Page 3.

Streamline train,
Fastest train they run,
It’s a hard worker, stranger,
Ain’t gonna hurt you none,
I’m gonna leave in the mornin’,
Get on that streamline train,
Well there’s only one thing, Momma,
He’s sure your lovin’ man,

Streamline train,
Greenback dollar bill,
It’s a lovin’ composition,
Gonna get somebody killed,
I’m gonna leave in the mornin’
Get on that streamline train,
Well there’s only one thing, Momma,
He’s still your lovin’ man,

Streamline train,
Fastest train they run,
It’s a hard worker, stranger,
Ain’t gonna hurt you none,
I’m gonna leave in the mornin’,
Get on that streamline train,
Well there’s only one thing, Momma,
He’s sure your lovin’ man,







Chapter. 21. EYE FI

     Alf decided to build his own amplifier. Great, I thought. But what’s an amplifier? Turns out it was funny-looking aluminium box thing, about 10 inches by 6 by 3, with a few valves and metal canisters stuck on top, and wire everywhere. Alf said it would give us a much better sound - loads of bass, clarity, ooomph. Yeah? Far out.

     The aluminium box was called ‘the chassis’, according to Alf. He had the ‘chassis’ on its side one day on the dining room table and was down on his knees with a soldering iron. He seemed to doing something that was a little difficult. I could tell he was stressed because there was a lot of under-the-breath muttering going on, sprinkled with the odd ‘shit’, and ‘bugger’.

     I wondered round the table to the side where the valves were. It looked like something was smoking, and it wasn’t Alf.

     “What’s that smoke, Dad?”

     “Soldering iron,” he said grumpily.      Alf was a bit alarming when he was grumpy, so I crept out of the room and closed the door quietly. The explosion came in a deep CRUCK sound as the door nestled back into the frame. I opened it again a bit sharpish and nervously peeped round it into the room.

     The Amplifier was still on its side on the table. A cloud of thick, sticky-looking blue-green smoke hung a foot above it like a ghost. Alf had disappeared. Maybe he was the cloud of smoke – nope, there he was sitting on his bum on the other side of the room looking a trifle dazed and confused and a bit suntanned for the time of year.

     “Capacitor,” he said vaguely, staring vacantly at the cloud of smoke.

     “Capacitor,” I repeated, as if to confirm his diagnosis, and as I had no idea what or who Capacitor was, I left him to it.

     A week or so later, he unveiled his new toy. It was extremely unimpressive. There were two boxes about 2 and a half ft high, which he said contained the speakers. Alf waffled on about tweeters and woofers, watts and ohms and stuff like that and I clearly understood that I really didn’t understand at all. He removed the back of one cabinet and proudly pointed inside to a ten inch speaker with a cannon ball sized magnet attached to it that must have weighed as much as a cannon ball.

     I never did figure out why speakers had magnets. Come to that I never did figure out electricity in general. I don’t like it. And I don’t trust it. You can’t trust something you can’t see. Yes I know you can’t see air, but air can’t kill you - well not unless someone’s buggered about with it. And all that direct and indirect stuff, or is it alternating? Search me.

     FABLON

     Actually, I found out the magnet weighed more like a whole cannon when I was detailed to lug the speaker cabinets out to the wheelbarrow at the time Alf was going through his mobile DJ phase. There was a shelf that hung between the speakers on which was placed a box containing the turntable he’d ripped out of the record player.

     “It’ll look great when it’s finished.” Alf said. I stared at the rough plywood boxes and spaghetti mix of wires and hoped he was right, fondly remembering the neat, red and black dog-toothed box of the record player that was no more. The next presentation was of the finished item a day or so later.

     “There.” he said proudly, “Good, eh?”
     “Great.” I said, (“Christ!” I thought.)
     “Fablon,” he said, even more proudly.
     “So it is.” I said.

     He’d covered the whole kit and caboodle with imitation wood-grain patterned Fablon. Imitation isn’t really the right word. Imitation implies something that looks like something real when it isn’t. The wood-grain ‘effect’ didn’t look anything like wood-grain. Yes, it had the same pattern form as real wood-grain, but Fablon looked like Fablon whichever way you cut it - either with a Stanley Knife or a pair of scissors.

     It looked like what it was. A nasty, cheap, extremely adhesive plastic covering that was really difficult to apply and impossible to remove once you’d applied it and If you managed to get creases in it, tough. There’s no way you could smooth them out. (One bloke we knew tried an iron and produced an interesting effect especially when his wife tried to use the iron again.)

     Fablon was supposed to push an object ‘up market’ by making it look posher than it actually was but it did the exact opposite. Alf, along with many DIY-ers of the time, were so impressed with the stuff that they covered everything with it. Trays, tabletops, picture frames, walls - I even saw it used on a car dash board.

     Who was kidding whom? Did the manufacturers really believe people would be taken in by it? Did they really think they were that stupid? Were they that stupid? Best not to even think about it.

     Fablon didn’t just come in a wood-grain pattern. There were sunflowers, bunches of grapes, oranges, roses, flying ducks, basket weave, Noddy and Big Ears, plain colours, chequered patterns, striped patterns, brickwork, scenes from famous battles, kittens, puppy-dogs, panoramic views of the Mediterranean... You name it, provided it was ghastly, you could get it in Fablon.

     PRATS

     I blame Barry Bucknel. He was the Laurence Lewellen-Bowen of the late 50’s and early 60’s, without the foppish clothes, the public school accent, or the pretentious sliminess.

     Their main similarity was/is their total lack of appreciation of the principles and disciplines of interior design, their lack of understanding of space and shape and how to juxtapose one against the other and their innate ability to transform any mediocre interior into a nightmare of riotous unrelated colours and chintzy decor or a hardboard and varnish tomb.

     Barry Bucknel was the icon of 50’/60’s DIY Britain. In his tank-top, tartan tie, rolled up sleeves, short back and sides, and classic Bobby Charlton comb-over, he presented the ideal face of the ordinary, respectable working man in his castle, ever improving what didn’t need improving, changing or covering over what was all right in the first place, and making ‘modern’ what was better off left in it’s original state.

     He was a champion of hardboard, varnish, Fablon, and anything else which could render a home environment bland, dull, and devoid of any character or self expression.

     With great glee, he’d shown us how to cover up Victorian door panels by nailing sheets of hardboard over the entire door and painting or varnishing it until it looked like a sheet of hard board stuck on a door and painted or varnished.

     He demonstrated the art of covering over a ceramic tiled fire place with a plywood box, covering off the grate with another sheet of hardboard, digging up the hearth surround and sticking a set of cork tiles in its place upon which could be installed an electric or gas fire with imitation glowing coal rather than those nasty, smoky, old-fashioned real fires that didn’t dry up the air or make you feel drowsy, but made that awful spitting, crackling sound instead.

     He was also a dab-hand at making hardboard and plywood pelmets to cover up unsightly curtain rails, and mesh and ply-wood boxes to hide radiators so that all you could see was a mesh and wood box that in all probability hid a radiator. For some reason, he seemed to have a need to hide everything behind something far more hideous than the original object.

     Sure, our Barry could use a saw with the deftness of a Samurai warrior and a hammer with the skill of the God Thor, but he had no visual awareness, no idea of proportion, no colour sense, no feeling for placing objects in a room. But then, neither did anyone else. It was a pure case of the blind leading the really blind.

     Bucknel’s expertise stopped at the inside of his eyelids. He usually ended his programme by sitting on a chair amongst the aftermath of his latest creation with a mug of celebratory tea in his mit, smiling in superior smugness, and surveying with pride the living room or kitchen that he’d managed to endow with the atmosphere of a Parkhurst prison cell.

     As for the other person I mentioned, I won’t waste space commenting further.

     TURNING TABLES

     Alf did a sound check. Connie put her hands over her ears and retreated to the kitchen as Alf was partially deaf due to his time as a battleship gunner in the war, and felt no pain.

     “That’s real EYE FI,” he pronounced in his best Yorkshire Cockney.
     I had to admit that he’d succeeded in creating one hell of a sound, all-be-it bloody loud.
     “I’ve ordered an LP from the Sidcup Music Shop.” he confided, grinning from ear to ear. “I pick it up on Wednesday on me way home from work.”

     Up till then, we’d only had 10 inch 78’s and a couple of 45’s. The arrival of a ‘Long Player’ was a new and exciting journey into unknown territory and promised to be quite an event.

     THE 3 SUNS

     Wednesday evening came and Alf charged straight into the front room where his monster creation was still on display. With his Macintosh and bike clips on, his hands shook as he took the LONG PLAYER out of its sleeve. Carefully, and unnecessarily wiping the virgin record with his hanky, he lifted the lid of the Fablon turntable box and lowered the disc gently down towards the spindle.

     Then he stopped. Something wasn’t quite right. He lifted the record up and tried once more and then again. But it just wouldn’t go on the spindle. He’d made a slight and understandable miscalculation. The turntable was ten inches in diameter. There was an inch of box surround beyond that and then the wall of the box. That made a diameter of eleven inches from the centre of the turntable to the outside of its housing.

     What he held in his hand was a 12inch LP. A look of stunned astonishment appeared on his face. His mouth gaped open and for a moment he froze.

     “Bollocks!” was his final conclusion, his brow knitting into an expression of threat as he glared down at the offending box. “Right, you bastard,” he warned,      “We’ll bloody see about that.”

     He placed the record on its sleeve on the table and left the room.

     I heard the back door open, then the key turn in the shed door. 30 seconds later, he strode back into the room clutching a saw. I couldn’t believe he was actually going to do it. But he did. With a sense of purpose and a certain amount of sweat on his brow, still in his mac and bike clips, he went to work and sawed great chunks out of the sides off the box.

     With clouds of sawdust floating in the air, he finally placed the LP on the spindle and pressed the autochange. The disc dropped majestically onto the turntable and the arm hovered over the edge of the record, then, gently, ever so gently, lowered itself down to the beginning of the first track. The electric organ, Guitar and Saxophone sounds of a dance trio, called The Three Suns, filled the room. Alf was like a kid on Christmas Morning.

     “That’ll teach you!” he said to the pathetic pile of splintered plywood and ripped Fablon that seconds before, had been the turntable box, “That’ll fuckin’ well teach you!”

     GRACIE LAND

     While most of us had our fingers in our ears when Alf was testing the latest modification to his ‘equipement’, Alf had his fingers on the pulse. He was a real talent spotter – or so it seemed to me. He discovered, or managed to get to hear before anyone else, the new ‘stars’ that were going to further change the world of popular music in the 1950s.

     This was largely due to the fact that he’d lock himself away in his the shed attached to the side of the house for hours on end and tune the old radio he’d got from a church jumble sale for a couple of bob to Radio Luxemburg. In those days, Radio Luxenburg was the only way you could get to hear the latest record releases if you were prepared to put up with the whistling and buzzing as the sound faded in and out.

     It was on Luxemburg that Alf first heard a new young Rock ‘n’ Roll singer by the name of Charlie Gracie and immediately started raving about him. A couple of weeks later, a diminutive figure in a tuxedo carrying a guitar he could just about see over the top of, shambled onto the stage and our TV screens for the star spot on ‘Sunday Night At The London Palladium’. No one had heard of this little bloke, who at least sported the regulation, Tony Curtis Rock ‘n’ Roll haircut and tapered pants.

     More importantly, his guitar was fantastic. It had 3, dotted, white blocks under the strings between the bridge and the neck, (Which I later found out where electronic pick-ups that sucked the sound from the strings via coiled magnets and transmitted it through the amplifier to the eager eardrums of the audience) and a row of white buttons around the widest curve of the body.

     And could the lad play? He not only strummed along to the songs he sang, but he took, rich, chord based solos in between choruses, in a beautiful, cascading electric sound.

     It was mainly thought at the time, that the new rock ‘n’Rollers didn’t really play the guitars they held at all, but merely mimed along to the backing group, but Charlie Gracie and Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran proved this theory to be unfounded, in their case at least.

     Charlie’s popularity was short lived, though. On his second visit to the UK, he brought a very pretty lady with him. There was a picture in the Sunday Pictorial of the two of them together at London Airport, she, in her mink coat and he in a dinner suit and bow tie. What was wrong with that?

     She was his wife, that’s what was wrong with that. It was a cardinal sin for any Rock ‘n’ Roll star to be married as it dissolved the dreams of every one of his female fans who were sure she’d one day prance down the aisle with her hero after he suddenly turned up on her doorstep with a bunch of red roses, announcing the accompanying hordes of media people, that he couldn’t live without her.

     THE BOY FROM LUBBOCK

     A great divide existed between Britain and America in the Mid 1950s, but it was really between skiffle and Rock ‘n’Roll. While Skiffle was the British urban folk music of the day and adopted by spotty blokes in sweaters and lank hair it was hated by teenaged girls who went for the slickly produced imported American sounds who’s popularity owed as much to the image of its moody singers who injected their own blatant sexuality into the music rather than the depression of the blues favoured by the washboard scrapers in the skiffle bands.

     In short, you either favoured skiffle or Rock ‘n’ Roll. It didn’t do to admit you liked both.

     Buddy Holly and the Crickets put and end to all that when they burst onto the scene with ‘That’ll Be The Day’ in 1957. Holly wasn’t the stereotyped Rock ‘n’ Roller with long sideburns and he wore horn-rimmed glasses and had crooked teeth, but his voice was raw-edged and gravely and sliced through the dark moodiness of all the Elvis sound-alikes with the keenness of a samurai sword.

     Buddy Holly’s electric guitar sound was also different. It was more up front than the familiar lead solo sound put out by Elvis Presley’s guitarist, Scottie Moor. It was cruder, harder and an intergral part of the song.

     Everybody wondered how Buddy Holly got his sound and it wasn’t until ‘The Chirping Crickets’, the first Crickets album appeared, that the first clue came to light. The picture on the album sleeve was of the four Crickets cradling two guitars One was a Gibson acoustic electric but the other didn’t look like a guitar at all. It was a solid plank of wood, with what looked like 2 horn shapes at the top of the body and a machine head with all 6 tuining machines on one side.

     Though no one knew it, the world at large was being given a preview of what was to become the most famous electric guitar in the history of music, later to be adopted by many illustrious players in years to come, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, The Ventures, The Shadows, The Police, Dire Straits, Steve Miller, Frank Zappa and many others: the Fender Stratotocaster.

     The Crickets put their music over with an unprecedented power, especially as they were only a 3- piece band relying on just drums, double bass and Holly’s driving, jangly Stratocaster to get their message across. The songs were simple but heartfelt and soaked with a nervous energy that made the hair on the necks of Rock ‘n’ Rollers and skifflers alike stand to attention. Buddy Holly and the Crickets cut through the crap, and all disputes about what was or wasn’t the legitimate young person’s music of the 50s just faded away.

     Holly’s songs were simple to play and usually consisted of the same 3 chords, AMajor, D Major and E Major with the occasional F major of F Sharp Major thrown in, and the already skilled players went for them like so many rats up so many drain pipes.

     His technique, however, was a little more tricky than just plonking away on the acoustic guitars that the skiffle players were used to. The simplicity of Holly’s music was blasted to a higher plane by the harsh, cranky sound of the Fender as Holly attacked it with his uninhibited style. Most players eventually gave in and stood back in pure reverence when they realised they couldn’t duplicate the unique Buddy Holly sound without the same equipment or the soul that the buck-toothed, four-eyed troubadour seemed to possess in spades.

     My friend, Roy Barker, got to see Buddy Holly live at the Lewisham Hippodrome on his first UK tour, and kept me spellbound throughout a junior woodwork lesson at Edgebury Secondary School one afternoon.

     “He just came on stage with that funny little guitar under his arm and carrying this little black box. He put the box down, plugged in the guitar and went straight into ‘That’ll Be The Day’. It sounded just like on the record.”

     The story set my imagination on fire as I imagined the gangly boy from Lubbock, Texas, belting out his music live at full tilt. It sure beat the hell out of making an egg rack.

     With Buddy Holly and Charlie Gracie the guitar became the real front line Rock ‘n’ Roll instrument instead of just a prop buried by the brass of a big band like Bill Haley’s. And with the help of the Everly Brothers, who’s close harmony singing style and twin giant Gibson J200 accoustics thumping out their distinctive sound, and Eddie Cochran thrashing his way through the chords of ‘Summertime Blues’ and ‘C’mon Everybody’ on his equally giant and in impressive Gretsch, the guitar was brought nearer to the people, and the worship of it began to reach religious proportions.

     ‘Brylcream. A little dab’ll do ya’

Mrs Dale:
“Jim’s been very quiet recently. I think he’s worried about Mother’s age, which, as her doctor as well as her son-in-law, is only right. (She’s also bloody rich.) Mother claims to have been born in 1864, which makes her 86, and she still insists on riding that silly motorbike to the post office. I keep thinking I’m sure she was around at the time of Alfred The Great, which would make her considerably older. Captain, her cat, must be a good 120 in cat years, but still seems to enjoy life to the full despite having false teeth and glasses now. Really, the way she spoils that moth-eaten ball of mange, really makes me cross. I’m afraid Captain will be with us long after he’s dead. Mother says she going to have him stuffed when he finally pegs it and wear him like a mink stole. I dread to think what the neighbours will say. I was only saying to Gwen the other day, how much more useful the thing would be as compost for the roses when it’s a stiff, but I’m sure Mother wouldn’t hear of it. Oh dear.”


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


I'm a gonna raise a fuss
I'm a gonna raise a holler
about a workin' all summer
just to try to earn a dollar

ev'ry time I call my Baby
try to get a date
my Boss says
No dice, Son you gotta work late.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.

A well my Mom 'n' Papa told me
Son, you gotta make some money
,if you wantta use the carto go a ridin' next Sunday,
wellI didn't go to work
told the Boss I was sick
Now you can't use the car,'cause you didn't work a lick.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.

(I'm gonna) take two weeks
gonna have a fine vacation
I'm gonna take my problem
to the United Nations !
Well I called my Congressmen
and he said, quote:
I'd like to help you, Son, but you're too young to votedemanded.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.





Chapter 22. YOUTH CLUBBING

     “After discussions with the committee representatives, a ballot has been held and the overwhelming majority of our members have voted in favour of the facilitation of a further youth club social gathering,” Johnny Lynch’s mouth said to Alf from the side of his face, his brown suit looking as nervous and worried as he was. What he was really trying to say was: “We’re going to hold another dance, and as the last one was crap, will you give us a hand?”

     Alf didn’t need asking twice but there were to be certain conditions, “OK. But we’ll do it my way.”

     “Agreed.” said a relieved looking Johnny, glad to have the total responsibility for the next youth club dance spooned neatly from his plate onto someone else’s.
     They shook hands on the deal. Alf also demanded £2 10s for his expenses, free beer and total carte blanche over the programme of music and the running of the proceedings.

     Connie set about hand-painting several posters advertising the event. She’d been to Art School during the war along with Wally Fawkes and Ruskin Spear, and was impressively skilled. The posters were displayed in our front garden on a sort of metal-framed sandwich board that Alf had made, and on the Coldharbour Estate in Mottingham where there was another church youth club.

     By this time, Connie and Alf were making regular visits to St Aiden’s youth club and had begun to help in the running of the place. Connie became a sort of involuntary agony aunt for the girls and got to listen to all kinds of stuff from boys to parents, from make-up to engagement rings.

     Everything was chewed over except sex. For some reason, it was a taboo subject much to Connie’s relief. No doubt the girls discussed it between themselves, but there was no way they were going to show their ignorance in front of a mother with two children, one of them virtually the same age as themselves.

     The blokes found in Alf, the much travelled, worldly-wise ex-sailor, a similar sounding board and they too laid all kinds of queries at his doorstep. Mostly, it was about girls and sex and Alf didn’t mind this at all.

     They all found the opposite gender totally confusing and infuriating and Alf was at least able to reassure them that these dilemmas relating to women, birds, ladies or all 3, were not only perfectly normal but ones that they would never solve no matter how hard they tried or how long they lived.

     It was not so odd then, that the young men at the youth club, with their pin-sharp appearance, and by then, not so infamous tapered pants, considered this swarthy-looking bloke from Selby, Yorkshire, with his oversized fisherman-knit sweater and regulation grey 22 inch bottoms, anything but just another member of the boring, dull establishment they were ‘rebelling’ against.

     “ARE YOU DANCIN’?”

     Alf, which they all called him, became a sort of senior mate who rolled his own fags and could drink any of them under the table. He was certainly more liberal-minded than most of their parents and seemed to know more about their kind of music than most of them did. AND he was pro-active. He decided that he’d teach them to dance.

     He’d noticed at the previous social gathering, that few of the men took to the floor at all, apart from when the slower, smoochie numbers were played at the end of the night, so that they could try and grope their girlfriends’ bums.

     I’d watch fascinated, as a bloke’s hand would drop down from the girls waist and gently cup a cheek of her bottom as if by accident. She’d bend her arm behind her and replace the offending digits back on her waist. Two steps later, the manoeuvre would be repeated. It was all done so deftly that it looked part of the dance movement.

     But mostly the girls had to find found partners of their own gender due to the lack of interest shown by the males of the species which Alf didn’t think was at all quite the ticket, though I never did see a girl groping another’s bum. Things weren’t quite so liberal as they are now. On reflection, it would have been an interesting phenomenon in 1957.

     Alf taught those that couldn’t to jive first. With his knowledge of the Jitterbug and what he’d gleaned from Arthur Murray’s leaflet, he perfected a technique of jiving based on the Quickstep, or Two-step as it was otherwise known. It wasn’t as authentic as the Jive that most of the young generation did, but it was more spectacular and versatile.

     Soon, after a thorough square-bashing from Chief Petty Officer Bradley, even those blokes who thought they’d been born with two left feet, discovered that the awkward hoofs they’d been born with would obey any command, provided the owner was insistent enough.

     There weren’t any budding Fred Astaire or Gene Kellys in the company or even the odd potential Morris Dancer but there wasn’t anybody who at least didn’t have the bottle to ‘give it a bash’ and find their way around the floor. To begin with, they may have looked like a bunch of fledgling flamingos with bendy legs but most of them gritted their teeth and carried on.

     Perhaps this was another reason why they liked Alf. He didn’t ridicule them like their mates might have. He was a tough drill sergeant but they were all doing it together, mates and all.

     Chris Robey, one of the surviving Teddy Boys with his state-of-the-art drape suit, suede creepers and yellow socks, was a sight to behold shuffling round with his girlfriend, his eyes glued to his feet in concentration, instead of riveted to her cleavage.

     Next came the Waltz, the Quickstep, Slow Foxtrot and, in the case of one talented 17-year-old guitarist called Ray Perriman, the Cha-Cha, which he performed with great relish with Connie, whenever he got the chance. The girls thought it was wonderful to see their men tripping the maybe not-so-light fantastic and made the most of Alf’s classes themselves.

     But the ‘Chief’ was a hard taskmaster and gave us all lessons at home.

     “No. You’re not paying attention. Listen to the bloody music! Look, Connie. Come here. Show ‘em how it’s done. It’s one, two skip - one, two skip, see? No, don’t look at your feet. Look at your partner, or if you can’t stand ‘er, look over ‘er shoulder.”

     When Connie and Alf demonstrated the waltz in the church hall, the kids were all mesmerised. (I wasn’t old enough to be a member of the club but was allowed in to help fetch and carry sometimes, and managed to stay around.) They just glided up and down and round and round as if they were on ice with an easy lightness that was magic to watch. The kids just stood back in awe.

     By the time the night of the dance came round, there was quite an air of excited anticipation at the club. Connie helped the girls prepare the food – sandwiches, sausage rolls, cocktail sausages and stuff, and Alf extracted 10 bob from each of the boys for the booze.

     He organised a proper bar, using the kitchen serving hatch and detailed 3 blokes to serve on a rota basis and the food was laid out on a trestle table. Christmas fairy lights were hung at one end of the hall where Alf’s secret weapon was to be housed and the main lights dimmed.

     The advertising worked and people turned up in droves, the only entry fee being from the blokes for the whip round. I helped Alf and a couple of the blokes lug the ‘EYE FI’ to the hall on Alf’s homemade wheelbarrow and installed it in its place.

     At about 6.00, Alf liberally sprinkled the floor of the hall with French chalk then walked the short distance home to get changed. My sister and I were already dressed for the occasion and so we stayed at the hall to wait for the kick-off.

     I was wore newish grey flannel trousers to the dance, that unfortunately weren’t tapered, but at least they weren’t shorts, and my new black sweater with its four inch band of white across the chest and arms that Alf’s Mother (Nana), a ferociously addicted knitter, had knitted on her last visit some two weeks before. I thought the jumper was the cat’s jim-jams, so I was quite happy.

     The man who was to become my hero, Jack Head, turned up with the rest of the Moonrakers, T chest, The Weapon and all. Struggling with Jack’s guitar case, (which I noticed he’d painted a bright, two-tone red and turquoise,) a couple of feet behind him, was Rosemary, his would-be girlfriend. A pretty girl with glasses and a clubbed foot, Rosemary followed Jack everywhere like a lapdog, and worshiped the ground his ‘spurs’ jingled on.

     She, understandably, refused to wear her orthopaedic shoe when she was with Jack, but her disability was such that by not doing so, she probably did herself a great deal of harm. To see her body plunging sideways onto her short leg was very distressing and for her must have been quite traumatic, but always, she was openly defiant.

     Ironically, Rosemary’s favourite song was “Cold Cold Heart”, a semi-alchoholic lament written by the 50s Country Music Icon, Hank Williams, to his former wife, who, fed up with his drunken tirades and extra curricular sexual activity, had left and divorced him.

     Hank was destined to die two years after the song became a huge hit in the States. He was travelling across Oklahoma to a gig in a Honkey Tonk Bar in the back of beyond, the only sort of dive who would employ him after The Grand Old Oprey had finally rejected the services of the drunken, violent and unreliable front man for The Drifting Cowboys.

     He sat on his own behind the Chauffeur, swallowing the contents of a whiskey bottle on top of painkillers and a hefty load of morphine. By the time they reached their destination, Hank was slumped on the back seat looking like he was asleep. In fact, he’d been dead for the last 40 or so miles.

     Rosemary’s mother was a very straight-laced district nurse who disapproved strongly of her daughter’s association with this shaggy-haired Mottingham Hill-Billy, but typically, all her protests did was to strengthen Rosemary’s resolve to pursue and eventually lasso her man. This she eventually did. They married and had two children but a few years later, they separated, Rosemary, condemning her own cowboy in much the same way Mrs Williams had condemned hers.

     THE HOP

     When the little hall was almost full, Alf, complete in DJ, bow and black patent leather dancing shoes strode confidently back into the hall and plugged in the stick microphone he’d made. With ‘no messin’, as he’d used to put it, he got things underway.

     “Good evening, Ladies and Gents. Welcome to the first of the new St Aidens Youth Club Dances.” I have to admit there were a few looks of “Who the hell does this prat think he is?” I felt my cheeks flush, but Alf didn’t care.

     He already knew where the evening was going and he was out to enjoy himself with or without the assembled company.

     “Right, someone will be coming round with some raffle tickets, proceeds to go to the local childrens’ homes, so I expect you’ll want to dig deep. There are lots of great prizes and they’ll also be a ‘spot prize’ for the best couple in our jiving competition a little later on. They’ll be live entertainment during the interval from The Moonrakers Country Western Trio.”

     He signalled to his two helpers (my sister and one of her mates) stationed by the ‘equipment’ and thankfully, one of them pressed the right button. Alf had worked out the programme in great detail and had put everything in the right order and given a playing list to the helpers.

     The first track on The Three Suns LP filled the hall with an impressive amount of sound and Connie and Alf whisked themselves around in a brisk quickstep, deliberately skidding at the turns on the French chalk. They were joined by the brown suited Johnny Lynch and his wife.

     The gathering at the walls stood stock still for a few moments, then a couple of the more adventurous girls pulled the blokes onto the floor in support of their ruthless dance instructor and soon the floor was host to half a dozen couples, most of them struggling but game to show the Coldharbour lot how it was done.

     The Three Suns were only half way through that first track when it suddenly stopped. All the dancers shuffled to a halt thinking something had gone wrong with the sound system. Then the vocal intro to ‘At The Hop’ by Danny And The Juniors split the atmosphere like a sudden air raid. Alf and Connie immediately leaped into a well-rehearsed jive routine.

     The other couples on the floor did the same, and, as if drawn by some kind of huge magnet, so did every other man (and woman)-jack in the place. It had been a brilliantly choreographed overture to what was to be a great evening. The joint was a-rockin’ - goin’ round and round.

     As we were packing the gear away at the end of the night, Alf spoke confidentially to my left ear. “We need two turntables.” and, lifting one of the hefty speaker cabinets and pausing to lean it against his shin, “Two bloody turntables.”

     ‘Say it with flowers’

Eamon Andews: “Thank you Joe Smith, our first guest on ‘ What’s My Line’ this evening, for that little demonstration of your occupation. For the illiterate amongst us, that means what you do at work. Our audience at home already knows what your occupation is, Joe, but the panel doesn’t, which, of course, is the whole point of the game. Barbara Kelley?”
BK: “Very interesting, Joe. That movement looks a little familiar. Would I be right in thinking that what you do has something to do with water?”
Applause.
Joe: “Yes.”
BK: “Are you, therefore, a fisherman of some kind?”
Joe: “No.”
Andrews: “That’s one gone. Isabel Barnet.”
IB: “Hello, Mr Smith. It’s very nice to meet you. So your job has something to do with water but you’re not a fisherman. Can I ask you, do you ever get wet?”
Applause.
Joe: “Somtoimes.”
IB: “Ah, I see. Do you wear special clothing for what you do?”
Applause.
Joe: “Yes.”
IB: “Are you a lifeboat man?”
Joe: “No”
IB: (under breath) “Bugger!”
Andrews: “That’s 2 gone. Katy Boyle.”
KB: “Joe. Am I right in thinking that you do some kind of entertaining?”
Applause.
Joe: “Yes.”
KB: “Ah, In which case, are you the man in the beach fairground at Burnham-on-Sea who falls out of bed into a tub of water when someone hits the target with a coconut?”
Applause.
Joe: “Yes, I am.”
Andrews: “Well done, panel. That’s one to you. Hard luck, Joe.”
Gilbert Harding: “As I didn’t get a go at guessing your occupation, would you mind telling me exactly what you were doing in your mime?”
Joe: “I was adding hot water to the tub.”
H: “What? D’you mean from a kettle?”
Joe: “Yes.”
H: “But you could’ve been making the tea. What’s that got to do with falling out of bed?”
Joe: “ I do sometimes make the tea, but I have to keep adding hot water to the tub. We do the show on the beach and the water keeps getting cold.”
H: “Bloody ridiculous, if you ask me. And you, what’s your name, how did you know he fell out of bed for a living?
KB: “Because I’ve seen the show, you grumpy old sod.”

Applause.



* * * * * * * * * * * * *

You tell me you love me, you say you'll be true
Then you fly around with
somebody newBut I'm crazy about you, you butterfly
You treat me mean, you're makin' me cry
I've made up my mind to tell you goodbye
But I'm no good without you, you butterfly

I knew from the first time I kissed you
That you were the troublin' kind
'cause the honey drips from your sweet lips
One taste and I'm outta my mind

I love you so much I know what I'll do
I'm clippin' your wings, your flyin' is through
'cause I'm crazy about you, you butterfly
Ooh, I'm crazy about you, you butterfly
Ooh, I can't live without you, you butterfly
I knew from the first time I kissed you
That you were the troublin' kind
'cause the honey that drips from your sweet lips
One taste and I'm outta my mind

Ooh, I love you so much I know what I'll do
I'm clippin' your wings, your flyin' is through
'cause I'm crazy about you, you butterfly

You butterfly
You butterfly



Chapter 23. REVOLUTION


     The expression ‘Teenager’ came from what we call today, the Tabloid Press, but in the Fifties there were just newspapers, big ones for posh people and small ones for the working classes. ‘Teenager’ was a way of pigeonholing and exploiting the younger generation. The description hadn’t been used before the 50’s and has stuck like glue to any young person edging towards puberty ever since.

     It seems it’s always been natural for the youth of any generation to be castigated and chastised by those older and wiser, but ‘Teenagers’ were apparently a new kind of trouble and threat to the institutions and structures of society, the like of which hadn’t been encountered before.

     Teenagers were a new breed of rebel - outrageous in their mode of dress, love of loud music, and general disregard for authority. And every 12 year old couldn’t wait to become one and move into the mystical age of double figures ending in ‘teen’ that signified an approach to Mecca - well at least a Mecca Ballroom.

     The likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando rebelled in their films as the Hollywood moguls exploited teenage appetites for identity and change. To quote from the banned film, ‘The Wild One’, a small town bartender asked Johnny the biker, played by Brando, just exactly what he was rebelling against. Johnny’s reply was a touch ambiguous:

     “Whatcha-got?”

     What dust there was,supposedly kicked up by Teddy Boys and girls, was also mainly invented by the newspapers and the era was short-lived. Stories of gang fights with bike chains and razors were common but few actually happened.


     Interviewer: “So he came at you brandishing a cut throat razor?”
     Ted: “Sright. ‘E woz gonna cut me froat like wot you said.”
     I: “And you had your bicycle chain?”
     T: “Yeah.”
     I: “And what did you do with it?”
     T: “Wha’?”
     I: “The bicycle chain.”
     T: “Oh, yeah, welw, I sorta whirled it rand, sorta fing.”
     I: “I see. Can you demonstrate?”
     T: “Wha’?”
     I: “Can you show me how you whirled the bicycle chain around?”
     T: “You be’er stan back a bi’. Welw, it was like this, sorta fing. Rand me ‘ead, an ‘at.”
     I: “Good Lord! Did you actually strike your opponent with the bicycle chain?”
     T: “Dunno ‘bart that, but I ‘it the geezer wiv it, if that’s wotcher mean.”
     I: “And what happened?”
     T: “Watchamean?”
     I: “When you actually made contact with your adversary.”
     T: “Oooz anniversary? Anyway, I wasn’t on the telephone. I woz usin’ me bike chain, an ‘at.”
     I: “So you said. It sounds very gladiatorial.”
     T: “Do wha’?”
     I: “ Gladitorial. As in ancient Rome.”
     T: “Wot the fuck you on abart?”
     I: “I was merely trying…oh, never mind.”
     T: “’ere, go’ a light, Palw?”
     I: “Nae. I daint smaik.”
     T: “Wanker!”


     The Edwardian or ‘Teddy Boy’ mode of dress of the 50’s was originally dreamed up by a Saville Row Tailor who designed and produced the ‘Frock-Coat’ look for ex-Eaton hoo-ray Henry types to swagger about in at weekends at Hendon or days at the races where they got out of it on champers and just became a load of rowdy puking bores.

     The clobber was very expensive but a few crafty East End Jewish men of the cloth found a way of producing it cheaply and flogged it to their own younger generation of working class evacuees who’d come home from evacuation to the depression and hopelessness of post war London.

     So the hoo-ray gave way to the birth of the ‘Teddy Boy’ and dropped their own outfits into the nearest salmon stream, not wishing to be challenged by some oik brandishing the essential part of a Rudge Roadster propulsion unit.

     Connie’s cousin, Joyce, Married her husband, Terry, in 1956. Tel was a ‘Ted’ – at least he had all the gear: drape jacket, bootlace tie, drainpipes, suede creepers, the lot. They couple used to go dancing at one or two of the Burtons dancehalls that the retailer ran over the high street shops.

     To be allowed in, Tel had to tuck all his velvet pocket flaps inside his pockets, as these were a sure sign to the management that he was a Teddy Boy, and that as soon as he got inside, he’d immediately whip out his bike chain and razor and get to work on the clientele.

     Terry is now fast approaching his 70th birthday but doesn’t look a day over 25 – for real! Apart from ‘able to take care of himself’, having been brought up in South London, he has never smoked or drunk and wouldn’t hurt a fly unless it landed on his sandwich.

     SHORT BACK AND SIDES

     From between the wars and up until the Mid-Fifties, boys grew up to look exactly like their Dads. The male uniform of the day was, starting from the top, short back and sides with a vicious side parting, plenty of Brilcream, and a slight ‘quiff’ or ‘wave’ at the front.

     The hair on the top of your head was stiff and felt like ridges of cardboard to your fingertips which every-so-often strayed skywards to check out this strange new scalp, which seemed to shift worryingly every time you twitched your eyebrows. And the sickly scent was overpowering.

     Barbers’ shops were horrible places. They smelled of men and Brilcream. Men didn’t wear deodorant in those days. There wasn’t any for blokes, and such a thing would have been unthinkable. So in the intimate atmosphere of the barber’s, the unsubtle aroma of stale sweat always hung in the air.

     The common smell of fresh horse crap in the streets and the smoke from coal fires from those days was far more pleasant and memorable. Even the exhaust stink from the few cars that were around was a pleasure by comparison, but barber’s shops should have been left to rot back in 1950 or even better, burned to the ground.

     They weren’t the most hygienic of places, the hair being occasionally chased round the floor with a broom, the air thick with blue cigarette smoke, the same wrap-around nylon sheet used for each customer after being shaken free of visible hairs in between.

     As a small boy, I sat on the special plank of wood placed across the arms of the chair so that the ‘hairdresser’ could get at a my small loaf of bread with his nasty nicotine-stained fingers, and I really had doubts about this stinky, coarse, hairy-nosed, adult male creature I was slowly growing into.

     And yes, they did say: “Something for the weekend, sir?” (Not to me as a 7 year old) The word ‘Durex’ was discreetly displayed above the mirror or behind the various assortments of containers on the shelf below. Even the colours were alien to any form of sensitivity - a sort of cream and maroon - enough to put anyone off sex for life - well, maybe not quite for life.

     The average 14 year old boy wouldn’t give a wank (the word toss wasn’t made public till years later) about having to wear a Durex or the finger of a woolly glove if it meant ‘getting a bit’. (Whatever that meant) For me, the packaging placed Durex in the same category as prosthetic limbs and trusses and fair made me shudder.

     In 1962, my first girl friend, refused to use Durex, or should I say, refused to allow me to use them, on the grounds that she found the very idea revolting. Not that she’d ever been in a barber’s, but her Father sold the things in his little corner grocer’s shop in Plumstead. The pill wasn’t released onto the market until 1966, so my first real courtship was a pretty risky enterprise.

     FOLICLES

     The most extreme short back and sides effect I ever saw was on the head of Heinrick Himmler, Hitler’s chief of the SS and secret police, in newsreel films. All that was left of his hair was a thin oil slick on top.

     I would have thought that after the death’s of 50 million people during 1939-45, Himmler’s head would be one of the last things that men around the world would wish to commemorate by following the style and that by 1950, British men at least would have born more than a passing resemblance to the Bard himself, and by way of protest against the Nazis, allowing their tresses free reign.

     It took the arrival of The Rolling Stones in 1962 to start bringing about a healthy change in the condition and management of male follicles. It all started in art schools, as did most fashions.

     I suppose you could say it had something to do with art students being creative and part of a fairly liberal environment after the constraints of secondary school. Until then, Elvis Presley, James Dean, Ricky Nelson and Tony Curtis had had a hand in things during the 50’s, but they still used Brilcream or as was popularly believed, axle grease, to keep their locks in place.

     In 1956, male adolescent hair became slickly combed back at the sides, which allowed it to grow to quite a length before anyone knew what was happening. To keep the smooth shiny tresses in place was a matter of regular maintenance – say, every 2 minutes, or so. To execute the manoeuvre properly and get the comb sweeping at the right angle, the elbows were extended outwards from the face to allow the forearms and hands complete access to both sides of the head.

     With practice, and there was a lot of it, it was a neat, impressive operation and due to the frequency, only one quick sweep was usually needed per side of head by the seasoned pro. The ‘quiff’ at the front was persuaded to hang slightly over the forehead, and the sideburns, or ‘boards’, were grown down level with the earlobes.

     The effect was especially well set off by the wearing of a black T-shirt beneath an open necked shirt, and a St Christopher medallion worn tight around the throat was a perfect finishing touch. The look was moody; enigmatic; Rock ‘n’ Roll; dopey.

     Before the liberation, however, in the post war British male ensemble at least, there was a jacket of some kind - usually a tweedy affair, though real tweed would have been too expensive. Worn over a tank top or V-necked sweater, or in the summer, over braces, the jacket was usually done up by all 3 buttons and pockets were not for show - they were filled with God knew what.

     This gave the jacket a kind of inverted light bulb look as the pockets made the jacket flair at the bottom, pulled away from the body by the bulging pockets.

     I bought a suit from Giorgio Armani in 1988 to get married in (the only time I was able to afford one) and, pointing out to the shop assistant that someone had forgotten to unstitch the pockets back at the factory, it was explained in no uncertain terms to Sir, that pockets were definitely not for use as this would spoil the cut of Sir’s suiting.

     How things have changed. Adult men in the late 40’s/early 50’s usually wore a tie to complete the picture while boys, from about 14, were allowed to wear an open-necked shirt with the collar folded over the jacket collar.

     Then came the most ill considered item of all. Trousers. Pleated from a high waist, they plunged downwards in huge baggy tubes devoid of any shape what-so-ever and came to an abrupt, 22/23 inch bottomed halt, exactly half an inch above the lace-up shoes.

     Somewhere inside the vast shafts of flapping darkness, legs walked, followed by the voluminous material of trouser, which seemed to walk on its own, trying to keep up but never quite making it.

     When you came to a stop, it took your trousers quite a while to settle down, and usually, before they were able, you’d be off again, creating an ever-moving cascade of rippling folds and creases.

     The ultimate trouser walker of the era was Robert Mitcham. In some of his early black and white movies, the directors always seemed to favour long full-length shots of him walking towards the camera in the ultimate demonstration of the technique.

     Being a big man, he had more trouser material about his person than Mr average, his belt almost under his arm pits, and his huge frame providing the most awesome spectacle of ‘trouser-in-motion’ ever seen before or since.

‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went,
When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.’



“This is Fabian of Scotland Yard!


     As I come screaming round a corner into your living room and onto your miniscule black and white TV screen at the beginning of the show in my 1951 Humber Hawk Police car, tyres squealing and pathetic silver bell on the front bumper jingling furiously, you’ll have noticed me get shoved violently sideways on the slipery leather of the back seat almost losing my balance and unsettling the Homberg on my bonce. There were no seatbelts back then but the stiffness of my trusty chalkstriped 3- piece suit and starched collar kept me firmly in place. The thing I was holding in my hand wasn’t a giant pipe full of baccy or a present for the wife, but a microphone that I was shouting into.

     I did smoke a pipe as Fabian because my partner, Sergeant Wright, and I were required to fill every scene with as big a foggy cloud as we could muster and I had a job keeping up with his 400 Players a day habit. It was all good serious stuff – very stiff upper lip and all that, which wasn’t difficult with all that smoke around. I never smiled, of course, as catching thieves and murderers was a grave business, and as ‘Fabian’ was filmed on cheap quality stock, there was no danger of me fluffing my lines like Chief Superintendant Lockheart did in the live broadcasts of ‘No Hiding Place’ a few years later. Bloody amateurs!

     We always got our man or woman, in some cases, due to my clever detective work and the plots needing to be resolved in the half hour allotted for each programme.

     Also, I was a pioneer in the use of forensic science in the nabbing of baddies, which was what made me such a smartarse. The story lines were as damp and soggy as the locations we normally filmed in, which, added to the very scratchy footage, made for a thoroughly depressing and enjoyable series Bugger! The blasted pipe, I mean, blasted microphone’s gone
out again.”



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The 6.5 Special’s steamin’ down the line,
The 6.5 Special’s right on time,
Coal in the boiler burnin’ up ‘n bright.
Rollin’ and a-rockin’ through the night,
My heart’s a-beatin’ ‘ cos I’ll be meetin’,
The 6.5 Special at the station tonight.

Hear the whistle blowin’ 12 to the bar,
See the light a-glowin’ bright as a star,
Now the wheels a-slowin’, can’t be far,

Over the points. over the points, over the points, over the points



Chapter 24. THE SIX-FIVE SPECIAL


     In 1956, the establishment, which really meant any one over 25 who happened to be in a position to manipulate the media, began to realise their worst fears: Rock’n’Roll wasn’t going to go away. The coffee bars in Soho’s Old Compton Street, once the bohemian homes of the early Trad Jazz bands and skiffle groups, began to spawn and groom their own breed of British R&R stars to feed the ever-growing public demand for the music and it’s performers.

     America, the source of the phenomenon, Daddy-o, was more than just a dream away, and so far in 1956, only Bill Haley And The Comets had made the trip to our little island where they were pretty much a flop.

     This was the deciding factor which caused Elvis Presley never to come here himself - which was one of the smartest moves his manager and mentor, Colonel Tom Parker, ever made.

     By keeping Elvis Stateside, Parker maintained the myth and the mystique, not only of Elvis himself, but of the roots of the whole Rock‘n’Roll movement. Had Elvis made the same mistake as Haley, his popularity would probably have lasted as long - about five minutes after touch down. Rock ‘n’ Roll itself would only have lasted for the next five.

     Haley in the flesh didn’t live up to expectations. He was already middle-aged, which for any Rock‘n’Roll star was THE cardinal sin, apart from being married. He was a flabby, never-quite-made-it Country performer in his forties who’d been given a new lease of life. The British teenagers saw through him instantly and dismissed him out of hand. The famous kiss-curl came unstuck in a split second.

     The wise-guy promoters over here moved to keep Rock ‘n’ Roll alive by creating their own British idols: Tommy Steele, Terry Dean, Duffy Power, Wee Willie Harris, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith, Jim Dale?????!!!! and many more. They were mostly short-lived by dint of the fact that few of them had any real talent with the odd exception, and the demand for new stars was almost insatiable.

     The BBC dipped its toe in the water by putting out an odd-ball programme called ‘Cool For Cats’, a title which made most youngsters cringe but which was one of the few broadcast programmes where the latest records were played apart from Radio Luxemburg which operated outside establishment controls and restrictions, but whose broadcast reception in Britain was often pretty crap.

     The show, hosted by Kent Walton, was a huge success and Aunty Beebe decided she’d either have to take a controlling part of what was sweeping the nation or sink. Tentatively, she organised her own popular music show to be screened live on a Saturday evening. On April XXXX, 1956, The 6.5 Special first took to the tracks.

     The show’s format was a total breakthrough in live broadcast technique and one that went on to become a benchmark format that’s still used in every country round the world that has a television network: the live, participating studio audience.

     But the establishment wasn’t going to give in entirely. Teenagers and their music had to be controlled, watched over, chaperoned, and never allowed to get out of hand. So did the Six-Five Special.

     Alf and Connie would have done a brilliant job of running the show but they were too busy running their own show at home after the Youth Club that operated from St Aiden’s church hall in Gravelwood Close was closed down for Lent by the new curate. So the Beebe recruited Pete Murray, an already established middle-of-the-road disc jockey, (it would be years before the term DJ was used) and a woman with Esther Ranzen style choppers called Josephine Douglas.

     Both were respectable, just young enough to be acceptable to the punters but old enough to exercise some sort of authority. They were just like youth club leaders: safe, reliable, but most importantly, NOT teenagers.

     DON LANG

     The ever-so-slightly over-weight, one time member of the Ted Heath band was a trombone player, an instrument that was about as far away from Rock ‘n’ Roll as you could get, and with his Frantic 5, (Gawd save us) Don Lang was the ‘musical’ front man on the show.

     Hanging his trombone on the crook of his arm so that he could clap his hands in time with the beat the way he misguidedly thought all good rock ‘n’ Rollers did, Lang also introduced a new symbol of casual respectability to the proceedings: the sweater.

     The sweater was a heavy-knit job. Not a pullover - that was something that Dads and Granddads wore. No, the sweater was what American College kids wore. It had to be big and loose-fitting, preferably in quite strong colours.

     The sweater was acceptable by both sides. The teenagers, who admittedly, were slightly suspicious of it, thought it OK and the older generation saw it as a sensible casual garment that dispensed with the those dreadful, scruffy James Dean type leather jackets and long drape coats they hated so much. You couldn’t wear either over a sweater.
The sweater was a brilliant compromise. It wasn’t stiff or starchy, but neither was it too yobish.

     Don Lang himself fell exactly into sweater territory as a personality. No one could dispute that he could play his instrument quite well and his band did have a loud drummer and a guitarist in the line-up so that was OK with the kids. But he was 30 if he was day and therefore already safe in the minds of thousands of worried parents; despite singing with a voice raucous enough to be Rock ‘n’ Roll - just about.

     Later, when his image of himself as a seasoned Rock ‘n’ Roll icon went to his head, Lang turned up on the programme wearing an American-style college jacket. Made of heavy felt, it was emblazoned with the large initials, DL, which could easily have stood for Dickbrainus Largus.

     Lang really thought he was ‘with it’, but if anyone was really honest, and not a lot of people were, he was most definitely without it - and by the ton.

     Here’s proof:

Oo ee oo-ah-ah,
Ting tang, walla-walla-wing-bang,
Oo ee oo-ah-ah,
Ting tang, walla-walla-bang-bang…

…were the opening words of Lang’s only real hit, ‘The Witchdoctor’
It seemed if someone couldn’t get into the Hit Parade with genuine talent, the answer was to come up with a comedy song and add a Rock’n’Roll beat to it. The results were mostly banal, some being worryingly successful, but usually putting an end to someone’s career. The genuine Rock’n’Roll generation were not fooled for long.

      Don Lang actually had two hits:the 'song' above and ‘White Silver Sands’, which he mimed to on 6-5 without his trombone. Clicking his fingers in time with the monotonous rhythm of the sickly song, he did a passable impression of a penguin jogging on the spot.

     This again was clearly a move by the establishment and the BBC to sneak under the wire and captivate the teenaged audience with a more civilised type of song. It still had a beat, albeit played with brushes on a snare drum, and it was pacy, and had the rotund front man of The Frantic Five wobbling his fat little tummy under his sweater as he bobbed enthusiastically up and down, grinning like an idiot.

     The powers that be thought they could let the air gently out of the Rock ‘n’ Roll balloon without anyone noticing and push as all back towards the likes of Kay Star and Ronnie Carol, who still appeared on the programme now and again.

     What ‘White Silver Sands’ did however, was drive a couple of six-inch nails firmly into Don’s professional coffin. His cover was finally blown.


‘Polo. The mint with the hole’

Hew Weldon: “On ‘All You Own’ this week, we’re going to meet a young man who keeps hundreds of butterflies in an old cornflake packet and a 12- year-old girl who says she can prove that we really do exist. But first, I want you to say hello to Sydney Blanket from Huddersfield who’s favourite occupation is riding around on a unicycle balancing a dozen new laid eggs on the end of his nose. Ah, here he comes. Tell me, how do you do that? Is it easy? Could I do it? Aren’t you afraid of dropping all those eggs when you’re riding around on one wheel like that?”
“No.”
“Look. Can you stop a minute? You’re making me giddy. Oops. Oh dear. Oh dear. That’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it? Perhaps I shouldn’t have put my foot out like that. Oh, come on. You’re too old to cry, surely. You’re fourteen, aren’t you? Haven’t you got a handkerchief?”




* * * * * * * * *




Standing on a corner watching all the girls go by
Standing on a corner watching all the girls go by
Brother you don't know a nicer occupation
Matter of fact, neither do I
Than standing on a corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by

I'm the cat that got the cream
Haven't got a girl but I can dream
Haven't got a girl but I can wish
So I'll take me down to Main street
And that's where I select my imaginary dish

Standing on a corner watching all the girls go by
Standing on a corner giving all the girls the eye
Brother if you've got a rich imagination
Give it a whirl, give it a try
Try standing on a corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by

Brother you can't go to jail for what you're thinking
Or for that woo look in your eye
Standing on the corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by


Chapter 25. THE KING BROTHERS


     *The King Brothers were one time winners of Hew Weldon’s ‘All Your Own’ show, a 50’s TV talent show where kids were invited to do their own thing, which could be anything from collecting bird’s eggs to riding a monocycle, only to then be patronised by the formidable Weldon who was later to become the BBC’s Director General. (*This is totally incorrect, as was pointed out to me, in no uncertain terms, by none other than Mike King himself, later in the text.)

     The King Brothers fitted most parents’ ideal of what the younger generation should be like in spades. They wore sweaters for a start and had clean-cut hairstyles. One played the guitar, one the double bass, and the third the piano. On ‘All Your Own’ their big song was ‘Rub-A -Dub-Dub, 3 Men In A Tub’. Not exactly Rock ‘n’ Roll, the song was at least up-beat.

     The King Brothers were immediately recruited for The 6.5 Special as a safe bet and climbed on the band wagon with ‘Rockin’ Shoes’, later having a Top Ten hit with ‘In The Middle Of An Island’, which is where Rock ‘n’ Roll purists thought they probably should have been put, along with their ‘White Sports Coats And Pink Carnations’, the title of another of their efforts.

     But no matter how hard they tried, the King Brothers just weren’t Rock ‘n’ Roll. They were too squeaky clean. Too nice. And they certainly weren’t skiffle. They had all their teeth. No-one really knew what the King Brothers were. Least of all them.

     One of the King Brothers married Carol White, of the famous Ken Loach film, ‘Cathy Come Home’ which also starred Ray Brookes, the guy who’s character painted a whole house white in the the film, ‘The Knack’.
     Pretty soon, the King Brothers disappeared along with their guitar, double bass, piano and their sweaters. They might as well stayed with ‘Rub-Adub-Dub’, as the BBC’s idea of them making Rock ‘n’ Roll respectable failed conclusively.

     Singers like Marion Ryan and Dickie Valentine were retained in much the same way as the Kng Brothers, but appeared pathetic even against the intrepid Donald and his large initials, not to mention his large trombone.

     But Rock ‘n’ Roll didn’t want to be respectable. That was it’s whole point - to upset the applecart of all that was considered decent and wholesome and boring. It was a wake up call to the youth of the day. It told them the future could be different, exciting, that they could be a part of it and belong to something that was theirs, and theirs alone.


(*This isn't actually the case. Denis King told me (see side panel) the King Brothers never appeared on All Your Own but everyone seems to think they did. I've just left things the way folk law would have them.)


‘Are you a Mackeson type?’


Ann: “Are we really famous, Dick?”
Dick: “I expect so. Ask Julian. He knows everything.”
Ann: “Julian. Are we really famous?”
Julian: “Quiet, Ann. I’m thinking.”
Ann: “Sorry.”
Dick: “Shhhh! Dick’s thinking! Haven’t you noticed the piece of straw dangling contemplatively from his mouth and the furrow of his brow as he stares reflectively across the unsploiled landscape and, as yet, unlpoluted skies of Kent at the white puffy clouds floating majestically above the Dover ferry port near where we’re staying, which is jolly convenient as we’re on a smuggler snaring holiday.”
Julian: “Hmmm. You know, I’ve an idea that the new postman who just rode by on his bicycle is really a smuggler.”
Ann: “Gosh! What makes you think that?”
Dick: “You really do ask the silliest questions sometimes, Ann. Julian’s obviously come up with a really wizard theory based on clues he’s discovered that the rest of us have been too dense to notice, isn’t that right, Julian?”
Julian: “Sort of.”
Ann: “Oh, tell us, Julian, PLEASE!”
Dick: “Ann, Really! Julian will tell us all in his own time, won’t you, Julian?”
Julian: “Ann’s right. I should tell you now before the unscrupulous villain has time to go off and smuggle. Then we can stop him and have a really thrilling adventure at the same time.”
Dick: “That’s really top hole, Julian.”
Ann: “I should say! What was it that gave you the clues, Dick? Was it the peg leg?”
Dick: “Or was it the patch over one eye, or the striped pirate shirt?”
Ann: “Or the cutlass, or the skull and crossbones on his hat?”
Dick: “Or the parrot on his shoulder?”
Julian: “Well…yes. It was all of those things, actually.”
Ann: “Oh.”
Dick: “Right.”
Julian: “Why are you both looking at me like that?”
Ann: “Well, he could’ve been going to the fancy dress ball in the village hall.”
Julian: “What?”
Dick: “Actually, Ju, there is one. It starts at 7.30.”
Ann: “Yes, and they’ve got smoked salmon sandwiches, vol au vents and gallons of Châteaux Neuf Du Pappe.”
Dick: “And the theme is Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Julian: “THAT’S IT! Don’t you see? He’ll look like everyone else and mingle with the crowd. No one’ll notice just another pirate.”
Dick: “And when the same no one’s aren’t looking…”
Ann: “He’ll nip off and do his smuggling.”
Dick: “That’s brilliant, Julian.”
Julian: “It is, rather, isn’t it.”
Ann: “Rath-er!”
Julian: “Then we’ve not a moment to lose. Come on.”
Dick: “Where are we going?”
Julian: “We’re going to dress up as as pirates and mingle with the crown at the party.”
Ann: “And catch him at it. WIZARD!”
Dick: “Spiffing!”
Ann: “Just a minute. Here comes George and Timmy. What’s that Timmy’s got in his mouth?”
Dick: “It looks like a wooden leg. Could it be…”
Julian: “Goodness gracious! It is. It’s the smuggler’s wooden leg.”
Ann: “And George doesn’t look very happy.”
Dick: “I’ll say. Hello, George. What’s up, old thing?”
George: “That’s settled his hash.”
Ann: “Who?”
George: “That stupid smuggler on the bike.”
Julian: “How did you know he was a smuggler?”
George: “Oh, come on! I’d have thought it was obvious. Anyway, he won’t be doing much smuggling for a while. I set Timmy on him.”
Ann: “Well done, Timmy. You caught a smuggler.”
George: “It was nothing to do with that.”
Julian: “What?”
George: “He called me a name.”
Ann: “No! What did he say?”
George: “We were crossing the road and he said: ‘Get out of the way, you dyke.’”
Ann: “What?”
Julian: “Er…”
Dick: “George, are you sure he didn’t say: ‘Get out of the way of the bike?”
George: “Of course I’m sure. He definitely said dyke. At least, I think he did. Anyway, dyke, bike, what’s the difference?
Julien: “Quite a lot, actually.”
George: “Look, let’s all go off to the party and have a jolly super time.”
Ann: “Rath-er!”
Dick: “Super! Come on, everyone! Last one there’s a dyke…I mean bike.”
George: “Dick, why don’t you go and stick your head up a bull’s bum?”
Dick: “Oh, I say!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Maybe baby I'll have you
Maybe baby you'll be true
Maybe baby I'll have you for me...

It's funny, honey, you don't care
You never listen to my prayer...
Maybe baby you will love me some day

You are the one that makes me glad
And you are the one that makes me sad
When, someday, you want me
Well, I'll be there, just wait and see

Maybe baby I'll have you
Maybe baby you'll be true
Maybe baby I'll have you for me

Well, you are the one that makes me glad
And you are the one that makes me sad
When, someday, you want me
I'll be there, just wait and see

Maybe baby I'll have you
Maybe baby you'll be true
Maybe baby I'll have you for me
Maybe baby I'll have you for me



Chapter 26. TOUCHY FEELY CURVES.

     By the Christmas of 1957, the guitar epidemic was at its most potent and contagious, especially among the pre-pubescent. Trevor Ford, my young friend from across the road was getting one for Christmas. Mike Rickards was getting one. Stuart Grey already had one that his Dad had bought back from Spain.

     Stuart’s guitar had gut strings as traditionally, Spanish guitars do. Stuart thought gut stings weren’t R&R enough so stuck a set of steel strings on the thing. The pressure of 16 lbs from each string over the bridge was too much, and as he was walking home from my place one evening, the guitar split around one side.

     The average cheap guitar in those days cost around seven guineas - that’s seven pounds seven shillings, for those too young to remember. They were small, and mass-produced by Rossetti, an Italian company, who specialised in making instruments that were unplayable.

     The first three frets were just about OK but then the strings got higher and higher away from the fingerboard until by the 12th fret you could easily have parked a bus under them. When Guitar strings are low on the fingerboard, they feel like silk. When they’re too high, trying to play is like deliberately trying slice your fingers on cheese wire.

     Alf and Connie couldn’t afford 7 guineas for a Rossetti so Alf decided to make a guitar. There was a magazine called Hobbies Weekly that I used to collect though I never really made anything the magazine suggested because I just wasn’t that practical, fairly ham-fisted and somewhat lacking in the patience department.

     Hobbies Weekly advertised their own kits for various things like wooden tea trays, pelmets, coffee tables and stuff. In 1957, they brought out a ‘Hobbies’ ‘make your own guitar kit’ for £2 10s, and Alf went for it.

     I was impressed. I knew Alf wasn’t a joiner or craftsman by any stretch of the imagination and thought a dovetail belonged on the arse end of a bird but he did make things quite well and over the years built me loads.

     He made the station and tunnel for my train set and covered it in plaster of paris to make the top look like is was a chalk cliff. I always thought the things he made were better than anything you could buy.

     He made a fort with a working drawbridge and a sandblasted exterior that you could dismantle wall-by-wall, turret-by-turret, and stow in the base box which doubled as dungeons and was where the soldiers lived when they weren’t dong battle.

     He made an Excalibur realistic enough for me to throw into Chislehurst Pond when I’d finished with it so that the Lady Of Prick End Pond ( That’s what they called it! ) could reach out and grab it before it hit the surface. I never got to perform the ritual as I managed to break the blade in half on a cabbage root that someone was using as a caveman’s club.

     Alf disappeared into the shed with the guitar kit about six weeks before Christmas and got to work. I wasn’t allowed to see it before Christmas Day but that just added to the excitement. It turned out to be a hell of a job, especially pegging and steaming the side pieces to the right shape. Connie painted a couple of Spanish dancers on the front when it was finished.

     The guitar was a sort of goldy brown colour with white piping and a black neck. It looked fantastic, but the plywood the Hobbies people supplied was far too thick and heavy to produce a decent sound, though at the time it didn’t matter.


     What did it matter? I was to find out when I really started to play, was that Alf found the formula for setting the frets the right distance apart very confusing and, as he decided it probably didn’t matter that much, he placed them anywhere.

     He set the frets at random distances apart. Playing basic chords on the first 3 frets was OK, but anything above there didn’t relate in any way to the Greek system of scales and mathematical, musical laws that musicians had used for 1000 years. In other words, ithe guitar was always pissed. Out of tune.

     And so, Santa delivered about 10 guitars to various households on the estate, Christmas Eve, 1957. With my guitar, I got my first pair of long trousers, a pair of leather slippers and a pale green crew-necked sweater.

     The trousers were the horrible, thick grey flannel ones that were hot, itchy, sagged pathetically after the first couple of wearings, and smelled when they got wet. But on Christmas Day, they had creases you could slice bread with, and I wouldn’t have cared if they’d been made of chain-mail or corrugated cardboard. It was what they signified that was important. Long trousers instantly transformed a pre-pubescent 11-year-old boy into a man.

     So after a few months, most of the guitars given as Christmas presents became ornaments - except mine.
     I persevered. I managed to make some sort of sense of the dots and lines in Trevor’s play-in-day book and set about trying to learn the chord of A on the second fret. (A fret is the space between those metal bits that run across the neck where you place your fingers. The same metal bits whose exact positions Alf didn’t seem to think mattered. )

     The basic chord was a mash of three fingers. It was extemely painful. How the hell were you supposed to push these bits of wire down a quarter of an inch with the soft tips of your fingers and hold them down hard enough so that when you plucked them, they made a sound? It was a joke. Someone was taking the piss. Just how much were you supposed to bleed first? But I wouldn’t give up. So I was going to bleed. If that was what it took, THEN THAT WAS WHAT IT TOOK.

     IT’S ALIVE!

     Early in 1958, the Fords, who lived opposite us in Gravelwood Close, threw a party. My guitar and Trev’s were on display as usual - I was still struggling with the chord of A major and my fingers were suffering. There were a couple of blokes at the party I’d never seen before.

     They were in their early twenties, and smartly dressed in a very un-skiffle sort of way, so I didn’t take much notice of them. Later in the evening, at what was a very slow moving party, the two guys picked up our guitars, settled themselves on the sofa, and launched straight into ‘That’ll Be The Day’, followed by a whole medley of Holly songs, with a couple of Elvis’s and Lonnie Donegan’s thrown in.

     My chin hit the floor. The wonderful guitar Alf made for me actually produced music - and it sounded great! Turns out, these two guys were founder members of The Shirralee’s Skiffle club in Bexley. They didn’t look skiffle in their smart suits, but maybe this was their weekend off.

     (Shirralee was the title of a hit Australian film starring Peter Finch. It was about a traveller who hooks up with an orphaned niece and they journey through loads of outback adventures together, including when the child got bitten by a snake. The title song by Mr T. Steele made number 1 in 1957.)

     The Ford’s party was where I listened to the first live guitar I’d ever heard and it made me hungry. The passion I’d held for the instrument for years instantly turned to burning desire. I had to make that sound. I had to find a way to make Alf’s machine talk. Without realising it, I’d opened my veins to a very powerful drug that I was to be addicted to for evermore.

     I was as high as a kite. When the two lads had finished, I took my guitar up to Trev’s bedroom and went at A major hammer-and-tongs for a couple of hours. The pain in my fingers must have been terrible but I didn’t feel a thing.

‘Pedigree Chum: Top breeders recommend it’


SFX: Door opening.

PHIL: “ Hello, Ded. I’ve jest finished ploughing the top field, the pigs are fed and I’m thinking of getting merried.”
DAN: “Aye, lad.”
PHIL: “Yes, to Grace Fairbrother. I know she’ll be fried to a crisp when the stable burns down in a couple of yers, but it’ll make the front page of the Daily Mirror and then I’ll be free to fall in love with Jill and get merried again and have lots of sproggs.”
DORIS: “Oh, Phil, that IS good news.”
DAN: “Aye, luv.”
SFX: “Door opening.”
WALTER GABRIELLE: “Hello there, me old pals, me old beauties. Has anyone seen
Mrs P?”
PHIL: “I thought she was visiting Peggy in the Bull.”
DAN: “Aye, lad.”
DORIS: “Peggy’s coming down the garden path now. I can see her through the kitchen window. Oh, she looks really worried. I do hope everything’s all right.”
DAN: “Aye, luv.”
SFX: Door opening.
PEGGY: “Hallo, Dad. Hello, Mum. Hello, Walter. Hello, Phil. Has anyone seen Jeck?”
PHIL: “Of course not, Peggy. He doesn’t turn up for another 10 years....”
PEGGY: “No, not that Jeck. I mean your brother Jeck, the alcoholic who owns the Bull.”
DAN: “Aye, luv.”
PHIL: “I didn’t know he owned a bull.”
PEGGY: “No, the Bull, as in the pub, you idiot.”
PHIL: “I say, steady on, old girl.”
WALTER: “Has anybody seen Mrs P?”
PEGGY: “Oh, DO shut up, Walter.”
DAN: “Aye, shut up Walter.”
PEG: “I’m sorry, Phil.”
PHIL: “That’s all right, old thing.”
PEG: “It’s just that I’m worried about the future. I mean, look at 1972 when Jeniffer gets knocked up by that common cow-herd Paddy Redmund, and what a scandal it causes in the village when Adam is born and then she takes Lillian’s boyfriend, Roger Pattillo, away from her and marries him and has Debbie and then Roger Pattillo turns out to be Roger Travers-Masey, and then Lillian Marries Ralph Bellamy a friend of that Ghastly Jeck Wooley, yes I know I end up marrying him in the 90’s but at least he didn’t have a leg amputated like Ralph - well, thank heaven they had young James, Lillian and Ralph, that is, but they’ll never find an actor to play him...and....Sid Perk’s first wife, Poll Doll, gets run over by a lorry and....oh, it’s all too much.”
SFX: Door opening.
JACK: “Hello, everyone. Has anybody seen my flaggon of gin - I’ve drunk all there is at the Bull and I thought I might have left one here.”
DAN: “Aye, lad. Mrs P. drank it. That’s her under the table. You can just see her legs poking out and those ‘orrible pink drawers she wears that hang right down to her knees. Fair turn a man’s stomach, they do.”
DORIS: Oh, Dan.

DA DA-DA DA-DA DA DA. DA DA-DA -DA DAA DA

Come on baby and be my guest
Come join the party and meet the rest
Everything is gonna be all right
So be my guest tonight

We're gonna dance to the rock 'n' roll
We're gonna even do the stroll
We're gonna Lindy Hop and Suzy Q
It's a special party just for you

My, my-oh-mine, gee you're so fine
Don't let me down
I'm the king but you can wear my crown
I'm gonna sing, my band gonna play
I'm gonna make you queen for a day
Everything is gonna be all right
So be my guest tonight

My, my-oh-mine, gee you're so fine
Don't let me down
I'm the king but you can wear my crown
I'm gonna sing, my band gonna play
I'm gonna make you queen for a day
Everything is gonna be all right
So be my guest tonight



Chapter 27. GOD HIMSELF


     He came to the Edgebury Estate in 1956 when the building of Gravelwood Close was completed by the erection of a small church-come-community-hall at the far end of the street. It was to be the sister church to the large, established Victorian church of All Saints in New Eltham. Several of the estate boys were conscripted into the choir and began choir practice on Thursday evenings, with Norman Harris, a middle-class draftsman from Brownspring drive.

     Norman Harris was what middle-aged respectable ladies would call could call a lovely man who didn’t have it in his nature to offend anyone. Always dressed in a dark blue, well tairlored, 3 piece suit, which seemed to belong to a previous age, he was also an enthusiastic but terrible pianist, but struggled manfully through ‘Jesu Joy Of Man’s Desiring’ to accompany the slow march into the church by the men in robes at the beginning of each service.
     Most of the boys were little sods and gave the poor Norman absolute hell. He never gave up trying to make angels from these grubby urchins even though he had no control over them whatsoever.

     Norman seemed to take an immediate shine to me, and though he had a son, Peter, who was the same age, also in the choir, it was as if I made up for the part that seemed to be missing in Peter: an interest in, and a love of music. Any music.

     We were a terrible choir. Our voices just weren’t strong enough, and what with all the pissing about that went on from the majority who were only there because their Mums said they had to be, we were never going to compete with Sierra State Boys Choir, or even the Bowery Boys, come to that.

     But Norman Harris wasn’t a quitter. Partly driven by his sheer love of the music that he tried in vain to get us to come to grips with, he hated the idea that we were considered 4th rate by the elite All Saints bunch. They were good. Very good, and it was obvious they looked down their very wealthy and privileged noses at us.

     Though perhaps not entirely at one with them, Norman, was nevertheless sympathetic with the sounds that I was surrounding myself with outside the church. He introduced me to the word ‘syncopated’, by way of description and justification in his own mind, and showed a respect for what I was into. After all, to Norman, it was at least music. (Well, he suspected it might be.)

     He used to take me all over the place on the back of his old Velocette ‘Noddy Bike’ (A lightwait motorbike that briefly took over from the traditional police pushbike.) to concerts and church music events. In 1959, he took me on a coach trip to the South East of England on a tour of all the great organ sites for a series of recitals.

     We did Canterbury Cathedral, Dover Grammar School, Hythe, and many other places too numerous to recall. I do recall the music. It was wonderful. These were some of the finest organs in Europe, and to hear them played at full volume in the echoey and relatively empty venues, was an awesome experience.

     This was also the weekend when Buddy Holly’s posthumous hit, ‘It Doesn’t Matter Any More’ was released. The coach stopped at the Robuck, a famous stop-off for travellers to Margate and the South Coast. As the party sat drinking their tea and munching their cucumber sandwiches, I wondered over to the jukebox and put the record on.

     Rock ‘n’ Roll’s first tragedy had occurred just two weeks before when Holly, The Big Bopper and 17 year-old Ritchie Vallens were killed in plane crash.
     These were a very poignant few moments and a huge lump swelled in my throat as it would in the throats of millions. Norman was sitting with John Stride, the All Saints choir master a few feet away. I heard Stride say:

     “What an earth’s that? What does he think he’s doing?”
     “Leave him. It’s very significant.” I looked round to see that Norman was obviously a bit pissed off with Stride’s comment, and he winked at me. Good old Norman Harris.

     FATHER

     Since God arrived on the Edgbeury estate, I wanted to be a priest. I just loved that stuff they wore - the long black thing with the leather belt right down to their shoes and the Polo Mint collar. And they held their hands together with the thumbs crossed as they walked slowly, humbly, and serenely. But I knew they weren’t just humble. They were superior, possibly above mortal. At least, they acted like they were.

     There were 3 ‘Fathers’ posted at the Little St Aiden’s Church when it was opened on the Estate in 1957 at the end of Gravelwood Close. There was the Vicar from All Saints, the Mother Church in New Eltham, Father Gerald Rymes, who lived with his mother in the Vicarage in Foots Cray Road. He had thick, curly hair, slightly protruding teeth and not a bad singing voice.

     Rymes, in his fifties, was a religiously enthusiastic, but dull man who always listened to the Brains Trust, an extremely dull programme, on the Home Service or watched it on BBC TV. I knew that because one day, when I was trying to stay awake waiting for the programme to finish so that I could watch Robin Hood on the Telly, they answered a question that he sent in.

     It was a very long and tedious question and so was the answer. Malcolm Mugridge, a self styled Christian Philosopher who in later years went on to label Monty Pythons ‘Life Of Brian’ blasphemous, leaned back in his chair, put his little finger on his chin and contemplated the ceiling before expounding from the depth of his cynical and over-intellectual wisdom. I didn’t understand a word and yearned for the twang of Richard Green’s arrow as it smacked into the middle of the old oak tree.

     Rymes was the general, the priest in charge, and held the posture of regal, eminent Father Superior. I don’t suppose he meant to be, but he was incredibly patronising, in a worthy sort of way and utterly out of touch with the customs and workings of a 1950s council estate. He reminded me of Dr Arnold, the Headmaster of Rugby School in Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

     In the 1948 film, Robert Newton played the part magnificently and it seemed to me that Rymes could have modelled his style on Newton’s performance. The two even looked alike: same hair; same bearing; same expression; same voice.

     “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting...” etc. All this stuff had to be sung in one note, except for the last one of the passage, which dropped a semi-tone - unaccompanied. This ‘ain’t easy, but what is easy, is to drift off key.

     This was no One Note Samba and there was no Charlie Byrd or Stan Getz to keep things on track. Rymes had a good ear, though, and had it cracked after years of practice.

     Rymes had two young curates under his command: the Reverend Graham Lynch-Watson, and the Reverend David Thornton. Graham Lynch -Watson was a David Attenborough look-alike (his TV travelogue, ‘Zoo Quest’ was very popular at the time) and sound-alike without the animals. (He even had Attenborough’s voice).

     Father Graham, as he was known, was a sincere, approachable man, I think genuinely so. A serious young chap who always seemed deep in thought, often to be seen with his hands thrust deep into his *cassock pockets, and contemplating the ground on which he walked. (*That’s the long black dress-type thing that they all used to wear and which I became more and more interested in wearing myself one day.)

     The local teenaged girls thought this shy, gentle, enigmatic servant of God, with the lank brown hair falling across his furrowed brow, was drop-down-dead-on-the-spot-with-legs-in-the-air-gorgeous and quite swoon-inducing, as he’d sit on his bike, bicycle clips flashing seductively beneath his cassock, outside the church having a quite fag with Norman Harris, the choir master.

     I was 10, going on 11 and still at Red Hill School, when I used to fantasise that I was a similar heroic figure, sweeping along the school corridors in my cassock and black leather belt, hands clasped together, thumbs crossed, ready to solve my classmates’ pastoral problems by ceremoniously making the sign of the cross at the drop of a school cap or especially a beret.

     Already in the school choir, and having signed up with the newly formed and totally inadequate St Aidens choir under the instruction of the ever-optimistic Norman Harris. A peculiar state of affairs, the choir seemed to attract a breed of singers who couldn’t actually sing or who had croaking, screeching voices that would have been more at home in a farm yard.

     Undaunted, Norman never gave in to this obvious disadvantage, and tried his utmost to instil some semblance of tunefulness into this largely reluctant, unrully and talentless ensemble.

     There were one or two of us who had voices that, though weak, could actually hang on in tune. A couple were tone deaf and eventually left as there seemed no point in furthering their confusion or the choir’s only to be replaced by more non-singers from the same mould. (Tone-deaf people don’t know they’re tone deaf because they have no accurate measurement of sound or pitch at their disposal)

     The majority were there because their mothers had seen a chance that from their lowly, albeit happy and care-free existence on the estate, here was a chance for their children to get nearer to God or nearer to a more enlightened way of life and ‘better themselves’. Also, having a son who was a recognised angel was a sign of respectability and, possibly, superiority.

     But though it’s relatively easy to take the boy out of the council estate and place him in a more sacred environment, having got him there, it’s a lot more difficult to take the council estate out of the boy. In fact, as Norman Harris found, it wasn’t on the cards at all.

     There was one kid in the company with a tremendous voice. This was David Jeffreys, or Gaffer, as he was known. He was big kid for 12, with an enormous set of lungs, capable of projecting his angelic tones all the way to Canterbury and back.

     The very first hymn in the very first practice we had was ‘Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken’, to the tune of the German National Anthem. This was the first time I’d ever heard it, and I thought it was a wonderfully rousing little ditti. Little wonder the Nazis rallied round the Swastika so readily with a number like that stirring the old Arian blood.

     Nowadays, it’s all too familiar as Michael Schumacher notches up yet more Grand Prix wins in the name of the Fatherland and their Italian allies at Ferrari. Just like Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, really.

     Gaffer could have helped take control of proceeding with his size and heavenly voice, but he was a mischievous bastard and encouraged the younger kids to firmly place poor old Norman in absolute purgatory.

     Gaffer’s mate from Bromley Grammar School, Brian Bateman, another enormous lad, with Arian features, fair hair and definite Gestapo sympathies, was promoted to head choir boy and did seem to get some kind of control going by the subtle approach of bashing a few heads now and again.

     But here again, poor old Norm was scuppered. Bateman was one of the ‘unsingers’, who produced a sound like a toad in labour - not good for a head choirboy, and excruciatingly embarrassing for the rest of us when he was called upon to perform the solo parts that went with the territory.

     PERFORMANCE

     I’ve got to hand it to Norman. He never gave up. His enthusiasm was undying and uncontainable. He just kept coming back for more. He turned up on our doorstep at 120 Imperial Way one Wednesday evening and announced that All Saints were giving a concert and had invited him to submit some partakers from his band of merry little buggers.

     He’d nominated Trevor Ford and I as a guitar-playing duo and said that we were to appear onstage in the All Saints church hall that very Friday. Now, I’d only had 2 lessons from the Coldharnour Estate, Hillbilly guitrist, Jack Head, and was just beginning to stumble my way around the chords to ‘I Saw The Light’, the Hank Williams tune he’d introduced me to. I also vaguely knew the parts for a Lonnie Donegan number, ‘The Big Grand Coolie Dam’. Trevor, though he’d had his guitar as long as I’d had mine, couldn’t play a note.

     I protested to Norman that we couldn’t play, which was absolutely true. But ‘Storming Norman’ was having none of it. ‘You haveth guitars, and therefore you playeth guitars’ was how it was as far as he was concerned.

     This may have had something to do with the fact that though the grand piano Norman used in the little church was a fine piece of kit, his own playing, though enthusiastic, wasn’t exactly what you could call, tuneful. But Norman wasn’t a quitter. No sir.

     “Nonsense!” he said, smiling his usual keen smile. “Of course you can play.” So that was that. We were on, like it or not. I’m sure the Everly Brothers would’ve crapped themselves if they’d they known. In blind panic, I rushed across to Trevor’s and broke the news as gently as I could.

     “Quick. Grab your guitar. We gotta practice!!!”

     When the curtain went up on the Friday night at All Saints, there were loud cheers from the audience at the sight of two guitars. The fact that two little boys in cassocks were holding them was of no consequence.
     Wasting no time, we launched into ‘I Saw The Light.’ I’d told Trevor to watch my fingers and try and make the chord changes as best he could. He did the best he could, and would have done a really good job miming on ‘Ready Steady Go’ a few years later.

     The Hank Williams gospel seemed to go down well and we segwayed straight into ‘Grand Coolie Dam’ to rapturous applause. I don’t remember what we sounded like, but with Trevor’s soft little fingers finding it nearly impossible to mash the strings down onto the fingerboard hard enough to produce much short of a resounding buzz, and with Alf’s home-made guitar being more than slightly out of tune, I doubt it was very melodic.

     However, the applause carried on after the curtain came down and Norman shoved us back on for an encore. We only knew, and I use the term loosely, the two songs, so we just did them again. Same response. Apparent ecstasy.

     Trev and I were not quite the Beatles who were drowned out at Shea Stadium in 1964 by thousands of hysterical fans, but there was the definite comparison in that during the famous bedlam of their concert, their music didn’t matter any more for them than ours did for us.

     GRAHAM AND DAVID

     It was standing room only whenever Father Graham was appearing. No one threw their knickers on the alter, though, and he did drone on a bit to my young ears and I used to keep myself awake by imagining tiny soldiers engaged in huge battles on the floor of the church. The other reason to prey for the Sunday sermon to finish was to get home see ‘I Love Lucy’ and ‘Sea Hunt’ which starred Lloyd Bridges as Mike Nelson, a sub-aqua super hero who sometimes wrestled sharks amred only with what looked like a kitchen knife.

     While Graham Lynch-Watson was charismatic and held the females of the St Aiden’s congregation spellbound with his Evensong sermons. (Not that it had anything to do with the content, which was way above the heads of most of the gathering.) The second curate, David Thornton, was anything but charismatic. A boyish, pinched, rat-faced young man with the features of a 12 year old, and thin greasy, hair shedding copious amounts of dandruff, he was insignificant apart from a pitted complection from a once virulent plague of acne.

     He could have been straight out of Norman Harris’s choir - he certainly had the pre-requisite ‘non-voice’. It was by far the worst example I’d heard. Feeble, scratchy and tuneless, as if his voice hadn’t really broken but his tonsils had. Socially inept, stiff and awkward, with not even enough art to be condescending, David Thorton was prim and proper, anally retentive, with no hint of any sense of humour - a stickler for rules and regulations and with about as much pastoral talent as Geronimo.

     THORNTON IN THE SIDE

     Unfortunately for the estate and the St Aiden’s community, Thornton was given the job of ‘charge priest’ over the little place of worship and in his great wisdom, decided in the summer of 1958, that all peripheral activities taking place in the church hall, including the youth club, should close for a six week recess. Many minds boggled at Thorton’s ineptitude and Mr McGoo blend of shortsightedness. When Alf heard about this, his reaction was precise.

     “Bollocks to that. We’ll have the youth club at home.”

     And that’s exactly what he did. In the week before the ban was due to start he sank 18 empty Kit-E-Kat tins in the vast back lawn, made some tin flags and painted them with numbers. He bought four putting sticks and a few golf balls and declared the Bradley putting green well and truly open. I didn’t think a putting green was really skiffle or Rock ‘n’ Roll but Alf wasn’t to be put off. He took down the door dividing the living room and dining room, pushed back the furniture and relocated the ‘EYE FI’. He built a makeshift bar in a corner of the sitting room and bought some new packs of playing cards.

     The new youth club at 120 Imperial Way was ready. Word got around, and reached the ears of the Reverend Thorton who knocked on the door one evening and asked to talk to Alf. Connie showed him into the sitting room and summoned Alf from the shed.

     “Evening, Vicar.” Alf called anyone in a Polo Mint collar, Vicar.
     “Actually, I’m the Curate of St Aidens.”
     “Whatever you say, Vicar.”

     Thornton explained to Alf that he thought it most inappropriate for the ex-Matelot to open his house to members of the youth club as it undermined his decision to close the club for the summer. He also said he felt that he, Alf, would be depriving them of an important lesson in values, being that they would appreciate the club more if they were without it for a period of time. He said it was rather like the exercise of Lent, and that it was one of the jobs of the church to educate young people in the ways of abstinence and what could be gained from it, blah, blah blah.

     Alf said he didn’t see what him opening his house to a few friends had to do with the church or anyone else for that matter. Thorton persisted.

     “It’s the job of the church...” he went on, or tried to. He was beginning to wind Alf up and I could have told him that winding Alf up wasn’t a wise thing to do and that for all intents and purposes, he might as well have been the bloke Alf caught standing on his hammock on a battleship in the middle of the Atlantic in 1940.

     “The church ain’t nothin’ to do with me.” Alf stated categorically.
     “But you run the Church Youth Club.” Persisted the suicidal Thorton
     “No. I run a youth club that pays rent to the church because we use their premises. But it’s not affiliated to the church. Ask Johnny Lynch. He set it up in the first place.”

     Alf was right and Thornton was furious. He told Alf that from now on, as priest in charge, he would decide who used the church premises and who didn’t. He would restart the youth club in the church’s name and that the members would be expected to attend church services. He told Alf that he would be welcome to continue running the club if he wished to do so, but would have to abide by the new rules. Alf resigned from the youth club on the spot and Thornton left in quiet rage and with quite a substantial flea in his ear.

     Alf’s home grown youth club flourished for about 6 weeks but gradually the clientele drifted away, except for a core of about 20 or so stalwarts who came back regularly once a week for about 4 years. It was no longer a youth club as such but a gathering of young people who just seemed to want to be friends of the Bradley family. They still used Alf and Connie as a sounding board for their problems and the couple were dragged into quite a few dramas being mediators between couples and disapproving parents and wet shoulders for many a broken heart.

     I was still considered to be too young to be an official part of the gathering but as Alf pointed out, I did live in the house and should therefore be able to come and go as I pleased and one of the big advantages as far as I was concerned was gaining access to a couple of the very talented guitar players who were members and during those 4 years, extended my repertoire considerably, playing along with some of the finest self-taught musicians I ever met before or since.

‘Frys Turkish Delight. Full of eastern promise’

Richard Attenborough/David Lynch-watson:

     “I’m standing here in front of the little church on a typical council estate, the natural habitat for some pretty unique creatures. If we’re very quiet, with a bit of luck, one of them will appear. They’re usually quite friendly and as long as we don’t make any sudden movements and frighten them away, we should be able to get close enough for a really good look. Here’s one now. Just peeping into view. Yes. Here it comes.. What a stroke of luck!

     You can just make out the head peering round the front door, probably making sure the coast is clear from natural predators, such as a visiting insurance salesman, or a milkman demanding payment for the week’s milk, or something else which strikes his fancy. Or it could be the most dangerous and voracious predator of all: the local plumber.

     Yes. It looks like its all clear. This one’s definitely a female - and a beautiful example. Notice the magnificent plumage of turban-shaped scarf just covering enough of the head to allow the curlers to protude alluringly from berneath, glinting in the early morning sun.

     Yes. She’s on her way. She’s wearing the traditional winter coat with the imitation fur collar, a really fine example of the natural camouflage used to great effect by the females in this area, and has the familiar wicker shopping bag over her arm. These adornments help her blend in with the local environment, and become an acceptable part of the community.

     She’s probably off to the shops just around the corner and through the alleyway to our right. Here, she’ll meet others of the species, many of them displaying the same plumage. They’ll communicate in the usual manner and engage in local gossip and probably exchange views on the weather and the price of haddock. What a priviledge for us to be allowed to view her at such close quarters. Sensational!”


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Every night I hope and pray a dream lover will come my way,
A girl to hold in my arms and know the magic of her charms,
'cause I want (yeah-yeah yeah) a girl (yeah-yeah yeah) to call (yeah-yeah yeah)
my own (yeah-yeah)
I want a dream lover so I don't have to dream alone.

Dream lover, where are you with a love, oh, so true?
And I hand that can hold, to feel you near as I grow old?
'cause I want (yeah-yeah yeah) a girl (yeah-yeah yeah) to call (yeah-yeah yeah) my
own (yeah-yeah)
I want a dream lover so I don't have to dream alone,

Someday, I don't know how, I hope she'll hear my plea,
Some way, I don't know how, she'll bring her love to me,

Dream lover, until then, I'll go to sleep and dream again,
That's the only thing to do, till all my lover's dreams come true,
'cause I want (yeah-yeah yeah) a girl (yeah-yeah yeah) to call (yeah-yeah yeah) my
own (yeah-yeah)
I want a dream lover so I don't have to dream alone.

Dream lover, until then, I'll go to sleep and dream again,
That's the only thing to do, till all my lover's dreams come true,
'cause I want (yeah-yeah yeah) a girl (yeah-yeah yeah) to call (yeah-yeah yeah) my
own (yeah-yeah)
I want a dream lover so I don't have to dream alone,

Please don't make me dream alone,
I beg you don't make me dream alone,

No, I don't wanna dream alone.....

Chapter 28. HAROLD DEXTER


     Almost as soon as St Aiden’s church was opened in 1957, many Mums on the Edgebury Estate seemed to develop a sudden anxiety to have some kind of connection with God, or at least, something that was good and respectable. As a result, they nominated their son’s to join the newly formed choir. I was already in the Red Hill School choir and enjoyed it sufficiently not to mind joining another one.

     The original auditions for the choir weren’t that strict and I think Norman realised early on that he was going to hard pushed to keep members for any length of time and it seemed pragmatic to open the doors to anyone who had a voice of any kind. He was right. Most of the recruits didn’t bother coming back after a first evening sitting around the donated grand piano, while Norman took the gathering through a series of scales and excercises.

     What he was left with on the second week, were about 3 kids who had the vaguest notion of how to hold a note and a remaing few who’s mothers insisted they kept attending whether they liked it or not. The turn over of members was swift and new recruits were drawn from the posher parts of the district of New Eltham, just across the Kent/London border.

     More and more non-singers left the St Aiden’s choir and more and more non-singers joined, though, at the time, I could never work out why this was. Perhaps Norman Harris was a masochist. The Fitzmorrises joined, young Michael first. He was a nine year old with dark Curly hair and a fairish voice. I met his 12-year-old brother at a tennis afternoon at All Saints. Everybody knows the kind of thing: curly cucumber sandwiches and lashings of orange juice; ladies in hats and men with ‘weekend’ open-necked shirts. If there’d been any hockey sticks then they would have been extremely jolly.

     I’d found an old racquet and an empty court without a net, which was probably why it was empty. Paul Fitzmorris appeared with another old racquet.

     “Let me riddle you.” he said. What? Riddle me? Oh, I see. At least I thought I did, though he didn’t look much like a poet. He strolled to the other end of the court, threw the ball up and hit it with all his might. It flew right over my head, right over the fence and into the trees, “There. I told you I’d riddle you.”

     The grinning Fitzmorris strode to where the net would have been and extended his hand, as if he’d just won the Wimbledon Men’s’ Final. “Now, let’s see if we can find some others we can riddle.”

     I never thought that tennis could be that simple. In retrospect, he was a complete, pompous dick-head, and I thought he’d make a perfect head choirboy for St Aidens. Brian Bateman had left on account of his voice breaking or his balls dropping or something, so there was a vacancy for another senior non-singing Pratt.

     So, Fitzmuck, as Paul Mainwearing, a haemophiliac choirboy with psychopathic tendencies named him, joined the choir. Within weeks, the non-singing pompous git was promoted to head non-singing pompous git and given the head pompous non-singing git medal to wear around his neck.

     Compared to the worst non-singing voices we’d had in the choir up till then, Fitzmuck took the entire barrel of biscuits. He was pitiful. Even the most rabid tomcats in the district took refuge when he opened his mouth and uttered just one excruciatingly crackly note. But he looked and acted the part to perfection. He had the breeding, the education from Colfe’s Grammar School, a famous place of learning in Lewisham which turned out pompous gits and dick-heads by the score, the neat side parting and most of all, the obvious superiority.

     The Fitzmucks brought with them another non-singing neighbour of theirs, one Christopher Thornton, a blonde, tousle-haired boy with a vacant expression and a pretty, young redheaded mother with a body for any pre-pubescent chorister to die for. Well, perhaps I wouldn’t exactly have died for her, but she stopped me having imaginary battles with tiny soldiers during the Sunday Evensong sermon. I spent the time instead imagining what Mrs Thornton looked like without any clothes on.

     By this time, Norman Harris’s choir squad consisted of two boys who could sing in tune, albeit with fairly weak voices, (Malcolm Carter and me) and four (sometimes six) that couldn’t. We were pitiful. Anyone else in his position would’ve shot themselves when it was announced that all choirs in the Southwark diocese were to sing in a 500 strong festival in Southwark Cathedral, but not Stormin’ Norman. Ever the optimist, he excitedly announced the event and set about preparing us for the first rehearsal which was to be conducted by Harold Dexter, the Principal Director of The Royal School Of Church Music.

     Norman knew Dexter and invited him to an Evensong service at St Aidens, which I thought was a plucky thing as it promised to be embarrassing if it was anything. Either Norman had extra large testicles or he was right round the bend and out of sight.

     Dexter pitched up and sat in the second row of tubular and canvas chairs which were used as makeshift pews. A silver-haired, middle-aged almost Dickensian character, he was over 6 foot tall and very distinguished in his cashmere overcoat and gold piz-net glasses perched on his beak-like nose. When he stood up for the first hymn and we struck up with the first verse, his mouth dropped open but no sound came out.

     He remained gaping incredulously, solid like a block of stone, as we crackled and croaked through the hymn then, sat down with a thump like a sack of flour, shocked and relieved that the ordeal was over.

     At the end of the service, he came round to the stage door - actually, the chancel, the bit of the tiny church where the alter was. He smiled awkwardly, and opened his mouth to speak.

     “Hmmm. Er...well done...I think you need to…yes...well done.” Maybe he figured our sound would be drowned out by the power of the other 492 voices at the festival, but for a man with ears like his, it was likely we’d stand out like piranhas in a tank of gold fish. Norman was beaming from ear to ear, though if I’d been him I’d have been hiding under the piano.

     After Harry boy left, Norman handed out the anthem we’d be singing at the festival. An anthem is a cross between a hymn and a psalm, but usually much more difficult than either. The only way to get through one was to follow the music. None of us could read properly but all you had to do was to feel your way when the notes went up and again when they came down. If you could sing in tune, it wasn’t so bad but if you couldn’t it might as well have been written in Chinese.

     So, 500 hundred choristers - that’s 492 choristers and 8 turkeys - met at a school in Deptford one Saturday morning and were herded into the hall for a rehearsal.
There we all were. Five hundred Just Williams from all walks of life, though mostly from the upper walks, huddled together on a damp, mournful day wondering why we weren’t at Saturday morning pictures or in some cases, playing ruggah.

     Still, the chatter was loudly exuberant - remeniscent of a thousand battery hens when HD made his grand entrance. Looking like Will Hay from the old classic film, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, he strode to the lectern in the centre of the hall and turned to face the murmuring throng. He held a conductor’s baton in his hand and brought it down with a vicious swipe onto the edge of the lectern top. It made a noise like the crack of Frank Eifield’s stock whip and the cackling of 500 voices was halted by a sudden devastating silence so acute that it caused a deep pain to the inner ear.

     “RIGHT. PAY ATTENTION.”
     We paid attention.
     “From the top.” commanded HD with a cursory glance in the direction of a timid-looking, middleaged female pianist. The piano struck up and so did we. We managed about a bar and half before we were brought to a dead halt by another loud whip crack.
     “NONONONONONONONONO!”

     HD’s eyes were screwed tight shut for a second, his face glowing purple. He glared over his piz nez, “I think it would be a good idea to START TOGETHER! Now. Again,” he optimistically raised his baton.

     It’s amazing what fear can produce. It gets people through exams. It’s been known to cause a man to find incredible strength that he didn’t know he had in order for him to lift a car off someone. It also mercilessly loosens the bowels and can cause a person to sing in way they never thought they could. What HD demanded wasn’t all plain sailing and didn’t come easy to any of us, even from the real choristers from the posher churches. But the birdlike man with the battron demanded perfection and he as near as damn it got it - albeit by seeming to threaten the death of a thousand David Thortons, in not so many words. He just eminated his intention through his steely-grey death mask of a face.

     There were quite a few sudden whip-cracks from the baton and at one point, his tongue lashed out at St Aiden’s Christopher Thornton with uncanny accuracy.

     “PAY ATTENTION! You there!Tthe tousled-haired boy in the centre of row 4. STOP DREAMING AND CONCENTRATE! Where do you think you are? You’re just opening and closing your mouth like a hungry goldfish. If you’re going to mime then at least mime the words. You are not here to catch flies. You are here to SING.”
     Christopher T. went even paler than normal. He apparently turned to stone and fixed his eyes on HD and kept them there until the ordeal was over, and even then, the lad next to him had to give him a quick nudge to bring him out of the trance.

     That afternoon of fear produced the sound of a heavenly choir, drawing subtle, angelic sounds from the throats of many who had no idea they had the potential of such beautiful sounds within them. Sounds that made the hair on your neck stand up and salute. Sound that bought tears to the eyes of many a rough, tough 12 year old; sounds that produced the ghost of a smile on Harold Dexter’s lips at the end of the afternoon. Harold Dexter was something else. For one Saturday morning in 1959 at least, Harold Dexter was God.

     We had one more rehearsal in Southwark Cathedral on the morning of the recital and then went straight into the performance at 2pm. It was like a dream. I don’t remember much about it, except a sea of angel faces in black and white robes straining to reach choristers’ nirvana. As for the sound, I just didn’t hear it. It’s a total blank, like white noise in my memory. Still, it was a high point in my career as a chorister, and at least I can claim, and often do, that I once sung in Southwark Cathedral. Dick-head, Fitzmuck, couldn’t realistically have claimed the same, despite the efforts of Harold Dexter. The prat may have been there but maybe he left his froggy voice at home in the bathroom cabinet and just mimed.






"Sooty, dorn't do thut!

* * * * * * * * *



A-wa do ya wun if ya done wan mu-ney,
Wa do ya wun if ya done wan goad,
Say wa ya wan an’ arl giv i ya hu-u-ney,
Wish ya wan-ed ma luv, bay-ber,

A-wa do ya wun if ya done wan trinkits,
Wa do ya wan if ya done wan pows,
Say wa ya wan an’ arl giv i ya dow-a-lin,
Wish ya wan-ed ma luv, bay-ber.

Well arm offeren you thus darmon ring,
An’ all ya do us turn mer down,
Wa da ya wan, oh boy ya muken,
A foool ard-er maay...

One uv these days when yo need ma kissen,
One uv these dyas when ya wan mer too,
Done tun urun ‘cos arl be mi-i-sin’
Thendyall wna-a ma luv, bay-ber.


Chapter 29. ROLL ON

     ADAM’S APPLE

     Skiffle was still alive and well when the 6.5 special went on air and the show was divided equally between the scruffy skifflers and the unkempt Rock‘n’Rollers. Pete Murray and the slightly nervous and out of place, Jo Douglas, flitted about like a pair of hens making sure that nothing untoward was allowed to happen to upset the coup. Murray, in his Sports Jacket and slacks and Douglas in a tight wasted dress and stiletto heals better suited to a vicar’s tea party, looked completely overwhelmed and out of place and somewhat embarrassed by Don Lang’s attempts to appear 10 years younger than he actually was.

     Various sidekicks were added to the mix to help things along, like boxer Freddy Mills, singer Kenny Lynch, Mike and Bernie Winters (long before the goofy one got hold of that stupid dog) and even Charlie Drake tried to stake a claim on Rock’n’Roll with his own one hit wonder, ‘Splish Splash’. Thankfully, the ‘B’ side, ‘Hello My Darlings’, hastened his speedy retreat from the Rock’n’Roll scene for ever.

     Generally, the 6.5 format worked if a little rough round the edges. All the groups and singers appeared live, and though the sound quality was pretty ropey, the atmosphere was exciting and the show spontaneous and compelling and apart from established celebrities the 6.5 special was also used as a launch pad for new acts and was host to the first appearances of Screaming Lord Such, Russ Hamilton, and Laurie London who, according to his superior Golder’s Green upbringing, had ‘The Whole World In His Hands’.

     He didn’t hold onto it for long though, and pretty soon it slipped through his fingers, rolled across the floor and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Laurie’s lurid sweaters didn’t protect him and he suffered the same fate without rolling across the floor.

     Helen Shapiro was another Golders Greenite to make her debut with ‘You Don’t Know’, sung in her distinctive baritone voice that in later years would equip her as a very fine jazz singer on the cabaret circuit. Wee Willie Harris, a South London ‘herbert’, died his hair pink to produce one of Rock’n’Rolls first pure gimmicks. Pink hair was about all he had to offer and he too faded away.

     There was Jess Conrad, whom I once cast as Batman in a commercial for Shreddies; Duffy Power, whoever he was; Tommy Steele’s brother, Colin Hicks; Marty Wilde and The Wild Cats; Billy Fury; Jim Dale, pretending to play a guitar and bopping about like a complete idiot on springs; Eden Kane, the less said about him the better; and a really scruffy looking individual in the James Dean uniform of leather Jacket, T shirt and jeans fronting a skiffle group which seemed to employ about 27 guitarists.

     The Group were called ‘The Worried Men’ and though they did appear depressed, they didn’t look half as worried as Pete and Jo. The one and only song which the Worried Men sang for 3 weeks in a row was ‘It Takes A worried Man To Sing A Worried Song’, which I suppose it does.

     The slob at the front in the leather jacket obviously couldn’t sing a note but he looked pretty skiffle in a desperate sort of way, and was none other than the great Terry Nelhams, aka Adam Faith. It was an appalling performance to put it mildly.

     But dear old Adam never looked back. He didn’t have to. A couple of years later, he turned up again on a much slicker and better produced show on ATV called ‘Oh Boy’, as a joint front man with Marty Wilde and the new, sensationally sneering Cliff Richard.

     Adam changed his hair to the new side parting ‘college boy style’ which he borrowed from the mums and dads favourite, Perry Como, he of ‘Catch A Falling Star’ fame. Adam’s new barnet was to become his trade mark but unfortunately the blonde rinse hadn’t changed his voice, not that that seemed to matter a great deal to the audience who were busily engaged in Rock’n’Roll’s first orchestrated bouts of screaming.

     “Right, you ‘orrible lot of degenerates, when I ‘old up the board wots says scream, you’re gonna scream, right? ‘Cos if you don’t, me and the boys‘ll give you somink to scream abart. Go’i?”

     Adam Faith became more and more a star in his own right, basing his entire style on not only his inability to sing but on his dreadful diction. It worked. The kids loved him, maybe because here was someone so vulnerable, so inept, that he had nothing to loose, and was prepared to give it a shot. It meant everybody could give it a shot, if they had the nerve. Better still, Adam Faith didn’t seem to give a toss about all his shortcomings. So he couldn’t sing. So what?

     ‘Oh Boy’, broadcast from The Hackney Empire in the East End of London later became ‘Boy Meets Girl’ which these days would have to be called: ‘Girl Meets Boy Because She Chooses To Do So’. Both shows featured a diminutive lady called Cherry Waigner, who spent her time at a Hammond Organ covered in white, padded leather that looked a headboard from someone’s bedroom.

     There was also a gang of dancing girls called ‘The Vernon Girls’. I’ve no idea who Vernon was, but the group were led by Margaret Stredder who’s contribution to fashion was to make women’s spectacles popular, as she sported an enormous pair of white ones that looked like the old white framed sunglasses of the day.

     The Vernon Girls wore ‘short shorts’, neatly pressed with tiny turnups over black stockings with seams. (Steady, boys!) They’d sweep about on mass, leaning forward and swinging their arms side-to-side as if they were on ice skates, surrounding whichever male singer was on stage at the time. Considered fairly risqué, the Vernons were nowhere near as overtly sexual as Pan’s People who appeared on Top Of The Pops in the 70’s. In fact, The Vernon’s routine was a semi-naughty nun-like display of sacred viginity, tinged with a real sense of:

     ‘Look all you like, but you’d better not touch. Don’t even think about it unless you propose marriage first’. Marty Wilde did marry one of them: a young dark haired dancer called Joyce Baker. It was probably the only way he was ever going to get his leg over the pretty dancer, but, having said that, Marty and Joyce’s was one of the first Rock ‘n’ Roll marriages and survives to this day, having produced Kim Wilde who was to become a successful pop singer herself in the 1980s, managed effectively by her brother. Talk about keeping it in the family!

     Also on Boy Meets Girl was the original boy band, ‘The Dallas Boys’, five blokes in suits 3 sized too big who could actually sing pretty neat five part harmonys looking more than comfortable and confident as a backing vocal band. They could certainly have shown today’s boy bands a thing or two even if it was just how to survive in a dance hall fight.

‘Murrymints. The too good to hurry mint’

SFX: Jolly piano music, ‘Have A Go’ song.
MVO: “Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you to ‘Have A Go’.
Audience:
“Have a go, Joe, come on and have a go
You can't lose owt, it costs you nowt,
To make yourself some dough.
So hurry up and join us, don't be shy and don't be slow.
Come on Joe, have a go!"
MVO: “And here is Wilfred Pickles.”
Wilfred Pickles:
“Ladies and Gentlemen of Cleethorpes, ‘ow do? ‘Ow are yeh? Right, Mabel, let’s see what’s on ‘t table today. Some old oonfinished knitting – eeh, ah dorn’t reckon mooch on t’ cooler ‘o that! Ooh, it’s for me, is it? Its reet loovely, is thut. A coople of boos tickets; a teaspoon; a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mirror and a pile of peanoot shells. Eye, an’ very interstin’, too. Reet, let’s gerron wi’, it, shall oos?
Ello, loove, and what’s thee name, luss?”
Contestant: “Audrey.” (Giggle, giggle.)
W: “Right, Audrey. D’you work ‘ere in t’ factory, loove?”
A: “Aye, ah do thut.” (Giggle, giggle.)
W: “And what is it you do, Audrey? In t’factory, I mean?”
A: “Well, I put the round things on the end of the long things.” (Giggle, giggle.)
SFX: Raucus laughter from the audience.
W: “Do thee, now? And what are the long things for, Audrey?
A: (Giggle, giggle.) “I dorn’t knor.” (Cackle, cackle.)
W: “Thee dorn’t knor?”
W: (addressing the audience.) “Dooz anyone knor what the long things are for? Can anywoon ‘elpooz out, ‘eeyer?”
SFX: Raucus laughter from the audience.
Member of audience: “Theu fshdu njuhdgtr omnghti!”
W: “Ye what? What did thee say?
Member of audience: “Theu fshdu njuhdgtr omnghti!”
SFX: Raucus laughter from the audience.
W: “I orp the audience at orm din’t ‘ear that! Ee, by goom, I don’t knor!”
W: “Anyway, Audrey. Are you ready to ‘ave a go, loove?”
A: (Giggle, giggle.)
W: “All y’aff ter do, is answer a simple question. D’you think ye can manage thut, loove?”
A: (Giggle, giggle)
W: “’ere we are, then. Are yeh ready, loove? Right then, ‘ere it is. What dooze a green traffic light mean? What dooze… a green traffic light… mean?”
A: (complete silence)
SFX: (Audience murmers)
W: “Knor…thee moosn’t ‘elp ‘er. A green… traffic… light…”
A: “Eerrr…”

W: “You’re jigging oop and down a bit there, Audrey. D’you want to…GO? Are you shooer you don’t want to… GO?”
A: (bemused) “Go?”
W: "Give 'er the mooney, Mable.”
SFX: (Rapturous applause, piano.)
W: “That’s all from ‘Have A Go’ today, folks. Next week we’ll be visitin’ The Rickard Penny Farthing Fuctory, in Cleethorpes. They dorn’t make Penny Farthings thee-er anymore, boot the place is still worth a bob or two uz they make inner tubes. Sor, till then, Goodbye.
Mabel: “Goodbye.”



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I got the blues from my baby left me by the San Francisco Bay,
The ocean liner's gone so far away.
Didn't mean to treat her so bad, she was the best girl I ever have had,
She said goodbye, made me cry, I want to lay down and die.

I ain't got a nickel and I ain't got a lousy dime.
Woman don't come back, think I'm going to lose my mind.
If she ever comes back to stay, it's going to be a brand new day,
Walking with my baby down by the San Francisco Bay.

Sitting down looking from my back door,
Wondering which way to go,
The woman I'm so crazy about, she don't love me no more.
Think I'll catch me a freight train, 'cause I'm feeling blue,
And ride all the way to the end of the line, thinking only of you.

Meanwhile, in another city,
Just about to go insane,
Thought I heard my baby, the way she used to call my name.
If I ever get her back to stay, it's going to be a brand new day,
Walking with my baby down by the San Francisco Bay,
Walking with my baby down by the San Francisco Bay,
Walking with my baby down by the San Francisco Bay.





Chapter 30. THE HOFNER.


     “So, when are you going to teach my son to play the guitar?” said Connie to the perky face grinning down at her from out of the huge bush of hair.

     “Any time, Ma’am.” Jack Head replied in his best mock-Tennessean.

     And so it was agreed. Jack would take an hour out from Youth Club activities on Wednesday evenings, mosey along Gravelwood Close to our place and show me where it was at, or where my fingers should be at on the fingerboard of my homemade guitar.

     From our front room window you could see right to the other end of Gravelwood Close to the Church. On a Wednesday, I’d sit on the arm of a chair and watch the comings and goings of the youth club members. Motorbikes whistled up and down the street.

     Groups of giggling girls in two’s and three’s promenaded up and down the street. Occasionally, a young bloke sauntered along the street to the corner opposite our house, lit a fag, had a long drag, then turned and sauntered back to the hall. I never fully understood these rituals, though Desmond Morris of Naked Ape fame, years later would describe such behaviour as primal displays of pre-mating behaviour where the female of the species would lay down a scent over a particular pre-chosen territory so that the desired male would easily pick it up and follow it to where he’d finally be entrapped and seduced.

     Maybe that’s what the lone blokes with the fags were doing - picking up on the Woolies perfume in the hope of getting their leg over. Surely it wasn’t that simple. Surely 17-year- old girls were harder to crack than female lions. Maybe they weren’t.

     Jack was supposed to turn up at 7 on the first Wednesday of my weekly guitar tutorials. He didn’t. He turned up at 8.15. After staring into the gathering dusk for an hour and a half, I eventually caught sight of the siluhouette of a tall figure with what looked like a bee-hive stuck on his head strolling along the Close towards the house, and if that wasn’t a guitar-shaped object he was carrying then it was a pretty weird looking suitcase.

     As I’d never actually had a conversation with Jack (I was just his fan club) I have to admit that my heart skipped a beat when I heard his ‘spurs’ on the garden path. I was somewhat unprepared for just how tall he actually was. Even though he was standing on the path below the doorstep when I opened the door I still had to crane my neck to see his face.

     “Howdy.” said the totally fake, but to me, totally convincing Texan drawl.
     “Hello.” said my totally Chislehurst accent. I’d put on my only checked shirt in a feeble attempt to look ‘country’, but Jack’s vivid red corduroy number just blew it away.

     Jack and his huge coffin of a guitar case dominated the hallway and blocked out the light from the street lamp like the mother ship from ‘Close Encounters’ blocked out the moonlight. He strode into the living room and immediately picked up Alf’s homemade guitar. He strummed a chord and sneered at the sound, which until that moment, I’d thought, was all right.

     “Way out of tune!” he said dismissively. He examined the neck and fingerboard with his long boney fingers and steely blue eyes. “You’ll have trouble above the 3rd fret. These frets are all over the place,” He handed the guitar to me and opened his case displaying the magificent Hofner Committee in all its glory. A distict, pleasant smell of polish and strong toabacco wafted into the room and Jack sat down in the armchair lifting the fabulous machine onto his knee, “Right, let’s see what you can do.”

     My heart sank as I unglued my eyes from the Hofner and shakily placed my fingers to form a 3-fingered A chord on the 2nd fret. I stroked my plectrum across the strings and produced a fairly dischordant representaion of A Major. Slowly, painfully, I repositioned my fingers to form D major and re-stroked the strings.

     “That’s about it.” I said apologetically.
     “Not bad.” he said kindly. “You need to learn a few more basic shapes, and then we get into playing a few things.”

     ‘Shapes’ was a new, esoteric, and obviously important term that I’d never heard in any musical context. I just nodded unconvincingly, as if I understood. Turns out, ‘shapes’ are the shapes your fingers make to form chords. Makes sense, I suppose - though perhaps ‘shapes’ ought to have been called ‘agonies’. I caught my breath. Play a few things?!!! Wow! Oh yes, please. Play things so soon? When? How? I couldn’t wait.

     Jack decided that I was to learn a simple 3-chord tune called ‘I Saw The Light’, a sort of gospel made famous by Hank Williams. Jack demonstrated the song with gusto, fixing me with a slightly off-putting stare from the pair of ice-blue marbles he had stuffed into his eye sockets.

     I thought the song was terrific. It had all the sad emotions I’d associated with skiffle, and drove along very nicely. Noticing my response, Jack followed up with a few more Hank Williams songs: ‘Jumbalaye’, ‘Cold, Cold Heart’, ‘Kaw Leiger’....

     “You heard of Jack Elliott?” Jack said, drawing in a double lung-full of Capstan Full Strength till his eyes watered. I shook my head, which was a cue for him to plough straight into ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ by way of a demonstration. It knocked me sideways, with its loudly strummed, articulate and quite comlex 12 strong chord sequence, punctuated with powerfull, single bass notes.

     To avoid Jack’s Dracula-like stare, I fixed my gaze on the Hofner astride his knee, staggered at the dexterity of the long fingers on his left hand and salivating at the confident picking of his right. I would gladly have sat there right through the night and through the following week if I could’ve. I loved the song itself and still play myself it to this day. Unfortunately, I don’t have Jack Head’s penetrating falsetto, modelled, it turned out, on the high pitched ‘round-up’ vocal style of Jack Elliott himself.



‘A million housewives every day, pick up a tin of beans and say:

BEANZ MEANZ HEINZ’

Grandma Grove: “Gladys, I want me elevenses. I’m faint for lack of noorishment!”
Jack Grove: “I’ll do for her one of these days, I swear I will.”
Gladys Grove: “Not if I get to her first.”
Gran: “GLADYS! Where’s me elevensies?”
Lennie Grove: “Why don’t you hit her on the head with the poker, Dad.”
Gran: “GLAAAAADYS!”
Daphne Grove: “We could put weedkiller in her tea.”
Glad: “Why don’t they just write her out of the series?”

Jack: “Because she’s more popular than the rest of us put together. She was on the front page of the Daily Mirror again yesterday. Without her, there IS no ‘Grove Family’. We’d all be out of work.”
Glad: “Ah, I think I see where you’re coming from.”
Jack: “What?”
Glad: “I mean, I think I see your point.”
Gran: “GLAAAAAADYYYYYSSSSS!”
Lennie: “I’ll go.”
Daphne: “No, I’ll do it. Where’s the tea pot?”
Glad: “ It’s me she’s calling for.”
Jack: “No, she’s my mother, I’ll do it.”
Gran: “GlAAAAA...”
Producer: “Sorry everyone, shows over. Gran just had a heart attack. She’s dead.”
Daphne: “That’s so Crap!”



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



Midnight, one more night without sleepin')
(Watchin' till the mornin' comes creepin')
(Green door, what's that secret you're keepin?)

There's an old piano
And they play it hot behind the green door
Don't know what they're doin'
But they laugh a lot behind the green door
Wish they'd let me in
So I could find out what's behind the green door

(Knocked once, tried to tell them I'd been there)
(Door slammed, hospitality's thin there)
(Wonder just what's goin' on in there)

Saw an eyeball peepin'
Through a smoky cloud behind the green door
When I said "Joe sent me"
Someone laughed out loud behind the green door
All I want to do is join the happy crowd behind the green door


(Midnight, one more night without sleepin')
(Watchin' till the mornin' comes creepin')
(Green door, what's that secret you're keepin?)

(Green door, what's that secret you're keepin?)

Green door!!

Chapter 31. I WANT TO BE DISCOVERED.


     Jack really made the big guitar talk. It seemed to come alive at his touch, the music dancing around the room and bouncing off the walls. I’d never heard the guitar played like this - with such power, such penetration, such confidence, such absolute joy - and curiously, at the same time, with such ‘respect’ for the instrument itself. Now, I was totally, utterly, irrevocably hooked on the thing. A state I knew would never alter for the rest of my days.

     He introduced me to the great devide between skiffle/ folk/ Country &Western music and Rock ‘n’ Roll. I didn’t know there was one. But jack referred to ‘Elvista’ as PRESLEY in a very disparaging sort of way. He didn’t rate Lonnie Donegan much either, even though the maniacal Irish descendant was generally thought of as the undisputed ‘King of Skiffle’. “IDIOT BRAINS DONEGAN.” was Jack’s term of endearment.

     Me, I loved it all. Skiffle, Rock ‘n’ Roll, folk, C&W, anyone from Slim Witman to Bach, and anything from ‘Reet Petite’ to ‘Jesu Joy Of Man’s Desiring’. It was all music - and, naturally, all the better, if it was played on a guitar.

     The ‘lesson’ went on for a couple of hours during which time I learned the ‘shapes’ of 4 new chords to add to the two I could already struggle through. These were B7, C major, F major, and G7 - ALL FOUR FINGER CHORDS (the ones I knew up till then were only three) and extremely painful. Jack also taught me a single note exercise, Arthur Smith’s ‘Guitar Boogie’.

     I was determined to impress the hell out of him by the next lesson and get it all off to perfection. But what was more important was what he talked about - the names of guitar players he mentioned, and the expert demonstrations he gave of their different styles of playing and their techniques. I was a disciple at his feet.

     By the time I watched the lanky cowboy jingle his way back down the garden path, the Hofner stowed back in its coffin, I was as high as a kite and full of guitar fuel that would keep me going for some time. I didn’t know it then but I’d embarked on an incredible journey full of magic, mystery, agony, ecstacy - an everlasting, passionate and fulfiling love affair that would just grow and grow and never die.

     TWANG

     Jack turned up the next week albeit a couple of hours late. I’d done my homework - on the guitar that is - the real homework from school had gone by the by. I’d done pretty well and was about up-to-speed with the chords and could just about busk my way through ‘Guitar Boogie’. And so the lesson continued with me playing the lead to guitar boogie and jack playing rythm. Then we swopped parts and I played rhythm to Jack’s lead.

     This turned out to a lot of fun and taught me timing and how to sense chord changes and stuff, but the best part of the evening was when Jack got into anecdote mode and took off another journey through the techniques of famous players. I could have just sat at his feet for the next six weeks watching his fingers dancing over the strings making the instrument talk in so many different tongues.

     All the time, I felt the steely gaze from those piercing blue eyes. I didn’t dare look into them in case I got turned to stone, or even worse, Tommy Steele.

     MRS HEAD

     The Coldhabour Estate was home to many young guitar players in the 50s and Jack was surrounded by several of them. There was Ray Perriman, a really gifted 17 year-old who lived across the road and who was an Arthur Smith affectionado and an absolute master of his technique including the maestro’s famous composition, Guitar Boogie. Mick Thompson, or Nigel, as he was known (I never knew why) was a left-hander who nevertheless played right handed style. He lived next door to Jack and next door to him was Mirabelle from the Moonrakers.

     Round the corner was Stan Peck, who was slightly outside Jack’s clan on account of his love of Rock ‘n’ Roll and was only part accepted because he liked Jim Reeves, who in those days was considered to be an acceptable Country and Western singer.

     Nigel and Ray used to talk about Jack's Mum, Mrs Head, now and again - about how mad but harmless she was. She apparently thought that someone was sending her ‘signals’ through her radio and would sometimes rush out into the street, stop passing cars and assault the startled drivers with a tyrade of ubuse.

     She probably would have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act had it been in force back then. When Alf needed a capacitor for his amp, I rode over to Jack’s one night on his bike to pick one up. The place was unbelievable - like a cross between the set from Steptoe and Sons and the Munster’s living room. There were bits of bike and guitars everywhere.

     The dining room table was covered in an assortment of cogs, tuning machines, worn out guitar strings, tools, cans of machine oil, the arm of a bass guitar and the bottom part of a tenor banjo, old newspapers, dirty tea cups, old inner tubes, bike chains and an old yellow lamp shade.

     The place reeked of oil. Several bikes, including a white tandem stood against the walls. Over the mantle-piece was a case containing a stuffed pike and pair of antlers. The room was illuminated by a single naked 40 watt light bulb the flex of which was part of an intricate spider’s web.

     Blue smoke hung everywhere, as did the biggest cobwebs I’d ever seen, along with the smell of Old Holborn, and the Sobrani Black Russian cigarettes that Jack used to smoke as a relief from his eye-watering Capstan Full Strength.

     Jack busied himself at the table mending a puncture, the inner tube draped into an enamel bowl of dirty water. The grimy sleeves of his once white shirt, open at the neck and diplaying a yellowy-buttoned vest underneath, were rolled up. I recognised the Weapon standing up against the edge of the table and the Magnificent Hofner Commitee, the lid of its case open to reveal the sleeping beauty, lay on the floor next to it.

     “Howdy, Partner. How ya bin?” said Jack, still studying the inner tube, “Mum. This is Nealw. Make him a cup of tea.”

     There was so much in the room to boggle my eyeballs that I hadn’t noticed the small figure hunched on a low stool by the blazing fire. I saw the cat sitting next to Mrs Head first and it saw me. It sat on a pile of old newspapers in the hearth with its back to the fire, its two huge yellow eyes shining like twin moons in a black furry sky. It was enormous, its python-like tail twitching spasmodically.

     I felt a shiver ripple up and down my spine as the beast fixed me with its threatening stare, and my feet seemed to grow root in the grimy carpet.

     “MAKE HIM A CUP OF TEA!” shouted the urban cowboy as his bony fingers pulled the rubber tube through the substance in the bowl. The figure on the stool didn’t move. The cat didn’t blink, but a low growl emitted from its throat.

     “I’ve got your Dad’s pot,” (seasoned electrician’s term for a capacitor) said Jack, pulling the top off a tube of rubber cement with his front teeth. “How’re you doing with San Francisco Bay?”

     “OK,” I said, not taking my eyes off the black monster by the fire.

     The figure on the stool moved with a slight shudder, “It’s cold in ‘ere,” said a scratchy voice from beneath a greasy thatch of dark grey hair, "Was that Daddy calling?” The figure leaned forward and stooped to pick up a lump of coal, tossing it onto the billowing furnace. Jack’s Father was upstairs in bed dying from cancer, or maybe he just didn’t fancy it much downstairs.

     Slowly, Mrs Head turned round and stared at me through smoky grey eyes. The face was thin and emaciated, the cheeks sunken into the wrinkled yellow skin of the face, a skinny, rolled dog-end protruded from thin, blue lips. The stringy hair was scrunched back behind a pair of child-sized ears and held in place by a strand of dirty bandage, tied in a knot on top of the head.

     At this moment, at the ripe old age of 12, I began believing in witches. I couldn’t see a cauldron or a broomstick anywhere, but everything else was there: the old hag; the demonic cat, and the strong feelings that a good few nasty spells were whistling about. In a slightly, but only slightly, more rational moment it occurred to me that perhaps the ‘signals’ were being sent by the CIA and Special Branch.

     Mrs Head scrutinised me carefully, no doubt trying to figure out if I was a sender of signals. Obviously discounting the possibility, she turned, disinterested, back to the fire, reaching to stroke the cat as she did so. It still kept its gaze fixed on mine.

     Mrs Head made no attempt to get up and make me a cup of tea. I’d already decided I wasn’t very thirsty anyway, even though my throat was dry, and preferred Mrs Head and the cat to stay roasting exactly where they were. The room was like a hothouse in Kew Gardens, and if this was really what the world of Country and Western music was really like, I began to feel my newfound love of it slipping quietly away.

     A few years later, my interest in Counrty Music was resurrected and my great friend and fellow guitar player, Roy Barker, and I spent amny a sunny saturday afternoon sitting on a huge pile of weeds in his Dad’s allotment at the end of his garden, playing our acoustic guitars together and imitating the songs we heard on the ‘Grand Old Oprey’, the famous C&W show that we managed to tune into on Radio Luxenburg.

     We heard ‘em all: Hank Snow, Hank Locklin, The Carter Family, Johnnie Cash, Jim Reeves, Earnest Tub, Chet Atkins, and the incredible Earl Scruggs and Lester Flat, who’s anmazing ‘Blue Grass’ 5 string banjo and guitar sound was adopted for some outstanding film and TV theme tunes: ‘Bonnie And Clyde’, ‘The Beverly Hillbillys’ and ‘Diliverance’ to name a few.

     Nevertheless, it was a long time before the terrifying image of Mrs Head and her demon cat faded from my mind.

     In the 6.5 Special days, new ‘talent’ was ‘discovered’. This wasn’t true of course. People were actually groomed, shaped, given a silly name and a guitar. They were rehearsed, songs were prepared, hair dyed, clothes bought, venues arranged - THEN they were discovered, miraculously.

     Lying on the living room floor one Saturday morning, gently roasting myself in front of our new gas fire and reading the Daily Mirror, I called out to Connie.

     “Mum, how old was Laurie London when he was discovered?”

     She didn’t know, but I reckoned he’d been 13 or 14 and, as I was 12, I reckoned there was still time for me. I’m still waiting.

     Such was the speed of Rock’n’Roll’s arrival, and the British management of our home-grown product so hurriedly thrown together, the precariously manufactured images of the stars mostly became tired very quickly and many bright lights were snuffed out almost un-noticed.

     The 6.5 special with its ancient black and white title footage of a Battle Of Britain Class locomotive ran out of steam within 3 years, aided by commercial television’s eagerness to gain a foothold in the market by recruiting some of the performers and re-packaging them for their show, ‘Oh Boy’.

     The average life of a 50’s British Rock’n’Roll star could be as little as a couple of months or 5 minutes if they failed to score a direct hit on the 6.5 special.
Radio Luxemburg seemed to get most of its transmitter problems sorted out and blanketed the airwaves with continuous Rock’n’Roll music from Britain and America.

     The BBC light programme made do with ‘Housewives’ Choice’ and ‘Two Way Family Favourites’ for the broadcast of popular music, Rock’n’Roll becoming buried amongst a mish-mash of anything from Max Bygraves to Mantovani. The Beebe still refused to take Rock’n’Roll seriously, believing the Corporation had done its bit with The 6.5 Special. The programme went out on Sunday lunchtimes, and as ‘Loud Jazz” was forbidden on a Sunday by the Beebe, what chance did Rock’n’Roll stand?

     THE -TEEN-UN-TWENTY-DISC-CLOOB

     n 1960, a friend (perhaps he wasn’t, come to think of it) of mine drew my attention to a pop programme on Radio Luxemburg. He said the DJ was some kind of nutter with a Northern accent who seemed to have his finger on the pulse, apart from sounding like a complete idiot.

     I managed to get the station on the 2 bob jumble sale radio with the speaker in the top I had stashed in my bedroom. I could just about hold on to the station by jamming the tuning knob with cello tape, and eventually, fading in and out like an English summer, came the maniacal tones of Jimmy Saville.

     “Hi, Guys and Guls. Welcome to the ‘Teen and Twenty Disc Cloob’. We’ve got some really groovey sounds for you tonight. First off, let’s get things moving with the latest rocker from Ricky Nelson, ‘Hello Mary-Lou’. Take it away, Ricky.”

     The music was OK, but I couldn’t stand listening to this bloke’s voice, and after about 10 minutes, I removed the Cello tape and allowed this manic intrusion to be swallowed up by Luxemburg’s famous hiss and crackle. A futile gesture, I came to realise later. Like it or not, the Jimmy Saville phenomenon was here to stay, and soon he was foisted on the British public big time, with his peroxide hair, fat cigars an patronising manner, whether we liked it or not.

     Another friend once saw Mr Saville’s Bentley parked in the car park at Stoke Manderville Hospital, where Jimmy was famous as the patients’ friend and mentor. On the side of the car was a small gold plate with the inscription:

     ‘This car belongs to a porter at Stoke Manderville Hospital’.
     I was never quite sure what to make of that.

     DUKE BOX JURY

     The first of the TV pop panel shows was devised by Peter Potter and hosted by DJ David Jacobs with his ‘Rock-Ola Tempo II Jukebox’ and the famous bell and hooter for 'Hit' or 'Miss'. It featured a celebrity panel that privileged us with their judgements on the latest pop releases, often in ignorance of the fact that the artist they were commenting on was sitting behind a screen listening to them.

     It started on 1st June 1959 and ran until 27th December 1967. Originally scheduled on Mondays, its instant popularity soon earned it a Saturday evening slot. The theme music was the catchy 'Hit and Miss', written and performed by John Barry and a hit in its own right.

     But this wasn’t the first tune - Ozzie Warlock and The Wizards introduced the first six episodes with the much less well-known ‘Juke Box Fury’!

     The panel usually consisted of Pete Murray, Alma Cogan, Gary Miller and a young Susan Stranks, giving a 'teenager's view' on the offerings (before becoming one of the presenters of 'Magpie' in July 1968 ). Katie Boyle was also a regular panellist, and in the case of a split decision, a separate panel made up of members of the audience voted as a 'tie-breaker'.

     A young girl from the Midlands, Janice Nichols made this slot her own and herself famous by use of her broad Birmingham accent and became a regular feature on the programme.


‘You’ll look a little lovlier each day,
With fabulous, Pink Camay.’

     DJ: “Well, that was ‘Twist Up The Road On A Purple Unicycle’, by Ted Berry and The Grass Seeds’. I hope that’s not the kind of grass I think it might be, but anyway, let’s see what our revered panel thinks. Pete Murray?”
     PM: “Yes. Very interesting. Slightly reminiscent of their last hit, ‘Twist Down The Road On A Turqoise Unicycle’, ironically. In fact, it’s identical, apart from the brass band. Doesn’t really do it for me, but you never know these days. Er…a miss I think.”
     DJ: “Alma.”
     A: “What was the second line of the chorus? Sounded a bit like ‘get off my dog’, but, anyway, they’re from Woolwich, aren’t they? Hm. I thought the beat was quite good. Not really my mug of gin, but…I’m sure it’ll be a hit.”
     DJ: “So that’s one each for a hit and a miss from our panel. Gary.”
     G: “Are they serious? No. It’s absolute (beep), even if my brother is in the band.”
     DJ: “Sue.”
     S: “It’s brilliant. What does he know? Anyway, they fired your brother last week. Maybe that’s why it’s so good.”
     G: (Edited out.)
     DJ: “It looks like we’ve reached an impasse once again. Janice. What do you think?”
     J: “It’s mooch more significant thun ther lust record. It us more depth to it un oi really loove the droomer.”
     G: “They don’t have a drummer.”
     J: “The bass player, then. Yeah, Oi’ll definitely geev it foive.”


     MUCH APPLAUSE!



* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


There must be ninety-nine ways
of losin' the blues
That I got from lovin' you.
Oh ninety-nine ways
but none of them do.

There must be ninety-nine ways
to do without you
but I can't find one tonight.
I'm feelin' so bad
and nothin' is right.

Oh baby I'm missin'
your huggin and your kissin'
I'm lonely as can be.
Well I've tried all the others
but none of the others
can do what you're doin' to me.

There must be ninety-nine ways
of losin' the blues
That I got from lovin' you.
Mmm ninety-nine ways
but I still love you.


There must be ninety-nine ways
of losin' the blues
That I got from lovin' you.
Mmm ninety-nine ways
but I still love you.
Yes I do,
Yes ninety-nine ways
but I still love you


* * * * * * * * * * *

Chapter 32. THE EDGE.


     In September 1957, those of us who failed the eleven plus, were ripped from the Idealistic utopia and sanctuary of Red Hill Junior School and thrust unarmed, and totally unprepared, either into Mottingham Secondary School for Girls or the Edgebury Secondary School for Boys war zone.

     All the delusions of the bright, happy, easy-to-come-by, beautiful future that was promised, went pop like a party balloon. It was like settling down for a sleep of sweet dreams and then being shaken violently awake and shown that the world wasn’t the wonderful Summer Garden we’d been led to believe it was, but that in fact, we’d been conned and someone had at last been honest and pulled back a curtain to reveal that we actually lived in Purgatory.

     For the boys, the injection of softness and gentleness that came of being with girl type Creatures, was torn away and for the first time we were exposed to the coarse, harsh, violent, unforgiving culture that naturally dominates a world of just men. And these were men. This was supposed to be a boy’s school but the majority had blue chins and spots.

     They smelled like men. They spoke like men. They shouted like men. They fought like men. This wasn’t a game in a protected bubble any more. This was real life. And it was a sudden, frightening shock.

     On the first day of my 5-year journey through hell, two gypsy boys went at each other in the time-honoured ritual of a playground fight. Participants in these ‘bundles’ as they were called, made no reference to the Marquis of Queensbury Rules and these two protagonists certainly were no exception - they had knives.

     The whole place seemed to thrive on aggression, as if it was inbred or part of the curriculum. It was like a prison in the sense that 60% of pupils didn’t want to be there and were held against their will, leaving at the earliest opportunity as soon as they were 15.

     Here the ‘class’ system wasn’t just an under the surface thing, it was naked in all it’s glory, marked out by actual territory. At Red Hill, those in the A stream were considered by most to be the privileged upper crust and the those who were left made up what we thought was the ‘rest’.

     In ‘real life’, however this wasn’t so. Us blokes in the top 2 streams at Edgebury were considered to be the privileged upper class ‘stooges’ and targets for the rest. Heaven knew what they thought of Grammar School kids. Only the top 2 streams at Edgebury wore school uniform, the rest wore whatever they felt like. This was against the school rules, but when you came from a background where school was considered a waste of time and school teachers ‘wankers’, who gave a stuff about school rules?

     But the difference between the two ‘classes’ was marked not just by appearance but also by attitude. The ‘uniformed branch’ wanted to make the most of every opportunity that was on offer and get whatever they could from the school in order to better themselves. The ‘civvies’ seemed to believe not only did the privileged pricks at the top end stand some kind of chance in life but that they themselves were doomed to failure before they started.

     They radiated a feeling of hostility. They seemed to want to do everything in their power to perpetuate this belief of inferiority and were rebellious both in their attitude and demeanour. They seemed to want to stick their fingers up and cause the very situation they feared just so that could say:

     “See. We fucking told you so. You’re just a bunch of cunts.”

     At break time on the first day, all the new boys stood in a scared line, with their backs against the canteen wall in the middle of the playground, not wanting to get knocked down by the seething mass of full-grown men rushing about at 100 miles an hour.

     The noise was incredible. There had been playground noise before at the junior school but it was a very much more high-pitched, happy sort of sound, like the pleasant tinkling of a hundred wind chimes - the sound of children enjoying life. The girls’ skipping song sprang to mind, ritually performed with 30 ft of rope, swung in rhythm to the song and allowing up to four girls to skip at one time.


ALL IN TOGETHER GIRLS,
1,2,3,
PLEASE WILL YOU TELL ME WHO IS HE,
STANLEY ADGIE,
TOOK HER UP STAIRS,

‘LAID?’ HER ON THE BED,
SAID: DARLING DO YOU LOVE ME? (at this point, the rope doubled its speed - the song, its tempo)
YES, NO, YES, NO, YES........ (squeals of pleasure if the girl left got caught out by the rope)

     GRUB

     There was no skipping at Edgebury, except the kind that was to do with avoiding school altogether. The ‘playground’ (‘battlefield?’) at Edgebury was a crushing din of semi-matured male voices, jagged and sharp edged, like broken glass.

     At lunchtime on the first day, the line of new boys reformed their squad with their backs against the canteen wall but this time queuing for their dinner. It wasn’t lunch. Lunch was something I learned about years later that you had in the middle of the day when the trick was to get someone else to pay.

     In Purgatory, dinner wasn’t something you partook of in the evening over a bottle of good claret and engaging conversation - dinner was a process of shoving down as much fodder in the middle of the day as you could physically manage as quickly as possible, before trying to survive the heaving mass in the playground and to bolster yourself against whatever the afternoon threw at you.

     I was about 3rd from the front and there was a lot of jostling and shoving going on. I was pushed from behind into the kid in front of me who nudged the one in front of him. The kid at the front of the queue, a little, round-featured hedgehog of a creature in a green blazer and with a nose like a walnut and a mouthful of crooked, overflowing teeth, was in my class but immediately turned on me and grabbed me by the lapels.

     “Oi! Watch it!”
     “It wasn’t my fault,” I claimed pathetically, “Someone pushed me.” He shoved me away.
     “Just watchit!” he sneered.
     The kid between us grinned.
     “He’s a great little fighter, he is.”
     This was Dave Groombridge and the hedgehog with the jagged fangs was his best friend, Nobby Swain. I didn’t doubt he was a great little fighter, and I didn’t need a demonstration.

     TROUGHS

     The door was opened and the queue suddenly became a mob, making for the opening as if this was the last meal they were ever going to get.

     I got dragged along and forced through the doorway almost against my will. Inside there was a mad dash for the tables - the usual school canteen collapsible stuff - benches seating 8. Amongst the sea of faces I saw some belonging to Red Hill and managed to find myself a seat.

     There were two adult-looking 15 or 16 year olds who seemed to be in charge. One, the taller of the two, was smartly dressed in a light brown sports jacket and grey trousers. His name was Stapp, the school Vice- Captain, whose good looks were slightly marred by one of his top front teeth being grey and obviously dead.

     If we weren’t at Edgebury, I’d have sworn he came from a gentrified background. The other was swarthy with greasy black hair and the kind of clothes that were never thought about. He wore a maroon tank top and had his sleeves rolled up. He cracked the heads of one or two kids as they scrambled past.

     “WALK! I said WALK!”

     Christ! They were allowed to hit you! They probably weren’t, but they did anyway. Then his face split into a sneering grin. The last boy into the canteen was an 18 stone 14 year old. Overweight wasn’t an adequate way to describe him.

     He was massive, probably with a gland problem - I couldn’t imagine how anyone could eat himself to that size. His red face signified that he was obviously having trouble hurrying along. Tank-Top launched into him without mercy.

     “Come on you fat wanker. Look at you. ‘Ave we got to wait all day, or what? Just move your great fat arse, Green. Jesus, what a state. Look at it. Like a great big barrel of lard, it is. Maybe you should lie down and then we could roll you to your seat.”

     Tank-Top, who’s real name was Stevens, thought his comment was hilarious and chuckled loudly. Several creeps joined in the laughter and he glanced over his shoulder in acknowledgment. Green found his way through to his seat and managed to jostle himself down. Tank Top lowered his head, then, at 90 miles an hour:

     “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful Amen.” He delivered the prayer with as much reverence as a dustman emptying a dustbin onto a dustcart, “Right, you lot,” he pointed at us lot, “You’re first. Get moving, and no talking in line.”

     We formed a queue by the long table displaying several aluminium catering boxes behind which stood a line of boys armed with ladles. A 5 ft rat commanded the first box.

     His beady little black eyes stared penetratingly from either side of a long pointed nose perched on a long pointed face, his rodent-like buckteeth resting on his top lip. The rat was about 13 and in charge of mashed potato. I was immediately on guard expecting him to dart forward in a sudden blur and sink his salivating incisors into my hand.

     “Whajoowant?” he snapped, in a half-broken, squeaky rat-type voice.
I swear his nose twitched. I would’ve thought the answer to his question was obvious. He was, after all, flogging mashed potato. Perhaps, I thought, there was something hidden in the squashy white mass that I couldn’t see. I peered closer. There wasn’t,
     “Whajoowant? Small, medium or large?” he squeaked again, more aggressively.

     I knew what I didn’t want - to be standing in front of a giant rat that looked a damned sight, hungrier than I was feeling at that moment, “Small.” I said, and he plunged his ladle into the quagmire and upturned a full, steaming load onto my plate. I went to move on but the rat held onto the plate and tipped another mound of the stuff on top of the first. Some of it spilled onto my hand and sleeve and for some reason, I felt sick. If this was a small, God knew what a large was like.

     Next up was piping hot mincemeat and gravy with an overpowering aroma. My mash mountain was swiftly smothered in a smouldering, lumpy, mudslide of lava, which cascaded down the snowy white potato slopes onto the unsuspecting villages below. The server didn’t ask me about the required size of portion this time, but I saw no reason to question his obvious authority.

     The following choice was peas or baked beans but I declined either, feeling that I had my work cut out disposing of what was already making my plate weigh the same as a sack of potatoes.

     After forcing as much this haute quinine down as I could stand, I proceeded to the slop bucket, aluminium bowl about 18 inches in diameter, to scrape the remains from the plate with a rubber spoon.

     This was the most disgusting operation, the contents of the bowl being enough to put you off eating for life. In fact, I can feel something rising in my throat as I write. The Edgebury canteen wasn’t the place to take a delicate palette for a visit because it wouldn’t have stayed delicate for long, and those kids who lived close enough and had sensible parents went home for lunch.

     There were compensations. I’ve never been able to find a restaurant that could equal North West Kent Catering’s Spotted Dick and brown sugar, though in 1972, the Savoy came pretty close to Edgebury with it’s rendering of Semolina and dollop of jam.

     The waiter bore a striking resemblance to Tank Top but it couldn’t have been him. Steven’s didn’t have it in him to be that polite even if he was paid for it.
     After ‘dinner’, we were thrust back into the gyrating hoard of adolescent humanity in the playground, with just enough time to try and settle the heaving mass of undigested fodder dragging our stomachs towards our feet like so much quick-drying cement.

     Were we really to become like those other spotty, ugly savages careering about like demented warthogs? If we were, then at that moment, I didn’t relish the idea of growing up at all. Especially when the abiding rule seemed to be kill or be killed.


‘Treats Milk Chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand’

PC Dixon:

“Well that just about wraps things up. Billy Ekersley got life, and his mother was let off the hook for helping us to nick the little bugger. Mind you, with good behaviour, he’ll be out again in 40 years. I only hope he’ll have learned his lesson and seen the error of his ways. You just can’t go round stealing other folk’s pigeons and passing them off as your own. As for the 24 counts of bigamy, well, it takes all sorts to make a world, I ‘spose. Being a criminal is always the easy option. Sticking to right side of the law takes real guts, even if it does make for a much more boring life. Anyway, I’m quite content with the wives I have bless ‘em. A bird in the hand is worth another 4 in the bush, I always say.

One more thing before I go. If you ever find yourself in Dock Green and you fancy dropping into the station for a quick cuppa and a chat…don’t bother. I’ve decided to hang up my helmet and call it a day. If I have to whistle that bloody tune just once more, I’ll go nuts. Goodnight, all. Mind how you go.”


* * * * * * * *


I'm a gonna raise a fuss
I'm a gonna raise a holler
about a workin' all summer
just to try to earn a dollar

ev'ry time I call my Baby
try to get a date
my Boss says
No dice, Son,you gotta work late

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.

A well my Mom 'n' Papa told me
Son, you gotta make some money
,if you wantta use the carto go a ridin' next Sunday,
well
I didn't go to work
told the Boss I was sick
Now you can't use the car,'cause you didn't work a lick.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.

(I'm gonna) take two weeks
gonna have a fine vacation
I'm gonna take my problem
to the United Nations !
Well
I called my Congressmen
and he quote
I'd like to help you, Son,but you're too young to vote
Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.


Chapter 33. BERT.

     “BARKER,” (Later, a great guitarist and my best mate)
     “Yes, Sir.”
     “BEAK,” (Snooty kid with a stiff cap of Brilcream stuck on toip of his head
like a cow plat.)
     “Yes, Sir.”
      “BLUITT,” (Nice, chubby kid who cried uncontrollably in class one day.

     Bert Bower, the form master, kept telling him to stop being such a Baby. Pity no one told Bert that the kid’s little sister had died the day before.)

     “Yes, Sir.”

     “BONE,” (Nice kid from Red Hill. Wore expensive, smooth-textured trousers, unlike the horrible, itchy grey flannels that most of us had to put up with.)
     “Yes, Sir,”

     “BRADLEY,” (Great bloke.)
     “Yes, sir.”
     “That’s a capitals S for Sir, Bradley.”
     “Yes, Sir.”
“CAMPBELL,” (Biggest kid in the class apart from Chris Stone, and DavidLowe. Campbell was a boy in a man’s body.)

     “Yes, Sir”.


     “CARTER,” (Incredibly tall, skinny kid. Lived on the estate. Sport mad; great long-distance runner. God knows where he got the stamina with such a tiny constitution, but he took these great, long, Laconic strides, and the only way to keep up was to take a bus. Some kids did, got off way before the school and then staggered
in trying to look exhausted.)

     “Yes, Sir.”


“CHEESE.” (Smashing bloke. Tall, skinny, crew cut, wore really nice
American style clothes. Known as ‘Chicken’ for some reason
which I can assure you wasn’t because he was scared of
anything.)
“Yes, Sir.”
“CHESSEL,” ( Nice bloke. Got sniffed out by ‘Horse” Jenkins, a games
Master, for drinking booze in school. Eventually got put away
“Yes, Sir,” for nicking cars.)

“CHUDLEY,” (Another strange one. From a wealthy family – lived in Walnut
“Yes, Sir”. Tree Cottage, Royal Parade, Chislehurst - very expensive. THE
most caked up Brilcream hairstyle of all.)

“COOPER,” (‘Scottie’. Nice, but a waste of space. )
“Yes, Sir.”
“ CREW, “ (Appallingly filthy kid who never washed. Watched TV
All the time and developed a dreadful stoop and bulging eyes
‘Yes, Sir.” as a result.)

“DORGAN,’’ (Masturbation guru - way ahead of everyone else.)
“Yes, Sir.”
“I KNOW YOU, DORGAN. You’re a clever bugger, you are, Dorgan. You’re going to leave here in two years, go to Cray Valley Tech, and when you graduate, open an estate agent’s in Chislehurst High Street, rip everybody off, make shit loads of money, drive fast cars, and pull all the birds, you bastard.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“FINCH... FINCH!!!!!!!! Where the Hell’s Finch?”
(Even when Finch was there, he wasn’t.)


     1A form master was Bert Bower. I don’t know if his name was really Bert but it’s what everybody called him and it seemed to fit him like the cap of hair he had. It was thick, and black, and so perfectly smooth, it almost looked unreal, like it was made of rubber. Christopher Lee wore the same headgear when he played Dracula for Hammer Horror.

     Bert must have been in his forties but he looked older because he’d apparently been very ill. He did look drawn and a bit haggard, with dark, sunken eyes beneath bushy eyebrows that must have come from the same joke shop as the hair. His appearance was immaculate.

     He always wore thick tweed sports jackets with leather elbows, dark grey trousers, and heavy brown brogues that looked a size too big. Over the top, he wore a white coat when he was using chalk. It was slightly reminiscent of dentist, John Percy Page’s, but in worse nick with frayed sleeves.

     Bert was a severe man who’s sharp features made him even more like Christopher Lee and he certainly looked as if he could do with a few fang-fulls of extra blood.

     Bert’s pride and joy was his brand new, black upright Ford Popular which he used to park underneath the classroom window so that in an idle moment, when the class were struggling privately with their French verbs, he could gaze lovingly at the underpowered, top-heavy apology for a car, with its Betty Boop headlamps, overbalanced shape and ridiculous running boards.

     The classroom windows were the 30’s metal-framed construction, which slid open from both sides. Hinged in the middle, they formed a triangle in plan view that extended outside where kids used to hang their games kit. The classroom floors were dark-stained boards and smelled of polish. Most of the desks were from the 30’s when the school was built and who’s legacy of well-carved epitaphs from the penknives of former inmates who’d escaped and moved on, I found strangely depressing.

     There was a row of four classrooms in the corridor with another four immediately above on the first floor. One November day, Bert was lost in his utopian gaze at the ugly little car when a fully loaded brown duffel bag with two pairs of heavy brown leather rugby boots tied to it, which had been hanging on the geography room window above, fell like a bomb from a Dornier onto the bonnet of the Bertmobile.

     One minute there was the shiny Ford sparkling in the mid morning November sunshine and the next, it was wearing a duffel bag like a hat. Bert’s blood siphoned itself away from his face turning his usual brownish complexion to paste and for a moment he was transfixed, mouth open in shock.

     He whirled round, leaped across the room, and, nearly pulling the door off its hinges, rushed through the doorway and up the stairs four at a time. We heard the door above open and the sound of Bert’s heavy brogues route marching across the wooden floorboards, no doubt towards the poor sap who dropped the bomb and was about to become a victim of a severe garrotting.

     Voices were raised, something was thrown, probably a body, then the footsteps marched back to the door. All 42 of us were in considerable pain when he returned, trying with immense difficulty to stifle the huge knot of laughter trapped in our throats.

     Bert was from Barnsley and had a very strong Yorkshire accent slightly incongruous with his main task in the school - to teach the A stream French. His French accent was sometimes superb, being matrimonially welded to a French lady. But sometimes a little bit of Yorkshire did seep through the Parisian accent, “Lar ploom derr mar tarrnt, ate suer la tarblurr.”

     When he got angry, and it didn’t take much, he’d address his victim as Master, pronounced: "Muster.”

     “Now, see here, Muster Richards,”
     “It’s Rickards, sir.”
     “Don’t interrupt, Muster Richards.”
     “Rickards, sir.” As I’ve said, Mick was afraid of no one, not even Dave Harris, and most people were afraid of Dave Harris.

     HORACE

     Bert Bower kept a friend called Horace in the desk of his plans-chest sized desk. Horace was a blackboard ruler that had split to a jagged point along its length. (Quite how this happened was intriguing.)

     He introduced Horace to Terry Pike, an ex-Red Hill soccer super star who came to the idyllic primary school late in the 3rd year and proceeded to steal Stan Adgie’s girlfriend, Jane Skinner, away from him.

     Stan didn’t complain, being an amenable sort of bloke whom we all accepted had a natural right to the pick of the best looking girls simply because the rest of us didn’t have the courage to go near any of them with any intimate intentions. Anyway, Stan was already moving back towards his former lover, Pamela Russell, who actually liked me, but in a Mumsy sort of way.

     Pamela was petite, dark-skinned, and very pretty. I think her Mother was part Indian. Stan and I used to pretend to fight over her on the grass outside the school gates of an evening. We used to punch each other about the body without inflicting any damage.

     It was great to show off in front of Pamela who considered herself a star and was always accompanied by an entourage of girl admirers. Turns out, that most of the girls in our class had the hots for Pikey. I don’t understand why. I thought he was a bit rat-faced, though a pleasant enough chap on the whole, and he was a pretty mean dribbler on the soccer pitch.

     Still, it was gratifying to see him get his comeuppance at the mercy of Horace. Our Tel had been warned to stop chattering during Bert’s French lesson but stupidly didn’t take the appropriate amount of notice. Bert gleefully bent him over the desk and gave him a couple of cracks across the bum. It was such a pity, I thought, that none of his previous, female conquests could have witnessed his execution.

     FRED TEXTURE

     Apart from being our form master, Bert was responsible for teaching us French, English and art. For art, we moved along the corridor to the art room, messy with errant powder paint everywhere, dirty tin palettes, an even dirtier sink and jam jars full of dirty water.

     It was a horrible place, usually occupied by the senior art master, Barry Robinson, better known as Fred Texture, a boy-faced man of about 35 who had long greasy hair, huge cherub lips, and a typically posh, arty voice. He was arty through and through, drove a vintage Riley and gave his children arty names. One of his daughters was called Franchesica.

     Fred was a great fan of Modigliani, I think largely because he liked to pronounce the name. Fred said he thought in patterns, whatever that meant, unlike Bert whom I never saw draw anything, but who thought in realism, becoming apoplectic if anyone ever produced work which contained large areas of flat colour.

     “If arve torld you wonce, arve torld you a thoseund tarms. NOR LARGE AREAS OF FLUT COOLER!”

     Years later at art school, Bert’s tutorials came in very useful, helping explain where the likes of Mattisse, Mondrian and Rothko had gone wrong.


‘Scotts Porridge beats the cold’


“Here’s a request for Sapper John Richard Allen, serving with the 11th Hussars, BFBO 4872386 Stuttgart, from his Mother Doreen, Allen, Stepfather Bill, the 2 Dachshunds, Ronald and Reggie, John’s girlfriend, Sybil, (this wouldn’t have been allowed as anything pertaining to oposite genders or adjacent by even by a million miles, to such a concept, was stircly forbidden. It was, after all, Sunday Lunchtime.) Aunty Mae, Grandma Thornton, the twins, all at the white Swan, Lee Green, not forgetting best friend Les Ducker.
“Everybody at 10 Rillington Place wishes you a happy birthday, John, with special thanks from Graham for doing such a stirling job as his Best Man last February. ‘We all hope your leg gets better soon and that you’ll soon be out of traction.’ says Mum, Doreen, and Bill says he’s forgiven you for treading on his whippet, and that he can always get another one.
“So, without more ado, specially for you, John, here’s Donald Piers singing, “Give Me A Cuddle While The Lupines Are Still In Bloom.”/









* * * * * * * *


Who’s sorry now, who’s sorry now
Whose heart is achin? for breakin?each vow
Who’s sad and blue, who’s cryin?too
Just like I cried over you

Right to the end just like a friend
I tried to warn you somehow
You had your way, now you must pay
I’m glad that you’re sorry now

Right to the end just like a friend
I tried to warn you somehow
You had your way, now you must pay

CHAPTER 34. SHAMUS.

For the first two weeks in 1A, there was a vacant seat at the double desk in the front of the classroom next to the door. Colin Thompson, another 11 year old with the body of a mature man, and the thickest-lensed glasses I’d ever seen, sat on his own. Apparently, the empty chair belonged to Dave Harris, who was starting his first term at Edgebury a couple of weeks late as he’d gone hop picking with his family. His reputation certainly preceded him.
     “Can’t wait till Shamus gets here. He’ll sort things out.”
     “Just you wait till Shamus turns up. Things are gonna change around here when he shows his mush.”

     I never did find out where Dave Harris got his nickname. It wasn’t because he was Irish because he wasn’t, and anyway, the pronunciation was ShAmus not Shaymus.When he did turn up, I was kind of disappointed. There wasn’t the charismatic super Human I’d been led to expect but a smallish, dishevelled, unkempt lad with an untidy shock of dry, black hair. He seemed to be quiet, polite and pretty bright - kind of harmless in fact - even a bit nondescript. This was a big mistake on my part. I was the first person at Edgebury who Dave Harris beat to a pulp, and I have to say, I asked for it. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one he mashed. I would witness many more, some of them a lot less deserving.

     It was in a junior metalwork lesson in the workshop where the iron filings got everywhere - under your nails, in your hair and under your skin, up your nose, in your shoes, in your crotch, when, for some unaccountable reason I stirred the wrath of Dave Harris. In between the boring chore of trying to file a rectangle of zinc perfectly square in order to make a pair of vice clamps that I would never use, I took time out to give him a couple of sharp prods in the back with a file. There’s a scene in the Roadrunner where Wyle E. Coyote is standing underneath a pile of boulders jammed in between two cliffs and which he’s prodding with a stick, when he suddenly realises his folly. He produces a sign that reads: ‘What in Heaven’s name am I doing?’ and looks forlornly at the camera while trying to protect himself from the inevitable avalanche with a minute umbrella before the rocks cascade down and bury him. This was exactly the sort of position I’d unwittingly placed myself in with Dave Harris. You simply don’t poke a bloke with psychopathic tendencies in the back with a file. But how was I to know he was capable of murder? He seemed like such a nice bloke.

     At the break time I wandered out ahead of the crowd and turned round the see Dave Harris skulking at back of the queue heading for the playground. His head was down into his shoulders and he was glaring, focussed on his prey like a lioness with hungry children. I turned back and started to un-ravel a tube of Fruit Gums, believing in the depths of my wisdom that he was certain to accept the orange one gracefully as sign of peace. It would have been a futile gesture if only I’d had time to make it.

JAWS

The Great White Shark has 3 rows of hinged teeth. When it opens its mouth, the teeth point outward at an angle of 45% and when it closes it jaws around something, the teeth point inward at the same angle. The teeth are wired with powerful nerves that tell the fish the nature of what it bites so it can decide whether or not to proceed with the next course. If it’s interested, the Great White always attacks twice, the first strike being a bit of a gourmet nibble that feels to the victim simply like a hard punch or kick, even though they’ve probably lost a chunk of flesh or a leg. The teeth aren’t particularly strong and it’s only when the shark decides it likes the taste of you and you become the dish of the day that things get really nasty.

     The second strike is apparently like being stuffed into a huge vice, and the Great White uses it’s massive body weight to twist its dinner apart, and that’s where it gets really painful. Dave Harris didn’t take a sample bite - he went straight in for the kill. He grabbed me around the body, pinning my arms to my sides, and lifting me right off the ground and smashing me down onto his knee. Then, like the Great White, he started to shake me apart throwing me from side to side and using his knee to help me on my way. I felt like I was flying, though not like on drugs, and if I was, they certainly weren’t painkillers. My legs were running in mid air like they belonged to a creature in some mad cartoon. Each time the knee made contact he punctuated the impact with a word of encouragement.
     “You think you’re FUCKin’ clever, don’t you? You’re not so fuc-KIN’ clever now, are you? Eh? You little CUNT. Hurt you? I’ll FUCKin’...HURT you.”

     He broke every bone in my body, or so I thought at the time. It was a real professional job. No bloody nose, no broken skin, not a visible mark anywhere - just a mass of bruises on my back and thighs. Shamus finally threw me on the ground and finished things off with a couple of kicks. He left me in a dusty, tearful heap and just walked away. He obviously felt he’d made his point, whatever that was. As the Great White is described as an eating machine, Dave Harris was a fighting machine. I saw him take on all-comers. No one was considered too big or unbeatable as far as he was concerned, and I never saw him lose. He fought like a demon. He spat, kicked, scratched, bit, gouged, and punched, all at that same time and through any defences.

FIGHT



     There was a kid in the 4th year called Leach, who’d unwittingly upset Shamus one time. News of an impending encounter “FIGHT!” spread with the subtlety of a bush fire in a hurricane and a huge crowd gathered outside the school gates at the end of the afternoon. Shamus was waiting with a few of Mottingham ‘hard men’ in cloth caps to add their support, “G’WON, SHAMUS! DO THE CUNT!” not that the demented fighting machine needed much encouragement. Leach, a fairly innocuous chap in a school uniform, appeared through the gates with a bunch of schoolbooks under his arm.

     He saw the crowd, but rather than running for his life, which would have been the sensible action, he calmly put his pile of books down on a garden wall and stepped into the road to meet his fate. He might as well have stepped off a platform into the path of The Flying Scottsman. Harris, propelled forward by the crowd, which was now a pretty nasty mob, came down the middle of the road and, as soon as he was in spitting distance, literally, launched into a frenzied attack.

     each marched right into the fray, bravely swinging his fists. He was much bigger than Harris and with a longer reach, but the little thug was a like whirling Dervish on speed, both arms and legs lashing out under the covering fire of saliva sprayed into his opponet’s face and eyes. Blood appeared on both boys’ faces in seconds, and though Leach seemed to be aquitting himself quiet well, the outcome was inevitable. Taking on Harris was like taking on Crazy Horse having a bad day. A 61 bus had stopped in the middle of the road, held up by the screaming rabble and both the driver and conductor left the vehicle and waded in, pulling the two combatants apart.

     A couple of prefects arrived on the scene and it was suddenly all over. Harris and the mob retreated up the road and Leach, wiping his face with a handkerchief, calmly strolled over to the wall and picked up his books. A couple of his mates patted him on the back, perhaps in a gesture of admiration, or more probably, congratulations on his survival. Usually, when Harris got in close, the carnage really began. He never stopped at the mere sight of blood, he just kept going till the opponent had all the fight or teeth knocked out of them and just quit - but even then, he didn’t stop. It must have been like facing an army. My little skirmish didn’t even figure. There was no gloating audience when I got my punishment and when I saw what he did to those poor fools who fought back, I realised how lucky I’d been.

     I expected further trouble from Dave Harris but it never came. He’d apparently made his point. He became quite friendly, strangely, thankfully. Obviously, my near execution wasn’t personal, but strictly business. Being put through the Harris mincer on a daily basis I couldn’t have coped with. I must admit, the thought of him as a ‘friend’ made me nervous but it was infinitely better than having him as an enemy. I don’t know what I did to deserve this reprieve but I wasn’t asking too many questions. Others weren’t so lucky and Shamus actively persecuted certain victims and must have made their lives almost unliveable.

     Peter Crewe was one who was selected for torture. I have to admit, I thought Crewe was a particularly unpleasant individual, not because of his personality, which was as OK as any, but because of his total dismissal of the need for hygiene. He never washed - he couldn’t have. Anyone who visited a bathroom once very 10 years for a quick glance in the mirror couldn’t have been so filthy. Peter Crewe’s condition was totally beyond anyone’s comprehension. How could anyone be so lazy or uncaring about their presentation to the world at large, not to mention their own health and welfare? And what were his parents thinking of? His lower face was a mass of blackheads; grime was clearly visible on his neck and his teeth clearly had never been introduced to a toothbrush. His clothes looked like they had been slept in and if he got caught in the rain, the stench was unbearable. He stooped, rather than stood, his eyes swollen and bulging from the strain of endless hours in front of a television.

     All that said, Crewe didn’t deserve the continual abuse he sufferered at the hands and mouth, of Harris, who would continually and skilfully rain spittle on him from across the classroom, or take a running punch at his humpy back. No one ever defended Crewe and there were those who could and would have stood up to Dave Harris and I wouldn’t have liked to bet on the outcome if Mike Rickards had ever got into a fight with him. In a perverse way, I think that most of us were glad to see Crewe get a beating he was so disgusting.

SELF DEFENCE

In 1958 there was a national bus strike, which seemed to go on forever though it was actually for about 6 months. The famous red elephants disappeared from the roads and some school kids were allowed temporarily to attend schools nearer their homes. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee were billeted in form 2A at Edgebury. I don’t remember their real names, but they were two egg-shaped identical twins who proudly wore their public prep school uniforms of grey flannel trimmed with cobalt blue ribbon edging on the jackets, topped off with grey caps also with a posh blue stripe. They were fairly distinctive looking individuals themselves; heavy and rounded, in a well-fed, slightly Middle Eastern sort of way, with black hair and darkish skin.

     Amongst the ‘blackboard jungle’ majority of cloth-capped, motorcycle-booted Edgebury renegades, they stood out like two turkeys in coup full of starving foxes, and to the natural hunter instincts of Dave Harris in particular, their smart uniforms transmogrified them into two huge archery targets on legs. His response was immediate - almost a reflex, with tiger-like ferocity. Peter Crewe must have thought all his Christmases had come at once. The weather above his head changed, the rain of spittle suddenly falling on fresh victims. On the open veranda leading from the main classrooms to the playground, Harris launched the physical attack.

     He’d take a run at Dum and Dee and deliver his speciality dead leg or a piston-like punch to the back. Dum and Dee resiliently put up with the onslaught, shocked and totally bemused at the unwarranted assault. They seemed to have accepted their lot as victims of the Harris tirade, probably hoping for divine some intervention to whisk them back to the sanctuary of their civilised public school.

     After witnessing the Shamus tyrade for about 2 weeks, the class was making its way along the veranda to the next lesson one morning, when Harris and the rest of us got the shock of our lives. Shamus had taken his customary dead leg run at the two rotund twins, who always walked together, and deliverered a wince-producing muscle-cruncher to Dee’s left thigh. Dee jack-knifed and clutched his leg but Dum suddenly turned round and started swinging his huge fists from side to side in the vicinity of Harris’s face. He’d turned into a robot, striding methodically towards Harris who had no choice but to back off and try to defend himself. Dee, no doubt still suffering the agony of the attack on his limb, recovered sufficiently to join in.

     Like two Sherman Tanks, Dum and Dee advanced relentlessly forward, swinging their arms from side to side in great sweeping lunges. It was too much for the surprised Harris, who did his best to defend himself in his time-honoured ritual of lashing out with his feet and spitting for all he was worth, even though his mouth must have been feeling a tad dry. Harris was on the back foot, lierally, stumbling away and cowering from the rain of blows, none of which, luckily for him, actually connected. But just the display of military might was enough with Harris looking as though the whole Red Army was bearing down on him. Dum and Dee pushed Harris further and further along the veranda until his back came to rest against the end wall

     As was always the way in situations like this, a teacher appeared and spoiled things, wedging himself between the attackers and their retreating adversary and it was game over. Bugger, I thought. This was going to have an interesting conclusion, to say the least. Harris was visibly shaken and his pride must have taken quite a knock, but the outcome of the skirmish was never to be known. He never bullied the twins again and before the strike ended, they left the school. After the ‘fight’, I asked a red-faced and puffed Dum what made him turn so suddenly. His reply was conclusive.

     “Dad told us to let him have it.”

TO THE MANOR BORN.

There are those that suffered and were in some cases, irrevocably traumatised by their experiences of Dave Harris, but he was intelligent, bright, and in some ways quite creative. He just came from a background that had such an overwhelming influence, that his destiny was assured. His father worked as a black marketer and his brother, Nutty, Robbed banks. Well, he tried to rob banks. He walked into Martin’s Bank in Chislehurst High Street with a gun. The manager simply closed the door behind him and locked it. Whichever way, at the age of 11, there was already a prison cell somewhere with Dave Harris’s name on it.

     I really got the impression that Shamus tried to begin with. He seemed to work hard and was enthusiastic, always being the first to hoist his hand whenever the answer to a question was put on offer. Inevitably, outside influences began his slide into demise. He started being late for school almost every day and was warned by Bert that if it continued, he’d have to go before Benny Hill, the Headmaster. Inevitably, the interview and subsequent flogging came to pass. Harris came back into the classroom with his face wet from tears and holding his backside. He mumbled something about having rumatism and how unfair it was that he’d been punished in such a way. Bert took no notice and from then on the Great White Shark, started to flounder. He lost concentration, spent more time with kids from the Mottingham Estate where he lived - kids who were in no way his intellectual equal, but with whom he felt more comfortable. We A-streamers steered clear of these tough guys with their chequered cloth caps, motor bike boots, jeans, fierce, snarling faces, and swaggering tough-guy walk that loudly proclaimed that if you fucked with them, you were dead.

     Dave Harris was the only kid I knew to have a hoof in both camps. He belonged in the A stream by virtue of his natural ability but maintained a fierce loyalty to those from a similar background. I was once allowed onto enemy turf accompanied by Shamus himself. We visited the games cloakroom, a wire mesh enclosure, which stank of old, socks and damp clothing. Atmospherically, the place could’ve been the domain of the ‘Sharks’ or the ‘Jets’, except the ‘Sharks’ and the ‘Jets’ would’ve been considered wankers by comparison to those who actually resided there in the dark, shadowy corners of this hard man’s cave.

DELIVERANCE

Harris was a fairly natural musician and played a mean banjo. I played the guitar a bit, and, as this was right in the middle of the skiffle era, Harris wanted to put a group of some kind together. My hair stood on end as I followed him into the smelly inner sanctum of the rough kids and down between the lines of coat pegs and benches. Tobacco smoke wafted in and out of my nostrils even though there was not a fag in sight.

     There were two kids sitting on one bench in the corner. The biggest, in a black and white cloth cap over his not very clean blonde curly hair and wobbly sideburns, had a snare drum on his knee and was tapping at it with a single stick, and next to him a diminutive Elvis Presley look-alike, Bernie O Connor, strummed a gut-strung guitar. The two of them were idling away at a passable interpretation of Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue and they seemed harmless enough. But O’Connor would lead an attack on the Staff and School prefects two years later on his last day before leaving school at the end of the Easter term.

     The riot took place in the playground behind the bike sheds. The prefects, pre-warned of the impending onslaught, tried to stick together in a tight circle, and it probably saved them from mass murder. (Obviously, one of the smarter bods had been studying Roman warfare) It took a gang of staff and groundsmen armed with cricket stumps to break up the melee, but not until a lot of noses had been broken and heads bashed.

BAND ON THE RUN


     “I’m gonna put a group together.” said Shamas to Checked Cap, motioning over his shoulder to where I cowered behind him.”
     “What, with this fuckin’ stooge?” retorted Checked Cap with utter disdain and the twisted nose of someone who’d just smelled the dog shit they’ve stepped in.
     “Nah. This is Nilw. He’s all right. He’s a good guitar player.”

     I felt kind of proud when Harris said this, but I wasn’t all right. Not as far as these goons were concerned. Checked Cap wasn’t impressed and even if he had been there was no way he was going to entertain the presence of ‘some cunt in a school uniform’. These kids were bitter and resentful - of everything, probably. They saw people like me as overpriviledged pricks who habitually broke all the cardinal rules by adhering to school regulations and blatantly displaying a will to work and recognise authority.

     But I felt I was the same as they were - almost. I came from a working class family just like they did. I lived on a council estate just like they did. Strangely, I resented their rejection, but I never visited the inner sanctum of their lair again.

TROTTER

The next year, the same Bernie O’Connor type terrorism was attempted again but with less success due largely to the heroics of the School Captain at the time, Mike Trotter. Mike was a six foot six, rugby playing, javelin throwing, discus-hurling, shot-putting, would-be policeman. He was a gentle-giant of a man who’s demeanour quietly displayed a ‘don’t fuck with me unless you’re certifiable’ label. Unfortunately, Joe Hurlock, whose name fittingly described his thickset, hulking, but fairly squat figure, (if you could call it that) accentuated with the regulation thug’s black leather jacket must have also been dyslexic according to the move he made. His men behind him, (by a good few yards, I might add) Hurlock decided, in a sudden rush of suicidal psychosis, that Trotter ‘was going to get his’.

     One of my few really fond and lasting memories of my time at Edgebury was of a beautiful late afternoon in 1960, the sun hanging low in the sky and casting long shadows of two figures moving slowly across the playground. One of the figures, Joe Hurlock, was being pushed backwards step-by-step, by the ironically long arm of the other, Mike Trotter. With every steady, stride, Trotter planted the palm of his hand firmly against Hurlock’s chest with just enough force to unbalance him. Back and back they went. Hurlock beckoned over his shoulder to his ‘men’ but they’d already seen the error of their ways and exited stage left like so many shit-scared rabbits. No one else got involved. There was no need. Hurlock eventually and begrudgingly turned his back on the advancing mighty Trotter and skulked away, the ritual of prefect mashing laid to rest forever.

     Shamus took his banjo into school once and Bert Bower lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw it. He actually asked Harris to play the thing, which he gladly did with the aid of a collar stiffener for a plectrum. Bert’s face was a picture as Harris alternated between probably the only 3 chords he knew, C, F, and G7. Perhaps it was these three chords that upset the Headmaster, Benny Hill, who happened to be passing. He came into the room and demanded to know why Harris had brought the instrument into school without permission. Bert didn’t defend him, even though he’d enjoyed listening to ‘The Midnight Rambler’, albeit without the vocal. Musical instruments were banned from the school from that moment on - one of the more shortsighted decisions Ben made when I come to think about it.

     In the 2nd year, Dave Harris was demoted down a form, back, unfortunately, towards the beckoning, bony fingers of his inherited kind. A year later, after a few fights that became more adult in their viciousness, he was caught selling the proceeds of a burglary in school, namely, 3,000 fags. Benny Hill made an announcement in assembly about the felony, and that the police were involved. No one was named but later, in the corner of the playground, Dave Harris confessed to the crime. He took a long drag of the roll-up he had tucked into the palm of his hand, in the pofessional way all furtive smokers do, and blew a couple of wistful smoke rings, following them with a vacant gaze.
     “I’ve fuckin’ ‘ad it now, Nilw.”

     “What d’you mean?”
     His head characteristically shrunk down into his shoulders, he smiled sideways at me, “The fags, you cunt. It was me. I nicked ‘em. ‘An they fuckin’ know it was me. Ben’s called the fuckin’ cops. I’m just waitin’ to get arrested. They’ll put me away this time.”

     I only half-believed him. He was almost bragging about it. But what really saddened me was that he had an air of success about him. As if he’d cracked something big at last. As if in some bizarre way he was relieved. He got 3 years at an approved school probably amongst similar thugs and phsycopaths.

     After escaping several times, and hiding under the beds of several Motttingham kids, he was sent to Wormwood Scrubs Junior prison, the toughest juvenile institution in the country and from where there would be no such thing as rehabilitation. There, he would be able to complete his education and hone his talents in the field that had already been chosen for him on the day he was born. Shamus’s course was set fair. He would possibly one day commit murder, as he was well equipped to do both physically and phsycologically. The most dangerous aspect of all this is that he was innately intelligent and would now have an opportunity to turn that intelligence into the kind of guile and craftiness that makes successful criminals. I’d like to think I was wrong, and that he’d see the error of his ways and reform. It’s more likely that the RAF will recruit prize porkers as pilots. I never saw Dave Harris again.

‘Just because the lady loves Milk Tray’

MVO: “5,4,3,2,1…CONTACT!”
SFX: Rocket blasting off
MVO:“Journey Into Space – a Tale of the future. Starring Guy Kingsley-Pointer as Doc; Bill Kerr as Mitch, Alfie Bass and David Kossoff as Lemmie, though not both at the same time, and some bloke no one can remember as Jet Morgan, a pretty daft name even for the captain of a space ship crew. Episode 304: ‘The Forbidden Planet’.” SFX:
Annoying intermitant background ‘buzz-buzz’, which runs throughout the entire show.
Jet: “Hello, Doc.What’ve you got for us this time? We’ve done the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and every other planet in the Solar System so it must be something pretty important to bring you rushing over from Space Control in such a sweaty state. Where’s it going to be, Alpha Centuri; Betelgese; some new black hole they’ve come up with?”
Doc: “Get your helmet on and fasten your seat belt, Jeff. This is the big one: Bournemouth.”
J: “Holy asteroids! You can’t be serious. Bournemouth! That’s totally unchartered territory for the likes of us. And it’s infested with Aliens of the most awesome kind: holidaymakers and OAPs. I don’t think the rest of the crew will take kindly to such a mission. There’s a chance that even if we make it there in one piece, we may never come back. I’m really not sure this is a good idea. Er, it’s JET, Doc, not Jeff.”
D: “It’s come right from the top this time, Jeff. It seems Billy Butlin is set to colonise the place and Control want us to make sure we get in first.”
J: “I can see their point. Look what happened to Skeggy. I can see we have no choice. I’d better breake it to the chaps. It’s JET, not Jeff.”
D: “Steady on, Jeff. There’s no need to rush things. Look, we need everybody 100% behind this mission. And if they find out where they’re going, well…”
J: “You’re right, as usual, Doc, we’ll tell’em we’re doing another Mars trip. Once they get there, they’ll never know the difference. By the way, the name’s JET.”
D: “Good thinking, Jeff. Oh, there’s one other thing.”
J: “Yes?”
D: “Whittaker’s coming with us.”
J:“You don’t mean, ‘orders will be obeyed without question at all times’, Whitttaker?”
D: “I’m afraid so.”
J: “But he’s barmy!”
D: “He was. But now he’s completely lost it. Gone right round the bend. Started some programme called, ‘Juke Box Jury’. Calls himself, David Jacobs.”
J: “Yes, I’ve seen it – in the cause of research, you understand.”
D: “Quite. But there’s a cunning plan. Control want us to leave him there.”
J: “Brilliant! No more ‘oil give it foive’.”
D: “Exactly.”
J: “When do we leave?”
D: “Last week in July, first week in August.”
J: “I’d better dig out my Ray Bans…I mean ray gun.”
D: “I knew we could count on you, Jeff.”
J: “They don’t call me JET Morgan for nothing, Doc.”
D: “I’m sure they don’t, Jeff.”



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