THE SUNDAY SCHOOL BUILDING

I originally posted this in “The Alternative” during my “sulky” old month avoiding Lesser Blogfordshire, but, as I’m currently in a better mood about such things and because  was considering the whole notion of “dreams” yesterday, I kind of thought that it maybe seemed appropriate to pull out the file from that dusty old archive and have another look at it and, because it didn’t seem quite such an embarrassment after all, decided to let the rest of you have a peek into one of the other nooks and crannies of my little life after all...

(Be warned, more items from “The Alternative” may yet resurface as I struggle to come up with anything new to talk about...)

It’s funny, but (perhaps rather appropriately) on one recent Sunday morning, I was so tired that, after doing my usual rounds of sitting at a keyboard and extracting the nonsense that had popped into my brain during the wee small hours and which had been keeping me awake, I went back to bed and dozed for an hour or so.

Rather strangely, because I don’t “dream” as a rule (at least not in any memorable sense of the word), I found that my subconscious took me on a bit of a “mind tour” through a long-gone building in which I used to spend a lot of time: the Sunday School building attached to the church I used to be forced to attend when my free time was spent in pastimes which were allocated at the whim of my parents.

That is, of course, grossly unfair. For many, many years my closest friends were the ones made in that place and it was hardly that I was “forced” to go there at all, and, even when I was old enough to have realised that “going to church” was not really for me, I spent many years socialising with that particular crowd both at the “Youth Club” and later on in the pubs, clubs and at various parties that were held, until we got to an age where we went our separate ways and inevitably lost touch with each other.

But I was still surprised at how vividly that building came to mind, and how strong the recollections were, presumably because I spent so much of my time and did so much of my “growing up” inside that ramshackle brick-built building.

I can remember that you entered the big hall with the arched glass window at one end and which used to have a badminton court marked out on the floorboards through a double set of rather beautiful double doors. The main set led out onto the street and the “porch” with its sand-filled red fire buckets was enclosed by those and another set which led into the hall itself.

Ahead of you, beyond the “badminton court” was a stage which I remember jumping off from its giddying three-foot height on various Sunday mornings (you see, I was once capable of excitement and feats of daring-do), and upon which, later on in life, many evenings of entertainment were performed, not least my less-than-legendary first performed stage play “Dash Creosote’s Trip to the Bingo Hall” and various other plays in which I usually played the villain (and mispronounced “Batta Poo Dinn” as “Barter-Poo” during at least one pantomime, such was my “evil voice…”)

Typecast as ever - it looks as if they could see “the divvil in me” even then.

If you stood in that doorway, looking straight at the stage, on the wall behind you and to your left would be distorted glass and wood panelled door to the ladies’ toilets which, if they were anything like the gents’ to the right, were no doubt testimony to the plumbing of a bygone era. I remember robust “Twyfords Adamant” ceramics and real sturdy pull chains and cisterns high enough up on the wall that small boys could swing Tarzan-like from them if they chose to.

Next to the ladies’ toilets, through another corner of similar dark wood and frosted glass panelled doorway on the left hand wall, was the office of the Sunday School Superintendent which, for one very proud period in my young life, was inhabited by my father and I recall it being a magical place full of mysterious machines and endless amounts of paper which would no doubt seem appallingly drab to me now, but then spoke of an adult world of mysteries I as yet knew nothing about. Next to that, a series of similar doors led through to the “coffee bar” which had been built by knocking through various small rooms into one larger one, which was another of those small childhood miracles when it was first unveiled.

I remember that the floor was tiled because I spent many hours in there painting banners and making posters (my limited - but slightly useful - skill-set being evident even then) and scenery for plays and it was the only large and “paint proof” floor that I could find to do the job, and I vividly the curved service area that served as the “bar” itself at the end where the room came into line with the stage area. I have a sudden recollection of trays of scores of packets of fish and chips arriving in that room, the sheer quantity of which also seemed rather magical once upon a time.

Sometimes that room also served as a “waiting room” as we waited to go on stage and perform, but mostly that occurred in the strange network of rooms that led off the corridors at the back of the stage. There was the relatively “posh” décor of the room that connected to the coffee bar – there was even a serving hatch - which acted as both the place where the respectable and elderly (they were at least fourteen!) “Seniors” were taught on Sunday mornings and where proper evening church services were held in the evenings.

Moving along the corridor that ran parallel to the back of the stage, you would fid the mighty glass and wood double doors that led through to the huge kitchen which had a massive central table, huge cupboards full of very plain crockery, a massive sink under a huge set of windows, and a strange smell all of its own.

Next to the kitchen door was the cellar door to another world into which I rarely ventured, but I think they stored collected newspaper down there and high above your head was a trap door leading to the attic. This was another area that I vividly remember from a filthy weekend spent up there assisting Mr Jones and another friend of mine with some plumbing, which sounds far ruder than it, in all innocence, really was.

After the cellar door you came to a “T” junction in the corridor. To the left was a set of racks where people would leave their newspapers to be put in the cellar until they were sold on later, and which I would rummage through, looking for old issues of the “Radio Times” to nab the articles for to put inside my television-themed scrapbooks. Beyond those was the back exit, a door I remember the outside of very well because of the hours spent waiting there as I was always early for things even then. To the right the corridor led back into the main hall where we began. Ahead of you was the huge “Juniors Room” which also doubled as our “Youth Club” base and I spent many happy hours there. Beyond that room was another lobby with door leading to another ancient toilet to your left, an exit with scissor-doors to the right, and another large and rather cosy room ahead of you – we read stories there - which eventually served as the fund-raising second-hand clothes shop where I bought an overcoat that I still have and stood more-or-less where my mother’s flat now is.

Returning to the main hall, there were more rooms off to the left most of which I am less familiar with. I slightly remember the “Infants room” because of birthday candles I rarely shared as my birthday fell in the time of year when most people were on holiday, and the crèche, but both of those were rooms I spent time in before I was really old enough to remember them, so I only recall being in them for other reasons in later life, most probably involving manual labour of some sort, although another memory popped into my head of shamefully not knowing the “alphabet song” to join in with, when it was obvious everyone else did.

It’s astounding to me how vivid it suddenly all seems to me now. The place was demolished nearly a quarter of a century ago, in 1988 in order to build those flats I mentioned, and even then I’d not been inside the place for maybe half a dozen years or more, and yet the hours of fun spent in and running around the outside of that peculiar little building, with all its peculiar shapes and odd little nooks and crannies, suddenly seem to be quite astonishingly important part of my past right now.