Open Writing

If I inherited anything from my father it certainly wasn’t his agility as a gymnast.

He and his mates from a quiet little corner of the Colne Valley were so good that their opponents nicknamed them The Invincibles.

The team from Lingards Wood Bottom won trophies galore, and the elite rope-climbing squad were undisputed kings of the West Riding.

Dad was one of the crack rope-climbers, so it was only natural that he wanted me to follow in his footsteps.

Sadly, I let him down badly. To put it bluntly, I was an abject failure in the gym.

By the age of eleven I was going to a grammar school where the gym equipment was probably better than anything that dad and his pals ever dreamed of.

But somehow or other I didn’t seem to be made to be even a competent gymnast.

Maybe it was because I was short. Short of strength, short of balance and short of a few more inches where it mattered. Not to mention short of breath after a few minutes’ work in the gym.

My rope-climbing attempts would have done credit to a comedian’s version of the Indian rope trick.

I stuck rigidly to the instructions about where to put my hands and feet. Then found two or three minutes later that I had risen to a great height…of seven or eight feet.

Even though I struggled until my arms felt as if they were being wrenched from their sockets and my legs were as heavy as a diver’s lead weight. I never made it to the top of that rope.

On the beam I did a marvellous impersonation of Norman Wisdom treading a tight-rope for a comic film. In the end I had to abandon the exercise because I was falling off so often that a huge queue built up of lads waiting for me to finish.

Worst of all were my pathetic attempts to master the vault. It was something I positively dreaded and it showed as I struggled even to get my feet on top of the wooden horse, never mind going straight over.

Our gym master at the time was a remarkable character who had played rugby league but was no great physical fitness freak himself.

It was rumoured that he had a part-time job as a club steward, which might explain why he spent most of the day’s first period sitting on a bench with his head in his hands.

He didn’t like it when his recovery sessions were disturbed. And his answer to any unruly behaviour was quick, painful use of a gym slipper on the behind.

He also had an effective way of dealing with anyone he thought was becoming too big for their boots.

Like one boy who fancied himself as the next candidate to play Tarzan on the cinema screen.

As he became increasingly unbearable the PE teacher quietly weighed up the rest of us and finally chose a cool customer about six feet tall.

Then he slung the pair of them a pair of boxing gloves and put them together in the ring. And he only called a halt when bossy-boots was almost out on his feet and his nose streaming blood.

Mind you, the teacher himself was no master of modesty. He fancied himself at every sport you could name, and he certainly could play rugby.

But he made a fatal mistake when in one games lesson he picked himself to lead a local team against another captained by a man-mountain we called Isaiah - because he had one eye higher than the other.

The master looked just that as he collected the ball on the half-way line and beat one defender after another with a bewildering dribble.

All seemed lost until, poised to shoot from the edge of the penalty area, he came up against his final obstacle in the shape of Isaiah.

Neither drew back as they met in a horrendous tackle. There was a sickening crack…and away came Isaiah with the ball as the master lay writhing on the ground, his leg quite unmistakably broken.

“Sorry Sir, perhaps we should have stuck to rugby,’’ muttered the towering Isaiah as his victim was loaded onto a stretcher.