Rob - The First 50 Years

1. Robert! Have you cleaned your teeth?

2007-04-18T13:00:00.003+01:00

People often ask others what their first memory is. I'm not saying that "Robert! Have you cleaned your teeth?" is necessarily my FIRST memory, but it's one that comes to mind from my early childhood. I must admit that at that time, I didn't particularly like cleaning my teeth, because Mum always bought a brand of toothpaste called SR, and it was so minty it burned like hell. But I cleaned them anyway, and I suppose it's a good job I did, because here I am, fifty years later, and my gnashers are all still intact. So thanks, Mum.

It is so difficult to recall much detail from early childhood. I don't think I am alone on this one. There are moments, of course, that spring to mind, but I guess that's all our lives end up as. Just a series of moments that we recall, but the humdrum of everyday life just becomes a blur. So, all I can do is write about the things I do remember, and hope that it falls together into some sort of comprehensible order.

I suppose the overall emotion that is engendered when I think back to those early years is that I seemed to spend a lot of time being scared. I don't mean that people used to rush up to me and shout 'Boo!". I mean that it seemed that every new encounter was something that I dreaded. I was mostly scared of leaving my comfort zone of home, and having to interact with new people. Whilst I was fine and happy on my own lining up my Matchbox cars around the fireside rug in a huge traffic jam, I was not so comfortable with having to visit my Mum's friends, or more to the point, their kids. Other kids were scary. They were loud, and boys were rough. I spent a lot of time as a detached onlooker, trying to make sense of my world, whilst the other kids would just throw themselves into the mix and enjoy every game or adventure that came along.

At aged 5, I was bundled off to Park Infants School. The thought would fill me with dread, and I often used to feign illness in the vain hope that Mum would keep me home. Infants school is the time when personalities are formed, and the pecking order begins.

You soon learn who to like and who to dislike. In my case, I always had few friends, but managed to usually find just one best friend. My best friend was always male. I suppose I gravitated toward the other 'awkward joes' a lot of the time. I couldn't know at that time that I was gay, but I certainly felt different to most kids, and never really managed to fit in somehow. My first best friend was a boy called Graham Chester. He was from the poorer side of town, and his clothes reflected this. He was as skinny as I was podgy, but somehow we found a sort of common bond, and I would sometimes spend time playing marbles with him in the schoolyard at 'playtime'. However, he was not a friend that I used to spend time with out of school. Once the day was done, I was happy to get away from school and get back home. Whilst I don't think I was a particularly good or bad student, I got through the learning parts of the day okay. It was break times that I hated. In class, the other kids were under control. Once released into the playground they screamed, shouted, ran about, caused fights, or played football. I seemed to spend each break trying to disappear into a wall. I would just stand and stare at it all. I remember thinking how stupid they all were, and could never understand how or why people wanted to form themselves into little groups and play games.
Boys would link arms and march around the playground, chanting "All on the wall who's playing!". This was a call to get together enough lads to play a game of football, which I've hated for as long as I can remember. And so, for much of my time, I was a loner. I preferred it that way. I don't think it was necessarily that I liked being alone. It was just that I didn't seem to THINK the same as other kids. Plus, if I stayed out of the way, it meant that I wasn't going to get hurt. Fights frightened me to death, and if one broke out near me, I would try to sidle away, feeling sick in my stomach. On the rare occasions when I was attacked for no particular reason by some moron or other, I rarely fought back, and I suppose was a bit of a wuss. I couldn't help myself. I didn't have that killer instinct that seems to be part of being a boy.

After a couple of years attending the Infants school, we were moved up to Park Junior School, which was just another part of the same building, but with its own entrance, and separate playground. It was commonly known as Park Board School, because at some time in its history, it was most likely run by a Board of Governors as opposed to being run by the Church. (Thanks to Paul Appleby for the info). My memories become less of a blur at this point. I hadn't changed in myself, and would still avoid large groups of kids if I had a choice. I was still a people watcher. Whilst I tried to spend as much of my time being invisible, I did still look at my peer group an awful lot, and try to make sense of it all.

There were around 60 kids of my age in the catchment area of the school, so we were divided into two classes, A or B. The letters didn't have any significance as regards intelligence or merit. They were simply a way of dividing this huge chunk of childhood into manageable crowds. My first Junior's class was 1A, and it was run by Mrs Greenwood, a pudgy, smiley, posh lady who wore long drab dresses and pearls. She was a nice lady, a good teacher and incidentally, the wife of the Headmaster, Mr Greenwood. They both seemed very old to me at the time, both being grey-haired, and having a peculiar similar smell about them. Not that sniffing teachers was a regular pastime of mine, it's just something I remember.

Lessons were still handled on a somewhat Victorian basis to an extent. There seemed to be an element of repetition to learning. I think that they thought that if we learned everything parrot fashion over a long period, some of it would stick. And so we did 'Tables'. The whole class would chant in sing-song style, "2 x 2 is 4, 3 x 2 is 6...etc." In this way, we learned multiplication. Maths, or 'sums' as it was called then, was never my strong point. I enjoyed English, where Teacher would read to us, or where we had to write things ourselves.
In class 2A and 3A, my teacher was Mrs Clayton. She had the unfortunate nickname of 'Powderpuff Clayton', because after getting the class busy with something, she often used to delve into her bag and fetch out her face compact, check her appearance in the small mirror, and dab another cloud of face talcum onto her cheeks, and touch the centre of her lips with bright red lipstick. She again was a very smiley woman, but she also had an 'edge' to her. If you upset or annoyed her, you knew about it. Being told off was enough. You would feel smaller than small, and longed for a time to court her approval once more.

Throughout my childhood, we were given school milk at break time. It came in 1/3 pint glass bottles, and each day the teacher would assign two kids as milk monitors to fetch a crate of milk from the back door, where it was delivered every day by the milkman. In the wintertime, the milk would sometimes be part frozen, and there would be a tube of frozen milk protruding about an inch from each bottle, with the cap sat on top like a little hat. Mrs Clayton also used to sell us Rich Tea biscuits that she kept in a tin, at four for a penny. I would sometimes just have two for a ha'penny. She didn't stop us eating our own snacks and sweets, but she did used to frown and say, "Biscuits will do you more good than sweets", so you had to try to snaffle your Black Jacks, Fruit Salads or Sherbert Flying Saucers as quickly as possible, out of her line of vision.

Whilst Mrs Clayton took us for most of our classes, Mr Greenwood taught Physical Education and one of the two male teachers at the school, Mr Butwright, used to teach us 'Arts and Crafts'. I seem to remember lots of papier-mache being involved! The other male teacher, Mr Abbott, became a mini-celebrity for five minutes after having an article written about him in the Lincolnshire Standard. He was over 7 feet tall, and complained that he couldn't buy a bed in the town that was long enough for him. Cammacks the furnishers came to the rescue and presented him with a free, extra-long bed! I don't know why that would make the papers, but I guess they were short on long news.

At this time, I shared a double desk with a blonde boy called Ian Thompson. He was smaller than me, but also stronger and rougher. I got along okay with him, although he was never really a friend. What I do remember is that he had hairy legs! Even at the age of around 8 or 9, I was fascinated by the golden covering of hairs on his thighs. In those days, all boys wore shorts until they went to the 'Big School' at aged 11. I suppose it was my burgeoning sexuality, but I didn't realise it at the time. Speaking of which, I guess my first 'crush' was on a boy called Stephen Smith. His Dad was a Grocer too, and I first remember seeing him in his Dad's van when I was quite small and travelling with my Dad around the Freiston area. Stephen was tall and dark with green eyes, and as well as being athletically built, he was also clever, damn him! Some guys just seem to have it all!

Behind me in class sat two strange boys who definitely didn't have it all.They were called Derek Thomson, and Steven Grist. Derek seemed to have no neck, had permanently frayed lips, and snuffled all the time. He used to be excused Games for much of the time, because he had asthma, but I don't think I really knew what that was. Steven was a tall lad, but seemed a bit odd to me. His head was permanently shaved around the back and sides, with a clump of unruly hair plonked on top. Good-natured enough, and always eager to please, he used to throw up his arm to answer the Teacher's questions unfortunately wrongly much of the time, and others would mock him. After a Games lesson, he always seemed to have a problem dressing himself again, and would inevitably end up with his jumper on inside-out, back to front, or both.

Our school was slightly unusual in that from around 1966, it employed a French Teacher. French was, as far as I know, not part of a Primary school education at this time. Looking back, it was probably one of those cases of 'It's not what you know, but who you know'. The teacher, Mrs Sagar, was married to one of the town's doctors, and he no doubt had links with one or more of the school governors. His French wife was possibly 'found' a job in the school system. This is only supposition on my part, but I know that when I went to the Grammar School, they found it unusual that there were a bunch of us who already had learned a smattering of French. Mrs Sagar used a box projector to show cartoon images on screen. From those images, we learnt basic words and phrases, like L'oiseau est dans l'arbre, or Ouvrez la fenetre. Ultimately, it did me no good whatsoever, because I still failed my French 'O Level at 16!

The total number of below freezing days has fallen from 20 per year prior to 1900, to around 10 per year in recent years. Most of the warming has occurred since 1976, which explains why my memories of early schooldays included lots more snow! Icicles would hang from our shed roof, and I would sometimes break one off and suck on it like an ice lolly. I still remember Dad ice-skating on the Maud Foster drain opposite our house, and it was a weird feeling to be able to stand in the middle of the river.Whilst it was fun at the time, getting to school amid a flurry of snowballs usually meant the big old classroom radiators were draped with steaming wet coats, gloves and balaclavas. It was nice to be able to put on a roasting hot dufflecoat to go home in though.

Towards the end of my last year at Park Junior School, I broke my leg falling from a swing, and had to spend 10 weeks off school in a full leg plaster. I had a bed made up in the front room, and had to learn the awkward and embarassing ritual of the bedpan, and sitting-up washes in bed. Apart from that, and having to occasionally scratch inside the plaster with a knitting needle, it wasn’t so bad. At least I got to watch a lot of tv or read comics all day.

Up until 1966, there had been an exam in place called the 11+, the outcome of which decided which type of upper school you would attend. By the time I was reaching 11, the system had changed, and the decision about my next chunk of education was made by Mr Greenwood, the Headmaster. My Mum and Dad had initially marked me down to attend Kitwood Boys Secondary School, but Mr Greenwood actually called at the house and persuaded them that I was intelligent enough to go to the Boston Grammar School. So that was that. A new chapter began.

2. High Days and Holidays

2007-04-18T12:55:00.000+01:00

Before moving on to the second decade of my life, I have to recount my world outside of school. My Mum and Dad were married in 1950, and settled in to the house in which they still live, 57 years later. After his Mum's premature death from spinal cancer, and Grandad's subsequent marriage to his second wife, Dad had spent some time growing up living with his Auntie Gertie. She lived in a rented house on Horncastle Road, and at the time that Mum and Dad married, the house next door to Auntie Gertie's became vacant, so this became the eventual family home. Many years later, both houses were eventually bought from their ageing owner. I was born in 1957 five years after my sister Barbara, and five years before my sister Carol. Almost five years after that, my brother Paul was born. Aside from a baby that didn't survive its first week, our family of six, plus Auntie and Uncle next door, was complete.

As a young boy, I tried to play with Barbara, but she had already established her friendships with other local kids, and I was a burden to her. I remember her 'going out to play' and me trying to follow. She would reach the gate and tell me something like, "Quick! Go back in the house! Mum's got some sweets for you!" Being naive, I would run back up the path, to find that she had gone, and latched the gate behind her. Lessons are soon learned in childhood.

I was happy enough.

Although Mum and Dad didn't have much spare cash, we had everything we needed, if not always everything we would have liked. I had a large collection of Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox cars, and would spend hours lining them up, parking them by the skirting boards, or just 'brumming' them up and down the fireside rug.
I had a metal pedal car with working headlights and a horn, and Dad also made me a 'Wells Fargo' train, which was great and gave me many hours of fun scooting up and down the path!

Barbara had a scooter, and a tricycle with a back box, which we all used as kids when we were growing up.

When I was a little older and I did get to play in the back street, the only other kids that were the same age as me were a boy called Chris Leonard, and a girl called Bridget McConvey. Chris was okay, but to my mind was totally bonkers. He was a daredevil, and the more dangerous the game he could find, the more he liked it. He was continually covered in scratches and bruises, either from throwing himself headlong onto the gravel while playing 'Wars', or from riding his bike full-pelt into the Water Board gates at the bottom of the street. Chris had two older brothers, so I'm guessing that one of them showed him how to make this home-made 'toy', and he showed us. It was a dart which you could either throw or blow through a pea-shooter. It was simply three matchsticks, a household needle, and snippets of wool for a flight, all tied together with wool or cotton. Once you had your ammo, you just needed a 'Cowboys and Indians' or 'Tarzan' scenario, and next thing you knew, you had a needle sticking out of your arm, leg or neck, which meant you were dead. Ouch!

Bridget was very squinty. She always seemed to have one eye closed against the sun, even when it was dull! We became friends for a short while, and I used to play with her bikes and toys at her house. One day, she decided she needed a wee, and went to the outside loo that most houses had then. Being a friend, I went in to keep her company, and sat on the floor chatting to her. The next moment, her Dad suddenly threw open the door, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and frogmarched me home! Being totally confused and scared, I still didn't know what I was supposed to have done wrong, even after we got home and he was shouting at my Mum about keeping her perverted son away from his little girl. I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old at the time. Strange man.

Dad was a grocer at this time who, along with a former work colleague, ran their own business, Clay & Lane's, in Main Ridge, Boston. As kids, we couldn't possibly know how hard he worked to provide for his growing family. Kath Lane spent every day in the shop, serving passing customers, and Dad took out his Bedford hi-top van, supplying groceries to people in their homes.

His working day started early, and apart from dropping in for meals, he would work until around 9.30 each evening. Occasionally, Dad would take me with him on his rounds, which extended to outlying villages and farms. It was all a great adventure for a small boy, but in the wintertime, when it was dark early, I wasn't too keen on sitting waiting in the van, while Dad was having a cuppa or a chinwag with his customer. Some of the country lanes around Boston at that time were almost devoid of traffic, so I would get a bit jumpy when an owl hooted nearby, or small creatures would rustle through the wheatfields.

The big old Bedford van almost became part of the family! On Sundays, Dad and Mum would sometimes take Barbara and I out in the van for a day at the seaside, or for picnics. Skegness is only 23 miles from Boston, but small children are impatient, so the journey seemed very long at the time. Barbara and I would sit on the deluxe seating in the back of the van which consisted of a three-legged stool, or a Smiths Crisps tin. We didn't mind, because it was all fun. Armed with a Primus stove and hastily packed food, Mum and Dad ensured we ate like kings in the open air. Why does food always taste better when you're 'roughing it' outdoors? We swam in the sea, sunbathed, dug holes in the sand and built sandcastles. A game of cricket or 'shuttlecock' made the day complete. Towards the end of this period of his working life, Dad was only paying himself the princely sum of £8 per week because it's all the business could afford. On that, Mum and Dad somehow brought up the whole family. It was a tough time for the small Grocer, and in the next few years, supermarkets drove the last few to the wall. Dad realised the way the tide was turning, so reluctantly gave up the business and sought work elsewhere. To give an idea of how little cash we were surviving on, when Dad managed to secure himself a job with the Lincolnshire Ambulance Service, his wages started at £13 a week. Mum also worked, cleaning other people's homes, but that was little more than slave labour. Because they both worked, when the school summer holidays came along, Barbara and I would spend time either with Mum's sister Rita and her family, on their farm, or with my Dad's sister Doff and her family in Stamford. Barbara and I didn't think it strange that we lived away from home for a few weeks at a time. We just accepted it as normal, and enjoyed our summer holidays. Doff, Dad's older sister and her husband Cliff (above) spoiled us while we were there, buying us clothes, toys and sweets. Auntie Doff would whisper, "Don't tell your Mum and Dad!". Their own two, Avril and Langley, had grown up, so they indulged us, being the little kids that we were. I loved spending time there because Doff was an animal lover, and in their small terraced house, she had Penny the dog, a mangey white cat with runny eyes that hissed at you if you got too close, Chico the mynah bird, who had us in hysterics with his chatter, coughing and whistling, rabbits in the yard, and a goldfish pond in the front garden. Unfortunately, Doff suffered the same illness as her mother, and died in her forties. It was a very sad time, but not properly appreciated by myself because I was young and foolish.

In 1962, Carol was born and life carried on much the same, albeit with an extra mouth for my parents to feed. Carol was a happy child, and grew into a happy adult. I suppose it's hard for me to admit, but there may have been a little jealousy on my part. I don't remember it as such, but I do know that I used to tease her terribly. I don't think I was a particularly nice child at times. In spite of that, we all got along okay, and the days out in the van continued. Being close to the coast, most outings were either to Skegness, Seacroft or slightly further to Mablethorpe, as in this picture from around 1963-4.

It's true that Dad's wages had increased, but we were still not a well-off family, so Dad kept the van after closing the business, and some time after, he converted it into a caravanette. He installed side windows, and made benches for either side in the back, and a fold out table which doubled as a base extension for making the seats into a double bed. He made two hammock style beds in the hi-top which rolled up and fastened to the wall when the van was in motion. The days out now sometimes became weekends, or even whole weeks away from home.

Paul was born in 1966 and instantly became everyone's darling. He was a cute, chucklesome kid with curly blonde hair, and being the baby of the family he had lots of attention. I was pleased to have a brother to even out the male-female divide, and I loved him from the start. When he was a toddler, I happily took him up town in his pushchair, and delighted in spending my pocket money on toys for him, just to make him happy.

In 1967 we went on what I remember as our first major holiday to Croyde Bay in Devon. Langley, Doff's son, and his wife Shirley and daughter Angela went with us. When we reached the cottage on the beach that we were staying in for the week, Dad and Langley carried on down into Cornwall, touring in the van, down one coast and back up the other. I was 10 years old, tubbier than I'd ever been, and didn't like myself very much. I was still quite childish, and I remember being terrified one night in bed when the tide came in, and the crashing waves on the rocks below got louder and louder. Shirley called me names and ridiculed me, which made me feel worse, so I spent a couple of days sulking and feeling very miserable. I took myself off, walking into the village about a mile away, and made myself feel better with some retail therapy! I spent almost half of my holiday money on a cool blue and white shirt, and felt like a million dollars because I'd actually chosen and bought an item of clothing for myself for the first time.

My joy was short-lived. I wore my new shirt down on the beach the next day, and decided to go for a swim. I folded my clothes up and took to the water. I enjoyed myself so much surfing along spreadeagled across an airbed, and didn't realise how long I'd been there. When I finally came back to the beach to retrieve my prized shirt, it was gone! The tide had come in, and it had washed away. I spent ages walking up and down the beach, peering at every wave, expecting my shirt to miraculously appear again, but it never did. Back to feeling miserable again. I must have been SUCH a joy to live with!

Our last family holiday before I started at Boston Grammar School in 1968 was to Great Yarmouth. It was one of the weeks when the whole family piled into the van and we pootled off to the coast. We stayed at North Denes Caravan Park and despite changeable weather, we enjoyed ourselves. The park itself had a central bar and amusement arcade area, but apart from that and a couple of gift shops and a bike hire shop, the main entertainment was in Yarmouth itself. The first night we arrived, there had been very heavy rain, so the campers in tents were desperately trying to dry out their belongings, whilst cars and vans were getting stuck in the mud. We 'moored' up for the week and set about having fun. Barbara was about 16 at the time, and experienced her first, and I think only, holiday romance with a lad in a neighbouring caravan. The rest of us did seasidey things, touring the endless gift shops, eating fish and chips, taking rides on the funfair or just spending time on the beach. One day it was decided that we should have a walk to Lowestoft. It is only across the River Yare, but it seemed to take us forever to get there, and half way, it absloutely pelted down with rain. We weren't prepared for it, so Dad rushed into a gift shop en route and bought us all plastic macs. Crinkling our way onwards like soggy carrier bags with legs, we eventually reached Lowestoft, looked at the wet fishing boats, ate fish and chips in a cafe, and I think got the bus back to North Denes. When your only source of heat is from a two-ring Calor gas stove, you can imagine the fun trying to dry out the clothes of a family of six in the back of a Bedford van! Our temporary home suddenly turned into a sauna, and Dad kept wiping down all the windows with a wash leather and wringing it out outside.
I don't think it bothered us kids, but it must have been a bit of a nightmare for Mum and Dad.
During a dry moment one day in Yarmouth, they decided it would make a fun excursion to book a trip the next day on the 'Golden Galleon'.

It was a small passenger ship that skirted the coast and back. We made it on board just in time for the heavens to open once more, this time accompanied by strong winds and sea spray. Maybe it wasn't the most enjoyable cruise ever, but it was certainly memorable!
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As a footnote, looking online, I found out this about the Golden Galleon.
ML162 had an illustrious career during World War II, as not only did the crew have the distinction of having shot down six enemy aircraft and taken part in the sinking of a submarine, she was also mentioned as being highly commended for the part played in the D-Day invasion.After the war, ML162 was transferred to the Royal Netherlands Navy where she continued in service for a further two years. She was then sold off and taken to Great Yarmouth for conversion to a passenger vessel. Emerging from the refit as GOLDEN GALLEON, she began her new career in 1952 taking as many as 150 tourists on excursions along the East Anglian coast and the Norfolk Broads.

Sadly, I then also found this:

Golden Galleon, in 2006 moored near Reedham. Despite efforts to save her, she was deemed a potentional navigation hazard and was scrapped a couple of months after the images below were taken.

3. The Grammar School Years

2007-04-18T12:50:00.000+01:00

For any child, moving from Primary School to Secondary School education is a daunting time. In my case, starting at the Boston Grammar School was quite a scary prospect. I had been to 'Cheers Mens Outfitters' in the school holidays with Mum to get kitted out in the strange new uniform I was going to have to wear. There was so much new stuff to buy that Mum had to use the money that I had saved in my TSB account. (While I was at Park School, every Monday morning I would take a TSB bank book and one or two shillings from home, and the Teacher would deposit it into a savings account). There was a lot to pay for, including a proper school blazer with three embroidered crowns on the breast pocket, charcoal trousers, socks, shoes, white and blue shirts, school tie, football boots, shorts, school football shirt, white T-shirts, cricket whites, and swimming kit. Being the stroppy little kid that I was, I remember throwing a sulk on holiday in Yarmouth when I was forced to spend one whole pound of my holiday money on a new satchel for school.
School started in September, and an old schoolfriend from Park school, Christopher Mills, came with me on my first day. (I found out years later that he was also gay. You know what they say about birds of a feather...).
There were around 90 new boys starting that year, and we were put in the new pre-fab mobile classrooms overlooking the school playing fields. In that first year, they still had no idea of our academic prowess or otherwise, so they simply divided us into three groups of around 30 boys, and named the classes after the initials of the school, B, G and S. I was in 1G, and my form teacher was Mr Dick Eyeington. It seemed a fitting name for him because he was whorl-eyed. He was a terror, who loved to shout at the top of his voice if he saw you misbehave. Many is the time I froze as his voice boomed out, "Clay! Face front! Or I'll stand on your neck!" In 1969, teachers were also not averse to throwing board rubbers at you from the front of the class. If his aim was good, you certainly felt it when a rectangular block of wood hit you on the side of the head! If he was close enough, he would hit the back of your head with his hand, and practically knock you senseless. It certainly made you sit up and take notice.
That first year was, I think, the last year that the whole school had to stand in the playground for a school photo. This was the result of 500 boys all told to "face front, and no larking about or you are in a week's detention". Lots of glum faces.

The school was very parochial and strict, and the masters dressed for assembly in gowns and mortar boards. Some of the older ones still used to wear their gowns in class. I think it gave them a feeling of superiority to swoop into class in their own Batman uniforms.
In the first year, I made friends with a lad that I'd barely known at Park School, Mick Holland. I have to admit that as well as sharing his silly sense of humour, I also thought him very attractive. He had black hair and green eyes, and always seemed to be smiling. He was what people would call 'a bad influence', because he was always looking for fun, and used to make me laugh in class. One time he had an argument with the cleaners, and to get his own back, at the end of the next day, he littered the classroom with scraps of paper, and wrote on the blackboard, 'Enjoy cleaning it up!' Unfortunately for me, while he went to fetch his bike from the bike sheds, I was seen by the caretaker being the last to leave the classroom. He saw the mess, and I don't know if I chuckled, but he grabbed me, told ME off and frogmarched me to the Headmaster's office. After a kangaroo court judgement, and because I wouldn't tell who the real culprit was, I was told to come back the next day where I would be given the cane. Mick, when he found out, thought he would do the honourable thing, so he confessed. It just meant that he had 'three of the best' too! We dragged our sore arses around to the school swimming pool and went for a swim to cool off our rears. If anything, it brought us closer as friends. It gave us a bit of a reputation when the whole class was talking about it the next day, how Mick and I had become the first two in our year to get 'the Swish'. We were asked, "What was it like?", and "Did it hurt?", but we shrugged it off and said "Nahhh, not really", which was a complete lie because we had whip marks on our arses for a week!
Mick and I hung around together, and in the summertime during breaks, we would play-fight and wrestle on the playing field, rolling down the grassy hill and falling about laughing when we reached the bottom. Fun times. However, at the end of the first year, there were some rearrangements done. There were a few boys that were seen to be less capable of dealing with the schoolwork, so they were moved to Kitwood Boys Secondary Modern for their second year. On the flipside, there were a few boys that were seen to have been misplaced at Kitwood, so they were moved to the Grammar School.
I lost my mate Mick initially to Kitwood, but then ultimately lost him completely to leukemia, which slowly destroyed his athletic body over the next couple of years, and he died prematurely at just 15 years old.

I somehow managed to make friends with one of the 'new boys' that started in 2G, Dave Rimmer. By now the class names had changed to reflect academic skills or choice of language that we were taking. Those that chose to do Latin were put into 2L, while my class, 2G, took German. There was a third class made up of the brainiest of the year, and they were all put into class 2A, to no doubt reflect their higher standing.
Dave Rimmer was so quiet and nervous when he started at the Grammar School, and with the other ex-Kitwoods, was treated as a race apart by the other boys. I felt sorry for Dave, and as he was sat behind me in class, I started to chat, and we became friends. His Dad was a sergeant at RAF Coningsby, not far from Boston. Dave was completely obsessed with all things to do with flight and flying. His bedroom had rows of books on planes, and there were numerous Airfix models hanging on strings from his ceiling. I suppose it was partly his influence that made me decide to join the RAF cadets.
The Headmaster, Mr Ricketts, retired in my first year there, and was replaced by a tyrant called Mr Johnstone. He was the youngest ever Grammar School Headmaster at that time, being just 33 when he took the position. He was a decorated ex-RAF officer, who often wore his old uniform under his gown on special occasions, or if the Combined Cadet Force were throwing an Open Day, as in the pic below, which shows my three best friends from school, Nick Murrell, Ian Wright (Albert) and Dave Rimmer. On the right is Robert Cocks, who later went on to become a Chemistry Professor, but not before one weekend at RAF Marham, where a bunch of lads stripped him naked and 'padawax-ed' his balls with black boot polish, because he was such a snoot and a know-all.

The picture below shows a chubby me in 1970, looking a bit uncomfortable at having to stand so close to the Headmaster, on the right.

The Combined Cadet Force was run by the school, and closely affiliated to the three forces of Army, Navy and RAF. We occasionally would go away for weekends or even weeks at a time and stay on a real camp. I had joined the CCF in the RAF section, and we used to turn up after school in a scratchy blue serge uniform, and 'square-bash' around the playground. We did also take classes in flight dynamics and suchlike, but none of it ever stuck. I enjoyed the excursions away to different RAF camps up and down the country, and was fortunate to be able to get free flights in Chipmunk trainers, and once as a passenger on a Hercules! One particular weekend, Dave and I went with the cadets to stay at RAF Newton, near Nottingham. On the Saturday, we were all due to get a free ten minute flight in a Chipmunk. We had had our briefing and all sat around in one of the huts on the airfield, waiting for our flights. Everyone in our group went up one after another, until there was only me left. The officer in charge apologised to me but said that the weather was getting too bad to fly, so I wouldn't be able to go up. At that moment, the Camp Commandant came in. Hearing about my non-flight plight, he said it was unfair to leave me out, so he would take me up himself. I was thrilled, not least because my flight lasted 35 minutes! During that time, we did loop-the-loops, flew upside-down, and did nose dives. It was great fun! Over the headset radio, he asked me if I liked football. I had to tell him, "No...not really, Sir". He said, "Good! Neither do I. Let's have some fun!", and he flew us over Nottingham, and buzzed Nottingham Forest football club in the middle of a game! A sea of scared faces looked upwards, probably waiting for the machine-guns to start up! On the way back to base, the Commandant let me hold the dual controls, and explained what each thing did. He asked if it felt okay resting my hands and feet on the joystick and pedals, to which I replied that "Yes, it feels great, Sir". He said, "Well that's good because you've been flying the plane for the last five minutes". I instantly panicked, and the plane wobbled in the sky. He laughed, and took over the controls once more. It was one hell of a good memory for me. What a flight!

Another highlight of my cadet days was when we attended a weekend at RAF Coningsby. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of only three cadets that had a free flight in a Phantom jet simulator. It only took off, flew across the fens and landed back at base again, but what a thrill for a schoolboy.

The RAF section at school had its own glider! Well, so-called, but it was a weird contraption built from a kit, and made of tubular metal and stretched wings over wooden frames. To make it fly, a pitchfork was hammered into the ground, and a rope tied to that and the back of the plane. Then the whole troupe took an elastic rope attached to the front of the plane, and ran for all they were worth across the playing field. When they reached as far as they could pull, a signal was given, the pitchfork removed, and the glider slid across the grass on thin wooden skis. By a complete fluke, I ended up as the pilot! It was nothing to do with any skills I'd learned, but everything to do with that fact that I was a fat kid, and they needed a 10 stone pilot. The 'sergeant' of the platoon, an older boy called Smithbone, was incensed that he was too heavy to be in the flying seat, and it made me unpopular with him as I was flying the glider when he wanted to. It was a fearsome machine, and sometimes I would be gliding around in the stratosphere, all of 10 feet from the ground, sometimes for as long as 10 seconds! It was all good fun, and we had some laughs.

Back to the school proper. I have to admit that I was not a particularly good student. The work was hard, and all through school, we were tested on our knowledge every three weeks. The three-weekly test scores would be put on the notice board of the classroom, and I always seemed to hover around the 20th - 30th position in most subjects. Maths was a weak subject for me, and I inevitably would be in the last three or four every three weeks. It just would not sink in, no matter how many times it was repeated to me. The Maths teachers may just as well have been talking to me in Swahili, for all the sense it made.

I was better in subjects that interested me. I consistently got good marks in Art, and my English was usually pretty good. I even managed to get a poem of mine published in the school magazine. I also liked History and Biology, but the other sciences, Physics and Chemistry were a mystery to me.

The other part of school life that I never looked forward to was Games. Most of the boys couldn't wait, because it meant that they could get out onto the school playing fields and play their beloved football. If I was ever forced to play, the others would soon groan if I was put on their team. I would more often than not accidentally kick the ball to an opposing player than one of my own. Yes, I can safely say that my football skills were nil. However, it made it easier to get transferred on to the Cross-country team instead. I hated running too, but because the teachers were usually taking charge of the football games, they would send us off on the 'school cross-country route' and leave us to it. I, along with a couple of others, would run-walk to the bottom of Rowley road, duck under the bridge over the river there, and chat and smoke for half an hour or so. Once the runners started coming back, we would let most of them go past, then tag on and run back up the street to the school, trying to look like we'd just run three miles.

There were a few occasions when this plan didn't work. Every year, the school would hold its annual cross-country event, and everyone had to take part. It was divided into three races along the same route depending on age. First and Second years would run together, third and fourth, and so on. The route would be dotted with marshalls made up of teachers and prefects, who logged your number on a clipboard as you struggled by. The whole route was three and a half miles long, and would take us alongside the Maud Foster drain, past the docks, along the Witham river and past Skirbeck church. On reaching the school gates, you then had to also do a whole lap of the playing fields before they clocked your time at the end. I was always one of the last stragglers to stumble home. The teachers couldn't understand it, as I did cross-country every week...

When I felt it was all going a little over my head, I was all too willing to look around for distractions, and one such distraction came in the shape of another school friend, Ian Ainsworth. He and I would giggle our way through so many lessons. We would make faces at each other across the room, draw cartoons or just generally take the mickey out of whichever teacher was mooching about between us. There were so many times when I was reduced to tears of laughter, and it was always the more funny because we had to stifle it, and try to look as though we were working. Inevitably, I got caught out for messing around, and would end up in detention. Some teachers took great pleasure in dishing out half-hourly detentions after school, and my school day more often than not finished at 4.30pm, whilst everyone else had gone home at 3.55. Sometimes we were allowed to do homework, but depending on the teacher taking the detention, we may just have to sit facing front in perfect silence for 30 minutes. They were the longest half hours ever!

Speaking of misbehaving, there was a lad called Mark Smith, a slightly-built blonde lad with tortoiseshell glasses who looked as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, but he was the bane of most teachers' lives. He loved fighting, destroying things, and especially seeing things explode. One day in Chemistry, we had all settled in our places before the teacher got there. Mark Smith ran round to each set of acid bottles on the ends of each bench, and dropped sticks of chalk into the sulphuric acid, replacing the glass stoppers as he did. The teacher entered the class, and within seconds there was a mini-explosion as a glass stopper flew into the air and crashed to the ground. It was quickly followed by another 10 or so bottle stoppers, as each bottle of acid reacted with the chalk. The class was in uproar, and the teacher was purple in the face. Mark Smith didn't last long at the school, and was expelled after he'd found a quarry somewhere with a shed full of TNT, and decided to blow the whole lot up!

As schooldays wore on, we found ourselves becoming more bored by it all. When I turned 15, they decided to raise the school-leaving age to 16. At the end of my fourth year, we took mock 'O Levels, and out of 9 subjects taken, I passed 6, (failing Maths, Physics and Chemistry, of course). They had no syllabus for the added year, so it became a year of revision. We were taken back over subjects we had already covered, and some of us were just champing at the bit to leave. My pal 'Albert' and I spent more time and intelligence trying to get out of school than actually studying. Albert was so-called because his name was Ian Wright, but there was a butcher in the town called Albert Wright, so the nickname stuck. We would turn up for Registration, get our names marked as present, then disappear after the first period. Most times we had to run under windows and past full classes to get our freedom. We found the best route was to go through the bike sheds, over the wall into the swimming pool area, (provided it wasn't being used), then a last fence and we were out on the street. We would take off our jackets and ties so as not to be identified, and hang around the shops in town. In the summertime, we sometimes used to shoplift sweets and paperback books and climb the fire escape ladders at the back of the cinema. The cinema's flat roof had a low wall around its edge, and it was a perfect place to sunbathe, read and snaffle our booty without danger of being disturbed. From the roof we could see the school grounds, and hear the bell, so as soon as the final bell went, we strolled back into school, mingling with the other students, collected our bikes and went home.

On one occasion, Albert and I didn't actually leave the school grounds, but skived off all the same. On the perimeter of the playground through the bike sheds stood an old house which somehow belonged to the school. I guess at one time it may have been for use by the Headmaster. Anyway, the only uses it saw when I was at school was as a meeting place for a chess club, and had previously been used by a Model Railway club. It was largely derelict, but there were a couple of old sofas and chairs still in there, and it seemed like a good place to hide out. Albert and I did our usual sign on and scarper, and although the old house was padlocked, there was an old ladder at the side of the place. We put the ladder up to the broken upstairs window and climbed in. We dossed around on the sofas, chatting and laughing until final bell. On the way out, Albert noticed that one of the interior walls had been broken through, and amidst the plaster and wood laths was a cable. He pulled on it, and the rest of the plaster stripped off the wall until we realised that the cable was connected to an electricity meter. We wondered if it was still connected, but assumed that it wasn't. In a wanton act of vandalism, Albert took a chunk of wood and slammed it down on the box. It fell from the wall revealing two bare wires. We stood looking at them, and then Albert dared me to touch them together to see if they were still live. Like an idiot, I did! There was an almighty boom! and I was sent hurtling backwards across the room, crashing into the crumbling plaster on the opposite wall. The explosion alerted boys collecting their bikes, and we soon had a small crowd of onlookers peering through the windows. We opened the window to huge cheers, and quickly hightailed it out of there. Luckily we were never caught for our roles as Explosive Demolition Experts. Shortly afterwards, the house was re-opened by the school as a Tuck Shop, in an effort to stop boys leaving the school grounds during break times to buy sweets and drinks.

If I ever see kids vandalising old property nowadays, I have to try to remember that I was not always blameless on that front myself, much to my shame.

The final year drew to a close, and we had the awful, inevitable 'O Level exams to get through. Because I had wasted much of my final year on having fun instead of studying, much of what I had previously learned was just a distant memory. No amount of last-minute cramming was going to help either. I managed a pass in English Language and R.I. strangely. When congratulated by Reverend Spurrell, our Religious Instruction teacher, I remember annoying him somewhat. I had never really believed in the stuff they'd tried to teach us about Jesus and his gang, and all through school I used to question everything the Rev told us. He seemed to think that by passing an exam, it made me a little more religious or something. He said something like, "So after all this time, some of the teachings of the Lord have sunk in then". I said, "No...I am a more confirmed atheist than ever...I just remember fairy stories well". He blustered something about getting out of his sight, as his face turned purple. Silly man.

During my last couple of years at the school, I had had a Saturday job with a supermarket in town, Keymarkets. As my educational qualifications seemed next to useless for a worthwhile career, and I needed a job, I asked at Keymarkets first. The Manager was a nice man, and offered me a place as a Provisions trainee, but I needed to start straight away. I went to see the Headmaster, and sucking air through his teeth in his usual style, hissed, "Go! I shall be pleased to see the back of you, Clay!" No love lost there then. So off I went, to start working for a living...

4. And now for something completely different

2007-04-18T12:45:00.003+01:00

Before moving on to my working life, I have to recap some of what I was doing outside of school from my pre-pubescent years onwards.The title above refers to the beginning of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which was my favorite tv show in the early 70's. It was completely bonkers, and so different to any other comedy around at that time. Dad already had a zany sense of humour, no doubt helped along by heavy doses of 'The Goon Show' on the radio, so it seemed a natural progression. There are far too many sketches to even begin to list, but here's one that shows what utter nonsense it was, and perhaps why it appealed to me, who at that time chuckled at anything, and I think would've laughed even if my arse was on fire!

Mrs. Conclusion: Hullo, Mrs. Premise.
Mrs. Premise: Hullo, Mrs. Conclusion.
Conclusion: Busy Day?
Premise: Busy? I just spent four hours burying the cat.
Conclusion: Four hours to bury a cat?
Premise: Yes - it wouldn't keep still, wriggling about howling its head off.
Conclusion: Oh - it wasn't dead, then?
Premise: No, no - but it's not at all well, so as we were going away for a fortnight's holiday, I thought I'd better bury it just to be on the safe side. Conclusion: Quite right - you don't want to come back from Sorrento to a dead cat. It'd be so anticlimactic. Yes, kill it now, that's what I say. We're going to have to have our budgie put down.
Premise: Really - is it very old?
Conclusion: No, we just don't like it. We're going to take it to the vet tomorrow.
Premise: Tell me, how do they put budgies down, then?
Conclusion: Well, it's funny you should ask that, because I've just been reading a great big book about how to put your budgie down, and apparently you can either hit them with the book, or you can shoot them just there, just above the beak.
Premise: Just there? Well, well, well. 'Course, Mrs Essence flushed hers down the loo.
Conclusion: Ooh no, you shouldn't do that - no, that's dangerous! They breed in the sewers , and eventually you get evil-smelling flocks of huge soiled budgies flying out of people's lavatories infringing their personal freedom.
...........................

My life felt very different once I'd started at the Grammar School, and I'm sure by the age of 12, I felt I was an adult already. I was left to my own devices much of the time, and I have to say that not all of my decisions were good ones. The worst decision I ever made was when I decided to start smoking. I had met a local lad one day while I was strolling along the riverbank opposite our house. His name was Ron Skinner, and he was a year older than me. He lived on Willoughby Road with his father who was a chef at the Pilgrim Hospital. Ron and I seemed to hit it off, and we became friends for a time. He was already smoking Consulate cigarettes, and asked me if I'd like to try one. I suppose thinking back I must have thought it was a grown-up thing to do, and quite daring, so at the age of 12, I started. Ron used to thieve cigarettes from packs left around the house by his father, but because Ron was now providing me with smokes too, his Dad soon cottoned on, and gave Ron a good hiding. Of course, we were already hooked, so needed to get the dreaded weed some other way. Ever resourceful, Ron hit on a plan. His grandfather ran an allotment on Horncastle Road, growing prize carnations. One day with Ron, we went along the rows of flowers, picking every fourth or fifth bloom in the hope that his grandad wouldn't notice. Armed with baskets of carnations, we made our way door to door down Horncastle Road, asking if people would be interested in buying our flowers at only 10p a bunch. We lied that the proceeds were going to a Children's Home. We didn't tell them that we were the children whose homes the proceeds would be going to! After selling our booty, we had enough to go to the Ropers' Arms off-licence and buy enough Consulates to keep us going for weeks. They cost 14p for 10 at that time, and as we were only smoking around 5 a day, we were very pleased with ourselves.
I was lucky that I wasn't around when Ron's grandad realised who had stolen his prize blooms. He told Ron's dad, and Ron got another good hiding.

Around the same time, Ron introduced me to a schoolfriend of his from Kitwood Boys' School called Graham.

Graham lived in Grand Sluice Lane directly opposite our back garden gate, but I'd never actually seen him before. They had only recently moved to the house from the country after his father had died prematurely of Weils disease, which is carried in rats urine and infects the human body with leptospirosis bacteria. Graham's dad had worked in a grainstore at a farm, and that's no doubt how he contracted the disease. His Mum moved into town to make life easier for her family, of which Graham was the youngest. Like Ron, he was a year older than me, but we soon became firm friends. He had a little dog called Lucky, and every time Graham walked Lucky, he would call for me too. We went for long walks and discussed every kind of topic we could think of, both of us trying to make sense of the world we were living in. One of the topics that springs to mind at 12 and 13 is what's springing to life down below, often of its own accord and with little control. We talked about how good it felt getting hard, and that progressed on to making each other hard. We invented forfeits and silly games and spent some time play-fighting with the express intention of getting hard. It was simply a young teenage voyage of discovery, we didn't reach orgasm with each other and we were never 'lovers' in the strict sense of the word, but we were very close as friends. I still smile to myself when I remember Graham saying to me when he was 15 and I was 14, "I think we ought to stop our games. I think it may be bordering on homosexuality". I was shocked to hear the word, even though I wasn't too sure what it meant. The games ceased, and we remained friends until a year later when he left Boston to train as a Police Officer in Lincoln. He still used to call when he came home, but it was never quite the same. He passed his driving test and bought himself an Austin 1100, and we went to one or two obscure village hall dances in it, but I can't say I ever enjoyed them much. At one such dance, he met a nurse called Lynn, and they started 'courting' regularly. When they eventually married, I was his Best Man. They moved to Horncastle with his first posting and we saw less and less of each other.

While Graham and I were becoming best friends, Barbara found a new best friend of her own at the local Mayfair. His name was Peter, and he hailed from Pinchbeck, a village about 14 miles out of town.

They dated for some time, and became lovers. He started to stay overnight some weekends, and would drive over to see her most evenings in the week. He was a butcher at the time, but as a hobby he liked Grass Track Racing. He had a couple of different cars, and as I was often at a loose end, I would sometimes go with them to meets. His twin brothers, Martin and David would often go along too, and I remember finding David incredibly attractive, with his cute face and shock of blonde hair. I never let on, of course, and just used to admire him from afar. I suppose alarm bells should have sounded in my head, but I didn't worry about it at that time. I was so naive that I didn't even know what being homosexual, or gay meant. I suppose I just assumed that it was a natural part of growing up. It was certainly natural for me, anyway.

To backtrack a little, when I was 12, I started a paper round with Berry's newsagents on 12/6d a week. That is to say, 12 shillings and sixpence. Decimalisation didn't come in until 15th February 1971. Until that time, we were still using Roman style money, hence the 'd' for dinare meaning pence. On the day that the new coinage was introduced, Ian Ainsworth and I rushed to Woolworth's in our school dinner break just to buy some sweets and check out the new, strange currency. Everyone was issued with a pocket card converter, and all shops carried charts such as this:

If you wanted to convert the new money electronically, the first calculators were making an appearance at this time. Considering that the average wage in 1971 was around £15 a week, I wonder how many people actually bought these machines, priced at £192 for a basic model and £250 if you wanted it to do percentages!

Back to the paper round. The law had been changed that year to protect minors at work, and you had to have an Employment card which stated that you were 13 years old before you could do any sort of part-time work. I promised Mr Berry for months that I would bring in my card, but just kept 'forgetting'. I did eventually get a card, but not till I'd been there for months. Not long after I'd started, we went on strike! A boy called Clive Atkinson, whose Dad was a Union man on the Docks, told Mr Berry that we were being paid 5 shillings less than WH Smith were paying, so unless he upped our pay, we were refusing to take out the local weekly paper, the Lincolnshire Standard. After a stalemate of about an hour, Mr Berry gave in and from that week put up our wages to 15 shillings. Power to the little guy! I kept my paper round right up until I left school four years later. As 'overtime', when I was 15 I remember I used to do a Sunday round for 8 shillings/40p, when I only received £1.00 for all the other six days.

When I was 15, Dave Rimmer and I both took part-time jobs as delivery boys with Melias Grocery store in Dolphin Lane. For delivering boxes of groceries on a carrier bike three nights after school, and all day Saturday, we received the incredible sum of £1.62p! Well, it helped subsidise my smoking habit :(

Whilst working there, I took out my first girlfriend. Josie was her name, and she worked in the shop. I think actually it was her that asked me out. She was already 16, and seemed very worldly-wise and educated sexually, having already dated a married man from her village. I don't know why I went out with her, because she did nothing for me, but I think I must have thought it was about time I started the mating game. We kissed and cuddled and groped each other a lot, but I never had sex with her. The hollow between her breasts seemed to be constantly sweaty, and I'm sure I used to cringe inwardly when I was supposedly enjoying the petting. One night after fiddling with her in the back row of the cinema, she had an orgasm over my hand. The smell was horrendous, and I felt like throwing up, but managed to hide my feelings from her. I know I couldn't wait to get home and scrub my hands! Let's just say the affair was short-lived.

Life at home continued on. Mum and Dad were both still working, and no doubt struggling to make ends meet, with bills to pay and six hungry mouths to feed.

Weekends away in the van happened a little less frequently, as the family were all growing up fast, but we still had occasional trips to Ingoldmells or Seacroft, as much for Paul's sake as anything. We did have a couple of times when we went in to Butlin's at Skegness for the day, and that was always fun, because they had lots of amusements and a monorail..woo. Barbara was dating Pete seriously and he stayed overnight in Boston quite a few times, which I don't think Dad was too happy about, but didn't say much. Paul and Carol were growing up fast, and Auntie and Uncle next door were as supportive as ever. As kids we often used to get home to find Auntie Gertie fetching veg in from the garden or in the kitchen peeling spuds for dinner.

In the summer holidays, instead of wasting the whole six or seven weeks, most kids would seek out work on the land. Some farmers would put out hand-written signs on the roadside, or word would get around that this or that farm needed workers, so we would head off on our bikes with a box of sandwiches and a bottle of squash (diluted orange juice), and try to get rich. Being mostly arable land around Boston, there were various jobs depending on the crop that needed harvesting. Bean and Pea Pulling was always popular, and after stripping the vines of pods, you had to fill a sack, take it to the supervisor, who would then weigh it to make sure it was heavy enough, and then you would get your shilling, or whatever they were paying. I remember as a younger kid going with Mum on a bus to Frithville every day, where we worked in a farm shed 'bulb cleaning'. This just meant that you worked at a bench, stripping flower bulbs of excess outer skins, roots and dirt with your hands, and filling a bucket at a time. When you had a full bucket, you took it to be weighed, and they would mark your total down in a book. Again, it was 'piece work' so you were only paid on what work you brought in. I don't remember how many buckets I filled in a week, but I do remember that I earned £1 16s 6d on my last week there, so I wasn't going to retire as a child millionaire anytime soon. Farm work continued in the holidays right up until my last school year, where I went to work for Grant's farm fulltime for about 8 pounds a week. The work that summer was mainly flower pulling, 'brussell-ing', and bulb-cleaning again. I suppose I was lucky in a way that I was being paid a wage, albeit small, because I know that I stood no chance of making much money in the flower fields. Some of the 'ladies' that worked the land on a regular basis were built like tanks, and just seemed to work like powerhouses all day. You had to straddle the flower rows, pull and tie 10 into a bunch with an elastic band, and leave your bunches in your row until you had enough to fill a box with about 50 bunches. Those on 'piecework' were then paid by the box. It was damned hard work, and it made me determined that I didn't want to make my livelihood on the land. Luckily for me, the last couple of weeks were spent indoors boxing up the cut flowers, which was much easier. I don't know if things have altered now, but at that time, lots of the permanent farmworkers lived in 'tied' cottages, which meant that if they wanted to leave their job, they had to give up their homes too because they were the property farm owner. Because the work was so badly paid that they had little choice but to stay where they were, usually with both husband and wife and sometimes their kids, all working for the same farmer.

By the 1970's Grandad Clay and Nanna Nellie were living just three houses away from us at number 47, and Grandad used to come round every Saturday morning for a chat, and to put the world to rights. I was always interested in what he could tell me about his younger days, but he was sometimes a difficult man to talk to because he could be quite abrupt. I remember asking him about his Japanese POW days, but he was very reticent to say very much. I did learn that when he was first captured, he was led with about a hundred others into a field surrounded by barbed wire. From there they had to build their own fences to keep them in, and their own huts to sleep in. The Japs had 4 machine-guns trained on them the whole time they worked. The food was so bad that he lost almost 4 stones (56lb) in weight. When I asked if he had ever killed anyone in the war, his response was, "Of course I did, you silly bugger! If I hadn't killed them, they'd have killed me!" Being a young teen, it makes you sit up and take notice when you realise your nearest and dearest have actually taken lives, but that's the nature of war, I guess. I am thankful that I have never had to go through National Service or suffer the misery of being 'called up' as cannon fodder on some foreign shores.
Evenings at home centred around the television mostly, but I had bought myself a mono cassette recorder, and used to like recording my own music cassettes from the radio. Mum used to knit and crochet sometimes, and Dad used to like playing the organ in the front room. About once a week we used to get a visit from Dennis, a family friend that Dad had first met when he was delivering groceries. Dennis was a funny guy, and he and Dad would love to mess with anything musical, or make jokes about anything and everything until they would be in fits of laughter. Dennis was one of the first people ever to buy a Moog synthesiser, and we would all laugh hysterically at some of the silly, farty noises it could produce at the same time as he was playing music.
Because of Dad and Dennis's interest in music, Paul also got hit by the bug when Dad bought him a Stylophone. This was more of a toy than a proper instrument, but produced electronic music by tapping or dragging a stylus across its mini keyboard.

From knocking out a tune or two on there, Paul progressed on to the organ, and with coaching by Dennis and encouragement from Dad, he eventually became quite an accomplished player. Paul learnt to read music, and picked it up quite quickly, but Dad preferred to 'play by ear' initially. He too managed to get to grips with sheet music in time, so it was always quite a musical household. If Dad wasn't playing then Paul was, so we were either treated to suchlike as the strains of 'Moon River' or 'Star Wars theme', depending on who was playing! Dad's record collection reflected their interest with LP's by some of the best organists around at the time. One of his favourites was Klaus Wunderlich, and here's Klaus playing 'Tico Tico' on an organ similar to his, the Wersi...

They joined the Boston Organ Society, and enjoyed social evenings with like-minded people, and watched guest organists perform or just entertained each other.

By the time I was 15, I was already drinking pints of 'Mild' quite regularly in 'The Eagle' public house in Boston, which had become Dad's 'local'. Because I was already 5' 10", and quite chunky, I suppose the pub landlords either assumed that I was 18, or they just couldn't care less. It was okay for me, but was sometimes more difficult for my mates to get served. Dave and I finished working at Melias, and found ourselves Saturday jobs with the new supermarket, Keymarkets, which had opened up on the old site of Grattan's Tractors. It was good fun, and we were paid £1.65 for the day, so it was slightly better than having to slog around the streets with 2 ton carrier bikes. Okay, so maybe they only felt that heavy when fully loaded, but it certainly became a mobile balancing act at times. I enjoyed working at Keymarkets, so when my school life was coming to an end and I didn't have any long-term plans, I started there full-time as a Bacon Hand on the Provisions department for £8.00 a week...

5. Yes Madam, can I help you?

2007-04-18T12:35:00.000+01:00

It wasn't too difficult a transition to working fulltime, because I already knew most of the people that I would be working with. I made friends with a fuzzy-haired lad called Chris Brown, who I worked with on the Delicatessen, and we sometimes went out drinking together. He had a zany sense of humour and would love dancing around and making silly noises when you least expected it. It sometimes took an amazing amount of self-control just to remain calm and sensible whilst serving customers. An old guy called Bill taught me how to break down a side of bacon and prepare it into joints or roll it for slicing. Bill retired in my first year, so it left me permanently boning, rolling, jointing and slicing bacon for the counters. It was hard work but I didn't mind. My immediate manager was a guy called Stuart Taylor, and he was pretty cool. He rarely lost his temper and if he did, he soon calmed down again, so work was never too stressful. It was nice to have a little money in my pocket for a change. I paid my lodge money and bought my cigarettes on a Friday when we were paid, and had about four pounds left for myself. I don't know how I managed it, but somehow out of that money, I started to save for my first foreign holiday. I saw an advert in one of Mum's periodicals for 10 days in Austria, Switzerland and Germany for £59. I sent off my deposit and banked a little each week to make sure I had enough saved for my adventure.
In March 1974, I started a new job with Geo. Adams and Sons. They supplied pies and cooked meats to Keymarkets, and after a chat with their driver, who told me that Adams were opening a cooked meats factory at Frampton, about 4 miles out of town, I applied to them and secured a position as a factory butcher.

Keymarkets Store Manager tried to persuade me to stay by offering me a rise to £10 a week, but Adams starting pay was £25 a week. No contest!

The work was quite hard to start with, because I wasn't used to boning meat at speed, and in order to be paid the bonus scheme, we had to bone 9 shoulders and 11 legs of pork an hour. However, I soon got the hang of it, and it became easier. Before too long, I was asked if I wanted to work on the cooking side of the factory, and as it seemed more varied than simply boning meat all day, I accepted. I learned how to inject, cure, press, steam, boil, roast, and 'pot' all the different products, and sometimes worked on packing and pricing them too.

At Adams, I made friends with a guy called Dave Bell who was 10 years older than me, and he weighed 28 stones at aged 28. His wife Margaret was dying of cancer when I first got to know him, and after a few months, she passed away. Dave had met and made friends with Sylvia, the daughter of the lady whose house he'd stayed with in London when he was visiting Margaret. They kept up a phone-to-phone relationship for a few months, and in that time, I used to go out drinking with him in Kirton, just to get him out of the house. He was a very funny guy, and once in the pub would become the centre of attention. He loved to dress up to go out, and would wear the smartest suits and gold jewellery. I guess people thought he was a Mafia 'heavy' or something rather than a cooking operative in a factory. If he was ever embarassed about his size, he never let it show, and would even make jokes about it. One of his party tricks was to bet someone a pint that he could put his own big toe in his mouth. People didn't believe he could do it, but once the challenge was on, he would throw off his shoe, and hoist his leg up until he held his toe between his teeth. With his free hand, he would beckon them to get his pint, and it usually ended in a round of applause. I don't have an old pic of him from when I knew him, but this was him later in life.

He eventually moved to London and married Sylvia and took on her two kids, Tracey and Russell. He found a job at Wall's sausages and settled in to the flat in White City with his new found family. I visited them a few times after that, and I always got on famously with Sylvie. She was a great character, and loved to laugh. Sadly, the relationship didn't last, they split up, and some time after, Sylvia died of emphysema.

Away from work, my Swiss holiday came along in September 1974. I'm sure that Dad would have liked to have gone too, but he and Mum had a wedding to pay for that year. Yes, Barbara and Pete had decided to tie the knot, so the plans went ahead, they married, and they settled into a house of their own in Pinchbeck. Family and friends from near and far came to the ceremony, and the trusty old van was loaded up with their wedding presents to transport to their new home.
On the first week in September , I travelled to Luton the night before my holiday was due to start and went out for a drink with Dave Rimmer who was now living there and working for Dan-Air as a trainee aircraft engineer. We caught up on stuff, and the next day he took me to the airport for my flight. It was all very exciting, as I'd never flown in a commericial aeroplane before. After an uneventful bus-ride of a flight, we landed in Zurich. We boarded coaches to take us to our first hotel in Gersau, a tiny village alongside Lake Lucerne. That first night we rode over mountain roads in the most dramatic and exciting thunderstorm I had ever seen. We had a meal at the hotel, and were shown to our rooms. I went straight down to the lake and stood awestruck at the spectacle of the lightning turning night into day, and floodlighting the mountains.
The next morning, I awoke early to the sound of cowbells. I opened the shutters on my bedroom window, and saw the herds of cows in the distance, way above the village, making their way down for milking. Never having seen a mountain before, I was totally blown away by the beauty of the landscape before me. The little houses with their pantiled rooves appearing slowly through the early morning mist was a joy to behold, and I have to admit that I was so overwhelmed by it all that tears came to my eyes. Well...I was young. And gay. So it's allowed.

It was a fantastic holiday and left a lasting impression on me. Over the next ten days I visited St. Anton, Wildhaus, Vaduz, Damuls, Lucerne, Lake Zurich, Santis, Lake Constance and Munich, and travelled on coaches, boats, mountain trains and ski-lifts. I met some great people on the holiday, including a family from Brighton and three old gals who worked in Woolworth's in Shepherds Bush, London. They all tried to 'look after' me, because I was only 17 and travelling on my own.I have loved the lakes and mountains ever since. If I could speak German and could find a job, I would move there tomorrow.

The holiday came and went, and before long, Christmas 1974 was upon us. Family Christmasses were great fun at that time. Paul and Carol would usually get up early and wake the rest of us, and by 7am, we would all be downstairs surrounded in wrapping paper and smiling faces. Auntie Gertie and Uncle John would come round too, and there would be an hour of mayhem and laughter until it was all over. Auntie Gertie was very special to me. Because of family differences, my maternal grandmother was never around much during my childhood, but Auntie more than made up for it a thousand times over. She was a loving, caring person who was always running around after other people and helping them however she could. Because she nursed her ageing mother for years, Auntie Gertie didn't get married herself until she was 45 years old, but we were her surrogate children whenever Mum and Dad weren't around. Auntie would play with us, make clothes for us, bake her wonderful eccles cakes and sausage rolls for us, start preparing dinner while Mum was at work, help with the washing, gave us pocket money, reprimand us when we misbehaved, and loved us all as much as we loved her. I was grief-stricken when she died, and miss her still. She was one in a million. Christmas wouldn't have been the same without her and John around. Wrapping paper would be cleared away, new toys would be assembled and played with throughout the day, and we always had a huge Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. Fond memories.

At around the age of 17 -18, I started sketching faces in my spare time. I guess I'd always liked drawing and painting, so it seemed a natural thing to do. The early efforts were nothing to write home about, but with practice at least one of two started to resemble the subjects in them. I'm sure I have thrown as many in the bin as those that I've kept, and looking at these sketches of Paul again, I know why!

1975 was I think the last time that the whole family holidayed together. Seven of us now with Pete, we all headed off to the Norfolk Broads for a week aboard 'Juliette I', a big old timber boat hired from Hoseasons. It was a fun holiday, and we cruised around the Broads, stopping at Norwich and Yarmouth and several points in between. One day when we were moored in Yarmouth, we were about to have dinner when we noticed that the boat was starting to list. The tide drops 6 feet at Yarmouth, and our boat was beginning to hang on its ropes. Pete and I jumped out to loosen them off. I loosened my rope on the back end, keeping it looped around the post. Pete inadvertently took his front rope off altogether. The tide was rushing out at this time, and took the nose of the boat with it. The rear rope snapped in my hands. Dad rushed up on deck to see what was happening, but Juliette was already determined to head off out to sea, sideways! The power of the water pushed Juliette into the boat behind, crushing the large wooden rowboat that we were towing. Dad managed to get the engine started mid-river, and struggled to bring her back to the quay. A dredger working in the harbour managed to hook up the rowboat, but it was beyond repair. It was a scary time, but just proves how one small mistake can turn into something much worse. We were all shaken but unhurt, and apart from that incident, we all had a good holiday.

Dad started teaching me to drive in the van. It was a bit scary at times, because it had a column gear change which was not very positive, and if you didn't catch it just right, it could easily slip out of gear altogether, which meant coasting to the roadside where Dad would jump out in a panic, fiddle with something under the bonnet, and the gear lever would work again. It was a big old beast to trundle around in when you're learning to drive, but I soon got the hang of it, and before too long I was doing my three-point turns and parallel parking the same as if I were in a car. My main means of transport at this time was a Honda 50 motorbike. It was actually little more than a moped, except that it had three gears and could reach a top speed of about 45 mph. It served me well and I used it every day to get to work at Adams. I took proper driving lessons with a chap called Major, who only lived about 8 houses down from us. The car was an Austin Allegro, and was the first and I think only car to ever have a square steering wheel! He was a peculiar, pernickety sort of bloke who rarely smiled, and if he saw you crossing your hands on the wheel, he would smack the back of your hand. Weird. Anyway, after 8 lessons with him, I took my driving test in September 1975, and passed first time!

6. Clubbing and Pubbing

2007-04-18T12:30:00.000+01:00

I made some great mates at Adams, and we started to hang out together a lot after work. From hard work during the hot summer of 1975 and working with 750 degree ovens, I lost a lot of weight, which was a good thing. I felt better about myself, and could buy clothes that didn't hang off me. I had already made friends with a guy called Dave Oglesbee, and he and I used to go drinking around town. Then a new guy started who lived in Swineshead, a village about 8 miles out. His name was Graham Harrison, but everyone called him Sos. Even he didn't seem to know why, and said it dated back to his early childhood. Initially, I thought him a little odd-looking, but at the same time, I was strangely drawn to him. He was what was known as a 'cool' guy. Together with another guy from Sleaford, Bill Wilson, the four of us started to go out to clubs together. Sos was already 'in the know' about all the best places to go, and introduced me to a whole new social life. He took me shopping and showed me the kind of clothes I should be wearing, and I already had a love of soul and disco music, so then I learned, by watching him, how to dance! I was so self-conscious to begin with, but as I followed him around the dance floor and picked up more of his steps, I developed a style of my own, and really started to enjoy myself. This is a not very good pic of him crashed out on Mum's sofa. It doesn't exactly show off his animal magnetism! As well as the regular night clubs, Sos took us to 'Northern Soul All Nighters'. These were great venues that usually started at 12 midnight and went on until 8am. There was no alcohol served, but always a good dance floor and stonking music. They had a kind of cult following, and of all the allnighters that I went to, I never saw any trouble. People just got such a buzz from the occasion.

The dancing, the Detroit sounds and the camaraderie were all that mattered. Typical apparel would be sports or bowling shirt, baggy trousers and 'flattie' brogue shoes, which had to have leather soles to make it easier to slide on the floor. Lots of the dancing involved sliding, and to make it easier, as well as a towel, a fresh shirt and soft drinks in your bag, you also needed talcum powder. It made the floor much more slippery and easier to dance on. We went to lot of one-off dances around East Anglia, but also once visited Wigan Casino, where it was all supposed to have started. We got used to seeing the same friendly faces in places like Loughborough, Skegness, Bourne, Peterborough, Kettering, and Cleethorpes, and to help along the sense of belonging to a 'tribe' we used to buy embroidered badges to sew onto our clothes. I used to have all mine on a waistcoat that I wore every time we went to an allnighter. It also made you instantly recognisable to other followers. We had some great nights out.
Another thing that became all too apparent was that by dancing, you were more noticeable to girls. I guess they think that if you are energetic on the dance floor, you could also be energetic in bed! Anyway, suddenly I became 'desirable' for whatever reasons. Sos already had a reputation with the ladies, and they all seemed to want a piece of him. Because I usually ended up on the floor at the same time as him, it wasn't unusual for the two of us to 'get off' with two girl friends. I'm sure I must have been the Ugly Mate who got off with the female equivalent, but I wasn't complaining. It did my ego the power of good. I suppose I also hoped that one of these floosies might actually spark some sexual attraction, but it never happened. Sos and I had one 1-night-stand after another, and there was an awful lot of sexual experimentation went on in dark alleyways, Sos's car, or the girls' houses. I knew that the more I saw of Sos, the deeper I was getting attracted to him, but of course, I couldn't tell him that. And so we went on, doing the dating game, and I guess the only reason I carried it on so long was because it at least gave me a chance to be with Sos. It seems so silly now, looking back, but it was a hell of a different time in those days. You couldn't just up and tell your best mate that you were gay, and desperately in love with them! And, I suppose I kept hoping that somehow it might not be true. Maybe if I waited long enough, and dated enough girls, at least ONE of them might make me spontaneously aroused. Of course it wasn't to be. It's ironic really to think that I now had a reputation as a 'ladykiller', and yet couldn't care less about them. To fake my way through sex, I used to think of Sos, and use a hell of a lot of imagination. In cases where he and I were getting jiggy in the same room with our current girls, it was easy. If I could catch a glimpse of his butt out of my eye corner, I had no problem 'performing' for whichever girl happened to be under me. I know it wasn't fair on the girls, but I didn't know what else to do...

The All-nighters were supplemented by numerous nights in various clubs around the county and beyond. Because I didn't have my own transport in the early days, when the four of us, Sos, Oggy, Bill and myself went out anywhere, we usually went in Sos and Oggy's cars. Sos first had an Austin 1100, but after an accident in which he wrote it off, he bought a Sunbeam Rapier. Flash. Well, it was at the time. Oggy had a beaten-up old mini. It occasionally decided to overheat, and it used to burn oil, producing fumes that somehow managed to seep in under the back seat, so we would often have to ride either with the windows open or in a smokey fog. It's a wonder it got us anywhere, but we did hundreds of miles in it.

One night after a particularly good evening at the Aquarius club in Lincoln, Sos and I had 'pulled', so Oggy and Bill decided to go for some fish and chips. Sos and I left the club with the girls, and we were all laughing and chatting. Suddenly from out of the blue, about 10 or 15 local lads who had been sitting around on a wall launched an attack on us. Sos and I were knocked to the ground, and the fists and boots started raining down on us. "We'll teach you to come to Lincoln and steal our birds!", they said. The girls were screaming and trying to push off our attackers. After a minute or two, they stopped to see how much damage they'd done to us. Sos and I ran for the cars. Luckily, I had Oggy's keys in case I'd wanted to do some necking in the car. Sos leaped into his car with his girl and drove off. I got into the mini with my girl, but the car wouldn't start. Click, click, click. Great. The hoodlums stood watching, then decided on another attack. They tried to open our doors, but we'd locked them, so then one of them decided it would be a good idea to rock the car over with us still inside it, and try to push it into the river! We were parked fairly near to the rickety fence near the river, so I don't think it would have taken too much effort. They kicked and rocked the car from side to side until it was starting to teeter on two wheels at a time. Just then, Oggy and Bill came back over the bridge and round the corner still noshing their chips. Oggy, who was such a lovely, meek lad who wouldn't hurt a fly, suddenly shouted, "OI! What do you think you're doing? That's MY CAR!". In shock, they all stopped and looked around. I unlocked the door to let Oggy and Bill in, and told him it wouldn't start. He calmly said, "Oh it's a bit funny this key. It goes in either way round, but only starts one way round". He took it out, put it back in again and it started first time. We roared off with another few bootmarks on the boot for good measure. We met up with Sos at the other girl's house and nursed our bruises.

On another night in Lincoln, Sos and I had gone back after the Aquarius club to my girl's house. Bill and Oggy went home in Oggy's car. We started to get amorous with the girls, and had gotten to the nitty-gritty stage. Sos was on the floor on top of his girl, and I was on the sofa on top of mine. Suddenly, the lounge room door opened, and my girl's Mum walked in in her nightie! We all froze, and her Mum said, "Oh don't mind me. I'm just making a cup of tea". She wandered through the middle of us, made a quick cuppa, and wandered back to bed again saying, "Have fun, kids". We couldn't believe it, but my girl seemed unsurprised. She just said, "Yeah...Mum's cool like that".

1975 marched on, and one of my favourite places that Sos had introduced me to was 'The Stonehouse' club and restaurant on the A1 between Grantham and Stamford. I started using the membership card of a friend of Sos's from Swineshead, John Spadafora, or 'Spad' as we all knew him. Spad had stopped going, so gave me his card. When we first started going, they had a sunken dancefloor, but towards the end of the year, they did some renovating and changed the floor into a raised figure '8'. When Sos and I were on form, we would take up one half of the 8 apiece and dance the same steps to the same music, like we were some sort of double act! It certainly went down well with the onlookers, and before long, people got to know us by name and started to buy us drinks. We had some great nights in there. Unfortunately for me, Sos started dating seriously towards the end of the year, so he went less often. I went one night with a girl from Boston, and it was the night that they were renewing memberships. Because it only cost two quid to rejoin, but a whole fiver to join as a new member, I thought quickly, and renewed Spad's membership, changing the 'J' to a 'B' for Bob, as I was called by my mates at that time. Over the next few months, I got to know both the owner and his son, Jimmi, who along with the resident DJ Bill, used to spin the records. Nothing would keep me away from the Stonehouse, not even bad weather. I think it was the following year that I'd made my way there with some friends in the worst winter weather, with snowdrifts on the sides of the road. Dad was worried that I wouldn't make it, so he rang the club and asked for Bob Clay. The owner answered the phone, and said "No, we don't have a Bob Clay, but we do have a Bob Spadafora from Boston". My secret was out! Thankfully, he just laughed it off, and bought me a drink for my cheek, and for making the effort to get there.

If I wasn't in a club, I would always try to go out somewhere, even if it was only to the pub. I began to make the Falcon my local in Boston, and I would drink every lunchtime with Sos in the Stag and Pheasant in Kirton. The landlord in there knew we only had half an hour, so he would have our drinks lined up on the bar at 12.30pm. We would rush in, drink the pint straight down and he would already be pouring our second. A quick cheese and onion roll and a game of pool, maybe sometimes followed by a third pint, and we would be back at work at 1pm! I don't think we got so much work done in the afternoons. After work, on a Tuesday or Thursday if I was at a loose end, I would ride my Honda 50 over to Swineshead and drink with Sos in the Green Dragon. I think it was just an excuse to be near him. I knew it was never going to go anywhere with him, because he couldn't have been more straight, but I still foolishly hankered after him. He was slim and sinewy, with a deep booming voice and twinkling blue eyes, and had a confidence about him that was almost cocky, but still I followed him around like a lost puppy. Sos spent more and more time with Jane, and I started to feel very low. At 19, I was checking out every guy that came along, but still kept trying to find that elusive girl that would set my passion alight the way that Sos did. I guess I just wasn't ready to admit to myself that I was gay. The more I thought about it, the more depressed I became.

I tried to go through the motions of enjoying my single, carefree life, and still kept going to nightclubs, parties and discos. Oggy started seeing a girl called Daniella Green in Boston, and in February 76 got engaged to her. She was very quiet and withdrawn, just like I'd always remembered her from primary school, except that now she didn't have the snotty nose. If I did go out it was often with Tony, the son of an older workmate from Adams, John. He asked me if I would take Tony out for a drink because he'd not really got any friends since they moved from Derby. I agreed out of pity, but Tony was such a drip that he used to make me want to scream in frustration sometimes. If we went out in his car, he never drove above 35mph even on the open road. Still, I used to go with him to the Castle Club on the RAF Coningsby airbase, and also to the Sands Showbar in Skegness. I still used to go out for drinks with Dave Bell in Kirton, and tried to hook up with my mates whenever I could. As all my friends kept pairing off, I became quite reclusive, and spent more and more time in my bedroom, drawing and listening to my favourite soul music. Although I was taking driving lessons, I didn't pass my driving test until September 1976, and even then I didn't have a car straight away to drive. And so it meant I had no way of going to clubs when I felt like it, and even then, my favourite people were all off enjoying themselves with partners, something I had yet to do. By March 1976, the depression was getting the better of me.

I was supposed to be going to work one day, but instead I wandered up town early in the morning. I was at rock bottom, and spent the longest time on the town bridge, staring down at the rushing water and the oily thick mud. As miserable as I felt, I didn't have the courage to throw myself off. Instead, I burst into tears and made my way to my Doctor's surgery. After a brief wait for them to open, I was one of the first patients. I explained to my Doc how I was feeling, but still didn't mention that I was gay. He put me on anti-depressants and gave me time off work.

On the upside, Dad bought a Ford Consul for £15 from a workmate of his, Albert Hicks. Albert thought the piston rings were going on it which was why it was so cheap. Dad set about repairing it. He stripped the engine down and found that it was just a leaky gasket causing the problems. After fixing that, it just needed the bodywork touching up, and we were in business. Dad insured me to drive it, and so by September, if he wasn't using it, at least I had a car to drive. It was a heavy tank of a thing, with bench seats in the front and back, and a big skinny steering wheel, but I wasn't complaining. It was transport!

My old schoolfriend Dave Rimmer spent a lot of his time living away whilst training to be a flight engineer, but whenever he came back to Boston we would go out for drinks locally or go to clubs further afield. He passed his driving test before me and bought himself an MGB GT.

It seemed like such a cool car at the time, but in reality, it was a boneshaker to ride in. You had to sit with your legs straight forward in front of you because the seat was only just above the floor. You felt the speed with being so low down, but you also felt every bump in the road! We went in it to the Castle Club at Coningsby, the Sands at Skegness, or maybe went over to Sleaford or Spalding pubs just for a change of scene. If he didn't feel like driving, or wanted to drink more, we would go to a club in High Street, Boston called King Solomons. It was a small dark place with a bar, dancefloor and disco all in the same room, but it was seen as being a 'cool' place to go at the time. The nurses from the town used to spend time in there, so lots of guys wanted to go to see who they could get off with. I dated a couple of them, but not for long, and not very seriously, of course. Dave couldn't understand how I could manage to get girls interested. I told him it was because I danced and they noticed me, that was all. I tried to persuade him onto the dancefloor, but it really wasn't his thing. He was happier propping up the bar and staying out of the limelight. That said, he was a lovely guy and we had some laughs together, sharing a common history through school and after.

The round of clubs and pubs continued with friends Dave Bell, Dave Oggy, Sos, Bill and Dave Rimmer. One night a bunch of us went to see Sweet Sensation at the Sands Showbar in Skegness.They were an eight-piece rhythm and blues act who were popular for five minutes at the time. Their main hit was 'Sad Sweet Dreamer', followed by 'Purely by Coincidence', but then they seemed to sink without trace. We had a good night out, followed by drinks and larking about at home afterwards. This is Dave Bell and Dave Oglesbee playfighting on the floor. Once Dave Bell grabbed you, you stood no chance!

7. More High days and Holidays

2007-04-18T12:25:00.000+01:00

If I wasn't out drinking with friends, I spent almost all of my spare time drawing and listening to Motown and Soul records.I sought out photos of people that interested me, and tried to create a likeness. It kept me out of mischief and gave me something to do. Around the same time, Dad had decided to build a model railway layout in the loft. It became a big project, and filled the entire space up there, with a small area around the loft hatch to sit and control the trains. Dad did all of the wiring for the points and lighting, and I made papier mache mountains and painted the landscape, houses, and little people to populate our 'town'. The excuse for building it was that it was for Paul's benefit, but I think Dad and I did it more for ourselves than anything. Indeed, once it was all finished, Dad and I happily passed control over to Paul and went to leave the loft. He followed us down. Dad asked him, "Do you not want to stay and play then?", but Paul said, "No - I'm not staying up there on my own!". It did still get used from time to time though; we would add bits and pieces and Dad would buy new rolling stock.

In May of 76, I went on a week's holiday on the Norfolk Broads with a pal from work, Paul Willows. Paul was a great laugh, but he did have a kind of hangdog expression about his face. It was this which made Dave Bell decide to give him the nickname Henry, which stuck. At the time, there was a series of adverts on the television for dogfood starring Clement Freud and his bloodhound, Henry. It was a bit unfair, but Paul didn't seem to mind, so Henry he became. I'm not sure how it came about that Henry and I went on holiday together, but it happened anyway. We had a fun week, but the memorable parts were all the mini-disasters that took place. On one occasion as we were travelling along, I was cooking dinner for us both, and called up to Henry to look for somewhere to moor up. Him being inexperienced, he spotted a clearing in some overhanging trees and decided to 'park' between them, not realising that the tide was quite strong. There was an almighty crash from above as he managed to smash through the cockpit windows with the tree branches, throwing saucepans of hot food across the cabin in the process. By the time I'd gone up to see what was happening, Henry had switched off the engine, leapt off the boat and was holding the stern rope in his hand, desperately trying to pull the boat in to shore. The tide was too strong and the boat was being taken with it. I frantically started the engine again, but by this time, Henry had released the rope, which promptly decided to wrap itself around the propellor. We somehow managed to get moored up amidst Henry falling about helpless with laughter. We had dinner, then took it in turns to stand in the river, uncoiling the rope from the prop. On another day, I had been sunbathing on the roof of the boat using the seat cushions from inside the boat. I got up to get a drink just as a gust of wind whipped the seat cushions into the river. We managed to get them back on board with the boat hook, but the foam cushions were filled with river water. We were in hysterics as we were cruising across Oulton Broad, steering the boat and simultaneously pogo-ing up and down on the cushions in unison, in an effort to squeeze the water out. It wasn't very successful, so we decided to leave the seatpads across the table, then turned on the heating and went to the pub. About three hours later, the boat smelled like some kind of fishy sauna! Yuk!

Other days out I remember from the summertimes in those days include visits to Traction Engine rallies at Revesby near Boston, or at Stamford. My cousin Langley and his wife were treasurers for the society, so we used to go along to help support them. Traction engines are big, noisy steam-driven workhorses from a bygone era, but enthusiasts around the country keep them preserved as if they were new.

Along with the static displays and arena events such as tug-o-war between two engines, there was a funfair, stalls and fair organs. There was always a layed back fun feeling to those highsummer days, when the heat would make everything shimmer, and your senses was assaulted by various smells, sights and sounds from new-mown hay in the fields, the slow chuff-chuff of the engines as they built speed, the ear-piercing whistles, the organs, and the smell of fried onions or candy floss from the stalls . One time I went with Dave Rimmer to the Carrington rally, and we took flights in a helicopter around the area, so that was a fun new experience flying around and watching the world skim by under your feet. Good days out.
In September of 1976, I went with family friend Dennis for a week's holiday in Devon and Cornwall. It was the hottest summer on record at the time and everwhere we went, the grass was straw-brown. The week after we went, they introduced stand-pipes in the street because of the lack of water. We rented a basement flat in Ilfracombe, North Devon for £25 for the week. As well as using that as a base to tour Devon, we also took a trip down into Cornwall and stayed in a Bed and Breakfast house at Newquay. We visited lots of places that week, including Clovelly, Croyde, Woolacombe, Lynton and Lynmouth, Mevagissey, Falmouth, Truro, St. Ives, Boscastle, Hartland Point and Lands End. When we got home we realised that we had spent more in petrol than we did in lodgings!

One night, Dennis was almost killed in Ilfracombe when, staggering out of a pub with about 6 pints of 'snake bite' inside him (local cider and Guinness mixed), he wandered out into the middle of the road just as a car came careering around the bend. It didn't have a chance to stop, and I have no idea to this day how it missed him. It was so close that it seemed to drive straight through him. He just laughed, and I had to grab him quickly and try to push him up the hill to our flat where we both threw up and collapsed onto our beds. Cider gives you one hell of a hangover!

It was a good week and we had the best of weather, and on returning, I took my driving test on the 20th September and passed first time! I was independently mobile for the first time!

8. The Long and Winding Road

2007-04-18T12:20:00.000+01:00

At last I was now behind the wheel. I may have been able to point my car in the right direction, but as far as my life was going, I had no idea. I went back to work at Adams to find Oggy had made Daniella pregnant and they hurriedly made wedding plans. Worse still, that Sos and Bill had both decided to move to Sleaford and work at the Ruskington branch. The only love in my life at that time was Sos, although he never knew it. It felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world. It was ridiculous looking back because Sos was never going to be anything more than a friend to me but I was young, stupid and besotted by this funny little guy who had taken me under his wing, given me a social life, and helped improve my confidence a hundredfold. I couldn't imagine going to work and never seeing him again, plus I was being bullied by the factory manager to leave. He had never liked me from the start, when he was still just a supervisor. Because he was a poorly educated country boy, he didn't like the fact that I was more intelligent than him so as a putdown he used to call me ' The Grammar School Puff' even though he had no idea that I actually was one. It was time to leave. I saw an advert for a job at Hargreaves Turkey factory in Spalding and went along for an interview. I got the job, and although I was sorry to leave Adams, Hargreaves promised to at least provide me with a better wage, so it softened the blow somewhat.

If ever there were a case of jumping out of the fat and in to the fire, I had just done it. I was telephoned the week before I started to tell me that I was actually needed to work at Hargreaves pork processing plant at Whaplode, which I had never heard of. When I found the place it was way out in the country, and was actually just a set of converted farm buildings. The Manager had shares in the company, and so was abrupt to the point of being rude, and the work was horrendous. The set-up was a long conveyor belt from one end of the shed to the other. On either side of that at about three feet intervals were single workbenches. A lad moved huge boxes of pigs heads on a forklift into position behind each one, and the job was to stand and bone them out all day, at the rate of twenty per hour, throwing all the meat, rind and fat onto the conveyor where it was sorted at the end. Pigs heads are notoriously tough to bone out at speed. Your knife is continually running up against bone, and catching the teeth just once dulls your knife so much that you are continually having to stop to sharpen it. The shed was freezing cold and was open to the air at one end where the loading dock was, so it felt like working outdoors. The manager patrolled the place like a bull mastiff, barking orders at everyone to speed up, and if you so much as left your workbench to go to the toilet, he followed you to make sure that you hadn't just sloped off for a cigarette. The ten minute tea break and half hour lunch break were timed from when you left the bench to when you got back to it, so provided little respite from the relentless robotic work. Because of the noise of the conveyor and the spacing of the benches, it was impossible to talk to anyone all day either. I was so miserable, and knew I wouldn't stand it there for long. I had to find another job, and quick! Fate took a hand in that on the third day, I was driving the 19 miles to the hellhole when the car engine blew its pistons. The guy I was giving a lift to and I managed to get to work, but it meant that I now had no transport. It was the final straw, and so the next morning, instead of trying to get to work, I walked up to the Jobcentre. There in the window was an ad for a shop butcher at Dewhursts in the Market Place. I went along to the shop, and tried to blag my way into a job. It worked, and the shop manager, Brian Jones, provisionally hired me on the spot. After verification with his Area Manager, I was telephoned and told to start the following Monday. I was so relieved and elated that I didn't have to go back to Hargreaves awful job.

I was still miserable inside, because I knew I wouldn't see much of Sos any more and had to get used to it. I was still trying to go against nature and was unnaccepting of my sexuality. I was still under the impression that maybe it was a phase I was going through and that if I could only find the right girl, I would feel complete, and would fit right in to everyone's idea of a socially acceptable young man. It has to be understood that in the late Seventies, racism and homophobia were widespread. Gangs of lads at night used to round off their drinking sprees by either going 'paki-bashing' or 'queer-bashing'. I remember a lad I had known vaguely at school who was a little more obviously gay. He was walking through the town centre one night when he was viciously attacked by a gang of lads, who punched and kicked him to the ground until he was motionless, and for good measure picked him up between them and threw him through a shop window. My Dad was actually called out to fetch his beaten body into hospital. He was quite seriously injured and suffered broken ribs which meant he had to stay in hospital to recover. Being 19 and realising that if I so much as told anyone that I may have homosexual feelings, the outcome was unthinkable. At best I expected to feel outcast and maybe thrown out of the family home, and at worst I thought that I could be seriously injured or worse. It was such a different time back then. There were no positive gay role models, and hailing from a small town, I knew no others like me, and inwardly felt like a freak. On the television, the only time you ever saw gay characters were as objects of derision or fun. I knew that I was not effeminate, I didn't flounce about and talk in a high voice like Mr Humphries from 'Are You Being Served' or stand-up comic Larry Grayson. Not only was I not like them, I didn't find anything remotely attractive about effeminate men. It made it very difficult for me to see where and how I fitted in. I did once try phoning a number in a two-line classified ad that appeared regularly in the local newspaper. It read "Homosexual men and women in Lincolnshire, phone CHE on (number) or write to PO Box 4". CHE was an abbreviation for Campaign for Homosexual Equality, and although I knew that much, I didn't know what else to expect, but knew I had to at least give it a try. Even then, I was so worried that someone may trace the call back to me that I walked up town to call from a public phone box. The voice that answered was so camp and squeaky, and in my naive mind was everything that society had told me to avoid. I put the phone down, shed a few tears of hopelessness, and vowed to have another go at 'doing the right thing' and finding myself a nice girlfriend.

I didn't have to wait long. Oggy and Daniella were married a year earlier than they had initially planned and being one of his best friends I sat at the head table with members of his family. There were a lot of them. I don't know why, but I only knew one other Oglesbee family in the town and they too had about 10 kids. In Dave's case, he was the second youngest of about eight offspring, his oldest sister being 45, and his youngest sister, Roz was 19. Roz and I hit it off straight away at his wedding reception. She was very much like Dave in temperament, and was quick to laugh, which made her fun to be around. We started dating. Over the next few months, I took her to all my old haunts, and we really seemed to get along well. I still had the nagging feeling that she didn't turn me on sexually, but thought maybe it would change once we got physical. Roz had been holding out on sex because she was still a virgin and wanted to save herself for the man she married. Of course this made it easier for me, because I didn't have to 'perform'. We did a lot of heavy petting in the car and back at her Mum and Dad's house when they had gone to bed, but it wasn't until we had been dating some time that Roz wanted to take it up a level. I asked her if she was sure, and she said she had never been more sure of anything in her life. The moment arrived one night when all her family were out. She took the lead initially, but then left it to me. She was nervous because it was her first time, and I was nervous because I knew that this was supposed to be special. We were both awkward and she wasn't relaxed, which made it difficult so it was possibly the worse 'lovemaking' I had ever done. I thought she would be so disappointed and disillusioned after that night, but the next morning she rang me to tell me how much she loved me, and that I had finally made her feel like a woman. I felt like a heel. There had been no passion involved in it for me, and I had just gone through the motions robotically because it was expected of me, I guess. We continued dating, and occasionally having sex for another few weeks, but when she started talking of wedding plans, looking in jewellers shop windows, and saying how many babies she wanted to have, I started to panic. Not only could I not go ahead with the lie anymore, I also knew that if we did get hitched, I would be ruining her life as well as my own.

The break-up happened unexpectedly. We had been to the Castle Club at Coningsby, but she hadn't wanted to dance. It was all I wanted to do, so I got up and strutted my stuff all evening. On the way home, Roz didn't speak to me. I kept trying to apologise and get her to talk, but she was determined not to. Back at the house, her Mum made us both coffee and then dutifully retired to bed. Roz and I sat on opposite sofas, me looking at her and her looking at the floor. We argued over silly things, and I suddenly found myself telling her, "I don't think this is working out. I think we should give it a rest. I'll call you". She cried, saying that she always knew that she wasn't good enough for me etcetera, and we parted on the doorstep. I drove hell for leather out into the countryside, crying my eyes out. I stopped the car and bashed my had against the steering wheel several times. I was so full of remorse and regret, but at the same time knew that i had no choice but to leave things as they were. I hated myself, I hated what I'd done to her, and I couldn't see how I could ever be happy.

The job at Dewhurts was going okay. I learned how to do the different cuts of meat quite easily, and enjoyed making window displays and serving customers. The guys I worked with, although not the type I socialised with outside of work, were pleasant enough and we had a few laughs. Brian the manager used to throw occasional tantrums when things weren't going his way, but he usually calmed down once the displays were in place, and his panic subsided. I was only 5-10 minutes from home, so even managed to go home at lunchtimes. My social life slowed down somewhat, but I wasn't too bothered. In February 1977 Sos was married, and Bill was his Best Man. I turned up and sat through the proceedings, smiling and congratulating in all the right places, but feeling all my pangs of love and lust being dashed once again. It was not a particularly happy day for me, but I couldn't tell anyone how I was feeling, of course. Why couldn't I find someone just like him who felt the same way I did?

I continued to go to pubs and clubs locally with John's son Tony, and on one occasion went to a nurse's dance at Westland Hall. After a few drinks, I found myself dancing with a cute looking girl called Trudy. By the end of the night, I had arranged a date. She was good-looking enough, and we dated a few times. It was nice to feel part of the crowd again I guess, and be able to have this poor girl hanging off my arm whenever I went out. I was really only coasting along, and didn't take her seriously at all. What made it worse was that I found out that her brother was a lad called Terry that I had fancied from a distance for years! Being at her house and seeing him walking through the room in just a towel after a shower in the evenings only added to my frustration. Trudy finally called it a day when she had to go into hospital for a few days with a dodgy ankle, and I didn't visit her once. She had told the girl in the next bed all about me, and wanted to show me off to her once I turned up to visit. The fact that I didn't, added to the fact that she found out I had been drinking in the Falcon with mates was enough. She wrote me a very polite letter, explaining all this, and that was that. I was single again.

herbie hancock - i thought
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