It started in the Mayor’s Parlour at Gateshead, one December morning in the Fifties. His Worship had been the guest of honour at a party for poor children which My Friend Harry had arranged as organiser of the Chronicle Sunshine Fund. Afterwards, the Mayor invited him round to the Parlour for a drink.
In the course of conversation, he mentioned the ‘topping out’ ceremony due to take place on the roof of the corporation’s first block of skyscraper flats on Christmas Eve.
“Come and join us," he said hospitably. “Starts at 10.30. Lashings of booze.”
Put like that, it was an invitation which Harry felt bound to accept.
Unfortunately, when 10.30 came on Christmas Eve, Harry was up to his eyes in work at the office. But an hour later he made his way to Gateshead and to the towering edifice. No sign of the Mayor or of the corporation. Perhaps the ceremony was all over. He was about to return to his car when he saw a workman pushing a wheelbarrow.
“Is the civic party over?" Harry asked.
“Not bloody likely, hinny. They’re not paralytic yet," came the reply.
“Where are they, then?”
“On the roof."
“How do I get up there?”
The workman led Harry round the comer and pointed to a spidery escalation of ladders clinging desperately to the sheer face of the building. Harry craned his head back and looked at the ladders pin-pointing to the sky. On one side of the ladders was wall. On the other-nothing.
As Harry was not too happy climbing to the top deck of a bus, you'll not be surprised to learn that his hands were moist and his mouth was dry.
“They’re up there?" he asked faintly.
“Aye."
“The Mayor?”
“Aye. Mayor, Toon Clerk, the lot." The workman stood looking at Harry, eyebrows eloquently raised.
Harry gathered around him some forlorn tatters of resolution. Swallowed hard. If the Mayor could do it...
He set foot on the ladder, grasped a rung. Took one step. Nothing to it. All he had to do was perform a similarly simple and tiny manoeuvre fifty thousand times and he was there, knocking back the ratepayers’ gin.
He took five more steps. Sweat was on his brow but he couldn’t spare a hand to mop it away. An age passed, and he was on the first platform. He wondered if the workman was still down below but he couldn’t bring himself to look to the ground. Harry was trembling and very unhappy indeed. Only another couple of hundred platforms to reach, though ...
He set off for platform two. It became harder to let go of one rung to reach the next. The biting winter wind whistled around him and made the ladder shake. What the hell was he doing on a ladder up the side of a skyscraper? He began to think of Harold Lloyd in Safety Last.
Inch by fearful inch he crept upward, simply because he was too frightened to go down-and he certainly couldn't stay where he was. It would not have surprised him to see Durham Cathedral looming on the horizon. Or, come to that, St. Paul’s Cathedral...
There were moments when Harry really did believe he would fall off. Then he thought guiltily of his responsibilities as a husband and a father and of the domestic anguish of a tragedy at Christmas. And he urged a leaden arm to reach for just one more rung and dragged a shaking leg up just one more step.
Suddenly he was astounded to hear a Scottish voice.
“Take it easy, lad," it urged. “You’ll make it. Not far, now."
The incredulous Harry looked up and saw that he was within six feet of the parapet. The Scottish voice spoke again. “Don’t hurry, lad. Nice and easy. You’re nearly there. You’ll make it. Just take your time." As Harry got to the parapet, many hands reached out to drag him to safety. The owner of the Scottish voice gave him a tumbler filled to the brim with an amber liquid.
“Get it down, you daft loon," he said.
Harry drained it - and never even knew it was malt whisky. Then the trembles set in and he had to down several more. The whole civic party was staring at this raving lunatic.
“What the hell were you thinking of?” asked the Mayor, aghast. “Have you gone out of your mind?"
“Well," replied Harry, downing another slam of the hard stuff, “if you lot could do it, then I had to do it."
The Mayor’s mouth fell open. “You surely don’t think we climbed up the side of that cliff like you did, do you?”
“Well, how else?"
“We came up in the bloody lift, of course.”
Of course...
It would have made a great Page 1 story for the Christmas Eve issue of the Evening Chronicle - but nobody believed My Friend Harry when, reeking of whisky, he got back to the office to recount his wondrous tale.
It is true, though. Honest.
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