No-One Famous

No-One

Famous

By

Phil Morgan

Contents.

Prologue

70s & 80s

Dads Adoption, London & Ireland

The Morgan’s

Birthdays, Haircuts & The A.T.C

School, Parties & Zeeta

Miriam

Friends

Bikes, Cars & Anna

College & Work

R.A.F

Cosford Drinking Weekend & Martin

Devon & Jets

Sharon

Acknowledgments

Prologue

May 1972. My mother is lying in the bed in agonising pain; my father is across the road pacing the front room of their friend’s house. Not quite sure where my sister was thou....

‘Push a little bit more…. A bit more….’ The midwifes voice isn’t exactly soothing, I was putting up a bit of a fight and she wasn’t happy about the delay, it looked a bit scary out there I can tell you.

‘Almost there, one more big push now ….Congratulations Mary it’s a boy!!!’

‘I couldn’t give a dam if it was a duck!!!’ and with those immortal words I was brought forth into the world….a duck.

Chapter 1.

70s & 80s

My childhood was a good one. I had a Welsh father and an Irish mother, what more could a child ask for? I had a sister, Claire, who was four years older than me and that was it. My parents had moved to Wales a few years before I was born onto a new estate in the little village of Ton-Teg. A cul-de-sac with 21 houses which overlooked playing fields at one end. Some of my first memories were of going to nursery in a small village hall in Llantwit Fardre. A bunch of kids in one place being allowed to do pretty much what we wanted as long as we all sat down half way through the morning and drank warm milk. We had a fancy dress there once, for some unknown reason. I believe I was dressed up in a cowboy outfit. There was another kid there dressed in a martial arts outfit and thought himself as the new Bruce Lee. He just went around the other kids shouting at them, kicking, punching and yelling a bit more. This came to a drastic end when one kid had enough of this and went over and kicked him in the nuts. Just for that one memory nursery was good.

Growing up in the 70s and the 80s was great. The 70s were still a time where people still left their doors open, everyone said hello to each other, the next door neighbours turned into uncle so-and-so and auntie so-and-so and depending on your religion the local holy man would pop around for tea whenever he liked. Now I don’t have a huge recollection of my early year’s just brief memories now and again. Seventy seven was a big year. It was the queen’s golden jubilee and everyone had huge street parties. Now street parties back then were great, everyone, not just in my street but all over the place got as many tables as they could out in the street, cover them in cheap paper covers and supply as much food as possible. All the kids would sit around the tables and stuff their faces full of crap and fizzy drink with so many additives and colourings that it would probably kill an elephant. It was great.

It was also a time that saw major changes around the neighbourhood I lived. Shopping centres were being built new housing estates where popping up everywhere and we even had our own sports centre being built. Unfortunately they left the council estate, or as us kids used to call it ‘The Bronx’ as it was. Building sites were great places to play as a kid. Unlike today’s health and safety, back then there was none. Every weekend or around five o’clock each school day after the workers had gone home us kids would descend onto the sites and have a whale of a time. Climbing scaffolding was the main order of the day along with seeing how many tools we could find. When the sports centre was completed they started holding, amongst other things, world famous roller discos. These were a phenomenon that swept the country, well I think they did. You would go in to the sports centre, rummage through cardboard boxes trying to find two matching roller boots and then try to skate around and around in circles while some bloke plays cheesy chart music. Our sports centre also intruded a bouncy castle into the centre as well. Roller skates and bouncy castles at the same time don’t really work, but hell we were kids what did we care. It was at one of these great events that I claimed my first black eye, whilst on the bouncy castle, with roller skates on.

Need I say anymore?

Now for many kids school is a nightmare, I was no exception. I was also mortified to find out that the tradition of drinking warm milk was still firmly in place On my first day I got told off for trying to run over the sinks in the toilets, it was a tradition that stayed with me for many a year, it was also the day I met someone who would be one of my best friends. I met him sitting in the classroom all by himself. His name was Jason. I sat with him and we had a chat and I introduced him to sink running. He loved it as much as me but never seemed to get into trouble like I did. Maybe I just had a knack for it. Jason and I remained firm friends for the duration of our school and college days.

I was brought up Roman Catholic so I went to a Roman Catholic school. God was big on the agenda I can tell you, with all the year being frog marched down to the local church every couple of weeks to sit in a dark room and tell some bloke what sins you had committed. Now this was all well and good, for a while but, we soon run out of sins to say so the next step was to lie about stuff you had done just for something to say to the bloke on the other side of the grating. We used to have running competitions on who lied the most and who had been given the most Hail Marys and Our Fathers. I remember this one thing in junior school, it was around Good Friday, a religious celebration about the death and resurrection of Jesus, it was called Corpus Christi. Now, if I remember rightly, and please forgive me if I’m wrong, this consisted of having a load of young girls dress in white march around the church with some boy carrying a pillow with a crown thing on it. Te way our school chose this poor boy was to get all the boys to try on the costume which had to be worn on the day. This outfit consisted on shorts, shirt and waist coat. The lucky boy was the one which the clothes fitted, and guess what, that lucky boy was me. My, how happy I was, no really I was...... There are some photos lurking somewhere showing me wearing shorts that were far too tight and far too short with nicely combed hair and a cheesy grin. Exploitation of the young I call it, but at the time it seemed to make sense, sort off.

Another thing about Catholic School was having try outs for the school choir. Now I can’t sing a note, nor can most kids at the age of seven or eight. Let’s face it you just normally shout or screech at that age. But that didn’t put the headmaster, Big Mac we used to call him on account he was bloody huge and had great hair to boot, from lining us up in the main hall and getting us to sing some random hymn. The way he used to choose who sang in the choir was to bend over almost double so that his ear was next to your mouth whilst you sang. He used to stay there and listen to you belting out hymns in good old fashioned kid style while you had the lovely view of his rather overgrown hairy ears. If Big Mac thought you were good enough he used to stand upright look down at you in a most discerning manner and then belt you across the back of your head. This was your signal to leave ranks and go and join the rest of the ‘lucky ones’ off to one side who, then would go along to the church on the Sunday and sing to the gathered hoards of happy bible bashers and your very proud parents.

Discipline was great in those days, what with the cane, the dap, this was a huge plimsoll which we called ‘Di the dap’ and of course, my favourite, the ruler over the palms of your hand. Being beaten around your head only seemed natural. I was a regular visitor in the head masters office in junior school for getting into trouble. Usually from saying something I shouldn’t have, or being caught sink running. I think my parents were always informed of my misdemeanours but being the time it was they let the school system deal with it and nothing more was said. You were always being watched no matter what you did or where you were. Evan at dinner times if you messed up you had to stand on your chair while everyone looked at you. If you messed up in class you had to either stand on your chair or stand in the corner. The thing is these days teachers can’t do anything to pupils but back then when you messed up you were shown to the entire school and the insult was enough to make sure you didn’t do it again. Discipline even spread to everyday life. You had the local police man who lived in his own little house down on Church Road. If you upset someone and they said they were going to call the police you were genuinely frightened. Police were respected for the most and whenever you seen him he always said hello and you always said hello back. I was brought up with the ethos of ‘If you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear’.

Junior school flew by at an alarming rate. Days turned into weeks and weeks into years. They cram so much into your heads it’s hard to believe that you stay sane. I had a whale of a time, me and Jason always messing about and getting into trouble; well, mostly me getting into trouble. It was also when I started getting blurred vision which finally ended with me blacking out on a regular basis. It scared the crap out of me and must have done the same to my parents. I went to several doctors, who didn’t know what was wrong. And then I went to a specialist. How the hell my parents could afford it I will never know. I was taken to the hospital in Cardiff where they attached a wire net thing to my head and injected me with some sort of dye. Now, for a kid this is pretty scary crap. But the doc reckoned that it would sort itself out I would be OK in the end. It took another six-seven years for the blackouts and blurred vision to finally stop but by the time I hit secondary school it didn’t happen much. It wasn’t a fun time. I seem to be Ok now thou….

At the end of each term we used to have a non-uniform fun day. This entailed wearing what you wanted and bringing in a board game of your choice. Someone always brought in Monopoly or a skill game called crazy maze, which entailed getting a small ball bearing through a strange obstacle course by means of a couple of joy sticks at the base of the platform while against an annoying sounding timer. I always brought in my electronic games which where my pride and joy. Pac-man, Frogger and Caveman were the best ones my mum and dad got me over the years and I could play them with my eyes shut and still get the highest scores. We also sat in the main hall and watched cartoons. For several years we were entertained by some old guy with his projector showing the same Tom and Jerry cartoon. After a few years you got to know them scene by scene. Another fun thing was Valentine’s Day. The teachers set up a post box in one of the corridors and if you wanted to send a card to some unsuspecting girl you posted them in there and they would get handed out at registration. I only ever sent cards to same one girl but never got annoyed when I never received one. The same thing was done at Christmas but I got more cards then because I think everyone sent cards to everyone.

Toward the end of junior school and at the beginning of secondary school we started to have Discos in the local church hall. All the kids used to get down there being dropped off around the corner because no-one wanted to be seen with their parents. Everyone wore their best clothes, which, let’s face it were pretty awful. It was the early eighties after all. It was an excuse to get together for about two hours as and watch all the girls dance to some corny chart trash. We done this because it’s a well-known fact that boys can’t dance, and I was no exception. You just had all the girls doing the two step handbag dance as all us boys stood in the shadows leering at them. Teachers didn’t make it easy thou. They used to be there in force, patrolling the perimeter like prison guards seeing if we youngsters were up to no