Month: June 2017

Well heeled

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sandal

Aged 60, I’m glad I don’t need my mum taking me shopping.

Aside from flirting with most shopkeepers along Balham High Road, mum would take me to buy clothes, get my haircut and purchase shoes.

Last week I was set to buy a pair of shoes and was reminded about the many pairs we’d buy in the Clark’s near Tooting Bec Station.

I loved the exact way they measured the length and width of your feet – one of the measuring instruments tickled; I can fully understand how people develop foot fetishes.  I never did, as my mum told me this was a guaranteed way of catching Athlete’s Foot (or was it VD? Either way, it’s why she never made it to be Surgeon General).

The thing which most fascinated me about this shop was the pneumatic system which ferried money around . There was a complex system of tubing which went around the shop.  Mum would buy my shoes (invariably brown sandals – how I was never bullied at school never ceases to amaze me) and in doing so handed over the money.  This was placed in a tube and sent, ostensibly at twice the speed of sound, around the shop to a cashier, hidden from sight (probably had corns and therefore not a good advertisement for the shop).  Any change, and a receipt, returned, as fast, through this magic system.

Last week I went to buy a pair of shoes (without my mum, I hasten to add). I found a pair I liked and asked, “Have you these in an eight?”

“I shall go and look,” replied the small, Scottish female assistant, who had the demeanour of having several unsatisfied customers out the back in a cauldron.

After a few minutes, she returned.

“We haven’t got these in an eight, but we have them in a seven-and-a-half?”

I can only assume she was expecting replies such as: “Oh, that’s fine, I was thinking of chopping half an inch of several toes” or “That’s OK, I never fully put my heel into the show anyway” or “Fantastic, that could immediately solve my verruca problem!”

I left the shop barefoot. It could have been worse, she could have replied: “An eight?  I assume you have a small penis?”

“Where’s your mother gone?”

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chirpy

Each week I would receive five shillings pocket money from my Nan and five shillings from my great aunt. I got nothing from either parent as they suggested any additional income would put me in a different tax bracket.  At 13, in 1970, I thought a tax bracket was something which held up book shelves.

I would, soon after pocketing my ten bob, be quickly relieved of it by the man behind the record counter in Hurley’s, a small department store on Balham High Road.

There were several listening booths within the record department; you could listen, in relative private (and without anyone shouting out “turn that bleedin’ noise down, Michael”), and no one would ever know you were a closet Clodagh Rodgers fan.

75% of my pocket money would go on buying a single record. (There’s not much you can buy for seven and six these days, mainly because pre-decimalisation currency in no longer legal tender).

Despite the unendearing fiscal lessons taught by my mother, I would occasionally buy her records she’d ask for. She was a massive Motown fan and I remember buying the Detroit Spinners’ “It’s a shame” and Freda Payne’s “Band of gold”.

One week my mother went rogue.

She’d taken a liking the Scottish group, Middle Of The Road. In June 1971, when seven and six had become thirty-seven and a half pence, I went to the record counter at Hurley’s. I approached the assistant and innocently inquired after the number one hit of this aptly-named middle of the road pop combo.  I had long hair at the time and believe the assistant anticipated me asking for something by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Humble pie.  His assumptive world (and mine) was about to come crashing down:

“Have you got Chirpy, chirpy, cheep, cheep?” I asked

“No,” replied the assistant, choking on the absinthe he’d had hidden in his Thermos flask, “I’ve been like this since the accident.”

Middle Of The Road went on to have two others hits: Soley, Soley and Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum; following on from Chirpy, chirpy, cheep, cheep, I naturally assumed either the lyricists were very unimaginative or had dreadful stammers.

Embarrassed after the Chirpy, chirpy, cheep, cheep incident, I took my custom to Harlequin Records, also on Balham High Road.  It was there, buying singles, that I learned to spell badly courtesy of Noddy Holder.

Wot, no fags?

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senior service

I never smoked when younger; consequently I am over seven-feet tall. Well, I smoked for about a fortnight when was 14, and because my growth was dramatically stunted, I now stand at six-foot (when not slouching and sporting Cuban heels).

My mother smoked about forty JPS a day, my father 50% more in Senior Service, my maternal grandmother smoked Weights and her sister was seemingly sponsored by Embassy (for interesting facts about collecting Embassy coupons, please see https://wordpress.com/post/mikerichards.blog/54 – new readers start here!).

Temptation was all around. Cigarettes were sold at the porter’s lodge within Du Cane Court where I lived; if you didn’t want either smoking-like-a-trooper parent catching you, there was a newsagent in Glenburnie Road in Tooting which would sell them individually (you’d have to go in the newsagents a great deal if you were collecting the coupons for sheets – or a new lung).

In the early 70s no one realised the inherent dangers of smoking – cigarette sponsorship was everywhere: I’m surprised my Auntie Vera wasn’t as good a snooker player as Alex Higgins although I did have another Aunt who had a similar physique to Jocky Wilson.  Cigarette ads were always on the back covers of men’s magazines.  Whenever I went to the barbers these magazines were always evident although before I was put on the bench and my mother explained to the barber in broken Greek (from whence the barbers had come) I’d never noticed the ads – I was too busy reading the thought-provoking articles which graced the likes of Penthouse and Men Only.

Luckily for me I never really ventured past sweet cigarettes (arguably worse for your teeth than actual fags were for your lungs) – I would pretend I was smoking, but never had the street cred for this to look realistic as I’d be constructing the Thunderbirds puzzle with the cards I’d collected.

Smoking saw off most of my aforementioned relatives; although my mum always maintained there was nothing more satisfying than sucking on an old Churchwarden!

Flagging a dead horse

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semaphore_flags_nylon

Before email, people would communicate with one another using semaphore flags.   Luckily for me, in the late 60s (just before the invention of email) one of the badges available for attainment within the 3rd/14th Balham & Tooting Cub Group was a Signaller’s Badge.   There was an option of learning how to work an Aldis lamp, but we were poor and couldn’t afford the giant light bulb.

Having created two flags out of an old pair of red and yellow pants (they were never going to become fashionable) and a couple of Mivvi lolly sticks I was sent by Akela (the she-wolf who ran the Cubs) to a house in Holdernesse Road, Tooting, to learn how to spell out H-E-L-P-M-Y-B-O-A-T-I-S-S-I-N-K-I-N-G.

The house was owned by the father of a fellow pupil at St Mary’s, Balham, and the dad’s ability to send messages using flags meant there was no ostensible need for a telephone (there were, however, several discarded yoghurt pots and bits of string strewn around the house – in case of emergencies, the father would say).

The badges available these days for Cubs are manifold: Entertainer (I’ve done 50 stand-up gigs, so feel over-qualified); Home Help (I bought a duster on the doorstep last week and have almost mastered how to use it) and Local Knowledge (I pointed out where the Gents was on Ewell East Station the other day). If I were a Cub today I’d have an armful; as a Cub in the 60s, I achieved two badges – Signaller and Collector (dad was a prolific smoker and acquired boxes of matches which I would collect and stick in a scrapbook).  It was the smelliest submission ever, said Bagheera (Akela’s deputy).

I never graduated to the Scouts as cooking was introduced towards the end of my Cub career and this looked potentially quite dangerous with sausages clearly having a mind of their own.

As you get older, you hark back to the “good old days” and I sit in my office praying for the Internet to go down, because I never need an excuse to get my semaphore flags out. This is not a euphemism.