Frankie and me were on our way to the camp we’d built in the elderberry bushes at the bottom of St Mary’s Church Yard. To get there we had to skirt Jones’s field that ran alongside the railway line, cross the stream and use the pedestrian bridge to get across the line. As we neared the stream we heard voices coming from amongst the bushes upstream.

‘Hand it over,’ said a rough voice.

‘Will not, it is mine.’ Came the well-spoken and high-pitched reply.

 Then a third voice chimed in, ‘Listen squirt, be a good boy and give it to Harry, or you’re in for a thumping.’

Harry, I thought I recognised the voices, it was Harry (Thuggy) Smith and his moronic friend (Gormless) Gordon McKye, a pair of bullying louts from St Aidens. We’d had a couple of run ins with them before. But the other high-pitched voice with its posh accent I couldn’t place at all and doubted whether the owner came from around our way.

‘Give it here. Now!’ snarled Thuggy

‘No I will not!’ came the defiant reply.

‘Grab his arms, Gord.’

There was the sound of a scuffle and then a cry of, ‘Get off me you big bully!’

Followed by, ‘Ow! The little sod’s just kicked me Harry.’

‘Hold him still, Gord till I get it off him.’

Frankie and me looked at each other; we’d heard enough, it was time to give the posh one a hand. Bursting through the bushes I said, ‘Leave the kid alone Thuggy.’

‘Keep you nose out of this, Geordie, it’s none of your business,’ snarled Thuggy.

‘Leave the kid be, pick on someone your own size,’ I said and got the shock of my life when he did.

 I don’t know what I thought would happen when I challenged him. Maybe I thought that like most bullies he would back off when threatened. Instead he charged at me like an enraged bull. His face was beetroot red and I could almost see the steam coming out of his nostrils. It was all over in seconds; I hadn’t really a clue what to do, so I put up my hands like boxers do and he ran straight into my fist with his nose. ‘Nagh!’ he screamed, clasped his nose and with blood trickling through his finger he legged it. Frankie didn’t even have to hit Gormless, he just took two steps towards him and Gormless let go of the kid and hightailed it after his mate.

‘Wow! That was some punch Geordie,’ said Frankie with a grin.

‘You OK, kid,’ I asked.

‘I am very well thank you and my name is not Kid.’

Frankie’s grin widened and he lifted his eyebrows as if to say we’ve got a right one here.

‘What’s you name then?’

‘Howard. E. Wilson,’ he said straightening his glasses. ‘You will notice that I said Howard not Howie or any other sort of nickname. In case you were wondering the E is for Edward and not Eddie.’

It was hard to keep a straight face especially with Frankie rolling his eyes and holding his hand over his mouth to stifle the giggles, but somehow I managed. ‘Hi, Howard; My name is George Miller, Geordie to me friends and this laughing hyena is Frank Dodds, aka, Frankie my best mate.’

‘Please to meet you both and thank you for the help, although I think I could have handled those thugs on my own.’

Oh yer, I thought, but didn’t say it aloud. ‘What were they after?’

Howard put his hand in his pocket and brought out a white object.

‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s a skull,’ said Frankie.

‘I know that, numbskull but what kind of skull is it?’

‘It is the skull of the Oryctolagu cuniculus,’ stated Howard.

‘The Orctowhaticulus?’ asked Frankie.

‘It looks like a rabbit skull to me,’ I ventured.

‘And you are perfectly right, Oryctolagu cuniculus is the Latin name for rabbit,’ said Howard as he slid his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

‘Cor, I never knew that, did you Geordie?’ said Frankie.

‘No,’ I replied, pleased to have learnt something new, but not quite sure how the information would be of use.

‘I’m not sure that I should ask this, but why do you want a rabbit skull and why did Thuggy and his mate want it off you?’

‘Oh, that is easy, I spent two days collecting the Ory…rabbit skeleton from the stream bed, but I couldn’t find the skull, so I came back today, did another search and found it. As to the those thugs, they just wanted it because I had it.’

‘You’ve got a whole skeleton of a rabbit,’ asked Frankie a note of amazement in his voice’

‘Yes, and I intend to mount it and display it in my museum,’ said Howard proudly.

‘Wow, a museum,’ said Frankie. ‘Can we come and see it?’

‘Well, I have only just begun my collection, but if you give me a few days to get the skeleton mounted, you are welcome to come along.’

Howard gave us his address. It turned out that he had moved to the area a week ago and he only lived two streets away. We said goodbye and while we carried on to our camp, Howard hurried away in the opposite direction with his prize wrapped in his hanky.

Four days later Frankie said, ‘Can we go to see Howard’s museum, now?’

He had been asking the same question every single day since we had met Howard and everyday I had been saying, ‘Give the lad time to get his rabbit mounted.’

But after four days of waiting I was curious too. ‘Aye OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

It didn’t take us long to get there – like I said it was only two streets away – and we marched up the path and knocked on the door. There was a pause then we heard footsteps coming along the passage, the door opened and a woman no taller that Howard stood there. ‘Yes, what can I do for you boys?’ she asked.

‘Howard invited us around, Mrs Wilson,’ there was no mistaking who she was, besides being the same height as her son, she had the same colour hair and eyes. She even wore an identical pair of black-framed glasses.

‘Oh, you must be George and Frank the boys Howard met the other day,’ she said. ‘If you go around the back you will find him in the washhouse.’

All the houses on the estate had a brick built washhouse around the back, with a coalhouse next to it. They were a throw back to the days when people had fires that burned coal and the washing had to be boiled and then wound through a wringer by hand. Those days were long gone and most of the washhouses were used as garden sheds. In Howard’s case the washhouse had become a museum, it said so on the door in hand written post office red letters.

We knocked and were invited in. The inside had been transformed by having the ceiling and walls painted white; a waist high bench built around three sides and shallow glass cabinets fitted to the walls above the bench.

Apart from the benches and the cabinets there wasn’t a lot to see. Howard had finished mounting his rabbit skeleton and it took pride of place in the centre of the bench in front of the window.

‘The rabbit’s pretty nifty,’ said Frankie. ‘But is that it, Howard?’

‘I did tell you I was just starting to build my collections,’ said Howard as he began to open some drawers beneath the bench. ‘But I have made a start, take a look at these.’

The drawers were shallow and divided into compartments. The first one contained different shells each one in its own compartment and labelled with its name. The second contained moths, each one mounted wings spread on a pad with a blank label at the bottom. Neither of us were that impressed but we asked a few questions and said they were great because we didn’t want to hurt Howard’s feelings.

‘What do you call this one?’ asked Frankie, pointing to a green moth.

‘Ah, that one is a Hermithea aestivaria.’

‘You’ve been at that dictionary pudding again, Howard,’ said Frankie. ‘Now how about saying it again, this time in English.’

‘Oh, all right then, it is called the common emerald.’

‘And this?’

‘Phyllo…’ Howard began but broke off as Frankie frowned at him. ‘Nut leaf blister moth.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t stick that pin through them when they’re alive, do you?’ I asked.

‘No, I put them to sleep in the killing jar first.’

‘Sounds a nasty.’

‘No, not really, I charge the pad with ethy…nail varnish remover, pop the moth inside and in a few minutes it is dead.’

‘ Like I said, it sound nasty especially if you’re a moth.’

‘Then you pin it to the pad,’ said Frankie.

‘No, not quite, first I have to open out the wings, pin it to a stretcher board and leave it to dry before I mount it on the pad.’

There silence at this point while we tried to think of something else to ask.

‘How do you catch them?’ I asked.

‘That’s the easy part, I go out into one of the fields when it is dark, shine a torch, the moths are attracted to the light, and if I see any I haven’t already got, I catch them with a net.’

‘Can we come out with you one night,’ I asked.

‘Yes, come tonight, bring a torch and a net.’

We couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so we arranged to me him at ten o’clock that night and left him filling in the labels beneath the moths. As soon as we turned into the street Frankie said, ‘I’m not very interested in collecting moths, are you?’

‘No, not really, it’s a bit boring and all those Latin names, I can think of better things to do with my time.’

‘Aye, so can I; so why are we going moth hunting with Howard then?’

‘Because I couldn’t think of anything else to say and besides hunting moths seems like it might be the only part of moth collecting that is even remotely exciting.’

‘Aye well, I’ll believe that when I see it.’

As it turned out our night time adventure was a lot more exciting than either of us would have believed.

At ten o’clock that night, armed with a pond net and a torch each, Frankie and me arrived at Howards.

‘Not really the right kind of net, but I suppose they’ll do for tonight,’ said Howard who was armed with a proper butterfly net. ‘This is the plan, when we get to Jones’s field we’ll split up: all you have to do shine your torch and the moths will come. When you catch one bring it to me, if it is any good I’ll put it in the specimen box. Everybody got that?’

‘Yes Sir,’ said Frankie standing to attention and snapping off a salute.

I nodded and we set off for the field. Things went OK for the first half and hour and we caught loads of moths, several of which Howard deemed good enough for his collection. Unfortunately at this point Frankie became bored and instead of waiting for the moths to come to him he began to hunt them. Soon much to Howard’s annoyance he was racing all over the field waving his torch and net about while hooping and hollering at the top of voice.

Howard ignored him, I tried to do the same and I succeeded after a fashion, I deliberately looked in the other direction so I wouldn’t have to see him. Unfortunately I didn’t have any earplugs so I could still hear him. Then suddenly I couldn’t. I looked up there was no sign of him. ‘Frankie!’ I called. There was no reply. ‘Frankie stop messing about and switch on your torch.’

‘Maybe something has happened to him,’ said Howard.

‘Don’t be daft, he’ll have switched his torch off and he’ll be lying in the long grass, waiting for us to come looking…Frankie if you’re playing the idiot I’ll kill you when I get hold of you.’

There was still no reply not even a giggle, ‘I think you’re right Howard something must have happened to him, where did you see him last.’

‘Over there at the far side, not far from those trees.’

Shining our torches on the ground in front of us we went to look for him. Even as we did, I couldn’t think what could have happened to him in a perfectly flat field of grass. We were halfway across the field before we heard him calling, ‘Geordie, Geordie, get me out of here Geordie.’

 His voice was muffled and came from low down, ‘I can’t see you Frankie, where are you?’ I called.

‘Over here in this bloody hole.’

I couldn’t understand what he was on about, I’d played all over Jones’s field and I’d never seen a hole. ‘What hole?’ I asked.

‘The one I’m in idiot.’

That was when we found the hole it was about five feet across. As I neared the edge I had to jump back quickly as began to crumble.

‘Watch it,’ screamed Frankie. ‘You’ll have the lot down on top of me.’

Dropping down onto my belly I wormed my way slowly forward until I could shine my torch inside. The hole wasn’t deep only about twelve feet and Frankie stared up at me from below. ‘Can’t you climb out?’ I asked.

‘If I could climb out I wouldn’t be still standing down here, would I? Every time I try the walls fall in.’

‘Howard,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘Slide your net over here.’

The handle on the net was about an inch thick and six foot long. ‘Here cop hold of this,’ I said lowering it into the hole. ‘And I’ll pull you out.’

Frankie reached up grabbed the end and while I pulled he began to walk up the wall of the hole and it worked. At least it would have, if a large chunk of earth hadn’t broken off and sent me tumbling down on top of Frankie. ‘Ow! Get your great number nines out of my ear.’

‘Ok, Ok, don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ I said as I scrambled to my feet and helped him up.

‘Howard!’

‘Yes George?’

‘Stay away from the edge and listen, Go to the police house and tell constable Simms what has happened.’

‘But I don’t know where the police house is George,’ he wailed.

‘That’s Ok; it’s on Pine Street four streets up from yours. You got that Howard?’ But there was no reply he had already gone.

All we could do was keep away from the sides of hole and wait. Luckily I’d managed to hold onto my torch so we didn’t have to sit in the dark. About half an hour later a light shone on the rim of the hole and constable Simms called. ‘Are you both alright boys?’

‘Yes!’ we chorused.

‘Good, your friend Howard here, has explained about the edges crumbling, so I’m going to slide a ladder slowly down to you. As soon as it hits the bottom climb up as quickly as you can.’

The ladder came down and as soon as it hit the bottom we were up it like two rats up a drainpipe.

Constable Simms escorted us home explained what had happened to our parents, took details of what had happened and left. The next morning a lorry arrived, filled in the hole and that was that. Until teatime the next day when dad arrived home with the local paper and showed me an article on page two. The headline read, ‘Local Boy Saves Friends From Mysterious Hole and underneath was a picture of Howard a small unlikely looking hero. Good for him I thought, if he hadn’t have gone for help we might have been in that hole all night or worse still, the walls might have collapsed and buried us alive.

Despite being a bit of a loner and spending most of his time building his collection of moths, we counted Howard as one of our friends and even managed to drag him away from his museum a couple of days a week. We taught him to climb trees camp in the woods, we even took him blackberry and mushroom picking and had him joining in with all the daft things we got up to. In exchange he taught us the names of butterfly’s, insects, and moths, both in English and Latin. The English names stuck but I can’t say the same about the Latin ones. Even Frankie thought it was a fair exchange and we were sorry when Howard left.

The Year That Christmas Came Twice

We were sitting in the old armchairs inside our camp deep in the middle of the elderberry bushes at the bottom of St Mary’s churchyard. There was only me, skinny Geordie Miller, and my best friend, freckle features Frankie Dodds. We had taken a pile of comics with us and had spent the last hour rereading old copies of the Beano and Dandy in peace. It was summertime and if either of us were to sit down indoors reading, there would be ructions on. Our mothers – Frankie’s was as bad as mine – would start, ‘Put that comic down now. And get yourself out to play in the sunshine.’ 

I don’t know what it is with mothers, but they’re always throwing you out into the street when you don’t want to go. If it was chucking it down with rain and we wanted to go plodging though puddles or building dams in the stream, the cry would be, ‘Don’t you even think of going out in that. Go and read your comics.’

You can’t win can you?

Anyway, I was reading a cracking Desperate Dan story and having a giggle at his antics, when Frank said, ‘Remember when we had two Christmas’s?’

I was so deep into Desperate Dan that only the last word registered, ‘Christmas? We’ve only just started the summer holidays and now you’re on about Christmas.’

‘Naw, if you washed your lugs out and listened properly, I said, remember when we had two Christmas’s?’

‘Course I do. It was great wasn’t it, all them toys.’

We both sat there all starry-eyed thinking about all those toys, more than we’d ever had in our lives. So many in fact, that we did the unthinkable and gave a lot of them away.

‘Aye, I remember it was a grand year that one,’ said Frankie, wistfully.

‘I remember? You sound like me dad, it was only two years ago,’ I reminded him.

‘Aye, but we were younger then.’

I couldn’t fault his powers of deduction there. We were younger by two years and since we were now ten, we had to have been eight then.

It was the Easter school holidays when it happened and on the Monday before Good Friday, Frankie came around ours, ‘Can George come out to play Mrs Miller?’

Frankie was no fool; he always used my Sunday name when talking to my mum.

Yes,’ she said and leaned back into the house, ‘George, Frankie’s here.’

‘And bring your marbles,’ Frankie called.

Frankie and me had bought a six-penny bag of marbles each, from Pearson’s corner shop on Saturday morning and were learning ourselves how to play. We reckoned that if we got enough practice during the holiday, we’d be experts by the time we got back to school.

I pulled on me jumper, grabbed the bag of marbles and headed for the door followed by familiar words from me mum, ‘Stay in the garden, I’ve got to go up the High Street later on and I don’t want you wandering off.’

We go around to the back garden but the overnight rain has turned the patch of clay we were using for a pitch into a slimy mess. So we move the bin out of the way and play on the wide part of the path in front of the washhouse. An hour later I’m feeling hungry so I open the back door, ‘Can we have something to eat mum.’

A few minutes later she hands us jam sandwiches an a couple of glasses of Ginger Beer, poured from the big stone jug that she buys off the pop man every Friday.

‘I’m off to the shops now, so no wandering off.’

‘Aw, mum we was going to go down to the park and play on the teapot lid.’

The park is only at the bottom our lane and is a large field that our school uses for sports days. But the council has built a new playground in one corner, with swings, slide and best of all a roundabout that from a distance looked like a teapot lid.

‘All right, but no further, I don’t want to have to send your dad looking for you when he comes in from work.’

It being the school holidays the park was mobbed and we couldn’t get near the teapot lid. We had a couple of goes on the slide instead and then hung around the swings waiting for someone to come off.

‘Howay, let’s go to the tip,’ said Frankie.

‘Don’t know, you heard what me mum said. She might just send me dad down when he comes in for his tea and if I’m not here, I’ll be in for it.’

‘Come on, we’ll be back long before then, besides most of the kids will be going home for their teas later and we’ll be able to get a good go on the teapot lid.’

At the far end of the park there was an old ash track that ran up to the railway line and the disused pit next to it. All of the land at the other side of the ash track used to belong to the pit, and since it dipped down into a hollow, the council were busy filling it in with rubbish.

 The tip was one of our favourite haunts. We normally went there on the weekend when it was shut. If you could call a tip that was surrounded by a fence with great massive holes in it shut. No what I mean by shut is that there was no men working on a weekend to chase us away. You’d be amazed at the really great stuff that gets thrown on the tip. Nearly all the lads in the area got their boogie wheels from the tip, and most of the wood to build them too.

We raced each other to the end of the park – I won, mainly because my legs are longer than Frankie’s – and stared in wonder, we’d never seen the tip so busy. There were wagons queuing up to tip their loads. A wagon would back up drop his load at the edge of the tip and drive away and before the next wagon had finish tipping, a bulldozer would push the first lot over the edge. It was the stuff that was being dumped that had us all bug eyed. Wagonload after wagonload of toys came cascading down the face of the tip like a rainbow coloured wave of delight.

I had heard me mum say that there had been a fire in a big toy warehouse belonging Johnston’s department stores. But I never believed that they would dump all the water and smoke damaged toys on our tip.

The last wagon dropped its load; the bulldozer pushed it over the edge and retreated from sight. We rushed across the track and were about slip through the fence when with a roar and a great puff of smoke the bulldozer reappeared. Oh no, it was pushing a great wall of ash and rubble over the edge, burying all those wonderful toys forever. To even attempt to get any of the toys while he working was to risk being buried alive. All we could do was to stand there and watched in dismayed and silence as he trundled back and forth covering section after section.

Then when he was only half done a miracle happened, the bulldozer drove back out of sight and the engine died. We looked at each other, both of us thinking the same, but it was me that said it first, ‘The drivers having his tea break,’

‘Aye, come on, let’s get some toys while he’s away,’ whooped Frankie as he dived through the hole in the fence and set off at a run. I passed him before he was halfway there – told you I had longer legs than him – and bagged my first toy, a steam roller, I examined it closely it was wet but I reckoned that if I dried it off in a warm oven and then squirted some oil in, it would be fine.

‘Geordie, stop messing with that roller, the driver won’t be on his break long, we need to get as many toys as we can before he comes back.’

From then on we just grabbed anything and everything, carried them away from the tip face and hid them under a bush by the fence. We must have made four or five trips each with our arms full, before the Bulldozer returned.

Hidden under the bush with our loot, we stared in awe at the mountain of toys we have accumulated. ‘We need something to carry them in,’ I said, stating the obvious.

‘Aye, you guard the loot and I’ll go and get the tank.’

All the other lads around the doors had a boogie that you could steer around corners. But not Frankie and me, we had the tank and it only went in a straight line. It consisted of a set of four wheels complete with frame and springs from one of them big old-fashioned prams and had an old galvanise bath that we liberated from the allotments, fitted between the springs. The bath, which was long and narrow, was held in place with lumps of wood and bent over nails. We called it the tank because when we first tried it down Willow Bank, we smash through the allotment fence at the bottom, and flattened two rows of Mr Parker’s Brussels sprouts before coming to a stop.

While Frankie was away I sorted through the toys removing them from damp boxes and shaking them to get rid of any water. The assortment of toys was amazing wind ups of every kind, tanks, police cars, aeroplanes, trains, cars and lorries. There were even toy soldiers, trumpets, a couple of fire engines and a wind up monkey that banged on a drum. You’ll notice that they were all boys’ toys, well; you wouldn’t really expect us to go picking dolls and stuff, would you?

When Frankie arrived back we loaded the lot into the tank and went home, missing out the teapot lid, only to get the fifth degree. The upshot was that we got a skelping from our respective dads for going to the tip. But in the end, sooner than making us take them back to the dump, we were allowed to keep the toys.

Tornado Tommy

Tornado Tommy was his name,

tearing things apart was his game.

When appearing at the Gateshead Sage,

he stood foursquare on the stage

and with a bow to the assembled host,

tore in half the Gateshead Post.

Seeing the audience unimpressed,

with a flourish he ripped off his vest

and with his torso completely bare,

he climbed quickly onto a chair.

Then flexing his ample six pack,

he raised aloft a Tibetan yak

The audience screamed and went wild

and for the first time Tommy smiled.

Then holding the yak in one hand,

he reached out to a nearby stand.

Picked up a street map of Leith

and tore it in half with his teeth.

But his smile turned into a frown,

when he fell as he stepped down

and as he lay prone on his back