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Our next door neighbours at that point couldn’t have been more contrasting. On one side was a very sweet old lady who always used to give us goodies when ever we saw her. On the other side, a family with three children, who we'd fall in and out of friends with over many many years. Like many they had their ups and downs. The son was a bit of a bully, and always used to try and pick fights with me and my brother. This attitude went on for months until one night my brother came home covered in blood. He’d gotten into a street brawl with him, and given him a right kicking. I don’t think we had much trouble from him after that. But it wasn't all bad, his two sisters were of a more friendlier nature, and we spend many hours of childhood wonder, making up games, characters and stories for our own amusement. I particularly remember when we had an old black and white TV in our bedroom (luxury back then) and we watched programmes like WKRP in Cincinnati, Shoestring and the Quatermass series with John Mills, which really freaked me out for some reason. I think it was the children chanting hauntingly in it. I have many unhappy memories of attending the primary school that we lived next door to. I seem to have spent most of my time tying to get out of going there on a daily basis. I made few friends at the school, but I remember a few faces, Jason was for one who was a lad I used to hang around with in the early days, we used to have aspirations of becoming long distance runners, and at dinner time we’d have mad races around the streets of the school, he was Seb Co to my Steve Ovett. At the end of the race he would return to school, while I took the whole concept a little further and ran as far away from the bloody place as I could. Sometimes the Caretaker would see me hiding and come after me, I would be Daily Thompson and he, well, I remember he resembled the old caretaker from Grange Hill. The lasting memory I have of Jason is his favourite cry in the play ground, “ch-arrrrge!!!!, while he ran around like a mad man, or mad boy. Another friend was David, or “Standard Pants”, as we used to call him, a play on his surname. He was a bit of a lose cannon. He had a real problem with authority figures and had more than a few run in’s with the teachers. On one occasion he threatened the teacher with violence, I was mighty impressed and he became a bit of a hero of mine. Of course every school has an irritating up start who just wants to make trouble, and I myself attracted one such hooligan. I forget his name but he used to think he was some kind of hard nut who could give anyone a hard time. Over the course of many weeks and probably months he decided to become my mortal enemy. God knows why, probably because he couldn’t handle the fact that I was a little different. Anyway, one night after school he was following me home, and having little snide digs at me, and generally getting right up my nose and in my face. I virtually got to my house gate when I turned around and let him know exactly how I felt about him by striking him right in his solar plexus. He collapsed to the ground and I went in my house. He proceeded to lift his shirt and display a scare which he said was the result of some operation he’d just had, trying to make me feel guilty or some such. I did feel guilty, for about ten seconds and then closed the front door on the little sod. There are many memories burned into my mind of hating the fact that I had to go to school. There was one winters morning when there had been a heavy snow fall overnight, Mom had gone into the school to do her cleaning duties and I decided to go play in the snow in the play ground, so off I went and began throwing the house front door keys up in the air and catching them in a kind of I don’t care about anything, kind of way. I suppose I was looking for attention or something. I was near to one of the school buildings and low and behold, the keys landed on the roof guttering and were never seen again. Mom was right riled and I think I got a good clip round the ear from Dad when he arrived home that night. As I moved from junior to secondary school, I had to adapt to a whole new bigger and more competitive world. I now had my own room, as my brother had moved out into the small box room, I was now to see a lot less of him and his mates. I was left to get my own friends. And to do this I had to do something I had so far not done an awful lot of. |
