Thursday, March 31, 2011

The circus

Big Top? Not for me thanks

I once worked at a circus.

You’ll notice I said ‘at’ instead of ‘in’, and when I said once I meant it quite literally.  While still in the 6th form a friend heard that a visiting circus was paying ready cash to labourers helping take down the big top and all the other paraphernalia after its final engagement in the Quarry, a park in Shrewsbury town centre.  So having found out more, off we trouped (see what I did there?) to earn a bit of easy cash.

There was a time as a small boy when I adored being taken to the circus.  There was a good one in Blackpool, the highlight of which was the very climax of the show, when the lights were lowered completely for a while, only to come back up to reveal that the ring had been filled with water (complete with fountains), and around its perimeter long legged ladies paraded in white feathered costumes along with the other entertainers, the whole spectacle bathed in a deep blue light to give a magical, almost Disney effect.

As I got older the circus became much less enchanting. The clowns ceased to be funny (big shoes and cars that fall to pieces haven’t been my kind of humour since I was still in short trousers) and over time they took on a sort of creepiness which to this day I find slightly disturbing.  As you get older you also become more aware of things like the amount of make up applied to the artistes’ faces (presumably with a trowel), and the sawdust and animal droppings spattered up the back of the ladies’ flesh coloured tights.

However, at 17 years of age I was glad of the chance to earn a few quid, but it really was back breaking work. The first thing I noticed as we started to pack up the circus was that everyone else seemed to know what they were doing, whereas I hadn’t a clue. However it didn’t matter much, because I didn’t actually need to use my initiative or understand the bigger picture. I just had to run, lift, push, pull, fetch, carry or heave as and when instructed. There was no Personal Protective Equipment on offer, not a hard hat in sight, so you had to keep your wits about you, what with metal gates, fencing, ropes and wooden benches being swung about all over the place, much of the time in virtual darkness.  The speed with which everything was dismantled and loaded onto lorries was impressive, considering the sheer amount of equipment involved.  It looked like chaos, but there must have been a plan.

A couple of hours later we queued up to be paid off by the foreman. My mate and I could see handfuls of notes being thrust into the hands of the other casual labourers ahead of us.  These guys were much older than us and I imagine otherwise unemployed, so had far greater need of the money than we did. Even so, when our turn came we were more than a tad disappointed to be given just £2 between us.  It might have been 1977, but a wage of 50 pence an hour was still pretty rubbish.

My mate questioned this paltry sum. “Take it and fuck off!” we were told with no small amount of menace.  The foreman and his cronies were big ugly buggers, “well ‘ard” you might say, so we took the money and just made it to the nearest pub before closing time, where we quickly converted our hard earned cash into whatever beer and crisps it would stretch to.  The refreshment was most welcome, but if I’d felt any lingering fondness for the circus it had now gone completely. Bunch of bloody clowns if you ask me.
Not funny, not funny at all you creep!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

No beard and no sandals


Not a good look and no they're not my legs ...

I was a social worker for around 5 years during the 1980s. This wasn’t the fulfilment of a long held ambition, rather it was something I stumbled into almost by accident. I’d come out of university with a degree in German which would prove to have no value in finding a job for almost another decade (more of that another time), so I returned to live with my parents. Kicking around on the dole and getting nowhere with job applications, my father (who was Director of Social Services) got me working as a volunteer in a children’s home.  Staff shortages eventually led to me being taken on as a paid casual employee, something which displeased the Director greatly when he found out. He told me he couldn’t risk claims of nepotism, and if I didn’t find employment elsewhere he would sack me!
I got a job as a Social Work Assistant in a residential Family Centre in a neighbouring authority. The Family Centre was in effect a short stay Children’s Home, the idea being that the staff would work with families to get their kids back home again. Nice in theory but very difficult in practise. A lot of the kids came from backgrounds of physical and emotional neglect, sometimes downright abuse. And many of the older ones were remanded into care by the juvenile courts for a range of crimes, mostly burglary and joy riding.
It was a fascinating environment to work in, albeit stressful and sometimes physically challenging. I lost count of the number of fights I broke up, the number of times I had to deal with kids high on glue, the number of PACE interviews I sat in on at the police station. I’ve been attacked by kids with scissors and had to disarm a boy trying to knife another resident. Successes were few and far between and never acknowledged, failures were splashed across the local newspapers. It was supposedly a rewarding job, but the rewards were private indeed.  I could never tell people I met what I did. I would just say I worked for the council; to say I was a social worker would often invite ridicule and hilarious questions like “Where are your beard and sandals?”, which was marginally better than being referred to as a “do-gooder”, as if doing good were shameful.
I began to hate it; the stress and the shift work with its ‘sleep-in’ duties 2 or 3 times a week were taking their toll, I just couldn’t get into a proper pattern of sleep and I was drinking more than was good for me. It wasn’t the work itself, it was the environment – always tense, always explosive. And yet while I didn’t want to remain in residential social work, I would have happily transferred to field work.  I had been promoted (which allowed me to drop the term ‘Assistant’ from my job title), and the authority ran a secondment scheme to enable staff to obtain a post graduate qualification at a local university. A couple of my colleagues had taken this route, so I was confident I too could make a career for myself. I was mistaken; in a startling piece of discrimination in a work environment where we were all supposedly ‘right on’ and politically aware, I was told I could not be released on secondment because of a shortage of male staff in residential settings.
So I left.  I sat the civil service entrance exam to take a job in the MOD, and a 20% cut in salary.  My wife (who also worked in a children’s home) convinced me it would be for the best. I was still only in my 20s, but she said “You have to get out now. Can you still see yourself running around after teenagers when you’re in your 40s?”
I’m left with mixed feelings about my time as a social worker. In some ways it shaped me for the better, in others it damaged me. On balance I don’t entirely regret it but I’m glad I left when I did; it’s a tough, almost thankless job, and unfortunately someone really does have to do it. So next time you read some lazy journalism or hear some tired old stereotype about social workers, give them a break, eh?

Friday, March 25, 2011

Crash bang wallop

Army Air Corps Gazelle

As a claims officer working in Germany for HM forces I would sometimes have to visit the scene of air crashes involving military aircraft.  Crashes were like buses; none for ages and then 2 or 3 seemed to come along at once. My job was to make an initial assessment of the damage to the landowner’s property and try to keep any subsequent damage to a minimum. With the exception of pollution to the soil by aviation fuel (the smell of which is unmistakeable), most of the damage was caused not by the crash itself, but by the recovery operation.  I remember the Royal Engineers  going to great lengths trying save a field full of rapeseed from the effects of the huge low loader trucks, which were being used to recover a small Gazelle helicopter lying in the middle of it.  It was a curious sight in the midst of this bright yellow crop which painted your clothes with a golden dust.

Sadly, air accidents sometimes had a human cost. I recall an army Lynx helicopter crash in about 1994 when 2 soldiers were killed. We were all kept about 200 metres away from the scene until a doctor arrived to certify them dead, but frankly you didn’t need a medical degree to do that.  Even from a distance there was no doubting what the charred remains were.  While we waited we were greeted by an ashen faced Lieutenant Colonel, whom my colleague happened to know.  He had actually been in the helicopter.  It had dropped him off, taken off again and promptly crashed.  It was a last minute decision for him to get out when he did, and the poor man was still shaking like a leaf hours afterwards.
Fortunately, pilots of jet aircraft are usually able to eject to safety. This was the case quite soon after the Lynx tragedy when an RAF Tornado crashed on land belonging to a German ‘Graf’ or Count.  After being introduced to him, the aged but rather dapper Graf drove us in his truck through a forest to the remains of the stricken aircraft. He seemed a little tetchy, which is fairly understandable, but nobody intentionally crashes a fighter jet.   After a while he stopped in a clearing where the trees were sparse and unhealthy looking. “This”, he informed us “is where an RAF Harrier crashed on my land in 1975”.  He still seemed quite annoyed about it 20 years later.
We continued to the site of the Tornado crash and went about our work – taking photographs, measurements, soil samples, etc.  I was intrigued by a number of very deep craters, some filled with water.  They were clearly nothing to do with the Tornado, but they seemed out of place in a wooded area.  The Graf soon enlightened me.  “That is where the RAF bombed my land during the war” he said.  He had a rather hurt look on his face, even after 50 years.  “It’s nothing personal” I replied smiling.  There was an awkward silence for a few seconds; I waited for some cutting remark, but instead he laughed.  Possibly he liked my merry quip; but more likely it was because I chose that same moment to step into a ‘puddle’ which turned out to be an 18 inch deep hole.  It wasn’t much revenge for him after half a century, but it was better than nothing.

Tornado GR4


Saturday, March 19, 2011

What a load of rubbish

Kim and Aggie have let themselves go since they were in Abba ...

I generally think of myself as being fairly tolerant of my fellow creatures and content with the world, although for the life of me I can’t think why I should entertain such a smug image of myself.  In reality I know for example that if I were ever famous enough to be a guest on the TV programme Room 101, I could easily produce so many pet hates, they’d have to open up Room 102 as well.  The programme of course took its name from George Orwell’s “1984”, in which a room of that number contains the worst thing in the world in the mind of whichever social miscreant is being forced to enter it.  Orwell himself named it after a room at the BBC where he had sat through interminable tedious meetings.  That sounds horribly familiar; as a civil servant I feel his pain.
I don’t know if my Room 101 nominations could reduce me to betraying someone I love, as happened to  Orwell’s Winston Smith (forced to face – quite literally – his fear of rats), but they certainly piss me off enough to gnash my teeth and mutter darkly.  I won’t bore you by listing them all (there are far too many and in any case, people who never know when to shut up are also on the list), but right now I’m brooding about just one.  It’s not actually at the very top of my list; I’ll bore you with that one some other time.
I hate litter.  I despise it.  I was fortunate enough to live in Cyprus for a few years, and at the right time of year (April-May after weeks of rain followed by glorious sunshine), it is a green, bright, warm and lovely island, except that is for the sheer quantity of rubbish strewn about everywhere.  And I don’t just mean bits of paper and cigarette ends; I’m talking discarded oil drums, fridges and cars.  Mind you, the Cypriots have all sorts of disposal problems, and not just because of limited landfill space.  The plumbing, and presumably the lack of a decent water treatment system, is such that the majority of toilets are not designed to accept loo roll.  So instead the loos in public places usually have a frankly terrifying ‘poo-bin’, into which the used paper is gingerly deposited and eventually emptied by some poor sod.  Sorry if you’re trying to eat while reading this; suffice to say that Cyprus is a very hot country and, well …. you get the idea.
Please don’t think I’m having a go at Cyprus, because I’m not.  It’s the litter I hate, and let’s face it there’s plenty of that on our own doorstep.  Nowhere seems to escape.  It’s bad enough seeing it on the streets or under a hedgerow, but I once found a discarded car battery just below the summit of Snowden.  I have never been able to fathom how it got up there, and more to the point, why.  How can it possibly be less trouble to carry a car battery up a mountain than take it to a council tip?
Did I do my civic duty and carry that car battery down the mountain for proper disposal?  No, I bloody well didn’t.  I might hate litter - but not quite that much.  I left it there to corrode some more, much as I leave the sweetie wrappers and the crushed fag packets I find in the fields where I walk my dog.  For that reason, I take off my metaphorical hat to Jonathan; he is a work colleague, and to be frank he can be a bit of a twat around the office.  However, Jonathan does routinely go out for weekend country walks armed with an industrial strength bin bag and one of those long sticks-with-a-thing-on-the-end-for-picking-up-litter-with.  I admire him for it but I couldn’t bring myself to do the same.  It’s partly that I'm constitutionally lazy, partly that I know full well the old litter would soon be replaced by yet more, but mostly because that's not my idea of a nice walk.
So I mutter darkly as I pass the offending items and do nothing about it. People like me shouldn’t be allowed.  Come to think of it, they should be on my Room 101 list …

Waiting for Jonathan ...


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A Shropshire Lad



Although technically a Lancashire lad (born in Blackpool and therefore ‘sand grown’ according to my mother, whatever that means), I lived in Shrewsbury for 10 years until I was 18, at which point I went off to university and never really returned, apart from spending a few months on the dole before landing a job elsewhere.  Since then I’ve only returned for ‘duty’ visits to my parents.  Nevertheless I think of myself as more Shropshire than Lancashire, partly because I’ve always thought it one of the loveliest and most underrated counties, for the landscape if nothing else.

Admittedly the north of the county is limited in what it can offer in that respect, and even Shrewsbury, once a gorgeous medieval market town of half-timbered buildings and narrow streets with names like “Grope Lane”, has fallen foul in recent years of the usual planners’ fetish for anonymous shopping centres, the sort which always look and feel the same, regardless of which town or city you are actually in.

On the other hand, the Shropshire Hills, particularly as you head south through the county, are beautiful and they’ve rightly been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  It’s a part of the world that was once virtually on my doorstep, and which I now wish I’d got to know better when I still lived close enough to do so.  I did do a certain amount of hiking there as a teenager, and the local authority maintained a building – really just a large hut with a kitchen, toilets and bunk beds – for school geography field trips.  This was near Ratlinghope (pronounced ‘Ratchup’) on the Long Mynd, a place as bleak as it was beautiful and which felt as if it were a lifetime from anywhere.

Sadly I didn’t appreciate it then quite as much as I would now, so before long I'm determined to spend some time walking the Shropshire Hills.  Ideally I should do it very soon.  We are approaching a good time of year for it if the words of A.E. Housman, the original Shropshire Lad, are anything to go by:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.


Grope Lane, Shrewsbury



Saturday, March 12, 2011

Lazarus and his amazing farting goats


I know I bang on a lot about having worked in Cyprus, but it was such a fun time in my life.  I was working for the MOD settling compensation claims, mostly from Cypriot farmers whose crops or livestock had been damaged by members of our armed forces doing their military training.  A good deal of the work was generated by RAF helicopters flying low across the training areas in the Cypriot outback, known as the ‘bondhu’. The effect of the helicopters was sometimes crop damage because of the downdraught from the rotors, but usually it was that livestock would be made to panic and either injure themselves or abort their young.

In the Summer months the bondhu was a hot, dusty, sand coloured wilderness, relieved here and there by olive groves and carob trees, whose seed pods could be picked and chewed when they’d turned dark brown.  The pods looked like huge sycamore seeds and had a bitter-sweet taste; indeed carobs are harvested for the manufacture of various foodstuffs including a type of chocolate.  The other most visible life form were the goats.  They do have cows, pigs and sheep in Cyprus, but you rarely see them, and goats are the order of the day.  Many a family makes a modest living on their ‘mandra’, a word which generally describes a simple goat enclosure.  The farmers often live in the local village; the mandra usually has no living quarters, just a rudimentary kitchen and maybe an old bed under a makeshift sunshade for an afternoon sleep.

The goats are bred for their milk, used in particular to make halloumi, which is the only cheese I’ve ever seen barbecued.  On average I used to visit a couple of mandras a day in order to verify farmers’ claims.  For much of the year there was a searing dry heat, and as Cypriots tend to be very hospitable I would be pressed to stay for fruit juice, coffee or slices of water melon.  It was not the done thing to turn down an invitation; some farmers would feel insulted if you declined.

One such farmer was Lazarus, a large and loud man who looked like a well-tanned Shrek.  He would often greet me with anger and threats to shoot at the next helicopter to fly over his animals (most Cypriot men seem to have access to firearms).  Having got that off his chest, within minutes he would be calm and polite, and official business having been concluded, we would sit down with his wife and my colleague Demetris in the shade of a tree to drink coffee.  Lazarus would tell me in broken English (which was nowhere near as broken as my Greek) about his animals, the price of feed, and the problem with the government.

It would have been an almost idyllic setting, sitting under blue skies with the Mediterranean sparkling away in the distance, had it not been for the goats.  They are inquisitive animals, and being separated from us by only a wire fence, they would approach in numbers and stare.  That would have been easy enough to ignore except for their incessant farting.  Many creatures break wind, and God knows I’m no saint in that department, but Lazarus’s did it so noisily.  You may be old enough to remember Harry Secombe, whose act at one time used to consist of a fine singing voice and the ability to blow long, fruity raspberries, which yet retained a melodic quality (indeed he wrote an autobiography called “Arias and Raspberries”).  But even Harry would have been blown off stage by Lazarus’s goats, whose accompaniment to our refreshments and conversation was thunderous and apparently unnoticed by anyone but me.

On finally taking my leave from Lazarus I would invariably be offered a gift of cheese or a bagful of fruit, or if he had nothing else to offer, a can of coke.  As a civil servant I wasn’t permitted to accept gifts from claimants, and in any event they often hardly had two pennies to rub together, so it would have felt wrong to do so, but without fail Lazarus and I would argue about it, during which he would look hurt that I would take nothing from him.  Like most claimants, he wasn’t trying to influence my decision on his claim; it was simply a question of good manners that a guest should not leave empty handed.  My grandmother used to do the same thing, always pressing her visitors to take a bit of rhubarb or something from her garden as they departed.  I have always found such good manners in one so rough and ready as Lazarus rather touching.  What a pity the same couldn’t be said about his flatulent goats.

Carob tree

Thursday, March 10, 2011

How to have a baby


I’m a great one for punctuality.  I hate being late for anything and I certainly hate being kept waiting by others.  However, it can’t always be helped and a certain amount of tardiness is forgivable, for example when an unborn baby would rather stay snug in the womb than make a prompt appearance on the date the doctor told you to circle in your diary.

Both of my boys were 2 weeks late making their debut on the world stage, and because of this my wife had to be induced on each occasion.  When the time came for our eldest to be born, we were remarkably calm and relaxed, albeit a little excited.  So on a December morning 21 years ago we arrived at our appointment at the maternity unit (on time too I might add), dressed in loose fitting cotton as advised by the hospital, and carrying a bag of clothes for both my wife and the baby.  His clothing was mostly either yellow or green, these colours having been chosen because we still had no idea whether a boy or a girl was on its way.  We were quite happy not knowing, which was just as well, because we couldn’t have found out if we’d wanted to.  At the antenatal unit there was a sign on the wall of the scanning department saying “We won’t tell you, so don’t ask!”  So it’s not entirely our fault that the boy looked like a wrinkled citrus fruit until he was big enough for new babygros (or grow bags as I wittily used to call them) in proper boys’ blue.

My wife was taken off to a side room to be checked over while I waited across the corridor, and just at this time an emergency admission was wheeled to the bed next to my wife by an ambulance crew.  The poor woman on the trolley was clearly in agony and close to giving birth, yet her husband found the whole thing hilarious and was busy taking photos of her.  Oh how I laughed when a few moments later the idiot fainted, and having crashed through the curtains onto my wife’s bed, he was led back to the waiting room by a nurse telling him to sit down and put his head between his legs.  Before long he fainted once more, so I called for a nurse to come and help while he lay on the floor.  I wish now I’d used his camera to take a few photos of him lying there; it would have made a nice memento for his wife.

I’m sure you don’t want to hear all the details of my son’s birth; suffice to say I was indispensable to his mother.  Whenever she needed someone to shout at, or to blame for all the agony (of which I was obviously the sole cause), or to say helpful things like “breathe”, I was there.  Of course I can’t blame her for ranting and swearing at me.  Giving birth did look like it must sting a bit, so I don’t hold it against her at all, and nowadays I hardly ever mention it.  I also don’t mention that on leaving the hospital that evening, I was treated to pint after pint of Guinness at my local pub, which combined with my general state of euphoria led to some difficulty in talking coherently.

Three days later my wife and son were back home.  The Christmas tree was up, the house was warm and cosy, there may even have been carols on the radio.  I was sitting down with my brand new child in my arms and completely out of the blue I started to cry.  It was the first and only time I have ever cried with happiness.  For me it remains a moment to treasure; for him it’s something faintly embarrassing that I’m never to mention in front of his mates or his girlfriend.  Kids, eh?


Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Master Criminal



As a small boy I used to attend St George’s Primary school in Shrewsbury.  The building itself has long since been converted into housing, and the playground where I used to play football and British Bulldog has been built over too.  You can still just about see the separate Boys’ and Girls’ entrances written into the brickwork, although that peculiar Victorian approach to education, in which the two sexes should be kept apart in order to concentrate young minds on learning, had been dispensed with years before I arrived in my barathea blazer and regulation grey short trousers.

Next to the school was a petrol station containing a small shop selling sweets, handy for those of us with a bit of pocket money to pop in on the way to lessons to stock up on goodies.  Penny Arrows, Black Jacks and Fruit Salads as well as the usual range of chocolate bars were available for any short-trousered man about town with ready cash in his pocket.

Sadly, money was not always in plentiful supply, even when opting to save on bus fare by walking home.  The emptiness of my pockets combined with a craving to feed my sugar addiction eventually led me into temptation, that very thing about which we were made to pray twice daily to Our Father Who Art In Heaven.  You would hope that reciting the Lord’s Prayer ten times in the course of a school week would provide some moral protection to a nine year old, but it didn’t, not nearly enough.

I wasn’t the first of the gang to dip a furtive hand into the sweet rack, but there’s no denying I quickly became bloody good at nicking stuff, even making allowances for the lack of CCTV in those days.  A selection of like minded desperados and I would walk in, and while one or two made legitimate purchases to divert the attention of the man behind the till, others would fill their pockets with as much bounty (and indeed Bounty) as possible.  In and out, as quick as you like.

We got away with it for a couple of weeks, but inevitably it all ended in tears.  Some wide boy was just a little too flash in the playground, giving it large with the Opal Fruits and Sherbet Fountains, no doubt trying to impress his moll.  Word got out to the teachers, and before long an investigation began.  We were called to the Head Teacher’s office and very soon cracked under interrogation.

Two things worried me most: first that my parents would be informed, and second that the punishment would be of a violent nature.  The Deputy Head was the school’s chief enforcer and he preferred to use ‘the slipper’.  The Head resorted to the ultimate deterrent only rarely, but his approach was more orthodox, preferring as he did the sort of cane which would feature in ‘The Beano’ (where a bit of violence never seemed to stop Dennis and Minnie getting up to their tricks).  The slipper could hurt but in truth it was administered very lightly.  The cane, which I had so far managed to avoid, promised to sting like the mother of all bees and leave marks that would have to be explained at home.

As it happens, the Head chose not to beat us, and nor amazingly were our parents informed.  Instead he compiled a list of what we admitted to having pinched, which he would hand over with a sufficient sum of money to the proprietor of the petrol station after school the next day.  We in turn were to bring along the necessary cash to make reparations.

My remorse however was not so complete as to prevent me from taking advantage of what was plain enough to a master criminal like me, namely that nobody had a clue who had stolen what.  With an expression of sincere contrition on my face, I brazenly claimed to have taken nothing more than a packet of Wrigley’s ‘Juicy Fruit’, for which I handed over sixpence from my bus fare there and then.  With one bare faced lie to the single most powerful man I knew, I had discharged all my responsibilities and simultaneously avoided having to ask my parents for the sort of money needed to meet the true extent of my Artful Dodgery.

Later that afternoon I walked home taking care to avoid so much as glancing at the crime scene.  I accepted the adventure as a warning that, while crime might pay a little bit, getting caught sure as hell makes you want to wet your pants; it was time for this Milky Bar Kid to go straight.



Sunday, March 6, 2011

A Cypriot Funeral


I’m not a big fan of funerals and I dare say neither are you.  I’ve never been to one that was a barrel of laughs, but then you don’t really expect much comedy at them anyway.  I once told my wife that at mine I’d like her to get the minister to change the traditional words, so that they intone “Ashes to ashes, funk to funky”, but I  don’t suppose she’ll be able to pull it off.  Actually I’m not that bothered about how my own funeral goes, so long as there’s a decent turn out, preferably with a couple of mystery blonds just to get people talking.
The trouble with funerals of course is that someone has died, and consequently it behoves any sympathetic mourner to act with decorum, maintaining a solemn silence to the point of barely being audible during the hymn singing.  For the record, I’m a non-believer but I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Abide With Me’, albeit for football rather than religious reasons; it was once a traditional part of the pre-match build up at cup finals in the days when Wembley Stadium was frequented by the good people of Lancashire mill towns.
Things are done slightly differently in Cyprus.  I lived and worked there for 4 years, and in the course of my duties I got to know George Cacoyannis, the senior partner in a Limassol law firm.  George’s brother Michael is (or was?) a well known film director, whose credits include ‘Zorba the Greek’, but George never mentioned him at all.  George was a nice old chap, I’d guess in his late seventies and pretty much retired, but he still liked to be involved personally when his company was acting as the Treasury Solicitor’s agent, which is what brought me into contact with him.
When George died it was right and proper that I attended his funeral, which took place in a large Greek Orthodox church.  Whereas in the UK the family of the deceased sometimes ask for “No flowers please, but donations to …”, at George’s funeral the path leading to the door was lined with trestle tables, each one manned by volunteers collecting money for various charities.  Then on entering the church, George’s immediate family were lined up to greet the mourners.  There was much shaking of hands and offering of condolences, and then you went further inside to find somewhere to perch, along with about a hundred others.  And I mean ‘perch’, because the pews in this particular place of worship were hard, wooden high-backed affairs with a very narrow ‘seat’ at the height of the small of your back, which you just leaned against.
I’d never been to any kind of Greek Orthodox service before so I’d no idea what the form was, but as it turned out, there didn’t seem to be any form to it at all.  The service had already started as we arrived and it basically seemed to be lots of chanting by priests, while the congregation treated it as a social occasion.  George was well known in Cyprus in his own right, and this coupled with his brother being a movie director would explain the TV camera crew inside the church.  The majority of people were constantly getting up and wandering about (partly I imagine because the perches were so uncomfortable), greeting acquaintances, joking and laughing in barely hushed tones, and kissing the odd icon.  Quite a few went out by a side door for a cigarette, and yet more left all together when they felt like they’d stayed for as long as protocol demanded.  This presumably is why the family greets the mourners on the way into church, rather than on the way out!
I didn’t go to the burial itself.  My colleague Demetris told me that it wouldn’t happen for some time yet, and since we’d already been there for an hour and a half, we too decided to bail out through the side door.  As we did so we could see others just arriving.  In Cyprus, life goes on – even during a funeral.  It seemed disrespectful at first, but in a way I rather liked it.  So if you should come to mine, feel free to make yourself at home; pull up a pew and chat up a mystery blond.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Tricycle Terrorist



I was born in Norbreck, Blackpool at no. 17 Delphene Avenue and spent the first 4 years of my life there.  As far as I recall, it was a fairly short road of 1930s semi-detached houses and a Working Men’s Club at one end.  Actually it could have been a Crown Green Bowling Club; it doesn’t really matter which, but I do remember going into the bar there once with my brother at the request of a neighbour to fetch her husband, and the dark, warm, cosy atmosphere, thick with tobacco smoke and beer fumes was to my young mind both intoxicating and welcoming.  It’s probably no surprise that I was always attracted to pubs when I was older, but that’s something to write about another time.
Delphene Avenue always seemed such a safe environment.  Just as well; at that stage in my life it was about the only environment I had.  Too young to go to school with my older brothers, I stayed at home with my Mum and joined in with the tea and gossip when “Auntie” Renee popped in from across the road.  Renee would wander in without knocking, calling out in her sing song voice “It’s only me from over the sea”, and while she and my Mum talked about heaven knows what, I would play around their ankles with my Dinky cars, pausing occasionally to sip my milky tea (two sugars) and eat one of the two biscuits I invariably had on the go.  My Mum always had to give me first one biscuit followed by one ”for my ‘nother hand” as I used to call it.
I can’t remember any other children my age living in Delphene Avenue, but as it never occurred to me I might be missing out, I was happy enough.  All of that changed one day when some people up the road had visitors over from Manchester.  Among their number was a big girl, bigger than me anyway, maybe four or five years old compared to my youthful three.  What her real name was I never found out, but to the day I die she will always be known to me as ‘Stripy’ on account of her knickers, which were white with red and blue stripes.  I dare say she flashed them at me and presumably at my Mum as well, for it was Mum who gave her the name.  I was three years old, and such wit would remain beyond my reach for some time to come.
It was agreed by those charged with our wellbeing that Stripy and I should play together.  Or at least nobody considered that it might be unwise.  I can’t really blame my Mum or allege any kind of negligence against her, but frankly I was sent out to play with a thieving, bullying, stripy-knickered-bitch-from-hell.  It started off well enough.  She appreciated my not inconsiderable ability to crash my tricycle into lamp posts, but more than that it was the tricycle itself which she admired.  It was one of those designed for little chubby-kneed chaps like me who wanted something flash but practical for their first set of wheels.  It was bright red with the pedals on the front wheel, a hard seat and minimal suspension.
Eager to “play nicely” as I had been instructed, I naturally let Stripy have a go on my tricycle.  I couldn’t help but admire the panache with which she zoomed up and down the pavement, cornering expertly and avoiding lamp posts.  She was indeed a most proficient tricyclist, but my admiration turned to concern and then to deep anxiety as she eventually continued up the pavement and into the house where she was staying.
I ran home for advice on how to proceed. My Mum, reasoning that Stripy was probably having dinner, sent me along to seize the trike by stealth.  I crept up the driveway where it was parked.  I had one hand on the handlebar when Stripy spotted me through a window, pointed a menacing finger and cried out “I’ve got my eye on you!”  I turned tail and fled.
Back home my Mum was completely unconcerned.  Left to deal with it myself, I gathered up an armful of less valuable toys and took them back to the house where Stripy was still eating.  As she again watched me through the window, I placed the toys on the ground next to the tricycle and began gingerly to wheel it away. She looked at me, and I looked at her.  She nodded her acceptance of the ransom of dinky cars and teddies.  At the bottom of the drive I mounted my trusty steed and pedalled furiously to the safety of no 17.
Once more my Mum again showed no interest in my plight.   I am not sure whether I actually told her how I had got my wheels back, but she should have known, surely?  However, despite often claiming to be a mind reader, it turns out she wasn’t.  I had hoped she would march round there and get back the ransom I had paid, but she didn’t.  No doubt I was too full of shame for giving in so easily to explain the situation properly to her.
I never saw those toys again, but their loss was nothing compared to the feeling that I’d been the victim of a dark malevolent force.  Still, I had at least recovered my pride and joy.  I dragged it up to the safety of my bedroom, and it stayed there until the tricycle terrorist’s parents took her home again.  The kids of Manchester would have to find their own way of dealing with her.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Holding back the years ...

I’m 50 years old. Lots of people already know this because I keep telling them. It’s only just dawned on me that I keep mentioning my age (I’m a bit like the Queen Mother on Spitting Image – “I’m 93 you know”), and it got me wondering why.
I expect in part it’s vanity.  OK, it’s all vanity.  Only a minority of people like growing older.  Once you reach 30 you start to realise that you’re actually a real live grown up and that middle age is only a few years away.  But here I am at 50. I’m not bald, I haven’t yet gone grey and I’m as fresh faced as can be expected of someone whose first half century has mostly been spent with his nose in a glass, or dragging on a ciggie.  Incidentally I started smoking at the grand old age of 12 and finally gave up 13 years ago; this means my life has been equally divided between being a smoker and a non-smoker.  I hate the fact that I even bothered to work that out.  Sorry, forgive the digression, it’s because I’m so old.
So I mention my age in the hope that people will say “Oh you don’t look it” or “I thought you were early 40s”.  I have no idea why this should be a source of pride when they do so; it’s not like I’ve actually done anything worthwhile to make myself look younger.  I’m not a fitness fanatic, I eat lots of rubbish and I sleep less than I would like.  I suppose it’s just in the genes, and even I couldn’t claim the credit for that.
 And it’s not like I am actually old!  Logically, age is really just a number.  In my heart I’m much the same person as I ever was, even if I don’t run around like an idiot so much nowadays.  But most of us (young, old and somewhere in between) make judgements about others based to an extent on their age, and are in turn judged by them.
In truth I haven’t really got so very much to be vain about.  Sometimes as I walk by a shop window, I catch sight of somebody who looks really familiar.  It’s only me of course, but for a split second it could be my Dad in the reflection as he looked in middle age.  My Dad is a man who, in his 40s, was asked not once but twice for his autograph by people believing him to be Benny Hill.  Apart from having a very round face and a similar hair ‘style’, he didn’t really look that much like the tubby girl-chasing TV funster, and neither do I as far as I’m aware.  I think not; certainly nobody has ever sung “Ernie” at me.  It came as a surprise to my Dad too; he didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed by the attention.
I suppose it just goes to show that we never quite see ourselves as others do, and perhaps that’s why I seek the reassurance.  I am however determined to be less needy in the future.  If you ever hear me say “I’m 50 you know!” - just give me a slap!