Our gang

It was, I suppose, typical teenage boy behaviour to form a gang. I hasten to say not a lurking on street corners, mugging old ladies, type of gang. Rather we were a group of students looking to form a social group. The core members were myself, Anthony and his friend Paddy both doing A levels at college in Birmingham and my school friends Bob and Trevor doing A levels at school. Truth to tell we were all rather nerdish and as we were all studying sciences we did occasionally discuss science. Trevor was hot on the philosophy of science and would talk ponderously about a priori assumptions. I must say this was just a tiny part of our activities which mainly consisted of going to pubs ( we were all under age ) and playing cards at each others homes.

As a group we were fairly short lived starting just before the 1959 general election and gradually disintegrating by the autumn of 1960. I can pinpoint the start fairly exactly. The school were setting up a series of mock hustings for the major parties. Bob, who was annoyed at being left out, decided to set up a fourth party and horn in with a loudspeaker. Needless to say this idea was firmly squashed by the school particularly when his nascent party was called the Independent Marxists. His loudspeaker was a lash up which was firmly banned. Rightly so as his concept was to shout down any opposition.

We had met Paddy and thoroughly approved and so our gang became established. There were other occasional members but we five were the core. The main attraction of pub going was the feeling of illicit behaviour as we were all under age which was 18. In fact by the time we disintegrated we had reached 18 after which pub going seemed less interesting.

The general idea is that we met up on a Saturday evening at a members house ( often Anthony as his parents were the most amenable) and decided to either go out or play cards. The card playing was mainly poker ( 5 or 6 card draw ) with a dash of others such as Cheat for variety and banter.

We didn’t just drink and play cards; we had a Christmas get together at Bob’s house and group outing to London in Easter 1960 The London trip was only myself , Anthony and Paddy in the end, but very successful. Anthony was a Young Conservative, just for the social life, but we got a visit to the Houses of Parliament from his contacts. Just to show how nerdy we were we spent the first evening travelling around on the Underground as we were all interested in railways, amusing ourselves also by thinking how we could beat the system of fare paying. We came up with a scheme which failed.

I’ve said we disintegrated in autumn 1960. Bob who was fed up with school joined the army. I was starting to go out regularly with Annette. We had a summer scheme to work at Butlin’s where Anthony and Paddy were accepted and I wasn’t,  I worked in the Co-op dairy instead. It worked well in the long run as I had my first date with Annette. Trevor was going away so didn’t apply.

I’m talking about Paddy whose real name was John. He was second generation Irish so that was the unimaginative nickname he was given. His family lived in a small council house so we rarely met there. I di recall his father being very friendly but I could hardly understand what he was saying. One of our occasional members was a super nerd. He always dressed rather formally but seemed to have pockets everywhere. He carried around an immense amount of stuff. If we needed say a screwdriver, he would grin and produce one.

In the nature of things we were breaking up to move on in life. As I’ve said Bob joined the army,  Trevor joined a pharmaceutical company doing a year in a local shop before university, Paddy got an RAF scholarship to study electrical engineering at university and went on to become a fighter  pilot. Anthony and I went on to study for a degree after Anthony had a false start and changed courses.

Unfortunately both Anthony and Paddy died young and Trevor has been bedridden after a sepsis incident.

I’m rather surprised looking back that Bob and I were friends.  He was completely opposite to me being self confident to the point of being bumptious. I do owe him for drawing my attention to Annette. She seems nice he would say to me, I’ll ask her out. Bob thought he was God’s gift to women but Annette had no doubt about rejecting him. The seeds were planted in my mind and I slowly got to know her. Nearly seventy years later this still is a very good idea.