by Mike Pannett
It worked, by and large: he could be pretty intimidating when he blew his top, but while he could scare the living daylights out of any of our friends who hadn’t got to know him, we knew it was all for effect. He was really a very kind and gentle man. He just liked good order. Sometimes, though, he really found it all too much and would send the visitors packing – and us to our bedrooms.
In other ways, though, Dad was quite go-ahead. We always had a car, for example, whereas even in the late 1960s and ’70s, most families didn’t.
In York nearly everybody went to work on their bikes. If ever you were in the city around knocking-off time you’d see hordes of them – a tidal wave, pouring out of Rowntrees or Terrys, or the railway carriage shops on Poppleton Road. The motorised traffic didn’t stand a chance. Drivers just slammed their brakes on and waited for the wave to pass.
Being a bit further out of town, Dad decided it was a bit too far to cycle. Of course, we had the Morris Traveller, but I don’t think it would have entered his head to drive in. Very few people did. No, the Traveller was for high days and holidays, and until we moved to Crayke it spent most of its long life in the garage.
The odd thing about Dad was that when he was a young man he’d actually owned a little Triumph. Many’s the time we heard him wish he’d kept it.
‘It’d be worth a packet today,’ he’d say.
I remember trying to imagine my Dad dashing around the countryside in an open-top sports car. I gave it up – even though he once told me he’d gone up Whitwell Hill on the A64 at 100 miles an hour. It simply didn’t fit. Once you’ve seen your Dad astride a mustard yellow KTM moped with a 49cc engine … well, you can see my point.
Ever more practical than stylish, Dad wore one of those old-fashioned peaked crash helmets with ear-flaps. Practical, yes. But cool? Not really. The machine itself was made in Austria. It had very little power, absolutely no style, but the important thing was it had amazing fuel economy.
Having said that, I suspect that Dad wasn’t a natural on the moped. Mum was worried about it from the start, and rightly so. Once we’d moved out to Crayke she insisted he take the car in winter.
He’d had a number of minor accidents, mostly involving him losing balance and parting company with the machine. There was one that took place right outside my school. I was walking in with my mates when we heard a squeal of tyres and a bang. Turning round, I caught sight of Dad toppling off the bike. A car had tapped his rear end as it came out of a side-street. Dad was fine. He picked himself up and went on his way. He may have emerged unhurt from the incident, but I certainly didn’t. I made the mistake telling everybody who he was, whereupon one of the boys started to make fun of me, telling me my Dad was a useless driver. Well, that did it. Before you could say ‘knife’ I had my jacket off and had him on the floor. The lollipop lady had to come and separate us.
I hope I’m not painting Dad as a bit of a wimp. Far from it. I think that deep down he wanted to have a more adventurous life. I’ll never forget the time he took me and Phil to Bridlington for a fishing trip. I was wildly excited about it. I’d done river fishing of course, and I’d caught those codling off the rock at Hayburn Wyke, but I’d never been out to sea. I’d asked plenty of times but the answer had always been no, not yet; maybe when you’re older.
It was a Sunday, and we were off in the car. Me, Phil and Dad. No girls, which made it feel all the more special. We had to be up at the crack of dawn for this one – well, six o’clock or thereabouts, but as it happened this was midsummer, so it barely got dark. Midsummer or not, however, Dad made sure we took thick sweaters and waterproof coats with us.
‘You never know what to expect at sea,’ he said. ‘It can change in a minute.’
Because it was so early, Dad said it was all right to take the main road to the coast. He was right. There was hardly any traffic. Phil sat in the front next to him, and I was in the back, struggling to stay awake, despite the sun blazing in through the side window.
We pulled into Brid about eight o’clock and Dad treated us to a fried breakfast in one of the harbourside cafés. There was a bit of a breeze, and he said the best preventive for seasickness was a full stomach. We didn’t need any persuading. We ordered bacon, egg, sausage, beans and toast and cleared our plates, wiping up the lovely bacon grease with an extra slice of bread the waitress brought us.
Our boat was what you’d call a proper boat. I doubt if it was twelve feet long. You could see the individual planks of which it was made, and it was painted a deep blue with white trim, and of course it had that crucial bit of red down near the waterline. All along the prow was a fat length of hempen rope, weathered and slightly frayed. A row of old tyres were hung over the side to stop it scraping against the harbour wall. A flag fluttered from the white painted mast, and, looking up at the captain’s little cabin, we saw a shiny brass bell.
We paid our money and stepped aboard. There were eight or nine other customers, mostly men with grey hair and large stomachs. Two of them lugged a crate of beer aboard. They walked stiffly and slowly, and slumped gratefully onto the benches, catching their breath and lighting up their cigarettes. Even with just a dozen of us it was a bit of a squeeze. As we edged along the boat to find a perch on the wooden bench seats, we splashed through an inch or two of water that had gathered in the bottom. Dad must have seen the look on my face.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’ll be rainwater. Either that or spray that’s come over the side. Perfectly normal.’
We settled in our seats and listened as the skipper explained where we were going – and added that he couldn’t guarantee a catch, but was hopeful. He looked at his watch, then at the sky, where a few clouds had gathered.
‘Should be back in port by three,’ he added. ‘Everybody ready?’
‘Aye aye, cap’n,’ said the men with the crate – and promptly started opening the bottles. They handed one to Dad, but he shook his head.
‘Just a bit early for me,’ he laughed. ‘Maybe later if the offer’s still good.’
‘You mean if we’ve any left,’ the man said, putting the bottle to his lips and tipping his head back.
While all this was going on the captain had gone to his cabin, fired up the motor and was steering us out towards the open sea. We’d barely got outside of the harbour when the sun went in. The sea, which had been a lovely blue colour when we arrived, turned a leaden grey. The boat started to pitch more than was comfortable.
‘Enjoying it, lads?’ The old men seemed to think it was funny.
I gritted my teeth and assured them that I was. As it happened, it was quite good fun watching the bow rise and fall, and ducking the spray. Phil and I put up the hoods on our coats and hunched our shoulders against a stiff head-wind.
We hadn’t gone very far when the captain came out and handed us our rods and lines. Then he brought us the bucket of bait, a seething mess of lugworm and cockles. We were just starting to bait the hooks when a fierce gust of wind rocked the boat, almost throwing me off balance. I dropped my rod and grabbed at the side. Dad put his hand to his forehead and scanned the sky.
‘Hm, don’t like the look of that,’ he said. Away to the north a dark mass of cloud had gathered. ‘See the rain?’ he said.
We could. A milky-white sheet filled the sky between the base of the cloud and the horizon.
‘Looks to be heading our way,’ one of the old fellows said as he secured a wriggly worm onto his hook.
‘Just the job, lad,’ someone said. ‘Bring them fish to t’ surface.’
Just then the boat lurched as the wind gusted once more. Spray showered over us, soaking my knees.
‘We going to be all right, Dad?’ I said.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he answered. ‘Might be a bit uncomfortable, that’s all.’
But ten minutes later, as the rain swept in and the waves piled higher and the water in the bottom of the little boat started to splosh this way and that with every lurch, he was looking decidedly worrie
d – as was the captain.
‘Sorry lads, but I’m going to turn her around,’ he said.
There was general agreement that this wasn’t a bad thing to do, a decision that was reinforced a moment later as a huge swell tossed us skyward, leaving my stomach somewhere in the bowels of the boat. That was followed by a truly sickening plunge into the following trough. As one of the old men heaved up his breakfast – and his beer – over the side, I started to feel decidedly queasy.
‘We need to get rid of some of that water.’ The captain was shouting through the open window. ‘I need a couple of you to work the pumps.’
Dad didn’t need any further invitation. He grabbed one pump handle, leaving me and Phil to work the other. As fast as we pumped the sea delivered fresh showers of salt water.
‘We’re not winning, but at least it’s no worse,’ Dad said, pausing for breath.
I carried on pumping. I was glad to have a job. It took my mind off my stomach, and the groans of other passengers. As we laboured our way towards the shore we heard the captain alerting the coastguard. Then he told his mate to get the distress flares out. That sent a shiver of fear through me, but Dad must have read my thoughts.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’s a routine precaution.’
Looking back, I sometimes shudder when I recall that day. I suspect that we were in genuine danger for a while, despite what Dad said when we finally staggered ashore: ‘All’s well that ends well.’
Our captain was full of apologies. ‘I did check the forecast,’ he said, ‘and it did speak of a squally shower, but later on. Not this early.’
He refunded us our money and offered us a free trip another time. Then Dad treated us to fish and chips on the harbour side, and a big mug of sweet tea. It put me off sea-fishing for a while, did that outing, but not our Phil. A few years later he joined the navy and eventually captained his own ship.
So we returned home empty-handed but happy enough, bursting to tell everyone about our adventure on the high seas. Dad, however, warned us about saying too much to Mum.
‘Don’t want her thinking we were in danger,’ he said.
And it’s those words, when I think of them, that persuade me that we probably were.
In the Bleak Midwinter
Mum said it was Dad’s fault, the bitter weather that hit us that winter. She was only joking, of course, although at that age I couldn’t be sure. It started when he came trudging back from the vegetable garden with a bunch of parsnips and an armful of leeks, his wellies all thick with mud.
‘We just don’t seem to get proper winters nowadays,’ he said. ‘I remember my Dad taking a pick-axe down the garden to lift a turnip for Mum’s stew. Now you need waders. It’s not natural, all this warm weather.’ And then he said the fateful thing. ‘What we need is a decent frost to kill off a few bugs. Put a bit of flavour in the parsnips too.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Mum said, as she took the vegetables from him and dropped them in the old pot sink. ‘And just be glad it’s mild, with the heating system only half built.’
Of course, the weather changed. I don’t think it had any choice.
Dad had been promising to take us to watch York City. They’d had a great run and got promoted to the old second division, playing teams like West Brom, Manchester United and Aston Villa. I think they were on the skids by this time, however, but Dad always said a true supporter would show up in good times or bad. Whatever the case, I was looking forward to the game, but as the week drew on the weather got colder and colder. The skies cleared, the wind dropped and we had three nights of frost – proper frost that clung to the trees and fell like a shower of desiccated coconut as soon as the slightest breeze blew.
‘Never mind,’ Dad said when he came home from work on the Friday. ‘It seems to be clouding over, and there’s a wind getting up. I dare say it’ll rain in the night.’
It didn’t rain. It snowed. Started as we sat down to our tea and was still coming down when I finally went to sleep about ten o’clock. Saturday morning we woke up to find it piled up on the window sills and banked up against the back door. And, as luck would have it, it was my turn to see to the morning chores.
I gave the fire a good poke, spread the usual double page of the previous night’s Yorkshire Evening Press over the front of the grate and waited for it to draw. The back page news wasn’t good. Racing at Wetherby was off. Rugby League was decimated. York City were ‘doubtful’ – and that was before the overnight blizzard. As I tried to read the caption, the page scorched, then burst into flames. I shoved it into the fire and watched it blaze away to nothing.
In the kitchen I prepared the feed for the hens and warmed up a big kettle of water. Then I stepped into my wellies and lugged the lot down the yard. The snow lay several inches deep, pure and white and powdery-soft. When I got to the gate I had to batter the frozen latch to loosen it. Inside, under the snow, the ground was a series of rock-hard ridges that all but tripped me up. The food steamed when I poured it into the trough. As expected, the drinking vessels were frozen solid. I dug out an old roasting tin from under the eaves of the shed, shook the snow out and tipped the contents of my kettle into it. Then I opened up. The hens trooped out, reluctantly, hesitantly, stepping daintily through the snow rather the way a bather would test the temperature of the North Sea on a summer’s morning. They were followed by a subdued-looking cockerel. I went inside to look for eggs. Instead of the usual dozen or so I found four. Nothing like a spell of wintry weather to put the birds off their lay.
Back at the house everybody had gathered in the kitchen.
‘Dad, Mum,’ I said. ‘Where’s our sled?’
‘The sled,’ Dad said. ‘Now there’s a thing.’
I wasn’t even sure whether we had a sled, or whether we’d borrowed one – it was so long since I’d been out on it. Two or three years, according to Dad.
‘There just hasn’t been enough snow,’ he said. ‘Last time I saw them they were in one of the outhouses. We’ll have a look after breakfast, shall we?’
Dad had found uses for most of the outbuildings. One stored animal feed, another gardening equipment, a third was for bikes. The horses of course were stabled out there, but there was one that Mum called the outside glory-hole – to distinguish it from the cupboard under the stairs. That was where we threw deckchairs, spare balls, deflated space-hoppers, and all the other things that we couldn’t find a place for when dusk was coming in and we were under orders to tidy the garden before bedtime. Maybe that was where the sled would be, she said.
We clambered over a mound of boxes, a rolled-up carpet and a spare car door before we found not one sled, but two, all dusty and speckled with droppings from the swallows that nested amongst the roof-spars every year. There was one sled that Dad had made when Christine was little, another that his dad had made for him when he was a lad. Same basic design, just a little older and slightly warped. We pulled them out and inspected them.
‘Give them a bit of a brush down,’ said Dad, ‘and if we rub some candle grease on the runners they’ll be fine. Otherwise they’re good as new.’
We tidied them up as directed, wrapped ourselves up in our scarves and hats, and dragged them into the road, then up the hill towards the church. Half the neighbourhood was out there already, some on old sleds like ours, some on the new-fangled plastic jobs they’d picked up from one of the garages on the way to town, bright red and light as a feather. Others had sheets of old linoleum, bits of plywood with a string attached to the front, and some were on yellow plastic fertiliser sacks.
Between them they’d already turned Church Hill into a glistening sheet of ice. Someone had built a snowman too, and wrapped a York City scarf around him.
We stumbled to the top, with Petra dancing around our feet, and piled on board. Me and Phil on one sled, the girls plus the dog on the other.
‘Race you!’
The girls were sitting upright, one behind the other. Phil had thrown himsel
f flat on his face, and I lay on top of him. It was no contest. While they slithered down, dragging their feet like a couple of scaredy-cats, we gathered speed and shot past them like a bobsled on the Cresta Run. We were passing everybody on the slope.
It was only as we neared the bottom of the hill that I realised why Phil was suddenly shouting ‘Brake brake brake!’ at me. In front of us was a pile-up of sleds and bodies. The last thing I remember was the look on some lad’s face as he realised we were heading straight for him. Not that Phil and I made contact. When the sled collided with the melee, we took off. I don’t know how long we were airborne, but it seemed to last some time. In fact, looking back, I wish it had gone on a bit longer, because the landing was something I wouldn’t want to re-live. Crunch went my face on the ice. I could taste the blood immediately.
A crowd gathered round. ‘You all right?’ someone asked.
I didn’t answer. I put my hand to my nose and showed it to the onlookers, all covered with blood.
Phil was okay. Typical of the luck he enjoyed back then, he’d landed on a girl – a rather fetching girl, as it happened: he later went out with her for a few weeks. Anyway, once he’d introduced himself to her, he saw what had happened to me and fetched Dad, who reluctantly got the car out and took me into the now-familiar YDH – York District Hospital. In casualty they told me I’d broken my nose.
On the bright side, I arrived home with an authentic black eye, and couldn’t wait to show it off at school on the Monday. Once we got home, however, the question uppermost in my mind was: when could I go sledding again?
The answer was: not till it snows again – because that night the temperature rose, the rain Dad had predicted arrived, and all that remained in the morning was a smudge of white and a sodden red-and-blue scarf where the snowman had been, plus a couple of streaks of rapidly melting ice on Church Hill. Next day the sleds went back in the glory-hole and stayed there for another year.