Chapter 5 High Noone

Thirteen

By Peter Noone

At school, I fancied myself as a bit of a writer. Unfortunately, my sense of humor was lost on my English teachers, and my penchant for changing the spelling of words, to make jokes at the expense of the English language, moved me out of the good graces of the teaching staff.

After starting in Miss Kloess’s class with a reading age of 12.7 years at age 5, I now found myself with a reading age of 11.2 at age 13. Much of my reading was of the Harold Stone type as my D,ad was the worlds number one reader of paperbacks and was known around the friendly neighborhood of ours as “Creeping Jasus” due to his unusual habit of never sleeping (insomnia) and always having a book in his hands.

We Noones are from a long tradition of writers. My Dad tells me that one of the most infamous books on British Socialism was written by his Uncle. It was called “THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPIST”. This may explain my overuse of the word trousers in all its forms, as it is quite possibly the silliest of all English words. I have yet to hear anyone say “Go and trouse thyself” at least not since I said it in that English class in my final and immortal days with the priests and brothers at St. Bede’s College for Boys. Along with knickers, trousers had been my most often used word, to make my fellow Upper 4th Modern B classmates titter. (Titter is always good for a laugh too or two).

My Dad had gone to St. Bede’s too, and his picture was there in the 100 year history of the school in Our Lady’s corridor. He was a serious looking student and had done rather well there, which is why they accepted me in the first place despite my obvious lack of any social disgraces. My Uncle Bernard was also a teacher there and was now known as Brother Geoffrey Maine, having dropped all ideas of a normal life to become a servant of G-d.

Uncle Bernard was my Mums’ younger brother and he was good at everything. He taught me to swim, play cricket, and look people in the eye. I was stunned when he became a man of the cloth, as I noticed that many of my sisters teenage girl friends found him somewhat attractive, and the fact that he was now clothed was not a deterrent. He still looked pretty dashing in the priest’s gear, and was the rugby coach. Rugby as you know is the man’s game, so I played the one game, was fortunate to get my arm broken in the first scrum, and was deliriously happy to no longer have to play any games where you came into contact with boys. A scrum is a lot of fun for the type of man who likes to have lots of perspiring, smelly boys of the same sex, jumping on your head and saying “Pass it to me Nooney”, as you lie at the bottom of this whole pile of horrid boys with your arm being forced into a life long German Army salute position, thinking to yourself “So that is the smell that pervades the school locker room. Fear.”

I suddenly realized that Rugby was indeed the sport of the Welsh, and I only had a tiny bit of Welsh blood in me, and it was yellow too.

I had tried boxing too, which was lots of fun. Until someone actually hit me. Until that horrid swine hit me and showed me the stars, which I had previously only ever seen in Roadrunner cartoons, I had quite fancied myself as a bit of a boxer. After I got the one hit, Mr. Patterson asked me to go back in the ring. I declined and was already trying to get the gloves off so I could feel if my nose was in fact now concave. He then asked me the question that had worked for hundreds of years as the British conquered the world and flew their flag on every continent. “Are you a man or a mouse?”.

Of course, until that day I had always wanted to be a man, but now my future was changed forever.

I said “You usually give multiple choice questions, but if this time you are going to only give me two choices, then I am going with mouse”. This was not the right answer, and he offered to show me a bit of wrestling, and tried to force me back into the boxing ring. This was the same ring where stood England’s answer to Mike Tyson, with none of the charm, wit, and winning personality traits of Mike Tyson. It is true that I had landed a few good left jabs to warm up his face, but he had shown me why there are no cute ex-boxers, and I was definitely going to be the first. Yes my mind was made up. Suddenly my ’wriggling technique’, which I had mastered by testing it out on my sister Denise ,and all her spotty and absolutely beautiful girlfriends. I managed to wriggle out of his full nelson (wrestling lingo which apparently Mike Tyson knows too), and began my new career in the mouseketeers. I found I could run quickly like a mouse too, but some of the boys at my school took my fear of having my nose look like Michael Jackson’s new one as fear of their boxing.

I had of course recently learned that the place to get the fight stopped instantly, was in fact the nose area, so I showed Mike O’Connor my left jab in front of the whole of the Upper 4th, showing them all that it was the gloved one in the ring who had scared me, but that didn’t mean I was cured, and they all knew about my Grandmother, if anyone ever needed a quick change into a higher key.

Word of my resignation from the boxing team quickly spread around the school, and of course before long there was Uncle Bernard (Brother Geoffrey Maine) looking for the true story. As you can tell by now, the truth was far from the truth or nothing but. I told him that I was not very good at getting hit, and he seemed to understand. I had finally found someone who didn’t like being hurt for fun.

Uncle Bernard was not allowed to teach me History and English Literature, because it was obvious that we were related, and of course in Catholic schools he would have had to be absolutely beastly to me, in order to show no favoritism. Because of this Uncle Bernard is still my hero. When he fell in love and wanted to leave the church, I was the person he felt he could talk to. This was my greatest moment. I will get to that story much later.

So none of the teachers at St Bede’s thought my writing style was any good.

They didn’t appreciate my sense of humor.

They wanted me to go for the Pulitoff Prize, which all the other boys were working on at home every night, and not the Pulitzer.

My French was excellent, and Father Murray was amused to hear that I was working overtime because one day “I was going to meet Bridget Bardot”, and have her fall heel over heads in love with me. My English was unappreciated, and at home I began to listen to records to fill up my empty time.

This was a very good time for music.

I began to get into it.

It was also a very good time for fashion. The mini skirt was invented.

Mags Vasey of course had one. So did Angela Denner.

Here I was torn between girls and music?

How could one get those girls in those mini skirts and legs, to notice me?

I went and bought the most ridiculous “Teddy Boy” suit, with a purple lining, and bought shares in Brylcreem. I began gluing my hair into the positions of those swan decorations at weddings. I began needling my sister to get out of the bathroom, so I could get in and stare at my acne for an hour too. I befriended the cooler, older boys who knew those girls with legs on, by impressing them with my vast knowledge of the America Music business, and my huge record collection, which I would loan to anyone who had a sister with or without legs, in order to go and get it back. I discovered that if you loan anyone a record and they keep it for more than 72 hours it becomes theirs.

So, I began writing my name on the records. And my phone number. Urmston 6751. This was to be the phone number for Herman and the Hermits one day, but right now, I was hoping that Angela Denner was going to call and ask to borrow one of my rare recordings, or perhaps take her up one of the little footpaths near her house and ask me to give her a French lesson. I was 13...

I was a teenager in love.

Chapter 5 High Noone

Thirteen

—Peter Noone

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