by Dave Spikey
Mr Bowler studied Dewek before he said, ‘Neither of them, Rigby?’
‘No,’ said Dewek, ‘I don’t think light or sound is the fastest phee-nomeenum [sic].’
‘So what is?’ enquired Mr Bowler.
Dewek paused for effect (what’s the secret of comedy?). ‘Diarrhoea,’ says Dewek – and we all start cracking up.
Well, I say ‘all’, but Mr Bowler was transfixed. ‘And on what evidence do you base that statement, pray tell?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ said Dewek, his eyes smiling, ‘I had diarrhoea last week and before I could put the light on or tell anybody I’d shit myself.’
Genius. A week’s detention, of course.
We were once doing a project for Remembrance Day and the teacher asked us to enquire of our grandparents if they would care to contribute their reminiscences and/or maybe a memento they might have. Medals, belts, buckles, caps, helmets etc. I went with Dewek to his grandad’s house to ask him. His grandad said he had a German helmet that Dewek could take, which he currently used as a plant pot holder in his shed. Dewek pestered him for something for me to take and his grandad said he had a German pistol, a Lugar, but we couldn’t take that, he’d get into trouble if they knew he had it. Dewek pestered and pestered and his grandad eventually said that the only other thing he’d kept was the old greatcoat he’d worn in the trenches, but it would be too big and heavy to get down from the loft. Dewek said we’d get it and where exactly was it. His grandad replied that it was over the tank.
You should have seen the look on Dewek’s face. He was stunned, he couldn’t speak for ages, then: ‘You’ve got a tank?!’ he shouted.
I said, ‘Yes, course he has. A proper big tank and he keeps it in the loft, obviously.’
I asked both my grandads, but neither cared to talk about the experience. They were both lovely men who had been badly wounded on the Somme, where my mum’s dad, my grandpa Alfred Ireland, lost his twin brother James in 1917.
James was a very fit young man who excelled at athletics and boxing and once in the trenches he was chosen, because of his speed and agility, to be a ‘bomber’. Hand grenades as we know them didn’t exist in the First World War; instead they had Mills bombs, which were similar to modern grenades, but couldn’t be thrown as far. It was James’s job to run at the enemy trenches, supported by two men who carried a supply of Mills bombs, and to lob the bombs into the trenches.
In September 1916, his battalion was moved to the salient at Ypres. It occupied the front line from Wieltje to Railway Wood. It was a ‘reasonably quiet’ sector and on 10 January 1917, the battalion decided to attack the German trenches.
I have obtained a photocopy of the report written by his commanding officer, which describes the actual attack in which he lost his life and which I often read.
1/5th LOYAL NORTH LANCASHIRE REGIMENT
10 January 1917
Party divided into two – left and right.
Parties left assembled trench at 4.40 p.m. and proceeded in file to front line, crossing front ditch at 5 p.m. exactly and taking up position at FIRST DITCH at 5.15 p.m. – zero hour – and made for German trenches as per programme.
Right party on reaching enemy wire found it uncut and encountered heavy machine gun fire from KAISER BILL on their right front. It was impossible for this party to enter the enemy trenches and it sustained many casualties.
The left party was successful in effecting an entry into the German trenches, meeting with very little resistance until inside the trench, where stubborn resistance was encountered. Many of the enemy were killed and two dugouts and a O.P. bombed. A bugle call ‘G’ was the signal for our parties to withdraw. The enemy appeared to be in strength and well prepared for the raid.
Our casualties were: Officers – Killed 2/Lieut J.C. Frankland, Wounded 2/Lieut C.W.Whitaker, 2/ Lieut Alun Jones. Other Ranks – Killed 7, Wounded 48, Missing 2.
It is impossible to imagine the fear and horror experienced by those young men on a daily basis, or the outstanding courage and valour displayed on the battlefield. Or to picture the conditions in which they lived and died day after day, month after month, during ‘the war to end all wars’.
My great-uncle James Ireland’s body was buried on the battlefield, but after the war, his grave could not be found; he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.
I sometimes wonder if he would have survived if he’d been in the left party rather than the right on that fateful day.
Grans and Grandads …
…ARE GREAT, AREN’T they? Well, mine were and because they lived nearby, us kids spent lots of time round at their houses at weekends, and during the week when Mum and Dad were out at work. Both sets of my grandparents lived only a few streets away from our house on Grafton Street. My dad’s parents lived on Oxford Grove and my mum’s parents lived on Lawn Street and I had a great many happy times at their houses, playing dominoes and cards and spin the bottle.
My maternal grandparents were quiet, but very loving. My grandad had been wounded in the First World War and had had TB so was never in the best of health, but he never complained. My gran was a typical lovely gran.
My dad’s parents were a bit more outgoing. My grandad had also been wounded in the First World War and had been, in his time, a decent boxer in the army. My gran had a bit of the ‘Thora Hird’ in her, if you know what I mean – a forceful lady and slightly eccentric, if you like. She did that thing that grans often do for no logical reason, where they shave off their eyebrows and then draw them back in a bit higher up. My gran looked permanently startled.
When they got their first gas fire and North Sea gas started coming through, she was absolutely convinced that the flames went up and down with the tides. We’d be sitting having a chat and the flames would flare just a bit and she’d say, ‘Tides coming in.’
One of the things I love about old people is the way they speak their mind. Talk straight. I took my gran shopping one day and in the town centre they had installed some new public conveniences, which cost twenty pence to use. My gran had to go, and when she came out, there was a posh-ish Hyacinth Bouquet-type woman, all fur coat and no knickers as they say round here, and she was haranguing the poor toilet attendant. Just as my gran was passing, the lady said rather loudly, ‘I think it’s an absolute disgrace that you have to pay twenty pence to use the toilet.’ My gran, without a moment’s hesitation or a break in her step, said, ‘Oh, you can’t put a price on a good shit’ – beautiful.
Her most brilliant comment was inspired by a day of national celebration: the Queen’s coronation in 1953. Like many others in our area, we didn’t have a television until I was about nine, but a family in our street had got one in order to watch the spectacular event, and they invited all the neighbours round to watch it with them. My dad later told me (I was still a baby at the time) that during the lavish ceremony of pomp and circumstance, my gran actually said, ‘It’s all so beautiful. Isn’t it a shame that the King didn’t live to see this?’
My grandad had his moments as well. Whenever he was washing his face, he would rub soapy lather hard into his skin with both hands and make a weird loud noise by exhaling and reverberating his lips, a bit like blowing a big raspberry through his hands, which sounded as though a whale was about to surface. He was also a bit scary; I think that’s part of the job description. His favourite trick with me was suddenly to grab my nose between his middle and index fingers and pull hard and then display it with glee: ‘I’ve got your nose, David, I’ve got your nose!’ And that’s scary for a six-year-old. ‘Aww, Grandad, give me my nose back.’ But he wouldn’t, he’d just dance around a bit and keep saying, ‘I’ve got David’s nose!’
Aged fifteen, when I judged myself big and strong enough, I jumped my grandad from behind and got him in a headlock and rummaged around in his mouth, then jumped back, shouting, ‘I’ve got your teeth, Grandad, I’ve got your teeth!’ He would say, ‘Nner Dabith, nib me ma theet baa,’ and I would just dance around
a bit and shout, ‘I’ve got Grandad’s teeth!’
We called my dad’s dad ‘Spiderman’ – not because he had special powers or was particularly agile, but because he couldn’t get out of the bath. He lived till almost ninety and he put this down to a healthy lifestyle and a lifelong love of sports. As I mentioned earlier, he was a very good boxer, plus he also played football to a high standard, and in later years he loved playing bowls and won cups and medals for crown green bowling. I took him bowling at Mortfield Bowling Club only a couple of weeks before he died and he was a bit frail and his eyes and ears weren’t so good, but we had a great time. He bowled a great wood right down the far corner of the green and because he couldn’t see so well, he shouted to a bloke who was passing, ‘How am I?’ and the bloke shouted back, ‘You’re a foot in front,’ and my grandad turned to me with a puzzled and stunned expression and asked, ‘What did that man just call me?’
During his last years, he had a bad heart, which wasn’t surprising considering his eating habits. Everything fried in dripping, plus full English breakfasts, fish and chips, pies and more pies … I got him to go and see a cardiologist and then went round later to see how he’d got on.
As I went in the front door of the terraced house he’d lived in all his life, I heard him shouting from the kitchen, ‘Arg! Ow! Jezz! Arrrggh!’ When I dashed in, he was cooking a fry-up on the gas cooker – in a biscuit tin. Bacon, egg, sausage, black pudding, tomato … all sizzling away in a metal biscuit tin! And he’s burning his hands trying to shake it up, ‘Arg! Ouch!’
I said, ‘Grandad?! What the hell are you doing?’ and he said, ‘I’ve been seeing yon cardiologist feller and he examined me thorough like and told me that the best thing that I could do when I got home was throw my frying pan away, so it’s gone.’
All my lovely grandparents have passed on now, leaving me with many happy memories. Some of my favourites centre on the rubbish they used to come out with. Well, to an eight-year-old it sounded like rubbish, but I now know that they were in fact age-old wise sayings such as ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree’. (Am I? I don’t recall barking at all and there aren’t any trees around here.) ‘A stitch in time saves nine’; right, good.
The thing is that they pass this trait on to your parents and then they start. My mum was and still is very fond of saying, ‘Cheap at half the price.’ Maybe your mum says the same. But of course it is! It’s half the price.
My paternal gran figured prominently in these sayings. My mum would often say, ‘David? Don’t teach your grannie how to suck eggs.’ Okay, then, I won’t. (Well, you wouldn’t, would you? You wouldn’t be so presumptuous. ‘Grannie? You’re sucking that egg all wrong. No, not like that, it should be more sort of sideways, about a 145-degree angle, try to just … Oh no! Now look what you’ve done! It’s all over your chin!’)
Indeed, it was my gran who starred in one of the only sayings that ever rang true to me, which was this: ‘David, don’t question your grannie. She knows her onions.’
And do you know what? She did. I used to go to the kitchen and get one out of the vegetable rack and then, holding it behind my back, I’d saunter into the front room and quickly produce it when she was least expecting it.
‘What’s that, Gran?’ I’d shout.
‘It’s an onion,’ she’d say in milliseconds, no hesitation whatsoever.
I tried to trick her with shallots and potatoes and even a pomegranate once – but no chance. She really did know her onions.
She had this party trick at Christmas where I would get a tray and fill it with all kinds of fruit and veg. Apples, turnips, swedes, carrots, parsnips – you get the picture – and then I’d mix in with this selection one small, solitary onion. I’d cover the tray with a tea towel and take it through to the assembled family and friends in the front room. With a flourish, I’d quickly remove the tea towel and demand, ‘Gran, where’s the onion?’
‘There!’ She’d point at it straight away with no hesitation; unerringly, always right; never known to miss.
I’ve thought often about the origins of these sayings and wondered if they maybe had, in days of old, some sort of Sage Factor, where wise old men and women came forward to present their latest words of wisdom to the panel of judges.
Judge 1: What’s your name and from whence do you hail?
Winifreda: My name is Winifreda and I hail from Winchester.
Judge 1: Okay, Winifreda. In your own time. Pray tell us your wise words.
Winifreda: My saying is ... (Clears throat.) Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Judge 2: Please explain.
Winifreda: It is because, should you put all your eggs in the basket and subsequently drop the basket, all the eggs shalt break, whereas if you spread your eggs around in differing receptacles, then if the basket should fall, you shalt still have some eggs unbroken.
Judge 3: But what if I don’t have any eggs?
Judge 1: Louis! Winifreda doesn’t mean you to take ‘eggs’ literally. She means—
Judge 2: (Crying.) I think it’s so sad: little, fragile eggs … broken. We must save the eggs!
(Winifreda goes through to the next stage. Next hopeful please.)
Edwina: My name is Edwina and my saying is: red sky at night, shepherds’ delight; red sky at morning, shepherds’ warning.
Judge 2: Which means?
Edwina: I have noticed over many years that a red sky at night indicates an imminent spell of fine weather, yet red sky in the morning precedes a period of rain and wind.
Judge 1: Edwina, I didn’t like it … I loved it!
Judge 2: (Crying.) And such beautiful imagery. I can almost see the old, weather-beaten shepherd, tending his woolly sheep on the hillside. And such inspired and exquisite rhyming: ‘morning’ – ‘warning’.
Judge 3: You’re through, Edwina.
(Next contestant on Sage Factor please.)
Judge 3: Hello, welcome to Sage Factor. Tell us your name and where you’ve come from?
Edgar: My name is Mad Edgar and I came from over there.
Judge 2: And your saying is?
Edgar: (Clears throat.) People with glasses shouldn’t throw stones.
(Silence.)
Judge 1: Why?
Edgar: (Unsure, grasping at straws.) They might break? Like the eggs?
(Judges confer.)
Judge 1: I’m sorry, Edgar, you haven’t got the Sage factor.
But when you analyse it, Mad Edgar wasn’t far off, was he? My grandparents came out with some totally mad sayings over the years. I think the best, for pure nonsensical value, included:
My gran: Stop that sulking, David, and stick your bottom lip in before a bird shits on it.
My grandad: I’m as happy as a dog with a tin dick.
My grandad: (About a pretty girl.) I know what she wants … two cakes and a bun.
Over the course of my childhood, such phrases would crop up time and time again – often when I was getting told off or bossed around or otherwise instructed. Here are a few of the dumb phrases and sayings that my parents and grandparents inflicted on us children during our formative years …
1. You’re late – you’d better get your skates on.
See, that’s not going to help. That’s going to take longer, surely? I don’t know exactly where my skates are for a start and I know that my sister had them on last so I’ll need to adjust them with that little spanner thing, wherever that is, and they’ve got those really big laces in them, so by the time I’ve tied them in a double bow and … Ouch! Mum!
2. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Right, because you’d probably need silk, wouldn’t you? A pig’s ear would be way down the bottom of the list. If Channel 4 screened the programme 100 Top Things to Make a Silk Purse Out Of, I’m betting that a pig’s ear would struggle to make it into the bottom ten, below ‘a brick’ and ‘Keith Chegwin’. I reckon that even if you checked the Dolce and Banana knock-off silk purses that ‘Pineap
ple Pete’ sells on Chorley market, I doubt they would have a label saying, ‘100% Pig’s Ear – Boil Washing May Cause Crackling’.
3. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
See, that’s where I’ve been going wrong.
4. Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.
It would be your last choice, though, wouldn’t it? A length of 3 × 2 or some scaffolding pipe would be top of the list, surely.
5. (In response to poor report from school) You are going to have to pull your socks up in English Literature, young fellow-me-lad.
That’s going to help? I’ll try it. (Pulls socks up.) Oh yes … hang on!
‘Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heavens of invention. A kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the war-like Harry assume the port of Mars and at his heels leashed in like hounds should famine, sword and fire crouch for employment …’
Bloody hell, it works! Let’s just check and roll them down again. (Rolls socks down.)
‘My friend Billy had a ten-foot willy and he showed it to the girl next door. She thought it was a snake, so she hit it with a rake, and now it’s only five foot four.’
Hmm.
6. Bob’s your uncle.
No, he’s not. Alf ’s my uncle. He’s your brother, remember? How could you forget that? I don’t know any Bobs.
Other characters who made regular appearances included ‘Soft Mick’, as in, ‘He’s had more women than Soft Mick. No wonder he’s soft.’ Also, there was ‘Billy O’, who featured in ‘Run like Billy O!’ How does he run then? Is he fast? Or does he run a bit weird? Does he zig-zag? I don’t know anybody called ‘Billy O’.
Last but not least there was ‘Jenny Green Teeth’, as in, ‘If you don’t come in before it gets dark, Jenny Green Teeth will get you. She’ll come up out of the grids, catch you and suck all the marrow out of your bones.’ That’s scary stuff for a kid. The mad thing is, if my mum had said to me, ‘David? Be in before it gets dark,’ I’d have said, ‘Okay, Mum.’ But no! Jenny Green Teeth will get me!