The Stick

I started my secondary school life at Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School, after failing my Eleven Plus exam due to my poor maths and spelling ability, and perhaps my appalling monotonous Birmingham whine. The test was guaranteed to weed out any young boys who were not of the middle class, or aspiring to be. We had no preparation for it at school, and no advantages at home, such as books, or interesting discussions on world affairs after dinner. There was no literature at my home, and no newspapers either, except the Sports Argus at the weekend.  So the system worked very well at keeping working class children from places like Winson Green out of Grammar Schools and higher education.

So, in my short trousers, which all boys wore until the age of fourteen, I arrived with all the other boys at the melting pot for local youth; to be prepared for the factories of Birmingham, a form of slave labour. It was necessary that British society get the fodder ready for a life of discipline in the factories as well as teaching them a modicum of reading, writing and arithmetic.

From the first day at Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School, discipline was ruthlessly enforced with the pain of the cane. For the smallest offence a slim willowy cane was slashed on the offending boy’s hand. I was of course no exception; I ‘got the stick’ on the first day at my new school, for picking up a compass in the Science Lab, after being plainly told not to touch anything.

At the age of twelve, everyone seemed tall to me, especially the Science Master, Mr ‘Slinker’ Priest, although I realised later on in my time at this school that he was a small man. I believe that he would have made a good stand-in for the witch in 'The Wizard of Oz’, if witches were men. ‘Slinker’ and the witch still give me nightmares, even in my galloping old age.

I was long gone when this picture was taken, but this is pretty much how this scene looked in the 1940s.
Handsworth New Road School is on the right. We lived in Preston Road, and the BP on the corner
of Preston Road was where my brother worked for awhile, and sabotaged Slinker Priest’s car.

When I picked up the compass, ‘Slinker’ pointed at me and called out, ‘You, boy, come here’. He made me hold my hands out in front of me, and wait for my very first caning on my very first day at Senior School, trembling.

'Hold your hands still!' he screamed. He pushed up my hands with the end of his long willowy cane and looked down his long willowy nose at me. He rose on the balls of his feet to get a better strike, and hovered there to let me suffer some more in anticipation. I could see my friend Barry sitting in the front row of the long lines of wooden desks. He squirmed on the hard seat, lowered his eyes uneasily and looked at the ink pot stuck into the well of his desk. He made sure not to touch it, nor the very interesting Bunsen burner in front of him. He was happy that he was not being caned, and was fully aware of the pain that 'the stick' inflicted. The whole class of boys watched with interest as the cane 'whooshed' down, hardly hurting at all until seconds later, when the blood that had been momentarily stopped tried to flow through my constricted veins, bringing with its efforts, acute pain.

Corporal punishment was common enough in those days, and what seems barbaric to the enlightened of today was dished out regularly to juveniles at school in the 1940s. Holding both hands under my armpits, for ‘Slinker’ didn't stop at one, I went back to my seat and tried not to cry. I remember exactly why I was subjected to this unlawful common assault, and I thought then and now that it was barbaric. It left me with a memory of pain, humiliation, and a bitter hatred of Mr ‘Slinker’ Priest, who I still see in my mind’s eye as the witch in the 'Wizard of Oz' even today; even though he was a small man.

Postscript: Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School is now a home for single Indian mothers.

Long Trousers

When I was a youngster, the purchase and wearing of a boy’s first pair of long trousers was a major event. It marked the anthropological changeover from being a boy to taking one of the first steps towards manhood. I didn’t look forward to this time in my life, for being short of stature, I knew I would get a razzing from my playmates at school when I appeared in my very first pair of ‘longies’.

Boys wore short trousers and long socks until the age of 13 or 14. 
I always kept my socks pulled up neatly, unlike Michael, whose socks were usually around his ankles

Mom had bought the long flannel trousers from ‘Peacocks’ a shop on the ‘Main’, as that part of Soho Road was called where the shops congregated. Auntie Chris, who had a treadle driven Singer sewing machine, had cut the legs of the trousers, because they were too long, and hemmed the ends to suit my shorter legs. She had measured me in front of my mother and my laughing brother. He was younger than me and was therefore safe from derision for at least for another two years.

Auntie Chris arrived with the doctored long trousers in a brown paper bag and advised me to go upstairs to my bedroom and try them on in case they needed some minor adjustments. Mom, Auntie Chris and my brother waited in the back room for my grand entrance. I tentatively tiptoed down the tortuous wooden stairs, holding on to the rickety wooden rail that was held to the wall by only one desperate screw. I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and whooped with as much bravado as I could muster in this critical situation in my life, ‘Ta Da!’

Auntie Chris shouted delightedly at her handiwork, ‘Ooh, they fit ‘pearfict’, and don’t they make him look oldah!’

Mom wisely said nothing, and gazed out into the back yard as though deep in contemplation of the coal heap. My brother burst into hysterical laughter. ‘Yow look a right prat Tone, yow look like a little old man’, he said.

Mom absent-mindedly smacked him on the back of the head with her open palm, and said, ‘Don’t swear Michael. Yes they’ll do, our Chris’.

After the performance I went upstairs and changed back into my comfortable shorts. I lay on my bed looking at the ceiling thinking how I could delay this terrible event tomorrow and the resulting embarrassment. I turned over the situation in my mind. I didn’t mind parading in front of my own family, but going to school and walking through scores of boys in the playground, all laughing at me, was another matter. I knew that I could not delay growing up, and as a man I would look stupid in boy's shorts. I came to the conclusion that there was no way out of wearing those bloody long trousers.

Monday morning came. I put on my long trousers and Michael sporadically laughed at me as we got ready for school. It was pouring down with rain and my shoes had holes in the soles, and cardboard would not keep out the water. Mom said I had better put on my Wellingtons. Not being experienced with long trousers, I wondered if I should wear them outside of the ‘wellies’ or push them down in the top and in my socks. I decided to push them into the top of the boots. So off I went to school in the rain, with my brother by my side. I approached Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School and looked through the railings with some apprehension. No one was there that I knew, so I strode into the playground in my long trousers and Wellington boots with an assumed nonchalant air. Because it was raining, the Prefects let us into the school and I sat down at my desk so that I could hide my legs.

During that momentous day, I was ready and waiting with a practiced retort for any comment concerning my trousers, but not one schoolboy or teacher mentioned my change in apparel or my consequent move into manhood. Not even Mr Archer, with his twinkling blue eyes, who reminded me of Alan Ladd the film star, said a word about it.

All morning I savoured being a man, and imagined that I had become, or looked, somewhat taller, and perhaps my voice had started to deepen just a little, and maybe there was the beginning of some whiskers on my face. But by dinnertime I had forgotten all about my sudden transformation into manhood and was galloping around the asphalted playground with all the other boys. Because we were cowboys, and I was Hopalong Cassidy (in my ‘wellies’), the famous American cowboy who was on at the ABC Regal on Saturday mornings, and I was not concerned with such trivialities as long or short trousers. I had a posse to run and some rustlers to find.

Hopalong was one of my western heroes.

This is how we dressed fo 'PT', in shorts and plimsolls with no socks or shirts, not matter what the weather.

Putting a Bet On

Every day except Sunday, Dad would walk from Preston Road to the factory where he worked, now he was out of the Royal Engineers and back at work, in Warstone Lane in Hockley. On Friday nights and weekends he would drink at the Red House with his brothers, and whenever he had the money, he would bet on the horses.Each working day Mom would give him half a crown for his dinner, but most times he would spend it having a bet on a horse instead. He did his gambling with an illegal bookie whose betting shop was up an entry at the bottom of a road close to the factory where he worked.

A furtive looking man, called Frank, a bookie’s runner, wearing a checked cap and a dirty white silk scarf around his neck, stood at the bottom of the entry. He was constantly watching for the police, his head darting backwards and forwards like a ferret. As an illegal punter, Dad would wrap his money for the bet in a piece of paper and sign with his non de-plume. His signature was always ‘Bonnie’; no one knew why, but Auntie Chris said it was an old girlfriend’s name from when he was a young man. Somehow, this gossip had never filtered through to Mom, who would have killed him, because he called my little sister ‘Bonnie’ too, even though her name was Roberta.

A typical 'entry', where the bookie's runner
would furtively wait for punters.

When a punter arrived at the betting shop, off would come the runner’s cap for the bet to be dropped into, then it was immediately slapped back onto his balding head. The attempts at secrecy were quite futile, as was the lookout for the police. All the bookies had an arrangement with the local police, where each gambling establishment was regularly raided on cue. There was an appearance in the local Magistrate’s Court and a predetermined fine was imposed. It worked very well; everybody was satisfied and there was no time wasted. Dad always had accumulator bets; he called them ‘if coming bets.’ He would bet sixpence on a horse, and if it won at 2 to 1, the shilling plus the sixpence went on the next horse, and so on. He rarely won. I would place bets for my Dad regularly. It made me feel quite grown up and daring going up the entry with his half crown rolled up in a piece of paper and putting it in the cap of the ferret-like little man with the grubby white silk scarf. I was always half expecting to feel a policeman’s hand on my shoulder and a voice saying ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s all this ‘ere then son?’ And me answering, ’It’s a fair cop, ossifer’, and being dragged off to the slammer, which I could later brag about to everybody.