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Luxembourg Calling

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luxmic

Until I was thirteen, I thought music was probably best heard under a thick blanket.

Armed with transistor radio, torch, blanket to muffle the sound of the transistor radio and ears which would make a pipistrelle bat jealous to listen out for potentially vituperative parents, in the evenings I would listen to Radio Luxembourg. I also had a pencil and paper to list the midweek Top 20. Unlike the BBC, who had their Top 20 inside Pick of the Pops, Radio Luxembourg’s offering was midweek.  My bed had so much stationery in it, it resembled a branch of WH Smith.

Because we lacked money, and to earn a few bob more, my father had a twice-weekly evening pools round around the back streets between Tooting High Street and St Benedict’s Hospital. My mum would drive him in our Austin A40 to his destination and follow him round (like kerb-crawling except my dad didn’t have the opportunity to stick his head in the car to ask “inside or out”).  I would sit in the back, listening to my radio.  These were days before car radios (which kept car radio theft down to a minimum); I would sit, one hand on the radio almost glued to my ear and the other on a pencil to write down the chart as it was unveiled.

Eventually we’d head home with my dad having been to one too many houses with people hiding behind their respective sofas. The chart, at this point, would only be about mid-way, so my sheet, with the numbers 10 to 1 remained blank.

By the time my strict parents had sent me to bed (ostensibly to sleep) the top five were yet to be revealed. Once the light was turned off, my listening post was hastily erected; important items were produced from under my pillow (this must have confused the Tooth Fairy).  My writing kit and torch came into their own as I rapidly wrote down (probably not grammatically correct) songs like, “signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours”.

My interest in music coincided with my rapid eyesight decline (I have since learned my myopia was, due to another hobby discovered as a teenager, not helped, either!). I don’t think this was aided by some of the 70s bands having ridiculously long names – why couldn’t groups be called Lulu or Dana?  Why choose Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich?  If I’d have wanted to witness such names I’d have watched episodes of Trumpton.

You know how to whistle, Mick, don’t you?

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john radford

If there’d been an O-level for whistling, I’d have got an A*.

My nan used to say “here comes Whistler’s Mother” (which was curious given that this was an 1871 painting, rather than some sort of noise).

Rather than whistling, looking back, I should have been reading. Reading, when it came to school exams, was a more constructive ability to have than whistling.

Having passed my 11-plus in 1968, I set off to grammar school; I choose to go to Bec, a grammar school in Tooting (an educational paradox if ever there was one). The summer in-between schools I was sent a reading list.  The list contained about twenty books – none required a whistling accompaniment.

I was never a great reader as a kid and the summer of ’68, when Jimi Hendrix and rioting French students were making headlines, was no different. I read the first chapter of Rodney Stone (a Gothic mystery written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) (about 1% of the reading list) and decided that perfecting my leg-break and learning to imitate the call of garden birds of south-west London or members of The Goons (which I can still do – so look out Britain’s Got Talent) was a better use of my time.

Throughout my teens, rather than reading books, I would read comics which were bought for me – Beano and Shoot being the two which were regularly procured.  If there’d been a question about Roger the Dodger or Lord Snooty, rather than Lady Macbeth, during my English Literature O-level, I may have got a better grade.

Rather than reading (and learning) Juno and the Paycock, I was fully occupied making sure the free ladder from Shoot magazine was up-to-date with the movements of the First Division football teams.

Whilst I can’t remember how many pounds of flesh Shylock wanted, I can remember that seventies Arsenal striker John Radford’s favourite food was “steak and chips in the Olympic Café, Neasden”.

Or was John Radford one of the twins in The comedy of errors?

Hold the bells

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Bells-single-300x300

I was never going to make it as a professional recorder player; I don’t like the taste of Dettol.

I often see young kids on the train to work with musical instruments twice their size strapped to their backs. This was never a choice at my sixties primary school.

For music lessons we had to play a recorder that’s end was more chewed than the end of a pen ravaged by the most nervous person in the world.  If you were lucky you’d get to play a triangle (this smelled less of Dettol) or, if you were teacher’s pet, the Glockenspiel.  The set of hand-bells, which could have acted as knuckle-dusters, weren’t issued to the more violent kids in the class!  Whenever the teacher said the word “maracas” you’d have fifteen boys giggling to themselves (although 50% not knowing quite why).

In the final year at St Mary’s, my primary school in Balham, there was the opportunity of learning the violin. This was made attractive as it meant missing part of a maths lessons.  (I can only assume that Einstein never had access to a tambourine when a child).  I can’t do long division, but I can play Baa-Baa black sheep.

I carried on, much to the chagrin of my parents, playing the violin when I went to secondary school. I played third violin (mainly because there weren’t eighth violins) in the Bec School Orchestra.  My murdering of the third violin part of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg would have had Richard Wagner turning in his Bavarian grave.

There was clearly no vision of any of us becoming decent musicians – none of the Beatles played the triangle; I hate to think what damage Keith Moon might have done with a Glockenspiel hammer! And there wouldn’t have been as much wonder of Jimi Hendrix playing Hey Joe with his teeth on a castanet.

The music aspect (in spite of the overriding smell of disinfectant) of music and movement classes, however, was the better half; moving about the school hall pretending to be a tree wasn’t as much fun as playing with your maracas. Although, even though I say so myself, I did make a very good larch (even if I was only wearing pants!).  I do, however, blame my myopia on over-doing the maraca-playing!

Hell’s kitchen

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semolina

I’ve not eaten semolina since 1962.

Even with a dollop of jam to hide the malevolence of this dish, if the Devil were to publish a recipe book, semolina would be on page one; if I were Prime Minister for a day, I’d put semolina up there with all the major Class A drugs as a banned substance.

In 1962, the year I started school, semolina was the staple dessert in my south-west London primary school. If ever there was a pudding which also acted as an emetic, it would have been the St Mary’s Primary School’s pudding from Hell!  If I’d have been War Minister, I’d have infected the remote Scottish island of Gruinard with it, rather than anthrax, which was chosen to deter invading Nazis.

However, living next door to the school meant I rarely attended school dinners. When I did, semolina would invariably be on the menu; this followed on nicely from the salad we were given, whose constituent parts were made up more of caterpillar than that of lettuce.

School custard had nothing going for it, either, unless you needed the skin to reinforce your wicketkeeping gloves. Leathery would have been a masterpiece of understatement.

Not only was the food frightful, the women serving it were just as bad. In our school, we had Mrs Roberts.  Mrs Roberts, we believed, had trained, as a dinner lady, at HMP Parkhurst.  Poor woman also had a dreadful limp – probably been involved in a custard-related accident during slopping out?

The only nourishing treat we’d be given was an annual slice of chocolate sponge, although I’ve probably eaten more edible carpet.

There were, back then, ostensibly, no such things as food allergies nor did the school ever entertain thoughts about giving us anything vaguely nutritional, as I assume there is in abundance these days within schools? No one was vegetarian and if you’d have asked a kid at my school what’s a vegan?, they’d have probably replied it was the character John Thaw played in The Sweeney?

And is there honey still for tea? I bloody hope so, but I’m not putting any of it on my semolina!

Mangled

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mangle

My nan used to let me play with her mangle (this is not a euphemism).

In her south London flat kitchen she had a table, underneath which, magically lived a mangle which not only helped removed excess damp from clothes, it also ensured you had one bicep big than the other – think of my nan was a precursor to Raphael Nadal.

She owned a mangle because she did not possess a washer/drier. Neither did my parents.  When I was a child in the early sixties washing machine brands were unknown: a Whirlpool was something they had at posh swimming baths; Indesit was something you got if you ate too quickly and Bosch was fifteenth-century Flemish artist obsessed with fish, torture or people being tortured by fish.

A consequence lack of family ownership of a washing machine meant we used the launderette opposite our flats on Balham High Road.

This week I discovered a shop where I get my shoes re-heeled, doubles as a launderette. Whilst queuing to collect my good-as-new shoes I was reminded of the launderette on Balham High Road where my mum would take me and convince me the drying machines were actual TVs.  I spent hours watching an entire drying cycle wondering why I never saw anyone from Emergency, Ward 10!

The shop was identical and almost in some time-wrap, the only difference being that packets of Tide now costs more than two-bob now (or would do if Tide still existed) and the actual machines, old-fashioned though they looked, probably don’t take a couple of half-a-crowns to get the washing started any more.

If you needed your washing moved from washer to drier and then subsequently folded, you could give the woman running the shop a few extra shillings. This was quite ironic as my mum would offer “additional services” to most shop-keepers along Balham High Road for nothing.

Phew, wot a scorcher!

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hosepipe-ban

In 1976 there was a heatwave like the one we are witnessing today in southern England. I had begun the second year of my advertising career that year and it was at this point that I realised just how glamourous an industry it was: I received a free T-Shirt from one of the clients of McCann Erickson for whom I worked, the National Water Council, encouraging everyone in the UK to “save water”.  Mine had the then TUC leader, Len Murray, embossed on the front encouraging me to do just that. (I don’t quite see how this helped save water and is one of the reasons the T-shirt shop in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest place on Earth, shut down after only two weeks).

1976 (or 4673 if you were in Shanghai) had James Callaghan as Prime Minister from April; West Indian cricketer, Michael Holding had match figures of 14-149 against England at the Oval; Southampton beat Manchester United one-nil in the shock result of the FA Cup Final, Franz “Bulle” Roth created the same winning score-line for Bayern Munich in their third successive European Cup Final; in June of that year the “Cod War” (see what they did there?) between Iceland (the country, not the shop where “mum’s gone to”) and Great Britain ended (this was of huge personal relief as I was on stand-by and had worn a sou’wester through much of April and May); and the heatwave persisted between 22nd June and 16th July, instigating this need to save water.

One of the thoughts of the “Save Water” campaign was to bath with a friend. This threw up so many social problems:  If you like, every evening, at bath-time, to re-create sinking the Bismarck, and you want to play the Kenneth More role, you do not want someone the other end of the bath acting as the French coastline; if you’re sharing with a member of the opposite sex, you have the dilemma of choosing between Mr Matey and Miss Matey bubble bath; if you like the radio on during bath-time, remember, not everyone likes Wagner and worst of all, if you’re sharing a bath with someone with a bladder control problem, what Archimedes had as his eureka moment, you’ll have as your urethra moment.

On the plus side, we all learned that drought wasn’t spelled with a “W”.

Can’t see for the trees

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pterdactyl

Living on the fourth floor of a block of flats as a kid didn’t exactly get you at one with nature. There were two breeds of birds which would circulate around the courtyard of my Balham block of flats: pigeons and sparrows.  I established (with the help of my Observer Book of Birds) that pigeons were the larger of the two species.  Anything else which might have inadvertently flown into my courtyard were regarded by me as smaller or larger pigeons.  A kite, would be a pigeon with a large wing-span, a pterodactyl would be regarded simply as unlucky for the other tenants if it chose to land on their Grobag.

Even with Tooting, Clapham and Wandsworth commons all nearby, I still had no tuition, and therefore comprehension, of the difference between trees. I remain incapable of determining between an oak and a Rocky Mountain Subalpine Fir (although, I seem to recall, there weren’t many of those springing up to great heights in Balham during the 60s and 70s thus emulating a Canadian skyline).

My most immediate access to nature was the communal pond in the front gardens of Du Cane Court where I lived; inside the pond swam very large goldfish. It was rumoured they weren’t actually goldfish, but coelacanths.  This would figure as, in my child opinion, many of the flats’ residents were like the walking dead, so having prehistoric fish in the ponds was logical.

My awareness of flowers is not dissimilar on a knowledge scale. I know what a daffodil and hyacinth look like as we had to grow them at primary school (I only once got a coloured certificate for first prize when I delegated the growing to a green-fingered uncle, I still can’t go past a garden centre without feeling guilty).  Living in near Epsom racecourse these days means I know what heather looks like.  I also know it has a smell similar to that of having peed yourself a week ago (not that that is a habit of mine), although this could be the people selling it in clumps?  (I assume the smell is the people selling it as you wouldn’t buy some given the lingering odour, and also, why would it be given the epithet “lucky”!?).

But it is birds where I most struggle and wish I had a greater knowledge. My “I-Spy Garden Birds” is still in pristine, almost virgin state.   I do have a garden now and have a bird table with many seed-filled containers hanging off it.  Whilst I know what a robin looks like (years of growing up watching Batman) I am still blissfully unware of the difference between a goldfinch and a collared dove; although I did see some tits once, but that’s only because the woman opposite can’t afford decent net curtains!

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!