Common as Muck!: The Autobiography of Roy 'Chubby' Brown Read Online Free PDF Page A

food she’d taken an hour to cook, everything. She had a wicked temper.
    My mam’s other affliction was that she was an epileptic at a time when there was no real treatment for it. Her fits were frequent. She once fell off the platform of the bus during a seizure and ended up in hospital. Another time she had a fit while cooking the tea and fell in the fire, burning the side of her face and her arm. And when I was a baby she had a fit while bathing me, trapping me in the bath. Fortunately, Aunt Alice was after acup of sugar and found us. She pulled me out from underneath my mam, held me upside down and emptied me of water. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Alice, I was frequently reminded, I wouldn’t have lived to see my first birthday.
    I’ve always suspected that my mother’s epilepsy was triggered by the frequent beatings my father dealt out. In that, our home was no different to any other in Grangetown at that time. It was the way things were in those days: married couples settled their arguments with their fists and their feet. I’m not making any excuses for it, but on rough council estates where times are hard and there’s not a lot of money about, people hit out when they don’t get what they want and need. It’s nowt to be proud of, but it goes on. Walking home along our street you’d often hear, ‘Aaah! Fuck off!’ and then a door would slam and you’d hear heavy footsteps pounding into the distance. Or a window would smash as something went flying.
    Whether my mother’s epilepsy was brought on by violence and depression, I’ll never know. Although I’ve asked many doctors, I never got a proper answer, but no doubt it played a part in making my mother among the most negative and disillusioned people I’ve ever known.
    So perhaps it was no surprise that Mam was well versed in catching the eye of other men. She was an attractive woman and there were loads of men after her. My auld fella once brought his foreman, Ted Bridge, home for tea. Ted was tall, wore a trilby and had a little moustache. Within weeks of Ted coming to our house, Mam was meeting him for walks and Dad was accusing her of doing the dirty.
    In the midst of this domestic warfare, my sister and I tried to get on with our little lives. My mates and I would have clemmie fights against rival gangs of kids, hurling lumps of clay and mud at each other. Or we’d go down to the river and float on the water on big inner tubes that we found on a nearby rubbishdump. We were toughened against the cold and would spend hours drifting in the heavily polluted Tees. Once we ended up floating out to sea. The lifeboat had to come for us and I inevitably got a clout from my father when I got home.
    I was always getting in trouble, which inevitably meant a hiding. On Sundays we were allowed to wear our best clothes and shoes, but God help us if we got them dirty. I’d gone down to the Veck, a little stream near our house, to throw matchsticks into the water and watch them race each other. Having got my shoes filthy and terrified of a beating, I hatched a plan. I’d take my vest off, use it to clean my shoes and throw it away. Convinced I’d pulled off my scam, I kept my head down all through tea that evening, praying that my dodge wouldn’t be discovered. It worked until my mam, filling the tin tub in the kitchen, saw my sister and me getting undressed. ‘Where’s your vest?’ she demanded.
    ‘I didn’t put one on this morning,’ I said.
    ‘That’s not true,’ my mam said. ‘I put a vest on you this morning. Where is it?’
    ‘I didn’t have a vest on. Honest.’
    My mam shouted: ‘Colin!’
    Dad was in the back kitchen and came through. ‘What?’ he said.
    ‘I put a vest on him this morning and he hasn’t got it on,’ said Mam.
    ‘Where’s your vest, boy?’
    This called for some quick thinking. I turned on the tears and through them I blubbered: ‘These lads held me down and took it off me! These lads got me!’
    ‘You lying little