NICK! GOT YOUR NICK!... DIMP!
GOT YOUR DIMP!
I was born in 1973. That made me four at the silver jubilee
and the release of Never mind the Bollocks. Eight when I bought Swords of a Thousand Men and Kids in
America on seven inch single. Nine during the Falklands War. Eleven buying When Doves Cry, by
Prince. Fifteen when Ben Johnson
was my mum’s favourite athlete for a very short time.
During my secondary school
years (the demarcation in my life that my mother reminds me, ‘You were ok,
until you went to that school’) I
was landed in the playground- the yard, much bigger and more complex than that
of my earlier school. It was
1984. I think the Prince purchase
reflected the priming lust that I began to feel for Miss Beedham.
The playground was a desolate
ashphalty expanse that had many, shadowy and unusual smelling corners, nooks
and passages. I felt like a
goldfish knowing the universality of clean underpants everyday, being poured
out onto a coral reef. The
darkness and protocols of yard life became quickly apparent.
I had not yet had my head
flushed in the toilet, like my brother had warned. But, on snacking innocently into a bag of Monster Munch
during what may have been my first day at school, I was made aware by a bigger,
older boy at the apex of a formation of boys- some stern, some cowed and that he
was, ‘having the nick on that’.
‘Dimp’, said a boy obscured
behind him. A square headed boy
with a very short haircut and a faint odour of fags combined with the vague
funk that emanates from a fake Ben Sherman coat not washed since his mum bought
it from the market in Rhyl a year previous.
‘OK’, I offered,
nervously. Squarehead peered into
my bag of Munster Munch, as you might, looking over the edge of a building to
the street below. ‘That’s a nick’,
he said swiping the bag from me.
He turned, walked through the formation- they, parting like cattle. I watched, electricity gossiping in my
head as an albino kid pestered Squarehead with tongue flapping pleas for the
dimp, the dimp.
Squarehead contemptuously
stuffed the remaining contents of the bag into his mouth, dropped it, licked
the essence of deep fried snack from his fingers and ignored the protestations
from the albino. No dimp for him.
I learnt quickly the
protocols of scavenging snacks and smokes. The Nick probably evolved from the last part of a
smoke. Fidgety, spermy teens with
creamy eyes, hungry since a breakfast of white bread, margarine and jam were
hyena quick to say, ‘gis ya nick on that’ as their partner in loitering drew a
match to a fresh, straight Benson.
It was always Bensons in our school. The Dimp, even lower in desperation was the nick of the
nick- the last few tar filled
draws ‘till the filter.
This lore of the smokers
somehow spread like a cancerous culture to the rest of the yard and hundreds of
children ceased to savour their Monster Munch and crammed that shit in before
anyone could pounce from the shadows to cast a contract: NICK! That kid, in turn would hop about as if
they needed to urinate, stressed that a lower scavenger would appear to bark,
DIMP!
One clause did exist
however. If no one around you was
harder than yourself, you could, as soon as you pulled the crisps from your bag
announce, ‘No nicks. No
dimps’. And as long as Markie
Rowlands didn’t swagger up and say, ‘Nick on ‘at’, you would be free to go to
the bottom of the bag.
Next week in Vernacular of
1980’s north Wales:
You used to be alright.
Sly (meaning cruel).
Fuck spelt fock
Going With as opposed to
Going Out
