Brothers in blood
 A Teddy Boy lights up |
My teenage problem was that I could never swagger. Where as my mates Jim and Dave could walk along the pavements of Dale Street or Lime Street with a degree of assurance that could send passing pedestrians into the nearest gutter, my own attempts to look big rarely induced any other emotion than mocking laughter.
Matters weren't helped by my clothes. Whereas Jim and Dave had parents who allowed them to strut the city streets in Teddy Boy velvet-collared jackets and drainpipe trousers, and bootlace ties and crepe-soled brothel creeper shoes, I was restricted to a brown sports coat, heavily creased gabardine trousers, and a pair of Freeman Hardy and Willis Brogues.
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I'd made matters even worse for myself by trying to cover up my Sunday morning at church uniform with a large white, heavily epauletted riding mac. It was a style I'd seen worn by the hero of a popular comic strip of the time - "Dick Tracey the 'Tec' with the bulldozer chin".
It looked fine on Dick Tracey. But sadly I lacked the bulk of my comic strip hero so that I ended up looking less like a famous detective than a walking bivouac. As Jim once said to loud jeering laughter in the saloon bar of the Grapes, I looked more like Dick Head than Dick Tracey.
Half pint
When I now look back I feel that I was quite fortunate in being the butt of such jokes. As I couldn't hold my drink half as well as Jim and Dave, and certainly couldn't emulate their prowess at chattering up women, I was only allowed to be in their gang for the amusement I inadvertently provided.
|  Around the group went the pen knife. Would it be passed to me? Was my blood good enough to pass muster?  |
Matters only came to a head on the night I was out drinking with Jim and Dave and their two mates, Vin and Big Bing. They'd all drowned five or six pints and finished deriding my last round request for "just a half", before going into a drunken sentimental trope about the meaning of true friendship; about how they were going to stick together for the rest of their lives; how they were "blood mates".
That was the point when Vin took out his penknife and flipped open the big blade. "Blood mates," he said, as he swiped the blade across the tip of this thumb, and watched as a bubble of blood appeared. "Blood mates," said Dave taking the knife, swiping his thumb, and then melding his blood with Vin's.
Around the group went the pen knife. Would it be passed to me? Would I be brave enough to make the cut? Would my blood flow properly? Was my blood good enough to pass muster? My anxieties were soon resolved. The knife never reached me. After Jim had let his blood, Vin simply leant over the beer-slopped table, took the knife from him, clicked the blade shut, and slid it back into his pocket.
I'd failed the initiation rite, failed my first test of manhood, failed to become a member of the gang. It was the worst moment of my adolescent life. From then on I knew that I'd have to grow up all by myself, without the support of a solid blood sharing fraternity.
But at least when I grew up and became a criminologist it did allow me to feel complete empathy with all those adolescents who for centuries have sought the excitement and comfort of gang membership. It allowed me to understand that teenage gangs were never a passing phenomenon. For many boys and some girls, they were an historical and contemporary necessity.
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