Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill

  Out of the Woods but not Over the Hill

  Gervase Phinn

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Gervase Phinn 2010

  Illustrations © Jim Kay

  The right of Gervase Phinn to be identified as the Author of the Work has been

  asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher,

  nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it

  is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Epub ISBN 9781848949294

  Book ISBN 9781444705386

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For my mother and father, Pat and

  Jimmy Phinn, who encouraged me to

  aim for the moon.

  Contents

  Introduction

  ‘When I Was a Lad’

  ‘Don’t You Have a Proper Job?’

  ‘The Happiest Days of Your Life’

  ‘The Wonder Years’

  ‘I Shall Not Tell You Again!’

  ‘God’s Own Country’

  ‘The Slippery Snake’

  ‘Are You Anybody?’

  ‘It’s a Funny Old World’

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  When my son Richard and his fiancée were planning their wedding, they asked me if I would write a poem for this special occasion; something about love and families, a verse which was both touching and maybe a little sentimental. They would then have it framed as a reminder of the day they tied the knot.

  Picture the scene: the happy couple sitting in the centre of the top table with the parents of the bride and groom, the two best men (my other sons, Matthew and Dominic) and the three pretty bridesmaids. Following the usual speeches, I was called upon to stand and declaim my poem, especially written for the occasion. And here it is:

  When I am Old!

  When I’m old and I’m wrinkly, I shall not live alone

  In a pensioner’s flat or an old people’s home,

  Or take an apartment on some distant shore.

  I’ll move in with my son and my daughter-in-law.

  I’ll return all the joy that my son gave to me

  When he sat as a child on his dear father’s knee.

  He will welcome me willingly into his home

  When I’m old and I’m wrinkly and all on my own.

  I’ll spill coffee on the carpet, leave marks on the wall,

  I’ll stagger home drunk and be sick in the hall.

  I’ll sing really loudly and slam every door,

  When I live with my son and my daughter-in-law.

  I’ll rise from my bed in the late afternoon,

  Throw the sheets on the floor and mess up my room.

  I’ll play ear-splitting music well into the night,

  Go down for a snack and leave on every light.

  I’ll rest my old feet on the new leather chairs.

  I’ll drape dirty underwear all down the stairs,

  I’ll talk to my friends for hours on the phone

  When I live with my son in his lovely new home.

  I’ll come in from the garden with mud on my shoes,

  Flop on the settee for my afternoon snooze,

  Expect that my tea will be ready by four

  When I live with my son and my daughter-in-law.

  I’ll leave all the dishes piled up in the sink

  And invite all my noisy friends round for a drink,

  I’ll grumble and mumble, I’ll complain and I’ll moan

  When I’m old and I’m wrinkly and all on my own.

  I’ll watch television hour after hour,

  I’ll not flush the toilet or wash out the shower.

  Oh, bliss, what a future for me is in store

  When I move in with my son and my daughter-in-law.

  A month after the wedding, my son and daughter-in-law moved to Bermuda!

  Like many other ‘oldies’ who are approaching their three score years and ten, I am feeling my age. You know you are growing old, they say, when everything aches and what doesn’t ache doesn’t work, you sit in a rocking chair and can’t make it work and you get wind playing cards. You know you are growing old when you have more hair in your ears than on your head, a dripping tap causes an uncontrollable urge and you look forward to a good night in. You help an old woman across the road and discover it’s your wife, someone compliments you on your crocodile shoes and you tell them that you’re in bare feet and your children look middle-aged. When I was approached by a bald, bent and wrinkled individual who informed me that I used to teach him, and another time when a small child in an infant school observed that, ‘when I’m twenty-one, you’ll probably be dead’, I really did feel my age.

  The thing about growing old is that you become increasingly nostalgic, remembering ‘the good old days’ and inflicting your memories on the younger generation:

  When I was a lad, I walked to school

  In pouring rain and freezing sleet,

  With satchel crammed with heavy books,

  I trekked for miles with aching feet . . .

  But I was happy!

  When I was a lad, I shared a bed

  In a room with bare boards on the floor.

  No central heating, double glazing,

  We didn’t even have a door . . .

  But I was happy!

  When I was a lad I had no toys,

  Computers, TVs and the like.

  You were thought to me a millionaire

  If you owned a football or a bike . . .

  But I was happy!

  When I was a lad, food was scarce,

  I licked the pattern off the plate.

  We never saw an ice-cream cone,

  A bag of sweets or a chocolate cake . . .

  But I was happy!

  When I was a lad, school was strict,

  And teachers hit you with a cane

  Just for speaking out in class.

  I never opened my mouth again . . .

  But I was happy!

  I remember well that golden age,

  The memories make me feel quite sad.

  Why every day was a holiday,

  In the good old days, when I was a lad.

  More and more these days, I seem to be harking back to this ‘golden age’ when bobbies walked the beat, people stood up for the National Anthem in cinemas and ‘gay’ meant happy. There were no Chinese take-aways, fast food outlets or supermarkets, and milk was delivered in glass bottles. Cars had chokes, MOTs hadn’t been invented and there were no computers, sound systems or mobile phones. The television, when it arrived in 1959, was housed in an ugly wooden cabinet, had an eight-inch screen and showed black and white programmes. There were no sex scenes, bad language or gratuitous violence on the screen, and the actors kissed with their lips closed.

  When I was young, my father handed his wage packet over to my mother every Friday. He didn’t have a credit card, rarely went out without wearing his trilby hat and never set foot on a golf course. We didn’t go to an ice rink or a bowling alley or travel abroad, and we never ‘ate out’. The family wo
uld sit down around the table at teatime. If we children didn’t clean our plates, there was no dessert and, when we had finished, we had to ask ‘to be excused’. I wore short trousers until I was eleven, always had ‘short back and sides’ at the barber’s and walked to school in sensible shoes.

  Of course, there are certain benefits to getting old: you receive a pension, a bus pass, a senior railcard and a winter fuel allowance. You can get into the cinema half price and people help you with your heavy case. But the great advantage of being a ‘wrinkly’ is that you can express your feelings and opinions freely and as forcefully as you like, for, as Dr David Olivier, an expert on ageing, concludes: ‘age can bring people independence of thought. Older people are not afraid to be original.’

  For my father’s generation, being in your sixties was considered old and there was little more to look forward to than a leisurely walk to the pub, a game of dominoes and then back home for a snooze in your favourite arm chair. A woman in her sixties settled for a quiet, uneventful life; she dressed modestly, recalled wistfully her youthful good looks and resigned herself to looking after the home. Not any more. Today’s oldies are not interested in growing old. They are more likely to spend their children’s inheritance enjoying life rather than brooding about retirement and slowing down. They may be ‘out of the woods’ but they are certainly not ‘over the hill’.

  Considering myself just such an ‘oldie with attitude’, I have collected together a selection of my own reflections – social comment, autobiographical anecdotes, descriptions of the oddities of life, random observations and idiosyncratic musings – in which I look back over the years. In this book you will find me rattling on about childhood and schooldays, family life and the world of work, the English language and, of course, ‘God’s own country’, Yorkshire. My aim is primarily to entertain and amuse. Perhaps, though, I might occasionally manage to stimulate an emotion and provoke a reaction. In any event, I hope they give you some pleasure.

  ‘When I Was a Lad’

  Growing Up

  A Singular Sort of Town

  Rotherham, the town where I was born and in which I grew up and went to school, has always had a bit of an image problem. It is viewed in the popular mind as a gloomy, depressing, industrial place, full of dust and dirt, of noisy steelworks and ugly pitheads. Comedians make fun of the town with jokes like ‘Rotherham doesn’t have a twin town – it has a suicide pact with Scunthorpe’ or ‘Rotherham’s like Barnsley without the carpets’. The celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, on his television programme about healthy eating, did the town no favours either and, on the screen, Rotherham lived up to its unattractive stereotype.

  In educational circles, Rotherham is seen by some, who probably have never visited the town, as a deprived and impoverished part of Yorkshire, as unlike Harrogate as chalk is from cheese. I recall once a speaker at a conference remarking that teachers should pay particular attention to the most ill-favoured and vulnerable children. ‘The Gervases of Eton will inevitably achieve, be successful and have the best of support and encouragement,’ he told his audience, ‘but it is the disadvantaged and underprivileged Jasons of Rotherham who are in most need of the teachers’ attention.’ I did point out to the speaker later that I was called Gervase and hailed from that particular town, and that not all children there are ‘ill-favoured and vulnerable’. Growing up in Rotherham in the 1950s, I certainly didn’t feel in any way ‘disadvantaged and underprivileged’. In fact, I thought I was very lucky.

  Rotherham is not as bad a place as it is sometimes painted. In the 1950s, the town was bustling and interesting, with a real Yorkshire gritty character to it – solid, uncompromising, unostentatious – a vibrant, friendly, hard-bitten part of ‘God’s own country’, and there was nowhere in England where the inhabitants were warmer or more hospitable. I grew up surrounded by people with an unflagging generosity, a sharp humour and a shrewd insight into human nature which I learnt to love.

  When I was young there were, of course, the smoky mornings, impenetrable smog and the unpleasant odour which sometimes emanated from the canal, but a bus ride out of the centre of the town, with its magnificent red sandstone medieval church and the rare Chapel-in-the Bridge, took me in minutes into open countryside. In the school holidays and at weekends I would explore the area around the town, setting off in the morning on my bike, with a bottle of pop and a sandwich, and cycle into the country.

  One of the favourite destinations on my weekend jaunts was Conisborough Castle, the great white stone Norman fortress set high on a mound between Rotherham and Doncaster. After I had read Sir Walker Scott’s epic story Ivanhoe, I cycled out one bright Saturday morning to where the novel is set. I recall sitting on the perimeter wall, staring up at the imposing edifice and imagining knights in glittering armour, gallant Crusaders, dastardly villains, jousting and sieges, dark dungeons and great battles.

  Another favourite spot was Roche Abbey. I would cycle out to Wickersley, famous for the grindstones used in the Sheffield cutlery trade, through the mining town of Maltby, eventually arriving at the crumbling remains of the magnificent Cistercian abbey. It was such a quiet, atmospheric place and I would sit amongst the crumbling stones in the sheltered valley and imagine the abbey in its heyday.

  My mother, like my pals’ parents, encouraged me to ‘get out from under my feet’ on Saturdays so she could do the cleaning and washing. There was no sitting inside watching the television or playing on the computer. We had to be out of the house and would not be expected back until it began to get dark. My parents never worried that I would be abducted or set upon and, unlike some overly anxious parents today, never thought there was a paedophile hiding behind every bush ready to pounce. It seemed to me a safe, warm environment in which to grow up. I had the freedom to play out all day in the street or at the park, something which is sadly denied to many children today. These days so many parents seem so obsessively concerned with giving their children long and happy childhoods, with keeping them safe from harm and injury, in need of constant protection, away from potential risks, that they underestimate their offsprings’ abilities and resilience and deny them the great sense of freedom I had. The children of my generation were happy as crickets, unhindered by adult restraint.

  A Boy Called Gervase

  One has to admit that my parents had a sense of humour calling a child born in a redbrick semi in Rotherham, Gervase. In the 1950s when I was growing up, there were Jimmys and Terrys, Michaels and Ronalds, Martins and Kevins and one or two Alberts and Harolds but, to my knowledge, no Gervases. The first Gervase I came across was in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – he was the blacksmith in the raunchiest of the stories. Now, of course, children are given the most unusual, not to say bizarre, names. Brooklyn and Romeo Beckham, Peaches Geldof and the other children of the rich and famous are not alone in their unusual appellations.

  Over my years as a school inspector, I collected quite a list. I have met Barbie, Kristofer, Buzz, Curston, Randy, Mykell, Charleen, Kaylee, Scarlet, Egypt, Heyleigh, Jordana, Aztec, Blasé (pronounced Blaze), Gooey (spelt Guy), a child whose surname was Pipe and first name Duane and a child called Portia but spelt Porsche for, as the teacher explained to me with a wry smile, the girl’s father had always wanted a Porsche car. I’ve come across Demi, Dayle, Shalott (pronounced Charlotte), Precious, Roxanne, Tiggy, Trixie, Terri, Cheyenne, Billi-Jo, Tammy-Lou, Princess, Duncan Biscuit and Eileen Dover, a boy named Gilly and a girl called Barney. In one school there were two sets of twins from the same family, aged ten and eleven respectively, named after great tragic heroines: Cleopatra and Cassandra, Desdemona and Dido. Then there were the brother and sister, Sam and Ella, whose names, when said at speed, sounded like food poisoning. I have met Hadrian Wall (with a father called Walter Wall), Victoria Plumb, Sunny Day, Holly Wood and Justin Finnerty. I have never met them, but was told by a teacher that she had had the pleasure of teaching a Teresa Green, an Annette Curtain and a Poppy Field.

  A head teacher told
me once that she taught three sisters called Paris Smout, Vienna Smout and Seville Smout, all, no doubt, conceived after three particularly memorable trips abroad. ‘It is just as well,’ she told me, ‘that her parents didn’t go on a weekend break to Brussels.’

  In one infant school in Bradford, I came across a large girl with a plump face, frizzy hair in huge bunches and great wide eyes.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the child.

  ‘Tequila,’ she replied. ‘I’m named after a drink.’

  ‘Tequila Sunrise,’ I murmured.

  ‘No,’ pouted the child. ‘Tequila Braithwaite.’

  Perhaps she had a brother called Bacardi in the Juniors.

  I was told by the head teacher of a Catholic school that it was the practice in the Church for children to be named after saints, and he was at school with a boy called Innocent, a name adopted by a number of popes.

  ‘I suppose it must have been difficult having to live up to the name Innocent,’ I observed.

  ‘It certainly was,’ he replied, ‘and something of a cross to bear. His second name was Bystander.’

  ‘I cannot say that modern parents are very well acquainted with the Bible,’ a vicar once told me. ‘Gone are the fine biblical names like Hannah and Simon. Instead, parents want their offspring named after pop singers, film stars and footballers. I draw the line though when I get requests for Jezebel, Salome and Delilah,’ he bemoaned. ‘It’s very difficult explaining to the parents who these women were and what line of work they were in. One child very nearly went through life with the exotic name of Onacardie. I asked the parents at the christening: “And what do you name this child?” The mother replied loudly, “Onacardie.” I had just begun sprinkling the water over the baby’s head and intoning: “I christen this child Onacardie,” only to be quickly interrupted by the irate mother. “No, no, vicar!” she hissed. “On ’er cardy. The name’s written on her cardigan. We want her to be called Siobhan.” ’