Winklepickers

Winkle pickers weren’t made for kicking a tennis ball around a school playground. In a matter of days mine were scuffed to bits and when the tips turned upwards, I looked like Aladdin. But where there’s a will there’s a way and a need to adapt brought a chance discovery. I found I was able to strike a ball with the outside of my foot, hard and true, consistently and with great accuracy.

 

Playing up the slope (on the netball court marked 1) our side went a goal behind. No problem. From the resulting kick off Stan set me up for an instant equaliser. A swing of the deadly winkle picker unleashed a missile of such velocity that a ball travelling two feet off the ground was still at the same height as it fizzed past Martyn Waterman and hit the fence at the top of the playground. Stan and I repeated the same move over and over.

Martyn Waterman was a jovial soul, a happy fat kid even. Like most fat kids he usually ended up in goal and in one of these games he sang Judy in Disguise throughout the entire break. He didn’t know the words to this new song in the charts, but he knew enough to keep it going and laugh his head off each time he got to the line ‘cross your heart with a living bra.’

Martyn was in goal again when I experienced one of football’s glorious moments. In playground football the goalkeeper always threw the ball, over arm, as far as he could into the opposition half. The defending side would back pedal and as always, when any of us realised the ball was about to go over our head, we’d throw a lazy heel up behind us in the hope of catching it. Getting any sort of contact with the ball was rare, but on this day…

Martyn threw a ball that was dropping over my head. Like a hundred times before I back pedalled and brought up a lazy heel… and caught the ball perfectly, returning it in a wonderful reverse arc. It didn’t matter that Martyn caught it and threw it straight down the playground again. For the rest of the game I was buzzing inside, reliving the moment of catching that ball just right.

Playground football brought a premature end to my first pair of winkle pickers. Mam was choked when I hobbled home from school with a heel missing. 

‘It just came off, Mam.’

‘You’ll have to wear the other ones,’ said my forlorn mother, of the bigger pair she’d bought in the sales for later use. ‘And don’t play football in them.’

And so it came to pass that the oversized winkle pickers got pressed into service much earlier than Mam expected. Though it pained me see her despondency, how could I not play football?

On a damp playground one dinnertime (see position 2), we were playing just another game on just another day when, from a defensive position and kicking towards the pool, I swung a leg to clear a bouncing ball. Stan, playing for the other side, jumped up to block the clearance and let out a sickening scream as an oversize winkle picker, with a coating of grit on the sole, flew off my foot and thudded into his face. 

 The lads rushed to his assistance. ‘Let’s have a look’ someone said.

‘Come on, we’ll take you to the nurse,’ said another, as they steered a distraught Stan into the building.

What nurse I wondered, as I hopped about on one leg. I didn’t even know we had a nurse. But once I’d retrieved the rogue winkle picker I had no mind for flippancy or football.

‘What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you playing?’ someone called as I walked away.

I couldn’t understand how anyone could play on after that. I certainly couldn’t. I wandered off onto the field, sickened and frightened for Stan. Everything had happened so quickly. One minute we were playing football and the next… it was too awful to contemplate. 

‘Hoi you!’ a female voice yelled, minutes later.

A girl I knew by sight was striding purposely across the field towards me. A second year in one of the B or C classes, she was with her curly haired mate.

‘Yes, you!’ she shouted as I turned around. ‘What have you done to my Stanley?’

I didn’t need a haranguing from one of Stan’s admirers, let alone a broad shouldered girl with an even broader mouth. I felt miserable enough already. I ignored her and mooched off in the opposite direction. 

Things weren’t as bad as they’d seemed, thank goodness. Nobody was more relieved than me when Stan reappeared in the afternoon break, none the worse for an eye-bath and some antiseptic ointment on a scraped cheek.