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‘Michael, what have I told you? Swallow your butty first, nobody wants to be drinking your leftovers’
Begging my dad relentlessly to be allowed to camp out on the big field with Ian Cropper –
‘But everyone else is going’
‘Well, good for them’
‘We’ll be dead safe, honest. Ian’s got a knife and matches and a proper paraffin lamp’
‘Has he really?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Well, that’s three good reasons why you’re definitely not going’
Tying fishing-line to a purse and lying in wait in the bushes to yank it away when someone tried to grab it, knowing that the victims who got narky had intended on keeping it –
‘Whoever you are, I know your dads – just you wait till I see ’em!’
Making breakfast in bed for my dad on Father’s Day but accidentally putting salt on the cornflakes instead of sugar –
‘And as soon as you’ve finished, you can open your card’
‘There’s no rush, you know I like to take my time with my food’
Going round Danny Rawlinson’s house believing that the future had truly arrived as I sat and watched with awe and envy, waiting for my turn on Atari’s Space Invaders –
‘Are you rich?’
‘No, why?’
‘Dun’t matter’
Saying my prayers in the firm belief that if technology such as Space Invaders was within our reach, then surely Star Wars was a realistic possibility –
‘Please, please get me to outer space. I know it might mean killing people, Lord, but you saw what they did to Alderaan, I mean, that was a whole planet ...’
Making movies on Danny’s Super 8 film camera and feeling magical the first time our film came back from the processors’ and we watched it projected onto a sheet tacked to his front room wall –
‘Look, look, there’s me!’
Playing snooker on Danny’s five-foot snooker table and dreaming of the day when Hurricane Higgins acknowledged the arrival of Michael ‘The Storm’ Pennington as the sport’s new name to watch out for –
‘... and as he lines himself up for a difficult angle on the blue into the right side pocket ...’
‘Do you always talk to yourself when you play?’
‘It makes it more like the telly’
‘Weirdo!’
Fishing with Danny’s spare tackle for four years –
‘Can Danny come fishing, Mrs Rawlinson?’
‘He’s out with his dad, Michael’
‘Oh ...’
‘The tackle’s in the garage – help yourself’
‘Thanks!’
My mum finally accepting it wasn’t a phase and buying me my own rod and reel from Makro for my birthday: a Shakespeare carbon-fibre ledger pro that you could bend right back on itself, although I never dared try –
‘Bend it ...’
‘No!’
‘They’re designed so you can bend ’em, to take the weight of a fish’
‘So?’
‘So bend it!’
‘No!’
Trying to breed my own maggots for bait by hiding pork trimmings on top of the cistern in the outside toilet. My dad doing a bloody good impression of Michael Caine in that movie The Swarm after taking the racing page in there for his Saturday ‘my time’ constitutional –
‘What the hell’s wrong with just using a bit of bread?’
Going hell for leather playing Murderball at Grange Park Youth Club until volunteer Phil blew his whistle –
‘Find a ball and you can carry on, otherwise the scrapping stops now!’
The first time we tried to play American football after watching The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds, and my brother Mark kicked our Rob so hard that Mum and Dad had to take him and his baking apple-sized swollen balls to A&E, where the doctor suggested pressing charges before being made fully aware of the circumstances –
‘His own brother did this?’
(Taking Mum and Dad to one side.) ‘Is he adopted?’
Rob’s glee at the stitches Mark had to have in his bum when Gaz Leyland stopped mid aeroplane-swing and dropped him on a broken bottle –
‘Your arse looks like a Sky At Night chart’
‘Shut up!’
‘Give us a pen and I could draw the Plough on it’
‘MUM!’
That huge terrifying swing off the flat shed roof and over the sharp, iron-tipped boundary fence of Hankey’s Well that everyone had to pog onto – a forty-foot arc of white-knuckle terror for the nine or ten kids clinging on for dear life –
‘Whoever’s holding on there, don’t – aim for the rope!’
The games of Skillie, or Manhunt, that covered the whole of Thatto Heath, Taylor Park, Portico, Red Rocks, Broadway and Eccleston Mere, despite always getting caught early and never, ever launching a successful escape bid for my team –
‘Same bush, same spot, every bloody time! Look, I can see you from here, Mike, and if you make me go over there and tag you, you’re getting a dead arm ... a proper one’
‘I surrender!’
‘And you wonder why you’re always picked last?’
Our Dimon blowing his birthday money on sweets for everyone and ten packs of Star Wars cards for me down at the corner shop near Thatto Heath Park, and the bollocking we all got from Aunty Kath for filling up on Blackjacks, Sherbert Dips, Cola Cubes, Fruit Salads and Drumstick lollies before his birthday tea –
‘I’m cooking nothing this week till all that’s gone, do you hear me?’
‘Yes’
‘Pat, get the clingfilm back on’
‘What about my cake?’
‘Don’t push it!’
Me getting Astro Wars for Christmas after pleading with Steve Butler for a full term of playtimes for a go of his, then praying with all my might that his batteries would have an acid leak and he’d have to make do with a game of Bulldog like everyone else –
‘I only ask Lord because you’ve seen him – he’s a proper tight git’
All the patients from Rainhill Hospital wandering around Thatto Heath Lane, some shouting random swearwords, but most just dazed and confused from the institutionalisation –
‘Bloody buggers ... bloody’
‘Mum, that man just—’
‘Shush and finish your pie’
The pig that used to escape from Piggy Fletcher’s and run riot down the lane, stopping traffic and drawing out all the drunken wannabe rodeo cowboys from The Vine pub
My nan, Mary, taking us to Blackpool and telling us we could stay in the Funhouse for as long as we wanted, even if it meant missing our coach and catching a train home
My dad building us a sledge and dragging it – with me sitting on it – all the way to Taylor Park’s big hill, just so we could crash it into a tree –
‘You’re not concussed, you’d be vomiting if ... here, use my hankie, and not a word to your mum, all right?’
Sitting in the garden with my mum if I went home from school for lunch, watching The Sullivans courtesy of a long extension lead and eating my Blackburn’s steak pie with cream cake to follow –
‘Well, will you marry me?’
‘Yes, yes, I will!’
‘I think Kitty’s gonna be all right, Mum. Mum, are you crying?
‘Shush and finish your cake’
Not sleeping for weeks after watching Salem’s Lot but being grateful that Dad had a crucifix hanging in every single room in the house. And wishing our Mark wouldn’t keep whispering –
‘Michael, open the window, Michael’
Actually worrying that Mum might be part vampire as she applied her prescription sun-block after being diagnosed with a rare allergy to sunlight. Wondering if I could bring myself to stake her if the blood-lust ever overwhelmed her mothering instincts –
‘That’s not your mother, she belongs to the Master now’
‘Forgive me, Mum!’
Realising that vampires don’t tend to wear crosses around their neck as Mum did, and therefore deciding all was probably well
Dad taking the day off and taking me out of school to visit the Liverpool Maritime Museum –
‘Shut? Ah, well, do you want to see the huge police station I built?’
‘All by yourself, Dad?’
‘I did the stairs. I remember telling the foreman that those drawings the architect sent were wrong ...’
All of Dad’s stories and how adversity never seemed to get him down. Never even hearing him shout like some of the other dads on our street
All the front doors left open on our street and all the verbal snippets of family life –
‘Mum, Muuuuum, come and wipe me bum!’
That camping holiday in Wales when Dad’s old army tent ripped in half following a force twelve gale, and the sleepless night that followed as the rain blew in –
‘Dad, I’m cold’
‘Go to sleep’
‘Dad, my sleeping bag’s wet’
‘Go to sleep’
‘Dad, can I go and get a shower?’
‘No, go to sleep’
‘Dad, when can I get a shower?’
‘When you wake up, now go to sleep’
