The Times They Are A-Changin Part 2

Things are changing so fast. My childhood took place before the onset of central heating. In winter, condensation would freeze on the inside of the bedroom window. You could not move under the weight of the many blankets in a winter before duvets. You would race downstairs in the morning, in slippered feet, to dress hurriedly in front of the lounge bar-heater. True you could have risked the bathroom with the old circular light and heater combined, the one with the pull down switch. But, these things buzzed like a disturbed bee hive, threw out heat like a napalm incendiary bomb, and smelled of smouldering dust and the polystyrene tiles which adorned the bathroom ceiling. And, the combination of electricity, condensation dripping from flammable polystyrene tiles, and little wet hands never struck me as the safest of combinations. I never did feel safe. It was always the lounge bar-heater for me.

Whenever I meet up with my mates’ young families or see my teenage nephews, I am just reminded of how different things were when I was a child. All the kids today have mobiles. In my day, only babies were lucky enough to have those – bright, colourful, musical things that would hang above the crib. We didn’t have mobiles. We didn’t even have a phone at home. I was lucky if I even had change for a phone box. Phone boxes – tall, square, red, glazed and proud, smelling of urine and Friday night’s kebabs. You still see these phone boxes sometimes in posh hotels as trendy shower cubicles, or, in architectural salvage yards.

The home telephone didn’t arrive in our house until way into the 80s. It arrived at about the same time as the colour TV, Breakfast Television, the chest freezer, Vesta curries and the Pot Noodle, and long before the central heating was installed and the front room wall was knocked down to create a through room. In my day we still had front rooms. Visited only ever on special occasions. Funerals mostly. Indeed, my grandma’s generation still had parlours and outside loos. My family were not exactly “early adopters”. We couldn’t afford to be.

These were the years of strikes. Winters of discontent. Rubbish piled up in the street as wine lakes and butter mountains formed in Europe. Many a weekend viewing of the Black and White Minstrels, or Morecambe and Wise was interrupted by a power cut, with the family huddled around the emergency candles and a pack of sticky playing cards. Many a Saturday morning was spent queuing for bread or some other staple. My childhood was like modern-day Russia at times.

Today, my nephews’ bedrooms are like multi-media palaces. Mine was a place you slept in during the night, or where you were banished to as a punishment during the day. They have TVs, DVDs, CDs, PCs, videos, PS2s, GameBoys, IPOds, mobiles (WAP-enabled, of course), hamsters, a tropical fish tank, and even a rubber plant each!

In my day, I didn’t even have privacy. If you even attempted to seek solace in the refuge of your own room you would be hunted down. Shouts of “what are you doing up there?” would climb the stairs. The door would be knocked: “Are you feeling OK?”. No privacy. No time alone. I think they assumed that there was only one thing a teenage boy could be doing on his own in the waking hours. They were probably right! After all, I did have pictures of the “Bionic Woman” (Lindsay Wagner,sigh!), Raquel Welch in One Million years BC, and “Charlie’s’ Angels” on the wall of my bedroom – the originals with Farah Fawcett not Lucy Lui (but I could be persuaded).

By about 14 I had a top-loading cassette player. The kind that you recorded with by placing next to the radio and turning the volume up. Later I progressed to a tape-to-tape, but seeing as I only had my mom and dad’s music to tape from the choice was somewhat limited. While Abba’s Greatest Hits have become a bit more retro-chic, I doubt that James Last’s Orchestra or Klaus Wunderlicht and his amazing bontempi will ever be considered cool.

Most kids today probably have access to free porn (being far more technically astute than their parents). I had to make do with a vivid imagination. I never could work out which out of the blonde and the brunette in “Abba” I would do first. I fancied most of the assistants on “the Generation Game” and “Dr Who”, especially Sarah Jane Smith who has recently played roles in the latest versions. Of course I never fancied Bonnie Langford. She is a two-bagger (you make her wear a bag to hide her face and you wear one yourself, just in case her’s falls off). Sarah Greene was on Blue Peter in those days performing the sexiest thing ever seen on TV – demonstrating how to pull on skin-tight jeans using a coat hanger. Not to be missed. Never to be forgotten. Oh, and I have it on good authority that the pool table incident at Hull university DID happen!

I also tended to like the female presenters on Saturday morning kids’ TV. I still do. Sally James off “Tizwas”, Sarah Greene from “the Saturday Morning Picture Show” on the other side, Emma Forbes who cooked. Emma was the Nigella Lawson of the 1980s but even sexier and of better parentage. Emma was number 64 in the FHM top 100 female poll of 1996. She is Nanette Newman’s daughter, which conjures up a whole new “mother and daughter” fantasy which we shall not go into. Not right now. I was also very partial to most of the female cast of ”Dallas”, especially Victoria Principal (a truly well-put-together woman), and Charlene Tilton. These were the Cat Deely, Anthea Turner, Carol Vordeman, Carole Smillie, and Kylie of my later years. My bed sheets must have fairly crackled, if only with the amount of static electricity I was generating. Polyester was a very dangerous invention. Sorry mom.

Incidentally, Kylie Minogue is sex on a stick. I have a get-out clause in my marriage if I ever get it together with Kylie. C has a similar one involving Sting. Our worst-case scenario is if Sting and Kylie ever get it together. Unlikely I know, but, unfortunately, more likely than Kylie and myself.

The lingerie section of mom’s Great Universal mail-order catalogue was about the most pornographic material in the house other than my dad’s H&E (Health and Education) magazines. He thought he had so carefully hidden these in the brown paper bag in the ottoman on the landing. In my experience it is always wise to take a peak into any brown paper bag that you may find. Unless you know that Bonnie Langford lies beneath. Oh, and the pictures of African tribal ladies grinding flour with their baps out in some of granddad’s old encyclopaedias. How times change…….

Fighting Part 3

Handsworth was a dangerous place in general in the 80s. There were race riots in 1981 and again in 1985. In the latter, an Asian family lost their lives. They were burnt alive above the Post Office they managed. During the first race riot, I had to be “evacuated” from school. It was a Sunday and we had been playing cricket and had just returned to school in the mini-bus. Normally I would have made my way home by bus. But, on this hot, Sunday evening the riot was kicking off, prompted by the arrest of a local drug dealer. The school, being predominantly white, became a target. We had to be escorted out of school under police guard. It was quite exciting. It was quite frightening.

When we returned to school on Monday, Handsworth was a mess. The Soho and Lozells roads were littered with burnt out cars. School had most of its windows smashed. It was quite exciting swapping stories with the other kids, especially those who lived in the area. The W twins had been arrested and subsequently released. They claimed they had just gone to watch but got caught up in a police baton charge. They got a beating, but not from the police. They got their beating from their mom – five foot nothing of old-fashioned Jamaican maternal discipline. They were good lads and should have known better than to get involved.

Things were always a bit more tense in the area after that. I remember once bunking off with a mate and going to the local snooker club. It smelled of weed. We were in there for just 30 seconds. We were the only white faces. Everything stopped. It was like a movie. It was like the pub scene in American Werewolf (Jenny Agutter. Since the Railway Children, I’ve never seen a film where she kept her clothes on. And, I’m not sure I want to. Sigh….). Nothing was said, but the look in their collective eyes shouted. We were not welcome there. We went back to school.

Suffice to say that at Grammar School I learnt to fight. I learnt to stand my ground. Actually, by building a certain reputation and by developing a certain stern look I managed, mostly, to avoid an actual fight. Normally the other guy would back down. Indeed I can still conjure that “stern look” today. It is very effective when dealing with noisy teenagers in cinemas, or, when kids try to push into queues.

Fortunately, there has not been much cause for fighting since Handsworth. True my nickname at Oxford, at least within the public school circles of the “Iffley Yahs” was “The Inner City Lad”. It could have been worse though. They referred to one of my best mates from Birmingham as the “Neanderthal” (but if you had met him then you would have understood why)……I did get a bit “feisty” when captaining the so-called “Animals” football team. And, there was a time when I did terrorise one of the “Iffley Yahs” by pinning him against the college wall by the throat. Sorry Simon. I hope this does not explain your absence from the Friendsreunited website.

Otherwise, Oxford was pretty fight free. One of my duties as Social Secretary seemed to be to “intimidate” certain rowdy types to leave the Beer Cellar on “Sweaty Bop” disco nights. It was my experience that your average Oxford student was pretty easily intimidated. Your public school types are not so streetwise and tend to rely on their wits more than their fists. And, they are generally lacking in wits. Certain more direct pressure was brought to bear on one MD when he refused to leave my girlfriend alone.

Indeed, I only have few recollections of real violence while at Oxford. One was when I was back at college a year after leaving. We were there as part of the Old Members Football team playing the annual fixture against the current college team. I had to intervene between my mate (the Neanderthal) and a “Townie” who had insulted his fiancée. My mate knocked the “Townie” clean into the middle of the street (and next week) even though the “Townie” was wearing a motorcycle helmet. I stepped in, with the two other mates we were with, when he came back with a tyre lever. It was the night that Frank Bruno was fighting (and losing) against Mike Tyson in the World Heavyweight Championship. …Frank lost. The “Town v Gown” fight had been much more impressive.

Fighting

Fighting

Another common attribute of the Middle Manager is competitiveness. You have to enjoy a good fight. I certainly did and I did so from a very early age. Well, when your local newspaper says of your birth “Miracle Baby!”, what would you expect. An immaculate conception? I have been dining out on that particular headline for years.

It actually probably means that my mom was a fighter too. After all, it was she, not me, who lost all the blood. I just had to hang on in there and survive. I came out the wrong way up, back to front, choking myself with my own umbilical chord. But, I survived to be told the story of it.

I can remember with some clarity one of my early “lessons for life”. This time from my mom. I guess I must have been about 3 years old. Indeed, it may well have been prompted by the “Battle of Batman’s cape” at Playgroup back in Selly Oak. (See Early Education – an earlier posting). “If anyone hits you, ” mom said, “you just hit them back. Stick up for yourself!”

And so I did. And so I do. If anyone has ever hit me I have always hit them back. That is, with the exception of any women (and there have been a couple who have given me a slap or two over the years). Hitting a woman is a big taboo. Real men do not use their fists on women. But men, no matter how big or how many, I always hit back. Never show fear. Never back down. Sometimes I got my hitting in first – what Americans might call “pre-emptive” hitting. On occasions I would take a beating. But, mostly I won. I was pretty hard. I am still quite capable of aggression if called upon but I rarely play the hard man these days. And, I hope I won’t have to.

I learnt mom’s lesson quickly. Not long after this the “incident with the dog” happened. My aunt and uncle (he of the Marvel comic collection) had a boisterous boxer dog, Spicer, that was just about the same height as myself. On one particular visit the boxer dog apparently came whelping into the lounge, its bobble tail firmly between its legs, followed by yours truly with blood around my mouth, declaring: “Doggy bit me so I bit him back!” Sorry doggy. I guess I’ve always been more of a cat person. And, for those of you who are interested……..it DOES taste just like chicken! Sorry Spicer.

There have been other notable scraps through the years. At the Junior School I was once concussed enough to be sent to a doctor after being set upon by “Big Boys” from the local comprehensive. Apparently they had entered the playground, stolen our ball and dared us to go and get it. And so I did. And so I received a bit of a kicking until a teacher came and chased the gang away. I got the ball.

There was the time I hit LH around the head with a cricket bat. LH was one of the rare black kids at Junior School and was by far the hardest kid in school. But, at least he respected me after being knocked for six. He turned out to be a thoroughly nice guy once you got to know him, but, I admit that this was a rather extreme ice breaker. Sorry LH.

Then there was the time I made the boy in the year above me at the Junior School cry, and, apologise to my sister. I forget his name, but he was bullying my sister. He made her cry. I twisted his arm until he apologised. He didn‘t learn his lesson though for some years later, when I was about 15 or 16, my sister came home from school in tears. This same boy, who went to another all boys Grammar School and big rival of my own, recognised her on the bus on the way home. He hurled abuse at her all the way. Without a word to anyone, not to mom, not to my sister, I sought him out. I took a different route home. In the full uniform and regalia of my own school, alone, I got onto the number 40 bus which carried Erdingtonians home from Aston. He was sat right at the back, in the middle of the back seat, on the top deck of the bus, surrounded by his mates. When I stepped up it was like a scene from a Western bar-room gunfight. The whole bus went quiet as I walked the length of the bus. It seemed a very long way. As I neared him there was an instant of recognition. Calmly, I simply told him, “Don’t you ever make my sister cry again” and then pummelled him in the face. No-one intervened. And, when the 16 year old bully began to cry in front of all his mates, I simply turned on my heel, walked back down the bus, and got off at the next stop. I said not a word when I got home. He never made my sister cry again. I hope he has never made anyone else’s sister cry either. Bullying and cowardice often go hand-in-hand.

Grammar School itself was one big fight. Even the organised “sports” were violent, with punishments meted out by hard men. The gym teachers. Ex-Royal Marines and utter bullies. Most of the “games” organised by this pair involved cruelty, torture or pain of some kind. Never their own. Their behaviour would not be tolerated today – the kids would sue. But, it did help to make men out of most of the boys.

PE (Physical Education) consisted mainly of two games – “Pirates” and “British Bulldog“. Pirates was rarer because it involved getting every piece of gym equipment out, and we only had an hour. The “trial” consisted of being chased around the room by the two best athletes in class. If (i.e. when) you were caught, or, if you put a foot on the floor, you were sent to the Sacrificial Altar. You would be made to take off your PE vest (not as rare an occurrence as you may think in days when you played games in either “colours”, i.e. with vest on, or in “skins”). You would be made to lie face-down over a buck with arms by your side. And, then, the gym teacher would slap you hard in the middle of the back with the palm of his hand! The game would not end until an inspection proved that every boy wore “the mark”……

British Bulldog was much simpler. It involved all of the class except the two biggest boys standing at one end of the gym hall. The Bulldogs stood in the middle. The boys then had to run from one wall to the other without being “captured”. To be “captured” you had to be lifted physically off the floor. This was the job of the Bulldogs. These two twin brothers were very good at it. They were big, black, and proud. They were both giants from a family of giants. Just look up any history of British athletics and you will find a member of their family, famous for throwing something very heavy a lot further than anyone else. In these days that included me and my classmates. There was just one rule. Boys had to resist. If you were not considered to be resisting enough then the Sacrificial Altar would come into play. Once “captured” you joined the twins as a catcher until there were no more boys to catch.

I do not remember a single boy complaining about such treatment. They did not dare. To show such weakness was an unwritten taboo. I am sure that no parent was ever told, otherwise there would have been complaints, parents to see the Headmaster. I t never happened. The only complaint that I can remember being made against these two complete b*stards involved a boy in another class but in the same year as myself. He was the boy who smelled. Every school has one and he was ours. He was scruffy, he had no school blazer, his hair was long and unkempt, and, he smelled. Apparently after one particular PE lesson he refused to join his classmates in that other ritual humiliation which came with PE – the communal showers. This humiliation involved stripping naked in front of your classmates. You have to remember that this was a time before central heating and power showers, before boys discovered underarm deodorant. We were the talcum powder generation. The generation who bathed once on a Sunday or after football. We were also at an age when involuntary erections were common. Adolescence, what fun! Once naked you had to run the gauntlet of cold water jets.

This boy refused to strip. I don’t know what kind of home life the poor wretch may have had. I cannot imagine what lack of parental care produced such a feral child. And I did not care. None of us cared. We were young boys and all we knew was that he smelled. The gym teacher lost it. He stripped the boy himself. He produced a wire brush – often used to cajole slow gauntlet runners. He yanked the boy into the shower and he scrubbed him clean. This boy complained……

Such institutionalised violence was not without side effects of course. Violence often erupted in the Quadrangle and elsewhere. From time to time boys would organise mass contests of British Bulldog involving the whole school, and all ages. The other Quad favourite was Murder Ball. This involved two teams whose purpose was to score by throwing a tennis ball through the opponents goals (hitting the wall between two wall-mounted dustbins). That was rule one. Rule two (and there were only two) was that whoever held the tennis ball could be murdered – punched, kicked, wrestled, anything went…..

Early Education Part 4

Grammar School – the Teenage Years
 
The Grammar School for Boys which I attended was a very different world from that of Junior School. Apart from one or two of the teachers and staff it was a male dominated environment. A world of boys and of men. Situated between Birmingham’s Asian quarter of Soho and the West Indian quarter of Handsworth, the school was still strangely dominated by a white, middle-class teaching and pupil population. But for sure, black and Asian kids were a lot more prevalent than they had been back in  Erdington.

Grammar School was a world of strict discipline, rules, detentions, being sent to the Headmaster, the cane, and of Prefects. In the ranking of punishments, Prefects were the most feared and second only to being expelled.

Grammar was a world of sports and of academic excellence, good manners, and of tradition. It was a time of selection and streaming (putting the brightest kids in the best classes). It was a time of school uniform and of standing when a teacher entered the room and of placing chairs on top of desks at the end of the day. Grammar was a world which displayed prefect stripes, and coloured sporting badges. A world with a House System, school colours, bullying, fighting, and testosterone. It was a world where boys were men, or, they were failures and victims. Like the public schools of old, it was a place which produced leaders (of industry at least). Many a Middle Manager came from its ranks.

Testosterone. Fill a school with 700 boys aged between 11 and 18 and you get a heady mix of flatulence, pimples, acne and hormones. There was just a handful of female teachers, the school secretary, and one lab assistant, the occasional student teacher (usually French!). Some of these were past it or downright ugly. The others were the subject of many a hormonal schoolboy’s infatuation and frantic masturbation at some point. And, do you know, I suspect they knew it…..and, some of them probably enjoyed that knowledge.

A number of these “femmes fatales” had a distinct sexual mythology built or constructed around them. Take Miss M, the art mistress. Many would have like to. She was pretty, with a good figure, and a wardrobe full of tight fitting and short outfits. There was a rumour that she never wore any knickers. That she went commando and would lure young boys into her storeroom cupboard. I spent many an art lesson with my eyes locked on Miss M’s crossed legs, hoping for an uncrossing of Kenny Everet proportions. None ever came. On one occasion she did actually call me into the storeroom. I was very excited. I was 11 (or 12, or 13) and I was terrified. I was in Miss M’s infamous storeroom. Gulp.

She stood on a chair and leaned up somewhere high to pass something down to me. She did this in a “suggestive” manner. She had really great legs and a good body. It did cross my mind that this might be a come on and that I was supposed to slide my hand up that leg and touch a trembling thigh. But I didn’t, thankfully. I was all too aware of the growing erection in my trousers. Trousers which all too soon would have to return to the classroom and the attentive eyes of boys who knew the goings-on in Miss M’s storeroom.

Another probable urban myth about Miss M involved a homework which she set to “draw your favourite teacher”. The story goes that one boy submitted a headless cut-out torso of a topless page-3 model onto which he had sketched a passing resemblance of Miss M’s head and for which he received a mark of 10 out of 10……and what else we wondered.

Another Miss M myth involved sightings of Miss M in a lesbian clinch with Ms T (note the “Ms”!). This took place during a sports day. They were sat together in Ms T’s mini-cooper. But, I must admit I do have a recollection of seeing this with my own eyes. I am not sure if the memory is real, but it remains a memory nonetheless. Happy days…happy thoughts…..happy nights.

Ms T taught biology. She was one of the younger teachers. She was blonde, buxom, very buxom, with a tendency towards erectile nipples that would protrude through button-stretching tight tops, and skirts that would ride up sufficiently to expose a firm, shapely thigh when seated. She was sexy! I used to sit front right whenever I could in biology, being at the best angle to admire a thigh and catch a glimpse of bra, always hopeful that an over-worked button would succumb, pop, and yield even more treasures. It never did, unfortunately. Sigh.

Testosterone. Christ, I even used to think Frau W, veritable witch, teacher of German and my fifth form mistress, had great legs, and she must have been 50 if she was a day. Max Mosely would have liked her. Maybe it was the way she insisted we called her “Frau” with its clearly sado-masochistic undertones. More likely it something to do with the fact that double German last thing on a Friday afternoon usually involved the secret passing around of pocket sized porno books and not much German reading……….although some were in German. Actually, it was as simple as being 16, sex-obsessed, she was female, there……and she did have good legs.

In fact, Frau W was the closest I got to having sex with a teacher. Twice. There was one clear near miss when I must have been taken ill at school and for some reason Frau W took me home. This is probably completely against the rules of today when teachers are advised not to be alone with pupils for fear of accusations and legal cases. She had a sporty little two-seater and a short skirt and I stared at those two legs all the way home and felt much better for it. The closest was when she kissed me. I was 18. She actually kissed me. She took my head in her hands and kissed me on the lips. She did this in the middle of Quadrangle (no playground in a man’s school), in front of everyone. Yeeucchh! But this was not sex. This was a “reward” for gaining my place at Oxford…..and maybe an apology for having accused me of cheating in my German mock “O” level exam. Co-incidentally, I had used the previous year’s O-Level paper to revise for my mock exam the following Christmas. Consequently, I got a very high mark and much higher than my term work would have indicated. She accused me of having cheated. I thought I was just showing initiative. No worries. I got my A in the real thing in any case…….

Early Education

Early Education

On the whole I enjoyed my schooling. And, when I didn‘t enjoy it I was at least sufficiently scared enough of a particular teacher, prefect or other dealer of retribution not to rebel against the System. And so I was pretty good at “knuckling down” and “applying myself”. Also, the status and accolades that accompanied my academic success helped to keep me motivated. Being good at something is very rewarding.

My first memory of “school” was a brief one. I guess I must have been aged just 3 or 4 when I went to Raddlebarn Road Playgroup in Selly Oak – which would probably be called a “Day Nursery” today. It was just up the road from the off-licence managed by my mom and above which we lived. And what a small world. We recently re-visited the “Threshers” on Raddlebarn Road – it was a “Victoria Wine” in our day – as my youngest sister-in-law lived in the same street while in her final year at Birmingham University.

I only remember visiting the playgroup one time. I came home distraught because I had not been allowed to wear the batman cape. I have always been a wannabe superhero. The trauma of it all. I hope it didn’t have a lasting effect. Perhaps I should consider suing? In any case, I don’t think that I ever went back. But, this may have had more to do with the fact that we moved to Erdington on the other side of Birmingham at about the same time. Erdington was not as posh as Selly Oak but was much, much closer to dad’s work at Fort Dunlop.

Come to think of it my memories of the off-licence could be indicative of the “late starter” of my family’s new academic mythology. Recently, my family have begun to describe me as a “late starter” at school. This was not my recollection. My recollection is that I won maths and English prizes while at junior school; I passed my 11 plus and so attended a local grammar school where I was top of class every term throughout my 7 years there; I took two “O” levels a year early, and passed; got nine grade “As” at “O” level (in both arts and sciences); got straight “A stars” in my “A” levels and won a scholarship to Oxford University. Late starter my eye!

Admittedly, the “potty training incident”, which pre-dated even the off-licence years, was not the most promising of starts. I had a slight mishap which required cleaning up. My mom’s back was turned “for just two seconds” and she found me, still sat on potty, glugging back a bottle of Domestos bleach. Kills all germs dead, or so the advertisement used to claim. But not this kid! Mind you, this was the days before they used to put health warnings on packages.  Not that this would have helped as I was not yet literary during my potty phase.

There followed a trip to the local hospital and the pumping of a tiny stomach but all was well in the end. But, I feel this is less indicative of a “slow starter” than it is of my early inquisitiveness and willing to experiment (and a later ability to drink hard liquor!).

That said, I certainly was not demonstrating much intelligence in those first tender years in the off-licence. There is an old family cine film, subsequently converted into video, which shows how I used to peel off the wallpaper in my bedroom from the wall alongside my bed. Presumably the wallpaper paste contained some valuable nutrient that I was otherwise lacking (so, intelligent after all). It probably saved my life by fending of the growth of the “auburn”gene that my mom passed to my sister, who has passed it on to both nephews. If not for the late night snacking on wallpaper I might have been a “Ginga”. What a lucky break!

There are other old stories from the off-license of me being “a little devil” for constantly stuffing full rolls of toilet paper down the toilet. There are faint memories of falling down the stairs while wearing a pair of mom’s high heels. Incidents of cross-dressing are thankfully few and far between in my personal history – although I did once skipper a rowing eight at Oxford called the Transvesteight. But, it was for charity!

More scarily, there are recollections of far more dangerous pastimes than this. My dad once caught me feeding bits of the frayed landing carpet into the electric bar-heater at the top of the first flight of stairs (In later years, when alone, I would often amuse myself by picking my toenails and flicking them into the gas fire in the lounge to watch them catch fire and burn away to nothing. I am a fire starter. Twisted fire starter!).

Also, I remember quite clearly being thrown across the living room once, while mom was asleep on the sofa. I had been fiddling with the electric plug socket, edging it out little by little until it would spark and fizz. It is great fun. And, if you are interested, you can get a very similar if somewhat less dangerous effect with a pull-cord light switch. I must have got one hell of an electric shock. In retrospect, it seems that I was lucky just to survive past the age of 3!

Well, let’s assume my early years at the off-licence in Selly Oak were a mere aberration. I can remember only a handful of similar stupid episodes in later years, such as setting off caps (little exploding caps for toy guns) with a glass jam jar. I still bear the scars on my hand today!

My Family and Other Animals (Part 4)

Maslow and the “Killer” Instinct

On one occasion, Maslow, our pet cat and furball baby, was having to go to the vet for a general anaesthetic in order to have his teeth cleaned. Consequently he was not allowed food or the liberty of the great outdoors that night. Being the soft parents that we are, with concerns over anaesthetic risks, Maslow was allowed to sleep upstairs….never the best tactic for a restful night, but eventually we all settled down and managed to get some sleep despite the “boy” fidgeting at our feet and the sound of his gentle snoring. It could have been C but I don’t think so. It certainly wasn’t me…….

At 5am in the morning I was awoken by this strange scratching noise. At first I thought it must be Maslow seeking attention but then realised he was still fast asleep at the foot of the bed. I listened again to locate the sound and opened my eyes to see a dark shadow climbing up the bedroom curtains. I leapt (yes, even at my age) out of the bed and switched the light on, which prompted mutterings of complaint from both Maslow and C alike. I went to the curtains and there, sat on the curtain pole, and looking down at me, was a field mouse. When I made a grab for it, it leapt to the floor and took refuge behind the wardrobe. The big, heavy, immovable wardrobe.

Maslow is a flawed mouser! There then followed a couple of hours of Maslow and I running from corner to corner of the bedroom, in a Benny-Hill-like pursuit, trying to catch the blessed rodent….to no avail. Maslow eventually got bored and went in search of food and liberty……in vain. He couldn’t be fed until after the vet. C and I eventually got bored and decided to shut all other doors except the bedroom and leave a clear path for the mouse to he front door, which we left open. It was very cold……..Fortunately, Maslow survived the anaesthetic and came home with pearly white gnashers. He has been given some toothpaste to help keep them that way, which he absolutely adores. Also, fortunately, the mouse has not been seen again…..unless he sprouted wings.

One summer morning I was awoken with a start. C had leapt out of bed and ran out of the room to the sanctuary of the spare room, shutting the door firmly behind her, shouting “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck!”. I came around quite quickly. I soon located the source of C’s distress. A bat! A furry little vampire mouse on wings, circling our bedroom.

I opened the curtains. I opened the two windows, but to no avail. The bat, being blind, could not see it’s way to freedom. Unlike birds, bats do not fly towards the light.The bat also seemed unable of smelling (do they have a sense of smell?) the fresh air of freedom, nor could his sonar detect the open windows. The bat continued to circle, swooping ever so closely to my head. I don’t like bats. Not when they are so close you can see their teeth. Clearly, this winged rodent was not going to find its own way out. So, I retrieved a towel from the washing basket, climbed onto the bed, and proceeded to twirl the towel around my head in an attempt to drive the bat towards the open windows, without attempting to hit it of course.

Thank goodness, it was not later. If this had been 9 am on a Sunday morning instead of 5, the pony club that passes the house at that time, may have had a bit of a shock if they had looked up to see a 40 year old beardie, fully naked, jumping up and down on the bed, twirling a bath towel around his head……..

Fortunately, after about 20 minutes or so, it worked. I managed to drive the little critter to the right height and eventually, it found the hole, the great outdoors, and, freedom!

More Leg Room Please!

I’m back. Did you miss me? We had a wonderful time. I am even a little brown. And, I know that you don’t want to hear another word about my holiday, do you? 

But, how do the airlines get away with it!?! This was my first experience of economy-class long-haul. I know, I know. I’ve been spoilt and I should count myself lucky. But, seriously, how do they get away with it? I have seen sheep transporters on British motorways that have offered more wiggle-room than we had. Air France, shame on you! 

We flew out from Paris Charles de Gaulle/Roissy . The French give the airport two names just to confuse you and to make it quite, quite clear that they are different. The airport is known everywhere in the world as Charles de Gaulle. Everywhere except France that is. CDG is even used as the international shorthand for the airport. You will get CDG on your baggage tickets. But, as soon as you land it is “Bienvenue a Roissy!” This is just some sick Frenchman’s pitiful attempt to disorientate you; to make some weary traveller panic that he is in the wrong place. Shame on you Charles de Gaulle. Shame on you France. Shame on you Air France. 

We flew out on a 747 Jumbo. C and I were in row 25, in the window and middle seat. C likes the window seat. I am not sure why. You can hardly see very much in the dark and they make you shutter it for most of the time on long-haul flights. Except for take-off and landing of course.  

Apparently, according to my mate Smithy the pilot, they dim the cabin lights and insist on having all windows open (well the little blind thing up – I haven’t actually been on a plane with windows that open) so that your eyes are adjusted to the ambient light. So that you can see better in the event of something happening. Something like crashing, catching fire, or being hit by a terrorist’s shoulder held surface-to-air missile. To be quite frank, that is the kind of thing I would rather not see coming!

 

As readers of my previous blogs will know (see the Planes, Trains and Automobile entries), I prefer an aisle seat. My motives for this are, well, many and varied but on long-haul the main ones would be a) you can get out of your seat whenever you want to for toilet or booze without disturbing those weird folk that tend to be placed in the seat next to you, and b) the extra leg room. You cannot imagine the relief of brief opportunities to stretch a leg down the aisle in between trolleys. 

But, on this occasion, C got her window seat and I got stuck in the middle. A petite Vietnamese lady sat in the aisle. She was about five foot nothing and her legs dangled off the end of the seat without reaching the floor. So, the aisle seat with its leg stretching opportunities was clearly wasted on her! My legs, however, were parted either side of magazine pocket and my knees wedged firmly against the back of the seat in front of me. Now at six feet and an important half inch tall I am hardly a midget, but nor am I a giant. This leg room was frankly pitiful. 

I was wedged in and there I stayed for the better, no, the worse part of eleven hours. The twee Vietnamese lady to my left popped a couple of sleeping pills during the safety demonstration, which for some strange reason does not include any reference to the fact that being completely comatose in the event of an “ on-board incident” can clearly damage your health and the health of the poor sod wedged into the seat next to you. Me. She was out of it. In the event that this plane went down, C and I were going down with her! 

Those little bottles of water that they give you on long-haul flights aren’t to prevent dehydration you know. No, they are designed to be emptied and then used as a personal relieving vessel (piss pot) by people wedged in the middle seat and who cannot get out to go to the loo. 

It is impossible to sleep well when your knees are stuck firmly against the seat in front of you. It is impossible to sleep when the dainty Asian lady next to you keeps wriggling in her sleep and banging her arse against your armrest. Sleep would not come, despite the best endeavours of the Air France trolley dollies who plied me with alcohol and tried to induce slumber via the in-flight “entertainment”. I use the word incorrectly. It was not entertaining.  Normally, the movie “A Night at the Museum” followed by back-to-back National Geographic documentaries, in French, would be enough to bring a coma on. But not when you are wedged in the middle seat of an Air France 747. Not when you have lost all feeling from the knees down. Not when your knees are bleeding because they have chafed against the seat in front. Not when your next-door neighbour keeps rubbing her bum against your elbow. Not when your thoughts are filled with the prospect of deep vein thrombosis and the growing awareness that your bladder is full! 

Please Air France. Can we have more leg room?