Treasure.
Some people are incredibly lucky. Sometimes they find things by pure luck that are valuable treasure, it comes into their possession free and changes their life, at least for a little while.
It happened to me twice.
When I was a kid, in Liverpool, we had nothing. There was a posh kid in our street who had a bike, but the rest of us had to make do with a skate. I used to prefer the right skate , my younger brother always had the left one and he used to whinge quite a lot about that. I used to aspire to a push bike, he aspired for me to get one too, because then he could have the right skate.
One day, the posh kids younger brother got a scooter. It was ace, and he would let us have a go on it for a sherbert flying saucer, two goes for a Kola cube. Then we got a plank and nailed a skate to the front and hack and made our own scooter, one that you had to lay on. It was miles better than the bought one, and then we used to charge HIM to have a go on our one.
I was larking about in the waste ground behind the church one day when I found my first bit of treasure. We used to play a lot in that field making ‘dens’. We would shore up the walls with old planks, prams , tyres, then put a wriggly tin roof on it, then camoflage it up with grass and sods of earth. It was always important to stay hidden, because there were always bigger boys and toughs who would take great pleasure in wrecking your den , nicking all your swag and giving you a thump or a boot.
It was important to be proficient in one of the three martial arts. Fist fighting, running away or smooth talking. This explains why I had so many bruises as a youngster, and why I determined, when I was a older and more muscely, never to be on the receiving end again. For then however, it meant I had to be good at hiding. Which I was.
So I was larking around one long summers day, probably 1965, and I saw something unusual in the long grass. It was a circle, out of place, and, as it turned out, out of time as well. It was about three inches long and made of brass. It was in two sections, one that slid inside the other, and it had a glass lens on each end that screwed on.
It was a top quality miniature telescope.
Hundreds of years old. It had belonged to a pirate. Probably. Or Robinson crusoe.
And it worked too, It wasn’t just an ornament or a toy. It was absolutely brilliant, extremely valuable and a real treasure. I only realised what a treasure it was when ‘Thomo’, the posh kid , offered me the unimaginable fortune of four bob for it. That was over two weeks pocket money. For four bob you could get a Tiger tank, a cup of chicken soup from the vending machine in Lime street station, and have enough for your bus fare so you didn’t have to walk the six miles home.
I became an overnight celebrity, much vaunted and feted, and it’s a wonder all my teeth didn’t fall out through overdosing on lemon sherbets and mojos.
Like all good things though, it came to an end. One day I looked in my pocket and it was gone. I just hope it brought as much pleasure and fame to the next kid who owned it*
A few years later, it was another long hot summer and we had discovered a new game. Rafts. We used to get some old planks and oil drums, lash them together and punt ourselves along the Leeds Liverpool canal in Bootle.
Other gangs would build a raft and we would have a battle, throwing bricks, bottles and trying to wreck the other raft, or tip it up. It was not a pleasant experience getting tipped into the ‘cut’, not because of the wet, or the dangerous sunken obstacles or the weed, but because you were a helpless target for the missiles and sticks.
Sometimes there were fleets of two or three rafts on each side. The more crew you had, the more firepower and ability to repel borders, but the more chance of getting tipped in, or the raft breaking up. And that’s when I found my second treasure.
People these days have difficulty understanding what it was like to live in (at the end of) the horse and cart age. There are materials nowadays that we take for granted, but they were new discoveries then. One of them was fibre glass.
Someone, somewhere had mad a big fibre glass bath, for some sort of industrial process I guess. It was about six feet square and about four feet deep.
We found it floating by the swing bridge, and it was the perfect boat. The perfect warship for canal-raft inter gang warfare. Unsinkable and with a crew complement double the normal craft, impossible to board because the side were too high, it was a dreadnought.
We used to hide it in the rushes overnight, to keep the enemy from taking possession, and one night it was my job to find a new hidey hole for it.
Just as I was scrambling up the canal bank, near the racecourse, I espied and enemy scout. Ha ha, I thought, so I jumped back in and punted a further half mile on the other side, hid our ship then made my way home.
The next day, the gang set out for the cut, and I went to find the boat. I looked high and low, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where I had hidden it.
They saw the look on my face when I got back and the gang leader shouted, ‘They nicked it didn’t they?
I had a choice. Let them think it had been nicked because I hadn’t hidden it properly, or tell them I had lost it.
I kept me gob shut, and beat a hasty.
*(whoever that dirty , stinking, robbing, no good, festering bastid might have been)
Some people are incredibly lucky. Sometimes they find things by pure luck that are valuable treasure, it comes into their possession free and changes their life, at least for a little while.
It happened to me twice.
When I was a kid, in Liverpool, we had nothing. There was a posh kid in our street who had a bike, but the rest of us had to make do with a skate. I used to prefer the right skate , my younger brother always had the left one and he used to whinge quite a lot about that. I used to aspire to a push bike, he aspired for me to get one too, because then he could have the right skate.
One day, the posh kids younger brother got a scooter. It was ace, and he would let us have a go on it for a sherbert flying saucer, two goes for a Kola cube. Then we got a plank and nailed a skate to the front and hack and made our own scooter, one that you had to lay on. It was miles better than the bought one, and then we used to charge HIM to have a go on our one.
I was larking about in the waste ground behind the church one day when I found my first bit of treasure. We used to play a lot in that field making ‘dens’. We would shore up the walls with old planks, prams , tyres, then put a wriggly tin roof on it, then camoflage it up with grass and sods of earth. It was always important to stay hidden, because there were always bigger boys and toughs who would take great pleasure in wrecking your den , nicking all your swag and giving you a thump or a boot.
It was important to be proficient in one of the three martial arts. Fist fighting, running away or smooth talking. This explains why I had so many bruises as a youngster, and why I determined, when I was a older and more muscely, never to be on the receiving end again. For then however, it meant I had to be good at hiding. Which I was.
So I was larking around one long summers day, probably 1965, and I saw something unusual in the long grass. It was a circle, out of place, and, as it turned out, out of time as well. It was about three inches long and made of brass. It was in two sections, one that slid inside the other, and it had a glass lens on each end that screwed on.
It was a top quality miniature telescope.
Hundreds of years old. It had belonged to a pirate. Probably. Or Robinson crusoe.
And it worked too, It wasn’t just an ornament or a toy. It was absolutely brilliant, extremely valuable and a real treasure. I only realised what a treasure it was when ‘Thomo’, the posh kid , offered me the unimaginable fortune of four bob for it. That was over two weeks pocket money. For four bob you could get a Tiger tank, a cup of chicken soup from the vending machine in Lime street station, and have enough for your bus fare so you didn’t have to walk the six miles home.
I became an overnight celebrity, much vaunted and feted, and it’s a wonder all my teeth didn’t fall out through overdosing on lemon sherbets and mojos.
Like all good things though, it came to an end. One day I looked in my pocket and it was gone. I just hope it brought as much pleasure and fame to the next kid who owned it*
A few years later, it was another long hot summer and we had discovered a new game. Rafts. We used to get some old planks and oil drums, lash them together and punt ourselves along the Leeds Liverpool canal in Bootle.
Other gangs would build a raft and we would have a battle, throwing bricks, bottles and trying to wreck the other raft, or tip it up. It was not a pleasant experience getting tipped into the ‘cut’, not because of the wet, or the dangerous sunken obstacles or the weed, but because you were a helpless target for the missiles and sticks.
Sometimes there were fleets of two or three rafts on each side. The more crew you had, the more firepower and ability to repel borders, but the more chance of getting tipped in, or the raft breaking up. And that’s when I found my second treasure.
People these days have difficulty understanding what it was like to live in (at the end of) the horse and cart age. There are materials nowadays that we take for granted, but they were new discoveries then. One of them was fibre glass.
Someone, somewhere had mad a big fibre glass bath, for some sort of industrial process I guess. It was about six feet square and about four feet deep.
We found it floating by the swing bridge, and it was the perfect boat. The perfect warship for canal-raft inter gang warfare. Unsinkable and with a crew complement double the normal craft, impossible to board because the side were too high, it was a dreadnought.
We used to hide it in the rushes overnight, to keep the enemy from taking possession, and one night it was my job to find a new hidey hole for it.
Just as I was scrambling up the canal bank, near the racecourse, I espied and enemy scout. Ha ha, I thought, so I jumped back in and punted a further half mile on the other side, hid our ship then made my way home.
The next day, the gang set out for the cut, and I went to find the boat. I looked high and low, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where I had hidden it.
They saw the look on my face when I got back and the gang leader shouted, ‘They nicked it didn’t they?
I had a choice. Let them think it had been nicked because I hadn’t hidden it properly, or tell them I had lost it.
I kept me gob shut, and beat a hasty.
*(whoever that dirty , stinking, robbing, no good, festering bastid might have been)
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