The Life of Lee by Lee Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

time of the industrial action that swept through the country faster than Arthur Scargill’s hair on a motorbike. It was bad enough coping with the power cuts inflicted on us by one lot trying to get their own back onTed Heath, let alone having to deal with the rotting stench of waste after another lot – the rubbish collective – voted for an all-out strike.
    So, after some cursing and ranting about how if he ran the country he could do it a damn sight better than those bastards in Downing Street, Dad came up with the cock-eyed idea of taking the rubbish to the local dump ourselves.
    The bins downstairs on the estate were bulging over with stinking refuse, and everyone in our flat was gradually losing their upper-arm strength from continually pushing the well-packed rubbish down into our kitchen bin.
    There were no bin bags then, so we emptied as much stinking waste as possible into carrier bags, boxes, even our pockets, then loaded it into Dad’s Ford Cortina and headed over to the tip. It wasn’t far away, about three minutes in the car – I could walk it in fifteen.
    We arrived at the gate to a small but vocal welcoming party. A few members of the transport union were picketing the gate. A local news crew was there, too. Reporting on such a small-scale demo didn’t exactly push back the boundaries of investigative journalism, but the way they were acting you’d have thought we’d just arrived at the gates of the Gaza Strip.
    As soon as we pulled up, the bloke with the microphone was banging on the car window, shouting at my dad: ‘Will you be going in, what’s your name, are you local, are you fed up with the unions?’
    ‘Who the bloody hell’s this clown? Piss off, you twat!’ Dad didn’t even give him any eye contact.
    The bloke with the microphone hustled towards the picket line. ‘We think he will try to cross the picket line,’ he shouted down the lens of the camera.
    Dad turned and stared down at me for a moment through his trademark thick bottle-end glasses. I could see that journo bloke had riled him. His eyes widened with mischief. They looked huge. ‘Wait ’ere, son. I’m just going to have a quiet word with the nice man on the gate.’
    He got out of the car and I watched him barrel up to the small crowd of protesters standing around a burning oil drum, some with home-made placards calling for more pay. I saw Dad standing in front of the men. As he delivered a flurry of jabbing hand movements and lots of pointing at the gates then back at the car, I could hear his muffled shouting – something about ‘I’ll kick your something head in and I will stuff it where I can’t quite remember.’ Dad was still working at the docks at the time, so perhaps the bloke in charge knew him. But wherever Dad was offering to stuff it, he obviously thought it worth opening the gates.
    Dad bowled back to the car and got in. ‘Everything all right, Dad?’ I enquired fearfully.
    He laughed and did an impression of W. C. Fields. ‘Son, we’re goin’ in.’ He proceeded to sing ‘The Dambusters’ as we pulled off at full pelt through the gates and into the tip. We bobbed and bounced at speed along rows of piled-up waste, followed by the man with the microphone and the crew of one in their ATV van. We came to a stop and the news van pulled up alongside us. The man with the microphone and his crew jumped out and began setting up their tripod.
    ‘Take no notice, Lee. Whatever he says, just ignore him,’ Dad muttered.
    I began unloading the rubbish from the car. The camera was set up and the man with the microphone began talking into it, as Dad and I carried boxes round the back. Dad began doing funny walks and pulling faces over the reporter’s shoulder, while I just kept my head down.
    That night after tea, Dad gathered us all round the TV to watch the local news, just to prove to Mum that we were telling the truth and that we were actually filmed at the rubbish dump that day.
    The news began and we all