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PART 1: A
TOSSPOT’S TALE BEGINS
Non-fiction by
Keith Skellern
THE RAMBLINGS AND REMINISCENCES
OF AN AGEING TRAVELWORN
ENGLISH TOPER
A SEMI- AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE
AND TIMES OF K. ROY SKELLUM (III)
I have never actually been called K. Roy Skullem (III) but it sounds
very American, and should attract the vast untapped market of the US
of A. Where English wit, sardonicism, sarcasm, puns, palindromes and
spoonerisms are virtually unheard of. (Not that I am promising any of
these) but you live in hope.
In fact in my 58 years on this mortal coil I’ve never even been called
Roy, my name is Keith Skellern, but what sort of a name is that for a
best-selling (?) author?
I have also added the “English” bit in the title for the same reason,
for some strange reason, the Yanks think the English (Poms) are olde
fashioned and quaint. The Aussies (Skips) know differently and think
we’re an outdated, mob of upper-class twits or an unwashed,
under-nourished, pale bunch of morons who can’t play cricket or rugby
or swim to save our lives. Neither of these points of view bears any
semblance to reality, as you will find out if you continue to peruse
this gem.
This was originally meant to be just a collection of unrelated
musings, on various topics as they sprang to mind. However, because my
young daughter had already asked me to write my life story for
posterity, mainly because she thought she might possibly edit out the
rubbish and write a best seller herself.
I started on that, but got bored with writing a straight
autobiography, so I have now incorporated that in this, if you see
what I mean. The result will be a real dog’s breakfast, leaping around
like a demented frog with Parkinson’s. So here we go!
My surname is Skellern, which is derived from the Olde English “Skalhorne”.
I have a theory about this, which has been enthusiastically embraced
by my progeny. I reckon that Ethelred (definitely related to “The
Unready”) Skalhorne was a Viking who was on a long-ship from Norway,
to go raping and pillaging in Newcastle (North of England not NSW).
He wasn’t much good at raping and his pillaging was pathetic. While
the rest of his motley crew carried home buckets of coal (highly
desirable in the cold northern climes) and comely wenches, he took
home a couple of bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (Piss-pottery runs in
the family!).
When he got home to Norway, his mum was less than impressed, dragged
him into the nearest sauna and thrashed him soundly with Birch
branches and threw him out into the snow (this was roundly applauded
by the neighbours who immediately followed suit). This practice
continues to this day. (The first of many innovations for the
Skalhornes, which have never been publicly acknowledged).
Ethelred was suitably bashed and abashed and his Mum sent him back to
raping and pillaging. When he arrived in Newcastle he pillaged several
more cases of Newky Brown (subsequently a favourite tipple of
generations of Skalhornes) and ran off into the interior.
He ended up in Derbyshire, which is about as far as you can get from
the sea in England, no matter which way you walk. He was welcomed with
open arms by the locals, who soon polished off his Newky Brown and
although he couldn’t speak English. It wasn’t a great problem because
neither could they.
Anyway, over the next five hundred years or so, the monks/priests etc
who had a rudimental understanding of Latin came to translate
Skalhorne as Skellum, Skelm and eventually Skellern. The first two
seem to relate to Olde Scottish and Olde Dutch respectively in which
they both mean ‘thieving ratbag’, so maybe they knew something I
don’t.
There is also the ancient French word Scelerat, a few accents and
graves in there, which also means something similar. However, who
cares about the Frogs and their accursed language.
The only thing I can conclude from all this is that my ancestors were
less than pillars of society. Writing about me, I will now include a
bit of autobiographical material that I had previously dictated to my
13-year-old daughter. At that age, she still thinks I’m a pretty cluey
sort of a guy. Give her two more years and she’ll realise, like the
18-year-old male fruit of my loins, that I’m a boring old fart who
doesn’t know his arse from his elbow (as is an eighteen-year-olds
prerogative).
Burblings about My Birthplace and England In General
I was born in March 1949 in New Mills. This is a small town of about
10,000 people in North Derbyshire. It is sort of in the Midlands, but
if it was a mile or less further north it would be in Cheshire, which
is in the North of England and we all speak (or in my case, spoke)
funny like Mancunians (natives of Manchester), so we think we’re
Northerners.
Not that that is a real big deal, most Southerners i.e. Londoners and
their ilk, think that anything north of Cockfosters (which is the most
northerly station on the underground) is the deep north and should be
avoided at all costs. Who cares what they think anyway! They’re almost
as bad as the French and have spawned the likes of Margaret Thatcher.
Most thinking people recognise that the further you travel from London
except South and East, (where they’re all cast in the same mould and
even closer to France) the friendlier the people. West Country folk
are very nice and not averse to smuggling a few barrels of brandy etc.
from the accursed French.
They also make a very nice apple cider (called scrumpy which is best
described as ‘Rough Cider’ including the skin and pips and rots your
socks off (more of that later). Up north a bit, you’ve got the
Southern Welsh who were kind enough to give me a tertiary education
(more of that later as well).
East from there, after you jump over Offa’s Dyke you’ve got the
Potteries Counties. The dyke was dug by some geezer called Offa and
his tribe to keep the Welsh where they belonged, although it could
have been intended to keep the Anglo Saxons out of Wales.
A bit further north is the Black Country, which was originally named
because of all the factories belching out smoke, during and just after
the ‘Industrial Revolution’. These days all the dark satanic mills
have been moved offshore to China and India.
Further north still, you’ve got your good people from Manchester,
Liverpool and if you hop over the Pennines, Sheffield. The other
Yorkshire folk are a bit strange, but alright in small doses. Then you
go up further and you get to the Geordies, who are some of the best
I’ve met and invented Newcastle Brown and other delicious beverages.
Over to the left, you’ve got the Lake District which is very
picturesque and that’s about all I’ve got to say about it. I’ve been
there once and it’s got a few lakes and some famous people and poets
lived there. I think Wordsworth may have wandered through a host of
golden daffodils in that neck of the meadows.
You then cross Hadrian’s wall obviously built by a Roman Wally called,
you got it! Hadrian. This was designed to keep the mad buggers called
Picts and Scots back over the border in Glasgow fighting among
themselves. The Scots are supposed to be a bunch of dour sods, but the
ones I’ve met love a bevy or two and rarely get violent, I may have
been lucky there.
NEW MILLS
To get back to New Mills, it’s situated on the confluence of the
rivers Goyt and Sett (which will never get a mention in any
documentary on the great rivers of the world). Although they do
eventually flow into the Mersey and if you’ve never heard of that you
shouldn’t really be reading this.
These two, not so mighty, rivers were trapped behind a weir and forced
into a mill race, which strangely enough turned a mill wheel, which
provided power for a mill or maybe two, milling corn. The local idiot
savant said “Oh! New Mills” and the local villeins and serfs clapped
delightedly and the name stuck. That’s enough geography for the time
being, I don’t want to bore you too much.
However before I completely abandon the topic, it is worth noting that
New Mills is still very much a small country town, a little too large
to be considered a village, but not yet swallowed by the Greater
Manchester Conurbation. This sounds like something the Catholic Church
abhors and is probably equally as reprehensible, unless you’re really
into urban sprawl. Meanwhile, the town sits just outside the High Peak
National Park, which will continue to remain, unspoilt moorland.
My Early Life
The house where I was ejected, kicking and screaming from the warmth
of the womb was on a very small street (called sensibly Cross Street,
connecting High Street with Low? Street), it only had about 2 or 3
houses on it. I don’t remember the house at all, but presumably I was
born there, with a mid-wife in attendance, as hospital births were
fairly unusual in the dim, dark distant past of 1949. Or were they? I
shall have to check my birth certificate, but who really cares, for
good or evil I had arrived on the world stage.
My family consisted of my Mum, Dad and my two-year-old sister Carol
and last, but definitely least, me. We moved to a new council house
before I turned one and the family were still there, when I departed
good old Blighty forever.
Our new home was a new, two storey ‘Council House’ on a Council
Estate. This was a post war initiative by the Labour Party after the
country gave Winnie the boot. The old pisspot was alright for the war,
but a silly old git for the peace, so out he went. Anyway, the house
and estate were to be my home for the next 18 years.
Suffice it to say that there were about sixty or seventy houses there.
The inhabitants varied, nearly all were working class, and a few were
unemployed. There was a smattering of petty thieves, teddy boys and
malcontents and three or four families with 10 to 12 kids, but not
very much in the way of trouble and strife.
Our house was typical, with three bedrooms and a bathroom/toilet
upstairs (no shower, they only existed in America) and a
kitchen/dining room, living room and ‘best’ front room downstairs. The
“best” room was never used and had the best furniture in it. It was
supposed to be used when we entertained guests but as Dad is a bigger
anti-social git than I am, this was a very, very rare occurrence.
We also had a brick “coal-house” which, as the name implies was used
for storing nutty-slack, a sort of domestic coal. Adjoining, but
separate was the “out-house” I leave the reason for this nomenclature
to your own, no doubt, vivid imagination.
Part of the “out-house” was used for storing, a ‘copper and manual
mangle’ for doing the laundry and the few garden tools that dad owned.
Including a manual lawn mower, spade and a hand saw, all of which had
to be cleaned and oiled after use by yours truly, or else! The other
part had an old table with an old carpet on it and various toys and
games and was used as a cubby-house by us kids.
In those days, the ‘Coalman’ delivered coal in hundred weight bags;
the ‘Milkman’ delivered milk to your front step in bottles. Letters
were delivered to the letterbox in your front door by the ‘Postman’,
as were newspapers. We even had a weekly delivery of lemonade and
Ginger Beer in large, thick enamel bottles, which had to be returned.
Although a couple were retained and used as very effective hot-water
bottles for warming beds on cold winter nights.
One of the more exotic visitors was a ‘Gypsy Tinker’ or ‘Rag and Bone
Man’ who used to arrive infrequently on his horse and cart shouting
“Pots for Rags”. The women would go out with old clothes and swap them
for saucepans, crockery and handmade wooden clothes pegs. The horse
manure was free and highly prized for use on rose-beds.
Meat, bread, and groceries were obtained from the ‘Co-Op’. This was a
combination of three separate shops, a Butchers shop, a Greengrocery
and a General Store. They were owned co-operatively by the local
people and gave stamps whenever you purchased anything, which could be
redeemed later for cash or more goodies.
They were a substitute for the corner shops, which never existed on
the new estates, but were later superseded by Supermarkets situated in
the town centre, which were operated more efficiently and were far
cheaper to buy from.
Our immediate neighbours on the upper side (Our part of the estate was
on a small hill) were a family named Large, although it wasn’t, as
they only had one son. Billy Large was my childhood hero; he joined
the Royal Navy at about 16 years of age and was usually away overseas
or at least at a Naval Base somewhere.
Whenever he came home me and my younger sister (aged 4 and 2) would be
camped outside their place waiting for him to wake up. He usually
brought something back for the two of us and once took us to a ‘Lyons
Tea Shop’ in the town and treated us to cakes and ‘proper’ lemonade
with bubbles, this was sheer unashamed luxury to us.
He also always brought back books, which influenced me almost as much
as his stories about Malta and Gibraltar and other exotic foreign
places. I don’t know if he was responsible for my urge to travel, but
it certainly fired my young imagination.
As I got older the books included Dostoevski’s, ‘Brothers Karamazov’
and other classics such as Joyce’s’ ‘Ulysses’. I have read the latter
with great difficulty and not very much enjoyment (apologies to the
Bloomsbury set) and although I have tried on a few occasions, I have
never got past about page 20 of ‘Brothers’. All the other books were a
lot less demanding and I enjoyed them for the most part.
He also introduced me to classical music, Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ and ‘The
1812 Overture being the only ones that I can recall now, at that stage
of my Life I was more interested in Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and
Dusty Springfield, especially Dusty. One time he took my older and me
sister, along with his future wife Isabel, tenpin bowling and then for
a Chinese Meal afterwards. No wonder he was my hero, what a guy!
Primary School 1954-1959
I joined Carol, at the Spring Bank Primary School in New Mills and my
first memory is leaning against the wall, just inside the gate and
being joined by another first day kid, whose name was Glynn. We spent
a few years together, Glynn and me; he was my best mate.
Being a red-blooded pair of kids, we sat in the back of the class and
as I couldn’t read the blackboard, the teacher assumed that I was a
slow learning retard. This was perfectly understandable as half the
kids were retards.
Eventually, Mum took me to the optician and I got my first pair of
specs, they were John Lennon type glasses and the change was amazing,
I could see each individual leaf on a tree, instead of a green
amorphous blob.
My joy was short lived however, I went into the class and Rosemary
Hoggins started laughing at me and then most of the kids were teasing
me and called me “speccy four eyes” after that I only ever wore them
when I was looking at the blackboard. It took me years to get over
that.
At the age of six or seven, Carol, Joyce and me all went to Hague Bar
Primary school, which was much better. The head master was called
Mister Hallam and if we misbehaved he used to smack us on the leg with
a ruler or if we really misbehaved he smacked us on the backside with
a plimsole (sandshoe, no Nikes back then).
After a year or so, I became a ‘milk monitor’; this involved
collecting the crates of milk from outside where the milkman left
them. For those of you who didn’t live in England in the fifties
(which would cover 99% of you). As part of the welfare state, all
primary schools were obliged to provide a third of a pint of milk to
each pupil. The reasoning behind this was so that all the kids would
grow up with strong bones and teeth, I think.
This was good in theory, but not such a great idea in practice. In
summer the milk, which had a nice inch or so of cream at the top of
the bottle would be warm (yep, even in an English Summer) and
bordering on rancid. Drinking it took a very strong stomach and kids
would be dribbling milk and trying hard not to vomit. Being the person
partially responsible for this form of child abuse, I was not Mr.
Popular.
In spring and autumn it was OK apart from the Tits (feathery type
blue-tits and great-tits, not what you were thinking, although the
mental connection between tits and milk can be forgiven). The crafty
little critters used to peck through the aluminium tops and drink the
cream from half the bottles.
A big responsibility for one so young was deciding who got the
untouched bottles. In winter the milk would freeze and as milk expands
when frozen, this pushed the tops off the bottles and seemed to keep
the tits away. Could this be the origin of the expression ‘Freeze your
Tits Off’?
I remember one winter’s day when the snow was very heavy. Carol, Joyce
and me couldn’t catch the bus (which couldn’t get safely through the
snowdrifts) and walked to the school, about two miles away, very
slowly, throwing snowballs at each other.
I got a slippering with a sandshoe from Mr. Hallam for being late and
the girls didn’t get punished at all, which wasn’t fair. But even in
those days it may have been considered improper, for a male teacher to
be smacking young girls on the backside with a shoe. All sorts of
perversions spring to mind.
After School Diversions
I vividly recall sliding down in the snow on a make shift sled down
towards the river, I was petrified that I would land in the river Goyt
and always stuck my toes in real bloody sharp at the end of the run.
This was considered to be very chicken by the rest of the foolhardy
young bastards, but was preferable to getting my backside kicked at
home.
Not that my parents ever resorted to physical violence but I didn’t
want to risk it. Anyway the Goyt may have only been thigh deep at it’s
deepest most of the time, but it was bloody cold and half a mile from
home.
I also remember bonfire nights (November the 5th to the uninitiated,
celebrating the frustration of the gunpowder plot to blow up the
Parliament in Westminster, which may or may not have been a good
thing).
Me and the Nadin boys (a local family of ne’er do wells) used to go up
to a wood and chop down a big straight tree to use as the center pole
for the bonfire. We would drag it through the streets of New Mills and
down past ‘the rocks’, past the chapel where I used to go to Sunday
school. Over the pedestrian Railway Bridge and down to the vacant
ground behind the Nadin’s house.
We would then cut down smaller trees and bushes and pile them round
the center pole to make a sort of large tee-pee, the parents also saw
it as a good excuse for getting rid of soiled mattresses and broken
furniture. Some of us kids would make good use of these and drag them
inside the bonfire/tee-pee.
Sometimes one or all of us would sleep inside the tee-pee to make sure
nobody robbed us of the bonfire materials. On bonfire night all the
parents would come to the bonfire, bringing spuds, treacle toffee and
ginger cake/parkin. We’d stick an effigy of Guy Fawkes (the leader of
the ‘Gunpowder Plot’) on top of the tee-pee. A week before that
we’d put Guy Fawkes in a Billy-cart and drag him round the streets,
going to houses and begging for money.
After we put the Guy on top of the bonfire and set the whole thing
alight we’d let off bangers and rockets and Catherine Wheels and
RipRaps. When the fire had died down, we’d put the potatoes in the
embers and let them cook, drag them out with a stick, peel off the
burnt bits on the outside and eat them with butter and salt
(Delicious!) with the parkin and ginger beer.
Grammar School 1960 – 1967
When I was Eleven I took the Eleven Plus exam, if you passed it you
went to the Grammar School. If you failed, it was off to the dreaded
Spring Bank Secondary School, which was the equivalent of the Spring
Bank Primary School but for older kids. Secondary Schools were there
to keep kids at school but get them more into the technical side of
things learning trades etc. The girls ended up as shop assistants and
the like. Elitism was alive and well in Britain in the swinging
sixties.
New Mills Grammar School was a fairly old fashioned school, just
coming to terms with the post war influx of (smarter?) kids from the
hoi polloi. We had to wear blazers, long grey pants, caps and ties. It
also had a ‘Quadrangle’, Prefects and taught Latin to first formers,
(which in my humble opinion, is like teaching hippopotami to tap
dance) but at least it was co-ed.
My first day there was a bit traumatic as my blazer and cap were three
sizes too big, but at least my Dad had taught me how to tie a double-windsor
knot. When I got there after a 10-minute walk from home, I discovered
that the rest of the kids my age were in the same predicament, except
they couldn’t tie a double-windsor, so it wasn’t too bad.
By the time I was sixteen my blazer and cap had shrunk compared to me,
it looked like I was wearing a yarmulke and the sleeves of the blazer
barely reached the elbows, which was a thing to be proud of.
I was also a prefect and had a class of thirty young kids to
supervise, before the teacher arrived, I couldn’t really be bothered
and let them run riot until just before the master got there, when I
threatened them with death through a slow form of torture. For this
reason I was considered to be a ‘good’ prefect by the kids. The form
master had his doubts.
Being a prefect and head of the table at lunchtime in the school
canteen, it was my responsibility to dole out the food for the younger
plebs. The poor sods at the bottom of the table always got the
smallest portions and the older you got the bigger the portion. Until
you became a prefect, then you could pig out.
Mum used to pay five shillings a week for the lunch, but I never used
to go there after the age of fifteen. I used to go to the pub with a
couple of mates and have a pasty and a pint of beer except for when
there was Roast Beef or Apple Crumble on the menu, then I’d go to the
dining room and get my pig’s share of it.
Sporting Achievements
I was totally useless at soccer and cricket because of my glasses; at
least that was my excuse. Anyway, to cut a short story long, the Games
master did the usual thing and picked the two best players and told
them to pick their teams.
This inevitably resulted in Me, Daffy-Don Davenport and Charlie Hume
being the last ones chosen. Daffy-Don’s only claim to fame was his
ability to make an extraordinarily loud farting noise using a cupped
hand and his armpit. (If you don’t believe me, try it sometime on a
hot sweaty day).
Charlie must have been one of the original eggheads, he had the
biggest cranium I’ve ever seen, he was a brilliant scholar and ended
up getting thrown out of Cambridge University for wasting his time
train-spotting. He also spent every lunchtime at school, cycling
around to as many pubs as he could reach, giving them his own version
of the Egon Ronay system for pints of beer and pasties.
That leaves yours truly, the last but arguably the best of the
“useless trio”. I used to be pretty good at cross-country running,
which didn’t involve hand-eye co-ordination and some of the best
distance runners in history wore glasses. Although I must admit I
can’t name any off the top of my head, so you’ll have to take my word
for it.
However the smoking and drinking got to me, sooner rather than later,
and my running career finally fell flat. Me and a couple of mates were
caught smoking by one of the teachers. We were hiding in a quarry
having a quiet smoke. We were watching the leaders passing by and
waiting for a clear break in the field of runners, so we didn’t finish
too high in the placings, (nothing but honest me and my mates).
The lousy, hypocritical sod crept up behind us and confiscated the
smokes (he was a smoker himself, of course) He kept us behind, till
everybody had overtaken us, including Charlie Hume and Daffy Don
Davenport and then let the four of us go.
We ran into the school grounds past the assembled pupils and teachers
and pretended to race each other, we were all from different ‘houses’
and the crowd was going berserk. As we crossed the finish line, we all
ran over together holding hands. Much to the delight of the pupils
and the chagrin of the teachers.
In my second or third year at the school, they said they were having a
holiday to Yugoslavia in two years time or was it three years? From a
very early age, influenced by my hero Billy Large, I’d always wanted
to travel the world and that was my chance to start.
To achieve this ambition I had to earn some money. I started
delivering newspapers in the morning and after school and Sunday
Mornings (it got me out of chapel). For the morning round, I got 8
shillings and six pence; for the afternoon round, seven shillings and
six pence and for Sundays I got the princely sum of fifteen shillings,
plus tips.
It was a bit hard getting up on a winter’s day, with the frost on the
windows and hopping from foot to foot on the freezing cold lino. Once
I was dressed and cycling down to the shop to pick up the papers, I
was usually reasonably acclimatised, if you can call frozen snoticles
hanging from the schnozz, acclimatised.
On my ‘best’ delivery day, the snow was deep, about six feet in places
and I had to go through the fresh snow to deliver the papers into
people’s letterboxes. These were situated on the front door of the
house, not out the front of the house by the gate. This ensured that
the recipients could jump out of bed, stick on their thick dressing
gowns and carpet slippers and pick the newspaper off the rug inside
the front door, very civilised. In the meantime the paperboy was
struggling down their garden path, so cold that his testicles had
retired up to the upper region of his large intestine.
There was no such thing as throwing plastic wrapped papers into the
front garden. That was a Yankee idea, I don’t know if it has ever
caught on in Pommieland. It certainly exists in the land of the Skips.
Here, they drive to the front of the house and fling a plastic wrapped
paper in the general direction of your domicile, where it invariably
lands in a pool of water.
The Real Start of ‘The Tosspot’s Tale’
To go back a little, to the age of fourteen, I went to a pub in Little
Hayfield (a lovely little hamlet right on the edge of the National
Park, I had every intention of retiring to, in my twilight years) with
‘Bootledge’ a kid from school.
The pub was called ‘the Lantern Pike’ a real olde worlde tavern on a
road to nowhere. With genuine horse brasses, hanging dark beams and a
welcoming fire in a large fireplace.
I went to the bar and asked for a pint, the barman said “what sort of
a pint?” so I pointed at one of the pumps and said “that sort of
pint”. The barman laughed and said to the other customers “you heard
him, he said he was over eighteen, right?” That night Bootledge and I
got through four pints of lager (I think it could have been Mild or
Bitter) and two rum and oranges. I missed the last bus home and had to
run two and a half miles home.
I got there about eleven twenty which was about five minutes later
than my old man usually got home, I knocked on the front door and my
mum opened it and said “You’ve been drinking!” I said in a very
slurred voice “No I haven’t, I gust hed a beeeer ice lolly.” Mum said,
“get up those stairs before your dad gets home”
I tried to walk up the stairs, but I was wobbling from side to side
and mum shouted after me “You can’t even bloody walk straight”. That
was my first introduction to the demon drink and unfortunately I
didn’t look back for forty years.
Since that fateful day, I have arguably consumed more alcoholic
beverages (mainly beer, I must confess) on more Continents, Countries,
States, Provinces and Counties. In more Cities, Towns, Villages,
Hamlets and Hovels and on more Planes, Boats, Trains, Trams, Buses,
Automobiles, Bicycles and good old Shanks’ Pony than most other human
beings, pissed or present.
Holidays
Every year the family went to Southport or Morecambe for two weeks, us
kids used to play on the beach, which in both places could be a
million miles wide, because the sea went out so far. The beaches were
not golden sand or even white sand, like an Australian or Balinese
beach, they were more like muddy sand or pebbles. Sometimes, us kids
would ride the donkeys, which was good, if you can call a three-minute
ride, bouncing up and down on a miniature donkey fun.
At other times we went to Blackpool to see the illuminations, which
was a light show with trams lit up and trundling down the foreshore.
There was also a wax works and a chamber of horrors that was at
Blackpool tower, pretty neat for an eleven-year-old kid.
When I was fifteen I got my first passport and we set out from the
school on a coach, we drove down to Dover and then caught a cross
channel ferry to Ostend in Belgium. We then drove through part of
Germany and Switzerland to Venice in Italy.
In Venice, I tasted my first pizza; it was beautiful (in New Mills
there was no such thing as a pizza shop when I was a kid, I don’t
think there is one even now). A few of us bought a bottle of Chianti
and smuggled it back into our room. A teacher caught us and
confiscated the bottle and probably drank the dregs himself.
I recall having a beautiful grilled fish, I’d had fish before in New
Mills of course, but always deep-fried cod in batter with chips the
British national dish. Until it was overtaken by ‘curry and chips’,
nobody can accuse the Brits of being unoriginal.
From Venice, we went to Yugoslavia by train, it was a real eye-opener
to see the agriculture, and they seemed to be so backward compared to
England. I can’t imagine how it would have looked to the Yanks, as I
worked later, hoisting hay-bales onto a cart using a pitchfork, back
home.
We arrived at our dormitory near Lake Bled and that night we were
accosted by the locals trying to get us drunk on slivovitz (plum
brandy). I was quite happy downing the fiery spirit with them, but
they got a bit bored, because I wasn’t getting drunk (that was my
second taste of foreign alcohol, after the Chianti and I loved it).
The locals then decided to try to get one of the other kids drunk, he
was a very tall skinny kid, who was all arms and legs and as ungainly
as a giraffe. The locals were chasing him around an orchard, trying to
get him to drink, he was running around the trees terrified. The rest
of us kids were creased up laughing at him.
We went to the capital of Slovenia, a place called Sarejevo and had a
meal in a workers canteen it was bloody awful, fatty, greasy meat,
which was fairly typical of the food in the socialist republic of
Yugoslavia. This experience should have turned me into a rabid
capitalist, but didn’t.
After the holiday, I returned home to New Mills with a few trinkets
for the family, including a gondola with lights. My Dad arranged it on
a cupboard, placed on top of crinkled aluminium foil, with the
goldfish bowl in the background. Very kitsch, Mum loved it, which was
the whole object of the exercise.
A Local Holiday With Other School Friends
One summer me (Skull), Tutty, Nigs, Bails and a couple of other lads
went sailing on the canals around Chester in a converted half size
barge. These were converted coal barges that used to ply the canals of
the Midlands, before the advent of trains and trucks. In the ‘old’
days they were horse drawn and 72ft long.
By the time we went on them, they had been cut down to 36ft and were
petrol driven and fitted out with bunks and gas stoves. The owner
introduced us to the barge and explained how everything worked, after
that it was up to us.
On the first day we were travelling along nicely, sun bathing on the
roof, visiting the occasional pub and generally enjoying ourselves. We
moored for the night and went to sleep. I woke up in the morning to
find my shoes floating in water next to my head, I said, “Shit” and
woke the other ‘bargees’ up.
It turned out that a metal cruiser had squashed our wooden barge
against the bank and broken a seal in our hull. If it hadn’t been for
the fact that canals are so shallow, we could have drowned in our
sleep.
Headline, “Six drunken students drowned in five feet of water”. We
called the owner and told him what was going on and he got it fixed
and we retired to the nearest local hostelry to recover from the
trauma.
After that little incident, we cruised along happily at about 5mph (or
knots to the nautically minded) visiting every pub along the way and a
few that were a little out of the way, but recommended by the local
gentry.
It was a beautiful summer that year and a very enjoyable, relaxing way
to travel, shouting “Ahoy there” to passing barges and cruisers.
There’s no such thing as ‘Canal Rage’.
A few days later Nigs spat the dummy, and disappeared without saying
anything to anybody. We were worried about him and went to the police
station to report him missing. The Sergeant on duty asked for a
description, we told him he was about 6ft 2 and ugly, he said “Go and
look for an ugly girl about 5ft 10 and that’s where you’ll find him”.
All in all it was a great holiday and we found Nigs when we got back
home, he’d been missing his girl friend and gone home. She was about
5ft 10 and ugly, smart psychologists those local sergeants!
Back to the Grammar School
In school one morning I was in assembly, the head master kept the
whole of the sixth form behind while the others had left. He then gave
us a lecture and ended up by saying that some of the boys had a beer
and rugby attitude to sex, and then added “and I mean you Skellern!”
this embarrassed me somewhat, but worked wonders for my reputation
with the girls.
It was also only partially true, I admit the beer part was correct but
‘Rugby’, shit! This was New Mills not Eton. We wouldn’t have known a
rugby ball from a croquet ball and as far as the allusion to sex went,
I was still a blushing virgin.
At school we had “A levels” which are the equivalent of the V.C.E here
in Victoria. I got a B in Economics, B in General Studies, C in
Chemistry and an E in Maths or something like that. Before I got the
results, I went through a book, which was about four inches thick,
listing all the university courses available in Britain.
Each student had to pick six Universities that they wanted to attend.
I went through the book and chose the six Universities, which had the
most women to male students. The head master called me aside and said
“Skellern you are not going to get into any of these you idiot, choose
somewhere that’s likely to accept you like Bradford or Hull or some
other crappy place like that”
This didn’t particularly worry me, I knew the slimy little prick loved
me and had my best interests at heart, so I chose Hull and U.W.I.S.T
in Cardiff. I got rejected by five of them including Hull, but I was
accepted by U.W.I.S.T. Which was my sixth choice, I looked them up in
the book and found out there were twenty males to every female. That
did not particularly impress me, but I decided to go anyway, it was
either that or earning an honest living.
University 1967-1971
When I left New Mills to go to Cardiff, I hitch hiked down to Cardiff
and found accommodation at a Bed and Breakfast place run by a Mrs.
Evans. It was there that I met Picky-Morch and Big-Clem. We were all
sharing the same digs, with a pokey lounge/dining room and a bedroom
with three single beds. We stayed there for one semester. The food was
lousy, but the three of us had a good time going to the pub and eating
at the student’s canteen.
The course that I did at U.W.I.S.T wasn’t particularly difficult and
the first year consisted of economics, maths, accounting, statistics
and a variety of engineering topics. I was the only one on the course
who had done economics before and I was the only one who failed at the
end of the year, there’s complacency for you.
I took the exam again and passed with flying colours, well I passed
anyway. Thus proving that you can’t take anything for granted in
education or any other bloody thing for that matter.
For the second semester Picky, Clem and I went into a three-storey
house with seven other male students, we had a ball there. I was in a
room with George Angel who was the least angelic person you could ever
hope to meet. He was a real mongrel, a Geordie, but a great guy.
Every Friday he used to say to me “ Eh Keieth doan’t let mee peck up
dat Sheila again” and every Saturday morning I’d wake up and George
and Sheila would be in bed together. George used to get up naked and
parade in front of the mirror saying “Eh George yeur a gud lookin’
lad”.
I’d look at Sheila and she’d look at me, waiting to see who would be
the next one to get out of bed, it was always me. I’d get out of bed
naked myself and quickly get dressed, no parading in front of the
mirror for me. I’d leave the bedroom and Sheila would get up at her
own pace.
Although UWIST had a really, really bad male to female ratio, as I’ve
said, about twenty guys to every girl. In Cardiff there were two
Teacher Training Colleges, one College of Domestic Arts and an Arts
College, which were nearly all females, and when ever they had a
dance, we were the first ones they notified to get a few guys at their
dances.
There was also a dance hall in the main street of Cardiff where the
local girls used to go, so socially we had a lot of choices. There
were also the girls from Cardiff University, but they tended to look
down on us UWIST guys, which was hardly surprising.
I remember one sad and demeaning occasion, when I was pretty drunk and
went to a dance at the local dance hall, I think it was organised by
one of the Colleges. I was dancing with a girl and asked her for date
at 7:30 on Monday, she said OK. 15 minutes later I was dancing with
another girl and asked her for a date at the same place at 7:30 on
Tuesday, she said OK. 30 minutes later I was dancing with another girl
and asked her for a date at the same place at 7:30 on Wednesday, she
said OK.
On the Monday I was having a few beers with the boys in the Student
Union and at 7:15, I said “I’ll see you later, I’ve got a date”. I
walked down to our meeting place near the Taff River and, got there
about ten minutes’ early, with a single stemmed rose and waited twenty
minutes. She didn’t turn up, so I threw the rose into the river and
went back to the Student Union. The boys were waiting for me with a
pint of Double Diamond.
On the Tuesday I left the boys in the Student Union at 7:25 and got
there at 7:25, I waited on the other side of the road for ten minutes,
and she didn’t turn up. I said “Stuff this” and went back to the
Student Union where the boys were waiting for me, with a pint of
Double Diamond and a few ribald comments, along the lines of “you’re a
wanker Skellern”.
On the Wednesday I left the Union at 7:30 and said to the boys “I’ll
see you here in twenty minutes, have a couple of pints of Double
Diamond waiting for me OK”. Went down to the same place waited three
minutes and guess what, she didn’t turn up. I went back to the Union
and the boys were all pissing themselves laughing. Apparently the
three girls were all roommates and I’d been set up something rotten.
The boys were also in on the joke, the bastards!
I had a few other girlfriends while I was at University. I fell in
love with a couple of them, but nothing ever came of it. One of them,
Brenda gave me the bums rush for a friend called Minty which I didn’t
particularly mind, another one gave me the bums rush for a guy called
Fred.
This was a bitter disappointment, getting the elbow for a guy called
Fred, for Gods sake. Another one moved from Cardiff to Sydney after
she graduated, and the rest sort of ended up with a similar whimper
(for proprieties sake, I won’t mention bangs).
I really enjoyed my four years at University, which was really three,
because it was a ‘sandwich course’, with a year spent in industry. I
spent a lot of my time playing snooker, at the bar and going to the
dances. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the library studying, but I
did attend all the lectures and took heaps of notes.
When it came time for the exams, I had a fantastic short-term memory
and could read the notes the night before and then pass the exam. Once
the exam was over, I could forget everything I had memorised and fill
my brain with the notes for the exam the next day. Not a great way to
study, but very effective at passing exams.
I eventually ended up with a ‘Second Class Honours Degree in
Industrial Economics’ from the University of Wales, Institute of
Science and Technology. Impressive what old chap? Unfortunately, this
elongated sobriquet was less than impressive to the Personnel Managers
of the various global companies to which I applied for employment.
They all recognised a second class degree from a second class
university when they saw one. Added to this was the fact that nobody,
including me, knew what the hell an industrial economist was and what
sort of function they were expected to fulfill.
At that time, the employment market in the UK, USA and most other
developed countries (with the exception, perhaps of South Africa), was
flooded with economists (real? ones), business analysts, and various
other assorted retards with equally assorted diplomas and degrees in
business studies.
Work.
I have been doing some very serious thinking on this topic and having
worked in a rather large and varied number of occupations from the age
of fourteen to fifty four. I am of the opinion that the vast majority
of jobs are as boring as all shit, after the first three or four
weeks.
How many people do you know who leap out of bed every day (I was going
to write morning, but there are a large number of shift workers out
there who are, of necessity, jumping or crawling out of bed at all
sorts of godforsaken hours), shouting ‘You bloody beauty another day
at work’.
I would hazard a guess that it’s not too many. You can probably count
them on one finger and it’s more than likely to be your middle one, if
you should be cursed enough to be sleeping next to them.
With this in mind, it is fairly obvious that the only way to be a
happy chappy at work is to change your job every six months. This
gives you the initial excitement of actually getting a job and
enjoying it. Then when it starts getting boring, you’ve got the
pleasure of anticipating when you can tell the boss to stick his job
up his nether regions.
This should always be done at the absolutely most inconvenient moment
for the fascist bastards. You then have a few months on the dole,
lazing around and doing nothing, until panic sets in when you realise
that you haven’t got two brass razoos to rub together.
I lived this lifestyle in the early seventies, jobs were plentiful and
a bloke could pick and choose. I found that when I was a cost
accountant I wanted a labouring job in the fresh air. When I was a
labourer, after the air got a bit too fresh, a clerical job seemed
appealing.
Anyone, who has done a clerical job, knows that this becomes
incredibly boring after more than four weeks. At that stage or any
other stage for that matter, six months or more travelling is always
very appealing. Travelling doesn’t pay very well and can be a
considerable drain on ones monetary resources and so necessitates
periods of tedium to earn the requisite brass.
When travelling has finally lost its ability to move you emotionally
as well as financially, which it inevitably does. It’s time to look
for that challenging professional position again and repeat the cycle.
The only trouble with getting your ‘ideal’ job is that you have to
explain to the prospective employer what you have been doing for the
last 12 months.
This problem is not insurmountable and can be overcome by the simple
expedient of lying through your teeth. In this day and age, you can
also produce your own glowing testimonials from employers and
educational establishments using the Internet.
I didn’t really have any of these problems while I was still at Uni; I
had to work during the holidays to supplement my pitiful (but welcome)
Government grant. (At least in those days education was free, not like
today in Aus with HECS).
Anyway I got various jobs during the vacations such as working as a
postman at Christmastime, which was a bit like delivering newspapers
only a lot better paid (including tips and alcoholic beverages ‘to
keep the cold out’. These perks should of course have been given to
the regular Postie, but I was far too polite to knock them back.
Other jobs included working as a trade’s assistant, read gopher (as in
go- this, go fer that), at the paper mill where my dear old Dad
worked. He worked at the same job for forty odd years, about half of
them as a boilerman in one mill and the other half in a similar job in
the mill I worked in. Straight after the war he was working 12 hour
shifts, six days a week. This was later changed to alternating 8 hour
shifts, five days a week.
This obviously resulted in a drop of income for the family and my Mum
had to take on a part-time job as a cleaner in the offices of the same
mill. Prior to having kids Mum worked as a weaver in a textile mill
from the age of about 15. Neither of them ever took a sick day, even
if they were as crook as dogs. This work ethic is definitely not
genetic and must have resulted from a combination of them both being
orphaned at 14 and the depression.
Working at the mill was a bit of an eye-opener for me, being the first
time I had actually been in a real working type environment. There
were kids my age and younger doing labouring jobs around these huge
machines.
I was a bit lucky working with the mechanics. Most of my time was
spent handing them tools and cleaning up afterwards. If they had
nothing better for me to do, they sent me off to the tool-store to get
‘left handed screwdrivers’, ‘skyhooks’ and ‘boxes of holes” etc. This
was OK by me, I just used to wander around for half an hour watching
the production line and different processes.
Boiler Cleaning
Anyone of a tender, caring nature should give this a big miss, as it
is not particularly funny. Positively heart-rending in fact, however
even though I have been permanently scarred psychologically by these
events I shall trudge ahead, masking a tear. This description of man’s
inhumanity to man, would make the aforementioned man weep, if he
wasn’t responsible in the first place.
I had a job for a couple of summers doing boiler cleaning; this was
the twentieth century version of the Dickensian era of sending urchins
up chimneys. In the North of England amidst those ‘dark satanic
mills’, it was traditional to close the mill down for two weeks every
summer. During this time any non-routine and major maintenance jobs
were accomplished, while the rest of the shit-kickers went off to the
‘seaside’.
One of these jobs was to clean out the boilers, which ran the
turbines, which ran the whole factory. This entailed closing them
down, which meant shutting off the heat source (oil or coal) and
‘blowing down’ the waterside (Getting rid of the residual water). This
sounds easy, but there is a bit more to it than switching off your
gas-heater at the power point.
Which is where my ‘Old Man’ came into his own. In his case he was also
the one who did the actual cleaning, so he always did a good job. Even
so, it was not a time we looked forward to in our household,
especially when they converted from coal to oil. For two weeks every
year he would come back from work, coughing and having breathing
problems and he reckoned that the only cure was a few glasses of
strong Jamaican Rum and orange.
Knowing this I should have been a lot smarter, but money doesn’t just
talk, it screams at you, when you haven’t got any. I was offered
ten-bob an hour to work for six weeks both times, eight if I wanted
it. This was back in 1968/69 and ten-bob, was a fair swag of boodle in
those days and was more than the Old Man was earning.
The first couple of days were great; another guy and me were sitting
up in a heat converter/cooler, about sixty feet above the ground. Some
silly sod of a fitter had walked over the fins in his hobnail boots
and squashed half of the fins. Our job was to squat on a couple of
boards and straighten them out. The sun was shining, the birds were
singing and we were stripped to the waist having a great old time.
This didn’t last very long unfortunately. The next job was cleaning a
large coal burning boiler in Lancashire, Bury or Bolton or some where
like that. 6:00 start, 8:00 finish (picked up and dropped off at
home). This boiler was fairly typical; the fireside was about 6ft in
diameter and 24ft long with a flywall 5-6ft from the back.
The idea is that crushed coal is fed into the boiler on a conveyor
belt. It then burns at a fairly healthy clip. Being anthracite coal,
it is very heat efficient and most is converted to heat. The rest is
smoke and a fine ash, the smoke goes out the back, through the flues
and then up the chimney stack.
This lovely stuff goes up into the atmosphere, which as we now know,
is not a great idea. Some of the ash follows the smoke, but because it
is heavier, falls down either directly or when it rains. This covers
the surrounding town and countryside in a rather attractive browny/black
coating.
Enough of this Al Gore pontificating. The rest of the ash remains
between the flywall and the back of the boiler and some half-baked
idiot (i.e. me, soon to become a fully baked idiot). Had to climb up
into the back of the boiler and proceed to shovel the ash over the top
of the flywall using a small hand-shovel. This allowed an older, wiser
person than me, (who was probably on twelve-bob an hour), standing
outside the front of the boiler with a long handled shovel removing
the fruits of my labour.
The above may not sound particularly arduous, you can no doubt imagine
yourself sitting on a sun-kissed beach with your bucket and spade,
throwing sand around willy-nilly, hither and yon. Now imagine yourself
sitting/lying in a confined space on a bed of warm, fine, soft ash
spade in hand. Fine ash is a wonderful insulator and when you dig down
an inch or so becomes hot, two inches and it’s bloody hot, I won’t go
on.
There is, as always a fine art to this. You go in and shovel like
buggery all the ash near the flywall over it. You then retire for a
couple of minutes to let the dust settle and cool down a bit. This
manouvre is repeated several times until the unfeeling bastard at the
front of the boiler, starts yelling at you to “get a bloody move on,
we haven’t got all bloody day”.
You then have to get serious, this involves actually getting inside
and going like the blazes, swapping between your feet and your nether
regions, getting scorched.
After that, you go into the front part of the boiler and chip away and
chip away at the residue on the sides and pipes with a scaling hammer,
this can be fairly relaxing, at least you’re not roasting your nuts.
You then go into the waterside which is not so good, usually hotter
and steamier and more pipes and more scale.
Once that is finished an inspector comes along to inspect your
handiwork. We usually did a good job and got the OK from the
inspector, so it was straight to the nearest boozer for a few
well-deserved ales.
One thing far worse for me than the big coal-burners, was the small
gas burners. These little suckers were about a fifth of the size of
the big ones and I’m not quite sure how they worked. I do know that I
had to squeeze into a hole at the front and being a skinny runt, I was
always the one who was picked. You had to use the scaling hammer to
get the scale off.
You couldn’t sit or turn around and hoped they wouldn’t turn your
light off or close the door on you. (They never did, they knew what it
was like). I really earned my ten-bob in those bastards.
The end came for me, when we were doing a coal-fired job on the
Yorkshire coast, Grimsby I think it was. The guys were picking me up
at 5:00am and driving for four hours to get there. Doing a full eight
or nine hours work, having a couple of ales, driving back and arriving
at about 11:00pm. We did that for about six days.
On the final day, we got there to work on the waterside and found the
stupid boilerman hadn’t blown it down properly. We didn’t have the
expertise to do it. We, or I should say I, had to put a dry-suit on
top of my overalls and slosh around in 4 inches of hot water.
I lasted a couple of hours and then spat the dummy and said, “You can
stick yer job up yer bum” and spent the next four hours in the pub.
They did have the decency to take me home and pay me off, but that was
it, as far I was concerned.
If anybody is really interested, I can continue with the next stage of
my life, which covers South Africa and then Australia and New Zealand.
After that will be more Australia and Asia, then America and Canada,
followed by my life from 1978 until I got married in 1989.
If anybody reads this, please comment, even if it’s excruciatingly
negative, I’m big enough, old enough and ugly enough, to take it.
Positive criticism would be even more appreciated.
Keith Skellern
Kskel5@hotmail.com
Reviews and comments requested
Posted 01/11/2008
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