1953 Year Of The Page Boy
By Dave Thomas
September 1 2010
It was the Coronation year, I was as yet to visit Turf Moor, and they dressed me up in this ridiculous garb. There’s me, a normal, lusty, rumbustuous, play out with my pals, kick a ball kind of lad, and they dress me up as an effing page boy.
The town had organised a day of celebrations one of which was the historical pageant and procession through the streets of the town ending at the local park. You had to dress as something which reflected the history of Britain. In short, something that had put the Great into Britain. I have never forgotten the humiliation. I was a normal lad. I read the Eagle and Dan Dare, Beano and Dandy, built dens, played in the local graveyard, fired catapults at the postman’s van as it drove by the house, was cheeky to passers-by and the best game of all was throwing stones across the canal at the windows of the Coop cobblers’ workshop which faced us across the water. For a dare we tiptoed and balanced precariously on the canal lock gates and lurched across to the other side of the canal. God knows what would have happened if one of us had fallen in. The dead dog in the lock we talked about for weeks and returned to stare at its floating body on a daily basis to see if it was still there. If no one was looking we sneaked up onto the railway lines and put a penny on the track. Then we came out of our hiding place to see how squashed the penny was after a steam train ran over it. Boy it sure was squashed alright. We tramped for miles up on the hilltops and eventually reached Stoodley Pike, a great stone monument that looked out over the valley. At junior school I was king of the rounders team when we played in the playground. My reputation spread the length and breadth of the class. I was so good that in a games lesson when we played as a class in the playground in the summer sunshine, it was always boys against girls; but to even things up the teacher put me and another lad called Rodney Greenwood on the girls’ team. Me and ‘im used to wipe the floor with the rest of them. I joined in any playtime football game. In short, yes sir, I was normal, other than this bloody page boy costume. To read the full article please click on the link below; |