My Long-Held Grudge
It is said that most people retain one or two grudges from events that happened a long time ago; a precise moment, a specific situation, often recalled in exact detail, when one was treated unfairly and felt rage and resentment. This is from Psychology Today:
Many people hold grudges, deep ones, that can last a lifetime. Many are unable to let go of the anger they feel towards those who “wronged” them in the past, even though they may have a strong desire and put in a concerted effort to do so.[1]
I consider myself fortunate to have experienced very little in the way of ill-treatment and certainly nothing to have left any deep inner wounds. However, when I considered the suggestion that we all bear one or two grudges from the past, I immediately thought of a discrete experience that has stayed with me for decades. I recount it now not as an attempt to air any grievance but purely as an exercise in sharing the memory and adding to the conversation.
I grew up in a village, which I shall call Greenmore, in the rural suburbs east of London. It was a vibrant commuter village with many new housing estates and was thus a magnet for young families with children. Apparently, the primary school quadrupled in size within five years during my time there. It was a diverse population, in terms of class rather than ethnicity, with many Ford Motor Company employees and executives (the European headquarters was nearby); City workers; East End overspill; regular working families; pensioners in bungalow-lined cul-de-sacs; and a significant number of settled Romanies who had been persuaded to give up the caravan for a council house. For a village (albeit a larger one), it was a busy and dynamic place with a lot going on and plenty of social interaction.
When I was ten years old, the village hosted a three-day fair to celebrate a royal jubilee. Greenmore had never seen anything like it, with the whole village sealed off from traffic and thousands attending the festivities, which included barn dances, concerts, discos, pet shows, funfair rides, street parties, and sporting events. There were loudspeakers set-up all over the village to play music, make announcements, and generally keep the fair organized. I still recall the tinny sounds of All Around My Hat by Steeleye Span waking me up each morning.
One of the activities was a soapbox derby, which I entered with a good friend of mine, Neil Marden. Neil and his dad built an amazing go-cart, with a solid wood body, comfy seat, four large wheels, a raised bar at the rear for pushing, and a pram handle for steering. It was painted dramatically in blue and yellow. Whether I pushed and Neil sat and steered or vice versa, the go-cart was seriously fast. After a bit of practice, we became a formidable team.
On the day of the races, Neil and I were feeling good and raring to go. We were excited rather than nervous. There were three races: a boys’ race, a girls’ race, and then a super-final involving the top three from each of the previous two races. All of the races were three-times around a circuit that had been laid out in the village — including sections along roads, past the pond, around the main village green, and through a narrow alley — replete with hay-bales, traffic cones, and chalk markings to guide the racers. The driver and pusher had to swap roles after each lap. The village was heaving with crowds and the whole circuit, apart from the alley, was lined with people standing two- or three-deep.
We destroyed the field in the boys’ race, dashing around the course and successfully avoiding the inevitable pile-ups between the more aggressive teams. The girls’ race proved a little more competitive with two sisters, Claire and Lisa Bakewell, eventually dominating and taking the flag with half a lap to spare. Claire was in my grade at school and Lisa was a year or two younger. The stage was set for the super-final.
The final was going to be a little different because, acknowledging that the boys’ teams were much faster than the girls’, the organizers allowed the three girls’ teams a three-quarter lap head-start. It was a big lead to give up, but Neil and I felt it was manageable if we held our form from the earlier race and stayed out of trouble.
It started well, as we exploded from the start line, leaving the other two boys’ teams in the dust as we charged in pursuit of the girls. Indeed, by the start of the third circuit we had already overtaken two of the girls’ teams and were closing in on the leaders, Claire and Lisa. Going into the alleyway section, we were only a few seconds behind them and could see they were tiring. All Neil and I had to do was maintain our momentum and keep the go-cart on the track. We were certain to catch them.
The denouement of the race remains so vivid in my mind even after all of these years, which is perhaps an interesting insight into young minds and the impact of discrete moments. With about fifty meters to go, there was a tight right-hand turn from the narrow alley onto Church Street, followed by thirty meters along Church Street, before a left-hand bend onto the twenty meter straight before the finish line, which was slap-bang in the middle of the village at Horsefayre Green (the second but much smaller village green).
The noise had been quite deafening throughout the race, with everyone hollering and howling as we passed. Nevertheless, as the end of the race neared, the noise was reaching a crescendo. The master of ceremonies at the finish began geeing-up the crowd and every utterance, as well as the cacophony of the crowd around him, was relayed through the speakers across the village. We could clearly hear the chaos of the finish line as we turned onto Church Street but we could not yet see it.
Nevertheless, we did see Claire and Lisa among the hay-bales desperately struggling to get their go-cart back in the race. It appeared that they had panicked after hearing us so close by and lost control, running into the barriers. We knew immediately that we were going to pass them and that victory was going to be ours.
Just as we were overtaking, giving them a wide berth to avoid any entanglement in their desperation, two men holding hay-bales came rushing towards us. Using the hay-bales like battering rams, they pushed them in front of our go-cart and stopped us in our tracks. Neil flew out of the driver’s seat and seriously gashed his arm as he skidded onto the tarmac, whilst I ran straight into the pushing bar and collapsed in a heap behind the go-cart. We had no time to think and Neil instantly jumped back on and I picked myself up to try and get going again, yet the men grabbed the hay-bales and used them as shields to prevent us from moving. Meanwhile, about four or five other men, including Claire and Lisa’s father, maneuvered the girls’ go-cart back onto the course and started to help push it towards the finish line. Once the girls had a seemingly unassailable lead, the men with the hay-bales moved away and allowed Neil and I to pass. Despite Neil’s arm dripping blood and me being badly hurt, we tried our best to catch the girls and the gang of men pushing the go-cart, but to no avail. By the time we got within ten yards of them, Claire and Lisa’s go-cart had broken the finishing tape and ecstatic celebrations ensued. A whole group of the Bakewell family and their friends, including the men who had used the hay-bales against us, were jumping up and down, screaming with delight, and going wild with jubilation. Claire and Lisa were hoisted aloft on shoulders and paraded around to rapturous applause.
After the celebrations had died down, the master of ceremonies brought Neil and I together with the girls as well as the third placed team to receive our trophies. The girls received a big, gleaming silver trophy and two £25 book tokens (no small amount back then), whilst Neil and I and the third placed team each got given a Matchbox toy car on a wooden plinth. The announcer asked the girls to share a few words over the microphone, which they dutifully did to deafening acclaim. I assume we were still just stunned, yet to this day I have no idea why I did not grab the microphone and scream of the injustice or simply shout “They cheated!” But Neil and I just stood there, heads down and heartbroken. Don’t forget, we were only ten years old.
I certainly did not blame Claire and Lisa for what had happened. They were nice girls and I knew Claire throughout most of my teenage years. It was not their fault. However, as to why their father and his friends would do what they did to me and Neil beggars belief. I could have accepted it more if the culprits had been other kids, perhaps school friends of Claire and Lisa, who had just misguidedly thought they were helping. It would still have been wrong, and I would have been equally angry, but I could have understood the high jinks and over-enthusiasm of children. But adults? Grown men not just brazenly cheating but being especially malicious and eager to hurt two ten-year-old boys over a village race, on what was meant to be a fun-filled, celebratory, summer afternoon. How could anyone do that to kids? It remains a hurtful and saddening memory. It is my longstanding grudge.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201503/why-we-hold-grudges-and-how-let-them-go#:~:text=Many%20people%20hold%20grudges%2C%20deep,concerted%20effort%20to%20do%20so.
