CHURCH VS. FOOTBALL
For some reason, when I was eight years old it was decided by my housemother that I was a Catholic. To this day, I have no idea how they arrived at that conclusion because as far as I know, neither of my parents ever practiced the Catholic faith. I have read all my social services files and never found any references to Catholicism.
I guessed something sinister was afoot. This strange man with a wide grin visited me at my cottage and presented me with a Bible, a prayer book, and blue rosary beads. He said he couldn’t wait to welcome me at his church, Our Lady of the Annunciation. It was about a twenty-minute walk from where I lived near Ashburton Park. The whole idea freaked the fuck out of me, but at least I’d be able to see life outside the Shirley Oaks complex, I figured.
I wanted to play in the soccer games that took place on the Shirley Oaks grounds every Sunday morning. Someone always had a hard leather football, especially after Christmas. Bushes were our touchlines and pullovers and anoraks served as goalposts. The lunchtime call from housemothers was our final whistle, and the referee was usually the player no one wanted to mess with. Fouls were never given if the aggressor was bigger than you. If you nutmegged anybody your reward was a slap on the back of the head.
Reluctantly, off to church I went. At least I received a pair of new shoes, a white shirt, and a pair of blue slacks.
In one sermon, the priest assured the congregation that everyone was welcome in God’s house. He explained that the church and where he lived were all God’s residence. Let the children come unto me, the Lord said.
This sounds promising, I thought.
When I had the chance to speak to the priest, I asked him if it was possible for me to live in God’s house. I promised I wouldn’t take up too much space. I just needed a shelf for my comics and a football, if I was ever given one. The priest said it didn’t quite work like that. I thought, Fuck you! And what’s with the black dress thing?
I never attended the church again, but I did post something smelly, something canine, through the priest’s letter box.
Instead of listening to priest’s sermons, I’d play truant every Sunday morning and spend my 2p collection money on a gobstopper or a juicy-fruit sweet. If I had 4p I’d buy myself a jamboree bag that had sherbet inside. I’d wander into Ashburton Park and watch guys playing football. Sometimes they invited me to play. I had to be careful not to scuff my polished shoes. When I arrived home, I’d take off my beads and place them in a shoe for next Sunday.
My housemother discovered my skiving one day and beat the devil out of me from one end of the dormitory to the other. Then she dragged me to the hallway and repeated the dose. But I didn’t care—if I couldn’t live in God’s house, then I wasn’t attending any of the priest’s services. Fuck them. They were boring anyway. I also thought they were a bit mean with the bread rations they offered to the congregation. Why couldn’t they serve toast?
In the end, they gave up trying to convince me that the church would save my sinful Black soul. I figured that hell couldn’t be much worse than the life I was living anyway.
In the fall of 1977, I bumped into the weird man with the ready smile outside Fred Dawes’s newsagents on Wickham Road. “Why have you given up on the Lord?” he asked me.
He wasn’t expecting my answer: “Him ah knot-up him head, him ah spread him bed, him ah Jesus Dread!”
The man looked at me as if I were possessed by Beelzebub himself. He hurried on his way, crossing himself and shaking his head.
I had just quoted Trinity from his huge reggae hit “Jesus Dread.” Produced by Yabby You and mixed at King Tubby’s quarter tower, it was one of those tunes where you just had to wiggle a toe or shake a leg. The bass line played its own melody, and my God, when I heard and felt that bass blow out of Papa Cass’s bass speaker box, I was in heaven.