Month: May 2018

“Is there a doctor in the dry cleaners?”

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emergency

It was watching Emergency – Ward 10 that I decided I was probably not best cut out to be a doctor.  Even in black and white, blood looked pretty gruesome. However, I’m sure the ITV series which ran for a decade between 1957-1967 inspired many people to be asked “what’s the bleeding time?”

In the 60s there was precious little TV choice; even when the third channel, BBC2, was added in 1964.  Although, as a seven-year-old, this seemed to involve watching lots of men with beards sitting around talking about the meaning of life – very late at night; in the 70s, if you couldn’t sleep and turned the TV on you’d be confronted by (probably the same) men wearing tank-tops and shirts with collars nearly touching their elbows pointing at complex charts or doing unspeakable things with pipettes.

However, in south London, with careers officers at school telling you to be a secretary if you were a girl and an armed robber or accountant depending on which type of boys’ school you attended, TV could have possibly given that much-needed career-inspiration? Perhaps All Gas and Gaiters encouraged people to join the church or a Reg Varney-induced moment would have made being a bus driver appealing, although running a motel in the Midlands wouldn’t have been attractive as you’d be forever sorting out the love life of the village idiot.

TV did inspire me and, despite having often seen the actor who played Mr Verity in Balham Sketchley’s, I have enjoyed forty-plus years working in the Home Guard.

Russian fly in the ointment

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thrush

I was seven when The Man from U.N.C.L.E. first aired on the BBC.  I immediately wanted to be Napoleon Solo and sent off to become a member. A few days later, with membership card proudly in my hand, I believed I would be a master spy before I took my Eleven-Plus.

During the series I always had my concerns about Solo’s sidekick, the enigmatic Illya Kuryakin; consequently, I wasn’t really surprised when he popped up, dressed as a British RAF officer, in Colditz – but that’s why Russian spies are so clever and clearly have a variety of seamstresses working tirelessly in their Gulags.

As a seven-year-old the name of U.N.C.L.E.’s nemesis, T.H.R.U.S.H., meant nothing to me. I’d yet to buy my first Observer Book of Song Birds and was unlikely to contract any sexually-transmitted disease (mainly because my mother told me never to sit on any strange toilets).  Looking back, Napoleon and Illya were unlikely to quash their arch-enemy by rubbing a soothing ointment on them.  Although eradication was the name of the game, I guess.

The show which rivalled The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on ITV was Danger Man – I also wanted to be John Drake and would stalk the corridors of my Balham block of flats seeking out enemies of the state (I suspected most of the cleaners and believed that inside their mops lay a selection of east European munitions).

Danger Man would occasionally feature cameo roles from famous actors, one episode featured John le Mesurier; I never wanted to be Sgt Wilson, but in increasing old age, can identify with Private Godfrey and his constant desire for the toilet; today I am more great uncle rather the Man from!

Deeper throat

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barley sugar

I’ve not had barley sugar since 25th May 1967.

My nan had a cupboard like a confectioner’s and contained an assortment of sweets primarily designed for sucking. If there’d been a warning fifty-one years ago on one specific packet I’d have not missed Cubs.

Dressed in Cub shirt, adorned with collector’s and signaller’s badges and newly-won felt sixer’s appendage, shorts, socks (together with garters holding them up) and woggle in correct position (enter your own gag here), I was all prepared to shout “dyb, dyb, dyb”, play handball, run like a Banshee round Balham Baths’ adjoining hall and splatter over-cooked sausages to every part of the hall’s kitchen, my nan proffered me one last sweet from her store.

I’d never had barley sugar before and felt it would make a change from her usual offering of Acid Drops or Callard & Bowsers Toffees.  It would be the last time too as, after a nano-second, because it stuck in my throat.   The natural melting time for a barley sugar boiled sweet is around the best part of a decade (the time it felt this thing was stuck in my throat).  Cubs had to be attended at all costs, if only to see how far up sausages on too high a gas would ascend into the air.

I spent, ostensibly, hours and hours, being fed water as hot as possible to try and melt the stubborn barley sugar – was suffering third degree burns in my throat worth not being shouting at by Akela?

Eventually the sweet melted sufficiently for it to move through my throat. Cubs had been and gone and the sausage safe for another week before I returned as a maniacal Fanny Craddock.

I sat down, relieved;  my nan to put the TV on – the 1967 European Cup Final between Celtic and Inter Milan was taking place. I had been a hero like the Celtic players that night.  Less than a week later I saw, in the Radio Times, they had the European Cup Winner’s Cup Final on TV.  Glasgow Rangers against some team which I’d never seen on the Big Match.  Perhaps I might bunk off Cubs again?

Personification of Evel

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puch

I think it was Evel Knievel who once said: “You wait ages for a London bus, then fourteen come along at once”.  I was, despite owning a moped aged 16, never destined to follow the exploits of the master bus-vaulter.

In 1972, aged 15, my parents emigrated from Balham to Carshalton (it could have been Neptune, it seemed so far away). Transport back to family still in Balham would be a problem so my dad said he’d pay for me to get a motorbike.

Armed with a selection of Premium Bonds, illegal Singapore currency my dad had brought back after National Service and a handful of pretend coins from the Co-Op, I travelled back to SW17 to purchase a Harley Davidson.  Sadly, they never produced a range of mopeds, so an Austrian-built Puch Maxi S was procured.

The shop I visited on Garratt Lane, Tooting was called Elite Motors. Growing up in 60s/70s south London, “elite” wasn’t a word we’d heard much, so we unwittingly called the shop “e-lights” (the shop is probably now selling vaping mechanisms).

Elites did well out of me; I bought three bikes there. However, I was more Mr Sheen than Barry Sheene and after a succession of minor accidents felt there was some supreme being telling me it was time to learn to drive.

On my travels back and forth from Balham to Carshalton, I remember vividly riding through Mitcham Common and the temperature dramatically dropping several degrees. I could have ridden blindfold and known exactly where I was – although this would have consequently entailed more arguments with the bridge over Mitcham Junction Station!

I miss not having a bike, although my most embarrassing biking moment is still etched in my brain: having toppled over at Amen Corner, Tooting, I was asked by a frail, old woman if she could help get my bike upright again? It was at this point when I realised that old people act as very good fulcrums!

I won’t ever be attempting vaulting over buses any time soon as my Red Rover is about to run out.