by Lee Evans
So, not long after, we left the flat above the doctor’s surgery and moved on to the Lawrence Weston Estate, a large housing estate in Avonmouth that was, to say the least, rough and ready. We were the dispossessed, continually ducking and diving in a generally hopeless attempt to make ends meet. We were trying to get by – by any means necessary. Potentially, we were the ASBO generation long before ASBOs were even a twinkle in an authoritarian Home Secretary’s eye.
As kids on that estate, we were like baboons at a safari park. If anyone left anything lying around, we’d have it. But our incessant monkeying about only alienated us further from mainstream society. These days, everyone goes on about middle-class this, middle-class that, but we didn’t know what middle-class people were or what they thought of us because we didn’t know any. There were times when we felt like travellers, moving from place to place without ever putting down roots. We never got any respect – and ever since then I’ve spent my whole life searching for it.
The Lawrence Weston Estate was like the Wild West. It was, for example, the sort of place where arson was an occupational hazard. On one occasion we were awoken in the middle of the night as a fire had started in the airing cupboard of one of the downstairs flats. Mum said it could have been started deliberately as residents would ‘accidentally on purpose’ set fire to their flats – ‘Oh dear, I’ve dropped me match on the floor. I must quickly run to the shops, and by the time I get back the flat will be well cooked. That’s a new lounge before Christmas right there!’
As long as you could prove it was an ‘accident’, then the council would come in and redecorate for you. That was nice if you liked woodchip wallpaper throughout and the whole place decked out in magnolia. But, if you ask me, that’s just asking for snow blindness. And if you brushed up against it, you could end up with a whole armful of splinters.
The residents of the devastated flat would be temporarily re-housed while the council went in to rip out all the fire-damaged items. Then the problems really began – a brimming skip was just asking for trouble. The workmen would fill it with the contents from the flat, and overnight it would all disappear. You’d see the amazement on the council workers’ faces; they filled the skip up with stuff, then when they returned the next day, like magic, it was completely empty. You could see them all scratching their heads and mumbling to each other, ‘I could have sworn I filled this thing up.’
‘Yeah, I saw you do it.’
You would look on in amusement as residents crept out after dark to see if there was anything of value in the skip, before they quickly darted back indoors, holding a slightly worse-for-wear picture or a table. Basically, the goods would be taken from the skip outside a fire-damaged flat and redistributed around different residences on the estate. Either that, or they were removed by the local kids, me included, carried round the back of the sheds and fashioned into ramps for our bikes to go over. A kitchen door on which to practise our Evel Knievel impersonations? Yey-ha!
Nothing was wasted on the Lawrence Weston. It was recycling before that word was even invented. Weeks later, you would call for a friend, his mum would ask if you’d like to come in and wait, and as you entered you’d be surrounded by stuff that you recognized from another flat. It was quite obvious that the picture of Prince Charles hanging on the wall had scorch marks all round the frame. Even Prince Charles looked confused by it all.
Like every close community which had no money, we would all come together on a big night. Someone would bring along illicit booze, someone else would come with fags that had fallen off the back of a lorry. We really knew how to party. It was great way of forgetting the daily grind.
Take New Year’s Eve, always a memorable occasion on the estate. It was the one night when everyone really went for it. The thing to do on that night was to go outside on the stroke of midnight with any implement and make as much noise as possible. All the residents would gather at the entrance to the flats in a small hallway just by two rows of bins. Everyone would grab a bin-lid and wait for the moment. It must have looked like the musical Stomp! just before a performance, with everyone holding bits of garbage, waiting for the off to smash seven bells out of any poor inanimate object. Then, suddenly, you would hear a faint voice wafting from across the estate.
‘Haaaapppy Neeeew Yeeeaaaar …’
It felt great to celebrate. God knows what we were actually celebrating, given that we had bugger-all! Nevertheless, it was good to feel like part of the community. Perhaps that’s what we were celebrating – the fact that we all seemed to be in it together, helping each other whenever we could. It may have been considered by some as a shit-hole of a council estate, but it was our shit-hole of a council estate – and we were going to revel in it together!
And we would go nuts, banging our makeshift instruments and shouting at the top of our voices. Mum would be right in front of me, smashing a bin-lid on the concrete floor with one hand, fag in the other, shouting, ‘Happy New Year!’ I loved it. There was a genuine sense of belonging, of being one big (more or less) happy family, celebrating together. It was a rattling good show.
Then everyone would end up at someone’s flat for a drink and a knees-up. We kids would be either still out on the street or gathered in another room, playing. Even when it got to the early hours of the morning, and I was physically exhausted, I refused to admit I was tired. When I was five or six, I’d be asked constantly if I’d like to go up to our flat to bed, but there was no way – I might miss something! Even after all the other kids had either fallen asleep or collapsed and been carried off to bed by their parents, I’d be sitting quietly in the corner of the kitchen, listening to all the grown-ups chatting. I learned so much about life from just staying there inconspicuously, observing the adult world.
By now, they would be very drunk and at the stage where local grievances began to surface. One particularly memorable New Year’s Eve, I was watching with interest as two neighbours begin to get more and more irritated with each other – nothing major, just the usual ‘You don’t keep your piece of the landing as tidy as everyone else’s’. At that moment, I caught sight of Doreen, another neighbour, a short, hunched, scruffy woman with small, beady eyes and a pointy nose. Doreen liked a drink, I think, and was already unsteady on her feet. She suddenly flung her arms in the air and announced: ‘Bollocks to this. I’m off to the toilet.’
Nobody took any notice, but just carried on arguing. After a minute or two, there was an almighty scream from the direction of the toilet. Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened, a look of concern on their faces.
‘Doreen?’ enquired Mum.
Everyone rushed out of the kitchen. I followed and found them all gathered around the toilet door. ‘Doreen? You all right, love?’
‘Mo, I am MOT aff might!’
‘Have you got a problem in there?’
‘Me teeff aff gom bown the bog.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
‘Well, how can you fee from vere? The frigging boor’s shut.’
‘Then open the door. Silly cow.’
Doreen opened the door with some embarrassment and stood in the entrance, swaying and hanging on to the handle to steady herself. Poor Doreen had lent over the toilet at the same time as she pulled the flush, and her teeth had fallen into the bowl and been whooshed away. Looking at her face, I personally thought they’d jumped ship.
‘Quick!’ shouted Dad, taking charge. Everyone bundled down the stairs and out into what was now daylight, and over to the manhole cover that serviced the flats. Dad lifted the cover as everyone gathered round.
‘You lot,’ he ordered a couple of us kids. ‘Go and pull all the flushes and turn on all the taps.’ We raced off. Beginning at the top flat, we started turning as many taps and pulling as many flushes as we were able. We then ran back downstairs to the waiting crowd at the drain hole.
Doreen emerged from the flats and staggered over, swearing all the
way. ‘Buddy peeth! They’re too loose anyway, ssshhhlipping all ober me gob.’ She arrived at the hole and squeezed through the crowd. Looking into the gaping maw, she moaned through her gums, ‘Sssstufff em, they’ll be in the Avon by mow.’
Everybody watched in nervous expectation as the water gushed from the pipe into the T-junction that took the waste and sewage away. ‘I think they might be halfway to Avonmouth by now, Dor …’
Doubt was seeping into the gathered crowd. ‘Put the lid back on,’ said Doreen, disconsolately. People began filing away dejectedly, back into the flats.
Dad picked up the lid and was about to drop it back into place. ‘Wait!’ he shouted. Everyone ran back to look down the hole. And there, poking out of the gushing outlet, were the smiling teeth – or were they in fact grimacing, having been apprehended trying to make good their escape? Either way, they were edging themselves slowly out and about to fall into the T-junction. With no concern for health and safety – we had never heard of those words back then – Dad reached down and snatched them up.
Picking off the debris and wet toilet paper, he handed them to Doreen, who, without hesitating, popped them back into her mouth.
‘Cheers. Now where did I put me drink?’
And, with that, she staggered quite nonchalantly back through the crowd and into the flats, leaving everyone stunned.
That kind of incident was commonplace on the Lawrence Weston. We existed on not much at all. I suppose some people might have seen us as outlaws or even crossed the street to avoid us because of what we looked like. But they didn’t know anything about us – we did our best with what we had. We had no knowledge of any other way of existing. Life may have been tough, but we just got on with it.
And if we picked up a painting of Prince Charles along the way, so much the better!
3. My Family
That feeling of being excluded from the mainstream was drummed into me from birth by my dad, a man who gave the impression that he was constantly at odds with the world. In those days, his favourite gesture was to look up the sky, tut and say, in tones dripping with sarcasm, ‘Thank you very much … for nothing! Someone up there doesn’t like me very much!’
Nan, Granddad, Dad and his brother, John.
At times, he was not an easy person to have around. He was forever fuming about the hand fate had dealt us. He wrestled with the feeling that he would never be accepted and constantly railed against his lowly status. He felt that everyone else was having a fantastic time at a party to which he had not been invited.
The trouble with Dad was that because he was constantly expecting to be attacked, he was forever on his guard. Convinced he was always being persecuted, he carried around an almighty chip on his shoulder. He also lived with an overwhelming fear and loathing of authority. An ex-teddy boy, he would refuse to back down if he believed he was right.
But then, in the blink of an eye, he could be your best mate and a funny, loving father. He was hilarious at times. The problem for Wayne and me was knowing how to tread that tightrope. We could never tell which way Dad was going to turn.
When he wanted to, he could charm the birds off the trees – although there weren’t many birds, or trees for that matter, on the Lawrence Weston. When Wayne and I were small, Dad was still working on the docks. But he gradually started to pick up more paid work in the evenings, singing in pubs. Like the two generations before him, he had the Evans singing gene. When my granddad belted out ‘Land of My Fathers’, tears would fill his eyes. ‘Hear that,’ he would wail, ‘that’s proper music, that is.’
Wayne, me and Granddad.
My great-great auntie was also an amazing singer, who played on the Welsh and English music-hall circuits. Performing was in the Evans blood. Even though it took me an age to twig, I suppose it was really no surprise that I eventually ended up on stage.
Late at night, Dad would come back from his shows, burst into our bedroom clutching a handful of pound notes and regale us with tales of that night’s performance. It may only have been a show in a pub or a club, but to us it seemed like an impossibly glamorous universe that existed only on the telly. At those moments, the glittering world of showbiz briefly entered our grotty flat. We felt that, just temporarily, we were touched by magic. It seemed as if there might be a way out of the drabness of the estate. It felt like there was hope.
The glittering world of showbiz might have seemed light years away from our humble council flat but, strangely, it kept knocking on our front door. The two apparently irreconcilable worlds collided – one dark and desperate, the other seemingly shiny and out of reach for us mere mortals. It may have appeared impossibly remote, but I suppose I was already getting a glimpse of the glitter.
I still vividly remember the first time I saw Dad perform. I must have been six or seven. Wayne and I stood clutching Mum’s hand at the back of a pub as he came on stage. Suddenly – kapow! – he started singing and we were mesmerized. We couldn’t believe how brilliant and how powerful he was onstage. He was like a force of nature, a second Tom Jones. He could blow a crowd away with the sheer potency of his performance. It was as if he was saying to the audience, ‘You’re going to have this and there’s nothing you can do about it. We’re going to blast the roof off!’
Dad appeared to be releasing all his pent-up anger. It hit you in the pit of the stomach with a rare energy. It was electrifying. To see all these people transfixed by Dad was an extraordinary experience and such a departure from the mundanity of our daily lives. His word was law at home, and his magnetic performance only added to the potent myth of his god-like domestic status.
Granddad, Dad and Nan in Rhyl, Wales.
But then, on other days, the mood in our flat could be decidedly dark. Often, reality would bite the morning after a show. There was never enough money and Dad would soon be worrying about bills again. His simmering sense of resentment often boiled over into the most fearful rages. He had a ferocious temper – and unfortunately, probably because of her background, so did Mum. When they went at it like cat and dog with helmets on, Wayne and I would cower in the corner. We wanted to be anywhere other than in the midst of that horrendous row.
When aroused, Dad’s temper would possess his whole body. He was like the Incredible Hulk – although he turned red rather than green. It was like living with an angry traffic light. Then, just as quickly, the rage was gone, leaving him exhausted, wondering what had happened and apologizing, as if the fury had gripped someone else entirely. We lived in a state of constant fear about when he would next blow his top.
Dad’s rages only added to our sense of being outsiders. Because of his insecurities, he would drill us never to ask for anything. Whenever we met someone new, we were taught to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and – above all – ‘sorry’. We were never allowed to connect properly with anyone, and that made us feel cut off from the world. That’s why I kept myself to myself as a child, terrified of stepping out of line. I would play the fool, but only to mask my innate shyness. I lived in mortal terror of standing out from the crowd, in case I was doing something wrong. I was a textbook misfit. If there was an instruction booklet on how to be one, I could have written it.
Dad was never far from snapping. When he was at home in Bristol, he was unable to relax properly. He was always irritable, always fretting about where the next meal was coming from. His mind was constantly plagued by anxiety. He would sit in the chair bouncing his leg up and down, biting his nails, moaning or shouting at the telly. In his presence, you were constantly treading on eggshells.
Whenever I was out and about with him as a kid, I always felt things could flare up at any moment. His mood fluctuated wildly. Sometimes Wayne and I walked down the street with him having the time of our life. But it would only take one tiny incident for him to explode. He had no blue touch paper – he was a spontaneously combusting rocket. He would never just let it lie. He was like a Jack Russell; once his teeth sank into y
ou, they were never going to let go. That was the prevailing storm force in the house when we were kids – and it left us feeling bewildered and bedraggled.
Dad in the army, stationed in Bristol.
Dad viewed the world through cynical, angry eyes and had a sardonic way about him that could be hurtful. It was not nice to witness in those days. But, seen from afar, his rages must have seemed quite comical. So people would often be doubled up with laughter at his desperate, self-defeating attempts to gain respect.
You knew when he was about to blow a fuse because his whole body would change. A spasm of irritation would cross his face and he would stretch his neck forward, pulling his shoulders back. Then he would bunch up his fists so tight that his knuckles would turn white. At the same time, his wild glare was magnified by thick glasses that made his eyes look like rolling hubcaps on a clown’s car. The final tell-tale sign he was about to blow was that he would calmly push his glasses back up his nose with his finger. Then – boom! – ‘Right, that’s it!’
And he was off.
Terror would permeate every part of my body at those moments. It wasn’t just Dad’s fury that scared me, but the sounds that always accompanied his eruptions. Hearing Mum desperately screaming his name over and over a few feet away – as if she were the increasingly unhinged corner-man standing behind the ropes at a prize fight – only seemed to inflame his demons even more.
These outbursts would always come out of nothing. A perfectly innocent remark would set Dad off on an expletive-laden excursion into the land of the red mist. It was as if I had pulled the pin from a hand grenade or flicked an angry switch. Nowadays I would find it really funny, but back then it was pretty scary.
If we went anywhere by car, for example, there was always the risk of an explosion. Once behind the wheel, in an instant Dad could metamorphose into a raging bull. As we drove along, we would watch him change from a mild-mannered, hilariously funny man into a shrieking maniac. Mum would sit, terrified, in the passenger’s seat next to him, living in fear of the next flare-up.
