Also by Gervase Phinn
THE DALES SERIES
The Other Side of the Dale
Over Hill and Dale
Head Over Heels in the Dales
Up and Down in the Dales
The Heart of the Dales
A Wayne in a Manger
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars
POETRY
published by Puffin Books
It Takes One to Know One
The Day Our Teacher Went Batty
Family Phantoms
Don’t Tell the Teacher
A Load of Old Tripe
GERVASE PHINN
MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
MICHAEL JOSEPH
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2009
Copyright © Gervase Phinn, 2009
Illustrations copyright © Chris Mould, 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
ISBN: 978-0-14-193096-1
For my mother and father,
my first and finest teachers
CONTENTS
1: A Load of Old Tripe
2: Butch
3: Ignatius
4: The Bowl
5: The Last Laugh
6: The Cake
7: The School Trip
8: The Exam
1
A LOAD OF OLD TRIPE
I was christened James Joseph Johnson: James after my Granddad Greenwood and Joseph after my Grandpa Walker. My mum and dad call me Jimmy, my friends call me JJ, my granny calls me Jamie and my teacher calls me James. I don’t really mind what people call me so long as they don’t make fun of my name – which I am glad to say nobody does. I’m really grateful that my mum and dad didn’t give me an unusual name like some of the boys in my class at school. There’s Walter Wall and Percy Potter and Montgomery Smout, but the name I would hate, really really hate, would be Ignatius Plunket. Fancy going through life called Ignatius Plunket. It’s funny but nobody ever teases Ignatius Plunket about his name. I suppose it’s because Iggy (as we all call him) seems to be in a world of his own for most of the time, and he’s such an easy-going, harmless, friendly sort of lad that everyone likes him. We also feel sorry for him, because he comes from a home none of us would want in a million years and he has horrible parents as well. But I’ll tell you about Ignatius Plunket later on. I want to tell you a bit about myself first.
As I said, my name is Jimmy Johnson or JJ. I’m eleven years old, born just after the war in 1946. I don’t have any brothers or sisters and I live with my mum (Brenda) and my dad (Colin) in a shiny red-brick terrace house with a greasy grey slate roof in Rotherton, South Yorkshire. I like where I live. There’s not much room in our house, and we don’t have a massive garden or a wonderful view, and sometimes the air has a sort of unpleasant metallic taste to it and bits of soot land on you like black snow-flakes, but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The steelworks are near to where we live, and all that smoke and dust and dirt and grime gets blown on the air and seems to end up at the bottom of our street. Mum is always complaining that when she brings in the washing there are grubby marks and black smears on the clothes and she has to do them all over again.
Our house is at the very end of a long terrace, so we only have one neighbour, Mrs Sewell, who must be at least a hundred if she’s a day and spends most of her life complaining about her various ailments and the state of the world. I’ll tell you about her later on as well.
In our house Mum and Dad have the front bedroom and I have the one at the back. There’s a boxroom, a living room, a small kitchen and the front room. We only go into the front room on very special occasions, such as when my Uncle Norman and Auntie Myra visit, and Mum keeps it really tidy. She’s always in there dusting and polishing. There’s her old upright piano, a heavy pale-green-coloured three-piece suite and a huge and ugly dark wooden buffet – a massive piece of furniture (Mum’s pride and joy) with deep cupboards, open shelves and heavy drawers where all the crockery, cutlery and important documents are kept. I am not allowed to go into the front room without permission. The front door opens directly on to the street and at the back of the house is a small yard with a high red-brick wall. There’s an outside store, which at one time used to be the toilet, where Dad keeps his tools and I keep my bike. So that’s where I live. Now I’ll tell you about my parents.
My mum is thirty-three years old, and has long straight blonde hair, which she ties back in a pony-tail, and large blue eyes. She nearly died when I was born and was in hospital for two weeks on some sort of machine, and now she can’t have any more children. Three days a week she works in the corner shop at the end of the street, so over the counter she gets to know everybody’s business. She is one of these people who others like to confide in – a very good listener. She can also tell really interesting stories. Sometimes in the evening she shares some of the gossip with my dad or tells him about the customers who have been into the shop that day. I pretend not to listen, but I do. It’s really good that she works in the corner shop because when a product goes beyond its sell-by date she is able to get it at a reduced price. Dad says that our larder is as well stocked as the shop where she works.
Dad is a bit older than Mum, and has bright ginger hair (which I have inherited) and a face full of freckles (which I have inherited too). Everyone says I am the spit and image of my dad. He was a despatch rider in the war and there’s a photograph of him on the piano in the front room. He’s standing by a motorbike in his uniform with some of his pals, smiling like there’s no tomorrow. Now he works as a de-seamer at the steelworks. His job is to hammer out all the faults in the steel when it has cooled down and been made into long strips. It’s a really dirty and dangerous job but he never complains, even when he has to go out in the cold and dark on the night shift. Dad takes me to see Sheffield Wednesday play if they are at home, and on Sundays we often go fishing for perch and roach at Elsecar reservoir. He’s great, my dad. He’s taught me how to dribble a football, play cricket, bait a hook, ride a bike, fix a puncture, play the guitar and lots of other things as well. He rarely shouts and never hits me. The one thing I don’t like about my dad is his singing. It’s really embarrassing when he starts to sing on the banks of th
e reservoir or at the football match or when he’s fixing something in the yard at the back. His favourite singer is someone called Alma Cogan, and when she sings she has a giggle in her voice. I hate it when my dad sings her songs and tries to do the giggle. I make myself scarce when he opens his mouth.
The only thing I don’t like about my mum is that she always makes me eat what she puts on my plate at dinnertime. ‘I can’t be doing with fussy eaters,’ she says, so I have to eat carrots (yuck) and sprouts (yuck) and mushrooms (yuck). ‘If you had been a lad during the war,’ she never tires of saying, wagging a finger in my direction, ‘you’d have given your right arm for some fresh vegetables.’ Fortunately she doesn’t pile the plate high with this hated food, but I have to eat what she gives me or there’s no pudding. I once devised a plan so I wouldn’t have to eat the detested carrots. I filled my mouth with that horrible vegetable and pretended to cough into my handkerchief but spat out the contents of my mouth. Then I stuffed the handkerchief in my pocket and disposed of the carrots later by flushing them down the toilet. After the third occasion Mum got suspicious and put an end to my little ploy. She doesn’t miss much, my mum.
Mum doesn’t, thank goodness, make me eat some of the delicacies that my dad is fond of: black pudding (made from pigs’ blood), pigs’ trotters, liver, cowheel, polony (a fat sausage made of bacon, veal and pork suet) and chitterling (intestines of a pig). Dad’s favourite meal is tripe. How he can eat the rubbery white lining of a cow’s stomach I do not know, but he does and enjoys it. Mum cooks it in milk and drizzles chopped onions on the top. Of course, I can’t be persuaded to try any. ‘There are lots of people in the world, young man,’ Mum says when she sees me screwing up my face at the sight of the pale rubbery slab of tripe bubbling in the pan, ‘who would be only too pleased to have a plate of tripe and onions.’ Then she says, ‘If you had been a lad during the war, you’d have given your right arm for a piece.’ Well, let them have it, I think to myself, I’d sooner eat stinging nettles. When Dad tucks into his tripe I watch fascinated as he devours the sickly white concoction and then licks his lips dramatically afterwards.
There is a tripe shop in Rotherton, and on Saturday morning, if I’m not out on my bike, I am sent to get a large piece of the white rubbery delicacy for Dad’s tea. I never mind going to the shop because the owner is a most interesting woman. She has steely white hair, a round red face and large pink hands and stands behind her counter, arms folded, discussing the state of the world and the activities of the locals (some of whom ‘are no better than they should be’) with the regulars. I am quite content to wait and listen as she takes her time slicing piece after piece of tripe, weighing it (‘It’s just a bit over, love, is that all right?’), wrapping it in white greaseproof paper and all the while holding forth and entertaining her customers. I think people would be quite happy to go there for the conversation alone. I often enter the shop at some crucial part of a story: ‘Of course if she’d have tied it up with a piece of string, it wouldn’t have happened’; ‘And I said to him, if you think I’m doing that with my bad back, you’ve got another think coming’; ‘When the police finally arrived, do you know where she’d put it?’ It’s like story time at school.
One wet Saturday I was sent to buy Dad’s tripe as usual and was coming out of the shop when I met my best pal, Michael Sidebottom. I call him Micky but not when his mum is around. My mum says that Mrs Sidebottom thinks she’s a cut above everyone else, and when she comes into the corner shop for her ‘special tea’, which has to be ordered, she relates in a loud, posh, put-on voice, which everyone can hear, how well her husband is doing at work, how pleased the teachers at school are with Michael and all about the important people she has met. She also likes to tell people about the latest expensive appliance she’s bought. The Sidebottoms were the first to get a television set, this small grey screen in a large wooden cabinet which has pride of place in her front room (which she calls ‘the lounge’). I’d love a television set but Dad says they’re too expensive and he’ll get one when his numbers come up on the football pools.
Anyway, coming out of the tripe shop that Saturday morning I met Micky. I was so busy talking to him about Sheffield Wednesday’s chances against Bolton Wanderers at the match that afternoon that I didn’t see the dog. It was a small wire-haired little terrier which must have smelled the tripe that I held in my hand. Before I knew it the mutt had jumped up, snatched the parcel out of my hand and run off. Micky and I gave chase, shouting and waving our arms in the air, and finally managed to corner the beast in an alley blocked by dustbins. It stood looking at us with the tripe dangling from its mouth. ‘Drop!’ ordered Micky in a loud assertive voice, pointing at the dog. ‘Drop!’ The dog continued to stare and then made a low growling noise. I grabbed the tripe and pulled, but the dog wouldn’t let go, and tugged and shook it. Michael, whose mum had a fancy little poodle called Mimi, knew what to do. He picked up the terrier’s back legs and amazingly it dropped the tripe, which I snatched up. Micky released the dog and it went mad, growling and jumping up and snapping and barking. Micky and I ran off with the dog at our heels.
‘Sorry, love,’ said the tripe shop owner, when I returned to the counter hoping for a replacement. ‘I can’t be doing that. You’ll have to buy another piece.’ I explained to her that I had no more money. ‘Well, it will teach you to be more careful with your tripe, won’t it?’ she told me, before resuming a conversation with a customer about the state of the public urinals in the town centre.
Back home, I stared at the tripe. After all the tugging it was now twice the size and had been chewed. It had also picked up a fair bit of dirt. If I explained to Mum what had happened she would, no doubt, send me back to the shop, which was the last thing I wanted. I was keen to meet my pals at the park later that morning. So, before Mum could take the tripe from my hands, I shot up the stairs and into the bathroom.
‘Have you got your dad’s tripe?’ came her voice up the stairs.
‘Yes,’ I shouted back, ‘but I’m desperate for the toilet.’ Then I washed the tripe thoroughly under the cold water tap.
Mum cooked the tripe, Dad ate it, and I watched with a screwed-up face.
‘Delicious,’ said Dad, licking his lips when he had finished. ‘Best bit of tripe I’ve had in a long while. You must mention it, Brenda, the next time you go in the shop,’ he continued. I gulped and prayed Mum would do no such thing.
2
BUTCH
At breakfast one Saturday morning, Dad sort of asked Mum casually, ‘Do you remember Reg Turner, Brenda?’
‘That little chap with the bald head and the arm full of tattoos?’ replied Mum.
‘Aye, that’s the fellow,’ said Dad. ‘I used to work with him when I was on the furnaces.’
‘Funny little man,’ said Mum. ‘He calls into the corner shop for his cigarettes but never passes the time of day. Just buys his twenty cigarettes, grunts a “thank you” and is out of the door like a cat with its tail on fire. Smokes like a chimney he does. He comes in with a fag in his mouth and lights up another when he’s outside.’ Mum looked daggers at me and stabbed the air with a finger. ‘And don’t you start smoking, young man. It’s a mug’s game.’
Dad winked at me, then turned his attention back to Mum. ‘He’s just shy is Reg,’ he told her. ‘He’s a nice man when you get to know him. I don’t suppose he gets to meet many people living on his own.’
‘You haven’t invited him round for tea, have you?’ asked Mum.
‘No, no,’ said Dad.
‘Well, what about him?’ she asked.
‘He’s to go into hospital next week for an operation.’
‘No doubt all that smoking,’ said Mum. ‘It can’t be doing his lungs any good at all with all those cigarettes he gets through.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Dad, ‘but the thing is, he’s got this dog.’
‘I think I know what’s coming,’ said Mum, shaking her head, ‘and the answer’s “no
”.’
‘We would only have to look after it for a week,’ Dad told her, ‘and Jimmy would help out, wouldn’t you, son?’
‘What, look after a dog?’ I asked.
‘Just for a few days,’ said Dad. ‘I mean, it’s your half-term next week so you’ll not be at school. You wouldn’t mind looking after it, would you?’ He looked at me expectantly and awaited my answer. I pretended to think about it, rubbing my chin and nodding. Deep down I was really keen. I would like nothing better than to look after a dog for a week, I thought, but I didn’t want to look that eager. I had a plan, you see. ‘You could take it to the fields and keep it out of your mum’s way,’ said Dad.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I could do, but I have a lot planned next week and the dog would take up a lot of my time. Now if you were to increase my pocket money?’
Dad sighed. ‘That, young man, is blackmail.’
I smiled. ‘Well, have we a deal?’ I asked.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll double your allowance next week but you had better earn it.’
‘Well,’ said Mum, ‘it seems that you two have decided between you. Just you make sure, Jimmy, that you do look after the dog because you’ll be responsible for it. I’m far too busy to be chasing around after it all week. You’ll have to buy its food, feed it, take it for walks and clean up after it.’
‘I will,’ I said, trying not to sound too excited.
‘Is it house-trained?’ she asked Dad.
‘Perfectly,’ he replied.
‘And docile?’
‘Like a lamb.’
‘And doesn’t bark?’
‘As quiet as a mouse.’
‘And not big?’
‘You could fit it in your shopping basket.’
‘Mmmm,’ hummed Mum. ‘What’s it called?’
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