In the Bleak Midwinter

Life in 4A2 required little adjustment. Not that it really mattered. In a few weeks I'd be leaving school anyway. In the meantime, I was still trying to shake off the stigma of demotion. Thankfully, some things carried on as normal.

‘Shall I cheer you up?’

That was Paul, in the playground, turning the tables on me with a piece of sarcasm I usually sprang on him each Friday.

‘Go on,’ I said, knowing perfectly well what was coming.

‘Collecting tonight!’

He laughed, I laughed. We always laughed, at a ritual that got us mentally prepared for the Friday night slog of having to knock on doors and collect customers’ money, a chore that doubled the time spent on our Evening Post rounds.

Delivering the Evening Post wasn’t a bad number. I encouraged my brother Dave to get in on the act on too. At thirteen, he was old enough, so he went see the boss, a crotchety old bloke with a hump on his back. I was pleased that Dave got taken on. I laughed too, when he nicknamed the boss Quasi.

The job’s biggest drawback came with four legs, teeth and a hostile reaction to newsprint. I’d had a couple of scares at the flats above the shops on Twydall Green, but the dog that worried me most was a dog I’d never seen, at a house in the corner of Elham Close. Each night I opened the garden gate and crept up the path as quietly as I could, yet no matter how careful I was, as soon as the paper slid through the letter box the dog went berserk. Knowing it was inside was something to be grateful for, but the sound of a dog biting lumps out of the door to get at me did nothing for my nerves and the fear of it being on the loose one day was ever constant.

The terror reached a climax each Friday night when a tentative knock triggered a murderous commotion. As always, the beast hurled itself at the door and an old woman started screeching. As always, I wished I was somewhere else, especially when the door opened. Then a hand came round the door, like Thing in The Addams Family, offering the money.

I never saw the old lady, just her hand, but as it was an old hand and she had an old voice, it seemed reasonable to conclude she was old and incapable of restraining Fido for long. As soon as I’d taken the payment I was off like a shot, striding down the path, bum clenched and heart pounding.

At school…

‘We’re going to Collingwood this afternoon.’

‘What’s Collingwood?’

‘Something to do with the dockyard, I think.’

‘What are we going there for?’

‘I don’t know.’

I didn’t know either. On a perishing cold day there was little enthusiasm for an expedition that set off straight after afternoon registration. Told to make our own way to the mysterious Collingwood, we blindly followed the leader. Someone must have known where they were going but the rest of us were strung out like a bedraggled army on the march down Marlborough Road when, to cap it all, it started snowing. In dribs and drabs we then crossed the High Street. I was not happy. I should have been in a nice warm classroom. Instead, I was walking into the unknown, clueless as to where we were going and freezing my balls off in a blizzard.

Collingwood, a one time naval barracks on Khyber Road, was a training centre for dockyard apprentices. As dull inside as the dreary weather on the outside, the upper floors were full of benches and vices. On the ground floor there was little natural light. If it hadn’t been for the integral spotlights on various machines I’d have mistaken it for a dungeon, but where were the operators? As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw them lurking in the shadows… skinheads, loads of them, staring at us. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, they then started chanting.

‘Na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye. Na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey, hey goodbye. ’

It wasn’t exactly welcoming. If the Collingwood visit was supposed to encourage school leavers into a dockyard career, it failed miserably. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.