It is late on a winter’s evening. Dark, but easy to see thanks to the sodium street lamps that cast a comforting orange glow along the roads we must walk that take us from our local, The Three Barrels (of which a trip to was always referred to as “Goin’ dahn the Barrels”), to my friend’s home.
The incredible good fortune of working for an estate agents in the 1990’s meant it was entirely possible for my 18 year-old friend to get a cheap mortgage and then fill her house with lodgers. To me this was an amazing turn of events given that no-one in my immediate family owned a house and an indicator that perhaps I could do the same thing one day too (buy a house that is, my skin was too thin to survive estate agent sales culture – or what people seemed to think of them at the time).
The evening had been fun. Karaoke with pints of lager and lime to lubricate our vocal chords. Our preference is for songs like ‘I Will Survive’ or, if we’re feeling especially harmonious, ‘Lean On Me’, but the locals who are our parents’ age do not like this. No. What they want is ‘London Songs’. And they ask for them not by writing a request on a piece of paper, but by heartily shouting “Sing some fahkin’ London songs!”.
It makes sense; Basingstoke as a town exploded in size thanks to the London Overspill programme which saw a wholesale uplift in living conditions for tens of thousands of people moved from bombed-out houses to a shiny new town in Hampshire. Inside toilets, running hot water, gardens and good schools were remembered fondly as amazing things for the families who took on the very first tenancies. For the original Hampshire Hogs who had to make way for building on a massive scale to accommodate these people, the feeling may not have been quite the same. For us kids who were born a generation or two later – the phrase “you don’t know you’re born” could not have been any more accurate.
We know our place, so we oblige – belting out a rendition of ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van’ and taking special care not to sing the football version that would get you an immediate detention if sung in a classroom. Chas n’ Dave we are not, so no-one buys us a pint. But at the same time no-one throws a pint so we reckon we’ve come off ok.
That was half an hour ago, this is now. We have arrived in the parking area near my friend’s house and are in need of something to do to let off some excess steam before going indoors. But what?
There are no driveways here. Instead, as was the way with housing designed when car ownership was not a given, and neighbourhood planning focused on giving children outdoor space to play, there is a large patch of grass ringed by trees that buffer the houses from the concrete bays and garages which are shared between the neatly arranged short terraces bordering three sides of the green.
Looking around we can see the recent frost caused the trees to shed their leaves. Piles of crisp brown foliage cover the grass and much of the road. For a moment, we consider scooping them into a pile and leaping around like lunatics…but that would wake the neighbours. We look around for inspiration and find it in the shape of our other friend’s car.
The thing with passing your driving test and getting a car by the age of 18 is that even if you have the requisite maturity to keep your car in tip-top condition, your friends may not. Or you may mistakenly believe that your non-driving friends won’t notice that you don’t always lock your car. We know that our friend loves her Ford Fiesta but we also know that she doesn’t lock it. Emboldened by the knowledge that were our friend to look out of her window, she wouldn’t be able to see us, we decided to do something way more daring than leaping in leaves.
Sidling up to the car, my friend tries the handle. It yields and she pulls the door open. A quick slide into the driver’s seat and she pops the stalk on the front passenger door lock; providing me with entry and enabling us to work side-by-side as we nimbly nip from the bottom of the trees and back again with our arms full of leaves. We’re filling up the Fiesta and we’re going all the way to the roof.
Unfortunately for us, we can’t fill the boot. What was once a space reserved for a spare wheel or shopping is now home to an enormous speaker that even we’re not idiotic enough to touch. Used to alarming effect to alert pedestrians to the car’s oncoming presence, our friend uses it to blare out Shabba Ranks and Buju Banton on the highways and byways of Basingstoke town centre. As much as we love mischief, we are not letting our magical mulch formula touch those bass bins.
A short while later our mission is accomplished. We are like naughty Milk Tray men scooting about in the dark, leaving presents for a beautiful lady while she sleeps. Our friend is sure to love the ingenuity and we’re looking forward to seeing if she can guess who did the deed. It doesn’t take long.
The following morning we are awoken by hammering at the door. The house filled with lodgers is being woken by a young woman with a car is full of leaves….We open the door and are done for.
‘YOU did this!’
‘Did what?’
‘You know what you bloody did. You filled my car with LEAVES! And if you don’t clear it out you are NEVER getting a lift to Reading again.’
Busted but with our friendship remarkably unbroken, we shuffle out to the Fiesta and put right what we have done. Every last bit of leaf is fastidiously removed partly in thanks to the Kirby hoover my friend’s mum bought off a door-to-door salesman who vacuumed her mattress and nearly made her throw up at the contents it collected (I swear to god it they put stuff down when you weren’t looking). Job done, we stand back and await our friend’s reaction to our work.
‘Pretty good’ she says.
We are done, we’re in the clear! She drives away smiling, and as she does, my friend says:
‘Just wait til she finds out about the leaves in the glove compartment’
Uh-oh…..
******
This is an extract from my current work in progress: Absolute Scenes. A book that will aim to capture what it was like to grow up on a council estate in the ’80 and reclaim and reflect some of the joy of working class culture.
All scenes are based on real events that took place in my life. Names and some of the details are changed to protect the identities of those who really *don’t* want to be identifiable in the recollections of someone with a history of sharing too much information.
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