HERNE BAY
The Little Restaurant on the Prom
A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Girls and "their Bits
Mary Thomas was wild and bold. Boys flew after her like bullets. And she, the flush-faced floozy, wriggled out of their clumsy embraces and headed for the woods, or scraps of teazled land that was Herne Bay in those far-off, fabulous days. Mary was only six as I remember, but a rebel. She was not only cruel with her favours to those hot-faced boys, but she would pull the legs and wings off flies and watch them struggle as death overcame them, unless her shoe was merciful. She treated boys like flies. Mercilessly she imprisoned their affections and then left them with their power gone and crying. Yet she did not realise her power. Did not know of what she did.
I watched her, fascinated by all that she did. I was one of those boys. But I kept my feelings silent. She singled me out. Why she did what she did I’ll never know. Perhaps she felt that I had earned the right to her secrets. Far from the madding boys and with her retinue of girlfriends, who were also in awe of her, she dug a hole. It was a wide hole but shallow. Then, carefully taking down her knickers, she positioned herself over the hole…and pissed into it. She watched me all the time she was doing it. I was riveted. She then pulled her knickers back up and stirred the pee with a stick. We all stirred the pee with our sticks. Then she filled it in again and went away with her friends, laughing. Maybe it was the equivalent to my crapping. It was exciting but she didn't know why. She swore to marry me one day. She never did.
Years later, when I was 12, my friend Jimmy Pierce, said that I could `feel` his cousin's` tits for half a crown. I went into the alley with him. There she was waiting. She wasn’t Gina Lollobrigida. She didn’t look like Brigitte Bardot. She was just a plain girl in a grubby teashirt. I made my excuses and left, riding on my big tricycle. Jimmy was upset that I had found his cousin `unattractive`. He couldn't understand it: "A feel is a feel," he said. I couldn’t explain either.
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Her name was Carol Rider. She was 14 and the official girlfriend of Johnny Hobbs, a boy so feared in Herne Bay Secondary Modern that even the teachers gave him a wide berth. It was during rehearsals for the school talent competition behind the stage. I was playing harmonica with another boy named Roger Hext. We were due to play `Green Door`, which was a popular song by Frankie Vaughan, and "to give it a Christmasy atmosphere", I announced over the microphone on the night, "Silent Night", with Roger playing a descant (we won). I’m not quite sure how it happened but all of a sudden she got rather close to me and smiled. My reaction was to kiss her. I don`t mean on the cheek but a bloody good snog. When we finally came up for air, as this was my first time and I wanted it to go on forever, I said in my best `movie actor` style:"You can do better than that!" and went in for another. We got together again after that, but not a third time. John Hobbs came back! I was terrified that he would find out. He gave me a few strange glares but that was all. How could a crippled kid get it on with his Carol? Naw !
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