Plank Lane Working Men's Club Trip to Southport

My apologies to all who do not understand a word of this.

 

It was Lancashire United Tramways originally except this was a red double decker bus and we sat upstairs at the back to show how tough we were.

It was Mary Wells and My Guy that we heard every where on our tinny little trannies. Strange how words change meaning.

It was a packet of crisps and a bottle of Vimto on the way there together with half a crown to spend. You could buy 50 tickets for rides with half a crown.

A stick of seaside rock and another bottle of pop on the way back.

Lunch was the Star cafe down a side street with pie chips and mushy peas. Except it wasn't a pie it was some grey amorphous mess with a small floor tile of pastry. Or what purported to be pastry but was really something of interest to an archaeologist. The little one's were sick and Mothers said “bless” a lot.

My father swore at me, hit me several times and told me not get too excited and spoil it for everyone. I wonder what it was? He also told me he would give me something to cry about. As if he'd noticed I was lacking in that department.

Then it was the fun fair and more Mary Wells, brylcreemed lads on the dodgems and kiss, command, promise, or show us your knickers on the ghost train. But only if you had been on the back seat upstairs on the bus.

It was toffee apples that always, always fell off the sticks and were always black inside. It was sticky candy floss, pink and disgusting. It was getting ripped off by all and sundry when all you wanted the large teddy bear that no one ever won or the real, plastic, historically accurate, genuine suit of armour as worn by King Arthur and his Knights. Or even the genuine Lone Star Sharpshooter rifle with white plastic stock and a solid metal telescopic sight. It was caps to go with it and a cowboy hat with tassels.

It was winning six toy soldiers with surplus plastic from strange moulds. It was scabs on knees and elbows from the big slide and dust and dirt from the fun house.

It was always stopping at a pub on the way to allow the committee to get a brown and bitter split, allow for the removal of flat caps and the placing of braces over vests. Technically it was a toilet stop for the kiddies, you know. Aye we knew and we didn't want to go, but they did. A small barrel was loaded onto the bus.

 

It was when she came that year. She joined the bus at the pub. She came upstairs to the strains of My Guy and she shone.

She was my stupid cousin's cousin and she sat next to him. She had two ten shilling notes and beautiful blond hair and she shone. My cousin kept poking her in the side, really hard so I hit him and still she shone. She eclipsed the bus. Bright light that came from her smile shone through the windows and there was a silent roar in my ears.

I offered her my crisps because she had been late. She refused but she did take my spare straw for her drink because hers had sealed through too much sucking. I kept that straw for a year afterwards. Twelve months of stale Vimto really stinks.

She had lunch with the adults and they got proper pie, in a dish. I threw my Roman tile at my cousin and his father hit him for throwing it back.

I followed her on all the rides until my tickets ran out and then I just followed her.

I was mortified because she went home on another bus. But I extracted, with suitable force, a promise from my cousin that he would require the regular use of a baby sitter on Saturday nights in future.

We sat on the back step of the club late into the evening when we returned as our parents got drunk. I wrote her a poem in ball point pen, on the photograph of Southport I got from my stick of rock. We practiced the ancient art of transfering Vimto by mouth and the bubbles got up our nose. She kissed me although she was a year older than me and I never saw her again.

Reviews

[arbitrary jane]

such stories here. and though, they read like 'just the facts' (well, facts in vivid, shocks of glorious detail), there is so much under the surface. the deep, bottomless oceans of young emotion. i saw it, i heard it, i tasted it, i felt it... just... freaking supurlative.

[holly]

This is really good material. It's brisk and painfully, laughingly honest. I was a child on the other side of the Atlantic but had the same sorts of experiences. Loved the language. It has an almost lilting quality. Good!

[J. Marc]

You would not be surprised if someone tells you that your writings have some similarities with Orlando Furioso's, would you?
Anyway, I think i undestood 99% of the story and can tell I appreciated it. There is a kind of "eternal male decency" in it, you want to tell the story about your encounter in a very withdrawn way hence the flurry of details about the secondary plots. There is something very gentleman like in it, although I know you will rush to tell me that you are nothing of that sort! Nice work!!

[Emily B]

This is a wonderful boyhood narrative. Reminiscent of Tom Sawyer and his sweet Becky, the boy in every man will probably smile a little inside at the memory. I loved all of the beautiful and descriptive details. It seemed a little like I was there in another seat, at another table.

[Phil Sanders]

Brilliant ... such wonderful memories superbly recreated .. love it .....

[SPINNING ON that dizzy ..]

Oh - if you were here you would hear the sound of laughter and my singing every word of My Guy! Ken, this is great - what a recount of a summer day and an outing with family and friends. I can remember days like this when we went on family outings as well. Laughed right out loud at the posturing of going to the pub so the kiddies could use the bathroom! Is that every parents excuse? I think I will keep this in my favs and think of it as an anthem to summer! I will have to do my own version of a day at Crystal Beach with kids from school and cousins when a good report card got you tickets from a local supermarket! This is such a fun little slice of a crush and just that flavor of summer - cotton candy, candy apples, salt water taffy, too much soda.... poking your cousin - or better yet, him getting in trouble for poking you back. Nothing you can do cuz I'm stuck like glue to my guy....nothing you can say ...... i'm sticking to my guy like a stamp to a letter..... cannot tell you how many transistor radios I had.... the best one I got from my godfather for my first communion! haha..... Thank you for this!

Kath

[Arthur Henn]

Vimto is a purple soft drink in the United Kingdom. It contains the juice of grapes, raspberries and blackcurrants, flavoured with herbs and spices.

I had to look up (Vimto) sound like a good drink.
Oh yes the memories, They never leave us, especially ones of this caliber. Thanks Ken for sharing this with all of us. I like the way you wrote this. I'm not good at the mechanics of writing. Maybe one day.

Art

[R J Askew]

Brilliant job. I love every line of it. It is evocoative for me as it reminds me of things I have forgotten, like the tassels on the cowboy hats. And I could smell the caps. It has life and truth in every line and feels alive. It is also intensely poingnant because what you describe has all gone. I don't mean this in a mean spirited way, just that there comes a time in life when we are so far away from all that we were it hardly seems that we were like that. But we were. I think every word of this will have meaning for thousands of people who experienced the things you pack into the piece. Ahh, Vimto!

Could you edit it down and poem it?

[Donald Meikle]

Jeez lar thanks, or rather ta for all those memories of mine down to the pleated skirt and ribbon hair.
Southport aftertaste and watching rich kids ride the donkeys

[W.k.kortas]

Not only is it a wonderfully detailed (and, in spots, tongue in cheek) tale of a trip to the seaside, but also a wistful and perfectly rendered look at that first awakening of what eventually rounds into form as that messy spot in our beings where love and lust try to work out a truce--"shone" is the perfect word to describe what that girl looks like to all of us. An wistful and expertly drawn piece that took me back to that happily haunted twelve year-old version of myself.