Another common attribute of the Middle Manager is competitiveness. You have to enjoy a good fight. I certainly did and I did so from a very early age. Well, when your local newspaper says of your birth “Miracle Baby!”, what would you expect. An immaculate conception? I have been dining out on that particular headline for years. It actually probably means that my mom was a fighter too. After all, it was she, not me, who lost all the blood. I just had to hang on in there and survive. I came out the wrong way up, back to front, choking myself with my own umbilical chord. But, I survived to be told the story of it.
I can remember with some clarity one of my early “lessons for life”. This time from my mom. I guess I must have been about 3 years old. Indeed, it may well have been prompted by the “Battle of Batman’s cape” at Playgroup back in Selly Oak. (See Early Education - an earlier posting). “If anyone hits you, “ mom said, “you just hit them back. Stick up for yourself!”
And so I did. And so I do. If anyone has ever hit me I have always hit them back. That is, with the exception of any women (and there have been a couple who have given me a slap or two over the years). Hitting a woman is a big taboo. Real men do not use their fists on women. But men, no matter how big or how many, I always hit back. Never show fear. Never back down. Sometimes I got my hitting in first – what Americans might call “pre-emptive” hitting. On occasions I would take a beating. But, mostly I won. I was pretty hard. I am still quite capable of aggression if called upon but I rarely play the hard man these days. And, I hope I won't have to.
I learnt mom’s lesson quickly. Not long after this the “incident with the dog” happened. My aunt and uncle (he of the Marvel comic collection) had a boisterous boxer dog, Spicer, that was just about the same height as myself. On one particular visit the boxer dog apparently came whelping into the lounge, its bobble tail firmly between its legs, followed by yours truly with blood around my mouth, declaring: “Doggy bit me so I bit him back!” Sorry doggy. I guess I’ve always been more of a cat person. And, for those of you who are interested........it DOES taste just like chicken! Sorry Spicer.
There have been other notable scraps through the years. At the Junior School I was once concussed enough to be sent to a doctor after being set upon by "Big Boys" from the local comprehensive. Apparently they had entered the playground, stolen our ball and dared us to go and get it. And so I did. And so I received a bit of a kicking until a teacher came and chased the gang away. I got the ball.
There was the time I hit LH around the head with a cricket bat. LH was one of the rare black kids at Junior School and was by far the hardest kid in school. But, at least he respected me after being knocked for six. He turned out to be a thoroughly nice guy once you got to know him, but, I admit that this was a rather extreme ice breaker. Sorry LH.
Then there was the time I made the boy in the year above me at the Junior School cry, and, apologise to my sister. I forget his name, but he was bullying my sister. He made her cry. I twisted his arm until he apologised. He didn’t learn his lesson though for some years later, when I was about 15 or 16, my sister came home from school in tears. This same boy, who went to another all boys Grammar School and big rival of my own, recognised her on the bus on the way home. He hurled abuse at her all the way. Without a word to anyone, not to mom, not to my sister, I sought him out. I took a different route home. In the full uniform and regalia of my own school, alone, I got onto the number 40 bus which carried Erdingtonians home from Aston. He was sat right at the back, in the middle of the back seat, on the top deck of the bus, surrounded by his mates. When I stepped up it was like a scene from a Western bar-room gunfight. The whole bus went quiet as I walked the length of the bus. It seemed a very long way. As I neared him there was an instant of recognition. Calmly, I simply told him, “Don’t you ever make my sister cry again” and then pummelled him in the face. No-one intervened. And, when the 16 year old bully began to cry in front of all his mates, I simply turned on my heel, walked back down the bus, and got off at the next stop. I said not a word when I got home. He never made my sister cry again. I hope he has never made anyone else’s sister cry either. Bullying and cowardice often go hand-in-hand.
Grammar School itself was one big fight. Even the organised “sports” were violent, with punishments meted out by hard men. The gym teachers. Ex-Royal Marines and utter bullies. Most of the “games” organised by this pair involved cruelty, torture or pain of some kind. Never their own. Their behaviour would not be tolerated today – the kids would sue. But, it did help to make men out of most of the boys.
PE (Physical Education) consisted mainly of two games – “Pirates” and “British Bulldog”. Pirates was rarer because it involved getting every piece of gym equipment out, and we only had an hour. The “trial” consisted of being chased around the room by the two best athletes in class. If (i.e. when) you were caught, or, if you put a foot on the floor, you were sent to the Sacrificial Altar. You would be made to take off your PE vest (not as rare an occurrence as you may think in days when you played games in either “colours”, i.e. with vest on, or in “skins”). You would be made to lie face-down over a buck with arms by your side. And, then, the gym teacher would slap you hard in the middle of the back with the palm of his hand! The game would not end until an inspection proved that every boy wore “the mark”……
British Bulldog was much simpler. It involved all of the class except the two biggest boys standing at one end of the gym hall. The Bulldogs stood in the middle. The boys then had to run from one wall to the other without being “captured”. To be “captured” you had to be lifted physically off the floor. This was the job of the Bulldogs. These two twin brothers were very good at it. They were big, black, and proud. They were both giants from a family of giants. Just look up any history of British athletics and you will find a member of their family, famous for throwing something very heavy a lot further than anyone else. In these days that included me and my classmates. There was just one rule. Boys had to resist. If you were not considered to be resisting enough then the Sacrificial Altar would come into play. Once “captured” you joined the twins as a catcher until there were no more boys to catch.
I do not remember a single boy complaining about such treatment. They did not dare. To show such weakness was an unwritten taboo. I am sure that no parent was ever told, otherwise there would have been complaints, parents to see the Headmaster. I t never happened. The only complaint that I can remember being made against these two complete b*stards involved a boy in another class but in the same year as myself. He was the boy who smelled. Every school has one and he was ours. He was scruffy, he had no school blazer, his hair was long and unkempt, and, he smelled. Apparently after one particular PE lesson he refused to join his classmates in that other ritual humiliation which came with PE – the communal showers. This humiliation involved stripping naked in front of your classmates. You have to remember that this was a time before central heating and power showers, before boys discovered underarm deodorant. We were the talcum powder generation. The generation who bathed once on a Sunday or after football. We were also at an age when involuntary erections were common. Adolescence, what fun! Once naked you had to run the gauntlet of cold water jets.
This boy refused to strip. I don’t know what kind of home life the poor wretch may have had. I cannot imagine what lack of parental care produced such a feral child. And I did not care. None of us cared. We were young boys and all we knew was that he smelled. The gym teacher lost it. He stripped the boy himself. He produced a wire brush – often used to cajole slow gauntlet runners. He yanked the boy into the shower and he scrubbed him clean. This boy complained……
Such institutionalised violence was not without side effects of course. Violence often erupted in the Quadrangle and elsewhere. From time to time boys would organise mass contests of British Bulldog involving the whole school, and all ages. The other Quad favourite was Murder Ball. This involved two teams whose purpose was to score by throwing a tennis ball through the opponents goals (hitting the wall between two wall-mounted dustbins). That was rule one. Rule two (and there were only two) was that whoever held the tennis ball could be murdered – punched, kicked, wrestled, anything went…..
Showing posts with label Selly Oak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Selly Oak. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 February 2007
Thursday, 1 February 2007
Early Education Part 1
On the whole I enjoyed my schooling. And, when I didn’t enjoy it I was at least sufficiently scared enough of a particular teacher, prefect or other dealer of retribution not to rebel against the System. And so I was pretty good at “knuckling down” and “applying myself”. Also, the status and accolades that accompanied my academic success helped to keep me motivated. Being good at something is very rewarding.
My first memory of "school" was a brief one. I guess I must have been aged just 3 or 4 when I went to Raddlebarn Road Playgroup in Selly Oak – which would probably be called a “Day Nursery” today. It was just up the road from the off-licence managed by my mom and above which we lived. And what a small world. We recently re-visited the “Threshers” on Raddlebarn Road – it was a “Victoria Wine” in our day – as my youngest sister-in-law lived in the same street while in her final year at Birmingham University.
I only remember visiting the playgroup one time. I came home distraught because I had not been allowed to wear the batman cape. I have always been a wannabe super hero. The trauma of it all. I hope it didn't have a lasting effect. Perhaps I should consider suing? In any case, I don’t think that I ever went back. But, this may have had more to do with the fact that we moved to Erdington on the other side of Birmingham at about the same time. Erdington was not as posh as Selly Oak but was much, much closer to dad’s work at Fort Dunlop.
Come to think of it my memories of the off-licence could be indicative of the “late starter” of my families new academic mythology. Recently, my family have begun to describe me as a "late starter" at school. This was not my recollection. My recollection is that I won maths and English prizes while at junior school; I passed my 11 plus and so attended a local grammar school where I was top of class every term throughout my 7 years there; I took two "O" levels a year early, and passed; got straight "A's" in my "A" levels and won a scholarship to Oxford University. Late starter my eye!
Admittedly, the “potty training incident”, which pre-dated even the off-licence years, was not the most promising of starts. I had a slight mishap which required cleaning up. My mom’s back was turned for just two seconds and she found me, still sat on potty, glugging back a bottle of Domestos bleach. Kills all germs dead, or so the advertisement used to claim. But not this kid! There followed a trip to the local hospital and the pumping of a tiny stomach but all was well in the end. But, I feel this is less indicative of a “slow starter” than it is of my early inquisitiveness and willing to experiment (and a later ability to drink hard liquor!).
That said, I certainly was not demonstrating much intelligence in those first tender years in the off-licence. There is an old family cine film, subsequently converted into video, which shows how I used to peel off the wallpaper in my bedroom from the wall alongside my bed. Presumably the wallpaper paste contained some valuable nutrient that I was otherwise lacking (so, intelligent after all). It probably saved my life by fending of the growth of the "auburn"gene that my mom passed to my sister, who has passed it on to both nephews. If not for the late night snacking on wallpaper I might have been a "Ginga". What a lucky break!
There are other old stories from the off-license of me being “a little devil” for constantly stuffing full rolls of toilet paper down the toilet. There are faint memories of falling down the stairs while wearing a pair of mom’s high heels. I ncidents of cross-dressing are thankfully few and far between in my personal history – although I did once skipper a rowing eight at Oxford called the Transvesteight. But, it was for charity!
More scarily, there are recollections of far more dangerous pastimes than this. My dad once caught me feeding bits of the frayed landing carpet into the electric bar-heater at the top of the first flight of stairs (In later years, when alone, I would often amuse myself by picking my toenails and flicking them into the gas fire in the lounge to watch them catch fire and burn away to nothing. I am a fire starter. Twisted fire starter!). Also, I remember quite clearly being thrown across the living room once, while mom was asleep on the sofa. I had been fiddling with the electric plug socket, edging it out little by little until it would spark and fizz (if you are interested, you can get a very similar if somewhat less dangerous effect with a pull-cord light switch). I must have got one hell of an electric shock. In retrospect, it seems that I was lucky just to survive past the age of 3!
Well, let’s assume my early years at the off-licence in Selly Oak were a mere aberration. I can remember only a handful of similar stupid episodes in later years, such as setting off caps (little exploding caps for toy guns) with a glass jam jar. I still bear the scars on my hand today!
My first memory of "school" was a brief one. I guess I must have been aged just 3 or 4 when I went to Raddlebarn Road Playgroup in Selly Oak – which would probably be called a “Day Nursery” today. It was just up the road from the off-licence managed by my mom and above which we lived. And what a small world. We recently re-visited the “Threshers” on Raddlebarn Road – it was a “Victoria Wine” in our day – as my youngest sister-in-law lived in the same street while in her final year at Birmingham University.
I only remember visiting the playgroup one time. I came home distraught because I had not been allowed to wear the batman cape. I have always been a wannabe super hero. The trauma of it all. I hope it didn't have a lasting effect. Perhaps I should consider suing? In any case, I don’t think that I ever went back. But, this may have had more to do with the fact that we moved to Erdington on the other side of Birmingham at about the same time. Erdington was not as posh as Selly Oak but was much, much closer to dad’s work at Fort Dunlop.
Come to think of it my memories of the off-licence could be indicative of the “late starter” of my families new academic mythology. Recently, my family have begun to describe me as a "late starter" at school. This was not my recollection. My recollection is that I won maths and English prizes while at junior school; I passed my 11 plus and so attended a local grammar school where I was top of class every term throughout my 7 years there; I took two "O" levels a year early, and passed; got straight "A's" in my "A" levels and won a scholarship to Oxford University. Late starter my eye!
Admittedly, the “potty training incident”, which pre-dated even the off-licence years, was not the most promising of starts. I had a slight mishap which required cleaning up. My mom’s back was turned for just two seconds and she found me, still sat on potty, glugging back a bottle of Domestos bleach. Kills all germs dead, or so the advertisement used to claim. But not this kid! There followed a trip to the local hospital and the pumping of a tiny stomach but all was well in the end. But, I feel this is less indicative of a “slow starter” than it is of my early inquisitiveness and willing to experiment (and a later ability to drink hard liquor!).
That said, I certainly was not demonstrating much intelligence in those first tender years in the off-licence. There is an old family cine film, subsequently converted into video, which shows how I used to peel off the wallpaper in my bedroom from the wall alongside my bed. Presumably the wallpaper paste contained some valuable nutrient that I was otherwise lacking (so, intelligent after all). It probably saved my life by fending of the growth of the "auburn"gene that my mom passed to my sister, who has passed it on to both nephews. If not for the late night snacking on wallpaper I might have been a "Ginga". What a lucky break!
There are other old stories from the off-license of me being “a little devil” for constantly stuffing full rolls of toilet paper down the toilet. There are faint memories of falling down the stairs while wearing a pair of mom’s high heels. I ncidents of cross-dressing are thankfully few and far between in my personal history – although I did once skipper a rowing eight at Oxford called the Transvesteight. But, it was for charity!
More scarily, there are recollections of far more dangerous pastimes than this. My dad once caught me feeding bits of the frayed landing carpet into the electric bar-heater at the top of the first flight of stairs (In later years, when alone, I would often amuse myself by picking my toenails and flicking them into the gas fire in the lounge to watch them catch fire and burn away to nothing. I am a fire starter. Twisted fire starter!). Also, I remember quite clearly being thrown across the living room once, while mom was asleep on the sofa. I had been fiddling with the electric plug socket, edging it out little by little until it would spark and fizz (if you are interested, you can get a very similar if somewhat less dangerous effect with a pull-cord light switch). I must have got one hell of an electric shock. In retrospect, it seems that I was lucky just to survive past the age of 3!
Well, let’s assume my early years at the off-licence in Selly Oak were a mere aberration. I can remember only a handful of similar stupid episodes in later years, such as setting off caps (little exploding caps for toy guns) with a glass jam jar. I still bear the scars on my hand today!
Monday, 29 January 2007
My Family and Other Animals Part 1
My Family And Other Animals
We have had only a few family pets in my lifetime. So far. Apparently, when I was a babe in arms there was a dog. I don’t remember the dog. I don’t even remember the dog’s name. In fact, my parents couldn't remember the dog's name when I asked them about it recently. It was a "lovely Alsatian cross" though. The dog died. I do remember being told that he had died, and, how. It may have been suicide, but that theory probably does not hold water. For a start, there was no note. Most suicides leave a note, I'm told. And, to all intents and purposes, the dog had been happy until he ran out of the shop door at the off-licence above which we used to live and of which my mom was manager (actually, she was the manageress – this was the days when gender differences existed; days before political correctness). Indeed, by all accounts the dog had been happy right up to the point that he ran under the wheels of the speeding car. After that he was mostly flat. And dead. Flat and dead.
Sometime after this mom and dad bought my sister and I new pets - two gerbils that we called Tom and Jerry. Don’t ask me why Tom and Jerry. Clearly this was something to do with the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but, neither of Tom nor Jerry was a cat. Indeed, neither of Tom nor Jerry was a mouse. Moreover, both Tom and Jerry were lady-gerbils, I think. Whatever, they were brought home (to the off-licence) in a nice cage, complete with big wheel and water bottle. I was very young, maybe 3. We were very excited and mom and dad decided we would have a welcome party. And so, much jelly and pink blamanche (my auntie Joan’s speciality – in the shape of a rabbit sat on a bed of green grass jelly with currants for eyes) was moulded, many a sachet of Angel Delight was mixed, much meat paste was spread on white bread sandwiches, many a cheddar cube and chunk of tinned pineapple was impaled on a tooth pick, and, many a bowl was filled with crisps and KP nuts. This was the early 1970s after all. All of our friends and cousins were invited and orange squash and Corona "pop" was swilled and spilt with abundance. Fortunately, 1970s carpets, like cinema carpets of the modern era, were designed to hide the stains.
Whatever happened to "pop" by the way? In those days "pop" was a drink for kids, not music for morons. There used to be a "pop" man that would come around the streets, selling "pop" from a van, in much the same way that an ice cream van does sell ice cream. These were the days of Dandelion & Burdock, Cream Soda, and, Shandy rather than 7 Up, Pepsi, Coke and Doctor Pepper.
Of course, once the squash had kicked in - these being the days before e-numbers had been discovered or their after-effects understood (these were the days of Angel Delight rather than Sunny Delight, Nesquick and hundreds and thousands - sugar, sugar, sugar) - a hoard of over-excited, Spam-filled toddlers wanted more. Pushing sticky little salt ‘n vinegar fingers through a cage door and prodding small rodents with your Nesquick-coated drinking straw or a twiglet just wasn’t enough. Besides, the crisps had run out. The cage was full of crisps. Gerbils don't like salt n' vinegar. It was decided that it would be nice to let Tom and Jerry “run around”.
Now, my mom and dad were not stupid. They were well aware that 2 small rats and several over-excited, over-tired hobbits, is a less than safe environment (mostly for the rats). And so, we children were instructed to sit around the edge of the room with our backs to the wall. We were lectured on the need to keep still and to keep quiet. Ssshhhh! And then dad brought in the cage and opened the little wire door. Tom and Jerry nervously edged their way into the strange world outside of the cage as every toddler gave a collective “ooh” and shuffled excitedly in their terry nappies and training pants. No disposables in this decade. We were all going through that stage when our bums definitely looked big in absolutely everything.
Tom and Jerry quickly grew in confidence and began to explore. It was at this point that my dad decided to practice what he had preached and to join the many munchkins on the floor, his back to the wall. It was at this point that, in the middle of the forced collective silence, there was a small crack. Dad had sat on Tom. Dad had crushed Tom. Tom was dead. And, flat. Another mostly flat and dead pet. This was becoming a bit of a theme.
To be fair, it could have been Jerry that died that day. We never really knew. They all look the same, gerbils. It was just that after the event, once many a small child had had his or her tears dried (what is it with moms and damp handkerchiefs?), and packed off back home with a sherbet dip and a piece of home-baked cake (much more effective than any modern form of post-traumatic stress counselling), we all decided that Jerry was a much more appropriate name for the remaining gerbil. Tom was buried in the back yard. Presumably, in something like an A4 envelope, maybe a jiffy bag. He was, after all, very flat. And very dead. Flat and dead.
Jerry was always a bit nervous from this point on. Especially around my dad. And jiffy bags. Clearly, something needed to be done to cheer Jerry up. So, we got him a friend. We got him a cat, who we called Tom. To be fair, Tom found us. He had been abandoned in a sack with his fellow feline siblings at the band stand of the park opposite our off-licence in Selly Oak, Birmingham. The circus was in town and the circus master who had found the sack, brought them round and asked us if we wanted one. Tom (although un-named at this point) was the runt and cutest of the bunch. He was black with white socks and white cheeks. Cute. Cute. Cute. We had clearly got better at naming pets. Actually, we probably just lacked imagination and post-rationalised our choice on the basis that a) he was a tom cat, b) he was noisy and reminded us of Tom Jones (our family name) singing, c) having already got a mouse/gerbil called Jerry then that old Tom and Jerry thing kind of made sense this time around.
Tom and Jerry were inseparable. That is to say that Tom would sit on top of Jerry’s cage most of the time. He was constantly trying to kiss and stroke Jerry through the cage. Hmm. To be honest, I do not think this helped Jerry recover from the shock of losing the first Tom. At some level, I think the fact that we had given the kitten the same name merely sought to remind Jerry of her previous playmate. Mostly, Jerry just looked anxious. It was not long until Jerry also died. She was discovered stiff as a board at the bottom of the cage. Mom and dad tried to tell us that she had died of a broken heart, mourning Tom the gerbil. Even at the tender age of 3 or 4 though, I kind of knew the cat did it. Jerry died in a state of absolute terror. Sorry Jerry.
Tom, the cat, was with us some 18 years. He was my cat. Or at least, I thought so. He was a very forgiving cat. He forgave me when I tried to dress him up in my sister's doll's clothes. He forgave me when I picked him up. He forgave me when I dropped him. He forgave me, mostly, when I pulled his tail. He forgave me when I slipped crème de menthe into his milk. He didn’t forgive us, though, when mom agreed to take in a friend’s cairn terrier. Indeed, when Tom was first introduced to the dog, Tom leapt 6 feet into the air and clawed his way up onto mom’s shoulder, leaving deep scars, and, pis*ed himself. Mom was quite damp. Tom then spent the next few days sulking and hiding in the front room. Fortunately, the dog didn’t last long as it brought on my mom’s asthma attacks. Tom made us feel very guilty for a long time. At least the cairn terrier survived with life intact and un-flat!
Tom died from a stroke while I was away at university. This was a real shame. When I used to phone home from Oxford on a Sunday evening, Tom used to recognise my voice and jump onto mom’s lap and purr down the earpiece at me. When he had the stroke he only settled when he was wrapped in my old school blazer. It was while wrapped therein that they killed him (put him to sleep). And, wrapped in my blazer, he was buried. That blazer would have come in bloody useful at many a fancy dress/theme party since. But, Tom was a good cat. I don’t begrudge him the blazer……much.
We have had only a few family pets in my lifetime. So far. Apparently, when I was a babe in arms there was a dog. I don’t remember the dog. I don’t even remember the dog’s name. In fact, my parents couldn't remember the dog's name when I asked them about it recently. It was a "lovely Alsatian cross" though. The dog died. I do remember being told that he had died, and, how. It may have been suicide, but that theory probably does not hold water. For a start, there was no note. Most suicides leave a note, I'm told. And, to all intents and purposes, the dog had been happy until he ran out of the shop door at the off-licence above which we used to live and of which my mom was manager (actually, she was the manageress – this was the days when gender differences existed; days before political correctness). Indeed, by all accounts the dog had been happy right up to the point that he ran under the wheels of the speeding car. After that he was mostly flat. And dead. Flat and dead.
Sometime after this mom and dad bought my sister and I new pets - two gerbils that we called Tom and Jerry. Don’t ask me why Tom and Jerry. Clearly this was something to do with the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but, neither of Tom nor Jerry was a cat. Indeed, neither of Tom nor Jerry was a mouse. Moreover, both Tom and Jerry were lady-gerbils, I think. Whatever, they were brought home (to the off-licence) in a nice cage, complete with big wheel and water bottle. I was very young, maybe 3. We were very excited and mom and dad decided we would have a welcome party. And so, much jelly and pink blamanche (my auntie Joan’s speciality – in the shape of a rabbit sat on a bed of green grass jelly with currants for eyes) was moulded, many a sachet of Angel Delight was mixed, much meat paste was spread on white bread sandwiches, many a cheddar cube and chunk of tinned pineapple was impaled on a tooth pick, and, many a bowl was filled with crisps and KP nuts. This was the early 1970s after all. All of our friends and cousins were invited and orange squash and Corona "pop" was swilled and spilt with abundance. Fortunately, 1970s carpets, like cinema carpets of the modern era, were designed to hide the stains.
Whatever happened to "pop" by the way? In those days "pop" was a drink for kids, not music for morons. There used to be a "pop" man that would come around the streets, selling "pop" from a van, in much the same way that an ice cream van does sell ice cream. These were the days of Dandelion & Burdock, Cream Soda, and, Shandy rather than 7 Up, Pepsi, Coke and Doctor Pepper.
Of course, once the squash had kicked in - these being the days before e-numbers had been discovered or their after-effects understood (these were the days of Angel Delight rather than Sunny Delight, Nesquick and hundreds and thousands - sugar, sugar, sugar) - a hoard of over-excited, Spam-filled toddlers wanted more. Pushing sticky little salt ‘n vinegar fingers through a cage door and prodding small rodents with your Nesquick-coated drinking straw or a twiglet just wasn’t enough. Besides, the crisps had run out. The cage was full of crisps. Gerbils don't like salt n' vinegar. It was decided that it would be nice to let Tom and Jerry “run around”.
Now, my mom and dad were not stupid. They were well aware that 2 small rats and several over-excited, over-tired hobbits, is a less than safe environment (mostly for the rats). And so, we children were instructed to sit around the edge of the room with our backs to the wall. We were lectured on the need to keep still and to keep quiet. Ssshhhh! And then dad brought in the cage and opened the little wire door. Tom and Jerry nervously edged their way into the strange world outside of the cage as every toddler gave a collective “ooh” and shuffled excitedly in their terry nappies and training pants. No disposables in this decade. We were all going through that stage when our bums definitely looked big in absolutely everything.
Tom and Jerry quickly grew in confidence and began to explore. It was at this point that my dad decided to practice what he had preached and to join the many munchkins on the floor, his back to the wall. It was at this point that, in the middle of the forced collective silence, there was a small crack. Dad had sat on Tom. Dad had crushed Tom. Tom was dead. And, flat. Another mostly flat and dead pet. This was becoming a bit of a theme.
To be fair, it could have been Jerry that died that day. We never really knew. They all look the same, gerbils. It was just that after the event, once many a small child had had his or her tears dried (what is it with moms and damp handkerchiefs?), and packed off back home with a sherbet dip and a piece of home-baked cake (much more effective than any modern form of post-traumatic stress counselling), we all decided that Jerry was a much more appropriate name for the remaining gerbil. Tom was buried in the back yard. Presumably, in something like an A4 envelope, maybe a jiffy bag. He was, after all, very flat. And very dead. Flat and dead.
Jerry was always a bit nervous from this point on. Especially around my dad. And jiffy bags. Clearly, something needed to be done to cheer Jerry up. So, we got him a friend. We got him a cat, who we called Tom. To be fair, Tom found us. He had been abandoned in a sack with his fellow feline siblings at the band stand of the park opposite our off-licence in Selly Oak, Birmingham. The circus was in town and the circus master who had found the sack, brought them round and asked us if we wanted one. Tom (although un-named at this point) was the runt and cutest of the bunch. He was black with white socks and white cheeks. Cute. Cute. Cute. We had clearly got better at naming pets. Actually, we probably just lacked imagination and post-rationalised our choice on the basis that a) he was a tom cat, b) he was noisy and reminded us of Tom Jones (our family name) singing, c) having already got a mouse/gerbil called Jerry then that old Tom and Jerry thing kind of made sense this time around.
Tom and Jerry were inseparable. That is to say that Tom would sit on top of Jerry’s cage most of the time. He was constantly trying to kiss and stroke Jerry through the cage. Hmm. To be honest, I do not think this helped Jerry recover from the shock of losing the first Tom. At some level, I think the fact that we had given the kitten the same name merely sought to remind Jerry of her previous playmate. Mostly, Jerry just looked anxious. It was not long until Jerry also died. She was discovered stiff as a board at the bottom of the cage. Mom and dad tried to tell us that she had died of a broken heart, mourning Tom the gerbil. Even at the tender age of 3 or 4 though, I kind of knew the cat did it. Jerry died in a state of absolute terror. Sorry Jerry.
Tom, the cat, was with us some 18 years. He was my cat. Or at least, I thought so. He was a very forgiving cat. He forgave me when I tried to dress him up in my sister's doll's clothes. He forgave me when I picked him up. He forgave me when I dropped him. He forgave me, mostly, when I pulled his tail. He forgave me when I slipped crème de menthe into his milk. He didn’t forgive us, though, when mom agreed to take in a friend’s cairn terrier. Indeed, when Tom was first introduced to the dog, Tom leapt 6 feet into the air and clawed his way up onto mom’s shoulder, leaving deep scars, and, pis*ed himself. Mom was quite damp. Tom then spent the next few days sulking and hiding in the front room. Fortunately, the dog didn’t last long as it brought on my mom’s asthma attacks. Tom made us feel very guilty for a long time. At least the cairn terrier survived with life intact and un-flat!
Tom died from a stroke while I was away at university. This was a real shame. When I used to phone home from Oxford on a Sunday evening, Tom used to recognise my voice and jump onto mom’s lap and purr down the earpiece at me. When he had the stroke he only settled when he was wrapped in my old school blazer. It was while wrapped therein that they killed him (put him to sleep). And, wrapped in my blazer, he was buried. That blazer would have come in bloody useful at many a fancy dress/theme party since. But, Tom was a good cat. I don’t begrudge him the blazer……much.
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