Up a dark, dark staircase is a dark, dark attic. And inside that dark, dark attic is a dark, dark box. And in that dark, dark box is...a ghost! Well, several ghosts, actually.
I have unearthed a class photo from 1964 to take into school. I’m second from left on the front row. The short boy with his tie mysteriously to the right of where it should be. It is an odd fact that on every school photo that was ever taken, my tie is to the right of where it should be.
Two weeks ago, a photographer came into school. He spent the day trying to encourage children into photogenic ranks in order to capture them for posterity. Kyle turned out to be more resistant than most to this strategy. His mum wasn’t going to buy one anyway, so why bother? There’s no point when she’s got a zillion pictures of him on her phone.
Last night, in an effort to convince Kyle to get a hard copy of this key moment on life’s journey, I conducted a search of the attic. It involved clambering through the trapdoor above the landing and entering a world of dust, shadows and cobwebs.
By torchlight, I searched several boxes until I unearthed what I was looking for. The ghosts of children from 52 years ago smiled up at me. An eerie reminder of Chinese burns, dead arms and that thing Haystack did with his knuckles on your head.
Back in class, I pass my photograph around the circle and tell the children about my friends. There’s Smithy, whose dad kept racing pigeons in a shed on his allotment...Nobby Clarke, who played football for Sheffield Boys and could have turned professional...Tank Battersby, who ruled the playground by fear...Saddlebags Johnson, who never let callipers stop him climbing onto the school roof...and Martin the “Milky Bar Kid” Wilkinson, grinning behind NHS specs.
In love with Lorna
My memory of the girls proves less detailed. There’s Deborah, whose grandma lived next door to us...Sheila Butcher, who could arm-wrestle any boy stupid enough to challenge her...and Lorna France (I hesitate here because all I can remember about Lorna is that she was the only girl who wore a bra and that Nobby Clarke claimed she stuffed it with socks)...who all the boys were in love with.
When the photograph reaches Kyle, he suddenly takes an interest. “Your teacher looks right scary,” he says, pointing to the ghost of a huge, rugby-playing Yorkshireman with steel grey eyes, steel grey hair, a steel grey moustache and a scowl that could curdle milk.
“That’s Mr Gough, and he wasn’t as fierce as he looks,” I reply. “He smelled of pipe tobacco and laughed like a drain. And when you did something good, he tousled your hair with a hand the size of Barnsley.”
“Is he alive?” asks Kyle.
“He died 30 years ago,” I reply. “But that’s what’s good about having a class photograph. I mean, wouldn’t you like to have something to remember me when I’m dead?”
“No,” he says, emphatically.
Steve Eddison teaches at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield
