When crossing the road ceases to be a joke for some of us
PAUL JOHNSON
Icannot remember when I first laughed, but! recall perfectly the first time I heard a joke. I was five and sitting on the front at Lytham, attending the afternoon performance of the the Comedians. To my left was the little resort's famous windmill, behind its enormous green, and in front the endless mudflats of the Ribble estuary. It was 1933 and evetyone was talking about the new film, King Kong, which I was not allowed to see. But I was allowed to see the Comedians because my mother said that they were 'harmless'. That is putting it mildly. They performed on a rocking temporary stage of wood and canvas, and must have been dropouts from the then enormous Lancashire entertainment industry, which specialised in comics. Just to the north of us was Blackpool, which boasted that you could see different live shows every night for a week, including Sundays. Some were said to be 'warm'. Not far from us lived George Formby and his formidable wife, Beryl. His notorious song 'When I'm Cleaning Windows' was another item I was spared.
But the Comedians were safe, and specialised in jokes that had not brought a blush to Queen Victoria's cheeks when she was still a maiden. Two men came on to the stage. One said, 'I say, I say, why does the chicken cross the road?' Because the trafficlights say go."No. Try again.' Because it's beginning to rain.' No no, no. You don't know the answer, do you?"No, I don't, Stanley, you're the clever one. So why does the chicken cross the road?' To get to the other side.' Ha ha!' Ha ha!' How we children laughed. And the grown-ups laughed too, though they must have heard it before. The Comedians bowed and said, 'Thank you, thank you,' and then went on, 'I say, Stanley, you know what happened to me on my way to the theatre today?' But I don't remember their other jokes. I was still hugging the first one to myself, and savouring it.
The joke loomed large in my mind because crossing the road was an important problem in my life. We were taught the drill: 'Look right, look left, look right again. Then proceed.' There was a rough little boy called Lukey Cunningham who had not, I was told, done this and had been 'knocked down by a van and crippled'. (He had a different story, that he had been attacked by pirates and severely wounded after desperate resistance.) There were no zebra crossings then, and not many traffic-lights. Not until the next year did Sir Leslie Hore-Belisha become minister of transport and introduce what were officially called 'amber globes' (titter ye not!) and were promptly dubbed 'Belisha beacons'. My father used to laugh at his round, beaming face, so like one of his globes, and say, 'That man knows how to get his name in the papers' — a dark, mysterious saying to me. But it worked, didn't it? All the rest of that government, except old Baldwin, are now forgotten, but Belisha still rings a bell.
I still look right and left and right again. These little road ceremonies please me. Once, it was the mark of a gentleman to offer to escort a lady across the road. In his charming essay, 'Modern Gallantry', Charles Lamb recalls his old mentor Joseph Paice, whose delight it was to perform such a service: `I have seen him — nay, smile not —tenderly escorting a market woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a Countess.' It still happens. I saw such an incident the other day. And, not so long ago, old Lord Forte, the great hotel tycoon, said to me, 'Do you know why I choose to live in England? I'll tell you. It's because the traffic is polite. To get from my house to my office in London I have to cross two big roads. I am an old man and nervous. But the traffic, they stop and let me pass. You don't get that in Italy!'
When Thomas Carlyle took his usual walk, up from Chelsea into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, then back, he had to navigate those same two roads, among others. Often, he was accompanied by the diarist William Allingham. who recorded his method. Being impatient, he waited a few seconds at the kerb, then plunged in, 'dodging the carriages'. Allingham adds, 'He may catch his death thus, for he insists on crossing when he has made up his mind to it, carrying a stick so as to poke it into a horse's nose at need.' That does not sound like a good idea to me. I must admit, I too stride furiously into the traffic at times — my face saying, 'Don't you dare' — but only in this country. I would not do it in France, for instance. Once, in the 1950s, having been at a lunch at the American embassy, I walked across the terrifying Place de la Concorde with that eccentric politician Pierre Mendes France, who was heading for the Chambre des Deputes. He said that we could do it without risk provided we kept within certain almost invisible lines, as it was illegal if they knocked us down within them. But all that did was to remind me of another old joke, from Punch no doubt. Scene: busy square in Paris. French gentleman, escorting nervous English visitor: 'Have no fear, mon brave! If zey keel you here, it eeszaire funeral!'
Of course, the road drill itself can become a liability abroad, and we have a famous instance to prove it. In 1931 Winston Churchill, then nearing 60, was in New York in an effort to retrieve his losses in the big crash. He was trying to find Bernard Baruch's house on Fifth Avenue, but got bored at the repeated traffic-light stops, `not having travelled on a road with trafficlights before'. So he dismissed his taxi and began to cross the avenue. He looked right, left and right again, and the second time he looked right he saw a car a long way off, so he crossed. But it should have been left, right and left again. He was struck by an oncoming car at 35 miles an hour, hurled to the ground and seriously injured. It is amazing that he was not killed. I know the exact spot where it happened, and occasionally point it out to New Yorkers, saying, 'That's the place where your people nearly ensured that Hitler won the war.'
At the time, his friend Lindemann, 'the Prof', cabled: 'Just received wire. Delighted good news. Collision equivalent falling 30 feet on to pavement. Equal 6,000-footpounds energy. Equivalent stopping 101b brick dropped 600 feet or two charges buckshot point-blank range. Rate inversely proportional thickness cushion surrounding skeleton and give of frame. If assume average one inch your body transferred during impact at rate 8,000 horsepower. Congratulations at preparing suitable cushion and skill in bump.' As for Churchill, he paid his hospital bill by writing an account of the accident for the Daily Mail, ending: 'Nature is merciful and does not try her children, man or beast, beyond their compass. It is only when the cruelty of man intervenes that hellish torments appear. For the rest — live dangerously: take things as they come; dread naught; all will be well.' Good advice. I accept it. I will continue to cross the street fearlessly — in England.
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