How Did All This Happen?

My dad returned to the car and immediately went to use the lighter. When it didn’t move, he used his strength to pull it. The internal coil unravelled and the lighter fell apart.

‘Have you been using this?’ my dad asked.

I tried to explain it wasn’t my fault, but due to the burnt tongue I just said, ‘Ummn dun nooo.’

My dad looked at me, and I knew that he knew I had broken it. He looked me in the eye for a moment, sighed and simply said, ‘I liked that lighter.’

Then we drove home. I loved that car because it always reminded me of my dad’s forgiveness and that ‘things’ don’t matter. People do. Even if those people can’t talk due to their own stupidity.

CHAPTER 3 (#u09671441-da0a-50d6-bbc5-05f0c2624236)

A BOY LEARNING ADULT LESSONS (#u09671441-da0a-50d6-bbc5-05f0c2624236)

It was a sunny day early in the summer of 1974 and we all went for a family day out to the swimming baths in Winsford, where the pool was outside. These days, the concept of having an outdoor swimming pool in the north of England would seem crazy, and the fact that it is no longer there perhaps proves that such a venture would be like having a ski slope in the desert (I know they do in Dubai, but they cheat). However, my childhood seems to have been full of sunny days, and we spent many an afternoon at Winsford’s outdoor swimming baths.

As you entered the swimming pool, you were immediately struck by the brightness of it all. The diving board was painted red, and the bottom of the swimming pool was painted pale blue, which always gave the impression of freshness. There was a large pool housing the diving board, and it was a rite of passage one day to jump off the top. On this particular day – I would have been no more than seven – I had not reached the top, although I had gone halfway and was still edging up slowly. There was a shallow children’s swimming pool at the end, beyond which was a small shop where you could buy sweets.

It was here that I saw a friend from school. He had on a scuba mask and was playing in the children’s pool. We spoke for a while before I went back to the base my mum and dad had set up amongst the tables and benches, and where I knew there would be an endless supply of sandwiches and drink. My mum has always possessed the ability to make more sandwiches than she has bread. I know that defies logic, but it’s true. It’s a mum thing that they can just do. I think the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand can probably be explained by Mary making sardine sandwiches.

I was sitting with my family when I noticed a man run and dive into the pool fully clothed. Whilst everybody else was playing, I couldn’t take my eyes off the man under the water, as he seemed to be swimming furiously towards the other side.

Suddenly, he emerged from the water holding a small figure that I immediately recognised as my friend. The lifeguards came running over and the pool immediately began to empty, so that I had a clear, uninterrupted view of the proceedings unfolding in front of me.

In a panic, one lifeguard tried to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while simultaneously another guard tried to administer CPR. Both were working hard, but they appeared to counteract each other. It seemed like only seconds before the sound of a siren could be heard. An ambulance man entered the scene carrying a holdall, striding with the authority of somebody who knew what he was doing. He was tall and wearing a white unbuttoned shirt, black trousers and had black, greased-back hair.

He immediately took control of the situation, picking my friend up by his right ankle and holding him upside down with one arm. Water gushed from his open mouth. But my friend’s body hung listless. Dead. The ambulance man then placed him on the ground with the least degree of ceremony conceivable and shook his head.

The body was carried away under a blanket. The lifeguards seemed just to be standing in shock, while families began to look for little children, holding them tighter as they left than they had when they arrived. I don’t recall there being hysteria or panic after the event, just a sense that something terrible had happened. I saw a woman being led away in tears, and everybody seemed to move slowly and with purpose. The ambulance man had made it clear that there was little point in trying to do anything. It was over.

I understood that my friend was dead, and I knew what ‘dead’ meant, but I couldn’t fully comprehend all that I had seen. Then I noticed that, for the first time in my life, the main pool was empty. I had never seen it empty, as we had never managed to get in before the crowds. But now the surface was as smooth as glass, and nobody appeared to want to penetrate its calm.

As the ambulance drove away with my friend’s body, I felt the overwhelming urge to break the stillness of the moment. Perhaps in an attempt to recreate normality, to return the pool to a place of joy and not a place of fear and death, I ran and dived into the water. As I was in the air, I remember feeling excited at the prospect of being the only person in the whole of the swimming pool.

I broke through the surface, and my breath left me. The water was like ice; colder than it had been moments earlier, and colder than I had ever felt before.

I surfaced and scrambled up the steps before the coldness overwhelmed me, snuggling into a towel and my mother’s arms. I should never have dived in; I could never have made things normal by doing so and, as the coldness entered my bones, a coldness that was not just generated by water temperature, I knew I had made a mistake. But I couldn’t help myself. I had needed to stop being passive; I needed to stop being a witness. I had needed to stop standing still, even if it did result in me sitting in a towel trying to warm up from a cold that I don’t think has ever really thawed.

At school the following week we had a special assembly in which the headmistress told us to pray for my friend. He was not a close friend – he was one of a bunch of mates – but I remember him being cheeky and funny. I also remember him being held up lifeless and dead. Apparently, he had decided to snorkel in the big pool against his mum’s wishes and had got his leg caught in the steps underwater. People had seen him, but as he had a mask on, they had assumed he was just snorkelling. The man who had dived in had noticed the boy had not moved for some time. It was said he was already dead when he was pulled out of the pool.

My friend Clive told me his mother went to the funeral, and that our friend had been buried in a white coffin. I was seven years old, and I had seen death close up for the first time. It didn’t really scare me; I knew that one day it would be coming for me. I just wanted to put it off for as long as I could. At least get to an age when I would not be buried in a child’s white coffin.

Most kids play games where you count to 10 when you get shot and then you are alive again. I didn’t play those games very often after that day. I knew dead meant dead, no matter how long you counted for.

I have to say that, despite gaining a sense of mortality, the experience did not stop me thinking I was indestructible. I don’t know if young girls feel the same way or if it’s the result of reading too many comic books where heroes have super-powers, or if it’s the genetic requirement of potentially one day having to hunt or go to war that makes boys assume they will bounce rather than break. If you have ever been in a family centre where they have climbing frames and a ball pool, you will know what I mean. Little girls play and enjoy the colourful surroundings. Boys fly everywhere, and if they have not fallen off everything in the first 20 minutes they have not had a good time.

I was eight years of age and playing football on a field that we called the orchard. The sun was shining and we were getting to play out longer as spring was turning into summer, with the promise of light nights. Beside the patch of grass on which we were playing there was a fence, which I suppose would have been about eight feet high. Behind the fence there was a private garden full of trees. None of us had ever seen these trees bear fruit, but for some reason the area had become known as the orchard.

Ten minutes into the game, one of the boys kicked the ball and it flew over the fence. I volunteered to do the risky job of fetching it, thinking in my eight-year-old mind that I would be a brave hero if I got the ball back: a cross between Steve Austin and Evel Knievel.

I climbed the fence and jumped down to the other side. I ran quickly to get the ball so that I was not shot by the person who lived in the house – nobody to my knowledge was ever shot, but if you are eight years of age and on an adventure you may as well believe you might get shot for the sake of the excitement. It’s either that, or the possibility of being eaten by a dragon.

I retrieved the ball and kicked it back to my friends. I then began to scale the metal wire of the fence that surrounded the orchard, until I reached the top. The fence was made of hardwire, which was spiky at the top. I don’t actually remember what happened next, but I do recall the decision to jump the eight feet or so down to the ground.

Due to the fashions of the time, I was wearing flares that were so wide that the law of gravity would have allowed me to float down had I chosen to do so. However, I decided to jump, and the flares got caught on the spikes and made me fall the entire way: the first, but not the last, time I fell victim to fashion.

I woke up in hospital. I had damaged my kidneys to the extent that the doctors warned my mum and dad I may need a transplant. As it transpired, my kidneys were actually only bruised, and the doctor suggested I was lucky because, for a boy of my age, I had particularly strong stomach muscles: clearly, all of those obsessive sit-ups had not actually been wasted. I think it was perhaps the only time when something I had done alone in my bedroom had proved to be of any use whatsoever.

It was during this time, in Leighton Hospital near Crewe, that I recall for the first time being able to make people laugh. Living in Winsford and surrounded by the people who had been displaced from Liverpool meant that many on the estate sought to hold on to their Liverpool identity in the most obvious way possible: their accent. Similar to second-and third-generation Irish people in America, who become more Irish than the Irish, many on my estate became more Scouse than they would have been had they never left. I basically grew up around people all trying to ‘out-Scouse’ each other, and this made my accent extremely strong.

Many people think it is strong today, but it has become much more comprehensible with age as I have learnt the importance of being able to communicate in a way that allows people to understand you – not something you immediately comprehend as a child. So, when I was eight years of age and lying in a hospital bed, I became somewhat of a source of entertainment. One particular nurse would affectionately call me ‘Baby Scouse’ and would keep on asking me to say things for her amusement; things that more often than not would involve the word ‘chicken’. There is just something about the construction of that word which makes it sound funny when said in a Scouse accent. The nurse would even bring other nurses to my bed, so that I could say the chosen sentence of the day. It would be something like: ‘Why did the chicken cross the road? How do I know? I’m not a chicken!’ Two chickens in one sentence – comedy gold – and the nurses would start their shift with a giggle.

In some respects, this might sound inappropriate behaviour by nursing staff. These days there would be an enquiry, and I would seek compensation for the trauma and victimisation, as well as the anguish that has meant I can no longer eat chicken. However, I not only enjoyed the attention, I also enjoyed the sound of making other people laugh. And not only other people, but strangers, people who knew nothing about me till I said something funny. That sensation has never left me, and I feel blessed that it is now the way I make my living. The other thing that has been with me all my life is the enjoyment of entertaining nurses. However, that is not for this book. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Pass the chicken!

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_d1594c0b-3086-5486-84c4-50d13c8047b2)

SCHOOL AND A FRIEND CALLED KIERAN (#ulink_d1594c0b-3086-5486-84c4-50d13c8047b2)

When I was 10 we left Winsford and moved to a brand new council estate in Runcorn. I joined Murdishaw West Primary School, along with Carol, while Eddie and Kathy went to Norton Priory Comprehensive, a 20-minute bus ride away.

Eddie at this point was very close to leaving school anyway, which suited him, as he hated it. He left as quickly as he could at the age of 15, which is quite ironic in many respects because, as I write this, having already completed an art degree in his forties, Eddie is now studying for his GCSEs in English and Maths to enable him to train to become a teacher. Prior to that, his adult life had been spent as a professional footballer playing for Chester and Tranmere, and as a welder, both careers fitting my image of him more than standing at the front of a classroom. But my own career change, too, shows that anything is possible.

Kathy, on the other hand, did well at school and left to train as a nursery nurse, knowing straight away that it was her vocation. She has now spent much of her working life looking after young children in nurseries and schools. I’ve visited her current school a few times to do an assembly for the children, and it is obvious why many people choose such a profession. Kids can be wonderful things – particularly when you can say goodbye to them at 3.30 p.m. Carol also went back to university and gained a degree in Community and Youth Studies, which led her to working at the young offender’s institute at Appleton Thorn, the former open prison our dad had been in. She now works as my PA, which is probably more challenging at times than working with delinquents.

For me, a new school was always an opportunity to make new friends and have fun. Playing football is a great way to make new allegiances, particularly if you are quite good, and I settled into my new school very quickly. It reflected the estate that it served: it was new, fresh and seemed to suggest potential in the very fabric of its walls. The classrooms were bright, and it was the first time that a teacher had a real influence on me.

Mr Jameson was our classroom teacher. Like all junior school teachers, he was charged with teaching us everything, from spelling and painting to world geography and maths. He also ran the school football team. Primary and junior school teachers at that time were like the Google of their age; they had to have an answer for everything, and Mr Jameson managed it all with a degree of calm control.

In one game, we played a nearby school and we won the game convincingly. Mr Jameson’s unruffled demeanour was notable in its contrast with the lunatic teacher from the other school, who stood on the sidelines screaming till his face went red. We almost felt bad for the lads we were playing against but, as they were from the next estate, it was our duty to hammer them.

After the game, we shook hands and did the obligatory three cheers for the opposition, which I always thought was good but belonged more in a rowing club than between teams from two council estates. I recall Mr Jameson speaking quietly afterwards to the opposing teacher, whose face quickly cooled from red to a pinkish shade of pale. None of us heard what was said, but for a day or so around the school it was rumoured that Mr Jameson had said, ‘Sorry you lost, but you’re a prick.’

However, what made him have an impact on me was that he recognised that not only did I like to play football and do all the other things that boys do, but I also enjoyed writing poetry and stories, and he would often allow me to continue working on a story long after the rest of the class had moved on to something else. I always valued this encouragement, and he made me feel confident, even if at times my spelling left us all confused. Every child going through the primary school system deserves someone like Mr Jameson to give them a hint that they can be something more than they can imagine.

It was good to go back to the school on the day that he retired, by then as headmaster. In the short time I was there, he made me the school football team captain, encouraged my imagination, and broke up the occasional fights I was involved in. He basically gave me confidence, and that has been an invaluable thing throughout my life (although, to be honest, I’ve often had much more confidence than I have had ability at times).

If there was ever a job I think I would have liked, it is that of a teacher in a junior school. I think those who work in education are some of the best of people we have. They have often chosen to take the opportunity to shape lives and influence our society rather than pursue a better-paid profession. I accept there are a fair few who fall into it because they partied through university and didn’t know what else to do or couldn’t get any other job. However, in my life, I know certain teachers changed the way I saw the world, and that cannot be said as readily about many people I have met as an adult.

I can still name the teachers who had a real influence on me:

1. Mr Jameson: for the reasons stated above.

2. Miss F: primary-school teacher who had a Spitfire, long blonde hair, lived in Sandbach and was, no doubt, my first crush, but as I was only six I didn’t act on it.

3. Miss J: comprehensive-school teacher on whom I definitely had a crush from the age of 13. I did act on this, but not till I left sixth form, details of which will not feature on these pages, but for which I shall always be grateful.

4. Mr Hilton: comprehensive-school PE teacher who put a great deal of time and effort into the sport at our school. He made me the captain of my secondary-school football team. (We didn’t have any other sports teams. There was once a lesson in rugby taken by another teacher, but a few broken collar bones and a fight later, that ended.) He also took me to all the town team games, and that eventually lead to a trial for the county under-15s team.

There were two games to be played that day, and I was put in the second group. We stood in the snow for ages till it was time to play, and then those supposedly watching didn’t notice for ten minutes that one team only had nine men. I scored and had one of my best games ever. Mr Hilton assured me I was probably the best player on the pitch, and as he was not prone to empty praise I was very encouraged by his comments. Everyone knew that getting into the county team was the first real step to being scouted by a club – it was the first vital step in your dream becoming a reality.