February 1968

At Paul Parker’s house one evening he showed me a football game he’d devised. With a bit of brainpower he’d formulated his own fixtures, decided the results on the throw of a dice and compiled an ongoing league table. Highly impressed, I vowed to incorporate his genius into a football game I played at home.

Playing football games wasn’t as good as kicking a ball around for real, but in the winter months, when it was dark by the time we’d got home and had our tea, it was either that or the telly.

On Wednesday 7^th February (7:30pm BBC1) I watched an episode of The Virginian. Called The Brazen Bell, it was about two escaped convicts, one being a slow minded, sleepy eyed character called Dawg, who relied heavily on the guidance of his older and wiser partner. 

The following morning... I'd not long arrived at school and was standing near the bottom of the playground, chatting with friends, when I heard someone say ‘Dawg!’ loud and clear, American style. Then I heard it again.

‘Dawg!’ 

I looked up and saw a first year kid walking by on the path, smirking.

‘Dawg!’ he repeated, looking straight at me. The insinuation was obvious. 

For a moment I just stared at him, scarcely able to believe his nerve. If I hadn’t seen the programme he might have got away with it, but I had, and when he said it again, I flew at him. I didn’t hurt him, nor did I wish to, but the roughing up I gave him was enough to mark his card. Going for him was out of character. Though my friends looked surprised, I didn’t bother to explain. Everyone draws their own line and that morning, he crossed mine. I found out later he was called Yianni. Peter, I believe. He didn’t trouble me again, nor I him.

‘I bought you some shoes in the sales,’ said Mam, looking very pleased. ‘Two pairs, one for now and a bigger pair for later.’

Winkle pickers, bloody hell.

They must have been a bargain for Mam to get two pairs. So what if winkle pickers were yesterday’s fashion. Not many thirteen year old’s owned two pairs of elasticated slip-on winkle pickers, but I did and I was chuffed.

February 29^th 1968 was a big day for a girl in Mister Potts’s class. So he said, once he'd called for silence at end of the first dinner sitting. After asking the girl to stand up, he told us she was a leap year baby and got the whole canteen to sing Happy Birthday to her on what – as he put it – was her third birthday.