The Magic That Was Harold Hill

I remember the name catermoul as it s unusal. Did you have a sister named Frances. As I went to dycorts with somebody called Frances catermoul. My name then was Lesley Cohen.

I remember the name catermoul as it s unusal. Did you have a sister named Frances. As I went to dycorts with somebody called Frances catermoul. My name then was Lesley Cohen.

Dear Lesley

OMG! Someone has actually replied to my message. Hmmmm, Donald Trump’s victory has not been in vain ha ha.

Lesley Cohen. Let me see now, the name seems strangely familiar, you are not by any chance related to the singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen who died this week, and whose song Hallelujah was immortalised by Alexandra Burke when she won the X-factor in 2008?

Probably not. Unlike my name Cattermoul, which as you rightly say, is unusual, there are plenty of Cohens scattered across the planet, though to be fair to my namesakes, a Google search will bring up 22,400 web pages, though curiously, my name ‘Richard Cattermoul’ appears on more - ~24,900, but they are not all about me.

You ask if I had a sister Frances. I still do. She is alive and kicking, as are our two sisters Dorothy and Marian. Irene and Ron - my mum and dad have sadly moved on to that big prefab in the sky.

Dorothy and Frances long ago set up shop in the USA, and I am now wondering if they might be partially responsible for the crash of Canada’s immigration website during the US vote.

You have to hand it to the man. During the campaign he managed to hurl every conceivable insult at a mystified audience and still win the election by a sizeable majority, even before all the results were in.

Has life been kind to me, have I learnt anything? Well, in my dealings with the fairer sex, I would probably have to say not really, I seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. Let me explain.

I am pretty sure this incident occurred at the Hilldene junior school when I was 8 or 9, but it could have been in the infants school when I was 6 or 7, who can tell?

Anyway, there was this girl Deanna Wills who, for reasons that are not clear - my mum looked after other people's children, and she may have been one of them - I remember sitting next to in the cloakroom one lunch time. We were surrounded by a number of girls – certainly no boys because in those days, no self respecting boy would actually be seen with them, let alone talk to them.

Nevertheless, her presence must have made an impact, for in class later that afternoon, I wrote a note which said ‘will you marry me when I am 21?’ which I handed to the person next to me, expecting it to reach Deanna.

Not long after, and to my great surprise, I was handed a reply which said ‘yes, meet me at the gate after school’

School ended, and I dutifully bounded to the exit where I waited for what seemed like an interminable length of time, but no Deanna showed up, though I dimly recall some other girl who seemed to be hanging around for no good reason.

My grief was further compounded the next day when I got another note, but this time it said ‘I never want to speak to you again. DEANNA WILLS’

It seems I had failed to sign my name and also not state who my note was for; after all, I wasn’t stupid, I was not going to let anyone know I had a crush on a girl, thus, it was some other girl who read the note and replied. Deanna apparently found out about this, and was incensed that I had eyes for someone else, hence her flat rejection of my proposal.

Looking back, it was quite funny, but back then, I had my first taste of the wrath of a woman scorned.

My memory is not what it once was, but this all surely happened around my 9th birthday I guess when she was one of the kids that came to my party. I remember this because I had just bought my very first Bayko set and I was so absorbed in this that I more or less ignored all the people who’d come to celebrate my birthday.

This was also the time I saw Snow White and the seven dwarfs, probably at the Gaumont or Odeon cinema. This film made a deep impression on me, so much so that on the way back home, I remember peering closely into the undergrowth that I was walking alongside, hoping to catch sight of her, but she wasn’t to be found, and I concluded that someone else had rescued her before me.

Of course, with the passage of time, I realised that the film was no more than the wild imaginations of movie makers, and that all the characters were fictional. At the time though, she was real enough.

Richard

Oh yes, did I learn anything from any of this? Apparently not. Just the other day, I was wandering around the local Sainsburys and I fell into conversation with one of the staff, even to the extent that she gave me her phone number, and which pleased me greatly because she was half my age and attractive with it.

Thus, there followed some whatsapp, but it appears I kind of misinterpreted one of her comments in the shop when she said her husband was crippled, and as I am still a randy old bastard, suggested to me that it was not a happy marriage and I could therefore fill the void, if you see what I mean.

Sadly, I was mistaken, and when I reminded her of what she said, she cunningly denied that she’d used the word ‘crippled’ but that he was merely suffering from a injury he sustained during a football match.

Not to be outdone, I then sent her a picture of the woman I said I’ll be spending Xmas with, and that pretty much did it. I saw her in the shop yesterday, but this time her words were decidedly cool and dismissive.

Oh well, you lose some, you win some.

I remember your name and I lived close to you. I think you lived at Myrtle Road on the green top of Holly Road and Broseley Road. Would I be correct?