Can I have made it up that sliced bread came in during the early fifties? ‘The best thing since sliced bread’ was a phrase from before the war, after sliced bread had been invented in Iowa in 1928. It came from America, like most good things in our post-war life. But I honestly do remember it being an amazing novelty in Carlisle when Robertsons, our local bakers, started selling sliced bread. It came in heavily greased paper and inside was all white and moist and soft. You could have it thick cut or thin cut. We all thought it was wonderful and gorgeous and tasty. Today, good gracious, we never have white or sliced bread in our house. The very idea.
When I was whizzing down the hill on my bike, with a full basket, I started to find that I had suddenly got an erection. Perhaps it was due to the hard, narrow seat on the bike. Or was I being turned on by the thought of the soft, moist sliced bread? Anyway, it was so embarrassing. I worried that some neighbour would see me, or one of my friends, or, oh horror, a girl, and they would realise what that little lump in my trousers was.
Often when I was delivering the groceries on a Saturday morning, I would walk down the front path and go to the back door, which would be opened by a housewife, still in her dressing gown or even a skimpy nightdress, clutching her bosom.
‘Where shall I put it, Mrs Graham?’ I would ask, sniggering in my head, but turning slightly red.
‘Oh, Hunter, that is so kind. Now where do I want it? Oh, just come in for a moment, let me think, put it over there . . .’
So I would go into the kitchen, find a space and put down her box of groceries. Then pause for a moment, in case she wanted me to do anything else.
Obviously, never for one moment did I actually imagine that an older woman, say in her twenties, would have any sexual interest in a skinny, weedy, teenage boy. It was just fantasy. Which, of course, almost every teenage boy has. Probably a few housewives as well, so we now know.
I can’t remember when I first started getting erections. Later than other boys, judging by the boasts of certain lads at school during PE. From about the age of thirteen there was one who would stand in the showers holding his cock between his legs, so you would just see his pubic hairs, then he would walk round, pretending to be a girl, asking if anyone fancied him. I was alarmed and appalled, having no pubic hairs, or any cock worthy of the name.
One day I bunked off a maths lesson and with a few boys from my year sneaked down to the River Eden. We lay down in the long grass and, before I realised it, we were having a masturbation session. One of the bigger, more advanced boys, Vinny, grabbed me and began manipulating, quite roughly, so it rather hurt. Then they all cheered. He might well have shouted out the names of film stars and pin-ups of the day, like Brigitte Bardot. That’s what John Lennon used to shout out when he was leading similar sessions at his school.
At school dinners, Vinny was always boasting about his cum. When the pudding arrived, often spotted dick with custard, he would tell the whole table that his spunk was thicker and more plentiful than all of the custard we had been given.
There were so-called dirty books passed round the school, such as Hank Janson, and copies of Health and Efficiency with photos of naked women, all unreal, with no pubic hair, as if I knew what a real woman looked like, shot artily in black and white with clever lighting.
Having a hard-on, jack, throbber, came on so suddenly and was so weird. Where had it come from, why was it so hard? Was there a bone there? If so, how had I missed it? I did get out my ruler and measure it, which was more difficult than you might think, for where do you start, right at the root, wherever that is, or just the bit that shows? It was not to compete and compare, for you don’t know what is normal, normal is only what you are, though at the same time you wonder if you are normal. I suppose it was to measure it regularly to see if it was still growing, still expanding. Having a ruler down the side of your sock was very handy, for I am sure I was still in short trousers at fifteen when all this kerfuffle with my body and mind started.
At home, pleasuring myself, I had no material to work on. I would peer out into the street from my bedroom window, the curtains half-pulled, hoping that a female, young or old, fat or ugly, any woman really, would walk along the pavement outside and I would imagine her naked. Just the way her dress folded between her legs when she walked, that would be enough.
Afterwards I would feel so ashamed and guilty – and also sore with all the violent effort. I did believe it was shameful and disgusting, that there was something wrong or perverted about me. God would not like it. I also half-believed it was bad for you, that you would go blind, which is what Baden-Powell had indicated in Scouting for Boys. He warned all boys not to take part in these sorts of disgusting practices.
Aged about fifteen or sixteen, I did start getting invited to girls’ parties, usually girls I hardly knew, perhaps girls at our sister school, the Margaret Sewell, around the same ages as my sisters. They also seemed to live miles the other side of town on another council estate, so it was handy having my bike.
One day I was invited to a posh house in Stanwix, thanks to Reg and other friends at the grammar school. The high school girl who had invited us, who was my age and had been at Stanwix primary with me, had a younger sister aged fourteen who was also at the party.
I got off with her, at least when the lights went off I made a grab for her and started snogging. I eventually managed to get my hand up her legs, and into her knickers. What a fright I got, so I withdrew my hand quickly. I felt ashamed, taking advantage of a girl two years younger. I told no one, not even to boast at school.
Lads did it all the time, of course, most of it fantasy, boasting about what they had managed. ‘Did you fin’ her?’ was what you asked someone who had been out with a girl? ‘Did you get a sticky finger?’
In Liverpool the expression was fish and finger pie, which appears in ‘Penny Lane’, though no one outside Merseyside understood it at the time. I would look revolted by such crude and vulgar conversation.
‘What number did you get to?’ That was another question. Number one meant a kiss, two meant feeling her breasts, three was feeling her minge, four was when she tossed you off, five was all the way. No one I ever knew throughout my school years ever got beyond three – and even that was very rare.
Who would have imagined that teenagers today would be sending photos of their genitals to each other, or of various positions and pursuits and practices, of things like blow jobs, which I had never heard of in the 1950s, and would not have believed, even I had been told. How sheltered we were. But do we want it back? Or do we envy the fun and freedom of today? Discuss.
Despite all these jobs I was doing, and going to the occasional party, I did not feel particularly nervous about my O-levels. The night before my French exam I even went out with Reg when he called for me. They were doing different exam boards at the grammar school. I knew I should have stayed in for last-minute swotting, but I felt blithely confident.
In 1952, when I took my General Certificate of Education at O-level, to give the full title, it was a relatively new exam, though I was not aware of that. It had been introduced in 1951, replacing the old School Certificate, which was a harder exam, by the sound of it, in that you had to pass six subjects, including maths and English, before you were said to have ‘passed’ your School Cert, or matriculated as it was often called.
When O-levels came in, you were given a pass or fail for each subject, so you usually had some success to boast about, as opposed to a blanket failure. Pupils tended to take more subjects, which was one reason for changing the system, to make pupils have a broader range.
These days the examination system seems to change all the time, and is endlessly confusing, and must drive teachers mad, but the O-level system I took lasted a long time, till 1988, when GCSE – General Certificate of Secondary Education – exams were introduced. The names of the exams people sat are one of the ways of telling someone’s age. If they let slip they passed their School Cert, you knew that they must be
pretty old. It’s like girls’ names. If they are called Margaret or Dorothy, they were probably born just prewar. Ivy or Jean, they were the generation before. Sue and Sarah and Caroline, probably post-war babies.
I sat nine subjects for my O-levels – English literature, English language, French, history, geography, maths, general science, RE and technical drawing. I passed seven. One of the two I failed was tech drawing. Which I knew I would, being hopeless at it and not interested.
But, oh my God, I also failed French. So much for that school trip to France. Naturally, I blamed that useless teacher.
Seven O-levels was pretty good, though. It was what most of my friends at grammar school had achieved – in fact, more than most of them. But I was livid about French, which they had all passed. Oh well, I suppose it wouldn’t matter in the end. When I left school at the end of the academic year, and started looking for a job, I was sure French would not be vital.
I had no idea what I might do, and had never properly thought about it. I supposed some sort of white-collar office job, perhaps junior clerk. Perhaps a level up from my father. The jobs to which the cleverest, hardest-working, neatest Creighton boys aspired were vaguely technical, such as draughtsman, drawing plans, measuring and marking, perhaps apprentice surveyor. The thought of any of that made me shudder. Imagine doing drawing, all day, every day.
On my final report at the Creighton School, I see I was marked as number one in the class – the first time I had been so high. There had always been at least two others well ahead of me in every year till then. Back in the third year, I had been as low as thirteenth in the class, out of forty. So I had improved or advanced, or perhaps it was because many of the others had lost interest, given up, or left after the fourth year. I never understood why so many boys at the Creighton who had appeared just as good as me in the early years, and often much quicker and brighter, suddenly started to fade, lose all ambition or hopes or just interest. Perhaps it was lack of encouragement, either from their family or teachers, or maybe something inside them was lacking. I could not believe it was due to any innate stupidity.
In the early years I had assumed my relative modest success in schoolwork, feeling so many were ahead of me, was down to arriving from Scotland and having to get to grips with a different life and system. I had overcome that, so I told myself.
But what was I going to do now?
13
GRAMMAR CAD
And then I found myself at the grammar school. I have no memory of applying, or being interviewed. I had never heard of any boys going on from the Creighton to the grammar in the past, and I am sure I would have done. I had assumed such a system did not exist. Till it just seemed to happen.
I can’t believe anyone at the grammar school said, ‘Let’s look at some of those eleven-plus failures, the ones who didn’t make it to the grammar school five years ago, surely one or two of them can’t be totally useless, there might be some half-decent chaps we could run our eye over.’
Nor can I imagine that any of the Creighton masters badgered the grammar school head and said, ‘Hey, come on now, don’t be snotty, we have some good lads this year, give them a chance.’ I should imagine none of the Creighton staff knew any of the grammar school masters, and vice versa.
Obviously my parents could not have done the pushing. They had no idea how things worked in England, least of all the education system. My dad was an invalid in bed, feeling well pissed off with everything, not surprisingly, and, as for my mother, most things in Carlisle were still a mystery to her.
I can only assume that it was somebody on some education committee in Carlisle or some official who suggested that possibly it was about time the city attempted to implement one of the aims of the 1944 Butler Education Act. This was the notion that the eleven-plus would not be a once-and-for-all demarcation line, there would be a chance later on to move between schools, for the brightest or keenest students each year, should they show enough interest, motivation and capability. In Carlisle, this was clearly demonstrable with its three-tier system and a proportion of boys at the Creighton and girls at the Margaret Sewell achieving O-levels each year. It should already have happened or been attempted everywhere, but it had been overlooked or forgotten. Very few schools around England ever managed to do it.
In 1952, three of us were chosen – Brian Cooke, Alistair McFadden and me. I imagine they were as surprised as I was to be told at the end of our last term at the Creighton that we were being promoted to glory, transported to join the gods.
Carlisle Grammar School was only a few hundred yards away along the same road, but the cultural and social and educational differences were going to be enormous. With its distinguished history and traditions, and its ivy-covered buildings, it would be like moving from a prefab to a stately home.
I can vaguely remember some discussion at the end of my last term at the Creighton, after we had been told we were going to the grammar school, about whether we would all be going into what was called the ‘fifth remove’. This was where those grammar school boys who had not done so well in their O-levels, but who wanted to go into the sixth form, had to repeat a year, retake exams. But we three Creightonians had all done well, got seven O-levels apiece.
The dreaded French, though, that was going to be something of a problem. During that long summer holiday, before I started at the grammar, or even visited it, one of the French masters, knowing I had failed French, contacted me to say he was going to arrange an exchange for me. It would help me with my oral, when I resat my French O-level.
One day we got a letter from the French master, Mr Watson, known as Jules, to say that my exchange would be arriving to stay with us for ten days. I hadn’t really understood what an exchange was, that it would mean a total stranger would be living with us – in our awful council house, with our awful coal-dusty kitchen, useless bathroom, no heating, horrible wet towels scattered around the house, invalid father. And they would have to share the bedroom with me and Johnny – perhaps all in the same bed. Oh God, what have I agreed to? It will be so embarrassing and shameful.
My mother had no worries. She was sure she could borrow a single bed. She loved people staying, on the rare occasions they did. She had bags of room, she said, just as she always maintained she had bags of money, bags of food. None of it true, of course, but her spirit was always willing. I felt ashamed of being ashamed of our house, when she clearly wasn’t.
We then got a telegram, as of course we had no phone, informing us that the exchange would be arriving at a certain time at Carlisle railway station. It was signed Adeline. Oh help. My exchange was going to be a girl. The thought of looking after a French boy was bad enough, but how would we cope with a strange French girl?
The song ‘Sweet Adeline’ was a popular prewar tune, which my mother knew – and she immediately began singing it: ‘Sweet Adeline, you’re the flower of my heart. For you I pine, my Clementine . . .’
‘Dear God, woman, give us a break!’ I was soon shouting at her.
I went to Carlisle station at the time given to pick her up – and she turned out to be a boy, just a year or so older than me, called Jean-Claude Adeline. His father had sent the telegram and just signed it with his surname.
He had fairish hair and wore an obviously French sports jacket, sort of black and white tweedy with little knotty lumps, the sort I had never seen before, certainly not in the windows at Burton’s. He seemed older and more mature than me, but didn’t say much, as his English was even worse than my French. Like me, he had to retake an exam, in his case English, in order to get into what sounded like some sort of hotel school, or cookery college, so his parents had signed him up for a random exchange. He didn’t say much, as I took him home on the bus, but seemed pleasant and affable.
To my total amazement, he was rather charmed by our house. He was interested in our living arrangements, our decor, my mother and her stories, and even the food. My invalid father lying in his bed was on his best behaviour. Jean-Claude
seemed very sympathetic. He appeared pleased to be here, in our house, so much so that I felt he must be really desperate to improve his English.
I had been working like mad for the few weeks before he came, doing extra papers and deliveries, determined to have enough money to take him out of the house as quickly as possible. So, after a couple of days showing him the delights of Carlisle, I dragged him off to Scotland, going on the bus, for which I paid, to stay with my Cambuslang relatives, which of course was free. I wanted to show them off to Jean-Claude, that we did have quite well-off relations, as their houses were smarter and more affluent than ours. He hit it off with one of my cousins, Sheena, who took him to see her friends, perhaps even held hands with him.
A few weeks later, it was my turn. I went off to France to stay with Jean-Claude and his family at Chaumont-en-Vexin, in Oise. I can remember his address exactly, yet I have never been back since or had any contact. His father was an affluent farmer, or so it seemed, with a large house and lots of acres. I had my own bedroom and was given a glass of wine at meals. I loved the breakfast, which I usually ate alone in their large farmhouse kitchen. Most people in the house were up early and off working on the farm. His mother gave me croissants, which I had never had before, and real coffee, not Camp, served in cups the size and shape of soup bowls. His mother did sup her coffee as if it were soup, which I thought very weird.
While I was there, a hunt – la chasse – was held on the estate. Lots of other local farmers arrived for the day. I followed behind the beaters, being told to stand and wait at certain places, not knowing what was going on. But we did get to sit down and a huge spread was laid out and everyone stuffed themselves with wine and hams and cheese.
The Co-Op's Got Bananas Page 13
