A prized possession has been found during the process of down sizing, or rather my new definition of a house move from a beloved but nevertheless large old and cold place to a smaller, equally characterful but higher energy efficient place- "across and slightly up sizing".
The transistion has been a necessarily long one. It is inevitable that 33 years of habitation in the same space means that all your possessions, memories and life have expanded into every square inch and with every piece of furniture, each and every familiar sight, sound or smell there is a very strong, fond, familiar, poignant and sometime sad association.
The house was purchased by my parents in the summer of 1979. The move, only of some 25 miles as that crow keeps on flying, may as well have been to another time and dimension because for me it was the life-changer that set me on the path to where I am today, in all senses of the word, a well rounded individual.
Out of the five of us children, well all under the age of 18, the house move came at perhaps the best of times for me. It coincided with that important decision making time in my life of either leaving school at 16 years old and walking straight into a great and assured lifetime of employment in just about any sector, including the now largely disappeared heavy industries or staying on in education for another 2 years and beyond.
We had lived in a small, busy town prior to the move but you did get the overall sense that it did have some limitations, a bit of a defined ceiling for acheiving things. Do not get me wrong. It was a great place to grow up in with a freedom to roam and get up to creative mischief without any perception of fear or menace from others. I do value, very much, that part of my life and its contribution to my character but I had started to become aware at that age that there was more to do and experience. It was just that where we lived at that time did not offer the options. We had outgrown it.
The new location was a larger ,old and historic market town and only 6 miles from the huge city of Kingston upon Hull, or as it is known, just " ull". Everything now seemed possible because of the greater access to, well, everything. The main advantage was that all of my previous geekiness could be re-engineered and I was now presented with an opportunity to re-boot. I was still very much the same person but it was now a fresh start and I could re-invent myself. I was of course a much smaller fish in a now very large ocean like environment but I thought it was great.
That summer of 1979 was, in my recollection, perfect in every way. In reality it was probably just ordinary and hum-drum but in the new surroundings everything seemed like a fresh and exciting experience. The prospect, looming sometime in the coming September, of starting again at a new school was just a slight and vague downer. It seemed such a long time ahead although was actually hurtling towards me at tremendous speed. It arrived quicker than I could imagine.
On the first day of attendance I was placed in detention for innocently but wrongly presuming that the front door to the school was the way in. It was actually reserved for the use of Staff and Prefects. I was mortified by my instant naughty boy status but in fact it served a purpose of elevating me from square new boy to not so square new boy amongst my fellow sixth formers. To make matters worse I missed the scheduled after school confinement because it clashed with a field trip to Hull. Again, no slack was cut with me and I was summoned before the Headmaster. The flashbacks to the 1969 film Kes were strangely familiar as I lined up outside Mr Waltons study with the smokers, insolent and offensive, inappropriate fiddlers and plain stupid. Fortunately we were given a lecture, rather than the cane,on blah, blah, blah Oxford and Cambridge, blah, blah, blah, under fire, blah, blah, blah empire and service. It seemed to be a stock speech as the more persistent offenders in the line up across the room were able to mime each and every word with great familiarity. The Headmaster had no idea who I was or that I had just arrived at the school.
My new found notoriety meant that I was now included in the extra-curricula activities which, out of school hours, included under age drinking, cars, girls, nightclubbing, going to 'Ull on a regular basis and music gigs.
By the coming October my experience of live music had gone from zero to seeing The Police and The Jam at Bridlington Spa. The latter gig was where I bought a T-shirt, the long since mentioned prized possession. It was the Setting Sons Album Tour and the merchandise featured a Japanese Imperial sun fronted by a British Bulldog. I joined the scramble to buy the item before the band came on and hung onto it in what became a seething mass of rowdy and violent Mods, Ska fans and curious school kids. At the end I hung about at the stage and Paul Weller emerged, shivering and swearing in the North Sea climate and signed my T shirt in biro.
I did wear it a couple of times around town but the autograph washed out to be replaced on the back with iron-on red velour lettering spelling out my hero's name. A bad decision but not thought through at the time.
The garment disappeared sometime between 1981 and 1985 when I was away at Polytechnic. I thought for some time after that I had used it to clean my bike of oil. Because of the time, place and authenticity of the T shirt, now lost, it assumed a mythical Golden Fleece status and my own children quickly tired of my story of how I got it and what it was.
It re-appeared just this week in the latest round of "across and slightly up-sizing". I got a bit emotional when my Mother presented it to me. It looked good with the screen printed logo still bold and strong in red and yellow sunburst and the Bulldog had not perceptibly aged another day but looked tired and jaded as a Nationalistic symbol.The white cotton was a bit discoloured in places, mildewy and with a fusty odour. The red velour lettering, unfortunately, looked perfectly new. Bad decision there I still thought. The most poignant thing about the T shirt was its size.
I kidded myself that over 33 years the 100% cotton composition would inevitably shrink a bit in a cold house wherever it had spent that time. Even making such an allowance, as I held the garment up to my chest , I realised that I had certainly been quite a lean and skinny youth. Any attempt now to put on the T shirt would cause irrevocable stress and damage to the fragile threads and seams. It even looked tiny up against my 17 year old son.
He seemed to make a mental note never to do anything to excess over the next 33 years at least.
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