Every prefab estate in 1950s' Britain had its Renaissance figure and Pete O' Clarke's old man in prefab number twelve was ours. He cut a dashing figure as he roared off on his motor bike (and side-car) for another gruelling shift at Bath Cabinet Makers. Some other so-called Renaissance figures are little more than image and surface glamour. Pete O' Clarke's old man xould have been taken fom the pages of Marx's The German Ideology. This was the non-alienated man who would sometimes be seen fishing in the afternoon, rearing cattle in the evening, and engaging in literary criticism after dinner. His cousin - a factory worker in Swindon - managed to teach himself Greek and Latin by chalking up the grammar on his workplace lathe! Should History take one of its ugly backward turns - if things started getting rough - you can count on the likes of Pete O'Clarke's old man and his cousin in Swindon to put themselves into the right place at the right time and do the right thing.
It was in 1958 that Pete O'Clarke's old man decided to build a metal scaffold bar in his back yard, and kids have been doing pull-ups and acrobatic curls on it ever since. In 1959 he converted the garden shed into a weightlifting gym, and nowadays a squad of aspiring Charles Atlas types turn up to do work-outs there most evenings every week. Once a month they board
the 5A bus into town and make their way to Le Club Musculation to train with the semi-professionals - "the creme-de-la-creme of raw muscle" as Ann Brown-Sloane admiringly calls them - in an equipment packed gym in an alley near the Co-operative Store in the centre of town.
The elite gym's manager is a cousin of Pete O'Clarke's old man's Swindon cousin. (He has a butcher's shop on the edge of Kingsmead Square.) With his bull-like neck of steel and razor-edged crew-cut you can spot him a mile off. Do a two hour training session at Le Club Musculation, breathe in its pulsating ethos, and your arm, leg and chest muscles and sense of self-belief can be felt bulging out into the biosphere! No wonder Precious McKenzie - the Bristol-based weightlifter and holder of a Commonwealth Games gold medal - told the sports editor of the Bath & Wilting that Le Club Musculation "is destined to become a legend in another lifetime!" Yet the kids from the prefabs would never have stepped into Le Club Musculation without first stepping into the garden shed gym in Pete O'Clarke's back yard. This Renaissance figure showed Prefab Land youth what dedication and self-discipline can achieve. Hardly anyone remembers Pete O'Clarke's old man today, yet he lit a flame which was to shine through the rest of our days.
The prefab gym built and inspired by Pete O'Clarke's own imagination had no drawbacks at all. However we cannot deny that La Club Musculation had one drawback, one awry ingredient, which in retropspect was the defining mark of the experience of all who sweated on its benches and limped out of its illustrious portal.