This Heart Within Me Burns - From Bedlam to Benidorm (Revised & Updated). Crissy Rock
crackers. I had a voice like a foghorn, Brian twitched and tapped his leg every five minutes, and then there was Ian’s stutter. She must have thought she’d given birth to The Three Stooges.
Then there was the day all three of us got a letter home from school. No other kids in my class got one. In fact, there were only four in the whole school who did. As I walked home with Brian and Ian, I tried to convince us all that it was because we’d been really good. But at what?
We all stood in the lounge grinning as Mum opened the letters one by one, taking in the contents before moving on to the next one. Her face was a picture of study; she was obviously thinking about our reward.
‘Have we been good at school, Mum?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘What have we been good at?’
‘Catching.’
‘Catching?’
‘Catchin’ bloody nits, that’s what. Now get in that friggin’ bath, you dirty buggers.’
The tin bath normally reserved for a Sunday night was pulled out and placed in front of the fire and it was filled with water much too hot for our little bodies. Mum scrubbed – literally scrubbed – and then Dad rubbed us down with a towel rougher than sandpaper as we stood on a copy of the Liverpool Echo to catch the drips and nits. Nan, who was half blind, was up next in line with a bottle of vinegar in her hand and dragged the nit comb through our hair taking half of our scalp with it. Nan said that the vinegar would burst the eggs. I swear our heads would nearly be bleeding and it felt as if the comb had no teeth in it. By the end of the operation, we were all screaming in pain but were comforted when the nit patrol decided to give us a big doorstep jam butty to take our minds off the pain.
I have happy memories of the long summer holidays and of the winter too even though it was bitterly cold in the tenements in the days before central heating. In the winter, Nan always made us wear liberty bodices. They were a type of combination vest and knickers that had rubber buttons all the way up the front. We were then trussed up in jumpers that had more holes than the ozone layer, with a scarf wrapped around our neck and chest, tied in a knot on our back. Next, black wellington boots, a duffle coat and a balaclava with a pair of mitts on a piece of string which were fed up each sleeve in order that they wouldn’t get lost. (Don’t ask me. I can’t figure that one out either.) I remember Ian’s string being a little too short and as he went for a piece of snow with his right hand his left hand took on an involuntary action of its own.
Like all kids we loved the snow and dreaded when it turned into that awful slush, though it still didn’t stop us from chucking slush balls. Brian, Ian and me would go off like three little Scotts of the Antarctic to play in the snow for hours then head for home bloody freezing, our toes throbbing and our legs ripped to bits with welly rash. All three of us would jostle for position trying to hog the roaring fire to get warm, until our skin turned bright red and Nan would be saying, ‘Don’t be standing too close to the bloody fire. You’ll get corned-beef legs.’
I try my hardest to keep the good memories of those days at the front of my mind and I love talking about them and laughing with anyone who cares to listen, especially my brothers. While some memories are hard to talk about, let alone write, I prefer to think of happy times: Christmas, Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night.
Bonfire Night itself was great, although we never had any fireworks, just sparklers. We’d beg Dad to let us set them off but he’d make us wait until we’d finished our tea, by which time it was really dark. Even Ian was allowed to hold the odd one under the close supervision of Dad.
The run-up to Guy Fawkes’ night was just as great. We’d dress our Ian up as a Guy, standing outside Ali’s sweet shop taking pennies from anyone who passed, and trying to convince people that we’d made him. There’d be plenty of wood for us to collect too, but it had to be protected from rival gangs who lived in the nearby tenement blocks at Myrtle House. Everyone would be trying to steal each other’s wood to see who could build the biggest bonnie in the area. Sometimes it was an all-out war, with the bigger lads throwing stones and kicking lumps out of each other for the sake of a plank of wood or an old settee. We’d watch in admiration as they turned the old wood, chairs and orange boxes into a huge wigwam towering into the sky. How we waited until 5 November before we set it alight, I’ll never know.
Every back lane, every street and every tenement seemed to have a bonfire. Health and safety didn’t come into it in those days and the glow in the pitch-black sky in Liverpool 8 on Bonfire Night could be seen for miles around. We’d throw potatoes on the glowing embers as the fire died down and sit as close as we dared, looking up into the night sky for the fireworks that were being set off around the city. It made me think that heaven was having a huge party.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death fires danced at night;
The water like witches oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
Every day was like a party. Even though we had nothing, somehow our parents seemed to be able to provide just enough to make these special days a joy. They struggled and no doubt did without other things. I will forever be in their debt, God love them both.
Christmas was different because everyone knew that Santa Claus provided all your presents, though I couldn’t quite understand how some kids got more than others. You’d think the fat get would have been able to even it out a little better, wouldn’t you?
Our Christmases were not fancy – they were basic, with only one or two little presents and a bag or two of sweets each – but to us they were special and not once did we ever wake up disappointed. Every year, Mum would take us on a trip to TJ Hughes’ store on London Road, where we’d watch the dancing waters in the grotto absolutely mesmerised as they danced a tune to the music. They were something else. Once the show was over, off we’d go to see Santa in the grotto, excitedly knowing that in a few short days he’d be coming down our chimney. A couple of days later, the Christmas parades with all the floats would heave and groan their way through the town centre. Sometimes I wish those events had been frozen in time, just like our fingers and toes were in the snow. It was great to be a kid back then; I wished we could have stayed that age forever.
It was at Christmas 1966, when I was eight years old, that Santa was particularly generous. I remember it well because we all got a World Cup Willie mascot to celebrate the fact that England had won the World Cup that summer. Dad had been knocked over by a wagon some months earlier when he was delivering his parcels for the railway. Thankfully, he wasn’t hurt too badly but was awarded £100 compensation in the middle of December. I swear he spent every penny of his compensation on that Christmas.
Mum could hardly contain herself; she had woken us at five in the morning to show us how good Father Christmas had been. She was wide awake and grinning as she woke three bleary-eyed youngsters from their slumber and forced us out of bed. So that year, we got loads of presents. We started with the pillowcases by the bottom of the bed: cars, a Snakes and Ladders board game, Tiddlywinks and a climb-in Dr Who Dalek for Ian. In the living room, there were two dolls for me – a Tiny Tears and a Tressy – and in the middle of the room was a brand-new Chopper bike for Brian. There was a police car with a siren, a Spirograph, Ker-Plunk…
Santa had even brought Mum a pair of new curtains. She said it was the first thing she had ever had that wasn’t on tick. We found out later they were magic curtains that wouldn’t go on fire. But we found out by accident.
One night, Brian and me were in on our own watching telly. The telly was from Radio Rentals and had to be fed with a sixpence via a slot in the back. That sixpence would last four or five hours, but it was so annoying when it would run out – especially if we were watching something good and you had to crawl around the back and insert another tanner. The set was so close to the wall it was difficult to see the slot but Brian, being smaller than me, could crawl under the legs of the television to insert the money. To give him enough light to see, I’d get some newspaper and light it from