WritersShowcase

Through HAROLD KELLY’s amazing eyes, we embark on an engrossing journey down a life of extreme poverty and despair, brutality and grief, enchantment and wonder, excitement and love. Born in 1901, his earliest memories include a bottom drawer for his cot, moonlight flits from one slum to the next, and the daily scourge of hunger, cruelty, violence and death.

His father dangerously ill and laid off work; the ever-growing family on the brink of starvation, schoolmates dying from deprivation, and the 9 year old Harold suffering severe blood poisoning which almost kills him. His wild habit of chewing raw meat scrounged from the local slaughter house, provides the nourishing strength to survive a major operation.

After a year in hospital, during which he almost forgets the primitive conditions his family are enduring outside, Harold finally returns home to see his frail brother Frank die soon after.

Happier times are recalled with characters like PATCHET, a giant invalid with a heart of gold and a killer temper; The GRUNDY’s, a family of practical jokers who infuriate neighbours as well as entertain them; a drunken old man asleep with his wooden peg leg propped against a blazing fire, saved by boys throwing fireworks into the house to wake him up.

Young Harold recalls a man in a pub, preparing Sunday roast lunch from a potato stuffed with dead sparrows; he is mesmerised from atop a lamppost as a pitched battle rages below in the town hall square, between religious factions and a beleaguered police force; he listens in fascination to stirring tales of daring adventures in South America.

Although Harold has many heroes in his life - and one or two villains - he idolises Uncle John, a professional soldier, heavyweight boxer, bodyguard and adventurer. JOHN TODD has sailed with royalty, dined with a president, drank with outlaws, and explored the Amazonian rainforest, surviving death-defying skirmishes with wild men, wild animals and an unforgiving environment.

We learn about the tooth drawer in the market; the poor man’s dentist, and of Harold’s time as a lather boy for SAM KAY, a barber cum bookie, always just half a step ahead of the law. He endures severe beatings and humiliation at the hands of DILWORTH, a tyrant headmaster. He sorts out a gang of bullies single-handed, and sneaks his first taste of beer as a young lad, almost landing the publican in trouble for watering the ale.

DAD briefly encounters royalty as King George presents him with a medal for service to the glassmaking industry, a somewhat acrimonious honour amongst his workmates, which leaves Dad a slightly poorer but much wiser man.

At 13, big brother JOHNNIE helps the family out by skipping school to work down a coal pit. A brush with the law and he goes missing, to walk the many miles to Liverpool where he desperately tramps the city streets, threadbare in search of food. Taken in by a ‘Mary Ellen’, he pushes her fruit & veg handcart around the city in exchange for food scraps. On his return home a year later, Johnnie goes to Dad’s folks in Ireland to evade the St Helens authorities.

To make ends meet, Dad returns to his old job as a stoker in hellish conditions, deep in the bowels of a ship. At the end of a voyage, he moves the family to Liverpool. Harold and little brother JOE make the long journey on the back of a horse drawn cart, frozen stiff as they huddle amongst the sticks of furniture.

One day, to everyone’s surprise and delight, Johnnie turns up in a soldier’s uniform, straight from the battle of the Somme. He is now AWOL after desperately tracking the family down, and after a few days with his people, gives himself up to the Army authorities and returns to the war.

Harold finds work on the docks and comes home to a telegram announcing that Johnnie has been killed in action. Dad gives up his precarious life at sea to look after the family. War is over and living conditions show no sign of improvement for working class folk. A black cloud of resentment, anarchy and revolution sweeps across the nation.

Depression, unemployment, profiteering and corruption are rife in the dark days after the Great War. No matter how hard the family tries to keep their heads above water, daily life is a matter of ‘survival of the fittest’.

A stranger knocks at the door. FRED PORTE is a wounded ex-serviceman who brings new happiness and prosperity to the household. Fred starts a grocery business from the premises and a soup kitchen in the back yard for the poor and needy. A consignment of mouldy meat is acquired from the docks. Scrubbed and scoured, it is made presentable - if not quite fit - for consumption.

Fred’s business acumen is exceeded only by his humanity, and the shop flounders owing to his generosity towards penniless customers. He illegally sells the rented premises to a local profiteer and consequently lands himself in jail. The family are now forced to move yet again, this time to an overcrowded house full of West Indians in the south of the city; a house full of wonderful characters and enchanting times spent there over the next few years. The neighbours include Alois Hitler, half brother to Adolf!

Harold is growing from a boy into a young man and is in regular – if only casual - work on the nearby docks. At last he can enjoy nice clothes, a few creature comforts, and a girlfriend for the first time in his life.

Life is still tough with just Harold’s inconsistent wage packet supporting most of the family. They move to a brand new council house across the city, and Dad – who has been ill for some time – dies soon after. Home life is made unbearable by Mother and the sisters, especially when Harold – now the sole breadwinner - finds a new girlfriend and falls in love at first sight.

The family try everything including threats, coercion and violence to split Harold and PEGGY up. They marry in secret and eventually find a place of their own to call home, with their new baby girl.

Liverpool endures a major blitz during World War Two and the family are in the thick of it. Harold witnesses death and mass destruction at the docks, whilst his home and youngest son PETER narrowly survive a daytime air raid, with a bomb exploding in the street.

Peggy’s brother TOM GRANT, a hero of the Great War and now a Rescue Warden, is personally caught up in one of the greatest tragedies of wartime Britain, in which many people are killed in an air raid shelter. The spectre of that night haunts Tom for the rest of his days.

During this war, just as throughout his early life, Harold witnesses man at his best – and worst. In times of food rationing, he sees the greed and hypocrisy of wealth, the corruption of power, and the benevolence of strangers. Unable to beat them, he is tempted to join them and so ‘acquires’ a carcass of mutton from the docks to feed family, friends and neighbours alike.

After retiring from the docks, Harold and Peggy leave Liverpool to spend the rest of their lives in the green Pennine hills of Yorkshire, where Harold pens his memories of a tough, eventful yet mostly contented life.

Although Harold’s powers of recall are noteworthy, there are bound to be gaps. His sons set out to fill in some of the blanks relating to two very important people in his life, namely Uncle John the explorer, and big brother Johnnie. The sufferance and exploits of these two men, combined with the rest of Harold’s enthralling account, make compulsive reading.