He's too clever by half

"And Best rounds one defender, then another; he shoots - AND IT'S
THERE!! Manchester United have got the equaliser they've been searching
for!"

Dad jumped up from the easy chair and punched the air in triumph; I
watched with open mouth, for normally in our house a late equaliser for
Man U was about as welcome news as an outbreak of bubonic plague.
Especially one scored by George Best, who, in Dad's opinion, was Too
Clever By Half. As with most of the football-focused families in Leeds,
Man U were our favourite hate-team, along with the trendy London clubs,
especially Chelsea, whose players looked like pop stars and were, in
Dad's opinion, a set of poofs. Leeds United were, of course, manly to a
man, even if the rest of the country knew their achievements were
largely based on kicking lumps out of the opposition forwards and
getting away with it.

It was twenty to five on a dank Saturday afternoon in November; the
gloom was gathering, a few dark wet leaves lay impaled on the spiky
doormat. In a few minutes time the full-time scores would be coming in
via the teleprinter and thence on to the nation's TV screens, but for
the moment we were listening to the featured match on the radio, where
Coventry had just surrendered their slender lead to the artistry of
George. Well, Dad and I were, at least; Mam was knitting and Linda was
reading some rubbish pop magazine.

"Thought you didn't like Man U?" I hazarded.
Dad tapped a pen against his blank pools coupon which he had propped
against an atlas for support.

"Bloody don't! But this week Coventry v Man U's my banker game. One-all
draw if ever there was one."

Not for the first time, he then began to elucidate his theory of how to
win money on the football pools. Firstly, you had to select games where
the away team was considered to be somewhat stronger than the home
team, who would of course be boosted by a large number of partisan
supporters. But that was only good for so much; it wouldn't save the
weaklings of the league from being slaughtered by the
champions-in-waiting, merely amend the balance of possibility in less
uneven contests. Then you had to take recent form into account;
Coventry, for instance, had drawn their last three home games whilst
Man U had drawn two of their last three away games. Also you had to
look for "derby" matches, those between teams in the same or
neighbouring towns; the intensity of such matches apparently threw up
an above-average number of draws based on the fact that both teams
would fear to lose such a contest and would readily settle for a share
of the points. Finally, you had to spread your choices across the
divisions as it was extremely unlikely that any one division would
produce more than three or four draws; given the choice of two equally
likely draws it was always better to plump for the lower division game
which would have a higher number on the coupon and therefore unlikely
to be selected by those punters who always chose the same numbers based
on family birthdays. Scottish matches were even better in that respect,
though they often got cancelled due to snowstorms and waterlogged
pitches.

"It's basically scientific," he concluded as the first results began to
trickle on to the TV screen.

This rather offended me, on the grounds that I took science seriously.
After all, I was in the third year of grammar school and a keen member
of both Biology Club and Astronomical Society. At this point I felt
like bringing in some real science, for instance asking whether acid
plus base equalled salt plus water only if neither of them was a bit
off form that day, whether the speed of sound could be affected by a
biased referee or whether the earth worm's peculiar structure could be
accounted for by that tricky European fixture in midweek. But, being
only fourteen and smaller than Dad, I held my peace. For him,
"scientific" was perhaps a synonym for "complicated" or "tricky", a
puzzle which needed his great, but hitherto unrecognised, capabilities
to solve.

He then showed me his "perm", a grid which came with the coupon and was
used to determine how many "divis" you had won. Basically you chose a
number of matches likely to result in draws, and the perm would arrange
them in vertical columns, each containing a group of eight; if all
eight selected matches in a given column were draws, you had obtained
twenty-four points and could look forward to a first dividend; seven
draws and an away win would give you twenty-three points and a second
dividend; anything lower wasn't normally worth having. This, I
grudgingly had to admit, was akin to real science and I tried to work
out how much you would have to spend to ensure that any combination of
eight matches from twelve would be covered by the perm; it seemed to be
an awful lot.

But, on the TV screen, great drama was beginning to unfold. The
floodlights had, it seemed, failed at East Fife causing the match to be
abandoned and therefore void on the coupon. Down to eight from eleven.
Crewe had, however, salvaged a point at Darlington; seven from ten.
Neighbouring Bradford, which at that time amazingly managed to support
two professional clubs compared to Leeds' one, had delivered the goods
- a home draw at Park Avenue. Scotland then atoned for its electrical
shortcomings by coming up trumps with draws at Falkirk and Kilmarnock;
if any four of the seven remaining matches were draws, we would at
least win something. But Dad had misjudged the Sheffield derby, the
Owls winning by three clear goals. Damn! However, Brentford had drawn
at Bury, and Rotherham's long journey to Exeter also saw them gain a
point; excitement was rising as we realised this was Dad's best pools
performance for a long time; despite all the science, he had never won
enough to buy a decent retort stand.

"Norwich City 2, Sunderland 0" chattered the teleprinter. Ah, well, it
wasn't going to be a fortune.

"Luton Town 1, Charlton 1". But maybe a few bob still?

"Mansfield Town 4 ...". Our faces dropped, and Dad threw his pen on the
floor in disgust.
"...Scunthorpe United 4!". We all yelled with triumph; four-all draws
were quite unusual.
Dad now had his eight draws, but the Coventry game had started late;
Dad turned down the sound on the telly and switched the radio back on
to hear that George Best had missed a "sitter" in the last minute; the
referee blew the final whistle and Dad did a victory dance round the
room; he had an incredible nine draws, which would gain him as many
first dividends as the perm showed. But, even as we celebrated, the
commentator drew attention to the above-average number of draws on that
week's coupon, and stated that telegram claims would not be required; a
lot of people would have first dividends this week!

When the "divis" actually turned up we had won just over three thousand
pounds; not enough to retire on by any means, but enough to have a
seriously good time. No one in our area had ever seen three thousand
pounds.

"I can give this old place a facelift," ventured Dad, looking round at
the shabby furniture.

"We're having a holiday," said Mam with unusual firmness.
"Abroad!"

Dad looked glum; he reasoned that as everyone knew you couldn't get
reasonable food or beer south of Sheffield, so by the time you ventured
down to France or Spain you'd be living on absolute pigswill.

"You can't go to Spain at this time of year", he said, "it's too cold,
and they close down for the winter, according to Mrs Blenkinsop."
During the summer the Blenkinsop family had finally shunned Scarborough
for the delights of Benidorm and had become the subject of much envious
comment in our council-house cul-de-sac.

"I didn't say anything about Spain, did I?" countered Mam. And she told
Linda and I to get our coats on; we were going down to the travel
agents to book a real slap-up holiday for the three of us. If Dad
didn't want to come, he could amuse himself for a week however he
wished.

Dad was right in a way, there were in those days far fewer places you
could simply take yourself off to in mid-November. But Mam was prepared
to cast her net wide, and we returned in triumph with a pioneering
package holiday to Tunisia booked.

I don't know what Mam expected; maybe she had hoped that Hammamet would
be swarming with wealthy young sheiks waiting to romance the hearts of
mature English ladies; rather it was swarming with fat men who tried to
sell us tatty trinkets, and the drains smelt. But the hotel was good;
the rooms were spacious and airy - I had one with a huge double bed to
myself - and there was a large open-air pool in which you could swim
all day if you wished. Most of the other guests were French, which
meant that the food and drink were probably better than you'd get at a
similar establishment today when undiscerning Brits descend on Tunisia
in their thousands. I got to practice my spoken French and spent a
couple of hours each day doing academic work, a condition which the
school had insisted upon before granting extraordinary
leave-of-absence. There were lots of lizards of several species to be
seen in the hotel grounds, so I tracked them for a Biology Club
project, noting down their size, what they ate and where they were to
be seen. In the evenings I stayed up long after Mum and Linda had gone
to bed in order to produce night sky charts for the Astronomical
Society; the waiters, who looked to be hardly older than myself, were
happy to serve me with beer when Mum wasn't around. So, whilst my
school friends shivered in rain-lashed Leeds, I was sitting at a table
drinking beer and watching the stars flashing in the brilliant
Mediterranean night sky. Abroad, I decided, was great.

I met two French girls, sisters who wondered why I was creeping round
the hotel with a magnifying glass, so I showed them my science
projects. We got on very well, I tried out some irregular French verbs
and on our last night in Tunisia they taught me how to kiss! Everyone
at school knew that the French were experts on these matters, and we
decided to become penfriends, which would enable me to substantiate my
amatory boasts when I returned to school in triumph, a boy transformed
into a man!

Too soon we had to pack up and fly home, but what an extraordinary
sight met us back in Leeds! For in our absence Dad had changed his
plans and had decided to spend much of the pools win on the
installation of a fishpond, but on a grand scale. In fact, he had
cleared the entire garden save for a strip of earth around a foot wide
which provided access to fishing platforms, wooden pallets which he had
nailed to the fences and which stuck out into the water at various
points. Mr. Blenkinsop was sat on one, rod in hand, drinking a can of
beer; he gave a guilty wave as we marched down the garden path with our
suitcases. Dad was rubbing his hands with delight at his masterpiece,
the only council house in Leeds with its own well-stocked artificial
lake. Mam was not a woman of many words, and was firmly opposed to
"language" of any kind, and on this occasion she surveyed the scene for
a full two minutes before delivering her verdict.

"You stupid, stupid bugger!" was all that she would say before stumping
into the house to make her first decent cup of tea in over a week.