It brings back character-forming and painful memories ...
This was a row of Victorian tenements in the town of Bacup, Lancashire, where I went to my second school.
I'm talking 1950s here.
Plantation Street, was a smelly, rat-infested development where policemen dared not venture.
We lived in a 'nice' house at the top of the hill.
One particularly fearless policeman frequently popped in to have tea with my mother.
"Go and play outside," she would say to me.
My walk to school involved 'goin' daan t' bonks'. The 'bonks' was as an abandoned quarry from which I would emerge down the lane on the right of the picture.
I was regularly intimidated by the roughnecks who lived in considerable deprivation, (as I now recognise with hindsight,) along 'Plant Back'.
Their favourite taunt was, "Are you Catholic or protestant?"
"What a strange opening gambit," I thought.
Now, I was never sure about their motivation. Nor did I know the accurate answer to their enquiry.
Even less did I know the possible lie that would save me from physical abuse.
Once, after multiple painful encounters, I responded, "Agnostic."
"Huh?" they said, half-inquisitively.
Then they beat me up once more!
'Agnostic' is a word I didn't understand at the time.
(I'm still not sure!)
I am determined that I will NEVER use that word again.
2 comments:
Such evocative prose leaves me gagging for more! I yearn to read further of your tales of long ago, and of the impact of environment on a tender and impressionable soul, and to see if it helps me to understand why you are as you are today.
I have always been a timorous beasty.
That goes back to my frightening memories of potty-training.
You really don't need to know about that, do you?
My life remains a learning process.
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