Open Writing

‘Radio Times’ we found were the best substitutes for a rugby ball, three or four of them, tightly rolled together and well secured with band. We never had string or twine. It was always ‘band’. The product here of paper and band possessed a solidity if not rotundity which gave good service until it either got wet or the outer pages began to fray. A good grip on it was possible and drop-kicking was sheer delight.

After a while, though, as a result of the hammering we administered, one such would begin to part company with itself. Drop one in a puddle and you had a tripey article on your hands, literally, but not for long. Strip away the surface sog and a dry undercover was revealed. Although when the band broke, that was it.

I don’t remember where we obtained the raw materials of construction. We used to take the ‘Radio Times’ at home, well my father did. But he stopped taking it when he died. It follows, doesn’t it?

‘Radio Times’ in our home, though, was rarely available to us young ones as playthings. They were reserved to be torn into quarters, threaded on a bit of band and hung behind t’ closet door. The periodical at that time did not contain glossy pages, thank goodness.

Thinking about lavatories and pastimes, there was one woman I knew at the time who on hot summer days would ‘refresh’ herself, as she would explain, by “Sitting on t’ pot an’ pulling t’ chain. Ee,” she’d say, “it fair cooils things dahn fair grand.” Jacuzzi forerunner?

We, as children, were fortunate regarding a play area. There was the local park close by with two tracts of land at our disposal.

Upon reaching the ripe ages of 11 or 12 years we gathered sufficient funds to allow for the purchase of a real, new rugby ball. Now that was something. It was everybody’s yet no particular body’s, so there was no muling and taking your ball home.

The area on which we played football mostly was level ground running alongside a footpath and skirted by staked beech saplings. One day, unluckily for him, Jack Scott going full tillup -- ‘like a stag baht ‘orns’ as we used to say -- with the ball tucked professionally under one arm, turned to look how near opposition was. It was nearer than he was aware since he ran full fullock into one of the aforementioned trees. He did something very painful to one of his legs. It wasn’t broken, but he was deprived of his walk. So we carted him home in a wheelbarrow, courtesy of the park’s department. We did return it.

Afterwards each Sunday morning for what seemed a lifetime we visited him at his home. We could tell how bad he was because his bed had been brought downstairs. We were glad he wasn’t upstairs, especially if there had been a fire in the bedroom grate. Things had to be bad for that to happen. The lad did eventually recover. The tree wasn’t even marked.

Our cricket pitch was pitched. It sloped as so many do in Yorkshire. All bowling was done uphill, the hard way. Like most in our walk of life we didn’t spend money on wickets. A large piece of stone sufficed. This we always referred to as ‘t motty’. How it acquired its name I have no idea, but a lifetime later I learned it was an apt name since the word ‘motte’ is Middle English or Old French and is the name for a mound, usually a site for a castle , a place of defence. Well, I suppose that was the exercise regarding our motty. It was to be defended. There we were, nearly intelligent and didn’t know it.

We never used aitches when we talked. It was always ‘ ‘horses, ‘houses and ‘ey-up’. We couldn’t afford luxuries.

But then it didn’t cost a fortune to please us. For a penny or a ½d we could buy either a wooden dart with real feathered flights, a catapult or a pea-shooter. Over time we bought all three, individually but time-after-time.

Such pastimes were purchased from Clegg’s the newsagents. If the shop was closed, we knocked on the house door and were served from there. Mr. Clegg rarely refused us service. We paid cash.

Ammunition for pea-shooters came from Exley’s the grocers in the form of brown peas, 2d a pound. We bought quarters. We also bought Rowntree’s jellies from there. They lasted longer, being more chewy, than the soft, spice shop jellies, but did cost 2d.

I could never hit any passer-by with peas from my bedroom window. The distance was too great. I could have scored a hit, though, using my air rifle, but didn’t. I contented myself with ricocheting slugs off the pavement close to a pedestrian’s feet. It didn’t half make ‘em jump.

Thinking of pellets brings to mind gas-tar. Road repairs at that period often involved gas-tar. A mobile, coal-fired tar boiler was employed, and we delighted in watching the whole operation from start to finish -- especially the finish. Lumps of bitumen were melted down in the boiler. Then a black stream was run off into buckets to be poured between sets in the road. “Sniff that tar smell up yer nooase. It’s good for yer chest,” we were told.

We waited until the workmen, job complete, would trundle off, then deliberately and purposefully we would remove as much of the tar as we could before it set hard. This we moulded into various shapes, pellets mostly, to be thrown at each other or any suitable target. That our hands became daubed with the stuff never concerned us. We rubbed them on walls to sand the it off.

It would be the same procedure when a glazier was replacing a broken windowpane with a new piece of glass. There was the glazier, thinking we were interested in watching him perform his craft. It was his putty we were after.

My father smoked Robin’s cigarettes, 60 per week. These he kept at the ‘cellar-head’, top o’ t’ cellar steps. When funds were low and we wished to try smoking, I learned how to reach around the cellar door, grab a packet of cigs from the shelf, remove one or two and replace the packet. The mystery of the occasional missing fags was never solved in our house. Only I knew the solution to the wicked deed, and now you do.

Neither darts nor catapults lasted us very long. We would throw the dart as high as we could into the air. It was stupid really since invariably it either lodged in some guttering or when it landed would hit a stone -- there were a lot about -- and in doing so the point would be broken off. A flat wall-topping stone was then sought, spit on the surface and patiently ‘grind’ a new point.

Catapults weren’t much better, constructed from a flimsy wire frame and a length of hollow tubing, bicycle valve rubber, with a piece of leather at its central point. We weren’t muscular specimens, but even our childish strength and enthusiasm proved too much for the rubber tubing. It soon broke and thus was regularly being shortened when re-tied. This continued until there was no elasticity remaining. The whole operation or ruination of dart and/or catapult taking no more than 20 minutes. Then it was off with the old and on with the new. “What shall we do next?”

The route perpetually taken whilst all these events were going on led us eventually into the park. There was a small recreation ground and the long horizontal swing within a few yards of the boundary wall. It was on top of this wall that Derek Jackson stood one day. He in all bravado was crying in a loud voice, “I am strength.” Just what he meant by that remains unclear. Evidently someone disputed his claim because a well-aimed brick hit him, knocking him off his perch. His pride was more hurt than anything, especially as ever afterwards he was known as ‘Strength Jackson’, a title of which he did not approve, and it enraged him. Consequently he was all the more called by that name.

Tree climbing was another amusement for us. There were several suitable for shinning up situated along the park’s boundaries. One, a large sycamore, well it seemed large to us, was deemed the most majestic, so it was christened King Solomon. The tree next in regal status, being somewhat smaller, was named Queen Solomon. You can tell how intellectual we were.

Kenneth Sheard was a determined tree climber, determined but obviously not too adept, since he kept falling out of them and breaking his arms, three times to my knowledge. Yet, undaunted, no sooner was his arm in pot than he was back again, up in the foliage. Yorkshire solidity - in the head.

Many trees were scarred by our initials being carved into their bark, small letters belonging to those with more demure temperaments or large, bold characters to match their owners. The carvings lasted longer than the blood which inevitably stained the bark, witness to accidents with knives, pen and sheath varieties.

Along the bottom of the park ran a stream. We knew where it went but never learned where it came from. The water ran clear most of the time, but there were periods when it turned milky. Whichever, so long as it flowed we would dam it to create boggy lagoons, the bigger the better, then let it run full spate into the distance. I remember drinking from it one time and whilst doing so I glanced sideways and found myself at eye level with a very wet and very dead rat. I don’t think I suffered any ill effects, but who can tell? My nose twitches sometimes when food is about, but I’m not scared of cats or dogs.

‘T’ owd dam’ lay between the stream and park. Drainage from beneath our cricket pitch kept the water level up and provided us with yet another play area. The plan was always the same, to find or build something which on or in we could float, zinc baths for example. But they always had a hole which needed plugging.

The water was never very deep, no more than boot-top level, deep enough to drown in, that’s true, but no one ever did -- spoil sports. We placed stepping stones in an attempt to reach the centre of the water. What we would have done when we got there I don’t know. I don’t think we knew either, but it was good fun trying. Get three or four yards from the bank and someone was bound to start heaving bricks into the water close by one’s feet in the hope of seeing one either drenched by the splash or losing one’s footing and falling in.

It was either that or, following somebody out onto the stones, then quickly reversing and rolling the stepping-stones out of reach. Thus marooned, the poor wretch had then to decide how to reach the shore. Should he remove his footwear, a difficult job whilst balancing on an insecure stone, or paddle ashore with footwear in situ? Well, it was hardly paddling, as there was several inches of mud to lumber through, not to mention broken bottles and lumps of old iron. That’s why it was unsafe to remove one’s footwear.

The air at this time would be rent with screams, oaths and curses, with threats of bloodletting once dry ground was reached. Then removal of wet, muddy footwear would follow, water poured from boots or shoes, stockings -- hand-knitted -- ‘rinsed out’ in muddy water amid baleful cries of “Mi mam’ll kill me.” But we’d be back again in a few days, all ready for fresh adventure.

Dark nights gave rise to different pastimes. There was eye-spy in shop windows. When the object was spied, dash to the next pre-agreed shop and the first one there won the right to ‘spy’.

In the centre of Town Green, which wasn’t green -- it was bare earth -- stood a wooden police box. Now that was green and beside it was gas lamp. Both acted as our rendezvous point. When time clocks were installed in gas lamps, we quickly learned that as the hour approached for the clock to allow the mechanism to light the lamp, if we kicked the post the vibration shook the apparatus into action and lo, there was light. Then followed tin-can squat, alle-leevo, chip-pie-crust and creeping Jesus.

With a length of black cotton and a bunch of keys, penknife or some such, we would ‘bait’ passers-by. Hiding ourselves behind some railings which ran alongside the causeway of High Street, the ‘bait’ would be tied to one end of the cotton and laid conspicuously on the pavement with someone holding the other end of the line through the railings. We would then wait for our ‘catch’ to approach and when he or she bent o pick up the ‘bait’, a quick pull on the line sprang the trap as it were.

One ruse didn’t need cotton. It was all in the imagination. Two of us would kneel, one on either side of the pavement, one hand extended about a foot above the ground. We would again await an innocent victim. “Don’t break t’ cotton, Mister,” we would plead. There was no cotton, but they didn’t know, and it was fun for us to watch them stride high over what was imagined to be a cotton thread.

A Roman, Pliny the Elder, between AD23 and 79 is quoted as saying, “There is always something new out of Africa.” He should have grown up in Earlsheaton.