As I remarked in a previous yarn, sooner or later most people have a go at keeping a diary. The same applies, in a rather lesser degree, to an autograph album. I still have mine but I'm afraid that apart from the usual banal entries as:
"By hook or by crook
I'll be last in this book"
Auntie Nell
written on the last page, and:
"For better or worst
I'm sure to be first"
Dad
written on to top of the first page, there are no world famous entries like:
"To Ed from his friend, Johnny Weissmuller".
The Walter Mitty in all of us makes most kids try to get the signatures of those they can see in themselves, and Tarzan was the hero of hordes of young fellows at who the Charles Atlas adverts were aimed, me and my mates included. We knew that we would never get a body like his, but we admired somebody who had. Even to the extent of dashing about the fields by the Welsh Harp*,
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| Pottinger |
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| Weissmuller |
dressed in the briefest of loin cloths, or in the nuddy if we felt like it, and attempting to swing on the branches of trees, there being a shortage of thick jungle vines at the Welsh Harp. We also discovered how Tarzan made his famous call. You try leaping about trees with nowt on, them snags catch you in some very dodgy places.
The best imitation of Tarzan yodel I heard was when my mate Sam swung on a rotten branch which broke, and dropped him astride a quickthorn hedge beneath. His backside was the best advert for shredded wheat you could wish to see, and for weeks he walked about like Cheetah than Tarzan.
However, to come back to the album, no names which are a legend of their lifetime adorn it's pages. After all, who else but me, ever heard of Kipper Jonto, who wrote the verse about the young lad from Ealing on the middle page the filthy swine. I had to glue it to the page facing it in case my old man saw it. Or if Wicker Dean, so called, not because he had sticky fingers, but because the only trousers he ever had to wear were a pair of knickerbockers his old man discarded when he got the sack from the stable he worked at for a while. He was the author of the engaging poem on page two, which ran:
"What a lovely little fish
The Sole is,
What lovely little fish
Are soles."
and so on for several lines, in the same vein.
My albums can be likened to a graveyard, full of names unknown to everyone, except the people who put them there. But there is one entry which in its 'profundity' could match any of the statements of Chairman Mao. It reads:
"Il ne fait rien remettre au lendemain"
and for all of you unfortunates who never got beyond 'La plume de ma tante' it means in English, as she is spoke:
"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today"
It was written by one of our French teachers, who rejoiced in the nickname of Puncher Lac, owing to his habit of belting the inattentive on top of the bonce with a full bunch of fives, and I was very proud of what I considered to be a literary rose flourishing in the dungheap of banalities and lavatory graffiti that filled the rest of the album.
Some time later I realized he didn't intend that I should look at it every so often in later life, and resolve to be more industrious and enterprising than nature made me, but was knocking me about not doing the French homework he kept dishing out, and never got - anyway, not on time.
The average person has a few of these deep sayings tucked away in the back of his mind, and trots one out every so often when he wants to sound intelligent, and his cronies nod their little old nuts, and say "True, that's true", while all the time, at the back of their mind, they're thinking, "Bighead". And these old saws are quoted at you when they suit the quotee's requirements. I worked with a chap who was fond of saying , "Many hands make light work" when he wanted a digout, but when asked to give a hand, always said, "Too many cooks spoil the broth".
My old retired chippy, who lived next door, used to pass away the time by watching me work, whenever I did anything in the garden. Being a short-arse, he had to stand on a stool to look over the fence and was continually clicking his tongue and saying "Don't spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar", whenever I took a short cut to finish a job. One day I was fixing the roof of the dog kennel, I was making for our cat, who was on the big side, by banging in some nails, and this superannuated coffin maker was shaking his old grey loaf and muttering about doing the job properly with screws and the hoary old boat and tar cliché. When I said why didn't he come round and do it, he promptly got off his perch and came round. And do you know what he did? He brought a handful of screws, which he proceeded to slam in with an Irish screwdriver - a bloody great hammer. Still, the laugh was on him cos when he went back and clambered up on his stool again, it collapsed, and he fell on a tomato plant by the fence and broke it. When I looked over to see if he was alright, I noticed the leg of the stool, which had broken, had been fixed before. S'right, with a screw through the seat. No doubt by the old do the job properly and don't spoil the ship method.
But then we all come out with these corny sayings, which are fit only for autograph albums and Xmas crackers. Not long ago, when I had been giving my son a driving lesson and had been ranting on about keeping at thirty in built up areas, he said, "How come you always do fifty then?" Before I knew it I replied, "Don't do as I do, do as I tell you".
It just happens to suit the occasion, as all these pompous verbal gems do, and the dirty look I got for saying it, was all I deserved.
* Note: for The Welsh Harp see
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