Back in those days of having absolutely nowt I was a gawky teen wanting what every kid wants, to fit in! To be accepted by the lads, failure to do that led to far too many kickings if you didn’t. So I became a clown in an effort to avoid a ‘Benwell kiss’ (a head butt) or a total ‘chinning’ (a group beating). Even so violence was a weekly thing, from the local Pipe track Lane Aggro Boys tipping my papers out into a gutter when I tried to deliver my Evening Chronicles, or a different gang would cruise by and attack us at random.
On one occasion when I was going up to Canning Street Swimming Baths three bigger kids knocked me to the floor with the side of an axe. Had they caught me blade on, I would be dead. My crime was that I lived in Benwell, and I had the temerity to have walked past their house. This stopped me going to the baths, as a hairy I was averse to being scalped. I remember on the brickfield, a place next to Benwell library that later housed a health centre, we had a stone fight. Thirty kids on either side, chucking bricks to sharp pebbles, bruising and potentially blinding one another. You walked away from that errant stupidity feeling like you had defended your homeland, you were a soldier! A pathetic half formed juvenile, who had gambled with circumstance for the umpteenth time. When the snow was on the ground we would get a bin bag (couldn’t afford sledges) and we would slide down the hills of the brickfield. At best you crashed along the bottom, skidding across the grass. At worst a brick sticking through the snow would tear you another crack on your bum! Then another gang would start throwing snowballs at us, and we were off again.
I used chemical weapons, long before NATO banned them. I would find a dog turd, wrap it in snow and chuck that. Once I hit this big kid right in the mouth, he tried to wipe the snow off, smearing light brown right across his face and into his hair. Now I know the potential risk of toxicara, yet back then we all wallowed in muck, and our resistance to illness was immense. It only ever wavered when we had double maths!
Just up from there is a long old cemetery wall, that we regularly climbed over and invaded the horse chestnut trees to get our conkers. Usually we tried every way to make them as hard as possible, after all our dinner money would be gambled on those kind of battles. Some soaked them in vinegar, then slowly warmed and dried in an oven, others lacquered or varnished them, and one even tried painting his! The most I ever managed was a 28’er. Opposite the church was a church hall, a more modern building where the local rabble could get a game of 5 a side football, or play that game where someone is ‘on’ and if he hits you with a ball, you are on too. Simple pleasures for lads utterly incapable of talking to girls. That is the most heinous thing about going to a single sex school. When the time came to speak to a young girl, it might as well have been talking to a horse, exactly what do you talk to ‘them’ about. Lads talked football, didn’t matter where you were from, you could have a chat with anyone about football. I remember a Russian lad called Dimitri, had not a single word of English, and I only spoke Russian after three bottles of Brown Ale! We did chat though, him saying “Bobby Charlton, Gordon Banks” I replied “Lev Yashin and Al Shesternev” two of the few Russian footballers I knew. Then we would kick a ball about, chatting to each other incomprehensively to one another for five or six hours, laughing, giggling and getting on! What did girls speak? Did they speak ‘dollies’ or ‘baking’? I had no clue.
We were in awe of Eddie Chambers, a bit of a drippy kid, but he ALWAYS had a girlfriend, and a tell tale circle in his school shirt pocket. A condom, at a time when the rest of us were more likely to wear a space suit than one of them. He bragged and bragged about all the women he was having sex with, talking crudely, he had a dirty mouth but we were all pretty jealous. We had all read crumpled porn mags, usually stashed under some geography book in a school locker. All of the principles of the physical act were engrained in our psyche, but there was little point, as we knew there was no way we could ever talk to ‘one of them’. At the nearby girls school there was a girl called Dorothy. All the other girls were 13, looked 13, acted 13, did 13 year old kind of things. Then there was Dorothy, who looked 19, acted three times divorced, and her body had filled out and she had ‘a bumpy jumper’. Every lad who saw her would have given their entire Sabbuteo team to get their hand up it! The thought of touching a breast, was similar to wanting to drive a car, it was so far away it was pointless even dreaming of it, but we all did!
So with girls being things we looked at from a distance, we once discussed for about three hours whether we might all be gay! After all I had long ginger hair, and my dad often would say to his friends “Here comes the little puff!”. Maybe I was? One lad called Roger suggested we could only find out if we kissed each other. There were rumblings of disapproval, but how else could we possibly know? So after a while Roger, who was sort of feminine looking, no spots or scars, volunteered to go first. He was of mixed race, although then he described himself as ‘half caste’ with an English Dad and a Pakistani Mum. We universally agreed he should kiss the lad who seemed the most gay. Those of us who were hetero were praying not to be chosen, but if it was a great experience a life of happy gayness it would have to be. So Roger picket this lad Ian, and the rest of us sighed with relief, then had to find a place to do it. My mate Micky’s Mam was at the bingo so about fifteen of us flocked into his tiny living room, in between the clothes horse covered in washing, and an ironing board waiting for his Mam getting back. Dad’s didn’t know how to work them! You should also remember that the only kiss treat any of us had experienced was off your Nana, usually after she had spat on her hankie and rubbed it all over your grubby face. She might as well have just spat in our faces. We had practiced kissing, by creating a mouth between your thumb and forefinger, giving your palm a good tonguing. We were just about ready to use our palm for more intense practice, but that’s another story. So Roger really went for it, ramming his tongue into a shocked Ian’s mouth and kissing and kissing. We started to clap it, like it was a game of keepie up. At the end of it Ian looked like he had sucked a lemon, we thought ‘Well he’s not gay!’. We failed to notice that Roger was grinning. So who was the next gayest? To everyone’s surprise it was Phil, at least according to the majority. He just closed his eyes and went for it, a battle of tongues, a soaking wet chin and they slid apart. Phil said “It was alright, but aren’t you supposed to feel something?”. I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want anyone, least of all Roger, feeling any part of me. I was about sixth pick. From the second I saw his blue eyes narrowing in on me, with his five times kissed lips pursing, I knew that it was not for me. I tried to keep the kiss a closed mouth affair, but he invaded my mouth with a tongue tasting lightly of Hubba Bubba. Might not even have been his bubble gum, could have been any of the other lads. Some of the lads were beginning to bale “I’d love to have my turn, but me Mams told me to get back for 6.o’clock!” all the excuses. Roger’s best friend was Simon, we all believed he was gay. When Roger kissed him, I felt like a voyeur, and some of the others began laughing. Roger had an erection! You can’t hide those things when you’re wearing tight sixties football shorts. Just like you couldn’t miss his testicles hanging out the side. Every third photo of school football teams had to be scrapped for this reason. Nowadays shorts have a string bag to keep your veg in. Anyway I now knew I was straight, and that Roger and Simon were gay. Not that it made any difference to us. Phil said “It just means more girls for us!”. If we ever tried to communicate with one!