The first we heard was a ‘phone call we got at four o’ clock in the morning saying it was the police and they’d got Mr John Rice in their custody.
The headline in the local paper was: MAN THROWS MANGLE AT POLICEMAN.
He got off light. He was fined £68, which his brother Packy paid. Mum never sent him shopping no more.
Looking back, I had two sorts of mates at school. Almost complete opposites. Perhaps this reflects the different directions I was torn between. One of my mates, Johnny Hitchens, was a smashing fellow and I thought the world of him. We went up the Spurs together, we went fishing together, but he always did his homework and I didn’t. I was always late for school but he wasn’t. I admired him for this but instead of modelling myself on him, I accepted the fact that we were different in these respects and went my own way. He still comes to see us at the Millfield Theatre Edmonton. He’s a retired teacher now. I bet he was a good one. Better than the ones we had at Eldon Road.
Apart from Miss McSweeny, who I fell deeply in love with when I was nine. She was Burmese, smelt lovely and had lovely brown sandy coloured hands. I still see her regularly today. Joan don’t mind. We all went to her 90th birthday this year (2008). She hasn’t changed.
My other sort of mates were the ones that were just a little bit more daring than I was. I admired them too. I enjoyed their company. It was exciting. For instance, one of my mates, Tony Webster, was another fishing companion. We used to go camping together over at Cheshunt. One day I hit on the idea (to get our camp fire going better) that we go along the railway lines collecting bits of coal that had fallen from the trains. We spent a good couple of hours doing this and came back with half a sack of coal. We had a good camp fire that night and decided we’d go back and collect some more coal the next day. But here comes the difference between him and me. I didn’t mind wandering along the lines picking up stray bits of coal, but it wasn’t quick enough for him. He’s spotted a coal yard and he’s over the fence.
‘There’s fuckin’ loads of it over here!’ I’ve heard, and then he’s back with two sacks full. In my mind collecting coal from the trackside wasn’t stealing so it was acceptable, but in Tony’s mind we were collecting coal and the quicker you got it the better, no matter how. I sort of felt it wasn’t quite right, but I liked his initiative.
Our camp fire for the rest of the week outshone everybody else’s. It was the talk of the camp site. So much so the camp site bailiff came down to see us.
‘Where did you get that coal from?’ he said. We told him we got it from along the railway lines.
‘Well you’d better bring it up to my house ’cos you’re not supposed to have it.’
I felt we’d been found out and it was the only thing to do, but not Tony.
‘Bollocks!’ he said to me after the Bailiff had gone. ‘He only wants it for his own fire!’
‘You’re right,’ I thought, and although I had a nagging feeling that it belonged more to the coal yard than to us, it was still more ours than his. (There’s a moral in this somewhere, but I can’t figure it out at the minute.)
As I began my new school at Higher Grade, the Rock ’n’ Roll era was beginning and I was about to be hooked.
Although, at first, I didn’t like it. All the kids were going mad on this bloke called Bill Haley. I couldn’t see it. He was okay but he was not as good as Tennessee Ernie or Kay Starr or the boogie-woogie piano players I’d heard. But I hadn’t heard Little Richard, or Jerry Lee then. Little did I know what I was in for!
I became a bit of an ’erbert at that school. Nobody got the cane more than me, nobody had longer hair than me. I suppose I was a bit cheeky sometimes, but even though I say it myself I was never nasty and I think most of the teachers liked me. I didn’t mind the cane if I knew I was guilty, but I wouldn’t accept it if I wasn’t.
The Headmaster was a bastard. If you got sent to him you knew you were gonna be caned on the arse and that wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t so much the pain. The worst part was the sick feeling you felt a few minutes after. You really felt you’d eaten something bad. Outside his study was a painting of a boy with a rabbit. That was all you had to look at as you was waiting to see the head who you knew was going to cane you. I’ve seen that picture since and the same feeling came over me. I wanted to go and have a shit. The poor sod who painted it never meant it to give off that feeling, I’m sure! The Headmaster loved caning kids. I’d look through my legs at the old bastard as he bent the cane about before he laid into you. He’d hardly listen to what you had to say for yourself. He didn’t want to in case there might be a reason for letting you off. I was a ‘bounder’ and a ‘thug’ and had to be ‘dealt with accordingly’.
I wasn’t sure what ‘bounder’ meant although it didn’t sound too bad, but I objected to being called a thug for kickin’ a football through the school window. We used to make up stories of him and the Headmistress having a ‘do’ at playtime. With her whackin’ him on the arse for a change.
The crafty fag smokin’ sessions round the back of the bike sheds was an enlightening experience. We’d talk about who you was going to ‘tit up’ on the field and who you would like to ‘tit up’. We had a PT teacher with nice tits. Miss Bebb. She taught us English.
She’d come into class with her PT shorts on. If you played up, you were made to come and sit next to her. So I played up. I remember once havin’ to sit at her desk while she sat in front of the class with her foot up on a stool. I could see right up the leg-hole of her shorts to full crutch-piece. No knickers. This was my punishment for being a naughty boy. Looking back I thought, ‘Oh no! She don’t realise what she’s showing!’ But now I think she knew alright! Nice memory.
My feelings towards girls began to change. They started to become not just nuisances who played silly games and messed up yours. I began to ‘see’ something in girls that was worth exploring. My first girlfriend at school was Gillian Marchi. She was the girl behind me in class who piped up when I was told off for having long hair.
‘Oh, it’s lovely!’
It got me to notice her and then I fancied her. The fact that her big brother was captain of Spurs made her even more attractive. I was a regular up the Spurs at the time. Everybody in the football world pronounced his name as Tony ‘Mark-Eye’. I was better informed. It was Tony ‘Markee’. ‘No, it’s not.’ ‘Oh yes it is, ’cos I go out with his sister.’ Anything I said about football from then on was taken as gospel.
At school I was okay at football but wanted to be better. I had a lot to live up to. My brother Dave played for Edmonton. I played in goal for the school and I thought I guarded goal well, but I never got picked to play for Edmonton. I thought I was as good, if not better than any goalie I’d witnessed at the time, but those that picked the Edmonton team didn’t.
I’ll tell you something now that will make me sound like a rotten little git.
When I was about seven I buried all my brother Dave’s football medals in the front garden.
I didn’t have