The Great Baked Bean Fiasco. Part 1.
By Daniel J. Sherburn.20th August 2010.
In 1980 it was and a Sunday came along. As usual we got together as a family, my father's only complete day away from work, and went to visit our relations in Rawmarsh South Yorkshire. Past slag heaps and dirty rivers we'd cross the Don and fly through Wath-on-Dearne, parkgate, goosebert street, claypit lane, the Rother and many council houses and coal board housing joselling with the smells of coal and steel industry in the air along to Jean and Milton's abode.
Mum and dad's old friends, best man etc regular guest at our house since I can ever remember. When all else of Rawmarsh has vanished with the death of dad they still occur in my life. Solid as a pair of doctor Martin boots. Andrew and I were proper childhood pals. Did everything together no matter how far away. I wonder if he remembers our Lego match days and leagues with Iperswitch and Aston Gate as the two most successful teams competing in the league of our creation. I remember fish and chips and chinese curry sauce bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, etc. And his spectrum was a + one of the amstad models. And a final holiday in Filey pint of lager and a packet of crisp and 'bloody hell' that j and m found so so funny before 1986 we left for Perth WA.
Back in the late 1970's they had the most peculiar loo, it was very bulbous and turquoise i think, and a silver retro vacuum cleaner which was straight from the fifties. Milton had a Honda pedal moped/scooter that was in the yard beyond the street through an archway: it was always covered to keep it dry. As a kid that terraced house seemed huge too. Kitchen, dining room, front room and plenty of bedrooms it seemed: but a very steep stairway and I'm not sure but I think the had another stairway up to their bedroom. Nicola always baby sat while they went out and enjoyed themselves. Actually this may all have been on a Saturday after my dad finished work for the rest of the week. It makes more sense than Sunday...
Saturday afternoon some time in the early 1980's is the final reckoning of time I will give in this account.
Lots of arguments and one brief break up I remember between mum and dad. We stayed there for a few days I think to let things settle down and maybe it was more like a week before dad came to apologise. Never found out what it was about: the failing out. Should ask mum one day I suppose. I don't know how we got to Rawmarsh without dad?
Dinner plates thrown at my dad and my card Hornsey cable tunnel. Lots of anger in that house at Meyrick avenue. A collapsed chimney and a gas fire and a Betamax and my eyesight myopic going and mum crying that I need glasses. 1981. The chimney collapsed in '1976' and I started St. James C of E. about then too and got lost in 1976 when uncle Alan came to visit us. He worked on the Leeds city gallery. The extension: Henry Moore. Can't imagine what he did. In all my life he never seemed to work and always lived at home with his mum - my grandma Sherburn - and drove some Triumph, but not a Dolomite . He died soon after my dad from cancer and then grandma followed. All the Sherburn's died of cancer. Too much smoking and coal mining for their genes. Grandma Sherburn lived long and happily. Always loved my dad and mum and Emma and me: Danny; forever Danny I was in Rawmarsh. Dad filled in the side door and I dropped a breeze block on my large toe and lost a nail and had a nasty bloodblister. I was 5 or 6 and tried to help dad. He never asked me to help again. Not even when he hand painted a Hillman Avenger blue. You could see the brush strokes. That's when he went from crap job to crap job - papyrus and post office amongst others and before mister Sellers and a company car: a Mark 3 Cortina. Mrs Salmon lived next door number 32. Nicolas and Heather Jewitt at 30 before they were gone and Jason Blackburn arrived before Spain 1982 and kings of the wild frontier came out. We used play football out on the street. Very few cars and only Mr Fox got upset about the ball in his front garden. I don't think my parents had a lot of money and a lot of stresses from the collapse of dads fish and chip shop on the east coast. I remember him having lots of problems getting money from the guy who bought the property off dad.
They all spoke so different in Rawmarsh it was like old English. Very unclean and gutteral. Lots of 'are Jack' 'are Nicky'. But again they were good boys. Richard and Nicky. Panini stickers and wotsits from Prestos or was it Benson's crisps. And towers of perspecs crisp feeders. You took a packet and another one would come down. You could play a game by throwing them back up and over. Over and over. The crisp packets kept on falling. Squirrel crisps come to mind. Corn snacks in the shape of wheels and stuff. A bit like those ones M&S do currently. I bought a cassette from a junk shop in Rotherham : had 'rip it up' by Elvis Presley and loads of good 1950's RCA releases. No idea what album was called. Maybe my first elvis interest? Before mum stencilled on my blue shirt with I love elvis 1950's. I user to wear that shirt with pride. And a pinstriped hand me down from Simon and Robert. That is in a photo. A school photo. Maybe the elvis one is too?
Mum doesn't remember why we left Dad that summer.
From the point of the baked bean incident dad refused to let us see Jean, Milton, Andrew and Nicola. For years. Until 1984 or 85. And I supposed Andrew and I had grown older and didn't really have so much in common anymore. We still hung out, but at 14 we were listening to different music, football teams, clothes. When they had moved to the new build that his parents still live in now and they had Ellie the dog, who is mow sadly gone.
A Sunday trip to Rawmarsh came along, but I don't think Jean and Milton expected us as they had family over for Sunday dinner. My dad was in his put upon mood: I think Emma and mum were at grandma's. He didn't want to do anything on his days off usually but mum always pushed him to go to our relatives. It was like a tour on sunday as we saw his mum and mum's mum and sisters and we'd play cards round at his mum's house and then we'd see all of uncle Alan's pedigree rabbits. I think the big male was called Fred. Black and White and huge and fairly aggressive. We got our chinchilla rabbits from him. Fiver and Floppsy, with floppy ears obviously. I can't remember what happened to them really. We had them a while. Did they die? They had such soft fur. We used to make little pens in the garden out of legs and arms. Their cages were very smelly. Their urine and the straw and wood mixed to a true stink. As a child I didn't think that rabbits pissed. I thought all they did was defecate. And nice simple poo not like the smell from dog poo. When broken dog poo expels a rank odour which says this is really really bad for you keep away. But inevitably I'd put one foot in it on a park or walking down the street. Perhaps I needed glasses even then? I don't remember anything being foggy then. I think it got bad very quickly. Oh well can't change your physiology or can you? My genes will still be recessive. Poor girl who finally has me will have a reject child. I and my gene pool is being bred out of existence.
Dad must've had an immense amount of anger building up between him and Milton and I bet Milton was completely transparently unaware he had any effect on my Dad who always felt he was tight to a penny as apparently he never bought a round unless it was equal to what everyone else bought. Dad hated him not being generous so perhaps the bean incident was one example of tightness too far. He had his reasons, but to me he cut off a lot of the reasons why I would go to Rawmarsh at all. Nicky and Richard were good lads but we rarely hung out proper except for one occasion that the local army regiment had an open day on a park. With a zip line and air rifles and assorted militaria. That was a good time. I think I was still in junior school and I didn't need glasses then and I had no vertigo. I developed vertigo later in my life, but I'm not worried by heights anymore because it's totally irrational. Why would I suddenly fall from where I am stood? It's impossible unless I jumped or was pushed. I couldn't do the last stage of St. Paul's when Julia took me there when I was 9 or 10. I have been to the very top now and I met a guy from New Zealand who actually asked me what river it was he could see? The Thames you thicky! He should've jumped surely?
Grandma's back yard was strewn with the left over ash from 2 coal fires I think. The was very little grass: it grew in sparse clumps here or there. In the lounge room they had this channel change box. Rediffusion I think and a early idea for cable tv. It didn't take off. I only ever saw one of them boxes again and that was in my student house in jesmond but that had been painted over so I don't know whether it said rediffusion or not.
All the Sherburn's seemed tv obsessed they were moths to a candle light. It had a strong attraction for them. The only thing stronger was either smoking cigarettes(everyone smoked except grandma Sherburn) or gambling and on Rawmarsh they used to gamble while smoking. We'd play rummy gin/rummy or brag. Usually for coppers. I enjoyed playing cards. I was an equal then even if they did always call me Danny. 'Are Danny'.
Dad rarely played cards him and uncle Alan would be handing each other strange metal bits that had no use whatsoever but sat on dad's garage floor forever after. Or dad went to the cricket club. Dad won some semi professional shield in the Yorkshire league but was told by Fred Truman he'd never be big enough to play for Yorkshire proper. He was a good bowler by all accounts and maybe if his family had a little more money he'd have gone to grammar school and perhaps had a better quality of food to build him up. He hated his father for refusing to sending him to grammar school. He passed the 11 plus, but was sent to the coal mine instead. No wonder he joined the army as soon as he could to flee the kind of anger and ignorance his father would dish out. Dad said that granddad Sherburn, James, used regular beat him and his life as very miserable. I know dad was a handful so whether this was brought on by himself I'll never know. Dad never once laid a finger on me. He'd shout and ball at me all day everyday, but he'd not touch me. He said he went through so much of that himself and wouldn't so the same to me. Dad spared the rod and guess he may've spoilt the child. I was given mostly everything I ever wanted for birthday and Christmas even if they had very little money. Emma says now I was Given into all the time. Any obsession I had they helped me to completely immerse myself. Matchbox cars, computers, bikes, Trevor Francis' football game, mario hand held nintendo games, records, sordid models, trainers, record players. Every year I'd get an old 1960's multichanger gramophone player with speeds from 16 to 78 on it and screw weeks in I had reconstructed the box with nudes how to put it back together. I think the record players were cheap enough from a junk shop, but I guess my parents got very upset that'd I had to destroy it. Same too with my matchbox cars. I'd literally break them to pieces very soon after getting them. I loved Lego and I did try to break that but I never managed.
This instance of my youth is really a demonstration of my fathers reactionary moods. Rarely was he happy. He was very stressed most of the time. I don't think he had true friends. Apart from a few that died well before they're time. Charles died too early. Good guy. Fun. Him and my dad had great times. Same age, similar humour. Both handy men. A successful business man and my father... I guess he had potential to do something, but some chip held him back. I reckon that chip was working class poverty and ignorance that his father and family and south Yorkshire culture in the 1930's, 40's and 50's enveloped him in. He escaped all through his life but all that running and moving couldn't prevent it finding him soon enough and consequently he took it with him and presented to mum, Emma and me.
Having arrived in Glastonbury and being tired since 11:30 I have...
In 1980 it was and a Sunday came along. As usual we got together as a family, my father's only complete day away from work, and went to visit our relations in Rawmarsh South Yorkshire. Past slag heaps and dirty rivers we'd cross the Don and fly through Wath-on-Dearne, parkgate, goosebert street, claypit lane, the Rother and many council houses and coal board housing joselling with the smells of coal and steel industry in the air along to Jean and Milton's abode.
Mum and dad's old friends, best man etc regular guest at our house since I can ever remember. When all else of Rawmarsh has vanished with the death of dad they still occur in my life. Solid as a pair of doctor Martin boots. Andrew and I were proper childhood pals. Did everything together no matter how far away. I wonder if he remembers our Lego match days and leagues with Iperswitch and Aston Gate as the two most successful teams competing in the league of our creation. I remember fish and chips and chinese curry sauce bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, etc. And his spectrum was a + one of the amstad models. And a final holiday in Filey pint of lager and a packet of crisp and 'bloody hell' that j and m found so so funny before 1986 we left for Perth WA.
Back in the late 1970's they had the most peculiar loo, it was very bulbous and turquoise i think, and a silver retro vacuum cleaner which was straight from the fifties. Milton had a Honda pedal moped/scooter that was in the yard beyond the street through an archway: it was always covered to keep it dry. As a kid that terraced house seemed huge too. Kitchen, dining room, front room and plenty of bedrooms it seemed: but a very steep stairway and I'm not sure but I think the had another stairway up to their bedroom. Nicola always baby sat while they went out and enjoyed themselves. Actually this may all have been on a Saturday after my dad finished work for the rest of the week. It makes more sense than Sunday...
Saturday afternoon some time in the early 1980's is the final reckoning of time I will give in this account.
Lots of arguments and one brief break up I remember between mum and dad. We stayed there for a few days I think to let things settle down and maybe it was more like a week before dad came to apologise. Never found out what it was about: the failing out. Should ask mum one day I suppose. I don't know how we got to Rawmarsh without dad?
Dinner plates thrown at my dad and my card Hornsey cable tunnel. Lots of anger in that house at Meyrick avenue. A collapsed chimney and a gas fire and a Betamax and my eyesight myopic going and mum crying that I need glasses. 1981. The chimney collapsed in '1976' and I started St. James C of E. about then too and got lost in 1976 when uncle Alan came to visit us. He worked on the Leeds city gallery. The extension: Henry Moore. Can't imagine what he did. In all my life he never seemed to work and always lived at home with his mum - my grandma Sherburn - and drove some Triumph, but not a Dolomite . He died soon after my dad from cancer and then grandma followed. All the Sherburn's died of cancer. Too much smoking and coal mining for their genes. Grandma Sherburn lived long and happily. Always loved my dad and mum and Emma and me: Danny; forever Danny I was in Rawmarsh. Dad filled in the side door and I dropped a breeze block on my large toe and lost a nail and had a nasty bloodblister. I was 5 or 6 and tried to help dad. He never asked me to help again. Not even when he hand painted a Hillman Avenger blue. You could see the brush strokes. That's when he went from crap job to crap job - papyrus and post office amongst others and before mister Sellers and a company car: a Mark 3 Cortina. Mrs Salmon lived next door number 32. Nicolas and Heather Jewitt at 30 before they were gone and Jason Blackburn arrived before Spain 1982 and kings of the wild frontier came out. We used play football out on the street. Very few cars and only Mr Fox got upset about the ball in his front garden. I don't think my parents had a lot of money and a lot of stresses from the collapse of dads fish and chip shop on the east coast. I remember him having lots of problems getting money from the guy who bought the property off dad.
They all spoke so different in Rawmarsh it was like old English. Very unclean and gutteral. Lots of 'are Jack' 'are Nicky'. But again they were good boys. Richard and Nicky. Panini stickers and wotsits from Prestos or was it Benson's crisps. And towers of perspecs crisp feeders. You took a packet and another one would come down. You could play a game by throwing them back up and over. Over and over. The crisp packets kept on falling. Squirrel crisps come to mind. Corn snacks in the shape of wheels and stuff. A bit like those ones M&S do currently. I bought a cassette from a junk shop in Rotherham : had 'rip it up' by Elvis Presley and loads of good 1950's RCA releases. No idea what album was called. Maybe my first elvis interest? Before mum stencilled on my blue shirt with I love elvis 1950's. I user to wear that shirt with pride. And a pinstriped hand me down from Simon and Robert. That is in a photo. A school photo. Maybe the elvis one is too?
Mum doesn't remember why we left Dad that summer.
From the point of the baked bean incident dad refused to let us see Jean, Milton, Andrew and Nicola. For years. Until 1984 or 85. And I supposed Andrew and I had grown older and didn't really have so much in common anymore. We still hung out, but at 14 we were listening to different music, football teams, clothes. When they had moved to the new build that his parents still live in now and they had Ellie the dog, who is mow sadly gone.
A Sunday trip to Rawmarsh came along, but I don't think Jean and Milton expected us as they had family over for Sunday dinner. My dad was in his put upon mood: I think Emma and mum were at grandma's. He didn't want to do anything on his days off usually but mum always pushed him to go to our relatives. It was like a tour on sunday as we saw his mum and mum's mum and sisters and we'd play cards round at his mum's house and then we'd see all of uncle Alan's pedigree rabbits. I think the big male was called Fred. Black and White and huge and fairly aggressive. We got our chinchilla rabbits from him. Fiver and Floppsy, with floppy ears obviously. I can't remember what happened to them really. We had them a while. Did they die? They had such soft fur. We used to make little pens in the garden out of legs and arms. Their cages were very smelly. Their urine and the straw and wood mixed to a true stink. As a child I didn't think that rabbits pissed. I thought all they did was defecate. And nice simple poo not like the smell from dog poo. When broken dog poo expels a rank odour which says this is really really bad for you keep away. But inevitably I'd put one foot in it on a park or walking down the street. Perhaps I needed glasses even then? I don't remember anything being foggy then. I think it got bad very quickly. Oh well can't change your physiology or can you? My genes will still be recessive. Poor girl who finally has me will have a reject child. I and my gene pool is being bred out of existence.
Dad must've had an immense amount of anger building up between him and Milton and I bet Milton was completely transparently unaware he had any effect on my Dad who always felt he was tight to a penny as apparently he never bought a round unless it was equal to what everyone else bought. Dad hated him not being generous so perhaps the bean incident was one example of tightness too far. He had his reasons, but to me he cut off a lot of the reasons why I would go to Rawmarsh at all. Nicky and Richard were good lads but we rarely hung out proper except for one occasion that the local army regiment had an open day on a park. With a zip line and air rifles and assorted militaria. That was a good time. I think I was still in junior school and I didn't need glasses then and I had no vertigo. I developed vertigo later in my life, but I'm not worried by heights anymore because it's totally irrational. Why would I suddenly fall from where I am stood? It's impossible unless I jumped or was pushed. I couldn't do the last stage of St. Paul's when Julia took me there when I was 9 or 10. I have been to the very top now and I met a guy from New Zealand who actually asked me what river it was he could see? The Thames you thicky! He should've jumped surely?
Grandma's back yard was strewn with the left over ash from 2 coal fires I think. The was very little grass: it grew in sparse clumps here or there. In the lounge room they had this channel change box. Rediffusion I think and a early idea for cable tv. It didn't take off. I only ever saw one of them boxes again and that was in my student house in jesmond but that had been painted over so I don't know whether it said rediffusion or not.
All the Sherburn's seemed tv obsessed they were moths to a candle light. It had a strong attraction for them. The only thing stronger was either smoking cigarettes(everyone smoked except grandma Sherburn) or gambling and on Rawmarsh they used to gamble while smoking. We'd play rummy gin/rummy or brag. Usually for coppers. I enjoyed playing cards. I was an equal then even if they did always call me Danny. 'Are Danny'.
Dad rarely played cards him and uncle Alan would be handing each other strange metal bits that had no use whatsoever but sat on dad's garage floor forever after. Or dad went to the cricket club. Dad won some semi professional shield in the Yorkshire league but was told by Fred Truman he'd never be big enough to play for Yorkshire proper. He was a good bowler by all accounts and maybe if his family had a little more money he'd have gone to grammar school and perhaps had a better quality of food to build him up. He hated his father for refusing to sending him to grammar school. He passed the 11 plus, but was sent to the coal mine instead. No wonder he joined the army as soon as he could to flee the kind of anger and ignorance his father would dish out. Dad said that granddad Sherburn, James, used regular beat him and his life as very miserable. I know dad was a handful so whether this was brought on by himself I'll never know. Dad never once laid a finger on me. He'd shout and ball at me all day everyday, but he'd not touch me. He said he went through so much of that himself and wouldn't so the same to me. Dad spared the rod and guess he may've spoilt the child. I was given mostly everything I ever wanted for birthday and Christmas even if they had very little money. Emma says now I was Given into all the time. Any obsession I had they helped me to completely immerse myself. Matchbox cars, computers, bikes, Trevor Francis' football game, mario hand held nintendo games, records, sordid models, trainers, record players. Every year I'd get an old 1960's multichanger gramophone player with speeds from 16 to 78 on it and screw weeks in I had reconstructed the box with nudes how to put it back together. I think the record players were cheap enough from a junk shop, but I guess my parents got very upset that'd I had to destroy it. Same too with my matchbox cars. I'd literally break them to pieces very soon after getting them. I loved Lego and I did try to break that but I never managed.
This instance of my youth is really a demonstration of my fathers reactionary moods. Rarely was he happy. He was very stressed most of the time. I don't think he had true friends. Apart from a few that died well before they're time. Charles died too early. Good guy. Fun. Him and my dad had great times. Same age, similar humour. Both handy men. A successful business man and my father... I guess he had potential to do something, but some chip held him back. I reckon that chip was working class poverty and ignorance that his father and family and south Yorkshire culture in the 1930's, 40's and 50's enveloped him in. He escaped all through his life but all that running and moving couldn't prevent it finding him soon enough and consequently he took it with him and presented to mum, Emma and me.
Having arrived in Glastonbury and being tired since 11:30 I have...
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