Record Play Pause

by Stephen Morris

  If I ever got to Beverly Hills, visiting the hillbilly Clampetts would be top of the agenda, and why couldn’t we live in Marineville, a city that retreated underground at the threat of imminent danger? Wonder how the shopping worked – could we go one day and find out? That seemed very unlikely but watching it was as good as being there. Better, really: no jet lag or possibly funny food like the possum and grits the Clampetts ate. The language was easily mastered and if I could only learn how to smoke cigarettes it would be even more real. Then I would get a job flying some fantastic silver rocket with flashing computer-controlled whatnots, come home for tea about six-ish, and drink Scotch and smoke the night away. Oh, the dreams of youth.

  It was the Pye TV that brought me the terrible news of the slaying of JFK. Yes, I know where I was on 22 November 1963. Watching the box. Same as always.

  With the Cold War raging, spying was big business when I was growing up and MI5 was my first career choice. I took to reading the newspapers from cover to cover, hoping to spot a vacancy for an under-tens’ spy ring. Possibly based in the north-west region. Although truth be told, I was beginning to get a little wary of the spy career. Much as I loved the guns and gadgets that were the tools of the trade, I was a bit worried by the gold-painted nudes that James Bond had to deal with.

  The Avengers, though, were more my sort of spies. I could see myself driving a Bentley and Dad already had a bowler hat I could use. I used to beg and plead to stay up late on Saturdays to watch Steed and Emma Peel. I was more than a little lovestruck. Mrs Peel had legs unlike my other sweetheart, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward. They both had cool cars, though. Maybe that was it.

  It was in the course of this newspaper spy-job hunting that I began to augment my education by studying a comic strip called ‘Focus On Fact – The Fun Way to Learn’. This was a strip that ran in the Daily Sketch. It was here that I came across stories with titles such as ‘The man who visited heaven’, ‘Do you believe in Life after Death?’ and ‘The Angels of Mons’. Fascinating, but puzzling. Some of the information it contained did seem, even to me, to be a bit far-fetched. But how could something with the word ‘Fact’ in the title be anything other than the gospel truth? I learned a lot from ‘Focus On Fact’, nothing that you might call useful in the real world, but the sort of things that would later come in handy at pub quizzes and the like. It was my introduction to the world of Charles Fort and paranormal Fortean phenomena. Not that I knew that at the time.

  I received pocket money of two shillings, and sometimes two and six, a week, which was a king’s ransom in those pre-decimalisation days. Where possible, I would supplement this by ‘borrowing’ from Amanda or any relative I came across. This hard-wheedled cash went on two things: models (still the plastic ones, unfortunately) and books. I loved to read. I was, as time went on, becoming more ‘cultured’. There was a spate of family outings to the cinema or the theatre – Something Fresh, Forty Years On, which my dad picked, and a disastrous outing to see Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, which was one of my choices. I’d read a write-up in the Evening News that mentioned it was about the Clitheroe family. I naturally assumed this was the same Clitheroe family of TV and radio fame and would therefore be a rip-roaring comedy classic.

  ‘It’s a bit depressing,’ was my mother’s interval critique. ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The next bit’ll be really funny.’

  We persevered and I learned a lot about the 1916 Easter rising. Specifically, that it wasn’t funny. No wonder the play caused riots back in 1926.

  The trip to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in Cinemascope at the Theatre Royal fared only slightly better.

  ‘I nodded off after the bit with the monkeys,’ my father confessed.

  You’d think they would have learned not to listen to my artistic recommendations.

  Mum, Renee and Dad: one Xmas or was it Easter?

  It seemed that an antidote to this artistic frivolity was required, something more traditional, say. My mother decided that the best way to put me off music for life would be to introduce me to one of its mustier relatives: ballroom dancing. That I had never shown the slightest interest in the terpsichorean arts was neither here nor there. (OK, to be fair, I had been a clapping/dancing shepherd in the Nativity once and there had been a bit of maypole-ing one harvest but BLOODY HELL it wasn’t by choice.)

  I was forcibly enrolled in the Alex Brown School of Dancing on the second floor above three shops at the least interesting end of Chestergate. It was all butchers, barbers and grocers. Not a toy shop in sight.

  Like some evil coven or secret society, these ‘lessons’ could only take place in the dark of winter evenings and then only on the nights that clashed with Top of the Pops. I wasn’t a rabid fan of TOTP, but it was entertaining and given the choice between TV or prancing about above a barber’s shop, the box would win every time. But there was no choice. So slow, slow, quick-quick, slow it was.

  The good thing about Alex Brown’s was it had a small bar at one end where you could have a Coke with a straw while you were hanging about. The bad thing was at the other end was a large dancefloor where you and a partner were expected to jig about in time to the music. ‘Everything from the Waltz to the Paso Doble’, I think the class was called. I never made it to the paso doble.

  The proceedings always kicked off with ‘March of the Mods’ by Joe Loss – what this had to do with mods still eludes me. There were no scooters, parkas or greasers involved at all – it was just like a glorified conga line going round and round the room – but it was easy and it did make the whole thing seem even more like a comedy masonic ritual. It was all downhill from there. First, you had to get a ‘partner’, usually some old lady; well, definitely older than me. The pretty girls got snapped up quickly by the one or two gents who were regulars. Then came the confusing bit about who was going to be the ‘man’. I thought I was the best choice for that, but things didn’t work like that at the Alex Brown School of Dancing.

  I then stumbled and blushed my way through what was supposed to be the waltz and then the cha-cha-cha. I couldn’t tell the difference myself: they both involved getting dragged about and avoiding getting toes stood on by the lady who was supposed to be a man. It was baffling. I could not make head nor tale of the whole rigmarole.

  I used to live in dread of any of my schoolfriends discovering how I spent Thursday evenings. I would have to make far-fetched excuses about broken tellies or getting sent to bed early if the subject of last night’s TV ever come up at playtime on Friday.

  My weekly humiliation finally came to an end when it was pointed out by one of Mr Brown’s lady instructors that I had no natural sense of rhythm and no amount of teaching could overcome that hurdle. I agreed wholeheartedly – you’ve either got it or you haven’t. It was a shame but never mind.

  The ballroom dancing, embarrassing as it might have been, was not a total waste. I came away having learned (probably by osmosis) that some tunes went ‘ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three’. Others went ‘One and two and three and four’. I liked the last ones best.

  I also learned to ‘lead with your left’ but I might be getting mixed up with boxing. I’m always getting those two confused.

  My mother was bitterly disappointed with me. Amanda, typically, did really well at the dancing and went on Saturday afternoons too for ballet classes. She also started taking an interest in music and began having piano lessons.

  The extent to which pop music could be taken seriously was brought home one Saturday when the Staceys took me with them on a church outing to Alton Towers, which in the 1960s looked almost nothing like it does today. It was all about strolling in the gardens, admiring the views or having a go in a rowing boat on the lake. There was one recent innovation though. They had installed cable cars! This was the exciting equivalent of a ride such as Nemesis today and required the now traditional bit of queuing to get on.

  Somehow, during the queuing I got separated from Kath and Sue, and end
ed up on my own in a car with a group of three angry-looking older boys. I squashed myself into a corner and did my best to become invisible (I’m still quite good at that) when, with a loud clunk and a grinding of gears, the machinery broke down.

  I was trapped high above the ground in an open-sided basket made of tin and wood with three pissed-up lads on a spree. They began shaking the car violently from side to side for a bit of a laugh.

  I felt the blood drain from my face. What a way to go. I got that buzzy-head feeling that usually signalled the start of one of my turns.

  ‘Hey you, short arse, what’s the trouble?’

  I’d been rumbled.

  ‘Er, nothing,’ I squeaked. ‘It’s a great view, isn’t it?’

  Each sideways lurch of the car piled on the vertigo. Oh yeah, I’ve got a terrible fear of heights – didn’t I mention that?

  ‘What’s yer team then?’

  ‘I don’t like football much.’

  ‘You don’t like football! What’s up with yer? Hey, he dint like football.’ I was suddenly in dire need of a piss. ‘Never heard of anyone who dint like football.’

  ‘All right then, who’s yer favourite band, eh? Beatles or Stones?’

  All three turned to look me straight in the eye. I began to get the feeling this might be a more important question than the football one.

  ‘Go on then.’

  This was getting a bit intimidating. A matter of life and death.

  What if these three were for the Fab Four and I said the Stones, or what if . . . Honesty, as my father was fond of saying, is this best policy. So I said, ‘I like the Kinks and I want the loo.’

  To my surprise, my tormentors found my reply extremely amusing and laughed like drains. They were suddenly my mates.

  ‘Yeah, the Kinks are great. Do ya want a fag, son?’

  I had no idea that liking the right or wrong kind of music could set you apart. That pop music and style were tribal.

  Cliché alert: ‘And so I became the class clown . . .’

  I would much rather have been the class clever clogs but that meant too much work. Who actually likes clowns anyway? Fucking red-nosed, big-footed bastards. I don’t trust ’em.

  I discovered I could make people laugh, though. The difference from the usual cliché is that I didn’t mean to. People would crack up with mirth when I thought I was saying something serious. The more serious I got, the more they would laugh. I learned to live with it. As superpowers go it was better than fainting. It could stop you getting battered in a cable car, for instance.

  Meanwhile, back in green and pleasant Gawsworth Road, I decided to start a gang. I’d found a good spot for a den in one of the big fields up the road. A nice shady bit of woodland next to a fetid slime-covered pool. I was sure there were fish in there that we could catch and eat. Being in a gang would be exciting. I could live in the den, catch fish and observe people. My plan came to an end when I failed to recruit enough of my friends to join my fledgling cabal. Geoff and John from up the road were in until they found that it was stickleback for tea. They cleared off and left me in our newly built leafy hideaway to spy on evil dog walkers. I got a cold and when I realised I had no idea how to catch a stickleback or make chips, I came to my senses and abandoned my dream. Two days later I visited the den and discovered to my horror that another bunch of kids had realised its potential and started a gang of their own. They told me to piss off. Which I did.

  I needed to join a proper gang. Of which there were but two: Mods and Rockers. They were on the news every time there was a bit of a scrap at the seaside.

  My older male cousins all sported Bryl creemed, slicked-back hair in the traditional DA style and, though they lacked engines of their own, they did seem to know a bit about sparkplugs and stuff. I guessed they were probably Rockers. But in Macclesfield they were outnumbered by boys in green parkas, the backs of which were covered with patches – ‘Tamla rules’, ‘Twisted Wheel’ and an odd clenched fist logo with the words ‘Keep the Faith’. Which to me suggested they were nice boys who went to church on Sundays. It was the RAF roundel T-shirts that grabbed me. These guys must be into Airfix kits too, I reasoned. Yeah, I’d look good in a parka, especially one with a furry hood.

  ‘You’re not having a parka,’ was my mother’s response. ‘They’re made of dead cats and all sorts.’

  Only slightly deterred, I skulked off to inspect the inside of Macclesfield’s Army & Navy Stores where a large quantity of green and khaki parka-like goods were haphazardly displayed in the window. Prices handwritten in felt-tip pen. The smell of damp canvas and vulcanised rubber goods. I rummaged through the fur-and-green rack and dug out the smallest-looking one I could find, pulled it on over my blazer and felt like a buffoon. The thing was nearly down to my ankles and my arms only reached the elbows. Well, I might grow into it. Who was I kidding? Until they did parkas for pygmies I was stymied. It did smell a bit like dead cats though. Red-faced, I exited the shop to find my Mum and buy a cornet from Granelli’s.

  I became fascinated with Jodrell Bank Observatory. A short bike ride up the road to Holmes Chapel and there was this looming great dish that scanned the stars like something out of Doctor Who. What was a radio telescope for exactly? I assumed it was some Top Secret military base. The front line of defence against any impeding flying-saucer-type invasion. It fed my imagination, my science-fiction dreams of tomorrow’s world.

  Any chance I got, I would ride my bike in its direction, watching it growing larger and larger above the trees as I pedalled. I didn’t want to get too close in case it spotted me or something. How did they make something so big? More importantly, why was it just up the road from Macclesfield, where anyone with a pushbike could find it?

  I would lie awake at night, listening for sounds that might suggest the beginning of some alien onslaught. There was only ever the wailing and moaning of my slumbering father, as he began one of his nightly soliloquies, making phantom sales pitches or violently arguing with his brothers. This was most likely a side effect of his habitual four-Gold-Label nightcap. And most likely the reason my mother would not share a room with him.

  4

  EDUCATION

  In 1969, two American men landed on the moon. Who’d have thought it? The furthest any man had actually boldly gone, ever. This was the future. I scrounged a tape recorder from my dad’s office and made a tape of all the news bulletins of the entire Apollo 11 mission’s progress. I even included a few bits of my own commentary.

  In Macclesfield an equally unlikely event took place: I passed my eleven-plus exam. I’d always fared badly in school tests. Every time I did some swotting, which wasn’t very often, learning my times tables off by heart until I could do them in my sleep, something would go wrong. Instead of being asked what is 12 x 10, the examiner would want to know how long it would take to fill a bath of a certain size.

  You want a plumber, not an ten-year-old lad, I thought.

  Previous warm-up exams hadn’t gone well but they were of no consequence other than me getting a bit annoyed with whoever it was for asking such stupid questions. The eleven-plus though, this was the big one. The result would determine my educational future. The teachers made many attempts to put us at ease, reassuring us that this was not an exam that you passed or failed: it was just to ensure that we went to the right secondary school for our needs. Passing was not a sign of cleverness or failure a mark of ignorance, they told us. They didn’t fool anyone. This was what the whole of my time at Christ Church had been building up to.

  The outcome of this examination determined whether my next place of learning would be King’s School Grammar or Broken Cross Secondary Modern. I surprised myself and everyone else by getting into the all-boys’ King’s. All I knew for certain about either of these schools was that at Broken Cross you played football, which I knew how to do badly, while at King’s there was compulsory rugby – about which I knew nothing other than it looked dangerous. It seemed to involve running about with a fu
nny-shaped ball, then rolling around in the mud and getting injured a lot. I wasn’t looked forward to any of it.

  Christ Church had been a mixed school, although there was a sort of gradual segregation that increased from the age of about nine. You didn’t willingly play with girls, but a few of them were my friends. It was going to be weird going to a place where there was no female company at all.

  So, after the long summer holiday of 1969, it was off to grammar school for me. My first day did not go well. I arrived at my allotted classroom only to discover I was the only one from Christ Church: my mates either ended up at Broken Cross or had been put somewhere else. Probably to stop us forming an escape committee or something. I was shocked and disappointed. I was in a different school with different rules and different manners, and I knew nobody. So there was a lot of ‘Hi, who are you? Where are you from?’ early on. I didn’t much like being called by my surname either. It was as if I was a dog. There was also the jolly old tuck shop where you could buy unhealthy confections of all kinds. I didn’t mind that bit.

  My first couple of years at King’s followed the average-must-tryharder standard I had set for myself earlier. The only thing other than the tuck shop that I really liked was the school library. I loved browsing through encyclopaedias looking for bits on Voodoo and Black Magic.

  My classroom was in the music block and the form teacher was head of the music department. At King’s, you were taught music whether you wanted it or not, and it was more serious than the tri angle bashing back at Mrs Berrington’s. Here it started more delicately with the mastering of the recorder. I wasn’t sure about that either. The class’s tuneless ensemble renditions sounded like a flock of angry pigeons arguing over crusts.

  I think my dad liked the idea of this music tuition more than me. He was a firm believer that knowing how to play an instrument was a benefit. The next thing I knew I was signed up for clarinet lessons. I felt a little bit railroaded. Given the choice, I would’ve had another go at the guitar, but that class was heavily oversubscribed. Everyone always wants to be the next Hendrix or Clapton, and so did I. You could look cool strumming a guitar. The clarinet is a lovely-sounding instrument but it would not make me look cool. It would make me look like a dick.