‘Drop ten, turn and face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 33 There’s nowt as strange as folk.

‘Drop ten, turn and face.’ 

Quilty’s Football Yarns 33

There’s nowt as strange as folk.

Getting back into study after 3 months away in Israel and Egypt was difficult. Mainly because Leeds was so cold. Our house at Brudenell Mount wasn’t far from the University itself but meant a brisk walk across Woodhouse Moor. Doing this was painful not least because the path was often frozen and if not, so hard and cold that it made your feet hurt every step. The area where we lived was opposite the old Hyde Park Cinema, restored from some bygone era. The demographics of the area were pretty low with hundreds of similar houses populated by either students or Anglo-Pakistani’s. Our house at number 60, had the advantage for us of being owned and repaired by the university.  They also sent cleaners in once a fortnight. I didn’t really get to know many locals apart from one bloke, ‘Nutty’ Paul Johnson. That wasn’t my nick name for him but was applied by Brian, Bren, my other housemates and Terrie once she got to know him. He’d had a very serious car accident and was really in a bad state living at his parent’s home. Paul told us he made the decision to leave home and live alone, in a place up on Hyde Park Road. He believed he wouldn’t recover being cared for. Paul was an obsessive. He would take his whole flat apart each week and clean it from top to bottom. “Jif cleaning fluid’ was his weapon of choice. He dressed immaculately but carried his right leg somewhat as a result of the accident. Paul was never short of an opinion and had a very thick skin. He was probably the original conspiracy theorist I ever met. Most of his ideas were out there but as early as 1980, he was talking about ‘burning sun rays’. He was a regular sunworshipper but only between certain hours. He was also a professional gambler who stuck rigidly to his system and view of betting ‘value’. I went a few times with him into the city greengrocery markets, where he would give every stallholder tormenting hell. Paul was an undoubted racist but then he hated anyone not from Yorkshire. He called me a ‘cockney gob-shite’ the first time we met. I couldn’t really argue with him there. In truth Paul shared his annoyingness around, it was the one area where he didn’t discriminate. Paul hated the ‘Top of the Pops’ show which started 7.00 pm on a Thursday evening. Thus, at 6.55 pm there would be a tap on the back window, as he turned up to watch it in our house alongside all my housemates. I certainly copped some stick for encouraging him. Some said he was a kind of social project for me. I’m not sure about that but I certainly collected some waifs and strays. Tolerating Paul was generally a shared job at 60 Brudenell Mount over the four years. However, he really pissed Terrie off, when she came up to visit. First off, he continually moaned while watching Top of the Pops on our telly. Not just that, he insisted on going home to get his ‘Jif’ to polish our fire-place hearth. If that wasn’t enough, he’d stay on until 11.00pm and insist on smoking one more cigarette in the house before going home. 

One day Brian Beacom snapped at him. Paul had been spouting racist based stuff all evening. Brian tried to reason with him, but little got through. The final conversation that night went like this.

Paul Johnson; “Yorkshire is ours and no outsiders should be coming here” 

Brian: “There are 22,000 students here and they add to the local economy, especially here in Headingly”

Paul Johnson; “Well they can all go home, especially those from other countries, if you ask me”

Brian. “Ask you? Who the f—k is going to ask you? You know what you should do?”

Paul Johnson; “No what?”

Brain. “Go home and top yourself because no f—cker will care!”

Do you know what Paul did? Just sat down, got out another cigarette and sat down laughing.

His ‘Nutty Paul’ nickname was well earned.

Over the four years I had quite a few lively housemates at 60 Brudenell Mount. Blond Dave was a classic. He had ridden his motorbike down a country lane one morning and crashed into a herd of cows, breaking both wrists in the process. He had a certain naivety about him and was unwilling to be anything but totally truthful. One early Sunday morning, there was a knock on the street door. It was a girl to see one of the housemates. When she asked, “Is he here” Dave said “Yes” and promptly took her to the fellow students room, knowing full well that that bloke was upstairs asleep with someone else! No one knew how he could possibly have done that, but he did. He couldn’t tell even a trouble avoiding white lie. 

One thing I certainly was at Leeds was very fit. I’d gone with the Athletics club to Nottingham to run in the 3000m relay championships. I was not club class runner but went along to help out. Thus, when the relay started around the campus, I was desperate not to let the team down with a poor time. Such was the nature of the run that it difficult to know how you were going. Many people had seemingly flown past me. It was great surprise then that I had ran our third best time on the day. Encouraged by this I agreed to also run for Leeds University in the famous Poly Marathon at Windsor Great Park in London. This run only had three thousand runners and was not only the UK’s oldest marathon but also the Olympic qualification race, I was in great company. One of the Leeds runners had pulled out and I was his replacement. As things transpired, I had run the London Marathon four weeks earlier and had hardly got past some casual runs in recovery. Amazingly, I did my best ever time 3 hours 23 minutes at the Poly Marathon. The race started at the gate of Windsor Castle but finished in the town. We were told that unless we did 20 miles in 2 hours 30 minutes, we would be stopped and withdrawn, because they were opening the roads back up to traffic at that time. Fear can be a great motivator. The first seven miles was really hilly, in the park, but I stuck with a good group who swept me along. Terrie was waiting for me at the finish, it was a great feeling.  Unfortunately, the certificate I received had the name ‘Graham White” on it because he was the runner I had replaced. I did receive a crystal glass as a prize though. 

As I mentioned previously the shadow of the Yorkshire ripper hung over Leeds in these years. One afternoon I had arranged to meet Terrie from the London bus but I was delayed. There she was, having been dropped off around the city back streets. Fortunately, a cab driver parked -up nearby in his cab, until I arrived on my bus. He got out and explained that in such dangerous times he wanted to stay to see she was okay. Brian, who at one time lived at Lupton Flats, actually lived in the same block as one of the Yorkshire ripper Peter Sutcliffe’s victims, Jacqueline Hill a student at the university. When he was eventually caught in mid-1981, the town breathed a sigh of relief.

As another learning year came to an end, I headed off back to Camp Delaware for the summer. Brian Beacom met up with me in early August and we spent a month delivering cars, city to city across the states. We were traveling with three other counsellors across from New York to LA. The firm “AAA Con’ gave you petrol money and seven days to get the car to its destination. Our first in this case being a compact Japanese car with a ‘U Haul box’ on the roof. The towns rushed by. Philly, Washington, Baltimore, Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock and Albuquerque. We actually started a two- hundred mile diversion toward Dodge City at one stage. I had taken very little note of our route but kept throwing ‘Dodge City’ into the conversation. Only to discover that we were actually driving that way, because they thought I really wanted to go there! We stayed on many university precincts on the way. Always a cheap feed, accommodation and a safe environment. One night our luck ran out finding accommodation on campus. Brian and I  climbed in through the open window of a library and slept the night on leather sofas until woken up be security guards next morning. The Grand Canyon was everything we expected and skirting around Utah we spent the night in Las Vegas taking in free food and drink at the tables. In nearby Gallop we got a less than friendly reception in a restaurant. The waitress literally dropping our meals on the table in front of us. When we questioned two uniformed police on just what was the problem, they told us that she thought we were Americans ‘out of area’. Eventually our British accents did identify us but we were warned not to wander more than a hundred yards either side of the restaurant, because it was some crazy town after dark.

Arriving in LA we got to stay at a fraternity house free of charge. If you saw the state of this ‘party house’ you’d know why. Still it served a purpose and we got an insight into ‘Animal House’ culture. 

At point Brain and I left the other three after dropping off the car. 

An amazing coincidence then occurred because at Venice beach we bumed to an Israeli I knew for Tel Katzir. This former kibbutznik actually had two vacant apartments at Venice and West Hollywood and this is where we stayed for a few days. Before leaving California we also went to Calabasas to stay with a bloke I had helped out in Israel. His name was Mike  ‘Malibu’ Clare. 

He had actually arrived back in Calabasas that day from a year’s overseas travel. His old man replacing his Blue Corvette with a new Red one!

Our next car delivery assignment was to drop of a brand new Camero sports car to Houston. Fortunately, I knew a couple down there, Chuck and Sally.  They put us up for a while and showed us some deep south hospitality. Eventually, it was time for me to return to the UK for University. Brian travelled on, doing on an epic Central and South American journey. He arrived in Argentina not long before the Falklands conflict was to erupt and we had to help him get back home to Scotland!

My story had a few funny elements on the way home. At Houston International I sat and spoke with five young Morman chaps for hours while waiting. Not mocking them but definitely questioning what was the basis of their faith, before they flew to Brazil on a ‘conversion tour’. They gifted me ‘the Book of Morman’.

I stopped off in New York for a few nights. My accommodation was with the late Ray Dorn, my good friend Zvika Dorn’s elder brother who worked on Wall St. Ray being a strict practicing Jew, I couldn’t actually go to his house until sundown on Saturday evening. With a few hours to spare I wandered into Central Park. The further I went the busier it got. Eventually I asked someone what was going on. A local told me “ There is a concert, Simon & Garfunkel live in Central Park”. I had stumbled into a classic occasion with a million other people. I stayed for seven or eight songs and got almost to the front. Then as I was leaving, I noticed that mounted police were forcing spectators to remain standing. Someone explained that the police believed that if they allowed people to sit down, they would start smoking marijuana. Who knew? 

Terrie was also arriving at Heathrow when I got home. In the end I waited what turned out to be 14 hours for her at the airport. Love is worth it.