It’s the end of the decade of the flare and 11 year old Jack Cauldwell’s father just won’t let him buy the drainpipe jeans he wants, despite making him sing “I pull my blue jeans on” by David Dundas at the top of his voice when it came on the car radio. Evil, just evil. He was more interested in the brown leather driving gloves he was buying in order to replace the ones lost on his ‘business trip’ to Birmingham the week previously. How could he misplace those gloves that he meticulously put on every time he drove, taking pleasure in their coolness as they slid over his hands, the finality of the clicking of the popper around his wrist, shielding his fingerprints? Another one had been announced on the radio a few days after his return, she was found dead in a lay-by, hammered to death nowhere near Yorkshire, but the name had stuck. Was it true? My Dad the Ripper?
