As if our club didn’t have enough to contend with, there was another cunning enemy who saw our beloved lakes as a convenient dump. This was Mr Pottle, grumpy caretaker of the secondary school whose playing fields backed onto the jewel in Moor Hall AC’s crown, The Ripples.
The Ripples comprised two large, open bays from which a dozen or so ‘fingers’ emanated, one of which the club had sectioned-off to form a nursery pool. I kept my eye on this pool as often as I could, patrolling the entirety of the club’s domain on my bike most evenings after school. It was my world. I loved every square inch and I guarded it jealously.
One evening as I rumbled along the rough path between the school field and The Ripples I saw that a substantial length of diamond fencing had been renewed, its obvious newness glaring down at the nursery pool, and it came as no great surprise to find the old fencing rolled-up and dumped there. The miserable Pottle had been at work.
After parking my bike and briefly viewing this outrage from the high bank I clambered down to the water’s edge and attempted to remove the foul obstruction, but thirty feet of blanket-weeded diamond fencing proved stubbornly difficult to shift. But it had to be removed. For the next thirty or forty minutes I heaved and tugged and strained and sweated until I’d dragged the eyesore out of the water, up the high bank and onto the path. Following a five-minute break to relieve my aching back I near-crippled myself cajoling the massive, dripping weight over the fence and onto the school field where it rightly belonged. Job done, I continued with my inspection of the pits.
From the art room at school next day I could see that the roll of old fencing had been removed and I vainly hoped that Pottle had seen fit to dispose of it a little more thoughtfully this time. I could see the old curmudgeon tending the cricket pitch, placing a cordon around its freshly-sprinkled perimeter after a morning’s heavy rolling. None of us boys liked him, not after dobbing us in to the Head for smoking behind the bike-sheds. The cricket pitch was his pride and joy it seemed; why…he seemed to love it with all the passion I had for my old gravel pits!
Naturally, that evening’s inspection of my paradise started with the nursery pool. Clearly, Pottle had decided to end any to-ing and fro-ing with his unseen foe by up-ending the roll and tossing it – caber-fashion – into the sanctuary’s depths, the bastard. It was almost out of sight, some six feet down and way out of reach. But there was no way on Earth he was going to win.
A nearby load of industrial waste provided me with a decent length of rope and a metal bar which I fashioned to form a hook. So armed, I swung my grapple into the pool and secured a firm purchase on the fencing first time! Another tug-o-war ensued and after a back-breaking hour or more I lay aching and exhausted alongside that wretched, ungainly roll of wire. With my young body screaming to be left in peace, I forced myself, again, to heft the bloody thing over the shiny, new barrier and onto the school field: “…now stay there!” I commanded it.
I returned home immediately, shattered but inwardly glowing at my successful determination to thwart the miserable school-keeper, Pottle; how dare he pollute my beautiful pits!! Rather than drag his unwanted rubbish a hundred yards to the tip he had chosen to use my pool as his own, personal dump. I confess I hated that man with a passion.
I think you know what I found the following night. That’s right. There it was, back in the drink and positively begging me for a decent, final send-off. I didn’t disappoint. It took every bit as long to remove it from the pool and to cajole the weedy, wiry monster over the fence and onto the school field – but there was no pain! I felt nothing; only pride – the pride of a boy on a mission… I knew what I had to do!
Oblivious to possible discovery I stood straight and proud with the cooling breeze on my face and turned my gaze to the baize of the cricket pitch. This would be my finest hour…
Grasping the end of the unholy roll and steeling myself for the final push, I dragged the furled and weedy mess a hundred and fifty yards across two football pitches and on to the centre of the hallowed emerald shrine, collecting a couple of heavy, metal cordon-stakes as I went. There, I snarled and regarded the roll with disdain, then pinned the hideous, unwieldy monster fast to the pitch, convinced of its agonized screams. When, finally, it expired I threw back my head, and with raised, fisted arms I laughed loudly to the heavens, invoking Pottle’s name and the gods of retribution!! Well…it was a bit like that.
Next day, at school, I was summoned to Mr Wilkins’ office. He and Pottle had probably put two and two together and come up with me: the only rebel in the school with a passion for fishing. But I didn’t deny what I’d done. The Head leant on his walking-sticks and listened as I stated my case, and as he did so, the merest hint of a smile occupied the corner of his thick, shiny lips. “I understand your concern for your fishing lake, Mr Hatton, but please…should you have further cause for complaint at any time, spare the cricket pitch, will you?”
