Finbar

Our stories (David Finn and Tony Barlow) ...written by Tony Barlow ...illustrated by Paul Sterry

For Sue. This book is dedicated to David Finn, for his friendship, sense of humour, mischievous nature and kindred spirit.

Finbar the robot We were 7 or 8 at the time when our teacher Mr O’Shea came into the classroom with several large cardboard boxes full of junk and announced to all of us that we were about to undertake a project. We were asked to delve into the boxes and take out whatever we wanted to and create something.

Me and Dave always worked together and set about rummaging through the boxes to see what we could come up with.

I remember taking several toilet roll tubes from one box and a few other bits and pieces including batteries and bits of wire and with the help of a lot of cellotape created our very own robot. Simple as it was, we were nevertheless very proud of our creation and decided we should give it a name. After several unimaginative suggestions like Robert, we eventually decided that a combination of our surnames seemed a sensible way forward. And so Finbar was created!

I remember feeling slightly aggrieved that my surname had taken second place and suggested Barfinn as an alternative but we both agreed that it didn’t quite have the same ring to it! So the name stuck and Dave was nicknamed Finbar as a result.

‘Eliza Goblin’ (alias Elizabeth Warren) and the unexpected school visitors It was a warm but damp day just after the end of the school summer holidays. As we did every day, we were making our way home on our lunch break. School meals were almost inedible, so the ride home at lunch time on my bicycle was a routine we were used to.

As we made our way along Beake Avenue, past the little row of shops that were a hodgepodge of bric-a-brac, nylon and knitting patterns that no one bothered with, we were distracted by the swarms of daddy long legs that appeared to be attracted to something in the grass in the damp conditions.

We immediately took full advantage of the situation and, having removed the batteries, began to collect as many of the daddy long legs as we could cram into my bicycle horn. Having little concern for their health or welfare and with no obvious plan in mind as to what we were going to do with the little creatures, we continued on our journey home.

Heading back to school after lunch we were still unsure of what to do with our catch until, shortly after approaching the school gates, we were confronted by Eliza Goblin (real name Elizabeth Warren) and, unbeknown to her, me and Finbar had hatched a plan.

After parking the bike in its usual position at the rear of the school playground, we proceeded to carry handfuls of the distressed and disorientated insects up to the classroom. We made our way swiftly to Eliza Goblin’s desk, opened the lid and deposited them all before our classmates arrived back from lunch.

Altar boys Being an altar boy was a great way of skipping lessons during the school week. In the catholic church there is a mass held every day and in addition to the regular mass there is a funeral service most weeks. Me and Finbar took full advantage of this opportunity and soon became regulars at Holy Family church. We would arrive about 15 minutes before the mass was due to start and prepare the altar for the priest.

It was during this preparation that we discovered where the communion wine was stored. And as soon as Father Diamond had left the sacristy we helped ourselves to a few swigs of this strange red wine.

I remember one time taking a few swigs before mass started. We chatted and laughed throughout the whole service whilst knelt, intoxicated on the altar steps.

Our punishment was 15 Hail Marys and 15 Our Fathers.

Stones in the milk Another unexpected opportunity to avoid some time in the classroom arose and me and Finbar volunteered to be milk monitors.

I can still remember the small half pint bottles of milk which were delivered daily and left in the school playground. There were several crates full and they all had shiny red foil tops. I assume there were enough bottles to go around for those children who had chosen to have school milk.

Finbar soon discovered that it was quite easy to remove the foil top and put it back on so that it appeared undisturbed. We both found this highly amusing and became excited at the possibilities this presented.

At first we would remove the top from a couple of the bottles and drink the milk, put the top back on and then report them being delivered empty. This novelty soon wore off and it appeared we were close to becoming rumbled so we decided to be a bit more creative.

We would remove the foil tops from several of the half pint bottles and drink a mouthful of the milk. Then we would put into the bottle, until it was full, a small handful of stones from the playground. We used to laugh at the randomness of who may be the unlucky recipients.

Singing in the choir Finding new ways of avoiding lessons was always at the forefront of our plans. So when the opportunity was presented to join the school choir we were the first to volunteer.

We knew that choir practice took place during our Geography lesson as we had heard the dreadful sound coming from down the corridor on many occasions.

So, Geography or Choir? Decision made.

Having attended the first few practice sessions however, we quickly became bored with ‘Oh come all ye faithful’ and ‘Gloria in excelsis deo’ and wondered whether we had made a mistake.

I suggested that we consider returning to the study of ‘Contours’ and the Earth’s flora and fauna, but Finbar had other ideas... “Let’s not sing the same words as the choir,” he said. “Let’s make up our own, it’ll be more fun.”

So that’s how our days of practicing with the choir continued. While the other choir members screeched ‘Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant’, we sang ‘Oh what are you doing, after school this evening?’

Church sermon It was at the end of mass and we had just changed out of our surplices. We had been altar boys as well as mass attendees for some time now and were familiar with the priest’s sermons.

We’d had a few swigs of communion wine from the sacristy and the church had emptied and me and Finbar found ourselves alone in the huge empty building. It was another one of those opportunities that was too good to miss.

I instructed Finbar to sit in the front row and made my way to the church pulpit. We had witnessed Father Diamond’s passionate pleas to donate generously on many occasions and so it wasn’t too difficult to act out the scene.

“We need more money”, I shouted in my best impersonation of an Irish priest. “Please give generously, the church roof is in need of urgent repair.” Finbar heckled and laughed in response.

Unfortunately, in the midst of our performance, Marian Hughes, a girl from our class and also the daughter of one of the staunchest Irish Catholic families in the whole of the parish, happened into the church and witnessed the tail-end of our sermon. She left the church in shock horror and her screams of “blasphemy, we’re all gonna die” could be heard fading off into the distance as she ran away.

We finished our performance and marched off in anticipation of a good hiding from the headmaster, who duly obliged.

Stealing from the church plate Pocket money was a rarity so we were continually looking for ways to make some money to keep us in the lifestyle we had become accustomed to. Finbar hatched a plan.

We attended mass every Sunday and had witnessed the collection plate being passed around during the service many times. We never had any money to put in the plate but were astonished at people’s generosity (or fear).

The plate was always full of silver and bronze coins and the occasional pound note. it reminded me of the priest’s sermons and the pleas to give generously.

Finbar reckoned if I sat to his left at Sunday mass, he’d be able to manoeuvre the plate between us so as not to raise any suspicion. He very quickly mastered the art of pretending to deposit a few coins onto the plate but taking a handful out instead. We took it in turns to do the manoeuvring and soon became adept at ‘raising our own funds’.

We joked over recent years that we were probably the instigators of the more modern collection bags with the slot in the top for depositing monies.

F’ting f’ting Young children tend not to take things as seriously as perhaps adults would like them to and the catholic mass was certainly one of those things. We listened to the priest’s proclamations and gave the learned responses without having any idea of the meaning or understanding of the significance of what was being said.

We found one of the congregation’s responses particularly funny and it kept us amused over the years at every catholic mass we attended.

It was during the Eucharistic Prayer when the priest proclaimed ‘Let us give thanks ‘to the Lord our God” and the response was ‘It is right and fitting’. For some unknown reason we found the word ‘fitting’ hilarious and followed the response with our own ‘f’ting f’ting’.

‘It is right and fitting, f’ting, f’ting became our own version of the Eucharistic Prayer response.

Classroom flood My bike had been out of action all week and as a result we walked to school on this particular Monday morning. Approached by several excited children from our class along the way, we listened to a variety of interpretations of how our class room had managed to become flooded over the weekend.

The general theory was that someone had left the taps running in the boys’ cloakroom and also left the plug in the sink and apparently this hadn’t been discovered until the caretaker had done his regular rounds first thing Monday morning.

We all continued on our way to school not knowing quite what we would find when we got there. The next thing I remember was the headmaster calling “Barlow, Finn my office”.

I suppose it stands to reason that when you lead a lifestyle of mischief you do run the risk of taking the blame for some things that you know nothing about.

Pilgrims Fag Machine We started smoking around the age of nine. Finbar’s dad Jack was the only smoker in our two families so we were limited to how many fags we could take without him noticing. Neither of us particularly enjoyed the habit but we knew we shouldn’t be doing it and that added to the excitement.

The odd fag from Jack though was not sufficient to maintain the habit.

Pilgrims newsagent on Beake Avenue was a regular haunt for us both.

We could be found there most afternoons after school, pinching a variety of sweets or whatever else took our fancy. Mr Pilgrim would follow us around the shop in an attempt to ensure we paid for what we took but we soon wised up to this tactic and adopted a strategy of splitting up during our foray.

It wasn’t long though before our new tactics were rumbled and we were now being followed around the shop by both Mr Pilgrim and Master Pilgrim.

A change of strategy was urgently required and came to us purely by chance.

Some time previously I had shown Finbar my dad’s Irish coin collection and he had figured that the Irish half crown was exactly the same size as the English version. Outside of Pilgrims’ shop there was a cigarette vending machine which we had used once or twice when we were able to pinch the odd half a crown from somewhere.

As the internal raids on Pilgrims were becoming less and less fruitful, this external opportunity, away from the watchful gaze of Mr Pilgrim, was too good to miss. We could kill two birds with one stone. Maintain our lifestyle of petty crime and keep us in fags for the foreseeable future.

So a few days later we removed the Irish half crowns from my dad’s collection and put the plan into action. We were careful to carry out our external raids after the shop had closed and the surrounding area was quiet but the plan worked well and we stocked up on Players Weights, No.6, Embassy and Peter Stuyvesant.

At the age of nine, we hadn’t given much thought to the potential consequences and continued our raids on Pilgrims’ fag machine until the Irish half crowns ran out.

But I clearly recall having to explain to Mr Murphy our headmaster, Finbar’s dad, my dad and of course Mr Pilgrim, why the cigarette machine outside of Pilgrims’ shop was full of Irish half crowns. I’m still not sure to this day how Mr Pilgrim made the connection.

Whitmore Park School Hut My house in Derwent Road was a stone’s throw from Whitmore Park school and being a non-catholic primary school, we had very little to do with it or the children who went there. Nevertheless it was a rival school and we occasionally encountered that rivalry at things like the area sports days.

It was during the summer holidays that me and Finbar decided that we should take a closer look at this rival school. We climbed over the gate and broke into the school hut which was on the edge of the playing fields. Feeling quite pleased with ourselves and our new discovery we lit a fag in celebration.

The hut was full of newspapers and rubbish and didn’t appear to be in use and as our cigarette smoke quickly filled the small space we made several unsuccessful attempts to open the window but it was jammed. My recollections of what happened next are vague but Finbar must have decided it would be fun to set fire to the rubbish and so he struck another match and we both ran out of the door and across the playing fields.

Coming home late. And Drunk. Age 16.

We were out, late, in Coventry City Centre. My dad told me to be home by 10 o’ clock, just like he always did. Of course, we caught the last bus home at 11 which meant that we wouldn’t reach my house until around 11.45pm.

I knew I was in trouble.

Finbar offered to get off the bus at my stop, we only lived one stop apart, and he would walk the rest of the way home. As we walked up the road I could see my dad standing on the doorstep, silhouetted against the light.

As we got nearer the house me and Finbar said our goodbyes and I started to walk towards home. In front of me I could see my dad, hands on hips and behind me I could hear Finbar humming the ‘Death March’.

I received a rollicking as normal both that night and the next morning with my dad shouting “and you can tell that David Finn that I heard him humming the Death March.”

Finbar’s first Saturday job Finbar was 6 months older than me and he was very pleased to secure his first Saturday job at a City centre shoe shop called Saxone. He had been working there for several weeks when he invited me in to take a look at some shoes. I recall being slightly apprehensive at the prospect, knowing that there was inevitably an ulterior motive for his invitation.

On arriving outside I managed to attract Finbar’s attention without actually going into the store. He nonchalantly strolled through the shop and walked outside to meet me. “I’ll go back in”, he said “you point to a pair of shoes you like in the window and I’ll put them in the bins out the back. Give it half an hour and you can go and get them.”

The chance of a brand new pair of shoes was too good to miss and I pointed to a pair that I really liked. I walked away feeling pretty excited but still nervous about the prospect of searching through the bins later on. I wandered around for half an hour and then returned to the rear of the shoe shop.

Several things were going through my mind as I searched through the bins.

Maybe Finbar hadn’t managed to get them out, maybe he’d been caught red handed. But my worries were unfounded. I soon discovered a shoe box which quite obviously contained a pair of shoes and I made a quick getaway.

When I felt I was at a safe distance and hadn’t been followed I opened the box with anticipation. I can still sense the shock horror when I looked at the dreadful shoes inside. Later that afternoon when I met Finbar after work and told him he’d got the wrong pair, he said that he’d thought it was a strange choice.

Jack’s Triumph Herald Our bus trips into Coventry became more frequent as we started to get older.

It was normal for us to catch the bus into town at around 7 o’clock and visit the usual haunts. Occasionally we would miss the last bus and have to walk the hour long journey home. But more often than not we made sure we were on the 11 o’clock back to Whitmore park.

When my dad decided to buy a shop and we moved out to Brownshill Green transport became more difficult. The bus into town was no problem but there was no bus home for me after 10 and the walk was around an hour and a half.

So we would both get the last bus back to Finbar’s house. By the time we got back it was normally around 11:30 and everyone in the Finn household was asleep. I would wait outside while Finbar went in the house to get his dad’s car keys. He would then open the garage doors, reverse Jack’s Triumph Herald out of the garage and I would jump in the passenger seat.

It was probably a 5 mile round trip to Brownshill Green and back for Finbar (drunk). ‘Fast as you like me hearties’ I would say in my best Captain Pugwash voice as the car pulled away and we laughed all the way to my house. As far as I know Finbar may have laughed all the way back home.

Our stories (David Finn and Tony Barlow)

...written by Tony Barlow ...illustrated by Paul Sterry