Ian McMillan: A bizarre outing on the legendary No 70

I WAS watching a cricket match on TV the other day, and during a slow passage of play, the cameras panned over the crowd; a lot of them were in fancy dress, as cricket crowds (as opposed to chess crowds) often are. There was the usual brace of Rotherham Elvises and a clutch of overweight Spidermen bulging out of their costumes like groceries from a carrier and there, about three rows back, was a quartet of blokes in white lab coats, like nuclear scientists on a corporate awayday.
By The Newsroom
Published 4th Jul 2011, 01:00 BST

I gazed at them and was instantly transported to an almost forgotten time and a memorable place; Wath Grammar School in 1971 and the formation of the Wath Grammar Bizarre Club by me and a few of my mates.

The Bizarre Club didn’t do very much, to be honest. We just decided that we were bizarre and that was enough. We’d stand about in the school yard just saying the word to each other in different accents and with different exaggerated gestures. The rest of the kids in the yard looked at us like were idiots, of course, which, in many ways, we were.

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In the Bizarre Club, we liked bizarre music and we were particular fans of Pink Floyd, or The Pink Floyds, as my Uncle Charlie insisted on calling them. “Sounds like a flaming milk float going past,” he chuntered when I played him one of their LPs.

We found out that the Floyd were doing a gig at Sheffield City Hall and decided to go. It would be our first Club trip. The 70 bus (the legendary long-haul double-decker which for some obscure timetabling reason went from Sheffield to Upton and back involving, some said, an enforced overnight stay in Hemsworth) would get us to within striking distance of the City Hall.

We decided to go in costume and hit on the idea of white lab coats because, as I pointed out, we were scientists of the bizarre. We “borrowed” some coats from the school chemistry department and met at the bus stop in Darfield; we either looked magnificent or ridiculous, depending on your point of view.

I was particularly proud of Pez, a kid from the year above mine, who’d written the words “Like a milk float going past” on his coat with a mauve felt-tip. It even eclipsed my home-made badge that said “Stamp Out Reality” in bright pink.

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The 70 lumbered into view. We got on and the driver smirked. We went upstairs because, as we told each other, that’s where the bizarre people went. Too right: there were some kids on the back seat with tattoos and cigarettes.

“Heyop, lads, doctors are here,” one of them shouted, flicking ash in our direction. We went back downstairs where the sensible people were, and scattered ourselves among the mams with shopping bags and the men in caps.

Upstairs, the bad boys banged on the floor and shouted “Hey, doctor, I’ve got summat up with me back,” and we all went different shades of red.

“They sound like milk floats,” Pez said, and we laughed. Quietly though, so they couldn’t hear us.

It’s a hard life being bizarre.