Category: humour

I changed secondary schools in 1972.
As well as studying different syllabuses, I was introduced to different hobbies.
At my new school my new friends had two hobbies: discussing what girls were really like? And plane- spotting. (If the latter hobby continued into your thirties, you’d never find the answer to the former!)
Plane-spotting involved journeying to Heathrow Airport (pre-Piccadilly line extension and Heathrow Express). We took a train from Balham to Clapham Junction, another train to Feltham, a bus to the airport (where was Sherpa Tensing when you wanted him?) and finally onto the observation tower within the main terminal, where we stayed for what seemed like the length of time it’d take for a return journey to Brisbane.
My interest in planes had been soured in the summer of 1968 by having to drag my nervous (and very drunk – too much Campari) mother across the tarmac at Luton Airport to board a plane to fly to Majorca (she wasn’t content having gastro-enteritis at home!).
My previous experiences of transport-spotting were ticking off 88, 155 and 181 buses (and the occasional Green Line to make my hobby seem exotic to my new school buddies) as they trundled down Balham High Road.
I ticked these buses off on the back of a Basildon Bond envelope stolen from my Nan’s secret stationery store; plane-spotting meant having a pad the size of an Encyclopaedia Britannica.
I lasted two trips, the journey tired me out – I assumed this was jet lag?
However, to ingratiate myself with my new schoolmates, I invited them to the top of my block of flats, so they could spot their planes there.
And from that time on I’ve always been able to tell my Qantas from my El Al.

Until the mid-Seventies I thought Dr Crippen was the fifth Beatle.
In 1964 my dad took me to Madame Tussaud’s to see the newly-installed Beatles waxworks.
I was seven and looking forward to seeing the Fab Four.
The train and bus journey from Balham to north-west London was a familiar one as my paternal grandmother lived nearby, so a visit to Madame Tussaud’s killed two birds with one stone – not dissimilar to Dr and the late Mrs Crippen!
Having made our way round the exhibition I remember thinking to myself that George Harrison looked a bit like President Kennedy, when I realised it actually was JFK (who wasn’t the fifth Beatle, either) – the clue being he was on his own, not holding a guitar and wasn’t part of a pop-combo involving Eisenhower, Harry Truman or FDR.
Modern culture box ticked, dad suggested a trip downstairs to the Chamber of Horrors.
I’d watched the initial episodes of Dr Who (albeit from behind a sofa) so the thought of being face to face (or face to wax on this occasion) with a selection of poisoners didn’t fazed me.
Except it did later that evening, as I couldn’t sleep thinking the likes of Crippen, Haigh and Christie were in the next flat! I’ve never had nightmares like it – except when I’d drunk Newcastle Brown Ale mistaking it for Virol.
It took several decades before I visited the Chamber again, in comparison, Hitler seemed quite innocuous; probably because he wasn’t wearing glasses like Crippen or Christie?

During the evening of December 24th 1978, it snowed in Balham.
It wasn’t until after I’d sung the last verse of “Hark, the herald angels sing”, and stepped into a scene from a Bing Crosby film, that I realised the change in the weather.
For a Nano-second it looked idyllic, until I realised that my transport home at one o’clock in the morning to Carshalton, was my 400cc motorbike.
The trains had long stopped running, plus my mother had warned me that travelling on the night bus was how you caught VD, so motorbike, that evening sponsored by Captain Oates, it was.
I immediately regretted not asking Santa for a John Curry annual rather than the Barry Sheene one I’d requested at the Balham Co-op earlier that month.
This was the winter of discontent, an appropriate noun as I anticipated the slowest motorbike ride ever. However, going along the relatively flat Balham High Road was fine until I reached Church Lane, which, at that moment in time, looked like the top of the ski jump at Garmisch-Partenkirchen!
I clung to my bike like Marcel Marceau fighting against an invisible wind, to the bottom, to Amen Corner (famous for its joke shop, which seemed decidedly inappropriate that evening).
From there on it’s flat and got back on my bike, thinking it must already be Easter!
I arrived back safely, only to face the return journey the next day.
I have yet to get the feeling back in many of my five extremities!

As an eight-year-old, at Christmas, I believed there were two ways I could get drunk – like my relatives.
The first was Pimm’s:
My auntie, who also lived in our Balham flats, whilst being sponsored by Embassy before they ventured into supporting snooker and darts, would have bottles of virtually everything alcoholic in her flat except potcheen (and she didn’t have that because of her allergic reaction to potatoes).
It was tradition on Christmas evening to go to my auntie’s and, whilst everyone else got Pimm’s, I had a glass full of half the contents of the greengrocers opposite the flats, lots of lemonade, a tiny umbrella, as used by The Borrowers, but not a sniff of Pimm’s.
The second route, I believed, was with the help of the mandatory Christmas box of chocolate liqueurs.
However, after eating a third, I’d already began to feel nauseous. Given that you need to eat 700 grams (that’s fourteen Picnics!) to get one shot of liqueur, I’d have had to have eaten one anti-emetic tablet every time I’d tuck into a Tia Maria Bounty (never did quite learn the names).
A consequence of this lack of alcoholic intake meant I remained stone-cold sober, although often felt sick and burped a lot courtesy of more than enough chocolate and a surfeit of lemonade!
A third route could have been with Advocaat, but I didn’t like the taste of “Snowballs”, having massive doubts about the colour and felt the texture was like that of blancmange which was past its sell-by date.
So, needing to go to meetings saying, “my name is Michael and I think I have a problem”, was never necessary as an eight-year-old!

The nights are drawing in and with that the advent of cold weather.
I look back to my childhood in 1960s south-west London and wonder why I never had hypothermia more frequently?
My winter attire was a mac (I’ve seen thicker veils) with a belt which, when my mother put it on me, acted as a tourniquet; a yellow and black school scarf which itched so much it was like having Scarlet Fever permanently; and gloves, which were attached to a long loop of elastic, taken, I think, from my Nan’s knickers as she coincidentally never left her flat during winter. I refused to wear a balaclava as I found the thought of messing up my hair abhorrent and one of the major reasons I never joined any terrorist organisations.
Everything was marked “Michael Richards Class 7” and all this whilst wearing shorts! Captain Oates had more protection!
Nowadays there are so many German-sounding layers of clothing to keep you dry, warm and to cheat the wind. I was not allowed to wear such things as my Nan thought there was a danger I’d look like Himmler. Given his uniform was made by Hugo Boss, I fear she may have missed a trick; still, I enjoyed the sanatoria which were located by the seaside!

I remember vividly the first Pippa Dee party I ever attended.
My mother would throw such parties for her friends in our Balham flat.
The invitation was never officially extended to me as I’d have been sent to bed earlier after a mug of warm milk, a chocolate digestive and above the legal limit dose of Gripe Water (I can never drink Ouzo now without conjuring up scary bedtime stories).
I can recollect entering a lounge through a fug of Embassy cigarettes, the bouquet of Blue Nun and witnessing rather a lot of Innoxa make-up to see several women holding up Baby Doll negligées.
The nights were drawing in and my practical, eight-year-old brain, calculated that the length of this garment wasn’t practical and probably wouldn’t have been for the guests’ daughters’ Barbies.
My stay (before I could be offered a fag or a sip of Black Tower from a glass procured courtesy of the local Esso garage) was short-lived and my return to my bedroom was threatened with less Gripe Water the subsequent evening!
I’m assuming that Pippa Dee parties were replaced with Ann Summers parties – with even shorter negligées, although probably more fire retardant?
Whatever happened, a Baby Doll night dress nor a vibrating rabbit could never replace a container which kept food fresh. But then, there’s nothing sexy about a Tupperware box and certainly wouldn’t make you smile quietly to yourself!