GROWING UP IN BIRMINGHAM: LIVING IN SHARD END, 1957-1962...

 A Childhood in Shard End, Birmingham, 1957-1962…

First impressions…

Moving to Shard End from Ward End was quite an eye opener for me, aged around 7, for 121 Nearmoor Road seemed a brighter place to live in than the rather dull and dark 63 Bamville Road. 

SHARD END ESTATE, LAID OUT...

I had my own bedroom at the rear of the council property, there was an upstairs toilet room rather than an outside loo, plus a bathroom and it was a novelty at first to clamber from my bed and go to the toilet, whether I needed a pee or not, just because I could… This risked the bellowing wrath from my dad downstairs though, demanding to know why I was out of bed…

EARLY BIRTHDAY PARTY AT 121: DAVE WHALLEY (CLASS FRIEND), PAULINE LUCAS (FROM WARD END), FLORENCE PHILLIPS (NEXT DOOR), JOHN QUINNEY (ACROSS THE ROAD), JOYCE HITCHMAN (CLASS FRIEND) & PETER PAGE (FROM WARD END...)
NOTE THE TIES WORN BY PETER & ME...

I still had to be in bed by 7.30pm however and on one occasion, in 1961, Aston Villa reached the first ever League Cup Final, played over two legs against Rotherham United. Villa lost the first leg 2-0 at Millmoor but although my father had decided to go to the second leg at Villa Park, I was not allowed to because it was in my school’s term-time…

Villa came from behind to claim the trophy by 3-2 on aggregate but all I received was a match programme on my bed and a note telling me the score. Thanks for that… 

I didn’t ever shrug off the rather military style adherence to rules inflicted upon me by my father.

My young cat Ricky struggled for the first few days in Shard End and to prevent him from wandering back to Ward End, he was kept in the house whilst belongings were sorted out and doors were being left open. There was a two-door storage cupboard on the landing with two small parallel handles which were pulled to open the doors outwards and apart. Dad locked the cat inside the space during those first daytimes in the new house by slipping a small American Native Indian toy canoe of mine across the handles, so that Ricky couldn’t push the doors apart from the inside…

SIMILAR CANOE TO THE ONE I HAD...

So cruel, mum and I thought at the time but I guess it worked, for Ricky didn’t ever wander away after those first days…

Noises in the night… 

Lying in that bedroom as a kid, two particular sounds were common. Every night, the wooden Bailey bridge along Packington Avenue towards Lea Ford which crossed the River Cole, rattled loudly like the quick salvo of a machine gun whenever a vehicle passed over it. The bridge was no doubt a relic of WW2, when an anti-tank gun placement was used in the vicinity. My mate Cliff Hickman’s dad had been stationed there at the time and he told me that the gun had been shoved into the lake on the site after the war had finished…

SHARD END PARK & LAKE WERE CREATED UPON AN OLD GRAVEL PIT...

On some weekend evenings at around midnight an aircraft revved up really loudly at Elmdon, now Birmingham, Airport. It was like WW1 shells exploding for about five minutes and along with the short bursts of machine gun fire from the driven-over Bailey bridge, I guess being in bed for me was a bit like hunkering down in a Passchendaele trench during WW1…

If the wind was in the wrong direction, sometimes the stink from the River Cole crept through my bedroom window too and it would always remind me of a particularly unpleasant lump of plasticine, which had been allowed to rot somehow… Awful.

Bread and milk were both delivered to the house and mum shopped mostly at the Co-op when some shops were built close by, soon after we moved in.

121…    

Both the front and rear gardens at 121 were quite long, for much of the Shard End Estate, built in the early 1950s I believe, certainly didn’t cramp folks. We took on the house which had been previously rented by the Frear family, one of a group of four joined dwellings. Looking at the frontages, ours was to the left of an arched entry which served the two middle houses and this contained two ‘back gates’. Floss and Tom Phillips shared the entry but their house had an extra bedroom which was situated above the entry’s arch.

THE BACK GARDEN: NOTE THE ROCKERY & THE PATH...

 The two end houses were rented by the Wilsons and the Carters, but although the Carters had an insurance policy with my dad’s company, I didn’t know the family at all. In fact Mr Carter worked in South Africa for some time and saw the 1958 FA Cup winners Bolton Wanders play an exhibition match against Southern Rhodesia while he was there and he gave me a match programme, which I kept for many years.

Len Wilson worked shifts but his wife Enid was really pleasant, even though my mum called her ‘Mrs Wilson’ for years… Their daughter Janice was some years older than me and when she was married, she went to live in the Channel Islands, I believe.

Enid was always good about returning balls when I somehow managed to lift them over the back-yard’s wall and in the end, with her blessing I simply practised my high-jumping technique by scaling the wire fence between the gardens to retrieve my inaccuracies.

When we moved house,  dad’s boss at Britannic Assurance asked him about the new residence and dad joked that it was so far into the country that cattle were herded down the road by the local farmer. On that very evening, cattle were driven down Nearmoor Road, plodding across gardens to the dismay of residents. See? You shouldn’t joke about some things, especially if you have Romany ancestry…

Commentating, being a wicketkeeper and racing Dinky cars… 

My use of a tennis ball for football in the back yard kept me busy for hours. The brick wall separating our yard and Enid’s was about three metres by three metres in size and of course I saw that as a goal-frame. I would commentate, imitating perhaps the BBC’s Kenneth Wolstenhome, as I underarmed a tennis ball against the house wall and either volleyed it against the goal-wall with a foot or I leapt salmon-like to head the ball at the goal. Having watched live matches at Villa Park, it had been clear to me that the majority of players were right-footed and so, to imitate them, I regularly kicked my ball with my unnatural right foot and thus became almost as adept with that foot as I was with my left… Later in life, I was able to shoot, take corners, etc, with either foot, which was more than useful…

MY 'GOAL WALL' IS BEHIND MUM'S LEFT SHOULDER...

I played football for Hillstone’s second XI in Year 4, then for a very good 1st team in Years 5 and 6, getting into the Saltley District team too, which wore exactly the same kit as Hillstone: green shirts with white sleeves, white patch on the back, black numbers and white shorts. I wore 6 for the school team and 3 for the District team but more about that in a future post about my sporting days… 

IN HILLSTONE KIT...

WEARING 6...

There was a nail in the house wall too, a couple of metres high, upon which mum had hung a small plastic plant pot and when it was empty, that became a basketball hoop for my tennis ball. Oddly, I never actually played tennis with a tennis ball, a sign of my working class background, I guess…

During the summer months I practised catching the tennis ball by slinging it against the opposite wall of the yard, which was also a brick construction forming one side of both the coal house and dad’s shed. I had watched BBC TV’s Grandstand on Saturday afternoons and had become fascinated by the gloves and pads worn by wicketkeepers in cricket matches. I so wanted to wear those pieces of equipment but of course dad could never afford them and I was left to my own devices.

I was in the Hillstone Junior School’s cricket team in Year 5 and Year 6 but I wasn’t the wicketkeeper. I was a batsman and quick fielder with safe catching hands but I so desired to play behind the stumps. A mate of mine, Dave Whalley was more forward in character than I was and in Year 6 he had demanded the gloves when the team had been picked. I was simply too shy.

At home, I took my football shin pads and attached the bottoms of them round the tops of my calves with the use of my elastic garters, usually worn to keep up my long grey school socks. The pads therefore flapped above my knees, like the tops of real cricket pads. Mum’s thick gardening gloves became my wicketkeeper’s gloves and I paraded around the garden, in my mind walking out to field in a real cricket match and then I would throw my tennis ball against any wall and catch it in the smooth style of a real wicketkeeper.

My hero was the Australian ‘keeper Wally Grout, who crouched differently to any other ‘keeper I saw and so I imitated him, which became my method of play too. I was to be a wicketkeeper all my cricketing life, for my secondary school and also for Lucas GKS when I had finished at college. I would have been quite happy to keep wicket for both teams and then go home. Batting didn’t appeal. Apparently my secondary school wanted to send me for a trial at Warwickshire Cricket Club but my father didn’t think my batting was good enough and I wasn’t told about the incident until many years had lapsed… 

MY SPORTING HERO Wally Grout...

WHAT I LOVED DOING...

Thanks for that…

Toy cars, jeeps, trucks and buses were brilliant for my only-child life in Nearmoor Road, for I would push them all, one after the other, with as equal force as I could manage, down the garden path in turn and back up again, to see which vehicle got back to the start first. It would take an age to complete and almost every time, my Dinky racer number 9, the red Maserati, seemed to win… I wanted it to. This puts doubt upon my assertion that I tried to replicate the strength of my pushes for every vehicle… Hmm…

THE RACERS...

THE FERRARI & MASERATI, MY FAVOURITE PAIR...

Playing on lawns…    

The main lawn in the back garden had been trained by dad in the first place, before opting out of mowing it and therefore handing the chore to mum and I wasn’t allowed to play on it. Instead, I was told to play on the small strip of lawn on the other side of the garden path but that was so narrow and the bushes in next door’s garden were so intrusive that I mostly played in the yard. 

MY FATHER 'TRAINS' THE LAWN...
NOTE THE KITCHEN WINDOW, BELOW WHICH DAD'S HOME-MADE CRICKET WICKETS WOULD LEAN.
BEHIND THE WALL ON THE LEFT WERE DAD'S SHED & THE COAL-HOUSE.
NEAR DAD'S BIKE IS A NICHE, WHERE DUSTBINS WERE MEANT TO BE KEPT...

MUM ENDED UP TENDING THE GARDEN...

However, on the occasions when dad found time to play cricket with me, late on some summer Sundays, the main lawn was utilised because I bowled left-handed and needed a slightly angled run-up to send the ball up the garden towards the home-made stumps below the kitchen window. 

DURING MY FATHER'S FINAL DAYS, HIS GARDEN HAD TURNED TO THIS...

SOME EFFORT AT CLEARING THE MESS WAS MADE...
NOTE THE PATH IS STILL THERE...

Dad considered the game to be totally competitive, the object being to score a 4 or a 6 by using the rockery behind the bowler as a ‘boundary’. This game was to limit my abilities as a batsman because there was no recourse to striking the ball to the ‘off-side’, due to the brick wall forming one side of both shed and coal-house… Hence my propensity for the ‘on-side’, not only because my father had forced me to learn to bat right-handed when I was about three years old…

Yeah, thanks for that, too…

I bowled overarm, whilst dad cleverly bowled underarm ‘spinners’ which often turned acutely on the paving slabs and gave me some real trouble, often having to defend as the tennis ball spun upwards and if he used a ‘leg break’, which bounced from the side where my feet were planted, of course there was no room to strike it so close to the brick wall after it had turned… Frustrating…

At least I could try to stop him scoring and was often forced to dive to stop the ball from reaching the rockery but the best moments of all were to leap sideways and catch him out… Joy. He was grudging in his praise for a decent catch. He wanted to win… I wanted to stop him doing so, if I could… 

I knew how to lose though, especially at Draughts…

Thanks for that, also… 

You would be out if your shot went straight over the fence into Enid’s garden, or if the ball lodged in the space created in the brick wall for a dustbin. Few folks used the space for their bins though, for most people tucked the trash container neatly inside the entry wall between the houses, out of sight.

At least I got to play on the lawn during those cricketing occasions…

Sunday sounds & smells, the sun, Brewer & Shipley and catching butterflies, bees and wasps…

I associate decent weather Sundays as a kid growing up in Shard End with my father working in his shed, using wood, making things. Sawing, hammering, planing, rasping and filing. People would burn rubbish in their gardens too, hastening the gathering in of hung out washing by women from other houses and filling the air with acrid smoke. 

Mowing was a regular sound, the cooking of Sunday dinner was a memorable smell but dad washing up on the Sabbath was always an activity to steer clear of, which must have been hell for mum, who stood timidly behind her frowning, grumbling, thrashing husband with a tea-towel, as he scoured the saucepans.

Mum usually sat in the garden in summer sunshine whenever possible and I recall that when I was around 19, I was listening to the radio in the garden, as mum slumbered in a deckchair and a DJ featured a song by American duo Brewer & Shipley called Tarkio Road. I loved it and became an avid fan, much to the disquiet of my mates, who were into more accepted musical tastes, like Cream, The Who, Genesis, Rolling Stones and Beatles etc…

LOVED THEIR MUSIC.
STILL PERFORMING TOO...

As a young kid, I used to catch butterflies in my hands from a bush near dad’s shed but then immediately release the Cabbage Whites and Red Admirals I had managed to grab. That exercise then extended to bees and wasps… I did that for quite a time until a bee finally stung my palm and I then sought a less painful activity to partake in whilst in the back garden…

DAD'S SHED WINDOW & NEXT DOOR'S SHED WINDOW, ALTHOUGH TOM PHILLIPS BRED BUDGERIGARS IN HIS.
THE BUSH BEHIND ME IS WHERE I CAUGHT BUTTERFLIES IN MY HANDS...

Playing out front…

I recall playing hopscotch on the Nearmoor Road pavement but at one time an older girl set up a ‘gang' which involved marching in the street but I only lasted for a few minutes before getting my football out. No wonder the idea of joining the army horrified me. 

Neighbour Ian Pemberton was older than me but we played with toy soldiers, tanks and other WW2 replicas in his back garden a couple of times, as well as partaking in games with marbles. Luckily, I rarely lost my marbles, unlike later in life…

The way the road was laid out was interesting, with the surface divided into large rectangles, bordered by lines of tar. This meant that courts were almost designated and I used this phenomenon to play a kind of tennis with a new neighbour, Ian Comerford, a year younger than me but considerably taller. His younger sister Heather was a decent girl, their mum was a dead ringer for the Queen and their dad was a JP, as well as working at the Rover plant…

IAN & HEATHER JOIN ME IN A GAME OF CARDS...

They had moved from a road less than a mile away, whilst previous occupiers, the Walthews, had moved further along Nearmoor Road for some reason. Barbara Walthew used to play with me sometimes… Ian though was a Birmingham City fan and we played ‘footy tennis’ with a tennis ball on the road surface. To score a goal, one had to shoot to hit the face of the kerb and if you struck the ball hard enough and it rebounded back across the tarred central line, you could shoot again. It was a brilliant game, making us move our feet to try to stop the other player from scoring and I beat Ian every time we played… 

I TOOK THIS PICTURE A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO & AMAZINGLY, THE ROAD SURFACE HADN'T CHANGED, ILLUSTRATING THE RECTANGLES & THE KERB FOOTY COURT!

So few cars were owned or parked in the road at that time, or even drove past our houses, that it was safe to carry on playing for hours. John Quinney was two years older than me but when he was 12 or 13 and I was 10 or 11, we sometimes took a football onto Combrook Green and John, who was a good footballer, would shoot at me, for I was always wanting to be a goalkeeper and I would leap about madly and return home muddy much of the time… 

JOHN QUINNEY & ME IN MY FRONT GARDEN, AGAIN A LONG LAWN!

COMBROOK GREEN, WHERE WE PLAYED FOOTBALL...

Gary Heatherington, a fair-haired local bully and popular with the girls was an excellent footballer but once he and his sad followers trapped John and me when we were out on our bikes. John, being older and stronger managed to get away and fetched my mum, who rescued me, the hostage, who had been ‘captured’ and tied to a tree… Yes, really… I saw Gary later in life and we had a good chat. He was the only Primary School footballer I ever knew to be sent off in a match… 

HILLSTONE'S TEAM AT STECHFORD PLAYING FIELDS WHEN I WAS IN YEAR 5.
I AM BACK ROW, FAR RIGHT,WHILST GARY HEATHERINGTON IS FRONT ROW, SECOND FROM LEFT...
BACK LEFT IS TONY BRITTAIN, THEN FREDDIE HAYCOCK, THEN GEOFFREY CARPENTER BUT I CAN'T RECALL THE GOALIE'S NAME, NOR THE LAD'S NEXT TO ME...
FRONT MIDDLE IS DEREK JAMES, THEN ANOTHER CARPENTER AND DAVE WHALLEY. NO IDEA OF THE NAME OF THE PLAYER, FRONT LEFT...

THE CRICKET TEAM WHEN I WAS IN YEAR 5.
GARY IS IN THE CENTRE AT THE FRONT, NOT SURPRISINGLY...
I LOOK UNHAPPY IN MY CHECKED SHIRT...

In a cricket practice once, my lace was untied while he was batting, I was fielding and he smashed the ball my way. However, to everyone’s horror, I caught him out with a tough, low catch, then, in my shy manner, I placed the ball on the grass and proceeded to tie my lace. Gary then argued that I had dropped the catch and he refused to be ‘out’. Teacher Les Barber was too scared of Gary to do the right thing and the little shit remained batting… 

I used roller skates on the fairly smooth pavements of Nearmoor Road too, even playing a form of hockey using my cricket bat as a stick and a tennis ball as a ‘puck’, as I skated about. 

I HAD A SIMILAR PAIR OF ROLLER SKATES & THAT IS MY ORIGINAL CRICKET BAT...

WHERE I SKATED A LOT IN NEARMOOR ROAD...

Schools…

Sometimes, I explored the edges of Yorkswood, annually used for camping by Scouts, Guides, Brownies and Cubs for years, before houses replaced the many trees there. A small section still remains, I believe. Three secondary schools had been built backing onto the River Cole’s valley: Central Grammar School for boys, Byng Kenrick Grammar School for girls and the mixed Sir Wilfred Martineau School. Only Sir Wilf’s has survived, now called Tile Cross Academy, which covers the entire site.

Central GS had been in Suffolk Street, Birmingham until 1957, when it moved to the new location, next to Martineau, named after Sir Wilfred, a Lord Mayor of Birmingham and local politician and Kenrick, named after another politician and Lord Mayor, Wilfred Byng Kenrick… Eventually, the two grammar schools amalgamated and then became one with the bilateral Martineau.

The two local 'secondary modern’ schools, Alderlea for boys and Longmeadow for girls, were knocked down many years ago to be replaced by housing… I was lucky enough to pass my 11+ examination and achieved a place at King Edward’s Grammar School in Aston, a related school to K.E. Camp Hill, where my twin cousins Dave and Derek were pupils… 

LONGMEADOW SCHOOL...

The only shops in Shard End when I moved there, were a group of prefabricated constructions in Shard End Crescent and I recall having my hair cut there but soon, two short rows of shops were created in Kitsland Road, closer to the house, which we used as a family. The Shard End Crescent shops were later replaced by brick built versions and have been refurbished in recent years, although the Kitsland stores have fallen foul of the expansion of supermarkets and I believe that perhaps only a couple of shops remain there now. I must drive over to Shard End and check…

THESE SHOPS REPLACED THE ONES BELOW...

The primary schools, like Alderlea and Longmeadow secondary schools had pertinent names for what the area used to be like: Timberley, Brownmead and my school, Hillstone, perhaps suggesting that the nearby lake was indeed once a gravel pit… Oh, there was Guardian Angels Catholic School too, which had no apparent connection to the countryside…

Shard End Park:

Created as Norman Chamberlain Playing Fields, where I would play a few Sunday football matches when I was older, this area, bordering the River Cole, with poor drainage, was where I sometimes played football with my father. (More about that when I write about him…)

A children’s playground was laid out but I only ever really used the decent slide, which was often lubricated using a butter wrapper, making the surface really fast and slippery, although my shorts must have become a little greasy, which to be fair, mum never commented upon.

Hillstone Primary School…

I transferred from Sladefield Road School to a Year 2 class at Hillstone Infants’ School but I remember only two incidents there… First, being far too scared to ask if I could go to the toilet before going home, I became desperate and after lifting our chairs onto desks to free up the floor for the cleaner, I was further delayed by a prayer delivered by the teacher, whose name I cannot recall. I peed myself. I can still feel it running down my bare leg onto the floor. I said nothing. Nobody ever mentioned it to me but I was so upset by the trauma…

On the final day of the summer term for some reason, all of the children from the Infants and Junior Schools were instructed to run around the playing field, which had its own football pitch, plus a long jump pit and it backed onto the woods. I found myself running past children of all year groups surprisingly easily, the first time I ever realised that I was quite fast…

So, in September 1958, I was in Year 3 and my teacher was an older lady called Mrs Smith. We had ‘tests’ at Christmas and then in the summer term and I finished top of the class both times. Mr Barber was my Y4 teacher, who became an acquaintance of my father’s and eventually he took out an insurance policy with my dad’s company, Britannic.

When we were sent to Mr Barber’s classroom to meet him for an hour or so at the end of Year 3, I recall him spotting a kid called Geoffrey Hancock sitting up so high, it was like he was about to be projected into space. “Are you the smartest boy in the class?” asked Mr Barber. “No, Sir…” others responded, “…Peter Ray is…” I could have died. I was embarrassed and consumed by shyness… 

In the Christmas tests, Roger Baker beat me by half a mark into second place. I was terrified what my dad would say to me. I didn’t want to return home and tell him. He was duly annoyed and really shouted at me. In the summer, I finished top, as I did in every set of tests taken in Years 5 and 6. It was easier to learn stuff and behave well, than go home and get scolded for failure…

Year 4 was good because I played football for the 2nd team, at right-back (again showing the importance of being able to kick with both feet) but it was cold in January at Glebe Farm Recreation Ground for the one time I recall the team playing and I barely got a kick. Our teacher in Year 5 was Miss Hands, who later got married to become Mrs Alldrick and she also became a policyholder for my dad’s company… Hmm…

I will write more about my football ‘career’ in a subsequent post…

Our Year 6 teacher was Miss Cattell and my mum described her as ‘mannish’… Indeed, she was a sporty type and when the school football team played against a staff team in the summer term, she threatened me that I would be in trouble if I scored past her, for she was to be the teachers’ goalie. Wouldn’t you just know it, although I was a left-half in those days, I played that match at inside-left and raced clear to thump a low shot past Miss Cattell… She laughed about it, fortunately…

THE YEAR 6 TEAM:
MR BARBER WITH GARY HASTINGS, GOALIE TREVOR HALL & PETER PINNER ON THE BACK ROW;
THEN TONY BRITTAN, JOHN MALLEN & ME IN THE MIDDLE ROW;
FRONT ROW IS CARL (?), UNKNOWN, DEREK JAMES, DAVE WHALLEY & BOBBY COLE...

I was chosen as School Captain, I was in the choir and represented the red house team, Arden, the other house teams also being named for forests, Epping (blue), Needwood (yellow) and Sherwood (green), which was the only one which meant anything to us, because of Robin Hood…

YES, MORE THAN 40 IN MY YEAR 6 CLASS...
I AM SECOND FROM THE LEFT IN THE BACK ROW...

I was the speediest runner in the school but despite wearing an old pair of running spikes in the Saltley Sports, I was only 4th in the district final, partly due to a stumble at the start. Hillstone won the relay however, with me being used on the opening leg due to being left-handed, the teachers said… At least we had a good start… When I started at secondary school, one of the lads looked about 15, Cliff Hickman, who was to become my friend and he was probably the winner of that sprint final for his school in Washwood Heath, for he was quite an athlete, mainly due his early physical maturity…

CLIFF WAS LIKELY 15 ON THIS IMAGE...

I recall sitting in my old Year 3 classroom to take the 11+ exams and looking out of the window, hoping that I done well enough to keep my dad off my back. I had. In fact, the school recommended King Edward’s Grammar School for both myself and David Whalley and we duly attended the Aston school. This would mean a journey of two buses from Shard End to Aston Cross, where HP Sauce and Ansells beer was brewed. And from day one, I travelled mostly alone…

KING EDWARD'S ASTON: NOT THE MOST WELCOMING OF BUILDINGS...

MY BUS...

In the school play at Hillstone, due to my shyness, I had a non-speaking part: the masked executioner, wearing a mask rather like one of my heroes, The Lone Ranger…

THE MASKED EXECUTIONER...

Amusing myself in the house…

As a young lad, I still played with my Dinky vehicles and my ‘Cowboys and Indians’, the popular small moulded replica models but my naughty moments in the house stemmed from times when mum was shopping in Kitsland Road. I loved watching Westerns on TV and especially when outlaws or American Native Indian braves were shot from their horses, for the spectacular falls intrigued me. So I would sit astride the arms of the sofa and pretend to be shot, then throw myself to the floor in gymnastic fashion…

TYPICAL FIGURES...

Also, I would play ‘Rugby League’ holding a balloon for a ball and run at the chair and sofa arms, so that they would ‘tackle’ me and deposit me again onto the carpet. I would also kick for touch with the balloon, all along the lounge walls, which was not an easy task… 

A dice-like cricket game called ‘Owzat!’ (which I still have) took up hours, as did a game of football I devised on the carpet between teams of trading cards of popular footballers, using a rolled up ball of silver paper the size of a pea for a football. I would ‘pass’ it between players of one side, then shoot at my home-made goals (made from mum’s old hairnets) with an attacking card in one hand and try to save it by holding a goalkeeper card in the other hand. It was brilliant… I was enthralled, no trouble to anyone and I became adept at both flicking spectacular shots and making fine saves…

Cousin Steve Heslop had a game called ‘Wembley’ which I admired and I made my own version of that, too, which again took up many hours. I drew 64 hand written proper team names from a hat, which was essentially the 3rd round cup draw of 32 matches. I would then deal out 5 playing cards for the home team and 4 for the away team. Picture cards were worth one goal each, the aces were worth two. Draws meant replays. Then it was 16 matches in the next round, then 8, before the quarter finals with 4 games and the semi-finals with 2, until the final was played. Kept me busy for hours…

When secondary school began, I was one of only two boys in Year 7 wearing short grey trousers. The other was Ian Price… He lasted out longer than me but he was really tiny… Mum couldn’t afford long trousers for me and I had to wait until cousin Steve had new trousers for school and only then did I inherit some ‘longs’. I had the cheaper blazer too, for the better quality one, the barathea version was too expensive for my parents to buy.

FIRST DAY AT SECONDARY SCHOOL...

Life became less about Shard End when I went to secondary school and more about being a Grammar School person wearing a cap, carrying first a satchel, then a haversack, playing rugby, playing cricket and, er, growing up…

THE LONG TROUSERS MADE A DIFFERENCE...