Coronation Street? I was present at the birth so to speak on December 9,1960. The first episode was broadcast live the transmission then of course in black and white. That was to be the first of more than 10,000 episodes to date. (who knew?). It was and is set in the fictional town of Weatherfield in Greater Manchester, the latter a large industrial working class city in the north of England county of Lancashire. As an eighteen year old pleb* set as it were and potentially stuck, in Barrow-in-Furness a much smaller Lancashire replicate of the Manchester scenario, I watched the early episodes just long enough for the realisation to sink in that given I had been a part of the ‘lower order’ north of England industrial working class milieu from birth, albeit not exactly a card carrying member, if I didn’t do something about it and soon, there but for the grace of God would go I. My escape window if it could be found, wasn’t likely I felt to be open for very long. As in time and tide wait for no man (or woman.)

Given that we Canadians by and large do not think in discriminatory terms such as lower, upper, working, ethnological or any other kind of class or group differentiation be it by birthright or whatever, it has always puzzled me why Coronation Street, given its narrow down-to-earth working class focus has been so popular here and for that matter in the United States. I fully understand why All in the Family worked in North America based as it was on the very successful British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part about a conservative father and his liberal son-in-law. Likewise the British Steptoe and Son gave us Sanford and Son, that one also about a conflict between father and son. (Tell me about it). Coronation Street on the other hand does not at all lend itself naturally to our North America wide social mores, yet the raw UK production is as popular here sixty plus years later as it was and is in the UK to this day.

Having made good in 1967 my escape to the egalitarian society that is Canada, ever since if on passing a TV screen I have seen Coronation Street even momentarily, it has triggered a raw nerve deep in my psyche bringing back images of my upbringing and of my decision and then struggle to withdraw from the British privileged class conscious and thus caste like milieux into which I was born. That said, I feel for all those around the world for whom through no fault of their own, there has not been nor sadly in perhaps the majority of cases likely can there be, an escape from a birth predetermined station in life. 

A turning point for me, not that one was needed although it certainly hit the nail on the head, occurred while I was working in a public health laboratory which, in order to test for tuberculosis bacteria in fresh farm milk used live animals in this case literally guinea pigs. The animals were injected with samples of the milk to be ingested for a specific period of time. We also had a perfectly good chemical analysis test for TB. The animals were subsequently killed (inhumanly with a club!) to then undergo a post mortem to determine if TB was or was not present. It was my job every Monday morning to identify each ‘due’ animal by tag number, capture it from a communal cage and then hand it to the executioner. He was literally and legally ‘licensed to kill’. With a cosh. Think policeman’s truncheon.

A supercilious upper class individual who, as the Chief Medical Officer of Health for the North Riding of Yorkshire was my boss’s boss, in response to my asking him why we didn’t just use the chemical test and stop killing animals unnecessarily and inhumanely, told me with compelling upper class affectation that it was none of my business and that I would have to learn** to know my place!** My immediate boss later told me that the previous incumbent doing my job, in addition to his laboratory tasks, had been required to wash and polish once a week during working hours the Rolls Royce owned by said medical officer of health. He had disposed of the Rolls shortly before I was hired. Do you think I would have washed it? I would have reported him to his boss and hoped that he (or much less likely in Britain she) was not of the same self serving class conscious ilk.

Through my late teens I had not yet become fully ‘immunized’ as it were against embracing and engaging in Coronation Street like working class ways which were inevitably the norm in my then social world. There was one shemozzle in particular that drove the point home to me once and for all. I had met an attractive girl at a dance. She was one year older than my tender eighteen years and lived in the town where the dance was held. It was about twenty miles from where I lived hence still in predominantly industrial working class territory. She was later, very much later, to be ‘featured’ in one of my short stories – The Scream posted Oct 2, 2020 q.v. but I digress. 

We dated for a while and at some point she invited me to meet her parents with whom she still lived. They would like me to have dinner (‘Tea’ in their northern UK colloquial parlance) and hopefully I pondered, also some wine and or beer. If I wished, I was welcome to stay over rather than drive the twenty miles home in my first car a recent step up sort of, from my motorcycle. The car was an aged and barely viable Hillman station wagon. Actually the stripped down el cheapo ‘Commer’ version thereof bought of course used and then some. I elected to stay over not wanting to be stopped again for driving under the influence. 

Again! Driving under the influence I hear you say. Yes I had been recently stopped late one dark night, this long before the advent of breathalyzers. A Bobby to use the British nickname for policeman after Sir Robert (Bobby) Peel who founded the police force in 1829 pulled me over because I was swerving back and forth over the centre line of a narrow country road. Fair enough. He ordered me out of the car and proceeded to have me attempt to walk in a straight line on the centre line. This I did with consummate ease not from previous practice of doing so drunk or otherwise, but because fortunately I had not had anything to drink and was by then fully awake. I was guilty of falling asleep at the wheel. He let me off if rather testily. I guess he was peeved he had not nailed a drunk.  

I had no idea what kind of dwelling my girlfriend’s parents lived in. It was apparently located deep into heavy industry territory. Not likely to my mind but best case they might live in a detached house, more likely a semi-detached house (duplex) or if they were really poor, a very small late 1800s early 1900s Victorian terraced as in row house, just like those in Coronation Street. These of course share a common wall with the house on each side along with any associated loud and not so loud noises. Regardless of type, the house would be built of red bricks like most all UK houses then and now.

I arrived mid-afternoon and was wholly unprepared for what I found. From the outside the tiny early twentieth century terraced house and its myriad ‘joined at the hip’ exact copies thereof collectively stretched for perhaps a hundred yards on both sides of the street. Certainly they were stereotypical Victorian. Other than the cobbled, yes cobbled road and a narrow sidewalk or pavement as the Brits would say, there was nothing abutting the front wall of the house. I subsequently discovered there was not very much beyond the back wall of the house either other than a very small paved yard to accommodate regular garbage cans and other containers for the ashes from the inevitable coal fires, in 1962 and long thereafter, still very much the domestic fuel of choice in the UK. Beyond the yard there was a ‘back’ street as in, poetically perhaps, ‘the back streets of England’. When I was a young kid, we used to play soccer (football in UK usage) in them using an empty tin can instead of a ball since rarely did someone show up with such a luxury. The noise was something else.

Arriving at my girlfriend’s house and after some deep breaths to steel my uncertain youthful self, in the absence of a door bell I knocked I will concede, with some trepidation. My girlfriend soon opened it and in I went. Although it was early afternoon and summer it was quite dark in the narrow corridor comprising the hallway. Windows in the house I was to discover were few and small in size. There was a small room to the right and an only slightly larger combined kitchen and dining room at the end of the hall from which was coming considerable noise. A TV was on seemingly at maximum volume however it was largely drowned out by a small barking dog, a Cairn terrier also at maximum volume. A dog lover more or less from birth, I was pleased there was a dog.

We walked from the hall straight into the small combined kitchen/dining room area. My girlfriend’s parents were there. They were much older than I had anticipated. Her father was retired and her mother did not and had never worked outside the home which was most often the way in those days including the situation with my own mother. There were very few jobs for women. A coal fire was hissing, sparking and periodically roaring as they do, the latter occurring when embedded gas exits and ignites. Very close to the fire and I am not making this up this is a true story, was something I had never seen before or since, nor do I expect ever to see again.

Equipped with substantial carry handles at each end there was a large, galvanized metal container. It was about five feet long, rounded at the ends, about two feet wide and roughly eighteen inches deep. It was filled with water. It struck me as an odd thing to have in front of the fire. Perhaps I wondered my girlfriend, knowing that I was a dog aficionado (I had one at the time) had planned on having the dog either swim in it as a sort of fun event and/or be given a bath. 

I can’t believe that it initially almost failed to register in my rather flummoxed and socially overloaded youthful head, but at first blush and in my overly anxious state of mind, miles beyond my then comfort zone, as my girlfriend’s father greeted me, an expected visitor to his home, he did so from within the warm water comfort of the galvanized iron bath! He not the dog was having a bath in front of the fire. Where else would he bathe in a house with, it turned out, no conventional bathroom? It was I discovered the only bath in the house. Clearly he was not a shy man nor rather obviously was he a rich man.

After his bath and having had the decency to put on some clothes, the father of the house, likely not I suspected the master of the house, exited the humble dwelling and walked about twenty yards to a pub. Having downed a couple of pints he was later to return with a very large jug of draft beer. No matter that doing so was illegal he pointed out, as the pub did not have an ‘off’ license to sell alcohol but who was likely to care?

After exchanging pleasantries with the lady of the house who mercifully was not planning on having a bath any time soon, my girlfriend and I retired to the front ‘sitting room’ to listen to some LP records while her mother started to prepare the meal. At no time did the dog stop barking and at no time did anyone attempt to stop it barking. At no time either did anyone turn the volume down on the TV much less turn it off. 

Along with listening to LP records which had superseded but not displaced 78 rpm recordings not too long prior, we also tuned in to Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres medium wave. In other words, on the AM band. Why we would be listening to an English language transmission from the European continent rather than to a British one is interesting. For reasons better known to the BBC who had a monopoly on radio broadcasting in the UK at the time, pop music for all intents and purposes was almost never broadcast. Go figure. English language savvy enterprising folks in Luxembourg saw an opportunity and aimed their radio transmitters at the UK with enormous commercial success. The weekly Saturday night ‘Top Twenty’ pops countdown was but one of many English language hit shows. 

My girlfriend was particularly keen on the music of a young American upstart pop singer – Elvis Presley. Like me she really liked the song Love me Tender and his interpretation of it. Elvis was co-credited with writing the words for the song. (I still have the sheet music to prove it). Elvis did not write any lyrics period. He was credited with co-writing all of the songs he sang but only because he would not perform or record the songs otherwise! 

The gorgeous melody for Love Me Tender was that from a well known US civil war era folk song Aura Lea from 1861. An entertainer of sorts myself, without telling the audience up front, I like to perform the song with guitar by singing Love Me Tender straight the first time around and then softly, gently and almost imperceptibly, transition into the words of Aura Lea as a second verse. Of course the melody stays the same. It is fun to see the audience gradually ‘get it’. It has proven to be a crowd pleaser and a good audience sing-a-long number.

With the bath put away for another month, OK likely another week best case, we all sat down for tea. There was no wine but as mentioned plenty of draft pub beer. The television was left on and at full volume and the dog, true to form, continued to bark at full volume. We conversed by shouting louder than the dog was barking and louder than the TV sound. Not easy on either account. After the meal we simultaneously chatted noisily and watched TV. What else? It appeared to be permanently on. It was 1962 and yes we watched Coronation Street. We might as well have been on camera as guest performers. We would have been a shoo-in. The show emulated the ‘lower orders’ north country life style and we emulated much of the show’s content without even trying. Independent Television (ITV) the broadcaster one imagines may have balked however at the bath scene. Had the broadcast been on BBC for sure they would certainly have done so.

With the hour eventually getting late we readied for bed. I was to sleep upstairs in the back bedroom across from my girlfriend’s parents front bedroom. It was unclear where my girlfriend would spend the night enlightened ‘modern’ ways not having been adopted in the milieux in which I found myself. Probably a good thing. Her bedroom was the one I had been assigned since there were only two actual bedrooms in the tiny house. It turned out she had been reassigned for the night to the downstairs front room. She could fall asleep listening to Radio Luxembourg.

The old folks headed off to bed first. The TV was still on albeit with the sound having been much reduced by us however the dog was still barking at full throttle most of the time. We chit chatted as young people do and I had a go at teaching the dog how not to bark. It was pointless and hopeless. The late TV news ended, late being a relative term as TV broadcasting, most all of it live at the time, shut down quite early in those days usually ending with a religious oriented epilogue. I headed up the stairs and my girlfriend headed to her temporary nocturnal pad. She also killed all the lights just before I reached the top of the stairs. This was to prove problematic.

In the complete darkness I quickly lost my sense of direction. Having barely made it to the top of the stairs after the lights went out I had no clue where the door to my room was. Nor did I know where any light switches were. Not wishing to appear to be a complete idiot, I decided against back tracking downstairs for help from my girlfriend assuming I could even transit them without careening down. Do you think I could find the back bedroom in the pitch darkness? In other words I was screwed or to use an expression common among Brits at the time, sewered. 

Slowly I felt my way along a wall guessing it to be on the sought after back side of the upstairs landing. Eventually I found an open door. This had to be it. I crept noiselessly inside feeling for a light switch. I found one but no lights came on. What to do? I could see literally nothing. Why did I need light anyway? I had found the bedroom. Why not just step inside and curl up in the bed? I felt a pillow so at least I knew which end of the bed I was at. Very slowly, I fumbled around quiet as a mouse then pulled myself up on to the bed and slid under the covers. I was home free.

Certainly it was at a minimum several minutes, but I don’t recall quite how long I had been in the bed when I thought I felt something move within it! The dog. It had to be the dog. For sure. It probably normally slept with my girl friend. It had beaten me to the punch. Thankfully it had given up barking for the night. It would have to sleep with me. No problem. As noted I love dogs. I reached further under the covers to reassure my new Cairn terrier friend. My hand landed on something much larger than a Cairn terrier. Yes, I had crawled in with my sleeping aged hosts! Wrong bedroom. Hopefully I would not be the bringer of heart attacks should either or both of them suddenly wake up. Needless to say I engaged reverse gear in a microsecond, conceivably a nanosecond and slithered again more or less silently into the darkness.

The rest was easy even in the dark. I now knew where my room was not. It didn’t need a Sherlock Holmes to deduce therefore that it must be the one and only other room in the vicinity which I soon located also by feel. This time I did find a working light switch and confirmed that beyond reasonable doubt I was where I was supposed to be and that the bed was devoid of canines and people.

Morning came and nobody mentioned anything about any strange noises or apparent movements in the night so I didn’t mention anything either, not even to my girlfriend. I told nobody, literally until this moment as I cast this story these many years later. All was well that ended well although the relationship fairly soon thereafter came to an amicable end. 

Regarding Coronation Street I felt that I had been in a real world episode thereof. That was more than enough to deter me from both the real life and theatrical versions of the genre period. It spurred me further to find my escape window of opportunity tout suite. In reality it took me another five years of work experience (in labs but certainly not public health ones) and of studies to be in a position thankfully, to apply and be accepted for immigration to Canada, a country about as far removed from a social system based primarily on inherited birthright as one could imagine.

* pleb – British usage short for plebeian – a person who is considered too ordinary.

** Phonetically: leeairn as opposed to learn & neeo as opposed to know. Go Figure.