Progress

A sunny Saturday morning in September, 1960. Bert Platt, the World’s Best Dad (he has the cup from Woolies to prove it), is standing under a pawnshop’s three golden balls and peering through the grimy window at a ‘JOMMETRY SET’. Beside him is a Brylcreemed short back and sides in a new school uniform. Bert left school at fourteen and got a job in the Jacob’s Biscuit factory. He is very proud and a little in awe of his clever son Tommy, who has just started in the A class of The Collegiate, one of the best grammar schools in Liverpool, and is now doing things like Maths and Latin.

Bert gazes at the stainless steel compass and dividers nestling in the (slightly dented) black case among unredeemed watches and wedding rings. Then he eyes the price tag beside it. He sucks his false teeth at the thought of all the pints and ciggies he’ll have to miss if he splashes out the nineteen shillings and eleven pence. But he wants his lad to make the most of the opportunities his own generation never had, to do well and get on. When he nudges Tommy and says: ‘I may know nothing about Maths, matey, but I do know you need good tools to do a good job, so I’ll get you that,’ the boy’s smile lights up the street and he blurts out: ‘Cor, really? Thanks, dad!’

A little over three years later Tommy discovered girls and started sagging off lessons. He didn’t take his O-levels, left school at fifteen and got a job on the socks counter in T.J. Hughes.

Paul Murgatroyd