Author: mickyrichards1957

I never felt the cold as a kid.

I had the mandatory duffel-coat, which made me look like a very small protester on the Aldermaston March, but rarely felt I needed it; even in the winter of 1962/3.  Ice Cold in Balham would have made a good film.

But now, with the duffel-coat no longer fitting (I blame chocolate Hob Nobs), I now need several layers.  When I go out now, it looks like I could be assisting Sherpa Tensing, only without the ice-pick.

I had an uncle who had a string vest.  He would eat his tea wearing it.   I often wondered what the point was – there were more holes than things stoppings drafts.  “Don’t forget your vest” was a much-used adage.  Why, if 90% was holes?

Nowadays everything is “thermal” – when I was a kid, the only thing which was thermal was a flask.

Years ago, if you had layers on, you’d look like the Michelin Man.  These days, everything is more streamlined and energy efficient.  If you still look like the Michelin Man, it means you’re not cold, you’re simply eating too many cakes.

I still have elastic attached to my gloves.

I also find myself saying “take your coat off, or you’ll not feel the benefit”  Oscar Wilde once said, “all women turn into their mothers”.  I’ve turned into my Nan 😊

I don’t quite remember when the site of Morden Station was lavender fields; nor do I remember when the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were part of the Battersea Park Festival Gardens in the years before Christ; what I do I realise is the buildings I knew as kid are no longer there.

When I first started work, in 1974, my job was to collect regional newspapers from their London offices in Fleet Street.  Most of these buildings are now law firms.  So, if you need to get a copy of the Hull Daily Mail, Helston Packet or the Isle of Wight County Press, it’ll cost you £1,000 just for someone to fetch it.

Many old banks are now wine bars; old pubs are now wine bars and you can’t find a decent milliners for love nor money.  I now have my own anvil.

The Balham Odeon, where my mum and I watched 50% of Dumbo (we left early as it was too upsetting) and 30% of The Scarecrow (too much set in Dymchurch), turned into Majestic Wine.  I’d moved away, came back, sat in the shop waiting to watch Emil and the Detectives only to be sold a case of Rioja.  Not even close to a Kia-Ora or a tub!

The Mayfair cinema, Tooting, turned into a snooker hall and then a bank.  I assume it’s a wine bar now?  It certainly won’t be a haberdashery shop.

But the most disturbing thing, given that everyone is being told to drink more water, is, where have all the horse troughs gone?  They’re probably very small leisure centres now!

One of the disadvantages of being brought up in SW London in the ‘60s and ‘70s was that none of the parks or ponds encouraged the local animals to help out the Police.

If there’d been an Outback within Tooting Bec Common, a Cockney Skippy could have helped identify villains.  Local Police could have been trained to speak Kangaroo.  “What’s that, Skippy, someone’s selling eggs past their sell-by date in Tooting Market?”

If Clapham Common Ponds would have been at the same temperature as the waters off the coast of Florida, Flipper could have made a second home there and have been a massive assistance to the constabulary operating out of the Cavendish Road Police Station.

However, my question is this: Why did the law enforcers, who, in Dr Doolittle vain, speak to the animals, always assuming there was a problem?  Was there not the outside possibility that both Skippy and Flipper, having befriended the local Bobbies, were simply trying to exchange pleasantries? 

I can imagine both Skippy and Flipper chirruping and squeaking away wondering, why do these people think a lifeboat’s adrift, or a body’s been found on Ayers’s Rock? All I want to know if they think it looks like rain?

I’ve always wanted to talk to dolphins and went to evening class to do so.  In the first lesson, I learned to count to ten in Dolphin; ordered two beers and mastered saying “you have the right to remain silent”.

Dingo took your baby?  Sorry, Skippy, that’s another series.

With the proliferation of computer games these days, I assume no one plays with flowers anymore?

Are daisy chains still made?  I assume, if you live next door to a family of aging hippies, they probably are?

I’m at that age when I don’t need plucking a dandelion to remind me to get up several times during the night!

Do I like butter?  Nowadays you’re asked about food allergies rather than food preferences.

As you get older, you’re more likely to worry about dandelion spores creating more weeds, not whether someone loves you (or not).

As a kid, growing up in the ‘60s and wandering across Wandsworth Common, I’d collect conkers.  Don’t know why: the fear of breaking the wrist which bowled a decent leg-break when I was 11, was never going to be risked in a school playground with a weapon baked in vinegar.

Walking along the street these days you never see people with green tufts of Goose Grass sticking to their clothes?  It was how Eric Bristow started.  Goose Grass was also called “sticky willy” – you can insert your own joke here, or, if this affects you directly, order some ointment.

Every time I walked past a sycamore tree on Tooting Bec Common I’d dream of becoming a helicopter pilot.

Luckily rationing has stopped, so I don’t have to drink coffee made from acorns anymore.

Nettle tea’s off, love.

I was a goody-goody at school; this made receiving my first detention a big shock.

At my Tooting secondary school we had exams for everything: including PE. 

PE was not a strength.  Give me a ball to hit, kick or head and I’d be fine; get me to vault over anything larger than a matchbox, I wasn’t.

We were about to start a geography exam – I had an image of what an ox-bow lake looked like in my head – when the PE teacher entered to read out the results of the PE exam we’d recently taken:

“Richards, 0%” – you couldn’t even get a mark for writing your name.  The consequence of this was a detention.

So, because of my inability to do a forward roll; leap over a buck or climb a rope, I had to spend an hour after school writing “Please give me a rope to climb, because it’s not at all futile” 100-times.

I also had to do a cross-country run – running round Wandsworth Common – seemingly 100-times.

And that was the only punishment I had – I don’t count mental punishment after every parents’ evening – “Michael could do better” and wasn’t Michael told about that later those evenings!

I never got the cane – which was still in use. 

However, the only violence I witnessed was, because I was caught singing Wizzard’s Angel Fingers during O-level music revision, a blackboard rubber – hurled at the speed of light, with the accuracy you’d have wanted on The Golden Shot.