Chapter 13 High Noone

Clear and Present Danger in Primary School

By Peter Noone

So my Mum and Dad go to work every day. Me and my sister Denise go to Woodsend Primary School. and when we go home from school, we go to our grandparent’s house just like many of our school friends. Denise is still 22 months older than I am, and we are very close. However, at that time, (and I am sure it never happens nowadays), she considered me (her absolutely fabulous snotty nosed little brat of a brother) to be a bit of a nuisance, and studiously avoided me and my friends as we became the local terrors and set fire to the local fields of barley and corn, to see if we would be able to put it out. At this time my best friend was Michael Munro, who lived right next door to my Grandmother at 20 Cheriton Road which was miles and miles away from our house, or about 375 yards.

Michael Munro was one day older than me, but I was the leader, and not unlike my sister, Michael was very quick to tearfully tell the police when they came to his house, that “It wasn’t me officer, it was Peter Noone” and his mother would hold him from behind hugging him in the way that really proud mothers of dirty rotten snitches always do. Of course my Mum and Dad were too busy becoming entrepreneurs to have any time for the police, so my Grandmother was summoned to punish me.

Her idea of punishing me was to take me round (in this instance to the house next door) and make me hit the snitch in the face with my fist. I cried in horror because I didn’t want to hit my best friend Michael in the face, but she told me if I didn’t hit him quickly, that she would give him the “LIVERPOOL KISS” which was a head butt to the nose.

Of course in order to save my best friend from this horrible first kiss, I dutifully punched him on the nose. She was still not satisfied that I had been punished enough for my arson, and made me hit him a couple more times, shouting “Go on kick him in the goolies.” Fortunately for Michael, I was totally unaware where his goolies might be found, and now wonder if he even had the set at age 6.

Then me and Gran both ran off down the street, as his big Dad began to lumber down the stairs. His Dad worked nights, and was a monster, if we ever woke him up in the day before 4 pm when he left for his shift. This meant that Michael would have to either use my Grandmothers bathroom, or go in his pants, which made him less and less fun as it got closer to his Dad’s wake up time, and often he would be punished for waking his dad up, until Michael finally realized that his full and fouled and smelly trousers were much easier to deal with, than his raging father. Oh the hours we spent under his parents bedroom window, as Michael moaned “Dad... Please... It’s a biz... A biz I was soon to learn meant it was serious business, and featured solids. Of course my Nanny Noone was quite famous in this little neck of the fields, and many of the locals thought quite highly of her, as she kept all the young blokes in order. In later years you would find her holding teenage boys in a headlock worthy of an all in wrestler, and making me hit very tall and very ugly spotty teenagers really hard in the area which guarantees you a long and illustrious career with the Vienna Boys Choir, who as you already know, are constantly on the look out for adult sopranos, since the fine art of castrati was dropped in favour of the much less popular falsetto.

As the ashes of the fields of summer around my part of the town blew away, it became clear that I was making quite a reputation for myself as being handy with my fists, at least whenever I was accompanied by my grandmother the coach, so, I decided that I should quickly learn to climb trees. No I will rephrase that. I was quickly made aware that if I was to remain cute and cuddly, I would have to learn to quickly climb trees. Quickly. Before very long, I was given many opportunities to clamber up any tree within sprinting distance whenever I was spotted by the hordes of Neanderthal jawed, who awaited my return from my new boxing lessons.

It was around this same period, that I began to learn about using my feet as a martial art. I would call it fighting with my feet, which required very good bursts of speed, and even some long distance running ability towards the nearest tree, where I would perch as the mandibularly challenged practiced pitching rocks and small stones into the higher reaches of any elm which didn’t have Dutch Elm Blight, and could therefore easily hold the weight of this local athlete for very long periods.

Sometimes I would see my Grandmother at the door looking for me, but I had by now learned that it was not good for me to have her help me beat up the local populace, until I could get her under a firm and binding contract to join me for my jogs to and from the local infants school. My most everlasting memory will always be of this splendid, gentle, and tough lady. I can still see her, as she waited at the gate for the whole of my first day at the school, so that whenever I looked out of the classroom window, I would be able to see her, and know they were not going to put me to sleep like Paul Baxendale’s dog, and all the other children who had gone missing recently.

They had gone to Junior school, but I didn’t know, and paranoia was keeping me alive. And tree climbing too.

I am also comforted that they fear HER, as I hear frequently “Look out here comes Noonie’s Nan” and they all scarper.

I am very happy at Woodsend Primary school, and I am in love for the very first time with Miss Kloess who is my teacher. Even at the tender age of 6,it is clear that I am not very good at sharing my love, and I am plotting to have her boyfriend, (a 3rd grade teacher in a trench coat and mouth to match) taken away to a war somewhere, just as soon as the Army find him and court martial him for his cowardice, dereliction of duty, and for making Miss Kloess giggle.

I am also very far ahead of the competition in all the subjects that are taught in this school, and Miss Kloess heaps praise on my 12.7-year-olds average reading age after the first stats are published. Yes I am a genius, and I spend all my spare moments in the books of my Auntie Mary, who is my Dad’s sister, and is a bookworm, a hypochondriac, and the world’s greatest pianist. When she isn’t playing the piano, she is whining and reading. The music is Vivaldi, Resphigi, Fats Waller, and Eric Satie. My favourites at that time, and the books are Gogol, Biggles, Enid Blyton and later on Harold Robbins. The whining is “Oh my back, feet, ears, mouth, nose, and teeth.

Mary sits in the kitchen when she is not playing the piano, or reading in bed, so my Grandmother is busy with her, and the two new children she has found herself with.

Life at 18 Cheriton Road is wonderful, and I am getting a musical education. Nanny Noone is the choir leader, and my Grandad Thomas (Tommy) is the church organist. He even plays with his feet. I spend most of what is his spare time, at Saint Monica’s Church, and watch as he teaches incredibly unteachable vocalists how to sing Ave Maria about 1% as well as my Grandmother sings it, when she has bronchitis and a sore throat. Auntie Mary is usually too tired to get to these choir practices, and when she does show up at mass, she knows and sings all the songs beautifully and knows all the words in Latin. This becomes my first real project. Yes, my dream was to sing be able to sing all these songs in Latin, but I am chosen instead to sing “Phil the fluters ball”. My first stage appearance and I was to sing...

With a toot of the flute, and a twiddle of the fiddle o Hoppin’ in the middle like a herrin on the griddle o Up down hands around cross in to the wall “Oh hadn’t we the gaiety at the Phil the fluters ball”.

I did a couple of little steps that were of Gaelic origin, and would normally have required very girly shoes with buckles on them, but I was able to lose them in a fire with my friend Michael’s assistance. Oops.

I was great.

I was on my way. Everything about it is a peeling.

I am a singer with the good sense not to wear the girly shoes unless I can take my Gran on tour.

I also have a reputation for being dangerous, as someone has burned down a small house in my part of the woods, and it is rumoured that “Noonie is crackers just like his Gran, and they will burn your Mum’s house down if you ever mess with him”.

Of course I had nothing to do with this senseless act of arson, but it was useful to remain quiet, and this strange rumour kept my nose in the middle of my face for a long time.

Next I will tell you about the humiliation on our daytrips with Tommy Noone, his motorbike and sidecar with the screaming Nanny.

Chapter 13 High Noone

Clear and Present Danger in Primary School

—Peter Noone

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