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

After our escape we didn’t wait for the tram and once we were at a safe distance from the communal hall we decided to walk home,—no mean feat, as it was all of three miles. Strange as it may seem, we were not downhearted. On the contrary, as we began to see the funny side of it I started to chuckle, which fathered a snigger and then a laugh, and soon we were all shrieking with maniacal laughter. Every so often we had to stop, offload and dry our eyes and our noses as we were shaken by another paroxysm of howling. It was carnival night at the asylum.

How could we have conceivably been a success with our amateurish blundering into a situation we were in no way competent to deal with? We had got away with it this time, but there’d be another and another until we were old enough to realise that all youth is not necessarily fireproof.

Meanwhile changes were taking place at the Rutland Mill. The storekeeper received his call-up papers and within a week he was serving in His Majesty’s army. The next time he came to bid us farewell was on his embarkation leave, a hero. All we young bucks envied him and still very few shots had been fired in anger. His leaving the storekeeper’s job left an important vacancy, and I wasn’t going to let a chance like this pass by unnoticed. So from dogsbody in the office I became the new storekeeper, back in my beloved overalls, once more a worker, and I could sit on the upper deck of the tram and light up a Woodbine without embarrassment. My duties varied. I was responsible for all the goods that made a cotton mill operative. My storeroom was in the yard annexed to the main factory, a large airy room. On each wall but one there were wooden shelves about two feet in depth, divided into compartments three feet long and deep towering up to the eighteen-foot ceiling. These shelves were stocked with everything to keep the factory supplied with the necessities of life: different-coloured crayons to identify cops from the card room, electric light bulbs, nails, nuts and bolts, toilet rolls for the office staff and heads of departments—it was rather like a shop with everything costing only a signature.

I don’t suppose for a moment that without a good storekeeper the factory would have ground to a halt, but it might have limped a bit. I didn’t spend all my time in the storeroom. Whenever a lorry piled high with bales of cotton pulled up outside the warehouse, it was my job to offload it. Manipulating the hoist, I sent the clamps high into the air, where the lorry driver caught them in order to fix them round the bale. Then with a downward movement of the handle I lifted the load clear, lowering it gently on to a waiting trolley, where it was wheeled away into the maw of the cavernous warehouse. The next bale was clamped and the same procedure ensued, and so on.

It could be dangerous: in the unlikely event of the bale tearing itself free of the clamps and hurtling to the ground, if I happened to be underneath it, looking the other way, it would be goodnight Vienna, and I would be carted off to the mortuary with a very flat head, half my size and twice as wide. With the tall doors of the warehouse open it was a pleasant enough occupation. In the summertime the warehouse was always the coolest department in the mill, but in winter a polar bear would have been in serious danger of hypothermia. I offloaded the bales wrapped up like one of the crew of Scott’s Antarctic expedition. Blizzards in a Lancashire winter were frequent, but the bales still had to be unloaded until thankfully I closed the enormous twenty-foot doors and hurried off to a room adjoining the general offices, where a hot mug of tea helped to bring my circulation back to normal.

Nobody knew where I would be at any given moment, but hanging about in my storeroom wasn’t an ideal way to pass time away, until I had a brainwave. I bought a lilo, hauled it up the shelves to the top one just under the ceiling, and laid it out so that I could lie comfortably, reading books or just resting. It was high enough to be unseen by anyone on the floor fifteen feet below, but a good vantage point for me to observe them. So that I would not fall off my perch if sleep overtook me, I nailed the long handle of a brush across the edge. It was the perfect bunk on an ocean-going liner. On one occasion, a labourer from the mule room poked his head round the door and called me. Had I been on the floor I would have asked him what he wanted and as long as he signed for it he could have taken away his articles; but when this particular man came in, he decided that I wasn’t there, had a quick shufti round and then snatched two light bulbs and stuffed them in his pocket. He was about to leave when I shouted, ‘Oi!’ He stopped in his tracks, looking round. ‘Put them bulbs back,’ I yelled. He didn’t hesitate: he put the bulbs back and ran out terrified. He was the gofer for the mule overlooker but he never entered the storeroom again without first knocking on the door, giving me time to climb down before shouting, ‘Come in.’

In the course of my work I was able to visit any part of the mill to check on supplies. Sometimes I’d just be bored by long stretches in my secret bunk and in truth I had no object in mind but I walked purposefully with energy and foresight, ostensibly carrying out my duties. The operatives in the mill seemed to enjoy my passing through, exchanging cheery badinage. One morning I was chatting away to a couple of big piecers who were eulogising about Bing Crosby. My face lit up: Bing was my idol too. Spotting a bucket resting aimlessly in the corner, I picked it up, stuck my head in it and sang ‘When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day’. I finished off the song with a ‘boo boo deo voihm’ and when I lowered the bucket the couple of lads were now a dozen, obviously impressed by my rendering. With smiles all round, and like a seasoned artiste, I left them wanting more. Some of them started to call me ‘Bing’ and from then on there was always a bucket handy when I went up into the mule room. I vocalised other Bing offerings but the favourite was ‘When the Blue of the Night’.

The bubble had to burst. Some of the big piecers were leaving their machines to gather round when I put my head in the bucket. I was in particularly good voice one morning and I finished up with the usual ‘deo voihm’, but when I took the bucket from my face the audience was not what I expected: it was the manager himself, all thin, six feet two of him. I attempted a sickly smile but he was unmoved. Either he didn’t like Bing Crosby or in the last few weeks production at the mill had dropped disastrously. The manager, who must have been in his seventies, spoke in a quavering voice, but as always he was economical with his words. ‘Get your cards,’ he said, and he left, the mule room. I looked round but all my newfound fans were frantically busy at their machines.

This was the second time I’d been sacked from the Rutland Mill, but I’d learned the lesson from my first dismissal. I ignored it and continued to be the storekeeper. A few weeks later when the mule overlooker passed me in the yard he said, ‘You must have a great guardian angel looking after you.’ Naturally I didn’t give it a second thought until the next time.

I must have been about sixteen when I had dancing lessons, not tap or ballet but ballroom dancing. I attended evening classes twice a week at Eddie Pollard’s Dancing Academy, in Hollinwood. I never saw Eddie dance himself. He collected the fee at the door and put on the records, old seventy-eights, on an even older gramophone. Without wishing to boast, I was a pretty good dancer. I didn’t get many partners, because I was a very young sixteen-year-old and like a fool I concentrated on learning to dance rather than assignations. I could do the fishtail and the running six and could even get round the floor without watching my feet. I wasn’t too fussed about the waltz, and the foxtrot was OK. However, the quickstep was my metier. I don’t quite know why I have mentioned all this, except now I’m a senior citizen I can still do a fishtail but in all my life I’ve never met a woman who can manage it.