Barnsbury Boy - James Sanderson - 1958-1963
James Sanderson
Learning the Game
Boardmen changed regularly in betting shops in the sixties as it was normally a part-time job in smaller shops. A lot of young blokes finished work at the markets and then phoned our head office to ask if there was a job going and if so, which shop to go to. Sometimes they were directed to a shop and stayed there until told differently. £2 per afternoon was the going rate; cash in hand. Managers and counterhands were always full time.
At the time of this story I was managing my first shop in Grays Inn Road and on one occasion I borrowed money from my pal Danny Droy (about £70) as I was thinking of buying a car and needed a deposit. Which was actually a total non-starter as I had not even passed my test. (failed four times). Anyway this particular boardman, a much older man, was quite a punter and after winning about £160 on a bet, started raising his stakes in a big way. He thought he couldn’t lose. Little did he know, and how painful it was for me to find out. Come the night of the Wembley Dog Derby, and knowing I still had Danny’s money in the shop safe, he tapped me for it before he left work, and like a fool, I said okay. He told me that he would pay me back the next morning and when an outsider won the big race he did a runner. A lot of dosh for me to lose.
Funnily enough, a year or so later there was a documentary about the gamblers anonymous 'help' programme on tv, and there he was, sitting in the circle of losers. Spielers really can weave tales to make a person believe them and hand over money. My ex-late mother-in-law was one - she got one man, a friend of her other son-in-law whom she had only met once, to 'lend' her one thousand pounds. He never saw that again.
The moral is, of course, learn by your mistakes. And I did, but as often or not, it was always too bloody late.
Like Father, Like Son
My old man was a loser. I don't mean in the sense that he tried and always failed. I mean that he never tried. He never, ever, tried to better himself. Played safe all his life. He held down a menial job that he did with his eyes closed and got paid commensurately for it. The result being, his family - us - always had fuck all. Can you have less than fuck all? We would have if my Mum hadn't worked full time all the years. Two weeks holiday in August on the south coast only happened because of her. In the late fifties half of London came with us. Packed trains, packed coaches and kids like me, holding bucket and spade, moaning, ‘are we there yet?’
Soon as I was out of nappies my mum gave me to my Nan who lived in the flat next door and went back to work. Needs must, as my father always used to say. What did he know? His need was singular: the pub. Finish work at six then off for a pint or three in whatever pub in the Holloway Road he got to first. I’d been sent on enough errands looking for him.
No bar-leaner, mouthing off as the drink took hold, he sat in the corner on his own doing the Evening Standard cryptic crossword. Then home to his dinner, dried out on the hob. By Thursday he was always skint, but cor blimey, blow-me-down, my Mum happened to get paid on that very day, so when he got home promptly and thirsty, I'd be called up from the grounds where I was happily playing, given money and told to run down to the local off licence for a bottle of VP Red. Half a bottle if my mum had a lot of bills to pay.
As I got older I resented this intrusion on my time and finally one summer's evening I refused to heed my mother's calls, though I eventually responded with a shouted, ’no'. Next thing I knew, my old man put his head over the balcony and called me up. I'd never seen him do that before. We lived on the top floor and I dragged myself up the stairs tutting and moaning, expecting a good telling-off. How wrong could I be? He hit me! Clipped me round the side of my head with an open hand.
"You come up when you're called! D'you hear?" His anger plain to see.
A nod from me through the tears. I'd wee'd in my khaki shorts.
"All right, John. That's enough." My tired mother put up with his demands in those days, but he did listen to her.
She changed my shorts and sent me down the Liverpool Road. Back home, I was grounded, an even worse punishment. Summer meant light evenings and net curtains blowing in open windows. In my bedroom I could hear my mates shouting to each other and it was painful not to be downstairs with them.
That was the only time my Dad ever hit me, but it has stayed with me forever. When he could be bothered, he was usually more subtle. I actually lived in fear of being sent to Boarding School. That was his big threat. He was going to send me to Boarding School if I kept misbehaving. What a joke! He couldn't afford the train fare - never mind the fucking fees. But what did I know?
A creature of habit, he couldn't stand his routine being altered. If my mum wanted to see a show or go to the pictures, then she went out with her friends from work. Or with my aunt Annie who lived in the buildings. As long as he was happy and he was only happy getting quietly pissed, their marriage tottered on. The only change that I noticed was when my brother got married - we shared a bedroom - my parents took our two single beds and I had their double one. That came in handy later.
It would be nice to say that something dramatic occurred in his life and caused him to begin drinking heavily, but that would be a lie. From the moment he acquired the taste he never stopped. Did it run in the family? His father - the grandfather I never knew - died in 1924 of chronic alcoholism at the age of forty-eight.
The last of many generations of glassworkers, my grandfather escaped the heat of the furnace and the grime of Manchester’s back streets and joined the Army on his eighteenth birthday. Demobbed in 1919, he had served twenty-five years, eighteen of them as a Military Policeman. During the Boer War he had volunteered his services to the newly formed Military Provost Staff Corp and was duly accepted. At the time he was a Staff Sergeant, Physical Training Instructor and Musketry Instructor. He also had a First Class Certificate of Education. While his erstwhile companions in the Manchester Regiments died on the fields of France, my grandfather guarded German prisoners-of-war in Wandsworth Prison. In a moment of recall my father said he also guarded the warder’s mess with an equal amount of vigour. So what did this wonder-man do when he finally reached Civvy Street? He became a bar steward at an Officer's Club somewhere near Piccadilly; and died five years later.
Just before my grandfather died, my dad was having his haircut locally and the chatty barber asked him who his father was. When told, the barber replied, “oh, yes, I know him. What a fine figure of a man he was when he came out of the Army. Just look at him now.” My father told me he burst out crying.
It counted for nothing. My dad was seventeen at the time of his death, and at that age, probably oblivious to the effects of his father’s heavy drinking on his now widowed mother and nine siblings. After my grandmother remarried and moved to Bexhill-on-Sea, my father left Wandsworth, and on a friend’s suggestion, he journeyed north east across the River Thames to the Borough of Islington in search of permanent employment.
Jobs were scarce during that time and my father was a loyal man. The owner of the Dry Cleaners that employed him then, and then again when the Second World War ended, was not deserted when my mother suggested my dad get a better paid job. My dad had nothing, wanted little and staying in the same cosy job, was duly rewarded with what he deserved. Nothing. No pension, even though he was promised one. And my mother woke up too late to do anything about it.
By 1964 I was a young man, fully employed and always dressed to the nines. The knowledge of the spending power we teenagers had, came slowly to my friends and me, but what we did know was that we were nothing like our parents. My father’s generation had always been expected to make do and not have any expectations. Know their place. As a result they never changed or grew, and by the time they were fifty they looked old, dressed old, and settled for what they had.
At age twenty in 1966 I was earning a thousand pounds a year. More than my father ever did. He was still in the same job, safe and underpaid. My mother had long given up on him, but changes were round the corner. His ulcers were really playing him up. Rennies weren't enough anymore. An operation for you mister and a change to a much lighter job. Doctor’s orders. He panicked on the day of his hospital admission and my mother had to dress him as he lay frozen on the bed. He thought himself a dead man and I never realised how great was his fear. He survived, but with a stomach half its original size. Never a big eater, he couldn't drink much now, either. One pint and he was bloated. Oh, there were times when he got his hands on some spirit or other, but mercifully those times were few. I always said it was lucky my old man was always skint - otherwise he'd have ended up an alcoholic. Just like his father.
Learning the Game
Boardmen changed regularly in betting shops in the sixties as it was normally a part-time job in smaller shops. A lot of young blokes finished work at the markets and then phoned our head office to ask if there was a job going and if so, which shop to go to. Sometimes they were directed to a shop and stayed there until told differently. £2 per afternoon was the going rate; cash in hand. Managers and counterhands were always full time.
At the time of this story I was managing my first shop in Grays Inn Road and on one occasion I borrowed money from my pal Danny Droy (about £70) as I was thinking of buying a car and needed a deposit. Which was actually a total non-starter as I had not even passed my test. (failed four times). Anyway this particular boardman, a much older man, was quite a punter and after winning about £160 on a bet, started raising his stakes in a big way. He thought he couldn’t lose. Little did he know, and how painful it was for me to find out. Come the night of the Wembley Dog Derby, and knowing I still had Danny’s money in the shop safe, he tapped me for it before he left work, and like a fool, I said okay. He told me that he would pay me back the next morning and when an outsider won the big race he did a runner. A lot of dosh for me to lose.
Funnily enough, a year or so later there was a documentary about the gamblers anonymous 'help' programme on tv, and there he was, sitting in the circle of losers. Spielers really can weave tales to make a person believe them and hand over money. My ex-late mother-in-law was one - she got one man, a friend of her other son-in-law whom she had only met once, to 'lend' her one thousand pounds. He never saw that again.
The moral is, of course, learn by your mistakes. And I did, but as often or not, it was always too bloody late.
Like Father, Like Son
My old man was a loser. I don't mean in the sense that he tried and always failed. I mean that he never tried. He never, ever, tried to better himself. Played safe all his life. He held down a menial job that he did with his eyes closed and got paid commensurately for it. The result being, his family - us - always had fuck all. Can you have less than fuck all? We would have if my Mum hadn't worked full time all the years. Two weeks holiday in August on the south coast only happened because of her. In the late fifties half of London came with us. Packed trains, packed coaches and kids like me, holding bucket and spade, moaning, ‘are we there yet?’
Soon as I was out of nappies my mum gave me to my Nan who lived in the flat next door and went back to work. Needs must, as my father always used to say. What did he know? His need was singular: the pub. Finish work at six then off for a pint or three in whatever pub in the Holloway Road he got to first. I’d been sent on enough errands looking for him.
No bar-leaner, mouthing off as the drink took hold, he sat in the corner on his own doing the Evening Standard cryptic crossword. Then home to his dinner, dried out on the hob. By Thursday he was always skint, but cor blimey, blow-me-down, my Mum happened to get paid on that very day, so when he got home promptly and thirsty, I'd be called up from the grounds where I was happily playing, given money and told to run down to the local off licence for a bottle of VP Red. Half a bottle if my mum had a lot of bills to pay.
As I got older I resented this intrusion on my time and finally one summer's evening I refused to heed my mother's calls, though I eventually responded with a shouted, ’no'. Next thing I knew, my old man put his head over the balcony and called me up. I'd never seen him do that before. We lived on the top floor and I dragged myself up the stairs tutting and moaning, expecting a good telling-off. How wrong could I be? He hit me! Clipped me round the side of my head with an open hand.
"You come up when you're called! D'you hear?" His anger plain to see.
A nod from me through the tears. I'd wee'd in my khaki shorts.
"All right, John. That's enough." My tired mother put up with his demands in those days, but he did listen to her.
She changed my shorts and sent me down the Liverpool Road. Back home, I was grounded, an even worse punishment. Summer meant light evenings and net curtains blowing in open windows. In my bedroom I could hear my mates shouting to each other and it was painful not to be downstairs with them.
That was the only time my Dad ever hit me, but it has stayed with me forever. When he could be bothered, he was usually more subtle. I actually lived in fear of being sent to Boarding School. That was his big threat. He was going to send me to Boarding School if I kept misbehaving. What a joke! He couldn't afford the train fare - never mind the fucking fees. But what did I know?
A creature of habit, he couldn't stand his routine being altered. If my mum wanted to see a show or go to the pictures, then she went out with her friends from work. Or with my aunt Annie who lived in the buildings. As long as he was happy and he was only happy getting quietly pissed, their marriage tottered on. The only change that I noticed was when my brother got married - we shared a bedroom - my parents took our two single beds and I had their double one. That came in handy later.
It would be nice to say that something dramatic occurred in his life and caused him to begin drinking heavily, but that would be a lie. From the moment he acquired the taste he never stopped. Did it run in the family? His father - the grandfather I never knew - died in 1924 of chronic alcoholism at the age of forty-eight.
The last of many generations of glassworkers, my grandfather escaped the heat of the furnace and the grime of Manchester’s back streets and joined the Army on his eighteenth birthday. Demobbed in 1919, he had served twenty-five years, eighteen of them as a Military Policeman. During the Boer War he had volunteered his services to the newly formed Military Provost Staff Corp and was duly accepted. At the time he was a Staff Sergeant, Physical Training Instructor and Musketry Instructor. He also had a First Class Certificate of Education. While his erstwhile companions in the Manchester Regiments died on the fields of France, my grandfather guarded German prisoners-of-war in Wandsworth Prison. In a moment of recall my father said he also guarded the warder’s mess with an equal amount of vigour. So what did this wonder-man do when he finally reached Civvy Street? He became a bar steward at an Officer's Club somewhere near Piccadilly; and died five years later.
Just before my grandfather died, my dad was having his haircut locally and the chatty barber asked him who his father was. When told, the barber replied, “oh, yes, I know him. What a fine figure of a man he was when he came out of the Army. Just look at him now.” My father told me he burst out crying.
It counted for nothing. My dad was seventeen at the time of his death, and at that age, probably oblivious to the effects of his father’s heavy drinking on his now widowed mother and nine siblings. After my grandmother remarried and moved to Bexhill-on-Sea, my father left Wandsworth, and on a friend’s suggestion, he journeyed north east across the River Thames to the Borough of Islington in search of permanent employment.
Jobs were scarce during that time and my father was a loyal man. The owner of the Dry Cleaners that employed him then, and then again when the Second World War ended, was not deserted when my mother suggested my dad get a better paid job. My dad had nothing, wanted little and staying in the same cosy job, was duly rewarded with what he deserved. Nothing. No pension, even though he was promised one. And my mother woke up too late to do anything about it.
By 1964 I was a young man, fully employed and always dressed to the nines. The knowledge of the spending power we teenagers had, came slowly to my friends and me, but what we did know was that we were nothing like our parents. My father’s generation had always been expected to make do and not have any expectations. Know their place. As a result they never changed or grew, and by the time they were fifty they looked old, dressed old, and settled for what they had.
At age twenty in 1966 I was earning a thousand pounds a year. More than my father ever did. He was still in the same job, safe and underpaid. My mother had long given up on him, but changes were round the corner. His ulcers were really playing him up. Rennies weren't enough anymore. An operation for you mister and a change to a much lighter job. Doctor’s orders. He panicked on the day of his hospital admission and my mother had to dress him as he lay frozen on the bed. He thought himself a dead man and I never realised how great was his fear. He survived, but with a stomach half its original size. Never a big eater, he couldn't drink much now, either. One pint and he was bloated. Oh, there were times when he got his hands on some spirit or other, but mercifully those times were few. I always said it was lucky my old man was always skint - otherwise he'd have ended up an alcoholic. Just like his father.