They think you really care,
But myself I can't deceive,
I know its only make believe,
My one and only prayer,
Is that some day you'll care,
My hopes my dream's come true,
My one and only you,
No one will ever know,
How much I love you so,
My only prayer will be,
Is someday you'll care for me,
But it’s only make believe,
My hopes my dream's come true,
My life I lived for you,
My heart a wedding ring,
My all, my everything,
My heart I can't control,
You'll my very soul,
My only prayer will be,
Is that someday you'll care for me,
But it's only make believe,
My one and only prayer,
Is that someday you'll care,
My hope's, my dream's come true,
My one and only you,
No one will ever know,
How much I love you so,
My prayers, my hope's and my scheme's,
You are my every dream,
But it's only make believe.
(make believe)
Chapter 47. THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY.
The two other rugby specialist Welsh teachers at Edgebury had similar joyful dispositions as Dick Spittle: ‘Dan’ Archer, from Cardiff, who also instructed the senior boys in the ways of the Lord, and 'Stan' Mathews who ran a boys club from his home in Sidcup. Dan, a thick set, wiry haired man in his forties, posed some really interesting and significant questions during his RI lessons when we were all in the Fifth Year.
“Luds...now, the bible says, that is according to Mathew 15, verses 9 to 12, (or thereabouts) that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was a ....virgin. Hm. Now what does this mean, luds? Mathew states that the woman had ‘not known’ Joseph. She was pregnant, but...SHE HAD NOT KNOWN HIM. I ask you. Can we believe this, luds? CAN WE BELIEVE THIS?”
There was a lot of shifting of bums on seats and a couple of chairs scraped against the floor. Michael Coward, who sat behind me, leaned across to his mate Dave Smith and said in a half-whisper:
“What’s he mean, ‘hadn’t known him’?”
Smith leaned back to Coward:“It means, she was up the duff, but he hadn’t given her one.”
“Who hadn’t?”
“Joseph, you dummy.”
“Well, someone must have. Otherwise she wouldn’t be pregnant, would she.”?
“That’s the whole point, you stoopid prick. She was a virgin.”
“But she couldn’t have been. She was pregnant.”
“Give me fuckin’ strength. Listen...”
“Do you have anything to udd, Smith?” Dan inquired.
“I was just pointin’ art to Car ‘d, Sir, that though Mary was pregnant, she hadn’t...I mean she didn’t...”
“She hadn’t been known by anyone.”
“Yes, Sir. That no-one had actually KNOWN HER, Sir, (given her one Sir.,)” he said under his breath. Smith and Coward were actually friends but they always went through the same ritual of Smith threatening to ‘git Coward artside.’
“I’ll gitchoo you artside, ca’rd!”
“Yes. Exactly,” Semi-confident that he’d regained the class’s attention, Dan turned back to them and tried once more to open the debate, “Now, can we believe this, luds?”
“Are you knowing anyone tonight, Dave?” Coward whispered to Smith.
“Fuck off, Ca’rd.” Smith punched Coward on the arm, and Coward winced
“What about your Linda, Dave? Have you known her yet?”
“I’ll gitchoo artside, Ca’rd!” Smith punched Coward on the arm again. Then suddenly looked reflective, wistful. “Actually, I can’t get anywhere with my bird. She don’t want to know.”
My heart leapfrogged. I was 15 and bonkers in love with Dave’s ‘sort’, Linda. He wasn’t wise to this of course. No one was. Not even me for quite a while. I’d been bonkers in love before, of course, several times since the age of about 7, but this, to coin-a-phrase, was the real thing. Being Dave's mate, made me feel closer to Linda in one way, but, strangely, in more pain. As well as being 'a many spleandoured thing', as the song goes, love is just weird sometimes and has proved to be many times over.
Linda was the sister of my sister’s best friend at the time, Janice, who lived in Slades Drive, next to Imperial Way. Linda’s best friend was Rosemary, who also lived in Imperial Way, on the other side of the road a few doors down.
At least once a day during the school holidays, Linda cruised by to Rosemary’s down the alleyway connecting Slades Drive to Gravelwood Close, past the patch of ground in front of our house where several years before I’d tried to blow my hand off.
She had this funny, scrappy, thin little dog on a thin lead. It was like an overgrown, half-starved brown rat with long hair which she tied bows in. The dog had minute legs sticking out like matchsticks in a potato and had to run to keep up.
Linda used to stop opposite on the wide corner pavement and let the dog sniff about or do what potato dogs and rats are very good at doing. I used to watch her from my roost on the wooden arm of the chair behind the net curtain. She was quite short and small chested with a round bum squeezed into those tight, black stretch trousers girls used to wear back then - the ones with the stirrups that fitted over their feet to allow the stretch to take place.
Linda was extremely pretty, with long ringlets of dark brown hair, deep brown eyes and a longish nose. She’d stand and wait as the rat-potato-dog did its thing and glance up and down the road. It was the way she did this, the way she moved her head and blinked her eyes that I found so captivating. She could’ve crapped in the road herself and I’d have thought it was beautiful.
Linda put me in the sort of tailspin any Mecherschmitt pilot would’ve been had the willies about. I was head-over-heals, backward flip and headspring over Linda. There was no doubting it. But how frustrating it was. She was far out of my reach even though she was only across the road. I’d already placed her on a 160-foot high pedestal surrounded by barbed wire, shark-infested seas and Tropical storms.
Still, she probably wasn’t so good looking and she had no chest to speak of. AND she was short. Almost dumpy and quite heavy around the thighs due, I figured, to all the sport she played, like hockey and netball and stuff. And she went to a posh school. Passed her eleven-plus, she had. And I didn’t really like what she wore. And I didn’t really make an un-necessary detour every night so that I walked passed her house for years even after she got married and moved away.
Furthermore, she didn’t really look so sexy riding her red bicycle to school in her blazer, crisp white blouse and navy-blue beret pinned to her brown ringlets, her brown legs, their muscley calves flexing with power, pumping up and down, the saddle at the lowest level because her legs were so short. And I never deliberately waited under the trees by the Kemnal alley for her to come past so that I could cycle along at a safe distance behind her.
And my emotions didn’t really take a nosedive when she started going out with Dave Smith. And I didn’t burn bright red when me and my mate, Roy, met them outside the Queen’s Head in Chislehurst one Summer’s evening, and I never even noticed the white high heels or the pale yellow frock she was wearing with the flouncy petticoats or the way she looked adoringly at Dave.
LINDA
On the day we all left Edgebury, 6 of us went back to my place for a cup of tea and a fag or three. Linda knocked on our front door looking for Dave, I certainly took absolutely no notice at all when I opened the door and saw her standing there in her green bulb-shaped overcoat holding that sweet little red umbrella of hers, the rain water dripping delicately from her pretty little nose, her deep brown eyes blinking innocently.
“Is Dave there?” she said, in her sweet, quiet, soft voice.
“Sure.” I said, loftily, “Come in.” I left her in the hall, and fetched Dave from the sitting room. See, if I’d been really in love with her, I’d have fallen over backwards. And I didn’t care that they shut themselves in the hall for a private tête-à-tête. And I didn’t feel a lump in my throat or cry inside, thinking of them both kissing. Linda never meant a thing, really.
‘This is luxury you can afford,
By Cyril Lord’
Derbishire: “Cripes, Jennings. That was fantastic! It was THE MOST INCREDIBLE experience of my life – until I’m old enough to have sex with a woman rather than some chap in the dorm, that is.”
Jennings: “I’m so glad you liked it, Derbishire. I aim to please, you know.”
Derbishire: “Cripes, can we do it again, Jennings? Please. Can we?”
Jennings: “I don’t know if we should. I’ve got this incredible ringing in my ears.”
Derbishire: “Cripes, so have I. But I still want to do it again.”
Jennings: “Hmm. I’m not sure. Mind you, the earth really did move, didn’t it?”
Derbishire: “Cripes, yes. It was really super.”
Jennings: “We’d have to be careful no one spots us.”
Derbishire: “Cripes, yes!”
Jennings: “There’s just one other small problem.”
Derbishire: “What’s that, Jennings?”
Jennings: “We can’t blow up the same school twice.”
Derbishire: “Cripes, I never thought of that.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Well, lookabell ,lookabell,lookabell,lookabell Oooooh Weeeeee
Lookabell, lookabell, lookabell OoooooWeeee
Oh, Ah,Oh,Ah, Oh wee
Well, she's so fine,fine,fine,She's so fine fa fine
She's so fi iii ine,She's so fine,fine,fine
She's really sweet the finest girl you ever wanna meet
Oh,oh,oh,oh Oh,oh,oh,oh,oh
Rrrrrrrr Reet Petite, the finest girl you ever wanna meet
Well, have you ever seen a girl for whom your soul you'd give
For whom you'd fight for, die for, pray to God you'd lie for
She's so fine, she's so fine, she's really sweet the finest girl
you ever wanna meet
Well, she really thrills me so
from her head to toe,I want the world to know, I love her, love her so
She's alright,she's alright,She's alrighty.
You know to me it has to be at night
Oh,oh,oh,oh, oh,oh,oh,oh
Rrrr Reet Petite the finest girl you ever wanna meet
Ohhhhh (instrumental) Well, she's like honey from a bees
And like bees from a tree, I love her, need her,
she bez' so buzzin'
She's alright, she's got what it takes
She's got what it takes and to me she really rates
Well, Oh now she's my cutey,my tuttu fruitt,
my heart, my love, my bathin' beauty she's alright, she’s
got just what it takes, she's got what it takes and to
me she a- really rates
Oh oh oh oh,Oh oh oh oh
RrrReet Petite the finest girl you ever wanna meet
RrrReet Petite the finest girl you ever wanna meet
RrrReet Petite the finest girl you ever wanna meet
Chapter 48. ACE.
I met Tony Eatwell when Connie’s cousin, Joyce, and her husband, Terry, suggested that I went to their flat in Dulwich to meet their landlady’s son who also played the guitar. Terry picked me up on his Heinkel scooter one Sunday and whisked me the 14 miles along the South Circular to Eyenella Road in SE 22 where they lived. Tony was 14, a year older than me. He was short and wiry, with cropped hair and wore ‘almost’ pointed shoes. The ‘Italian’ thing was incoming at the time and Tony was well into it.
Later on, he and I rivalled each other to see who could squeeze his feet into the most pointed winkle pickers first. I sold my precious Hornby 00 train set in 1961 for 4 quid to buy the last pair I owned. They had ‘extensions’ so that the points were really sharp, and Cuban heels. I became obsessed with the idea that they shouldn’t become up-turned at the toes or scruffy and so I thrust a couple of iron bars into them every night to keep them straight.
Tony always seemed to stay a couple of jumps ahead of me both in terms of fashion and music. He was constantly moving on from one fad to the next leaving me breathless trying to keep up. He was a very bright and clever kid and attended Archbishop Tennison’s Grammar School at the Oval, one of the most exclusive schools in London. By the time I got to show him my new ‘points’, he was wearing tan, calf loafers with conventional toes and a Lee Rider denim suit. He ignored my ‘pickers’, and merely informed me that he wasn’t into juvenile fashion any more or teenage music, come to that. He was into art and modern jazz. Once again, I was too late - behind with the way things were moving. Or with the way Tony was moving.
* * * * * * * * * * *
MAI GOD
Tony’s brother, Brian, was a student at Camberwell School Of Art studying painting and theatre design. He was short like Tony with long hair (for those days) that hung low over the back of his shirt collar, and short on top, brushed forward in an unwashed Julius Caesar style. With a voice sounding like a cross between Brian Sewell and the Prince of Wales, totally manufactured to fit his own intellectual image of himself, Brian disapproved of me and saw me as an uneducated yob who, because I smoked, was a bad influence on his brother.
Brian Eatwell’s style was shabby and ‘beatnik’ after the style of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg and the other Greenwich Village poets and writers of the day. He wore brown Eaton Clubman suede shoes with thick crepe soles - not like Teddy Boy Rock’n’Roll shoes, but more much more expensive and exclusive looking, or the first elastic sided chukka boots I’d ever seen. The ensemble was usually topped off with black corduroy drainpipe trousers and usually an olive green v-necked sweater over a striped shirt and thick, knitted tie in dark, arty colours. Brian’s Girlfriend was a beautiful, dark-haired, olive-skinned German girl called Christine Henke. She was tall and slim with smallish, but neat breasts (pubescent boys start to notice such things at that age and never stop noticing - weird, really) and wore her long black hair piled up in a tight bun.
She was a textile student at Camberwell and wore clothes that she’d made herself in very exotic colours with shoes dyed brilliant puke green over the regulation girl art student black stockings.
“Mum. Can I have a clean pair of socks? My feet smell.” Brian commanded one day before going out to an arty party. Obviously, washing wasn’t a cool thing to do.
Brian’s room was on the ground floor next to the front door of the old Edwardian house. I managed a sneak look inside when he was looking for a Big Bill Broonzy EP Tony wanted me to hear. Tony followed Brian in and I followed Tony getting far enough inside to survey the scene while Brian rummaged about amongst all the rubbish. It was a tip. A landfilled sight that hadn’t been filled. There were bits of paper everywhere. Tins of paint, dirty socks, clothes and underwear slung all over the floor. There was no carpet - just bare boards and the place smelled damp. Stuck all over the walls were pages from broadsheet newspapers with nudes painted on them in thick black brush strokes. Though crude, and obviously put down quickly, they were beautiful.
The drawings were simple, the faces had no features, but the shape of the hair of the girl in the pictures was unmistakable. The model was Christine. He’d drawn his girlfriend in the nude, as in naked, with no clothes on, starkers, bare, in her birthday suit, as nature intended.
How’d he persuade her to do that? I felt my brain somersaulting inside my skull. At 14, this was a monumental concept to take in. Did all blokes of Brian’s age see their girlfriends with their clothes off? No. Surely not. But if it was Christine, then...maybe she didn’t just take her clothes off...maybe they... It was just too much to contemplate without causing some kind of short circuit in my nervous system. It was probably all done in the name of art and after she finished modelling, Christine just put her clothes back on or maybe...???
It was a hell of a conundrum to wrestle with. Brian found the record and saw me standing in the doorway. Obviously, I wasn’t of sufficient calibre to witness the inner sanctum of such an intellectual artist and he grumpily ushered us out. Maybe he was just ashamed of the pigsty he slept in but somehow I doubted it.
Despite being an utterly rude bastard, Brian Eatwell, nevertheless, impressed the hell out of me. He was different to anyone I’d ever met. He knew things nobody I knew did. He was somewhere else. He had something I didn’t have - that the people I knew didn’t have. And I wanted it badly - whatever it was.
These were the days when the word ‘cool’ was first introduced into the language to signify all that was hip or hep amongst the arty set. Its use wasn’t common like it is today but reserved for those in the know. ‘The Birth Of The Cool’ was how the newly resurgent Miles Davis’s interpretation of modern Jazz was labelled. To the masses, modern jazz was summed up in the Chuck Berry song, ‘Rock’n’Roll Music’ where he describes it as too darned fast and that it mucks about with the melody until it sounds just like a symphony. Fair comment I suppose, but what did he know?
I would have said Brian Eatwell was both enigmatic and charismatic had I ever heard the words and known their meaning in 1960. He described as ‘rotten tripe’ the live TV performance of Joe Brown and The Bruvvers Tony and I were watching one Saturday on Jack Good’s show, ‘Oh Boy’. I resented this remark not because I thought him wrong but because I didn’t understand why this apparent icon of absolute cool superiority held that particular view. Miles Davis’s famous album, ‘Kind Of Blue’, changed the direction and conceptual thinking of Modern Jazz up till then. It had just come out and of course Brian Eatwell had a copy.
He’d sit in the kitchen on the ground floor of the dingy Edwardian house in Dulwich where he lived with his brother and diminutive, chain-smoking Mother, Jean, playing bongo rhythms on the wooden chair seat and eulogising about the ‘phrasing of the music’.
Phrasing? What the hell did that mean? I thought phrasing was to do with words and stuff. Things that people said. Once again, I was frustrated by what I didn’t understand. And who the hell was Miles Davis when he was at home? (Today, I own 4 copies of the album.)
“Mai God, Tainy. Jst liston to-wit.”
His eyes were closed, his chin tilted towards the ceiling:
“Each phrase is say beautifully interwaiven into the next. He-are comes Coltrane’s sailay. Ba-ba-bubb-badabaaaaa...”
I wasn’t interested in whatever this rubbish was that was churning out from the record player, but I was rooted by Brian’s weird antics and convinced he was on something more than PG Tips.
“Ay, it’s jst SUPERB, Tainy. Mai God, Can’t you jst FEEL it?”
Somehow, the music managed to spill into my brain as I stood there. He was right. These strange sounds were beautiful – hypnotic. I didn’t understand it but it was haunting, mesmerising, rich - different to anything I’d ever heard. And quite obviously, intellectually a cut above - outside the herd - right where I wanted to be, I was beginning to think. Well, summat like that.
Christine was even more stuck up and superior than Brian, referring to me if ever she had to, as ‘him’ or ‘he’. She probably would’ve preferred ‘it’ as she clearly saw me as sub-human, but not wishing to upset Tony’s Mum, Jean, she restrained herself.
The Miles Davis Quintet with Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and Bill Evans were on tour in Britain at the time and Christine was able to get tickets for one of the concerts through family connections.
“Mai God! We can all gai togethar.” (She didn’t have a German accent and suffered the same type of plum-in-the-gob voice as Brian.) “And I ‘spase he can come tor,” pointing at me as if I was some kind of ‘baigy’ she was trying to shake from the end of her finger.
I really wasn’t that interested in going to see Miles Davis, and showed little enthusiasm. I wasn’t invited in the end, but, ‘mai God,’ (This seemed to be a sort of Camberwell Art School catchword.) I bet they had a really suoopar taime. In retrospect I realise I missed hearing, and seeing in the flesh, one of the best Modern Jazz ensembles ever to breathe and blow air on the planet and, given the chance now, I’d kill for a ticket.
I did get to see Miles (as we musicians refer to him) in 1968, when he reformed his quintet with Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Ron Carter and Herbie Hancock. Mai God! They were amazing, but the members of the best line-up in the original quintet were by then already immortal, most of them dead through drug abuse and booze.
‘Pamper yourself with Imperial Leather’
The Cliff Adams Singers: “Sing Something Simple…”
SFX: Rapid machine gun fire.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Pegged cool daddy-o! When I put em on I'm a rarin' to go
When I go places I just don't care
You'd know why when you see what I wear
Black slacks.....pegged 14
Black slacks ....really are keen!
Black slacks pegged cool daddy-o!
When I put em on I'm a rarin' to go
Man you aughta' see me with my derby on
I know that you would say ..."He's gone"
Black slacks......"Mostly in the head" ..
Black slacks ....Uh..that's what I said...
Black slacks I'm the cat's pyjamas
I always run around with the crazy little mamas
Well the girls all look when I go by
It's what I wear that makes 'em sigh
Black slacks....I wear a red bow-tie....
Black slacks...they say "Me oh my!!!"
Black slacks....with a "cat's chain" down to my knees
I ain't nothin' but a real cool breeze
Black slacks..........
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Black Slacks
Pegged cool daddy-o! When I put em on I'm a rarin' to go
When I put em on I'm a rarin' to go
When I put em on I'm a rarin' to go
When I put em on I'm a rarin' to go
Chapter 49. TRYING TO KEEP UP.
In my ignorance, I had no idea that Brian Eatwell’s attitude and image paid direct homage to the ‘Beat’ generation of New York’s Greenwich Village, the stomping, or rather, creeping ground of the self-styled anarchist poets like Graham Burroughs, Jack Kerrouac and Allen Ginsburg. I didn't know that such a place or such people existed till Tony put me wise yet again.
It was Burroughs who first coined the phrase ‘Beat Generation’ which I always thought was a reference to the Modern Jazz he and his sort used to enhance the melancholic atmosphere generated at poetry readings. In fact, the word ‘Beat’ was a reference to anyone who considered his or herself exhausted and worn out by the pressures of trying to keep up, sociologically, intellectually or politically with the Great American Dream and were just plumb tuckered out by the whole experience, man.
It wasn’t until the word ‘Beatnik’ was penned by an eminent journalist after the first Russian ‘Sputnik’ was launched to describe the drab, depressed appearance of ‘Beat’perpatrators, with their moustachless beards, and black stockings (that’s beards for the men CATS – in most cases, stockings for the women KITS, and long black sweaters worn by both) that the original meaning got lost and was interpreted by most as a purely music based term.
The ‘Beat’ appearance was remarkably similar to the skiffle effect once wrapped so comfortably around the shoulders of our home grown depressed urban folk music performers and was readily adopted by the art schools of the mid 1950s as a sign of intellectual superiority only to disappear with the arrival of the Beatles in the early 60s with their forward combed, long hair already worn by male art students, and suddenly made massively popular.
The Beatles tore down all the barriers between highbrow students and ordinary folk by taking the piss out of everything. The intellectuals couldn’t argue that their property had been stolen because John Lennon had been at art school himself. The Beat image was later revived to some degree by the Hippy movement in the 1970s, though it no longer had depressed connotations, and had more to with exhuberent fornication, thinly and unconvincingly disguised as anti war protest. Was it ‘make love, not war’, or ‘shag first, shoot later’?
Tony and I became good friends and I used to visit Dulwich every couple of weeks or so. More and more, we’d play guitars together, swapping ideas and chords. Tony got into Les Paul and used to buy rare American guitar recordings from ‘Jean’s’, a shop in Peckham run by a bottle-blonde in her 40’s, none-other than Jean Herself.
“‘Allo, Tone. ‘Ow ya doin’, luv? ‘Ere, I’ve got some jazz guitar stuff in: a couple of Barney Kessels, a Jimmy Rainey, and a Tal Farlow. You interested?”
Tony always snapped them up. He’d take them home, learn a few of the solos from the records, then take them back and try and barter with Jean to exchange them for her latest stuff. Most of her stuff was second-hand so she wasn’t adverse to the odd spot of bargaining.
“Cor Blimey. You finished wiv these all ready? Whatsup? Too eye brow for ya? 2 quid? You’re jokin’, encha? Tell ya wot. I’ll give yer 1 pand ten for ‘em an’ I’ll frow in this ‘Little Rock Getaway’ EP. Can’t say fairer than that, now can I?”
This way, Tony and I got to hear the best American guitarists without having to lay out too much. Barney Kessel, Les Paul, Wes Motgomery, Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, Chet Atkins, Charlie Byrd, Django - the lot. More and more, I came to idolise Tony and his lively mind, often boringly referening to ‘my mate, Tone’, to school friends rather too often. They must have thought I’d met Jesus.
Brian began to tolerate me a little, realising that I wasn’t going to go away. He passed us on the way to his room one day as we sat at the foot of the stairs contemplating our latest load of jazz guitar music acquisitions.
“Hello, men.” he said with the hint of a smile, as he entered the rubbish tip where his bed was and closed the door behind him. I was staggered, overjoyed. Was this a kind of acceptance? Had Brian figured I wasn’t such a dummy after all? Had I passed some kind of ‘cool’ test? Nah. More likely, he’d probably just had an extra satisfactory bowel movement.
Nevertheless, I suddenly felt ashamed of the double-buckled winkle pickers and the imitation leather jacket I was wearing that I’d borrowed from my aunt. She’d just ditched her boyfriend, and the bloke owned a 500cc Triumph Tiger 100. The plastic jacket was what Janet wore when she rode pillion. Anyway, I just wasn’t arty, and I decided I really wanted to be. Needed to be. I determined there and then that I’d acquire a pair of Eton Clubman like the one’s Brian wore. I managed to convince Connie that I needed the shoes and together we scoured the shoe shops in Eltham till we eventually found a pair. They weren’t quite like the ones Brian wore. They were chukka boots with a fur lining but they were genuine ‘Eaton Clubman’ in light brown suede.
They looked enormous on my feet; especially against the tight grey trousers I wore round my skinny legs. I looked like flamingo. But I had to have them, and Connie, though not quite convinced, handed over the 4 quid to the salesman. My next mistake was wearing them to school. At the time, the TV sitcom, ‘The Army Game’, with Michael Medwin, Bernard Breslaw and Alfie Bass was at the height of its popularity. Bass played a character called ‘Excused Boots Bisley’, who wore old plimsolls instead of army boots because he suffered from corns. Bizley became known as ‘Boots’ or ‘Bootsey’ for short.
With my new footwear standing out like a pair of beer barrels on the end of my legs I immediately acquired the same name and for a whole term in 4A at Edgebury was known as Bootsey. This wasn’t quite the effect I wanted to achieve, but at least I had the Clubman and it wasn’t my fault that those idiots among my schoolmates weren’t up to speed with the intellectual arty programme.
After Brian left Camberwell, he went to Bristol to do a post-grad course but gave up and came home when Christine revealed that she was up the bohemian duff. My mind did cartwheels at the notion that Brian and Christine had actually ‘done it’ and I tried in my imagination to describe a vision of them in some erotic position or other.
I did at 14, find Christine overwhelmingly attractive and whenever she stood closer than 5 foot, she might as well have taken a stick to the hive of crazy hornet-like hormones that lived somewhere inside me and given it a thorough bashing. When I stayed over one weekend after Brian and Christine married, Tony took them a cup of tea in bed and eagerly reported on their position as they slept.
“He was dead slick sort of lying on top of her.”
My mouth went dry, my legs to jelly.
FINGERS ON FIRE
I was by far the better guitar player when Tony and I met and very happy at the fact, but though a comparative beginner, he soon overtook me both in breadth of style and technique. He introduced me to jazz guitar, which, apart from Django Reinhardt whom Jack Head had already had me listen to, I thought was mainly crap to begin with. I was saying this to my fellow guitarist and best friend, Roy Barker, one day and he surprised me with his own appraisal.
“Y’know some of it’s really great. They’re incredible players, these modern jazz guys. You should listen to them.”
I was surprised. I always had Roy pegged as a blues and folk player but he was usually far ahead when it came to new discoveries himself. He strolled into art school one day a few years later with one of his ‘special’ imports under his arm and announced that folk music was about to take the world by storm. He already knew some of Dylan’s songs and would sing them incessantly.
“AAAAhhmmmm goin’ back to Coloraydo...”
Anyway, I listened to Roy and listened to the jazz guitarists. There was a lot to what he’d said. These guys were fantastic. Gradually my own musical road took a new direction - one that I was never to veer very far away from. It was Roy who told me in 1964 about an amazing young jazz guitarist he’d seen playing in the cellar of The Bickley Arms in Chilsehurst.
“He sounds a lot like Wes Montgomery. He’s got that warm sound and he plays octaves very fast. He plays a semi-accoustic double cutaway Gibson. I think it’s a 330.”
As usual, Roy was right. The next Friday evening, I went to the ‘Dive Bar’ and was immediately blown away by this diminutive mod in a pink shirt who was not only playing all the Wes Montgomery licks but also a couple of tracks off Miles Davis’ album, ‘Kind Of Blue’. This was the first time I’d heard modern jazz guitar live and I was so amazed at this guy’s dexterity, it was all I could do to stop myself falling at his feet, which wouldn’t exactly have been a very jazz thing to do.
LET’S TWANG AGAIN
To begin with, Tony and I were more or less at the same point musically. Our heroes were Duane Eddy, The Ventures, The Shadows, and later, at Tony’s instigation, Chet Atkins, who dumfounded us with his ability to play one than one note at a time.
Actually, being a finger-style guitarist, he played great handfuls of notes at the same time. We got to know his famous compositions like Trambone, One Mint Julep, Django’s Castle, Teensville and loads more mind-boggling stuff, but it took us a long time to master the technique because we couldn’t imagine how it was done. Learning single note stuff from records was a relatively simple affair, apart from wearing the wax smooth by playing bits over and over again.
Tony wrote to me one week with news that a range of the fabulous ‘Gretch’ guitars that Chet Atkins used were on display in Len Styles, one of the many music shops in Charing Cross Road.
ONE MINT JULEP
They were all there. The orange Tennesean, The dark brown Country Gentleman, (George Harrison played a green one of these in the early days of the Beatles) the Country Club and the incredible White Falcon (often played by Brian Jones as a slide guitar and by Dave Stuart of The Eurythmics) with its gold plated machines and trim. These instruments were almost orgasmic to guitar players - especially guitar players who were in the mad throws of puberty. Maybe it had something to with guitars being girl shaped, but as we stood wide eyed and open mouthed in that Aladdin’s cave, the last thing on our minds was bloody girls.
Inside the shop was a guy in a state-of- the-art 3 buttoned navy blue ‘Italian’ suit, actually playing one of the hallowed guitars. He was a shop assistant, and despite the piece of sticking plaster on his chin, looked the absolute dogs. Tony nudged me and pointed to the guy’s needle pointed winkle pickers with their neat side-laces. The guy had in his clutches an orange Tennesean, just like the one Atkins himself played. He was idly finger picking a few random Chet Atkins sounds and we were immediately sucked through the doorway by some great invisible force.
The guy had the guitar plugged into a Watkins Copycat, a continual tape loop in a bright blue metal box that produced the same echo effect that the great God Atkins had, and then into one of the now famous Vox AC30 amps. We almost fell at his feet. Tony, never one to be backward coming forward, fired a question straight from the hip.
“Can you play One Mint Julep?”
“Yes thanks.” replied the lucky, cocky, conceited bastard in the suit, and immediately swept into the tune with no problem. Our chins hit the floor. It sounded just like the real thing. AND we could see the technique first hand, and it didn’t look all that difficult.
“What about Trambone?” Tony hardly gave the bloke time to finish the first number before demanding another. He went through all the Atkins numbers we knew with such ease I wanted to rip the plaster from his mid-morning blue chin and inflict some real pain, I hated him so much.
We left Charing Cross Road that day both feeling a deep ache inside - knowing that these incredible instruments were way beyond our means and our wildest dreams. There was one local music shop that came pretty near what was on offer in Charing Cross Road. John Spice, on Sidcup Hill, leader of his own small dance band and quite an eloquent musician in his own right, ran a tight little outfit in his shop and with the use of various contacts in the music world, had an import licence for some of the famous American Guitar makes plus others from around the world.
John Spice also specialised in some pretty fair Japanese copies and in 1958, Jack Head, a regular customer of Johnnie’s, persuaded Alf to invest 11 guineas in an Antoria acoustic he’d found in the shop for my Christmas present.
Though made of cheap, very soft wood, it nevertheless outshone Alf’s homemade effort by light years and so the neat little box became mine a couple of months before Christmas. Apart from nearly being burned to a crisp when Jack and Rosemary turned up at 120 Imperial Way one Sunday while I was at church, the guitar stayed with me for years to come.
Jack sat by the gas fire in the front room and played the thing for a couple of hours, all the time gently roasting the bottom side nearest the tail piece, which on American style guitars is the bit from where the strings are stretched over the body. The varnish blistered and bubbled causing a deep indentation along the side of the guitar as the wood warped. I cried buckets when the damage was discovered and Alf did his best to repair it with his favourite brown varnish all to no avail.
But the sound wasn’t affected, so I resigned myself to the fact that the mishap was all part and parcel of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Alf and I added a Hofner pickup to the guitar and he gave me his old amp all tarted up in a hand painted red and white wooden radio cabinet we got from a jumble sale. It had musical notes painted all over it and small cheap chrome handles screwed to the sides which cut into our hands whenever my guitar playing friend, Roy Barker, and I tried to lift the thing. The ‘electric’ effect was OK but by the time I met Tony, he’d acquired a really nasty Rosetti Lucky 7 semi-acoustic job and after a while we decided that we needed to get some better gear between us.
‘Kelloggs Corn Flakes. The sunshine breakfast’
SFX: Doorbell followed by frantically yapping dog.
David Bliss: “Psyche! Calm down. Look out! You’ll have me over.”
SFX: Door opening.
Tina: “Hello, David. Hello, Psyche.”
Bliss: “Oh, hello, Tina. What are you doing here?”
Tina: “You invited me.”
B: “Y-y-es, but that’s on Sunday.”
Tina: “That’s right. And today is…?
P: “Yap, yap, yap, yap.”
Bliss: “Quiet, Psyche! Today is…oh, Sunday. Oh, G-g-osh! Come in, come in. You really caught me with my pants down there…I…I… mean...no, you didn’t catch me with my pants down really, because I didn’t have…my pants down, that is…I…mean.”
T: “It’s OK, David. Where are you taking me, then?”
B: “Taking you? W-w-hat do you mean…er…?
T: “For lunch, David. You’re taking me out for lunch, remember?”
B: “Yes, but that’s on Sun….that’s right, I’m taking you out for lunch today. Well, then. W-w-here would you like to go?”
T: “But I thought you’d arranged it. You said it was going to be a surprise.”
B: “Did I? Oh, yes. So I did.”
T: “You said it was going to be a special occasion.”
B: “Did I?”
T: “Yes, you did. And stop saying ‘did I’.”
B: “Did I? Oh, ha, ha, there I go again.”
T: You said you had something you wanted to ask me.”
B: “Did I? I...I..mean: do I?”
T: “Yes. Well how on earth do I know? You said it.”
B: “Di…. Yes. You’re absolutely right. I did say that…that I had something I wanted to ask you.”
T: “Good. I’m glad we’ve sorted that out.”
B: “So am I. So am I.”
T: “GOOD. That’s settled, then.”
B: “Right. Where shall we go, then?”
T: “Give me strength! Look, it doesn’t matter. We can have lunch here.”
B: “Can we? Oh, yes, I s-s-uppose we can. I’ve got some cheese in the fridge and some cream crackers, oh and there’s half a bottle of wine.”
T: “Lovely. So why don’t you get the cheese and crackers and the half bottle of wine and then we can get on with it.”
B: “What?”
T: “Get on with it. You know…ASK ME whatever it is you want to ask me.”
B: “Oh, yes that. Right you are, then.”
T: “DAVID!”
B: “Tina.”
T: “Forget the cheese and the crackers and the wine. Just get on and ask me.”
B: “Right you are.”
T: “Oh my God. David, you’ve actually gone down on one knee. That’s so sweet. So…ROMANTIC.”
B: “No…n-n-o. I was just tying my shoe lace.”
T: “David, you bastard!”
B: “Tina…no, I’m sorry…ha,ha, I‘m only joking. What I wanted to ask you was…is…I mean….W-w-w-w-w-w-w….”
T: “Spit it out, David.”
B: “WILL YOU MARRY ME…TINA?”
T: “I think I’m going to cry.”
B: “Oh…I’m sorry, Tina. I didn’t mean to upset you, really…I …I…”
T: “Of course I’ll marry you, you silly, silly, lovely man.”
B: “You will? You will marry me? Oh my! Oh My! Did you here that Psyche? Tina and I are going to get married.”
Psyche: “Yap, yap, yap, yap.”
T: “David.”
B: “Yes?”
T: “David, the dog has to go.”
B: “What. B-b-but….she’s been with me for a long time. Oh, I see. You mean if I want to marry you, Psyche…I mean, I have to give her away. But she’d fret. If she didn’t see me every day…she get hysterical…well I know she’s hysterical anyway but…oh, Tina. Is it really necessary?”
T: “David, what are you babbling on about? The dog wants to go. She needs to pee. Why do you think she’s standing there with her legs crossed and her lead in her mouth?”
B: “What? Oh, yes. So she is. I thought you meant…I mean…”
T: “David. Shut up and come here.”
B: “Oh, yes. Of course.”
Psyche: “Yap, yap, yap, yap.”
B: “It’s all right, Tina. She thinks it’s a sausage.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
You tell me that you love me, baby,
Then you say you don’t,
You tell me that you’ll come on over,
Then you say you won’t,
I love you like a hurricane,
You’ve got me on my knees,
I’ll give it to you straight right now,
Ple-e-ease don’t tease.
Oh please don’t tease me,
I love you, oh so much,
C’mon and squeeze me,
You know I need your tender touch....
Chapter 50. Tracks.
Connie was never keen on me having a bike. The Youth Club Leader, Roger Pierce, and I became good mates (especially when he was restoring a 1927 Austin 7 convertible in his Dad’s Garage at the back of the 1030’s house in Farmland Walk, Chislehurst.) despite an age difference of 7 years, put one together for me out of some old bits he had lying about, but the frame was bent and despite Alf’s best efforts at doing the thing up, it seemed to have a mind of its own and wondered about all over the road. I gave it up as a bad job.
Tony wrote to me (only posh people like doctors and vicars had ‘phones) and told me that he’d built two track bikes - one for him, and one for me. To the uninitiated, a track bike was similar to today’s mountain bike. Less sophisticated maybe, but homemade, and awesome ‘off-road’, which is where the ‘track’ bit comes in.
They had sprung or strengthened front forks, low gearing, cow-horn handlebars, so named because that’s exactly what they looked like, and a back ‘ bogey’ tyre This was a tyre with a very thick tread that made a fantastic whirring sound when you rode on the road and gave you extra grip (supposedly) when you rode through mud.
That Saturday, I eagerly took the single-deck 227 bus to The Crooked Billet, Penge, then the double-decker 12 to Dulwich and Tony’s place. The two bikes were in his front garden leaning up against the hedge and Tony was bending over one of them pumping up the tyres.
“Hi, man.” he said. That was our cool way of talking in those days. We were way ahead of today’s Rap Bunnies. There ‘ain’t nuttn’ noo under the sun! Today, to me, ‘Man’ is just black jive talk, and is used by every would-be teenaged thug in a hoody - black, white or multi-coloured: 12 year old white girls, 24 year old black girls, Asians, who also ad ‘mite’ (mate) and ‘innit’ into the mix, and four year old tattooed Arsenal supporters with one earring and a can of lager.
“Hi, man.” I said back. “Wow! Which one’s mine?”
“That one.” he said, still pumping and nodding sideways, “Dead slick, eh?”
Everything that was cool was ‘dead slick’ to ACE. His name was Anthony Charles Eatwell, so he signed his name A.C.E. Tony’s bike WAS dead slick. It was a sort of metallic turquoise green with no mudguards and the obligatory cow-horn handlebars. It didn’t have any crash bars on the front forks, which were essential credibility for a real track bike, but ACE explained that these machines were in the transition stage and that we had to be sure they were going to work OK before we splashed out on accessories.
It all sounded convincing to me. If he’d said dog’s muck was the new ‘in thing’ I’d have believed him, I was so excited. I looked at my bike. It wasn’t quite as slick as Tony’s and the frame looked a little on the small side. Still, it was a nice colour. a sort of metallic purple. ‘Gresham Flier’, read the enamel label on the front forks. But it was a bike. That was the main thing. I’d worry about perfection later.
“Yours has got gears, man.” said Tony, still pumping.
“Dead slick!” I said, “ So it has.” Well, it did have a set of hub gears but I couldn’t see a cable or lever anywhere.
“We’ll sort that out later,” said ACE. “Let’s ride over to your place.”
(“Jesus. That’s 14 miles!”) I thought as we wheeled the two machines out of the garden and into the road.
“Let’s go, man!” yelled ACE as he threw himself aboard his tracker and set off up the road. I set off after him but immediately found the going hard. What ACE hadn’t told me was, that though my tracker did indeed have gears, it was stuck in top. ACE took a short cut through Dulwich Park, famous for its giant Rhododendron bushes, and noted for its sandy horse-riding path around the central garden island.
I was having to stand up to gain extra pressure to the pedals in a vain attempt to keep ACE in sight. He suddenly turned sharp right, dropped one foot, and slid broadside into the sand, skilfully effecting a 180 degree skid, turning to face me, grinning, and coming to a stop amidst a great cloud of sandy dust. Pathetically, I tried the same manoeuvre, but with no momentum, I turned right, went straight in, and merely stopped dead. Slowly, almost majestically, and still astride my new steed, I fell over sideways like a toppling tree.
“Dead slick, eh?” said ACE, obviously in celebration of his death-defying stunt, and not at my pathetic demise.
By the time we reached Imperial Way, my legs were like lead, and my pride in rags. Connie’s mouth dropped open when ACE told her of our triumphant ride through 14 miles of Saturday traffic between Dulwich and the Edgebury Estate. But we’d survived, and in her heart, she knew she’d have to concede the fact that I was nearly 14 and that she had to let go of the rains and let me take my chances as a cyclist.
One of the benefits of my tracker, having got hold of a gear change cable and lever and concluding that I had a child’s three-quarter sized frame and only three gears, was that I could make more frequent visits to John Spice’s music shop at the top of Sidcup Hill. The shop assistant was someone I knew vaguely from Edgebury, Dennis White, who as well as being a pretty good guitar player himself, was amenable and let me play any instrument in the shop which took my fancy.
On one such visit, on display in the window was a second hand sold-body Harmony electric guitar. It wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I wanted a Guaytone like the one that Hank Marvin of Cliff Richard’s backing group, the Drifters, was using at the time but the harmony still attracted me like a hungry fox to a fat juicy chicken.
Later, when the Drifters became the Shadows, they were the first British owners of a salmon pink Fender Stratocaster, specially imported straight from the factory in Indianapolis. But the Harmony was what I wanted to own more than anything else in the world at that moment and I spent days in a dark contemplative mood, not wanting to bring up the subject of the Harmony for fear of having to face up to the possibility of a no.
The next Saturday morning, Alf came home at lunchtime from work to tell me that a mate of his had a son who did a Saturday job for a butcher in Chislehurst and that the kid was quitting the job because he was leaving school. Alf’s mate wanted to know if I was interested in the vacancy. The only qualification I needed was a bike. It was four days a week, Tuesday to Friday from 8.00 till 8.30. for 9 shilling a week. this was a sign, I was sure. This was how I was going to get the Harmony, and I blurted out my dilemma.
Alf rang John Spice and did a few calculations. He and Connie agreed that they would put up the required £2 … 10s needed for the deposit, and that, provided I got the job, I could pay off the HP debt over a year at...9 SHILLINGS A WEEK. This wasn’t just sign, but a huge, pulsating, flashing, truck-stopping electric neon sign. The Harmony was mine. All I had to, was get the job.
I persuaded Alf to go with me to John Spice that afternoon so that I could try out the guitar. Lying next it in the window was something else. A brand new Guaytone, well it wasn’t quite, but was as near as dammit. It had the name ‘Star’ on the headstock, but was identical in every respect except that it had 3 machines on each side of the head instead of the 6 in-a-line characteristic of the Guaytone.
John Spice told us that it was actually an Antoria copy and he belived that in some respects, it was better than the original, especially the electronics. I suppose he had to say that, but when I played the guitar, my mind was instantly made up. It was beautiful to play with a very narrow fingerboard suiting my small hands, and a very low action. (That’s the distance between the strings and fingerboard )Through an amp, it demonstrated the sounds I wanted. It cost 29 guineas, and what’s more, John Spice had two of the blighters. This wasn’t just a sign, or even a neon sign - it was God talking.
Alf, who’d already been told I’d get the job, as the butcher wanted someone who was Recommended. He paid the deposit there and then but there was a stark warning. From then on, I was on my own. If I lost the job and couldn’t meet the payments, he wouldn’t pick up the tab. But as far as I was concerned, only an atom bomb blast or an outbreak of bubonic plague could lose me the job. I was their man come hell or high water. I wrote to Tony and he immediately dragged his Mum to all the way to John Spice on three different buses and grabbed the ‘Star’s’ twin brother.
B.B.O.P.
This is what Ace and I had inscribed on our new guitar cases. Nobody knew what it meant except the newly formed dynamic guitar duo of Tone and me. It was a variation on the word Bebop that we we nicked from a crazy cartoon strip in ‘Mad Magazine’ 1959-60 was the new era of guitar instrumentalists and Apache by the Shadows was a smash hit. Ace and I had become accomplished guitarists and found the task of translating everything in the Hit Parade onto our little Jap electric guitars a piece of cake.
Alf had rebuilt his ‘eye fi’ into one box about the size of a radiogram with two turntables and an array of flashing fairy lights behind panels made from hundreds of pieces of fuse glass glued together. The new ‘eye fi’ easily accommodated our little Japanese electric guitars and gave us quite an impressive sound. Alf began to use us as a cabaret fill-in during his beer break interval as he’d become the first mobile DJ known to man. We did weddings, 21st birthday parties, British Legion dances and the like. Alf charged fifty bob plus all the Whitbread Pale Ale he could drink which was considerable.
We were really good, Ace and I, even though I say so myself. Transfixed on a chair at the back of the hall at our first gig, I noticed Graham Stapp from the early Edgebury days. He still had the same dead front tooth. Though unsmiling, the expression on his face was far from dead. We covered every guitar instrumental that was current: ‘Sandstorm’, ‘Forty Miles Of Rough Road’, ‘Apache’, ‘The Stranger’, ‘Home’, ‘Perfidia’, ‘Walk Don’t Run’ by The Ventures, ‘Shazzam,’ ‘Because They’re Young’, ‘Gone Train’, ‘IH Boogie’, by Arthur Smith, anything that had a good twang to it.
We went down a storm every time we played and planned to get a bass player and drummer and be a real band. But it was a short lived dream and when Ace suddenly went all arty and traded his Jap plank for a Guild ‘Slim Jim T100 Jazz Guitar’ and began learning solos by Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery. He left me standing, dazed and confused. Just when I thought we were actually getting somewhere, the shifting sands kicked in once more.
ALTERETED STATES
Ace’s obsession with the USA was matched only by his obsession to get there whatever it took. Several times, he disappeared into thin air in several abortive attempts to stow away aboard an America bound vessel of some kind. ‘The Atoms’, as we called ourselves were due to play at The British Legion annual dance at their purpose built headquarters on the corner of Belmont Parade in Chilsehurst.
We’d rehearsed the weekend before but Tony didn’t answer my usual pre-gig letter and was picked up on the Friday before the performance by the police in Southampton. He’d ridden there on his track bike and was trying to board a freighter bound for New York. Having been admonished by his perplexed Mother and pissed off Brother, who once again blamed me for being a bad influence, he was allowed to make the trip to Chislehurst and we did the gig. Ace was philosophical about his narrow escape from escaping and still determined to get to America somehow claiming it was just a matter of time before he planted his feet on the hallowed soil once and for all.
Like his brother, Tony was a gifted draftsman and used his talent to draw things from his beloved would-be country with great accuracy and send them to me through the post. His favourites were trucks, always with the inscription ‘ACE Trucks’ emblazoned on the side.
Then there were the cars, most of which I’d never heard of but came to know well because of Ace. These huge gas-guzzling, exotic monsters all had evocative names:
Fairlane 500, Ford Galaxy, Chevrolet Impala, Caprice, Stingray, Comaro and Corvette, Ford Thunderbird, Cadillac Seville, Dodge Challenger, all icons to the great American dream of the times. If young Master Eatwell had had the choice, he’d have been Christened, ‘Fairlane 500’.
These great metal creatures were supposed to symbolise the ‘conservative’ prosperity of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant way of life – anti Rock ‘n’ Roll and youth in essence. But soon they were adopted by teen idols themselves, like Elvis Presley and James Dean, simply because they could afford them. The cars became as much part of the youth culture as the chrome jukeboxes they bore remarkable similarity to with their long sweeping razor sharp wings, flashing lights and miles of reflective chrome.
The vehicles became white-walled Rock ‘n’ Roll temples on wheels - travelling places of worship to the great God R&R. They were food for Ace’s fertile mind, mesmerising him with the dream of a better, slicker, richer life away from the dullness of South East London and its 2nd rate, 2nd hand imagery. He bought all the American magazines he could lay his hands on and he’d spend hours pawing over the ads and articles, absorbing everything from guns and clothes to guitars hot-dogs, music and films. He didn’t just want to go to America he wanted to be American.
Rock ‘n’ Roll pop music in the UK, and to a large degree in America, had lost its way by 1960. The twist was the only new thing on offer and Chubby Checker was dominating the airwaves and making his mark on the top ten. In 1962, the USA launched the world’s first telecommunications satellite along with its excrutiating nickname, ‘Telstar’.
Almost immediately, a studio band called ‘The Tornados’ released an instrumental track by the using the name as a song title. The lead instrument sounded like Sooty’s mini organ (that’s the tiny keyboard he used to play with one paw, incidentally.) amplified a billion times. The melody was suitably moronic and, of course, the thing was a giant hit on both sides of the pond. (Having mentioned the bloody thing, I now can’t get it out of my head.) The rest of the stuff was just as bland and dominated by up-beat ballads with string accompaniment and Elvis Presley was just singing ballads. Someone with the unlikely name of’ ‘Clarence The Frogman Henry’ was being talked about but I wasn’t listening. I’d become a modern Jazz snob just like Ace’s brother, Brian.
I’d started collecting jazz guitar records by Barney Kessel, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass and Django Reinhardt. My interest wasn’t totally pretentious, though my lack of interest in pop music probably was. Even Frank Sinatra was climbing on the twist bandwagon and had a number one hit with “Everybody’s Twinstin’’. What no one realised at the time was that art schools throughout the country were spawning a ‘back-to-the-roots’ revolution of rhythm and blues and were about to give birth to a ‘second coming’ of Rock ‘n’ Roll that was going to carry the Fifties upsurge of rebelliousness far farther than anyone could’ve imagined.
If the establishment had thought the original phenomena a 5 year flash in the pan that was petering out, they were in for a real shock.The Rock ‘n’ Roll phenomenon had merely been a skirmish so far, and in retrospect, the Fifties could’ve be seen as a mere skirmish against the might and power of what was to come in the 60s and 70s, if John Lennon, Keith Richard, Bob Dylan, Ray Davis, Eric Clapton, Eric Burdon, Mick Jagger and George Martin had anything to do with it – which of course they did - just a bit.
‘Aaaaaah, Bisto’
Bruce Fossdyke: “Welcome to Beat the Clock. I’ll just tap dance over to meet our contestants because I’m really good that. A quick twirl, a flea hop, back flap, finishing with a barrel roll and hey presto, here I am. Hello, my loves. What did you think of that? Pretty nifty eh? Eat your heart out, Sammy Davis Jnr. Now, you’re Sonia and Des aren’t you, my loves? Wich are you?
Sonia: “Sonia.”
B: “Yes, course it is. Sorry, my love. It’s all that leaping about. Goes to my head sometimes. Now, Sonia and Ted…”
S: “Des!”
B: “Steady, Sonia. I’m in charge.”
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “See, they know whose boss, don’t you?”
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “Yes, course they do. Now, Beryl…
S: “Sonia!”
B: “Yes, yes! Now what I want you to do, Beryl and Ted, is to run over there to where the camel is standing, and between you persuade it to step through the hoop.”
Des: “But the hoop’s on fire.”
B: “Yes, yes! That’s right, and then…”
D: “But it won’t want to step through a burning hoop.”
B: “I don’t suppose it will. I don’t suppose you would, would you? But that’s the whole point of the game. Gawd help us.”
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “ Just give it shove from behind. It’ll soon get the idea. Right, now after you’ve got the camel through the hoop, I want you, Ted, to quickly shin up the rope to the trapeze, OK? And while he’s doing that, dear, I want you to stand on one leg and hop over to the bucket, stoop down and pick up one of the apples in your teeth. Then I want you, Ted, to swing from the trapeze by your feet and grab the apple from Beryl’s mouth with your teeth and drop it into that tank up there, OK? You have to do this 3 times and you’ve got 60 seconds to Beat the Clock starting from NOW! Right off you go. That’s it. Give the camel a good old shove…no, from the back, Beryl, from the back, dear. Yes, I can see he’s turned round, dear, that’s what camels do when you shove them from behind. Dear oh dear. I don’t know.
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “You’ve got 45 seconds left…that’s the idea, Ted, you get its attention. That’s right, Beryl, keep shoving. You’ve had 30 seconds. That’s good, Ted. As long as it holds on to your leg like that, Beryl can work on its back bits, so to speak.”
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “Oh, well done, Beryl. That’s the way…whoops. A bit more…”
SFX: BZZZZZZZZZZZ
B: “Oh, times up, I’m afraid. Never mind, it was a good try, wasn’t it everyone?”
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “What a shame. You didn’t Beat The Clock, Beryl and Ted, but never mind. Here’s a lovely Beat The Clock pen and propelling pencil set each for being such good sports. Weren’t they good sports, everyone?”
Audience: Cheers and applause.
B: “Well that’s it from Beat The Clock for this week. Join us again next week when the jackpot will stand at TWO HUNDRED POUNDS.”
Audience: Huge gasp followed by cheers and applause.
B: “Sack the camel. Get me a sheep.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
You can dance, (You can dance...)
With the man who gives you the eye,
Let him hold you tight,
You can smile,
At the man as he holds your hand
‘Neath the pale moonlight,
Bue don’t forget who’s takin’ you home,
And in who’s arms you’re gonna be,
So, Darlin’, save the last dance for me.
Oh I know, (Oh, I know...)
That the music’s fine,
That sparklin’n wine,
Go and have your fun,
Laugh and sing,
But while we’re apart,
Don’t give your heart,
To anyone,
And don’t forget who’s takin’ you home,
And in who’s arms you’re gonna be,
So, Darlin, save the last dance for me.
Don’t you know,
I really love you so,
Can’t you feel it when we touch,
I will never ever let you go,
I love you oh so much.
You can dance, (You can dance)
Go carry on till the night is gone,
And it’s time to go,
And when he asks,
If you’re all alone,
Can he take you home,
You must tell him no,
‘Cos don’t forget who’s takin’ you home,
And in who’s arms you’re gonna be,
So, Darlin’,
Save the last dance for me.
MMMMMMM....hmmmmmm...
Save the last dance for me.
Ohhhhhhh---ohhhhhh...
Save the last dance for me,
Chapter 51. A BUTCHER’S BOY I’LL BE.
It was still the school summer holidays when I got on my bike the Tuesday after taking possession of the little Jap guitar and headed for Chislehurst High Street. The nine bob a week they were going to pay me, co-incidentally, was the same amount required each week to meet the HP payments on the guitar. Funny that.
G. E. DOUBLE AND SONS was a family business that had occupied the same shop on the corner of the High Street and Willow Grove for countless generations. Painted in traditional, folksy-type butcher’s shop colours of maroon and cream, with Victorian lettering over the shop front, the business had a fine reputation as ‘purveyors of quality meat’, or so the sign said. They were ideally placed marketing-wise, as Willow Grove was the gateway to some of the most expensive and exclusive private houses in Chislehurst.
I met Brian Geary, Alf’s mate’s son, and another bloke who was going to take over the Saturday round, outside the shop. Geary was quiet, didn’t smile much and hardly said a word. He seemed to me a right miserable so-and-so. He was a good-looking lad about two years older than me with dark brown brilcreamed hair that flopped over his forehead and which, infuriatingly he’d keep sweeping back over his head with his hand every ten seconds or so. I thought of his greasy hand handling the parcels of meat and shuddered at the thought. His mate, a redheaded bloke called John Emerson, who was going to take over the Saturday round, was equally uncommunicative.
These weren’t exactly the Everly Brothers and they certainly lacked the jocular presence of Flanagan and Allen. But, they were going to show me the ropes and all I had to do was keep the picture of the wonderful little guitar in my mind. I didn’t have much to say to these two prats anyway.
I followed them into the shop where a big, heavy-set man with tight black wavy hair and a bloody apron was busy splicing between the rear legs and into the crotch of half a pig with a shiny cleaver.
“ Charlie,” said the dull Geary in his inimitable monotone, “This is Nilw.”
“Watcher, Nilw. Pleased to meetcha.”
SFX: TTTHHHHHHHONK!
I winced as Charlie, a jovial bloke who always had a wide smile on his face, brought the cleaver crunching down again without taking his eyes off me. He wiped his hand on his apron, leaned across the cleaved pig and offered it to me. (his hand - not the pig) I reached out and my hand disappeared into Charlie’s massive paw. I winced again. His mitt was absolutely freezing, like he’d held it in a bucket of ice for half an hour. Charlie couldn’t help but notice my reaction.
“Sorry, Nilw. I don’t know me own strength.” He laughed loudly, displaying a beautiful set of perfect, gleaming white teeth.
Still fixing me with his welcoming grin, Charlie picked up the cleaver and carried on assaulting the pig’s crotch. The cleaver sliced home once again, and Charlie paused to prise the pig’s legs apart with his substantial, Charles Atlas hairy forearms so that he could split the torso right down the middle, which he expertly did with two more chops.
“Allo, Bri.” A small, whippet-featured man with a spiv moustache and a three-quarter inch roll up dog-end between his lips, dressed in a dark grey cotton coat with a striped apron over the top, immerged from a back room.
“Whatchoo bin up to? Crumpet ‘untin’, I’ll bet.” This was Peter Double, one third of the ‘Sons’ inscribed over the door. The other two, Charlie and Alf, ran Double’s haulage business from the yard at the back of the shop.
“Hello, Pete,” said the automaton at my left shoulder, “This is Nilw. We’re gonna show ‘im the round.”
“Watcher, Nilw.” The twinkle-eyed, smiling Pete crushed my fingers with his right hand and tried to shake my arm off at the elbow. He turned to Geary. “Usual people, the smornin’. Not that many, so you won’t need the trade bike. Mrs Walpole’s gonna pay you two weeks to-day. She was away last Saturday, remember.”
Geary shambled out to the back and returned with an armful of parcels wrapped in white paper, and varying in size. Each one was marked with a name in biro and a bill was tucked into the wrapping. Geary laid the parcels out in a row on a counter in the corner of the shop and began rearranging the order, according, I guessed, to the order of the visits we’d make.
“So, you still at school then, Nilw?” said Pete.
“Yeah. Another two years to go.”
“ You stayin’ on then? Gonna take yer GEC’s? Like Bri did?”
“Yeah. Gonna take my GCE’s next year.”
“Right. You brainy, then?” Pete enquired, as he joined Charlie behind the wood and marble counter and began wiping the empty trays with a dishcloth.
“Not really.”
“What’re yu goin’ ter do then?” Charlie was still wearing his generous smile.
“I’m going to Art School.”
“Ooooooh, ri-ght.” Pete winked at Charlie. He pulled a shiny silver Ronson gas lighter out of his apron pocket and skilfully lit the half-inch dog end that was permanently clutched between his lips without singeing his pencil moustache or nasal hairs.
He suddenly looked genuinely interested. “They ‘ave noods at art schools, don’t they?”
“Well, yes. They do have nude models in the life drawing class.”
Charlie carried on beaming as he picked up another half-pig and stood it on the wooden
chopping bench. I winced inwardly. Pete continued, “I bet you’re looking forward to that, eh? I said I bet he’s looking forward to that, Charlie, eh? All that fanny floating about. Couldn’t get us in there could you? I quite fancy starin’ at a bit ‘o crumpet for a couple of hours. Eh, Charlie?”
Charlie carried on beaming and smashed the cleaver into the crutch of the new half-pig.
“Yeah. I could do with a bit of that. Bit of crumpet watching.” Pete lit the now quarter-inch dog end with the Ronson and leaned further across the ledge in the window, wiping the white porcelain trays with his dishcloth, “I could do with a bit of that. I’ll say I could.”
THE ROUND
Satisfied with the selection of order, Geary placed the parcels one at a time carefully in an old brown shopping bag with a broken zip and tucked it under his arm.
“Seeyerlater.” he called over his shoulder as we left the shop.
In line, and in silence, the three bikes set off along Willow Grove into the territory of Chislehurst’s richer carnivores, Geary at the front, and Emerson in the sandwich and me riding shotgun. Slowly, lethargically, we pedalled along Willow Grove past the garage and market garden and into the avenue of trees that led us towards the money. Emerson had a green racing bike with a fixed wheel. He looked quite sporty his khaki trousers clipped up past his muscular calfs as he stood up on the pedals and pushed himself easily up any incline along the road. He was like a racehorse on a leading rein patiently waiting for the chance to unleash some of that latent power.
Little did he know, or any of us for that matter, that a year later, he’d lose his right leg from the knee down whilst riding his 250cc Royal Enfield Silver Bullet just a smidge too close to an on-coming car while in the process of overtaking another. His lower leg was sliced clean off with an efficiency that would’ve given Charlie and his meat cleaver a run for their money.
After about half a mile, the road curved steeply to the right past the first of the posh houses. The two in front stood up on their pedals to get up the hill. Me, I just changed down to my ultra-low first gear and stayed in the saddle, proud of the way my little track iron took hills in its stride. Trouble was, my legs had to belt round three times as fast which took the edge off things a bit. By the time I got to the top, I was sweating like a pig and felt like I’d been shot through both lungs.
Chislehurst is a very pretty place. With its acres of common laid out like tailored carpet, liberally sprinkled with thousands of Silver Birch, Weeping Willow, ancient Oak, Plain Trees, picturesque pondscapes and leafy pathways, it stands like an oasis on the edge of suburban sprawl between Mottingham and Orpington, as an entry point and prelude to the fields and meadows of Kent, the so-called Garden of England.
Chislehurst also has loads of hills. The main village itself actually stands on a hill through which the famous Druid caves run, but a good 50% of the community resides at the foot of three very steep downward sloping roads between Chislehurst and Bickley - Yester Road, Old Hill and Summer Hill.
Summer Hill is long and curves towards Chislehurst Station where it rushes under the railway bridge and climbs towards Bickley on the other side. The steepest part is from the Chislehurst end and a good cyclist could get up enough speed to climb the Bickley end quite comfortably. Coming the other way it’s a different story. Even the most seasoned cyclist could only make it about half way up before having to dismount and push his machine the rest of the way to the top.
Being a busy A road and main bus route, riding side-to-side of Summer Hill in order to stay in the saddle was out of the question. Old Hill runs parallel to Summer Hill about 500yds to the East, past the caves entrance towards the bottom and through an arch before bearing right in a long, boring, and climb towards Bromley. A few hundred yards to the East is Yester Road, the steepest hill of all.
If Summer Hill was Ben Nevis and Old Hill, Snowden, Yester Road was the North Face of the Eiger - unforgiving, treacherous because of the loose surface, and deadly on a bike if you lost control. The speed without pedalling was awesome. Even the bike felt scared. And Yester Road was a main part of the butcher’s round. Terrific.
I once went down Yester Road full belt on the back of a tandem piloted by Tony Ford. The thing had hub breaks so stopping wasn’t an issue. It also had a speedometer and Tony reckoned we clocked 50mph on our way down. That was bollocks. It felt more like 75 or 80.
At the top of the rise we turned right into Walden Road then left into a crescent of detached 1960’s private houses. We stopped after about 50 yards and Geary shambled up the short drive with one of the small white parcels in his hands and rang the door bell. A woman’s hand poked itself into view took the parcel and withdrew, closing the door. Geary shoved his bike forward and cocked his leg over the cross bar.
The next stop was a few yards along on the right and the intrepid biker performed the same laconic ritual. A voice from behind the door bade him good morning and Geary grunted an un-enthusiastic reply before shambling back to his bike. These were one pair of miserable sods. They never said a word apart from Geary’s occasional mumbled greeting to customers, if you could call it that.
The round was finished after about 20 minutes and a trip to the bottom of Yester Hill. The way back, if you wanted to stay in the saddle was to take a short cut through an alleyway alongside the golf course. It was a mud track with a slight incline that needed a bit of effort and was ideal ‘track bike’ country.
‘So use Ajax, BOM-BOM,
The foaming cleasner,
BOPP-DOPPA-DOP-BOM’
Theme tune: ‘Horseguards, Whitehall’.
Frankfurt Engelburt: “Down Your Way this week is visiting Poncing On Why, a tiny, rural village which is nowhere near Portsmouth. We’re here to meet John Trowel, the local poacher. He’s quite a character by all accounts and I’m told he’s hiding somewhere in these bushes by the river. I’ll just have a rummage around with this stick and see if I can persuade him to come out and talk to us. Hello, John. I know you’re in there. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
John Trowel: “Oi! Wunkar!”
SFX: Rustling bushes, running water.
FE: “Ah, here he is, looking somewhat bedraggled, I must say. Goodness me! That’s a pretty big fish you’ve got there, John. What is it?”
John Trowel: “It’s a fish, annat?”
FE: “Quite so. Tell me, John, how long have you been doing this kind of work?”
JT: “Bout ‘alf ‘n hour, oid say.”
FE: “No, what I meant was, how long have you been working as a poacher? Since you left school?”
JT: “School? What’s art?”
FE: “Right, I see. How did you catch this fellow, with a rod?”
JT: “Yus. Big iron one. Bashed ‘im on the ade wiff it, din’ Oi?”
FE: “Oh, the subtle approach. Very effective, I’m sure.”
JT: “Wunkar!”
FE: “Quite so. Now tell me, John, have you ever been caught, while you’re plying your trade, shall we say?”
JT: “Yers. Got caught tuvver Windsdee.”
FE: “Really? What happened?”
JT: “Ud ta go be’ind a bush, din Oi?”
FE: “I see. Actually, I meant have you ever been caught by the gamekeeper or the police?”
JT: “Wunkars!”
FE: “Possibly, but could you be a little more specific?”
JT: “Wot’s art wot you got in yor arnd?”
FE: “It’s a microphone.”
JT: “Wotsartfor?”
FE: “Well, you speak into it and about 5 million people will hear your voice. Would you like to say something to our audience at home?”
JT: “WUNKARS!”
FE: “Thank you so much, John Trowel of Poncing On Why. Next week, I shan’t be doing this.”
Theme tune: ‘Horseguards, Whitehall’.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
My tears are fallin'
'Cause you've taken her away
And though would really hurts me so
There's something that I've got to say
Take good care of my baby
Please don't ever make her blue
Just tell her That you love her
Make sure you're thinkin' of her
In everything you say and do
Ah take good care of my baby
Now don't you ever make her cry
Just let your love surround her
Make a rainbow all around her
Don't let her see a cloudy sky
Once upon a time that little girl was mine
If I've been true I know she'll never be with you
So take good care of my baby
Be just as kind as you can be
And if you should discover
That you don't really love her
Just send my baby back home to me
Take good care of my baby
Be just as kind as you can be
And if you should discover
That you don't really love her
Just send my baby back home to me
Ah take good care of my baby
Well take good care of my baby
Just take good care of my baby
Chapter 52. OUT OF THE BLUE.
The ritual, I discovered, was to stop half way up for a fag before heading back to the shop. Geary silently and almost begrudgingly, offered me a Senior Service but I declined in favour of rolling my own having always been encouraged to smoke by Alf who, when I was 7, had put a pack of 5 Players Weights in my Christmas stocking.
About 2 years later, I stopped at the same spot with the trade bike at the end of the Saturday round which I inherited after John Emerson got fed up with it. I was sucking hard and experiencing the first sting of a fresh and too tight Old Holborn roll-up, and watching two golfers up on a hill driving off.
One of them whacked the ball mightily and the sound ricocheted across the valley as the missile disappeared into the clear blue sky. There was a longish pause as the two golfers craned their necks and shielded their eyes before the satellite came crashing down through the trees and landed in the basket on the front of the bike.
Mind you, re-entry wasn’t that spectacular. The golf ball’s trajectory and speed were arrested by the leaves and branches and after a big build-up of machete-against-undergrowth type sound, it eventually dropped pathetically onto the plywood floor of the basket giving a little bounce like a half-hearted cough, and rolling into one corner, where it stopped as if dead. I thought nothing of it at the time and dragged away at my fag as the two golfers hurried in my direction, dragging their caddy trolleys behind them. The bloke who’d hit the ball came wheezing up the slope to the hedge and fence behind which I was parked.
“I say. Are you all right?” He sounded agitated.
“Yeah. Sure.” I replied, using yet another favourite ACE expression. I picked up the ball and handed it to him.
“Here take this.” he said, offering me a ten bob note.
“No, that’s OK.” I said, thinking that this was a bit over-generous for retrieving a golf ball.
He insisted, thrusting the note into my hand and backing off.
“No. No. Please. Buy yourself some cigarettes.”
When I got back to the shop, I showed the 10 bob note to Pete and Charlie. They both looked a bit scornful.
“The prat!” declared Pete. “Ten Bob’s not much for nearly taking your fuckin’ head off.”
“What d’you mean?”
“If that ball’d hit you on the bonce, you’d’ve been brown bread!” Charlie exclaimed. I must have looked a bit bemused.
“Dead as a fuckin’ dodo.” said Pete, then reflectively, as he ripped a ten inch knife through a mountain of raw steak. “We could’ve sued the cunt.”
WHERE THERE’S SOME WHEELS, THERE’S A WAY
On the day of my graduation to the Saturday round, I was taken out the back of the shop to the big shed where the lorries were parked and introduced to my new steed. Up till then, I’d used my little track bike on weekdays, leaving it at Richard Janes house at the bottom of Edgbury and walking up the hill to the school.
This was because if you lived less that half a mile from the school, you weren’t allowed to cycle on account of the fact that there was only enough room in the bike shed’s for half the school’s bikes. A bit like the Titanic not having enough lifeboats, I used to think.
I’d seen trade bikes around, of course. Cannon’s, a posh grocer on the other side of the High Street had one. It had a small wheel on the front and a large, deep wicker basket. It also had one of those display plates slung from the crossbar of its delicate frame, adorned with flowery gold lettering.
The Cannonmobile was immaculate. Painted black with its chrome bits beautifully manicured and shiny, the proportions were perfect - extremely pleasing to the eye, the white-wall tyres setting the whole ensemble off a real treat. Their machine was the bee’s knees, if ever a trade bike could be. A real upper-crust job which spoke oodels about
Cannon’s position in the upper echelons of the local delivery market.
I didn’t suppose Dr Cripin (aka Dr Buller)) told the rider of this mount to use the back door next time. No, the rider of this mount would naturally know his rightful place in the great scheme of things and wouldn’t need telling. He’d EXPECT there to be a tradesman’s entrance at the back of the house and would probably complain if there wasn’t.
THE IRON HORSE
There amidst the acrid, cancerous, rust-dust clouds and choking diesel fumes of Double’s Haulage Co’s maintenance shed, leaning against the corrugated wall, was G.E. Double and Sons contribution to Chislehurst’s upper-crust delivery service transport reputation. If Cannon’s mount was a thoroughbred racehorse, Double’s looked like a tired old carthorse. You could almost see the emaciated bones poking through its skin, except that, come to think of it, it did look quite robust in a funny sort of way.
It was certainly a big bugger. The tubular steel frame was twice as thick as Cannon’s flyer and both wheels were full-size. Actually wider and fatter than full size. The basket carrier on the front looked like it had come from a Panzer Tank, thick and chunky in that unmistakable Hun-like way, as if it was meant to plough straight through things rather than go round.
The thing had heavy, metal mudguards and serious-looking rubber brake-blocks. (I was later to discover that this was quite a serious and meaningful design fault in such a heavyweight, and that the bike should have been equipped at least with hub brakes like on a moped, or better still, a parachute, to stand even the remotest chance of stopping once it was fully-laden and up to speed.) Pete leaned forward and pressed the front tyre with his thumb. Apart from the resistance of the heavy-duty rubber, it was completely flat.
“Needs a bit of air. Alf! Bung a bit of air in these tyres, woodyer, mate?” he shouted above the 200bhp clattering roar of reving diesel V8 muscle. Alf looked up from beneath the engine cover of one of the two big Bedford trucks run by the firm, issued a puff of smoke from his Doubles Brother standard dog-end, then returned to his task.
I took that as a “fuck off, I can’t be bothered,” but half an hour later, Alf wheeled the Iron Horse round to the front of the shop and parked it against the concrete pavement just outside the window.
“I’ve pumped up the tyres,” he said to Pete, ignoring me completely, as he always did. “ ‘An I’ve greased the chain.” He certainly had. The chain sagged like a baby’s over-filled nappie, dripping with thick grease.
“Brakes OK?”
“Should be.” said Alf, disinterestedly as he turned back along the side path to the shed.
Judging by the amount of dust clinging to the bike, it obviously hadn’t been used for some time. This aroused my suspicions somewhat, but before I had time to ask the question, Pete answered it.
“Emerson didn’t like to use it.” said Pete. “ Said it was too slow. Preferred his racer. ‘e ‘ad to do the round in about 4 runs. Took much too bleedin’ long. People complained. Prat.”
I obviously didn’t have a choice. The Iron Horse and I were going to get acquainted whether I liked it or not. An average weekday round was about 6 deliveries. An average Saturday was about 24. I soon learned how to line up the parcels down the long white shelf than ran the length of the shop and arrange them into an order of delivery.
It didn’t take long for the pile of white newsprint parcels to get well past the top rim of the carrying basket with only half the order. But I learned how to stack the parcels like the bricks of a dry stonewall, a real feat of engineering, so that they all supported one another.
When it was time for take-off, the pile of white parcels was twice then height of the basket. The whole combination of metal, rubber, wickerwork and dead flesh weighed about the same as a 250cc motorbike. It was essential to keep the Iron Horse upright at all times. A few degrees lean to the right or left and the sheer weight would drag it over and I knew I didn’t have the strength to hold on to it and prevent disaster. I would simply go down with the ship.
The other reason for keeping the Iron Horse upright was to get it moving. There was no way I could pedal off from a standing start. Even a champion weight lifter with 3 times the muscle- power of my little leggies would have had his work cut out to get the thing motoring from a prone position. Once underway, though, the old iron horse felt really light, as if it had an aluminium-racing frame, such was its momentum. The only way to get on board and underway was to do both at the same time.
One of my cowboy heroes from the early commercial television broadcasts was a character called, The Range Rider. Played by Jock Mahoney, The Range Rider was unusual in that he wore a white buckskin suit and Indian moccasins. None of your poncy jingling spurs and silly litttle boots, like Hopalong Whatisname. Tall, dark and laconically handsome, Mahoney was also extremely athletic, a deadly knife thrower and marshal art expert. None of this was ever explained which made him all the more mysterious.
The bad guys were no match for The Range Rider when it came to hand-to-hand fighting. He’d use Judo, Aikido, Karate and probably Karaoke too, chucking the surprised bandits about all over the place, often punching his foe’s lights out in spectacular fashion with unconventional long sweeps of his arm and the inside of his knuckles.
He usually fought up to 10 at a time, and if one of them should manage to get mounted and scarper, the Range rider would take a run and leapfrog into the saddle and give chase. Or, and this is the interesting bit, he’d slap the horse to get it moving and then, clinging onto the saddle, scoot along beside the nag unitl it got up some wellie, and then swing himself into the saddle. Brilliant.
This was the very technique I used to get the Iron Horse moving. I didn’t slap it, of course - that would have been cruel. But, keeping it upright, I’d run alongside until the sheer weight and momentum of the thing took over and swing myself into the saddle a Le Range Rider. It was a dangerous manoeuvre, but it worked a treat.
I soon became quite skilled at riding the Iron Horse and it seemed to respect me and respond to my every whim - except stopping. The brakes were just too weak against all that weight, but they did slow the old girl down a bit. It was possible to ride the great beast fully laden down Yester Road, but only by jamming the brakes on all the way down, hard enough to drain the blood from my knuckles.
I usually had to make a stop about half way down and closed my eyes to summon up an extra squeeze 100 yards early. It just about scraped to a halt with me leaping off while it was still moving and pulling backwards on the handlebars with what little strength I had left. If it rained, forget it. I just sailed on by.
Rain caused other discomforts. The white newsprint wrapping round the lumps of meat in the basket got wet and became transparent. The biro names and addresses written on the paper ran merged with the blood that seeped through the sodden wrapping. The paper itself turned to pulp and fused with the meat.
I had to take my gloves off and pick the parcels up bare handed to try and detect the names and addresses. It was like picking up blocks of bleeding ice. Several times, I would be in floods of tears half way through the round from the sheer cold, my fingers feeling frost bitten and my toes like they’d been skinned flake by flake with a razor blade. To some degree, I cured the frostbite by digging out my trusty Eaton Clubman to wear on the bike. With their fur lining and bulletproof uppers, they did the job admirably.
‘Smarties. WhatalotIgot’
Ros Salmon: “Howdy. Today, I’m going to show you how to make a campfire in your front room without the aid of your Dad’s cigarette lighter. All you need is a box of matches. But before we do that, I’ve had a letter from John Smallwood of Chessington who wants to know why I’m a jungle cowboy and not a real cowboy. Well, John, I AM a real cowboy. Just because I don’t ride a horse or carry a Colt 45 or chew tobacco doesn’t make me any less of a cowboy than you. You can be anything you want to be. All you have to do is get the right hat, and away you go. As for the jungle, that refers to my back garden, which is as much like a jungle as you’ll find this side of the Rio Grande due to the fact that I’ve never mowed the lawn. Now, back to our fire. First make a nice pile of screwed up newspapers on the sofa; pour on the petrol till it’s all nice and soaking; take a match out of your box. This is the clever bit. If you rub the head of the match against that funny brown strip on the side of the box, sooner or later, it’ll start to burn. It’s quite fantastic and a lot easier that you might think. When the matchstick catches light, hold it next to your pile of newspapers and Bob’s your Uncle. Well he won’t be for very long if he’s standing too close to the sofa.
Adios, amigos till next time. Have fun.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Everybody's doin' a brand-new dance, now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
My little baby sister can do it with me;
It's easier than learning your A-B-C's,
So come on, come on, do the Loco-motion with me.
You gotta swing your hips, now. Come on, baby.
Jump up. Jump back.
Well, now, I think you've got the knack.
Now that you can do it, let's make a chain, now.
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
A chug-a chug-a motion like a railroad train, now.
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
Do it nice and easy, now, don't lose control:
A little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul.
So come on, come on, do the Loco-motion with me.
Move around the floor in a Loco-motion.
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
Do it holding hands if you get the notion.
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
There's never been a dance that's so easy to do.
It even makes you happy when you're feeling blue,
So come on, come on, do the Loco-motion with me.
Chapter 53. CRASH.
The worst rain catastrophe happened when I took the golf links alleyway to get to the other end of Yester Hill in a hurry. It was a rocky path, suitable for a track bike but not ideal for the fully-laden Iron Horse. It had no suspension to rave about - in fact over such terrain, it was like riding a rabid bucking bronco.
Basically, I lost control, the brakes not answering the pleas of my frozen fingers, which had no grip to speak of. The front wheel hit a particularly spiteful and menacingly proud lump of flint and the Iron Horse threw me over the handlebars, luckily, into a bramble bush. I got slashed to ribbons, but at least I didn’t bust my head.
The basket of meat parcels became an explosion of soggy newsprint, guts, liver and offal shrapnel that would have done Sam Peckinpar proud. There was mincemeat everywhere. Strands of sausage-meat hung on the wire fence. A lone chicken rolled down the track, gathering speed like a crazy, wayward ten-pin bowling ball, before disappearing out of sight under a hedge.
The Daily Mirror headline flashed in front of my eyes: ‘BUTCHERS’ BOY IN GOLF LINKS CRASH CARNAGE.’
Being useless at maths and still having to sometimes count on my fingers, I used to separate the bills from the parcels and work out the change from a couple of pound notes before I even got to the customer’s door. I just didn’t have the confidence to work it out on the spot. Now I was stuffed. From the post-artillery-bombardment battle ground before me, I had no idea which portions of bruised, bedraggled, blood and guts belonged to which customer. The biro inscriptions were washed away by the rain and all the meat was mixed up.
Most customers ordered more than one item and the only way I could get this jigsaw massacre puzzle back together was to study the items on the bill. Trouble was, a lot of the stuff had been so badly maimed in the crash that it was impossible to determine what the identity had been when it left the shop. It all just looked like some terrible accident - which of course, it was.
Through tears of cold and frustration, I did the best I could, re-assembled the disaster and piled it all back into the basket. I finished the delivery, handing very bedraggled and un-attractive parcels into the hands of some very worried-looking customers before beating a hasty retreat. By the time I got back to the shop, the telephone line had already hit meltdown. Pete Double’s greeting was to the point.
“WHATHEFUCKD’YOUFINKYOUBINPLAYIN’AT? My ear-‘oles ‘ave ‘ad a right fuckin’ bashin’, I can tell you!”
I think the only time I saw him more out-of-his-tree was when he won the pools. I never did find how much he won - or would’ve won, because I forgot to post the coupon.
DOGS
Pete Double could be quite reasonable. Like the time I supplemented a bulldog’s diet with a chicken. I’d finished the Saturday round with ease for once but when I got back to the shop, there’d been a late call from a Mrs Smelling, of No 2 Yester Road, right at the bottom of the hill and under the railway arch.
“There’s an urgent chicken for Mrs Smelling. She won’t be there but she’ll leave the kitchen door unlocked and you’ve to leave it on the table.” said Pete, handing me the pristine, white football-shaped Parcel. “Don’t worry about payment, she’ll call in on Tuesday and settle up,” As I left the shop, I heard him say to Charlie, “I wonder what she smells of.”
No 2 Yester Road was a detached white farmhouse style building with a long gravel drive leading to a stable-type back door at the back. I figured this to be the kitchen and I lifted the latch and pushed the top half of the door. It wouldn’t budge. I tried the bottom half and it swung open with ease.
Crouching down, steadying myself with one hand and clutching the white football in the other I pushed my head through the gap and peered into a vast, country-style kitchen. A huge pine table took up a lot of the space and there was a door to the right which was open, probably leading to the hall. I shuffled forward on my knees and was about to stand up when I heard something.
The was a puffing, slurping sound accompanied by a rapid scratching as if someone was sprinkling water on a pane of glass. A muffled growl followed by a snarling bark suddenly introduced stage right, a fat ball of stiff, white fur with shark’s teeth as it came skidding round the open door, it’s claws clattering against the slippery lino as it tried to make the turn. I was eyeball to eyeball with the biggest bulldog I could have imagined. It went into a 4 –wheel slide and for a moment, totally lost traction going hell-for-leather on the spot. This was a very hacked off bulldog and I was on its turf.
It’s amazing how fear and adrenalin can force you to weigh up the odds of a dangerous situation so swiftly and make a snap decision. In this case, snap being the operative word. There was no way I was going to be this bastard’s breakfast.
s its nasty little feet began to find grip, I bowled the white football straight at it, pulling myself backwards and the bottom half of the door shut in one movement. If ever there was a ‘strike’, this was going to be it. But there was no sound of toppling skittles. In fact there was no sound of anything. Then a delighted yelping sound arose from behind the kitchen door, almost as if the beast was having some kind of orgasm. It probably was, owing to the fact that it was also having the chicken.
I was pretty pissed off and all the way back to the shop, I rehearsed my resignation speech. By the time I walked through the shop doorway, I must have resembled Genghis Kahn on the rampage. I didn’t give a stuff what they said. This was well out of order. Life aboard the Iron Horse was dangerous enough, but acceptable - one of the hazards of the job.
But being turned into something nourishing with marrowbone jelly so that someone’s mutt could enjoy a healthier, more active life, was fucking not. Pete was standing at the back of the shop. He’d taken his apron off and had applied bike clips to the bottoms of his trousers. In his hand he held a new, white football-shaped parcel.
“Silly, bleeding’ cow.” he said, the tiny fag end dancing in his lips as he spoke. “Fancy leaving’ that fuckin’ thing in the hall with the fuckin’ door open. She wants pruning’ that one. Ears year wages Nilw. You get off ‘ome,‘n I’ll take the bike an’ go and sort the silly fuckin’ moo out.”
I don’t know if Mrs Smelling complained or if Pete Double charged her for 2 chickens and I didn’t care. The important thing was that justice had been done and seen to be done. That old Bull Dog must have thought it was Christmas day.
JAWS
The second doggy adventure took place one autumn off Manor Park up past the Royal Parade at the War Memorial end of Chislehurst. The house I called at had to be entered via a brown leaf sodden woodland pathway. I’d just parked the Iron Horse against a fence and was pulling a hefty leg of lamb out of the basket when I noticed a middle-aged woman coming along with 2 Golden Retrievers off the leash.
As I knew that Retrievers usually had the same soppy disposition as Labradors - all wet-nosed and smiley. I didn’t take much more notice when they came trotting towards me. I now know what it feels like when a shark attacks in shallow water. It must have been the smell of the meat or maybe the old bag hadn’t fed them for a month.
Whatever, the first one let out a fierce snarl, twisted its head sideways and grabbed my left ankle. It went at me like I was some old cushion, shaking its head and my leg violently from side to side. The thing pulled me right off my feet and I went over on my back. The second dog grabbed my sleeve and applied the same treatment to my arm. So there I was, being used as a tug-of-war by Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie. Thankfully, I was distracted from the hideous pain in my ankle by the searing agony in my wrist.
At last, the dog owner stepped in and offered the situation an absolute pearl of wisdom. “Lay still, you stupid boy. Of course they’ll attack if you writhe about like that.”
The old bag grabbed the dogs’ collars and pulled them off, still snarling and snapping. Oh, so it was MY fault??!!! Of course. Why didn’t I realise? The fuck it was. I leapt to my feet grabbed the leg of lamb, and kicking one dog as hard as I could in its testicles, I brought it crashing down on the skull of the other, crushing it to pulp.
I wish.
That’s just one of those retrospective fantasies we all have. You know, like when your ears are stinging from when a teacher has given you the verbal what-fors, and you suddenly pull out a flint lock pistol and relish the look of surprised horror on his face a split second before before you blow his fucking head off. The old bag actually just walked away and left me lying there in a whimpering heap. Unbelievable.
WOLVES
Dogs have, of course, been the delivery tradesman’s archenemy for eons. Some people, however, just ask to get chewed. When Connie worked as a daily to a posh Anglo-Irish family in Bickley, one of the requirements of the job was to get used to and gain the trust of the two biggest and most ferocious Alsatians I‘ve ever seen.
“German Sheppards!” will come the indignant cry from the odd PC dog aficionado, but, as Billy Connelly once said, “They’re fucking Alsatians. That’s what they are. I KNOW A FUCKING ALSATIAN WHEN I SEE ONE!”
But gain their trust Connie did, especially as she used to play with the younger one, Carlo, when he was a pup. By the time I got see him he was about the size of a small Polar Bear. Prince, the older of the two was apparently more treacherous and could turn in an instant. I think he would have gladly eaten Connie, given the chance, but was so scared of the Mem Sahib, Mrs Smythe, he decided it wasn’t a very smart thing to do.
One pleasant spring morning, the full-grown Carlo was sitting in the middle of the lawn when a new postman arrived. He was new because the old postman was so terrified of the dogs, he had a doggy–phobic nervous breakdown and got transferred to another district. The new bloke was a real clever-dick and sauntered nonchalantly up the path with a jaunty whistle.
This was a good tactic because these Bengal Tiger behave alikes would get very irate if they sensed fear. Fear spells threat to poisonous snakes, Alsatians and schoolteachers, and they attack. The two Smythe wolves could probably whiff the old postman coming for half a mile so that by the time he got to the gate, they were positively rabid and completely bonkers.
Carlo just sat and watched the new guy walk by and stick the letters through the letterbox. Prince wasn’t allowed out as to him all postmen were edible. Postman Prat didn’t seem at all perturbed by the manic, thunderous barking and snarling coming from the kitchen, as Prince stood with his hind legs on the sink, glaring hysterically through the kitchen window and contemplating his chances of survival if he lost control and launched himself through the glass.
As he sauntered back from the front door, Postie threw his brave demeanour away with one suicidal gesture. It would have been simpler, less painful and less messy if he’d put both barrels of a Purdy in his gob and pulled the trigger. Instead, as he passed Carlo, he said: “Hello, doggy.” and promptly bashed the young wolf on the nose with a bundle of letters.
The following scene was reminiscent of those in a Tarzan film when some poor native wrestles with a leopard, screaming for his life, while the onlookers turn their heads away, the Ape Man shielding the eyes of the heroine in jodhpurs from the terrible sight of ripped intestines and torn off limbs.
“HERE, BOY!”
We housesat for the Smythes for two weeks in the summer of 1957 and Trevor came to stay for the first week. Carlo adored him and allowed the 9 year old to put his arms around his neck and cuddle him just like the boy, Rusty, in Rin-Tin-Tin. When we took the two ‘boys’ for their evening walkies, Trevor would have 3 leads joined together and tied round his waste in a vain attempt to stop Carlo disappearing into the distance with him. It didn’t work, Connie forever giving chase.
“Carlo. Come back here. CARLO! Did you hear me?”
&
nbsp; If he did, the great big hound rudely ignored her and charged on, Trevs legs scampering along trying to keep up.
One of the loudest and most fearsome thunderstorms ever witnessed in the South of England, suddenly erupted one evening. Prince became hysterical and
uncontrollable, and Connie locked him in one of the bedrooms in case he decided to eat the kitchen table. Carlo didn’t seem to mind much, preferring to spend the time on the kitchen table being fussed over, scratched and tickled by the rest of us - all except Alf that is.
The boys didn’t like him. His deep booming voice really pissed them off and he was too scared to get close enough for them to get used to him. He never went into the kitchen all the time we stayed at the house, preferring to taunt the two hounds from hell through the serving hatch from the safety of the dining room.
“‘Allo, there. How are yer, then?”
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFSNARRRRRRRLLGRRRRRRRRRROOOOFFFJUSTGIVEUSONEOFYOURLEGSYOUBASTARD!”
“Bet you’d like a bite of me, then, wouldn’t yer, eh?”
Alf would have been torn to pieces had he not left the dining room one day just a split second before Prince leaped onto the kitchen table and hurled himself through the hatch, skidding along the dining room table, collecting a crystal vase full of roses, dragging it to the edge and depositing it in the floor before landing in a scrabbling heap amongst the glass and water.
‘Pal meaty chunks, enriched with marobone jelly’
Funny Haddock:
“Hello, everyone. Today, Johnnie and I are going to show you how to make spaghetti pancakes, isn’t that right Johnnie? WILL YOU STOP PLAYING WITH THAT!
“Now, the thing to remember about spaghetti pancakes is that you’ve got to keep everything moving otherwise you could get into a fine old mess. (Johnnie – you’ve got your monacle in the wrong eye again!) Right, first you take your spaghetti and you toss it like this…then while it’s still spinning above your head, you take your frying pan with your batter and you toss it like this…NO, NOT THE FRYING PAN, JOHNNIE! JUST THE BATTER!
That’s right. Now, just like a juggler, you keep everything moving round in a circle like this. Just keep it moving. It’s really very easy once you get the hang of it.
Eventually, we’re going to bring the two halves of the concoction together in a riot of colour. It’s all just a question of timing. Right, here goes. AND…
Sod it! What a mess. You are a clot, Johnnie. You look like a Christmas tree. The spaghetti makes wonderful lameta, though, don’t you think, everyone? Anyway, here’s one I made earlier. What do you think of that? Johnnie, what are you doing with that fork? NO! DON’T EAT IT! ARE YOU MAD? Phew, that was close. They don’t pay us enough to actually eat this crap!”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Girl, you really got me goin?
You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin?
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin? now
Oh yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
See, don’t ever set me free
I always wanna be by your side
Girl, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin? now
Oh yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
Oh no...
(solo)
See, don’t ever set me free
I always wanna be by your side
Girl, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin? now
Oh yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
You Really Got Me
Chapter 54. BULLERSHIT.
BULLERSHIT
Most of the customers on the round were fairly pleasant people, not over-friendly, but at the least I got a semi-sincere ‘good morning’ once in a while. As in the rest of life, however, there were a few arseholes.
The two butchers had a good view of the High Street through the big plate glass window of the shop, and like all men of their age, of any age for that matter, had an eye and a comment for any young female who happened to be passing.
“There she is! Young Berrie. Cooor! She’s luverly, in’t she? What d’yu reckon, Niwl? Bet you wouldn’t mind gettin’ to grips with ‘er? Eh?”
She was luverly. She must have been about my own age, maybe a bit younger. Petite, and very pretty with slightly auburn hair, faint freckles, porcelain skin and a body that was growing into something a young man like me would readily die for. Well, maybe just break a leg.
Berrie Buller was the daughter of Doctor Buller and lived in a pretty cottage in Willow Grove right behind the shop called White Gates. A pretty obvious name as the house was fronted by a large white, paddock-style swing gate. Why the house name was plural, I don’t know. I only ever saw one gate. Maybe there’d been a gate tax and they’d had to give one up. Dr Buller was a sometime customer of Doubles, and Pete and Charlie’s opinion of him was succinct.
“He’s a cunt.”
I was to discover this for myself. The first time I delivered to the cottage, I closed the white farm gate firmly behind me and crunched down the drive to the front door. Buller himself opened it and snatched the parcel out of my hands.
“The back door, next time!” he snapped, and slammed the door in my face. Pete and Charlie were right. As I closed the gate, I noticed a small metal plate in the centre of the top bar.
‘BEWARE OF THE DOG’
I hadn’t seen or heard a dog, but it crossed my mind that
‘BEWARE OF COMPLETE AND UTTER ARSEHOLE’ would've been more appropriate. I’d ‘ve hated to be one of Buller’s patients. If you ever had to call him out because you were poorly, his bedside manner would probably finish you off.
A couple of years later, when I’d been fired from the round (that’s another story) and was working on the Post for Christmas, I came across the luvlery Berrie again in the Chislehurst sorting office canteen. She was sitting on a table talking to a tall, very good-looking rake with blonde hair, wearing a Cambridge scarf. You know, the sort you hate on sight because women seem to drop themselves and their knickers at his feet automatically as if it was their expected duty.
“Which college do you attend?” she said, in her beautiful plumby voice, apparently rolling said fruit against the roof of her mouth.
“Clarr.” (Claire)
“Ay, I nae someone who gaes thar. D’y nae Saimon Digs?”
“Yars. Sord’ve. Aive seen him a couple of taimes, but he’s reading theologay say ay dain’t exshoolay come acrorse him thet mech.”
“Nae. Ay daint nae him thet well. He used to gay ite with a friend of main.”
“He’s a pal of Mike Briggs. D’you nae aled Brigsay?”
“Nae, but from what aive hard, ay dain’t think aid lake him thet march.”
“Nae. I carn’t stend him, exshoolay.”
“Nae. Apparently, he’s a cunt.”
“Lake your father?”
“Yers.”
Berrie was gaying ite with Mick Jeggars brother, Chris, at the taime, for what it’s worth.Lucky Bastard.
WAIT A MINUTE MR POSTMAN
Working on the post at Christmas when I was a student was quite fun for me at least. I was consigned to the collection truck and spent most of the time in the warm cab of a Commer van with John, a burley fireman and Fred, a whippet-faced postie, while most of the other students freezed their nuts or tits off delivering door to door. I pitied them for at least 10 seconds. I’d been there many times on the butcher’s bike, and though I could’ve sypathised, I didn’t. I felt glad that these privileged bastards were feeling what we poor working class saps sometimes had to go through to earn a crust.
The van crew’s job was to collect all the post for Chislehurst from the main sorting office in Bromley. The job also consisted of drinking copius amounts of tea. We’d drive to Bromley and head straight for their canteen while we waited for the bags to be filled, at least, that was the excuse.
Then we’d load the bags into the van and head back to base, just in time to see the first student postman return frozen or wet through from the morning delivery. Sometimes we’d be required to make heavy parcel deliveries in the van if there were things too big to be taken by bike. If Fred thought he could carry a parcel without giving himself too much of a strain, he’d be first off the van - especially if we were in one of the posher roads and the tip promised to be generous.
It was agreed that all tips would be pooled, and far-be-it for me to suggest that Fred would take an extra cut, but I think Fred’s idea was to take an extra cut.
He’d say, “Hay’ll do this one. Hay know how to speak to these people. Hay talk thar language.”
He certainly did have his own way of communicating with Chislehurst’s ‘hupper crust’, as he saw them. If we saw one walking by, he’d get John to slow down to a crawl. He’d doff his postman’s cap and announce his greeting in that special way that only Fred could.
“Hello, thar. Haim very pleased to see yor. Hand may hay take this hopportunity to hextend to yor hand your good lady waif, hall the very best wishes for the season.” Then he’d turn back to the cab with a smug little smile on his face, glowing with pride at his ability to talk to the natives in their own tongue.
One such greeting was met with: “Fanks very much, mate. Anna same ta you, ‘n all.”
SORTING
Back at the sorting office I’d sometimes stand and watch Harry Lettington, who lived a couple of doors away from us on the estate, sort the letters and packets (small parcels the layman) into districts. He put them into a designated basket, which would then be taken by one of the regular sorters and re-sorted into streets. He’d stand beside a bunch of about 20 tall baskets each about 2 feet in diameter and flick the letters and packets skilfully into their proper slot.
He tossed them like they were frizzbees and they’d float majestically across the wicker sea until they plopped into the right hole. He was very slick and would be reading the next address while the envelope he’d just tossed was still in flight.
The first one was still airborne when he tossed the next. It occurred to me that his little act would’ve gone down quite well on Bruce Forsythe’s ‘Sunday Night At The London Palladium’ instead of the usual spot where some bloke from Russia with a name like Yuri Gatemen, would spin plates to balalaika music.
NOB DYLAN
There’s always a chief tosspot when there’s a gang of students around. On the Post that Christmas it was David, a student from the LSE, who’d automatically set himself up as gang leader. A reasonable chap really, I suppose - always friendly and smiley.
Maybe that was part of his problem - that he was so reasonable. He was so friendly and smiley, that it made you want to puke. I think it was the brand new black, corduroy Bob Dylan hat that was the early prat warning. It just didn’t look like it belonged on his conventionally-curley, middle class bonce. Especially against his standard issue Miletts camel duffel coat, desert boots, bright blue corduroy trousers, brightly coloured pop-art shirt, long flowing university scarf - you know the sort of thing.
He was a prime example of someone conventional trying to look trendy and missing by a billion light years. He was just asking to be ‘Isadora Duncaned’ on his red post bike. More’s the pity that it never happened. It would have wiped the patronising smile of his face in spectacular and sudden fashion. He’d have been well choked.
As chief tosspot, David organised the Christmas party at the end of the Post stint. It was going to be held in Berrie Buller’s house and the wondrous creature asked me if I knew some people I could take along to bulge the numbers. I suggested a few art students and she seemed in favour.
“Ay, yers. Thet would be rarly soopar.” She really was stunning up close. She had watery blue eyes, and voluptuous lips. Her’s was the kind of mouth that seemed permanently puckered in a kiss shape - a cross between Bridget Bardot’s and Claudia Schiffer’s, the top lip up-turned slightly so that even when her mouth was closed, you could see her top teeth.
I tried my best to come across as aloof and urbaine. I’d rather have grabbed her and disappeared into the soft cushion of her mouth and then a sorting basket with her, and I wondered what sort of noises she’d make when she got excited.
KING LEER
The party was a real drag, as we used to say in the Sixties. They played ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ by some Liverpool group or other, over and over again, while they all stood in the middle of the room and shook themselves like they were aload of dogs that’d just been for a dip in the pond, with Chief tosspot, David, magificently demonstrating his impersonation of a wobbly coat-stand.
The Doctor was there. He sat in the corner in a low arm chair sipping a large whiskey from an expensive-looking crystal glass, and trying to get a look at the girls’ knickers, which from his angle wasn’t difficult, what with the skirts being so arse-revealingly short. Unlike art school parties that always went on all night or sometimes for a couple of days, the proceedings were brought to a sudden and unclimactic end at 11.30.
When we all left, Dr Cripin (aka Buller) was still in his chair, obviously pretty pissed. He was still knicker-spotting and the whiskey had sunk him further down into his chair so that his view of little triangles of taught white cotton were much easier for him to get a gander at. The moronic, wet-lipped leer on his mush was a bit of a giveaway.
That was the last I saw of Berrie. She probably merried some fraightfully rich buggar and being a good Catholic with a ripe and willing womb, had loads of brats. I bet she had a good time first, though. Inwardly, I jealously hoped she didn’t.
ROY ORBISON
“D’you like Roy Orbison, Nilw?”
Rod, the new apprentice butcher flashed me a similar gleaming white-toothed grin as Charlie displayed. He was slicing through a huge slab of red meat on the big wooden bench counter where Charlie usually stood, with a vicious looking knife with an 18 inch blade. I recognised him from the Edge. He was about 3 years older than me but I’d never spoken to him.
“He’s great, Roy Robison. D’you like ‘Pretty Woman’? Brilliant, that is. Really Brilliant.” He continued slicing without really watching what he was doing. “You ‘eard ‘Only The Lonely’?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Brilliant, that is. What sort of music d’you like then, Nilw?”
“Modern Jazz mainly. Miles Davis; Thelonius Monk; The MJQ. That kind of stuff.” I said casually from my superior, intellectual perch. I knew Rod wouldn’t have a clue who or what I was on about.
“Oh, right.” he said, still grinning. What about ‘’Cryin’, you ‘eard that?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Brilliant, that is. We went to see him last year when he was over, Roy Orbison.”
I didn’t think he meant Thelonius Monk.
“Brilliant, he was.”
(“You don’t say”,) I thought.
“Yeah. Did all his big ‘its. Brilliant, it was.”
(“Good.”) I thought.
I was such a bloody snob. Now, I think Roy Orbison was brilliant, Rod.
A pretty young girl wearing a pale green nylon overall entered the shop. She had light auburn hair and pale skin, and had about her an air of total fastidious freshness.
“Allo, love.” Rod obviously knew her. “Nilw, this is Pat, my fiancee. Pat this is Nilw.”
She turned to me and smiled. “Hello.” Then back to Rod. “You free at lunch time? I promised Mum we’d go to the flower shop and have a look at their prices.”
“Yeah. Alright.’” Still the knife went slicing through the slab of meat.
Pat left the shop and went back to the chemist’s where she worked as Pete Double emerged from the back.
“Was that Pat?” He said to Rod, who nodded still grinning. Then to me: “That’s Rod’s crumpet. Lovely, int she? Don’t know what she sees in this ugly mug, eh?” Rod carried on grinning.
A couple of weeks later when Charlie was back in his usual position, Pete came out of the fridge carrying a side of some animal or other.
“You heard about Pat, Rod’s tart?” he said whipping out the silver Ronson to re-ignite the dog-end stuck on his bottom lip. “She’s up-the-duff.”
“In the family way.” said Charlie in case I didn’t understand what up-the-duff meant.
“Yeah, ‘es put her in the club. Got a bleedin’ great bun in the oven.” said Pete, trying once again to light the dog-end. “Dirty little sod. ‘e’ll ‘ave to marry ‘er now. I say, ‘e’ll ‘ave to marry ‘er now, Charlie.”
I never saw Rod again. One Saturday morning, soon after G.E Double and Sons baid me farewell, without a lot of warning. Pete Double’s sister-in-law didn’t like me very much. The Irish, chain-smoking, staunch Roman Catholic kept the firm’s books and always tried to catch me out over the change at the end of each Saturday round. She never succeeded, but I don’t think she approved of the Rolling Stones hairstyle that I’d adopted a year into art school.
For the first time in my life, I’d been made redundant. I felt hurt, sad, victimised, ashamed, displaced. I liked Charlie and I didn’t mind Pete, and though the round had sometimes been a pretty painful experience, a bond had grown between the Iron Horse and its young master. It was a bond based on mutual respect, companionship, and a love of the open road.
And there were achievments, like when together we conqered the Dreaded Yester Road, riding up the 1 in 10 incline by travelling diagonally, backwards and forwards across the tarmac till we reached the top, with me standing up on the pedals and never once allowing one foot to touch the ground.
No more would we ride the wild, Chislehurst country together, fending off the rabid dogs, and sometimes rabid customers, making sure our precious cargo got to its destination through rain, hail, snow, and golf balls, returning to the shop sometimes bedraggled, but always on a high of accomplishment, glad that the bloody round was once again over for another day. I rode the Iron Horse down Perry Street to Sidcup after the Friday round one last time where a gang of students at the art school ceremoniously wrapped rags soaked in paraffin around the back mudguard, set fire to them and one of them rode it round the back lawn, flames blazing furiously behind him.
On a particularly freezing January morning in 1963, it was so numbingly cold in the shop that Rod sliced through his right thigh with the 18inch blade without noticing anything. It was only when Charlie pointed out the flap of flesh, muscle and trouser hanging down almost to his knee, and the growing pool of blood, that Rod fainted.
VEN
Most of the regular customers of G. E. Double and Sons were quite pleasant and some, very generous at Christmas. Mrs Walpole was my favourite. A little round Jewish lady, she was very smiley and though she called me ‘butcher’, she always gave me a couple of quid, as did most of the more civilised ones. There were those amongst the mega-rich, however, who’s seemed to have no concept of the real gap between their own wealth and the financial situation of the average working class 16-year-old.
The Venns weren’t regular customers, but when they did use Doubles, they always spent a fortune, as if they were feeding the five thousand. One Christmas Eve, Mr Venn, a tall, elegant man in his forties, asked me to carry half a side of a cow over my shoulders up the high street to his waiting Mark 10 Jag. He strode ahead of me in his sumptuous navy blue cashmere overcoat, the fine snowflakes falling like so many specks of dandruff on his shoulders.
It was bloody freezing but I gritted my teeth looking forward to the reward I was sure was to follow. I heaved the lump of meat into the boot of the jag with a gasp and sure enough he reached into his waistcoat pocket. Into the palm of my frozen paw he squeezed a sixpence, smiled and wished me a Merry Christmas. I wasn’t sure whether to fall at his feet and kiss his shiny Oxfords in mock gratitude, or kick him sharply in the balls.
It was the last insult. My art school grant came through and simultaneously; G.E. Double and Sons showed me the door and the way through it for the last time. The business was folded soon afte; Pete went back to his original trade as a plumber, and dear old Charlie went to work for another butcher. The Iron Horse was probably finally laid to rest on a scrap heap somewhere. Or maybe some young loon filled the frame with weed killer and icing sugar prior to blowing it up along with most of his hand. It would have been a fitting end for such a magnificent and loyal beast.
‘Maxwell House. Good to the last drop’
Signature tune: ‘By The Sleepy Lagoon’
Roy Plomley:
“On ‘Desert Island Discs’ today, we are privileged to welcome one of England’s most eminent and well respected pillars of society. Often reclusive, some would say antisocial, his reputation as a scientist, anthropologist, philosopher, criminologist, physiologist, phsycologist, swordsman, marksman, marshal arts sensei and virtuoso violinist is irrefutable, even legendary, but has often obscured the foremost passion and almost overwhelming ambition in his life: to play centre forward for Blackburn Rovers. He is, of course, Sherlock Holmes.
“Mr Holmes, perhaps I could begin by asking what first caused you to become fascinated with the study of the criminal element in our society?”
Holmes: “I’d rather talk about the game last Saturday. We was robbed. THAT was criminal. What is more, it is of the utmost importance that the qualifications of the referee be thoroughly scrutinised forthwith. I further submit that his flag brandishing gang members on the touchline were undoubtedly agent infiltrators employed by the opposition.”
P: “Quite. But if we could establish for our listeners, what exactly set you on the path of becoming the most famous detective in history…”
H: “THAT is of no signicicance. What IS, however, is the penalty that was awarded against us in the second half. It only would take an idividual of limited mental capability, in short, a halfwit, to conclude that this injustice demostrated a singularly blatant disregard for any fundamental appreciation of morality and fair dealing. It was a clear DIVE, John.”
P: “It’s Roy.”
H: “The term ‘John’ is a colloquial expression used by one fan to address another. It’s quite elementary.”
P: “I’m sure. But if I could just ask you…”
H: “Yes, there were clear villainous elements of the most reprehensible and wicked nature abroad that day, and on reflection it is with deep foreboding and dread that I am led to believe that the very darkest, most devious, fearsomely cunning of masterminds was in evidence, especially during extra time.”
P: “That’s very interesting but…”
H: “It was all too clear. All too irrefutably apparent that his could only be the work of one individual: the most loathed, feared, unscrupulous villain of all…”
P: “Moriaty, I suppose?”
H: “BUSBY! BUSBY! Did you not read the signs? Who else could have engineered such a devastating attack? Who else could have promoted such an uncompromising, overwhelming decimation of our defences? Of course, the goal should have been disallowed. That is beyond doubt.”
P: “What about Watson? Tell us about about his famous chronicles of your adventures…”
H: “WATSON! WATSON! Don’t speak to me of that confounded traitor.”
P: “Ah, that’s more like it. Has he gone over to the other side? What a turn up for the book.”
H: “Yes. I am afraid it is true. He has diverted his allegance to another power. Another force. It is beyond comprehension. A black period in history indeed.”
P: “Has he become a foreign spy?”
H: “Nothing so trivial, I am afraid. No, it is far, far worse. Sniff! Forgive my feeble display of emotion, but I find it almost incomprehensible, unimaginable, that my once dear, dear devoted friend and colleague, Watson, has finally succumbed to one of the most deadly and dangerous influences know to man. He has become a UNITED SUPPORTER.”
P: “The bastard. Let’s talk about your first record.”
H: “It is well documented that I am sometimes given to the darkest of moods which usually occur when I am without a case to ponder or a problem to solve. Being in solitude a desert island, I doubt there will be much crime, and certainly few sooer matches, if any. Therefore, the likelihood of such sates of despair might well be frequent. In such circumstance, there is only one piece of music I could countenance.”
P: “’The Laughing Policeman’?”
H: “’Crying’, by Roy Orbison.”
P: “Cool.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Dum-dum-dum-dum-dee-du-wah
Ooh-yeah-yeah-yeah-yah
Oh-woh-woh-woh-o oh-wa-wah
Only the lonely, only the lonely
Only the lonely
Know the way, I feel tonight
Only the lonely
Know this feeling ain't right
There goes my baby
There goes my heart
They've gone forever so far apart
But only the lonely
Know why I cry
Only the lonely
Dum-dum-dum-dum-dee-du-wah
Ooh-yeah-yeah-yeah-yah
Oh-woh-woh-woh-o oh-wa-wah
Only the lonely, only the lonely
Only the lonely
Know the heartaches I've been through
Only the lonely
Know I cry and cry for you
Maybe tomorrow a new romance
No more sorrow but that's the chance
You've got to take
If you're lonely heart breaks
Only the lonely
Only the lonely
Only the lonely
Chapter 55. MISSING.
Once again, Ace lost touch before a gig and, again, as neither of us had have telephones, Ray Periiman, who’d passed his driving test, commandeered his Father’s black Vauxhall Velox and drove me, Alf and Nigel to Dulwich to look for him.
When we got to Eyenella Road, Brian opened the door and told us the good news that Ace hadn’t done another bunk but had simply gone to a jumble sale. He drove round the district with us to help us find the wayward younger Eatwell.
Brian sat on the front bench seat next to Ray as we toured the neighbourhood. Nigel thought the hair hanging over the back of Brian’s collar was hilarious and pretended to set light to it with his cigarette. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I took great offence at this. Even though Brian wasn’t exactly my best friend, I still admired him and found Nigel’s gesture pathetic and ignorant.
Back at Eynella Road, we found Ace in his front garden with his mate Pete from across the road. They were gleefully examining their haul from their latest jumble sale adventure: a Union Jaqck, one leather sandal, a china doll with no arms and a win-up gramaphone. Ace seemed surprised to see us. He said he hadn’t received my last letter and assumed the gig was off.
I didn’t know if I believed him or not, but whatever, he grabbed his stuff and guitar and climbed aboard the Velox for the journey back to Chislehurst.
This was to be our final gig before Ace lost interest completely and sank himself into modern jazz and drugs. Ray Perriman stopped going out with Kathryn and after she turned Nigel down, Alf decided that they old youth club thing should finally come to an end and we said goodbye to Nigel, the last remaing visitor from the era, one Sunday afternoon.
The last time I saw Ace was during my first term at art school. He dropped by one day wearing the tan loafers and denim jean suit. The Guild was gone and he was into Bob Dylan along with a billion others. I started to tell him about art school and how some of the senior students used to buy Benzedrine inhalers, suck out the contents and chew bits of it until they got fairly high or threw up in the bog.
With a knowing smile, Ace produced a tube from his pocket. Just around the corner lay the spoon and tackle that went with heroin addiction. This disappointed me no end. My hero was vulnerable, an open door and welcome mat for any abuse that might be going.
In short, he’d become stupid. I never dabbled in drugs myself, though the opportunity presented itself countless times. I didn’t see the point and anyway, I was too much of a coward.
Christine gave birth to a daughter whom they named Joanna and Brian started work as a set designer for ABC Television. I came across him again when I was a student, a group of us were being shown round the ABC Television Design Department and there he was. I could only see him from the back as he sat at his design desk but the accent was unmistakable. He was laughing and joking with the other designers in the studio.
“P’heps it’s meant to be a countray war there isn’t a hame secretree.”
“Hello, Brian.” I said.
He half-turned, then looked away as if I was something unpleasant stuck to the sole of his Eaton Clubman. “Hello. Harr your?” he said with about as much enthusiasm as a dead sloth would have for Rock’n’Roll.
“Fine.” I said, and not being able to think of anything more to say. I’d wanted to say I was one of them - one of the arty brigade. That I loved Miles Davis and art and Alan Ginsberg, (Though I’d never actually read anything the famous ‘Beat’ intellectual had written.) and that I had a beautiful girlfriend who was dark and wore black stockings too, but the words just didn’t want to form. So I simply thought, “Fuck you, then.” And walked away.
Brian and Christine eventually divorced and Joanna went to art school and became a successful costume designer making clothes for Elton John amongst others. Tony dropped out of school and once again got as far as Southampton where the police picked him up and took him back to Dulwich, his anxious mother and pissed-off brother, who again blamed me for being a bad influence. It only showed how narrow-minded and stupid such a talented and intelligent person like Brian Eatwell could be.
Tony, whose father died when he was 3 years old had only Brian to look to for guidance, later became a heroin addict. I suppose that was my fault, too. I sold the little Japanese guitar just before Christmas 1964 for 12 quid, and bought a ridiculous pair of Cuban-heeled boots from Arnello and David in Charing Cross Road.
They were incredibly uncomfortable and from the back looked like I was wearing light bulbs on my feet. Ironically, I could have become one of the very first victims of fashion. If I’d ever worn the bloody things in the wet, one slip would’ve snapped both ankles like twigs.
Brian Eatwell’s name started cropping up on TV credits during the late 60’s as he gained a reputation as a talented set designer on programmes like ‘Top Of The Pops’ and Ready Steady Go. Later on, he became one of the most sought after film art directors in the industry, working on films like, ‘Clockwork Orange’, ‘Here We Go Round The Mulbury Bush and countless others. I was never sure whether I admired him or hated him for his success.
Joshua: Production Designer;
The Watcher: Production Designer;
The Man Who Fell To Earth: Production Designer;
TheShooter: ProductionDesigner;
Dazzle: Production Designer;
Erotic Tales: Production Designer;
Silent Cries: Production Designer;
Blood River: Production Designer;
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Production Designer;
Wired: Production Designer;
Morons from Outer Space: Production Designer;
The Three Musketeers: Production Designer.
‘What we want is Watneys’
David Nixon:
“Hello, there. I’m glad you could join us…Whoops! This microphone cable seems to get everywhere. I nearly dropped the famous red book in the swamp. That would never do. Now, we’re here to give a certain someone the shock of his life. At the moment, he’s rumaging around in the crater of this really large volcano. Phew, what a stink! It really is a bit iffy. Poo! I can’t say I’m all that fond of all this swirling, green mist. It’s all a bit gooey. Yuck. It’s all part of the job I s’pose. Now where is our friend? Hello! Are you in there? Just a minute, there’s a gurgling sound coming from down there. I can see movement. Yes. There’s definitely a sign of life. I’m really excited. No one’s ever seen this character before, even though most of us have heard about him at one time or another. I wonder what he looks like. Ah, I think he’s coming out. Ugh, the smell’s getting stronger…my eyes are watering…Oh, the ground’s shaking and I can smell burning…Gosh! Look at that! Where did all that fire come from? I can see something through all the smoke… it’s a bit hazy…but I think I can make out a shape of someone…something…moving towards us…Goodness! Look at the size of those feet, er… I mean hoofs. And here he is in all his flaming magnificence. Right, here goes.”
Apparition: “What do you, want, baldy?”
DN: “Surprise, surprise! OLD NICK, better known as the Devil himself, this is your life. Gawd, what a sight! I’ve never seen anything so revolting. I think I’m going to be sick.”
A: “I usually have that effect on people. What’s that helicopter doing here?”
DN: We’re going to whisk you off to the studio where all your friends and associates are waiting.”
A: “Like who?”
DN: “Well, there’s the Angel Gabrielle, Judas Iscariot, Nebudkanezza, Attila The Hun, Adolph Hitler, Rasputin, Genghis Kahn, a handful of murderers, a few Kamikaze Pilots and a couple of Prime Ministers.”
A: “Sounds interesting.”
DN: “Oh, and God Himself might put in an appearance during the interval.”
A: “What? That prat? You want me to sit and listen to Him pontificating and enjoying the sound of his own Heavenly voice? He’ll only start reciting a few of His blasted ‘Thou shalt nots’. No way! Forget it. God! He’s just so indescribably predictable. He’s just…so…so BORING!”
DN: “No, wait…I was joking. HE won’t really be there. Oh, he’s disappeared back into the fire and brimstone. Damnation! I say, have we still got Cliff Richard on standby?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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