by Nick Frost
The neighbours on our right were Dave and Jane. Jane was a stone-cold MILF, although the term MILF was a long way from being invented at this point. I reckon she was in her late twenties/early thirties. Lots of low-slung, tight jeans, flat, hard tummy and bellybuttons, long fronds of loose blonde hair, no bra, bending over to pick up a well-chewed dog toy – this was too much for a young boy to take. I remember Dave liked knives and Rottweilers, a frightening mix that should’ve guaranteed I kept my young horny eyes well away from his wife. It didn’t, my burgeoning sexuality – I was twelve for godsakes! – and real need to see what a woman looked like was to get me into terrible trouble while perving on Jane as she sunbathed topless in the garden.
I’d cleverly worked out that if I stood on the toilet, and angled a CD (acting as a mirror) I could see her knockers. I’m ashamed writing this, ashamed and proud at the level of invention my perverted determination drove me to.
I thought this discovery was amazing, she was my first fantasy and I needed to confide this naughtiness to someone. Sadly I made the mistake of telling a big-mouthed friend who, literally the moment I finished telling him, ran up to Jane, who had conveniently wandered round the corner, and told her. (She worked as a dinner lady at lunchtimes at the school.) ‘Miss, Nick perves on your bangers when you sunbathe.’
I couldn’t believe it. This was the first time I experienced what has become known as a Heat Flash. I was/am to experience it many times after this. It begins in my feet, moving north, it flashes up my body at three times the speed of sound, leaving me momentarily deaf. The deafness is replaced by the sound of my blood pumping through my ears and then slowly, gradually, normal service resumes.
I imagine it to be a similar physical sensation to standing slightly too near a car bomb as it goes off or driving a heavily armoured vehicle over an IED. Once I’ve recovered enough to move, I set off at pace, running for home. I fly through the front door screaming to Mum that I wasn’t very well and I get into bed. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon and one of the hottest days of the year. I lie there wishing I were dead. (This is a perfect example of Karma in action and totally serves me right for being a horrible little pervert.)
Then there was a knock at the front door. I’d been half expecting it, the blood pressure whistles loudly in my ears, I knew what was happening, who it was, it was Jane. I hear her talking to my mum and then I hear the front door closing, someone coming upstairs. There was a tap on my door.
‘Hello,’ I croaked, pretending to be dangerously ill. Jane comes in and we fuck violently (we don’t). Actually she was absolutely lovely about it. She very quietly, calmly and peacefully told me that what I had done was wrong. And that was that. She went off and it was never mentioned again.
Next door to Jane and Dave lived the Ellicotts. They were a nice family with four strapping sons. Dad was a copper and their mum was a lovely, lovely Irish lady called Peggy, with a need to constantly feed people until their stomachs split. The house was very messy and the kitchen was packed to the rafters with bumper packs of food, cases of soup, cereal, eleven thousand slices of packet ham, fifty litres of margarine, a ton of Quavers on a pallet, chocolate, peanuts, chocolate peanuts, and the world’s biggest private collection of tinned fruit. I guess having four sons means you need a lot of food. I have one son and I’m constantly amazed by how much he eats.
Every year the Ellicotts had a New Year’s Eve party. It was always fun and crazy and was the chance to stay up late and steal cans of lager. It was at one such do that we all sat and watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller video directed by the great John Landis. It was absolutely amazing. I’d never seen anything like it.
The Ellicotts’s 1987 New Year’s Eve bash provided the setting for a moment of young weirdness for me.
Sexy neighbour Jane had got over my earlier sexual misdemeanour, and asked if I wanted to go upstairs and smoke a joint with her. Course I did, the fact Mr Ellicott was the police didn’t bother me much at all to be honest. Jane and I stuffed our bodies halfway out of a tiny window and hung out of it puffing, it was nice. There came a sharp knock at the door, I suffer a low-level panic, I frantically whisper at Jane to not open it, she tells me it will be fine. I trust her. Jane opens the door, her face softening.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s fine . . .’ I relax. Jane continues . . .
‘It’s only your mum.’
WHARRRRRRRRRTTTTTTT!!!!
It was very odd, Mum was pissed, and I was frankly too high to care – in fact I even recall at one point relishing showing my mum how to smoke a joint properly. Weird scenes inside the Goldmine.
The next morning was awkward. I came down to find Mum washing up. I cleared my throat.
‘Hello.’ I was casual.
‘Hello.’ Mum was casual.
We didn’t make eye contact. I grabbed my stuff and left for the day. Do you know that feeling when you end up French kissing an uncle while camping? It felt a bit like that.
***
On our left, at number 29 Babbacombe, lived Chris, Alan, Ian, Mandy and Martin. They become pretty important. My mum and Chris soon become best friends. Me and Chris’s son Ian who was four years older than me also became good mates. Ian loved Cagney and Lacey and Status Quo and we spent a lot of time playing golf at Hainault municipal golf course. I kind of idolised him a little bit.
Mandy was Chris’s daughter; she was my first proper love I think. Mandy was three years older than me, not much in the big scale of things granted, but when you’re twelve it was a love forbidden.
Me and Mandy would play a game where we’d stand on the corner of the street kissing to see how many people would honk their horns at us. It never went much further than kissing but then it didn’t have to, it was enough. I really liked her. She had other, older boyfriends; I didn’t mind, I knew our thing was transient and just for giggles.
Mandy’s year in school had their own common room, I was a few years below and being in that room flirting outrageously with the fittest girl in her year was taken by some as a major slight.
There was a guy in her class, the older brother of a mate of mine, who really fancied Mandy. Seeing her cuddling and kissing cute old me drove him crazy. He made the mistake of confronting me in front of everyone, an OK Corral kind of thing. He told me I didn’t belong, that I should ‘get lost’. He then made his final mistake, trying to knee me in the Goolie Bag. (As an aside he actually got my inner thighs.) This I couldn’t take. Everyone was looking while he towered over me smiling like a cunt. My ears rang, my fist clenched itself up. (You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the plot point in BTTF where McFly clumps Biff.) I stand and begin moving a solid, powerful right towards his fucking head, I sit into it moving my body round so the arm whips around quicker, it pludges into his face, his neck whips back, and the world speeds up again. He slumps to the floor. Nunight.
This is the first time I ever did anything like this. I felt good slugging that pompous jerk-off. I felt good, for about a second. I’ve always been someone who overthinks things, works shit out and imagines the consequences of actions, my actions. Fighting left me cold. What if I hit him and he falls and hits his head and dies? He didn’t die. There was a collective gasp. Is Mandy looking at me with a newfound pride and attraction or does she have the beginnings of slight conjunctivitis? I don’t hang around to find out. My plan didn’t include what might happen if he gets up with fight still in him, so I run. There is no come back. He never bullies me again and nor does anyone else. I guess a secondary school is a bit like a prison in so much as once people know you’re happy to sling a fist or two they tend to stay away from you.
These people, our neighbours, were the closest friends we had. Up the street a little way lived my new best friend, at least for the first couple of years of school; he was a peculiar fellow called Brett Colley. He had perhaps the best and biggest train set I ever saw. It took up his whole room leaving a tiny space in one corner for his little bed. His brother Ricky wa
s a much bigger boy who could ride really fast on his bike. His mum was like Dog Chapman’s lovely wife Beth and I seem to remember his dad was a Fred Dibnah-style man, always stuck down in his vast shed/workshop taking apart and putting together old cars and engines. There was lots of that back then. Essex seemed to be a real hotbed of taking apart and putting together old cars. Me and my later crew had our own workshop in Peter Ashton’s shed, we’d spend a lot of time sanding and filling old car panels and hanging them back on whatever shitty banger Pete was working on at the time.
I begged my dad to buy me a shitty banger and after weeks of me hassling him he did just that. It was a powder-blue Escort MKII. It was beautiful and fucked and I loved it. I think I was fourteen at the time. My intention was to work on it until I passed my test and then I’d have a car straight away.
It sat outside the back of the house in the alley for several months. I didn’t do much to it. I think once I hit the engine with a hammer, maybe I sanded a wing. A few weeks later I try to jack the thing up. The car creaks and slumps and finally emits a loud cracking sound. The jack rips through the floor pan and lodges itself deep into the underbelly of the car. Try as I might, I could not get it out. Like the sword in the stone I was not worthy. I soon lost interest in that car and it was eventually pushed into a river and set alight. Don’t judge me, I’m from Essex.
I often wondered what happened to Brett. He got a lot of stick but I liked him. He’d always have an angle and was a pretty savvy businessman, buying boxes of Mars bars at trade and selling to the other kids well above market place. I bet he’s some kind of tech billionaire now.
Beal High School also had an ice cream van, a kind of mobile tuck shop if you will, that’d come in at lunchtimes for all the eager fatties. Brett worked out a deal where he would essentially do litter patrol at the end of lunch and get free sweets from the ice cream man. Brett was the only kid I knew that had all of the NatWest Piggies. He looked like a thirteen-year-old Freddie Mercury complete with partially formed bumfluff moustache.
I remember playing hide and seek in his house once; it was dark and we had our school uniforms on so I imagine it was winter. I found a place on top of a cupboard where I curled up and waited. While I was lying down wanting to piss – this is a sad side effect hide and seek has on me – I noticed the bulb-less light socket hanging from the ceiling and an odd plan of action made itself known to me. The voice in my mind said this . . .
‘Stick your finger into the light socket to see if it’s on or off.’ I had to know and sticking my finger into the socket was the only way I could think to find out, so I did it. The whole room popped and for a moment the darkness became bright like a supernova. I woke up on the floor, muffled voices filtering into my consciousness; I’d been flung across the room, what a fucking idiot. I was absolutely compelled to stick my finger into that live socket, perhaps this is a valuable insight into my powerful lack of impulse control.
Brett also went on the school canal trips, and was the main reason really that I wanted to go. From my first year at secondary school until the fifth year when I left we went on the annual canal trip. It was a week over the Easter holidays with the groovy gang from the school’s canal club travelling different routes around the highways and byways of Britain’s majestic canal network. We were the uncoolest people in the world, but it was fab and I friggin loved it, especially the feeling of responsibility.
It was run by science teacher Mr Fisher, a big, bearded man who always creeped me out a bit. He had large hairless hands with big pores and was always a bit too touchy feely; because of him I now have a distrust of men with hairless big-pored hands.
In the run-up to the trips we’d attend a class after school a couple of times a week for about a month, teaching us the technicalities of narrow boats, how locks worked, safety on board and general waterway etiquette. Usually four boats would be hired, a twelve berth, a couple of tens and an eight. After a safety briefing from the hire company we were off. We were allowed to steer, operate the locks, and we all took turns cooking and cleaning as we pottered down the canals at 4 miles per hour (bliss).
On the canal trips there was always some kind of drama going on, lots of falling in love with people, drunkenness, little arguments, people falling in. One year a kid called Amit and a teacher called Mr Green had a major beef, fuck knows why. Amit could be annoying and a little bit hyper but he was essentially a good bloke. Green really had it in for him, I think at one point he pushed Amit over into some nettles. Nettles for fucksakes! I even seem to remember him holding Amit down in a muddy field and struggling with his conscience whether or not to punch Amit in the chops.
I remember the thrill of the Tardebigge flight and the terror of the mighty Pontcysyllte aqueduct, an iron trough two hundred feet in the sky with no safety rail. I remember smoking and laughing a lot with Peter Ashton, eating eggy bread, walking miles at night with a torch trying to find a phonebox! Finding a fucking phonebox. (I’m glad I straddle this era between phonebox and mobile.) I fell into the canal twice. I fell in love more than that.
The most memorable thing to happen to me though was on my last trip. I was fifteen and the trip fell on my sixteenth birthday. As it was my birthday they made a real fuss of me. It was day two of a seven-day trip. That night we were moored up in the Gas Street Station in Birmingham – a place I’ll never forget. We had a small party on Mr Green’s boat and I drank too much whisky. Too much for a sixteen-year-old anyway.
I begin to get a whisky rage on, the first inkling I may have Celtic Twilight in me. In a fit of rage and teen despair I smash a bottle and attempt to punch a bridge. It hurts and I trudge back to Green’s boat; someone suggests I should stay and not stumble back to my own boat up the dark towpath. I find myself in the female teachers’ cabin. I’m drunk on the floor on top of a thin mattress in a sleeping bag. I hear the words, ‘Why don’t you come in here, you’ll be more comfortable.’ Then something about it being cold.
How did this begin? What sparked it? When had it become this? What led up to it? Was there flirting? I don’t remember guffing on her so maybe not. I was sixteen and she was at least thirty-seven. At school we called her Lumpy Linda. We used to joke about the way she walked, a kind of bouncy half tumble, and how she always wore these long pointy shoes, shoes a Turkish soldier might wear, while guarding the shrine of Atatürk.
I allow myself to be pulled into her tight bunk and then, space being a premium, I end up on top of her. I’m hammered and confused. The vast expanse of her big white tummy spreads out beneath me, an icy field of wrong. My head swims. How did we get here? Things become vague. I remember snippets of things, sure, but nothing concrete. I think I’m losing my virginity to a woman called Lumpy Linda. This is not how I imagined it to be honest; that said, I’m not sure I had ever imagined it.
Almost the second it’s finished, Lumpy Linda leans her head out of the bunk and projectile-vomits all over the tiny cabin. It’s like I just lost my virginity to Mr Creosote. The fact I ever had sex with a woman again absolutely amazes me. With the noise of the – whatever it was – and the puking the whole boat comes thundering into the cabin to help out. They fuss around and help with the vomit, torches are shone in to illuminate the scene. Shouts of ‘Back to bed everyone!’ Am I naked? Am I in my trademark Tanga briefs? Mr Green’s there too, what did he think with his stubby legs, gappy teeth and desert boots?
The next day, and in fact the rest of the whole week, was fucking awful. Everyone knows. She keeps trying to catch me alone at the locks to talk about what has happened. I’m totally unprepared for this, talking about feelings is not what the sixteen-year-old me wants to do, can do. I’m completely without the tools to cope with this.
After a while it slips from the front page to page eleven and then it’s chip wrappers.
***
Between fourteen and sixteen I spend a lot of time down in Wales. It’s a place where I feel like I’m treated like a grown-up a bit. From the age of eleven I’d been t
aking the train or a National Express coach on my own to Haverfordwest. I loved being down there. Things at home had taken a turn for the worse and Mum’s drinking was getting out of hand. I’d use Wales as a place to escape to. Staying with Auntie Linda or at Auntie Melanie’s house on that little council estate up near the cemetery was a dream. It was in Melanie’s house I first saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
They all found me hilariously funny and I loved showing off, making them all laugh. Despite the shit there was a lot of laughter at home, at least early on. I was the funny so and so. Impressions were my thing and mimicking voices. Dad was a pun merchant and Mum was dry as a bone. Guffs got a lot of airtime. Lotta guff comedy at home. I remember as a young boy I’d ripped my underpants pretty badly. I decided to use this tatty garment as a prop. I ran into the kitchen in my gran’s house and did a very loud fart which I then pretended had blown my underpants to bits. My gran and four or five of my aunties howled with laughter at six-year-old me dancing around, arse scorched from a flaming pump. Maybe I should try and resurrect ‘pant explosion’ in a film sometime.
At sixteen, though, because of the pressures of home I was a miserable so and so. Many was the time I’d sit on the bus driving from Haverfordwest to Fishguard and back again with my Walkman on listening to the Smiths and watching the rain trickle down the fogged-up windows. It felt right to be there. What a moody little twat I was.
I’d hang out in a pub on the square. Some people knew me, most didn’t. I liked that. I’d write in a little notebook and be miserable, I thought it was attractive to be mysterious and sullen. When I was there I was definitely from London, I made a point of not hiding it. At the weekends I was allowed to go to the club with my aunties. RJ’s was a real shit hole. On a Sunday as part of the entrance fee you got a free sausage and chips. What a place.