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‘Dad, can I mind the torch?’
‘No, go to sleep’
Mum having her drink spiked with Pernod at The Catholic Men’s Society New Year’s Eve party and her coming home singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ before getting poorly –
‘No, the bucket! Under the stairs, next to the bleach!’
Butlin’s! Us and the Holkers paying for two families of three in the self-catering chalets but smuggling the rest in. Simon getting the short straw and having to go in the boot of the car –
‘Well, just take little breaths and for God’s sake don’t make a sound till we’re well past reception!’
Rumbles with the Protestant school, St Matthew’s, but making up by home-time as half the kids in our street went there –
‘You don’t get Communion because Jesus dun’t even believe in you!’
Almost wetting myself laughing at watching a truck drive backwards at high speed thanks to rewind on Martin Hurley’s brand new video recorder –
‘Can I do it?’
‘No, you might break it. You should tell your mum and dad to get one’
‘Maybe ...’
‘That’s what you always say’
Wimpy’s opening in St Helens and my dad acting genuinely bemused as to why I’d want to opt for that over a pig’s trotter from Kwik Save’s in-store butcher’s department –
‘But it’s what Action Man would eat in a real war’
The Morris 1800 that my dad refused to scrap despite living under it with a tool-kit every spare Saturday afternoon. Putting it in our backyard after demolishing the wall to get it in. All the make-believe day trips we went on in it, although even then my brother made me sit in the back with my seat-belt on –
‘Do you wanna go to Disney World or not?’
‘Yes, but ...’
‘Because any more out of you and I’ll turn this car around right now and we’ll go straight home, got that?’
The fights my brothers had with other kids in the street – the Rodens, Gaz and some of the Fords – all over nothing and forgotten the minute a football appeared on the scene
Offering Lee a go on my bike the awful day I found him sitting looking lost on the kerb outside his house after hearing his dad had died falling from a ladder on a building site –
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, just no going off kerbs, and don’t let me mam see you’
Dunking cold toast in a flask lid of hot tea for breakfast in school because we’d attended early mass during Lent –
‘Chocolate’
‘Sweets’
‘Newsround’
‘Newsround dun’t count – it’s educational. You have to give up something you’d miss, like Tiswas or Hong Kong Phooey’
‘He’s right. You’ll end up in purgatory for Newsround’
‘Blue Peter?’
‘Same difference’
That moody bloke who’d had the first ever double-glazing fitted in our street –
‘Your dad doesn’t earn in a month what one of these would cost to replace, now bugger off and play outside yer own house!’
Playing football in the grounds of St Matthew’s Church and my dad not bollocking us when the vicar called round to grass us up because he never forgave them for not giving up their cast-iron gates during the war effort.
Flashing Julie McDonald and doing ‘The Penguin’ around the back of Rainhill cricket club in a giddy, nine-year-old fit of wild romantic abandon
‘What you doing that for?’
‘Dunno’
‘You’re not funny’
‘Right’
Struggling to explain the flashing incident in Confession that week and being grateful I’d got funny Father Joyce instead of stern Father Turner –
‘I accidentally showed myself to a girl from school’
‘Accidentally what?’
‘My pants were loose, they fell down’
‘And what did she do?’
‘Told all her mates in class. They kept calling me “The Flasher”’
‘That’s not good’
‘No’
‘And are you sorry?’
‘Yes, Father’
‘Well, say two Hail Marys, just in case’
‘Okay’
‘And tell your mum to get you a belt’
Missing out on Halloween because my dad reckoned it was a blasphemous celebration of the occult, but getting the money to go to the pictures instead –
‘There’s enough evil in the world without throwing a party for it’
Our Mark belting that posh lad sitting behind us during The Spy Who Loved Me because he’d already seen the film and told his mate, really loudly, that the car was about to turn into a submarine –
‘Have you seen the bit where this happens?’
‘I beg your pardon ...? Ow!’
Watching our Mark play rugby – he was a blinding scrum-half
Watching our Rob score that amazing goal from a corner
Offering to put out the corner flags for future footy matches after failing to get selected for the school team because I wouldn’t quit goal-hanging and couldn’t grasp the concept of off-side –
‘You’re a parasite, Pennington. Do you hear me? A parasite!’
Learning to swim courtesy of our headmaster, Mr McManus, after numerous lessons with my brother Mark had failed –
‘Put your hands on the sides again and I’ll stomp on ’em. Now move your arms, kick your legs and bloody swim!’
Paul Barnet sticking blades of grass up frogs’ arses and inflating them a bit before gently squeezing to make them fart –
Phhhhht
‘Can you make ’em burp?’
‘Nah, they’d be sick. That’d be cruel’
Believing Paul Barnet when he told me he was born on a meteor that crash-landed in Taylor Park and therefore he was half werewolf –
‘I don’t turn into a full wolf, I just get a craving for sausages and chops or owt else meaty when it’s a full moon’
Our Robert and Mark getting Paul to chase me down the street just so they could test their latest man-trap by lifting up a piece of fishing line at the last moment and nearly bloody decapitating me –
‘It’d work if you weren’t so bloody slow at running!’
Trying sterilised milk for the first time at Martin Hurley’s house and throwing up for three days straight at home afterwards
Eating snails at their house and throwing up at home afterwards
Eating a Goblin meat pudding at their house and throwing up at home afterwards –
‘Mum, can I go and play at Martin’s house after school?’
‘Yes, but best come home for your tea afterwards’
Martin’s mum taking us to see Grease even though we were under age and then to a curry house where she let us have a real beer shandy, then my throwing up on Martin’s hand after drinking it, which made him throw up in the restaurant fish tank –
‘Just the bill, please’
Hearing that my nan had died on the first evening of our caravan holiday in Rhyl and packing the car to go back home. There was no conversation to cover the sound of Mum weeping in the bedroom
Me and our Dimon pounding on a lad the afternoon after Nan’s funeral for shouting –
‘Ey-up, it’s Rentaghost!’
Leaving Mum in church on Sundays as she knelt and cried her heart out week after week after week
Playing Kamikaze golf in the Holkers’ bedroom and our Mark knocking the ball through their window and leaving a clean, golf ball-sized hole in it –
‘Catch a bird, kill it, say it flew straight through’
‘You’re an idiot!’
Watching Superman with Christopher Reeve and actually believing a man could fly!
Watching Superman II with Martin Hurley and his dad and seeing families get up and leave during the scene where Superman was in bed with Lois Lane –
‘But Dad, why?’
‘Never mind why, just get your coats. And bring that popcorn with you!’
Having nightmares about the bedroom filling with water and a shark getting in after our Robert told me all about Jaws chomp by chomp –
‘DUUUH DUH. DUUUH DUH’
‘Mum!’
I was crap at climbing. This tree had actually blown over in a storm.
The tree outside our bedroom window that looked like a witch
The parent alarm our Robert built with a Subbuteo floodlight and the switch contacts that he hid under the carpet outside our bedroom so we could play cards after lights out, not knowing that Dad used to stand outside tapping it for his own amusement –
‘Right, your turn ... shush!’
‘Twist ... shush!’
‘Twist agai—shush!’
‘Twi—shush!’
Watching the BBC Television Centre on telly and thinking it was almost as far away as the Star Wars galaxy, then committing the postcode to memory: ‘W128QT, W128QT, W128QT’
