Chapter One
Beginnings
I
was brought up with the German bombers dropping their deadly blasting bombs. I
remember my mum forcing a gas mask on my face and pushing my pram down the
ginnel to the air raid shelter. Why, I
can even remember the high powered searchlights scanning the sky for the
Luftwaffe German planes. One night my father returned home in Dane Bank,
My school when I
was a young boy was called Duke Street. The playground was a big field full of
air raid shelters which were built for the children to hide it in when the
German bomber planes came from Germany. There was a large chicken wire
fence between my father’s Moorfields engineering factory and this big
playing field. One day I took a pair of pliers and made a hole in the fence,
just big enough for me and my friend to squeeze through. I would often visit my
father's office to have a chat and a cup of tea with him. One day I
arrived at his office and the door was locked from the inside.
Being very agile and a good climber I climbed up the drain pipe at the side of
the office window, and I watched a scene that I did not quite understand. His
secretary Violet Lee and he were drinking what seemed like whiskey. They were
laughing a lot and she was sitting opposite him with her legs open. She then
kneeled down in front of my father as he sat on his office chair, and I
thought, “Oh look, she's examining him”. But in fact she was doing other
things. She then got on top of him and he slid his trousers down to his ankles
as she started to bounce up and down on his lap.
When I got back to
school I told the teacher what I've seen and asked him could I go home to tell
my mother. But I was called a liar and caned on my bare bottom for making a
hole in the fence and, as they said, inventing lies. Several days later I saw
the headmaster of my school with my father in a pub near the school. I remember
them and still remember now how Violet Lee got the job as his
secretary. I did not put two and two together then, but Violet came into our
pub whilst my mother was out at the market, and I saw her talking to my father.
I remember thinking at the time that she looked very similar to my sister’s
best friend.
After I left
school and even whilst at school I would often visit my father in different
pubs around Denton. He had a special car, a Rover, and whenever I was on the
bus or walking around and I saw that Rover I knew he would be in the nearest
pub. And he was nearly always with that same woman who was his secretary, and
later became the mother of his son, my half-brother called Kenneth
Kelly. I remember telling my mother that I had seen my father with
his secretary sitting on his lap in the office doing bounces, and I remember my
sister Glenda telling me, and getting very emotional, that that was not true
and that I was lying. I never mentioned it again to her because she
became agitated and was in absolute denial.
I grew up in the
North of England in and around
James Dean was a
new young film star who suddenly came on the scene (Rebel Without A Cause,
1953), and was extremely fantastically favoured by the girls that loved
his sullen, moody manner, and the way of him being moody, with jeans, jean
jacket, and of course in some scenes, the jeans and a black leather jacket as
worn also by Marlon Brando. This was before the Teddy Boy
fashion. I remember I saved up all my money and went to Manchester on Saturday
afternoon to buy myself a black leather jacket and pair of tight fitting jeans
with a 3 inch turn up at the bottom. I also bought the most beautiful flowery
coloured shirts.
When the Monday
morning came in there was I prancing around Duke Street secondary school gate
in Denton, Manchester. But the school head teacher
would not let me in to the school, she said I looked like I was dressed to work
not to study, and that I must go home and change immediately into my collar and
tie and blazer, with the emblem of the school (which stated LEARN TO LIVE,
but I only wanted to learn to love). Consequently for the next 11 days I sat on
the school steps, wearing my jeans and flowery shirt. That is until the school
authorities sent a school board representative, who took me to a nuns’ school,
in other words a catholic school run by women in long grey robes. Well this
kind of tickled my fancy, so I stayed there for 11 weeks before they let me
come back to a new school called EGERTON PARK SECONDARY SCHOOL. I was
accepted back into the system even with my jeans. They put me into the C class
which is the lowest of the low, but the best class to stay in as I preferred it
because I could laugh and joke all day, instead of filling my head with
nonsense that they wanted to teach us.
My parents were separated
and I lived with my mother who for financial reasons was forced to take in
boarders. We had about 12 men living with us [that is with my mum, my sister
and myself].
Every night I
used to play cards with our lodgers. They taught me many of the tricks of
“Survival” at an early age. Every Friday night they used to get paid so this
meant that they would all go off down to the local pub and get drunk. They
would regularly return home to fight and argue amongst themselves or with my
mum.
I distinctly remember
one night when three of the Irish Navvies returned home and having lost their
keys, could not get in. One of them broke a window to get in. My mum was
furious and told them to get out immediately. One of them pushed her out of the
way and she fell hard on the floor. I heard her scream and so I jumped out of
bed and ran downstairs and pushed one of them.
They all set
about punching me and so I went into the kitchen and picked up a carving knife.
I stuck it right through the main protagonist and it ended up sticking in the
kitchen door. On seeing this, the other two attacked me again but being naked
and far more agile, I managed to push one over the kitchen sink and turn on the
taps so that the handles turned into his head, no doubt causing him much pain.
It was many hours later, after the turmoil of Police cars and ambulances
arriving and leaving that we managed to settle down for the night.
The incident did
not go unnoticed by the local hardcases. "What's
this then? Let's try this geezer out."
The era of the
'Teddy Boys' was just beginning. I had a 'Post-Office' red suit made with a
black velvet collar, Slim-Jim shoe lace tie, 14".bottom drainpipe pants
with an 8" waistband and a special secret pocket in which to carry my
flick knife.
I was about 14 years
old then, and to pay for my fashion fad uniform, I ran away from home to join
the fairground. My first job with them was building up the rides that's
mounting, and putting together the rides. The cock-'n-hens, the waltzer, the caterpillar, the big wheel, then the
surrounding stalls, the coconut shies, drop the tins, roll a ball in the moving
clown's mouth, roll a pennys, by the score, gunstalls, you get a bulls eye and the skeleton pops out of
his coffin, weighing machines, fortune tellers, candy floss and black puddings.
These are sausages made of pigs' blood mixed with sago and stuffed into a pig's
intestine and then tied at each end by a sinew..
I got a job on Mr
Connolly's darts stall working from 10:30 in the morning till the same hour of
the night, walking round and round the circular stall. There were seven
dartboards to take care of. I shouted "Come try your luck, anybody can do
it. Just score under 21 to win a prize." In between times is was running
around trying to avoid the crazy fun loving kids who were throwing darts in any
direction but towards the dartboards.
It was during
those days that I got the first hole in my head where the rain comes in. The
holes are small that's why rain is so thin - oops sorry mate!!
As the night
progressed, the people got increasingly older until 10:30 when the pubs closed
and the drunkards staggered by for a gut mix up. I still remember the stench of
baked apples, black puddings and vomit. There were fights in all directions.
After a couple of
weeks, I graduated to working on the rides. 'The Caterpillar' was the name of
the ride I got to work on. My job was to work in a team with two other boys of
about the same age. We had to be light and agile as we had to jump on and off
the cars as they went around in a circle to the blare of Elvis Presley singing
'Jailhouse Rock' or Wee Willie Harris screaming 'I go ape every time I hear you
call'.
After we had
collected all the money, and a quick nod and a wink to the guy who controlled
the machine, we chose which birds we wanted to feel up and grope. We would stay
in that car and wait until the dark green canvas cover came up and over the top
of us. It would be completely dark and as the ride progressed, there would be
much groping and giggling. Underneath the machine we had several double
mattresses which we used to entertain more individually and also to have a
night's sleep.
It was about that
time I met my brother Jimmy. He was working on a ride called 'The Waltzer' which is a spinning circular platform which has a
number of triangular shaped cars attached to a spindle. On the other two
corners there were two steel wheels that ran on a circular steel track. His job
was also to collect the fares then to terrify the passengers by spinning the
car around even faster as the platform went up and down and round and round.
Soon after I
decided to change rides to work with Jimmy on the Waltzer.
He was earning a lot more money than me. He had learned the traditional art of
robbing the passengers. I soon acquired the knowledge, so we worked as a team.
The idea was to spot which passengers had the most money in their pockets. The
blokes used to carry their money round in their trousers as they would usually
take off their jackets as the spotlights on the rides were so hot. We could get
as many as eight people in each car and during the ride Jimmy and I would spin
the cars round so much that all their money would fly out of their pockets and
go down behind the seats and through the slats of the platform onto the ground
below. Every night we would find our mattresses covered in treasure - money,
cigs, pens, lighters, spunk bags, penknives. In fact everything that one would
usually [or unusually] carry in one's pockets. We became the best-dressed Teddy
Boys in any town we visited.
After about six
months Jimmy and I decided to return home to Denton, which is a small town just
on the outskirts of Manchester. Jimmy had no real parents as he was an orphan
and so I took him home to meet my mum. She liked him so much that she 'adopted'
him and he stayed with us and was treated like the brother I never had.
Jimmy was a
little smaller than me so he was the one that everyone would pick a fight with.
Our environment in those days was so violent that we did not feel we were
living life to the full if we did not have at least one fight per week. We
would attack Youth Hostels, Social Clubs and gatherings in general, if by the
end of the week we had not managed to arrange a punch-up, we would jump on
anyone we could find on the streets.
On returning to
Denton, Jimmy and I joined a local gang. Our headquarters was a local coffee
bar situated on the edge of the local open-air market place. We used to meet
here almost every night and our rowdy conversations were accompanied by the
wails from the juke box.
Our gang
consisted of about 200 boys and of course the chicks. These girls were only
accepted as our friends if they were not virgins. In fact every Sunday
afternoon, we the main leaders of the gang, would make up a 'Top Ten' list of
the most enjoyable sex performers. I particularly remember one girl who was not
very pretty but she used to work so hard to be 'Number One'. She would seduce
up to 20 of us a night. Around the corner from the Coffee Bar was a cotton
mill. We knew a way into the room where they stored all the unprocessed cotton,
so we always had a warm and comfortable place where we could judge our
promising contenders and on many occasions spend the entire night there.
Sunday night was
always 'Barcliff' night, this being the name of our
local cinema. This cinema was owned and run by a very nervous one-armed man.
Our gang and girls would take up the whole right hand side of the cinema in
girl boy sequence in order that we could enjoy 'finger pie' during the film.
The smell of sperm was so overpowering at times it would smell like a bleach
factory. Inevitably one could tell who had been wanked off by the white stains on the front of the
others drainpipe trousers.
On frequent
occasions there would be fights amongst ourselves or the film would break down or
just plain old boredom would cause us to throw odds and ends at any of the
other audience we did not like. This would bring the one-armed owner with his
torch in hand - only one hand so no threat. On many occasions the police would
be called but it's so difficult to arrest 200 of us with only a dozen or so
police. Where would they put us all, anyway? The local jail had only two cells
and they were almost always full with somebody's father, mother or relative.
Eventually the
one-armed cinema owner was taken away to a mental institution, his nerves
totally shattered.
After the cinema
we would all head for the open-air market place. It was a wide cobble-stoned
clearing in the centre of the town. Every Sunday night, the Salvation Army
would collect there to sing their songs and to try to drum up some new recruits
to join God's own army. Naturally our gang would wreak havoc with them.
I particularly
remember that Jimmy and I pretended that we truly believed in God's word. We
told the gang to lay off and we joined the hymn
singing. We listened to their message but in a couple of weeks we had to treat
them badly again as they had started to make our lives a misery. They would
visit us at home at night to continue to try to convert us. Their lines were so
bad: "I got the word one day when I was so down. I heard God speak to me,
I saw the light and now I am so clean, so happy. God is in me. Won't you let
him into your head?"
I became the hero
of the gang again on one of those Sunday nights. The older school bully was
home on leave from the Army. He had signed up voluntarily for five years in the
Red Berets, these being feared by all for their intensive training in unarmed
combat. He was in uniform and accompanied by about twenty other infamous hardcases several years older than us. They had all been
boozing it up in the local pubs and of course now was
the time for the customary punch-up.
The local Police
were taking up their places in the shop doorways around the market place. The
atmosphere was tense as they arrived swaggering and cursing and spitting on
anyone who happened to be in their path. Brother Jimmy, as always taunting and
grinning, was the first target. They circled him then started to kick him. On
seeing that I became nervous, tense and as if hypnotised. I jumped on the back
of their leader - my arch enemy and tormentor. He was the one who had taught me
to hate from an early age and had given me many beatings as a child. I was
terrified by my own actions yet motivated by an inner hatred.
Thud! I hit the
ground as if by instinct. He had thrown me over his head. I was lying on the
ground; the impact had taken away all my breath. I was gasping for air. Walsh
and his bully boys were laughing at my predicament. Walsh began to unbuckle his
heavy leather belt, saying that he was going to whip the hide off me. I then
got my second breath and made a lunge for his balls and with my other free hand
I pulled his trousers down to his knees. In this position I caught him off
balance and toppled him to the ground. I rolled around and got into a position
where I sank my teeth into his balls. He let out a scream like a dog falling
beneath the wheels of an oncoming car.
I then spun round
once again and started using my forehead on his nose. His nose exploded in a
fountain of blood, which covered my face and eyes. His nose was broken and he
screamed for mercy. I heard one of his cohorts say "Okay boys, lets kill the bastard." As they started to pull me
off, Walsh said to them, "Let him go, just let me get to my feet and I'll
teach him a lesson"
We parted and
stood up. Walsh pulled off his coat and I followed his example. Just as my coat
was half off and my arms were constricted by my sleeves, he lunged forward and
grabbed the back of my coat spinning me round at the same time. Holding the
tail of my coat over my head he punched upwards, hooking me under the chin,
then in the eye. I realised in a flash of pain that I must go down to the
ground again and so I dropped face first.
As Walsh stepped
back I was preparing for the inevitable kick, to put the boot in as we called
the coup de grace of street fighting. I was prepared. I caught his foot in
mid-air and sprang back to my feet, his foot in my hands. He lost balance and
fell backwards. As he landed on his back, I jumped on him feet first. I felt his
ribs crack beneath my weight. The fight was over. His friends moved in for the
kill but the police, up till now just acting as spectators, now took action.
Seeing that Walsh was done for, they all came forward with their truncheons
swinging.
There was little
resistance and in a short time the gang was surrounded and under control. The
police inspector told me that I had won fair and square but it would be
advisable for me to disappear off the streets for a while. An ambulance took
Walsh to hospital and my gang celebrated the victory by hoisting me above their
shoulders and carrying me round to the coffee bar singing 'For he's a jolly
good fellow'.
Before I bought
my bright red Teddy Boy suit, I worked as a Beam
Carrier at Ashton Brothers mill, in the Lancashire town of Hyde. We started work at 7:30. The sound of the thousands
of women millworkers walking in their wooden clogs was enough to wake me up. My
job as a Beam Carrier was to change gigantic bobbins on the weaving looms. But
first thing in the morning I had to clean literally thousands of shuttlecocks.
After removing the cotton that was left on the inner bobbin, I had to then
paint them with linseed oil. The large four foot long beams were delivered by
me on a two wheeled trolley with iron wheels. The mill was on both sides
of Hyde Road, and I had to traverse the road by tunnel. The three weaving sheds
contained a thousand looms in each. The noise of those many looms was so
loud that even when I shouted at the women
operators I could not be heard. And anyway most of the women were deaf,
deafened by the excess noise, so we had to learn lip reading and sign
language.
I changed the full bobbins of now woven
material for new empty ones, then wheeled my heavy laden trolley to the
combing sheds, where the material was inspected,
and the stray cotton removed by very randy girls. Maybe it was because
I was a good looking lad that I regularly got seduced by those younger shed girls. They used to take turns to be the ones
that got my attention. When the dinner siren blew, I found it better
to hide away in the raw cotton shed to eat my midday sandwiches, as I was
drained of energy, and the three thousand women weren't. On reflection I
realise now, most of the menfolk had been killed in the war, sooo I was a good filler-in.
Around this time we
started to spend our nights visiting neighbouring towns. This usually coincided
with the nights when there would be a local dance. To raise cash for our
extravagant clothing and lifestyle we used to rob shops and supermarkets etc.
One of our gang was an apprentice engineer and he made about ten collapsible
jemmy-bars which we could hide up the sleeves of our jackets.
We would first go
to the pub and have a few bevvies, the favourite being Black Velvet. This was
Guinness and Cider which when mixed together made one hell of an unholy
concoction. Three of these gave sufficient Dutch courage to face up to whatever
devilment the night would hold for us.
We would then
split up into groups of about five, as 50 to 100 of us together would not be
allowed in for obvious reasons. In our Teddy Boy
clothes we'd go to a dance hall. We would carry the little crowbars, the jemmy
bars that were specially made to collapse and hide up our sleeve. We'd go into
a dance hall and once inside we would make ourselves well and truly recognised
- then we would switch clothes with each other to create sufficient confusion.
By now we would have found an exit-door and about ten of us would make our
temporary exit and go about pillaging. Our method of entry into the various
premises which we chose to pillage, was by removing
the mortar and bricks around the windows or doors, so it was necessary to
choose old properties. Down the ginnel and over the backyard wall, and then out
with the ten crowbars; working in harmony, we made short work of the red bricks
and mortar. We would steal as much as we could carry in our pockets, cash being
the main target, followed by cigarettes, then small pocket-sized items such as
lighters, watches and pens. On returning to the dance hall, we would re-enter
the same way we left.
The headlines in
the local newspapers used to say "The Wall Wrench Gang Strike Again".
After several months of this, we became the richest teddy boys in Manchester.
We each had at least a dozen or so Teddy Boy suits,
each one being more elaborate than the other. Every suit being of the brightest
colours we could find. We had our shoes specially made with thick wedge heels,
usually with pointed toes. The thick rubber bottoms would hide the embedded
razor blades, which would cut deeply into our enemies if we were lucky enough
to put in the boot.
The gang became
known as the Rainbow Boys. When we were together in a team the colours were
seen for miles, and our enemies quickly disappeared, so we had to go even further
and further afield looking for a good time.
Transport became
our problem because the big red double-deck buses that usually carry about 72
passengers refused to carry more than 10 of us at a time. Consequently to move
our gang from one town to the next took hours. We retaliated, of course, by
wrecking a few buses, but this only made matters worse, as the bus drivers
simply refused to stop at the bus stops when they saw us waiting, so we decided
to pool our resources and buy a lorry, a second-hand ex-builders truck. Siggy was nominated to be the driver, as he was the oldest
amongst us.
One night we
decided to rob a supermarket. Now we had transport and could carry more loot
with us, so off we went in search of a supermarket that sold liquor. Our entry was easy as usual, and our loot of
crates of whiskey and rum was loaded up with much excitement. Siggy left his trademark by shitting a nice long turd on
the bacon slicer. Now we had our loot of canned food, chocolate, liquor and
cigarettes, where were we to hide it?
After several
hours of discussions, we decided to hide it in the abandoned mine shaft on the
edge of our own town, situated in the woods in an area of farmland. This way we
could all visit our spoils any time we wanted to. We just had to take a walk
across a couple of miles of fields
Several weeks
later it was Siggy's birthday so we invited all the
girls to the mineshaft for a party. Everybody got paralytic drunk, since many
of us had never tasted rum or whisky before. Now we had boxes of the stuff. Siggy was so pissed that he went out into the field and
returned with a handful of cowshit, which he stuffed
inside the, fanny of one of the girls. This sent the girls crazy with disgust,
and they ran away.
The next thing I
remember was police, lines and lines of police coming over the fields and over
the hills. We scattered in all directions, but we were so drunk that all we did
was fall down in the mud. We were collected together and taken to the main gaol
in Manchester. It seems that all the local police forces had banded together to
finally round up the "Wall Wrench Gang". We were all charged and
released on bail until our case came up at the local Juvenile Court, which was
to be held some weeks later.
I was about 14
years old by then. I distinctly remember my fifteenth birthday was due and I
made a count of how many times I had had sexual relations with different girls.
I counted 86. About the same time I was once again thrown out of school for
shooting a home-made dart into the head of our English teacher with a pea
shooter.
I decided it was
time to leave home to discover new lands so I set off for a fish market and
caught a lift on the back of a lorry to Grimsby, a fishing port many miles
away. The ride was the first real experience in discomfort I can recall. It was
winter at the time, and the lorry was completely open at the back. The inside
of the open platform was lined with steel - freezing cold steel. It was snowing
and windy and I was well dressed in my warmest clothes, but not at all prepared
for those 10 hours of absolute agony. The noise of the rattling wagon was
enough to deafen. To reach Grimsby, we had to cross over the Pennines. I cried
to myself as the lorry rattled on through the freezing night.
We finally
arrived at the docks at 6am where the fishing trawlers were unloading their
night's catch. I was immediately employed, and within days I was offered a job
on a trawler which was due to leave for the North Sea. The only requirement was
that I was to have a gutting knife, a pair of waist-high boots, and a polo-neck
oiled wool sweater. I borrowed these from a new-found friend and I was off.
It was 5am on a
cold wet and windy morning when we set sail into the fierce and unfriendly
North Sea. I was told that our fishing area was to be somewhere around Iceland
and that it would take about a week to get there. Three trawlers set out at the
same time for the same destination. On board our boat there was a crew of 10
including the Captain. My job was general deckhand.
Within a few
hours of setting sail I became seasick. Every time I stood up, I threw up. I
could not eat or drink and I remained in this state for almost the whole trip
out to the fishing grounds. During the last two days before reaching our
destination, the sea became calm and I managed to eat. I therefore managed to
gain some of the weight that I had lost and regained some strength. I was given
a knife and was shown how to gut the fish.
It soon dawned on
me that the only thing that we were going to eat on the whole trip was fish. We had been trawling lines since
we left Grimsby so we caught a large fish every day in the nets, which we
lifted every two hours of trawling.
There were only a
few days of calm before the storms came again and I was again back to being
seasick. I was excused from work and went to the crew's quarters to lie down
This was a small area, about 15 feet by 12 feet situated at the pointed end of
the boat and of course the worst place to be in a storm. It was the noisiest
and most offensive place that one could imagine. The boat would rise up about
30feet, pointed end first, and with a terrifying pound would drop down again
like a very fast elevator. Suddenly I heard a shout "All hands on
deck" but I was so sick, every time I lifted my head off the bunk, I started
to retch and so I stayed where I was.
The next day it
was a little calmer again so I was ordered to the bridge as the Captain wanted
to speak to me. On the way, past the galley, the cook asked me to take a mug of
tea up to the bridge for the Captain. What? I thought. How? It appeared to me
that two hands would not be enough to hold on never mind one plus a mug of tea.
I would give it a try though. I almost made it but as I got to the last step of
the iron ladder that led to the doghouse on the bridge, a huge wave hit the
boat. Had I not let go of the mug and used both hands to cling on, then I would
now be just another part of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Skipper was
waiting for his tea and of course his favourite mug that his son had made for
him in his school pottery class. When I arrived empty handed, he lost control
of his temper and slapped me across the face. I fell down. He then picked me up
and shook me like I was an empty potato sack. He had no mercy left for that
lazy, snivelling, landlubber boy and he was going to punish me to the extreme.
Who was going to listen to my word against that of a ship's Captain?
I was ordered to
go and work below deck. I was given a pick axe and shown how to break the ice
into powder chip then line each of the trays on which the fish were laid to
keep h them cold. The men above were constantly requiring more and more trays
and below I was slipping and sliding about with the movement of the boat. My
hands were cut to ribbons and my feet almost frozen solid. Thanks to the
clothes I was wearing, I did not cut my body but I was so bruised I was blue
all over. This torture lasted for 4 weeks in intervals of 3 hours working then
one hour off.
On returning to
Grimsby we learned that the other two trawlers working for the same company and
fishing in the same area, that had left at the same time as we did, had been
lost in the storms with all hands missing. Instead of feeling sorry for myself,
I felt elated. I was again a survivor. I was not prepared to go again. Once was
enough for the time being. I returned home by train and fell asleep on the
floor in the lounge of our house for three days.
I then started
working for an industrial painting firm. I altered the age on my identification
papers from 15 to 18. In this way I could earn more money and also be allowed
to go to the higher parts of the steel framework, therefore earning additional
'danger money'. This job paid well but came to an abrupt end.
During the break
for dinner and tea, we used to play cards for money. One day I won all the
money off my partners as I had learned how to gamble at a very early age. When
I refused to continue to play in order to give them a chance to win back their
money, they became violent and I had a fight with the foreman.
It didn't take me
long to find another job, often working in all weathers as an anti-corrosion
expert at heights of 280 feet. I was looked on as an all-weather man. Winter
was setting in so outside jobs were becoming plentiful as the summer workers
moved into the inside jobs, cotton mills etc.
The local
brickyard, 'Jackson's', had vacancies for 'ponies'. These were the men that had
been sturdy enough to stick it out for a winter were then allowed the privilege
of moving up the track to work in the baking kilns stacking the bricks to be
baked hard. I started work as a 'pony'; the job got its name from the animal
that used to pull the trucks before the RSPCA stepped in and stopped the use of
these animals. The ponies were constantly breaking their legs by stepping
between the wooden sleepers on the tracks. The mud between the sleepers was
very sticky and the ponies would trip over, and the heavy metal tipper trucks
that they were pulling rolled backwards breaking their legs. This meant that
they had to be destroyed there and then, and the RSPCA deemed this to be a
cruel practice and so humans replaced the animals.
The strong humans
that replaced the ponies had to push the trucks instead. The trucks were all
metal with heavy steel wheels like miniature ore carrier trucks that one often
sees passing by pulled by a steam train. The trucks were pulled up a high ramp
on long metal cables to a height of 200 feet where they were detached from the
cable and then the contents of clay was tipped out into a hopper. The clay
passed through a set of grinding wheels and was then ready to be moulded into
bricks and then baked. The bricks were intended for the local construction
industry. The trucks would be attached once again to the cables as they
descended the ramp. We would be waiting at the bottom, two of us per truck. We
had to push the trucks along the rails to the digging machine. We were open
cast mining for the clay and we were about 50 feet below ground level working
in the open air in all weathers. Snow, wind, rain or sun we would continue to
work: the whole plant was a great machine and we were just small cogs in a big
wheel. The tracks would flood after a rainfall and sometimes we would be
working knee deep in freezing cold mud.
The rails went
off in six different directions with two people working each rail. All the
other ponies were Italians, contracted workers who could not get work in their
own country. They were prepared to sign for two years work and if they refused
their work they would owe the company a fine plus their fare to and from Italy.
I was bored because I had nobody to converse with at work. They would jabber
away in Italian so I used to relieve my frustration by playing practical jokes
on my fellow ponies. It was so funny to see them get excited. One day, I had a
wonderful idea. On my way to work, I had to cross over a few fields, in which
there were small ponds. This particular time of year frogs were breeding and
the water was full of frogspawn. I decided to collect a cup full of the
frogspawn and take it with me to work. On arrival I secretly put a little of
the frogspawn in each of the Italian's thermos flasks. It sank to the bottom of
their coffee, and was not at all noticeable. I could hardly contain myself for
the rest of the morning just waiting for the morning break siren to blow.
I'd heard that
the Italians would eat almost anything, so I was curious to see for myself what
their reaction would be. It started to snow very hard so our work that day was
extra hard because the cold steel of the trucks almost froze our hands to the
metal. After what seemed like the longest three hours of my life the siren
finally blew, and everybody rushed to the cabin for morning refreshments. The
hot coffee was waiting. We all sat down on old oil drums and jabbered away as
we eagerly poured the coffee into the cups. First one cup was consumed, then
two. I waited and watched, and I drank my tea, then the third cup was poured,
and eagerly consumed once again. I was beginning to think that the frogspawn
had melted, and suddenly one of them, Arturo by name, spat the contents out of
his mouth onto the floor and jabbered away very very
excitedly. All twelve together began to examine the blob on the floor. One by
one the others let out a scream. Arturo ran out of the cabin and retched
uncontrollably into the snow. This was more than I could stand. I could not
stop myself from laughing and this gave the game away. They realised that I
must have been the one that sabotaged their sacred coffee. There was a quick
jabber amongst them, and then three of them made a lunge for me. They took me
unawares and held me down in the snow, as they were debating my fate
Within minutes
they had decided. I realised myself when I saw them nailing two large pieces of
wood together in the form of a cross what they had in mind. After attaching the
cross to the scoop of the digging machine, I was sure their intention was to
crucify me. I was terrified. I was also aware that struggling was of no use so
I pretended to pass out.
It was not until
they took a nail and a hammer to my hand that I totally freaked. I saw the
blood spurt out of the small hole they had made in the back of my right hand.
It appears that the blood also shocked the other two who were holding my legs
down, and they relaxed a little. They released their hold a little on me and I
kicked out, kicking both of-them in the face and they fell back. I used my legs
now to twist around, thus escaping the hold that the others had on me. I
screamed as if I had gone totally crazy, and took out my sheath knife. Arturo also
drew a knife. Before he had time to even menace me, I jabbed and cut him across
the face. On seeing this, one of the others pressed the emergency alarm button
that was installed in the driving cab of the digging machine a deafening
ear-piercing siren sounded. The last time I heard a sound like that was in a
newsreel of a German bomber raid on England. Immediately the whole factory
stopped working. The machinery in the grinding tower became ominously silent.
That silence in itself was enough to quell the upheaval of the frogspawn. In
what seemed like no time at all, the foreman of the plant came running to the
scene. He saw the bleeding face of Arturo and after exchanging a few words in
Italian, he turned to me and said "Kelly, You're sacked so get the hell
out of here or I will personally crucify you myself." I left immediately
and returned home.
The next day,
Jimmy also got sacked from his job. He had been working for the local church as
a gravedigger but he was discovered burying the wrong people in the wrong
graves. This was a scandal that was to continue for several months, as many
families had to go to the expense of digging up the dead to see if they were in
fact the right corpses. Now there were two of us without employment. We decided
to go into business for ourselves. Our first venture was to be suppliers of
chopped firewood. As it was November there were plenty of piles of wood around
because Guy Fawkes Day and Bonfire Night was due. All the local kids would go
around and collect all the scrap pieces of wood that they could find and stack
it on the old bomb sites, of which there were still plenty during the
mid-fifties. At night Jimmy and I would take our home-made carts and go round
the bonfires under construction and steal all the best pieces of wood. We
chopped these up into small fire-place sized sticks and then we would bind them
with wire into bundles about 20 inches round by 7 inches long. During the day
we would load up the carts and go from door to door in the local neighbourhood
to sell the bundle of firewood for 3d per bundle. We earned enough to buy a
small car in no time at all. Now we were in the money and still only 15 years
old and had our own profitable business.
One night two
friends and I went out to the next town on the bus. We spent most of the night
in the pub showing off our new found wealth, buying everyone drinks and getting
drunk ourselves. We were in a dangerous predicament for two reasons.
1.
We were not with the rest of our gang and so did
not have the benefit of their protection;
2.
I was on the black-list of the local Gypsy
hard-cases.
I had by now an
infamous reputation which had to be taken from me. I had recently gone into
direct competition with the Gypsies by selling firewood. This had always been
their fiddle and they felt robbed by this young house-dweller. They waited till
the pub closed. After leaving the pub, we went next door to the local chippy
where we all bought fish, chips & mushy peas wrapped in newspaper so that
we could eat them on the way home. The owner of the chippy recognised me as he
knew my father. He said that he had worked with my father in the pub. He warned
me that the Walches had been in his chippy earlier
and that they were waiting to beat us up somewhere nearby. On hearing this we
each bought a steaming hot Steak & Kidney pudding. We were prepared. We
thanked the chippy owner and cautiously set off for the bus stop.
We knew that the Walches would be waiting for us, hiding,
somewhere within a couple of blocks from the bus stop and we approached that area
with caution. We prepared ourselves by unwrapping the
scalding hot Steak & Kidney puds. I nudged my pal
Pete; there ahead of us in the ginnel to the right I could see a foot. They
knew we were approaching and were waiting to take us by surprise. To their
surprise, we crept up on them so quietly that they thought that maybe we had
turned back. One of them decided to take a look. I was waiting, Steak &
Kidney pud at the ready. SQUELCH!!! Then a loud
scream of agony as the pudding aided by the full force of my hand landed right
on target in the middle of his face. He was screaming like a scalded cat. I
quickly finished him off with the full force of my pointed stiletto boots right
between the legs.
One
down.
Two to go!
Pete had landed
the second pud and Dave my other pal had put the boot
in.
One to go!
This time it was
a running tackle by me, for the third one being so terrified by the screams of
his pals, had taken flight running into the middle of the road. I chased him
and with a rugby tackle that my old P.E. teachers
would have been proud of. I brought him crashing to the ground. He hit the
ground with such force that he lay motionless, so I kicked him a couple of
times to make sure.
Now
to split the scene.
Right on cue our
bus came round the corner and as it slowed down we just jumped on it without
waiting for it to stop. On arrival at our destination a welcoming committee
from the local police station met us. There were six of them waiting for us in
a van. We were all arrested and taken back to the police station and later
charged with causing Grievous Bodily Harm. After charging we were all herded
into another van and taken the five miles to HMP Strangeways Prison. We were
locked up there until our trial, as the Police would not grant us bail. This was
because apparently the men we beat up were very badly injured and one of them
had still not regained consciousness and there was a possibility that he might
die.
Four months later
we appeared before the Judge in Manchester Crown Court. The trial only lasted
one day. Pete and Dave were older than I was and so they were sent to prison
for 18 months. I was due to be sent to a boys detention centre but because my
solicitor pleaded that I had been badly misled by the older boys. I was sent to
a sea training school in Botley, near Southampton. I
agreed to stay there until such time as I was sufficiently trained to take my
place as an Able Bodied Seaman. The Sea School was named T.S. WARFLEET.