us all to scramble down. The trunk, though narrow and rotten, bore his weight and mine. In a moment of rare sanity we decided to leave Bobby at the top in case we got stuck so that he could fetch help.
The shelter offered no surprises. It stank of urine and rotting things. We guessed it was a shelter from the Second World War but it could equally have been some mundane structure thrown down by the electricity or water board. It was too dark to see into corners and too cold and damp to stay long. Bobby shouted down questions and instructions. We made our way out making plans to return with food and blankets, candles and comforts to make it our den. We had spent some time exploring the wood and shelter and decided to make our way back to the boat.
As we returned to the river we noticed the craft appeared to be lying low in the water. Our makeshift bung had weakened and had let in a significant amount of dark green water and continued to do so. Frantic efforts to push the bung in more firmly served only to weaken it further and the top of the boat was almost level with the surface. We baled water out with our hands and shoes. If the craft sank we would either have to swim across (and neither Bobby or I could do that) or walk the mile or so back upstream across private farm land, over electric fences, past herds of unfriendly cattle and evade unfriendly farmers’ dogs.
We opted for the boat and seemed to be winning with the baling. The water was emptying faster than it was filling. We had to make the decision to go. Our tired arms were weakening by the minute and Eddie decided it was now or never. Gingerly we climbed aboard, our bodies soaked to the waist, and grabbing the oars that were floating across the deck, we paddled for our lives.
What we looked like from the bank I can only imagine. Three filthy, soaked and terrified youngsters thrashing about wildly in an old aluminium water tank that was slowly sinking. We paddled with as much dignity as we could muster but fear was in our hearts and water in our underpants. Under normal circumstances the effort we used to propel the tank across the river would have been more than sufficient to make it. The weight of the water on board created such drag, however, that we stopped eight feet from home. Without a glug or a whisper the tank sank beneath us and we all lunged for the bank. Through luck and instinct we made it safely to the bulrushes on our home bank. We squelched through the mud cutting our legs, hands and arms on the sharp green blades of reeds and rushes and collapsed, exhausted but safe on to the small dirt footpath that led home. Bedraggled and shoeless we returned to our respective houses, lies at the ready.
" I fell in Mum. I just slipped but I'm O.K."
I had the usual lecture, clip round the ear, bath and early night but I experienced a feeling of contentment. Safe, dry and secure in my own bed I determined that I would work extra hard at my underwater jogging sessions on the end of a rope.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Milverton County Infant and Junior School was on the Rugby Road, about a mile away from home. I was initially taken on the back of mum's bike but after a while my sister was entrusted to escort me. On the first day I remember screaming and refusing to let go of my mother. Although I was well settled by break time I managed to keep the screaming routine up for a week, ensuring that mum always left feeling sick with guilt. This ploy worked rather too well though, as it turned out. She got a job as a ‘dinner lady’ patrolling the playground.
School was either brilliant or diabolical. As I learnt to read I discovered the thrill of vicarious fear when I was allowed to choose any book from the book chest. One of my most memorable choices was, 'Struwelpeter.' I had selected one of the weirdest tales in the collection. It told the story of a boy who refused to cut his nails and ended up with his fingers chopped off. The picture of the frizzle-haired youth sobbing in pain as blood dripped from his mangled hands in bright red pools on the floor represented a fascinating image of adult retribution in the face of disobedience. The joy of unlimited imagination through fiction was the brilliant part of school.
Struwelpeter
As for the diabolical, that was unquestionably school dinners.
No one knew how to cook food at Milverton County, only how to boil it to destruction. They did this for exceptionally long periods of time. The denizens of the kitchen then let it all go cold and re-heated it for our delectation at midday. The effect of this on vegetables was poisonous. Swede became a watery red/grey mess that sat on the plate like vomit. Potatoes were inedible mush. I was very obstinate and on one occasion was forced to sit for a whole afternoon in front of my plate because I refused to eat such slop. Mrs. Barnes, a headmistress of some reputation, was summoned to the dining room. Had they brought the tailor from Struwelpeter's home town to cut off my fingers I could not have spooned the noxious substances past my lips but Mrs. Barnes gave strict orders that I was to remain at the table until I had eaten every bit. Finally, the cooks were instructed to switch off the lights in the dining room and I remained, a pathetic figure in the centre of the dark and echoing room.
I was no radical. I was as frightened of authority as the next infant but this was not a point of principle. I just could not shovel the stuff down my throat without retching. The impasse resolved itself eventually when a kindly cook sneaked out of the kitchen and emptied my plate into a slop bucket before returning it to the table. I sat sobbing quietly with my arms folded throughout. I don’t know whether she was acting on Mrs. Barnes’ instructions but I doubt it. Soon afterwards I started taking sandwiches for lunch.
My aversion to milk led to a similar situation. The government of the day issued a third of a pint of milk daily to each schoolchild. I hated the smell and taste and texture of plain milk although I loved custards, milkshakes and instant whips but during my first winter at school I was not yet brave enough to refuse it. I managed to gulp down the disgusting stuff because it was chilled from being stored outside in the frost which numbed my mouth and throat so that I couldn’t taste it. We often had to break a frozen, watery crust to get our straws in. When the warm spring mornings arrived, however, I could no longer bring myself to drink it. My plan was to be first at the crate, grab my bottle and head for the back of the room. A quick flick of the finger opened the top and for a couple of days I poured it away into the accommodating soil of a very large pot plant which stood by the nature table. The clamour of other kids collecting their bottles allowed this to pass unnoticed by the teacher or the rest of the class.
After a short time sour milk starts to smell. By the second or third day the stench had grown intolerable and tadpoles, fungi and flora were removed one by one from the nature table in an attempt to eliminate the odour. By the fourth day the table was bare except for a few sycamore wings from the previous autumn and a book on the life cycle of the frog. The pot plant was finally identified as the source of the offensive odour and the caretaker removed it to a covered walkway outside the class room which put paid to my plan permanently.
It wasn't until Junior School that the daily ration of milk became optional. I never understood why adults made such a fuss about how good it was for you. I observed the slow death of the class pot plant and ascribed it directly to four or five small bottles of Midland Counties full cream milk (together possibly with a few cold nights towards the end of April). I never found out.
THE BROOK IN THE POND
I was an incredibly naive child. I was gullible to the point of stupidity. On my first day in the junior school I was tricked by wily older pupils into believing the low wash basins in the toilets were the urinals and was only prevented from making a total embarrassment of myself by the intervention of another, less vindictive boy. I was persuaded to be wicket keeper for one of the playground matches. The wickets were painted on the red brick walls of the school and I stood next to the batsman to take up my position as I was unable to stand behind him. It was the first and only time in my life that I was knocked unconscious. A wild swing of the bat met the ball in mid flight, continued its perfect arc and then connected with the side of my forehead. I awoke in the staff room surrounded by concerned teachers and my mother, who was all for calling the police to arrest the child who had attacked me. The most interesting feature of my injury was that my skin had not broken and therefore there was no blood but I had a huge bump the size of an orange that crowned a deliciously evil black eye. I sported this trophy proudly for days after as it fascinated the other kids and made me some kind of folk legend for a while.
I was forever getting into one kind of scrape or another through sheer ignorance or innocence and to avoid further humiliation I developed the fine art of lying. I would make up such prefabrications that, after a while, even I started to believe in them. It was a slippery slope but stood me in good stead on many occasions not least with " The Mystery of the Brook in the Pond. "
Alastair Brook was never a very close friend of mine but we got on all right. He was more studious than me and not at all athletic or inclined to misbehave. He had a swathe of black hair that was brushed back hard over the top of his head. This had the effect of making him look in a state of permanent surprise as it tended to lift his eyebrows up at the centre. He wore thick rimmed glasses that weighed heavily on his face and left deep red marks on the sides of his nose.
He first came to my attention when he vomited over the back of David Sheriff during a silent reading period. We were given no warning and fortunately I was well away from the carnage that ensued. All was quiet as Miss Montgomery busily mounted our pathetic efforts of Marion Richardson handwriting exercises on the front wall. I say pathetic because we were using school issue pens that were dipped in ceramic ink pots tucked into each corner of our desks. The pens themselves were wooden stems inserted into a small tin tubes. The tube then had a brass nib, selected from a tray of brass nibs, inserted between it and the stem. The process of assembling the pen initially took half a lesson. The control of the ink, nibs, paper and hand were often too much for some of us and the final results were often deemed less than satisfactory by our stern arbiter. Being left handed I tended to drag my hand across the wet ink and smudge the lines into obscurity. This issue was eventually remedied by me turning the paper at forty five degrees and writing downwards. The Chinese don't have this issue.
On this particular occasion we made some effort to read silently and attempted to spot which of the cursive creations was to be honoured with a place on the wall. Maybe Alastair's myopia was the cause of the problem, the stress of trying to focus on the scrawls on the walls may have been too much for him. Suffice it to say that David Sheriff took the full force of the eruption on the back of his crisp, white shirt.
Chaos ensued with chairs tipping over, children screeching, laughing or holding their noses in disgust. The lesson was brought to a halt and we all filed out into the playground making rude remarks about David's shirt. I was appointed to take Alastair to the school office whilst Miss Montgomery took David to the cloakrooms to clean him up. Trevor Banks was appointed to collect the caretaker. On my return Mr. Stranks arrived with his bucket of sand, a shovel and mop cursing all children who had ever been born. I thought this a little unkind and somewhat blasphemous. Did he include Jesus in his universal condemnation? What about all the good people in the world? I resolved then and there that I would not make caretaking my career for two reasons. One - I did not want to turn into a child hating misery and two - I did not want to spend my life cleaning up sick from classroom floors. Now I am older I can see the connection more clearly.
Alastair seemed to think that me taking him to the school office was a great act of kindness. I was only following instructions. From that point on he seemed to attach himself to me and, though flattered at first, I started to resent his presence. He was like some giant raven that cawed at my shoulder. I was into everything. If there was stone throwing to be done I was there. Tree climbing, pea shooting, pulling the girls into the boys' toilets, Berry could be seen somewhere in the crowd. And who was that making disapproving noises at Berry's shoulder? Why it was Alastair! I was pretty patient but I needed space and so I became even more outrageous. He stuck to me closer than ever. Maybe he thought I needed salvation, guidance, a conscience. I do not know. Something had to be done.
A crowd of us had gathered around the school pond. It was not a spectacular pond but contained some extremely large goldfish all with their own names. It was a rectangular affair edged with large, concrete slabs that absorbed the heat of the summer sun. We were encouraged to sit and observe the animal life by the teachers and small groups would often gather and chat whilst trying to catch pond skaters with our hands or drop small stones on to the heads of unsuspecting fish. We had assembled this day to watch Trevor Banks try and retrieve a shilling coin from the murky depths. It had rolled in the previous day and we were all offering advice and encouragement as to where it might be hidden. Trevor, with sleeve rolled up to the armpit, was fruitlessly sifting the mud at the bottom of the pond. Alastair, who had an annoying habit of knowing best, had somehow made his way to the front of the crowd and was directing Trevor's efforts with a certainty that hit a raw nerve with me. I didn't stop to think of the consequences. I nudged the earnest Alastair, who was by now leaning over the surface of the water trying to avoid the glare of the sun reflecting back in his face. It wasn't a push or shove. It was a nudge. It was just enough to send him toppling head first into the weeds and rushes with a satisfying slap!
I relished the moment for a split second and then offered my hand to pull him out. He spluttered, yelled and cried, coughed, choked and screamed, spat slime, water and weed in all directions as I hauled back onto the edge of the pond. Trevor Banks was also pretty wet as most of the excess water had displaced itself over the unfortunate youth.
In the interrogation that followed my skills in lying created an apocryphal story that resulted in those present being absolved of all responsibility. I stated that I had been accidently nudged by Steven Walsgrave who was standing behind me. He was so shocked and taken unawares by this outrageous accusation that he blurted out someone had pushed him from behind and so it continued in a circle, around the pond. It was concluded that Alastair must have been responsible for the first nudge himself and created the circular domino effect. The pond remained out of bounds for the rest of the summer term.
COUSIN NICK AND THE BUNG
I regularly suffered from car sickness and my parents tried all manner of devices to cure me. Our black Morris Minor was a delightful little car but for a small kid it had the disadvantage of low seats and high windows. My earliest journeys involved me rocking backwards and forwards on the cold leather seats unable to see where I was going. My only recourse to this inhuman treatment was to throw up over the back of my Mum's neck and make everyone else feel as uncomfortable as me. They had me sitting on newspapers, taking travel sickness pills, tying lumps of chain to the back bumper to prevent static building up inside. No invention known to man was ignored in the never ending quest to cure me of my anti-social behaviour.
Once, on returning from Edinburgh, I had made it as far as Leicester without mishap and my Auntie Molly, who was coming back with us for a visit, rewarded my Herculean efforts of restraint with a chocolate bar purchased at a garage stop. We managed another three miles before I repaid her kindness with my usual back seat performance. Both Molly and I were in the dog house for the remainder of the journey.
One such desperate foray was the visit to Hastings upon Sea with Auntie Betty and family. She was a round and blossoming woman who had a riotous sense of humour that I never quite understood. Her conversation was peppered with sexual innuendo and therefore missed me by a universe but brought the adults within hearing into fits of laughter. The ribald comments were probably less funny than my complete innocence in asking what was so amusing which brought even louder guffaws from the assembled throng. I could just about live with this until my sister started understanding her jokes and wouldn't explain them to me. This was a pain I could hardly bear. Eventually, to salvage at least a little dignity from my naiveté, I pretended I knew what the innuendo was and laughed along with the rest.
Betty was married to Uncle Sid. Neither of them were our blood relations but my Mum had been such close friends with Betty that she became a part of the family by a process of osmosis. Their children Nicky and Vicky were regarded as cousins.
Betty's bonhomie and enthusiasm for life had somehow rubbed off on my mother and she was eventually persuaded to go on a joint caravanning holiday for two weeks to Hastings and St. Leonards. Betty had shown her photographs of their delightful caravan situated a stone's throw from the beach and with a little persuasion and a gentle push from the children Mum thought that it might be a jolly jape to risk some of the minor discomforts involved in the life of a traveller.
A journey to the seaside was a major event in my life and, as we neared our destination. the whole family were all eager to be the first to see the sea. We travelled in convoy down the winding A roads to the south coast. We arrived without much incident and turned into the caravan site with a feeling of excitement and, for my mother, a hint of apprehension. We pulled up outside Betty's caravan and spent ten minutes admiring its sleek lines, all its mod cons and its ideal position overlooking the sea and within two minutes walk from the site shop. We then proceeded, on mass, to the location of our van.
My mother's face dropped as we approached what can be only be described as a sad substitute for a caravan. Heavily repainted in dark factory blue the vehicle sat on concrete blocks looking for all the world like a builders' van. It just needed a few spades and a concrete mixer by the side to complete the picture. Whether my Mum and Dad exchanged glances I do not know but I can imagine they did. Mum's would have been a look that would signal to my father her desire to kill Betty, Sid and their children and any of their relations, friends, pets or neighbours. My Dad's would have been one of quiet resignation and, hidden behind that look, would have been his calculation that no matter how delicately he trod during the holiday it would take only one wrong move or word and we would all be packed back into the Morris and be heading for home before the door of the van had slammed shut.
I loved it. It was cosy, warm and full of surprises that folded out or tucked away. The glow of the gas filament in the light as it putt-putted away, the smell of cooking as it permeated the bedrooms and the creaks and unstable slant of the floor all leant itself to the big adventure that was to be our holiday. My joy at being able to run around the camp site and play with kids whose accents I had never encountered before, to stay out until darkness fell, to smell the sea and play in the dunes was liberation beyond my wildest dreams.
The situation did not improve for my mother despite the gorgeous weather of the first day. My sister fell asleep on her stomach whilst on the beach and she ended up in Hastings General Hospital with blisters the size of small pancakes on her back. She was in agony. My sympathies lay with her and I wished her good luck. She was carefully ushered into the car to visit casualty which was a relief for me as I could then, in my caring brotherly fashion, continue with my game of football with some new found friends.
By the end of the first week things were looking up. Val had recovered enough to be outside again, my Dad had repaired what ever was causing the car to cut out every two miles and my mother had finally got to grips with the calor gas stove, which had plagued her standard cooking techniques for the first few days. We hit the beach as a family. Val was tucked beneath a rather nice beach umbrella that had been purchased on her behalf, my mother was loaded down with sandwiches, thermos flasks of tea, cigarettes and enough boiled sweets to see her through to the next decade. It was at this point my Dad suggested a boat trip. We would hire one of the little outboards and have a gentle cruise around the bay. Sid declined the offer but Nick, after protesting he could not swim was cajoled into joining the adventure by me, who threatened to stuff his trunks with sand if he didn't stop whining and join in. The women declined, considering the venture too risky, too pointless or too stupid. Had we only listened to their objections at that point we could have saved ourselves a lot of hardship.
It began pleasantly enough. The boat owner gave Dad a quick run down on the controls and we chugged merrily out towards the open sea. It was the days before health and safety and lifejackets were not provided. The waves were small and we cruised gently in a long arc around the bay. At about the midpoint my father's confidence in me had got the better of him and he offered me the chance to steer. I leapt at the chance and after a bit of careful maneuvering, and some precarious rocking of the boat, we exchanged places and continued chugging merrily out to sea. Whether it was the gentle lapping of the waves on the bow, the warmth of the afternoon sun or the steady stream of carbon monoxide spewing from the outboard I don't know but I started to relax by leaning on the arm of the engine a little too heavily. The result was the propeller, unbeknown to me, was slowly rising in the water and heading upwards as the angle of the motor increased. When the propeller hit the surface I fell into the bottom of the boat as the arm of the outboard no longer offered any resistance. The engine screamed as the prop thrashed around on surface and threw the boat into a tight left hand circle. Nick screamed " I can't swim...I can't swim. " I felt that it was not appropriate, at that moment, to point out to him that I was not the greatest swimmer in the world either and if my Dad was going to save anyone it was damn well going to be me!
The engine screamed like a demented banshee, Nick screamed like a terrified ten year old and the boat lurched heavily as Dad and I desperately changed places. He cursed me in something heavily Scottish as he made to push the propeller back into the water. Unfortunately the petrol pipe had managed to loop itself around the clamp that held the motor to the boat which effectively locked the engine into a horizontal position. With a mighty heave Dad yanked on the handle and the engine crashed back into the water and thumped heavily on the stern of the boat. Our troubles were not over as this action resulted in two further complications. The first was that the fuel pipe now started pumping petroleum into the bottom of the craft and the second was the drainage bung, situated in the lowest portion of the hull, was knocked into the air and danced on a fountain of sea water as we started to sink. Drainage bungs were never good to me.
" I can't swim...I can't swim. " repeated cousin Nick, now a gibbering apology of a boy, in the front of the vessel. Our only piece of fortune that day was that at least the bung landed back into the boat and not floated off into the channel. Dad had the presence of mind to grab it and, with the strength of a plumber, thrust it back into the offending orifice.
It had suddenly gone quiet. The engine had cut out. Nick was slobbering silently. I was breathing heavily and looking for the retribution that was bound to come and my father sat there, ankle deep in sea water and diesel, looking helplessly at a broken fuel pipe and a tide that was gradually taking us out to sea. As we drifted powerless around the headland the waves started to increase in size and the smell of fuel and the undulating motion of the boat stimulated my inner ear and I was just on the verge of throwing up over the side, or on cousin Nick, if he didn't shut up, when a thirty seater pleasure steamer chugged up to us and offered us a line. The ignominy that Dad suffered, as we were hauled into dock, I could never imagine. Suffice it to say that my freedom on the camp site was curtailed somewhat for a couple of days.
Too soon it was time to leave. It was certainly a holiday to relish. I think Mum secretly enjoyed the caravanning experience once she had come to terms with the classless society of campers. Val had recovered enough to enjoy the company of one or two dubious looking boys and I had turned the story of the rogue engine into an heroic epic where Dad had saved our lives. We never did go back.
THE LAND OF THE ATTIC
To enter the attic of our house needed agility and technique. It required standing on a ledge to get close enough to push the board that was the entrance into the loft, a leap from the top banister a haul and pulling up with weak arms and a scramble to safety into the itchy blanket of insulation that my father had laid long before energy saving had become vogue. Treading the rafters had become too dangerous a pastime for my father to risk me foraying into the darkness with my three coloured torch. It was a playground that he knew I could not resist. He decide to tackle the problem head on by encouraging me to use the attic by building a floor in the centre of the roof space, fitting lights at either end and walling the remaining loft space with plywood, in the days when plywood was within the financial reach of the working man. An old wooden ladder was then let down once access had been achieved.
This was my realm. I shared it with only with a few spiders, the occasional sparrow and my father's old plumbing tools. My sister would sometimes join me, if I had a special project on the go. She needed me to lower the old ladder which I would let down from above. She never mastered the technique of getting through the hatch from the banister. The central pitch of the roof provided me with the full length of the house to play in and although it was bitterly cold in winter and stiflingly hot in the summer the attic became my proud domain.
I would practice puppet shows and built a small theatre for my Pelham puppets. All my shows were based around the story of Hansel and Gretel as the only three puppets I owned were Hansel, Gretel and the Witch. The Witch was my favourite because her mouth moved, unlike those of her victims in the gingerbread house. The mechanism for moving her mouth puzzled me. It involved a string attached to the centre of her head and, rather than letting her jaw drop, the movement required the whole of her body to be lifted whilst her jaw remained in the same position. It seemed to me like using a sledge hammer to crack a nut and it gave the unfortunate old hag the impediment of bouncing up and down every time she spoke. This was a minor drawback however and on more than one occasion we sold tickets to our parents to see the fabulous puppet show. The shows consisted of a dash through the fairy tale, interspersed with records played at 78 rpm instead of 45 to which the puppets danced maniacally about. There would inevitably be an interval where we sold Mum and Dad biscuits which we had previously stolen from the tin in the kitchen. I was born to be an entrepreneur!
The pride and joy of the attic was my Triang train set. As I grew older my tiny bedroom could no longer accommodate both me and my railway. I made the move gradually but by the time Dad and I had completed the procedure the miniature masterpiece was set for major expansion.
The attic provided scope for model building. Wood, papier-mâché, plastic kits were all part of the master plan and, over the period of some months, I gradually swapped, bought, begged or had given to me pieces of track. There were curves, straights, level crossings, points and intersections. I made tunnels, banks, stations, cottages, farms and factories all totally out of scale but with a little suspension of disbelief the effect worked. I then constructed a series of long wooden shelves that, by the time I finished, went down the right hand plywood wall, turned ninety degrees left along a large wooden surface where my town was taking shape. It then turned again travelling over the open half of the attic along suspended wooden platforms to bring the track back to wall supporting my original layout.
It was a complete circumnavigation of the house. Admittedly it looked a little shaky in places but my green diesel with its glowing light would speed around disappearing behind the chimney into the darkness and reappearing with a whirr of its tiny electric motor to my greatest satisfaction. It was about this time that Triang, in its wisdom, decided to change its track from a bulky grey plastic to a flimsy, brown sleeper construction and I then spent the following year trying to replace it all. It was a mammoth task but it was achieved by the following Christmas. It was the first time I had felt cheated by the march of technical progress. It was not going be the last.
I was around twelve years of age when the greatest disaster in the attic occurred. I was always one for adventure and the plywood wall that my father had built to protect me from the rafters hid a dark and secret corner of the roof from me. To my knowledge there was nothing interesting stored behind the wall but a boy needs to discover the mysteries of the unknown.
In badly fitting, well worn slippers and armed only with a candle, I prised open one of the panels that had for so long kept me at bay. By gently easing the nails away with a screwdriver at one end I made myself an access point. I slipped behind the wall with little difficulty and entered the cavity of gloom. I had made sure my entrance was at the far end of the attic, away from the hatch, so that no adult, poking an inquisitive head up would see that the plywood had been disturbed. There was nothing of great interest at this point of the roof space but interesting shapes appeared and then vanished in the flicker of the flame of the candle that I was using, as the batteries in my torch had gone flat. It was going to be a tough assignment to travel the length of the house behind the panels but I knew no fear.
Slowly but surely I edged my way towards the shadows and shapes at the far end of the roof space and, as I approached, I could see there were bulky, old hessian sacks tied with parcel string. I carefully placed my candle on one of the beams and positioned myself in a sitting position to enable me to undo the knots and see what lay inside. They were certainly heavy and the weight of the objects were considerable. To my great disappointment I discovered that they were only my father's old plumbing tools. They were works of art in their own right and today they would probably be worth a tidy sum for they were beautiful, wooden, turned instruments whose purpose and function I was unable to guess. but for a boy of twelve they were junk. All three sacks contained the same. Not only disappointed I was also cold. My hands were itching with glass fibres and my eyes were straining from the poor light from the candle.
I decided to make a move. As I stood up I forgot the sharp pitch of the roof and managed to crack my head on a rafter, causing me to drop the candle which, fortunately went out immediately. I was now plunged into pitch darkness and, as fear took hold and disorientated from the crack on the head I had two choices. The first was out of the question. There was no way I was going to yell for help and suffer the ridicule and humiliation that would follow. No, there was only one thing for it and this was to make my way by touch back to the loose panel and light and safety.
The combination of a sore head, pitch darkness, a loose slipper and fear may have had something to do with the events that followed. I straightened carefully this time until my head brushed the sloping roof above me. I steadied myself and decided I would leave the candle and return later to retrieve it and to re-tie the sacks. Somehow my foot slipped. The world turned. Within a split second there was brightness all around me. I was sitting very heavily on the corner of my bed with the wind knocked out of me. I had not just slipped and pushed my leg through the ceiling I had completely fallen through the rafters. Had my chin been out or my head been back I would have surely broken my neck or at the least smashed my teeth. My slim frame had slipped between eighteen inches of space without touching the beams. I had landed relatively unscathed in my bedroom.
Within a second of me landing on the bed, my feet hitting the floor in front of me, there followed a slow rumble where upon two sacks, full of my father's plumbing tools, cascaded down on top of me, thumping my head and body in a shower of hard wooden mallets. The noise was quite impressive and added to the already remarkable thump of my own frame hitting the bed. My mother was entertaining Mrs. Jones, a neighbour, downstairs and from the kitchen came the screeching sound of, 'What the bloody hell are you doing up there?' With remarkable presence of mind I replied that I had just fallen off the bed and listened to a tirade of abuse and a description of an earthquake from my mother that seemed to satisfy her wrath. The joy was that she did not come up the stairs to see the devastation that was now my bedroom.
I looked around. There was a carpet of glass fibre on the bed, the cupboard, the windowsill, everywhere. There were ancient wooden plumbing tools resting mockingly in every corner. I looked up. The ceiling had been torn in an oval shape around three feet at its widest. There was however one glimmer of hope. The whole piece of plaster board was still hanging by one end. My mind must have been affected by the series of events for I truly believed that, with some careful patching, using some heavy duty, white carpet tape that I had secreted beneath my bed, I could repair the damage sufficiently for my parents not to notice. It was definitely a case of disorientation. In my heart of hearts I knew it was a hopeless cause but I spent a painful afternoon cleaning my room, returning the tools back into the attic and attempting, pathetically to tape the plaster board flap back into position.
My room looked half way presentable by bed time and I decided to have a bath as I was still feeling pretty bruised and shaken. My desire for a bath set my mother's antennae twitching but she let it ride. I went down stairs to say good night in a rather sombre mood. Mrs Jones was still there and between them, they deduced that I must be sickening for something. Mum felt my head and thought I was running a temperature and on lifting my pyjama top discovered I had come out in a massive rash. It had also appeared on my arms and legs. I knew that this was the glass fibre working its way deep into my skin but it was concluded that I had chicken pox and an emergency plan A was put into action. The kettle was put on and I was hustled upstairs. I insisted that I was fine and I didn't need putting to bed but mother knows best. The door of my room swung open and I prayed that she wouldn't look up. She did.
