granny grimble's grunts

THE FUN STARTS!

2010-10-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

THINGS ARE DEVELOPING

It seemed liked weeks and weeks that we’d been planning and preparing for our new rooms, and it was. Then on the morning of June 1st at 8am, six men arrived on my doorstep and it all started!
Having had my old bathroom and kitchen literally ripped out and new walls and ceilings put in, the fun started!
Through the front door, and up the stairs and into my spare room went a vanity stand, toilet, cistern, bidet, wall cupboard and shower unit. Then the large glass shower screen followed. It got to the bend in the stairs and was just too large to take the bend in an orderly fashion. I hovered, fearing for my walls and stair lift. They had another go, still no joy. The fitter was trying hard to compose himself in front of this elderly lady customer, but you could tell that he was bursting to shout expletives at the sheet of glass.
‘It’s no use’ he said. ‘It’ll have to come through the upstairs bedroom window’. I blanched. ‘But my bedroom window is a large double glazed fixed picture window’. ‘Yes I know’ said Mark the fitter. We’ll get the guy who installed the new kitchen and bathroom windows to take it out and put it back when we’ve got the screen into the room’.
My dressing table runs along the wall under the window and is over six feet long. It has four segments that are screwed together and the whole thing is immovable’ ‘Perhaps the window isn’t big enough’ I said weakly. ‘Oh it is, I’ve measured it’. I thought this a bit of a cheek as he didn’t ask me first. And that’s what they did. They took out the entire window, hauled the shower screen up the front of the house and through the window aperture. I feared that the sheet of glass would not be able to be transported from my bedroom, along the landing, and turn into the bathroom doorway. But it did! Of course I was charged for the taking out and replacing of the window. I forgot to mention that the large floor standing carousel in the kitchen suffered the same fate as the shower screen. It wouldn’t come through the back door, into the utility room and so into the kitchen. It too came in through the window. This time the kitchen window.

We were sort of marooned in the lounge, so didn‘t see much of the wet room installations, but you can be sure I kept a beady eye on the work in the kitchen.
Units were built and an induction hob and cooker hood fitted on one wall. Opposite was the microwave oven and self cleaning cooker. Under the wall cupboard was a drop down TV, DVD player and DAB radio. There were no floor standing cupboards as such. Behind each soft closing door were pull out units and drawers. No more agonising arthritic pains from bending and crouching in front of horrible cupboards.

I studied colour charts for hours trying to choose my colour scheme. The more I pored, the more uncertain I became. In the end I left it to my wonderful, artistic and talented son Philip. I was thrilled with his choice, and all my visitors say what a wonderful colour my feature wall is. It’s called 'Driftwood' and is a sort of mushroom colour and the splash back tiles are mosaic and echo all the colours that are in the room. I chose the colour of the units and I love it. I didn’t like white or cream but still wanted something neutral. It’s called ivory and it’s gorgeous.

We still had two little problems in the kitchen. One was the microwave oven which had a large sticky mark on the glass door. Nothing, but nothing would remove it. We tried oil, WD, sticky stuff remover, spirit, meths. It refused to be banished. In the end the whole oven was sent back to Zanussi and replaced. The other problem was the TV. It’s digital and although the DVD player worked fine, the TV and Radio just didn’t want to know! That too was replaced, but still didn’t work. Three months later, it took my friendly neighbourhood TV man and £96 to get it going. It was the electrical installer who had fitted the wrong cable and fittings for Digital signals. Unfortunately they had chased the TV aerial into the plaster on the wall, underneath my beautiful mosaic tiles! No way could it be accessed without taking down the tiles, and no way would I allow that. That’s why it cost what it did, and my lovely TV repair man worked hard and solved the problem. I now have TV on all my menus!

I've tried very hard to get photos (of which I have many) onto this blog. But for some reason known only to Windows 7 and Mr. Gates, it won't happen. I will keep trying.

HI ! I'M BACK !

2010-09-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

HI! I’M BACK

Hi! Remember me – Leeta (aka Granny Grimble). It’s been a long time since my last blog and a lot of water has gushed under my bridge since I last put finger to keyboard, so I’ll just recap to get back in the swing of things.

The building work is finally all over (more about that later) and we are both coming to terms with Arthur’s Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t get any better, but he has been prescribed Aricept which is a drug that can’t cure or halt the disease, but can slow the progress down a little, giving us a bit more time.

One of the reasons that I have not been on the blogging scene is that looking after my other half, and running a home, and doing all the things that I’ve never had to do during our long marriage, takes up so much time and space , that there aren’t really enough hours in the day. I suppose being 79 doesn’t help, as I don’t seem to have as much energy as I did a few years ago. But we’re coping.

Arthur now gets taken out for three hours twice a week, by two lovely community workers, which gives me some ‘me’ time. He is also attending a six week course on ‘Living and Coping with Memory Loss’. This means that I have an extra three hours of ‘me’ time for a few weeks. I thought it would be a great idea to catch up with my blog and relax a little, so here I am!

Last Spring we were advised by our three children that we should literally get our house in order. The bathroom was very tatty and the shower cubicle was an accident waiting to happen withmy husband becoming more and more unsteady on his feet. The stairs were becoming such a trial that sometimes it just wasn’t worth the effort of climbing them! My kitchen had been inherited when we bought the house 15 years ago, and although a dream at the time was now falling to pieces. Two drawers didn’t pull out more than half way, and one fell on your foot if you weren’t mindful of its evil ways. There were lots more that I won’t bore you with. Putting all these things right was going to cost thousands and thousands of pounds, which we just didn’t have. The offspring persuaded us that the sensible thing to do was to raise some equity on the house. So we did. You will never know the amount of paperwork and phone calls it entailed, covering solicitors, insurance agents, brokers, builders, surveyors, fitters and installation men, suppliers and so it went on. All this and with no active husband to help me.

First we ordered a Stannah Stairlift, which was installed without fuss or problems, and then I set about choosing a new kitchen and a wet room. That was great fun, as for the first time in my entire life, I could choose what I actually wanted and not what I thought we could afford. I felt like I had won the lottery! Because my arthritis is now quite bad, I can no longer crouch or kneel down, so under worktop cupboards are no no. I set about designing a kitchen FOR ME. I am only 5feet two inches short, so I can never reach shelves and high cupboards. The first thing I decided was that I wanted the wall cupboards and work tops lowered by two inches. It took a lot of persuading to get the kitchen installer to come to terms with this! Then I insisted that the electric fuse box was lowered to my head-height. In the past it had been at ceiling height and when the lights fused (every time a bulb blew) Arthur had to climb a ladder to flip the trip switch back. Of course he could no longer do that, and I can’t climb ladders, so it had to either be lowered or we would have to live in darkness forever more! I had a fight over that. At first they chased dozens of cables into the wall and put the box half way down the wall. I would still have to climb a ladder to use the fuse box! The electrician was not a happy bunny, but it was costing us a great deal of money and I was the customer who is always right! They had to take it all out and bring it down even further. This time, hiding it in the wall cupboard, this was fine by me.

To be continued………

LULU'S BACK IN TOWN !

2010-04-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

LULU’S BACK IN TOWN!

Some of my blogging friends have been wondering what had become of me, and if I was still in the proverbial land of the living. So I thought it time that reported in with my bits and pieces of news.

Things have not been going too well health wise since Christmas, so I’ll just slip very quickly over all that. My OH wasn’t very well for a few weeks and then I got this awful watered down version of flu. It hung around through five weeks, several courses of antibiotics and variations! As soon as that faded away I got the dreaded tummy bug that usually hits people at Christmas. You do NOT want that one! It left me after about a week and jumped over to OH! I do think that we are both feeling a lot better and ready to face life again.

There was just one other piece of news that I have to tell you. My darling OH Arthur, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. This is still sinking in and quite a blow. We have been together for sixty-three years and married for almost fifty-nine! But we will survive.

My other news is much happier and exciting! We have decided to take life by the horns a little, and treat ourselves to a house face-lift.

We are turning our dingy old bathroom into a wet room (much safer for OH) and my twenty-year-old kitchen is being gutted and completely rebuilt to my specifications. I am so excited although it’s quite a headache organising it all on my own. Its taken weeks to get all the admin and form filling etc. sorted and it all starts on 1st June. I can’t wait! I’ll keep you informed with photos as and when it all happens.
That’s all for now folk!

THE PHONE CALL ( AT LAST ! )

2010-01-04T17:22:00.000-08:00

OF SHOES AND SHIPS part two

One evening at about ten-thirty the phone rang and Arthur answered it.
I heard him say: ‘yes, yes. Mostly black, getting old.’ He put his hand over the phone and turned to me.
‘It’s the vet. They’ve got Rusty, he’s been run over’. He turned back to the phone. ‘OK. I’ll come down there right now.’
Arthur replaced the phone and turned back to face me. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead. A car hit him as he was crossing the Hertford Road.
I screamed, and started to cry. ‘What was he doing in the Hertford Road? It can’t be him. He isn’t out, he’s upstairs under the bed.
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Arthur. The vet has his collar, with his name and address on it. They don’t advise us to have him back.’
I just couldn’t believe that he was dead. I really thought he was upstairs, asleep, and I had no idea that he’d gone out. He never went down to the main road, as far as we knew.
I was desolate. Rusty was eighteen and a half years old. We’d had him longer than we’d had the children. He was like one of the family. Indeed he WAS one of the family. I suppose with him being black and it being dark at the time, he never stood a chance. It took a very long time to get over his death. Every part of the house held memories of him, and sometimes we’d swear we could hear him shuffling to get under the bed.

* * *

I can’t remember what exactly it was that prompted a six-year old Philip to leave home in search of fame, fortune and new parents. We had a period of him complaining and sulking over something. Not being able to get the better of me, he suddenly stated that he wasn’t going to live with us any more and was going to pack his things and leave home. I was very understanding and said that he was entitled to dislike us all if he wanted to and, although I didn’t want him to leave home, if that was what he really wanted to do, I would help him sort out his things. I went upstairs with him and gave him a small suitcase. To this I added his pyjamas and a couple of other things, including his favourite bear ‘Daisy’. My attitude was not what he had expected, and he sat on the edge of his bed not sure about the way things were going. I didn’t want him to lose face by saying he’s changed his mind, or by crying, so in a matter-of-fact voice I said: ‘we’re just going to have tea. It seems silly for you to go now, you might as well have your meal first, don’t you agree?’ He did.
By the time we’d all sat around the tea table eating and chatting, Philip had, by accident or design, completely forgotten that he was supposed to be leaving home that evening. Later, I crept upstairs, unpacked his little case and replaced all his clothes where they belonged, tucking Daisy up in his bed.

to be continued...

Part 2 The treasure chest of Mum's stocking

2009-12-15T14:20:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in this treasure-chest of a stocking Mummy would almost certainly place a few sheets of transfers. There were two types available. The cheaper ones were printed about a dozen to a sheet, like postage sheets. We would hastily cut them out, lick our arm, and place the transfer face down on the wet patch. A soggy handkerchief would then be applied to soak the paper backing away, never very successfully, revealing a slimy, far from perfect picture in hues of red, green, and blue. The more expensive type of transfers, which we weren’t always lucky enough to get, had multi-coloured exotic pictures of butterflies and flowers and always produced a perfect result. These transfers were larger, about six to a sheet, and had a silvered coating to one side. We treated these with much more respect and each one was carefully trimmed from its sheet and gently soaked in a saucer of tepid water. It was then very carefully applied to an arm or hand, while we waited for the glorious moment to gently slide the backing paper away, to reveal the secret picture that lay beneath the silver coating.
The toe of our stocking always held an orange, a handful of assorted nuts, and a pink sugar mouse.
A present that arrived on most Christmas mornings, either in my stocking or on the floor beneath it, was a paint box. There was absolutely nothing in the world like receiving a brand new box of water colour paints. The outside of the box was black and so shiny, indented into six cushion shaped squares. The thrill of opening the lid and gazing at the pristine coloured slabs of paint set in two or three rows, and nestling in the virginal white interior of the box, with the paint brush lying stiff and straight just waiting to be swirled into puddles of brilliant colour, took a lot of beating.
A new pencil case was another longed for luxury. These were double-decker boxes of varnished wood. The top layer not only had a lid that slid out to open up compartments for pencils and rubbers, but it pivoted at one end revealing a lower box for things like a six inch ruler and coloured pencils. The first thing I always did was to open the box and take a deep sniff of the lovely aroma of varnish and new wood, a smell that still transports me back to school days.
I received one of these wonderful magical stockings every single Christmas until I reached the age of fourteen. Naturally, the contents were updated to accommodate my increasing ‘old age’.
On the Christmas Eve following my fourteenth birthday, all the little ones having gone to bed, Mummy turned to me and said the words that would change my Christmas forever:

‘Now that you’re fourteen, would you like to stay up and help me fill the stockings?’

Now I really had begun to leave my childhood behind me, and felt very important. I gathered up the stockings, each with a label pinned to it bearing a child’s name, and excitedly helped Mum to fill them up. I certainly enjoyed this task, and went to bed looking forward to the next day.
Christmas morning dawned and the family trooped into the kitchen to see what good old Father Christmas had delivered. I looked along the mantelpiece for my stocking- it wasn’t there! Then it dawned on me: not only did Mum think that I was old enough to help fill them up, but she thought I was old enough not to have one! I was quite shattered and fought back tears that were hurting the back of my throat. I never said anything to Mum but, from that moment on, Christmas morning would never ever be quite the same.

A LITTLE BIT OF CHRISTMAS MAGIC

2009-12-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

Christmas magic

Mum and Dad made Christmas very special for us, and I always tried to carry on this tradition by making it so for my own family. This wasn’t always an easy task, as my husband hadn’t been brought up in the same family orientated atmosphere as I had, and I’m sure he often thought I went too far, worked too hard, and was slightly mad.
Whereas I was content to stay up on Christmas Eve until the last mince pie and sausage roll was baked, the turkey was in the oven, the bowls of fruit and nuts laid out and the last Christmas stocking (including one for the dog) was filled. Arthur would want to go to bed at the usual time and ‘do it in the morning’. But then he didn’t have the memories I had spurring him on!
Throughout my entire childhood the Festive Season was a wondrous time. We were often very poor, but oh so happy. I remember one year when the electricity had been cut off because we couldn’t pay the bill. It didn’t stop both my parents working by candlelight, way into the night after all us children had been put to bed.
Mummy would tuck us up and say ‘don’t come downstairs any more this evening: Daddy is helping Father Christmas.’
Dad made handsomely painted wooden toys for the children. Dougie and Bill were the recipients of trains, lorries and boats, while the youngest little girls in the family received doll’s cradles that rocked gently back and forth, complete with bedding lovingly made by Mum.
She sat and sewed till the small hours, so that each of her four little girls (I was, by then, a bigger girl) would have a pretty frilly dress to wear over the Christmas holiday. She made beautiful pram sets for doll’s prams, and baby clothes for the various dollies. One year, Dad built a doll’s cot, which was just like the drop-side cot that my youngest sister Gill slept in. It was painted a pretty pink and Mummy made all the frilly bedding for it. I believe that this was a present for Babs. We certainly didn’t go without, and only in latter years did I realise the sacrifice, time and, above all, love that went into giving us all ‘A Happy Christmas’.
I also received my share of homemade clothes. One year, I distinctly recall Mummy making me a dusty-blue dirndl skirt and a biscuit coloured single-breasted jacket to go with it. How proud and smart I felt that year as I went walking with my friends!
We all had a stocking on Christmas morning, and I still feel a thrill tingling through me, as I remember the excitement of delving into the elongated depths of one of Mummy’s carefully washed and filled stockings.
First out from the top would be a noisy blower with a feather on the end. Then, so that the stocking would stay open enough to hold the little gifts that were tucked into it, there would be a magic painting book, comic, or reading book, carefully rolled up and strategically placed, so that the centre was hollow. Into this tube of colouring or reading matter would be hidden coloured pencils, yo-yos, hair ribbons, dolls, Dinky cars, five stones, pretty beads, toy soldiers, pea shooters etc, depending on if you were a girl or a boy. In between all these wonderful surprise items were bars of chocolate, packets of toffees and, of course, chocolate money wrapped in gold paper and tied in a golden net.
To be continued…

SINDIE AND THE CAVENDISH CENTRE

2009-10-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

We all know what she was like... "Don't give all the money to the Interflora!"

If you would have arranged flowers for Sindie's remembrance, she asked if you could send the money you would have spent to The Cavendish Centre instead. They were a great help to Sindie and Gary.Please only give what you can spare (the amount of your gift will not be shown), but rest assured, every penny you can give will be put to very good use helping families get through difficult times.

The centre provides supportive care to cancer patients, their carers and children. It helps people find ways of coping with the physical and psychosocial effects of the illness, helping them to live through the illness with maximum independence and optimum quality of life. The service is free.

Please click on the link and read all the lovely things that have been said about Sindie, from people far and wide! If you have lost someone to this dreadful disease called cancer, you might like to donate a small amount to Sindie's favourite charity. Thank you for reading this. XX

http://www.justgiving.com/Sindie/

FAREWELL TO A VERY SPECIAL PERSON

2009-10-17T05:42:00.000-07:00

A VERY SPECIAL PERSON

I would like to tell you a little bit about my beautiful niece Sindie, because she was a very special person.
Last night after a five-year battle with cancer, and at the tender age of 39, Sindie closed her eyes for the last time and is now at rest.

Before she became too ill, we attended creative writing classes together, shared our hobbies and shopped together. She had the utmost patience and saw the funny side of life like no other.

When my husband was in hospital, and knowing of my great fear of spiders, Sindie told me that should I find a large eight legged beastie in my house I was to phone her night or day, whatever the time, and she would hurry round and dispose of it for me. This became reality one night about 1 am. I phoned Sindie and within a couple of minutes she had put on her coat (she was in her pyjamas and in bed), jumped into her car, and sped round to my house, to rescue me. She thought it was very funny and never once complained about me getting her out of bed. It was the first, but certainly not the last time she would save me from my worse fear.

I've been wracking my brain to think of lovely stories about her, but thinking of individual ones is very hard. I have suddenly realized why. Her life has just been one unending lovely story since she grew up and became a wife and then a mother. Always smiling, always there to help, advise or organize. Always ready to share, always ready to listen to your problems and never letting anything get her down. She was my friend, my confidante, and she brought sunshine into my life. I loved her to bits. You don’t meet many people like Sindie, and now there is a great hole in our hearts. Farewell my very special person.

Since posting this blog, we have learned that Sindie especially asked if, instead of 'donating ' to Interflora, we send a donation, no matter how small, to her favourite cancer charity. Perhaps you would like to click on the link below and read all the lovely things that have been posted about her. If you have lost a loved one to this dreadful disease, maybe you might like to donate a little too. Thank you.

http://www.justgiving.com/Sindie/

GOOD NEWS!

2009-08-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the doctor to get the results of the scan on the lump in my neck. I am relieved to say it wasn’t the dreaded big C. Thank you to all those kind people who sent me their good wishes or said a little prayer for me.
It turns out that I have a nodule on my thyroid gland that has to go one way or another. I have had another thyroid blood test and will be seeing a specialist as soon as the results are through. Whatever happens now can’t be as bad as I feared, so I am feeling much relieved and will now get back to my postings very soon.

I'LL BE BACK !!

2009-08-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been around much. I know a few of you have been waiting to find out all about my phone call. I have had a few problems just lately that have rather taken the edge off my blogging a bit. Not the least being the long wait for my scan. This has now come through and I 'walk the walk' on Tuesday morning. Once that is out of the way, I will feel more like blogging again I'm sure. Till then ...

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN - I THINK!

2009-07-31T06:45:00.000-07:00

Here I am again after an unforgettable string of mishaps. It started with my thirteen-year-old cat Boomer, suddenly having a heart attack and dying without any signs of illness. Shortly after, my computer deciding to go AWOL for six days. I thought that it was a server problem and sat tight. Suddenly it came back so I went to various friends’ blog sites to explain that I was back again – WRONG! After three days I went off line again.

That wouldn’t have been so bad if at the same time my freezer hadn’t decided to join in the fun. I rang my friendly neighbourhood freezer mending man, only to be told that it would never make another strawberry ice-lolly again.

That wouldn’t have been so bad, if I could have gone on line and bought a new freezer. (People, who know me well, know that we don’t have transport and we live in a small village, so have to shop on line all the time).

That wouldn’t have been so bad if my telephone hadn’t started making a disgusting noise while I was trying to get my act together.

That wouldn’t have so bad if my keyboard hadn’t decided to seize up and refuse to type vowels, and gradually more and more letters. Although I couldn’t open any web sites or my blog site, I could send and receive emails. Now that too was becoming very difficult and time consuming.

My last disaster (or so I thought) came to light after a visit to the doctor. He found a lump on the side of my neck, and I am now waiting for a scan to find out what it is.

After a couple of hours spent in the very welcome company of my special computer doctor, I was back on line in full, and my blog site was also up and running.
That was two days ago. Two days spent trawling all over cyberspace for a tall frost-free freezer and a new keyboard. The former is still out of my grasp and the latter, luckily, wending it’s way to me. I thought that that was the end of my run of disasters until this afternoon, when the crown on my back tooth fell off! This coupled with the news that my lovely dentist was on holiday for two weeks and was leaving the practice in three! Mr. H. has been tending my teeth for fourteen years, what will I do without him?

OF SHOES & SHIPS & SEALING WAX & CABBAGES & KINGS

2009-06-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

The three children were soon happily settled into the local primary school. New friends were made and the house and garden was often playground to several small boys and a dog. Lynne rarely asked her friends to play in the garden. She mostly preferred to go up to her own room where all her dolls, books and games were.
When we were all settled down to a routine, it was decided that I should return to work to enable us to have a better standard of living.
Feeling somewhat uneasy, I enrolled at the local employment agency for ‘temp’ work. Operating a PBX switchboard was no longer an option for me. Switchboards had significantly changed since my old ‘operator’ days. Also, apart from working for my brother for a few months, I hadn’t typed since my first job at the age of fifteen. To say that I was nervous was somewhat of an understatement. So I settled for general office work, which meant being a dogsbody who also typed envelopes and did everything that nobody else wanted to do. Of course this job carried he lowest paid rate for office workers, but at least it was a start.
There was no way that the children would suffer from my return to work. I made it quite clear to the agency that I would only be available to work from nine-thirty to three-fifteen. Each morning I prepared myself for work, then got the children up and gave them their breakfast. It wasn’t until I had kissed them all goodbye and waved them off that I left for work. Each afternoon, I would rush home to be there when they all returned. I didn’t want my children to become so-called latchkey kids.
I don’t pretend that the ironing didn’t pile up or dust didn’t collect in places, but I was always there ready to listen to how the children’s day had been, and provide them with hot meals and home made cakes, just as my mother had for me.
My typing capabilities soon returned and I upgraded myself to copy-typist – for more money! The children grew older, their school hours increased, so did my working hours. I seemed to be appreciated by those that employed me. I was hardly ever moved on, and stayed with each company for weeks and sometimes months at a time.
I worked for quite a long period at Wadham Stringer (Unipart), and shared a job in the stock control dept with a lovely lady who turned out to be Cliff Richard’s aunty. At that time, he and his family lived at Waltham Abbey, which was next door to Enfield where we lived. She told me many tales about Cliff and how he handed down his clothes to her son. I also got to see the wedding photos of Cliff’s sister.
School holidays and teacher’s strike days were a nightmare, as far as our income was concerned. Whenever the children were home from school, I also had to be home. That meant no wages for me, and no housekeeping. Arthur’s wages came under a great strain and something had to give: usually, an electricity or gas bill. If we really couldn’t manage, then Mum and Dad Chapman could always be relied on for a loan. It was at times like this that I wished my parents hadn’t moved to Kent. Although they rarely had money to spare, there was always an abundance of love, support, and an overflowing ‘goody-bag’ whenever they were around.
At eighteen, our dog Rusty was getting old. He was very arthritic and his eyesight was going a little, but he was still full of fun and ready for the odd game or two. He would spend most of his days mooching around or dozing. In the evenings he would snuffle around the back garden for a while, then usually lay beneath our bed in peace and quiet for the best part of the evening. The gap beneath our bed was so small that he had to get down on his tummy and shuffle along on his haunches to get into the gap. We would often hear a noise, like someone shifting furniture, coming though the lounge ceiling, and would know that Rusty was going for forty winks!
One evening at about ten-thirty the phone rang and Arthur answered it.

To be contd…

NOT ALL PLATES ARE CLARIS CLIFF

2009-06-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

The couple that sold us the house took everything they could remove without damage. We even had to go and buy light bulbs for all the rooms. The kitchen had a strip light that they‘d wanted to remove, but our solicitor had said no, it must remain. Nevertheless, all the curtains, nets and floor coverings had been stripped from the house, so we were glad of the two hundred and fifty pounds that we’d received from our ex-agents.
We were very proud of our new house. Lynne had her own bedroom. It only measured six feet by seven feet, but it was all hers. She could, theoretically at least, keep the boys out of her belongings. The room was so small that there was only room for a single bed and bedside cabinet, which had to stand at the foot of the bed! I said that Lynne’s clothes could go in my wardrobe, a decision that I never was happy about. As she slowly grew into a teenager, she always had more clothes than me.
Philip and John were allocated the middle bedroom, which was a good size for two small boys who loved sleeping in their new bunk beds. Once Arthur had got going with cupboards, shelving and toy chests, all the children were comfortable and delighted to have their own space. We painted a road plan on to a large square of hardboard and set this into the centre of the boy’s bedroom floor. It was complete with roundabouts, zebra crossing and petrol station. Philip and John had dozens of Corgi and Matchbox cars, and would sit for ages vroom-vrooming them up and down the painted roads. Those cars experienced more than their fair share of crashes and fatal accidents, involving soldiers and North American Indians, who just happened to be standing in the middle of the roads!
We hadn’t been living in Enfield very long when the firm that I worked for fell upon hard times. Belts were tightened and workers (including me) had to be laid off. As I had a whole house to play with now, Arthur and I decided that I should stay home for a while unless our finances dictated otherwise.
Then we received the letter from the hospital, saying that John could now have his second operation. This time, Mr Lloyd-Roberts wouldn’t be carrying out the operation; it was to be done by one of his colleagues. The operation itself was a success, but the scarring was quite bad and we weren’t very happy about it. We were, however, still very grateful for the skill and dedication of all concerned at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.

One amusing anecdote comes from this otherwise worrying period of time. After John’s initial operation he had proudly told friends, relatives, teachers and even strangers in the street, that he had plates in both his legs and, on learning that he was to have his plates removed, he asked if he could keep them afterwards. The surgeon who was to perform the operation told us that they were made of precious metal, which was very costly and always re-cycled. However, seeing the devastated look on John’s face, the surgeon took pity on him, saying that he’d ‘do his best’. John came back semi-conscious from the operating theatre and the surgeon came to his bedside to see how things were progressing. After chatting to us, he put his hand into his pocket, smiled, and pulled out a little brown envelope.
‘There you are John, I said I’d do my best,’ the doctor laughed. ‘You’ll probably get me fired, but you’ve been such a brave boy, you deserve these.’ He placed the package on the top of John’s bedside cabinet. ‘Here’s your plates, look after them.’
John smiled a sleepy contented smile and dozed off again. It wasn’t until later when he was fully awake that he asked once more if he could have his plates. We handed him the envelope. His face fell.
‘These aren’t plates, they’re just pieces of tin,’ he said.
The penny suddenly dropped. All this time, we had been glibly talking about John’s plates and had stupidly though he knew what we meant. In his childish mind, a plate was a dish that he ate from, and he had expected to be handed a couple of tea-plates! We felt so sorry for him. He’d longed for the time when he could look at his plates and, all the time, they weren’t what he thought they would be. Nevertheless, he saved the plates, screws and stitches and took them with him when he finally left home as a grown man.

WE DELIVERED THEM TO SCHOOL, AND THEN MOVED HOUSE!

2009-06-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Philip and John were almost six years of age, and Lynne was nearly nine, and we were now beginning to run out of breathing space in our flat. The little box room was too small to hold all three children and their toys. Something had to be done.
When the children became toddlers Arthur changed jobs and went to work for the bank. The salary was far better and he got two bonuses a year. By far the best perk the bank had to offer however, was the prospect of us owning our own house one day. Once Arthur had worked for the bank for six months he could apply for a mortgage. Not only did they give employees a 100% mortgage for a house, they also gave them a loan to cover the solicitor and surveyor’s fees, together with moving expenses. All this at 2½% interest!
Because rented accommodation was still at a premium, we contacted our house agent and offered to vacate our flat if they would pay us five hundred pounds towards our expenses. After a bit of haggling, he agreed to give us two hundred and fifty pounds. This money was to help with the cost of things like curtaining and floor covering in our new house.
Arthur applied to the bank for the mortgage and was told to go ahead and find a house. It wasn’t easy to view property with three small children, when it all had to be done in the evening or at weekends. We worked out that we viewed about sixty houses in all (we even accidentally viewed one house twice). I think we were starting to get punch drunk in the end. We finally chose a house in Enfield, paid the deposit and started the ball rolling.
We decided to move on a weekday while the children were safely at school. We took them to the school gates in the morning, and told them we would pick them up at home time and take then all to the new house. They were so excited; I don’t know how they managed to do any schoolwork that day.
Everything went as planned. Arthur, Rusty and I moved into our new house and the sun was shining. The first thing I did was to open the back door and gaze in wonder at our very own private garden. How the children were going to love running in and out of the garden and having friends in to play. Perhaps we might be able to buy them a swing or a see-saw to play on. No more Aunty Minnie watching us from behind her nets. I was so happy. We’d been married for about sixteen years and, until very recently, had had no chance of ever owning a real home of our own. Now, here we were. Just the two of us (and rusty), sitting on boxes in our first dining room eating fish and chips from our just discovered, local fish and chip shop. Oh, bliss! The three children were duly collected from the old school, beds hastily made up, and curtains draped across bare windows in new bedrooms. It had been a thrilling but tiring day. We ate a simple meal in a picnic-like manner, after which we all went happily and excitedly to bed; ready to start a new life in the morning.

FACING SCHOOL AND MORE HOSPITALS

2009-06-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Lynne was keeping all the teachers and children at St Aiden’s School well informed about John and his various brushes with the medical world. He was to start school in about six months.
The first year teacher, Miss Loney, who had been Lynne’s first teacher, was a little worried about him falling in the playground or in PE lessons. When the day came for the boys to start school, she wanted to know just what he was and wasn’t allowed to do in the way of physical effort. I told her that, to all intents and purposes, John was a perfectly normal little boy and she was to treat him as such. I said that I didn’t want him to grow up frightened to jump or run or play rough. If, in the course of his school life he broke a bone, then so be it.
The only accident John ever had at school was when a bigger boy tried to lay a punch on another of his classmates in the corridor. It seemed that, as John walked by minding his own business, the boy had ducked, and John caught the full force of the blow. The headmaster phoned me to say that John was in the Cottage Hospital, having a couple of stitches put into his forehead.
The three children were all very happy and did well at St. Aiden’s School. Lynne was in a class ahead of her age during her time there. John’s operations had apparently no adverse effect on his work or during his playtime at school. In fact, he once told his classmates that the scars on his legs and body were caused by him being attacked by sharks! This made him somewhat of a hero. Philip, who was so laid back he took everything in his stride and made no ripples, just continued to be studious and deep thinking and let John get on with his accident prone life.

John’s legs were still very thin, but his muscles were slowly getting back to normal. This, of course, was more noticeable at bath time. I would wrap a large towel around him and carry him in to the warm kitchen to be dried but, as I towel dried his legs, I could feel the heads of the screws sticking up just beneath his skin. He would wince and, when I asked if it hurt, say: ‘It’s OK Mum’.
On his next hospital check up, I asked the doctor if all was still well, and pointed out the prominent screw heads that I could feel. After an X-ray, it was revealed that the screws were in fact, becoming undone and both plates and screws would have to be removed after all. They would send for John when there was a bed available. Though they would operate on both legs, the operations would have to be done one at a time, on separate occasions. The first operation was performed by Mr Lloyd-Roberts and went well, leaving a second, but quite neat scar on his thigh. We then began the wait for the second operation.

THE JOURNEY WAS A HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE

2009-05-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about being mobile was that we visited the family, most of whom lived in Kent, a lot more than hitherto. It was on one of these trips that fate dealt us another blow.
My sister Tina (Croom) and her husband David lived in Erith, Kent. They had been very good to us when John was hospitalised, sharing the task of looking after Lynne with another of my sisters Sandie (Weechuff). It was good now to be able to visit them as a complete family and just for pleasure.
Tina and I were in the house, chatting and making tea, while Arthur and David played in the garden with the three children. They were taking turns to throw the children up in he air, and swing them round. Arthur swung John and, ever mindful of his bad legs, lowered him to the floor. As his feet hit the ground, John started crying and yelling. I rushed out to find David looking very worried and Arthur cradling a very distressed John in his arms.
‘Give him to me’ I said, gently taking him from Arthur… I looked down at his leg while I held him close trying to comfort him. I could see that the shape wasn’t right. ‘I think he’s got a broken leg’ I whispered, so as not to frighten John.
‘It can’t be, I was being very gentle with him,’ said Arthur, who was so upset to think that he was responsible for John’s pain. Tina rang for an ambulance and both Arthur and I were thankful that it had been Arthur’s turn to do whatever it was that caused the accident, and not David’s. Poor David was shocked and worried, and he wasn’t even responsible.
I went in the ambulance with John, and Arthur followed behind in our car. Since we weren’t au fait with the area, Arthur had great difficulty in keeping up with the ambulance, especially as it went through red traffic lights.
The doctor in the Casualty Department confirmed our worst fears. John had, indeed, broken his leg. The thought of him being in a Kent hospital for weeks, with Arthur and I in London, and the other two children with Tina and Sandie, didn’t bear thinking about. In any case, we wanted, above all else, for John to be cared for by Mr. Lloyd-Roberts at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.
The Erith hospital agreed that, instead of plastering John’s leg, they would splint it so that we could lay him in the back of the estate car and drive to Great Ormond Street. They phoned he Children’s Hospital to let them know that we were coming and, after a quick phone call to Tina to arrange for Philip and Lynne to be left for the time being, we set off. The journey was a horrible nightmare for all of us. John’s leg was stretched out and on either side were wooden splints held in place by bandages. Arthur had to drive extremely carefully so that John’s leg wasn’t jolted by any humps or holes in the road. Each time the car jerked a little, John would scream out. All I could do to help him was to stroke his hair, hold his hand, and tell him it would soon be all right.
It was one o’clock in the morning when we finally arrived. John was taken into X-ray and we waited nervously for news. We were so worried in case his first operation had been ‘undone’ and he had been set back to square one again. The doctor told us that John would be put into traction and plaster, and we would know more the next day.
We crept into the ward to say goodnight to him. He was once again under sedation, tucked up in a hospital bed, in a ward that was dark and very quiet. With a lump in my throat I kissed him and we whispered ‘Good-night, God bless,’ and then we slipped silently away, and drove home to an unexpectedly empty and lonely flat. Before going to bed I went into the children’s room. I gazed at the empty beds and the rumpled nightclothes that had been discarded so excitedly that morning. How could such a lovely day out end in such a cruel, miserable manner?
It turned out that no one was really to blame for the accident. While playing, John had landed on the side of his foot. Because he had a steel plate fixed to the thighbone, the bone wasn’t able to bend as it normally would. Instead, the plate acted as a lever and just snapped John’s bone in half. It was one of those one in a million chances that happened.
John wasn’t too long in hospital this time and, in due course, the plaster was removed and we all settled back into some sort of normality.
To be continued…

THE QUIET BEFORE THE STORM

2009-05-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

So far, our beautiful new car had been a blessing, enabling us to travel back and forth between Kent, Great Ormond Street Hospital and Oakfield Road. I can’t even begin to imagine how we would have coped without it. It was as though it had been sent by providence, to help us survive our ordeal. It was, however, now time to use it for the purpose that we had envisaged when we first set eyes on it. A holiday.
And what a holiday that was. We packed so much into those two weeks. Our base camp was to be in Somerset, where we’d rented a holiday chalet. We all bundled into the car, with our dog Rusty sitting in the front seat with me. He loved travelling with his head out of the partially opened window, his fur and ‘chops’ billowing in the wind.
Our luggage, which comprised of a large expanding suitcase (a left-over from our honeymoon) and several bulky egg-packing boxes, was all securely strapped to the roof rack with webbing straps ‘borrowed’ from Midland Bank.
We were all in a happy holiday mood, as we set off singing at the top of our voices: ‘We’re all going on our summer holiday’.
We arrived at the site tired and hungry, so I made something quick to eat and we relaxed till the next day.
The car was parked under the trees next to our chalet and, after breakfast, we all packed into it ready for our first outing. It wouldn’t start! We were horrified. In those days, we hadn’t yet joined the Automobile Assn. And, as I said earlier, Arthur knew next to nothing about the mechanics of a car.
The God of Automobiles was still with us, however. In the next chalet was a family group consisting of two married couples and a young girl of about twelve. It was the two men, however, who had been sent from heaven. One was a train engineer and the other a car mechanic. Without any more ado, they took off their jackets, rolled up their sleeved and disappeared under the bonnet of our car. They were obviously in their element. Their womenfolk looked on happily as the men flung oily rags, spanners and feeler gauges around.
Arthur and I were understandably worried that this might herald the end of our touring holiday and, as more and more of the engine was dissembled, we became increasingly fearful.
Philip sat on the grass at Arthur’s feet watching the unfolding of events, and then uttered one of his most memorable remarks ‘Dad, I can see all the hairs up your nose.’ It wasn’t only the way that he said it, but his completely inappropriate timing, that lifted the gloom of the occasion and reduced everyone to helpless laughter.
In no time at all, the car was miraculously repaired and running better than ever. We couldn’t believe our good fortune, and all offers of payment or reward were absolutely refused.
The young girl, whose name now escapes me, became quite attached to Lynne and the boys. Her family left a few days before we did, and she bought sweets out of her pocket money and ceremoniously handed them out to out three children.
During that holiday we visited the Cheddar Gorge, Wookey Hole, Castel Coch, Cardiff, Stonehenge, Exeter Moors, Newport, and lots of other places. The children saw the wild ponies on the moors, and witnessed wild pigs trotting up and down a village street, in and out of front gardens. They visited the place where cheddar cheeses were made, and went down into deep caves with beautiful stalagmite formations. See pictures above.

On one of our car trips during the holiday, we inadvertently came across Aberfan where, in October 1966, an avalanche of black coal slag demolished the school in a matter of seconds, killing 116 children and 28 adults, following the collapse of an adjacent slag heap. Because Aberfan was a small mining village this disaster removed almost a complete generation from it’s midst.
Although this had happened a couple of years before, it still sent an overwhelming feeling of horror and sadness through me as I saw the school site and the empty cottages opposite, still half full of dried sludge. I quietly hugged my three children and thanked God for them.
To be contd…

DRIVING TESTS & OPERATIONS DON'T MIX

2009-05-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

Lynne and Philip were sent to stay with my mum, and sisters Sandie and Tina in rotation, which upset me a great deal. I hated the idea that they might think they were being pushed aside, while we stayed with John. Lynne, as usual, was very grown up about it, taking Philip under her wing and explaining all the whys and wherefores. Philip, however, didn’t accept the situation very well. He became jealous of all the extra attention. He resented staying with aunties, and also all the fuss that John generated. He once said to me ‘it isn’t fair: why is it always John that gets ill?’
Of course, we tried to make it up to Lynne and Philip. I wrote them letters and sent them goodies. We spoke to them on the phone each day and tried to explain what was happening, but I think Philip kept a chip on his shoulder for a few years. I was once again being torn in different directions. However, I knew that Lynne was very level headed and sensible, and that she and Philip were in good and very caring hands, so my time and attention had to be given to John who was really going through it and needed us more than ever.
Each morning I would see Arthur off to work, and then catch the train to the hospital. I would spend the entire day there, not only looking after John, but also helping with all the other children on his ward. Arthur would come straight from work at five o’clock and spend an hour with John and me. Then we would say goodnight to John and travel back to Oakfield road, telephone Lynne and Philip, and snatch a couple of hours to ourselves before going to bed. The next day it would start all over again. This went on for weeks and was quite exhausting, day after day. The only deviation to this routine was my driving lesson. Once a week, on top of all else, I would rush directly to the driving school and do an hour of reversing round corners or hill starting.
The day of my second driving test, which my instructor I and now knew I was capable of passing, arrived. Murphy’s law lay down that it was also to be the time that John was having his second hip operation. I must admit that, on the day, my mind was more on John than the examiner. I failed, but only just. Nothing worse than ‘driving too close to stationary vehicles’.
I really was shattered not to have passed, but decided I had far too much going on in my life at that time to continue. I would re-start driving lessons when John was entirely better: a completely wrong decision since, as it turned out, I never again sat behind the wheel of a car.
Not only did we visit John every day, but all my family at one time or other made the trip from Kent to visit, as did Arthur’s mum and dad, his brother Bill and sister-in-law Jean. This went on for weeks and weeks, and then they said that John could come home. He had plates screwed into both his thighbones, and was encased in plaster of Paris from his armpits down to his toes. He couldn’t sit up or move anything except his arms and head. The poor little mite had to eat and drink flat on his back. He couldn’t go to the toilet properly, and, since he couldn’t even partially sit up, wasn’t able to play or amuse himself. The only way I could go shopping was to take him laying flat on his back, on a sort of mattress on wheels. Life wasn’t easy, but it was wonderful to have all my children back home together.
When John said that he needed to go to he toilet, this entailed holding a bottle at a very funny angle, and a lot of strategic positioning, which used to make him laugh. But a week later, it wasn’t a laughing matter. He said he’s finished, and I removed the bottle from the bed. I nearly died of fright. His urine was the colour of red wine. I immediately made a phone call to the children’s hospital that said we should bring him straight back. I phoned Arthur who hurried home from work. Off we sped to the hospital, leaving poor Philip and Lynne with Aunty Minnie and Ruby, once again.
After more tests, we were told that John’s kidney had a tube running from it that was malformed. He’s been born with a ‘kink’ in the tube, which probably wouldn’t have given any trouble under normal circumstances. Because he’d been lying on his back for so long, there’d been a build up of calcium at the kink and a stone had formed. There would have to be yet another operation. Poor John was only three years old and was clocking up his third major operation. Once again he rose to the occasion and was the perfect patient.
This time he was already known to the nurses and Sister, and was treated like an old friend. The surgeon had to remove the plaster that encased John’ body in order to perform the operation. This time he had tubes running from the new incision and into a urine bag attached to his bed. He wasn’t allowed to run around with his bag on wheels like the other children, because of the troubles with his legs.When he was discharged from the hospital on this occasion, things were a little better. They decided to put the plaster on only one of his legs so that they could keep an eye on his new operation site. Now John wore a plaster of Paris equivalent to a pair of long johns with one leg cut off.

MY FOOT STILL HURTS, MUMMY

2009-04-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

‘My foot still hurts, Mummy.’
We went through the motions once again, carefully examining first his sock, then his shoe, and lastly his little foot. There was simply nothing there that was out of the ordinary. I honestly thought that whatever it was, it would be gone by the morning. But it wasn’t. I kept an eye on him all day, and when Arthur came home from work I said that we ought to take him to the doctor. We both felt a little stupid, as it seemed such a minor thing to worry the doctor with. All that John would say was that his shoe hurt him and, of course, he was still limping. The doctor examined him very carefully, and asked us if we had a car. Puzzled, we said yes.
The doctor looked at us and uttered the words that chilled us to the marrow.
‘I think that this could well be Poliomyelitis. The quicker you get him to the Isolation Hospital the better.’

I don‘t remember where Lynne and Philip were. We must have left them with aunty Minnie or Ruby. I thanked god that we had just bought the car.
We put John in the car and sped off to Coppet’s Wood Isolation Hospital, Finchley, as fast as we could. The medial staff did all manner of tests on him including a lumbar puncture, which was very painful. We could hear him screaming and crying out for me. Our hearts were breaking.
The part of the hospital that John was in looked like a row of holiday chalets, with a wooden verandah running along it’s length. He was all alone in his little chalet. This wasn’t too bad if you were an adult but for a little three year old, who had never been parted from his family, it was very traumatic.
It was with great foreboding that we said goodnight to him and left the room. We walked away, turning to look back one more time before getting into the car. There, to out horror, was John, running down the verandah, looking for us and screaming ‘Mummy! ‘Mummy!’ We didn’t know what terrible contagious diseases the other patients had, and there was our little baby running up and down outside their rooms, nothing on his feet screaming and crying for us.
We ran back, scooping him up in our arms, just as a nurse appeared. She scolded him for getting out of bed and took him back with a ‘He’ll be aright now’. But we were very worried and afraid that he might get out of bed again, and come into contact with a contagious illness.
The next day we went back and were told that the doctor wanted to see us. We sat in her office while she gave us the results of the tests.
‘John hasn’t got Polio,’ she said. ‘That much I am sure of. There is, however, a rare disease that I have only come across once before. It’s called Perthes disease and I have a strong feeling that all the symptoms point to this. We are not equipped to deal with it here, as it isn’t a contagious illness, so I’m going to give you a letter for The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.’
We were so relieved to get John out of Coppett’s Wood and into Great Ormond Street. There, they confirmed the other doctor’s diagnosis. How fortunate we were that the very doctor on duty at Coppett’s Wood, had actually come across Perthes disease once before. We blessed her, and confidently handed John over to the staff at Great Ormond Street, where I knew he was in the very best of hands. This was to be the second occasion that I was to be eternally grateful to Great Ormond street Hospital, and feel that I owed them a debt that I could never repay.
The surgeon, Mr Lloyd-Roberts, who was the father of the TV news correspondent, Sue Lloyd-Roberts, explained that, as a result of the Perthes disease, the ball of the ball and socket joint of John’s hip had softened. He said that it would harden again, but in a flattened shape, which would prevent John from walking properly. At best, if untreated, it would mean leg irons, at worst, a wheelchair. However, Mr Lloyd-Roberts said he could cut through John’s thighbone, twist the ball joint, and then plate it back together again. This would take the pressure off the joint and enable the bone to grow again into the proper ball and socket joint. Unfortunately, the disease had attacked both his legs, so it was to be a double operation.
John was only three and a half years old and such a brave little fellow. The only thing that upset him was the ‘prickit man’. This is what he called the technician, who took blood samples. All the nurses on the ward loved John. He was so easy-going and never complained or screamed to be with us, as lots of the children did.

To be continued….

OUR CUP RUNNETH OVER - BUT NOT FOR LONG!

2009-04-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

We were out for a walk with the children who were now aged three and six years old, and happened to pass by a friend’s house en route. There we found our friend Mike, as usual, underneath a car parked outside his home. It was a beautiful, pale blue and cream, Vauxhall Victor Super Estate with pale blue, leather upholstery. Arthur stood admiring and coveting it, his eyes gleaming like Mr. Toad’s.
We desperately needed a car, but it was completely out of the question. As always, we were living on a shoestring budget and couldn’t afford hundreds of pounds for a good second hand car. Since Arthur knew absolutely nothing about cars, except that they ran on petrol, we couldn’t risk buying an old banger.
‘If you’re interested, I could probably get you a good deal on it; I know the guy that’s selling it,’ said Mike.
In a mad moment, we succumbed to Mike’s encouragement to sit in it.
‘We could never afford a car like this. By the time it’s repaired and cleaned up, it will be right outside our means. It’s a beautiful looking car though,’ sighed Mr. Toad!
‘Leave t to me,’ said Mike. ‘I’ll see what I can come up with,’
A couple of days later Mike came back with some exciting news. The car was a hire purchase ‘snatch-back’ and the dealer was prepared to sell it ‘as is’ for £120. Mike said he would go over it with a fine toothcomb and make certain that it was running like a dream. He wouldn’t charge for his time and labour, and he thought that, for another £80, he could replace and repair anything that was necessary.
Now we had to see if the bank would lend us the £200. The bank said yes. Never was there a happier couple than the two of us. Mike got to work immediately. Every day, we would walk round the corner to see our new baby and give it a loving pat.
At last it was ready, and Mike took Arthur for a run, to get the necessary MOT certificate. Arthur had already passed his driving test before buying a car. Better to have passed the test first, than buy a car that he wasn’t allowed to drive.
We spent a whole day washing and polishing the paintwork, leather, and chrome of the new car until it sparkled and gleamed. At last, we were car owners!
We decided it would be a good idea for me to learn to drive. Since it wasn’t practical for Arthur to use the car to travel back and forth to work, the car sat outside our house all day while I pushed prams, and lugged shopping about.
I started driving lessons and loved it. Although I wasn’t ready for it, my instructor applied for a driving test for me. He said I was almost ready, might pass if I was lucky, and it would be good practice.
In those days it took about nine or ten weeks for a test application to come through. The driving instructor would sometimes, if you looked promising, book one at the beginning of the course, hoping you’d be good enough to take it when the big day arrived. We managed to afford one lesson a week for me, but I couldn’t practice in our car as it had column gears. I knew I wasn’t ready for a test, but took it anyway, and failed. I wasn’t upset because it was as I had expected. I now resumed lessons once more.
By now, Lynne was coming up to six and a half and the boys were three years younger. We had a beautiful family, a faithful dog, a lovely home and A CAR! Our cup runneth over – but not for long.
It was Sunday morning and the children were getting ready for Sunday school.
‘Mummy, my foot hurts,’ John’s voice piped up.
‘Let me look,’ I said, taking off his shoe and sock and examining his foot. I couldn’t see anything untoward.
‘It’ll soon be better,’ said Lynne, always the little mother where the boys were concerned. Lynne helped put John’s shoe back on and I tied the lace.
‘I’m sure it will be alright by the time you get to Sunday school,’ I said, thinking that a little psychology would probably do the trick. Arthur bundled them into the car and off they went, while I busied myself preparing Sunday lunch. When they returned from Sunday school, John was still limping.
To be contd…

THIS WAS REAL FAMILY LIFE

2009-04-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Lynne had already been given her own bedroom, long before she knew about the new baby. We were determined that she would not feel pushed to one side, particularly now there were going to be two babies. She was a very sensible little girl of three years old. I explained that some people were very silly when new babies came on to the scene. I warned her that neighbours would probably all want to peep into the pram and say daft things to her, like: ‘Do you love your little babies?’ She understood.
With only one day to go before I was to be hauled into hospital, my waters broke. This time, Arthur left me at the labour ward and went home to bed. He didn’t want to be present at the birth, and couldn’t anyway, in case of complications. He was ready to rush to Hanley Road Hospital the minute he had news, and would be as relieved as me to get it all over with. He later told me that during my pregnancy he was quite concerned, as I was so huge and not at all well.
We had chosen two girls’ names (which I can’t now recall) and two boys’ names, covering all contingencies. When the first baby was born, the doctor said it was a boy.
‘His name is Philip Lea,’ I managed to say, before the next wave of pain. Seven minutes later, they held up the second baby.
‘That’s John Lea,’ I shouted. Then: ‘Are they identical?’
‘No’, said the midwife, ‘but they’re bonny babies. The first one weighs 7 lb 2oz and the second 7 lb 4 oz.’
Not only were they perfect babies, but also they each weighed much more than Lynne had when she was born. No breach births, no incubators, just a cot each side of my bed, each containing a perfectly beautiful, baby boy. Bliss!
The hospital authorities kept me and my boys in hospital for just four days. They needed my bed and I had to go home, but my doctors made me promise to stay in bed for a further week.
From then on there wasn’t much rest for Arthur or me. We were inundated with visitors wanting to see the wonder babies. Mum helped out for a couple of days, then Daddy became stroppy and said it was too much for her. Soon everybody had gone, and Arthur and I were left to our own devises. Of course, Arthur had to go back to work, (no maternity leave in those days) so it left just me and a three year old with the two newly born babies, to cope as best we could.

I was three years wiser now and so didn’t think the babies were ill every time they cried or that, if they slept too long, they were dying. I took it all in my stride and had no problems cooking, shopping and looking after three little ones.
The twins were super babies and never cried at night. However they had to be fed every four hours, which meant that one or the other of the boys woke up every two hours all through the night. I would feed, burp, change and put down Philip, which would take about half an hour. He would go back to sleep, no problem, but one and a half hours later, John would want feeding, and so it would go on and on. I never had more than 90 minutes sleep in one go, all night! This was the period of my life when I acquired my first grey hairs, and I was only thirty-two.

Note: For my female readers who can cope with this information. Since each of my twins were full sized babies and not identical, I carried two lots of water and two afterbirths and nearly fifteen pounds of baby. No wonder I looked like the Titanic!

AND BABY MAKES FOUR - OR IS IT FIVE?

2009-04-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of Lynne’s birth was that we received an unexpected income-tax rebate, which was quite large and came in very useful at the time. Because she had been born in the last month of the tax year, Arthur was entitled to nearly a whole years rebate, now that he had a child.
By the time that Lynne had turned two, we decided that we would like another child. Having a three-year gap between them seemed just right. Then we remembered the tax rebate and decided that, if we were gong to have a second baby, we might as well have it at roughly the same time of the years as the first, and reap some more tax benefits. After working out the relevant dates we became aware that, if I didn’t become pregnant very soon, we wouldn’t manage to ’complete’ by the end of the tax year.
Out came the thermometer and we drew up cycle charts. Since, in any one month, there is less than a week in which it is possible to conceive, it was again all systems go as often as we could muster!
The day came when I knew that, once more, we were going to have an addition to the family. Soon I’d have not only Lynne and Arthur to look after, but also another brother or sister for Lynne. Although I didn’t say anything to Arthur, I said many a prayer on the lines of ‘Please God, don’t let it cry all night, like Lynne did’. I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to stand that all over again.
Throughout the pregnancy I felt certain that I had more than one baby growing inside me. I asked for, and was given, examinations by several doctors and midwives. They all assured me that, not only was there only one baby with one heart beat, but that it was a large baby. That really cheered me up! The thought of giving birth to a nine or ten pounder wasn’t something to get too enthusiastic about.
Nothing daunted, my strong feeling was that I was going to have twins continued, and I set about getting two of everything together. Two sets of clothes, two shawls, two sets of bedding etc. The whole family thought I’d flipped my lid, and Arthur was worried that I would be so upset and disappointed, when only one baby arrived.
The midwives were being very kind and gentle, but quite firm in their belief that it was to be a singe birth.
Two weeks before the birth, I developed a kidney infection, which confined me to bed and gave me a raging thirst that had me drinking four pints of water during the night, every night. Because of the imminent birth, the midwife thought that I ought to see a hospital doctor with a view to having the baby in hospital, instead of at home as planned. Off I wobbled, looking like a tramp steamer on legs, to be examined by the hospital doctor.
He did the ‘laying on of hands’ bit and said: ‘ Has any one ever mentioned that this is possibly two babies?’ I was elated, and told him my tale of the unbelievers who had consistently hammered my maternal feelings into the ground.
‘The first thing to do is to get you X-rayed and make sure’, said my knight in shining armour. (No scans in those days).
I balanced precariously on my oversized, over-filled belly, feeling that any moment it would split asunder and we’d all know what was in it, while the radiographer took the necessary X-rays. Within minutes I knew for certain that the three of us were very soon to become the five of us. Now I would have to go into hospital for the births, like it or not.
‘If you don’t go into labour in the next week, come in under your own steam and we’ll start things off for you,’ said the doctor, adding, ‘One will probably be breech birth, that’s quite often the case with twins and, because they’ll only weigh about five pounds each, they’ll go into incubators for a while. Don’t worry about it Mother, it’s the normal procedure for twins and there won’t be any cause for concern. You’ll be able to see them, but you won’t be able to have them in an open cot, like the other mothers, until they’re a little bigger.’
I rushed to telephone Arthur at is office and give him the fantastic news. Every member of the family was so excited. There was no history of twins on either side of our families. Arthur and I were making history.

AND BABY MAKES THREE !

2009-04-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

I was admitted to the Hanley Road Maternity hospital at 10pm on March 9th. Lynne was born at 11.20 the following morning, March 10th 1960, weighing in at 6lb 11oz.
As I hadn’t expected her to be born until March 20th, I could be excused for deciding to have a home perm on that fateful Wednesday evening. At twenty-eight, with my first pregnancy, I wanted to look glamorous during my ten day stay in hospital.
Ruby had kindly offered to give me a perm, and we were at the stage where the curlers were all firmly in place, ready to dry naturally on my head overnight. It was at this point in the proceedings that I decided to go to the toilet, for the umpteenth time (one of the side effects of having a baby sitting on your bladder for nine month). My waters broke, a sure sign from the baby that it was eager to make its appearance into the world, and there was I with wet hair rolled up in tight, little packages of tissue paper and perm curlers. Dozens of the damned things!
Ruby quickly loosened and removed them and we towel dried my hair (we didn’t own a hair drier), until I looked fairly presentable. The ambulance could then be called; using the telephone we had installed for this very purpose.
I won’t dwell on the boring and yucky bits, only to say that Arthur stayed with me throughout the birth. He has often remarked since that, in his opinion, it was an experience not to be repeated. Since he wasn’t allowed to be at the next birthing, he thankfully didn’t have to make the choice.
We called our daughter Lynne Lea: Lynne for no other reason than we liked the name, and Lea because we decided to start our own ’family name’ from the first two letters of my name and the first of Arthur’s.

Ten days later I was back at home. I kept gazing in wonderment at Lynne, realizing that her very life and safety depended on me and the way that I cared for her. It was an alarming thought to have this new life resting in my hands, and to know that all my maternal feelings and knowledge of what was good or bad for this tiny creature would have to be put into practice with only instinct to guide me.

As Lynne grew into a chubby little toddler, each day became a joy to us. Arthur adored her and spent all his spare time with her. He loved getting her ready for bed and tucking her up. Being read to was one of Lynne’s favourite things and something that we both enjoyed as much as she did. Her eyes would sparkle, and she would jog up and down with excitement as we pointed out the pictures in her favourite ‘Cat in The Hat’ book.
The two things that members of the family mostly remember about Lynne’s early days were her infectious belly laugh that had everyone joining in, and the way that she would wave her arm in the air and pontificate, in a non stop babble of nonsensical words. She could keep this up for ten minutes, stop, thump the tray of her highchair and start all over again. We felt certain that she’d turn out to be a politician. Her chuckling, robust laughter once had a great section of the Victoria Palace Theatre audience laughing at her, instead of the cast of the Black and White Minstrel Show, and she was only three years old!

THE FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN AND MORE FANCY DRESS

2009-03-25T04:13:00.000-07:00

I accidently erased this blog and have had to re-install it. Unfortunately, I have also erased the comments that were kindly left for me. I apologise for this and if possible would appreciate the comments being re-instated. Thank you.

THE FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN

The Highlight of 1951 was the Festival of Britain, built one hundred years after ‘The Great Victorian Exhibition of 1851’. There were many facets to the festival. The Pleasure Gardens, a huge fun fair, a tree walk, The Dome of Discovery and, of course, the world famous ‘Skylon’, a futuristic structure which appeared to have no visible means of support. This magnificent and prize winning structure was sold for scrap in 1952 (the following year).

All this was an enormous feat of design and technology, and intended to show the world how well we had picked up the pieces and recovered from World War ll. The Royal Family, heads of state, and millions of tourists visited the Battersea Pleasure Gardens.
Hoping to get the public into a festive mood, the organisers announced that there was to be a huge fancy dress night at the Pleasure Gardens. The entrance fee would be waived for any person arriving at the turnstile in fancy dress costume; the Leach’s and Chapman’s needed no second bidding, and immediately organised a large group.
Aunty Minnie, Ruby and her son, Mummy and Daddy, Arthur’s brother and Arthur and I, and several friends made up a large party, and let ourselves loose on the London Underground, bound for Battersea. Dad this time became ‘Old Mother Riley’, and stole the show.
Much to Arthur’s embarrassment, and everyone else’s joy, his brother dressed as a Romany gypsy, strapped his piano accordion on and serenaded us all during the underground tube journey and at the Festival.
When we arrived, we discovered that hardly another soul had made the effort to dress up. We didn’t care, it was still a lot of fun, and the Press was pleased that we’d entered into the spirit of the occasion. They interviewed us and took our names, and a group photograph duly appeared in the next day’s newspaper.

The only part of the Festival of Britain still surviving is, of course, The Festival hall on the South Bank.
Although we threw lots of parties and enjoyed dressing up, I must admit that we did change our party tastes after a couple of years of married life. This was solely down to the couple that had the flat above ours at Oakfield road. He was about fifteen years younger than his partner and they lived together many years, later marrying.
They had a circle of about a dozen or so close friends who they often brought home after an evening out, or sometimes instead of going out. Rather than have the inconvenience of guests tip-toeing past our bedroom door on the way to the loo, they would ask if we would like to join the party. We really came to love their get-togethers, and our taste in parties changed from then on. Our hosts would have little dishes of nuts and crisps and sausage rolls lying around, the drinks were plentiful and generous, the lights were turned low and the music was classy. It was all very intimate and we all got quietly, slowly and sedately drunk as, arms entwined around each other’s necks, we danced into the small hours. Pure magic!

IT'S PARTY TIME!!!

2009-03-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

IT’S PARTY TIME!

Because we were such a large family, we didn’t need many extra people to make ‘a party’. With the coming of Arthur, our family increased by another five people: his parents, his brother Bill and wife Jean, and their daughter Wendy. Doug’s teenage friends accounted for another half a dozen or so more, so party we quite often did! Fancy dress parties were a favourite and everyone joined in with gusto.

One Christmas, Arthur’s brother Bill organised a party for the two families and their friends. Mum went dressed as a Harem girl and Dad as Charlie Chaplin, a role he played almost as well as Chaplin himself! I put all my dressmaking efforts into Arthur’s devil’s costume. I made him a close fitting helmet with a ‘widows peak’. Arthur fashioned a splendid pair of horns, which we painted bright red and attached to the helmet. He had a voluminous black cloak lined with red satin, and sported a wicked beard and moustache. All this, together with a full-size ‘devil’s fork’, also painted bright red, made him look really fiendish.

At another of our parties, Mum and I made Can-Can girl costumes, and burst into the room, high-kicking and showing our frillies, to the strains of ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’.
A regular at our parties was Doug’s friend Fred. He lived with his gran (to whom he was devoted) and he was also a devotee of fashion: the Teddy-boy fashion. In Fred’s case this meant shoes with thick crepe soles (known as brothel creepers), topped by narrow, drain-pipe trousers and a three quarter length, black jacket trimmed with black velvet. Beneath his jacket lay a snowy white shirt trimmed from neck to waist with layer upon layer of narrow, white lace ruffles. Fred embellished this with a black shoestring tie, and an immaculate, Teddy boy hair-do, gleaming with hair cream, in a style that resembled a sculpture.
He was a tall lad; in fact over six feet tall, and he cut a very dashing figure dressed as he was. He didn’t have a great deal of money and so wasn’t able to spend as much money on his appearance as he would have liked. Nothing daunted, what he couldn’t afford he made! Fred would spend hours in our kitchen at Oakfield Road, sitting at Mum’s treadle sewing machine, laboriously stitching yards of lace on to his shirt front, and adding bits and bobs to his clothes. He was always very fussy about looking just right. That is, until one of our family parties when Fred got ever-so-slightly drunk and, feeling very hot, decided to cool off in the kitchen. I shall never forget the sight that greeted me as I followed him into the room a few seconds later. There, with his lace trimmed shirt awry was Fred. His head was scarlet from the effect of heat and booze, and fully submerged in the goldfish tank with fish swimming around his face as he cooled off! The only sound in the room, except for the noise of bubbles, was Dad’s tired, somewhat disgusted but very patient plea: ‘Don’t do that Fred!’

Last photo: Arthur as a

devil,with his brother Bill

as a witch!

EGG DONOR TO A FROG!

2009-03-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

I explained to the doctor all about Patsy and Doug, and that we wanted to tell Mum together, and that they wouldn’t wait two months to break their news. Being the lovely old man that he was, he immediately said: ‘OK there’s a special test that I can give you that usually is only carried out in emergencies.’
Home pregnancy testing had not yet been developed, and wouldn’t be for many, many years to come. The test that the doctor was going to do had something to do with sending a sample of my urine to the hospital laboratories, injecting it into a frog, and waiting to see if the frog laid eggs!
‘Ring me at the surgery in three days time, and I’ll be able to tell you the results of the test,’ he said, and if you really are going to have a baby.’
They were the longest three days of my life, and on the third day I rushed to the telephone box.
‘Have you got the results yet doctor?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said the doctor, ‘the results were positive. You were right: congratulations!’ I couldn’t believe it.
‘Am I really going to have a baby?’ I asked.
‘You certainly are. Come to the surgery and I’ll give you a letter for the antenatal clinic.’
The four of us went to visit Mum and Dad, so eager and happy that we could hardly contain ourselves. Needless to say, Mum, Dad, and all the siblings were ecstatic about the news.
It was a wonderful nine months. Pat and I did everything together, and Arthur and I were so happy. When you consider that David was born to Pat and Doug on February 27th, and Lynne was born less than a fortnight later, you must admit that we did remarkably well, at very short notice!
Daddy was working away in Wrexham for a lot of the time I was carrying Lynne, and he wrote me many letters about his hopes and love for his forthcoming grandchild. I still have them in my treasure chest.
When I look at my children I still can’t believe that Arthur and I made them and that we alone are responsible for these lovely people that are now part of our legacy to the world. If we never achieve anything else of any worth in our lives, we have at least done this.
I remember dreaming a particular dream several times during my first pregnancy, always a variation on a theme. I would carefully put my baby away somewhere safe. Perhaps in a bed, cot, room or even a drawer. Then I would forget it for several days, and the thought would suddenly strike me that I had omitted to feed it. I would wake up in a cold sweat! Perhaps this is a common dream for expectant mothers.
Even now, as I touch the fingers of a small baby and feel the little wrinkles of its skin I am immediately transported back forty-something years to the births of my children. All those years ago, the sensation of holding a baby in my arms, made a perfect job of imprinting itself upon my brain. I close my eyes and my babies are back. The warm head, so soft and downy against my lips. The smell of baby powder and clean, sterile linen. I lay my finger in the palm of a tiny hand and it closes its fingers around mine, in a reflex action: so tightly, so tightly. The baby blue eyes are closed and the perfectly formed mouth makes little movements. I lay my baby against my shoulder and a tiny face nuzzles into my neck. This must be one of the most wonderful of all wonders of the world!

STARTING A FAMILY

2009-03-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

STARTING A FAMILY

By now, we’d been married seven years and had collected a good home around us. In our lounge we had a new 21-inch screen television set, a three-piece suite and a carpet square! In those days only the relatively wealthy could afford fitted carpet. Then, Cyril Lord, a carpet entrepreneur, introduced plain coloured carpets that could be purchased by the yard in several widths and at affordable prices. We managed a large square, but were still not in the fitted carpet league. We also had one of the first Hi-Fi systems, fresh from the Ideal Homes exhibition. Not only did it have FM radio and a built in reel-to-reel tape-recorder, but it also had an echo chamber and the facility to make double track recordings, all with plenty of echo-echo-echo! It was very modern and stood on long, spindly, black legs ending in shiny, brass ferrules. How proud we were of our gleaming, black and gold Hi-Fi.
We had also bought a kitchen table and chairs made from bright yellow Formica and vinyl. The chairs stood proudly on black, tubular steel legs, looking like great, yellow beetles striding across our red and white chequered linoleum covered floor. At the same time, we indulged in a matching yellow fibre glass sink unit, and a pale green kitchen cabinet with, as the brochure said: ‘ a fitted clock and bread bin together with pull-out work surface’. It was all very modern and much sought after! We even had Rusty the dog to complete our happy picture.
Remember we were just entering the ‘swinging sixties’ and this was reflected in our home. Purple, mustard, terracotta and burnt orange were the colour we chose to paint the doors in our flat. It started when we bought ‘contemporary’ linoleum to cover the floor on the landings. It had a black background and lots of colourful designs all over it, squares and triangle with rounded corners. We decided it would be fun to pick out all the bright colours in the floor covering and echo them on the doors that led off from the landing. Very fiftyish, which, of course it was.
Arthur and I were still very happy with our life together, and had no desire to start a family – we thought. I’d started looking at little girls wearing frilly frocks, cute smiles and ribbons in their hair but, at the time, didn’t recognise it for what it was: broodiness.
One day in June 1959, Doug contacted us and suggested that we all go down to the Railway Tavern for a drink, as there was something that he and Pat wanted to tell us. We were agog with curiosity. Surely they couldn’t be moving. Maybe Doug had landed a good job at last. When we’d settled down with our drinks, Doug told us that Pat was pregnant and they wanted us to be the first to know. We were so surprised because they hadn’t been married very long. Suddenly, I knew that I wanted to be pregnant too!
‘Can you imagine Mum’s face if we were to tell her that we were both expecting babies?’ I said. Doug and Pat agreed that it would be fun, but there was one little drawback. Pat was already pregnant and Arthur and I hadn’t even started yet!
‘Please wait just a couple of weeks’ I pleaded, ‘before you tell Mum and dad. It would be wonderful if we could present Mum and Dad with their first two grandchildren at the same time. Especially since they’d waited so long’.
‘OK,’ Doug agreed. I think he secretly thought we were both off our trolleys. After all, we’d been childless for seven years.
That night we set about fulfilling our part of the plan. After only one try, I was absolutely certain that it had worked and that I too was pregnant. We suddenly wanted to be parents more than anything else in the world, and there didn’t seem to be any reason to waste time now. I don’t think that it occurred to me that we might have to wait months, or even years, to make a baby.
It was just a short time later, and my period was overdue by three days. I just knew this was it! I went to the doctor and told him that I thought I was pregnant, He asked me how late I was and, when I told him three days, he roared with laughter and said: ‘Come back in a couple of months.’
To be contd…

SKIFFLE GROUPS AND PING PONG!

2009-03-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

After we left St Paul’s Road (see ‘Back to my childhood home’) Mrs ‘S’ the mother of Joyce, who rented the top floor flat with her husband Wally (see ‘A Move – But Not too Far’), moved into our original rooms, with her younger daughter Pat. St. Paul’s Road now housed Mum, Dad, brothers Doug and Bill, and the four girls on the ground and basement floors. Mrs S and Pat had our old flat, and Joyce and Wally still lived on the top floor.
Doug and Pat started dating and they finally became engaged and subsequently married.
From the outset of their relationship we became a regular foursome. Doug and I had always been very close to each other and, as Pat was roughly the same age as me, we all became very good friends, spending most of our spare time together.
In 1957 we formed a skiffle group and jazz group and, night after night, well into the wee small hours, we would make our own music recording it on to a Grundig reel-to-reel tape-recorder. Doug played a guitar and banjo and home made drums. Arthur played guitar and piano, and I played guitar, and Pat and I sang.
At one point, Dougie took up amateur photography, so we had a spate of taking black-and-white photographs of anything and everything, doing our own developing and printing in a makeshift dark room under the stairs.

This is one of the posh ones he took of me! Next we became very keen on table tennis. As we never had any money, it was decided that we make our own table. Arthur and Dougie also made the bats. They were a trifle heavy, but manageable! Why we never bought proper ones I don’t know, but it was fun, and we held tournaments in mum’s front room.
That year, Doug and Pat joined us on holiday in Dorset. They weren’t yet married. We had such a crazy, happy holiday. Our chalet stood on the bank of a river and Arthur and Doug did silly things like staging water pistol fights, and building a raft with a sail that sank immediately!

We walked across the fields at midnight, and came home to our chalet with our shoes and legs covered in snails, slugs and bugs!
One afternoon Pat’s deckchair collapsed while she was lounging in it. The whole thing folded up with her body on top, and her fingers trapped in the mechanism. We all thought for one horrible moment that she’s severed them and were frightened to look! However, they were still attached, so we rushed her to the doctor’s and spent a worrying hour at the surgery, Pat spent a few painful days with her hand in a sling.

After that, all went well until Rusty (our dog) was savaged by the swans that used to swim along the edge of the river in our front garden begging for pieces of bread. He was so scared; he leapt into the air, pulling his head completely out of his collar. Apart from the loss of dignity, he was otherwise unharmed! Doug and Pat duly became a married couple and rented a flat at Finsbury Park. This was good news because they now lived a lot closer to us and we could spend more time together. Their landlord lived in the flat below them and always banged on the ceiling if we made a noise, which we frequently did! More of that later.

BACK TO MY CHILDHOOD HOME

2009-02-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

When we had settled in and were starting to think about building our first kitchen, I suddenly had a much better idea. On one hand, there was Mum, Dad, six children and a dog, boxed up in the small, first floor flat in Oakfield Road. They had no garden for the children to play in or for Mummy to hang out the washing, and they had Aunty Minnie forever thumping on the ceiling and shouting at them all.
On the other hand, Arthur and I now had the offer of half a large house, complete with a very large garden. There were only two of us and we were out at work all day. The sensible solution seemed to be for Mum and Dad, and Arthur and I, to swap accommodation! The agents on both sides were happy for us to do this, and Mummy and Daddy were overjoyed at getting out of Oakfield road at long last.
And so the switch was made. Dad spent his every spare moment working like mad to get St Paul’s road how he and mum wanted it. The ground floor rooms became bedrooms, and the basement was turned into a beautiful fitted kitchen, living room and lounge.
Sandie, Babs, Tina and Gill loved it. They played in the garden and Mum hung out her washing in the sunshine. Mum and dad planted flowers and sat out in deckchairs.
With Arthur at my side, I arrived back at Oakfield Road, the house that I had first moved into as a little girl, all those years ago. This was also the home that all our children were to be born in, but that was about seven years away.
Mummy was worried about us having to deal with aunty Minnie’s moods and her moaning. We felt quite confident that it would be OK and Arthur wasn’t the least bit scared of her. We knew that legally, as tenants, we all had equal rights in the house.
When Mum and Dad first came to Oakfield Road, during the early war years, to share the house with Aunty Minnie, she had been renting it in her own name. She was, in fact, the legal and sole occupier. Then individual flats were gradually taken over by Gwen, then Mum and Dad, and also a couple who applied for and rented the three-roomed attic flat. Aunty Minnie became our unofficial landlady to whom they all paid rent. She in turn paid her rent to the real landlords. Eventually the tenancy was taken away from her and they were all given their own rent books. 71 Oakfield Road had become a tenement block. Now all the tenants had equal rights to the hallway, garden and cellar. This was great news, except for Aunty Minnie. She still said: ‘This is my house,’ and made life so unpleasant for everyone that no one really stood up to her. That is, until Arthur and I moved in!
The first hurdle was hanging out the washing. Although I didn’t relish carrying wet laundry down two flights of stairs, through a dark, dirty cellar and up another flight of stone steps outside, there was a principle at stake. Doug and Arthur waited for a fine Saturday afternoon then proceeded to erect a magnificent, wooden clothes-post that Arthur had made for me.
Aunty Minnie sat at her kitchen window, watching us like the Wicked Witch of the West until she could stand it no longer. She jumped up and ran into the garden. This happened to coincide with the moment that Dougie broke in half the handle of the garden fork he was using.
‘How dare you use my garden fork without my permission,’ she shrieked at us. ‘This is my garden and you have no right to dig holes in the ground and break my garden fork.’
This was a beautiful moment… our moment of triumph. Doug looked at her as she leaped up and down with what I swear was smoke pouring out of her nostrils.
‘This,’ he said truthfully, ‘is my fork, I brought it from home specifically to do this job.’
Arthur then informed her in no uncertain terms, that she no longer had exclusive rights to the garden, and we continued to erect the clothes post. Poor Aunty Minnie had met her Waterloo and she was thoroughly deflated. Turning on her heel, and throwing the rather inappropriate remark: ‘Get off your high horse!’ over her shoulder, she strode indoors, slamming the back door in her wake. We had started as me meant to continue, and had won the first battle.

There were many such upheavals about who had the rights to what, and of course we always won.
I am now much older and more tolerant of elderly people’s behaviour… Auntie Minnie is no longer alive, and I must admit that I do feel a little guilty about the way we treated her. She was in the wrong, but she was in her seventies and no doubt felt justified in her behaviour. We should have been a bit more understanding. We never found out why she was so bitter and resentful. Perhaps she resented other’s pleasures or good fortune because life had been very hard for her. There were many such battles with her during the first year or so, but she eventually came round, apparently accepting that it was quite handy to have a man around the house occasionally.

A MOVE -BUT NOT TOO FAR!

2009-02-25T16:52:00.000-08:00

A MOVE – BUT NOT TOO FAR!

Arthur had told me that, if I wanted to give up work and be at home, he would be quite happy with the arrangement. So, with a heavy heart and mixed feelings, I handed in my notice. There were lots of tears on the day I left. I really was very happy at the old ‘Angel Madhouse’, as it was affectionately known, and probably would not have left it if it hadn’t been for the move to Dalston.
I didn’t make a bad decision, as it happened. My suspicions turned out to be right. The angel Warehouse became very impersonal, as I had predicted.
That summer, Miss ‘D’ went somewhere out east to an expensive and very hot resort for her annual holiday. There she suffered a stroke and died. This was a terrible shock to the girls. Although Miss ’D’ had been Company Secretary, she was always a good friend to all the female staff, whom she treated as her equals.
Doreen left to have a baby and, now that she, and Miss ‘D’ had gone, there was no reason to keep in touch. I often think of all the ‘inmates’ and occasionally look at their photographs, wondering where they are, how they are, and even if they are all still alive. They were happy, happy days.
Our house in St Paul’s Road was divided into three flats. A married couple were living on the ground floor, though we never really got to know them, and a young married couple were on the floor above us. They had a baby boy.
One day the couple on the ground floor vacated their two-roomed flat and we asked the agent if we could take it over. As it included the basement, that had two further rooms that were never used, we had ideas about getting a kitchen at last. The agent agreed that we could move downstairs.
As we were not actually moving house, Arthur and I decided that, with a little help from Dad and Doug (my brother), we could move our furniture piecemeal down the stairs ourselves. We thought this would be an easy job. We moved everything straight down into the relevant rooms, thereby positioning everything roughly where we wanted it to stay. The really heavy furniture such as the wardrobes, sideboard and bed, Arthur, Dad and Doug could man-hand between them, with me yelling out the appropriate encouragement like: Mind what you’re doing!’ and ‘Be careful you don’t scratch my table top!’ and, occasionally, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea!’
Arthur and I had started moving the smaller things on Friday evening and it was now Saturday morning and time to get stuck in with the large items.
Everything went well for a while, and then it was time for the piano to be shifted. Originally professional piano movers had transported it from my mother-in-law’s house to ours. We had been amazed at the alacrity and ease with which they sped up two flights of stairs; the piano balanced on one man’s back while two others steadied things. Oh how very stupid we were to mistake professional artistry and experience for something that appeared to be the proverbial piece of cake!
We had already stripped the top, front, and lid from the piano to make it easier for them to handle, and all went well from the lounge to the bottom of the first flight of stairs. It was when the men were negotiating the 180-degree bend between the two flights of stairs that the house demolition started.
Somehow, the piano slipped, and one corner began deftly to push out, one by one, the banister rails that blocked its way. Suddenly it stopped. Completely jammed. With much yelling and grabbing, the three men tried to pull the piano out from amongst the banister rails, only to firmly drive the opposite corner of the piano into and through the plaster on the stairway wall.
It was at this point that the couple upstairs, (Joyce and Wally) and their small son descended from the top floor flat. Their path was of course blocked very firmly by three grunting, puffing men, one slightly hysterical me, and an upright piano that was wedged, it seemed forever, across the stairs between the wall and the banisters!
Wally, with a look of chagrin said: ‘We really do need to get to the front door. Actually, we’re on our way to a family wedding’. It was only then that I realized Wally was dressed in a smart, navy suit, complete with a floral buttonhole, and that Joyce was wearing a resplendent hat trimmed with an equally resplendent floral arrangement! Oh my God! They really were dressed for, and on their way to, a wedding. Joyce and her little boy retreated a few steps up towards her kitchen door, and Wally, realizing that he really didn’t have any other option, if he was to make the wedding at all, said: “Come on, I’ll give you a hand”
The men in unison, and now numbering four, managed to get the piano back in a straight line pointing down the stairs, but there still was no way they could make it turn the bend, try as they might. By this time, Wally’s beautiful, smart, navy-blue, wedding suit was covered in white plaster dust. His face was sweaty and his hair dishevelled. The rest of us were beginning to feel rather embarrassed when Doug’s’ face suddenly lit up, as in idea struck him. Had I known the outcome of his idea, I’d have probably struck him too! “Let’s turn the piano upside down,” he said, “so that the wide keyboard area is over the top of the handrail, then the narrower base will easily make the bend in the landing”
This was hailed by the others as a brilliant, “why didn’t we think of it earlier” idea. With more grunts and shouts of “one, two, three, over”, they turned the instrument, which had been our pride and joy, upside down … and all the keys fell out! With a discordant, clattering sound, they tumbled down the stairwell and into the quarry tiled entrance hall below.
Alas! This was to be the swan song of our beloved pianoforte because, although the keys could have been put back, there was also extensive damage to the hammers.
Wally and Joyce finally made their way, brushed and re-groomed, to their wedding celebrations, and our beautiful piano, that had been handed down from the last generation, was dragged unceremoniously into the back garden. There, sadly, it was hammered, hacked, and chopped into pieces small enough to dispose of. If any of you have ever attended a piano-smashing event at a local garden fete or County Fair, you will know just how difficult and very, very noisy this act is!

MORE MONEYMAKERS

2009-02-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

MORE MONEYMAKERS

Some months later, the company Secretary Miss D, told me that she had been invited to a Masonic dinner and would like me to make her an evening gown. She was about size eighteen and didn’t care for the styles that were available in larger sizes. This was a lady who had lots of money, made tea in a black Wedgwood tea-pot and had a mink coat hanging in her wardrobe! As money was no object, she bought some extremely expensive, mid-night blue brocade. I had only ever worked with cheap and cheerful material and felt just a trifle apprehensive.
Once again, I made the sketches, held my breath and cut into the brocade. I had a deadline, several weeks away, which was necessary as there was a lot of work to do. This was to be a dress with a matching, fitted jacket.
All went well for a while, and then I suddenly became quite ill. The doctor was called in, and Arthur was informed that I had pleurisy and wouldn’t be well enough to go to work. In fact, I had to remain in bed for several weeks. Poor Miss D kept sending messages that, if she wasn’t to get her new dress in time, she’d have to go shopping for a replacement. I was so embarrassed, but could only assure her (with fingers crossed) that, come what may, she would look stunning in midnight-blue brocade on her special evening. I did manage it and she was overjoyed with the finished garment. I can’t remember how much I charged, but you can be sure it was put to very good use, however much it was.
Another little moneymaker that I managed to wangle was ticket writing. This was still during the birth of self-serving grocery stores, and bar codes and shelf pricing had yet to come. Attached to the edge of each shelf, in front of the commodity, was a piece of white card showing the price, written in black ink. This usually said something like: ‘Baked Beans 16-oz. Usual price 7d. Our price 4d!!!’
When SJI found out that I was artistically inclined, he asked if I’d like the job of keeping the price cards in our local store up to date each week. I said I’d do a good job if he let me buy the materials myself, and pay me one penny for each card I supplied. He laughed and said: ‘You’ve got a bloody cheek; I already pay you to work for me! But OK, buy what you need and let’s see how it goes.’
I went to a small artist supply shop in Camden Passage and bought sheets of the recently developed Day-Glo board in bright orange, plus a couple of thick marker pens. Next I went to Chapel Street Market and noted how the market traders formed their letters and numbers on their market stall price tickets.
I ended up doing all the price tickets for all the Anthony Jackson grocery shops. I charged a penny for small tickets and 1 ½d for larger ones. Nowadays it seems very little money for lot of work, but in fact it boosted my wages considerably and I became expert at it. However, I did feel a little guilty, being paid so much for an enjoyable job that was very quick and easy for me to do.

News came that SJI was opening larger and flashier premises in Dalston, and the old warehouse on the Islington green was to close. It was going to be a complete change and, as I had suspected, would no longer have the lovely ‘family’ atmosphere that we had enjoyed for years. Sidney Ingram was going up in the world, and we were all going with him. The trouble was that I loved the cosy, friendly little firm, and didn’t want to move into a cold, impersonal, ‘new-age’ company.
To be cont…

MARRIED LIFE AND LITTLE SISTERS

2009-02-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

My new husband was very good about having my little sisters to stay with us. He understood that we were a very close family and how much I missed them all, so now and then Tina (Croom) would come to stay for the weekend. She loved being with us and seemed to be the one that missed me most. Mum told me how Tina, who was seven years old, cried and cried after our wedding. She suddenly realised that I wasn’t coming back home on my return from holiday in Eastbourne!
Sandie (Weechuff) was a very resilient nine year old and, as long as she could don a pair of football boots and coax the boys to let her kick a ball around with them, was happy. Babs (Beetle) aged five was a bit clingy and wouldn’t stay away from Mum at all.
Gillian, who was still very young, once asked if she could stay with us. Which she did. Next morning she asked to have toast for breakfast and, when it was set before her, refused to eat it. I told her that if she didn’t eat her toast she would have to go back home to Mummy and Daddy. She was so stubborn. As much as she wanted to stay with us, she said: ‘take me home’ then: ‘I don’t care.’ We couldn’t let her win, so we took her back to Mum.
One time, when we went to Clacton on holiday, we asked Sandie if she would like to come along with us. We had a chalet with a spare bedroom, and Arthur liked Sandie as she was very ‘grown-up’ and sensible. We all had a lovely time and repeated the experience a couple of years later on. We took Tina on a similar holiday as well.
In those days anyone was welcome to stay the night. Believe it or not, we once decided that Flossie the family dog was feeling left out and would like to spend the weekend with us. We walked her from Oakfield Road in Hornsey to Islington late one Friday evening. She spent the whole of the night walking up and down, up and down, her claws tap-tap-tapping on the linoleum and driving us mad. We returned her to her natural habitat as soon as possible the following morning and never repeated that experience again.
We didn’t have any thoughts about starting a family. I’d spent so many years my of my childhood and my teens washing, dressing, changing and feeding babies and toddlers, that I felt I’d already had a family and, in any case, there was always a toddler ready and willing to come and stay with us if we felt that need.
Married life was a wonderful life, we were doing whatever we wanted and were so happy to be in each other’s company, we didn’t need anyone else. Mum was always tossing out little remarks about grandchildren and other people’s babies, but we refused to be drawn on the subject, and continued home and marriage building, oblivious to all but ourselves.
Arthur bought me a reconditioned, Singer, treadle sewing machine, which was my absolute pride and joy. I set to and from then on made most of my own clothes. The girls at the office were commenting on the dresses, skirts, and coats that I was making, and it wasn’t long before I received requests to make skirts for them too. Money was always in short supply in our household, so I was happy to do it. I used to charge between ten shillings and twelve and sixpence (50p and 62 1/2p) to make a skirt. They supplied their own material and I designed and made up the skirts to their measurements.
My best friend Doreen, who worked with me, was cashier in the showroom. She announced the date for her wedding, and asked me if I would make her wedding dress and hat. She wasn’t having a white wedding, and fancied a pale lavender outfit. It was a bit of a responsibility as I always designed my own garments and never, ever used paper patterns. I did a few sketches and Doreen picked her design. We went together to choose the material, and then I was on my own! I didn’t even make my own paper patterns. I just kept the rough shape of each piece in my head and ripped into the cloth! When it was my cloth it didn’t matter if it all went wrong, but someone’s wedding dress was a different matter.
The whole outfit looked really good when it was finished, and Doreen and her new husband were thrilled with it.

To be contd…

UNCLE JACK OF TESCO'S

2009-02-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

UNCLE JACK OF TESCO’S

The Angel Warehouse supplied tinned and packaged groceries to shops and market stallholders all over North London. SJI also owned three or four grocery shops of his own, which traded under the name of Anthony Jackson’s. These were one of the very first self-service chains of shops in the UK, the first ones I believe being Tesco’s.
Tesco’s was established and built up by John Cohen, who happened to be SJI’s uncle. I knew ‘Uncle Jack’ very well and, in those early days, he often came to my office to do business with his nephew, who supplied him with some of his stock.
Uncle Jack, who in later life became Sir John Cohen, was a tall, slim, imposing man with thinning grey hair. He always wore a belted, camel hair coat, and on his finger was a large, solitaire diamond signet ring. I had never seen a diamond of that size before, and it used to fascinate me as it flashed in the showroom lights.
I learned from SJI that Jack Cohen had started off his grocery chain with one market stall; bought with the money he received when he left the army (demob money). The rest is history.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch, Arthur and I were very happy just to be in each other’s company. We read to each other, played board games, listened to music and, of course Arthur played the piano while I sang. Once a week we went to the local cinema, and we visited our parent quite often.
One day we picked up some entry-forms for an egg decoration competition, sponsored by the Egg Marketing Board and held as part of the Ideal Homes Exhibition of 1956. The point of the competition was to decorate an egg in a topical or humorous way. As we were both keen on a challenge, we decided to go for it.
The eggs had to be blown, washed and dried prior to painting, and it must have taken us a few days to complete them and deliver them to the Egg Marketing Board.
On the day of the competition, we thought it would be fun to watch the judging live, so off we went to Earl’s Court. The exhibition hall was crowded and hot, and we pushed and hustled our way to the front of the egg stand, hoping to get a better view of the entries and be nearer the appraisals.
The competition was to be judged by Bernard Miles, the actor, comedian and, later, founder of the Mermaid Theatre in London. He was dressed as one of his characters, a West Country farmer, standing there in his battered hat, chewing a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth, his wellie-boots looking so ‘ripe’ that you could almost smell the manure!
We’d both decorated and entered eggs. Arthur painting my design idea, ‘The Egotist’, and me painting his idea, which was ‘The Egg and I’. That way, should either of us win a place, we would both win a place. We always shared everything fifty-fifty, straight down the middle; it made us happy and worked very well.
‘The Egotist’ had a snooty face, and was set at an angle, i.e. with its nose in the air. ‘The Egg and I’ was mounted horizontally and I’d painted it as an eyeball, complete with full eye make-up and false eye lashes. Both were mounted on little wooden eggcups.
We stood silently, breath held, our fingers entwined, as Bernard Miles carefully examined all the entries, one by one. The excited babble of the watching crowds caused us to strain our ears to catch every little comment.
There were beautifully worked eggs with traceries of fine delicate brushwork, obviously painted with infinite patience. Some eggshells were encrusted with jewels and sequins, feathers and fur. Some eggs bore a close resemblance to ‘Tweetie-pie’ and Mr Magoo. We laughed at the many ‘Bulganin and Khrushchev’ eggs that had been entered. These two Russian leaders were at that time on a state visit to London, so the eggs were very topical.
After great deliberation, Bernard Miles picked up ‘The Egotist’ and said; ‘This one I like very much and I award it first prize’. I screamed with joy and hugged Arthur: ‘We’ve won, we’ve won!’
The assistant took down details of Arthur’s name and address from his entry form. Then we stared in amazement! Mr Miles had picked up ‘The Egg and I’, which was my entry.
An assistant from the Egg Marketing Board noticed that the entry forms for both the chosen eggs shared the same surname and address. There was a lot of ‘rhubarb, rhubarb’ and snatches of ‘same family…. might not look fair’, after which they slapped a ‘Highly Commended’ on my entry. We didn’t care, we had won first prize, which the entry form said was an electric cooker. We rushed home to tell everyone the news.
As we opened the front door, there on the mat was a bright yellow envelope. I tore it open, and unfolded a telegram.
‘Congratulations’, it read. ‘You have won first prize in the “Decorate and egg” competition. Your prize will be delivered to you shortly.’
Later that evening, we turned on the television to watch the news. Part of it was from ‘The Ideal Homes Exhibition’ at Earl’s Court. And there, for about five glorious seconds, was a close up shot of my entry ‘The Egg and I’! Video recorders had yet to be invented, so it was a’ now you see it, now you don’t’ piece of television history. Never mind, in my box of souvenirs lies the faded yellow envelope from the post office, with the word ‘Telegram’ printed on it. Incidentally, the electric cooker turned out to be an electric frying pan!

LIVING IN ISLINGTON Part two

2009-02-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

LIFE IN ISLINGTON PART 2

Although we now had two rooms, we still had to do without a kitchen because we were anxious to sleep in a proper bed once more. We also wanted to show off our lounge, which was large and sunny and the perfect setting for our furniture.
We’d bought a new cooker from the Gas Company show room, but that's all we possessed in the way of a kitchen. The gas cooker sat in the recess of the bedroom chimney breast, and a baize covered card table was set up in front of it. This served as my washing up area and work surface. (Remember that the only sink we had, was in the corner of the downstairs landing, and was a triangular shape with each side measuring about nine inches!) The idea was to fold and put away the card table after each meal, and draw a curtain across the front of the cooker. But, in all honesty, this was never done because there was always a bowl of washing-up or pile of dirty saucepans standing on the table. It was easy once we’d eaten a meal, to just dump all the dirty dishes in the bedroom and sit in comfort in the lounge. Quite often, we wouldn’t go into the bedroom again until bedtime. And by then we were too tired to wash up or clear away so all was left for the next evening when we got home from work. I wouldn’t ever go to bed now, unless the kitchen and lounge were clean and tidy and there wasn’t so much as a dirty cup in the sink! I can’t bear to come down to an untidy room!
I had a nine to five job, but Arthur was by now working with his brother Bill at The English Association of American Bond and Shareholder’s, and his hours were from ten till four. Each morning, I would get up at seven thirty and get ready for work. I would cook Arthur’s porridge and, at eight fifteen, leaving Arthur in bed, rush to catch the bus. He came home earlier than me, so he would usually wash up and tidy up before I returned from work. He was always happy to share the workload as best he could, something I was very grateful for.
I was getting a bit fed-up with travelling to Canda’s every day, and thought it would be nice to work a little nearer home. Also, we were still hard up, as Arthur had started at the English Association with only £16 a month take home pay. By the time we’d paid the rent, put away my bus fares (Arthur cycled to and from the City) and allocated lunch monies, there wasn’t much left over for groceries and entertainment. I was still only earning just over £5 a week, which we both had to live on.
Arthur always received his salary monthly, while I opted for a weekly wage. This suited us fine because we used his monthly salary to pay all our big bills, and my money for day-to-day living.
How well I remember one particular time when we were at the end of the last week of the month, and had no money at all. Our supply of food had run out, we weren’t getting paid till the next day, and we were hungry. I searched through the cupboard and all I could find was a little margarine and some flour. Nothing daunted, and being my mother’s daughter, I mixed these together with a little water and rolled the mixture into small balls, which I baked in the oven. We sat and ate these hot, unbuttered, baked pastry/rolls as if they were a banquet!
It was time for another trip to the employment agency and this time they came up with a telephonist/receptionist vacancy at Islington Green. Joy of joys! This was just a very short bus ride away and, once again, the pay was much better than my present wage. The agency told me to report to a Mr. S. J. Ingram at the Angel Warehouse Company in Upper Street, opposite Islington Green.
The interview went very well and SJI, as he was later to be known to me, offered me the job at the weekly wage of £6.15. (£6.75). This job was to turn out to be one of the happiest periods of my working life.
To be contd…

MOVING TO ISLINGTON

2009-01-25T15:12:00.000-08:00

Moving to Islington

Although we were reasonably happy in our first little ‘cellar flat’ there was no way we wanted to stay there any longer than we had to. We continued to search for bigger and better accommodation, as did my mum-in-law. Since my parents and all the little Leaches were still vastly overcrowded at Oakfield Road, there wasn’t anything they could do to help. They were desperate themselves to get more room. Arthur’s mum was pestering her estate agents each week when she went to pay her rent. The agents promised her that they would let us have the next available flat, but flats did not become available very often.
So it went on, for some months, until one miraculous day we got word that a flat had indeed become vacant. If we liked it, we only had to say the word and it was ours! Good old Mum Chapman. With the help of her agents, she had come up trumps yet again!
It appeared that the previous tenant had left a lot to be desired on the cleanliness front, and the flat had to be cleared, cleaned, fumigated and decorated before we could even view. This took a couple of weeks, and we both spent the time all but jumping up and down, screaming: ‘We’ll take it, we’ll take it, whatever the condition!’
The great day for viewing came round and there was no holding us back. Clutching a bunch of keys that were tied together with string and labelled 166 St.Paul’s road, we hurried to Islington.
The house stood on the bend of a busy, main road with cars and buses roaring by. There was a flight of stone steps leading from the pavement up to the front door, and a flight of steps to the right leading down to a basement. We let ourselves in through the front door at the top of the flight of steps into a long, narrow hallway. There were two doors on the right leading to ground floor rooms, and a flight of stairs to the left going up to the first floor flat, which was ours for the asking.
Half way up the stairs was a landing where a small, corner hand basin with a cold-water tap was set into the wall. This was the only running water in the flat. On the next landing were two rooms: a medium sized, rear facing room to the left, and a large, front-facing room immediately in front of us. The backroom looked out onto a long garden that ended with a railway embankment. We could see the railway lines. This, we decided, would be our bedroom and we would have to get used to steam-trains puffing past the bottom of our garden.
As you went into the front room, there was a fireplace on the left and two large, sash windows with a good view of the street. We were quite high up and could see traffic and pedestrians scurrying about far below. Everything was clean and newly decorated and, we were assured, bug-free! The rent was eleven shillings (55p) a week, and it was most definitely a step up the ladder. Now we would have two rooms. We told the agent that we’d like to take up the tenancy, and started measuring up for curtains and lino, and made the necessary arrangements with a local removal company.

LIFE IN ISLINGTON

It was 1952 and, for the first time since we married, we had all our furniture under one roof, including Arthur’s piano. The piano had belonged to Mum and Dad Chapman, and Arthur had been paying tunes on it since he was a toddler. Dad Chapman no longer used it and so they decided to give the piano to us as a wedding present. We hadn’t enough room for it at our first flat, but now it stood in all it’s glory in our new flat.
Because the piano was dark brown and old fashioned, Daddy thought it would be a good idea to make it more modern and in keeping with the rest of our home. He covered it entirely in a substance of his own invention. Very like the Artex finish of today. The surface was stippled all over, somewhat resembling the frosting on a Christmas cake, and painted in a creamy biscuit colour. All the black keys were painted bright red, and Arthur cut out a fretwork treble clef and some musical notes, which he also painted red, and mounted them on the front of the piano.
It looked quite smart and everyone who saw it thought it was great. The only drawbacks were that the red paint wore off the keys and rubbed off onto the ivories, and the Artex type coating somewhat deadened the sound. Still, it was different!!

To be contd.........

A CHRISTMAS TALE

2008-12-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

I thoughtI would have a little break from my own story, and give you a Christmas present. Here is a tale written especially for the season. Enjoy XXX

A CHRISTMAS TALE

The old man sat in the corner of the ‘pull-in’ café, his hands wrapped tightly around the mug that had once held strong, brown, steaming hot tea. His eyes held a look that said his thoughts were a hundred miles away, and his fingers had yet to tell his brain that the empty mug was no longer keeping his hands warm.
“Come on Dad, you can’t stay there all night”
The café proprietor pushed a cheese roll that had seen better times across the counter.
“Here, for God’s sake, take this and go find yourself a place to settle for the rest of the night.”
It was Christmas Eve and so, perhaps, unwittingly, the gift of a stale cheese roll really was for God’s sake thought the old man. But he doubted it. However, he rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet, and shambled over to the counter where he picked up the offering and stuffed it into his over-coat pocket.
With a grunt that could have been interpreted as thank you, or sod you, he made his way out into the cold, bleak, night.
The wind cut through his thin coat like shards of ice, even though he’d tied a length of rope around his waist in an effort to keep it out. His feet were wrapped in old newspapers and stuffed into boots that were too large, and did little to keep him warm. Clutching a black plastic bin liner containing all his worldly goods, he shuffled along the street looking for a likely doorway to shelter in.
He must find somewhere soon. He was so tired, and his chest was playing him up again. Each breath he took rasped in his throat and then wheezed out again on a cloud of steam.
He recalled that around the next corner was an old disused entrance to a London Underground station. He’d once shared a bottle of dubious alcohol with an old tramp at that very spot. He wondered where the old fellow was now. How terrible it was, to be a tramp at Christmas time. Of course, he wasn’t a tramp, just a traveller temporarily down on his luck. Still, he knew what it was like to be without a bed or a good meal.
The railway entrance suddenly loomed up from the frosty darkness and thankfully ‘the traveller’ made his way to the back of it and huddled as deeply as he could into the corner. An old newspaper that had blown in on the wind was soon tucked around his legs.
He reached into the depths of his coat pocket and, rummaging for several seconds, finally pulled out the stale, and somewhat fluffy, cheese roll, which he proceeded to devour with much grunting and lip smacking. When the last crumb had been wiped from his lips he gave a long agonising sigh, and rested his head against the wall.
His mind began to wander as he tried to remember when life had been good. Back in his childhood days it had been very good.
Tom, (how long it had been since anyone had called him Tom), and his elder brother Will had lived with their parents Sarah and James, in a stone-built cottage on the Cornish coast. Such happy days! Will had been gone many years now. The war had changed their lives and broken his mother’s heart. But before that time there had been, oh, so many days of wine and roses.
Christmas was the best time of all. There would be a huge wood fire in the open hearth, and the logs would sing and spit as they burned and glowed in the candlelit room. The tree would have been dragged into the cottage on Christmas Eve by his father and, when Tom awoke on Christmas morning, there it would stand in all its glory. Tinsel and candles and chocolate shapes, sticks of striped candy-canes and glass baubles all a gleaming. Tom’s young hands trembled with excitement.
The wind changed direction and came whipping and whistling into the doorway where Tom lay. He was so deep in his dreams that he hardly noticed it. He stretched out his cold trembling hands to warm them at his imaginary fire.
There were many festive traditions in Sarah’s house, but the most important to Tom was the tradition of pulling the first cracker to welcome in the turkey. Each year it would be James’ task as man of the house, to carry the large turkey surrounded with roast potatoes into the dining room, but not before the given signal!
All Christmas morning Tom would eagerly await the removal of the first Christmas cracker from the box that stood on the sideboard. Every year it was the same. His mother would snip the string holding the crackers in place and remove just one.

“Come along Tom, time for you to herald the start of our feast. This is a very important job for a very important lad”.
So saying she would hold out the first cracker of the season and they would pull it together. As the cracker exploded, Tom’s father would strut through the door holding the turkey aloft, and they would all cheer.
In his dreams Tom could feel the soft crepe paper of the cracker in his hand. He looked up into his mother’s beautiful smiling face and knew he could never be this happy again. He pulled on the cracker; saw his father coming towards him. His mother took his other hand in hers as they waited for the joyous Christmas happening.
In the cold crisp light of Christmas morning, Constable Blakely walked his beat. A few homeless souls still snoozed in their cardboard boxes, but most had already made their way to the ‘Sally Army’ hostel to hopefully cadge a Christmas dinner. He spotted Tom still curled up in the corner of the old Underground station doorway.
“Wakey, wakey! Dad, it’s Christmas day.”
Tom didn’t stir. Constable Blakley leaned over him and carefully nudged him with the toe of his shoe.
“Poor devil, he’s dead! What a miserable and cold way to go.”
The newspaper had blown onto Tom’s face during the night, and as PC Blakely gently removed it he was amazed to see a serene smile on the old man’s lips. One of the old man’s hands was stretched out; palm uppermost, and clutched in Tom’s other hand was half of a pulled Christmas cracker.

A very merry Christmas and a truly happy, healthy, and peaceful 2009 to all my blogger friends

Leeta X

EARLY DAYS OF BRITISH TELEVISION

2008-12-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

Four months after our wedding I celebrated my twentieth birthday. I was no longer a teenager and, to mark this great event, Arthur bought me a television set. Not many people owned television sets in the very early fifties, and certainly no one in our entire family had one. It cost us fifty-four pounds and we were so proud of it. It stood like a sentry in the corner of the room. The cabinet was walnut and went solidly right down to the floor, and the screen was the largest that could be bought. Until 1951, televisions had nine-inch screens, but our new Pye model had a tremendous twelve-inch screen! The indoor aerial had to be placed wherever you could get the best picture.
Each evening, we would hurry home from work, have our meal, and settle down excitedly waiting for the transmission signal, to start. Up would come the Oranges and Lemons theme music, heralding about three hours of ‘scintillating’ entertainment.

WILFRED PICKLES

The first programme we ever saw was a game of table tennis played with a commentary by Wilfred Pickles. We sat with our eyes glued to the miniscule ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth on the blue tinged, twelve-inch screen. After that came the news, which was repeated two days running. On Sundays there was no fresh news at all, only a repeat of the entire previous week’s newsreels. Considering that programmes were limited to about three hours a night, we didn’t appreciate having to sit through a whole hour of stale news that we had already seen twice. All drama was repeated twice each week, so that, if you saw George Orwell’s 1984 on a Tuesday, it would be transmitted again on Thursday. Television programmes were transmitted ‘live’, that meant if the transmission staff weren’t ready or if a camera broke down (which they did quite often), one was forced to sit and watch, yet again, the calming (and utterly boring) potter’s wheel turning or the sun moving slowly and relentlessly across fields of corn. There was also an intemission film of a combined harvester at work. In all my years of viewing, I never found out what the potter was making, or saw the field completely harvested. Sometimes these intermission films would go on for ten minutes or more, while frantic television technicians tried to put things to rights.
Often it was quite funny to see things that we weren’t supposed to see. Microphones and booms suddenly appearing in front of a scene or an actor’s face, were not at all an uncommon sight. I’ve seen people crawling about on hands and knees under tables, scenery collapsing, and ‘brick walls’ shaking when touched; all part of the fun of early television. Once, during a quiz game, we heard an off camera voice say in a loud stage whisper: ‘Not so easy with the marks!’

FANNY CRADDOCK PHILIP HARBEN

During the fifties there were two major television cooks who regularly appeared on TV. One was Fanny Craddock and the other, Philip Harben. Philip Harben was the cookery equivalent of David Bellamy, so full of enthusiasm and fervour that, to see him fry a sausage was like watching the launch of a space shuttle!
He did, however, meet his match on one occasion. For some reason, there were technicians crawling about on their hands and knees beneath the table that was being used for his cookery demonstration. The table rose up and heaved about on the travelling backs of the technicians. Philip Harben leaned heavily on the worktop with both forearms, trying to hold it down, and continued his recipes through clenched teeth, as if nothing was amiss! I think the most spectacular faux pas that I witnessed in those early television days was during a Peter Cushing play about the Abominable Snowman. The scene was set on the cold, blizzard swept Himalayan mountainside, outside the cavernous entrance to the Yetti’s lair. As we sat with baited breath, awaiting our first sighting of the Abominable Snowman, from the depths of the dark cave trundled a television camera on a dolly, being pushed by a cameraman resplendent in earphones! Woudn't have missed it for worlds!

SETTLING IN

2008-12-02T15:05:00.000-08:00

Life in our new flat was a mixed blessing. Once we were behind our door, we were blissfully happy, but things on the other side of the door were a bit wearisome.
For example, having a bath would take up an entire evening. Firstly we had to inform Miss Jones in the room next to ours that we would be using the scullery for that purpose, as she would not have access to running water or the cooker while we were bathing. Next, we had to fill every utensil we could find with water, which we would then boil on the stove and empty into the bath, until it was deep enough to have a reasonable bath. Since there was no heating, we didn’t hang around any longer than we had to, but it was still a very tedious and lengthy business, and one not to be repeated more than once a week!
Another slight fly in the ointment was Laura. We did go up and sit with her every now and then, but it was very hard going. We didn’t know her very well and so had nothing to talk about. We also found out that her age and blindness inhibited small talk. She rarely moved from her bed, and could see nothing, and so had no concept of time. It was not unusual for her to get out of bed in the middle of the night, fumble her way to her piano, which was almost alongside her bed, and give us a tune. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been a decent rendition of an old time music hall song played at a reasonable hour, but it was always ‘Abide with Me’ played at about two or three in the morning! Not much fun when you had to get up for work, particularly as we used to get a reedy, vocal version of the hymn at the same time, for good measure.
Arthur and I both disliked Mrs. Bottacelli. Her husband wasn’t bad, but he seemed downtrodden and didn’t have much to say about anything to do with the house or us. She treated us with contempt and made us feel inferior to her and her family.
Each week, we would come up from the bowels of the earth, climb the stairs to her flat, and knock on her lounge door. She would keep us waiting for a while, then open the door, but never invite us over the threshold. It made us feel like tradesmen at the back door of Buckingham Palace. Having taken the rent and the rent book from us, she would make us stand there while she went back into her lounge and entered the rent into the book, before handing it back. There was never any idle chitchat and we would be grateful when it was all over for another week. Sometimes she would have company, which made it even more degrading. We always thought she knew she was on to a good thing as far as Laura was concerned. We assumed that, when Laura died, which couldn’t be far off – the house and any money would be theirs to do with as they liked. We thought that she looked after Laura only half as well as she could have, considering what she was getting out of it.
Miss Jones owned a cat, and we thought it would be nice if we had one too. We bought an adorable, little, black and white kitten, which we fell in love with immediately. Since we lived in the basement and had access to a sunken back yard, we were completely cut off from the rest of the house. This meant that the kitten would not have contact with anyone except Miss Jones and us. However, when Mrs ‘B’ found out about our pet, she said it would have to go, as we weren’t allowed a cat and it would become a nuisance. How I hated that woman, but she was the boss and we needed her room, and so I tearfully gave up my little kitten. In spite of all this, we were so happy just to be together, and married.

2008-11-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

OUR FIRST HOME

We returned home to North London and excitedly made our way to our new address in Archway, Upper Holloway. We knocked on the door and were ushered in by Mrs. Bottacelli who directed us through the door under the stairs, telling us to come up to her flat and collect our rent book, when we were ready. When we entered our room: it was magic. There were our lovely dining room suite and two rust coloured, caterpillar, fire side chairs, the interior sprung mattress, our bedding and our pots and pans. Daddy and Doug had made a lovely job of decorating the room. It was now light and bright and clean. Dad had even laid our linoleum for us. We found the shiny, aluminium, whistling kettle, and carried it through to the scullery, where the air was thick with the smell of boiled fish heads! We didn’t care; we were married at last, in our own home, and it was all real.
Our first teapot was made of white china and was encapsulated in an insulated, chrome ball, with holes for the spout and handle to poke out. This was very modern and was supposed to keep the tea hot for ages. Up to now such household items had been very sparse and basic, and still bore the Government utility mark. But the ‘contemporary’ era was upon us, and we were starting to get a bit of ‘style’ in our lives.
The kettle whistled and we made our first pot of tea. Out came our new, white tea set and we played Mums and Dads.
Soon the job of arranging our new home was well under way. Because we wanted to show off our new dining room furniture and comfy chairs to the best advantage, we decided not to clutter our bed-sitter with the inclusion of an actual bed. Bearing this in mind, we decided to leave the bedroom suite at Arthur’s mum and dad’s house, and only use the mattress.
Our room had a door, a window, a fireplace and a handy floor- to- ceiling cupboard which was not very deep, but high. In this cupboard we planned to keep our mattress and bedding.
Each morning, before we went to work, we would stand the mattress on end, fold it in half, then quickly stuff it into the cupboard and slam the door shut before it could leap out again! I don’t know if you have ever tried to fold a new interior sprung mattress in half. It really needed the joint strength of three all-in-wrestlers to achieve this feat, but there was only the two of us! Once the mattress and bedding were hidden, we had a nice, cosy lounge that looked quite normal and, and we thought, rather smart.
Come bedtime, Arthur would open the cupboard door and let the mattress out. We would then drag it over to the rug in front of the hearth and make up the bed, using all our lovely, new bedding. This was the only space in the room that would accommodate the mattress. It was a bit of a nuisance, but well worth the effort if we wanted to have a respectable lounge that we could entertain in. It did, however, have just one little downside.
One morning when we were late for work, it was very easy to convince each other that it was a good idea to leave the bed down till we returned at teatime. We came home about 6 o/c that evening and, when we opened our door, we couldn’t believe what our eyes ere telling us. Our mattress and the bedding were completely buried under a thick layer of black soot, as indeed was all the furniture.
We just stood transfixed, with a mixture of horror and disbelief. The rest of the evening was spent, cleaning, and sweeping and shaking things. We didn’t have a Hoover, just brooms and brushes. Looking back on it, I can hardly believe it happened, or that we managed to clean it up. But it did, and we did. We never left the bed down again though. Previous to our occupation, the room hadn’t been used for years, and so the chimney hadn’t been swept since sweeps stopped using little boys to do the job!

THE END OF THE HONEYMOON AND START OF REAL LIFE

2008-11-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

Cutting the cake

We’d left our honeymoon address with both of our mothers, and received a letter from each. It was the one from my mum that carried the awful news of our wedding cake.
On the Sunday after our wedding, as promised, Mummy started to slice up our cake for distribution to family and friends. We had chosen a three tier, horseshoe-shaped cake, thinking that it would be easy to portion. Mum made the first cut and lifted the slice away from the bulk of the cake. As she bent down to savour the aroma of marzipan and spices, she stopped in horror. There was an aroma, but it came from the green mould growing around the layers of marzipan and cake. All she could think of was the shock and embarrassment we would have suffered, had we cut the cake at the reception, as normal. Mummy hurried back to Hemmings Bakery Shop, one of a large chain of bakers trading in the nineteen-fifties, thanking God that we had forgotten the ritual of the ‘cutting of the wedding cake’ on the big day.
The mangeress of the shop apologised profusely, saying they would bake me a fresh cake, ready for our return from honeymoon. It was thought that we had been given a cake used for display purposes, but who knows?
Nowadays, one would have sued a company that made such an awful blunder, but such thoughts didn’t enter our heads. In fact, we didn’t even get a free wedding cake out of it!
The other bit of Mum’s news from home was that was the state of affairs in our new flat. Dad and Dougie (who was only fifteen years old) were spending every spare minute of their time clearing out, decorating and moving furniture into our magnificent, one-roomed flat. Mummy said they were working very hard and it would all be ready when we returned. What a smashing family I had!
The day before we were due to leave Eastbourne, we were very, very broke. After breakfast, we walked around the shops and along the promenade. As lunchtime approached, our stomachs began to rumble with hunger and we counted out our coppers, which was all the money we had. There wasn’t nearly enough for fish and chips, so we decided to buy the cheapest, but most filling thing we could afford – a loaf of freshly baked bread. We have had many fancy meals since then, but none of them was as notable as that last, honeymoon lunch. I will always hold in great affection, the memory of us sitting on the sea wall, side by side, giggling, as we saw the funny side of the two of us tearing apart and eating a loaf of dry, unbuttered bread. Ours must truly been one of the lowest budget, shoestring honeymoons ever.
That night, after dinner, we packed our clothes, souvenirs and future dreams into our grey, paperboard suitcase, and prepared ourselves for the journey home to Upper Holloway and, we hoped, a long and happy life together.

OUR FIRST HOME
We returned home to North London and excitedly made our way to our new address in Archway, Upper Holloway. We knocked on the door and were ushered in by Mrs. Bottacelli who directed us through the door under the stairs, telling us to come up to her flat and collect our rent book, when we were ready. When we entered our room: it was magic. There were our lovely dining room suite and two rust coloured, caterpillar, fire side chairs, the interior sprung mattress, our bedding and our pots and pans. Daddy and Doug had made a lovely job of decorating the room. It was now light and bright and clean. Dad had even laid our linoleum for us. We found the shiny, aluminium, whistling kettle, and carried it through to the scullery, where the air was thick with the smell of coiled fish heads! We didn’t care; we were married at last, in our own home, and it was all real.
Our first teapot was made of white china and was encapsulated in an insulated, chrome ball, with holes for the spout and handle to poke out. This was very modern and was supposed to keep the tea hot for ages. Up to now such household items had been very sparse and basic, and still bore the Government utility mark. But the ‘contemporary’ era was upon us, and we were starting to get a bit of ‘style’ in our lives.
The kettle whistled and we made our first pot of tea. Out came our new, white tea set and we played Mums and Dads.
Soon the job of arranging our new home was well under way. Because we wanted to show off our new dining room furniture and comfy chairs to the best advantage, we decided not to clutter our bed-sitter with the inclusion of an actual bed. Bearing this in mind, we decided to leave the bedroom suite at Arthur’s mum and dad’s house, and only use the mattress.
Our room had a door, a window, a fireplace and a handy floor- to- ceiling cupboard which was not very deep, but high. In this cupboard we planned to keep our mattress and bedding.
Each morning, before we went to work, we would stand the mattress on end, fold it in half, then quickly stuff it into the cupboard and slam the door shut before it could leap out again! I don’t know if you have ever tried to fold a new interior sprung mattress in half. It really needed the joint strength of three all-in-wrestlers to achieve this feat, but there was only the two of us! Once the mattress and bedding were hidden, we had a nice, cosy lounge that looked quite normal and, and we thought, rather smart.
Come bedtime, Arthur would open the cupboard door and let the mattress out. We would then drag it over to the rug in front of the hearth and make up the bed, using all our lovely, new bedding. This was the only space in the room that would accommodate the mattress. It was a bit of a nuisance, but well worth the effort if we wanted to have a respectable lounge that we could entertain in. It did, however, have just one little downside.
One morning when we were late for work, it was very easy to convince each other that it was a good idea to leave the bed down till we returned at teatime. We came home about 6 o/c that evening and, when we opened our door, we couldn’t believe what our eyes were telling us. Our mattress and the bedding were completely buried under a thick layer of black soot, as indeed was all the furniture.
We just stood transfixed, with a mixture of horror and disbelief. The rest of the evening was spent, cleaning, and sweeping and shaking things. We didn’t have a Hoover, just brooms and brushes. Looking back on it, I can hardly believe it happened, or that we managed to clean it up. But it did, and we did. We never left the bed down again though.
Previous to our occupation, the room hadn’t been used for years, and so the chimney hadn’t been swept since sweeps stopped using little boys to do the job!

COSTA DEL EASTBOURNE

2008-11-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

Next morning. A tap on the door awakened us. Into the room came Arthur’s mum, carrying two cups of tea. Because all our new furniture was still stacked up around the room, there was no space for a bedside table, and Mum Chapman stood holding the cups while we sat up to take them from her. It was obvious that I had no nightdress on and I felt so silly. To give her her due, she never batted an eyelid, but I don’t suppose Dad Chapman had ever seen her running around starkers!
After some tea and cornflakes we caught a bus to the railway station, and it was Eastbourne here we come! We soon discovered that we had a lengthy wait for the train, so decided to stand in the street and take in the beautiful sunshine while we killed time. There we stood looking every inch newly weds. Me in my white, flowery hat, silver grey dress and shoes, and long, white gloves, and still wearing a spray of flowers; Arthur so smart in his white shirt and new suit. Even our suitcase was new.
We stood there, observing a ‘spiv’ who looked like a role model for George Cole in his St Trinian films. He was gliding in and out of the crowds, tapping people on the arm, trying to sell them something on the black market: probably, nylon stockings. We were fascinated, as we’d never seen a real spiv at work before.
In due course, we caught our train and arrived at Aunt Beat’s house. She showed us up to our room. We unpacked before going downstairs to the dining room, where tea and sandwiches had been prepared for us. She told us what time dinner would be served, and off we went to explore Eastbourne. As I said earlier, we had very little money to spend, just the remains of our wages, and Dumpy’s cheque (which made up the lions share of our cash).
The weather was wonderful and we spent dreamy days lying on the beach, gazing into each other’s eyes and whispering sweet nothings. We decided that it would save money if we had fish and chips for lunch each day, and so we would sit on the sea wall or in the Botanical Gardens, eating them out of steaming vinegary newspaper. Absolute heaven!
One night after our evening meal, we decided to treat ourselves by booking seats at the theatre. We chose a show called ‘Goodbye Boys, Hello Girls! It was advertised as the show where you could ‘Come and see Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, and Bette Davies in the flesh’. We couldn’t imagine how this was going to be achieved and, intrigued, thought we’d go along and find out. Of course, it turned out to be a drag show! We had never seen anything like this before (drag wasn’t commonplace, as it is now) and we were enthralled. So much so, that we booked seats for later in the week and went a second time!
It was on a hot, sunny day towards the end of our honeymoon, when Arthur said he would take me out on the sea in a rowing boat. Because I didn’t own a watch, and Arthur’s was ‘on loan’ to
raise extra money for our honeymoon, we didn’t know how we were going to keep check on the rental time. We couldn’t afford more than one hour and since we would be out at sea and not
near any clocks, this was a bit of a problem.
Suddenly, Arthur had a brainwave! We hurried back to the digs, where we borrowed Aunt Beat’s alarm clock from our bedroom, smuggling it out of the house and taking it to sea with us. Arthur set it for one hour and carefully placed it in the bottom of the rowingboat. Problem solved.

THE RECEPTION & FAMILY FUEDS

2008-11-18T16:31:00.000-08:00

The reception started off on shaky ground. Grandad Leach and Uncle and Aunty had fallen out years before our wedding, and had vowed never to speak to each other again. We didn’t know what to expect when they saw each other, and it was all very embarrassing for me with Arthur’s family present. Granny and Grandad had attended the wedding service, so were already ensconced in comfortable seats in the corner of the room when Aunty and Uncle arrived. Grandad Leach spotted Uncle immediately and, rising to his full height, hissed at Uncle: ‘Snake in the grass!’
Before any more hostilities could take place, Daddy stepped in and said ‘ Come on now, this is Leeta and Arthur’s wedding day, don’t spoil it for them.’ Eventually, and begrudgingly, they shook hands and a minor war was averted.
Mum and all her helpers had done us proud with the buffet, and Arthur, Dad and Doug had done a good job at tapping the barrels * the previous evening! We fitted fifty people into Mum and Dad’s lounge at Oakfield Road, and a good time was had by all.
I loved Arthur so much that it hurt. One reads of ‘floating on clouds’ and that is perfectly true, I still can remember the feeling that my chest was being grabbed and squeezed by a giant hand, and I did indeed feel as if I was floating on air. Every time I looked at him, my heart stood still. It was an experience that I feel certain could only happen once in a lifetime.

*It was usual when throwing a large party to buy beer by the barrel from the local pub. (Cans hadn’t been invented then). Bungs had to be extracted and taps fitted the night before use, a job enjoyed by the men who insisted it was necessary to keep tasting and testing the contents thereafter, to ensure a good flow! This was called tapping the barrel. When empty, the barrels were returned to the said pub.

The time was getting late. Arthur and I had planned to spend our wedding night in his old room at his Mum and Dad’s house. We were catching a train early the next day to Eastbourne, where we intended to spend a week at Daddy’s Aunt Beat’s B & B, The second week of our honeymoon was to be spent in our new one room flat, getting settled in.
We were so short of cash after the wedding, we were anxiously waiting for Aunty Dumpy to give us the cash she had promised us as a wedding present. Without this, we couldn’t go on our honeymoon. At last she came over to us and slipped the eagerly awaited envelope into Arthur’s hand.
‘Enjoy yourselves tonight, Duck,’ she said, and gave one of her raucous laughs.
We left he wedding party in a taxi with Arthur’s Mum and Dad. After saying goodbye to everyone, and promising to send cards, I kissed Mummy and Daddy goodbye and then I remembered that we hadn’t cut the wedding cake. Mum said that she would do it next day and send it out to all the guests, leaving us the top tier for our anniversary. I thanked her for everything she had done for us, and left home, feeling happy and, at the same time, very sad. I knew that my life would never be quite the same, ever again.

During our courting days, Arthur and I would often spend the evening at my home chatting to Mummy and Daddy over endless cups of tea. These were supported halfway through by one of Mum’s tasty cooked suppers, which Arthur loved. Dad would go to bed first. He always retired early, as he had to get up at about five o’clock in the morning. Mummy would stay up chatting to Arthur and I about anything and everything for a while longer. At about half past eleven, she would bid us good night, and off she would go to bed, leaving the two of us to have and hour or so on our own.
We usually had a kiss and a cuddle and talked about our plans for the future, or sat and sketched with the beautiful set of pencils Arthur had bought for me (one of those sketches still adorns my craft room wall), while we drank several cups of coffee. Later, Arthur would either cycle home to Newington Green, his battered old trilby hat (demob issue) jammed on his head, and trouser bottoms secured by bicycle clips, or he would have to walk, a journey which took well over an hour.
On the other hand, if we spent an evening at Arthur’s place the scenario would be oh so different. At a quarter past nine, Mum Chapman would announce: ‘Time for me to make the coffee, Will’. That statement was the signal that we had to leave very soon, as they wanted to retire for the night. There was absolutely no chance of them ever going to bed until we were well off the premises, and they never stayed up later than nine-thirty. I really couldn’t understand this because we spent every Saturday afternoon on our own at Arthur’s home and Mr. & Mrs. Chapman were well aware of this. Had we been able to spend our first night at my home, I know there would have been no embarrassment, and Mummy would have set us a ‘honeymoon breakfast table, complete with lace cloth and flowers. However, this was the Chapman abode, and I felt very uncomfortable going into Arthur’s bedroom with him and closing the door, bearing in mind that I had never even been allowed to sit in the kitchen with him on his own! To compound my embarrassment, a family friend had machine stitched the bottom of my black, honeymoon nightie together, so that I couldn’t put it on. I frantically tried to unpick the stitches, but she had done a thorough job, and I had to go to bed wearing nothing but my perfume!

THE GREAT DAY ARRIVES

2008-11-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

As the wedding date grew closer, Arthur and I went to see about the church arrangements for music etc. We were shattered when Father Kelly (who was to marry us) said that we couldn’t have an organ playing, as our wedding was on the same day as the church fete and the organist would be busy on the Tombola. I couldn’t believe it! How could I walk up and down the aisle without ‘Here comes the Bride’ or ‘The Wedding March’. I was almost in tears, but the priest was unbending.
I was relating this tale of woe to one of the buyers for C and A’s, and I was touched by his concern. He was one of Canda’s to men, and I hadn’t spoken to him before, apart from putting his calls through to him. He surprised me by saying that he regularly played the church organ at his local village church., and would be honoured to play at my wedding. I was both flattered and overjoyed, and hurried round to tell Father Kelly the good news.
Can you imagine how Arthur and I felt, when Father Bede admitted that ‘the church fete’ as just an excuse, and that the church felt that it was their duty to do all they could to dissuade me from marrying a non-Catholic. Then they pulled yet another trick from their ecclesiastical sleeve and informed me that, should I still want to marry in St. Peter’s, I would not be allowed to marry at the main altar, nor would I walk down the main aisle, either before or after our wedding ceremony.
Far from dissuading me from marrying Arthur, they succeeded in dissuading me from wanting to get married in the Catholic faith at all! Once again, we had to bite our tongues because we knew that Mummy would not allow us to marry in a Church of England church. Arthur already felt that he had been well and truly blackmailed by the Catholic Church, by making him promise to have all issue from our marriage baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith. (In fact, when we later had children, none of them was baptised into the Catholic faith!) And so the wedding took place, in St Peter in Chains church, with me walking to meet my future husband down the side aisle of the church, with all the guests from both families sitting on my left, and a blank wall on my right. There was no triumphant organ music to herald my arrival. Just silence. The wedding service started with the exchange of vows and ended just a few minues later. During the entire event, Father Kelly stood in surplice and Wellington boots, not having bothered to change when he left the church fete. He hadn’t even shaved! We signed the register and silently out of the church.

A measure of the splendour and pomp of our marriage service was although we were booked to be married at 3 o’clock, the next bride (complete with ‘Here comes the Bride’ and ‘The Wedding March’) was due to be married at 3.15pm! It was nearly eight years before I set foot in a Catholic church again.

Yesterday I came across my wedding veil. 57 years old and very yellow with age. My neice Sindie persuaded me to include it on my blog, so here it is looking very like Miss Faversham's veil!!!

THE WEDDING APPROACHES

2008-11-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

There were more notebooks to fill and more lists to be made out. Since Mum and Dad couldn’t afford a wedding, Arthur and I had to save and pay for most of it ourselves. We worked out how many guests we could fit into Mum and Dad’s front room at Oakfield Road, and how much beer the men would drink; what sort of food we would need, and how much of it we could afford.
Of course, there was also my wedding dress and going-away dress, bridesmaid’s dresses, Arthur’s suit, cars, photos, honeymoon, flowers, wedding cake. The list seemed endless and the money short, so a lot of careful planning was necessary. Food was still rationed, and clothing and material could only be bought if one had enough clothing coupon. A considerable task for a nineteen-year-old but, with Mum’s help, I coped.
I decided it would be cheaper if I made my own wedding dress and going away outfit, together with the bridesmaid’s dresses. Mummy would help me with these as there were going to be five of them, plus a chief bridesmaid and a maid of honour. All four of my sisters wanted to be a bridesmaid and Arthur’s niece, Wendy, made five. My best friend from Williams Brothers was to be my chief bridesmaid, and we thought it would be nice to ask Ruby (the one who nearly married Bab’s American Godfather) as well.
She’d never been a bridesmaid, and had been a good friend to us over the years. They both supplied their own dresses, which wouldn’t match but, because things were in such short supply in those days, it didn’t really matter.
I sketched out ideas for the bridesmaid’s dresses, and designed my dress, veil and head-dress. Armed with a large part of our savings, Mum and I went to the West End of London, shopping for material.

Front row L to R: Sandie(weechuff), Tina(Croom), baby sister Gill, Babs(beetle), neice Wendy

I think Gill and Babs must have been having a mood, they don't look very happy!

It was to be turquoise and pink for the little girls, and we purchased yards of satin and net. The next job was to choose the material for my dresses. I even decided to make my own honeymoon hat! Mum and I were very busy for weeks, cutting pinning and sewing. I made all my clothes and Mum was left to get on with making the bridesmaid’s dresses.
I’d set my heart on wearing a long veil that would sweep the floor at the back, but it took ages to scallop the edges of the veil and sew yards of mother-of-pearl sequins all around the border. Having seen the price of headdresses and tiaras, it seemed a good idea to make that as well. Looking back, I must have been a game girl!

Daddy and I

Auntie and Uncle (from Blackpool) said that they would like to buy my bouquet, which was a very welcome suggestion, and Aunty Sissie and Uncle George supplied the gold flower baskets for the bridesmaids. Aunty Dumpy (my Dad’s sister) promised us a cheque for six pounds (quite a sizeable amount then) and we paid for the buttonholes, the cars, the cake, invitation cards etc.
The Catholic Church of Saint Peter in Chains was booked for July 7th 1951 at 3 o’clock. As a non-Catholic it was necessary for Arthur to visit Father Bede every week, to take instruction on how to be married to a Roman Catholic. He wasn’t very happy about this, but since I was only nineteen, under-age and needing parental permission to marry, we didn’t dare rock the boat by refusing.

I GOT AN AWARD !

2008-11-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

I was honoured to receive the 'Superior Scribble Award' from Jay of thedeppeffect the other day.

This came as a complete surprise and I was so excited. I didn't realise that anyone other than family and a few friends read my blogs. Thank you Jay for making my day and for thinking I deserved such a lovely award.

Here is the next episode of my story:

OUR HUNT FOR A PLACE TO LIVE

Council housing-lists were a joke. You had to have lived in your area for ‘X’ amount of years to even get on the list, and then you had to earn points by being infirm, crippled, over crowded etc. My parents, with a family of seven children, lived in an upstairs flat, comprising three rooms and kitchen. They had no garden, no hot water and no bathroom, yet didn’t even make it past the first rung of the housing list. If having seven children and living in these conditions was not classed as a priority, what chance did we have?
We scoured all the newspapers and notice boards, listened-in on people’s conversations in the hope of overhearing news of empty rooms. We knocked on doors of houses that looked as if they had uninhabited rooms. Many evenings were spent just going from house to house, knocking and asking if they had any rooms to rent. It was like asking for the moon, and we thought we’d never get married. One week I sat and worked through my lunch hours, typing notices begging people to help us find a home, offering an invitation to the wedding as an incentive. We then walked up and down likely looking areas, posting them through people’s letterboxes. Needless to say, nothing came of this venture.
Arthur’s mother had a very old friend, Laura, who had been blinded years earlier and now spent all her days in one room, confined mostly to her bed. Although she owned the house she lived in, it was given over rent free to the Botacelli family. They were Italian Jews and I believed they owned a club somewhere in the West End of London. Mrs Botacelli looked after Laura and, in return, she let them take over her house. It war rumoured that she had left them the house in her will, for ‘services rendered’. Mum Chapman sweet-talked Laura into letting us have a room there. I don’t think that the Botacelli’s were very keen on us going there, but it was Laura’s prerogative.
In exchange for this accommodation, we had to be prepared, and indeed promise, to periodically sit with Laura in her room and chat with her. She was over eighty years old and completely blind, and we’d never met her before. Because of her blindness, her room was very dark and dingy, the furniture consisting mainly of a large, ancient bed and an old, upright piano. I would be able to cope with this situation quite well now, but it wasn’t an easy or pleasant task for a coupe of very young newly weds. However we were desperate and said ‘Yes, please’.
It turned out that the room that she offered us was a basement room that had been used as a cellar storeroom for years. It was dirty, damp, dark and full of rubbish. The room was reached by going down a flight of steps that were hidden behind a door under the staircase. At the bottom of the stairs were two cellar rooms and scullery of sorts. One room housed an even more ancient old lady called Miss Jones who was an old friend of Laura’s. Miss Jones owned an equally ancient cat, and was always boiling fish heads on an old gas cooker in the scullery. We were to share the scullery and cooker with Miss Jones. God – what a bleak, bare, basement scullery that was! The floor and walls were composed of stone and cement, and the walls were covered in peeling white distemper. In the corner of the room, next to the cooker, stood an old, iron bath tub, and a very old, butler sink. We didn’t grumble, we were just grateful that we had at last got somewhere to live and could set a wedding date: something we had never thought we’d achieve. From now on, it was all systems go for the whole family.

THE BEST IS YET TO COME

2008-11-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

One of the first things I did after becoming engaged was to start a ‘bottom drawer’. In days gone by, this was known as a ‘Hope Chest’. Young girls on reaching puberty were given a wooden chest. Into this went various items of fine linen, stitched, embroidered, and trimmed with hand made lace by the young lady in question, in the hope that she would one day marry and use these items in her own home. The modern version of this was the bottom drawer or, for me, a large suitcase.
Each payday, when I received my wages; I would look around the shops and choose something to buy for my bottom drawer. It might be as big as a tea set, or as small as a wooden spoon, whichever caught my fancy or, more likely, whatever I could afford that particular week.
Arthur and I had a notebook, which we’d designed and devised over numerous cups of coffee. Each page was headed with the name of a room, such as lounge, bedroom, kitchen, and beneath each heading, we listed everything we could think of. Firstly, things that we needed and secondly, additionally things we would like to have. As each item was purchased or given to us (we received a lot of engagement presents), we ticked them off in the book and wrote down how much they had cost us. I still have this notebook, and the low prices we paid for household items are really amazing.

I had now been working for Williams Brothers for over a year and had never received a pay rise. We were saving really hard to get married, and I decided to ask my boss for more money. I felt quite nervous; I’d never had to do this before. The boss was a woman not liked by the staff, which did little for my confidence. I stood before this ‘dragon’ and felt about two feet high. She let me have my say, then politely pointed out that, since my switchboard hadn’t and wouldn’t be getting any bigger, there really didn’t seem to be any grounds for giving me more money.
I was deflated, disappointed and angry, and beat it hot foot to the employment bureau, a few doors down the road. When I told them how little I was earning, they were absolutely aghast.
‘We can get you much more than that,’ they said, true to their word, they did.
I went to work operating a double-position switchboard at Canda, a clothing factory in Islington. Canda was the trade name for the manufacturing side of C and A Modes. String the letters C and A together and, hey presto, you have Canda! There was a little more travelling to do, but my wages jumped from three pounds five shillings (£3.25) to five pounds, an amazing and very welcome pay rise.
Our most daunting task as a newly engaged couple was the task of finding somewhere to live. This had to be achieved before we could set a wedding date. There was absolutely no chance of buying a house, the cheapest being two thousand pounds, so that people like us just weren’t in the running. We could only hope for rented accommodation, but that too was virtually unobtainable due to the acute housing shortage that followed the war.

EATING OUT

2008-11-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

We were saving very hard, but every now and then we would allow ourselves a special treat. Eating out was not something that we did very often, but there were affordable bargain meals available, even in the West End of London. For us to have a meal ‘up West’ was a real adventure and something we did perhaps every couple of months.
Our favourite eating-place was Lyon’s Corner House at Marble Arch. There were two fashionable restaurants in the Lyon ‘s complex. One was the egg-and-bacon bar; the other was the salad bowl. We would stand and watch the chefs resplendent in their tall white hats, cooking eggs and gammon bacon on huge griddles set behind plate glass windows. They flipped the eggs over with great panache. However, we never ate in the egg-and-bacon bar, as it was a set meal for a set price.
The salad bowl was a very different matter. There were two set meals one priced at two shillings and sixpence (12 ½ p), the other at three shillings and sixpence (17 ½ p). For the princely sum of half a crown (12½ p) you could help yourself to as much salad as you could pile on to a large plate, together with a roll and butter, and as many cups of coffee as you required. The latter was served by a waiter who appeared at your elbow, white napkin draped over his arm, and poured from a silver coffee pot, For an extra shilling (5p) you were entitled to add to this menu a bowl of soup and your choice from the sweet-trolley. I might add that this was no ordinary salad, but exotic things that I’d never seen anywhere else. Smoked salmon in little pastry boats, roll-mops, olives, things set in aspic. The meal was eaten with silver cutlery in the luxurious setting of deep pile carpet, intimate lighting, and soft music played by a real live pianist sitting at a grand piano! When you are seventeen years old, hard up and in love, what more could you ask for?
We once shared a table at the salad bar with a vicar complete with dog collar. He arrived at the table bearing a plate laden with the biggest salad that we had ever seen. He must have been either very poor or very greedy. His meal was carefully constructed, using little pastry cases filled with salmon as the foundation, and layered with vol-au-vents, roll mops, things set in aspic and every pasta, rice and potato salad available, Carefully woven in to this creation were all the normal salad ingredients such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber etc. The whole concoction stood some eight inches high! We watched, fascinated, as he ploughed through the meal, washing it down with several cups of coffee.
Another café we frequented was in Islington, where we occasionally ate Saturday lunch. It stood opposite the entrance to the Angel tube station. And served the most delicious egg and chips for half a crown, this included bread and butter and a cup of tea. Not as splendiferous as Lyons, but just as delicious.

Sometimes in the summer, we would hop on a bus in Harringay, and for two shillings and sixpence (12 ½ p) we could travel all the way to Southend–on-sea. It was a long ride and we really enjoyed the journey. As long as we could have a cup of tea, a bag of chips and a Rossi’s ice cream when we arrived, we were on cloud nine. We’d stroll along the front and the pier, hand in hand; me in my off the shoulder blouse and white sling back high heeled shoes, and Arthur in his shirt and slacks purchased by him in Italy. We thought we were ‘the goods’
Oh, that I could wave a magic wand and do it all again! Time rushes by so rapidly that you don’t notice that these are precious moments, let alone appreciate and treasure every second, as you should.
Writing these memoirs has enabled me to unlock so many forgotten moments of my life. Not necessary earth shattering moments, but silly. Heart-warming memories that I am so grateful not to have lost for all time.
Like coming out of the cinema as a very young teenager feeling that I was Betty Grable who had just taken her fourth curtain call on opening night, or Jean Crain after she realised that she really did love the studious guy with glasses, and not the cocky heartbreaker her took her to the High School prom.
Like buying my first78 rpm record of Benny Goodman’s ‘Slow Boat to China’, and feeling to important standing in the record booth at HMV. I listened, letting it play right through to the end before saying’ Yes, OK. I’ll take it,’ knowing from the onset that I fully intended to buy it.
Like watching my first-born join the other children on her first day at school, biting my lip to fight back the tears, realising this was the moment she started to be her own person and ceased to be ours alone.
This realisation was bought home to me even more so, some fourteen years later. Lynne had moved out of our house to share a flat with her then boyfriend John G. We received a late night phone call from John, saying that Lynne had been taken into hospital with mystery stomach pains. We dropped everything and rushed to the hospital to be greeted by Lynne, laid out on a hospital trolley, looking quite ill. I rushed to her side, intent on holding her hand and comforting her,
All she said was: Where’s John? I want John.’
That was the moment I knew that she was no longer our little girl, and that she now belonged to someone else. I felt completely devastated.

ANOTHER STORY FOR HALLOWEEN

2008-10-31T07:54:00.000-07:00

He had come too far. He realized that as the car spluttered to a halt and the petrol gauge registered on empty.
Cursing, he banged both his hands down on the steering wheel in frustration.
He’d passed a petrol station some thirty miles back along the road, but it had been closed. Hoping to find another garage, he’d driven on through the night. Now this!
He glanced towards the dashboard. Looking firstly at the petrol gauge, and then at the clock glowing with an eerie green light. 1.30am.
Opening the car door he put the handbrake on and then stepped out into a dark country lane, unlit, apart from the headlights of his car.
He’d be damned if he were going to sit here all night waiting for a friendly, passing motorist. He knew he’d have to walk to find some signs of life and obtain assistance.
Reaching into the car, he switched off the lights and fumbled about in the glove compartment for the torch, which he slipped into his jacket pocket. Locking the car he started to walk into the cold October night, which quickly enveloped him like a thick, dark, blanket.
He walked on for what seemed like miles listening to the rhythmic tread of his feet on the rough surface of the road, interspersed with the occasional rustling sounds from the undergrowth. Somewhere in the dark distance came the lonely hooting of a night owl.
James smiled to himself. All he needed now was a storm, and an eerie country house with its lugubrious housekeeper, and he could be right in the middle of a 1930’s black and white horror movie.
James reached a bend in the road, and to his delight, as he rounded it he saw nearby house lights. “Let’s hope they haven’t all gone to bed,” he thought. What he wouldn’t give for a hot drink and a comfortable chair. If he ever fancied “doing” the London Marathon, he’d certainly gone right off the idea now.
As he reached the house, which was indeed a large country residence, he saw that although the curtains were drawn across the windows, there appeared to be someone moving about in the room. Walking up to the front door he lifted the large knocker and let it fall back heavily.
He waited, straining his ears for sounds of life. He wasn’t disappointed; someone was unlocking the heavy wooden entrance door.
It opened slowly, inch by inch. James gasped in horror as his eyes fell upon the apparition waiting there. A white-faced spectre stood before him. Long grey hair tumbling in a tangled mess about its shoulders. From a gaping wound in its throat dripped scarlet blood.
James screamed silently and fell to the floor in a faint.

When he came to he was half sitting, half lying on a settee. Around him were a group of people. Well not exactly people. There were two witches, a monster with a plastic bolt through his neck, two mummies bound in bandages, a skeleton and the spectre from the front door, who was pressing a glass of water to James’ lips.
“Sorry we gave you such a fright mate, we thought you were a belated party guest”.
As he passed out yet again, James’ eyes fell on a poster above the fireplace. It was decorated with spiders and bats, and read “HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2008” !

A SCARY ONE FOR HALLOWEEN

2008-10-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

BEDSIDE MANNER

Ruth, her back pressed against the wall and her arms spread-eagled on the wallpaper behind her, slowly and fearfully crept up the stairs. This should have been a tranquil and restful weekend, but it had turned out to be just the opposite.
She’d spotted the weekend cottage as she drove through the village a couple of months ago, and decided then and there that it would be the ideal place to chill out for a couple of days, when her current freelance job came to an end. She duly popped into the local estate agent and, leaving a small deposit, secured the accommodation. And now, here she was. In the afternoon sunlight the exterior of Clematis Cottage (for that was its name) certainly had a rural charm of its own and, once inside, Ruth hugged herself as she felt the comfy feeling of the lounge envelop her. On the red quarry stone floor lay a large, sumptuous rug, and Ruth, kicking off her city shoes, felt her feet sink into the pile. She wriggled her toes sensuously as she gazed around the room. Mounted on the wall above the fireplace, was a bronze shield, crossed with two long swords and, in the alcove next to the fireplace was a goodly-stocked bookcase. The window overlooking the garden had before it a magnificent recessed windowsill, which held a couple of pewter pots, a jug containing freshly picked wild flowers, and a bowl of delicious-looking red apples. This is the life, thought Ruth, as she flopped into the inviting arms of the big soft armchair.
Later that evening, after consuming a tasty supper of crusty bread, French cheese and half a bottle of red wine, Ruth decided to spend her last couple of hours before bedtime skimming through the books on the shelves. She thought she might choose one to take down to the lakeside on an exploratory walk next day. Her eyes rested on a book bound in rich brown leather, bearing the title ‘The History of Clematis Cottage’. She sat in the big armchair, engrossed in what she was reading, not able to tear her eyes from its pages or put the volume down.
The cottage was very old and had been in the Armitage family for generations. Ruth glanced at the shield above the fireplace and back at the book. The same coat of arms! The tome was mostly a reference book. It listed builders and architects, family trees and military records of the Armitage family. Ruth was fascinated and wished that the volume would tell her more about the private lives of the various owners. She closed the cover and reached up to replace the book on the shelf. As she did so, she saw two yellowed newspaper clippings that had obviously slipped from between the pages of the history book.
The first one bore the headline NANNY MURDERS CHILD IN HER CARE. It went on to tell how the nanny to the Armitage son and heir, who was being sent away to boarding school, was unable to bear being parted from her charge. She had gone into his room that night, tucked the blankets around his chin, in her usual manner, then placed a pillow over the child’s face and held it there until he was dead. Filled with remorse, she left a letter of confession and made her way, clutching the boy’s blue dressing gown, to the lake in the grounds, where she drowned herself. Reading the old news clipping was chilling enough, but it was the second cutting that ruined Ruth’s evening!
The other extract was from an article in the local weekly rag. It stated that although Clematis cottage looked like a dream home, it was in fact more like a nightmare home! Several people had reported strange occurrences and none of the local people would set foot in the cottage, let alone live there. There had been sightings of the nanny, and sounds of childish laughter. It was also reported that the child’s mother, unable to face life without her only child, and wracked with grief, had also killed herself.
Ruth’s trembling fingers dropped the pieces of paper on the floor. She suddenly felt very cold and frightened. ‘Pull yourself together’ she thought. ‘It’s only romantic nonsense’. She turned towards the stairs.
It was then that Ruth looked through the window into the night. She felt sure she’d seen a murky shape cross in front of the window. In a state of great panic and fear, she rushed towards the stairs trying to put as much distance as she could, between her and the thing in the garden. She mounted the first two stairs and looked back to check that she was still alone. Turning towards the bottom of the stairs she felt an icy trickle of fear run down her spine. There, draped over the end of the banister rail was a child’s blue dressing gown.
Not knowing which way to go, she edged, slowly and fearfully, up the stairs.
On reaching the bedroom she flung herself fully-clothed onto the bed and pulling up the quilt, closed her eyes tightly. Her heart was pounding so loudly that she heard nothing. She only felt. The quilt was being tucked oh! So gently, around her chin. Her heart stopped beating as she felt the pillow being slowly withdrawn from beneath her head.

A MOTHER'S DAY POEM FOR DAYS GONE BY

2008-10-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

1930

Left-hand small, dainty and feminine, slightly trembling
Thin golden band slowly placed on wedding finger
Strong masculine hand gently lifting smooth white fingers to bridegroom’s lips
There, to softly place a kiss

1940’s

These hands now a little older fingers not as slender
Nails neatly cut, shaped and painted palest pink
Hands that had raised seven children plus two foster babes
Nursed cherished parents, and crumpled tear-sodden hankies at their deaths
Now deftly guiding yards of gingham through sewing machine
Four little girls aged three to eight eagerly awaiting summer dresses
Seven children experienced those cooling fingers gently stroking fevered brows
Felt the bruising pressure of damp hankie rubbing at grime on faces
Hands that scrubbed floors, lit fires, soothed chilblains and changed nappies
Produced melt-in-the-mouth pastries, birthday cakes and Sunday dinners
As well as Christmas decorations, doll’s clothes little treats and most wonderful stories
They carried, held and lifted heavy bags of shopping
They washed and scrubbed at dirty clothes
Lifted scorching flat irons popping with testing spittle
Hands that had a few more lines but still had many miles to go

1980’s

The hands, now resting quietly on sheets that are tidily turned down are once again pale and slender
Fingernails now longer, shapelier, and painted coral pink.
But the years have taken their toll

Knuckles enlarged, lopsided, twisting fingers into obscene shapes
Still proudly feminine and bearing the wedding band placed there over half a century ago
Placed there by the strong, masculine, hand that still holds the aged hand of my mother.

The last time I saw those hands they were finally resting.
Arthritic fingers, nails still coral pink, gently holding a crucifix.
But no doubt, somewhere already, they were busily making, doing, or mending something.

And another in a lighter mood about a cat called 'Harris'

GOING TO PARIS (With apologies to Christopher Robin and Alice!)

I’m changing houses
I’m going to Paris
Me and my home and a cat named Harris

I’ve taking my books and my clothes and CDs
Harris is even taking his fleas
To Paris

I’m learning French
‘cos I’m going to Paris
Rolling my ‘R’s and so is Harris

I only hope I get used to the ‘bogs’
But I know that I’ll never be eating boiled frogs
In Paris

I’ve learned to eat garlic
I’d better in Paris
Can’t say the same for poor old Harris

He’s tried it in chicken, and liver, and fish
And hopes it’s not every cat’s favourite dish
In Paris

I’m changing houses
I’m going to Paris
Me and my home and a cat named Harris

MONOLOGUE BY A VERY SENIOR CITIZEN

2008-10-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Another bit of fiction for you

Can I make you a cup of tea? No? Well I’ll just ‘ave one while I wait. Waitin’, that’s all I seem to do now. Waitin’ for this, waitin’ for that.

Yesterday I waited all day for the man to read the meter. Bring back the good old days, that’s what I always say. Things used to be so easy then. The gas went out when your shilling ran out, and you just put another bob in the meter. Then they gave us electricity. Goodness knows why! I used to do a lovely roast on the range. You can’t beat a good old-fashioned fire range you know. It’d boil your kettle and ‘eat the iron. Saved on the gas too. Anyway, when we got the electric, I ‘ad to keep an oxo tin in the scullery for the meter money. Always ‘ad a few bob and a foreign coin in it. What was the foreign coin for? Well dear, at the end of the week when money was a bit short, a coin in the meter meant another bob in your purse. The meter man would always give it back when he emptied the meter, all ready for next time!

Did you know that I’ve lived through two wars? In the first one we fought the Kaiser, and then the next time round we wiped the floor with Adolph. I ‘ope I don’t live to see another war. Silly innit? All that fighting… I lost me Dad in the first war. A lovely man ‘e was. Blonde curly hair and the bluest eyes. Just like mine they were. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still feel his rough army trousers scratching my legs when I sat on his knee. The second war took my Alf away from me. Left me with little Frank to bring up all alone. Now ‘e’s moved away and I’m alone again. The grandchildren don’t come by either. They promised they would but they don’t. My Grandad used to tell me that promises were like piecrusts – made to be broken. I used to laugh at ‘im, but it’s true…Oh yes, it’s true you know.

All the friends I ‘ad when I first moved in - do you know it must be fifty years ago now? They’ve all gone one way or another. It’s a funny old life. One day there’s all your neighbours and family popping in and out, in and out – didn’t wait to be asked in those days you know, we always left the door on the latch, every one was welcome. Popping in and out… in and out. What was I saying? Oh yes, now they’re all gone.
Alf and I rented this ‘ouse when we was first married, soon after that Frankie came along. A beautiful baby, but ‘e gave me gypp being born. Then our Maureen was born. She was so special. Alf called her ‘is princess. We didn’t ‘ave ‘er very long. First God took her back, and then he took Alf as well. I never wanted another man.

You didn’t in those days. You married your man and ‘ad as many babies as God saw fit to send you, and that was that. Now they don’t even bother to get married and they take pills to stop babies. I ask you! Pills to stop babies. Pills are for stopping ‘eadaches!

The ‘ealth visitor came to see me this morning. She wanted to know ‘ow I was managing. I’m fine, I told ‘er. So long as I’ve got my wireless. Never did take to that television. Frank got me one in the fifties but I couldn’t be doing with it. I used to stand with the aerial in my ‘and, trying to keep the picture still. I said to Frank, I said. Take it back and give it to the girls, I prefer my wireless. I loved listening to Billy Cotton and ITMA. Of course they’ve gone too. What was I saying? My memory isn’t what it used to be either! Oh yes, the ‘ealth visitor. Well, I told ‘er, a bit of a fire, me wireless and me knitting and I’m well away

Do you like this cardigan? I knitted it last winter. See, it matches me ‘at. Knitted that too. The ‘ealth visitor said she could get me a phone wired in for emergencies. What do I want a phone for? Frank and Joan ‘ad one. Frightened me out of me wits when it rang, and then people whisper so quiet that you can’t ‘ear what they’re saying!

I think Frank and Joan would like me to ‘ave the phone so that they can talk to me. Just like them. They don’t ‘ave any trouble lifting up the phone, but travellin’ a few miles by car, oh dear no. That’s too much trouble. Anyway, I’m used to it by now. Still, I would like to see my little princesses now and again. Mind you, they’re not so little nowadays. Look at this photo… I can’t be doing with all this fashion business. ‘ardly any clothes up top, and skirts up to their waist. I told them last time they came. I said, “You’ve never gone out like that. You’ll catch pneumonia, mark my words”… but of course they didn’t. I often wonder what Alf would say if ‘e was still ‘ere. In my day you didn’t even show your knees. Now they think nothing of showing their drawers. I remember the first time Alf saw my smalls. It was the night we got married. I turned the gaslight out, but I couldn’t turn the moonlight off, could I? I was so shy in those days. Still, two babies and a war soon sorted that out.

Now I’m sitting ‘ere just waitin’. What am I waitin’ for? I suppose most of all; I’m waitin’ to join my Alf. I’ve got so much to tell ‘im, ‘e’ll never believe it all. I’ve not ‘ad a bad life. Some ‘as ‘ad it a lot worse than me.

There’s just one more thing I’d like though. I’d like to go out in style. You know… one of them glass carriages with ‘orses pulling it along. Long black feathery plumes on their ‘ead, and their knees ‘igh in the air, and me lying there like a queen with all the neighbours taking off their ‘ats as I go by.
Oh! There’s the doorbell. You’ll ‘ave to excuse me now. You never know, it might be my little princesses.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

2008-10-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Now for something completely different! Nothing true about this one, it's purely a figment of my imagination.

His night with the lads had been great. He’d had a skin full, and didn’t fancy a curry with the rest. He stabbed the front door of number 29 with his key in an effort to locate the keyhole; he had to admit he did feel peckish. He walked unsteadily to the toilet, and swaying back and forth, disposed of the last drops of lager. Suddenly, he thought of chips. Large golden chips, smothered in salt with great dollops of brown sauce.
In a drunkard half-hearted voice he called his wife. “Make some chips woman”. There was no reply, and by the time he reached the kitchen, he’d forgotten he’d called her. Hanging on to the edge of the cooker for support, he lit the gas under the chip pan.
“Bloody fat is hard, she ought to bloody well be in here doing this”.
Still muttering and complaining, he slumped down at the kitchen table, rested his head in his hands, and waited for the lard to melt. Ten minutes later he was fast asleep, all thoughts of chips removed from his inebriated mind.
A blue smoky haze enveloped the pan. Suddenly it ignited in a strangely silent way that belied the ferocity of the blaze that followed. Roy slept on. Unaware of what awaited him.
At number 31, all was dark and still. Jock and Margaret were asleep, as was Dodger their dog.
Jock was dreaming he wore a deerstalker hat and was tracking down the Hound of the Baskervilles. The hound was howling as he awoke, Jock was surprised to find it was still howling and barking as he sat up in bed. It was Dodger who was barking non-stop in the back garden, and Jock knew that he must go down and quieten him before some one complained.
He switched on the kitchen light and padded barefoot across the cold linoleum, noticing that they’d forgotten to put the bread away. He picked up the loaf in passing and dropped it into the earthenware crock as he passed by. The back door was soon unlocked and Dodger pushed his way past Jock’s legs without waiting for the door to be fully opened.
“What’s up Dodge”? He crumpled up the dog’s ear in a rough affectionate way, and decided he’d better take a look, just in case.
Jock didn’t expect the scene before him. Roy and Pauline’s kitchen was glowing with orange flames. Smoke rolled and curled through the top of the window, which was slightly open. The curtains were beginning to burn.
For a moment Jock froze. Attempting to put priorities in order, he decided that he must ring 999, call Margaret, and attempt to raise the next-door neighbours in that order. He ran into the hall calling to Margaret as he went. “Margaret, get up! Next door’s on fire!” He dialled 999 and gave the details of the fire to the operator. Slamming down the receiver, he raced up the stairs to waken his wife. Only then, did he realise that Dodger, thinking all this was a grand game, was running beside him rubber bone in mouth, and tail revolving like helicopter blades.
“Roy and Pauline’s house is on fire Marge, and I’m going to knock them up. I’ve called the Brigade”.
Only stopping to make sure Margaret was awake and Dodger was shut up, he raced down stairs and out into the street.
He was amazed to find that everything in Daniel Street looked so normal. Houses were all in darkness, and a couple were walking arm in arm on the other side of the road, occasionally stopping to kiss. In the distance he heard the sound of cats fighting.
Jock raced up the path leading to Roy’s front door. He put his finger on the bell push, holding it there. It didn’t surprise him that it wasn’t working. He balled up his powerful fists and hammered them in a rapid and heavy tattoo on the door. The window on the first floor flew open and Pauline’s face peered balefully round the curtains. “If that’s you Roy, you can bloody well sleep in the front garden! What time do you call this?”
“ It’s me, Jock from next door. There’s a fire at the back of your house Pauline, in the kitchen. You better get out quickly while you can. Check if the landing and hall are clear enough to make it to the front door. If not, go back to the bedroom, close the door, and come to the window. Don’t worry; we’ll get you out. The fire engines are on the way”.
Pauline disappeared, and a few minutes later reappeared at the front door.
Putting his arm around her, Jock led her back down the path and into Daniel Street.
In a very short time the area had come alive. Windows that were so dark and non-seeing ten minutes ago were now winking and blinking in the light. Crowds were gathering, and the courting couple had returned to stand hand in hand on the other side of the street.
The fire engine turned into Daniel Street with sirens screaming and lights flashing, and halted outside number 29.
Jock couldn’t believe the expertise with which the brigade moved.
Margaret, arms around Pauline, was trying to comfort and reassure her.
“Silly bugger,” said Pauline, in a strangely endearing tone, “he’s probably lying drunk in a gutter somewhere. He’ll be home soon. I know he’ll be home soon”. She was still repeating this when a fireman came through to the front of the house. Leaning heavily on him, coughing and gasping for breath, was a sooty, unsteady, and shamefaced Roy, still somewhat bemused about why a fireman should be in his kitchen, spraying water all over his chip supper.

SNIPPETS FROM MY SCHOOLDAYS

2008-10-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

SNIPPETS FROM MY SCHOOLDAYS

I first attended school sometime before my sixth birthday. It disappoints me that I cannot recall that first momentous day. It’s quite a milestone in one’s life, on a par with falling in love, or receiving your first pay packet; yet it eludes me completely.
My earliest school memories are of a small warm classroom bathed in electric light. The air filled with the sweet smell of almonds that came from the glue we were using to stick scraps of paper together. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hall and singing at the top of my voice about a green dragon is another early infant recollection. Do you know I still remember that song!
Throughout my entire school life, I never managed to acquire a taste for school milk. After the first mouthful my throat would become slimy and, try as I might, I just couldn’t stomach a second mouthful. The milk was delivered in individual bottles that held a gill of milk, and was, for some reason that I never questioned, consumed in the cloakroom. Each bottle would be sealed with a waxed cardboard disc snapped into the bottleneck. In the centre of the lid was a small circular cut out that could easily be pushed in by a small finger or a straw. Unfortunately, childish fervour during this procedure often resulted in the drinker, and his or her near companions, being showered with milk.
Constant house moving on the part of my parents meant that I went to many, many, different schools. I once totalled up those that I could remember, and reckon that between the ages of six and fourteen I attended at least ten schools. Probably worth an entry in the Guinness book of Records!
In spite of the number of schools I graced with my presence, the only subject that seemed to suffer and give me nightmares was Maths. I could never keep up. Just as I was getting the hang of long division, I would find myself in a new school and a new class who were halfway through learning fractions, and I didn’t stand a chance of understanding what was going on. It didn’t matter, because soon I would be thrown into the depths of decimals or algebra with another teacher, probably on the other side of London. Although I have managed to master the rudiments of arithmetic, it still fills me with dread, and anyone who chooses a career in this subject is an enigma to me.
Many of my teachers’ faces and names are still engraved in my memory. Miss Wright who taught us PE. That poor lady never knew that sitting on the floor, knees bent, arms raised, the entire class could see right up the leg of her shorts, and sometimes her knickers!
Miss Jewell, a neat little lady who seemed always to wear a navy, crepe dress sprinkled with tiny white flowers, and a sparkling white lace collar at her throat. She wore her faded, red hair that was tinged with grey gathered into a tight little bun in the nape of her neck. My mind’s eye can clearly see her standing there before the blackboard, a picture in navy and white: a duster in one hand and a stick of chalk delicately held between the finger and thumb of the other. Her slender delicate fingers were always coated in white chalk dust. Her periwinkle blue eyes shone behind horn-rimmed spectacles containing thick lenses. Sadly, I later heard that she had become blind.
On the other side of the road was the school Tuck Shop where we could buy four sweets for one old penny. A farthing (there were four to a penny) would give us many choices including, a strawberry chew, a liquorice blackjack, sweet cigarettes or a gob stopper. Sherbet dips and lemonade powder were also great favourites and, when the lemonade powder craze was upon us, the school would be full of pupils sporting bright yellow tongues and forefingers. During the war years when sweets were rationed, the tuck shop sold their own homemade crisps. They tasted like wafer thin slices of potatoes baked in the oven until they were as hard as iron, which is probably what they were! They tasted pretty awful, but were better than nothing.
Lastly, as a sign of the times, I give you the following. I passed by our old Tuck shop many years later, when I was a mother myself. The shop was still there, but someone had climbed up and altered the ‘T’ of Tuck into an ‘F’. My poor old headmaster would have turned in his grave.

"RIGHT SAID FRED!

2008-10-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd have a little change from the tales of my youth and fast forward a bit. Although written as fiction, this really did happen to me and mine. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty!

“RIGHT” SAID FRED!

Our home in Islington was a large Victorian house divided into three flats. The ground floor flat housed a husband and wife that we hardly ever met, and a young married couple called Dave and Gemma lived in the flat above us.
The ground floor flat became vacant and so we asked the agents if we could take it over. It was a much larger flat than the one that we rented, and meant we could have a real kitchen at last.
As we weren’t moving house, only moving to the next floor, we decided that, with a little help from family, could move our furniture piecemeal down the stairs ourselves.
This surely would be an easy job. We would move each item straight down into the relevant room, thereby positioning everything roughly where we wanted it. The really heavy stuff such as wardrobes, sideboard etc. my husband James, my Dad and brother Peter could manhandle between them, with me yelling out the appropriate encouragement such as: “Mind what you’re doing!” and “be careful you don’t scratch my table-top!” and, occasionally “I really don’t think that’s a good idea!”
James and I had started moving the smaller things on Friday evening and it was now Saturday morning and time to get heaving with the larger items.
Everything went well for a while, and then it was time for the piano to be shifted. Originally professional piano movers had transported it from my mother-in-law’s house to ours. We had been amazed at the alacrity and ease with which they sped up two flights of stairs; the piano balanced on one man’s back while two others steadied things. Oh how very stupid we were to mistake professional artistry and experience for something that appeared to be the proverbial piece of cake!
We had already stripped the top, front, and lid from the piano to make it easier for them to handle, and all went well from the lounge to the bottom of the first flight of stairs. It was when the men were negotiating the 180-degree bend between the two flights of stairs that the house demolition started.
Somehow, the piano slipped, and one corner began deftly to push out, one by one, the banister rails that blocked its way. Suddenly it stopped. Completely jammed. With much yelling and grabbing, the three men tried to pull the piano out from amongst the banister rails, only to firmly drive the opposite corner of the piano into and through the plaster on the stairway wall.
It was at this point that Dave, Gemma, and their small son descended from the top floor flat. Their path was of course blocked very firmly by three grunting, puffing men, one slightly hysterical me and an upright piano that was wedged, it seemed forever, across the stairs between the wall and the banisters!
Dave, with a look of chagrin said: “We really do need to get down to the front door. Actually, we’re on our way to a wedding”.
It was only then that I realized that Dave was dressed in a smart, navy suit, complete with a floral buttonhole, and that Gemma was wearing a resplendent hat trimmed with an equally resplendent floral arrangement! Oh my God! They really were dressed for, and on their way to, a wedding. Gemma and her little boy retreated a few steps up towards her kitchen door, and Dave, realizing that he really didn’t have any other option, if he was to make the wedding at all, said: “Come on, I’ll give you a hand”
The men in unison, and now numbering four, managed to get the piano back in a straight line pointing down the stairs, but there still was no way they could make it turn the bend, try as they might. By this time, Dave’s beautiful, smart, navy-blue, wedding suit was covered in white plaster dust. His face was sweaty and his hair disheveled. The rest of us were beginning to feel rather embarrassed when James’ face suddenly lit up, as in idea struck him. Had I known the outcome of his idea, I’d have probably struck him too! “Let’s turn the piano upside down,” he said, “so that the wide keyboard area is over the top of the handrail. Then the narrower base will easily make the bend in the landing”
This was hailed by the others as a brilliant, “why didn’t we think of it earlier” idea. With more grunts and shouts of “one, two, three, over”, they turned the instrument, which had been our pride and joy, upside down … and all the keys fell out! With a discordant, clattering sound, they tumbled down the stairwell and into the quarry tiled entrance hall below.
Alas! This was to be the swan song of our beloved pianoforte because, although the keys could have been put back, there was also extensive damage to the hammers.
Dave and Gemma finally made their way, brushed and re-groomed, to their wedding celebrations, and our beautiful piano, that had been handed down from the last generation, was dragged unceremoniously into the back garden. There, sadly, it was hammered, hacked, and chopped into pieces small enough to dispose of. If any of you have ever attended a piano-smashing event at a local garden fete, you will know just how difficult and very, very noisy this act is!

LIVING AND LOVING

2008-10-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

LIVING AND LOVING

During the late forties and early fifties, going to the cinema was a popular way for young people to spend their leisure time. Other common past-times included motor speedway racing and sitting in coffee bars. At least, that was the case in our part of London. Harringay Arena was situated in our area, and it housed not only speedway racing and dog racing, but also the Horse of the Year Show. Opposite the arena was a coffee bar that, apart from being our favourite coffee house, was often visited by the speedway stars in their off-duty moments.
One of the big names of the day was Split Waterman. Such was his fame that he constantly had a stream of girls who ran after him, screaming, or queues of lads just wanting to touch his motorbike and collect his autograph.
As all my family are only too aware, I’m an inveterate organiser and list maker, and it was always so. When I became engaged, I immediately set to, armed with notebooks and pencils.
One day, we were sitting in the coffee bar discussing our ‘lists’ over numerous cups of coffee, when we looked up to see a small group of young lads peering through the plate glass window. They were pointing and staring in at us, their noses pressed against the glass. We smiled, not so much at them, but at the humour of the situation. That was the signal they were waiting for, and they opened the café door and trooped in.
The leader of the gang stood purposefully in front of Arthur and said: ‘Please give us yer autograph, Split.’ Then pleadingly ‘Go on, pleeease’.
Arthur laughed and answered that he wasn’t who they thought he was, but they were not convinced.
‘We know it’s you, Split. Go on, please, give us yer autograph, go on.’
The boy kept thrusting his book at Arthur. The café proprietor behind the counter was highly amused but said nothing to help the situation, and it was obvious that we weren’t going to get away with a refusal. In the end, Arthur said: ‘OK, you win, give me your book.’
Somewhere today in North London there is an elderly man who owns a treasured autograph from Arthur signed: ‘Best wishes, Split Waterman’!

Split Waterman 3rd from L

Arthur

Soon after our engagement, we were roaming around the West End of London, one of our favourite haunts, window-shopping. We often saw beautiful furnishings and household equipment that we would dream of owning one day, when our ship came in. On one such trip, we happened upon Maples. I don’t even know if they are still in existence, but then, they were the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of furniture makers, and were ‘By Royal Appointment’. Featuring in one of their large window displays was the most beautiful bedroom suite we’d ever seen. Very clean cut and modern and made from figured walnut. It was very expensive, and we coveted it! Of course, it was out of the question. We could have easily bought a bedroom and dining room suite for the same amount of money (with a couple of fireside chairs thrown in as well). That bedroom suite became our fantasy and we kept re-visiting it in our minds and imagining how it would look in our new home, the fantasy wouldn’t go away, and we finally succumbed to it.
It cost us £117, which was a great deal of money in those days. However, it lasted until just before we moved to Kent thirty-five years later. Even then, it hadn’t worn out. We had just got tired of it, and it had become very old fashioned.
We decided to buy the suite on hire-purchase. We wouldn’t need it for at least a year and it would be a means of enforced saving. As we weren’t terrifically good at saving, this seemed a good idea, so we went ahead and bought a dining room suite as well. This came from a furniture chain store and it cost us £48. As we settled up these hire-purchase debts, we bought more furniture.

THE KOREAN WAR SCARE

2008-10-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

Just about a year before we got married, on June 25th 1950 to be precise, North Korea invaded South Korea. By the next day, President Truman had ordered air and naval forces to go to the aid of South Korea and, by the end of July, our troops were being sent out there.
When Arthur had been demobbed from the army he was put on the ‘Z Reserve’ list. This meant, in effect, that he hadn’t entirely severed his links with His Majesty’s Armed Forces. The Ministry of War could, if they so desired, in times of emergencies and for several years hence, call upon him to go to war and fight. Not a nice thought to have hanging over us as we planned to get married.
Then, out of the blue, Arthur was taken quite ill, the doctor was sent for, and quinsies was diagnosed. This ailment takes the form of abscesses that form in the throat area near the tonsils. Nowadays, it’s a matter of pumping in antibiotics and waiting for it to go away, but nearly sixty years ago the story was a little different.
Arthur ran a very high temperature and, was in great pain. The doctor had said that, if the abscesses became too large, he would have to operate on Arthur’s throat and do some lancing.
Because of the state of his health and, no doubt, the medication he was taking, Arthur started to worry about the prospects of his being sent to Korea to fight in a not very civilised war. We were both very concerned about this as I knew full well that, if need be, the army could indeed recall Arthur to service.
Each evening I would travel directly from work, to sit with him in the dark silence of his bedroom at his parent’s house in Mildmay Park. Arthur complained about the light, so the bedroom curtains were perpetually closed and electric lights were never switched on till he recovered.
I don’t think that most of the time he was even aware that I was there, and certainly never made any comments about my presence each evening. We hardly ever spoke except for his worried mutterings about the war. I would sit and hold his hand or stroke his forehead for about four hours, then catch a late trolley bus back to Harringay. After I alighted from the bus, I still had a fifteen-minute walk alone in the dark to Oakfield Road where I lived.
This was the most awful period of our courtship and lasted for a couple of weeks. Arthur never knew at the time just how ill he was, and was amazed when I told him about my horrendous evenings with him. Incidentally, the army never did call up the ‘Z Reserve’ men and, in fact, the war was still raging long after we got married in July 1951.

THE FATEFUL WEDDING ANNIVERSARY PT ll

2008-10-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

Dad was in hospital for weeks and weeks and, so that Mum could spend the days with him, Doug and I went to Miss Silver's Private School at the other end of New Park Avenue. How Mum got us in there I'll never know, for she certainly couldn't have paid any fees. I don't know why we weren't attending the local council school at this time, as we certainly did at a later date. Perhaps Dad's story became local knowledge and made us 'famous', who knows? I loved attending Miss Silver's school because it was so very different from any school I'd known (and I'd known a few!).

All the pupils sat around a Morrison indoor shelter which served as a large communal desk where we studied our lessons. The Morrison shelter (named after Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary during the war) was issued to people who couldn't use an Anderson shelter in their garden for one reason or another. It comprised of a tough, metal cage, the top and base being heavy, sheet metal, with strong, steel, chain-link fencing around all four sides. The whole thing was about the size of a large dining table. In the event of an air raid, you were supposed to make yourselves secure and comfortable in the cage and, should the house collapse, it was strong enough to prevent you being crushed until, hopefully, you were dug out of the debris still alive.

Miss Silver taught us how to make rose hip jelly and marrow jam, and how to clean down the Morrison table top with methylated spirits after school. The smell of meths still transports me back to Miss Silver's little room in Palmer's Green. She also told us stories and taught us about wildlife. I suppose we learned the three R's, but I don't recall them.

The school-house backed on to the park and, as the school was just an ordinary, domestic dwelling-place, it hadn't a playground. Accordingly, we spent every playtime in the park, which was wonderful.

Daddy eventually came home from hospital. This must have been a terrible time for him and Mummy, but it never seemed to overshadow our happy childhood. They were remarkable parents.

Daddy was encased in a plaster jacket from his neck to his groin for six months, and I don't know how he stood it. The hairs on his body grew into and through the plaster, and he kept a long knitting needle which he used to plunge down inside the plaster in an effort to scratch his many itches. Of course, he couldn't bend over or sit in an ordinary chair, so he ate all his meals propped up on the edge of Billie's high-chair. How he managed other necessities of everyday living I never knew. I was too young and innocent to even wonder!
With Dad back home again, things were reasonably normal, and Douglas and I were transferred to the local council school. Naturally, the task of taking my brother back and forth to school fell to me. Mum had Daddy and Billy to care for, and I was going to school anyway.

I never minded taking him to school: he was quite a sweet little boy. But bringing him home was a nightmare! Every single day he would come through the school gates saying he urgently needed to go to the toilet, and most days he wouldn't make it to the house in time. It would have been bad enough if he'd wet his trousers but, oh no, it was much worse than that!

There I'd be, chatting merrily to my band of friends, talking about home-work, Children's Hour, and who we were going to the park with after tea, and then I'd turn round to look at my brother. He'd be hobbling along, legs spread wide apart, with an obvious heavy mass swinging about in his trousers! If I was very lucky it would stay there until we got home, but it didn't always.

Some fifty years later I happened to ask Doug why this had happened so often; I learned that poor Dougie was frightened to use the school loo, because the big boys would fling open the toilet door and taunt him. What a shame he never told me. Life can be so cruel when you are timid and only five years old.

Dad finally had the plaster removed and he told me that it was excruciatingly painful, as his whole body was defoliated in one fell swoop! Unfortunately, carrying the great weight of the plaster body cast around for all those months, left him with the legacy of ulcerated legs. They never ever went away for more that a few weeks every five or six years, and although he was only thirty two when the accident happened, he still had his ulcers when he died aged seventy nine. He worked so hard, and such long hours to keep us all fed and clothed and happy, which we always were, and yet all those years he was in continuous pain. I am only so sad that I never really told him how proud I was of him.

THE FATEFUL WEDDING ANNIVERSAY

2008-10-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

As a break from my story, I thought I'd give a little insight into another family happening that was very frightening, and gives testament to what a wonderful brave and strong man our Dad was. I hope you find it interesting, it is all absolutely true!

It was Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary. Billy was still a baby and Mummy was preparing a surprise anniversary dinner for Daddy when he got home from work. There was a chicken roasting in the oven, together with all the trimmings, and I had been sent to the local Express Dairy to buy some huge, chocolate cream buns, which were Daddy’s absolute favourites. All was ready and waiting for his knock on the front door. I was so excited, as I had been allowed to stay up and share the meal. Billy, of course, had been put to bed hours before, and Douglas, being five years younger than me, had also gone to bed.
There was a loud knock on the front door and I started to leap up and down with excitement. I don’t remember clearly what happened next, except that a policeman came into our house.
My Dad had been involved in an accident, He was very seriously hurt and not expected to survive the night. I can’t recall the complete order of things, but Mum went to the hospital of course, and I think Dougie and I must have gone back to Granny and Grandad Leach’s house for the night. I don’t recall where Billie went. I can still smell the leather of the taxi interior that took Granny Leach, Doug and me to Granny and Grandad’s house in Stockwell and Mummy to the German Hospital in Dalston where my Father, we were told, was dying. Granny Leach, always a harbinger of gloom and doom, asked my mother if ‘she had anything black for the funeral’. Looking back, it’s a wonder that Mummy didn’t hit her!
Apparently, Dad had been asked to work a little later than usual. He’d agreed to do this but only on condition that the firm’s lorry driver gave him a lift home, as it was his anniversary and Mum was waiting. He didn’t know it then, but the odds were stacked against him the moment he agreed to work late, because the passenger door of the lorry didn’t close properly. On the way home, the lorry took a corner a little too fast. The door flew open and my Father fell out, under the wheels of the lorry.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were travelling along a road that was in the process of being tarred and re-gravelled. As my father fell beneath the lorry (it was an eight wheeler) he remembered the technique that he had seen my ‘Uncle Sampson’ perform on stage, during part of his act where he lay down on the stage and allowed a lorry to be driven over his body. Daddy later told me that he ‘rolled with the wheels’ (whatever that meant) just as he had watched Sampson do, and it appeared to have saved Daddy’s life. His injuries were horrific. He suffered a fractured skull and a broken pelvis, his spine was broken in three places and his stomach split open, causing his intestines to spill out and become pitted with tar and gravel. It was not surprising that the doctors had told my mother he would not live through that night. But they didn’t know my dad! He was as stubborn as an ox all his life, and there was no way he was going to leave his ‘Lollipops’ and children at thirty-two years of age.

They said he wouldn't live, but he did. They said he'd never walk again, but he did. Such was the stuff my Dad was made of. He bribed an orderly to turn a 'blind eye' while he endeavoured to get out of bed, stand on his feet, and walk. He was encased in a plaster jacket from his neck down to his thighs and, having pulled himself on to his legs, he took two steps and then passed out. The orderly probably passed out too, but Dad has taken his first step on a long, long journey back to recovery.

To be cont..... (If you want me to)

ON GETTING ENGAGED contd...

2008-10-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

Shortly after Arthur proposed to me, Dad had a decorating job to do at a big restaurant in Wood Green. He needed another pair of hands and asked Arthur if he would like to work with him. The money would be more, he said, than he was earning in the office at The Solicitor’s Law Stationery Society. Arthur wasn’t very happy in his present job and welcomed the change of employment and a possible new career. Also, since we were secretly saving up for an engagement ring, we thought this a good idea.
Arthur said he would have to give notice, but Dad wouldn’t have this. He had to start work the following Monday, and Arthur would have to join him then. It was now or never. Arthur left his job at the end of the week, though they didn’t take very kindly to having to waive his notice.
There was a dead line on the job and, as Arthur had never done any building and decorating work before, Dad had to teach him as he went along. Daddy was used to long hours of hard work, but Arthur had always had a nine-to-five job that entailed having clean fingernails, and wearing a suit and white shirt. Now he came home tired and dirty, his hands cut and bleeding.
We decided that it would please Dad if Arthur officially asked him, as they say, for my hand in marriage. This he did while they were both working late one night. Daddy was delighted, and so was Mummy. We gave Arthur’s parents the news, and I made a concentrated effort to call them Mum and Dad. Arthur had always called my parents Sid and Nan, which he continued to do. Incidentally, although my mother was christened Jeanette, she was known to everyone as Nanette or Nan.
Meanwhile, Dad and Arthur were working harder and harder. In the end, Arthur worked day and night. Dad said that, if they could do a couple of thirty-six hour shifts, they could finish the job in time, and Dad would give Arthur a share of the profits. Arthur said OK, and worked right round the clock for a full thirty-six hour shift. He went home, had a normal night’s sleep, and then worked another thirty-six hours, non-stop. Suddenly he developed a bad leg and became very ill. The doctor diagnosed cellulitis and lymphangitis. Poor Arthur was bedridden and his leg swelled up to an enormous size. Mum Chapman wasn’t very pleased at what had happened to her son, and I was very worried. The bitter pill to swallow was that Dad didn’t get paid for the job and so neither did Arthur! Neither of us can remember, almost sixty years later, why this was, but it wasn’t that unusual in Dad’s working life just after the war. All that hard work and a bad leg, to say nothing of losing his job at the Law Society. When Arthur eventually recovered, he decided that a builder’s life was not for him, and went job-hunting.
By the end of October we had enough money saved for my engagement ring and went shopping. Bravington’s of King’s Cross was the place to buy wedding and engagement rings, so that’s where we went. I chose a five stone, diamond ring. It cost £15! It was nestling on a bed of black velvet and sitting in a brown leather box. We decided to become officially engaged on St. Valentine’s Day, since that was the anniversary of our first date. However, Arthur kept saying ‘Why don’t you wear your ring now?’ and when my birthday came round I couldn’t resist the temptation any longer. We did have an official Valentine’s Day engagement party with lots of guests, presents, and booze, where a good time was had by all. Then we settled down to the serious business of saving and planning for our forthcoming marriage.

to be contd...

APOLOGY

2008-09-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry my next blog is a bit delayed. I am not too well at the moment, but will be back as soon as I feel better.

ON GETTING ENGAGED

2008-09-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

The Government ran a scheme whereby people from Briton could apply to be shipped out to Australia for the nominal sum of ten pound per head. This would not only boost the population, workforce and future economy of Australia, but also ease the great burden of trying to re-house thousands of families in the UK after the war.
Emigration was very popular during the post war period. For ten pounds, you could make a brand new start in a brand new country. Of course, there were a few ground rules laid down by the powers-that-be. All applicants had to have someone in Australia ready to sponsor him or her and find them accommodation, prior to arrival. Another condition was that your trade or profession had to be one of those listed by Australia House. It was pretty easy to find someone who had a friend or relative in Aussie-land to help with sponsorship. And since Dad’s trade, building and decorating, appeared on the list, there was no problem. Dad got caught up in the excitement of it all, and he and Mum went along to Australia House to get forms and details. There were booklets to read and films about all aspects of life in Australia.

Arthur and I were very worried about it all. We couldn’t bear to be parted, but neither of us wanted to lose our family. The problem seemed to be insoluble and we could think of nothing else.
On the evening of August 22d 1949, three months before my eighteenth birthday, Arthur and I decided to go to one of out favourite places: Jack Straw’s Castle, a pub adjoining Hampstead Heath. We would sometimes go there for a glass of cider before walking on the heath. It was a beautiful, balmy, summer’s evening and we sat in the long grass talking of Dad’s plan to leave England, and watching birds hopping around in the trees. Suddenly, Arthur turned to me.
‘Would you marry me?’ he said.
I had been waiting and hoping for this moment for weeks and had rehearsed in my mind several romantic responses. Now, faced with the big question, all I could blurt out was: ‘I might if you asked me.’
‘I am asking you,’ he replied. ‘Will you marry me?’
I said ‘Yes’ we kissed, and then caught cloud nine disguised as a number 210 bus home.

Jack Staw's Castle where I was proposed to.
We decided not to say anything to out parents, but to start saving for an engagement ring. During the next month or so, all Dad’s thoughts of Australia were forgotten, like so many of his ideas that had gone before. The panic was over!
As a matter of fact, this was the second time that fate almost had me wrapped up and bundled down-under.
After I left school and before I started work, Daddy had yet another business partner, called Bert. He had a young brother called Joe, who was rather sweet on me. Joe was a very nice lad who happened to be a blonde. I had a ‘thing’ about blonde men: I didn’t like them. They tended to have pale eyebrows and eyelashes and look a bit insipid I thought. Nevertheless we went out a couple of times together and he wanted to buy me a new record, just released, called ‘Dance Ballerina, Dance’. Poor Joe, he didn’t really stand a chance with me. I hated this song so much that I wouldn’t let him buy me a copy, under any circumstances. Goodness knows why I didn’t just graciously accept his gift and never play it. Because of his insistence that I accept this gift of a stupid record, I gave him the brush off.

Anyway, I learned later from Bert that Joe had joined the Merchant Navy, jumped ship in Australia, and was doing very well as a sheep farmer. Just think: had I liked that rotten record, I might have turned out to be ‘Sheila the sheep-farmer’s wife’ in Australia!

To be cont…

SOMETHING BIG!

2008-09-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

The following February, our dancing teacher announced that the school would be holding a Valentine’s Day Dance in the upstairs banqueting hall of the Nightingale Pub that adjoined the school.
Arthur asked me if I would like to go, I said yes, and the tickets were bought. I met him inside the dance hall: this was our first proper date. We spent the entire evening dancing with each other. From then on we were known as a pair and always partnered each other at dancing lessons.
We started going out together every night and I took him home to meet the family. Mummy liked Arthur straight away and they very quickly became friends. She would have endless discussions with him on all sorts of subjects, and he found her a joy to be with.
We courted all through the long, hot, summer, spending many happy hours lounging on the grass at Hampstead Heath, walking around Virginia Waters and Epping Forest, and sitting in the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Life was wonderful and I couldn’t imagine it being any better. Then the fickle finger of Dad’s mad ideas struck again!
We had been ‘going out’ for several weeks, and Arthur was now almost a member of the family. Although he had previously had no dealings with little children, he took to our tribe like a duck to water. Even Gillian, the seventh and last of Mum and Dad’s children, at that time a small baby sitting in a cot, used to get the occasional poke in the tummy to make her laugh.
During all these weeks Arthur had never taken me home to meet his family. I knew they existed: father, mother, brother, sister-in-law and niece: but I had never met them. Every time I asked, he would reply that his family wasn’t like ours, and he never told his family much about his private life. This was good enough for me, I loved and trusted Arthur and knew he would ‘take me home’ when he was good and ready. Dad had other ideas, and being Dad, boy, were they bizarre! Because Arthur said he lived near Stoke Newington, a largely Jewish area and, because of the shape of his nose, Dad had it all worked out. He was convinced that Arthur was Jewish, married with several children, and I was his bit on the side! ‘You mark my words! He’s of the Jewish faith, and married with a family ’ said Dad. ‘He’s not going to make a fool out of me. I know what he’s up to. I’m a man and I was young once.’ When Mum and I laughed at him and told him he was being silly, he got even angrier. I told Arthur what Daddy was saying, and he couldn’t believe it. Of course, once he knew Dad a lot better, he could believe it!
Arthur now had the choice of not seeing me again, creating a bad atmosphere with Mum and Dad, or letting me meet his family. Of course, he chose to take me home to tea.
Mrs Chapman has prepared a traditional British Sunday tea, consisting of ham salad, fruit and cream, and homemade cake. When I arrived in the new dress bought especially for the occasion, there was Mr. and Mrs, Chapman, Arthur’s elder brother Bill, Bill’s wife Jean, and their little girl Wendy, all waiting to see what I looked like. We spent a few hours in strained chitchat, and then Arthur said we had to go. They seemed like nice people and I couldn’t for the life of me see why he had kept them and me a secret for so long. At last I could reassure Daddy that his eldest daughter’s new boyfriend wasn’t a bigamist, mass murderer or bank robber, but just a fine boy who he would learn to become very fond of.
Everything was chugging along very nicely for Arthur and I, when Dad had his next crazy idea. He and Mum had been idly chatting about life’s prospects, when they started to wonder what it would be like living in another country. Not having any ready money made this conversation a little like a ‘what we would do if we won the pools’ discussion, until the subject of Australia reared it’s head.

To be continued…

A CHANGE OF JOB

2008-09-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

During this period of my life, I was getting very frustrated at work and wanted to become a full time telephonist; not just a relief operator to stand in when Molly wanted to go to lunch or to the loo. At the time, this seemed a big decision to take and I was rather scared. But I went for it, and changed my job.
My new position was with a company called Williams Bros. They were very big in those days, rather like the Co-op. They had stores all over London and the Home Counties and owned chains of butcher’s shops, greengrocers, florists, grocers and furniture stores.
I was employed by them as a telephonist/receptionist, and loved being in charge of the switchboard all day. The pay was three pounds five shillings (£3.25), ten shillings (50p) more than my last job. Now that Dad was working and I didn’t have to give the whole of my wage packet to Mum, I felt quite rich. Each morning I would by a daily paper on the way to work, and each evening buy the Evening Standard to read on the bus journey home. This really was the working girl’s world!
Payday was always the day that I loved because it was on that day that I could buy Mummy and the children their weekly treats. The ritual was always the same, every Friday night, until I left home.
Firstly, I would go into the local cake-shop and buy Mummy two ‘Melting Moments’. These were little cakes in paper cases that truly did melt in your mouth as you ate them, and Mum loved them. Then, I would make my way to the sweetshop and buy an assortment of sweets, so that each of my brothers and sisters received a collection of sweets for themselve I don’t recollect Dougie or Billy’s reactions, but I can still picture Sandie, Tina and Babs jumping up and down with excitement, hands flapping at their sides, as they shouted ‘Treat day! Treat day! when I walked through the kitchen doorway.
They are all middle-aged ladies now, but I bet that they too can still remember those Fridays.
It was about this time that I gave up my amateur dramatics. Although I still enjoyed my hobby, my life was getting busier and I had lots of other things to occupy my time, such as going to Maurice Jay’s School of Dancing twice a week. No time for learning lines and dress rehearsals now!
I loved my job, loved my new dancing classes, and loved my new- found dreamboat.

CUPID TAKES AIM

When each Saturday night came around, I would curl my hair with dozens of small metal ‘Dinky’ hair-curlers (rollers hadn’t been invented yet), put on my ‘war-paint’ and, don my three inch, high-heeled, silver, dancing shoes and catch the trolley-bus to Maurice Jay’s School of Dancing in Wood Green.
One of the hit records of the time was by a band (the word ‘group’ would not be invented until years later) called Pee-Wee Hunt, and was entitled ‘Twelfth Street Rag’. This was our favourite record for dancing the quickstep to. Although we weren’t yet officially going steady, no matter who we were dancing with, Arthur and I would always get together as soon as this tune came on. Before I became Arthur’s girl, I went out and bought ‘Twelfth-Street Rag’ so that I could play it at home and dream about him. I still have this same original 78rpm recording that I purchased sixty-one years ago! It’s one of my most treasured mementoes.

By the time we left Maurice Jay’s, the last bus had usually departed. Arthur, myself and another girl called Jean would start the long trek home on foot. I lived the nearest, so Arthur and Jean would bid be farewell at the bottom of my road and the two of them would continue on until he dropped Jean off at her house.

I was still working hard to get him to myself, and was now halfway there. After a couple of weeks, I successfully persuaded him that two was company and three a crowd! From then on, he only took me home. This was wonderful as we then had plenty of time to talk. I would walk along beside him, my arm tucked lightly through his, his hand deep in his raincoat pocket. How I longed for him to hold my hand, but he didn’t. One evening, I linked arms with him as usual, and then decided to take the initiative. I let my hand slowly drift down his sleeve and into his hand. I was home and dry! He didn’t say anything and neither did I, but I felt that this was going to be ‘the start of something big’

To be cont…

OLD LOVE RE- REVISITED

2008-09-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

Between leaving school and meeting my future husband, I once again became friendly with Lennie Waring from my days with Aunty and Uncle in Blackpool. I must have obtained his address from Aunty, and by now he was serving in the Army and stationed in Trieste, Italy.
We began writing long letters to each other , which inevitably became love letters. We would make pacts to look at the moon, at the same time, on the same night and we also exchanged photographs.

These were the photos we exchanged

One time he sent me a beautiful pair of pure silk stockings (nylons had not become available yet), and I showed them to Ruby, who was green with envy. Unfortunately for Ruby, no amount of money could buy silk stockings: they weren’t available. How she begged and cajoled me to let her have them. She made a fantastic offer of two pounds ten shillings (£2.50) for them, but I was adamant. How could I ever sell a token of love, even though I had no intention of wearing them! Lennie at last got leave, which he spent at his home in Bolton, Lancashire. We arranged to meet fleetingly as he passed through London on his way back to Trieste. We were to meet each other on the platform of Charing Cross railway station, before he was once again whisked out of my life. We only had a few minutes together and I got my first, long awaited kiss from him. It was also my last. We had no time to talk as the train was already filling up with soldiers and ready to leave. I stood and watched as Lennie and the train disappeared into the distance. A few months later the romance fizzled out. I was probably a lot younger and less experienced in life than he thought, and we gradually stopped writing. I never saw him again, but have often wondered what became of him. Someone once told me he worked for the Evening News in Bolton, but I don’t know in what capacity.
Because I had led quite a sheltered life as far as boys were concerned, I had never learned to dance, and had never been to a dance hall. This was quite a handicap to me, as a teenager. Most young people met on the dance floor, and it was one of the most likely places to find a boyfriend. As Mum and Dad didn’t like the idea of their daughter frequenting dance halls and getting ‘picked up’ this option was not open to me. I was almost sixteen when my friend Doreen suggested that we go to a place she had discovered where they taught you to dance. For me, it killed two birds with one stone. It was similar to a social club, where you could meet new friends, but I could also learn ballroom dancing. As it turned out, it was the most momentous thing I ever did, and it changed my life forever.
I didn’t know what to expect as I joined Doreen’s group of friends in the Lady’s Cloakroom. The conversation, amidst lots of silly giggling seemed to be mainly about this male they all fancied, and who’d playfully taken one of the girl’s headscarves home with him the week before. Since I didn’t know the girls, or the boy that they were talking about, I felt rather left out of the conversation.
Doreen said: ‘Let’s all go into the dance hall and wait for him to arrive.’ Having put on their lipstick and straightened their stocking seams, all the girls streamed back into the dance room to await this 'dreamboat.'
In due course, he walked through the door and the girls started giggling and nudging each other again. He walked over to our group and said hello. He was a couple of inches short of six feet tall, very slim and showing off the most wonderful suntan that I had ever seen. The two things that I noticed first about him were his eyes, which were very dark brown and fringed with thick lashes, and his long, slender fingers. He was dressed in a silver-grey suit, which showed off both his glorious tan and his broad shoulders. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘you are quite dishy, after all.’
The dance instructors separated us all into two groups, male and female, to learn our respective steps. A bit later Dorrie, the instructress shouted ‘Find a partner.’ Miracle of miracles, ‘dreamboat’ came over to me and asked: ‘Shall we?’ As we took to the floor, he introduced himself.
‘ My name’s Arthur, what do they call you?’
We danced most of the evening together and later, after we had said goodnight, I went home floating on air. I didn’t know if he would be interested in me, but I was jolly well going to try and make him so. I was nearly sixteen. I had never been out with a boy and all this was very new and exciting to me.

This is a photo of Arthur , taken just before I met him. He's the one in the foreground wearing sunglasses.

AM DRAM

2008-09-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry but this blog got overlooked and should have gone in before the last one so I'm adding it now, but it's a little out of order!

When Dad had returned to the fold and resumed work, life became a little less hectic. It was then I decided to join the local Youth Club, and became a member of the drama group.
The first performance that we put on was a one-act play by Noel Coward, called ‘Fumed Oak’. In this I played the Mother-in-law. It was tremendous fun rehearsing each week. The Youth Club’s venue was in my old school at Stroud Green, and one of the teachers ran the drama group. His name was Geoff and he was very enthusiastic, as were we all. The public performance of the play was a big success, so Geoff entered us in the Hornsey Drama Festival. This was open to all amateur dramatic groups in the borough, and ran in ‘heats’ over several weeks. Much to our amazement, we managed to get into the finals. The winning group were to perform a three-act play in the Town Hall Theatre, under the direction of a professional theatrical director. We didn’t come first, but we did come second, and considering this was the first production we had ever put on, it was quite a feather in our cap.

The icing on the cake came a few days later. The winning drama group (The Ansata Players) didn’t have enough members to cast the play they had chosen, so they decided to cream off the best actors from the runners up. I was the one they chose from our drama group!
It was great fun rehearsing with a real director and I made a lot of new friends. Having only acted on school and church platforms, it was quite a shock performing on a professional stage. The size of it took my breath away, and ‘Exit Left’ took on a different meaning when the wings were so far away from centre stage.
The great night arrived and the Town Hall was packed to capacity. All my family and friends were out there rootin’ for me on this very exciting night. All went well, and we had good press notices. Ansata asked me if I would like to join their company and I appeared in several more plays. It was great fun. Coincidentally, one of the company (who was rather dishy) was called Philip Chapman. Little did I know at the tender age of fifteen that Chapman would become my married name, and Philip the name of my first-born son.

To be cont…

A WORKING GIRL'S WORLD

2008-09-14T05:47:00.000-07:00

As the year progressed I began to think once more about Art College. Then ‘Sod’s Law’ struck: Dad became ill again,
This time he was admitted to the North Middlesex Hospital. He had some sort of skin disorder, an allergy to the treatment for his ulcerated legs. Naturally, as Dad was self-employed and the only breadwinner, this created a very serious and worrying situation for us, the family. Daddy was going to be away in hospital for quite a while, so I offered to go out to work. I didn’t expect to earn a fortune, but when you have nothing, anything is acceptable. Of course, I hadn’t planned for, or expected this to happen, but there really wasn’t any alternative. It was a bit scary, as I’d not even thought about a career, other than art,
Sixty years ago, choosing a career, if you were female, was quite unlike today. In general the upper classes went to University and became doctors, lawyers, politicians and the like. The middle classes went to grammar school and became secretaries, librarians, school teachers, bankers and so on. The working classes however, didn’t really have much choice: it was office- work, shop-work or factory-work. Even the working class girls had sub-classes. It was considered ‘proper’ to have an office job, and you were generally a ‘cut above’ the shop-girl. Factory workers were at the very bottom of the pile, and I would rather have died than work there. I opted for office work.

My first job was as a typist at ‘Kay’s Film Laboratories’. This was better than I had hoped for. The office was about 15 minutes walk from home (no bus fares) and meant that I would become involved, albeit in a miniscule way, with the film industry,
Kay’s Laboratories was responsible for developing, printing and editing commercial films. Most of the companies work was concerned with Ministry of Information films.. These films were made for distribution to the public and used for educational purposes. From them we were supposed to learn how to deal with living during, and after, the war. We processed short films put out by the Post Office, The Ministry of Food, Health, Education, and Housing etc. We also processed the Television Newsreel films.
Stan, the motorbike courier, would roar over to the laboratory, pick up the cans of completed newsreels, and roar back to Alexandra Palace in time to transmit that day’s news to the few fortunate people who owned television sets. At that time I had never even seen a television set, let alone watched one!

Occasionally, feature films were printed and copied. When this occurred, we were allowed to watch a private showing in our own theatre. On one memorable occasion, we had the composer Charles Williams visit the Lab. He wrote the background music as he watched the film. I was absolutely fascinated by this procedure. The film was ‘While I Live’ which is now one of those old black- and-white classics, and the theme music ‘The Dream of Olwen’, is still played from time to time on the radio.
I shared my office with three other girls: Molly the telephonist, Brenda the other typist and Dorothy, who was in charge. Molly fascinated me. She was an ex-GPO telephonist who spoke with a GPO telephonist voice and knew all the proper terms and phrases. It was from Molly that I learned the phonetic alphabet, the A-apple B-Bertie C-Charlie version that all telephonists used at that time. My little cog in this big wheel was to type out instructions to the various developing, printing and editing rooms. I also had to make tea and do all the other odd jobs a junior is landed with. Since I’d never even seen a typewriter before, a lot of my time was spent learning to type. I was also expected to learn how to operate the switchboard. This was the part of my job that I liked most of all.

Me in my first job at Kay's
aged fifteen

LIFE AFTER SCHOOL

2008-09-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

From the moment Babs was born, Nurse Jones the District Nurse was a regular visitor to our house. She was Irish, very friendly, and I liked her a lot. She used to sit and chat to Mummy while I made us all a cup of tea. On one occasion, I made a pot of tea and offered the nurse a slice of home-made cake that I had baked that very morning. She ate it with relish and had a second slice believing, naturally, that Mum had baked it. Mummy told her that it was all my own doing and Nurse Jones was amazed. She couldn't believe that at fourteen years of age I could make such delicious cakes. It was nothing out of the ordinary as far as I was concerned: I'd been cooking for some time.

Nurse Jones asked if I would like to come and work for her as a cook. She was a busy career-person and didn't ever have the time to cook proper meals for herself, let alone bake cakes. She enthused over how lovely it would be to return from work to home-cooking each day. I was really chuffed to think that, at fourteen, my cooking was good enough for the District Nurse, but I graciously declined her offer. I hoped to aspire to greater things!

It was time to think about getting Babs christened. Since the rest of us children had been bought up in the Catholic faith, Babs was to be no different.
Mum had to find two Godmothers and one Godfather for her, in accordance with Roman Catholic practice. I can’t remember who the Godmothers were, but Mike the American Sailor (who happened to be a Catholic) was chosen as her Godfather. I cannot conceive why Mum and Dad chose him, as he was due to go back to the States very soon. Perhaps they thought and hoped that he would keep in touch, which would have been beneficial to Babs in later life (another mad idea?), but Mike it was.
In the summer of 1946, before he went home, Mike asked Ruby to follow him to the States so that they could be married. Ruby of course got very excited about this. Unfortunately she was never able to obtain a visa and, though she tried very hard, Mike duly departed from Ruby and Babs’s life forever.

Mike

Probably the first time you have seen your Godfather Babs!

Mum never had a job outside the home from the day she married Dad, with the exception of one brief period during the late 1950s, when she did a short spell of temporary office-work. Since she was either pregnant and/or nursing small children most of her life, she really never had the chance. In any case, Dad was one of the old school who thought that it was the man’s responsibility to provide for his family, even if, as in his case, it was difficult to do so. However, there was just one occasion that Mum caused quite a stir by going to work. Dad got a contract to paint and decorate the frontage of a butcher’s shop situated in our local high street at Harringay. He needed a labourer to assist him, the money wasn’t really enough to split with someone else. Mum suggested that she go with him; that way they could keep all the money. Dad laughed and said’ Why not?’. He thought it would be a fun-thing to do, so he fixed Mummy up with white bib and brace, and a paint kettle, and off they went.
There wasn’t even the faintest whisper of equal opportunities in those days; so one can imagine how much it stimulated the interest of passing shoppers. Mummy shinned up and down the ladder and negotiated the scaffolding like an old hand at the game, much to the amusements of the butchers in the shop, and the passing trade below. All her life Mum thrived on attention, and she certainly received enough on that occasion. It was an experience never to be forgotten and she was, rightly so, rather proud of herself.

Have been asked what our lovely Mum looked like. Here are a few photos for those interested:

ON LEAVING SCHOOL

2008-09-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

Before I finally left Stroud Green Secondary, Inky (Mr. Stephens), the Headmaster, requested that my parents come to the school to see him. When they arrived, they were ushered into the Head’s study, while I was told to sit on a chair outside. I couldn’t think what I’d done to justify this visitation as I was a regular little ‘goodie-two-shoes’. My ears could just pick out the sounds of Mum and Dad’s voices mumbling away in the office and, finally, the door opened and Inky asked me to come inside.
His first question was: ‘How would you like to stay on at school and train to become a teacher?’ I was thunderstruck. Firstly, I never thought I was clever enough to do this and, secondly I hated maths so much that, for me, leaving school was equivalent to breaking out of Alkatras. In any case, I had set my heart on attending Hornsey Art College to learn designing. At that time, cash grants weren’t available to help students, as they were in later years. Dad would have to pay for me to go to college, so I didn’t think my dreams had very much chance of coming true. Still, becoming a teacher definitely was not an option, as far as I was concerned.
Mr. Stephens emphatically assured me that I was a very clever girl, and would do well if I stayed on at school. He also pointed out that, as I was consistently top of the art class, and obviously had talent in that field, I probably had a future in art, if that was what I really wanted. As I hadn’t attended grammar school, I would have to stay in my present school for another two years. This, I didn’t want. Mum and Dad said that it was for me to make the decision and choose for myself.
I was adamant. As I saw the situation, I was about to endure the torment of a lifetime doing maths! Mr. Stephens said I should think carefully, as it was a great opportunity for me,
I thought carefully, for all of ten seconds, and said ‘NO!’
Daddy’s next remark made it all wonderful again.
‘Leeta has set her heart on going to Hornsey Art College and, frankly, that’s what we’d planned for her. I know it will be expensive, but we’ll manage that, somehow.’
I was overjoyed and my cup ranneth over. But this was to be another of my Father’s well-meant, but rash decisions.
I left school and my parents shortly put my next career-move to me. How would I like to take a year off from education and spend it at home with my mum? This would give me a break from schooling and, at the same time, be company (and help) for Mum, who had just had her fourth daughter and sixth child Babs. After my sabbatical, I could then go on to Art College and start work in earnest. I agreed, only too happy to be with Mum and the new baby all day.
My father, who was self employed as a painter and decorator, didn’t really earn enough to feed all the mouths that he had created. However, he said that he would pay me ten shillings (50p) a week pocket money (a princely sum in 1945), to do various jobs around the house and help Mum with the little ones. Sixty-three years on, I still have his yellowed and tatty piece of paper listing the jobs, which involved me in running errands, making tea, doing shopping and taking babies for walks.
We were best friends, Mummy and I, and we loved doing things together. She was only about thirty-five years old and very young at heart. I was fourteen and very grown up, and we got on very well together. We shared the cooking and housework, and she taught me how to do dressmaking. I shared the looking after and bringing-up of Sandie, Tina and Babs.
Mummy and I went shopping together and how she loved it when the shopkeepers took us for sisters! She was always very attractive in a glamorous sort of way, and turned heads wherever she went. I was very proud of her, particularly since she’d had six children.

To be continued…

FIRST LOVE !

2008-09-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

It was customary for the top class at school to present a Christmas play for the rest of the school, and this year it was to be ‘Little Women’. I had been chosen to play Mrs. March and was dressed in a floor-length costume, with a crisp, white apron, my head covered in a white lacy mop cap. I felt very elegant and important. Best of all, I was allowed to wear make-up. This consisted of a little face powder, a scraping of mascara and some lipstick.
We got ready for our first full dress rehearsal, and I donned my make-up. The effect on the male members of the class was electrifying! Suddenly, I was transformed from an insignificant, shy classmate, to a femme fatale. This was the unforgettable highlight of my last year of school.
David H, together with Arthur P. (who were the two boys that all the girls fancied) chased me all round the desks, trying to kiss me. Although secretly thrilled, I was embarrassed and nervous, as I had never been out with a boy, let alone kissed one. What a sheltered life I’d led! Arthur finally caught me and kissed me. It was as if all the lights in the world flashed on and off and, at the same time all the bells started to ring. On the last day of term, we performed our play and it went really well. After the final curtain call, another boy in my class called Tony asked me if I would be his girl. I said ‘yes’ and got another earth shattering kiss. He said I could wear his ring over the Christmas holidays. It was a huge, silver skull-and-crossbones ring. Normally, I would have thought it hideous, but this was all so romantic that I took it and swore to keep it carefully until the start of next term. I couldn’t really wear it. It was so unfeminine; and anyway, Mum would have wanted to know where it had come from. So I hid it away until school started again in January. When I saw Tony again, it was as if nothing had ever happened between us.
He said ‘Have you bought my ring back?’
I said ‘ Yes here it is’.
He said ‘ Thanks very much’.
And we both went on our way. End of romance!!!

To be continued…

AMERICAN FUDGE

2008-09-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Ruby started going out with an American sailor called Mike. We thought he was wonderful. He used to bring part of his rations each month to our house. One delicacy that particularly springs to mind was chocolate fudge. Because they were rationed, we had very few sweets, and certainly not chocolate. This naval ration fudge came in tins. I don’t mean tins that you could open and close, but tins that had to be opened at each end with a can opener, just like tins of corned beef. The fudge was then pushed out of the tin, and emerged in a solid roll. Mike would cut it into cubes and share it amongst us. The smell and taste of it was something not to be forgotten.
Having a real, live, American sailor around the house was to us young girls almost like living with a film star in our midst. At the tender age of twelve or thirteen, any one who had a genuine American accent was only one step removed from Clark Gable. The only time we ever heard an American accent was when it came from the silver screen. This one was actually in our house!
To add to his magical charm, Mike had told us that his sister was married to the singer/ film star Dick Haymes. He was a teenage idol (a bit like Cliff Richards was in his younger days). Mike promised us that he would get his sister to send us Dick Haymes’ autograph, but it never arrived. In retrospect, I think it was just a sailor spinning a line to impress us all. He probably didn’t even have a sister.
My last six months at school were great fun; at thirteen-and-a-half I was beginning to grow up, and the boys were starting to notice me. The main reason for this was, to my great embarrassment, because the first bra that I ever owned was a size thirty-four! Most of my friends had no boobs at all. The rest of me was quite slim and here was I, bustin’ out all over!
One of my out-of-school friends was Judy. She lived in the house opposite ours and I admired her very much. She was pretty and had a trim figure; her hair was long (which mine never was) and blonde, and curly. We used to ‘swoon’ over the same spotty, little boys, and go all wobbly when we listened to Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto on the radio. She was a great drama-queen and knew just how to play for effect. Once she ‘twisted’ her ankle while we were out with the boys. They and I had to support her on all sides, whilst she hobbled home in ‘agony’ all the time whimpering and almost collapsing in a faint from the pain! Strangely enough, she was quite recovered by the next day, and I realised that it was all done for to gain the attention of the two lads we were with.
We had a sort of eternal triangle syndrome. I had a crush on Colin, Colin had a crush on Judy, and Judy had a crush on Judy too! Such is youth. Colin’s dad died, and the family immigrated to Australia, and Judy’s family just moved away one day. I often wonder what became of her. She probably became an actress!

To be continued…

PEACE AT LAST

2008-09-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

Soon the spring of 1945 was upon us, and with the spring came VE (Victory over Europe) day. The war with Germany, at least, was over and at last we could think of going home. Three months later, the world’s mightiest and most devastating weapon of all time, the Atom bomb, was dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, ending the war with Japan. The two wars that had ravaged so many people’s lives had spanned six long years.
It was strange being back at Oakfield Road after what seemed like a lifetime away. But soon evacuation was all behind us and life returned to an even keel.
Dougie and I went back to Stroud Green Secondary School. I had been in the youngest class of the Senior School when I left, and was now in the top class with only a year to go before leaving school forever.
One of the first things I remember about returning to school was all my classmates asking me why I ‘talked funny’, and my spending snatched moments here and there teaching them Yorkshire-speak! For instance to be ‘starved’ in Bradford meant that you were cold, whereas in London you were hungry. A Yorkshire mother might ‘play pot’ with you (give you a good telling off) and anything good was ‘gradely’.
Now I was back in London, I realised how biased my education had been in Yorkshire. In Bradford my geography and history lessons had been primarily concerned with the north of England. We were taught all about the mills and the cotton industry. I knew all about the spinning Jenny and Watt Tyler and wafts and weaves and mill girls and clogs. I had been completely unaware of these parts of our heritage until living in Grange-over-Sands and Bradford.
What in London was called Domestic Science had been Housewifery in Bradford. These lessons in Bradford were out of this world! On Housewifery days the girls would board a school bus and ride off into the wilds of Yorkshire, to attend a special school that only taught that subject. The school was a one storey, stone building surrounded, as you might imagine, with dry-stone walling and fields. The inside of the school comprised of one large room that was very bleak and Spartan. There were deep Butler sinks and black, iron gas stoves that stood on curly, metal legs. The tables we worked at were wooden and scrubbed white. Here we were taught how to make our own soap and how to wash clothes using a dolly in a tub. A dolly was shaped like a four-legged stool with a long pole coming up from the centre, with a crosspiece at the top, all made of wood. The washtub was placed on the floor and filled with hot soapy water and dirty clothes. The idea being, that you stood the dolly in the tub on top of the dirty clothing and pounded it, lifting and turning the dolly by the crosspiece: obviously the forerunner of the automatic washing machine!

We learned how to iron, using fluting irons. These were like curling tongs that put ruffles around the frills on pillowcases and doilies. Everything we touched was like something out of the Victoria and Albert Museum!

How different it was from our domestic Science lesson at Stroud green School. True, we still has to travel to another school, but when we got there the facilities were better than home! We had a purpose-built, fully furnished flat that we learned to clean and maintain. There was running hot water, modern ovens, and we learned how to cook nourishing meals and wholesome food using rationed produce. These were, as the teacher used to say, ‘Meals fit to welcome your fathers home from the war with’.

When the Americans dropped the atom bomb on Japan and ended the Second World War, I had just three months to go to my fourteenth birthday. The war had started so many years ago, when I was such a little girl of eight, and here I was, almost ready to go out in the world and earn my living.

WAR TIME HOBBIES contd...

2008-08-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

WAR TIME HOBBIES contd…

Another hobby, born out of the wartime motto ‘make-do-and- mend’, was making flowers out of modelling wax. I don’t think modelling wax is around any more. It used to be sold in sticks of a similar shape and size to stage make-up. It came in every shade you could imagine and, if you were lucky, scented to boot!
Every one in the family had a go at this. There weren’t many fresh flowers around (it was frowned upon to use any ground space for growing anything but fruit and vegetables), so this was a good substitute that brightened up a table or a windowsill. First we picked twigs and stripped any leaves from them. Then we softened the wax, broke off little pieces and rolled them into balls. These were then flattened into disc-shapes and secured to the twigs, like petals. With practice, you could get quite good at it. Most households had a vase full of these horrendous ‘flowers’. If it wasn’t wax flowers taking pride of place, it was crepe-paper flowers: equally ugly!
There was no limit to the things one could do with an old sock or yesterday’s newspaper. Even empty baked bean cans were used to make flower arrangements. These were not for us children though, as this floral extravaganza entailed cutting the tin into long strands with scissors, and then twisting them into spirals! One wartime hobby that has now made a very fashionable comeback is he art of making rag rugs. Everyone who owned a sewing machine made these rugs. They were warm, very hard wearing, and could be made from any worn out clothing or scraps of suitable fabric. We made small rugs for putting in the hallway outside various doors, and larger ones for the fireside. The cloth had to be cut up into 4” squares, sorted into pleasing colour combinations, and then machined diagonally onto a sacking back. I used to cut up the squares, the younger children helped to sort them, and Mum machined like crazy. I helped make many of these rugs during the war, and also made quite a few for my own home in later life.
Before I leave the Bradford period I must tell, you the following tale. In the January 1996, I learned that Ruby was ill in hospital. I had not spoken to my cousin Rita for about four years and decided to telephone her to enquire about her sister Ruby’s state of health. Our conversation got around to the good old days and evacuation, and I asked her what had happened to her after we had left her behind in Grange-over-Sands.
‘I thought you knew,’ she said. ‘After you left Grange, Mr. Quarry had a heart attack and I was moved to another house. I stayed there a little while, and then was moved on again.’
‘What happened next?’ I asked. ‘Did you return to Oakfield Road before us, then?’
‘No’ said Rita. ‘ I joined you all in Bradford, didn’t I?
I had absolutely no recollection of her being at Duckworth Lane, but she told me details of the school we attended and the room we slept in, and she convinced me that she did indeed live there for a time. I’ve thought about this memory lapse of mine, and have come to the following conclusion. By the time Rita had come to Bradford I had formed new friends. She most likely wasn’t in the same school class as I was, and we probably did our own thing in our free time. If this was the case, I don’t suppose she was imprinted on any very memorable times we had. I have already found this to be the case with my brother Doug. I know that he came with me to Bradford, but I don’t have any memories of him being there either. Again, he would only have been seven years old (still very young) , whilst I was twelve and almost a teenager.

To be continued…

WARTIME HOBBIES

2008-08-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

My all-consuming hobby when I was twelve and thirteen was, surprisingly, not boys. In those days, children of thirteen were still children, and my hobby was collecting pictures of Hollywood film stars. I had several scrapbooks into which I pasted all the film stars’ photos I could lay my hands on. I used to spend all the money I had on the two magazines that were all about Hollywood and the stars. One was called Picturegoer and the other, Filmgoer. I’d give my eyeteeth for a back edition of one of those magazines now! All the girls in my class were crazy about Hollywood, and we collected and swapped pictures at every opportunity.

One time, I had a picture of a starlet that I didn’t know. Not to be outdone, I duly pasted her into my book and wrote beneath the cutting the word ‘anon’. This happened again, so I followed the same procedure; Mummy had told me years earlier what the word anon. meant. Later, at school, I was showing my collection to a girl in my class. She looked at the photographs of the two ‘unknowns’ and said ‘you’d never guess that they were the same person, they look so different!’
One of the side effects of the war was a paper shortage. Of course, there were a great many shortages, most of which we kids didn’t worry about. The smaller children didn’t remember things like chocolate and bananas, while oranges and lemons was just a nursery rhyme. I was quite aware that clothes and food were rationed, but as a family we never bought great quantities of either. Mum was a good manager and we never seemed to go short of the things that really mattered. But a paper shortage – that was different. That had a serious affect on my film star collection!
I had been unable to continue my hobby in Grange-over-Sands. We didn’t live anywhere near a newsagent, so I didn’t have the opportunity to buy my magazines. Then we moved to Bradford and it was all systems go! I hurried down to the local paper shop, which was a few doors away, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. The shopkeeper soon informed me that owing to limited availability Picturegoer and Filmgoer were only for regular customers who had always ordered them from him. I cajoled and pleaded, but to no avail.
Back home I sat and thought deeply about this problem. Then I hit on an idea. I would boldly walk up to the counter and, clutching my money, announce that I’d been sent by Mrs. Jones to collect her copy of Picturegoer. If questioned, I would tell the newsagent that Mrs Jones had a headache and couldn’t come out. I don’t think it occurred to me that he probably didn’t have a customer called Mrs. Jones. Or maybe it did, and I decided to live dangerously. Of course it didn’t work, although I tried it on more than one shop. From then on, until the end of the war, film stars were very thin on the ground.
To be continued…

LIFE IN BRADFORD

2008-08-28T04:49:00.000-07:00

EVACUATION – THE REAL THING contd…

Coming from a working class background, our abode was very much make-do-and-mend, with Dad’s decorating prowess and Mummy’s homemaking skills well to the fore. We didn’t go in for quality furnishings. We couldn’t afford them. So Mr and Mrs. Quarry’s home seemed to me to be very posh. Looking back, it was just a normal middle class home.
Mummy, being Mummy would send little parcels to Dougie and I from time to time. They would contain small items of clothing, such as socks and underwear, and little treats like chocolate and biscuits. Se would write lovely funny little letters that would make us laugh. Rita didn’t often get any letters or parcels, and this didn’t go down very well with Mrs Quarry. I think, in a way, she resented me having a caring family and so favoured Rita more than me. Throughout all this Rita and I remained firm friends.
We tended to be sent to bed rather earlier that we had been used to at home in London. Sometimes we would read our books but, on one occasion, we invented a new pastime, which we were to regret. One of us, I can’t remember which, discovered that if we curled the corner of our handkerchief into a spiral and inserted it up our nostril, by gently tickling the inside of our nose, it would produce very loud and violent sneezing. How stupid can you get? After a time, Mrs Quarry, who had been listening to the prolific sneezing from downstairs, hurried up with doses of medicine for the pair of us, insisting that we were ‘going down with something’. We didn’t dare tell her the truth, so we took our medicine.

LIFE IN BRADFORD

Meanwhile, back in London, the raids were still very bad and the Government had now decided to offer evacuation to mothers with young children and babies. This, of course, included Mummy and Gwen.
My mother sent a letter to me at Grange-over-Sands telling me that she had moved with Tina, Sandie and Billy to a place called Bradford. She and Gwen, with the four small children, had been allocated a large house in Duckworth Lane. Sharing the house with them was another young mother who had been evacuated from a place called Wood Green in North London. I had never heard of Wood Green and I had no idea that it was to have such a big influence on my life in future years.
Once Mum had settled in, she quickly realised that Bradford wasn’t that far away from Grange, so she came to visit us, leaving the small children with Gwen.
We were beside ourselves with excitement at seeing Mummy again. Unfortunately, we weren’t going to see Dad for some time, as he had been left behind in London. He had to continue to work and earn money to keep our flat going until we could all return to Oakfield Road once more.
We walked Mummy round the town, showing her all the places we frequented. She in turn told us stories about Billy and Sandie and the things they were getting up to. I was also very interested in the progress of the new baby, little Tina.
When we returned to the Quarry homestead, Mrs. Quarry told Rita and I to go and play in the study while she and Mr Quarry talked to Mummy in the lounge. I felt very upset and cheated. I hadn’t seen my mother for such a long, long time, and now I was being shut out of the room while Mr and Mrs Quarry took up my precious time with her. What I didn’t know was that Mum was arranging to take Dougie and I to live with her in Bradford.
Mrs Quarry assumed that, because Gwen was Rita’s sister and also Peter’s Aunty, she would want to take them to Bradford as well. Nothing was further from the truth. Gwen was a young, newly married wife and mother of a newborn baby, whose husband was away fighting in the war, and Gwen and Rita were actually stepsisters. They shared the same mother but had different fathers, and although she of course loved her sister and nephew, Gwen really didn’t want the added responsibility of two more children to care for, and who could really blame her?
The Quarrys were aghast at this news, and poor, old Mum had to take the brunt of it because Gwen wasn’t there to say her piece. When Mummy left us to go back to Bradford, the atmosphere was less than cheery at Grange. It was therefore with great joy that Dougie and I left to join Mum and be a family once more.
72, Duckworth Lane was a three storey, Victorian house with a flight of stone steps leading up to a solid front door. Once inside the front door, we found ourselves in a large hallway with more stairs going up to our part of the house. The ground floor was occupied by a mother and daughter. They had fled the German occupation of Jersey in the Channel Islands, ending up, like us, in Bradford. They were both French, but could speak English. The little girl was about seven years old.
Leading off the hall was the cellar door. The cellar was a large, almost empty room with a flagstone floor. In one corner was a copper with a sturdy, wooden lid. This was where all the laundry for the entire household was boiled, rinsed, and mangled.
Our living area on the first floor compromised of two large rooms, one overlooking the back garden and the other the front main road. The room at the front was quite large and was a communal kitchen/living room,
There was a gas cooker just inside the door, and a large, old fashioned kitchen table stood in the centre of the room. Around and about, were a settee and various armchairs. I imagine all the furniture was supplied to us by the Bradford Council.
A further flight of stairs led to the top of the house, where there were two more large bedrooms. The front rood had dormer windows from which you could se the sky. Although this was my bedroom, I never liked being in it. There were tales of it being haunted and the room used to spook me.
Apart from this, I was very happy living in Bradford. I went to the local school, picked up a broad Yorkshire accent and became a teenager. This all happened in a short span of time. Quite a lot of other things happened during our stay there.
Daddy came to visit us and became bedridden there for a while with his ulcerated legs. These were a legacy from a traffic accident and were to stay with him, on and off, for the rest of his life. Of course we loved having him there with us, and we would all sit on the bed while he showed us how to draw and colour.
While we were in Bradford, we all caught mumps and then chicken pox, though not at the same time! We also acquired head lice! Sometimes I wonder how Mum coped with all our traumas, and us, but she did.
Tina was an especially tiny baby at birth (and I believe that to this day she is the shortest member of the family) and Mummy worried about her. One day Tina was taken ill and rushed off to the Bradford Infirmary, where they suspected meningitis. Mum was told that they would have to perform a lumbar puncture on Tina, and the doctor asked Mummy to phone the hospital at a given time for the results. We all sat watching the clock and, at last, it was time to telephone. Mummy was too frightened to make the call, so she asked me to do it. I didn’t really know what meningitis was, only that it was something that my mother greatly feared, and that Tina might have it. Thankfully, the results were negative, though I don’t know what I would have done had they been otherwise!
We lived near the school and Doug and I used to come home for lunch each day. As we came through the kitchen door, Mummy would be standing at the cooker preparing a hot lunch for us all. We’d all sit down round the big, wooden table and, while we ate our lunch, we would tell Mum what we’d been up to at school. Usually the radio would be playing in the background and we’d sing-along with Bing Crosby and ‘Swinging on a star’ which was top of the hit parade.
One day, the Head Teacher found out that I had never been given the chance to sit my eleven plus exam. I don’t know who thought of it, or how they managed it, but I was given a message for my parents, saying that on a certain day the school had made arrangements for me to sit this very important examination.
When the time arrived, Mummy made me feel so special. Off I went to school in a smart, white shirt and navy gymslip. I thought most of the papers were quite easy: nearly all Mensa-type puzzles and multiple choices. And, since I had always been adept at reading and writing essays, the English paper was a piece of cake.
I came home lunchtime; Mummy had made me a special lunch and laid the entire table nicely for me. She said it was important that I felt cosy and relaxed. Bless her for being the darling Mother she was. I felt like a princess! The sad part of the story was that we went back to London before the results came through. Because it was wartime and chaos reigned everywhere, I never did find out if I passed or failed the exam.

EVACUATION - THE REAL THING

2008-08-27T14:31:00.001-07:00

Dougie had recently come out of hospital after being seriously ill. The ambulance came and took him away whilst I was at school one day, and I came home to find a worried and tearful mum. Dog had been stricken with appendicitis and rushed off to the Royal Northern Hospital for an operation. That in itself wasn’t too bad, but peritonitis had set in and his life was in danger. He was on the critical list for a while, but God was with us, and he pulled through.
Shortly after this, the Government decided that all school children should be given the chance to move to a place of safety. Bill, Sandie and Tina, the latest addition to the family, were not yet of school age, so were exempt from evacuation. Sylvia had started work, so she wasn’t eligible either. That left Douglas and me, and Rita and Peter who could be sent away to a safe place.
Because of Dougie’s state of health, Mummy had made me promise that, come what may, I wouldn’t allow the authorities to separate us. When we reached our destination, as yet unknown to us, I was to tell everyone that we must be billeted together so that I could take care of Douglas. It’s only now that I write this that I can fully appreciate what terrible torment my parents must have been going through. Did they know where our destination was to be? They certainly didn’t know into whose care we would be given; this would not be decided until we actually arrived at our destination.

So there we were, the four of us (and a few hundred more) on the train to ‘somewhere in England’. We stayed overnight in a church hall: God knows where. Next day we reached our Yorkshire destination, Grange-over-Sands, a coastal town that I’d never heard of. We were ushered into yet another church hall where the share out of children proceeded.
I stuck to my guns and my promises, and said that ‘My brother and I mustn’t be parted’. Because they were cousins, Rita and Peter also wanted to be together if possible. I knew something was afoot when various WI-type ladies started to go into huddles, looking at us and murmuring amongst themselves.
‘We have these two very nice houses, quite close to each other,’ said one of the ladies, fixing me with a purposeful stare. They only have one spare bedroom each, so it isn’t very convenient to have both a boy and a girl’. I knew what was coming next.
‘If you and your cousin Rita stayed with Mr. & Mrs Quarry, your little brother and his cousin Peter could stay with Mrs. Pickering and Miss Watts’.
I opened my mouth to protest but was carried along on the verbal avalanche.
‘The two houses are so close that you’ll be able to se each other from your windows and call on Douglas every day. I’m sure your mother wouldn’t object to that; it would be very jolly for you all to be so close to each other’.
What chance did a small child of nearly twelve, in a strange place, with no one to back her up, have against all these grown ups? I shyly gave in.

Rita and I got on OK but I felt I’d let both Douglas and Mummy down. Peter and Douglas loved it where they were. They were spoiled and cosseted by the two elderly ladies. Miss Watts was companion to Mrs Pickering and they lived alone in the house at the bottom of ‘The Crag’. Apparently, Mr. Pickering was a permanent patient in a nearby institution.
Mr. And Mrs. Quarry were grey-haired and also elderly. Mr. Quarry had been a banker, but was now retired and lived only for his garden, which was beautiful. Mrs. Quarry was pleasant and kind but somehow didn’t radiate any of the love and affection that I had grown up with; so it wasn’t home, by any means. They had two grown-up children: a son and a daughter. The son was away at university somewhere and the daughter was a nurse. I never saw either of them.
The Quarry’s house reminded me of Aunty Sissie and Uncle George’s home. The curtains and carpeting (we never had carpeting at home) was co-ordinated with the three-piece suite, which was leather. There were highly polished coffee tables and heavy oak bookcases laden with leather-bound books. As well as possessing a bathroom, Mrs quarry had a kitchen that was only used for cooking and a dining room that was only used for eating in, a luxury I hadn’t encountered before.
Rita and I were allowed to sit in Mr Quarry’s study and play with his son’s solitaire. It was one of those large, carved, polished, wooden sets with beautiful, rainbow-coloured marbles.
The food was good and quite plentiful and the Quarry’s did their best to make us feel at home. We grew quite fond of Mr Quarry. He sometimes made up silly, little songs that he would sing to us at bedtimes. One such song went like this:
Come into the garden Maude
And see all our beans and peas
Come into the garden Maude
And see our evacuees
And see our evacuees.
Not exactly brilliant, but it made us giggle, especially as Mrs. Quarry’s name was Maude.

to be continued...

RATIONING AND SHORTAGES

2008-08-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sleeping in the underground contd…

If the evenings were filled with great fun and excitement the mornings were sheer Hell. The fact that I could never go to sleep till the last train pulled out didn’t make getting up (literally) at the crack of dawn very easy.
The rule was that all members of the general public using the station, as a shelter must vacate the platform before the first train arrived in the morning. To get everyone up, dressed and packed, took ages, which necessitated extremely early rising. Of course, I was very, very tired and operated on automatic pilot most of the way home.
Early on in our tube shelter days, Mummy discovered, while talking to her bedfellows, that there was a house at the street level of Manor House tube station that would store bedding till the evening for a shilling (5p) a week. At least now we didn’t have to carry everything back up the hill to our home as well as struggling to carry ourselves.
I can well remember feeling so tired that I kept blacking-out as I was walking, waves of unconsciousness sweeping over me, just for a second or two, and my feet keeping on walking. The walk must have taken us about three-quarters of an hour, but by the time we were nearly home I had begun to wake up.
It fascinated me to think that each day, as we turned the bend in the road, there could possibly be a hole where our house had been. A couple of my school friends had been bombed out, and I didn’t see why some morning it couldn’t just as easily be us. But, each day, there was 71, Oakfield Road, standing as it had since Victorian times.

RATIONING AND SHORTAGES

Almost all goods and food were in short supply; some were very scarce and a few items just vanished from out lives altogether for the duration of the war. One of the items that disappeared was the lemon. Oranges and bananas were still being imported spasmodically and reserved solely for infants less than five years of age. As Mum and Dad always seemed to have two or three children under the age of five, we did, from time to time, savour these delicacies.
I recollect a day, round about the time that the war ended, being asked to go to the local shops to purchase something for Mum. About halfway to the shops I saw, in the gutter, something bright yellow. Bending down to investigate, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Wonder of Wonders: it was a piece of real-life lemon peel. I picked it up and held it to my nose, inhaling deeply. What bliss! I had forgotten what a wonderful smell the zest of a lemon had. I held the lemon peel tightly in my hand, all thoughts of errands consigned to oblivion, and rushed back home with my treasure so that all the family could have a sniff!
Food was under strict control and everything was rationed in varying amounts. Ration books were colour coded: buff for adults, blue for children and green, I believe, was for babies. On the rare occasions that bananas were delivered to the shop, word would quickly spread and there would soon be a lengthy queue of mums waving green ration books ant the greengrocer.
Meat, eggs, butter cheese, tea sugar and bacon were issued on a weekly basis of so many ounces per person, whereas flour, biscuits, dried fruit and tinned goods were allocated on a points system. A set amount of points were allowed in each ration book per month, and these could be ‘spent’ as and when needed. People saved points up for Christmas and birthdays and weddings, so that they could buy little extras.
Since there were eight members of our family at this time, we had more than we needed of some items and not enough of others, This meant that a bit of wheeling and dealing would go on (strictly on the quiet, you understand). For instant, Dad didn’t eat sweets, so us kids had his sweet ration and he got our cheese for his sandwiches. We were never well off enough to have real butter, even at the best of times, so Mum would swap our butter rations for extra packets of tea. So long as Dad had his cup of tea and cigarettes he was happy. Mum would sometimes sell a few clothing coupons to make ends meet. This was known as ‘selling on the Black Market’, which was illegal.
Most people dabbled in a very minor way in the Black Market, but it was really the ‘big boys’ that the police were eager to catch, not housewives trying to bend the rules a little.
Some time towards the end of the war, an empty High School a couple of blocks down was suddenly taken over by the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Services) and things started to get busy. Vans were parked outside and ladies in bottle green uniforms scurried in and out. Grown-ups had a habit of being boringly unconcerned about these sorts of things, but us kids were agog to know what was going on in the old school.
We didn’t have to wait long. Notices went up in the windows announcing that we could, on certain days at particular times, obtain whatever we needed in the way of clothing, no money or clothing coupons required to change hands. The notice invited the public to enter the building and go to the large room at the top of the stairs, where all would be explained. Mum told me to go and find out what it was all about and to report back to her.
In fact, it was a very good idea and worked extremely well. All we had to do was to take any unwanted or outgrown item of wearing apparel, including shoes and slippers, and hand them in to the WVS worker on duty. She would examine the article and allocate it a specific number of points (according to it’s worth), which was then entered into a book and set against your name and address. If you had a particular need at the time, you could spend all or part of your points on a garment that someone else had bought in. If there was nothing you wanted or fancied, your points remained in the book until you came back another day.
As far as I was concerned, this was all great fun. I could go shopping without any money at all, and come home with new clothes. All I needed was a few unwanted garments from home.

One item of clothing that I kept, and indeed handed on to Arthur when we married, was a beautiful Noel Cowardish dressing-gown. It was heavy quality midnight blue satin with wine-coloured collar and cuffs etc. The quality was so good that it wore for many years!

Sorry about the double photo. I can't get rid of it and am a bit worried in case I end up deleting the entire blog!

to be contd..

Can you please let me know if these blogs are too long and if you would like then shorter. I don't want to be a bore!

SLEEPING IN THE LONDON UNDERGROUND

2008-08-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

Sleeping in the London Underground station

Mum and Dad decided that we would all be safer out of the house during the night-time air attacks, so we joined the ever growing band of Londoners who took their ‘beds’ to the local underground railway station.
At the start of the war, the government had refused to allow the London underground to be used an air-raid shelter. They seemed to think that the population of London would all rush underground and stay there for the duration of the war! This, however, did not stop the general public from buying platform tickets and just staying on the platform. It became a case of might being right, and the government relented.
By he end of 1940 some 170,000 Londoners were taking up their positions throughout the underground transport system, in an effort to shelter from the German bombs,
A couple of years later, the Leach family and other residents of 71 Oakfield Road added to the above figures.
Each evening, like a band of wandering gypsies, we would wend our way from the top of Oakfield Road (no cars in those days), to the Manor House tube station. Mummy would be carrying Sandra, who was a tiny baby, at the same time hanging on to Billy’s hand. Usually it would be my job to look after Dougie who was by now about five or six. Anyone who was big and/or strong enough, helped carry the bags containing night-time necessities. It was. Of course, Dad’s job to carry all the bedding needed for the whole family. This was usually rolled up, put into blankets, and tied up in large bundles.
On arrival at Manor House tube station, we would manoeuvre ourselves down the escalators – no mean feat for us lot. Daddy would take us down one or two at a time, leaving each of us at the bottom waiting for the next delivery to arrive.
We were then all shepherded on to the platform.
Each family or single person was allocated a particular place on the platform. Whether this was official policy, or was bought about by the general camaraderie of the times, I don’t know. Some people had bunk beds. These must have been given to the first families that applied for shelter. Anyway. We had our place on the floor of the station platform, and it was in exactly the same spot every night. No body ever put their bed down in another family’s plot.
Two white lines were painted on the floor, one eight feet and the other only four feet from the edge of the platform. Until 7.30 we were only allowed to ‘camp down’ behind the eight-foot line. After 7.30, people were allowed to make their beds up to the second mark, which was only four feet away from the edge. Once the trains stopped running for the day, it was every man for himself and the floor became a sea of bodies.
There were big bodies and small bodies: bodies with pink, shiny, tranquil faces and bodies with smelly feet and snoring faces; babies with bottles; children with teddy bears; people with false teeth and old people with no teeth at all; people who slept in their day time clothes, and those that insisted on wearing their curlers and pyjamas each night.
After greeting and exchanging the latest news with their ‘neighbour’, Mum and Dad would busy themselves making up beds for us all. Then they sat and drank cups of tea and chatted. Occasionally, Dad would go ‘up top’ to see if there was a raid in progress and assess how bad it was. When all the children were tucked up in their beds I was, as the eldest, allowed to stay up and wander around for a bit. This was all very exciting and great fun.
I imagine that Aunty Minnie and her family must have been there with us, because I don’t remember being on my own once the little ones had gone to sleep. My companion (who must have been Sylvia or Rita) and I would stroll through to the platform where trains travelled in the opposite direction. Sometimes there’d be community singing going on. Or a member of the public would be playing an accordion or mouth organ, and we’d hang around, listening. We’d beg Mum to let us go for a ride on the tube train.
‘Promise me you’ll only go one stop and then come straight back’, she would say. We would agree and, feeling so grown-up and brave, wait for the next train to draw in. Then, as the automatic doors opened we would jump aboard and stand there, trying to look like seasoned travellers. After just one stop, we would jump off the train and cross over to the other platform to catch a train back.
There was never any concern about us getting into trouble or danger. Parents never seemed to have that worry in those days, especially during the war. Everybody you met was in the same boat and treated each other as part of a big, friendly family.
The WVS would come down to the platform at some stage during the evening, dispensing cups of tea and biscuits, and if we were really fortunate, doughnuts. I can’t recall if this service was free or not but there was always a long queue. We didn’t mind waiting, as it was a way of passing the time.
Finally, when the last train had travelled through Manor House underground station, the lights would dim, and all would be safely gathered in, and the ‘concerto for snorers’ would start.

To be continued...

CROSSING THE THAMES

2008-08-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

My first little sister Sandie

One fateful day Mum and Audrey had an argument; there were about three such arguments during their life-long friendship. As always, I didn’t know what it was about, but it culminated in Audrey going off in a huff to live somewhere else in South London, and us packing our belongings and moving, once more, this time to North London.
Oakfield Road, Stroud Green, wasn’t really ready for us. The road was very long and tree lined, filled with large, Victorian houses that had seen aristocratic days. Mostly elderly, retired, business people now inhabited the houses, and there were few children to be seen.
How well I remember the day we moved in. It was a hot summery day in 1942 and our house was right on top of the hill. We looked along the length of the road and it seemed so quiet and peaceful. The hot sun shone through the green leaves and, as we walked up from the bottom of the hill, we crossed over a railway bridge and heard a train puffing along. This was nothing like the noisy, dusty, treeless street we’d just left behind and I felt that this would be a good place to live. I was almost eleven years old.
The reason that we’d come to North London was because of my mother’s widowed Aunt Minnie. She had rented this rambling old Victorian house and lived there with her three single daughters and an infant son, a war widowed daughter (Ruby) and her son Peter, and her married daughter Gwen. Minnie’s small son Wally was about two years old, next eldest was Rita, who was the same age as me. After Rita came Sylvia who had just left school, Edna who was about sixteen, and Ruby. Aunty Minnie said that, provided we were all prepared to’ muck in together’, we were very welcome to stay.
I enrolled in the top class of the local junior school and, and Douglas went into the infant school which was in the same building. Billy was still only about two years old, and Sandie was soon to come upon the scene.
All the children slept in the large back bedroom, the boys in one bed, and all the girls in another. There was lots of fun to be had reading under he bedclothes, playing jokes on each other and frightening the more timid members of the family with ghost stories.
On one occasion, a very elaborate midnight feats was planned. Sandwiches, biscuits and cake were saved from our meal times and surreptitiously hidden. We older ones ‘borrowed’ things from the larder to embellish our feast. We weren’t really hungry but it was very exciting and seemed like a daring thing to do, I was at the time heavily into ‘The Girls Crystal’ and boarding school stories, so it was probably all my idea!
After a short period of time, Mum and Dad and their growing family (which now included my first new baby sister Sandie) moved into the flat upstairs.
Then the raids started again. Now Germany had invented a new type of bomb: the buzz bomb or doodlebug. These bombs were, in effect, pilot-less aeroplanes, self-powered by petrol and compressed air. They were steered by gyroscope and designed to stall when they ran out of fuel, exploding on impact. The buzz bombs often fell in the daytime, and on busy streets. The sound of them droning overhead was very scary, to say the least. When the engine cut out, and the deathly silence followed, I was really terrified. I though my heart would stop beating and held my breath until the big bang told me that this time, we weren’t all going to be blown up.
In the daytime when the warning sounded, we all rushed down into the cellar and sat on the stairs, huddling together. The very young children didn’t really know what was going on, so they were quite happy with events. Mummy tried to be brave for the sakes of all the children, but I was old enough to know the danger that we were all in, and not old enough to put on a brave face. I would occasionally whimper or say Mummy’s name over and over again, but the way that Auntie Minnie behaved was almost as frightening as the air raids themselves.
She would sit on the lower cellar steps, with her arms clasped around her knees, her feet jumping up and down making a noise on the stone floor like machine guns firing. Crying over and over again, Oh, God! Oh, God! She looked like someone about to go into a seizure, and it frightened me a great deal. More than sixty years on, the memory of buzz bombs and Aunty Minnie still go hand-in-hand.

2008-08-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

This time our new abode was an old, Victorian house not far from Brockwell Park. Since most of our South London homes had been in Brixton or Stockwell, we were always near that particular park. I soon made friends with some children that lived in the flats at the back of us. My particular friend at that time had a sister who was deaf and mute. I'd never come across this before and I was fascinated. She went everywhere with us and I remember being quite protective towards her. Nowadays she would have been given a hearing aid and/or be taught to sign and would be little from her peers. Life wasn't like that then. The girl was looked upon as something of a curiosity by the other children.
For reasons unknown to me, Mummy decided to send me to a Catholic church-school at the bottom of Brixton Hill. I can truthfully say that his experience left me with the most unhappy memories of my entire school life, but that's another story.
At least it didn't go on for too long because we were soon on the move again.
The next house in Rymer Street, was quite small after Madora Road. Even the road was small. Once more, we were just around the corner to the park, and back living with the ack-ack guns and the search lights. For a while life was fun once more.
We all loved Aunty Audrey. She had a lovely singing voice, and would sing 'The Toy Drum Major' for us. She and her little girl Annette had a room upstairs but unlike the other houses Mum and Audrey shared, we now all lived together, ate together and played together. Audrey worked in a war munitions factory and Mummy used to look after Annette while Audrey was at work. I remember the BBC visiting the armament factory where Audrey worked. There used to be a war-time radio show called 'Worker's Playtime' which was transmitted each day from 'A factory somewhere in Britain'. The basis of the show was that any worker who was talented and suitable could perform on this programme, if they could pass an audition. Audrey had volunteered to sing on Worker's Playtime, and we were all very excited. We never did hear her on the radio though. At the very last moment she'd got a terrible attack of nerves and chickened out!
Our next door neighbours at Rymer Street were the Johnson's. There was a daughter Rene, who was the same age as me, and a son Freddie, who was the same age as Dougie. We all became the best of friends and frequently played in each other's homes. Looking back, I could see that they really weren't Mum and Dad's type, but during the war years everyone befriended and helped everyone else. Mr. Johnson was a typical London cockney. He wore a flat cap. braces and a white silk muffler round his throat, which he tucked into his shirt or vest. I don't think I ever saw him without his cap and muffler. Mrs Johnson was always hard-working and, as I recall, looked a little like Andy Capp's wife, although she never wore curlers in her hair: it was straight, dark, and slightly greasy, anchored on the side by a large kirby-grip.
I don't remember many air-raids at Rymer Street. Maybe there was a lull in the bombing for a time. I do remember, however, one especially bad night. The warning sounded and we all say around waiting to see what would happen. We didn't have to wait long. Soon, the German planes came over and the bombs started falling.
If they were near enough, you would hear the swish or whistle as the bombs fell from the sky, then the explosions as they hit their target. We always said a silent prayer to thank God that it wasn't us, but you knew that someone, somewhere, had copped it.
On this particular night the bombing was very heavy, the searchlights were sweeping the skies and the guns in the park were bang-banging away. Daddy thought that we would be safer in the shelters, so we put our coats and hats on and opened the front door.
As I said, Rymer Street was only a small street, and there weren't more than about six or eight houses on each side of the road. The park ran across the end of the street, and the air-raid shelters were just around the corner to the right. It was very dark, the only light coming from the flash of the guns and the searchlights in the park. We all waited for a lull in the firing of the guns, and then made a run for it with Mum. Dad, and Aunty Audrey trying to keep all the children together. The shrapnel from the guns was hitting the pavement and houses, making an awful noise. As each new rain of shrapnel bounced around, we'd scuttle into a doorway and wait, ready for the next pause in the action, then we'd dash off again.
At the time, I was quite thrilled with the excitement of it all and Dougie was busy ear-marking bits of shrapnel that he would claim the next day - which he did.

to be continued...

WITH SISSIE AND GEORGE

2008-08-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

L to R Aunty Audrey- Mummy

And so we arrived in New Park Avenue, Palmers Green. The house was beautiful, and the garden a showpiece. We weren’t allowed to pick any flowers, or walk or sit on the lawn unless Uncle George gave permission. Even then, we couldn’t wear shoes, only slippers, and we had to sit on a blanket provided for the purpose. My Aunty and Uncle were very kind and quite fond of Doug and I, in their own way. They just didn’t understand children or their ways and found it difficult to communicate. Billy was called ‘the brat’, in a jokey way (as were all the other little Leaches as they appeared in the world!)
At first we were made very welcome. Then small, insignificant events started to get on the grown up’s nerves. Like me having a cough that wouldn’t stop tickling my throat. Uncle George was convinced that I was coughing deliberately to annoy him. Of course I wasn’t, but that, together with Dougie doing head-over-heals in the lounge and Billy having baby bodily functions, meant that things were magnified out of all proportion, and it was soon time to move on again before relationships got too strained.
A house on the opposite side of the road to Sissie and George’s was unoccupied. The owners were away because of the war, and wanted to let it out. I have no idea how Mum and Dad managed to secure the property, but they did. It was like being let out of prison! We ran up and down the stairs and in and out of the garden; the freedom was wonderful. We were happy, Mum and Dad were happy and, most of all, Sissie and George were happy to have their own little nest back again.
Because Dad was out of work and we’d lost all out furniture, the new house was a bit Spartan looking to begin with. Aunty Sissie gave us a table and we sat on boxes. Mum and Dad gradually got furniture together. I don’t remember how, but I do remember we were never without the basic essentials for long. Somehow, Mum and Dad always made it OK again. It wasn’t long before, being the miracle workers they were, my parents had managed to build us yet another home. Dad got himself a new job with a building and decorating contractor, and life settled peacefully down once more.
My mother wanted to put curtains up at the front windows. Of course, we had the obligatory blackout curtains, but these didn’t look very cosy, and weren’t intended to take the place of proper curtaining. Being the wonderful homemaker that she was, Mum somehow managed to acquire some biscuit coloured lining material. This material, after being given Mummy’s own individual touch, became our new curtains. Together, we collected different sized cups, glasses and jam jar. Mum placed these upside down on the curtains and drew circles around them that overlapped in various sizes and patterns. She then spent the next few days embroidering these circles in different coloured embroidery thread, letting me help her. This must have occurred about sixty five years ago, but I can see those pretty curtains now, and would love to be able to hold them and run my fingers over the chain-stitch embroidery.
It wasn’t too long before the real owners of ‘our house’ decided that they wanted to take up residency once more. Mum and Dad received a letter from a very old friend of theirs called Audrey. She was, and still is, referred to as Aunty Audrey to all of us. Audrey’s husband Herman was in the RAF and stationed in Wales and Aunty Audrey had moved there to be near him. Now she wanted to return to war-torn London. It was then that we moved from New Park Avenue to Madora Road, Brixton, and Aunty Audrey joined us.

To be continued...

OUR NEW BABY BROTHER

2008-08-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

On one occasion my Aunty bought me a pale lemon, silky, party dress, which she embroidered with little, lavender French-knots (she was heavily into embroidering French- knots at the time). I remember that I was given my new dress to wear at Dougie’s 4th birthday party. We had a jelly and cake birthday celebration, and my friend from the garage was invited. I can’t remember much about her, except that she had some sort of skin complaint and had to wear a funny pixie-hood with her party dress. I was very polite and pretended not to notice it, while all the time I was dying to see what was hidden beneath the hood. Also at the tea party was our Daddy. He had come to Blackpool to see us, and I assume, to bring birthday presents for Douglas.
By the time summer came around again, Lennie had returned to Bolton, and Mummy and Daddy had presented us with a new baby brother named Billy (in honour of Uncle). My mother told me that Billy came into the world in the middle of one of the worst nights of the London Blitz. When she went into labour the spitfires were battling overhead. She, together with my dad, Aunty Lily and Uncle Len (relations of Daddy) had to stay in the house. They were unable to get as far as the local air-raid shelter in the park.
Dad and Uncle Len went to the bottom of the garden, to watch the planes dog-fighting in the sky and left Mummy and Aunty Lilly to their own battle in the bedroom. Mum said that the bombs were falling all around and, because we lived next to the park where the ack-ack guns and searchlights were stationed, it made it a very dangerous place to be. Aunty Lily was sure that they were all going to be blasted to kingdom come before Billy was born! However, all went well and the next time we saw Mum and Dad there was a new baby to cuddle.
It was thought that it would be safer for all our family to stay together for a while in Blackpool. The air-raids in London were still raging, and the air-raid shelter in the park had recently been bombed, killing a lot of our neighbours and some of the local shop-keepers. Mum, Dad and Billy were somehow fitted in at Aunty and Uncles Blackpool house, and things jogged along. Daddy found work and Mummy helped Aunty and Uncle look after the air force boys.
I don’t remember how long my parents actually stayed in Blackpool, but it all ended in tears, like so many family get-togethers do. One day, all our things were packed up and we went home.
Well, not quite home. When Mum and Dad had come to be with us in Blackpool, our house in Norwood had stood empty. They had left our house keys with neighbours, in case of an emergency. Now that we were moving back, Daddy travelled down to London ahead of us, to get things ready for our return. To his horror, the neighbours said that they were surprised to see him: they thought we’d moved away from Norwood Road.
Apparently a group of removal men had collected the keys, let themselves into he house and removed all the contents. When Daddy finally got into the house through a window, he found everything was gone, even the cutlery. There was nothing left. The House had been ‘cleaned out’ and closed down and we could no longer live there. Even my dearest, old teddy with half an arm, which had been with me most of my life, had gone, never to be seen again. This should have been a traumatic experience for me, but to be honest, we moved house so often that it somehow seemed perfectly normal that we should be ‘on the move’ again.
I was a mere child when all this happened, and so I don’t really know the finer details of the story. I feel certain that Mum and Dad must have had their suspicions about the identity of the person who took the keys but, if they had, they didn’t seem to do anything about it.
I had no notion of the drama going on between the grown-ups, and don’t remember much about the lead-up to my next adventure. All I know is that my Aunty Sissie (Mum’s sister) and her husband Uncle George had said they would put us up until we could find somewhere else to live. This must have been very hard for both sides. Aunty Sis and Uncle George had no children (because they didn’t want them) and Mummy and Daddy probably felt very embarrassed but had no other option. They said how grateful they were, which of course they were, but it didn’t sit easily on their shoulders.

The photo is me in my party dress with Dougie

To be continued…

THE 'LITTLE OFFICER'

2008-08-16T13:25:00.000-07:00