I WAS IN SOUTH LONDON

 

I was in south London

And this bloke I met

Said he would attack me,

If I didn’t make a bet,

With the neck of a guitar,

So, I said ‘Is that a fret?’

AMIDST THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY SADIQ

 

Amidst the terrible tragedy

Sadiq smiled, to his eternal shame

But the reason for that was

That he had found someone to blame

SADIQ KHAN, PHOTO OP BOY

 

For little Sadiq, appearing big

Is the name of the game

So, if its bad news, photo op boy

Is on scene to apportion blame,

If it’s good he’s there, so that

All the praise is his to claim

OUR LONDON SCHOOL WAS AWASH

 

Our London school was awash

With drugs of various kinds

And it certainly wasn’t considered

A punishment to do lines

PICCADILLY PHILLY

 

We stood on a busy London street

One bright warm summer day

When a girl in a skimpy top

And very short skirt came our way

The girl was walking towards us

And she caused every head to turn

Men and women, young and old

Mens jaws dropped and women looked stern

She was quite an attractive girl

Not a stunner or a movie star

But not worthy of all the attention

She was just a little above par

The reason soon became apparent

As we noticed when she passed

Her skirt hem was tucked in the waste band

And she was completely bare arsed 

Uncanny Tales – (28) The Girl in the White Dress

 

It was September 1997; and I was up in London for a meeting with a client in Young Street and I had misjudged the journey time and found myself with sometime to kill.

Princess Diana had died tragically the week before and was lying in Kensington Palace which was only a short walk from my destination.

Although I was not a fan of her, I found her to be manipulative and hypocritical, who would always castigate the media for not respecting her privacy one moment and in the next breath court them to put her latest titbit out in the public domain.

It was however a tragedy and when someone dies before their time there is an added sadness.

So, as I was close by and had time to kill, I decided to go and pay my respects.

It was a glorious day, a real Indian summer day, as I walked through the gardens, and all of a sudden there she was, not Diana obviously, but the girl in the white dress and I was stopped in my tracks.

Not because she was stunningly beautiful, she was indeed an above average, attractive young woman in a long flowing white dress. 

What made her noteworthy was the fact that with the afternoon sun directly behind her, she was suddenly quite naked, to all intents and purposes.

She had stopped to light a cigarette and to the casual observer it would have appeared that I had stopped to watch her smoke it.

Though that wasn’t what I was looking at, and I was not the only man or woman for that matter to be transfixed and mesmerised by what we saw.

This was of course before the fashion of waxing everything had taken hold, certainly with her.

She just continued to stand before us and smoke her cigarette and we just stood there staring.

I don’t quite know how long we would all have stayed there, had a cloud not obscured the sun, but there was an audible sigh from more than one of our group when she was suddenly clothed again.

Sadly, the show was over and we all moved off and as I proceeded to the palace to sign the book of condolence I felt suddenly ashamed at my lascivious behaviour at such a solemn time.

Although the girl in the white dress should have felt more ashamed walking through Kensington Gardens sans underwear.

Uncanny Tales – (022) Linda’s Corker

It was an ordinary afternoon in 1970 when I was in the fourth year of Secondary School at Alexander Park Comprehensive School. 

It had only been called Alexandra Park as long as I had been going there, before that, it was Cecil Rhodes Secondary Modern but as Haringey was such a racially mixed borough political correctness reared its ugly head, long before it was even a thing, and the name was changed.

The racial mix of the area was well reflected in the student body, in fact the School assembly was like a session at the United Nations.

We were sitting at the back of Mr Cooke’s 4^th year biology class.

It was the first class after lunch, and we were watching a very boring natural history film about mountain goats.

Rich and I had taken second sitting dinners which consisted of liver and bacon whereas Wendy’s lunch was made up largely of cider.

“That billy goat’s beard looks like Palmers fanny” Wendy said out of the blue and giggled

“What?” I said taken by surprise

“Who’s?” Rich asked

“Claire Palmers fanny looks like that” she said and pointed at a large brown goat on the screen.

“Seriously?” Rich said

“But she’s so small” I said irrelevantly

Claire Palmer was the smallest girl in our year by a distance, small and plain with straight lank hair and a freckled complexion, looking back she always looked like she should have been a year or two behind us but I guess she stopped growing when her pubic hair started. 

I had known her since junior school, but she was the quiet shy type and I don’t think she said more than a few words to me in all that time.

To be truthful she wasn’t really on my radar but at the moment Wendy made her lurid statement Claire became significantly more interesting.

“She’s the hairiest girl in our year” Wendy continued

“What’s yours like?” I asked taking advantage of her alcohol induced indiscretion.

“Ask him” she said nodding in Rich’s direction

“You’ve been in Wendy’s drawers?” I quizzed Rich in total shock, and more than a little jealously, not because I fancied Wendy, but I hadn’t been in anyone’s pants except my own.

Rich just blushed, so I punched him hard the arm.

I couldn’t believe he’d had his digits among Wendy’s ginger pubes and furthermore that he hadn’t told me all about it, he was my best mate after all, and furthermore he was a real drip and he’d scored before me.

“Linda McLean’s got a corker though” Wendy said a little too loud as Linda turned around and looked straight at me.

 

As we were walking to the next lesson Wendy suddenly felt sick and went off to throw up, Rich had French in the annex and I had German in the main block and it was when I was on my own that I felt a tug on my jacket sleeve.

“What were you lot talking about in Biology?” A girl asked and when I turned around, I saw it was Linda McLean with a frown on her face.

I liked Linda even though she was completely flat up top, but I had to admit I liked her even more after finding out she was more substantially equipped down below.

“What?” I said

“What were you saying about me in biology?” she asked forcefully

“We were talking about the flicks” I lied “Rich wanted to see “Rio Lobo”, John Wayne’s latest and Wendy fancied “Love Story”“

“I heard my name mentioned” she continued, and I shuffled my feet as I struggled to find an answer.

“Well um….” I mumbled “I said I was going to ask you to the flickers, and Wendy said “Great idea, Linda’s a corker”

She didn’t speak for a moment then she said

“Well are you going to ask me then?”

 

That Saturday night on the back row of the ABC Muswell Hill I confirmed Wendy’s assessment that it was indeed a corker and I was left to speculate that if little Claire Palmer was considerably more luxuriant down below than Linda then she must have had to wear bigger knickers.

The following summer at the Durnsford Road Lido I found out first hand so to speak but that’s another story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uncanny Tales – (020) Unsuitable Viewing at the Lido

 

When I was growing up in the sixties we lived in North London and one of the things I really loved to do was to go swimming and we were quite well fixed for pools in the area and I would swim until the chlorinated water left my eyes red and sore.

But of all the pools I swam in, the one I loved to swim in most of all was the Durnsford Road Lido, especially during the summer months.

It was only sixpence to get in and for that paltry sum you could stay all day long, which of course I did and I would spend as many days of the holidays there as I could, playing with friends and watching Mad Jack stunt diving off the high platform.

When I first started to go there it was just a joy to spend all the time in the sparkling water.

As I got older, I would come to appreciate the many delicacies on which to feast the eyes upon, delicacies invisible to the eye of the eleven-year-old boy who first visited the pool.

 

On one particular visit after I’d got the maximum value from my sixpence and enjoyed a full day in the pool, I was getting changed and I caught sight of something quite disturbing as an old man stepped out of the shower.

Though when I say he was an old man I should point out that from the perspective of a teenage boy everyone over twenty was old.

But just as he passed me he lowered his towel, though not in a pervy way, and he revealed the biggest scrotum I had ever seen, before or since, not that I had seen a lot of scrota and those I had seen belonged to my peer group so were somewhat pink and hairless.

But not only was this old man’s scrotum huge it was also purple, in fact it looked like a large purple boxing glove.

I was taken aback by the extraordinary spectacle but with my limited knowledge of old men’s genitalia I was left to conclude that I was destined to acquire a large purple ball bag of my own one day, and as I stood there holding my speedos in front of my shrivelled specimen I thought

“If I’m going to get one like that, then I’m definitely going to need bigger trunks”

 

Uncanny Tales – (019) Tales of a Young Angler

 

My father was a very keen angler and my older brother followed suit and in the fullness of time, so did I.

There was however a vast difference between my brother and I, namely that he was a good fisherman like my Dad, and I was hopeless.

Amongst other things I couldn’t bait my hook properly, I was hapless, noisy and terribly clumsy.

If I managed to avoid falling in the river, lake, or stream. I would drop something in the water instead.

The inherent problem with fishing for me was (A) the fishing rod was twice as long as I was and (B) the line had a hook on the end.

I would get snagged in weeds or bushes or trees, passers-by, my Dad, my brother, a boat, in fact you name it and I would get hooked on it.

But if all of that wasn’t enough to qualify me as a useless angler then the fact that I had never caught a fish would have sealed it for certain.

For three years I fished with my Dad or my brother or with mates and nothing, and the longer my drought went on the smaller my angling peer group became.

I was so desperate to catch a fish, but the harder I tried the worse I got.

I even dreamed of catching fish and in those dreams, I caught them by the dozen on unbaited hooks and I reeled them in effortlessly,

But when I woke again next morning, I was the same crap angler I was the night before who nobody wanted to fish with.

So, it was for this reason that I found myself fishing alone at the age of nine on Southgate Boating Lake.

I had been there all day and hadn’t even got a bite so just before I decided to call it a day, I cast my line in again, this time from the boat jetty.

My float went plop about forty feet from the jetty and I nodded to myself with satisfaction.

Within a minute or two I became aware of something digging into my foot.

I waggled my wellied foot in an effort to dislodge the source of the discomfort, but when I put my foot down, I realised I had just succeeded in moving the offending article more securely under my foot.

There was only one solution to the problem and that was to remove my boot and shake out the debris.

I lay my rod on the jetty and sat down next to it and removed my welly.

As I shook it a small pebble bounced off the jetty and splashed in the water which was when I realised my float was bobbing franticly in the still water.

I had a bite, and it was a bloody good one.

I didn’t have time to replace my welly, so I quickly stood up and snatched up my rod and line and struck.

I felt instinctively I had it hooked and began reeling it in, my maiden catch.

And there I stood on the Southgate Lake boat jetty reeling in my catch wearing only one welly.

Moments later I landed the thrashing writhing monster of the deep, a three-inch-long Gudgeon the most beautiful fish I had ever seen.

And in timely fashion just as the fish appeared a small group of angling friends were passing the jetty to verify the breaking of my angling duck and as a result I would no longer have to fish alone.

It is a day that is etched into my memory and I was so grateful for that tiny fish and incidentally that was the one and only Gudgeon I ever caught.

 

PAYMENT IN KIND

 

On the seventh day

Of the seventh month

Londoners paid the price

The ultimate price

in blood and death

In part only they paid

On that July morning

For years of liberalism

Historically Opening our doors

To the world

Offering Succor

To every race and creed

And on July 7^th

Our kindness was repaid

Not in like kind

But in bloody vengeance

By the terror of Islam

They bit viciously

At the hand that fed them

A hand offered in friendship

Torn to shreads

Instead of embracing us

And returning in kind

They choose instead

To embrace terror

We should beware

Of giving of our hearts

To the heartless ones

Who plot to destroy us

This was only a warning

They will come again

HI’S AND LO’S

 

There was a tight rope walker

On a high wire in Sydney harbour

While in London was another man

Being blown by an octogenarian

 

The men a thousand miles apart

Nearer the end than to the start

Have the same thought suddenly

Occurring to them simultaneously

 

There seems to be no comparing

Oral sex and tight rope walking

So, what makes both men frown?

Well, the thought of looking down

THE LONDON EYE

 

The London Eye

Is a giant wheel

All white and bright

And made of steel

It’s slowly turning

Round and round

Offering views of London

Above the ground

Famous landmarks and

Sights dramatic

The nation’s history

Panoramic

Old visitors express

Sentiment

In children’s faces

Wonderment

But all agree

It’s worth the fee

To ride the wheel

The sights to see

MILLENIUM

Two thousand years to celebrate

Let’s make our plans don’t hesitate

We’ll build it big we’ll build it grand

On Greenwich Peninsula it will stand

An attraction great for us all to flock

On a theme of time? Perhaps a clock

What in their wisdom would they decide

To build beside the river side

What would they chose to mark the day

Well, they got it wrong I’m sad to say

So, what did they build to mark this date?

An attraction not even second rate

A site for visitors to stand and mock

A Ferris wheel and an upturned Wok

BOWES PARK 1920

 

London’s north was once my home

Before the countrywide I’d roam

I dwelt in London’s north it’s true

In postal code N22

It’s forty years now since those days

And thing have changed in many ways

Take Tele-com's for examples sake

No direct dial calls could we make

No mobile phones or call waiting

No answer phones or message paging

The best time then to speak with friends

Was After 6 and at weekends

Even numbers then were differ-ing

No eleven-digit number-ing

Numbers then were much more classic

Though lines did have a lot more static

The phones were much more practical

And not some fashion article

And we Answered calls with more panache  

Not impolite nor curt nor brash

Wed Pick it up and say Hello?

Bowes park one nine two oh