Rik

This weekend I met up with Rik, my best friend throughout my informative years. He is now a citizen of Australia and has lived there for about 7 years or so, but like all friendships of this nature, time and circumstance may change but the relationship doesn’t.

When we were kids we often had the same things and our life’s seemed to mimic one another. We went to the same schools, had the same material goods, we joined the army at the same time, left the army at the same time and then played in bands together. I even chose ‘Paul’ (his real name) as my confirmation name. So it was no surprise when he announced he was having a baby at the same time as us, and that it was a boy. Jenson, his son, was born 1 week after Darwin albeit in a different hemisphere. 

We recounted a number of tales on our walk through Worden Park, of which there were far too many to talk about during our few hours together. Notable stories were: 

Wrote Ricks brand new bike off within an hour of him getting it.

I had a Viking Warlord (that’s a bike) 5 speed racer at the time when Rick had a bike given to him by his dad. From what I remember it was massive and the front cog often chewed his trousers causing the chain to come off. I don’t know if this is still an issue with the kids of today but all kids when we were young had oil stained jeans and trousers which were chewed at the bottom. 

For his 13th birthday he got a brand new 10 (or even 12) speed racer, a beautiful light blue thing with proper thin racing wheels. We did speed tests racing my bike against his and concluded that his bike was indeed faster than mine, that’s gears for you we thought. 

Then our attentions turned to a new achievement that had occurred recently, one that only a few kids could do. On a nearby playground there was a climbing frame that was shaped like a mushroom, it had a fibre glass roof and someone had seen a kid on top of it. “How the hell did he get up there?” we asked ourselves, but now Rik knew! We rode to it and parked our bikes beneath it. Rick explained that the secret was to splay both palms and position as much of the palm onto it’s surface causing the maximum amount of friction. He didn’t use those words, he probably said, “you’ve got to climb it like a tree frog” or summat! 

Anyway, within a few minutes both of us were on top of the mushroom and proudly shouting to any passer-by. It was our very own Edmund Hillary moment. The descent of the mushroom was similar to the ascent but in reverse. Both palms had to be placed on the fibre glass and you had to gently slide down until your feet felt the climbing frame, then you had to transfer your hands to the frame and climb down. Some where in the middle of this process I got it wrong and fell backwards right onto Rik’s back wheel. The wheel virtually bent in half and so did I. I felt a sharp pain to my innards and began to cough up blood. Rik was furious, and anticipating the imminent beating he was about to get off his dad he began to kick me shouting “look what you’ve done to my fucking bike”. My side had swelled as if I had a small fat python beneath my skin. I couldn’t ride my bike due to the pain and he couldn’t ride his either due to the state of his back wheel. We were both in shit state, me physically and he mentally. We walked slowly to Riks house and I heard the onslaught of his fathers rage. I felt even worse. I couldn’t help think that if he had got a Raleigh Bomber for his birthday, the precursor to the mountain bike, the wheel wouldn’t have bent and I would have simply bounced off the massive tyres like falling onto a bouncy castle. I walked home coughing blood up on the way. 

I do remember saying to him as we approached his house, “We’ll be laughing about this in years to come” and I was right. 

Parachuting off school roofs 

We were both fascinated with Militaria and the Army and spent many hours in the cap badge shop in Preston buying stuff for our collections. Now there was a new programme on TV called “The Paras” showing what recruits go through during the selection phase to join the regiment. 

We became a slightly bit obsessed and immediately took to the local school roof. On the way we had come across a large plastic sheet and thought this would make a fantastic substitute parachute. We tried a few jumps individually without any success and then concluded we needed more height, obviously! We also came up with the bright idea that rather than trying it as individuals why didn’t we use the large sheet to parachute us both down, him holding one end and I on the other. We edged our way to the highest part of the roof holding the plastic like a large bed sheet. After the count of 3 we would fan the sheet high in the air and both jump off simultaneously. We did this and the sheet did indeed catch the air. It fell to ground far slower than we did and resulted in Rik and I swinging into each other in mid air, cracking our skulls and dropping like stones with sore heads onto the grass. 

We decided not to join the Paras after that. 

We got up to many other adventures throughout our time. He was with me when I fell 50ft out of a tree, in fact he was putting out a burning mattress at the time. When I first met Sarah he was there. We pulled moonies at girls, painted flowers onto little Johnny’s Fiesta and used to go ‘Bird Hunting’ (not politically correct nowadays!) in his car. We gestured for air horns at the Lions Tetley trucks, spent hours down the ammo dump and in the tip with Gaz Gal. Nicked pencil rubbers from the rubber factory, shot air guns near the test track and went fishing with piccalilli butties. We jumped brooks, navigated long sewer tunnels and sat watching Friday night live whilst his mum provided us with cakes and juice. Life was innocent and brilliant. 

It was lovely seeing him and his family after too long of a time.

"Rik on the Train"

"Nob Grafitti"

"Piggy and Jenson"

"Piggy and Jenson"