January 1970

Disastrous results in the pre-Christmas exams had left me dancing on the trap door of demotion. I feared the worst, yet there’d been no confirmation. A discreet word before we broke up would have sufficed but I was none the wiser when I returned to school after the holidays and took my place, in 4A1, for registration.

‘What are you doing here? You’re not in this class anymore. You should be in Mister Askew’s classroom,’ said a brusque Mister Fisk.

Bang, have that. What a bastard. After gathering my gear and the remnants of my hymn book, I crawled out of the room; a humiliating end to my time in A1.

Break time…

‘Hoi! Dimbo!’

A very healthy looking Brian Lack thought it hilarious that I’d been demoted. 

‘It should have been you,’ I told him. 

Brian laughed. He knew as well as I did that after all the mucking about he’d done that year, he’d have been bottom of the class if he hadn’t dodged the exams by skiving off sick.

4A2 wasn’t the end of the world. How could it be, when I was reunited with Paul, Clive, John and Kevin; friends I’d known since we were classmates at Twydall Juniors. Mister Askew was a teacher I liked and I knew all the lads through our classes doing PE together. I knew a few of the girls too; those that had been in A1 at some time. Only they weren’t in A1 anymore and nor was I, because I’d let myself down, and that was the painful part.

Dad didn’t hesitate to sign the letter I brought home. Whatever the future held for me, I’d be leaving school at Easter.

Brother Mike and I went to see the school production of Cinderella. There was a good atmosphere in a packed assembly hall that evening. Before the show started it was fun to identify the huge silhouettes of various teachers, cut from black paper and mounted high on the panelled partitioning that separated the hall from the canteen.

Teachers singing, dancing and playing the fool provided marvellous entertainment. Mrs Sharp played Cinderella, Mister Middlewick played Buttons, Mister Carroll hammed it up as an ugly sister and somewhere in the support cast was Ann Howe.

‘Joshua, Joshua, nicer than lemon squash-you-are,’ was one of many songs sung.  Others songs were more contemporary like One, Two, Three, O’Leary and Lily the Pink. All in all, it was a good night that Mike and I enjoyed immensely.

Hail, sleet, rain or shine I’d be at Beechings Way on Sunday mornings. Of the teams that played their home games there, Gillingham Supporters Club were the most popular. Most of the team were in their late teens and early twenties. Bugs Nekrews was someone I’d seen working in the supporters hut at Priestfield Stadium. Paul Dixon, I believe, was a former Upbury pupil. Nobby Blackman, a stocky lad with ginger hair, was another who caught the eye. If his appearance didn’t catch the attention his name surely did, especially when his team mates were yelling for the ball. ‘Nobby! Nob! Nob! Nob!’ How the local kids loved that.

From my usual position behind the goal near the pavilion I witnessed the comical, the farcical and the magical. And I heard plenty of colourful language. Rarely does a player score direct from a corner. For a player to perform the trick twice in the same game is unheard of, at any level. Yet incredibly I saw it happen. From successive corners, left foot and then right, from either side of the pitch, the ball swung over the goalkeeper and curled inside the far post. Amazing.

Beechings Way and that particular pitch had been special to me since the summer of 1966. For countless days after we’d won the World Cup, I was there, reliving England’s glory as Bobby Charlton, aged eleven.

Note: Two years later a story in the local press said a young labourer had been killed in a building site trench collapse. With it was a picture of a young man, drinking a pint in his local. I froze when I saw it. It was Nobby.