Flatnose Tom announced angrily as I walked into the corner shop he ran at the end of our street.
“Yer wha??? What for Tom?” I asked with increasing embarrassment and in complete and utter disbelief.
“I’ll tell ya what for you little robber! You climbed over the back wall last night and robbed a crate of Schofields lemonade!!”
Even if my status really had been elevated to ‘robber’, I wouldn’t have dared climb over the back wall seeing as Flatnose Tom kept a huge German Shepherd in the back! Not only that, but when I sagged off school or pretended to be sick, I’d look forward to having a game of draughts with him and I’m sure he was glad of the company. Nevertheless, I was banned and there was nothing I could do or say that would make any difference. So I simply crossed the street and bought me threepenny drink at Ballards.
On the way out, I saw Tony Bancroft kicking a stone in a perfectly straight line across the cobbles in an attempt to score a goal in the grid. His slip-on shoe came off with the force of the kick! “Ahhhh yer scruff!” I shouted compassionately. “What are yer doing? Are ya coming out or wha?”
I really liked Tony. He was me best mate and although he was two years older than me, he told me everything I needed to know about the universe and about girls that he had learned from his older brothers Jimmy and Billy.
It was Tony that told me when I was ten that if you lie on top of a girl “you get a thrill!” I tried it once with Pauline Kelly for a whole ten minutes and she just told me to “Get off!” So we both marched round to Tony’s house and told him he was a liar and that nothing happens! Tony just nodded his head and tutted at the pair of us.
There were ten people living in his three-bedroom terraced house including his grandma. They dressed in hand-me-downs, as did most other big families, and although they seemed poor, they managed on Billy’s money from delivering the coal and from Jimmy’s money working on the bins. Me and Pauline Kelly worked out that Mr and Mrs Bancroft were probably too tired to work!
There were other great things about Tony Bancroft.; he’d stick up for me especially with kids and even gangs that were older than us. All it took was a simple “AYYYY leave him alone you!” and most of the time they would stop, frown, spit on the ground, and drag their feet walking away; every one of them baring a curled lip! For this, and many other reasons, I’d usually share me pocket money with him or pay his bus fare when we’d go to the museum or on the trains as far as Southport which was miles away.
In those days, you could throw a brick at a kid, near split his head open, and there would be blood everywhere but no one ever snitched (unless it was really bad and their clothes were wrecked!).
When I threw a brick at Flatnose Tom’s son though, he went beserk and we had a fight at the bottom of the street until I convinced him that me trousers were brand new and that four year old Tony Kelly had thrown it. Tony even admitted it for me and we were all best mates within an hour!
For the next few months though, whenever there was a raid (gangs of kids throwing bricks and stones at each other) and despite being warned to “Aim to miss” Flatnose Tom’s son went out of his way to aim for me head! He still missed cos I was a good brick dodger but I got him in the forehead loads of times!
Now, you need to know that knocking houses down was great fun especially in the late sixties when hundreds of families were moving out of the area to places that had gardens and weird birds like Starlings, Thrushes, and Magpies! We only ever saw pigeons, seagulls and sparrows and the only trees you ever saw were all in the park!
When a family had moved out, their house was condemned for clearance and the entire area earmarked for poorly informed and narrowminded redevelopment. When a house became empty, it was like winning the lottery! As kids, we just thought it best to help out in any way we could and so our dad’s tools came in really handy!
Armed with a set of stone chisels and hammers, me, Pauline Kelly, Tony Bancroft, and Tony Williams managed to climb over the back wall of the Cobblers and in through the back window to begin our demolition.
Tony Bancroft legged it upstairs while the rest of us sorted through discarded shoes and found tons of leather cutting tools and bits of shoes. Once we’d sorted our individual stashes, we joined Tony on the first floor where he’d already begun knocking one of the upstairs walls down.
“AY You!!!” I shouted. “What are yer doing??? We all start on the SAME wall!!!” We had rules and you never break them especially with tasks this big when you worked as a team. But Tony couldn’t wait… he wanted a wall of his own and that’s when we heard this almighty crash accompanied by an “Aaaaggghhhh!!!!” and a heavy thud!
When we got to the doorway of the room Tony was ‘working’ in, there was a huge hole in the floorboards where half the floor had collapsed! Now the distance from the upstairs floor to ground level was easily around 15 feet and as we inched our way to the edges of the hole we saw Tony covered in plaster and lying in a pile of rubble and timber. He was still alive but winded and it had to be one of the funniest things we’d ever seen! We could barely breathe ourselves for laughing but then, at the same time, you had to at least ‘look’ concerned’ cos this, afterall, was one of yer mates!!
There was loads of times I'd fallen off walls and roofs and Tony was there like a shot! When I fell off one particularly high wall and landed on me back, he even made a song up with lyrics that went: 'Putting on the agony, putting onnnnn the agony...." I wasn't putting anything on though... I near broke me back and me neck and I nearly died cos that wall was easy over 20 feet!!
Eventually, we controlled our laughing and it was safe to take our hands away from our mouths. We shouted down the reassuring “Awww are yer alright Tone? ... We’ll get yer out in a minute!” The thing is, Tony Williams and Pauline Kelly had already started knocking the stairs down so it took a while for us to negotiate the lack of stairs and reach the still winded mate.
He looked a right state lying there coughing and moaning and trying to clear his eyes of debris until he finally and quite casually said: "Fuckinell... I near broke me neck then!"
After he finally stood up, he tucked his shirt in and brushed himself down, and was sniffing quite a bit. When kids sniff like that, and they haven't got a cold, you know they're dying to cry or that they really got hurt. You kind of ignore it as though it isn't happening because there's every chance that someone will say "Ahhh look... he's dying to cry now!" I'd had it said to me loads of times but you never ever say it to your mates and no matter what.. you do everything you can to stop the tears!
So.. we got out of the Cobblers and back into the street. We’d just got to Pauline’s house when her dog Prince started jumping up at Tony probably because he ‘looked’ strange covered in plaster. Get off yer bastard!” Tony snarled, but it was then that I realized with horror that he had left me dad’s chisel in the cobblers and even though me dad would be blind drunk when he got home, he’d KNOW his chisel was missing without even having to look!
All of our dad’s had somehow inherited psychic abilities from all that fighting in the war. Some could tell that you were lying, others could sense something was missing from their toolboxes, and that you'd heard them calling you in half an hour before you turned up.
There were some dads that were really powerful though.. these were the ones that could tell if you’d been to Mass on Sunday or not just by looking at ya!
Eventually, Tony Bancroft went back to get the chisel through sheer peer pressure and when he got back and everyone had gone in for tea (dinner), I was waiting for him on my front step. "D'ya wanna go the pictures?" I asked enthusiastically. "It's alright.. I'll ask me mum if I can pay for ya... there's a Dracula film on and I think it's on with The Mummy's Shroud!"
Tony Bancroft smurked a classic best mate smurk: "How are we gonna get in... they're both 'X's?"
"Don't be soft!" I said, on my way to get me pocket money off me mum... "You know how it works... just look like you're about to cry and we'll get someone to bunk us in... cum-ed!"
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