Sometimes a strong undertow of emotion emerges out of nowhere and overwhelms the most ordinary of days. This is what 'Tubby' Lard found on a Monday morning in the early spring of 1960.
He had woken up earlier than usual to find that the idea of walking to school rather than getting the bus had implanted itself into his brain. 'Tubby' was a pupil at the Weymouth House Technical School. Such was the narrowness of its curriculum (metalwork, technical drawing, painting and decorating and the like) that "technically" Weymouth House Technical School could hardly be said to be a school at all.
Soon 'Tubby' was strolling down How Hill and inhaling the rich whiff of brewery yeast that lingers around the half-ajar door of the Old Crown. (There are no other half ajars in the Old Crown). He took a smart semi-military style left turn at the junction of the hardware shop and the newsagents, and marched towards the grime-encrusted (and some say spook-infested) railway arch that borders the fast and furious Lower Bristol Road. Just as 'Tubby' was about to congratulate himself on his cracking pace and growing sense of physical vigour an unknown girl zoomed by him on her bike and shouted: "Out of the way, you fat slob!"
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!" These defiant words had often chanted been chanted on his prefab estate, but always without any real conviction. The bike girl's words did not simply hurt 'Tubby'. They hit him with such a force that - a mere six months later - 'Tubby' was tubby no more. What the malign jibe did was to galvanise him out of his flabby "pile some more sugar on to my Weetabix" lethargy. The Prefab Weightlifting Club that was set up a few weeks later and covered with No Pain, No Gain! posters would never have come into existence without the incident of the bike, the girl, and the grime-encrusted railway arch.
The malign jibe-hurling girl would have been filled to the brim with energy, verve and high-fuelled confidence as she sped by the pedestrian 'Tubby' on her fast-moving projectile. The uniform she was wearing revealed she was en route to the girls' grammar school for six hours
of the engrossing Renaissance Humanistic Studies which 'Tubby' - trapped in his Technical school - secretly craved. He knew for sure that she would be a fully paid-up member of the Zero-Sum Tribe (the one sponsored by a Mr F. Nietzsche) whose core doctrine is the more bile you can puke out on the unthreatening likes of 'Tubby' the better you are going to feel. 'Tubby' on the other hand was a fully paid-up member of the "I'll Be Nice To Them And Then They Might Be Nice To Me Liberal Club' which seemed to ensure he was on a hiding to nothing.
The intersection of the trajectories of the jibe-hurling girl and the pedestrian 'Tubby' at the foot of the grime-encrusted railway arch poses the perennial "Who would you rather be?" question. Would you rather be the overweight, kindly and painting and decorating-bound
'Tubby' - a slow-moving target for any passing chariot-racing Wagnerian spear-thrower - or the lithe lean-limbed fast-moving buoyant girl who gives out exultant and cathartic verbal kicks to pedestrian peasants as the wind races through her hair?
With the passage of time 'Tubby' Lard came to feel a strange debt of gratitude to the "fat slob!" yelling girl whose face he could never quite remember. Years later he would find himself wondering whether she went on racing through life with the same elan, or suffered some sobering reversal of fortune under her own grime-encrusted railway arch.
For 'Tubby' Lard there were some consolation fruits from his moment of adversity. Fading photographs of weighlifting champions from forty years ago show him with a "my claws are no longer blunt" tattoo on his muscle-bound chest. His eyes have a distant look, as if he is searching out for that bike-riding girl.