Gas Meter Knees

By Francis Fox

“It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realised pressing 50 pence pieces into Plasticine sheets and filling the impressions with water, freezing overnight and quickly using the ice coins in the electric meter slots wasn’t normal behaviour.” From raiding the bins of London fashion labels, to being asked to bury dead bodies in a flyover, being beaten unconscious twice in one day, to regularly driving my inebriated maths teacher back to school for a fee, finding my boss dead in a mysterious suicide and dragging a teetering motorcyclist to safety on a busy A3 flyover to avoid certain death, the weekly war with the bailiffs doggedly trying to repossess my TV, and finally an attempt to emulate Evel Knievel by jumping a pickup truck in Wimbledon Stadium. I learned the hard way that nobody was going to save me except myself – all this before the age of 16. A real-life rags-to-relative-affluence story which takes us from humble SW17 origins to the bustling streets of Singapore and Tokyo. The story is as diverse and delightfully absurd as it gets. If I hadn’t lived every moment, I wouldn’t believe it either.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398435285

Francis Fox

“Every day you have a choice – be part of the problem or part of the solution.” Francis fox was born in 1973 and was raised in ‘the dodgy end’ of South London. Growing up he was highly motivated to improve his life experiences, and these early lessons forged his career as a management consultant and business turnaround expert. He has lived and worked around the world, stationed in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Italy amongst others. A keen cyclist and with a strong penchant for Asian cuisine, he now shares his time with his family between Australia, Japan and the family home in Thailand along with five rescue cats (and counting). An Italian speaker and a student of Japanese currently, he is always looking to learn about new cultures and customs and this vibe has passed down to his children. Gas Meter Knees is his first book and it’s a rollercoaster ride through his formative years in 1980’s London that will make you laugh, cry and lots in between ‘sometimes you’re the pigeon – sometimes you’re the statue’.

Book preview

Gas Meter Knees

Francis Fox

Austin Macauley Publishers

Gas Meter Knees

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Suntec City, Singapore 2012

South London January ’82

March ’82

May ’83

November ’84

March ’85

September 1986

January ’87

April ’87

September ’87

March 1988

August 1988

January 1989

May 1989

September 1989

February 1990

August 1990

January 1991

May 1991

February 1992

May 1992

June 1992

July 1992

About the Author

Every day you have a choice – be part of the problem or part of the solution.

Francis fox was born in 1973 and was raised in ‘the dodgy end’ of South London.

Growing up he was highly motivated to improve his life experiences, and these early lessons forged his career as a management consultant and business turnaround expert.

He has lived and worked around the world, stationed in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Italy amongst others.

A keen cyclist and with a strong penchant for Asian cuisine, he now shares his time with his family between Australia, Japan and the family home in Thailand along with five rescue cats (and counting).

An Italian speaker and a student of Japanese currently, he is always looking to learn about new cultures and customs and this vibe has passed down to his children.

Gas Meter Knees is his first book and it’s a rollercoaster ride through his formative years in 1980’s London that will make you laugh, cry and lots in between ‘sometimes you’re the pigeon – sometimes you’re the statue’.

Dedication

For Olivia, Amber and Luca – my daily motivation.

For Massimo – my biggest supporter and mentor.

Costantino – Loyalty and opportunity many times over in my life.

For Felicity, Phil and all the other poor souls struggling with life.

Marellon – my oldest school friend.

Ann and Bill W – for putting me on the right path and those great summer school holidays.

Sally B –A fantastic teacher.

Ken – For all you did for us.

John F – 20 years of selling scooters together and against each other!

George D – recipient of my woofing pants more times than I care to mention and an enduring friendship over many years.

Copyright Information ©

Francis Fox 2023

The right of Francis Fox to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. The events expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398435261 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398435278 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398435285 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Neil Webster – Copy, advice, friendship and a good listener when I needed one.

Anyone that made life a challenge – you truly gave me the gift of the contents of this book, and I wish you all happiness.

Messrs Steve Vai and Joe Satriani for the music these experiences were always played out to either in my head or on my Walkman.

Illy for the endless espresso – the lifeblood of my creativity.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realised pressing 50 pence pieces into plasticine sheets and filling the impressions with water, freezing overnight and quickly using the ice coins in the electric meter slot wasn’t normal behaviour.

Suntec City, Singapore 2012

I sat in my not inconsiderable glass, L-shaped box of an office and looked at the vast landscape of staff busy in their cubicles in front of me and the stunning vista of Singapore’s Marina Bay outside my airconditioned full-length window.

I had put the office in Suntec there for one reason only and it had nothing to do with business, once a year my office overlooked turn one of the City track for Formula one.

I could hear the muted screams of the cars practicing below in my left ear and the steady slurping in my right ear of at least four of my staff supping cup noodles and managing to stay just below the partitioning so it was not clear who was actually eating and not working.

No matter – if the numbers came in, I’d let it slide.

My PA, a very attractive and petite Indian lady poked her head around the door and said, Line two for you and you’ll want to take this.

I frowned and outwardly sighed but answered in my best telephone voice and awaited today’s disaster.

Mark it’s Nik. (Nik was Dato’s fixer and Dato was an incredibly powerful and well-connected business partner in Malaysia.)

Look, Dato needs you in KL tonight, there’s a big presentation going on with the minister of sports and the prime minister and he needs you to say a few words about our strategic partnership.

I paused and put the receiver to my head. How quickly could I get a flight, where was my suit, when would I need to get back for…Nik interrupted my silence, Mark it’s OK, he knows how much you like the 458 so it’s in basement level two with a bonus. My heart leapt – two months ago I had borrowed the Ferrari 458 for a few days and was absolutely smitten, I’d done a track day at Sepang and cruised downtown KL blipping the throttle like a child and howling through tunnels and under every bridge I could find – normally getting a thumbs up from the local traffic cops as they knew it was Dato’s car.

I talked about details with Nik and clicked off.

My Pa must have seen the light go out on line two as almost immediately she entered the room and handed me my suit all dry cleaned, an appropriate tie and an overnight bag. Enjoy your surprise. She chuckled and was gone, no doubt to fuel the gossip grapevine of the office with today’s latest news.

None of my staff bothered raising their heads above the parapet. As my office door was locked, I was pushing everyone hard and to be fair, they were probably glad I’d left for the day so they could watch more Korean soap operas on YouTube.

The elevator took an eternity, I was solo apart from the staple diet of two loud fat Americans, shirt buttons straining like a taut flag in the wind and overtly large Breitlings worn like a badge of honour-22 floors and they were just bitching about how everything was better back home, I forced myself to dial out as my palms got sweaty and the door opened on to the basement level.

The tropical heat hit me hard and I could feel my heart beating so hard it was deafening. I turned a corner and there she was, svelte, dressed in red and just perfect in every way Arayana Dato’s PA and my current obsession…the Ferrari was there too of course!

Arayana leaned on the roof of the 458 with a grin on her face, she was the spitting image of Halle Berry in the James Bond era, short-cropped hair, high cheek bones framed by a huge pair of Jackie O’s, immaculate wide smile and curves in all the right places, her perfectly formed rear stuck out like it was spray-painted red in her figure hugging strapless dress paired with some ludicrous high heels, she gauged my obvious delight and said, So we have six hours to get to KL and that includes a one hour stop for some rest in Malacca if you drive fast.

She tossed me the key and I fired up the 458 and span it around to the exit in anticipation.

South London January ’82

29C Churchill Road, situated far off the main road at Mitcham junction. 1982.

At one time, the properties here were clearly high-end Victorian four-storey townhouses with bustling shopfronts below, that was a very long time ago and now they consisted of as many maisonettes, bedsits and flats that could be crammed into their sagging shells. Each door had more buttons than a telephone exchange of the time and most of the shop fronts had been whitewashed over to create more living space or were used for storage.

There remained two functioning (well open at least) shops – my uncle’s television repair shop which was mid-terrace and leaked horrendously. Windows overpainted with a thousand costs of Leyland gloss and rusty grilles to protect what meagre offerings were left over for sale inside.

A short stroll to the corner was the junk shop, a source of many treasures for me as a child and an endless emporium of curiosities and house clearance proceeds no doubt.

Enter Uncle Ken, for it was his good spirit that allowed us to live in the small flat behind his TV shop in return for my father working a few days a week going door to door in his yellow comma van (ex BT of course) selling colour TVs for the sum of ‘£59 any one you like with a three-month warranty’. Quite where one would obtain said warranty is another matter as the operation was strictly mobile and the quality of the TVs such that Dad would be sure not to visit the same street twice.

The saving grace of this scenario was the fact that the BT vans were bought at auction and barely lasted two months before another replacement in a slightly different hue of faded yellow was acquired and so the game went on like a gradually fading facsimile of the same idea.

Just behind the shopfront of 29 was 29C – a three-quarter height door set into the stairs that opened to rooms to the left of a narrow corridor. Two bedrooms – one for myself and my sister, another for my parents – and then a lounge with kitchenette (1970s’ lingo for a small galley or kitchen where there should be a cupboard) off to the right leading to a small yard stacked high with old TV cabinets and my uncle’s bloody German shepherd in a permanent state of Defcon 1 and manufacturer of an endless line of dog turds to navigate whilst crossing the yard to the outhouse that held a washing machine and a chest freezer.

While we’re here, let’s have a walk around the local area to give you a feel for the real 1980s’ south London.

Exit 29C and walk up the road, cars jammed bumper to bumper and most of them displaying ‘tax applied for’ in their murky windows while being for sale – a veritable sea of brown and derivatives of beige punctuated with obligatory British Leyland rust and dodgy MOTs was the norm in this area.

Get to the top of the road and the smell greeted you before you arrived – the Grenfell Arms – stale beer and a thousand cigarettes hung in the air and wafted in warm gales every time the swing doors opened, it was quite normal for fights to happen in the Grenfell arms and it was a den of small-time crooks, fences and labourers coupled with middle-aged men spending their dole money as fast as they could to blot out the reality of their failure and the cold winter days.

In those days, kids were allowed in most pubs but the Grenfell was somewhere you didn’t want to be regardless of the weather. A lot of people came out of that pub horizontal or stuffed into a car boot for disposal later, best to look down and just keep walking was the respected advice from any of the locals.

Turn the bend and the main road appeared. A shabby launderette with habitually broken machines (at least it was warm in winter) and Tom’s the greengrocers. All the local housewives loved Tom. An extra apple and a wink and he was as smooth as they come and with a twinkle in his eye. On more than one occasion, I’d seen Tom with a black eye – clearly the result of him taking liberties with a few of the more attractive ladies who swooned over him and repaid with a slap from the husbands. If you were female and it was a Friday and if Tom invited you for a curry at Samrat’s, it was code that you were the sure thing this weekend. All the local ladies knew it…and so did their husbands and boyfriends.

Tom mellowed over the years, especially as one day a young man in his early twenties turned up. A good-looking lad turned out he’d been told on his mother’s death bed that Tom was his father and had come in search of him