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  Her father eventually remarried, and I think she returned to live with him when she was aged about sixteen, and got a job as a silver-service waitress. Within about six years she was married. During the war she worked as an inspector in a munitions factory – of which there were several in North Staffordshire – which she enjoyed, and it seems most likely that she met Harry there. She gave the job up when she got married to become a traditional housewife at home.

  NEIL

  She was a marvellous mum who always looked after me well. It’s very sad that she lost contact with her brother and never saw him again and I had an uncle who I never met.

  When I was thirteen, in 1959, I was taken ill with pneumonia, and I was off school for several weeks. It was quite hard coming back: I’d missed a lot of lessons and it wasn’t easy to catch up. But I was OK. They made me a prefect – I had to look after the little kids and try to be friendly to them. I liked doing that. I’ve always liked doing that.

  Some of those kids still see me in town, in Newcastle-under-Lyme. They say, ‘Hey, Neil, I was at school with you.’ I heard the other day in town that one of the teachers there, Ron Stanton, was asking after me, and he’s eighty-one now. He was head of RE and he was always very nice to me. My parents were strong Christians, as well as Stoke City supporters, and so am I.

  MALCOLM

  Neil’s cousin Denise says:

  When our Neil was young, my mother used to say to Mary, ‘Something’s not right: he’s not developing, not sitting up or walking when he should.’ But Mary would not accept that anything was wrong. Harry realised but he kept very quiet. It was only much later that Mary accepted that things were not quite normal, but she never let it affect anything and always believed our Neil could do whatever he wanted. And he has! The only label I have ever given our Neil is ‘cousin’, and the same goes for all the family. I just think of my mum, Mary, myself, and Neil as being very alike – never seeing the bad in people.

  When I was a child we had so many lovely times with our Neil, who was so much fun for my sister Brenda and myself. He was in his teens but we were younger. When we went to Chesterton, we spent hours in the park opposite where they lived in Ripon Avenue, or, when they came here, we went to the Stanley Street park. Some of the local kids in Chesterton used to call him unpleasant names such as ‘spastic’, but it just never bothered him. Life never seems to bother him.

  Denise’s sister Brenda recalls:

  When we were children I spent a lot of time playing with Neil when we visited Auntie Mary and Uncle Harry. Neil was always so comical. He has no inhibitions. If he wants something he just asks for it. Auntie Mary was such a lovely lady. She was incredibly understanding of Neil, who always wanted to be a vicar.

  Once, Neil ordered some cassocks. Mary rang up the supplier and said to them, ‘Just tell him they’re out of stock’ rather than destroy his dream. She was protective of him in a lovely way. She protected him but didn’t inhibit him. She was one of the kindest, most lovely people I have ever met. Uncle Harry was very quiet. I remember that he produced his own home brew and had two dogs, Trixie and Prince.

  When Neil came to stay he would eat my mum out of house and home. He could almost eat a loaf before a meal.

  Neil wanted to run off with the circus – which, as we will see, years later, he did. Paul Bartels remembers:

  Once, after Gandey’s Circus had been on the Timber Yard, as we called it, Neil went missing. It caused hassle in the village, and PC Ernie Ball and the rest of the police were trying to find him. It turned out he had followed the circus.

  Denise also recalls these escapades:

  Neil used to try to run away to the circus. When the circus was in town, he would just disappear during the day, but Mary knew where to find him: at the circus. I don’t know where his love of the circus came from.

  When they came to Birkenhead, we used to reenact the circus as kids, and Neil would always be the clown.

  NEIL

  And Denise was the acrobat.

  MALCOLM

  Brenda recalls that Neil occasionally had a difficult relationship with his granddad: ‘Granddad was a very strict man. He used to expect us all to sit still, but Neil didn’t like that. We were quite scared of him, but Neil wasn’t.’

  Denise remembers that Neil’s love of the circus caused problems for the family at Christmas, because Granddad wouldn’t have the television on, and the circus was always shown on Christmas Day:

  Granddad always came to our house at Christmas, but he had very fixed views and was very strict. The rest of us just accepted it, but poor Neil couldn’t adapt. Granddad insisted that the television should not be watched on Christmas Day and refused to have it on. But Neil was obsessed with the circus, which was always shown on Christmas Day, after Top of the Pops, which was on at 2 p.m., and wanted to watch it. He just couldn’t understand why the television couldn’t be switched on, and kicked up about it. Auntie Mary just tried to shut Neil up. Normally Mary used to let Neil do whatever he wanted.

  Mum and Mary went out once and left Granddad in charge of Neil when he was about six or seven. Neil spent the whole time singing in the bedroom, and Granddad couldn’t make him be quiet. Granddad said he could never sleep again in his house because of his bad behaviour.

  NEIL

  My mum and auntie had gone off to the Battle of Britain celebrations. Granddad told me off for singing in the bedroom and said the bedroom is for sleep, not singing. But I liked my granddad. He’d been in the navy, which is why he had all those rules.

  My dad and mum were very good parents. They taught me how to live properly and be nice to people. They looked after me, and they wanted me to be happy, and they took me to Stoke City and the circus and that’s why later on I went to Stoke City and the circus.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NEIL IN THE SIXTIES: A TIME TO SOW

  NEIL

  When I was fourteen, a student teacher called Dave Cox turned up at my school for a few weeks’ teaching practice. He was training to be a teacher at the local university, Keele. He and I got on pretty well, and he said, ‘Come along and visit me at Keele.’ So I did.

  I came on the bus after school. It was March 1960, just after my fourteenth birthday. The campus was all covered in snow – the lawns, the lakes, the woods, everything. It looked marvellous.

  I met Dave Cox in the Students’ Union. In those days the union was just a Nissen hut. They didn’t build the present union building until 1963. I sat down with Dave, we had coffee, then he showed me round, showed me the library and the big old building, Keele Hall, and I thought, I like this, I’ll come again. So I arranged with Dave Cox that I would see him next time, and he introduced me to some other students.

  That first time I couldn’t get home because of the snow, so Dave Cox invited me to stay. He lived in one of the Nissen huts – lots of the students did in those days; they were left over from the war, with about six students in each one – and they had a spare bed in the hut. I rang my mum and told her where I was. My mum wasn’t worried – she always wanted me to be happy.

  After that I came to Keele most evenings. By the time Dave Cox left I knew a lot of other people.

  It never seemed odd to me. I know that none of my friends from school did anything like going up to Keele and getting to know everyone. But I did. I met the students and the Vice Chancellor, too. You can get things by asking for them. I always do. I got the confidence from my mum, and from the church too.

  My mum wasn’t worried about me coming to Keele. She wanted me to have a good life. And that’s what I’ve had. She did a good job.

  I left school that year. I didn’t bother with any exams or anything, and the school didn’t put me in for any, so I went to work at Swinnertons. It was a big pottery, and I took the plates to the dip. I did that for about four years. I worked from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon, and then I’d get the bus home and my mum would give me some tea. And then I’d get the bus to Keele and meet my friends t
here. Saturdays I’d go to the Stoke City match, and Sundays I’d be back at Keele.

  MALCOLM

  One of the students Neil met in 1961 was Glyn Cherry, a Christadelphian. They are still friends today. Glyn recalls:

  I think Neil and I may have first met at a Bible exhibition we held in the Municipal Hall, Newcastle. As a result, Neil came to see me at Keele and came to some of our meetings. One day Neil said, ‘My mother wants to meet you.’ Two of our Christadelphian members went to see her. It was quite difficult at first because it turned out that Mary was very suspicious and worried about who we were. She was a very devout lady and insisted on saying a prayer at the end of that meeting. But a couple of years later she had a conversion to us and had her Christadelphian baptism. But Neil didn’t join us because he doesn’t think in terms of religious doctrine at all and likes all the ceremony of the Church of England, which we don’t have. Mary was very proud of Neil and always backed him.

  The story is typical of Mary. She had a fierce independence of mind, and she also wanted to support Neil’s independence, while always keeping an eye on him.

  NEIL

  We were Church of England but in 1961 I went to a Christadelphian Bible meeting with Glyn Cherry. I told Mum about it and she came with me to a meeting. She liked it so much that she became a Christadelphian but I liked the church and remained C of E. Mum was quite happy about that. She always let me do what I wanted. So long as people believe in God and live a good life it doesn’t matter which church they belong to.

  One day at the beginning of 1964, I saw Pete Dunkerley in the Students’ Union, and I knew he was the new Rag Week Chairman. So I went up to him and I said, ‘I want to do the Rag.’ And he got me collecting money and made me a marshal, and then he made me Rag Safety Officer. I like Pete Dunkerley. He’s a very nice man. And it’s a very important job, Rag Safety Officer.

  I’ve been the Rag Safety Officer ever since, and I still am, and Pete and I have been friends ever since. I had to deal with the Rag Committee and the police. I used to go and talk to Sergeant Dave Nixon, and he turned out to be the manager of a police football team, so, when I started the Neil Baldwin Football Club a few years later, we played them.

  MALCOLM

  Peter Dunkerley (only Neil is allowed to call him Pete these days) is a key figure in Neil’s story, because Peter made him a central figure in the annual student Rag, which he’s been ever since. In 1964 Peter was an eighteen-year-old undergraduate, the product of a North Manchester grammar school. Peter says:

  The student Rag was a big deal. We had a procession half a mile long and we raised a lot of money for local charities, so it was also a way of putting ‘town and gown’ together. We needed a lot of willing volunteers, so, when Neil came up to me, the first thing I did was to put a collecting tin in his hand, and he went round with the others to working men’s clubs, and came back with a full tin, and he was really pleased at how well he’d done.

  For the procession we had to have six marshals – they wore an armband with a big M on them – and I made Neil a marshal and he went and checked on parts of the procession for me, and he really liked doing that. Then one of us – I’m not sure if it was me or Neil – invented the post of Rag Safety Officer for him. He took the job really seriously. He must have done something right: no one was hurt on the procession, then or afterwards.

  For the rest of Peter’s time at Keele – he left in 1966 – Neil visited his room in one of the student halls of residence about once a week:

  I’d make coffee, he’d talk about what he was doing, about his mother, Stoke City. He was always chatty. Quite often he’d be carrying a Bible but he was never Bible-thumping, he didn’t discuss that. He was part of my experience of Keele.

  Like many of Neil’s oldest friends, Peter has found Neil good at keeping in touch, and gets the occasional visit at his Hampshire home.

  It was through the Rag that Neil got to know some of the campus children. Keele at that time (and even today to a lesser extent) was unusual because almost all the students and the majority of the lecturers lived on the campus, with lecturers and support staff bringing up their children there. There was a whole community of families, and of course all the campus children loved going to the Rag procession. David Nussbaum’s father was a classics lecturer, and David told me:

  One Keele Rag Week in the 1960s, various floats on lorries were parading around, and Neil, of course, was there in the midst of the spectacle. He mentioned that he was ‘the safety officer’ – which seemed to entail him being able to get on and off any of the floats he wanted to at will, and being given due respect by the students, and of course by us children, as that meant it would be him who decided whether we could get on some of the floats as well.

  We campus children of course took Neil as we found him, and rather took to him. He was usually with students, but we sensed he wasn’t quite one of them. Indeed, he seemed somehow in charge at times. Neil was also known to me from chapel (where we went on Sunday mornings), so he felt a familiar member of the Keele community. From our perspective as children, students came and went, but Neil seemed always there, from year to year – with the students, but not quite one of them.

  He started playing football with the campus children. Some of them called him Stan, a reference to the great Stoke City player Stanley Matthews – an ironic reference, as Neil always played football with more enthusiasm than skill.

  Those were innocent days. Today, I suppose, the parents would wonder who this strange man was who seemed to enjoy playing with their children, and what his agenda was, and someone would call the police. But I’m glad to say the campus parents in the sixties seemed to take Neil at face value. David’s mother, Enid Nussbaum, got to know Neil pretty well. She says:

  After the Keele chapel service one Sunday we invited Neil to lunch. Over lunch, Neil suddenly asked me if we had a telephone. We had. ‘Oh,’ said Neil, ‘I think I’ll just phone the Bishop and ask him if I can be ordained.’ He was around seventeen, I suppose. I suggested that, as it was Sunday, the Bishop would be very busy – in fact it was highly likely that he wouldn’t be at home at all, better to put it off for a day or two, to which suggestion Neil concurred.

  In September, 1964, I turned up at Keele, and Neil Baldwin was one of the first people I met.

  NEIL

  I have been greeting the new students at Keele since I first got to know the campus. I stood just outside the Students’ Union – they had the new building by the time Malcolm arrived in 1964. I just came up to the students and said, ‘Welcome to Keele. I’m Neil Baldwin.’ I did that because I thought it would be nice to meet students and meet people, because in my life I always wanted to meet people. They were OK about it; they liked it, too. Lots of them stopped and had a chat with me.

  That’s how I met Malcolm. He came along and I said, ‘Welcome to Keele. I’m Neil Baldwin.’ And he looked quite pleased and he said, ‘Thanks. I’m Malcolm Clarke.’ And that’s how that all started. We’ve been friends ever since.

  Now, I know Malcolm says I was wearing a dog collar, and all I can say to that is, maybe I was. I put it on because I thought it would be nice.

  MALCOLM

  I was a fresh-faced student of just eighteen. My family had lived at Yarnfield, near Stone, and not far from Stoke, until I was ten, when we moved to York. When I returned to North Staffordshire to come to Keele I was away from home for the first time. I approached the Students’ Union nervously. A rotund, jovial figure offered a confident handshake and said, ‘Welcome to Keele. I’m Neil Baldwin.’ I’m pretty sure he had a dog collar on. I thought he was a few years older than I was – it was some time before I realised we were born in the same year.

  I appreciated his warm welcome, but who exactly was he? The university chaplain? I wasn’t quite sure. And so it has always been with Neil, who lives by many roles. It is not that he doesn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality, but rather that he renders the distinction irrelevant and cont
inually turns one into the other across the loves of his life: Keele University, Stoke City, the Church, circuses, the Boat Race and famous people.

  We chatted, and he reminded me that Stoke City were at home a couple of days later. That was how our lifelong friendship started.

  NEIL

  The job at Swinnertons was all right, but I knew things weren’t right and I left in 1964 after four years and went to work at Dewar’s butchers in Newcastle-under-Lyme, cutting up meat and serving customers. That was good because it was easier to get to Keele in the evenings, because Newcastle is just down the road from Keele. It’s a very short bus ride.

  I did it for a year-and-a-half, but it meant I couldn’t go to watch Stoke City on Saturdays and I didn’t really like the blood, so I went to work at the pottery Woods and Sons. I worked there for fifteen years, right up to 1980. I was a dipper’s assistant, and what I did was, I helped the dipper. I helped the dipper check the plates and put them in glaze. It was all right, but towards the end I thought the pottery business was going down.

  I’d finish work, go home, have some tea, get the bus up to Keele. On Saturdays I’d go to watch Stoke City, then to Keele, where I’d go to the union bar and the snack bar. On Sundays I’d go to the chapel at Keele. That’s where I met the Vice Chancellor, Harold Taylor. He always went to chapel, and Sunday morning I would always meet him. He was an excellent vice chancellor. He was a nice person, he was nice to me. He was a lovely chap. I’ve known all the vice chancellors since then.