124 in the Bleak Midwinter

A poor showing in the Upbury Manor Christmas exams had left me dancing on the trap door of demotion. As nothing was said about it before Christmas I returned after the holiday and took my place in the 4A1 classroom, as usual, for registration.

‘What are you doing here? You’re not in this class anymore. You should be in Mister Askew’s classroom,’ said Mister Fisk.

Bang! I gathered my gear and left, humiliated.

Demotion hurt, but life in 4A2 required little adjustment. Five Twydall friends were in 4A2 and I knew the rest of the lads through PE. Otherwise, things carried on as normal.

‘Shall I cheer you up?’ asked Paul Parker in the playground, turning the tables on me with a piece of sarcasm I usually sprang on him each Friday.

‘Go on,’ I said, knowing perfectly well what was coming.

‘Collecting tonight!’

He laughed, I laughed. We always laughed, at a ritual that got us mentally attuned for the Friday night slog of having to knock on every door for the weekly payment, a chore that doubled the time spent on our Evening Post rounds. 

Delivering the Evening Post wasn’t a bad number. Upwards of nineteen shillings a week was good money and it left Saturdays free for football. The weather wasn’t always kind and nor were all the customers, but the job’s biggest drawback had four legs and a nasty attitude to paperboys. I’d had a couple of anxious stand offs with dogs at the flats above the shops on Twydall Green, but the dog that scared me most was the dog I’d never seen, at a house in the corner of Elham Close.

Each night I opened the garden gate and crept up the path as quietly as I could, yet no matter how carefully I slid the paper through the letter box, the dog went berserk. Knowing the dog was inside brought some relief, but the sound of it biting lumps out of the door to get at me did nothing for my jangling nerves and the fear of it getting loose was ever constant.

The terror reached a climax on Friday nights when I knocked for that week’s money. As always, there was a murderous commotion with the beast hurling itself at the door in defiance of its screeching owner. As always, I wished I was somewhere else, especially when the door opened. Then a hand came round the door, like Thing in The Addams Family, offering the money.

I never saw the old lady, just her hand, but as it was an old hand and she had an old voice, it seemed reasonable to conclude she was old and incapable of restraining the animal for long. As soon as I got her half crown I bolted down the garden path, bum cheeks clenched.

At school…

‘We’re going to Collingwood this afternoon.’

‘What’s Collingwood?’

‘Something to do with the dockyard, I think.’

‘What are we going there for?’

‘I don’t know.’

I didn’t know either. On a perishing cold day there was little enthusiasm for an expedition that set off straight after afternoon registration. Told to make our own way to the mysterious Collingwood, we blindly followed the leader. Someone must have known where they were going but the rest of us were strung out like a bedraggled army on the march down Marlborough Road when, to cap it all, it started snowing. In dribs and drabs we then crossed the High Street. I was not happy. I should have been in a nice warm classroom. Instead, I was walking into the unknown, clueless as to where we were going and freezing my balls off in a blizzard.

Collingwood, a one time naval barracks on Khyber Road, was a training centre for dockyard apprentices. As dull inside as the dreary weather on the outside, the upper floors were full of benches and vices. On the ground floor there was little natural light. If it hadn’t been for the integral spotlights on various machines I’d have mistaken it for a dungeon, but where were the operators? As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw them lurking in the shadows… skinheads, loads of them, staring at us. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, they then started chanting.

‘Na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye. Na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey, hey goodbye. ’

It wasn’t exactly welcoming. If the Collingwood visit was supposed to encourage school leavers into a dockyard career, it failed miserably. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.