Eric Sykes - If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will

A few months later I found myself in a different location, opposite the cross-cutter. My new assignment was on a machine called the fore-cutter. The cross-cutter was a much older, capable and efficient man in a boiler suit and a very old trilby, sides pulled down to protect his head and neck from flying wood shavings and splinters. His job was to feed a dirty long plank of wood into the fore-cutter, where it would slowly move through the blades and emerge at the other end planed and shiny. It was up to me to take it off the rollers and stack it with the others in time for the next twelve-footer. It sounds simple enough but the storm of wood shavings and chippings flying from the machine was much greater in volume than it was at the front end so an old hat was found for me. Nowadays one would certainly wear gloves to protect the hands from splinters and goggles to protect the eyes, but in the early thirties at Emmanuel Whittaker’s these had never even been considered. Every fifteen minutes or so the machinist would switch off to allow me to sweep the shavings through a square, two-foot opening in the floor, and at the break I would go down the ladder to spread the sawdust and chippings more evenly. When I got to the bottom of the ladder I was up to my waist in sweet-smelling wood, so it was a slow job to spread the load.

As I write this, it suddenly occurs to me what a fire hazard the sawdust and chippings must have been, but then I doubt that safety regulations were prevalent in those days. Come to think of it, I can remember at least three comrades with missing fingers.

Again I was moved to a different job. Whether I was up- or downgraded I’ve no idea, because my wage was the same. I was now a painter, but not exactly in the Van Gogh school. In fact I wasn’t really a painter at all: my task was to prime the wooden window frames with a pink primer. At least my assignments seemed to be getting less onerous. Was the management experimenting, trying to find a job that would suit me, or, more likely, trying to find me a job I could do?

I threw myself into my new work. Proudly I returned home every night with my overalls stiff with almost as much paint as I applied to the window frames. After a couple of weeks I knew I had found my niche. No chance of losing fingers, no chance of a hernia from carrying more than my strength—it was going to be a pushover. But little did I know that splashing about with paint was a boobytrap. First I went down with painter’s colic. This was not life threatening, but unfortunately the colic mushroomed into something more serious: exactly half of my face broke out in eczema, from the middle of my forehead, down the bridge of my nose and under my chin, while the other half of my face was completely unblemished.

Mother took me by tram to the skin hospital in Manchester. A middle-aged lady doctor treated the suppurating side of my face and my whole head was bandaged, with two holes cut into the bandage for my eyes and a slit for my mouth. Every Tuesday for months we made the journey, as in Son of the Invisible Man , to see the doctor, who would unwind the sticky bandage, view the affected area and shake her head in defeat. The eczema hadn’t spread—it was down exactly half my face—but neither had it improved. She applied more lotions, bandaged me up again and told my mother that I would have to be admitted to the hospital. She should take me home now as there was no bed available and as soon as there was a vacancy the hospital would let us know. It shouldn’t be too long a wait but if we had not heard we should report as usual to the outpatients’ clinic on the following Tuesday.

When my mother told me what the situation was, I was horrified and waves of panic swept over me. For me it was a terrible week: I dreaded the days that followed and prayed that I would not be admitted. Every Tuesday for the past few months as we’d sat on the long benches in the outpatients’, sometimes waiting for ages for our call, I had looked round me to see some terrible skin afflictions. One or two of these poor wretches were in dressing gowns, inpatients obviously, and some of those sights were horrendous. After a time I refused to look and just stared at the floor until my call came. At least I went home every night, but now the thought of lying alongside these nightmares in a hospital ward gave me the shivers.

Next Tuesday came and I was sitting opposite the lady doctor, listening as she told my mother that there still wasn’t a bed vacant, and my spirits rose a little. Then she began to unwind the bandages and my self-pity evaporated somewhat; after all, this wonderful lady had to deal with skin diseases all the time and most likely much worse than mine. When the unveiling was complete, a cool breeze caressed my face and there was silence for a moment or two. Then the doctor beckoned Mother across and together they stared at me in amazement. The doctor nodded and said calmly, ‘This is what I have been hoping for. It’s the shock—it must have been.’ She repeated herself: ‘The shock of having to be admitted to the hospital is the trick,’ and as I looked into the mirror I understood. There was not a blemish on my face; a pink tinge where the eczema had been but that was all. I was cured. No more eczema, no more bandages and certainly no more Emmanuel Whittaker’s.

Once again Auntie Emmy came up trumps when she asked me if I would like to spend a week’s holiday in New Brighton. She said it was Uncle Joe’s idea, but I had a shrewd suspicion that she was being diplomatic. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t wait to pack my swimming costume and a towel, a Just William book to read in bed and, naturally, a pullover.

So I went with Uncle Joe and Auntie Emmy to New Brighton, a place not renowned for its amusements, its main attractions being an open-air swimming pool with diving boards and a shopping arcade. In fact we spent every day at this manufactured oasis, except when it rained, which it did for a large chunk of our holiday, which we spent in bus shelters and shop doorways. Umbrellas were an unnecessary expense, affordable only by bank managers, local officials and the well-off. On sunny days Uncle Joe and Auntie Emmy lounged on deck chairs by the pool, and I sat on the grass beside them, ostensibly reading my book but all the time watching furtively the goings-on around me. We made an ideal holiday trio. Auntie Emmy sucked Mint Imperials from the bag on her lap, listening to the beat of a popular tune blaring from hidden loudspeakers, while Uncle Joe, knotted white hankie on his head, scanned any discarded newspaper he’d managed to scavenge on his way from the digs. As he was fair-complexioned, his only concession to sunbathing was to undo the top button of his shirt. But nobody went to New Brighton for a tan: although the sun was out it wasn’t strong enough to cast a shadow.

People were splashing about in the pool but as yet no one had used the diving boards. I was a useful swimmer but my greater joy was high diving. As a young hopeful I had learned to dive from the lock gates on the Manchester Ship Canal and I had since improved from the top board at Robin Hill Baths, a few hundred yards from my home in Leslie Street. Now in New Brighton I eyed the top board by the pool. It was higher than anything I’d ever come across before, but I could manage a swallow dive, which was the nearest thing to flying, upwards and outwards, arms stretched out like wings and brought together for the final plunge: it was exhilarating, spectacular and fairly simple.

I stood up and announced that I was going for a swim, and Auntie Emmy said, ‘All right then.’

Walking down to the pool, I was conscious of my thin, white, emaciated body. I was fifteen years old, midway between the roundness of childhood and the chunky hardness of an adult, and I was fed up with the old gibe of many, who should know better, whenever I dived in the water at Robin Hall Baths: ‘Who’s thrown a pair of braces in?’