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

However, on this day, instead of diving off the side of the pool I made my way up the ladders to the highest board. On looking down, I had qualms as I saw the little figures below staring up at me, Auntie Emmy, shading her eyes from the sun, on her feet now. For a wild moment I thought of abandoning my madcap desire to show off, but then the thought of making my way down the ladders again was too shameful. I walked to the edge of the board, controlling my breathing, I stared outward and the next moment I was floating down almost in slow motion, and when I brought my arms forward for the entry I looked along my body, I could see my legs and feet together and I plunged into the water. It was the most exciting dive I’d ever attempted, and when I heaved myself out of the pool I noticed that all the noise and shrieks from the bathers had ceased and they only had eyes for me: it was my moment of glory.

When I got back to Auntie Emmy she was wiping her eyes, as she’d been crying. ‘Who learnt you to do that?’ she said.

I was shivering so much that my shrug went unnoticed and as I towelled myself Uncle Joe remarked wryly, ‘I can think of better ways to commit suicide.’

But the main memory of New Brighton eddies around my mind for one other landmark. On the day following my historic dive, a new entertainment visited the pool: eight beautiful girls, all blonde, same height—they might well have been octuplets. They were sponsored by a newspaper and announced as the Daily Mirror Eight. They danced to recorded music, perfectly synchronised. They were fantastic and I was mesmerised. Fifteen years old, and innocent, I was vaguely aware of the difference between men and women—this was made obvious when I watched them in their bathing costumes—but women had aroused no strange feelings in me until I saw the Daily Mirror Eight. Auntie Emmy said they were going back to the digs and I said I wouldn’t be long. In fact five minutes later I followed them, and as I walked through the streets in a haze of wonder a coach drew up alongside and, would you believe it, out stepped the first of the Daily Mirror Eight, the other seven close behind, making their way into a hotel. Not one of them noticed me, mouth agape, eyes shining with adulation. I hadn’t expected them to look my way, and if they had I would only have blushed. I was in love with all eight of them and that was enough for me. What a wonderful place to live in!

Oldham was the major cotton town in Lancashire in my opinion. Others will undoubtedly disagree. Cotton towns all had one thing in common: they were tired, and weary, and it would take another few years to fill the gaps left by the bloodbath of the Great War. Oldham Town Hall was a quiet, austere Victorian building, with heavy, stone pillars at the front, and except for the dirty, smoked brickwork it could have been reminiscent of the Parthenon in Ancient Greece; in fact most town halls in northern towns seemed to have been constructed from the same blueprint. Across the wide roadway from the town hall in Oldham was the Cenotaph, an evergreen memorial to the young Oldham lads who would never again walk up West Street or Barker Street for a Saturday night out in the Tommyfield market; and overlooking the Cenotaph, St Mary’s Parish Church.

It is poignant to bring to mind Armistice Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Each year when the church clock struck the eleventh hour all traffic stopped, trams ground to a halt, horses pulling carts were reined to a standstill, and cyclists dismounted and stood to attention by their bikes. Every pedestrian remained where he or she was; men removed their hats and women bowed their heads. The silence was almost tangible. Then after two minutes a soldier on the roof over the church doors, head and shoulders visible above the black stone battlement, put a bugle to his lips and the melancholy, evocative strains of the ‘Last Post’ pierced the veil of silence. Not until the last note had faded away did the town re-activate itself.

Alongside the church was the commercial heart of Oldham: dress shops, chemists, solicitors, Burton’s fifty-shilling tailors, Woolworth’s, Whitehead’s Café and, squeezed in the middle of all this affluence, a brave little greengrocer’s shop. It really was tiny, just one room crowded with a counter, a tap without a basin and no space for a lavatory, the nearest being the public toilets at the top of West Street—quite a distance for a weak bladder.

The over-worked proprietor was Sam Hellingoe, a round, darkvisaged man, not tall but compact. Alone he collected fruit and vegetables from the market in Manchester, laid out his daily purchases on a bench in front of the shop, and then hurried inside round the counter to serve his customers. If there weren’t any he swept the floor, polished the apples or wiped the counter as if it made any difference. He was always busy, but sadly his age was beginning to slow him down and reluctantly he decided to take on the expense of an assistant. This was a momentous decision because money was tight, so his assistant would have to be willing, able and above all thick enough to toil every day except Sunday for a pittance—and that is how I came to work there.

Mr Hellingoe, was forever in a flat cap and brown dustcoat—as a matter of fact in all my time in his establishment I never saw him take his cap off, not even to scratch his head—and like a dutiful assistant I followed suit in a flat cap, brown dustcoat and, hallelujah, my first pair of long trousers. Beneath my overalls at Emmanuel Whittaker’s I had still been in the short pants from my schooldays, but now I wore a pair of Vernon’s cast-offs, a bit long in the leg with a shiny backside, but I didn’t care: they were the bridge into manhood.

Each morning I met Mr Hellingoe on the Croft, where his small van was parked. We never exchanged ‘Good mornings’, we just nodded, and he squeezed himself into the driving seat, putting the gear shift into neutral before letting off the brake. Then I moved round the back of the van and when he gave me the thumbs up I began to push. It was hard work, but I’d only about a hundred yards to go to the top of West Street, where I gave him an extra running shove to set him off and the van slowly trundled down the hill. I watched it disappear like a very old tortoise on ice. It was all downhill to Manchester and that was his destination. Eight miles is a heck of a long way to freewheel, but I did say money was tight; after all, he had to pay me fifteen shillings a week—I had Tuesday afternoons off but worked until nine in the evenings on Saturdays—and petrol wasn’t cheap.

As time went on, I grew accustomed to the work. Mr Hellingoe was away for longer periods and I became self-assured, looking after the shop on my own, weighing out potatoes, carrots and Brussels sprouts with fallible dexterity on the old scales, popping the goods in a paper bag, and then ‘ting ting’ on the till, ‘There you are, missus, three pence change,’ or whatever. One day, however, I overstepped myself. An old lady clutching a shiny purse was feeling the fruit, squeezing the bananas, smelling the cabbages. I watched her covertly as she turned her attention to a box of apples and suspiciously I wandered casually from behind the counter. If anybody was going to walk off with a Cox’s pippin without paying it would be me, and why not? My wages weren’t princely and to make up the deficit I ate more of the stock than my Friday night’s wages were worth. Underneath the counter was a huge rubbish box. Overripe or beginning-to-smell fruit and vegetables found a quick exit into it, but amongst all this detritus there was quite a hefty amount of healthy apple cores, pears, some with only one bite out of them and banana skins, because while in charge of the shop I ate fruit by the sackful, but if a customer came in, wallop, the half-eaten fruit would find its way under the counter. But that’s between you and me.