The Great Baked Bean Fiasco

20th August 2010.

I think it was on a Sunday in 1980 and, as was usual, we were taken in the family car by my father, on his only complete day away from the job he usually hated, to visit our relations in Rawmarsh South Yorkshire. We'd drive south on the A1, turn off at junction 36 and pass slag heaps and dirty rivers. We'd cross the Don and fly through Conisborough, Mexborough and Swinton to arrive at Hallam Place, Goosebutt Street,  Parkgate or Claypit Lane. Crossing the Rother and passing many thousands of council houses and coal board housing jostling with the smells of tar, coke, coal and steel industry in the air along to Jean and Milton's abode.

Mother and father's oldest friends while they were married: 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 regularly in my life. Solid as a pair of Doctor Martens boots. Andrew and I were proper childhood pals. Did everything together no matter how far away. I wonder if he remembers our Lego football match days and leagues with Iperswitch and Aston Gate as the two most successful teams competing in the league of our creation; before I'd discovered Subbuteo. I remember fish and chips and chinese curry sauce bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, etc from the chinese  and he had the Spectrum+, the Amstrad model with the hard keyboard. And a last 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 vacuüm 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.
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 broken by being  thrown at dad and I don't know how he survived being hit by my hard board Hornsey tunnel that dad had got from Papyrus at Newton Kyme.

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 blood blister. 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 Royal Mail Sorting Office  among others and before Mr. 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 Adam and the Ants '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 dad's fish and chip shop on the east coast: Skinningrove. I remember father having lots of problems getting money from the guy who bought the property.
They all spoke so different in Rawmarsh it was like an olde English. Very unclean and guttural. Lots of 'are Jack' 'are Nicky'. But again they were good boys. Richard and Nicky. Panini stickers and wotsits from Prestos or was it Bensons crisps. And towers of per-specs 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 that M&S sell now. I bought a cassette from a junk shop in Rotherham : had 'rip it up' by Elvis Presley and loads of good 1950's RCA Records releases. I have no idea what the title of that first album. 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, but we did.
From the point of the bakedbean incident dad refused to let us see Jean, Milton, Andrew and Nicola ever again. Well for years at least. Until 1985 or 86. 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, supported different football teams and sported different clothing styles. 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 their family over for Sunday dinner. My dad was in his put upon mood so Emma and mum stayed at Grandma Mitchell's. He didn't want to do anything on his days off usually but mum always pushed him to go to our relatives. We turned up quite uninvited and they offered me Baked Beans on toast for dinner - probably as they didn't have enough Sunday Roast for an extra 2 people...

On Sunday as we saw father's mum and his siblings and mum's mother and Iris. Round at the large house on Hallam Place we'd play cards round and we'd see uncle Alan's pedigree rabbits. I recall Alan owning a large male rabbit: Fred; black, white, huge and aggressive. We got our two Chinchilla Rabbits from Alan: 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 so I had no idea why the hutch stank. And nice simple pooh not like the smell from dog pooh. When broken dog pooh 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 can you?

My Dad must have had an immense amount of anger building up between him and Milton; and life in general, and I bet Milton was completely transparently unaware he had any effect on my Dad's nerves. Father thought he was always tight to a penny as apparently he never bought a round unless it was equal to what everyone else bought and he would recall 'he could peel an orange in his pocket'! Dad hated him not being generous so perhaps the bakedbean 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 when the local army regiment had an open day on a park. With a zip line and air rifles and assorted miliaria. 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 if I was stood on a precipice?' It is impossible unless I jumping or I was pushed.

I couldn't climb the last stage of the ascent up Cathedral Church of Paul the Apostle in London, when stepsister Julia took me for my tenth birthday. I have been to the very top since and I met a guy from New Zealand who actually asked me what river it was he could see to the south...The Thames you thick person! He should have jumped surely to save humanity from his blatant ignorance?

Grandma's back yard was strewn with the left over ash from 2 coal fires. There was very little grass: it grew in sparse clumps here or there. In the lounge room they had this channel changing box on the window sill: Rediffusion.

I think it was an 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, Newcastle but that one switch had been heavily 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 and it had a strong attraction to them. The only thing stronger was either smoking cigarettes (everyone smoked except grandma Sherburn) or gambling and in Hallam Place, Rawmarsh they used to gamble while smoking; some drank gin too. We'd play rummy, rummy gin or 3 card 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. Both him and uncle Alan would be giving each other strange metal bits that had no use whatsoever but sat on dad's garage floor forever after or became an ashtray. Sometimes he went to Rawmarsh Cricket or Social Club. My dad won some semi-professional shield in the Yorkshire league, but when he was a youngster Fred Truman told him he'd never be big enough to play for Yorkshire proper; he needed to put on some timber. 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 and perhaps be someone. He hated his father for refusing to sending him to grammar school. He passed the 11 plus, but instead he was sent down the coal mine to bring in money to feed all the hungry mouths. 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 real handful so I don't know whether this continual punishment he received was self inflicted; I'll never know as life was more violent then. My father never once laid a finger on me. He'd shout and ball at me all day everyday, but he'd not touch me. H e said he went through so much of that himself and wouldn't so the same to me. Dad spared the rod and guess he maybe 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' Electronic Striker, hand-held Nintendo video-game, records, Airfix

models, trainers, record players. Every year,  I'd get an old 1960's multi-changer gramophone player, with speed selectors from 16 to 78 on it, and in only a few weeks I had de-constructed the workings inside the box and had no idea how to put it back together; I always had a spring left over. Hopefully the record players were cheap enough, from a junk shop in Rotherham, but I guess I can understand why my parents got very upset that I'd destroyed 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 recollection of an instance in my youth demonstrates my father's overwhelming 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 so he took it with him and constantly presented this to mother, Emma and me.