Honour of the Line Read Online Free Page A

Monday’ and all workers feared it.
    On Daisy’s first night in her new home she seemed contented and slept most of the night and only disturbed when Dad got up for work. Her early morning crying was a joy to hear and none of us really cared we had been woken up a shade earlier than normal.
    Daisy’s growing up was fairly straight-forward and I was kept totally in the picture during all the stages of her eventual adoption, which helped me come to terms with my early days, but at that time of my life I couldn’t have cared less. I had no idea how babies were made, I just wanted to play and have fun. Life was great.

C HAPTER 6
Bad Loser
    Life was beginning to change lightning fast and by June 1960, two months short of my tenth birthday, I accompanied my parents to the local Magistrates Court where they officially adopted Daisy. This would have been exactly the same procedure Mum and Dad had gone through to adopt me several years earlier when I was a baby. It was a total anti-climax as I was expecting loads of policemen and men with wigs but, in fact, we went into a large room, with massively long tables, where two women and one man sat. These were the Magistrates. Both of the women were old but the man seemed ancient and barely alive. It seemed like he was hovering in and out of consciousness. However, they signed the forms and Daisy was ours forever. Three weeks later she was christened Daisy Alice McFirley at the same church where I was christened.
    I was beginning to take an interest in sport and was really looking forward to our school sports day. I was now at middle school just across town and the nine year olds and upwards could take part in the school sports on its rather nice sports field.
    Sports Day was really something special for us kids from the Arches because we only got to try our luck twice before returning to senior school on our own patch. The ones from other areas stayed until leaving age was reached. During the evenings I had been practising running at the rec close to Grandad’s house and could easily beat the boys of my age and the majority of the older ones and so all the kids from the Arches thought I would win easily.
    Middle school was somewhat more up-market than the Arches school as school funds were collected each term towards outings etc., and also to provide prizes for Sports Day in the form of book tokens. The idea being that books had an educational theme. Prizes were awarded to the first two in each race. A ten shilling voucher for the winner and a five shilling voucher for second place. In my little world I had already spent my winning voucher before the race was run. The bookstall on our station had a book containing all of Britain’s train numbers, it was known as a combined volume and you underlined the numbers as you collected them. Up until this time I just checked them off in an exercise book and had firstly written them down on pages I had torn from the middle of various school books.
    Sports Day arrived and it was all very exciting. There was bunting right along the whole length of the straight running track. There was a stage for the prizes to be presented and several teachers had megaphones. It was like the Olympic Games in miniature.
    Mine was to be the second race of the day over a distance of 70 yards. The girls 70 yards was the first race. The big event of the day was the 150 yards in which the winners, and runners up of all the age groups faced each other in the golden finale. Although I would have to face much older lads in this event most of my friends thought I would win it. Georgina ran in the girls 70 yards and ran the race of her life to finish 4 th . She had expected to finish last. She was by far the quickest of her house team, the yellows, but the other colour teams all had runners that could always beat her easily.
    Nerves were non existent as we were called to our marks and as the start whistle sounded and the crowd began to cheer I gave it all I had got. After