One Stop, One Life

- CHAPTER 1 -

Born in a Bucket

It was a typical December morning, chucking it down with rain, blowy and very cold. As usual it was impossible to park in the surgery car park and I had to drive a couple of hundred yards to find a spot. I jogged back and, as I registered, was glad to see that the doctor was only running ten minutes late. I took my seat in the waiting room and crossed my fingers.

The doctor opened the door and beckoned me into his room. He fixed me with a somewhat sympathetic stare and took a breath:

I am sorry to say, Kevin, that the results are not good. The tumour appears to have grown, but more worryingly the cancer appears to have spread to your liver and also your pancreas.

I could feel a drop of sweat forming on my brow as I asked him how long I had got. Without hesitation he replied:

I am afraid to say weeks, not months.

I shot bolt upright in bed, my heart thumping as it slowly dawned on me that I had been having the same repetitive dream once again. For two years since my lifelong friend and business partner had died of throat cancer, I had experienced this same dream every couple of weeks. Dave had suffered for ten long years and I guess that deep down I was frightened of going the same way. My life had been wonderful and I hoped for a few more years yet.

That life had started back on 29 September 1948 in the Queen Victoria and Albert hospital in Wolverhampton. According to my mother I had been born into a bucket; why a bucket, she had never actually told me.

I remember very little of childhood up until my first day at school aged five. My sister Sharron, who was two years older than me, had walked me through the gates for my first day at Elston Hall Primary School. It was one of the largest primary schools in the West Midlands, with over 600 pupils and average class sizes of 42.

I hated it, cried all day long and would not play in the sand tray with all the other boys and girls. Things only got worse when at the age of six I developed a squint, which meant that I could only really see out of one eye. So there I was sitting in a classroom of 42 with my pink National Health specs, unable to read much on the blackboard. It was not a great start to my academic career.

I lived in an area of Wolverhampton called Low Hill, which was one of the largest council house areas in the Midlands. My mother was one of eleven children, her father having developed a local painting and decorating business. My father was a Lancastrian whose family background was very much coal mining and weaving. Dad worked in a cotton mill for three years from the age of fifteen. In later life it was to come back to haunt him as he suffered quite badly from emphysema.

Dad moved down to the Midlands for a job as a sales representative and my mother was one of the people he interviewed for promotional work. Needless to say she not only got the job, she also got the boss because within two years they were married.

My first school: Elston Hall Primary, Stafford Road, Wolverhampton.

My parents were early entrepreneurs; they were determined to get on the housing ladder and my father used to go around the pubs in the town selling hot dogs, which my mother had made in the kitchen of their one-bedroomed flat. Mom quickly realised that if she cut the ends off the hot dogs, every sixth hot dog could be made out of all the end bits. At a stroke she had improved the gross margin by 20 per cent and the profits started to roll in.

Within a couple of years they had made enough money to put a deposit down on a small semi-detached house on the edge of the council estate in Low Hill.

Central heating and refrigerators were still only for posh people but we did have an inside loo, so I guess we were semi-posh. In the winter, frost would accumulate on the inside of the windows and I used to drive my sister mad by scratching my fingernails across the glass. With open fires being the only source of heat, the real fun was making the fire up with paper twists, sticks and coal. Sometimes the chimney would catch fire and I would run out into the cul-de-sac to watch the flames bursting out into the night sky.

The other really good game in town was to watch the chimney sweeps' brushes protrude out of the top of the chimneys while they were being cleaned. Now that really is an industry that has disappeared for good.

Life at school started to improve after I had an operation on my left eye to correct the squint. As an eight-year-old, I was terrified when they wheeled me down to the operating theatre and I can still remember the green gown of the surgeon as he told me that I would soon be going to sleep.

I woke up with both my eyes bandaged and unable to see a thing. In literally blind panic, I tried to rip off the bandages because I was convinced that I was now blind. Can you believe that nobody had told me that for a couple of days after the operation, I would not be able to see? To this day I cannot sleep in a completely darkened room; if I do, I wake in the same traumatised state and have to switch on a light.

Now I was old enough to wander beyond the confines of our culde-sac I became a little more interested in what was going on around me. The main railway line was only a couple of hundred yards away and within months I was completely hooked on trainspotting.

It became my life's ambition to become a train driver, and all my spare time was spent standing by the bridge with my Ian Allan trainspotting book hoping to see one of the glorious steam trains of the day.

The best times for us as a family were summer weekends. My father was captain of our local cricket club and from April onwards we spent most Saturdays and Sundays at the ground. My sister would help my mother with the teas and I would make a general nuisance of myself, either by climbing trees or by running across the nearby field to get the number of another passing train. I never went anywhere without my precious trainspotting book and it lived with me day and night.

Most of the players hated me, because just before the game was about to start I would pinch the brand new match ball and hide it under the pavilion. I would then refuse to give it back until they had all given me a penny so that I could buy some sweets. They regularly gave me money to go and play on the railway lines; I could never understand why!

I often got a swift backhander from my mother when she caught me stealing the cakes that had been put out for the players' tea.

But they were great family days and I would be immensely proud of my father if he scored 50 runs or more. He opened the batting for the first team and when he was eventually out, I would run on to the pitch to congratulate him. From a really early age he became my hero.

In those days there were no drink-driving laws and Sharron and I would be allowed to stay up late while Mom and Dad enjoyed a tipple or two with their friends and the players from the visiting team. I could never understand why they were always so happy when we were driving home and we would all sing songs at the top of our voices. They would rush us off to bed and bet that they could get to sleep before us - I don't think so!

I was now growing up fast and doing better at school as I could finally read what was on the blackboard. My father had started his own grocery wholesale business and was now earning enough money to educate Sharron and me privately, so just before I was to take my eleven-plus exam I left Elston Hall and started a new life at Birchfield Preparatory School.

That move was to change my life forever.

The first shock was that the teachers had difficulty in understanding my broad Wolverhampton accent and I was sent for elocution lessons. I didn't realise it at the time but most of my fellow pupils came from a completely different social background to mine. Back in the late 1950s the only people who could afford private education were professionals such as doctors, dentists and lawyers. Arriving at school in my dad's van did little for my street cred and because of this it was hard to make friends. I think the other parents thought we were gypsies.

As time went on I did make some good friends because parents may be snobbish, but children rarely are. I was amazed at the size of some of their houses, and the gardens were enormous. Where I lived all the houses were the same, with almost identical postage-stamp lawns. I think the first seeds of ambition were sown when I realised what could be bought with money.

The class sizes were much smaller than I had been used to, and it was strange to sit among only 16 pupils having been used to 40 or more. Some of the teachers were very scary. Our Latin teacher, Mr Ratray, used to pick at the skin around his fingernails, so much so that they were permanently bleeding. He was a stickler for using correct English. One day I asked him if I could go to the toilet.

'You certainly can, Threlfall,' he boomed across the classroom.

I got to the door and he shouted, 'Boy, where do you think you are going?'

'To the toilet, sir. You said I could go.'

'I said you could go to the toilet. In other words you are physically able to go to the toilet. The correct question should have been: "May I go to the toilet?"'

'OK, sir, may I go to the toilet?'

'No, you may not. Go and sit down, you horrible little child!'

Another teacher, called Mr Carver, had a fearful temper and it didn't take much to wind him...