In 1966 the world cup came to England and lots of things were going on, I started collecting the coins from the Shell garage with the players pictures on them. Dad got them free when he bought petrol for the car. He also got a colour television for us, it was a big 28” screen and looked huge in the living room. We held a party for friends on the day of the final and we watched it after the pub had closed in the afternoon. What a celebration we had when England won.
One Sunday afternoon after the pub had shut we were on the lawn by the bowling green when there was an accident at the road junction of Bescar brow lane.
A motor bike coming from Southport had hit the front of a car coming out of the lane and the rider had gone over the handle bars on to the road. It was a good job he had been wearing his helmet as it was worn away on one side where it had rubbed on the road surface. Mum and Dad rushed up to help and mum used tea towels to wrap the young riders wounds up. One of the drivers got out of the car and said “I am a doctor let me help” He examined the young man and splinted his legs as he had caught them on the handle bars of the motor bike. The ambulance was called by the police man that was on duty and when it arrived the doctor gave the driver a list of the riders injury’s. We found out later that the doctor was Mr Porteuse, a surgeon that would operate on Mum in the future. The rider turned up in my life a few years later as the art master at Wigan road school Andrew Overton, He later left teaching and opened a pottery in Bispham.
When I was fourteen I started opening the pub in an evening after school, this was against the law but no one bothered. I could pull a pint or serve any of the drinks and I knew all the prices. I earned a few pounds a week and that’s how I got my first record player. Dad went to Curries in Southport and bought it for me on hire purchase and he paid the 10/- a week until it was paid for. I used to get all the records that came off the juke box in the pub, sometimes they might have a scratch and I had to buy adapters because the centres had been taken out for the juke box mechanism. That did not matter to me I had the biggest collection of seven inch singles in the school. I bought twelve inch LP’s in the record shop in Burscough street in Ormskirk.
I also learnt how to play darts, standing for hours throwing at the board when the pub was closed. I can still repeat all the numbers in the correct order clockwise round the board. I learnt how to subtract in my head doing the scores. Serving customers and adding up the prices of the drinks became second nature. We did not have tills to do the adding it all had to be done so quickly in your head or the customers would have to wait longer for their drinks. At fifteen I was running the cocktail bar on a Saturday and Sunday night on my own. There were loads of regulars and I knew all their names, I found if I called them by name I always got more tips. There was a really excited feeling when one of the local farmers Colin Sephton was selected to go to the Olympics. He was a skeet shooter and he and another farmer from the Northwest, Bob Braithwaite ,went to Mexico in 1968.
Another person that would feature greatly later in my life was Chris Hedges, he owned a frozen food company , Hedges Frozen Foods, down the road with his two brothers. He came in as a customer and met one of the waitresses that worked for my Dad. They eventually married and Mum did the catering for their wedding. I would work for Chris and his two brother for sixteen years later in my life.
One person that sticks in my mind was a delivery man that I got to be friends with. He brought the fresh bread , pies and cakes for mum and he drove a van all over the area. His name was Steve and he treated me specially nice, he would let me go on his round with him into Southport and all round Birkdale and into Formby before taking me home. It was a Sunblest van and I think it was from Scotts Bakery on Dunnings bridge road in Bootle. I did not know it but a few years later and Steve and his wife Rita moved into the house across the road from me and my wife, our children grew up playing with each other. My first record player eventually went to his son Adam as his first record player.
When we moved to the Morris there was a caravan parked in the back yard and it belonged to Ted and Marion Pierce. They lived and worked in Liverpool but came down to Scarisbrick at the weekend, they helped out in the pub and slept in the caravan most Saturday nights. In appearance they always reminded me of the TV chef Fanny Craddock and her husband Jonny. I knew they lived just off Penny lane and this was somewhere special as the Beatles had written a song about it. They had two sons who were both a lot older than me. I remember the eldest was David and he was an engineer on a ship. One week they did not come down and I found out later that David had had an accident whilst working on the ship. As it was so hot in the engine room they were working striped to the waist,. He was working with a gas torch and it was put down pointing at a can of oil, as he turned around the oil exploded and he was burnt on the face and chest. It was a good job he was wearing a neckerchief or his throat would have been burned and he would have died. He was badly burned and never went back to sea again. My youngest brother Simon was born in 1969 and Marion, Ted and David stood as godparents for him.
I started running the cocktail bar for my Dad on a Saturday and Sunday night and I really enjoyed it. Many of his and Mums friends would stay late and I would stay up with them I was allowed to have a drink too. My Dad believed that it was better to educate me how to drink and what to drink. I was allowed beer and an occasional sherry but never spirits. It really educated me as to the trouble that drink could cause. When I was working in the cocktail bar Dad had employed some students from Edgehill college as part time waiters. They had a rented house on Shirdley Hill and would regularly have parties to which I was asked to go. Dad said OK but Mum was worried about me at 16 and these older lads getting up to all sorts as she said. Dad said I was old enough to be trusted and let me go with the lads after the pub had closed.
When we got there the party was all ready in full flow with music blaring out of all the open windows. I seen to remember Tunderclap Newnam and “Something in the air”. The drinks were all in the kitchen and I was given a can of beer. Everyone seemed to be older than me so I just sat down at the side and watched until one of the girls grabbed me and dragged me up to dance. She was much older than me, at least 19, she was in a bright colourfull mini dress, high heel boots with long blonde hair and very pretty, we danced for ages and ages. There was the smell of wacky baccy and joss stick, I decided not to take a drag when the joint came round, beer was enough for me. It went on and on all night and I did not get any sleep. I can remember standing outside with the girl that had dragged me up to dance as the sun came up. It was a wonderful dawn with all the colours of the rainbow in the sky, the song birds drowned out the music from the open windows, I felt free and really grown up.
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