Re: Phil's Phings

A short piece on a visit back home last year after years living in Wiltshire ..

BIRMINGHAM OR BUST!

“Yo cor go rung if yo keep to the roight.” So went the wise if somewhat optimistic instructions imparted to us from a passer by. OK, to the roight it was, except that the pub we were attempting to meet our pals in was somewhere to the south of Narnia, nestled between the slaughter house and the now defunct nightclub of my youth. Living in rural Wiltshire for many years, Birmingham city centre seemed frighteningly gridlocked, and the enormous roundabout ahead had three lanes of stationary traffic round its edges, and no sign of anything crawling more than an inch for what seemed half an hour (actually 20 minutes – I timed it, having nothing better to do).

We’d planned this reunion for weeks. Our friends hadn’t seen us for some years, our pints were warming gently on a pub table, stale peanuts were being nibbled in nervous anticipation. We were so close …. we could walk it …. probably….and yet here we were, caught up in a monumental Brummie tailback.

“Look at that lovely office block!” I ventured, as my husband’s knuckles turned white. The building in question resembled an ice wedge, blue-grey and beautiful and loomed over the city like the front edge of a misplaced iceberg. Squinting and tilting my head, shading my eyes and peeping through my eyelashes I could just discern tiny clerks killing time with jokey emails and see them mouth to their mates “If that blue car there gus more to the roight they’d cut that corner. Silly sods.”

Oh joy! At last the blockade, as if passing on some coded message, decided to creep ahead. Our distant pals rang our mobile and I was designated chief go-between. Sadly, I struggled getting to the shops when I lived in Brum, and trying to follow a garbled and none-too-sober bloke and then passing the message on proved challenging.

“Are you near the market?”
“Dunno. What market?”
“YOU know, used to sell meat, sells crap now. Next to that closed down chippie.”
“Er no. We’re near the Post Office.”
“Roight.”
“Turn right?”
“Nah, I meant roight. You’re close. Goo left at the end.”
“Into a brick wall?”

We eventually drove up, someone outside keeping watch– vaguely. It was dimly lit and hummed with Midlands accents that made me smile and broadened my own tones.

“Orl roight?” I greeted my mates. I’d come home.

Re: Phil's Phings

And this was written by my husband!


It was a fine Saturday. It was a going out day; a shopping day. We were off to the Bull Ring. Following the 45 minute ritual of checking trouser leg lengths for exact distance of turn ups from the heel of the shoe, examining of the heavily Brylcreemed hair, back and front, a rigorous brushing of cat hairs and other debris from his suit and an in depth interrogation of the rest of the family about the suitability of his attire for the occasion, dad was ready to depart. Well not quite - first of all I had to be prepared in the kitchen. This involved a damp flannel, which I’m sure had been used yesterday to remove the cat sick from our new oil cloth, being rubbed around my face and hands. My wrists and neck were infrequently in contact with water, so they became ever deeper shades of grey as I progressed through childhood. I can’t exactly recall how or when it was removed; perhaps it became so thick that it cracked and flaked off.

As dad and I left the house, we could almost hear the sigh of relief from my sister and mother. There would be no tidying of cupboards! As we were going to the Bull Ring, some way away on the bus, there would be no expensive, big purchases. “Big” was important to dad. Only the largest, most garish furniture was ever wrestled into our modest home. The fact that the lounge was only ten foot square was not a consideration. We could only move around the house in single file, frequently having to breathe in to pass through the narrow gaps between the three piece suite, the dining table, the radiogram and the enormous television. To clarify, the screen was small but the cabinet huge; it “was a nice piece of furniture”. There was also naturally the obligatory coffee table. We didn’t actually drink such exotic liquor as coffee; we did however drink a brown tasteless liquid called “Camp”, which merely coloured the hot sterilised milk the same orange shade as my sister’s tights. Sterilised milk was a boon to the working classes before the age of fridges. Not only would it take 3 weeks to turn sour even in the hottest weather, but it could be used to patch up white paintwork.

On arrival at the Bull Ring our first stop was Woolworths. This was not the same bland store as today, but a wondrous cavern that sold all manner of delights. Dad was a forerunner of today’s DIYer. However, he had two problems with DIY - firstly he possessed only one hammer and one screwdriver; secondly he possessed even fewer skills. The hardware section was our first port of call. Before us stretched an acre of assorted screws in tiny plastic canisters. Dad would pick up a few canisters. He would then reach for his pocket, half of them remaining there as he produced a half crown. My dad had the patience of – well, what’s the opposite of Job? As he hadn’t been served for 35 seconds, the remaining packages went into his pocket along with the half crown. Now as my father’s son I hadn’t been wasting precious shopping time and several more of these canisters were deftly fingered up my sleeves until they jammed at my elbows. Duly loaded with the spoils of petty thieving, we made a fast exit as I grimly clutched my shirt sleeves. What was perplexing about this particular foray was that he only ever used nails in his construction. I reckon it was a matter of principle with him though.

As dad grew older he made most shopping trips alone. The redistribution of wealth from the multi-nationals to the Jones’s humble family is still a mystery to me; however when he was in his sixties I happened to open one of his store cupboards. On the top shelf were tidily stacked enough tubes of toothpaste to have needed a small pallet truck to transport. Next to these was a huge pile of “family sized” packets behind a similarly but equally neatly distributed “economy” sized section. Now, as dad had around 12 teeth and mum had parted company with hers some years earlier I was at a loss to understand the need for such an excess of dental beautification. Only one of two explanations seemed remotely feasible - he wanted the whitest 12 teeth in Birmingham or Colgate had been a particularly evil capitalist organisation that he wished to punish.

Further into the store cupboard I found a razor blade section. A quick calculation revealed that if he shaved twice a day using a fresh blade he would be 95 before the supply was exhausted. Either he lusted after a chin like a baby’s bottom (which seemed unlikely to ever happen) or Gillette must have been even more evil than Colgate. However, the truth was revealed later that year when I asked him to help me with my shopping at his local supermarket. I found it bemusing that he told me rather twitchily he didn’t feel up to it, but caught sight of my mother mouthing incomprehensibly behind him in the way women of bygone ages talked to each other about intimate topics, a mime show perfected by Les Dawson.

My earliest recollection of visiting the doctor was of a Victorian parlour waiting room. A roomful of deferential old people would be coughing in synchronism against a background hiss of a one bar gas fire, lit only if ice had formed on the inside of the window. Conversations would be punctuated by “how’s Mrs. Smith?” “Oh, she’s had…”, then the mouthing started with gesturing to “down below”. My mother’s mouthing, I learned later, had meant that he’d been banned after being caught with contraband goods in his pocket. The contraband goods? Have a guess..

Re: Phil's Phings

And yet more on Brum related by a traumatised husband!

IT’S LIFE JIM, BUT ……

Life on the mean streets of Saltley was never going to be normal. I realised this early on in life watching mum, face streaked with coal dust like a Brummie Mrs Jolson, marching down our road of terraces towards the bookies.

She was after delivering a vital message to dad, who was a trifle mortified at the apparition that appeared at the bookie’s door. Actually, he wouldn’t have known what “trifle mortified” meant; his language was liberally sprinkled with expletives and single syllable words that had served him well in the Navy. He wasn’t best pleased though, that I do remember - particularly when he arrived back home to find he’d been dragged away to play the role of interpreter to our neighbour. She came from … well, we were never quite sure where, but her grasp of the language was even more fractured than mum’s. Mum was hoping my dad, having travelled widely, would be able to understand whatever it was that was bothering her. He couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. He could be a stubborn man when his pleasures were curtailed.

It’s fashionable nowadays to purport to agree with Larkin’s view of parents, and who am I to say mine were different? Both had had deprived, difficult and downright weird upbringings. Mum was the youngest of a family of 200 children, well OK, quite a lot. Dad said she had been a skivvy to her siblings and parents, and in an act of altruism he’d taken her away from it all and dragged her up the social ladder to the heady environs of Saltley. Saltley, next door neighbour to Ward End which was well posh - they had inside toilets there, some of which didn’t even have coal in them. Mum was suitably grateful to be in these enchanted surroundings, though she was always reticent. Dad could tell she was eternally in his debt by the effusive way she greeted him on his unexpected return from the war. He walked in on her after a thousand mile journey, visualising a Celia Johnson/Trevor Howard moment of romantic reunion. “Oh, hello” she said. “I’m just off down the bingo.”

Dad had been dragged up in Liverpool by an uncaring sister. He joined the Navy as soon as possible, an emaciated runt of a lad. He returned a rotund, witty raconteur with a Scouser’s gift of the gab, an entirely unfounded optimism, language that would strip paint and an unquenchable urge to nick anything that wasn’t nailed down from his workplace. He wasn’t quite Brinks Mat material, but he’s the only father I know who acquired a complete radio piece by piece out of the factory doors, concealing various components down a trouser leg. I was just grateful he didn’t work at the Rover plant.

*******
Does everyone have an Auntie Doll? Oh, it’s just us then - me and my sister, both named, imaginatively, after our parents. Doll on the other hand was named after a large, henna-dyed scary pit bull which is what she most resembled throughout my formative years.

My wife reckoned Doll was the spitting image of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland - the “off with her head!” character guaranteed to terrify small girls. To me she was normal and another small twig of mum’s Twilight Zone family - albeit a noisy and formidable twig. She reared a vast number of children without any help whatsoever from her ne’er do well husband whose main claim to fame was managing to evade the military police during his army career (I use the word loosely) by hiding behind Doll’s vast apron strings. It was a brave MP who was willing to face off Doll with all his teeth still in place.

Doll’s weakness was snuff. The Scarlet Pimpernel had evidently made an deep impression on her as a girl, with his elegant nostril pinching, lacy cuff flick and witty ripostes. Unable to find lacy cuffs and incapable of any riposte other than “f... off”, she adopted substance inhalation instead - after all, this was Saltley. Her nostrils assumed a fetching ochre hue, as did most of the washing she kept on the stairs, which she used in lieu of hankies. Doll’s preferred method of child rearing involved a hot poker, administered fleetingly to the exposed flesh of any of her brood with the temerity to misbehave. It goes without saying that Social Services were never visitors to her council house, and she became a revered figure to her grown children. Naughty steps and time out would have been as foreign to her as, well, the identity of Sir Percy Blakeney.

Doll’s funeral was a sight to behold. Large black horse complete with plume, carriage with glass sided bier, a bagpiper, half the estate lining the pavement and adult children sporting scarred tissue weeping copiously. She’d have been bleedin’ chuffed.

Re: Phil's Phings

A friend asked me to write something on her forthcoming marriage that could be read out in the church and I came up with this (this is the last, sorry to overload everyone).

WEDDING THOUGHTS


© C. Jones 2010


We all know the official meaning of marriage. It’s a lifetime commitment to one person, for better for worse, so the vows tell us. What they don’t tell us is that sometimes the “worse” can be as bad as anything imaginable, from illness and loss to worrying financial problems. It can mean indescribable snoring too – surely a test of anyone’s love! Worse can also mean the stress of combining your job, day to day tasks and school trips and still trying to find time to show your other half that you’ve not forgotten about them, and still love them.

But “for better” is wonderful when two people make that commitment, and with children, for better takes on a whole new meaning. Better is being a family unit who yell, moan a bit sometimes, squabble undoubtedly but are secure in the knowledge that they are united not only in love, mutual support, loyalty and fun, but the bonds that only a close knit family can have. “For better” is better than anything, it’s knowing you’re part of that noisy, chaotic, occasionally humdrum relationship that combines marriage, children and life. ***** and ***** have made that commitment, and you only have to see them today to know that it was a decision made definitely for better. I’m sure their life together as a family and as a loving twosome will bring them many years of joy, fun and that wonderful togetherness that we envy in all happy families. And good luck with the snoring!


Two lives entwined, two loving hearts,
A promise made, a kiss exchanged,
A whole made up of just two parts
Evolving yet the love unchanged.

We meet today to, laugh, rejoice,
With family, this special day,
To raise a toast with one strong voice
With friends arrived from far away.

To ***** and ******, for all the years
To grow in strength and bond,
Through any trial that then occurs,
Into old age and beyond.

Re: Phil's Phings

Hi Eccles - good to see ya back .....
Lovely memories for me gal - sterilised milk - my nan and her snuff and the wonderful Woolworths, always a magical place - they seemed to sell everything !
Me and Hubs, used to write, poems and short stories so was pleased to see you share the same gift with your Hubs ...
Tell him I really enjoyed his words, you are both truly gifted .... Thanks

Re: Phil's Phings

I'm delighted someone else is having a go on here as well as me. Up to my eyes in marking at the moment but looking forward to reading these pieces later

Re: Phil's Phings

Finally managed to get round to reading these pieces, Eccles, (such is the joy of marking) and I think they're excellent. Just what we want

Re: Phil's Phings

The second of three parts, sequel to I hurled it down the lane fine - Part 1 which appears on Page 4 of this thread (I think)

Digressing for a moment, I used to know someone at my local whose wife had grown tired of his predilection for spending his nights in the pub. She had decreed, in an effort to curb his intake, that he could not go out until 10.25pm. Unfortunately, this bright idea merely proved the law of unintended consequences, as his desire for intoxication was greater than any artificial time constraints. On entering the pub, this quiet, well-spoken, mild-mannered individual, would order 4 pints of Pedigree, which he would then proceed to consume at an alarming rate. By 10.50pm he was almost totally incoherent and ready to fight anyone in the place.

Anyway, this stultifying regulation not only hampered the enjoyment of the pub customers. It made life pretty tiresome for the landlords and landladies as well. For a few years, in the mid-1960s, we kept a pub in Burton. In a perfect world, the pub would have kept us, but it didn’t quite work out like that. By the time we had closed the bar, emptied the pub of customers and generally cleaned up, there really wasn’t anything interesting available to do. The evening’s television programmes had long since vanished into that white dot in the centre of the screen (which will completely baffle readers of a younger disposition) and every entertainment venue was closed…until the arrival of the ten-pin bowling alley. You see, I do get to the point, eventually.

I can still picture the scene as my mum and dad and me, plus a possè of like-minded pub customers, drove rapidly, and probably illegally, across town to Bargates’. I would be about 11 years old and there was something impossibly exotic and intoxicating about being able to enter this exciting world of music, noise and laughter at the unearthly hour of 11.00pm without anyone tapping their foot and looking sternly at their watch. I can’t remember much about the actual games on those first visits, which I suspect involved more enthusiasm than skill, other than mum giggling helplessly as her ball made a bee-line for the gulley time after time, but I do remember the overwhelming feeling of excitement and liberation.

Unfortunately, visits to the bowling alley were, by necessity, limited whilst we were at the pub and remained a rare treat for the next couple of years. My only other contact with the game consisted of a toy version I received as a Christmas present, which I had completely forgotten about until I started to write this. It consisted of a quite realistic looking bowling lane, about two feet in length and six inches high (sorry, I don’t do metric), complete with all of the relevant logos and markings. At the far end was a covered area housing the ten pins, which were suspended from the roof of this area by lengths of thread and which could be lowered to the lane floor by means of a handle and pulley system. At the base of each pin was a small magnet which connected with a corresponding metal dot on the lane. Thus the pins were kept in place, theoretically, until a marble was rolled down the lane. As it struck the pins, they would spring to the roof, leaving the remainder for the next ‘ball’. It was great, albeit slightly unrealistic and dependent on the continuing effectiveness of the magnets. It even came complete with proper scoring sheets.

My next encounter with ten-pin bowling proper came via my school. As I said in the previous chapter, in a sudden bout of uncharacteristic enlightenment, my school had realised that not all of their pupils were enthusiastic devotees of football, cricket, hockey, netball or gymnastics. Therefore, more engagement might be achieved if the students had some choice about how to spend their recreational time. I’m not at all sure that this was really the ideology behind the strategy, but you’ve got to admit, it sounds convincing! Anyway, ‘outdoor activities’ as it was inaccurately termed, ran on a Friday afternoon and gave pupils the choice between a whole range of sports and activities, including the usual suspects of football etc. but also some less well-worn options such as cycling, which can wear your options down quite considerably, badminton, table tennis and…ten-pin bowling. The only catch was that you had to continue with your choice for a whole term and you were unable to repeat your choice in the same school year, the idea being to broaden the student’s horizons – which brings us back to cycling.

As soon as possible, I signed up for the ten-pin bowling option. My decision was based on various, carefully considered, criteria:

1. It took place indoors, in a nice dry, warm environment
2. It didn’t involve kicking or being kicked, or throwing or catching anything
3. It didn’t require the participant to jump, leap, run or swim over, under or around any object

In addition, because it was subsidised by the school, it was affordable whereas, in the normal way of things, it would have been an expensive luxury.

To my surprise and delight, not to mention the shock of my compatriots and teachers, I discovered that I was not too bad at this game. That is not to say that I was good or excellent, just not too bad. This was in sharp contrast to my endeavours in every other sporting discipline, where I had consistently proven to be a one-youth disaster area. Suddenly, I found I was an asset to the team rather than a liability. Flushed with success, a group of us formed a bowling team, sponsored by a local butcher, and played in the mid-week league. We didn’t win many games, but at least we weren’t a laughing stock.


I can still remember the mounting excitement I felt each Friday afternoon as we climbed the flights of stairs up to the bowling alley, chattering optimistically about scores we would achieve and techniques we would apply. With each step, the rumble of the balls in the alleys and the crash of pins would get progressively louder, until you opened the double doors at the top and were overwhelmed by the wall of sound. Balls making their hopeful journeys down the aisle, the crash of pins or the rattle of the ball in the gulley, the clanking and whirring of the pin stacking mechanism and the subterranean rumble of balls making their way back to the playing area. Over and above all of this, there was the sound of the juke box playing the hits of the late 1960s. It was like entering another world.

You can find this, and a lot more of my ramblings, at http://www.philwhiteland.blogspot.co.uk

Re: Phil's Phings

I have enjoyed reading your posts PHil, keep up the good work.

Re: Phil's Phings

BTW, was this chappy's wife called Lysistrata by any chance?