IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

Dear readers and friends,

I have decided that in future I will publish my writings in an online publishing website hosted by the publishers, Harper Collins. If I am able to demonstrate an interest in the novel Juggernaut there is a possibility that I may be able to have it published by this route. I depend on your critical comments and support of course in my endeavours so if you feel able to help and assist me in this I will be most grateful and indebted to your generosity.
Please continue to follow what happens to Gerry and share it as widely as you feel able on http://www.authonomy.com/ReadBook.aspx?bookid=15037#chapter
My very best wishes and grateful thanks to you all for the coming New Year which hopefully will bring us all some degree of prosperity and contentment.

Gary (Bill Walters) Rudd

Chapter Twenty-Three - Nature's Way

Malcolm Moore was a surprise visitor to the front door of the Hood family’s house late one summer afternoon. Unbidden by anything other than the repetitive sound of rock music in the immediate vicinity of where he lived he drove around the estate in his Hillman Imp until, locating the source, he knocked on the front door of the house where he was greeted by the boys’ mother. The appearance of the long-haired and bespectacled boy, who was five years older than Glenn didn’t seem to faze her too much as she soon admitted him to the upstairs bedroom where Glenn and Gerry were rocking their way through David Bowie’s Saviour Machine from which they immediately paused at the appearance of the older boy who resembled John Lennon in many ways except for the semicircle of flesh that was missing from his left ear. The mutilation had occurred they later learned when Malc, as his friends and family called him, had got in the way at very close range of a friend firing a twelve-bore shotgun. One degree further toward Malcolm would have blown a sizeable hole through the centre of his face and head, so, in a way, he was lucky.

And he did seem to enjoy certain privileges. He had quite a nice car - courtesy of his father who was the general manager of a well-established car-dealer’s - and having recently left school enjoyed some source of income as yet unknown to the Hood boys and considerable liberty and freedom. After their unsophisticated introductions had been made Glenn’s self-consciousness somehow decided him against accepting Malc’s immediate invitation to join him at his house where they could apparently listen to some ‘sounds’ and talk about the possibility of forming a band, a band in which he hoped to find musicians to accompany on his Sonor drum kit which Gerry having accepted the invitation found arranged in the dining room of Malc’s parents’ rather modern looking home. The house had an ostentatiously open-plan staircase and, best of all a massively powerful hi-fi which was built-in to the living room’s fitted wall unit, speakers and all, and which blasted out sounds and frequencies that Gerry had not heard the like of before.

Malc placed LP after LP onto the Goldring Lenco deck and from the top of the range Wharfedale speakers Gerry felt, not just heard the sounds of what he was told were the Californian band Spirit performing tracks from their latest album The Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus. Not content with this aural bombardment Malc made, lit and then handed Gerry his first joint. Gerry had watched as Malc carefully manipulated the two Rizla papers into an angled ‘L-shape’ into which he then poured the contents of a Rothman’s cigarette, licked and split along the seam, before rolling a lump of brown gelatinous vegetable matter into a long black sausage which he carefully arranged along the length of the envelope of white tobacco-filled paper. This he then licked along both gummed strips before expertly twisting into a cone-shaped ‘reefer’ before rolling the ‘roach’ of cardboard, taken from the Rizla packet and inserting it into the narrow end of the conical cigarette. As he lit it and took a deep and satisfying draw on the joint, Gerry watched as the snake of blue smoke drifted from his mouth and was then inhaled again into his nostrils before it could escape. Malcolm gave Gerry the first of what he would learn was one of his trademark grins before mischievously handing the reefer to the young teenager whom he was now inculcating to cannabis smoking within minutes of their first meeting. Gerry, trying to copy the sophistication of the much older boy inhaled deeply but immediately coughed out a cloud of smoke as the much more pungent aroma hit his lungs.
“Take it easy man!” smiled the impish youth to his latest acolyte, advice which proved very valuable when it was later ignored by a curious Glenn who, overcoming his initial misgivings later appeared on the doorstep and ignoring the same instruction spent several hours vomiting.
Gerry felt the first sensations spreading through his body and after an initial period of uncertainty and discomfort soon found the sounds emanating from the speakers ever more agreeable and fantastic. The dope made Gerry feel the music more intensely and as the initial wave of wellbeing took over his small frame he began to giggle uncontrollably at the masterful humour and bonhomie that seemed the natural manner of this laid-back and benevolent young man.

Malc’s suggestion that they ‘play some music, man’ met with little resistance and though Glenn had failed to reappear from the bathroom other older boys with exotic instruments and wispy beards had by now arrived and plugged their guitars into the several amplifiers that stood in various positions around the room. It was Gerry’s first ‘jam’ with older musicians of an ilk that could actually improvise the music as they played rather than copying the lines from a solo in a song and, under the influence of this new narcotic, he loved it. He played with a sense of uncontained adventure and succeeded in laying down some ‘tasty grooves’ as his colleagues taught him a new terminology for what he was now attempting and apparently succeeding in achieving. The mystery guitarists who came and went throughout the chaotic hours of that afternoon and evening - uninterrupted by Malc’s parents who also came and went amidst the chaos and reefer smoke - seemed to enjoy the ‘session’ and shook hands firmly with Gerry when the performance dissolved into another round of ‘toking’ on the comfortable sofas during which the song Nature’s Way insinuated itself deeply into Gerry’s floating subconscious teenage mind. ‘If this is nature’s way then I like it’ thought Gerry almost levitating with serenity and pleasure in the heady company of so many cool guys. The sound of Glenn vomiting could only be occasionally heard above the tremendous volume that Malc’s parents seemed to take for granted in their thoroughly liberal household.

Returning home with his distressed older brother Gerry vowed to return and experience once again the benign though highly illegal pleasures of pot, as soon as possible. Malc had many interesting friends and Gerry soon found himself in ever more exotic company and a considerable amount of trouble at home. Gerry’s father didn’t appear to be opposed to Gerry and Glenn’s new acquaintance calculating that the longer the boys spent playing music at their new friend’s house the more peace he would enjoy as a result. He seemed to take to Malcolm who, with his apparently respectable father Basil and knowledge of motor cars seemed to be the kind of person who wouldn’t necessarily lead his boys, Gerry in particular, astray. Well, at least that’s how it appeared in the beginning. Gerry’s unknown whereabouts during his frequent and lengthy absences were not known about and if Bill Hood had any idea of the goings-on he would certainly have put a stop to them instantly. But he and Gerry were ever more like strangers to one another. Bill, now deeply immersed in financial worries - brought about by the milking parlour he had built for a local farmer who now had solvency problems of his own - was involved in legal wrangles amounting to many thousands of pounds that threatened the future of his business. Gerry, since his move at school, had been less of a problem and his passionate pursuit of work had convinced his father that perhaps a more practical career lay ahead for the boy who might not now add-up to much academically, unlike it was supposed his brother Glenn, for whom high hopes still existed. Making friends with young men such as Malcolm might, his father reasoned, help the lad develop some useful contacts for when he inevitably left school. The deception, such as it was, suited Gerry perfectly and he refused to miss any opportunity to develop his ever more exciting social life regardless of the problems that were now steadily building up for him at school.

Gerry coasted through his schoolwork relying in the event on Dietmar to hastily copy homework or complete whatever exercise that now lay between Gerry and another night out with Malc and his mates. Such nights out would leave Gerry exhausted and bleary-eyed and from which he would arrive at school the following day still partially stoned from another night of excess and indulgence. His various jobs and gigs sustained him financially without any demands on his father’s purse and though the teachers at school were beginning to notice an inexorable deterioration in Gerry’s performance his behaviour at least was not causing them any worries so no reports were yet forthcoming to create discord in the family. Gerry shamelessly exploited this black hole of necessity and burned the candle at both ends for almost the entire third year of grammar school. There were no exams to take or pass and his backsliding was not therefore even on the radar of parents or teachers. His was the life of Reilly and he was living on borrowed time.

Before the bubble had time to burst Gerry was going to fill it with as many new experiences as he was able. He took to visiting, with Malcolm, a very eclectic group of people who lived in a very spacious and spacey flat on the side of the hill overlooking the city of Lindon. There, through the picture window that looked down upon the city’s sparkling lights he met with beautiful sinuous young women in kaftans and Afghan coats who spoke openly about love and sex and who petted him in affectionate ways that he quickly got used to and greatly enjoyed. Handsome young men, recently returned from travels to exotic far away places told him dubious tales of encounters with crazed Afghan tribesmen in the Hindu-Kush whilst Gerry learned to smoke from chillums and bongs, inculcating him further into a culture of drugs and music but, so far at least, not sex. His lack of sexual maturity frustrated Gerry keenly aware as he was of the difference in age and sophistication of the bearded and muscular men who accepted his presence with nonchalant ease, feeding his desire for hash and grass without complaint or demur. In this company Gerry learned to debate, joke, curse, discuss philosophy and theology and listened to the very latest tracks by Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Pink Floyd courtesy of the owner of the local record store who kept the same company and habits. The group or collective as he sometimes heard it called liked Gerry and he loved them. Evenings painting walls with psychedelic and luminous designs were interspersed with building hot air balloons - balloons that were so successfully eerie in their glowing iridescence that he was to learn many years later of a nearby neighbours mental breakdown who, when witnessing phalanxes of these ascending in the darkness from the adjacent garden seriously believed them to be UFOs! The nights grew longer and the days paled into relative insignificance as his arrival home in the Hillman Imp grew later and later.

Gerry attributed his luck to the fact that he now had little or no interest in alcohol. He’d tried that again since the bailer incident and the drunken nights at the Plough but had been put off by the nasal vomiting incident after a bottle of cider had left him so drunk that he had been rescued off the front lawn of a kindly woman’s house and, having been allowed to puke in her bathroom for several hours returned home sufficiently chastised to call a hasty halt to his alcoholic apprenticeship. Dope, he felt, suited him much better and his parents, now fully aware of his propensity for smoking, simply turned a blind eye to it outside their home. That he reeked of tobacco fumes at least was inescapable, but he never smelled of alcohol and for this they counted their doubtful blessings. His nocturnal comings and goings were therefore glossed-over in an attempt to maintain the uneasy truce between him and his father, his mother covering for him on many occasions in order to maintain the uneasy peace in a house that by now contained enough stress to boil over with the latest solicitor’s letter or household bill. Gerry was under the radar and took full and complete advantage with the many liberties this allowed him.

Glenn, now embarked on his final GCE exam year had other things on his mind, mainly girls, and the expectation of the family lay entirely on his shoulders, educationally at least. Gerry simply deflected all enquiries about his own diminishing prospects with the simple response “I’m only a third-year, I have two whole years before I have to do my exams. I’ll have plenty to worry about then!” which in truth was certain. He would have plenty to worry about then, had he but known the extent of his approaching anxieties, but for now he hadn’t a care in the world. The summer of 1971 could not have been better for Gerry. He would laze around in parks with his much older and exotic group of friends, playing music, smoking dope and practicing his wiles on some very beautiful ladies knowing that they were helping to hone his skills for the inevitable day when his own chance came. And come it did, all at once.

Sharon Rogers was widely acknowledged to be by far the prettiest girl at the Robert Pat school. She was breathtakingly beautiful, with long straight brunette hair, deep blue eyes and, with her impossibly long legs and ample breasts, a fantasy figure for all boys between twelve and twenty years old. She was, at fifteen, two years older than Gerry when he was given the message from one of her many retainers to meet her behind the bike sheds after school that day. Gerry, at first bemused and thinking she intended to meet Glenn who at almost sixteen was more appropriately aged still went to meet her just to say he’d had a good look up close. When they met he was truly stunned. Stunned by her perfect skin and flawless features but also stunned by her rather common-sounding voice and unsophisticated manner. This paragon of beauty just did not compare to the charming and eloquent young women that Gerry was comfortable in the company of. His attempt to elicit a conversation fell on very stony ground and after acceding to Sharon’s request for a snog, which he enjoyed but didn’t overly prolong, Gerry decided that this was not the girlfriend he was actually seeking and declined most politely the chance to be her boyfriend causing considerable consternation with his and her friends who simply thought him insane.
“You’re doing far too much of that dope if you turned her down” said Glenn to him as they walked home together with Gerry trying to vocalise the enigmatic decision which had served to propel him into another league of unpredictability.
“I know she looks great…” he reasoned with his perplexed brother, “…but there’s nothing going on between her ears at all! There’s more to girls than a pretty face and nice tits.” he argued but Glenn shook his head at him disbelievingly like the brother of a man who had just refused the gift of eternal life.

Gerry had no such doubts. He wanted a girl who could wear an Afghan coat and roll a spliff whilst discussing nihilism. In the event he’d have to wait a long time and live to regret that particular quirky set of demands for even longer. For now, his mind made up, he walked away from the local pin-up girl without a care, certain that what he wanted existed and that judging by the disappointed reaction from Sharon, and the fury of his own friends, he’d get what he wanted eventually. The sickly sweet aroma of the joint that he smoked on the way home, much to his brother’s disgust, wrapped Gerry in an invisible blanket of comfort and his pin-prick pupils failed to reveal to his waiting and trusting mother the extent of his descent into the drug-addled mindset of a dope-smoking teenager. Glenn kept his secret and Gerry’s wastrel ways continued unabated, at least for now.

Chapter Twenty-Two - The Price of Petrol

Mindful of the unpredictable nature of fortune, Gerry’s new-found income as a musician did not distract him from other avenues of earning potential. A visit to a friend and former supermarket colleague who now ran the number-plate shop at a local motor factors proved very profitable when, after making the tea, placating an irate customer and locating a missing item he was adjudged to be sufficiently useful to deserve a Saturday job which he accepted with the proviso that he be allowed to leave early in order to travel to his latest gig.

A new and further unexpected development arose when tiring of the quiet tyranny of his horticultural master, Burt Mee, he became aware of a part-time position at a petrol station in Toddington, the village where he would visit Dietmar. The local car-sales lot had two rather ancient petrol pumps and the job was to serve the passing motorists and local account holders with their fuel and oil needs and, as he was to discover, meet the endless demands for coffee from the junior partner Mr. Burdon. The interview consisted of calculating the price of four gallons of four-star petrol - then thirty-seven-and-a-half new pence per gallon - which the hitherto mathematically challenged Gerry answered quickly and correctly as one-pound fifty. He was instantly installed into a position which he then understood was not much sought after as he learned the sullen and despotic ways of his employer. Lengthy periods of inactivity on the infrequently visited forecourt would be interrupted by pointless tasks - such as the washing, polishing and valeting of the rusting and worn-out but over-priced hulks that stood forlornly on the carefully swept car lot - designed only to confer his employer’s authority and status. Gerry would complete the days roster of tasks whilst dealing with the regular and passing customers in between coffee making duties which would elicit not even a glance of recognition from his taciturn boss as he pored over the records of sales and shuffled log books behind his tatty desk from whence he would spring into action like an ageing praying mantis at the first sign of what he uniformly referred to as ‘punters’.

The long ride up the steepest hill in the area didn’t deter Gerry nearly as much as the boredom and poor wage he received for the Sunday morning shift and the daily cash-up he had to perform in a long-winded and entirely questionable accounting procedure before handing-over to another local boy and nearly caused Gerry to quit prematurely before he made his remarkable discovery. The petrol pumps themselves - one four star and the other three star petrol - were not of the latest design though mercifully they were electrically powered. In order to operate them, which all customers of the time expected, Gerry had to manhandle the pump out of its aluminised holster, and turn a separate handle - which was about fifteen centimetres in length - a half turn which engaged the motor. As the handle turned it brought up shutters which concealed the reels of digits on the pump which displayed both the volume of petrol delivered (in gallons and quarts) and the amount the customer would then be required to pay (according to the currently prevailing price). The nozzle of the pump could then be placed into the filler opening of the car’s tank and as the reels began to turn invisibly beneath the shutters the shutters themselves would drop and reveal the rotating numbers. For some reason best known to its manufacturers the shutters would only reveal the quantities and price of the delivered fuel-load part-way into the process. Gerry could never understand why this concealment and later reveal of the pump's contents had been deemed appropriate by its designer but he soon learned an accidental benefit to this odd facility. The pump was not easy to operate and Gerry’s slight build and puny arms would struggle to reholster the nozzle as he was required to return the handle to its original starting position. The result was that when he next flipped the handle into the on position it failed to ‘zero’ the counter, leaving the previous delivery of a gallon on the now hidden reels. His next delivery of three gallons was therefore only two gallons and when the unquestioning customer paid without protest Gerry was left with a small surplus of cash to account for during the dreaded cashing-up procedure.

In between fending off Mr. Burton’s latest demand for a caffeine infusion he ran out of time to explain or account for this genuine mistake and, in an attempt to solve the problem, pocketed the spare cash, knowing that the readings for the pumps, at least in terms of fuel delivered, would be correct in the days cash-book. On his way home Gerry mused at his profit from the day and quickly calculated that he had in fact discovered his own oil-well, full with possibilities and perhaps even more potentially lucrative than the cigarette-machine scam. Slowly and with carefully measured scrutiny of the customers responses, Gerry introduced his new scheme, confident that were anyone ever to notice he could easily blame the pump for its eccentric behaviour, but no-one ever complained or even noticed. He took care to leave only the small deliveries un-zeroed on the pump and only to add his ‘tax’ to the owners of expensive cars who required a minimum of four gallons but more often much larger deliveries into their waiting tanks. He figured that if they were to check their actual consumption, a less than likely occurrence in pre-Opec days, they would see it as an aberration in the car’s performance, and so he was therefore careful not to repeat the ruse on the same customer, at least initially.

The scam worked like a dream and Gerry began to look forward to his Sunday stints when he would emerge loaded with cash, once almost forgetting to collect his wages such was his new found surplus. He was careful not to discuss this with anyone and his regular gigs paid so well that no-one questioned the source of such wealth which, when combined with his Saturday job and musicians pay exceeded many working men’s weekly wages. When the Saturday shift became available Gerry informed Dietmar who, having expressed a desire for some quick cash agreed that a hundred metre walk was within his range, and Gerry quickly inducted his friend, to whom he was grateful for the generosity with the amplifier, into the job and scam all at once. He was certain that Diet would not be tempted to poison the well of their now mutual good fortune, with any excessive plundering of the pumps or customers and together they began to enjoy the benefits of their now shared oil-well, undetected by employer or customers alike. They were the modern day Clampit’s and the refined black gold that emerged from their doctored pump seemed like a direct portal into the mother vein of fossil fuels into which they were now comfortably and firmly tapped.

Gerry had noticed from his previous experiences how trust can make and mar a relationship. He noted how all relationships improved as trust was built up but how that self-same trust also become a burden to those thus indebted. He and Dietmar were friends at school and shared a quixotic view of the world they now so confidently inhabited. Dietmar’s short sojourn - he quit when he had made his target for cash to buy a brand new colour television, the object of his desire for money in the first place - after only two months, having carefully calculated the extent and volume of his fraudulent fillings, entirely satisfied with the transaction between the two friends. However, it was what he did next that drove a wedge between their burgeoning friendship.

Gerry arrived early that Sunday, aware that he was required to train the ‘new boy’ in his duties. He was more than a little shocked to learn that the boy proposed by Dietmar - to the employers who had greatly liked the unusual boy - was none other than Ralph Ireland-West. Gerry had maintained some relations with Ralph since his move to Toddington but their friendship had cooled considerably since the looting of the cigarette machine. He greeted him in a friendly enough manner and set to showing Ralph the duties and processes required to perform the job. No word or hint of the pump scam passed his lips and Gerry suspended all swindling activities for the day, certain that Ralph could not be trusted with the secret of the scam, and equally certain that should he learn of it the single ‘well’ of Gerry’s genius would become so over-exploited within a day that Ralph would become a weekend millionaire but put paid to the scam forever. Ralph’s sneering grin should have alerted Gerry to what lay ahead.

Within days Ralph had taken to adding substances so noxious to Mr. Burdon’s coffee that were the victim of these evil concoctions ever to have learned of it - Castrol GTX, RedeX additive and animal faeces were amongst the dreadful ingredients - the Police would have immediately been involved. Uneasy though this made Gerry it was the chance discovery that he had made and which for all he knew Ralph was about to that haunted Gerry’s waking moments. The tension and uncertainty combined with his other sources of relative affluence proved too great and fearing mass apprehension of the culprits, himself particularly, Gerry decided to quit whilst the going was good. It proved to be a prescient moment. Ralph had pried the secret from Dietmar and the train was rolling inexorably toward the buffers as customers limped off the petrol station forecourt with virtually empty tanks having paid to be ‘filled-up’. A few short weeks after Gerry reluctantly left the filling station it closed its doors forever in the wake of a weights-and-measures investigation, brought about by incensed motorists who had run out of gas within miles of leaving the forecourt having paid for a full tank. Ralph had ran the well dry yet again, but at least Gerry was beyond the scrutiny of the government’s investigators as they set about ransacking the offices for clues to Ralph’s wanton plundering. No-one was implicated in the end when it transpired that Mr. Burdon’s accounting procedures had violated Custom’s and Excise regulations to such an extent that even Ralph’s greedy and insatiable appetites were considered mild by comparison. Gerry had got out in the nick of time, and he knew it. Dietmar apologised for the indiscretion, which Gerry readily accepted, knowing full well the dangers of such an association were not easy to anticipate, even with a mind like Diet’s, who learned much from the encounter with the mad copper’s son.

Gerry’s luck, not having run out entirely, then presented another unexpected opportunity. A petrol filling station in Wykeham was currently seeking a pump jockey and when Gerry applied he - and his unsuspecting employers - were overjoyed with the boys immediate knowledge and familiarity with their rather outdated petrol pumps. They were exactly the same model as those Gerry had so recently bade a sad farewell to in Toddington! His new boss, a South African émigrée who spoke Swahili when angry, was great. Although possessed of a slightly irascible nature with an explosive temper, Humphrey Butler had an energy that Gerry liked, and he liked Gerry. Whilst Humphrey would tinker around in his mechanics shop, emerging black and flecked with underseal for a very occasional cup of tea, he would simply leave Gerry to serve the customers, count the cash and fill in the accounts sheets at the end of each day. Gerry quickly built excellent relationships with all of the regular customers and would spend his hours between serving at the busy petrol station learning to play the latest drum rhythms from his favourite songs on the Formica topped counter in the office. Chastened by his previous near-miss Gerry felt such a regard for his employer that he never once exploited the petrol pumps potential for easy money and in any case his three jobs were now proving so lucrative he no longer felt the need to resort to nefarious activities which inevitably seemed to attract the attention of Ralph Ireland-West whom he now regarded as a parasite of the worst sort. At school they barely spoke and on a school coach trip Ralph had actually tried to intimidate him with physical threats which Gerry had laughed off but not forgotten. Somewhat estranged by Ralph’s excessive appetites, Gerry moved in very different circles now and too much water had passed under their respective bridges, much of it tainted by Ralph’s extremity and rapaciousness.

Gerry wasn’t entirely satisfied with his musical direction, playing working men’s clubs and pubs on the cover band circuit, and although the money was regular and well-paid he sought new musical challenges as 1971 revealed to him the talents of David Bowie in the form of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He and Glenn would listen repetitively to what quickly became their latest obsession and then try to deconstruct the tunes, rhythms and melodies of their latest idol. The boys formed their own band with another friend Tom Andrews who owned a rather less than magnificent drum kit. His father however, a local businessman who touted the products of an ‘art-studio’ had an art studio in which they could rehearse. It wasn’t a great meeting of musical minds and led to quite a few fallings out between the two brothers due to musical differences and sibling rivalry. Glenn, who considered himself the most experienced of the three, refused on principal to defer to Gerry in spite of them both understanding that Gerry was the more seasoned musician with many live performances now under his belt. Gerry was never to know how irksome it must have been for his older and equally accomplished brother to have to watch idly from the audience as cheering crowds turned out to watch the child prodigy climb onstage with his outsized instrument and sing and play with apparent ease the popular songs of the sixties and seventies. Gerry’s diminutive stature alone seemed to arouse excitement in the crowd and his ability to perform without nerves in front of any audience left Glenn shifting uncomfortably with simmering resentment as his own talents went unlauded. The chance to redress this as leader of the new band turned Gerry’s older brother into an unsympathetic figure and with his new red-headed girlfriend adding her futile and derisive comments from her seat in the rehearsal room, arguments and disputes smouldered uneasily preventing the progress that Gerry had become used to in his business-like dealings with other musicians. A fierce dispute over repertoire was hurriedly concluded one evening with Glenn stomping toward the exit, guitar slung over his shoulder and amplifier in hand. Sadly Glenn had failed to unplug the power cord from the socket and as he reached the full extent of his dramatic exit he was arrested by the cord, much to his younger brother’s hilarity who he then thumped in the head. It was the end not only of The One-Eyed Gods but their joint musical adventures which thereafter occurred in increasing isolation from one another. Gerry benefited more from this division and his older brother would never again feel comfortable on stage in what he had come to feel as an uneven competition. Gerry, who continued to respect his brother’s immense knowledge of musical theory, tried, unsuccessfully, on many occasions to mend the rift but the glass was broken and their respective musical ambitions took entirely different courses, not without resentment and rivalry. For Gerry, as ever, one door closed and several more opened.

Chapter Twenty-One - Catch-22

Catch-22, is a paradox in rules, regulations, procedures, or situations in which one has knowledge of being or becoming a victim but has no control over it occurring.

Dietmar Frantz not only had the most unusual name on the school’s register but he was arguably the most unusual boy in the school, had they but known it. Inarguably one of the school’s brightest lights he had single-handedly resisted all accusations of being a ‘swot’, a ‘brainbox’ and a ‘geek’ where all before had so singularly failed. Handsome, in a self-deprecating way, he also somehow managed to maintain the appearance of a self-possessed person without any apparent need for a group of worshippers. Neither seeking nor lacking for attention he continued to cut a solitary but never lonely figure throughout his time at Westeven Grammar where his grades hid his complete lack of regard for authority and belied his distrust of celebrity. He was as charismatic as he was enigmatic and no-one could quite penetrate to the source of his obvious power beyond his easy-going charm, affability and self-confident but never arrogant mien. Girls queued-up to genuflect before him and boys who found themselves perturbed with this cult of personality still somehow adjudged him non-threatening though not entirely harmless or defenceless.

Gerry found himself being placed next to this phenomenon of popularity on his first day in his new class and content at least to not be sitting next to an acknowledged geek or boring-old-fart assumed the position of a student with much to prove in his first Latin lesson. Frank Mason, the famously unstable volcano of pithy remarks and heart-stopping threats had assumed his position sitting astride the corner of his well-worn desk and began to read from the mysterious text-book, a copy of which sat on the desk in front of the utterly bewildered Gerry, foreigner to the language his new teacher now spoke.
“Right new boy, what is your name by the way?” he remarked almost half-heartedly.
“Hood” Gerry confirmed for the benefit of all those who now surrounded him.
“Hood what boy?”
“Gerry Hood, sir” he muttered self-consciously to the silent room.
“No boy, I mean what word should you append when answering a teacher’s question?”
“Upend sir? I would have to stand on my head to do that” smiled Gerry, breaking the ice, or so he thought.
“YOU SEE THIS BOILER BOY!” roared the now standing six-foot of gnarled and clearly agitated Latin teacher - “well, it burns bodies! He stared down the new boy who he had deliberately targeted in the whispered knowledge that he had heard which had notified him of the boys wilfulness well in advance of this, their first encounter. Mr Mason had a reputation as a disciplinarian, Glenn having gleefully told Gerry that very morning of an incident concerning Nicky Birch, who having been discovered as the culprit who wrote ‘SPURS’ on the blackboard in Mr. Mason’s hut had then experienced the crusty old gentleman write the exact same legend on the seat of his school trousers and publicly spank it off in front of the entire class.
“When you speak to me in this class you will refer to me as ‘Sir’ on every occasion. Do I make myself clear?”. His voice trailed off into a whispered threat.
“Yes… Sir” Gerry added pausing as long as he reasonably dared to emphasise his actual disdain for the deliberate humiliation he knew he was now being required to take as the rear-end of the pantomime horse Frank Mason had so carefully constructed.
“Now boy. Conjugate the Latin verb to love” added the spiteful teacher smiling the self-satisfied smirk of a tormentor.
“Gerry was just about to confess, as intended, his complete lack of any grasp or vocabulary at all to the smug pedagogue, but before he could walk blindly into the next stage of his ritual humiliation he noticed a carefully hand-written note had appeared between the leaves of the text book he was holding on which was written: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.
Gerry falteringly read the words on the paper and noticed his teacher narrow his stare as the esoteric words tumbled from his mouth and the snare snapped shut without capturing its prey.
“So you do know some Latin then boy?” his rhetorical question bringing only a sullen nod from the intended victim who had now stopped giving his tormentor the eye-contact favoured by the bullying teacher.
“Hmm … we’ll see how much in time, right class, page one-hundred and fifty-seven. Complete the exercise IN SILENCE” he bellowed and the class set about their task with the eagerness of the petrified, apart from his colleague who had made a rather more desultory attempt which seemed to involve special writing and drawing implements of a design hitherto unknown to the already fascinated Gerry.

The lessons passed far more rapidly and easily than Gerry had thought they might and during each of the five periods that day Gerry became acquainted with his new teachers, fellow students and the increasingly eccentric idiosyncrasies of his new co-conspirator. Dietmar Frantz was, it transpired, the most subversive person Gerry had so far encountered. His knack of answering one key question during a lesson, confirming both his attention and comprehension, was studied and deliberate and concealed an utter disregard for the manner in which the lesson was intended to proceed. Diet, as his friend allowed himself to be addressed, learned quickly and thoroughly without the unwelcome attention or intervention of his teachers and provided Gerry with an entirely new model of lassitude to which he clung, at first uncertainly, but with renewed determination and vigour. Notwithstanding the gulf Gerry was required to cross in order to catch-up with his new class mates who were sailing through their subject knowledge - a very different set of demands to those Gerry had previously been exposed - with apparent ease, he clung to this superman’s coattails as if his life and their friendship now depended upon it. He couldn’t be certain where this new dynamism might lead, but he was prepared to find out and had little if anything to lose. Marginalised by his friends because of his involuntary move, Gerry’s bridges had been burnt for him and so all new horizons became his focus and Dietmar his lens.

Gerry met his mother’s enquiries about his latest day at school or his hoped for progress with cautious optimism, fearful at once that his new allegiance would be uncovered as the subversive plot it had already become and to which he readily submitted himself. Dietmar had many talents; he could draw cartoons - which were published on match days in the local football club’s programme - and he was also an excellent writer and humorist. Gerry discovered the foundation to this in the extraordinary collection of Alfred Neumann’s Mad Magazine, Private Eye and Punch magazines which quite literally lined the walls of Diet’s bedroom in the family’s small but spacious bungalow which stood in the hilltop village of Toddington. Diet lived with his quite elderly parents, who having seen their daughters grow-up and pair-off were now barely tolerated by their recently-teenage son. Diet ruled-the-roost and his parents quietly accepted his dominance. They never had family meals, Diet’s were delivered outside his room on a silver tray whenever he rang the small brass bell that sat on his bedside table. Bed-times simply didn’t exist. Diet would sleep whenever his body finally caved-in to the reading, watching of his own television, or playing his electric guitars through his extremely powerful amplifier and speakers, which might happen at any time of the night or day, his preference seeming to be the early hours of the morning. Diet’s youngest sister Dorothy was herself an accomplished and well-known singer, at least in local terms, whose partner was himself a partner in his father’s second-hand musical instrument shop in the city. It was thereby that Diet had obtained a Framus semi-acoustic bass guitar - carefully and liberally stuffed with his sister’s sanitary towels in order to overcome its propensity to feedback - and his latest acquisition a Hofner Verithin semi-acoustic guitar which neither suffered or benefited from such modification. These he played enthusiastically if inexpertly and drove both his parents and neighbours to distraction with high-volume nocturnal performances of Beatles’ songs with which he was currently enamoured. Gerry’s experience of one such moment, when on a sleepover with his new and respectable friend, was so dramatic that it threatened to perforate his eardrums as Diet hammered out the introduction to Paperback Writer at four in the morning. When the cacophony eventually abated Gerry fully expected an explosion of anger from Diet’s father, an ill man with his own concerns who occasionally appeared in a dressing gown from his next door room. In the event he was astonished to hear no more than a polite whimper from Diet’s mother who quietly implored him to “turn it down just a little, if you wouldn’t mind Dietmar?” which was met with another furious salvo from the guitar, the Vox AC100 now turned up to its deafening maximum as he cranked his way through Revolution back-to-back with Day Tripper playing along to his record-player, itself no slouch in the decibel department. Gerry felt liberated around his new chum, effortlessly soaking up his influence and influences until Dietmar exposed a chink in their new relationship by offering to let Gerry borrow one of his books.

Gerry had rather gone off the process of reading under the careless tutelage of Miss Markham and felt immediately intimidated by the huge tome his friend passed him as he pored over the somewhat more alluring periodicals that surrounded him.
“Try this!” said Diet, without looking up from the pornographic magazine he was flicking through distractedly whilst smoking the Turkish cigarette, the noxious fumes from which did not seem to disturb his parents who wafted around the rest of the house but were absolutely forbidden entrance to Diet’s very private domain. Gerry searched the front and rear cover for visual clues as to its contents but was unable to discern anything other than its title Catch-22, the name of its author Joseph Heller, and that it was by all accounts printed on the rear cover, a stunning read. He opened it cautiously and searched for further clues before reading the opening paragraph.
“What’s it about?” he asked, pausing for validation from his friend.
“Oh, you’ll see” replied Dietmar, enigmatically and continued puffing from the oval-shaped barrel of the pungent cigarette which he cradled in the cigarette holder clenched between his perfect teeth. “I’m sure you will find it very interesting.
Gerry did find the book very interesting and both he and his brother Glenn tore through it, comparing notes, until the meaning of Catch-22 was thoroughly apprehended and hotly debated between the boys who, having discovered yet another mutual interest, immersed themselves into counter-culture with the avidness of the new convert to Dietmar’s guru-like aplomb. Never once reproaching or mocking Gerry’s new-found enthusiasm or child-like innocence, Dietmar built new confidence in his friend and founded a lifelong love of literature, a love so nearly stillborn from the counter-intuitive efforts of those actually trained and paid to do that exact job. Cervantes’ Don Quixote quickly followed and even as Dr. Cole, his new and highly knowledgeable tutor of English smothered Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood in the torpid wet blanket of study, Dietmar coaxed Gerry through his own library of classics which one day might produce George Orwell and another J.P. Donleavy.
“Why don’t they give us anything interesting to read at school, or better still, make what we do read interesting with debates and discussions?” Gerry enquired from his friend as they pored over a dull text, apparently selected for its dull prose.
“Because learning is deliberately separated from interest by those who ultimately require us to submit to dull, boring and repetitive labour” Diet replied without looking up from his latest delivery of Men Only which had arrived, on a tray which included sunflower seeds and sliced cucumber, outside his bedroom door minutes earlier.
Gerry didn’t yet know the truth or otherwise of his friend’s assertion but he couldn’t imagine Men Only ever making it to the shelves of the school library in spite of its ability to captivate Dietmar once a week.
“You know I actually thought that attending a Grammar School was going to be a magic-carpet ride to success, well, that’s if you believe what Winwood cracks on about every bloody week in assembly” said Gerry, making public his thoughts in the way which his father described as ‘opening your mouth and the top of your head coming off.
“Grammar School? What Grammar School? Westeven Grammar is a comprehensive in all but name” rejoined Diet before adding “I wonder how many O-levels she has?” before sharing the latest centrefold with his sniggering friend.

Dietmar had recently landed a paying gig in a band, courtesy of his sister but soon tired of the disciplines of dates and repertoires, preferring his own company and choice of material to the three-piece cover band Connexion he had joined. Surprising Gerry one day he spoke almost as an aside “Do you want my job in this band?”. He knew that Gerry had now become very proficient as a bass-player and had been practicing with several local bands, always using borrowed amplifiers and speakers. Gerry was also aware that his father had been less than encouraging about the growing dedication of both of his grammar school attending boys feeling that his own youthful enthusiasms for music had now provided the worst sort of distraction from their studies. Without any income there was no way that Gerry could even contemplate his friend’s remarkable offer prevented as he was from buying the equipment necessary for the task.
“You can borrow my gear and, if you like it, pay me for it over a period” his friend said almost telepathically reading Gerry’s mind.
“Really? You’d let me do that?” asked the astonished Gerry, allowing the centrefold to slide from his grip.
“Yeah, why not” said Diet puffing on his Balkan Sobranie, decided already that music was not the career he sought or desired.

Liberated from the need to even seek his father’s permission Gerry auditioned and was inducted into the band within the week and as he sat in the centre seat of the shuddering Ford Transit van on his way to his first paid gig he wondered whether he hadn’t found a way around the Catch-22 mentality of an education system that seemed determined only to fit him for a future he neither desired nor would be able to fulfil. If all institutions shared the mindless aims and ethics of his school, it was only a matter of when, not if, he would fail to reach the numbers of missions required to obtain freedom from their relentless demands. He was thirteen going-on thirty and had by good fortune discovered an escape route, a loophole to the inevitability of getting a job and earning a wage. No longer required to ask his father for money he was headed for independence and rock n’ roll was his key. Fate had dealt him a lucky card and Gerry wasn’t about to let this one slip through his nimble fingers.

Chapter Twenty - Hot Gossip

The problem of obtaining paid work could be divided into two distinct areas for Gerry and, to a lesser extent his fourteen-year-old brother Glenn. Opportunity and age. There were few places, other than the newsagents’ paper-rounds, where a not-quite-yet thirteen year-old might find paid work without rising at the crack of dawn and trudging the pavements in all weathers at unsocial hours for poor wages. Christmas was not far away and both Gerry and Glenn wanted to obtain some of their own funds to tip the balance in their father’s ruthless negotiations with vendors of electric guitars. Bill Hood was notoriously parsimonious and the boys wanted to avert yet another embarrassing disappointment as his harsh bartering skills reduced yet another prospective seller to a committed collector. The boys were also keenly aware that the arrival of electric guitars would also require the appearance of amplification, a factor that their father had yet to be informed of, so funds were in demand to avoid the frustration of silent electric guitars and paternal outrage.

The solution arrived in the nick of time with the completion of the new supermarket. As its management prepared to open their doors for the long-awaited rush for Christmas bargains they identified a number of staff shortages, principally in the stores. They were short of trolley-pushers and shop-floor workers to clear up the mountain of waste cardboard that had accumulated in the aisles as the shelves were packed with their surfeit of products. Glenn had a friend who had already been made an offer of employment in the stores and as he arrived at the end of another exhausting day wrestling with the cardboard mountain and the temperamental bailing machine that was experiencing significant teething trouble as it chewed its way through the Himalayan range of packaging he confided to Glenn that his employers were literally ‘desperate’ for workers. Glenn did all the talking and the diminutive figure of his younger brother stood slightly behind him as the stores manager, Jock Alexander, detailed their duties in his highly esoteric and therefore only vaguely understandable Scottish brogue. The tiny bald man, with the thickest lens glasses either of the brothers would ever see, had a particular form of myopia that rendered him both virtually blind and apparently stupid, though no-one would fully understand the depth of this delusion until many years later when he left over £100,000 to the local school from the vast wealth he had quietly accumulated in stocks and shares trading.
Whilst the boys were thinking they were slipping easily under the dim radar of a man with cataracts he was in fact exploiting employment legislation which forbade Gerry at least from becoming an employee at all.

There were two tasks required of the boys; pushing the trolleys which the customers would abandon at the remotest corners of the twelve-acre site, and collecting the cardboard outers of packaged goods as the army of shelf-stackers reloaded the shelves. The latter was the ‘cushier’ of the two simply because it was indoors and therefore not subject to changes in the weather. The job of pushing trolleys - up to twenty at a time, but sometimes expanded to huge anacondas of wheels and wire as the boys challenged each other to ever more ridiculous feats - was hard and unrelenting. It also provided the very real possibility of altercations with car-owners who were in the vanguard of motorists now rapidly discovering the vicissitudes of mass-parking and damaged paintwork. Interrupted by the occasional canteen break, the boys would work three or four evenings-a-week after school and all day Saturday in the Sunday-closing world that still prevailed in Britain at the time. Smoking was compulsory and the older workers could all be relied on to provide cigarettes which would be repaid, with interest, on pay day. It seemed like fairly easy money and when Friday arrived the boys would count their gains, pay their debts and, along with their new workmates head off down to the pub!

The local pub, the Plough, was a cosy little boozer in the old village of Wykeham where on Friday evening, around nine-o’-clock the boys and their friends would huddle into a corner and drink as many pints of Guinness as their money would allow and their stomachs could hold. This weekly feast would not have been complete without the consumption of one of the pub’s steak-and-kidney pies, which were consumed in an upside down position, flopped on their paper plates, with plastic cutlery. Epicurean delights of pickled onions and eggs were washed down with more beer and then regurgitated in the gardens and onto fences en route home. Saturdays would dawn in the Hood household where two pasty-looking boys would crawl to work with their latest hangover and indolently shove trolleys and collect cardboard in a haze of still semi-drunken torpor. Their colleagues, an eclectic bunch of school-leavers and men of misanthropically mysterious origins, worked like the crazed crewmen of an ocean-going ship to empty the aisles and clear the car park of all obstructions and as the frenzy of Christmas shopping proper descended on the beleaguered store’s staff, spirits were high.

It was the custom of the company who collected the half-ton bails of cardboard to reward the endeavour of its collectors, so when Gerry was presented with a half-bottle of Teacher’s finest Scotch Whisky, the twelve-year-old boy looked for guidance to his elders. Brian - or Brain as his schizophrenic condition had seen him hastily renamed - was already half-way through his bottle and there seemed to be no hesitation amongst the other lucky recipients of this unexpected bonus to consume theirs as fast as possible. Gerry, wishing only to fit-in to this apparently pleasurable camaraderie, raised the flask to his lips and drank deeply from the fluted bottle now clamped to his lips. He was shocked by the acidic burn at his throat but closed his eyes and concentrated on consuming as much of the unusual tasting amber fluid as he could gulp down. A temporary break-down at the besieged bailer resulted in the cardboard from the shop floor being piled-up and allowed to accumulate in ever-increasing mounds as the operatives struggled with the recalcitrant machine which now stood inert and useless. Brain, having drained his own draught dry, was now sitting mumbling quietly to himself in tongues behind the broken behemoth whilst an increasingly hysterical workforce giggled, sniggered and guffawed their way to and fro’ from the overwhelmed store’s gangways, now piled-high with cardboard boxes. The chaos finally resolved itself, at least for Gerry, when in a fit of hysterical laughter he interred himself deep within the largest mound of boxes and detritus and simply fell asleep. Recovering just in time to collect his free frozen turkey from the deep-freeze, Gerry staggered home with his brother and slept the sleep of the drunkard.

The guitars, which had been purchased shortly before Christmas, were beauties. Glenn’s, a copy of the Rickenbacker 6-string electric popularised by John Lennon in his Beatle’s days, had a rich red sunburst body, three pick-ups and a tremolo arm. Glenn set to work, immediately removing the tremolo arm which he deemed superfluous to his requirements and filing down the frets into fat strips of flattened metal in an attempt to ‘improve’ the action, something he almost immediately regretted. Gerry’s was also second-hand but was a well-preserved right-handed edition of the Hofner Violin bass which was also synonymous with Paul McCartney of the Beatles, a fact that had somehow escaped the boys who were not in fact their biggest fans. Gerry recalled how the craze for the fab-four had resulted in a plethora of Beatles branded products which included a plastic ukulele bearing an imprint of the mop-tops which could neither be tuned or rendered playable. He also remembered without affection a plastic wig, based on their iconic hairstyles, which when placed on the wearer’s head resulted in cuts and sores to where the tops of one’s ears met the side of the head. They were rubbish and set Gerry firmly against the exploitation of brand-name products for good and the Beatles for several decades to come.

A single speaker Selmer practice amplifier had also been purchased from one of the vendors which had a volume, treble and bass control knob but which immediately presented a serious problem. It had but one input socket. There was no way the boys could play at the same time! A local boffin was consulted before the simple solution of adding a second socket was decided upon. This was only partially successful however in that it reduced the output level for an individual instrument from the quite loud five watts RMS dividing it unevenly between the two instruments. Never ones to be easily deterred the boys soon found an alternative remedy. Their father’s much-loved valve radio-set had several input and output sockets on its rear and with a few stripped wires Glenn’s guitar was soon demonstrating the truth of those who preferred the warm tones of valve amplifiers. It was when the boys decided to swap instruments to see if playing the bass through the radio and the guitar through the Selmer that the limitations of the pre-war speaker revealed themselves in a distorted low-frequency grunt which tore the radios speaker cone into fluttering fragments before their amazed eyes. Replacing the mortally-wounded machines casing after desperate investigations, the boys left it to their father’s future discovery and made-do with the over-subscribed Selmer although Gerry learned that placing the bottom of his bass firmly against the old wardrobe in the boys’ bedroom created the same acoustically amplified effect and sound of a double bass.

The boys had other older friends who allowed them occasional access to their more powerful gear and the guitars were in constant use from the moment of their arrival until the occasional irascibility of their father decreed silence, usually defined by his turning the mains electricity off in exasperated protest. Top of the Pops continued to dominate the weekly battle for control of the airwaves and as the charms of Pan’s People faded the erotic gyrations of Hot Gossip replaced them in everyone’s affections save for the boys’ father who felt that this was a step too far. It was gossip which would also result, shortly after Christmas, in the boys both getting the sack from their jobs at the supermarket. A rather dour and taciturn man named Cliff arrived on the scene and soon created a discord in the stores department that had hitherto not been evident. The misanthropic Yorkshireman soon convinced his myopic boss that more men and fewer boys were required and so it was that following a particularly dismal day of precipitation Jock Alexander announced to them both in his peculiar and indecipherable contralto “You’re finished!”.
After some discussion in which the boys grasp of idiomatic English was tested to its extreme and the grim realisation that they had been stitched-up by Cliff on allegations of insufficiency, Gerry hurled his now redundant overall into a deep freeze in a fit of anger. His elder brother’s more dignified response resulted in the boys’ father being able to negotiate a second chance for Glenn but there was to be no reprieve for Gerry whose petulant display in front of the store manager proved to be his last act in the firm’s behalf. Unemployed and without any real hope of child-labour elsewhere Gerry had, to use his father’s description ‘shit the nest’ and would now have to look elsewhere for his suddenly-curtailed income.

Little did he know that on return to school and his new friendless class he was about to experience a revolution in circumstances and earning potential that would dwarf his previous aspirations and set him permanently free from the world of wages.

Chapter Nineteen - Arbeit Macht Frei

An unexpected benefit to come out of Gerry’s suspension from school was that he got himself a job. It was late springtime and the local and relatively nearby tomato nursery had many vacancies. Most of these were filled by the wives and girlfriends of the servicemen who filled the ranks and houses of the nearby RAF base. The nursery, which spanned several acres across a large plateau at the foot of the mountainous ridge - from where the airbase would launch wartime bomber-command raids on the German industrial heartlands, their Lancaster’s bomb-bays so burdened with ordinance that they virtually fell into flight off the top of their cliff-top runways - was the kingdom of Burt Mee, an enigmatic Australian, who lived, ate and breathed his world of fruit.
“Because, young man, fruit is what they are. Your tomato is not a vegetable but what the good Lord was describing in the bible when he ordered our wonderful world. Which is why I am forced to employ young heathens, such as your good self, as nature’s miracles do not take Sundays off from the need for water and therefore that’s what you’ll be doing instead of attending church, which is where you should be!”.
They walked energetically across the estate which Burt had established, halfway up the then barren hillside and which now gleamed as its collective hundreds of sheer glass facets collected the combined rays of the warm morning’s rays like diamonds in a massive glass and wire sieve. Under the superheated enclosures thrived acres of uniform rows of twisted stems and leaves. Dotted with a Seurat-like pixilation of tiny red dots the combined weight of which held the ever climbing plants securely in their slightly contained rootballs, their mainstems, carefully entwined around the wires which connected the massive grid of life to overhead cables that ran the length of the great cathedral of glass and aluminium. Burt was as high as Doctor Frankenstein on his visionary achievement, and as he and Gerry looked down upon his horticultural utopia, Burt detailed the many days and nights of sacrifice, sleeping alone in frosted greenhouses on beds of horse manure, that had been the tribute required by the God he served in order to create his latter-day Garden of Eden.

A Garden of Eden, nevertheless, where temptation was as plentiful as tomatoes, as Gerry discovered in the number of very attractive but conspicuously pregnant young women he found himself surrounded by. It was hot work and Gerry had much to learn from these remarkable women who quickly taught him the art and purpose of ‘side-shooting’ and defoliation amidst an endless ribald banter that accelerated his knowledge of both men and women well beyond the short years of his pre-teenage adolescence. The ladies of the greenhouse spared none of his blushes and Gerry was soon a popular member of the exclusively female workforce which swept through each greenhouse in locust-like thoroughness caring for each plant in their enormous horticultural maternity ward. Occasionally, one of their own soon-to-become matrons would falter, exhausted from the dual efforts of physical hard work and nurturing the constant demands of their unborn child. Willing and compassionate hands would immediately find a cool and shaded place for them to rest whilst the remaining workforce increased the tempo of their collective efforts to accommodate the fluctuating numbers in the team’s hands.

Gerry loved every moment of it and he fell enthusiastically from his bed each day and cycled the two miles - half of it up the steepest hill on the ridge - chomping on his breakfast as he raced to be at his post earlier and earlier each day. The days when the fruit was picked were his favourite. Hard and sweaty though the work was, Gerry beamed with satisfaction at every filled basket and as these were graded and placed in the correct boxes for market, he felt for the first time that he was doing something worthwhile with his time. If this exclusion from school was a punishment he considered, what better reward for the injustice that had actually led him to be here in the first place. It was with some regret therefore that he returned to school happy at least that he had been offered a part-time evening job by Mr. Mee who seemed quite pleased with his efforts, so far.

His sentence served Gerry was surprised to learn of a new caveat to his being allowed to rejoin his classmates and resume his fitful studies.
“It will be necessary for your son to see the school’s educational psychologist” Mr Winwood stated from his desk as he looked significantly over his ludicrous spectacles.
Gerry and his father made no response to this edict and it was therefore arranged that during the following week Gerry would meet with and be interviewed by Dr. Baines who would be visiting the school specifically for the purpose.

On the day of his arrival, Gerry was conducted into the office of the deputy-head, Mr. Straun, but ‘humph’ was mercifully absent from his lair. Gerry sat across the desk from Dr. Baines, a middle-aged man in a blue suit with dandruff-scattered shoulders who sported riotous eyebrows and who moved his head about in elaborate gestures of internal writhings which Gerry observed with amusement but without trepidation. On his desk was a recent copy of the Daily Telegraph which he picked up, and whilst regarding Gerry closely, carefully tore a one-inch diameter semi-circle from the spine of the newspaper. Without warning, Dr. Baines opened the pages of the newspaper to reveal a dark hole into which, from the other side of the opened broadsheet newspaper to Gerry an eyeball peered at him, staring strangely from beyond this bizarrely constructed barrier. Gerry meant only to block the disturbing apparition now set so dramatically and unexpectedly before him, realising its immediate voyeuristic intention. Were it some kind of ‘ice-breaker’ the Doctor had frozen his subject out in his single bleak moment of scrutiny. In the event the optical illusion presented before him had an altered affect on Gerry’s depth of field which resulted in Dr. Baines suddenly recoiling from behind his fragile barrier, Gerry having poked him soundly in the right eyeball with his index finger.
“Whatever did you do that for?” enquired the Doctor, whilst rubbing his sore eye with his handkerchief as it streamed tears down his reddened cheek.
“I didn’t mean to poke you, I just didn’t like being looked at like that. Why were you doing it?” he asked.
“Well“, smiled the amused psychologist “I was trying to see which side of your brain is the dominant one by seeing which of your eyes was the most quickly focussed!” he declared with a chuckle. “Perhaps I will reconsider that approach in future” he smiled amiably.
“Or keep your glasses on” Gerry tried helpfully, warming to the gentleman’s sense of humour.
They talked easily for a while and Gerry told him that he didn’t think his father understood him and the many other common denominators he shared with most children of his age, and time.
“No, my dad doesn’t beat me, well the odd clip round the ear you know when I push my luck, but no, he’s usually very fair with me.” he told his interviewer.
“So, why do you think you are in so much trouble at school then Gerry?” he asked, widening the remit of his questions.
“I don’t feel like I am allowed to learn things here the way I like to learn them.” he replied, confused himself to learn that the trouble he was in could now be described as ‘so much’.
“And how would you prefer to learn things Gerry” the Doctor now wanted to know.
Gerry thought carefully back to a recent experience and decided to share it with his confidant.
“I used to be terrified of the dark” he began slowly. “I don’t know when or why it began, but I used to have these strange dreams. In one, I would lie, facing the wall in my bedroom and on the wall, like the child’s projector I have, I could see a strange scene. There would be the wagons of a wagon train and they would be trailing across endless marshes, their sad and frightened occupants depressed by the dismal miles of wet and windswept landscape that stretched mercilessly out before them. I could feel the swish and slush of the mud and slime around their corroding wheels and sense the hopelessness of their venture, doomed as it seemed to failure. The second dream would contain a circle of burning wagons and a woman crying something to anyone who might hear her desperate plea.” Gerry appeared to pause, but the pause stretched out infinitely before both occupants in the room until the Doctor gently prompted him “And what was the woman saying Gerry?”.
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?” asked the Doctor.
“Because it is ineffable”
Gerry surprised the Doctor with his grasp of vocabulary and with his carefully measured words, but even the Doctor wasn’t sure that they both held the same understanding of this particular idea.
“Why can’t you say it to me Gerry, here, now, in this safe place?”
Gerry was amused, not only by the notion that the deputy-head’s office was a safe place for him, but by the qualified man’s interpretation of what he had said to him.
“No. It’s not that I can’t or won’t say it to you, or anyone, wherever I might be. It is just ineffable in the sense that I have no way of making the sound. It is unspeakable. I don’t know how to even form the word or sound that she made. It is beyond language. It is something so primitive that I have no way to communicate it and I wish I had never heard it, whatever it means.”

There was no great discovery in the meeting that the Doctor felt able to share with his employers other than to say that he had enjoyed meeting Gerry who he thought was a ’very interesting young man who had an unusual ability to express himself verbally’ an assessment which Mr. Winwood was reluctant to share or accept. Gerry was accepted back into the year he had recently been excluded from but he was, he now learned, to be moved to a different class where the highest academic standards were expected. It was thought that by challenging Gerry more at the level of his intellect his difficulties with authority would resolve themselves. The IQ test Gerry had completed after the meeting with Doctor Baines had apparently satisfied something within Mr. Winwood who had now concluded that Gerry should be in the top class. Gerry’s father smiled at the news and could not quite understand why Gerry didn’t share his pleasure at this latest surprise development.
“They’re all swots dad. You just don’t understand. My life will be misery” he gloomily concluded. Cut adrift from his new found ladies of the greenhouse and his mates at school Gerry began to feel the real price for his misfortune. Alienation from all the friends he had so far made as they accused him of defection and rejection, both of which he now experienced in earnest, now that he was one of the ‘bright-kids’. Those carefree days of chlorophyl covered joy now behind him, banished to the exile of social Siberia, Gerry submerged himself into novels and retrospective accounts of the Nazi holocaust. He consumed the Scourge of the Swastika and the novels of Primo Levi in his one-man pursuit of the answer to the question ‘Why must people be so evil to one another?’ He just didn’t understand it, he hadn’t done anything wrong and yet he had suffered the maximum penalty. Exile. Maybe work would lead to freedom? He’d liked the experience at the greenhouses, and they seemed to like him. Maybe he’d find what he needed in the world of work, but he was too young to make that decision yet and he would have to use his newly discovered intelligence to his advantage, somehow. For now it was school, and merciful music, which would provide his escape from the vagaries of education.

Chapter Eighteen - Gravity

Gerry’s relationship with gravity was about to experience a change. His father, now a builder of bungalows in the ever expanding suburban development of rural Lindonshire, would be furious should he learn of Gerry’s latest pastime. Housing developments create building sites and these were then Gerry’s favourite ‘hang-outs’. He and his ‘mates’, a loose collection of similarly-minded neo-troglodytes would gather at the site of the newly delivered brick stack and epic works would then be conceived and constructed from a human-chain of industry and ingenuity. Should the brick stack arrive on the Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend then the resulting weekend’s work might rival the Taj Mahal for grandeur. At least in the eyes of the small army of mud warriors who would painstakingly see their grand vision take shape before the real builders were astonished by its immensity - shortly before the dawning realisation that they would have to deconstruct the miniature Hampton Court brick maze before their own labours could begin. It was not a popular discovery by builders and, safety implications aside, led to much damage and no few number of injuries.

It was astonishing, given the complexity of and tons of materials thus consumed, that no-one was actually killed by these finely-balanced but potentially lethal tombs. One simple misjudgement during their design or construction would result in the potential for burying a dozen children in a miniature Aberfan of bricks, blocks and planks. Multi-storey and subterranean constructions were attempted and tumbled on the failure of an angle or absence of a supporting beam. It was dirty, dangerous and exhilarating work, as the sandcastle imaginations of the boys stood back to survey the genius of their innocence as magnificent palaces of their dreaming asserted themselves across the vast acreage of their childhood.

The climbing of scaffolding was another popular diversion for the intrepid constructors and it was whilst jumping from the first storey of a half-built shell that Gerry had his first misadventure with the forces of gravity. Confident that the arc of his flight would ensure a soft landing in the awaiting pit of yellow, soft sand. He couldn’t quite account for his painful landing in the pile of bricks, adjacent to the grime-encrusted cement-mixer onto which he bounced. Gerry’s injuries might have been much worse than the broken wrist which, other than a few small bruises and scratches, was his painful and somewhat inconvenient souvenir of the mistimed leap into the unknown. A tree was blamed and conflict with his father thereby averted, but if Gerry was chastened, it was not to lead to a sudden and more profound understanding of Newton’s Law. That would require a tree.

The resident monkeys of Gerry’s expanding tribe were the Sadler boys. Stephen and his older brother Martin could climb anything. Trees, posts, walls and rocks were all powerless to resist the progress of these simian-like creatures who liked nothing better than to swing from the treetop of one-hundred feet high Poplar trees, changing from one swaying tree to another with the agility of an Orang-utan. Fear had obtained no purchase in their wild and free souls and they challenged every physical boundary without its restricting influence. It seemed quite natural for Gerry to be ascending the massive trunk of the old and extremely gnarled willow tree which stood at the centre of the park where the boys had gone in pursuit of excitement. The Sadler boys were never inclined to smoking or other nefarious activities, but Gerry shared their joie de vivre and their shared interest in music greased the wheels of friendship sufficiently for them to tolerate one another’s idiosyncrasies. Oddly enough, the boys’ father was a travelling salesman for a large tobacco company, but no-one in the family ever expressed any interest whatsoever in the products from which the family made its apparently comfortable living. Not as much as an ashtray betrayed their resistance to the superiority, or otherwise, of the products peddled by the amiable head of the family, Paul. Paul Sadler was fan of the great outdoors and his children would benefit from sharing this passion as the assembled canoes, wet-suits, hiking boots and self-constructed garden tree-house made evident.

Following Martin closely along the fork of the trees lowest truncation, Gerry had perhaps hoped to learn more of the gecko-like techniques possessed by his friend. In the event his attention was suddenly completely focussed on the ground some eighteen feet directly below him. Climbing up a tree was easier than climbing along a thick bough and he began to perspire in a way he hadn’t previously experienced. The cold sweat dripped into his eyes and made his hands slippery as he tried to remove it with the backs of his fingers. He sat now astride the thick bough, swaying slightly in the movement of the light summer breeze. His friend, crouched easily just beyond his reach. “You alright Gez?” enquired the relaxed but concerned Martin.

“No, not really Mart. I feel a bit dizzy to be honest” and as Gerry moved to wipe the latest drips of anxious sweat from his brow his weight shifted imperceptibly and he slid sideways off the trunk, like a wounded Beau Geste having finished his last mounted report from a besieged desert fort. The fall was a blur of whirling and rotating madness before Gerry’s twisting body hit the mercifully soft earth but with such force all the air spilled urgently from his lungs. His body, breathless and apparently lifeless was soon the scene of great concern as his friends and passing adults gathered around the prone body of the fallen boy. When he came to, Gerry remembers the heavy feeling of his body, almost as if he had fallen deeper into the earth, beyond his own physical frame, from whence he could never entirely return to the same specific gravity he had previously felt. He felt heavier, and very, very earthy.

His practical demonstration of the inescapability of Sir Isaac Newton’s theory, made real, Gerry never again felt comfortable around exposed heights. Mr Rudkin, the Physics teacher however did not want a discourse on gravity when apprehending Gerry coming into school on his friend Martin’s unicycle, demanding only to know “What are you doing boy?”.

“I am cycling into school and learning Newton’s Law sir!” Gerry replied as he cycled expertly up the single narrow ramp and parked the offending article.

“Well, you can’t come to school on one of those, can you?” Mr Rudkin enquired uncertainly.

“Apparently so sir. I just did!” replied the delighted Gerry.

The discussion ended, uncharacteristically for Gerry without further rebuke, but he could not help but notice how any individualism he ever displayed was automatically met with an institutionally ordered wall of approbation. It was almost as if everyone in the school was engaged in a conspiracy to reveal the flaws of each child and then, having labelled and assessed their unsuitability, write their destiny in spitefully measured disregard. He’d never had a disagreement with Mr. Rudkin, though many would follow, but he felt judged as a troublemaker when his actions might just as well have excited pleasure, even joy, at the unpredictable event. Yes, he’d got away with it, but he was no stranger to implied criticism - his own father’s specialisation - which he now found himself resenting.

Of course he’d had other ‘run-ins’, as his father habitually characterised them, with several teachers. Doctor Michaels, a mountainous Welshman with a chinstrap black beard and comb-over, initially made some attempt to accommodate the talkative but likeable first-year, but his paper-thin patience soon exhausted itself on the paper-sharp wit of his new intake of chatty pupils. A bout of chalk-throwing by the irascible Welshman didn’t seem to solve the problem and the inevitable collateral damage inflicted on the girls unfortunate enough to be behind Gerry might have led to complaints from the innocent girls’ parents. Finally, during one hectic Monday morning, the good Doctor took leave of his senses and threw a long and potentially lethal haymaker at the astonished Gerry’s head. His reactions were luckily for his own health and the Doctor’s reputation, equal to the assault, and with a deft roll of his head, the huge fist and thick wrist, whistled past the boys head, connecting instead on the wide sweep of its arc, with the laboratory tap which promptly snapped in two gushing its contents forth in an aerial fountain of suddenly released pressure.

The good Doctor tried to discuss his growing frustration with Gerry at the boy’s apparent attention deficit and ever present need to be ‘the centre of attention’, but, as Gerry tried to reason with him whilst slightly distracted by his teacher’s bandaged hand, throwing chalk, blackboard-rubbers and haymakers in his direction were questionable tactics on this basis alone. Before the giant Welshman’s patience could again reach its margins, Gerry stopped making the eye-contact, so desired by those with an apparent curiosity to better know his mind and the conversation ended uneasily in a detention for Gerry which seemed odd to him when only his teacher had so dramatically misbehaved.

Gerry had ceased taking his grievances to the high court of his father’s judgement when he realised that his own father’s pre-occupations would rule against him with the tired eyes of a man who was himself more than slightly out of lock-step with the prevailing belief in all things institutional. His father railed against the Government and its new notion of ‘comprehensive’ education, a new paradigm that Gerry himself was an unwitting victim to.

His second year at school was shared with the arrival of a very distinct and new group, the comprehensive students themselves, and with them an entirely new educational structure and set of conflicting demands. The new children, no longer required to demonstrate their ‘suitability’ for Westeven Grammar, either educationally or socially, arrived in great numbers, swelling the schools population to the very extremities of its capacity. The existing staff, unprepared for this invasion were hard-pressed to contend with what many of them felt to be a dilution of their purpose, aims and abilities. The two independent syllabi were to be taught, and administered, in tandem, to a widely differentiated twin cohort of ability and as it proved difficulty. Many teachers, such as the much vaunted Mr. Cant, realised immediately the impossibility of the competing demands and swollen rolls of these competing agendas, and in time, simply gave up and moved on to new pastures. Others, less aware of their own limitations, imposed themselves upon the new directive with leech-like authority. They were there and they meant to stay there. This saw the rise to local power of the worst sort of teacher. Those with ambition but without conscience. The school bullies rose like slag to the top of the furnace from where they spilled their caustic embers upon all those who resisted the new education ministry’s imperative. All children were equal, but some teachers were somehow more equal than others.

Gerry enjoyed reading his first novel, George Orwell’s Animal Farm at school that year, at least in the months following the surprise and shocking departure of Miss Markham. Her very public breakdown, in room 6/7 had occurred one Thursday morning when the despised and spider-like spinster had literally unravelled in front of Gerry’s class. Teachers and students who witnessed the drama would often attribute the moment of crisis to the question that Gerry asked his teacher.

“Is that brandy I can smell Miss?” he had enquired, quite ingenuously, familiar as he was with the aroma of the spirit from his several close encounters with Dr. Humphrey Dickman, the family GP, who made no attempt to disguise his favourite tipple which reeked from his mouth when under the close proximity of one of his examinations.

He never did receive the courtesy of a reply as the poor old girl first slumped into her chair and then, in an ever increasing crescendo of sobbing, declared herself unfit to continue her career. Several distressing minutes passed before two of the more ‘sensible’ girls left the scene of the cacophonous keening, returning with the deputy headmistress, Violet Richardson, a dwarf-like lady who effected the twin-set and pearls era of education, along with an impressive growth of facial hair that might well have qualified her for a circus career had education not afforded her a suitable sinecure. Realising the very real distress to both Miss Markham and the children, Aunty Vi, as she was genuinely affectionately known, dismissed the children early for their lunch break and set about making Miss Markham’s last morning at school as easy as possible. The children last saw her as she was winched up on the tail-lift of the ambulance which had been summoned to take her away. She was strapped into the seated position of her wheelchair and displaying a cracked smile from within the cocoon of her hospital pink, crocheted blanketed comfort of her madness which was plain to see reflected in the staring and unashamedly curious faces of the hundred or so children who had gathered to witness this humiliating departure.

Mr. Winwood of course had to conduct a post mortem investigation of the circumstances relating to her embarrassing departure and unsurprisingly Gerry was summoned to an audience with him. Gerry, having given a very straight-forward account of his conversation with the departed madwoman was more than slightly bemused at the head’s attempt to connect him with the breakdown, regarding him as the straw which broke the camel’s back.

“Oh no sir, it wouldn’t have been anything I said. It’s the growing class-sizes and the conflicting demands of teaching both comprehensive and grammar school students at the same time” he confidently replied.

“I beg your pardon Hood?” queried the by now perplexed head teacher.

“Yes sir, I heard Miss Markham discussing it last week with her head of department and they both agreed that their workload has become ridiculous and that they never get any time to catch-up with the requirements of senior management. You can ask any of the teachers sir, they’re all talking about it.” he replied without any sense of awkwardness, knowing how closely that this fitted his own father’s analysis of the ‘cock-up that this Government calls education’ on which he regularly held forth across the pages of his newspaper or during the BBC’s six-o’-clock news.

“You don’t seem to appreciate the gravity of this situation.” Mr. Winwood told Gerry, across the steel framework of his semi-elliptical glasses.

“Oh yes sir, I do.” said Gerry and was about to embark on a discourse about the discovery by Sir Isaac Newton and the theory to which this led, all of which he had learned in Mr. Rudkin’s dissertation of the subject in fact, when Mr. Winwood produced a large stick from behind his desk.

“Bend over my desk boy” ordered the cold and unemotional voice that threaded itself like a worm into their conversation.

The sudden change in subject and atmosphere came as a surprise to Gerry, but deep within him a new survival instinct had begun its process and Gerry was surprised to then discover himself holding the large and weighty glass ashtray that sat on the front corner of the head’s desk.

“What are you doing with that boy?” demanded the tremulous tenor of the head’s voice.

“Well sir, if you try to hit me with that, I will hit you back with this!” declared the frightened but defiant voice that shook from a previously unheard depth within him

“I BEG YOUR PARDON?” screamed the enraged head teacher as the stick shook threateningly from his outstretched and pointed arm that held it aggressively out before him.

“Well you started it sir! If you are entitled to attack me with a stick, I am entitled to use a weapon to defend myself!” a voice from deep within Gerry declared.

“I am suspending you from this school forthwith!” commanded the head, by which time Gerry had reversed out of his office, leaving his weapon on the bookcase by the entrance as he walked quickly toward the cloakroom to collect his bag, happy to obey the head’s most recent edict.

His father, grieving the recent loss of his beloved mother, was unable to arouse the usual degree of ire that Gerry might have expected from the latest development in his educational interruption, and allowed the incident to pass with only the muttered rejoinder that he agreed with Mr. Winwood’s response and therefore sanction of two weeks suspension because as Mr. Winwood had correctly surmised Gerry simply didn’t ‘understand the gravity of the situation’. His latest experiential meanderings in the bewildering world of Newtonian physics had taught Gerry something much more important, he felt. That equal and opposite forces were as much at his disposal as bullies such as Mr. Winwood, and Miss Markham, and he now knew how to employ such forces in his defence.

Chapter Seventeen - Boots, Braces and Boxers

Becoming a musician would require a none-too subtle shift in terms of identity, concluded Gerry. This would have its difficulties and as Gerry considered the possibilities whilst poring over the modes, hairstyles and footwear of his newly-discovered idols, he reflected on recent controversy in connection with his appearance. The move to Wykeham brought temporary respite from the tyre-fitters grip much favoured by his uncle Vic’s barber shop experience which had been ceded prior to the move to the bizarre emporium of Deek’s gentleman’s hairdressers. This extraordinary place held a special place in the memories of all who passed through its many chairs and barbers as they snipped, clipped and trimmed the hair, moustaches and beards of the city of Lindon’s male population throughout the many generations of the firm’s existence.

Located in the city’s Guildhall Street the entrance itself was worthy of mention. A wide porch way which had been floored in the exact same material as the entrance plinth of a double-decker bus - consisting of loose rubber compound blocks which interlocked to form a regular open mesh matting - the entrance way sloped uphill where one might reasonably have expected steps. Narrowing as the incline increased itself by degrees, visitors were eventually compelled to ascend short, often narrow and randomly arranged steps before arriving in a splendid hall which bustled with life and the queues of indolently waiting customers. Frantically busy teams of barbers would invite their next client to sit upon the carefully polished leather, chrome-trimmed chairs with a flourish of their bry-nylon coverall as with their right leg they pumped the hydraulics until the head of the client arrived at optimum cutting height.
“What would sir like today?” was the uniform greeting as they readied themselves for battle with the unkempt mops of schoolboys or the grey band of hair that was all that remained of the many victims of male-pattern baldness and faded youth.
A frenzy of highly skilled snipping would ensue in which the proximity of the razor sharp scissors and shears would freeze the formerly writhing child in its booster seat, mercifully hidden from mocking adult stares by the maroon nylon coverall draped around them. The chatter was of football, potential foreign holiday plans and Gerry noticed with some curiosity how the more feckless of the young men would openly thumb through the torn and folded pages of magazines entitled Playboy, Men Only and Penthouse. Such publications were never to be found anywhere other than Deek’s or scattered randomly in hedgerow bottoms along the pathways that common courtesy and repressive convention then demanded they should be taken to be surreptitiously read and then discarded for the further edification of young lads such as himself. The performance ended in a crescendo of careful shaving with the electric clippers during which the barber would tilt one’s head into strange and discomfiting angles before producing the hand-held mirror which try as he might, Gerry found impossible to relate the picture now displayed via the two mirrors employed, albeit briefly, to the back of his now bristling and itchy neck. A good barber would, as Gerry eagerly anticipated apply a squirt or two - from a glass teardrop-shaped bottle attached to a rubber ball-operated pump - of what was prosaically described as jungle-juice before his coup-de-grace of whipping the coverall away whilst brushing one’s neck with a stiff bristled brush. The entire drama of Deek’s might last an hour, with perhaps five minutes spent in the chair, but was a spectacle that Gerry found fascinating culminating with a short visit to the elaborately appointed mechanical till where paying adults were ritually presented with the esoteric request “anything for the weekend sir?”.

It would be many long years before Gerry would crack this careful code of condom concealing coyness but he did notice that his own father’s weekend requirements were either non-existent or had been inconspicuously conducted elsewhere. Steeped in historical myths masquerading as long-held truths, Deek’s was a veritable museum of urban myths where it was believed that the notorious hangman Albert Pierrepoint regularly visited prior to despatching the latest victim condemned to a hideous end by the judges at the nearby assizes. Whether anyone ever asked the grim executioner his requirements for the weekend was not known though Gerry did ask his father on receipt of this information though no answer other than a look of exasperated disgust was forthcoming.

The exact nature and extent of one’s haircut, which would happen at intervals of three weeks to a month, was entirely dictated by one’s parent and Gerry quickly discovered that whatever he said to the barber’s enquiry would result in a uniform short-back-and-sides. The newest innovation of a ‘square-neck’ left him wondering about its appropriateness to the round and v-necked shirts and jumpers that such a neck-cut might then compromise so he remained mutely resistant to all such invitations. Latterly his exhausted father had allowed the boys to visit the local hairdresser, Philip, unaccompanied. It didn’t matter what one’s individual requirement was at Philip’s, his training at the local hairdressing school having presumably been devoted to one client or model of uniform construction which he could repeat perfectly and endlessly. Returning from their latest disappointment the boys would be confronted by their father’s disapproving glare as he enquired mirthlessly “which one did he cut then?”. But it wasn’t by having too little hair cut that Gerry caused his father to bristle in resentment. Quite the opposite actually. The fateful day on which Gerry returned from a visit to Philip’s with what his father referred to as a ‘crew-cut’ was the beginning of his struggle for identity within a culture of rigidly fixed and immoveable stereo-types. He had listened as his father deplored first ‘teddy-boys‘, then ‘rockers’ and ‘mods’ before alighting on the new, and as he preferred to think relatively unknown phenomenon of the ‘skinhead’. The genesis of Gerry’s discovery of this new anthropological trend was however found to have its roots in music.

His new found friends in his expanding village life were given to regular attendances at the local disco. Once a week all the young boys and girls of his new-found acquaintance would gather at the village’s Memorial Hall where the local council had sanctioned the playing of recorded music for their entertainment. This took the form of popular soul music of the time which consisted almost entirely of records from the Detroit based Tamla-Motown label as the Transatlantic arm of Berry Gordy’s expanding empire was then known. From the very instant that the dj placed his first platter under the tone arm the local girls, clad almost exclusively in stay-prest jackets and short skirts, feather-cut hairstyles radiating a coloured aura from their closely cropped skulls from the ever-changing lights, thronged the floor and, in a carefully contrived and obviously well-rehearsed set of routines, danced in closed groups around a central altar of handbags. The boys shifted conspicuously around the periphery of these knots of formation dancers as the strains of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and other less well-known black American artists laid down their deeply affecting grooves or crooned their soulful melodies. If indeed ‘Farewell’ was the loneliest sound one could hear from the one that you loved, Gerry was more ‘hurt inside’ at the prospect that all the girls were much bigger than him and were they to whisper such a sound in his ear he would need to be standing on a chair in order to share the moment of emotion.

Ballads, however sublime, would clear the floor whereupon the girls would evacuate the building in preference for conspicuous smoking which might then include some of the bigger lads in possession of cigarettes and the appropriate uniform of Levis’ finest denims (or two-tone stay-prest pants) Doc Marten’s boots (or brogues), Ben Sherman shirt, Harrington jacket and, most importantly a pair of braces (preferably red with gold adjusters and clamps). Gerry learned to appreciate and envy this uniform of acceptance and made elaborate plans for his own induction. He listened in wonder to the effect wrought by the opening bass-line and drum beat of Freda Payne’s anthem Band of Gold which never failed to fill the polished wooden floor of the small and dimly-lit hall but left him wondering why a song about desertion and heartbreak would remain a must-have song at weddings and engagements long after he had pointed out its lyrics being inappropriate for such occasions.
The glamour was further enhanced when, upon his first visit to the spring fair with its gyrating carnival rides and tattooed and ear-ringed hucksters, he had been propelled into a whirling and nauseated world of adrenaline to the same soundtrack of Motown’s greatest. The pounding basslines and thudding drumbeats allowed no indifference to this irresistible rhythm and blues invasion and he began to conceive himself as part of this scene without deference to his parents growing concern about his appearance and acquaintance with ‘youths’ unknown to them and clearly tarnished by a cultural change of which they would never entirely approve or even attempt understanding.

Bit-by-bit and over a period of weeks, Gerry slowly and carefully plotted his transition to becoming a recognisable member of his new tribe and as each new acquisition confirmed his metamorphosis his parents watched with mounting disapproval. The purchase of his new Harrington jacket, a rather strange green zip-fronted canvas wind cheater - as his scowling father regarded it - with a red tartan lining, led to rather unfortunate consequences. His first weekend as its proud possessor resulted in a strange and highly unpleasant encounter. For reasons he could never recall, Gerry’s parents had uncharacteristically relaxed their vigilance about the company he was keeping and he was allowed to go on a camping trip with several other boys to the low fields area, down near the river and the sewage farm. Had his parents first witnessed the boys as they balanced precariously on the thin concrete ledges that divided the raw human effluent whilst they threw large rocks and bricks into the beds of ordure in an attempt to dislodge one another from their position in a shower of feculent filth, they might have been more circumspect about the adventure.

The trip was ill-conceived and no planning or consideration whatsoever had gone into their collective needs for food and drink - apart of course from the several plastic bottles of cider that had been rapidly consumed the moment they had gathered together. After watching one of his unfortunate friends actually walk into a septic lake full of butcher’s effluent at the nearby sausage factory, whose surface looked remarkably like concrete in the moonlight, Gerry determined to solve the food shortage with a visit to a nearby garden which he had noted on his way to the camp was well-stocked with potatoes. Boys were set to scavenging wood and making the fire to which Gerry and Buster were confidently expected to return with King Edward’s finest in short order having plundered the stock of their owner’s careful husbandry. Access was easy across the recently clipped and well tonsured privet hedge and as Gerry and Buster set to work, expertly pulling the head of the plant and shaking the loose soil from their roots they were genuinely surprised to find themselves in the company of the owner’s extremely alert and excessively agitated boxer dog. Boxers held a special place in Gerry’s taxonomy of dog-terrors, having once been unexpectedly greeted at his own front door by Brutus, his mother’s friend’s overenthusiastic year-old pup who had overwhelmed the infant Gerry in an orgy of drool-filled slobbering and excitement causing Gerry to evacuate his bladder in shock and fear for his life. Crouching low amongst the luxuriant foliage of the carefully planted potatoes Gerry hoped his latest encounter would not have the additional danger of hostility from the clearly aroused dog which stood on three feet surveying him carefully from the row end. Suddenly, without hesitation the dog ran toward him. Gerry remained in his submissive crouch hoping that this behaviour would result in at worst a lick and at best a greater interest in his friend Buster who was halfway back across the privet hedge behind them. His high-speed departure, amidst a splintering and now ruined privet hedge through which he left a large new access point, at least provided Gerry with privacy, the only concession now remaining for what happened next.

Approaching from behind, Gerry could only hear the dogs heavily respiring breath on the back of his neck before the hound placed both of its front legs upon his shoulders before crossing both feet and locking them together in an unbreakable grip as Gerry felt the entire weight of its body fall onto his crouching and useless legs and torso. With sudden and insistent rhythm the dog pressed home its primal intention and for several moments which seemed like an eternity the dog violated Gerry’s back before spending itself all over the shoulders of his brand-new and previously unsullied Harrington jacket. The end, when it came, was merciful, the dog shifting his weight and with a slobber of dominant satisfaction returning to his kennel without so much as a farewell look of regret. Gerry walked the long and disconsolate walk of the sexually assaulted, empty-handed and unwilling to recount his tale of canine shame, to where the now raging fire was surrounded by shadowed faces, gaunt with hunger and expectation. His description of the dogs savage intent mollified all but those in need of the sight of an open-wound as satisfactory evidence of his struggle. Those who’s faces indicated derision at an assumed lack of resistance to the boxer’s aggression were never to know the deep sense of shame Gerry would feel that night as he wondered what it might be like as a woman to know and to share his deep feelings of disgust at what he had been forced to submit to that evening in the vegetable garden and to which, he was certain, they had to endure, repeatedly throughout their disempowered lives.

The washable jacket and Gerry’s reputation somehow survived his brutal induction into the world of testosterone and lust, but the braces and monkey boots of his lost innocence were humiliatingly hurled into the family’s dustbin on production of his latest school report which Gerry was required to watch his father contemptuously burn over the outside lavatory due to his Geography teacher’s assessment which found him to have ‘appalling manners’ courtesy of his discourtesy and new-found ability to belch, at will, in his presence. His ill-fated conversion to ‘street-cred’ temporarily arrested, Gerry now discovered the paradoxically incongruent desire for long-hair and with it a penchant for loon-pants (with 28” bell-bottoms and split knee construction, necessitated no doubt by the voluminous lower leg acreage of cloth), tie-dyed shirts and clogs. This very impractical choice of footwear, popular though they were to prove, were something of a handicap when pursued with malevolent intent by his former associates who proved less than delighted with his latest sartorial manifestation. Nevertheless, they slid under his father’s radar, mystified as he now was about the perverse change in hair styles that by now both his boys were affecting. The younger generation, he had wisely concluded, were an enigma that he would never understand, and he thereby resolved to stop trying, to the relief of the entire household.