Best days of our life: Part II

 

Percy wore a long, sand-coloured coat and a brown flat cap. His face was red, weather-beaten, and he looked like Mr. Punch. He was our milkman and delivered it punctually on horse and cart. We would lie in wait, lurking in alleyways and then leap on the back of his cart. There we hung, hidden by milk crates, pursued by Kiowa, and mouthing silent but deadly gun sounds: the Deadwood Express, now peppered with arrows, tearing along at two miles per hour and Percy the Milkman oblivious to the carnage around him. Or so we thought or liked to think. 

The Deadwood Express ended halfway down Greenwich Road opposite the graveyard where the horse had its stable. 

To the right of the power-station at the bottom of our street, ran a narrow alleyway bounded by a high brick wall. On the other side was a long unkempt field called ‘The allotments’, though nothing grew there, and any would be gardener would have had to have been fairly agile because there was no way into it other than by climbing over the wall. On the other side of the wall was a sea of grass and beyond that the railway embankment, thick in bramble and gorse, rich in wartime artefacts.

Ours was a world dominated by gangs— innocent but real—one in particular based in and around Kingswood Avenue off Greenwich Road. We called them the ‘Kingy-elly Gang,’ (Adding the letter Y to the end of a word makes for a pleasing rhythm and is the essence of abbreviation in Liverpool.) When they flowed over the wall at the furthest end of the allotments we would wave sticks at each other, throw a few stones, and then one or the other, sometimes both, would retreat in clouds of defiance and clods of earth. 

Once we built, what we hoped would be a lasting monument to our tiny nation-state: a deep, roughly circular underground den, its roof made from earth and branches, and the whole thing cunningly disguised by a thick layer of grass. 

 In children’s picture books, rabbits and voles live in warm and cosy burrows which, on the page, resemble snuggle-up-able orange or brown blankets. There are even armchairs down there, occasionally a fire. Our den was dark and wet. We sat on lumps of mud and could easily have suffered from ‘trench-foot’ had we known what it was.

We tried lighting a small fire and almost suffocated, smoke tearing at our lungs; but we stayed put, unwilling to admit to a further bad idea. From there, it was a natural progression to inhaling smoke more directly. Cigarettes. 

 I can’t remember who, first introduced them. They were bought singly, or pinched in ones or twos from parental packets, and referred to as ‘loosies.’

In the days before marijuana became prevalent, we sat underground passing round the single cigarette, Shamans in short trousers. To cough showed weakness and provoked mild derision. To leave a ‘ducks-arse’ however was the greatest sin of all. The origin of the name is shrouded in mystery. No one had ever seen a duck’s arse, let alone felt one. Poetry again. Our first introduction to metaphor. 

In real terms it meant passing on a cigarette wet in spit and I, unfortunately, was the greatest sinner of all. I coughed and spluttered and was brutally re-assigned to guard duty, banned from the inner circle of hardened smokers. Ironically today the reverse is the case, the hardened smokers banished outside to guard the pub.

One day, on a whim, or perhaps because of a collapsed roof and a blazing hot summer, we decided on a swimming pool. The cavity became even deeper; we dug and dug; our ambition knew no bounds.

 When the hole was sufficiently deep, a human chain was formed, passing buckets of water from the nearest house to our hole in the ground. In our minds we’d visualised a deep, blue pool. We ended up with a chocolate brown mess we felt honour bound to paddle in. 

When I went back some years later, small houses crammed close occupied where we once used to play.