(91) 'The Enigmatic Chris Prevett, a.k.a Speckitt'

[Ken]

I grew up in the age of nicknames and for years I was known as Denny.  This came about because of a speech impediment which meant I pronounced my name, not as Kenny Tuffs, but as Denny Duffs. Why this was so, I know not, but I recall my speech became so bad I had to visit a specialist in Guildford for speech therapy.  My dear friend, Chris Bushell, had an Aunt Kit who found my affliction hilarious and she would constantly ask me what my name was.  I recall much merriment in her house when she told those present that I only liked the Dandy comic because I could pronounce, 'Desperate Dan's' name correctly. Perhaps a cruel thing to say to an eight years old but, looking back, it was quite a funny line.  Back then my friend Chris Bushell's nickname was Georgie Porgie, because he was rather a plump child, as was Robert Gualey, but his nickname became Flabby.  Another old friend was Martin Elliot and he had printed M.Elliot on all his school books.  Some wag had added an S before the M on every book, so M.Elliot became SM.Elliot, which soon morphed into Smelliot and then Smelly Elly.  Completely unfair but Martin still became universally known as Smelly.  I'm told he still retains that nickname, some fifty plus years later!

I have often written about the visits my friends, Chris Bushell and Colin Bowbrick, have made to our home in Wales. When we're together we sometimes find ourselves reverting to our alter ego's and once again we become Denny, George / Bush and Bojey.  Jenny will hear us speak of Maxi, Donker, Poker, Butch and many others.  The name of Jobey may be mentioned and also that of Effel Bingo.  We may talk about  Barney Rubble, Plank, Worm Chopper, Narna, Pablo, Plugger, Plonk, Tommo, Chippy, Ucker, Puffer, Sticky, Itchie Ball and Yam.  As we recall those nicknames of yesteryear, usually with great affection, tales of them will be told and retold.  But one nickname always holds the greatest affection in my heart and that is the name of 'Speckitt,' whose real name was Chris Prevett.  Speckitt, was one of a kind, completely unique, and he died too young.

My mother once warned me of families who were not very nice and she advised I should avoid such people.  She had included Speckitt's family and, although events found she was mistaken, around my tenth birthday I didn't think so, for Speckitt and I had been fighting.   The worst of it was that when the fight was stopped, by the older Tommo Thompson, I knew that Speckitt had been beating me.  I can recall that later I cried with frustration at being bested and I vowed I'd get my own back.  I never did, for something unexpected happened, we became firm friends.  He was an adventurous child and he seemed to have no fear.  I remember we discovered, in an overgrown wood near Greenland's farm, a derelict house. It was spooky and dark inside and I saw when we entered that the staircase was rotting. That didn't deter Speckitt, for he ran up the stairs and charged over the broken beams without a care.  He shouted for me to join him but, not blimming likely, was the thought that entered my wise young head.  He was always reckless, even if playing a game of Cowboys and Indians.  We were once doing so in a field full of cows and, to my astonishment, he jumped on the back of a cow and rode it, pretending it was the Lone Rangers horse.  "Hi Ho Silver, Away," he shouted as he attempted to persuade the rest of us to get on a cow.  We all declined!

Speckitt became one of the core members of my four closest friends who I thought of as an alternative Famous Five. Our nicknames were Speckitt,  Bojey, Maxi, Georgie Bush, and Denny.  I was the first to lose my nickname and, once again, I became known as Ken.  The others, however, retained theirs and still had them when they became eighteen years of age.  This occurred in 1964 when we were all old enough to visit the Red Lion pub and Friday evenings would see us gathered there to plan our weekend.  It would be true to say we were inseparable during that wonderful period of early adulthood.  None of us ever fell out or argued needlessly and, although leg pulls were frequent, they were never vindictively hurtful.  We truly cared for each other and we were a fair minded bunch, not one of us ever hung back from paying their way at the bar.  We were young and happy and our weekly routine followed the same pattern throughout the remainder of the 1960's.  Each weekend went thus...  

Friday night would usually find us enjoying a couple of pints at our beloved, Red Lion.  We'd then drive the eight miles to the village of Hambledon to visit its pub, The Merry Harriers.  We, the famous five, always went, and often other Shamley Green-ites would tag along.  Friends like Smelly, Lukey, and Donker, with his lovely girlfriend, Liz.  We would competitively play on their glass topped table football game.  Most nights Donker would be declared the silver medal winner and, although it frustrated him enormously, I always took the gold.  Between us we would constantly feed the pubs excellent Juke box, I recall the Seekers version of, 'California Dreaming,' was always a great favourite. The evening often ended with a meal, usually after a hurried ten mile drive to the Chinese restaurant in Guildford.  We'd arrive just minutes before they closed but they always served us.  Speckitt, who had an enormous appetite, would sometimes say he was still hungry and order a second meal, despite this he never had an ounce of fat on his lean, muscular body.  Saturday's routine was almost the same, but sometimes the lure of a female meant we'd forgo the Chinese meal and go to a dance.  However, our success rate was abysmal for not one of us was a Casanova.  We all agreed we knew more about Chinese food than the opposite sex. Thank God, in time four of our five managed to find out a little more and started to have some success with the ladies. To my knowledge, Speckitt never did!

Bojey was the first of us to get married and, in 1970, Georgie Bush and I did so too.  Shortly after that Maxi also tied the knot with the beautiful Veronica.  Of course we five still remained close friends, but the routine changed for everyone except Speckitt.  I ensured that I still met up with him every Friday night, and sometimes Bojey would also arrive with his delightful wife Lynn.  But Speckitt began to alter as the weeks turned into years and, by the mid 1970's, he'd stopped coming to the Friday night gatherings. Business wise, I was doing well, and at that time something occurred that saddened me greatly.  Despite my efforts, I'd not seen Speckitt for several months, when I bumped into him in Guildford High Street.  My delight in seeing him was obvious, but when I suggested an immediate pint, he declined, saying, "Its all changed Ken, you live in a another world now."  Try as I would, he wouldn't change his mind, saying to my annoyance, "You're in a different class, we're miles apart, there's no point!" He left me with a firm handshake saying he was pleased things had gone so well for me and, with a sad look, he was gone.  

I felt completely devastated and, in the days that followed, I spoke to the others about that chance encounter.  I know both Maxi and Bojey went to see our old friend.  I found myself pondering on the wonderful times I'd enjoyed with him as I recalled our mid week youth club get togethers and those countless laughter filled weekends.  I recalled the Isle of Wight weekends away and the fortnights holiday we'd shared in 1967, when we'd toured Devon in a hired Dormobile bus. There was Speckitt, Maxi, Smelly and myself.  One evening we were eating in an up market restaurant, when Speckitt noticed a well to do man on a nearby table had left most of his meal. In a flash he was over to him, asking if he'd finished eating, when the old gent said he had, Speckitt held out his plate saying, "Horse it on there mate," which was what the astonished old chap did.  I also reflected on the night prior to my wedding day, when I'd held my stag night in the Merry Harriers pub.  That night we'd found there was also a caravan club meeting in the field opposite the pub, and Morris Dancers had been lain on for their enjoyment.  Speckitt, seeing an opportunity, picked up someone's hat and walked among the campers asking for donations from those watching.  I only discovered this later but when the hat was quite full, he returned and added the cash to our beer kitty. Completely the wrong thing to do of course, but a typical Speckitt stunt.  The memory of such audacities still makes me chuckle. Those were the kind of memories that invaded my mind as I came to realise my alternative famous five, had become four.  As Bob Dylan's song had predicted, the times they were a changing, and for us, they truly were!

I was still to have a few good times with my old friend for, on the odd occasion, he'd appear in the Bricklayers on a Friday night.  The door would open and he'd come in with his nervous grin, dressed in his usual attire of blue jeans and a white tee shirt.  I used to rib him that he'd worn white tee shirts ever since he'd seen Paul Newman's film, The Hustler, and there was some truth in that statement.  They certainly suited him with his naturally good physique and his wide of shoulder and lean of hip, good looks.  Both my Jenny and our friend Sue Bushell say their enduring memory of him is of his air of strength, his politeness and how he looked in those white tee shirts.  In there way they had become his uniform and that's what he was wearing on the last of my F.A.Cup Final gatherings,. (see memory No.18)  He'd arrived unexpectedly at one of the designated pubs and the cheer that erupted was a sign of how much he was liked and admired by us all.  Never in my life had a friend been made more welcome than he was on that long ago Saturday.

One Sunday afternoon he and I were sitting watching cricket on the bench next to the bus shelter. Speckitt looked at me for some time and then quietly said, "You're a bloody good bloke Ken!"  I can't remember if I replied to this unexpected praise but he immediately deflated my ego when he added, "But you're not a patch on Maxi."  I've always thought that was a strange thing to say but how uniquely honest it was of him. Looking back I think my organising nature sometimes irritated my enigmatic friend.  One example of this was the time I persuaded our crowd to visit, Winkworth Arboretum, a beautiful National Trust woodland I liked.  "How do you bloody do it?"  a frustrated Speckitt was complaining as we walked through the sweet smelling bluebell woods, "How do you persuade us to do these things!"  A few weeks later it was he who suggested we go there again for he'd admitted he secretly enjoyed the tranquillity of the place. On another occasion, I'd wanted us all to see the film, My Fair Lady, but he didn't want to go.  The second feature of the show was a documentary called, The Hidden Jungle, so I spuriously told him it was a Tarzan film.  This untrue information made him change his mind but half way through the film and, still no sight of Tarzan, Speckitt roared for the whole cinema to hear, "He's done it a bloody again."  Later, in the pub he admitted with a grin that to his surprise he'd really enjoyed watching, My Fair Lady.  

When I moved to Wales, Speckitt was the only one of my friends not to wish me a fond farewell.  Maxi, Bojey, and Georgie Bush were all to visit our new home and laugh around my oak table, but I was never to see Speckitt again.  It was somehow fitting that it was Maxi who phoned me in 1992 to say he had gone missing and I felt and shared the worry in his voice.  A few days later he phoned again and tearfully told me his body had been found.  We were to find that our friend who had such a huge appetite for food, drink and laughter, had lost the appetite for life itself and had taken his own. Whenever I think of Speckitt, which is often, I don't think of the unhappy chap he became in his later years. I recall the youngster who laughingly rode a cow.  I remember the handsome man in the white tee shirt who loved to laugh. I can still picture him standing on top of Leith Hill and making spears from the giant bracken that still grows there today. He would delight in throwing them at the people who were climbing the steep side of the cliff like slope that led to the tower at the top. He'd roar with pleasure if he hit someone and run away laughing when they chased him.  "Woe betide anyone who catches him," we'd say, for he was an unusually strong man. Chris Prevett, aka Speckitt, remains in my mind as one of my famous five and one of my best ever friends. The man who could eat like a horse and drink like a fish was also the uniquely unpredictable friend whose company I so loved.  "Speckitt, old buddy, I still miss you and I am thankful to have known you!"
 

[Ken]

This tale tells of a boy who bested me in a fight and of the man he became.  It tells of our friendship during our growing up years and the adventure's we shared as young adults.  It's a tale of laughter and trust between five close friends and how events evolved to turn those five into four.