Before the Frenchgate Centre in Doncaster was massively extended to make room for an H&M – because no town can truly call itself contemporary without a cut-price Swedish fashion emporium – the only way to reach the train station from Doncaster’s shops was by dashing across a very busy dual carriageway or by descending into a dingy, yellow-lit subway where big boys loitered. Big boys were Town’s trolls; their ability to block narrow thoroughfares would have been widely admired by the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
If you were a little boy – a “nipper” – you tended to steer clear of
Doncaster’s warrens due to terror, choosing instead to dance with Datsuns and Talbots
on the A630. I first darted across this busy racetrack when I was eight; I’d
been travelling on buses on my own from the age of seven. You did that then.
Different times. We stayed up later, too. On Saturdays, I’d ride my Grifter
back from my mate’s house at 10pm with two carrier bags full of model
aeroplanes swinging from my handlebars. It’s funny how the Soviets would launch
an all-out attack every Saturday while Dynasty was on the telly; our 1:72
air forces maintained your freedom. It was also uncanny that a werewolf would
instinctively know I’d be gliding past Retford Walk at 10.03pm, meaning my
uphill climb on a seven-ton bike would make my legs turn to wobbly fire-jelly
with the strain of survival.
A few years ago, me and an old schoolmate were passing through the
aforementioned subway – probably to avoid H&M – and found it had become the
hangout of baggy clothed skateboarders. For us, this was a sorry sign of the
times. “I despair of the younger generation,” my pal mentioned, and I nodded. I
don’t like skateboarding – it’s an Americanism we can well do without. It’s
actually a declaration of being anti-British, because you’re bypassing all the
great youth movements we’ve had in the past and eschewing all our fantastic
edgy musical genres in favour of California, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Vans,
pastrami on rye, hoodies and Avril Lavigne.
Ker-CLANK CLANK. “Ooh!” Ker-CLANK CLANK “Yeah!” Ker-CLANK CLANK, “Ooh!”
Ker-CLANK CLANK “Yeah!” It sounded like a slowed down version of “It Takes Two”
by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock. It was Saturday, match day. As we neared the
skateboarders, at the opposite end of the subway a gang of Doncaster Rovers
late-teen hardnuts emerged. Like oryx antelope in the Serengeti, the boarders
sensed extreme bother and, for a moment, desisted from their clank until fate
revealed its hand. Deeply intimidated, they looked to the floor, shamed because
of the mobile-Pacific pastime they’d opted for. The football lads moved past
with rolling shoulders. At the critical moment, and with much sneering, one of
the football supporters shrieked, “Hey! Skateboard – USA!” It refreshed my
soul. I smiled at the incident for the rest of the day.
Skateboarding is the most uncool movement in the history of youth
culture. In fact, I dislike anything to do with boards, especially surfing and
snowboarding. In the booze-soaked lads-mag days, me and my superior, the
editor, had to spend a day getting pulled around a lake on a “boogie board” by
a speedboat. It was right next to Heathrow’s main runway. Boogie board is a
stupid name. It sounds like Doogie Howser, that child surgeon from the eponymous
Eighties’ TV show. As holidaymakers lifted to the clouds in their Boeing 737s, I
repeatedly went headfirst into the freezing black water, with my face smashing
into the riptide over and over again. Around ten falls later, I decided I’d had
enough of this. Eventually, I strode off to the bar in a state of shivering
anger. I couldn’t get the basics of board balance – and why should I? The
editor, of course, was spraying up 20-feet walls of water and changing the rope
from hand to hand, while waving to people on the shore who were walking their
dogs. I just think balancing on a plank of wood isn’t much of a claim; not like
scoring a wonder goal.
There was a German writer with us that day, a frizzy-haired Karl-Heinz
Rummenigge/Andreas Brehme lookalike called Gertz from a surfboard magazine. With
their shaggy perms, Germans are perpetually stuck in 1986; they’re born to look
like skateboard freakz. Gertz, true to form, wouldn’t queue for sandwiches. He
bypassed the system and helped himself to handfuls of butties, so I called him “Greedy
Gertz”. “Greedy Gertz, this is Britain! We queue here.” He pretended not to
hear. I also had to pull Greedy Gertz up on his quasi-San Fran accent. After
cross-examination, he admitted that he’d changed his accent to fit in with the
Newquay surfer community, who had affected a Californian/Australian/hippy lilt.
Their god is Henry Ramsey.
There’s a videogame called Subway Surfer that all the kids are
playing on their £500 iPads and Kindles. The premise of the adventure is that
an errant Japanese teen on a hoverboard leaps between, and on, moving Tokyo trains
collecting … big coins, by the look of it. I think it’s Angry Birds for 2013. Inspired, my youngest asked for a hoverboard
“with lights on the front and two flames out the back”. He’s aware of my
dislike of skateboards but obviously hasn’t grasped the family lineage. He
seems determined to own a flying toy. Around the time of Hallowe’en last year,
he bought a broomstick from the local party shop expecting instant fast-moving
fun at altitude. He asked if I’d ever flown on a broomstick and I said that I
had.
“We used to have a broomstick in our house when I was young,” I told him,
“and I’d climb on it, whack your Auntie Tracey round the back of the head, then
I’d fly off round the living room while she jumped up at me, screaming.” “How
did you make it fly?” he enquired. I said, “Just believe you’re going to fly
and you will.” He spent the next half hour running down the hallway and leaping
into the air at critical moments, but, alas, never got airborne. I said the
batteries might be low. Later that evening, prior to bath time, I stopped Young
Un in the nick of time from leaping off the top of the landing with a helium
balloon tied to his waist. He was stark naked too, which, he explained, was to
assist with the lift. I maybe shouldn’t have told him about the broomstick. I
won’t do that again.
I maintain a resolute determination to get my kids interested in UK
pleasures and not board sports. Football is played a fair amount, and we go to
the odd match. Trees are climbed, largely unsuccessfully. Railways play a
massive part in our existence, whether it’s through Brio train sets, visiting
preserved lines or dashing around the National Railway Museum in York. And there
are always model-aeroplane kits on the go. I suppose a defining step will be
introducing the boys to The Fall, but let’s take it one step at a time. The only
pleasure I derive from board sports is the ridiculous fact that surfers feel
compelled to ride monstrous waves in South Africa, where 25-foot great-white
sharks amass. You just think their brains must have become contaminated by sea
water. It’s not the most pleasant way to go, being pulled ten feet down and
losing your extremities in the confusion of a submerged frenzied attack, before
being wagged to death by a killing machine the size of a helicopter. I like
drinking red wine, but I wouldn’t crack open a bottle surrounded by spitting
snakes at London Zoo.
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