by Suggs
The train pulled into Charlton station and we all piled off. ‘WE ARE THE FAMOUS, THE FAMOUS CHELSEA!!’ We weren’t famous, we were infamous. When we arrived all the usual faces were milling around, trying casually to extract themselves from the huge police cordon and find the home end. We did, and I donned my red and white scarf. As we approached the turnstiles Chalky was stopped.
‘Where you going then, son?’
‘To support my team, Officer.’
‘Who do you support then, son?’
‘The mighty reds, Charlton.’
‘Who’s your reserve keeper then, sunshine?’ It was stuff the coppers learnt, stuff it was important to know.
‘Reg Morris,’ came Chalky, quick as a flash.
I pushed forward with my red and white scarf to the fore. The copper looked at me, with my fresh black eye, and eyed us both up and down. He knew the Chelsea special had just pulled in, but there was nothing else he could do with the limited espionage he’d been given. He stood on my foot. ‘No steels.’ Unfortunately they weren’t and he nearly broke my big toe. ‘All right, in you go,’ he said, tapping his truncheon on his leg. ‘But any trouble and, believe me, there’ll be hell to pay.’
Hell indeed, but not the one Plod had anticipated. Within minutes the antiquated Charlton end was on fire. Smoke billowed across it. Scarf carefully stuffed back in my jacket, I waited. We waited for that very specific moment. A very specific moment that only happens in the home end when it’s been infiltrated by an away team. Standing next to some recognised faces, it didn’t take long. The minutes passed, then a lone voice we were waiting for shouted ‘CHELSEA!’ That was the signal, the moment when, if there wasn’t enough of you, the home fans would steam in, followed by the coppers, who took no prisoners. You could never be sure.
But there was enough, there was more than enough, and soon the chant spread across the whole end. A small pocket of red and white regrouped in one corner. A phalanx of Old Bill hastily formed a line to keep the two sides apart and the stewards looked up anxiously from the pitch. A few marauders tried unsuccessfully to breach the thin blue line, but it stood firm and the whole thing was over in a matter of minutes. A feeling of anticlimax descended.
The ground was full of expectant marauders with nothing left to maraud. The lot in front of us had made a space and were throwing handfuls of loose change onto the terracing. It was starting to form quite a pile until it became irresistible to some foolhardy soul, Chalky, who made a desperate lunge at it, grabbing as much as he could while being booted from all sides.
To make matters worse, moments later Charlton scored. Bollocks! The Charlton contingent were in the air and going mad. I got swept off my feet as our lot surged towards them and I heard a familiar cry, ‘C’mon, let’s have ’em!’ Lo and behold, the Fat Man was moonwalking backwards, while directing his troops forward in the direction of the enemy. He backed straight into me and nearly knocked me over.
‘Hang on, there’s Charlton here.’ Some of his squaddy-headed mob turned. ‘You’re Charlton,’ he squealed, eyes alight.
More of his firm turned and we squared up. ‘Of course I’m not.’ He knew exactly who we were, he smiled, and a space opened up around us. ‘Well, what’s this then?’ He yanked the red and white scarf that was protruding from the bottom of my jacket. ‘What d’you call this then?’ He knew what it was.
The tension crackled, hundreds of faces turned, now straining to hear. Fatty held up his prize, victorious. ‘Come on, let’s have ’em!’ But before he had the chance to retreat behind his oncoming troops, I snatched the scarf from his fat hand and waved it aloft. ‘Come on Charlton, come on Charlton,’ I chanted. Silence, the Fat Man’s eyes bulging in confusion, then laughter. Our gang joined in, ‘Come on Charlton.’ The atmosphere cracked and someone piped up: ‘We want Fatty for our leader, ’cause he’s so big and fuckin’ daft. Fuckin’ daft!’ Even some of his own crew started joining in. There was a loud ‘Shut it!’ and the Fat One disappeared.
Things were going from bad to worse on the pitch. Mike Flanagan had scored a hat-trick and with twenty minutes to go we were 4–0 down. The fire had spread to the back of our stand and part of the perimeter wall had come down, bits of masonry flying in all directions. Chalky and I looked at each other, yeah, time to go. Outside the ground it was obvious we weren’t the only ones who’d decided to retire early, as every other car in the street was either on fire or turned over. Smoke billowed from the ground and whining meat wagons disgorged yet more coppers. It was like Beirut.
We weren’t the first to get to the train either and by the time we did every window and light on the thing had been smashed. Not the greatest idea, seeing as we now had a draughty hour and a half, on a cold December evening in the pitch black, back into town.
I was freezing my nuts off, literally teeth-chatteringly frozen by the time we pulled into Victoria, half-hungover and knackered. The joys of teenage hooliganism were waning fast. As the light of the station platform beamed through the broken window, illuminating shards of broken light bulb swimming in beer and piss, I really started to think that there had to be better and more useful ways of spending my time. Really.
The alternative to the football special. Pompey here we come!
PARMESAN WHEELS
Back at the flats there was only time for a quick pint before Mr Draconian and his licensing law saw us back on the pavement. Backslapping and exaggeration concluded, I headed up the draughty staircase home. Home, which consisted of two rooms – my bedroom and the living room Mum slept in. We didn’t have a bathroom or fridge. I called Chalky posh because he had a bath, albeit in the kitchen. If they put a door on it, it doubled up as a dining-room table.
I grabbed some milk from the windowsill, put two bob in the gas meter, put the kettle on and turned on the two-bar electric fire and headed into my room. I’d papered one wall of my bedroom with covers of Marvel comics, which were getting increasingly scratched as Sultan scrabbled up the wall, flapping his way back to full health. I loved Marvel, especially Spider Man. He always seemed to have problems in his head, but when he put his gear on he became a super hero, and I could relate to that. I had some nice gear but it was all over the room and I needed to go to the laundrette. This was one of my household chores, as Mum often did two shifts and she very rarely got home before 3 a.m. But I didn’t mind going to the laundrette, especially in the winter. The warm dry air and smell of cleanness, I don’t know if it was the soap powder or what, but it always smelt nice, and pulling a pile of hot clean clothes out of one of them giant driers was always a great feeling. Sometimes if it was pissing down I’d even put my DMs into the drier.
I went into the living room (it was warming up) and turned on the radio on the music centre. It was John Peel and I liked his show – it was weird but you’d often hear things you’d never imagine could be recorded, let alone put on record. I was starting to get into music you actually wanted to own.
When we moved into Cavendish Mansions, the flat was fully furnished, if you can call two beds, one chair, a table and a cupboard fully anything. But strangely, on the top shelf of the cupboard in my room were two albums and one single, with no covers, presumably left by the previous occupants. One was the Rolling Stones’ Around and Around, and the other was Manfred Mann, which had that song ‘Five, four, three, two, one’. I don’t know why they’d been left there but I liked them, especially the single, which was ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ by The Temptations, which had the most incredibly long and dramatic intro and continued on the b-side. It had the line ‘And when he died, all he left us was alone.’ I was never sure if Papa left them alone or a loan.
Mum had quite a few records, mostly jazz. She was a good singer and I’d often wake up to hear her singing along to Billie Holiday or Morgana King when she came home from work. I liked jazz too, but it always sounded kind of sad. One record in her collection which I really did like was an album of Burundi drumming. It was a French LP recorded somewhere in Africa,
with literally hundreds of drummers all playing the most amazingly complicated rhythms.
I smoked my last fag and went to bed. I fell straight asleep – it had been a long day. A very long day. I woke at about half three to hear Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis, one of my mum’s favourites, the theme of which I can still recite in my head, note-perfect, even though I’ve never played it since.
In the morning I woke with a start. The butcher’s was shut Sundays, but I helped out the Pirimaldis in the newsagent’s over the road. Outside my window it was still dark, but the lights in the shop were on and Mr Pirimaldi was shifting bales of papers into the shop. I was late, as per. I stuck my head under the tap, threw on some clothes, and headed out.
In the shop Mr Pirimaldi, fag on the go, was standing next to the till scribbling a set of figures on a scrap of paper. Alex, his eldest, was cutting the string on the bales and arranging the newspapers on the shelf. He looked up slowly and peered at me through the fag smoke in his eyes.
‘Whadda the hell is up with you kids today?’
‘What, sorry, I’m not that late, am I?’
He went back to his figures and, without looking up, pushed a copy of the News of the World in my direction. Pictures of the Charlton riot were all over the front page.
Alex turned and just laughed. ‘What happened to you?’ I glanced at my face in the Wills tobacco mirror – Jesus, the black eye had gone green and purple.
‘Hooligan,’ grumbled Mr P, flicking his ash on the floor. ‘Fang! Kill! Get him.’ A small kitten trotted through from the store room.
‘Look, I had nothing to do with that bollocks. I got this’ – pointing at my blackened eye – ‘in the pub yesterday.’
Before I got a chance to continue, Mr P butted in. ‘Fighting and smashing up the places, you should be ashamed. Fang. Attack. Kill!’ The kitten meowed. ‘They wouldn’t get away with this shit at Juve.’
Alex laughed again. ‘Yeah, should bang the lot of them up.’
The day was off to a flyer. First in was old Granny Groodle Carpet Slippers and yapping dog. ‘Ooh, it’s disgusting,’ she said, reading the front page, still occupying the front of the counter.
Mr P rang the till. ‘Tell me about it, missus.’ Warming to his theme, ‘I’ve got the leader right here.’ He pointed his bookie’s pen at me. ‘The hooligan’s numero uno. I’m just holding him here till the cops arrive.’
She looked at my bruised mush and took a step back. ‘Ooh dear.’
I went downstairs for a carton of Number 6. There must have been a thousand different varieties of fag down there – in those days smoking was good for you, and everyone smoked. Number 6 were small but Number 10 were even smaller, barely worth wasting a match on. I don’t know how the numerical rating worked, as I never saw a Number 11, or any other number but 6 and 10. You could get five Park Drive, they were actually smaller than a match.
The basement was like Aladdin’s cave, stuff piled up everywhere. The spare time Mr P had left between the shop and the bookies was spent buying job lots at auction, water-damaged goods from the docks. It was pot luck. The stuff was in containers, and your only clue to its contents was its place of origin. Mr P tended to go for anything from Italy. I don’t know if it was a sense of national identity, or business nous, but that basement was piled from floor to ceiling with everything from damp straw-covered Chianti bottles to Bella Donna underwear. According to Mr P everything made in Italy was better, more stylish, more beautiful. Sophia Loren, Ferrari. ‘Bellissima.’ I couldn’t quite see where the mouldy Chianti bottles fitted in.
Back upstairs the place was buzzing, if you can call a room full of old codgers chatting and smoking a buzz. Sunday mornings were the busiest time in the newsagent’s. Newspapers and tobacco products were flying out. Alex had the radio on and Diddy Hamilton was chatting jovially between Christmas crackers. Mr P slammed down the phone and winked at Alex. He put his fag back in his mouth and rubbed his hands together.
‘Hold the fort, ragazzi. I’ll be back in a shortly.’ He clapped, triumphantly. ‘It’s a big one. The big one!’
‘What, like the last three-legged nag? Please, Dad, don’t make me laugh.’
‘I’m not talking about the gee-gees, ragazzo,’ Mr P said, grabbing his tweed coat. ‘The-Big-One.’ He winked again, threw on his tweed cap, and he was off.
‘Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, a tutti!’
The bell-tinkling door slammed behind him and he disappeared up the road. Alex plucked a packet of Rothmans from the shelf and ripped the cellophane. ‘Mum’s gonna go mad.’
About elevenish the shop began to quieten and soon we had it to ourselves. We sparked up and carefully leafed through some porno mags that weren’t wrapped in cellophane, in silence. Mr P still wasn’t back at one o’clock when the shop shut, so me and Alex piled up the returns, pulled down the shutter, and closed up.
Lunch at the Pirimaldis’ was never anything less than a celebration, and there were rarely fewer than nine or ten people. Today, apart from Alex and his three sisters, there were a couple of aunts and uncles who had come over from Covent Garden. They were all perched on stools round the dining-room table. Even though they had the two flats knocked together, it was still a tight squeeze.
Mrs P appeared through the cupboard door from the kitchen and squashed past with a huge steaming pot of pasta. She wasn’t overly happy that Mr P had disappeared, which usually meant that the day’s takings had gone too. She tossed the pasta vigorously in the sauce with two miniature wooden rakes and splashed a generous glug of olive oil over the top. Lunch was served with big glasses of damp straw-covered Chianti, and we all tucked in. Silence descended, the kind you only get with good food.
One of the front doors clicked open and slammed in quick succession, and in came Mr P, cap on the back of his head. Without looking up Mrs P said: ‘Did you get any Parmigiano?’ There was a very sorry-looking crust on a saucer in front of her. I’d never seen real Parmesan cheese before I met the Ps. I’d only ever seen the powdered variety that came in a little cardboard tube, which seemed to have more in common with the dry skin my mum used to file off her feet with a pumice stone. Olive oil was something you got from the chemist, in a dropper, for earache.
‘Have I got the Parmigiano?’ He was sweating and puffing. He took off his coat and threw his cap on the couch. ‘Have I got some Parmigiano? Take a look,’ he gestured at the window.
‘What are you talking about, you fool? Sit down and eat before this gets cold.’ She started grating the sorry-looking nubbin.
He was having none of it, snatched the rind of cheese out of her hand, opened the window and flung it out. ‘Da-da!’ he said, pulling back the net curtain with a flourish.
‘Have you gone completely mad?’ Mrs P’s voice was serious.
Maria, the youngest and nearest to the window, peered out. ‘Oh. My. God. Mum, look.’ Mr P took Mrs P gently by the arm and led her to the window.
‘Mamma mia.’ She swooned slightly in his arms and we all crowded round the other window. There in the street below was an open-backed truck, filled with what looked like giant yellow lorry wheels.
One of the uncles started jumping up and down, clapping his hands. ‘Parmigiano, Parmigiano autentico!’ He stared at me wild-eyed but I didn’t have a clue.
Even Alex looked impressed: ‘What, Parmesan cheeses, whole Parmigiani?’
I was still bemused. ‘What, that’s cheese?’
‘Yes,’ said Alex, smiling. ‘A small fortune’s worth.’ Mr P was already back out the door. ‘Il grande uno!’ We all piled out behind him down the slippery steps, out the archway and into the street. And there it was. A small truck piled high with whole Parmesan cheeses.
It was cold but the sun was shining as me and Alex clambered onto the bumper and into the back of the truck. Mr P and the clapping uncle climbed into either side of the cab. The heavy doors slammed, the horn honked and the clapped-out diesel engine revved. The idea was, Mr P explained, to get out and ab
out as soon as. Clerkenwell boomed on a Sunday afternoon, Leather Lane market was teeming, and St Peter’s, the big Catholic church, would be tipping out the majority of Clerkwell’s big Italian community after Mass. Also all the local delis and restaurants would be full of expats chatting the afternoon away.
No time to waste! Mr P ground the truck into first gear and swung into what ended up a laborious, grinding, three-point turn in Clerkenwell Road. First stop the church. HONK! And we were off. I don’t think there can be many more pleasurable experiences for a young chap than sitting in the back of a truck, wind in your hair, sun shining, ten feet off the ground, flying along and waving a fag majestically at the passers-by.
We were at the church in a matter of minutes. It really was like a scene from The Godfather, the men in their smart suits and hats, the women in all their finery. Mr P pulled up wildly on the kerb and a well-dressed couple had to jump out the way, smartly. HONK! Mr P climbed out of the cab and he and Uncle Clapper clambered up in the back with us. ‘Roll up, roll up.’ Mr P lowered one side of the truck and sat, feet dangling, over the edge.
‘Wass up, Giuseppe?’ said the man in the camel-hair coat who had been nearly run over.
‘Wass up? Wass up? I show you wass up. Here, hooligano, pass me one of them precious babies. Careful now.’
There were a good forty of the giant cheeses lying on their backs. I went for the nearest. Now the thing about a water-damaged good is that it’s wet. And cheese when wet, I now know, becomes slippery. Really slippery, and it must have weighed twenty kilos. I wasn’t weak, but I just couldn’t get any purchase on the soddin’ thing.
The shouting below grew. ‘Here come on, hand it over. Don’t be shy. There’s customers waiting here.’ A small crowd was gathering, trying in vain to peer over the side of the truck. ‘Yes, just wait till you clap your sorry eyes on this lot, my Italian cugini.’
