3,000

Blog three thousand, and here is something that has been going through my head, a sort of autobiography thing, not that my life deserves it, but after reading the opening chapters of Born to Run, why not? I was born in Great Yarmouth on a Wednesday in August 1965, Sonny and Cher were number one with I Got You Babe. I was born there because of the baby boom, Lowestoft hospital and Great Yarmouth hospitals were both full, so I was born in the sanatorium on the sea front.

Dad had to cycle from Oulton Broad to Gorleston to register my birth, as I born over the border. Dad could not drive, nor did he ever learn. I had to repeat that journey, though in a car some 31 years later to register his death.

So, I was born in Norfolk and lived in Suffolk, not that it means that much now, nor then. Norwich is twice as close as Ipswich to our home, so whenever Mum needed to do some clothes shopping, we went to Norwich. And I went along too, the only treat being chips on the market, usually after hours spent in C&A as Mum tried on outfit after outfit. I was excused attendance after one fateful day when she tried on a red winter coat, and asked me what I thought: you look like a post box. I was no more than ten. I wasn’t forced to go along again.

Norfolk, Suffolk; who cares?

Lowestoft was back in the 1960s, a thriving town, full of manufacturing; two shipyards, a wood yard, two canning factories, Pye TV, the Bally shoe factory, Birds Eye, and many, many more. People worked hard, and then at weekends went out on a Friday and Saturday night to let their hair down at a “do”.

I once wrote an account of my weekend for my primary teacher, and she asked why I was staying with my Grandparents, where were your parents? At a do I said. What kind of do? How did a seven year old know? Maybe a black mass?

I was the only child of two only children. I thought this normal. I mean, no brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins; just Mum, Dad, Me, Dad’s Mother (nannie) and Mum’s parents *Nana and Granddad). For the first few years of my life, Mum’s grandmother, Nana Meades and her husband were alive and living on Clapham Road in town.

Nana had one brother, Peter, and their Mother only loved Peter. Nothing Nana did was ever good enough, she grew bitter and never loved her daughter, Nana did everything she could to be loved, but it was just not good enough. Nana carried on that bitterness to her own daughter, and to Granddad too. So we have two generations of daughter wanting and not getting the love of their Mothers. So, nothing Granddad or Mum did was ever good enough. I say this as people replace love with something else, or confuse something else with love. This leads to some mixed up people.

Just saying.

So, I used to stay with Nana and Granddad at their house on Chestnut Avenue, which was heated by a single coal fire in one of their three living rooms, yes you read that right. Nana was persuaded to have storage heaters installed in the rest of the house, but was too tight to actually put them on. They also had their kitchen in a separate building, which was fine in the summer, when we would have tea and sugared banana sandwiches in the living room watching TV, but in the winter it meant carrying the food over the frozen yard, or if you wanted a cuppa in the evening, out you would have to go.

Nana was a Christian, but only in the sense she went to church. She was a cold, bitter and selfish woman, and once Granddad had died, I was able to tell her this. Wat was hers was hers, but what was Granddad’s was theirs. All bills had to be paid out of his earnings, hers was hers to keep. He had to pay her bus fare when he was in hospital, so she wasn’t out of pocket.

When I stayed we used to watch TV all evening, if there was something I did not like, like Dixon of Dock Green, I used to watch the hardwood blocks Granddad brought home from Boulton and Paul, burn. I loved fire then, and still do.

I would wake up the next morning, if it was winter, not quite with frost on the inside of the windows, but close to it. And it would be cold. Bitterly cold. You would have to rush to get dressed and go downstairs and over the yard to the kitchen where they had a coke fired stove that burned 365 days a year. That was the only heat until four in the afternoon when the fire in the living room was lit.

Nannie lived half a mile away, near to where I would buy a house with my second wife. She was a spinster, after her husband, James, died in January 1960. He worked on the harbour branch at Lowestoft docks. Nannie’s house was even colder than Nana and Granddad’s. She had just small fire in the living room, the rest of the house was unheated. It smelt of mothballs and boiled meat. I never stayed there, but used to visit on summer Saturdays when there was speed boat racing on the Broad and inbetween races would go there for sausage and chips from the Hall Road chippy.

At Christmas we would all gather at the family home and Mum would do all the work and cooking with no help from anyone. I can see this now, but Christmas wasn’t a good time for Mum, I mean, its supposed to be perfect. Opening presents had to be delayed until Nana and Granddad had been to church too. I could open just the one present before they came.

I grew up on a modern, 1960s estate, school was a ten minute walk away. We had a three bedroom detached bungalow, with a mortgage for two and a half thousand pounds, there were eight houses on our street, most were young people all hoping to raise families, and at the top of the street was a fence, behind which was the council tip. Or one of them. A large overgrown area, full of legends and mysteries. My best friend was Stephen Pitcher, a couple of months older than I, I guess you would say now he had Asperger’s, but then he just needed attention. But we were great friends. His Dad, Leroy, had a Jensen when he married Maureen, and when I was friends with Stephen, the family car was a Capri, with black vinyl seats that got very hot after being parked near the beach all day.

There were other kids around too, but we didn’t really mix that well. We played football, or when we were older used to explore, explore the tip and the council nursery beyond. Further still there was a small farm, with pigs, and when we used to sneak in there the smell used to make us wretch.

Then, in about 1975, the tip was closed and houses were built round the edge of the tip. This became our new playground, breaking into the new houses, jumping off piles of bricks, or tipping over the chemical toilets. Sorry about the last one, not big or clever, but I was easily lead.

Lead by a new friend, Andrew Ellis. I can’t remember where he came from, but he and his Mum and sister moved into one of the new houses, and, as it turned out, Andrew, Stephen and I could not be friends with either at the same time. So, sometimes I would have no close friend for a few weeks, then they would fall out and I would make up with one of them. And so on. Andrew joined the Foreign Legion at some point, and went AWAL I heard, though impossible to say if this is true.

We had a final falling out when we went to high school and I made a new group of friends, and we never really spoke again. Sad, really. Stephen was a really good guitar player, and formed his own Shadows tribute band, and they played at my parent’s silver wedding party. Hey were damn good, or he was.

Dad worked away a lot. He worked in the building industry until 1972, but money was poor. The industry went on strike for the right to earn £20 a week. He left to work where he had done his apprenticeship, Brooke Marine. They had a contract to refurbish kitchens at the Barbican in London, so one week in four, sometimes more frequent, a van would collect him at four on a Monday morning, take him and a couple of colleagues to London where they would spend the week, working and drinking. This meant Mum and I would be home alone, by this time she was working in a school as a cook. Before then she was a barmaid, working in several pubs around town. In the mid-790s she was working in the George Borrow, named after a famous author. It is right beside Oulton Broad North station, and on school holiday I would go along, sit in a back room looking onto the clapboard signal box, and so able to see the trains go by. Between the trains I would read. All of the Enid Blyton Famous Five, Secret Seven before moving onto Just William and Biggles.

Yes, Biggles.

I suppose being an only child and an avid reader it was obvious I would have a fertile imagination, creating worlds for me and my imaginary friends to live in and explore. I don’t know if this is what other children did. We always though Lowestoft and Oulton Broad so boring, but we had it better than most. Growing up Mum took me to the beach a lot. Not the South Beach where the amusements and ice cream shops were, but the north beach where was just the beach and a single shop, far away from where we would spend the day. Sometimes we had chips, and there is nothing better than hot chips after you come in from the grey North Sea. And there was the speed boat racing to watch, the smell of the odd fuel they used to use, and being so close on the park as boats hammered down the Broad at close to 100 mph. Indeed, a few times a year, the F1 boats used to come down, and try their best to get round the tight turns.

Yes, it was boring in Lowestoft, growing up.

Growing up, Dad liked football and fishing, so he said we would try both, which one would I like to go to first.

Football.

We started going in the 1972/73 season, when Norwich were in the First Division for the first time. I am pretty sure the first game I saw that season was v Spurs, but I have no proof. We used to stand in the old South Stand, which stretched along the whole length of the pitch. We had to get to the ground at half twelve so I could stand at the front to be able to see. There was no entertainment, just standing there for 90 minutes, when at two, the dreadful tannoy system would burst into life playing the hits of the day.

In order to get to Norwich that early, we caught the 11:15 train from Oulton Broad, always a Cravens DMU, which used to rattle and shake its way across the marshes through Somerleyton, Haddiscoe to Reedham then past the stinking sugar beet factory at Cantley, but the smell was offset by the maze of sidings there used to be and seeing shunters working. We would arrive at Norwich at midday, then walk down Riverside Road behind the freight yards that used to go all the way to the road. The sidings for the fuel tanks were black with spilt oil, so looked very different. Then further along was the old Boulton and Paul yard, where a shunter used to be sheltering under the offices on the track into the yard. At the top of the hill beside Carrow Bridge there used to be a guy with a wooden box on a single leg that sold scarves, rosettes and the such. After one very poor game, we left the ground with City 3-0 down against Aston Villa and Dad bought me a satin scarf from here.

At quarter past two or so, the teams used to come out to practice, running up and down, lobbing shots for the keeper to catch. It was still over half an hour before kick off, and we had been in the ground for two hours.

At quarter to three, the players went into the old wooden Main Stand, re-emerging a few minutes later, sprinting out onto the pitch while the crowd sang "On the Ball, City". Back in those first few years, 35,000 or more fans used to squeeze into Carrow Road, and on the days when City clicked, made a heck of a noise.

At full time, there were only two narrow sets of stairs out of the South Stand, so a sliding gate was opened allowing the while stand to exit via the open River End, once they had left. It was this that done for the South Stand, not being able to evacuate the crown in an emergency. In 1974, after being promoted back to the First Division, it was mostly converted into seating, using second hand red and blue seats. Dad must have got a bonus as he found a hundred quid for us to have season tickets in the same place we used to stand. It was from there I saw Duncan Forbes score one of his rare goals, a header that broke his nose; there was blood everywhere. He played on, not minding and by half time we were 5-1 up.

We could not afford to go the next season, and so did not get another season ticket for a decade, when I learned to drive and we would cruise up in the family car, a Mk 1 Fiesta.

Money was always tight, I remember us going on a family holiday to visit very distant relations in Lancashire one year, two years we visited friends in Billericay for a week, the second year we had a week in a dreadful B&B in Southend. We had a fiver to spend each day, a pound of which was spent on me going swimming in the morning for a couple of hours, then walking hours up and down the promenade or up and down the mile long pier. We ate each night in a kosher restaurant, we got a a main course each and a dessert of strudel within the daily budget.

Dad hated those poor days, and vowed that we would not have a holiday like that again.

Instead, we visited a different circle of hell. Thanks to Goldenrail.

They say the past is a different country, then holidays in the UK was certainly true. Goldenrail was a part of British Rail, they would produce a brochure with all the usual holiday haunts around the coat of the UK, it listed hotels you could stay at. Could being the operative word, as the four or so years we went with Goldenrail, we never got the place we wanted to go to, which is how we ended up in Aberystwyth for a week during the wettest summer on record.

All Dad wanted was to go to Jersey. But Goldenrail never let us go, they offered us Wales or Cornwall. But we did get to travel by train, and there was me eyes glued to the window as we travelled up and down the country, most thrilling of all was in 1980 when we went to St Ives and we got to travel in a High Speed Train. Was like travelling by plane in that you had to have a seat reservation. In the end, Goldenrail offered you a holiday where they had space, and you either accepted it, or not. By then it would be too late to book anywhere else.

So, we went to Aberystwyth. For a week. A whole seven days. It rained every day, there were floods, and the hotel so bad we gave up eating there even though we had paid, and ate at the chippy down the street instead.

Final family holiday with me as a child was 1980 when we went to St Ives, and I was suffering from acute unrequited love for someone back home, someone I never had the guts to tell her how I felt about her Not even at the reunion a few years back. Probably for the best. In short, that week I was a pain in the arse, moody, wandered off, dragged my parents to record shop after record shop.

Love. Don't talk to me about love.

So, this is the 3,000th blog. I thought I was a good writer, and maybe this was the start of something. Who knows. Anyway, back to baking mince pies.....