Boyhood in Northern Ireland

Boyhood Chums and Pranks:

Another school incident occurred when I was with R one night returning from the cub scout meeting. We had to take a short cut through the school. As we approached our garden we sensed an eerie apparition on the hill. It was the classical ‘white sheet’ ghost apparition. Anyhow it scared the hell out of R and I and, we backtracked (running) along the Comber road to take the long way home. When we got home I remember the terror I felt at going round to the back door of our house which was quite close to where the apparition had been seen. I was petrified.

It turned out to be a prank played on us by my brother and his friend who, knowing we would be returning through the school had wrapped themselves in a white sheet and taken up a conspicuous position on the hill in the school grounds.


Speaking of right and wrong and righteousness another anecdote: Around this time in primary school we developed a fad of spelling words backwards, or at least mixing up the syllables. As my best friend was nicknamed ‘Rhino’ he tried referring to himself as ‘OnihR’ but it didn’t roll off the tongue easily –so it became corrupted first to “Orine” and then , since we were at that age “Urine”. For me this was fine –as long as we kept it low profile and within our select group. But, I was not happy about this corruption ‘Urine’ being used in public which my friend M, one day conspicuously decided to do by roaring ‘UUUrine!’ at the top of his voice down the road. The roar was directed towards the hapless Rhino at a distance of about fifty metres – well within earshot of neighbours and all and sundry. My response was to engage in the one and only physical fist fight I have ever had in my life -with M -to ‘punish’ him for his unseemly outburst. That day I learned two important things about myself: firstly, that there was a puritan streak in my psyche; secondly, that I was not a great fighter: I came off worst against M.

M lived across the road, His father worked in the aircraft factory in Belfast and had a good job but he was an alcoholic and nobody saw much of him. His mother had a tough job bringing up M and his younger sister more or less on her own.

M was the leader and I was the follower. M could always ‘do’ things whereas I could only watch and applaud. He was a daredevil-and a bit wild because of the lack of close supervision from his Dad. I egged him on oscillating between between awe and grim fascination at his exploits. M enjoyed and needed the hero worship. He was the “Gider” champion. A gider was a Go-kart. He would make (and I would watch him make) a gider by what appeared to me to be magic. All he needed was old pram wheels and some planks of wood, a hammer and a few nails. Like a madman M would fly down a long hill at the school at the bottom of our garden and disappear through an archway. Each time he did it, my heart missed a beat as I was sure it would be the last time I saw him. But he always returned to perform again for his admirer. M liked praise and he got most of it from me.

Another thing M was good at was making guns. He would get a hollow piece of copper pipe as a gun barrel and fit it onto a wooden rifle butt made from a plank. The open end of the pipe would back up against the wood. Gunpowder from fireworks was placed in the barrel and lead shot from fishing tackle in front of a ‘wad’of paper. He would drill a hole ( and I would watch) at one end and put in the touch paper from the fireworks. He would then light the touch paper and aim at a crate of milk bottles at the school at the bottom of the garden. You see, even in my spare time I was obsessed with schools. I never seemed to be able to get away from them, even in my spare time.

Bang! And the milk bottles would shatter –a schoolboy’s delight!

When I told my son about this, he was horrified. He just could not get his head around the fact that his teacher father could have indulged in such an activity.

M and I were both great tree climbers . We would climb those trees at the bottom of our garden and cross from one to the other at a considerable height. I honestly believe Mum and Dad never knew the half of it. We carved our initials in the trees – still there I believe to this day. D.N. 12th of July 1962. That would have been when I was ten years old.

What a different life I had as a child from my own children. Another thing M and I had were endless pets-not just the family dog –but our own mice, rabbits and even Bantam hens. How many kids today in suburbia would understand the joy of owning (and having somebody else look after) all these animals?

When I was a teenager I may have been a miserable nerd who couldn’t communicate with people –but I could always commune with my Bantams-Higildy , Pigildy , Bert and Gerald. Mum had a penchant for naming bantams. My favourite was ‘Dosy’ as in the ‘seven dwarves’.

How caring and thoughtful my parents were to provide us with all these animals.

I was too lazy to give them to my own children: I was too busy trying to get them into a private school to ‘achieve’ rather than worry about such things.

A typical ‘babyboomer’.