Atomic Fireball

Back in the days before games consoles and PCs the closest you got to the Burnout or Need For Speed series involved Dinky or Matchbox cars and a lot of imagination. If you were really, really lucky your dad might have convinced your mum that a Scalextric or TCR set was what you wanted for Christmas so he could play too. An FPS usually involved running round a local bombsite, scrubland, park or the local churchyard firing at your mates with an assortment of cap guns and as for huge explosions, you only got those in war films…unless you were a ten year old with an unhealthy obsession in militaria and making things go ‘BOOM’. As mentioned before on here, my friend Dave and I both had that particular unhealthy obsession. I’m not sure what his excuse was but I still blame my granddad.

One bonfire night in the mid 70s Dave’s wheeler-dealer of a dad got hold of a quantity of Chinese fireworks from one of his contacts. In those days Chinese fireworks were a bit of a novelty sold in a rare few shops. Most of us made do with boxes of Astra, Brocks or Standard, nothing as exotic as these and tame stuff unless you count the time one nearly set fire to the conservatory. Usually it was only the rich kids down the road whose parents could afford them that got them on Bonfire Night, not that we did not reap the benefits too as we could see their display by standing on the garden wall and peering over the fence.

Unfortunately the provenance of these particular oriental fireworks could not quite be ascertained and to say that they were a little on the duff side would have been an understatement. About 70% of them failed to bang and sparkle as sensible fireworks are supposed to. These were thrown to one side and forgotten about as us kids stuffed our faces with the party food on offer.

However, come the following day Dave and I were poking through the detritus of the previous night as bored kids are wont to do when we discovered the huge pile of dud fireworks that had been thrown aside. Back then bonfire nights were, on the whole not conducted in the pouring rain as global warming had not yet been invented so the explosive contents of the brightly coloured tubes was quite dry albeit slightly chilled. It appeared that the cause of non-detonation was quite simply rubbish blue touch paper that had failed to convey the fire to the powder. Of course, the next thought was obvious, “Why not make our own firework?”

So we did.

Nearby was a row of local shops, this being the days when such things existed and they had not all been turned into trendy wine bars and coffee shops. One of them was a haberdashers shop selling everything from buttons to huge rolls of material. A swift raid on the bins at the back procured us an empty cardboard tube left over from a roll of material and in the case of Dave, a pair of ripped jeans as we scrambled back over the wall. Back at his dads shed we bunged one end up with a cardboard disk and best part of a roll of masking tape, filled the tube with the gunpowder mix from all the other fireworks with no thought of what they had originally been supposed to do, rockets, fountains, Roman candles, they all went into the mix. The original fireworks were pretty chunky affairs and nowadays would probably have large warnings on them about retreating at least fifty metres if not several streets away or even the next county just to be really safe so there was a lot of gunpowder and ‘stuff’ (‘stuff’ being a technical term known only to ten year old boys and used to describe most chemical compounds and the green slime found in water butts). Once we had filled the tube up with the gunpowder mix and given it a bit of a tamp down we then trimmed the tube down, covered the other end with a circle of cardboard and a lot more masking tape and added a bit of blue touch paper adulterated with some scraped matches and a bit of leftover gunpowder.

The ‘Atomic Fireball’ as it was grandly named was ready. Now we had to find somewhere to let it off in peace and quiet. It was decided that the churchyard was the ideal place as we could hide behind the buttresses whilst setting it up. It was a quiet area and passing cars were a rarity back in those days.

Dave managed to steal some matches from the kitchen whilst I distracted his mum and we set off. A few minutes later we were in position and ready for go. After a bit of “You do it!”, “No! You do it!” the blue touch paper was lit and we retreated to a safe distance, about fifteen feet, expecting a few pops and a lot of sparks. We were not ready for the 10 foot high jet of flame and sparks accompanied by vast amounts of smoke that erupted from it.

Standing amidst swirling smoke reminiscent of London pea soupers of the 1950s our trousers went a little bit brown as the flame scorched a black mark up the side of the church. It looked like Beelzebub himself had farted up the side of the building. The look that passed between us said it all, “Oh…arse!”

If this obvious affront to God, that was bound to get us excommunicated from Sunday school should the vicar discover the culprits was not bad enough, at that moment the local policeman rounded the corner by the far end of the church. Now, this being a gentler time before international terrorism, crack cocaine and body armour we might have expected a Dixon of Dock Green style “Ello! Ello! What’s going on here then lads?” or some such gentle enquiry to ascertain the nature of our crime. Instead we got a slightly more earthy yell of

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

A yell that was a touch more ‘Sweeney’ than ‘Dixon’ and one that hinted at dire punishments to come. At this point our trousers went several shades browner than they had been before and we decided that discretion was the better part of valour. We ran, scaling the seven foot high spiked railings that surrounded the churchyard in seconds before fleeing for our lives. The rest of the day was spent hiding in an empty garage on a local estate, convinced that it was next stop Borstal and we would never be able to bend down in the showers again.

Flight of the Rupert

D-Day, 6th of June 1944. In the hours preceding the seaborne landings thousands of allied paratroops dropped over Normandy to secure bridges, roads and harass the enemy. With them were dropped thousands of dummies known as ‘Ruperts’. These dummies, rigged with explosives to simulate gunfire were to confuse the enemy and make it appear that more paratroops were landing than there were.

Sanjeev, Stuart and I knew all this because we had watched ‘The Longest Day’. Sanjeev lived a few doors down from my grandparents in a similarly large five storey Georgian house along with his parents, grandfather and several brothers and sisters. His father was a lecturer at the local university, his mother a fashion designer like my own mother and his granddad had served with colonial forces in the far east and liked telling stories of how he faced the might of the Japanese army armed only with a Lee Enfield, a bayonet and his wits. It was only natural then that when I visited my grandparents that Sanjeev was one of the other kids I spent time with along with Stuart who lived over the back wall.

It was the tail end of the long summer holidays. In a few days I would be going home but we were hanging around bored. It was too warm to kick a ball around down on the green and there were not enough of us for a decent game of soldiers so we were wondering what to do. Somehow we started discussing the film ‘The Longest Day’ that had been shown on TV a few days earlier and in particular the explosive parachutists that had been dropped to sow confusion amongst the enemy. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make one of those? As usual at this point one or more of us should have said “Don’t be stupid!” and smacked the person suggesting it around the head until they suggested something a bit safer but being nine year old boys we all went “Yeah!”.

Stuart had a whole tin filled with bangers brought back from a holiday in France. In the 70s if you were a kid and you went to France you brought back as many as you could possibly conceal in your parents and siblings luggage without arousing the suspicions of the Customs people. We could use those to simulate the gunfire bit but what about the dummy. None of us wanted to sacrifice our ‘Action Men’ and anyhow I had only brought three uniforms with mine, none of which were suitable for falling from the sky. It was Sanjeev who came up with the second not so bright idea of the day. His mum had an old shop dummy up in the attic she had once used to display clothes she had designed. We could use that, attach a sheet to it and drop it from the attic window that was five storeys up. Brilliant! His parents were out and only his granddad was around and he was most likely to be asleep.

So it was that the three of us, Stuart clutching his biscuit tin full of bangers that he had nipped home to collect sneaked up into the attic. We were not really allowed to be there, his dad used to tell us off frequently but it was one of our favourite places. By climbing out of the window we could gain access to an area of flat roof between the houses from which we could snipe at passers by in the street with our spud guns and water pistols.

The dummy Sanjeev had mentioned was easily located as was a large dust sheet covering an old trunk which on exploration contained a whole load of Sanjeevs’ granddads old belongings including of all things a tin helmet. “Cool!” we all exclaimed, we could tie it to the dummy for added realism. Whilst Sanjeev and Stuart hung several garlands of bangers around the dummy which had a few more bumps and curves than the average allied parachutist I made the parachute by tying four lengths of hairy string to the corners of the dust sheet and securing them under the dummies arms. With a flourish Stuart put the tin helmet on the dummies head and produced a box of matches from his pocket we were ready to go.

With a bit of effort we got the dummy up onto the window ledge and pushed it out onto the ledge that ran beyond the window so that it rested precariously against the roof . Stuart lit the fuse of the bangers and we gave it a mighty heave.

It worked quite well…for the first ten or so feet. The dust sheet billowed out arresting its fall and it began to drift earthwards…and sideways, straight towards Sanjeevs granddads greenhouse. Like my own grandfather he was a keen gardener. Every year his allotment produced a veritable bounty of vegetables and his pride and joy were his tomatoes, cucumbers and various exotic specimens with unpronounceable names that he grew in his greenhouse. Now our ‘Rupert’ was headed straight for it.

For an agonising second or two it looked like it might miss but then the inevitable happened, one of the knots I had tied decided that now was the time to come un-knotted. It was hardly my fault I had dropped out of the Cub Scouts before we had done knotting. The dummy dropped like a stone and the hideous crash as it plummeted through the greenhouse roof was followed by the gunfire like sounds of the bangers detonating. This in turn was swiftly followed by Sanjeevs granddad bolting from the shed at the end of the garden where he had apparently been having a nap to stand in incredulous silence at the spectacle of a shop dummy wearing his old tin hat dangling by a few bits of string engaged in the nefarious activity of blowing up his prized cucumbers. The silence did not last for long as spotting us clinging to the roof, white faced at the enormity of what we had done he let fly with a thickly accented yell of

“You…you little…buggers!”

It was no good trying to run, by the time we had pelted downstairs he was waiting for us and in those pre-PC, pre-childrens rights days that meant that all three of us got the seats of our trousers well and truly dusted and Stuart and I were marched round to our respective parents and guardians. That night my grandfather called my parents and suggested it might be a wise move if they collected me a few days early lest Sanjeevs granddad carry through with his threat to introduce me to cold steel like he had done to a number of ‘the nipponese’ if he happened across me again. Unfortunately only being a few doors away that was more than likely. My parents heeded my grandfather’s advice and did so and I may have escaped a fate likely to end in death but for the next six months I seemed to do an awfully large number of chores for very little financial reward.

Fortunately by the following year it had all been forgotten which was lucky given that that summer we almost burnt the shed down instead.

Ed

We were never quite sure where Ed came from or even when he attached himself to our group who on the whole had been friends since the first year of primary school. All we knew was that one day he was there and that put him anywhere near a pint of shandy and disaster was likely to follow. He was a nice enough chap, perhaps too nice who had obviously had a decent upbringing. His parents were both awfully middle class and he still lived with them in a large house in one of the up market areas of town.

Unfortunately Ed liked to think that he was a hardened drinker. Maybe he was providing that whatever they served wherever he was from was weaker than the watered down witches piss they served in some of the more tourist oriented bars in town. Having grown up honing our underage drinking talents in some of the more ‘interesting’ country pubs in the area the rest of us tended to gravitate towards the kind of cider that was still illegal under several European treaties and which could perform painless surgery to the knees after a couple of pints leading to many of its devotees waking up with a mouthful of cigarette butts and sawdust from the floor.

Ed was no exception. In fact on most occasions just walking him past the barrels of ‘Old poachers gumboot’, ‘Badgers Bollocks’ and other such quaintly named beverages would usually lead to him falling over in a stupor there and then. No matter how many times it happened he would not heed the warnings of those who had been there before him many times since the age of 14. On at least one occasion he had held a pint of cider aloft declaring “Looks like orange barley water!” before quaffing it in one go. Five minutes later he slid slowly off his seat and under the table. Of course, being the good mates that we were we allowed him to lie there for at least an hour collecting dog ends and crisp packets in his open and gently snoring mouth. Oddly enough many years later another friend used almost the same line in a different pub in a different town but the results were almost exactly the same.

Thus, when we set off on one of our legendary pub crawls from one end of town to the other we made Ed solemnly promise to pace himself and maybe stick to lemonade in four out of every five pubs. To be fair to him he did as he was told as the rest of us downed halves in every one of the twenty or so pubs we visited and got slightly tipsy. It was only when we reached the Red Lion that Ed forgot his promise and got stuck into some of the real ales on offer. Now if the country folk at one end of town liked their cider, the trawlermen at the other end liked their real ales and some of them were even pokier than the cider but lacking the bits of dead rat to add to the taste. Ed had at least four pints. Twenty minutes later he went a bit glassy-eyed and toppled from his chair much to the amusement of the assembled throng. Not that big a deal until we realised he was staring straight up the skirt of one of the trawlermens wives or girlfriends. Not only was he pissed as a fart but he was about to get himself and probably us too beaten to a pulp by some bloke who smelt of fish. Swiftly as two alcohol befuddled teenagers could Paul and Alex scooped him up and we fled the pub.

We had not travelled a hundred yards when Ed broke free, mumbling something about gymnastics and made a beeline for the railings that edged part of the harbour. Before any of us could scream “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he had climbed onto them and in utter silence, vanished over the other side. We ran as fast as our own legs, numbed by alcohol, could carry us although we were sobering up rather quickly, waiting for the splash as Ed hit the murky waters…but there was no splash. As we reached the edge we discovered why. The tide was high and a new mooring pontoon had been installed. Ed was lying on his back on the pontoon, staring up at us, waving and giggling like a lunatic. Fortunately for him he had landed on a fishing net, the alcohol had relaxed him just enough and the pontoon was high enough that no damage was done. It was Paul, good, decent, Christian Paul who, mere months later went on to begin to carve out a future career in the priesthood who articulated all our thoughts at that moment…

“YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER FUCKING BASTARD!” was yelled at the top of his voice, causing windows and doors to be thrown open and at least one woman to yell out “You mind your language you fucking twat!” Ed continued to look up at us, still waving and grinning from the fish reeking net. It took us a good ten minutes to extract him from his predicament and set off for home.

Living closest to the harbour I was first to leave them so it was not until the next day when I met up with Paul and Alex for a greasy fry up prior to some hair of the dog that I discovered what they had done with Ed. Deciding that waking his folks who, judging by the lack of lights had already gone to bed, Paul and Alex had left Ed slumped over an ornamental lion in the garden figuring that he would soon sober up and find his own way in. It wasn’t until later that day that I found out what had happened after that when I received a phone call from Ed’s father, a rather pompous gentleman:

“Did my son go out drinking with you last night?”

“Errr! Yes!”

“Did you bring him home?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“Ummmm! Yes!”

“Good! Can you tell them that next time they do, can they not leave him on one of my ornamental lions. He woke up in the middle of the night and threw up in the pond. My Koi do not like it. What’s worse though is that he decided he needed to have a number two as well. My wife just happened to look out of the window after hearing the noise outside. I don’t think she will ever be quite the same after seeing her son shitting on the garden gnomes!”

Somehow as I desperately tried to quell the image of Ed squatting over a garden gnome I had the feeling that we might not be seeing him very much in the future.

Porterhouse II

I’m sure that the liberal minded do-gooder who decided that it would be wise to educate us in the mysteries of human sexuality regretted it afterwards. If they did not they really should have given the mayhem their afternoon lecture caused the following day.

It wasn’t so much that the lecture, delivered to half of the sixth form, namely thirty or so seventeen year old boys, most of who were already engaging or at least trying to, in carnal ramblings with the other half of the sixth form that consisted of thirty or so seventeen year old girls that caused the mayhem. It was the packets of condoms that were handed out to us to promote safe sex and responsibility. No doubt the person who donated them presumed they would mummify in our wallets as most condoms handed out to teenage boys had tended to do in previous more sexually unenlightened times. How wrong they were!

So, there we were, thirty or so seventeen year olds, most of whom already had wallets stuffed to bursting with prophylactics stolen from older siblings bedside cabinets, from the local barbers having endured the gazes and knowing nods of the older gents when Mr Ginelli asked “Something for the weekend sir?” and in the case of Pete whose parents ran the local chemist, from the stockroom out at the back and all of a sudden we each had an extra packet of three. If we tried to cram any more in our wallets there was a serious risk of condom overload and resulting eruption that would cover the school playground from end to end with things that were ribbed, bobbled, nubbled and tentacled for his and her pleasure. So what could we do with them?

The answer was simple, why not inflate them and fill the sixth form year masters broom cupboard-like office with them. Brilliant idea! Mr Dart the previous incumbent had just retired and his successor was to be named the next day. An office filled with inflated condoms would be a jolly jape to welcome him or her into the post. Er…maybe not. Unfortunately, being seventeen our reading matter tended to consist of 2000AD and lurid books about SS Panzer battalions from the cheap bookshop in town. It did not stretch to ‘Porterhouse Blue’ and its potential warning about inflated condoms. What’s more we should never have trusted Pete with the inflation of said condoms as he had never read the book either.

The following morning we all arrived bright and early which in itself was unusual given that most of us rolled in sometime after morning assembly just in time for mid morning break and a game of poker before the first lesson of the day. Pete had obviously been in since the crack of dawn as the year masters office was filled with inflated johnnies that resembled oversized maggots. The 90 or so that we had all contributed had been supplemented by a fair few more stolen from Petes parents chemists shop and the room was stuffed as full as it possibly could be. Now all we had to do was attend assembly and discover who the lucky recipient of our splendid wheeze was.

Standing at the back we endured the usual badly sung hymns, the congratulations to the first 11 who had managed to escape with a 25-0 mauling against another local school and how the study garden was not to be used to play cricket in. Finally the revelation of who the new sixth form master was came…Mr Bowles, probably the single most humourless individual in the school. Over the years his reputation had grown worse with each passing term. Here was a man who would give a pupil a weeks detention for just standing in the wrong way. We had arranged for his office to be filled with contraceptives. In the back row the entire sixth form went a very pale shade of their usual colour and one thought passed silently through all our minds…”Oooooh fuck!” We were doomed to a lifetime of detention, in fact we would probably be old and grey before we would be let out.

Perhaps fortunately for us, at the back of the hall was a cupboard that connected with the PE department changing rooms. Hurriedly, three of us, Nigel, Andy and myself shielded by the rest of the sixth form crawled through this and fled the building, running across to the sixth form common rooms as fast as we could. We had only a short time to get rid of the contraceptives before Mr Bowles turned up as was tradition after the assembly in which he had been named but how could we do it. There were so many in the tiny room we could only just get the door open a crack. There was only one way, burst them with something. But what could we use? Darts! There was a dartboard in the common room, we all used it, we could poke the condoms with darts. There was only one problem with the plan, there were not any darts in the board, most of the players brought their own and kept them in their rucksacks. What about something sharp from the woodwork block next door suggested Nigel so he and I scurried off leaving Andy behind.

We had only just reached the door of the woodwork block when behind us we heard what sounded like a series of muffled car backfires, a slightly louder bang and the sound of breaking glass. Running back we crashed back into the common room to find Andy standing by the office door looking somewhat traumatised with a cigarette lighter in hand. Beyond him the sixth form masters office resembled an explosion in a contraceptive factory, which, as we found out later was not far off the mark. We had just enough time to bundle him out of the fire door and run round the building as the rest of the sixth form arrived with Mr Bowles. We had joined the tail end and were witnesses to the look of utter astonishment on his face as he surveyed what was supposed to have been his office but which was now an area of devastation, missing a window pane and littered with singed paper and bits of pink latex. Suffice it to say he was not a happy chap.

It was only later we pieced together the whole sorry tale. Pete had indeed arrived early that morning and faced with inflating almost a hundred condoms had cheated a bit and using the gas hose from the oven in the common room kitchen, had filled them with good old North Sea gas. Andy had not really expected them to be inflated with anything but air when, desperate to get rid of the Zeppelin like prophylactics, he had applied his lighter after managing to open the door a crack. At first there had been a brief chain reaction but this, as chain reactions have a tendency to do had turned into something bigger. The resulting gas explosion had blown out one of the window panes and shot a sheet of flame past Andy who had been lucky to have been shielded by the door.

The entire sixth form had their privileges revoked for two months, no darts, no cards and were expected to spend their free breaks and lunchtimes studying in the library. We were sternly reminded that condoms were meant for other purposes than blowing up the school, something that may also have been regretted when the head boy was discovered in bed with Miss Wilder, the new gym mistress at an end of term party that year.

The Great Rubber Band War

It probably started like so many conflicts with a relatively minor incident, an Archduke Franz Ferdinand style assassination attempt round the back of the boys toilets perhaps but soon the ‘Great Rubber Band War’ of 1978 had taken a momentum of its own. The minor incident became forgotten as the cries to arms went out. Hit and run border raids on the second year corner of the playground were unleashed and retaliated against and by the end of the week full scale open warfare had broken out. Just about every able-bodied boy in the 1st and 2nd years began packing heat in the form of rubber bands purloined from the bursars stationery cupboard and a pocket full of folded paper pellets.

From the stalemate of trench warfare hiding behind the walled flowerbeds of the ‘study garden’ to grand sweeping charges across the playing field nowhere in the school was safe and every break reverberated to the ping of rubber bands and the yelps of the victims as a lucky shot caught them in the back of the neck. Naturally the masters attempted to ‘discourage’ us by confiscating rubber bands and having us turn out our pockets, rucksacks, briefcases and bags but it was not like we were turning up to school with an Uzi and a couple of Glocks like most pupils of today seem to do so on the whole they were fairly laid back about it. After all, nobody was going to get killed, that task was covered by the PE department and their ten mile runs. At least they were laid back about it until the ‘East bank massacre’.

The ‘war’ had been humming along nicely for best part of a month. The massed battles had given way to a more static and ambush based conflict. Us 1st years defended our corner of the playground and had made significant gains around the library, Physics building and lower school toilet block. Along with our allies in the 3rd year we also held a chunk of the upper school playground. After a long stalemate and threats of a sound thrashing if we disturbed its solitude ever again, the ‘study garden’ had become neutral territory guarded by the fearsome Mrs Trotter of the music department. The 2nd years held the area around the biology labs, the school gym and the newly built ‘Home Economics’ suite as well as good portion of the area of land that bordered the playing fields. As in other wars our ‘generals’, three of the quieter kids who were members of the school war game club, decided that a major offensive must be launched.

Maybe events would have been different if Mike had not decided to up the ante a little with his homemade multi-banded miniature crossbow that could be used to launch inky pellets with the potential to mark our foe as victims of war. Maybe they would have been drastically different if he had not shared his design with the rest of us and we, instead of being the blood-thirsty warriors of the playground out for honour in battle had not copied it in our dads sheds and garages over the weekend and turned up at school the following Monday with an assortment of inky paper projectile launching devices that would make Dennis the Menace go white with fear. Maybe too, things would have not culminated in the ‘East bank massacre’ if our generals had, like generals before and after not been relying on faulty intelligence.

Word had gone out that the 2nd form commanders would be gathering on the East bank of the playing fields at lunch break. Here was our chance to break the stalemate by not only capturing the area, but also humiliating their leaders with our new inky artillery. Double maths seemed to last forever that morning as we strained at the leash to launch our attack. No sooner had the lunch break bell rung than we were out of the classroom, stuffing our pre-Jamie Oliver sugar loaded snacks and fish paste sandwiches down our throats as we went, ready to do battle. Our advance parties were already in position, ready to sweep the opposition around the biology labs aside whilst our raiding party moved through to deliver the humiliating blow. At exactly 1pm we went over the top in more ways than one.

The few second years that had gathered by the labs were swept aside and our flank attack seized the high ground only to discover that the bank was deserted, no-one in sight. We stood confused for several moments then Mike yelled “I hear them, they’re in the bushes!”

With a bloodthirsty scream twenty or so 1st years piled over the top of the bank firing inky pellets. It took at least ten seconds, in which, thanks to Mikes brilliant design of multiple firing mini-crossbows several hundred pellets soaked in blue Quink had been fired, for us to realise that it was not our 2nd form foe that stood before us but Miss Ashton, the biology teacher who had been out gathering bugs for the forthcoming 3rd year double biology period that afternoon. What’s more her white coat looked like it had developed a strange case of blue measles. I can’t remember what I thought at that moment. I think it was something on the lines of “Oh bother!”

Suffice it to say that we found ourselves hauled up before the headmaster who, to put it mildly was a little on the unhappy side that one of his staff had been assaulted in such a way. We were lucky to escape with several thousand lines each especially after almost all of us had been forced to desperately hide our sniggers with a variety of coughs, snorts and sneezes when he demanded “So who was it that shot Miss Ashton in the bush then?”

The Cocktail of Doom

My father was ex-RAF and had spent much of his younger years pootling about the skies in a selection of very fast aircraft scaring the crap, sometimes quite literally, out of various cows, sheep and the inhabitants of a fair few towns with his low flying antics. Thus it was hardly surprising that when he left the forces it was for an exciting job in middle management in the DIY business much like many of his former colleagues.

Malcolm however, was different and had swapped his Biggles-like life of swooping about the skies shooting down ‘bandits’, strafing the natives in the various foreign conflicts of the 1950s and bellowing "Tally-ho chaps!" for the heady excitement of being a sales representative for a well known firm who purveyed dairy goods to the trade. The perks were good though and as Uncle Malc’ was a frequent visitor to our house being one of dads drinking mates we got a fair share of them. Thus it was that one Wednesday in the middle of August 1973 he turned up and unloaded from his van a quantity of a new brand of Yoghurt and what looked like a small oil drum of something. The something turned out to be prawn cocktail.

Now as anyone who grew up in the 70s knows, prawn cocktail was the sophisticated dish to serve at your gatherings. No intimate soiree was complete without a bottle of Blue Nun, prawn cocktail and throwing your car keys into a bowl at the end of the evening. Okay, round our way the whole key throwing thing had skipped people by, probably as most of the people who drove only owned a set of tractor keys and the rest had only just crawled from the 19th century and were still wondering what all the fuss was about the internal combustion engine but prawn cocktail was big and suddenly we had about two gallons of it. Naturally enough we got well stuck in and rather tasty it was too.

The following day we had prawn cocktail for breakfast, lunch, dinner and we did the same the next day. In fact I think mum even served up prawn cocktail sandwiches and prawn cocktail on toast at some point. By day three I wanted something other than prawn cocktail, even the 30 year old tin of Spam kept in the kitchen cupboard had started to look appetising but we still had a load of the sickly pink goo nestling in our old gas powered fridge.

Saturday came and with it came my older cousins Phil and Laura who lived just round the corner. My aunt had promised to take them and myself into town to buy various supplies for the new school term and they had come to collect me. Naturally enough as kids do, Phil started poking round in the fridge to see if he could find anything to eat and discovered the prawn cocktail. Having never had it before both he and Laura asked mum if they could and the answer was “Yes!”, anything to get rid of the stuff and make room for the Sunday joint so they both piled in and against my better judgement I did too, noting as I did that it tasted a bit ‘different’ than it had before but being seven I did not consider anything of it. After that we wandered up to my Aunts house and spent an hour or so mucking around in the back garden as she had a few chores to do before she took us into town. Time to go came and we climbed into the back of her Triumph Herald for the drive into town. Unfortunately for us, it being a summer Saturday, the traffic into town was backed up and in the car it began to get a bit warm. I started to realise that there were distinct rumblings in the Balkans and both Phil and Laura were awfully quiet. Arriving in town and being able to emerge from the car was a blessed relief.

Our first port of call that fateful afternoon was a large and well known gentlemen’s outfitters that also had a small section devoted to school uniform for the local schools. The shop itself was old fashioned with wooden counters, hats stored in hat boxes and various items of attire displayed on shelves. It was also cramped, dingy and on that August afternoon decidedly warm. Little did the assistant who emerged to serve us know of the apocalypse that was about to follow. He had just finished measuring Phil for a new blazer when everything erupted, well, when Phil erupted with a monumental “BOIYLLLK!” that covered the counter, a display of shirts and a rack of ties that happened to be in the way. The assistant, big manly man that he was screamed like a girl and leapt backwards just in time to avoid Phils stream of vomit but unfortunately straight into the path of Laura who with a massive and perfectly timed “HOOOORRRP!” sprayed him and an elderly gentleman who had up to that point been innocently trying on hats nearby not expecting to be puked on by a nine year old. In some ways it was good that he was trying the hats on as it meant that unlike my cousins who by now had covered half the shop in vomit I had something to throw up in, the hatbox, which I grabbed and added my own “BLLLEEERCH!” to the proceedings. It was only after that I realised I had grabbed the wrong box and had just brought my boots up over a brand new Homburg.

Aunt Anne, being the kind, caring and responsible adult she was, was by now trying to vacate the shop without drawing attention to herself, pretending that she did not know us and had not really brought three apparently demonically possessed children into the shop to let them abuse the customers and staff with foul demonic emanations. Unluckily for her she was spotted and we were ushered back into her care with the words “We’ll send you the bill!” ringing in our ears. It looked like our chances of getting any pocket money for the next twenty years were seriously screwed.

Swiftly we were ushered back to the car and in a style of driving that the ‘Sweeney’ would popularise the following year we sped out of town with us kids going a delicate shade of green in the back unsecured by seatbelts and subject to an un-merciless bouncing as Aunt Anne hurtled up the sea road.

Now those of you who come here from the Scaryduck blog will know of his frequent bouts of being “sick inna hedge”. It’s very possible we outdid him that day as no sooner had we reached countryside than the Sweeney-like speeding became a stop-start crawl as one of us bolted from the car every two hundred yards. We were sick in hedges, in fields, in a dustbin, in some poor sods Lupin patch, over several walls and in Phils case ‘onna dead badger’ which made him throw up again seconds later. Never have the words “Are we nearly there yet? I’m gonna be sick!” inspired so much terror. Finally though we reached home and as I pelted through the door heading for the bathroom and its merciful absence of shrubbery and dead wildlife I noticed mum and dad tucking in to bowls of prawn cocktail. Impending disaster was not far off.

After that the mere mention of it was taboo in our house after the days of family bonding over the toilet that followed and despite its popularity throughout the 70s I don’t think I, or my parents touched it again until I was well into my twenties.

Sports Day

As mentioned on here several times in the past, the school I attended valued sporting prowess as much if not more than academic ability so if you were rubbish at sports you were almost certainly doomed to seven years of being treated with contempt by the sadistic bastards who made up the PE department. Of course the flip side of this was that if you were any good at sports you ended up in one of the school teams which meant after hours training and matches against other schools that were invariably held on a Saturday, a sneaky way of getting extra school attendance out of you when you should have been watching ‘TISWAS’ and stuffing your face with Tartrazine loaded snacks.

Thus it became a battle to try to strike a balance between making sure that you did not lose your chance to laze around at the weekend and making sure that you were not labelled a bone idle waster by Messrs Jackson and Stephens and forced to do the kind of physical jerks that could fell most SAS men in the playground in order to toughen you up whilst everyone else played basketball in the nice warm gym. In my case being unutterably crap at football meant that at least once a week I got sent on laps of the field but the rest of the time I managed to just about do enough not to be marked down as a weakling yet avoid getting on any teams. Rugby and cricket I was average at, I could run the four hundred yards and not stagger in last gasping for breath and throwing up behind the biology labs and as for cross country, well most of us had sussed that if we dropped out of sight on the first lap of the school we could have a crafty smoke for twenty minutes, nip out of the side gate and then reappear for the last two hundred yards just behind the keen types who really had done the running and it would look like we had completed the race in an average enough time that would not see us ending up on the cross country team either. There was only one time when we were almost caught out and that was when Kev’ crossed the line with a Lambert & Butler glued to his lip having forgotten to spit it out before he resumed the race. Luckily for us Mr Jackson happened to be looking the other way as Kev’ charged past emitting clouds of smoke like a runaway steam engine.

The one fly in the ointment though was school sports day. We have all had to do it at some time in our youth. It’s the day when the PE teachers not content with being the evil, sadistic bastards they are and hounding you round a cold, wet playing field for two hours make you do the self same thing but with an audience of parents and peers to see you stagger in last or try to throw a lump of iron like an uncoordinated chimpanzee on Mogadon in the one sporting event you are absolutely rubbish at yet have been made to do by the PE teachers because they want a bit of a laugh. After all, the sight of Neil in his coke bottle glasses veering off at a tangent into the crowds and the second year kid with the withered arm trying to putt the shot obviously had great comedy value amongst the staff.

Apart from football the other event I wasn’t any good at was throwing the javelin or at least it appeared that way. I was in fact very good at it but to ensure that my leisure time was not dented by hurling pointy sticks on a weekend I made it look like I wasn’t that brilliant at it, not completely cack-handed like Pete who managed to spear himself through the foot the first time we were let loose with javelins but not good enough to be noticed and appointed school spear chucker either. Thus on the last sports day before we left school after our ‘O’ levels I found, by some twist of perverse logic in one of the PE masters mind, that I was representing my house in the javelin events.

It was possibly because this was the last sports day we would ever have to attend as in the sixth form sport was optional that a certain spirit of rebellion came over me and when it was my turn to throw I thought “Sod it!” and hurled the javelin with all my might which given that I had just hit sixteen was pretty mighty indeed. As it happened the annual spectacle of the teachers versus first year pupils egg and spoon two hundred metres race had just begun and as usual the teachers were about fifty yards ahead of the first year participants who seemed to consist of all the asthmatics and kids who liked their chips too much chosen in order to make the teachers, who apart from Miss Hancock were hardly the fittest of beings, look good.

Now, in most normal and sensible athletics stadiums the javelin triangle is marked so that stray missiles pose no threat to spectators and other athletes. At my school it had been decided that as it was obvious no pupil would ever hurl one more than about ten yards, probably because generations of pupils wanting an easy life had never really tried that hard, that the javelin triangle would be marked out straight across the field instead of down it. As I stood and watched the sharp pointy metal thing I had just thrown descend in a graceful arc my thought of “Sod it!” became one of “Ooooo! Shit!”

With a thud the javelin fell to earth… slap bang in the middle of the running track about six feet in front of Mr Tate, one of the geography masters, who, unable to stop or react in time went flat on his face over it closely followed by two of the French Masters a history teacher and the head of Biology. The fat and asthmatic kids meanwhile jogged serenely past the teachers lying in a heap on the track, or at least as serenely as it possibly is for someone who is gasping for breath and going a funny shade of blue to jog past and on to the finish line, the first time the teachers had been beaten in about a hundred years. Behind me I could hear the sounds of apoplectic rage and turned to face Mr Jackson who, red faced glared at me for long seconds. Next moment the whole audience of parents, teachers and fellow pupils heard his bellow of “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE BOY…A…A FUCKING ZULU????” echo across the playing field.

An hour later, as if to rub it in I was presented with the rosette for first place and over the polite applause of the parents and teachers another sound could be heard, that of three hundred or so of my fellow pupils stamping their feet in a rough approximation of the moment the natives are heard in a certain 1960s film starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker. Perhaps not surprisingly when the athletics area was marked out the following year the javelin range pointed down the track, not across it.