Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad

by Phinn, Gervase

  Schools are places where children acquire much more than the principles, ideas and processes of a subject. They are formative little worlds where children develop their social skills, learn to get along with others, make friendships and sometimes enemies. They are places where rules circumscribe their every move, where they discover, are hurt, feel lonely, experience success and failure, and where teachers loom large. In the good schools they learn about love, beauty, compassion, goodness, cooperation, care and other positive human emotions and feelings. Children, however, even in the good schools, also learn the hard lessons of life; lessons about injustice, humiliation and cruelty and sometimes, if they are unlucky, they come across the bully. A measure of rough and tumble in a school builds a degree of immunity and teaches us to stand up for ourselves. One can't expect children to be permanently pleasant with each other. We have all been name-called and called others names ourselves, but systematic cruelty in the form of constant bullying is a very different matter.

  Bullies seek out their victims, those who are likely to be in some way different. It might be skin colour, physical appearance, a disability, the colour of one's hair or the way one speaks. For me it wasn't just my name that set me apart. Perhaps it was that to some in my class I must have appeared something of a 'goody-goody'. I enjoyed most of the lessons (the notable exception being mental arithmetic), readily volunteered answers to the teachers' questions, offered to tidy the books, clean out the hamster cage and act as milk monitor. I little thought that my behaviour would antagonize the large moon-faced boy who was frequently outside the headteacher's room for misbehaving.

  Charlie, it was clear, was not popular with the teachers. His hopeless forgetfulness, his permanent scowl, his answering back and lack of interest in the lessons rubbed them up the wrong way. I guess I appeared to him everything he was not, and he singled me out for his special attention. He would delight in mispronouncing my name, much to the amusement of some of the other children, who were no doubt as afraid of him as I was and thankful they were not his victims. 'Gervarse! Gervarse!' he would shout after me down the corridor. I would carry on walking, afraid to face him and feeling everyone's eyes upon me. Children can be a delight, but they can also be corrosively mean and spiteful, and those of us who become the object of the bully's unwelcome attention remember for a lifetime those periods when it was our turn to be picked on and our most secret insecurities exposed and held up for ridicule.

  Charlie developed a real, almost obsessive dislike of me. He was a tall, fat, round-faced boy with lank black hair and scowled constantly. Maybe if it had been just him who picked on me I might have summoned up enough courage to challenge him, but he enlisted two other boys to make my life a misery. Charlie and his two fellow bullies would stop me going to the toilet and tip everything out of my satchel, write cruel notes and leave them on my desk and spit at me when my back was turned. He would poke and push and call me names at every opportunity. His speciality was the Indian burn. At breaktimes he would sidle up with his two cronies, who would grab me and hold me while he would wring a bare wrist with his hands close together until the skin chafed and stung.

  The bullying soon began to affect my school work. I became very quiet in class, stopped volunteering to help the teacher and at breaktimes found a quiet corner in the cloakroom rather than go into the playground. I kept my head down, not wanting to attract attention. I tried to keep out of Charlie's way and ignore him as much as I could, believing in the old adage that bullies soon get tired of teasing once the victim ceases to react. This didn't work and the bullying continued.

  I never said anything to either my parents or my teachers and to them everything must have appeared normal. But things were not normal. Those who have been bullied know only too well how vulnerable you feel, how your self-confidence diminishes and how weak and frightened you become, dreading going into school, filled with fear and apprehension in case your persecutor is lying in wait.

  There are two ways of dealing with those who delight in others' suffering. You either enlist the help of an adult who might make it stop, or you confront the tormentor. I eventually took the second course. Recently I heard the legendary Yorkshire athlete Lord Sebastian Coe speak at a dinner. He started his immensely entertaining talk with the words: 'When you are brought up in Sheffield and are called Sebastian, you soon learn to run.' Well, I grew up in Rotherham and was called Gervase and I couldn't run, but I soon discovered that words could be powerful weapons, more powerful than fists. I have never believed the sentiments in the children's chant: 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but calling never hurts me.' Those who are bullied know only too well that 'Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break your heart.' For a while, I endured a miserable time at school, watching and waiting for the bully to pounce, having to endure his constant name-calling and cruel comments. Bruises fade but cruel words stay with you.

  I found that my words could hurt bullies too, and one day I gave as good as I got. I recall vividly the very first time I confronted him. It was on the way home. I usually waited a while in school until the rest of the children had set off for home. In doing so there was less likelihood of Charlie getting me. That day he was without his two cronies and had commandeered a girl's skipping rope. He waited for me outside school, then followed me down Broom Valley Road and began thrashing at my legs with the rope. I had had enough. I grabbed the rope, yanked it from his hands and told him to leave me alone. Then the words just spilled out. I told him no one really liked him and that they talked about him behind his back and laughed at him and everyone knew where he lived, not in a proper house but in a prefab.

  Of course, it ended in a fight. I'd known it would happen one day, and at night in bed I had often wished I had the courage of Tom Brown, who flattened the cowardly bully Flashman to the cheers of the other boys, or David, who killed the Philistine giant with a sling and a pebble. It didn't quite work out like that for me. Charlie was a head taller and a good stone heavier. He thumped me hard in the stomach, which winded me, then grabbed me around the neck. I kicked his shins. He cried and swung a punch at me which split my lip. I felt frightened and angry and I hit him in the throat with all the force I could muster. He cried, gasped, coughed and spluttered, then lunged at me again, punching me in the chest. I remember picking up the skipping rope and throwing it at him. I heard the crack as the wooden pommel came in contact with his head. Then I turned on my heel. I was much smaller and thinner than he and a faster runner too, and I soon left him behind me, hurling insults and threatening to get me the following day at school. I had been well and truly thrashed and ran home with tears streaming down my cheeks, a bloody nose and cut lip.

  I was pleased the confrontation with the bully had taken place well away from the school, without a baying audience to witness my shame. I had seen playground fights and had shuddered at the thought that I might one day be in the middle of a ring of solid spectators egging on each of the panting adversaries with roars and cheers of encouragement - 'Smack 'im!', 'Thump im!'- until the teacher hurried out to break it up.

  At home I told Mum, as she wiped my face and rubbed Germolene on my lips, that I had fallen climbing up the gate of the allotments taking the short cut home. She knew, of course, that I was lying.

  'Who did this?' she asked.

  'I told you,' I said. 'I fell over.'

  'Do I look stupid?' she asked, and repeated, 'Who did this to you?'

  'A fat kid at school,' I admitted.

  'Right,' she said, 'I'm up to the school tomorrow to sort this out.'

  'No, Mum, please,' I pleaded. 'It will only make things worse.'

  My brother Michael, who had been combing his hair in the mirror, said, 'Leave it to me, Mum, I'll sort it.'

  'And how will you do that?' she asked.

  'I'll have a quiet word with this fat kid. Tell him to leave him alone.'

  The following day at school Charlie sauntered up to my desk. He was sporting a red bump on his forehead.
He kicked my ankles under the desk. 'You're dead!' he told me, running a finger across his throat.

  After school, as usual, I ran home but as I approached the allotment gate I slowed down. I knew the bully was stalking me. As I turned to take the short cut through the allotments, he ran up behind me, panting.

  'Got you!' he shouted, grabbing my shoulder. Then my brother appeared. Michael was really good at sports and played cricket and football for his school. He was lithe and athletic, and in the sea cadets he had taken up boxing and proved to be a good amateur fighter. He had been waiting, out of sight. The bully stopped in his tracks, then reeled backwards at a blow to the base of his stomach. He landed with a thump on the ground. Michael, legs apart, stood over him, then dragged him to his feet and pushed him up against the iron railings. He pushed his face forward and grabbed Charlie by the throat.

  'You're choking me!' gasped the bully. 'I can't breathe.'

  'Touch my brother again,' said Michael, 'and I'll ram your bloody teeth down your fat bloody throat.' Then he pushed him away, kicking him up the backside and sending him staggering forward.

  'I'll tell mi dad!' howled the bully, holding his throat.

  'And I'll tell mine,' said Michael, 'and he's bigger than yours. Now scram!'

  The next day at school I said nothing about the incident and neither did the bully. He kept well out of my way and wouldn't meet my eye when I stared at him in assembly. I suspect that like most bullies, Charlie was more frightened than frightening and as much in need of help as his victims. After that, to my great relief, he left me alone.

  I feel passionate about anti-bullying and schools should acknowledge that it exists, is a real problem, and should actively do something about it. As parents we would all like our children to attend a school which is happy, optimistic and productive, because children thrive in this kind of environment. Bullying, both physical and verbal, causes children untold misery. I know it did for me. Persistent bullying affects a child's happiness, well-being and educational success and can result in permanent health and psychological damage. In my experience bullying causes enormous family stress and is responsible, in great measure, for truancy and depression. It can even lead to a child taking his or her own life.

  In 1994, I was addressing a parents' meeting at a small primary school. At the end of my talk I was approached by a large man with a pale moon face and a great mound of a stomach. I recognized him immediately. He was with a tall, overweight boy of about eight or nine with lank hair and a round pudding face.

  'Now then,' said the man smiling widely. 'Do you remember me?'

  'Yes, I do,' I said, looking him straight in the eye. 'I remember you very well. Your name is Charlie.' I could feel my heart beginning to pound in my chest.

  The man turned to the boy. 'I was telling my lad here that you were a pal of mine at school, wasn't I?'

  The boy nodded and scowled.

  'No, I wasn't,' I corrected him. 'I was no pal of yours. You were a bully. You bullied me and made my last few weeks in primary school a misery. You used to call me names, kick me and spit at me.' The man coloured up and shook his head but he didn't reply. The boy looked up at his father. 'I just hope,' I continued, 'that your son doesn't have to put up with what I had to endure at your hands.'

  'It must have been somebody else,' the man blustered.

  'No, it was you,' I said calmly, but feeling my heart banging away in my chest. 'You see, the bully forgets, but the bullied never do.' With that I left him standing there. My wife later said that I perhaps should have resisted that temptation to say what I did. After all, it was such a long time ago and children can be very cruel. But then Christine was never bullied at school. I am afraid that I was unable to forgive and forget, since this particular bully showed no remorse, how could he? He had forgotten his cruelty.

  27

  On some wet Saturdays in winter, when the sky was slate grey and the air icy cold, I stayed at home in the living room, with a blazing fire in the grate, making model Spitfires from Airfix kits while listening to the light programme on the Bakelite wireless. I spent a great deal of time listening to the wireless; the entertainment programmes, plays and quizzes were my favourites. I recall the soft Dublin accent of Eamonn Andrews and the strong Yorkshire twang of Wilfred Pickles. Wilfred Pickles presented a quiz show called Have a Go, which was popular with all the family and at its peak attracted an audience of twenty million. He would ask his wife, 'How much money is there on the table, Mabel?' and if the contestant won he would shout, 'Give 'em the money, Barney.' Those taking part were often asked, 'Are you courting?' or 'Have you had any embarrassing moments?'

  The quiz programme Top of the Form intrigued me. It began with the stirring 'Marching Strings', played by Ray Martin and his Orchestra, and then teams of boys and girls with frightfully posh accents, all of whom seemed remarkably well-informed, battled it out to see who was the brainiest. I could visualize them sitting behind a long table in pristine white shirts, school ties and fancy blazers with gold beading, earnest expressions on their faces. I never missed the exciting adventures of Dick Barton and his Cockney sidekick 'Snowey' White, the serial in which each episode began with the fast-moving 'Devil's Gallop' by Charles Williams.

  I would listen to The Goon Show with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and the outrageous Spike Milligan. I loved the characters: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne with the fruity British upper-class accent, the ex-Indian Army officer, Major Dennis Bloodnok ('Damn those curried eggs'), and the British jobsworth ('You can't park that 'ere, mate'). I used to amuse my friends by mimicking the silly Goon voices of Eccles, Bluebottle and Minnie Bannister.

  Most Sundays before lunch (which we called dinner) I would listen to The Billy Cotton Band Show or Two-Way Family Favourites, with Jean Metcalfe and Cliff Michelmore, when service wives and sweethearts would request records for their husbands and boyfriends serving in occupied Germany and Cyprus. The room would be filled with Glenn Miller, Doris Day, Guy Mitchell, Rosemary Squires, Winifred Atwell, Russ Conway, and every week selections from Oklahoma! and Carousel would be played. A favourite request was for Ann Shelton to sing, 'Lay Down Your Arms and Surrender to Mine', with its dire lyrics.

  In 1959 my father arrived home carrying a black and white television, with a small grey screen set in a shiny brown veneered and ungainly wooden cabinet with a pair of double doors at the front. He placed it in the corner of the living room and it changed our lives. Instead of playing games of Monopoly, chess or draughts in the evening, my father now, most evenings, spent a deal of time transfixed, facing the small grey screen. I have to say television initially held little interest for me. At first all I recall were the dreary documentaries, boring interviews with experts, political commentaries, newsreel programmes, cookery lessons from the heavily bearded Philip Harben, gardening hints from Fred Streeter, quasi-quiz shows like Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and What's My Line?, finishing with the po-faced clergyman reading the Epilogue, whom I rarely saw because I was in bed by the time the television shut down at eleven o'clock. Books still held sway in my life.

  Of course, I had seen televisions before. The big national event of my childhood was the Coronation on 2 June 1953, a day the Daily Mail called the 'Crowning Glory', and we were invited, along with other selected neighbours, into Mr and Mrs Marshall's house three doors down from us to watch the ceremony on their newly acquired television set. Two million people had television sets at the time but few of them lived on Richard Road.

  This seven-year-old, clutching his Coronation mug, crown piece and little cloth Union Jack on a stick, saw very little from the back of Mr and Mrs Marshall's 'lounge' but was given a running commentary and a selection of personal asides from Mrs Evans, our other neighbour, about the dress, the coaches, the horses, the abbey, the guests and anything or anybody else that appeared on the screen. The rain poured down, so that many of the dignitaries, monarchs and heads of state were hidden behind umbrellas. One guest, Queen Salote of Tonga, endear
ed herself to those assembled in the Marshal's lounge by waving from an open-topped carriage, wet through but smiling as if the sun shone on her face. Occasionally Mrs Simcox from up the road, the least monarchist among the group, added her half-pennyworth - she would have no truck with kings and queens - which was followed by indignant outbursts. This was post-war Britain, of course, when we all stood for the National Anthem at the end of a film. No one would have dared remain seated or, even more unthinkable, walk out of the cinema while the band played. It was certainly not the era to make the slightest criticism of the royal family and the new young Queen.

  The television in the corner of our living room soon began to be of interest to me when more programmes for younger viewers appeared. For small children there were The Wooden-tops, Muffin the Mule, Andy Pandy, Sooty, Listen with Mother, Pinky and Perky and The Flowerpot Men and Little Weed. There was not the surfeit of action films, reality shows, soap operas and cooking and antique programmes which make up so much of the television schedule today, but there were American situation comedies that amused me. I liked George, with the lugubrious expression, in The Burns and Allen Show, the dead-pan humour of Jack Benny and the dizzy but endearing blonde in I Love Lucy, but the programmes I really loved were the exciting cowboy and historical adventures: Rawhide, with the youthful Clint Eastwood playing Rowdy Yates, Casey Jones the eponymous engine driver who always managed to avoid disasters on the line, Gunsmoke and Ponderosa. William Tell was a favourite, and always started when the hero shot the apple from his son's head. It was accompanied by the lively music of the William Tell overture and the rushing sound as the bolt from the crossbow flew through the air and split the apple in half. I would sing along with the inane lyrics: