Military Merriment

It seems like a very long time ago that I was in the army. That’s because it was. I joined in September 1985 and left ten and a half years later, at the age of 27.

Considering that it was a job that I left over 15 years ago, it continues to inform my life and occupy my thoughts more than it probably should. This is mainly because I had such a laugh being a soldier.

That’s not to say I didn’t take the job seriously (sometimes). I was never, in British Army parlance, a dreg, slug, leg-iron, waste-of-rations or oxygen thief. I passed the courses they put me on. I got promoted roughly in line with the average. I never got into much trouble, apart from a bit of standard, drunken tomfoolery in the early part of my service.

It’s just that, with the passage of time, I seem to have screened out all the shit bits of being a squaddie and I’m left with a skewed memory that suggests that I spent 10 and a half years, on the floor, helpless with laughter. If I really try hard I can recall some of the bad times, like being very, very cold, on exercise in the middle of nowhere as a recruit. I was lying next to another lad, both of us 16, guarding our comrades while they slept. I’ve never been as cold, before or since, my teeth chattering so hard that one of the Sergeants had to come over and tell me to, ‘shut the fuck up.’

There! I’ve done it again! It sounds funny now, but I wasn’t laughing then. I thought I was going to freeze to death. So did the lad next to me. He asked me quite seriously, ‘What would happen if we just ran off?’

Like members of the emergency services or people who do jobs where hardship and exposure to danger is a feature, the soldier’s ability to winkle out nuggets of humour in the darkest of circumstances is essential to maintaining some sort of mental stability. Almost everyone I knew in the army would go to elaborate lengths to be cheerful in adversity, with some displaying a superhuman ability to be un-pissoffable. These guys were worth their weight in gold. I can remember standing on the top of a hill on Aldershot training area, having been last to get to the top on what felt like the 50th ascent, whilst being screamed at by the instructors. I was given a water bottle by someone who looked more knackered than me. Whilst I was guzzling the water, dreading what was to come next on our beasting, he started laughing at the situation.

“Look at the fucking state of us, Charlie. All this and pay as well!!”

Despite my exhaustion, I joined in the laughter. I knew that he was referring to a famous recruiting video, where a rotund Sergeant salutes the camera, implying that service itself was reward enough, but to top it all, the army were that charitable, that they’d give you money too.

Though nothing like today, where your signature will guarantee you a posting to somewhere dangerous, the British Army of the 1980s had its own perils. Everyone was convinced that at some point, millions of bloodthirsty Russian soldiers would pour into Western Europe and lay waste to everything before them. Of course, it turned out that this wasn’t entirely accurate and the annual Moscow, show-of-strength parades were a little bit rose tinted. The reality was that some of the Warsaw Pact fighting units were armed with only cardboard tanks and cooking apple ammo.

If you went to Northern Ireland, there were some people who would attempt to ventilate you or make your car jump thirty feet into the air.

But none of this stopped us smiling and I think this is why my time in the forces lingers and will always linger in my memory. The intensity of the relationships formed in hard times and the determination to take the piss as a defence against discomfort is something I’ve found impossible to replicate since.

At least once or twice during my working day, something will remind me of a cutting comment delivered with all the subtlety of a Harpo Marx expression.

I went to a church a few weeks ago, to attend a friend’s wedding. As we entered the building, I hesitated for a fraction of a second, thinking about removing headgear I hadn’t worn for decades. When I was in the army, we had to go to church quite a lot, particularly at the Army Apprentices College. One of the lads was a bit slow to remove his beret as he went in. The Sergeant at the door spotted him and shouted at parade ground volume.

“Smith!!! Take your hat off in the House of the Lord, you cunt!!”

The Beauty of the Regional Accent

I love regional accents.

Until I was sixteen my exposure to them was entirely through the telly. My mum’s favourite soap at the time was Emmerdale Farm -  Coronation Street being a bit too close to home. It took me seven years of concentrated viewing to understand that,

“’Appen as’ mebbe’" meant, “I suppose so.”

The difficulty was in the lack of exposure to variety. In those carefree days before The Bill and Eastenders, people from London were assumed to sound like Richard Baker off the news or Jack Regan off the Sweeney, with nothing in between. I had no idea what Billy Connolly said to Michael Parkinson, but it must have been funny. Max Boyce and Tom Jones were plying their lonely trade as the only high profile Welshmen to grace our screens.

Regional accents then, to me, were these strange, impenetrable things that were simply a bar to understanding.

This all changed on September 3^rd 1985. For reasons still unclear to me, despite writing a book about it, I joined the army and turned up at a place that seemed to be a cross between Eton and a borstal, The Army Apprentices College, Harrogate. Amongst the many lessons I learnt there (like how to eat really quickly and masturbate undetected in a ten man room), was how to love the myriad accents and dialects to be encountered in the UK.

I didn’t get off to a great start. I shared a room with nine other recruits and the Room NCO. We had a mixture of Scots, Londoners, Scousers, a Welsh lad, a couple of home counties chaps and a Yorkshireman. This was replicated throughout the rest of the recruit troop, forming a body of 120, 16 year old lads who struggled to understand anyone who didn’t arrive at Harrogate on the same train as them.

My initial inability to negotiate this linguistic hurdle nearly saw me getting filled in for my trouble. One of the lads came back late from leave and I asked him why.

He replied simply,

“I gat on de wang metwo.”

Even written down 27 years later, I’m a bit confused by it. He was saying that he had inadvertently boarded the wrong train, but it had been converted into a strong Geordie accent, further clouded by the speaker’s inability to pronounce his ‘r’s.

I spent the next five minutes staring bleakly, saying, ‘Eh?’ as he shouted that he’d gat on de wang metwo repeatedly and more angrily with each repetition.

It was only the quick interpretative thinking of a fellow recruit from Darlington that saved my bacon.

After that early scare, I soon learned that accents weren’t to be feared, but embraced and used to good effect. Most of us became excellent mimics and enjoyed the attempts at each others twangs. I started to enjoy the differences. No one was better at the dismissive phrase than the lads from Scotland, so, “Awa’ tae fuck” was used by us all to give our speech extra emphasis.

The boys from the north east seemed to have sardonic humour off to a tee, so whenever we were cheesed off and needed to pass comment, the Newcastle accent was perfect. Stood on the square, snow filling your left ear like one of those old hearing aids, with a two hour drill lesson in the offing, you’d often hear a comment from the rear rank,

“How man, this is nee laffin’ matta!!”

As I said at the top, I love the regional accent and I’m hopeful that they’ll never disappear. My chldren are from Manchester but have a worrying tendency to use words they pick up from ICarly and other American programmes which seem to serve the principal function of teaching kids how to be smartarses.

Fortunately, the Americanisms are counterbalanced by some solid northern-ness and, when pushed, my daughter can scream, “Alright love?” in a style that makes Julie Goodyear sound like Joyce Grenfell.

In an attempt to see if I’ve still ‘got it,’ I’ll occasionally try and use an accent in its place of origin. In 1996 I had a fascinating conversation with a mono-toothed old lady at a sandwich wagon near London. Adopting my best cockney, pitched somewhere between Pete Beale and Mike Reid, I attempted to buy a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea. If she’d rumbled my hackneyed act, she didn’t let on, content to let me fiddle about with imaginary braces whilst using the word, ‘tweacle’ more than is probably legal.

I was in Liverpool last month for a medical. Scouse is always a tricky one. It looks straightforward, but you can find yourself veering off into Brummy or Welsh very quickly if you get complacent. I was early so went to a Starbucks for a coffee, prepping myself by pronouncing it, ‘Schtarbucksh’ on the way in. I asked the girl behind the counter for an Americano, but put stretched out the ‘carrrrrrr’ sound so much, it was obvious she’d rumbled me, her eyebrow raised in a, ‘What a knobhead,’ statement. The trouble was we still had a transaction to complete and I found myself working my way back down the East Lancs in embarrassment as we went, morphing from St Helens to Salford by the time I’d got my change.

Regional accents are as much to be celebrated as any other elements of our culture. If it’s not something you usually do, you should take the opportunity to have a little dabble yourself, from time to time.

As you’re reading this, think of the word, ‘Kentucky.’

Now say it out loud in the strongest cockney accent you can muster. Lay it on thick, hold nothing back.

I bet you couldn’t do it without moving your head!!!

All the Fun of the Big Family

We had a few friends over for something to eat on Saturday night. There are those who would refer to this as a ‘dinner party’ but that’s a phrase that scares me more than the Childcatcher on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I love having people round. I always spend most of the evening laughing and one of my favourite topics inevitably comes up. Reminiscing about a 70s or 80s childhood and the differences between growing up then and growing up now.

Most of the people I know come from families that would be considered big these days, but were normal for the predominantly Irish Catholic communities we lived in. At the start of each school year, the teachers at my secondary school only had to amend the first names on their registers. They’d be guaranteed to have the next Duggan, Bell, Murphy or Fitzpatrick in their new class, the elder sibling having moved on.

I remember being a bit nonplussed once, when a classmate told me he had only one brother and one sister. One of the other lads overheard and said.

“That’s just weird, that!”

If you question someone from a big family, it never takes long for them to start revealing the arcane hilarity and one-upmanship that occurs due to competition for attention and finite resources.

One of the people who was sat with us on Saturday described a teatime rule at their house which decreed that as soon as you’d finished your tea, you were allowed to start poaching off the adjacent plate. This led to incredible levels of speed scoffing and fork puncture wounds to the back of hands.

There were quite a few kids that I knew that subscribed to the edict, ‘First up, best dressed.’

Our house was no different. We constantly vied to be top dog, or get a brother or sister in the shit.

My little sister had a brilliant way of sending me from 0 to 60 in no time flat. She’d select a small noise from her repertoire and start making it, irregularly. This would interrupt my enjoyment of Scooby Doo and I’d ask her to stop. It would go back and forth like this for a couple of minutes until I delivered the ultimatum.

“Stop making that noise, or I’ll lamp you.”

Peace would descend for a few seconds and then she’d do it again, so quietly that it was almost imperceptible, which just increased my level of fury. I’d jump off the sofa and she’d run in to the kitchen with me in hot pursuit. As soon as she reached my dad, she was safe. I’d get sent to my room and she’d get what she’d been after all along; the opportunity to have the tv to herself, because she hated Scooby Doo.

There were five of us and we were all terrible to each other, in sly, underhand ways. My mum and dad got the Manchester Evening News and I liked to have a crack at the crossword. If I didn’t complete it, I couldn’t stand the thought of my brother filling in the last couple, so I’d just go over them with a black, magic-marker.

When we took turns to wash and dry the dishes, it became apparent to the dryer that, if you allowed evaporation to weave its magic on the hot dishes, you could save yourself a bit of work. This also became apparent to the washer, who would counteract this bit of good fortune by intentionally dousing all the dishes with washing-up liquid suds, necessitating a rinse and dry.

My mum and dad were generally oblivious to our low-level tribute to Lord of the Flies.

In this bonkers world, the rules were often confusing. At the age of 8, I went swimming with my older brother. After we’d finished we were walking back to our cubicle. I was then pushed in to the deep end by another kid. I was a non-swimmer and would have promptly died because the ‘lifeguard’ was clearly disobeying his own ‘petting’ rules.

My brother dived in, pulled me off the bottom, got me out to the side, then battered the lad that had pushed me in. As we changed, I expressed my gratitude for his display of brotherly heroism, only to have him explain that he was the only one who was allowed to drown me.

Male Grooming by my Desperate Dan dad

My dad was an old school dad. Though he was full of humour and always singing, whenever good cop-bad cop needed to be played, he was quite happy to let mum take the pleasant role.

As kids, we always worked under the unspoken rule, “Don’t get dad involved.”

If he needed to be called in to ‘mediate’ one of the daily disputes that were bound to take place in a three bedroom semi containing two adults and five children of similar ages, then it would only go one way.

Mum could be worked on, cajoled into sympathy or empathy, but dad was rigid. A closed newspaper followed by the single, softly spoken word, ‘Bed’ was enough to terminate all argument.

It’s one of the things I loved and still love about him. He was a fixed anchor point in my life. It wasn’t always pretty but you knew where you stood with him.

I used to love to watch him shave. Like all men of his generation, the notion of male grooming as something to spend time on, was completely absent from his life. Sacha Distel was the only man in England who knew what moisturiser was and he was French.

My dad’s shaving routine was rudimentary to say the least. I wet shave. I use the latest multi-bladed offering from Gilette, which shaves so close that I can occasionally see my back teeth through my skin. I fluctuate between foams and gels, searching for the best combination to give me the perfect shaving experience. My dad used to use a bag of Bic disposable razors.

I think they were meant to last a week or two, but he could get a whole year out of a ten pack. They were usually blunt after the first go. He had a proper, Desperate-Dan five o’clock shadow as well.

He didn’t bother with any sort of facial lubricant, other than to get a bit of lather off some Lifebuoy and smear it around in a cursory fashion. He’d fish into the Bic bag, pull one out and then start dragging it round his face. The noise was horrendous. It sounded like someone rubbing a pine cone up and down a cheese grater. It can’t have been comfortable but he never batted an eyelid, whistling as the rusty blade yanked out the stubble, hair by hair.

When he was finished, the Bic would get a quick rinse then be chucked back in the bag to ferment some penicillin with its mates.

His post shave routine would see him chucking on half a pint of whatever rubbish aftershave we’d bought him for Christmas. He wasn’t really a brand man. I don’t remember ever seeing a bottle of Brut, Denim or Hai Karate in the bathroom. If you can cast your mind back that far, Hai Karate was the aftershave that came with a leaflet, offering tips on how to defend yourself from the swarm of women that might attack you if you used it. My dad's aftershaves were basically white spirit that smelt nice. Putting neat alcohol on to an open wound never seemed to bother him. A quick slap followed by a stoic grimace was all you’d see.

I liked to watch him, because I’d always get a pat on the head and a wink as he walked past me on the landing.

I can feel him and the rest of the men of his generation, peering over my shoulder whenever I’m in Boots, walking along the ‘male grooming products’ aisle. As I try to decide between ‘King of Shaves’ and ‘Gilette Fusion Stealth Hydragel’, I can almost hear him saying, ‘I would’ve repaired a bike, built a wall or carried out some home improvements without planning permission in the time that it’s taken you to decide.’

In all things, more choice seems to create the illusion of happiness, whilst just making life that bit more complicated. The variety of products available to the man who has been conned into caring about his appearance being just one example.

In 1980, my parents decided which secondary school I was going to by pointing at it, so things have definitely changed.

It didn’t happen that long ago, either. When I was a young soldier, I turned up in Aldershot to make a futile attempt to pass P Company in 1987. On the first morning, our ragtag bunch were prepped and ready to go for our first run, when the Staff Sergeant taking the course, gave us a once over. He was an old school guy and had been in the army since Centurion was a rank not a tank. He paused at the lad stood to my left, pointed at his head and asked him a question. He wasn’t angry, just clearly shocked, his world rocking on it’s axis.

“Are you wearing hair gel?”

What Would Jesus Do?

I was on my way home from work in the car the other day. It’s a largely uneventful, seven mile drive. In fact, the only thing of note that’s occurred in the two years I’ve driven this route was a couple of weeks ago, when I had to pull up at a zebra crossing to let someone cross. I took a picture.

If I live to be ninety, I think it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get another chance to see an elderly woman, riding a mobility scooter whilst towing a miniature horse, in the middle of Wythenshawe. I’m assuming that the horse was some sort of battery backup for the scooter or the woman was taking the words, ‘Zebra Crossing’ literally and the little black and white thing she was dragging was the closest she could get.

I’ve made the journey more than eight hundred times, but aside from tiny Mancunian nags, I usually just have the back of other people’s cars to stare at. I get to see all the usual bumper and window stickers, telling me that the driver has been clever enough to get someone pregnant and now has a ‘child on board’, or that I should be supporting the work of one pigeon sanctuary or another.

I do get a bit irritated by the Christian fish symbol ones, though. I suppose that the driver is just stating their affiliation, but I always feel that I’m getting a finger wagged at me. The car in front contains souls earmarked for saving, but my vehicle, absent the appropriate emblem, is on the A666.

“Check us out, you heathen. We’re statistically less likely to be involved in a serious RTA. We’ve got the badge and we’re with the Big Fella.”

Last Wednesday, I saw a new twist on the familiar motif. It looked like this.

There was no explanation about the letters, but the light was on red for a good thirty seconds which allowed me to work it out. The ‘J’ had to be Jesus, him being the central figure in Christianity and all that. A bit more head scratching lead me to the rest.

‘What Would Jesus Do?’

The bloke in the car might well live his entire life according to this particular credo, but the message was for me, not him, otherwise he’d have it on his dashboard or tattooed on his hand.

So I spent the rest of the evening thinking, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’

When wrestling with the big philosophical questions of life or dealing with matters of conscience, I imagine it’s a very useful tool to the average Christian. Its simplicity probably eases the decision making process, but if you apply it literally it’s not so effective.

I was trying to fix one of the drawers in the kitchen. We bought it from IKEA nine years ago, so I can’t quite believe it’s gone wonky. The screwdriver I was using was a little too big to get into the gap to access one of the screws, so I took a deep breath and thought, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ It was no good to me. Even though his dad was a carpenter, people in Nazareth two thousand years ago can’t have been familiar with modular, flat packed furniture. With the best will in the world, Jesus would have only been able to give me some general advice about taking my time and not swearing, but that wouldn’t get the drawer fixed.

Later, I was trying to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, but realised that two things were being taped on Sky Plus. The box was giving me the choice of deleting Family Guy or Modern Family, both programmes which I wanted to watch. What Would Jesus Do? Once again, he was likely to be a bit stumped by the technology. By the time I’d have explained the system (as well as backtracking through the invention of television and the harnessing of electrical power), Curb would have finished.

He was able to help me just before bed, though.

I was brushing my teeth and contemplating a shave. I’d not bothered for a couple of days and on looking in the mirror, I couldn’t decide if I looked rugged or dishevelled. I thought about it for a few seconds and then chanted my mantra.

“What Would Jesus Do?”

Novel Theft

After the recent riots, I was discussing the rights and wrongs of helping yourself to things that don’t belong to you with my son, Chester (12).

He’s a lovely kid. He’s got a nice bunch of mates and a good sense of humour. He’s polite and chatty to people who come to the house and to my knowledge, he has never stolen anything in his life. He was clearly horrified to be asked the question.

He asked me if I had and in the spirit of honesty that pervaded the conversation, I came clean about the little bit of ‘dare’ inspired petty larceny I got up to as a boy.

Having spoken to a lot of men and women my age on the subject, it seems to have been a pretty common thing for kids in the 70s and 80s to conduct a bit of five fingered discount in the hope of impressing their mates. It seems that my experience was typical.

I never had to steal anything because I couldn’t afford to buy it. My mum and dad weren’t rich by any material standards, but I had everything I needed.

I don’t remember who amongst my mates suggested stealing something from the newsagents, but it caught on and one by one, we took turns to be the thief of the day. It took a few weeks for it to come round to me, but eventually I found myself, aged 9, nervously holding the door handle of the newsagents on Platt Lane, with a semicircle of my pals giving useful tips.

“Straight in and out, Charlie.” “Go for the Fizz Bombs, they keep ‘em near the till.” “Ask for some kop-kops and when she turns around, grab a handful of Refreshers.”

I was terrified, but determined to keep my nerve. The shop was quite busy and I was in there for a couple of minutes. When I emerged, I had my swag carefully hidden in my jacket and my mates quickly surrounded me.

“Did you get something? Did you get something?”

“Yep. Have a look at this.”

I opened my coat to reveal a copy of ‘Jaws’ by Peter Benchley.

“What the fuck’s that?” cried Clement.

“It’s a book.” I replied. “It’ll be great for us all to read it,” I lied.

I wasn’t really promoting my own literacy programme. Everything else was far too risky. The assistant seemed really hawk-eyed and the bookstand had been the nearest thing to the door. My friends sussed this out in no time flat and I was roundly scorned for showing a clear lack of moral fibre.

After a few more rounds of this, one of the lads got caught. The 70s were a different time and extra judicial sentencing by the man in the street was quite common. He’d gone for a copy of Roy of the Rovers and got as far as the door with it. A bloke who’d been reading a paper rather than buying it, spotted him and just as he left, yanked it out of his hand and delivered an immense toepecker to his backside, accompanied by the warning.

“I know your dad, lad. If I see you or any of your mates helping yourselves in here again, you’ll be for it, coppers and everything!!”

That was enough to curtail our fledgling careers and we went back to playing football and popping tar bubbles for a few years.

I only ever stole like that once more, when I was 14. Once again, I did it to impress my mates and it backfired completely. We’d just left a museum trip to make our own way home and as we walked down the road, I was telling a few of the lads about my artistry in the specialist world of shark novel theft. Filled with bravado, I helped myself to a pear from the display of the fruit and veg shop we were passing. I hadn’t spotted the shopkeeper but he’d spotted me. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, relieved me of the pear and started marching me down the road, informing me that we were on our way to the police station.

It was only some Olympic standard blubbing and continued pleading, all witnessed by my mates, which persuaded him to let me go, probably in disgust. I was ribbed for weeks afterwards, my attempts to convince them that I was only pretending to cry, falling on the deafest of ears.

Those days are behind me now. I limit myself to occasionally hiding a sausage under the bacon in the work canteen or putting £10.01 worth of petrol in my car and offering the service station man a £20, forcing him to give me £9.99 of change or letting me off a whole penny. I’m keeping my hand in for the leaner times ahead, which I hope will never come.

Lyrical Vandalism

Like most people, I’ve spent my life getting the words wrong to songs.

Sometimes I do it deliberately to annoy my wife, sometimes I do it because I think the words I’ve put together suit the song better. Sometimes it’s for comic effect, but in the overwhelming majority of instances, it’s because I’m being a bit thick and haven’t been listening properly.

The first time that I noticed the entertainment potential of messing up the lyrics was at secondary school. At Saint Pius X, a Roman Catholic all boys school, we were often press-ganged into singing the praises of Jebus and his pals. I hated hymns. They all sounded the same and most of us were incapable of generating the required levels of rapture or enthusiasm demanded by the music teacher, memorably nicknamed Adolf Walsh. It was a grim old place to try and propagate bliss. The chapel was modelled on an above ground version of Hitler’s bunker.

The tiny bit of quiet sedition we engaged in to make the songs tolerable was to modify the text. As a form of rebellion it worked most effectively during the hymn, ‘The Spirit Lives.’

Simply changing the word ‘light’ for ‘shite’ gave it an entirely different emphasis.

The Spirit lives to set us free,

walk, walk in the light;

He binds us all in unity,

walk, walk in the light.

Walk in the light,

Walk in the light,

Walk in the light,

Walk in the light of the Lord.

Due to his unashamed zeal for all things musical and holy, Adolf always assumed that we were laughing because we realised we’d be going to heaven one day.

That aside, I usually get the words wrong to songs because of a lazy ear. In a blatant effort to try and keep my blog references as contemporary as possible, I’ll just mention that I thought that Hazel O’Connor was saying, ‘Will you adjust the lightbeam, say goodnight?’ on the song ‘Will You?’ and that Paul Weller was referring to an organisation called the ‘Eton Riot Force.’

It was only when I met and married a muso with an encyclopaedic knowledge of bands, obscure album tracks and most importantly, the correct words to their songs, that I came unstuck. Whenever I sang along to something on the radio, I’d receive a quizzical look followed by the question.

“What did you just sing?”

Apparently, in her 1999 hit ‘I Try’, Macy Gray is singing, ‘My world crumbles when you are not near’ and not ‘I wear goggles when you are not here.’

It gives my wife great satisfaction to put me straight, but a bit of me always prefers my version, so I just sing along more quietly.

Always having the radio on in the car means that a new generation of lyrical fucker-uppers is being nurtured and brought through steadily. My kids have shown great potential in their ability to change the emphasis and meaning of a song completely by cocking up one of the words. In ‘Dakota’ by Stereophonics, singer Kelly Jones is recalling the special memory of a lost love. He repeatedly sings in the chorus,

“You made me feel like the one.”

Not according to my kids. Their version is altogether crueller.

“You made me feel like a worm.”

The Kings of Leon are actually telling someone that, ‘You, your sex is on fire,’ but in our car, Caleb Followill is beseeching his cab driving mate,

“Joooeeee, your taxi’s on fire.”

In both cases, the modified lyrics get my backing and long may my little group of tiny song wreckers ply their trade.