Glenn's Diary

Chapter 7

7th August 2005

1961

By the time I reached eight, I needed to wear glasses. I was diagnosed with a lazy left eye. What that meant was that when I fixed my eyes on anything for a period of time, my right eye would be dominant, and my left eye would virtually go to sleep, in that the muscles would relax and allow my eye to drift inwards towards my nose; so I'd look cross-eyed with my left eye. The traditional way to cure this at the time, was to wear glasses with a patch over the strongest eye; to make the weak eye work harder, until it caught up with the other. I wore National Health glasses, with a patch over the right lens for over a year. I looked a right Dork!

Children can be much crueller than adults, so you can imagine the name calling: four-eyes, three-eyes, pirate, Long John (Silver), Billy Bunter.

Billy Bunter was a grossly fat kid character in a TV serial. He was a Public School boy. Public school in the UK is where parents pay for their kids to attend. Everyone else goes to State schools. Now there's something you need to understand here. This was 1962. Almost everyone in the UK was skinny; that is apart from my Mum. She was fat, and I have her genes. I was a skinny kid at school. If you saw my photographs you’d see a skinny, but solid young boy; but in this school of around 200 boys and 200 girls; everyone else was even skinnier. It was a poor council estate we lived on.

So now my life was being lived in ridicule; but it didn't end there. We weren't allowed to wear long trousers at school. All boys had to wear shorts; and the shorts were really short. That was the general fashion at the time.

Mum bought some grey corduroy shorts for me to wear for school. They were long, and they were really baggy. It was embarrassing. So now I got a new name: Harribags! And if you could see the haircuts that I got? I looked a real geek.

There was very little in the form of entertainment in those days. We had to make our own; and being an only child (until the previous year) it was very lonely. When my brother was born, I was still a really lonely child. There was over 7 years difference in our ages.

To have fun in those days, we had to make games up. We'd play at war games. We'd take a roller skate and attach a hard-backed book to it; sit on it and fly down a hill, often skinning our knuckles as we went around a corner, holding onto the book edges with both hands: the first skateboards. There were plenty of green areas to play on, but ball games weren't allowed. Park Keepers would patrol and chase you off the green grassed areas. They'd confiscate balls, and if they caught you, they'd give you a thick ear; and most parents accepted this discipline. These were the times when people were afraid of Policemen. Policemen would happily give any kid who was wrong-doing, a thick ear. Minimum height was six foot for a Policeman, so they always looked seven foot with their helmets on, and at that time, women weren't allowed in the force.

It was about this time that a few of us were playing around on the green area in front of our house, splashing water at each other, which had puddled on the footpaths and in the roadside kerb edges. There wasn't much in the way of traffic in those days. Lowedges Road where we lived, was very quiet. Today it's a busy thoroughfare for traffic. The most popular form of transit was the Public Transport system. Buses then were like what you see in London today. The red buses have been preserved in London for heritage and tourism.

As I was jumping away from being splashed; a double-decker bus came round the corner. I was in the road and ran to get away from the oncoming bus. The driver swerved and screeched to a halt; but it was too late. He clipped my left ankle with the front left tyre. It was incredibly painful. I thought my foot had been crushed. The driver jumped out of the bus with fear on his face. he thought he'd killed me. He checked me over as the passengers on the bus started to form a crowd around me. I was wearing Wellingtons (Galoshes) at the time, and the left one filled with blood. We daren’t take it off. When the driver realised I only lived 50 yards away, he carried me back to our house. Fortunately my ankle was only cut, and didn't need stitches; but that day I was 6 inches away from death: literally.

Mum and Dad didn't seem to have too much care as to where I got to. Occasionally they'd get angry if they found out I'd been off afar, but they never reinforced it. At 8 years old I was travelling up to three miles away from home. Sometimes we'd go across farmer's fields to get to their hay stacks and play. But the furthest I ever travelled was to go train-spotting at the bottom of a hill called Twentywell Lane in a little village in Sheffield called Dore. It was at least a three, maybe four mile walk. I was 8 years old; and my parents hadn't got a clue where I was.

It was also at this time that some of the older kids on the street started going to the swimming baths. The baths were at a place called Heeley; which was a 20 minute bus ride away; and then a 10 minute walk. This was a 25-yard-long swimming baths, with a 6-foot deep-end and a 3-foot shallow end; and I was about 4-foot tall.

Now, I couldn't swim. But that wasn't going to bother me. I asked mum and dad if I could go along. There were about 8 of us. Now I want you to think about this. I was 8. I couldn't swim. The baths were a 20 minute bus ride away, in a rough part of Sheffield city; and my parents let me go without adult supervision.

By the second time I went, I was venturing into the deep end, holding onto the drainage channels which lined the pool. I quickly learnt to jump and dive; so by the third time I was diving off the 6-foot diving board; aiming for the side of the pool, because I couldn't swim yet. I'd just kick myself to the side of the pool as I started to surface. I’d just learned to swim under water, but hadn’t got the knack yet of how to stay afloat.

The first time I hit my head on the bottom of the pool was probably the worst. I'd dived in from the 6-foot board and smacked my forehead hard on the bottom of the pool. I must have passed out for a few seconds. One of my friends saw what happened and dragged me to the shallow-end whilst I was coming round.

Strange isn't it! In all the days I was with my parents, although we went away on holiday each year, I can only ever remember being on holiday with them twice. The first time was at this age of 8. It was a little earlier in the year, before the swimming. We'd gone to Scarborough for 2 weeks.

Scarborough's a Northern East coast holiday town. Real working class. There was a Lido (open air salt-water pool fed from the sea) at the South end of the town. It was always crowded on sunny warm days. The Lido was huge. Dotted around the swimming area were fountains, capped on the top, to look like mushrooms. They fed the sea water into the pool. Now; the North Sea is freezing at any time of the year. The minute your 'tackle' hits the water, it runs for cover inside your body to keep warm. It can be quite frightening watching your 'tackle' disappear.

I remember getting up from the floor where Mum and Dad were sunbathing and telling them I was off for a swim. Dad was curious and casually reminded me that I couldn't swim. I took no notice and told him it looked easy. I went to the side of the pool and launched myself into the water. Talk about confident! It was supposed to be a dive, but you couldn't really call it a dive; more of a launch really. When I surfaced I was gasping for air, mainly due to the shock from the temperature of the water. Then I pushed away from the floor and started to 'swim'. The pool was just shallow enough so that when I did stand up, my head was just above the water. Two or three strokes; I'm moving along and I'm thinking, "This is easy!" Then I started to sink. I managed to push off the floor again and manage a couple more strokes, before I sank again. This time I was struggling. I couldn't get a grip on the floor and I went down again. I managed to get up and get a little air; but quickly went down again. I was really panicking. Air was running out fast and I was fading. Just as I thought my time was up; inhaling water; I felt my hair being pulled, as my Dad pulled me out of the water with my hair. I choked on the sea water I'd inhaled. It put me off swimming for a little while.

Little did I know that Dad suffered with piles. Launching himself into the freezing water to pull me out had generated piles on his bum; and he suffered the remaining 12 days of the holiday.

The only other time I remember being on holiday was at the age of 11 in Caistor, near Great Yarmouth, on the East Coast of East Anglia. It was uneventful. So much for remembering good times on holiday. Maybe it's because there weren't any.