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When I was a very small boy, a creature, lobster-like, with teeth and claws lived under my bed. I never saw it but I knew it was there. One night, still dreaming, I padded toward the toilet at the other end of the landing. In the dream the landing started to tilt like the deck of a sinking ship; and then, like a gymnast, I cart-wheeled in slow motion through the thick air and down, and down, and down. The lights went on and I was looking up from the bottom of a steep flight of wooden stairs into the eyes of two anxious parents. They had good reason to be anxious. They had two children before me who died in infancy. I was unhurt. The strong arms of my father carried me back upstairs. He was wearing his night attire of white underpants and a singlet. Not long afterward, I pulled the kitchen cabinet down on myself while trying to climb up it. My head had gone through the glass cabinet top-door. It was where the jam was kept. We lived in a flat above a shop that sold radios and televisions. In the small unkempt garden at the back was a skinny apple tree and a tower that rose some thirty feet. Radio and television antennae sprouted from the top. I climbed up that, too. My mother suffered from vertigo and fear of heights. But she told me later that she climbed to the top to bring me down before she remembered to be afraid. On another occasion, she retrieved me from the coal bunker where I was curious to find out what those black shiny stones would taste like. My bedroom was small, with only enough room for my tiny army-blanketed bed. I would lie between the sheets and listen to the sounds coming from the next room: my mother laughing and the television. My father referred to the television as the idiot’s lantern. He was against it. My father was against a lot of things. He was generally peeved that the world wasn’t other than it was. He had gone into the army as a boy soldier and come out a captain. He had a low opinion of civilians. In the mid-1950’s there was just one television station, the BBC. We were one of the first families to have television as my father’s shop downstairs sold them. A television set was a huge box which housed a small black and white cathode ray tube. It took an eternity to warm up. Viewing hours were limited to the evenings and the content tended to be the sort of thing that was considered culture. Each night there was a short religious thought, the Epilog, the national anthem and then nothing. But I was allowed to watch Children’s Hour. I was fascinated by puppet shows. Andy Pandy, Sooty, Noddy, and Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men held me spellbound. Television was magic, but so was life. The immortal goldfish lived in a bowl in the kitchen. It had a habit of dying and then mysteriously coming back to life: each time it looked slightly different. The repair room looked like a mad-scientist’s laboratory. Acid jars stood in a row on the other side of the window. Dismembered Bakelite radios and televisions littered Uncle Roy’s workbench. It was made plain to me that I should not touch the back of a set. Uncle Roy wasn’t my real uncle, but he always had time to talk to me. I decided then that I would be an electronic scientist. Downstairs in the shop they sold records. Teenagers came in Saturday mornings to listen to the latest hit songs. They lingered in front of a small record player that sat on a table in the middle of the shop floor. Later, four small booths were set into the wall. Customers could hear records before buying them. Records were breakable and played at 78 rpm. When the shop wasn’t busy, Miss Evens, Gwen, the shop assistant, would let me listen to her favorites. She knew about the latest pop songs. I had one of the first “unbreakable” vinyl records: Bert Weedon and his twangy guitar. I soon became a fan of Cliff Richard and Adam Faith. I was having second thoughts about being an electronic scientist. I was going to be a pop singer. Gwen liked pop singers. My father’s business extended to providing a public address system for local events. We had a green Austin 7 van with a loudspeaker on the top. He took me to a pageant, where I saw knights in shining armor joust beneath the ruined castle on the hill. He took me to the rowing club regatta where I saw rowing eights compete on the Thames. He took me to see The Queen as she addressed the town from the balcony of the town hall. But most of all he took me to the barber four doors down the high street. My father was keen on haircuts, and I wasn’t. Short back and sides was the only style the barbers knew. There were two of them, and they both went to the rough school of hairdressing. They would yank your head forward; and then to the side; and then splat a handful of white goo called Brylcreem from a giant bottle with a black dispenser on top. It was a masculine place. Copyright Christopher Richards 2007
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