How Did All This Happen?

Today, the first indication that your teenage child is having a relationship is the increasing size of their mobile phone bill. The notion that teenage romance led to hours on the phone was somewhat alien in my youth: talking on the house phone at all was a rare event. The phone was for emergencies. Besides, the phone lived on a table positioned in the hallway under the stairs – the most public place in the house. Nowadays, people are suggesting that parents need to monitor their children’s activities on social networking sites to find out to whom they are talking. That wasn’t required in the eighties – if your mum wanted to know what you were up to, she just sat on the stairs.

Today, every individual in my house has their own mobile phone, and we have various telephone extensions around the house – to the extent that it is impossible not to be available for immediate communication. This has created a difficult situation for this generation of teenagers, as they have never known anything but instant communication. If the internet goes down in my house, it’s the end of the world, and the children immediately get in touch with social services to report neglect.

But the flip side to this is that if they leave the house and I want to know where they are going and what they are doing, I just ring them. (If you are a parent, you know that I’m lucky if they bother to answer the phone or tell me the truth, but allow me my fantasy.) Telecommunication has lost all its magic for them, which is sad in some ways. They will never know the excitement of a phone call after nine at night: anyone ringing our house that late was only doing it to say someone was dead, and it was always great family fun to guess who before the phone was picked up.

Often the quickest way to converse with teenagers today is via text, even if they are in the same room. I once had a text row with my son when we were sitting on the same couch! I lost, as every adult that tries to communicate with the ‘youth of today’ inevitably will do when the process of communication involves only using your thumbs. Watching my kids texting looks a blur to me: it’s like their two thumbs are having a race. Their head is bowed, and the concentration on the face and the general stillness could easily be interpreted as meditation, were it not for the frenetic thumb action. Having a text row with them is pointless because before you can finish your text to them they have replied, told you how wrong you are, how great everyone else’s parents are and how you are ruining their life.

This evolution of communication is the biggest difference between my kids and my own development as a teenager. For me, football provided a way to enter the adult world. During my teenage years my dad ran Sunday league teams. We would travel together as a squad, play the game, go to the pub afterwards and be home for the Sunday roast my mum had prepared. During those years I learnt how to be amongst men. I also learnt that if you make a commitment, you stick to it. So even on wet Sunday mornings, when your bed was calling you, you got up and went to play on whatever pitch you were sent to that week.

Trying to recall my teenage years, I can remember football constantly being there. The academy system that most clubs run these days did not exist then, so it was possible to believe you might become a professional footballer even if you hadn’t been scouted by the time you were 20. There were always examples of top-flight footballers who, a few years earlier, had been playing Sunday league football. The consequence was that amateur football was very vibrant: people still had dreams, and those dreams had a chance of being realised. It wasn’t difficult to get kids together either, because everyone wanted to play. In a world without computer games or, for that matter, home computers, and where children’s TV was only on for a few hours after school, if you didn’t go out and do something your options were very limited.

Having run kids’ teams myself in recent years, I don’t recall levels of parental involvement or interference being as high back then, either. I don’t recollect my dad having to drop us off and pick us up in the same way my wife and I have spent the last few years doing – to the point that if there is one luxury I have allowed myself, it is to set up a taxi account. My secret ambition is to one day own a car and sell it years later, without it ever having been used to ferry them anywhere. When my oldest son recently passed his driving test, my wife and I sat back and planned what we would do with all the spare time we would now gain from not driving him around. She is considering a second degree and I am planning to learn Chinese.

The truth was that we expected less then. Youth teams barely had full kits, let alone matching hoodies and personalised bags. The parents who did come generally did so to support the lads; there was no need for rope around the pitch to prevent irate parents coming onto the field to either support or bollock their little Johnny. The level of organisation in youth football now is impressive. Team coaches have to pass an approved FA coaching course, people involved are CRB checked, and my son’s under-15 team has to line up to have their photo ID-checked by the opposition manager before every game.

I think some of this can be overkill, like being CRB-checked to take your own son and his friends to a game, even though they all stayed at your house the night before. (This was actually suggested to me a few years ago – you can imagine my response.) It’s great to be organised, but you don’t want to take the simple pleasure out of the game. Although I do think the ID cards are a good idea, as it prevents teams playing ‘ringers’: I recall playing a game against one team when I was 15, which we lost. At the end of the game their bearded centre-half drove himself and his watching wife and kids home.

As a teenager the team I played for was Halton Sports. It was run by my dad’s friend, Joe Langton, whose son, Peter, also played. Joe was a barrel-chested man with a bald head, the crown of which was framed by short, blond hair. He always sported a neat moustache. A strong man whose day job was laying flag stones, Joe was almost square in shape. The joke amongst the lads was that he had once been six-foot-seven and a house had fallen on him to make him the square five-foot-six he actually was. Joe took it so seriously that he would often turn up in a three-piece suit, ready for an interview with Match of the Day should they turn up.

The team was good. The better players from our school team played, boys like Mark Donovan, Sean Johnson and Curtis Warren – not the infamous Liverpool gangster, but a fast, ginger-haired lad who scored a lot of goals. We were joined by good lads from the schools’ representative team, like John Hickey and Peter Golburn. I only list the names because none of us became professional footballers – which was an obvious ambition for us all – and every single one of those listed would have been good enough.

I would possibly suggest that playing in Joe’s team was the highest sporting success most of us enjoyed, as we spent one season completely unbeaten and won most things in the years that we played. My dad kept all the newspaper clippings of my resulting football career, and I always look at the coverage of that period with affection.

• • •

Apart from playing football, there was not a lot to do on the estate. When I was a bit older I volunteered at a cancer hospice, but in my early teens I never went to a youth club or anything of that nature, and generally just hung around on my bike doing all the things teenage boys do. I never really got into too much trouble. Scrapping had been replaced by an interest in girls, and the knowledge that as you all grew bigger it hurt more when you got hit. I never did the drinking-cider-on-a-wall-and-smoking thing that many started to do in their mid-teens because I had promised my dad I would never smoke, a promise he made all four of us make to him from a very early age, and which none of us has broken – apart from allowing myself the odd cigar. (That habit began one night in a posh hotel in Valletta, Malta. I found myself alone with an 80-year-old barman called Sonny, drinking a glass of whisky and listening to Frank Sinatra. Having a cigar seemed the most appropriate thing in the world.)

When I was 13 and feeling the need to be more independent and spread my wings outside the estate, football things were replaced by a bicycle. It was a silver ‘racer’, which basically meant it weighed a ton but had curved handlebars. Due to a cock-up by the catalogue company, I didn’t actually get the bike till Easter, so on Christmas Day my present was a box containing Cluedo. A great game, but not a great way to get around the estate. I hope I hid my disappointment well enough on the day when asking through gritted teeth – when my mates were all out on their new bikes – ‘Was it Professor Green with the lead piping?’

With the ability to stagger repayments, the catalogue was the avenue through which many people on the estate purchased things that were out of their reach financially. Every time a White Arrow van arrived on the estate, you knew someone was getting something from the catalogue. The bike was my final present as a child. Every year previously for Christmas I received something football-related. After the bike, all my Christmas presents were things to make me look good or allow me to go out; in other words, money or clothes. Unless it was a book voucher, which no kid wants as a Christmas present – you may as well give them an abacus and say, ‘Go and try to be a bit cleverer next year.’

The progression of a boy’s life can be mapped out by the Christmas presents he receives: a kit; a ball; one year I got a Subbuteo set with two teams, England and Uruguay. Nobody knew where Uruguay was, but they played in a blue kit and all the players were painted brown, so when I played Subbuteo, it was always England v the Black Everton.

As I got older, other things became more important to me, such as trying to be fashionable. I particularly remember receiving my first Fred Perry T-shirt, a yellow one with brown trim, which I don’t think I took off until it was physically too small to get on and had begun to look like a bra. But the only way of providing you with something that allowed you to make up your own mind was with money. Cash became king in my teenage years when it came to presents. I could buy records, although I never went too crazy on this: I rationalised that there is always new music, so why spend your money on something you like now when something better may be out next week? These are the decisions you had to make when it came to records, as they were things of permanence, not like a download. Even if you weren’t playing it, you had to put it somewhere, and I couldn’t always be bothered with that level of responsibility. Besides, being the youngest allowed me to listen to the music the others brought into the house, on either vinyl or cassette. I realise for readers of a certain age these things may as well be tablets of stone, and for others they provided hours of musical joy, but to me they were just more things I had to put away.

By the time I was 15 I had discovered girls. I knew they had existed before, obviously – I lived with two of them. But I mean I became more interested in them than I was in my mates. However, it should be made clear that I wasn’t exactly a lothario when it came to girls, and I had all the awkwardness that comes with being a teenage boy. These ranged from thinking that the best way of attracting the attention of a girl you fancied was by throwing something at her head (Paula); to being so unworldly wise that the first time a girl French-kissed me I pulled away, spat on the floor and shouted, ‘What did you stick your tongue down my mouth for? You dirty cow!’ (Jane).

This growing interest coincided with a failed car-stealing incident. It was not an unusual pastime for teenage boys on the estate to steal motor scooters from gardens. They were easy to jump-start, and you could have a few hours of fun before the petrol ran out, someone crashed or you just left it somewhere – usually always stupidly close to home, to save the walk.

Somehow, we had never been caught doing this. So, emboldened, we decided one afternoon when at my friend Mark’s house that he should steal his dad’s car. This was a big, golden-brown British Leyland Princess which Mark had been shown how to drive by his dad, although admittedly only for 50 yards. His mum and dad were away for the weekend, and Mark was being checked on by his older sister, but was basically left to his own devices. After some thought, we all decided it would be great to drive around the estate in the car.

Mark was a bit less enthusiastic, I recall, but, being egged on by the four of us, he capitulated. He took the keys, and off we set. He reversed safely enough and, despite it being the middle of a Saturday afternoon, none of the neighbours seemed concerned when five 14-year-old boys started driving down the street.

Mark managed to get over two relatively busy junctions and had avoided knocking over any number of kids playing in the street before the car suddenly stopped. He tried to change gear but nothing happened.

We were all sitting in a stolen car in the middle of the estate when a man in a van stopped and asked what was wrong. Not, ‘What are you lot doing in the car?’ but, ‘What’s wrong?’

With his help, it was decided the clutch had gone and that the only way back to the house was to push it. A journey of 10 minutes’ driving is a lot longer when four teenage boys are pushing a car steered by their friend, and it may have been during it that the penny dropped in my head: ‘My mates are idiots. I should be trying to get girls’ bras off instead.’

I really was no big hit with the girls. I was never actually shy, just unsure. I understood boys. You knew what made each other laugh (farts), and you knew that if someone was annoying, then eventually someone else would punch them. It was never the same with girls. They could say something to me, and I would just be stumped. I would just think, ‘Laughing must be wrong as nobody has farted, and punching them is out of the question.’

I eventually got over my awkwardness and was able to have a few dalliances, before going steady with a girl called Denise. She had hair that was a mixture of red and auburn, a great athletic figure from playing school hockey and netball, and a wicked sense of humour. And I am grateful that during my later teenage years, when I could have been doing other things, she allowed me the opportunity to fumble my way to manhood with her.

We went out with each other in that typically teenage on-off fashion for years; people assumed that we would one day get married. That is what you did on the estate: if you found someone who was good enough, it seemed to make sense to get married. I remember my dad even asking me once if I thought I would marry her. I was 17. As the father of 17-year-old boys of the modern era, I am not sure I could even ask them to commit to taking the dog for a walk without expecting a phone call telling me the dog had ran off and it was my fault because I asked them to do it in the first place.

The reality was that I wanted something more than the estate had to offer; I just wasn’t sure what it was. But I was about to find out.

CHAPTER 6

ALL I LEARNT IN SCHOOL

I left school for the first time when I was 16. I had gained six O-levels and four CSEs. At that time, the education system was split between those who teachers thought were academically capable enough to achieve an O-level, and those they considered ‘less able’, who sat CSEs. I fell into the bracket of pupils who were regarded as a little bit of both. In Physics and Maths everyone sat the same examination, and you were either awarded an O-level or a CSE. This worked out well for me, as I achieved an O-level in both. I doubt that was what my teachers expected of me, particularly as the only thing I can remember about physics was setting my hair on fire trying to see if the central hole in the Bunsen burner continued up through the flame. If you’re interested, it doesn’t. And I think it is fair to say that if you are stupid enough to set yourself on fire, you are lucky to get any qualification, let alone a coveted O-level.

At my school, this batch of O-levels was a fairly impressive figure. Within my household, school was something that we all went to but never really expected much from. My mum attended all the parents’ evenings, but the only time I recall my dad showing more than a passing interest was the summer I left.

‘You mum tells me you’ve done some O-levels.’

‘Yer.’

‘Good, hope you get them.’

That was that, and I guess that was all that needed to be said.

With what appeared to be a healthy clutch of qualifications, I was encouraged by the school to return to the sixth form. It had only just been set up, as whilst the total student population was pushing towards 2,000, they weren’t particularly successful in recruiting candidates for sixth form: there was just 11 people in it. But, after due consideration, I went for it.

This decision was based on the belief that if I were to gain A-levels I could do a degree, and if I did a degree, I could do a job where I would not need to get a wash when I came home from work, like Clive’s dad. In my mind, I could end up doing something interesting, taxing, and where you wore a suit: perhaps be a solicitor. No ordinary, boring solicitor, but more of a Petrocelli-type, caravan-dwelling advocate, the sort of lawyer who stood up for the innocent poor who couldn’t pay for justice. If you never saw the brilliant series starring Barry Newman, it is a great indication of how times have changed. Who would trust a lawyer now who lived in a caravan?

To be a lawyer was an impressive aspiration within my family, so I perpetuated the idea that I wanted to train to be a solicitor for many years. In fact, I’m sure there are still some family members who think it would have been better to have a lawyer in the family than a comedian.

However, my attendance at sixth form lasted all of one day. At that time, anybody staying on at school sixth form only received family allowance. This was the princely sum of £6.50 per week, as opposed to the £24 per week afforded by the government to all those on a Youth Opportunity Scheme. It was 1982, the recession was beginning to bite, and there were very few jobs around. But the government policy guaranteed all 16 to 18 year olds a place on one of these schemes.

Along with this, when I arrived at the sixth form wearing brand-new jeans, I was promptly informed that jeans were not acceptable so I would have to get some trousers.

At the time, Eddie had left home to take up residence in a flat in Southgate, an estate built to look like washing machines and with about as much practical application as a washing machine when it came to somewhere to live; Kathy was training to be a nursery nurse; and Carol was on a Youth Opportunity Scheme. My dad was trying to make a living making and selling wrought-iron furniture, such as telephone tables, which were such a staple of every home at the time. The idea was that when you used the phone you sat sort of side-saddle at the table. No wonder people of a certain age seem to droop as they get older – for a large part of their life they are having conversations on the phone at a ridiculous angle. My mum had a part-time job washing dishes in the kitchen of a factory canteen on the industrial estate. In essence, I didn’t feel I could return home and say to my mum I required new trousers. Instead, I felt I should be bringing money into the household and paying my way.

I had already applied for a job at the main factory in Runcorn: ICI. Along with my mate, Vic, I received a letter saying I had the got the job, to start in the second week of September. ICI was a huge chemical plant and the job in question was as a mail lad. That was the actual job description; it was a job for a ‘lad’ – girlies need not apply. And to my knowledge, none of them did. Most followed other paths, like my then girlfriend Denise, who trained to be a hairdresser. At least the old system made things very simple, as I’m sure if the ‘mail lad’ job were to exist at all in the world of emails it would be called something like ‘communications distribution individual’.

So I left school and went to work delivering mail at ICI. This involved getting a bus at 6.30 a.m. to arrive at work for 7. We would then collect the bicycles that were left at the security gate each evening and ride down the hill to the mail office. Getting up early was worth that ride downhill. Everyone should start the day going downhill on a bicycle. It was great fun – apart from the rain and snow and cold. OK, so it was great about eleven days of the year, but they were still great days.

We’d finish by 3 o’clock and, two nights a week, I would then go to night school in Widnes to study A-levels in English and Law. I may not have been in the sixth form, but I didn’t want my education to stop.

One day, on the way home from ICI, and while still wearing my steel-cap ICI safety boots, my ICI safety jacket and my ICI safety trousers, I called in to the school sixth form. It was there that I bumped into Mr Logan. Mr Logan had been my English teacher during my O-level period and would have been my A-level teacher had I stayed in the sixth form. He asked me how I was getting on, and I explained that I was working and doing A-levels at night school. He asked if I’d consider returning to the sixth form in January, but as I was then earning £42 a week, to leave that to return to a family allowance of just £6.50 a week didn’t seem viable.

In reality, I was beginning to have doubts about ICI and the future. I remember one day I fell into conversation at the plant with one of the men who always seemed to be walking around wearing boiler suits and hard hats, but never actually doing much. He was a friendly man in his late fifties with a warm face and a frame that suggested he enjoyed a roast dinner, and a disposition that suggested he had never seen how that roast dinner was made. He had worked at ICI all of his life.

‘You’ve got a job for life here, son,’ he informed me proudly, as he lit a cigarette, completely ignoring the No Smoking signs and the miles of pipework around his head carrying flammable chemicals. ‘Yes, son, no reason you won’t be taking your pension here.’

I remember looking around at the myriad pipes transporting chemicals all over the plant, and thinking, ‘Is this the view I have to spend the rest of my working life looking at?’

I think one of those great things about advice is that it is often given to make one point but ends up making entirely the opposite one. I could think of nothing worse than giving my life away so cheaply. Some people are lucky enough to find contentment in such security, but for me it felt as if someone was pouring water over my bonfire so the flames would not get too high. To stay in the same place of work all my life, get married, live in the same area, go to the same pubs, see the same faces until one by one we popped our clogs was like being handed a life of limitation that I just couldn’t accept. It’s a life that suits many people down to the ground, and in many ways I have always been envious of them. I never thought I was better than anyone else; I just knew I wanted something different. The problem was, I wasn’t sure what that was.

In the discussion with Mr Logan I had told him that the only option for me to return to full-time education of any nature was to take a part-time course at the local further-education college. If you were able to study part-time there, then you were able to claim unemployment benefits, which would mean £18 a week rather than £6.50. Still a long way behind the £42 a week I was currently earning, but at least a step to bridge the gap. The difficulty was that you were not allowed to study in school sixth forms part-time, only in FE colleges. If you were studying in a school, then you had to be classed as a full-time student for the school to receive the payment from the local education authority to cover your attendance. Mr Logan had said he would talk to the headmistress, Ms Philips, and see if there was any way around this.