Being the Old Pro.

I sang in public once, you know. I was about eight and I’d gone to the British Legion Club in Cobridge with my parents. My grandmother lived in Cobridge and had some sort of connection with the Club, I think.

It was a rough area even then. I remember some posh person’s car wheels being stolen one night. Heaven knows what a posh person was doing in Cobridge, but there must have been a reason because only posh people had cars in those days. I expect he was either a doctor or a debt collector. (It must have been a ‘he’ because only men were allowed to drive in those days, too. Women weren’t considered to have the right kind of mind to handle either navigational skills or logic. It should be said, however, that their superior skill in fixing babies’ nappies with safety pins was duly acknowledged. Nappies were big pieces of cloth back then that had to be fixed with cold steel and washed when they became soiled. There were none of these throwaway, padded things that people use now.)

‘Get on with it.’

‘OK.’

So, Cobridge was a rough area, and the British Legion Club was the nearest we plebs ever got to cabaret. My mother and grandmother were engaged in making cheese and onion sandwiches for the assembled unwashed, as I recall, when the man on the stage asked for volunteers to get up and sing a song with the band. I wasn’t lacking in confidence at that age, so I was the first taker.

I sang a very proper, romantic, grown up ballad, and was later told that all the other mothers (who were also helping with the catering endeavours) cooed and swooned and said ‘ahh…’ and ‘doesn’t he sing beautifully’ a lot. And I got five shillings for my efforts, which I suppose makes me a professional. Five shillings is 25p in modern money, but it was enough for two pints of beer then. I didn’t spend it on two pints of beer, of course. As far as I remember, I put it into my savings towards a new piece of track for my train set. Or maybe a gun. A toy one. Cobridge wasn’t quite that rough.