MEMORIES
Updated 14/6/2017
When talking to those who weren't actually there it's hard to explain what it was actually like growing up in the 70's and 80's.... There's always the tendency for what you're saying to start sounding a bit like a "we had it hard when I was a lad" Monty Python type sketch.... even the mention of Monty Python or other old TV shows will leave many asking "who ?...... There are so many things that don't make any sense to people anymore, not just gadgets but the whole way that lives were lived back then...... So this page is here to give a little background into how things were..... The following jumble of thoughts, stories and memories are supplied by those that are involved in bringing Goodbye Victory Road to life.
14/6/2017
I don’t remember my first day at school, big school or little school. I liked primary / junior school. The school itself was one of those red brick jobs built around 1900 with a couple of prefab extension added on. There were no uniforms but we didn’t suffer from the problem of kids being bullied because fashion wasn't really based on spending lots of money. Well not where we lived anyway. All the kids at school were from nearby streets and lived in similar circumstances. I remember me and other boys wearing an imitation type DM boot. I had a pair of navy blue high waisted flares with a pocket on the leg that came out of BHS or Littlewoods which I thought were the business and a brown zip up cardigan. A cheap but pretty tasty outfit. Nobody had brand name gear. We were kids after all, not models. It’s hard to remember exactly what we did at school but I do remember country dancing, sewing and singing “Michael rowed the boat ashore” and Cat Stevens songs. I didn’t realise it then but our teachers were hippies and we were an inner city experimental school (unofficially) where the emphasis was on imagination and not on basics like spelling and times tables. I do remember them stopping us from playing war in the playground (the “bang bang, your dead” type) although we did play British Bulldog in PE which would be considered too violent by today’s standards. We learnt from Ladybird books about Romans and stuff like that. PE consisted of climbing ropes and jumping gymnastics horses or playing football. Again all our kit was cheap. We wore white plimsolls which we’d cover with a sort of chalky white paint when they got dirty. We’d always have assembly in the morning where we’d sing a Christian hymn of some sort and say the Lords prayer….. it was a Church of England school although religion wasn’t pushed very hard. I don’t think there was much swearing. Most of us didn’t hear much swearing even though our Dads were pretty tough working blokes. If we did hear it we knew it wasn’t good. There was an attempt not to pollute our minds. Parents taught us to give up seats to grannies and step out of the way of adults on the pavement. Not every kid had parents like that. One of my mates in junior school came from a rough family. One day I had a fight with him, he was bashing my head on the hard enamel sink when we were split up…… and one day he nicked my brothers peddle go cart from our shed by the lifts. Anyway, one of the women teachers had slapped this kid round the face and so his mum turns up and she was a bit burly and tough looking. After a brief exchange she punches the teacher, laying her out across the desk. We just sat there in amazement. We didn’t even see stuff like that on tele let alone in real life. Her son was in school as normal next day so I expect the incident was forgotten. I was sorry to leave school and move on to secondary school. Secondary was only 5 minutes walk further away, down amongst the shops but moving broke up my group of friends so I ended up at the beginning in a class with a whole bunch of new kids.
Pat McVicar
1/4/2017
It was in the spring on 1982 we had a 4th year geography field trip to Minehead on the North Somerset coast, the theme for the trip was a study of the seasonal effect on business in a seaside resort. Minehead in the early 1980’s was a bleak enough place at the height of the holiday season; early spring was depressing to say the least.
The trip was eagerly awaited, it was a day out of the system and it was a non-uniform day. I chose to wear my black Levi’s sta-press, sky blue Brutus trim-fit shirt, black trench coat and black DM boots – which was ironically exactly the same as what I wore to school, minus the tie. This was topped off with my new Bruce Foxton haircut; since I started doing my paper round my Mum no longer cut my hair and I was able to afford to get mine done by Reg Ayers who rented a chair at the local barbers. ‘Gay’ Reg was as camp as you like but he was our favoured barber because we could take in a photo of the haircut of our choice and he would duly oblige for the princely sum of £1.90p. I thought I was the only kid in the world to have a Bruce Foxton haircut until I saw The Jam at Shepton Mallett the following month where I discovered 2000 other kids looking exactly like me. Reg was also happy to do skinhead haircuts but only on the production of a mother’s note. I saw Reg many years later at the funeral of my great uncle Mark, they lived 30 miles apart but were both members of the Burma Star Association and bravely served their country in WWII.
But I digress. On the coach travelling down to Minehead I was 4 rows from the back, too non-descript to sit at the back with the cool kids, not cool enough to sit with the kids on the fringes of the cool kids. It was on the journey a ball of paper ricocheted off my head and I was ordered down the coach to speak to one of the cool kids. Word had got out that I was drumming in a mod band and they wanted to hear about it. A rehearsal tape was duly revealed from my bag and played on a portable tape recorder. There were appreciative nods in time with my beats, it was music as they knew it and from there my standing in life changed forever. I was promoted there and then to the outer fringes of anything cool and/or popular – a position in life I have occupied, without promotion (or relegation) since.
On arrival at the coach park on the sea front of Minehead we were reminded by teachers of our ambassadorial role for the school and duly dispatched in our little social groups for the day. Al was the team photographer and set about taking pictures of a town closed for the winter. To spice things up we decided to feign a punch-up to highlight the rise in violence, the type of which bored youths did in a seaside town during the off-season. Little Tim the skinhead and I staged the ‘fight’ and this was duly recorded by Al. It must have been a sight, at 14 we were all shapes and sizes Tim was little more than 5’ and I was 6’1 and have not grown so much as a fag paper since.
We wandered street-to-street looking for something, anything, to be open. As luck would have it, the lights from a record shop shone out like a welcoming beacon. The windows were all steamed up and on entering we could see why, practically every kid on the trip was in there. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, excited chattering and swearing. The middle-aged lady behind the counter was looking flustered by the unexpected upturn in business. It was discovered record shop etiquette of displaying record sleeves in the racks and leaving the records behind the counter had not been recognised in Minehead. In unison bags were stuffed with anything not nailed down; records, tapes, pin badges, song books, posters, fanzines…all pilfered. I swear to God I didn’t take anything – I was a good boy and what’s more there was nothing left that was of interest for me.
In an unspoken and co-ordinated action we retreated one-by-one out the door and dispersed into the streets, parks and cafes of the town centre to later regroup. At the allotted time we made our way back to the coach park only to be greeted several vehicles of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. It was there panic set in, swag was dumped in bins by the scared, the more brazen slipped records into the gaps in the sea defences, defiantly vowing to return that weekend to retrieve them. The most scared was Perring, he was the only kid to have bought something in the record shop and he was shaking like a shitting dog as each kid climbing on the coach was duly searched. Only the production of a barely legible receipt prevented him being arrested.
Once we were all aboard, the police sergeant read us the riot act, he said that he had never seen so much ‘flagrant and wanton lawlessness’ in all his years in the force. The sergeant listed theft, intimidation, vandalism and fighting as our misdemeanours, remarking that we even had the gall to photograph our fighting. He went on to tell us as long as we lived we would not be welcome back in Minehead and were duly given an escort out of town.
My new status on the fringes of the cool kids was confirmed when I was invited/ordered to sit on the second seat from the back. What should have been a contrite and silent journey home erupted into singing and general dicking about. For some unknown reason much of the journey home was via the ‘A’ roads and not the motorway, so we passed through every hamlet, village and one-horse town…very slowly. The toxic combination of a slow moving bus, an audience of cool kids and an unsuspecting public by the roadside for me was a temptation too much to bear. Without warning and not thinking about any consequences I undid my trousers and pressed my bare ass against the window, much to the impressed hoots of the cool kids. The mix of excitement and sudden acceptance of the cool kids was intoxicating, my ass was constantly pressed against the window. When another kiddy tried joining in on the act, he was soundly berated by the others, ass showing was my party piece and mine only.
The coach eventually joined the motorway, I did up my trousers and the tape recorder came out and in unison we sang along to Do Nothing by the Specials. The lyrics of the song perfectly echoed our lives, adolescent boys with not much hope or direction; to this day when I hear that song it transports me back to our trip to Minehead.
On our return to school we were greeted by the deputy head master, his face told the story of a man incandescent with rage. He had received two phone calls, one from the Minehead police and the other from the coach company after complaints to them from shocked Somerset villagers who had called in after witnessing my bare ass.
Our year was banned from ever being allowed on any future trips. A punishment which was sadly forgotten later that year when we had an excursion to Brecon in South Wales were we had to study the effects of tourism on Llangorse lake.
Si Phillpotts
2/1/2017
When discussing the writing of GVR a friend said about people wanting to get out of council flats and the general opinion that flats were a disaster from day one. Well my friend had a working class upbringing but a different one to mine, one that didn’t involve living in a concrete block. When we moved into the flats I must have been five. We lived on the top floor in a complex with outside landings that joined to other landings in what would later become a muggers paradise but to start with was just a great place to play. The first people that moved in were good people, people that were happy to have a modern home with central heating and a bathroom, things most of us take for granted nowadays. As the first child I remember the 2 rooms we lived in before moving to the new flats. We had a makeshift kitchen and shared the loo and bathroom on the stair with other families. This can’t have been unusual as my aunt, uncle and 2 cousins lived in a similar split up Victorian house in Gypsy Hill. My Dad and uncle both worked and had done their national service but contrary to popular opinion today British working people never had it particularly cushy. Anyway back to the flat on the 7th floor. Flats built in the late 60’s and early 70’s were an economic compromise. Build them quick and pack the people in. The rooms were small but not by today’s standards and the build quality was better than the soft wood framed, single skinned crap they’re throwing up now. The older council houses, the homes fit for heroes had far bigger dimensions inside and a good size garden. Our flat had a small kitchen (we supplied the cooker and fridge) and a front room (it was at the back but that’s what we called it) on the first level and upstairs there were 2 bedrooms (I shared with my brother) and a combined toilet/bathroom. There was a balcony out back where you could hang the washing. From the balcony we could see a really big pond that belonged to an old vicarage. It was cut off from the estate by a big fence. Sometimes the estate was full of escaped frogs. That was the nearest most kids got to nature. Not that it was a positive connection as some of the little bastards used to collect them in a bucket and throw them off of the top balcony. My Dad was interested in nature to a certain extent and used to walk us out of the town centre, through the barracks (when it wasn’t surrounded by Barbed wire due to IRA bombs) and up through the common and to the woods, to what is now part of the Green Chain where we’d see Skylarks, little scorpions and find grass snake skins….. Strangely enough school never made any attempt to introduce us to the nature so near by…… Most of the time we’d play round the flats and the nearby streets where the other kids from junior school lived. Games varied from hide and seek to war games with squeezy washing up bottles used as guns, filled with water from the tap in the garages. Sometimes we’d walk on the outside of the balcony barrier for a thrill….. We’d go to the dump (it was probably a bombsite) and find bits for our bikes…. I suppose we’d use the swings and we’d have stone fights with kids from the school round the corner….. I can’t find a picture of the flats and they’ve been knocked down now but I’ve included a couple of photos to give a rough idea what they were like. The photos are of a section of Park Hill estate in Sheffield. There were 7 separate blocks that were joined at each end to each other by square sections that each housed a lift and stairs. Also there were cupboards (or sheds as we called them) for each household, the rubbish shute and an incinerator. We’d play football in this area sometimes as unbelievably you weren’t allowed to kick about on the grass in front of the flats. Everything was built out of solid concrete so you’d never hear a ball hitting against a wall. The place was always clean; nobody dumped stuff and there were no broken windows or vandalism. There were proper tenancy rules although I think people were good anyway . There were no dogs in the flats. You never saw any dogs in the area. I only knew one person with a dog, a white boxer dog. When I was 13 my sister was born and we moved to a terrace house with a garden. We won a little money and bought a Stafordshire Bull Terrier with it. This might be hard to believe but we’d never seen a Staff’. We chose it from a book about dogs because it was described as a good house dog and no bother with children. We had to go to a proper breeder in Richmond to pick it up. It had a list of champions on its pedigree. Nobody knew what it was, they just thought it was a little dog that looked like a pig. All the macho types had Alsatians and Rottweilers and never had the sense to keep them away. Anyway before we’d moved out of the flats things started to deteriorate. As the first families moved out dirty families moved in, people with no manners. The underground garages got wrecked or burnt out, people would piss in the lifts and sometimes bottles would be thrown from the balconies when you walked below. After we’d left they actually added more sections to the complex but then had to put bars up at the end of some landings to stop toerags using it as a get away or a speedway circuit for motor bikes. I had mixed emotions when I drove round that way one day and found the whole place had gone and I could find no trace of my childhood. One thing for certain I don’t remember ever being bored when I lived there.
Pat McVicar
10/11/2016
The River Avon flows through the city of Bristol, to the south is Somerset and to the north is Gloucestershire. By the grace of God I was born in 1967 in Southmead, which is in the north side of the city.
I was brought up on a 1950’s housing estate, in a traditional West Country Methodist household which meant Sunday School and no playing football on Good Friday. Methodists tend to shun alcohol and gambling. The former I devour with great gusto and as for the latter I still tend not to buy the raffle tickets preferring to make a donation. Although I don’t profess to have a great faith, I do still respect other’s freedom to express theirs and on the occasions I go to church for weddings and funerals I sing hymns with the greatest enthusiasm.
Like nearly every man in the area, my father worked at the massive Rolls Royce factory and built Concordes, Sea Harriers, Eurofighters and Tornadoes. The annual family days at Rolls Royce was eagerly awaited by us kids, a tour of the factory was ended with a display that rivalled the Paris air show. Many prototypes were on display, years before they appeared on active service. I have the clearest memory of hearing the thunder-like rumble of Concorde’s sonic booms as it broke the speed of sound out over the Atlantic.
Like nearly every woman in the area my mum stayed at home and made our gravy dinners (eaten at midday) and our bread and butter teas. I enjoyed school dinners and to this day love stewed white cabbage and thick gravy. My favourite meal was always faggots, these were made at local butchers or commercially up the road in Kingswood at the Kraft factory. The whole area smelt of liver and onions and my dad would slow the car down as we drove past and open the windows so we could breathe in the glorious odour. The local bakers would turn out lardy cake which as the name suggests had lard in great amounts; the lard would seep to the bottom of the cake and mix with the sugar and create a delicious chewy sticky mess that would attach itself to your teeth. This was best served warm, sliced in half with a massive slap of butter and a mug of strong tea.
When I was 9 my mum got a job and during the school holidays I used to look after my little brother and sister. We were kept an eye on by other mums and we never came to harm. My siblings always behaved for me and we saved our fights and squabbles for when our parents were about.
I idolised my grandparents; my paternal grandfather fought in the war and very rarely spoke about it. My grandma loved the Great Depression and the war, she spoke of those times with such affection and seemed to be constantly disappointed with modern life and conveniences. When my granddad was away fighting the war in France, my grandmother stayed in Bristol during the blitz and only moved to the relative safety of Clevedon on the North Somerset coast to give birth to my mother.
My paternal grandfather lived in a constant state of sadness, forever grieving the loss of my grandma who died before I was born. He and his siblings were the product of the workhouse after their parents died. The family of 9 brothers and sisters were relocated en mass from Devon to the Muller orphanage in Ashley Down in central Bristol in 1914, most of the boys ended up in the forces and the girls went into service in the big houses. My grandfather was quite a sickly child and couldn’t escape poverty to the trenches of France on medical grounds and remained to work as a labourer on farms in the north of Somerset.
Si Phillpotts
4/12/2016
continued from above
Our estate in Southmead was a series roads serviced by back lanes. Our social groups were defined by our lane. We played with the kids in other lanes but would often descend into fights.
Like most boys of the time I ‘played out’ whether it be fields, up trees, ditches, railway lines, building sites or bomb sites. I was sports mad, I supported Man Utd (they were in the old 2nd division then), we supported the Bristol Bulldogs speedway team and formed our own cycle speedway team. Over the course of one summer holiday one of the dads came over ‘our’ field with a lawn mower and perfectly cut a track for us and it was the envy of every other lane on the estate. That September work commenced on a courthouse and a doctors’ surgery in our field which coincided with the financial demise of the Bulldogs and cycle speedway died on the Stanshawe Estate without so much as a whimper.
A watershed for me was starting secondary school, all schools in the West Country played rugby first and foremost and all other sports came a very poor second. The great English forward Mike Rafter was a P.E. teacher in a neighbouring school and our sports masters were keen to beat his teams. I loved rugby, in other areas of the country rugby is viewed as a posh mans’ sport, in the West Country it’s a working mans’ sport. We played the rough teams over in Wales and the posh schools in Bath and each took great pleasure in trying to beat us to a pulp.
My father took me to my first proper rugby match at the Memorial Ground when I was 11 and so started an obsession with the Bristol rugby team that is still with me nearly 40 years later.
When I was 8 I joined the Boys’ Brigade and learned how to play the snare drum which affirmed a love affair with drums, percussion and all things rhythm.
At 11 I started to become aware of music and started listening to Madness which led me to listen to 2Tone and so onto The Jam. I started to delve into the influences of my favourite bands and so started my musical education.
At 13 I got a paper round and had the biggest round at our shop. My round started at the shopping centre and ended on the new estate; as new rows of houses sprung up so my round increased. When I eventually gave up my round to start work, it was split into 3 separate rounds! Despite it being over 30 years ago, I can still remember the route, which papers went through which letter box. Which house had the vicious dogs and which lawns I couldn’t walk across
Si Phillpotts
4/12/2016
I’d go down town with my mum to help carry the shopping back. At the time the Co-op was the biggest supermarket. By today’s standards it was probably only a little bigger than one of the big chain “Local” stores. The only thing that really sticks in my mind is the Co-op stamps that you were given as a bonus. I’d stick them in a book made for collecting them and then when you had a full book you’d get some money back on them. A pathetic amount. As a result I never bother with the loyalty cards that stores keep pushing nowadays. The town centre is a sad thing compared to how it was. Down the town their were two department stores, “Cuffs” and the Co-op….. I suppose some people would never of been in a department store as they only seem to exist in big city centres and out of town shopping malls. Cuffs for instances sold good quality furniture, beds, electrics, clothes, had a toy department and a good record section that kept racks of albums that were last years fashion a well as newer stuff….. talking of records, well the Co-op had a record department, and Boots, Woolworths, British Home Stores, Littlewoods, WH Smiths and there was good independent record shop that also sold sweets and fags up near the market. This smaller shop was where we went to order records that we’d missed but heard about….. It’s hard to believe looking at the state of the music industry but people use to love music and buy it in bucket loads. All of the store I mentioned were in (or just off of) one high street and all of the departments would have been as big or bigger than any independent record store today….. There was also a stall on the market that was great for 77 punk and other older stuff. Records that are hard to get today like The Suburban Studs, Ricky and the Last Days of Earth, Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts, etc were available at give away prices as everyone had forgotten the old bands and only wanted Anti-Pasti and Bauhaus.
When we had nothing to do we’d go over the river on the ferry. We were just kids, I can’t remember how old but if it was today people would of thought we’d run away from home. Anyway when the ferry pulled in and the ramp came down for the cars to drive on board and park on the top deck we’d walk on and go below. We could walk round up top with the cars if we wanted to. Below decks when the Ferry was underway there was an opening either side where you were only a few feet above the water, looking at it swirling and thinking that if you fell in you were dead. I’ve not been on there for years but they must of changed things as the opening was exactly that, only a metal gate that would reach up to an adults waist and with a gap below that you could roll under….. and no-one cared what you were doing….. We’d go to the park on the other side, the nearest green space to us and then come back through the tunnel making lots of noise to get the most out of the echoes…. A perfect place for someone to get attacked down, no cctv cameras but I never heard of anything like that happening down there.
Pat McVicar
10/11/2016
Someone was saying to me the other day about Sundays. Everyone goes shopping. Somewhere like Bluewater is my idea of hell. People walking round in their best clothes carrying designer shopping bags and then “doing lunch”. When I was a kid and even up until the early 80’s Sundays were great…. I’d go to visit mates from the Dockyard (or it might have been Morris Walk Estate) and we’d go over the park for a game of football. A proper game of footer. Jumpers for Goal posts and about 20 a-side. The teams would range from 13 year olds, through teens, young lads of working ages and Dad’s. Some good players dribbling round people, others like me resorting to slide tackles, knocking someone’s Dad up in the air and then being thankful I was too young to get a dig. While I’m on the subject of public parks, well they were different back then. Parks had a park keeper who lived in a house in the grounds and would make sure things didn’t get smashed up and would keep the place spotless. The one where we went on Sundays (and this isn’t unusual) had a café that sold tea, ice cream, etc and wasn’t opened as a business to rip the locals off. There was putting and tennis where they’d lend you a club or racket and it cost peanuts…… no-one would of used it if the price was out of our reach…… And there was a kids swing park with a slide and stuff you don’t get anymore like the big umbrella and a long rocking horse that went really high, the roundabout that you’d look down the middle of to make you feel drunk,. All the stuff must’ve been Victorian almost. Probably weighed a ton and was definitely designed before the nanny state came into existence…. As there were Dad’s playing football someone was always there to remember it was time to get home as Mum had the Sunday roast on….. the really nice park we used had grey concrete tower blocks just outside the gate….. a real contrast but not really one that we thought about.
Pat McVicar
