Product of the Estate Part 2

It’s amazing—you start writing about your life growing up on an estate, thinking it’ll be a pretty quick endeavour. You jot down a load of headings to expand on, and suddenly you find you’ve written 1,000 (ish) words and have only got halfway through the list…

So without further ado—here’s part two of Product of the Estate.

I mentioned in a previous post two friends I had, both called Gary. Well… the three of us used to go round to another “friend’s” house called Richard. I use the quotes around Richard because he was a couple of years older than us and lived next door to the Gary my parents didn’t like—we’ll call him Gary B for clarity!

Richard, like Gary B, had parents who both worked full-time and was left to fend for himself during the school holidays. This meant we could play with no adult supervision, no parents telling us “don’t do that—it’s not safe.”

This led to us doing some pretty stupid stuff, like setting things on fire in his garden. 

In fairness, Richard had a really cool garden with a tree in it that had a tree-house. This tree had a plethora of really good branches to climb onto and jump out of. 

Instead of referring to branches as “that one there” or “this one here,” we actually named the various branches from which you could jump.. I can vividly remember two of the names. 

The first, and lowest, was called the Gary Daren't Jump Branch. This was cunningly named as Gary B wouldn't jump from it. Now some of you would think that this was sensible of Gary, but this branch was only about six feet from the ground and there was an old mattress that we would land on. The mattress was still in pretty good condition, with very few springs poking through, so we thought Gary was just being a wimp...

The second branch was called the 'Bumhold'

Copilot's interpretation of the Bumhold

The Bumhold was about 12 feet above the aforementioned mattress and there was no way Gary would climb up to this branch, let alone jump off it. 

One of the jumps we did was a Jedi Jump, in which you stand on the branch, step forward off it, spin 180°, and grab hold of the branch.. A bit like Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.

We spent many a happy day doing this.

In between all of this frivolity we found time to hang out on the park on the estate. This park contained a 'big slide' - This was actually a big slide... it had a wooden frame and must have been about 30 feet high, a small slide - about 10 feet high, a set of swings and a roundabout that could only be described as a vomit-inducing steel ball of hell. 

The roundabout's design was a steel sphere mounted on a pole that ran through the middle of it with a fixed circular wheel at the top which one gripped and pulled. This force rotated the sphere that had a horizontal ring attached to it with four seats. 

Fantastic speeds could be achieved with four people all pulling on the fixed ring in unison and I lost count of the number of times, after the roundabout had finally stopped, I alighted and then staggered away at a tangent to an imaginary circular plane before collapsing onto the grass groaning, feeling intense nausea and wishing for the release of death. #TrueStory

Other fun on the park was gained in summer - mainly the act of attempting to burn down the slide using a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays to a small point. We did manage to get a bit of smoke but the slide remained resolutely upright and flambé-free!

Stingies... (wistful, nostalgic chuckle). 

Stingies was a game played with a football and five or more players. One player was in goal and the rest were outfielders whose job was to score a goal. A goal could only be scored if it was a by a header or a volley. If a goal was scored without it being a header or a volley - that player took the place of the goalie. There was many an occasion in which the goalie would shield the ball - ensuring it crossed the line to force a goalie / outfielder swap. Likewise, if it was a header or a volley, and the goalie caught the ball - the goalie and outfielder swapped places. 

“Big deal,” you may say - "It's only being in goal"… Nope—you did not want to be in goal. 

At the beginning of the game everyone started on five points, and if a goal was scored with a header or a volley - this went down to four. When the last goal was scored, the poor sucker in goal had to endure 'stingies'... He had to bend over on the goal line while all the outfielders took a turn in taking a penalty kick, aiming to hit his butt. If you, as an outfielder, hit the goalies's butt - you moved forward one step and took another shot. Hence the name stingies - the poor sucker in goal could end up with a very stingy ringy*

I'll leave it there for this episode - I still have six more topics that would take up too much time to read for one post. It looks like there will be at least another 'Product of the estate' entry!

*Ringy = Ringpiece = Anus

Product of the Estate Part 1

I mentioned in the first post in this series that growing up on the estate I did was idyllic. This post will expand on that somewhat and tell of some of the exploits in which a 7-11-year-old managed to engage.

As a recap, the estate was a 'one road in, one road out' affair which meant that there was very little traffic. Very little traffic meant safety, safety meant happy mothers and happy mothers meant more freedom. Freedom to explore...

The playing field ran the entire length of the estate (about 1 KM) north to south and parallel to the brook that ran along the west length of the field, there was a shallow ditch about 6 feet wide that had hawthorn trees that had been planted on each side. These hawthorns totally encased the ditch and left a tunnel between them and this served as the perfect place in which to assume the role of a Star Wars character and run up and down with a 'clumsy and random' pretend blaster or a willow 'elegant weapon for a more civilised age' (Lightsaber). Quite what it must have looked like to 'normal people walking their dogs', I'll never know. I hope they looked at it the same way as I look at kids today running around pretending to shoot each other: With a sense of wonder at an active imagination and innocence.

Along the brook, there were a few areas in which willow trees were planted, usually in groups of three. The estate was built in the late 1950s so by 1983, these willow trees were very well established and thus provided the perfect places to build 'bases' and tree-houses. I should probably try and explain what I mean by 'bases'. A base was a secluded area to which a path had been beaten flat through the nettles and cow parsley We used to hang out in these bases, sitting on branches of the willow trees, just talking and planning our next escapade, which was usually something as innocuous as beating a path to the next base...

There were, if memory serves me correctly, three of these bases along the length of the brook:

1. Tramp's Den - Named thus because, upon beating the path to it, we found an old pair of damaged shoes. Our young minds put two and two together and concluded that a tramp must have slept there! There was no other evidence to support this claim, but the name stuck, and Tramp's Den it was. It was located on the other side of the brook from the estate, and you had to cross a bridge to get to it. A pipe ran along the underside of the bridge, and not long after establishing Tramp's Den as a base, we graduated from walking over the bridge to climbing down and hanging from the pipe with our feet about three feet from the water, shimmying to the other side. Doing this allowed the flora to grow over and hide the path, affording us a place that looked inaccessible to the outside world.
   
   
2. Tree Base - Looking back, this sounds like it should have been the first base that we named, but it wasn't - it was the 2nd... Clearly primary school English and creative writing was wasted on us 7-8-year-old boys as this has to be the most unoriginal yet perfectly descriptive name we could have come up with. Tree Base consisted of quite a few really tall willow trees that had no low branches so climbing was out of the question. This base was mainly used for hiding behind trees and shooting each other with home-made bows and arrows*
   
   
3. Sandy Bay - This was pretty much opposite Tree Base and sat right on the bank of the brook. We used to go fishing (another post) here mainly.

At a couple of points along the brook, there were pipes that crossed it. These pipes were about 18 inches in diameter and had a 45° slope leading up to a horizontal section roughly 12 feet above the surface of the brook, followed by another 45° slope down the other side.

As this was the 1980s, there were no spiky barriers to keep kids from crossing, so my friends and I used to climb up and shimmy across the pipe on our bottoms, then down the other side. One of the tests of how good your trainers were back then was the classic: “Can you walk up the 45° slope without using your hands or falling off?” Needless to say, a good number of us did, indeed, slip off the pipe.

After a few attempts, we soon graduated to walking—or even running—across the pipes and timing ourselves to see who could get across the brook the fastest. I never fell off, but a few of us had some explaining to do when we got home soaking wet and nursing a sprained ankle.

Not the pipe we walked across, but a close approximation.

Away from the brook, one of my earliest memories of growing up on the estate was playing out on the road on which our house was located. 

The house was a three-bedroom semi-detached property with an incredibly long garden and three enormous forest poplars that my granddad had planted - apparently not knowing what they were. These poplars dominated the skyline of the estate and were quite possibly the tallest trees there. 

Anyway, back to the memory of playing out on the road. My brother and I were typical young boys - noisy, boisterous and favouring games that involved a fair bit of talking loudly - OK shouting. We had two sit-on toys that we used to race up and down the road on. One of these was a tricycle and the other a plastic racing car with pedals that drove the front wheels. These vehicles could make a fair racket and I remember one day a gentleman who lived on the tiny close, situated off our road, coming round to our house to complain about the noise. 

Bear in mind this was during the day, probably just before or just after lunch. The gentleman's main gripe was that he worked nights and thus slept during the day. My brother and I were clearly disrupting his sleep.

You may remember from a previous post—about the smacked derriere I received at Play School—that my mother was fair but fiercely defensive of her family. She politely pointed out to the gentleman that it was not our fault he worked nights, and there was no way she was going to keep her boys indoors during the day.

Maybe he could invest in a pair of earplugs... Proper earplugs... Not bread.

Whether or not he did, I have no idea. My brother and I continued to play on the street with our cars.

Happy days!

Precocious at Playschool

Please forgive me, but my memories of being about 3-4 years old are a bit on the hazy side owing to the fact that it is 46 years since. Some of them have, however, coalesced into something coherent - namely that of being at playschool.

Playschool, or 'break for mothers' as it should properly be called, was held in the community centre within the estate on which I lived. I think I can still recall the layout of this (though I may have mixed up two locations). There was an entrance hall, from which you could turn left and go into a kind of lounge area that was furnished with a carpet, tables and chairs with a low ceiling. The ideal place to hold a wedding reception or something similar. Straight on from this was a sports hall with a high ceiling, in which you could (and I did) play badminton. At one end of this hall, the end near the reception area, was a kitchen, and adjacent to this was a small storage area.

The playschool was held in the sports hall area as it had a hard floor, from which glue, glitter, paper, and the inevitable vomit could easily be mopped up. I'm pretty sure that my mother used to drop me off there and then walk the 3 minutes back to our house where she could look after my 1 year-old brother or have a cup of tea and relax.

There were a number of tables that ran down one side of the hall and these tables contained a few craft things that the volunteers deemed appropriate for 3-4-year-olds.. My overarching memory of this setup was stickies...

Stickies: 
Noun:
The riveting exercise of sticking bits of coloured paper cut out into fun shapes and the 'herpes of the craft world' (glitter) onto a sheet of garishly coloured cardboard; like appliqué for idiots.. 

Image of the most dull and pointless craft exercise known to man...

As you may be able to glean from this definition, I was not overly enamoured with 'doing stickies'

WHACK! - Yes...I got a smack at playschool... No names will be mentioned because a) I have no idea who gave me the smack (My mother would know - fortunately she has no idea how to comment on a blog), and b) in this ridiculous age, I would not want to get the lovely volunteer into any trouble (she's probably dead now though but I wouldn't want to get her family into trouble...)

Apparently, I got the smack for standing up, folding my arms, pouting and saying "Stickies, stickies, stickies! I hate doing stickies! It's all we ever do!" When my mother picked me up from playschool that day I was a little upset / subdued and my mother asked me what was wrong. This set 3-4 year-old Mat blubbing again whereupon I told her that I had received a smack! "Where did you get the smack Matthew?" asked my mother. Picture the scene: 3-4-year-old crying in greater and greater intensity expecting to get into more trouble for getting into trouble (another blog post perhaps..) to the point of wailing now... "In the kitchen!" came my wailed, yet innocent reply. I'm not sure if my mother laughed at this - she certainly laughs when she retells this story though, so I imagine she did. Apparently the answer she was looking for related to a location on my body rather than a location in space.

My derriere was the bodily location, and I genuinely cannot remember how hard it was - Enough to make me cry though.

My mother can be quite a fierce defender of the weak and powerless; it is one of her amazing strengths. I think I have this right that she gave the smacker a piece of her mind and my derriere was safe from playschool smackage for the time being.

After this, my mother likely debating whether or not to send me back, was taken to one side by a lovely lady. I believe her name was Joan. She told my mother that I was bored as I had quite an active mind and was just not being stimulated enough by doing the stickies. Her suggestion, which she enacted, was to bring some screwdrivers (probably not allowed now) and some old mechanical clocks to playschool for me to take to pieces. I remember loving this and really getting quite into taking them to bits even if, when putting them back together, I had a few spare screws left over.. I don't think I was cut out to be an engineer but finding out how things like clocks worked was incredibly interesting to me. I think I still have some of that inquisitiveness today although I rein it in somewhat as I have very strong recollection of the leftover screws...

My life!

 I've been thinking about doing this for a while now.. Writing a blog series about my life, a kind of memoir if you will. Putting it like that sounds really pretentious and I don't think I am.

I'll start with some facts: I was born in April 1976 just before the 'hot one' which possibly explains why I hate the cold and feel like i was born on the wrong continent. I lived and grew up on a small estate to the south of Nottingham. This estate had playing fields that ran the length if it and a brook bordered the playing fields on the other side. Growing up here was idyllic, summer holidays playing on the fields, pretending we were Star Wars characters (i was clearly Luke) I remember we used to whack paths through bracken and dog weed with willow branches that we snapped of trees that were growing by the brook. I'm pretty sure that we did more for weed control than Nottingham City Council did.

I had two main friends on the estate, both were called Gary. One had a sister called Vicky and the other a sister called Lindsey. My parent's liked one of them and not the other as they believed the other to be a potential bad influence citing a seeming lack of parental responsibility. Both of his parents worked full-time and he was effectively a latchkey kid with maturity beyond his years forced upon him. At age 8 it was like having a friend that was 16.. He had access to his parent's video collection and it was this video collection that made me realise that I did not like horror movies.

The nearest school to me was the primary school in a neighbouring estate that was about a 5 minute walk from my house across the brook. I did not go to this school.... I went to a Church of England school just to the south of Nottingham city; a 10 minute walk to the bus stop and a 5-10 minute bus journey away. No one else from my estate went to this school but as the other school was burnt down twice; I believe my Christian parents made the right choice. 

I'm still thinking how to write this - I don't think I'll go chronological (too hard and requires more planning) I think I'll go 'Theme-Centred' and cover topics like school, church, childhood teens, moving house, girlfriends, partying, driving etc in later posts. I'm also unsure what frequency to do this.

Later posts will be about my life with Anna who died this year on June 12th after a battle with cervical cancer. It was one hell of a fight and she fought like a true warrior of God. People asked 'why you'; she answered 'why not me'

Anna on Oct 27th Just before her diagnosis

I miss her terribly but know with certainty that because of both of our faith in Jesus, we will see each other again!

This blog is going to be mainly written for our kids so they can have a memory of who we were before they blew onto the scene like a hurricane that shook our world and knocked a lot of the rough edges off us both.

More to follow.............

Crete - Day 8 - The journey home.

You know that you've had a really good holiday when you are very sad to leave and you realise that you are going to miss the people who became part of your life for a week.

It is so sad to see how the fear of COVID-19 has negatively impacted the tourist economy here. There have been so few deaths but such draconian measures implemented! Hopefully the post-mortem will be done and government heads will roll! Incompetent donkeys!!

I have to fill in a passenger locator form for coming back to the UK. Compared to the Greek version the UK one looks like a typical UK government IT project. Crap and not fit for purpose. An example.. We are travelling as a family and I can put my kids on the form but not my wife... We're all travelling on the same tickets, same flight, same eventual destination etc.. Go figure!

The Greek one, easy! My details, passport number etc, flight details, hotel details and I just had to add Anna and the kids to the same form! Easy! 

We had a leisurely 'get ready and have breakfast' and then got packed up and handed in the room keys for the kids room. The message that we could have our room for the day had survived the change of reception staff so I stashed the important documents in the safe and headed out for coffee!

After this, we walked out to do some souvenir shopping. 

Reuben bought a t-shirt that he could have bought at home (for more money) and a few other small Greek souvenirs. Holly bought a lovely olive wood bowl which I think is exquisite; beautifully made. 

After this seemingly never-ending shopping trip, we found ourselves in the harbour area where we sat and baked in the shade (it was about 1 pm at this point.) Holly and Reuben decided to go off and price up some baseball caps for Reuben to possibly buy; alas, the one he liked was too expensive for him! 

At about 3 pm, we decided that we could do with some food as we would be landing at 12.05 am Saturday morning. We finally succombed to the "hello family! You want to eat?" and stepped into one of the restaurants bordering the coastline. The food was amazing! Anna, Holly and I all had gyros, pork or chicken with salad, pita and some fries. On the street the food would be wrapped in the pita but at the restaurant, it was all on plate with tzatziki! Absolutely nostimó (delicious).

We had a really good chat with the proprietor, a buxom Greek lady who was probably about 7 years younger than us. She had two children, 9 and 7 years old respectively. She offered her view on all this covid nonsense (in fairness, we did ask her how badly it had affected her trade) and it was pretty much identical to mine, 'a lot of fuss over a bad flu that, in Greece is hardly killing anyone and those it does are generally pretty ill anyway. 

After paying for the meal we departed the restaurant and headed back to the hotel for a shower and for me to sextuple-check all of my necessary documentation to allow me back into England. For some reason, I always seem to be totally task-focused on getting back home to the point that I really do not enjoy the journey. I'm usually semi-justified in this as proven today when waiting for the taxi back to the airport from the hotel. I saw a grey Mercedes turn right down the road than the hotel was on about 5-10 minutes before we were due to be picked up. I thought to myself "I bet that's our taxi" but waited... Nothing... I stood on the corner looking for other taxis but none were for us. Eventually I acquiesced to my nagging doubts and sent Reuben off on a mission to see it the taxi was an the back of the hotel. He got about 5 yards down the road and said "the grey Mercedes is coming back up. It was our taxi!

The ride to the airport was smooth and scenic and after half of the journey being in silence, we asked the driver about 'the island on the right. We could not shut him up after this. He was talking about broken government promises to expand the airport capacity on Crete, but it was all hot air and empty words! I guess politicians are liars the world over! 

Check-in at foreign airports is always a stressful time for me as most of the officials seem to be bored, in a hurry and expressionless; this was even more so with masks on, making their 'snapped' instructions so much more difficult to fathom. We eventually made our way through and snaked inexorably to the departure gate... B9... 

We settled down here and waited until the flight was ready to board. The time dragged but finally we made it onto the plane and took off heading into the bad weather we had left behind.. 

There's nothing like a stormy August day to make you want to jet off to get some sunshine....... 

Crete - Day 7 - Culture

Well this is it.. The last full day before we fly back to, by the looks of it, a bloody cold and wet England..

The weather today did not disappoint again! Beautiful clear skies and 30°C. The humidity was a bit higher though which made it feel stupidly hot! It reminded me of Southern Italy where the temperature hit 40°C.. Stifling! The heat seemed to be bouncing right off the pavement and rebounding into my legs!

Anna had been looking at trip advisor and found an open air museum to Cretan life. 

A family had started to build the museum in 1986 and had kept it quiet from friends and extended family for fear of being thought of as crazy. They had a vision of telling people about authentic Cretan life back from the turn of the 19th century and onwards. I found it fascinating!

There lady who worked there had been there for 21 years and was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful! 

After spending a couple of hours here we noticed a gate to the beach and enquired about the cost of parasol hire. It was very good and the beach looked great so we camped out here until 5pm, at which time we packed up and headed back to the hotel for a shower followed by a drink at the hotel bar and dinner. 

As we walked past reception, the lady who checked us in and dealt with the first night shenanigans, confirmed our taxi and said "to thank you for being such a nice family and to say sorry for the inconvenience on the first night - we could have the room until the taxi arrived" 

I am genuinely going to miss this place, the hotel and the staff have been absolutely fantastic. From Denda takin the mickey out of my sunburnt forehead to the guy without a name badge who served me coffee every morning with a smile, remembered what I wanted and poured it as soon as he saw me. Yep! I'm definitely going to miss this place! Great people and great weather! 

Crete - Day 6 - Short and sweet

... Like the wine I have just drunk... Except for the short bit...

It was a fair bit of the rest of the wine I bought yesterday. 

Blah blah blah... Woke up etc.. Perfect shower... Great breakfast... 

Kids went parasailing.. 

(they are there, promise)

They loved it 

Anna went in the boat that was towing them. 

Then we went to the same beach as on day 2!

It was really hot but due to the more expensive suncream, no one got burnt! Reuben looks like one of the locals! 

After this, we walked back to hotel and we had dinner followed by some local beer and wine in our room! 

Heaven! 

No idea what to do tomorrow...