[OLD STEVE] [WORLD OF THE CONTENT] [THE RE-WRITTEN LIST] [LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS] [THE THREE LEVELS]
CHAPTER 8.
During School Days.
MY BIOGRAPHY.
1. I have vague recollections of being taken to Works Parties and parties at the local Working Men's Club, (where all the local aristocracy met regularly) and of always being on my own and sitting and not really making one in and not caring if I didn't get a present like all the rest because I would either not be allowed it, it would be ridiculed, or I would have to share it with someone, while now, I suspect, my father went off boozing. Later I would dutifully say that I had enjoyed it because that was what was expected and why else do you think I was taken there, if it were not for the boozing and to bamboozle my mother?
2. It was at some time, while playing out with the local kids, which surprisingly enough we were allowed to do just as long as we didn't expect them to be let in the house, that my sister accidentally got paint or turpentine, or something, splashed in to her eyes. It was serious and I remember one of her eyes going badly out of line and of her having a plaster over it for months followed by wire framed glasses with one of the lenses blacked out for a long time after that. But what I remember most was being left for full days, in bed, under the threat of God knows what if I go out other than to go to the toilet and also with nothing left out for me to eat all day, while my mother took my sister to the Leeds Infirmary for treatment. So it must have been quite serious if there was not a hospital that could handle the problem in Bradford and there was an 'Eye and Ear' Hospital there. I was scared whilst left on my own and went under the covers and slept most of the time and rarely got out of bed, holding on for the toilet as long as I dared. I wonder if that is why today I can hold my water for almost an unlimited time and when feeling under the weather or bored or frustrated I tend to go to bed and stay there until I feel better. In fact during my teens I would often go to bed on Friday night and stay there until Monday morning when I felt there was little to do and nobody bothered or cared a damn that I did.
3. Around that time poor sis had a rough time of it and that also includes the time when she decided to eat all the small parts in my Meccano Set and my hysterical mother held her upside down, by her ankles, and shook her until she gave me them back.
4. During the war, bonfires were not allowed on Bonfire Night (November 5th) but there were usually a few fireworks about and one year my father came home with some Thunder Flashes, used by the military for practice; attached one of them to next doors fence and blew it up. He then set off another two or three, on open ground and was amazed when the Police and an Air-raid Warden turned up following the report of explosions.
5. My father ate tripe; pig's trotters and jellied eels that came from somewhere, and I know my mother detested cooking them and certainly would not eat them herself. She also told us that we wouldn't like them either and so, to this day, I have never tried to eat any of them and so don't know whether I would like them or not. Funny how at an early age you can be told you won't like or can't do something and you will believe it and become conditioned by it. A subject I went into and studied, in great detail, later in life.
6. At some time I remember being sent, on my own, to stay with an Aunt and Uncle and some cousins. I don't know how many children they had at that particular time but they ended up with three and there would probably be at least two of them around the time I am thinking about. While staying there we would be given sandwiches and a bottle of water and we would take them and have a picnic on the grassy central reservation of a nearby main road. It was incredible fun being there with them and there was also a big public park nearby that we were also allowed to visit and that was incredible fun also. One of the girls, the eldest, would often come and stay with us for long periods. Why I don't know, probably during school holidays or something. I can remember it all happening but cannot recall the reasoning behind the exchanges. I also remember in the same family, my uncle, not being away in the war because of burst ear drums and so working with grandad as a Painter and Decorator, moved into a Bakers Shop with a small cafe attached and on rare occasions we would visit or I would stay there. Thinking back now, that was funny because when we visited, my aunt would give us buns to take home and my mother would throw them away as being unfit to eat. But it was fine for me to eat them and all the other things when I stayed there. But I suppose in a way she might have been right, to a certain extent, because my aunt did smoke all the time and did have a yellow, nicotine stain up her cheek, through her eyebrow and onto her forehead and into her hair and did let the ash constantly fall into whatever she was mixing. Also she used the same small shovel, which she used to shovel coal into the oven fire, to shovel the flour, currants and raisins etc from split open bags sat on the floor, into the mixing bowls and they did have a large Red Setter dog that was not adverse to cocking it's leg around the place. Some time later they left the area and my father's younger sister took over the business and my grandparents joined her and lived there for a period. We very rarely went to visit when they were there as my aunt was rumoured, by my mother, to get over-friendly with the wagon drivers that frequented their high-class establishment.
7. Years later I heard a story from around this time, told by someone who had obviously known my father but did not know me. That when drink was rationed, Pubs would obtain what they could and once it was sold out, they closed. My father, true to form, was popular in the local because when the drink ran out he could always produce a bottle of something and sell it to the Landlord. They all loved him when the booze was flowing but called him a double-dealing, no good cheat and black market draft dodger, behind his back. I was a young teenager at the time I heard that but still cried over it on the way home.
8. Want a laugh? I was hit over the head twice; well probably more than that, but twice that I distinctly remember, and on each of these occasions with a book. Once by one of the big boys when I picked up his ball, intending to throw it back and the second time by the father of a local girl, who had managed to get hold of this book, that she shouldn't have, and we were both looking at it in their back garden. I bet you didn't know that an early sex education can be knocked out of you by a sever blow, from the manual, on the head. Does the world move for you darling? No I get a sharp thump on the top of my head. Not true, of course, but it might have been.
9. There were few buses and even less cars in those days and so most people walked everywhere and I remember having to walk all the way to Saltaire, and then be left standing outside the hospital while my father went in to visit my mother, who on one occasion was in there with 'whispered about women's problems,' and on the second occasion to have a cyst removed from her shoulder. Some weeks later I was sent to find a very large house, in Bradford, and stand while the surgeon counted out forty pounds, in large white notes, the likes of which I had never seen before, to pay for the operation. He was OK, he gave me a shilling; twelve old pence, (5p) and I was not yet eleven years old.
