Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2

by Danny Baker

  ‘In any case, we will be planning on going ahead on time,’ she announced.

  She carried on talking, but I was too numb at this news to register anything else. Eventually I managed a small, ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ she rattled on crisply. ‘We’ve discussed it and there are one or two brave souls sitting out in their cars waiting, and we’ve got the under-sixteens marching band due at any minute. They’ve been working very hard, so . . .’

  This last revelation struck me as particularly farcical. On a day like this, any marching band, irrespective of what age they were, might just as well have marched straight off the end of Clacton Pier. Naturally, I felt for these poor kids who’d obviously been looking forward to a decent blow as they kicked out the Erith jams, but my plan now was to hurriedly cut whatever ribbon I was expected to and, stopping briefly to deliver a few amusing words for the local free sheet, follow the siren call of that hot sizzling breakfast. Inwardly, I hoped, and hoped hard, that I wouldn’t be asked to stick around for the junior swing combo’s full honking set.

  No such luck.

  With mounting horror I was informed that, as far as the Erith & District Events Committee were concerned, no proper Erith & District Annual Fête could be properly pronounced open without the Erith & District Marching Band (under-sixteens) first making one full circuit of the Erith & District four-hundred-metre running track.

  OK, so my sausage-and-egg sandwich would be delayed for thirty minutes. This might be something I could just about cope with. There was bound to be some sort of porch or canopy beneath which we dignitaries could shelter while the youth made their noisy wet way around the flooded asphalt. Except it was then explained to me that whatever lucky celebrity been given the honour of opening that year’s spectacular would be fully expected to march at the head of this cacophony – trumpets, tubas and drums blazing away – waving wildly at the ranks of cheering spectators (a throng that currently numbered approximately three desolate souls).

  As the woman outlined these proceedings, she seemed to pay little heed to the fact that her words were being drowned out by the monsoon raging against the room’s sole window.

  Sure enough, the band duly arrived, shocked, squelching and bedraggled, and we were soon all jostling for the high ground beneath a small square exterior roof that was our last refuge before marching out into the tempest. There was nobody, nobody out there and it was now raining so hard that none of us could even see the far side of the field. Out into the wall of water we went.

  Incredibly, the parade could not immediately get underway, as I had hoped, at a lunatic pace redolent of the Keystone Kops. No. First the band had to be physically arranged and lengthily briefed by their sergeant or whoever this cruel martinet was. It seemed to be all about proper distances between marchers and thumbs aligned parallel to trouser seams. All the while I stood patiently about five feet in front of them with not so much as a hat to ward off the continuous assault. Eventually he came over to me.

  ‘I’ll instruct the boys when to begin, Mr Baker,’ he said. ‘When you hear that, start walking smartly – but in sync with the drum at all times.’

  ‘OK,’ I gasped, bitterly noting that he was issuing his instructions from beneath a large striped golfing umbrella.

  So, there we all stood. At long last he stepped back and barked something unintelligible but military-sounding and the band began to play. I swear to God it was ‘The Liberty Bell’ – better known as the theme to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And off we went, around the six-lane Erith & District municipal running track. Now I pride myself that I can keep a beat pretty well but, probably because my ears were full of rainwater, coupled with an understandable urgency to get the thing done, by the first turn I seemed to have opened a twenty-length lead over the orchestra. To an untrained observer it must have looked as if I was trying to shake them off. Figuring I had better let them catch me or risk appearing even more forlorn and ridiculous, I slowed down and marched on the spot for a bit. Once we were a unit again, through squinting eyes I scoured the few stalls at the centre of our parade, one of which had totally blown over, for any signs of life. Nothing. Out of sight of even the organizers, we were marching around in the storm-tossed wilderness for no apparent reason.

  By the time we arrived at the far side of the track – I think the musical programme had segued into ‘The Washington Post’ at this point – I saw that a line of houses backed on to the facility and at one or two of the upstairs windows, confused residents awoken from their Sunday morning lie-ins by this gurgling din powering toward them, were attempting find out what the hell was going on. What they must have made of the sight of a saturated marching band coming a-Sousa-ing around the bend during what was clearly the end of the world, I simply can’t imagine. And what, they must have asked themselves, was that idiotic man at the front doing? Shouldn’t he be tossing a baton in the air or something? Has the poor fellow just got mixed up in all this? Are those people making that racket just to show him where the local bus stop is?

  I have to say I have never felt so utterly ludicrous in all my adult life – and as this book will prove, I have had some cracking contenders for that title.

  After a single interminable orbit we finally found ourselves back where we started. The music ceased with a lone trombone quack like the last fart escaping from a scuttled submarine and we dashed en masse into the base camp, united in our embarrassment. We were greeted by half-hearted applause from the five or so witnesses who had seen it through. Spud was nowhere in sight. I eventually located him in the small office space where I’d left him, though by this time he was ensconced in one of the two chairs either side of the electric fire and holding a tumbler of Scotch. (When asked if he’d like tea, Dad always said, ‘Well, if there’s nothing stronger knocking about . . .’ and usually there was.) In the other chair was one of the officials who had given the thumbs up for the parade to go ahead, also enjoying a fiery drop. Neither of them had moved a muscle to watch us go round.

  ‘This is Georgie Howard!’ boomed Spud. ‘I used to work in the dock with his brothers!’

  No matter where we went, without fail, my old man invariably met someone who knew someone who knew him, and within minutes they’d be breaking out the bonding booze.

  Then, finally noting my appearance, which was of course now almost entirely liquid, he enquired, ‘How’d it go?’

  ‘Terrible,’ I whimpered, trying not to overly offend the stranger who had sanctioned my descent into the maelstrom. ‘Really, really bad out there. And not a soul to be seen, Dad. Felt a right idiot, going round like that.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ he said with a tickled expression, ‘If you will go volunteering for these things.’

  Now you may think that was an end to my agonies. However, as I waited for Spud to finish up his drink with his new friend, and as a few towels and warming plastic cups of tea arrived, something peculiar happened. The rain weakened and then stopped. And, as sometimes happens on even the most inclement of days, several glaring rays of sun suddenly shone through the previously unbroken clouds. When this happens at home, one usually calls to one’s partner or children, ‘Blimey! Have you see it out now? Would you believe it?’ At the Erith & District Sports Centre it almost magically signalled the arrival of about fifteen new vehicles in the car park. And where there had been just the mournful sight of a few disparate abandoned stalls out on the grass, the area immediately took on the intense bustle and swarm of a Marrakesh souk in high season.

  ‘Oh, what a shame!’ I trilled to the woman in whom I sensed a natural organizing authority. ‘If only we’d hung on a bit!’

  ‘Well, actually, could I be very cheeky?’ she smiled back. ‘Word seems to have got around we are actually open and there are a quite a few more here . . . So I wonder if you and the band would mind . . .’

  I didn’t hear the rest. The next thing I remember was putting my best foot forward again as the brassy juniors kicked into the theme from Monty Pyth
on and once more around that fucking running track we set sail for the second time in thirty minutes. With every step I took, the water in my shoes shot out through the lace holes like a surfacing sperm whale.

  Dad didn’t budge from his Scotch for this lap either. Afterwards we didn’t speak much until, as he turned the ignition for the journey home and I buckled up my seat belt, he took a moment before putting the car in gear to say, ‘Well, that was a fucking waste of time, weren’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ I said, in a voice as cold and flat as my arse at that moment. ‘An absolute waste of time.’

  Of course I had no idea that that particular mantra would cover pretty much everything else I was to take part in across the following three decades in this relentlessly farcical industry.

  Up In The World

  Familiar TV face or not, Wendy and I were still living on the nineteenth floor of Maydew House, one of the four landmark Swedish-design council-estate towers that stood overlooking the Thames in Deptford and Rotherhithe. Today I’m sure these flats have been privately sold and resold many times, recognized at last as the stylish apartments in a prime location that they always were. Back in the early eighties, however, nobody wanted to live in this part of South-East London. It was universally regarded as a screamingly unfashionable location, barely part of the ‘real’ capital at all, despite the borough bordering on Waterloo, Southwark and London bridges. Cab drivers in the West End famously would not go ‘south of the river’ and, given that it was ill-served by Tubes and overground trains, this could put a crimp in your late-night carousing. It took the eastwards shift of the City into Canary Wharf for the streets in which I grew up to be ‘discovered’. Now, even the restructured classroom spaces in my old school require a five-figure deposit. This is a good thing. And yet, on the occasions today when I pass the neigh-bourhood’s upmarket al fresco restaurant tables around which sit four or five City – or media – types braying away another expenses lunch, I do have the overwhelming urge to shout, ‘Why don’t you lot just fuck off back to Chelsea?’ I never will, of course. And even if I did, they would be entirely baffled as to what I meant, so completely redrawn is the map of my youth.

  The only real drawback to living in a high-rise flat was the lifts. Unreliable, claustrophobic, dingy and eternally reeking of piss, it could often take more than ten long minutes before the one lift that was working – rarely would it be both – wheezed open in front of you with a metallic shudder. A slow journey up to the nineteenth floor would then be slowed even further because some lousy ponce had purposely pushed all the buttons before getting out and you were now required to stop on every single level. On most of these floors the filthy steel elevator door with its useless tiny wired-glass window that was forever covered in dried phlegm would slide back to reveal identical dismal landings that were made even more sullen because 80 per cent of the overhead light bulbs were broken. On most of the stops you would find a forlorn-looking bloke, broken by the long wait, or an equally desolate mum with a pram that denied her the option of using the stairs, both looking at you with a defeated air before asking plaintively, ‘Going down?’ to which you would shake your head and break the doleful news, ‘No. Up. Sorry.’ And the door would sigh shut again.

  The lifts at Maydew House could hold, uncomfortably, about ten people. Though there was never a breakdown while I was inside one, they rattled up and down the shaft at a snail’s pace as if they might give up the ghost at any minute. Also, as a bonus, back then everybody else in there with you would usually be smoking.

  At the base of the rear of the lift was a recess about three feet high. I had supposed this was to help with moving longer items of furniture in and out of the tower, until a caretaker one day explained to me that its primary function was for removing coffins.

  These finicky elevators lead us into two notable stories.

  One: I was talking to a rag-and-bone man in a café one day – the area boasted many stableyards for this, at the time thriving, profession to house their horses – when the totter, recognizing me from the show, asked if I still lived in the area. When I pointed toward Maydew House, he moved uneasily in his chair and gave it some, ‘Don’t talk to me about fucking Maydew House.’

  It turns out the block had given him one of the worst experiences of his working life. He’d been calling out his traditional cry along the streets one day, a deceptively difficult ululation, when he heard the distant voice of a woman shouting, ‘Rag man, up here. Rag man, stop!’ Pulling the reins, he brought his horse to a halt and located the plea as coming from a window very close to the top of Maydew House. At first he chose to ignore the woman – tower blocks were the bane of the rag-and-bone man’s life, and unless he had good cause to believe there was gold in them thar hills, a seasoned totter would opt to stay on the street. The woman proved very insistent though, so cupping his hands to his mouth be bellowed back, ‘Is it worth my while, lady?’

  Her reply saw him immediately reaching for the horse’s nose bag: ‘Oh it is!’ she yelled. ‘I’ve got something special for you here! It’s all yours!’

  Arriving at the notorious Maydew lifts his hard-working heart sank right down into his manure-flecked wellington boots: out of order, both of them. The woman had informed him that she was in flat 121; scanning the corroded metal sign that adorned the space between the lift doors he could see that her lofty drum was stationed right up on the twenty-first of the sky-scraper’s twenty-four floors. Many a lesser rag man would have baulked at such an epic climb but, as he told it, ‘It was about fakkin’ two o’clock be then and all I had on the cart was a couple o’ bits of shitty aluminium, a few bottles and an old R Whites sign. So when she says she’s got something special, I think, “Fuck it, there’s me beer money, I’ll go up.”’ And up he goes.

  I can tell you from bitter experience that there are four long flights of cold grey concrete stairs between each floor in Maydew House. Each flight has fourteen steps and the levels are arranged in an odd-number sequence: 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on. Thus our man had to slog up 560 unforgiving elevations in full winter work gear – including, remember, wellington boots – while carrying a cumbersome sack. In my own attempts at this feat I found that, even allowing for one being a few pounds above optimum fighting weight, you would definitely have to lean heavily on the stair rail for a bit of a blow after floors 5, 9, and 13. By floor 17 this regime would expand to sitting down for a minute on the piddle-smelling stone landings provided at the turns. I can assure you, by that point, the spectacular views across London available through the stairwell windows would count for nothing, because they would be seen through eyes now popping out of your pulsating head and stained blood-red by the sting of a torrential sweat.

  With this punishing struggle finally behind him, our intrepid rag-and-bone man arrived on the twenty-first floor. Doubled over, gasping for air like a gaffed salmon on the towpath, the heat of his thickly socked feet causing spirals of steam to issue from the turned-over tops of his wellington boots, he steadied himself with one hand on the corridor wall and staggered his way along to number 121, the last door but one. Summoning up a final iota of strength from some deep inner reservoir, he managed to press the bell. From behind the frosted glass he could see the figure of a woman making her way to the front door. When she yanked it open, he could she was gripping a small child by the hand. The red-faced toddler had tear-stained cheeks and had plainly just been having a bit of a tantrum. Seeing the clapped-out stranger on his doorstep, his mouth fell open in shock. Looking triumphantly at the stunned boy, the woman announced: ‘Here he is, what did I tell you? And unless you start behaving yourself today, next time I WILL give you to him!’ She then turned to address what was left of the totter:

  ‘Thanks for that, rag man – he’s a little effer some mornings.’

  And with that she promptly shut the door again.

  ‘I fuckin’ stood there – I couldn’t get angry, I was too fucked,’ the shabby tradesman concluded. ‘I opened up the let
ter box and tried to shout through: “Thanks a lot, you potty tart!” But nothing come aht! I couldn’t face going back down again, so I just slumped down next to her milk bottles. Next thing I hear from inside is the pair of them, fucking singing along with the telly! And I’m out there fucked – totally fucked!’

  And that, understandably, is why you should never talk to him about Maydew House.

  The second of the tower block’s lift stories concerns my life-long friend Peter King. Pete, like me, had attended West Greenwich secondary school and left without gaining a single certificate. You just did in those days – and still can, of course. Despite what anyone might try to tell you, it usually turns out really well.

  People insist that times are radically different nowadays, but if you are truly bright and peppy no amount of A levels ought to be needed to convince some dull-eyed job-Caesar on the other side of a desk that you will be just great to have around. Besides, if everyone has dozens of A levels, doesn’t that make them worthless? I mean, if you have ten A levels and Victoria over there has eleven, shouldn’t that mean she will always get the gig? If not, then as I suspect, these certificates are as worthless as Deutschmarks after the First World War. Frankly, too much studying and exam sitting makes youth jittery and subservient – which is the point, I suppose. Of course if you subscribe to the view that it’s vital to attend university, you will be required to jump through those dreary academic hoops. Personally, I consider university to be a fucking nonsense three-quarters of the time, unless you are after something genuinely quantifiable like engineering or medicine. Middle-class parents seem to be convinced that a child who winds up at university is the rubber stamp on good parenting, but you know what, kids? Fuck that. Sod the gap year – have a gap life.