Wet chips and Wate-on

No bones were broken. I was left grazed and dusty, not bleeding. There was, unfortunately, no cause to stay off school and counselling hadn't even been invented.

But it was still a middlingly unpleasant experience, being pounced on in the dark, pushed and jostled by two or three other boys and left feeling sorry for myself on the ground as they ran off laughing.

My crime, aged all of 11, was to be caught in possession of grammar school uniform while carrying a briefcase that even a bunch of louts could see was probably on its way to or from a piano lesson.

If only they'd known how bad a grammar school pupil I was, how hard I was applying myself to the sort of under-achievement that could have only one outcome, explusion, they might have spared me. But no, at that moment on the path that leads down from the King Willie to the railway tunnel top in Shildon, I was a "grammar school snob" and that was reason enough for their half-hearted assault.

It is actually just as well that they didn't know my parents, both Londoners with London airs and graces despite ample North-eastern family connections, also sent me to elocution classes. That would have been real provocation.

I was a natural target in one other way. I was painfully thin. No one looking at me now would believe that this could ever have been the case, but there was indeed a Colin Randall before weight gain. That is me in the grainy picture, top far left.

Spindly legs, knobbly knees, the hint of ribcage sticking through skin. Perhaps I exaggerate, but only about the ribs. I even remember that, during that miserable grammar school career, the threat of the cane was somehow all the greater because I feared in my childish way that my trousered backside would look emaciated, bringing further humiliation and headmasterly contempt when I bent over.

Once, after I had moved on - been moved on - to Woodhouse Close Secondary Modern in Bishop Auckland, I was playing in goal in a house football match. I would have been 14 or 15.

To my absolute horror, I noticed two girls, probably from the next year down but on the precocious side, ambling towards my end of the pitch. At least during the day, I had my long trousers to protect me from embarrassment. In my football kit, more or less static when play was at the other end of the field, I was utterly vulnerable.

The girls reached my goal and stopped behind it. There wasn't even the flimsy protective screen of a net. I tried moving further out into the penalty box but couldn't escape their taunts. "Y'naah," one lass said to her friend, raising her voice to make sure nothing would be missed, "Aa've seen more fat on a wet chip."

This putdown has remained with me ever since. I know worse things have been said in the history of girl's inhumanity to boy. It just didn't feel that way at the time. And they not only heard but giggled when the team captain, a rather smug youth, turned at one point to look back, pointed me out to the refereeing sports master and said: "Doesn't Randall look pathetic?"

Well yes, he almost certainly did. Only a two or three years earlier, the class tough at grammar school had sidled up to me in the changing rooms and said: "You know, you'd look good in drainpipes. Seven-inch bottoms should be about right for you."

The sort of remark that was wounding at 11 or 12 was devastating to a fourth or fifth former, especially on the lips of a pretty girl who then, along with her equally pretty mate, also heard my classmate's jibe.

It was all enough to persuade me that drastic action was required. I tried eating more, without success. I gazed at those "do you get sand kicked in your face?" ads and considered buying the exercise equipment on offer - weren't they called something like Bullworkers? - until I realised that "on approval" didn't mean I could avoid paying for it. And then, in the pages of Reveille or Titbit, I spotted something called Wate-on.

This, it appeared, was more or less guaranteed to pile on pounds. Can you even imagine trying to market such a product in these diet-conscious days? Well, I just made cursory Google checks and both Wate-on and Bullworkers seem still to be with us.

In any event, I bought my fattening food supplements as slyly as a man in a dirty raincoat ducks into the porn parlour. Not in Shildon, or Bishop Auckland, where the chemists or their assistants might recognise me, but during a trip to Newcastle.

When I got home, I hid them up the the chimney of my bedroom. They remained, so far as I know, undiscovered. And I certainly remained skinny, despite taking the horrible stuff religiously until the contents of my packets ran out. Wate-on was expensive for a lad with only a paper round and modest pocket money; I'd had to save up for the first supply and when that failed to build me up, I convinced myself it was not going to work at the dosage my money would stretch to, and simply gave up.

Why I was so thin was a mystery to me, since I had a hearty enough appetite. Why I got fatter is not so hard to explain. It would be easy to blame the makers of fish and chips, fried breakfasts and Guinness, and later rich French and Indian cuisine and red wine. But they didn't actually make me eat and drink any of their products.

Badminton keeps me reasonably fit, but not sufficiently unfat. I need to lose a stone. And I have a plan. Soon my wife will join me in Abu Dhabi. I have bitten the bullet of getting into shape and poured thousands of dirhams into the coffers of one of the local hotels for joint membership of its health club.

Much as I loathe gyms, and gym classes, I know what is needed, along with that most effective of exercises, planting your palms against the dinner tabe and pushing it out of reach.

If I can bear to do so, I shall report my progress. Watch this space, if only to see if it gets smaller.

Comments

[Dr. Jules]

A doctor writes:

It is a well-known medical condition that you have been suffering from: foodboozebloodylovelyitis. You can't get enough and you're not alone.

I myself was a skinny kid. I also lived up north and one would have thought the diet of fish and chips and chip butties and Tizer and Mars bars etc would have piled on the pounds but they did not.

Age is cruel in many departments, a tendency to put on weight being one of them.

Exercise in itself will not see you lose weight. Trust me, I'm a doctor. No, my advice is to give up food entirely and just drink vodka. You will lose weight but after the first week you won't care either way.

[Bill Taylor]

I tried this last year for three months, with a report once a week in the Toronto Star (and a very embarrassing video on our website that I think is still up on YouTube somewhere)to keep me honest. It didn't produce any lasting results. But I had my three-yearly annual physical a few weeks ago and my doctor, bless her, told me that while I could stand to lose a few pounds I shouldn't sweat it (literally or otherwise). Blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol level were all good and I get a reasonable amount of fairly strenuous exercise. As she said, taking weight off is one thing but keeping it off is another and yo-yoing up and down is not healthy. So work out by all means but don't go all obsessive on us.
Meanwhile, I have fading (but still quite vivid) memories of you in the yard of King James I as possibly the world's youngest (and skinniest) bookie.

[Bassy]

How about some stuff from the lads who went "Downstairs" ? all you grammar school lot got things like chemistry sets for xmas (like that overacheiver out of Albert st) the downstairs boys got what shildon shops could provide, that is, what god did not, so maybe that was the problem at tunnel top?

[Colin Randall]

I'm sure you have a watertight alibi Bassy. Not getting a chemistry set for Christmas would have been thin mitigation otherwise.
ps my first job was at Shildon Shops where men in certain trades (eg toolmakers, fitters) earned a bit more than a cutting room manager at Northern Clothing

[Bill Taylor]

It would be an implausibly happy coincidence if your 11-year-old assailants turned out to be the same trio whom in later years you trounced after they taunted you on the steps of the Waltzer at Shildon shows. You presumably had by then gained a little beef to back up your derring-do.

[Akelamalu]

I popped over from Dumdad's place and I have to say I love your blog! I'll be back to read more, Salut North is on my favourites now. :)

[Irene]

I came here by way of Dumdad and enjoyed reading some of your older posts. You have the natural gift of a story teller and I enjoyed myself tremendously and therefor can't wait for the next installment. I have bookmarked your page and come by here every day to see if there is anything new yet. Your stories are wonderful and well told and draw you in as if you were witness to them yourself. I imagine you telling them with some wonderful British accent (I am from the Netherlands myself), although I don't really know what that accent would be. I'll see if I can find out about that on your blog somewhere. Please keep the stories coming, as I am hunkering for them. There is nothing like some entertaining literature to start the day with, and I do mean you!

[Colin Randall]

Thank you......Irene et al. Please see my new posting

[Dave Williams]

As entertaining as ever Colin.
Came across this whilst looking for the colour that Shildon FC play in as I'm off up there tonight to see them play Bish., First time for 40 years or more.
Will send this link to our old Geog teacher, George Dixon who I'm sure will appreciate it.
All the best marra

[Joseph Stubbs]

Re Bassy's comments, I’d like to point out that some of the “downstairs boys” did go on to better things despite the beckoning of steady work at Shildon Shops and the local mines.

Anyone remember Bob Whittaker? Who sat next to Geoff Carnan in the E stream under the tender mercies of J Wynne. Bob was last heard of as the owner and executive producer of Orion TV. There’s also a couple of other millionaires I can think of who emerged from the underworld that was SBM.

Unlike your man from Albert Street Bob’s journalistic and business skills have taken him away from the North East and the groundhog days of the Echo, where the same bits of local “news” have been recycled through the John North column with the regularity of an Andrews junkie. I’ve heard of professional northerners but a “Professional Shildoner”; Walter Nunn & Percy Douthwaite not withstanding. As a junior reporter was once heard to loudly proclaim from the back room of the Red Lion “writing about food isn’t journalism”.

Still it looks like a family business there with “our lass” employed and recently the young un (who went to one of the top five uni’s you know). Now’t shy about these folk? Bit like the Shops when you think about it. If your father worked there -----. Still if Alan Coren can do it for Giles on the nationals why not.

I don’t there’s been much over achievement, apart from a smart move to an upwardly mobile area of North Yorks; just the steady plod of a hack when compared to a life of his contemporary “downstairs boy”.

[Bob Whittaker]

To the Shildon gang including Geoff Randall, Mike Amos and Geoff Carnan my former best friend. I'd like to point out that contrary to what Joe Stubbs says above I am NOT a millionaire and have not left the North East. Though come to think of it I must be quite rich as I have a house in Northumberland and one in Kent.But I'm still poverty stricken compared to Randall.