Going Commando

by Mark Time

  It was a household of addiction. With nine kids, including my mum who apparently used the house as a ‘chuffing hotel’, my gran’s time and money was at a premium. Neither was made any easier by her gambling. In the harshest winters of the 1960s, she resorted to burning the garden fence and old pairs of shoes to keep the house warm, as Grandad would sell his free coal to clear his tab at the Labour Club. In the 1970s, the living room of our council house contained a black and white TV hidden behind a continual fug of smoke from unfiltered cigarettes that stained the ceiling yellow. My grandad forever had a Woodbine hanging from his mouth, possibly to rid him of the aftertaste of Vaseline sandwiches he took down the pit every day for 53 years. My gran had her penchant for whisky and sherry (not in the same glass, mind), and showed her class by chain-smoking Senior Service – an altogether more refined fag than the humble Woodbine.

  My own addiction was books and atlases. On my eighth birthday I received a Philip’s World Atlas that I treasured more than life itself. I would often stay up late reading its maps by torchlight, little realising how much time I’d spend doing this later in life. I could recite every capital city of the world by the time I was eight-and-a-half, and would try to impress schoolmates with the name Ouagadougou, the capital of Upper Volta. Equally as absorbing was the red leather-bound Readers’ Digest Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary (Vol III) that I renamed my ‘red bible’, and in which I’d read up on such age-appropriate subjects as anatomy and classical architecture.

  I would take it to school and play a game with the other kids. At break time, I’d approach one of them and ask, ‘What’s your surname?’

  ‘Uh… Bugg. Why?’

  I’d then open my red bible and, with a licked finger (intellectuals did that when going through books), slowly flick to the chapter entitled ‘Surnames and their Meanings’, and then look disappointed when that particular name wasn’t in my big red book of everything. Keen to prove its value, I’d flick through again, this time to the anatomical section.

  ‘Do you know what a penis is?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m looking at one. Fuck off.’

  Despite often getting ignored, my red bible and atlas opened up a Pandora’s box of imagination for me, and while others read comics I’d immerse myself in books on Marco Polo and Alexander the Great. I would write stories set in far-off exotic lands and dream of conquering mountains of the Hindu Kush, exploring Afghanistan and Arabia, places I felt an affinity for after watching films such as Lawrence of Arabia and, Carry On up the Khyber. If my nose wasn’t in my precious books, I’d be completing puzzles and IQ tests. I thought of myself as someone who could immediately get into Cambridge University, despite being ten, as I apparently had an IQ over 150. Clearly, if common sense had been measured in a similar way I’d have been placed in a class with others sympathetically labelled ‘special’.

  My diet as a child was as unconventional as my reading habits. Dinner tended to consist of a cup of sweet, black Camp Coffee; I’d always fantasise about being in the shoes of the Gordon Highlander who adorned the label, drinking his cup in some far-off land. I imagined the Sikh in the picture making the coffee for his sahib, and wondered whether he accidentally dropped fag ash into it, as my gran often did when she made mine.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she would add, as I peered into the scalding hot water, watching the ash swirl slowly to the bottom. ‘It won’t kill you.’

  Along with the acrid coffee/chicory/ash brew, I’d consume my nightly packet of shop’s-own bourbon biscuits. I’d wolf them down and happily scoop out the soggy remains of saturated biscuits and fag ash from the bottom of the cup. This coffee-and-biscuit combo was my sole midweek diet throughout my early childhood, my gran figuring that my free school lunch would provide sufficient nutrition for the day.

  On Saturdays, we had Knottingley’s finest fish and chips, bought for us from the shop across the road by Aunt Lily who visited religiously with her large brood of kids. I remember vividly how she would place her false teeth on the chip paper as she simultaneously ate her fish and smoked Lambert & Butler cigarettes.

  After lunch, all of us would sit to watch the wrestling on World of Sport, my gran and aunt manically knitting in metronomic time with the ebb and flow of the action. Should the baddies, Giant Haystacks or Mick McManus, get the upper hand over any of her favourites, my gran’s needles would suddenly stop their click-clacking as she leaned forward to look at the telly, bug-eyed, and use the sort of language that at any other time of the week she’d describe as ‘rude’.

  Once the wrestling finished, the room would fall deathly silent as if a mute button had been pressed on the household. Grandad had to listen intently to the football results while he filled in his pools coupon. If a mouse farted, it would get the belt. If a gnat suppressed a sneeze, it would get the belt. If any of us children so much as audibly exhaled, we would get the belt.

  There was no reason for it. Bob Colson, the results announcer, would always imply the result through his intonation, and we kids could pick up who’d won a given fixture before he’d finished reading it out (either that or we could just look at the results on the screen).

  However, this was of no concern to my grandad. One day, after a poor run of around three weeks of not getting belted, I made the mistake of laughing at a fart from my elder cousin. Let’s face it, any 10 year old would when they’re not supposed to. Even with his belt at the ready, my ten-year-old self was too quick for grandad, eluding his grasp as I ran upstairs. He didn’t follow like he usually did. Eventually, holding my breath and listening out for the tell-tale sound of a creaking stair, I peeked out of my bedroom door. No sign. I crept back down the stairs, hoping he wasn’t lying in ambush, and returned to the kitchen that was festooned with skinned rabbits hanging from a washing line.

  Grandad was sitting on a chair, looking pale – his miner’s tattoo, an Indian ink-blue crack caused by a large block of coal falling on his head years earlier – seemed more pronounced than ever. He was rubbing his bald head and breathing deeply. My gran scolded me back upstairs. It was the last time I ever saw grandad. He had suffered a stroke while trying to chase me. He died later that evening.

  After his death, our prize-winning garden fell into disrepair and the house seemed to wither with age – as did my gran, who chain-smoked her way through her single-parenting responsibilities with little money but too much pride to ask for help. She’d be up chopping wood for the fire before I rose until I decided, aged eleven, that it should really be my job. Unfortunately, so was the cleaning up of dog shit that was a trip hazard around the dining room.

  The upshot was that I was farmed out between aunts and uncles more often, especially during the school holidays, to alleviate the child-rearing pressures on my gran. I felt like a wartime evacuee when sent to the West Hull villages, and my time spent amongst the greenery of the Yorkshire Wolds opened my eyes to the wonderment of rolling hills, tree climbing and river rafting – all alien pastimes to a kid surviving the concrete jungle. I suddenly felt alive, with fresh air detoxing my lungs, and realised the books I’d been brought up on were just the prologue to real life.

  June, or ‘Mammy June’ as I began to call her, visited more often. She now lived about a mile away, and so would call in on the occasional Friday evening en route to nightshift at the nearby chemical works. There was still not much of a bond between us, but she did seem to take more of an interest in my life and even came to see me play the title role at my primary school production of Jonah and the Whale.

  I’d visited her just once at her house on a rough council estate, which she shared with her husband Derek – or ‘Dekker’ as he was known at the pit. Dekker had encouraged me to go out and play with a neighbour’s kid who took me to meet his mates. Ironically, given the profession I’d later follow, my new ‘mate’ got me to stand in the middle of a circle of about ten other youngsters and fight whoever came into it. I’m not talking play fighting either, this was proper ‘smash your fucking teeth in’
fighting.

  After I’d beaten up the first two volunteers, the others were less keen to try their hands. The biggest lad, whose name I will never forget, pushed another small kid into the circle who I also finished off with my increasingly sore fists. By now I was exhausted. I didn’t want any more. I hadn’t wanted the previous three either, but it had kind of been put upon me.

  Seizing on my weakness, the biggest lad, who was probably fourteen or fifteen, ran into the circle and floored me with a flying kick. On the floor, I was defenceless against the horde that all of a sudden wanted to fight. I lay there curled up into a tight ball, getting kicked from every conceivable direction, trying as best as I could to protect my head. A couple got through and soon the metallic taste of blood covered my tongue. The kicking then stopped, leaving me still curled in a ball. I wanted to cry, to burst into tears, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  The brain is a strange organ when dealing with trauma. Despite what had just happened, all I could feel was the stinging from a fingernail on my left hand that had been kicked loose. I rose slowly to my feet, ignoring the stares and taunts, and hobbled to my mam’s house. My mam was out, only Dekker was there. When I told him what had happened, he just shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a rough estate.’

  I pissed blood for the next week, and have had traces of blood in my urine ever since. Believe me, it’s a pain when trying to pass an employment medical.

  As I entered my teenage years, my mother’s influence on my life became more tangible. I’d been streamed into the top class at secondary school and was captain in many of the sports teams. I was playing football at an extremely high level, and had a reputation as someone who could handle himself in a scrap. Yet for all these youthful achievements, my gran was struggling to look after me due to my increasingly errant behavior. My temper was becoming too much for her to cope with; I’d smashed up my bedroom on many occasions through anger at nothing in particular.

  Eventually, and without notice, gran was taken from me to a one-bedroomed bungalow on a warden-assisted estate for old folks. I was carted off to live with my mam and stepdad, who had moved themselves from the rough estate into a posh bungalow in an outlying village. Nobody in the family consulted me or considered how I felt – it just happened. An angry thirteen-year-old forced to live with a disinterested mother and a drunken, violent stepdad; it seemed as if I’d secured a part in a soap opera.

  As with most soap operas, death eventually featured. Not long after our separation, I was taken to visit gran on a hospice ward. Cancer had ravaged her body until she lay withered to skin and bone in a ward hammock. I didn’t know it would be the last time I would ever see her, but I now understand that the look she gave me said that she did.

  With my gran gone, I needed family. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it at home, so mateship became more important. I found that my eight-mile round trip walking to school afforded me plenty of time to get to know other kids. Many of them weren’t as academically minded, but a commonality existed, being from coal-mining families, and that connection only grew stronger in March 1984 when the miners’ strike began.

  We had moved yet again, our regular transience only surpassed by my stepfather’s insistence on buying a shit car every six months. We returned to Knottingley, the rundown pit town in West Yorkshire where I’d been brought up. Spending most days either at home or out on the NUM picket lines, my stepdad did little to encourage bonding, although he’d take me to play football as I was talented.

  His public face was that of a champion to the miners’ cause, but I loathed him. Many a time I’d return from school only to find the kitchen stinking with dirty plates – totally acceptable given his busy day was filled with watching the horse racing and working his way through a bottle of cheap whisky. We’d argue about who was going to do the washing up. I tried using my stack of homework as a get-out, whereas his case would be short and to the point, consisting of a punch-up I’d invariably lose. My record against him read twenty-one fights, zero wins, twenty losses – and, if I’m being kind to myself, one draw - I’d once managed to twat him on the nose.

  Yet I supported him and the miners, becoming an outspoken socialist. Knowing everything there is to know about everything, I saw the world through my red-tinted glasses and wholly partisan view of Maggie Thatcher and the Conservative government.

  But whichever side of the electoral fence you sat, the miners’ strike destroyed our community and the fractures still remain thirty years later. Despite his earlier championing of the cause, my stepdad went back to work before most, so his comradeship with the other miners became a distant memory, resulting in our house being daubed with ‘scab’. Even worse, we awoke one morning to find our living room curtains ablaze after someone had set them alight by poking a burning newspaper through the letterbox. Socialism, it seemed, was honourable enough within the pages of The Guardian; having some leftwing arsonist trying to set fire to me put me off it for a while. After the strike collapsed, the subsequent months became a festering wound. Once close families drew battle lines over garden fences. Breadwinners saw their dreams of a job for life dashed and the hopes of future generations were put in doubt through the decline of local industry. The Smiths became the soundtrack to disaffected local youths, who chose delinquency over order, blaming anyone who wore a tie for the bleakness they had inherited.

  I had to escape this life. I could see it dragging me down.

  I decided to turn my life around and knuckle down at school. I was bright enough to be in the same class as a future maths professor, a heart surgeon and an adviser to the Home Secretary (it’s not hard to advise politicians, the difficulty seems to lie in getting them to act upon it), but up to then had neglected my academic potential, preferring to drink Woodpecker cider in the park with the lads, go to Leeds United matches and try to start fights with the police. Now I set my sights on going to university and training to be a geologist.

  Unfortunately, that meant studying for ‘A’ levels, and that, in turn, meant stability. But with my stepdad now ostracised by his community, he and my mam were looking for an escape route of their own. I discovered this by coming across ‘business for sale’ particulars and circled classified ads in mushy pea-covered newspapers. My life was about to take another turn, with the impetus provided by my mother.

  ‘You need to think about leaving home and getting a job,’ she said to me one day. ‘That will be better for you than that sixth-form rubbish. Here… have a look at these.’ And with that she thrust a bunch of army recruiting pamphlets into my fifteen-year-old fist.

  I had never had any interest in the military. The Air Force Cadet detachment at my school was enough to put anyone off. Only the metal-mouthed geeks had joined and none of them had cool mates, unlike us geology boffins. But to my surprise, as I pored over the pamphlets I found a genuine interest in something other than football and basalt. The British Army seemed to be an ideal fit for me – mates, travel, sport and a uniform the girls would surely swoon over. And I could join as soon as I left school.

  I paid a visit to the Army Recruiting Office, my inquisitiveness equalling my enthusiasm. The recruiting sergeant advised me to sign up as a Construction Materials Technician. He said, rather vaguely, that it was ‘like being a geologist in the army’. I have to say he was a very nice man, and very smart – though his clipped moustache made him look a little too much like Grange Hill’s Mr Bronson. Nevertheless, I went ahead and took the technicians’ aptitude tests. With a ninety-nine per cent pass mark in the bag, I was given the date for my interview. It was with the excitement of a small child on Christmas morning that I exited through the door facing the adjacent Royal Navy Careers Office.

  I stopped in my tracks and stared.

  The RN had just changed its window display from flares-wearing sailors to Royal Marines Commandos looking like harbingers of death and doing things James Bond might have wet dreams over. I studied the pictures. The word ‘Commando’ jumped out at me. It was the mag
net, the tractor beam that attracted thousands like me every year. So, in a moment of utter insanity, I forgot all about a job that could give me a well-paid lifelong career to take on an occupation that involved killing people and shitting in plastic bags.

  Inside, a tubby sailor sat behind a desk. He looked me up and down; given my diminutive stature, he probably thought I was sounding out the vacancy situation for Royal Navy stewards.

  ‘I want to join the Marines,’ I said, boldly. Having just passed a technicians’ interview, I reasoned I was surely a prize catch.

  ‘Well,’ he said, dismissively, ‘you’d better go over to America then, son.’

  I was flummoxed. I just stood there, not knowing what to say or do. Apparently passing a technician’s interview didn’t mean you were exempt from looking stupid. Eventually, he spoke for me. ‘I take it you mean the Royal Marines? There is a difference, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Yes.’

  ‘Dave?’ he called over his shoulder, and from a backroom appeared a giant of a man with the world’s thickest arms. I gulped. Did I really want to join the Marines – sorry, the Royal Marines – if they were all like him?

  Fuck, yes.

  ‘Right you are then, Lofty,’ said Dave the giant in a surprisingly soft voice. He pointed to a bar spanning an alcove. ‘I’m not going to bother my arse talking to you unless you can do ten pull-ups. You know what a pull-up is?’

  I nodded confidently. Of course I did. I watched Superstars.

  ‘And it’s not like they do it on Superstars.’

  Fuck.

  ‘They do pull-ups underarm,’ he said. ‘Royal Marines do ’em overarm.’

  He grabbed the bar – he didn’t need to jump – and demonstrated the grip. Then he paused and gave a sarcastic smile. ‘Of course, the ability to actually reach the bar is part of the test.’

  Happy with the task ahead, I jumped up and pulled myself up, planting my chin over the bar as instructed. I repeated this manoeuvre again and again and again, and after doing the requisite ten I carried on.