It was called N.16. Don't know why but it felt right, and after a while the number has a familiar feel like it was a piece of safety, a sanctuary.
I discovered it all on my own when I was about 12 and had been moved from two grotty disgusting rooms in the east of London to a Council flat in Manor House. It was called The Finsbury Park Estate and as you sat on the red number 653 bus, the great brick and cement blocks just flew past you as if never-ending, and it made you so proud to be amongst this humongous forest of post-war council flats.
One day we packed our few belongings that had slowly accrued in the years we had survived in that grim street in Stepney and headed to north London, a completely new world for me. We, that is mum and I, had inspected the flat before we accepted it and it seemed just about right, being on the top floor and a shared balcony that went from one end of the block to another where the lift was. We had three bedrooms, a small kitchen and a living room with a fireplace that had a propensity to puff and gulp thick belches of smoke into the room. However, now I had my own bedroom, since I used to share with my sister which wasn't really agreeable for either of us but I accepted it as a fact of life. Now, however, with my own refuge I felt like the regular boys in the movies.
So the day after we moved in I took the number 653 bus to Stamford Hill, N1, and was obsessed with the idea of doing up my room. But first I wanted a table lamp, so I could lay in bed being lit by just a cosy lamp sitting on a side table. This was now my dream and I headed straight for the small electrical shop that I saw from the bus as we slowed down to the stop which was just opposite an amusement arcade, which I was not to know then but would be the avaricious consumer of many of my young hours.
Settling into a new environment takes some time, especially when you have no one to guide you or show you the ropes. You sniff around and discover them for yourself. I was still at Hackney Downs Grammar School, which was quite a trek from Manor House but the bus stop was just outside our industrial block of Stalinist style flats and each morning I would hop on, run upstairs and watch the world gradually unfold before me. Amhurst Park, Stamford Hill, Clapton Pond, Hackney, then a swift walk across the Hackney Downs before entering the school by the back entrance up one of those railway cuttings. There!
I hated almost every moment of the three tedious years I had to endure it. The loneliness was the worst since, for some reason, there were no boys with whom I could bond and no teachers either. I dreaded the weekends when I knew I would be at my wit's end to fill the long meaningless days. Then I discovered Stamford Hill Boy's Club. Eureka!! I found a place to go, was welcomed and in that shabby, rather derelict old Victorian house I always found something to occupy myself. It was there that one evening I bumped into this extraordinary fellow and thespian, Malcolm Knight aka Zausman.
A 13-year-old like me, he was a strange and yet rather exotic creature who wore his greasy hair in a large quiff and spoke in the most affected, almost upper-class accent. For some bizarre reason we took to each other since we were both bereft of friends and so both found not only a mate but an endless source of playtime and frivolity. He wore a stunning royal blue gabardine suit and thick-soled blue suede shoes. He was a dandy in other words. In Stamford Hill!
Ridiculous and yet I liked him because he was a bit of a sorcerer's apprentice. I was, in a way, his part-time minder, companion and butler. We would sit in the large lounge of The Stamford Hill Boy's Club, chatting up all the girls who were always there - so it might have a boy's and girl's club. It was a sanctuary and where I first learned to groom myself in the chatting up of young ladies for whom I felt only the most complete awe. I could only chat and tell silly stories, often accompanied by Malcolm, and any further dallying was for me not yet remotely possible.
Then I would walk up to Stamford Hill and, before stepping onto the 653 bus, gaze somewhat wistfully across the road where the amusement pinball arcade with its perpetually playing jukebox had gathered its regulars, the evening gang that would hang around, strutting and preening. I longed to go there and see who all these young men and women were. What they were doing and how could I join them but I was too young and vapid, just a young prat going to Egerton road Hebrew classes to study for a Barmitzvah I would never have.
However, one day Malcolm offered to take me to 'The Hill' as it was called and hang outside the 'Shtupp' house, simply named since this is where you push or 'shtupp' the machines to make the balls hit the round electric pads that would increase your points. Sometime after I became a very familiar face I would play for a penny a point, which was quite a lot if you lost by invalidating your score with a 'tilt' if your shtupping was too enthusiastic. Then 'Phil' the grubby white-coated change-giver might be inclined to ban you for a week or so and then you would have to stand outside the arcade in a form of public exile and not very pleasant.
Phil was always there controlling the young crowd and would slowly circle the interior of the arcade with one hand in his pocket rattling the pennies. He was a decent man once you got to know him although he seemed half dead. Bill, the owner, sat in the front presiding over his beautiful American machines like a lord of the manor. He sat behind a simple kiosk where he sold Pepsi and sweets. He wore thick glasses and never acknowledged any of us and seemed to wear the same expression from noon till night. He had a daughter who, on rare occasions, was seen sexily decked out with an impossibly slim belted waist and brazenly high-pointed boobs as though she was a movie star.
This was the place. This was The Manor. The Shtupp House was merely an iconic sign. A kind of hallowed spot where you would gather and not too early lest you fall into that ghastly trap of just lingering around, watching out for nothing but the emptiness of your own life. Once or twice I fell into that when unemployment crossed with a sense of complete pointlessness has me standing forlorn and fallen waiting for just one familiar or friendly face to join me. Soon, there would be as I slowly got to know 'the locals'
But now I was still at school, waiting desperately for it to end so I could go out in the world and do I know not what. Dad had next to no interest in what I did or where I went. However through the closeness of bodies and association or the occasional dance at Stamford Hill Boys Club did I get to know people. And what people.
My new Jewish pals were the funniest, craziest, weirdest bunch of dudes I had ever known and, though I did not know it at the time, it was to be a huge influence on my future life…
