John Lennon

1940 - 1980

The Vanished World of a Woolton Childhood with John Lennon

by DAVID ASHTON

Page 3

I was later to find out that it was rugby kit. Robert Bancroft was picked for a side and as soon as he got near the ball he picked it up and started running with it and fell down near the goal. I thought at first that he had pinched the ball but John Lennon said that he was playing rugby so "just play along with him and when he gets the ball, grab him, pull down his 'keks' (trousers) and rub his balls with cowshit".

Perhaps I should explain that in the Liverpool of my childhood Rugby was only played in foreign places with coal mines like St Helens, where they had red buses instead of green like our corporation buses and our Crossville buses, or in Widnes which was a long way to go on your bike.

So how John Lennon knew the difference between rugby and football I didn't know. I was to learn later that he was like that - he knew things we others did not know. It was not long before the brave Robert Bancroft grabbed the ball again and began to run with it to the goal.

We all piled on to him, got him to the ground, got his keks down and rubbed cowshit into his testes. Honour done, he went home crying and it was not long before my mother appeared at the cow field wall demanding that she be given the ball and I was to go home. Robert's mother had been round to complain and I was banned from going out for a week and banned from playing with John Lennon, Peter Shotton, Ivan Vaughan and Nige Walley.

The ban did not last as we came into contact with one another at St Peter's Church - at cubs, scouts, church choir, the youth club and Sunday school - and at the barber's or just wandering around the lanes and byways of Woolton.

John became interesting for I guess what I would now call his 'Huckleberry Finn' qualities. He knew things or found them out and if he liked you he got you into trouble! But it was on his side not the other side you got into trouble if you can understand the logic of it.

John was alluring and beguiling, even bewitching to be with or near sometimes, even spellbinding and never boring. There were lots of kids banned from playing with the gang of Peter Shotton, Ivan Vaughan and John Lennon but we played anyway. That was Woolton!

I went to Mosspits Lane County Primary School with Pete Shotton who I was sometimes mistaken for due to us both having blonde hair and with Ivan Vaughan. Later I was to go to the Bluecoat School near Penny Lane with Nige Walley - so one way or another we were often playing together or mixed up in something. We only lived around the corner from one another.

There were two barbers in Woolton village to which we Woolton kids were sent - Dicky Jones' and Ashcroft's. In our childhood both of them inflicted a considerable amount of torture and pain.

Even now almost half a century later later I still intensely dislike having my hair cut unless the barber seems like a humane human being. One such barber existed outside the world of Woolton but nearer to where I went to school at Mosspits Lane and the Bluecoat.

John Lennon was later to go to school at Quarry Bank after he had been to Dovecote Primary School. The barber I'm referring to was run by the lovely expatriate Italian family of Bioletti in Penny Lane.

It was rumoured that old man Bioletti had been involved with Guiseppe Garibaldi (1807 - 1882) in Italy's battle for independence and statehood. The Bioletti family had old guns, bullets, grenades and pictures of happy Italians waving their flags high, on the walls around the barber shop.

They were certainly a loving, kind, happy family with brother, sister and old man Bioletti cutting your hair. Unless you knew him, and I guess he would have been nearly ninety when I was 9 or 10 years old, old man Bioletti in 'Penny Lane Barber's Shop' would frighten the life out of you with his shakey hands thinking that any moment he would nip your neck or cut your ear off.

When you knew him he really was a kind, loving, gentle ex-revolutionary who actually loved us lads and he often with his shakey hands deviated from the regulation army-pudding-bowl, short back-and-sides hair cut that our parents demanded - sometimes to good effect, sometimes to bad effect.

Old man Bioletti also had a rule that boys could only get their hair cut when there were no men waiting. I had met John going into Bioletti's in Penny Lane on his way back from Quarry Bank School and me from the Bluecoat School.

It was after 4 in the afternoon and not long before the men would start arriving on their way home from work with their gasmask knapsacks they used to wear round their necks to carry their packed lunches - their 'bait' - and newspapers. John and I sat down on Bioletti's comfortable bus bench seats that the family had for the boys to sit on and read comics.

We were behind two other boys in the queue when some men came in. Exasperated, John said to the two lads in front of us "Do you know, last week old man Bioletti cut off somebody's scalp completely, with his shakey hands.

You could actually see the brains wobbling around like a dark grey blancmange inside the head. But he was alright 'cos he stuck the scalp back on with sticking plaster". The two boys left - without a haircut and we got ours done before the rest of the men came in. It was this taste for devilment and bizarre imagery and creative thinking that made John an attractive friend to have on your side.

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