Anecdote – The Night of the big bust-up

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Anecdote – The Night of the big bust-up

AppleMark

The Night of the big bust-up

John and Gwen lived upstairs in the rooms directly next to ours but in the other half of the house. To get to their place you had to do down the four stories on our side and up the four stories on theirs. It was good for the heart but we didn’t do it much. Gwen was a terrible cook. We went round for a meal which consisted of spaghetti with a tin of sweetcorn. I can’t say I relished it.

John was freshly out of prison for grievous bodily harm. He was a heroin addict and had a bit of a temper, particularly when he’d been drinking and was low on smack.

They had a baby. I think Gwen was hoping that the baby might have a stabilising effect on John. I couldn’t see it.

As we were on the top floor in the attic we had dormer windows that opened on to the roof. We both had cats and because we were at the top of the house they’d go out on to the roof. That was their territory. Our cat, Cherokee, was a black female and theirs was a ginger female. But they did not get on. In the middle of the night there would be an almighty caterwauling, yowling, hissing and spitting followed by an almighty fight. At the end of the fight on one occasion there was a great –

YEEEEEEEOOOOOOoooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!

 

Our Cherokee had knocked their cat off the roof. It fell five storeys into the basement and fractured all four legs. The vet’s bill was pretty hefty. Cherokee slid in through the window looking pretty pleased with herself.

John and Gwen were not amused.

On this particular night it was Terry’s birthday and he and Jane had invited John and Gwen out for a celebration at the local boozer. Gwen had asked us to baby-sit and had brought the baby round in a Moses basket.

At eleven o clock the bell rang and it was Gwen and Jane who were distraught and hysterical. We took them up and calmed them down with mugs of coffee to sober them up.

There had been an argument and a fight. John had beaten Terry up.

We just managed to settle them when the doorbell rang. I went down. It was Terry. He was mumbling and a bit incoherent. Partially because of the drink and partly because he’d bitten his tongue which looked as if it was partly severed.

‘My best mate,’ he mumbled. ‘I couldn’t hit him.’

I persuaded him to come upstairs and doused him with coffee. It was apparent that he had stood there and simply allowed John to batter him.  All he kept saying was:

‘He was my best mate. I couldn’t hit him.’

It was also apparent that his tongue was very badly damaged. It was like the end was hanging off.

We managed to calm everyone and then the doorbell rang. An electricity ran round the room. There was only one person it could be.

I went down and answered the door.

John was standing there.

‘Can you ask Gwen to give me the key to the flat,’ he mumbled not looking me in the eye.

I told him I’d go and get it. Just then Gwen came charging down the stairs clutching our bread knife and lunged for John.

‘YOUUUU BAAASTAAAARRRRD!!!’ she shrieked.

I grabbed her hand as John stood there unflinching. I was taking the knife off her when Terry came piling down the stairs.

‘My best mate,’ he said with quite a lisp. It’s hard to speak with your tongue hanging off. He tried to get the knife off me and stab John. Somehow we got Gwen and Terry back upstairs and I shut the door on John.

It all goes quiet.

It is now one o’ clock in the morning.

‘We’d better go round and get some things for the baby,’ Gwen reasoned. We’d sorted that the baby and her would stay with us for the night. Terry and Jane would go to A&E and get Terry patched up.

We went downstairs and up the other side. There we found John crashed out on the landing. He didn’t have a key so he couldn’t get into the flat. He was out for a light.

We stepped over him and opened the flat. We quickly got the nappies and essential items and came out. Terry stepped over John and took a few paces down the stairs. Gwen stepped over him and followed. I was just shutting the door when Gwen turned back and gave John a vicious kick in the ribs.

‘You Baaaassttttaaarddd!!’ She shrieked. ‘’Ruun!’

With that her and Terry belt off down the stairs leaving me having just shut the door and John between me and the stairs.

‘I just want to crash,’ John remonstrates blearily. ‘Just get Gwen to give me the key.’

I’m wishing I hadn’t shut the door.

‘I’ll go and get it,’ I say, edging past him.

I manage to squeeze past and head downstairs. Gwen is at the bottom with Terry. She refuses to give me the key. John is bellowing down.

We head back to our place.

John is evidently working himself up to a fury and decides to break in. We sit and listen as he smashes, kicks and batters the door into matchwood.

Once in the rage is there and we hear the sound of crashing and splintering as he wrecks the place.

Then it goes quiet.

Anecdote – My first kiss.

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Anecdote – My first kiss.

 

My first kiss

I’m going to cheat here. To start with I’m going to discount all those parental smackers, and embarrassing smackeroos from salivary grandmas and aunties. They simply do not count.

For the first nine years of my life the thought of kissing girls was absolutely horrifying. Indeed you looked at older boys and shuddered. What on earth were they doing?

Technically my first kiss was during ‘kiss chase’. The girls loved it, and so did we, but I suspect for totally different reasons. To the girls it was about kissing boys. To the boys it was all about escaping from this most terrible fate. If you got caught and kissed that was horrendous. It made it exciting.

So I’ll rule out kiss chase as well. That was a game.

By ten my hormones were kicking in. Suddenly girls were not to be run away from; they were alluring.

But I’m still going to cheat – because I’m going to separate my first kiss into two types.

The first girl I kissed was Liz Staines. She was ten, like me, and in my class. She was sweet on me and I liked her. We would play together. I kissed her on the mouth.

It was a worrying thing. How were you going to manage it? Where did you put your nose?

I remember being concerned. In the event it was sweet and noses weren’t too much of a problem.

But tough I liked Liz, and that kiss was experimental and OK, it was a long way from the real thing. That came shortly after.

Glenys was a Welsh beauty. I was ten and a half and very innocent. She was the older vixen with the wanton ways who led me astray. She was eleven. I think maturity had arrived early for both of us.

I feel for her dark sultry looks and flashing eyes. She was my first love. She made my stomach churn and sent me into a whirly spin. I loved her.

I have no doubt that her hormones were just as active as mine, if not more so.

We spent a lot of time together that summer. I even gave up playing cricket in the street. We built dens and lay down in the long grass in the fields staring into each other’s eyes.

In her garage, my garage and those dens we kissed. It was just like in the films and went on for ten minutes or more. We called them real lover’s kisses. We shared twenty seven of these blood boiling embraces.

They were the hottest.

I count those as my first real kisses.

Anecdotes -My first Singles

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Anecdotes -My first Singles

Opher's World tributes cover

My first singles

I was eleven when I bought my first singles. They cost me 5P each and I bought five of them.

They were second hand off my older friend Clive Hansell. He had a limited taste in music. The only artists he liked were Buddy Holly and Adam Faith. I didn’t notice at the time that Adam Faith was modelling himself on Buddy Holly. He put that same little warbling affectation into his songs. I also didn’t notice that the quality of the British production was naff. My eleven year old self was not as discerning.

While America, used to authentic country music, was great at producing Rock ‘n’ Roll, Britain was out of its depth. The backing and arrangement was crap. Very few British Rock releases from the late fifties and early sixties came up to scratch on that front. What the producers were aiming for was a more middle of the road market. Raunchy, raw and rockin’ weren’t in their vocabulary.

My friend Clive unloaded all the singles, which he had played to death, on me. That was probably a good deal for both of us.

Over the course of a year I got to inherit the entire output of Adam Faith and Buddy Holly. I still have them all. I’m a collector.

For 25p I bought five Adam Faith singles. I remember playing great numbers like Who Am I, How About That, Someone Else’s Baby, and What Do You Want, on my old Dansette. I loved them.

I progressed to Buddy Holly when Clive became tired with them. For a while they were my only singles.

The first single I bought new was From Me To You by the Beatles. I had been knocked for six by the Please Please Me album and rushed out to buy the album and single.

After that I bought every Beatles, Kinks, Downliners Sect and Stones single on the day of release except for Honky Tonk Women. I was given that in Hyde Park for helping clean up the litter.

I did not tend to buy too many singles. I was always looking for the best value for money (having a limited amount) so I tended to buy albums. But I still have a collection of around five hundred singles that I have accumulated over time.

I miss that excitement of rushing back from the shop and putting that single on the record player in my bedroom with the arm up so that it played on repeat. It would blast out and I’d play it endlessly until I had absorbed every note. Then I’d flip it over and do the same with the B-side. Those singles are seared into my mind.

The experience these days is just not the same, not so visceral. Those singles captured the vitality of my youth.

Every morning I would load my Dansette up with six singles of choice. They would blast out as I got washed, dressed and breakfasted. I knew I had to be out of the house by the time the sixth finished.

Singles were the start to my day.

Anecdote – Road Sweeping Through the Floods on a Wave of Madness

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Anecdote – Road Sweeping Through the Floods on a Wave of Madness

Road Sweeping Through the Floods on a Wave of Madness

The rain had been relentless but it had stopped. We had resumed our road sweeping duties. I was paired up with Jim. He was fragile. It was felt that he needed someone to work with because he was unstable. Jim had a mental condition. He was subject to psychotic episodes. For Jim reality was a very thin and highly transparent sheath; it kept breaking down. Jim’s whole life was a series of hospitalized episodes with spells in institutions. It was good that the council employed him. Jim was a pleasant, friendly, harmless soul who needed employment. Without it he would have vegetated.

We had both been on bin duties for a few days. The torrential rain had made sweeping roads extremely difficult. We’d largely confined our duties to emptying litter bins. Now it had turned fine and we were back clearing up the debris from the gutters and drains.

The area we were working in must have been low-lying. We were working our way steadily along when it happened.

There was a series of loud clangs.

I looked back down the road to where the noise had come from. The heavy cast-iron manhole covers for the sewers were exploding up into the air or pillars of water and clanging back to the ground. They were popping up all along the road and heading towards us. Each of the manholes was spouting a solid column of water four feet high.

I stood and watched with amazement. I had never seen anything like it. Fortunately there was no traffic or there could have been some serious accidents. Jim carried on regardless pretending that nothing extraordinary was happening.

The manhole covers near us shot up in the air on pillars of water. It was incredible. Those covers were solid cast-iron and weighed a lot. It took considerable force to lift them. They were popping up into the air like corks. The swollen river Mole had broken its banks. The water had gushed down the sewers and was erupting back out in the lower areas.

Within minutes the water was lapping up to the kerbs. Jim was continuing to sweep even though the water was flowing around his feet.

It was obvious to me that we had to move to higher ground quickly. The whole area was in the process of being flooded. I urged Jim to come out. He refused and was totally focused on sweeping, trying to ignore the water as if it was not happening.

I could see we had a problem. These strange events were outside the norm. Jim had learnt that things that happened outside the normal range of experience were usually figments of his imagination. They augured the start of a breakdown. Jim did not like that. It meant frightening periods of incarceration and treatment. All he wanted was normality.

Unlike me, who found the events of exploding manholes and fountains of water quite exciting, Jim found them terrifying. He was desperately trying to hold his world together. If he could just go on as normal it might all go away and he’d be alright. Exploding sewers were not part of the normal world.

Except it was real.

I coaxed Jim out of the water and got him t trundle his cart in front of mine up the rise away from the rapidly expanding lake of water. He was becoming more and more agitated as he tried to come to terms with what was happening.

At the top of the rise it was dry. A police car parked up and a policeman donned a white mac and took up post directing traffic away from the now deeply flooded road. He was standing at the edge of the water and waving cars away.

Jim took one look at him and thought that he’d been sent to pick him up. He lost it, ran across to the startled policeman and, in a highly agitated manner, started gibbering at him, clutching at him, and telling him that it was alright; he would go with him.

I managed to prise Jim off the bewildered man and lead him away. We went round a friend’s house. I made him a mug of tea and we played some Moody Blues. He liked classical music; that was the nearest we had. It soothed him and gradually he regained control of himself. It had frightened the wits out of him. We talked to him until he managed to grasp that it had been real and the river had merely overflowed and burst out of the sewers. It settled him.

There is a fine line between reality and the worlds inside the head. For some the fabric is exceedingly thin.

Anecdote – the rat and the scream

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Anecdote – the rat and the scream

anecdotes BookCoverImage

This one is not in here!

The rat and the scream

I was sitting on the floor leaning back against the armchair watching the TV. It was late at night. Liz was lying on the settee fast asleep.

I thought I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. Under the sideboard there seemed to be a tail sticking out. It was hairy. I thought it looked like a big gerbil’s tail.

I rose up and went across to get a better look. I shifted the sideboard and this huge rat ran out and bounded across the room straight under the settee that Liz was asleep on. It was ginormous – nearly as big as a cat.

It presented me with a dilemma. In order to move the settee and get at the rat I had to move Liz.

I woke her up and gently suggested that she might like to go up to bed. Even in her drowsy state she sensed something was not quite right. The more of an innocent act I put on the more suspicious she became. Finally I told her about rat.

She came fully awake, jumped up on the settee and screamed.

That was not helping matters. I told her to be quiet. Liz refused to get down so I could move the settee.

I went and got the cat who seemed remarkably disinterested.

I retrieved a broom from the kitchen and proceeded to poke and fish around under the settee with the handle. I was a little apprehensive having seen the size of the rodent. I was not quite sure how it had fitted under the settee in the first place.

After a bit of swishing with the broom handle I managed to scare it out and it lolloped out and straight out into the kitchen. Liz shrieked in horror at the size of the beast. I’ve no idea what the neighbours thought? They probably thought there was a murder in progress. The scream was very plaintive. But then it was the biggest rat I had ever seen.

The cat watched with keen interest but showed no inclination to go too much closer. She’d figured that this one was beyond her range.

I followed the rodent out into the kitchen with the broom handle poised to give it a whack. It was too fast for me. The cat followed me and seemed interested in how I was going to deal with this. She sat to watch.

The rat had belted under the washing machine.

I poked and prodded, wondering when if Liz was ever going to come down from that settee. The rat ran out and made a bolt for the cat-flap, straight through and out in one bound.

The cat looked at me and cautiously followed. I could see that she was merely making a token gesture. She followed through the cat-flap with no real conviction. It was purely for show.

It certainly explained how the animal had got into the house. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. It looked to me as if he was a regular.

I bolted the cat-flap which must have given the cat a headache when she tried to get back in and probably provoked some feline confusion. But there was no way I was going to allow that monster back in.

The next day I rang the Council. A gentleman came round with some nice blue rat poison. He seemed very blasé about it all. He thought that it had probably come from the sewers from a few streets over where they were demolishing some houses. I told him that it had obviously been interbred with a mammoth. He laughed. He thought the rat-poison would sort the problem out.

I suggested that he might like to reassure Liz. I had visions of her spending the rest of her life standing on that settee.

Poetry – Once Upon A Time

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Poetry – Once Upon A Time

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Once Upon A Time

It seems to me that mankind’s intellect has outgrown his instinct. Where once we roamed freely in small numbers using all our intelligence and skills to battle the elements, fight of predators, feed and clothe ourselves and stay alive, now we are in the business of sanitising life.

In the plastic universe of our creation, where nature is banned or tamed, we are shackled by our laws. We still have the tribal instincts. The skills, camaraderie and bravery that once meant life and death for all the tribe now count for nothing. Health and Safety rules. Life has to be saved. But life has no substance or meaning.

Our young people are aimlessly drifting.

It is no wonder that some of them drift into religion as an answer. They are searching for purpose. They want more than gang violence and the endless, vacuous night out on the town.

 

Once Upon A Time 

Once a tiny tribe

Roamed, following the meat,

Now a teeming mass

With more than it can eat.

Once wild and free,

Bonding in brotherhood.

Now restrained by law,

Rampaging in the neighbourhood.

Once master of skills,

Living by their wits.

Now a gang of fools

With whom no purpose sits.

Once proud, strong and true,

Now posturing on corners, wondering what to do.

 

In the concrete and plastic

Of a man-made universe,

Where decisions are all drastic

And answers perverse,

The human race has come to this –

A smoke, a shag and a lot of piss.

 

Opher 19.12.2015

Anecdote – the kids, red powder paint and attempted murder.

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Anecdote – the kids, red powder paint and attempted murder.

AppleMark

Kids and red powder paint

Back in the days when our kids were little we would go and visit our good friends in Bangor. They had kids of a similar age and lived in a pleasant cottage close to the monument. You went up a little lane into this delightful secluded garden full of flowers. We spent idyllic weeks in the place.

One bright sunny summer day when we were sitting around talking our two eldest boys, with a younger one in tow, decided to get up to mischief. I don’t quite know what was on their minds but they sure planned something out. I don’t think they even knew what. One thing led to another. I believe it was merely devilment.

While we were distracted one of them climbed through the open kitchen window and managed to get one of the big tins of tempera powder paint down from the top shelf of the cupboard. That was quite a feat.

They smuggled the tin outside into the garden.

Now the three of them had to decide what to do with a big tin of illicit powder paint.

Well the first part had been simple. Now they were flummoxed.

Somehow they got the lid off.

By the time we discovered them, after a period of quiet, they were sitting in a circle ladling big spoonfuls of dry paint on to each other’s heads. At the time they had longish hair and were wearing next to nothing as it was very warm. The powder found purchase. They had big cones of powder on top of their head. The game seemed to consist of who could create the biggest heap.

There was quite a scene. We were angry that they had done such a devious thing but we were also very worried that all this paint might get into their eyes and cause damage.

They were mortified as we started shouting at them. As their tears hit the dried paint on their body it left bright crimson streaks which only served to make us even more agitated and anxious. While my friend rushed in to get towels I led the kids over to the garden hose. I continued to berate them while I turned the hose on them which made them shriek and squeal. As soon as the water hit them the paint streaming down their bodies in great crimson rivers. I was desperately trying to keep it out of their eyes and continued explaining, in heated terms, just what idiots they had been, while grabbing them to stop them running away as they jumped around and attempted to evade the stream of water.

In the midst of this pandemonium I looked up to see a whole family peering down at us from the top of the monument. They looked utterly aghast. I realised that from their perspective there were three screaming kids who appeared to be pouring with blood being attacked by some raving adult. No wonder they looked so shocked.

I quickly hosed the children down and we dried them off. The family up the monument had disappeared.

We spent the rest of the day expecting a visit from the local constabulary. That never materialised.

Now you might have thought that the kids might have learnt their lesson but no such luck. It was apparent that applying cones of powder to their heads was all the fashion that summer. We later found them in a similar condition with cones of white snowcem on their heads.

This might have proved even worse for eyes and certainly required similar drastic treatment but this time, fortunately, the streams of white were not quite so dramatic and there was nobody up the monument to witness it.

After that the kids had either banished the desire out of their system or learnt their lesson. There were no further instances ….. that I know of.

Anecdote – Hat and the E-type Jag

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Anecdote – Hat and the E-type Jag

Hat and the E-type Jag

When I was seventeen I lived at home. We had a bungalow and my bedroom was at the side. I was doing my A-levels, not that you’d know it, and life was quite wild. There was music, gigs, parties and friends. The sixties was in full swing. I had my motorbike and was as free as the wind through my long hair.

Hat was a good friend. His Dad owned a factory and had insisted he left school and worked in it to learn from the bottom up. That was not amusing Hat who found it all excruciatingly boring. They were quite wealthy, wealthy enough for his Mum to have an E-type Jag that she let Hat borrow.

Every now and then I’d be asleep and there’d be a knock on my window. It’d be Hat. He’d borrowed the car and fancied a drive. I’d climb out the window and we’d head off into the night.

Sometimes we’d just drive around.

‘Where to?’

‘It’s always straight on!’

It became a catch-phrase. It would always take us somewhere though it wasn’t as good at getting us back.

Hat’s favourite destination was Brighton. We’d hurtle down the sixty miles to the sea-side, run up and down the pebbled beach like maniacs and then get back in the car and drive off.

It was pointless. That’s what made it so attractive.

For some strange reason the police would take an interest in our exploits. Two young men driving around in a flash E-type Jag in the middle of the night seemed perfectly normal to us but they thought we were up to no good. They seemed to think we’d stolen the car. Unreasonable eh?

Hat did not make it better and there were a couple of times when we ended up being taken in to the police station for questioning.

‘Is this your car, sir?’

‘No.’

‘Do you mind telling me what colour it is?’

Hat, peering out of the open window at the bodywork. ‘It’s hard to tell in these yellow street lights.’

‘Do you know what the registration number is?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

Hat’s long-suffering Mum would get a call in the middle of the night and have to smooth things out with the disgruntled constabulary. Hat loved winding them up.

On the way home we’d always pop into Heathrow Airport. It was the only place open at that hour back then. We’d run up the long escalator marked ‘Down’ and get ourselves a coffee.

Hat would drop me off. I’d climb back in, get an hour’s kip and be into school the next day.

Anecdote – Heroin and the guy upstairs.

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Anecdote – Heroin and the guy upstairs.

During the late sixties and early seventies I lived in London. I had a bedsit. Upstairs from me was a young guy, we’ll call him Joe, who lived with his partner and liked heroin.

Every now and then he’d go off and score some heroin and, because he didn’t use it regularly and never knew the exact strength as he always got it from different sources, he would occasionally overdose.

There would be a knock on my door and a distraught partner would explain that he had passed out, collapsed on the floor and would I help. I’d send her to the phone for an ambulance, go upstairs and get Joe into a recovery position, check his pulse and breathing and wait for the ambulance.

On one occasion he still had the needle in his ankle, which seemed to be his preferred site for injecting. On another occasion he actually stopped breathing and I had to give him mouth to mouth to get him going again.

The ambulance would arrive. They’d assess the situation, cart him off and within hours he’d be back.

I sat him down and talked to him. I explained that one day I might not be in, the ambulance might be delayed, and that would be it.

He shrugged.

I asked him if it was worth it. It was quite apparent to me that if Joe had sufficient funds he would have bought a bucket of heroin, sat in his arm-chair injecting and nodding off for the rest of his life. I doubt if he would have eaten, drunk or got up to go to he toilet.

He said to me that I shouldn’t knock it until I’d tried it. He explained that it was like some endless orgasm. You were floating on a warm ocean in euphoric peace. Nothing mattered. There were no worries.

He offered me some – just to try.

I declined. The worst that could happen was that I would love it. I did not want to spend my life in a chair.

A Day with my Granddad.

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My Granddad was a meat porter in Smithfield Market. I don’t know why I spent the day with my. I was only seven years old. Perhaps my Mum was ill? But it was a day I remember well.

I went up to London with my Dad. He worked in Fleet Street. He dropped me off with my Granddad at the Market. I was a tiny little shy boy at the time and it was all very daunting…….. but exciting.

My Granddad had started work at Five o’clock in the morning and so all the heavy work was done by the time I got there at around Eight o’clock. The first thing he did was show me off to all his mates. They ruffled my hair and grinned at me and pressed half crowns into my hand. That’s what cockney’s seemed to do for luck. They pressed your hands with silver. They were a terrifying bunch – all great burly, loud men in white coats which were blood smeared on their right shoulders where they’d carried the carcasses out of the lorries. My Granddad was the exception. He was a little thin wiry man. But he pulled his weight. He made sure of that.

They were unloading the last of the lorries. The big carcasses of cows, sheep and pigs were hanging on hooks. They’d come in fresh from the abattoir. The meat porters job was to carry them from the lorry to the respective stalls where the butchers cut and sawed the meat into their respective trays.

When the last lorry was empty they took me off to the café for a hearty breakfast of sausage, bacon, eggs and fried bread washed down with big mugs of tea. They were a happy bunch with much banter and laughter.

Then it was back to the market to load up lorries with the select cuts. I watched as the lugged the big white boxes around and shared jokes with the butchers who were slicing and sawing the carcasses.

My Granddad took me to see where they used to burn Catholics. I was too young to understand what that was all about back then. I’ve learnt about it since and gone back to that same place.The times of religious intolerance; the conflict with Catholic Europe; the politics and religion; the brutal theocracy and heartfelt beliefs. Those poor people were tortured and then burnt at the stake facing the church. If they wanted them to die fast they stacked up the tinder. If they wanted them to die slowly they did not stack it so high. If the wind blew in the wrong direction it took longer. That was the Christian way – Protestant against Catholic – intrigue and revolution – fifth columnists and plotting – torture and death. It drew quite a crowd. They took the whole family to witness the burnings, to hear the screams and take in the spectacle. It was what passed for entertainment along with the bull baiting, cock fighting, dog fights and bear baiting.

We have improved.

Then it was off to the café for an extended lunch.

Looking back I can see that it was hard work but there was a great camaraderie among those men. I was proud of my Granddad with his gory white coat. He and his companions made quite an impression on a seven year old lad. They didn’t put me off meat though. I don’t think that seemed real to me.

I’m glad I went for that day.