Taken round about the time... 1962
Left to right: Me, Verlaine, Lea and Barry Forrest
We were extremely conscientious about keeping up with the hits of the day and tried to make sure we learnt most if not all of the UK top ten. (Along with all the groups in Salisbury we played covers) This
meant we rehearsed every Tuesday, Tuesday being the one night a week we weren't booked to play. Rehearsals always took
place at our home,146 Victory Avenue. This meant every Tuesday
evening around 6:30 our long suffering folks vacated the comfort of their
lounge and carried the TV, along with our young brother Charlie, into their bedroom
where they remained until rehearsals finished, usually around 11:30 p.m.
This talk
of band practice has set me thinking of a mortifyingly crushing incident I experienced... the
magnitude of which in sheer, raw, unadulterated embarrassment stands head and
shoulders above all others I have ever suffered, even surpassing the ‘tick
incident’ I endured when as a seven year old I discovered two ticks attached to
one of my ball-bags. Although acutely embarrassed I told my mom who to my complete horror invited friends
and neighbours to check it out. The shame I suffered then paled into
insignificance when set against the gargantuan humiliation I’m about to
recount. It left me so traumatized it still has the power to give me the raging heebie-jeebies just
thinking about it. Maybe I’m over egging it. You be the judge.
As Lea worked at Radios Limited, an electrical shop with a record section, he
would ‘borrow’ the latest hit records when he left the shop on Tuesday evening and
returned them, albeit slightly scratched, first thing Wednesday morning.
The band would gather around the
gramophone and listen to the record which would
be played over and over until we had all the chords, lyrics, bass lines,
drum patterns and lead guitar figures off pat...then we’d try and put them all
together.
We’d learn two sometimes three new songs per rehearsal. Though how we actually managed to is beyond me - we seemed to spend most of the time sitting round talking, drinking copious mugs of coffee and smoking copious skayfs.
I need to wind the clock back a couple of years from 1963 t0 1961. I was fourteen at the time and had just started going out with this girl who I will call Lucy. It was band practice night and Lea had driven me round to Lucy's house to collect her and take her back to our place so she could experience the pleasure of watching us rehearse and making the band coffee when required...lucky girl.
I rang the doorbell and was met by Lucy's mother who told me Bridget wasn't quite ready and
invited me into the house. Lucy's family, her dad, younger sister and
brother were gathered in the lounge. I was introduced and invited
to take a seat. As I sat down I was
almost doubled over with an intense stomach cramp. The pain was excruciating. I asked if I could use their loo and was
pointed to a door. To my abject horror I discovered the door was the actual toilet
door. The toilet led straight off the lounge. I sat down on the toilet seat
with the disconcerting knowledge that a single flimsy door separated me
and any sound I made from Lucy's family. I needed to
go desperately but I would have to control the flow so to speak, and make it as noiselessly as possible...at least that
was the plan. What happened next will be forever branded on my being. I let out the loudest fart imaginable. I'm talking seismic. The sheer
volume of the anatomical retort even gave me a fright. I'm sure it must have registered on the Richter scale. It was that loud I am convinced somewhere in a dusty old Rhodesian government office, hidden away in some long forgotten civil servants drawer,
under a pile of paper yellowing with age, is an earthquake graph from 1961 with a sudden
and inexplicable peak.
Under different circumstances I
may well have taken pride in the thunderclap I had let loose. If
for example it had happened at Churchill School where a loud doeuf (fart) was
feted; something to be proud of, my gargantuan boomer would have been greeted
with total respect. I’d
have been lauded by fellow pupils. Spoken in the same breath as such Churchill
luminaries as Nigel Minnify who’d been caught smoking behind the bicycle shed
and as punishment ordered to sit in the middle of the quadrangle and smoke
fifty cigarettes straight off, one after another without a break, in the
mistaken assumption that it would make him violently sick. Nigel
Minnify who was probably on 100 plus a day got through the packet of
fifty Peter Stuyvesant without any visible signs of discomfort then asked the
teacher overseeing the 'punishment' if he had anything stronger, something toasted without ‘sissy’ filter tips, a packet of Gauloise, Texan or Malbro.
Yes, if it had only happened at
Churchill School they’d still be talking about me today. But it didn't. It
happened in my girl friend’s home with her mum, dad, sister and
brother seated a few feet away.
I was completely and utterly
mortified. I just sat there as the sound resonated around the loo,
echoing back and forth off the tiled walls. It was excruciating. But a worse was to follow.
Even though I’d been half
expecting it, when it came it cut me to the quick, sweeping away any last vestige of dignity I’d been clinging to.
The sound of laughter coming
from the other side of the loo door. Laughter which started out as a soft, stifled
snigger then suddenly erupted into a chorus of howls, hoots and shrieks.
I sat on the pan a broken man,
well a broken fourteen year old. I just didn't know what to do. How could I
face Lucy's family and their mocking laughter? I prayed to God to put me out of my
misery, to let the floor open up and swallow me whole... but my prayers
remained unanswered. I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit on the toilet
for the rest of my life.
If God wasn’t going help me I’d
have to help myself. A thought sprung into my head. Maybe I could climb out the
window and leg it into the night. “Yes,” I said to myself, “that’s what I’ll
do. Genius! I’ll climb out the window and leg it into the night then I won’t
have to face Lucy's family’s cruel mocking laughter.” But when I checked the
window above the cistern I discovered that apart from it being way too small it
also had ornate wrought iron burglar bars covering it. I was stymied. There was
only one way out the loo and that was the way I’d come in. There was nothing
for it I had to open the door and face the music.
And that’s what happened. I
waited for the laughter to abate... and bit the bullet. Trying to look
completely unconcerned, as completely unconcerned as a fourteen year old kid
can after he had let rip with a boomer within close proximity to his girl
friend’s family; I opened the door and stepped into the lounge. I don’t know
what I expected but nothing prepared me for the torrent of laughter my red
faced appearance evoked. It was like the floodgates had opened. They sat there
with tears streaming down their faces. Then, when I thought the laughter was
about to stop, Lucy came in and asked what was so funny and it started up
again.
So there it is, out in the open.
I know this is going to sound trite but I feel a weight has been lifted from my
shoulders. Recounting this episode is similar, or so I imagine, to lying on a
psychiatrist’s couch and letting it all out. There is something
therapeutic, almost cathartic about divulging a trauma that has been locked
away festering for years. For won’t of a phrase, it’s like opening a door to a
musty old room and letting in the fresh air... Back to The Chequers.
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