Category Archives: Perfectly Hard and Glamorous

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous/Tell me about Jack

Park Hill/Deprivation, whose environment is bleak, dreary and hostile/The Times/1980

Part 4

“Tell me about Jack.”

I hadn’t said anything. Instead, I’d saved my thoughts for the train journey back to Sheffield, absorbed myself in 80s music, and drifted in and out of sleep.

I’d met Meghan, my literary agent, in a pub off Wardour Street. She’d looked tired. The book business was taking its toll and she was desperate for a bestseller. I wasn’t sure that I’d be the one to deliver it.

“I don’t know where it’s leading,” she’d said. “And I never took you as being a chav bad boy.”

I’d laughed. The word ‘chav’ hadn’t been invented then and it had made me think of Jeremy Kyle.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

Meghan frowned. “I worry that once people realise it’s about you that some of your charm will disappear.”

“I know that people don’t want to know that I grew up in a council flat. But I did, and they might not like me afterwards.”

She’d folded her arms on the table. “If that’s the sacrifice then it means we have a bestseller on our hands.”

***

Park Hill had changed beyond recognition. It was the same buildings that I once knew, the same framework, the same concrete, but it had a new soul.

Despite my initial reservations I was feeling slightly homesick. Not for London, but the apartment in Sheffield where you couldn’t hang a coat because the bare concrete couldn’t be disturbed.

I thought of the high up neon sign that said, ‘I love you… will u marry me.’

And on that train home I remembered when we’d dangled Jack over that same walkway. He was the only one brave enough to be suspended hundreds of feet above ground and paint ‘Geisha Boys’ in big letters.

We’d hung on, threatening to drop him at any moment, but he’d added his mark on the drab concrete.

But it was wasted. At ground level you could hardly see it and the lettering made no sense. And then a council worker came along and removed Jack’s efforts. It gave somebody else the chance to write, ‘I love u… will u marry me.”

***

Andy was the handsome one. He was the boy that all the girls liked and had anyone he wanted. Next was Jack. Cute and adorable Jack. The lad with the six-pack and infectious smile. And then it was me. Harry with the black spiky hair, not as handsome but taller than the others.

Jack was shorter but had the confidence and personality to make up for it. His six-pack arrived by the time he was a young teenager, and that was because he liked sport, especially football. He played for the school team and was picked for Sheffield Boys, but we told him it wasn’t right. He had a trial with Rotherham United and we got him drunk the night before. We didn’t want Jack to leave us.

He also had a big sister, Louise. She hung around with girls her own age and was distinctive for the long leather coat that nearly touched her ankles. All the boys coveted her.

But something changed. As we grew older, became perfectly hard and glamorous, I got the girls. The prettiest, the sexiest, and the oldest. Andy and Jack would get jealous, and that suited me fine. But things were never what they seemed.

***

The Scottish Queen/Park Hill/Modern Mooch

We were fourteen and notorious. Branded for drinking, smoking, fighting, stealing, and mindless vandalism. That standing followed us to comprehensive school, a 95 bus ride to Manor Top, and a long walk to Ashleigh School.

It was a shock to be there. Next to Ashleigh was Hurlfield where most of our schoolmates ended up. We were shunted into a different environment to straighten us out, but we ended up as adversaries to our former classmates.

But a bigger school meant bigger boys and they soon found us. Or rather they found Jack first.

We always went home together but one afternoon Jack had football practice. By the time he’d showered and was walking across Ashleigh field we were already home and smoking fags outside the Scottish Queen.

Jack looked dreadful when he came back. His trousers were ripped, his shirt hung open because the buttons had been torn off, and his face was bloody. But Jack still smiled.

The three lads had been hanging around the cricket nets and Jack was an easy target for them.

“They tried to nick my footy gear,” he told us.

They’d grabbed him, pushed him to the ground, and kicked him. But Jack was having none of it. He got up, kicked the first lad in the knee, thrust a foot into the second lad’s bollocks, and on the third he landed a punch that broke a nose.

The incident went unreported to the school, but the word in the corridors was that payback was heading Jack’s way.

We had to be the first to act.

Monday evening was youth club. On this day we never went home after school and always went to Manor Top chippy, where we stuffed ourselves with cod and chips, as well as cans of Top Deck shandy. We’d go to the newsagents and steal porno magazines which we read behind the fire station, and then leave them where little kids might find them.

That Monday night, we went back to school for seven. We diverted into nearby woods and found sticks that we hid alongside our school bags behind the boiler room.

We played table football, shot pool, and danced to music in the darkened assembly hall. It was about flirting with girls, lots of them, beautiful and ugly, and then scrawling our names and conquests on the toilet wall.

Andy loves Jayne, Jack loves Julie. Harry loves Kay.

It was also about having teachers watch us all the time because we might start a fight or vandalise the toilets.

That night, the arrogance and restlessness amongst us was nervous tension. We’d noticed the three spotty boys following us from room to room, staring, smirking, and whispering between themselves.

Saggy, Tommo, and Hesso, lived on the flats at Gleadless Valley, and were bullies who everybody avoided.

We plotted and schemed, blew kisses, and stuck two fingers up at them. They glared at us, but only Saggy and Tommo looked like they might be a problem because Hesso was supporting his smashed knee with a crutch.

When they weren’t looking, we left and crept into the shadows outside.

Everybody left at nine and headed towards the main road.

Saggy and Tommo came out first, and instead of following the crowd, turned towards the dark field and the flats beyond. Hesso was next, struggling with the crutch, and trying to catch up. The night was black and dangerous, but with safety in numbers, they trekked into it.

We picked up our sticks and followed.

We crept across the muddy grass, weapons in hand, and got nearer our prey. That’s when it happened.

Andy gave the nod, and we raised our sticks. The second nod was the signal for us to run as fast as we could.

Jack was fastest and hit Hesso across the back of the head. Hesso screamed and collapsed in a heap, and Jack followed up with a blow across his already destroyed knee.

Saggy and Tommo turned but they were too late.

Andy landed a crushing blow on Saggy’s temple, and he slumped forward. I aimed at Tommo’s chest and knew straightaway that I’d broken his ribs. They lay on the ground moaning, but we hadn’t finished and delivered blow after blow until they begged us to stop.

It was then that the clouds parted, and the moon cast an eery glow over the incident.

Andy stamped on Hesso’s crutch until it snapped, and Jack got his dick out and pissed all over Saggy. I collected the discarded sticks, fascinated that Jack had such a big one.

“Never mess with Park Hill lads.”

“I’ll piss on all of you.”

“All for one and one for all!”

It never crossed our minds that we could have killed somebody.

The three of us didn’t go to school the following day because there might have been too many questions. Angry teachers, enraged parents, and battered boys. There was even a chance that the police might have been waiting.

We walked into town and lounged outside Castle Market, cadging cigarettes from bus drivers, and stole a big bottle of Woodpecker Cider from the Co-op.

In the event, nothing happened at all.

Saggy, Tommo and Hesso had a code of honour. They were like us. And their standing would have suffered had it been known that they’d been humiliated by three fourteen year old schoolboys.

But we had an enemy, and retribution would come much later.

When they weren’t looking, we left and crept into the shadows outside

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous/We were inseparable

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Part 3

It was the first time I met Andy.

I‘d wandered along the balcony and climbed the concrete steps that smelt of piss and disinfectant. It was a big climb and when I reached the new world it looked the same. A sweeping row of front doors and a long balcony.

There was a small kid in tiny red wellingtons riding a kiddie’s tricycle. He cycled furiously towards me and stopped. His nose was snotty, and he kept wiping it with the sleeve of his blue anorak.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for my dad,”

“My dad will beat your dad up.”

“He will not. My dad killed your dad.”

“He did not. My dad hit your dad with a big stick and now he is champion of the world.”

In later years, I realised that Andy’s dad would have easily beaten my dad up, and he would have been the one to have done any killing.

“I’m going,” I told him.

“You’re a scaredy cat.”

I ran back down the steps. “Fuck you,” I called.

We saw each other often. Usually at a distance. We would look at each other as our mother’s dragged us in opposite directions. He would dawdle and his mother would clout him across the head.

“She’s a bad woman,” my mother once said to me.

“Fuck her,” I replied, and she slapped me harder.

Our paths crossed again when we were five years old. It was our first day at school, and we were scared. We decided, encouraged one another, that we didn’t want to go, and so we both cried with the hope that they would let us go back home. But they didn’t.

From that moment we were inseparable. We sat next to one another and were a hellish combination.

Our flats were on consecutive floors, sharing the same view, and outside school we’d congregate at the bottom of the lifts. We rode bikes, became little soldiers, and played football because we were Sheffield Wednesday fans.

We were hard little bastards. Anybody who crossed us ended up dealing with the other too. We gained a reputation for being unruly and played up to it. We misbehaved in class and found that punishment enhanced our status further.

I recall that Andy once threw a tin of bright yellow powder paint over Paula Smith because she called him a bummer. It was funny but she cried, and Mr Newsome grabbed Andy by the hair and paraded him in front of the class. He bent him over and walloped him across the arse with such ferocity that he couldn’t sit down for hours.

The class looked on in admiration at this defiant small boy who smiled and became ‘cock’ of the school.

I was incredibly jealous and wanted the same adoration.

My turn came one rainy afternoon. We were being taught by Mr Ellerby, a pipe-smoking guy who everybody liked. He called me to his desk. I stood waiting and watched my classmates play with Colour Factor. I saw Andy pocketing long red bricks that he would later toss off his balcony.

Mr Ellerby had been writing school reports. In his scrawly handwriting he had carefully put comments against each of us.

‘Andy. Disruptive. More effort required.’ ‘Harry. Not very boyish. More effort required.’

It was the first sign that I could explode. And I did. I swept everything off his desk until there was a pile of papers and pens on the floor. All except a half filled coffee mug that I picked up and threw at the nearest person who happened to be a boy called Ivan. It hit him in the face and cut his eye.

Mr Ellerby dragged me outside.

“What the hell are you doing lad?”

I couldn’t catch my breath and realised it was the point of no return. But it was my moment of glory.

I suspect that teachers would have gladly queued up to punish me. But it was nice Mr Ellerby who proved he could be equally nasty and smacked me ten times with a battered old plimsoll. My arse smarted and I’d never experienced such pain before. I tried not to cry, and when I looked up, I saw Andy smiling and then he winked at me. My standing had been cemented.

When the school report reached my parents, it read differently.

‘Harry. Behavioural problems. More effort required.’

I also found out that I’d misread Mr Ellerby’s illegible notes. I’d forgotten that there was an effeminate boy in our class called Barry Green.

‘Barry. Not very boyish. More effort required.’

Years later I had an email from somebody called Amanda Green who had read one of my articles online.

“You may not remember me, but we once went to school together. I was called Barry in those days.”

There was another consequence to that day.

Sitting at the back of the classroom was a boy called Jack Dempsey. He was small, sporty, and well liked. He’d nervously watched my retribution and made his mind up.

Jack was waiting outside the school gate and tagged along as we walked home to Park Hill. We entered the lift and pressed the button to go up. He exited on the landing beneath mine. I was next. Andy was the last one out.

That was when I thought that Jack was okay.

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous/It has already happened/The story is real

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Park Hill. I Love You/Will You Marry Me/The Guardian

Part 2

Tonight, I walked up the old-cobbled street from Sheffield Station. It passed over the railway line and was probably once lined with slum terrace houses. They vanished long before I was born. In my lifetime, this lost street has always fallen under the shadow of Park Hill.

It was dark and raining and the new streetlights made the wet stones sparkle. I saw three lads balancing on the old white railings at the top. They watched me approach. I slipped a hand in my pocket and felt for the tactical torch.

“Wrap the strap around your wrist, grab the torch like a dagger, and hit them on the side of the head with the jagged edge, remembering to twist it at the same time.”

I remembered these words from the man who gave it to me in London. It was after I’d been robbed of my phone in Bethnal Green. That was four years ago, still handy with my fists, but no match for the knife that stuck in my arm.

Park Hill might have become trendy, but some things never changed.

The lads said nothing, and I knew that silence could be dangerous. Three minds, three trains of thought, three different outcomes. I knew from experience.

I considered the time forty years ago when I’d sat in the same spot with Andy and Jack. Teenagers. Geisha Boys. Hard boys from the flats.

The lad had walked up this same street. We recognised him from Hyde Park, and he was walking into our territory. We stared him out, but this lad turned out to be more stupid than brave.

“What’s tha looking at bum boys?” he’d said.

We didn’t reply.

Andy was the first. He’d punched him in the face, blood splattering down the lad’s parka coat. Jack had kicked him in the stomach, and the lad fell to the floor. I reached for a half house brick and smashed it down on the back of his head.

There it was. Three minds, three trains of thought, three different outcomes.

All these years later, I thought that karma came around.

These three lads were different. One was White, one was Black, the other was Asian. Teenagers.

I recalled the words of the man who gave me the tactical torch.

“Be warned. You might end up killing somebody!”

“Have you got a smoke?” I think I took them by surprise.

The White lad produced a cigarette from nowhere and the Black lad gave me a cheap purple lighter. I lit it and took a drag.

“Thanks guys. I appreciate it.”

The Asian lad nodded. The White lad looked at the floor. “It’s ok bro’,” said the Black lad.

I smoked the cigarette as I walked towards the apartments. I didn’t look back until I reached the communal door. The three lads were still there, deep in conversation, and no threat to me.

What if that Hyde Park lad had done the same? Might things have been different? He had been called Brian and two years after we beat him up, he fell from the tenth floor of Hyde Park flats.

I have been back in Sheffield a month now and have yet to start writing my fourth novel. But tonight, I thought about these three young lads, and they reminded me of the Geisha Boys. And I thought about all the memories that have resurfaced these past weeks, and I accepted that Megan, my agent, might be right.

I sat down at my laptop and wrote the following words: –

“I was making a coffee at the time, staring out of the window, looking at a world that used to be marvellously different.”

*****

I was born in the sixties, and I didn’t know anything about Park Hill. It was years later, when writing an article for The Guardian, that I learned about the place I grew up.

It was allegedly based on Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation In Marseilles but this was too bizarre for us to understand.

I was born in 1966, the last time England won the World Cup, and Sheffield Wednesday lost a cup final to Everton. Park Hill was home. It was the only place I knew. We lived in the sky and looked down at the rest of the world. And for all I can remember, my first five years were spent within four walls and on a balcony as wide as a street. My earliest memory is the milk cart, as big as a car, that delivered every morning.

My family were called Oldham. It was an unusual surname, but my dad liked it because every Christian name went well with it. He was Peter Oldham, my mum was Pat Oldham, I was called Harry Oldham, and my younger brother became Adam Oldham. And there were lots of cousins across Sheffield.

Mum and dad moved to Park Hill in 1962 when it was still new. They were rehoused after their old back-to-back house at Netherthorpe was bulldozed. He was a cutlery worker, she was a wages clerk, and they were relatively poor.

But Park Hill promised clean and modern surroundings in which to raise a decent family. That dream eventually died, and the respectability of the Oldham family was often placed in doubt by Harry Oldham… me.

I hated my name. Harry was the name for an old man. When I was growing up there was nobody called Harry. But life goes full circle and at last, at the age of 56, I have a fashionable name and happy to be Harry.

Before lockdown, I was invited to see a play at the Crucible Theatre called Standing at the Sky’s Edge. I visited Sheffield with my partner, Scott, who had never been before. The account began in 1961 and told the story of three families over sixty years living in Park Hill. Scott loved it, but I came away feeling sad because it aroused memories of a life I thought was behind me. It might have been written about my family, my friends, and me.

I went back to London and wrote a third novel, and when that flopped, I realised that I wasn’t clever enough to be a crime writer.

Now I am back here. At Park Hill. I am writing another novel, one where I will not have to do any research and spend weeks scripting the storyline. The plot is already in my head. It has already happened. The story is real.

Yet, as I write, I realise that it is not so much a novel but is a collection of reminiscences.

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous/When I look back on my life

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Three Sheffield lads living on Park Hill. Andy, Jack, and Harry. They are typical working class lads. Three dysfunctional families struggling to survive. Three lads that grew up together and on the brink of adulthood.

Part 1

There is a song by the Pet Shop Boys. It starts like this, “When I look back on my life, it’s always with a sense of shame, I’ve always been the one to blame.” I heard it on the radio the other day, and I knew all the lyrics. I was making a coffee at the time, staring out of the window, looking at a world that used to be marvellously different.

It was the same city, bathed in sunshine, and brighter than the one I remembered. The skyline had changed. Now there were swish tower blocks, lots of cranes, and flatness where industry once thrived.

I look at this landscape every day, and each time I feel sadness, and remember something from the eighties.

The three of us were sat on a wall at Duke Street, smoking fags, and passing a can of Kestrel lager back and forth. An old man struggled along the other side of the road, relying on his walking stick. Suddenly, he fell forward, the stick flying into the road and almost getting run over by a passing bus. For a second or two, he was motionless, then made feeble attempts to lift himself off the ground.

We sat and watched with childish amusement. And then, with compassion or guilt, we crossed the road to help him. Andy and Jack grabbed an arm each and lifted him upright while I retrieved his battered old stick. “Up you get, Grandad.”

The old man composed himself and eyed us guardedly.

“Don’t try it on with me lads. I took a bullet in the leg, and I’m ready to shoot some bastard for it.”

“Calm down Grandad,” said Jack, “We’re only trying to help.”

The old man pointed his stick at us. “Aye, that might be son. But I must be on my guard around here.”

“Fancy a swig of lager?” Andy gave him the can and the old man took a mouthful before stuffing it in his coat pocket.

“You lot with the Mooneys?”

“Never heard of them,” I said. “Who the fuck are the Mooneys?”

The old man stared at us and rested both hands on the walking stick. Then he looked up and down the street and seemed satisfied that we weren’t a menace. Slowly he made towards the wall and sat down.

“If you’re not with the Mooneys, then who are you with? You’re not with the Park lads because I’ve never seen you before.”

“We’re the Geisha Boys,” Jack said proudly. “That’s what our mates call us.”

It was true. The lads on the flats had called us ‘Geisha Boys’ because we’d once been in a fight with some posh boy at Crazy Daisy in town. We were sixteen and had slipped past the bouncer and drank as much lager as we could steal off people’s tables. A lad, wearing a dazzling white tee-shirt with ‘Geisha’ across the front, had clocked us and offered us all out. Jack chucked a pint of lager at him, and the lad had responded by smashing a pint glass and threatening us with it. We piled in, throwing wild punches, and kicking him, until he was a bloody mess on the floor. It had happened so quickly that by the time we ran up the stairs and into the street the bouncer hadn’t realised something was amiss. Afterwards, we were famous on Park Hill, known as Geisha Boys, which we liked because we thought it made us sound tough.

The old man shook his head. “Never heard of you. Do you know Sam Garvin?” It was our turn to shake our heads. “He’ll have all three of you if you’re not careful.”

“Nobody fucks with the Geisha boys,” I said. “Tell him we’ll take him on anytime.”

“See that over there?” The old man pointed towards the flats. “That’s the alleyway where Spud Murphy shot me from. Got it in the leg. Sam showed him that nobody messed with the Park Brigade. He cut him with a knife, and he’ll do the same to you.”

There was no alleyway, only the block of shops beneath the flats. Jack caught our attention and circled his finger around his ear, and we knew that the old man was cuckoo.

“I’ve got a gun in my pocket,” said the old man. But he pulled out the can of Kestrel and had another swig.

And that was how we had left it that summer day in 1982. The old man had limped up Duke Street and disappeared into the New Inn. Only afterwards, did I realise that Andy had lifted his wallet.

Now I am back where it began.

There is a lot of concrete, and I can’t remember this much. It’s been thirty years, and London has been the place I’ve lived the longest.

“I’ve found the most fabulous place for you to live,” said Megan. “Near the city centre, near the station, and the apartments are retro modern.”

I knew straight away, as only a Sheffielder would, that she was talking about Park Hill.

When we lived here, it was on its knees. Not quite. But eventually it would be. The people moved out and it stood empty for years. For better or worse, it’s listed status allowed it to survive.

It was February when she called me at my Kensington flat.

“How are you?” asked Megan.

“Not good, but thanks for asking.”

She hesitated and seemed to choose her words carefully.

“Have you seen him?”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

Megan was referring to Scott, my lover of ten years, now my ex-lover.

Good looking Scott. The best thing that happened to me. Reliable Scott. I was lucky to have him.

But there turned out to be another side to him.

Cheating Scott. The one I discovered had been sleeping around for years, and that was the end of it all.

“I hate to bring this up but writing magazine articles isn’t the way forward. Remember you have a book deal.”

Megan was right. I had to write novels. The first couple flew off the shelves, the third bombed, and Megan, as my agent, had been the one to pick up the pieces with the publisher.

“You need to score with the next one. Write about your time growing up, your family, the people you met, your adventures. But for Christ’s sake, make it good.”

And that is the reason why I came back, and it’s all very different, but the past remembers me.

Last night the ghosts crawled out of the walls and interrupted my sleep. Embedded into Park Hill are the memories of my parents, hard-working servants of the city, sent into early submission. And my younger brother, Adam, who’s still around, but living somewhere in Scotland.

And my best mates – Andy and Jack – came too.

Everybody came last night, exactly as they used to be, and it was only me who had changed. And when I woke, I realised I’d changed a lot.