The Steering Group Read online

  Newcastle was, for me at least, innocence, beautifully delivered in a cotton wool fantasy of happy families. I attended school for what it was worth, my dad did the nine-to-five and I remember our first colour TV. Mum even had a few friends and worked part-time as a checkout girl in a supermarket for a short while. Shit, it makes me feel old to say we had a black and white TV – most people now wouldn’t know that they existed – but I genuinely remember watching the snooker in colour just because we could. Heck, to think it only had three buttons – one each for BBC1, BBC2 and ITV – and no remote; well, the remote would be one of us kids! Life went on, a life which was just normal, nothing to get excited about. Good memories, family Christmases with piles of presents – it just seemed like back then we would get tons and tons of presents. It would be fair to say I was really lucky to be in such a great family. Mum and Dad never had any money so I have no idea how they ever afforded Christmas from the day I came on the scene until they tragically opted out. Funny how as life goes on, the fewer gifts you get, the fewer people keep in touch and the more you want to just forget the whole issue and get drunk. I think Christmas is mostly a depressing time of year, both for me and for the wider population who don’t have wads of cash to waste on unwanted gifts and other shite we all seem so desperate to buy in the big build-up.

  I dodged school one day to go with my dad to the Pye workshops for a day out of school. I rode shotgun in the van, one of those real old Ford Transits with the curvy bonnet and the double windows in the back doors, and we went off and did some off-site work before going into the workshops. I think my dad and I did this maybe a dozen times together, so he’s as much to blame for my schooling as me, I think. For lunch Dad took me to a spit-and-sawdust pub in central Newcastle called The Albion, where I would always have sausage and mash with tinned veg. The sausages were fucking awesome and the mash was served like ice-cream scoops, which for me made it all taste great for some reason. Harry would sometimes meet me and my dad at this pub and let me have a pint, and if I behaved I’d sometimes get to ride back to the workshops in his Bentley – damn, that was fun. My mum always found out about the pub visits and it drove her mad that I would eat veg at the pub but not at home. This sometimes ended up with me and Mum having massive fights over such ridiculous things as not liking spinach or cauliflower, pointless arguments that always seemed to happen after a good day out.

  I suffered badly from hay fever in childhood, not so much now. Not just the odd sneeze, hell no, I’d become almost completely blind as my eyes swelled up and became all crusty with all the gunk I had to use to help treat it and the never-ending watering eyes. Fucking doctors were shit; I had the multi-jab thing and no end of injections, all to no avail. I was always off school in the summer and even played on it a bit for more time away from school. I guess I just never liked people, or too many of them at once. I still find people generally annoying to this day unless they have something to actually say or share that is genuinely interesting. I used to spend hours and hours playing marbles with a kid called Johnathan in the street; he had some really bad fucked-up disease as I remember, and I think he was grateful for some friendship as he was always off school. He was an okay kid. I always stole the odd marble from him for my collection but I don’t think he noticed or even minded because he enjoyed our time together. Often us kids would disappear down the local quarry to play war or cowboys and Indians; it was a great place – we used to sink no end of stuff in the lake, shopping trolleys and stuff we had stolen from the Blaydon Estate. My brother and I spent many days building tree houses and dens in that quarry. We made great bows and arrows that really did fucking hurt if you got shot. Phil (my older brother) managed to drop a huge lump of wood on my hand one day whilst we were building a tree house, and I remember coming home screaming like a crazed lunatic. I still have the scar on my finger from that accident. In retaliation I split his head open with a spade a week later. Newcastle holds my fondest memories of childhood; I had cool friends and things to do. I still think of it as home.

  Occasionally my older brother and I were sent off to our grandparents on my dad’s side who lived near London. This was always sold to us as a great holiday but was most likely to get rid of us both so our parents could get some peace and quiet. Heck, it was traumatic; don’t get me wrong, my brother and I would be just as good as gold until we got there. Our grandfather, a short-ass dapper gent, would allow us to work in his shed; the old guy was quite a clever chap in making models and stuff, model railway engines mostly, and I guess that’s where my dad’s model boat building talent came from. Phil and I would learn many new skills down that shed, and of course I would learn how best to use a chisel to draw blood from my brother in one way or another. We occasionally joined forces and sabotaged all manner of things in the shed, including Grandad’s whisky supply. He would have bottles stashed just about everywhere. Our grandmother would innocently think that her husband was down the shed making models and steam engines, when actually he was slowly drinking himself into oblivion. From what I can remember he never got on with my mum’s parents as he never saw action during the war so he was never part of the club. Bill was considered a war dodger in Grumps’ household from what I gathered from my mum. (He was called Grumps because he really was a miserable bastard.)

  I got a taste for whisky during those visits to London, and I would be held to ransom by my older brother, but I always had more dirt on him than he had on me, and if I didn’t I would make shit up. I just love the memory of Phil and I sinking many of our grandad’s plant pots in a water butt at the end of the garden that collected all the rainwater off the garage and shed roofs for watering his plants in the greenhouse. Grandad had heaps of plant pots in the shed and greenhouse, stacks and stacks of those nice terracotta pots, in all shapes and sizes. Shit, that was funny; the old guy couldn’t figure out where all his plant pots had fucked off to! There were probably only a few inches of water left in that water butt, the rest displaced by all his pots!

  Grandma would be in the kitchen making the worst rock cakes known to man (or were they grenades for the army?) and the most disgusting lumpy mashed potatoes to go with some carefully prepared nightmare dinner on a plate. For fuck sake, when you make mash it’s supposed to be mash or it would be called ‘lumps’. Heck, she had all the best intentions, but both Phil and I would delight in finding innovative methods of getting rid of this shit during mealtimes. Of course, Grandad was too pissed to notice what we got up to; and well, we were too young to care. They were really good people but we were young, and getting into trouble was much more fun. Later, when we would get back home, we would tell Mum how bad Grandma’s cooking was and have a real laugh about it. I guess it made Mum feel more appreciated when we returned home from our holidays.

  One night we were made to dress up and go to some OAP event at the local community hall where our grandparents showed us how skilful they were at ballroom dancing. It was a young boy’s nightmare, ballroom fucking dancing! Turned out to be a pretty cool evening as I would minesweep as much beer as I could, and most of those old guys would let me have a drag on a cigarette or even give me a sip of whisky or rum after telling me some old war story or other tale from their past. However, typically, I just had to brighten that one night up, so decided that I would help out with the tombola thing and fixed it so my brother Phil won first prize. We never got invited back after that. Funny old thing. Oh well, shit happens, I guess.

  My dad’s father eventually died, God rest his soul, after many years drinking whisky which led to a progressive decline in his health to the point where he literally shit his pants on a holiday bus trip, which finally made my grandmother realise the guy was on his way out. Although it really isn’t funny, I still chuckle at the fact that the old boy enjoyed his drink and just casually shit his pants in front of everyone. I guess he must have been pissed, and I know what it’s like to try to hold in a crap when you’re pissed; you’re gonna lose so you might as well just smile. Gran died shortly af
terwards and, if my memory serves me right, my poor father never really got to mourn their deaths because of the geographical distance, and time away wasn’t easy.

  After my younger brother had been born in Newcastle, a happy accident by all accounts, we moved to a small town in Nottinghamshire and to a much larger house because Dad had landed himself a good job, a manager’s position at some big radio telecommunications firm called Air Comms, if I remember correctly. The move would take us closer to Mum’s parents. What a joy, we would see more of Grandad Grumps – he was a seriously miserable bastard. He was 6ft plus and a real live war hero and survivor of Belsen concentration camp during the Second World War. He had a chest full of medals and, when we went round to visit him, he would let each of us boys have a coin out of this big old ammo box where he kept tons of war memorabilia that fascinated both my older brother and me. The old war horse had fucking everything in that old ammo box – coins, medals, German SS knives and spent ammunition cartridges – no idea what happened to all that. They had moved out to South Africa to be with Mum’s sister for a few years and later returned to England, ending up in a council house. They had had servants and all that shit out in South Africa but I guess the money must have run out or something so they ended up back in sunny old England.

  It was a one-horse town, sold to the unsuspecting house-hunter as a historic market town; translated, that means shithole with nothing going for it except a market in a town square where we used to love going to see the hunt set off. I remember seeing those tall horses with the red-jacketed riders and all the dogs; seemed like real England, a scene perhaps from the magazine This England. With a river and a canal flowing through it, it was somewhat interesting to me as a boy as both waterways presented some adventure to my young enquiring mind. But it basically consisted of cheap housing, a town hall, a collection of cheap shit shops, too many banks and building societies, a good butcher called Hogg & Son which is still there today (they do great pork pies and awesome cream cakes), Cooplands the baker, a cinema and about half a dozen pubs. If you go there today, you’ll think I am lying because it’s actually a really nice place. It has become very desirable, with great shops and restaurants all adding to the café culture. It’s clean, well-kept and, heck, I’d probably move back it’s changed that much!

  My grandmother on my mother’s side was fucking awesome. You could see where my mum came from – just the most caring selfless person in the world. Grandma Bramworth was 5ft and a fag paper and weighed in around the half ton mark. She was just the greatest person on earth. I suppose she had to be to put up with that miserable bastard Grumps. Never had any nice outfits, or anything special, just old crap clothes that stank of cigarettes, and she always wore one of those awful ‘pinnies’ old people wear to do the housework in. On countless afternoons I would sneak out of school, steal some fags and go play backgammon with her whilst drinking Grumps’ supply of brown ale. Black and Tan was her drink and she would have no problem sitting smoking and drinking away those many afternoons with me knowing that I should be at school but would rather I be safe with her than out and up to no good. Clever old bird. When Grumps came home Gran would let me escape out the back door which backed on to the railway line, which covered my escape from Grumps quite nicely. I really, really loved my grandmother.

  Moving meant a new school, friends and enemies, and of course having a Geordie accent was the perfect excuse for all the other boys to pick a fight with me despite me trying to avoid it at all costs. Let’s just say I continued to skive off quite a lot. I started to learn a few good swear words in the playground, often repeated to the teachers to my downfall, and I soon learned how to throw a punch. I wasn’t hard or anything, just a skinny kid who preferred to bunk off than go to singing or recorder lessons! Yeah, music lessons where boys are expected to get up and sing or play the recorder are just a no-no in my book. I can remember Mrs Callington’s music lessons; we each had to stand and sing solo and play the recorder to the rest of the class – what a load of bollocks. I went down the river instead and gradually learned new ways of how to steal cigarettes and other assorted goodies from the local shop without being caught on my way. I would go on my own, with a friend or with my brother, but he was at a different school soon after we arrived because he is two years older than me so it wasn’t often we got into trouble together.

  The river was great. I remember taking our inflatable dinghy down there after filling it up with air at a local petrol station; I’m sure the staff there grassed me up a few times for not being at school, and they hated me using the air supply for the dinghy. I loved riding the dinghy down the river, which was fast-flowing, and towards the edge of town it plummeted though a weir; you had to be careful not to get trapped in the weir’s sluice gates and not to spin too fast or tip over before hitting the big wave at the bottom which we called ‘the muncher’. From the weir we would go onwards, collecting old bottles and shit from the riverbed, finally getting to an old firing range the TA used. This turned out to be an awesome discovery; we would find live rounds on the range which had been abandoned in exercises and we collected them. I later introduced a few friends to the firing range, and we later learned together how to put unspent rounds on the railway tracks in order to try shooting each other across the tracks, pretending we were in the trenches like in the stories Grumps had told me about. Being in the ‘trenches’ was where teams took up position either side of the tracks, which we thought was awesome, not realising just what we were playing with. I can’t believe no one actually got shot playing that game. I think only one train stopped after passing over about a dozen rounds, which resulted in a number of ricochets against the trains wheels. We didn’t hang around to find out the result of our handiwork.

  We later moved into an older house near the town centre, which was great, and I had just the biggest bedroom ever. All the rooms had servant bells that rang down in the kitchen. Everything felt like it was gonna be okay. The house was totally unmodernised but to compensate had great big coal fires to keep us warm, and they were in the bedrooms too. No carpets or central heating for the first few years but it never mattered much to us; it must have been a major headache for my dad, getting all the earache from Mum to get on and do all the DIY shit. I liked that big old house; it was kind of a mess but at the same time a really nice home. I think because it wasn’t perfect and not a show home it felt more of a home, even if the mess drove my mother insane.

  The next-door neighbours introduced themselves quite early on. Curly, as he was affectionately known, was in the demolition business, but only of his own home. This guy was into DIY on a biblical scale. Just about every night this fucktard would start banging, demolishing one of the interior walls or some other destructive process in his home. The banging and crashing would sometimes go on all night and it simply drove my mother mad. On and on this went for a few years, almost to the point of my mum having a nervous breakdown. I guess it was this chapter in her life that made her so anxious and paranoid. You had to see the funny side of all of this too because Curly was a brilliant entertainer as well as being a total idiot.

  He brilliantly decided to knock down the wall between the living area and the kitchen – or was it the living room and the dining room?; I can’t remember – but he unintentionally took the stairs out at the same time. Kids were stranded upstairs and the fucking debris had blocked the way out to the yard so he couldn’t get the ladders to get to the kids or his dogs! It was Billy Smart’s Circus on some nights, and we would watch in awe from the bedroom windows at his DIY show. Curly wasn’t the brightest bulb in the shop but he had everyone else’s lights on all night on many occasions. It all came to a head one night after the endless noise, crashing and banging forced my dad to go round and confront him. He was married to Marie, who had no teeth and was mother to his six boys. They all looked the same: really short-shaved skinheads, home-knitted jumpers and ripped jeans. I guess they were just trying to make ends meet like the other 90% of the population. Anyway, Da
d went round there, all 5ft of him, half Curly’s size, and offered him out. Of course, after that incident the banging and the piss-taking got worse and Mum and Dad eventually moved on to a bungalow the other side of town, but that was way after I had left home.

  I started secondary school and was just not into any of it. My friends and I eventually gave the French teacher a nervous breakdown pretty early on by clowning around at the back of the class. I later took up playing the trombone to get out of doing French altogether. Schoolmates were pretty okay, I guess. I was in the top stream for all subjects but I never applied myself to any of the subjects initially. Couldn’t care less really. It was all a waste of time. What was the fucking point of learning that a+b = fucking x? But what suddenly became interesting to me was the fact that my school taught Russian. I was fascinated immediately by the language and its new crazy alphabet, and I was actually genuinely interested in something for the first time in my life. My tutor was Mr Richards, funny looking fucker but strict; I didn’t mind his authority for some strange reason. He had a full black Russian beard like one of those woolly hats they wear in Moscow and NHS black-rimmed glasses, but he was sort of smart and composed with his black doctor-style briefcase, very shiny black shoes and heavy overcoat. It was like he was stuck in a winter’s scene from Moscow, and he had squinted ice-blue eyes which didn’t miss a trick. You could almost imagine him in Stalingrad during the siege as a commissary officer or something equally as sinister behind the Iron Curtain. I always expected him to have a hip flask of vodka or something but never saw one, to my disappointment.

  I spent just two years learning Russian in school with Mr Richards and learnt it obsessively for some reason. I don’t know why I was obsessed, but I soon became absolutely fluent, taking extra time to do additional learning at home and in school, including asking for those language cassettes for Christmas. I listened to those cassettes every day. My older brother would be recording Top of the Pops and I would be learning how to speak Russian. I just wanted to be a Russian I guess, in a childish way. It was still mysterious in the ’70s, and the Cold War remained very real and on the news every week. I guess you could go as far as to say Mr Richards and I got on really well, as well as a student and teacher possibly could. I gained pen pals and personal friends in Moscow through him and later wrote regularly with families all over the country as far east as Vladivostok. I probably took too much time to impress Mr Richards and to show my desire to learn, but at the time he would be obliging enough and even take the time to hold a conversation in the school corridor in Russian to see how much I really knew. I guess you could say I admired him in some strange way.