Come along, come along with William Tell,
Come along to the land he loves so well.
I guess in this day and age there would have been a warning for children not to try the feat with the crossbow at home. I loved to hate the outrageous and vastly overweight Lamburgher Gessler, a master of overacting, who did a wonderful facial expression which I used to imitate. Other programmes I never missed were Zorro, with the masked crusader, with his flashing sword and flashing teeth, and Robin Hood, in which a youthful Richard Greene, as the dashing hero, in extremely clean tights and with a jaunty feather in his cap, always managed to foil the goatee-bearded and permanently glowering Sheriff of Nottingham. On the way to school we would all sing the music that accompanied the opening credits:
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men.
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, became something of a cult figure. When I was ten or eleven there was the craze for Davy Crockett hats. The television series started the widespread enthusiasm for this ridiculous headgear, and every boy on our street was soon sporting a large fur muff with a tail dangling down the back. The hats were made of different-coloured rabbit fur. Mine was a pale ginger. It looked as if I had a tomcat on my head. To go with my Davy Crockett hat my brother Michael made me a leather waistcoat, dyed black and with pale leather stitching. He bought thirty or so silver threepenny bits from Mrs Harrap, who ran the post office, drilled each one and sewed them around the edges. I was the envy of the street. Mr Fowler at the top of Richard Road made me a whip and, much to our neighbour Mrs Evans's irritation, I would practise cracking it and trying to whip tin cans off the wall which separated our two gardens.
I didn't take to some of the programmes. The precocious, clean-cut, cheeky-faced boy actor with the tinny American drawl in Circus Boy rarely got a word in before he was turned off. Another hero of the small screen who was given short shrift was the Lone Ranger. In his tight pants and his silly little mask which didn't fool anyone, he was too clever by half. He was always shouting, 'Hi-ho, Silver,' which was really irritating, and he never seemed to get dirty. He would be accompanied by Tonto, his buckskin-clad Indian sidekick, who spoke in strange broken English and was constantly saying 'Kimo-sabe'.
All the adventure programmes were deeply moral. Cruelty, greed, selfishness, unfairness and unlawful behaviour were never rewarded and good always triumphed. This was good clean fun, for the fights never ended in the horrific death of the villain. Nobody was maimed or lay writhing in agony on the floor. There was no loss of blood from a gunshot wound or a sword, for our heroes, who had high moral principles and were far too compassionate and well-meaning, merely disarmed their opponents. There might have been a bit of rough and tumble, a few thrown punches, but nothing too excessive or frightening.
Then came The Six-Five Special, Crackerjack with the small bespectacled Peter Glaze and Leslie Crowther with the irritating smile, Juke Box Jury with David Jacobs, and Armchair Theatre, which I was occasionally allowed to watch. It was all inoffensive material - no innuendo, rude jokes, bad language or gratuitous violence and certainly no sex. Mum kept a very keen eye on the programmes and banned me from watching anything she deemed unsuitable. She refused to allow me under any circumstances to watch Quatermass, the science fiction series, on the grounds that it was far too frightening for an impressionable boy. It is a wonder that she allowed me to read Treasure Island.
My mother had a habit which, when I recall, still brings a smile to my lips.
We would all be watching a programme, the children on the carpet beneath the television cabinet, my father in his armchair, and a love scene (very mild by today's standards) would appear on the screen. It might involve a semi-clad couple in an embrace, but little else.
'Turn it off, Jimmy!' my mother would snap, as if he were responsible for it. Dutifully my father would rise from his chair and turn the knob.
Most people my age will remember what they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated and I am among them. There was a deep sense of shock in the house when the news came on the television, and I remember my mother weeping and my father sitting in a chair silent and serious-faced. Another television programme I have a vivid memory of was a documentary on the Holocaust. It was screened late at night and there was a warning that viewers might find some of the material distressing. I was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and Mum and Dad told me I should put away my books and come downstairs because there was something I should see, that all people should know about. We sat in silence staring at the small black and white screen and not a word was said. When the television was turned off, my mother was clearly deeply upset and said that what had happened in those death camps should never ever be forgotten, for it showed mankind at its most evil. I still see those recurring images of chalk-white, emaciated bodies, stick legs and arms, blank faces, deep-set eyes, shaven heads, semi-naked skeletons wandering aimlessly through the high wire gates. I still shudder at the memory of tangled masses of bodies shovelled into deep open graves and the traumatized faces of the liberating soldiers.
Today television has become integral in the lives of most children, and in this age many have a television set with DVD player in their bedrooms. They can watch from six in the morning to late at night, hopping from one channel to the next and often watching the most unsuitable material. But in the 50s and 60s television was not so important in children's lives, for there wasn't the variety on the screen and there were other things to occupy our time.
There was poetry in those early television programmes, squeezed in between the quizzes and the plays, the news and the variety shows. It was not traditional verse read by earnest poets; it was in the form of advertisements, which employed all the figurative language of poetry - repetition, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia. At the time these adverts were considered revolutionary, but far from destroying the fabric of the nation, as some would have us believe, they added to its richness, colour and gaiety and were memorable in their catchy tunes and clever lyrics. I remember the jingles to this day:
You'll wonder where the yellow went
When you brush your teeth with Pepsident (toothpaste)
Murraymints, Murraymints,
Too good to hurry mints (sweets)
You'll grow a little lovelier each day
With fabulous pink Camay (soap)
Opal Fruits - Made to make your mouth water (sweets)
We are the Ovaltinies, happy girls and boys (milky drink)
The Milky Bar Kid is big and strong
The Milky Bar Kid just can't go wrong (chocolate bar)
P ... p ... p ... pick up a Penguin (biscuit)
A million housewives every day,
Pick up a tin of beans and say:
'Beans means Heinz' (baked beans)
I still have a great weakness for Marmite spread on a slice of fresh white bread and recall the clever little ditty that advertised this enduring product:
If Ma might give me Marmite for my breakfast,
If Ma might give me Marmite for my tea,
If Ma might give me Marmite for my supper,
How happy I and Pa and Ma might be.
I was so fascinated by the television jingles that I took to inventing some of my own and entering competitions. At eleven I tried my hand at the Brooke Bond PG Tips Competition, where entrants had to complete the sentence, 'I drink Brooke Bond PG Tips because ...' in twenty words or less. The other entries can't have been very good, for I won the runner-up prize (a cheque and some packets of tea) with my effort:
It perks you up,
When you pick up a cup,
And it's the only tea for me.
This small masterpiece was my first published effort. I was now a paid writer.
28
Like most boys I liked football and
swimming (but wasn't much good at either), and I liked excursions on my bike. Some weekends in summer when I was ten or eleven, me and my friends (I was a member of the gang) would take ourselves up to the building site or to Archer's Farm on Moorgate. We would walk up through the allotments at the back of my house, along a path of beaten mud overgrown with nettles and across the fields, lifting the dried cowpats with sticks and disturbing a buzzing cloud of yellow horseflies. Then we would climb the five-barred gate and run across to a small copse where we had built a den out of dead branches, cardboard, bits of rusty corrugated tin and asbestos roofing. There were five of us and we would spend all day there, with our den as the base. We would climb trees and swing from the branches on a rope, daring each other to run through the stinging nettles. We would have mock fights, cowboys against the Indians, British against the Germans, Flash Gordon against the aliens, and run wild across the grass, dodging the wet cowpats and skimming the dried ones at each other.
To become a member of the gang everyone had to go through an initiation ceremony. It was Tommy, the self-proclaimed leader, who thought it up, and as new members joined they were sworn to keep secret what went on at the ceremony. I was the last to be initiated and had endured sleepless nights thinking of what terrors were in store for me. The members of the gang had already told me that it was a horrible ceremony but that if I failed to pass the three tests I couldn't become a member.
When the dreaded Saturday for the initiation arrived I couldn't eat my breakfast and felt my stomach doing kangaroo jumps. On the way to Archer's Farm, where I was to meet the gang members at nine o'clock, I began to imagine all sorts of dire rituals.
Mr Archer was busy milking the cows when I arrived and the four gang members were waiting for me outside the barn. I was taken inside without a word and blindfolded.
'First you have to stroke a dead rat,' I was told by Tommy. My hand was guided to a cardboard box, the sort shoes come in, and the lid taken off. My hand was thrust inside. I touched something wet and furry. I could imagine the black shiny coat, the pointed face, the cold dead eyes, the needle-like teeth, the claws and the long grey tail. I had seen enough rats on the farm to know what they looked like. I took a deep breath and ran my fingers across the fur.
'He has passed the first test,' said Tommy.
Then I was taken across the barn to some ladders and told to climb up. I knew this part of the barn. There was a sort of balcony, not too far off the ground. Below were bales of hay. We had often leapt off and I knew the hay would break my fall. Blindfolded it was a different matter. Suppose they had put something in the hay beneath me? I was positioned on the edge and told to jump.
'There aren't any pitchforks or rakes down there in the hay, are there?' I asked.
'That's for us to know and for you to find out,' Tommy told me.
'There had better not be,' I said.
Before I could say anything else I was pushed forward and I landed safely in the hay.
'He has passed the second test,' said Tommy.
By now I was thinking that I had done rather well, and was pretty confident that I would sail through the third and final test.
'All you have to do is eat three maggots,' said Tommy.
'I'm not eating any maggots!' I cried.
'You 'ave to,' said Tommy.
'Well, I'm not!'
'Come on,' said Simon, 'we've all had to do it.'
'Well, I'm not!'
'Then you can't be in our gang,' announced Tommy firmly.
'Come on,' said Jimmy in a friendly voice, 'we've all 'ad to do it. Gerrem down ya.'
I gritted my teeth and forced my lips together but fingers were pushing in a maggot. It was soft and squelchy. My mouth filled with saliva and I poked the maggot to the side of my mouth. Then another was posted through my lips and another.
I felt I was going to be sick. The thought of those pale, wriggly maggots in my mouth made my gorge rise.
'Swallow 'em,' urged Tommy.
In one great gulp, they were gone.
'He has passed the third test,' announced Tommy.
The blindfold was taken off and hands were patting my back and telling me, 'Well done.' I felt a warm glow come over me.
Tommy held up a small furry toy rabbit. 'There's your dead rat,' he said, chuckling.
Simon held up a Heinz Baked Beans tin.
I cannot describe the relief at seeing what I had been eating. They were not maggots at all but three baked beans. Of course when you were blindfolded and your imagination was working overtime it was easy to convince yourself that they were real maggots you had swallowed.
I sat in the hay and laughed and laughed and that started everyone else off laughing too.
'So I was eating beans,' I said, lying back and staring up at the roof of the barn. 'Baked beans.'
'Eh?' said Simon.
'The beans in the tin,' I said. 'I thought they were real maggots.'
'You're daft, you,' said Tommy.
'Well, I was blindfolded,' I said. 'I couldn't see what I was eating.'
'No, I mean, you're daft,' he repeated. 'We just collected the maggots in the bean tin.'
It's a wonder that those of us growing up in the fifties managed to survive. We jumped off walls, climbed trees, wrestled on the damp grass, threw stones at cans, lit fires, fenced like knights of old, with switches cut from the great weeping willow tree by the pond, fished for tiddlers in muddy streams, swung across rivers on a rope fastened to a branch, drank water from a garden hose, shot each other with potato guns and catapults, played marbles in the dirt, chewed sticky toffee, and then returned home for deep-fried fish and chips, with bread and butter, stodgy puddings and mugs of tea with three spoonfuls of sugar in. We had never heard the phrases 'health and safety' and 'high in saturated fats and carbohydrates'.
The building site on Moorgate where the large detached houses on the Duke of Norfolk Estate were being built was the finest playground a child could ever wish for. Saturday and Sunday afternoons were the best times, when there were no workmen about to chase you away - only a bad-tempered watchman who spent a deal of his time sleeping in his little hut. His guard dog, a fat, lazy and stupid old labrador called Laddie, which, like its master, enjoyed lengthy naps, occasionally roused itself to give a single bark before slumping back into its somnolent posture. On the site, well away from the watchman's hut, there were cement mixers to climb into, mountains of sand to run up and down, bags of cement to jump on and create explosions of grey dust, nuts and bolts to lob, buckets full of slimy water to throw, ladders to scale, planks to balance on, ropes to swing on and scaffolding to climb up. It was much more fun than playing in Clifton Park. If I were to visit such a building site today I would have to wear a hard hat and a yellow jacket and sign some sort of indemnity. As children we would spend hours in this 'playground' and return home weary and grubby, with nothing but a scraped knee or a bruised shin to show for it.
At Archer's Farm we would help feed the hens, muck out the pigs, collect the eggs, ride on the back of the tractor, watch the cows being milked, cut down the swathes of stinging nettles, pretending they were ranks of enemy soldiers and, above all, stay away from Gertie, the old grey goose which would honk and chase you, neck forward, beak open, wings flapping. There was an old crossbred sheepdog which would follow us around, and a yapping three-legged Jack Russell terrier, appropriately named Jackie. A clouder of feral cats inhabited the barn and would catch the fat black rats and little fieldmice, and hiss and snarl and arch their backs if we came anywhere near. Both dogs and cats, very wisely, avoided Gertie. I much preferred to be inside the barn, that huge, shadowy, hay-smelling, mys terious place piled high with straw bales and full of strange rustlings. We would lug the bales around and make tunnels and caves; we would leap from the upper floor on to a mountain of soft hay or watch the cats stalking the rats.
Mr Archer, the farmer, was a small grizzled man of few words, with a sad countenance. He had a broken nose, a weather-reddened face an
d eyes as grey as the ocean on a winter's day. Invariably he wore old green overalls, heavy boots and a flat cap, oily and frayed, the inner rim blackened by dirt and sweat. His pronounced limp, it was rumoured, was the result of his tussle with Moses, the 750-kilo bull that roamed the top field. The great Friesian creature had, so the story goes, knocked him down, tossed him in the air, pummelled him with its head, caught his side with its horn and broken the farmer's leg and two of his ribs. He was very wary, as we all were, of this proud and fierce animal. Sometimes we would tease Moses, running across the side of the field, a good distance away, willing him to chase us, and when he did we would scream in fright as he pounded down the field. We would leap over the five-bar gate and watch fascinated as he charged right up to us before swerving away, snorting and bellowing and shivering with fury.
Of all the animals, I liked the pigs the best. 'A dog looks up to you, a cat looks down on you,' Mr Archer once told me when I was helping him to muck out the sties, 'but a pig, he looks you straight in the eye.' I learnt quite a deal about these intelligent creatures on those Saturday visits to Archer's Farm, for instance that they are essentially clean animals which defecate where they get water and leave the rest of the pen dry for sleeping.
Mr Archer never appeared particularly pleased to see this motley gang of boys appearing in the farmyard, but he never thought of us as nuisances and never told us to 'Clear Off!' or 'Play up your own end!' as so many adults did.
Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad Page 24