A favourite moment by Joe Pemberton
Playing jacks in the juniors school playground with our Alicia and her big girlfriends. It was dinner time and I’d already had me dinner, chips and something, anything with chips was my favourite, them being the days before you had chips with everything. And it wasn’t semolina or sago or rice pudding for pudding. Can’t remember what it was but I know I had seconds.
So there I was in the Greenheys school playground in Moss Side Manchester in the late 1960s, I was in the juniors’ playground which I wasn’t allowed in as I was still in the infants but I was with our Alicia and her big girlfriends. If I got caught I’d get the cane again. Watching them playing jacks reminded me of them circus juggling acts on the telly, they were so fast. To make things a little more interesting they added a few rules of their own whilst the ball was in the air such as standing up and doing twirl, a quick game of clap-hands - ‘my father went to sea sea sea’, and any others they could do in the time the ball was in the air, which was anything between ten seconds and a few hundred feet, which ever came first. They occasionally let me have a go but that was only so they could have a good laugh.
It was in the middle of one of my miserable attempts that we heard the screeching of tyres and a loud crash bang. Everyone rushed over to the far corner of the playground where the noise came from. Our Alicia told me to stay put and look after the jacks and coats, which I thought was pretty stupid thing to ask. I didn’t dare tell her that to her face though, I just followed everyone else and hoped she wouldn’t see me. As I scrambled over the other kids to get at the railings I could hear screaming and crying. The first thing I saw was an overturned car and woman wandering round like she’d lost an earring or something. There was a man sat on the pavement with his head in his hands just like me Uncle John when he’s had too much rum and all the cars had stopped and they were parked really stupidly. It was then that I saw the lollipop man who had clipped me round the ear for crossing the road without him, only now he was lying down in the middle of Lloyd Street without his cap on. It was then I discovered he was bald. Some of the kids near me were laughing, well, it sounded like laughter. There was blood by his right ear but his head looked all right to me, all white and shiny in the midday sun in the middle of Lloyd Street at the traffic lights where it meets Great Western Street. I saw me class mate Errol to the left of me, clinging to one of the railings and shouted to him.
‘Oi, do you think he’s dead?’
‘Cors he is, stupid.’
‘Will we get the afternoon off then?’
‘Oh yeah!’
An ambulance came rushing round the corner just missing the lollipop man by inches. I rummaged through me pockets and found something square and podgy. Hey great, a Mojo! I knew I had one left, strawberry my favourite. I unwrapped the sticky wrapper, licking me fingers so not to lose any of the fruity flavours and chewed away as happy as I’d been for a long time, not daring to blink in case I missed any of the show right there in front of me.
‘Will it be on the telly?’
‘Hope so.’
The thought of being on the telly made me dribble all down me shirt. I’d have given Errol a Mojo only it was me last one. And anyway, he never shared his crisps with me this morning, the greedy pig.
What turned out to be my most favourite moment at school ended as abruptly as it began; a loud clang clang of the school bell and everyone scattered automatically as the teachers told us to get inside, though not as sternly as they usually did. It was then I remembered the coat and jacks. When I went back to them there was our Alicia and her big girlfriends looking as mad as hell. The coats were still there but no jacks.
‘I thought I told you to stay here and look after them. I’m goner kill you when I get home.’
Well, even though she didn’t kill me and she gave me a Chinese burn instead, and even though Errol was wrong and we still had to go to classes, and I got the cane again along with Errol for throwing pieces of paper under Miss Ryan’s desk – that was so we could pick them up and get a right good look up her skirt – nothing but nothing could spoil that day for me. As for the lollipop man, or Mr Riley as he was called by the headmaster during assembly, he did die, but not until a few days later at Withington Hospital. The same one where I was born. Our Alicia said Mr Riley had lived on the same road as us, near to those white people who don’t speak to nobody but themselves but I don’t ever remember seeing him.
Then again, I didn’t know he was bald either.
