VT Coughtrey

NOTES	True to form, I waited until it was past going-home time, just in case something should turn up, then started hitching up the Great North Road. I was probably heading back towards Leeds instinctively. Anyway, that's where I landed. I was now fairly adept at hitching and could get anywhere on the main routes quite quickly. I managed to do the couple of hundred miles overnight.
	Upon arrival the next morning I returned, just this once, to my old 'job' of booking into a hostel, then doing the rounds of National Insurance Office, Employment Exchange and Supplementary Benefits Office of the Ministry of Social Security (MOSS), to give them their newest names at that time. From earlier chapters, you must be well familiar with the routine by this time. But to recap, the aim was to get a temporary NI number under a false name, get a job (not necessarily intending to turn up for it) then hope to score some Supplementary Benefit (formerly National Assistance) on the strength of having the roof, the job and the NI number. The usual reason for the false name was that you would be going through this routine far more frequently than allowed, but this was my first time for two years. I had another reason, which was that, having sacked myself, I was not yet entitled to any benefit - there was a long 'penalty period' for self-sackers.
	There was no Salvation Army hostel in Leeds, but there was a small private hostel which, as expected, turned out to be a lot less terrible than any Sally Ann. The liberal attitudes that were, for the time being and in some areas of the country, now having a strong influence on some parts of society, such as the welfare system, had certainly reached Leeds. I very easily scored £6 from a smiling, utterly gullible clerk, in addition to a voucher for a week in the hostel. (This liberality never reached London, where it remained so hard for the rootless to score that very few bothered to try). I decided to stay in the hostel that night and to give the job I had got for the purposes of cracking MOSS a try. I no doubt had hopes of resettling in Leeds.
Well, I've recently discovered who wears them these days - members of the 'new skinhead' movement. Some of the new skins have even quoted my paragraph on their websites!	The job was swarf devil at Blakey's seg factory in the Armley district of the city. I was going to ask how many of you remember segs, or 'blakeys' as they were more generally known. But now I find to my great surprise that they are still obtainable and still made at the same factory in Armley. Segs are steel studs with three or four spikes,which enable them to be hammered into the soles and heels of men's and boy's boots and shoes as a kind of armour plating, to prolong the life of them. The use of blakeys was probably one way of defining the working class. When I was a child, my father was very keen on them and hammered them (using my grandfather's old shoemending last) into every new pair of shoes, of his and mine. It was my delight, and that of other boys lucky enough to have segged shoes, to kick the granite curb repeatedly while walking along the street after dark, in order to produce showers of multicoloured sparks. But who on earth wears them these days? Even in 1967 I was surprised to find that they were still being made.
	Nostalgia for segs was all very well, but it didn't help me with the job. As swarf devil I had to clear out the swarf (actually it wasn't so much swarf as iron dust in this case) from under the machines and take it by the barrow-load to a large and very robust steel spin-dryer. It was then spun in order to recover the lubricating oil that had been used during the machine process. No problem up to that point. The big snag was that, after a spin, I simply didn't have the strength in my wrists to undo the clamps on the lid of the dryer, so I had to keep fetching the foreman. But the end of the first day he was getting thoroughly exasperated. He was able to flick them open effortlessly with one hand. I simply didn't dare go back the next day, so got nothing for that day's very hard work. I could somehow sense that the luck I had encountered the first time round in Leeds wasn't going to be repeated. I was not meant to return.
	After a second night in the hostel I set out, in low spirits, to hitch away from the city. On the way out through the suburbs I called on a young methodist minister whom a dosser at the hostel had described as a very good tap. He certainly was. He swallowed my story, whatever it was, and lent me a fiver (at that time a ridiculously large amount to lend a complete stranger). Needless to say, he never got it back. I carried on eastwards to the Great North Road, then struck north. Alas, I no longer had the great Book of Taps to refer to, but I knew from memory that there was a spike I had never visited during the Grand Tour. It was called Plawsworth and was somewhere near Bishop Auckland in County Durham, probably about 80 miles north of Leeds.
	This spike, being in a remote area and a former RAF camp, was of the 'Rehabilitation Centre' type. (For an explanation of the spike system and the different types of spike, see Chapter 27 and other chapters). I booked myself in and fortunately wasn't searched on this occasion - the money I had on me would have disqualified me and could have led to arrest for fraud, since spikes were by definition for the destitute. I was put to work in the extensive vegetable gardens that were the usual feature of the rehab centres (and were definitely not used to produce food for the inmates, but for sale at market). After a week or two I decided to move on. As described before, with the exception of Gordon Road, to book into the rehab typ of reception centre, as distinct from the casual ward type, was to imprison yourself until the spikemaster decided you had been rehabilitated. Given that the spikemasters were in general of a sadistic nature, you had to know the trick I had learned during the Grand Tour - that of appearing to want the opposite of what you really wanted. I duly pleaded to be allowed to stay for longer and was promptly kicked out.
	I found my way to a main road, but there was very little traffic. Suddenly I was overcome by a sensation I had experienced not very often in past wanderings, but always strongly - the exhilarating feeling of freedom resulting from a sudden realization that it matters not a jot which direction you take, which corner you go round, etc. Sometimes this realization leads to despair rather than elation. When I saw a car approaching from the north, I thumbed it. When it didn't stop, I crossed the road and thumbed another car approaching from the south - and so on. I would go wherever the first driver to stop was going, however short or long the distance.
	The car that stopped was heading south - and going all the way to London. It was a Morgan driven by a good-looking young blonde. It was surprising to be picked up by an unaccompanied young woman on a lonely road, but not downright astonishing, as it would be today. She drove very fast the whole 300 miles to London, except for a stop at a service station, where she bought me a meal. She was very interested in all my adventures. I got the impression that she was wealthy and well-connected. It was only after she dropped me off in Trafalgar Square that I realized to my horror that she was probably the long-awaited Introducer, and I had blown it ! I knew there would never be another.