My best mate when I was a boy was Teddy Birchall, who went under the nickname of Windy, for reasons best not to mention. Enough to say that his Mum reckoned he had a weak fooffoo value and just couldn't help things happening down there when they weren't supposed to. It usually happened when he laughed, which was unfortunate, as he laughed a lot when we were together. While she hoped he'd grow out it, she doubted it, judging by his father, she said.
From Windy I learned all sorts of things, whispered or giggled from the side of his mouth. He'd nudge me, lean his head to one side and wink saying, “Hey, Crompy, did you know that…?” and I'd receive another dose of extra-curricula information. Usually dodgy, based on rumour rather than fact and best not repeated in the hearing of one's elders. Things that most other cheeky snotty-nosed lads in short breeches came to know either by accident, by shared observations of friends, or by trips to the adult section of the public library when a certain lady was not on duty. Sometimes I'd come to a halt, “Never!” I'd say. “You're codding me.” He'd respond in a variety of ways before shrugging his shoulders, “All right. You don't have to believe me. But it's true.” The hurt he could get into the tone of his voice, still in the upper reaches of young boyhood, would have had any Hollywood producer within earshot signing him up on the spot.
You see, I'd paddled around in quiet backwaters of Lancashire for a much longer period than most of my mates as far as certain things a boy should know was concerned. Then Windy came along and this particular day's naughty revelation has stayed with me ever since. It had me trembling on the brink of losing my innocence, which I learned later most youngsters had been given in order to lose. From that day on and for quite a considerable part of my journey up to, into and through what is known as puberty, Windy's revelation to me was never far from my thoughts. A kind of touchstone if you like.
We were walking past a clog repair shop where we'd often stop to watch. One man would pop a handful of brads into his mouth, pick them out rapidly one at a time and hammer them into the side of a clog to hold the leather upper to its wooden base as clever as you like. This time, Windy grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me a few yards further along the street. Then stopped, grinned, looked across the street nodded with his head and said, “That's a nice building, in't it?” I gave it a quick glance. I'd seen it before without it seeming to be any different to others in the street. So I said so. “Tek another look. What can ta see standing at t'top?” His voice hinting, “Look, but don't let folk notice you're looking.” I looked again and on the top left-hand corner was a statue. A statue of a lady. It, or rather she was naked. Windy’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“What's she doin'?” I thought, the daft bugger. (I was beginning to think such words but never dared say them.) “She's not doin' owt. She's just standing there. At top of t'building.” By this time we'd walked a little way past it. He stopped me. “No wonder tha's wearing specs. Tha needs to tek another look. Come on.” And we turned round and walked past again, but slower. This time I saw where her right hand was placed and blushed with embarrassment. I remember thinking, fancy making a statue of someone with their hand there and without any clothes on too. Ted laughed, “You know what I reckon. I reckon she's bursting for a pee and thinking, look the other way ya cheeky monkeys. Tha'd be t'same if tha'd been stuck up there as long as she 'as.”
And that was it. Knowledge, but of a kind bordering on shame. Why? I wasn't really any the wiser, though the statue of the naked lady drew me along that particular street quite regularly for a time. What I hadn't realised was that my thoughts had turned an inanimate object into real life. It also brought me to a delta where knowledge opened before me in a variety of ways.
On the other corner opposite the statue was an admiral with a cocked-hat. I pondered on why the admiral was clothed while the statue was not many times but couldn't come up with a reason that satisfied me. Of course the building was a pub. There was a lovely red light above a side door. It could have been The Admiral Benbow or some such, I forget. It led me to thinking about Nelson dying during the Battle of Trafalgar and him saying: 'Kiss me, Hardy'. Surely the reporter got it wrong! What sailor worth his salt would have said that? But then, what if it was true? I never talked about this you understand. I did wonder if any of my mates were concerned about Nelson asking Hardy to kiss him. Inwardly I didn't really mind. Nelson was a hero. He could ask anybody to kiss him. I wonder what happened to Hardy after that?
By this time I had a fairly good grasp of general knowledge when it came to things above the waistline and below the knee but woefully ignorant about the bit in between. Then one day Windy and I were in the library and found a book about the buildings in our town. Eagerly we flipped through the pages. It was there, but some uncouth lout had defaced it at the place I most wanted to see. Beside it was the word, ‘Homo'. Windy looked at it and said knowingly. “You know, a cross between a man and a woman, or something like that.”
“Gerroff!” I exclaimed, shocked beyond my normal range of shockability. We looked it up in a dictionary. It wasn't there. “It's to do with sex,” Windy said quietly. A three-letter word ringed, high-lighted and glowing with dire warnings of what would happen if you started mucking about with it. “I once heard an old lady say that a certain boy would never amount to much because the crotch of his trousers hung too low for a lad of his age.” He sounded serious, so we both checked the crotch of our trousers but couldn't make out what she meant.
Eventually, we found the word ‘homosexual’; it was in the extra bit at the back of the dictionary. That extra bit contained other words, diverting my interest along many lines for a few more years before other things began to happen. You know, as a lad the delta of knowledge was a fascinating place in which to paddle. Oh yes.
NB. Gerroff! means: ‘Get off’, standing for a very strong sense of disbelief, its origins dating back to just before Stonehenge came into prominence. A man invited a neighbour to view his erection in the backyard, where two big slabs of rock had been set upright in the ground. He was suitably impressed but when told that next week he'd see another one across the top of both of them, he came out with the word, “Gerroff!” then adding, “If you do manage it, it'll be handy to shelter from the rain.”
Some weeks later it was done but with several more stone slabs forming a semi-circle. “It's the kids,” his wife explained. “Like a lot of dinosaurs. One dies they all die. He puts a stone up, they put more up. It's ruined the view.” The story has come down in oral tradition with the first recorded occurrence appearing in a tablet called: 'Strewth'.
Editor's note. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
Dennis Crompton © 1998
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2012)
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