I’ve always thought that to start an autobiography with the
phrase ‘My earliest recollections are of…’ was a very trite thing to do,
sort of like the proverbial dark and stormy nights of literary legend.
However, when that recollection involves coming within a cat’s whisker of
setting the family home ablaze and possibly wiping out the entire French
dynasty in one mischievous stroke…what choice do I have?
It was the first of many houses that I remember living in. My
dad bought the house, he owned it outright. It was the end house in Shand
Street, right next to the docks at Garston in south Liverpool. Shand Street
was the last street which ran off King Street, right at the dock entrance.
It was about as far ‘Under The Bridge’ as you could get without getting your
feet wet in the River Mersey. We had running water, which ran from a huge
brass tap into a massive Belfast sink which boasted a wonderful pattern of
cracks over every square inch of it, inside and out. We had gas too, which
fed the wall lights in the back ‘living room’ and later on, the stove which
was parked in the lean-to at the back of the house.
In the living room we had a coal fire, and this is where I
almost ended everything before it had really had a chance to get going. My
siblings were all of the opposite sex, one older and two younger than me.
(This is the main reason for my habit of securely locking the bathroom door
on every visit even now, much to my wife Anita’s annoyance.) We were in the
living room one winter morning having crept down the stairs while our mum
slept in her room. Dad had gone out to work. He worked six days a week.
After many complaints about the freezing cold, after the novelty of melting
patterns on the ice coated windows with fingertips had worn off, I decided I
could light the fire just like dad. I will say right now that I was
definitely cheered on and encouraged to do this daft thing by said siblings.
The best way to light a coal fire, after the paper and
kindling (or later, firelighters) had been properly stacked and positioned,
was to light the paper and then ‘Draw’ the fire using a draw screen. The
draw screen blocks of the front opening of the fireplace and forces air up
through the coals from the bottom vents. The resulting furnace-like roar of
the blazing coals as they crackle and pop behind the screen is a curiously
satisfying sound still.
The thing is, back then only the posh people had proper fire
screens. We had to make do with the short handled shovel or the poker, and a
full two page spread from a broadsheet paper. As soon as the fire had caught
enough to definitely stay alight all by itself, the shovel preferably, would
be stood on the front of the grate, wedged between the ornamental
castellation and propped against the top of the opening by the wooden
handle. The full broadsheet page could then be spread across the opening
supported against the shovel as the vacuum pulled it toward the fire behind.
Now, watching the light of the fire behind one flimsy sheet
of newspaper can soon become quite a hypnotic experience for a five year
old. It starts with a dancing red light glowing behind the paper and then
progresses to a slight browning of the paper at each side of the metal part
of the shovel. These entrancing brown spots soon turn black and grow from
the centre outwards. The final phase of this incredibly interesting
spectacle can be almost explosive as the whole thing bursts into flames and
starts flying around the room, as it did on this occasion. A particularly
large piece of burning paper landed on the scattered unused sections of the
broadsheet which immediately burst into flame on contact.. This generated
lots of jumping up and down, along with very loud screaming and wailing from
at least two of my siblings – the ones that were old enough to really
understand what a mess we had gotten ourselves into – which brought mum
bounding down the stairs and into the room. After dealing with the flames
and pouring water onto the melted linoleum, she duly imparted a different
sort of heat to my ‘stupid’ and ‘idiotic’ backside.
It could have been much worse. We could have had curtains and
carpets, or a wooden floor under the lino instead of a stone slab floor.
This was 1950’s Liverpool and the house my dad bought was already almost
ninety years old.
Despite these obvious hardships, Garston was a magical place
to spend your childhood years. We had Robinson Crusoe’s Hut, The Cast Iron
Shore, (The Cassie), Crab Island, Dungeon Shore, Hale Lighthouse, Hale
Marshes, Oglet Shore, Dingle Cliffs, Knotts Hole, and of course, the Docks.
We went to the ‘Bag wash’ with mum and clambered over the huge wooden drying
racks. We went to the ‘Pictures’ on Saturday morning, then played out the
film on the rugged wasteland opposite the cinema building.
We didn’t have paedophiles or rapists back then, but we did
have ‘Let ‘im have it Hanratty’ and later, Ronnie Biggs the great train
robber. It was safe for us to explore our own territory to our hearts
content. We defended our territory with a fierce determination. Every street
had its own gang, every gang a bunch of scruffy six to eleven year old
‘hardnocks’. It seemed that there was a pub at the end of every street
though it was probably only every second street, so the adults appeared to
have their own ‘gangs’ too. On Saturday afternoons we would gather around
the end of the street by the pub to watch the inevitable fight after
throwing out time. The best ones were the ones that featured men from
different streets, one of whom was obviously in the wrong pub. The winner
was usually the one who could unbuckle and whip his thick leather belt
through the belt loops of his trousers the quickest. This didn’t work at all
with elastic snake buckle belts, which is probably why we stuck with sticks
and stones when we fought with the gang from the next street. |
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