TEENAGE TALES: HOSPITAL HIJINKS...

The long-vanished hospital shop of my childhood, teenage years
and young adulthood.  Demolished sometime back in the '90s 

I've a nagging suspicion that I may've told this tale

before.  Or perhaps I intended to tell it but then forgot.

Either way, I can't find it on the blog or remember which

of those two possibilities is the right one, so I may as

well tell it now - or again - whichever is the case.

When I was a teenager, me and my pals were quite

adventurous in our, er, adventures.  We explored places

we had no right to be, convinced in the fevered depths of

our imaginations that we were U.N.C.L.E. agents or The

3 Investigators, or 007 - or any fictional characters

with whom you associate 'living on the edge'.

We explored building sites, empty offices, the local

Civic Centre - before, during and after working hours.

We investigated hotels, restaurants,  churches - even the

local hospital and surrounding out-buildings.  You name

it, any place we should never have been, we were over

it like a rash.  For we were - The Adventurers!

(Seriously, that's what we called ourselves.)

Let's just pause for a moment while I savour the

thrill of what I deludedly (but willingly) like to believe

was my exciting everyday life as a teenager, but (sadly)

know I'm probably romanticising just a little.  But we

had our moments, and one such moment was this.

Sometimes there were three of us, but on this par-

ticular evening, there were only two - my good self and

a mate who, for the purpose of this tale, we'll call Adam

Cowie.  We used to drop into the local hospital shop to

check for various American comicbooks and black and

white magazines that, somehow, weren't regularly or

readily available from other newsagents.

There used to be more trees here, but they were felled to make
way for car parking areas.  Again, none of this exists today

Having done that, we next decided to explore an

out-building partially concealed by a wooded area.  It
was one of several annexes, once used as wards, but at
the time of this tale, used mainly as storehouses for med-
ical supplies and goodness knows what else.  We gained

entrance through the door, which yielded (unbroken)

under pressure from our determined selves.

We wandered the corridor, exploring the various

rooms, and I happened to notice that all the windows

were tightly secured with string, tied around the handles

to prevent them from being opened.  My pal had just ex-

amined a bag containing a selection of steel implements

and put it down again, when we were suddenly aware

of what sounded like soft, slow footsteps, stealthily

making their way along the cooridor.

Discovery meant trouble, for who would ever

believe that we were merely indulging our over-de-

veloped sense of adventure, rather than being engaged

in criminal activity?  My mate (as usual) sh*t a brick, but
I was made of cooler stuff.  I'd noticed a pair of surgical

scissors in the bag my friend had been looking at, so I ex-

tracted them and quietly cut the string on the window's

handle, replaced the scissors, then we both made our

exit through the open frame and vanished in a

cloud of dust over the horizon.

Phew!  It had been a near miss, but once again

we had evaded capture by the combined agents of

S.M.E.R.S.H., S.P.E.C.T.R.E., T.H.R.U.S.H. and

H.Y.D.R.A., and were free to fight another day.  Well,

that's how things seemed to be in my fertile mind, but
then again, I always was a bit of a nutter.

Ah, those were the days.  

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