Of mice and kids.
It looked like we were in for a thunderstorm last night which quite excited me, I love thunderstorms, have done since I was a kid. When my Brother and I were very young and a storm was brewing, my Father would get a couple of chairs and place them just inside the front door so that we could watch these magnificent events in comfort.
We didn’t have a telly in those days so it was the only entertainment option we had and it was free. When we did eventually get a TV I wasn’t that impressed with it, the thunderstorms lasted longer than the TV programs which were only broadcast for a couple of hours a day. I remember one stormy Sunday afternoon very well. My pal Turnip and I had gone to Gorton park to do some serious playing, we called him Turnip because of the shape and colour of his head, think Andrew Lloyd Webber and you will get the idea.
The park sported a well-stocked play area in those days; it also had toilets and a large open fronted building with benches around its walls, the ideal place to go when it rained, or to get some shade during the summer months. Sadly that’s all gone now and instead it’s a place to dump cars or get rid of your unwanted used condoms.
Turnip and I decided to try and swing so hard that we would do a three hundred and sixty-degree turn over the bar that held the swings in place. Obviously that was impossible to achieve, but in those days it was the Holy Grail for young boys and there was always someone who knew someone who had done it. Turnip tried so hard that he fell backward of the swing and added the colour of blood to his already reddish vegetable face.
He began sobbing in that way children do when they can’t catch their breath, I helped him up and we made our way to the open fronted building to sit down and tend to his wounds.
It was a stroke of luck him falling off the swing, one because the rain started just then, but more important than that was that we found a dead mouse under one of the benches. Had turnip not reached for the stars on the swing some other kid might have found this treasure.
We sat there trying to work out how we were going to share this mouse between us when the first crack of thunder erupted and echoed around the empty stone building. Suddenly the sky turned black and as it did the rain hit the ground and bounced three feet into the air, the darkness was illuminated by a huge bolt of lightening. This storm was turning out to be a belter. As the second crack of thunder erupted in our ears we were distracted from the mouse by the sight of a woman screaming hysterically and running towards us, with her hands over her ears. She completely ignored us and began running round in circles screaming at the top of her voice.
The park keeper who had a little office at the far end of the building heard the commotion and left his tea and newspaper to see what all the fuss was about. He tried valiantly to calm the screaming woman, who very obviously was frightened of thunder and lightening, but she wouldn’t be calmed so he tried the only thing he could, he slapped her face. He struck the woman just as her husband who had been chasing after her came onto the scene. So there she is hands up to her face in a protective pose, there the parky is hand raised and poised to strike again and there the husband is pissed wet through and pissed at the nerve of a complete stranger hitting his wife.
The husband launched himself at the parky and began swinging wildly, the parky tried in vain whilst avoiding blows to explain things to the husband, and the woman still screaming hysterically was now rolling around on the floor trying to escape both the storm and the fighting men. I noticed that the woman wore bloomers. An item of apparel I thought only schoolgirls wore at that time, at least I knew Lillian Chippendale wore them, pink ones down to her knees, but they didn’t impress me, although she was quite a pretty girl, I often wonder what happened to her.
Eventually the storm subsided, the woman and her husband left to go home, the parky had long since dissapered back to his newspaper and tea. Turnip and I were alone again musing on what had been a great day all round, a thunderstorm, an hysterical woman, a fight between grown ups and of course the mouse we had found. We couldn’t decide who was to have the head and who was to have the tale, in the end I let Turnip have the whole mouse, well he had banged his head and cried.
We didn’t have a telly in those days so it was the only entertainment option we had and it was free. When we did eventually get a TV I wasn’t that impressed with it, the thunderstorms lasted longer than the TV programs which were only broadcast for a couple of hours a day. I remember one stormy Sunday afternoon very well. My pal Turnip and I had gone to Gorton park to do some serious playing, we called him Turnip because of the shape and colour of his head, think Andrew Lloyd Webber and you will get the idea.
The park sported a well-stocked play area in those days; it also had toilets and a large open fronted building with benches around its walls, the ideal place to go when it rained, or to get some shade during the summer months. Sadly that’s all gone now and instead it’s a place to dump cars or get rid of your unwanted used condoms.
Turnip and I decided to try and swing so hard that we would do a three hundred and sixty-degree turn over the bar that held the swings in place. Obviously that was impossible to achieve, but in those days it was the Holy Grail for young boys and there was always someone who knew someone who had done it. Turnip tried so hard that he fell backward of the swing and added the colour of blood to his already reddish vegetable face.
He began sobbing in that way children do when they can’t catch their breath, I helped him up and we made our way to the open fronted building to sit down and tend to his wounds.
It was a stroke of luck him falling off the swing, one because the rain started just then, but more important than that was that we found a dead mouse under one of the benches. Had turnip not reached for the stars on the swing some other kid might have found this treasure.
We sat there trying to work out how we were going to share this mouse between us when the first crack of thunder erupted and echoed around the empty stone building. Suddenly the sky turned black and as it did the rain hit the ground and bounced three feet into the air, the darkness was illuminated by a huge bolt of lightening. This storm was turning out to be a belter. As the second crack of thunder erupted in our ears we were distracted from the mouse by the sight of a woman screaming hysterically and running towards us, with her hands over her ears. She completely ignored us and began running round in circles screaming at the top of her voice.
The park keeper who had a little office at the far end of the building heard the commotion and left his tea and newspaper to see what all the fuss was about. He tried valiantly to calm the screaming woman, who very obviously was frightened of thunder and lightening, but she wouldn’t be calmed so he tried the only thing he could, he slapped her face. He struck the woman just as her husband who had been chasing after her came onto the scene. So there she is hands up to her face in a protective pose, there the parky is hand raised and poised to strike again and there the husband is pissed wet through and pissed at the nerve of a complete stranger hitting his wife.
The husband launched himself at the parky and began swinging wildly, the parky tried in vain whilst avoiding blows to explain things to the husband, and the woman still screaming hysterically was now rolling around on the floor trying to escape both the storm and the fighting men. I noticed that the woman wore bloomers. An item of apparel I thought only schoolgirls wore at that time, at least I knew Lillian Chippendale wore them, pink ones down to her knees, but they didn’t impress me, although she was quite a pretty girl, I often wonder what happened to her.
Eventually the storm subsided, the woman and her husband left to go home, the parky had long since dissapered back to his newspaper and tea. Turnip and I were alone again musing on what had been a great day all round, a thunderstorm, an hysterical woman, a fight between grown ups and of course the mouse we had found. We couldn’t decide who was to have the head and who was to have the tale, in the end I let Turnip have the whole mouse, well he had banged his head and cried.
2 Comments:
What an exciting tale! Perhaps Turnip will read your blog.
I too love storms. I sit at the window in the dark and just enjoy the flashes, the colour and the noise.
Sadly Kaz Turnip died in Africa in the 70s he was captured by natives and put into the pot along with some spuds and an oxo cube.
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