Chapter 12 High Noone

Tommy Can You Hear Me? Part II

By Peter Noone

Well, Tommy finally had to give up the motor bike and side car, even if it did turn on all the local women as he sped past them in his World War One goggles, and his incredibly anti-sex yellow motorcycle helmet. The goggles and helmets were purchased by my grandmother to ensure that no members of the opposite sex would get any ideas about my granddad’s new idea. He believed he was now an attraction to women, just like Marlon Brando in Hell’s Angels. Women (he thought) would hear his motorcycle in the distance and run out into the street. They did not wave and blow kisses at him. They ran out to call their children inside until he was out of the neighborhood.

“Quick! Ethel come in the house! It’s that bloody maniac with the motorbike again!!!”

Yes his reputation had preceded him. Alas all he saw was the shocked reactions as he rode up, and figured that it was that look of “Wow! There goes that cool old bloke known as Tommy (Brando)”, when in reality they were thinking “Wow we just got the kids off the road in time” and, “When are they going to lower the legal age of drivers?” They had obviously recognized old Tommy from the news reports, and the photographic evidence of his trip through Devon.

None of this ever got to Tommy, and of course he was oblivious to it all, and actually waved and blew kisses at the local women as they made various gestures at him using their elbows and multinational signals with their fingers which were brought to England by sailors.

He surprised us all one day with the announcement, “That’s enough of motorcycling for me”. All England breathed a sigh of relief. Then he said, “I am going to build us a car”.

At the time, I was deliriously happy, because I envisioned a sporty coupe just like the one in those hilarious P.G. Wodehouse books, and awaited anxiously for the kit from Mister Ferrari himself, or maybe old man Royce was to design it for us.

Nothing could have prepared me for the disastrous outcome. This was going to be a very bad setback for me.

The vehicle (I don’t want you to get the idea that it was a car that was being created) was to be built in our garage down the street from our house, and around the corner from his house. These were the garages where me and my snotty-nosed friends played all our games of cricket, wall -y, football etc., We used the doors as our goalposts, as we learned and yearned to one day play soccer for the Red Devils (Manchester United). We also used the doors for our wicket, as we learned to play world class cricket, in the hopes of one-day playing in a Test at Old Trafford against the West Indies.

I was blessed with the ability to draw the wickets, and always got a game with the other lads, despite my shortcomings and long throwings, mainly because I owned the bat. In all these street games the rule was 3 gardens and you are out, which meant if you were stupid enough to let the ball go in someone’s garden, (and accidentally trampled on their root vegetables, whilst retrieving the leather orb), then the 3rd time you did it, you were out of the game.

It was not good to be home early when you could hear the other boys playing still, and had I known that the vegetables were in fact the English scourge known as Brussel Sprouts and Cabbage and sometimes even the dreaded PARSNIP and SWEDE, (or whatever else you could grow in a garden the size of a car, in the planets most unlikely climate to attempt gardening), then I would have trampled much more, and perhaps have saved a whole generation of English youth the horror of being made to eat the brussel sproutings or cabbage.

Worse than being forced to eat these English vegetables, was to live in fear, that your girlfriend might smell them being cooked at your house, and, that she would forever suspect that was how your family would smell if they married you, and had children, or consented to a game of Doctors and Nurses in my Grandad’s garage, and “you had better be quick, because he is going to build a Maserati in there starting next week”.

O yes, I forgot to tell you, the garage was also my office where I practiced medicine. Sort of.

Here in the Doctor’s Office was where the vehicle was to be built, which caused my office and all my medical records and their names to hastily be moved into Sylvia Weeks’ front parlor.

Sylvia had a record player and a desire to know lots more about the male anatomy that they were teaching her at school, so I very quickly started to learn more about the music business, and she had a fine set of recordings as I recall. She immediately explained to me the difference between 33 RPM, and 45RPM, and the soon to be obsolete 78RPM.She was an expert, and I was her willing apprentice. Her Mum always had great smells coming from the kitchen which I later learned was a thing called Bisto.

Bisto and Oxo are two major ingredients in English cooking. Many marriages have been linked to Mothers cooking with both these stocks as they cover up the horrible smell of cabbage. Her Mum had the Bisto thing happening, and Sylvias’ brothers were always out taking care of their own patients, which were legion. (I have changed Sylvias’ name of course, as she eventually married my friend who is a real doctor. Her real name was Christine Weeks). She played Ebb Tide to me, and I was hers.

Oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch. A long lonely time. Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much... She had the 78 RPM. I was hooked on music. And medicine.

The doctor’s office behind the cricket pitch and the huge garage-door was cleaned out and work began on the Jowett Javelin. Nothing could have prepared my sister Denise and I for what they were creating in that garage. By now, my Dad was assisting Tommy, and all talk at home was of magnetos and big ends. All this, just as my sister was discovering Billy Fury and Adam Faith, and I was discovering that to be a world class athlete, it was important to have at least some talent, and that having the equipment and a great garage door, was not enough to get you a place on the first team.

One day the car was finished and we all went down the street to see it get started. Of course it would not, and both my Dad and Tommy threw out their backs wrestling with the strange handle which protruded form the front-end of the whatever-it-was, and all the time called to their Maker for assistance. They also began to call the contraption some of the same names that my Grandmother called Tommy, and I suppose that they were just bonding with the machine. By now the vehicle had become a female? Most of their words of encouragement to her engine to start were off-colour, but I supposed that this was how all engineers talked to their creations. “Turn over you b-----d” was one of the kinder things they shouted at the unsuspecting and untroubled, unstarting motor vehicle. (Note I never call it a car). My favourite was of course “I will strangle you rotten piece of junk if you don’t start right now”.

Sometimes there was punishment heaped on the heap of old junk, in the form of a kick or a slap. The kick I now know was actually “The Irish Screwdriver”, also known as “The Italian Screwdriver” at Ferrari.

A couple of weeks later, just as everyone was about to realize that the Noones were just bluffing, and that no one could just build a car in a garage that would start, and that was why Henry Ford had the big house, an explosion rocked our usually peaceful little neighbourhood, and there in his goggles and yellow sex machine helmet, was Tommy Noone, the world class engineer and motor mechanic. Oh the look of pleasure on that Irish face! There he was Tommy... Engineer... Motor mechanic. Driving at over 3 MPH along Norfolk Gardens in the most hideous luminescent green monstrosity you can imagine.

No. It was much worse than you are imagining.

Imagine much worse that that.

You aren’t even close.

It had been painted with, of all things, a paint brush. The paint was my Uncle Reg’s bathroom wall colour, as this was his left-over paint. Many stories have been told of youth and the humiliation of the hand me down clothes and shoes syndrome, but how many of you have had to live with the fear that Gaynor Wilkinson, or even worse Maggie Woods might one day want to go to your Uncle’s bathroom, and then, will KNOW why your grandad’s car is that unusual green fluorescent vomit colour. “Hmmm I know this ugly colored paint from somewhere?”

“That’s it. It’s the same color as Peter Noone’s grandads so-called car”.

“I shall debate this on the bus to school tomorrow, just to see if any of the other fabulous girls who go to my school have yet noticed?” “I bet Peter Noone likes cabbage too”.

The whole new car thing seemed to stress out my sister Denise (22 months older than me), and she began to wander back towards her cabbage patch to look for caterpillars again.

She must have known deep inside that this hideous machine would work, and that we both would be required to ride within it.

I was happy to have it out of my office again, and had my eye on a brand new couch for the waiting area, but incredibly the magneto was a good one (whatever it may be), and after the smoke of the Brazilian rain forest fire, (which burned within the Jowett Javelin’s motor), had blown away, it became increasingly obvious to all, that one day, we would be forced to get IN IT. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh.Nooooooooooo. Not the caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr.

Denise saw it first. It was Auntie Celia’s couch. No. Say it ain’t so. No!

Yes. The couch was put into the rear of the Jowett. It faced backwards.

It was for US. We were going to be made to sit in it. Me and my sister. Oh no.

“What if any girls see us in here?” I said. My sister just reached for another caterpillar. She was 6.She knew that if any boy ever saw her near this car thing, she would never ever marry Elvis Presley.

She must have had psychic powers, because if I saw a couch, the last thing I would have foreseen was a couple of kids being taken in front of huge trucks, lorries, and weekend tourists, and transported unwillingly across the hills and ordeals of England.

After a few futile attempts at projectile vomiting, (which had always worked in the past), and a vain attempt by me to make the most of this awful punishment for crimes we had not yet committed, and even a couple of games of the old favourite “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with T’. Tree, Denise and I would sit there, and try to avoid eye-contact with all the fist waving drivers who were forced to wait behind us as we putt putted across the countryside at an average speed of 11 MPH. We were going to have to sit there as this hideous green home-made car (and you could tell it was home-made), which was seemingly being pedaled (it never got to speeds over 22 MPH down hill) up and down the beautiful countryside of rural England and Wales.

After what seemed like the first 1000 or so miles, Denise tried waving at the angry mob who were forced to follow us. Tommy had finally taken to driving along the middle of the road, only moving over to the side if someone was coming the opposite way. Towards us. He now knew not to get too close to those trees at the kerbside, as they surely would hurt his head. His head was still bruised form the trees, where my Grandmother had hit him with her handbag because he got too close, and had also very inconsiderately reminded him where he was born, just in case he had forgotten. You see, now she was able to tell him easier than from the sidecar, and Denise and I were now able to hear what she had been trying to him all these years.

He was a “Stupid Irishman without a father” This was a lie, but he never bothered to tell her about this, or remind her to look at his father’s portrait in the dining room. He probably was just too busy pretending that the steering wheel really was connected to the wheels, although my sister and I could tell, even from the back, that he was definitely not in control of the direction of this vehicle. Of course, to add to our misery, anyone lucky enough to maneuver past Tommy and his beloved family Jowl, also felt the need to try to give good old Tommy driving instructions through the open window of their vehicles, and Denise and I learned all the unpleasant ways to say “I say old boy, would you mind pulling over a bit”, and “I know it’s Sunday, but please get on your own side of the road old chap, so that I can get my children to school by Monday morning”, and even “I say old boy, be a sport and move your fine racing machine off the road completely and give us peasants a few inches of the highway”. You know the stuff you hear people calling to each other whenever they get in cars. It was unnecessary to shout some of the things to him that they shouted, because it was clear he had done quite a few of the things they called to him, because he had grandchildren. All this seemed to just prove to my grandmother that he needed another go upside his head at the driver’s instruction manual, which she was carrying inside her handbag. “See you daft bugger, you were driving too fast” Pow. Blat. Kerchong.

“Even that great big gormless looking truck drivers wife saw you were driving too fast”.

Then we would get a new beeping from the new car behind us. If they ever did get past, my sister and I could have given very fine details on who was driving, what all the passengers were wearing, and how old the family pet was.

The things they shouted at Tommy, in reference to the viability of his new automobile-manufacturing career were cruel, and even heartless. Often even their children had driving tips for Tommy.

Of course nobody would dare to talk to my Granddad like that in any other place, and my Gran would have held you, while we kicked you in your goolies if we could have caught you up without getting out of his horrible, green, slow moving and smokey Jowett.

We made it. To there little Welsh dream cottage in Wales. They had decided 40 years ago that if they were going to have a Welsh dream cottage then they would have it in Wales. My Dad, his brother Lawrence, and my Auntie Mary had grown up here. It was 60 miles from our house. We made it in under a day, which for us was a bewildering new experience. There was no electricity, no gas, and no running water.

I of course was in charge of fires. I was also in charge of getting the water form the well. Ty Nant. That is Welsh for the tap. Not the quaint little Welsh well like in the postcards. No this was THE TAP.

The tap was many miles away, or when you grow up, about 700 yards.

This Welsh cottage became our home away from home, and Denise and I spent every school holiday here.

Gronant.

I think it means boring or dead in Welsh?

Gronant is near Prestatyn, which is in Wales, but is now almost a suburb of Liverpool. In those days it was almost uninhabited. The nearest shop was about a mile away, and my sister and I volunteered to go on foot to do the shopping, so as to avoid being seen by any of the local children in the green thing. Tommy set about digging the cottage out of the sand, which buried it every time you didn’t look at it for a day. He also was in charge of the toilette, which was at the back of the cottage, and was not connected as they say, nor was it heated or aired or conditioned, or any of those things which make you a regular sort of person.

Denise and I would often go shopping, rather than spend any time in this small room, as there was a very nice toilette in the chemists shop, with a chain, which when pulled would make you seriously consider maybe visiting the room more than once a fortnight, which was more like what we were used to at home. Many children had not the resilience to go shopping every morning, in order to stay healthy and regular, like Denise and I.

Here we were to learn the joys of family bathing. which consisted of going very often to the tap, filling this great big bath full of water as it sat on the stove, and then you and your Grandad get it off the stove, ably directed by Atilla the Hen (Grandmother),as to the logical whereabouts of the bathing party with your sister. Of course the bottom of this bathtub was very hot from being on the hot stove, so I always let my sister go first.

Tommy smoked a pipe, which made him appear to be at peace, but I knew something was bothering him. He was always an avid reader, which kept him out of a lot of trouble. Arguing with that hand bag wielding goolie- booter was not on the menu at his house. He wanted nothing. He was a servant of his family. He did everything for others. I never met anyone like him since, but my Dad has a lot of that gene.

Tommy was the organist at church. Has there ever been a more thankless job than teaching a bunch of very difficult middle aged women how to sing Ave Maria in Latin, and to try to all use the same common key? Here Nanny Noone was an asset, because these women knew she was strange, and that you shouldn’t mess with her. He was a really talented bloke, but always seemed reticent to “have a go” as they say in England. From him I learned that it was better to “have a go” and come in last, than to not participate. He missed all his goes, just by being too nice. Not that I would suggest that being nice will stop you getting a go. Too nice will. He was too nice.

What a lucky man he was. He was happy just to participate. No need for him to be in charge. He was just grateful to be a player.

Now I know that it was very common for men of his time to behave like he always did. It is probably an Irish thing, although we Noones never went in for that Irish business, feeling much less Irish than people we knew with names like Eamon and Seamus, Kevin, and Kieran, and I suppose that once upon a time it was quite fashionable for Irish people to pretend they were English, and Irish jokes were never popular in my neighbourhood. Probably because we were all Irish. Kieran and Kevin Murphy? Sounded Irish to me.

My dad’s friend at school was Lancelot Mooney.I went to school with his son Stuart. My mum’s brother was a teacher and a priest at the same school that me and my dad went to. At different times. When I got to school they asked me was I Denis or Lawrence Noone’s son, and when I said proudly “Denis Noone’s son Father” they always said “Oh G-d help us.”

I was always very proud of that. The teachers all remembered my Dad. He still had all the books he had borrowed and forgotten to take back, and made me do the work the year before everyone else so that people would think I was smart. He had learned this one from Tommy, whose brother was the Head Master of Lancaster Grammar School, until he decided to enlist in the army and was killed on his first day as a soldier.

Tommy used to like to go and see the pigeons perching and othering on the head of the statue of a General in downtown Manchester, as this particular British war hero, had murdered hundreds of thousands of young British soldiers as he marched them against a small German Battalion, in what he was later to claim as a great victory. He had been questioned as to the brilliance of his plan of sending 1000 men at a time against a fortress, having all of them killed, and then sending in another 1000 or so (his words), and only killing 20 or 30 Germans. He was to utter the immortal words “We are slowly breaking them down”.

I have no way of feeling the pain of this type of stupidity, but as a lad growing up in Lancashire, I clearly remember there were many, many single women who had children, and they always cried the most at mass.

I was of course “sacked” as an altar boy for crying at funerals. This was a huge financial setback for me, as funerals were the most lucrative of all altar boy jobs, but, when the mass began and I saw that look on the wife or the husband or the daughter’s face, I would of course start to cry. Being the first one to cry at a funeral, is not appropriate when you don’t even know the family, so I was asked to leave the altar, to allow the real mourners the opportunity to have the first go. Having seen my Grandfather cry on hundreds of occasions, I had no idea that it was not manly. Of course he never did it in public.

He never told me why he cried, but I joined him anyway, in what is surely the most soulful and spiritual thing that men can do together, and it was my great pleasure to join him whenever he wanted to have a cry. Sometimes he would cry for joy, meaning that he was so happy he just had to cry. This could be a sign of a sign of serious mental problems to you all, but to me it seems totally natural. Sometimes I would be sitting there when he came home from work, and he would read the Manchester Evening News and begin to cry, and being upset to see him so sad, I would join him. It was great. He had old stuff buried that he needed to cry about, and I was there to help him.

He also taught me that melancholy is good, and solitude is a good place to be alone. He was always amused when people tried to cheer him up, just when he wanted to be sad, and he was equally amused when people joined him so he wasn’t alone, just when he wanted to be alone with himself. There are much worse places to be than alone.

I have still not done anything that would possibly hurt this great man. This is what he gave me. My kindness to others is borrowed from him, as is my boisterous nature so equally the responsibility of his incredible and beautiful wife Dolly. I am theirs you know. I am just bits and pieces of the giant puzzle that they and my Mum’s parents began putting together. I actually feel bits and pieces of all four of my grandparents every day. When I look inward, I always see them there. They are me. I am them. Working class, honest, wonderful family people, with a great need to see people smiling. All of them. I only mention this here now, because later on when I become a teenager and the world began to be my oyster, all these family traits were very important to my retaining my sanity. At the time, all my family stuff appeared to me to be the tell tale signs of serious mental dysfunction (theirs), until I was able to use much of their idiosyncrasies to appear to be normal, when clearly I was not. Tommy had made his car. We were all able to travel to and from my grandparent’s holiday home, and my parents decided to go back to University. This was quite common in those days, as the Second World War had made many college age people miss out finishing their education, and off they went. My Mum went off to Cambridge, and my Dad went to Edinburg.

Chapter 12 High Noone

Tommy Can You Hear Me? Part II

—Peter Noone

Go to Chapter 13

Back to Top

Contents