PINS - Rule Forty: How To Hide #2
(Bag o’dabs, then?)
He got his hair braided as a Christmas present for his mum, so she could be proud of him. He can’t hide his anger and frustration in any other way.
He ended up in Germany and came back in 1946, and never said what he’d seen apart from “it was terrible.” You know, I think he once said he saw people burning during air raids. Your dad asked who he was when he came back, didn’t know his own father, imagine being greeted like that. “There’s a strange man, mam, who is it?” He’s been busy with his politics and his choir ever since. Do you want a bit dinner?
She had it chopped off, breast cancer back then was a death sentence, you’d never know.
Padiham baths with the big white horse sign, like a hillside chalk figure, except it’s not. Always gave me the creeps, that sign. There was that afternoon strip club just down the road from that sign in a pub’s upstairs room, in the late 1980s. One of our lot being attacked and given a reet wigging by the stripper, “part of the show” apparently, had his head down towards t’other one’s bits, a big fella, too, expertly hidden ... Things like that always happened to that lad. Remember when he fell down a hole in the middle of a field and no-one knew where he’d gone? He ripped his ballsack open another time, climbing into his parents’ kitchen window, didn’t want them to know he’d been out.
No point saying anything, you know it’s not yours, all you’ll get is people trying to do you down and you’re trying to help by driving them over to the clinic.
But you can’t hide from your enemies after the Norfolk Street Ragnarok ooh no, that’s because one of them’s your landlord, and, okay, this needs a long breath, and I’m not sure if it’s a good story for the wake and certainly not for the funeral but maybe for the buffet afterwards when the kids have gone home. Reet, here goes, tha’ knows.
After a long night of chewing the cud over the world's affairs in the establishments of Accrington, he found himself unwelcome at the house he was renting on Norfolk Street, (due, I believe, to some romantic liaison between the landlord and a new beau). Unable to contemplate a return to the family seat, he decided to pick the lock using a brick to smash through the middle glass pane. Somehow this act triggered the tiresome process of falling through the door and removing the whole door from its jamb, including the full glass pane during the descent. Undeterred by the screams of panic from within, he’d got to his bed, and managed a good thirty seconds sleep before being evicted. He then went round to another house to crash out, where he was received and where, by most people's logic, this story should end.
Quite what convinced him to trim his sideburns at three o’clock in the morning is anyone's guess. Such are the machinations of the human mind. Regardless, and to his chagrin, he found that hairdressing is a skilled profession and not one for the casual Bohemian. Sideburns, and eventually most side, and some back hair had to be sacrificed in a late night attempt at follicular symmetry. Unfortunately, his nocturnal buzzings meant his host had to show him the door. All this I found out later. What I can say is that, the following morning, in full innocence of the situation, I received a call from what I first thought to be a foreign agent. A gravelly voice said “I need you to come round now. Don’t ask why, just come.” After a minute I realised who it was and set off for Norfolk Street. What greeted me was a scene out of a riot; a house with no door, and bricks and a lot of glass and broken wood in the street. And a strange looking friend, shorn of his luxurious sideburns and most of the hair on the side of his head. He looked like a convict on the run. We decided to get the door fixed. He measured the glass out and I drove him down to a glass merchant down Clayton. All seemed fine, we picked up some cheap putty and got a glass cut. I left him to it.
About three hours later I received a second call. “You won't believe it.” I went round to find him with a new haircut straight out of Full Metal Jacket, both hands bandaged and a new door. The putty had glass in it, meaning deep gashes in his hands and a dash to A and E. Plus, he hadn't measured the glass correctly so the cut pane fell through. Somehow he'd found time to sort his hair out, meaning a grim, steel-helmet-fitting barnet, and - courtesy of his landlord who'd cut his losses at some point - a new door. I think that may have been one of the last times he did any DIY. And he had to teach his class on the Monday. What do you reckon, alright for the buffet reception?
I can’t be doing with all this “Jack the Lad” stuff, it can’t be good for you lot, all you lot do is talk about drinking, you’re all broring, what’ve you got to hide?
An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.