Episode 3, Chapter 4
This post is dedicated to Mr John Lees and Mr Andy Morton. Thank-you for teaching us the therapy of "mekkin' an mendin' ".
It was a pleasure to meet you again at the 2008 & 2009 CGSFPA reunions.
Our ginger beer plants were in full production by mid- November 1969. Creedence Clearwater Revival hammered out the three chords of Bad Moon Rising, which would be reprised by the Cannock Grammar Boys' Band precisely forty years later at their school reunion.
(Click on astronauts if you'd like the full Apollo 12 nerdfile)
Astronauts Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon and Al Bean had a bad rising to the moon on 15th, when their Saturn rocket was struck twice by lightning. Al saved the mission by fiddling with an override switch in the Command module, after the instruments and onboard computer told them to abort...
In our Wednesday afternoon school metalwork lesson, Zedders Paul, Nigel, Kev, Graham and I were fiddling too, as usual, but with less guarantee of success. We were discussing the Apollo drama in a fume cocktail of machine oil, brazing flux and arsenic. This was metalwork before Health & Safety spoiled the fun.
"It's all bloomin' aluminium these days", said Nige, who was struggling with the handle of the screwdriver he had chosen to manufacture, while Kev attempted to remove a piece of swarf from his eye.
Paul chipped in. "Yep. It meks good aeroplanes, 'though; And egg cups. I'm on me second one."
He proudly demonstrated his handiwork; a matched pair of recepticles made from bent slices of the miracle metal, which wobbled hardly at all when placed on the flat surface of the tool-strewn workbench.
"Are", said Kev. It might be good on them spairce rockets, burrit's a bugger to get outter yer eye orright. At least wi' them steel slivers, yer can use a magnet."
Graham was experimenting with spent air-rifle pellets and a brazing torch. "Look Al, this lead melts dead easy. Ah'm gunner mek some fishin' weights for Kev"
I was busy affixing a shaft to the garden trowel project, bashing the rivets and one of my thumbnails with affected aplomb.
I looked up, wrapped a handkerchief around the wound, and peered past lathes and drills into the middle distance of the far end of the workshop.
"Dave's mekkin' a steam engine, yer know..."
Our classmate Dave was good at everything, and never needed to affect aplomb because he had the real stuff by the bucketful.
Kev said "I bet Dairve ends up doin' summat in the car industry. Have yer gorra minute, Boy Wonder, I need a nand to light the forge"
Mr Morton and Mr Lees were engrossed in technical consultations with one of the Sixth Formers who was building a full-sized space-framed sports car next to where Dave was honing the brass bore of his steam engine, prior to final assembly.
The forge was an example of The Real McCoy approach to education: Our 1960's Grammar School curriculum juxtaposed Science, Humanities and Manual/Domestic Arts.
After a token nod to mixed boy-girl woodworking in our First Year, the lads (at least those who'd failed Latin) were by now being instructed in the skills of drilling, brazing, soldering, melting, casting, filing, forging, bending, or shaping the metals of the waning industrial age as well as those of the emerging space-age.
The girls were learning Latin, or cooking cheese pie.
This all seemed to fit in with the late-Sixties vibe/zeitgeist: Apollo Astronauts went to the moon, while their wives looked stylish and stayed home cooking apple pie. We made egg cups or steam engines in the high-risk metalworkshop, our female class companions huddled in the Domestic Science bliss of E block...(Expect a few emails on this subject. Ed)
Kev was reading the instructions on the forge.
"It says here we need ter remove clinker before lighting. What's a clinker, Boy Wonder, yo'm the language specialist ay yer?"
"Dunno, Kev. Doe bother wi' th'instructions, just light the bugger."
Kev had sorted out the gas taps in no time, and applied a match. An orange flame sprang under the canopy, bathing us, and Paul and Nige who had come to watch, in a golden glow.
"Doe worry, Al, them eyebrows'll soon grow back"
Kev applied some air. The flame roared and changed to blue, showering the floor and the spectators with red-hot popcorn. We had just discoverd the existence of clinker, and the need for its removal.
"Looks like an Apollo mission in here" quipped Paul, picking clinker from Nige's face, and we all burst into laughter.
Mr Lees heard the laughter, and came striding into the forge.
He failed to see the reason for our amusement, and gave us a few (20, reckoned Paul) minutes' in-service training on the importance of pre-lighting clinker precautions.
At the end of the lesson, we took off our aprons, examined the burns in our clothing, put on our striped green ties and our blazers, and strode out into the autumn 3.35 pm semi-darkness of the staff car park. We did not often see the school from this angle, with its array of sixties motorbilia. We admired Mr Blackham's cream Triumph Vitesse six-cylinder saloon.
Kev claimed he spotted Miss Austin SMOKING in the staffroom, but none of us believed him. He was adamant all the way home, upstairs on the Number 17, that his eyes had not failed him.
It was completely dark when I picked up my newspaper delivery bag at Mrs Rogers' shop. Walking past the war memorial, with its recently-laid wreaths of poppies, and through the fallen leaves, then past the Monkey Puzzle tree next to the Chemist's, I looked up at the Moon, and couldn't understand why most other folks were going about their everyday routines apparently oblivious to the fact that there were two blokes up there at this very moment.
A characteristically downbeat headline in the Express & Star tried to bring my thoughts back into line and down to Earth, by whining:
"MOON TV FLOP" .
Up there on the Mare Cognita, joking prankster astronaut Al Bean had accidentally pointed the TV camera at the sun, burning out the video tube, and putting an abrupt end to colour coverage.
The tabloids sulked en masse. Even Cliff Michelmore and James Burke at the Beeb faltered in their enthusiastic elogies for a while. But my own attention was rivetted to the Apollo 12 mission, all the way to splashdown on 24th.
Rivetted as firmly as the shaft of the gardening trowel which was nestling next to the three dozen undelivered newspapers.
EPILOGUE
November 2009. A weak sun is low in the mid - afternoon sky.
There is enough light in Dad's shed to find the toolbox, but I need to carry it outside to look at its contents.
Through odours of Jeyes Fluid and creosote I pick out a life history in implements: Plumber's apprentice; Bricklayer; Village postman. I find his spirit level made by Rabone, Birmingham; a cold chisel stamped "Gilpin, Staffs"; a bike spanner marked "GPO".
At the bottom of the box, I find what I knew would be there.
-An aluminium eggcup.
-A screwdriver with a wonky handle.
-And a garden trowel, minus its handle, but with two rivets holding the blade as tightly as ever.
AB
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