The Sound of Laughter (8 page)

Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, one day a German shepherd came into my life. It was an ordinary afternoon just like any other. We were playing football in the park, I was in goal as usual, when from out of nowhere a
German shepherd appeared and mounted me from behind. I didn't even know his name. I'm joking of course.

Please don't expect me to try to explain to you why this German shepherd chose to mount me because I don't have any answers. All I do know is that it started to happen every week and it always seemed to happen when the other team was just about to score. The dog would appear out of thin air and start to shag my leg.

I was becoming a nervous wreck. I couldn't sleep and whenever I did the dog would appear. I'd wake up in a frenzy in the middle of the night, kicking the duvet, trying to shake this damn dog from my leg. I didn't know the dog, I'd never seen the dog before, but it was starting to take over my life. I took to riding around the park on my bike after school in an effort to find out who owned the dog. I'd take a carrier bag full of leftovers from my tea with me as a peace offering. And I'd have them swinging from my handlebars as I searched for the dog, but I could never find it and it still only showed up during football for a quick game of hump my leg.

Thursday would come around too quickly and we'd all trudge over to the park. I'd be on edge, trying to hide myself in the middle of a group, my eyes darting from left to right, searching for the horny mutt.

Eventually I'd have to take up my usual position in
goal. I'd have a quick chat to Darren Leech about his latest video nasty and before you could say 'I Spit On Your Grave', the other team would be screaming towards me in a frenzied attempt to score. At that very moment the dog would appear from out of the blue and climb on. Unbelievable! I'd be trying to shake it off and save a goal at the same time but resistance was futile. They'd score and the dog would bugger off.

Bewildered, I staggered to my feet and shouted to the others,

'Did you see it? Did you see it? It did it again.'

But while the other team was busy charging back up the pitch celebrating, my team were just hurling abuse at me. But what did they expect me to do with a German shepherd clinging rhythmically to my thirteen-year-old leg?

We ended up playing in a different park in the end after my mum wrote an embarrassing letter of complaint to Sister Sledge. I never saw that dog again but even today when I drive past a German shepherd I find my leg involuntarily starts to shake.

I always wanted our school to have a swimming pool. Other schools in Bolton had them, so why not ours? Apparently the year before I arrived the school had been given some money from the education authority and the pupils had the chance to vote between having a
swimming pool or a recreation centre. The morons chose a recreation centre. I only saw the inside of it about six times in all my time at Mount St Joseph. In the end the nuns ended up using it as a storeroom for their religious stuff, like candles, hymn books and a ping-pong table. What a waste. I wish they'd have chosen a swimming pool, because swimming was a sport that I could do.

I was taught to swim on Tuesday evenings at High Street Baths in Bolton, an old Victorian building that has since been demolished. I had a lot of affection for the place but have to admit it was a shithole. It was dangerously decrepit and out of date even by the standards of the 1980s.

After the success of the 'Ave It! football advert I was asked to film a second one for John Smith's bitter campaign. This one was to be set at the European Championships and I was to play the part of the diver. A few days before filming I got a call from the producer just before I went down to London. He chatted to me about what I'd be expected to do during the filming at the swimming pool at Crystal Palace. Then casually halfway through the conversation he said,

'. . . and of course when you jump off the top of the diving board the director will be expecting you to bomb into the water.'

'He'll be asking me to do what? Bomb?' I said.

'Yes, you know, bomb, like you used to do off the diving board at the local baths when you were a kid.'

'My local baths used to dream of having a diving board mate,' I said. 'We never even had a slide, all we had was a handful of half-eaten, white polystyrene floats that you could hang on to in the water, I've never bombed in my life, not unless you count that taxi drivers' Christmas party I did over in Blackburn last July.'

Perhaps I'm such a keen swimmer because I used to go to swimming lessons twice a week at High Street Baths. My mum and dad used to take me on Tuesday nights to the 'Barracuda' Swimming Club, and I went there with the school one afternoon a week.

We had professional instructors at the Barracuda Club – well, as professional as you could get for 30p a session. I managed to collect most of my badges, 125-metre breaststroke, 125-metre crawl and an all-important life-saving certificate. Well, all-important was what they told me, but I've still yet to save a black rubber brick from drowning while coincidentally walking past the side of a canal wearing a pair of pyjamas. Nevertheless, I wore my badges with immense pride after my mum had sewn them on to my navy-blue trunks with red piping down the side. The trunks also sported a secret inside pocket (for what reason I'll never know).

The afternoon swimming trip with the school was a much more relaxed affair. We used to have a laugh in the changing rooms, the usual childish pranks. Turning the showers to cold while people were in them and hiding each other's clothes. I remember I once found a pair of underpants on the floor and we took great amusement in throwing them at each other and then it turned into an improvised game of football. By now they were sodden. Clint Kennedy decided to take things a step too far and slap any unsuspecting persons entering the changing room round the back of the head with the soggy underpants. It was funny until he almost blinded a bloke coming in with his son.

This bloke lost his mind (and almost an eye). Clint got a major bollocking off the nuns and would be banned from going swimming for the rest of the term. They would also force him to write a letter of apology to the bloke and his son.

At the time, though, we all found it very amusing, until on closer inspection I realised that the offending underpants were actually mine. They must have fallen out of my bag on to the floor. Cold and damp, I had no choice but to put them in a carrier bag and walk home commando.

The main difference between the Barracuda Swimming Club and school swimming was that, as I
said, at the Barracuda we had professional instructors teaching us, but when we went with the school it was left to the nuns. Far be it for me to generalise, but nuns are to teaching swimming what pensioners are to power-lifting – in other words, useless.

I'm just glad I had the Barracuda Club, otherwise I would probably still be in armbands doing the doggy-paddle.

Sister Scissors
^*5
hadn't got a clue about swimming. She'd try to coach us as best she could, motioning breaststroke movements to us by the side of the pool. We used to find it very uncomfortable because every time we'd complete a circuit we'd come back and face Sister squatting by the side of the pool offering encouragement to us and the closer we swam towards her the more we could see her big white knickers. We had no choice but to look up her vestments.

We'd swim off deliberately slowly, desperately trying to delay our journey back. But we'd inevitably have to swim back towards her.

'Hurry up,' she'd shout. 'Open your eyes, Peter Kay! You're swimming into the wall.'

I really didn't want to glimpse her holy white triangle again. It took the fun out of swimming.

Sadly Bolton doesn't have a public swimming pool in the town centre at the moment, somewhere for families or kids to go to. We did have the Water Place for a while but that was demolished a couple of years back, I don't know why, it hadn't really been open that long.

I was thirteen when it first opened, I went with some girlfriends of mine from school. I wasn't supposed to be the only lad but my mate dropped out. I'd never been swimming on my own with a group of girls.

I raced into the changing rooms and ripped my clothes off. I didn't want to be last in the pool to a bunch of girls. I already had my trunks on underneath so that I could get into the pool in extra-fast time. I stuffed my clothes into a locker, shut the door and then noticed that there was no number on the locker. In fact, there weren't any numbers on several of the lockers in my block. In a rush to get the building completed in time, the builders had forgotten to put numbers on all of the lockers.

Because I was in a rush I decided to just count where my locker was, fourth across, second row up, great, and then I dashed over to the YTS locker-room attendant in the corner of the changing room and thrust my key at him. I actually did a double take when I glanced up at him because he looked remarkably like Fatima Whitbread. I think he was used to getting this reaction because he stared back at me with venom.

Then grudgingly he looked over his shoulder to the 'I Ran the World 'clock on the wall.

'You've got an hour,' he said, and passed me a red rubber band to wear on my wrist. As I ran off he shouted. 'Don't run,' after me.

Then I was faced with a dilemma that I have every time I go swimming: how do I get across that freezing cold pool of four-inch shallow water without getting my feet wet? (Why do they always make you walk through that before you get to the pool?) Maybe I could clamber round the edges? At least I would avoid those plasters I could see floating on the top of it. Maybe I could leap it? No, too far. The ironic thing is that this pool of cloudy fluid has been deliberately put there for you to cleanse your feet before you enter the pool. I don't hate much in life but I hate that water. I'm making myself feel sick now so I'll move on.

I managed to beat the girls into the pool and after an hour of splashing and playing tag I heard a booming voice over a tannoy system: 'Red bands out please, red bands out.' That was us, time to leave.

I got out of the pool and reluctantly tiptoed through the obligatory pool of shallow water again. It was much worse the second time. Shivering, I went over to the attendant and got my locker key from him. I half expected him to be practising the javelin but he was just
slumped in his chair reading a film magazine with Sigourney Weaver on the cover in
Aliens.

I went back to the lockers and counted, four across, two up, put the key in, turned it but nothing happened. I tried it again but still it wouldn't budge. I tried several more times, starting to panic. I may have been victorious beating the girls into the pool but at this rate they'd already be on their second cup of chicken soup from the vending machine.

I went back over to the locker attendant and told him that I couldn't open my locker. I saw the look on his face, he really didn't want to help.

'Are you sure it's your locker?' he said patronisingly.

'Yes,' I said.

'Because some of them haven't got any numbers on them yet.'

'I know.'

'Well, why did you use one of them?'

Why didn't you put a sticker on them saying they were out of order, you lazy Fatima Whitbread lookalike? I never said this, I just thought it loudly in my head.

He sighed, slammed his magazine down and walked over to my locker. He tried it himself, twisting and turning the key every which way but loose.

'See,' I said.

'Are you sure it's yours?' he said.

'Yes, I know four across and two up, I know which one it is.'

This was getting beyond a joke. By now the girls will have grown up, got married, had kids and be back at the same vending machine drinking chicken soup with their own children. (Slight exaggeration there for comic effect but I'll allow it.)

Just as I could feel pneumonia creeping into my lungs I thankfully heard a voice over the PA again, this time asking for all 'yellow bands' to leave the pool. I saw a flash of concern in the attendant's eyes.

'Wait here,' he said and ran off.

He returned with an enormous pair of industrial bolt cutters and without so much as flinching, he snapped the lock off the front of the locker and went off to greet the yellow bands from the pool with his usual apathy.

The locker door swung open on its crooked hinges and revealed to me a white string vest, a pair of tan-coloured open-toed sandals, a trilby hat ... I could go on but I think you get the picture.

'This isn't my locker,' I mumbled to myself in shock.

I re-counted the lockers, put my key in the one below and, hey presto, it opened. Quickly I grabbed my clothes, legged it over to a cubicle and locked the door. What a palaver!

The last thing I saw as I sneaked out of the changing
rooms was the shocked expression of an elderly naked man as he stood facing his vandalised locker.

'What the bloody hell happened here?' I heard echoing behind me as I fled out the door.

I've never understood blokes like that old man, strolling around naked with everything swinging in front of all and sundry. I know it's a male changing room but there's no need to parade it about. I think they must get some kind of a kick out of it. I mean, call me old-fashioned but on the odd occasion that I'm ever in a changing room and I have to get naked, I do it discreetly with a towel round me or in a corner with nobody looking. I don't get my cock out and stop for a chat; I keep my head down, literally.

The other thing that pisses me off are blokes who bring their kids into the changing rooms with them. I understand that they probably don't have a choice but there are very few things worse in this world than turning round in the shower to find a strange child watching you soaping up your nether region. Again, it's bang out of order and I find it extremely uncomfortable.

But even worse than that is when blokes strike up a conversation with me when I'm naked. Now I agree that conversation is a dying art form but never, I repeat never, in the memory of mankind will you ever catch me striking up a conversation with a naked man.