I should know !

One of the things I always remember people saying to defend their point of view was "I should know ..." followed by some tenuous claim to have infinite wisdom in the particular area of knowledge under debate.

For instance - talking about football you could say "You can't score from and indirect free kick - I should know ... I've played for the school team all season !" (not that I ever did).

My most hated memory of this was of one lad in my class at primary school. Timothy.

We were doing experiments with light bulbs and motors and batteries etc., and we had a box full of stuff to clip together to make simple circuits. I was about to join up a number of strips of wire to make a light circuit with a switch. A doddle for me even at the tender age of about 9 and a half.

Timothy decided he knew better - single stranded wire could not be used - he'd obviously spotted that some of the wires were multi stranded, and had managed to pick all of them up, as there weren't many. He insisted that the single core wires could not be used - they simply would not work, and single wires didn't conduct electricity.

Now it was pretty damned obvious to me that he was wrong. One - the metal conducted the electricity - it was the same for both wires, and two - most of the wires in the box were single strand and hardly any were multi strand - why the hell would anybody put non-condicting wires in the circuit experiment box, and three - I'd done it before and it worked then.

But Timothy was not to be deterred - he'd got his mad up now and put on his best angry look and voice, and gave me his killer debating point :

"Look single wire's useless for electricity - I should know ... My Dad's an Electrician ! "

I let him use his wires - like I cared anyway, and little Timothy went off thinking he'd won a great victory.

I knew differently. I knew that he was wrong about the wires, I knew that if his Dad had told him that he was wrong about the wires as well, I knew that the occupation of one's father does little to enhance subject specific knowledge in 9 and 10 years olds, and that it certainly hadn't enhanced Timothy's.

And here's the killer - I also knew that Timothy's Dad was a chef - a rather good one actually - and not an electrician.

What I did not know before that day, but quickly learned - was that Timothy was a popular , but ill informed and unintelligent little shit, and he remained so for many years. This put me in good stead for quite some time, although he was too stupid to realise it.

Hit the ground running

When I was in my late teens I went to a lot of football matches. Many of them were away games. All of them were to watch Huddersfield Town.

There was a lot of bravado surrounding all these expeditions. I could go on for hours about the football hooligan related anecdotes, but the most scary for me always happened when you travelled by train to an away game.

This generally involved a football special. The police liked this, since by dropping the price of travel to a ridiculously low level , they could more or less ensure they had 90% plus of the travelling support in one place, on one train, where they could be contained safely (sometimes stuck on a branch line standing still for several hours until they decide we were ready to arrive).

On pulling in to the station, you were once again in the public domain, and it was considered your duty as a Town supporter to make as much noise as possible in as dramatic a way as possible as quickly as you could on arrival.

This meant that everyone wanted to get off the train as soon as they could, so everyone left their seats at the first sign of the station - usually there were loads of people hanging out of the windows anyway.

The trains were usually old ones and had the old style doors - these had a window that could be pulled down, and a door handle on the outside that could be opened by leaning out and twisting. The doors were flung open as soon as the train got alongside a platform - but well before it stopped. As soon as this happened everyone surged for the doors. If you were next in line - you jumped off - as simple as that, which meant that the whole train 'debussed' in a matter of seconds.

This was bloody terrifying - you had to run along the platform as quick as you could to avoid falling flat on your face, and also knowing that there were people in front of you that might fall over, and people behind you running fast into you as well.

Whilst doing this you were obliged to sing ! Usually the chant was "We're here again, We're here again" - as soon as you'd got your footing this changed to "Huuud eeers fieeeeeld, Huuud eeers fieeeeeld"

I never ever bit the dust, but someone always did - usually pretty painful and causing split lips and grazed knees and forearms. But hey ! We were hard ! so what did we care ?