Heywood, Lancashire - for Fungus/ChrisNoir
pottssteve
Posts: 4,069
Ay Up!
I'm writing my memoirs/a cycling book at the moment and thought you might like to reead a bit about my time at Siddal Moor High on Newhouse Rd. It's a bit long but hopefully you'll have a chuckle...
I’ve never been very good in the heat, coming as I do from the cold and damp environs of North Manchester where the main climatic difference between summer and winter is the temperature of the rain. During my school career, P.E. lessons of football and rugby were often cancelled due to snow on the pitch and the teacher, caring more about his turf than about the twenty five unwilling victims which he had to entertain for fifty minutes, would not allow us to play on them. In some ways the cancellation of rugby in particular was a blessing for a variety of reasons. At around the age of 9 or 10 my eyesight had begun to deteriorate rather alarmingly, forcing me to wear black plastic-framed NHS spectacles of ever-increasing lens thickness. “Guinness bottle bottoms” was not an understatement. During rugby lessons I was compelled, for reasons of safety, to take them off, rendering me effectively blind for the duration of the lesson. Lacking virtually every attribute required to play rugby for the school team (fitness, stamina, courage, an ability to see the ball and other players), my bulk was utilised, along with the rest of the sick and the lame, as practice for the first team. For 40 minutes we would be pummelled, tackled and run ragged as the shining stars of the First Fifteen ran rings around us, their morale soaring in preparation for the arrival of the real opposition on Saturday morning. My Mister Magoo rugby stylings did mean that I missed most of the physical punishment however as I rarely got anywhere near the action. Playing at what I have since learned is called “tight head prop”, once the ball had exited the scrum I would spend much of the time until the next scrum wandering around in the midfield, squinting desperately in order to bring anything into focus. In five years of secondary school rugby I never saw anyone score a try. However, with the arrival of the blessed bad weather, instead of the humiliation of school rugby class, Mr Smedley, an Andrew Ridgley lookalike who loved himself more than anyone else, would make us “warm up” by jogging around the field in thin polyester shorts and jerseys whilst he made a leisurely cup of coffee, after which he announced, to our delight, that we would be doing sit ups and press ups in an inch of snow on the touchline. On the occasions that the cold weather had frozen the pitch solid, paradoxically allowing football to continue, it proved to be equally unpleasant. One classmate of mine, hanging around on the half way line trying to keep warm found himself to be the last line of defence against the opposing team. Hopelessly outnumbered he bravely advanced to narrow the angle for a pass and was rewarded as the ball ricocheted powerfully off his frozen thigh at great speed with a hollow, “ping”, leaving a perfect red circle which would remain until Maths class two hours later.
Worst of all, however, was the cross-country running. Looking back, it was excellent training for the rigours of cycling, mixing as it did both mental torment and physical agony. However, as a sedentary teenager who preferred jelly to jogging, it was torture. Firstly, there was the psychological impact as the teachers never told us that we were running until we were getting changed for the class. Presumably the lack of advertising meant that the worst malingerers, such as me and Keith Bamford, the boy with the football-shaped weal on his thigh, would have no time to prepare excuses or self-inflict injuries which prevented us from taking part. The classic element of surprise; the P.E. teacher’s key tactic. The psychological trauma continued as Keith was invariably singled out for special attention. Although I was chubby, Keith was in a different league of fatness. He had more, and bigger rolls than I did, soft, white, doughy flesh which bulged and oozed and jiggled. Unlike me he appeared to have no hang-ups about his size and, as he squeezed himself into his polyester P.E. shirt, like a tube of toothpaste in reverse, was possibly even happy with his special treatment. Keith didn’t have to do cross country running. Because of his monumentally slow progress during a previous attempt, which saw him finishing somewhere around 20 minutes behind the last arrival (probably me), while the rest of us had to do the full distance his task was to haul himself around the playing fields three times and then head into the showers. I’ve recently retraced the route of our run and it turns out to be about 1.8 miles, or a shade under 3km. I could walk it in less than 30 minutes but back then the pain and trauma of the event were exquisite. As Keith plodded across the road to be yelled at by one of the P.E. staff whilst moving at glacial speed around the sports fields, the rest of us turned right out of the school gates and began to pound the pavement. If fact, the name, “cross country” is a bit of misnomer because although much of the route took us through green belt land on the outskirts of town very little of it actually involved running on anything other than tarmac or paving slabs. Bearing in mind that this was the early 1980’s when training shoes had all the cushioning of a cricket bat and it’s a wonder that I’m not confined to a wheelchair with arthritis. Turning right onto Manchester Road the section here was a relatively flat stretch of about half a mile, the only hazards being the possibility of being run over by a vehicle pulling out of one of the side streets. Five minutes in and by this time my lungs had begun to burn and my leaden legs were feeling every thump as my feet banged hard on the unforgiving pavement. I’m just not built for running, anything over about 150 metres and I’m spent, hence my love of the bike. At the corner of Hareshill Rd we turned right and began the long, slow drag up to the newly constructed distribution park, an ugly collection of corrugated metal warehouses used to store produce on its way to the supermarkets and retail outlets of the North West of England. Due to its proximity to the M66 and M62 motorways Heywood is an ideal location for such a facility, and I’m sure the farmer who owned the land felt the same way when he sold it to the developers with the result that hundreds of HGVs and container lorries now plough up and down the outskirts of Heywood at all hours of the day and night. I say, ‘we” by the way, but by this time I was usually a considerable distance off the back of the pack and losing contact with every stride. However, on rare occasions I managed to keep pace with the slower kids, especially the heavy smokers, and so it was an extra treat if, as we forced our way against the extremely modest gradient, an 18 wheeler appeared on the horizon. I suppose it’s another example of the grim humour borne out of adversity, which is one way of dealing with the misery of running around the outskirts of a dull Northern town in the grey drizzle of a February Friday morning wearing inadequate clothing and hard shoes. If nothing else I suppose it would have given the driver a chuckle at the sight of five or six half frozen teenagers raising their arms in a ragged Mexican wave and yelling at the top of their lungs as his enormous rig shot past down the hill, covering them in a torrent of spray and road mud.
As the road crested we turned right off the pavement and onto the one real section of “country” running. A local farmer, and possibly colossal pervert, had apparently given permission for dozens of scantily clad local school kids to run through his farm yard during the winter months, and we were the lucky recipients of his generosity. Apparently the only caveat was that he be allowed to keep a very large dog behind an very small fence and on a very long chain, with the result that it would come running out of its kennel, barking furiously and scaring the hell out of us as we negotiated our way through the mixture of mud and cow shit which covered the yard, trying not to get too much up our legs. By the time the back markers such as myself arrived the thing must have been straining and barking so much it was usually hoarse and extremely frustrated at not having been able to eat one of us.
Through the yard and known a narrow, muddy path filled with half bricks, broken glass and pot holes and lined on either side with razor sharp barbed wire. At least it was slightly down hill. Having survived this we emerged once again onto the road and began the last half mile stretch back to the school, the final obstacle being the cruel hill on Newhouse Rd. Here once again my memory seems to have played tricks on me. I remember that hill as a steep ramp, almost a wall of leg sapping, lung burning pain, but it turns out to be nothing more than a slight rise of a few metres or so before it levels out in front of the school car park through which I would trudge, able at last to stop running, before falling into a shower whose hot thick steam made me catch my breath after the chill of the Mancunian morning.
I'm writing my memoirs/a cycling book at the moment and thought you might like to reead a bit about my time at Siddal Moor High on Newhouse Rd. It's a bit long but hopefully you'll have a chuckle...
I’ve never been very good in the heat, coming as I do from the cold and damp environs of North Manchester where the main climatic difference between summer and winter is the temperature of the rain. During my school career, P.E. lessons of football and rugby were often cancelled due to snow on the pitch and the teacher, caring more about his turf than about the twenty five unwilling victims which he had to entertain for fifty minutes, would not allow us to play on them. In some ways the cancellation of rugby in particular was a blessing for a variety of reasons. At around the age of 9 or 10 my eyesight had begun to deteriorate rather alarmingly, forcing me to wear black plastic-framed NHS spectacles of ever-increasing lens thickness. “Guinness bottle bottoms” was not an understatement. During rugby lessons I was compelled, for reasons of safety, to take them off, rendering me effectively blind for the duration of the lesson. Lacking virtually every attribute required to play rugby for the school team (fitness, stamina, courage, an ability to see the ball and other players), my bulk was utilised, along with the rest of the sick and the lame, as practice for the first team. For 40 minutes we would be pummelled, tackled and run ragged as the shining stars of the First Fifteen ran rings around us, their morale soaring in preparation for the arrival of the real opposition on Saturday morning. My Mister Magoo rugby stylings did mean that I missed most of the physical punishment however as I rarely got anywhere near the action. Playing at what I have since learned is called “tight head prop”, once the ball had exited the scrum I would spend much of the time until the next scrum wandering around in the midfield, squinting desperately in order to bring anything into focus. In five years of secondary school rugby I never saw anyone score a try. However, with the arrival of the blessed bad weather, instead of the humiliation of school rugby class, Mr Smedley, an Andrew Ridgley lookalike who loved himself more than anyone else, would make us “warm up” by jogging around the field in thin polyester shorts and jerseys whilst he made a leisurely cup of coffee, after which he announced, to our delight, that we would be doing sit ups and press ups in an inch of snow on the touchline. On the occasions that the cold weather had frozen the pitch solid, paradoxically allowing football to continue, it proved to be equally unpleasant. One classmate of mine, hanging around on the half way line trying to keep warm found himself to be the last line of defence against the opposing team. Hopelessly outnumbered he bravely advanced to narrow the angle for a pass and was rewarded as the ball ricocheted powerfully off his frozen thigh at great speed with a hollow, “ping”, leaving a perfect red circle which would remain until Maths class two hours later.
Worst of all, however, was the cross-country running. Looking back, it was excellent training for the rigours of cycling, mixing as it did both mental torment and physical agony. However, as a sedentary teenager who preferred jelly to jogging, it was torture. Firstly, there was the psychological impact as the teachers never told us that we were running until we were getting changed for the class. Presumably the lack of advertising meant that the worst malingerers, such as me and Keith Bamford, the boy with the football-shaped weal on his thigh, would have no time to prepare excuses or self-inflict injuries which prevented us from taking part. The classic element of surprise; the P.E. teacher’s key tactic. The psychological trauma continued as Keith was invariably singled out for special attention. Although I was chubby, Keith was in a different league of fatness. He had more, and bigger rolls than I did, soft, white, doughy flesh which bulged and oozed and jiggled. Unlike me he appeared to have no hang-ups about his size and, as he squeezed himself into his polyester P.E. shirt, like a tube of toothpaste in reverse, was possibly even happy with his special treatment. Keith didn’t have to do cross country running. Because of his monumentally slow progress during a previous attempt, which saw him finishing somewhere around 20 minutes behind the last arrival (probably me), while the rest of us had to do the full distance his task was to haul himself around the playing fields three times and then head into the showers. I’ve recently retraced the route of our run and it turns out to be about 1.8 miles, or a shade under 3km. I could walk it in less than 30 minutes but back then the pain and trauma of the event were exquisite. As Keith plodded across the road to be yelled at by one of the P.E. staff whilst moving at glacial speed around the sports fields, the rest of us turned right out of the school gates and began to pound the pavement. If fact, the name, “cross country” is a bit of misnomer because although much of the route took us through green belt land on the outskirts of town very little of it actually involved running on anything other than tarmac or paving slabs. Bearing in mind that this was the early 1980’s when training shoes had all the cushioning of a cricket bat and it’s a wonder that I’m not confined to a wheelchair with arthritis. Turning right onto Manchester Road the section here was a relatively flat stretch of about half a mile, the only hazards being the possibility of being run over by a vehicle pulling out of one of the side streets. Five minutes in and by this time my lungs had begun to burn and my leaden legs were feeling every thump as my feet banged hard on the unforgiving pavement. I’m just not built for running, anything over about 150 metres and I’m spent, hence my love of the bike. At the corner of Hareshill Rd we turned right and began the long, slow drag up to the newly constructed distribution park, an ugly collection of corrugated metal warehouses used to store produce on its way to the supermarkets and retail outlets of the North West of England. Due to its proximity to the M66 and M62 motorways Heywood is an ideal location for such a facility, and I’m sure the farmer who owned the land felt the same way when he sold it to the developers with the result that hundreds of HGVs and container lorries now plough up and down the outskirts of Heywood at all hours of the day and night. I say, ‘we” by the way, but by this time I was usually a considerable distance off the back of the pack and losing contact with every stride. However, on rare occasions I managed to keep pace with the slower kids, especially the heavy smokers, and so it was an extra treat if, as we forced our way against the extremely modest gradient, an 18 wheeler appeared on the horizon. I suppose it’s another example of the grim humour borne out of adversity, which is one way of dealing with the misery of running around the outskirts of a dull Northern town in the grey drizzle of a February Friday morning wearing inadequate clothing and hard shoes. If nothing else I suppose it would have given the driver a chuckle at the sight of five or six half frozen teenagers raising their arms in a ragged Mexican wave and yelling at the top of their lungs as his enormous rig shot past down the hill, covering them in a torrent of spray and road mud.
As the road crested we turned right off the pavement and onto the one real section of “country” running. A local farmer, and possibly colossal pervert, had apparently given permission for dozens of scantily clad local school kids to run through his farm yard during the winter months, and we were the lucky recipients of his generosity. Apparently the only caveat was that he be allowed to keep a very large dog behind an very small fence and on a very long chain, with the result that it would come running out of its kennel, barking furiously and scaring the hell out of us as we negotiated our way through the mixture of mud and cow shit which covered the yard, trying not to get too much up our legs. By the time the back markers such as myself arrived the thing must have been straining and barking so much it was usually hoarse and extremely frustrated at not having been able to eat one of us.
Through the yard and known a narrow, muddy path filled with half bricks, broken glass and pot holes and lined on either side with razor sharp barbed wire. At least it was slightly down hill. Having survived this we emerged once again onto the road and began the last half mile stretch back to the school, the final obstacle being the cruel hill on Newhouse Rd. Here once again my memory seems to have played tricks on me. I remember that hill as a steep ramp, almost a wall of leg sapping, lung burning pain, but it turns out to be nothing more than a slight rise of a few metres or so before it levels out in front of the school car park through which I would trudge, able at last to stop running, before falling into a shower whose hot thick steam made me catch my breath after the chill of the Mancunian morning.
Head Hands Heart Lungs Legs
0
Comments
-
Superb Steve. I never went to Siddy I went to Suthy instead, but I live just around the corner from siddy and have witnessed on many occasion kids still doing the very same route.
I actually felt all your pain as last year I did the bupa 10k in Manchester. So the route was the beginning of my full 10 k practice run. So I know what its like to hit the hill up to the farm and also Newhouse Rd as I used to finish off by sprinting that. Little hill it is not especially when your knackered
I only wish that our teachers were like yours. Alas we played footie and rugby in every type of weather be it stinging hail, torrential rain or swealtering sunshine. Now I liked playing them but not in that weather.
So when do we get to read the other instalments?Bianchi. There are no alternatives only compromises!
I RIDE A KONA CADABRA -would you like to come and have a play with my magic link?0 -
School showers have HOT water as well? :shock:Cycling weakly0
-
skyd0g wrote:School showers have HOT water as well? :shock:
Oh aye we have all the mod cons in heywood
Bianchi. There are no alternatives only compromises!
I RIDE A KONA CADABRA -would you like to come and have a play with my magic link?0 -
Ah... the memories come flooding back
Went to Joeys myself '79 - '84. We had a similar route but in the opposite direction. Went thru the farm the same way tho, i think.
What is it with PE teachers being sadistic barstewards?0 -
Ours used to take inane pleasure from shooting snot out of one nostril just as you were running past with the football :shock:
The other one I had at primary school on regent st was a little pygmy cnut who needed a good smak in the faceBianchi. There are no alternatives only compromises!
I RIDE A KONA CADABRA -would you like to come and have a play with my magic link?0 -
The Ballad of Eric Olthwaite eat your heart out. Fantastic bit of writing, chapeau.0
-
Wow. I think you and I have lived a parallel life. I grew up in Middleton during the same period and went to school in Oldham and this was just so close to my experiences to be scary.
We had two PE teachers, one was the typical 'jock' who lived in a pair of Ron Hill trackies and the other one looked as if stirring his cup of tea was the most exercise he'd do in a day.
Both had evil streaks and as I was also (still am) quite shortsighted, PE lessons were an absolute misery. Funny I'm probably fitter now than either of them ever were. Wonder if they'd fancy a cross country run with me now.0 -
Thanks for the feedback, guys.
Fungus - I'm looking for a publisher/agent at the moment so hopefully you'll be able to read the whole thing in book form! If not I'll probably set up some sort of blog when I have the time and can work out how to do it.
Interesting spread of readers on here:
Siddal Moor was obviously the best school in Heywood by a long chalk. If you went to St Joseph's you were a God botherer, and Sutherland Rd was the rough one where all the scum from Darn Hill went to! (Or at least, that's how it seemed when I was 14). The freaky thing is I was looking at Siddal Moor on Google streetview and other than the sign at the front of the school nothing else seems to have changed since 1987!
skydog - yes, we had hot showers. I believe the water was pumped specially from Down South for us. The showers had only 2 settings though - Arctic breeze or Nuclear furnace. And Foffy Forrest always wanted to borrow my towel as he was rough and his Mum never gave him one to use......Head Hands Heart Lungs Legs0 -
Well to us we were the best and siddy was full of mosser's lol.
Hey it's looking different now its all getting rebuilt is siddy into one big school and suthy has closed now I think. Also siddy is now a sports college not a high school.
Its still full of mosser's as well Bianchi. There are no alternatives only compromises!
I RIDE A KONA CADABRA -would you like to come and have a play with my magic link?0 -
Great stuff, post some more! PE is always fertile ground for reminiscing - here’s the Roch Valley angle...
It’s funny really as during my time at Roch Valley the only sport I showed any aptitude for was cross-country running. I liked the sheer lack of any talent required. Football? Need some skill and accuracy. Cricket? Need some skill and accuracy. Rugby? Need to able to take a beating. Cross country running? Just need to keep putting one (muddy) foot in front of the other. I could do that - piece o’p*ss.
You could always tell when it was it was time for cross country running as it would be howling with wind, lashing it down and the kettle would be on in the PE teacher’s office as we all trooped past waiting for the inevitable shout of ‘CROSS COUNTRY!!!’ As heads in the changing rooms sagged at the prospect of a four mile run through the Pennines mine would be bright and perky. ‘Yes’, I thought. ‘Not today will I stagger round the rugby pitch with a fist imprint on my head. Not today will I have to stand in a mudpool between two posts while the ‘bigger boys’ cannon footballs at me’.
I can certainly empathise with the ‘farmer plus big dog’ rule that seems to apply to all school cross country routes. The farmer had neatly chained the dog next to a gate. An incredibly heavy gate. An incredibly rusty heavy gate that took every last breath of effort to open - while all the time a semi-rabid Rottweiler bayed for blood three feet away from your pallid, cowering face.
However, the upshot of this was that, as a ‘good runner’, you were back early (sometimes early enough to catch the teacher with his feet up on the desk, drinking a brew and reading a confiscated copy of Shoot) and able to take a shower in relative peace, get dressed, drench yourself in Lynx Java then peer through the crack in the door at the girls doing aerobics in the gym (images that I still sometimes recall in private situations even today).
The teachers both left one year and were replaced by the worst kind of PE teacher; the one that wants to be your friend (unless you happened to be a skinny-lycra-loving,-indie-girlie-weed). Somewhat lol-tastically this matiness extended to him letting his guard down one time and confessing to the bigger boys of the rugby team that he’d recently found his wife in bed with another man. This tale shot round the school faster than a dose of Chlamydia. Pr*ck.
Good times, kinda…
Let’s have some more PE tales please - it’s heart-warming to hear that not everyone was a strapping six-footer who had trials with the local football and rugby club.0 -
Ay Up!
By Hell, it's grim up North!
Fungus - they closed Suthy Rd down because it was the only way they could stop the exam results to getting worse!
Chris - "drench yourself in Lynx Java then peer through the crack in the door at the girls doing aerobics in the gym (images that I still sometimes recall in private situations even today)."
Every teenage boy knows teenage girls can't resist Lynx. I'm showing my age but I don't think it even existed when I was at school. We used fookin' soap AND LIKED IT!
Anyone else seen Gregory's Girl with John Gordon Sinclair and Claire Grogan?!
SteveHead Hands Heart Lungs Legs0 -
Stop knocking mossers or i'll nick your bike and sell it for a bag of glue 0
