Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (9 page)

T
he train pulled into Loughborough on a fine and sunny Saturday lunchtime and I hopped cheerfully out.

I’d rushed to the Internet and booked the ticket the very same night I’d managed to find Anil’s number. He was heading back
home that weekend to see his parents and had immediately invited me to stay. I’d had no hesitation in saying yes. I’d known,
there and then, that this would be
fun
.

The next morning, of course, I’d considered the potential awkwardness of it. Of spending a weekend revisiting things that
I’d never thought I’d need or want to revisit. But what if this was exactly what I needed? What if all I needed was a quick
blast from the past to be able to move on?

And anyway—this was a one-off. A salute to times gone by. All I was doing was updating my address book. Making an effort.
Doing
something. Seeing a friend.

The station hadn’t changed one bit in the sixteen years since I’d last seen it. And I mean not
one
bit. But then, as I’d find out, nothing much
did
change in Loughborough. I’d managed to spend six happy years here. Happy years of not much more than cycling about, and running
around. Of mild, leafy summers and mild, never-all-that-chilly winters and mild, conker-filled autumns… which reminded me
of something…

CONKED OUT!

Delayed by other events, the annual conker championship at Holywell Primary School, Loughborough, between finalists Timothy
Sismey and Daniel Wallace was declared a draw when, after thirty “strikes” each, both boys had registered the same number
of hits.

Impressive enough. But even
more
impressive… one witness described the event as “eye-popping.” Oh yeah. And I’ll tell you what: it
had
been eye-popping. An eye-popping finale to a
legendary
competition. But the truth was—and this breaks my heart—Timothy Sismey had
won
that year, not drawn. My prize conker, Brutus—discovered under a bush, as if a gift from God—had been splintered and scattered
across the school hall, in full view of more than two hundred excited children, their tiny fists punching the air, as the
classic face-off they’d been waiting weeks to witness had finally ended. The annual conker competition was the highlight of
our year—trained for in every playtime and on the slow walk home after school. Dozens had entered, but only the brave and
talented few had made it through to the finals. This year had not been without controversy. Luke Trehearne had been banned
after rumors had surfaced that his dad had been secretly varnishing his conkers. Which is a rumor that twenty years later
could land you jail time. But now, here we were—me versus Sismey. My con ker nemesis. The battle of the 1980s. And Sismey…
had
triumphed.

I had accepted my defeat with grace. We had both been given a box of Toffifee bought from a garage as prizes. Tim, as the
winner, received a 24-pack. Mine contained a mere eight. But I never really got over it. His victory over me was made all
the worse by the
Echo
’s inaccurate coverage of the event. “Congratulations!” family friends would say when they saw me. “I read about the conker
championship.” I would then have to tell them that they were mistaken, that Timothy Sismey was the real victor, that I had
come in a mere second. And in that moment I would see their respect and admiration for me dwindle, so I’d tell them about
the swimming gala, but I just knew as they walked away that they were thinking, “I’m
sure
P. Walls won that…” Since then, I’d kept largely quiet about the whole thing.

Incidentally, you might be surprised that the
Loughborough Echo
decided to report on what now, more than twenty years later, seems a little less important than it did then. But this is
the
Loughborough Echo,
where no story is too small. These are four completely genuine headlines from the
Loughborough Echo,
which all ran in the
same edition,
this year:

This was the news that a stranger had been spotted in town, and that some locals had stared at him.

This was the news that someone had just found out that Loughborough had once nearly had trams, but then in the end hadn’t.

This was the news that someone had taken a picture of a moth in their back garden. It was accompanied by a picture of a moth.
It remains unclear whether this was the same moth that had been seen in the garden, but the eyewitness does go to some lengths
to explain that he had seen a moth the
previous
year, although that was in the
front
garden.

And finally, my favorite:

No one injured in an accident! Alert Larry King! And all of these incredible events occurring in just one week in the Bronx
of the East Midlands—Loughborough! Suddenly, I am surprised that news of a conker match between two children was not at the
time deemed worthy of a souvenir pull-out section.

I folded the article back up, put it in my pocket and wandered out of the station. And there, standing by the entrance, under
the big sign saying LOUGHBOROUGH, was the man I’d come to see.

Anil Tailor.

We jumped into a sparkling, mint-green Mini and Anil revved it up. “It’s my sister-in-law’s. You know Sunil got married? I’m
an uncle now!”

Jesus. An uncle. Anil didn’t look old enough to be an uncle. Mind you, he hardly looked old enough to be a
nephew.
When I’d seen him in Huddersfield that time, he’d looked every bit the man. He’d shaved his head and he was wearing smart
clothes, the successful young architect about town. But today—today he looked like the boy I used to know. I’m not saying
he was wearing tiny velour running shorts and a Ninja Turtles top, like the old days—but there was something in his eyes.
And something in the fact that here we were, together again. A kind of childish glee.

“So to what do I owe the plea sure?” asked Anil.

“I just realized it’d been so long,” I said. “I mean, I know we saw each other that time in Yorkshire, but…”

“Hey—check it out!” he said, pointing at the coach ahead of us. The sign on the back read WALKER COACHES.

“Remember Andrew Walker from school?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“That’s one of his coaches!”

Blimey. So Andrew Walker was now Loughborough’s premier coach magnate. He probably had a red leather chair and smoked cigars.
I still thought of him as the kid whose stink bomb accidentally went off in his pocket during assembly one day. He was also
the first of us to admit that he got funny feelings when he saw Sue Ellen from
Dallas
in the shower.

“What about the other guys? Do you know anything about them?” I asked.

“Remember Richard De Rito?”

“Yeah. His dad ran the Mazda dealership. He had a different car every month. His dad told us it was because he was in the
witness protection program.”

“Well, he’s married now. And Louisa Needham—she’s married too. To Guy.”

“A guy?”

“No—Guy. A guy called Guy.”

“She was the first girl I ever sent a valentine to. She used to be obsessed with Shakin’ Stevens. I wonder if Guy looks like
Shakin’ Stevens—that would certainly mean Louisa’s life had worked out as planned. I used to hang around her house. I used
to play Jet Set Willy in her brother’s room.”

Anil shot me a concerned look.

“What’s Jet Set Willy?” he said.

“A game,” I said.

Another concerned look.

“What
kind
of game?”

“A
computer
game.”

He looked relieved.

“I never played that. Thank God it’s a
computer
game. You hear
stories
about people’s childhoods… hey, remember Michael Amodio?”

“Of
course
I remember Michael Amodio!”

He was, after all, the second name in the Book.

“He’s still in Loughborough. We should surprise him!”

I thought about it. Would that be weird?

Yeah.

But sod it…

“We
definitely
should!”

I was beaming. This would be
fun.
Plus, I’d be updating
two
addresses in my address book. Two for the price of one! Not that that was what this was all about. No, no. This was just
a today thing. An excuse to do something random and youthful and not at all grown-up.

We passed a sign saying TOWN CENTER.

“Let’s drive that way so you can get your bearings…”

And so we did. We drove past Geoff’s Toys, which amazingly hadn’t shut down yet, despite seemingly
always
having a sale on. We passed Charnwood Music, where my mum had signed me up to an ill-fated series of guitar lessons with
a man named Roger. Roger had been a lovely teacher, with one bizarrely long thumbnail which was useful for guitar-work but
absolutely terrifying when you shook his hand. Things had gone well at first, but we’d had an argument one day when it became
clear he was teaching me “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” instead of “Thriller” as I’d insisted. And there was the Curzon cinema.
I thought back to my ninth birthday, when my mum had treated me and half a dozen friends to see the new action film in town—
Red Sonja.
Sadly, it wasn’t until the film had started that anyone realized that the Curzon had put the wrong audience rating up. Someone
had placed a PG where a 15 should have been, and my mum was too embarrassed to move us, as we all just sat there, wide-eyed
and mildly traumatized, as heads flew across the screen, swords cut through faces and blood spurted violently from sockets
where arms had once been. Oh, and then Brigitte Nielsen gave Arnold Schwarzenegger a “special hug,” at which point Mum tried
to distract us all by dropping a pound on the floor and shouting “Scramble!”

And there—on the corner. McDonald’s. Now that may not sound like a big thing to you, but the arrival of McDonald’s in Loughborough
was absolutely one of the defining moments of the late 1980s. Even bloody
Moscow
got one before we did. Up until ’87, we’d simply had a Wimpy, where you had to share your table with grannies drinking tea,
and you had to eat with a knife and fork and use paper serviettes. Despite this, it was a regular Saturday afternoon hangout.
Even Gary, the DJ who ran the roller disco in the Leisure Center, ate there sometimes. Gary was the coolest guy in Loughborough.
Possibly even the coolest guy in the whole of the North Leicestershire area. He was probably about twenty, and he wore white
jeans and Hawaiian shirts and had blond highlights and he
knew my name.
He’d sometimes say hello to me in the Wimpy, which made me feel incredibly grown-up. He was Loughborough’s George Michael,
and
he had a
girlfriend.
Which made him way cooler than George Michael, who, to be honest, never seemed to be able to meet the right girl.

And for a while at least, all I wanted in the world was to be like Gary. All I wanted was to grow up and run a weekly two-hour
roller disco in a regional leisure center for children. Only now do I realize he probably worked in Kwik-Fit the rest of the
time. Anyway, one day in the Wimpy, after Gary had climbed into his electric-blue Ford Capri and shot away, we looked up and
were amazed to see a huge, red banner being put up outside the town hall… we rushed out and read it.

We had stood and stared at it, in stunned, silent awe—me and Andy “Clementine” Clements. We couldn’t believe it.
We
had been
chosen! We
were to get a
McDonald’s!
We may have hugged at this point.

The day it opened, we were first in the queue. Neither of us could handle a Big Mac—in those days we couldn’t even finish
a can of Coke—but the fries and the chicken nuggets and the barbecue sauce were a taste
sensation.
And on its opening day, you got to meet Ronald McDonald himself! He’d come over specially for the opening—he must’ve looked
ridiculous on the plane—and in what I could only assume was an attempt to fit in, he’d even adopted a gruff, local accent.
He was calling people “me duck” and hiding his American roots and he seemed to know his way around town already! I wanted
to shake his hand; to thank him for what was
surely
the finest cuisine the world had ever known. I wanted to know how he’d done it; how a simple clown with a ragtag group of
friends had founded one of the global sensations of the 1980s. But I never got the chance. The last time I saw him was when
he was being driven away in a yellow transit van with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was quite an occasion, having
Ronald McDonald in town—the only other celebrity I saw in Loughborough was Barbara Windsor, the day she opened the Kwik Save
on the high street, when I’d decided my new hobby was autograph collecting. You might remember me appearing in the local newspaper
expressing my delight.

But soon, McDonald’s was a firm part of our Saturday afternoons—as established as the Woolworths pick ’n’ mix counter and
a walk around the market, marveling at the stolen Liverpool tops and knock-off
A-Team
duvet covers.

The A-Team
had been my
particular
childhood passion. It was all I cared about for quite some time. I’d written to
Jim’ll Fix It,
of course, asking if perhaps he could fix it for me to have Dwight Schultz, Mr. T, George Peppard and
especially
Dirk Benedict get in a chopper and pop round to 63 Spinney Hill Drive for the week… and yet somehow it seemed Jimmy Savile
was far happier to grant the wishes of children who wanted to know how a
tire factory
worked than to pile the A-Team into a chopper and send them 40,000 miles across the world. I couldn’t understand it. Meeting
the A-Team was
much
better television than a visit to a
tire
factory. It was almost like
Jim’ll Fix It
was cheap TV.