'Tain't What You Know, It's Who You Know

            I started Grammar School two days before my twelfth birthday. Everyone else in my class was at least a year younger than me. Not only that, I discovered that there were 191 other people in my year as opposed to 90 in the other years. I was a post war boom baby.

            I was quite proud when I learned I had gained a place at the school, so was my father, I think. I say I think because he was looking after a 16 year old daughter, me and my four year old brother, and his wife had died three  months before. Bit of a hard time to be as enthusiastic as I was.

            Because of the numbers in my year the classes were graded from A to F. I was placed in class F. It wasn't until the end of the third year and start of the fourth year that I discovered that the teaching staff considered that this stood for Failure, and from the start treated and taught us as such. What a bunch of idiots they were, and I don't mean that in a nice way. There were exceptions. The maths teacher was infinitely patient. The biology teacher was brilliant. The music teacher had the patience of a saint. The Geography and French teachers ruled with a rod of iron, but fairly.

            The last of the two English teachers I had was a complete and utter tosser. On the very last time I went into school to collect my final examination results ( a miserable one pass and five near misses and one complete failure) I bumped into him. I walked up to him and very pleased with myself told him that the one pass I had achieved was in English. He said, 'Yes, I know. It's because of the ridiculous system in this school that allowed you to pass and others far more worthy to fail that I am leaving teaching.' I was so upset by his words I could say nothing at all and watched his fat little arse waddle away down the corridor.

            It was quite a shock to leave school. I had never given it much thought. Felt it would go on forever. Obviously I knuckled down to try and find a job. Along with the several other thousand of kids of my age who had also finished their education that year. Not an easy task.

            I the space of a month I applied for fourteen jobs and had one interview. I didn't get the job, it went to a friend of the managers son, a lad I knew from school. I felt very aggrieved as I knew I was more capable of doing the job than he was, but it taught me a lesson. It ain't what you know, it's who you know. My next application was for the position of Police Cadet within my local Police force. There were 83 applicants, so I discovered, and one position. No chance. However, I put my best jacket and trousers on and a collar and tie and presented myself as instructed for a written examination, three of them in fact in one day. Not hard really, and I was one of about 35 who were whittled down.

            I had then to write an essay and leave it with the officers managing the interview process and told I would be getting a letter telling me whether or not I would proceed to the next part of the interview process. I got the letter the following week requesting the attendance of my body for further interviews. I went and had to sit yet another two written exams and we were cut down to ten.

            The ten of us sat in a large bare wooden floored gymnasium waiting and sweating for the results. Five of us were asked to remain in the room and the others were given the heave ho. Over the next two hours we were cut down to three, and I was one of them. Thinking and worrying that the final part of the interview process was upon us I, along with the other two started to really sweat. You could smell it in the gym, even though it was a big room. 

            The following week the three of us attended for our final interview by the Chief Constable and three members of the Watch Committee. (the Watch Committee was a local government committee responsible for the Police and Fire services of the town.) When it came to my turn I was ushered into the large corner office of the building which housed the Chief Constable. Imposing. Corner office overlooking a pleasant town centre road, floor to ceiling windows on two sides and half a mile of carpeting to walk along from the entrance door. When I had sat down and the oldest of the three very old Aldermen had put me at my ease, one of the men suddenly said to me, 'Are you Stanley Catherall's lad?'

            'Yes sir,' I replied. He smiled and leaned back in his chair.

            'I'm Alderman Booth. Your uncle Fred's brother. He's only recently retired from the force hasn't he?'

       'Yes sir,' I replied, suddenly placing the face of the man. I had seen him at my uncle's house once or twice before.

            'Make sure you remember me to your dad will you David? He's been through a rough time recently hasn't he?'

            I nodded my head silently. He smiled warmly at me and then made a note on the papers in front of him.  'Shall we start then gentlemen?' he said. 

            Guess who got the job?  Me!

            So, Mr English teacher. Up yours pal!

 

A Dog Called Soddy

Easter 1966 saw me and my girlfriend (we were married the following year) staying with some friends in a lovely little place in the north east of England. This couple had a dog, a very scruffy grey and white mongrel which they had named Soddy, on account of the fact that it would attempt to engage in sexual intercourse with anything of any gender. Male, female, table leg, your leg, anything.

The trip by coach to their hamlet was long and tiring, followed by a drive around the countryside with the friends and a few drinks at a club before retiring to bed for the night. Needless to say, we were very tired. My bed was a double put-you-up sofa in the front room of their small house whilst my girlfriend occupied a single bed in a small back bedroom. Our friends had the front bedroom and Soddy the dog had his place in the kitchen. The kitchen was at the back of the house and at the end of a hallway running from the front door where the stairs to the upper floor were situated.

Eventually my girlfriend and I found out which were our correct beds and I left her to sleep whilst I went back downstairs to the front room. It was probably about one in the morning by this time and I lay on my back looking to the large window in front of me covered by dark red floor to ceiling curtains, and tried to get to sleep.

As I started to drift off I was suddenly awakened by the sound of Soddy whining in the kitchen. After some minutes I got up and went to see what the problem was with the dog. He was lying with his head between his two paws in the kitchen facing down the hallway to the front door and stairs. Despite me trying all my dog threats and pleas to shut up and go to sleep I took him by the collar and dragged him down the hallway, thinking that maybe he wanted to be upstairs with his 'mum and dad'. As we got to the foot of the stairs the dog's hair on the back of his neck stood up on end and he glared at an old armchair which was placed at the foot of the stairs. As soon as he got to the chair he shot up the stairs and disappeared. I thought no more of it and went back to my bed in the front room.

No more than ten minutes later the door to the front room opened and a visibly frightened girlfriend crept in saying that "something is breathing at me out of the wall in the bedroom." She snuggled down into bed with me and we tried to get off to sleep.  Some minutes later as we lay side by side trying to get off to sleep I was suddenly aware that her breathing had stopped and this of course threw me wide awake. I lay for a second or two listening to her then became aware of something staring at me from the curtains covering the window in front of me. It was two Eurasian eyes. They had red irises and were slightly curved upwards at the outside edge. I too stopped breathing, then told my girlfriend to go to sleep as there was nothing there.  She started to breath again and after a few seconds the eyes slowly evaporated into nothing.

The following morning the four of us met up for breakfast in the kitchen. I mentioned to our friends about Soddy's antics the previous night. They looked around for the dog, but it was nowhere in sight. I told them that he had shot upstairs after looking in a very scared way at the chair. We all went up to their bedroom and there was Soddy lying under their bed flat to the floor. He had never done this before, and in fact had been chastised more than once for trying to get into the room in the past. Soddy came down with us looking very happy to see us all once again.

Before I went on to tell them the rest of the incident from the night before I told David to go into the kitchen with my girlfriend whilst I went into the front room with his wife, where we both related to them what we had see whilst lying in bed. Bear in mind that my girlfriend and had not discussed what had happened to us in bed the previous night.

I told our friends wife what I had seen, then the four of us got back together and the two friends compared the stories my girlfriend and I had told them. What my girlfriend and I had seen was identical, Eurasian red eyes in the middle of the curtain which eventually faded to nothing.

When I told them about Soddy and his antics in the kitchen and at the foot of the stairs David said, "That's strange. That chair used to belong to my grandmother, and in fact she was found dead in it some years ago."

So that's the story, as it happened, no embellishments, no additions, no explanations.

The Star Ferry - Hong Kong

The Star Ferry runs from Hong Kong to Kowloon. It was started in 1880 and seems to have changed little since those first days.

My only trip on it was a round trip back in 2005. We took a morning sailing over from Kowloon to Hong Kong to visit the Stanley Market on the south side of the island, and then back again in the evening. A memorable experience.

 If you ever go to Hong Kong then I insist you take the trip! 

Hong Kong is something of a culture shock for the first visit. I had taken a three hour train trip from Guangzhou on the mainland to Hong Kong. At the time it felt rather like going by Tardis from the 19th century to the 21st century in less than half a day. The station at Guangzhou was crowded liked no other station I had ever seen. All the signage was in Chinese, so that was fun, trying to buy a ticket. Fortunately the railway staff were fantastically helpful and after purchasing the ticket we started to make our way down the wide concourse to the appropriate platform, offering our tickets to the first ticket collector we came across.  It seemed strange to see that there were very few people making their way to the track or platform, and the ticket collector explained why.

It was forbidden to go to the platform until the train had actually arrived at the platform and been announced. So we stupid foreigners had to wait, with several hundred others.Notice I didn't say, 'wait patiently' - it seems to be contrary to the Chinese nature to wait patiently. They shuffled and gently pushed into each other and us as we waited. Finally the train arrived and we rushed headlong down the walkway onto the platform and eventually found our reserved seats on a very modern train. Very comfortable and light.

The trip, like all train journey for me, was a boring three hours until we eventually pulled into the station at Hong Kong. As I mentioned earlier, it was rather like going forward in time two hundred years. Hong Kong was just as crowded as the rest of mainland China had been, but the cultural difference was dramatic. As we were only to stay in the city for two nights on business the trip on the Star Ferry came on the second day when we had given ourselves half a day off.

Arriving at the ferry terminal was similar in many ways to the station in Guangzhou, crowded. The main feature however was a large crowd of young people, mainly young women, sat on the pavement outside the terminal. My first thought was that this was a demonstratin, but no, they were just waiting, noisily and colourfully. With tickets in hand we went to board the ferry.  This was something else. From the bright new buildings of Kowloon we walked into a dark wooden tunnel to the fery. The difference was instantainous and dramatic. The floors and walls up to window height were made from dark, almost black, planks of wood, stained by years of use. Windows permitted you to see across the water and to the ferries as they approached the terminal. 

The ferry arrived and we tramped further down a deeply worn gangplank to the ferry, stepping over the gap between dock and boat to find ourselves a seat, though it wasn't necessary really. There was plently of room for us to walk around and see the sights of Hong Kong in the distance and the receeding docks of Kowloon behind us.

The trip didn't take long and we were soon in Hong Kong for the remainder of the day. The trip back was quieter in some respects as people were somewhat queiter, but just as numerous. The lights though were somethign else. No doubt you have seen photos of the sea fronts of both cities, but the real thing is even more spectacular.

To have read in novels of the Star Ferry it was a wonderful experience to actually be on it and making the trip from Kowloon to Hong Kong and back again.

Why Does The World Insist on Changing?

Each day for some five years from the age of almost twelve, I went to school along a path which went first of all through a recently built housing estate, and then through fields leading to a farm. 

It wasn't a big farm, I suppose by standards today, quite small. Jim and Mary, who were the farmers, kept a small herd of cows for milk, and a few pigs whose sty was placed conveniently close to the footpath leading through the farm for schoolboys to lean over the wall of the sty and torment them. They didn't seem to mind though.

 

These are the sides of the main working buildings of the farm. The closest is the roof of the dairy where Mary used to process the milk she got from the cows each day. The large building is a barn where Jim kept a bit of the machinery he used, and towards the end of summer, the hay he had made from the few fields lying beyond the buildings.

As you left the farm there was a rough unmade track through the woods. This is where occasionally if I wasn't quick enough, one or other of the cows would try and tup me over the wall. Became a bit of a game for them, terrifying for me.

 

Of much greater interest in time, and before if I am honest, was the woodland which lay to the sides of the bridge you can see in the photo above. It was a wild place where we played in as kids. And now, some sixty years later on, it has changed. Most of the changes are man made, though not as bad as that sounds. The undergrowth, mainly Rhodedendrons, has been stripped out and replanted with Birch trees. The thing is though, all the other familiar things I knew, the river bends, the banks, have altered. Some of the photos below are of places I knew intimately as a kid. Now, I hardly recognise them.

Some things do change I suppose, after sixty years.