Willie – Part 1

Willie Black never had been the same since he pissed on the electrified fence that surrounds the gasworks. His saving grace, according to the doctors that treated him, was the fact that he been wearing Wellington boots. The fact that none of us had ever seen Willie in anything other than ‘wellies’ thought this to be considerable forethought on the part of his parents.

The wellies did not however save Willies private parts from receiving a severe and excruciating roasting. Willie’s wellies did not save Willie’s willy! Whereas – after healing and the removal of stitches - it functioned almost normally in most of its duties, it did seem to have one major anomaly; direction!

The only safe place to be when Willie was pissing was behind him – well back behind him. It was a bit like the ‘box of chocolates’ scenario in ‘Forest Gump’; when Willie took out his Willy, you knew that he was going to piss, you just never knew where. Allen Butler had been standing in a queue behind Willie at the school urinal and so - one would think - reasonably safe. However on that fateful day, Willie achieved the near impossible task of pissing over his left shoulder into Allen’s eye. Allen was not a happy chappy and neither was Willie when Allen had finished with him. Let’s just say that both of them ended up with sore eyes.

There was one other little> thing that served as a reminder of Willie’s electrical circumcision; his privates were turned a permanent shade of, well…black. Given that Willies’ surname was ‘Black’, it gave hope to the theory that, not only was there a God but he had lovely twisted sense of humour. Frank Sinatra had a song out about this time called New York, New York – so good they named it twice! We called Willie ‘Yorkie’; it was easier than Willie Black Willy Black. We arrived at this nickname after some serious brain-storming and several serious contenders were thrown into the pot of possibles; ‘Blackie’, ‘Niggadick’, ‘Blackball’ ‘Sammy’ (Sammy Davies Junior) – put forward by Mark Weaver who’s father was a big fan – and ‘Burntballs’. All these worthies were discarded for reasons of being too unimaginative, too racist, too stupid or just plain too dangerous. ‘Niggadick’ while catchy and popular failed on the last two counts; obviously racist, it was thought primarily dangerous as none of us fancied standing in the middle of Brixton High Road and shouting …’hey, Niggadick ….

Willie learned to live with his unusual branding – he didn’t have a lot of choice. It was when girls started entering into the equation that things got a little, um…awkward.