I Dare You!

Above photo is a Ramsbottom's picnic spot on Pilling Sand in 1946. The house in the background is Ramsbottoms house.




 On the right is Pilling Sands at dusk

I Dare you!

We were enjoying ourselves. We’d been out since daybreak on that dusky autumn dawn fully prepared for an adventure. His Mam had made him cheese sarnies, mine a boiled egg and an apple. We were doing all right.

At least we though we were.

The whole trip had been prepared several days before. The previous Saturday my mate, Stuart had burst into our kitchen clutching a map of the Fylde. It was the ordnance survey map we’d been saving for. There it was neatly rolled up, sealed with government brown paper and stamp of authenticity. The excitement was killing us. The cat was pushed out its sleeping place in front of the roaring coal fire and the map carefully rolled out and held flat at the corners with empty bottles of Jubilee stout.

Had I asked my Mam? Had he repaired his puncture? Had I fixed my bicycle chain? What time should we leave? Just the two of us or should we ask Dale to come? Was Toddie full? These questions fired between us like the speed of a machine gun.

It was decided that October the eleventh would be the day!

The 11th turned out to be a beautiful day. The air clear and crisp with hardly any wind and we were at Glasson Dock well before our scheduled lunch break.

“Let’s go down to the dock,” I said, “There are lots of boats coming in.”

I looked down at the habour and the sudden spurt of activity. “Why’s that? I ventured to Stuart but he was too engrossed in eating his Mam’s cheese sandwich. I’d already polished off my Mum’s offering of the apple and egg and I was still hungry.

“Y’ fancy some shrimps Stu?”

He didn’t need much persuasion as the smell of freshly caught fish wafted up from the trawlers unloading in the docks. Off we cycled down the hill and over the small hump back bridge to the small Fylde harbour.

The fisherman were running back and forth unloading their catch and carried heavy laden wicker baskets of freshly caught fish to the waiting trucks. Interspersed with their labour and taking a well earned cigarette break a heavily set and overweight fisherman sat down on the rear tail gate of a truck. As he exhaled his first nicotine drag he said, “Never seen owt like it!”

“Me neither.” Replied his mate, obviously the junior as he continued moving the loaded baskets.

“Has Stan got back? He were a long way out? It’s weird!”

“Dunno,” replied junior.

“Soona the betta, I reckon.

Stu and I had been listening from nearby.

“What are they on about?” enquired Stu.

“Haven’t the foggiest, but something’s bothering them. Think we should ask?”

“Why not?” said Stu timidly. I hesitated as I too was a little nervous about confronting the large overweight fisherman who looked like he played rugby for the local team and I was concerned on intruding.

“Well, go on!” continued Stu.

With Stuart prodding me in the back and taking a slug from Toddie I sauntered over looking as confident a ten year old school boy could. I decided to ask the younger fisherman as the fat one, who was still smoking seemed to be in a trance looking at the darkening horizon.

“What’s up?” I asked junior, trying to lower my voice to its lowest register.

The fat one suddenly broke his trance and yelled, “Mind ya own f’ing business! And Tommy get a move on! I need a pint and we ‘aven’t got all day!”

“I’m sorry Sir, but what’s the trouble?” I asked pleading in an innocent and naïve way.

“There’s a squall ont’ way, me lad! Look at it,” he boomed, “It be right across Pilling Sands by t’evening!”

“Who will?”

“The sea lad! The sea! Tek a look!”

I strained my eyes looking in the direction he was pointing.

“You mean the sea will be right across the Pilling beach road?”

“Aye lad. A Spring high tide with wind right up her arse. Wouldn’t surprise me if she don’t wash right into Presall, ain’t seen anything like this since thirty-nine. Washed old Ramsbottom’s place right away. Took the whole lot of ‘em! Except t’ daughter. Lucky filly was in Blackpool at the time. It were nasty.”

A shiver ran down my spine and I could see panic sweep across Stuart’s face. The thought of drowning didn’t appeal to either of us and The Pilling Sand’s Road was our short cut back home. We’d come the long way round through Garstang. The Pilling Road route would save us about twenty miles on the return trip.

“All dun boss,” said junior, “don’t suppose y’ll buy us pint too?

“A pint!” roared the fat one, “Ya’ll be needing sumat stronger than a pint if that blighter comes right in!”

The fat fisherman rose up and closed the tail gate of the loaded truck and told the driver to scarper.

I plucked up courage and asked him, “You think we’ll make across to Presall?”

“Ont’ Pilling Road?”

“Yes, we’re cycling back to Cleveleys.”

“Wouldn’t like to say lad, but suppose you could have a bash. If t’ warning flags is up y’ could come back, wouldn’t tek any chances though.”

I only half heard his final comment as I’d made up my mind and was peddling of back to Glasson village with Stuart following.

We zipped through Glasson at maximum speed and down to Cockerham village, gateway to the Pilling Sands Road. The air was still relatively calm and the road from Cockerham was flat but an ominous cloud was hanging in the distance over Morecambe Bay. Our cycles rattled over the rusted cattle grid. The local farmers were fully aware of the danger of the Pilling road and had installed the cattle grid to prevent their animals wandering onto the open marsh land.

My arse was sore from the morning’s ride and the cattle grid increased the pain. I stopped and Stuart move in next to me. The red danger flags were flying the wind and grains of wet sand lashed into our faces.

“Think we should try?’ asked Stu.

“Why not?’ I said trying to sound confident, “It’ll take us half an hour if we pedal hard.”

“It’s six miles,” said Stu, trying to hold the folded map steady in the wind, “And look, it’s pretty bloody black over the bay. The flags are up, he said come back if they were!”

“Yeak I know, but the sea’s still along way out, I dare you!”

At that instant the sky went black as an unseen hand blocked out the hazy sunlight. The wind whistled through the spokes of our wheels and seemed to speak. “Come, come if you dare, if you dare!”

“Oh, come on.”I said trying not to sound chicken, “High tide ain’t till three o’clock; we saw it the Gazette last night!”

“I know,” said Stu, “but I don’t like the look of it!”

To this day, sixty odd years later, I have difficulty remembering what I did next.

All I do remember is seeing Stuart waving frantically in the distance. I looked over my shoulder expecting him to be right behind me but he looked like some character in the closing shot out of a silent movie waving his arms up and down on the horizon in the same rhythm as to my legs pounding my bike’s pedals.

Before me stretched the long straight road across Pilling sands.

The turf from Pilling is now world famous and is used on golf courses for the greens, the open expanse would be a dream for any golfer, no bunkers, no undulating ground, just a vast expanse of lush green for that final hole.

I cycled on into the centre of the green. The wind was increasing so I was lifting myself out of the saddle to exert more pressure on the pedals. My bike was a Heath Robinson construction with a fixed wheel.

So I battled hard against the wind. Head down as low as possible gripping the BSA low slung handle bars I built up a constant speed.

Gasping and panting I slowed down as I came to a small rise where Ramsbottom’s farm had once stood. It was silhouetted in the setting sun. Adjacent to the ruins were a favourite spot for weekend picnickers. In the summer months they came in their droves, bicycles, motor-cycles with side cars and a few cars.

They came for the solitude escaping the hustle and bustle of Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach. The pick pockets, the scroungers, the drunks and the other assorted filth that Blackpool attracted over the summer months.

Today the place was deserted; the ruins stood looking like a broken down Norman Keep shimmering in the hazy light; surreal.

Shock is like floating; fear is like choking.

As I reached the top of the rise I floated and choked at the same time.

I sucked in the salty wind in short sharp gasps, panting as I stood stride my cross bar.

The road in front of me was under water. The sea was still relatively alm but far out in the bay I could see huge white crests moving in. I guessed by the time they reached me they would be twenty foot waves crashing onto Ramsbottom’s rise.

The other marsh lands inhabitants were scuttling about, field mice rushing away from the water line like lemmings in reverse. Suicide was definitely not in their minds, nor was it in mine.

But I could not move. I was rooted to the soggy marsh ground with a cold sweat running down my legs. Second by second the sky darkened and a thick salty mist engulfed me. The outline of the ruins were just visible and I though I saw a light. How was that? I didn’t stop to answer myself and with sudden effort I ran pushing my bike through the soggy earth towards the perceived light.

About twenty more strides and suddenly the mist lifted and in front of me was the impossible; what I heard was impossible.

Voices loud and clear, a song coming from a scratched record on a wind-up player drifted on the air.

 I leaned against a weather beaten stone wall  and saw six other bicycles, some looking as if they were made in the last century; next to them an empty more modern looking pram.

I was in a trance as I walked forward towards a door. The ground was firmer, sky clear and sunny.

Approaching the door it swung open and a deep warmth flowed out and dragged me inside.

There were about a dozen people cramped in small groups occupying the room, all dressed in weird clothes from a bygone eras.

An old bearded man approached shouting, “Gazette! Evening Gazette! Read all about it!” I reached out and tried to grasp the newspaper he’d just taken from the canvas bag hanging over his shoulder; I opened my mouth to speak and he vanished, leaving the newspaper floating on an unseen eddy of air.

It landed gently on the ground, the headlines glaring up at me, CHAMBERLAINE REJECTS KRUGER’S OFFER. I crouched down to look at the date-line; October the 11th 1899.

Where am I? What’s happening? Who are these people? My mind raced remembering all the recent horror and Sci-fi movies I’d seen on my Saturday mornings at the local Odeon.

I swung round to the door and grabbed the handle. It didn’t move. I turned back and looked into the room, slowly sliding down the old wooden door till I was on the floor. A young woman suddenly appeared in front of me pushing a pram, her dress and make-up were out of place, she paused looked at her crying baby and lifted it into her arms. She then stared at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked as she completely ignored me and continued gently humming to her baby.

Tears began running down her alabaster face. A shiver ran down my spine and her cotton dress shimmered. She was a step away now and my legs blocked her path. As I looked up again my whole body shivered as a warm and gentle caress swept over me and she was gone. I tried to scream but nothing came out, I was being invaded, my body, mind, my soul, words floated in my head, “Come, come, come if you want”. The smell of the sea was over-powering and Neptune with his servants had come to collect me.

I curled up into a fetal ball and cried.
………………………………………………………………………………….

My first recollection of the next day was the warmth of the sun falling on my face, I rubbed my eyelids and forced my eyes open. There was my mother dressed in all her fan-dancer’s regalia. She leaned over me and grasped my water-wrinkled hand and squeezed it gently, “God you were fucking lucky, you really were. Y' gave me the Willys, the police dragged me out of my rehearsals.” She lent down, hugged me and started crying.

It was several hours later that woke up again and looked around the hospital ward I was in. On top of my NHS bedside locker was a bowl of fruit and a newspaper.

I was front page headlines, with my smiling cherub face greeting the readers, “SAVING CESS POOLE” was the headline, I glanced down at the article reading every word.

In the early hours of Saturday morning twelve year old Cess Poole of York Avenue Cleveleys was lifted to safety by an air sea rescue helicopter. Cess was spotted by flight officer Cumbrink from the chopper. He was about a mile out to sea in Morecombe Bay floating on what looked like an old wooden door clutching a baby’s rattle. Major Cubthbert of air-sea rescue said. “Damm lad was very lucky, he should have heeded the warning flags before trying to cross Pilling Sands just before that terrible storm we had last week.” The alarm was raised by Cess’s friend Stuart Baily who did not attempt the crossing and cycled back to Cockermouth to get help.

This area of the local coast line has claimed several lives. The most bizarre suspected fatality occurred six months after the great storm of 1939 when Ramsbottom’s farmhouse was completely destroyed. On the 11th of October that year the only surviving member of the Ramsbottom family, their daughter and her baby were reported missing. She had gone with her baby to visit the ruins of her old home. What happened to them nobody knows and their bodies have never been found.

I had dared.

Ghosts of Women

Ghosts.

The supernatural has always fascinated me even as a child. It is in these tender years, when your imagination hasn't been suppressed by all the social rules that are constantly being driven into your brain by your elders, holds you in its firm grasp.

Plastic windmills, balloons, cars, trams, grandpa’s pipe and grandmother's mop all catch your eye and assume another purpose.

The mop becomes a witch’s broomstick, the pipe a funnel of a steam train, and balloons take on the image of the balloons that come out of the mouths of the comic strip characters you love. All those words floating in the sky.

My greatest fascination was the sea.

Its ebb and flow, its highs and lows and I spent many a day in my childhood enthralled by its majestic beauty. One day it was like a still pond, another it was crashing over the breakwaters and the promenade and making its way into houses close to the beach. On those days nothing stood in its way.

In later life pictures of the massive tsunami that engulfed Malaysia and reached right across the Indian Ocean to the coast of South Africa, reminded me of the childhood floods we’d had in Cleveleys.

The rush for sandbags, the opening of all the doors so that the invading water would carry on its sweet way, the clutching of my pet rabbits and holding them in my arms on top of the coal bunker in our backyard. All these memories come surging back.

“Ah ya sure everythin’s on ya list?” said my grandmother, And don’t forget Dewhursts and mek sure ‘Arry serve ya, not t’other one that give ya bad sausages!”

It  could’ve been a Tuesday or a Wednesday morning I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. Shopping list orders varied little from day to day as rationing was still on, except that Mondays were always milk tokens.

Come to think of it, it must have Tuesday because I remember visiting the dairy yesterday and talking to Jimmy Fisher about Mathew’s goal on Saturday.

A glance at the list told me my first port of call would be the butchers to return the sausages that were off. Then down to the chemist for some cotton wool, granddad’s ears were bad again; up Nutter Road to get some brussel sprouts and then back home. I reckoned on forgetting the Home & Colonial, I knew there was some butter in the larder and I hated margarine so I wasn’t going to buy it. I could have it all done in an hour or so leaving me plenty of time to see her while she was still in.

I tried to visit her everyday, some were easily arranged others more difficult.

The shopping done, I made a fast exit out the back pantry; I didn’t want to get collared into cleaning out the pidgin loft. I’d done it at the weekend. Why couldn’t those bloody pidgins clean up their own mess? And whether or not they had a clean loft it didn’t improve their racing ability. Granddad hadn’t had a winner for over a year.

It was a clear, crisp winter’s morning and I knew that at eleven thirty she came in. I walked headlong into the whistling wind down Victoria Road and could hear her calling; her arms of fine silk flailing against the concrete wall that kept her imprisoned. Fifty yards away I could feel her, her cool spray like aftershave on my face.  I struggled up the rise to the promenade and there she was.

Grey, black, green, blue and white battering the wall that kept her enclosed. She wrapped her mammoth body around the breakwaters positioned to lessen her destructive force.

I stood anchored to the spot, still and silent, leaning into the wind and stared out over the expanse. I took a quick slug from Toddie to keep the cold away. Thank God I was alone; no other bloody fool has come up today. I watched.

Occasionally she sank back, gathering strength, pausing. It was in those pauses. Short and deep, that she talked to me about things to come. Of hearts I’d break and of loves I’d loose. A fully grown woman and she talked to me, an eight year old child.

It was well into the afternoon when I left, or rather she left me. The wind had dropped and the golden sand stretched far out. The harsh winter sun was getting lower, shadows long, the mounds of sand left by the fishermen digging for worms looked like mountains in the low light of the setting sun. On the distant shoreline a lone Alsatian ran to and fro barking at her gentle ripples. She laughed and murmured softly to me, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“So will I,” I replied.

It was dark when I got home. The only light on was in the kitchen, I knew Nan would be there squeezing a last cup of tea from the pot and that Pop would be snoring peacefully in his armchair. “Good for his constitution,” he used to say. I’d have to wake him for the six o’ clock news on the wireless otherwise there be a riot.

“Ya Mam’s gone t’ theatre, said I’ve gota get ya tea.” As she heaped her third spoon of sugar into her well brewed tea, “It’s ont’ table and wake Pop he’ll be furious if he misses t’news!”

How did I know all this was going to happen?

I switched on the lounge light, stoked up the fire, woke Pop and sat down to my bread and dripping. I was into my third slice when Nan shuffled in with my cup of tea, I knew it would be weak but I smiled and thanked her.

The wireless cackled in the background, something about a General Nasser and the Suez Canal. Pop belched, “He’s gone and dunit now; wilt be a war again!” he said scratching his paunch.

I was miles away with my brain working overtime; Ma will be home late probably with a hangover so that means I’ll have to do the shopping again tomorrow. It was the Kenn Dodd Christmas season at the opera house and they always had a jar afterwards at Yate’s Wine Lodge.

Wednesdays were always hell. I’d have to cycle out to Stannah for the farm eggs, deliver Aunt Anne and Aunty Edna theirs. This used to really piss me off because they weren’t real aunties and they never gave me anything for delivering the eggs. It would be eleven o’clock I would have to go to the Home & Colonial to get the margarine that I conveniently forgotten today.

The new super-market was a twice weekly visit and with Christmas only three weeks away I knew I’d have a long list. A quick look at the Evening Gazette told me high tide was at eleven forty five, I had to be there. My mind was in turmoil. I said a quick goodnight to Nan and Pop and wandered off up the corridor to my room. As I closed the door I heard.

Pop say, “Ah dunno know what’s wrong with that lad?”

Little did they know.

A quarter to one in the afternoon, I managed it. She was more at peace than yesterday so I walked northwards along the prom and occasionally we exchanged a few words. Time dissolved and I was at Rossal Sands as dusk began to fall.

“I need you,” I whispered, “I need you.”

“I know,” she replied, “so come and take me.”

“Ya what?” my voice cracking.

“Walk into me and over me, I’m yours,” she crooned.

And so I did. On that icy cold December evening she gently licked my feet, caressed my legs and folded her arms around my chest and whispered, “I’m yours, yours, yours……..yours.”

 Many years have now passed. The things she spoke of I have felt. Different shores have welcomed me and kept me fed, watered and Toddie has nearly always been full, but in no bed anywhere have I found that woman.

When I returned home for my mother’s funeral I sat in the afternoon throwing pebbles in that forgotten beach far out into her swelling bosom.

“Your’e back.”

“Yep,” I said.

“Why?” she growled as though I’d offended her, “I told you you’d travel far, on me and over me, What makes you return?”

“I needed to see you again.”

“Listen Cess you’re a child, a child of fantasy, you’ll find me across the world, in habours, inlets, coves in all guises, hot cold, warm, inviting, loving, destructive.”

“I know, I know,” I cried, “but I want you all.”

From Pool to Poole

From Pool to Poole

Assorted fathers

All the world’s a stage, and I’ve certainly strutted in finery across many a board.

It has been noted and reported in numerous theatrical gossip magazines that I have, throughout my illustrious career spanning the last fifty-two years, also been found lying prostrate on many a board. Deserted by party-going friends and foes alike, I have been discovered, more times than I care to remember, on a park bench clutching my beloved “Toddie” in gloved hand, mumbling, “Oh, for a muse of fire,” to many a star-lit sky.

These gloriously entertaining events have occurred with an almost curtain-up regularity, from my early days in the theatre capital of the world, London, to my latter years here in my jobbing actor’s garret in “Mr Mandela’s Rainbow Nation”.

A jobbing actor!

Now, that’s a descriptive term that is not used very often these days. I find the lack of use of this very complimentary terminology a great injustice.

Think of all those actors’ faces you’ve seen in one B-grade movie after another, or on one TV soapie in 1973, then playing the same character in another soapie in a different country in 1998, and the same character, slightly aged, in another soapie twelve years later. Well, I am one of those.

I’m a jobbing actor. I am privileged to belong to this large and often unsung group of fine talented Thespians who continue to earn a rather limited living and keep their noses just above the waterline.

My “Toddie” and my name were given to me at a very early age.

My mother, Gladys, found herself in the family way towards the end of the Second World War. She was a large-bosomed fan dancer entertaining the remaining American troops and returning British soldiers at the Opera House in the home of music-hall comedy: Blackpool, England. Unable to afford digs in high season, my mother, who was always willing to help anyone in distress, made use of the convoys of military trucks ferrying servicemen back to their barracks, and the free accommodation at a nearby public house.

The journey to the barracks near the small quaint town of Kirkham should have taken three-quarters of an hour but, if an obliging driver, and the accompanying M.P., could be bribed, then a short detour would be made via my mother’s hostelry, which offered an after-hours service. The landlord was a jovial, well-mannered and refined local country gent and, in spite of his name, Robert Ulrich Smelley was extremely well groomed. It was in Mr Smelley’s attic room that my mother used to engage in her extracurricular fan-dancing activities.

Mr R. U. Smelley was able to buy more deodorant than he needed, and acquire some rather expensive French perfume, using his extra bar takings and the ration tickets my mother stole from her clients’ trousers on a nightly basis, so a good time was had by all.

One such night was the August Bank holiday of 1945, and on a foggy London morning in May the following year I was born. My mother never liked hospitals. By eight o’clock that evening I was being cuddled in the muscular arms of visiting American actor Todd Stardust. Todd was young, wealthy and not too wise. He was playing the lead in one of America’s first radio soaps. He was passing through London on his way to Paris, where he hoped he could find inner depth for his two-dimensional character by visiting the bars frequented by Mr Hemingway.

At the airport, the next day, he gave my mother a beautifully engraved pewter hip flask as a momento of his passage. Toddie hasn’t left my lips since Mr Stardust boarded his flight; as my mother discovered that, if she held the open top of it directly under my nose, it seemed to stop the hideous wailing I enjoyed so much.

I was only christened five years later.

The tardiness of this event was due to my mother’s hectic schedule and the high demand for nubile fan dancers across the length and breadth of the British Isles. It was hard enough for her to remember all the newly choreographed routines, and deal with the threat of forgetting a downward fan swing and revealing to the Lord Chancellor something she should not, without having to find time for such trivia as the registration of my birth.

However, in 1952 she was faced with the problem of my schooling and, in order to register me with a local authority, she had to catch up on her paperwork. She managed to convince a friendly registrar in Liverpool that he could do it all for her. With one mighty leap my birth was registered. I was enrolled at a local primary school, and introduced to an Anglican priest who was going to christen me the following day. I sat in the front pew of the Anglican cathedral whilst he and my mother performed a highly athletic display of the Kama Sutra over the font.

The only hiccup in the registration came when the registrar asked my mother the name of my father.

She giggled sweetly at him and said, “Oh, my darling, it was such a long time ago, I can’t possibly remember. It could’ve been Cecil, or was it Eddie? Er, no, no, I think Steven or, yes, yes, dear Simon.”

The registrar smiled, his arm gently encircling my mother’s waist.

She crooned and softly whispered, “They were all such lovely boys at the Old Trout Pool.”

A brainwave filtered down through the registrar’s right hand as he neatly wrote C.E.S.S. Poole on the certificate. The added “e” occurred as my mother guided his left hand further towards her bra strap.

In honour of my mother’s giving ways, on my graduation from the Royal Academy, sixteen years later, I decided to keep my real name when I registered with Equity.

The Attic

 The Attic

In the mid-fifties, I and my mother, when she was not off on one of her fan-dancing tours, were living with my grandparents.

It was a Victorian house – 17 rooms including three separate toilets and two bathrooms, ideal for renting rooms either on a short term basis during the summer months or long term, but excluding the two back garden-sheds, the pigeon loft, and the attic and by the time of my 14th birthday I had the pleasure of sleeping in them all – bathrooms, toilets and sheds included.

Strange?

 The situations which resulted in me being shuttled around the maze of corridors and rooms were also strange. But then, boarding houses are the strangest places. They have this creative ability of absorbing the character of the souls who pass through their portals making them multi-faceted shells of human pain and joy.

Laszlo Bartos entered the portals of The Beachcomber one fine summer’s day in 1957. He occupied the attic and for this privilege he paid my mother the princely sum of one pound and ten shillings a week. His arrival at the height of summer season along the Fyde coast had necessitated me being shunted into the last wooden shed at the bottom of the back garden which housed my grandpa’s tools.

“Kivanok!”

“Hi”, I replied as I released my hand and glanced up at the sweat glistening on the stranger’s forehead.

Two words of greeting – the only two we exchanged at our first meeting. He clutched a battered old suitcase wrapped round with string in his left hand. My eyes darted from the case to his bright yellow nylon socks. They seemed to light up the space between his grey flannel trousers and black plim-soles in a way that appeared to keep his slender body out of contact with the ground. The closer I observed him the more I was aware of a surreal aura that enveloped his whole body. The air shimmered around him.

“I want must study – me – alone, get the English. I need room. Time to get heal.”

My mother who was in charge of the rentals, had no time for small talk, especially pigeon-Hungarian-English and replied, “You can have the attic. One pound ten shillings!”

“I take it,” and off they walked.

I wondered if he would manage to survive the heat up there. I had been an occupant of the attic and during the summer months and the oppressing humid warmth of the house rose and hung trapped under the rafters. He wanted privacy. That he would certainly have up the two flights of twenty-two steps to the dingy brown fading door.

Mr. Bartos proved to be one of the best lodgers my mother and grandparents had ever known. He kept himself to himself. He was clean in his habits, as least he cleaned the bath, which he shared with the summer time guests on the second story, after he’d used it and to my mother this was of prime importance. So after the first few tentative weeks when she used to follow him around like his own shadow, checking how much hot water he’d used and whether he’d switched off the hallway and stair-well lights, my mother resumed her normal routine.
 
To her mind Mr. Bartos could do no wrong. Every Friday night he paid his rent in cash and my mother wrote him out a receipt.

He secured a reasonably paid job working as a conductor, a ticket dispenser on the Blackpool tramway system. He was supplied with a uniform and his very own ticket machine and belt. His name was etched into the leather belt and the machine had its own serial number.

He was very proud of this and often asked me if we had any brasso and black boot polish. I would often catch him sitting in his fold-up chair he brought down from the attic, enjoying the summer time sun and cleaning the metal machine until it glowed in the dark and rubbing the boot polish into his belt, which he wore off duty when he attended the local Catholic church every Sunday.

His job also was a blessing to me.

I had a daily long tram ride to school, or to Gypsy Rose Lee on weekends. School was at the South Shore of Blackpool almost next to the Pleasure Beach amusement park, a three shilling return ride. It meant that when he was on the early morning shift six am till two in the afternoon I gained a free ride on the tram.

Laszlo and I had our own little secrets, as I pocketed the fair money my mother gave me and bought chocolates and crisps, which I used to share with him.

We established a routine should a ticket inspector board the tram. He would whistle and a minute later he was next to me rolling out a three-penny student ticket, which entitled me to five tramway stops.

We’d worked out that the inspectors were usually off the tram after the fourth stop.

However, it amazed me that the inspectors did not cotton on, as often I was twenty or so stations away from my point of alighting. It was clear that the inspectors didn’t pay much attention to the school uniform, because that would have given them an idea as to where I would be getting off the tram if he’d been able to identify the uniform.

When Laszlo was on the afternoon shift 2pm till 10pm his journeys from South Shore to my home of Cleveleys, we followed the same routine. I normally finished lessons at 4pm and would be able to catch the four-thirty tram, but on days when extracurricular activities like rugby, drama, choir practice happened, I’d only be finished at approximately six o’clock. On those days I had to stand around at the tram stop as I knew Laszlo’s tram would not be coming till twenty past six.

So during my second year at secondary school I had an ample supply of sweets, chocolates and my favourite new on the market, smokey-bacon crisps.

Over the winter term at school Laszlo’s and my friendship blossomed, whether this was due to the very hot coffee I had procured from the border’s matron, for my large thermos-flask and shared with Laszlo on those gusty wind swept evenings, I’d never discover.

 He told me of his escape from Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Soviet tanks on the street, how to make a Molotov-petrol-cocktail-bomb, how the black-market operated and many of the political depravations he endured.

The story of his older brother’s death was spine chilling. Lucas had been in the Hungarian army and had deserted and joined the uprising. He was captured by the Soviets and shot, his body wearing his dull green army fatigues was delivered to his parent’s house wrapped in a yellow sheet. They were told he was a traitor and a coward.
 
I was gaining valuable knowledge about the workings of the communist system, which thirty-five years later sprang into my head on my first visit to apartheid South Africa. The working class Hungarian and the South African blacks had much in common; pass laws, restricted living areas, a thriving black market and a diabolically poor wage packet.

I digress. I’m sorry but it tends to be a habit of mine which I have been trying to cure all of my life; where was I?

Oh yes, tram rides and Laszlo the perfect conductor.

He told me a recent argument he’d had with one of the inspectors who’d referred him to his boss. It was his yellow nylon socks. They were not part of his regulation dress code.

“You not give me black socks!” he’d screamed at his boss, “I these wear as yellow reminder of the uprising!” Obviously the Hungarian uprising was beyond the comprehension of the surly middle aged Blackpudlican and he demanded that Laszlo wear black socks and if he was ever caught again incorrectly dressed, “H’d be goin back t’ uprising!”

Laszlo was deeply upset when he told me this and was almost close to tears. I did my best to console him, but a near adolescent youngster was hardly capable of offering advice, or tear  him away from his horrific memories.

I didn’t see Laszlo for the rest of the week either at home or on the tram.

It was the Sunday morning of that week when I was summoned by my mother to find out what was wrong with Mr Bartos. He hadn’t paid his rent as usual on Friday night, and she’d noticed an odd smell in the upstairs rooms.

I was given the pass-key to the attic and climbed the two flights of stairs. It was almost a year since his arrival and the summer months with their exceptionally hot days were with us again. I also noticed the smell which reminded me of the tripe my grandmother used to cook.

I opened the door and called his name, “Laszlo!”

This was the last word I spoke before I screamed so that whole street could hear me.

Laszlo was hanging from one of the cross-joists, his fold-up chair on its side a few feet away from his dangling bare feet and entwined around his neck were six pairs of tied together bright yellow socks.

The police translated his two word suicide note “emlékére” in remembrance.

Lost on the Rhine

Lost on the Rhine

The sexual education of children particularly those approaching puberty has, and always will be, a hotly debated issue. The basic findings of all surveys on the subject come to a similar conclusion; it is sadly insufficient. However with today’s technology and access to the WWW today’s enquiring minds can easily gain access to this often taboo topic.

Unfortunately this access can lead to pedophilia, kidnapping and other even more horrifying conclusions.

My casual, slow and satisfying education way back in the nineteen-fifties was gained purely and simply by the act of observation and some strange graphic drawings on a blackboard during my biology classes.

It was during my time with Gypsy Rose Lee as her assistant that the full use of my eyes came into play. This was due to the fact that Rose Lee demanded that I scrutinize every possible punter, so that I could gather as much information about them as possible.

In the early mornings before the punters arrived I used to walk along the shore-line and the promenade of Blackpool. I would occasionally find a young couple “At-it”, as the sexual act was described at that time, under the iron girders of Blackpool’s north pier.

In my wanders during the height of the summer season just after high tide I used to find the debris and residue of sexual activity, an assorted supply of used rubber-jonnies. These useful contraceptive devices, made by a rubber company in which the Vatican had a share, came in all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes, but they were not what I was after. Apart from noting that they looked like dead jelly fish they held no interest for me.

I was on the look out for far more sellable items, like watches and jewelry which the sun-worshippers had lost the previous day. It was amazing as to what I would find amongst the broken sea-shells.

Some-days nothing, others a lucrative windfall, a rolex watch, a diamond ear-ring, a gold bangle. 

Gypsy Rose Lee had a contact in the fencing-trade, known as Larry the fingers. He was a forger by profession but also dealt in the trading of what he called “Lost-Merchandise”, thus bringing him in an extra income while staying just on the right side of the local constabulary.

I used him many years later when I was tracking down my biological father and he arranged the five passports I ended up with when I visited Munich after the 9/11 incident. You’ve presumably already read about that in the essay called “Passports”.

I digress, my apologies.

Sex at a tender age was the subject that I wished to enlighten you on.

Apart from the delicate, although at times robust handling of my private parts by some fan-dancer friends of my mother, who said. “It’s better than doing it yourself Cess. You could go blind!”

I was in theory, a virgin till the tender old age of sixteen, when all was revealed to me in a broom cupboard on board a tourist vessel cruising down the river Rhine in Germany.

I was there as I was playing Brutus in Mr Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. It was a National Youth Theatre modern dress production and we were on tour in the mining town of Recklinghausen, in what was called West Germany.

The theatre was newly built when the coal mining company of the town “Swapped coal for art” just after the Second World War hoping they could give something back to the community, and make the fact, that they supplied Mr Hitler with most of the energy for his war effort conveniently disappear. 

This was my second NYT tour to the continent.

The previous year I was playing Paris in Romeo & Juliet. I was only reminded of this fact when I received a copy, in the mid-eighties, of Simon Master’s book entitled, The National Youth Theatre. 

Although he does not comment on my acting in the tome, my ability to make a fast buck definitely caught his attention as he mentions me in the second to last chapter, “Cess Poole spent a good part of the Romeo and Juliet season getting up at seven in the morning, walking to the local public house, The Enterprise, to swab down the bars and clean the tables, all for a few shilling and a free breakfast.”

At the time Simon was totally unaware of my ulterior motive in securing this employment and Toddie remained full to the brim throughout that summer season.

When the NYT toured the country they visited supplied them with what was called “A liaison officer”. On the Reckinghausen tour this officer was a very young attractive lady called Heidi, who certainly wanted to show her young charges the beauties of the area and the Rhine valley.

It was our first free Sunday with no performance and we were taken on a barge and chugged along the Rhine from Strasbourg to Colonge. 

After a few slugs of Dutch courage from Toddie, I made my introduction, "Ich habe Deutsch in der Schule fünf Jahre lang lernen"

 

"Das ist sehr gut Cess, müssen Sie sehr hart studieren und dann werden Sie in der Lage, die großen Werke der Literatur der Deutschen lesen."

And on she gabbled like a Messerschmitt chasing a UK bomber  thinking that I would understand.

I didn’t and we continued the conversation in pigeon German and English.

She was studying English in her first year at university and certainly understood the underlying implications involved in taking steady sips from Toddie.

I knew that Toddies contents were taking effect when she started changing all her “Sie’s” to “Du’s”. The latter being the more friendly translation for “You”. It wasn’t long before we began kissing and exploring with wild youthful abandoned hands under her great overcoat and my army surplus combat jacket.

We thought we’d found a secluded little hide-a-way to the rear of the vessel under the tarpaulin that covered a small life boat, till we heard the voices of fellow thespians congregating next to the life boat.

The cruising barge had just passed the magnificent Gothic cathedral of Colonge and they all wanted to look at it for as long as possible, so had swarmed the full length of the vessel and had moved to the stern to catch a last glimpse.

A healthy pause and silence followed until the voices died away.

Heidi said, "Lassen wir in funfzehn Minuten Andocken werden. Wir müssen uns beeilen. Ich weiß von einem Besenkammer auf dem Oberdeck. Lass uns gehen"

I understood kamer, gehen and Lass for room, hurry and go, and surmized that we only had 15 minutes before we’d be disembarking. So off we crept trying to avoid the rest of our party, and made our way inside the smallest broom cupboard on the upper deck you can imagine.

So it was amongst oily rags, buckets, hose-pipes and mops that I lost my virginity.

Sordid is perhaps a good word to describe it, but it was also filled with adventure, fear, intrepidation, anxcious pleasure, sheer ectascy, and all the other adjectival words you can find to describe your own sexual exploits.

Heidi and I continued our fly-by-night relationship for the whole of the following week before we had to return to the UK. In those days when international phone calls were expensive the trendy thing to do as parting lovers was to become pen-pals.

I am certainly glad we did, and although our relationship fizzled out two years later, the exercise of putting pen to paper has helped me write these tales.

Whether or not I learnt anything as regards sex education is another matter, but the dextrous moveability I devised amongst the mops, buckets and brushes could certainly be published in the next edition of the Kama-Sutra.

Photos of Blackpool in Sir Cess's younger years

I hope all the above pictures will give you a better idea of Sir Cess's younger days in his home town of Blackpool.