Johnny Seven OMA

The Johnny Seven OMA..

One Man Army.

There were a few gifts in the back of my mind as a child have been left there to this day. Christmas was always a wonderful time. It wasn't the fact that the gifts were always in the same league as the other 'richer' kids, but it was the expectation. The expectation that just once, on Christmas morn, that Father Christmas would bring something truly awesome, something so spectacular that in opening the gift and discovering that it was beyond belief would have caused my head to surely explode, and in doing so would have scattered the iron filings from my cracked magnetic 'man with beard' game that I always received from my bewildered Grandma, whose idea of a perfect Christmas was to include the iron filing man in every grandchild's must-have present list.Not that I was ungrateful..I dutifully dragged the iron filings across the bald guys head and face in a myriad display of facial imagination; never had a bald guy been so well facially explored, it was a multitude of chins like never before...well, like the previous Christmas in truth, but you get the idea...Christmas presents were opened in the bleak hope that one day, just one lucky day, I would miraculously receive a Johnny Seven OMA. One Man Army!
This was no ordinary toy. It was immense. A weapon that had not one,nor two, but seven different features. This single acquisition would have taken boyhood warcraft to a whole new level of realism, and with a plastic grenade that was capable of being launched a staggering fifteen plus feet, it was likely that no stale tomato within range would ever be safe again.
Looking back this may seem just a little barbaric, but with open wastelands of completely flattened houses, a war would often be reenacted with much gusto. My weapon of choice would always be the side of an old dining room chair. Old, broken furniture could be found in an unlimited endless supply.The upright was the barrel, and the two feet would be the stock; with boyhood imagination it was a perfect Bren gun, and all that was needed was the sound effect, a high speed burst of dubadubdduddudbdudbdubuddu'...followed by the obligatory ricochet sound of 'peeoewnnn'....small platoons would be chosen from whoever was around at the time, and the war was on. A base of some sort was required,usually an old bin; this had to be defended at all costs, all whilst an all frontal attack was carried out with reckless abandon on the opposing platoon's bin
The ultimate base of course was a den. The den was the capital city of boyhood memory, the epicentre of a secret club where sweet stashes could be stored, and ill-gotten gains from your homes food cupboards could be shared with fellow den members. I remember that one new member, who had missed the point entirely,brought back to the den a tin of sliced carrots., which was as about as much use of a chocolate tea pot.Embarrassing, to say the least.
Alas, the gift never ever materialised. The only kid I knew who ever had one was Gryff Waters, who had practically every new toy going, and all of which were destined to be smashed to pieces within weeks. He got fed up with it within weeks, and found some weird joy in jumping on it until the Johnny Seven was more of a Jonah Nought Point One, a broken piece of useless plastic. The waste was beyond my comprehension, especially when two days later Gryff was found armed with an old chair leg. Perhaps he was jealous.
The Johnny Seven OMA.If I ever found one cheap now I think I may still buy it.
Memories eh?
Peeoewnnnnn............

Swede Heist..

It was a misty early winters evening in about 1975.
About 5:30pm...
Close to Halloween.
It was conker season.
Shops were just shutting
I was walking back from St Georges Park, where I had been conkering. As per usual, most of the good conkers had been harvested, and I had to be content with 'conker residue'...that's the left over conkers that had been left in disgust on the grass under piles of smashed horse chestnut husks, and where only a desperate non conker owning kid would have searched. I was not proud, and knowing that not to own at least one conker at this time of year was, in boys terms, in the same classification as Walter the Softy of Dennis the Menace fame.
One measly conker.
The size and shape of a butter bean,
It was ridiculous, I had to make amends and reclaim my stakes in the boys department before anyone found out I was indeed virtually conkerless.
A butterbean conker counted as conker destitution.
At that point, as I turned down a small lane that drifted past the greengrocers in Church Road..and then something happened..it was FATE...
My jeans caught on a sack..I tugged but the sack wouldn't give, a staple had lashed itself to my leg..this was terrible...first beaten by the conker harvest, and now taking a kicking by a sack. The sack itself was on the edge of the pavement display,or had been, for it still continued to follow me up the lane.
The dark lane...
The dark lane that was occupied by just me, and an unknown sack of undetermined value.
Of undetermined value, or wealth...
Wealth!
No, it didn't belong to me, and yet, like a stray dog, it wanted to be with me.
It wanted company, and it had chosen me.
I was the chosen one.
I realised that the wealth within the sack was going to be limited, but then again, no veg was free and the old man would be pleased of any 'windblown' freebies.
Wondering....
No, only truly bad kids stole stuff, and I should drag it back before I was caught.It would have been the right thing to do.
Only bad kids done this sort of thing.
And kids who had great conkers.
Sixers.
I dragged the sack further along the lane, commando style,dragging the look-out behind the hedge in my mind...it was first class skulduggery, a genuine crime, real boys stuff, not the capers of a butterbean conker owner, but the antics of a Huckleberry Finn type school boy...this was it, I was in an adventure!
My excitement dimmed slightly as my wealth was fingered in the darkness.Earthy spherical mounds that slowly dawned on me as swedes.
Flipping swedes. Muddy,earthy,grimy swedes.Grime everywhere.Mud and earth and swede-grime.
Only Shaun Paintworthy would queue up in the school dinners queue for seconds of swede.
Actually, he queued up for thirds of swede, an amazing feat of gastronomical endurance by anyone's standards.
But swedes...I ask you.
Thank you FATE.
But I had to have them.They were now mine.In a way.
I stashed as many as I could about my person.
Now this may be easy to say, but if you have ever tried to actually stash a swede, then you would realise the error of this decision.I crammed as many as I could into the arms of my jumper, and then into my shoulders, and then into my jumper belly area, and then left the scene of the grime.
I tried to walk in an innocent manner, casually walking down the road, acting as if it was perfectly normal to pretend to be Charles Atlas..Charles Atlas with muddy hands and a red face. And a small butterbean conker.
I eventually got in, and closed the door behind me. The old man was rolling a fag, his tea brewing next to him.
'I found some swedes Dad.In a lane,Loads of them.'
'Well done boy,put them in the kitchen, we'll eat them next week.'
Great.Just great.
Just great with effing bells on.
What was I thinking, of course I would end up eating them.
FATE still had a hand to play in this particular episode.Halloween was just a week or so away, and not having a pumpkin, I decided to hollow out a swede.
As John Noakes made the pumpkin episode look easy, I followed the programme with dedication,and hacked away at my largest swede as he spooned out the pumpkin seeds easily.
The swede was like concrete,, and no spoon would ever get through it.
I chose my sharpest knife, my sturdy craft knife, and within seconds bitterly regretted the whole Swede Heist, for I nearly severed my thumb with with a badly timed slash of the blade into the hardened swede.
Typical.
My life of crime was over, before it hardly began.
Just one happy footnote.
With a makeshift bandaged thumb, I was excused conkering.
Butterbean would never see the light of day.
And neither did my partly hollowed swede,one less to eat.
Only Shaun Paintworthy would have been sad.

Ted's Cafe...

Ted's Cafe was an amazing place.
It was located just past The Netham, a tiny little cafe that was the feeding place of many an overweight and sweaty lorry driver.
I had walked past the place every day for years, the dirty lace curtains mesmerising me with their mystery, the shadowy figures inside a silhouette show of scoffing and swilling and smoking, all at the same time.
It was not a place for children, this was the home of Homodelivericus, a direct ancestor of Homo Erectus and Margaret Rutherford, an unusual coupling, but there you go. At any given time you could find a wide variety of Homodelivericus foraging amongst the pornos and week-old News Of The Worlds proudly displayed by the mal-functioning till. After ordering from a range of traditional cardiac inducing meals, Homodelivericus would then retreat to it's lair, which was invariably one of the wonky tables covered in a sauce smeared red plastic tablecloth. It was part of the folklore of this place that these cloths were never, ever, not in a million Sundays, ever,ever washed. It all added to the enchantment of Ted's cafe.
When I eventually plucked up enough courage, and money, and of course hunger..well, more hunger than anything else, I ventured forth into the den of intrigue, the smoke from a thousand Capstan Full Strengths wafting over,and in truth, through me as I nervously approached Ted, who was apparently 'cleaning' his tea towel on a dirty looking cup.
'What can I getcha son?' Ted said,smiling through squinty eyes, as his fag smoke stung his eyes.
'Er..um...er...'
"Come on son, I'll have a queue any minute..'
'Egg and Chips please Mr Ted' I muttered, a little scared as if Ted might refuse. This was, after all, a man's place.
'Coming right up son' he said as he removed the 50p from my grasp, and then clinched the deal,and the rest of the 50p, with a hard sale of 'Bread'nbutter for 5p?'..he had me,and my money, as I happily felt a little more grown up and found a seat on an empty table.
Ted was fast. Really fast. The egg and chips were delivered within five minutes, and the bread seconds later. Ted emptied the ashtray into his hand, and nodded, as if inducing me to try something else other than his food. He left, and I nudged the ashtray to one side and scanned my plate. It was an adventure. A voyage of discovery. For the first time ever, I had been served crinkle cut chips!
Ted's crinkle cut chips were no ordinary chips. To me, to have zig-zags on a chip was amazing, a modern foodstuff that was pure Space age. Ted had the knack, I also discovered, of cooking a chip so that it was red hot on the outside, but still partially frozen on the inside. A sort of potato based baked Alaska, a modern marvel, and delicious in the extreme. Ted's tomato ketchup was unique too , in that the vinegar content seemed to be higher than vinegar itself, a thin reddish water fluid that seemed not to pour over the baked Alaska crinkle cuts, but rather to spray in an atomised mist over the plate.
Amazing!
Ted's cafe was a taste of the sixties and seventies. And I thank him for the wonderful memory.