CHAPTER 1
Old Baldie, sometimes known as The Grim Reaper, The Banshee or The Angel of Death, has been my constant companion as I wander the globe. Through the years he almost, but not quite, has the aspect of a friend. The joker in the pack, he turns up unexpectedly and, at present, he's always returned alone. I'm almost convinced that he's a figment of an overactive imagination, but there are times when I'm not so sure. In any case, who am I to deprive him of what is rightfully his.
I'm sixty odd and maybe it's time I put some things down on paper. So many memories, from severely good to diabolically bad, pass through what's left of my brain. On the more physical side I was a soldier, explorer, pilot, coal miner, steel-man and potential cosmonaut, and my artistic abilities led me to author, filmmaker, songwriter, singer, poet, musician, cartoonist and teacher. In some of these I reached the peaks but in others succumbed to the troughs of life. But I did my best, which is all that can be asked of anyone.
This is the way it was.
I stood beneath the kitchen table, on the oilcloth, gazing up at the drawer and trying to figure out how it worked. The puzzle was due for some pondering, so I sat down and pondered. Maybe if I tugged the handle, as I'd seen others do, that would get some results? Crawling to the coconut matting, in full view, I stood up, grasped the handle, and pulled. My world was filled with falling knives, forks, spoons and concerned relatives. Nanan was concerned with my welfare as she gathered me up, Mam and Aunty Betty were concerned with the cutlery and Granddad was concerned with the loss of sleep as he looked around his chair. The cat was concerned with safety and cowered under the dresser.
We lived in a one down, two up, terraced house. Granddad paid rent to the Co-op next door, who in a fit of expansion had annexed our front room. We weren't poor, provided the adults were in work, but we weren't rich either. Granddad was a railway porter, Mam and Aunty Betty were on munitions and Nanan looked after the house. World War 2 had just started so I signed on as a domestic baby to give my father, who I rarely saw, something to fight for.
My early memories are peppered with air-raid sirens at the sound of which I was drilled to crouch in a cupboard, or, as I grew in stature, under the great, solid and drawered kitchen table, proof against all the Luftwaffe could throw against a defiant Castle Hill Road. Nanan, meanwhile, would go down the yard for a bucket of coal, determined that the might of the Fatherland should not impinge on her life one iota more than was absolutely essential.
When I got too big for a pram I was bought a Tan sad which was an early version of a stroller. I wouldn't ride in it, preferring to push the thing wherever we went. This was a good indicator of my future career.
In summer I made tar babies with tar borrowed from the sparse travelled road, and learned that manure straight from the horse was hot; and I made aeroplanes out of cloths pegs
My Auntie Doris and Uncle Tommy lived in Marton, near Blackpool. They had no children and we visited them often for an extended stay. Sometimes I was left to give Mam a break. Uncle Tommy made real aeroplanes and Aunty Doris supervised my crab collecting from the North Shore.
One day, when I was two, Mam and Aunty Doris took me to see Mrs. Hall, a medium of great renown. The stairs were bare of carpet and the meeting was held in a room with rickety cane-backed chairs facing the sage. Mrs. Hall was holding forth when we entered. She stopped and looked at me in an imperious manner.
"I must go to the little boy," she said. The assembly swung round, staring at me. She closed her eyes and uttered in sepulchral tones, "He will surprise the world." That was all I can remember of this gathering. Speculation was rife. Would it be a pleasant surprise, or not? Would I win the Nobel Prize or become a mass murder. Mrs. Hall had said it, so it was true. I filed it away for future reference.
About this time we were in New Brighton on a cold and rainy day. We dodged into a full café and, after the meal was finished, (and I don't know why,) I stood up on a chair and gave a faultless falsetto rendition of "Don't Fence Me In," in a voice that carried to every corner of the café. People stopped speaking and eating, and after I'd finished my performance the applause was deafening. Someone produced a cap. The pennies, halfpennies and farthings filled it. I made seven shillings and six pence, which was a good morning's pay for a labourer. My pockets bulging I filed that away too.
Marton was about three miles from the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool, by a route I knew well from several bus trips. On a tar-bursting morning when I was four I inveigled a young lady of barely three to accompany me there. My first expedition, without the approval of anyone, started well. We gathered some discarded cinema tickets to hand to the guardians of the rides. I knew that was the procedure, and tickets were tickets.
We managed a few rides while they were looking for our guardians, and then made our way in the direction of the tower where I promised lions. At some stage she started blubbing, which brought several sympathetic ladies and a policewoman who ascertained that we were lost. I took exception to this. I knew exactly where we were. My protestations about lions fell on deaf ears as we were abducted and taken to the police station where, several hours later, we were collected. This experience had far reaching effects. Henceforth I tended to travel alone.
I was taken to see the great sage known as The Teacher, who, I'd been led to believe, was the repository of all knowledge. I was not impressed. She didn't know my name, my address or who my mother was. If she lacked this basic information, what chance was there that she would open for me the great portals of wisdom? Ever after I would take the word of adults, and particularly educators, with varying quantities of salt.
Teachers spoke a different language known as English, which was somewhat different to my own. I'd heard it on the wireless and grew up bilingual, but now I had to concentrate to find out what they were on about.
At school I discovered prayers, which were a way of talking to an old man called God, who was like Father Christmas in reverse. He it was who frowned upon any kind of fun, especially on Sundays. I hated Sundays.
The day of victory in Europe was a day of parties, and of a bonfire. We six-year-olds had never seen a bonfire because of the blackout restrictions, and were thoroughly entranced as backyard gate after backyard gate was sacrificed to the pyre. Flags flew from clothes-props sticking out of bedroom windows. Now we all prepared to settle down to something called Peace, which seemed to me something of an anti-climax after a lifetime of war and hate.
Victory over Japan came and out stuck the clothes-props again. Owing to a shortage of backyard gates several outside toilet doors were utilised, which caused considerable embarrassment. The celebrations were subdued. They lacked the spontaneity of the ending of the German war, and there was much talk amongst adults of a bomb.
Some days after VJ Day Mam took me to the cinema. I've no recollection of any of the feature films, but the newsreel is indelibly printed on my mind. The camera was in a bomber and far...
