Extracts from Bob’s 1984 Diary… Volume 244

August 31, 2009 at 4:06 pm · Filed under Bob's Bits And Bobs

Friday 31st August 1984

GAZZIE’S 11th BIRTHDAY

Woke up at 9.00 and got up at 9.45. Then I went to the dentists and had two teeth out, and we went into Stockton and bought my PE vest and rugby gear. Came back at 12.00 and called for Doug, and we walked home and had dinner.

Then we walked the mutts to the log and back, and when we got back we set up an assault course in the garden. At 4.00 Doug’s mam came for us and we went and dropped a hutch off at the pet shop, then we went swimming.

I came home at 6.30 and had tea, and at 7.00 I watched Candid camera, then I played out till 9.00, when I watched Babble. Went to bed at 9.30.

Yes, not content with spending the previous day watching paint dry, I was now having teeth pulled! What a way to celebrate Gareth ‘Gazzie’ Jones’ 11th birthday. Happy birthday Mr Jones, for both then and now (And let’s wheel out that now-famous photo from our 1983 school trip to Whitby, just to celebrate…)

 

My teeth were in a bit of a weird state during the latter half of 1984. In a nutshell… I had too many of them, and was in danger of spending my teenage years looking like Jack from On The Buses (although an adolescence spent messing around with Reg Varney and pulling buxom ‘clippies’ didn’t seem like the most disastrous prospect in the world). My adult teeth were pushing through, but my milk teeth were still clinging on for dear life, so I spent much of the Autumn having them forcibly removed.

The man with the pliers was, as ever, genial Geoffrey Palmer-lookalike Keith Herren, whose surgery was a grand, converted town house on the outskirts of Stockton. I can still remember the heady whiff of disinfectant, mouthwash and Auto Trader back issues that filled the place, and it never fails to rekindle the memories of Keith’s knee in my chest, prickles of sweat appearing on his forehead as he struggled to remove my last remaining baby tussy-pegs.

He also confirmed on this occasion that I’d need to wear a brace at some point in the very near future, the very prospect of which filled me with horror and disgust. I’d seen kids with mouth braces at school, and clearly they were the LOWEST OF THE LOW… geeky, spittle-fuelled inadequates whose lifelong playground destiny was to play ‘Jaws’, the metal-mouthed James Bond baddie immortalised by the great Richard Kiel…

In fact, just the kind of geeky, spittle-fuelled inadequates that would have their head stamped on by a stampeding mob of slavering knuckleheads during a game of school rugby. Of all my terrors about my impending career at Conyers comprehensive school (four days and counting!!!), rugby was definitely high on the list. Or at least up there with advanced sex education and Foggy-Bashing Day.

My ‘gear’ (purchased, as ever, from the prissy little man at Rawcliffe’s School Suppliers at the top of Stockton High Street) comprised tight white canvas shorts (settle down at the back, there), red socks the consistency of sailing rope and a navy blue collared rugby shirt that was entirely revisible to allow for ‘home’ v ‘away’ matches in PE.

It had a red streak on the ‘home’ side, which matched perfectly the yellow streak running all the way down my back.

Quite a late expedition to the swimming baths, this one, so I’m wondering if it was something that we talked Doug’s Mum into on the way to deliver one of his Dad’s home-made rabbit hutches to Yarm Pet Shop. A 6.30pm return home meant that I had undoubtedly missed my tea, as my parents ALWAYS ate their main meal at 5pm, in front of Blue Peter and Willo The Wisp, with cakes, steaming pots of tea and malt loaf to follow as Jan Leeming or Nicholas Witchell introduced the main BBC1 evening news.

This means one of two things…

1. I went without any tea, which is entirely possible. I was a bit of a fussy eater as a kid, and thought nothing of skipping meals – or, possibly, just eating a cheese sandwich and a couple of almond slices while my parents tucked into their traditional meat and two veg.

2. My tea was put on the plate, covered in tin foil, and put ‘in the oven’ for me to eat when I returned. An act I always dreaded, as it meant working my way through a pile of dried, stodgy mashed potato and sausages with the consistency (and taste) of… well, canvas rugby shorts.  

‘Aw Mam, this tastes like GARBAGE’ I’d moan, picking my way through the slate-grey mound and pushing bullet-hard ‘mushy’ peas around the edge of the plate.

‘Well, you should have been here on time, it tasted lovely at 5’o clock’ would come the reply, frequently followed by the classic ‘There are children in Africa who’d give their right arms for a meal like that’.

(Was there ANY Mum in the country who didn’t use this brilliant guilt-trip technique at some point in the early 1980s? And was there any kid who didn’t instantly retort with the Acknowledged Official Sarky Comeback ‘Put it in an envelope and send it to them, then…’? By Summer 1984, this routine was SO well-rehearsed in our house that we could feasibly have taken it to the Edinburgh Fringe. Along with the following exchange…

Me: Mam, can I go to Doug’s and mess around in his garage?
Mother: No, you can stay here and finish tidying your bedroom.
Me: Awwww, I KNEW you’d say that.
Mother: Well you weren’t disappointed then, were you?

Just leave the Perrier Award on the patio outside the kitchen door.

By the way, is the 5pm tea a bit of a Northern thing? My girlfriend – from la-di-dah Cornwall – was horrified to discover this tradition when she moved to the North-East, as her childhood ‘dinner’ was always eaten at around 7.30pm. Which almost seemed like Dali-esque surrealism to me… after all, 7.30pm was for Hi-De-Hi and Top of the Pops. And it was a full TWO HOURS after after eating my tea, so chances are I’d be hungry AGAIN, and scavenging around the kitchen looking for Blue Riband biscuits.

Before eating a bowl of breakfast cereal before bedtime, a tradition I’ve proudly maintained throughout my adult life. I had no idea at all this was seen as something unusual until I lived in a shared student house at the age of 20. It can’t be just me, though, surely? Night-time Cereal-Eaters Of The World Unite.

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