You may remember Ken Loach’s 1969 film Kes, the story of a Barnsley boy called Billy Casper. Well, that was just like me at school: no shorts, worn-out shoes and scruffy plimsolls. I remember getting a new pair of plimsolls, and it was a big thing. But now kids want everything.
It’s ‘Dad, can you get me those trainers?’ A hundred and fifty quid for a pair of trainers or £200 for a tracksuit, as if it was nothing. They just don’t appreciate things like we did. I sound like a grumpy old man, I know. When I was a kid, I used to say I’m never going to sound like our dad does, but in the end you do, don’t you? I thought, I’m not going to sound like my dad does because he moans all the time, but now I understand where he was coming from.
I remember buying a pair of trainers for 99p in Hartlepool. I’d been walking around in trainers that had an elastic band round them and they were flapping because they were knackered. Your mum would give you the money and you would get a new pair of trainers and you would get them home. You would put them on and throw the old ones in the bin. Oh, you can run faster in these, you think to yourself, because they are new and they’ve got brand-new white laces, and you get so excited over a pair of new trainers that cost less than £1. But that was how it was: brilliant.
Then the school grants would arrive and off to the shops you would go with your mother. ‘Oh, another one with a grant,’ they would say in the shop, to show you up, but most people had grants then. We would go to what was called Hartlepool’s Service Stores, where they stocked all sorts of stuff and, important for us, they accepted grants.
You may think we were right scroungers, but you have to remember this was Hartlepool in the 1970s – not Knightsbridge. About 70–80 per cent of the school kids received free school meals in those days. When I tell you my dad used to work collecting sea coal on the beach and made £500 a week, you will probably think we were scroungers. But when I tell you he used some of this to support his gambling, and when you remember the size of the family, it might make you see what we had to endure.
The old man used an ex-army Bedford lorry and I remember Allen Jackson, who owned the coal yard, saying, ‘Your dad is the best worker.’ My dad wasn’t huge, only about 12 or 13 stone, and he was one of those people that could have two or three hours’ sleep and then go out working all day. I went out with him once, when I was 16, and made 50 quid in one night. When I left school, I was on one of those Youth Training Schemes but in that one night we made more money than the YTS paid me for a week. We collected 50 tons of coal that night. My dad would collect 100 tons of coal in one night – he could get eight to ten tons on a wagon – and get £10 a ton for it. He used to work with a lad called Jimmy Walker and they were the best two workers on the beach.
My dad could sniff coal like a pig can sniff a truffle. He knew where it was and it wouldn’t be there for very long.
The tide would go out and then when it came in again the coal would settle on the beach in thin layers. You marked out where it was and you would rake it in and make a mound as big as a large garden shed, and not just one mound but several during a shift. Now and then I’d put a bit of sand in, so we’d get a little bit more for it.
You would scrape it all together and then put it on the wagon. It was like that non-stop, like you were scooping ice cream. That was my dad, all day, just scooping it up. He was superfit. All the others, big lads of 15 and 16 stone, were knackered after five minutes and they had to sit and wait, but my dad worked non-stop. ‘They are like machines, your dad and Jimmy Walker,’ Allen Jackson told me.
My dad would make £500, killing himself all week, and then he would walk into the betting shop and lose it in two or three hours. I have never, ever gambled – he put me right off.
I didn’t approve of leaving kids in the house with no food. We didn’t even have the potatoes that we used to get out of the farmer’s field when we lived in the cottage to keep us going. You just used to have to do without.
In those days, you used to be given a third of a pint of milk at school each day. I was the milk monitor and you would go round with a crate to one class and there would be 20 or whatever in a class and somebody would be off, so you would keep the milk and when you’d finished you would end up with maybe ten spare bottles. You might give some to the staff for the staff room and keep the rest for yourself.
But regular pocket money was unknown. You might get some money now and then when your mum or dad came home with an extra few quid, but it wasn’t like the handouts kids get now.
Graythorpe was all right, as everyone knew everyone. There was a little corner shop and we called the shopkeeper Elsie Bump because you could see the big bump on her head. The old girl was about 70 and she used to sell singles [loose cigarettes]. I never used to smoke them. I tried it once and the taste was horrible; smoking is fucking horrible. I never really drank either. When I got older, about 26 or 27, I did drink, with Lee Duffy, but we’ll get to that later.
My grandma passed away when I was living at Graythorpe; I was about 14 or 15. The strange thing is, she went to Scotland on holiday to see some family and died of a heart attack there, where she always said she wanted to be buried.
My uncle Frank was a really good footballer when I was a kid, but he was another one for gambling and it was no good for him. When he was 16, the top five teams – Liverpool, Everton, Man United, Manchester City and West Bromwich Albion – all sent scouts up to the North-East to see him play, so he must have been good.
Eventually he went to Man United, but he should have gone somewhere smaller first and got used to that, like Rooney did, before going on to a bigger team. But sometimes success just goes to a player’s head, like it does with pop stars and film stars. That is what happened to Uncle Frank. He was on £200 or £300 a week, which was a lot in those days, especially for a kid of 16. It was too much too soon.
All of my uncles were fighters. Uncle John could fight a bit and he was a footballer. They were all big lads – except for Frank, who was only 10 or 11 stone, though he could fight too. Fighting was bred into all of them.
When we lived at Graythorpe, we couldn’t afford much, so I made a bike up. It was a Chopper frame, Chopper back wheel and a Chopper pair of handlebars, with racing front forks and a racing wheel. I didn’t know anything about welding, so I took it to a local forge and had the bits welded together. I thought it was great until I grasped the part that had just been welded and burned my hand! I didn’t realise the welding was red-hot!
This bike was the bee’s knees, this fucking bike I had made myself. We used to ride our bikes and play football; there was nothing else to do. But I remember we once managed to get a tent and camped on the school field for about six weeks in the summer holidays.
When we moved house again it was for our health. The area was surrounded by chemical-industry works and sometimes the washing hung out on the line would become discoloured. It was bad for your health, the environmental-health people told us. They had to knock our houses down.
WE MOVED TO Seaton Lane. The bottom of the road was rough … well, they had horses. I said, ‘I’m not moving to Seaton Lane because, when everyone asks me where I live, I’m not going to tell them Seaton Lane. That’s the roughest place in Hartlepool.’
As it turned out, our new house, number 200, was at the very top of Seaton Lane, near Stockton Road. So, when people asked where we lived, we would say it was on Stockton Road, as there was such a stigma attached to the other end of Seaton Lane.
I wasn’t keen at first, but I soon found it was great, because the girl next door was 15 and so was I. On the other side was a girl of 16 and then there was 17-year-old Tracy Laughton and another one of about 14 ½, so there were plenty of girls in the street.
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