Chapter 3 High Noone

25 Norfolk Gardens... The Beginning

By Peter Noone

Well here goes. I will try to be honest, but as you know, I am prone to exaggeration, especially when it comes to the telling of a good story, or a yarn.

Many of the things you read will be true, as far as I can tell you, and some of them will be absolute nonsense, so it’s up to you to approach this story with that in mind, which for many of you will be more than you usually start with.

My first memory is of a house in Flixton near Manchester England. 25 Norfolk Gardens. My family, Mum, Dad and Sister Denise are all there and I am under 2. It is a council house, which means it is rented from the local council. We have moved here from what was called in my memory “The prefab”. Prefabs were tiny little prefabricated boxes, constructed at the end of WW2 to house the un-housed, the bombed, the newlyweds, and us.

I can remember we are all cleaning the house in Norfolk Gardens as the lodgers have slipped out of the window in the middle of the night, and left my Mum and Dad, my sister Denise and me to pay the rent ourselves, which is getting my parents pretty agitated. As best as I can recall that is the only family “secret”. They had lodgers in a council house, which I think was a sin at the time, but it helped pay the rent.

My Mum and Dad leave very early every morning on their bikes for work. Yes both my parents work, and so do everyone else’s parents in this neighbourhood. That is the way it is. We are what are known as working class folk. They are both soon going back to finish their education, which The Second World War had interrupted, at Cambridge and Edinburgh but right now they are both working very hard to keep us all warm and fed. My sister and I are dropped off mornings at a nursery school where I scream and tremble in fear of being “put to sleep”. I know what being “put to sleep” means. My best friend’s dog was put to sleep, and next time it woke up they were burying it and it was very stiff and dead, and they are NOT putting me to sleep. No way. I will stay awake and watch for them. Uh oh! The big teacher is saying giddily “Let’s put the little ones to sleep”. Not me. Not me. I knew Rex when he could still bite me and fetch!

My sister eats caterpillars. Big ugly white ones from the “allotments”. These allotments were given to us by the government, and are behind the pig bins, which are garbage cans at the end of a street, where one puts all the refuse that may be eaten by pigs. Which is everything according to my friend who lost his bike to the pig bins. The old age pensioners grow cabbage and other inedible English vegetables which they call brussel sprouts. I bet the Belgian children call them Liverpool sprouts.

My sister wants me to eat one of these caterpillars, which are white and wriggley, but I just cannot do it. I am a wimp, or I’m “nesh” as my Nanny Noone calls me. No one ever called me “nesh” since my Nanny, but it is what they call little boys who will not eat caterpillars and anything that wriggles. Me. I’m “nesh” and proud of it. Still not had one.

I did do a brussell sprout in the ’60s but everyone else was too.

“Here’s a nice fat one” my sister would say and bite just a small part of its rear off. Well there’s another family secret. I had a sister who ate caterpillars. She also wondered silently why my Mum said “This is my daughter Denise, and this is my son and heir Peter, which she heard as “SUN AND AIR”.

That is the kind of kids we were. I was afraid to sleep, in case I became very stiff like that dead dog who was “put to sleep”, and my sister had a caterpillar Jones.

Chapter 3 High Noone

25 Norfolk Gardens... The Beginning

—Peter Noone

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