A Shot of ’64

We’d been to a pub for the evening, in Seven Sisters Road, a big pub, we sat as a group in the back room and chatted. That’s the sort of thing we did.

We walked back towards home. At the corner of Green Lanes and Church Street Andrew and Geoff were to go along Church Street and Micky, Brian and I straight on towards Petherton Road. Partings took a while in those days, there was still such a lot to say. What was there to say? Rubbish. But lots of it.

Chatting on the corner, a car came round quite wide and fast, there was a bang from an open rear window. Micky sat down on the wall, looking white, saying, ‘I’ve been shot in the leg’.

The bang was a shotgun, we all got sprayed a bit, I had a few small holes in my jeans, but the side of Micky’s leg through his jeans was a bloody mess.

Geoff and Brian ran over to the Robinson Crusoe pub, banged on the door. A voice from inside: ‘We’re closed!’

‘No, no, we need to call an ambulance, someone’s been shot.’

‘I said we’re closed. Can’t you hear? Piss off!’

But someone must have called one, for in a short time an ambulance arrived.

I went with Micky in the ambulance to the hospital. Micky’s parents arrived. I think Brian must have gone round and informed them, he’d already checked with the ambulance crew which hospital they were going to. Good old Brian – always steady.

Remember we love you, said his mum, We’ll do all we can to look after you. I choked up. I can’t cope with kindness. Micky’s mum always was a little bit more middle-class.

At the hospital the police arrived and the press saying they were police. We couldn’t work out who was which. We definitely had our suspicions about some of them.

The following morning the shooting was on the front page of the national press. My mum came into my bedroom. ‘What’s this?’ She looked frightened and horrified.

Two policemen came round while I was brushing my teeth. I could tell them nothing. As regards motives or possible motives I knew nothing. The police seemed doubtful about that, my mother even more doubtful, the policemen went away.

I honestly think that it was just a group of youths having what they probably called fun. Once they found the results of the actions on the front page of the Daily Mirror, they’ll have kept their heads well down.

In the pubs, we heard people say they’d heard, they knew someone who knew someone who did it. But it was all brag.

These days a shooting on a street corner at night wouldn’t make the front page of the Daily Mirror, but it did then, in 1964.

Dave

The story continues with Patched Up and Celebrity Voyeurs.