19. The Six Fillings

If Mother Nature hadn't given us a stomach, she wouldn't have punished us for making pigs of ourselves, by keep on filling it with nosh. But give us a stomach she did, and then filled our mouth up with teeth, to make us suffer.  Not only that, but gave us an inbuilt fear of getting anywhere within ten miles of a dentist. Mother Nature is no doubt wonderful, but if she ever assumed human form, I bet she'd have razor blades sewn to her knickers , if you get what I mean. No pleasure without pain.

Anyway, on the subject of teeth. It never ceases to amaze me when people say "Oh, I'd far rather have my own", when they discover that you sleep with your grin in a glass on the bedside table. Being able to proudly boast that you have all your own teeth, also means that you have all the attendant joys that go with them. Like getting that sharp stab of pain when your cold beer gets in the hole where you should have had a filling done but were too windy to let the dentist get at you with his drill, or having a smile like a November sky, with it's beautiful shades of grey, yellow and black, no matter how you scrub with paste and brush making your gums as tender as a baby's bum.

I think one of the best days of my life, was when I went to the dentist to have six teeth filled. I must hastily say. that on no account would I have done this voluntarily, I a genuine A1 first class coward when it comes to inflicting pain on my person, but this time I had no choice, as the P.O. doctor had it down on his report that six teeth wanted filling, and the Post Office would not grant my establishment as  postman unless six teeth got filled, I don't remember the doc ever looking at my teeth, apart from the usual investigation to see if I was breathing and the correct response happened after I coughed (presumably to ascertain that I could be classified postman and not postwoman), he did nothing else. Perhaps he felt that just a little extra should go down on his report to justify his position as M.O. for P.O.

Anyway, I duly presented myself, quaking, at the dental surgery, to let the gnasher inquisitor have a go at me. He was reputed to be a good workman at his job, but sadly lacking in comforting bedside manner. I had occasion to go to him once before, when a raging toothache drove me to his door, I'd been told he never turned anyone in pain away, and neither did he. One look at what must have seemed like a tortured gargoyle (my face) and he had me in the chair and tooth out in a couple of ticks. Then holding aloft the offending molar in the forceps, said in a tone of disgust, "filthy thing", and threw it over his shoulder in the general direction of the waste bin. I had the feeling that he though I'd deliberately harboured bubonic plague in my mouth, and what I'd suffered was just retribution for doing so. However, he read the report and grunted, "Right, let's have a look" and after doing so, said "You don't want any fillings". The sigh of relief from me must have sounded like I'd got a puncture, and I remember gabbling something about never having any trouble with them, when he chopped me down with "They've all got to come out, your gums are septic". I thought that a spark of human kindness broke through when he added "I could save one or two if you like", but decided he was only saving a bit of overtime for the future, so said he better take them all out. He didn't seem overjoyed at losing what could have been a lucrative income from messing about with the few he could leave in for filling etc.

Eventually, he got his own back by taking them out in two sittings, which was OK, excepting that he took out the complete left side first, top and bottom, and I went around looking like half a vampire  until he took the rest out. People used to back away an put their hands up to their necks when I smiled.

The final chapter of my disassociation with Ma Nature's scourge of the cake-hole and my adoption of man's finest invention, plastic gnashers, demonstrated again my dentists efficiency and his down to earth approach to his job. I went to have the plates fitted, rejoicing, that at least I would be free from toothache, fillings, gumboils, and the description of toothless wonder which had been stuck on my since extraction day number two. The top set fitted beautifully, although I felt my mouth was full of tombstones, but the bottom set perched on the gum like a six and a half hat on a seven and a quarter head. As I gingerly tried to press the plate over the gum, he watched my efforts for a few seconds , then, as his impatience at my timid approach boiled over, grasped my jaw with his fingers on top of the teeth and his thumb beneath the chin, said "You've got to be firm with them", and crunched his fist shut like a steel vice. I'm sure my kneecaps shot up and down my shins like yo-yos and certainly the shout that burst from way back n my gullet and made me jump, must have nearly deafened him, but he never turned a hair, just said, "Like that". Mind you, he was right, they went on all right, at the expense of a fair amount of gum skin and it was a fortnight before I dare take them out to clean them. It's not so easy to be firm  when you're on the receiving end, but as I said, he knew his job and the end product of a session with him resulted in you having a well fitting set of gleaming teeth, fully MOT'd.

This is more that I can say about the bods at University College Hospital, which at one time trained the future dentists of our land. I went there once, way back, and you were examined and the work that had to be done was marked out on a chart which you took to a waiting room, adjacent to the operating theatre. This only had a partition wall, which didn't reach to the ceiling, so that, while you couldn't see the men at work, you could hear everything that went on. I went in first,  gave the bloke in charge my chart, and three young trainees took over my body. They sat me in the chair, strapped me round the waist, and bunged a dirty great funnel over my face, telling me to count to ten (I'd paid two bob for gas, being a coward and not wanting to know what was going on).

I remember dreaming that I was in the wolf wood up the zoo and all the wolves were howling like mad for food that they fancied as they chased me. Sounded like a lot of banshees, getting louder and louder until I realised it was me, and  I was on the floor of the theatre having slid under the strap and had kicked my shoes clean off my feet. These three idiots were holding me down, laughing their heads off. I'd been in the washroom for a while, washing my mouth clear of blood, when a chap came in, looking a bit the worse for wear and said, "Was that you in the chair just now?" I said "Yes" and he said "Blimey, you should have heard yourself, two of the women waiting fainted, and some of the blokes turned green, talk about having teeth out, sounded like you were being castrated".

Afterwards I found that they'd broken two teeth level with the gums and had to go and have them extracted some time later when they went bad and started to ache. Well, they were only learners, so I couldn't moan but when people say they'd sooner have their own teeth, I silently bless the day I went for six fillings and got a set of plastic gnashers instead.

18. The Invention

At some time or other in our lives, every one of us must have had the thought that if we try hard enough we could invent something that nobody else had yet thought of, but was so simple and obvious that how mankind had existed without it all this time, was one of the mysteries that only God could answer. Every now and again, some idiot presents the world with an invention that nets him a quick fortune, and is so simple that you could kick yourself for not having got in first, because, well you could have thought of that, couldn't you?

The answer lays in the old saying "you can't see the wood for the trees" or in other words, the best hiding place is right under your nose. After all, how many generations of blokes, with frozen fingers, had to leave their flies undone after having a jimmy-riddle, because their hands were too cold to do them up, before some bod nipped in to invent a zip-fastener*. Dead simple, wasn't it? Anybody could have thought of it, right under your noses, well give or take a couple of feet.

And how would women's liberation have got underway, if someone hadn't invented the bra for them to wave in the air? So there again was a simple solution which some clever so and so spotted, and is now rolling in the lap of luxury.

Perhaps inspiration would come more easily if we though of inventing something that would benefit our fellow creatures, rather than make our bank manager get out the port and king size cigars when he saw us instead of saying "About your overdraft, Mr Snooks".

As, for instance, the invention I came across when driving on holiday one year. We pulled in to a typical roadside café, with usual signs all over it. Eat at Pete's. Good pull up for drivers. Coaches welcome. Ladies and gents toilets at back etc etc etc. It was a very hot day, and after driving for some time through towns with one way circuits that nearly had me round the twist with frustration, as no matter which way I went, I came back to the town centre, and when I did get out it was on the way back to the town I'd just left; my wife and I were dying for a lovely quiet refreshing cuppa away from the madding crowd. The bloke who invented Hampton Court Maze was a novice compared to raving maniacs who plan the average one way system. Anyway, Eat at Pete's hove into view along a long lonely country road, which, according to the map, didn't exist, but was the only exit we could find from the jungle of road signs and prowling traffic wardens, waiting to pounce with their little plastic covered tickets at the ready.

The Taj Mahal couldn't have looked more beautiful than this corrugated jewel, nestling on it's carpet of loose dirt and empty Coca-Cola cans. We parked and made for the door where lay the soul reviving peace of a quiet sit down with a cuppa and maybe the added luxury of a cheese butty, as it was, after all, holiday time.

The thought of it hastened our steps towards the door which I opened in anticipation of joys to come, and was met by a blast of sound which bloody nigh knocked us back to the car. This bejewelled retreat, from the stresses of the one way circuit, was as a beautiful woman who nurtured a viper in her bosom. In this case, a damn great juke box standing in the corner, blaring out top of the pops, at the top of its strident metallic lungs. Well, the need of refreshment overcame all thoughts of retreat, and as I went to the counter to order, I came across this heaven sent invention which should have netted its inventor untold material gain and a place among the immortals to boot. Among the top twenty records available at a tanner a go, there it lay, the inspiration that sets a man above the beasts, a silent record, once without a groove, two whole minutes of silence bought for a miserable sprasi. Was there ever a better bargain offered to the road-weary traveller? I spent as many sixpences as I could manage to get in without smashing the teacups in the race to get to the monster before the local youths, who no doubt, felt that this was an intrusion into private lives, and could possibly have dangerous side effects in later years.

Young people cannot operate without the accompaniment of noise and too much silence unsettles them, possibly to the extent of eventual impotency, who knows?  Maybe the unknown genius who had invented this gift to homo sapiens had deeper motives than golden silence and was really concerned about world population explosion. Only posterity will tell, and should it prove true, the silent record will be hailed as the most infallible contraceptive since the advent of the pill.

So put your minds at work and try to think of something that will enrich all people instead of only yourself, and you will find inspiration abounding.

This is what I have done, and am now working on a cure for lumbago, slipped disc, and all the numerous back ailments that afflict us today. As it will be in common use before this article is printed, I'll tell you all what it is that I have done.

It's a pair of scissors, three feet long, available in two grades, standard with wooden handles to be operated with two hands, or deluxe which expand from six inches to three feet, to be used with one hand from the hip, to enable folk with dodgy backs to cut their toenails without bending.

So carry on trying and I'll be happy to hear of your efforts and will write about them in a future article, if you would care to let me know about them.


Notes:

*Says wikipedia: the zipper beat the button in 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly", after French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray".

Pleasingly (though I'll hazard, not from Grandads perspective) I've typed up this piece with that modern-ish jukebox, the CD player, on windows wide open and the Wharfedale's banging out a little bit of Iron Maiden, little knowing the narrative I was starting on a half hour or so ago. Next door will be wishing I had me the silent record.

Actually, silent records have a bit of history - see the attached.
http://musicweird.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-sounds-of-silence-brief-history-of.html

17. Living Rough

I read that there are more people living rough at this point of time than ever before. At this point of time is one of those queer modern phrases which have crept into the English language and freely translated means right now. Anyway I don't know whether the writer of the article had been counting them or not, but I am disputing his statement and saying there were far more on the road in the early thirties. Why? Because they had no bread, man. (Another queer phrase meaning boracic lint. Skint.)

They weren't living rough doing their thing. (Trans: too idle to work). They were just pawns on the chessboard of free enterprise and of no consequence until the war, when they quickly reached queen position. In the modern jargon, your country needs you, man. (Trans: someone's got to die, so guess who?). I met up with a few of these lads one summer night in '32 when I held the important post of tea-boy at a coach painters* in Little Albany St, N.W.1.

What's left of Little Albany Street. Sep 2017. www.instantstreetview.com

From this palace of industry, (Trans: rat infested, bug ridden, converted stable) I sallied forth at ten-thirty, one o'clock and half past four to Old Bills Cafe in Osnaburgh St bearing a long pole on which hung a dozen or more tin billy cans, and repeating in my mind a list of the workers requirements. Like two of drip, two of marg, or five woods, or half of Digger shag, and each can to be charged to the brim with a pennorth of tea.

We lived well then and no expense was spared when it came to the inner man. England's mighty empire sprang not from the Industrial Revolution or the playing fields of Eton, but from the cuppa char and two of drip of the British Working Man. My efforts were rewarded with the generous stipend of the 12/6d a week and whatever I could fiddle by milking their cars of their petrol and flogging it back to the owners when they came to collect. At 1/3d a gallon this added up to a tidy bit if we had a good week.

One Friday, the guv'nor, an enlightened employer who had the well being of his staff at heart, came up on a 50 to 1 shot with a quid on the nose, and on returning from the boozer in a extremely benevolent frame of mind (Trans: p----d as a newt), informed his staff en-bloc, that there was no work tomorrow so they might as well all sod off to safhend on a beano and he'd give us a tenner for the beer. Then quickly added that he wasn't bloody well paying us wages as well.

The London Gazette 7 July 1931

The cold reasoning brain of your true executive will always supersede the mind befuddling fumes of four ales. So as work was cancelled for Sat and a tenner bought enough wallop to float the Queen Mary in those days and paid our fares as well, (1/9d return cheap excursion), the morrow found us disporting ourselves around the old mud heap, Southend-On-Sea.

Late evening found us engaged in a hotly disputed contest in The Ship Inn with a team of gentlemen from a jam factory. The best of three dart games, twelve aside, losers to pay for the beer. It was one all and the decider was well under way and I was sat in a corner with the jam factory tea boy where we had been put by our respective foreman with a bob each to buy beer and crisps and strict orders to keep out of the way. He was named Nathaniel , stood about four feet nothing and was as muscular as a pair of anaemic braces. If he'd laid on the beach the winkles would have queued up to kick sand in his face. I was no Charles Atlas then, either, but we both felt ten feet tall as we supped our halves of four ale and puffed Woodbine smoke towards the ceiling and bragged of our importance as tea boys. He told me he also had to chop up the wood for the raspberry jam. When I said "Eh?" he said that raspberry jam was made from turnips and the pips were bits of wood chopped up fine to make it look real. I believed every word being very naive at the time and he was so serious. I still have my doubts and raspberry jam is still called wooden pip jam in our family. We suddenly realised that it was ten minutes from the departure time of the excursion train and on telling our foremen both got the same answer - "P--- off!". So we did and ran like the clappers (Trans: quickly) to the station and got there in time to see the train steaming up the line. As it was the last train home we strolled back to the pub to find it closed and deserted. Where all the darts revellers had gone so quickly was a mystery to us, so we wandered to the beach and that is where we met up with a bunch of lads who were living rough.

Ship Hotel, Southend On Sea

At first I thought that a lot of other blokes had missed the last train home as there were dozens of them sitting around on the beach, the seats, and in the shelters on the front, but Nat told me they were all on the road. He seemed well versed in human affairs and spoke as if being a tramp were a classified occupation. Something like being a cowboy. There were young fellows of our age, middle aged men, and elderly chaps. English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Chatting, smoking, some in earnest discussion, others just staring across the water. All with one thing in common. A large bundle containing all their worldly possessions. 

We got talking to a group of lads of our own age. A couple of Scottish boys on their way to Portsmouth in hope of joining the Navy, a Welsh lad who'd been trying to get work in the Kentish mines, a Geordie who was just looking for work anywhere, and three chaps from Notting Hill who were trying to get bookings as an acrobatic act around the seaside shows. They obviously weren't having much success if they had to bed down on the beach at night, but their spirits were in no way dampened by this. Full of life, they gave us all a demonstration of handstands, backflips and balancing then stripped off to have a swim in the sea. They were chivvied out by the patrolling fuzz (Trans: night shift from the local nick) who moved everybody off the beach to the shelters on the front with strict instructions to stay there till dawn then shift our bodies as far from Southend as possible before the dawn patrol got around. None of the lads seemed envious of the fact that Nat and I had homes to go to and were there because we'd missed the last train whereas they were there because they'd nowhere else. I got the feeling that we were being granted membership of their community for the night and were the ones who needed advice, freely given, on how to keep warm and comfortable on the hard wooden seats which faced the keen off-sea breeze. We awoke around dawn and thrown over Nat was a ragged overcoat to help keep him warm. Like I said before, he looked like an advert for 'Consumption and how to live with it' so perhaps the lad who owned the coat thought he might snuff it during the cold, early hours and there would be some awkward questions asked. But I prefer to think it was the compassion of a lad who had nothing, for another boy who was his guest for the night. An unknown soldier of the Cenotaph of the vast army of British unemployed of the Thirties, many of whom were on the road.

And I'll still bet there ain't so many today no matter what the writer of that article says.

Lies, damn lies and statistics? These statistics prove Grandad to be correct.

                                                     

Notes:
* The only coachworks on Little Albany Street my very modest research - I really haven't looked hard -  turned up was dissolved in 1931. See the extract from the London Gazette.

16. English Traditions

Us Brits are very proud of the ancient traditions that have developed and been retained throughout a thousand years of history. We love to parade them at every possible moment in front of the visiting tourist, not that we give a monkey's whether they like it or not. We like 'em and that's good enough for us, but if the visitors go back home and tell their mates to come over and bung a few bucks, francs, or liras into the UK coffers, well, all the better for us.

The must be sense of the 'Come to Britain' tourist propaganda program are too well known for me to enlarge upon here, but I think a better job of presenting us British to these foreign visitors, would be done if we got 'em away from Buck House and all the bods who make such a palaver about changing over to guard it, and got them round a few places that are truly representative of this Sceptred Isle.

Like a picket line at British Leyland, a traffic jam in the Edgware Road, a bus queue practically anywhere, a casualty queue at any hospital, the gents in most boozers, and so on ad infinitum.

There is one place I would plump hard for the visitor to visit, and that is the artists exhibition which is held every Sunday along the Bayswater Road. This is an exhibition in the truest sense of the word. Here, anyone who fancies that he has created something that they can flog to somebody, can hang it on the railings of Kensington Gardens from the Broad Walk to nigh on Marble Arch, if they can find a space.

I may have mentioned it before, but in case you missed it, I'll tell you that I was pupped in Paddington, a stone's throw from Queensway, or Queens Road as it was called then. In fact, I did my first paper round from a shop which stood where the Queens Ice Rink is now sited. The whole area was so English that it could well have been the original setting for "Upstairs Downstairs".

Queens Road was an English bastion, firmly planted by it's broad base in Westbourne Grove, with it's long taper of genteel shops, lorded over by the imposing edifice of Wm. Whiteley, which always waved the Union Jack from its dome towards the end of the road as it embedded itself into Bayswater Road. Foreign persons were definitely not encouraged, and ragged arsed herberts as myself were only allowed up there before seven a.m., in order to deliver the papers to the upper crust residing in Inverness Terrace and the roads around. All for two bob a week including Sundays.

All very English and democratic, as Wm. Whiteley sold off yesterday's stale bread and cakes to the deserving poor living on the wrong side of the Harrow Road across Royal Oak station if they presented themselves at six a.m. with a tanner and a shopping bag round the back entrance. Must look after one's own, you know.

I don't think that Queens Road ever recovered from being debased by the building of the Queens cinema bang opposite, during the thirties. It tolerated the Roxy in Westbourne Grove as a concession to progress, anyway it could pretend to be unaware of it's existence, being round the corner, and it knew that a high standard of hygiene was maintained, as the usherettes, who were always dressed in black, came round at regular intervals and sprayed the audience with Flit guns.

I hadn't been along the Queensway for many years, until the other Sunday, when my wife and I went to see if we could buy a picture at the artists exhibition in Bayswater. We drove up Inverness Terrace from Porchester Road and parked at the end and started our long trek from the Broad Walk along the park railings towards the end. It took nearly three hours, with stops for ice-cream and hot dogs, which were sold from vans and barrows parked among transport of every make and age. Creations of every form of art hung from the railings or stood on the pavement. Etchings, oils, rubbings, collage, pencil, water colours, pictures made from watch and clock works, nuts and bolts, everything imaginable. Modern art, some of which looked as if the artist had sat his or her bare bum in a tin of paint and slapped around all over the paper. You could almost hear the seal clapping it's flippers. Representatives of every creed and culture were there in abundance, all trying to flog their own peculiar form of culture.

Only one thing was held in common - a mistaken idea of the value of their work. We saw a set of water colours of the Pool of London, one of which we liked, and promptly looked for the vendor. A bloke with a mass of matted rats' tails on his nut and a terrific Zapata moustache waved a half sucked lolly at us from the van he was sprawled against, and said, "You interested, man?" I said yes, how much was he asking, and he replied the big one was £60 and the others £48 each. I said that I didn't want to buy a Renoir, and I'd give him £10 for the one I liked, whereas he shrugged and said "That's the price, man" and resumed sucking his lolly. I thought that if he stuck to those prices, he was liable to be eating lollies for the rest of his puff and wished him a good morning. I added, "Mr Picasso", but very softly, as he looked a mite fierce. Probably because he was a bit fed up with a monotonous diet of inflated ego and Mr Whippy.

We badly needed a cup of char, so I said we'd stroll down Queensway as there was always a decent tearoom somewhere along there. We walked the length of Queensway past Hungarian, Armenian, Italian, Indian and the inevitable Chinese restaurants all doing roaring trade and filling the air with continental and oriental pongs, most of which were very mouth-watering but we didn't fancy eating many of the queer looking objects hanging in the windows, most of which seemed to have been cooked in varnish.

It wasn't until we got nearly to Whiteleys that we found a Wimpy Bar, tucked coyly back from the road but still valiantly flying the English flag, metaphorically speaking*. The place was full of people of every race bar ours, all nattering  their nuts off in their own lingo, excepting a clergyman seated by himself in a corner. As he seemed to be the only link left with Queensway's past, we sat on the next table and ordered two cups of tea, but were out of luck as they only had espresso coffee. Well, we settled for that, sub-consciously strengthened by the vision of the Church in the next table. However, thing are never as they seem, cos as we got up to leave, I saw that the magazine he was so intent on, was not the local parochial news, but the latest edition of Men Only. Perhaps he was meeting the Devil on his own ground, but as blokes dress themselves in anything these days, I don't think so.

Still, I definitely would recommend the artists exhibition as a must for the foreign visitor, who wants to soak himself in some English tradition, and whoever he is, he'll also find some link with home there.

Notes: 
I've edited this piece quite heavily, and, in trying to give it some coherence, I may have lost the point of the original.

Whiteley's Department Store met its demise, closing in 1981, and  re-opened in 1989 predictably enough as a shopping centre. More pleasingly, the Sunday Bayswater Road artists exhibition continues to run, having been established for over 50 years. See  https://www.bayswater-road-artists.co.uk/

* Wimpy Bar - the well known chain of fast-food restaurants, is, of course, actually American and only came to Britain in the 1950's when Lyons obtained a license to use the brand. 

15. The Crew Cut

This time he meant to do it and no mistake. How many times he'd reached this very same pitch of determination, well, it just didn't bear thinking about. It always seemed so simple, figuring the whole thing out in the quiet of his room. He's simply walk into the shop, say what he wanted, get the job over and done with , and walk out again. As easy as that. Of course, there were one or two details that had to be worked out.  After all, it would be asking a bit too much, expecting it to work out just as you imagined it would., in your mind. No, you could bet your bottom dollar something would turn up out of the ordinary run of things, and there you'd be, nerve gone at the very moment it was needed, and that meant another couple of weeks or so, of going through all the old rigmarole of telling yourself how easy it would all be and what was there to worry about anyway. To say nothing of what the boys would say if he boobed again. He'd just about has enough of having the mickey taken out of him, and besides, he had a feeling that they all though him yellow, although not one of them had had the nerve to say so, at least, not to his face. Bit too handy with his fists, and they knew it. Some of them had good reason and all.

Still, he'd said often enough what he'd so some day, and all the cleverness in the world with his fists wouldn't wipe the sneers off the gang's face every time they knew he'd got windy again. So there it was, now or never, more for his own self respect than anything else, with  the details gone over and over again and no reason why it shouldn't be dead easy. Naturally he hadn't chosen a shop near home where he was known. That was obvious. And dinner-time, he reckoned, when there was less chance of any customers , was about the best time. A stroll past, first of all, taking a quick look in the door as he went by, and if it was empty, then about turn, in the shop, straight up to the bloke and tell him what was wanted. If he could sound as though he was used to being obeyed , and not used to being argued with, then there shouldn't be any trouble. Then give the bloke what he held in his hand at that very moment and out again without any fuss or hurry. Even if anybody did see him coming out, it wouldn't matter than much, as there were thousands of chaps who'd look like him these days, and there was no reason why he should be at all noticeable.

Funny how hot his hand felt in his pocket, making the hard metal slippery with sweat. Well, that's how it was and it wouldn't be long now. There wasn't anybody near the shop so it looked as if he was going to be in luck.

Now then, straight past and a look in the door out of the corner of his eye. Didn't seem to be anyone there as far as he could see, so about turn as if he'd suddenly remembered something, and in the door.

The bloke was sitting on a chair in the corner reading a paper and when he hear the door ping it's little bell, looked up with a big smile of welcome on his face, which quickly changed as he realised right away what he'd come for. Nor for it. The old familiar pounding heart was by now banging like mad, as he felt his determination to really have a go this time slipping away again; then in a flash he saw the boys jeering and saying "Yellow", and he started to give the command he'd practised so often, but before he could get the first word out, the bloke was on his feet with a big lump of wood in his hand.

He looked enormous now he was standing and that curt sentence so authoritative in front of a mirror, froze in his throat as the bloke said: "Blimey, some people never learn that I don't cut kids hair on a Saturday; don't know why your mothers will keep sending you. Still might as well do you while I'm slack, I suppose. Hop up, Trim up and make it tidy, eh ?".

He nodded miserably as he clambered up on to the board that the bloke had put across the chair, and handed over the shilling he had clutched in his hand.

One day he would ask for a crew cut, and get rid of those hateful blonde curls for good.





www.instantstreetview.com

Notes: I'd completely forgotten about the board they used to put across the chair when cutting kids hair!  I used to get mine cut at Peter Lazou's in Grant Road, Wealdstone (see the picture - seemingly now Blue Star Afro-European Hair Stylist).  Zero chance of me ever opting for a  crew cut though! 

14. Another Year Gone

It's a sure sign of advancing years when time seems to gather momentum with increasing swiftness and you think "Blimey, another year gone. Where the hell did it go?"

I must be getting on myself, as I suddenly realised that it was time for another article to be written for the Harrow Post which was due out - last week. And I hadn't done one.

Several, in fact a lot of people have been kind enough to say they like the stuff  I write, which has boosted my ego sky-high and made me feel that perhaps I had a modicum of talent in a brain which seemed to have been built in for the sole purpose of keeping my ears apart.

So, rather than have my fan club hand in their 'I like Ed' badges and switch to Tom and Jerry, I'm going to stretch their loyalty to the fullest extent and inflict upon them a very short story I wrote way back in '57 when I first felt the pangs of authorship stirring. It never got a good acclaim, and thoughts I had about being another Charles Dickens were swiftly chopped to pieces by John Bull* to whom I sent it, who politely returned it with a note which more or less said they hoped I could mold casting (I worked in a foundry) better than I could write.

Times and fashions have changed since then, the short back and sides is the exception more than the rule etc etc but the violence that was always part of human nature ain't altered. If anything is has increased so perhaps this small effort is still topical. Hope you like it.

Notes:

* Magazine. Published by Odhams Press until 1964. Maybe if they'd used Grandads' story they'd have been in business a bit longer. Ha.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bull_(magazine)

In Jennie's compilation this piece is included as #15 and the story it is introducing precedes it at  #14. As it makes for a better flow I've switched the two around, so the story will be up in the next post. 

13. Becod It Wad Dere

Remember the modest hero, who, when asked why he pushed a pea up the side of one of the Great Pyramids with his nose, replied, "I did it becod it wad dere"?

 

This attitude toward the strange achievements of mankind has aroused much discussion as to what makes them do it and made a fortune for the compilers of the Guinness Book Of Records.

 

The diagnosis of these impulses is a favourite topic of conversation around any gathering of Homo sapiens and a typical example is at the breakfast table of the drivers. The conversation here usually follows a set pattern. Sport, sex, last night's telly, sex, reflections on the doubtful parentage of some supervisors, sex, money, sex and thoughts on whether the sausages were dead when they hit the fat or did they die as a direct result of incineration. (Only joking, Cook!).

 

We have ardent followers of various pastimes among our members and while the universal subject of sex is discussed at odd moments, it's only talked about, whereas, other sports are actively participated in. We pride ourselves on being a serious debating group.

 

One member, an ardent angler*, who is highly proficient on the necessary ability of narrative (a must for the first class fisherman) was holding the attention of the company one morning with an enthralling account of the previous day's catch. Do not for one moment, imagine that his speech was a mere placing of the facts and figures before the assembled company. Such mundane efforts are for Hansard or the records of the minutes of any committee meeting. He laid before us a story, nay, a saga worthy of Dennis Wheatley** at his descriptive best. The pre-battle study of the haunts and environment of the prey, reports from outlying weather stations, the intensive research into the feeding habits of the species, the careful selection of suitable baits and methods of presentation, the all important decisions on the type of tackle and methods of angling to be made, the stalking of the prey in a manner that Tarzan could not have bettered, all told in great detail prior to the actual account of the final coup-de-grace. Then, with a great sense of timing, when interest was on the wane, the story of the strike, the bending of the rod the leaping, twisting, diving and fighting of the crafty, courageous monster of the deep, until that final ecstatic moment when it lay exhausted and defeated in the bank, a gallant adversary whose weight and size were statistics of incredulous disbelief. All garnished with the rolling up of the sleeves to show the bruising resultant from the muscle strain which was a natural hazard of the contest.

One of the golfing members, who had paused in the delicate operation of the mopping up the remains of his fried egg and bacon fat with a piece of toast, said "What did it taste like?"

 

Our piscatorial member looked puzzled. "Taste like?" He queried.

 

"S'right", said the golfer, "taste like, You eat 'em, don't you?"

 

Horrified understanding dawned on the face of the angler, and he stared at this heretic, who had suggested something tantamount to mugging one's grannie.

 

"Course I don't eat 'em", he gritted between his teeth.

 

"Well, what do you do with 'em?" asked the company in one voice.

 

"Put them back of course, what the hell do you think?"

 

An excited buzz of conversation flew round the table as the meeting realised that once again the unexplainable urges of mankind had manifested itself, and many future discussions could be foreseen as a result of this revelation of the angler which ranked on a level with the highest mysteries of mankind's irrational behaviour.

 

As duty called, and we all trooped out to perform the commonplace tasks of earning a crust, leaving behind the debris of the breakfast table, over which hung the faintly audible aura of those immortal words, which put the whole in perspective -

 

" I did it becod it was dere".

Notes:

* I can't help but wonder if this is a piece of autobiographical self-analysis

** Dennis Wheatley: once a massively popular author but now largely unread. By todays standards Wheatley's writing is pretty un-PC, and modern reissues subject to abridging. Notwithstanding that, Wheatley is still one of my favourite authors, I have a full set of his books on the shelf behind me as I type. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Wheatley