This Cadbury’s job is fantastic news. It almost makes the patchwork rug bearable to view. There will be another wage coming into the household and the genuine prospect of food cupboards full to busting with cakes, biscuits, and sweets. I could not be more wrong.
*
The rot sets in the day Mum starts work. The old man is now in charge of cooking our meals, which is like asking Private Godfrey from Dad’s Army to represent Great Britain in the shot put. What makes the situation even worse is that he is also now the food shopping supremo. Standards of cuisine are plummeting to depths close to the earth's core.
It is the second week of this new routine, and I am experiencing the discomfort of severe indigestion after eating my dad's baked bean pie speciality. Mum arrives home to a piece of steak, and I am ready to protest about the inequities of our differing meals but decide to rise above it and call Julian. He was hopeful last night that Ged might have secured a venue for Plain Truth’s inaugural gig.
I walk a little gingerly through to the hall with a fair amount of the pie still resident in my gullet. The green phone is on top of a small metal table painted white with a frosted glass top. I pick up the hand piece and go to dial the number but notice there is a locking device in one of the finger holes. Exasperated, I go the kitchen to berate my dad.
‘What’s the point in having a telephone if we can’t make a call?’
My challenge elicits a forthright response.
‘Listen, if I want to put a bloody lock on the phone, I’ll put a bloody lock on the phone. As long as I’m the one paying the bloody bill, the bloody lock stays!’
That was about four bloodies.
‘Oh Ted, just give him the key. He’s not ringing Australia.’ Mum is her usual voice of reason.
He relents, though not before a lecture on the cost of everything from the telephone to the immersion heater and from potatoes to sausages. I notice there is no mention about the price of Golden Virginia or Whitbread Mild.
I ring my friend. ‘Hi Jules, it’s Tom here. Any news about the gig?’
‘Good news my friend. Ged has managed to get us a booking a week on Saturday at the St John's Social Club in Liscard.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘They’re paying us £20, and of course they have their own PA, so no problems there.’
‘Well it’s hardly the Liverpool Stadium, but it will certainly do for now.’
‘Hey, that was an unfortunate business with the security guard at the Funeral Home, wasn’t it?
‘I know... to be fair, the joke was not in the best taste.’
‘I’m not talking about the joke. The old security guard really did breathe his last on the day we first practised there. He was found dead in the same chair he played the practical joke on us.’
My mind goes back to our exit from the premises that day, when I had assumed the old guy was messing about again, and I told him to sod off. I feel some culpability surfacing and have to remind myself that his last entertainment in life had been a game of the boy who cried wolf. It helps assuage the guilt.
I am conscious that if I stay on the line much longer, my dad’s blood pressure will start increasing in the manner of a thermometer stuck up the arse of a cow with foot and mouth. However, before I hang up, Julian passes the phone to Amanda who wants a quick word.
She reminds me of that haircut, and I arrange to go tomorrow lunchtime. As Wednesday is half-day closing in Liscard, I will head straight to her salon at about one o’clock. When she informs me that she is staying open especially for me, I ask her to have the red carpet ready for the visit. She laughs. Looking forward to a haircut is a new experience in my life, but I like it.
*
It is closing time at Strathconas the next day, and I am shepherding the final customer of the morning out of the shop, some old dear babbling on about the Goblin Teasmade she has just bought. Thanks to the wonders of technology, she will wake up to an early morning brew ready in an instant. I want to add ‘tasting of piss.’ Then in my haste to dispatch the old girl, I inadvertently grab her right tit. I really did not expect it to be hanging down at waist height, but you live and learn I suppose. Fortunately, she is besotted with the Teasmade and does not notice a thing.
Amanda’s hairdressing salon is at the Moreton end of Hoylake Road and is a good fifteen to twenty minute bus ride away. I stroll to Seaview Road and the bus stop outside the Gas Showroom. I have a short wait until the number seven arrives, its headlights, Wallasey Corporation crest, and registration plate forming a friendly face to welcome me. The Atlantean's door slides open, and I am greeted by a less friendly face, an acerbic-looking driver with a grey caterpillar moustache who begrudgingly gives me a ticket. I sit downstairs towards the back rather than in my favoured front seat on the top deck, part of an attempt to prove that I am maturing.
I sit near some odd-looking guy in a boiler suit who is listening to Radio 1 on a portable transistor radio. Johnnie Walker introduces with contempt the current chart topper ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ by Lieutenant Pigeon. At this point, boiler suit man turns up the volume to demonstrate both a disregard for his fellow passengers and a questionable taste in music. He hums along in the wrong key, continuously rubbing his groin with a hand down his pants via a strategic split in his boiler suit. There are two middle-aged women sitting diagonally opposite him, both with headscarves and lipstick-stained mouths turned downwards. They look around in disgust but say nothing.
With one stop to go, and to the relief of the passengers, the bloke with the radio and hands on groin action gets off. I watch him alight and head towards the Jockey & Horse pub, just along from the bus shelter. As he disappears inside, I see two familiar faces coming out and my stomach churns. It is Sofia and her boyfriend Danny. She is walking just ahead of him, and as he tries to grab her by the arm, she pushes him away. This is clearly some kind of altercation between the two of them. The bus driver is doing what bus drivers do when they are slightly ahead of timetable, waiting a few moments as the engine idles. It allows time for me watch the couple turn into the adjacent car park and walk up to a bottle green MG sports car; I might have known he would have a bloody MG and not an old Morris Minor.
The quarrel seems to be getting worse, and I watch Danny walk with menace from one side of the car towards Sofia. Some involuntary instinct propels me from my seat, and I find I am shouting at the driver to let me out with the urgency of someone whose pants are on fire, arguably based on real life events. He presses the button. The door opens and I jump off, providing the women in headscarves with further cause to vilify the youth of today.
I run from the bus towards the car park. ‘Hey, is everything alright?’ I shout.
My interference brings a temporary halt to the couple’s feuding. They both turn towards me with puzzled faces, the foolishness of my actions quickly dawning upon me. The mood turns from bewilderment to anger. I ready myself for Danny’s reaction, yet Sofia speaks first.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she says. Her flushed cheeks are pink.
‘I was on the bus and I, erm... thought, erm…’ My reply trails away to a whisper.
‘You thought what?’ she continues. ‘You thought you’d come and poke your nose, uninvited, into someone else’s business.’
‘No, not really, I erm…’
She, like me, struggles to find the right words. Finally, she says, ‘Just go, will you.’
‘I’m sorry, I only…’
‘You heard her mate, on your bike.’ It is Danny, unable to hide his delight at the exchange between Sofia and me.
I offer a further muted apology and turn away in the direction of Amanda’s salon. A tidal wave of misery washes over me. I walk around the perimeter of Moreton Cross, rebuking myself for the recklessness of getting involved in such a private argument. I pass a row of estate agents and insurance brokers, absorbing the consolation that I had meant well. However, given her angry reaction, I know I have burnt all bridges between Sofia and me, however fl
imsy their construction.
Encouragement then comes to me from an unexpected source; a pile of steaming dog muck. Such is my detachment as I saunter along that I walk by a newly laid mound - more likely from the arse of a Great Dane than a Chihuahua - and avoid contact by about half an inch. The near miss acts as an unlikely catalyst for transforming my outlook to one of renewed optimism. I conclude that now is the time to leave Sofia behind, to stop brooding at work in the vain hope that she will come and visit the shop. It is a destructive and unsettling state to inhabit and a complete one-way street rendered all the more hopeless by her relationship with Danny. It is time to move on and what better way to kick things off than having your hair re-styled by the beautiful Amanda.
*
Even a blindfolded Mr. Magoo in dark glasses would have no difficulty in finding 'Amanda’s Unisex Hair Salon' with its exterior of fluorescent pink and light blue. Sandwiched between the dreary run-down décor of 'Jack Cavendish the Cobbler' and 'Bob Pitt’s Second Hand Emporium', it stands out like Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at a funeral. Either side of the entrance there are window displays with poster-sized photographs of models in black and white. On the left side, the women look like Lynsey De Paul, and the men on the right like David Cassidy. The sign on the door says ‘Open’, but when I try to push it, I find it locked. There is no sign of anyone in the shop, and I am starting to feel a bit of a fool, when I see Amanda appear through a vinyl strip door and acknowledge my arrival. She welcomes me like a long lost brother returning from a few years away with the French Foreign Legion before shutting the blinds and flipping the sign to ‘Closed’.
‘So... is it a feather cut for you sir?’ she asks.
‘Yes please madam.’ My reply is in the style of a nineteenth century gentleman.
Christ, this is what I call an antidote to the miseries of the Sofia incident. As ever, Amanda looks completely alluring, today in a white lace top that leaves little to the imagination underneath, though as this is my best friend’s girl, I put the brakes on the stirrings my physiology is generating. She ushers me across to a washbasin at the rear of the salon and gives me a shiny black smock top to wear. Like a dick, I put it on like a shirt.
'No, you silly thing,' she giggles, 'you've got it on back to front.'
'Have I?' I am already thinking that haircuts at Ron the Barbers were simpler than this.
She starts by washing my hair, and with my head leaning back against the hard enamel, I have the perfect sight of her cleavage as she applies the shower spray. I close my eyes and start thinking of Miss Hopwood, our old French teacher from school, as captivating as a Yorkshire pig farmer smeared in manure.
My concentration is at its peak when Amanda speaks again. ‘Are you looking forward to your gig at the weekend?’
‘Yes Miss Hopwood.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Sorry, yes, erm very much... so yeah, it should be great’
I opt for the conditioner, and with the rear of my neck numb from the porcelain and my mind numb from images of an old schoolteacher in compromising positions, it is with some relief that I am led to what looks like a dentist's chair for the cutting to begin. However, things do not get any easier. I discover that my new hairdresser has a very tactile approach to her trade. I do not remember Ron rubbing his body against his customers, but Amanda leans across to trim a little piece of hair dangling by my ear and is draped over me like a contortionist. Extreme measures are required, and so I call Miss Hopwood into action again, this time joined by the school nurse, a vitriolic, sexless woman with the body of a weightlifter and the facial hair of a Neanderthal. What started as a liberating and welcome diversion from the disastrous episode with Sofia has now turned into an arduous ordeal of its own.
By the time she has finished blow-drying my hair, I am pleased to see that the new cut looks great, though even if it looked like Ken Dodd, I would say it was perfect just to get away. I am about to get up, when Amanda motions for me to stay put while she retrieves some form of dressing. She applies a very small amount to her hands and massages it gently into my hair, taking her time and not speaking. Her actions are creating, very gradually, an almost trance-like condition in me, and I feel my eyes closing as her hands move from the scalp to my neck and shoulders. The next thing I feel her unbuttoning my shirt and the warmth of her hands on my chest. I have just enough consciousness to wake from this reverie and jump out of the chair.
‘No Amanda, that’s not right.’ I say my words with feeling, as I re-button my shirt.
She backs off immediately, and there appears to be instant remorse. ‘I’m so sorry Tom, I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘I know you shouldn’t. Julian is my best friend. You just can’t treat my best friend like that.’
‘Oh please don’t tell him,’ she says. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing. I know it was wrong.’
I cannot answer her. Her regret seems genuine, and her frown makes her seem even more attractive, but her appeal has diminished. Miss Hopwood and the moustachioed nurse are now off duty. I pay the full price for my cut and leave the salon, a dispirited young man. It may be daytime, Colin and his baby next door might be asleep, but at this particular moment, I could not give a monkey’s toss. I am going home for a bit of a spank... on my drums, of course.
10. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’
'Sometimes I get a bit constipated, but the wife’s as regular as clockwork. She does the business every morning at half past six… trouble is, she doesn’t wake till seven!'
Local comedian and club host, Harry Carlton, is going down a storm at the St John's Social Club. I am enjoying the pre-gig entertainment with Julian, Ged, and Brian, sitting to the right of the stage and drinking Coca Cola. The place reeks of stale beer and is a sea of half-occupied tables and chairs with more Formica on display than in a shop of Hygena kitchens. The scene is the embodiment of the working class cliché. Only the whippets are missing.
Harry is wearing an old dinner suit, about three sizes too small for him, complete with vivid green bow tie and cummerbund. In between sweating buckets and constantly reinstating his comb-over with an upturned palm, he is smoking a Woodbine and drinking a pint of bitter. We have decided to shun alcohol on this occasion. We want to keep our wits about us. Even Brian has promised to lay off the hash, an encouraging sign. In about half an hour, it will be our turn to perform.
‘She wanted a holiday where it was really warm... so I booked her a week at the local blast furnace.'
I survey the small stage, just about big enough to house a four piece like Plain Truth. My drums are in the middle, the rather unsightly house bricks a bit too visible for my liking. Either side of my kit are the guitar amps with two microphone stands further forward, facing three racks of coloured lights at the front. There are caricatures of Tom the resident organist and Dick the resident drummer hanging on the wall at the rear of the stage. Each portrait has an accompanying sign coloured in bright orange with their name in large black letters. I am slightly crestfallen to see that I will be drumming later with the word ‘DICK’ displayed prominently next to my head.
'She told me she was fed up and wanted to see more of the sun... so I bought her a telescope.'
My own laughter dies away when Amanda and Brenda arrive at the club to join us at the table.
‘Eh up lads, the groupies are here.'
Brenda gives Harry a V sign.
‘£2?' You only charged me a £1 last time love!’
Amanda embraces Julian and offers me a nervous, contrite smile. I find a chair for her and return a non-committal half-smile. It is a few days since my haircut, and I have said nothing to Julian about the incident. I am still unsure what to do. I feel inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, that it was a spur of the moment thing, so maybe the less said the better. She looks as gorgeous as ever tonight in thigh length, tan suede boots, but for the first time, I do not fancy her. She may be an example of near physical perfection, but I have seen
a flaw beneath the surface, and it has affected my thinking.
‘You haven’t said anything to Julian have you?’ she whispers in my ear.
‘No.’ My reply is curt.
‘Thank you.’
Her thanks jar somewhat, but tonight is about the band and nothing else. So I put these thoughts out of my mind, at least for now, and disregard any opinion I may have on the sincerity or otherwise of her welcome for Julian.
The greeting between Ged and Brenda may lack the subtlety of their more reserved counterparts, but the passion seems genuine. Even though Ged is the type of guy who would have to be on his deathbed before talking openly about his feelings, he is evidently wearing his heart on his sleeve with Amanda’s sister. The two of them appear well matched.
‘She said she wanted a weekend away, to have a complete break from the washing and the ironing... so I locked her in the shed for a couple of days.’
Harry finishes his act with a few songs including ‘Spanish Eyes’ by Al Martino, Tom and Dick providing the musical backing. When Jules points out that a real life Tom, Dick and Harry are on stage; our cheaply earned laughter is an indication that the adrenaline is pumping in readiness for our re-launch. The applause rings out at the end of the last song, and Harry gives us the nod that we are on in five minutes.
Just before we get up to perform, Brenda addresses me in her characteristic way. ‘Hey gobshite, what’s this I hear about you wanking on the bus?’
‘Eh?’
‘One of the women from the canteen at the funeral home saw you on the bus fiddling with yourself.’
The lads start pissing themselves.
‘It's not true!’
‘She said you were singing along to the radio while having a wank.’
I recall the bus journey to Amanda's hair salon with the oddball in the boiler suit. It is a case of mistaken identity. ‘That wasn’t me. That was some other bloke.’
‘Come on lad, it’s not such a big thing,’ says Ged, ‘at least that’s what the woman from the canteen said.’
Cue belly laughs from the others.