A Coventry Kid's Tale

Chapter 7: Aged 11, Senior School days

All names will now be deleted to protect the guilty.

In Vine Street a glass factory stood, looking up the street, a four storey building on the left and a single storey building on the right. On this evening two children were out playing. They thought they would build a camp in the big pallets full of straw. These were for holding big sheets of glass, these pallets were in front of the small glass factory. Inside the camp they made, they decided to light a camp fire!!! Within minutes the straw had caught on fire. The two children ran for their lives. With flames shooting 60ft high, one of the children stood on the wall shouting "----- get out it's on fire". The other child on hearing this shouted "I'm already out", this because he was 200 yards up the street. Both children ran to safety out of sight to Primrose Hill Street. One child said to the other "At least I grabbed my coat", the other child's heart sank because his coat was still in the flames. Then, as people fall into a cesspit and come out smelling of roses, the child said "Thanks Gams that's my coat". The other child had picked up the wrong coat !!!!! Walking the streets for hours, they returned to the scene of the fire. Two fire engines were packing away their hoses, the police were there. The two children walked by as if nothing was happening when the cry went up from a small child "that's them mister" to a policeman, "they done it". Off the two children ran, never to return for hours until it had gone dark. Then they slunk back home. The new glass factory blackened, and the windows cracked. As a glass factory they never did replace the glass???

The main glass factory was scaffolded out right up to the roof. The child could not resist climbing up to the roof, there he found a rope tied up. This rope was for hoisting up the builders materials. The child untied the rope and then let it fall down to the street below. This was the biggest swing the child had ever seen. 40ft high, the child then climbed the scaffold pulling the rope with him. When the rope was at full stretch the child jumped off the scaffold, the child went soaring off down towards the ground then went swinging back up, the only trouble being that the rope was that long he swung right across Raglan Street and up and over the Forester's Arms pub. Besides frightening the car drivers he had just flashed over, he was lucky a lorry had not past by or else the child would have been flattened on the front of it !! This swing was not to last long as somebody called the police. "Right then son" said the policeman "come with me to the station". So off the child was escorted to the police box by the Green Man. Inside the police box (other people now know this as a "TARDIS") the policeman entered the child's name and address into a big ledger on a desk. The policeman then said "I'm going to be lenient this time but if I catch you again I will speak to your parents". The policeman then let the child go home. Oh the shame, he now had a criminal record.