Gallery 3: When I Was a Boy
Sunday afternoon on a platform somewhere in the east Midlands a new recruit about to depart for induction and basic training on Her Majesty’s service.
The wage was slightly better than signing on at Her Majesty’s dole office
The rumour in nearby Poolsbrook had it that at Bolsover, the outpourings from the plant owned by Coalite; the ultimate owners of the Falkland Islands, were turning the milk of the local farmers’ cows, an incandescent shade of green.
If you were to come back when the weather is a bit warmer then you’ll get to see the ferrets. They’ll not be brought out now, they’ll be dead. It would kill them. I wouldn’t let them anyway. The birds now, they are different, they go all over. In all weathers. I can send them to Belgium and they always come back here. You have to be a bit careful.
The Wirral Peninsula has a splendid canal leading to the sea at Eastham, Birkenhead which also was the birthplace of the poet Adrian Henri and the home of the late Brian Dixon.
Dixon’s Wrestling Enterprises of Birkenhead; the company he founded and operated from what was once his teen bedroom, grew from an early involvement with professional wrestling as the Secretary of the Jim Breaks fan club.
I came across another quote in the wake of the reforms to welfare that are in the mix as I write.
On a blog a claimant writes: “The DWP Agents declared me fit for work whereas I know for sure the Nazis would have sent me to my destruction directly.”
It makes sense to stand up. To defy the abuse of power. To question authority.
There was an older man who worked behind the counter at the Maypole grocer. Chewing slowly on a piece of cheese or boiled bacon. Around his wrist, very tightly, were several broad elastic bands.
Our family butcher would deliver to the house our order for Christmas Day.
Included was always a fresh sprig of Mistletoe.
Poose’s ancestor Elijah Ridings, was a member of the Sun Inn Group of poets who convened at that establishment on Long Millgate, Manchester.
Ridings, was just 17 went he led a group from Failsworth to the protest on August 16, 1819, where up to 80,000 people gathered in Manchester. It became known as the Peterloo Massacre.
The crowd was charged by the cavalry and 15 people died, with 654 more injured.
Poose told us that (in his opinion) he had no need to work.
Mummy, as she put it, ‘went to business’, at a giant chemical manufacturer, for forty faithful years until she died.
Daddy had done the same.
Both used the annual bonus to buy shares in the chemicals that employed them. And the returns from this accumulated thrift and foresight, was the reason Poose now ventured out only to buy records, books, porridge oats and intermittent chicken pieces. To buy beer while visiting what few friends he had.
Poose was a regular drinker in the members-only bar at the Railway Police club situated beneath the station platforms. Most lunchtimes he was offered stories the bearer felt worthy of publication. Like this one.
There had been rumblings of a walkout by platform staff. One of their number, employed to assist those travellers with first class tickets who were incapable of finding their seats, had given away to a Second-man, a tatty worn out jacket issued with his ‘special’ uniform that boasted gold braid.
“It’s not right, y’see. It’s not for the likes of him to be wearing that”, my informant insisted.
The Second-man, whose employment required him to couple and uncouple locomotives from the carriages during a runaround. A dirty and dangerous job. And, he was not classed as platform staff. The editor failed to appreciate the newsworthiness of this snippet and it was spiked. The militancy later evaporated come the afternoon shift changeover at two o’clock.
No more was said.
