The first time I flew...

Look at these two. It’s my Mum and her best friend Clara at something-teen or twentyish. Auntie Clara as I used to call her – still do actually.


Mum and Clara were neighbours, they grew up in Wellington Street in adjoining, gloomy, Edwardian, semi-detached houses and when they were married by luck, magic, good fortune or maybe the pulling of strings, they ended up in semi-detached council houses STILL living next door to each other just up the road. Clara moved in first and my Mum moved later.

67, Kings Close, Wellington Street. After my name, that was the second piece of factual information that I was taught to remember. I was expected to repeat it to relatives like some sort of party trick - ‘Where do you live?’ they would ask, even when they were sat in the very house they were asking about. ‘67, Kings Close, Wellington Street.’ I would reply, thinking ‘you should know - you’re sitting in it’. I’ve lots of stories about Wellington Street and Kings Close and this one is about how I stopped being a yellow-belly and learnt how to fly.

Here we go, come with me… do you see the door that Clara and my Mum are standing outside of? That’s my house - number 67, and that’s my porch above the door. See it? Well, you can’t quite see the porch but those two white wooden posts are holding it up. The porch is flat, about four feet long, two feet wide, and covered in lead sheet. My bedroom window is above the porch, my window opens onto it. Look its open now – and therein stands my story, quite literally.

At six and a bit, and for as long as I could remember, I wanted to climb out of my window. It was a compulsion that grew daily. I knew that I had to climb out, lower myself onto the roof of that porch, and stand there waiting for ‘it’ to happen. At first I didn’t know what ‘it’ was but after a while I worked it out. There was something about the porch that drew me, and it drew me for a single reason - I felt a need to stand on the grey lead with arms outstretched and jump… jump to fly, flying away over the willow tree and the roofs of the cottages, over the Tuesday market place and away. That was ‘IT’. I HAD to fly! So, self-taught, I began to learn.

It started with me climbing onto my red tiled windowsill and sitting looking at the ground below. It looked a long way down and it wasn’t until weeks later that I opened the window and, feeling the breeze on my face, pushed my upper body fully out into the sky. It was only after even more weeks that I learnt how to sit on the window frame, holding on for grim death as my Uncle Len said afterwards, and dangle my legs straight down above the porch. A month or so on and I’d learnt how to manoeuvre myself around away from the wall and carefully lower my boy-body until, still holding tight to the frame, my feet could gently touch down on porch. I progressed quickly from here and, one leap of a week later, I gave up the safety of the frame and turning around and away from the wall stood firmly on the porch roof unaided with arms outstretched ready to fly. I bent my knees and drew my arms up and out, I was going to fly… this was it!

But it wasn’t.

I must have stood waiting like that a dozen times over the next couple of months certain that ‘This was it!’ But each time it wasn’t and I clambered back through the window and into my bedroom, grazing my knees as I pulled myself back over the sill and tumbling down onto my bed to rage at my own cowardice and self-loathing. The long and short of it was that I was a yellow-belly, and there was nothing worse in the eyes of a six and a bit year old boy back then than being a yellow-belly.

Still with me? Yes? This is ‘IT’. See me standing on the porch roof, twelve feet above the ground, daring myself to jump. I’m wearing my thick duffle despite the heat, just in case, and I’m wondering what will happen if and when I jump - will I fly or fall? It’s sunny, far too hot for this coat, and the brown grass below looks very far away. I’m standing on the porch, the lead boiling beneath my toes. I can feel the heat through my shoes. I hop around – first one foot, and then the other. This really is IT! I’m no yellow-belly! My heart is in my mouth and my spirit in my head as I stretch out my arms, shut my eyes and jump up and out into the air, my feet instantly cooling as they leave the hot lead. I leap up and into the sky and I fly, and fly, and fly. I fly! I can FLY! And then I’m falling.

I come all awake in the mess of rose bushes that grow in the roughly circular bed in the centre of our small, grassed, front garden. I’m a little scratched and grazed and my coat is covered in dirt and twigs from the roses, but all I feel is exhilaration. I’ve done it. I’ve flown. Not far, but flight, real flight – and even short flight is flight nevertheless.

Over the next year or so I flew a half a dozen times, discarding the coat and alone at first. But word gets around on an estate and soon I had an audience for my flights, the estate boys coming to watch - Jimmy and Phillip, the Bowlers, my cousin Ian, even Vincent - some of them leaning their bikes against our chain-link fence, cheering me on, shouting for me to fly. They cheered so loudly that my Mum heard and came out to see what was happening. She looked up, mouth open wide, and began to shout - and I never flew from my porch again. My Dad nailed my window shut.

There you have it all, well almost. My first flight; how I learnt to stretch my arms and mind, reach up and out and over the willow tree, over the roofs of the cottages, over the market place to take off. And here’s the thing - He may have nailed my window shut, He may have stopped my flights from the porch - but he never stopped me flying. I’ve been flying ever since, fly still - even now I can fly whenever I want or need to.

All I have to do is close my eyes and jump.