Glenn's Diary

Chapter 5

2nd August 2005

About Glenn... 1954 - 1960

Well; here goes: Glenn Michael Edmund Harrison; born 6th February 1954, son of (Lillian) Rita and (William) Bill Harrison. Born in Sheffield Children's Hospital.

Mum and Dad were pretty poor. They got married at age 21 and 25 respectively when dad arrived home after 5 years from World War 2. They'd met just before war broke out. They lived with a friend until they could afford to move into a one-bedroom flat. Dad never knew his real Dad.

He'd walked out on the family when Dad was born, to join a circus and become a Carny. By the time they'd been together for four years, they wanted to have me (or something like me), so approached Dad's Mum to see if they could save money by moving in with them at their council house on Windmill Lane, Wincobank, Sheffield. This was a few roads away from Daffodil Road, where my Mum's mum lived, again in a council house.

So I was born into my Grandmother's house. Mum told me a story, about how she toilet trained me. I was 2 years old, struggling to make it to the outside loo at the back of the house without wetting my pants, so she taught me how to pee in the drainage grate on the road outside the house, to get me used to peeing out of my pants, rather than in them.

Apparently a young girl used to come to the front door of the house to 'dob me in' when I'd wet my pants. My mother would paste me on the backside each time it happened. This was her way that she thought I'd stop; apparently not realising that 2-year-olds pee themselves from fright too. She never did click on to that.

The only reason my mum was telling me this, was that it annoyed her that the girl would stand and laugh at me, whilst my mum pasted me, until Mum got angry with her and threatened to paste her too.

I still bear my first real scar on my left nostril, from when I fell down the three stone steps leading into the house. I split my nostril completely so that it was flapping. The scar today's about 10mm long. And so began the long and arduous life of pain and suffering that was about to come.

At age two and a half, Mum and Dad moved us out to a new Council Estate call Lowedges, on the South West Side of Sheffield. They were really struggling for money. Breakfast was always cereal. Lunch was usually soup. Are you ready for this? Sometimes I'd get a treat: bread and butter with heaps of sugar on; sugar sandwiches. By the time I was 5 years old, I was having fillings in my teeth. Is it any wonder why?

Uuuuurrrggghh! The visits to the dentist. I was always given gas, and threw up before I got to the bottom of the dentist's drive. I became so frightened of the dentist that my Mum was afraid to tell me when she was taking me. It was only when we got to the bottom of the road the dentist was on, that fear would overcome me.

She didn't have a clue that what she was feeding me was the cause of so many fillings and extractions. I don't recall much in the way of teeth cleaning at that age either, because Mum wasn't too clean in that department either, so I wasn't pushed.

I'd be about 4 or 5 years old and Mum left me in the house on my own to go to the hairdressers. She tells me now that she couldn't find anyone to baby-sit me. What she really meant was that she didn't ask. We lived in a cul-de-sac with around 20 houses. She told me she wouldn't be long, not to leave the house and not to answer the door to anybody.

Now I want you to visualise this: This was 1958 or 9. No electronic games. Only black and white TV; which had no programmes on during the day, apart from the test card. In other words, hardly anything to amuse a child that couldn't read yet; and hadn't yet started school. After a while, time really becomes relative. A minute in time is relative to which side of the locked bathroom door you are, when you're busting for a pee. Mum was gone for nearly three hours.

The back of the house had French windows. They're a little like Patio doors, except made of steel and glass, hinging outwards. I stood there waiting; waiting; waiting; with tears streaming down my face. I thought my Mum had left me; abandoned me forever. When she did appear, she was running her fat little body as fast as she dare down the back footpath, to get to me. She broke into tears at the sight of my eyes, which must have looked like piss-holes in the sand. She swore never to leave me like that again.

LESSON

Time; for children under the age of around 8, is relative. They don't really have any understanding of time. Right now our bright 7 year old son can't distinguish between 10 minutes, an hour and 3 hours. He just knows that two of them are a long time.

Mum and Dad were hard up and mum needed to get a job, so she took me to a nursery about a 15-minute bus ride away. After a day, the staff refused to let me stay. Apparently I 'didn't fit in' and caused too much confrontation. Mum resented me for that. It cost her a job. So she managed to get a neighbour to baby-sit for me.

There were two girls, a little older than me to keep me company out of school hours. They were the bitches from hell. Wherever they could get me into trouble; they would. When I needed the toilet, they'd run upstairs and pull me back from reaching the door; both run inside the bathroom and lock the door, in the hope that I'd mess my pants. When I did pee my pants, their mother would give me a good hiding, and wouldn't listen to me tell her that her daughters were responsible.

Sometimes I'd have to run outside and pee in the street. One time though is a vivid memory. I was desperate for the loo, and they forced me away from the door, locked themselves in; and I shit myself. They came out shouting, "Uhhrrr, uhhrrr!" as kids do. I got another pasting from their mother.

One day at lunch I was eating sausage. In those days the sausage meat was stuffed into a sheep's intestine to make sausage, which when cooked well was OK, but if under-cooked was very rubbery. Guess what I had in front of me? I tried my best to eat it, but ended up taking the skin off the sausage and leaving it.

Well; the wicked witch of South West Sheffield was having none of it. She forced me to eat the skin on its own. It made me throw up trying to eat it. She pasted me and made me eat that too. I was in tears of fear and distress. It wasn't long after that that Mum finally rumbled her and once again I was in the bad books, because she had to leave her job to look after me again.

Looking back, I can see now that we must have been the poorest people on the street at the time. I distinctly remember playing with the other kids on the street at their different houses. Occasionally their mum would come out and treat us to a biscuit. We got Kitkats and Penguin chocolate bars, unlike the plain biscuits at home. When I challenged my mum she angrily told me she couldn't afford to buy chocolate biscuits. I think she was embarrassed.

You also have to understand about how poor a childhood that Mum and Dad went through. Mum was one of 6 children living in less than 1000 square feet; a typical small two-up, two-down terraced house. Dad lived in a 'Garret' house; a two-up, two-down terrace, built back-to-back with other terraced houses. There was only one door: the front door, and the road was unmade. Dad didn't get his first pair of shoes till he was 13. That was when he had to leave school and get a job to support the household.

At the age of four and a half, Mum took me down to school to try to get me enrolled early, but I 'kicked up', screamed the place down, and pleaded with her to take me home. Another nail in my coffin. I was petrified of being left at school. When 5 came around I was enrolled in Lowedges Infant School.

I guess I must have been an Indigo Child too. I just didn't conform. If there was any trouble to be gotten into, I'd be there. You might say I was an unruly sort of child. You 'might' say that. You also might say that I was the child from Hell. I'd not really thought about this before, but maybe I have some kind of record for the area I lived in for being caned. I got caned for every year I was in school, including the infants; right up to 1971; my last year in school at the age of 17; when corporal punishment was abolished in schools.

The summer of the first year in infant school, we were allowed to play on the grass fields. We were warned about some construction work taking place in the field, which was barricaded; and under no circumstances to go near it, because it was dangerous. Talk about a 'red rag to a bull'. A few of us approached the construction. It was a huge deep hole in the ground where workers had built a new manhole. At 5 years of age it seemed really deep. It was probably around 12 feet deep (just under 4m). There were ladders built into the concrete rings which walled the manhole.

There was a dare. "Dare anyone to climb down!" I guess I've always been bold and daring. I'll have a go at anything… literally. I've always been highly competitive. So down I went. By the time I got to the bottom, a little crowd of kids had appeared at the top of the manhole. They looked tiny from down there. Then, suddenly they all disappeared. Whoops! That could only mean one thing. Sure enough, the next head that appeared down the hole was bigger than all the rest. I'd been nabbed.

Up I climbed; straight to the headmistress's office, where she caned me for the first time. This time it was on the hand. There were many more canings to come; many more on the backside.