Under the Microscope Page 2

  Under certain circumstances, my mum could ‘kiss it better’.

  Me: Mum, I fell off the shed roof and landed on my head.

  Mum: Come here while I kiss it better.

  Me: Look, Mum, I’m only eight, so what do I know, but there’s blood coming out of my eyes and I really think I should go to casualt ...

  (Blackout.)

  Early Days

  UNTIL THE AGE of twelve, I lived at 3 Grafton Street, Bolton, Lancashire: a small terraced house amongst the rows and rows of terraced houses that surrounded the many cotton mills of the town. We had a coal fire, a tin bath and an outside toilet (and other stuff, furniture and that). The outside toilet was at the bottom of the back yard and – if you hadn’t burned it to keep warm – it had a door on it. It wasn’t very pleasant going down the yard to the toilet at the best of times, but in the middle of a freezing winter it was horrible, even with the marginal warmth of the paraffin lamp that was burning in there to stop the cistern and pipes from freezing.

  On occasions, it was just too cold and hazardous to venture down the yard holding the washing line to guide and steady you from slipping on the ice – especially if you only needed to pee and there was the temptation of an empty milk bottle on the kitchen table. Pasteurized milk bottles were best because the sterilized milk bottles had a narrow neck which was a real worry when you were aged eleven and your body was changing. Even so, in the deepest, darkest winter, it was sometimes worth the risk.

  If we needed to pee in the middle of the night, we had a totty-pot (chamber pot) under our beds which you knew was getting full when your thumb went warm. Bizarrely, one of my earliest memories is sitting struggling with constipation on the totty-pot and my grannie shouting at me, ‘Come on, David, thrutch!’

  For many years, we didn’t have the luxury of toilet paper, we had the cut-up pages of the Bolton Evening News or my mum’s Tit-Bits magazine, which was sadly mostly ‘Bits’ to be honest and was the Bella of its time. It contained short stories, puzzles, knitting patterns, rubbish poems and of course ‘Top Tips’. The winning ‘Top Tip’ of the week was the ‘Ten-Bob Tip’ and one I’ve always remembered was ‘how to get ring stains off your coffee table’ … I was more interested in how they got on there in the first place!

  So, although we didn’t have the luxury of soft velvet tissue, we did at least have interesting reading material. The problem was that undisciplined toilet users would rip their sheets of newsprint off randomly instead of in strict page order, which often ruined an exciting moment in Tit-Bits’s weekly steamy story ‘Sinful Pleasures’: ‘Gareth took hold of Denise and drew her slowly towards him. She smelled the musk of his aftershave as his hands gently cupped her …’

  Next sheet, quick! Oh no, where is it?! This is the ‘Top Tip’ page! Where’s Gareth? What’s he cupping? I’m eleven, I need to know! I don’t need to know how to clean a pack of playing cards by using a loaf! And I quote, ‘Don’t throw away a grubby pack of playing cards, simply rub a slice of bread over them and they will come up as good as new’; this earning the contributor ten shillings for the ‘Ten-Bob Tip’. I had (and still have) a few quick questions about this:

  1. How many cards can you clean with one slice?

  2. How much does a loaf cost?

  3. How much does a pack of playing cards cost?

  I had no idea then, I have little idea now, but I imagine that there can’t be much difference between the two. Just buy a new pack of cards, you idiot!

  I did ask my dad about it at the time. He didn’t know either although he did want to know why I wanted to know. I told him about the ‘Ten-Bob Tip’ – and the next thing you know, Jed’s a millionaire … well, my dad won ten bob for the top tip in Tit-Bits!

  His top tip – unsurprisingly – concerned the art of painting and decorating. You may remember it, it went something like, ‘When painting doors and window frames, make sure to paint a small piece of wood at the same time. You will never again leave fingerprints when touching the door or window frame to judge if the paint is dry; simply touch the painted piece of wood instead.’ They printed that! And that only spurred him on, but he never had another one accepted. I give you, ‘Do your glasses steam up when reading in the bath? Simply dip them in the water and they will clear immediately’ … so, not surprising, really.

  When I was four, I went to nursery. As previously reported, I remember my first day vividly: there was a big wooden slide and lots of games and we all were given a peg; a cloakroom peg onto which we would hang our outside clothes and put on some sort of tunic.

  The transition from nursery to primary school was seamless, being as it was the same building. I was a mixed infant – or so it said on the entrance to Oxford Grove County Primary School – and my memories of early school are clouded. I remember my first class teacher, Miss Wilson, a 103-year-old spinster who was quite blind, which was a bonus when she administered her particular form of corporal punishment: a ruler across the knuckles. If your timing was good, you could move your hand at the last minute and yell in pain as she forcefully smacked the desk. If your misdemeanour was more serious, she would add more rulers; some would break as they smashed down on the desk.

  I was in ‘Hilary’ house and have a photograph somewhere of me in the school football team. This is a happy reminder, of course, but I also remember my first proper game of football with acute embarrassment. As we trooped out to the pitches across the road, I noticed that all my friends and classmates sported the strips of local teams – Bolton Wanderers, Manchester City or Manchester United – while I wore a shirt that my mum had bought on Bolton market. My shirt was green with white sleeves.

  ‘Whose strip is that?’ the others asked.

  I furtively glanced at the badge. ‘Hibernian.’

  I was a bit of a laughing stock for a while. So much so that I was forced to invent a Scottish ancestry; a family history that included an aunt and uncle who actually still lived in Hibernia!

  The only other clear memory I have was of the nit-nurse who would examine our hair regularly for head lice. She always used to rummage through your hair and say, ‘How often do you clean your teeth?’ which freaked me out because I thought there was some way she could see through my head to inside my mouth.

  Class Clown

  A QUESTION I’M often asked is whether I was the class comedian at school … and actually I wasn’t; I was quite shy, quiet and studious. However, we did have a class clown called Derek Rigby, who I’m sure was just like the lad that you had in some class at school. A boy who was a complete idiot. You know the type; he was the one who would jump on the front desk as soon as the teacher had left the classroom, get his willy out and wave it about. And you’d shout, ‘Do you mind, Derek, we’ve got our A levels next week!’

  Derek was the lad you still talk about at school reunions or in conversations with old schoolmates; something along the lines of ‘Remember when he did that? What a nutter! And remember when he hung Mr Nealy out of the Chemistry lab window?!’

  So, as I say, Derek Rigby was our class comic – well, I suppose that ‘class clown’ is possibly more accurate. Derek assumed this role for the classic reason that he was bullied and thought that acting the fool might get him accepted into the gang and deflect the bullying to someone else. And please don’t get me wrong, when I say he was bullied, it was nothing severe, it was a playful kind of bullying; he was simply the butt of our jokes. The worst we ever did to him was take his clinic glasses off him and burn his arm by focusing the sun through them … Actually, when I write it down …

  The fact that Derek was selected to be bullied in the first place was surprising when you consider that we had a lad called Cliff Kidney in our class. Not only did he have a stupid name, but Cliff was the boy with the lazy eye (and I don’t mean a ranch in Arizona), plus he had ringworm (and so a purple head). Imagine then how relieved he was when he was overlooked in favour of Derek Rigby.

  So, why Derek? Well, where do I begin, to tell the story of
how great a … Okay, well, for a start his mum and dad sent him to school wearing one of those leather helmets, do you remember them? They had a peak, ear flaps with press studs and a strap and buckle under the chin. The first time I saw him I thought he was a Japanese kamikaze pilot.

  Then we discovered that Derek couldn’t say his ‘R’s, sort of like Jonathan Ross, so he always introduced himself as Dewek Wigby, and I know you shouldn’t laugh, but just say it now out loud – ‘Dewek Wigby’ – piss funny and kids are cruel. And you know when you start school, there’s always a kid with massive ears and another kid with a huge nose and another with thick clinic glasses? Two words – Dewek Wigby: he had the full set (maybe that’s why he wore the helmet). Jumbo sticky-out ears, big flat nose and thick glasses – when he stared at you, he looked like a VW Beetle with the doors open.

  His eyes were all over the place, with the left one predominantly looking slightly upwards and the right one skenning to one side; our first nickname for Dewek was ‘Look North-West’. He was so self-conscious about his ears that he used to go to bed at night with an elastic band round his head, in the hope that he could train them flat. Unfortunately, this only made things worse because all that happened was that he came to school the next day with a red stripe across his forehead. One night, the elastic band snapped and nearly took his eye out, so he had to wear an eye patch for a fortnight. I remember him bursting into the classroom, shouting, ‘Look at me! I’m a piwate!’ Don’t make it worse, Dewek.

  If all that was not enough – and let’s face it, it is – Dewek had a nut allergy. In those days, it was a rare condition and his parents were naturally very concerned that everyone was made aware of this potentially life-threatening condition. Nevertheless, they didn’t really think their plan through to see the downside of making him a big red badge that they insisted he wore throughout his schooldays, which simply read: ‘No Nuts.’ He didn’t stand a chance, did he?

  He was so desperate to be part of the gang. He would have done anything … Well, he did, actually.

  We once acquired an old battered air rifle, with which we tried to shoot sparrows. I know it’s wrong! But let me comfort you by saying that we never hit one … so naturally we moved onto pigeons. Bigger, slower and easily distracted pigeons. We thought that this time we’d actually hit a couple, but although a few feathers flew, the birds didn’t seem unduly troubled.

  We decided the gun needed testing – and so we had this brilliant idea, and I don’t use the word ‘brilliant’ casually. Listen to this and bear in mind that this was basic forensic science way before Quincy appeared on the scene, never mind CSI, Waking the Dead and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. The idea was that after school, one of us would put on everyone else’s jumper and then a school blazer with a duffle coat on top, and then one of the others would shoot that person and then we would examine the depth of penetration of the pellet. Pretty impressive for eight- and nine-year-olds, I’m sure you’ll agree.

  Suddenly, from the periphery of the crowd we heard: ‘I’ll do it.’ And there he was, Dewek Wigby volunteering. ‘Shoot me, I don’t mind.’

  Fair enough. After school in Queen’s Park, Dewek turned up in his school uniform, very smart in his blazer, tie, little grey short pants and grey socks. We each of us gave him our jumper to put on and someone gave him a duffle coat, and then we stood him on the spot and I shot Dewek Wigby … in the leg. Dewek howled and hopped about like mad, screaming in shock and pain. And that’s bad, obviously, but it’s also good because it helped us solve the problem with the air rifle. It was the sights! The sights were all to cock. We needed to aim a lot higher.

  Then Dewek started to make us laugh. He started saying funny things. The problem was that you could see in his eyes that he didn’t know why they were funny or indeed why we were laughing, he was just saying any old stuff that came into his stupid head. He was simply reacting to situations and questions in his normal way; he didn’t mean to be funny and he really had no idea why we were pissing ourselves laughing. For the thing I haven’t yet mentioned about Dewek was that he was a bit dim. No, actually, he was very dim; at school he was lucky if he got a tick. He was the lad who the teachers got to play the wooden blocks in the school ‘orchestra’ and he couldn’t even do that, trapping his fingers in them all the time. As we played our recorders – ‘Frère Jacques … Frère Jacques’ – you’d hear a ‘Frère Jacq … Ow! Frère Jacq … Argh!’ The only real natural talent that Dewek had was that he could make that farting noise by squeezing his hand in his armpit.

  We talk about Dewek a lot at school reunions because over the years he did come out with some classic lines during lessons. We all agree that the first time he really made us ache laughing was at primary school, when we were about eight and Mrs Greenhalgh was trying to teach us basic geography. She picked Mary Hilton out and asked her to come to the front of the class and stand near the big map of the world that decorated many a classroom wall. Mrs Greenhalgh asked Mary to go to the map and point to Australia. After a moment’s hesitation, Mary successfully did so.

  ‘Very good, Mary,’ Mrs Greenhalgh said. ‘Please sit down.’

  As Mary retook her place, Mrs Greenhalgh said to Dewek, ‘Dewek Wigby. Who discovered Australia?’

  He looked at her as if she were simple and replied, ‘Mary did.’ Then he turned to us, shrugged, and rolled his eyes as if to say, ‘How dim is she?’

  And we laughed and Dewek loved it and he laughed too, but you could tell that he had no idea what he had said that was so funny because Mary did just discover Australia, didn’t she? Maybe he thought we were laughing at the disparaging look he had shot at us, which highlighted how dim Mrs Greenhalgh was.

  The second time he struck was more of a sharp intake of breath, followed by giggles, followed by suppressed hysteria. One very snowy cold January, a little boy from the year below us died. He’d got a new sledge for Christmas and had been out sledging on Winter Hill and caught a chill which turned into pneumonia and he’d died. So they kept us behind after assembly and a solemn headmaster addressed us all.

  He said, ‘Now, as you all may know, Horace Cope [not his real name]will not be coming back to school. I’m sorry to tell you that he’s gone to heaven.’ Gasp from the assembled children. ‘Horace went out sledging without wrapping up properly and he caught a chill, which turned into pneumonia, which turned into double pneumonia.’

  We all exchanged glances and mouthed knowingly, ‘Wet hair.’

  The headmaster continued, ‘The outlook is that this bitter winter weather will continue and so I want you all to promise me that when you go out sledging, or playing in the snow, you’ll wrap up warmly. Bob hats, scarves and gloves. Will you promise me that, children?’

  We all replied in unison, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, thank you, children. And I understand that this tragic occurrence may have troubled some of you, and so if anyone has any questions, any questions at all, I’ll be happy to try and answer them.’

  A moment or two passed and then, almost predictably, a hand was raised. We all looked down the line and saw that it was Dewek and anticipation grew.

  ‘Yes, Dewek?’ said the headmaster. ‘What’s your question?’

  And Dewek said, ‘So … what’s happened to his sledge then?’

  Of course, once he found out that he could make us laugh, he dedicated his life to this purpose. He loved the sound of laughter and tried hard, often too hard, to produce the comedy gold. Unfortunately, as I say, he didn’t really have a handle on why we were laughing. He couldn’t see that it was the stuff he came out with spontaneously that we loved – the stuff he actually didn’t mean to be funny. Still, it didn’t stop him from trying and just now and again he would deliver.

  His biggest triumph was in our first secondary school Physics lesson. We were discussing ‘natural phenomena’ or some such, thunder and lightning, tornadoes, the sun, the moon and tides, that sort of thing, and the discussion got around to speed of light versus speed of s
ound, using thunder and lightning as the basis for said discussion.

  Now, bear in mind when reading this that we were eleven and we’d never done physics before and, oh yes, we were a bit thick … The teacher, Mr Bowler (with the implausible first name of Thomas), pointed to a child midway through the lesson and barked, ‘You boy, Olaff Kidney!’ (‘Olaff ’ being, of course, Cliff Kidney … until we altered the school register on the first day of term.) ‘Based on our discussions of natural phenomena and in particular thunder and lightning, which is faster: the speed of sound or the speed of light?’

  Olaff thought for a second or two and then replied with confidence, ‘Speed of light, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Bowler. ‘Why do you say that?’

  Olaff replied, ‘Because as soon as you flick the switch, the light comes on. Flick switch – light comes on.’

  Mr Bowler stared blankly for a moment before moving on. ‘Mary Hilton? Do you agree?’

  Mary said, ‘No, I think the speed of sound is faster.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because as soon as you say something, you can hear it, sir.’ She suddenly shouted loudly, taking everyone by surprise, ‘Say it – hear it! Say it – hear it!’

  Mr Bowler knew at that moment that he had his work cut out with this class. He threw the topic open for discussion: ‘Anybody else like to contribute to the debate?’

  It was then that we noticed Dewek winking and nodding at us with that conspiratorial look. Surreptitiously, he gave us a thumbs-up before raising his hand. We could hardly contain our expectant excitement. Mr Bowler spotted him: ‘Yes … Rigby, is it? Which do you think is the faster?’

  ‘Neither of them,’ said Dewek. I remember clearly the half-gasp, half-giggle I managed to disguise as a cough.