Issue No. 14: FROM THE CRAVEN TO THE GRAVE

The most coveted role (and hated people) in my Junior School were the prefects. These were kids selected by the teachers from the final year pupils, usually ones from the top class. Their principal function was to control the other kids, especially stopping them entering the school at break or dinner (lunch) times. In effect, they were juvenile 'bouncers'.

However, the best job (if not the most prestigious) was to be a milk monitor. This required a couple of the boys counting out the third of a pint milk bottles into the required numbers for each class, loading them into milk crates, carrying them to the classrooms and then carrying back the 'empties' to the collection point.

Making Us Wait

I was lucky enough to be one of the school's two milk monitors, and we roved back and forth to each classroom, ensuring that we took the maximum alloted time to complete our task. Sometimes, when we knocked on the classroom doors, the teachers made us wait ages before letting us in. Maybe they thought that this was a way of showing us who was in charge. In reality, the more time we wasted the better we liked it. One teacher who did this regularly was called Miss Craven. When we were eventually allowed in, one of us would loudly say "Milk straight from the dairy, Miss Craven",which would always make the kids laugh. She could never understand why this remark caused so much mirth, and it increased her annoyance at us. The answer was right in front of her, with 40 odd milk bottles stamped 'Craven Dairies'. It was a kids' silly joke, continually enjoyable because the authoritarian adult it was aimed at didn't get it.

Sad Alvin

The saddest boy in my class was called Alvin Shipman, but his name was not the reason for his condition. We did not know it at the time but Alvin lived a double life. When he left off playing with his boisterous classmates and went home, he entered a world of sectarian and religious zealotry. Alvin's parents were devout Jehovah's Witnesses.

As kids, we did not know much about religion, especially the sects such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. What we did know came from our parents, who regarded them as people to avoid, like the so-called gypsy women who tried to sell them wooden clothes pegs for the washing line. Mam was terrified of being cursed by the 'gypsy women' if she didn't buy their pegs so, when they were about, she would run indoors and hide where she couldn't be seen from either doors or windows. Sometimes this didn't work or she wasn't quick enough to spot the danger. When this happened she reluctantly bought the pegs rather than take on the dreaded curse.

The Jehovah's Witnesses used to knock on doors in our street and, rather than do the sensible thing and run away, they would try to convert the hostile natives. Inevitably, these doorstep conversations (if they could not be avoided) used to turn to the question of blood transfusions (the JWs were against Christians receiving them) and allowing a relative to die because of the lack of them. Doors would be slammed in anger, oaths sworn and remarks passed such as "I should have cut their bloody wrists, then what would they do?"

Alvin, secretly and quietly, belonged to this world. However, even this did not mostly cause his sadness. What did was that Alvin's Dad died suddenly one Friday. That would be cause enough but, for reasons either practical or religious, his Dad was placed in the coffin and the coffin (it was said) was put in Alvin's bedroom until the funeral on the following Tuesday. Rumour has it (as it often does) that Alvin had to sleep in the room with the coffin under his bed. Whatever the true story, it was undoubtedly the case that Alvin emerged from the experience a much changed and sadder boy.

Maybe Alvin had to attend his Dad's funeral, which would also have been an alien and unnerving experience. I cannot recall any school friends being asked to go to a funeral; it was simply not reckoned to be part of a young person's expectations. Of course, it may not have been so bad because there was always the possibility of the dead person being cremated at the town's new, smart crematorium, as opposed to the macabre prospect of crowding around a deep hole in the ground in a vast, damp and mouldy cemetery.

South Shields Crematorium

The crematorium in South Shields was in landscaped grounds and looked rather like a fashionable bungalow. It is an interesting social development in post-war Britain that most modern crematoria are (or would be) pleasant places to visit with their airy design, sense of ordered informality and (in a sense) 'user friendliness'. Perhaps it would be a good idea to scour the country for examples of the best crematoria and to publish the top twelve in a special wall calendar. It could be titled 'Crematorium of the Month' or 'Crème de menthe' as the French would say. 

Postscript

Having presented the Jehovah's Witnesses in a bad light, it's only fair to do the same for the Mormons or, to give them their correct name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

My encounter with them occurred much later, when I was seventeen, and intellectually flirting with a few diverse ideologies, including existentialism, communism and attaining spiritual enlightenment by lying all day in bed. Two young men, neat, well-dressed, extremely polite and from (I suppose) Salt Lake City in Utah knocked on my door one day and began a diverting conversation. I guess that I was interested in them because they were from the (to me) exotic USA and reminded me of the smooth, smart-suited individuals, like Robert Vaughn, in 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' on TV. 

After that first visit, they came a couple of more times to my door, and then I made the fatal mistake that you should never make with either religious zealots or vampires - I invited them in. Mam was busy in the kitchen, so I took them into the living room. To be honest, by this third visit I was growing bored with them and their insistent and drawling monomania, but I lacked both the experience and 'killer instinct' to tell them to 'bunk off'. At the end of the latest session, and much to my surprise, they stood up and invited me to join them in a prayer. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes as one of them intoned. I bowed my head too but kept my eyes open and then espied Mam entering the room, instantly taking in the scene before her and then silently and swiftly exiting. I recognised the look of awe and fear on her face. I knew what she was thinking: "Get out before they try to sell me some pegs!"

I finally managed to rid myself of them when they next visited. This required no special summoning of courage on my part. Being mere short-term visitors to the UK, they were totally unaware of the powerful subterranean forces driving the culture of the nation. They called on the Saturday afternoon of the FA Cup Final. No contest really.