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Troubador Publishing Ltd - Graham Buckley

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25 pages

English

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Born in Huddersfield in 1961 to parents Frederick and Jean, Graham Buckley grew up living on a council estate. Now, he looks back on his youth in Memoirs... From a Council Estate, a hilarious collection of the ridiculous japes and outrageous situations Graham encountered.With tales of dangerous games that would make parents wince, playing pranks on his pals and schoolyard scuffles, Graham fondly remembers his childhood and his side-splitting misadventures. Readers follow his story as he enters adolescence and adulthood, with the world of work and marriage providing equally humorous encounters.With characters ranging from the funny to the unbelievable,Memoirs From a Council Estateis a laugh-out-loud trip down memory lane, perfect for fans of nostalgia and readers who grew up in the area.

Sujets

Condado de Yorkshire (Reino Unido)

Memoir

Yorkshire

Humour

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	22 juin 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838595784
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Graham Buckley

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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Contents
Acknowledgement
Foreword
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Paul Grindrod, for all his support and encouragement, without which, this book would probably not exist. This will certainly annoy him, as that isn’t his actual name!
Unfortunately, anywhere his name appears, it is invariably incorrect!
It varies from Grindley to Grundley; Gridley to Gridiron; and even Grindog.
So, to put the record straight, thanks ever so much to: Paul Grindey.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my wife, Liz, who has backed me all the way, and more importantly, has believed in me.

Cheers
Foreword
Before we go any further, I must warn you that this book is definitely not PC! However, it isn’t sexist, racist, feminist, xenophobic or homophobic. In fact, I don’t think it is even phobic in any way! If, however, you are offended by anything and everything, then do NOT read anymore. These are just stories of what happened and I am simply telling it as it was!
I grew up on a council estate in Huddersfield. It consisted of a large number of houses crammed together with a small community play area nearby. On the estate there were obviously a fair amount of people, from all walks of life. Throw in a large mixture of ‘oddballs’ and you, just about, get the picture. You either, made an effort, and got on with everyone, or you didn’t!
It started as a small group of mates in a corner of the estate, but eventually, it grew into a large crowd of us. En masse, we all signed on for a local football team. We trained together, played together, drank together, and fought together (sometimes with each other).But throughout everything, many of us have remained friends to this day.
Sadly, some have passed away. Some have chosen to take their own lives, and some have literally moved away from the area.
Everyone gets on with their lives, and we don’t all meet up regularly nowadays. But when we do, there is a real buzz. We met up a couple of years ago for a veteran’s football day. It was in memory of a lad who had sadly passed away at a young age. There were 150 of us and it was an absolutely brilliant day.
In these next chapters, I am going to attempt to tell you some of the stories, and ridiculous situations, we (as a group) got ourselves into.
So here it goes…

Much of my childhood (like many others) was spent playing football in the winter and cricket in the summer. We used to play in an area we simply called ‘The Rec’. It was an uneven, muddy, swampy wasteland that the council classed as a play area. You could have filmed Chernobyl there.
One day, after getting bored with football, we were looking for something else to do. Luckily, someone had dumped a load of old roof slates in The Rec. The most obvious thing to do was to have a slate fight! Half of us hid behind a rickety old stick fence, which bordered an allotment, while the opposition stayed in The Rec. Armed with an endless supply of roof slates, battle commenced. I don’t know if you have ever thrown a piece of roof slate, but when you do, they instantaneously become invisible. Vertically or horizontally, you simply cannot see them hurtling towards you. For around ten minutes, slates whizzed around, sticking into the fence or skimming people’s hair. Fortunately, someone got hit, and the slate stuck in his leg. This made everyone suddenly realise how bloody dangerous this game was! A truce was called, and we all wandered off to the corner shop to buy pop. Game over, thank God .
A few days passed and then the same old sketch…boredom. So, this time, rather than use those ridiculously lethal slates, we would use half bricks! Safety conscious or what ? A young West Indian lad, from a family who had only recently moved into the area, joined the fray. Needless to say, he got hit, smack above his eye, and his head split like a watermelon.
He took it really well, actually, and toddled off home to try and get fixed up. Within minutes, we could hear the screams coming from his house. Some twenty minutes later, quite amazingly, he rejoined us. His mother had stitched his eyebrow with thick wool, and he could hardly blink or close his eye. She must have used a cricket stump as a needle. It must have bloody hurt!
They turned out to be quite a family. One of them stole a bicycle, and in order to disguise it from the owner, he painted it in white gloss paint. The seat, chain, spokes, handle bars, the lot. He then decided to ride around on it, totally ruining his clothes in the process. The bike owner’s father somehow recognised the bike (gloss and all) whilst driving around the area. He stopped the car, retrieved the bike, and gave the lad a slap. Perfectly normal, and acceptable in those days.
In one corner of The Rec, behind a motor mechanics shed, there was always a fire burning. In those days, it was an ideal way of disposing of anything that would or wouldn’t burn. Oil filters, oil, tyres, you name it.
Two brothers, from the West Indian family, were messing around with the fire, when one of them slipped and got burning tyre on his arm. It ballooned up, and immediately turned into a huge blister. In an attempt to help the situation, the other brother ran and retrieved a bamboo cane from the nearby allotment. He then burst the enormous blister by jabbing it with the sharp cane! So much for modern medicine !
In times of boredom, go karting became the next big thing. Everybody and anybody built their own ‘lorry karts’. They pretty much consisted of a board with pram wheels on. Nails were bent around the axels to attach the wheels to the boards. It just so happened that my father was an extremely good engineer, so he built me a lorry kart. It was so unbelievably well made, you could have done the ‘Paris to Dakar’ rally on it! Unfortunately, it wasn’t very fast, as it only had very small pram wheels on it. The karts with the large wheels would speed past me, down the terrace and into The Rec, driven by the laughing, and sometimes, sneering owners. That was until they neared the wall at the bottom of The Rec. At this moment, it dawned on them that no one had invented a braking system!
A very innovative, but totally sadistic bastard solved the problem. As he, and his passenger, careered towards the wall of death, he simply leant backwards and forced the passenger’s legs outwards onto the wheels. The kart stopped alright, and there was a strange smell of burning skin coming from the (screaming) passenger’s legs.
A half-used textile mill formed the border of one end of The Rec. It had two metal fire escapes, with two platforms each and drop-down ladders at the bottom. These were great for climbing and relaxing on the platforms at the top. One day, bored with loafing around on the platforms, we hatched a cunning plan! We decided to gang up on a nice, well-to-do lad from the ‘posh’ side that was over the main road and bordered our estate. He had been mixing in with us for a while now and was considered a ‘good lad’. We wrapped him up and tied him to a rope swing that we attached high up on the fire escape. We began swinging him like a pendulum, pushing harder each time. However, the novelty soon wore off. So, we decided to add a little excitement by setting fire to the top of the rope. The aim was that, hilariously, at the top of the arch, the rope would burn through, and our victim would sail through the air into the corporation building yard next door.
Much to our dismay, as we pushed and watched the rope burn with eager anticipation, the bloody thing snapped at the bottom. Our victim fell all of nine inches to the ground.
Twenty-five years later, he would exact his revenge. He had built up a small chain of pizza restaurants and was doing quite well for himself.
I decided to order some take-away pizza and kebabs, and was somewhat surprised when he delivered them personally. Well, the sauce on the kebabs and pizzas must have had a radioactive half-life of about 200,000 years! I have never tasted anything as hot before, or since. Months later, when I bumped into him, I asked, “What did you put in my food that day?”
He just smiled and said, “You tied me to a rope swing and set fire to it.” Fair comment , I thought.
November was always exciting round our way. We would all do Halloween and ‘mischief night’, and also spend weeks collecting anything that would burn for Bonfire Night. This task was known as ‘chumping’, and to this day, I have no idea why. We were quite fortunate for around four years running, as whole streets nearby were either being renovated or demolished.
We had developed the knack of getting every single piece of wood out of these houses; floorboards, window frames, you name it. We even managed to take out the staircases. We would hammer at the top and bottom with the cast