Blid-earth
Boneshekers
[Dream
target date - July 1982]
In spite of the very real
threat of disappearing down bottomless pits, drowning or
being crushed to death in pools of quicksand, the pit tips
always proved irresistable to Blidworth boys.
Whenever we scaled the barbed-wire
fences to play in the forbidden zone, you could always guarantee
someone would lose their footing and go home caked in grey
slurry.
One of
the most daring activities to emerge on the tips was conceived
by my youngest brother Mick and two of his school friends,
Ian and Dean Mawsen. The Mawsen brothers were hefty lads with
bright pink faces and lank blonde hair. They wore faded denim,
donkey-jackets and big boots that made them look like builders
rather than teenage schoolboys. In later
years they attended Smart Cookies and Ramba Zamba gigs and
proved to be formidable bouncers.
Their
pit tip game involved a couple of old bicycles that looked
as if they had come off a rubbish dump. The bikes had no tyres
and trundled noisily on bare wheel-rims. The idea was to drag
these things up onto the top of the tip and then race them
back down the steep hillside. The racket was horrendous as
steel wheels careered dangerously down the craggy slope. In
the hot sun, they generated a great dust cloud too which tended
to make the ride even more trecherous.
Pot
holes were a constant worry, because they always sent the
rider tumbling head-first. The Mawsen brothers dwarfed the
spindly racing-bike frames and it was a miracle they weren't
killed when they came off. They nick-named the bikes 'Boneshekers'
which accurately described the experience of riding them.
Pit
Tip Shootout
Because the tips were
some distance from the village, some kids would go up there
hunting for rabbits with pellet rifles. This activity was
generally reserved for bad lads, so it wasn't really a very
good idea to be up there at the same time as them.
The bar
on pit-tip pellet guns was eventually raised with the arrival
of more powerful shotguns. Normally, a shotgun would be so loud
that it could be heard in the village, even when they were used
on the pit tips. My brother Pete had a 'four/ten' shotgun which
whould have been extremely loud if it wasn't for the fact that
it had been specially customised with a silencer made from a
long stack of metal washers.
A large
grey crater at the bottom of the tips provided a convenient
shooting-range. The crater housed a range of targets, including;
perforated oil-drums, reflective traffic cones, coke cans, various
detergent bottles and the occasional gas-stove cylinder.
The oil
drums made the most noise, but it was the detergent bottles
that kids used to fight over because they could be filled with
red poster paint and then topped-up with slurry-water. When
they went-up, they provided the most authentic blood and guts
display.
On one
occasion, Chris and I followed Pete, Trog and a few others to
the shooting range to have a go for ourselves. It was great
fun, at least until Chris got hold of the shotgun, safety-catch
off, turning around to face us, saying 'What do ah do nah?'
Mawsen
pic in Psychobook Vol 2
Now Chris
can handle a guitar like you wouldn't believe, but a shotgun?
No thanks! We must have looked
ridiculous clambering over rocks in our New Romantic attire,
but it was a great experience and provided some great material
for our psycho-notebooks. The drawing of
big Dean Mawsen armed with a 'matchstick-like' shotgun remains
an all time classic.
Email
Copyright
- Paul Fillingham
Last update - 30 July, 2001
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