1955 was skidding past so fast it was hard to keep track of things,I was thirteen and a bit and the old Adam in me was beginning to make itself felt.
The voice was thirst thing to change,going from a boy soprano to a squeaky,uncertain croak,the spots bursting out in crucial places.Adolescence was a terrible price to pay for the journey into manhood.Which was still a long way off.
At school we had had showers installed and it was mandatory to use them after sports.That 12 months difference became very obvious when I was in the showers with the rest of my class.......................I was the pubeless one.I wished to god for at least one or two little follicles to start sprouting,instead I was greeted with cries of baldy b++++++s,whenever I showed up.You just had to laugh along with them or you'd go under.
I was mates with 3 lads from Woolton now,Joey Lewis,Billy Dawber and Reggie Owen.We were four very different characters.Joey,loved the Teddy boy style,but would never dare dress like that,had a machinegun style of patter and a very sharp wit,Reggie,he was always dressed very conventially,school uniform and hair very neat and tidy,but game for a laugh and a joke.And Billy,almost a mirror image of me,no school uniform,hair and clothes unkempt,but the funniest of the four of us.Dinnertime would find us spending our school dinner money on a vienna loaf from the bakers,always hot and crusty,we would bite the end off it and hollow it out(eating the removed innards),and then we would go to the chip shop and get threepennorth of chips, which we would pack onto the hollowed out loaf.Sheer bliss,I would love to do that one more time before I die!
With our change,all this was out of a shilling,we would buy a chocolate cigar from the sweet shop and then meander up to the golf course or Woolton park.
There were some beautiful chestnut trees on the Woolton side of Heath Road and boys from our school had gathered their conkers from them for generations past.
It was at such a time that one our of class mates,Googy Mills,climbed high up one of the bigger trees and fell.We were shocked to find that he had died ,it's a cliche ,but he really was a nice kid.
The whole school went into mourning for Googy,he was an all round sportsman,and a proper lad,he was greatly missed.
We four ,on the other hand,were all round wastrels,not one of us was in a team,we were always amongst the last in cross country races and were never picked for teams,kids in leg irons had a better chance than us!
So,what were we good at?......................Enjoying ourselves.I count those dinner time walks as being amongst the best times of my school life.I was only sad that the four of us didn't live closer so that we could spend more time together.
We would discuss what we had seen at the pictures,Joey would practically re-enact whole films for us,talk about our favourite radio shows,The Goon Show being top favourite,with Ray's a Laugh coming a close second.Television did'nt feature much in our conversations,there wasn't really that much on then,ITV was not yet born.
Sex raised it's head,quite literally,in the dying months of '55.Our class had a boy from a well known orphanage join us.He appeared to be a lot older than the rest of us ,worldly wise and full of new swear words,and we thought we knew them all,he was contemptuous of all the masters and pushed them to their limits.One afternoon,we were in a maths class taken by Mr.Blease,a man of great age,looked like Degaulle without a moustache,but must have been 70 or so.When we went to his class,we four would always sit on the back row,so that we could have a laugh.This time the orphan was in our midst.Midway during the lesson,he put up the lid of his desk,pulled out his willy,we thought he was going to pee in to the desk,but he shocked us by doing something we had never seen before.We could't fathom out what the hell was going on,he was groaning and grunting and all the while fiddling,and then of a sudden he stopped,with a dopey look on his face.Blimey!Old Mr. Blease hadn't noticed a thing,but the whole back row had just undergone a rite of passage.
A short while later I underwent another rite of passage.It was when I took our Chris around to Maggies for her babysitting stint.I knocked on the door as usual and one of the twins,John or Paul,I could never tell them apart,opened the door and told me to take Chris into the bedroom,pointing to which one.I went in and saw Maggie sitting on the bed in all her naked glory.This was the first truly naked woman I had ever seen,I didn't rush out,I couldn't.I was transfixed,she was so voluptuous,I just drank in the vision,seeing everything that had heretofore been a mystery.Womanhood.She threw a towel at me and told me to scarper.I limped to school in a dream.
When she came round for her money on Friday ,she told Mum that I wasn't such a little feller after all.
Did you ever look in the larder and notice that there was something there that had been there forever?Being a bit of a gannet I was always on the lookout for a surplus bit of grub.Now there was a Peak Freans christmas pudding that had been on the back shelf forever,well since last christmas at least.My bedroom was at the rear of the hallway,but our Jess's was next door to the larder and ,for reasons that I have long forgotten, I was put In Jess's room for one night while she was away.Next door to the larder!
When everyone was safely abed,I snuck out to the larder and lifted the pudding.I unwrapped it and got stuck in.Bit of a job eating an uncooked pudding,I managed to put away half of it,and ,forgetting I was in Jess's room,chucked the remains out of the window.Instead of landing on the green below,they landed just to the left of the front door step.Next morning I was awakened by Mum,holding the half eaten pudding,I never knew she had such a salty vocabulary.Good job she didn't tell Dad.
div>
Bookmarks