MORE MEMORIES OF KNOTTINGLEY

MIKE EDWARDS

Another huge wave smashed against the side of the ship, inside the vessel I was flung against the bulkhead. A few moments later the thirty five thousand ton vessel pitched, lunging the bow into a raging Atlantic. When a ship does this, occasionally the propeller comes out of the water making the stern vibrate which finalizes the whole experience as a day in hell.

I wished I hadn’t played by bank dole lock, on those rusting ‘Harkers’ barges as a child. It is probably what inspired me to join the merchant navy.

We’d been at sea for five or six months, our ship the M.V. Letchwoth had been under arrest in the Persian Gulf (Don’t ask, it’s a long story) Now heading for England, we were deep at sea and in the middle of the worst storm I have ever seen. I thought I was being a wimp but some of the seamen who’d been at the sea for years were getting edgy. I always envisaged a storm at sea as an exciting adventure. The Hollywood cliché of a choppy ocean projected onto a screen behind a rocking boat, with stagehands throwing the odd bucket of water was wrong. Very wrong!

When I looked through a porthole the foam would eventually clear, what you could see through the spray was a religious experience. It resembled the Yorkshire Dales, but alive and composed of angry dark water. Huge waves would lurch above our ship with a foreboding sense of doom. Then we would rise up on a similar wave looking down into a brooding valley of brine.

Staggering to my cabin terrified I felt sure death was approaching. I would end up like one of those mariners, whose gravestones I had seen around St Botolph's church in Knottingley. What I would have given to be back in Yorkshire with my wonderful mother and sisters. This was the first time I’d experienced something worse than life with my father.

The floor of my cabin was wet. Every time a wave bashed against the ship a trickle of seawater would seep through the edge of my porthole. It came through with a low growling hiss, which was most disconcerting. The ship was rolling so badly I had to stuff my lifejacket under my mattress to wedge me into my bunk. As a youth I always tried to act tough and deny any type of religious affiliation, however it’s surprising how, pure fear is an excellent soul searcher. If there was a God I was about to meet him, in fact they wouldn’t even find my body, so the privilege of a burial in St Botolph's was probably out of the question. Kneeling down I said the Lord prayer just as Mr. Pearson had taught me. I finished it off with a promise to God ‘Lord get me out of this and you exist.’

I got into my bunk fully dressed (There was no way I was going to be found dead wearing my pants and a vest) I’d been awake for days so it wasn’t hard to drift off. As I fell asleep I went back to my 60s childhood in Knottingley.

My father had been sent to prison, which was good as it meant he didn’t take my mothers family allowance. As a result we had our electricity put back on and began to eat better.

Our playgrounds were the streets of Knottingley and what wonderful playgrounds they were. ‘Middy’ (Martin Middleton) and I used to drag each other through the snickets and ginnels of Knottingley (usually in the pouring rain) in an old pram. Though we must have looked complete pratts, to us it was a racing car, a tank and once when he shoved me down the hill from Shepherds Bridge, a plane crash. It was about this time I met a friend who I went all the way through School with. He was a cocky lad called Steven Temple. He spoke in a perfect ‘Knottla’ tang, lots of ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ and said ‘coil’ instead of coal. His face had a perennial autumn colour due to an even sprinkling of freckles. He had the most amazing ‘V’ shaped gap in his two front teeth; this gave him the ability to spit so accurately he could pin it on a tanner. He hailed from Becketts row on Weeland Road. I can’t remember the number, but it was the house with the archway to the right of it.

When my father returned our life took a turn for the worse again. Our short-lived jolly atmosphere turned back into a heavy curtain of doubt and fear. One of my only memories of Wakefield was our dog snowy. His name suited him perfectly for despite being a mongrel he had half a coat of pure white fur. Only his face and his tail were black. He was a bouncy thing with sparkling eyes and a carefree nature. One day he jumped up and tried to lick Catherine’s face, (my sister) as he fell down his paw left a small scratch on her arm. Dad, having just got up from a night of drink picked snowy up and rammed him onto the back of a door, stabbing him through the back of his head with a broken coat hanger. Snowy made no noise and there was no blood just a heavy silence throughout the house.

We learned very quickly that any type of obvious warning very rarely preceded our father’s fury. However if you watched him closely his teeth used to clench, hidden behind his lips. His face would go pale and the muscles behind his temples would flex back narrowing his eyes and slightly lifting his hairline putting his whole face into a silent snarl. Whether it scared you or not, it didn’t matter because what usually followed was devastating.

I remember him ‘teaching’ me to tell the time. Every time I got it wrong he would smack me across the face, hard. His palm felt like oak, and before he gave up he’d walloped me so many times it was beginning to look like the Russian roulette scene from the film ‘The Deer Hunter’ This type of bullying affects you in a strange way. Even years later when I was at sea someone would ask me the time, when I looked at a clock my heart would start pounding and the numbers would not register to me in any type of order. I always tried to keep everything from my mother; otherwise she would intervene and end up on the floor bleeding. That hurt me more than any smack in the mouth.

I remember a man coming round to collect the rent. He a large cloth bag containing loose change, he wore a Deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately he met my father who told him to kind of ‘Go away.’

From my hiding place at the top of the stairs I heard the man shout; "Right I’m gonna tell em that you put the electricity back on yourself!"

I then heard three loud thuds and saw the ‘Deerstalker’ fly up into the air. I jumped up to the window and saw coins all over the street. The rent man was lying on his back holding his face. My Father leaned over him and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The man quickly picked up his coins and left.

The councillors of Knottingley must have hated my playground. During the late 60s and early 70s these idiots began to systematically demolish the town. The Red Lion went, so did the houses either side of it. Their biggest crime was Aire Street. This evocative esplanade of infinite character was the heart and backbone of Knottingley. Looking like a set from a Catherine Cookson novel, it could rival Haworth High Street any day, due to its length and diversity of Victorian (and older) architecture. OK it didn’t have the green hills as a backdrop, but the River Aire was just as imposing.

(photo) Mike with Joyce Temple

I tried to spend as little time as possible at home. With my newly acquired friend Steven Temple I really got to know the town. ‘Tempy’ (as he was known then) knew Knottingley like the back of his hand; he took me fishing for sticklebacks at the ‘Pot Dicks’. We made dodgy rafts and went on the canal and river Aire. We also (like every other kid in Knottingley) stole apples from the vicarage.

One night when I returned home my father was sat waiting for me,

"Get your coat back on we’re going out."

As we hit the night air he produced this weird looking handcart, "Get in." Riding in this contraption was quite fun……for a while, until I cottoned on where we heading.

We proceeded down Common lane for ages, in the pitch black until we came to a large hole in a huge fence behind Kellingley. We could then see very clearly as there were massive floodlights illuminating a long mountain of coal. The most shocking thing was the amount of people. It looked like ‘Ponte’ market on a Saturday morning. I recognized a lot of faces, as some of them were my friend’s fathers. The atmosphere was jolly if perhaps a little rushed. Everyone was filling any container they could with black gold to heat your house; there was even an old ambulance. I was brought out of my daze by a nudge in the back from my father, "Start filling, quick." As we set off back into the darkness my dad had yet another surprise for me. A rope was put around my waist, "Get pulling. Don’t stop till we get home." I don’t know how good my father was in the army, but what I do know is he was crap at tying knots. The rope around my waist was a lasso. The more I pulled the more ill I began to feel. People were overtaking us on bicycles and mopeds anything with wheels, all weighed down with coal. My father stopped dead, "Listen." He hissed. All I could hear was some type of police siren in the distance. My father pushed the whole cart into the ditch next to the road; of course I followed rather quickly having been tied to it. The taste of that water is something I’ll never forget. As I raised my head I clearly saw the ambulance whizzing by full of stolen coal, and yes the idiots had the siren on. I got home soaking wet, half strangled with about two buckets of coal. Crime really does pay.

When the houses began disappearing around Harker and Aire Street most of my friends went with them. Knottingley was becoming a lonely place. My mother told us we maybe getting a council house on an estate called Warwick.

When the Osmonds and David Cassidy hit the pop charts I started Knottingley High school. The thing I wanted most in the world was a Parka with a fur rim around the hood. Alas with our lifestyle it would never come.

From that time Tempy became my best friend. When things were bad in our house his mother and father (Joyce and Charlie) gave me haven in their own home. Joyce and Charlie were the first people to take me to the seaside. I’ll never forget getting off the Wallace Arnold coach and seeing the ocean for the first time in my life I was gob smacked I’d never seen anything like it, even if it was Blackpool. I vowed to myself there and then I would one day go to sea.

When I woke up the storm had gone. I went on deck and smiled at the ocean. It looked like a giant mirror stretching out to a crimson horizon. Upon returning to the mess room it had become literally a ‘mess’ there was tomato ketchup, chutney and a million other condiments smeared all over the bulkhead. One of the deckies walked by an laughed, "Who didn’t batten down his area properly?" I didn’t care, as I scrubbed it clean. I had been spared Davey Jones’s Locker.

Mike Edwards
26 March 2003

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Also by Mike Edwards

Knottingley Compatriots
Memories of Knottingley - My Knottingley
Stranger Things Can Happen At Sea
Happy Days
Teachers of the 70's
Africans and Communists

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