Green Teeth

My first bike was grey and heavy and looked like a recycled tank. My parents tested it and were reassured by its strength and solidity. The ground shook when my dad picked it up and let it fall gently to the floor. He tried it again - just to make sure and a passing lorry jumped. The two of them nodded. Michael would be safe, safer than any vehicle he’d probably crash into.

Tony was luckier; younger brothers are. When nothing bad happened to me, he was allowed to buy a light and sexy bike in glossy red metallic paint. But the deal remained the same. We had to save half the cost and our parents would match it with the other half.

It took me just under a year and two paper rounds. I loved delivering papers. The round bound you, but the mind roamed where it wanted to. Sometimes still, I wonder what fantasies lurk in a postman’s head - probably darker, more erotic than any a twelve year old boy would have had in 1959.

Usually I was an Indian, chewing pemmican as I trudged across the endless plain. In lieu of dried buffalo meat, I’d have a store of dried orange peel gathering dust in the pocket of a blue gabardine raincoat. Sometimes - as a true forager - I would sample privet leaves. They had a mean, bitter taste and would stain your teeth green. Not a garden was safe from me. My favourite was nasturtium leaves. They had a dark and peppery taste, and didn’t stain your teeth. On a Sunday I would treat myself to an Uncle Joe’s mint-ball. Sometimes two.

Delivering the papers took me longer than most people because when not whistling or chewing privet leaves I’d be reading what I should have been delivering; occasionally exercising censor-ship. I was a narrow bigoted little boy, a good Catholic, possessed of the truth. There was a journal called ‘The Free Thinker’ - atheist and libertarian - I regularly crumpled up before pushing it through the letter-box. The man was patient, but eventually complained.

Mrs Robertson ran the shop. She had a waxen face and her fingers were yellow. She’d clutch the sweets as though reluctant to let them go. At the far end of Warbreck Moor was another Newsagent - Claytons. Along one wall was a small private lending library. The books smelled musty, the shelves were dark and narrow. The other walls were lined with tall glass jars filled with sweets, but it was something else they sold that drew us like wasps to a beer glass. Broken crisps. They were the brushings from the Crisp Factory (Smiths) half a mile up the road, but we didn’t know that. They were served in small conical paper bags - a penny a bag - and they looked good enough. Grease with a crunch.

British Comics

The man with the square chin is Dan Dare, Pilot of the future.


Giant green head and stunted body - must be the Mekon - Dare's supreme enemy














The scene: a log cabin in Siberia: a British pilot kneeling beneath a lit window. Inside Von Stalhein is warning his new Russian paymasters, “You must never under-estimate Herr Biggles. He could be anywhere.” The British pilot wears a smug look.

Why do we remember such rubbish?

Biggles began his long duel with the German master-villain in World War 1. The fight continued as Von Stalhein mutated into a Nazi, and he’s still fighting an ever-green Biggles at the height of the Cold War. The author, W.E Johns went on to have Biggles fighting the Communist Chinese in the Himalayas. By this time the author was almost as senile as Biggles should have been. My last remaining image of Biggles was being pursued by the Chung - invisible electrically charged maggots the size of dogs through a network of mountain tunnels.

George Orwell wrote a superb article on British comics. “Here is the stuff that is read somewhere between the ages of twelve and eighteen by a very large proportion, perhaps a majority, of English boys, including many who will never read anything else…and with it they are absorbing a set of beliefs… All the better because it is done indirectly, there is being pumped into them the conviction that the major problems of our times do not exist, that there is nothing wrong with laissez faire capitalism, that foreigners are unimportant comics and that the British Empire is a sort of charity concern which will last for ever.” This was written in 1939.

I think Biggles, single handedly fighting German master spies and the two great Communist blocs, shows that comics and boy’s books don’t so much ignore the problems of our time, but rather simplify them. But then I’ve never met a boy yet who reads a Times Editorial for pleasure.

They would much rather read the ‘Yellow Sword’ published in the Wizard in 1968.

He had seen the grey hordes from the East spread like a flood across Europe, as they had done across America a year before, and now he was coming home. ...it was June, and Britain had been conquered. The last news Maitland had heard was of landings by the Kushantis at Dover, Folkestone and in the Southampton area….He was opposite the general store when the announcer came on the air again. “You will now hear a recording of the last message of the late Prime Minister, the last words spoken before his death,” he said. Maitland stopped at the sound of a familiar voice, now heavy with incredible weariness and broken by emotion. “My friends! It is my duty to tell you that at six o’clock this morning, stripped of our defences and in order to save further useless loss of life, the British Government through me, as Prime Minister, signed an act of surrender to the Imperial Kushanti Oligarchy in the Tower of London. I have to say that the act of surrender was made in the presence of His Excellency, Colonel-General Mushti, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Occupation in Great Britain.”
The wireless was now silent, but some of the villagers heard another voice, a voice that came from the street. Maitland with his head back and a strange glow in his eyes, was singing as he marched. “Rule Britannia,” he sang, “Britannia rules the waves. Britons never, never never shall be slaves!” His voice weakened and faded away. As, with shouts of “John! John’s come home!” his parents and brother rushed out of the house. Maitland staggered and fell sprawling and inert on the garden path.

1968. This was well after my comic reading days were over but think about it. This was written in 1968 - the year of the Paris riots, world wide student unrest, Vietnam and the march on Grosvenor Square - 'Sympathy for the Devil'. And children are reading about a grey horde from the east - Britain over-run - and the hero singing Rule Britannia. 1968. It could have been written in 1910.

Orwell was speaking of a time and place: 1939. Britain. What about America? In Europe,economic and social turmoil saw the rise of fascism during this period - the cult of the leader - the hero born to rule. German had Hitler, Italy, Mussolini. America had Roosevelt, but it was also the period Superman was born. Britain made do with Stanley Baldwin.

Super-heroes change but one thing remains. Whether apolitical or reflecting some degree of cultural liberalism - even bloody-mindedness - super-heroes never question the economic basis of society, or its social structure. Individuals may be bad and the hero will sort it out. At this point my son moseys by. "What about Ultimate Thor," he mutters. "He challenges the American military-industrial complex."

"Adults revisiting their childhood," I mutter back. "Revisionism," I hiss.

The New York Times (05/07/07) in an article on a Comic Book Convention, argued that it’s a cliché about fans of comic /fantasy being losers with no social skills and no friends. Hmm. It can be also be argued that cliché is also another term for an obvious truth, though as a fantasist myself I’d rather believe that truth is sometimes more complex. What interested me most however was its later suggestion that:

“In some respects America is now a country of freaks and geeks, self-professed outsiders who imagine themselves somehow different from the herd, perhaps because they are Americans - radical individualists who are united if only by their increasingly narrow interests and obsessions.” The danger is that fantasy too often compensates for economic and social inequality, imaginary worlds reduce the need to change the one we have. George Orwell would have had a field day with today’s comic culture.

Comics need heroes. Orwell argued that the boy imagines himself to be that hero but as an adult subconsciously assumes a hero is needed in times of trouble. I’m with ‘The Lord of the Flies’ on this one. Children are inherently fascist. They identify with something greater than themselves whether it is Harry Potter, Spider Man, Sherlock Holmes or Biggles. Young souls or tired souls cling to heroes. In quiet times, Fantasy remains the great escape, adding colour to drab lives. But when it comes to social breakdown adults become children again, with their black and white views, their need for heroes - the stronger the better. If George Orwell is right, the seeds are sown in childhood from the earliest fairy tale to the all pervasive cartoon and now CGI.

I'm talking as if there might be an alternative. I don't think there is. It is something built in: aspiration - as basic to us as sunlight to a runner-bean. Social realism for Children? Middle Earth ruled by a Collective. The entire world of fantasy is built upon hierarchy. Heroes of either sex defeat villains, and the peasants get on with their lives with the occasional walk-on part. And what child wants to identify with a peasant?

I didn’t. I lived in a red-bricked terraced house and attended a working class school. I didn’t want to read about it as well! Like a whole generation, I bought into the myth of privilege. In my imagination I attended Grey Friars School, laughed with Bob Cherry and Tom Merry at Billy Bunter. (You were allowed to laugh at fat boys in those days).

The Beano, the Dandy, Topper and Beezer saw me through my early childhood. Characters like Biffo the Bear, or Dennis the Menace, Beryl the Peril, Desperate Dan, Minnie the Minx, Lord Snooty and the Bash street Kids were all well and good, but none surpassed Big Fat Boko and his crow called Koko, and not even that approached - Rupert the Bear.

Big Fat Boko was a fat magician in a red robe and conjured up a mystic world - a world away from Aintree. Rupert the Bear was stronger drink - the summation of imperial mysticism. Set in Nutwood, an idealized English village with the sea conveniently close, stories were awash in mermaids and sea-elves, gnomes, Manchu princesses and worlds within worlds.

Later I became more sophisticated.

I adventured with Breakneck Bradshaw, Thruster John (what a name!) Captain Condor and Magnus the Muscleman; thrilled to the adventures of Captain Zoom, Cool Cassidy, Captain Scarlett, Catamount Jack, Red MacGregor - and best of all Dan Dare - space pilot of the future.

Imagine a square chinned fighter pilot dressed in a neat UN/American uniform; imagine a cultural fusion of the Battle of Britain and the 1950’s. Now put them up against intergalactic villains. There was only one, as I remember - The grand Mekon. He was green with a large globular head, and he floated on a motorized lily pad. He led the Treens who were also green and to a boy of that age carried connotations of Nazis, Japanese, communists or any totalitarian system we saw then as a threat.

Dan Dare also saw my first sexual awakening. It involved an alien race with blue skins and flaming red hair. The women were spectacular. I’ve had a thing about blue skinned women with dark red hair ever since, but so far have been disappointed.

I can escape Sharks

The Leeds and Liverpool canal where I learnt to swim










































Undressing for the Pacific



Claiming the Pacific for the Republic of Liverpool















My wife’s Uncle Dennis still goes into the sea, sometimes with sticks, at other times held. He’s in his late eighties and refuses to accept either his age or the stroke he suffered shortly after his wife died.

I admire him immensely and recognise a similar fear: I never want to be so old that I can no longer walk into the sea. Summer or winter, if I’m at the sea, I’ll go in the water. One day I might not be able to.

Proust had his Madeleine cakes I have water, and four particular memories that evoke its magic and potential.

There’s a very small bay on the Gower peninsula, close to Oxwich and hidden beneath steep sandstone cliffs. I left the friends we were with and swam far out, then lay on my back for what seemed like hours. I was in a trance-like state, floating in a green sea beneath red Jurassic cliffs. The sky was blue and empty and except for surf, the silence was complete. There was no reference to any particular century or millennia. I was in an empty world, a non-determinate time.
I toyed with fancies that something long and supple with teeth, something cretaceous might lunge at me from behind; romantic picture book thoughts, devoid of fear or possibility.

In 1982 I was somewhere in Florida. It was sometime after midnight and we were on the beach. The air was hot and sticky, the sea a milky blue, invitingly cool. I floated beneath the stars, aware of distant shouts from the beach, a glimpse of barbeque flames. Then the music started, mind music, fear music. DUM-DUM, DUM-DUM, DUM-DUM, getting faster and faster. And I was kicking, clawing at water, convinced that a great white was immediately behind me. I was out of that sea as though it were boiling, staggering across the surf-line in a self-induced panic. I flopped on to the sand and looked back. The sea was calm and milky blue, but I wasn’t fooled. Something was in there.

At least I was able to swim. When I was eleven, I couldn’t. We went to the Baths on Queens Drive and shouted and splashed a lot, but never swam.

And then suddenly I could.

It was a hot day and I was walking along the side of the Leeds and Liverpool canal. It passed close to Aintree Race-course and fascinated me with the thought that if I walked long enough it would take me across the Yorkshire moors to a place called Leeds. I never got very far - not this day at least.

Four or more kids were hiding in bushes, waiting for someone, waiting for me. They never spoke. They just rushed out and pushed me in, then ran away. I sank and spluttered, did all the usual stuff a drowning person does. Possibly shouted ‘Help’ though there was no one else around. I must have been kicking my arms and legs with some purpose because the next moment I was hanging on to the bank, catching breath for that final scramble onto dry land.

I could swim.

Next weekend I was at Queens Drive Baths, determined to put my new skill to the test. Pushed into necessity by four psychos I had taught myself to swim. Unfortunately it shows. With a style reminiscent of a walrus in labor, I am not a pretty sight, but at least I can escape sharks.

It didn't belong to this world

Walking to music lessons down Wyresdale Road

Turning left at the cemetery

Wishing I too lived next to a graveyard

  

Under the railway bridge

And down Roosevelt drive where Mrs Richardson taught us to play Little Brown Jug on mandolin. There was a great bank of Michaelmas daisies at the bottom of the road.

“Dad, I heard this guy whistle today.” It was my daughter, and the shock came slowly. She’d said it as if she’d seen an alien, or Vladimir Putin skateboarding in the park. When was the last time I’d whistled? I raised the paper up to hide my face and tentatively puckered up my lips. They were dry and little or no sound came out - though enough to arouse suspicion. “Dad, what’re you doing?” “Whistling,” I said feebly. As a boy I always whistled. It got me through the paper-round, that and a large mint-ball - though never at the same time. I tried once and almost choked. My range was vast and eclectic, the more popular overtures - (Ride of the Valkyries always posed a bit of a problem after the opening bars) - Gilbert and Sullivan, courtesy of my parents, Elvis, Jerry Lee, old English folk songs, and at Christmas, carols. If it had a tune, I’d whistle it. There was no competition. There were no birds in Liverpool other than sparrows and pigeons, and they could only twitter or coo. Old ladies gave me generous tips; swore I was better than any alarm clock - so that was something else I was better than. In the pre I-Pod age there was only the whistle and apart from waking up old ladies, it gave me the greatest gift of all: an ear for music. I read music like a Zulu reading Greek, but give me a mandolin and let me hear a tune once and I’ll have it almost at once. The mandolin was another cul-de-sac when you consider it. In a Liverpool waking up to the Beatles before the rest of the world what was I doing with a mandolin? Blame it on Miles Hartley. He’d bought one from a second hand shop in Rice lane. My brother Tony immediately copied him and bought a beautiful flat-topped mandolin for about ten shillings (a dollar). I wanted one and ran to the same junk shop as though there might be a never-ending supply. There wasn’t. I came home with a metal and skin monstrosity - something called a Banjolin. Not a Banjo-mandolin, but a Banjolin. It’s so weird it’s not even in the Oxford English dictionary; it didn’t belong to this world, but that’s what it was called, a Banjolin. And I hated it. We went to music lessons, me, Tony and Miles and played endless scales, and tunes that always sounded like ‘Little Brown Jug.’ There was a worse fate for Tony, worse even than playing ‘Little Brown Jug’ on the Banjolin. His beautiful flat-backed mandolin broke. He dropped it in Greenwich Road. He couldn’t afford another but still wanted to be part of the gang who were now famous throughout Aintree for their version of Little Brown Jug. “There’s the piano,” my mother said hopefully, and he jumped at it like a doomed piranha fish. Miles gave up the lessons and sometime later so did I. Tony was never allowed to. Mandolins were a cheap, slightly exotic fad but the piano was serious. Our Dad had decided. Tony would stick with the piano whether he wanted to or not. In years to come I played badly in a Ceilidh Band, Tony played jazz piano for comfort, and two days ago I was staring over a paper at my daughter who’d heard someone whistle.

My Head in the Oven

I have always had a problem with ‘style’, and in my entire life, I doubt there’s been more than a four-year window of ‘coolness’. When all around me were flaunting their grey terylene trousers, I remained in grey flannel shorts. It was more economical and my parents conservatively believed that boys should wear short trousers. Jeans were unknown. Rumour had it that Americans wore them, though there remained still some doubt.


Hair was equally problematical for a boy who aspired to ’77 Sunset Strip’ cool but couldn’t afford the Brill-cream. My only recourse was to mould my hair into a long and fragile quiff with a wet comb, and then stick my head in the oven. The heat dried my hair like a potters kiln, and I would then walk to school very carefully, aware that an awkward step would undo everything. I can’t remember if anyone actually told me this ‘trick’ or whether I’d discovered it all by myself. If the latter, I wonder why…and more to the point - how?


The Beatles spared me from more years in the oven, but clothes remained a problem. It was no fun being under-aged, trying to slip into a cinema unnoticed - not in your dad’s pre-war mud-coloured sports jacket that looked as though it had come from Fred Astaire’s wardrobe. Retro-chic now. Not then. Not on a fourteen year old boy.


At fifteen, I took my first faltering steps into coolness in a cheap blue suit, black polo-neck sweater and black framed glasses. I was on my way to Blessed Sacrament Boys’ club where they had a table tennis table, orangeade, a small Dansette Record Player and two Beatle LPs. I was chewing my thumb - I don’t know which cowboy did that - walking slowly to be noticed. Unfortunately, a priest noticed me as I entered the club. He slapped me hard on the back, and in a loud booming voice that drew all eyes our way, told me there was no need to be nervous or shy. I took my orangeade, credibility blown. A blue suit wasted.


There was only one lesson left to be learnt. Shops are out to make money - especially in Liverpool. I saw the bold advert; the shopkeeper saw me coming. ‘Freddy and the Dreamers’ Cuban Heeled Boots’ - HALF PRICE!
Cuban Heeled Boots - so cheap. I had the money - just - and a moment or two later I was wearing them, walking down London Road at an acute angle, like someone battling against a force ten wind. ‘Freddy’ was a small Mancunian, who on Television always looked bigger than he was. Now I knew how. With heels as high as these he could have looked down on Big Ben - though at an angle.
Luckily my years in the wilderness were about to come to an end - or so I liked to think.

The Dog and the Mangle

For my children who will never enjoy the simple pleasure of mangling wet washing, or teachers and other enemies of the people. Ours was squeezed into the kitchen.


Our kitchen was a 4ft by 6 ft box large enough for a sink, stove, and mangle. It also held a small fridge and an over-large cabinet that held everything else. The best parties are held in the kitchen, they say, but not in ours, though it once held a dog.

A mystery dog, referred to, but only in one iconic story. It was a bull terrier that held pride of place in 14 Ribblesdale, until our mother came along. Our dad spoke of it with pride but it was always the same story. It began with a knock on the front door and my mother, not wishing the dog to run out, tied it to the mangle table before answering it.. The caller kept her talking for some time and then left. When she turned round she found the dog half-way down the hall and half choking and dragging the mangle table behind him. The story ended with nods of approval from senior members of the family, well, the men at least. ‘Bull terriers never bark warning,’ ‘when they bite, they’ll never let go’ and ‘they’re loyal to a fault.’

We never got to find that out because our mother fought to make the house a pet-free zone. We did however get to use the mangle, which was the C19th answer to the spin dryer. Clothes were squeezed between two large rollers, and in the days before television, it represented one of the smaller highlights of the week, because ‘only strong boys could turn the handle to a mangle.’ And simple ones.

Eventually we wore our mum down. It began, like most things with deceit. She had gone off for a long weekend with our dad and we were staying with our grandparents at 24 Helsby. Now that was a treat, even better than the mangle. She took us to ‘The Wizard’s Den’ in Dale St. where we stocked up on itching powder and other essential sundries, and we persuaded her to take us to a pet shop in the same street.
“Are you sure, boys?”
“Yes, mum gave us the money to buy a small pet.”

It was a case of wish becoming reality and we brought back an albino guinea pig and two hamsters, maybe a mouse or two. She allowed us to keep them in a dressing table drawer until we got home, and only now do I fully realise how tolerant she was, and how gullible - or possibly mischievous.

As I remember our dad was amused and we were allowed to keep them in a hastily constructed cage in the back yard. It was the thin end of the wedge. We acquired a small Dutch Rabbit that was never to be allowed into the house. Only one day our mother accidentally stood on its leg, causing it to limp. From then on she was called Susie and was allowed into the kitchen where she followed our mum like a small, well trained cat. From there we moved on to hedgehogs and we ended up with a pets’ graveyard, big enough for a Stephen King novel.

Eventually the flood-gates opened wider than was good for us, though we didn’t think so at the time. Our uncle John, now a lorry driver, brought home two wild English rabbits - they may have been hares - they were bloody big. How, or why he caught them God only knows, but he brought them to 14 Ribblesdale.

These were big beasts, and fierce. They drove away cats and took umbrage at not being allowed into the house. Several times they tried jumping over the wall, but never quite made it, and they intimidated us as we ate. There’s a risible horror movie about giant killer rabbits. They came from Aintree.

Our table was directly next to the window and as we ate, first one and then the other would leap onto the window-sill and bang their heads against the glass, or else just stare at us. Daring us to eat. I think Hitchcock blew it with ‘The Birds.’ He should have made ‘The Rabbits.’

Life in the Fast Lane

I'm on the left. Tony is pulling a gargoyle face. It was a hobby we had.

Our car was a small black Austin with leather seats, foot-boards below the passenger doors and small yellow indicators that flicked out like dead canaries when the car was about to turn left or right. Whilst our dad was at sea, it was kept in a garage - one of four converted stables - opposite Melling Avenue, and was only brought out when he came home.

Our dad, a seaman with an innate distrust of anything faster than a ship, drove a sedate 30 mph. and we ignored with some disdain those who overtook us at a reckless 40, turned away from the curious stares.

All that was after we got the car started.

Starting ‘Biggleswoop’ - (the name of the car. Don’t ask me why) - involved cranking the engine. A thick metal rod with an angular handle was inserted into the front of the car and then turned. For most of my childhood, I just assumed he was winding the car up like some great mechanical clock and that in itself was the reason for our cautious speed. Go any faster and the car might run down, leaving us stranded somewhere in the country. My mechanical knowledge remains much the same. We sat in the back praying the sun wouldn’t go in before the car started. Finally, after a bit of a cough, would come the first apologetic murmur and the car would shudder and then grumble into life.

Sometimes I wonder where I got the 30mph stuff. Ainsdale beach - a common destination - was only ten miles away, but it seemed like it took an hour to get there. Whatever the speed the landmarks remained the same: to our left a Crisps factory, (Smiths) Vernon’s Pools, the Race Course Garage; to our right Aintree Racecourse and in the far distance the great towers of our local chemical works. At the Old Roan, we turned left along the A569 and for the first time smelt country, in reality a small garden cemetery, then a few houses and finally Ince woods.
Sometimes we stopped there and walked around a small pond, wondering what our mum and dad found so much to talk about. We ate small cheese sandwiches and then we went home.

Sometimes we parked next to a mound of gravel that we’d climb up and hide behind, until the novelty wore off. We ate small cheese sandwiches and then we went home.
And on good days we’d go to Woodvale. This was a small airport. It’s only claim to fame was the fact that Charles De Gaulle once landed there, and it had a windsock which was only important to us. When we saw that we knew were only ten minutes away from the beach. Opposite the airport was a large stretch of common, and beyond that woodland. That was heaven. Our mum in her red coat, our dad in his grey gabardine would walk slowly, hand in hand and allow us to tear off like dogs unleashed. They always caught up with us because at the far end of the common was a thin strand of trees, bushes and a ditch. Beyond, a garden forbidden to us, though sometimes we strayed.

The woods began across the road and it was easy to get lost in them. Memory is a strange and wonderful thing. Powerful too, though not always useful. Where is the use in regretting something past? What is so magical about a great mound of bramble? A narrow tunnel wove through to its centre. It was dark and green and thorns tore through elbows and knees, but at its very centre was a secret glade humming with bees and full of butterflies. I’d lie on my back for hours (5 minutes is an hour or two for a small boy) knowing that until I felt the need for a small cheese sandwich, no one need ever see me again.