Made In Hull By Maurice Fairfield Part Four - Schooldays continued (2/3)

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3). Part One - Arundel Street Days Part Two - Our Terrace Part Three - The Calm before, (The Storm) Part Four - Schooldays Part Five - The War 1 Part Six - The War 2

I had a jumbled idea in my head that somewhere was a magic place containing all the amazing things and places that I heard about and read about and seen at the pictures. I had the idea firmly set in my small head that if one morning instead of turning right at Maybury Road I went straight on , I would come to the land of lions and tigers, cowboys and indians, pirates and Robin Hood. One morning I decided to do just that. I pedalled on full of excitement passing houses and shops. After a while I began to wonder if I had done the right thing and as my legs tired the houses petered out and were replaced by autumn fields. Unwilling to give up I pedalled on until I arrived at the Holderness Drain.

The morning was chilly and very quiet. The dead straight road dwindled ahead to vanishing point. At right angles to it was the muddy drain also tapering to an immense distance and surrounded by the flat brown fields newly ploughed. I could hear a dog barking somewhere and I could smell the cold, wet earth. A crow flapped past startling me and I turned the trike round and headed back brooding on my new awareness of the sheer intimidating size of the world I lived in. I felt glum enough to feel like going home but I turned left and went to school where I was in trouble for turning up late. This put the experience into perspective and took the edge off my disappointment.

One of my favourite memories of Maybury Road was the time we were all in the boys toilets. One of our favourite playtime activities was seeing who could pee the highest. Whether we had grown physically or whether it was a result of practice I don't know but one morning -possibly helped by the cold weather - at least one of us made it through the arrow-slit shaped holes in the wall.

We had a teacher who we called Tishy Moore because of his habit of spluttering when enraged. The playground was on the other side of the wall and he burst into the toilets so angry you could hardly see him for a mist of flying saliva. I don't know if any hit him but he was angry enough for this to be on the cards. He demanded at length to know who was responsible but nobody cracked. He calmed down in the end.

One Sunday morning in a cold winter. I was the only one up in our house. I had a small toy yacht which I had not yet sailed. I took it out into the nearby East Park and to the boating lake which was frozen. At one part of the lake was a place where water was pumped in and this stopped the ice from forming, leaving a sizable patch of open water. I carried my Yacht around to the other side and launched it. The little craft bounced away over the waves briskly enough and at last bumped to a stop against the edge of the ice on the far side.

It was early, and the park and the frozen lake were covered in snow. Nobody else seemed to be around. I set out round the edge of the frigid green depths. I could hear some shouting and, in the distance I could see a see a policeman waving and yelling to me to come back. I had no inkling of the danger I was in and went right to the thin edge of the ice to get my boat before I returned.

Shaken and angry he took me home where I was in trouble again. I didn't know what the fuss was about but in later years I knew and got cold shivers when I remembered it, and still do. Living at 710 was a new experience since I came into contact with posh people for the first time.

There probably wasn't a lot of difference between us and them apart from the confidence bred by being on slightly better incomes and the security of steady jobs.

Some fathers had tiny cars and worked in banks. My playmate (to his parents horror) Alan Brown had this kind of background and his mother employed a cook/housemaid. They recognised each other by a slightly less extreme form of the Hull accent which pretty well bluffed the rest us; although in later years after I had travelled they sounded pretentious and silly like comic Yorkshire men in a Monty Python sketch.

An enquiring child, I read at an early age and devoured advertisements on billboards. There was a huge one on the wall of the tram shed. Beer is Best, it read. The alliteration appealed to me and I marched home from school one night chanting the oddly satisfying words at the top of my voice. I was bailed up by an imperious old dear who felt entitled to explain to me at great length that my behaviour was misguided and disgraceful. Unimpressed I carried on chanting. She carried on attempting to convert me but she didn't succeed. She followed me home and ticked off my mother, but she got no change out of her either.

Continued on www.thisisUll.com...... Next Page (3/3).

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