Chapter 6 High Noone

Me, Dad and the Christmas Lights

By Peter Noone

My DAD

Scattered thoughts. Life in Norfolk Gardens Flixton England.

I know them as just Mum and Dad, but they are really Joan Blair and Denis Patrick Noone. My earliest memory of them is at 25 Norfolk Gardens. It is Christmas time. It is snowing which is quite unusual and also quite unfortunate, because Santa has delivered a new 3 wheeler bike. Dad had spent the whole of the previous night trying to make the fairy lights work on our tree. This was a recurring theme, and being the only son, I am always at hand to stick a screwdriver into the electical outlet, or stick my finger into the electric fire to see how it turns bright red so quickly. I found out that no matter how quickly you touch the coil after you switch it on, it s always hot enough to burn your finger, and that electricity is constant, meaning it is always in the electical outlet just waiting for young boys known as Peter, to stick their perfectly sized fingers into. Electric shocks are Us. My Mum and Dad let me and my sister Denise do all types of naughty things, and when they catch us, Denise always lets me come up with the reason for our behavioral discrepancies. We have a little lobby at the front door and my bike is standing there just waiting for me to take it for it’s first ride and a show off to all the other lads and others in Norfolk gardens. This is a really working class part of town, and unbeknownst to me, the government have built our house and rented it to us. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, my parents are very very English. There are all kinds of unusual places to get into trouble, and I am always a willling participant, if not the instigator. Actually, I was always the instigator, but I am very good at crying, having learned how to do it, by sticking all sorts of objects into those glorious little 3 pin holes which are to be found in every room in the house, and mysteriously provide the heat for the iron, the music for the radio, and have made the Christmas tree lights blink on and off and cause some sort of bubbling effect to occur as they intermittently work...don’t work... work... don’t work etc. I am soon to discover that this is called “Blinking lights”., and not intermittant power supply. My Dad never ever hit me, because he had “THE LOOK”. My Mum could do it too. A lot of the time they did it to each other, but every now and then, I would get the look, which would send shivers up and down my spine. This Christmas I was going to get my first look at the LOOK. Dad was having trouble getting the lights to work at the same time as the fairy (which every litle girl would like to be) on the Christmas tree, (as sung badly sadly by my Mum). Dad is screwing the attachment into the thing where the light bulb dangles on normal non-Christmas like days, and is perched on a ladder precariously at an angle of say 40 degrees. As his apprentice, and, in order to speed up the delivery of the electrical current to the waiting tree full, I swtch the switch on for my Dad. At exactly the same time as he holds the wires and says “Make sure the switch is off son”. It should be explained here that in England we have 240 volts and much wattage, but I am not yet in school and I am unaware of this fact. My Dad knows of course.When the first of his electric shock treatments is introduced to him, he tries to drop the wiring from his clenched fist, only to find that Old Sparky demands that he holds on for a while and be taken on a ride around our front room, hurtling through the air towards the far wall which is there of course, to stop him from flying into the street, and all the inherent dangers from the cars driving quickly past. Dad ( in one of his funniest moments, and he ia a very funny bloke), decides to slide down the wall in slow motion whilst yodeling great ancient hymns about the birthday Prince himself.

This fine and spirited performance causes me to giggle and nudge my sister Denise. Being 22 months older than me, she knows to head for the hills,(in this case the stairs and my upper bunk) leaving me alone to congratulate Dad on his new astonishing acrobatic skills. I looked proudly at my Dads crumpled and smoking body, and found myself giggling uncontrollably as he carried the sight gag even further , by writhing and moaning and taking the name of Our Lord in vain. As I went over to give him what in those days was our version of a High Five, I suddenly realized that something was in fact bothering him. His impromptu performance was not done to amuse me at all, and that in fact he had not done his recent hilarious cartwheel off the ladder through the air and into the wall, purely to make me and my sister laugh. It became increasingly apparent, that he supposed I had had something to do with his strange new choreography. I got the LOOK. The lights were soon working, and every year after that his lights didn’t work, my job was holding the ladder, and pretending not to giggle as I remembered his first shock treatment. He is always good for a laugh my Dad. My Mum is a lot of fun too.

Chapter 6 High Noone

Me, Dad and the Christmas Lights

My DAD

Scattered thoughts. Life in Norfolk Gardens Flixton England.

—Peter Noone

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