Adolescence

One of the most miserable times of your life is adolescence. I've been going through mine since 1966. There was no such thing as adolescence then, it hadn't been invented.

Despite having four sisters I was painfully shy around the beings with boobs. I would blush and become tongue tied if a girl so much as looked at me, not good when trying to form any sort of relationship. It didn't help going to an all male grammar school. I don't think the homosexuals even enjoyed it as that was also some years away from being invented. The reality for most of the teenagers in the U.K. was the same as mine. The swinging sixties only existed within a certain social class in London, and the home counties. It is fair to say that 1966 didn't arrive in Bingley until 1977. There was only one definite none virgin in our school of around 1100. He caused a huge scandal in 1969 by getting his girlfriend pregnant. I used to think a girl was naked if she took her hat off.

Having said that, it was the era of the mini and micro skirt. When you are young and brought up with them all around you, it somehow wasn't sexy. There were thighs and knickers on view everywhere but it somehow seemed normal. Even the Queen had her skirts above the knee (and a young prince Edward I'll wager). My Mum even wore shorter skirts for Gods sake.

In 1968 I got a summer job in a textile mill. They actually produced knitting wool. On our floor there were about 5 males and sixty females, the majority of which came from the local sink estate. They were known as ballers. I assumed it was for packing the wool but it was an unintended double entendre. I didn't know what a comfort zone was so fortunately I was too dumb to know I was out of it. I spent the first week blushing and stuttering. I had one piece of ammunition in my locker however. I had started to develop and express my sense of humour. To that point, no-one, not even me, knew I had one. I started with a worker whose feet smelt so bad the smell improved when he stood in dog shit on his way to work one day. He was a dirty bugger. He was strong too, twice my size but I marvelled at how he managed to put one foot in front of the other each day without falling over. Think "Lurch" from the Adams family. They stopped letting him have tea breaks as they had to retrain him after each one.

He used to steal things. Chocolate, sandwiches, drinks, anything you left on your space. He'd pick things up and take a bite out of them or have a swig. The saliva left behind glowed green and stuck like shit to a blanket. One day a consignment of wool arrived from Ireland and stuck to one of the boxes was a substantial quantity of rat shit (we deduced). Lurch rolled his own cigs. I took a half dozen turds and ground them into his tobacco tin. I waited. Not long as it turned out. A few minutes later he came back, opened his tin and rolled a fag. It took ages to light. It stank to high heaven. He smoked it. He never noticed. His own smell defeated it

Undaunted, the following week, I brought in a substantial quantity of very ripe pimento seeds. I cut a mars bar in two, sccoped some out, and joined the ends back before melting the chocolate over the crack with a lighter. I left it out. less than a minute later he passed, grabbed it, took a bite and threw it the rest back down. I waited for the fun to start. Nothing. Not a flicker. He swallowed it whole. I was gutted.

Next day he failed to turn up for work, and the next day. The following day, environmental health turned up. They closed the staff canteen.Lurch had shit his insides out for two days and could only remember eating from the staff canteen.

O.K. I digress from adolescence but it was all part of my education. I was there for six weeks and on the very last day I plucked up the courage to ask one of the girls out. She said yes. She was a classy piece. Her boyfriend was in prison for burglary, she wanted twins so she had one for each breast an  her hair was so bleached, crows used to dive bomb her for nesting material. I met her off the bus. She wore a suede mini skirt and a blue PVC mac. White knee length pvc boots completed the ensemble. We went to the cinema and saw an atrocious Elvis film called "speedway". I never touched her. At the end she went for a drink with her mates and I went home. It was a lucky escape. Had she not felt sorry for me she could have eaten me alive.

I find it hard to believe that boys can be so naive now. They have so many advantages over my time. Sex education, school proms etc. I'm bored now but you get my drift.