Goodbye Tony

This just about sums the past ten years up - and what a tune!
(needs speakers)

This is David Gest

Did anybody see this on ITV-1 on Sunday night? I watched it last night and was struck by a few things.

1) When it was filmed, he was at the height of his notoriety from celebrity jungle w@nkshaft so making a show about him sounded like a good idea at the time.

2) Now it is actually out, everybody is wondering who the hell he is again, with good reason, because apart from being married to Liza Minelli, there is no backstory for him.

3) The show itself is completely disingenuous. By setting him up as some kind of celebrity, it filmed him attending various photo-shoots dressed as a pearly king and a polo-player. What the show didn't tell you was that these were to promote the very show he is filming!!! Even at the "soul show" he was promoting, he had to rope in his mates from the jungle show to announce him and add some "credibility" to the whole enterprise.

I'll say that again. He had to bring in people from "I'm a celebrity" in the jungle to add credibility.

4) The smell of bitter desperation hangs around him and the show like stale fish. Being a very minor celeb, famous but not famous enough, well off but nowhere near rich enough, must be some kind of circle of hell if this is anything to go by. It's like a real-life version of Extras.

When he went to the premier of "Dreamgirls" with a backing singer he pestered for a date. I don't think she realised it was a date. When they got there, he signed some extremely unflattering photographs of himself, and then he left her in the lurch, ran over to Beyonce to say hi, came back, asked the film crew if they got it then dragged this poor bemused woman into the film. When he kissed her afterwards The look on her face was akin to an antelope being bitten by a crocodile in a nature film.

5) As to his previous marriage which was glossed over and the only reason why anybody would watch this hagiography for a nobody, my astute wife nailed it - "If I was married to him, I'd beat his puny ass too".

6) I haven't even started on the size and number of pill bottles in the bathroom and the fact that his stylist uses mascara to paint over his bald spot.

I watched expecting a car crash but halfway through realised that it's not even that. It's the moribund life of a not-very-famous-in-the-first-place man desperately trying to eke out some kind of reward and meaning from the fag end of a spectacular un-career.

The only thing sadder than him (and possibly me for watching) are the people who are genuinely entertained by this kind of thing. And maybe that's the biggest mystery of all.

Behold your future

Idiocracy is the latest film from Mike Judge (Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill, Office Space). It stars Luke Wilson as an average army soldier who is coerced into taking part in an experiment where he is cryogenically frozen and awakens 500 years in the future.

The not-so-outlandish premise is that in that time, the Human race, fed a diet of energy drinks, candy and mind-numbing media, have become so stupid and imbecilic that he is now the most intelligent man alive.

Judge displays his usual razor-sharp wit and eye for detail in the depiction of a society created entirely by Big Brother contestants. They speak in a mix of rap, slang, catchphrases and advertising slogans. Anybody who has spent some time amongst 13-year-olds recently will think “so what?”

Clothes resemble Grand Prix drivers uniforms, covered in advertising, The president of the USA, President Camacho, only has the job because he is Smackdown champion, The highest rating TV show is called “Ow, My Balls!” and the most popular movie “Ass” is exactly that. Two hours of a bare backside on screen. The most brilliant observation, on the juxtaposition of sex, advertising and consumables, Starbucks is now a coffee serving brothel.

Wilson is one of the best “everyman” actors around and doesn’t really get out of second gear here but the role doesn’t demand him too. Maya Rudolph is underused as his love interest, a cryogenically frozen prostitute called Rita, and Dax Shepard provides solid support as Wilson’s lawyer and later friend, Frito.

Satire is where Judge works best and some of his targets are bull’s-eyes. Like Office Space, it runs out of steam two thirds through and limps over the finish but it’s an enjoyable ninety minutes all the same.

It was him all along...

As well as fessing up to the 9/11 plots, It has been revealed that Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed has also confessed to the following:-

Sinking the Titanic

Spitting in my Parmo on at least three on consecutive occasions

starting the Fire of London

Driving the White punto in the paris tunnel

Dressing up as the loch ness monster for photographic fraud

making hoax phone calls to fire stations

Convincing Ricky Gervais not to make any more episodes of The Office

buying white lightning for 14 year old kids

hiding my keys

failing to flag for Chesterfields "goal" in the FA Cup Semi Final of 1997

Writing and directing Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

Murdering Simba's father in "The Lion King"

Secretly fathering Amy Barlow

being the chairman of the UEFA panel that decided that Newcastle should be awarded the prestigious Intertoto Plaque.

He played Batman in Batman and Robin opposite Arnold Schwarzennegger

Chapter One – Here I Go Again (On My Own)

Below is the first chapter of a novella set in Stockton in the 80s and today, that will feature in First XI.

Enjoy...

Colin opened his eyes but it was only marginally lighter than when they were closed. He strained his neck muscles to a higher angle to see over the pillow. A pair of wide, red LCD eyes stared back at him. He strained further and saw the dreaded 6: next to them. He shifted his weight carefully so as to slip out from under the duvet softly and not disturb the large warm mound next to him. He looked back anxiously as he tiptoed to the door but the mound settled itself without any further movement. He edged out of the door toward the bathroom barely registering the loud fart that emitted from the mound.

Colin turned on the bathroom light which blinded him momentarily with its stark intensity. He preferred the low intensity energy-saving bulbs that dotted the house. It was almost the law now according to the media and the government and while he was less bothered about climate change and the Environment than your average marmoset but when Wilkinsons were selling them three for a pound then he became part of the solution. That said, you did need one a light that worked in the toilet. Even David Attenborough would have to admit that there was no virtue to be had in pissing in the dark.

He showered, toweled himself off and filled the sink with warm water while he lathered up to shave. He shaved quickly with his latest space-age razor. Colin didn't need to shave every day. He was one of those lucky lads who hadn’t reached full maturity until he was well into his teens and didn't fully appreciate this money saving gift until later in life, if ever. You paid a high price, literally, for a chest and chinful of hair.

He did like buying space-age razors advertised by football superstars however. Money was tight. Always tight but he allowed himself this one extravagance. All the whiz-bang gadgets, aerofoils, vibrating buttons, superfluous blades at odd angles, all secretly thrilled him. "If its good enough for David Beckham" he always thought to himself. Good enough to have a permanent red stubble rash anyway. After drying himself off fully, he looked at his reflection in the mirror. A 38- year-old man with a reddish face, steely blue eyes and a receeding, graying channel of hair, in the middle of his head, the grain leading away from him. If Colin had been living in 1957 then his hairstyle would be ultra fashionable. As it was 50 years later, he wished he looked less like a young Mike Baldwin, from Coronation Street, and more like his grandson, Jamie. He didn’t know the actor who played him but he did have an impressive mop of hair. Like all men, Colin was sensitive about his receeding hairline. Even more so when one of the warehousemen at work said he had a “V-neck” hairstyle. That was the first of the now, frequent jibes. “Baldwin” was another and he was glad that Steve Maclaren, the previous Middlesbrough manager, had left his post recently because the chant “Two Steve Maclarens” to the tune of “Guantanamera”, used to ring out from between the massed stocks of chocolate bars, crisps and soft drinks when he passed through the warehouse.

Colin edged himself into the spare bedroom at the front of the house. He always laid out his uniform the night before. Despite his laid-back attitude, he was quite fastiduous and always liked everything to be neat and tidy. Embroided navy polo shirt? check. Black slacks? check. Black Nike trainers? check. Calvin Klein boxers? check. Homer Simpson socks? check.

He also didn't want to move around the main bedroom in the dark for fear of waking the mound. Not worth his while. Not worth his while at all.

Colin edged downstairs and into the kitchen and flipped the kettle’s ON switch. It was already filled as part of his routine from the night before, this saved him valuable seconds. He went through to the front room and opened the curtains in front of the patio doors that faced onto their back garden. The threadbare state of the lawn reflected the carpet. Almost a mirror image at times of tuft and bald patches, with two plastic chairs and a flyaway plastic table secured with a brick resting on the middle of it. Colin knew scams when he saw them and mentally saluted the man who first moved his rickety old chairs outside and had the cheek to call them “garden furniture”. There was plenty of it on the estate – bikes, cars, the odd fridge. Not quite what Alan Titchmarsh would have in mind he was sure.

The grey semi-dawn that greeted him over the back, razorwire lined fence was the same colour and brightness as the curtains he had just pulled back. He closed them then opened them again to prove to himself that his mind wasn't playing tricks on him. But no, the translucent grey curtains didn't block out the light at all. They just limply hung around, their presence unnoticed unless you took particular care to look, like an old man in Ladbrokes the day before pension day.

It had been windy the previous night, not just in the bedroom, and the lawn had attracted a smattering of damp brown leaves.

Colin had always liked Novembers. His birthday was on November 4th and he always combined his celebration with Guy Fawkes Night so it felt like two birthdays. Like so much else in life, it was better, or seemed better, when he was younger. Novembers provided the odd burst of excitement early on before a long fallow period, generally building up to something or somebody else more exciting elsewhere. Colin was definitely one of life’s Novembers. Unfortunately for him, and everybody else, it was January.

The worst of all the months. As far away from Christmas as can be, the nearest event of note being Valentine’s day, everybody skint or cutting down on tabs and booze and making you feel like a lightweight or a turncoat if you hadn’t. Colin didn’t really care less but he did feel the pinch. The January squeeze was useful camoflauge for the tight and poor alike.

He poured the hot water carefully into his favourite Middlesbrough FC mug. Slightly chipped on one side and with the handle repaired where it had once broken, it still proudly boasted "SUPER BORO - 1st Division 1988/89" in faded red letters on the front. He always tried to keep enough water in the kettle to reboil it, in case he needed it to thaw the windscreen of his van.

He took his tea into the front room – he would never have referred to it as a sitting room or, heaven forbid, a lounge - and sat down to enjoy his precious ten minutes of Colin time. The ten minutes at the start of the day, the ten minutes before he had to leave for work, the ten minutes he shared with his mug and his breakfast bar - Fruit and Fibre today - when for just ten blissful minutes he was once again the master of his own destiny and therefore, the universe.

He exercised his power wilfully, flipping between GMTV, Charlie and Lola on Cbeebies and Georgie Thompson on Sky Sports News. Those precious minutes that seperated 6:50am and 7:00am, the minutes filled with last nights goals and reaction, pre-school cartoons and the daily worship at the altar of celebrity, those ten minutes could almost certainly be described as the best, most positive minutes of Colin's day. They were his and his alone.

With mournful inevitability, Mickey Mouse's oversized hands pointed to both 7 and 12 so Colin finshed his tea, carefully deposited the mug on top of precarious pile of crockery that grew from the sink and fastened his fleece up to his neck before he went outside of the house.

Their semi-detached home didn’t have a driveway so he always had to park the van outside of the house. This was out of the necessity of security as much as convenience. Tilery was a rough estate in a rough town and even though Colin and his family were known on the estate, it wasn’t above the malice or general boredom of a pair of little chavs to smash a window or pry open the back doors to see if they could have anything away. He used to himself when he was their age.

The van always took too long to warm up when he started it in the winter. He often resolved to rise 15 minutes earlier to allow himself the luxury of starting the van and letting the diesel engine run for a while to warm it up. The trouble was that this would take about 15 minutes and would interfere with his precious Colin time, so he made do with the standard issue warmth of his company fleece instead.

Colin was a delivery driver and vending machine operative for Loughran and Sons vending services limited, Stockton-on-Tees.

It took about 20 minutes to drive to the industrial unit where they were based by which time the heater had woken up and was beginning to heat the cab just as he parked and turned the engine off. Colin was too poor for irony so it was filed under ‘Bloody Typical’ – Teesside’s unofficial motto.

Colin had been with the firm since 1987 when he was 18 and was good friends with Paul Loughran, the eldest son of the owner, John Loughran. They had known each other at school and played for the same football and hockey teams. They got on well and Paul put in a good word for Colin with his dad to secure him the job. Competition was tough and Colin was grateful to get a job of any kind at all. Unemployment was in five figures in the town at the time and the local council would, unbelievably, advertise this figure on a hoarding above the High Street. Updated weekly, some people wondered if this was Marxist dogma run amok or a flawed but well-meaning attempt to show the miniscule progress being made in reducing the figure in the Borough. Most observers thought it was just stupid.

Paul wasn't the sharpest tool in the draw but he was a grafter. He knew his limitations but he got his head down and worked hard. Colin was the opposite. He was smart enough without being intellectual and whilst he had some naturally ability his overriding trait was laziness. If some people can be described as driven, Colin was a passenger. Intent to drift through the week from Monday to Friday with overtime on Saturdays, intent to drift through life with no particular plan or goal. So long as he had enough to go out on a weekend and a week in Spain every summer, then life was enough.

When Colin started with the firm he and Paul were both drivers and stockers. Driving the vans and produce round a set list of companies with Loughran vending machines. They had to check the stocks within the machines, replace out-of-date stock with fresh, total up the cash received by the machines and remove excess so that all the machines had was a maximum £20 float in change so in the not-so-rare event that they were knocked off, there wasn’t much cash for them to get away with. The work was easy enough and got you around various Teesside workplaces and several opportunities to chat up the numerous receptionists and cafeteria girls you would inevitabely come across.

Paul worked a similar round to Colin but was more punctual and conscientious. He had to be, as the eldest son in the family run business. His younger brother Gary was still at school and his experience of the business was limited to coming in on a Saturday, riding on the forklift in the warehouse and hanging out in the office, enjoying the perk of being the cute bosses son, which allowed a seemingly never-ending supply of chocolate bars and cans of pop, in the days when the worst they would do to you was give you excess wind.

Paul was also diligent and precise. It took longer for him to stock the machines, cash up, checking and double checking the take but he got their in the end. The added pressure of expectation, being the next in line to the Loughran throne drove him. Whether he liked it or not, he was the heir. “Appointed by god” his dad had told him, half in jest, whenever Paul had suggested an alternative career path. He now realised that it was best to keep these occasional thoughts to himself.

As well as learning at the sharp end of the job, Paul had the omnipresent John to advise, lecture, tell, cajole, bully, impart, show, suggest, persuade, threaten, and demonstrate the finer points of running the business. John was a mans man and patriarch before the term entered wider public use. Not that anybody who knew him would use the word anyway. John was suspicious of unnecessary syllabuls and those that used them. Once the youngest of seven children, now the youngest of four, John had begun work at the huge ICI plant at Wilton aged 15 and had not stopped since. John was that worst of self-made men, poorly educated and chippy with it, he displayed his disadvantages as a badge of pride. He was successful because of his ignorance, not despite it. His relative wealth and success insulated his insecurities and his reputation became his public armour.

He never had time for smart-alecs and baloney merchants and now he had the money to back his mouth up. His life view had prevailed and it was his duty to spread the creed. Education was a free babysitter until 16 and then he had new employees. The schools and the women did their job of preparing his workers whilst he did his of making sure that their was work for them.

Paul loved his father, as all sons do, but couldn’t bring himself to admit that he actually liked him. Aware he was in a losing competition with him since his birth, he realised that he was also in for a tough fight with his younger brother. Clearly his dad’s favourite, more for his close resemblance to him and his attitudes, Paul decided to plough the safe path of least resistance that was the firm ground of family succession. He suspected that Gary would be able to break out of the birth-to-grave cycle of the firm if he so wanted, a choice that had evaded him, so Paul began his arduous journey.

After finishing his rounds, he spoke to his dad about the days and weeks trade. Whenever he was able, John took some time out of his own schedule to teach him the finer details of the trade. They studied the firms books, orders, purchase ledgers and agreements. Paul learned about margins, cashflow, balances, perishable stock, rightoffs, trade discounts and lots of other words that washed over Colin in the shoptalk and the morning business reports like the surf washes over the pebbles on Saltburn beach.

Paul got Friday afternoons off to go to the local technical college and study for a business certificate. Although this went against John’s ingrained philosophy, he got a grant from the local Teesside Training and Enterprise Council for Paul and Colin to go. In fact, by writing this off against tax, John was actually making money from it. And if there was one thing he enjoyed more than disparaging education then it was getting one over on that very system.

While Paul went to the college to study, Colin found a better use for his sanctioned time off. He told people he had a regular appointment with his speculative investment consultant, Mr William Hill. It usually took them about 20 seconds to realise that he meant the bookmakers of the same name. He placed his regular weekend wagers of such varying degrees of complexity that a maths graduate would struggle to be able to fully explain the differences between a Yankee and a Canadian. Not that it mattered though because he had a 99.9% failure rate. The joke amongst the other gamblers who worked at Loughrans was that Colin’s luck was so bad that if he fell into a bucket of tits, he’d come out sucking on his thumb.

After this, it was onto the Garrick pub just off the High Street to drink and play pool with his pals. The pub was actually on Yarm Lane which joined the High Street opposite the renowned Swallow Hotel, where Larry Grayson had once stayed, no pun intended. This section was 100 yards long and contained two pubs, The notorious ‘Theatre’ being the other one, ‘Rileys’ 24-hour pool and snooker centre, two framing shops, the local office of the Evening Gazette newspaper, a minicab firm and no fewer than 15 kebab shops, takeaways, eateries and associated shithouses. At least you were guaranteed of being able to get a decent Parmo.

The Parmo was Teesside’s contribution to world cuisine. Short for Parmesan, the Parmo was invented in Middlesbrough in the 1970s. A flattened and grilled chicken breast, coated in bechemelle sauce and breadcrumbs then baked, comes in two sizes, large and regular, also known as a ladies Parmo which was a half portion. It was a phenomenal success and attained the same cultural significance that the deep fried Mars bar enjoys in Glasgow. It’s perverse popularity bolstered because it was so unhealthy. Only real men ate Parmo’s so the talk went.

Like most of the food served in Yarm Lane, the taste improved incrementally with the amount of lager drunk.

The average Friday for Paul saw him come down to the pub after he had finished his course and gone home for his tea. Later on, he would get the 62 bus to meet Colin and their other mates Bryan and Vic who had also been drinking with Colin since early afternoon. Although he had every reason to resent Colin for not attending the course and cribbing his notes from him, Paul was under no illusions that he was the straight man in the partnership and took it in good humour. Along with the nicknames. ‘Linford’, ‘Lightning’, or just plain, old ‘Daft C**t’. Paul had raised his objections to the last one on occasion after a few pints and got a swift backhander for his trouble. Whilst nursing his jaw he was told “Shuttup, daft C**t” so didn’t raise it again. Insult was literally added to injury. The worst thing you can do was react to a nickname and show people that it affected you but Paul could testify that one of Bryan Cooks straight rights was worse.

They preferred to play pool in The Garrick. Despite being over the road from a proper pool club, The Garrick had its advantages. The Hoffmiester was £1 a pint in the happy hour that started at five and lasted several more and the jukebox was stocked with the latest tracks from the likes of Rick Astley, Madonna and Whitney Houston, none of the old album crap that cropped up in some of the other places. It also had the best pool table in the whole of Stockton.

It was a regulation sized pool table but covered in a red beize. Even more unusual was that it had yellow and blue balls to complete the novelty. As well as this and the obligatory disco lights and TV, the walls unusually had a nod towards art-deco style. There were ones of European models looking moodily off into the middle distance, a picture of a locomotive that had failed to stop at a Paris station and ploughed right through the other end and down onto the street in 1899, and on the opposite wall was Colin’s favourite.

A black and white poster from the 1950’s which featured a young blonde French woman standing up on a big dipper at a fairground. Her skirt was billowing up as the dipper was about to descend at speed and you could see her knickers as a result. Apart from the fact that she was quite attractive, the up-skirt shot was Colin’s own fetish of choice.

Whenever the funfair came to town, he would loiter opposite the ride he dubbed the "white triangle". A row of 12 people would sit on a long bench. The bench was attached to an arm at the end of a circular pivot which would turn and force the bench sideways and upward, rocking back and forth, gently at first and then faster until the bench reached the top of the circle and then it swung back down to the bottom before repeating the process another four times. Every time it swung on a downward pass, gravity would take hold of the skirts, and more often than not he got a glimpse of the elusive "white triangle".

The lads knew the landlord, Davie, quite well. They turned out for the pub team in the Teesside and District Sunday League third division and entered the regular pool and darts competitions he would organise. Once a month, or when the mood took him, he would often let them in for a much-missed afternoon lock-in. This was when pubs had to shut after lunch and remain shut until teatime by law. The curtains, windows and doors had to remain tightly closed during the not-so-secret sessions that abounded in the town. 24-hour licensing is a mixed blessing to the country. Yes, you can get a pint at almost any time of the day or night depending on your circumstance and location but where’s the thrill of keeping the noise down and begging the landlord to let you OUT of a pub in mid afternoon so you could return to work?

They stayed in the Garrick until about 8pm before beginning their circuitous route of the many High Street pubs. Despite the close proximity of many eating venus, food was never a consideration for them until after closing time. "Eating's cheating" was Bryan's motto and it wasn’t difficult to see why. A ginger bear of a man, Bryan stood over six foot tall and must have tipped the scales at 16 stone. He had a barrel chest and a six pack stomach but this was a measure of capacity as opposed to description. If eating was cheating then he was the most dishonest man on Teesside. He was also a useful centre half, where the main attributes were height, strength and a violent disposition. Bryan was their colossus. A better player than his build and reputation suggested, his fondness of beer, cigarettes and takeaways had begun to take their toll and what little pace he had was beginning to deteriorate. A disciple of the one-legged school of defending – “nobody runs past you if they only have one leg”, he remained the only member of the team ever sent off for crunching into a member of the opposition during the warm-up before kick off.

They were playing a team from County Durham in the prestigious FA Durham Cup competition, like the FA cup for North East Sunday league teams. They hadn’t heard of the opposition but they looked a decent proposition before the kick off. They all had matching socks. One particular forward was the spitting image of Charlie Nicholas, the popular Arsenal forward of the time. Even down to an earing in his left ear and the Farrah Fawcett-style flick hairstyle.

This was compounded by wearing the hair long at the back in a tight wet perm. Every football team group photograph from the mid 80s has three or four members that looked like they could also have taken part in Crufts.

The Garrick’s back four had a conference between themselves and watching the opposition warm up confirmed their fears that anybody who was brave enough to turn out in the rough Durham Sunday leagues looking like that must be a bit useful and he was definitely quick. Whilst the teams were sorting themselves out and chatting before the referee emerged from the changing rooms Bryan tripped Peterlee’s answer to the “Cannonball Kid” and for good measure grinded his studs across his prone kneecap. When the referee emerged from the tin shed changing room he was faced with a scene from “The Wild Bunch”. A full-on, 30 man brawl in the centre circle witnessed by three kids who had stopped pulling wheelies on their BMX’s to watch the spectacle and an old man with a disinterested greyhound.

By the time the referee had established order and got a version of events, one of the subs had got changed quickly and taken Bry’s position in the heart of the defence whilst Davie managed to con(vince) the referee that Bry was only his assistant manager. Thus the team started with 11 players instead of 10 and went on to win 3-1. Bry got a month long ban and an £80 fine for his trouble but the lads had a whip round to cover it.

Vic was Bry’s polar opposite. Skinny, with a nervous disposition and standing only five foot six inches tall. He was the natural victim of the group. In fact the first contact they had with Vic Slack was when they used to pick on him at school. As well as general beatings, wedgies, and running at a pole, groin-first, each holding one of Vic's limbs, he was also a victim by proxy.

Before leaving school Bryan was the feared school bully. Even then, the lads liked to keep him onside, realising that a happy psychopath was a good psychopath but like a maladjusted gorilla kept in a garden shed then let loose in park full of noisy children, he could easily turn and they could find themselves in as much danger as any regular civilian. Colin, of course, had the most elegant and cunning solution. He and the others would grab Vic by the scruff of his Rawcliffes jumper and march him towards Bry shouting "Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice!" before pushing him into the bully and making good their escape. Sometimes they hung around to watch the inevitable but otherwise did the sensible thing and ran.

Time is said to heal all wounds and the time elapsed since his schoolday humiliations, coupled with Vic’s natural stupidity, timidity and comatose ego now meant he was a fully fledged member of the group. Albeit still the runt of the litter.

Paul and Colin were the same height and build but Colin was fair whereas Paul was swarthy and dark. Neither were in great shape but nor were they ever in danger of troubling Bryan for his heavyweight crown.

They drank up and left The Garrick to begin their Friday night route. They liked to start at the opposite end of the High Street from the pub to give themselves some fresh air and chance to check out the talent tottering around on its white stilletos.

They walked past the post office next to Barclays where Colin and Paul stopped to queue up outside the cash point to get their money for the night. £20 would generally cover it. Twenty years later, £20 would barely cover a round.

Bryan and Vic had their accounts with Lloyds and the Midland respectively so had to walk further to use their machines. People soon forget the sheer folly and inconvenience of not being able to use their cashcards in other machines. A party of four could have to walk half an hour to visit all the cash machines they needed to.

‘I had a new machine to fill today, mate’ Paul said while Colin was typing in his pin. 1969 was his year of birth and despite the banks advice, he wasn’t that good with remembering numbers so stuck with it. Unbeknownst to him, this was Paul’s pin number too for exactly the same reasons.

‘Oh aye, where?’

‘Only in The Waterfront!’

‘Never! Really?’

‘Aye. Went in there this morning and filled the tab machine upstairs. They’ve also got a Downing 11 series over the way from the cloak room just as you come in on the left. It’s in a storeroom so its just for staff at the minute. I asked them if they were going to bring it out for everyone but they didn’t know. I think they are on about doing food upstairs so they might lay off it for now’.

‘Cool. £30 out mate. Purple and Brown means we’re on the town!’

Their route took them to The Mulberry Tree at the opposite end of the High Street. The MulberryTree was a recently renovated pub with brand new monogramed windows and a bunch of crazy crap on the wall. It wasn’t an Irish themed bar but it had taken the "after the tornado" motif to heart. As a Guiness fan, Bryan had been to Ireland before and had reported back, with some surprise, that the pubs in Ireland were just normal pubs. No bicycles or tin baths hanging from the ceiling or roadsigns nailed to the wall, just grizzled old boys drinking the black stuff.

Before it became The Mulberry Tree, it was the North Eastern and it had a reputation for toughness and extreme violence, which in Stockton was an achievement and a selling point. Vic's uncle Tommy had actually died in the back bar from a mixture of alcoholism, nicotene addiction and possibly boredom. A lot of people died of natural causes in the town, booze, tabs and fighting included, but at least a quarter of those had just given up. This was before the days of Trisha Goddard and Jeremy Kyle’s morning Circus so after “This Morning” there was a big hole in the day before the pubs opened at three. Even this was too much for some people, like Tommy.

Despite this, Vic still drank in there partly because he liked it but also out of a sense of family loyalty. Being Tommy's nephew used to carry a little social cache within, and the odd free pint.

The boys had returned to drink there reluctantly. They had boycotted it for three months after the relaunch because it had been reopened by Kevin Keegan, the manager of Middlesbrough’s hated local rivals Newcastle United. Such acts of petulance might seem trivial to the outsider but in the North East, the intricacies, customs and rituals surrounding football and the rivalries between the various teams and supporters made the disparities between Iraqi Sunni’s and Shia’s look like the rules of Snakes and Ladders by comparison.

Fitzgeralds was next on the list, situated over the road from the Mulberry Tree, it was a strange bar full of lager lads and older real ale buffs enjoying the guest beers. The lads deliberately kept themselves on a leash in Fitzys because of 'Crusher'. Nobody knew his real name but Crusher was as tall as Bryan but with not an ounce of fat to spare. Shaven headed and with more than a passing resemblance to Popeye, it was rumoured that he had once killed a man in the ring and only a fool would put this reputation of martial prowess to the test. Fitzgeralds was alone in all of Stockton in that it was virtually guaranteed to be trouble free. The lads weren't fighters as a rule but they weren't above backing up their mouths on occasion. Especially Bryan. If it was going to kick off then Big Bry would be at the centre of it. Only the month before, they had been kicked out of The Mall, the biggest nightclub in the town, because Bry had smashed a stool round the head of a bloke he swore was looking at him "funny". The fact he had his back to him at the time was neither here nor there. After drinking up they turned left out of the door to head for the Royal Oak where Colin's grandad drank on his trips into town. If they had turned right they would have been at the Lambton Castle which was known as a lesbian bar. They never went in there as "even the pool table doesn't have balls" according to Bry.

After the Royal Oak, They continued down the High Street, past at least four charity shops. Stockton’s only growth industry. They turned left into an alleyway opposite the Victorian town hall to visit the Courtyard Hotel. This was Colin’s contribution to the crawl. The decor in the bar was dark but warm with old move posters advertising "The Grissom Gang" with Shelly Winters and an early Sean Connery film called "City of Fear". Faux glamour in a real dive.

Colin mainly dragged the gang there because it served Carling Premier which was his rare drink of choice. They then walked across the Georgian courtyard known as Green Dragon Yard to the Green Dragon pub. This was their warmup before the club because the jukebox was laden with the kind of tunes they all liked. The Clash, The Jam, The Smiths, Bob Dylan, The Stone Roses, Guns N Roses and many many more. It made the Samuel Smiths beer the pub served just about tolerable. An independent Yorkshire brewery, Samuel Smiths beer was famously rough. Vic swore he once saw some twigs and leaves in a bottle of their Nut Brown Ale. They tended to stick to lagers but Bry was a big Guiness man. Colin used to drink Guiness and Newcastle Brown Ale but at Paul's sixteenth birthday he beat his personal best of ten bottles and was as sick as dog for three days afterwards and hadn't touched the stuff since. No wonder it was nicknamed “Dog” – you either felt like one the next day or woke up next to one.

After an hour in the Dragon, they made their way out of the pub and down the embankment toward the river and The Waterfront.

The Waterfront was an Indie club that overlooked the River Tees. There weren’t many nightclubs in Stockton but it was the least towny and the only one that would let you in wearing jeans and trainers. The club was divided into two parts, an upstairs with a central bar in the middle that allowed you to walk all the way around it. The rear part of the bar was housed in a conservatory with a balcony overlooking the Tees. On warm nights (and even cold ones) the balcony was packed with drinkers, dope smokers, speed takers, snoggers and the cream of Stockton’s intelligentsia - the kids who went to the 6th Form College. Hardly any glasses were returned to the bar from outside as it was far easier to hurl them into the river. This often turned into a competition which saw Bry clean up on occasion with his patented over arm spinning bottle throw. In the distance, the recently completed shopping and cinema multiplex called Teesside Park was shining out like the Emerald City with the cinema marquee at the base of a tower in the car park with a flashing light at the top of the 60ft tower like a particularly flimsy lighthouse. On the other side of the river were a new development of flats and canals being built along with a new college campus. The flats had a gothic design to them so it wasn't too hard to imagine a dark cloaked figure leaping about them in the moonilght. It was said that the development would breath new life into the town and kickstart the economy with an influx of new families and jobs. Bry was more sceptical: "No Chance. This place is buggered. It'll be like giving an asprin to an AIDS case”.

They didn't make too much effort on Fridays as they were the undercard for the main event of the week - Saturdays. In all reality, they were just the same as Friday’s but they started drinking earlier.

To everybody else, Colin was perfectly pleasant and at ease with his situation but like everyone in their late 30's who hadn't achieved anything like what they believed was their true station in life, he pretended it was all down to him and part of their grand plan. The van started on the second turnover and as Tiffany blared loudly out of the speakers he began the same drive he had made six days of the week, for the last 20 years.

The Clocktower

The three-faced clocktower stands at the corner of Dockside Road. Surrounded by factories and workshops, few open, many gone. She resembles her surroundings now.

Although the clockfaces looking east, west, and south remained, the machinery inside didn’t. A square building 20 feet by 20 wide and over 60 foot high, its sides are grimy brick with the doorway to the south. It was boarded up but some planks are gone and gaps have formed. It’s where drunks and druggies congregate for warmth, shelter and company. We all want the same things no matter what our life’s station and more fortunate people lived in less grand surroundings than the clocktower.

Apart from the doorway and a couple of cracked glass panes in the top corners of the building, where the stairs ascended into the tower proper, it was remarkably free of damage, unlike the other buildings nearby.

The corrugated iron fence surrounding the scrapyard opposite resembled a bad youth arts project but the grand old lady of the docks remained relatively unblemished. Her reputation defying circumstance and age. It’s telling as in this town respect is not given freely. It’s earned. An invisible currency understood by all.

The clocktower began in arrears. It had three faces because the north side faced the steel river. Where the majority of the men worked in the yards, buzzing like drones inside their dark metal hives. The yard bosses, men who would not spend a penny more than necessary, threw pounds at that clocktower. It was both their sentinel and their mark. They made sure that the men concentrated on one thing only, and that wasn’t the time. The men looked and bricks looked back.

The bosses, the men, and the yards have gone but the three-faced clocktower remains. A headstone for more than men.

Stockton Midnight

Cold, drizzle, walk quicker, fasten the top button on my Hackett shirt, scan the street, queues too long for me, could probably get in Bar Ibiza but it’s only just gone 12, got some valuable drinking time to kill, make a left, hurrying up, of course, Jockers! Haven’t been there in ages, 80s hell, neon paint, Top Gun posters, barstaff in Frankie shirts, tight dance floor as I recall, easy to squeeze on your way to the bogs, machines? Couple of fruities and a weakest link. Don’t like it, too boring but I love the tunes, “alright mate” “good evening”, go in anyway, undo top button, glance around, [AND DID YOU THINK THIS FOOL COULD NEVER WIN, WELL LOOK AT ME, I’M COMING BACK AGAIN]blondes at the bar, young ‘uns on the stage, make for the bar, hand down and eye contact, “pint of extra cold mate”, still scanning, no sign of Gary or Si, [DON’ T LEAVE ME THIS WAY, I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW I’M AT YOUR COMMAND] plastic glass, hate plastic glasses, neck it anyway, hand on my shoulder, “Now Then Doyle!”, Tommo! Now then!; “you seen who’s in the corner?” “nah” “Caitlin”. Gulp, Caitlin, Fucking Caitlin, Jesus, glance behind optics, see half my face but looks presentable, undo second button, “Where abouts mate?” “Over by the bogs, sat down” “I’ll catch yer later soft lad” deep breaths, lead with left arm, protect pint, where is she?, is this a wind-up? [MY WORRIES AWAY, YOU’RE ALL THE THINGS I’VE GOT TO REMEMBER] She’s there. Sat down in the corner, spare seat next to her, deep breaths, “Hiya” “Hello” “Tommo saw you, said you were here” “did he now?” “Anybody sat here?” “The Invisible Man”, still funny, still beautiful, still hurts, still, “I’ll have a breezer”, [AAAHHH WE FADE TO GREY]

Mascot Memories

Me, Kevin Beattie, Vince

It was 1983, I was ten years old, David Bowie was number one with “Let’s Dance”, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray were bustin’ Ghosts at the Stockton Classic, The Minipops were blissfully entertaining dodgy middle-aged men on the fledgling Channel 4, and while ostensibly a Boro fan, my trips to Ayresome Park were sporadic at best.

I mainly used to spend Saturday afternoons at my nanas in Meath Street watching Big Daddy on World of Sport while waiting for my own big daddy and medium-sized grandad to return, usually as miserable as sin.

I had been threatened by my Uncle on occasions, “If your naughty, your dad will take you to see the Boro” and working on the premise that a problem shared is a misery halved, my dad informed me that not only were we going, but that I was going to be the mascot in two weeks time! At home to a struggling Derby County on Saturday April 9^th.

My first difficulty was when the club wanted some information about me for the programme. What were my interests? This was a problem. I couldn’t honestly admit in print that my interests solely consisted of eating mars bars, watching cartoons and playing Manic Miner so in a desperate attempt to please my dad I said Golf and Fishing.

A bigger problem was that I was crap at football. Not totally hopeless, I could kick a ball properly but being the owner of a robust Rochembackesque physique, not as fit as I might have been. It wasn’t critical, I wasn’t playing but I still didn’t want to make an arse of myself in the kick in when I’d have a chance to score in front of the Holgate. I had appeared as a sub in a school match earlier that year, the games teacher taking pity on me and bringing me on when we were 4-0 up with quarter of an hour to go so I could also accurately tell the programme that I played for the school team. This talent for stretching l'actualité would serve me well in my adult career as a spin doctor.

My biography submitted, we now had to get me a kit. This was before your chain sport stores so off to Jack Hatfield’s. It was the year after McLean Homes had pulled the plug so we had a pristine, sponsorless silky red home shirt, with authentic Addidas stripes down the sleeves. Like a footballing Starsky and Hutch design. We also wore white shorts and socks that season. It looked as distinctive as a Ford Cortina and would probably be worth a few bob if you had one now (the kit, not the Cortina).

I wasn’t allowed to wear the kit to school but still told the few Boro fans that were there that I was going to be leading the lads out on Saturday. Out of a school of 200 in Stockton, there must have been about five of us who owned up to supporting the Boro. Liverpool and Man Utd claimed the rest, even though I now run into a good proportion of these turncoats at the Riverside.

The big day dawned and I even had a shower, so important was this event. I didn’t really want to but I was assured that Heine Otto showered so that swung the deal. We got to the ground just after dinnertime and after wishing me luck my folks went off to their seats. Leaving me in the capable hands of a PR guy.

Looking back, you could see the writing was on the wall for the club because they were cutting corners everywhere. The programme was a six page newspaper that season called Boro News. It had a picture of Paul Daniels on the front proclaiming that the “Boro Bonanza was magic“. They were also scrimping on the mascots. I wasn’t the only one. I met the other lad, Vince Potter from Eston, an hour before kick off. While both disappointed we wouldn’t be the centres of attention, we decided that if we scored four or six goals, we would share the credit for them equally. You can tell we weren’t regulars in the Chicken Run.

We sat in an ante room and said hello to a frazzled-looking Mike McCullough as he was passing through. Looking back, he should have called his company Atlas because he had the world on his shoulders. We had a mini tour of the North Stand including the ill-fated Sports Centre where we were told that it would soon open to the public. 24 years and counting Charlie.

The time came for us to get ready. We changed out of our tracksuits, walked up the steps and through the tunnel and stood on the side of the threadbare pitch. It was not in the best of condition. We had our photo taken with the latest in a long line of saviours with sellotape knees – in this case, Kevin Beattie. We also got to meet Radio Tees’ rising star – a young Me Mark Page.

For reasons I still don’t fully understand, Mark was dressed as a high court judge with a black cape and white wig. We had to pose with him holding our ears. The headline in the next home programme, and I am not making this up, said “Ear, Ear says the Judge! – he gives mascots a good wigging (but it’s all in good fun)”. I still don’t get it.

We went back into the tunnel and awaited the teams. We met the ref, the wonderfully named Trelford Mills from Barnsley who resembled a young Brian Blessed. Derby came up led by a grizzled Archie Gemmell and then the Boro. I think Mick Baxter was captain that day. Trelford told us it was time to go and despite having already being out on the pitch, the nerves hit home. The empty South Stand was now full, the South East corner had a smattering of Derby fans making a noise and the Holgate, my god the Holgate, looked like a human pyramid. The noise was as loud as a jet engine and I got as far as the touchline and froze. I knew other mascots went to the goal and had a kickabout with Steve Pears but I couldn’t move. I was literally scared stiff.

I have never been able to boo Titus Bramble with any degree of conviction for precisely this reason. I’ve been there, to his world, you want your legs to move and your head to meet the ball but your body won’t do what you tell it to. It’s not nice.

I eventually regained some composure when I realised that most of the crowd hadn’t come to see me, (Uriah still hasn’t worked that out). I took a deep cleansing breath, looked towards the Holgate and thought “This is it Guy, your big moment, your big chance. You’re the Boro captain, and you’re leading us out at home. This is destiny. Let’s roll!”. I could see there was an unattended ball 20 yards away. I could run on and take it on, easily go by two uninterested defenders, draw Pearsy and slip it inside the right hand post. I could already see myself wheeling away in front of the crowd with a couple of ironic cheers reserved for when the tapped lad scored from three yards during the half-time draw.

I put one foot on the pitch about to break off to the right and fulfil the dream when a large, heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder. It was the PR guy. “Come on son, photo’s now”. I was frogmarched to the centre circle where I met Vince and posed for photos with the captains and the officials. We shook everybody’s hand and we turned to go back to the tunnel. I still harboured thoughts of a quick breakaway to score when Darren Wood I believe, ran up to it and wellied it back to the dugouts. My chance gone, I slouched back up the tunnel. I could never bring myself to warm to Darren Wood after that.

My dad met me, camera in hand, and we walked up the steps to our seats. “Why didn’t you have a shot?” he asked. I couldn’t answer him then and I can’t answer him now. If I had told him that I was scared shitless I’d have got a backhand. Where’s the justice?

We sat down just in time to see the Boro go 2-0 down fairly quickly but in the second half we pulled it back to 2-2. We put the pressure on the Derby goal and I made a mental deal with the almighty. I’d trade my goal, my moment of Ayresome glory for the greater good. A Boro winner. A draw wasn’t bad but what was the point of being a mascot if you couldn’t inspire your team to victory? We pushed forward in numbers for a corner. I could sense that this was the moment. This was the turning point, when my very presence in the ground and leading the team out was going to bring the lads victory as certain as if I headed the ball into the net myself.

The ball drifted in from the right hand side, Otto rose powerfully and directed his header downwards. The ball bounced up and against the shin of a Derby defender. He swung his boot and cleared the ball towards halfway. It was now three against three as the whites shirts swung forward, moving the ball to the other side of the pitch. Red reinforcements were still arriving as the ball was delivered into the box onto the head of the diving, Derby forward. Pearsy was a bystander as it bulleted into the East Stand net and the Derby fans roared their approval. Five minutes later, my mate Trelford blew the whistle and we had lost. 3-2.

Despite the result, we still went and had fish and chips at Rooneys on Newport Road like we usually did when we won. We weren’t going to let a little thing like losing spoil our day. I got slaughtered at school on the Monday. I thought I’d get away with it but oh no, the plastic scousers and mancs sought me out to give me the full treatment. “Loser Mascot! Loser Mascot!”. Oh that still smarts.

The season petered out, we were safe, and despite their win, Derby went down at the end of the season and celebrated their centenary in the third Division. By the time I got the boro bug full-time, three years later, we had emulated them.

I hope to be a father myself one day, and whether they like it or not, my son or daughter will join me in the East Stand to watch us huff and puff against a mid-ranking midlands team and hopefully one day, they will walk out alongside Roary, pigbag blaring in their ears as they shake hands with Lee Cattermole and as they look around quizzically afterwards I hope they will remember my soft words of fatherly advice.

BREAK THE BLOODY NET OR YOUR WALKING HOME!

First XI

Below is a short story called "Chemistry Lessons" which is based on a true incident.

I am working on a book of short stories, memoirs and fictions which I hope to publish either later this year or in 2008.

There will be 11 pieces in it - hence the clever title.

"Chemistry Lessons" (or an amended version of it) will appear. Not everything that appears on this site will be in it - and not everything in First XI will be on this site. So keep checking in for more stuff.

"When you finally realise what it is you are put on this earth to do, the fog surrounding your life disappears and everything at once becomes clearer".

Chemistry Lessons - A Short Story

We were enemies from the very start.

He was everything I hated. Fading blonde wispy hair, small, wiry, untrustworthy and dressed like he managed a charity shop and took advantage of the position.

He was called Mr Jardine and as far as we knew lived in BillIngham. This was another black mark against him. BillIngham was a concrete mess, which on Teesside, was damning it with faint praise.

The Shopping Centre looked like it had been designed by a six year old using Lego as his medium. It was nothing of the sort either. Instead of being an enclosed, shopper friendly building, it was the opposite. It looked like an abstract painting, all impossible angles and grey shading in places where it shouldn’t be. Too bleak and macabre for the cheap and miserable stores like “The Stationary Box” and “Iceland” that inhabited it’s convex and concave corners. But there they were with their gaudy window displays adding unexpected colour in an unusual place, like somebody had splattered an egg box with ketchup.

People trudged by on walkways above the shops but you had no earthly idea about how they got there or where they were going to. Not for nothing is BillIngham also home to ICI’s vast plant. The inspiration for “Blade Runner”.

It was also the home of the BillIngham Forum. The local leisure complex as would be described by an American who had never seen it and as reminiscent of ancient Rome as a digital watch. It showed films but wasn’t a cinema. It hosted pantomimes and touring plays starring soap opera actors you hadn’t seen in years and in many cases had thought had passed on. It also hosted the local ice rink. Home to minor league ice hockey and local posers alike, the ice rink was a freezing cold and wet youth club. Giggling girls formed crocodile chains with their hands and teetered on their tiptoes on the ice, while sullen youths skulked on the other side of the barrier, smoking and pretending not to be interested. All the while suspiciously lithe men, some with even thinner moustaches, weaved in and out of the traffic with the speed and skill of a motorcycle courier at Oxford Circus in rush-hour. Ice Skating was an unusual pursuit which requires co-ordination, fitness and imagination. For the less gifted, the same experience could be replicated by sitting in a puddle for 30 minutes and slicing into the back of my ankle with a razor blade.

BillIngham also produced and attracted odd people. It was the only part of Teesside that could and did tolerate a nest of Mackems. (A collection of Sunderland supporters, nest being the appropriate collective noun). An unusually large proportion of the domestic violence and other, more sinister goings-on, occurred here. It was also Jardine’s home.

We had heard the rumours about him before we started our two year duel. We were studying GCSE Chemistry for the last two years of our school life and he was to be our guide. We heard about his unprofessional attitude to work, we heard about his lassez faire attitude to teaching, We heard about his crap car, a duck-egg blue Mark Two Ford Escort, we heard of the boys who waited outside the school gates for him to drive past and give him a ZZ Top-style hand wave culminating in a V sign. We heard he blissfully waved back.

We also heard the story behind his nickname, unusually from another teacher. They tend to stick together in the staffroom, The beaten brigade, trying to maintain a sense of authority and enthusiasm to a bunch that would most likely be either earning twice as much as them in a couple of years or would be serving them sandwiches at a cheap supermarket Deli.

It was a rare event for one of them to break ranks and give such useful information about one of their colleagues. It also signified the low standing he must have occupied amongst his fellows. That they were willing to turn him over to the hordes to save themselves.

School dinners are industrial food in every sense. In preparation, production and taste, they were put together with the unnerving accuracy of an automated production line. Credit must be given for the uniformity of results achieved from the ingredients. Without fail, every single meal was doughy, tough, and contained as much nourishment and culinary flair as a football boot smothered in gravy.

The Cheese pie was a good case in point. Unlike any cheese I have encountered before or since, it was a block of yellowish goop, similar in texture to Styrofoam but moist. It had a pie crust base but this could equally have been cardboard. If I was being charitable, I’d say the top of the concoction looked like a crème brulee, touched up with a blow torch like an expensive chef. It was more than likely burned and produced a film which lay on the top, the consistency and colour of which was reminiscent of the contents of the liquids pouring out from Ethiopians featured on the nightly news at the time.

This was Jardine’s favourite so this is how he became known as Cheese Pie which then became Cheese Pie, Private Eye which then became Cheese Pie scoffing bastard and finally, mainly for brevity, just Cheesy.

I sat on the back bench of the class with a couple of friends and Liam Pike. Pikey was amiable enough but not very bright. He often had to attend the remedial classes organised and taught by Mrs Rinquist. Remedial was the official term for the classes. To us, they were the Rinky-Dinks.

I once had to suffer the ignominy of sitting an entrance tests for the classes because the powers that be confused my terminal laziness with mental issues. I scored the highest total they ever had and told me that I wasn’t retarded but merely unfocused. I still take my victories where I find them.

The benches themselves were not conventional school tables. They were special science benches that had gas taps built into them for connecting bunson burners to for experiments. They also had sinks built within them that had covers that could be lifted out. They were big, rigid and more like the desks that Dickens would perch at and write with a flowing quill. There were five in all spaced at regular intervals. They were so big; you sat at them with a special stool, no standard issue plastic school chair for us. The teacher’s table was on a raised platform of about six inches at the front of the class like an altar. It was flanked by a curious glass contraption to the right known as a fume cupboard. It was like a glass wine cabinet with two large holes in the wall to the supply room behind it, there were also three or four small holes at irregular intervals in the wall. There was a door to the supply room to the left. This was the teacher’s door and only he and his assistant Grayson, Igor to his Frankenstein, could use it. We all had to use the pupil’s door at the back of the room and opposite the end of our desk.

The benches were organised according to the strict school social charter. The “popular” kids and members of the football team sat on the front bench. The brainy kids and ones who were good at science sat on the second, the girls sat on the third bench, the fourth was occupied by boys and girls who found themselves studying Chemistry because of some administrative error and would have been much happier doing home economics or needlework instead, and the fifth and final bench was us. The rebels, the outcasts, Tommy Sampson, the boy who attended school one day a year and spent the rest of it with his mother in their council flat eating pies and playing snooker, Janey, the girl who spent three months in school last year then vanished for the rest of it. She was back now but even we picked up the whispers and sideways glances she attracted from the other girls. My friend Billy, Pikey and me.

We began our Chemistry education with the wide-eyed optimism that would have cheered the heart of any science advocate. We wanted to learn; we were keen and eager and could not wait to take part in experiments and to do Chemistry. Jardine had other ideas.

It may have been his Mormon persuasion. He had confessed to Mormonism a couple of years earlier when another pupil asked him about it for the express purpose of putting around rumours and stories about what Mormons actually did. This opened the floodgates and being a Church of England school, misinformation about other religions was not as discouraged as it may have been. According to the stories he had three wives, he had seven children, their house didn’t have electricity and he made his five wives and ten children plough the back garden of their semi-detached house with forks to better grow the corn that they survived on because they weren’t allowed to go to the shops. His car was horse drawn because his god forbade transport and he was often seen strolling through BillIngham attended by his six wives and 12 children, he sometimes rode the horse to school if the wives and children had church business, and the family had to sit by candlelight in their house made of sticks and straw because electricity and bricks were also verboten by the vengeful Mormon God of BillIngham. Looking back, his actions and demeanour were classic reactions against inadequacy and blunted ambition but they could equally have been the strict covenants of a secretive suburban sex-cult. When you were 14, you weren’t really bothered.

His method of pedagogy was very much old school. As in Victorian. He beamed as he presented us with our brand new, freshly unwrapped textbooks. If it wasn’t against his god’s law, these books would have been his children. So much of his pride, hopes and joy were invested in them. The term began thus.

We read from Chapter One together. The class swots being invited to read the technical pieces to demonstrate their superior understanding and status, the rest of us as makeweights to plough through the text with the comic relief provided by the dyslexics and the stupid who were deliberately given paragraphs containing hard to read words and chemical compounds to pronounce. No actual Chemistry was hinted at or attempted. We assumed this was a scene-setting procedure. To make sure we were fully aware of the wonders we were about to experience and create.

We had two lessons a week and we looked forward to the second one. We came in, placed our bags down and after some lively preliminary chat amongst us, Jardine emerged from the backstage area behind his desk and took up his position. We then took out our books and began reading Chapter Two together.

It slowly began to dawn on us that the die was cast and that this was going to be our Chemistry career. Reading and comprehension exercises intermitted with an all-too-brief “practical” session where he worked through an already assembled experiment on his desk, which we were invited to gather round and watch. Like a dad who had spent too much time and effort assembling an elaborate board game like Mouse Trap that wasn’t for the kids. We would then go back to our desks and write up what we had witnessed.

Young minds are hard to cage. Even in a subject which contained little or no interest. Chemistry was different. It fired you. You had a multitude of chemicals to experiment with, bunson burners that produced flames on command, a water tap on your desk for god’s sake – and we were being asked to read from a collective book. It was like holding a consolidated accountants convention in Billy Smarts Circus.

Human beings have untapped psychic potential. I predict that mankind’s next evolutionary stage will be mental and will see the wide development of precognition, ESP and telekinesis amongst the race. You can already see this randomly and undisciplined with some young children and adults. Mothers and babies have an unspoken, almost supernatural bond. Mothers just know. It’s the same with kids. They can sense energy and messages that adults with closed minds cannot.

An unspoken idea grew between us. Transmitted by eye contact and some unseen energy. The group instinctively knew what they had to do.

If Jardine wasn’t going to teach us Chemistry. We would teach ourselves.

When he went to school, Jardine would have been the second-weakest kid in the class, the most vociferous and active in the bullying of the weakest. You could see this in practice during the reading sessions that we came to dread.

I became one of his victims. A slow and deliberate individual must be slow and stupid. He confused the manner and the method.

I had learned to hide my gifts in the previous couple of years. Due to the disinterest, lack of will or just plain dislike for me from our tutor, I was left to fend for myself in the classroom jungle. Despite being in a prosperous middle class area, the school I attended was a Church of England administered one that didn’t believe in segregation or selection. It opened its arms to the children of the roughest estates of the town and was repaid in kind. The nearest other school and our perpetual rivals, Manorsfield said “thank you very much” and proceeded to build a continuing legacy of achievement and excellence. We had our school gym set on fire.

Despite liking football, I also liked reading and using big words. At the time I hadn’t fully appreciated the necessity of a fashionable haircut, a trendy coat and good personal hygiene. I was easy prey.

One of the biggest ironies in football is that when a player retaliates to a harsh foul or bad tackle then he will be punished more severely than the original aggressor. So it was in the Tutor group. Punished for being myself, punished again for defending myself.

I eventually got wise and actually picked a haircut for myself rather than let the barber indulge himself with one of his wall pictures from 1977. I persuaded my parents to buy me a coat made by a company you’d heard of, rather than one that the guy on the market told them would be big in six months time, hence the good price today. I started taping the top 40 off Radio Tees and started reading my cousins’ “Look In” magazine. It was an effort but I started to fit in.

I also decided to curry favour with the bullies by picking on the genuine weirdo’s and idiots in the class. Kids who went to church and had bags and pencil cases as a result of a promotion by the Midland bank. Kids who were genuinely stupid and in one case, actually mentally retarded. Easy pickings for the prey turned hunter.

You do what you gotta do.

Jardine became a rarer and rarer sight. He was present at the start of the lesson to take the register and then he would disappear into the supply office. Who knew what he did in there? He was conducting experiments, he was reading The Sun, he was reading The Sun and masturbating in there, he was looking at us through one of the holes in the fume cupboard; he was looking at us through one of the holes in the fume cupboard and masturbating in there. The theories were rife, usually of a sexual and deviant nature and it spoke of his wilful lack of awareness or simple self-delusion that he we would be working away in our office while he was in his.

Chemistry was now ours. We started small time. Pikey was a smoker and always had a lighter on him which was essential for our work. The class swots all had a standard issue green Berol pen. For somebody with handwriting as borderline dyslexic as my own, these were fatal and I ended up getting more ink on my hands than on the paper but it was a badge of achievement amongst the intelligentsia of the 4th year. They also melted rather easily when subjected to a constant flame from a desktop gas tap. After a little while, we became performance sculptors operating in the medium of melted plastic. U-shapes, corkscrews, abstractions, we had it all. With a little more enterprise, we could have initiated Brit Art ten years earlier.

There was a primal beauty to lighting a gas tap and turning it to full power to singe the desk. It was even funnier when it was inches away from Laura Kinsey’s straw-like hair, just inches from our rudimentary flamethrower.

Our next project lay with an old video machine located in a cupboard at the back of the class behind us. It was a very early type with one spool so it predated Betamax by about five years. It might have even worked. Not that we were bothered. It was Jardine’s so it must be destroyed.

Billy was the technical genius so was able to advise us which pieces we should remove in order. Every lesson we removed some diode or transistor or rotary device. We should really have kept and catalogued them instead of throwing them in bushes or at other pupils. In amongst the mayhem, we did conduct our own experiments. We took one of the tapes from Cheesy’s Cyclops machine and tied one end to a lamppost opposite the school. We then placed the other end on a pencil and walked the long way home, approx two miles and we hadn’t even dented the reel. We had left a lot of tape in our wake but this was science at work so we felt we could explain it away if challenged.

We discovered a seemingly inexhaustible supply of exercise books in the cupboards in our desks and became a surrogate stationer for the other members of the class and others in our year. If we had been a bit more enterprising, we could have made some money of it but when a pretty girl asks if she can have an exercise book then you don’t really think of charging her. Alan Sugar I’m not.

We didn’t stop at Chemistry. Pikey moved onto advanced biology when he decided that he needed his ear piercing. A safety pin and a pile of paper towels were his instruments when he began the operation. Humans have a grim fascination with pain and the infliction of it. Even more so when they are inflicting on themselves. Nobody watches “You’ve Been Framed” to see cute kittens skidding about a polished wooden floor. They watch to see a pair of boneheads retiling a wet roof in the hope of seeing Darwinism in action.

Isembard Kingdom Brunel once performed an emergency tracheotomy on himself to remove a lodged sixpence in his throat. Pikey couldn’t spell Brunel but his spirit was just wiling as he plunged the safety pin through his earlobe.

Now we were the video nasty generation. Used to seeing bikini-clad teenagers decapitated on grainy films by various demons and hockey-mask wearing serial killers, watching films with titles like “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Driller Killer”, we’d seen it all. We’d laugh if we saw it on screen. Seeing a fountain of blood inches away from your eyes and your classmate’s face go through so many of shades of white in rapid succession that it was like someone making a flipbook out of a Dulux colour wall chart in front of you.

Girls screamed, Pikey fainted and we looked around at each other, as useless as seconds at a duel, waiting for an adult to do something. Of course, Jardine was away so two of the more mature members of the class lifted a slumping Pikey from the desk and carried him outside to seek attention, stemming the flow of blood from his ear with a darkening series of towels. When Jardine came back, he barely noticed the missing pupils.

Bored with Sculpture, we decided to move into Art. Billy was a born artist and like most born artists, was destined for a career in car design or kitchen brochure production. Thankfully that didn’t happen and his career has since bloomed into something approaching his original potential.

It highlights the inequities of the British education system. Exercise books filled with caricatures, designs, doodles and sketches were a valuable progress ional aid for an aspiring artist but that wasn’t important. What was more important was that you sat in a classroom for two hours on an afternoon reading about Chemistry instead of actual doing it or worse, running round a muddy field chasing a ball of various sizes and shapes. I’m not interested in how fast David Hockney could run the 1500 meters but the fact that someone; somewhere was employed to find this out tells you everything you need to know about our society.

We then went to work on our Magnum Opus. We planned our project in specific detail. What our aim was, what materials we would need, the scale, the colours, the dimensions. Billy even produced drafts. All we needed to do now was wait.

We returned to the school that night, after dark, with the materials and set to our task.

The next day, everybody filed into the Chemistry class as usual; Cheesy did the roll call but didn’t disappear off as usual. We became aware of movement outside the window and all eyes turned to look at faithful old Grayson scrubbing away at a large, fluorescent coloured, cartoon piece of cheese decorating the window like the centrepiece of a dairy cathedral. The sun shone through the yellows and oranges and blacks for holes onto the wooden floor. The difference between Art and vandalism is that Art speaks while vandalism shouts. This message was clear. Billy had even disguised his handwriting for the CHEESE PIE label next to it. An Urban Masterpiece.

We had, however, underestimated the malevolence of Jardine. I suppose it was naive of us expecting a humourless automaton to get a joke, let alone enjoy it, but teachers were professionals. We knew they had favourites and discrimination was as rife within the classroom as any banana republic but we forgot they were people. With people’s ideas and emotions. And that people hate things. Jardine hated us.

This was a declaration of war. I’d hinted at the self delusion that surrounded and covered his existence like a musty fog but this act blew it away with the cleansing force of a jet engine. He suddenly realised that he wasn’t the hard but fair master of the class, the big boy in the class of boys who could enjoy the joke but maintain discipline when required, or the charming, older man who girls could confide in and maybe have a crush on. In a stark, Day-Glo, 3D image of a piece of Swiss cheese, Dorian Gray saw his portrait for the first time.

Of course, we were having too much fun to spot, understand or even care about the subtle change in our world. The balance of power was shifting, or more accurately, about to reassert itself.

Meanwhile, the resistance escalated its destructive campaign and the cherished exercise books, his virgin children, were the next victims.

The violations were many and complete. We would deface a book uniformerly and then swap it with another pupil’s clean one. They were eager to enjoy the comedy, we were eager to exert our influence.

Every picture of a scientist wearing glasses in the books was defaced so the glasses became 3D with the addition of red and green lenses. Every eminent scientist with a pipe became a bubble blower or a cannabis smoker with glazed eyes and whacked-out comments to match.

Every animal was seen enjoying coitus with vigorous pervert, sometimes Grayson, more usually Jardine but never labelled.

Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man became a transvestite with a Basque and fishnet stockings for each of his four legs. This actually made him a dead ringer for Tim Currie in “The Rocky Horror Show”.

Molecules became Pac Men or Smiley Faces, The periodic table of elements now included Ice Cream, Hair Gel and of course, Cheese.

We began to pervert scientific knowledge itself through the skilful application of colour specific tippex and Billy’s perfect copperplate handwriting.

Covalent bonds between molecules vanished. Instead they were now held together by bits of string. Absolute Zero was discovered by Kevin Webster from Coronation Street, The Noble Gases were the invention of “posh bastards”, The hardest substance known to mankind was Boy George’s mascara, Destiny is the ratio of Macaroni to the volume on your ghetto blaster, Water in gaseous state was Philip Schofield, Potassium was best used as bath salts, Alkali metals reacted with non-metals to produce ironic compounds, which was the opposite of what they intended in the first place. It was even funnier than it sounds. So good a job had we done on those books that it was rumoured that they were just as funny as the notorious books used in Religious Education lessons. High praise indeed.

Hubris is a concept most adults struggle with, let alone 14 year olds but we had an appointment. I was about to discover that revenge, like cheese pie, was a dish best served cold.

About five months before the end of the course and our exams, Jardine began to take it a little more seriously. We saw more of him during the lessons and, amazingly, actually got more work to do ourselves. He would try and keep us on our toes by bursting in through the pupil’s door instead of his own one. This was met with general derision and shouts that “you’ve just missed your twin brother!” and the more effective “Doyle!” Nothing dissuaded him from the task at hand. Even when we burned a hole in his brand new protective goggles.

We should have realised something was amiss when we saw he was smiling.

He was conducting an experiment at the front of the class that we all had to gather round to get a better view with goggles and all. We seated ourselves at the edge of the desk. He was boiling a test tube with hydrochloric acid with another ingredient which gave off the most sulphurous disgusting smell I have ever come across. It was a mixture of death, bad eggs, mould, damp and inevitably, cheese.

He passed the test tube under the noses of a recoiling class from the far side of the bench toward us. We would be the last people to smell it, even though we could smell it from the other side of the classroom anyway. He came closer, edging his way towards us with the sickening smile of molester approaching a bound child. He was two feet in front of us to the right when he began to stumble. The momentum carried him forward towards the bench and his left arm instinctively came out to break his fall and balance him. The right hand containing the test tube stiffened it’s grip and instead of letting go, began to twist anti-clockwise, toward me.

I was sitting in the stool in my standard school issue navy jumper, black trousers and trainers. The test tube was level with my goggled eyes when it’s mouth began it’s downward path. Within a few seconds, the contents, smell, boiling acid and all, had poured all over and onto my crotch.

When people are shot, the body shuts down the immediate area so for a few seconds, they are unaware of what has happened to them. I felt an initial coldness the same way you do when somebody spills a drink in your lap. What doesn’t happen when a drink is spilled is that everybody in the group runs away from you as quickly as possible, the drink doesn’t begin to heat up expediential and smoke definitely doesn’t begin to rise from your crotch.

The smoke and the heat are greater now, just five seconds after contact, I’d almost forgotten the smell which was now, if it were possible, even worse and centred squarely on me. My sinuses are getting the full benefit now, eyes are filling up with water, my nostrils are trying to close of their own free will to prevent the body from taking in any more damage, and all the while the burning, burning, BURNING is spreading from my genitals to my thighs and my lower stomach.

My body took over. I remained sitting in the stool as my body leapt from it and crashed through the door of the supply room. I stood with the rest of the class, gathering round the door of the room and looking through the fume cupboard as a boy who looks familiar is pulling down his trousers, turning on the cold tap on the large sink as open as he can and trying to sit in the sink so the water soaks his horrible green boxer shorts. All the while, the heat, the pain and most of all the smell, that unforgettable signature stink, are actually getting worse, if such a thing was possible.

In chemistry, such things are possible. Some compounds and mixtures react badly with water intensifying their effects. We would have realised this had we been taught it.

The boy knows that the tap isn’t helping, that more pain is on the way to an area that is not designed to handle it. He knows that 100 meters from the chemistry classroom, down the main corridor to the side entrance to the building and across the playground is the school swimming pool. He lifts himself from the sink and finally manages to kick off his trousers. To anybody watching he resembles a drunken Oliver Reed taking part in “It’s A Knockout”. He makes for the corridor but time is now also his enemy. It’s 3.30pm, the end of the school day and the bell has rung and is ringing. The schools other pupils are vacating their classrooms with haste as they stream toward the exits. This doesn’t register. I am no longer with my classmates watching the situation unfold, I am firmly attached back in my own head as I am racing down a corridor full of school kids wearing a pair of soaking wet boxer shorts. I simply don’t hear the catcalls, laughter and mocking coming from the surprised onlookers and the pursuing group of classmates who have followed me. The pain and smell won’t allow it. I skid left through the double doors of the exit and run towards the pool, still hurting but becoming more aware of the crowds, crowds following, crowds watching, crowds blocking my way, crowds coming out of the changing rooms where I need to be.

I grab the heavy changing room door and pull myself inside, knocking a couple of younger pupils out of my way, I make a swift left into the main male changing area and through the showers and the footbath into the main pool area. Thankfully it is uncovered as I plunge head first, shirt, jumper and trainers into the pool. My one last hope.

Maybe the sheer volume of water counteracts the pain as it begins to numb as I surface in the pool but the smell, the smell of bad eggs and cheese is now amplifying throughout the changing rooms and the gym. I emerge from the pool soaking from head to toe, glancing at the windows, full of jeering, yelling, classmates, banging encouragement and abuse with equal force. I listen to the games teacher talking to me but I don’t hear him. I am an onlooker again but I wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway as he has his hand and sleeve covering his mouth. He leads me by the arm to the entrance of the now empty changing rooms and drapes an old grey towel over my shoulders. I emerge from the entrance to a mixture of cheers and boos, like an early evictee from Big Brother but with no placards or happy family members to greet me. If the towel had been over my head I could have doubled as a sex criminal being led from a courtroom into a waiting van. How I wished there was a waiting van to take me away from the school. The crowd is swelled by the sports teams forced to evacuate the changing rooms due to the virulent smell which swept in like a phalanx of wild horses and took possession of the room entirely. They spared me the ignominy of ringing the fire bell to evacuate the gym but it had the same effect.

I walk alone, unaccompanied, soaking wet and humiliated back towards the main school building. Nobody dare approach me to say anything or to pull down my boxer shorts and inflict further humiliation because of the smell.

Whenever ICI in BillIngham had an ammonia leak, you could smell it in several miles away. I imagined that this would be the same. Local TV host Paul Frost’s bearded concerned face would appear on Tyne Tees TV to warn people to remain indoors and close their windows. There would be a picture of me in the corner of the screen subtitled “Stink Boy” and the picture would cutaway to a chemical expert, probably in a protective suit, talking about the situation.

I trudge slowly back up the corridor to the classroom because I am aware that is important to retrieve my trousers from the utility room. I am greeted by a sheepish looking Grayson who directs me back into the classroom where the trousers are. Some poor soul, most definitely Grayson from the redness of his eyes, had picked up the trousers and placed them in a carrier bag. They are hanging in the fume cupboard.

I walk on the platform, behind the desk to retrieve them and pick them up. I turn to walk back out of the supply room door and see Jardine stood at the end of the desk.

He is wearing his powder blue jacket and his cheddar yellow shirt with matching yellow and brown tie. His fine blond/grey hair is still in the side parting he wears it and he is smiling.

Smiling.

As I walk past I hear him say something like: “Sorry about that” and know that it is all he can do to stop himself from laughing hysterically in my face. I know that will come later for him. His victory total, my humiliation complete.

Grayson, poor Grayson, drives me home with the windows open and the cool air fans blowing on maximum to be greeted by my startled mother. She has seen me come in late before, muddied and bloodied from various escapades but she has never seen me emerge from a strange mans Volvo Estate soaking wet and trouser-less. She opens her mouth to say something but closes it very quickly when her nostrils catch the smell. I kick off my trainers at the front door and run into the bathroom. These were the days before ambulance chaser and frivolous law suits even though we would have had a really good case for compo. In those days, "you must have been doing something".

We attended the classes for the rest of the term. Nobody says anything much about the incident or the aftermath. A couple of half-hearted jokes at the start of the first lesson afterwards, one or two underwhelming choruses of “Great Balls of Fire” but that’s all. They can see in my eyes that I am broken. A lesson has finally been learned in chemistry. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.

I leave the school some weeks later with my well deserved F I my back pocket, never to cross swords with Jardine again. I later returned to night school to study Chemistry again and actually found I enjoyed it. It made sense, was involving and the textbooks were so old and dull that I never felt the need to deface them.

It was also some years later and I was returning from a boozy night out in town. It was about 2.30am and for some reason I decided to take a short cut across through the school and planned to walk over the fields. I usually got a taxi home or if I did walk back with friends, we stuck to the roads.

For some reason, I wanted to walk that way.

It had been over ten years since I had been back at the school. New extensions had been built, There was new paint around the place, new grilles over windows, new signs to warn trespassers to keep away and new fences placed at various places to keep trespassers, like me, out.

I walked through the playground keeping to the shadows of the buildings so as not to fall in full view of the halogen lights and security cameras placed about the premises. I edged past the side entrance to the Upper School building and walked past the pool. I got to the edge of the field and was about to march forward over it when I stopped. I glanced up at the top of the gym building and reassured the camera was looking in another direction, made my way to the left.

I continued walking behind the building and turned left again until I was looking at the outside of the chemistry classroom. The blinds were down, as they always were but I crept up, onto the raised walkway that ringed the building to have a look in anyway. The benches, stools, even the fume cupboard, where the same. The posters around the room for various chemical equations and periodic tables were new but this was to be expected. Most importantly, the altar desk was still at the front. I edged along further to look into the Supply room. I could see a desk with two chairs either side and a folded copy of The Sun on the table. Two mugs were on either side.

I jumped down from the path that and was walking away when my foot caught on something hard. I looked down and saw a large stone, buried loosely in the soil near the base of one of the trees that grew in between Upper School and the old library behind it. I had been here before. I was an onlooker again as a familiar man picked it up and walked back toward the classroom. He stood four feet away from the window, underneath it, behind the raised path.

I surmised what was going on as he grasped the stone in my palm of his hand and assumed the classic shot-putter position. He then lobbed the stone high towards the window.

It rebounded off and landed at the base of the raised path. Breathing a sigh of relief, I was no longer an onlooker. I picked up the stone, fully meaning to place it back at the base of the tree but in one swift movement, I spun on my heels and lashed out with my arm as I turned, with a primal yell, I hurled the stone toward the window again.

There was no mistake this time as it shattered with a satisfying crash. I saw the large jagged shards at the bottom of the window and at the top right. It had gone through just to the left of centre.

I ran away from the school, behind the gym and towards where the beck ran underneath the field. Into the Valley which followed it. It was overgrown in places with some flat scrub which passed as a pathway. Pitch black it may have been and treacherous to a drunken man but I wasn’t a drunken man. I was a stone-cold sober 14-year old boy again and despite not using it for night on 15 years, I knew the way like the back of my hand. I ran for as long as I could until my lungs and legs both called time on me and I bent over for breath I reflected on my actions.

Numerous lessons occurred to me. That a substance needed a reaction to cause it to change. That just because you happened to make it to your 20’s it didn’t automatically make you a man and that bad things happened to good people and good people did bad things.

The only thing I could be sure of is this – that a grudge matures with age.

Like a good cheese.