Down the Local

Some more of my words turned into a song by Chaz Crane.


http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/down-the-local/

Cockney Sparrow

About twenty or more years ago, I was walking over to the local supermarket, when I came across a baby sparrow huddled up against a low wall. The flats that the wall belonged to are forty-plus feet high, so though the little mite had survived the fall, there was no possible way its mother could get it back into the nest and a local cat was bound to stumble across it sooner or later.

 

Anyway, touched by its plight, I hurried back upstairs, found a small basket with a lid and returned to the chick. As I tried to pick it up, it squawked and shrieked and spread its wings trying to look bigger and more imposing, which was an impressive display for such a youngster given it wasn’t even two inches big and probably weighed an ounce dripping wet.

So I scooped the tiny sparrow up, with it loudly protesting the entire time, put it in my basket, took it back to my flat and fashioned a home for it. First I cut one side out of a cardboard box and covered it with cling film, then cut a flap in the back to act as a door. Finally, I put a number of cotton wool balls into the small basket, turning it into a surrogate nest, all nice and cosy.

At first, the baby sparrow was rightfully wary of me, but when you’re as hungry as growing birds are and someone keeps bringing you food, it’s not long before trust is gained and given. I fed it oats soaked in milk, small bits of bacon fat (remembering how we used to put the rind out for the birds), crushed up nuts and slivers of dried fruit, all supplied by a pair of tweezers. The diet was pretty much guesswork on my part, but it gobbled down what I provided and seemed to thrive.

After just three or four days, I started leaving the box open and all I had to do was walk into the room, tap the food bowl I was carrying and “Birdy” - as I had so imaginatively called my little friend - would fly across the room, land on the rim of the bowl and open its tiny beak demanding to be fed.

Every evening, when my girlfriend of the time, Allison, came home from work, first thing she would unfailingly do was ask how Birdy was and go and check on her. That’s when an amusing idea came to me in the form of one of those sugar coated mini eggs. Sorting through the bag, I found the most convincingly egg-looking one and just before my other half got home, I placed it on the cotton wool in Birdy’s nest.

I was sitting in the living room when Allison got back that night and as usual she asked how Birdy was and went straight into the bedroom to check. A few seconds passed and then she cried in a voice full of surprise and delight “Tony! Tony!”

“Yes,” I responded, trying to sound innocent, but my voice clearly giving away my barely suppressed laughter. There was a brief pause and she called back, “Nothing…”

When she came from the bedroom, I was grinning from ear to ear. “You bastard,” she said. “I really thought for a moment Birdy had laid an egg.”

“Yes,” I laughed. “She’s only a baby and an egg that size would have split her in half, but you still fell for it.” She replied that she would get me back and sometime later, she did, in the form of a large plastic spider placed half behind a pipe in the bathroom. Being a terrible arachnophobe, I was almost sick from fright, so she did indeed get me back. Good and proper.

It was a shame that my suppressed laughter gave me away, because the next part of my plan - expecting to be called in to take a look at the "egg" - was to amble in, pick it up, pop it into my mouth and crunch it up. I think the look on Allison's face would have been priceless. Just the same, all these years on, my prank still makes me smile when I think about it.

Birdy grew fast and within another week, when she started flying around the room, I realised it was time for her to leave the nest. She was clearly ready and cooped up in my bedroom, I was scared she’d bang into a wall and hurt herself.

Next morning, a nice bright warm day, I took Birdy in her box/cage out onto my balcony. She had only been with me a matter of days, but having been a mum to her and having won her trust, I was sad having to let her go, but knew it was the right thing to do. I opened the front of the box and Birdy hopped out onto the wall. She hopped about a bit, looking out towards the big world she was about to enter, then she turned back around, took a good long look at me like she was saying goodbye, then turned again, spread her wings and flew off like a tiny rocket.

 

I freely admit to shedding a few tears watching her go, but I was also pleased that I'd managed to give Birdy her life back when the little soul I'd found, feisty or not, likely wouldn't have lasted an hour or two out on the street. They say that God looks out for even the smallest fallen sparrow and on this occasion, I guess I was the one sent to do the rescuing.

For many years since then, sparrows had all but disappeared from London. No one seems to know quite why, but they went from a daily part of life, to non-existent. Recently, however, I have started seeing a few about again. I particularly noticed because they have been conspicuous by their absence for so long.

There are actually a breeding pair of sparrows nesting somewhere in the downstairs communal garden. Whenever I see them hopping around foraging, I can’t help but wonder, or even hope, that one or other is a direct descendant from Birdy and that perhaps I had some hand in continuing Birdy's line and in my own small way helped to stop sparrows from vanishing for all time.

Still, a comparatively huge chocolate egg, Allison, really?




 

White Lightning

My family never had much money when I was growing up and couldn’t afford to buy me expensive toys and games like the other kids had. To make up for this paucity of plastic playthings, I developed a truly amazing imagination and came to inhabit a world that was authentic in every detail.

 

My favourite escapist game was daydreaming about being a cowboy. Not any old cowboy, but the greatest gunslinger around. I was a good guy with a hard edge and baddies feared me and my blazing law-bringer because they knew I was super fast, deadly accurate and remorseless in my battle against the forces of evil.

 

Like any decent lawman, I rode a fantasy steed called White Lightning – an equine friend more fleet of foot and more loyal than any other horse in the west. Wore an imaginary Stetson to shade the hot sun from my eyes (even when there was a bit of a light drizzle outside). Had a pretend Winchester thrust through a loop on my fanciful, hand-tooled, Mexican saddle and toted a made up colt 45, complete with non-existent mother-of-pearl handle, carried in a fictional many-notched holster slung low on my hip.

 

In my time as a fake US marshal, I cleaned up several lawless towns, tracked and gunned down many a murdering bank robber and rogue comanchero, butchered the entire Indian nation (in my day, pre PC, the injuns were always the bad guys), created the legend of the mysterious hero on the thundering white stallion and kissed two girls from my school, Sharon and Tracey, whom I liked to visualise as pretty and obliging inhabitants of my tough western utopia – though in reality they were the pillows off of my bed.

 

A large, tatty, soft toy monkey I owned came in handy during my cowboy games and we had regular fist fights, in which I would punch him from one side of the room to the other and back again. We would roll around the floor, Mickey trying to strangle me and then I would gain the upper hand and throw him against the wall like a Vietnamese guy killing a guinea pig.

 

Mickey’s face (Mickey the Monkey) was made of rubber and squashed under my knuckles in a most satisfying manner. Usually, outlaw Mickey was called Roger Cooper, named after a little shit from my school who used to twist my ear or give me dead legs and I would beat him mercilessly. If voodoo worked, Roger would have been black, blue and dead.

 

Anyway, one day, I was galloping along on White Lightning in hot pursuit of a particularly vile bunch of outlaws who had just robbed and murdered a stagecoach full of young women (including that bitch Sharon, who I’d gone off after she spat on my school blazer when I was standing in front of her in the dinner queue), when an unfortunate accident occurred.

 

Just as I drew my shiny peacemaker to bring down the first of the leering, unshaven desperadoes, a mentally constructed diamond-back rattle snake slithered into my path, thus spooking my pretend steed, causing him to rear up and throw me violently to the ground. I hit the mythical desert floor hard and the jarring impact made my dreamt up six-gun go off – the imaginary wayward bullet entering my head via my nose, blowing out my heroic brains and allowing the villains to escape.

 

I was never the same after that.

 

These days, I just drink a lot of White Lightning, rock back and forth a lot and dribble down my chin. I still miss my super powers, though. Particularly the x-ray vision and my bat cape. Wibble.

 

 

　

Practical Jokery

I haven’t done a whole lot of practical jokery in my life, but when I decided to, they were doozies, as you are about to hear.

 

My first victim was my older sister, Shirley. My Dad summed up my relationship with Shirley as, “you two are always fighting like cat and dog.” This was true, but I was the innocent in all of it because Shirley was both a bully and a snitch.

 

In fact, Shirley bullied me when I was too small to fight back, but when I grew big enough to get her in a headlock and rub dirty socks in her face, she switched to the tactic of getting me into trouble with my mum at every possible opportunity – which wasn’t difficult with mum delighting in slagging me off and nagging me senseless every moment I was in her company. That’s what being raised a Catholic did for her.

 

I remember, when I was around seven and she was thirteen, my dear sister folding a thin mattress in half like a sandwich, turning me into the filling, and then jumping up and down on it. She was a lump, my sister, and soon developed into a young woman with a forty-two inch bust, with a barrel body to match. Five feet two and at least fourteen stone if she was an ounce, meant her using me as a trampoline was no joke.

 

Then there was the time she knelt on me and repeatedly rubbed her knuckles spitefully on my wishbone, not even desisting after she had managed to make me cry. Or the time she pinned me down and roughly tickled me until I was screaming for mercy. There was nothing playful about it, just tickling way too hard and with nothing but malice. Bullying cow that she was.

 

Anyway, a few years on, I took my revenge on her in a most creative way. At the time, we lived in an old Victorian house that had provided a few creepy and inexplicable events already, which made my prank all the more effective (and terrifying).

 

The family were all sitting watching TV one Sunday night and luckily for me, the first to need a toilet break was Shirley. As she headed off into the hall and down the stairs to the bathroom on the landing below, I could barely contain my glee.

 

You see, what I had figured out was that the toilet chain to the overhead cistern just about reached the door jamb. Thus, I had pulled the toilet chain and then backed from the room, pinning the chain handle in place with the door. Shirley duly arrived outside the loo – in a hallway lit only by the light filtering down from the kitchen – pushed open the door to the unlit bathroom and then let out a blood-curdling shriek as the toilet mysteriously flushed itself and the chain swung violently back and forth clanging against the cistern pipe.

 

She was a big lass was our Shirley, but she proved she could move at some speed when necessary, and she came hurtling back up the stairs, screaming all the way, bursting back into the living room howling and crying, face gone so red it was almost purple. A gibbering wreck, she managed to explain what had just frightened the living crap out of her, only to have my dad dismiss the whole thing as nonsense. A toilet didn’t just flush itself, so she must have imagined the whole thing.

 

How I kept a straight face through all this and not give away my own involvement in this “supernatural” event, I will never know. Thereafter, for several weeks, Shirley refused to go to the toilet at night unless someone accompanied her and I never did own up, leaving her convinced a toilet flushing ghost resided in our bathroom.

 

After a good bit of time had passed, Shirley finally calmed down and began braving toilet visits on her own once more. Well, that is, until I did it to her again!

 

Bruhahaha and other evil noises. Teach her to mess with me.

 

My next victims were two of my friends. At the time, I was living with a mate and his family, my loving mother having kicked me out at age sixteen. Again, this was a somewhat spooky old house, which lent itself very well to the prank I had lined up.

 

I was the only one at home at the time, but expecting my mate and his younger brother to turn up at any moment. In preparation, I dressed myself up, switched all the lights off and lay in wait. On my head I had a fright wig, in my mouth a set of plastic fangs. I then put a black crombie overcoat on back to front and slipped a torch into the neckline so it would shine its light up across my face, casting all sorts of eerie shadows.

 

I didn’t have long to wait and a few minutes later, I heard a key go into the front door and peering through the banisters at the top of the stairs, watched as the two lads came into the front hall. They were no sooner in than I made my scary appearance at the top of the stairs, torch shining across my face and glinting off my fake fangs, arms outstretched in front of me zombie-like.

 

As soon as they spotted me, I began to shamble down the stairs, emitting a low growling from my throat. For a long moment, they froze where they were, eyes wide, mouths dropping open, then the pair of them took off at a lick even a scalded hare couldn’t have competed with. Getting the door open only delayed them for half a second and then they were off down the path and through the garden gate, with me in hot pursuit in a loping side-to-side run that would have made Igor proud.

Passers by looked on at all this with expressions of either bewilderment or amusement depending on whether they realised they were witnessing some silly youthful shenanigans and not anything more sinister. We hadn’t gone more than a few yards before my two mates regained their senses and realised it was me chasing them and not the horrific apparition they’d first thought me to be, but by then they were so spooked, they kept right on running.

 

Truth be told, my hair was standing on end as well, so though I knew it was me under that fright wig, I had somehow managed to even frighten myself. Finally, the three of us came to a breathless halt, me gasping for air and laughing, them gasping for air, calling me rude names and vowing they would pay me back. They did try, bless them, but they never did get me as good as I got them that night.

 

Then comes victim number three. I was in my mid twenties by now and working as a tube driver on the Bakerloo line. One day, one of my colleagues was riding up front with me on his way to pick up his own train further up the line. Peter, his name was.

Peter was slim, blond and quite a handsome chap. That aside, he was also a dirty sod. He collected porn films and I mean seriously collected, to the point where he would travel to Holland armed with a list of titles he couldn’t buy in Britain and smuggle them back home. Had a whole wardrobe full of them, apparently. This was at a time before the porn explosion went off in the UK and aside from girlie mags, there was little else on offer for the smut aficionado and not even any internet filth to drool over.

 

Now, in the old 1938 rolling stock, the driver’s door invariably had a small hole where some screw had fallen out over the years and when bored (which was all of the time) the drivers would have a peer through the hole at the passengers, generally in the hope of spotting some good looking woman or other.

 

Well, a cunning plan struck me. Pure devilment. While Peter chatted away to me, I leaned down and began peeping through the hole in the door and after a moment or two, I said “wow” followed by a low whistle. Breaking off in mid sentence, Peter looked down at me. “What?” he said. “There’s this bird sitting just outside,” I said, “and I can see right up her skirt.”

 

“Let’s have a look,” he said, interest instantly peeked.

 

“Hang on a second,” I said. “Blimey, she’s got suspenders on and everything. Cor!”

 

“Come on. Let me have a look,” Peter repeated, tugging at my shoulder.

 

Pretending to be reluctant, I sat up and made way for him, whereupon he dropped to one knee and with his hands either side of his face to steady himself against the door, put his eye to the hole. The second he was in this position, I reached up, turned the handle and swung the door open.

 

What a tableau! Peter on his knees peering through a hole in a door that was no longer in front of him and a packed carriage full of passengers all swivelling their heads to stare in his direction, wondering what on earth he was doing. For a painfully embarrassing second, Peter remained kneeling in front of his confused audience, but when the penny dropped, he leapt up and backwards to dodge from sight.

 

Um, that’s when my joke went a bit wrong, because Peter jumped back with such force, he crunched his head against a piece of overhead equipment and blood started to pour down the side of his face. Actually, it went more than just a bit wrong, because Pete had to book off duty and go to the hospital for stitches.

 

Peter was not best pleased with me, to say the least. I lost count of the times I offered up grovelling apologies, but all to no avail. He never forgave me, rarely spoke to me again, even after years had passed, and on the odd occasion that he did, it was in a clipped staccato that let me know offering me even the smallest communication was painful to him.

 

I couldn’t have foreseen what was going to happen, of course, and it was so damned funny, I didn’t feel as badly about it as I perhaps should. All my other mates on the job thought it was bloody hilarious when I told them what I’d done and knowing them, I dare say they ribbed him about it mercilessly. Might be that was what stopped him from forgiving and forgetting, in fact, rather than the initial incident.

 

Obviously I’m sorry he cut his scalp open, but I wouldn’t have missed seeing him kneeling there, hands pushing against an invisible door, one eye shut and the other peering through a small hole that had suddenly turned into an open doorway. If only there had been camera phones at the time…

 

If Carlsberg played practical jokes, they’d be the best practical jokes in the world.

 

 

 

 

Me and My Bird

Girls, ladies, women folk, Mrs, Miss and even bloody Ms which is impossible to even attempt to say without looking and sounding like a complete twonk, I am going to tell you about my bird. My pet cockatiel bird, that is, not my girlfriend type bird, touchy.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you about her, about our story, me and my bird, and you girls will weep buckets. Lots of men will too and not only the gay ones. Face it fellows, we cry at toilet roll adverts and women get drunk and kick bloke’s heads in outside curry houses before puking and passing out in the gutter. It’s a topsy-turvy world, lads. Oh yes. But if Naomi Campbell spat on my face or punched me, I would slap her good and hard. A line must be drawn somewhere.

Anyway, I was walking home from a shopping trip on my birthday in 2003. It was February the twelfth, should you wish to put notes in your diaries re cards and expensive gifts. I had been broke for a long time and having had a small windfall, and as I was starting to look like a hobo, and given it was my birthday (Feb 12th) and as I was alone with no family or friends and would be getting sod all from anyone, not so much as a cake nor a candle, I decided to treat myself to a few new togs. Items of apparel, don’t you know Mary Poppins.

Well, on the way back from my shopping trip, I was passing my local pub and feeling a bit sad and lonely, I decided to pop in for a beer. It was a wet, cold, very grey, blustery day and the warmth of the pub seemed as good a refuge as any and I thought a little company may just raise my spirits too. And it was my bloody birthday (12th Feb in case I haven’t mentioned it). I deserved a drink.

Inside I found the middle-aged owner with a face like his poodle had just died from being cooked in a sad but funny chinese restaurant misunderstanding, two blokes who had clearly been killed by their first sip of warm bitter and a sleeping dog. There was no music, the heating wasn’t high enough to keep the chill out, leaving the place colder than the pint in front of me and the landlord was amusing himself by scrolling through teletext on the TV over the bar. Definitely no dancing-girls or even any jolly cockney banter. Happy birthday, Tony, I thought, welcome to hell’s waiting room.

Ten minutes into all this frivolity but before the froth had died on my pint of chemicals, the door swung open - like a scene from some hammer horror film – and swept by rain, wet leaves and burger wrappers, this guy popped his head in and said:

“There’s a parrot out here”.

I looked at the dead men in the corner, misery behind the bar looked at me, the dog woke up and looked at all of us, and our eyes all said the same thing – he has got to be taking the flipping michael!

“No, really,” the bloke said, obviously hearing the disbelief our eyes were saying. “There’s a parrot out here”.

So I said, go on then, I’ll fall for it and walked outside.

Get the tissues out boys, this is the first tearful bit. I’m going already and I’ve heard it before. On the wet pavement huddled this bedraggled, sodden, shivering little mite and being a big soft touch my heart went out to her. I realised she was all in and wouldn’t see out the night, so I scooped her up, took her inside and put her into an empty crisp box supplied by mine host. After downing my birthday pint in one and bandaging my fingers and stemming the blood from her frantic beak attacks, I took her home.

At first I cobbled together a cage out of a big cardboard box with thin sticks for bars. Then, a couple of days later, I built her quite a cool cage out of scavenged stuff – a kitchen cupboard, a bamboo bookcase and twigs from the local park – mainly doing so because I still had flip all money and couldn’t afford a cage. I could buy a “proper” one now, but she seems happy in her modified cupboard so why disturb her? I still don’t have much cash anyway and my birthday has just been and gone again (Feb 12th), and I needed my few pennies for a celebratory packet of biscuits and a pint of meths.

She has been with me now for over 11 years. She has gone from a depressed, skinny, half tail-less and mistrustful bird, to a happy, cocky little nut case. Mostly she is to be found on my shoulder, nibbling at my ears. She loves me she does. So she bloody should. Be dead if it wasn’t for me…

She comes and goes as she pleases from her cupboard cage and has the run of the place. A ceaseless flow of bird poo and several million molted feathers are my enemy!

Her name is B.B.

B.B. stands for Birthday Bird.

She just whistled to me.

If you’re not crying by now, you’re a hard-hearted cow. Yes, you too Kirk! I know you’re not gay, just stop blubbering.

And no I’m not homophobic, before anyone starts chucking their toys out of their pram. Arachnophobic yes, homophobic no. So if you are gay, but refrain from growing eight legs and scuttling across my carpet, I have no problem with you. Otherwise, it’s the rolled up newspaper for you my gay leggy friend.

If she and I survive for another 2 years, BB will become my longest ever relationship. Well, apart from my childhood cat, Ginger, who was also rescued from the street, but by my equally soft-hearted dad.

Ginger, linked with my mother’s maiden name, makes my porn star name “Ginger King”. Just thought you’d like to know that. It doesn't work with BB because a certain blues singer already took the moniker BB King about forty years ago.

... Sadly, after weeks of being ill, with the Blue Cross unable to help due to her having an enlarged heart, BB seemed to perk right up for a couple of days, but yesterday she suddenly took a turn for the worse and last night my lovely little baby died in my hands. Though I knew she was gone, I couldn't put her down for a good hour and just sat stroking her as though she was still with me.

God rest you my loving, tiny friend. When my tears finally stop, I will never forget you. For years, you were my only companion and you gave me affection even when I was grumpy and shouted at you to shut up when you were chirping non-stop. I will miss those sounds now. I will miss tickling your little neck and you snuggling up behind my ear and nuzzling me. I will miss you sitting on my shoulder and turning into a little beggar whenever you knew there was food about. I will miss you being there in the morning and miss saying goodnight to you before bed. I will even miss you biting my ear to remind me your food bowl was empty.


Birthday Bird, for as many of those as I have left, I will raise a glass to you. Sleep tight little one.  

Jack of All Trades (2)

The second thing I did to earn money – this time an actual wage paid by a third party rather than just extra pocket money from my folks – was when I was eleven going on twelve. My dad got me the job helping out in a greengrocers owned by some guy he knew. I seem to remember the shop was on Lambeth Walk, but I can’t swear to that. It’s all so long ago, my memory of it is hazy to say the least.

 

The chap I worked for was quite young, as I recall, though I couldn’t tell you what he looked like. He didn’t let me serve customers as I had for several years in my parent’s shop, I was simply a fetch and carry boy, humping sacks of spuds, onions and sprouts, restocking the fruit display, sweeping up, cleaning windows and the like. By then I could add and subtract as quick as a mathematician and had a well-developed knack for charming customers, but I guess he just saw me as a kid and not capable enough to be trusted with his punters.

 

The one job I really hated doing was preparing the beetroot. Out in the shop’s back yard was an enormous copper cauldron and when a couple of sacks of beetroots were simmering away in it, the stink it gave off was horrible. Can’t remember the exact smell now, but think combination of cooking sprouts and boiling laundry and I reckon you’ll be somewhere close. That was the only chore I really didn’t like, but while humping heavy sacks about all day was no problem for a strong kid like I was, most of the time I was just bored stiff, a theme that was to follow me throughout most of my working life – bored, bored, dreadfully bored.

 

Though my time working there is more a ghost of a memory than anything more concrete, a few things have stayed with me – the first time I was told to go down the cellar for some empty boxes, for example. The cellar was at the bottom of a rickety wooden staircase and boy was it inky black down there. I was never happy in dark places, my over-active imagination peopling them with all kinds of witches, ghouls and monsters – the same ones that tormented me in nightmares – and the damp, musty smell, only helped flesh out my grim imaginings.

 

No intention of venturing into what had, in my young mind, now become hell’s vestibule, with only the glow from the open doorway behind me for company, I duly fumbled around on the wall for a light switch. I only discovered the switch had no cover on it when a jolt from the unprotected wires threw me against the opposite wall and I found myself, after a rapid tumble from top to bottom, in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs.

 

Winded and battered, heart playing bongos on my eardrums from the shock, I lay still for a moment, monsters forgotten, trying to assess whether I’d picked up more than a few bruises from my short, painful trip. A sound from above finally made me look up and there, framed in the doorway, stood my employer. Obviously come to investigate what all the crashing was about, he was peering down at me, holding his stomach and laughing fit to bust.

 

Back in the late 60s, health and safety, or anyone being sued for damages by a no win no fee solicitor, had never been heard of, so he could glean maximum amusement from my accident without fear of consequences. What a prick, I thought, he knew those live wires were hanging out and didn’t even bother to warn me.

 

When he got his laughter under control, to make me hate him a bit more, instead of asking if I was alright, he just told me to stop messing about, like falling down the stairs was my own stupid fault and to hurry up and get his boxes. In revenge, I sulked for the rest of the day, spent as much time as possible skiving off in the toilet and made every task last twice as long as usual.

 

While I again couldn’t tell you what she looked like now, this guy had a young wife, or possibly girlfriend, not sure which she was. I do know she was pretty and that from the first moment I clapped eyes on her, I was immediately in the grip of a major crush. She only had to crook her finger and there I was, a moon-eyed puppy dog, desperate to please and begging for praise.

 

One afternoon, I was in the back of the shop and when I heard her calling out from the flat above, I was off up the stairs like a rabbit out of a cannon, taking the stairs in threes, a blur of eagerness. Turned out that while decorating, she had managed to lock herself in one of the rooms. To avoid getting paint on them, all the doorknobs had been removed and without thinking, she’d pushed the door shut and trapped herself inside.

 

I didn’t know what to do, so I ran back downstairs to get help. I told my boss what had happened and it was then that the loathing I’d felt for him laughing at me for falling down the stairs was confirmed. “Leave the silly bitch where she is,” he said. “I’m too busy, she’ll just have to wait.” Well, I hated misogyny before I even knew there was a word for it, just as I’ve always hated injustice or bullying of any kind and if I’d ever felt any respect for him, I certainly didn’t after that. How dare he call my beloved a silly bitch. Not only that, but I figured she’d believe I was complicit in leaving her locked upstairs and to think she wouldn’t like me anymore cut deep.

 

One other thing about my time working there springs to mind and I’m not sure whether to laugh about it, or die of embarrassment. The shop hadn’t always been a green grocers, a fact born witness too by a number of mannequins that, along with piles of empty boxes and disused shelving units, were also stored in the dank cellar. Now, until I managed to get my hands on a soggy copy of Fiesta, which I found in the street, half floating in a rain puddle, I had little conception of what lay beneath a lady’s togs. My mother was brought up by Roman Catholic nuns, so flesh in my household was never on display and discussion of anything relating to the body or sex was such a terrible taboo, when a school mate once asked me if I’d ever spied on my sister in the bathroom (as he had on his), I remember my stomach knotting in horror and my throat constricting with revulsion at the mere thought.

 

Fiesta was a nudie mag, but by today’s standards, tame to say the very least, being no more than a collection of page three type topless poses, any possible glimpse of pudenda being painted out or waxed over. Oddly enough, this matched with my only previous experience of curiously looking up the skirts of my sister’s dolls to find out what delights they hid and here I was confronted by a number of female shop dummies who were anatomically the same. That is too say, smooth.

 

Hormones fizzing and knowing no better, I found those dummies oddly arousing and spent rather more time in the cellar than I otherwise would have, or indeed, had need to. I was fascinated by them and let’s just say, I wasn’t always down there only collecting empty boxes. All part of the growing up process, I suppose, so I harbour no deep sense of shame about it.

 

I would like to point out that this didn’t tip over into some kind of macabre lifelong fetish and neither do the dead eyes and painted on faces of blow up women bring back any similar lustful rushes of blood. It was a brief love affair and once I left that job and moved on, my mannequin harem was soon forgotten, as was the pretty partner of my chauvinist employer.

 

At that age, passions burn bright, hurt for a time, then fizzle out as quickly as they came. Exquisitely painful while they last, admittedly, but gone in a flash. Besides, by that time, I had moved on to a deep, unrequited love, for a dimpled friend of my older sister and the glimpses of stocking top and suspender which her 1960s' style mini skirt offered up on a regular basis to rock my young world. When my sister's two friends got into play fights, boy oh boy, they were about the most erotic thing my innocent young eyes had ever become glued to.

As for the beetroot cauldron, I couldn’t see the back of that foul-smelling bugger soon enough, nor my pig of a boss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack of All Trades (1)

I guess the first work I ever did in return for payment was at the age of eight. My mum and dad had a florists in Clapham. Next to their small shop, which was more like a hut than a real building, were a set of wooden gates and when the weather wasn’t too sodden, they would open them and put a stall out – one of those old time market ones, made of wood and painted dark green, complete with wheels and a canopy. In the school holidays, I sometimes worked the stall and how grown up it made me feel selling the flowers with my trader’s cloth money belt tied around my waist. Dark blue it was, with three zipped pockets, one for copper, one for silver and one for notes.

 

I think I sold much more than my parents could have simply because people would come along and be charmed by my “cuteness“. I’d often hear the ladies remark to their blokes something along the lines of “ahh look, bless him, let’s buy some flowers“ or “look at him, proper little man“.

 

The other benefit of being cute, apart from increasing sales for my folks, was that usually they’d tip me a shilling or two on top of whatever they spent on flowers and like most kids, I was a mercenary little git and if flashing my baby blues brought a bit of extra cash for my own pocket, all to the good. Their admiring stares and pats on the head were also welcome, particularly as I had a mother who did little else but criticise me from dawn to dusk.

 

Luckily, I’ve always been pretty sharp at mental arithmetic and working the stall, I had to be. No decimalization then, no sir: roses two shillings a stem, marigolds one and nine, carnations one and six, bunch of daffs two and a tanner, potted geranium three bob, iris one and thru pence, small mixed bunch half a crown – large bunch five bob, six tulips one and ten. Most kids now wouldn’t have a clue, but in my day you either learned your times tables, or you got a whack with a wooden ruler over the back of your hand and calculators hadn‘t even been thought of then, let alone allowed to dull childrens’ use of their own grey matter.

 

The flowers seemed ridiculously expensive to me at the time, but at the age of eight, why anyone would waste two bob on a rose when you could buy a bar of Cadburys for the same price was a mystery. Adults, what were they thinking? They did get a spray of fern and a bunch of gyp thrown in for nothing, but even so, several dead plants, wrapped up in glorified chip paper, or a big chunk of chocolate, no contest surely?

 

Of course, I doubt a kid could do the same thing now (even if any of them could count properly). That money belt wouldn‘t stay around their waist for five minutes, not in lawless south London. Plus some busy body now would be bound to see such child labour as abuse and take them into care. Shame. I learned more working that stall than I ever did in maths class, ruler inflicted pain or not. It was work, but it was fun as well and made me feel important.

 

A year or two down the line, my folks took another shop on the other side of the road and opened a green grocer. I worked there as well and in no time at all, I could judge five pounds of spuds or a couple of pounds of carrots to the nearest ounce every time, more often than not getting it bang on the mark. I was also rather proud of the skilled way I could spin the brown paper bags, twisting the corners tight and securing their contents of grapes or plums with a flourish.

 

Sadly, no tips were forthcoming in the grocers, unlike on the flower stall, but my pocket money was always better on the days I worked – though all too soon gone on comics and sweets. My dad used to get exasperated with me. Money burns a hole in your pocket, he used to tell me sternly on discovering I was unfailingly broke an hour after being paid. He was right. It always has and explains why I’m still broke now, forty-odd years on. Never could save for rainy days and I’m afraid I always have been that fool soon parted from his money.

 

This was all in the mid sixties and I guess my folks were some of the first to see the opportunity of the black immigrant pound note, not only stocking their shop with the usual green grocery fare, but also yams, plantains, ochre, dried salt fish and what seemed strangest of all to our British sensibilities, pickled pig snouts and tails floating in barrels of brine.

 

Snouts, doesn’t really describe it, because basically, whole eyeless pig faces bobbed about in those barrels like something from a horror film, which us unworldly whiteys all found rather disconcerting. Just the same, if that’s what the local west indian people wanted and the till kept ringing, our squeamishness had to take a back seat.

 

Working that old-fashioned till with its many keys was another skill. When you have to ring up one pound, seven shillings and nine pence ha’penny, you start to run out of fingers. Those old clunkers were the origin of the word “KaChing”, because that is exactly the noise they made just before the drawer flew out – like Arkwright in a scene from Open All Hours, often catching the unwary a sharp blow to the mid or nether regions depending on how tall one was.

 

The old greengrocer shop is gone now, demolished to be replaced by a modern, soul-less, featureless, square block of smoked glass. Had to happen, though, the old place was falling to bits when we had it and forty years on it must have been held together with sticky tape and prayers.

 

Oddly, the little shack on the other side of the road is still there. No idea what’s still holding that place up. To call it ramshakle would be an understatement. I walk past it occasionally and the memories come flooding back, like when you smell fresh bread or cut grass and are transported once more to childhood when those aromas first hit your young senses.

 

The old green flower stall has somehow survived as well and now other people set it up on the corner in front of Clapham North tube station. One day I may go and talk to them and fill them in on a little of its history. I wonder who had it before we did. It was past its prime when we got it and has to be a century old at the very least. They built things to last in those days. No MDF and plastic fittings then, ready to fall apart at the first breath of wind or drop of rain.

 

Most of the old shops are gone from the street now. Taskers, the sweet shop on the corner, has been turned into a flat. The two Tasker children were my little friends and many a happy afternoon was spent upstairs eating toast, drinking old-fashioned Tizer (before they withdrew it from sale due to its alleged cocaine content) and squealing at episodes of Doctor Who and the Daleks with William Hartnell.

 

The old café is gone, once owned and run by Les, a man so tight we used to joke he would show the bread the margarine, but not actually allow the two to meet. I used to go there with my dad most days. He always had a crusty cheese roll, which he would sqaush to make it easier to bite into and a mug of tea strong enough to stand the spoon up in. My favourite was egg and tomato in one of those soft torpedo-shaped rolls, washed down with coke. I remember one day asking for a Seven Up instead and being really disappointed to find it was just a type of lemonade and wishing I’d stuck with my dimpled bottle of Coke instead.

 

The pet shop went many years ago, once run by a man my dad described as “the Jew boy”. This was pre PC days, of course, and the terms used would curl your hair if you heard them now. Probably get you arrested and fined, in fact.

 

There was also a Polish guy who ran the local cobblers and key cutting shop, ever known as Polack, a mute everyone called dummy, all Welsh guys were designated Taffy, all Scotsmen were Jock, all Irish men Paddy, and black people were invariably described as darkies by just about everyone. I know how appalling that may sound now, but in general, it was just how people talked back then and I don’t actually remember there being any particular malice in it. Not for the most part, anyway, though I admit black people were viewed with considerable suspicion.

 

Before you condemn, however, you have to bear in mind, like my parents, these were people who had struggled through two world wars and only a relatively few years earlier, had been fighting tooth and nail to stop invaders taking over their country. Then they were suddenly expected to reverse the mindset instilled into them over many years and welcome with open arms people so different to anything they had ever known, it was akin to an invasion of aliens from outer space. Naturally enough, in my opinion, they were often wary at best.

 

The regularly trotted out complaint that people were brought over to do the jobs the English didn’t want or thought they were too good for (a distortion which persists to this day), didn’t much help to smooth relations. The truth of it was that the generation of young men who would have been driving buses, laying roads, or working as porters in the hospitals throughout the 1950s, had been decimated fighting Hitler. They brought in foreign labour because the labour we would have had were laying dead in fields across Europe and the world.

 

Anyway, the streets I spent so many good hours in, playing and laughing with my gang of mates, are very different now. When I pass by, however, I don’t see it how it is, but how it was. Taskers sweetshop is still there, selling colourful drinks from an early version of soda stream and charging a penny deposit on the bottle. The chip shop still serves up a free portion of fish batter with each fourpenny bag of vinegar-soaked chips. My dad is still in the backyard of the florists, sleeves rolled up and working hard as he always did. As for me and my little friends, I’m sure we’re still around somewhere, no doubt playing run outs or doctors and nurses and giggling fit to bust.

 

 

 

 

F W Woolworths - Gone But Not Forgotten

Woolworths I miss you badly
As I write my list today
Gone but not forgotten
Why couldn’t you make it pay

 

No more kitchen wall clocks
No more super mops
Gone the paint and rollers
You really were the tops

 

I need a plastic tea-tray
And lots of pick and mix
But gone your many treasures
Where will I get my fix

 

I miss the socks and cushions
The tea pots, pads and pencils
I miss the toys and frying pans
The dye, the mugs and stencils

 

I need some brown shoe polish
And own brand paint remover
I need a pair of earphones
And dust bags for my Hoover

 

I want some black boot laces
And brass numbers for my gate
I want a funny birthday card
To send to my good mate

 

Where will I find my baubles
And chocolates for my tree
The tins of Cadbury’s roses
On buy one get one free

 

Woolies I mourn your passing
You’ve been with me since youth
There’s no shop quite like you
And that’s the honest truth

 

As a kid I loved your wonder
And not bothered by your staff
My little gang would nick things
But only for a laugh

 

My sister used to work there
My mum would shop there too
Sis filled her bags with items
But only charged for two

 

Now only left with memories
Of your amazing range of stock
The day they said you’d gone bust
Came as quite a shock

 

The diverse things I needed
Piled up high all in one place
Your passing into history
Is simply a disgrace

I Climbed A Mountain

I climbed a mountain in my mind, to see what I would find up there
Not much, not really, nothing great, just blood and bone and greying hair

I tried to climb the tree of sleep, to nestle in its bowers
But the nightmares came, I woke again and wept for several hours…

I climbed into the morning and peered up at the skies
But the emptiness discovered there, filled up my heart with sighs

I climbed the stairs, went to the shop, the highlight of my life
I used to have big dreams, you know, a job, good friends, a wife

I climbed out of insanity, that dark and eerie land
But my mind soon slipped away again, like fingers clutching sand

I climbed into the next day, to escape from all the pain
But as I climbed, I realised, it would be just the same again

I climbed into a bottle and hid away down deep
I know that’s not a clever thing, but at least I got some sleep

Great Britain

Soft falls the rain upon the glen
Home to the canny Scottish men
Who wear the kilt for father’s sake
The past a chain they do not break

 

Soft falls the rain on peat-bog fen
Home to the dark-eyed Irish men
Who wear the shamrock on their chest
And treat like kings the lowest guest

 

Soft falls the rain on welcoming hill
Where throaty Welshmen boom and trill
Where rare on coal face the axe now rings
But still undaunted the miner sings

 

Soft falls the rain on country lane
Where in tolerance the English reign
Who bind emotions as they are taught
Ne’er to voice their inner thought

 

Soft falls the rain on this gentle land
Where split, but joined, four races stand
And though we have fallen to enemies pleasure
Let them pour scorn, then repent at their leisure.

 

An Ode to Heartache

 

A snore like a sob, a cough, a yawn

I open my eyes to drizzling dawn

And I think of you

 

Cheerless cold breakfast, a shave, brush teeth

Look out the window, but find no relief

And I think of you

 

Pull on creased trousers, a shirt, tie lace

Mirror reflecting an unhappy face

And I think of you

 

Trudge down staircase, open door, depart

Wind moans a dirge like the pain in my heart

And I think of you

 

Back at the coal face, clock in, fake smile

Can’t stop these sad thoughts for even a while

And I think of you

 

Reach my bed late, no sleep, mind spins

Neither peace nor rest for all of my sins

And I think of you

 

A snore like a sob, a cough, a yawn

I open my eyes to drizzling dawn…

Pleasurable Pongs

I guess near the top of almost everyone’s list of favourite smells would be freshly mown grass, baked bread and brewed coffee and I’m no different. Obviously frying bacon would be right up there as well, but I wonder how many people would agree with the other pongs I find pleasurable.

 

For instance, I love the smell of diesel oil. Seems random, especially as I have never driven a car and have no call to visit garages, but I think this may be because my Mum once worked as a petrol pump attendant at Dagenham Motors. I could have been only three or four at the time and Mum would drop me off with a nearby lady and her small son, where I would happily play all day until she came to collect me when her shift was over. Diesel oil, therefore, seems to have linked itself in my mind with play and being carefree.

 

I don’t know who the lady was, friend, relative or paid child minder, and nor do I remember her son. My one abiding memory is of a toy record player the other boy owned. It was plastic and I seem to remember it was red and yellow. The records it played were also plastic and to activate them you pushed them into a slot. His music collection consisted of Nellie the Elephant, Whistle While You Work, Three Blind Mice, plus various other nursery rhymes, but the one that has stuck with me for all these long years was a ditty that went “Froggy went a wooing go, hey ho said Froggy”. I’m not certain if I even knew what “wooing” meant back then, so why that particular line stuck with me for over five decades, I have no idea.

 

Another smell that I adore, which also takes me back to childhood, is carbolic soap. Mum would stand me in a washing up bowl and give me a good all over scrub with a rough flannel and a big red bar of carbolic. I remember once complaining that the curtains were open and people could see in, to which Mum responded in her usual dismissive manner, “don’t be silly, who’d want to look at you?”. Having been raised by Irish Catholic nuns, Mother was an expert when it came to destroying any sign of self-esteem and ramping up guilt complexes.

 

These memories aren’t so pleasurable, but I still love the smell of that soap. I wasn’t even aware of it until reintroduced to it one day in a public convenience. I was just washing my hands (see some blokes actually do) when the smell of the soap suddenly took me all the way back to toddler-hood. I actually wrapped that sliver of soap in a bit of toilet paper and swiped it so I could sniff it at my leisure. I then went on a soap sniffing mission in the supermarket and discovering carbolic soap was the one, for the last thirty years, I have never used anything else. Sadly, it’s now orange instead of red, but the scent is the most important thing and to this day, I still occasionally pick up my soap just to give it a damned good sniff.

 

I also like the smell of bleach. Not lavender, lemon, or “spring fresh”, just plain old household bleach. In fact, I put a good glug of bleach into my bath water and it makes me feel ultra clean and fresh afterwards. Am I unusual in this? I don’t know, but if you have whiffy armpits or feet, forget all your sprays, deodorants and talc’s, a drop of bleach in your washing water works wonders. Body odour smells are caused by bacteria, after all, and as Domestos household bleach kills ninety-nine percent of all known germs… Actually, I use the watery 29p per two litres bleach, but it gets the job done and being weak avoids the risk of skin irritation and bleach burn of my delicate bits.

 

When you finish bathing, you actually smell as though you’ve just come back from the swimming baths. Maybe that’s why I like it. I use about a cup full of thin bleach in a full bath, but don’t over do it, folks, not unless you want to emerge from the water with your eyes on fire and looking like an albino!

 

There are other smells I like that I can’t pin down to any one time or memory, but I think they also relate to childhood in one way or another. Felt tip pens and magic markers, evo stick glue, the smell of tar boiling away on the back of a lorry; fresh paint, bonfire smoke, creosote, wood shavings and sawdust; Vic’s vapour rub, old books, a woman’s hair, burning toast, the scent of spring in the air, that pipe tobacco that smells like chocolate…

 

Don’t get me wrong, I also like the smell of lavender and flowers and good perfume, but in general, the smells I like the most tend to be a little more industrial and may be considered by some as more stink than pleasing aroma. Each to his own, I guess.

 

Well, I managed to get through all this talk of various whiffs without once mentioning the smell of your own farts.

 

If you disregard that last sentence, anyway.

 

In addition, memory jogged by the comment below about nail varnish remover, I used to own a Zippo lighter and I loved the smell of that as well. Every time I lit a cigarette, I would flip the Zippo shut to put out the flame and then open it again to inhale the remaining fumes. In fact, I would often light it, put it out and sniff it, whether I had a cigarette to light or not. I don’t think there was any resulting high of any kind, I simply loved the warm petrol smell of it. Cost me a fortune in lighter fluid, as I had to refill the thing almost every day.

 

Finally, a useful smell, rather than just a pleasant one, is the smoke from burning newspaper. If anybody let’s rip a foul-smelling trump, set fire to a piece of newspaper, blow it out and leave it to smoke in an ashtray and the bad smell will be instantly gone. I guess it works in a similar fashion to the way charcoal is used as a purifier. I learned this little tip while working nights on the London Underground. With a group of men on standby, all sitting around a table in a small, windowless mess room, playing cards for several hours, without the newspaper trick, the air in there would have been unbreathable. Talk about shades of blazing saddles!