Dragged up proppa, p.8
Dragged Up Proppa, page 8
It hadn’t started well. She lived at the end of her street and at the bottom of her front garden was a communal alleyway and a tall brick boundary wall separating her postage stamp garden from the park. A few years previously, probably when I had been no more than five or six, two of my brothers and I had developed a nasty habit of walking on top of the park wall and pulling faces at Mrs Bateman as she looked from the window. She probably found it funny at first, but as the novelty of three young kids sticking their tongues out and pulling at their ears had eventually worn off, she had reported our behaviour to my mother. We came in from school one afternoon only to be summoned to the kitchen and given a stiff lecture on how we had let the family down and how we should have more respect for our elders. The three of us were instructed to take an orange each from the fruit bowl, take them to her door and apologise. My mother only bought six oranges per week, one each, and I always kept mine for Saturday night. We were to give her the oranges as a peace offering and promise it would never happen again. We did as we were told and to our surprise, Mrs Bateman invited us in and thanked us for the fruit. It was brilliant. She made us tea in posh china cups and it was the first time I had seen or tasted a sugar-coated NICE biscuit. I dared to eat two and a beautifully sweet friendship was born.
Mrs Bateman lived on her own and would always be looking out of the window with the egg money ready. Sometimes, if I had a spare ten minutes, she would insist I went in and drink a cup of tea and if I was lucky, I would get a biscuit, a NICE of course, that she would refer to as a NEECE. She only got half a dozen eggs a week but would insist on giving me a whole one-pound note. I admired her generosity and would give her a free gift. A half-pound bag of toms or the odd cabbage or turnip or whatever I had too much of at the time. It worked well. I liked Mrs Bateman. She would tell me about her life as a child or what her husband had done during the war. He had inhaled mustard gas in France and though he had made it home he had not recovered enough to work again. At this particular point of my life the old lady was probably the nearest thing I had to a good book. The cover may have first appeared stale but once into the pages and their text there was always something sharp and interesting hidden there. She reached the age of ninety-nine and outlived her husband by over sixty years. Imagine that!
After bringing Mrs Bateman her eggs on that Wednesday, I put the dog in the shed, a pile of veg in the kitchen sink for my mother, the paper-round bag under my bed, blazer on, tie on, a tin of mice in my pocket, back on my bike and off to school.
Lynda Phillips was the love of my life. Pity I wasn’t the love of hers. She had a blonde bob and an angelic face and would do my homework for a fifty-pence piece. It was a good arrangement. Any homework I received would be dropped into her bag and the very next day it would come back completed and exchanged for a ten-bob bit. I would sometimes give her a pound – perhaps I thought she could be bought. I would even pretend I liked Adam Ant just so we might have reason to talk a little longer. She loved Adam Ant and I hated him – perhaps I was just jealous. In fact, I think it was worse than that; so strong were my feelings for her I actually wanted to be Adam Ant. What did he have that I didn’t? I had her believing I was too busy to do the homework myself and she didn’t have a clue I couldn’t read. This was good and I was determined the situation stayed exactly like that. I needed every tool in the box if I was to win her over, but if she was to find out I had the reading age of a five-year-old, I was certain I would have been ruled out of the equation. She was in my English class and was clever. I had managed to escape attending English lessons very successfully. In fact, I had probably only been forced into turning up for no more than half a dozen all year. My favourite trick was to sweet-talk the metalwork or woodwork teacher and say I was a little behind on my work and if I could possibly get out of my other lessons, I could come in and get myself back on track. This worked for a while but it was not something you could pull off twice a week, every week.
I told nobody about the mice. Best if no one knew, it was safer that way. The clock moved fast and eventually the dreaded English lesson with the dreaded Mrs Black could be avoided no longer. Thirty-eight filed into her class. She was strict and as she stared down at her desk we would be expected to stand quietly behind our chairs until the noise of everybody’s shuffling feet reached a level she found satisfactory. She would then look up sharply, wait for complete silence and when it descended, and only then, she would give us the instruction to be seated. The way it worked was simple: there would be a stale book on each desk and we would open it at the first page. She would start reading loudly from her copy of the same boring book and then stop. She would then call out a name and that person would have to read one page. It would start at her front right and work its way to the back of the room. The seats were arranged like what you would see in an aeroplane with a row of two tight up the right-hand side, then there was an aisle, three seats in the middle, another aisle and then another row of two up the left-hand side, all about six or seven deep, from front to back. She would work her way up the window seats first and then jump forward to the middle row and then work her way back through them. I would always position myself on her left and at the very back in hope that the one-hour lesson might finish before she reached me. This method of avoidance had worked a few times before but could not always be relied upon. If the book was short or the writing big and easy for people to read, I could soon find myself in deep water. Hence the mice. There were a few in the class who were known as ‘non-readers’. Robert Chance was one. Mrs Black would miss them out, usually whilst uttering some derogatory remark about how she didn’t need some degenerate retard ruining her day. Robert wouldn’t even open his book. Neither did Jimmy Malcolm or Kev Laws. They were even allowed to look out of the window, across the rooftops to the tower of the pit wheels. I believe the thinking at that time was they were already destined to work down the pit, so they might as well enjoy the blue sky while they still could, and it was common knowledge that you didn’t need to read to work down there.
It didn’t take long for the reading to creep its way up through the window seats and leap across to the front of the middle row. It seemed the book was a quick read and combined with all non-readers being skipped past, it meant the reading quickly spreading like an aggressive cancer towards my corner of the classroom. In no time at all it had consumed all in the middle before leaping again and contaminating the front of my row. I stared in dread as it started advancing steadily towards me. There was still twenty minutes of the lesson to go and I was not going to be saved by the bell. Panic started to take over. Time for plan B. Out came the tin. I placed it on my closed knees, released the lid, and emptied the two mice onto the floor before clicking the lid back on and hiding the tin in my blazer pocket. Time to concentrate on the book. I held on to the book with both hands and looked as interested as I could as the reading reached the table in front of me and Lynda Phillips took the floor. Bingo! Suddenly the whole class exploded into a state of complete chaos. All the girls were standing on their chairs, Robert Chance was running around, scattering tables and chairs whilst trying to stamp the mice to death with his size thirteens, whilst Mrs Black stood on her desk and screamed at the top of her voice that they were God’s creatures and must not die. Jackpot, job done!
The whole class was ordered outside and we watched through the windows whilst Mr Skirvin from the French class next door rummaged around on his hands and knees for ten minutes. He soon appeared outside triumphantly with two mice in a plastic sandwich box and like a hero released them in the grass behind the bike shed just as the bell went off marking the end of the lesson. Perfect timing. We all started to walk away.
‘Where do you think you lot are going?’ screamed Mrs Black. ‘Nobody is going anywhere until I find out who is responsible for this debacle!’ She was not amused. We were instructed to stand in a long line and look straight ahead. No talking.
‘You will all stand there for as long as it takes for the culprit to step forward,’ she explained, pacing up and down with her arms folded behind her back. After an hour or so in the heat, she started to soften a little and informed us gently of what a brilliant judge of character she was before starting to announce who she was certain it was not. She stood stiff in front of us whilst scanning every face for traces of guilt. Lucky I had an honest one.
‘Susan Green, on your way. Collene Corfield, Lynda Phillips, on your way. Deborah Plant, on your way.’ She continued this for a while until all the girls had gone. She stared at Alan Ladalor. Alan was quite camp and was the head of the school’s drama group. He had been more terrified of the mice than anyone else, resulting in him standing on a windowsill and screaming louder than all of the girls put together, and he definitely wasn’t that good of an actor. ‘Alan Ladalor, on your way.’ She smiled. He trotted off. I always felt sorry for Alan, for no other reason than I felt the place and time he had been born in didn’t quite fit.
‘Peter Clarke, off you go.’
Peter Clarke was known as ‘Perfect Pete’. He was a large, overweight prefect who tried his very best in all subjects. The headmaster had once got him on stage in a morning assembly and given him an award for something or other and told us all to have a good long hard look at him because he was the model student and we should all be exactly like him. I remember Robert Chance whispering into my ear, ‘I can’t afford to eat that much!’
After a while there were seven of us left. The write-offs, of which I was one. I had no objection to working at the pit at this stage of my life. In fact, that’s where I knew I was heading but I wouldn’t be down the pit, I would be on the surface. If you were a welder, you didn’t have to go down the mine. Welding couldn’t be done underground because of explosive methane gases so it was done in workshops on the surface. I knew this because of my older brother Glen being a welder at Easington Colliery. All I had to do was pass my O level metalwork practical and there would be a place for me there. Perfect!
‘I will find out who disrupted my lesson, and when I do, I promise you now, the person responsible will never walk into my classroom again,’ she exclaimed. Robert and I stepped forward to claim the prize.
‘It was me!’ we admitted together. It was like a scene from Spartacus. Robert was quick to act and set out apologising for his actions in an effort to prove it was him. He was so convincing, I started to think it was him. This required action. I produced the tin from my pocket, and held it out for her to examine whilst Robert looked on outwitted.
‘I even put a hole in the top so they could breathe, miss,’ I explained. She looked at the tin and then at Robert.
‘We did it together,’ he said, still trying to get in on the act. She didn’t believe him and sent him and the others on their way.
After waiting for the innocent to disappear into the building she stood right in front of me, our faces almost touching. I could feel her breath as she yelled as loud as she could, ‘The English language is the gateway to opportunity, and don’t you ever forget it, boy! Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Don’t know, miss,’ was all I could say. I wasn’t bothered what happened next. I had proved my guilt and hit the jackpot. No more English. No more Mrs Black. Away from the dread of not being able to read in front of the lovely Lynda. The relief of it all was worth the worst punishment imaginable.
The punishment was six of the best. I was marched to the headmaster’s office and made to stand outside whilst Mrs Black went in. She reappeared minutes later, completely ignored me and disappeared down the corridor without a word. I hoped I would never have to look at her again. I stood there for a couple of minutes with my back to the wall. Half of me wanted to fuck off and the other half was telling me to stay, take the punishment and get a line drawn under the whole situation. I’d just found out I didn’t have to sit through another English lesson ever again and I was not about to jeopardise that! I think I was scared that if I avoided the punishment, it might give her licence to break her promise.
Mr Jenkin appeared with a perturbed expression painted on the front of his grey, shaking head and spoke only one word. ‘Inside!’ He followed me in; I knew the procedure. I would stand in front of his desk, he would get behind it, tell me how disappointed he was in my behaviour and how he hated this part of his job. Liar! This was all run of the mill. However, on this particular occasion he told me that because I had been honest and admitted to the offence, my sentence was to be reduced from six smacks of the hands with his cane to four. This was something I had to thank him for.
Now, if you are in an unfamiliar environment here, I probably need to explain something: giving somebody the cane wasn’t just some haphazard task to be performed by an unskilled idiot. Oh no, this man really knew his trade. He was an expert. He had obviously been shown by some sick bastard even more perverted than himself at his university of headmastery how to physically inflict the maximum amount of pain on a child. It wasn’t the first time I had been caned by him. It had happened numerous times. It was normally an act performed on stage, during assembly, in front of the whole school. A civilised display of savagery and a deterrent to all non-conformists. The time before this, I had been on stage and been given the full six whacks for filling Henry Whittaker-Smith’s motorbike helmet up with piss in the bike shed. Not something I’m proud of today but I was young, he was rich, could afford a brand-new moped, I couldn’t and it was funny watching him put it on at the time.
To correctly accept the ritual of a legal and organised beating is quite a skill too. One has to maintain one’s posture, know where and how to stand and it is most important you pay attention and show full respect for the rules of engagement. I was quite an expert by now. It went like this. You would stand with your hands behind your back, and face the man whose job it was to set an example to the whole school of how we should behave in life whilst he mentally warmed himself and got ready to physically abuse you. He would pace about his office swishing a long cane down hard and then back up slowly whilst grunting like a chimp. He would stomp back and forth, spinning repeatedly on his heels until he had mustered up the required level of mental stupidity needed to perform the abuse. Then he would approach you, his weapon out level at chest height.
‘Hand out!’ It was always the right hand first which meant spinning your body around ninety degrees to the right and stretching out a flat hand on the end of a right arm at exactly chin level. The thumb had to be on the opposite side of the hand to the abuser.
Whack! Now you would turn one hundred and eighty degrees and stretch out the left. If the hand was too low, you would feel the cane under your knuckles lifting it to the required level of the chin.
Whack! Back around for the second on the right. He would grunt with each whack. What the fuck was that about? There was little or no difference between having four or six as the first two had your hands completely numb and after that, the pain seemed to just bottom out.
Whack! The second on the right. His grunting was getting louder. He was enjoying this. About-turn.
Whack! The last one on the left. ‘Get out of my sight, boy!’
I’m not sure, even all these years on, if there was anything sexual going on. Who knows what the hell was going on in his head? Or his Y-fronts? Perhaps he’d strategically reduced my sentence by two whacks knowing the sheer excitement of the situation might render him unable to reach five. Lucky me!
I still remember the exact emotions I felt as I walked out of that office that Wednesday and the strength of the overwhelming sense of relief that radiated from deep within. No more English!
The pain was always worse on the second and third days, once the fingers had gone past blue and blackened. I was lucky in that sense. I was able to rest my hands more than some. After all, I hardly needed them for writing and all the important stuff I did, like delivering my newspapers, veg and eggs, was done on my bike. Easy. I would pedal everywhere no-handed!
7
Leaving school
I got my O level metalwork and a few CSEs in the other more practical subjects. I was actually made to sit an English Comprehension exam. I remember it clearly; there were three sheets, two of which were an in-depth scientific description of how the human eyeball worked. The idea was you read it then answered questions on it. I tried my best to hack through it but it was full of words like ‘enzymes’ and ‘conjunctiva’ and it started to appear fuzzy. (Actually, the only reason I remember it so clearly is because my youngest brought it home as a test paper only a few years ago. I read it and it made me smile.) I was not a quarter of the way through the first page and running out of time so went straight to the questions. What lubricates the human eye? I ditched the first two pages and with only minutes left went to the third sheet. It read, Write a short poem about a rabbit. This I could do, and I did. In fact, that’s all I did!
Sabbit the Rabbit had a very bad habbit,
Of nocking on people’s dors,
With his pors!
I got a FAIL. There we go! My talents as a writer were to be ignored for another forty years. Geology was another exam I took. I thought the school had finished with me but apparently it had not. The first thing I knew about the exam was my teacher appearing on the building site at the edge of the village and shouting up to me on the scaffold, ‘Get in my car now, you have an exam!’ Which I did.
If I ever find myself in a situation where I need to know the difference between a lump of iron pyrite and a lump of galena in order to save my life, I would be able to survive by simply explaining that though they are both metamorphic rocks, the galena has a much higher density than the iron pyrite which is actually magnetic. That should save me!
