89 Winklepickers

Winklepickers weren’t made for kicking a tennis ball around a school playground. My new shoes were scuffed within days and when the tips turned up, I looked like Aladdin. But where there’s a will there’s a way and a need to adapt brought a chance discovery. I found I was able to strike a ball with the outside of my foot, hard and true, consistently and with great accuracy. Thus, a swing of the deadly winkle picker unleashed a missile of such velocity that a ball travelling two feet off the ground was still at the same height as it fizzed past a goalkeeper twenty yards away.

Playground football brought a premature end to my first pair of winkle pickers. Mam was choked when I hobbled home from school with a heel missing.

‘It just came off, Mam.’

‘You’ll have to wear the other ones,’ said my forlorn mother, of the bigger pair she’d bought in the sales for later use. ‘And don’t play football in them.’

And so it came to pass that the oversized winkle pickers got pressed into service a lot sooner than Mam expected. Though it pained me see her despondency, how could I not play football?

A damp playground one dinnertime: from a defensive position I went to clear a bouncing ball. Stanley Slaughter, playing for the other side, jumped up to block the clearance and let out a sickening scream as an oversize winkle picker, with particles of grit on the sole, flew off my foot and thudded into his face.

 The lads rushed to his assistance. ‘Let’s have a look’ someone said. ‘Come on, we’ll take you to the nurse,’ said another, as they steered a distraught Stan into the building.

After hopping about on one foot to retrieve the rogue winkle picker, I had no appetite for football.

‘What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you playing?’ someone called as I walked away.

I couldn’t understand how anyone could play on after that. I certainly couldn’t. I wandered from the playground to the field, worried for Stan’s sight. Everything had happened so quickly. One minute we were happily playing football and the next… it was too awful to contemplate.

‘Hoi you!’ a female voice yelled, minutes later.

A girl I knew by sight was striding purposely across the field towards me – a girl in our year with her curly haired mate for support.

‘Yes, you!’ she shouted as I turned around. ‘What have you done to my Stanley?’

I didn’t need a haranguing from one of Stan’s admirers, let alone a broad shouldered girl with an even broader mouth. I felt miserable enough already. I ignored her and mooched off in the opposite direction.

Things weren’t as bad as they’d seemed, thank goodness. Nobody was more relieved than me when Stan reappeared in the afternoon break, none the worse for an eye-bath and some antiseptic ointment on a scraped and swollen cheek.