THE TATTOO

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 7 YEARS OLD

Friarage Infants School (Photo taken 1971)

I remember my first day at Friarage Infants School on Longwestage, Scarborough (UK). Friarage was split into three schools then: Infants, Juniors and Seniors. The photograph above shows the Infants section on the northern end of the school.

We'd just moved from Westway in Eastfield just outside Scarborough to 7 Princess Terrace. The move was spurred by the fact that my father wanted to return to the bottom end of town where he was born. "Bottom Enders" are people born and brought up in the bottom end of Scarborough near the harbour, and consisting mainly of fishing families, and being a Bottom Ender was (and still is to this day) something to be extremely proud of. (See Facebook Page Bottom Enders.)

I was placed in the final year of the Infants Scool just before we all got promoted into the Junior section of the school. Upon being introduced to the rest of the class, I was placed next to a boy called Jamie Blackburn whilst everyone there was painting and colouring in. Jamie told me he was a tattooing expert, and would show me how to tattoo my name on my arm.

He did his arm first by prodding it with a sharp pencil until it started to bleed, and he kept prodding it until his name was written on his arm in a light grey from the lead of the pencil.

Next it was my turn, so I copied the procedure. It hurt likke hell, but I persevered and was quite pleased with the result. The only problem was that when I got home, it all washed off.

Next day, Jamie's explanation was that I hadn't done it properly and would have to jab my arm harder. I didn't believe him, so gave up at that point. I've never had a tattoo since that day, and don't think I ever will.

THE STATUE WHITEWASH

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 18 YEARS OLD

Click pics to view larger

At midnight on 14th March 1967, a group of college students from the Scarborough Technical College Student's Union whitewashed the Queen Victoria Statue in the Town Hall gardens at Scarborough (UK). This included myself, John Ellard, Jonathan Snow (the current Channel 4 Newsreader), Colin Steel and a few others I can't quite remember. That's me up the statue, above!

As representatives of the Students Union, we had previously applied for permission to collect money for the charity SHELTER on the streets of Scarborough, as part of the Scarborough Technical Colleges' FIRST-EVER Rag Day. The application was declined.

Jonathan Snow led an appeal against the decision by taking a delegation to see the Town Clerk Mr Horsefall Turner. (Where does one get a name like that?) He flatly refused permission (and frankly was quite rude about it) based upon the fact that there were already six street charity collection days in Scarborough, and he didn't want to see any more. "HE didn't want to see any more." As Jonathan and the delegation stood there, they could see that the statue of Queen Victoria was directly outside the Town Clerk's window, and henceforward a quick plan was hatched.

The plan was (as part of the College Rag Week) to whitewash the statue at midnight THAT NIGHT, so we speedily approached Councillor Peter Jaconelli (who later became Mayor of Scarborough) for his support, because we knew he supported our inaugral Rag day. He agreed to contact the Press and have a photographer there at midnight. (See photo above) We all unanimously agreed that using paint would be far too vandalistic, and that whitewash would be fairly easy to remove and hence the preferred method.)

And so it happened. We all gathered in the backyard of my house at 7 Princess Terrace at around 11am, and we had two cars at our disposal sitting out in Princess Street. We mixed up the whitewash, and used nylon stockings over our heads to disguise our faces, knowing that the press would be there. One car was to drop off the team in St Nicholas Street near the statue, with the buckets of whitewash and ladders, (including myself) whilst another car waited on the seafront to pick everyone up when the dastardly deed was done. This meant that once the statue was whitewashed, the team had to swiftly run (more like a charge really) through St Nicholas Gardens down to the seafront, and get picked up and make our escape. It was like clockwork! AND IT WORKED PERFECTLY!

Next day, the Student's Union team was hauled in front of the CID Chief Inspector on the top floor of the Police Station in Northway - AND WE FREELY ADMITTED that the whitewashing was carried out by the Students Union - but they wanted names, and names were something we were not prepared to divulge, even though everyone present at that meeting had been in on the whitewashing. I distintly remember the Chief Inspector shouting: "If it takes me 30 years, I'm gonna find out who did this!" Well, the 30 years are well gone, and he never did find out the names of those present, and if he had, might have been surprised that one of them (Jonathan Snow) was the son of the Bishop of Whitby, and went on to become one of the biggest names in British television.

Just for the record, many of the team who did the first whitewash went out the very next night, and did it again, after they had cleaned it. The second night didn't make the newspapers but boy, did it make the Chief Inspector angry, and he sent policemen out to visit the houses of student Union members, taking with them all the photos taken on the night by the press photographer.

GIRDER BOYS

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 12 YEARS OLD

PHOTO: Under the Valley Bridge, taken 1971

Few people would realise that the big girders that hold up the massive half mile long Valley Bridge adjacent to the Westwood Secondary School (as it was then) in Scarborough are actually hollow.

How do I know this?

Because various school friends and I at several times, used to crawl from one side of the valley to the other THROUGH THE GIRDERS. The space inside the girders is tight but just big enough for someone of our age in those days. There's not much to see inside of them, and they are dusty and dirty, but it was quite exciting crawling across the spans and arriving onto the top of the stone structures you can see above. For youngsters who were accustomed to climbing the walls of the Castle (more about this later) it was surpringly easy to climb up to the girders.

We often thought it was quite funny that the local council were always discussing ways to stop people throwing themselves off the top of the bridge, (they've since put up railings and barbed wire) when it would have been easier to throw oneself off from the underneath.

ISLE OF ARRAN - LOST AT SEA

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 14 YEARS OLD

Holy Island, from Lamlash Bay on the Isle of Arran (recent pic)

In the Summer of 1963, John Ellard and I went to the Isle of Arran in Scotland with my father and some of his friends on a fishing trip in one of those VW dormabiles where the roof folds upwards and out. We stayed at the little village of Lamlash, which is almost on the beach, and faces Holy Isalnd about 3 miles out to sea. Great place - I recommend the scenery.

Anyway, I can't remember John and I actually doing any fishing, but I do remember us singing "Twist & Shout" at the top of our voices inside the dormabile, which had just been released by the Beatles. Sadly there were no girls around to hear our beautiful singing voices. The week was rather uneventful except for three things:

1. John and I hired a rowing boat. We were supposed to stay within 100 yards of the beach, but that was a bit tame for us, so we rowed all the way across Lamlash Bay to Holy Isalnd, and landed safely. Then we walked around the entire permiter of the island on the rocks, which took most of the day and was about 5 miles around. On the north East corner of the island, we found the jacket and trousers of an RAF bloke - but no bloke, and no sign of him. We have wondered ever since why these clothes were just lying around on the rocks above the high water mark. We eventually got back to the rowing boat in the late afternoon and thought we'd better make a rapid row back to Lamlash. BUT boys being boys, we mucked about and then I think it was me who lost an oar, and the water current was so strong that the oar disappeared quite quickly. We looked around. We could see past Holy Island into the Firth of Clyde, which ran into the Irish Sea, which ran into the Atlantic. Oh heck! Luckily, my father had returned to Lamlash and found us reported missing and outside the 100 yards from the beach mark, so he got into a motor boat with his fishing friends, and they found us drifting around the south east tip of Holy Island. Phew! Nearly gonners.

2. We used to go on our hire bikes over the top of the bay to Brodick. The bike ride was a hard ride uphill, but a great ride down the other side. At Brodick, we bought ice cream, but another motive for going to Brodick was to secretly look for girls while my dad and his mates were fishing elsewhere on the island. Day after day we did this, but sadly no girls. I don't think we'd have known what to do with them if we found any.

3. We set fire to the dormabile. Now I have to say that we didn't mean it, but when my dad and his friends were having one or three amber fluids in the Lamlash Hotel, John and I decided we needed to eat, so we cooked up some bacon and eggs. But Dormabiles are not designed very well, and the curtains on the windows wafted over the gas ring with the draft coming through the open window - hence WHOOSH! It was quite scary for a couple of minutes, but we threw lots of water about the place and put it out. Dad wasn't too pleased when he came back to half-burnt curtains.

MOGGA

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 13 YEARS OLD

Quite a few of my friends and I worked for Mogga during our school years. These included John Ellard, Dennis Hearn, David Siddle, Kevin Trotter and a few more than I can't recollect.

Mogga was a man called Maurice Wells (nicknamed 'Mogga Wells'), a lively character well-known in the bottom end of Scarborough. He was a skinny bloke with hair so short that we used to mock him, as we stood around with Beatles haircuts over our ears. Late afternoons would see Mogga walking up and down Eastborough and Newborough with a huge bundle of Scarborough Evening News under his arms, shouting at the top of his voice: "Yipp-an-eeeer" which meant "Get your newspaper here!" They were sixpence, I seem to remember. Most newspaper sellers in those days had their own call. Mogga's call was particularly piercing, so you couldn't miss him.

Mogga also owned his own shop. Well actually, it was a wooden shack painted blue at the side of Scarborough Markets which was run mostly by a little stout lady called Lil.

PHOTO: 1970 - MOGGA'S SHACK DOWN

THE SIDE OF SCARBOROUGH MARKET
(Where the people in the pic are talking)

We called it "Mogga's Shack." It sold newspapers, magazines and cigarettes, and that's about all. We all had newspaper rounds and used to turn up at about 6.30am in the morning. We'd go and buy some "hot cakes" from next door, (hot cakes are small bread buns straight out of the oven) then collect our newspapers and go in different directions to deliver them - mostly covering the entire bottom end of Scarborough, and mostly national newspapers like the Daily Mirror and daily Express. In the evening, after school about 4.30pm, we'd all turn up again to deliver another batch of the just-printed Scarborough Evening News. generally the eveing papers were a lot lighter. We delivered newspapers 5 days a week, although one or two of the team also had a Sunday round as well. Mogga paid us all around 13 Shillings a week, depending upon which round you got. Mogga's shack was demolished a few years later, so the above photo might be the only one there is of it.

My round was easy. Straight down Eastborough, all along the seafront, and then up through the houses in the shadow of the Castle. When I got paid, most of it went on buying fruit from the Quartons Fruit and flower shop a few doors up from Mogga's Shack, or on 'Hot Cakes" from the bakery-cum-cafe next door to the shack, and run by a lady called Mary who my father eventually married.

This is just an introduction to the stories surrounding working for Mogga. I've lots of stories to tell about the days working for Mogga, such as when we grouped together and called ourselves the black-hand gang and threatened to go on strike if Mogga didn't pay us more, and how I could easily have got killed riding Mogga's carrier bike laden with newspapers to head height coming back from the Scarborough Evening News printing works on Aberdeen Walk, so stay tuned.

FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL & THE FEAST

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 5 YEARS OLD

Photo: My Grandad Thompson and I, circa 1954

We lived in Newby (Scarborough, UK) in a street called The Whins, next door to a shop that was built whilst we lived there. This was before we moved out to Eastfield. Our house had a garden in the front with a hedge running between the lawn and the public pavement. I used to sit under this hedge and peer through the leaves and watch "big kids" going to school every day. I wanted to be one of them! They all looked very old - they must have been six or seven, I guess.

My day came, and my mother walked me down the street opposite our house called "The Green" where, at the bottom, stood Newby Infants School. I was full of joy at going to school at last, even though I didn't really know what school was. The joy didn't last, because my mother took me into this huge classroom full of kids I didn't know, and THEN SHE LEFT! Prior to leaving, she told me that I could find my own way home - which wasn't as bad as it sounds, because you could just about see our house from the school.

I remember sitting at this little desk (and it even felt little as a 5 year old) watching all the other kids doing things and running around. I was doing nothing. Suddenly from nowhere, a grown-up lady (the teacher) handed me a book and it was painting by numbers and she showed me that by putting water onto the numbers, the colours would show. I'd never seen this before. It was absolute magic to me. So that's what I did for most of the morning, until a bell rang and all the other kids ran to the front of the class and started drinking milk from little bottles. I remained seated, not sure whether I should join them or not. As the minutes rolled by, I became scared because I didn't know what was going on - so I just sat there! I didn't get any milk on the first day. It was only later in the day that one of the little school girls whispered that the milk was free, it happened every day at 10am and I was allowed to join the others.

The day rolled by, and I became friends with a boy called William. He wanted to know if I'd like to go to a feast; not a word I was particularly familiar with. After school, I followed William to his house, which was halfway up the hill to my house. While I waited outside in a sort of covered porch entrance, he went inside to 'fetch the feast.' Now to a 5 year old, this could have been anything from a box of frogs to an elephant. What was this thing called a feast?

After what seemd like ages, William came back out of the house with something wrapped up in white tissue paper. When he unfolded it, it was a full-size fresh unsliced bread loaf. He'd 'stolen it' from inside the house. This was to be our feast. We sat in the porchway and ate most of it! I remember thinking that the soft white bread in the centre was delicious. Then I went home.

My mother asked where I'd been because I was late, but I was too scared to mention the feast and instead told her that I was late because some of the numbers in my colouring book didn't work at school, and I had to wait until the colours came through. I think this might have been the day I told my first fib, too.

MY FIRST 45 RPM RECORD

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 13 YEARS OLD

When we moved into Princess Terrace in Scarborough (UK) around the mid 1950s after living out in Eastfield, I remember that my brother and I had to sleep in the attic at the very top of the three-story house. In the corner of the attic the past residents had left a huge heap of stuff, including what appeared to be wireless transmitters, gas masks, and all sorts of electrical gear left over from the war, we assumed. (My mind used to boggle at what all this stuff might have been used for.)

Mixed in among this heap of 'rubbish' was a 78 rpm record player and dozens of old 78 rpm records, so my first experience of music (other than the radio) was playing old 78 records on a wind-up record player with big metal needles.

It wasn't until February 1962, that I got a record player for my birthday. It was a turqoise and cream coloured box thing with a handle, that opened up and plugged into the mains, but it didn't play 78s. It was designed to play 45s and LP records. I was really chuffed because many of my friends already had record players, and I seemed to be one of the last to get one.

I remember going with a school friend called kevin Trotter to buy my first record from Deans Music Shop in St Thomas Street, and it was "Return To Sender" by Elvis Presley. I took it home and played it non-stop for hours on end. From that point on during 1962, I bought quite a few 45 rpm's and built quite a collection, including records by Adam Faith, Del Shannon, Cliff Richards and the Shadows, Duanne Eddy, and many more.

During the Summer of 1962, I would often put records on in my bedroom, turn up the volume to full blast and open the windows. Why? Because there were always the possibility of girls staying in the Bed and Breakfast houses opposite, and my music would show them how cool I was. (That's what you do when you're 13, and why I understand totally why teenagers in cars nowadays turn up their CD music and wind down their car windows - it's the 'hey look at me!' syndrome - it just surprises me that they are still doing it at 18 years of age.)

It was about a year before I got my first LP - "Please Please Me" by the Beatles which came out in March 1963, and is still today one of the best records the Beatles made.

THE FIRST SNOG

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 16 YEARS OLD

I remember it well, but damned if I can remember her name(s).

I'd been invited to a party by friend Dave Siddle. The party was somewhere down near Falsgrave, in Scarborough, in a private house. Now up to that time, the only parties I'd been to were birthday parties and I hadn't been to one of those for many years. So my mind was filled with the boring prospects of playing games and eating lots of stuff piled up on tables and generally making lots of noise. Boy was I wrong.

When I arrived, Dave introduced me to about a dozen people my age who had already arrived. There was alcohol, and soft drinks and a bit of grub, from memory, and people stood around, and sat around talking in groups, either on lounge chairs, the sofa or sat around on the floor. Very sociable! Very pleasant!

Suddenly someone (it could have been Dave) shouted out "Let's play Postman's Knock!" Well I'd heard the term postman's knock before, but hadn't a clue what it was. Even today, I can't remember exactly how it goes. I just know that on that particular evening I ended up outside the main room where everyone else was, in a darkened corridor of the house with quite an attractive young lady asking me "Well, when are we going to start?" and I didn't know what she was talking about. I must have had a blank look on my face, so she grabbed me and our lips slid together like two slugs mating on a rainy day. I remember thinking that it was pretty good.

For the next hour or so, I think each person at the party got to snog each other person at the party of the opposite sex, and then the lights went low and everyone paired off. I ended up laying behind the settee in the dark with a blonde lady and lips were stuck together for the next several hours. All the other couples found their own places under tables, behind chairs, on chairs, in the corridor, etc.

Dave was a great host and kept wandering around filling people glasses. He obviously knew that snogging for hours on end tends to give one a dry mouth. I don't remember much more of the party or the evening, except being dragged out from behind the settee by Dave about 2am and told it was time to go home.

Extracted from College Photo 1965

WHY I NEVER GOT INTO FOOTBALL

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 7 YEARS OLD:-
One of the things I disliked when I was young was my mother and her parents (my grandparents of course) taking trips to Leeds and Hull. It seemed to be 'a thing' with them that we would go on regular coach trips - TOO REGULAR FOR ME! When we went to Leeds, we always went to a big department store called Lewis's and have a cup of tea. When we went to Hull, a similar thing happened. It felt like we were on a coach almost every second week. BORING! The only good coach trip was the annual Hull Fair, but then again, when you're going on roundabouts with your MOTHER, it's not that much fun. The whole thing about coach trips bored me silly.

So when teacher Mr Bogg came into our teacher Mrs Arundales class one day at the Friarage junior school, and asked who would like to go coaching - lots of boys put their hands up - BUT NOT ME - NO WAY! Coaching was the last thing I wanted in my life.

A few days later I saw all the lads who'd put their hands up boarding a big blue coach just outside the school gates on Friargate, I felt so sorry for them. They didn't know what they were in for. Poor sods! They obviously don't have parents with a coaching habit. I wonder where they will get taken? Probably to some department store somewhere?

So that's the reason many of my schoolmates got into soccer, and I didn't. It was quite some time before I realised "coaching" was football coaching, and they were going to Northstead Playing Fields to play football and have a jolly good time. And when you're only seven, you tend not to jump around and shout "Sorry, I got the coaching bit wrong, can I join in." I went fishing with my dad instead.

THE ONE THAT DIDN'T GET AWAY

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 11 YEARS OLD

There are several times in my life where I came close to death. This is one of them. (I'll tell you later about the other times.)

I was fishing with my father from a huge rock underneath the 200 foot-high cliffs at Hawsker, south of Whitby. "White Rock" the rock is called by those who know it, which was very few, because few people ever got down to it. The only way to get there was down through steep muddy grassy cliff with the assistance of a thick rope. Once at the rock, the wide sweeping semi-circle bay around us was surrounded by high grey slate cliffs which constantly and randomly spat out bits of slate, so you had to watch your head. On the ground were (and probably still is) millions of really quite good quality fossils, like the ones you see in shops - just laying there, waiting for someone to pick them up - amazing place!

It started to get dark but we could still see the waves breaking over the rocks a few feet away. We'd caught no fish to that point. Every now and then, as I sat with the fishing bags watching the tips of our rods for 'a bite', I would feel the brush of a rat's tail across my hand. The rats were always after the bait, and when it got dark it got worse, and it was normal to switch on my headlight and see a circle of around a dozen big rats peering back at me. Spending an evening with rats was something you get accustomed to after a while if you're a rock fisherman on dark evenings.

Anyway, it wasn't that dark yet, when suddenly my father grabbed his classic Greenheart rod and gave it a huge yank - which I knew meant "A FISH!" As he started to haul it in, he realised it was a big one. After what seemd like half an hour, he got it to the water's edge, and as I reached out to grab it by the gills, it slipped off the hook. To any fisherman, this is a time of sheer horror - having to tell stories later of "the big one that got away."

My father suddenly kicked me in the back and shouted "GRAB IT, JOHN !" and I fell into the water grasping the air and then the water, for the fish (and my life I think, too.). It was a huge cod, and one of the biggest we'd ever caught on shore, and I somehow managed to grab it around the neck underwater. By the way, I couldn't swim in those days. I staggered out of the sea with the cod tightly tucked against my chest with both arms, and somehow managed to clamber to a dry position.

To cut a long story short, it weighed just 25 lbs. We cheered loudly as the rats ate most of our bait - but it was a good day, even though I might easily have drowned.

This is a photo of the fish, next day!

BARROW LOAD OF LEAD

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10 YEARS OLD

PHOTO: The Marine Drive, Scarborough, 1971

In the photo above, you can see someone fishing over the edge of the railings. In recent years, the Marine Drive at Scarborough has been transformed as the council has thrown thousands of tons of rocks over the edge to act as a breakwater, and it no longer looks like this. In the 1950s and early 1960s, I used to climb down the back of the Far Pier on a spring tide (Extra low tide) with best-mate-at-that-time, Richard Sheader, and go looking for abandoned lead sinkers that got snagged on rocks below the level of the water from people fishing on the Marine Drive. Richard's family were from the fishing fraternity at the bottom end of town, and very well known and respected.

Climbing down the back of the pier was always a little bit of a hazard but very narrow steps down the back of the pier wall allowed this to be done without too much hassle. Once at the foot, then the next hurdle was a green slippery part which got you over and around a sewer outlet, which was almost always throwing up huge brown turds and rubber condoms by the bucket load. Sometimes, we had to wade through this. Wading through human turds was a way of life to us. (I still think I'm doing it today, sometimes. Ha! Ha!) At 8 to 10 years old, I don't think we really knew what condoms were, and in fact, in those days, they were called rubber Johnnys.

Once at the other side of all this stuff, the rocks were always still slippy because the base of the Marine Drive was only above sea level for a few days every six weeks or so, when Spring Tides abounded.

Lead sinkers were usually EVERYWHERE and sat on top of rocks, down the side of rocks, and sometimes deep in big sea puddles where we had to wade in to get hold of the sinkers, and dodge the waves as they rolled over the deep water hole. (I couldn't swim in those days, by the way!) Nine times out of ten, the sinkers were tangled in masses of nylon fishing line, so a sharp knife was absolutely essential to free up the lead.

Lead attracted a lot of money from the metal merchants and that's why we were there. Lead is heavy, of course, but we used to gather enough to fill a small barrow, and then cart it to Websters Scrap Metal dealers near North Marine Road, in town. (All uphill!) I'm not sure whether they are there today, though.

Sometimes we'd get ten shillings, sometimes a full pound, but you have to remember that this was equivalent to maybe £10 to £20 in today's money, and a heck of a lot for a 10 year old. Not bad for half a day's work, though. I sometimes think this is when my interest into entrepreneurship started.

AFTERNOONS ON THE EDGE

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 8 YEARS OLD

PHOTO: A recent photo of Bempton Cliffs,
but they haven't changed for thousands of years.

Have you ever been to the Bempton Bird Santuary with 300 foot high cliffs, just north of Flamborough, which is just north of Bridlington. In the old days (1950s) the bird sanctuary didn't exist, but my father (Ray Edmonds) used to go fishing at the foot of these cliffs. The only way to get to the foot of these cliffs was by rope. There wasn't (and still isn't) any land access. I was about 7 or 8 years old, I guess, and I'd go with him when he went fishing, but he'd leave me sat on top of the cliffs ALL DAY with a bag of sandwhiches and a bottle of pop. (We're talking 300 feet sheer drop cliffs, remember).

When we'd arrive, he'd throw down the coil of rope onto the grass near the edge of the cliff, and pull out a huge metal spike which he'd hammer into the soil near the cliff edge. Then he'd tie his rope to it and throw the remainder of the rope over the edge. Next he'd tie his fishing rod across his back and sling his fishing bag over his shoulder, and holding on tightly to the rope, he'd disappear over the edge - and that's all I'd see of him for the next six hours. No safety harnesses! Just rope and bare hands!

Sometimes, little old me used to creep to the edge of the cliff to see if I could see my dad, but I never did. It was a bit scary near the edge, so I generally stayed away from it.

At the end of the day, my dad's head would suddenly appear, followed by his a hand cluching a bunch of huge fish, with him shouting "Here, grab hold of these!"

I'd grab the fish, and he would clamber onto the safety of the cliff top, and then we'd walk to the car park where someone usually picked us up in a car and returned us to Scarborough where we lived.

I often reflect upon those days. I wasn't tied down to anything and could have fallen over the edge very easily if I mucked about - but that's what the world was like in those days. No-one gave a toss about Health & Safety - but we somehow survived.

I've always wondered what it would've been like down there fishing on the rocks with only one escape route - upwards on a rope.

FIDDLING THE AMUSEMENT ARCADES

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10 YEARS OLD

Photo: Scarborough Beach - 1960s

Scarborough seafront (UK) was has always been a mass of amusement arcades overlooking the beach, even more in the 1960s and 1970s, than today. The easiest machines to 'fiddle' were those that had fruit such as cherries, pineapples, lemons and the like on a roller wheel. (They became known as Fruit Machines) This was in the days before these machines were called one-armed bandits, but in essence, they were exactly the same.

We knew that the machines won every 9 times. It cost a penny to have a go on a machine (i.e. the OLD BIG PENNY before the UK went decimal) and the winning sequence was threepence, threepence, sixpence, threepence, threepence, ninepence, threepence, threepence, a SHILLING! This meant that the machine took about 72 pence revenue, and paid out 45 pence during each full sequence.

What we'd do is this: We'd watch a punter (usually a man and usually a tourist) playing on the machine. When it came time for the shilling payout, we'd shyly with puppy eyes (an act!) ask the man if we could have a go - and in most cases (because we were just kids) they'd allow us. We'd win the shilling (i.e. 12 pennies) and then run off happy. Meanwhile, the punter hadn't a clue what had just happened.

The best of it was that the same type of machines worked in exactly the same way across the length of the entire seafront. No only that, but other machines (such as horses running around a track) worked in a similar way and we knew the winning sequences. Of course, the managers of the arcades used to ban us from entering amusement arcades, but generally, we could always get into half a dozen, and come away a lot wealthier. It was nothing to win up to a pound in an afternoon - equivalent to £20 in today's money. I think we were the richest little urchins on the seafront.

Was it crooked? I guess it was, but we never saw it that way because we considered that the amusement arcade owners were just as crooked by 'fixing' machines to only win in a certain sequence, thereby ensuring they couldn't lose.

BURYING STUFF ON THE CASTLE

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 9 YEARS OLD

PHOTO: Scarborough Harbour & Castle

There was a phase when I was about 10, I think, where my schoolmate Dennis Hearn (Lived in Elder Street, Scarborough) and I used to bury stuff up on the Castle Dykes at Scarborough (UK). Most of it is probably still there unless the people with metal detectors in recent years have gone over it and dug it up.

Now you might well ask "What kind of stuff?" To be honest, I can't remember exactly, but we used to bury money that we'd fiddled from the machines in the amusement arcades down on the seafront. (See next story) We'd bury knives, coins, momentos, badges, pens, unwanted toys, unwanted gifts, - in fact just about anything.

What we'd do is this: We'd use a knife blade and dig out a square of grass about four inches square and six inches deep, bury whatever it was we wanted to bury, then replace the grass square. We'd step up and down on it, and it was impossible to know that there was anything buried there. We'd then make a note of the position by taking paces from the nearest park bench, telegraph pole, or whatever, so that we could go back at any time and dig it up. Mostly, we never went back.

I think it was the act of burying stuff that made us feel like we were burying treasure like the pirates used to do. We must have buried over a hundred bits of stuff, at least.

Want to have a go at finding some of it? Go up "Castle Gardens" and climb the stairs to the Castle Dykes. From the grass pathway above, we buried stuff between the grass overlooking Castle Gardens up to 100 yards west towards the Castle Archway.

Let me know if you find anything.