PREFACE

I first suspected something was amiss when I noticed loss of colour definition in my left eye, an occasional bout of double vision and an unusual tingling in my arms during a hot shower after squash. I went to the reference library and convinced myself that I was experiencing the onset of MS. The family doctor and his colleagues were clearly irritated at my self-diagnosis and agreed to a man that I should “go away and grow up”.

But I insisted on a referral to a higher authority……. and this is where you and I possibly differ. Your specialist hopefully communicates and empathises with you.

My specialist informed me by phone that my “tests were positive”, that he was going on holiday and that he would answer my questions “in a month or so.” Nobody else from his team was available to help me, or so he said. He was completely insensitive. To make matters worse, Sue my wife, was not around at that crucial moment.

At times like this, what we need is immediate communication with specialists and loved ones to help us cope with the panic and to focus.

If you have just been diagnosed or have just become disabled, things will possibly not change or deteriorate straight away. Try to focus on what you can do now, not what you MIGHT NOT be able to do in twenty years. It is important to speak to your specialist, your GP, your local nurse, your loved ones or even someone like me, if only because I and thousands of others have been through what you are experiencing. Look forward positively to the hundreds of things you will be able to do.  Focus on your new, realistic aims and visualise yourself succeeding. If I have to get from my study to the lounge I focus then visualise getting there with my walking frame.

In the meantime, while Sue and our kids, Ellie and Alex, go off to play badminton, I will focus on this autobiography and visualise myself completing it then you reading it. I’m LEFT TO WRITE. That’s my project.

So, here goes!

 

 

 

                                                                Chapter One                                                 

 

I was born in Edinburgh in 1941 and started my education at the RoyalHighPrimary School on the other side of town to where we lived. This was the feeder primary school for the RoyalHighSeniorSchool which my parents wanted me to attend eventually. Dad worked at Bruce-Peebles engineering and Mum was Mum so, where the money was to come from, God only knows. Dad and his two brothers, Bill and Alex, had spent 12-15 years working for Shell-BP in South America and Alex (the eldest) had done well out of it all. My father was the youngest and I’m sure Alex was quite protective of him. Anyhow, I ended up at the Royal High where we were deemed capable of paying £10 per term.

At primary school I never opened a book. Enid Blyton? The Brontё sisters? Never. But I had a wonderful time playing rugby and soccer.

The only sisters I stretched to were the Beverley Sisters on the newly-invented TV; the eldest of the three was married to Billie Wright of Wolverhampton Wanderers and England (105 caps) and my Dad fancied one of the younger twins.

As a seven or eight year old going to school, I would catch a bus for a twenty-minute journey then a tram for a half-hour trip.

ON MY OWN!

Would you let even your TWELVE year-old kid do that nowadays?

 

There were lots of things you were allowed to do as a youngster in those days.

One of the things I loved best was helping change the trolley on the tram at Willowbrae. Our school was at the terminus and, if I got out of school quick enough at the end of the day, I got to help the driver change the trolley round. It had a hell of a spring on it so, quite often, he had to put his arm round me and lift me up, shorts and all. Nobody said anything, because there was nothing to say and because there was little room for cynical interpretations of what was a perfectly harmless

 

 

 

 

action. (The activity of hanging on to the trolley was, of course, very risky).

By the time I was twelve and getting the Number 19 bus from Melville Place down to our house in Pilton, I would put my schoolbag under the stairs then be on duty ringing the bell while the conductor was upstairs taking fares. One for “Stop at the next”; two for “Go”; three for “Keep going, we’re full”; four for “Emergency.”

Once, an interfering lady rightly complained to the conductor about  “this child” having such responsibility. But she used to pick her nose in full view of the other passengers and her complaints were ignored. It was not the norm to complain. In those days you just didn’t take matters to a higher authority or write to the press. The conductor was in charge of his bus, the teacher in charge of his class. Apart from my bell-ringing responsibilities I had to make sure I disappeared at the first sight of an inspector.

But I felt very important and used to wonder how the conductor would cope when I got off the bus on Boswell Parkway. Still, the bus was emptying and there were only three more stops to the terminus!

When we were thirteen and in senior school, I had started to play even more sport. But I hated swimming; the teacher in this all-boys school insisted we swim in the nude because (wait for this …..) “fragments from the swimming trunks would get caught up in the water filters.”  I don’t think any of us dared tell our parents.

Being a well-developed, big lad I used to spend Monday evenings shaving my pubics so that I would not look too different at Tuesday’s swimming lesson. George Penman, the PE teacher who supervised the lessons, could not keep his eyes off my designer stubble. The other kids, who were all a year or so behind me, noticed nothing. My difficulties were compounded by the fact that I had a puerile crush on another naked boy, Chas, in my swimming class. Mr Penman insisted we all showered after the swim which preceded our lunch break. Chas and I always seemed to be last out of the showers while everybody else had scarpered to the dining hall. Chas would sing “Santa Lucia” in full voice and eye me up coquettishly. Once, peering through the steam, he asked me if I thought he had nice legs. That was difficult! But, again, nobody seemed to say anything.

 

When we were in the third year, we were taught biology by a grotesque female, one of only three lady teachers on the staff. One particular lesson, when she was teaching the human reproductive system, she designed to ask her class, a cluster of 32 over-sexed young men, if anyone could describe human sperm. John Mackay was the only one who fell for it and satisfied the ogre’s fantasies by describing it in unbelievable detail. I mean, either your class know or you tell them. You don’t ask them. ………..But nobody said anything.

 

 

I think it’s not unfair to say that I excelled as a fast-breaking No. 8 (“lock” as we used to call it) in the School’s rugby teams.

At the age of fourteen, I had opted for athletics as my summer sport. The athletics ground was opposite HolyroodPalace on the site now occupied by the Scottish Houses of Parliament. My friends and I would go down to Holyrood after school on a Tuesday and Thursday. Normally, the weather was fairly clement and we would spend the afternoon putting the occasional shot or sprinting a few hundred yards. The rest of the time, we would sunbathe.

One Thursday afternoon, we witnessed the arrival of Frank Dick and his father who proceeded to stop-watch Frank as he ran around the four-hundred yard track. Great hilarity ensued because Frank was known in school as a complete sporting non-starter. He was funny and intelligent and the leader of the terrible trio of George Farlowe, John MacDougall and himself.; but he was not a sportsman.

Thirty-five years later, the same Frank Dick became England’s national athletics coach. Nowadays Frank Dick OBE is one of Britain’s top five “Motivation” speakers.

 

 

Most of us have teacher heroes at school. Mine was the Head of Music, Bill Bowie. He was an exceptionally good church organist and choirmaster who obviously favoured boys with musical talent. One particular lad who was moderately gifted, was very much a favourite of Bill, who had a lot of clout at the Royal High.

Our School concerts were performed over four nights at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh each year. The boy, Malcolm, performed a solo one year, got driving lessons from Bill, and even moved in with him for a school term in his bachelor flat. Again, nobody seemed to comment, at least not publicly.

I was in Bill’s School orchestra and “special” choir. Being a big lad, my voice had broken before my contemporaries’ and so, while they were still sopranos, I could not be a member of my class in the School choir.

Bill was a total snob, socially and musically. His assistant, Norman Shires, was a lovely, unimposing personality who excelled at jazz and boogie piano. The contrast was vibrant and Norman, although extremely talented, lived in total fear of Bill. But he got on very well with one of my class-mates, Jack Duff. Even at this young age, Jack was a talented saxophonist, clarinettist and pianist and Norman would invite myself and Jack to listen and “sit in” with him at the International Club in Princes Street. I don’t know what they were thinking, but none of the adult members saw fit to comment or complain.

 

When I was fourteen, I was in the Sea Scouts who met on a Friday evening in the School gym. Our Troop was asked to provide volunteers over the school Summer holidays to help in the offices of the Edinburgh Festival.

Within a few days, Ken Shanks and I were being interviewed by a Mr Ponsonby, Chairman of some Festival Committee or other, who explained that Ken would be his office boy and that I would be “The Messenger” in the Number 1 dressing room of the Usher Hall. I would be at the beck and call of whoever was topping the bill at the time. My first assignment was Messenger for Isaac Stern of whom I knew nothing at all.

I’d go shopping for him on Lothian Road or take messages from him to Ponsonby round in the Festival offices. One day, Mr Stern asked me to accompany him to his suite in the nearby Caledonian Hotel. We were taken the couple of hundred yards in his chauffeur-driven Bentley, which seemed to me to be a completely unnecessary expense. We sat together in his private lounge and chatted about me, my school and my family. He talked about his youth. No mention was made of his career or ambitions which was considerate of him; he probably realised I knew nothing of his fame or his kind of music. We had tea and biscuits before he went off to get ready for his evening performance.

When I told my parents or other people what I had done that day, no eyebrows were raised and, indeed, there was no reason to raise them.

 

By the time I was fifteen I was having private Yoga Nedra lessons from the park keeper who had a very private hut in the middle of the park opposite our house. It involved me lying out on a bench inside the hut while George (the “parky”) whispered gibberish in my ear. The Yoga Nedra seemed to work because, at a time of adolescent stress, I was very able to cope with life. Nobody said anything about “the parky” and his sessions with me in the hut; there was nothing to say anyway

.

I loved my schooldays. Everybody got on so well.

It was a proper school………..single sex with well-established pecking-orders. You lined up for milk under the supervision of the ASSISTANT-janitor who also ran the army cadets. THE janitor, Mr Campbell, wore a long-coat and, on special occasions, a top hat.

 

Of a summer evening, my friends and I would play tennis or soccer. In the dark winter evenings, David Russell (a classmate who lived near us in Pilton and who was good at science) and I (who had become good at languages) went jogging around Inverleith, at the same time sorting out each other’s academic problems. Nobody seemed to have any other problems. If they did, they kept them to themselves.

Life seemed simple.

 

 

I decided not to do a sixth form at the Royal High. My Highers had been excellent (Higher Maths, English, French, Spanish and Latin) so I decided to get stuck in straight away. (This desire to take action IMMEDIATELY has cost me dearly over the years)

I took up an apprenticeship in chartered accountancy with a firm in George Street, Edinburgh. I was so flushed with the joy of succeeding at this, my first interview, that I had no hesitation in accepting an indentured apprenticeship with them. For thirty bob a week, the Practice got a completely servile dog’s body who spent all day preparing Profit and Loss Accounts of small Edinburgh businesses and then spent two hours every night, after work, at the “Institute” attending the most boring lectures on Taxation, Cost Accountancy and the like.

On a few occasions, a smart whiz called Alastair McBeth would venture into the “foosty” storeroom they called “the apprentice section”. He was an apprentice registered with the firm, who was studying at EdinburghUniversity for his LL.B. degree. He played hockey and rugby, enjoyed Scottish country dancing and had several girlfriends in tow. Because he was doing a University degree, his accountancy apprenticeship was reduced from five years to three and a half years. I wasn’t bothered about the hockey or the Scottish Country dancing but I quickly realised this could be my way out.

 

Thanks to some tricky footwork and promises made to the practice partners, I started at St AndrewsUniversity in October of the year after I had left school. I enrolled for a General Degree in French and Spanish; and I was still a virgin.

 

Chapter Two

 

Jim Bayne and I met at St. Andrews when we were both students; he was three years ahead of me and was about to become President of the Union. He was tall, good-looking and of a commanding, confident style. In fact, our paths rarely crossed in university life. Despite his presence and apparent fitness, he was not at all sporty.

I was soon recruited as trumpeter in the university trad. band while Bayne was long-established as the leader (on trumpet) of the Albatross (Modern)Jazz Band.

My first year at University was a completely new ball game. I was eighteen years old and, as I say, still a virgin. Having lived with my parents in very conservative Edinburgh for the past seventeen years, I was nothing if not naïve. My only excursion into the real world was playing trumpet in the Ian Sinclair Jazz Band in Edinburgh, a professional group formed by the former clarinetist of the Jazz Advocates. We used to meet in Sinclair’s home in a tenement building up Lothian Road in Edinburgh. Ian was in his early twenties and desperate to make this band work. He modelled his playing on Monty Sunshine and played with such a hard reed that, by the end of a gig or rehearsal session, his lips would be bleeding.

I never practised and, to this day, I have never been able to muster the enthusiasm for it. In all, I have played piano and organ professionally for fifteen years and while I have had to attend rehearsals or “band calls”, I have never practised. I suppose my attitude has been “I can never be as accomplished as Oscar Peterson or Andre Prévin, so what’s the use?” I have ducked and weaved in that awfully grey area (“He’s a good piano player for a trumpeter” or “He’s a good trumpeter for a piano player” depending upon what instrument I was playing.)

 

Anyway, Bayne’s Albatross Jazz Band used to meet on a Monday night in the Memorial Hall in Market Street, St Andrews. Those who attended were generally third or fourth year students and, typical of the University, about 65% were English. And The Albatross played “modern jazz.” So I tended not to go.

For my first year or eighteen months I was abruptly aware that I had an undesirable Scottish accent. In the second half of my time at St. Andrews I began to realise that most of my immigrant audience were Oxbridge rejects and, for that and many other reasons, I had no need to look up my nose at them. It was only in my last year that I realised most of them would actually love to talk the way I talked. In these early Sean Connery days I realised that Bayne had got it right.

He was elected President of the Union and I thought it appropriate to ask him to become my “Senior Man”.

 

St Andrews was a lovely place and still is, as far as I know. A couple of school-mates and I had digs in a Council house to the south of the town. We had our own sitting room downstairs and the three of us shared one bedroom upstairs. Ian McIntyre, a brilliant classics scholar and Heart of Midlothian supporter, never got out of bed before lunch and spent most afternoons playing snooker in the Union. I don’t recall him ever attending a lecture although, like the alcoholic he has surely become, he was full of promises in his rare moments of sobriety. He was a weed and a scruff who smoked and drank incessantly and gave absolutely no truck to anyone, particularly the English imports.

His father was a publican in Edinburgh’s infamous Rose Street. He, the father, had an immovable, bigoted view of life, some of which rubbed off on Ian. This gave rise to some excellent New Year parties at the McIntyre household in Edinburgh where, one year, Ian’s Dad berated his son more aggressively than usual.

“Ye might be a classical student but a’ bet ye havnae even heard o’ Pluto’s Republic.”

“No, I can’t say I have” says Ian, with exaggerated English fop, knowing it would drive his father to distraction. Only the timely intervention of meagre Mrs McIntyre would obviate any fisticuffs and the outcome would be a song from a grinning Mr McIntyre. All the time, he had really wanted to sing.

My drinking was coming on nicely now; I had started to smoke. But I was still a virgin.

 

Alastair Gordon, our other classmate in the digs, was a veritable pain in the arse. “Sanctimonious” is too kind a word to afford this plonker who, even in these early student days, was on the road to becoming a Scottish politician. He was an angry young socialist who took great pride in defending the underdog. “Why shouldn’t a woman breast-feed her baby in the Underground?” “Why are shipbuilders, the real backbone of our economy, not awarded Knighthoods?” All that sort of crap!

Alastair just liked to be outrageous.

 

I had just passed my motor-bike driving test in St Andrews on a totally clapped-out 98cc machine with a cracked cylinder-head. Where I bought the thing I can’t remember; it didn’t even surprise me in those days that, having passed the test on this ante-deluvian monstrosity, I was then entitled to drive a shaft-driven 1000cc monster. I used to bike quite happily on the 98 from St Andrews to Anstruther every Friday and Saturday night to play the piano at The Smuggler’s and even more happily bike back to St Andrews at two o’clock in the morning with a belly full of real McEwan’s Export. Nobody, except poofs, wore crash helmets in those days and, to be honest, I don’t think a helmet would have made a great difference, such was my feeling of one-ness with the world as I struggled to follow the bike’s fading half-light over the hills back to the digs.

 

But, the land-lady’s son had a BSA 250. So, that summer and the next, I paid him £20 for two month’s rental and headed off to France where Dave MacAlpine and I worked as moniteurs in several “colonies de vacances.”  This was an excellent way to earn some money, see France and improve one’s oral and aural French.

French kids from families in cities who had little chance of enjoying the countryside would enrol for a month’s colonie in, say, the Pyrenees or the Alps while their parents would take off on a romantic break together.

MacAlpine and I would meet up later at some rail-head then drive north and make for home via Le Mans and Cérences.

 

 

To be perfectly honest, I do not know how I managed to get a degree at St. Andrews.

My days were punctuated with stints working in The Coffee House, football training and matches (I was captain of the College 1^st XI), orchestra rehearsals with Cedric Thorpe-Davie, choir practices at St Salvator’s Chapel and playing in the jazz band every Wednesday at the Imperial Hotel. There was the Film Club on a Sunday night; I even had a “chip round” for Pete’s Café which involved driving what was effectively a mobile, gas-lit oven (some called it a “bomb”) round the housing estate selling pre-packed fish and chips.

I totally loved every minute of it. French wasn’t a great problem (although I could see Corneille and Racine far enough); Spanish was wonderful ………completely do-lally with lecturers whose main interest seemed to be focused on the next planned barbecue with the Oriental Languages Department.

My problem was Political Economy.

 

I chose Political Economy thinking it might be useful if I went back to Chartered Accountancy. God! What a bore! I failed the blasted thing each year and had to sit through all the Professor’s lectures again in the next academic year. Every lecture was dictated at writing speed and they were identical to the previous year’s except that you got an update of, say, the current year’s National Product. Wow! Imagine missing that! The Professor took a register, just like school. If you missed three lectures per term without a reasonable excuse, you automatically failed the course.

Judging by the number of times he mentioned the name Adam Smith and the smug grin that then transfigured his sombre jowls, he must have been experiencing orgasmic thrills.  No questions; no discussion; just write. The one good thing that came out of Political Economy was my firm decision never to return to the Numbers Game even if I had signed a contract to do so. The Senior Partner in the Edinburgh firm was a Crawford (of Crawford’s Whisky); my alcohol palate was expanding daily and I was sure he would understand.

But I was still a virgin.

 

At that time, at St AndrewsUniversity, if you were doing a three-year Ordinary degree, you had to “read” your special subjects (French and Spanish in my case) and a total of three subsidiary subjects, a chosen one of which, in my case, was this wretched Political Economy. The other two I chose were Psychology and Moral Philosophy. What a difference! Here we had many off-the-cuff discussions about Right and Wrong, Jesuism, capital punishment and so on.

“It is not wrong to kill.”  Discuss. All that sort of stuff.

 

The Professor of Psychology not only stated that the Mind had overwhelming power over the Body in such environments as the work-place, to prove it he dissected a live frog, removing one of its legs and attaching it to a regular electric shock just to show that, when detached from the brain, the muscle will soon tire. At the same time he made the point that a subject can overcome the fatigue of packing thousands of mushrooms if he or she THINKS of the terminal bonus. Simplistic, but I liked it.

 

I have a theory about my lengthy virginity which I am sure will apply to some of my readers. While still at school, all our neighbours looked upon me as different. I was different. I got caught up in this desire to do well at school, which involved staying in at night to study while my mates were outside playing or chatting up the girls. If I wasn’t studying, I was shaving my lower parts in readiness for the swim at school the next day. Yes, I was different.

By the time we were fourteen or fifteen, everybody had a girlfriend. Except me.  I began to adopt the attitude “.You think I’m different. OK  You’re right. I’m going to be totally different.”

My pals were beginning to drink. I didn’t.  Most went to school in uniforms they clearly detested. I didn’t. I had a barathea blazer with cuff buttons and shirts with Van Heusen, 47 detachable collars. I sang in choirs. They didn’t. I played music professionally. They couldn’t.

 

By the time I got to University it was easy to start drinking. You could practise on your own, after all. You could be different again by frequenting real local pubs and not the undergraduate hangouts. That was different in itself. In fact, by the end of the first year I was an accomplished boozer who drank more than anybody else. That was the key: either you did it or you didn’t. If you did it, you did it more than anyone else; if you didn’t, you didn’t do it at all.

Over the years, I have refined this to suit my particular requirements. For example, I could drink anybody under the table and back. But, when everybody chose to drink each other under the table, I stayed sober. It’s probably a pathetic effort to be seen as different but that, in itself, is different, I suppose.

Anyhow, while all the other students were doing everything into the same pot, I remained disdainfully aloof. The fact that I had attended an all-boys school might well have had something to do with it. Who cares? I’ve made up for it since, thanks to the Swedish connection.

 

Chapter Three

 

Just before the end of the Summer Term in my second year at St Andrews, I noticed an advertisement on the Union notice board asking for “Social Organisers” for groups of Swedish children attending English language summer courses in the UK.

I had to attend an interview in London at the Greys Inn rooms of one Tony Abrams. I was so naïve in those early days; I got the train to London from Edinburgh, convinced I was God’s gift to the world. I stayed overnight in a guest house near King’s Cross and, after an early breakfast, set off on the Tube for Greys Inn. It was so easy. I was clearly cut out for this kind of fast lane! I even had a plastic cup of coffee (or was it a cup of plastic coffee?) as I strolled along the Embankment in the early summer sun. God, I was so cool!

Having arrived half an hour early at this guy’s basement rooms, I was asked to wait in reception. It was here that I met Anne who, apparently, was going to attend the same interview. She was three or four years older than me, maybe 22 or 23, dark and not very attractive. She was quite tall but had bedraggled hair and a long, upturning nose. If she had a figure it was concealed in drapes of bohemian odds and ends. But she was friendly and seemed a caring, observant sort.

One or two others assembled for the interview.

Tony Abrams was an extremely fat Jew who smoked a cigar. He was a practising barrister who had developed a very lucrative side-line recruiting teachers for the Swedish market. In an attempt to make the positions attractive to British teachers, the Swedish Government has agreed tax-free status for them. Their gross salaries would be paid into a central account in Stockholm, Abrams would cream off the equivalent of the UK tax and everyone would be ignorantly happy.

He knew exactly what he wanted from his teachers which he verbalised with a dry sense of humour.

I got on well with Tony and he seemed to like me.

“You have no teaching experience”, he said to me after the initial meeting “but I can offer you a job as a social organiser this summer on the Isle of Wight.”

He went on to explain the job of social organiser, how Anne would be one of the teachers and how he had found it difficult to get teachers to repeat a summer with the course director, Sten-Åke Björling and his wife Gunnar.

“He’s a damned good director” he explained, “but his wife’s an alcoholic. He likes his booze too and, when he’s pissed he likes to bore people by playing English songs on his violin” he added.

Perhaps not the sort of language you would expect from a QC in an Inn of Court!

 

 

ISLE OF WIGHT  1960

 

It was arranged that we should all assemble at the Queens Hotel, Bayswater at around lunchtime on July 15^th………. Sten-Åke Björling, his wife, the group of 37 boys and girls from Sweden, the three teachers and myself, the social organiser. Being a “what if?” sort of fellow and coming all the way from Edinburgh, I decided to book in at the Queens the night before. People laugh at my “what if?” attitude but, I can tell you, it was a very useful attitude to have in these early years. The trouble is, nowadays, I tend to think twice about everyday things like flying or taking a lift in someone’s car. Just taking a lift up a couple of flights of stairs is a bit dodgy.

 

I arrived at King’s Cross at about 6 p.m. and took a cab to Bayswater. I had no trouble booking my room for an extra night and, after a sandwich in the bar, decided to explore Bayswater.

The decadence was, to me, unimaginable. People actually lived in this arsehole of a place. There were houses or flats juxtaposed with Chinese restaurants and ladies of dubious intent wandering the shady streets. The decent cities I knew, like Edinburgh, Glasgow and Kircaldy, had sections or areas where you could go for a poke of fish and chips and other areas for a simple poke. There was Leith Street or Rose Street. You would get your Scottish pie in Leith Street and your other pie in Rose Street. Two fairly down-market areas but with distinct roles to play in the city .But here, in London, was a melting-pot, the German Embassy rubbing shoulders with massage parlours and Indian take-aways. I began to like the anonymity of it all. And, at last, I lost my virginity.

 

The Isle of Wight was superb. We had 37 Swedish boys and girls aged 12-15 all staying in a dedicated house in Bembridge and it was my job to flit about the island in the mornings, during their lessons, organising activities for the kids in the afternoons. The teachers, who were free in the afternoons had to be on duty in the evenings and so the Director, Sten-Åke, Gunnar (his wife) and myself were free to drink ourselves stupid in Steyne Cross before returning to our rooms in the hostel where we would make large inroads into a bottle of whisky.

Sten-Åke was the second hero in my life by this time. He was a wonderful linguist. He spoke English to perfection; he dressed with style (never without a bow tie) and he adored live music. True to the warning from Tony Abrams, he loved playing what he thought were popular English songs on his violin. The number of times I’ve played “Ain’t She Sweet” with him in pubs throughout England…….……! Gunnar tended to spoil things because, while she struggled in order to be nice and friendly to English people when she was the worse for drink, Sten and I were normally well lubricated and friendly towards the natives. Gunnar was a frail lady, obviously spent to booze. But she was hard. Sten was a wonderful showman whom I admired; and I liked him, because he was as soft as she was hard. Not soft in a business or professional sense; he cared. They both had reasons for being how they were .It was not significant to me at the time. But Dicken, Sten-Ǻke’s 27 year-old son from a previous marriage, suffered from MS. Apparently, he had been a superb swimmer and athlete but was now almost blind and a source of great distress for Sten-Åke.

 

The daily routine during the month on the Isle of Wight was repetitive but very enjoyable. I tried to make the activities as different and “un-Swedish” as possible and, apart from the horse riding and putting matches, I organised competitions and treasure hunts which involved the kids visiting shops and places of interest where they would have to speak to the natives.

But then it was time to get back to St.Andrews for my final year.

 

 

 

 

I was still bogged down by this bloody Political Economy and I arrived back at St. Andrews to receive the academic yellow card…………………………either you pass this year or you are “down”. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sten-Ǻke, the prospect of  spending another summer with him and the possibility of a job at his school, Sigtunaskolan, where I would be “very comfortable” (providing, of course, I graduated). But that academic year (’61-62) was no different to any other………………….countless trumpet-playing jobs in St Andrews Jazz Club, with Ian Sinclair’s band in Edinburgh, piano-playing at the Smugglers in Anstruther, College Choir all day Sunday, Film Club Sunday night, Orchestra Wednesday afternoon, football training Tuesdays and Thursdays, matches on Saturday afternoons, snooker and boozing in the Union whenever possible, surprise parties and all-night card schools in the flat I shared with three other reprobates and, oh yes, the occasional lecture or tutorial.

Now, this may come as a surprise to you; I passed my French and Spanish exams at the end of the year AND FAILED MY POLITICAL ECONOMY. I think they must have liked me and I certainly got on well with Cedric Thorpe-Davie who held the Chair in music and bore some clout upstairs. The result was a seriously yellow card and the opportunity to resit the Political Economy exam for the very last time at the resit session in July of that year. A pass would mean I could graduate in August; failure would mean an academic court martial.

 

My mother, whose company I still enjoy today, was totally ignorant of what went on in my life. I would drive off from Edinburgh in the L-plated family car to attend a party in London and she, thinking (having been told) I was venturing to Dalkeith, just out of Edinburgh, would ask her usual “Clean underpants? Hanky?” Her main concern was that I should have an accident and be taken to hospital with dirty underpants. My Dad was, I think, more circumspect, having

spent three years living and working in Peru.

 

Sten-Ǻke had rung me to offer me the Social Organiser position on two of his courses that summer, one in Cromer during the month of August and the other in Sheringham the month after. I was over the moon. I would go up to St.Andrews for three weeks prior to the Political Economy exam in July, blitz the swotorium (no booze, no music, no other students, no problem), then join Sten-Ǻke and Gunner in August.

The three weeks in St. Andrews during the month of July were no real problem. I stayed in “the Chimes” guest house along with Ian McIntyre and Alistair Gordon who were also re-sitting exams. The digs were owned by a well-known gay (“bender” in those days) called Jimmy Pride. Jimmy was middle-aged, small and plumpish with disappearing ochre hair. He lived in the basement of the property and you would only see him at mealtimes when he and his female assistant would dish up very basic but wholesome fare at breakfast and evening meals to the seven or eight inhabitants. The breakfast table always  boasted a pot of lemon curd which nobody dared touch. We were convinced he had the Fife concession for Millar’s Lemon Curd. The standing prank was, every time a lorry or van parked in the street outside, we would call Jimmy from the kitchen and tell him a new consignment of curd had arrived. Invariably, he would mutter something derogatory about “bloody schoolkids” before retreating past his pride and joy, a grandfather clock which stood elegantly on the sous-sollanding by the entrance to his subterranean flat.

 

There were two other guests in the house during these first weeks of July, both young French females. I was now sexually rampant and it took a great deal of bromide to concentrate my thoughts on the forthcoming re-sits. But concentrate I did until one evening at about nine o’clock, the girls came into the lounge where we were reading and explained to me, in French, that they had been followed from the pub by a scruffy local man in rubber boots.

“Mais, ne t’inquiète pas, Danielle” said I, rising in several ways to the occasion.

“Il est dans la maison” said Danielle, visibly agitated.

I casually made my way to the lounge door and opened it. Sure enough, there stood the biggest farm-hand I have ever set eyes upon. He would be in his early twenties, with thick, straight black hair, a muddied face and knee-length rubber boots into which he had fed the trousers of his grubby overalls.

“Bonsoir” he said unconvincingly.

I explained to him, in French, that this was a private house and that my sisters did not want his company. He must leave; whereupon he turned and I followed him, thankfully, down the stairs, towards the ground floor.

By now everyone was observing from the safety of the first-floor landing. Half-way down he turned and aimed a random, alcohol-inspired blow at my now proud visage. We grappled, he gripping my grey, mother-bought sweater while I contributed my lean fifteen stones to his turgid mass. We rolled down the stairs in wanton embrace, crossed the ground-floor landing then completed the last short lap where one of us put his foot through the front glass of the grandfather clock.

Jimmy Pride seemed to arrive. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed unsympathetically before calling the police (presumably to establish his insurance claim).

The police confirmed that the perpetrator was a wanted GBH criminal, whereupon I apparently paled noticeably and continued to do so for the days building up to the resits. I blamed my pallor on the mere prospect of resitting and probably failing the dreaded Political Economy but, when I returned to Edinburgh after the exam my mother saw through all that. She noticed the tear in my sweater and made the improbable suggestion that I had been in a fight. I say “improbable” because she knew that I was more likely to throw words than fists when cornered.

 

I prepared to spend the rest of the summer vac. enjoying Cromer with Sten-Åke, Gunnar and Lasse, their son.

 

 

Cromer passed off much as expected. I was again the Social Organiser and I delighted in skooting about the place every morning making deals with local tradespeople so that the kids would have a fulfilling, enjoyable afternoon.

After dinner, the evening would take its usual form. Sten would take his violin and we would go off on a pub crawl. As the weeks rolled by, the radius of the crawl would diminish to one or two pubs that would or could welcome me on piano and Sten on violin playing yet another version of “Ain’t She Sweet?” or “Czardas”. I came to like the fact that our stay in any place would never exceed four weeks!

But this stay was interrupted after the second week.

I received news that I HAD PASSED MY POLITICAL ECONOMY and was invited to graduate in the Younger Hall at St. Andrews on October 2^nd at 10 a.m.

 

 

Chapter Four

 

On the morning of September 30^th Sten and I bought a second-hand Standard 8 in Cromer for £27. It was a beautiful black machine with real leather, palm-coloured upholstery, front doors that opened into the wind and tyres as bald as I am now.

After dinner on the evening of October 1^st Sten and I took our leave of Gunnar, Lasse, and the other staff.

Sten-Åke was a tall, dapper, fifty-four year old who felt undressed without the ubiquitous bow-tie. He walked with confidence, almost a swagger, which resulted from him knowing he was successful. Teachers were very well-respected and well-paid in Sweden in those days and the private school where he taught in Sigtuna was an all boys establishment which housed and taught the sons of royalty, military personnel and successful businessfolk. His English was perfect, his French very good, his German passable. As I’ve said before, the trouble was, he liked to play his violin in public, preferably in English pubs where many still boasted a steam piano with the occasional sing-along. But Sten-Åke’s repertoire of English songs was limited and, by the end of a month with a course of Swedish children in a small town or village, the local boozers were getting fed up with Ain’t She Sweet!  and  Danny Boy.

The trip up to Scotland for my graduation was a perfect platform for Sten-Åke and the less-discerning British public. We wandered slowly up the old A1, stopping every twenty or thirty miles when Sten would shout

“What a lovely hostelrie. Alex, we need some refreshment.”

We would rest our weary Standard, play a few uninvited tunes and quaff two or three pints of real ale. Our little “spot” would finish with a frenetic Czardas and a thunderous ripple of applause. Then we would set off on the next part of our journey.

Fortunately, Sten enjoyed doing all the presentation of our little “spots” because, by the time we reached the “Three Bridges” in Berwick, I could play, I could drive but I couldn’t speak. (These were the totally ridiculous thank-God-for-a-seat days when double vision and fatigue didn’t interfere with driving; you simply shut one eye.)

 

Mercifully, at about 4 a.m., we arrived at my parents’ house in Pilton, Edinburgh. My mother had been at her wits’ end but insisted on tea and toast. Sten-Åke was his usual Mr Suave; I found somewhere soft and slept like a top for three hours.

The following morning, we had to catch the 8 a.m. ferry from South Queensferry for my big day at St Andrews

 

 

I awoke, feeling extremely rough. Sten-Åke, bless him, was the epitome of class and savoir-faire as he tucked into bacon and eggs and bewitched my mother with his worldliness. We lived in a three-roomed semi and, while my mother was at pains to try and impress, my father, with his own worldliness, found it difficult to muster any enthusiasm for this Swedish poser.

My main concerns were that my mother had remembered to hire a gown and hood for me from Forsyth’s in Princes’ Street and that it would be delivered to the Younger Hall in St Andrews in time for the graduation ceremony. This having been confirmed, we set off in Dad’s Morris 1000, under the scrutiny of Mrs Gammy and Mrs Barclay, our immediate neighbours. I could feel the pride welling in the hearts of my parents as we headed towards South Queensferry. (All this was happening in 1962, you understand, when the road bridge was but a glint in someone’s eye.)  It was 7.40 a.m. and only I knew that we would have to stop in Kircaldy and buy some black shoes and a white shirt, sized 17, with peaked collar, necessary for the coup de grâce when the hood is thrown over your head.

The 8 o’clock ferry was full and we had to wait until 8.40 for its return (the second ferry-boat did not come into service until 9 o’clock).

At twenty past nine we arrived in Kircaldy and started hunting for the shoes and the shirt. The man in the shoe-shop was very helpful and ‘phoned around for us until he found an outlet selling what was, even then, a rarity. The eventual shirt shop was only a few doors away. I had my black suit on and was allowed to try the shirt for size. I bought some cheap studs, added the musician bow tie that I always carried in the suit pocket and, looking a complete prat,  rejoined the others

 

At twenty to eleven we docked in North Street, St Andrews.

The ceremony had started at ten and there was no action outside the Younger Hall. My father had, long ago, resigned himself to the fact that I “had mair o’ ma muther in mi” and calmly accompanied her and Sten-Åke to a back seat in the Hall while I abandoned the car in North Street then went back-stage to suss the scene .

I could’t believe what I saw. All my fellow students who had successfully re-sat in the summer were standing in alphabetical order, waiting to be called on to the stage for the “et super te”. This was done over the microphone on stage by an old fossil called Mitchell who was something like the Deputy Principal. He was standing to the left of the Principal who was casting the hoods over the kneeling graduates.

The first MA, Bob Abernethy, would have been called by Mitchell. Abernethy would proceed on to the stage and kneel before the Princ. who would “blether” something in Latin before throwing the appropriate hood (scarlet, I think) over the head of the genuflected Abernethy. This is where the peaked collar came into play as it  prevented the hood  strangling the recipient. Subsequent graduates knelt and were bedecked with their hood after the Princ’s pronouncement “Et super te.” Then off they went, stage right.

I clocked all this as quickly as I could then returned backstage in panic. Mitchell was about to start on the B’s.

“God! What will my mother say? Sten-Åke’s come all the way from Cromer and, when you think of it, Dad’s come all the way from Peru.” It was his big day too.

When I was at school, in the Third Year I think, I had done particularly well in some exams and my Dad gave me a ten-shilling note. Today had to be worth 30 bob at least.

Scurrying and scanning up and down the off-stage lines I found Paul Coulton, bass player in our jazz band at the Imperial.

“Where have you been?” he asked. Paul was from Wisbech in Suffolk and, like most of the 60% students who were Oxbridge rejects from England, he had a superciliousness I had found daunting in the first year, irritating in the second and laughable in the third. Latterly, I had become known as a defiant individualist, more than happy to invite the Sassenachs to go forth. Anyway, I needed him now. Approaching him with an over-effusive grin, I asked him where the hired gowns and hoods were.

“They’re in Number 1 Lecture Hall”, he announced with one eye on the wings where the B’s were about to start. “You’re too late. You’ve been marked absent. You’ll have to do it in absentia.”

“You can tell Mitchell I’m here when you get out there………. Please!”

“I can’t. I’ve got my whole family here.” says Coulton, as if I cared.

“So have I, for goodness’ sake” and I ran off to find my hired kit. On my way across the quad I remember thinking  “One day, I’ll write a book and I’ll crucify that bastard.” Well, here I am but, far from crucify him, I’m going to publicly thank him.

The lecture hall was full of boxes, mostly empty. But I found one with a rather nice, heavily-adorned black gown, just like Bill Bowie’s, and another with several MA hoods. I assumed the gown, grabbed a hood and ran back to the Younger Hall. (The big breweries had, at some point, been in keen competition to gain credibility, witness theYounger Hall in St Andrews and, in Edinburgh, the McEwan Hall and the Usher Hall.) If I get enough brass from this book I’ll build a Red Wine Hall, although I suppose it exists already in several forms…………bus shelters, Priory Clinics and the like.

Back in the wings of the Younger, Paul Coulton had four people in front of him before his name was to be called.

 

Breathlessly, I reminded him of all the good times we had had at the Smuggler’s and the Imp., of the chord sequences I had shouted out to him as he slapped his bass or blew his Sousaphone.
Two to go.

“All you have to do is tell Mitchell, as you pass him, that Fleming’s here. Paul, please. Remember all the good times”.

“I do. That’s the trouble”

One to go then Mitchell’s voice rang out over the p.a. “Paul Coulton, MA”

As Paul sortied from the wings I said to him “’I Can’t Give You Anything but Love’” and, as he strode towards the Princ., in a stage whisper, “F, F-diminished.”

It worked. He knelt before the Princ., received the et super te, stood up and, as he passed Mitchell, said something. Mitchell, the old duffer, all but shouted into his microphone “What?”

Paul’s whisper could be easily heard over the p.a.. “Fleming’s here”

“Sorry?” bellowed the old fart.

“Fleming’s here” shouted Paul, now in complete despair.

Half an hour later I walked on to the stage accompanied by a hand-clap, precisely synchronised with my steps and a gradually-swelling chorus of “Fleming’s here. Fleming’s here. Fleming’s here.”

I loved it. My Mother didn’t.

 

 

Chapter Five

 

 

The following morning Sten-Åke and I set off to return to Cromer with less than our normal gusto. However, a few choruses of “Danny Boy” and “Blackbird” in the pubs of Coldstream and Doncaster (with the inevitable pints accompanying) and we were soon back on song.

 

A few days later, the Cromer course came to an end and we all parted company, me to Edinburgh, to pack my bags for Sweden and Sten-Åke to pave the way for me in Sigtunaskolan.

 

 

 

 

 

October ‘63

 

My Dad’s friendship with John Parkes (the travel agent) in Edinburgh was useful in my preparations for travelling to Sweden. My contract, set up by Tony Abrams in London, was to involve some low-key, more-tea-Vicar? teaching of English to adults some days of the week, duties as a housemaster in Tallåsen House at Sten-Åke’s school in Sigtuna and running the Folkuniversitetet’s jazz club once a month on a Friday night in Stockholm. Tony was a co-founder of the Folkuniversitet in Sweden. He was resident as a lawyer in London while his partners, Ian Dunlop and Dennis Gotobed ran the show in Stockholm. They made their money from the tax concessions allowed by the Swedish Government as an inducement to teachers of English. Abrams paid us (net of the unpaid tax) in England. It wasn’t Swedish tax, nor was it British tax. Nice one!

 

The work with the adults was very low-key. The whole of the FolkUniversity comprised merely half a dozen ex-pats who organised evening classes in English conversation and “realia”, held in rented accommodation throughout  the Stockholm area. Members of the clique also appeared in the endless English-language programmes on Swedish radio and television. This was to prove a difficult scene to penetrate. Not only were the Swedes very good at English, knew it and enjoyed showing it off, but their teachers realised they had hold of a good thing and didn’t want to share their cookies.

 

My only deadline from Tony Abrams was to be at Sigtunaskolan on October 15^th  (a Saturday) whereupon I would be given my school timetable, meet my housemother colleague Ingrid and be shown my room in the House. I was then to have dinner in Sten-Åke and Gunnar’s home. We would be joined there by the dreaded Ingrid.

 

 

 

My chosen mode of transport to Scandinavia was a cargo ship, the Icelander, which plied the seas between Reykjavik, Leith (Edinburgh) and Copenhagen in a never-ending nautical triangle.

I can’t remember my leaving home being particularly traumatic. But I do remember The Icelander. There were only eight passengers on board: a family of four, a young couple, a single Danish girl and myself. The passengers’ common-room where we were to eat and socialise, had a small snooker table and a bar where everybody would help themselves. No money would change hands.         Heavens!

I enjoy the sensation of sailing out of harbours and escaping land-bound (and other) shackles. The feeling would inspire a raging, inexplicable erection similar to the feeling I had when driving the family car alone, ‘L’-plates ablaze. Something to do with danger and the unknown, I suppose.

I stood on deck in the early evening wafts of autumn, waved to my Father who had dropped me off then watched the slowly diminishing streets of Newhaven, only just recognisable from this unknown perspective as we turned into the open. This was really my first time at sea.

“Would you like a game of bee-yard?” she asked as she snuggled up to me like a long-lost friend and leant, like me, with folded arms, on the rail. As she looked around her, towards Newhaven then out to sea, her auburn hair blew recklessly in the wind atop an irresistible smile. Supported by the hand-rail and her cradling arms, her tits were amazing andy erection blossomed.

 

As we crossed the North Sea all eight of us enjoyed an excellent dinner together. It seemed to be accepted that Patricia would sit next to me; I remember thinking how strange it was that the other two men had smartened up since last I saw them and how easily they ordered wine and other drinks.

Tricia giggled a lot as I forced down the sild and new potatoes rinsed with a bottle of the steward’s recommended Chardonnay. I didn’t like her giggling much but I hoped I could stay in control until the après-ski !

The main course was steak tartare accompanied by a Côtes du Rhône all of which we devoured with unseemly haste and ignorance. Oblivion swiftly took over. I can’t remember any game of beeyard ; I can’t even remember finding my cabin and falling asleep. But I do remember, the following morning, vomiting large quantities of Cornflakes into the harbour of Köpenhavn (Copenhagen)

I had arrived in Scandinavia.

 

 

 

STOCKHOLM

 

 

I casually meandered around the entrance to the TivoliGardens in a hopeless search for Patricia who had indicated, the previous day, that she would head there.

In resignation, at just after two o’clock, I decided to get to the station and catch a train to Stockholm.

I arrived in Stockholm on the Friday evening at about 7 p.m. and could not gain the slightest response from the guest house right opposite the station which Tony Abrams had booked for me. I resolved to take a cab to the most expensive hotel in Stockholm, knowing there would be vacancies and planned to proceed to Sigtuna, as arranged, the following day.

I may have considered myself a casual globe-trotter now, but I had never seen so many contraptions in a room before ………

trouser-press, shoe-shine, drinks cabinet. After three or four extracts from the drinks cabinet and with renewed courage, at about 11.30 p.m., I rang Reception on the bed-side ‘phone and told them that my bill should be sent to Ian Dunlop of Folkuniversitetit, Stockholm.

“You have heard of him, of course.”

Oh, and could I have breakfast delivered to my room at 8 o’clock the following morning? I heard nothing more about my account. I was on the edge again. The erection prevailed.

 

The following morning after breakfast I taxied back to the station from Falun. Both my taxis in Stockholm had been Mercedes. Within minutes I realised that a taxi that was not a Mercedes, or at least a Volvo, was the exception.

Wow! This was the life!

I caught a train to Märsta, where I telephoned Sten-Åke, and then took a local bus, directly outside the railway station, to Sigtuna.  Sten was waiting for me at the bus-station of this delightful little town which sat peacefully at the side of LakeMällaren. As you went away from the bus-station, parallel to the lakeside, all the buildings to the right were detached and painted white or russet. The Town Hall stood back off a little square. The buildings to the left, a hundred metres from and parallel to the lakeside were single-storey terraces which housed the five or six shops, the bank, the systembolaget and, as I later found out, the dentist. At the top of this main street, isolated to the left, on the lakeside, was the Stadshotelet which was to become my quartier général for the next couple of years, particularly of a Saturday.

The bus-station sat on the lower right quadrant of the junction of the main street, the Märsta road and the “Arlanda road” which, in fact, took one to the main north-south motorway. You had to cross this motorway to get to ArlandaAirport. The Björling house was set in its own grounds some two hundred yards from the bus-station on the Arlanda road.

Sten-Åke was a wonderful poser but here, in Sigtuna, he was Top Man. As we walked the short distance to his house he would tilt his Trilby to innumerable townsfolk who clearly knew and respected him.

The dry autumn leaves crunched underfoot as we made our way up the unpretentious drive to the house, a typically wooden, two-floored structure that, again, was picture-like. The rear of the house enjoyed a parade of tall conifers which hid a breath-taking view of Lake Mällaren from all except, as I found out later, the occupant of the first-floor guest-room. The full Björling household welcome party was in place ………… Gunnar and the two sons Lasse (14 at the time) and Dicken.

Gunn had prepared a superb supper in my honour. They knew how much I enjoyed an appetiser of sild and new potatoes with Schnapps followed by an extremely rare entrecôte with French beans sweating in garlic and tomato. Fried, diced potatoes, occasionally burnt then sprinkled with fresh parsley, were in a separate serving dish. I had never in my life seen such high living.

At the end of the main course Sten started exalting the wines he had chosen.

“I remember having this particular label in Provence in Summer 1961” he would declare as Gunnar served the cheese.

Lasse was a quiet, very pleasant, not physically attractive boy who attended his father’s school and who had been on one of the courses in England. (I say “his father’s school” because, in fact there was another, mixed, boarding school on the other side of the village. It too was very exclusive and had Carl-Gustav [then Crown Prince] and his sister as pupils.) He, Lasse, lived totally in the shadow of his father, Sten-Åke.

Dicken would be in his late twenties, a good-looking, sporty type who carried the weight of an ex-rugby player. In fact he had been a county swimmer but was now ravished by multiple sclerosis. I learnt a lot from Dicken about bearing illness. Never talk about it and never complain; because your listener might be young and fit, as I was then, and not really want to know or might have his own unseen medical, financial or psychological problems that are worse than yours. Either way, he’s not interested in yours, so why not just shut up and get on with it?

I knew a psychology lecturer in Kampala who had a theory about problems.  (see later)

 

 

Chapter Six

 

The next day, Sunday, Sten-Åke took me up to the School to meet Ingrid, the husmår who was to be my second-in-command at Tallåsen. In fact she had been there some fifteen years and knew all the ropes. Her duties were to organise the housekeeping staff and to mother the younger boys when they were distressed. Very often I let her run the whole show if I was on with “other things”.

The whole School was on a campus about 300feet above the village on one of the quadrants around the bus-station. It was a perfectly dedicated site without, unfortunately, the posture or dignity of Eton or Fettes. There were four “houses” accommodating something like 200 boys in all, a sports field which doubled as an ice hockey pitch in the winter, a huge sports hall, a swimming pool and the School buildings themselves. Three or four detached properties where senior staff lived were dotted around the campus along with one large hostel where the female house staff lived. This proved to be an endless source of surveillance problems as the older pupils, some in their early twenties, tended to seek solace there. I didn’t blame them at all, of course, but quite often I had to interrupt my own solace-seeking elsewhere if any of our senior boys, particularly Tom, had been caught on the prowl.

I was only twenty-two at the time and felt more like an incoming prefect, who couldn’t even speak Swedish, than an authoritative master who was to rule over the day-to-day lives of the 49 pupils in Tallåsen. In fact, most of the boy residents spoke perfect English being sons of military or diplomatic officers serving abroad; or sons of eminent bankers and the like. I was totally out of my depth linguistically and socially.

 

We met on the ground floor, in the small office adjacent to Ingrid’s rooms. She was ugly, not outstandingly old and sat at the end of the small, oblong table, chairman-like, drawing on her clay pipe which she clasped in her stubble-covered lips. The house-prefect, Göran, was there too. Blond, thin, tall and not attractive, he was in the Lower Sixth and had his feet well under the table. I decided, from the outset, that I would not challenge this régime. Instead I would run the top floor of older boys from my room there.

 

Most weekdays were much the same. We’d get up at 7, rush down a cup of tea then the boys would attend their first classes at 7.30. They would return to the House at 10.15 for a sit-down breakfast. This might be my first showing of the day if I’d had a trip to Stockholm or Upsala the night before. At meal-times, I sat at the top table with Göran and the other sixth formers. I let him say grace and make the day-to-day announcements. I only spoke if there was a major discipline problem. My experience in bands had taught me the importance of “feeling” an audience. I knew how to hold a crowd. I savoured the moments when I would stand there at full height looking around and waiting for complete silence……essential for effect when laying down the law to the assembled masses.

 

I only taught in the School on a Friday morning; one hour in the junior section and two hours in the SeniorSchool. I had had no formal teacher training and if you had mentioned TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) I wouldn’t know what you were talking about. In fact, at that time, I still had a pretty strong Scottish accent. It might be OK in the BBC nowadays but it was definitely infra dignitatem in TEFL circles then.

One day I had chosen “The Farm” as the subject of my JuniorSchool lesson. I had a wall-chart showing lots of farmyard animals. The kids had enjoyed drawing and labelling them. But then I asked the question “And what do we grow on our farm?”

No suggestions.

“Hmm?”

Nothing.

“Wheat?” I tried. “We make bread from it”.

The class erupted. Why, I didn’t know until Sten-Åke later explained.  “Wheat”, pronounced in a Scottish accent (where the wh begins with the gutteral ch as in loch) means “shit”. To these young boys it meant we made bread from shit!

 

During my first month at Sigtunaskolan I built up a lot of cred. by serenading hairy Ingrid and the female staff on the piano during the late morning while they cleaned and generally sorted the place out, and by turning up regularly in the sports-hall to play indoor soccer or to play the Head of Maths at tennis. My soccer was O.K. (having had a trial for Edinburgh Thistle as a schoolboy) and my tennis was pretty good. But this Head of Maths was something else; he just stood there and thrashed the ball all over my side of the net leaving me completely limp after an hour or so. I was consoled a little by the fact that he knew one or two players in the Swedish Davies Cup Team. He only knew them but, somehow, that made me feel better. Although he made a complete mess of me, the fact that I had dared to play against him added to my cred. And the connection was to prove quite fruitful in the future……………

 

My finest cred-stroke involved Tom, whom I mentioned earlier. He shared the room next to me with an excessively timid sixth-former called Lasse. Tom’s parents lived in Chicago and he punctuated his frightening bursts of temper with completely fluent Americanisms such as “Son of a bitch”, “I’ll be darn’d” and the like. Nobody, pupil or teacher, could control this big “muscler”. One evening I was called from my room. Tom had been found carousing in the girl servants’ quarters and brought back to Tallåsen by the security staff who were more than happy to simply dump him in the kitchen downstairs. Hairy Ingrid called me down to the kitchen where I found him wading through a huge plate of cornflakes and dehydrated strawberries. It was just after 10 p.m. I had completed the Fourth Year Lights Out and my fifth small bottle of Pripp’s  pilsner. I felt comfortably mellow and said to Tom  “Finish that lot and we’ll go have a beer in my room. What’ya say?” slipping into the appropriate vernacular as you do.

I did not like the lad, who was three or four years younger than me and a lot more dangerous.

But, probably because of the booze and the language, he saw me as a kindred spirit. Any time in future when Tom was causing problems in class or elsewhere they would call for me. I would take him to my room, not talk aggressively and give him a beer or two. It worked a treat every time. It stood me in good stead in future years. I had learnt never to confront confrontation, particularly with confrontational kids.

As a reward, the school authorities decided to get me a little flat in the village. I would be on duty in Tallåsen three nights a week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) and would teach in School on Fridays. With the flat being a ten minute walk from Tallåsen and with me sleeping in the House three nights a week, I was readily at hand, in theory at least, whenever Tom needed calming down. The attraction to the powers was I was off the premises four nights a week thus not providing a bad influence for Tom. By the end of November I had two mornings (Tuesday and Thursday) and one evening (Wednesday) teaching small adult classes in or around Sigtuna for the Folkuniversitetet and, once a month, usually on Friday evenings, I helped run their jazz/social club in Stockholm. Perfect!

In fact it was during one of these social evenings that President Kennedy was assassinated in America. I had completed my spot on the piano in the rooms they occupied opposite the RoyalPalace on the other side of one of the many inlets into Stockholm harbour. I decided to go next door to the Stadshotellet for a quick beer or six. (Even in those days it was well against the law to drink and drive in Sweden; but, up to press, I had got away with it)  It being just after eight, the bar was virtually empty. The barman was glued to the television and waved me aside as I tried to order. I followed his gaze on to a red-hot report of the President’s assassination and resultant death.

Foregoing the beer, I returned next door just in time for the end of Dennis Gotobed’s spot. The whole thing was extremely informal so anyone who happened to be around at the time would “bring on” or “bring off” the act. I leapt on stage and, with suitably calming reverence, announced the “as-we-speak” death of President Kennedy. The proceedings were appropriately closed. One or two stayed behind for an “English” cup of tea. But, a thing I have never forgotten, after ten minutes or so, Dennis Gotobed took me aside and said “I don’t suppose you could have waited until the end of my second spot!”

The world is coming to an end (for so it seemed) but we’ll just let Dennis do his “More scones?” act before we tell everyone that the President of the USA has been assassinated.

 

 

Towards the end of that Autumn Term it got very cold. The snow lay thick, the sky was blue and the air pure. It was a normal Swedish winter. Beautiful. Cold. Possibly minus 20 degrees. I was luxuriating in my village flat on a Monday evening with a case of Pripps, feeling quite lonely actually. I had just thrown my rubbish down the chute to the communal bin at about seven thirty when the ‘phone rang. Could I come up to Tallåsen where Tom was being difficult.  I began to feel better, more needed, almost essential, as I ran up the path opposite the bus-station on to the school campus. I could feel the hairs in my nostrils hardening in the sharp evening air. A couple of red squirrels rushed off from under my feet to find their places for the night. By the time I reached Tallåsen at the furthermost point of the campus I was inhaling hectares of beautiful, clear Nordic air. My heart was thumping, not because I was concerned ……… I knew Tom only wanted my company ……… but because of the excessive exercise from running up the hill.

I burst into the enveloping warmth of Tallåsen and my nose began to bleed. Tom was no problem but my nose continued to bleed even when I had returned to my flat. In fact it continued for three days during which time I developed a large cyst on my left eyelid. By the morning of the fourth day I felt completely crap. Sten-Åke made me an appointment for that morning at the local quack in Sigtuna and by eleven o’clock I was sitting in the very quiet waiting-room of the ophthalmic surgeon in UppsalaHospital, not because my treatment was urgent but because this was Sweden. By 12.20 I had had an eye test, my nose had stopped bleeding (thanks to some magic potion they had inserted), the cyst had been removed under local anaesthetic and I was on my way to the down-town optician with prescription in hand. Because I had had an eye test before the removal of the cyst there was nothing to do at the optician.

“I’m afraid we close for lunch” he said, in perfect English. “Can you come back at about three? I’ll ask you to chose some frames now, though”

I could have been anywhere in England. Everybody, doctors, nurses, opticians spoke perfect English. The only difference was that the medical service was first-class. And free for overseas teachers!

The doctor had indicated that the nose-plug was temporary and that I should have my nose cauterised as soon as possible.

I returned to Sigtuna after seven hours, cystless and with very trendy specs. Term was about to end so, the next day, I went into the village and booked a flight to Glasgow. IN THE VILLAGE if you please. I couldn’t get over how organised this bloody country was.

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

I arrived back in Edinburgh on December 23d 1962. Mother had no concept of where I had been; not because she was stupid; it was of no import. What was really important was a bath and a good meal. For her, “a good meal” comprised a plate of home-made broth (in those days, almost everything was home-made) followed by mince and tatties. “Real food” she still calls it and, after all those years poncing about the place, I tend to agree.

In 2001, as I write, we live in a developed, but average-sized, two-floored cottage which is about the same size as the building in Edinburgh where we and three other families lived. Two were downstairs and two upstairs with separate entrances and carefully allocated garden space. Although, as I lay in bed, I used to hear the mice running in the space between our ceiling and the Crombie’s floor above us, we made little contact. But, in the flat above and diagonally opposite ours was the Gammy family with their dark, sultry daughter Rae, who was a year or so older than me. She had a very competent soprano voice and was on the point of joining Edinburgh’s Bohemian Light Operatic Society where my mother had starred for many a year. So, after “the fancies” I went into ”the big room” to play the piano. “The big room” (which was, in fact, quite a small, average room by today’s standards), had been my bedroom in upper-school and university days and I had often serenaded Rae from here. She would sing along with my selections but never acknowledged me outside, in the street or in the park opposite, where everyone, except me, was “experimenting” with adolescent sex. Or was it I who never acknowledged her? If only they knew; I was too bloody shy. They saw me as too stuck-up; I went to the RoyalHigh School and would probably go on to university.

So, tonight, I played Ivor Novello. My Dad never objected to the racket; I have absolutely no idea of what he felt about me and my doings in life. Very Scottish. But mother came and joined me. She wanted to show Rae how it was really done; Rae wanted to show us what a young, fruity voice she had; I wanted to show off to both.

When it all died down, we had some supper. Rae probably did the same. At half past ten I went to bed in “the big room” and got pissed on the half bottle of whisky I had bought on the ‘plane.

I felt quite alone.

 

The following day, Christmas Eve, I went up to the Out-Patients’ at the Royal Infirmary to see if they could cauterise my nose. There was NOBODY there. It wasn’t like UpsalaHospital which was clearly well-funded and organised. Here, they were probably saving themselves for the forthcoming battles in the local pubs that evening. In those days, Christmas didn’t mean a lot in Scotland, but, any excuse for a brawl …………!

Under Sten-Ǻke’s tutelage I had learnt how to manipulate people and within minutes I had the undivided attention of Dr. Shah, the duty doctor who emerged from somewhere, yawning pointedly. I had some medical notes with me from Sweden and, before long, the doctor was dipping some cotton wool into a liquid before, quite deftly, sticking it up my nose then saying

“I’ll leave you for a few minutes until that anaesthetic takes effect.”

He went off for a tea or a fag or whatever Asian doctors do in the privacy of their little rooms.

I started to feel queezy so removed the University scarf I had casually tossed around my neck against the bitter Edinburgh wind.

The blazer was next to go. I stood up to do the job and the room started to spin. I must have fainted because, the next thing I remember was wakening up with my head pressed firmly between my knees. It must have still been attached to my body, though, because I gradually became aware of Doctor Shah massaging the back of my neck and discussing my case with some fervour and a female, compatriot colleague.

I straightened up and was quite taken aback by the serenity and attractiveness of Shah’s female colleague.

I felt better.

“You must never take cocaine again” he warned, as if it were my fault. Here I was, on Christmas Eve in Edinburgh, being treated by a non-believing injun with suspect English and even more suspect motives (he was definitely up to something with his colleague) and yet, only a few days earlier, I had been treated in a well-oiled Swedish medical system by native Swedes who spoke perfectly inflected English.

 

 

 

 

 

I returned to Sweden on the 7^th of January 1963. I caught the New York – Stockholm flight in Glasgow and arrived in Arlanda at about 4p.m. I took a taxi to Sigtuna and spent the night in my flat before returning to Tallåsen on the morning of the 8^th to prepare for the returning boys. Miserable-puss Ingrid was there, of course, getting everything right, as usual.

I had been invited to spend the early evening with Sten and Gunne so decided to stroll down to the village, have some lunch and make my five-yearly visit to a dentist, the only one in Sigtuna.

I have always been terrified of dentists. My mother used to take my sister and me to a bloke and sister team in Edinburgh every six months. He was a wimp of a man who showed no sympathy or mercy.

It wasn’t the pain that got to me, it was the noise. The drill was driven by a machine with a rotating belt that you watched in horror. The huge dome of the drill would slowly excavate your tooth and the noise would resound around your head where you pictured exactly what was going on.

He had absolutely no communication skills. He should have been able to talk me through my fear, to get focussed, to be my friend

The whole building was sepulchral. His sister, a small, dark, overweight and unsmiling Gestapo-like warder welcomed you from the street through huge doors into their austere suite of rooms where the silence was embalmed in an unnatural cleanliness and broken only by the occasional scream of a terrified child. You spoke in whispers and pretended to read a magazine. My late mother-in-law’s father was a dentist in Seaham in the 40’s and 50’s. Apparently he had no professional training. He liked his drink and regular flutters on the horses. He sounded OK to me. But, whether or not I would like him to excavate my teeth is another matter. I get the impression a lot of dentists in those days were like that. This sepulchral aura at “Mc Aaaarthur, the dentist” on Henderson Row in Edinburgh was a deliberate ploy. I’m sure he had no formal training. You were MEANT to be frightened and NOT to ask questions. McArthur used to delight in smacking my naked thigh (we wore shorts until we were 15) when I reacted to anything he did. It certainly wouldn’t pass muster with the News of the World today!

Now that I mention it, the father of John MacDougall, one of the Frank Dick trio at the Royal High in Edinburgh, was a doctor. Like many of his medical colleagues, he practised “incidental” dentistry without any relevant training, as John would delight in telling us.

 

But, back to Sigtuna.. There were a couple of days until the actual start of term  That Saturday morning, with an hour or so to spare before my dental appointment, I was looking in the tailor’s window (again) when I heard an English-speaking couple pass behind me. They had a couple of kids in tow. I turned around and was just about to say something when another group of sedate, obviously well-travelled English speakers followed on. I decided to say nothing but did overhear one of the men say “See you later in the downstairs bar, about 9.” The only “downstairs bar” I knew of was the little pub under the Stadshotellet at the top end of the village.

 

The trip to the dentist in Sigtuna was awesome. The middle-aged, quietly-spoken fellow who seemed to work without a receptionist or nurse, had all the “modern” tackle. “I’ll just put these around your ears” he said in a typical Scandinavian lilt as he adjusted a close-fitting, expensive set of headphones on my head. Duke Ellington surrounded me in total splendour. I wondered where the hell I was. Then the music faded to nothing. Smoothie swung round from his arrayed tools in his tall, black chair to face me. He raised his balding pate, sparsely vegetated with thin strands of blond tug weed and peered over his rimless specs. If you can imagine a likeable dentist, this fellow seemed like a likeable dentist. “OK? I am just going to inspect” he said into the microphone I could make out on his black bow-tie. This guy was trying to communicate and I felt slightly happier than I ever did with McArthur.

More Duke Ellington while he began to prod and hook around my

mouth. I had to stop him and explain that, much as I was impressed by the gear, I’d rather we concentrated on the mouth job and I could continue to enjoy my love of Ellington elsewhere, unhindered by unpleasant associations.

I’ll never know if I offended this perfectly pleasant fellow. I do know that this little incident was the overture to many weeks of root fillings, extractions and facial invasions that, according to a current school of thought, may well have been responsible for the onset of my Multiple Sclerosis in later life. But he tried  to communicate and was a better dentist for that.

 

That evening, after an early dinner with Sten and Gunne, I strolled up to the Stadshotellet. The snow was fresh and crisp, the air so unbelievably pure. The village was deserted. I passed the picturesque, wooden town hall set back on my right and the row of shops on the left. The alley-way down to LakeMällaren past the systembolaget where we used to queue for our weekly ration of booze seemed like a good alternative. The Lake was stunning as ever, the occasional lit cottage on the far side creating a beautiful silhouette of the evergreens that lined the opposite shore. The Lake itself was frozen over almost in readiness for the young drivers that would race their cars there tomorrow morning. Nobody realised that the obvious was soon to happen and three young Swedes who were in the pub that evening would drown.

 

The Stadshotellet is built on a slope going down to the Lake, and the little pub I was visiting had been constructed in the space created by the incline. You gained access from the rear of the Hotel building, which is why I had come round the back, between the Lake and the village. As I went through the single door entrance I gave way to a line of well-dressed English-speaking couples laughing and giggling as they filed out, probably on their way to a night out upstairs. I was disappointed to have missed this lot but went to the bar for my usual schnaps and Pripps chaser. There was a little group of three local Swedish men I recognised and greeted; the other two men, sitting together but apart from the other three, simply grunted at my Swedish greeting as I installed myself in the table next to theirs. This was the start of a brief but intense friendship with one of them, Phil Herrington.

 

 

It turned out that Phil, Chris Baguley (the other fellow with him) and all the other “expat” men around had arrived on the scene over the last week or so and were working for Marconi about twelve miles north of Sigtuna.

Marconi had won a defence contract to build a concealed “receiving” station into some hillside to the west of Uppsala. Over the weeks and months I associated with Phil and his colleagues, I learnt (or was told) that what they would be receiving would come from a station currently being built by Decca on the west coast of Norway. To this day, I don’t know if I was the victim of one of their complex “laughs”.

But, I do remember that, after a particularly good night in Stockholm, Phil agreed to take me out to their “mess” on the building site where I would be made more than welcome. We were both drunk and should definitely not have been driving (In those days, Swedish cars were left-hand drive and you drove on the left-hand side of the road; confusing enough without being drunk!} Offenders were often jailed and certainly lost their licence. But we headed off towards Upsala in high spirits. I was driving and Phil kept up the banter and the flow of Pripps. A few miles out of Stockholm he noticed casually “That black Volvo’s been following us from outside Tenstoppet. It’ll be these two birds that were watching us. I bloody hope so.”  He was from Birmingham and not short of imagination. But we had become quite adept at pulling the girls particularly with the “Out of Petrol” ploy. So I drove on to the shoulder with flashers firing.

The Volvo slithered past and continued into the distance.

“Two blokes, for Christ’s sake” said Phil in mock disappointment.

He opened another couple of Pripps.

I let the Volvo get well out of sight then gently set off again. We did about three kilometres.

“You’ll have to take over.” I said. “Don’t forget, I don’t know the way”

I pulled over to the hard shoulder so we could change drivers and stepped out of the driver’s door. Just at that moment, the same black Volvo passed on the main road. Phil, who had got out of the passenger side had a clear view.

“It’s these two blokes again. They’re probably shirt-lifters. They’ve hidden somewhere and waited for us to pass. Bloody benders!”.

With Phil driving, we were soon within a kilometre or so of the Marconi site on a very quiet, dark, country road.

“Alex” Phil said sternly and very soberly. “They’re behind us again. We’ll have to keep going…………..get back to Upsala………….that’s the turn off to the site, there, on the left”. He was talking extremely sotto vocce, hardly opening his mouth as if our followers could hear us or perhaps lip-read in the rear-view mirror.

“What are we doing, Phil? I asked, making as if to turn round and look out the rear window.

“Don’t turn round!” Phil shouted, his eyes darting nervously, spasmodically to the mirror.

“We’ve been told about this sort of thing” He was becoming more calm, more Phil. We crossed a motorway then turned right towards Uppsala. Our followers had melted into the darkness and the welcoming lights of the city centre relaxed us.

It was approaching midnight by now so we decided to call into The Cat’s Whiskers for a nightcap or three.

It was there that we met Alex (short for Alexandra) and her cousin Cia. Phil, who would be 24 then, not very tall, lithesome and dark had a way with older women and it seemed quite natural that he would hit it off with Alex, an equally dark 28 year old, smart and attractive photography student at the city’s University. Cia was small, slightly dumpy with auburn hair. Everything I didn’t like in a girl. But she had an infectious (not brainless) laugh and had an attractive smile. More importantly, her cousin had a small flat in the outskirts and to there we repaired after closing time.

I don’t know if things have changed in Sweden but in those days there seemed to be an unbreachable line between them and us (that is, between Swedish girls and British boys) until, finally, you’d  be accepted. Then everything was so easy and matter-of-fact. It could be that, even at 22, I was still earning my wings and Cia was only 16. We were hardly worldly. We slept on a mattress on the hallway floor with cushions as pillows and had basic, rushed sex.

The following morning all four of us had coffee in a laughing, harmonious atmosphere and, after exchanging addresses and phone numbers with the girls, Phil and I left.

 

On the following Tuesday I had my lesson at Arlanda training school where I taught “conversation” to SAS ( Scandinavian Airline System) airhostesses. This was often followed by lunch served by two of the trainees in a mock-up of a DC10. Filet Mignon or Devilled Kidneys were things I had never tried before, but they became everyday. In fact, eating there, at Operakällaren, at Baron de Geer’s, at Stadshotellet at the Björling’s etc. took my eating to a different plain. It was wonderful, almost erotic. After lunch on a Tuesday, I would make my way to the community centre in Märsta where I had an ever-dwindling class of Anglophiles who spent an hour each week pretending to be English. The ever-present attendee was Karen Ericsson, a dark, petite woman in her mid thirties. She had false teeth and persisted in trying to tease me. I was not drawn to her but things did seem to be changing.

 

I spontaneously visited Alex’ and Cia’s flat in Upsala one Tuesday after my lesson in Märsta. Cia was there alone and came rushing to the door when I rang. She stood on tip-toe to kiss me, her tongue exploring my mouth. We went inside.

“I am so very glad you came”.

I sat down.

“ Smell this” she said, whisking a cushion from under my arse and sticking it squarely on my face. The stink of “Old Spice” smothered me.

“I’ve slept with this cushion for three nights, thinking endlessly of you.”

“God!” I thought, “where’s she read this rubbish?”

But we had furious, insatiable, selfish sex. Again and again.

 

After this, I spent two or three nights a week with Cia either in Upsala, in my flat at Sigtuna or, more dangerously, in my room at Tallåsen where the boys would listen and giggle.

 

I spent more and more time away from School and Tallåsen. Most nights I’d sleep there, have early breakfast with the boys, perhaps have “lunch” (which was after classes at one o’clock) and occasionally have dinner.

As “husfar”, I was expected to say grace before each meal but, being a teacher of English, everybody spoke English to me and they expected me to speak English to them. That aside, I was a Latinist by nature and always found Germanic languages too dogmatic. The Swedish grace just didn’t sound right to me not because of its sentiments, but because of my accent. Apart from anything else, the younger lads tended to giggle. So, I did two things or, should I say, two things happened; I attended fewer meals and, when I was there, I took to reciting what I’ve always thought was a Rabbie Burns quote:

 

“Some hae meat but cannae eat, some can eat but want it.

We hae meat an’ we can eat, so let the Laird be thankit”

 

That way, nobody knew what I was talking about, and the giggling stopped.

 

Phil and I still met the lads regularly on a Saturday lunchtime followed by an afternoon’s snooze and shower then the evening upstairs in the Stadshotellet for the dinner-dance. Sten-Åke and Gunn were becoming quite keen on Cia. They often joined us at  Stadshotellet on a Saturday evening and entertained us once or twice at The Operakällar restaurant in Stockholm. It was there that Sten-Åke announced one night that he had been approached by Baron de Geer (whose two boys attended Sigtunaskolan) to find him an English “lektör” for the forthcoming Easter holidays. His boys clearly needed conversational help before the “studentexamen” that summer.

“He will pay handsomely” said Sten-Åke “but, for goodness sake, don’t mention money to him.” At which point Gunne, pissed as always, returned from the “ladies” giggling ostensibly but unimpressively. Sten-Åke found that she cramped his style and, tonight, dining in the opulence of “Operakällaren” was no exception. Apparently she had found, or pretended to have found in the ladies’ toilet a hand-cream dispenser in the shape of a penis; it dispensed cream after four or five “pumpings”, as she insistently repeated. I’ll never know if it was true but, knowing Sweden, I suspect it was.

Cia and I spent more time together at her cousin’s flat in Upsala and her cousin, not unnaturally, I suppose, always seemed to be around. It was her flat, after all.

 

We started missing out on the dance night in the Stadshotel at Sigtuna and spent more time together in the Upsala flat. Phil had virtually given up on Alex so, if we went out, it was often as a threesome, Cia, Alex and I.

One Tuesday evening, the three of us went to the Cats Whiskers where booze and grub were half price until 10.30 p.m. We were all pretty oiled by ten o’clock and Alex started her usual teasy joking. Cia went to the bar to refill while Alex giggled uncontrollably and for no apparent reason.

“How’s the art course?” I asked in an attempt to stabilise things.

“It’s boring” she offered.”But”, she said, swaying to and fro as drunks do when they are about to impart a ‘secret’ in whispered tones, “we have to produce a life study by the end of this term. I’ve already asked Cia and she has agreed. I want to photograph the two of you in the nude. She says you are a real ‘hästkuk’. You know what that is?” She was close up to me, smiling coquettishly. I had a rough idea!  So had she.

 

 

 

 

I did another couple of courses that summer with Sten-Åke. I was still his “Social Organiser” and thoroughly enjoyed the inevitable buzzing about the place. The four or five days we had in London was, for me, the best part of each course. We were “on the edge” most of the time keeping an eye on the kids, many of them Scandinavian beauties who had a lot of time to wander about London. I know that Sten and Gunne could only begin to relax when the main part of the course started in Sheringham, Cromer or wherever it was. But those nights in London, with Monty Sunshine, Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, The Jazz Advocates and many others were memorable times.

The kids, in fact everyone, was into trad jazz. At the end of each course in the English bush we’d return to London, have two or three hours present-buying, meet at the Wimpy Bar in Leicester Square for lunch and then head out to Gatwick for the return flight to Stockholm. One year, the edge came right to us; a fourteen year old girl was missing at the Wimpy Bar roll-call. She hadn’t appeared by twenty past one and the coach would be picking us up at half past.

Sten-Åke’s panic reached fever pitch. I was going to return to Edinburgh; my time in Sweden had come to an end. So, I offered to stay behind and established a dug-out in the Manager’s office. I suppose we had spent hundreds of pounds at his branch over the years, so it was the least he could do. The group left exactly on time with the pathetic, tearful figure of Sten-Åke being comforted by half-sozzled Gunne and the other kids apparently enjoying the crisis.

I got in touch with the police and, within half an hour or so, they were back to me to say they had found her wandering down the Haymarket. They brought her to the Wimpey Bar then very kindly dropped both of us at Liverpool Street Station where we swiftly caught a train to Gatwick. In actual fact, we arrived at the Airport well over half an hour before the party’s coach. The girl and I sat on a bench where the coaches pulled up and unloaded. When our party arrived, the look of relief on Sten-Åke’s face was unbelievable. He had won several million pounds. He kissed the girl, he hugged me and wept.

 

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

EDINBURGH  August 1965

 

I didn’t have a lot of time to get ready for Africa. My ship was sailing from Tilbury on September 3 so I set to work re-packing the trunk my father had used in South America.

Somehow Cia and I found time to exchange letters a couple of times a week; our test of three years separation was about to begin. If we survived that, our love would be unremitting and everlasting. That was to prove a load of crap as you might expect. But it was very interesting.

My father took me to the Waverley Station in Edinburgh for the 7.35 to London. He was a man of few words. In those days, your Scottish dad was either a man of few words or you could NOT stop him talking and arguing, especially in booze. My father did not drink. He had spent some years with South American Indians at the Shell-BP mines. He made quite a lot of money with nowhere to spend it except on booze and or women. I suspect he just saved it until he returned to Scotland in about 1936 and spent some of his money on a Model ‘T’ Ford in which he posed around the villages of Mid and East Calder. He caught sight of a bonny lass, Margaret Tweeddale, in Juniper Green, just outside Edinburgh, during one of his posing sorties. Mother lived with her Granny and had gone to school in Juniper Green. While attending the village school she had made a name for herself as “The Juniper Green Nightingale” because of her beautiful singing voice which had been in competition in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and other places of renown. In the 1920’s, junipers had been planted in the grounds of WindsorCastle and a full-voiced nightingale had established itself in the trees. After her successes in many local competitions my mother became known as “The Juniper Green Nightingale”. She is ninety-one years of age today, as I write this, and she makes quite regular trips from Murrayfield in Edinburgh where she lives, out to Juniper Green. Her excuse is that she likes the local butcher’s sausages and black pudding but I suspect she retreads many a footstep round old haunts. It was on one of those recent visits to the butcher’s in Juniper Green that a man in the queue took a pace backwards and, pointing to my Mother, announced “The Juniper Green Nightingale”!

 

Between her childhood years and her fifties, Mother sang as a regular in St Cuthbert’s Parish Choir in Edinburgh and, for many years, was a leading lady with the Bohemian Light Opera whose performances were an annual Edinburgh highlight at the King’s Theatre on Lothian Road. With this sort of background and, looking back, I am not surprised that music has played a prominent part in my own life. But, while I am proud of her achievements, I doubt if my boozy nights playing trumpet around Edinburgh jazz clubs would ever deserve to feature in her memoirs.

I told you about Dad earlier. He was the youngest of seven children who hailed from Pumpherston near the present-day “New Town” of Livingston, about 12 miles from Edinburgh. Although he was the youngest, he was born in 1899 which meant that, when I was thirty-one, he was seventy-two which is when he died.

 

I never really knew him. In the forties and fifties fathers were the disciplinary icons, aloof from their children. But he started to take me to Tynecastle to watch Hearts play and I remember a period when I was in my early teens, that we occasionally walked out together. At that time he had finished with Bruce Peebles and was working for Electrolux; our family mode of transport was one of their vans.

One Saturday morning he set off in the van, up PiltonPark, on his way to work. By this time, what with the football matches and the occasional walks, I suppose I felt quite warm towards him and decided to show off to my friends by running after and catching up with the van. I certainly caught up with it because Dad, having seen me in his rear mirror, “jammed on the anchors” so that I ran, full-face, into the back door. He didn’t even get out to check me; he just drove off! I have never again chased a van. My nose even starts to bleed if I see a van with “Electrolux” written on the back.

This brief period of togetherness started when I was 12 years of age. I had moved from the junior department of the Royal High at Willowbrae to the SeniorSchool on Waterloo Place, just off the East End of Princess Street in Edinburgh. I had done nothing until then except play rugby and other sports. My performance in the 11+ examination had, of course, been abysmal and I was put into the bottom stream of the First Year at senior school As I have told you, books had been of no interest to me.

But it was easy to get to the top of this class. I still gaze at the certificate, written in Latin, which was presented to me at the end of the First Year. Even in the ‘C’ Band we were considered bright enough to study Latin; but not French or Spanish. So, when Mr Coles, my Form teacher, proposed to the Head Master, Dr Imrie, that I be promoted to 2B in the forthcoming September and he, Dr Imrie, refused on the grounds that I had not studied French and my other key subjects, like Maths, would be “irretrievably behind”, my father gathered his heretofore unused cudgels. In those days we had ten weeks of summer holiday and my father, confronting Imrie with a fervour and spirit we had not seen before, vowed that I would learn one year’s French over the summer holidays and would hold my own in Mathematics and other subjects if Imrie would agree to promote me to 2B. An agreement was reluctantly struck.

However, that promotion must have happened just at the right time for me. I got to the top of 2B, was promoted to 3A, got to the top of 3A and was promoted to 4X. I did not get to the top of 4X but, in the Fifth Year, I won the School prize in French and Spanish. Yet they had said I was too thick to do languages four years earlier. That is one story that features heavily in my Communication>Association>Focus process with pupils of mine.

 

We set sail from Tilbury, as arranged, on September 3. I was still in my “Jack-the-Lad” mode but this was something else. My trunk was taken care of, I was called “Sir” and, being one of the oldest participants in the Teachers for East Africa (TEA) scheme, I had a cabin of my own.

I love boats; I love the openness of the sea, the feeling of complete, slow separation from the past and anticipation of the future.

Final glimpses of the East End as dusk fell and the RhodesiaCastle was on her way to Mombasa.

I was on my way to the cocktail bar.

 

 

I got to know the bar steward and the quite disgusting Ansdell lager that seemed to be the only draught on board. Couples, dressed for dinner, popped in briefly as did one or two twenty-year olds who were obviously on the TEA (Teachers for East Africa) scheme. They all had that just-out-of-school naivety that put me well off.  I was an old-timer of 24 years. But not like this 40-year old smoothy who sat himself next to me at the bar. What hair he still had was well-bleached; he had a permanent, genuine smile under his constantly-searching eyes. He immediately struck up a repartee with the “steward” whom he must have known from previous trips.

We rounded the Kent coast as I got to know “Graham”, self-styled coach of the Kenya national soccer team. It was a beautiful evening and Graham and I moved to seats on deck to watch the dwindling coastline. He was in cheerful mood telling me of his plans to form a keep-fit group on board for the fifteen or so days we were to spend at sea.

“Does it not make you sad, leaving England for such long spells?” I asked.

“You must be bloody joking” was his smiling reply. “All the expats on board this ship feel they are going home not LEAVING home. We only come back to sort out family affairs and because we get about two months paid leave per contract. We don’t pay anything for our travel to and from the UK and we have a choice of flying or sailing. It’s a very good scene, old boy” said Smoothie, who suddenly jumped out of his deck chair to greet a solitary 30-ish girl strolling “invitingly” along the deck side.

“Good evening” says he, “Pat, isn’t it?”

She smiled wryly, having heard it all before. “No, it’s Mary, actually. Mary Thompson.”

“Oh, how very nice” said Smoothy, totally unphased. “Would you care to join us with your husband or father or somebody?” Then, without waiting for a reply:

“Can I get you a drink? Alex will look after you while I find a steward.”

Mary sat down in the deck-chair opposite me. She was quite tall and brunette, with a small chest and a long skirt ……………..all rather bad news for me.

Before Graham got back, I had elicited from Mary that she was Kenya-born.

“Mum and Dad have a farm outside Nakuru. I think I’ve seen your friend there in town and at parties. He’s quite well-known…………” she added with another wry smile. She gazed at me for what seemed ages, until Graham returned.

“Actually, I seem to know you from somewhere” he said cheerfully to Mary as he launched himself into the deck-chair between her and me. It was clear he saw himself at the start of yet another escapade.

“Steward’ll be here in a sec.” said he as the ship lurched sideways and a tallish mast went past us, quite fast, in the opposite direction, a few feet away We had collided with what turned out to be a German trawler in the network of shipping lanes that criss-cross the English Channel.

The hooters went; you could tell it was an emergency, but nobody knew where to go. Everyone was on their feet; crew were running about the place shouting instructions. Graham disappeared, as did Mary. I remember thinking how inconvenient all this was, just as I was settling in nicely.

I determined to make my way down to my cabin to retrieve my passport and money. This I did against an aggressive rush of other passengers heading upwards from below decks.

“No use arriving in foreign lands without money and passport” I thought.

I didn’t rush; there didn’t seem much point. A ship this size would take hours to sink, and there would be an unspeakable rush anyway for the first boats. I honestly think that our behaviour in later life is tempered by incidents like this. Since then I have never panicked in dangerous, physical situations. Rugby helps, of course.

 

We ended up in Southampton for three days while the breach in the bows was repaired. It was a very strange feeling, having left Tilbury ten hours previously with images of hot, sweaty natives featuring in our thoughts. But, I suppose there were plenty hot, sweaty natives in the Southampton pubs where we spent most of the next three days.

Our accident had been reported on BBC television and, being prior to the mobile phone era, it was very difficult to find a telephone to contact one’s parents. I don’t know how many people were on board the RhodesiaCastle but all of them spent the next 36 hours or so trying to find a vacant phone.

 

We stayed on board the ship during all the repairs. There was no sign of Graham and Mary who were probably wining and dining in the Southampton high-spots (if such places existed in those days). But the TEA (Teachers for East Africa) group gradually gelled into small cliques.

Mine began to include people like Trevor Wilson, a tall, blond Yorkshire lad of about 21 who spent most of his time talking about rugby and quaffing pints. He and I became good, regular “mates”.

George Coventry actually came from Coventry, was a mathematician and a definite “Yes-Man”. Dave Smith was from London, very much into football, young and quite immature. His fellow Londoner, Dave Marshall was a good-looking young footballer who, like most of the others was prepared to try his hand at Trevor’s rugby. Most, that is, except Ken Evans, the burly elder statesman and Clive Lovelock, the Jewish Southerner, who was to play an important part in my Africa. Ken was an amusing raconteur who seemed to have read every book ever published. In fact he had read very few complete books but plenty, I mean plenty sleeves and reviews.

 

We set sail again on schedule. Captain Brown had just started his first commission on a passenger vessel and he had gained a lot of sympathy from hardened travellers. He even got a round of applause on arrival at his Captain’s table as we rounded into the Bay of Biscay.

The poor fellow had no idea what Ken Evans would soon take on board, literally.

 

 

 

I was getting more and more used to life on board the RhodesiaCastle. By the time we had passed through Gib. and were making our way to Genoa, I was totally accustomed to the routine of rising at 6 a.m. then mustering on deck with Graham and the other lads before jogging 20 times round the deck. After ten laps we would stop for a session of Graham’s “kinetic” exercises, with one arm fighting against the force of the other, then leg v leg, then arm v leg and so on. A shower, then an unhurried breakfast before I would make my way to the lower lounge and tinkle the piano for an hour or so.

I knew I was good at this and I soon acquired a regular morning audience of twenty or thirty co-travellers who would drink tea and read the airmailed newspapers brought out by the stewards.

Moira and Harry Harbottle were regulars. She was Scottish, wee and wiry, about fifty years old who walked about the place as if she were singing a sea-shanty. She was the Maths tutor on the TEA course in Kampala and Harry, her husband, was the Government Chief Chemist there. They were employed to accompany a new batch of TEA recruits every two years at the end of their contractual leave. The trip by boat gave us all time to “bond” (as they were beginning to say then). Harry, a rotund mid-fiftier, was President of the Kampala Rugby Club who enjoyed his pipe and a Scotch or six. He never talked about MakerereCollege; this was always done by Moira in the compulsory one-hour meeting every day just before lunch. I always remember Moira because she used to finish each meeting by looking at all thirty-two of us individually and drone,

“There are thirty-two of you here. (long pause and pan). You are going to Africa (another long pause and pan; by this time we were all mouthing the speech). Three of you will die in car accidents before your contracts are complete. Good morning.”

She was totally right, but very nearly wrong.

I suppose it’s obvious but, I have found, the more you get about, the smaller the world seems to be. For example, thirty-five years after meeting Moira and Harry, I am writing this in our conservatory

overlooking some wild scrubland near the coast of Lancashire. In the distance I can see the roof of St Aidan’s School. I teach privately in our conservatory and have just finished an hour with a new pupil who attends that School. I complete a dossier for each new pupil so that I can (wait for it) “flag up” any “identifiable difficulties”, “devise meaningful strategies” then “run them across” the parents and staff, if they dare get involved. Would you believe it, this kid’s Maths teacher is Miss Harbottle, Moira’s and Harry’s daughter?

 

“Any road”, as they say round here, back to the RhodesiaCastle.

 

We arrived in Genoa.

By this time I had got to know some of the stewards quite well. They brought me drinks to the piano in the lower lounge and I spent time speaking to them. If you want anything done in an institution…..a ship, a school, an office, anywhere, go to the guy who thinks he’s at the bottom. It might be the caretaker, the gardener, the cook. He thinks he’s not important and will delight in building up his bank of gossip about those bastards up the ladder who treat him like muck. He loves you because you’re different; you’re somewhere up that ladder but you take time to talk to him. You “come alongside”. You communicate.

Mark, our dining-room steward recommended the Via Gramshi for a good night out in Genoa. So, after dinner and a few drinks in the top deck bar, Trevor and I strode out. The Via Gramshi seemed to consist of one whorehouse after another. It was like a time-capsule, long since defunct. Trevor and I repelled the offers of the ageing ladies outside the bars. We did sink carafes of wine, however, and finally found ourselves in one of two bars in the square at the top of the Via.

There was only room for five or six at the bar and one of these was the voluptuous Maria (at least she said voluptuously that she was called Maria). The barman was friendly; I conversed in Spanish with an Italian local who was delighted that I seemed to understand his Italian, and Trevor motored on with Maria. After half an hour or so, the bar seemed to empty suddenly of clients, the barman, everyone. Only Trevor and I remained, with a fellow who was aggressively pointing at me and saying, “You O.K.  No good” (indicating Trevor with the hefty blade of a meat cleaver).

Simultaneously, it seemed from our alcoholic stupor, a distant siren could be heard approaching us up the Via. At the time I didn’t think that the barman, realising that the local hood was about to cause trouble, had probably called the police but I made an unflustered, hopefully unnoticed exit through the back door of the café.

Out in the square, to the front of the café, the police were arresting a bloke by throwing him unceremoniously into the local meat-wagon. It wasn’t Trevor; to be honest, there was nothing I could have or would have done if it had been Trevor. It was more than likely the fellow with the meat cleaver.

With renewed sobriety that seems to result from an injection of adrenalin I decided to make my way back to the ship. Security at that time of night was quite strict and it was nearly four a.m. when I finally hit the hay. I hadn’t given Trevor another thought.

 

During the allocation of cabins at Tilbury, I had pulled rank claiming that, at the ripe old age of 25 and being a seasoned traveller, there was no way they could expect me to share a twin cabin.

I had a twin cabin to myself (most nights) and, the morning after Genoa, I was still asleep when we set sail for Port Said.

I wasn’t even out of bed until after ten that morning, so missed breakfast. I went to the upper deck for coffee, the Mediterranean sun and recuperation.

An unspeakable noise in the water below distracted everyone. It turned out to be a pilot’s boat that had raced about fifteen miles from Genoa, bearing Trevor who had fallen asleep the previous night on the deck of the wrong ship in Genoa harbour.

 

Trevor and I had a few hairs of the dog then made our way for an early lunch at the first sitting. As usual, this early session was poorly-attended. Most people enjoyed a few drinks on deck until about one o’clock, had lunch in the second sitting then wasted the rest of the afternoon sleeping or getting drunk. You certainly didn’t expect to see Ken Evans at this first sitting stacking a huge plateful from the self-service buffet. He chose to ignore our hangover ribaldries and disappeared into a secluded alcove only to return within a few minutes at the buffet with a completely empty plate. This he re-loaded and disappeared again behind his pillar. He was a very big lad was our Ken but, my God, could he shift the grub!

We never met the American stowaway that Ken had sneaked on board in Genoa. But, we soon learned that Captain Brown had delivered an ultimatum to Ken. Either he stopped the nude midnight swimming in the pool AND gave up his stowaway or they would both be forced to leave the ship in Port Said where they would be handed over to the relevant British authorities. Fortunately, because I liked Ken, he agreed to the former deal.

 

 

In Port Said, we had a choice. Passengers could leave the ship after lunch, do some sightseeing then take the hired bus to Alexandria where they would meet up with the ship on its way through the Suez Canal (this was before Anthony Eden got hold of things!). Still recovering from Genoa, I was one of the few who decided to stay on board. All the TEA lot went on shore. One of the few people left on board was Mary Thompson. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Mary or Graham for a couple of days. She was wearing one of those long floral dresses that button all the way up the front. She had the bottom four buttons undone, allowing for a substantial eyeful in various positions. We both wore straw hats which buckled gently in the slight breeze as we sipped our cocktails on deck. She clearly had a liking for young buck. I didn’t fancy her; I mean, she was almost a red-head. But it’s quite amazing what a few afternoon cocktails will do!

 

 

 

We docked in Alexandria later that afternoon. I went ashore alone with a pre-arranged agreement to meet the other lads at what was referred to by all as “The Mucky Duck”. On my way out of the port, I stopped for a drink at an exceedingly grotty bar opposite which was a row of garages and second-hand car joints. I sat on the “terrasse” getting more and more giddy from either the coffee or the whisky or both.

I crossed the road and, for the equivalent of £2:10s I hired the most atrocious vehicle I have, to this day, seen. The interior was filthy, the tyres balder than I am now and the timing so bad that people scattered as I exploded my way up the long boulevard to the “Mucky Duck”.

 

The lads were there, of course, swilling their Allsops and delighting in the company of Alain, a tall, blond, angular Belgian or Nordic type whose sexuality was in no doubt. He had taken a definite liking to Dave Marshall who was having difficulty rejecting Alain’s offers for a joint sauna somewhere in town. Ken Evans and I took the strain. Once we had marked the pitch we spent a pleasant couple of hours with Alain who was, like most homosexuals, kind and considerate.

The van I had hired was so awful we decided to abandon it outside the entrance to the harbour on our way back to the boat. Trevor was for chucking the keys in the drink but common sense prevailed.

 

 

Captain Brown continued to have his problems. We passed through the Canal with camels and sand dunes only feet away on either side. It looked even weirder on the postcards with photographs taken from the desert, behind the dunes. In them, there were camels in the foreground and the ship seemed to be sailing across the desert.

By the time we got out of the Canal into the Red Sea, the Rhodesia Castle was listing to starboard about fifteen degrees. Something had gone wrong with the fuel tank feeds and, as far as the crew was concerned, nothing much more could go wrong. But then, after I had completed a particularly good morning session at the piano in the lower lounge with Trevor and up-start Graham adding the funny asides, we were approached by two of the stewards who invited us to “appear” and me to play the piano that evening at “The Pig and Whistle”, the stewards’ private mess down by the water-line. Trevor and I accepted happily but Graham, surprisingly, declined what Trevor and I took to be a friendly offer.

“He’ll be having his way with that Mary”  Trevor supposed.

He might have been right.

 

 

 

 

As arranged, Rodge and Gregory picked us up at 10 p.m. outside the “No Entry” door, next to the Pursar’s office. Gregory opened the door from inside. They were both dressed in short jeans and tea-shirts. Clearly, they had no intention of being seen on the public decks. On the way down to the “Pig”, Rodge asked what we would have to drink. A couple of very strangely-dressed people crossed us on the staircase.

The “Pig and Whistle” was about the size of half a dozen “normal” cabins with a makeshift bar at one end, a piano at the other and, in between, about 20 or 25 transvestites all “tarting” about the place. I find most “scene” gays generally kind and considerate, feeling no need to make excuses for their predilections. They have, in my experience, a good sense of humour too. But I’ve never found transvestites particularly attractive, kind or funny. I played for five minutes or so then made my excuses and left. As I almost expected, Trevor stayed. Once up on deck again, I was glad to see Graham and Mary in the forward lounge.

“Hello, old boy” was Graham’s smiling, knowing welcome. “Has Trevor got someone down there to play with him?”

I felt like inviting him to piss off but ignored him instead.

I placed her favourite, earlier bought Scotch and ginger in front of her.

“Sorry, Graham, I didn’t see you there. The greyness of your hair almost melts into the skyline” I exaggerated.

 

The following afternoon, we stopped off in Aden to have something done about this wretched 15 degree list. It was making us all feel quite sick and, much more importantly, we were quite unable to rehearse the cabaret I was putting together for the night after next, our last night at sea. We were in Aden for about an hour while some engineers from the British Marine Commando 45 Unit got us back on an even keel. I don’t know what the Hell they did………something to do with ballast or fuel storage……… but, why our resident engineers couldn’t have done it, I cannot surmise. The Marines were so busy that two of their sergeants even had time to come up to the forward lounge for “a drink”.  They introduced themselves to the barman as Fred and Andy. Fred, the elder of the two, did most of the talking while Andy, taller and slimmer than Fred, paced in front of the bar. Their “drink” consisted of four uncooked eggs from the galley and a double tot of something or other from the bar in two half pint glasses. They broke the raw eggs into the glasses and, after a swift gulp of air, swilled the lot.

I was conducting an off-stage rehearsal/talk-through at the time with long, tall Barbara, Clive Lovelock (lights and sound), and Ken Evans (Front-of-House). Ken got up and rotundly made his way over to Fred and Andy.

“How you dare don a British uniform and perform that disgusting, barbarous act in front of a lady, I cannot imagine.”

Barbara, the only female present, was falling about the place, in uncontrollable laughter.  I winked at the two sergeants in an attempt to avoid a confrontation. The Marines approached our table.

The older of the two removed his beret and tugged his forelock.

“Good afternoon” he said with a curt tilt forward and a suggestion of clicked heels. “My name’s Fred and this is Andy. I do hope our men have been of assistance. We both wish you a pleasant completion to your journey. Good day”

Off they went, leaving us all, including Ken, totally speechless.

 

 

 

 

The same Fred and Andy would later feature heavily in my Africa.

 

Two nights later, the adrenaline flowed. I’ve always been tetchy and aggressive when it comes to stage productions. Of course, they are only important to the audience for the couple of hours they are there, but they are important to me for weeks or months before the event. In this case, we had days.

 

When I produce things like this, my authority, confidence and self-importance all inflate. I’m sure this is why the professionals do it too. When they go to rehearsals, they become omnipotent and omniscient. Their ego and self-esteem soar.

So it was with me. I “effed” and “blinded”; I hit things; I threw things; I shouted commandingly until I got what I wanted. It was wonderful for me and probably quite frightening for the fifteen or twenty TEA girls and boys who took part. I’ve done it many times since and felt the same elation.

 

The night itself……….our last on board the RhodesiaCastle, went superbly. The audience, all ex-pats who had probably never come across this sort of thing before on ship totally lapped it up.

I can’t remember what the show included. But it was good variety ………….musical, rude, with plenty surprises and a modicum of talent. I got totally blitzed and, within half an hour of the show finishing I watched from Mary’s bunk as we crossed the Equator on our approach to Mombasa. She spun me a yarn that real men “do it” as they cross the Equator for the first time.

We did it.

 

 

 

By about 11 o’clock the following morning we had docked in Mombasa.

 

“Would all those passengers, including the TEA recruits, who are proceeding by rail to Nairobi, Nakuru or Kampala, please disembark on the gangway off Deck C. Other passengers disembarking, should do so from Deck A.”

Surprisingly, even Ken Evans, Barbara and all the other dregs (including myself) made it to the Immigration desk right next to the train. Moira and Harry took complete charge and, once we had all identified our baggage, they escorted us to the two carriages that had been reserved for us.

It was as if we were in a Somerset Maugham time-capsule with the African porters straining in a most organised, swift fashion to load all the trunks into the dedicated luggage carriage and the  Sikh engineers busying themselves around each of the huge, possibly German, locomotives at either end of the nine-carriage train.

I was billeted in a twin-bunk compartment with Clive Lovelock..

Our carriage was next to the lounge which, in turn, was next to the dining car. Very nice!

 

 

We set off at about 4 o’clock at what can only be described as “snail’s pace”. As we skirted Mombasa, the public address summoned us to the lounge and dining car for afternoon tea.  Most people were happy to take in the suburbs of Mombasa and gawp from the corridor at the  squalor  (or was it deprivation?). Clive and I decided to have tea. After all, we had the same views, but from the comfort of our dining car table.

In Sweden I had enjoyed the good life. This was insular good life in an ocean of poverty. Here we were, sitting in luxury, being served tea from silver services accompanied by quite unnecessary but delicious creamed scones. The service was provided by African waiters who would be “lucky” to be earning £20 a month as we looked on at the shanties with their knackered braziers and clapped-out pots.

Once outside Mombasa, the train took on an even slower pace as it was pushed and pulled up the escarpment in a tedious zigzag on its way towards Nairobi. You could get off the train at any point as it travelled, say, to the left on a gentle incline, then walk the short, steep hill to the line where the train would eventually travel slowly to the right having gained forty feet or so, at which point you would re-mount.

Once we had straightened out and gained a little speed inland, I was fascinated by the scenes of rural village life going on just yards from us. The mud huts, maybe five or six making up a small community would seem almost submerged in a boundless, deep sea of green.

 

The meals on-board were wonderful; not over- or even under-stated; just perfectly served, in a beautifully calm, dignified way. We spent the rest of the time on the open verandas at either end of each carriage or, as the evening chilled, in the bar/lounge adjoining the dining car.

 

By this time the TEA recruits had formed their cliques. We saw little of the others who, even on the train, managed to live their own lives, separate to us. Thank God. There were lots of people who posed differently to us…………………. a bit like St Andrews where, in our inexperienced youth, this awareness was at times, bothering. Now, it did not matter a toss.

 

In Nairobi station, where we stopped for half an hour or so, Clive, Trevor and I, “The Three” as Moira Harbottle had labled us in her curt, Scottish way, went to buy some air-mailed English newspapers. On the way back, we dodged the on-coming leavers and their porters.

“Alex! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” said the approaching female.

Clive and Trevor walked on.

“Mary! I didn’t want to ……………”

“Let me give you my card. If you ever come to Nairobi, please look me up.”

Without as much as “By your leave…….”, she took hold of my shoulders and did that continental, cheek-to-cheek which I have always found embarrassing. Still, I suppose it was nothing compared to the nautical performance of a few nights previous!

I didn’t give a thought to her invitation for a year or so.

 

We spent two wonderful days on that train in the lap of Pullman luxury. Graham and one or two others were dropped off in Nakuru in the early morning of the second day and we finally arrived in Kampala at about five o’clock that evening.

It was only then, really, that we saw all the others, as we climbed into the coach that was provided to take us the short trip from the station to MakerereCollege, just to the west of Kampala centre. Barbara was in her usual full, loud, flow. Most of the rest of us were quietly expectant; after all, we were going to spend the next nine months in what appeared to be an unqualified dump.

However, the College campus was, and possibly still is an extremely pleasant, rolling, green terrain.  It was only later that I came to realise how much British and American money was being invested in the future of this Third World country that had gained its independence from Britain just three years previously, in 1962.

 

I was allocated a room on the first floor of New Hall right next door to an American who had joined us from elsewhere on the TEA scheme. Geckoes frequented the walls. These little lizard-types terrified me, but the Yank, who was constantly in and out of my small room taking for granted that I was a non-stop font of coffee, assured me that

“God has given us those little guys to eat up the mosquitoes. Be thankful.”

Thankful? I used to move my bed at least a foot from the wall each night. I learnt later that they would never inhabit bed linen and, of course, were more terrified of me than I of them.

A propos, Barbara was in and out too and, as a result of a late-evening visit from her with her raucous vocal attachments, I was actually “gated” for a week. ME, a mature student! The Warden, a white minion from the Dept. of Philosophy, would hear nothing of my pleas.

“You must learn to set an example” he kept saying.

After half an hour or so, during which he told me I would be expected to “sign in” every hour of each evening the following week, I recall inviting him to go forth and multiply. He must have been at least thirty years old and came across as a complete “wally”, sat at the end of high table every meal-time.

He was markedly pissed off when, one meal-time, I organised a team to stack four benches under our existing benches so that, at the end of grace (for which we all stood), we whipped those spare benches under ours and we ended up sitting higher than the ten or twelve white dons at head table. This show of disrespect for the champions of academia hardened little shit-face in his resolve to gate me for five nights.

Just as we were becoming regulars at the “Hi-Life” Club, five or six miles out of Kampala.

 

I had no trouble with the meals in the hall of residence. Mtoke (plantain) accompanied most cooked main meals; it is a non-sweet green banana which can be steamed then fried. Gorgeous!

Some of our lot would complain but, as usual, they’d be the people

who probably didn’t get decent grub at home.

In later life, my family have been very kind; they’ve given me the pen, the time and the space I have craved. I’ve been left to write.

Read on, you’ll see what I mean.

 

 

******************

 

Trevor Wilson and I were sitting in the front of the Land Rover, me in the driving position as usual. We were parked outside the Central Station in Kampala while Clive Lovelock went in to meet his girlfriend, Clare, who was on a week’s holiday visit from England. Clive, Trevor, other young people and I were post-graduate teaching students at MakerereCollege in Kampala. We were on the “Teachers for East Africa” (TEA) scheme.

After some time, Clive and his girl-friend emerged from the station. Clive threw Clare’s bags into the back of the Land Rover then unceremoniously hoisted her over the tailboard with a simultaneous “This is Clare, lads. Alex, Trevor.”

Trevor and I turned round to say “Hello!” and were confronted  (it’s the only word I can find) with this morass of thick, black pubic hair as she straddled the tailboard.

I knew that Trevor, who captained our rugby team, would have happily launched into an appropriate version of “Ash Grove”.  Even in those early days, I was losing my hair and often being referred to as “baldy”. I remember thinking that, if I had a mass like that on my head, I would have a centre-parting too.

But it was hot in East Africa.

We were out there in 1965, the scheme being sponsored by the British Government. We were not teachers at the time. We were graduates who fancied qualifying as teachers, spending three years in Africa and getting paid for it. Our average age would be about 23 and our group of 28 was made up 9 girls and the rest. We were based at MakerereCollege in Kampala, the Ugandan arm of the University of East Africa. Part of the scheme involved us living in halls of residence on the campus in Kampala so that we could be seen to mix with the local Ugandan undergraduates.

The campus was superb. It was only about half a mile square on a luxuriant, east-facing, undulating slope. At the top of the slope were the University offices and the quite magnificent assembly hall where, later, we would be addressed by the new President, Milton Obote. Typical, unkempt bungalows occupied by expatriate teaching staff were dotted about. There were three or four halls of residence, a book shop, the teaching blocks, the sports hall and the now disused Mitchell Hall which, by its appearance, had been used for badminton matches.

Even at St.Andrews I had always lived in a flat so the whole experience of living in a university residence was new to me; and I was the eldest but one in the whole group. The eldest, at 28, was Ken Evans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ken was a very clever, disruptive, rotund sod with a huge beard. He liked to display his bulbous, mal-formed lower legs by constantly wearing long shorts and seemed to be terribly proud of his well-pronounced ten-to-two feet. Sailing out to Mombasa in September 1965 on the SS Rhodesia Castle, he constantly upset the expatriate regulars by swimming naked in the pool at any time of the day and by filling his briefcase with cold meats and miniature bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon from the buffet tables at mid-day and dinner-time. It later transpired that Ken had taken pity on an American student in Genoa (our second port of call en route) and had hosted him as a stowaway in his cabin.  When we reached Port Said the American was forced to leave the ship. Ken was only allowed to stay on board after the intervention of our leader, Moira Harbottle.

Moira (originally from Kelvinside in Glasgow and a lecturer in Teaching Maths at Makerere) and her husband, Harry, (Government Chief Chemist in Uganda) had the “tiresome” job of accompanying groups like ours every two years from Tilbury to Kampala. The two martyrs were subjected to what was effectively a totally free, all-expenses-paid cruise through the Mediterranean, Suez Canal and Indian Ocean. Every two years, Harry would buy a duty-free Citroen in France and ship it back with him to Kampala which meant that, every two years, he had a two-year old Citroen doing nothing in Kampala. I discovered that Harry ran the local rugby club in Kampala; he discovered that I played a fast-breaking Number Eight and the result was I got a virtually new Citroen ID for my year in Kampala.

Harry was a likeable chap, tall and scruffy with a genial smile and floating teeth through which he would pronounce his oft-expressed theories. We would find out that he was most at home at Kampala Rugby Club in the suburbs of the city or entertaining with his wife on the patio of the Chief Chemist’s run-down bungalow somewhere in Kampala

 

But I liked Ken. I like anyone with a hearty, genuine laugh.

He used it to respond to Captain Brown when he was carpeted for his nude swimming and for stowing away the American; he used it when he was elected student representative at New Hall, one of the eight white students in a Hall housing 127 Africans. In another setting he would have been a missionary in the African bush or a spin-doctor for an unlikely mayoral candidate somewhere in Britain. He tended to speak through his nose then, after making some outrageous statement, look down, over his invisible spectacles, at his victim. He loved verbal conflicts and loved them even more when the other participant got upset and left. When this happened, you might discern a grin through the mass of ginger beard, peppered with crumbs from his last five-course meal in the luxurious dining-room or from a plateful of peanuts in the “For’ard Bar”; but you couldn’t miss the ever-increasing orbit formed by the hem of his cheap T-shirt revealing more and more of his belly-button. The laugh was coming.

 

We were given an allowance of £57 per week from the British Government. In 1966 this represented quite a lot of money to young unattached people with all “keep” and travel expenses paid. So, during my week of detention, the “gatekeeper”, Joshua, and I came up with a system. I would sign four slips for 8p.m., 9p.m., 10 p.m. and 11p.m. If little shit face came to the gate to check that I had obeyed his curfew, Joshua would show him the appropriate slip. I knew the little bastard wouldn’t dare come to my room. If the evening worked according to plan, I would give Joshua 40 shillings (2 quid) the following morning. At the same time he would receive the four slips for that evening. If it had not worked, he’d get nothing. Joshua and I understood each other well and the week went perfectly. After dinner, I would have a shower then walk to “Hospital Hill” as we called it, outside the campus. This road separated MulagoHospital and the Wandigaya settlement from the University campus. Getting a taxi there meant that the warden and his little chums couldn’t see us.

We’d go down to the City Bar in town for some beers and a game of snooker then take another cab to the Hi-Life Club where we’d stay until three or four the following morning. Sometimes we’d return to College with a couple of girls who, with the help of a friendly ground-floor occupant at New Hall, would enter the building through a window then creep to our rooms.

 

I loved the Hi-Life. The band was fronted by an ever-smiling drummer called Ruben Kaya. He had the most expensive drum kit I’ve ever set eyes upon; its main feature was an elliptical bass drum. I haven’t seen any since, so I imagine it made no beneficial difference to the sound. But he was surrounded by bongos, tumbus, tubular bells, glockenspiels and God-knows-all-what. It was a complete percussion section superimposed by an array of large, white teeth engulfed in a huge smile. He was not physically big; but his talent and immaculately-dressed presence was huge.

 

Hi-Life is a style of music, often referred to as “Congolese”. The “Mountains of the Moon” separated Uganda and the Congo by some hundreds of miles. Obviously, their geographical proximity encouraged some interchange and music was one of them. The music was almost all “written” in 4/4 tempo……..four beats to the bar……….with the stress on the second and fourth beat of each bar, as opposed to the Western style, with stress on the first and third beats.

If you are a little confused it’s because I have no idea what I’m talking about. But, it was enough to fool the examiners when I got round to my end-of-year dissertation where I blinded them with “knowledge” on African music and mixed tempos, citing the popularity of Millie’s “My Boy Lollipop” to justify my shaky theory. I came out with a 1A label at the end of the year, although this undoubtedly had something to do with my second teaching practice in Nairobi. I’ll tell you about that later.

 

Our first teaching practice happened after a couple of weeks in Kampala. As was typical of the TEA scheme, we were scattered anywhere throughout East Africa. Some were in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), some in Kenya, others in Uganda. After all, the scheme was “Teachers for East Africa”.

 

We were all still in compliant mode so nobody objected to their posting. Clive Lovelock and I were posted to Gulu in Northern Uganda, not far from the Sudanese border.

The school was a Church, boarding establishment. Clive and I were allocated one of several ex-pat. bungalows on the campus. Everything in the house was extremely basic………..no cushions on the raffia suite, simple linen on the mosquito-netted beds and absolutely nothing in the fridge or pantry. Fortunately we were put in the charge of Bryn Jones, the school geography teacher who introduced us to the only immediately-recognisable distraction in Gulu, the “club” (ie where all the local ex-pats met). There was a nine-hole golf course attached but, more importantly, Clive and I could have a toasted sandwich or two to replace the evening meal we could not be bothered to make.

Bryn was funny but looked even funnier. He was not into sport; he was not into music. Like lots of people with terrible legs, he insisted on wearing shorts with long, black socks that should only be worn with a black suit. He was about thirty, small and wizened. He was a complete wimp, knew it and even thrived on it.

Our teaching was minimal and I really can only remember the nights at the club which was the centre of Gulu district as far as the expats were concerned and where an evening always ended with a rendition of “Land of Hope and Glory”. There was a “steam” piano there which I tuned approximately with the use of several donated clock keys and which allowed me to lead a few sing-alongs.

Although the two weeks in Gulu were non-eventful, I still remember a scene for one of my raconteswhen, these days, I give an after-dinner talk. It goes like this:

 

The wife of a farmer in Gulu district had a colostomy. One day the bag burst. The expat farmer, being an inventive chap, said

“Don’t worry darling. I’ll put it right.”

He took the bag of a Hoover vacuum and attached it to the colostomy.

That evening at the Club in Gulu, one of his friends said to him

“I believe your wife’s not been so good. How is she?”

“Oh, picking up nicely” was his reply.

 

There was only one other thing I remember about Gulu, although Bryn Jones would feature elsewhere in the immediate future.

Clive and I were invited to the Head’s house for dinner on the Tuesday evening. It being a C of E. school he, the Head, and indeed his wife, had no connection with the local Club. They didn’t like sport or music. The one thing they shared with Clive was photography. So, while the reverend’s wife was out collecting the pudding, Clive was showing the Reverend Headmaster his photographs of giraffes and chimps in different positions of sexual congress. Clive knew this would upset the Reverend Headmaster who tried to divert the subject to food. He talked about his wife’s prowess at making steamed puddings and Christmas mince pies. Clive, quite innocently, announced loudly:

“Yes, Reverend, I can judge from our last course that your good lady is extremely talented in culinary skills. I’m sure you share my hatred of Instant Delight and the like”, at which point, precisely, Mrs Warwick-Armstrong emerged from the kitchen with two strawberry-flavoured and two chocolate-flavoured Instant Delights.

“Take your pick” says she.

 

 

Our year at Makerere was nothing if not eventful.

One particular evening, we had taxied out to the Hi-Life as usual. Again as usual, Trevor and I made for the adjoining bar while Ken Evans, Dave Smith and Barbara went straight into the Club. We were enjoying our third beer before sneaking through behind the bar and into the club (without paying) when, suddenly, the lights went out and we were engulfed in impenetrable darkness. Power cuts were not unusual, especially out in the bush, where the generators would often conk out. But, this time there was lots of shouting and a brief but definite burst of automatic gun fire. Women began to scream. I managed to make my way to the door and get into the street where soldiers were loading protesting individuals on to the back of an open lorry. At that time I had not learned that Africans can distinguish an individual’s tribe and therefore in most cases, his politics from his facial structure. I also learned later that Milton Obote had started his early rule of the newly-independent Uganda in partnership with the Bugandan Anglo-phile, Prince Freddie Mutesa.  Obote had decided that Freddie’s pin-stripe suit and English mannerisms did not fit in the new Uganda; also, tribalistic partnerships never had and never would work. Freddie and his mates had to go. Hence the purge we were witnessing at the Hi-Life.

“Mzungu, go to Kampala!” shouted an officer, who seemed to be in charge. I stopped a moving taxi…………one hand on the on-coming bonnet, the other waving frantically at the driver, beseeching him to stop and let me in. Several people piled into the Peugeot estate cab driven by what was more than likely an escaping Bugandan. I thrust a 100 shilling note into his hand at the same time indicating I was not looking for any change in return for my escape to Kampala. For all I knew, things might have been worse there.

I was dropped off at the “Mulago roundabout” and got back to my room in New Hall where everything was absolutely calm and normal, as if nothing had happened.

 

Milton Obote had taken over.

 

The content of our teacher training course was not intellectually stretching. At most, we would have clusters of lectures every week: one with the neurotic, boring Professor Lucas (Theory of Education), one with Moira Harbottle (Maths), one with John Bright (English as a Foreign/Second Language), one with Tom Andersen (Psychology) and one with Tony Pervez, the Goan games teacher.

Lucas’ lectures happened on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the ungodly hour of 8.30 a.m.

Lucas quite clearly did not like trainee teachers and liked Ken Evans least of all. Ken would arrive noisily at the Lucas lecture at about nine o’clock and, instead of slipping discretely into a back row seat near the door, would make his way down the central aisle of the lecture theatre to the front row where he would unload his kit bag of totally irrelevant books, spread them out on the work-top in front of him then read snippets of each at apparent random, paying no attention at all to what Lucas had to say.

This behaviour quite obviously infuriated the Professor who would stop in mid-sentence as soon as Ken banged through the top door. He would lean, quivering, against the blackboard until Ken had finally settled in. The quivering got worse as the weeks went by until, on the morning after the Obote/Mutesa episode at the Hi-Life, Ken produced a small sub-machine gun with his books. This was the final straw. Lucas marched out of the lecture hall and, after that day, Ken was never seen again.

 

Marcia, the Secretary in the TEA office, was an absolute angel if treated correctly. She was another Goan, who loved sponge cake; at least she made great theatre of receiving a sponge cake and would rush from her desk to meet me as I came in with the tell-tale white box.  Once or twice a month, I would “smuggle” a cake into her office and, if top secret information was in the pipe-line, I would accompany this with a bottle of sparkling wine. So it was that I happened upon a preview of the end-of-term assignments, got “express delivery” of my twice-weekly letters from Cia and had ten minutes to copy a list of Professor Lucas’ itinerary during the final teaching practice.

But, Cia’s letters were becoming fewer and less regular. I was religious in my application to sending her two letters a week but, by the end of the course, her letters had dried up.

 

Marcia introduced me to a compatriot of hers called Oggy Alvarez who played the tenor sax with a group of four fellow Goans at a venue somewhere in the industrial estate. I joined them on trumpet now and again and we tried, not very successfully, to achieve a trad sound. Eventually, we realised that “mainstream” was more our calling and I took to the piano again. Oggy was a very good musician; he couldn’t “read” but was “street-wise” and very inventive.

Before long, I had persuaded another Goan, the owner of the Speke Hotel, in the centre of Kampala, that we had the ideal after-dinner sound for his roof-top restaurant.

So our quartet of sax, piano, bass and drums took off. We had a raison d’être; we even rehearsed, which I hadn’t done since my serious days in Edinburgh with Ian Sinclair. But the work paid off and eventually, we had two, sometimes three gigs a week: Sunday at the Speke, every second Saturday at the rugby club (not far from our rehearsal centre in the industrial estate) and every Thursday at Mitchell Hall.

 

Mitchell Hall was a derelict social hall on the campus at Makerere. Nobody knew what it had been used for; we got the keys from a colleague of the American psychology lecturer Tony Andersen who was also kind enough to lend us his rarely-used two-year-old Land Rover.

(All the expat. workers who were on two-year contracts had relatively unused vehicles lying around the place. They bought new, tax-free models when they went to Europe for their biannual leave.). We needed the Land Rover to transport barrels of Allsops and Guiness which we picked up at the local brewery and delivered to the Mitchell Hall Jazz Club.

 

The Jazz Club formed the core of our existence from March 1966. Everyone attended each Thursday evening. We had acquired old tables and chairs from under the stage in the Central Hall; we created a stage out of inverted book containers from the Education Department; during the many breaks we played new Beatles’ releases which had been sent out to Clive Lovelock by some of his Jewish journalist friends; we drank a lot of beer. But, certainly without asking or advertising, we gained a huge following of African students. At its height, the Club’s supporters would be 75-80% African. Ruben Kaya would visit from the Hi-Life and we employed visiting troupes of African musicians and dancers. But the central theme was “traditional” jazz with myself on trumpet, Oggy on sax and reluctant clarinet, the Goan rhythm section and anybody else who fancied a “sit-in”. We didn’t know, but we were soon to have a trombone join our ranks.

The whole scene was even more than exactly what we had tried to create. Students met lecturers, lecturers met other lecturers, Africans met Europeans, males met females.

Every Thursday night became a highlight on the Makerere calendar. It was wonderful. But Moira Harbottle’s prophesy was nearly about to come true.

 

On Thursday 19^th April I received a call from Bryn in Gulu. He was coming down to Kampala for the weekend and, could he kip on my floor? I was disappointed he would miss our Thursday night at Mitchell but, nonetheless, looked forward to his raw, abrasive yet almost lyrical company. He would simply drink, endlessly, during the home rugby match on Saturday but would also enjoy the boozing after the game, especially in the company of dear Harry Harbottle. As usual, I would take a shower after the match, down several Allsops then take to the stand with Oggy and the lads to provide background music while everybody enjoyed the buffet set up by Moira, Polly and the others. It was a well-established, almost ritualistic lifestyle but it was good!

 

Bryn, Trevor (who captained the rugby team), George Coventry and I were pleasantly relaxed when we retired to the City Bar in town for a game of snooker and a few more beers at about seven o’clock. We travelled the short distance in Bryn’s brutish Morris Cambridge, the type you still see ruling the streets of India in the rôle of taxi or police car.

Trevor and I, having played two halves of equatorial rugby, were absorbing the liquid refreshment with relish. Bryn and George, on the other hand, had been drinking all afternoon. The difference showed in their snooker and they bumped into tables as they went to the toilet.

 

By eleven o’clock we were ready for the Hi-Life. I ordered a taxi from the rank outside but Bryn insisted we go in his car.

“You don’t know the way”

“You’re pissed”

“We’ll have problems getting back” and so on didn’t work. Bryn wanted to drive. He would not accept that Trevor or I drive. And so, like new-born idiots we set off towards the Hi-Life in Bryn’s car, with Bryn at the wheel.

In those days, all the roads beyond the city-centres were “murram”-surfaced i.e. topped with shale and, as driving surfaces, as safe as gravel.

 

We got two or three miles out of Kampala on the way to the Hi-Life when we came upon a four-lane junction which nobody recognised as we normally travelled there by taxi.

“Which way?” enquired Bryn, trying to sound sober but, even braking, managing a speed of some 50 m.p.h..

I was sitting in the front passenger-seat with my trumpet nestling in my lap.

“Straight on!” I declared with a slicing, downward movement of my right hand.

“Left here1” somebody shouted from the back.

“To the right!” someone else suggested, in an attempt to find a joke in the confusion.

Bryn, confused, drove us head first into a ditch. The Morris Cambridge split in half from left to right and I was partially projected head first through the windscreen.

I must have lost consciousness and was pulled from the wreckage.

I remember wandering up the pitch black lane in anaesthetised trauma. Nothing hurt; nothing mattered. I was on a cloud.

In fact, my body was a mess. Two of my front teeth were sticking through my top lip and I was drenched in blood.

The next thing I recall is being in a very nice car. Everyone was African, except me. I was in the back seat, next to a screaming African girl who, I presumed, was the daughter in this kind family who were taking me home.

I protested that they should drop me off and take their distraught daughter home.

I must have lost consciousness again. The next thing I remember is sitting on a trolley in a hospital (Mulago, as it turned out). I sat there for what seemed like ages.  I was beginning to hurt more and more. It was something like four o’clock in the morning and the place was far from buzzing. I felt progressively worse. Moira Harbottle turned up and I began to feel slightly better.

“It’s the same every bloody year” she kept saying as she fussed about swabbing up the blood and trying to find someone.

Finally, an African nurse turned up and announced she was going to give me cocaine before the doctor came to stitch me up.

I began to panic as I realised the nurse had spoken of cocaine. Memories of Dr Shah and Edinburgh Royal Infirmary came flooding back. I even remembered Shah’s delightful colleague.

“I can’t take cocaine” I said, as best I could, lying flat on my back on a hospital trolley with two teeth through my top lip. As I write this, in 2002, we read lots of complaints in the popular press of people waiting for ages on trolleys in Accident and Emergency units throughout the UK. At least, most of them won’t have a couple of teeth through their top lip and, almost certainly, won’t have Moira Harbottle fussing around them at four o’clock in the morning.

The medical duo obviously thought my concussion was impairing my judgement.

“Vee only have cocaine” the doctor announced.

So I opted to have the thirty-eight stitches without anaesthetic. They removed the teeth, stitched me up and sent me back to Makerere with Moira. I apologised to her for screwing up her statistics relating to deaths among TEA students. She let me sleep the whole thing off.

 

But, by the end of the academic year, she still had a 100% record.

 

The following morning, at about 11.30, I felt awful. Everything hurt; my mouth, my shins which had been severely lacerated and the crown of my head which had “enjoyed” the immediate impact of my person on the windscreen when we had crashed. It was all made worse by the insistent presence of Bryn who, having had his broken ribs strapped up, found it difficult to laugh. I was in total agony and had to make my unassisted way to the dental clinic over at Mulago. Letters from Sweden had dried up. I had nobody to write to and nothing to look forward to. But I did look back to Moira Harbottle’s prophesy on board the RhodesiaCastle. Phew!

 

I walked over to Mulago feeling very sorry for myself. Having left the campus and crossed the Avenue, I took a short-cut to the clinic, struggling through some overgrown grass on a steep incline. Then, swearing beneath my breath because of the oppressive heat, I came across a vast swarm of flies circling around what turned out to be a dead man, concealed in the undergrowth. I can’t forget the finality, the endness, the going-nowhere he gaped at.

 

“Open wide” said the totally delicious orthodontist, or whatever she

was. She was Germanic, blond and very pretty, with massive tits, and a willingness to laugh that I found irresistible. She took an impression of my mouth while I took a close-up impression of her boobs.

The denture was ready for me the following Wednesday and, heeding their advice to start playing trumpet again as soon as possible, I attempted a few easy buskers that Sunday night at the Speke Hotel. The dining room was not large but it was very pleasant and clean. The “Table d’Hôte” was always popular and, this week it featured lobster thermidor.

The “bandstand” was just to the right of the waiters’ entrance to the kitchen. Between our stand and the kitchen door was a table, hidden by a screen from the view of the eaters.There was a bin under the table into which the waiters scraped their “slops” then left “the dirties” for the k.p. to pick up.

As the evening progressed and my “lip” became more and more fatigued, I took to removing my new denture and playing without it. I laid it on the table next to the stand. The relief was instant and I played for the rest of the evening “senza denti”. At the end of the evening we sat down as usual to have a few beers. I went to the table to retrieve my teeth but found they had been removed with all the other crustacean remains. I spent the next half hour or so in the kitchen rummaging through the swill trying to find my denture. You’ve probably never had to think of this, but the similarity between a lobster shell and a dental plate is annoyingly close. I did not find my teeth.

 

My replacement denture was ready for the second teaching practice in May 1966. I had made it quite clear that, should I be posted up-country, I would not accept, and would return to the UK. My established interest in things musical and theatrical could only justify a posting in Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi or Mombasa.

 

Clive Lovelock and I were both posted to the Aga Khan Girls’ High School in Nairobi for this final teaching practice.

Through the British Embassy, we got a very nice, small flat off Ngong Road. It was about five or six minutes’ walk from the centre of town and two minutes from the Starlight Club, another all-African joint that was owned and run by a canny lad, Robbie Armstrong, from South Shields. I was to spend most, if not all of my spare evenings at the Starlight Club which had been created by Robbie in a disused RAOB centre partially on Ngong Road. It had a couple of tennis courts outside which Robbie had converted into a beer garden. Over the years, we enjoyed many barbecued goats there.

 

We had a month to spend at the Aga KhanGirlsSchool. The pupils were adorable, beautiful, from well-to-do families and keen, so keen to learn. Marcia, the secretary in Kampala, had told us exactly when Professor Lucas was coming to inspect Clive and me in the third week. I had plenty time to get to know the girls and they me. I talked them through the day of inspection and how I would want them to react. The most beautiful girl in the world suggested that, when I asked a question, if they knew the answer they would put up their right hand, if they didn’t, they’d put up their left hand. I said that, if they all put up their left hand, I would say something like:

“Clearly, you all know the answer. I’m going to ask something else.”

We even practised “Lucky Dip Questions”.

I would announce “This is a Lucky Dip Question/Task.”

All the girls would “Oooooh!”

The girl who got the right answer or completed the task correctly would be allowed to dip into the plastic bag containing all sorts of goodies.

We practised extensively on the Monday and the Tuesday.

Lucas arrived on the Wednesday when Marcia had said he would. He strode into our classroom without knocking at exactly ten o’clock. He sat himself down at the back of the room without any greeting whatsoever. Of course, he couldn’t see the smiles on the girls’ faces. I completely ignored him and spoke as if I was mid-lesson.

“Right. Now let’s see if we have understood what we have been talking about.”

They had understood, all right. We took that miserable, old, supercilious sod to the cleaners.

I had bulled my way through the “Millie” coursework, the end-of-term exam (thanks, Marcia!) and the teaching-practice. I hope Lucas benefited from the experience because I certainly did.

Old fart!

 

Clive and I decided that we couldn’t do a day’s work, spend the night on the piss AND keep a clean flat so we contacted the “Labour Exchange” in search of a “house-boy”. The flats had “servants’ quarters” round the back of the block. There were two units of four “quarters” each.

They resembled public conveniences from the outside but were fairly comfortable as far as servants’ quarters went. Each had one room, a kitchen and a toilet. The servants had to bring their own “furniture” and cooking equipment. They could paint the dirty, stone walls, if they wanted but nobody did.

There were only two applicants and Mungai, a Kikuyu, got the job because he was prepared to accept the servants’ quarters and 100 shillings (£5)a month that Clive offered. He would also do our dhobi(laundry), prepare the evening meal and keep the flat clean. The flat only consisted of a small bedroom, a lounge, a toilet and a kitchenette. But Mungai worked his parts off. The parquet floor in the lounge was polished every day; our clean clothes and underwear were laid out each evening on our beds; a sponge cake awaited us for tea each afternoon after school and, between 4 and 7 each evening he would prepare our evening meal. If he had worked well, Clive would allow him to take a portion of the evening meal to his quarters. Quite often, though, Mungai would prefer to make his own maize meal which he would prepare sitting outside his quarters, listening to the portable radio I had given him. He had temporarily succeeded in life, working and having quarters in quite an up-market area of Nairobi. I felt so sorry for the guy and constantly reminded him that, once Clive had left and I had got a posting in a school, I would employ him at (the national basic of) 200 shillings per month. I would also teach him to drive. The minimum national wage for a driver was 400 shillings a month. It was something we’d do together and we both looked forward to it. I wanted to repay the poor bugger and he wanted to do well for his family.

“Mr Arex, he know too much” was Mungai’s constant acclaim. As in Sweden, here too I was employed as an English teacher. So, I never got to grips with Swahili and certainly not with Kikuyu and had no equivalence of what he meant. I’d like to think that he felt I was being fair.

 

I think it was on the Friday of that teaching practice week that I bumped into Mary Thompson, not in the centre of Nairobi but on the bloody stairs in our little block of flats. She had only just returned from a holiday at her parents place near Ngong and so we hadn’t seen her around. Her flat was directly above ours. To be quite honest I was slightly disappointed to see her again. Her company on board ship had been very pleasant; it took my mind off Cia and boosted my esteem amongst the others. But I was looking for a fresh start. I had written Cia out of any future plans; she hadn’t been in touch in the last four or five months and life in Kampala and Gulu had been busy and involving anyway. Nairobi in 1966 was a beautiful city with open, green spaces, excellent restaurants and shops. More important to me, it had theatre and music. I could see lots of scope and potential. But, at 25 I didn’t want a staid, smart-looking 28-year old red-head in tow, cramping my style. I wanted to be nearer the edge.

However, she did do a nice hot-pot and her Sunday lunches, washed down with plenty red wine and Nat King Cole’s “Button up your Overcoat” and “When I Fall in Love” were very welcome.

 

 

After the teaching practice, the participants in the TEA Scheme spent the “summer” settling into their postings. Clive went off to Moshi just over the border in Tanzania beneath Mt Kilimanjaro.

I got used to a bachelor life in the flat, spending most evenings, and nights, in the Starlight, just up the road. I would not be on a real salary until I started at my local posting in September. At that point I would put Mungai on a “decent” wage but meanwhile, if I felt flush, I would pop downstairs to the Grill in the Hotel adjoining the flats. There I could enjoy the company of South African Mona (vocals) and “Chinese Charlie” (piano). Mona, a very immobile version of Ella Fitzgerald, used to join me for her breaks and tell me about her life in South Africa and her friends, all singers and musicians, who were here in Nairobi.

“There are quite a few Xosas down town in the Equator Club” she told me. I was intrigued by the word “Xosa” the x of which was pronounced like an impressionist’s sound effect for two things colliding. It is produced by removing the tongue plosively from behind the front teeth.

I soon came to recognise this as a feature of the “click language”.

 

One Thursday evening I went down to the Equator Club in the centre of town. It was about 9 p.m.. There was nobody on the reception desk at the entrance so I made my way upstairs, unchallenged.

The first-floor interior was very nice. The bar, on the left and fronted by imitation zebra skins, extended the length of the long, narrow room. There was an aisle in front of the bar and, to the right of that, reaching half-way down the room, there were tables with three or four seats each. The rest of the floor-space was dance-floor. The band-stand was at the end of all this with a full grand piano to the right, just on the dance-floor.

 

Apart from the musicians and the acts, the place was empty.

“It’s early Thursday evening admittedly” I thought “but you’d expect someone.”

I had been brought up in bands with the discipline of playing to an empty room as if it were full of “punters”. If the public comes into a venue and sees or hears nothing happening, they will leave again. On the other hand, if they see the band and cabaret apparently enjoying themselves anyway, they’ll come in.

Then, a welcome and a bit of banter over the microphone and the night starts. Before long you’ve got a club.

The barman eventually appeared and, after serving me a drink, confirmed that some punters had been and gone.

“The band and the entertainers are on strike” he explained. “Mr Hirji not very happy” he added, with a sympathetic dropping of the jowl and shrugging of the shoulder. He nodded towards the avuncular Asian gentleman making his way down the aisle in front of the bar. Mr Hirji smiled and nodded as he passed then made his way back-stage.

I had another drink and went over to the piano. Not being shy at coming forth, I sat down and played a few “slows”. The piano, a Bernstein, had a beautifully meaty middle and bass sound without being uncontrollably loud; it had a lovely touch. Sure enough, four or five punters came in and, hearing the music, made there way to the bar without a thought. Some more people came in and settled so I decided to “take five” and join the three African girls from back-stage who were sitting at the end of the bar. Thankfully, someone put on some “canned” music and the punters took it all as normal. The three girls were all South African: Sheila from Cape Town, Maisie and Jodie from Johanessburg. Sheila said how much she had enjoyed my playing. The other two said nothing or very little; it was one of those female enclaves where all knew what each was going for.

I was definitely thinking of leaving when Mr Hirji opened the stage door and politely beckoned me in. The five-piece band were lounging, drinking and smoking in the 12ft square “dressing room”. Sheila joined us; the other two stayed outside.

“Will you play for me tonight?” Hirji asked.

I looked around at the clearly-disgruntled band, none of whom would look at me.

“No, I can’t” I replied. “You’ve got a dispute on your hands.”

There was a long pause while people shuffled and spoke in short jabs of Swahili as they looked to the ground.

“Will you play for me?” Sheila asked.

I looked at the band. There was still no reaction. Then, one of them did that throaty, African laugh and looked down at his feet. I heard a challenge but didn’t want a confrontation.

“OK” I said. “But we don’t want paying and we’ll only play for tonight if you lot spend the evening together, sorting out your problems.”

The band seemed quite happy with this arrangement so Sheila and I made to the floor where we busked for half an hour or so. She had an excellent swinger’s voice…. a mixture of Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. She was quite bulky with a fat rear, the sort much sought-after by Bantu men folk.

At about 11 o’clock a familiar figure appeared at the entrance at the back of the club. He was carrying a musician’s case,trombone or tenor sax, I happily surmised. He made his way down to the corner where the end of the bar met the stage door and sat on a bar stool listening to Sheila and me. We didn’t immediately recognise each other; but it was Oggy Alvarez from Kampala.

Oggy was a very pleasant guy. I’ve told you, he was Goan. You’d expect his Portuguese to be pretty good but, like all the Goans of my generation that I’ve ever met, English seemed to be their first language. It was a stylised, passé form of English. Instead of saying

“Quick!” they’d say “Snappy!”   Instead of

“Girl” they’d use the Arabic “bint”.

It was all Second World War stuff that had filtered through to Goa and, in the case of “bint” to Scotland too.

But it was great to see Oggy again. A good “muso” always travels with his “horn” and Oggy was no exception. We had another half hour of steady “standards” and the place really began to fill.

The band emerged from what had clearly been an amicable conclusion to their discussions and we all spent the rest of the evening in joyous “session” (ie with everybody joining in). But Oggy, like most of his Asian compatriots, was not totally at ease in the company of Africans. Not even music could bridge that gap.

 

I hadn’t seen Oggy since Kampala and, over a few post-midnight drinks provided by the grateful Hirji, he invited Sheila and me to join him and a band on Saturday evening at the Sikh Institute where he had been booked for a wedding function. Somebody drove Sheila home and I rounded off the evening with a few “swills” with Robbie at the Starlight before retiring up the road at about five a.m.

 

I was due to start my new posting at the HighwaySecondary School in South C the following Monday so I was looking forward to a quiet weekend. I love playing and the prospect of a gig on Saturday added to my anticipation of an ideal chill-out.

The actual event started for us at the Institute mid-afternoon. The Sikhs can shift their booze and the afternoon was soon in full swing. The African Muslims in the band were on their alcohol plus orange. The Sikh community there didn’t want their traditional music; they wanted “European”.

Sheila, who had begun to attach herself to me in more senses than one, was “going down a bomb”. I was “doubling” on piano and trumpet and the booze was beginning to take effect all round. By eight o’clock Sheila had left the “stand” and the band got on with enjoying themselves. The music was good; the money was very good; the booze was free; somebody mentioned food. At around nine o’clock I saw Sheila prancing about on the dance floor with a good-looking young Sikh as I was taking the vocal on “Blue Suede Shoes”.

At the end of the evening, about eleven o’clock, the band finished and, after a couple of drinks with the lads and certainly no thoughts of Sheila, I made my way homewards.

The flat was so homely now that Clive had left.

I had a series of records called “Minus One”. Basically, they were what we now refer to as “backing tracks”………….the backing for a song without the melody-line or the vocal. The commercial version today, used in pubs and clubs, is called a “Karaoke”.

I selected the track on the disc containing “One for my Baby” and sat down to enjoy a croon with my very large whisky.

I was loving it. I even thought I might pop upstairs and visit Mary. But then, at ten to one, there was a knock on the door.

I was quite frightened.

“Who the hell is this?” I thought. The evening’s events flashed before me. Had I annoyed someone; had I talked to the wrong woman at some point? Who was it?

There was one of those little spy-holes in the door which magnifies outwards. I was able to discern a black female carrying what seemed like a bundle of something or other.

“Who the hell IS it?”

I put on the security chain and opened the door a few inches. This was Africa, after all!

On the doorstep was a barefoot Sheila, carrying a baby. She was sobbing. She must have walked two or three miles in the middle of the night, carrying this bairn. She looked very much the worse for wear.

I had to let them in, didn’t I?

In one form or another they have been in my life ever since.

 

 

 

 

On the following Monday morning I made my way, in my two year old Citroen gifted to me by Harry Harbottle, to the HighwaySecondary School in “South C.” This area of Nairobi, not far from the airport, had previously been occupied by lower-ranking British troops. It was now almost completely over-run by Asians.

The School was of simple design: a car-park, an entrance to an admin. block and, leading off, two quite long identical blocks, each of two storeys, both overlooking the sports-field. The main road (or “highway”) to the airport and a distant Mombasa, skirted the edge of the field.

I met the Head Teacher, Mr Shah in his office at about ten to nine. He was tall, quite trim, with grey hair and buck teeth. Like most of his compatriots he delighted in decrying the Africans who would soon be kicking them out anyway. Even then, in the1960’s, two thirds of the pupils were African and, within ten years or so, his job would be up for grabs.

There were things like ‘O’ Levels and Cambridge Certificates but he wasn’t interested in them.

“Keep the little bastards off the streets” he said, trying hopelessly to sound superior.

“You are an English teacher, but I see you are qualified in French too. I want you to start some French groups. Sort it out with Singh in room 12. You’re next door in Room 11.”

That was it. Day One had started.

 

Singh was nice. He had graduated somewhere in England and, indeed had family in Leicester. He’d be about thirty or so, slightly on the plump side and with a definite dislike of the other teachers, none of whom was Sikh. Apart from him, there were Muslims, Hindus, Goans and a couple of Christians on the staff. I have never liked staffrooms……………… you get roped into things. But, at the Highway Secondary, you had to go down to the “office corridor” at “break-time” if you wanted some of the splendid samosas and bhajis on sale. The tuck shop was only a few feet from the staffroom so I’d normally end up having a cup of tea there during morning break and at lunch-time. In British staffrooms, the Scots often sit with the Scots, the Geordies with the Geordies and so on, but there’s no rule. Catholics do tend to associate with other Catholics, Protestants with Protestants; no rule but a definite tendency.  Here there was absolutely no question; the Muslims would sit with the Muslims, the Hindus with the Hindus and so on. I’ve never liked cliques and tended to “sit around”.

On one occasion, about six months into my contract, I was sitting with the two or three Hindus.  One of them, called Sharma, would be in his early thirties. He was of slight build and very “switched-on”, missing nothing in the way of gossip or scandal potential. We drank our tea and ate our samosas in silence. Occasionally, Sharma would indicate someone by nodding at him then smiling at us. Eventually, he said:

“My colleagues and I have a plan and we think you might be interested. We’ve noticed you are one of us. You’d like to make some money, yes?”

“Yes, if it’s legal” sayI. “I don’t want to steal anything or ………”

“No, no” says Sharma with a derisory, smiling dismissal. You’ve seen it before… closed eyes, head rocking slowly from left to right and a windscreen-wiper movement of the hand.

“We want to help some of our friends, our brothers and sisters in India to get to England.”

“OK. What do you want me to do?”

“We want you to come with us to India during the Easter holidays” says Sharma’s pal.

“Are you free then?”

“I can be.” I say. I’m intrigued that the school year in a predominantly Asian setting, is still punctuated by Christian holidays.

“Exactly what do you want me to do?” I asked Sharma, with a direct hit to the eyes.

“We, all of us, will go to India in April.  We have planned over one hundred barrazas (public meetings) in up-country Punjab. We want you to come with us.”

“I keep saying to you, that’s no problem. What do you want me to do? Why do you want me to come with you?”

“You will stay in the best hotels…….anything you want.”

“Look, Sharma, I’m not into pissing about. What do I do?”

“You come to these barrazas with us. You just stand there”

Again, the wobbling head, this time accompanied by raised, questioning eyebrows, a grin and upturned, cupped hand. He lowered his voice.

“We introduce you as an important British industrialist looking for workers in his cotton mill in Lancashire. We take 100 rupees from each man who wants to come, as a kind of goodwill and tell them that you will pay for the rest of the flight and will sort their accommodation when they arrive in England. They will make lots of money, can send many rupees home and can even arrange for their families to join them.”

The strident bell rang to announce the end of break and the start of the next lesson.

 

The following afternoon, Jomo Kenyatta was due to welcome a visiting foreign politician at EmbakasiAirport, just down the Highway from School. The Headmaster, salutary creep that he was, ordained that we should all line the fence of the sports field bordering the Highway which would take Kenyatta and his entourage to the airport. Kenya had, relatively recently, gained its independence from Britain. Kenyatta had led the resistance to Britain’s occupation of the country.  He had been captured then conveniently removed to jail in Britain where he was presumably indoctrinated. He even married a white, English woman. After several years he was returned at the right moment to lead his country through Uhuru with a definite pro-Britain stance.

 

We stood for forty minutes or so, escaping lessons, by the perimeter fence. All the kids had been given a little paper Kenyan flag which they would wave on cue. I was standing next to the African groundsman, Joshua, a likeable fellow of fifty years or so. As the cavalcade of six long-wheel base Mercedes and their accompanying police escorts passed us, I turned to my friend Joshua and said:

“This must make you so proud?”

“No” he said. “Now we don’t know where we stand.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the white man was in charge we knew exactly where we stood. We didn’t go into his clubs; he didn’t go into ours. We were all happy. The mzungu (white man) treated us with respect; we treated him with respect too. Now Kenyatta is in the white man’s car and we don’t feel comfortable.”

 

That year, Sheila and I moved to accommodation in South C, nearer the School. Our flat there was part of a fairly large detached house that, like so many since the departure of British troops, had been divided into two flats. The shared entrance was at the side of the building. There was a shared yard at the back too and a garden at the front. Sheila, Michael and I occupied the flat upstairs. This was ideal accommodation for me because it was a two-minute drive from the HighwaySchool and the drive-in movie; it was ten minutes from the centre of Nairobi. Robbie, the owner of the Starlight Club lived a few doors away and we were able to share lifts and I could get my Citroen DS 19 serviced for nothing by the lads at the garage up the road who were regulars at the Starlight.

Mr Wahid (the landlord) and I first of all agreed a rent for the equivalent of £140:- a month.

Wahid was, like many of his compatriots, up for a deal. The British Government paid me something like £200:- a month “Inducement Allowance” into my current account at the Clydesdale Bank in London. Wahid, who knew his and his compatriots’ days were numbered once the Kenyan people had taken over the middle economy, was anxious to shift funds out of Kenya. We came to an agreement whereby I transferred my £200:- into Wahid’s account in Leicester at a cost to him, in Kenya, of £270 (variable).  So Wahid paid me £270 minus £140 (i.e. £130) to live in his quite nice flat. The deal seemed good at the time. The fact that I was not saving £200 a month in England was not important to me.

 

No sooner had I struck this deal with Wahid than Sheila and I got a permanent “gig” at the Equator Club and I got a “double” at the Topaz Grill.

The Topaz was a beautiful grill-room on the ground floor of the North Africa Hotel. It was one of many classy eating venues and musical stages of the late sixties in Nairobi. The truth is, of course, that Kenya was still recovering from white rule. It had gained its independence four years previously in 1963 but much of the British legacy remained. It could be seen partly in some superb eating/meeting places like the Norfolk Hotel, The Topaz, The Swiss Grill, The New Stanley and countless others, not just in Nairobi but throughout East Africa.

In 1967 we saw the foundations of the Nairobi Hilton being laid with the help of overseas investment money. It was a tall, cylindrical hotel where you would insert your plastic key into the lift’s mechanism and it would transport you up to your floor then round to your room.

When I returned to Scotland later I showed a University friend of mine some photographs of Sheila, then my wife. He exclaimed

“She’s wearing European clothes!”

This about summed it up; even intelligent people in Europe were still thinking that Africans lived in trees.

 

We had some wonderful nights at the Topaz Grill.

Angelino (the resident Italian saxophonist) and I struggled to get on. He was older than all of us and he did not like my being the self-appointed leader. But someone has to do it and, if needed, I would always step in and take charge. Anyway, his lack of English didn’t help with the banter that you must have on a good band-stand. However, I would soon need the same Angelino and his wife, the large, but very pleasant, Sofia. They had grown-up children in Italy; but, on the few occasions that she came to the Topaz, Sofia would talk endlessly and warmly with Sheila.

The Topaz never did wonderfully; some evenings there would be no eaters although, as always, I insisted we played. During band breaks Pierre, the Swiss maître d’ would invite us into the kitchen to share the brandy and other liqueurs they had filched from the bar (they would use “essence of orange” with a dash of some unsellable stuff from the bar to flambé the crêpes Suzette etc.). If the mood took him, he would drop his pants and flop the biggest machine I had ever seen on to the nearest work-surface. Apart from the dauntlessness of the spectacle, one thought of the hygiene implications. I must be honest, though, and confess to having seen some disgusting behaviour in catering establishments where I have played. I don’t necessarily mean of a sexual nature. Simple things, like waiters and waitresses throwing bread rolls at each other across the dining room then replacing them on the dining tables minutes before the place opened to the punters; like band members eating remains (biscuits or half-eaten cheese) from the bin in the “still-room”; like kitchen porters widdling in the hand basins rather than going to the toilet.

 

The Manager of the Topaz Hotel, Colin, was terrified of coming into the kitchen of the grill where we played.  He was a young, bespectacled English lad who often referred to his “peaches-and-cream” Asian girlfriend. I soon learnt that, in this Hotel, as in most, the Chef was Numero Uno and then came the manager or maître d’  of the restaurant, depending upon who was the stronger. Colin was a nice lad but nowhere in the pecking order.

The Chef in this Hotel was called Gilbert. Nobody could quite make out where he came from. He spoke fragmented French and, as far as I could make out, quite good German. Angelino seemed to converse comfortably with him in Italian on the rare occasions that he came into the kitchen.

 

Sheila would come to the Topaz once or twice a week. The owner had some sort of agreement with the New Stanley (where some decent professional acts used to appear) and, as a result, we had people like Dorothy Squires, Helen Shapiro and Leslie Hutchinson drop in at the Topaz. “Hutch” (of “Let’s Do It” fame) was a lovely, genial, elderly fellow who would sit at the piano and sing all night if you let him, or asked him, which is what the audiences invariably did. He died not long after his appearances at the Topaz, in August 1969.

 

Sheila and I still appeared at the Equator Club and it was there that we were seen by “Joseph” (no surname was ever given). He was a “producer” at Kenya TV.. This resulted in a string of work, particularly on the “Sunday Startime” show and with an agency that produced most of the TV on-screen advertising.

At the time, Nairobi was a small place. Influential people were accessible and I accessed as many as I could.

I continued to work daily at the HighwaySecondary School. Each evening involved an appearance somewhere but it always ended with a drink at the Starlight. As I have already told you, the Starlight was owned by a small consortium of Africans headed by Robbie Armstrong, from Gateshead. Of an evening, we would normally be the only whites in this vibrant, all-black venue. But, on occasions, usually a Friday night, we would meet another white, Joe Diver who rode for the Delamer stables at Ngong. There were two race-courses around Nairobi one left-handed, the other right-handed with, between them, something like ten meetings a year. Joe was head lad at the Delamer stables. In his late forties and putting on some midriff he would invariably appear at the Starlight the night before a race meeting. The norm was for Joe to give us his TIP with the optimum odds, for the following day. Whatever he gave us in cash, Robbie and I would cover in cash the next day at the course. The arrangement was that Joe would give us what he knew was a “certainty” for the following day. Having received “instructions” in the paddock from the owner and his trainer just before the race, Joe would circle the paddock with his whip in his left hand if he had been instructed not to try, in his right hand if he was trying. This gave us just about time to run to the Tote to place our joint bet before the “off” The trouble with this arrangement was that Joe almost invariably left the paddock with his whip in his left hand!

 

Our flat in South C was comfortable. The building was flat-roofed, like so many in that area. We had a very large balcony overlooking the backyard which was all tarmac. The property had only recently been acquired by Wahid who, a few days earlier, had completed the alterations making the two flats. Clearly, there was no planning permission since he had not dared to alter any of the outside doors. The side door was our only means of access to and egress from the top flat; but it also provided a rear entrance for the ground floor flat; a definite safety hazard.

We had established a small business selling roast chicken portions in the Starlight Club and in Hirji’s other club, the Hot Spot. Both these clubs were regarded as African venues and roast chicken came a close second to goat with the locals. We got another houseboy, Samuel, to work with Mungai…….not a bad achievement since Mungai was Kikuyu and Sammy, Luo. I would go twice a week to the “African Market” in town (right next door to the “European Market”) and buy a dozen live chickens as near as I could guess to two pounds each in weight. Out on the balcony at the back of the flat, Sammy would halal the ones that had survived the short journey in the boot of the car to South C. By 8 p.m. I would be delivering the portioned roast chicken to the two clubs where Sammy and Mungai had their second jobs, manning the two ovens we had recently made for the venues.

 

Within a few days, the new occupant of the ground floor flat appeared. He was on his own. One evening he left ajar the slim partitioning door that separated the entrance to his flat and to ours. I returned from my chicken delivery, came in the side door, our only way in, and was confronted by this little Asian man who invited me into his flat.

“Vould you care to join me? My name is Asif. I like jazz” he announced in one breath.

I accepted his invitation and joined him for what he called “a swift Martini.” He had one of those extremely trendy reel-to-reel tape-recorders that stood, up-ended, on the sideboard or book-case. The music was good……..Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, that sort of thing…….. and the Martini and conversation flowed easily. He was a small, very insignificant little chap who claimed to be a pilot with Air India. I didn’t mind; it was his trip.

Afterwards, we greeted each other when our paths crossed but, apart from the occasional soirée of jazz and Martini, we saw very little of each other.

 

Our home, social life normally happened on Sundays w.e.f. lunchtime until the small hours of the following day. We would have these “at-homes” once every couple of months and be inundated by every South African musician in town. There were lots of them.

A Jewish musical director in Cape Town called Ralph Herbert had been employed by the South African Government to put together a travelling musical show of happy, smiling, black singers and dancers whose task was to tour the southern states of Africa and show the people of Rhodesia, Portuguese East Africa and East Africa itself how happy those black South Africans really were. Apartheid was working. How could you smile, dance and sing if you were not happy?

They were so happy that, when the show got to Dar es Salaam, they all buggered off. Some made it to London and eventually formed part of the cast of the hit musical “King Kong”. But most ended up in Mombasa, that wonderful melting-pot of people, religions and life-styles.

Sheila, Maisy, The Lo Six, Kit Phungula, Shirley and the others had all made it to the richer pickings of Nairobi where they had gained names as good, if somewhat unreliable musicians. For example, our Sunday lunches would start with two or three of the crew turning up at South C at about 12 o’clock. Their duty was to prepare the pombe (booze) for the afternoon’s proceedings. They would do this in the biggest sufuria  (pot) they could find, usually something like four gallons.

They would use varying quantities of pineapple, yeast, slices of bread and something like a bottle of sherry to set the whole thing off. I have never known the exact quantities or contents because I never tried the disgusting potion nor was I interested in trying it. But, by 2 o’clock, the potion would be ready. By 6 o’clock, they would all be drunk, dancing on the patio and singing uncontrollably. On occasions, Asif would join us from downstairs.

There was no way they could turn up for work in that state; fortunately, most of them had their night off on a Sunday.

 

In the meantime, Sheila and I decided to marry.  I was due some leave in a couple of months and we thought it might be an idea for me to spend some time gently breaking the news of our marriage to my parents in Scotland. Gently, because they had found it difficult enough to accept that I had been engaged to Cia, the Swedish girl.

“What the hell’s wrong with a good Scottish girl?” was my mother’s usual enquiry whenever Cia had been discussed.

Surely they would find it more difficult to accept Sheila! For this reason we decided it would be better I went to Scotland on my own. Apart from anything else, Herbert had retained all of the cast’s passports and she would need to apply for temporary travel documents. “Better leave well alone”, we thought. After all, those were the days when boy met girl, they became engaged after clearing it with their parents, they got married and, a couple of years later, they had their 2.4 kids. Nairobi was away from home for most people so we were more risqués. The South African coloureds could not go home anyway…………..they would be banged up for jumping ship and, incidentally, I could not go to South Africa either, since my liaison with Sheila was known to the authorities there. The escapees from “African Follies” had been quite well-known while they appeared in Johannesburg and Cape Town but they had become folk-heroes after their escape in Mozambique.  “Drum” magazine did fairly regular up-dates on escaped musicians and artists. Miriam Makeba and one or two others had made it to America. Their successes were regularly reported.

As the duo “The Two of Us”, we featured too, so there was no way we could even contemplate a visit to South Africa.

I often wondered where “Drum” and other South African authorities got their information.

But Gregory, the coloured South African singer at “Goldilocks” used to make regular trips to South Africa. He had not been one of the “African Follies” and, indeed, was not liked by his fellow country-folk from that cast. He considered himself much superior to them although “Goldilocks” was really no more than a strip joint. He did not mix socially with the rest of us and I and one or two others had our suspicions about his political allegiances.

 

One Saturday, we learnt that Asif’s wife and family of three kids had arrived from Delhi. Although we had not met on any regular basis, Asif and I had always made an effort to be sociable. Like all Asians, he despised Africans, particularly the women, so he had had little to do with Michael, Sam or Mungai and nothing at all with Sheila.

But, from that Saturday, it became complete war, with Asif’s wife the silent general. She said nothing to anyone; her kids’ shoes were left in front of our narrow, one and only entrance at the side of the building. They had the front entrance to the building but her kids HAD to use the side entrance for their dirty shoes, footballs, bikes and goodness knows what. Sheila, whom I had restrained twice at the Starlight Club as she threw bottles and glasses at some poor (African) blokes who had attracted her ire, was becoming more and more tensed up about this little waif of an “injun”, as she called her.

I was still working at the HighwaySecondary School and came back one lunchtime to find Sheila in terrifying combat with the “injun” woman. The fellow with the vegetable barrow had set up in the back yard and Sheila and the “injun” had clearly crossed swords over the broccoli or something. Sheila had the woman’s long tresses of hair wrapped around her left fist and was thumping her around the face with her right one.

After this, things went from bad to worse. The women argued every morning while I was at work and one evening I returned from school to find Sheila in a terrible state. Asif had found the mains water tap in his front garden and, for no apparent reason other than pure spite, he had turned off the supply to the two tanks (one for each flat) on the roof of what was effectively our flat. I went into his garden and turned the tap on, at which point his wife opened a window and shouted what I could only assume was abuse. I was completing the job when Asif’s Volvo screeched into the driveway. He leapt from the car and, stationing himself at what he thought was a safe distance, he started ranting at me. With one lurch I smacked the little shit between the eyes. He went down like a sack of red peppers and I went upstairs to soothe my bleeding knuckles.

Later, two African policemen (one quite senior) arrived while I was on the roof, shutting down the inlet tap to Asif’s tank. When he had used up his water supply, I reckoned, he would go into his private garden, open the tap and fill our tank. The tap to his tank was shut, although he didn’t know it. I mean, how childish can you get?

The African police, the senior of whom recognised us from the Starlight, found the whole thing more and more amusing. The whiskies probably helped but it was another example of how Africans despised Indians and their superior attitude.

 

After Sheila and I were married at the quietest registrar’s ceremony you can imagine, we went off to work, that same night, in Kisumu. A local farmer and his friends had seen us perform at the Starlight during a lads’ weekend in Nairobi and they had wanted us to perform at some annual event up-country. We had booked to stay the night in a local hotel. The only reason I mention that evening is because it exemplifies what I found typical of the East African white settlers. When one of them learnt that we had just been married, he left the Hotel and travelled home some thirty miles over quite rough terrain then returned to the Hotel with a small, probably quite cheap dinner set as a present from his family and friends. We didn’t even know the guy. But, if he had the wherewithal, an African would do the same. It was the only wedding-present we received, and I still have some of it.

I think I cried a little.

 

 

But Sheila and I had had enough. We decided to move well before my leave that was due later that year. Lots of properties were becoming vacant as the exodus of British and Asians from the middle economy continued. We were fortunate to hear about a small open-plan apartment on a farm owned by a Mr and Mrs Doug McCrell, about seven miles out of Nairobi, opposite NairobiNationalGamePark and quite near EmbakasiAirport. A 600 matre murram, pot-holed drive led you from the Mombasa Road to the farm itself.

The farm buildings and the setting were delightful. When we arrived for our “interview” with Mr and Mrs McCrell I did my first-ever recce. which I would perform many times on show business trips in the UK. It involved me going, in this case, to the lovely, detached homestead first, leaving Sheila and Michael in the car.

“Is your family in the car?” Mrs McCrell asked as she opened the door to welcome me.

She was an attractive, well-dressed, forty-year old with long, dark hair trained in a cerise head-scarf. She had a permanent smile in her eyes and a Corgi at her feet.

“Yes” I said, without moving. “But, to save embarrassment on either side, we thought we’d let you know that my wife is African, as is her child. Please tell me now if …………”

“Mr Fleming, both Mr McCrell and I are African, as are most of our friends. Some are black; some are white. Would you care to invite them in?”

There were three attached dwellings some eighty or ninety yards from the McCrells. The property on offer was a charming, totally secluded, one-up, one-down affair at the end of the Z-shaped block. Upstairs was a large bed-sit with bathroom and toilet. Downstairs were the “public” sitting-room, a raised dining area and a kitchen with an outdoor access to two servants’ quarters. To the front of the building was a double garage with a 20’  x  10’ room incongruously attached. This I later converted into a bar/bed-sit for casual visitors.

Within a couple of days we had left South C and moved in along with Mungai and Sam.

We finished with the roast chicken business because it would involve too much travel. But we were all happy. I was paying less rent than in South C; Sam and Mungai had spacious quarters and Sam was able to have his wife and baby son join him. Mungai was not married but I fulfilled my promise of giving him driving lessons. The murram tracks around the farm provided the perfect nursery slopes and he soon became adept at avoiding the ostriches and zebras that would stray on to the farm from the GamePark opposite. Before long, he had a provisional licence and I would take him out on to the Mombasa Road between the end of school and “sundowners” at about 6 p.m.

 

The Lo Six (the male South African song and gum-boot dance team), Sheila and I were invited, quite regularly, to appear at functions organised by the Daniel arap Moi’s “Freedom from Hunger Campaign”.  We didn’t get paid for the work (the Campaign was purportedly Church-based) but we always saw the brownie points that could be gained by Sheila and her “brothers” doing work for the Vice President of Kenya.. My contract with the Ministry of Education explicitly barred me from earning money other then through teaching and so, if money were to be paid for our services, I had people like Hirji and Armstrong primed to declare that I did it all for fun; money was paid to Sheila, nothing to me.

Another two-or-three-times-a-year job were the garden parties at the home of Tom Mboya, the Minister of Economic Planning and Development. He and his wife, Pamela, were well-known for their superb hospitality in the glorious surrounds of their home on the outskirts of Nairobi. Of course, they were political functions and Tom, or one of his good-looking brothers would briefly address the guests before everyone got too pissed. Tom’s usual tack went along the lines: “Our society shall be enriched by our ability to borrow or take what is good from other systems.”

He didn’t want to offend anyone. But his spin-doctoring was unequalled and nobody openly criticised his luxurious (American) lifestyle.

At the time, America, Britain, France, Germany and some of the lesser powers were keen to gain a foothold in this young, developing, Third World country. High-ranking politicians in the pay of some such countries who lived a life of luxury in Nairobi would make conscience-clearing trips up-country to their constituencies once or twice a year. Robbie Armstrong, at the Starlight, was often the first outsider to know such a trip was imminent. The politician would be keen to have a night on the town before spending two or three weeks up-country where they would secure their votes (and livelihoods) by handing out European money in the form of university scholarships and building grants.

“It’s such a drag!” exclaimed one fairly-elevated African politician who, having been educated at Cambridge, had, himself, been beneficiary of one such scholarship.

“I’m driven to within ten miles of my constituency by which time I’ve changed into something tribal. I drive the rest of the way in a Skoda or something. By the time I arrive, clutching a fly-whisk and a wad of grants and things, I’m a hero. The only trouble is I’ve got to eat posho and pretend I like mboga for the next two weeks or so.”

 

 

I continued to work at the Topaz and the Equator and Sheila would join me there and at the Starlight for the occasional “double” (performing at two clubs on the same night). I loved the fact that quite a few African musicians began to come to the Topaz “for a blow”. They would never normally seek access to such “European” venues but, within months, their appearance there became totally acceptable and, indeed, much sought-after by innovative managements. The Topaz was the place to be. Everybody drank and drove, so travel to and from the clubs around town was no problem.

 

It was about this time that Sheila became ill. She was bleeding often and quite profusely from her vagina. I managed to persuade her to see a gynaecologist at the Aga KhanHospital (I had taught his daughter briefly at the Aga Khan Girls’ School). He suspected the need for an immediate hysterectomy which, for several, obvious reasons he could not or would not perform. However, he would have a word with a colleague in the visiting “Glasgow Team” at the Nairobi Infirmary.

Sure enough, we got an appointment eight days later. The doctor, an African assistant to the Scots, gave her a searching examination before calling in his boss. Within seconds Professor Thompson had decided they needed an urgent look inside and was rifling through his diary for an available date. Another eight days would lapse then Thompson or a colleague would perform a Wertheim’s hysterectomy.

 

It was a Wednesday when I took Sheila in to hospital. I insisted on accompanying her to the ward which did not go down very well with the nurses and the porter and we were met with actual hostility from a despicable little black doctor who had one leg shorter than the other. His physical handicap did not make him despicable; it was his manner towards Sheila.

He was brusque and unwelcoming.

“Are you a member of Professor Thompson’s team?” I asked in an attempt to break the ice.

“Why?” he enquired gruffly without taking his eyes off the Record Sheet he was completing.

Sheila was getting into bed.

“How do you spell Fleming?” Again he did not raise his eyes from the papers.

I stopped myself from saying anything rude, on the grounds that, if he were a member of the Glasgow team, he could make things double difficult for Sheila.

“The way it’s spelt on that sheet your copying,” I replied.

I could see he had scrawled something about “stage three carcinoma………..” at the foot of the page.

The little squirt got up and limped over to Sheila’s bed where he all but threw the clip-board on to the bottom rail before hobbling off the ward.

I realised that Sheila, even if she saw the reference to stage three carcinoma, wouldn’t know what it meant so I approached a pleasant, smiling, Asian nurse and asked her to explain the reference.

She smiled, sympathetically.

“You know you’re not supposed to be on the Ward. We do have visiting times.”

She glanced around to check that no Higher Being was near.

“Her condition is serious” she confided “but she is in the best possible hands. Professor Thompson’s team is only here for three months. In a sense, it couldn’t be better. Now please go. Come and see her tomorrow. She should be out of theatre by about three o’clock.”

“Is that doctor, who’s just left, part of the Glasgow team?”

She smiled.

“He’s a house doctor on general duty in four wards.”

 

I took the next day off school. There was a visiting hour from 10 o’clock in the morning so I went to see Sheila who was, strangely, in ebullient humour. Clearly, she had not seen Dr Gnome; her mood was entirely down to the superb nursing staff, their empathy and their willingness to communicate. I made light all round of the imminent operation and left at about ten past eleven.

I went to Hurlingham shopping centre and spent the next four hours feeling and being totally alone. Michael was being looked after by Sam and his wife; I had nothing to think of except Sheila, the invisible Glasgow team and the progress of her operation. It’s a very lonely feeling, knowing there’s no point confiding in the hundreds of people milling around you with their own problems, their own thoughts. All the acquired bravura of the last ten years dissipated. I was alone and so was Sheila. I couldn’t confide in God; neither Sheila nor I could expect that. Sheila was out of it, thankfully. It probably sounds daft, but the strength I found was in the knowledge that the surgeons were Scottish.

At exactly three o’clock, filled with potato crisps and far too many cheap coffees, I made my way up to Ward C. As I arrived at the Ward door, I noticed a tray resting on a chair. It was full of transparent plastic bags containing body parts. One bag had the clear inscription “Sheila Fleming”. It contained a lot of fluid with a lump of something very red floating within.

Bloody hell! Who would leave a display like that in the doorway where you are about to visit what is left of your loved one? Was she alive? Was she crippled? Was she brain-dead?

 

She was asleep.

As I sat next to her bed, holding her hand in selfish gratitude more than unswerving love, that nice Asian nurse came up and assured me.

“She’s fine. All has gone very well.”

 

The approach to the farm was a good 600 metres of flat dirt-track; Sam and Mungai could see me approaching and had plenty time to set whatever scene they wanted to welcome me.

When I got back to the flat, Sam was in the kitchen making it clear to all-comers that he was praying.

“Saida memsahib” he was saying in Swahili made simple for my or God’s benefit. He was standing in the half-open kitchen doorway, counting his beads and facing heavenwards with eyes closed in assumed reverence.

Sheila was home within a week.

 

Just prior to her return I had decided to satisfy my curiosity by raiding Sam’s quarters. I found expensive cuts of meat and some of Michael’s clothes which he had nicked during Sheila’s absence.

With some reluctance I fired him. Basically, if I ignored what I had discovered, he would continue to do it, even if he knew that I knew. I told him to vacate his quarters.

But, having returned early from school one afternoon, I found him standing in the sitting room with two of his Luo mates. They were grouped around Sheila’s couch where she had been trying to rest. Sam’s little suitcase was on the floor by the couch. They had clearly waited for the clarion cloud of dust before gaining access to our little house. Michael, almost three by now, was at the other end of the room, playing on the floor.

Some people are well-rehearsed violent thugs, like the Kray twins with the proffered cigarette and the recipient’s resulting broken jaw. I have never been like that, always preferring to talk my way in and out of situations. I have always played better al progo lughole (by ear). This time I picked up Sam’s case, punched him in the mouth with it,

kicked the bigger of his pals in the balls and followed the three of them as they escaped out the door. I kept a shotgun, loaded with

blanks, above the fireplace and made good use of it, standing in the doorway, firing well above their escaping heads, just in case.

 

 

Christmas 1967 came and went. I had several gigs in the various hotels and clubs. Sheila, happily, was able to join me for some of them. I still had my base at the Topaz where she made quite regular appearances and Angelino continued to get up my nose. When the mood took him, Pierre, the maître d’  would delight the waitresses, the chef and, yes the band, with glasses of cherry brandy and glimpses of his immense penis.

In fact, that Christmas we had a superb “at home” on the farm. We had invited people with transport………..none of the Sunday South Africans. I installed a spotlight pointing skywards and instructed invitees to “follow the star”. Apart from Clive Lovelock, who made the long trek from Moshi (and swore he could see the light from twenty miles out) we had Dave Smith from Kitale , Robbie Armstrong from the Starlight, several local, mobile, musicians and Pierre with his penis. We organised transport for Maisie and a few friends and a very good night resulted.

 

 

Sheila was on a good mend. We wanted a break and decided to visit some old haunts up in Kampala. The trouble was, Sheila, like all her South African “sisters” and “brothers”, had no travel documents. So we went to the passport office in Gill House in the centre of Nairobi.

The queues were quite lengthy so we picked the shortest and awaited our turn. Most of the personnel behind the counter were white, as was still the case in many Government departments. After Uhuru, selected Africans had been immediately promoted to the top of the ladders so that local nationals were seen to be “in charge”. The experienced whites and Asians were left to complete the day-to-day tasks and, more importantly, to train the slowly emerging Africans.

 

Just as we were reaching the head of our queue, a large African tapped me on the shoulder and announced:

“You are wanted upstairs.”

“Me?” I enquired quite stupidly since he had tapped me on the shoulder and was looking at me while he spoke.

“Both of you” he said with no emotion.

All sorts of imaginings flooded my head. Public execution by stoning? Deportation? Imprisonment?

An even larger white man joined us.

We passed several little clusters of askari (police) until we finally penetrated the top floor. In Europe, the senior partner or Minister is not expected to hoof it up to the top floor before he does a day’s work and meets VIPs. He is on the ground floor. In Africa, the top man is on the top floor so that, should any would-be assassin manage to avoid all the armed bobbies then shin up seven or eight flights of stairs, he will be too knackered to do the job at the top. (I was to find a similar set-up when I made an impromptu visit to Daniel arap Moi’s office two or three months later.)

The white chap, who hadn’t spoken a word during the climb, sloped off with Sheila and I was conducted into the office of the Principal Immigration Officer, a Mr Nyamu.

 

Nyamu was totally despicable. He accused me of “harbouring an illegal immigrant” and when I asked him to explain why he was picking on Sheila he said

“If you must know, we Kenyans feel the South Africans have not fought like us”.

“F…… off” I replied, as I still do when cornered. “I bet you didn’t do any fighting.”

I knew I was on thin ice here; with a name like Nyamu, he would be Kikuyu. He might have been a top Mau Mau leader for all I knew. I might have dug myself into a very deep hole.

“What’s happening with Sheila?” I asked. “She’s been very ill.”

“We want to make sure you both tell us the same story” Nyamu replied.

“Story?” I queeried “Story?” Then even louder…….”Story? So you’re saying we’re liars.”

“If you both give us the same account, I presume everything will be in order”

I proceeded to tell him how I’d met Sheila, how she and the others felt it was not safe for them to return to South Africa, how they had to work in order to eat.

“I’ve seen your shows in town. Very good.  But, why has Miss Adams not attempted to regularise her position here in Kenya? She could apply for naturalisation.”

“I would prefer you to call her Mrs Fleming. We were married a few weeks ago, you see. I’m surprised you didn’t know. Her position will become more …………. ‘regularised’……… when she receives her British passport.”

I wouldn’t say his face was a picture because I couldn’t see it. He had turned 90 degrees and looked out of the window on to the bustle of Nairobi. Actually, he might have smiled.

I certainly did.

Sheila and the white guy came in unannounced.

“Mrs…eh…Fleming has given me a full account of her stay in Kenya, Sir.”

Nyamu turned from the window.

“Mr Fleming. You have some accrued leave which I’d like you to take.”

I got up to leave.

“Not in Kenya………….or Uganda.”

As we approached the door, Nyamu added:

“When you get back, I’ll be in the Ministry of Education.” I turned around. “I’ll look forward to having you in my team” he added, with a  smile.

I was troubled by this. I didn’t see why we’d been put through that trauma; more importantly, I didn’t see why Nyamu wanted me out of the country when he knew Sheila’s British papers could not be through and therefore wouldn’t be able to join me. Did he have something planned for her? But, she packed a hefty punch and, on the other hand, I could go to Scotland and break the difficult news of our marriage to my parents.

 

I booked a flight for a fortnight hence. In the meantime I had a word with Robbie Armstrong at the Starlight and Angelino at the Topaz. We drew up a timetable and, over the thirty days of my absence, one or both of them would contact Sheila each day.

 

I flew to London on July 17^th 1968, caught a train to Edinburgh the same afternoon and was met by my father in the Waverley Station at about 8 o’clock that evening.

 

“I have a surprise for you” he announced as we drove across Princes Street.

“I have one for you too” I retorted wondering how the news of my marriage to a single, black South African mother would be received. I’d probably leave it ‘til the following afternoon when Mother and he had both come home from their part-time jobs.

The next fifteen minutes of journey was punctuated by meaningless, monosyllabic chat. We were both ill at ease.

Father parked the car outside our house at 54 Pilton Park.

“So, what’s your surprise?” he asked as we walked up the path to the house.

He climbed the couple of doorsteps and unlocked the front door.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow if that’s OK. What’s yours?”

At that precise moment, the living-room door burst open and an exuberant, laughing, auburn-haired girl threw herself at me and, hanging around my neck, was kissing me excessively.

Bloody hell! It was my Swedish ex-fiancée, Cia.

 

 

The next six days were awful.

I’ve never been very good at concealing my feelings and Cia must have realised I was less than impressed with this all-round surprise.

I went to the postal sorting office at the bottom of Leith Walk and asked them to hold any mail addressed to me. I had to go twice a day for fear that letters from Sheila would be delivered to Pilton. Mother might open them and the whole balloon would burst, right in my face.

Cia hadn’t answered my letters or written to me after my first three months in Kampala so I didn’t feel at all guilty. I just wanted the space to tell my Mother and Father that I had met and married a coloured South African, with a child.

Good God! They had been condemning me four years previously for “getting involved with a foreign girl (Cia) when there were plenty of good Scottish girls waiting to meet a nice Scottish boy.” Now they had actually organised for Cia to come over and meet me again during this short leave.

Shite! Shite! Three times Shite!

It was nobody’s fault. Everybody meant well but I was totally boxed-in. Cia was too; she knew it wasn’t going to work.

Mother and Father pushed. They prepared lovely meals for us and I took Cia out to various jazz clubs where I was still known and we were guaranteed a good night.

But I was so relieved when the 23d of July arrived and Father and I drove Cia down to the harbour in Leith where she was to catch the same boat I had taken to Copenhagen some five years earlier.

Cia was very upset and cried a lot. I felt sick!

 

I had something like twenty days left before my return to Nairobi. But there was no way I could find the time, the space or the heart to break the news to my Mother and Father. He was a well-travelled cool dude …three years in Bogota, the first Model ‘T’ Ford in Edinburgh, fairly high in the Masonic movement. But he was getting on, about 69 at the time, and he clearly didn’t need the hassle.

I told them I was flying back to Nairobi the following day. In fact, I just needed space.

When he dropped me off again at the Waverley Station on the morning of the 24^th, Father said to me “So, what was your surprise?”

I gave it a beat then said “Boo!” quietly.

He smiled. I turned and headed for the train.

I never saw him again.

 

I spent the night at the Palace Hotel in Piccadilly after the inevitable visits to the “100 Club” and “Ronnie Scott’s”. Then, the following morning, I remembered that Sheila had given me the address in London of her “sister” Eunice who had been a dancer with African Follies and who now plied her trade as a stripper in Soho. She lived  with Tony, a doorman from one of her venues in Soho. I decided to spend that day tracking them down. After all, I had another nineteen days before flying back to Nairobi.

Eunice and Tony lived in a fairly tatty block of flats on Goldhawk Road, out in Shepherd’s Bush. They were on the second floor of one of those blocks with a centre stair-well and an open landing to each of the three floors which overlooked the back yard, hidden from the main road.

Understandably, given the nature of their work, there was no reply to my pronounced knocking at the door so I left a note saying I would return at about two and repaired to the nearest local for a pint or six.

The nearest pub was a couple of blocks down Goldhawk Road towards the Bush.

There were three or four Irish blokes in the public bar so I got myself a pint and wandered into the “lounge” which had exactly the same decor and furnishings as the public bar; but it was bigger and had an upright piano on a little stage. There was nobody in the room so I tried one or two notes. It seemed quite well in tune; the action was OK too. So I sat at the stool and played “Don’t Blame Me” in C. This is always a good ploy because all the white notes in C usually get a good bashing and, if it’s wooden-framed or unkempt, you can soon judge its overall condition with “Don’t Blame Me” in C.

“Do you want a job?” shouted the bloke behind the bar.

I closed the lid of the piano, retrieved my pint and walked over to him.

“I’m no good at Irish ditties and I’m only here for a week or so.”

“Bloody ‘ell” said this swarthy, unshaven muscler. “I’m not offerin’ yer a bleedin’ pension and two weeks ‘oliday a year. I’m talkin’ about tonight. If they like you, you can do the week. I’ll give yer five pounds cash every night you work. If they throw bottles at yer in the first half hour, yer don’t get paid.”

“I’ll see you tonight. What time?”

I had another couple of pints and mulled over the scene for that night. I’d run a talent competition and offer a prize of a couple of drinks for the winner. The focus was then on the punters. I could abuse them for not taking part. I might even tell a few jokes. We’d see.

But if Eunice and Tony were not about when I got back to the flat, I wouldn’t even turn up at the pub that evening.

 

Eunice was in the flat when I got back. We hadn’t met before but she welcomed me like a long-lost brother. She was big in just about all visible respects, if you know what I mean. Obviously at home with her tits flailing, she lead me into the small sitting room, asking all the time about Sheila and Michael. She opened a bottle of wine and we settled down to a couple of hours, getting to know each other. She laughed a lot; we both drank a lot.

Tony came in from town. If Eunice was obviously a stripper, Tony was an obvious bouncer. He was quite stocky, about 25 or 26, very muscular and with a nose that had been broken several times. He was full in the face; you got what you saw and I saw a very caring, dependent guy.

They insisted I stay with them for the next week or so. I would sleep on the couch in the lounge and, in turn, I insisted that, at three o’clock each day, I would prepare a decent meal for all three of us. With Sheila’s assistance I had become quite adept on the stove and I wanted to pay my way with those lovely people.

My stint playing at the pub was a great success and I am able to claim that, in my residency of two or three weeks, the “lounge” changed from virtually abandoned to virtually full.

 

 

 

I arrived back in Nairobi on July 27^th, EmbakasiAirport, at about 7 p.m. Sheila was there, and Angelino with Michael in his arms. Michael, who hadn’t seen me for three weeks or so, didn’t want to know me. He feels the same to this day.

 

It all really happened on this second tour.

Doug McCrell announced he was going to sell the farm so Sheila and I decided to leave. I came back from school one afternoon and Mungai, having seen my dust as I approached from the main road, emerged from the grass where he had been relaxing and readied himself for his driving lesson. Apparently he had been relaxing all the time I was away. He had done little for Sheila and Michael. I was well pissed-off with this fellow to whom I had given so much trust and, I thought, hope. What didn’t help was Sheila’s announcement that he had made advances to her. In the light of Doug’s news that he was going to sell, rather than thump Mungai, I told him to collect his belongings, loaded him and them into the car, drove him to the centre of Nairobi, gave him 500 shillings and said goodbye.

I still had about two weeks before the start of the new term at the Highway Secondary. We had given Doug one month’s notice that we’d be leaving so we decided to have a few days’ break, anywhere in Kenya. Sheila’s British passport had arrived but we didn’t want to run the risk of leaving the country again.

We went to Mombasa for my first time since arriving in 1965. We passed through Voi, roughly half-way between Nairobi and Mombasa, without stopping to meet Ron Partridge. He had sold the Equator Club in Nairobi and opened a very nice watering hole in Voi.

“What a desolate place to have a hotel!” I thought. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

The reason for anyone having a hotel half way between Nairobi and Mombasa became obvious the morning after we had booked into the very basic Star Hotel, a couple of miles from Kilindini docks.  I had slept on the flat roof and was woken by the Mhazen calling the local Muslims to prayer. I had been eaten alive by ants and mosquitos during the night so I was relieved to get to my feet. I looked over the balcony wall on to the square where I had parked our Peugeot 404. All four tyres were pancakes. Apparently I should have stopped at Voi  (Ron Partridge’s Hotel) as we descended the six thousand feet towards Mombasa. What a clever bastard he was! You stopped at his luxurious oasis, on the way down, to fill up your half-deflated tyres, had lunch and a few drinks and stopped on the way back to deflate them (and have lunch, of course).

It cost me a lot of money to replace those tyres.

I went downstairs to the bar to drown my sorrows.

Sheila and Michael were still in bed. I was sitting on my own.

The owner, a white guy, was in and out of the bar, cleaning the pipes and re-loading the shelves.

Two lads came into the bar, acknowledging me with a cursory nod. They waited a moment or two at the bar then, when the owner was away for some time, the younger one went behind the bar and helped himself to two glasses of what turned out to be port and brandy, in pint tumblers. The elder of the two also went behind the bar and thence into the kitchen. He emerged with four eggs and a pint of milk which he, almost ceremoniously, added in equal proportions to each pint glass. I was wondering what I would say when I witnessed the inevitable brawl that would ensue.

The two sat in front of the bar with their terrible potions.

“Hi Fred, Andy!” greeted the owner, as he returned to the bar.

I have never been good at remembering names but these certainly seemed familiar.

It was when the owner mentioned “The Crater” (ie Aden) and “Silver Sands” (ie the British Services rest camp on the north side of Mombasa) that I realised who they were.

“Fred!  Andy!” I shouted.

They turned and, within a few seconds, they had recognised me from the RhodesiaCastle off Aden and had taken seats at my table.

Fred would be about thirty-five; medium build, dark hair, not an inch of fat. He came from London. Andy was about ten years his junior, taller, with flaxen hair and a temper.

They were on leave for two weeks and, yes, they’d love to meet my African wife and child. Several whiskies and beer-chasers later I went to find Sheila and Michael. She had left a note on the bedroom floor: “Alex. Can’t find you anywhere. Gone to meet Sylvia. Back about three.  XX”

Sylvia was one of Sheila’s Xosa “sisters” who had stayed in Mombasa along with four or five others from the “Follies”. She worked as a “dancer” in the local clubs.

When I returned to the bar, Fred and Andy had finished lining their stomachs against the day’s forthcoming alcoholic onslaught.

“HMS Ashanti’s in town.” Fred announced. “We’re going on board. Do you fancy coming with us?”

“How can I come with you for God’s sake? I’m not in the Navy.”

“We’re marine commandos. We’ve been invited on board and you, as a civilian, can be invited on board too, as our guest. We’ll set it up if you’d like.”

“Yes, please.” said I, heading for the bar and another round.

By two o’clock we had had some sandwiches and were in a cab on our way to Kilindini docks. A small landing craft took the three of us and a couple of returning sailors out to the Ashanti.

I managed the rope ladder on board but have to admit I was grateful that Fred and Andy were following me. We were given a brief tour of the ship then given freedom to roam. We visited the Junior Ratings’ Mess, the Senior Ratings’ Mess then the Officer’s Mess, the WardRoom.

This was in the time of the traditional “Below Decks Allocation” of rum, dispensed in a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part rum in the Juniors’ and neat in the Seniors’. At the exhortation “Sippers!” you would, as it implies, take a sip from your glass; “Gulpers” meant you had to empty it. Consequently, by the time we left the WardRoom and were making for the return journey via the rope-ladder, I was all but legless. I couldn’t find a footing on the way down this wretched ladder and so, by hanging on to each consecutive rung, made it to the landing-craft by luck rather than design. I fell, helpless, into bed at about 6 p.m..

 

Three hours later I was awakened by Sheila who announced that, in half an hour or so, we would be going by taxi with Fred and Andy to pick up Sylvia (her night off) and thence to the mess at Silver Sands where we would enjoy a good social evening. I would be about 27 at the time; recovery rate at that age, as we all know, is nothing if not impressive. A swift shower and spruce and I was on my way, fresh as a daisy.

 

The sergeants’ mess at Silver Sands was a long wooden hut on stilts. I suspect the stilts were to keep the main room free of sea-water rather than snakes and the like. Fred, being the senior member, made the necessary introductions and identifications at the door and we were soon at the bar. At the NAAFI in Nairobi you could buy a bottle of Haig’s for 22/- and the prices here were not much different. Fred ordered drinks for the five of us and, as we were taking them to a table, some bloke took Fred to one side. They seemed to have a deep discussion at the bar then both of them went outside. Four or five minutes later Fred re-entered the mess alone, came over to our table and, without sitting down, made a great show of taking each individual glass, including pints of beer, raising it then upending it and replacing the empty glass on the table. This extravaganza completed, he announced, alta vocce and still standing,

“Right, let’s go to a decent club.”

 

We went outside and got into a waiting cab.

“What was all that about?” I asked Fred who was sitting behind Sheila and me with Andy and Sylvia. Andy seemed to know or didn’t care.

“Wait a minute” Fred said, leaning forward and putting a hand on the driver’s shoulder.

“Look. There’s that bastard mess sergeant finding his feet.”  The fellow who had left the mess with Fred was crawling out from under the building.

Apparently, the sergeant had taken Fred to one side and explained that “the wives” had been made to feel uncomfortable with the presence of two local prostitutes. Fred had invited him outside where he had corrected the young man on a couple of points.

We went back to the “Star” and had a wonderful evening during which Fred and Andy agreed to complete their leave by coming up to Nairobi with us and staying a few days.

 

Once back in Nairobi and probably fortified by the macho presence of two marine commandos, I decided to go and storm the office of the Vice-President, Daniel arap Moi. He was a much-declared Christian, Chairman of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign for which Sheila and I had performed on several occasions and was responsible for the department dealing with immigration. What the Hell were he and his department playing at, giving Sheila and me all that hassle?  In those days, everything was in the middle of Nairobi and within easy walking distance. I’d kill two birds and afterwards walk to the New Stanley and have a drink.

Access into the Vice-President’s building (Jogoo House, I think) was easy beyond belief. A couple of askari glanced at me as I strode purposefully through the glass front doors. They said nothing; there was no question, no offer of help.

“Keep going, Fleming” I thought as I rounded on to the stairway going upwards. I figured that this building would have a similar lay-out to Gill House, so I kept going, up and up. There was no resistance on any of the landings. A few file-grippers moved about on each landing, mostly African but the occasional European. I reached the top floor, perhaps the fourth or fifth, and was prevented gaining access to the landing by a sort of Mothercare gate manned by one single askari.

“Yes, Sir. What do you want? Who do you want?”

“I have an appointment to see the Vice-President” I lied.

In 1968, the African hierarchy was taking over. But, in most situations a white face was still a useful passport, as long as you didn’t push things.

I couldn’t believe it. The askari got up and, without any reference to a diary or appointments roster, he opened the Mothercare gate and ushered me into the first room through the wooden landing doors. It was a waiting room.

I sat on a plastic chair in this ten by eight foot, bare room until, eventually, a small, bulky red-headed European blobbed in through the door facing me, in the wall at ninety degrees to the one through which I had entered.

“How can I help you, Mr Fleming?” he asked, without sitting down. He had left his office door open, behind him.

“How the hell does this fat twit know my name?” I thought.

Just then, the door opposite the open door, on the far side of the adjacent office, burst into life and a tall, mid-thirties African emerged with a handful of papers that he threw on to what was probably Carrot’s desk. Arap Moi then stood, very upright, gazing at me through the door into the waiting-room. I was just about to greet Moi when Carrot, without turning, and still staring down at me, took hold of the door behind him and threw it shut. This was a completely new ball game. Who was this little fat git? How did he know my name? What was his part in the scheme of things?

I told him of our grievances and wondered why, after doing so much free work for Mr Moi’s Freedom from Hunger Campaign, we should get such poor treatment at Gill House.

“I hear what you are saying, Mr Fleming. Rest assured, you will have no further difficulties.”

I was certain I could detect a southern African accent.

He indicated I could go by symbolising assistance in my getting up with his right hand and indicating the exit with his upturned left hand. He walked to the door and opened it for me.

“Good-bye, Mr Fleming. I suggest you keep your head a little lower.”

He shut the door behind me as I opened the now-unattended Mothercare door.

 

 

Fred and Andy were superb company in Nairobi. I was back at the HighwaySecondary School where a Mrs da Souza, who taught English, made several approaches to me on behalf of her husband who was the Director of the GovernmentSecretarialCollege in Nairobi. Apparently, he was looking for an English tutor for his four classes of 20 girls each; two classes in the morning (10 – 12) and two in the afternoon (1 – 3). I had had enough of Shah and his underfunded Nissan huts so, with the proviso that he, da Souza, got the approval of the Ministry of Education, I accepted.

 

Fred and Andy slept in the “bar” next to the garage in the garden. Each morning, they would get up at six and, having extolled Sheila’s cooking of dinner the previous evening, they would prepare a “full English” for all of us before I went off to work at the Highway Secondary. On the third morning of their stay with us, Shah called me into his office. He had received a letter from Abel Nyamu at the Ministry of Education authorising my transfer to the Government Secretarial College with an additional “hourage” of two per week at the Government Poly where I would be teaching English to Government employees on a Tuesday and Thursday between 9 and 10 a.m. Nyamu had promised me a good deal when I returned. This was a superb timetable and formed part of what was going to become a very busy life in Nairobi.

As it happened, I had organised a careers-awareness evening at the Highway to complete my last week with them and I had asked Fred and Andy to address the massed parents and children one final evening on “Careers in the Armed Forces”. I don’t remember what the date was. I do remember it was raining stair-rods by 5 o’clock and Fred and Andy would have to be ready with their presentation in the hall for 7 p.m. I was preparing the hall during the three hours after school finished and, while I didn’t expect many people attending, was continually making contingency plans for Fred’s and Andy’s possible absence.

But, my heroes showed at just after six thirty. They had walked the four miles from the farm in a horrendous downpour. They doffed their all-encompassing oil-skins which had protected their earlier-prepared visual aids and, by seven o’clock were in full flight in front of the audience of a hundred or so.

What a superb show! It made one proud to be British!

 

The next day, they left by train for Mombasa. Andy, the younger of the two, had apparently wanted to get out of the Marine Commandos for several months to that date and our parting was emotional, to say the least.

 

I reported to the GovernmentSecretarialCollege on State House Road, just off Uhuru Highway.

Da Souza, the Principal, tried hard to ape the Brits he and his type had admired for so long.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to move” he told me. “Welcome aboard!” he grinned cheesily.

There then followed a diatribe directed at many people in general and Africans in particular. This was a popular pastime with most Asians I met; they would be as nice as ninepence, of course, when in the company of these same Africans who were by now in all the top positions and working down.

It wouldn’t be long, I thought, before this creeping sycophant got the chop.

He showed me around the simple complex. The main building comprised entrance hall, da Souza’s office and toilet, dining room and kitchens. Round the back was a covered walk-way which led to quite a large, two-storeyed, L-shaped building which housed the girls’ dorms and facilities on the ground floor and four classrooms, two to each wing, on the upper floor. The staff-room separated the two wings. Here I met the three permanent, African, teaching staff, Ruth, Jane and Barbara. As da Souza made his pompous introductions, I made mocking faces at the girls, behind da Souza’s back. They liked it; I would be OK here!

In truth, I thoroughly enjoyed this extremely normal scene. I went from one room to the next, a twenty-seven year old stud. I had four delightful hours in the company of eighty 19-20 year old girls.

We formed a choir and a vocal quartet which was an all-female version of the then-popular Seekers. The girl who was our lead singer was Patricia, from Class 2. She was a vocal ringer for Judith Durham and, when we performed in front of a visiting African dignitary who was visiting the College, the result was an invitation for us to appear on “Sauti ya Kenya” Sunday Startime, a weekly TV programme.

At the time, television in Nairobi was basic. It was American-funded and would show lots of pap sponsored by Coca-Cola, Caltex and the like. The Americans were in it for obvious commercial reasons but there were a few slots for local “soaps” like “Mzee Pembe”. This was watched avidly every afternoon by any local African who could afford a television. It was completely unrehearsed and depended totally on the spontaneity and inventiveness of the “star”, Pembe. He was about sixty years old and had taken to TV like a duck to water. It’s possible that, initially, he had no idea what TV was and he acted as if he were performing on a village green. But Mzee Pembe was so very popular!

 

My girls were invited to appear on “Sunday Startime”, a show sponsored by Caltex  (hence the star). Each show was presented by a colonial relic called Peter Clare who had a wonderful radio voice and used to read the English news bulletins on Voice of Kenya (“Sauti ya Kenya”) radio. He always reminded me of Alvar Lidell who would pause for five seconds between items on his news reports. Such class!

During our recording session in the TV studios it became very clear that Peter was planning to move back to England in the near future. Never having been slow at seeing an opportunity I asked if I might present the show since the girls from the College and my wife would be featuring. I would introduce the girls with some background information, do the same for Sheila who would sing a Shirley Bassey piece then have the girls finish with our second Seekers item.

These were early days in the development of Kenyan TV and the director, David Kumau, tentatively agreed to my ridiculous proposal.

“You have done this before, I hope” he said. “We’ve no video editing facility so, if you get it wrong, we’ll have to leave it to Peter and go live on Sunday”. Then, aloud, to everyone:

“We’ll do a sound level with Alex and the girls as a quick run-through then go for it.”

I must admit, I love this on-the-edge stuff.

I wrote a few, very brief notes then, just as the floor-manager shouted:

“Right, let’s do it!” I asked if I could visit the loo. They must have thought I was suffering post-curry shits because I took at least ten minutes sitting on the throne, delivering my intro at the door handle (which I pretended to be the camera lens).A couple of drams from the half-bottle of whisky I have always taken to such happenings and I was becoming so, so ready.

I got back into the studio where the floor-manager was beginning to get restless.

“We’ve got to be out of here in one hour. We’ve got to get this right in one take. We don’t want a lot of people here on Sunday. We’re going live with Helen Shapiro. Right, this is a level check. Here we go.  Intro from Alex    (pause)    And ……………….”

I’ve got to say, I bloody loved it. I found it useful to pretend I wasn’t doing a real show, which I wasn’t, anyway, at this point. By the time we went for a “take”, the whisky had clicked-in and I was thoroughly enjoying it. The whole thing went perfectly and Mr Kumau, the Director, came down from the gantry to congratulate us.

“Well done everyone! I think I’ve found myself a new presenter” he said. “I enjoyed your playing too. I don’t suppose you could put a small band around Sheila and any guests?” he asked as he buggered off.

“Of course I can!” I almost shouted.

He turned around.

“Next Sunday, ten in the morning. We go live at 7 p.m.”

He loved the power. Bless him.

I was really chuffed with this “appointment” though. It would give me the sort of experience I would never get in the UK.

 

 

We moved into the Greenlands Hotel a week or so after this. The Hotel itself was a lovely small, colonial style building about two kilometres to the west of Nairobi centre, within easy car reach of the “Starlight”, the “Swiss Grill” and the town itself. The main part of the Hotel contained, perhaps, half a dozen bedrooms, the dining room, a sitting room, a tiny public bar and reception area with a small, leafy terrace to the front, separating the Hotel from the bumpy murram lane leading from the main road. The bedrooms in this main part of the Hotel were occupied by the “permanents”, white expats who, having spent most of their lives in Kenya, were then retired, usually single.

The owners of the Hotel, Mr and Mrs Jamieson were themselves quite elderly. Mrs Jamieson, a 65-68 year old peroxide ex-pat certainly ran the show while Ted, her 70 year old husband, spent most late afternoons and evenings in the residents’ bar at the back of the Hotel playing poker dice with Jim (and me, eventually). Jim was a large, very affable printer of about 45 who, it turned out, had played rugby for Wakefield Trinity in his time.

But, on our first day there, Mrs Jamieson tried to fob us off with one of the many properties she had surrounding the Hotel. The one she allocated us was two thirds of a detached bungalow about twenty yards up the main road, opposite the Hotel. It was a ramshackle, wooden structure, built on stilts, not, I think, because of any imminent danger from snakes or the like although about thirty wild cats had made their homes under the house and defended their domains with such sibilant fervour that, on about the third night, after dinner, we didn’t even dare approach the building to get to our two rooms. Fortunately, the other occupant of the bungalow, a disillusioned, white alcoholic heard the shenanigans and aided our entry by throwing a few well-aimed (empty) whisky bottles at the amassed defenders who retreated under the stilts.

Mrs Jamieson accepted my complaints and, possibly in the light of a reminder to her that my rent was paid directly by the Kenyan Government, we were moved to one of the three small ground level flats which ran down the side of the main Hotel.

We were now in the main body of the kirk and things began to look up. The new flat itself comprised a small entrance-terrace and, through the front door, a bed-sitting room with, to the back, a utility room (which we made into Michael’s bedroom), leading to shower and toilet. There was a little hot-plate in the utility room where we could heat up snacks for Michael or for ourselves. It was a thirty second walk round to the little public bar and not much more to the dining room. Adjacent to the dining room was the residents’ lounge and, behind that, the residents’ bar.

 

Every weekday would now have the same form: breakfast (often on my own) at eight o’clock; teaching from 9-3 (including lunch) at the

Secretarial College; private time for shopping etc. 3-5; “sundowners” 5-6; wash and brush-up 6-7; dinner  7-8; Michael to bed then I do my thing (drinking and poker with Jim and Ted) 8 – 10; bed or nite-lifing 10 +.

 

There was a couple, I think they were called Millar, who attended every meal. If it had been a theatre, they would be in the front row of the front stalls; the band were the waiters who waited on them hand and foot. They spoke to no-one; no-one spoke to them. They would sit down at their pole position, frown at the menu, which was identical every day, wipe their cutlery ostensibly and individually with their napkins, replace them on their table then tell the waiter what they wanted. I thought it was such an insult to the staff who were working to make a fraction of what they took in their pension. The implication was that the staff could not clean the cutlery sufficiently for them. Nowadays, we recognise this as a condition which we refer to as COD (Compulsive Obsessive Disorder). If it’s not that, it’ll be something else with an equally fancy name. In those days it might have been referred to as ODS (Obsessive Dot in the Snout). We all witnessed the same ritual every mealtime until they received an anonymous note (from me) slipped under the door of room 3 saying:

“Your table linen MIGHT be deliberately infected with hepatitis”.

Cruel; but it worked. They buggered off.

 

Teaching at the SecretarialCollege was absolutely superb. I had four sessions each day, one with each of the four groups. On average, they were seven or eight years younger than me and one group, the one including Patricia, took me quite literally when I told them I wanted to encourage open discussion on topics of general interest; to improve their English, of course.

“What shall we discuss today?” I asked an expectant Class 2, the second class of the morning.

“Masturbation” said Alice. “What is masturbation ?” she enquired so innocently. Of course she had been set up by Patricia et alies

I was totally at a loss.

“Self-gratification by manual stimulation of the genitals” I offered as a very speedy, hopefully conversation stopping answer.

Patricia was going to have none of it. She had this 27 year-old bachelor against the ropes in front of twenty very sexed-up girls.

Honestly, I had no idea at that time how a girl’s mind worked. I was certainly not outrageously beautiful. Basically, I was tall, with hair and no belly.

I ranted on about inserting things into the vagina and manipulating them.

I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

“What sort of things?” enquired Patricia.

I think I blurted something about bananas. But thankfully, another teacher came into the room and I had an excuse to escape into possessive pronouns or something.

What a relief!

I would never, ever try that approach again.

The other (lady) teacher hadn’t noticed anything untoward and at the end of the lesson, with unspeakable relief, I avoided the dining room and took a break by strolling up State House Avenue to cool my blushes over the lunch hour.

I had never had any reason to go further up the road beyond the College. But, not fifty yards beyond the College, on the right hand side, I came across a bungalow with a large notice-board outside advertising a recording studio.

I rang the doorbell. After some time, a very pleasant, middle-aged African man opened the door and asked my business.

“Do you need any writers?” I asked. “Copy? Music? I write both and was ………………”

“One moment, please” said Isaac, who turned out to be the studio producer. “I’ll just see if Mrs Hargreaves is available. Come in, please” he said, indicating a seat in the hallway. I was so glad he hadn’t given me the space to expand on my writing experience! Within a couple of minutes I had been shown into the front room and was introducing myself to this fifty-year old white woman.  She didn’t stand up as I took her hand; I could see the pale green cardigan, the pastel-coloured scarf, the large probably unnecessary spectacles beneath the expensively-coiffured hair. I imagined the tweed skirt. She was probably glad to see anyone in this equatorial backwater, a converted bungalow masquerading as a recording studio.

I don’t like telling lies; to me it is a weakness. White lies, though, can be very useful.

“I am a professional musician” for example, was allowable, since my only source of income while at St Andrews and in Ian Sinclair’s Jazz Band, had been earned playing the trumpet.

“I have the band at the Topaz Grill and present ‘Sunday Startime’ on TV”.

“I have just come out from England” was true at the time. I didn’t add “having been kicked out briefly at the end of my last contract.”

“I am teaching and writing for the choir down the road, at the SecretarialCollege” was true enough. I didn’t add the fact that this was merely a leisure-rime activity for all concerned and that my actual reason for being at the College and the Poly was to teach English.

It worked a treat and, before long, Betty was showing me around what was, in fact, quite an impressive little set-up. I say “impressive” although the only recording facility I had experienced to date had been the studio where we recorded the Folkuniversitet’s  English programme in Stockholm.  I was wrong about the tweed skirt, too. She was wearing Rupert Bear-type trousers which would have been totally laughable on a smaller woman. But, she pulled it off did our Betty. I got the impression that, if asked nicely, she would have pulled them

off as well.

She and Isaac led me to the front door.

“We have a local distributor of Proctor and Gambol products who wants a fifteen-sec jingle for radio  Omo, I think……… English and Swahili. Can you do something for me to hear by Wednesday?”

“Of course. Can I come here and do it? I’ve no kit at the Hotel.”

“Fix it with Isaac” she commanded as she swept tough-at-the-topishly into her office.

Isaac walked me out to the front gate.

“You’ve never done a jingle in your life” he said with his arm round my shoulder.

“Isaac, just let me try.” It was Monday. “Can I come tomorrow at this time?”

“No. We have a big job tomorrow. I’ll meet you here at 8 p.m.” he said in a beautifully exact Swahili way.

 

That evening, Sheila suggested there was no distributor’s contract at the recording studio. We had not been given a “treatment”, no theme of any sort. Betty had been bullshitting me. Betty knew it, Isaac knew it, Sheila knew it. Smart-arse Alex didn’t.

 

I must have listened to a hundred or so jingles on the radio over the next twelve hours. It seemed to me there were two common factors: simple, catchy tune, simple, catchy words. Nothing clever. Just cleverly simple.

 

The fact that Omo had come nowhere near contracting Betty to produce a jingle didn’t matter.

I really went for it, keeping it short, simple and catchy. Isaac was impressed as Sheila and I put the jingle down in a couple of takes. Obviously, quality of recording was not of prime importance since it was only a “demo” when all said and done. But Betty was impressed with the end result and gave us a lot of work over the next eighteen months. One “big” contract was with Barclays Bank. I wrote the music and put down a simple backing track in an afternoon while Isaac and Sheila spent a day doing English, Swahili, Luo and Kikuyu versions. It was good fun and there was always a dead-line to meet which added to the attraction.

 

At the end of my first week’s association with Betty Hargreaves I had my first “gig” presenting “Sunday Startime”. The whole thing was so makeshift. I had Oggy Alvarez (Goan) on sax, Bernard Jackson (South African) on bass, George Karanja(Kenyan) on drums, me on piano/mike and Sheila on vocals.

We turned up as arranged on Sunday morning at 10 o’clock, made our way to the studio, set up our kit and jammed until Kumau appeared at about noon.

“Right” he announced. “We’ve got Helen Shapiro. She’ll be here around six for a run-through. O.K. Let’s get some levels,” he suggested and disappeared..

All afternoon, the band and I lived in terror. What sort of “dots” (music) would she have? We’d only have an hour at best to get two of her numbers together. Oggy threatened to leave (which he always did when things got tough), Bernard stared through his increasing cannabinol haze, George got more and more oiled at the bar and I strutted about the place pretending to be used to it all.

Finally, at twenty past six Kumau appeared with an entourage of five or six Jewish suspects surrounding the diminutive, cock-eyed Shapiro. We in the band, or those who could, stood up with a view to going over the music as quickly as possible. Kumau disappeared into the gantry and, within a few seconds, we were engulfed in the far-too-loud strains of a thirty-piece orchestra. The entourage sat down, the engineer found his level, Shapiro disinterestedly sang a few boyish-sounding bars of “My Boy Lollipop”.

She was going to use backing-tracks!

Wow! The relief!

.

In the end, I only presented two or three shows. Although Voice of Kenya obviously had connections with the New Stanley in town and occasionally benefitted from the appearance of a “name” on Sunday Startime, most of the shows were half-hour exposures of local talent. The resident quartet (including me) backed these people as well as Sheila, who opened and closed the show. Kumau either thought I was no good at presenting or was getting too much exposure. Perhaps my mate Nyamu had been in touch. Who knows or cares?

 

One of our sessions with Betty Hargreaves involved me putting together a “trad” band to do some work for Esso. They wanted to cut a small disc with “Bobby Shaftoe” on the ‘A’-side and anything of our choice on the ‘B’-side (4 tracks to be submitted).

The “Bobby Shaftoe” tune was to be used with the lyrics:

 

“Esso sign means happy motoring

Esso sign means happy motoring

Esso sign means happy motoring.

Stop at the “Esso” sign.”

To fill out this A-side we did something like ten “choruses” of Bobby Shaftoe”, the first and the last with vocals. I can’t remember what we did on the B-side of this pathetic EP that was given free of charge to anyone who bought at least five gallons of Esso. Any discerning driver would never have bought a pint of Esso after such a promotion. However, I think it did quite well with the “owt for nowters”.

I  played valve trombone on the record and, from the grapevine, had managed to get the services of one John Eames to play trumpet. The whole band was so makeshift!

 

At the end of the recording session, John Eames asked if I “happened” to play trumpet. This is an odd question to ask a trombone player unless you are very, very short of trumpet players. Maybe he was making an observation upon my trombone playing but I was, in fact, trying to “get my lip in” again on the trumpet after my accident in Uganda.

It turned out that Eames played first trumpet in the “pit” for the amateur productions at the National Theatre in Nairobi. The Theatre, Conservatoire of Music, University of East Africa, Norfolk Hotel and Broadcasting House formed an élite suburb of the City, about half a square mile in area. This was 1968, five years after Independence. There were no signs saying “Whites only” but there might as well have been. Most of the waiters at the Norfolk were white. Any new customer was scrutinised by the regulars. Only serious black British or American puppets, like Ngongo or Mboya might, just might be seen there.

The Conservatory was run by an ageing violinist called Nat Kofsky who had accepted the role of Musical Director for the show “Guys and Dolls”, to be presented in a few months by the local amateur dramatic society at the National Theatre. They were short of a second trumpet and hence the Eames enquiry.

I opted to turn up at the Conservatory orchestra rehearsal (“band call”) about two weeks hence which would allow me time to really get my lip in. More importantly, it would give me time to go down to the Conservatory and spy, at least from outside. What I didn’t want was to be involved in a church hall extravaganza with “amateur” emblazoned everywhere.

 

I would return from work at the SecretarialCollege to our little flat on the ground floor of the Greenlands just after four. Sheila had made friends with the two ladies in the only two flats on either side. Gwen Omara, to our left, was married to Pat, a forty-five year old super-prat maths teacher who taught at a local Government school on secondment, like me. They had two kids. Nobody could work out where they all slept, but shit-face will have worked out a very clever quantum division of the miniscule provision.

On the other side was Mandy Silver who worked as a stripper in the several dedicated sites in town. She had a little blond boy aged four or five who became friendly with Michael.

At some time after four each day I would join the ladies on the terrasse, just in front of the small bar. We would wait for clever-clogs Pat, then afternoon tea would be served. Often we’d be joined by another resident, Wilf Glover, an elderly, single man who worked for a British firm of building contractors. Wilf was in his early sixties and was a good raconteur. He was popular with the girls, who saw him as a father figure.  This was probably why his wife had ditched him several years earlier but his company was good. He had lived in Kenya for some thirty years and spoke what seemed like fluent Swahili. Being a site engineer, he knew how to get on with the working man too and was popular with the waiters. He was a captivating conversationalist and would be visibly peeved if he joined us while Pat and I were attempting the Telegraph crossword. I was the one “attempting”. Omara would pump out the solutions like an automatic gun. It was only later, when I met a colleague of his from the same school, that I learnt he and his mates had already completed the bloody thing during the lunch-break.  It pissed me off even more because Wilf, who returned at different times of the late afternoon would tend to avoid us if he saw the paper spread out around the tea-cups.

One of Wilf’s favourite stories related to his son, Robert who, he said, was the assistant hang-man during the Mau Mau uprising. Apparently, when at his peak, he would “do” half a dozen in the morning, piling the bodies in the corner after each execution so that the new victims could see the fruits of his labour before they too were strung up. Robert would then have a hearty lunch with the rest of his team before “doing another six”.

I never knew if this was true but it was a chilling story.

Mary Thompson had once told me a similarly cold tale about her brother who, as a Kenyan national, had been inscripted into one of the British army “pseudo gangs”. They comprised British men who, having been born and brought up in the Kikuyu territory with the help of Kikuyu “ayas”, were familiar with local custom and could speak and understand the Kikuyu dialect perfectly. In command of small brigades of troops which would include Africans with detailed local knowledge and language, they would “black up” and, in suitable disguise, would probe into the Highlands where they would track down and gain the confidence of Kikuyu guerrilla groups. At the “moment juste” they would rout the unsuspecting “enemy”. This was all very well and medal-winning until, during one sortie, Corporal Thompson and his brigade came across a troop of British soldiers. Thompson’s “hail-fellow” greetings were to no avail; his disguise was so good. He was executed with one bullet between the eyes.

 

At the Hotel, we would have a couple of rounds of “sundowners” then smarten up for dinner. After dinner, Sheila, Gwen and Mandy would take the kids off to bed and Wilf and I would retire to the residents’ lounge where Miss Hattersley ruled. It was vintage Somerset Maugham.

Miss Hattersley prided herself in being “eighty-four or –five, I can’t quite remember which”. She was a large version of Miss Marples,  omniscient in all that was proper and knew quite a lot about the improper, too! I don’t think I ever saw her move out of “her” softly-furnished arm-chair. She insisted that the television should always be on, at a low volume, “lest we miss the news.” On a Sunday evening I would return, still sweating, from the live output of “Sunday Startime”. She would make no comment and continue on what, to her, was a relevant diatribe on much more important matters. The only reason I was sweating was I was rushing to get involved in her court.

Jack, an elderly, single chap would join us too. He would be in his early seventies, a former civil servant who was retired out of the service to coincide with Kenya’s Independence and the onset of his multiple sclerosis. He had difficulty in speaking and his sight was quite badly affected but he took a full part in our lively post-prandials. He soon died after a particularly bad fall on the way to his flat across the murram road. I happened to be around at the time, accompanied him to the hospital and looked after his affairs upon his death.

Today, I suffer badly from MS too. I fall quite often but I put it down to a surfeit of red wine and work.

 

We’d finish in the lounge around 9 pm after which Sheila and I might spend an hour or so in the residents’ little bar with Ted (the landlord) and “Big Jim”.  Jim was a complete gentleman. I never heard him swear, shout or blow his own trumpet.

Ted wasn’t keen on anybody, male, female, white or coloured interrupting his game of dice but Jim always made you welcome and would give up his bar stool to Sheila whenever she came in.

 

Talking about “blowing trumpets”, it was about time I went to “suss out” the Conservatory.

I had a couple of drinks in the Norfolk on a rehearsal night then walked over to the Conservatory buildings where the sounds of a very professional, if small band bounced out to the car park. They were rehearsing “Guys and Dolls”. It was important to me that the balance was right. In most amateur productions, either the violins are too stringy or the brass far too loud. Not here and not surprisingly either. For, as I later learned, this orchestra had Dennis Bayton (Director of Music, Kenya Army) on trombone, Paddy Learey (Director of Music, Kenya Police) on flute and several other very tasty amateurs who were accountants, teachers or, as in the case of John Eames, journalists, all on short secondment contracts. Nat Kofsky, formerly a lead violinist in British orchestras was conducting.

The break came up and I decided to go in, there and then. Kofsky was busy discussing a section of the music with Dyllis, the elderly, finicky but very efficient piano player. John Eames, ever vigilant, ever the journalist, saw me come in and greeted me.

“Alex!” he shouted, coming forward. “Come and meet Dennis and Barbara, his wife.”

I was completely captivated. There seemed to be several husbands, wives, girlfriends around. Rehearsals were clearly a family event. Some were making and serving teas and coffees, some washing up, and a couple were going round selling tickets for some event or other. Sheila was very good in any colour of company and was anxious to expand her circle of friends. This would be a perfect milieu.

“Are you married, Alex?” asked Barbara. “Any family?”

“Yes” I replied. “She’s a coloured South African. The boy’s coloured too.”

“How lovely!  Do, please, bring her to the next rehearsal. And the boy. What’s his name?”.

“Michael.”

“How nice! We, Dennis and I, have a son called Michael too.”

Blaa  blaa.  We had lift-off.

 

But, as I sat through the second half, I saw the first of my real heroes, Dennis Bayton, in action. He was a wonderful musician; he had no edge; he didn’t need any. He was seriously good, as was Paddy and the others who had been imported from the Army and the Police. These guys were all Knellar Hall trained.

“You fancy yourself on trombone? O.K. Sunshine. I’ll give you three months to become proficient on violin then three more months to learn flute and clarinet and a final three months to learn percussion. Now, straighten your tie and piss off.”

When you descend into amateurism you come across more and more grandeur.

“Of course” becomes the ubiquitous prefix to everything. “Of course, when I sang with the D’Oly Carte……..”

During one of the rehearsal breaks, John Eames, who was Editor of the Sunday Nation, happened to mention that his parent newspaper, the Daily Nation, was looking for a feature writer. Apparently, they were looking for someone to write a (tabloid) page on the music scene in Kenya. Did I, with my extensive list of contacts in broadcasting, know of anyone who might fit the bill?

“Yes” I said, “me.”

So began a twelve-month association with the Daily Nation which had a circulation extending throughout East Africa. I talked the Features Editor into allowing me to take my own pictures and into giving me a Minolta camera to do the job.

I had to hand in my copy and film by 1p.m. on a Thursday. I loved the pressure, the imminence of the deadline. If I needed more copy I would paraphrase items of “news” from the Melody Maker which was sent out to me weekly by a mate in London.

Again, it was the “big fish, small pond” scenario. Here I was, writing advertising jingles, appearing regularly on nationwide television, headlined in a national newspaper and playing regularly at quite high-profiled functions. Oh yes; and I taught as well. It all helped when we got to England.

In my weekly articles I featured visiting “stars” or musicians and cabaret artists who were well-known in the local communities. Occasionally, I expressed opinions or views about performers or topics within my field. One of them was the need for a voice through which local musicians could speak and earn their self-respect.

Several weeks later, Sheila and I were at the Starlight when a group of local musicians (the Starlight band and one or two others) joined us at our table. Would I be interested in helping them form a musicians’ union?

To cut quite a short story even shorter, we hired a room in the building adjacent to Gill House, a local solicitor drew up a package constitution and I was elected the first President of the Kenya National Union of Musicians. We met once a month but there was less than a year before I was to leave Kenya. And we achieved little. I had wanted to develop a minimum wage structure based on the technical ability of each musician, his/her record of reliability in employment and so on. Basically, they (the musicians) didn’t want to know.

 

It was July 1969. Again, I had not taken any leave and I was looking forward to what would amount to about five months paid leave when my contract was due to end, in June the following year.

One Saturday morning, it was July 5^th I remember, we had been round to Hurlingham shopping centre to fill up our small fridge for the week and returned to the Greenlands for our usual Saturday binge. But, there was a buzz about the place. Waiters were hanging about, in deep discussion; cars were coming and going; there were occasional bursts of laughter.

Tom Mboya had been assassinated in Victoria Street, in the centre of Nairobi.

About two weeks previously Sheila and I had entertained again at Tom and Pamela’s party in the gardens of their beautiful home on the outskirts of Nairobi.

I have never been political. I have always taken folk as I found them and have expected them to do the same with me. I knew that Tom and his family were from the Luo tribe and so, almost by definition, would have many enemies within the ruling party. I knew he had been a young, political activist who had warned America and Britain to “keep their hand off Africa”. I surmised that, with a house and facilities like he had, he must have been in the pay of someone. But, I knew too that, as he matured in Kenyatta’s spirit of “Harambee” (meaning “Let’s work together”), he had become a vibrant, internationally-respected member of KANU.

Now he was dead.

Sheila and I stayed with Michael in our flat. I suppose there was a danger that violence would erupt. I spent the afternoon thinking about my estranged family in Edinburgh…….estranged

by me…… and the cruel reality in the sudden death of promising youth.

I had been frustrated by the lack of opportunity to tell my parents about Sheila and me and, upon my return to Kenya had written my mother an unnecessarily aggressive letter at which my father took great offence.

 

For the next twelve months or so I received no communication from Edinburgh; not did I send any to Edinburgh. Typical Scottish stubbornness and bigotry set in. I had insulted my father’s wife and he was waiting for an apology. In fact, of course, I had jumped the gun and assumed they would object to Sheila. They hadn’t. All they had done was arrange a “nice surprise” for me by having Cia waiting for me in Edinburgh when I went on enforced leave in 1968. My mission had been to tell my family face-to-face that I had married a South African coloured, with a child. Cia’s unexpected presence just cramped me and, upon my return to Africa, I took it out on them in my OTT letters. Despite Sheila’s pleas, I ignored their birthdays, Christmas and other festivals. As the months went by, “age added obstinacy to stupidity” (Pitt) and I resolved to blot them out of my life.

 

This last contract year panned out very nicely. I took to annoying da Souza (the Secretarial College Principal) by regularly persuading the college driver to let me drive the college bus. Da Souza, with a smirk on his supercilious gob.would refer to me as “incorrigible” when he had an audience of African lady teachers, who detested him and knew his days were numbered. The fact was, he needed me and he bloody well knew it.

 

As we approached the Christmas season of 1969 we were rehearsing with Nat Kofsky for a Christmas show at the National Theatre. There were some quite high-powered thespians around who had probably gained a lot of self-esteem in the small pool scene. Alice Warwick, sister of Stanley Baxter, was producing. Her husband, Andrew Warwick, a local solicitor, had recently starred with Glyn Davies in a very well-received production of Night of the Iguana in which I had a minor part as the bus-driver and had produced background music for certain scenes.

One evening I had arranged to meet Sheila in the upstairs bar at nine o’clock when we always had a break from rehearsing.  I was sitting there with Glyn Davies when Sheila turned up with Mandy, the stripper from the flat next to us at the Greenlands. Glyn, being a gentleman (and a bit of a star in his own territory), jumped to his feet and asked theatrically

“Good evening, girls. What can I get you to drink?”  Mandy kept him waiting while she sat and made herself comfortable as dramatically as she could, then looked up at him with great disdain and enquired

“Do you know who I am?” (Actually I think she said “…whom I am?”)

“A dirty stripper from Nairobi” would have been an appropriate response but, fortunately, Glyn, a well-respected quantity surveyor in town, would never be seen in such joints. If he had known who she was, he certainly would not be seen buying her a drink.

 

On the Friday before Christmas, we had a seasonal lunch at the SecretarialCollege with all the girls, Mr and Mrs da Souza, staff and spouses. Principle guests were Mr and Mrs Nyamu, the Director of Education (the former Immigration Officer who had made things difficult for us) and his wife. Most of the girls were Christians although about a fifth was Muslim. Da Souza never made any concessions to the Muslims. He was a Roman Catholic and it was HIS college…………for the time being at least. The girls were simply glad it was the end of term and, if it meant singing a few Christmas carols and eating some turkey with pork stuffing, so be it. They left the stuffing and had a bloody good party, bless them.

 

Nyamu indicated he wanted to see me after the meal, “in da Souza’s office”. I had recently appeared in a special Christmas episode of the TV “soap” Mzee Pembe. This was a totally Swahili, extremely ad libafternoon production in the early days of Kenyan television. I had had no stage directions and had no idea what the story-line was. I did not speak Swahili and understood very little of what was going on. I made a complete arse of the whole thing……………which is probably what the producer wanted. More than likely this was what Nyamu wanted to speak to me about. How could one of his teachers make such a fool of himself on television, in front of so many people?

“Come in Alex” he shouted from the depths of da Souza’s cupboard.

“It’s going to be the soft line” I thought.

I went in and, with a hearty “good do wasn’t it?” I sat down in front of da Souza’s little desk.

“Alex”, he started.

“Never GIVE or ADMIT anything” I thought.

“I’ve been watching you over the years”

I saw another expulsion; no gratuity, no paid leave. The hackles rose; I was ready.

“We’re planning a new educational establishment outside Nairobi…… the Kenyatta Centre. For your next contract, I want you to be involved in the design and planning of the music centre.”

Bloody hell!

“Think about it” he suggested as he got up. “I’ll put you on Head Teacher scale. I might need you to do a couple of hours teaching here too. Give me a ring within the week.”

He shook my hand. As he left the room he hailed his wife and his chauffeur who were sitting chatting with da Souza and his wife. Without a word to the latter two, Nyamu made off to the waiting car and left.

 

 

Sheila was not impressed. She did not fancy another two years in Kenya. She wanted to leave a country where she had been more insulted than accepted, to try her luck in the British musical scene.

I would not say I am selfless but, if a person is kind enough to agree to live with me, I must surely respect their wishes and hopes for the future together.

 

We left Kenya (EmbakasiAirport) at 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday June 4^th 1969

The build-up to leaving had been horrendous. My main concern on this occasion had been that I should leave the country with everything I was owed. Instead of paid leave of five months, I had opted for cash and, after much cajoling at Head Office, I managed to get a cheque for my final gratuity (40% of total earnings) before we left.

 

Having stopped at Bengazi to re-fuel, we arrived at Heathrow at about 8 p.m. that evening. Sheila, Michael and I took the airport service bus into London then made our way from Victoria to the Regent Palace Hotel at Piccadilly which I had used often enough during the Swedish days. Sheila and Michael were agog at the internationality of the city which became more “in your face” as we walked the streets of Soho that evening.

The main attraction of the Palace Hotel has always been its cheapness, paid for by its lack of en suitefacilities; but it was comfortable enough and provided a good breakfast.

 

The following morning I hotfooted to the Royal Bank of Scotland and expedited the cashing of my Kenyan cheque. It cost quite a bit of money but it meant that I left the bank with several thousands of crispy pound notes in my hip pocket.

 

We needed transport quickly so, having decided upon aVolkswagen, we took a cab, with our baggage, to the Oval where the main Volkswagen dealer was based. I negotiated a good discount for cash then bought a second-hand caravanette which we drove to Fornham in Suffolk. This beautiful little village near Bury St Edmunds was home to Jim and Sheila Bayne. You might remember, Jim had been my “senior man” at St AndrewsUniversity where he had met and lived with Sheila. By now, they had a couple of kids, Julian and Justine but welcomed us warmly and unexpectedly; they had no idea we had been on the horizon. JUNE 1970

 

What a pain! I had flown back to England from Nairobi with £1200 cash and a cheque for £850; I had refused to leave Nyamu’s office without my terminal gratuity and leave entitlement. After the trouble they had caused me, I could see me sitting in England penniless, waiting trustingly for these bastards to pay what was due to me.

So, everything, on the surface at least, seemed rosy. My wife, Sheila, and her six-year old son, Michael, were in tow. Sheila had never been to this country before and was full of expectation. We were going to break into the British music scene. It would only be a matter of time! I had £2050 in my hip pocket, it was us against the world…….the way we both liked it.

The trouble was, I had fallen out with my parents, mainly because of my marriage to a coloured woman. Scottish people can be so bigoted, just like their offspring, I suppose! A Scotsman finds it hard to accept that he’s wrong; not MIGHT be wrong; just wrong. Compromise, a very useful tool I later found, is not part of his lexicon. Do you know, I actually find this hard to write, even today.

So, there we were, at Victoria Terminal in Central London, with nowhere to go. My family wouldn’t want to know and Sheila had, or thought she had nobody in this part of the world. We hadn’t even given it a thought, so full were we of youthful confidence and togetherness.

In the whole time I had been in Sweden and Africa I had never contacted any school or University friends. But, as we left the Clydesdale Bank (“Let’s get that cheque banked before they think of stopping it”) almost in despair, I parked Sheila and Michael outside a kiosk, rang Directory Enquiries and found the only Bayne, J. living in the Bury St Edmunds area. Jim had been my “Senior Man” at University.

Frankly, I was becoming a bit desperate. Sheila was totally lost (“How come all those blacks and whites just mingle together?”) and Michael was more than dependant. But Bayne and his wife, Sheila insisted we came and base ourselves in their beautiful cottage in the village of Fornham, just outside Bury St Edmunds.

“We’re going on holiday tomorrow” says he. “We don’t normally leave folk in the house while we’re away, but I suppose we’ll make an exception for you. Only ‘cos you’ve got a wife and kid, mind. Make a mess here or do any damage and I’ll have your balls screwed off.”

Jim referred to his wife as “Sheila la blanche” and to my wife as “Sheila la noire” which was not wonderfully funny but gave autocratic Jim a sense of command and originality.

Two nights after Jim and Sheila la blanche had left on holiday, la noire and I got very pissed and impulsively (we were both that way) decided to up and go. By eleven o’clock we had cleaned the cottage, loaded the sleeping Michael and our kit into the caravanette and were on the road.

In those days, one seemed to be allowed to drive after drinking although it is more likely that, being younger, we could physically cope with booze more efficiently.

It would be around midnight as we cruised with ease up the M1. Sheila was asleep and Michael was snug, stretched out over the engine housing at the back of the van. We would head for Edinburgh and sort out the whole mess with my father and mother.

But I was beginning to get tired as the booze wore off.

We arrived in Leeds at about 3.30 a.m. and, not knowing that the M1 became the A1 (M) north of Leeds, I was looking for an M1 (north) sign which, of course, did not and still does not exist.

I had circled the city several times by four a.m. and, outside the town hall in the centre of Leeds, I decided to park up and have a sleep.

The double bed, which was constructed by inserting the table-top between the ridges on either of the two facing bench seats in the back of the van and then by strategically placing the sponge cushions from the seats to make a “mattress”, was, by any standards, uncomfortable. But, if a “head-down” was urgently needed, it served the purpose.

In fact it was after nine in the morning when we were awoken by someone banging on the caravanette window. It was a traffic warden and a Thursday morning.

Sheila and I had fallen into a well-rehearsed routine where she spoke Xosa (the South African “click” language) to me and I “replied” in French. Up to press, it had worked superbly well and most enquiring officials simply gave up after less than a minute.

Directly opposite the van where we had parked was an estate agent’s and, while Sheila readied herself and Michael, I went over to investigate the cost of property. Never having been in a house-buying or renting position in Britain, I was surprised when I compared the Leeds prices with what we had seen in London.

“Kudja happa” I shouted to Sheila and Michal as they emerged from the van; the traffic warden was lingering.

More quietly and, by now standing together at the window, I observed:

“We can get a one-bedroomed flat on Hillcrest Drive, wherever that is, for £2300. You’d pay about seven or eight thousand quid in London for something like that” I supposed.

 

After viewing the flat, which was in a block of six about ten minutes from the centre of Leeds, we bought it for cash. Our thinking was that Leeds was about equidistant between Edinburgh (which we could visit if peace were made) and London (where we believed everything in showbusiness happened). We had about £1200 left from my gratuity…………just enough for the purchase of essential furniture and cooking gear with a bit spare to live on while I found a job.

To this end, I got the “Yorkshire Post” every evening at the shopping centre half a mile away and each day I spent a few hours teaching Michael, then six years old, basic numeracy and literacy. It was certainly at this point where I realised the value of one-to-one teaching and of teaching in situ. As with the Swedish kids, I took Michael to shops for exercises in the four skills of mathematics and in reading. His verbal communication, confidence and respect were strengthened as he politely dealt with the exceptionally helpful lady on the check-out. He was black in a very white community and for this reason, I wanted to teach him myself; I knew that, as a trained teacher, there would be no problem with the authorities.

 

About a week later I saw an advertisement in the “Yorkshire Post” inviting applications for the post of Head of Immigrants at Batley High School, five or six miles from our flat in Leeds. At the time, lots of Indian and Pakistani workers had managed their way into the UK and many of these had headed straight for the mills that still operated in the Batley/Dewsbury area.

I got the job. There was only one other applicant, the Sikh who already worked at the School. In those days, internal appointments were not popular. (Nowadays, in the twenty-first century, they’ll take any bugger stupid enough to apply for a post involving responsibility).

Anyhow, I accepted their offer on condition that I was put at a point on the top scale.

I never moved off the top scale even in future years despite the Government restructuring the pay spines at least twice while I was a Head of Department. The moving goalposts were to become an increasingly common scenario in my life (yours too, no doubt) over the next thirty years or so.

 

BatleyHigh School was an all-boys school with about 15% of the 800 pupils of Asian origin.

There was no system or structure in the Immigrant Department when I arrived. I had three Asian members of staff who, because of religious or geographical differences hardly spoke to each other. I think I succeeded in getting it across to them that we were together in our Department as professional teachers, not as leaders or representatives of any particular sect or community from Asia. We had to play a full part in the everyday running of the whole school and help our Asian pupils to do the same.

 

The Headmaster, Billie O’Neil was one of the few university-trained staff. He was an aggressive little terrier who had played rugby league on the wing for Hunslet in the fifties. He was at his best sorting out big Batley thugs when they threatened to disrupt “his” school and was ably assisted by his Head of Upper School, Geoff Whitehead. In those days, good discipline depended on 90% pretence………….lots of shouting and giving the impression that you, the teacher, knew that little bit more than the kids. Occasionally, the cane had to be used but, more often than not, bluff ruled.

For example, on my ground floor corridor, there were three immigrant classes and, opposite, three classes for kids adjudged to be “Educationally Sub-Normal.” At about ten o’clock each morning, I would meet Mick Robertshaw and Stan Beaumont from the ESN Dept outside one of our classrooms where we would spend ten or fifteen minutes catching up on local gossip.

The classroom doors were open; you could hear a pin drop. But at the end of a conversational chunk, we would each stick our head into our classroom and break the silence with:

“Eh, I thought I heard a boy whispering” or the like. Bluff ruled.

 

One of the things I enjoyed about BatleyHigh School was the CAC (Country Activities Centre), a converted cricket pavilion in the middle of a field a few miles out of Giggleswick, in the Yorkshire Dales. There was nothing there except beautiful hills and scars. I would take part of my new first year form up there for a couple of nights every October and watch the kids react to each other and to different situations. Because we had to have two teachers on each trip I would share the Centre with Steve Bamber and kids from his class.

The whole experience was a great leveller for these kids, many of whom came from deprived backgrounds and many of whom had never ventured far from Batley/Dewsbury. The Asian lads had certainly seen nothing like this sort of countryside.

Neither Steve nor I was into pot-holing so we kept to the paths and lanes.

During the first part of each morning at the hut, we would  all complete our various duties………making our beds, emptying the bins, cleaning the kitchen, doing the shopping for the evening meal, making the sandwiches for the packed lunches. We soon sorted out the men from the boys. It was often quite surprising and rewarding to see the boy who had been ridiculed by the others in the first few weeks of term at Batley hold his own and indeed play a pivotal part in “hut life”. His self-esteem would soar and, of course, it carried over into everyday life at Batley, when we returned to school.

 

We sold our flat in Leeds and bought a bungalow in Ossett, five miles from Batley, for £2700. Ossett was a small town, a satellite of Leeds, and had nothing particular on offer except a delightful little working men’s club which happened to be within walking distance of the bungalow. This became my evening watering-hole and, indeed, after a few weeks, Sheila and I had started performing there on a fairly regular basis.

 

In the Autumn of 1970 we applied to appear at the Concert Secretaries’ Auditions in Halifax and Huddersfield. Concert Secretaries are members of committee in working men’s clubs. It is their responsibility to organise each week’s entertainment and to book the “artistes”. We took advice from people at Ossett WMC, put a ten minute “treatment” together with Sheila singing, me playing whatever instrument was in the club and then the two of us singing a Peters and Lee type duet. It was simple but good. It worked well and we got something like 30 bookings from each of the auditions. This meant more than one booking a week per venue and, after a year or so, the volume of work eventually escalated out of control.

 

One day I decided to take time off school and go along to Yorkshire Television’s studios on the outskirts of Leeds. YTV turned out a daily local news programme called “Calendar”. I had been told that, if they were under-running at the end of an edition, they would plug the gap with one of many pre-recorded musical items. The producer would simply pick the recording of best-fit and one of the presenters, Austin Mitchell or Richard Whiteley, would introduce it along the lines:

“Now, we’ve had many requests from viewers to see (whoever) just one more time. So, with their version of (whatever) we sign off until tomorrow evening at six”

The object of this visit was simply to get some names for dropping when I rang up later.

The commissionaire at reception was a native of Edinburgh. After a few well-placed references and reminiscences, he became extremely helpful and gave me a comprehensive “who’s who” of all the top people connected with YTV productions. There seemed to be two or three Simons dotted around the Calendar team, so I’d try that.

“I’m trying to track down a Simon who was at school with me (“school” is better than “university” or “college” when talking to commissionaires). He told me a few years ago that he worked here in the Calendar team. I can’t for the life of me remember his second name. It might have been that one, Crozier, (pointing to the list) or that one, Cruickshank. Can I be a real pain and ask you what these three Simons look like?”

Apart from the occasional spotty, leather-bedecked youth and one middle-aged poser in a full-length black coat who slow-marched pensively in front of the commissionaire’s desk then , without saying a word, disappeared into the depths there were no visitors and my friend, the commissionaire, from Edinburgh’s Boroughmuir School warmed to the task. He was fascinated to know that my Mother had attended the same School as him and couldn’t wait to tell me about the three Simons.

“Simon Crozier’s tall with red hair………….about 40, 45. Simon Cruickshank’s a bit younger, maybe 35, 36. He’s away at the moment, in Germany I think, or France, maybe, on some project or other.  Simon Watson’s getting on a bit; he works in sound”.

Perfect.

I went back home to Ossett and rang the Calendar team at Yorkshire Television. Eventually, I got through to the top girl.

“Hi! Don Ricksman here. We met in Harrogate, I think. How ARE you? (No pause) Simon Cruickshank asked me to be in touch when I had another good act you might like to use. I have ‘The Two of Us’, who’ve just landed from Africa and they’re on their way to a big date in Scotland. You’ll have heard of them, I’m sure.

They’re actually based in Yorkshire now…..in Leeds. Can I bring them along tomorrow on their way to Scotland to put down a couple of “enders” for Calendar? They’re doing something for the BBC when they get back.”

Nothing run-of-the-mill. Suggestions of connections, something she should know about and the possibility of missing out.

Job done.

In the end we put down four pieces and were invited back on three or four occasions.

 

I would turn up at BatleyHigh School of a morning and someone would say:

“Saw you on tele last night. Why didn’t you tell us you were on?”

“’Cos we didn’t know” always got a puzzled response.

 

Sheila, who enjoyed buying clothes and was keen to build up her stage wardrobe got herself a job in a medical supplies unit on an industrial estate between Leeds and Dewsbury. She was in the section that produced artificial limbs and, while the job was interesting, it was full-time and meant we had a bit of a rush if we were doing a “mid-weeker” in one of the WMC’s. I know she experienced some racial prejudice at the beginning but she was always perfectly natural and, when the other workers realised she could back that up with a hefty right hook, she soon became one of them.

 

During our year-long struggle to gain full-time membership of Equity we came across a young man called Bill Partington who worked for an agency in Doncaster. We had been booked by the agency to “do” Askern Miner’s Welfare Club and Bill came along to see us perform. We were doing very well on the Yorkshire circuit by now and we “did a bomb” at Askern. Bill, who reminded me somewhat of Robbie Armstrong in Nairobi with his quiet, thoughtful approach, was suitably impressed and asked if he could come to Ossett for a chat.

A couple of days later, he came to our little bungalow and was almost as pleasant as we first thought. I say “almost” because he had that TV weather forecaster’s annoying habit of prefixing some words with “a…” while he/she thinks what they have to say next.

“But, a…tomorrow we will see some a…heavy showers coming in from the a…west”. Rather like the late Eddie Wareing:

“It’s an a…….up-and-unde.e.e.r (looks up notes on player) by this young man who hails from a…Castleford”.

Bill made all sorts of reasonable suggestions one of which was that he should manage us for a commission of 15% (Agents charged 10% and many managers, 20%). In return, he would guarantee us work to the value of at least £5000 per annum but it could be anywhere in the UK.

Bill admitted that he was building his connections with agents in the North-East, a notoriously difficult area to work.

One of the first bookings he got for us was a “net fee” weekend in the North East. This meant we would work in the Sunderland area Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday lunchtime and Sunday night. We would pick up cash at one of the venues and that would be it ……… no commission to pay, nothing owing to us.

After picking up Michael from school and Sheila from work, we drove like hell and arrived at the Malleable Club in Aklam for about seven-thirty. I had half an hour to set up the gear and Sheila to get dressed. We had left Michael to sleep in the van, parked outside the dressing-room door.

We “went down a storm” (ie we were very well-received) and slept in the van that night.

The following morning, we went to show digs in Sunderland which had been recommended to us by Bill. We were working at the Steels Club in Sunderland that night and doing an “all day” (meaning lunchtime and evening) at Mill View the following day, Sunday.

The digs, run by Norman Youll, were in a high, well-kept terrace house on Mowbray Road. We were booked in for evening meal, bed and breakfast, taking us to the Sunday morning when we were to appear at the Mill View.

Evening meal that Saturday was an eye-opener. There were about six “acts” sitting down to a meal of (catering) soup, (catering) roast beef etc. and (catering) apple pie and custard.

Katie somebody or other was intent on impressing everyone that she had been playing tennis last week-end with “Cliff”. They had such a lovely time! Oh, and could she have the mint sauce for the roast beef, please?

“And why not?” thought I.

“I didn’t know Cliff Morgan played a lot of tennis” I observed, feigning innocence.

“Cliff who?”

“Cliff played rugby for …..”

She turned her back on me.

“Cliff advised me to take it very easy about ‘Opp. Knocks’. He told me it was fixed…..well, we knew that anyway………..so I told them to get stuffed.”

“Did you pass the audition?”

“Eh,….yeh. Of course.”

I didn’t tell her that we had been invited to audition for London Weekend’s “Opportunity Knocks” at the Astoria Hotel in Leeds, next October.

 

We enjoyed working the North East. A lot of acts found it difficult because the audiences were fed up with typical working men’s club acts…… powerhouse vocalists and predictable comedians. Our act was different……white on black, with strong, well-rehearsed material. We were before the time of backing-tracks and what you heard was what you saw. I backed Sheila on whatever organ was available (ie what the audience was used to hearing) and, after listening to the first half hour of the resident duo as they opened the show, when we went to discuss “the dots” before the first of our three spots, I would tell the drummer that we normally did or didn’t use a drummer depending on the evidence of their first spot. So, while some acts “died” if the backing was poor, we normally survived.

 

Billy O’Neil, Headmaster at Batley High, ex-rugby-league player and honky-tonk piano player was, thankfully, fairly sympathetic towards me and my occasional absences.

 

On March 3d 1972, my sister spoke to Sheila on the telephone. Mum and Dad had been on holiday, Dad had been taken ill and had died. I remembered him telling me about 10 years earlier that he was experiencing a tightness in his chest and seeing black spots flashing in his eyes. He would not take any advice to go to the doctor and I was told not to tell my mother.

That was then. A lot of water had passed under the bridge and, through my own stubbornness, I had been persona non grata for five or six years.

But now he was dead and Sheila’s common sense prevailed. We had to attend his cremation.

 

We had only just bought a new Volkswagen Caravanette from a dealer in Ossett. To this day I swear he told me that, because it was a low-revving engine, I should use 2-star petrol. I know nothing about anything technical and so, on the morning of Friday March 5^th, having made all the necessary arrangements with Sheila’s work, my school, a minder for Michael, our club commitments and, having filled the van up with 2-star the previous evening, we set off at around 7 a.m..

 

We were making excellent time up the A1 (M) when, about twelve miles north of Scotch Corner, we ground to a halt. I trudged over half a mile to one of those roadside telephones, contacted the police who, in turn, informed the RAC then made my way back to the van where Sheila was trying to keep warm.

“You’ve not been using low grade fuel have you?” asked the RAC mechanic who eventually turned up then towed us into Darlington.

“Does that mean 2-star?” I asked pathetically.

“Mmm” was his non-committal response.  “What a berk!” he MUST have thought.

 

With the plea that I just had to get to my father’s funeral  I managed to persuade the garage owner to rent me an old Morris 1100, provided I had it back on the Monday.

“I’ll get it back on Sunday evening” I said “We both have to be back at work on Monday. Will the van be ready by then?”

“By Sunday? Are you bloody joking, or what? That engine’s going to take the best part of two weeks to rebuild. In fact, it might even need a new engine.”

 

God! People in Edinburgh would think I was making excuses for not turning up and how were we going to get back from Darlington to Ossett on Sunday night?

We took it very easy from Darlington to Edinburgh and arrived at Warriston Crematorium at almost exactly five to two. The cremation was at two o’clock.

 

My father and I had never felt really close. We had walked together, briefly, in my early teens and attended football matches at Tynecastle. He had confided in me only when he had experienced his chest pains. When I was fourteen or fifteen I got quite upset when he gave me ten shillings for doing well in the school exams.

“I did it for you and Mum” I pleaded. “Not for your money.” Then, not wanting to betray my feelings, I had retired to my bedroom and cried a bit.

But, in those days, perhaps only in Scotland, fathers certainly didn’t cuddle or get close. I think he was proud of Kathleen and me; he and Mum had provided and Kathleen and I had achieved what we could.

 

Sheila was one of the few females in the chapel. In Scotland the ladies did not attend funerals. They would mourn together at home then get on with preparing the buffet and drinks for the forthcoming wake.

 

After the committal, Sheila and I left the chapel early without lingering to meet friends or family. We headed straight to my Mother’s house in Pilton where the ladies were hard at work. My Mother had never met Sheila. When we knocked at the door of 54 Pilton Park, Mother answered, as if she knew it was us. She immediately came over the threshold and embraced Sheila on the outside pathway, then took her by the hand and led her, in front of me, into the house.

Game, set and match!

 

Mother has always been a thespian. She could display groundless feeling on stage and conceal real hurt at home. Her life’s partner was being cremated but she welcomed Sheila as a long lost daughter.

It was as if nothing had happened or been said over the last ten years.

 

My Mother, Sheila, my sister Kathleen and her husband Harry all got on very well. Sheila and I stayed until Sunday. First thing that Saturday morning I rang our new manager, Bill Partington who, thankfully, agreed to pick us up in Darlington the following evening. Then we spent the rest of the day en famille. Mother, who had been ready for Father’s demise, was determined to put a brave face on things and make a new start. Her attitude, at just 62 years, was exemplary.

Apart from the death of my Father, things were looking up………with no thanks to myself. I had been a spoilt, pompous, ignorant git, but, at a very difficult time for her, my Mother and Sheila sorted out ten years of my stubbornness in ten minutes on March 5^th, 1972.

 

 

Bill picked us up in his clapped-out Austin A40, as arranged, at the garage in Darlington. During the trip back to Ossett, he confirmed our auditions for “Opp Knocks” in October, later that year, and told us he had clinched a week for us at “The Senate” in Peterlee with Vince Hill some time in April the following year.

 

Life went on as “normal” with Michael attending school at Park Road in Batley, Sheila continuing her work in Leeds, me at BatleyHigh School and “The Two of Us” appearing in three or four clubs each week in West Yorkshire.

 

It was around this time that HMI Inland Revenue was realising that a lot of money was being paid out to entertainers by the charitable, non-taxable working men’s clubs As a result and, following advice to club secretaries from the Inland Revenue, we all had to sign official receipts when we were paid at the end of an appearance. Idiots like me were not making provision for tax as self-employed entertainers..

 

Another, quite interesting social development, was the racial prejudice phenomenon. It was absolutely fine for Sheila to be an entertainer and, as such, to be in what was essentially an all-white club.

Over the years, we had become friendly with a couple, Jeff and Lynn Parker (drums and keyboards respectively) who played in many of the local clubs where we often appeared.

Sheila and I took part in what was now becoming, for us, a rare club audition at a venue somewhere in north Leeds, just down the road from where Jeff and Lynn were currently playing. The half hour audition version of our act involved me taking a trombone and vocal spot for five or six minutes while Sheila changed out of her expensive frock and got into her “native” outfit to perform the last item, the Xosa “click song.”

My trombone solo, “Hello Dolly” involved a key change from F to G. On this particular evening, the club organist failed to read the music and the key change didn’t happen. So, there I was, front of stage, playing “Hello Dolly” in G while this berk continued in F. In panic, I turned round to the organist who had his head in a pint of beer.

Auditions were a godsend to WMC’s. It meant a lot of free entertainment usually in the middle of the week when the club “concert room” would normally be empty. Some backing groups saw auditions as a very nice extra night’s earnings playing for less than average acts who needed the work.

We didn’t need the work, but the date was long-standing and we liked to keep a promise. However, while this wanker continued to block chords in F and I continued to look a prat, playing in G, I thought of all the work we might lose.

Taking the microphone in my hand and the bull by its horns I went over to the organist and, at the top of my substantial voice, invited him to “BUGGER OFF”

The net result was we left the club without a booking but, within a couple of days, the Concert Secretary from the nearby Labour Club had rung us and booked a “noon and night” a few Sundays hence on the grounds that “it was time someone put that bastard’s nose out.”

It happened that Jeff and Lynn were resident at that Labour Club so, one Thursday night, which was “Bingo and Dance Night”, we decided to pay them a visit.

 

“I’m sorry” the old specimen at the door said. “This is a private members’ club. You can’t come in”. It had taken him a split second to clock Sheila and suppose she was probably from a local, predominantly coloured neighbourhood.

“We are due to appear here a week on Sunday”.

“Well, you’ve appeared now and you can bugger off.”

He then went on, with great difficulty, to convert twenty pence into “real” money (four shillings) for some punter who wanted bingo tickets.

We left the place for the first and last time.

 

 

In  May 1972 we had our week at the Senate in Peterlee with Vince Hill. We had to take the Monday off work and school because, at 2 o’clock that afternoon was “band call”. This is when the resident musicians rehearse the music for your “spot” and the stage manager can sort out your lighting and sound requirements. It took us two hours to drive from Leeds to Peterlee.

We had never heard of Vince Hill (having not been in the UK during the sixties) and so were surprised to see “House Full” signs on the door when we arrived. The sign was definitely not caused by news of our appearance and the other “support act” was a local comedienne. who was treated like us by the Club staff.

The club was newly-built and not very big; it was round, with painted sketches of Roman dignitaries, presumably to give the impression of a Roman senate. The dressing rooms were not completed and there was no backing band; incidental music was supplied by the resident DJ.

We were quite happy with this because everyone, including the audience, would be used to “self-support” acts and we, by definition, would rely on nobody.

Having come the farthest, we had arrived first. We suggested to the Stage Manager that we should open the show and the comedienne follow us before “Vince”.

The Stage Manager thought this was the best idea……music, comedy, music…… and we were delighted because it meant we could be on stage at 8.30, on the road home by 9.30 and in bed by midnight, which was about our normal time anyway.

Vince Hill was a lovely, simple person. His piano player, whose name I forget, was even more laid-back than Vince and we all got on very well. Fortunately, because we had to share the one and only, quite large, dressing-room. Vince, his pianist, myself, the MC and the DJ used a third of the space and the girls (Sheila, the comedienne and a couple of dancers) had the rest, separated from us by a flimsy white bed-sheet acting as a screen.

Every evening when Sheila and I arrived around eight o’clock, Vince would already be doing his make-up. He and the piano player were staying in the Lodge on the other side of the car park behind the Club so they were never in a rush. On the other hand, Sheila and I had to make sure Michael was comfortable and secure in the van before we rushed back-stage to get ready for the 8.30 kick-off.

Every evening there was a bottle of whisky, supplied by Vince, on the dressing-room table with the unfailing invitation from him to “help yourselves, everyone.”

I think it was the Wednesday evening when I asked Vince

“You don’t provide a bottle of whisky at every venue, do you?”

“No, no. My wife and I have been trying to start a family now for several years and she gave birth to a healthy boy, Atholl, last Saturday. We’re still celebrating, really. You and Sheila missed out on a little knees-up last night. Someone said you work during the day”.

“We’re not on quite the same money as you, Vince”.

“Don’t give us that. I’ve been there. I’ve worked for less than you’re on now. Anyway, you’ll not be working this Saturday morning will you?”

“No.”

“Then please stay for the night on Friday. After the show, we’ll have a meal and some drinks. I’ll pay for a room for the two of you at the Lodge where I’m staying. We’ve really enjoyed your show and your company. Please say ‘Yes’”.

We turned down the very kind offer of a room. Sheila and I liked the comfort of our own bed and I still enjoyed the loneliness of driving.

 

When we left the Club late that Friday night I knew I shouldn’t be driving. I was far too drunk.

Michael had been asleep six hours or so and Sheila was asleep within ten minutes of setting off. The A1(M) was all but desolate as I tried to focus on the dipped headlights of a vehicle heading north from Scotch Corner.

I knew there was something wrong. The oncoming driver was round a bend to our left on the motorway but the angles and distances didn’t make sense.

Within a minute or so, the oncoming car whizzed past us heading north but ON THE SAME SIDE of the motorway as us.

My alcohol-induced insouciance gave way to alcohol-induced panic. I pulled on to the hard shoulder. Having moved into the front passenger seat and left the keys in the ignition I began five hours of totally carefree slumber. If the police approached me, I would say that my drunken driver had gone for a pee and hadn’t returned, leaving us in this invidious position.

In the event, we all had an uninterrupted four hours sleep with the draught of the passing lorries waking us at about 7.30 on Saturday morning.

 

 

The final show, on Saturday evening was superb but we still left the Senate at about ten o’clock.

Compared to the previous evening, I was extremely less drunk. Nonetheless, some two hours later and approaching the roundabout at the top of Queen’s Drive on the way into Ossett, I narrowly missed a policeman who had been standing in the middle of the road trying to stop the occasional oncoming vehicle, presumably for a road check of some kind. I decided to continue down the long, straight Queens Drive, in the very unlikely hope that he hadn’t noticed me or perhaps had more important things to do than jump into his car and follow me. But, jump into his car and follow me, he did.

When we got within two or three hundred yards of our bungalow, he set off his siren and flashers presumably so that the whole bloody neighbourhood would be woken up to see me arrested. I went into our drive and quickly got out of the van as he drove up behind me.

“I’m so sorry” I said “I got into our drive as quickly as possible to make way for you.” A measured pause then, incredulously,

“You weren’t following me, officer, were you?” Pause, then, as he was about to say something,

“Would you like some tea and a sandwich? You look quite exhausted. Come in.”

Not game set and match; maybe 30-all. But, within half an hour and a biscuit or two, we were home and dry……..well, almost dry.

 

Between March and October of that year (1972) we got some fairly good bookings. We had some posters made (always a sign of a good, professional act!!) and sent one to each venue a week or so before we were due to appear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          By popular demand, next Saturday night,

                          we proudly present

 

                            “The Two of Us”

 

(photo)

 

 

     (Just returned from a season with Vince Hill)

 

Unashamed poppycock, but the punters fell for what seemed an endorsement by Vince, in combination with the word “season”.

 

One such gig was in Driffield, East Yorkshire, where, again, we were doing the Friday, Saturday, Sunday overlap between full weeks by two “stars”. I suppose it was helpful to the management because acts like ours were “self-support” and needed minimum band-calls and those of the week’s audience who had enjoyed the “star” might return later in the week in the knowledge that the support acts would be different. The current week’s star was a certain Billy J Kramer.

We had beautiful show digs on a farm outside Driffield where we arrived at about six-thirty on the Friday evening. A shower, a sandwich and a cup of tea later and we were back-stage at the “Theatre Bar”, Hutton Cranswick. There was no time even for a “run-through”. I was allowed to fiddle about with the resident keyboards for ten minutes or so but there were two or three other people trying out their act at the same time. At eight fifteen or so, the doors opened to the public and we had to clear the stage.

A tall, young, polite man came into the cramped dressing-room we were sharing with countless other people and bade us a good evening.

He began to spend a lot of time brushing his hair. Possibly because I had very little of my own home-grown stuff, I normally took an instant dislike to such men.

“Are you in the band?” I asked.

“Actually, I’m Billy J” he replied most pleasantly. I had no idea what to say or do. After all it was his Roller outside, not mine.

But I resolved there and then that when I was in doubt, I’d keep my mouth shut. Of course, it didn’t always work.

The only memorable part of that weekend was an incident involving a now quite famous hypnotist who was one of the support acts. All he wanted from the band was a “play-on” and “play-off” (aka “top and tail”) but, and this was always guaranteed to piss off the resident musicians, he wanted the band to remain on stage as his time of finishing would depend on how well he was “going down”. Drinking was not allowed on stage and so the band members were not happy bunnies.

The bass player, a rotund forty year old, who loved his booze and smoked like the proverbial chimney, was probably the most pissed-off. He was also the band leader, one of whose duties was to “count everything in.”

“Two, one, and” whereupon the band would strike up with “Cabaret” or whatever the “play-on” was.

At the end of his act on this first night, the hypnotist brought all his victims back from their lewd, demeaning activities by clapping his hands in the pre-arranged fashion and, fully expecting to hear the bass player’s count-in, made his way up to the front of the stage for his “false tabs”.

Nothing.

Not hearing the usual “Cabaret”, the audience was not sure what was happening and the hypnotist’s act ended like a wet fart with the other band members clapping around the bass player in a mock attempt to get him out of the trance into which he had supposedly been induced while on stage, watching the act.

On Saturday and Sunday, at least while we were still there, the band played the hypnotist “on”, left the stage for a good half hour at the bar then, after a sensible signal, went back on stage to “play him off”.

“Toujours le moyen”.

 

At BatleyHigh School, things were getting very busy. The flow of immigrants from East Africa and relatives from India and/or Pakistan was swelling. We now had three reception classes which were graded from Level One (new arrivals with very little English) to Level Three (those who, we felt, were getting near to coping with a normal GCE diet, delivered in the mainstream school). Having the Asian boys integrate as soon as possible was the stated aim of my Department although the Head (Billy O’Neil), the Deputy Head (Fred Parkin) and the two Heads of School (Geoff Whitehead and Mick Dews) all made it quite clear they would rather the Asian boys stayed in my Department. In fact, these were early days in the immigration stakes and these Muslim boys had not yet learned to stand up for themselves. They were no trouble at all and I guessed the management of the School was uncomfortable because their strong-arm methods would have no place in dealing with the Asians. If a local thug had misbehaved he was confronted by Billy, wielding his extra-length cane and Geoff Whitehead plus AN Other who would unceremoniously upend the lad, face-down, on the Head’s desk for his six lashes. I was third man on one of those occasions and distinctly remember feeling very uncomfortable with the spectacle and, believe it or not, with the ensuing language.

The immigrants and natives tended to ignore each other in what can only be described as a healthy apartheid.

 

In the light of the Government’s wish that all secondary schools should offer a modern foreign language and in observance of my French/Spanish degree, Billy asked me to get “French or something” off the ground. A young teacher called Brook Carbutt was already teaching some French in the School so, together, we put in place a facility for GCE examination courses in English as a Foreign Language, Urdu, Gujurati, French and Spanish. Of course the Asian boys spoke Urdu or Gujurati at home but we were instrumental in gaining the services of a local English-speaking Muslim cleric who could teach the necessary reading and writing skills if the three in-house Asian teachers couldn’t cope or needed help.

Anything that was not examined at GCE at that time, we examined and assessed ourselves. For example, we felt that the young Asian lads would have such an advantage if their literacy in Urdu or Gujurati could be accredited. So we set up teaching structures which allowed us to assess internally the boys’ progress towards GCE in those languages.

From a different angle, we took the immigrant pupils to the School’s country activities centre near Settle and on visits to Yorkshire seaside resorts so they could see that there was more to Britain than textile conurbations.

 

During the summer of 1972, Sheila and I decided to have a break from clubs and take Michael to Normandy, where I could introduce them to my friends in Cérences and Sheila could enjoy some seafood.

I hadn’t seen Rémy and his wife Lulu (Lucienne) for some twelve years or so.

 

We travelled to Southampton in the trusty VW and made what was, for me, a nostalgic crossing, in this case to Cherbourg. As a schoolboy I had actually done the Southampton to St Malo crossing most years but the type of boat and the approximate time on board were about the same. In those days, as a schoolboy, I had a tight budget. I could never have justified taking a cab from the docks to the station and, anyway, actually enjoyed the “risk” of walking through the old town of St.Malo to catch the Paris train. I would change at Dol before arriving, almost in anti-climax, at the safe haven that Cérences had become.

 

Rémy’s father had died and Rémy and Lulu had divorced since we had last seen each other. So there was much less of the family atmosphere I had enjoyed as a youngster and, while Rémy tended to make himself scarce in the kitchen, I did enjoy seeing and introducing to Sheila some of my old schoolboy friends. Most of them were now married and in the throws of rearing their own families.

 

Cérences was a small market town at the convergence of several minor inland roads about 12 kilometres east of Granville on the CotentinPeninsula. Tuesdays and Thursdays were market days but, apart from this, nothing much ever happened in Cérences. The nearest secondary school was about seven kilometres away in Percy, on the Villedieu road so there we went to research the possibility of establishing a school exchange with Batley. The two communities couldn’t be more different : Batley with its run-down mills and housing: Percy, in the centre of a thriving rural community.

The French kids and staff were on summer holiday when we visited the School which consisted of ten classrooms, an office and a staffroom built around a large yard behind the Mairie (town hall). The “fonctionnaire” in the Mairie directed us to the flat upstairs where the Head Teacher and his wife occupied the only asset the School seemed to have, a luxurious four-bedroomed furnished flat.

This and many local households were to become, over the years, the venues for some of the most gorgeous meals I have experienced. I had eaten at the Stadshotellet in Sigtuna, at Baron de Geer’s ancestral home, at the Björling household, at the Opera in Stockholm and at Freddie’s Chippie in Edinburgh, but these meals were, without exception, out of this world. They knew their meat and their fruits de mer. Over a period of six or eight years, we shared annual exchanges, with each evening forming a new gastronomical experience. When the French kids and staff came to Batley, there was no way we could match or even return their hospitality.

My main connection in Percy became the English teacher, Evelyn Brochard. Her husband, Edmond, was Deputy Head then Head at the village junior school. They had a beautiful, completely detached house, “La Cannière”, just outside Percy and their two teenage daughters, Corinne and Emanuelle, completed the perfect family.

Although in charge of English at Percy CEG (college d’enseignement général), Evelyne’s English, indeed her whole persona, was subdued. She lived, unassumingly, in the shadow of her husband, a short, very bearded 35 year-old with compensating large house, large dog, large car and large Englishman (me) all in tow.

Edmond spoke little English but he enjoyed his jeux de mots in French and our banter was amusing to both of us. Once, on the return part of the exchange, when the French kids were staying in England, he noticed a chemist’s shop somewhere with the proprietor’s name “Samuel Mort” above the door.

“Mr Dess, (death) pharmacist” made his day, in fact, several days.

But, in the village of Percy I often heard of him referred to as “le mouton noir”, which said it all. He was an aggressive little shit who eventually made my life quite difficult and, in fact destroyed the whole exchange. I liked, and still like to extend hands. The exchanges continued when I moved schools but, in the end, his involvement took its toll and, by 1980, the whole wonderful scheme had ground to a halt, thanks to him.

For many years after this we came across French adults in Batley and elsewhere who had participated in the exchanges as children and who were still exchanging with their English families and their children. That little bearded twat ended it all.

I’ll tell you why, later.

 

 

Our audition for “Opportunity Knocks” took place in the Astoria Hotel, Leeds on a Wednesday in early October 1972. The appointment card was a typed postcard giving the venue and the time of the audition (in our case 8.30 a.m.). There was a sentence typed with worn-out red ribbon which warned acts that they would have NO MORE THAN 3 MINUTES in which to audition. We would then be sent a “pass certificate” if we made the grade but this did not necessarily mean we were guaranteed a spot on the television programme.

When we arrived at about 8 a.m., the place was already buzzing with groups setting up their equipment at one end of the hall and solos and duos getting themselves ready at the other end where there was a semi-circle of tables and chairs facing the “stage” for the producers and their assistants to make their decisions. A pianist was “talking through the dots” with the first half dozen acts. We were to be second and, as usual, I would provide the “backing”. Being totally “self-supporting” was an enormous source of strength to both of us. Together, we would walk away from or fight anything that grieved either of us.

The first act, a bloke in his thirties, got up to sing. Sheila simply could not stop laughing at the poor bugger’s visibly trembling knees. Then, two or three bars into “My Way” he stepped forward and disengaged the microphone from its stand. Like most club acts he had to give at least one hand something to do.

“What are you doing, darling?” shouted a small, ageing, rotund dog’s-body dressed in green cords and white, polo-necked T-shirt. He marched up to the singer who, by now was clearly terrified.

“We’re recording this lot, darling. Anyway, we don’t use hand-held mikes in Opp Knocks. Thank you, darling. Next please! ‘We Two’, I think they’re called.”

“’The Two of Us’, darling”, I shouted as we made our way on stage.  “Oh, by the way, could I have a boom mike at the piano please, darling?”

“Nice one” whispered the sound man who had anticipated my request and was already setting up the mike stand by the piano. “Bloody ponce!”

 

We were allowed the full three minutes into which we had packed a cross-section of our show: a”power-house number” (Shirley Bassey), a duet (Peters and Lee), a sprinkling of comedy and the “Click Song”.

At the end, we casually went stage left to collect our bits and pieces and enjoy a wipe-down. As the next act was starting up an assistant from the “darling tables” came over to us and explained

“I’m allowed to tell you, you’ve passed the audition. Royston has asked me to explain to you that, of course, we are trying to uncover new talent. But, from the viewers’ point of view, we have to produce a variety show. You can go in the queue with all the other Shirley Basseys and Peters and Lees but, if you agree to do that Click Song, we can guarantee you a place in the next series. I’ve got to tell you though, you’ll not win. Weigh up the advantages in publicity terms of being in the next series and not winning against standing a goodish chance against another Shirley Bassey in two or three years time.”

She gave us her card and told us to go away and think about it.

“Let us know by five o’clock this evening” she said as we started to make our way to the exit through hundreds of other hopefuls. It was about 9.30 a.m.

A bottle of brandy, a bottle of whisky and a long afternoon with Pete and Anne Senior (steward and stewardess at Ossett Working Men’s Club) and we were on the ‘phone to the PA at the Astoria. We would accept a place in the forthcoming series.

 

We had a wonderful time at Teddington Lock, home of Thames Television, in February 1973. We turned up in our recently-acquired, second-hand Rover 2200 at the provided hotel in time for dinner on the Friday evening. Determined to enjoy ourselves we parked the car and took taxis everywhere. There was a “band call” with Eric Sharples and the orchestra on Saturday morning and then we recorded the show that afternoon in front of a live audience.

All the band seemed to be ancient; I recall that at least three of the brass section were, like me, wearing a hairpiece. Sharples, who would be in his fifties, treated his musicians like misbehaving schoolchildren. At our “run-through” in the morning, he had told the band to “cut from figure D straight to F”. The trumpet section had not been listening and went straight through at D. Sharples spent a full five minutes dressing down these three sixty year olds in full frontal. It was so embarrassing!

“Would I be right in thinking you call yourselves ‘professional’?” is how he started. The attack went on and on. The old guys took it all in utter humility then did a perfect, run-through. After all, Sharples was writing the cheques and, again quite literally, it was his Roller in the car-park.

There has always been plenty good musicians in London. The number of venues was in the decline even then and, when someone like Sharples said “Jump!” you tended to ask “How high?”

In the afternoon, we did the “live” show. We, the acts, were in a studio on the ground floor with the audience and Sharples and the orchestra were somewhere on the third floor. By using two cameras (I think), they had me sitting in the middle of a jungle to introduce then accompany Sheila in the Click Song.

We enjoyed it so much that we decided to eat out in London then stay another night in the Hotel before returning to Yorkshire on the Monday. We would hopefully get home in time to see the programme on TV that night.

Unfortunately, our old Rover, having hibernated for a couple of freezing February nights, had decided to give up the ghost on the Monday morning. After breakfast, it was snowing quite heavily and I had no alternative but to call out the AA. The very nice mechanic got us started with no problem but he warned us that the alternator was shot and the battery was almost dead. We would have to keep going and pray for good light.

In the event, it could not have been worse. We gave it plenty welly up the M1 but it was so dark by two o’clock that we needed side-lights at least. The battery held its charge for three or four miles at a time; then I had to switch the lights off while it took a small charge on board.

Three-thirty, lights off, and the inevitable happened; we were stopped by the police. I spun all sorts of yarns about having to get home because my father was having an asthma attack etc etc but the one that worked was the tale about us having to get home to see ourselves on TV’s Opportunity Knocks. As a result, we had a fully-lighted police escort from Charnock Richards to Ossett, where we docked in time for a large whisky before watching the show. After the six acts had performed, there would be a sort of “curtain call” at the end of the show when each act was briefly re-introduced and subjected to “The Clapometer”. This was a huge contrivance that filled your TV screen and, with an arrow like on a basic weighing machine it purported to measure the audience applause. Everyone supposed there was a little man behind the machine pushing the arrow left and right. Whatever the trick, the whole thing was an insult to anyone of average technological intelligence in the early seventies.

“But, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the important voting is down to you at home” Hughie Green would gush. “Just send your vote on a postcard etc., etc.”

I must have bought every bleeding postcard in our area of Yorkshire. I remember spending more than £20 on stamps, one for each card, which I then gave out to every pupil at Batley High School with the promise that they would appear with us in the “Yorkshire Post” if we won.

Of course, we had been told we wouldn’t win but we wanted to put up a good show.

We didn’t even make third. The call came on Thursday evening.

“Hard luck, darlings. You came a very close fourth” said the little schmuck who, of course, would say exactly that to the acts who came fourth fifth and sixth.

Although we knew we would not win, Sheila was very disappointed and cried a lot.

She was also fed up with the dormer bungalow we had. While I could do nothing about the “Opp Knocks” outcome I could do something about the house so I vowed to shop around for a decent mortgage and, by using a salary slip that combined two months’ salary at the end of the Summer term, I managed to get finance for a detached, four-bedroomed villa on a new estate just outside Wakefield. The price? An exorbitant £10,000.

 

Building of the house was about to start.

As a  result of our recent TV appearance, our local demand rocketed and we got a long weekend booking with Les Dawson, somewhere in South Wales. Sheila began to feel better.

Our lawyer in Leeds drew up a contract with the builder’s agent which included what he called a “Rise and Fall” clause. It meant that, in our case, the price could not fall or rise more than £200. In the event, of course, it rose by £200 and, towards the end of March 1973, we moved into our £10200 villa with four bedrooms, a study, separate dining room and sitting room, a huge back garden and an extended single garage to include a workshop for me. Neighbours, whose lawyers had not had the foresight to include a “Rise and Fall” clause had paid up to £14,000 for an equivalent house.

Sheila and I enjoyed pottering around in the virgin property. We settled Michael into a middle school at Kettlethorpe, on my way from our new house to Batley and life was good.

We started enquiring into the possibility of adopting a little girl since Sheila was no longer child-bearing after her hysterechtomy in Nairobi. Somehow, we ended up in the books of the adoption section at Sheffield Social Services. They sent a female social worker to interview Sheila and myself and, presumably to see what provision we could make for a child. I found her horrendous in her self-righteousness. It turned out she had similar feelings about me.

“And what colour of child would you like to adopt?” she would ask, following the question with long, silent eye-balling as she awaited a response.

Sheila had no problem at all with her. Perhaps the social worker felt more at self-propagating ease with Sheila. I was certainly uncomfortable with her totally unnecessary, vacant staring.

I would escape from these dreaded interviews on the pretext of having some prep to do for the next day’s teaching. (To this day, after 40 years teaching, I have never once spent a previous evening preparing a lesson).

We had five or six of these interviews and, each time, I bottled-out. I could not stand her searching eyes that stared at me for ages after each question.

“Would you prefer a boy or a girl?”

Long stare.

“Do you mean for breakfast or lunch?”

I just COULD NOT cope and so wrote to the authorities in Sheffield to ask them for a different, more user-friendly interviewer.

As it happened, our letters crossed. She wrote to me telling me that, in her opinion, I was not a suitable adoptive father, and I received the Authority’s reply to my letter with the news that they were sending us a new interviewer, a Miss Martina Elmslie.

 

Martina came on a Monday evening at about 7 o’clock. I had had a longish day at school and, anyway, I wanted to put her to the test. If it was going to be another staring match, she and the rest of her Department could go forth.

“I’ve had a long day” I announced. “I’m going for a pint. Would you like to join me?”

“Thank God for that” she said. “I’d murder for a pint.”

Sheila, who had already passed all the tests, decided to stay behind and make some sandwiches.

When we got back to the house, we sat round the sandwiches and, between the three of us, sorted out the whole job.

But, it was still a year or so before we completed our family.

 

We enjoyed our long weekend in South Wales with Les Dawson  Ogmore-by-Sea rings a bell, but, to be totally honest, I can’t remember. What I do remember is that the locals were so welcoming; we spent all our free time eating and drinking on nearby farms. To this day, I can’t even remember where we slept.

Dawson, who had only recently won “Opp. Knocks” was extremely pleasant. He would end his spot, go off and change and then re-emerge to socialise with the locals in the grubbiest of sweaters and trousers. He had no transport and, at the end of the gig, hitched a lift back to Manchester.

These long weekends tended to be organised around half terms and school holidays so Sheila and I missed very little of our “day jobs”.

 

Back in Wakefield, we were still on a high after our “Opp. Knocks” appearance. The house and garden were coming on well too.

 

We became regular customers at “Heppy’s” in the centre of Wakefield.

Heppy, aka Frank Hepworth had made his money with a small café right next to the city’s postal sorting office where he and his business partner kept the constant flow of  “posties” well-nourished with bacon “butties” and tea. The business sloped off in the afternoons so Heppy decided to buy a disused workshop in town for conversion to a fish and chip “restaurant”. This part of the building lead on to the street which contained the open market and the bus station. Behind the chippy was the main, large workshop which Heppy converted into a perfectly-sized night club. There was a bar at either end, a small stage and a “dressing-room” directly off-stage the wall of which comprised a dark sheet suspended from the low ceiling.

The club seating was at long, canteen-type tables to accommodate the coach loads of customers who used to visit the Club by the time we got to know Heppy.

His resident band, the Kalahari Bushmen would start the evening at about nine o’clock. Heppy would do an hour’s spot with the band

and, quite often, Sheila and I would do the last hour up until two a.m..

Heppy’s spot was vulgarity itself. He was about 45 years old at the time, not very tall and of slight build. After a busy day and a few pints of lager, he would pick a fight with anyone, and often did.

Coach-loads of “punters” would turn up to be insulted by Heppy. Some people are obnoxious, swear incessantly and, by so doing, offend all-comers. Others, who do the same but with timing and “feel” actually get laughs and, in Heppy’s case, have coach loads of people paying good money to hear him do it.

His most popular rendition was “Angeline” where he delighted his audience by singing about the squire who had his way with poor little Angeline and somebody else who, arriving on the scene, slipped in the produce of “the squire’s last squirt”.

I could never hear the whole text because of the laughter which accompanied Frank’s antics. At the end of it all, the audience on the floor with laughter, Frank would say

“Look, if you don’t like it, sod off.” As they left at the end of the night, they would re-book the table for a fortnight or three weeks hence. Heppy’s was extremely successful.

Frank had made his money giving people what they wanted………bacon butties, fish and chips and verbal filth. Occasionally he took the verbals a bit too far especially after 1 a.m. and it was not unknown for him to be picked up in a Wakefield gutter, well-bruised and well-pissed.

Frank’s only mistake, as far as I could see, was his decision to employ Sheila and me. He was so anxious to “improve” his Club, his restaurant and himself. He thought a bit of class would do all that.

Most real people know the saying: “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. Frank, with his wealth of experience should have stayed with what he knew. The truth is, Sheila and I died on our arse when we did the 1-2 a.m. spot at Heppy’s.  Quite simply, the punters did not come to Heppy’s for our sort of material. After a couple of months we gave it up. But we remained regulars at the Club and friends of Frank for a very long time.

 

At BatleyHigh School, things were going well. The immigrant population in Batley and Dewsbury was increasing as more and more people in remote Indian villages followed their relatives to the West Yorkshire conurbation. Whole streets in those villages were becoming deserted as the occupants used their ‘D’ passports to gain access to the land of milk and honey and join their friends. I didn’t have a problem with this; it was enhancing my role in Batley and was, quite simply, Raj in reverse. What’s good for the goose, and all that.

I found three key things in the teaching of my Asian pupils: firstly, they tended to love mathematics; secondly, they had already learned two or three languages; thirdly, the Asian teachers in my Department did not like each other. One was a Sikh, one was from Pakistan and the other was Gujurati. I couldn’t do anything about the teachers’ origins, except tread the diplomatic tight-rope. The Asian kids had nothing like the problems of Batley kids in learning a foreign language; but the Maths was an absolute godsend. For example, they loved discussing relative adjectives as long as we were talking about shapes or algebraic functions. Is this rectangle BIGGER in area than that circle. With strategic positioning of self in front of the blackboard, you could easily cover the demonstrative adjectives and pronouns. The point is, they had been taught and had enjoyed the mathematical concepts in their schools back home. I tried to drag this enjoyment across to English-learning.and it seemed to work in most cases.

 

One cold Thursday evening, towards the end of April 1973, I decided to venture into the “Wakefield Theatre Club” which was on the outskirts of our City, next to Wakefield Trinity Rugby Club. It was a very nice venue with four-seater tables set in gradually ascending amphitheatre layout allowing perfect vision for all. Sheila and I had been there on a couple of occasions and I thought it was about time they knew of us. After all, we had appeared on “Opportunity Knocks”

And we only lived round the corner.

The MC, who seemed to be in place/in charge, was called… (wait for it)….GLEN DALE.

He came off-stage having done a couple of numbers and three or four floral dedications to some local birds who were celebrating their birthdays or whatever.

I caught him as he came out of the FOH stage-door.

“What a wonderful spot, Glen!” as I cornered him. “Have you got a signed photograph I could send to my mother in Edinburgh? She was a professional singer and thinks you………..”

He was scanning the horizon; I was going to lose him.

“You must have seen Sheila and me on television recently” as I passed him a glossy ‘ten-by-eight’. “We’ve just moved into the area” I lied. “We’re off the road for a couple of months’ rest. If you need half an hour, give us a shout. Our private number’s there, on the back.”

 

The following Thursday there was a ‘phone call from London Promotions. Could we do next Monday to Saturday at Wakefield Theatre Club with Max Bygraves?

 

Band-call was, as normal, on the Monday, in this case Monday 1^st May.,……… “May Day”.(very appropriate, as it happened) The resident band was run by a short-ass called Willie Hirst who played the only sax in the ten-piece set-up, The melodic lines were held by three trumpets, two trombones and short-ass. I spent the whole weekend writing arrangements of our spot for this strange outfit. Because of the rush to complete by the Monday morning, I made lots of mistakes, not least of which was “overwriting”. I am not and certainly was not anything like a professional arranger; my experience was limited to four or five part vocal harmony.

 

However, at the band call that Monday morning, things went quite well. I had explained the situation to the band who were very understanding and we were all happy to make suggestions regarding alternatives, what should be left out or possibly put in. Our material was not difficult so the extra time taken on the alterations was offset by the easiness of the arrangements.

Then Bygraves and his pianist/MD turned up. When Hirst noticed them, he stopped playing and, putting his saxophone into its stand, announced

“! can’t play this front-line stuff.”

“Ron Sharples at Thames Television coped” I immediately replied, “but he’s a London muso with a band five times the size of this.”

“Right” said Short-ass, and walked off-stage, followed by one of the trumpets. The rest of the band sat quite still, a couple of them clearly grinning and enjoying the incident.

Once Hirst and his licker had cleared off, the lead trumpet and guitarist came over to Sheila and me. Bygraves was sitting at a table in front of the stage.

“We’ll use what you’ve written and busk under whatever you’re doing on piano. Come on. Let’s start from the top  Bygraves can wait” said the lead trumpet.

 

So started a superb week. Sheila and I did the dreaded first spot but, because we feared nothing on stage and the relaxed mood was contagious, we “went down” well.  We bought the band a round of drinks every night via the intercom from our en-suite dressing room and we were home for “News at Ten” Monday to Thursday. Not once did we cross paths with Bygraves or the other support acts.

But Friday was May 5^th., our wedding anniversary and we had invited a few friends to join us, like Lynn and Geoff Parker (the organist and drummer), Pete and Anne Senior (from Ossett Club), Paul Stoner, (a builder/entrepreneur from Ossett) and one or two other musician friends.

I had arranged for Glen to present a bouquet of flowers to Sheila at the beginning of the spot, thus bleeding the maximum sympathy from the start.

We had stocked up our dressing room with all sorts of booze and it became the self-service source for our guests. By ten o’clock we had finished our spot and were occupying a series of linked-up tables front-of-house. By eleven, when Bygraves took to the stage, I was more than self-sufficient in alcoholic propellant. By quarter to midnight, when he came off-stage, I was nearing melt-down.

 

At something like 12.30 I went to our dressing room to find it full of people I didn’t know. They were all drinking what I assumed was our booze and, at the centre of it all, holding court and a large glass of our gin and tonic, was Max Bygraves.

What happened next is unclear to all concerned.

 

We continued to live off the “Opportunity Knocks”, “just appeared with Vince Hill/ Les Dawson/ Max Bygraves” tickets and did very well in the local Yorkshire clubs. We appeared at Batley Variety Club which was in the ascendant and had just enjoyed the services of Louis Armstrong and Shirley Bassey.

Batley Variety was owned by the Corrigan family who were known in Yorkshire more for their fruit machine and fun-fair activities. The Variety Club was really an up-market working men’s club, seven or eight miles from Wakefield Theatre Club to which it could not hold the proverbial candle.

I was getting nearer and nearer to making my biggest financial mistake.

 

Between Bradford and Wakefield, somewhere in the Heckmondwike area, was a small, unpretentious hotel standing in its own isolated grounds. On Saturday nights, if we were appearing anywhere near Bradford, we would call into the “Lapwater” after the gig. Anybody who was anybody in the music world who was appearing in the area would drop in there after midnight. It was a converted Hall which had normally completed its restaurant business by the time we all pitched up. Tubby Hayes and an extremely popped-up Phil Seaman joined the party on a couple of occasions.

 

My biggest mistake which I referred to earlier was to imagine that Batley required an up-market restaurant.

Batley was a working-class industrial town with several cafés that did very well out of bacon butties “early doors” and “dinnertimes” (ie lunchtimes). All the buildings were black from the ravishes of industrial smoke that had emanated from the now dying mills. It was a totally dejected environment. The bottom road which skirted the centre of the town was connected to the main street by a very scruffy, narrow hill with a pub and a “greasy spoon” café on either side.

We took over the lease of an ancient, disused shop on this short strip that had been a hatter’s for most of the previous century. I had this wonderful idea that we could provide dinners for visitors to Batley Variety Club (as I’ve said, a glorified beer and crisps working men’s club). But, while visitors could find parking easily in the evenings along Commercial Street, we would have no private parking whatsoever.

 

My colleagues at school were very helpful; the lads from the technical department made the fixed, upholstered seating and the tables; the genuine old mahogany counter became the bar; the old wall fitting where the hatter had displayed his “toppers” etc became, with a few inserts, the wine-rack. One of the art teachers did a superb stylized painting of the Mont St.Michel (the restaurant was to be called “The Bistro” after all) and we managed to raise a loan for about £10,000 for kitchen equipment and carpets etc. Sheila had been brought up by her grandmother in Capetown where she, the granny, worked in various catering establishments and where Sheila learnt a great deal about cooking for numbers under pressure. She knew exactly what was required in the kitchen in Batley and so a day out at Stotts of Oldham helped her decide on particular machines. The engineers had told us to come with a sketch plan of the kitchen (which would be on the first floor in the Bistro) and, once we had all agreed on the right ones for the job we wanted to do, they were fitted in Batley within the week.

 

We had something like £2000 of our loan left to create two toilets, carpet the restaurant, complete hundreds of little jobs and buy in some stock. Sheila went alone to a carpet warehouse in Leeds near her place of work and struck the most amazing deal I have ever witnessed. She arranged to take possession of about 100 pattern books of “end-of-line” Axminster AO carpet and would pay the salesman £500 to stitch the half metre square panels into a patchwork carpet, tailor-made to fit our restaurant and stairs. In fact the designs were so similar that the end product was virtually indistinguishable from an extremely expensive, hard-wearing, top quality Axminster carpet.

 

Sheila and I thought it would be a good idea to invite Heppy, Paul Stoner, Pete Senior, the relevant staff from school and all their wives to a soirée preview of what we were heralding as THE new experience in Batley. We had just under two weeks until the public “launch”.

Everyone was impressed. The lines had been put into the cellar, the beer was good and Sheila had used her new equipment to produce a tantalising display of “nibblaba” (we are proud to claim copyright to this expression which means “things you nibble while you bla-bla”)

Frank (“Heppy”), Paul and Pete and the others seemed impressed. Then Paul asked

“Who’ve ye got doin’ toilets? Tha’s less than two weeks, tha knows”. (he hailed from Eccleston, near Blackpool)

“I don’t know, Paul. I’ll get someone” I said dismissively. “It’s Friday night. Let’s get in a mess. I’ll think about it later.”

“Tha’s got less’n  two weeks to get ‘place ready. We’ll do them for ye. How’s about tomorrow?”

The word in Ossett had always been that Paul Stoner was the man for any building job, but he was not cheap. I expressed my concern to Pete and Anne who, like Sheila and me, were always pretty near the breadline. But they were very friendly with Paul who often called into their WMC with some of his men from his nearby plant. Heppy had met Paul for the first time that evening so I don’t think he had discussed our toilet problem with Paul.

 

We all got blitzed. But, as fully expected, at eight o’clock the following morning, Paul, a rotund, smiling, quite tall forty year old was at the restaurant with a team of four workmen..

They took about three-quarters of an hour to discuss the jobs and unload the van. Then:

“The lads’ll finish ‘work by dinner-time. A’ll si’thee then. OK?” And off he went.

 

The team of four was made up of two joiners and two plumbers. After several hours of hammering, swearing, whistling, laughing, singing, discussing football and women’s tits, the old toilet, which had housed a dirty white bowl and an avocado-coloured sink in a large, otherwise empty first floor room, had been converted into two quite separate, well-appointed public loos. They were beautifully painted, the “Gents” in blue, the “Ladies” in pink, with towel rails and full-length mirrors. The days of electric hand-driers and condom-dispensers were not yet upon us.

 

Four years earlier, Sheila’s tribal “uncle” had come from Rhodesia to Kenya to scrutinise his niece’s future husband. When he pressed me to agree a time and place for meeting, I complained of being very busy. He looked at me with what could only be described as pity, then observed “A busy man always has time.”

Paul Stoner was like Sheila’s uncle.

He returned to the Bistro just before one o’clock, inspected the jobs, handed out envelopes to his men, who were obviously on overtime, then said to me:

“Can tha be ‘ere, Monday, two o’clock?”

“No problem.” say I, thinking “God! I hope he doesn’t want paying on Monday. If he does, I’ll have to sell the van, get a second mortgage or extend the £10,000.”

 

That night we appeared at Golcar Conservative Club near Huddersfield and, on the Sunday, we had a “noon and night” somewhere in Doncaster so I did not have a lot of time to worry about finances.

 

Billy O’Neil, Headmaster at BatleyHigh School was, as I have said, an ex professional rugby league player and a bit of a pianist. We used to have awful rows but, on the whole, we got on.

That Monday he gave me the afternoon off to meet Paul at the Bistro.

 

He had a cup of tea as he went round the premises on inspection.

“I’ve got someone comin’ to see yer at two” he announced.

“Paul, how much do I owe you?”

“Ee’s from ‘building inspector’s”

“Paul, how much do I owe you?”

“Nowt”. He pointed to my chest and eyeballed me. “Nowt”

 

The chap who came at two o’clock was indeed a building inspector. But he was in his early twenties and, it seemed, very keen to impress.

To this day, I cannot believe what I saw and heard.

Firstly, he asked if the exposed brickwork on the walls by the tables was real brick.

“Of course” I replied.

In fact, it was papier maché panels of very poor lookalike brickwork which you could buy at any average DIY store. He didn’t even bother to go over and closely inspect it.

“It might have been a fire risk, you see.”

Paul smiled but said nothing.

“Those beams, up there” he said, indicating two boxed-in RSJ’s. “What are they made of?”

“Solid timber” said Paul, winking in my direction. “Why, what’s up?” He knew perfectly well what was up.

“If they were metal RSJ’s they’d be a fire risk” the youngster explained, by which time Paul had grabbed the corkscrew from the bar and, standing on a chair, had screwed it to the hilt into one of the “solid timber beams”. It was hard work for Paul because, as he knew, he was in fact screwing against a solid metal beam which was merely boxed-in by wooden panels.

“Phew. They don’t make ‘em like that na’adays” said Paul as he dismounted the chair, leaving the buckled corkscrew in the panelling.

 

The opening night on the following Saturday was a near non-event. Heppy and Paul turned up as did five or six other couples who had read about us in the local paper. But, the small number gave Sheila, Pauline (the kitchen porter) and Tony (Pauline’s Maltese husband, who was barman/manager) a chance to get used to the equipment.

 

A week or so later, it had become clear that there was little point in opening on week-day evenings. Lunchtimes, Monday to Friday were almost worthwhile but the roaring trade in the “greasy spoon” opposite was so depressing.

 

On Friday nights we seemed to get more and more young people (mostly pupils from my School and from the Girls’ Grammar School) and, although I knew it was totally wrong, I turned a blind eye to Tony serving them alcohol. We started providing hot-dogs and chips on Fridays and hired a juke-box on condition that the supplier installed the Top Twenty from the previous night’s Top of the Pops. It was the complete antithesis of what we had intended; as a schoolteacher in the town, I was treading on very thin ice.

But it became even thinner when I started to run private stags on mid-week evenings. On a Monday one week, a Wednesday the next and so on, we would pull down the wartime blackout and, for three pounds fifty each, thirty or more police, cricketers or bankers would enjoy a cooked meal, some naughty films, a couple of strippers, a “schooner race” or two (which upped the bar takings) and a joke-telling competition. The wives knew where the men were, the men knew where they were and what rules I had laid down and Sheila and I could actually pay off our loan. But it was knife-edge stuff.

For example, one Friday night during the school holidays in July 1973, I was down in the cellar changing a barrel of beer when I could hear great scuffling on the floor of the restaurant above. Suspecting a scrap which, I knew, Tony could not or would not stop, I rushed upstairs to find the restaurant empty but for a be-helmeted copper and his flat-capped superior holding on to a young lad who was clearly an under-aged drinker……..the diminutive ”Diddy” Charlesworth. All the other kids had scarperred and left Diddy, wittingly as it happened, to take the rap.

The police arrested him on suspicion of under-age drinking and asked me to accompany them to his house where they would presumably have access to his birth certificate and, thus, the wherewithall to build a case against me. As it turned out, Diddy, the smallest lad amongst the clientele that evening was over nineteen years of age.

 

The Saturdays were as we intended with “normal” adult couples eating what, for them, was fairly adventurous food.

Sheila and I couldn’t possibly keep up the cabaret work because of the commitment to the restaurant. Sheila worked Saturday nights; all day Sunday she and Pauline made and frozen meals for the following week and I played Saturday nights and Sundays at Castleford Working Men’s Club.

So, Saturday nights were a bit of a rush. I’d get back to the Bistro by about 11.30 p.m. when the pubs had emptied and the punters were coming in.

In our short existence as licensees, we had never had cause to call the police (you can probably imagine why!!). But, one Saturday in September 1973, I got back from Castleford to find the Bistro in full swing, as usual. The previous evening, some of the kids had damaged the juke box and it wasn’t working. But tonight the atmosphere seemed good.

Then somebody shouted:

“Put juke-box on Alex!”

“It’s not working. Sorry!” I said loudly as I made my way, proprietorilly, around the tables.

“You mean it’s buggered” someone shouted from the depths. There was a suggestion of laughter; then we all got on with the evening.

At about 12.30, a male customer who was sharing a table with his peroxide blonde female, called me over.

“I’m not paying for this” he said, pointing at the very empty plates which, until recently, had housed substantial peppered steaks.

“Can I ask why? They seem to have been good enough for you to eat.”

“You insulted my wife”.

“I’m so sorry. How?”

“When somebody asked you to put on the juke box, you said ……….. I can’t repeat it in front of my wife. You swore and so we’re not paying for that food. You offended my wife.”

I went with my master key to the front door and locked the double locks, like we did when we had a stag do. Returning to the table I said

“I hope I’m not offending your wife again, should she be here somewhere, but nobody’s leaving these premises until you’ve paid me so that I can pay my butcher for the meat you seem to have enjoyed and my staff for the service I have seen you enjoy. Of course, to save time, I can call the police.”

“You can do what you like, pal, but I’m paying nothing.”

Did I detect a little challenge?

I went to the bar and lifted the telephone. I dialled the number of BatleyHigh School, knowing there would be no reply.

“I know what you’re doing” he shouted across the restaurant “You’re ringing your home number. You can’t fool us.”

So, for the first time in my business life, I rang the police and took comfort in a bar stool. The rest of the punters were thoroughly enjoying the late-night spectacle and, within ten minutes or so, a blue light could be seen flashing outside the front door. The bobbies were knocking at the door. To be perfectly honest, I had wondered what a raid on our stag do’s would be like; this gave me some idea, I suppose.

The two punters came up to me at the bar.

“You bastard” said Eric the Nice in front of his easily-offended “wife”. He delved into his pocket and slapped a ten pound note on the bar-top as I gave Tony the front door key to let the two policemen in.

Almost anticlimactically, the incident ended, with Eric and his “wife” being warned about civil disturbance or something and me being warned about the fire risk inherent in locking the main exit of a public place while in use.

At the end of the night, towards two o’clock, when all the customers had gone, Sheila, Pauline, Tony and I took up our normal seats at the bar to enjoy a drink or five. Sheila used to rest her feet on a batten going across the front of the bar and that night, as she looked down to aim her feet, she saw three twenty pound notes scrunched up and lying on the floor. In his rush to get me paid before the bobbies got in, Eric the Nice had dropped sixty quid. If only I had known his address I would have written to him……………to thank him of course.

 

We had another exchange with the School in Percy, France and, while it was totally involving and thoroughly enjoyable from a socio-culinary point of view, nothing untoward ever happened. I liked to think it was down to planning.

In fact, nothing awfully unordinary ever happened at BatleyHigh School. Teaching was easy in those days and the only challenges I enjoyed were the social evenings we used to organise with the PTA. In fact, they had become quite well known locally for their standards of entertainment and hospitality. A “social” at BatleyHigh School was quite an event.

So much so that we were asked by Lord and Lady Kagan (of raincoat fame) to organise the Batley celebration of the Kirklees International Festival. My job was to plan and present a suitable evening of international entertainment at BatleyHigh School.

I found some Hungarian dancers somewhere in Leeds; I got a Ravi Shankar-type sitar player in Dewsbury; I found a Scottish bagpipe band in Huddersfield; I taught our School choir a Kikuyu lullaby and our French assistante, an extremely ebullient little thing from Marseille, would prepare some snails in garlic butter to be washed down with a chilled glass of Muscadet at the interval. I wasn’t very sure that the pie and peas/chapatti and rice population of Batley would rush for the snails so Sheila agreed to make a large pan of Hungarian goulash to bridge any gaps.

Please believe me when I tell you that the snails went within minutes of the interval starting and we had enough frozen goulash at the restaurant for weeks to come.

 

But Sheila wasn’t happy. She wanted a break.

In October that year, with the Bistro working on 3 cylinders out of 7, she proposed we go to Blackpool. Of course, she had never been there before. I had been once as a child with our family and, although I couldn’t remember any details, I knew I didn’t want to return. But she was bent upon going and, fortunately, Pauline, the k.p., agreed to accompany her for a week’s break. So Michael (now about 9) and I took both of them over to the Brincliffe Hotel near Bispham and got back to Wakefield as quickly as we could.

For a week, Tony and I ran the restaurant, I taught at Batley High where I had a new assistant called Philippe and organised Michael and his schooling. Philippe had a room in our Wakefield house. Unlike all the other student assistants we had had at Batley High, Philippe had some drive. Apart from playing a very useful part in the teaching programme at School, he would play a full part in our home life, come out with us for a drink, help at the Bistro and generally muck in. But he came from a rural area in the Dordogne and was physically not used to the exposures and contacts he had in this industrial, mainly Asian community where we worked.

He contracted TB. Apart from this creating a big problem for him (he was hospitalised for a long time) our adoption plans were put on hold. Social Services had to establish that Philippe had not contracted TB in our home and that he had not left any spores (or whatever you leave with TB) before we could welcome a young child. I would say this incident added yet another three months to the wretched procedure.

 

Sheila came back from Blackpool convinced that we could live there and make a killing, judging by the food and service she and Pauline had been given in the very busy Brincliffe.

We could do some real cabaret in clubs like Uncle Tom’s Cabin which they had visited two or three times during their stay.

She wanted a hotel in Blackpool.

I have to admit that I wasn’t keen. We had a beautiful home in Wakefield, my job at BatleyHigh School had me at the highest point on the teachers’ pay spine, Michael was well-settled in his school at Kettlethorpe and we had some lovely friends in the area. We could work the pick of the clubs in the north-east of England if we wanted.

 

But I knew Sheila was not fulfilled. OK, we had done well in show-business and there wasn’t a South African coloured within hundreds of miles who had similar outward trappings of success.

But we had failed with the restaurant and she saw it as her fault. In fact, of course, it was mine.

In moments of solitary self-analysis, I built up quite a frightening picture. A professional musician when I knew I wasn’t really good enough and everyone saw me really as a chartered accountant; go to Africa for a teaching qualification when Moray House in Edinburgh was good enough for everyone else; marry a foreign girl, Swedish or black South African when everyone else was happy with the girl next door. The list was endless…………..stack the odds against myself and show everyone what a clever shite I was by knocking them down. I wasn’t the kid from the backstreets of some slum who became the managing director of International Drawing Pins Ltd. I was a self-satisfied git who was ignoring Sheila’s perfectly achievable aims if given the right task in the right setting. Her success would make her happy. It was really none of my business although I could make it happen.

 

I agreed we should move. But it would take time. The most difficult task would be selling the restaurant; then we had to find a suitable guesthouse, a school for Michael and a job for me, to name a few. Oh, and we had to complete Marie’s adoption, which was due for February in the following year (1974).

 

Philippe eventually got out of the TB clinic but never returned to work at Batley High. While in PinderfieldsHospital, he had become very friendly with a fellow patient in the next bed, one Paul Armfield. In better days, Paul ran his business, a gent’s outfitters in Leeds, which he had inherited from his father. With regular visits to the Hospital to see Philippe, we got to know Paul who was a young bon viveur in his mid-thirties.  He would welcome you to his bedside with

“What would you like to drink? I’m out of malt whiskies at the moment but the Cabernet Sauvignon is worth a try.”

 

Apparently he and nine or ten businessmen friends from the Wakefield area had formed a luncheon club which met once a month in a restaurant chosen by that month’s host. They each took the rôle of host in monthly rotation; the host chose the restaurant and the meal then paid for everything consumed by the group. Needless to say, I got to know Paul very well.

The outcome, when Philippe and Paul were both discharged, was three or four absolutely superb extended Friday lunches. The club expected complete privacy so we had to close against the five or six regulars who frequented the place; but the returns were superb. On each occasion the host gave Sheila carte blanche to design the menu and, once or twice, the Bistro became what we had envisaged. With the stag do’s, the Friday night discos, the unfailing Saturday nights and the occasional luncheon clubs, we were just about managing to pay the rent.

But, although we had decided to move on, it was not going to happen straight away and things were far from right. The “Greasy Spoon” opposite was much more of a bank manager’s idea of a steady business; things were far too near School and Billy was losing his tolerance. Then, one Wednesday afternoon, as I walked through town towards the Bistro, a Panda car screeched up next to me and the driver, his hat discretely concealing the top of his face, rolled down the window and announced:

“You’re going to be done tonight”.

He screeched off into the distance as quickly as he had landed.

Of course, I cancelled that night’s stag, thanked my lucky stars and determined to get out as quickly as possible.

We put an ad. in “Dalton’s” and, some time in December of that year (1973), we received our one and only serious enquiry. It was from an Irish gentleman who wanted to see the place as soon as possible. I said I was going to be out of town until late the forthcoming Saturday but would be pleased to see him at about 11p.m.on that evening. “It’s usually beginning to quieten off about then” I lied, “so we’ll have a chance to talk.”

In reality, the artificially created lapse gave me time to plan my moves.

The Irishman, a Mr McNair was, thankfully, based in Northern Ireland which meant he would probably not come and spy on the place when he would find it totally dead. Anyway, we met that Saturday as arranged, just after eleven. He was a tall man in his early fifties with dark features and rather well-dressed in a three-piece suit and a three-quarter length mohair coat. This fellow had money and I suspected I was playing out of league. He was entirely unaccompanied, having travelled by taxi from his hotel in Leeds.

“I thought you said it would be quietening off at this time” he said disgruntledly as another party of four came over the front door.

“It does seem slightly busier than normal. Would you like a drink?”

“Coffee please; no sugar.”

Tony was snooping about so I asked him to organise the coffee while I showed McNair around the premises. He had very few questions and, something that struck me at the time, he made no enquiry about parking facilities. There were none anyway. But he seemed quite impressed with what he saw.

“Can we not meet some time next week during the day when we can actually talk? I’m here until Thursday.”

I was cornered. Lunchtimes could be very quiet with two, sometimes three customers.

I showed him the stag party booking for the following Wednesday which I had actually cancelled because of the police advice, explaining that I would be spending most of the day in prep and quickly, without any particular reason, plumped for next Tuesday lunchtime.

That Monday evening, at about 9.p.m., I went down the road fifty yards to the Cross Keys pub. The clientèle was mainly made up of couples in their twenties, most of whom could not and would not pay for even a starter at the Bistro. But they would still ogle the menu board outside and drool, often jokingly, at the contents. The landlady of the Keys and I had lent each other a bottle of spirits on a couple of occasions and she gave me permission to make a public announcement.

“Could I ask for your attention, please” I shouted with classroom strength. “You may recognise me as the landlord of the Bistro, up the road. I certainly recognise some of you”, I lied. (very short pause for very little laughter) “We hope to be moving on and, as a sign of our gratitude to you all, you are INVITED”   (“Aha! freebies” you could almost hear) “to HALF-PRICE lunches at the Bistro TOMORROW ONLY. We look forward to seeing you all. Oh, by the way, there’s a free drink for each of you WITH YOUR MEAL”. I felt it needed that something to clinch it.

The half-price concept brought the meals within their reach and it meant that we, who worked on a 100% mark-up, were not out of pocket, at least on the food.

The following lunchtime we were three-quarters full.

 

“I thought you said it would be quiet” McNair observed as he came over the door.

“This is about normal for a Tuesday” I suggested as casually as possible.

Bloody hell, if I could hear myself!

Fortunately, McNair didn’t notice or didn’t heed the various conversations going on between tables.

I had put Tony, our little Maltese manager, on a £1000 pay-off if we managed to sell. As usual, he ran the risk of over-sell so I had him bugger off to make McNair another coffee and, to avoid him hearing anything untoward, I took McNair up to the little office on the top floor.

By the time I had sat down, McNair was preparing to write a cheque.

“Can I give you a cheque for £5000 as deposit? We’ve already made the usual searches and, if all goes well, we’d like to take possession on the first of January at which point we’ll pay you the balance of the total we agree today. OK?”

My relief was intense although, as was usual in this kind of situation, I contrived to be despondent. To be completely honest, I can’t remember what the final figure was but, in conjunction with the profit from the house, it would be enough to pay off our debts and get us started in Blackpool.

 

It was actually nearer the fifth of January when I handed over the keys. I can’t tell you how relieved we both were.

As I still worked at BatleyHigh School, I could keep an eye on the progress being made at the Bistro. When would it re-open? Would there be a new theme? I took a relaxed interest; but nothing seemed to be happening.

 

Plans were going ahead for the adoption, due to take place in February. At last, they had found a suitable child, a six month old coloured girl living with her elderly foster-mother in the outskirts of Sheffield.

 

By mid-January 1974, nothing had changed outwardly at the Bistro. It remained closed.

 

My work was cut out at school. Philippe, the French assistant, had returned home to France to recuperate and we had managed to find a replacement in Mohammed, a little French-speaking Algerian who turned out to be the idlest fellow I have ever come across. I found him a flat in Batley where I had to go regularly to get him out of bed to fulfil his duties at school.

 

Once again, by late January, detailed plans were being made for the School’s French exchange with Percy in Normandy.

Mohammed was more than useless and I had the landlord of his flat constantly ringing me to complain about the filth and the vermin he was attracting to his “prestigious” properties. I can assure you in 1974 there were no prestigious properties anywhere near Batley.

 

Sheila and I continued to accept bookings at the better clubs in the North-East and looked forward to our imminent adoption.

Still, Mr McNair from Belfast had made no attempt at re-opening the Bistro.

Then, on February 3d, 1974 a huge explosion on the M62 outside Morley, just three miles from Batley, destroyed a coach carrying troops on the first part of their trip to troubled Belfast. Several soldiers were killed.

Still, Mr McNair did not re-open the Bistro.

 

 

We went in the direction of Sheffield to pick up our little coloured girl, Marie. The elderly lady who had fostered her was devastated when we left with Marie cradled in the portable part of a carrycot. We lodged her on the back seat of the car for the journey back to Wakefield. She was dressed, quite inappropriately, all in white and hollered continuously until we got to our house in Mountbatten Avenue, Wakefield. When we arrived there she screamed the place down.

“God’s truth!” I thought all day. “What have we let ourselves in for?”

She continued yelling all that night. Even the “dody” she brought from her foster-home in Sheffield offered no solace. She cried inconsolably until about three the following morning whereupon Michael, who, like the rest of us, couldn’t sleep went to her room and finally managed to comfort her. To this day, Michael continues to provide her haven at times of trouble.

For the next couple of years, there was no French exchange; there was far too much happening in our lives.

During the October half term in 1974, Sheila and I felt we were ready to make a move into Blackpool. The resort’s season had all but finished and owners would be moving out and on. I had to give a term’s notice before leaving Batley High so we planned to buy something suitable in Blackpool with a bridging loan in October, sell the house in Wakefield between October and Christmas using the bridge and get me a teaching job somewhere on the Fylde by Easter 1975 at the latest. That way, in theory at least, we’d be ready to open whatever we’d got in time for the 1975 season. We both felt that if you wanted a thing, then go for it unreservedly.

Having thought the whole thing through, my colleagues’ dismay at me wanting to leave such a prestigious post for an unknown future, had no bearing on our plans.

We spent the October week in Blackpool and, after much to-ing and fro-ing, committed ourselves to the purchase of “The Irvine” on Osborne Road, South Shore, Blackpool. It was, and still is about quarter of a mile from the promenade and opposite a sawmill. In the months and years to come, I would use this in our advertising.

 

 

The fact that the superb view was of a sawmill caused many to giggle, if only eventually. And if they didn’t, they could always piss off. (Thanks Heppy!)

We completed the sale of the house before Christmas at which point I handed in my notice at Batley. It would mean I would have to continue teaching there until Easter 1975 by which time, hopefully, I would have found a job on The Fylde to support us as we found our feet in the guest house trade.

 

The Irvine was very typical of Blackpool at the time. It was a converted, two-floored, terraced house. The attic had also been converted to contain two “family rooms” which were a decent size but had sky-light windows set in the sloping, tiled roof. The basement of the building contained three rooms as owners’ accommodation. The ground floor had the guests’ dining room which doubled as a lounge and, at the back of the house, the kitchen and an outside loo. Somehow there was a total of eight guest bedrooms which were minuscule. A couple of tiny toilets, one bathroom and the “facilities” were complete. It would be twenty years or more before “en-suite” rooms became the norm. But our guests would only be paying £7:50 for bed, breakfast and evening meal; everything would be spotlessly clean and the grub would be better than they got at home. Sheila would have it no other way.

During the Spring Term of 1975, I shared a room in Mohammed’s “prestigious” flat in Batley, Monday to Friday and stayed the weekend with Sheila and the kids in Blackpool.

 

The Bistro had still not opened.

To be perfectly honest, I was at a bit of a low ebb. I couldn’t sleep at night because of the noise made by rodents easting through the bags of take-out shite left in the corner of the room by the dirty Algerian layabout who was supposed to work for me. Everything I said just rolled off his back.

“Putting your shite in the corner of the room does NOT mean you are being tidy. It needs to go to the bin in the yard, perhaps while I’m covering for you at School. Then you need to wash the dishes, vacuum the room and go to the shops to buy something for dinner.”

He’d smile and say nothing.

“You idle, dirty bastard!” would be the level of my verbal reaction.

I still had a Ford Corsair van which we had bought when we had the restaurant and which I had converted into a mobile, “take-out bistro” in a hopeful attempt to stave off bankruptcy. In the end, this became my temporary home, parked round the back of the school where the caretaker had kindly left a transom window ajar so that I could wire-up the van for the night.

I slept, Monday to Thursday (incl), in the van and spent Friday afternoon to Monday morning in Blackpool. The weekends were full of action, with basic DIY work, while the weekdays were lonesome. Obviously, we were doing hardly any performing.

I had been fired as resident organist at Castleford WMC for having a fight with a knob-end customer and for tampering with the bingo machine. Have you noticed that, at the top of the tube where the balls randomly exit the plastic maelstrom, there is an L-shaped metal stopper which holds the numbered table-tennis ball at the top of the tube, so that the “caller” can remove it at his leisure with appropriate, well-worn funnies? When the ball at the top is removed, the tube is effectively reopened and the pump blows another ball up to the top of the tube to be held in place again by the L-shape.

The bingo caller at Castleford was a particularly dislikeable sod so, one Wednesday evening, having prepared the organ behind the closed curtains on stage, I found the beloved bingo machine in a back-stage corridor, tripped the switch to “on” and bent the L-shape to widen the opening at the top. There was no act on a Wednesday so it was normally a particularly boring evening because Norman, the drummer, and I had to play for “sequence” and ballroom dancing for an hour. Then there was an hour’s bingo and we would finish the evening with another hour of dancing. To break the monotony during the bingo Norman and I would go to the pub next door but, this Wednesday, we stayed in the “concert room”. Suspicions must have been aroused because each evening, especially a Wednesday, followed a very set pattern. There was no way Norman and I would sit through a session of bingo and the punters knew it. I swear my heart was pounding as scruffy little Thistlethwaite wheeled the machine to the front

of the stage in readiness for the highlight of his week. He gathered up the long lead, strode to the back of the stage and plugged in. Because the switch on the machine was “on” and there was no stopper at the top of the tube, there was an immediate ten-foot spout of numbered ping-pong balls which then bounced all over the stage in total abandon. The funniest thing was that, instead of unplugging the lead, Thistlethwaite pranced about the stage trying to retrieve the ninety balls that continued to ejaculate from the machine.

Norman and I were beside ourselves; but nobody else found it funny, least of all Thistlethwaite. The high spot of his week totally ruined, he was livid so we graciously, if somewhat half-heartedly, helped him find and replace the balls so that their revered game could start. Nobody was in any doubt where the culprit was and Norman, who relied on the income, suggested we lower our profiles.

 

The organ in Castleford was one of the first Hammond Concordes in Yorkshire. It was a big brute with an equally brutish theatre organ sound, ideal for those bloody Wednesdays. To the right of one of the keyboards there was an in-built cassette recorder which played anything on tape through the amplifier and speakers of the organ. With the two extension “Leslie” speakers at either side of the stage, one could achieve quite an impressive sound. I suppose the system was a precursor of today’s “backing tracks”.

I bought a few cassettes of Reginald Dixon and the like and made a compilation of “sequence”/ballroom tunes in the order I knew they liked at Castleford. I would put some book of music on the music stand so that the punters could see “Reginald Dixon’s Favourite Ballroom Tunes” while, facing me, was my current reading material. All I had to do was switch the tape recorder on and off. At £10 an evening, I was on excellent money for those days!

 

“Sequence” and ballroom dancers are a veritable pain in the arse. They have the stage, so to speak, once a week as they circle the floor. When they pass the band some of them will signal to speed up, others to slow down. At Castleford, they had no idea they were telling Reginald Dixon to get the tempo right.

Dirty little Thistlethwaite had already worked out what I was doing and, that evening, I was “paid off”.

“Deservedly so” I can hear you say?

 

I was beginning to panic about my teaching career which provided the bread and butter in our lives. Every Friday I had perused the Times Educational Supplement in the Batley staffroom but, while there were always jobs in and around Blackpool, there was nothing equating to my current status. Towards the middle of March 1975, King Edward VII in St Annes advertised a vacancy for the teaching of Latin and French during the summer term. In desperation I applied and, I suppose in equal desperation (for the Summer Term was almost upon us) the Head Teacher, Mr Lipscombe, appointed me. I was so relieved and there was a hearty farewell party for me at Batley High too.

I spent the Easter holidays on DIY projects around the Irvine and then started what turned out to be one of my happiest (and shortest) teaching spells.

The Spring and Summer of 1975 featured glorious weather. King Edward was an independent boys’ school in a beautiful setting half a mile from the centre of St Annes. This town is only a couple of miles from Blackpool centre yet as far removed from it culturally as you could imagine. Cricket and athletics were very much on the agenda at King Edward’s during this term and I ambled through the teaching of Latin and French with a facility that easily rubbed off from the other members of staff. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is an accepted pecking order and mutual respect in these establishments which remove them from the crude “streetiness” of the State schools.

 

I was glad to be with my family, the weather was superb and I was getting stuck into our new project. We joined the Hotel and Guesthouse Association but there was nowhere to get advice.

By trial and error, we found we got the best response from advertising in Scotland and, in the end, probably 60% of our visitors came from the West Coast of Scotland. I had no idea why this should be the case.

 

Through Marie’s playgroup and dance school we gradually made friends with other families one of which was Dennis and Carol Wann’s. Dennis was a professional footballer with Rochdale and, later, with Blackpool. He was also an excellent cricketer and had been spoilt for choice when selecting a professional career. Having played soccer and rugby to a reasonable amateur level I am in awe of professional sportsmen and sportswomen.

Dennis once told me that he and his team mates would often be hurt by the jibes of fat slobs who were still out of breath after climbing on to the Man.United supporters’ bus and who were stuck in the same motorway jam as the Rochdale team coach. They would mock masturbate at the Rochdale players.

 

[“How do you get to Wembley?” a sage asked a slob.

“Buy a crate of lager and a box of crisps and leave the rest to the coach driver” said the slob.

“No, no, no” replied the sage. “Reach the peak of fitness and acquire plenty skills.”

“Eh?” the slob said, puzzled.]

 

The trouble was, Dennis had always wanted to play the organ and our admiration for each other was so embarrassing for family and friends!

 

I learnt to double book the guest house in the high season for two reasons:

Tossers from all around would ring several guest houses in Blackpool until they had found and finally booked a place that was 20p a night cheaper than us and all the other places they had rung. In the end, of course, they wouldn’t turn up at the Irvine on change-over day,

Saturday of each week.

The other reason was, quite simply, a lack of confidence on my part. We had borrowed a lot of money from the Yorkshire Bank to fund the several improvements we wanted to make and I was worried that we could not meet the repayments.

I even went to Blackpool North Station (the Central Station had been demolished) and issued special business cards to taxi drivers who would earn a commission for every fare who was looking for accommodation and whom they dropped off at the Irvine.

 

But with Sheila’s superb cooking and exceptionally high standards of cleanliness it wasn’t long before we were getting return bookings and the “No Vacancies” sign became a permanent feature.

 

However, back in the Spring of 1975, and still at King Ted’s, I replied to an advert in the Times Ed. for a Head of Modern Languages at Hodgson School, about five miles from the Irvine in a delightful little town called Poulton-le-Fylde.

 

The interview was fairly high-powered with the Head Teacher, Mr Pickles, the District Director of Education, Mr Raymer and the Chair of the Board of Governors,  Mr Lofthouse, a local builder who, it turned out, had connections with the corrupt Yorkshire architect John Poulson.

They found it difficult to understand why I had left such a prestigious position in Batley. I fibbed about an ageing mother in a Blackpool rest home and, once they had agreed to appoint me on the same salary as Batley, I accepted the job which was due to start in September of that year.

 

Since we were going to be tied to Blackpool in the summers it made sense that I found a job playing music somewhere, so I went along to the Blackpool Tower Company where I finally gained an interview with Ken Turner, the Musical Director. He explained how the Company paid less than Musician Union rates and, if he did employ me, I would have to realise that resident musicians were no different or better than resident carpenters or electricians. He took me to the Spanish Hall for an audition on the vintage Hammond C3 organ, asked me to sing a couple of songs then told me to be ready to start at 7.30 that Friday evening.

 

When I finally got to the dressing room, the place was abuzz with silence. The five male musoes were sitting around seemingly waiting for something or someone. Only the two girl singers were having a whispered conversation. Ken Turner came in.

“Alex Fleming” he said by way of introduction and handed me a sweat-stained, burgundy band jacket.

“Here’s the pad” he said, handing me a thick, black file. “We start at the beginning and finish at the end.”

“Gigs” are meant to be fun with plenty chat and laughs on stage. Ken, who held his trumpet with one hand and blew out the side of his mouth announced each of the dances. Apart from that, nobody on stage spoke during the whole night.

I lasted about ten nights then left without picking up any wages. Stuff that for a game of soldiers!

 

As I’ve said, the Summer of 1975 was glorious. We had advertised the guest house extensively but selectively and I managed to pass on the double bookings we didn’t want………………..any groups under forty years of age, anybody with little children, parties of Welsh women and so on. In fact, after two or three seasons, the Irvine was almost entirely booked by middle-aged folk from the west coast of Scotland and from Yorkshire. Hailing from Edinburgh, I had very scant knowledge of the Scottish west coast. But Irvine, it became clear, is a town near Paisley. We were led to believe, after some years, that, south of Glasgow, it was said that, if you hadn’t met Sheila and Alex at the Irvine Hotel in Blackpool you were not born within sight of Paisley.

It became known as the Irvine HOTEL because, over a period of four or five years, we created a sun lounge (still looking on to the saw mill), licensed the premises, built a “roof-lift” allowing for five new, purpose-built bedrooms, bought the private house next door (which meant we could create a dining room totally separate to the bar/lounge and open three more bedrooms) and, across the back of the two buildings, built a long, very professional kitchen and stillroom.

There was even room for a small car park outside!

 

I started work at HodgsonSchool in September 1975. The School had the appearance of a staid, disciplined, free-standing grammar school. This was probably due to the peaceful, disciplined environment which was Poulton-le-Fylde. In fact, it was a local comprehensive where the Head Teacher, David Pickles and I were the only university graduates. Pickles made it clear that he wanted to appoint only graduates, believing that this would improve the quality of teaching in “his” school. But all the existing staff knew how to teach their subjects and create and maintain an interest in them. They were long-standing, experienced personnel who held the respect of the pupils and the local community. Unlike the current Head, as it was to turn out.

 

The guest house / hotel fell into a predictable pattern. The food was excellent, the cleanliness unquestionable, the expansions on-going every year and the live entertainment from Sheila and myself unequalled at the all-inclusive price.

It was a bit of a struggle for me from the School Easter holidays (when the hotel opened for the season) until the School Summer holidays. I had a full timetable at HodgsonSchool where I took Michael and one or two other SouthShore kids and would often return to the Irvine at ten to four to find no sign of Sheila one hour and ten minutes off presenting a three-course evening meal for thirty guests. She would return from town at about twenty to five, laden with new, expensive clothes and with Marie in tow, whom she would have picked up at the local primary School. Neither time nor space featured in her planning.

 

The food at the Irvine comprised beautiful soups made from boxfuls of leaves normally ejected at the local market vegetable stall and stock made from pork rib cages left over from our purchase of bacon at the wholesaler. After she had made the stock with the ribs, Sheila would drench them in a piquant sauce and present them, as spare ribs, on the bar for evening nibbles.

 

I was playing the organ in various social clubs on the Fylde, one of which was the Gas Workers Club and Institute in Fleetwood. The drummer, an elderly chap called Don, drove a “bin wagon” during the day. One of his calls was at the dockside market where he was expressly forbidden by the Dock Authority to remove fish carcasses. The stall holders had agreed to send the carcasses to the mill at the far end of the dock where they would be rendered into fish-meal

nuggets for cattle or something. Whatever the arrangement was, it was inconvenient for the stallholders who would “pay” Don a couple of stone of fresh haddock to take the stuff away in his wagon. I would buy the fresh fish from Don for next to nothing. For the benefit of the Roman Catholic guests we would serve this up on a Friday evening. Everybody complimented us on our soups and the freshness of our fish.

“We have it delivered fresh on a Friday morning” I would lie. “It’s expensive, but it’s for you.”

 

We loved it when the last coach party left on the last weekend of the Illuminations. We would both stand in the doorway smiling, waving and muttering “piss off” under our breath as the coach rounded the top of Osborne Road Then we would forward roll in the hallway, cheer and kiss and get terribly drunk.

The kids knew we were free and back to being a family. Sheila had kept a jar on the bar for tips throughout the season; the proceeds of the coffee machine and the fruit machine in the hallway would be emptied and we would spend the lot on a no-holds-barred holiday over the half-term week in November.

I liked that fruit machine. I never played it because I have never really taken to gambling but I enjoyed the fact that it was making money for us unfailingly and with very little effort on our part. It was set at a 40-60 ratio in our favour so WE weren’t gambling. If the husbands were in the bar waiting for their wives to come downstairs, I would feed the fruit machine with four fifty pence coins and press the “Change” button. The ensuing “b’doom, b’doom, b’doom”  as the machine pumped out 20 ten pence coins always attracted at least a couple of suckers to our holiday fund. After all, Blackpool had some very tasty properties (North Drive springs to mind) which housed professional boxers who pulped your brain for large sums of money or, if your brain was already pulped, took you to the cleaners on their fruit machines, stalls, fun parks or junk-food outlets.

 

In the winter months I frequented a local Boddingtons pub called the “Dog and Partridge”. It was a dump. Holidaymakers avoided it.  However, there was a group of about a dozen local, young professional lads and their attachments who met there in dribs and drabs during the week and in force at weekend lunchtimes and evenings. They were, on average, ten years or so younger than me. I enjoyed their joie de vivre and they seemed to accept me and Sheila. Extremeness was the norm. The leader of the gang was a young man called Don Keadie who sported a complete set of false teeth. By pursing his lips and, without using his hands, he could eject the dentures into someone’s pint of beer at six feet. He did it to my bank manager and to quite a high-ranking police officer.

 

Every Easter in South Shore Blackpool there was a “conference” for school PE teachers, the rougher end of whom would meet every night of that week in the “Dog”. On the Friday, Don would be responsible for the organisation of the “Turkish Delight” competition. The landlord, Fred Watson, would organise a heap of metal trays on the bar and the two teams would draw lots. Number One from the PE teachers would play Number One from our crowd. This would involve the player taking a metal tray in both hands; his team mates singing “Fry’s Turkish Delight” and the player smashing the tray over the head of his opponent on the eighth beat. The winner would be the player adjudged to achieve maximum bend in the tray. That was bad enough in itself. But the Number Two opponents performed from on top of a table; the tray man would jump from the table with his opponent standing expectantly at ground level. The Number Three opponents would perform from on top of two tables until, eventually, the two opposing captains, Don Keadie and AN Other, would leap at each other from the ceiling of the pub. Keadie and his cronies challenged several pubs around Lancashire and Yorkshire over the years.

They were all bright guys. The main core had attended ArnoldSchool, a public school about a mile or so from the “Dog”. But, and there was no doubt about it, Keadie was a rogue and a cad.

 

Work at HodgsonSchool continued apace. Sheila and I still took groups of sixty children or so to Normandy on the French exchange which we had established when I was teaching in Batley.

I continued to extract as much money as I could for my Department from the LancashireCounty coffers which were overseen by John Darlington, Chief Adviser in Modern Languages and, wait for it, Conrad Rainbow, the Director of Education.

In 1976 we had to replace a member of the Modern Languages staff. Interviews were held in the Summer Term for a September start and, as Head of the Department, I was on the interview panel. We sat in a semi-circle with Pickles, the Head, at one end and me at the other. Between Pickles and me were Raymer, the Director and somebody else. The candidates were mostly forgettable until we got to candidate number five, a Mrs Melvin. She sat confidently in front of us, with legs ostensibly crossed. The Chairman was going through the usual banter when a folded note was passed from Pickles to Raymer who passed it behind the Chairman to me. I unfolded it.

“She’s got nice legs” it read. “What do you think?”

Mrs Melvin got the job and, in so doing, affected the lives of many, as you will see.

 

The senior masters and Deputy Head, Mike Taylor, knew that I ran my own ship. I was Head of the Modern Languages Department and my line manager was the Head, David Pickles. He might pass messages to me through other members of his senior staff but, as far as I was concerned, Pickles had been responsible for my appointment and I was answerable to him. There was no middle man or woman; if I had something to say, I’d say it to him. Unlike today, there was no written job description and so, as a senior member of staff, I declared my own ground rules. And, as had been the case in Batley, the Head and I often came to verbal blows that seemed to strengthen our relationship if anything.  Pickles was my boss; I eyeballed him and he, me.

 

 

The Summer season of 1976 was even better than ‘75. Work on the sun lounge had been successfully completed over the winter and the hard slog was soon under way again. The highlight of each day for the type of middle-aged guests we were attracting was undoubtedly the late-night parties around the bar where as many as possible would “sing a song or tell a joke”. It meant I got very little sleep before getting up the following morning, starting the breakfasts, wakening the rest of the family then heading for School with Michael. Sheila would deliver Marie to her new School, Thames Road, and hopefully be back to serve the breakfasts at 9 o’clock.

I played in various social clubs at the weekends because it was a relaxing break and I could get back to the Irvine by the time the guests returned from their various sorties.

Saturdays we did not like. It was change-over day, when most of the guests left and the new intake arrived. Sheila and her helpers cleaned and prepared the rooms while I would be downstairs firstly organising Marie then taking her to her dance school. By 11 o’clock I would be in the sun lounge with the diary hoping everyone would turn up and the room allocation would work out. Everybody had paid a deposit so it was unusual for people not to turn up; the worst scenario was when too many people turned up. Once we were full, I would frantically ring Bernard and Judith next door then Dennis and Carol then absolutely anyone to find vacancies. Having found a room in, say, Withnell Road with minutes to spare, I would go outside and meet the taxi bearing the now-unwanted guests.

“You won’t believe this. I’m waiting for an emergency plumber. There’s been a huge burst in the room above yours and your room is in a total mess. BUT, I’ve managed to get you a very nice room at my sister’s place on Withnell Road, much nearer the beach than we are.”

Then, shoving a fiver into the knowing taxi driver’s hand,

“It’s number 75. I’m very sorry about this. But I know you’ll have a wonderful week. Oh, there’s the plumber. ‘Bye!”

I much preferred Sundays

 

Because of the pressures of maintaining the Irvine, Sheila and I did not perform as “The Two of Us” during the summer months.  I was getting a bit fed up with the insecurity of accompanying suspect acts at various social clubs with sub-standard equipment. All the top social clubs (The Central, The Brunswick, Pelham Mount, Layton Institute, The No. 1, Talbot Conservative and so on) had had the same teams of musicians for years. The shows they backed were very professional and featured such semi-names as The Nolan Family, Frank Carson, Les Dawson and others. The musicians had annual contracts for seven or eight sessions a week in the summer and three or four in the winter. They might agree amongst themselves to swop around for the following season or two but there was no way that outsiders like me could breach the tight circle. I did a “You’ve probably heard of me ….” letter to all those clubs and one or two others.

 

In October of that year I got a telephone call from Jim Booth, licensee of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the North Promenade. Their organist had let them down for the last few nights of the Illuminations (I soon learnt why) and could I help them out?

I “depped” for a couple of nights and got the job………….. three nights a week until the end of “The Lights”. On two occasions they were let down by one of their “acts” (again, I soon learnt why) but it gave Sheila and I a golden opportunity to gain a window.

As a result, I was booked as the permanent resident organist for the following season and “The Two of Us” would share Tuesday nights with the well-loved Lancashire comedian,“Wandering Walter”.

 

The winter of ’76 – ’77 went beautifully. We built the roof-lift on the Hotel and bought the private house next door. I was becoming well-established as the Head of Modern Languages at Hodgson School and Mrs Melvin (Sue) fitted in superbly well with the other two ladies. We had a good, professional, easy-going Department which began to achieve excellent CSE and GCSE results.

I played euphonium in the School band, coached a third-year soccer team, formed a cast of pupils and produced “Oklahoma!” in the Spring Term 1977 and enjoyed another successful exchange with Percy, in Normandy. Sue Melvin didn’t play in the band or the football team but she got “well stuck-in” by forming a German exchange with a school in Biberach and taking over the School’s wilting badminton club. Her husband Ian, a fellow North-easterner, had an excellent job at the Fylde’s most prestigious private boarding school, Rossall. He had just completed his Ph.D. in American literature and, with his incongruous “Geordie” accent, was something of a star on the boys-only campus. I remember seeing him interviewed on the local TV programme “Look North”. I was impressed, although he came across as trying too hard to be the likeable, working class mouton noir.

 

1978 was our first season as “a hotel”. We were fully licensed, had some en suite rooms, offered a choice of menu and so on. I had a complete season at Uncle Tom’s with Sheila making up “The Two of Us” on Tuesday nights. We had, as it were, arrived. The seasons were going well and school was going well too.

 

Right at the start of the ’78 season we let it be known that there would be no dinner served on Sundays; guests would receive lunch and the bar would only be open between 12 and 2. This meant we had a free afternoon during which we could re-group in readiness for the forthcoming week and, because our bar was not open on a Sunday night, I could get straight to bed after Uncle Tom’s.

And we still looked forward to the highlight of each year……………….. a week in London at the long-awaited close of the season during November half-term with a pot of hard-earned cash

The drag surrounding this “ideal” set up was the fact that, if we wanted to work the summer season at places like Uncle Tom’s, we had to work the Christmas-New Year period too; but at summer season rates, which were a quarter what you could get at Christmas on the open market. That time of each year was also a time when, traditionally, guest houses would open and rely on the taxman turning a blind eye. The Hotel would be open from the night of the 23d December to Boxing Day. We had to provide full board (including afternoon buffets and full Christmas lunch) and we would be doing four or five shows at Uncle Tom’s. It was a hard, intense time but only lasted six or seven days; and it was all during school holidays.

 

During the Spring Term 1979 at HodgsonSchool, I produced and musically directed “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying”. We had some wonderful kids in the cast, many of whom were low-achievers in school but who boosted their self-esteem immeasurably by being part of the show’s success. As with “Oklahoma!” we played to full houses for six nights.

 

The French exchange at Percy again took place, this time with Sue Melvin as part of the four-teacher team. Percy is seven kilometres from my childhood patch in Cérences, near Granville.

As I explained earlier, it is an agricultural community, the very opposite of Batley and even Poulton-le-Fylde. But this added to the ethos of the exchanges and they mostly worked.

Our school party would go to Normandy just before the Easter school holidays and the French children would come to England after the holidays. This was the best arrangement for Sheila and me.

The Brochard family was made up of Edmond (who was aware of but spoke no English), Ēvélyn and their two daughters, Corinne and Ēmanuelle, who were both learning English at their collèges secondaires. The Fleming family was made up of Sheila (who spoke no French but was a superb linguist), me and our two kids, Michael and Marie.  Michael, who was fourteen at that point in 1979 actually exchanged with Hubert Levêque, a pupil at the school, who was the son of the village charcutier. In theory, it was an ideal mix.

Our school kids were accommodated far and wide throughout the region, some in quite luxurious farmhouses, others in much more basic settings. Wherever they were, the hospitality and cuisine were superb. We, the staff, were invited out to host families every evening for meals that would have cost a hell of a lot of money commercially. You couldn’t buy the hospitality.

Each morning, the English children were dropped off with their corres. for school. But each morning there would be one or two kids who couldn’t make it. They had eaten too much “birds nest soup” or were tearfully missing their mummies. Edmond let me have his car so that I could go round the families and visit the sick. Invariably, the farmer or his wife would welcome me into their house and, at about ten o’clock in the morning, the very old, top-of-the-shelf, illicit Calvados would be produced.

“Monsieur Fleming, ce ne’est pas souvent que vous venez nous voir. Prenez un bon petit Calva avec nous”,and the day would begin.

One girl I visited, Ann Lofthouse, was recovering from some contrived malaise on the balcony of her hosts’ beautiful farmhouse as I drove up.

“How do you feel, Ann?” I shouted.

Clearly glad to see me or at least someone “English”, she confirmed she would survive.

“Qu’est-ce qu’elle veut manger ce midi?” asked the fermière.

“What would you like for lunch, Ann?” I enquired loudly.

 

“Oh, God, I don’t know” said Ann, almost regally. “Something normal, like chicken and chips”

“Ah, j’ai compris” said the farmer’s wife as she stooped to catch a scampering hen.

“Comme celle-là?” she enquired, holding the hen by the neck,

With a decisive slice of the long knife she was holding, she decapitated the hen, which spent its last few seconds running aimlessly around the yard, blood tracing its route.

I, let alone Ann, can still hear that woman’s maniacal laugh.

 

I would visit two or three kids before noon each day. The same Calvadosian ritual took place and then I’d make for school where we would enjoy a few bottles of plonk with the simple, but always sociable lunch.

The afternoons were dedicated to “activities” for the English kids. This could involve a five kilometre walk to the local stables for an afternoon’s riding or a totally boring visit to the ruins of some completely insignificant monastery. Failing those uninspiring options, we would send the kids on projects around the village to meet the local bobbies and shopkeepers. Prizes would be awarded at the soirée held in the village hall on the last night of the exchange.

My accompanying staff and Sheila would tend to konk out after two or three days of this hype and it was left to me to fulfil the remaining seven or eight nights of carousing. I missed their company and the hosts were always clearly disappointed. Sheila was very popular as were Sue and any other colleagues.

Our hosts always tried to put on a “typically French” meal. They would consult with each other so that nothing was repeated or replicated. I remember one evening, when Sue was the only other colleague attending an evening with a local family of Moroccans. She was a primary school teacher and he a very quiet, self-effacing civil servant. The first course was snails.

You can think of frogs legs as pieces of chicken; but snails are snails.

“Could this be my culinary Waterloo?” I thought.

Sue and I managed to maintain a serviceable level of conversation; she seemed to be managing the snails alright but I was having to get one in my mouth, add a chunk of dry bread, then down the lot with a full bouchée of white wine. I had three or four snails on my plate which, I felt, passed muster for the starter course. I was about to give the second snail the same treatment when I, foolishly, asked our hostess

“Les escargots, vous les achetez au marché à Percy, oui?”

“Mais non.” says she. “Je les prends du mur dehors”

That was it. I made my excuses and left the room for a moment or two.

 

The summer season 1979 at the Irvine and at Uncle Tom’s Cabin was good. Marie was doing well at ThamesRoadSchool and Michael was in his “Fourth Year” at HodgsonSchool where he was beginning to show some real artistic talent.

We had completed most of the alterations at the Irvine and I continued to thrive on my three jobs, teaching, partnering at the Irvine and playing at Uncle Tom’s.

We continued to see Jim and Sheila Bain (my St Andrews mentors) as much as we could. They were busy with their laundry business and their four children and, while we had our commitments too, we managed to meet up once or twice a year.

On one of these occasions Jim had come up from Bury St Edmunds for a swift visit. He always stayed at venues like the Imperial, understandably avoiding such low-class hostelries as ours. He accompanied me for one evening to Uncle Tom’s Cabin where the support act was a female vocalist I totally disliked. She liked me even less. The Cabin had been refurbished during the previous winter and a new organ, a Hammond Concorde, installed. After my experience in Castleford I had no problem with this brute, using all its gimmicks and peripherals to provide a colourful opening “set” from the drummer, Roy and myself.

This particular evening, Jim had the idea that I should turn up at the Cabin with my right arm in a sling. Clearly, I would not be able to play so Jim would pretend to be the organ “dep” (replacement). At the 7.30 “run-through”, the woman’s face was a picture. Jim was sitting at the organ, clearly struggling to make the thing work. I was leaning over him, pretending to show him some of the controls. As the female “star” swanned over to us, her jaw on the floor, Jim contrived to ask me a searching question.

“Just remind me” he begged, “is it Every Good Boy Deserves Treats?”

“Favours, for God’s sake! Favours! E  G  B  D  F. We’ve only got half an hour. Who the hell recommended you anyway?” I bellowed.

“Acker’s brother at the Bilk Marketing Board. I told you, I’m a drummer, not an organist.”

The ensuing tears that could be heard issuing from the dressing room were music to me. I doffed my sling and went into the room. My only words were “Same as last week?” There was a long, unbelieving silence as she looked at me in her mirror.

“You bastard!” she mouthed, then got up and, throwing her rippling, wrinkled triceps around my neck, hugged me.

Yugh!

But Roy and I never again had a problem with her.

 

At HodgsonSchool, Pickles, the Head Teacher was coming over more and more as a complete prat. He was a scout for Leeds United; but then again, every head teacher or head of PE could get himself a commission from any sporting organisation. After all they are in a key position for spotting any kind of talent.

Pickles reckoned to be a soccer expert. He must have been quite knowledgeable, though, since he spent most Saturdays on Leeds United account, watching their opponents of the following week and writing a minute-by-minute report on individual performances. The object of the exercise was, presumably, to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the team they would be playing the following week. A good bit of sport, you might say. But, every Monday and Tuesday, Pickles was totally involved in writing match reports; no way could you access the Head’s room to discuss school matters.

 

In the summer term of 1979 it became clear that Pickles had a problem.

Some of the staff, like PE teachers and one or two Heads of Department, had master keys which allowed us into school in the evenings or at weekends to pursue our extra-mural activities. In June 1979, those of us who had keys were asked to return them to Pickles who, it emerged, was giving private tennis lessons in the evenings and at weekends to a girl in the Fifth Form. Everybody, but everybody, knew who it was and what it really meant.

“I don’t want to get involved” said the poofy deputy.

“I’m sayin’ nought” said the caretaker.

Nothing of the dreadful secret was shared, except by the coteries of female staff who brooded knowingly in staff room corners.

 

At the end of the ’79 season, during the November “Half Term”, Sheila, Michael, Marie and I went on holiday. We had worked our parts off as usual during the season but agreed that we needed a change from London for our annual break. Instead, we chose a canal holiday in Shropshire.

We picked up the barge somewhere near Shrewsbury and set off on what was to be an idyllic, relaxing break. The weather was superb, the going totally as-you-please and everything a complete reversal to our lifestyles of the last six months. We were sharing the barge with my sister and brother-in-law and their two boys so sleeping arrangements were slightly cramped. We were being followed by a lovely small family with their two young daughters..

On November 4^th we “docked” in Market Drayton at about 4 o’clock. Sheila, I, Michael and Marie spent an hour or so sitting on the edge of the canal with some tea and sandwiches. The family with the two young girls joined us. Kathleen and Harry went off to Market Drayton with their kids and the agreement that we would meet for dinner at seven at a particular Indian restaurant in town.

Sheila left us “skimming” stones over the canal while she went to get ready for the evening out.

At just after six thirty, the four of us set off for the Indian restaurant. We ambled through the town of Market Drayton, pausing to peer into shop windows. We were crossing a quiet main street when Sheila bumped into Michael. She complained half-heartedly then fell quite heavily on the edge of the pavement. She was in desperate pain.

I sent Michael and Marie to the restaurant with the news that Sheila had food poisoning and that we would join them later.

A friendly couple drove us to the local cottage hospital from where we were eventually taken by ambulance to the RoyalShrewsburyHospital. Sheila was unconscious. During her second day in intensive care I met the parents of the older little girl from the family who had been following us on the barge. The girl had been sitting on the cabin roof of the barge as it went under a bridge. She had cracked her head on the bridge arch and, despite the slow speed of the boat, she ended up in the bed next to Sheila in intensive care. She died on the third of November. On the fourth of November 1979, Sheila died of hypertension associated with acute pyelonephritis (kidney failure).

 

The next couple of months were horrendous. Although my sister and Bain rallied I had to cuddle Marie in bed and explain to the six year old adopted girl that her “mummy” had died. Michael appeared to be very strong but, I know, he was terribly hurt.

With the help of Carol Wynn we managed to put a price to and sell off most of Sheila’s clothes which were in the expensive “gown” category. Pickles gave me a couple of weeks off school to get sorted out, time which I badly needed during this very stressful period.

Most people from the previous Christmas had rebooked for Christmas 1979 so, what should I do?

I felt very alone with little spare time to contact friends who might give some advice. In fact, quite a few friends didn’t ring us, which bothered me somewhat, although I was told this was quite common after death or divorce.

“After all” as someone put it “when a and b are very friendly with c and d and one of the partners buggers off, the two relationships are then completely different and, not surprisingly, they often break down”.

 

If I cancelled Christmas at the Irvine, a lot of people would be disappointed; my kids would have time to think instead of being involved. They would have lots of Christmas activities at school and the more “normal” I could make it for them, the better. So Michael and I decided to fulfil our Christmas commitments and open the Irvine. “Sheila would have wanted it” never really came into it. After all, would she have wanted to die?

I decided that the best thing for me was to get even more involved with work. This may well have been a mistake as things turned out.

But, with the help of some lovely people who rallied around, we ran Christmas at the Irvine. The guests, who had stayed with us many times over the years, were fantastic. We almost  tacitly agreed to enjoy our Christmas as if Sheila were still with us. I played with Roy over Christmas at Uncle Tom’s and most of the guests took taxis up to the Cabin on the three nights they were with us.

One or two of the acts used to “double” at the Hotel St.George, South Shore and I went along with them on a couple of late nights knowing that Michael would run the bar at the Irvine until I got back at about two a.m..

 

Lyn, a sixty year old bottle-blond diva, was the manageress of the Hotel St George which was owned by a successful geek in Bolton whose main business was selling welding gear. Lyn certainly did not make him any more successful. She and her live-in partner, an ex-copper called George Beattie, took him to the cleaners in so many ways. As she explained later, she would write guests’ names in the visitors’ book in pencil if they arrived any day other than Friday which was the day he, the owner, would come and check the books. Otherwise, when the guests left, she would simply rub the pencil entries out of the guest book and pocket the cash. But he was a prat and, as I was to find out, almost deserved the treatment he received from Lyn and George.

She would sell her own bottles of whisky at the bar, any sandwiches or room service charges went straight into her purse and so on.

George would entertain the guests on stage with an extremely amateurish but much-appreciated routine and all the visiting acts would do a spot at whatever price Lyn could agree. It might be a supper of (nicked) lobster thermidore, five or six large whiskies or an introduction to the lonely female in Room 6. It was a fantastically successful late-night bordello. I was hooked and, before long, in an attempt to immerse myself in work, I began playing regularly at the Hotel St George.

 

After the Christmas/New year period, Uncle Tom’s Cabin closed down until the start of the next summer season. I was totally involved in the well-being of Michael and Marie.

In reality, Michael became a replacement for Sheila, cleaning her, ironing her clothes and making sure all was well for school. I could not have survived without him. Selfishly, I played at all sorts of venues around town and, at one, backed a local singer called Lisa Shane.

Her husband, Brian, was in charge of the sound system and, being of similar ages and musical tastes, we had drinks together during breaks. Mike being an intrepid builder/developer and Lisa were looking for a guest house/hotel with real potential for development and, of course, I was looking for an “out”.

They lived in a large property three hundred metres south of the Irvine on Watson Road.

Two weeks later, the Pearsons and I exchanged keys.

 

Watson Road was a large, semi-detached red-brick house right on a junction of two main roads. It wasn’t ideal but it was near Marie’s school and was well decorated and furnished throughout.

I soon moved Marie to BreckSchool in Poulton so that Michael, Marie and I could at least spend the working day near each other.

 

At School, Sue Melvin and I became quite close. She was having problems in her childless married life. She enjoyed the lack of commitment that children demanded; but her relationship with Ian, her husband, was breaking down.

 

Sue and I would spend lunch-times and breaks together in my room and it wasn’t too long before she was making the ultimate sacrifice…………..that of accompanying me to some of the dreadful clubs where I played in the off-season. But there were usually functions at the Hotel St. George and some of the classier hotels in Blackpool and St Annes where we could be together.

 

I played my last season at Uncle Tom’s in the summer of 1980. It had too many emotional attachments; I used to cry a lot on my way to the Cabin and later, at my “double”, in the Hotel St George where, after plenty whiskies plied by Lyn, I would attempt to sing some of the songs Sheila and I had performed. On occasions, Sue and I would have coffee, biscuits and “afters” at Watson Road before she set off home to the other side of town.

 

 

At the HodgsonSchool parents’ evening in June 1980, Pickles was seen to spend an unusual amount of time with a particular female parent. Nothing too deep was observed but it came as no surprise when, in July, Pickles announced that this female’s daughter was to become his Head Girl for the ’80-’81 academic year. After all, his previous Head Girl/tennis pupil was about to leave.

 

By the start of the new academic year in September 1980 I was playing my last few weeks at Uncle Tom’s and still doubling at the Hotel St George.

At Easter 1981 we had another French exchange with Percy in Normandy during which Sue and I shared a bedroom at the Brochard’s home, La Cannière. Our room was above the garage at the far end of the house and short-arse Edmond made it quite clear that he did not approve of our liaison by banging all the downstairs doors first thing each morning. Sue was an attractive, fit, intelligent twenty-eight year old who was very popular with the Percy families and I often wondered if the little schmuck harboured pangs of jealousy. But I could understand his chagrin; Sheila had been dead less than two years and our co-habitation clearly went against his conservative flag.

 

 

In May of that year, Marie had quite an important dental appointment in Poulton with our friend Barry Seymour. Barry, his wife Alison and their three beautiful kids who attended HodgsonSchool had been pivotal in the success of our French exchanges. Barry had made it clear to me that she shouldn’t eat anything before her two o’clock appointment so I kept her away from BreckSchool all day. She sat in my classes and loved the attention given her by my higher set kids. At lunchtime, I had to enforce the “nil by mouth” regime so, with Sue’s assistance, we kept her entertained behind closed doors in my classroom.

Half way through the lunch-hour Pickles was doing his rounds. He came to my classroom, found the door locked, peered through the little glass door panel, saw Sue and me sitting at my desk and jumped to his sort of conclusion: a shag had taken place or was about to happen. He couldn’t see Marie who was innocently playing in my store room.

 

After lunch, Pickles summonsed me to his office.

We spent ten minutes or so discussing departmental matters then

“I think you’re seeing too much of Mrs Melvin in front of our kids” he suggested. The suddenness of his change of topic was not unexpected.

“At least she’s a consenting adult” I replied.

I got up and made for the door.

“What do you mean? Come back. Mr Fleming,………Alex ………”

BANG! (the door shut).

 

“Piss off!” I thought. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

 

 

 

 

On June 7^th it was Marie’s eighth birthday. Marie was an attractive, smiling little girl who, being coloured, was something of a rarity in Blackpool. Although she had gained a lot of sympathetic friendship after Sheila’s death, she was genuinely liked and very popular. Michael, now fifteen years old, was developing many of the artistic talents he had inherited from Sheila whom he missed terribly. He dressed Marie, supervised the buying of her clothes and even made her some garments using Sheila’s extremely complicated sewing machine.

The birthday was no exception. Marie was beautifully turned out and Michael, Sue and I prepared a tasty spread for the twenty or so kids who came to the party. A magician followed then, all holding hands, they set off on the three hundred yards to the PleasureBeach for what in Blackpool is the ubiquitous birthday “treat”.

At the end of a busy day, Sue and I relaxed with a drink in the kitchen at Watson Road. We kissed tentatively then hummed and “danced” very closely to a slow foxtrot, pausing for a slurp of wine. We kissed less tentatively then hummed and “danced” more closely to a very slow foxtrot, pausing for several slurps of wine. Then we spent the first night of the rest of our lives together.

 

The academic year of 1980-1981 went much as usual. It seemed that Pickles had abandoned the mother and was giving his undivided attention to the daughter who, as expected, had become Head Girl and was receiving what now seemed to be obligatory tennis lessons. This was to be his downfall.

Sue had organised a German exchange with the school in Biberach, near Ulm. It was totally of her making and I had been happy to let her take on the considerable responsibility. She had modelled it to a degree on the long-standing French exchange and had enjoyed great success. As a reward, Pickles agreed to give her a “scaled” post which meant she earned about £500 more per year. She was normally accompanied by another, male, member of staff who might be from the PE or History Department. In 1981, our relationship now generally accepted by most, Sue decided that I should be the second member of staff on her German exchange.

We travelled by train all the way to Ulm where a coach was waiting to take us on to Biberach. Most of the kids who studied German were from the A1 (express) classes; Sue and I made no pretence of our togetherness and the kids seemed to accept it with no difficulty at all.

We had a departmental joke that the only German Mr Fleming, our Head of Modern Languages, could manage was:

“Ich möchte ein Stük Swartsveldekirschetorte”, reflecting my penchant for fancy German cakes.

 

Rainer was the Head of English at the local high school in Biberach and, while the kids were all housed with local families in true exchange mode, Sue and I were accommodated by Rainer and his wife, Christel. She was a trained teacher but, as far as I could make out, preferred to stay at home and look after her elderly father and her son, Dirk. Rainer and Christel would be in their late forties, early fifties. She was extremely laid back and spoke little English. Rainer was a health food freak who consumed countless daily potions of weird mixtures. I’m sure he was the victim of his own liberal teaching methods which were popular in Germany at that time (and may still be, for all I know). There was bedlam in his classes and he would try to socialise at break time with groups of pupils, most of them smoking three or four fags in the space of fifteen minutes.

Apparently he had several run-ins with his Head Teacher, a female, which would drive him to an extra helping of unrefined muesli as soon as he got home. We saw very little of Dirk who could be heard most evenings practising his trumpet somewhere in the house. I use the word “somewhere” advisedly for the house was the strangest building I had ever set foot in or, indeed, eyes upon. It had been conceived by Rainer, in the shape of a snail’s shell. I understand the concept which, I suppose, was quite original but I doubt if I would have spent thousands of marks on a project that will certainly have pissed off the neighbours. How he got planning permission to build this absurdity in what was clearly a middle-class suburb of a middle-class town, God only knows. Apart from anything else, although the inside of the building was very modern and well-equipped, the stupid, snail-shaped roof leaked like a sieve.

The whole German exchange was a wonderful holiday. I was at a stage in life where I was never really “phased” by new situations. The scenery around Biberach and the setting of the town itself was wonderful but not unlike Sigtuna in Sweden with its green vastness and clear, pure lakes. More importantly, I had found a new, hopefully lasting relationship with Sue.

We felt rather naughty displaying our feelings in front of the kids but we landed with a bump when we arrived back at Poulton station two weeks later on June 22nd.

At the end of an exchange it is normal for the grateful parents to hug their returning offspring then thank the teachers who have made and built up the connection in the first place, paired off their kids with suitable host families and looked after their health and well-being during the stay and the journeys. Not so today. They simply picked up their kids and buggered off. Clearly, in ‘phone calls and letters, their kids had kept them well-informed about Mr Fleming’s and Mrs Melvin’s indiscretions.

 

July at school was, as usual, a month of tennis and football matches involving pupils and staff. On virtually the last day of term we staged the Masters v Boys soccer match. We had a few decent players on the staff, one of whom was Keith Dyson who, until fairly recently, had played for Newcastle United. The self-styled guru of professional football, Headmaster Pickles, who often referred to Keith as “useless”, was refereeing.

Keith played in the middle of the back three. He was majestic, almost balletic, in his all-round control of the ball while I fannied about on his left, making sure my hairpiece hadn’t slipped.

That night at about 3 a.m. Pickles was arrested at his home in Preesall not two miles from where I am now sitting. Apparently the mother of the head girl had become jealous and shopped him to the bobbies. The teaching staff at HodgsonSchool never saw him again.

Sue and I did.

 

 

The Deputy Head, a sixty year old fanny looking forward to his retirement, reluctantly took care of the floundering ship. Surprisingly, very few if any press appeared at the School while Pickles disappeared behind the high wire of Garth Prison. Few of us had ever met his long-suffering wife let alone his two teenage children. As far as we all knew, Mrs Pickles was not pin-up material and one of the children was “ESN” (educationally sub-normal, as we used to call them; “SEN” now, i.e. with Special Educational Needs).

 

In the autumn term of 1981 when the Deputy Head was in charge as acting-Head, a quite serious allegation was made against me by the NEA Examining Board. For the ‘O’ Level Oral exam in French, the candidates had to learn answers to 100 different set questions which were organised in ten groups of ten questions, with each group sub-divided into two sub groups A and B. On the day of the oral exam, the candidate chose two cards from an upturned selection of numbered cards so that he or she would be asked the five questions from, say, Section 6A and 2B.

Lost?

I thought it was a total arse-ache. It was a pitiful, unnecessarily complicated attempt at creating real situations where the candidate’s oral ability is tested randomly but, so that we could get on with more realistic, less time-consuming linguistic skills and tests, I allocated  batches (like 2A and 7B) to individual pupils before the exam. Of course it was wrong; but it was a system begging abuse anyway.

A parent of one of my GCE candidates, a vicar I think, had written to the Board and complained, rightly, that I had given our candidates an unfair advantage. He was referred to as “someone whose motives cannot be questioned.”

“The nearer the pulpit, the worse the Christian” sprung to mind; actually it is a saying I have found to be so very true, so very often.

Anyway, I was carpeted by the Fanny who was Acting Head and by the Senior Master whom I quite liked. They showed me the letter they had received from the Board. It mentioned irregularities in the German exam; I didn’t teach German although, as Head of the Modern Languages Department, I would be ultimately responsible for any such irregularities. It was quite clear that neither wanted their comfy little boat to be upset particularly after the very recent Pickles débâcle.

“Can we take it that you deny any impropriety?” one of them asked.

“I’m afraid not” was my curt, clearly unwelcome response.

Tattersall, Secretary to the Board, had got the language (German) wrong but my system right.

 

Anyway, I took the rap which resulted in my being barred from conducting NEA exams at any venue until further notice.

I had no doubt that the Acting Head would have informed the local Director of Education and was sure that his reaction would be to expect my resignation. I made an immediate appointment to see the Director, Mr Raymer, who told me to go away and forget it.

“Delegate someone within your Department to be examinations officer” he suggested. “That’ll let you get on with other, more pressing items.”

His son, Chris, was in my form at school and had taken part in several French exchanges.

 

I had spent the summer of 1981 playing at the Cala Gran in Fleetwood and doubling every night at the Hotel St George in Blackpool, less than half a mile from our house on Watson Road.

The Cala Gran is a caravan park not far from the local rubbish tip in Fleetwood. It was the worst summer I had played in the Blackpool area.

Kids ran amok in the reception area which led into the usually empty Cabaret/Nightclub Room where Ian Cross (drums) and I (keyboards) provided the resident backing for a good but disinterested singer/MC.

The bigger room was always packed with families and kids who gathered to hear the average five-piece group and the children’s entertainer. Probably as a kind of penance for having an empty cabaret room, the management decided that Ian and I had to play a couple of early evenings a week in the “big room” while the five-piece group tried to pull the adult punters into the Cabaret/Nightclub Room. It didn’t work. Ian and I knew a maximum of 6 popish numbers that we could sing and play reasonably well and the five-piece band couldn’t read music and so couldn’t back any cabaret that turned up in the “Night Club”.

 

I would be forty years old at the time and I was totally unable to keep my eyes off this fifteen year old girl who spent the whole of our two hours dancing provocatively right in front of the stage. I can’t remember if she was pretty but her solo dancing was so knowingly erotic I used to look forward to playing “the big room”. She knew I was intrigued and definitely played to it. Eat your heart out, Pickles!

 

But a more interesting contact was a young man called Gary who worked behind the bar in “the big room”. Some of the staff and occasional members of the public who regularly attended “the big room” formed an easily identified cadre of interesting characters; they could be piss-artists, funny, gifted or whatever but Gary, who was an extremely talented caricaturist had built up a gallery containing sketches of these people. I’m not sure what category I belonged to but, opposite, is his impression of me playing the piano.

I mention all this because, as I’ve said before, I do like meeting talented people; also, don’t you think the signature looks similar to that of Gary, the cartoonist in the Sunday Times ? As I write this, I am making daily attempts to contact the man, but to no avail.

 

Sue’s Mum and Dad used to visit us at Watson Road with Aunt Mary (then in her early seventies) and their little dog, Cocoa.

They made it quite clear that they hadn’t liked Sue’s first husband, Ian, but they were totally taken aback when I announced that our relationship might be more than platonic. After all, they had been to the Hotel St George, listened to my crap on the microphone and seen me throw an occasional tantrum with punters.

 

Sue and I married on October 22^nd at Blackpool Registry Office above the “adult bookshop”. We had agreed that we would keep things simple and that a Registry ceremony would be more appropriate for our second attempts. Our witnesses were Roy and Dyllis, who were regulars at the Hotel St George. Dyllis was in her sixties, a very friendly, pastel lady and Roy in his forties. Attending the wedding were Sue’s parents and Aunt, my mother, sister and brother-in-law, Marie and Michael, Dyllis and Roy. I am hopeless at any sort of ceremony. I stood totally erect while the Registrar read out the script and I verged on tears when he came to the “till death do us part” bit.

The Registrar took a breather.

“You do realise” he said to me in full hearing of the others “that this office is above the muckiest bookshop in Blackpool. But what we are doing up here is committing ourselves to a happy union of man and wife. So, for goodness’ sake, smile.”

 

After the ceremony, the procession down the narrow stairs was tailed by me, my new father-in-law and the Registrar. Jim, Sue’s Dad, tapped me on the shoulder and said “Welcome to the family” and, turning to the Registrar who was taking up the rear, asked:

“What do you get up to in your spare time?”

“I love fishing” I heard him say. “It gets me away from the wife”.

 

 

 

I wrote to Pickles in prison telling him the news and warning him that, when he got out, I couldn’t see anyone wanting to meet up with him. He was due to be released for Christmas so Sue and I invited him to Watson Road for a meal.

He turned up in his usual nonchalant, swaggering style. There was no sign of him having been incarcerated for the last six months. His wife was divorcing him and, he announced, he had got a new job.

“Oh, well done!” I enthused. “Doing what?”

“Teaching” was his unexpected reply. “I’ve got a headship. I’m afraid I can’t tell you where at the moment. I’ll come and see you in a year or so.”

“Good luck then” was all I could think of.

“I don’t need that” he replied smugly as he climbed into his red Volvo sports and zipped off.

 

Sue and I handed in our notice at Hodgson in time for leaving at Easter 1982. I was 41 and Sue 29. She had only completed five years teaching and I just eleven pensionable years in England. Most of our colleagues felt we had made a foolish decision but there was no way I wanted to spend another 25 years withering away to THEIR old tunes. Thankfully, Sue agreed to join me and we set about our plans to convert Watson Road into the Personalised Language Course centre (PLC). The Government had not yet created the abbreviation plc (for limited companies) and, unfortunately, we didn’t register the name.

Because ours was quite a rash move I managed to interest the Blackpool Gazette who gave us some free publicity to help us on the road.

But, to where?

Anyhow, after Easter, we were on our own.

 

We relied on my earnings from playing at various venues in and around Blackpool ………….weddings, Rotary and Masonic functions. But slowly our single line directory adverts in the local papers began to pay off. We got one or two private school-age pupils and, completely out of the blue, a call from the Chief Executive of Blackpool Council asking us to organise some “personalised language courses” in German for seven or eight Blackpool councillors who had taken an interest in the recent twinning of Blackpool with Bottrop in Germany. Sue interviewed the councillors then organised an eight week personalised language course.

They were total wankers on an obvious freebie but it became the launch of PLC.

 

Another total godsend was a call from the owner of the Hotel St. George. He felt he had been let down by Lyn and George (in other words they had been sussed) and would Sue and I like to take over the management of the Hotel. We would have the help of Joe Farrell who had been the resident factotum for several years.

We accepted gratefully but with some understandable sorrow.

 

Finally, at around the same time, I was offered a 6-night residency at the “Bellevue” pub on Whitegate Drive in Blackpool which would start that summer.  During the seasons, Blackpool was full of superb professional musicians whose shoes I couldn’t offer to polish. But, in the winters, a reading musician was quite in demand. Anyway, the pro’s from Manchester’s NDO and the like were busy in the Winter Gardens and on the Piers so they didn’t get in my way.

 

Joe Farrell was a complete angel at the Hotel St George. He knew the place like the back of his hand and lived in a converted garage behind the kitchen. He ran everything from bar to bookings and left me plenty room to get on with my own things, like helping run the fledgling PLC and, eventually, play at the Bellevue and the Hotel.

In fact, within a month or two of leaving Hodgson, we were almost self-sufficient, thanks in many ways to Joe. PLC had developed the Blackpool Council connection and we were picking up private school aged and adult pupils on a regular basis.

I had complete daily control of the Hotel purse-strings and was answerable to the owner Eric Barker, only on a Friday afternoon at two o’clock.

He would turn up in his large Mercedes and start his inspection. As I’ve explained, he used to sell welding gear in the Bolton area on commission, then, over a few years giving customers good deals, he let them know he was going to start up on his own. When he made his move, he would seal their new contractual commitment with a two-week freebie at his three-star Hotel in Blackpool. He was clearly doing very well and his Mercedes cars became bigger and bigger.

He was in his early forties, tall, smart-looking and very self-satisfied. He had the impression that he was liked by all and sundry. Eric was always courteous to people until things went wrong, at which point he would cut them down with cold logical steel. There were never any questions or doubts. His management skills were doused in computer-like logic and impregnable self confidence….totally admirable of course, until real, emotional, tired, fed up, end-of-season people are involved.

Sue wondered how I managed to maintain my cool with him when he came over on a Friday. He would work out a net profit for the week using a completely different method to mine. Once, according to his calculations, the cash float was 4p out. He asked me to replace the 4p from my own pocket. Sue was beside herself with rage but, because of her innocence and honesty, I couldn’t assure her that I had covered the 4p many, many times in the previous week.

Joe had his little business selling sandwiches on the side and I was buggered if I was going to let on.

 

The Hotel was flooded twice in the winter of ’82 – ’83. On the first occasion the central heating boiler had frozen up. The 32 bedrooms and ballroom downstairs were totally destroyed. Barker called in the insurers and, without any difficulty, got out of them a set of completely refurbished and redecorated bedrooms and a new ballroom floor. Two months later, it was flooded a second time. He had read the small print and, once again, got a totally (some may say better) hotel out of the settlement.

Brian, the k.p. (kitchen porter) got the rotten job of elbow-greasing the new dance floor twice in one year.

By the end of the ’82 season we were all completely knackered. The Bellevue had been a totally new scene for me. It always takes time and effort to settle in to a new scene and the dash across town at 11:15 p.m. followed by three hours of entertainment and management began to take its toll.

 

October and November was time for the “Illuminations” in Blackpool and this would be the first (and last) year Sue and I had to entertain the “Enfield lot.” at the St George.

They comprised a set of OAP’s from north London who had, apparently, stayed at the Hotel during many Illuminations. I couldn’t remember them and, indeed, would not have come across them on a daily basis anyway. Their group leader was a mousey 70 year old called Ted and his equally mousey wife called Maisie. He reminded me of a Concert Chairman (an MC) in a Preston WMC where I had “depped” quite often. His chairman’s box was immediately adjacent to the organ, where I would spend most of the evening. The windows were never opened so the room was always full of disgusting secondary smoke. To make things worse, the concert chairman slob would always, but always, retain a lit fag in his left hand which he rested on the waist-high parapet immediately behind me.

“Would you please move that cigarette somewhere else” I once begged. “I can’t breathe and I can’t see the music.”

He replied in a most original way.

“Piss off” he said.

I politely obeyed.

Standing up, switching the organ off, pulling down the lid then walking out always grabs the attention. You lose a bit of money though.

I never worked there again, thankfully.

 

Anyway, mousey Ted wanted a fight. I suppose I did too.

From Day One he complained that everything was different to when Lyn ran the place.

“La-a-a-a-st yeea, we did this, or that”.

Everything was a comparison to Lyn’s régime. Lyn, being of a certain age, would handle them beautifully. I couldn’t cope.

They had arrived on a Friday afternoon for an illuminations night on their way to the Lake District. I had had a tough management meeting with Barker, the owner, and was in no mood for mousey Ted.

“We no-o-o-rmally sit in the ballroom and play cards for our first afternoon” he announced.

“Well, I’m afraid you can’t this year. I’m sure you’ve noticed Brian there trying to buff the new ballroom floor. We’ve had a couple of floods, you see. You’ll have to use the sun-lounge.”

Mousey Ted was even more mousey as he retreated into the sun-lounge.

“La-a-a-a-ast yeea, Lyn gave us sandwiches and tea when we arrived” he said, chancing his hand even further. In fact she or Joe would have charged them double then pocketed at least half. Mousey Ted was clearly a seventy year old shit-stirring chancer.

Sue could see that, after a morning with Barker and an afternoon with Mousey Ted, I was getting more and more miffed.

“Joe and I’ll see to evening meal” she said. “You have a break ”

My heart sank. But Sue was learning the trade quite fast and knew she could depend a lot on Joe when I was not around.

 

In those days, there was little choice, if any, on the menu of guest houses and hotels of this stature. You had the main course or a salad. Actually, in earlier years in Blackpool, people used to take their own food to guesthouses and the landlady would cook it for them. Nowadays, guesthouses have become hotels, bedrooms are en suite and there are choices on the menu. But, in the early eighties, it was braised steak OR salad one evening, fish and chips OR salad the next evening and so on. This particular Friday, Sue left Joe to prepare the soup and the sweet and she went home to Watson Road with six “flats” to prepare what turned out to be six very large quiches.

 

When I returned to the Hotel at 5.30, Mousey shouted from the dining room to me in reception

“’Ere” he shouted. “What’s this?” as he prodded the quiche with his fork, at the same time leaning backwards and maintaining a safe distance, lest the quiche explode.

“We thought you’d like a change from jellied eel.” I said as I crossed the dining room, Basil Fawlteyesque.

“La-a-a-a-ast ye-e-a we ‘aed fish and chips on the Friday.”

I leant on his table with one hand so that I could approach his face.

“This yeea you can piss off” I whispered.

They left the dining room with the quiche mostly untouched.

 

Clearly, Mousey Ted was impervious to insults.

He, Maisie and most of their cronies were in the ballroom for the 11 o’clock start. The cabaret for the evening was Phil Kelly, a drunken Irish tenor who actually lived next door to us on Watson Road. He would be appearing with us, for his “double”, at about midnight.

Roy (the drummer who had been with me at Uncle Tom’s) and I spent the first part of the evening keeping a low profile.

At about 11.30 we received a telephone message from Phil telling us he would be arriving at the Hotel at about midnight and not 11.45 as arranged.

We had had a successful, uneventful evening to press, so I made a smooth, apologetic announcement about the slight delay in the show.

“Bloody typical, innit” I could hear Mousey mumble.

“……..so we’ll take a short break while you replenish your glasses” I announced “ and we’ll follow that with this evening’s prize elimination waltz”.

As Mousey and his mates went off to the bar, I went to the kitchen and retrieved a large portion of quiche from the bin which I took to the office and wrapped in fancy paper.

Elimination dances have always been a joke with musoes. You scan those on the dance-floor while you’re playing. If your “victim” is wearing white shoes, you stop the music, turn your back to the dancers and announce:

“Any ladies wearing black shoes please leave the floor with their partner” and so on until the girl with astounding boobs and white shoes wins the prize. A lingering kiss with individual band members is not optional.

On this particular night, Mousey won the well-wrapped quiche.

He was extremely unimpressed and, when he returned to his table, he started dismantling it and throwing bits around the room.

I was getting more and more annoyed when I was sent another message from Phil Kelly to say he would be delayed another half hour. In the most unperturbed tone I could muster I announced our apologies and promised that, by 1.15 a.m. Phil Kelly would be on stage for an hour of superb entertainment.

“’Eez not bleedin’ comin. ‘Eez loyin’” I heard from Mousey’s direction.

In fact, I’ve never liked liars and tended to avoid lies myself. But tonight would be different.

At about half past midnight, Roy and I got off the stand and went for a drink. One of the regular locals at the bar offered to buy so we had a couple of large whiskies.

At that very moment, a tall, well-built, middle-aged man came into the ballroom. He was wearing black trousers, a flamboyant bow tie and a red tuxedo.

“’Eez ‘ere” was the general buzz that went around the room.

I went over to him and slipped his money into his jacket pocket.

“There’s your money Phil” I said quietly. “We’ve had a bit of bother tonight. If anybody asks, you are NOT Phil Kelly. Understand?”

“Why? For the good Lord’s sake, what’s happened?”

“Tax man, Phil.”  Wink.  “Tax man.”

Phil’s eyes darted around the ballroom as he sought discreet refuge at the bar. His brushes with the taxman were the source of many a local joke and embroidered story.

 

Roy and I went back on stage.

“Gosh!” I said over the mike. “You’re so right, you people. Phil Kelley’s not able to make it tonight. We do apologise on his behalf.”

Everyone was looking at Phil’s bedecked hulk trying to conceal itself at the bar. He appeared totally “unaware” of all the taxmen looking at him.

“So” I continued “we’ll round off the evening with a last dance or two, after which we’ll close this room and serve you any drinks you may want in the Reception area. I’m sure that, like us, you’ll want to relax over a drink or two with your friends.”

Ten minutes later, after the last waltz, Joe and I assisted the old buggers with their drinks into the Reception area. We locked the slide doors and joined Phil with the other locals at the bar.

The slide doors had oval glass panels looking from the ballroom into the Reception area. At exactly 1.15, I asked Phil to sing us two or three of his favourite songs……………………………….

 

They left the following morning after breakfast. Joe cooked breakfasts every day with his Scottish girlfriend waiting-on. Normally I would get to the Hotel by about 10 a.m. and join Joe for a coffee in the sun lounge. That particular Saturday morning I was in good time to see Mousey’s coach leave. As they passed the sun lounge window, Joe and I afforded them angelic smiles and waves while some of them mimed what I could only describe as male masturbation. I do hope I’m wrong.

 

The Bellevue pub developed into a good venue for me and John Lennox. It was not affected by seasonal trade and, in the end, we played there until 1986.

The venue was frequented by local police and villains (“Same thing!” I hear you cry), but the majority of the clientèle were working class people. The landlord, Barry Eastwood, was about forty. (He died last week, 18^th December 2003). He was small, single, well turned-out and definitely a bright button. His managerial decisiveness was couched in a hearty, devil-may-care humour.

In one of the years, we held a “Bad Singing Competition” which boasted the latest Ford Fiesta as a first prize. The thing grew a huge momentum in the whole of Blackpool, the worst singer each night (as adjudged by the volume of boos and hisses) going into the next round of the series. The pub was bedecked with pictures of sporty, shining Ford Fiesta’s added to each week by Barry who put the name of the previous week’s winner and a big question mark underneath.

After three or four months of the “Bad Singing Competition”, the final was staged. When the winner was at last announced Barry appeared with a biscuit tin full of a very crushed Ford Fiesta retrieved from a local scrap yard.

“You have exposed us to the worst rendition of ‘Spanish Eyes’” he announced to the mentally deficient winner “so please accept this as the worst rendition of a Ford Fiesta.”

 

The acts who were paid to appear at the Bellevue would not usually qualify for the “Bad Singing Competition”. Some were less than the ultimate musical experience and most were never destined to leave the mediocrity of clubland. But, one evening, some time during 1984 I think, a young 15 year old girl and her father were shown into a section of the pub cellar which we referred to as “the dressing room”. Both John and I were dismayed when this kid produced the music of some really old standards, like Smoke gets in your Eyes, Blue Skies and Every Time You Say ‘Good-bye’.

I use the word “dismayed” because I couldn’t imagine this very attractive young brunette using such dated material; and John would have to use “brushes”, which, for him, was very bad news.

Her father was extremely protective and kept repeating “Please, just keep under her” (i.e. keep the volume down) “You count her in, Alex. Count her in, please”(i.e. count aloud the tempo for each song). He was more nervous than the kid and, like a second with his boxing protégé, accompanied her to the stage then took a seat directly in front of it.

After a few bars of her first song, you could hear a pin drop in what was, normally, quite an inattentive atmosphere. To this day, I have never backed such a gently swinging, sensitive, even sensuous female singer. And all at the age of 15!

Her name was Lisa Stansfield.

 

As a matter of course, Barry, the landlord, would fire one of his seven or eight female staff every fortnight “just to keep the rest on their toes”.

“This week, I’m down £28:70 on your till” I can hear him say to a newish recruit at the end of a Saturday night. “We’ll have to call it a day. Don’t come in again. Here’s what I owe you” and he would hand her her wage.

“But …………”

“I’ve not deducted the £28:70 and I’ve not informed the police.”

His nose would be twitching by now, and his cheeks would puff out as if he were stifling a grin. He would take a long drag on one of his 100 free king size Marlboro donated to him weekly by the cigarette salesman.

“But do come in some time for a drink”.

Barry knew that, by the time he dismissed them, they would not have accumulated any legal privileges.

It was sad but it was jungle law; and, of course, they never came in for that drink. I’ll never know why Barry didn’t set new bar maids on for a trial month then simply confirm or reject them. I suppose he liked the intrigue and the “power”. It was Blackpool, after all.

 

I remember one Saturday night in the pool room, a regular little hard nut got wind of the fact that some thug was coming to “kick his head in”. He removed one of his socks then went to the pool table. Leaning on the table and glancing round the small room, he quietly announced

“Nobody plays pool ‘til I say so. OK?”

Eventually, the other little hard nut came into the room.

“I’ve heard you’re looking for me” Number One says as he approaches the new arrival, Number Two who is standing at the bar..

They are both in their twenties, both nervous.

A girl tries to intervene.

Then the sickening, dull crack of three pool balls when Number One aims his loaded sock, sling-like into the newcomer’s skull. A second blow catches him as he falls to the ground.

He lies in a pool of blood. Number One empties his sock on to the pool table.

“OK”

As if rehearsed, two lads take up their cues and immediately start a game.

The police arrive; nobody knows anything about anything.

The ambulance comes.

John and I go back on stage.

It could be London’s East End.

But it’s Blackpool.

 

 

Sue and I finished managing the Hotel St George that November; it had only been a short-term stop-gap and PLC was beginning to take off. We knew from experience that it would take at least three years for our business to become established but, at least, I had a permanent year round gig playing at the Bellevue.

At various times over the next year or so, a musician friend, Dave Spencer, suggested I might supplement my income by doing some TV extra work. Dave appeared regularly playing darts at the Rovers on Coronation Street.

“You’ve got your Equity ticket and you’re not using it.” he would tell me regularly.

“Instead of sitting on your arse during the day, you can earn £45 for playing darts in the Rovers. The grub’s good too. We’re all musos making a bob or two. It’s good fun.”

In fact many, if not most of the “actors” on “The Street”, including the stars, are ex club acts.

He gave me the name of his agent, Bill Williams (a female), who provided many of the “walk-ons” for Granada and BBC in Manchester.

The agent explained that, with “special skills” (horse-riding, motor cycling, playing cricket convincingly etc etc) you could earn a lot more money. With speaking parts, however small, you were in the serious league. I listed keyboard playing, trumpet playing, French and Spanish speaking, motor cycling, and hairpiece wearing (intended as a joke, but it did produce work on a magazine advert.).

I soon got my first booking which was to play the part of the jury foreman in a virtual reality series called Crown Court with GranadaDave Spencer was wrong about it being fun. The amount of time (and therefore, presumably, money) wasted on television sets is criminal. The TV audience was not aware that, once we had spent the morning in a perfect mock-up of a courtroom listening to actors prosecuting and defending another actor over some fictitious crime or other we, the jury, had to retire, unseen, to a “jury room” where a beautiful buffet lunch was set out for us to devour while I, the foreman, chaired a discussion by the jury members on the accused’s guilt or otherwise.. The anomaly was complete when I learned that all the jury members on this particular episode were actually magistrates from the Courts not 100 yards from the Granada studios. I had difficulty maintaining order amongst those savants who held that, with the evidence they (and the audience) had heard during the filming, the case would have been dismissed at magistrate level let alone be referred to a higher court.

“Not guilty” I said on screen

Two weeks later I cashed my cheque for some £200.

 

Over the next few years I had lots of “non-speaking” parts. I was reliable, did what I was told and earned a regular 15% for Bill Williams. But the time-wasting, the money-wasting and the aura all the stars and bit-parters built around themselves got me down. Most of the “names” and “semi-names” despised the walk-ons. They probably realised that the “extras” could do as good a job as them in the extremely easy television milieu. As former club acts they got into the series because they looked the part at the time and they had their Equity ticket.

Please believe me, there are no sour grapes here; I’d love the money and would certainly, initially, enjoy the fame. But the inaction and posturing would get me down.

 

In my early days, Dave Spencer and I were in the Granada bar which was housed in the old college opposite the front of the Granada building. A young lad whom Dave recognised as a club act nervously came in and joined us for a drink. He was a guitar-vocalist, one of clubland’s staple diet.

“I’ve been booked for two weeks” he explained. “I don’t know where to go or what to say. I’m going to lose a load of club work if I’m not careful.”

Kevin Kennedy doesn’t do the clubs now. He’s been well established for twenty-one years on Coronation Street as Curly.

[Actually, as I write this, I hear on the News that Kevin Kennedy is moving on from Coronation Street to concentrate on his music. “What goes round, comes round” as they say.]

 

One of my next tasks was to be a Frenchman on Coronation Street.

Deirdre was having an affair with Mike Baldwin and Ken was staying up late with Uncle Albert as he waited for Deirdre to return from a supposedly late-running class at a local “night-school”. Ken being Ken, he was watching a French film on BBC 2. It involved the French surrendering to the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War.

The shot was from the back of Ken’s television set with a frontal of him supposedly watching the box. So I was not going to be in shot.

Upstairs, in the gantry, I had been given about 300 English words of an imagined surrender speech by a French general which I was asked to translate into French.

After half an hour or so, I was taken down to a dubbing studio where we recorded my translation in one take.

The whole thing took about an hour to translate then record. On the episode of Coronation Street my contribution accounted for 14 seconds, right on the opening.

I was paid £370 for my trouble.

 

Another thing I did as an extra starred Jim Ellis from Z-Cars. The writer was a fellow called Jim Allen and, while we were on the set in down-town Manchester, he and I shared a pint or two in the local pub. At the time, I was trying to write scripts for short TV dramas and comedies. I had just had a script returned from the Head of Comedy at Granada with a covering note that said, amongst other things

“This treatment lacks grace, wit and dignity.”

I took it in one day to show Jim who was appalled at this reaction from “a totally talentless wanker”,

“That guy’s a sycophantic bureaucrat who has no right to comment on an artist’s work. I’ve spent eight years trying to get where I am and I’ve not been helped by cunts like him. I’ll have a word with him; leave it to me.”

That was the last I heard of it.

 

For that particular episode, I was back on my £45 a day as a walk-on in what was depicted as a 1930’s trade union conflict on a building site somewhere in the suburbs of Manchester. Granada Television had rented an on-going building site and, with several obvious adaptations made to fixtures and fittings, we were ready to film a fight between two rival groups of trade unionists. With the use of three or four strategically-placed hosepipes, the crew created a hellish quagmire of sand and earth where we were to meet and fight with an in-coming lorry-load of other extras portraying a rival group.

I was paired with one of the three professional stuntmen (£350 a day) in the welcoming group.

“’Ere” he said, taking me by the lapels. “Let’s get on to a dry spot.”

The lorry arrived. All the extras rolled about in the mud for several “takes” in mock combat at £45 a day while I (£45 a day) and the stuntman (£350 a day) enjoyed the ride on an elevated dry spot. I would have thought at least one forward flip or roll into the very wet mud would go some way to justifying this guy’s hefty fee not to mention the free transport and superb lunch from the snap wagon.

In the event, at lunchtime, the queue took its familiar form at the wagon with the crews, production members, “stars”, stuntmen and “supports” at the front, followed by the £45-a-day extras, five or six of whom were dripping wet with chattering teeth, taking up the rear.

“To those who have ………….”

 

Talking of which, after lunch an elderly bloke, probably just back from the Post Office, had set himself an observation point on the third landing of the high-rise block of flats right opposite the site in which we were filming. The flats were not in shot, of course, and he knew it. You could actually hear him talking, and he knew that too.

We started the afternoon’s filming. Everyone was in place, psyching themselves up.

“Quiet on the set, please!” shouted the FM

“And, cue!” he declared, dropping his pointing hand in the direction of two “stars” who started a meaningful conversation.

The cameras rolled.

“Piss off!” bellowed the old geezer from the flats opposite.

 

They tried again.

“Twats!” he shouted, just in case his earlier effort had not been fully understood.

 

After one or two more botched attempts, a PA was sent to quieten him with the promise of £50 in cash if he afforded us an unencumbered afternoon’s filming.

Who needs Equity?.

 

I appeared as an extra, sometimes with special skills, on all the soaps except “Eastenders”. Even with “repeat fees” where a fraction of one’s original fee is paid if episodes are repeated or played in other countries, the income was not wonderful.

 

Other non-memorable appearances were in “Brass” with Timothy West and “Airport” with Rod Steiger, Antony Perkins, Joanna Lumley and others. I was on a special skills booking and drove Steiger and Perkins around the approaches to ManchesterAirport for some reason or other.

Perkins was a lovely, normal person who delighted in queueing up with non-entities like us extras at the snap wagon.

But what a twerp Steiger was!

At the end of a heavy day’s filming in a Leeds hotel, I wanted to get finished so that I would not be late at the Bellevue. We had two more scenes to film. The extras weren’t needed but the FM wouldn’t let us go. They had “checked the gate” of the camera after every scene and there was absolutely no reason for us to stay. If Steiger, the prat, had had enough for the day, that would have been it. “A wrap”. As it was we had to hang about while the camera and sound people manœuvred themselves into a very narrow hallway where Steiger, Joanna Lumley and a couple of companions had to enter a lift then, in the next scene, be seen to exit the lift after an implied meeting upstairs.

They shot the first scene and checked the gate. All O.K.

It was six fifteen and I had to be in Blackpool for an eight p.m. kick-off at the Bellevue.

They shot the second scene with the Muppet and his three companions exiting the lift. All went well, they checked the gate and we extras started signing off on some new kind of time-sheet we had never seen before.

It was six forty and I would make it in time to Blackpool.

Then, the sound equipment half-dismantled, Steiger announced he had worn a different pair of “eyeglasses” going up in the lift to those he wore coming down. It was bad for continuity. Could we do the second scene again?

The continuity girl was perplexed because she hadn’t noticed anything untoward. The sound people had to reset everything in the narrow passageway. I was beginning to panic and on the point of leaving anyway.

Steiger and the others got into the lift again. It was two minutes to seven.

“Cue Mr Steiger” shouted the FM.

The lift doors opened and Steiger emerged…..wait for it now, please, please wait for it…….. with his “eyeglasses” pulled an inch to the left, so that the right lens was resting on his nasal bridge.

There was silence for an instant.

A “grips” who had been talking about his tea for the last hour or so muttered “Bloody hell!” like anyone would who had been kept away from his tea at the end of a busy day for no good reason. Forced laughter erupted from those who knew on what side their bread was buttered while I pushed my way, quite violently, to the timesheet, signed it then endangered the lives of all travelling westward on the M62.

Since then, having accumulated much more experience in that medium, I now realise that any prat who has incurable belief in himself or herself and “can chew gum and walk at the same time”, can act on television and films.

 

Another prime example was a film called “Studio” which was also produced by Granada Television. Again, I was employed as an extra, this time for two days of filming. I acted the part of a film cameraman and lumbered a very heavy shoulder camera around a set in the Granada Studios in Manchester.

As an extra, you are rarely told what the plot is and where your little rôle fits into the scheme of things. But, as time goes by, you put two and two together.

In this case, the extras and I had no idea what the plot was about. “Studio” starred people like Zoot Money and other insignificant little shits who were so clearly into themselves it made me sick. One little schmuck made a point of looking down his homosexual nose at me and a fellow extra while on camera. Maybe this was some kind of method acting; I just didn’t know.

The freelance Director who, of course, was called Julian met with high-powered Granada people on the set. He would nod furiously in agreement with whatever they said, his bedraggled mop flying about the place in an attempt to demonstrate unreserved, shared artistic appreciation.

One of the Granada people he met was the Head of Comedy who had condemned my earlier script submission as “lacking in grace, wit and dignity”. I can assure you that “Studio” had so much grace, wit and dignity that nobody I talked with on the set (including real camera men) realised that it was supposed to be a comedy too.

It failed miserably in the ratings.

 

Of course my observations were draped in sour grapes. I wanted to have their power, control and demand but I couldn’t, for the life of me see where they were all coming from.

 

Bill Williams rang me in May 1985.

“You are the only French-speaking Equity member available in Manchester next week” she said. “I’ve got a nice little one for you………… two days on location near Manchester.”

“Thank you, Bill. What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, darling; a love story, I think. You’ll be speaking French. Be at Granada, 9 a.m. Thursday morning for a costume

fit. Now remember, darling, leave out what you’ve not done.

So, Thursday and Friday this week then take it from there. ‘Bye, darling.”

And that was it; in fact, quite a lengthy briefing for Bill. She knew I’d turn up, she knew she would get the cheque from Granada, she knew she would deduct her 15% commission and send the rest to me. The only thing she didn’t know was that she should have booked a German speaker.

 

At the costume fit we were kitted out with blue overalls. We were to be prisoners-of-war in England some time between the end of the War in 1945 and the final repatriation of German P.o.W’s. Apparently our leader, a German officer, supposedly married and with three kids had fallen in love with a female student at the Oxbridge college where we prisoners were doing some labouring work. I couldn’t see where the French speaking would come into it but, as I’ve said before, on those TV sets nobody tells the minions anything. I would be on £300 or £400 a day and I was not for buggering it up, so said nothing.

Most of Thursday was spent filming in the quadrangle at Cheetham’s School which, I suppose, looks quite like the environs of some remote Oxbridge college.

During “snap”, which we had with a couple of PA’s in the coach which had brought us from Granada studios, we learnt that the male German lead who was actually Austrian could not stand the English female lead with whom he had supposedly fallen in love. Apparently, her feelings for him were even more obtuse.

It’s hard graft, this acting!

 

The following day we were on location near Altrincham. The researchers had found a disused military camp that would be used as virtual accommodation for us prisoners. A couple of toilets and an office had been restored for our use.

We alighted from the coach and gathered in front of the camp admin. section at about 10 a.m. on the Friday morning. The only “prop” in sight was an old Jeep.

The Director gathered together the Austrian “star” and the four or five extras behind the Jeep.

“Right, in this scene, we are coming back from a hard day’s work on a local farm” he explained. “Now, who’s our German speaker?” he enquired, looking around our small group..

There was no reaction from anyone so, in the split second afforded me, I realised Bill Williams had made a mistake.

I stood forward and gave a Nazi salute.

“Ich möchte ein Stück Schwarzwälderkirschtorte” I shouted.

“Right” said the Director. “In the Jeep Hans is going to say to you that

the farmer you work for is a good lad. You just agree with him. OK? Say something laddish in reply. OK, everyone? Let’s go for it.”

“One minute, please,……darling” I said. “Can I visit the loo?”

“Alright, darlings. Alex will have a comfort break. Take five, but only five.”

If any other extra had asked for this he’d have been left behind.

I went to the loo and rang Sue on the mobile.

“How do you say ‘He’s a good lad’ in German?”

“Er ist ein netter Kerl” she told me.

I practised it again and again with Sue over the ‘phone and even wrote a phonetic transcription on the palm of my hand.

To this day, we watch the video and marvel at the totally un-Germanic sound that was heard on national television.

But my “fluent” German would soon play an important rôle in my future teaching career.

 

Over the next few years, I accepted several little “cameo rôles” in various dramas and soaps. Most of all, I enjoyed the few advertising pieces I did on television and in still photography. There seemed to be fewer posers around that work. The object was to get the job done as well, as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

“Hollands Pies” was a case in point. I went to the studio in Salford for two o’clock, was told I would be a rugby player, got kitted out appropriately, went out to the car park to dirty down, did the photo-session and was home in Blackpool for six o’clock. The only hold-up had been the cutting of the pie with a Stanley-knife, filling it with the meat of two other pies and applying eyebrow makeup to the pastry to give it that well-cooked appearance.

 

A near miss that I really regret was an audition at Granada to replace Chris Kelly as the voice-over on World in Action.

The auditions were held in the dubbing studio where we had put down the French gibberish for Coronation Street. But, this time, all the people involved were serious non-timewasters. In a sort of “green room” next to the studio, I had five minutes to read over an excerpt of a script about a former Nazi criminal who was living in Argentina at the time. A glance at it and I immediately focused on the Spanish words and names. But then my heart sank as the German emerged.  Bill Williams had got it wrong again.

 

A seriously serious guy opened the door.

“Alex? Come with me please. We’ve only given you a few minutes to read the script because, quite often, a story breaks, we get Chris and he goes straight into it.”

I followed him into the studio where two more seriously serious blokes were sitting, deep in serious conversation.

“You’ve done this before” the first seriously serious bloke said as he showed me into a tiny, glass-fronted box with a worktop, a small speaker, a red light and a green light. I didn’t know whether what he had just said was a question or a statement. He didn’t wait for a response.

“Watch these lights. When you see the green light, read that script. Make it as matter-of-fact as you can; we don’t want any interpretations, please. When the red light is shining, stop your reading. Wait for the green light to come on before you start again. Of course you know that on the screen there, (he pointed through the glass panel) you’ll see what you’re talking about. We’ll go in a couple of minutes. Good luck!” and he buggered off, closing the door firmly behind him.

All I could see through the tinted glass was the outlines of the two other serious guys who were clearly there to watch my reactions to things.

I started to sweat and the more I realised they would notice, the more I sweated.

I think I read the script alright but, clearly, they didn’t want a sweating git with a dodgy German accent.

I didn’t hear from them again.

Thanks, Bill.

 

Over the next years I did quite a few bits, very small bits, on TV and in advertising. But I was never “noticed” and PLC took over as our main, only source of income.

In fact, from’82 onwards, 30 Watson Road in Blackpool was our focal point. We had a small language lab., a shower room and toilet, kitchen and two quite large reception rooms downstairs, a toilet, bathroom, kitchen, two bedrooms and a lounge upstairs. In about the middle of 1983 Harry Hardwick, who had made lots of alterations and extensions at the Irvine and would continue to play an important part in our business lives, built a superb rear roof lift to contain a very private lounge and bedroom.

PLC was conducted entirely on the ground floor. The smaller of the two reception rooms became a large office and the other, a classroom.

Some time in October 1983, I was sitting at the large table in the classroom, working on the compilation of our PLC “Side Guides” which we were designing to accompany our personalised audio tapes. The front door was rapped decisively. I went and opened it. On the doorstep was a 50 year old chap with greying hair, a pronounced twitch and a Scottish accent. He strode purposefully past me into the hallway. He was followed by a much younger man in his twenties wearing a pristine, full-length, off white twentieth-century toga; his Arabic or mid-Eastern origins were confirmed by the small procession of five little fat brown boys who followed him.

I closed the front door.

“Come in, please” I said sarcastically, having watched their parade.

I ushered them all into the classroom.

I sat at the head of the table with the Arab to my left and the Scotsman to my right. The boys sat passively at the end; never a word was spoken by them.

“How can I help you?” I asked, looking first at the Scotsman then the Arab.

“We want English lessons for these wee boys. Can you handle it?”

“Yes. What do you want them to do with their English at the end of it all?”

“They belong to very well-placed families in Saudi Arabia. We want them to hold their own in international company. Some Ladybird books or the like” he added incongruously.

“How often do you want them to come?” I asked. The Arab continued his pristine silence.

“They’re here until about December. We want them to come every day, two hours in the morning, lunch then two hours in the afternoon. They’ll need some exercise, of course, and some trips to places of interest. We want them to stay in English families. Can you handle it?”

“I can handle it, easily, Mr….eh…? “

“Galloway; Bill Galloway” said the major-domo. “How much?” he enquired.

“Who the bloody hell do they think they are?” I wondered.

“How many boys are there? I take it there are only boys”.

“Yes. These five and two others.”

“£75 each a week for the tuition and lunch” I said, completely off the top of my head.

The Arab to my left spoke for the first time.

“Too much” he said, without even looking at me.

I had bought shirts and trinkets from Arabs in the markets of Nairobi and Alexandria. So I eyeballed him, blinked once, sighed emphatically then turned to Galloway;

“Which part of the fatherland are you from then?” I asked him in exaggerated, mock Scottish accent.

Bill Galloway was obviously well into the Arabic way of things.

“I’m from a place just out of Glasgow. What about you, where are you from?”  etc  etc

Three or four minutes later, the Arab waited for a pause in our conversation then said:

“O.K.”

“We want them to start on Monday” Bill said. “Can you sort out their accommodation to start from that day? We want the boys to be in families. We’ll pay you twice your asking fee, to cover tuition and accommodation. We’ll bring the boys here on Monday morning at 9 o’clock and pick them up at 4 o’clock. Do you understand?”

“Just a minute” I said. “I hope you understand that we have a code of discipline we adhere to. While the boys are in our care, I’ll stand no nonsense. What they do after 4 o’clock is not my responsibility.”

I looked at Bill then Ziad, as he was called.

“That’s fine” said Bill. “They’re used to discipline.”

Two of the boys nudged each other and sniggered.

“That, I will not stand” I said indicating the two boys. “When I speak, they listen”.

“Excellent” said Bill. “That’s exactly what their parents want.”

“The other thing that WE want” I said emphatically “is payment in cash one month in advance for all those services. So, on Friday morning or before, I would like cash for ………….. (several moments to calculate)…………     £4200 to cover the first month’s expenses.”

 

I felt I had done quite well on a morning when nothing seemed to be happening.  Bill Galloway felt he had done well for reasons that would become clear later. Ziad……………….well, that’s another story.

 

Bill arrived the following Thursday bearing £6000 in cash.

“Tell me about their accommodation” he commanded with that twitch that looked like he was trying to free his neck skin from a collar that was too tight.

I knew of several guesthouses whose owners had school-aged children and who would be glad of the extra income now the season had ended. I had everything arranged. I told Bill where each property was.

“Would you like to see the properties or leave it to me?”

“I like your style” he said with a twitch. “I’ll leave it all to you.”

The two older boys will have £100 pocket money each a week and the younger ones £50 each a week. I think you’ll find this will cover everything” he said, handing me the wodge of £6000. “OK?” which, said in a South Glasgow twang became Bill’s call sign.

“Yes, I’m sure. But I must point out that, with staffing and accommodation commitments, I must have your payment in advance of each month O.K.?” I asked, mimicking his accent.

 

This Arabic connection went on for several years and definitely formed the financial basis for PLC. But, of course, the boys were trouble. Basically, they came from very well-off families around Tabuk. They had access to far too much money and despised women who were better or more important than them…………..a description that applied to most of the ladies with whom they came into contact. They were fat, spoilt, fourteen year old little shits who wanted everything their own way. They had problems with the landladies, problems with their daughters who were supposed to succumb to their fat uselessness and problems with the excellent lady teachers I employed for them.

 

In the first week, Daar had a set-to with one of those lady teachers, who called me into the classroom.

“What’s the problem?” I asked her, a hard, secondary modern, street-wise teacher drenched in years of experience.

She was clearly upset and, in normal circumstances, would have absolutely squashed the miscreant with her sledgehammer tongue.

“He won’t do what I ask him to do” she said, close to tears.

I approached Daar who was smiling in his seat.

“And what was that, Miss?” I asked.

“He’s been very naughty this morning and I’ve asked him to leave the room.”

I probably cocked my head, a signal, I am told, to most of my more long-standing pupils that violence is ………….

Thud! He got a ringing smack on his fat jowl.

He stood up, indignant, defiant.

“No!” he exclaimed. “She’s a woman.”

Smack!

“She’s English and she’s a lady. Get out”

I knew this could be the end of a profitable relationship; but we had to get things right.

I looked at the other four individually and, with raised eyebrows implying “Would you like to get out too?”

I waited for their reaction. They stayed in their places. In the event, Bill Galloway was most approving of my actions and, in fact, assured me that Daar’s father would approve too. But, the more I got to know them, the more I realised these Saudis lived a double life. The boys could only have learnt their anti-feminist views at home.

 

I knew from my time in Africa that a lot of Muslims drank as much alcohol as we Europeans; it was the same, at least with these Saudis.

Two examples come to mind.

The boys had an elder “brother” called Hamid who came to England every year at a time when he could avoid the inconveniences of fasting at Ramadan. I was told that it was and still is difficult to get a flight to Europe out of Muslim countries at this time of the year. Hamid and his entourage would drop the girls off in Paris for some shopping while he and his other “brothers” would proceed to London and spend a lot of money getting bladdered.

By 1984, it had all gone wrong. The price had to be paid. He needed a heart transplant and he took residence in a London private hospital serviced by Magda Yakub.

Bill Galloway thought it appropriate that I should take the boys, with Ziad, to London to see Hamid in his private clinic.

 

We stayed at the Palace Hotel in Piccadilly and went up to the north London clinic the following morning. Cost was apparently no consideration; I was told that “the Crown Prince was paying for everything”. It was later revealed to me that the boys’ families, who had control of the area surrounding Tabuk in the north of Saudi Arabia, were in partnership with the consortium employed by the Royal Family to build a highway from Riyadh to the military base of Tabuk. The families were relatively small-time local sheikhs but, clearly, their co-operation was important. Bill Galloway had involved himself somewhere in the Tabuk end of the deal. I don’t think he made any regular money out of the arrangement. But he certainly enjoyed the ex’s, the kudos and the ubiquitous promises. Bill was the Saudi’s Mr Fix-It for everything in Britain.

 

We saw Hamid after his transplant. Pristine Ziad and the boys held Hamid in the highest esteem. After all, it was his building company that had the contract for the Tabuk end of the deal and he was the eldest brother in one of the three powerful families of Tabuk.

It didn’t do him any good though, because the erstwhile smoothy died two or three days later.

 

After our visit to the clinic we went for a meal to a Lebanese restaurant in central London. I remember surprising Ziad by taking photographs of the occasion. He was totally astounded and, quite aggressively, asked me to return the film while he removed all evidence of alcoholic consumption, I inserted a new film and we took it “from the top” with the boys and Ziad sitting happily behind bottles of Coke and Perrier.

I came across many examples of this kind of hypocrisy in the years that followed.

A classic example happened in early ’85 when a 20-year old lad from Tabuk was booked in for one-to-one lessons with me for a period of three months at the end of which his father would come to Blackpool and assess his progress. Ahmed was very Europeanised and, in truth, Sue and I both quite enjoyed his company. He was perfectly happy to be taught by Sue and we often lunched together upstairs.

Sue was very busy at this time and has never really stopped since. Her German classes with the Town Hall lot had proved very successful, she had built up quite a coterie of Germano-philes who came to her for private or, in the case of a local girls’ school, group tuition and she had given birth to our first child, Eloise.

Anyway, Ahmed often accompanied me to the Bellevue where he would enjoy a pint with the rest of us and, on occasions, use the services of the local bordello.

Towards the end of his “term” with us he became more and more nervous about the pending visit of his father. When father finally showed up I followed his curt instructions and booked him into what is now the Hilton Hotel in Blackpool.  Not to be outdone, I also made a booking for the three of us to have lunch at the South Shore Seafood Restaurant.

Ahmed begged me not to offer his father or him any alcohol during the meal.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the first thing father wanted to do was inspect the kitchens. I was teaching the Manager’s daughter at the time and I had warned him to expect possible bizarerrie. We went through the inspection to the complete amusement of the other diners.

I had a bottle of wine while Ahmed and Dad had orange juices.

At the end of lunch, we took Dad to his Hotel on the NorthShore. As he got out of the car he instructed:

“You bring your family and friends here tonight. We have dinner together.”

“I have lots of friends.”

“OK” said Dad with a nonchalant tilt of his head. Clearly his game was to improve on my meagre offering at lunchtime.

 

By six o’clock that evening I had rung ten or twelve friends, four or five of whom were available that evening. At about eight o’clock, twelve or fifteen of us sat down at the pre-booked array of tables to await the arrival of our generous host. He arrived at 8.30 as pissed as a bookie’s runner. How the hell he could speak and walk at the same time, I just do not know.

We had a splendid, no expense-spared dinner with Dad quaffing orange juice between sorties to his bedroom for discreet alcoholic top-ups during which times Ahmed would dash to the bar for two or three large shots of Paul Daniels.

This branch of hypocrisy typified everything we did with the Arabs.

 

 

 

In the summer of ’83 I took a telephone enquiry from what was clearly a male southerner.

“I’m working in Blackpool for the season” said this geezer. “I’ve had to bring my son with me; he can’t be trusted to live on his own in London.

Can I swear?”

“Feel free.”

“He’s a bleedin’ nuisance. Blackpool Education said you were the man to handle him on a private basis.”

“What’s his name?”

“Athol,…… on a good day. There’s not many good days, I’m afraid.”

“How old is he? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

“How d’you know?”

“Vince Hill isn’t it?”

“How d’you know?” he repeated.

“I shared your bottle of whisky every night for a week in the Senate, up in Peterlee when you and your wife were celebrating the birth of your first child. I presume that was Athol.”

“Bloody hell! Yeah, they gave me your name at Blackpool. Alex. Of course, Alex. “The Two of Us” your act was called. A coloured girl and you. What was her name? Sheila, wasn’t it? She came to see me four or five years ago at the North Pier. How is she? How are you?”

“Sheila died in ’79, Vince. Why don’t you come round; we can discuss Athol and see if I can be of any help?”

 

He came round to Watson Road with his “landlord”, an ageing fellow whose sexuality from the start was questionable. They were both wearing long overcoats, despite the time of year and made an ostensible show as they emerged from Vince’s antique Bentley. While real superstars tend to disguise themselves, Vince obviously felt a need to announce himself. When we worked together in Peterlee, I had never heard of the guy although every night was “house full” with old dears and their mates.

Sue’s parents, Jim and Betty were staying with us on holiday, Jim pottering about the house and Betty basing herself on the first floor to be near baby Eloise. She had always ranted about Vince Hill and his appearances on TV’s “Stars and Garters” so I took great pleasure in letting her know he was downstairs having a cup of tea and would she like to join us. She wouldn’t. It was like having Willie Bauld or Cliff Morgan in your front room.

I went downstairs to the kitchen where Jim had just boiled the kettle and was saying to our visiting superstar:

“How many sugars,… eh,….. what’s your name again?”

Anyway, we set up lessons for Athol, two hours a day, at the landlord’s house just outside Poulton-le-Fylde.

 

The house was enormous and set in a plot of about ten acres. It had a large swimming pool and a billiard room. The Hills occupied a garret flat, quite tastefully furnished but definitely out of the way. Other seasonal tenants were (the late) Dustin Gee and his show business partner, Les Dennis. Sheila and I had worked with them at the Rainbow Club in Leeds but, like many of their type, all they wanted to do was talk about themselves.

Athol despised everyone and most things: his father, his genre of music, his show business cronies and the teachers at his expensive public school. He had revolted by forming a loud punk group and being rude and objectionable to his teachers. Once he had realised that I was more than happy to be rude and objectionable to him, we began to establish a working relationship. Like so many of these kids, he wanted to relate to adults that he could like until he had got through his adolescence.

I remember Vince saying to him:

“Look, Athol, forget that horrible stuff you call music, forget your problems at school, your Mum and I just want you to have good general knowledge like ‘The Romans were in England from 18 hundred and whatever to whatever.”

 

Athol would be in his late twenties when he died of a drug overdose near his parents’ home in Richmond.

 

 

Shortly after her birth, it became clear that Ellie was suffering from asthma. I have memories of being half-way through an evening at the Bellevue when I would be called off-stage to take a call from Michael or Marie with the news that Sue was with Ellie in A+E at the Victoria Hospital in Blackpool. She was invariably admitted, thank God, to the Children’s Ward where the treatment and care under Dr Woods and his team was so reassuring. In the beginning Sue and I had spent many sleepless nights pushing the pram up and down the Prom. in an attempt to fill her lungs with fresh air. But we soon got into a routine of about six to ten confinements of one week each in every year. These periods of hospitalisation were stressful. We were running a business and so, by definition, the telephone was constantly ringing and, each time, we feared it might be the Hospital with bad news. The guitarist in one of the regular acts at the Bellevue, himself an asthma sufferer, used to say to me;

“Stop worrying; it’s only asthma”.

I’m glad I didn’t know at the time just how many lives were lost to this horrible condition.

The “seven year cycle”, the span within which people supposedly became asthmatic then shed the condition, didn’t work with Ellie who continued to be hospitalised on occasions until she was about thirteen. Although now twenty years of age, she still suffers from attacks which, thankfully, she is able to control herself with suitable medication.

But she has deep-rooted memories of those childish times in hospital; the distress, the ensuing care and relief and the final well-being before Doctor Woods finally allowed her home.

Once, when she was seventeen and I accompanied her to an orthodontist’s appointment at the same Blackpool hospital she said to me “I feel like I’m coming home. I love it here.”

 

Some teachers have become teachers because, perhaps, they were helped through a difficult period by a teacher. Some dentists become dentists for similar reasons, some doctors, doctors; and so on.

Anyway, Ellie is now training to become a physiotherapist. When the physio visited her during a hospital stay it usually meant she was on the mend and the gentle patting behind her lungs soothed her.

 

 

In September 1984 we opened our Fourth and FifthYearCollege in the premises on Watson Road. Sue and I had had a vision that some parents with money, perhaps recently-acquired, who were despairing of their teenage children, might be prepared to spend a few grand over the last two years of their kids’ education in an attempt to gain one or two meaningful ‘O’ Levels out of their current stockpile of nothing.

Following two or three ads. in the local rag we had something like fourteen families with fourteen year old boys and girls who attended our open evening in early August 1984. The selling point was my explicit conviction that I would stand no nonsense and that they, the parents, would sign an in loco parentis agreement with me. This would mean that I would treat all fourteen of them as if they were my children while they were in my care; I would take them to the doctor if I thought it necessary or not take them, if I thought it unnecessary. I would intervene as their parent/guardian wherever required. Most importantly, I would give them a thick ear if they misbehaved. That was the clincher, and every family signed up and paid a deposit there and then.

I was a great believer in the need for in loco parentis status and had insisted on it when Sue and I used to take pupils abroad or to camp from HodgsonSchool in the seventies.

In truth, I think this law and its provisions had run its course long before 1984. But, in September 1984, we launched our Fourth and FifthYearCollege with great hopes and in the loco parentis spirit.

 

We had the same timetable for everyone, each day. In the mornings they would study English, Maths and French with me and after lunch, Business Studies with me, then Science with a superb elderly teacher called David Pilkington. He and I shared the same views on discipline and the whole thing ran very smoothly with plenty laughter and smiles within that disciplined structure.

But, over the next ten or fifteen years, I and my type would find  ourselves more and more on a limb as more and more of our colleagues retired from the profession with mental stress or knife wounds.

 

In the late Eighties, I did quite a lot of “supply teaching”. ST’s fill in for absent teachers who are normally off with mental stress, pregnancies or straightforward ailments. A switched-on Head Teacher will ingratiate him/herself with the permanent staff by re-organising the timetable so that the Supply Teacher gets all the shit. This didn’t bother me particularly but it was harder work than taking the top set in one’s own subject. In reality one was given the “rag-ends” in every other subject.

“You first” you would say to the least troublesome pupil at the end of a lesson prior to a break or lunchtime. You would open the door theatrically for the little creep. This would go on until all the individuals in what was usually a small group had left. All, that is, except Trouble-Maker Number One who, invariably, would approach the door.

“Can I go now,…………Sir?”

On one particular occasion, I locked the door on the inside and, turning towards this good-looking Asian lad who was intent on making my life as difficult as possible, I kneed him in the groin. Then, with drummed-up, pretend hardness, I grabbed him by the tie and, using his chin as a lever, pinned him against the wall and raised him, off balance, onto his tip-toes.

“DON’T ANNOY ME”   would be enough.

Open the door and let him skulk out.

I would never repeat or refer to the incident again. I knew that the word in the playground would be along the lines:

“That supply teacher, Fleming, is OK. I’m gonna give ‘im a chance.”

 

Of course, the same system didn’t work with girls. They don’t have balls, for a start. My style tends not to work with girls but strategic reference to the word “tart” can produce results.

As for primary school kids, I don’t do them at all.

Experienced supply teachers know where they can work best.

 

My classroom in the School with the good-looking Asian lad was on the first floor, adjacent to one of the staffrooms. There was a door leading from the classroom into the staffroom. At the end of break times, teachers with classrooms on the first floor would use the shortcut through my classroom rather than descend to the ground floor, pass through Reception under the gaze of the homosexual Head, then climb the other stairs to their own rooms.

Shortly after starting at the School and two or three weeks before the good-looking Asian episode, I decided that the constant flow of dalliers through my classroom was doing nothing for discipline. I liked to get started as soon as the bell went and no sooner had I settled the sods than the door would open ten minutes into the lesson and the Head of Maths who had the room next to mine and stinking armpits would come through.

“Alright, Sir?”

“How’s your love life Sir?”

“Who washes your shirts, Sir?”

Any discipline and order simply evaporated and if the kids had just come from a discipline-free class the problem was compounded.

I soon began to lock the adjoining door every morning, so I started each lesson on time with no interruptions. Believe me, I wasn’t popular with the established staff; but, since I wasn’t and never have been a staff room fixture, I couldn’t give a little monkey’s.

The good-looking-Asian-boy incident followed all this so the homosexual Head Teacher in his pastel-coloured suit decided to come and see me. I had developed the habit of preparing my blackboards from about eight in the morning, not because of any desire to creep, just to make life easier. He knew this and pitched up in my room on this particular day at about 8.30, bearing two cups of coffee.

He settled into a chair like a well-established friend.

“Alex” (my name rolled gently off his pursed lips). “I know you like to run a tight ship, but …………….”

I knew he was going to bring up one of several disciplinary incidents.

“Just a minute” I interrupted. “In my experience, there are only two types of ships: tight, floating ones and loose, sinking ones. I take it you don’t like my floating one so I’ll leave yours before it sinks. Good-bye.”

I stood up, collected my belongings and, sidestepping his agape profile, made my way to the nearest bus stop from where I took public transport to my base in Poulton.

 

He rang me there and asked me what “I was playing at.”

Oh dear! Oh dear!

 

 

By the Spring of 1985 we were both quite exhausted. Sue was five or six months pregnant with our second child and I was feeling the strain of “running a tight ship” ………….the Fourth and FifthYearCollege. I still had the occasional Arabic pupils and was still playing six nights a week at the Bellevue.

The Education Correspondent of the Daily Express had heard of our innovative idea and came to Blackpool to interview and take photos. At his request, we were all posing for a photograph at the front of 30 Watson Road.

Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I experienced double vision. I was confused more than anything else and found it quite difficult to maintain a cool, casual grin for the Express photographer. Of course I could get rid of the double vision effect by shutting one eye. But I was sufficiently concerned to give our pupils the rest of the day off so that I could leg it into the reference library and research this worrying phenomenon. I followed up lots of links with optic nerve conditions and brain tumours then, suddenly, it was all there; “Multiple Sclerosis.  Symptoms may include some or all of the following:  tingling sensation when the surface of the skin is exposed to heat, as in the shower or bath; double vision; loss or diminution of colour definition in one eye. Even before I got to “loss of balance” “clumsiness” “bladder and other muscular malfunctions”, I realised I was probably on the MS route because I had very definite evidence of the first three symptoms during and after squash matches.

 

I made an appointment to see our local GP, a David Charles. He was a young, quietly spoken chap who did well with the ladies. Incidentally, the same guy had failed to recognise Sheila’s symptoms of pyelonphritis and, on this occasion, was reluctant to accept my conjectural, layman’s diagnosis of MS.

“Don’t be ridiculous” he said. “You’re too old and you’re male” he added incongruously. “Even if it is MS, take it like a man and get on with your life.”

Bloody hell, I’d never been ill in my life before but, if this was the sort of dialogue I was to expect, I was going to hold my ground.

“David, I can read. I admit some of the words and concepts are medical property but I am inside this body and I fully recognise the symptoms described in that book. I don’t care what secret code you lot use when communicating with specialists but I want to be referred to one. Is it possible?”

“Well…………………”

“David, I don’t want to talk about Sheila; I am still the only reference point for Michael and Marie. Sue and I have one kid and another on the way. I don’t want to be guessing. I want to make provision.”

“Alright. Sorry. I’ll refer you to Mr Moore on Whitegate Drive. He’s an opthalmic surgeon.”

 

Within the month, I was seeing Mr Moore.

As it happened, his secretary was the mother of one of my private pupils.

Mr Moore did some superficial tests, like tickling the back of my hand with cotton wool and asking me if my double vision was vertical or horizontal. He decided to refer me to SharoeGreenHospital in Preston where I would have a series of tests.

This involved putting me through an MRI scanner which profiled my brain. I was then injected with some coloured fluid and put through the scanner a second time.

At the end of this procedure, the very nice little Asian radiologist called me into his “gantry” where he showed me and explained the resulting scans.

Apparently, I did not have a brain tumour but there were some lesions evident. The neurologist, Dr Vakil, would shortly be in touch with his analysis of all my tests.

 

It was over three weeks later that Vakil gave me a call. Sue was out at the time.

“Your tests were positive “said Vakil. “I’m going on holiday. Get in touch with my rooms and make an appointment for a month or so from now.”

“What do you mean by ‘positive’? Have I got MS?”

“Of course. Get in touch with my rooms.”

He hung up.

I was totally gob smacked. I was on my own, a fit, very mobile, switched-on person who had been told by this foreign, callous runt that my life, as I knew it, was coming to an end. He was going on bloody holiday!

Of course, he was so used to breaking this type of news to patients, that it made no difference to his day. For the next twenty years, I would measure every centimetre of my decline.

At the time, there was no effectual change to my life and I continued to play sport, mainly squash. In fact, everything went on as normal for the next two or three years.

 

For some time, I had had an idea that I should be doing something with Blackpool tat, making a bob or two along the way.

Maggie Thatcher, President Reagan and Arthur Scargill were everyday news features who had big followings and equally big detractors. A lot of these detractors would come to Blackpool and might be tempted to buy one of my toilet stickers………….a sketch of one of those characters with appropriate speech balloons and adhesive backing that you could stick on the internal wall of your loo.

Maggie Thatcher would be saying “I accept the motions of this House”, Arthur Scargill, “You’ve listened to my crap often enough…………” and Ronald Reagan “Go ahead, I know how you feel.”

The manager of a group, Shady, who performed regularly at the Bellevue, had a printing works in Blackpool and assured me he could produce each sticker and a “header bag” for something like 7.5p. I reckoned I could wholesale them at 25p each and they could reach the streets and joke shops of Blackpool and Brighton at about 50p. It was a project. I’ve always liked my little projects.

In the end, I tracked down a novelties wholesaler near Kings Cross in London who invited me to send him some samples. I did, and within the week he had ordered 12,000 stickers at 20p each.

I took the stickers down to London in two suitcases on the train and returned home with a cheque for £2400. Not bad going for a month’s work!

 

On 16^th July of that year, Alex was born. As with Eloise, I was present at the birth, an experience I enjoyed even less than Sue. To this day she blames me for the irregularity of the various channels in her lower parts and attributes this to my alleviating the boredom when I distracted the attention of the young doctor who was stitching her up after the delivery. Apparently, I spent the whole time stitching him up with some right “old chestnuts”. (Jokes)

 

We decided to disband the Fourth and FifthYearCollege after the GCE’s in the summer of ’86. We got some excellent results but the work was taking its toll. Motivating the sods was really difficult and a day never went by without some hassle or other.

 

I began to take on private one-to-one pupils again, one of whom was a young girl who attended, with her mother, on a Sunday morning. Mother, who was seemingly a teacher, used to sit in the office and do some marking. One Sunday, while her daughter was completing some work for me, I made the mistake of going into the office for a chat.

“Where do you teach?” I asked feigning interest.

“At TusonCollege, in Preston.”

“How interesting! What do you teach?”

“I teach office skills in the Business Studies Department. Do you teach any of our subjects?”

“Heavens, no” I replied. Then my big mouth got me into trouble again.

“The nearest I have come to anything like that was when I left school.”

Shut up, Fleming. For Heaven’s sake, shut up.

“What happened?” she enquired with such innocence.

“I took up an apprenticeship in accountancy. It took me a whole year and a lot of exams to learn that accountancy was not for me.”

I  knew from her reaction that I had gone too far.

“Tea, coffee?” I asked in a hopeless attempt to distract her.

“So, you teach accountancy?”

“No, no. Accountancy and I parted company many, many years ago. Thank the Lord!”

 

I don’t know if it was me trying to stop the pathetic, pleading telephone calls from Mr Wright, the Head of Department at Tuson or the acquired opportunism of a self-employed, free-lance teacher but I ended up teaching accountancy for 12 hours a week at the aforementioned Tuson College, now part of the joke that is the University of Central Lancashire. It wasn’t even accountancy as I knew it, you know, double-entry book-keeping, Profit and Loss Accounts and Balance Sheets. It was Cost Accountancy with accounting ratios, accounting standards, FIFO, LIFO and other imponderables.

The MS was beginning to take hold, though, and I was buggered if I would give in. It was the start of my FIGHT. I conquered the boredom and got to grips with the topics, producing hundreds of worksheets for my mainly Asian classes. The subject matter was not difficult. It was as boring as ever. But I resolved not to give in to it or tothe occasional ribaldry attracted by my walking stick. But the M.S.was still only a minor feature in my daily life..

 

My specialist in Preston, Dr Vakil, was on a hiding to nothing. I saw him for five minutes every three months; he collected his £60 fee from BUPA and, after each visit, I left his consulting rooms with no strategies or solutions. There are still none as far as I know and, at the time, I was ready to tell him I’d do it myself, thank you……….whatever that was.

My next appointment with Vakil was some time in October ’86. I was spoiling for a fight. He had been so unsympathetic when he delivered his pre-vacational diagnosis. During visits, he was pompous in the extreme, recording his summary notes at the end of his brief consultation on a portable tape recorder. So, one would spend three minutes of the consultation hopping on one foot or touching one’s nose with whatever finger he indicated, then the other two minutes listening to him pontificate into his mobile tape recorder.

Sue and I went together to this consultation in October ’86.

“And who are you, my darling?” the big fat git said to Sue. He waddled over to Sue like Omar Sharif with his uncapped penis at the ready, dragging along the floor. He bent over to grace her with a kiss.

“She’s my wife. I’m your bucket of gold. What would you like me to do for your £12 a minute?”

“Sit on this stool” he instructed before peering, close up, into each eye through an optometer.

“Phew! You’ve been drinking” he observed with uncanny accuracy.

“You’ve been smoking, you dirty bastard. Is that it? Can I have my sixty quid back please?”

He actually enjoyed the banter. I suppose most people hung on his every word in the belief that he could, at will, cure or at least ameliorate their neurological condition. Perhaps he could in some cases but I was becoming more and more sure that Sue and I were going to be the ones who had the best chance of controlling my MS. It would be down to Sue and me.

 

Towards the end of ’86, Bill Galloway came to see me “on private business”. Bill was definitely an ideas man. From his tiny “works” above a shop in Blackpool’s Topping Street he and his diminutive, submissive wife, May, would duplicate texts or design and print off business cards and letterheads on an old, messy, all-purpose machine. He and May were regular churchgoers and a great deal of their work was church-based.

However, one of his ideas was to buy up a load of cheap tea from a merchant in Blackpool then repackage and sell it as a panacea for rheumatism. (“The nearer the pulpit….?)

Another was his idea for a Blackpool-based lottery. He was one of the first owners of the late, lamented BT Merlin computers which could be seen running constantly in his office as it selected random numbers. But, like most of Bill’s ideas, they never really took off.

“Some friends and I have formed a new political party in Blackpool” he announced, as he helped himself to another large whisky. “The Independent Party. We want you to fight the Waterloo Ward for us in May next year.”

“Bill, I’ve never even voted in my life before. I wouldn’t know where to start or even why to start.”

“We’ll help you”, he insisted. “I’ll print your doorshot leaflets. It’ll cost you nothing, just some time. We need someone with a brain and some presence.”

That’s what I needed. I wasn’t disabled………….far from it…………..but I had stopped playing squash and other ball games and was about to retire from the hassle of live music. But THEY needed ME.

I went into the Independent Party with all guns firing.

 

Over the Christmas period, my old mate Harry Hardwick was doing some work on the front of our building at Watson Road. He had erected scaffolding that covered the ground and first floors but was, in no way, fixed to the building. I decided to paint then attach to the scaffolding a large white sheet with the message

“VOTE  FLEMING” emblazoned.

“Not awfully original” I hear you think, but it was striking in its amateurism.

 

Watson Road, or “Waterloo” as our Ward was called, is in Blackpool’s SouthShore district. The majority of Blackpool tawdriness has dissipated or at least diluted by the time you go south of Waterloo Road, but there are still some hotels and guest houses in the area. In fact, BlackpoolPleasureBeach is in the Waterloo Ward.

I decided to focus my campaign on three issues relevant to residents of such an area:

•          parking
•          SouthShore railway station
•          the Illuminations.

 

 

Most local residents were unattached to the local tourist trade and were pissed off with coming back from work and finding the parking outside their house taken up for the rest of the week. Residents’ parking was therefore a bullet point in my electioneering claptrap.

 

South Shore Railway Station had been opened without waiting room telephone or toilet facilities. This had to be an addressable issue.

 

But the main thrust of my campaign were issues concerning the Illuminations on the Blackpool Promenade. For years, thousands of coaches had brought millions of visitors to see the much-repeated illuminated displays provided by the local Council. Somewhere north shore they would be invited to throw a bagful of money into a collection box to show their appreciation. It goes without saying that the bags were mostly full of coppers and other unmentionables.

I proposed that the Promenade be rented off in quarter mile sections to high profile conglomerates like BT, British Gas, BAE and so on who would rent the space for millions of pounds, then design and construct

the displays with Blackpool’s paid-for expertise and approval. They could collect what money they could towards what would be their substantial costs at the end of the one-way promenade.

Catering concessions, where coach parties would order their food on their way into Blackpool, collect it from mobile units SouthShore and eat it as they viewed the Illuminations and street artists on their way to the NorthShore, would be another earner.

 

I didn’t even attend the count late on election evening. With 503 votes (out of a total of 2130 votes cast), I didn’t get a seat. John Woolley who had been a town and county councillor for years was returned. Mike Japp, my nearest competitor got the second seat and I came third. Colin Hanson, who had been a councillor for a very long time, lost his seat. It had never been my ambition to be a town councillor and I deeply regretted being responsible for displacing Colin.

Later in life I did another thing against my better judgement; I became a Mason, briefly. But more about that later.

 

I gave up playing at the Bellevue later that year, not because of the MS, which was still only an inconvenience, but because we were becoming more and more busy during the daytime. Also, Alexander, who was then two years old, took a dive on his tricycle from the top floor landing of Watson Road down the uncarpeted wooden stairs to the middle landing. His forehead bruised hugely and we panicked. We applied countless ice packs and reported with him to the A+E at Victoria Hoapital. As I write, he has just embarked on a career with the Civil Service. So, the brain damage hasn’t set in, yet.

However, we did decide that Watson Road was not the ideal setting in which to bring up the kids. There was no garden to speak of, we were right on a main road junction and the PleasureBeach, with all its noise and drunkenness was 300 yards away. Michael had finished at College, was working at Top Shop and had got himself a little flat further down the Shore. Of course, although by its nature, always on the card, we didn’t know that Marie would soon be the victim of a rapist in the PleasureBeach.

By the beginning of 1988, we had moved PLC to the very nice inland town of Poulton-le-Fylde where Sue and I had worked at HodgsonSchool. We had acquired a lease on the large first floor of a corner building on Elletson Street which had been a private school up to four and a half years previously. Since then it had been unoccupied and was now full of dead crows and the like. The planning permission for use as a school would expire under local legislation if we were not up and running by the end of the fifth year so Sue and I embarked on a gigantic cleaning operation. It was a “full repair” lease and we took it on board “as seen”. Nonetheless, by Easter, with the help of local craftsmen and a substantial bank loan, we had painted, carpeted, repaired the roof and furnished the place, very basically.

In truth, this part of the move was ill-conceived. Although some of our pupils from Blackpool followed us and, with our good names from HodgsonSchool, we gained a number of local pupils, we had borrowed too much money. We had five classrooms only one of which was used on a regular basis except on a Saturday morning when the place was heaving with pupils, parents and extra teachers. I even had to take pupils on a Sunday to help make ends meet.

Four of the “weekenders” warrant a mention. One of them, Kathryn, took the cookie as the only pupil I have ever “permanently excluded”. She was about fifteen at the time and attended a fee-paying school a few hundred yards from our place on Watson Road in Blackpool. She was a big girl and not very attractive, both traits she had inherited from her mother. She had that fee-payer’s supercilliousness which we often came across with pupils from independent schools (why fee-payers should need extra, external private lessons, I’ll never know). One Sunday, she quite simply chose to have an argument with me. We were discussing a passage for comprehension in which a country bumpkin was described as “a cowherd”.

“How can a person be a herd of cows?” she asked.. “It’s a herd of cows”.

“No, it isn’t” I countered tetchily. I could think of plenty other places I’d rather be than in this millstone on a Sunday morning trying to teach an immovable monolith.

“A cowherd ………..a herd of cows. A mugshot …………..a shot of your mug” she countered.

“Who’s doing the bleeding teaching here?” I enquired.

“Obviously me” she declared. “You just relax, I’ll send you my bill later”. She was clearly enjoying the harmless banter but I had had enough.

“So, what’s a bloody shepherd?” I asked irritably. “A herd of sheps?”

“A herd of sheep” she replied, mock schoolmarmish.

Of course, I should have enjoyed the sparring and the opportunity to discuss the words ‘herder’ and ‘herdsman’.

Instead, I retaliated.

“Oh, piss off” I said, quite unreasonably. “Ring your mother and have her pick you up”.

She went; but I’ll always be grateful to her for her favourite saying, which I have found so apt on many occasions:

“The nearer the pulpit, the worse the Christian.”

 

Another kid who came to us, on a Saturday morning, was a 14 year old blond boy who was breathtakingly good-looking. The teachers, including me, would all be available to welcome him into the place. Nobody actually referred to his boyish good looks, not even the lady teachers. But it was quite acceptable for the ladies to comment on the attractiveness of one or two of the girls who attended. The men never said anything about the boys or the girls for fear of the paedophile label. I would occasionally go as far as to say “She’ll break someone’s heart one day” but, never any further.

The truth is we would all be more than happy to admire these teenagers in swimsuits but daren’t say anything. Nobody, as far as I knew, would want to see them naked or tamper with them. That would be perversion or misguided lust. I think most people would agree with that.

I took this lad quite often for French and, during the last two or three lessons, he brought photographs of himself, stripped to his underpants.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“What do you want me to think?” I retorted.

“Does it turn you on?”

“No.” I saw the warning signs I had seen before with other kids.

Then he showed me a profile photograph of him, naked and sporting a fierce erection. He was a perfect figure, and knew it.

“Who has ……..?” I started then added “I don’t want to see these, Robert. They’re very nice, but please don’t bring them in again.”

I would say the boy had a problem, plus a good photographer in tow.

 

This kind of incident has not been extremely rare in my teaching of boys and girls. They are going through a difficult, uncertain period and need a bit of help.

I have no problem with admiring the beauty and innocence of masculine or feminine youth. None whatsoever. But we men are not allowed to say too much.

It is the 20^th of June today and I am watching Royal Ascot with one eye as I write this. A commentator has just referred to one horse as:
”A beautiful filly”, an accolade afforded Princess Anne’s daughter Zara, earlier in the week. I hope they are not planning or even imagining some sexual intervention with either!

 

Two other places would go to Richard Thornton and Scott Bessay. They came from two quite separate families but I mention them together because their parents, probably more interesting than their kids, came to me too for French lessons and joined us later on our minibus trips to France.

Gary Thornton, two or three years younger than me, was a detective inspector in the Lancashire Constabulary. His wife, Anne, is a retired nurse. We still see them socially (actually, we’re going to meet them tonight) and, as with many couples, the ladies spend a lot of time being nice to each other while the men meet in another room and exchange ribald tales. Gary and I insult each other in lighter moments, particularly when we are displaying our plumes in front of the ladies.

One evening, a few years ago, Gary, who was still in the police force, was asked by someone what his plans were.

“Well” he said, clearing his throat very loudly and training his perfectly-sculpted quiff yet again, “I’m planning to take my boys on a long walk up Mount Kilimanjaro, in Kenya.”

“It’ll be a very long walk, Gary. Mount Kilimanjaro’s in Tanzania.” I said, happy in the knowledge that, having visited Clive Lovelock in Moshi half a dozen times during my five year stay in East Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro was certainly in Tanzania.

“No it’s not,” replied Plod, “it’s in Kenya.”

“Well, bugger me, they’ve moved it since I was there.”

“They must have” said Plod.

Straightaway, I imagined what must have been a typical scene at Gary’s police base in Preston.

“And where were you last Thursday night at the time of the offence?” he asks the innocent suspect.

“I was shagging Britt Ekland in front of the Royal Family on Channel Four  TV.”

“No you weren’t” he says. “You were where I thought you were.”

It is quite frightening, don’t you think…………..the power of assertion packaged in a well-established uniform.

Gary just could not understand why his kids, Richard and Alex (daughter) chose not to have secure careers mapped out for themselves with maturing pensions being their guiding light. I’m certain his continual harping on about security and pensions was exactly what put Richard and Alex off. Richard is now a Hari Krishna monk in Scotland and Alex has a daughter with a Dutch drug addict who has since died.

 

Scott went to the most expensive, exclusive independent school on the Fylde. He came to me for extra French lessons. He suffered from a mild form of Turret’s.

“Good morning, Scott.”

“Good morning, Sir. Fuck off” would be a typical opening gambit.

He had a good sense of humour, though, and I enjoyed his company. His parents, Mike and Dorothy, had been in show business, he as a club manager and she as a singer. They had done well locally in the rest-home business which had obviously helped Mike and Dorothy find the fees for Scott’s schooling. They too came for French lessons and, along with Gary and Anne, formed the nucleus of the minibus trips to France.

 

!988-89 was a decisive period. We knew we had to do something about the lack of business in the vast premises in Poulton. We did two key things, the first of which was to look for a property in the countryside “over Wyre” which would give our kids the space to grow up and would allow us to create a children’s nursery which, we were sure, was a forthcoming phenomenon.

The second was the subletting of at least half the building in Poulton given that I was committed to a twelve year lease with three yearly rent revues

.

 

By the summer of 1988 we had sold Watson Road and bought a three-bedroomed cottage in a village called Stalmine. It is four miles from Poulton-le-Fylde on the “other side” of the River Wyre, separated by quite a long toll bridge. The property was surrounded by about one acre of scrubland with open views to the Trough of Bowland and MorcambeBay beyond. On a clear day you could see the foothills to the south of the Lake District.

 

Within a month or so of moving in, we had submitted plans for the construction of an extension to the cottage. We were advised by locals that we had no chance of getting permission to build a commercial children’s nursery on what was a declared “green belt”.

So, I decided it would start as a nursery for our children which would double as a music room for me. The architect had drawn two grand pianos in the plans which would at least justify the size of the place and, when the planner at the Council offices asked why we needed two grand pianos, my response was:

“Well, you have heard of me, I hope.”

“Yes, yes”, he lied.

Well, my partner and I are continuing to do our Ravinch and Landaur impressions and we need somewhere to rehearse.”

“Of course” He buggered off into a back room somewhere and returned ten minutes later.

“My line manager says he can’t see any objection and your application will probably be delegated”.

Apparently, this meant that the office wallahs would deal with the application; it would not go to committee and there would be no need for discussion.

 

Neville and Marcia Smith, who had been Spanish pupils of mine at Watson Road, had bought an end cottage a few hundred yards up our Lane. Neville and his brothers had taken over their small, family, electrical business in Blackpool which had been run by their father, Jack. He ran the business with one hand and got more involved in his real interest, local politics, with the other. By the time the brothers had left school and served their apprenticeships, Jack had become Mayor of Blackpool. Suffice it to say that the electrical business grew and grew on the back of plenty council estate work in Blackpool and, by the time Neville and Marcia bought their property and adjoining land near us, they were clearly worth a lot of money.

We started building our extension on money borrowed again from the Yorkshire Bank in SouthShore, Blackpool. We had borrowed money there in the past for extensions to the Irvine and to Watson Road and I had built up a relationship/understanding with Jeff Tennant, the Manager. He had obviously had enough of the cap-in-hand borrowers from the SouthShore guest houses who would fit his budget requirements and work their parts off until they had improved their properties and paid off their loans.

I’m sure Jeff saved a bit of his budget for us. He must have known we would want some brass every year. He was almost exactly the same age as me and, with him coming from Leeds, we had some common ground. He liked my jokes too, which helped.

Upon entering his office for the inevitable “chat” I would greet him with “Hello, you tight Yorkshire bastard” or some such finery. “By the way, have you heard the one about the prostitute with a nose like a builder’s elbow?”

At this particular meeting, after the opening jokes, Jeff announced with his usual stutter, that he would be leaving the South Shore Branch.

“So c..c..c..cut the c..c..c..crap, Mr Fleming. This’ll be the l..l..l..last time you b.b.b.borrow money from me. Let’s do it the short way. You ask for  twi…twi…twice the money you n..need, I’ll offer you half, the..then we’ll go somewhere n..n..nice for lunch.”

Game, set and match.

 

Harry Hardwick started the building work in the Summer of ’88. He and his team were from Blackpool and, I suppose, had little experience of country life. One of our neighbours kept some ponies in the field adjacent to the land where we were building. On a couple of occasions I came back from work in Poulton to find Sue and two or three workmen watching the stallion have his way with a mare. Once, when I had returned unnoticed, the joiner suddenly piped up:

“Sue, come on quick; they’re at it again!”

I never did find out if there was any audience participation.

 

Ellie started at the local primary school that September. After innumerable hold-ups caused by bad weather, the ordering of the wrong roof trusses and the buckling of the floor-boards, the building was completed a few weeks before Easter 1989. We immediately applied for “change of use” to a commercial nursery. I attached a lengthy exposé about the need for such a provision in the area and I feel that Neville Smith may have mentioned it to his Dad, the Mayor of Blackpool who, in turn, just might have brought it up in conversation with a colleague in Wyre Council. I don’t know; but I do know that I had been “very useful” to the Smiths in a row they had with the local planners.

Anyway, “change of use” was granted and we opened for business in

September 1989.

 

Things got off to a very slow start and, as with any new business, it would be a few years before we even made ends meet. But Sue, with the help of Olwen who is with us to this day, built up an enviable reputation. We now have five trained nursery nurses, a full house every day and a waiting list. But, during the early years, I had to be the main bread winner; and the MS was becoming noticeable.

 

The level of pupils in Poulton did not increase but I got wind of the fact that the landlord of the premises, John Bithell, would be taking up his option for a rent review in 1991. Of course, I reasoned, it would inevitably mean a rent rise and I would have another 9 years of the lease to honour with two more rent rises to look forward to. So I decided to continue with the “bit part” acting, to increase the work I was getting as a supply teacher and, so that I would not continue robbing Peter to pay Paul, I decided to ask Bithell if I could sub-let.

My next two acting rôles really emphasised the progression of my MS. In one I was playing the part of a drug dealer and had to throw a satchel containing “drugs” from one trawler to another at sea. Admittedly, we were only half a mile out of Fleetwood but the sea was quite rough and I had difficulty maintaining my balance. I had always enjoyed good balance in sport and this was a depressing sign that the MS was bedding in.

 

A few months later I won a part as one of three trawlermen on a mock-up of a fishing boat in the studios at Granada TV. The “boat” was on a platform with hydraulically operated levers to simulate the roll. I had great difficulty getting on and off and moving about the set. People were beginning to notice and, indeed, it was around this time that someone suggested I might have had too good a lunch.

 

Fortunately, Bithell agreed to my sub-letting. It was that, or I went bust and he knew it.

I advertised in the Evening Gazette  and, after a few false starts, I was contacted by Adrian.

He was very amusing; younger than me by fifteen years or so but with a very sharp wit. He was keen to be superior and I found the implied challenge interesting. He had a partner Rod, whom he would introduce at a later stage. I showed him the premises and he agreed to pay me a rent which was, in fact, equal to what Bithell was asking me for the whole place; effectively, I would have four rooms at no cost to me.

 

The dividing of the premises simply involved the insertion of two doors in the common passageway.

Within a couple of weeks, Sue and I had totally cleared the other half of the building and Adrian  was concentrating on converting the “turret room” into an impressive office for himself and his partner.

 

“Rod’s coming to meet you tomorrow, if that’s OK.” Adrian announced cheerily one morning. “He’s an acquired taste but I think you’ll like him. Possibly” he added, as he left my office.

 

As warned, Adrian and Rod turned up the next day.

A tall, thin, youngish, dark-haired guy, I took an instant dislike to Rod’s brash self-confidence and abrasiveness, so much so that I decided to ring Gary Thornton who, with his computerised records, had the wherewithall to allay my burgeoning suspicions.

Within half an hour of ringing Gary, someone from the Hutton Police Headquarters outside Preston was on the telephone.

“Thank you for contacting us, Sir. Could you repeat your description of him, please?”

He took every possible detail, like confirming Rod had a broken front tooth, wore a silver-looking ring on the wedding finger of his left hand and had a had a mole on the outer surface of his right nostril. Oh, and could I get the make, colour and registration number of his car?

I took two or three hours to confirm and acquire the various pieces of information needed then rang Hutton back.

“Thank you very much, Sir.” said the plain speaking bobby. “Do I take it you are prepared to help us, Sir?”

“Help you with what?”

“We have been looking for this character for months, Sir. He is suspected of being heavily involved in the sale and distribution of all classes of drugs to street dealers in the Blackpool and Fylde.”

“Yes, I’ll help you where I can. As a teacher of young people………..”

“Can I ask for your complete discretion in this matter?”

“Of course. Can I ask for your name and extension number? Where are you calling from?”

He gave me the information I wanted then added:

“A detective constable and a colleague will come and see you tomorrow morning if that’s O.K. Sir. It’s quite important and we do need to shift.”

 

I have to admit that I was quite excited. My dislike for Rod (if that was his name) increased every time I saw him just as my dislike of people who created then profited from addictions among young people.

The following morning the constable and his colleague came into PLC as openly as you please. They were both casually dressed and both in their early thirties. The one who did all the talking and who clearly enjoyed his rôle as a very casual inquisitor, was called Dave Callan. He was small, dark and athletic. He told me later he had worked “on the bikes” and was looking for promotion to the rank of sergeant after a successful two-year secondment to the drugs squad. Apparently this job in Poulton was his baby where he would prove himself.

Over the next weeks he came with different colleagues and, to be perfectly honest, they were of such minimalist character, I can’t remember many of them.

But Callan, who had made a detailed study of the premises, right under the noses of Rod and Adrian, did arrange to pick me up at 3 a.m. one morning so that he and a large elderly chap could gain access to the building and wire it for sound. The elderly fellow crawled into the roof and drilled through the ceiling into the smallest of my rooms, where they established a professional listening point with top-of-the-range reel-to-reel tape recorders and headphones.

He then crawled over to a position above Rod and Adrian’s “best” room where he drilled two fine holes into either end of the fluorescent light- fitting and installed two tiny microphones, each the size of a finger nail.

The resulting sound in the listening room was crystal clear. With the headphones on, it was as if the person speaking was next to you.

It was nearing 6 a.m. and Dave was still nonchalantly swanning about the place, rifling the cupboards and unlocked filing cabinets in Rod and Adrian’s office while occasionally stooping to brush some dust off  the desk below the fluorescent light.

“Look, I know you two can always explain being here by flashing your ID’s in front of these tossers, but what about me?” I asked Dave. “I want to get out of here. I’ve got my credibility to think of.  Knowing my luck, these bastards will have a breakfast meeting arranged for 7 o’clock.”

“Alex, don’t worry” says Dave, clearly trying to gain some kind of points in front of the older copper.

“Dave, I’m going and I’m locking the doors on the way out. You two can look after yourselves.”

“Alex ………………..”

“This ‘operation’ or whatever you call it, is coming to an end unless I’ve got some say in what happens. We’re going now.”

 

We went.

 

Alexander, our younger child, started at StalmineSchool that Summer. The next few weeks were interesting.

We have been quite lucky as self-employees. When we headed towards the doldrums an alternative course with a following wind would often turn up.

I was going to charge the police rent for the use of my room and facilities which were often in use by them late into the night.

Blackpool Social Services were beginning to invoke my help for the “home tuition” of miscreants who had been “excluded” (ie expelled) from school and I applied for a job teaching in Preston Prison.

 

The police occupied the room in Poulton for the best part of a month. Dave and his colleagues would base themselves there from about 10 in the morning then listen to the recordings from the previous twenty-four hours. They would go for “dinner” to the nearby “greasy spoon” then disappear on “related business” for the rest of the afternoon.

I would leave the building at about 8 p.m. at which point the night shift would have taken over.

I was invited to listen to one of their recordings where Rod was selling “a brick” of ganje to some moronic, unintelligible street seller. The quality of the recording was superb although I found it impossible to decipher the moron’s grunted lexicon.

I was terrified that Rod or Adrian would, out of curiosity, open the door of that small room, which was right next door to the toilet and full of some inexplicable paraphernalia.

 

 

I spent about twenty hours each week with home tuition pupils, most of whom lived in St Annes, the area covered for Social Services by Betty Rawlings. Most of those part-time Social Workers and Education Officers who were in a position to employ teachers or other helpers were semi-retired ladies of a certain age who, very often, had their favourites. I was becoming Betty’s favourite and was grateful for the income.

Many of these excluded kids had been “punished” for non-attendance.

Why exclude a kid for excluding himself? It’s a bit like a magistrate saying to a thief: “You have been guilty of stealing a lot of money. Your punishment is to receive a gift of £200,000.”

Most of my pupils from this source over the years were boys; I made it quite clear from the start that I didn’t “do” girls. As I’ve said before, girls know how to make it difficult for male teachers, usually by involving third or fourth parties and almost always with sexual overtones. There were always the rules about never allowing yourself to be alone in a room with a girl or never take a kid out in your car; always teach these excluded pupils where you can be seen.

I’ve always had a problem with this. The excluded child may have had difficulties at home or may be having problems in his or her care base. Whatever the source of their problems, what they want is to build a strong relationship with an adult who is not a deviant, not primarily a disciplinarian and not a boring nerd.

There is, of course, an inherent risk. Boys too can dream up malicious tales but, if you’re not prepared to take the risk in gaining their trust, I think you should be doing other work.

Against all the rules, I took my excluded kids out of the source or result of their problems and took them to meet Sue and our kids, took them for a McDonalds or went go-karting. Maths and English had no place on their agenda, although, to keep the authorities happy, we might make our trip to the go-karts into a small maths project (how much per kid so how much for the group? I give £20………how much change? Length of circuit, so what is the petrol consumption? Proprietor’s costs? etc)

This went down well with some of the powers-that-were and not so well with others.

 

 

 

One of the more difficult pupils I had was a 15 year old boy who was in residential care at an institute which used to be referred to as “Fylde Farm” in Poulton. These kids were difficult; the place was basically “open” but the “carers” in the five or six homes had what I saw as a difficult containment job. The kids would regularly abscond, be recovered, then moved to a more secure unit. They were taught in classes for part of the day then worked on “the farm” for the other part.

I was asked to take over the tuition of Andrew who was so disruptive that he could not participate in group tuition at the “Farm”.

I made it clear to his housemaster that I would be taking Andrew off the premises and would be returning him to the “Farm” after his two hours of “tuition” with me.

The housemaster, a large brute of a fellow who countenanced contradiction from nobody, knew me from the Belleview where he would occasionally show with some thuggish colleagues. I didn’t actually recognise him but he did me.

“I don’t teach my pupils on the premises” I told him in his tiny, Spartan office.

“We’ve prepared a room for you at the end of the corridor” he said, in a tone that implied it was a fait accompli.

“I don’t teach my pupils on the premises” I repeated. “You have your ways, I have mine.”

“He’ll do a runner, I’m telling you.”

“Then you’ll have to go and pick him up, won’t you”

This bloke had been a serious constable or screw somewhere along the line and he did not like any form of confrontation. He always had someone else in his office when he undertook an interview or “discussion” with kids or staff. On this occasion, the third party was Tony who, along with his twin brother, had worked as a part-time barman at Uncle Tom’s. I didn’t really know them although they were obviously used to my antics on stage.

“He’ll take you to the cleaners” he pronounced as he left the room, dragging the door shut (The doors to the offices of care/remand homes seem always to have been re-hung several times).

Andrew was a lad who needed help. His mother was a prostitute in Blackpool and, clearly, Andrew had been exposed to all sorts of dramas and derision from his peers. He was extremely aggressive. He would strut about the place giving the impression that his self-esteem was very high; in fact, just like the bully, it was low and only superficial. His academic abilities were extremely low too.

As we were leaving the Fylde Farm campus, Andrew opened the car window without asking my permission and began to shout abuse at his fellow residents who were walking up to the classrooms for their morning session.

By the time we got out of the campus on to the main road, he was studiously picking his nose and examining the produce.

I was concerned that he would be fouling the interior of my pristine motor.

“I hope you’re not flicking those bogies on to the floor of my new car” I said with a deprecatory glance.

“It’s alright” said Andrew. “I’m eating them.”

I pulled into the roadside.

“Andrew”, I said, eyeballing him closely, “we are on our own now, so you’ve nobody to impress except me. You’re going about that the wrong way. Do it the right way and you’ll get a treat at the end of our two hours.”

“What sort of treat?”

“Anything within reason, Andrew. I like an easy life and if you make my life……………our lives………………pleasant for both of us, I’ll get you a treat.”

“Like what? Some weed, some cigs?”

“I don’t know, Andrew. We’ll have to see.”

 

It was a long time before Andrew and I knew where we were each coming from. For example, it was some time before one of the carers explained to me that, as a child, Andrew had been trapped in a domestic fire. He had suffered oxygen starvation. Surely this and his mother’s life style had contributed to Andrew’s current problems which would often include a violent expression of his Œdipus complex.

In this case, although we had no further difficulties, I think I had bitten off more than I could chew.

 

The norm was more like Ross, from Fleetwood. He lived with his family, who were all very nice and, as far as I could see, quite normal and caring. But, for whatever reason, Ross suffered from Superficial Self-Esteem. Following my habit, I removed Ross from his usual environment and taught him at my home base which now included a portakabin and a workshop in an outside shed where, unbeknown to the local authority I had sub-contracted my mate Ken to teach varieties of building skills. When we were based in Watson Road, Blackpool, we had gained national accreditation as an examining centre for GCSE, RSA, City and Guilds and other bodies and we simply notified them when we moved address. We could set achievable and relevant goals for the kids in our charge and, while the authorities might question my methods, I was satisfied they worked. We got some wonderful exam results. But it was crucial too that we built a social relationship where we interacted with the kids.

Rightly or wrongly I thought it important that we should be seen as on top of this relationship. We could have man-to-man chats, have a laugh and a bit of rough and tumble but, in the end, we were the ones who would call the shots in what was always a very delicate situation. But it had NEVER to be a win-lose situation. Normally we got the balance absolutely right but, with Ross, I have to admit, I lapsed into the win-lose scenario.

Attending at the same time as Ross was a Blackpool boy called Dominic. He had his own particular reasons for being in our care but all was going very well with him. The boys used to retreat to the shed at break-time where they would exchange pornographic books and banter or roll up the occasional “spliff”.

After one such break, Dominic came to me and said that Ross was planning to nick my shed keys and return one night to steal our kids’ mountain bikes which were kept in that shed.

The correct things for me to do were:

as always, avoid aggressive, win/lose strategies,

immediately remove the keys, the temptation, out of sight,

perhaps in a day or so, let him see me remove the bicycles to an unknown haven.

I removed the keys but, foolishly, set up a stupid win-lose scenario for the following day.

 

Sue and I had simple child listening devices which sent sound signals around the wiring of a single-phase electrical set-up. They came in the form of little radio-speakers which, when plugged into the mains at two separate points could be used as two-way intercoms or listening devices.

By the following morning, I had one unit set up in the shed and the other in the kitchen. During our break, Ken sat in the kitchen with pen and paper; I went out to the shed to meet with Ross so that we might complete what I called an “advertiser’s poll”.

“Ross, we have all the usual information, like date of birth, address and so on. What’s your father’s first name?”

“Malcolm”

“Where was he born?”

“Hull”.

“Thanks, Ross. It’s an awful bore all this, but we get 7p a questionnaire.

What make of car does your father drive and what is the registration?”

Several more leading questions followed and Ken made his notes in the kitchen.

“Thank you very much, Ross” I enthused. “We knew all these answers anyway. But, for 7p, we’d better just check. Let’s have a drink in the kitchen.”

We joined Ken and set up two more teas.

“What do you mean, you knew all the answers?” asked Ross.

It was a total gift.

We sat down with Ken.

“Ken, what’s Ross’ father’s name?”

“Malcolm” said Ken, almost as if it were a stupid question.

“Car registration?” and so on, until Ken bent over the table and eyeballed the totally bemused Ross.

“We even know you’re planning to nick the bikes in the shed.”

Ross, totally disarmed, picked up a chair and threw it violently to the ground then left the premises in a searing rage almost never to be seen again.

We had lost our grip and it was my smart-arsed fault.

 

A month or so later, I was in Fleetwood dealing with another child’s home tuition needs. As I left the boy’s home I drove towards the tram tracks, preparing to head for Blackpool. A voice from nowhere greeted me:

“Fleming! Fleming” I tracked the voice down to the upper floor of a passing tram. It was Ross.

“Fleming! You’re a wanker” he was shouting out the opened window, giving everyone the benefit of his synonymous hand gestures.

I thought it quite funny and actually felt happy that he seemed in high spirits.

 

A couple of years later, I got a call from the landlord at the Seven Stars pub where Ken and I used to relax at the end of a day.

“There’s a young man called Ross with his father, Malcolm, in the bar. They’re inviting you for a drink” said Arnold.

We didn’t go because the Seven Stars is our local pub and Ross and his Dad would have been more than justified if they had set about us.

 

After a month or so of the police taking up residency in my Poulton offices, they disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. I tried to extract some rent from them but, despite my co-operation (which, to say the least, was inconvenient) and the fact that, with Rod’s disappearance I assumed the operation had been a success, I got nothing.

 

Bithell owned the property next door too. It consisted of a lock-up garage on the ground floor with two floors above, each with three rooms. He had leased the property to a small publishing firm owned by a bloke Sheila and I had come across on the show business circuit. They had designed a new form of the dreaded year planner surrounded by about sixty adverts for which they were sole distributors on behalf of local authorities. In the short time they had been next door to us they had clinched the sole representation of 20 or 30 authorities. They were in dire need of space for expansion. Gary, the owner, came to see me and asked if I was willing to let him have some rooms.

In brief, I got rid of Adrian and Rod, on the perfectly valid grounds that I could not have drug dealers on the same premises as an educational establishment. I accepted £2000 from Gary for my “grace and favour” and, within a couple of weeks, they had moved in,

By skilful use of plasterboard, I divided my remaining three rooms into five, one to one, teaching rooms.

 

My MS was continuing to get noticeably worse. None of the medics ever referred to it as “remissive” or “progressive”. I had to work it out for myself. I had kicked the Evening Primrose into touch, had tried all the alternative stuff and decided to get on with it.

I bought a walking stick. It was me, my red wine and my good humour against the lot of them. MS was a life sentence but it was not going to be a full stop.

 

By late 1990, I had persuaded Bithell that, because of the MS, I would not be able to honour my lease with him. Thankfully, he agreed to transfer the whole thing to the publishers who were now doing exceedingly well with their stupid wall planners.

The truth is I had accepted the fact that I had MS and knew that, like all disadvantages, it could be used.

 

During the dying embers of my lease in Poulton I got a job at Preston Prison teaching Modern Languages. I forget who recommended me to the job or the job to me but it was an interesting phase for me

Preston Prison is just a few hundred yards from the centre of the town and virtually next door to Red Rose Radio, two factors which seem to add to the incongruity in the positioning of this Cat.B prison. Of course, lots of secure units (like Wakefield or Strangeways) are in or near the centres of large towns or cities but I always imagined it would add to the frustration and punishment of prisoners, who could watch from their cells the toing and froing of freer citizens making their way from pub to shop or bus.

 

The interview was a joke. I was met at the front gate by the Head of Education, a small, quietly spoken elderly man who, it transpired, was about to retire from the Service. He took me through a labyrinth of passages and cell blocks, unlocking then locking countless sturdy doors, the objects of which, he explained, were to isolate sections of the prison in the event of a crisis.

We eventually arrived at the “Education Wing” on a floor which, judging by the smells, was above or near the kitchens. He showed me around the five or six teaching rooms and the small library. Before returning to his office he opened the door of the last classroom and said

“This’ll be where you are based”.

It almost seemed I had the job already.

“But, let’s go to my office and discuss some details.”

We sat down in his room which overlooked the main exercise yard.

“I see from your CV” he said, flicking through my recently-sent missive “that your qualifications are in French and Spanish. We offer our clients French, Spanish and German. Can you teach German?”

I stood up and did my party piece, one finger of the left hand representing the moustache and the right hand in mock Nazi salute.

“Ich mőchte ein Stűck Schwarzwälderkirschtorte”

“Yes, alright, alright. We can offer you two hours a day, Monday to Friday. When can you start?”

 

I told him I could start straight away, which seemed to please him.

“I must tell you that half your clients will have ulterior motives for joining your class” he said, leaning back in his ripped swivel chair now that a successful appointment had been made.

“What do you mean?”

“Your clients will be remand prisoners. The Governor likes to accommodate on separate wings prisoners held on remand for the same crime. They volunteer often for education so that they can meet up and plan their defence. That sort will have no interest at all in what you are teaching. You’ll soon find out where they’re all coming from.

There are sets of course books in the library. If you need any books or other materials let me know and I’ll see if we’ve got the money.

The block is locked up when they’re in here, but I’d still rather you didn’t let them wander about the place in lesson time. There are always two warders on duty in the corridor if you need them. Shout if necessary. By the way, why the walking stick?”

I don’t know why I said it. Perhaps it was the soporific atmosphere created by the ease with which I had gained access and a job in a Cat. B prison. The atmosphere was so laid-back. I could and probably should have said “MS”. Instead, I pursed my lips as if in readiness to speak to a lip-reader and, very quietly (I didn’t want anyone to know the truth or the lie), I replied

“Falklands.”

“Right” he said, getting to his feet. “We’ll see you on Monday. You can complete all the County details then. I’ll walk you to the front gate.”

In fact somebody had to accompany us teachers everywhere; we were not given a key; we had to sign in and sign out at Reception.

In reality, I disliked the whole set-up. The concept of adults “banging up” other adults seemed totally distasteful. I realised that most of the prisoners had done despicable things to other humans but locking them up in the middle of a city didn’t seem right. In the short time I was there, I saw several prisoners return on different charges; they just picked up their French or German where they left off. It was only and could only be punishment through containment. Apart from our scant efforts at teaching very few of them basic cooking, guitar, languages or other skills there seemed to be little rehabilitative strategies. Sometimes I wondered how the prisoners got letters and messages to their loved ones or received supplies of harmless palliative drugs. Sometimes I knew.

 

The deputy Head in the education unit, whose name I forget, announced one morning in May 1990 that we would be having a visit the following week by a small team of magistrates who were keen to see the various provisions made for prisoners whom they had sent to Preston Prison. I have always thoroughly enjoyed visits or inspections in my place of work on the grounds that I have always known that I have tried my best in whatever the circumstances and I did enjoy showing off in situations where I knew that I knew more than the punters inspecting me.

 

One of my last private pupils at PLC was Rachel, a fun-loving 16 year old who was doing GCSE English with me. We were only a few weeks away from her sitting the exam at PLC in Poulton. Her coursework had been good and I felt she was going to do well.

Her lessons with me were on a Friday after school and Rachel was always psyched up for the weekend ahead.

“What’s in store this weekend, Rachel?” I asked as I escorted her to the door after one of those lessons.

“Me and some friends are going to the “Tash” in Blackpool, tonight. It should be cool. There’s some good groups playing.”

“Is that upstairs or downstairs?” I asked innocently and only with some interest.

“Upstairs. You’re not going to tell me you’ve been there, you old faggot.”

“I played at the opening night of My Father’s Moustache two or three years ago with Brian Rossi.”

“Yeh. Get a life.”

“Who are you going with?”

“Just some friends. Do you wanna come? They’ve got a lift up to the first floor.” She paused, realising she might have touched a sore point with my MS. “Sorry, Alex” she said. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’ll be able to park near the front door with my disabled stickers.”

“Will you really come? Please” her big brown eyes pleaded. “About ten o’clock?” she suggested

“I’ll come for an hour or so. I’ll buy you and your mates a drink then I’ll have to go and meet my bit of spare”.

Rachel laughed, gave me a father’s kiss on the cheek then jaunted to the bus stop.

 

That evening, Sue had a badminton meeting in Blackpool so I dropped her off for 8 p.m. and, having had a pint or two with the late Barry Eastwood who was then running the Star pub next to the PleasureBeach, I arrived at the “Tash” for just after ten.

The kids were pouring in, anxious to get a table before the pubs closed, so I went to the head of the queue where I would deliver my usual line about being the keyboard player at such or such a place. In Blackpool, this was usually good enough to guarantee you swift, free entrance to a venue.

“Don’t charge this man” said one of the bouncers. “I was on the door here when this man played at the opening night of our beloved club. How are you doing, Alex?” It was Steve Hill, the former semi-professional boxer from SouthShore who, since that time, has built up THE  town’s largest door-security operation.

 

I took my time and made it to the floor above. The racket was unimaginable even before I opened the door into the club.

Rachel and her pals were in a cluster half way up the bar but there was no way I could speak. Rachel burst forward to welcome me with a radiant smile and another kiss on the cheek. I managed to communicate through sign language that I would buy a round of drinks, gave Rachel two twenty pound notes then retreated towards the “Gents” to relieve my bladder which was becoming increasingly encumbered as the MS progressed.

As I passed along the bar on the way to the toilets, I noticed in the retroussé alcove at the end, an elderly fellow in deep conversation with a young, blond chap.

“Father and son on a bonding night out” I surmised as I looked forward to the imminent pee. Once in the loo I made for the sit-down cubicle which had become my habit over recent months. It wasn’t so much the fact that I knew I’d wee my pants; it was the fear and awareness that I might. In fact, with MS, at the start of a twenty mile outward journey you can wish you had gone to the toilet before setting off then two hours after returning you might still not have had or even thought of a pee.

I sat on the loo, enjoying the relative peace. I heard people come into the toilet and the cubicle next to me being occupied.

After a short time:

“I’ve told you I care for you” I could hear this bloke saying.

“Fuck off” said the other, younger voice. “You just want it all your way.”

They were in the booth next to me.

 

I stole out of the toilets and made my way back along the bar. The old fella and the lad had left their secluded position at the end of the bar. But, within minutes they re-emerged from the toilets hand in hand. They sat down again at the end of the bar, the older guy with his arm around the neck of the younger. Clearly, they had made up; nobody gave them a second glance.

 

I had the following Monday to prepare for the magistrates’ visit. George, one of the half dozen or so prisoners who made up the language group was an excellent cartoonist and, between us, we made a colourful and amusing wall display. I prepared the usual montage of French and German recipes while George (who had been accused of attempted robbery in a Blackpool Building Society while completely pissed) did some amusing cartoons of prisoners and guards saying some very unlikely things to each other in foreign languages. Admirable wall displays and well-rehearsed rôle-plays were some of the usual things staged for inspections in such a way that they appeared to be the norm in the everyday life of the language teacher. Of course, inspections by professional educationalists took a lot more preparation than one by a bunch of lay do-gooders.

For security reasons, the inner walls of each classroom were made of re-enforced glass overlooking the arterial corridor where the warders would sit and play scrabble and the Head would occasionally do “a round”. On this particular Tuesday morning, I saw, out of the corner of my experienced eye, the expected group arrive. It was headed by the ubiquitous, large, smiling diva accompanied by our revered Head of Department and a mixed bunch of what I presumed were self-righteous magistrates. I feigned interested conversation with my pupils until they had disappeared to other classrooms up the corridor then returned to the classroom opposite which had thirty or more aspiring guitarists who, every Tuesday, learnt a new chord on the three guitars they had spent half an hour tuning. This being the depths of Preston Prison, these little villains each saw themselves as Johnny Cash re-incarnations.

Eventually, the group of magistrates approached my room. By the time the diva, at the head of her little enclave, was knocking for admission I had placed myself in chat position, back to the door, at a table facing a couple of prisoners. The group came in. The Head introduced himself and I nonchalantly swung round to confront them. My welcoming smile wilted as I recognised the ageing poofter from the previous Friday at “The Tash”.

 

My feelings of discomfort with prison life increased over the next few months. I got to know quite a few of the “screws” during break time or if no “clients” turned up for lessons. They seemed to me to be as villainous as some of the prisoners. It was another example of “The nearer the pulpit …………………” They would take pornography and drugs from the prisoners for their own use. The prisoners knew and accepted this (and plenty more); the only real difference was that they, the prisoners, had been caught.

Although I was not happy working in this false, contrived scenario, I accepted work at the nearby Kirkham (open) Prison. As with other open prisons, the inmates were not “banged up” as such. They were free to move about the “campus” and, indeed, encouraged to socialise with all and sundry. On the whole, they were theoretical miscreants whose crimes had been committed in commercial theatres and the like. In general, no violent or life-threatening behaviour had been used. They were accountants, bankers and other professional people whose greed, self-gratifying or otherwise, had got the better of them.

 

The Prison Service liked to see itself as largely self-supporting. The inmates at Preston would repair broken furniture and machinery while those at Kirkham would maintain the market gardens and devise relevant accounting systems (presumably to reduce the amount of fruit and veg. stolen by the warders).

At lunch time and dinner time, the inmates had a choice of three menus: European, vegetarian or Eastern. We would struggle to find such a choice anywhere near our home in Stalmine.

During the morning and afternoon sessions, the prisoners worked at their allotted jobs. Those who were too “poorly” could spend the day in the library, play bowls on the beautiful greens, squash and badminton in the well-equipped gym or simply chill-out in their quite comfortable Nissan hut dormitory. The evenings from 7p.m. were taken up with leisure activities, one of which was Spanish on a Wednesday or Friday. By the time I got there I would have already had a busy day at PLC in Poulton, would have had a liquid lunch at “The Thatched House” and followed this with several glasses of red wine in the afternoon. I had bought a large, metallic blue, second-hand Mercedes which I would drive over to Kirkham, arriving in the Prison car park by about 6.30. Half an hour’s shut-eye and I would be ready for the quite stimulating next couple of hours.

 

Since my early thirties, a Mercedes had always been in my forward planning. It had replaced my childhood dreams of a red, soft-top MG sports car on grounds of practicality. The Merc was in pristine nick and a beautiful drive. But it cost a lot to run and service and it attracted a lot of attention, mainly from the police.

A few years earlier, when I was still playing the clubs and we were still living in Watson Road, I had accepted a “depping” job on the organ in a Working Men’s Club in Leyton, near Preston. I went over in the Merc, not looking forward to the prospect of an evening playing a “box of bees” with a drummer who’d be “building a shed”. When you “dep” in the musical world or “supply” in the teaching world, you’re often filling a gap where something is drastically wrong. At this club in Layton, everything was almost perfect. The organ was a lovely little Hammond ‘M’ with two Leslie 760 speakers, one at either end of the stage; the drummer was a young swinger with a wicked sense of humour; the act was something else; the beer was Boddingtons.

All of us had a superb evening. I had sweated buckets and replaced it with pint after pint of Boddingtons. At the end of the evening, the three of us each enjoyed a large whisky and a pint before going our separate ways. Having worked hard and sweated hard, I was as sober as when I entered the place. I settled into my luxurious Mercedes 300 series, tuned into Radio 4 or Classic FM and eased my way back to Blackpool.

I arrived back at Watson Road at about half past midnight. Before I could get out of the car I was apprehended by a tall, young-looking, aquiline-nosed traffic policeman.

“Would you mind joining me in my car, Sir?”

“Why?”

“I don’t wish to arrest you, Sir. I would like to check that you are not over the legal limit of alcohol consumption for driving.”

I knew I would be so I went along quietly into his patrol car which was parked behind me. I blew into his portable breathalyser and the little light turned red.

“We’ll go along to Central and do a proper test. Can I have the keys to your car, Sir?”

“Can I just go and tell my wife? I only live there” I asked, indicating the house.

He got out of the patrol car, and I could hear a central locking system clicking-in. When he returned, he started the motor.

“Can I go and tell my wife?” I repeated.

Without replying, he sped off down Watson Road and turned right on to the Promenade. He ignored any red lights and even missed the right turn into Bonny Street which housed the Central Police Station.

“Did you say we were going to Central?” I asked. “You’ve just passed Bonny Street”.

Without any form of response, he did an illegal U-turn, regained Bonny Street, drew up at the naughty boys’ entrance under the police station and escorted me into the front office. A sergeant was behind the desk.

I realised I had had a good run over the years; I had talked my way out of several similar situations but, this time, my number was up.

“And who do we have here?” asked the sergeant. I thought he was talking to me.

“Fleming’s my name” I replied

“Alexander Fleming” said the aquiline bobby. “I breathalysed him at 12.37 this morning on Watson Road. The result was positive. I’ve brought him in for further testing.”

“Very good” said the sergeant with what I imagined was a touch of sarcasm. “Take Mr Fleming into the interview room, please.”

There was a definite coldness between the two of them and I thought about the arresting bobby missing the turn-off into Bonny Street. Perhaps he was new to this Division and had been upsetting people.

“May I use your toilet?” I asked the sergeant. “It’s been a long trip from Leyland.”

“Certainly, Sir; just over there on the right. Constable Perry, wait in the interview room. I’ll bring Mr Fleming when he’s ready.”

A definite coldness.

Once in the interview room, the sergeant asked me to sit in front of a machine about the size of a small television. He attached a new mouthpiece and instructed me to

“Blow into that as hard as you like.”

 

I took a deep breath and blew.

“Bloody Hell!” exclaimed the sergeant. “Very good. I’ve never seen anyone fill it that much. I’ll come back in a few minutes and we’ll do a second reading. Just relax.”

“Thank you, sergeant. Oh, I don’t suppose I could ring my wife and let her know where I am?”

“I’ll do it. Just give me the number.”

During all this, PC Aquiline sat in the corner, gathering his brows more each time the sergeant and I had reasonable conversation.

Ten minutes later I had to perform again on the in-house breathalyser.

“He thought the last time was good,” I said to myself. “This time I’m going for top ‘C’. I’ll blow the bleeding lot through the roof.”

I took the deepest breath I could, filling my lungs, my stomach and any other corner I could find. Wallop!

“Bloody Hell”, he repeated. “You’ve gone down almost two points on the Richter scale.” Pause.   “But I’m afraid you’re still over the limit” Pause “ I’m going to have to charge you…….” (I could hear the sepulchral voice ordering them to take me down)  “……with not wearing your seat belt. You weren’t wearing your seat belt were you?” Without waiting for an answer, he added: “There’s a mandatory fine of £20 for this offence.” He produced the already-prepared ticket.

I felt like kissing the guy and dug into my pockets for the twenty quid.

He laughed.

“Just do what it tells you on the ticket, Mr Fleming. Oh, Constable Perry, would you drive Mr Fleming home, please. He’ll show you the way.”

I was shaking like a leaf as we made our way back to the police car. We said nothing at all until, somehow, he found his way back to Watson Road. The Mercedes had gone. By the time I had got into the house, checked on Marie then sat down in the lounge, I could hear Sue parking  and went to make a couple of drinks. I imagined she wouldn’t abandon Marie for long and had probably gone to Bonny Street to pick me up.

She had had a longish chat with the sergeant who had explained how much he had “enjoyed the visit”. Apparently it was typical in Blackpool for driving offenders to swear quite violently at the arresting police. Indeed, he claimed, more than many physically resisted arrest. It had been “very pleasant” dealing with Mr Fleming.

“Oh, and by the way, between you, me and the gatepost, he did the right thing by inhaling a lot of fresh air before blowing into the machine. That’s why the second reading was better than the first.”

 

Quite often, during a lesson at Kirkham, a siren would sound. Invariably, it meant that a couple of inmates, who were not attending any of the many activities on offer between 7pm and 9pm had been seen heading to the perimeter fence to do a “pick-up” of alcohol or drugs. With the advent of mobile phones these “drop-offs” were easy to organise but it was also easy for the screws to listen in to the basic gear.

But, there seemed to be more talent amongst the prisoners than amongst the screws. Of course there were more prisoners than screws; but, even so, the screws were an unimaginative, self-satisfied bunch. Yet, I supposed, the more imaginative we all became, the more we’d have prisoners walking out the front gate or have punters throwing inflatable dolls over the perimeter fence.

 

Once out of the lease in Poulton, I decided to concentrate on my one-to-one teaching which I would conduct in a Portakabin between the house and the Nursery. I continued to visit Fylde Farm and the kids in residential homes under the ægis of Betty Rawlings and her team in the Lytham-St Annes area.

The Nursery went from strength to strength in the wake of Sue’s dedication and honesty. She had gathered around her an excellent team of NNEB’s and a cook called Wendy Wilson who worked in the house kitchen because, at the time, the Nursery had no cooking facilities. Wendy would be about forty, short and chubby, with “flashed” auburn hair and an unfortunate, grating, Birmingham accent. She would prepare the Nursery lunch in the house then carry it the short distance to the main building in time for lunch at 11.45. From 11.30, it was “all hands on deck”. Olwen told a story for the children, then they all had to visit the toilet to wash their hands before settling down at table. The postman always arrived at the house between 11.30 and 11.45. It seemed strange to me that, fifteen minutes before she was to serve lunch Wendy would take time to arrange the mail neatly on our kitchen table.

Sue, who was, and still is less organised than most, has always left her handbag absolutely anywhere on the ground floor of the house the front door of which opens directly on to a busy country road. The inevitable happened. One day the handbag disappeared; but it was found that same day, about fifty yards up the lane in a hedge.

“Can you guess what was missing?” asked the spider to the fly.

“The cheque book and cheque cards” said the clever fly.

So, Sue reported her cheque book and cheque cards missing, supposedly stolen.

“Your new cheque book will be with you in a few days and your new cheque cards will follow two or three days later” said the nice man from the Nat West.

Five or six days later the new cards and cheque book had still not appeared in any of the nice piles of post arranged on the kitchen table by Wendy.

Sue reported them missing again. I contacted the police and suggested that “someone” might have intercepted the bank items and, having waited for the cheque card to arrive, be “kiting” cheques all over the place in our name. I gave that “someone” a sporting hint by noisily fitting a bolt on the kitchen door at about ten o’clock one morning.

 

I then had to agree to pay the police a fee to fingerprint the ten most recent cheques through our account and fingerprint Wendy Wilson.

The results were positive and the friendly, elderly bobby from Pilling told me they would be going to “confront” Wendy at her home in Hambleton that Sunday at 1600 hours. Nothing ever happened in Pilling and, clearly, our nice bobby was quite excited.

 

Every Sunday lunchtime, the former “Dog and Partridge” crowd who had now grown up a little, used to meet at the more respectable Warwick Hotel, South Shore, Blackpool, where the Boddingtons and the Thwaites were both excellent.

This particular Sunday in late ’92 was no different except that Sue came along too. I had four or five pints then Sue drove us home to Stalmine where she had prepared her usual excellent Sunday lunch. We washed this down with a bottle or two of red wine and then, like a total piss-arsed nincompoop, I decided to go and witness the arrest of our friend Wendy Wilson. Sue pleaded with me not to go:

“This’ll be the very time you are stopped. You have a record now and they won’t let you off lightly this time. Why did you ask me to drive home from the pub anyway?”

Being a vengeful twat I thought it was worth the risk of the mile drive to her house in Hambleton. I set off at about ten to four, drove the 250 yards to the top of our lane and, a hundred yards or so along the main road was stopped by a bobby in a “plain” car. I opened my driver’s window and, with the Blackpool sergeant’s advice in mind, started inhaling deeply through my mouth.

“I don’t need to ask if you’ve been drinking. I can smell it from here” said the fat little short arse. “We’ll just see how much if you’d like to come into my car.”

I was in the Nursery minibus and realised it would be bad for business if I were seen to be arrested locally. The blood drained from me as I thought of Sue and her advice. I supported myself on the side of the van as I made towards the waiting constable.

“You can’t even walk straight” he observed.

I was still inhaling deeply through my mouth.

“Actually, I’ve got MS” I ventured.

Constable H, who had been sitting on the bonnet of his car, stood up.

“I’ve got a sister with that. Listen, if you have been drinking, walk home or get a taxi. I live here in the village and I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

He turned and got into his car.

Almost confused, I turned and climbed into the minibus. Constable H drove off in the direction of Hambleton, so I did a U-turn and beat a hasty retreat. After all, if I had started walking, he might have returned and greeted me with “Oh, so you have been drinking.”

 

He was right about seeing a lot of each other in the future. But, more importantly, he was right about the foolishness of driving in drink. It took just one more incident to convince me totally.

It was eight o’clock one morning and I was taking the minibus to a local garage for servicing. As I drove on to the forecourt a police car emerged from its hiding place in front of a delivery van right opposite the garage. Constable H. and a silent colleague walked over to me as I got out the van and was starting to walk towards reception.

“Good morning, Mr Fleming. Have we had a drink yet?”

“I’ve had a drink of tea, thanks.”

“We mean an alcoholic drink, Mr Fleming. Someone rang in, you see and I would like you to blow into this.”

He produced his little machine.

“Who rang in?” I asked, imagining people who owed us money.

“Oh, we can’t tell you that Sir. Just blow into this, please.”

There are probably hundreds of books written about this sort of situation and what one should do.

But I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I suppose if I had refused and, in the light of the openness of the scene, had invited them to meet me in a quieter place they would refuse, saying that he and his colleague had noticed my erratic driving or whatever and had to test me there and then. In any event, they stuck with their “someone rang in” story.

The test was negative and, without apology or explanation, they left as quickly as they had arrived.

 

Most people will agree it’s foolish to drink and drive because of the danger you create for others. Of course, you also create dangers for yourself  because, for a copper, gaining convictions for this offence is an easy and very justifiable way of earning brownie points. But, for Constable H, it had an added attraction. He too could live on the edge while, at the same time, persecuting certain neighbours. On his nights off he would drink with his flat-mate in the local pubs then drive home. When on duty he would park his little panda car on the pub car park about half an hour before closing time. There were only a few things in Stalmine that upset me. Constable H was one of them.

On one occasion, he and four friends were on their usual Friday night pub crawl. In mid session they called the local taxi firm for transport to their next port of call. The saloon car arrived and, when the team of five emerged from the pub, the driver told them

“Sorry, I can’t take five of you in this vehicle. It’s against the law” to which the plain-clothed Constable H replied:

“Don’t worry; I am the law.”

That said it all about H. and thousands of others. Behind the protection of their uniform or job they commit all sorts of offences. Remember: “the nearer the pulpit, the worse the Christian”?

Most of my friends who enjoyed a couple of pints in the local pub, lived in fear of Constable H. In ’95 or ’96 news went around that Constable H was joining a “Rapid Response” unit somewhere in Bosnia, I think. Clearly, he was getting bored breathalysing harmless pensioners, so he was seeking excitement elsewhere.

The local pub in Stalmine had an entrance porch with a door at either side. My friend, Ken, and I used to sit in the pub at the table between the two doors.

One early evening in ‘95/’96 I, Ken and one or two other locals were enjoying our pints and chat. In the next room sat off-duty H and his pony-tailed flat mate.

I got up and bolted the door between us and H so that, when he and his pal left, they would have to pass in front of us to access the door to our right. It happened at about 7.30. As Constable H and his pal walked in front of us, I said;

“Good evening, Constable H. I hope you’re not drinking and driving.”

“I hope you’re bloody not” he replied testily.

Just before he got to the exit I asked:

“Is it true that you are about to join a ‘Rapid Response’ unit?”

“It is, actually.”

“Well, get some practice in. See how rapidly you can piss off out my local.”

From then on, the daggers were truly drawn.

 

In the Summer of ‘96  word went out that Constable H and his “band” were to appear in the gardens of a local pub one Sunday lunchtime. It seemed they were a heavy metal group which appeared mostly free of charge at dubious local functions. Apparently some residents within a mile of venues where they appeared had complained to the police about the noise and the disturbance of their rural peace. Of course, nothing was done.

On the Sunday in question, we had a family of friends from Sunderland staying with us. It was a beautiful morning and we decided to go for a “tootle” in the minibus to the Trough of Bowland. On the way back we stopped off for a drink where Constable H and his group were playing.

It was 12.15 and it looked like they had been “tuning up” and testing their equipment for some time. I sat with Sunderland Robert amidst a group of elderly ladies, obviously on a day trip and ready for a good sing-song.

At 12-40 they were still “tuning up” and everybody, especially our lady-friends, was getting irritated. Amateur bands tend to “tune up” with furrowed brows and playing their little party pieces in front of their future audience, rather like professional footballers who come on to the field ten minutes before the start of the game to warm up. Can they not do it somewhere else, like the car park or the gym? Professional musicians leave the amplification and other effects to the “roadies” who do their bit before the audience arrives. The “musoes” tune up in the dressing room without amplification.

 

“When are you going to stop this racket and start playing?” shouted Elsie, now about to get into her third milk stout.

Sue had bought me a beautiful fedora which I complemented with coloured “shades” and a constant stare. Apart from occasionally responding to Elsie or her pals, I never took my eyes off Constable H, even when I seemed to be on the mobile ‘phone. He was getting more and more nervous and must have drunk three or four pints of lager since we had arrived.

“What’s that bloody ‘phone for?” asked Elsie “What wi’ them making a bloody racket and you sittin’ there wi’ one o’ them fancy phones, you’re spoilin’ us day out.”

“Sorry, Elsie” I half mouthed, half shouted, still gazing at Constable H, whose group had embarked on their first contortion of a “tune”.

“I was just speaking to their Manager” I said, indicating the band.

“I’m pleased you were” Elsie shouted. “Did you tell him it’s a load of

loud bloody rubbish.?”

“No I didn’t, Elsie. But he did say they should play ‘Spanish Eyes’ next. Go and tell that little dark bugger who keeps looking at us.”

Elsie got up, went over to Constable H and started shouting at him in his artistically-inspired trance. Eventually, realising something was amiss, the “band” stopped playing. We could all hear Elsie over the now resting PA.

“That bloody racket you’re playing is not for us. Your manager over there (pointing to me) says you’ve to play ‘Spanish Eyes’”

The audience of pensioners and piss-takers gave Elsie thunderous applause.

Constable H looked over at me. He gulped at his pint of lager. I stood up, had a swig of my tomato juice, winked at Constable H with a pursed-lip impression of a kiss and left.

Game, set and nearly, match.

We returned to the cottage and immediately got on the ‘phone to Fleetwood Police. “Someone rang inl” still featured in my recent memories.

I dialed 141 then the Police.

“I’ve just been watching a group in a local pub.”

“Sorry, Sir, can I have your name”.

“Dominic Steven Toss” I replied. “My friends call me ‘Dom’”.

“Could you spell that for me, Sir.”

I did; then continued:

“One of the group is a colleague of yours. He’s drinking quite heavily and is going to be driving. I think you should stop him and breathalyse him.”

“What is the registration of his vehicle, Sir?”

“You know the registration of his vehicle. His name is (I gave his full name). What’s your name please.”

“I’m the duty officer, Sir.”

“Yes, I do realise that. But what’s your name?”

“I’m sorry, Sir, for security reasons, I can’t give you that.”

“Well, you might like to know that, for training purposes, this call has been recorded and the time logged.”

I suspected that Constable H was not popular amongst his colleagues and I do know that bobbies like to “do” each other. But, as far as I know, nothing happened as a result of me “calling in”.

 

He was going to get me. But, since the only thing he ever seemed to do was breathalyse, I vowed never to drink and drive again. This applies anywhere now and so, I am grateful, Constable H. Thank you.

 

Back in February of 1993, three friends and I decided to follow up an idea I had had for several months. I felt that, in the summer, when people were having their barbecues, they could infuse the odours of France by including vine prunings on their fires. One of the prunings in the Macon area takes place in February each year and it was our idea to collect what the viticulturists normally burnt off, bring them back to the UK and sell them off in little user-friendly bunches in garages and supermarkets. A girl pupil of mine in the Fourth and FifthYearCollege had done a caricature of a French café owner for her GCSE Art coursework and we would use this in our quite elaborate artwork for the sales promotion.

The group of four was made up of Don Keady, the world’s number one bullshitter, Rob Lomas, a member of the Dog and Partridge tray-bashing team, Gary Thornton, the police inspector and myself. The whole thing was my corny idea so I would handle the French; Keady was in charge of the travel arrangements, Gary was the wine connoisseur and Rob was the sensible input.

Keady had somehow acquired a Transit van for us and one of those Daily Express special offer tickets for a return ferry crossing to France for £1. We were not told by Keady, until well en route, that the return was meant to be completed within 24 hours and the ticket was valid for vehicles up to and including a Vauxhall Viva. The other minor drawback, revealed by Keady as we circled Birmingham, was that the crossing was from Margate.

It must have taken us seven hours to drive from Blackpool to Margate.

 

 

Not surprisingly, we had a choice of crossings. At about 8 pm, when we had arrived at the deserted port, I followed Keady to the commercial transport reception where he was bullshitting some of the ferry staff.

“I went to college with your boss…………what’s his name, John Robertson?” he was saying to a very nice, gullible, blond girl.

“Oh no” she replied. “It’s Mr Karrott now. He’s the port manager.”

“So who’s in overall charge now? Is it Robertson or Karrott?”

“Mr Karrott. He’s very much in charge” she said with a wry, perhaps knowing smile.

 

Thus armed, we completed our crossing and set off for Médoc.

We avoided the expense of the autoroute on the way down and contented ourselves with very cheap overnight stays in unclassified dumps. At Chatillon, we went into a hotel/ bar to check if they had any vacancies.

 

 

 

I remember that my MS, even then, meant I needed some assistance. There were three locals enjoying a drink. Gary, who had been learning French at PLC took it upon himself to ask the landlord if there were four single rooms available and then, having broken through the language barrier, ordered himself un verre de rouge.

“Et quat’ pailles”  suggested one of the fat little locals at the bar.

Returning the support Gary had given me getting into the place, I suggested

“Cinque, si t’en veux, mon pote” .

We had a superb couple of hours at the bar after that.

There was no problem in getting a van load of sarments  which the viticulturists just burnt off anyway.

We developed a very pleasant relationship with one particular vineyard owner who took up my offer to try and promote his excellent wines in the UK. But the unfortunate truth was the French were now being seriously challenged by cheaper East European, Australian and South African equivalents.

 

Our return journey, on the fourth day, was almost uneventful. Keady slept amongst the twigs; Rob, Gary and I drove up the autoroute to Calais where we called into Mammouth to replenish our personal supplies of booze. The only “event” arose as we waited in the dockside queue to board the ferry. A member of staff came round to check the tickets and issue boarding cards. He was not at all happy when he saw the £1 day return ticket for a Vauxhall Viva given, I suppose, that we were in a Ford Transit and had used the “outward” part of the ticket four days previously. Keady emerged from the back of the truck:

“MR KARROTT bla bla shit bugger up your arse MR KARROTT. I’m going to tell MR KARROTT” he said wagging an index finger at the totally confused workman. “Tell him, Alex.”

“Nous sommes des invitės de Monsieur Karrott. Vėrifiez, si vous voulez” I said, indicating his mobile phone.

He waved us on.

 

Once back in Lancashire, I paid a couple of my “Out-of-School” pupils to do some private work making and binding small bouquets of the twigs.

I went to Center Parcs near Nottingham, even to a business park near Cambridge where I saw the Managing Director of a large company with outlets in some prime motorway and A-road filling stations.

All to no avail, and three or four months after our visit to France, I burnt the bloody lot.

A year or two after that, ready-made, flavoured barbecues were available.

Even the wine did nothing. The poor fellow who owned the vineyard where we got our sarments spent seventy-odd quid on the postage of twelve samples from his little co-operative. Our local supermarket chain was “very interested” to try them so I humped the box over to their head office in Preston. The brother within the family which owned the chain and who was responsible for the buying of wines and spirits was too busy to see me. He probably looked upon me as a lowly delivery chap. But there was not even a reply to my letter, included in the box of wines. I wondered how many boxes of fairly expensive wines that ignorant bastard guzzled in a year without even returning a letter to say “Thank you, but no thank you.”

 

It had been a good trip, though. And we had tried.

 

 

Another failure of mine came some time later, in 1999, with the “Motorway Guide”. At the time, Sue and I were spending a fair amount of time travelling up north to visit her elderly parents and my 89 year old mother.

On the way back from Edinburgh on one trip we stopped at a service station on the M6. I was then dependent on two walking sticks so Sue kindly went in search of refreshment for both of us. She came back with a tea, a coffee and a couple of sandwiches which we settled down to enjoy in the farther reaches of the car park.

Fortunately, there was a bank of dustbins nearby where we threw the hellish fayre which had cost us £5:20. To this day, I have never come across such an insult to the coffee bean. We didn’t even try the sandwiches. Somehow, the whole thing reminded me of the age-old saying: “Eat shit. Thousand of millions of flies just can’t be wrong.”

 

A mile or so further down the motorway we turned off, determined to find a pub where we could have a good, reasonably-priced snack. We stopped to ask a bloke, out walking on his own.

“Excuse me, can you tell me where………….”

He indicated that he was deaf and dumb.

We stopped to ask a nice-looking couple.

“Excuse me, could you tell me ………….”

“Sorry, we’re not from these parts”.

We did a U-turn, regained the motorway and continued on our way. By the time we reached home, Sue and I had verbally designed our Motorway Guide. It would have a double page for each junction, a map and prime ad.space on the left page and four ads on the right page. Ads would be for pubs, hotels, cafés, sandwich bars etc. within a mile or so of the motorway junction. Each venue would be sampled by Sue and myself and the ads. would cost something like £200 each. 44 junctions on the M6 = 220 ads @ £200 each = £44,000. There must have been 20 or 30 motorway stretches to go at in England alone. We were looking at an eventual conservative turnover of £5-6 million in England alone. We were psyched up but, no way did we have the finance to roll.

I was getting on for 58 years old and my MS was progressing. I didn’t play the clubs any more because of my increasing disability. I played occasionally at Masonic lodges, one of which was held at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool where I entertained at the “Olde English” evening. For the meal, I sat with our neighbour Neville Smith who was Worshipful Master at the time. Neville knew how I liked my “projects” and he asked me what I was currently doing. I told him about our Motorway Guide idea and he was wildly impressed. My sorry tale about lack of funds seemed to heighten his interest.

“Let’s meet tomorrow” he said. “I’m interested in possibly funding the project if we can get the right infrastructure.”

 

The following morning, we met in my Portakabin.

By lunchtime, we had fleshed out the whole plan: he would provide the finance and would set up the accounting infrastructure; I would “do the people” (i.e. meet them, employ them, fire them, deal with the advertisers etc).Within a month we had two cars, two salesmen and a girl to manage the “office”. Neville had organised the printing of contracts with employees and advertisers. The whole thing was extremely tight. Neville was happy with his investment of £50,000 and I had established a sound relationship with my staff. We set sail on September 1st 2000.

We spent a whole year paying commission and travel allowances to salesmen and office staff.

By June 2001, we had accumulated enough advertisers to produce the M6 version of Fleming’s Motorway Guide.  By July of that year we had agreed format and cost with the printers and, the following month, we received 12,000 copies for our salesmen to distribute at the main Ford dealers in Preston, ManchesterAirport and other venues.

 

Then September 11^th 2001 happened.

In rapid succession, came the foot and mouth crisis.

As a coup de grâce we had the SARS epidemic.

 

The net result was a serious decline in the number of tourists visiting Britain and, because of the foot and mouth, a decline of tourism by Brits within Britain. Our advertisers suffered the ill effects and concluded that our publication was a failure. We got very poor response on the other motorways because of the depressed market and Neville, understandably, decided to pull the plug. Now, in 2003, there are several successful motorway guides.

 

I prefer to refer to this kind of thing as a poor outcome. I mean “nine-eleven” was hardly our fault, any more than the foot and mouth or SARS epidemics were. Falling foul of multiple sclerosis can hardly be described as my fault, despite what that twit Glen Hoddle says.

 

I have always wanted to drive a bus or coach.

Once, on a French exchange during a coach trip to St Lô in Normandy, I watched the little owner-driver, M. Lecanu, all the way from Percy to our destination. While the kids went on walkabout in St Lô, Lecanu and I sat on the coach and chatted. After a few minutes I stood up.

“Tu permets?”  I asked, indicating the driver’s seat.

“Bien sûr.” he replied. “Tu sais conduire les cars?”

“Mais oui. J’ai mon permis. Tu savais pas, non?”

“Non, j’savais pas.”

“Je ferai le retour à Percy, si tu veux.”

“O.K.”.

At BatleyHigh School I had passed the County test to drive the school bus, a thirty year old 22 seater Leyland bus which had been bought from a remote Welsh Authority. It was certainly far removed from this 54 seater, left hand drive Mercedes with a Telma retarder and split gearbox.

When the kids had returned, I eventually set off amidst the kids’ raucous laughter, protests and fearful silences. Three hundred metres from the central coach park I drove into a traffic jam caused by repair work being done on the roundabout that separates the Cherbourg and southbound traffic. I had never sat in a Mercedes 54-seater before, let alone driven one on the Continent. It was unspeakable, unforgivable madness which I rue to this day.

But it was fun; and we completed the 30 kilometre journey without incident. Thank God!

 

This whole event encouraged me to take private lessons back in England and, in February 1991, some twelve years after the French episode, Sue bought me ten private lessons with a local coach firm for my fiftieth birthday. I loved it. I saw myself in retirement acting as co-driver and interpreter for the “G-Line” coach firm that was, and still is, based 300 metres from our house in Stalmine. But, virtually on the eve of my test and with Sue’s insistence, I reluctantly admitted to having MS. At that time, my condition was almost unnoticeable but I would not qualify for a PSV licence. With great sadness, I withdrew my test application.

Another poor outcome!

 

That French episode in St Lô indirectly reminds me of another event which took place in Coutances back in the summer of 1978. I had applied for the deputy headship of MontgomeryHigh School near Blackpool. It is nowadays grandly referred to as “A Language College” but, as far as I know it is very little different to the secondary school I visited 26 years ago.

On the day, the four of us who had been invited to stay after lunch were reassembled in an ante-room for the final sessions of the interview. We were visited by one of the interviewing panel, a large, fat fellow from County Hall by the name of Williamson who advised us:

“In this session, if you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t insult us by waffling on. Just say nothing. You either know the answer or you don’t. Good luck everyone.”

He went, sideways, out of the room.

I was contemplating an exit there and then when I was called, the first, into the Head’s office. After the preliminary pleasantries and a few warm-up questions, Fatso intervened.

“In your opinion, what relevance has the Taylor Report to MontgomeryHigh School?”

I said nothing.

“Sorry. Did you hear the question?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you. Did you hear the answer?”

“There wasn’t one.”

“You said ‘If you don’t know the answer to a question, just say nothing’. I have chosen to say nothing. I expect my pupils to follow simple instructions too.”

I stood up.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

I left the room.

Another poor outcome, resulting from my impulsiveness. I never applied again for a deputy headship.

“If, at first, you don’t succeed, kick it in the bin.” was my cowardly version of the well-known adage.

 

It was all put in context in the gardens of Coutances during the French exchange that year. Sheila and I had left the pupils to go walkabout in the town while we went to have our picnic lunch in the gardens. Two or three of the English exchange kids joined us on what was one of the most rewarding aspects of our work as teachers in those days. We had the togetherness of a little family as we sat in the midday sun watching the children run about in the simple maze. A family of four settled near us. Before long it became clear they were Welsh. Their two children ran off to join our lot in the maze. Within minutes we had learnt that they, the parents, were living in Sheffield and that they were both teachers. She taught languages and he was a head teacher. We explained that I was a Head of Languages at Poulton and had just failed to get a deputy headship in Bispham.

“Failed? You succeeded in getting an interview, didn’t you? How many interviews have you had?”

“One”

“I had nineteen interviews before I got my present headship in Sheffield. I must have applied for over thirty jobs. Thanks to my wife here, I succeeded in making thirty-odd applications, I succeeded in getting eighteen interviews then I succeeded in gaining the headship of my present school. It’s been a whole success story.”

There’s positive!

 

Late in 1996 I got a ‘phone call from a chap called Doug Beaumont. Was I available to teach excluded children who were attending four or five of the centres he ran for County in the Blackpool area?

“Yes, I’m available. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m slightly disabled.”

“I’ve heard you’re slightly good at teaching. It’s one-to-one. £22 an hour.”

“Bloody hell! That’s good going. You must be on good tucker yourself.”

“Yeh. It’s quite a good do. So, can you help?”

 

I started working as one of Doug Beaumont’s teachers in September 1996 in one of his Centres in St Annes. The group met in a church hall. There was a group leader, five or six pupils and four teachers of different disciplines. Obviously, it helped if you could teach a few subjects so that the kids got a reasonably balanced diet. They were only offered two hours a day, from ten to twelve, which was the minimum Government requirement for kids who had been excluded from local mainstream schools. There were hardly any difficulties with the kids except, perhaps, those with ADHD, Aspergers or autism. These were only mild cases, the more severe ones being in dedicated institutions or taught at home.

In any case, with teaching on a one-to-one basis it was difficult for the pupils to attract or gain peripheral attention. Most of them had fairly straightforward socio/familial problems and needed a dependable adult to relate to. In most cases, as I have said before, this was much more important than the educational subject content. But still, some of those elderly ex school teachers insisted on boring the little buggers with trigonometry and figures of speech. I spent every day teaching 10 year old Stephanie who had quite severe ADHD. I didn’t want to teach her but nobody else did and I was the last to arrive.

When she went loopy about something or other, I would open my newspaper, turn my back on her and completely ignore her. When she had shut up, I would turn around, put the newspaper down and, adopting a different tack to where I lost her before, would start a game of noughts and crosses which she loved. I’d let her win a couple of games, give her a lucky dip into my ubiquitous sweetie bag, then make a “deal” with her about the rest of the two hours we would spend together. As a reward, I would allow her to take the biscuits round the other teachers at break time. Of course, she adored the thanks she got and she had a platform from where she could communicate with the other kids. Achieving communication was a problem for her.

 

The whole thing worked well for me because nothing ever happened in the mornings with my teaching in Stalmine; in the afternoons, particularly after school time, I was very busy.

 

One day, my adopted daughter, Marie, rang me from Blackpool.

She had made friends with a Russian girl, Tetiana, who had rented a room from her and who was wanting English lessons. Her parents had a business in St Petersburg importing English and other European furniture and it was their idea that she would eventually set up a branch somewhere in the north of England.. At least, this is what I was told, when Marie brought her over to Stalmine.

She was a tall, dark, well-built eighteen year old-who knew how to tease the ****, as we used to say. Her English was good already and she made easy meat of the Cambridge and TOEFL materials. She claimed to be a friend of Pete Sampras and already had a 40 year old married “boyfriend” called Graham who, coincidentally, had a furniture business somewhere near Appleby.

I worked in St Annes in the morning, taught “Tania” in the afternoon and had my private pupils from local schools in the evening.

My lessons with Tania, like all good language lessons, ended up in chat mode. She was very keen to download Graham since her hard-nut mafioso boyfriend, Igor, from St Petersburg was coming to meet her. I ended up between the two stools.

I took Tania to Appleby, met Graham, extended some cock and bull story to him about her tutor coming over from Russia then took her to ManchesterAirport to meet this little 35 year old Russian in a long Molotov overcoat. He, Igor, regarded me as his chauffeur and sat cuddling Tania in the back of my bloody car all the way from ManchesterAirport to Blackpool, where he was staying in the Imperial Hotel. During the trip from Manchester, I pulled down the mental shutters; Tania and Igor were in deep Slavonic discussion which was of no interest to me.

When we got on to the short M55 which goes from the M6 to Blackpool, Tania leant over the front passenger seat.

“Pull over, on to the hard shoulder” she said in perfect English. I did so.

We stopped. There was a long pause while Igor and Tania continued their discussion. Eventually, she leant over the back of the passenger seat again.

“Igor wants you to front the English part of our operation. Do you agree?” she asked, smiling in her coquettish way.

I always like to keep my options open, never refusing an opportunity.

“Why not? What is the operation?”

“Igor wants us to buy a property where we can establish a girls’ finishing school for rich Russian families. He has a property to see in Lancaster tomorrow.”

 

A parent whose child came to us for tuition in Poulton had a concession in BlackpoolTower. Once, when I tentatively approached him for fees he said,

“Don’t insult yourself and your splendid set up by begging for your fee. Hold your head up, look me in the eyes and tell me how much I owe you. If I don’t like it, I’ll pay then bugger off. The important thing is I’ll pay first.”

 

“Fine. What do I do and how much do I get paid?” I asked Igor who understood more English than he pretended.

“We’ll see” said Tania. “You’ll be well paid. Don’t worry” she said with those well-rehearsed flashing eyes and big, pursed lips.

The following day we went to see what was a huge secluded, totally detached Georgian property on the outskirts of Lancaster. It was owned by McDougalls Flour. From what I could gather, the Company had used the property for residential courses which had now fallen out of fashion. It was a resplendent venue perhaps, I imagined, a little too near the main road for comfort. What I didn’t like was the way Tania and Igor left me and buggered off on their own little tour. Was I part of this bloody organisation or not? When all said and done, I did have plenty experience of Swedes, Africans and English youths living abroad.

Graham, Tania’s English “boyfriend” and associate of Igor, had fixed a similar visit to a magnificent baronial hall near Appleby. Again, I drove them up there but I was becoming more and more confused. I was not included in the chummy tours. No educational aims or budget were ever broached with me and I was feeling more and more used. I had no doubt that little Igor had financial back-up for his project but I was becoming concerned about what that project really was.

On our return from Appleby, I pulled up outside Igor’s hotel then turned around to the two love-birds in the back seat.

“I’ve been thinking” I announced. “I’m far too busy to be involved in this project. Thank you very much, but ‘No’”

Tania mumbled something to Igor then, without a word, they began to alight.

“Good-bye, both of you” I managed to complete before the door was firmly shut.

I never saw either of them again.

 

One morning in early ‘97, at the St Thomas base in St Annes, Doug Beaumont drew me aside.

“I’m going to open another centre in Blackpool” he said. “Would you like to run it for me?”

Doug was an extremely elusive personality. He had a smile for everyone, laughed on cue but gave nothing away. He was in his late forties, single and very much in charge of his little set-up.

In fact, he had been an RE teacher somewhere in the Midlands and had become very high-powered in the local teachers’ union. Somewhere along the line, someone had asked him to run the out-of-school provision for the Blackpool section of Lancashire Education. Over the years and using his union expertise, he had built himself a very nice scenario. He had covered all the angles and nobody in the relatively small Blackpool scene dared question him. When I joined his theatre, he had something like 100 teachers in various centres, all operating on a one-to-one basis. He knew it would all change when Blackpool went “unitary”, which was planned for April 1998.

 

I opened his “new” centre in a dilapidated church hall off Grasmere Road in Central Blackpool. It was in September 1997.The kids we had were almost all of secondary school age although I brought young ADHD victim, Stephanie, from St Annes. It was a horrible, old place, where security was non-existent. It was so lax that a couple of boy pupils cased the joint at their ease during breaks between lessons then, having prepared the way, gained easy access that night into the church from the hall and stole the very basic amplification system. They didn’t NEED it; quite simply, it was there. It took all my investigative and manipulative skills to wheedle out the required information which I passed on to the police.

Over the years I have learnt NEVER to try to do another professional’s job. There are certainly no badges to be won. Identify the cut-off point and hand it over.

The police retrieved the equipment and the two lads got some more meaningless months added to their meaningless supervision orders.

 

 

Doug spent a lot of time in earnest conversation with one of “my” tutors who, until his recent retirement, had been deputy head at a big local secondary school. Doug being Doug, he kept his cards very close and there was no way I could find out what was happening. It turned out that he had asked this ex-deputy head to run a new centre in GrangePark, a troublesome Blackpool housing estate where he, the former deputy head, had been a local councillor. Nice one!

 

We moved our Centre from the dilapidated church hall to the nearby, newly-refurbished basement of RevoeSchool in January 1998. It was a very nice facility with a well-equipped office and snack-bar. The pupils still had only two hours tuition in the mornings and Doug had employed so many teachers that we always had one-to-one teaching.

 

With irregular attendance by the pupils, I found it difficult to structure the lessons. In many cases, the kids had been disruptive in school because they had found the lesson content too difficult or too easy and pointless.

“Why learn trigonometry or read Shakespeare when the only maths I’ll every need is to understand the odds on a horse or calculate what my round’s going to cost in the pub and the only English I’ll need is when I’m reading benefit claim details? As for science, what goes up usually comes down. What more am I going to need?”

A little simplistic, perhaps, but containing an aspect of truth.

Eventually, I was to discard GCSE’s and their dreadfully cumbersome coursework and go for the more relevant, more achievable RSA’s with their short, one hit exams, some of them lasting just twenty minutes. The aim was to set achievable targets with a view to building up a presentable portfolio of certificates which would tell prospective employers something about an interviewee.

 

Against well-intended advice from many quarters, I started to use our Nursery minibus to take kids out on trips where we could look at numbers. We calculated petrol consumption, cost per mile, cost per kilometre, cost per head.

We did map-reading on one of the earliest outings where the kids had to follow on their maps where I was taking them. This was invariably Over-Wyre, about fifteen miles from Blackpool, right in “the bush”. I knew the district well because it was our Nursery catchment area. But it was totally unfamiliar territory for these town-dwellers. Once, I had stopped the minibus at a secluded spot and said:

“Someone has dropped a sweetie paper on the floor of my minibus. I heard it drop. Who is responsible?”

The matter was soon cleared up and the culprit made to clean the whole of the minibus.

In fact, by now, nobody would even drop a fart in my minibus.

“If this happens again, I will leave the culprit here and he will walk home to Blackpool. If I can’t find the culprit the lot of you will walk back to Blackpool. Do I make myself clear?”

 

At Revoe, most things went relatively smoothly for an out-of-school provision. I like to think I ran a tight, fun-loving ship. Remember?

 

On one of his visits, Doug asked to see me in the office.

“I’m leaving Blackpool and want you to take over my rôle” he announced without introduction or ceremony. “Would you like that?”

“Thank you. Yes”.

I didn’t ask why he was going but I had known for some time that Doug was an NS homosexual. He had never denied, indeed often proudly let it be known that, at the weekends, he had worked for the victims of HIV, either collecting in the shopping precincts of Blackpool or working with them in a local clinic. Doug had his own strong views which he didn’t flaunt but which he would fervently defend if needs be. He was a regular churchgoer, a Mason and a very strong unionist. On one particular occasion, his private life rubbed unhappily with his professional life when he asked one of my teachers to help an HIV victim with a geography project for an OU course.

This double prat of a geography teacher asked me:

“Do I not run a risk of getting something by sitting on the same seats as these people?”

“Only a risk of getting real” I said.

 

In February 1998 Doug was asked to present himself at the Nissan huts in central Blackpool where, in anticipation of Blackpool becoming “unitary” (i.e. stand-alone), the newly-appointed Director, David Sanders and Assistant Director of Education, David Lund were temporarily based. They wanted to get Doug’s “overview”. He asked me to go along with him.

We arrived at the temporary, stacked huts and were shown into a little annexe where we met Sanders and Lund. Sanders was quite tall and in his mid fifties; Lund was younger, perhaps mid forties. Both were very confident with superior attitudes gained from earlier experience in lesser posts. Nothing wrong with that, but they had a conjoined superciliousness which we both found a mite disconcerting.

Doug introduced me as “the man who will fill my shoes when I leave the service next month.” to which Sanders said something like “We’ll see about that.”

Doug had been used to getting his own way in the small regional Blackpool office and he was clearly riled. But these guys meant business.

I have always enjoyed interviews which, in a way, this was and I happily blabbed on about Individual Education Plans and the need to provide meaningful teaching strategies and relationships for the excluded children. Doug did not enjoy himself and, by the time we had regained the car park, he was chain smoking and referring, sotto vocce, to the “bastards” and “wankers” we had just met.

“Doug, you’re leaving soon. You’ve no need to bother about them” I said.

“Yeh, but they’re going to be trouble for you. You heard what Sanders said: ‘We’ll see about that’. Big shit!”

“Doug, I can……….”

“I want to leave my set-up in place. What do they know about Blackpool?”

He was clearly riled.

A week or two later Doug was called to a meeting with the two self-styled leaders of the existing, not yet defunct Blackpool Education                                                                                                                                                                                                        Authority, Bridgit Bryant and Peter Skelley. Again, Doug asked me to accompany him.

The Blackpool office had something like ten rooms of various sizes which housed education officers and social service links. Admittedly, there were other small offshoots around the city but it is quite sobering to realise that this small cluster of rooms was soon to be replaced by an open-plan complex (Progress House) the size of two football fields when Blacpool adopted its full untitary status. I suppose everything, but everything, would be under the one roof and that would be some sort of advantage. But I was soon to hate Progress House.

 

We had our little meeting with Bridgit and Peter which covered various topics that had obviously been previously discussed by the new higher management team of Sanders and Lund, Skelley and Bryant. At one point, we touched on the topic of teacher ratios. As a big Union man, Doug wanted as many teachers as possible to be employed but the resulting luxury of one pupil to one teacher obviously irritated the bureaucrats. It became worse when we were visited by anyone in authority who would be amazed at the number of teachers, say, at Revoe who would be sitting around chatting and drinking tea because their pupils simply hadn’t turned up.

“You’ll have to do something about the number of teachers we employ, Doug.” said Bridget. “Remember, they’re only casual and don’t have any contracts. We want it to be more like one teacher to six pupils. Can we leave this to you?” she asked, including me in her gaze for the first time.

In our Nursery Sue and I used this kind of ratio ourselves and the hardworking NNEB’s were on nothing like the £22 an hour we were paying these tea-guzzling teachers. Doug knew that heavyweights Sanders and Lund would be imposing a sleek, money-conscious management structure with nine-to-fivers “flagging up” problems and “running ideas across” each other.

In the “gents” on the way out, I said to Doug:

“What are we going to do about Bridget’s decision?”

He gave himself a good shake, washed his hands at the sink and said:

“What decision?” before striding out.

“You’ll see,” he said in the car, “the money they will eventually save on the teachers will go on weekends for administrators in flash, expensive hotels.”

He was right, too, as it turned out.

 

The run-up to the handover on April 1^st 1998 went pretty smoothly. Doug took more and more of a back seat, and left the day-to-day running of the centres to me.

In the beginning of March, Lund send Zyg Kulbacki to see me at the Revoe centre. Zyg was a tall, good looking thirty two year old of Polish stock who had been in charge of the School Support team in Blackpool for several years. He had a team of seven or eight teachers whom he sent into local schools to work with disruptive kids before they were excluded. Everyone knew that Zyg., a smooth operator, was probably earmarked for higher things within the new unitary structure. Central Government was veering off the policy of exclusion and going more for inclusion. Basically it meant that the nasty boys and girls in Blackpool would not be excluded; they would all be kept in school with help from Zyg’s team. The fact that hundreds of thousands of pounds would be saved by using existing physical facilities was incidental. Sanders and Lund were clearly grooming Zyg to implement this “new socialist” programme. Doug’s little Pupil Referral Units were going to be dismantled. It would take a year or two; I couldn’t give a monkey’s and Doug had made the right decision to get out.

On his visit to Revoe, Zyg simply stood in front of the coffee bar looking at the little one-to-one groups and, clearly not wanting to reveal his true standpoint, said to me

“This can’t go on, Alex.”

 

A couple of weeks later, I had been round the other centres and returned to Revoe to find that two pupils, Ryan Walsh and Paul Threlfall, had locked themselves in a section behind what was now a locked yet moveable screen. They were peering through the glass partitions and shining laser torches at the teachers who were thinking it all rather funny. I guessed it had only being going on for a short time given that nobody’s eyeballs had fallen out.

There was a loud speaker system which operated from the office. I asked the lady who taught Office Skills to transcribe what I said as I announced

“Ryan, Paul. You are in danger because there is no way out of the secure area you have created. Other people in the main room are also in danger because you have decided to shine laser torches at them. Unless you are out of the area you have chosen to occupy and return the keys to me within two minutes I will call for help from the Police and/or the Fire Brigade. The choice is yours.”

I left it for two minutes; they clearly had no intention of leaving their cloister so I went to the office and rang the Fire Brigade.

By the time I had finished giving details and left the office, Ryan and Paul were, of course, out of their retreat.

The klaxon of the fire engine could be heard as it drew up at the rear of the School. The officer in charge, Mr Vaux, came downstairs to the Centre. He was quite small and corpulent, in his fifties, with grey hair.

“What’s to do?” (Lancashire for “What’s happening?”) he asked gruffly.

“Two lads locked themselves in a section of the building where we couldn’t get them and from where they couldn’t escape in an emergency”.

“Where are they now?”

“They’re stood over there, at the coffee bar. I must apologise for the ………”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the Co-ordinator of Out-ofSchool provision in Blackpool Borough Council.”

“So, you’re the boss here” His eyes were continually darting around.

“What are these two lads called?”

“Paul Threlfall and Ryan Walsh …………you know, the Walsh family.”

“I couldn’t give a monkey’s.” He strode across to Ryan and Paul and confronted them. He was about the same height as each of them but a lot stockier. Frowning at both of them, he grabbed each under the chin and pulled them slightly upwards and towards him so they were off balance.

“Get your bloody hands off me” said Threlfall, trying to cover his fear.

“You’re right, my little sunbeam,” said Vaux, “my hands are bloody. Me and my men have helped more seriously injured people in fires and accidents than you’ve had hot breakfasts. We might be called to do it again even before YOU have your dinner, you little shits.”

He let go of them.

“Now, if you’d like to meet some real men, I’ll take you upstairs to our rig. But you’ll be wanting to play with your toys, won’t you?”

He grabbed them again.

“Don’t ever do that again” he snarled

He left. Once he was well out of sight, Ryan and Paul did the usual, pathetic strut.

“If he’d touched me again, I’d have headed him………. etc  etc”

 

It was a couple of days before Ryan and Phil had gained the strength to return to Revoe. I talked to them a lot about the incident and eventually persuaded them to write a letter of apology to Mr Vaux. Nobody else in the Centre knew about this, so there was no loss of the important face.

 

Vaux wrote back within a few days. He thanked them profusely for their letter and suggested that they telephoned him if they would like to meet his team and see round the station.

Ryan rang him and the whole visit was organised between the boys and Vaux.

On the day in question, Ryan and Paul made their own way to the South Shore Station where, by all accounts, they had a “great time”.

On their return to Revoe, they found it difficult to stop talking about Mr Vaux (who was now nothing short of a hero), his team of “lads” and how stupid they (Ryan and Paul) had been to take them away from their essential work. Apparently, the boys called in again a couple of times and the rig driver “beeped” them and waved to them on one occasion when he saw them in town. The effect on Ryan and Paul and their attitudes towards the other kids at Revoe were remarkable.

 

Now THAT is education.

 

I think the key consideration was that, after our initial involvement, we let Ryan and Paul make their own way in the adult world. We have to be involved at the beginning but, a soon as possible, we have to let them find their own way.

 

Here is an example of me getting it wrong, again:

Back in the Hotel St George days, we had an occasional entertainer called.Ron., of Asian descent, who played the clarinet and who worked in Air Traffic Control at BlackpoolAirport. One night, I asked him if I could bring a group of six pupils to see around the tower and watch him and his colleagues in action.

Ron got permission from the top man and, instead of leaving the arrangements to the kids, I did all the running about and telephoning.

Although the tower was very small they were having a new radar system installed and, I have to say, I found the whole visit fascinating.

“That was the most boringest [sic] two hours of my life” said the lad who would have and should have been in charge of making the arrangements.

Even my mate, Detective Inspector Thornton, who saw himself as a gourmet and connoisseur of French wines would never admit to making or even booking an average to poor meal. So it was that, on one of our adult minibus trips to France, he was delighted to be elected the catering agent whose responsibility it was to arrange all outside meals. That way we shut the bugger up. The only drawback was that he would swan about the restaurant asking each member of our party

“Everything O.K?”

In Gary’s eyes, everything would be perfect. He had organised it.

 

The more I think about this, the more often I recall my times as Head of Department in various schools. At HodgsonSchool, for example, I would create end-of-term tests that might be out of, say, 65. The Head Teacher liked us to show the marks as a percentage so, in this case I would say:

“In each case, multiply the raw score by 1.5. In other words, add half again to the score and you’ve got a percentage, near enough.” One teacher, Averil Singleton, confessed to feeling rather sick with this manipulation of numbers so I took her aside one break time and, with the help of a calculator, showed her how it all worked. Eventually, Averil became the specialist converter and I had off-loaded yet another tedious task. Everybody felt good; I did, because I had shed another boring task, and Averil did, because she felt needed.

Basic man management.

 

Just before April 1998, it was made clear to all of us that Zyg Kulbacki would be the provisional Head of the Out of School and In School Support Teams.

Doug took me to the huge, almost empty building which had, until recently, housed the various offices of British Gas in the Blackpool area. David Lund could be seen sorting out his new office through the glass wall which would allow him to look out upon his infrastructure of line management once up and running. I still get a sick feeling when I think of the whole set-up. I have never been a line-managed corporate animal. I like to do things my way and, when things are not right, as I’ve said before, I go to the man at the top. I’m not proud of this. Most “company nerds” must have either envied my independence or seen me as a complete nuisance. Doug, although a big player in the Teachers’ Union, was similar to me. But he stopped short at confrontation. He would rather make a joke about it, then walk away, cursing under his breath. Doug had wheedled himself into a nice little number which he was passing on to me.

 

He casually waved to Lund as we passed his window.

“They’ve decided not to interview for my job. It’s yours.”

He waved again at Lund.

“Pompous git!” he said under his breath then strode off to where our section was to be. Once there, he commandeered a desk that was standing about.

“Ziggy will be there” he pointed “so I suggest you make this your desk…….far enough away from him but near enough to make you part of the instant authority.”

He nabbed a PC that was lying about the place and positioned it on “my” desk. He then stuck a label with “Alex Fleming” on the worktop of the desk before going off to speak with some engineers about intranetting the PC and acquiring four brand new filing cabinets which he again labelled “Alex Fleming”. We then retired to the Imperial Hotel for coffee and biscuits.

 

Doug actually liked one of the young waiters who worked there but we never spoke about it. Word eventually got out within the service that Doug had a penchant for other men but, although he never let it interfere with his work, David Lund saw fit to quiz me about his sexuality long after Doug had left the service. Inadvertently, I had discovered that Lund was a scoutmaster of some years standing and so, in an attempt to contextualise his quizzing of me, I said:

“We all know that Baden-Powell liked his pictures of naked boys but, as far as I know, nobody questioned his ability to run the Scout movement.” I thought I’d throw in one of Lund’s favourites. “Am I making myself clear?” I asked.

“Perfectly” replied Mr Lund.

 

Lund would be in his mid forties. He was overweight and pompous, with a habit of making a “t.t..t…t…..t” sound behind his teeth when he was pretending to find a solution to some infrastrucural problem. It implied that he knew the system better than anyone else at the meeting and, given time and space, his vast intellect and experience would find a solution to the current problem. He was thinking about it……………….. Don’t interrupt. As far as I know, Lund was not a better teacher than the rest of us. He was an administrator. He had little snippets of inside information about departments and individuals which he would use in his various manipulations.

But anyone, Lund, Sanders and all the others who worked under Blackpool’s laughable banner “Where People Come First” just cannot be taken seriously.

Once, prior to a meeting at the Revoe centre, he stood at the bottom of the large room surveying the comings and goings of staff and pupils. I went up to him. He looked straight past me, ignoring my greeting. He had told me before to respect the line management system and take questions or grumbles to Zyg who was my line manager. But I had greeted him civilly and got no response. “Where people come first”? Rather than succumb to his superciliousness I started to organise his dishevelled tie as one does on a tailor’s dummy. He continued to look over my shoulder, like a tailor’s dummy He didn’t even have the guts to tell me to piss off.

 

In many ways, he reminded me of Dr Vakil, my neurological specialist, who felt he had some sort of divine right to everyone’s attention and admiration. As far as I was concerned, neither Vakil nor Lund knew much more about “the job” than those around them.

When I had suspected something was wrong with my body

around 1986 I had gone to the Reference Library and traced my symptoms, all of which pointed to Multiple Sclerosis. It took a long time to persuade my GP to refer me to a specialist and when, eventually, I was put on Vakil’s “list”, he would see me for ten minutes every six months, to measure the progression of my condition. This he would do by inviting me to stand on one foot, touch the tip of my nose, eyes closed, with a designated finger and other scientific calibrations. As it was, I or my insurance company, paid him £60 for his ten minutes of expertise. No cure, no treatment; just ten minutes of ritual. I could have told him over the ‘phone how things had progressed. After all, I had a grandstand view!

 

 

During my time as Co-ordinator of out-of-school provision in Blackpool, Central Government dictated that social inclusion, not exclusion, was to be flavour of the political term. Blackpool, like so many other authorities, realised that “bad” kids could not be re-introduced into schools, so they created PRU’s (Pupil Referral Units) where otherwise excluded kids could be “included” in the Authority’s

provision. This meant creating or building a small school for the twenty to thirty kids in the Blackpool area who would otherwise be excluded. In effect, it meant the end of my provision but I can honestly say I didn’t give a toss. I was becoming more and more immobile in a job that, by definition, required a certain degree of mobility. Two walking sticks were now the norm for me.

 

At about this time, Zyg, now established as the undisputed Head of “out-of-school” provision came into Progress House one Monday morning, complaining of a bruised calf muscle. He had been playing football over the weekend and limping around the place was not on the agenda for this good looking, popular thirty-two year old. Bullshit is an essential component of the successful rung-climber’s make-up. The higher you get, the more bullshit there is; it’s just more camouflaged, less obvious.

Zyg had become accustomed to confiding in me. I wasn’t a challenge to his progress; my age and increasing disability assured him of that. But, that Monday morning, he showed himself as selfish and inconsiderate. He wasn’t thinking of me and the implications of my problems.

“Do you know” he said, smilingly looking around to see if anyone else might want to join in this self approbation.

“I’m like a well-tuned, totally co-ordinated machine. All it takes is one little thing to knock my system off balance.”

“Carpe diem, old fruit, carpe diem”

“What?” he asked.

“It’s Latin for ‘I, and millions of others, used to be like you’”, I said.

He wasn’t in the least bit interested. He had seen some female looking at him and he went off to tell her about his bruised leg.

 

As I write this, in September 2003, LancashireCounty is thinking of reclaiming all local authorities. By all reports, there will be no rural councils and no borough councils.

“Back to square one, boys. We’ve found it was better that way.”

They’ll pay Sanders, Lund and co. a lot of money for their troubles, rent Progress House as a shopping mall and throw away that ludicrous logo “Where People Come First”.

 

It was some time in 1999 that Zyg was confirmed as permanent Head of Out of School provision and, in the summer term 2000, Lund and he appointed Alan Banes as his assistant to run the PRU in the expensively-converted, former district education offices in central Blackpool.

Nobody had seen the advert for the vacancy; it was clearly a set-up job. Banes had been a senior master in Blackpool’s largest comprehensive. Rumour had it he had fallen out with the Head Teacher and, saving embarrassment to all concerned, he was appointed to the post as leader of the newly-created PRU.

He came round to Progress House with two or three teachers and classroom assistants he had appointed for jobs with him and regally introduced himself and his staff to us. Inclusion, not exclusion was the name of the game, he told us, and a kid was either in school or his wonderful PRU; the tuition centres, like Revoe and the others, would be disbanded.

“This is Alex Fleming” he announced to his coterie as they approached my desk. “He used to be the co-ordinator of out-of-school provision. He will have a shared office in my PRU for the meantime.”

I stood up.

“Does this mean I’m for the chop, Slobodan?”

“That’s for you to guess” he replied, clearly disgruntled at my reference to the current despot.

 

True to his word, I was given a small room to share at the PRU with another sceptic called Ian Gartside. Ian had been working for Youth Justice and was also a “big Union man” in the NASUWT. Youth Justice had decided to part company with Ian and so, as with other high-profile unionists, a sinecure was created for him somewhere in the Education infrastructure.

The net result was that he and I shared a small office near the entrance to the PRU.

It was quite clear that Banes wanted rid of us. We cramped his style in his pathetic little kingdom where his teachers had been so grateful to get out of mainstream schools or his unqualified assistants were so happy to get off the dole and be at his beck and call for an extra pittance. Ian Gartside had pulled a very nice stroke a few years earlier when he became the NASUWT Health and Safety representative on the Blackpool Executive. Banes realised he couldn’t do much about Gartside’s rantings but knew that Ian could have the PRU closed down for one of several Health and Safety transgressions.

He also knew that I couldn’t stand his bullying supercilliousness. The Hitlerite runt would never confront any adult in public who might get the better of him orally. He would rather make his loud, unpopular observations then strut off to the safety of his office. You could follow him into his office where, on a one-to-one, he would be sweetness and light but he would already have belittled you in public by walking out and ignoring you.

 

There was a small common area at the end of our corridor where Banes would hold his registration first thing in the morning and make his confrontational, aggressive assaults on individual boys or girls before again strutting off to his room.

Anyone who knows anything about strategies for children with ADHD

(Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder), Autism Spectrum and Pervasive Developmental Disorders will know that aggressive confrontation is definitely not the way. The joke was that Banes was reputed to be doing his Ph.D. in some area of his work at the PRU. He was so divorced from the needs of these youngsters that I could, and often did compare him getting a Ph.D. with Slobodan Milosovic winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Not very funny, I do admit, but it annoyed Banes who then banished Ian and me to an office at the back of the building.

He visited me there one morning before Ian had arrived.

“I know you’re trying to undermine me” he said, his eyes welling.

“I’m not trying to undermine you, Alan.” I said. “I just don’t like you and I don’t like your style with the kids. The converse will apply to you, I’m sure, but I see that as your problem.”

“You’re disruptive, Alex. You’re as bad as the kids.”

“Alan, you don’t have to be a cunt with everyone to prove that you’re good at your job. To be frank, what pisses me off is you’re a cunt and not good at your job.”

“You’ll not be here to ………”

“I’m glad you’ve found out, Alan. Obviously Zyg has told you I intend to leave at the end of this term.”

“I told Zyg that I wanted…………….”

“As far as I know, Alan, Zyg is, what we in the trade call, your ‘line manager’. I’m sure he’ll be letting you know what he wants.”

I got up, excused myself and went out for a sandwich.

 

Man-management is a universal skill, quite independent of the specialist trade or profession. It helps if you are good at the job of the people you are managing but it’s not a pre-requisite. For example.we know that Alex Ferguson played football for someone in Scotland but he has made his name as a manager. Did Sven Gőran Erikson actually play football for someone? It matters not. They are currently excellent, sought-after managers. As far as I was concerned, Banes could neither play the game nor manage the players.

 

Anyway, his PRU was going to be the provider for the difficult children of Blackpool and my satellite centres would be dismantled. I was quite happy for this to happen but I realised that, amongst the forty or fifty teachers I employed in various settings that suited individual pupils, seven or eight really good teachers would be ditched. I’m not talking about people who could impart useless information about maths, science and the rest; I’m talking about communicators who filled a huge relationship void for the kids they “taught”.

 

In fact, I was so glad it was coming to an end. I felt like I did when I left the prison service. There, I felt “banged up” like the prisoners. It was so unnatural. I knew that the prisoners had probably committed some unnatural deeds themselves but prison, the second wrong, did not make it all right.

In Progress House, the majority of the workers looked after Number One. The higher you went, the more you saw it. Directors, Deputy Directors, line Managers, all looking after themselves and their futures with no real concern at all for the children in their care. They were the only “People who come First”.

I was so glad when, in August 2001, I left the Service and regained the solitude of my PortaKabin, behind our house in Stalmine.

 

 

Until the summer of 1998, I would spend an hour or so each Sunday morning cycling something like 10 miles around “the Moss” near our house. There were no major hills but I’d never stop pedalling in my fight against the Westerly winds and would arrive back home at about 10.30 am, cool down on the patio then go for a shower while Sue attended church. I was 57 at the time and my MS was not a major consideration. The following year, I took to the “ThreePeaks”, as I called them. These were away from the Moss, towards the River Wyre. They were hardly peaks but they were high enough to make me really sweat. Again, the exercise made me feel good but I began to be conscious of the possibility that I might “come off” my machine.

By the time I left the Education Service in Blackpool, I had given up cycling. It was too dangerous. If I stopped on the road somewhere, I would certainly not be able to restart. In fact, it was getting so bad that Sue would push-start me outside our house and follow me discretely in our minibus. Bless her!

I was now constantly dependent upon two walking sticks but, being based at home, I determined to build up my own “gym”. I acquired a small step-up machine on which I would (and still do) 300 steps each day. I gave my bicycle to a friend and acquired a tricycle which, very quickly, proved to be more dangerous than the bike. Trike technique is almost the opposite of bike technique and, ‘midst the potholes and troughs of our immediate surrounds, I soon abandoned this as a form of exercise. Instead, I had a four-wheel, cycle go-cart built which, I must admit, I have not used extensively as yet. I have a treadmill, though, and try to get some exercise each day. I “furniture walk” around the house, but I think, for a 63 year-old with MS, I do quite well. I think the important thing is I don’t want to let the bastard beat me. I grow my own cannabis and will eventually work out what to do with it.

The important thing to me is, now I’ve no pressure.

 

 

Sue is wonderful.

Being 63 could be very cool; being 63 with MS is less cool.

I’m not physically mobile, but I’m mobile mentally.

And, while the others are playing tennis or badminton, I can be left to write.

 

And then …………………………………………

As I said, Sue is wonderful. She is twelve years younger than me and now, in 2007, it can’t be much fun living with a 66 year old somewhat immobile, sometimes incontinent old bugger like me.

 

We have just had a young salesman to the Nursery selling us space in some business directory. I was working in the conservatory and could hear him impressing Sue with his tales of playing professional football and rolling up his trouser leg to show her his bruised knee. Forty years ago he would have got a bruised eye to go with it but these are the days of virtual reality, diving in the penalty box and talking endlessly about yourself. I am sure this is a load of sour grapes from me. My MS is progressive as opposed to relapsing, remitting. With the latter you can be in a wheelchair one day then playing tennis the next. With my type of MS you get progressively worse. Next year I will not be able to do what I can do this year. So, I do things like: I bought a four-wheeled pedal go-kart. I couldn’t get the bastard to move so, over the next few days, I worked at it until now I can pedal the two hundred metres up the slope in front of the house, pedal backwards for a further twenty metres, then pedal back down to the house. I repeat the whole thing two, three, maybe four times then recover over a coffee while thinking “I couldn’t do that last year so, up your arse, progressive MS,”

Sue, bless her, is a great support in everything I try to do. On New Year’s Eve I don’t drink and I go to bed early; I seriously dislike Christmas, tasteless Brussels sprouts and women with big tits and matching mouths. Sue goes along with all this (or, at least humours me) and we have a giggle. She has a beautiful free-standing, well-liked personality of her own which puts my aggressive, shit-stirring style well in the shade. I need to change the act anyway……………….everyone’s doing it nowadays.

 

Just to put things in temporal perspective, they hanged Saddam Hussein in Iraq last weekend and we have heard that there might now be a public enquiry into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed in Paris ten years ago.

Saddam was chatted up for years by Britain, America and others until he got too big for his boots and the ego-trip started. He then killed (or was responsible for the killing of) hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis. Bush and Blair, having fallen out of love with the oil-rich despot, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of American and British troops. But Saddam was hanged. What a sad, cocked-up world we live in!

Bob Geldof and others seem to do wonderful work. But they too will have their hidden agendas.

Can we not get someone, somewhere in this God-forsaken lump of shite who will act as the filter for the billions of American dollars and European cash and who will establish an anonymous team of professionals who will follow each dollar to the mouths of hungry, sick folk and their kids. Are you telling me that, in this world as we know it, we can do what we do but can’t do what I have just described? SAD!

 

We went up to the church in our village over Christmas. I am definitely not a regular attender but Sue is an active participant. I was made to feel very welcomed and was asked by a couple of old dears when I would be “doing another concert” in the Church. Some years previously (I pinpoint times fairly accurately by thinking of the state of my MS at that time) I presented a little variety show in the Church one summer during the annual village festival. I had some musician friends in the form of a trad band, a female singer (whom I accompanied on piano), a male guitar duo called “Los Pájaros” (the Birds) and Trouble-at-t’Mill”  me, telling the occasional gag and bringing on the acts. I think I had done a similar, quite successful, show before so the “house” was pretty full this time. Amongst the usual congregation were the quiet-spoken Vicar, Terry, his wife, ebullient Marion, the organist, minute “Billy” and her husband, very large, very gentle Tom.

Because it was festival week, the Church had a large marquee erected in the space between the building and the main road through the village. It was only used for refreshments and storing the occasional chair for visiting dignitaries but the festival Committee had decided that Jack “the Teeth Jackson would be employed as a night watchman to stop the local vandals abusing the place. Jack was as harmless as you could find. On the evening of “the concert”, he was sitting at the back of the Church by the door ready to rush into action but, more importantly, at arms length from the array of sherry bottles awaiting the onslaught at the end of the show of the suitably “jovialised” congregation.

I decided to use the ever-popular Jack in my yarn between the Stompers and the Pájaros. Most people agree this was a mistake.

 

“You’ll all agree, our marquee outside is a wonderful erection.

No need to worry ‘though. We have Jack there, sitting at the back, as our night-watchman. He was telling me that, the other night, he was doing an early morning security check at around 4 a.m. During his trip round the marquee, he stumbled  over a body lying on the ground. He turned it over with his foot and could just make out that the man was wearing a dog-collar. It was Terry, the Vicar, who signalled to Jack to be quiet.

“What are you doing down there?” whispered Jack.

“Ssshhh!” was Terry’s irritable reply “Be quiet, Jack, I’m rabbiting.”

And with that, there was a pitter patter of tiny, fast feet and Terry pulled a wriggling little bunny from the burrow where he had inserted his whole arm. He put the animal into a black plastic bag then re-inserted his arm on another hunt.

“How do you do that, Vicar?” asked a totally bemused Jack.

“Jack, for goodness sake, shut up” said Terry as he grabbed another poor rabbit and stuffed it into his plastic bag. “Look, I’ll tell you if you promise not to divulge the secret. Then, would you please go away” said Terry, stuffing yet another little bunny into his plastic bag.

Jack didn’t really know what to “divulge” meant but, it sounded like a good deal and he agreed.

Terry sat up and reluctantly explained:

“In the early morning, rub your hands in the long dew-covered grass then go home and fondle your wife where she likes it most. Stick your hand down a burrow, like this ………….. oh goodness, there’s another one!” and he unceremoniously shoved the rabbit into his bag.

 

On his way back home at the end of his shift, Jack thought

he’d give it all a go. On a quiet spot just outside the village and a few yards from the park where he lived, he bent down and immersed his hand in the long, dew-drenched grass. A few yards from his caravan he picked out a couple of burrows where he would hunt for lunch very soon.

He gently opened the front door of the van and there, as usual, was Anne, his wife. She had her back to Jack as she dazedly stirred the contents of a large saucepan. Jack crept up behind her and, steeling himself for an unusual experience, he threw caution to the wind and his sodden hands up her frocks. With just the suggestion of a whimper and a scarcely discernible yet sudden stiffening, but without at all turning around, she said:

“Oh, hello Vicar. Are you going rabbiting again?”

Although the audience hooted uncontrollably, my days as an ecclesiastical impressario were definitely numbered.

 

True to form, I get irritated when Sue refers to me as a deaf old bugger. A couple of weeks ago she organised an audiologist to come to the house and test my hearing. The girl was clearly on a commission-only trip, extolling the virtues of various hearing aids while setting up her little amplifier before she had even tested me. Into this amp was plugged an ancient set of headphones which she attached to my head. The test began. When I heard a sound I was to indicate by raising a finger. Some of the sounds were abundantly clear, others were faintly audible while yet others were either inaudible or “possible”. I didn’t bother even guessing at the latter and so it was that I was deemed to have quite marked hearing loss.

Sue and I do the Telegraph crossword in bed (it’s truly amazing what turns some people on!). She has the paper and reads out the clues which I invariably ask her to spell because I can’t make out her stuck-up Kate Adie Geordyisms. O.K. maybe I do have hearing loss; but maybe Sue’s speech is contorted in some way; or maybe she has hearing loss too.

“Why don’t you test Sue’s hearing?” say I, unattaching the headphones and passing them to the commission-only audiologist. As she, in turn, was applying the ‘phones to Sue’s lugs, I discreetly and unseen by the others, unplugged the amplifier with absolutely chaotic, very funny results.

 

 

Quite recently, Sue and I made a trip up to Edinburgh to see my 96 year-old mother. She’s in a rest home and has finally admitted she’s really enjoying it, which is wonderful because she would not like staying with us, amidst our docile, often incongruous Lancashire rustics and would hate it with my sister and Harry down in London.

As I become more and more disabled and as I travel around the country, I become increasingly aware of the amount of disabled facilities that have been installed without enough planning or forethought. I’m talking here of physical disabilities. You can find hotels with “disabled rooms” but, when you try to get into your room, the door is not wide enough for the wheelchair, the room has thick, luxuriant carpet, which is bad news for the chair, you can’t turn around in the bathroom, the restaurant has not five or ten steps, just one, but no ramp, etc. etc.. I mean, we disabled are very grateful for the money spent but, for goodness sake, give it all some thought. Why not take a wheelchair-bound couple along to spend a day with you on site?

Anyway, Mother seems very happy with the provision in her rest home. Kathleen and I are not so joyous, though. She pays something like £720 per week, eats very little (like most of the residents) and yet, when we visited last week, we not only found dirty bed linen, but her bathroom contained a large amount of unattended laundry and everything needed a good clean. She complained to us that she was having difficulty making out what people were saying so I had a word with the resident nurse who confirmed that they would “look into it”.

(Seven weeks later, and her ears have been heavily oiled prior to two proposed then forgotten-about syringing appointments and the last two weeks she has spent in total deafness until today, when she can now actually hear again.) If you call £720 per week good value for this level of care, either you or I must have got it wrong!

 

Anyway, before leaving our Hotel for the journey back south, Sue and I went round the room checking we hadn’t left the usual phone charger, battery lead, credit card or shoes under the bed. The whole place was completely cleared so we paid our bill and set of towards the M74 and home.

 

An hour after leaving Edinburgh we were approaching Bigar where we normally stop for a cup of tea and the last chance to buy some Scottish pies, bridies and black pudding without any blobs of English fat in it. We parked outside the Elphinstone Hotel and Sue went to the rear of the vehicle to get the wheelchair.

“You’re not going to believe this” she says through the hatchback. “We’ve left the walking frame at the Hotel. We’ll have to go back for it.”

“It has taken us one hour to get here from Edinburgh. One more hour to get back there, half an hour pissing about looking for the frame another hour to get back here, an hour for the cup of tea and a sandwich and we’ve added three and a half hours to our journey. Kathleen’s going there anyway next month; don’t be so f……….ng simple.”

A major row then ensued with Sue repeating what, to her, was the burning issue: “Why do you always swear?”

“I don’t always swear” I protested. “I swear when I am confronted by stupid, unreasonable, self-satisfied, bigoted buffoons as you are being. If you want to go back to Edinburgh for that f……..ng frame I’m going to ……………..”

“There you go again, swearing.”

“Right” say I “Here’s the deal. I’ll not swear again in front of you, ever, if you agree to give up the idea of going back to Edinburgh and we continue now with our journey home.”

Thus it was that a sensible agreement was struck between two hard-headed adults. I don’t think I have sworn in front of Sue since then. Bless her!

 

 

Today, February 20^th 2007 (my 66^th birthday) and I’ve been listening to the depressing news from the Middle East. Bush is planning to attack Iran if they don’t do what he wants. He has been told by Senate that he cannot send more troops to Iraq where his virtually non-existent, unconsidered plans are floundering. And, to crown it all, there have been more teenage gun killings in London.

The terribly depressing thing is that it has all happened before and indeed will happen again and again. Soldiers who don’t really know why they are fighting in Iraq are killed by other soldiers who are today’s heroes and tomorrow’s villains. A tank load of British troops was killed by some “friendly” American fire in the Middle East “theatre”. They can’t even get the right words!

The majority of people are fickle and just follow the flow. It depends where you are and with whom. Don’t you agree? There are too many angles, too many interests, too much selfishness.

“Oh God!” screamed the man as he rolled about on the pavement.

“Oh do shut up!” said the passers-by.

“Oh God!” screamed the man in the aeroplane. And everyone else started screaming.

 

 

I have a pedal go-kart and try to get out for exercise every morning. Today, Sue and I were about to start the fairly lengthy operation of getting me installed in the go-kart when the ‘phone rang for Sue. The call was from some half-qualified little bird at County who had been given the dreadfully onerous task of handing out little grants to nurseries now that the Government has made a balls of everything by creating too many nursery providers. The call lasted exactly 25 minutes and was peppered with the usual metaphorical Speak:

“flag up”  “cascade”  “issue”  “line manager”  “ring-fence” “run it across you”

etc. etc.. I got more and more pissed off as they went up and down “As I say…….” Avenue until, 25 minutes later, I finally made it outside in the bleeding rain. It’s not so much that I’ve heard this Speak again and again; these people ring up whenever they have time on their hands to waste. It always seems to be at our expense.

You know, I’m sure that some comic has fitted a pressure pad somewhere in our loo such that, whenever I settle down on the throne, a light goes on somewhere in the ether telling everyone, but everyone, now is the time to ring Alex Fleming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to revive the good old days never really works, does it?

I had a cluster of phone calls recently from a couple of musos connected with the old Blackpool days, Chris Riley, guitarist and Jack Johnstone, trumpeter.

Chris is perhaps best known as leader of the small band at the now-defunct Lemon Tree Casino in Blackpool. He was never the all-singing, all-smiling type of band leader but, one late night in November 1974 there was a lone drunk couple in the dining room where we were playing. Boredom was rife as the light-headed, middle-aged blond floated around the dance floor watched by her completely sozzled partner. She approached Chris on the bandstand and, slumping over the rail, asked:

“Can you play Spani- – hic- hic – shies?” It was five to three in the morning. Chris lent forward as if about to impart a great secret. “Piss off” he suggested, at which point Goldilocks struggled to her feet and, propelled by several stifled hiccups, directed herself roughly towards don Juan, shouting to him:

“He told me to  hic  piss off.”

From then on Chris was always introduced as P.O. Riley.

 

Jack Johnstone was a one-off. He and I played in small bands in the hotels and clubs around Blackpool and Lytham St Annes. The conversation on the stand would go:

Cyril (leader)  “We need a waltz”

Jack  “’Tenderly’. Starting note, please”

I would play him a B-flat and he would start to play the melody faultlessly. He had no idea what key he was in but he would play the whole thing without a splash.

 

 

 

 

Where I went wrong is when I called a reunion in our conservatory. We had F.O. Riley and Jack Johnstone, me on piano, Nigel Bernstein on bass, Cyril Wroe on Tenor and Jeff Gallagher on drums. Jack was not his usual ebullient, raconteur self but the music was quite good.

I had prepared a curry and bought in several bottles of my usual, extremely average plonk. I tended to be calling the shots and doing the vocals, pretty much like the old days.  After the “knock”, we all sat down to the curry and wine. Jack was very quiet and actually seemed quite morose.

The following morning, I rang him to see if he was o.k.

“I’m alright, I suppose” he offered. “I feel a bit rough after that bloody curry though.”

“Was the wine passable, Jack? Like the curry, it was free.”

“It was alright, I suppose” he repeated.

“Bloody hell, Jack! Take it easy. What about the music? Was it up to scratch?”

A longish pause.

“Jack? How was the music?”

“What you guys have got to realise” says Jack “is that you are there to make me sound good.”

“Well, fan me pink with a yellow duster!” was almost all I could manage. “Goodbye, Jack!”

We have never met again.

 

 

 

Today is Sunday 25^th February 2007. Sue is working her parts off preparing Sunday lunch for us, Alexander, Ellie, Dave, Marie, her five kids and her delectable husband, Fred. I haven’t written a great deal about our immediate families, mainly because Sue’s parents, her Aunt Mary, my father and the only surviving parent, my mother were all perfectly respectable, decent folk whose memories should not be sullied by mention in or association with this intemperate publication.

On the other hand, I am quite happy to include the drongo of our family, Fred.

He is one of the thousand of Yorkshire and other northern misshapes who have blessed Blackpool with their permanence. Their misshapenness is often physical, resulting from the consumption of too much culinary swill washed down with gallons of finished, dead beer but is often mental, as a result of poor upbringing and example. In Fred’s case, I suspect a physical and mental input.

He is thirty something and short, bordering on the rotund. He occasionally works as a builder’s  navvy and returns “home” to Kirkham on a Friday evening with some £400 in his pocket. He claims the usual benefits and, along with his free housing will be worth in the region of £700 per week. He reluctantly hands over about £80 to Marie (to feed and clothe the five kids and him for a week) then swans off to the town’s pubs to spend the best part of £500 in his capacity as “the village idiot”. When he returns “home” at about midnight Marie guesses where he is going to pee; it could be on the sofa, it could be on the new mattress. Whatever his choice, the following morning, he bad-mouths the children and Marie before spending Sunday in his usual stupor.

I don’t really want to talk about the little shit, but I’m sure it’s nice for you to know that others have their moutons noirs  tucked away too. Suffice it to say that he is a colloquial version of a female part with a very large C.

 

 

Isn’t it a nuisance how kids are so into machines and buttons? Just yesterday prior to the grandchildren all coming here, I did the usual round of switching off and hiding the keys to the computers, the stairlift and the electric scooter only to go into the lounge and find the three year old pushing the buttons and having fun with my very expensive adjustable lounge chair. I suppose its not the child’s fault when everything nowadays seems to be button-controlled but I do regret the removal of the thick-ear remedy which certainly worked when I was a kid.

The youngest child has taken to interrupting all conversation by gaining everyone’s attention with ear-rending screams. This went on for ten minutes or so until I put him outside in the cold garden. When the screaming subsided to sobbing he was brought in and never screamed again.

Nothing could be simpler, as they are so fond of saying these days.

 

One last gripe I currently have is the appalling state of television. We only have the five main terrestrial stations but even so, apart from BBC2, the rest tend to be nonsensical, noisy rubbish. The content hardly tests the intelligence of pubescent youths and, even first thing in the morning, the fillers sound like someone building a shed to boring, repetitive “music”. What was wrong with a kitten quietly teasing a ball of wool?

Jonathan Ross, who has problems speaking English seems to be iconic in the eyes of the powers that be. Presumably, he gives the punters what they want but I have to say that I object to paying hundreds of pounds to listen to the likes of him telling us that “My balls are hanging lower the older I get” or asking the male members amongst his viewers if they “shave their balls”. Change over to another station and we get two hours os soccer and “analysis” with, if we’re lucky, a couple of goals. We might be very fortunate and catch a few hours of “reality” TV watching real stars lying asleep in bed and occasionally getting up to visit the loo. £130 a year is a lot of money to avoid this kind of TV for one or maybe two hours a day.