by Lee Evans
I was sure I even saw a tear appear in the budgie’s little eye.
I was confused. I was too young to understand. I didn’t know what was going on. It was difficult to tell why you might tie a bow around Nanny Norling’s head so she looked like a rabbit. Why was everyone so upset?
I heard the faint siren of an ambulance arrive on the estate. That must have aroused something in her because suddenly, without warning, Nanny Norling sat bolt upright in bed.
A woman fainted on the spot.
The room ignited with screams of terror. An atmosphere that just moments earlier was silent and solemn was now complete mayhem. The budgie fell from its perch, seemingly clutching its tiny heart with its wings.
Everyone stood terrified, dumbfounded, staring at Nanny Norling. It was like she’d awoken from the dead. She made a few odd faces as if she had a wasp flying about her mouth. She had no teeth in, which didn’t help. It made her mouth look all concave. She produced some extraordinary noises that I had only previously heard on nature programmes. Her head jolted from one person to the next, her mad, staring, pea eyes darted about the room. She looked like a pinball caught between two posts as she flailed around in the four-poster bed.
‘She can’t breathe!’ someone cried out.
‘Well, no, she’s dead,’ shouted another.
‘She’s not dead, you idiot! Take that cloth off her head!’
Dad quickly ripped the cloth from Nanny Norling’s head. She took a huge intake of air, paused for a moment and shouted: ‘What are you trying to do? Kill me?’
In fact, not long after that, Nanny Norling did sadly pass on. No one knows if the trauma of that day contributed to it, but in my opinion, it surely couldn’t have helped.
Even though we were so hard up, Nanny Norling managed to brighten up all our lives on the estate with her hand-outs, her exciting shopping expeditions and her exploding hard-boiled sweets.
I dedicate this chapter to the beautiful generosity of Nanny Norling.
8. X-Ray Vision
Despite participating in all these shenanigans on the estate, I still felt walled-off from mainstream society. It was as if all the real action was taking place in some far-off land, light years away from our life of grime on the Lawrence Weston.
As I got older, I started to yearn for something that might make me stand out. I wanted a capability that would command instant respect from others. So I decided that what I needed to mark myself out was a superpower. Then one day I got one. Well, sort of.
Dad was getting a lot more work on the club circuit by now and would often spend weeks away. The estate was getting pretty lively, which made me anxious. It was becoming increasingly rough. I only ever really felt safe when Dad was there. A superpower would stop me feeling so vulnerable. I imagined I could impress people by bending iron bars at will. So I’d lie in bed dreaming of amassing superhuman strength.
Whenever Dad was home, he’d like to go to Bristol town centre and visit a costume and make-up shop to stock up on tape and props, as he was now starting to incorporate impressions into his act.
For me, it was always the most exciting day of the year when I held my dad’s hand and went up the Christmas Steps, a section of the town centre with second-hand clothes shops, book shops, joke shops and music stores. One of the music shops was owned and run by Trevor, the drummer in the band Dad used to belong to in the old days when he was doing gigs around South Wales and Bristol.
I loved going up the Christmas Steps. About half way up, there was a joke shop that sold rubber masks, make-up glue, false hair and wigs of all colours and lengths. I would stand in the middle of the shop, quietly fascinated by the brightly coloured magic tricks, practical jokes, wigs and costumes, waiting for Dad as he had odd, work-related conversations with the even odder-looking bloke behind the counter. They would talk endlessly about double-sided tape, rubber noses and false facial hair.
As Dad chatted away, my eyes were drawn to a pair of plastic glasses in a bag that hung near the counter. ‘X-Ray Vision’ it said, in big red letters. There was a picture of a man wearing the glasses and looking at a woman. It appeared that he could actually see through the woman’s dress to a skeleton underneath. I immediately snatched them from the rack and put them alongside the pile of stuff Dad had chosen to buy.
As the strange-looking man behind the counter cashed up all Dad’s stuff and plonked it in a bag, I imagined all the things I was going to do with these X-ray specs. Perhaps I might look inside my own body to see how it worked, or peer through buildings. Best of all, I imagined that I would be able to see underneath the dress of every girl that came within my X-ray vision. My eleven-year-old hormones were going ape shit with X-ray excitement.
As soon as we made our way out of the shop and back into the hustle and bustle of the Christmas Steps, I was eager to give my powerful new glasses a field test. Dad was distracted by a shop window, so I delved into the white carrier bag and retrieved the equipment that would endow me with my new superpower. It would enable me first to dominate the school playground, and then the planet. I would be able to watch teachers through thick walls, see what other kids had in their bags and, mostly, view naked girls at my leisure without them even knowing it.
I frantically opened the packet and carefully placed the huge, plastic, super-powered glasses upon my small freckled face. To my dismay, I couldn’t actually see anything. I looked around me at the buildings – nothing but fuzzy images. I took the glasses off and studied them. What was causing these powerful specs not to work?
Upon inspection, I found that they simply consisted of pieces of thin cardboard as lenses with red spirals painted on the front and a small hole in the middle over which a tiny piece of red nylon gauze was stretched and glued in place. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked through your net curtains at home, but things do appear to be fuzzy and kind of X-rayish, I suppose.
But I couldn’t give up. The spectacles had aroused something deep inside me. I no longer wanted to be the twat of the school, the odd boy, the one picked on for making strange noises to myself during class – well, OK, maybe that one. But I needed this new superpower to banish my reputation as the eternal loser. If I had this ability, the other boys who thought of me as merely the school buffoon would immediately see me in an entirely different light. I shall, I thought, see into their minds, control the school, fight crime, even take over the universe.
I would no longer be viewed as the unwilling volunteer for the latest painful experiments – for example, I can boast that I was the first at my school to test out the agonizing pain of a dead leg from Alan Wilson, and the bumps from the entire Year Three. They swore it was my birthday, but unless I got the date wrong, they were sorely mistaken. Actually, I was sorely, they were just mistaken. No, if these boys knew I had the power of X-ray vision, I would be the most important, sought-after pupil in the school.
I kept the glasses on as we entered the next shop Dad wanted to visit. I looked at everything around me, bumping into every other person – much to the annoyance of Dad, who started to pull me along the pavement once we were back outside. ‘Take those bloody glasses off, you look mad,’ he fumed, before turning to apologize to anyone I bumped into. ‘Lee, look where you’re going.’
But I wanted to keep the glasses on in case somehow they suddenly started working. I persisted with the specs in the hope that the X-ray vision might kick in. I tried desperately to focus through the small pinholes. So determined was I that I refused to remove them for a week, stumbling around the flat in near blindness.
‘Lee, take those bloody glasses off. You can’t see your tea,’ Mum would demand at the table. I’d take them off, but as soon as I was away from the table they were back on and I was crashing into things again.
Trying my luck at school, I’d lurk in the playground next to the girls on the monkey bars, attempting not to look too suspicious. Then, at the right moment, I’d turn round, bend dow
n, slide my hand into my bag, whip out my X-ray specs and put them on my face. Closing my eyes, I’d pray that they would work. Then I’d slowly, nonchalantly turn round and stare at the girls through these huge black glasses with red spirals painted on the lenses.
‘Piss off, Evans, you pervert!’ they would shout. Even though the glasses didn’t work, I made out they did, by saying stuff back to them like, ‘Oooooh! I see …’
They would all jump from the monkey bars and run to the teacher on playground duty, and tell on me. ‘Miss, Miss, Lee Evans can see our underwear!’
Word got round that Lee Evans had X-ray glasses and could see girls’ knickers. At every break, I would aimlessly stroll around the playground, then suddenly pop up somewhere and put the glasses on in front of as many people as possible. Then I’d point randomly at them and begin laughing and saying, ‘I can see what you’re wearing, you know!’
All of a sudden, I was the most in-demand boy at the school. Overnight, I’d gone from loser to lord of all I surveyed. Other lads would sidle up to me and whisper, ‘Evans, gissa go on your glasses.’
‘No,’ I’d respond authoritatively. ‘If these land up in the wrong hands, God help us!’
That just made them want the specs more. I found myself in the desperate situation of for once being the kid all the other boys wanted to talk to, but for something that I knew didn’t really exist. As I was a prize twit and not used to this kind of pressure, I soon buckled.
One morning, I was in the playground at break time with a crowd of excited boys, all wanting a go on my X-ray specs and to look at the girls. I made some futile attempts at lying – I said that I’d buried them far away because the responsibility was too great a burden, and even that the government had come and taken them away to test them for possible use by our armed forces.
But it was no good. I quickly gave in to Big Chris Blake, the school bully. ‘Listen, Evans,’ he snarled as he gripped the lapel of my blazer. ‘I need those glasses. I want to see some crumpet.’ I duly took them from my inside pocket and gave them to him. He grabbed them and, projecting spit into my face, spat out the word ‘Tosser’ before running off, followed by a cackling crowd of equally Neanderthal boys.
It was over.
I’d had my moment of popularity, shallow though it was. Just as I was thinking how empty it felt being a mere mortal, bereft of any superpowers, the crowd of boys came rushing back towards me. ‘Wait,’ I thought, ‘maybe the glasses worked. Perhaps they are coming back to lift me on to their shoulders with shouts of appreciation.’ Er, no.
They stopped in front of me. Chris Blake pushed his way through the crowd. Even though he was still wearing the glasses and his eyes were covered in red spirals, I could tell he wasn’t happy. He came right up to my face and slowly took off the glasses, revealing red, angry eyes. His head looked like a geyser about to blow. He threw the glasses to the floor and, without saying a word, punched me full in the face. Was I still part of the in-crowd?
Back to the drawing board.
That feeling of being a perpetual misfit ran throughout my school days. I could do nothing right. The more I tried to be in, the more I was pushed out. The only time I ever felt at ease was when I was allowed to daydream. For example, I could lose myself in art. Every year a charity would hang up on all our front doors clear plastic bags containing colouring books and crayons. For some reason, the charity must have thought drawing the dot-to-dot pictures in those books would stop us from scribbling on the walls. But the crayons just gave us the ammo to do so.
I would spend hours sitting, colouring and drawing. Ever since I can remember, entering the world of writing or painting has been a great escape. To me, it is the place I feel the safest. It’s where I feel total freedom to express myself any way I want, without prejudice or worry.
I experienced a similar feeling of belonging when it came to music. At the Christmas Steps on that same day with Dad, I went into Trevor’s music shop and suddenly I was surrounded by all types of drums and cymbals. It was difficult to take it all in. There seemed to be no gaps anywhere. You couldn’t see the wall – every available space was filled with equipment: bass drums, kettle drums, gongs, all sorts of gleaming chrome stands that held cymbals, and entire drum kits hanging from the ceiling.
Trevor, Dad’s old bandmate behind the counter, was a short man with dark features. I thought he looked like a skinny version of Engelbert Humperdinck. He and Dad were both enthusiastically slapping each other’s backs, obviously two friends who hadn’t seen each other for a while. When he broke off from hugging Dad, Trevor looked down at me, smiling. ‘This your boy, Dave?’
‘Yep, that’s the younger one. The older one’s at home. I’ll tell you what, Trev, the older one can sing, you know. He’s very good, he is.’
‘What’s he do?’ Trevor enquired about me.
‘Nothing. I think he’s a bit shy, this one. He don’t say much,’ answered Dad.
Trevor turned round and grabbed something from behind him. Then he walked around the counter and knelt down next to me. ‘I’ll tell you what, have a go with these, young Lee,’ he said, producing two drumsticks from behind his back and handing them to me. I held them in my hand, lost in awe at my brand-new possessions.
The words ‘Trevor’s Drum Store’ were written in blue along the two sticks. They seemed to have a mind of their own, as if they were obliging me to bang something with them. It was the first time I’d ever felt any sort of urge to be musical.
From that day, I never wanted to put those sticks down. Every chance I got, I would slide off into my bedroom and construct a drum kit, setting up a rolled-up blanket to act as a bass drum, two pillows as tom-toms and a book in the middle as a snare. I tapped away for hours. I’d always liked my own company because it allowed my imagination to wander. I’m still the same today. I love nothing better than locking myself away for hours on end, doing something creative. Wait a minute – that’s prison, isn’t it?
When I played on my bed back then, it was like to imagine I was in a band. I would put on the old record player in my room and try to drum along to whatever was playing. They were mostly records Wayne had bought: T-Rex, Sweet, Gary Glitter. The one record I had bought was Cosy Powell’s ‘Dance with the Devil’. I would practise playing along to it so much, I had blisters in between my fingers. I reckoned I had found my instrument.
I was never any good at school. I always seemed to be someplace different from the rest of the class, always marooned in the world of my own imagination. Mentally, I would cut myself off. But when I got home and played with the drumsticks, my whole body would just relax, I was in my own eleven-year-old comfort zone. This was it. I sat drumming on a book, some pillows and rolled-up blankets, but in my mind I was playing in front of thousands at Wembley Stadium. I was a performer.
Thanks, Trevor.
9. The Wish List
It was slowly becoming clear that the one place where I felt at ease was as a performer. Experiences such as my humiliation by Mrs Taylor had demonstrated as much. As yet, however, I had no idea that I could parlay clowning in the classroom into a career.
I was still very much regarded as the odd one out by people on the estate and at school. From a very young age, I always knew that I was not the same as everyone else, and there were lots of things about me which I wished were different.
That continues to this day. I’m still haunted by a ‘wish list’ of things I long to do better. I wish, for instance, that I didn’t think so much, but I can’t help it – I’ve always had a very vivid imagination. It’s a place I can go to, my own little world where I find the most solace. It’s the spot I can hide in, where no one can find me. It’s a sort of defence mechanism. My imagination takes over whenever I find it difficult to cope with the real world.
I am completely satisfied with my own company. When I was a college student, I might suddenly decide that – for that day – I was going to be from a di
fferent country. It was no specific country. I just adopted a fictitious language, and any time anyone spoke to me, I would really believe I couldn’t understand them. I’d shake my head and hold out my hands, trying to explain to them in a ridiculous made-up foreign tongue: ‘Eye aammmmaaa no frum eerrre. I know not?’
It was just the same when I was a young kid. I’d lose myself for hours, painting, reading or dressing up and acting out stuff. To anyone watching, I looked like a simple boy, but to me I was right there in the midst of my imaginative world.
I could spend hours alone in my bedroom either imagining I was somewhere else or acting out being someone else from a film or TV show I might have watched. I always yearned to be someone much better than me – better looking, more decisive and confident, stronger-willed.
So, as a young kid, I might spend days pretending to be in a car. I would commandeer one of Mum’s dinner plates, hold it out in front of me like a steering wheel and, while making a car noise, walk around our flat. I’d only respond if someone called me, as you might a taxi. If I was asked to sit at the table, I’d drive there. When Mum shouted at me to sit down, I’d spend ages meticulously parking my imaginary car, opening the door and saying, ‘Sorry, Mum, did you say something? I couldn’t hear you in my car.’ Or sometimes I’d lie under my bed refusing to come out, explaining it would be impossible as I was a trapped miner who had somehow managed to find a small air pocket.
With my mum on a day out while Dad was away.
At various times, I was also both Batman and Robin, and Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man. I once stood for an hour at the bottom of our block of flats, clasping hold of the corner brickwork, literally believing I was the Bionic Man. I would warn anyone who passed by in a sort of strained American accent to ‘Step … back … I … really … don’t know … if … I … can … hold it … up … much … longer.’