A few weeks later, I wasn’t very happy at home. I’d been told off for something or other, my mum and dad had been arguing and even in those days I got very depressed. Later I was stood on my own in the school playground when Terry comes up behind me and, for no reason other than for his own amusement, slapped me on the back of the head. All my bottled-up frustration came out and I swung round and hit him full force in the face and he goes down like a sack of spuds. I don’t really know what’s happened, I’m just standing there and all of a sudden the other kids are going crazy, jumping around me, patting me on the back. And from that day on I never had any trouble from Terry, I just had to look at him and he’d run, because bullies are the biggest cowards.
Come the age of seven or eight and my reading was virtually negligible and the teacher has basically given up on me so I got moved to a different class. And who should be in that class but Terry! It turns out that he had the same problems and frustrations as me and that’s why he took it out on other people. Each of us finding someone else who was in the same predicament as ourselves meant that we ended up becoming quite good friends!
Our teacher in this class was a very kind, plump little lady called Mrs Wright. She was a proper teacher, someone who went into the job to try to help people get on in life and this lovely lady had much more time for us than the others did. She really did all she could for us, but in those days nobody knew what dyslexia was. Eventually, with all the attention Mrs Wright gave me, my reading came on very slightly, but my writing was still non-existent.
Come the age of eleven and it was ‘11-plus’ time. This was an exam you took in your last year of primary school that governed which secondary school you could go to. By now I could just about read the questions and in a lot of cases I knew the answers. Trouble was I just couldn’t write them down. So of course I failed my 11-plus, and as far as anyone was concerned I was a dunce.
The thing is I wanted to learn, I just didn’t have the ability to. So along with about half my year who also failed, I was sent to Upton House School in Hackney. On my first day there I turn up in second-hand trousers that were too long for me (I think my mum still hoped I’d grow a bit!), a baggy second-hand blazer and a shirt with a frayed collar.
Of course, I stand out like a sore thumb to the older kids who fancy initiating the new boys. I walk around the playground and come across a few mates from Tyson and we’re chatting when the next thing I know I’m being hoisted up in the air by a couple of older lads. ‘Stick ’is ’ead down the toilet!’ is all I can hear, as well as, ‘He’s a newbie, duck ’is ’ead down the toilet!’ I’m kicking and screaming for dear life as they carry me over to the toilet block, with everyone cheering and goading them on. There we meet this big ginger cunt who tells me he’s going to flush my head down the toilet, but I was having none of it. As they pushed me forwards I managed to wriggle free, turned round and smacked him square in the jaw, whacked the next one as well and legged it.
Welcome to Upton House!
I was only a scraggly little thing, not muscular, but I learnt to box properly and so was able to stand up for myself and got a bit of a reputation. Of course the bullies, though, if they can’t get you with their fists, try to get you with words and so as I walked around the school I would hear people shout things like: ‘Jew Boy!’ and ‘Fucking Yid!’ like a lot of us did. You never found out who said it because no one had the bollocks to own up to saying it. Cowards again.
The school uniform was a bright blue blazer with ‘UH’ on the badge, you could wear shorts or long trousers and our tie had blue-and-yellow diagonal stripes. As you can imagine I looked a right muppet. My dad, being ex-forces, taught me how to spit and polish my shoes. I used to put all my polish on them, then spit on them and the saliva somehow reacted with the polish and then I would buff them until they were absolutely like glass. You could comb your hair in front of them they were so shiny – of course that was in the days when I had hair!
I had the shiniest shoes in the school and that was the one thing I was really proud of. Each night I would get some newspaper, soak it in hot water, squeeze out the excess then pack the wet sheets into the shoe. Then as the newspaper dried overnight it would expand inside, causing the leather to stretch out, and it would get rid of any creases. That was another old army trick. Although they were second hand, my shoes always looked like new.
The school itself was a typical early twentieth-century comprehensive. Morbid, grey, iron-bar windows, layers of green and white paint on the walls, and linoleum floors. If you wanted to take a shit then you had to use the Jay’s toilet paper, which was like trying to wipe your arse with a razor blade, and if you weren’t careful you’d cut yourself. It was anall-boys school but the girls’ school, Brooke House, was just up the road, so we’d go up there for a snog behind the bike sheds or invite the girls down to see us.
My best mate at school was a guy called Jimmy Nunn. We went everywhere together and are still mates now, sixty years later. He came up to Upton House with me and we were as thick as thieves. For the bullies that were a lot older than us, if we couldn’t fight them then we’d go around the streets by the school picking up dog poop in plastic bags. We’d then hide it in the satchels of the bullying fifth formers or the pockets of their blazers when they were hanging up outside the classrooms. It made the whole place fucking stink but we never got caught!
Jimmy was another lad who was big for his age and is still a big lump now, about six-foot four inches tall and twenty stone – Jimmy is one tough boy. We still knock about together when he comes down from Birmingham, still speak on the phone every week, and I’m so thankful to have a friend like that to remember the old times with, someone who I know will always be there for me.
Mind you, Jimmy wasn’t the brainiest kid either, but thankfully we had subjects like metalwork and woodwork, which was great for the lads who were good with their hands but didn’t like academic subjects.
My metalwork teacher, Mr Bader, knew I couldn’t read or write so well but he grabbed my hands one day and said, ‘You’ll never go hungry, because you’ve got good hands. Get yourself a trade and people will pay you to use your hands.’ After years of teachers telling me I was a dunce, it was the most incredible feeling to be told I could do something well. It was the best thing a teacher ever said to me, and I’ve never forgotten his words.
One day when I was about twelve years old I was walking home from school past Springfield Court Garage, where all the taxis went. Anything mechanical always fascinated me – I always wanted to know how things worked. All my mates had Saturday jobs in shops or hairdressers or whatever, so on this day I decided to pluck up the courage to walk into the garage to get myself a little job. So, little squirt that I was (and as I mentioned in the introduction to this book), I walked in, past all the mechanics working on the cars, and went straight into the office to ask if they had any Saturday jobs going.
‘How old are you, son?’ they asked.
‘Nearly twelve,’ I said.
‘And what can you do?’
‘I’m good with my hands.’
‘Can you make a cup of tea?’
Can I heck! So Mr Phillips said there’s eight mechanics out there, go and wash up all the cups, take their orders and make them all tea, and, as I said earlier, that was the start of my career as a mechanic. First thing he gave me was a pen and paper to write down how many sugars everyone wanted and whatever, so I scrawled down whatever symbols I needed to, in order to help me remember the order. The kitchen was what I later found out to be a typical garage kitchen, i.e. a fucking shit tip! They all had tin mugs with gunk all over them, rings around them where the tea had been, bloody disgusting. So the first thing I did was give the whole kitchen a good clean, scrubbed the tin mugs up nicely and took them their tea. They all said it was the best they’d ever had, and I got the job! They said I would start Saturday and they’ll pay me two and six. Start at 7 am, finish at 5 pm, make tea, get the lunches and clear up after everyon
e, and for that he was going to pay me the equivalent of five weeks’ pocket money. I was like the favourite dog in the garage, I brought everyone tea and cleared up after them so they didn’t have to and I absolutely loved it.
The red-haired foreman was called Ginger, for obvious reasons, and he took a shine to me so one afternoon he told me I was going to help him on one of the cars, and he goes, ‘Unscrew this, get that bolt,’ and in this way he started showing me the ropes. Then he taught me how to grease the cabs up with the grease gun, spray all the springs with paraffin. At the end of the day Ginger would give me another two and sixpence (15p, but worth more like 75p in value today) for helping him.
Everything Ginger showed me I took to like a duck to water; I couldn’t get enough of it and I wanted to learn. Come the school holidays we weren’t going anywhere, so I’d go into the garage every day and work with Ginger. They had me taking engines out, and I learnt to drive and they had me driving the cabs round the forecourt testing the brakes etc. By the time I was twelve-and-a-half I could do a brake re-align on a taxi, and by the time I was thirteen I could do kingpins, bushes and steering.
All the taxi drivers got to know me and if their taxi was waiting they’d ask me to give it a quick clean and they’d give me another shilling (5p) for doing that. So in the school holidays I was earning a pound a week, which for me was mega money. Out of that I would keep a shilling or two, plenty for my needs, and give the rest of it to my mum for food. She’d never take it of course, she was too proud, so I used to slip it into her purse without her knowing.
In the garage I just felt at home. I would wake up at five o’clock every morning because I couldn’t wait to go to work. Finally I had found somewhere I belonged and where people appreciated me. The smell of diesel, of petrol engines, brake dust, sweaty mechanics – I was in heaven! I used to choose a bay each day and clean it from top to bottom, polish all the tools and everything. They’d never seen the place so clean.
One Sunday I even went in and painted the floors as a surprise. I just felt part of the company, felt like I belonged. That bit of faith Ginger showed in me had an amazing effect. I was twelve and he was giving me the responsibility to take an engine out of a taxi. I’d have my little toolkit full of all the nuts and bolts I needed, screws of all different sizes, each in their own compartment. Ginger knew that when he asked me to take an engine apart that I’d have all the parts neatly in line ready to be cleaned and put back. And once he’d rebuilt it, it would be ‘Bernie, put the engine back in,’ and he’d trust me to do it.
Back at school it was the usual shit: getting told off for not getting on with my work and getting into fights for being called a Yid. One day I was hauled up in front of the headmaster yet again for fighting some dicks who’d been calling me ‘Jew Boy’ or whatever and I’d had enough. The headmaster said ‘put your hand out’, and I went ‘no’. He asked me again and still I said no. There wasn’t a third time, as he grabbed my arm. I just snapped and said, ‘Take your fucking hands off of me!’ and I pushed him away.
The school went berserk!
I got pulled into the headmaster’s office and I was expelled on the spot, which I wasn’t very proud of. I was the hero of the school but I was terrified about what I would say to my mum and dad. All the way home I was absolutely bricking it. It was probably the slowest I’d ever walked home from school. My mum and dad both got in about eight o’clock, and straightaway Dad says, ‘How was school, son?’ in his usual jovial way.
‘Dad, I’ve been expelled,’ I told him.
Dad asked why. I said I’d been caught fighting someone who’d called me a Jew and the headmaster wanted to cane me in front of the school and I wouldn’t let him. I’d already been caned two or three times before when I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I reckoned I was just standing up for myself.
‘So what happened?’ Dad asked me.
‘He went to grab me and I told him to take his fucking hands off of me.’
Dad looked at me, didn’t shout, but just calmly said, ‘You shouldn’t have sworn at him. That’s what’s done it for you.’
The only other school in the area was Brooke House, but they didn’t want to know me. I could barely read, had no qualifications, no prospects, and had just been expelled for being a troublemaker. They just saw me as a liability, so refused to have me.
So the nearest place I could get into was JFS, the Jewish Free School, in Camden Town. I used to get the 253 bus which at that time in the morning was full of school kids going to all different places. Of course, there would be rivalries and those of us going to JFS would get the predictable anti-Semitic goading. A lot of the guys just ignored it but, as you can imagine, I wasn’t one of those who was going to take it sitting down, so I used to cause a lot of havoc on the bus, regularly getting kicked off and having to walk the rest of the way.
Sometimes if the drivers knew me they wouldn’t let me on in the first place, so I would have to walk from the Holloway Road back to the East End. I never told them my name, but somewhere along the line one of the other kids must’ve done and the bus company sent a letter to the school informing them I was banned from their services. Dr Conway, the headmaster, summoned me and my parents into his office and he told us that I was bringing the school into disrepute, so I was no longer wanted. Knowing that nowhere else would have me, my father just turned to me and said, ‘Right, you better get down to Springfield Court tomorrow and ask for a full-time job.’
Next morning I got up bright and early, went straight over to Springfield Court, went up to the boss, Alf, and asked for a job. Not a problem, he says, I’ll pay you five pounds a week. Five quid a week! I’d have worked there for free! I thought all my Christmases and birthdays had come at once: no more school and I’d got myself a job at a company I loved.
I was able to give my parents four pounds a week – they were only earning ten or twelve pounds themselves, so it made a heck of a difference – and I still had plenty of spending money left over. But after a while my dad said you need to get a proper apprenticeship, as the job won’t last forever and you need to get a qualification behind you.
The local college wouldn’t take me so I started flicking through the paper looking for apprenticeships when my eyes were drawn to an advert for an apprentice/cleaner at a Rolls-Royce garage in Croydon called Thomas & Draper. I’m in the East End of London so Croydon seems like the ends of the earth to me, it’s three hours and three buses away. But I go down to the phone box at the end of the road, give them a ring and ask for an interview. When I get there they ask me my age and I lie and say I’m fifteen, tell them all about my experience working on the taxis and they think I’m great. ‘Right,’ they said, ‘you start off as a cleaner and after six months or so if we’re happy with you then you’ll start your apprenticeship.’ When I told my dad I’ve got a job with Rolls-Royce he was just ecstatic, absolutely over the moon, almost in tears.
I have to be in work at 7.30 am, which means leaving my house at half-past four every morning, and not getting home until gone nine o’clock at night. The first day I am up at half-two to make sure I’m washed and ready – all the mechanics had to wear a shirt and tie and so did I. I go in and get introduced to the foreman. He points over to the corner where there’s an old bucket, some bleach and a scrubbing brush, and wants me to clean the toilets. ‘Yes sir, no problem,’ I say. Everyone was addressed as ‘Sir’ in those days.
Of course I want to impress and I know from Springfield Court that I’m a good cleaner, so I’m brushing and scrubbing these urinals that are absolutely filthy. No gloves, undiluted bleach, I’ve got my hands down the toilets and everything. Four hours later the place is absolutely gleaming, though my hands are red-raw from all the bleach. So I go over to the foreman’s hut and tell him I’m finished. ‘Go back and I’ll meet you there,’ he tells me, so I go and stand outside, pleased as Punch with myself.
A few minutes later he comes over and takes a good look around. ‘You missed a bit,’ he te
lls me.
‘Have I? Where?’ I ask him.
‘Over here.’ And he proceeds to unzip his trousers and piss all over the floor – with a big grin on his face.
I’m thirteen and I’ve got three options: one, cry; two, clean it up; or three, go fucking apeshit.
Unfortunately I did the third.
Picked up a broom handle and whacked him right across the nose with it. He goes down like a sack of shit, blood spurting everywhere and I’m standing over him like Bruce Lee, with this broom handle in my hands! He gets up, screaming and shouting, and we both want to kill each other. We get pulled apart and dragged up to the MD’s office.
He’s still ranting and raving, wants me dead. The MD, calm as you like, just says ‘Shut up,’ and he went completely silent. ‘Now, what happened?’ he asks.
The foreman kicks off again, saying I hit him for no reason, and I just put my hand up and say, ‘No I didn’t. I spent five hours cleaning the toilets then, when I told him I’d finished, he pissed on the floor in front of me.’
The MD just looked at him, looked at me, and then back at him. I am shitting it, thinking I’ve lost the job before it’s even started. He then turned to the foreman and said, ‘Get your bags and get out. You’re a bully, this isn’t the first complaint, so fuck off.’ He sacked him there and then.
Then I think, right, that’s it, now I’m for the high jump.
‘And you,’ he says to me, ‘if you ever raise your hands to anyone again I will deal with you myself. Tomorrow, Sunshine, you’re on the workshop floor.’
Bernie Fineman, Original Motor Mouth Page 5