Catapults Down The Canal
It’s Saturday morning. Jack has come calling even though it is uncivilly early, as Paul’s dad says. Whilst Paul has been dreamily swinging through the trees with Tarzan, Jack has been out delivering newspapers on his bike. A large one, with cow horn handlebars, which in Paul’s opinion makes him look fearless.
Paul’s bike has small wheels. It’s a ladies’ one with a basket and a bell. Up until now he wasn’t embarrassed riding it because he really really wanted it, flaws and all. His bike is prone to fold in on itself. It misses a bolt from the foldable hinge, and the wire he uses in its place occasionally bounces out. But other than that, it has air in both its tyres and a paint-free chain. He’d come across a tin of paint and revamped his purple Raleigh Tomahawk. Made it black with little white stripes — tyres, frame, chain and all. Didn’t quite work the same after that. He received this latest set of wheels in payment for babysitting.
There are a lot of family friends that trust Carole and even Paul to babysit for them. In the past, Paul has babysat for four different sets of children. It is a sign of the times that a boy younger than eleven, and a naughty one at that, is given the task of overseeing children not much younger than himself. Paul does, however, rise to the challenge. He puts aside his juvenile ways and is quite able to keep the spoilt youngsters in check without mishaps. Paul is particularly proud that he once watched over a baby who was barely six months old, and changed her pongy nappy too.
Whilst child-minding Paul eats lots of biscuits and crisps, most of which belong to the kids who have more than enough, in his opinion. There are usually cigarettes to be found and if not, the ashtrays provide him with a few dog-ends. Paul can’t abide lipstick-stained filters but inevitably they are always the ones most worthy of rescuing. He gets to watch a colour television, and despite suffering from insomnia at home always struggles to remain awake during the ten o’clock news. Each hypnotic bong of Big Ben pulls him further under, weighing down his eyelids just that little bit more. No matter how much he tries to lift them, the sound draws him nearer to the realm of slumber. Only the voices of the revellers returning can break the trance.
It is not for the bag of chips they pick up for him on their way home that Paul chooses to babysit. He’s not a fan of chip-shop chips. Paul hopes to earn a little cash, which is never assured. There is no fee agreed upon in advance. Paul’s services are mostly seen as a favour for friends of his father; people he often relies upon to lend him a tenner whenever he’s struggling. Sadly, unlike Jack’s paper round, child-minding is sporadic and can never be depended upon as an income. Sometimes he’ll earn a pound, other times just fifty pence, topped up with a bar of chocolate here or a packet of Monster Munch there. Although no amount of payment is worth the alarm he incurred the last time he babysat.
He didn’t know what to do or say or where to put himself when the two drunken lovers burst through the front door in the middle of a blazing row. Fuelled by alcohol and paranoia, after six months apart Joe the oil rig worker and Brenda the children’s mother squabbled like geese. Hours earlier they had left the house, shiny and spruced, arm in arm and, as Paul would testify, totally in love. Paul recoiled into the sofa cushions hoping that violence didn’t rear its ugly mush. The door slamming and violent threats woke the children, who gathered bleary-eyed and nervous at the top of the stairs. Paul heard them calling out for their mother. He comforted them as best he could. Explained that all would be okay in the morning. Told them it was only the drink and even convinced the three of them to go back to bed.
Other than the ordinary, everyday yelling when things displease his dad or when Pauls’ arguing with his brothers, passionate rows of such volatility never happen in his house. Perhaps that’s the only plus point to living in a single-parent household bereft of emotions.
Paul got driven home at a terrifying speed. Fuming with anger, the only thing keeping the car straight and true was Joe’s dogged determination to get back to his row as soon as possible. Every set of headlights threatened a head-on collision. And it was with much relief that Paul exited the car, glad to have survived the ride. So Paul would like nothing more than to obtain a paper round like Jack’s.
Alas, Paul’s chances have been scuppered by his brothers. A tarnished reputation of unreliability due to their lateness, undelivered newspapers and takings being short has long since been established amongst the local newsagents.
*****
Jack tells Paul that he’s off to the other side of town to see Noah. They plan to visit the industrial estate near Noah’s home to search about the bins belonging to the Barnett factory for some elastic.
Jack owns a Black Widow catapult from which he shoots ball bearings, stones and, when fishing, bait. It’s not a wooden one made from a tree branch: it is a state-of-the-art metal one with a foldaway wrist brace to give stability, latex power bands for extra yanginess and, for the ultimate in comfort, a moulded grip with finger contours.
Paul fantasises about owning such a weapon. In fact, anything that shoots projectiles holds an attraction.
In class, the hollow casing of a Bic pen becomes a blowpipe to spit out bits of chewed-up paper. It is very entertaining. So too are the V-shaped paper missiles shot with elastic bands. These can be painfully dangerous, even more so when metal u-shaped tacks are used.
Luckily, Paul doesn’t follow his brother’s example in this action. As a young child, it was bow and arrows, peashooters, and the ever desired, three-in-one water pistol, cap and spud gun that he longed for. Now it is the Gat air pistol that fires lead pellets, corks and darts that tops his wish list. Jack's Black Widow, a new entry, goes straight in at number two. Most things seem as if they will forever be unattainable, so Jack's insistence that the bins will have defective catapult parts gives hope to Paul’s desire of obtaining one of his own.
So, it is with eager rotations that his little wheels turn to match Jack’s speed. Pedalling twice for every one revolution by his friend, Paul struggles to keep up, regardless of whether he’s going up a hill or rolling down one. Jack kindly assists. At intervals he reaches down and pushes Paul along.
Jack, a regular visitor, walks straight in through Noah’s back door whilst Paul waits by the side gate. After a minute Noah’s big sister calls him over and invites him inside. Being a ruffian from a family with a reputation means that Paul rarely gets invited over the threshold when calling for mates. The coloured views of parents, justified or not, has kept him on many a doorstep.
It is such a novelty being asked inside. Noah’s house is bright, clean and homely. Hovering next to the back door, Paul hopes he’s not asked to remove his shoes.
“You can sit down, you know,” Noah’s sister smiles. “Would you like a drink of pop?” she asks.
Paul would never refuse pop. Even if he’d just drunk two large buckets of water he’d somehow find room for pop. Especially fizzy pop. He answers in the affirmative, and she pours a little orange cordial into a glass and adds water from the tap.
“Here you go.” She places it on the table, then adds, “How about a biscuit?”
Paul is feeling spoilt, and as it’s impolite to refuse such gracious hospitality, he accepts. Whoa! Paul’s eyes bulge at the offering which is more than a mere biscuit. More than a chocolate biscuit. It’s a Burton’s Wagon Wheel, and as the advert declares, it’s ‘So big you’ve got to grin to get it in’.
They leave their bikes at Noah’s and make for the industrial estate. Jack and Noah take out their catapults, and selecting a few rounded stones fire them at random objects. The sound they make hitting the steel shipping containers satisfies their urge for a while. When Paul has a go, he is surprised at the accuracy of his shots and at how far the projectiles fly.
Poking around the bins of the factory, they find some lengths of elastic but no other catapult parts, which is a disappointment but not something to dwell on. Just like down the canal at school, there is an iron bridge spanning the water, but unlike that one this bridge is still used by trains. Noah and Jack show Paul a space they can squeeze into beneath the bridge. One where their noses are only inches away from the revolving wheels of the trains as they zoom past. Noah places a stone on the track and Jack a two pence coin. Amazingly the stone is crushed to dust, and the coin, flattened and curved by the arc of the rails, is almost completely smooth. The distorted head of the Queen is hardly perceivable.
The boys hang around the industrial estate, looking in skips and sifting through various piles of refuse. Left scattered around the side door of a metal works are lots of small silver discs, off-cuts from a sheet of hole punched metal. Although the size of a two pence piece, they look like they’d make numerous bounces when skimmed across water. Hoping to test them out on the surface of the canal Jack, Noah and Paul load up their pockets.
Noah discovers a lock-up with a window left open and they climb in. The space is mostly empty and at first glance appears to hold nothing of value. There are no cupboards, or chairs to sit on, only a scattering of crates. It looks abandoned, and as if the occupiers had some sort of a party before leaving. Only it wasn’t a beer party but a children’s one where the merrymakers drank pop and ate cake. Within the crates of empties are some bottles of Cream Soda which are still full. There are also unopened, handy-sized glass bottles of Cola with their metal caps left intact, and a Victorian sponge cake. Paul detects that the cake is out of date, but not by using his eyes to read the expiry date nor his nose to detect an offensive odour. No, Paul uses his mouth, or, more to the point, his tongue and stomach. After one swallow, his stomach churns, and without warning Paul vomits uncontrollably over the floor. Up comes the Wagon Wheel and orange squash he’d recently consumed. Jack and Noah find this hilarious. Paul’s used to puking so it is no big deal. He throws up with the least provocation, such as a car journey, a ride on the roundabout in the park, or just to rid himself of indigestion before he heads off to school. It matters little. If anything, puking brings relief because two minutes later he no longer feels ill. Not even queasy, so it doesn’t cut short the day.
Jack and Noah guzzle down Cola, and when they leave through the window they take as many bottles as they can carry. Along the towpath, Paul tests the metal discs’ skimming abilities. Pathetically they barely make two hops. Like a stick grenade, Jack dashes a Cola bottle against the walled sides of the canal bridge. It explodes with a spectacular fizz, leaving behind shattered glass and a wet burst that trickles down. With not a care or a thought for anyone, or anything, they proceed to hurl more bottles in a mad frenzy which satisfies the destructive nature that Paul seldom gets to fully vent.
A guy stumbles along the towpath towards them. Although still young he dodders like a pensioner with incontinence. The boys move aside to allow him to zombie on by, but he stops for a drunken sway. He looks in a crazed state: his red, cosmic eyes stare off into the grey sky as if searching for something — his words, probably, since it seems to Paul that every time he looks at the boys he’s about to say something. In his grasp is a plastic bag. He brings it to his mouth, sticks in his nose and draws in a deep breath. Then, twisting open the cap from a container of Evo-Stik, he pours an amount of glue into the bag and mumbles something that hardly resembles words at all. It is quite possible that he is speaking another language, although there is no need to translate the offer he makes to Jack. The outstretched bag is left hanging: nobody wants to partake. Paul has never met a glue sniffer before, and if ever there is an advert against solvent abuse, this is it. The man is a proper mess yet Paul feels no sympathy, only repulsion, and he wonders if the man will even see tomorrow. Paul makes a silent vow to never, ever sniff glue.
Before they depart, Jack kindly offers the man a cigarette and Noah hands over a bottle of Cream Soda. The man notices the 10p deposit printed on the bottle’s top and empties the contents of it straight out.
Noah had missed a trick, overlooking the deposit on the bottles, of which there were many. Paul must also have been blinded, probably by his misadventure with the Victorian sponge cake, to miss something he’s normally so alert to: money-back bottles. He suggests they go back to get some more. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. To Paul’s astonishment, Jack finds a lug nut from someone’s car, loads up his catapult with it and fires it at a passing train. Jack yells, “Run!” and before Paul does, he sees the window of the train turn completely white. After this the boys rather swiftly leave the industrial area and head back to Noah’s.
It is purely by chance that Paul tries one of the silver discs in a bubble gum machine outside a newsagent’s. The exact size of a tuppence the machine happily accepts it and Paul gladly feeds in more. With each disc he receives three bubble gums but he doesn’t use them all in one machine. He feels it more prudent to distribute them, so as not to get caught. Paul and Jack ride home stopping at every machine along the way until all the fakes are used and their trouser pockets are bulging. Not to be ungrateful, but Paul really wishes he had some the size of a five pence also, then he could raid the toy section. Get himself some plastic figures, trolls, a tiny book of jokes or even some tattoos. He finds the gum balls hard; much less succulent and not nearly as capable of producing those massive bubbles as the American gum Andrew Gold gave him. Carole is much less ungrateful. She doesn’t complain and is happy to take whatever’s on offer.
Comments