Free Life Without Armour by Alan; Sillitoe

write, however, and I loved inks, paper, pens and notebooks. In a large limp-covered jotter I recorded details of my cousins’ way of life, thinking I might one day write something about them in a novel, noting their age, weight, height, colour of hair, where and when they had been born, what clothes they wore, as well as their address, when they had one. Then I inscribed sketches of their past lives and brief army careers, and entered accounts of their robberies and escapades which included, as far as I could ascertain, the date, time and location of particular shops and offices broken into.
    My mother found the book and, on glancing through it, rightly considered such material too incriminating to leave lying around. Protesting that I was going to write a novel, she ignored such a ludicrous boast and poked it into the flames, perhaps also thinking me stupid enough to use the data as the subject for an essay at school.
    The book on journalism told me that articles for newspapers had to be neatly typed on sheets of good paper, so it was discreetly proposed to my cousins that on next breaking into the appropriate premises they bring such a machine back for me, with the assurance that they would be paid for it on the instalment plan, or out of what money my journalistic enterprise might earn. They did not reject the idea, even laughing about it, and as good as promised they would get one for nothing. Perhaps my mother had mentioned my secret ambition, and they were amused, possibly flattered, at the notion of having their own biographer at some future date. I waited in hope, but the scheme was quietly forgotten, my mother no doubt realizing that it would be bad for everyone if the police saw reason to search our house and found one there.
    Either my parents were getting old enough to know better, or with adequate rations and money to pay for them there was less reason for antagonism. Perhaps the atmosphere of war sapped some of their bile. Peggy had become a second wage-earner, bringing home twelve shillings a week from a sweet factory up the road. She and I were more able to show our disapproval of any violent clash, though we could not yet muster the strength between us to stop the mayhem on the few occasions when it occurred.
    My parents had the cash to go now and again to the cinema, and spend Saturday night at the pub, and there was sufficient also for pennies to flow into my pocket, mostly for running errands or doing the weekend shopping. Arthur Shelton earned a few shillings delivering newspapers morning and evening, but I refused such jobs from a mixture of pride and inertia.
    The time was coming when it would be necessary to work full time anyway, though I could not prepare myself for it by imagining such a situation. School was the basic condition of life, home a place to stay while going there, and the prospect of labour in a factory something that could not be allowed to spoil my enjoyment of the present. By the age of thirteen I could swim well, walk any distance, go up trees like a monkey, and ride a borrowed bike for a few yards without holding the handlebars, much I suppose like most other boys, and not a few girls, in the area I came from.
    It gave some satisfaction to hear on the wireless, on 22 June 1941, that the German Army had invaded Russia. Spreading a map so as to follow the campaign as closely as possible, it was easy to see that Great Britain now had a much better chance of surviving the war. The national anthem of our Soviet ally was added to those played every week in a fifteen-minute programme on the BBC. I listened to every one, and having memorized the verses of Rouget de Lisle’s ‘Marseillaise’ from a French grammar, could fit the words to the tune.
    The German advance in Russia was rapid, and dreadful things were happening, though we were not to know the full horror till the war was nearly over. It was obvious that the greater the distance the German Army went through the