The Battle

Sandlay Woods, Great Leighs, Essex.

One balmy Thursday evening in June we managed to get a big attendance to one of our wood battles, our boys were feeling overly confident after a few evenings of battering practise on a large oak tree.

A rumour had been circulating at school all day one of the village big boy bully's was going to at attendance and a hint of nervousness had started to creep into our ranks. But buoyed by Thomas's boasts that we would send him home weeping confidently marched to the woods using route 2 across the stream. No problems there as it hadn't properly rained for a few weeks so the stream was dry as a bone.

As we approached the woods the laughter of a few other lads could be heard. As predicted there was Alex the big mouthed self professed gangster of Great Leigh's. No sooner than he saw us he let out an almost incomprehensible 'Gays' and went off into a bout of uncontrollable laughter. Feeling a bit dejected and definitely with some pride flushed from us we dashed into the woods screaming come and get us. 5 of us in total we split into two groups, me and Thomas dashed deep into the heart of it whilst the other two flanked us keeping to the clear edge of the woods but within shouting distance. Within minutes we could hear the shouts of Alex and his cohorts closing us down. We jumped down a leafy ditch and kept low. Alex appeared to have broken from his pack of crony's and we heard his war cry within spitting distance “come on you gays”. Alex leaped down from above us into the ditch and clumped Thomas clean on the forehead with his stick. Tom let out what can only be described as a 8 year old girls scream which quite predictably sent Alex into fits of laughter, not one to hang around with a stick in my hand, I jumped heroically to Thomas's defence and swung my stick straight at Alex's face. Strangely he didn't make a peep, Alex just fell to the ground with nothing more than a dull thud, panicking I run over to him to see if he he was alright, Thomas still crying like a girl in the ditch. Alex was out cold, I wished he would just open his gob and scream ' gaylord' in my face but even after a few shakes I had no such luck. When your twelve there is only one reaction to a shock to the system and that's run from it. I grabbed Thomas and quite promptly scarpered to the nearest field dropping the tools of our misdemeanours to the ground as we fled.

Getting to 'The Woods'

Sandylay Wood, Great Leigh, Essex.

Around Great Leighs there were several places for a young boy to go get his kicks, and with the majority of the young generation being pre teen Great Leighs was a relatively untarnished place for a kid to grow up, it was certainly not an affluent place to live, its just the class difference was small, small enough for family’s not to have envy for each others property, everyones parents seemed to work hard and to just have enough, not enough as the family on the edge of the village with the swimming people but enough for the village not to harbour any need for more than one policeman.

One such place was 'The Woods'. The Woods so called for the area being densely populated with trees much like a small forest and could only be accessed one of two ways.

1. Over the barb wire and across the field next to the school that contained 'The Bull'
2. Across the ditch, through a different field then across 'The Stream'.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   At the age of 11 one isn’t so bothered with imaginative names for places rather what happens at those places. There was also an area we congregated to named 'The Tree' which was a huge fallen down Oak but the activities there were far more uninteresting than anything that went on in 'The Woods'.
   In regards to getting to 'The Woods', choice 1 was more or less out of the question because out running 'The Bull' was no goer. No one had ever been hurt by 'The Bull' and it was wise to keep that statistic a none fluctuating figure. So it was always choice 2 (unless 'The Bull' happened to not be around) that we would take. Going via 'The stream' was not a cop out by all means, the stream ran the length of the only accessible field from our side of the village to the woods, it was not a fast flowing brook and 90% of the year didn't even have much in the part of water running through it. It would have been more accurate of us to describe it as 'The Bog', it was really just a long stretch of really sinky mud. Many an intrepid traveller had lost a Reebok Classic in 'The Stream'. It takes a fair old jump to cross it and if you trip up, thats it your knee deep in muddy stream and coming home with crap caked tracky b's, a trip to Wimpy at the weekend with mum it does not make.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

St Annes Castle, Great Leighs, Essex.

Jimmy Whiting was one of those kids who when you get older you meet them again, in another form, they are the same at whatever age they are or whatever stage of your life you meet them. Tale tellers, truth twister, life fabricators, story weavers or in many cultures quite simply referred to as liars. I don't like liars as much as the next guy but liars have to be put into category’s. Liars that lie to cover falsehoods their ashamed of, liars that lie to cover up things that may harm yourself, liars that lie to get themselves ahead in the game, liars that lie about everything, or my favourite liars, the ones that lie for the benefit of the story, entertainers as it were. Jimmy fell in to the latter, a harmless liar, he did it not maliciously, only to enhance the enjoyment of the story to the audience.

One such lie I can recall specifically and let it be known the lie wasn't entirely a falsehood and may well have not been entirely made up independently. One can only assume perhaps his mum or dad may have weaved this one into his head not realising he would pass it round the playground like cheap heroin – creating story addicts and leading others to push his story on to other kids. Besides I liked it, I was hooked and that tale he sold me has stayed in my bloodstream ever since.

I had since moved out of Bollingbrooke close to 23 Audley Road and dear Jimmy who was one year my junior had moved into my old house. I was climbing the social ladder, moving up the class system. Dad had got a job with the council and his and my mums hard work went into a nice four bedroom place on the bottom of a slopey little cul-der-sac which was brilliant for kettle car racing. This exchange of abodes between me and Jimmy, (we imagined it was us that did the buying and selling of houses, fuck the estate agents, fuck Wimpy homes, me and Jimmy ruled the property market!) cumulated in a strong friendship. We stalked the playground together on sunny June days pretending we were the Rays, ratatatattingting our school mates with our invisible Tommy guns, ratatat ratatat ratatatatatatatatatatatatatratatatatatatat. We weren't the strongest of lads so when we weren't mowing down fat Mrs Tiller the dinner lady from behind trees, we sat on the tyres by the climbing frame, which we couldn't use because our arms were too small, and filled each others minds with stories. Mine on the most part were true, but Jimmy's, Jimmy’s were long tall tales that excited me and kept me up for nights on end.

The story I remember the most came when the village had been flooded with press, The Essex Chronicle, The Braintree and Witham and even a national magazine all came down to visit St Annes Castle were a spat of hauntings had been reported. A series of witch hangings had apparently occurred several hundred years ago and then during WW2 some bumbling American soldiers from a nearby base came out of the pub and moved a large stone that was said to cover the ashes of murdered witches of the village. Ever since St Annes has exchanged hands every couple of years without a word.

Jimmy's dad Graham frequented St Annes castle pretty regularly and it was during one of his visits that Jimmy told me that his dad and his mates witnessed a haunting –one quiet thursday night a glass fell from a hook and flung itself across the bar- smashing against the wall. Then a bang was heard from outside, the punters were alarmed to say the least and drunkenly stumbled outside to investigate.

Let it be known, these are not hard men, these are Great Leighs men they live in a village, they are not like the surrounding farm workers, tough from the land or the nearby town geezers of Braintree or Chelmsford, they are run of the mill 2 point 4 children dads with a cat and a Fiesta. Graham, being a regular and all, decided he would have a look in the shed at the side of the car park whilst the others who weren't really bothered any more went back inside. As Jimmy approached the old wooded shed he could definitely clarify the banging was coming from the shed. Granted he hesitated, who wouldn't? But Jimmy's dad was pretty brave (Jimmy's words not mine) so he approached the shed. Undeterred he unbolted the door and looked inside, the banging stopped. Graham went inside just to have a quick look, it could have been a dog or something you know – nothing scary. As he reached the back of the shed, which wasn't very long after he had entered it, because, well, its a shed, the door suddenly slammed behind him – shut. He ran to the door and tried to open it but it was locked from the outside, he began to bang on the door, screaming shouting for help.

Then the most wretched sounds erupted from inside, as if his intestines were being dragged from inside of him and made into an 1004 mile length of sloppy bunting. Upon hearing the shouts his mates ran out from the pub across the gravel car park and kicked open the door. The door was kicked down by one of the burlier fellows and he was sitting in the corner of the shed covered in sick. “It's not mine, he proclaimed, it's it's hers” Graham sat forlorn covered in an unexplicable amount of Lentil soup shaded vomit pointing with a limp wristed shakey hand to the opposite corner of the shed.

Jimmy claimed this was the ghost of St Annes Castle, the legendary witch. Jimmy also claimed, and this was the shitter, this was the deal sealer, that the ghost wasn't just content with haunting the pub, she also wanted to have a pop at the whole of the village and make kids everywhere puke all over themselves. It was that little piece of information that kept me awake for weeks.

Poor Jimmy probably didn't realise that his dad was actually locked in the shed by his mates then proceeded to puke up his mums Shepherds pie all over him and that this tale was woven to somehow save his integrity, his honour, and his manhood.

Dog Shit Lane

 Bollingbroke Close & Coopers Lane, Great Leighs, Essex

Great Leighs is one of those villages that are so ancient you can look them up in the doomsday books. A Norman church, a pub that claims to be the oldest inn in England, a village green with an odd number of goal's- three, and a village shop where one can fondly recall rifling my dads pockets for penny’s then asking him to get as many cola cubes as he can for them. 

Several of the streets were named in someway after Henry VIII ill fated 1^st wife Catherine of Aragon- Catherine Close and Aragon road. She had reputedly stayed at 'England’s oldest inn' St Anne's Castle. The village now sprawls across the main road and has morphed into a Beazer Homes haven - kids shacked up indoors on consoles, talking to their friends via video and parents shoving them off so they can watch Come Dine with Me for hours on end, long gone are the days when you would run to your mates house and knock on the door not knowing if they were in or not.

“Is Tom coming out to play?” “No”, “is ben coming out to play?no?, Is katie coming out to play?” “no, why aren't you at school with them?”

St Annes castle (England oldest inn) is rumoured to be haunted by an old witch (who isn't the land lady) who was burned just outside during the witch hunts. In WW2 some silly American soldiers who were based down the road in White Courts, moved the stone in which her ashes were buried under and out came the ghost - simple. 

My parents house was off of Coopers Lane or Dog Shit Lane as we fondly called it in my infancy. A simple two up two down, my dad designed and built the humble porch which later fell down to my school mates delight and to mine, my dads, and poor old Jimmy Whiting (who at that time lived in the house and slept above) its dismay. The garden didn't stretch back far, but long enough for me to race my next door neighbour Alan Idller up and down in one of those cars with smiley faces on the front, our feet furiously acting as their engines like futuristic Flintstones. Alan's dad was incomprehensibly Scottish, tall dark- a poor mans Sean Connery but with the vocabulary choices of Rab C Nesbitt. He would fondly shout - spitting and spluttering over the wire fence urging his son on, offering sincere advice to both lads in the art of kettle car racing.

At the age of 5 I was still sporting a nice head of blond hair, I was more beat than I have ever or ever will be, a pair of rough round the edges blue jeans, and a washed out navy sweatshirt walking hand in hand with mother kicking stones and dodging shits down Coopers Lane.

IRA Nursery School

 Great Leighs Nursery School, Goodmans Lane.

At an early age the suburban parent sends you to nursery school, mine was deep in the countryside outside of the wimpy home estates that were growing out of village greens.

It was a dark old building all wooden beams and hard floors, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday... Sunday sung in trepidation for our obligatory glass of milk and rich tea finger biscuits. Party rings on birthdays. Here we learnt to share, to sing loudly the alphabet when our parents waited outside, to not make guns out of sticklebricks assuming that this would provoke thoughts of joining the IRA as soon as we lost the stabilisers on our bikes. Frantically peddling over to Ireland and proposing a new legion of mickey mouse knit jumpers on 4ft terrorist groups would storm the pubs of Soho with bombs in milk bottles.

Born.

St John's Hospital, Chelmsford, Essex.

Lucas William Sullivan.

St John's Hospital was built on the site of an army barracks during the Napoleonic War. The current buildings were first used by the Chelmsford Union in 1837 as a poor house and in 1930 the workhouse was handed over to Essex County council and was used as an infirmary for many casualties and prisoners of war during WWII.

In 1948 the beloved NHS took on the hospital and has looked after this humble site ever since. Its slightly romantic to imagine hundred's of thousands of little Essex babies being born in to Thatcher's shoddily iced 80's, parents hoping their new-born would grow up to own two cars, a conservatory and take on a successful double glazing business. Little did they know they were being born in an ex workhouse and more than 50% of them would find themselves struggling for any work on the shit side of the economic boom.


The midwife noted that I came out rather quietly. There was no fight, no battle to see the light of Chelmsford. I was content to be introduced to the four walls of the brightly lit room and blinked to be greeted by several perms, a moustache and two pairs of thick rimmed NHS discounted glasses.