11. Cheesy

I had a mate who was one of these types who have an inbuilt compulsion to take things apart, to see what makes them tick.

We called him 'Cheesy’, but I can't recall why, unless it was because he had a pair of feet which so upset his socks, that he could stand them up in a corner like a pair of wellies when be took them off. Anyway, he had a very enquiring mind, and while the rest of us were content with mundane hobbies like football, boxing, weight lifting, cycling and darts, he filled in his leisure moments by totting round the dustbins and rubbish tips for old radios, clocks, watches or anything that he could dismantle and put back together again to see if it worked. This was mostly done when everybody else was asleep, as he worked in the kitchen of a Soho restaurant and seldom got home before midnight. 

He had a room in a house occupied by the family of another of our fraternity where we gathered on nights spent indoors to play cards or argue, or just idle away the time, and he often returned home from work and settled down at a table to fiddle around with a dismembered electric iron or whatever was under construction at the time. He was able to ignore any card school that happened to be under way or any of the boys who were sleeping on the sofa or bed because they couldn't be bothered to go home that night. He'd fiddle about with bits of wire, minute nuts and bolts, springs, valves, old speakers, cogs and wheels, filling the air with horrible pongs of solder, burning wax, paint or whatever was needed to arrive at the end product. Whatever it happened to be was always offered for sale to the nearest person, and I was often disturbed in the wee small hours, when sleeping there, with, "Ed, you wanna buy an electric kettle?" or "I've finished this alarm clock, let you have it for two bob". Muttered advice on what he could do with his bloody kettle at this cursed hour of the morning by no means abashed him, and he never got annoyed at any threats. He just put the offending article on the mantle piece, went to kip and hawked it around next day until he found a buyer.

We got our own back by sticking the flea-bitten old mongrel of the house in bed with him when we left for work in the morning. This canine queer always got turned on by the smell of Cheesy’s feet, and our jaded spirits got a tremendous uplift from the shouts of "Gerrout you mangy sod you", as he booted at doggie, who was making a frenzied effort to seduce his toes.  

As I said before, he just couldn't resist experimenting with things, and this compulsion intruded into his cooking, which, in all fairness, was extremely good.

Four of us went camping one weekend by the Welsh Harp. Not a very glamorous outing by todays' standards, but we only had bikes as cars were strictly for rich men in those days, and we were limited as to distance when it came to humping our tent and things around. Cheesy said he would do the cooking for breakfast, so we left that side of the venture to him.

 

In the morning, after a fairly comfortable night, considering there wasn't much room in a small pup tent for four hefty blokes, nineteen years of age*, and the fact that we insisted on Cheesy sleeping with his feet outside the door flap. We awoke to the mouth watering smell of rabbit stew and coffee brewing over a wood fire right outside the tent flap, It was a brisk, chilly morn, just after six, and that stew and coffee went down a treat, and after sating our appetites to the full, we said "Smashing, where'd you get the rabbit, Cheesy?"

We should have thought about his innate curiosity as to finding out about things, either before we ate the stew or before we asked about it. He told us how he had heard that it was practically impossible to tell the difference between rabbit and cat meat, so as his boss’s cat had a litter of kittens the day before, and they had drowned the unwanted females, he thought he'd try out the theory on us, and what did we think. As I was bent over double trying to control my stomach from climbing into my neck, I remembered thinking that it was funny he had bread and cheese for breakfast. He too was bent over double, laughing his head off, and we never knew whether he was having us on or not. It tasted like rabbit, but if there was something in the theory he'd heard, ugh!!  I've never been able to face rabbit again.

There's a sequel to this story. I was hiking home from work one evening after the war, when I met up with one of the lads of those carefree days, whom I hadn't seen since we all drifted apart into marriage, removal from the district, or various other causes, and we hied ourselves to the nearest pub for a drink and natter about old times. Eventually, the talk got round to Cheesy, and his insatiable curiosity. I said I wonder what happened to him, my mate said he knew a bloke who served in the same mob with him in Germany. Apparently he was the same old Cheesy, always trying to find out how things worked. This bod said a few of his mob, including Cheesy, were going through a village recently evacuated by Jerry, when they came across a German pistol lying in the road. Naturally, they'd been warned about booby traps that Jerry was kindly leaving around, so the sergeant wanted to shoot it, just in case. However, Cheesy talked him into letting him have a go at it. He said he wanted to examine, had it been dropped he'd have a good souvenir. While the others got well up the road, Cheesy carefully tied a length of string to the handle which was clear of the road and carefully paid it out to a shell hole a few yards away. He clambered into the hole and pulled the pistol towards him. The shell hole exploded, and blew him to bits.

My friends and I left the pub that night mutually agreed on one thing.  That our old mate Cheesy wouldn't let St. Peter rest until he found out how that one worked.

* Note - which dates the camping trip to 1935. The Welsh Harp must have been a regular haunt, having already been mentioned in People Are Funny 10 - Autograph Albums