By now, our little sister, Rachel was on the scene, although she doesn’t feature in the stories. Yet! I don’t think dad ever settled in the new street, which was populated by people much posher than we were. I am sure he felt a bit inferior every morning as he free wheeled his motorbike to the bottom of the street (so as not to wake the posh neighbours) before kicking it into life as he went off for his early morning shift down t’ pit.
We lived next door to the village policeman – who was not a bad sort really. In fact, later on in my adolescent years he did me a few favours by pretending not to notice me in the local pubs. On the other side was man with company Morris Marina. One evening having just got home from school I heard a terrible commotion and for the first time in my life heard my dad using language which he could only have learned down t’pit. I did not get the full story until a bit later, but the gist of this violent exchange of ideas included flying shit, posting said item through letter boxes and finally, rubbing Morris man’s nose in it. It transpired that Morris man had been walking some posh guests to their car – they must have been terribly important because they had a Granada - and found a dog turd on his drive! He jumped to the conclusion that this turd had been deposited by our dog and promptly tried to impress Granada man by scooping it onto a shovel and slinging it over our garden fence. This, just as my dad was walking up the drive. Anyway, Morris man quickly learned that motor bike man did not take well to this kind of behaviour! Suffice to say the final resting place for the shit was not on our drive!
There was one chap at the top of the street – let’s call him Roderick Stuart to avoid any chance of litigation! He really was weird. At least to 12 and 9 year old lads he was. He had a son who we believed was kept shackled in a locked bedroom and only came out occasionally. To Mike and I the really interesting thing about this guy was his comings and goings. He had a Ford Granada and his house was bigger than almost anyone else’s on the street. We spent many a happy Saturday afternoon watching him going out in his car and coming back literally 7 or 8 minutes later. He would often return with tires screeching, parking hastily and running into his house, accompanied by the hacking sound of his smoker’s cough brought on by a combination of excitement and exertion. This behaviour also extended into the small hours of the mornings which we found really interesting. We pleaded with dad to following him on his motorbike to see what he was up to. Sadly this never happened. These comings and goings culminated one Saturday afternoon with Roderick’s car being absolutely caned up the street to be parked outside his house with steam pouring from beneath the bonnet and brown stains of expelled antifreeze all over the paintwork. Shortly after this, Mrs Stuart appeared with a bucket and threw water over it to remove the stains - the car that is, not Roderick. On closer inspection, we found that both front headlights and both rear light clusters were smashed! We really did (and still do) think that this was the strangest thing but never did get to the bottom of it. Literally days after that the Stuart family vanished and a For Sale sign appeared outside the house.
At the very top of the street was a millionaire. This man had made his fortune in scaffolding. He had a lovely Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, a Jenson Interceptor FF, a V12 Jag and numerous other cars. This feast of expensive automotive equipment kept us drooling. He was also the first person I ever saw to have a new fangled LED quartz watch, which also fascinated us. We never had anything much to do with him until one day the 6 feet high fence outside his house was freshly painted with new white paint. It looked immaculate. Anyway, we decided it would look better if we threw mud at it, so spent the next 10 minutes doing just that. Finally Joe (think I can get away with divulging his first name) came out. We thought we were dead. What did Joe do? He engaged us in very pleasant conversation. He showed us his new LED watch and even opened up his Rolls for us to sit in. We never did throw mud at his fence again!
Shortly after that we found our way onto an area where they were building some new houses and decided to play with a JCB wheel which we found there. We spend ages rolling it around. Eventually, we got bored with this and decided to roll it further up the hill, above the houses. This wheel was very heavy but 4 of us managed to push it up a mud path into the woods at the top of the hill. Just before we got it to the top, someone slipped and we all relinquished our grip on the wheel, which set off rolling back down the path. The last we saw of this wheel was it crashing through a garden fence. A second after that there was a sickening sound of shattering plate glass as the wheel disappeared through the patio window of the unfortunate residents.
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