Early Education Part 3

Infants And Juniors

In Erdington. I attended the local Infants and Primary School from the age of 5 until 11, as did my sister, albeit from the luxury of the year above me.

Apart from the first day, these were happy times. On the first day at Infants I had that feeling of being abandoned that many kids must share. The feeling of being discarded by your mom, never to be collected again. Dumped into a world of complete strangers, all of whom were bigger than me. Indeed, this was a common occurrence in my early years – people being taller than myself.

My mom is only 5 feet and 4 inches. My sister is about the same now, and my dad is just 5 feet 9 and an important half inch. Hardly “Land of the Giants”. And so, I was often at the smaller end of the school height line until I suddenly began to sprout up around the age of 16 or so. It must have been something in the illicit bags of chips or chunks of coconut ice from Granny’s Sweetshop just up from Grammar School I attended. I used to spend my dinner money on such treats instead of the proper school lunches that it was intended for. Sorry mom. Sorry Jamie – Oliver that is. I’m with you. I always want to slap the parents of fat children when I see them. It is child abuse abuse! Drag them off their computers, tie them to a stake in the garden and let the neighbour’s rottweiler chase them for an hour or two – they’ll thank you for it in the end……. 

Anyhow, I can clearly remember my first day at Infant School. I bawled and I bawled and when some boys laughed at me for bawling I ran to hide in the wendy house, and balled. Don’t ask me why the wendy house was there but I was glad of it. A place of refuge. Here I met the beautiful Carol T. My first love. Blonde, blue-eyed and stunning. Or, as stunning as any 5 year old girl can be. She was stunning when we left Junior School at the age of 11 too. By all accounts and, according to a couple of old schoolmates with whom I have since exchanged emails via Friendsreuinted, she remained pretty damn stunning thereafter too. Quite aptly, Carol T now runs a number of small beauty salons. In the wendy house, Carol T took pity on me. Being bigger than me, of course, she sat me on her gorgeous lap, put her arm around my shoulders, and, told me that it would all be alright. And, at that very moment it was. 

Incidentally, Carol T, who I also contacted via Friendsreuinted, has seemingly no recollection of this momentous occasion in my life. Indeed, I’m not actually convinced that she remembers me at all. I suspect that she may have me confused with my best mate from those days, Christopher J.

 Such memory loss in your First Love is pretty hard to swallow. Unrequited. How could she? I mean we must have been “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” off and on for nearly 3 weeks in total during our 7 years of school together. Surely, such a relationship must have had an unforgettable impact on her, as it has on myself. And, she even wrote to me once after I had gone to Grammar, asking if I wanted to go out with her. I declined. I declined because by that time she had become a Goth. Fashion has eluded me for most of my life, until quite recently, so I am not sure if I even knew what a Goth was back then. But I knew that I did not like the smell of pituli oil. In any case, this happened at an age when I wasn’t really interested in girls and certainly did not want to be tied down to any one girlfriend – no, that time probably hit me about a fortnight later.

And so, I chose not to reply to Carol T’s letter. It is probably this rejection that caused Carol T to erase the wendy house incident from her own memory. It was clearly too painful for her. However, I was dead jealous when “Granty” declared via another Friendsreuinted exchange that he had got to “go out with” (I’m being very polite with my phraseology here) Carol T at the much more interesting age of 18. Apparently she had grown out of the Goth thing by then but was still stunning. Lucky bast*rd! 

Junior School was a happy place and time. I don’t really remember very much at all about the academic side of things. This was a time of free school milk with stripy paper straws, of softball and rounders on the playground, of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat played on an old gramophone after Peter and the Wolf, of football and cricket, of mittens connected by string through your sleeves so you wouldn’t lose them. Every piece of clothing had your name sowed into it. This was a time of grandma’s knitted balaclava in winter (for me to wear, not her), of school trips to Burton-on-the-Water miniature village and butterfly park, or, to Alton Towers. This was before the theme park of today had been built. There was still the ruined castle, the odd slot machine, and, the best “big” ride was a giant slide, which you went down in a sack.

Junior School was sports days and inter-school “Its-a-Knockout” competitions (Jeux Sans Frontiers as foreigners called it) complete with greasy poles and swimming pools – we won! Junior School was cruises on the SS Uganda, a school cruise ship in the 1970s which turned up again as the hospital ship in the Falklands War of 1982. The SS Uganda took me to Santander, Oporto and Lisbon via a hurricane in the Bay of Biscay – which caused me to fall out of the top bunk – and an alarming incident with a tug in Liverpool docks. 

This was a time of innocence and innocent girlfriends. Holding hands, “Kiss Chase”, “Postman’s Knock”, giving presents, and, being forced to hold the end of a skipping rope while the girls jumped up and down to stupid rhyming songs. Girlfriends. There was Carol T (blonde), of course, and Madeleine D (brunette, who only finished with me when her parents moved – or so I have chosen to remember it), Samantha (blonde), Julie (brunette, a teacher’s daughter), Heidi (blonde) and Gail T (brunette). Boy was I promiscuous in hindsight. Gail T’s mom was a receptionist at the local doctor’s surgery – a position of considerable power and influence in the local community. Gail T, like all my girlfriends of course, was gorgeous. She was tall (of course!), slender, with long dark hair. She also gained particular notoriety by being the first girl in our class to develop breasts. Boobs. Tits. Melons. Baps. Bazookas. (Now that must be worth a few interesting hits on Google!)

Up until this particular day (it happened so fast!) boys and girls had happily stripped off in the classroom in front of each other to change into PE vests, shorts and plimsolls (Christ, plimsolls – how old am I?). Not an eyelid was batted at the sign of bottle green undies or white y-fronts. But, all of a sudden, at the very first sign of mammary development, GT had to go and get changed in the store cupboard, where we kept the paints, jam jars and sweet wrapper collection (for making collages), away from the preying eyes of “the boys”. She was soon followed by a growing collection of other maturing young ladies. We boys had no clue what was going on. After all, this was in the days before even an involuntary erection in your PE shorts was a source of embarrassment! Happy days…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early Education Part 2

Extra-Curricular Activities

 

Initially at least (!) my mom and dad had a great desire that my sister and I should do better for ourselves, better than themselves. School and homework came first and foremost in our childhood. Homework had to be completed before any of those childish luxuries such as TV, food, or playing could be enjoyed. Parents’ Night was an annual highlight in the family calendar. School reports were scrutinised. How horrified my poor parents would have been to have discovered the number of times that I copied my maths homework on arrival at school on Monday mornings. Sorry guys. But, I am very grateful that my mom and dad pushed me to be academic.The copying didn’t really matter in the long-run. It was mostly laziness. I was bright enough, and polite enough. I had the capacity to succeed academically. And, I was helped by a healthy dose of competitiveness towards my sister. My sister, J, is 18 actual months and only one academic year older than myself. She was the first of our family to go to university. She went to Grammar School before that. And, yes, I competed with her for academic honours. Boy, did I compete!

Books (not surprisingly), board games and quiz shows (perhaps more surprisingly) played a big part in my education. There were always books to read – history books (ancient picture books in their own right, handed down through the generations), story books, albums as stocking fillers (Beano and Dandy eventually gave way to Battle and the Fantastic Four), comics (I had a favourite uncle who had travelled the world as a Royal Marine Commando, via the Korean War, who gifted me his collection of American Marvel Comics – Daredevil, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Hercules, Spiderman – they were all there), and, of course, my sister and I had our own library cards if we ever ran out of things to read. We never did. Admittedly, J’s choice of reading matter was always a little more high brow or grown up than mine. She was reading James Harriet (and always laughing out loud, which I found very, very irritating) while I would be helping Spiderman in his battles with the Green Goblin.

Incidentally, my classic collection of comics – which included a first edition of the original Batman series and must have numbered several hundred in total – failed to survive one of my mom’s tidying sprees in my early teens. They were thrown away. I imagine that they would have been worth a small fortune to a collector today. Thanks mom! Pay heed all teenage boys – tidy your own room!

Comics always did seem to get me into trouble. At the age of 11 I was caught shoplifting comics from our local paper shop by the owner. It was one of the most humiliating and devastating experiences of my early years. My mom cried. My dad cried. My grandma looked at me disapprovingly. This was further evidence, if my parents needed any, of how carefully balanced I was on that tightrope walk between a career in Middle Management and a life of crime. Nowadays, my comic is FHM (For Him Magazine). Ah, Kylie……………

Sunday Quiz shows. Sunday lunchtime meant roast meat, roast potatoes and parsnips, two veg, gravy, mint sauce for lamb, horseradish or mustard for beef, apple sauce for pork, stuffing or cranberry for poultry, all washed down with a glass of lager and lime, often home-brewed by my dad in a big yellow plastic bucket, or, in latter years, a bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower. Sophisticated, eh? Anyhow Sunday lunchtime was interrupted by the 1.30 showing of ‘University Challenge’. The original and best ‘University Challenge’ that is, with Bamber “bouffant” Gascoigne. Sunday teatimes turned into ‘Sale of the Century’ with Nicholas Parsons. My sister and I often did better than the contestants. How different our lives could have been if kids like us had been able to take part in the actual quiz . We would now be surrounded by caravans, fondue sets, fridge freezers, drinks cabinets, juicers, stereos, and, brand new cars……………

Later, in the evening, came ‘Mastermind’. The original and best with Magnus Magnusson. Boy, were his parents imaginative when it came to choosing names or what! I enjoyed the general knowledge sections much more than the specialist topics in things such as “Outer Mongolian Floral Exhibitions of the Late Eighteenth Century.”

‘Ask The Family’, ‘Blockbusters’, ‘Blankety Blank’ (I know, I know). The 1970s and 80s were a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of quiz-show opportunity to test a developing mind such as mine. And, when they brought out ‘Trivial Pursuit’ I thought I had found absolute heaven. It has got to the point that family and friends refuse to play ‘Triv’ with me now unless it is a new edition and they are able to witness its removal from the cellophane. This is because I would spend many a happy hour in my youth, card by card, question by question, learning and memorising the answers. I am still pretty damn useful in a Pub Quiz!

Intelligence is often born of imagination. Well, I think so at least. Or, I imagine so. We had lots of opportunity to exercise our imagination as children. Unlike today, batteries were rarely a requirement on Christmas mornings in our house. We got toys that you played with and which required imagination. And, they were proper toys too, unlike today’s namby-pamby, left-wing-politically correct, toys. Girls got dolls, dressing-up things and making-up things. Boys got guns and plastic soldiers by the bucket-full, cars, and Action Man. Admittedly, Action Man often got called upon for a date or game of “Happy Families” with my sister’s Barbie or Cindy until such time as Ken arrived on the scene. But, he didn’t seem to mind quite so much as I did at the time.

And then there was the computer printer paper – the old green, striped stuff with perforations at the edges. Dad used to bring tonnes of it back with him from work as a treat. Whole evenings would be spent drawing on the stuff. Matchstick soldiers would be lined up against each other (Brits and Yanks versus Germans and Japs – very xenophobic), alongside planes, cannons and tanks. Guns would have dotted lines protruding from barrels to indicate being fired and to identify a hit on their target. A veritable Lowry’s Apocalypse. My side always won.

“Connect 4”, “Mastermind”, “Battleships”, “Scrabble”, draughts, chess. Ours was a home full of toys of a sensible and educational nature. They helped to stretch a developing mind and to nurture an intelligence in its infancy. They were helped, no doubt, by oily fish in regular doses and sheep’s brains – one of the less pleasant side effects of the arrival of our first chest freezer in the 1980s and the “economic good sense” of buying a whole lamb from the butcher! As a child you just have to trust your mom about such things. Either that or grandma’s threat of serving leftovers up cold for breakfast. I was never very sympathetic towards the one about feeding the starving children of Africa for a week on my scraps from just one meal though. I would have sent my scraps to them, gladly.

And sleep. Lot’s of sleep. We were children with a regimented bed-time triggered by the end of various TV programmes – a particularly sly ploy from our parents to avoid the usual pleas of “just another 5 minutes!”. We were allowed an extra 30 minutes or an hour at weekends and during school holidays but, otherwise, it was off to bed early and “don’t you come down stairs again or there’ll be trouble!” Sleep, apparently, is an essential ingredient to nurturing intelligence. Of course there were times when I would sneak to the top of the stairs and catch glimpses of illegal TV shows through an ajar door and the bars of the stair banisters. Yes, there were summer evenings spent with my head peeking through bedroom curtains watching the world go by. But, generally, as a young child at least (when it is most important I am told), I got plenty of sleep.

Many a summer day was spent re-enacting the “Battle of Britain”. This game involved chasing my cousins around the streets of Erdington (home) or Pype Hayes Park on our bikes, or, doing a whirling figure of eight in front of the paper shop and the greengrocers. Or, many a pistol made out of two fingers was used in a game of “war” fought in a series of back gardens. As boys we were fairly proficient at mimicking the different sounds of rifles, pistols, exploding grenades and machine-gun fire: “Ra ta tat ta”, or “Brrrbrrb”, or “Ch ch ch ch”. We were the kings of onomatopoeia. My cousins lived just up the road from us and their back garden was separated from grandma and granddad’s garden by the garden of a friendly neighbour who either didn’t care or couldn’t stop us from climbing over her fence as we invaded one or the other of the families’ gardens. It was a very safe outdoor environment in which to play. That is not to say that paedophiles and child-snatchers did not exist on the streets of Birmingham back in the 1970s and 80s. We just never knew about them. There was not the same media hype or attention as today. Of course there was poor old Mad Ernie. Rumour was that Mad Ernie had suffered shell shock (whatever that was!) back in the war. Small children would chase poor Ernie down the street shouting: “The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!”. Ernie would turn on the kids and throw stones at them. Hence the nickname. Sorry Ernie.

Even time on the toilet was spent stretching the imagination. No not as you may think (not until later at least) but as commander of a starship sat on his bridge single-handedly protecting the Federation of Planets and Mother Earth from hoards of Imperial Stormtroopers. “Star Trek”, “Star Wars”, “Battlestar Galactica”, “Buck Rogers”, “Space 2010”, “UFO”, “Captain Scarlet” – this was a sci-fi age and my imagination was filled with it. And, it gave me something to do while sat on the loo……

 

 

Early Education Part 1

First Days

 

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 super hero. 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 families 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 straight “A’s” 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! 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. I cidents 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 (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 7

No Luck With The Birds

 

Indeed it rains quite often in Cheshire. As has often been said – that’s why the Lake District is where it is. And, despite annual clear-outs by a man with an industrial-sized super-cleaner, the soak-away drain at the heart of the car park often does not cope. It is often inundated. As a consequence, from about late September through to March (our grey period) , the car park looks more like a pond.

That is when it is mild. When it is cold, it better resembles a skating rink. A veritable death trap to all who would venture upon it.  However, when it is doing its pond impression, it is very convincing. In fact, on one occasion at least, it was so convincing that a passing wild duck decided to make its home at the “side of the pond” in the long grass beside the oil tanks alongside the row of garages. There, Mrs Duck (we’ll assume she was married although there was no sign of Mr Duck), built her nest and waited for her eggs to hatch!  She was there a couple of days. In fact, we were quite concerned about her. Although she was quite safe from humans, being almost invisible in her hideaway of herbage, we were worried about foxes, the local polecat that the farmers had been hunting, and, more likely, feline attention from the multitude of pet cats that existed at School Farm at the time (not least Maslow).

We consulted our local farmer, Godfrey, who assured us that she would be alright and that she would up and off as soon as the chicks had hatched. And this is what must have happened as, after a few days, she just disappeared. There was no sign of her chicks and, thankfully, no tell-tale sign of a fight or a killing ground. 

Mrs Duck was not the only avian visitor to grace our Cheshire home. While we were next door (we moved next door!) we were visited by a “resting” racing pigeon. It collapsed just by our back door. Cathy gave it a name. Something like Tarquin if I remember correctly, after the guy on the Boddingtons’ advert. We know it was a racing pigeon because Cathy phoned the RSPB and gave them the number on the poor little bugger’s ankle bracelet. They assured us it was probably just resting and in need of water and food. We gave it both. We hid him so that he would not fall prey to the local cat (this was the days before Maslow). We left him to rest.  

He was dead within the hour. Deceased. Stiff as a Norwegian Blue Parrot in a Monty Python sketch. Cathy asked me to dispose of Tarquin. I did. I threw him over the hedge into the farmer’s field. For a bird, he was not very aerodynamic when dead. He flew like a stone……  

My Family And Other Animals Part 6

Catsworth House

I think that Maslow, our furball baby cat, has been using his psychic powers again and has got wind of our imminent holiday. And, his imminent internment in cat camp. And, he’s decided to throw a potential spanner in the works. He’s a bit poorly.Actually, it is hardly a cat camp. It is more like a luxury five star cat palace.

Maslow will be taking his sojourn in a place called Catsworth House. Corny or what? He has his own private sofa. They play the radio to the cats in the morning. They watch TV in the evenings, the cats. And, in the afternoons they have two hours of communal time when all of the cats get together in a big room full of settees. Spoilt rotten! But, he’s worth it.

At least that is the plan. But, Maslow was back at the vets this weekend. He’s been sneezing. Not all the time, but when he sneezes he does so six or seven or eight times, with a very surprised look on his face. It is always a bit of a worry when Maslow shows cold or flu symptoms because he had cat flu when he found us and has, what my grandma used to call a “weak chest”. He was sneezing a lot on Friday, especially in the evening. And again Saturday morning. So, off to the vets to get him checked out.The vet was quite confident that it

I have to say though that Maslow was as good as gold at the vets. He kind of know when he’s going so hides in strange places, but I managed to grab him and get him in his carry box. I hope it will be just as easy the next two times I have to do it this week. He was a bit reluctant to get out on the vet’s treatment table. But, once he was out he sat there licking my hand while the vet checked him out and gave him his jabs. He did go slightly cross-eyed when the vet checked his temperature. Maslow that is. Not the vet. He has to go back for a final check up on Wednesday. Before cat camp. Maslow that is. Not the vet.

wouldn’t be pepper that was making him sneeze. This was one theory because Cathy had left some fresh ground pepper on the work surface over night on Thursday. Maslow could easily have jumped up and done a line. The other theory is that he might have picked something up when hunting. Sticking his nose into something he shouldn’t. As we know, he has caught at least two mice this week (including the one that I sat on and killed) and was getting up front and personal with a hedgehog. He pricked his little pinkie as a consequence. No, the vet thought his glands were up and his temperature was at the high end of normal. So, Maslow was given an anti-inflammatory and an antibiotic jab that will last two weeks, so, for most of the time that we are away. He’s back to the vet on Wednesday just in case. The day before he is due to go to Catsworth House.