Terry’s 1980 Diary

The following pages are a transcript of extracts from a diary written by Terry starting 1980 and are recollections of her life and times.

 

15^th October

How often you see or hear something that triggers off a train of thought. I saw a programme on TV, I can’t recall what it was about for I was only half-heartedly looking at it, when it mentioned the airship [?]101, which I believe was the last one to make a long journey, although this one only got to France, where it crashed and burst into flames. I heard the man say that this happened in 1930. Now this took me back a bit for I can very clearly remember being taken up on the flat roof of 70 West India Dock Road to watch this large airship go over, and the realisation that I was 2 years old at that time really surprised me. It must surely be my very earliest recollection.

And in thinking of that flat roof reminds me of another on which I sat above my Aunt’s shop in the Commercial Road with my cousins, waving Union Jacks to Queen Mary and King George V on their (I think) Silver Jubilee. I plainly remember as the carriage passed us, Queen Mary looked up and waved. Much later, in my teens during World War II, I was to see her often when she came to Bath, Somerset – where I was living all through the war – to shop and rummage through the antique shops. Again, with royalty, although the occasion escapes me, but I remember my father taking me along to see a procession and in the various open carriages, I saw King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose. Another held the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Thinking about it, it must surely have been his return from the Portsdown meeting with Adolph Hitler when we were assured of peace, although I’m not sure. Many years later when I and my daughter Margaret were on our way to a theatre to see ‘Child’s Play’, when we took a wrong turning and I once again saw Princess Elizabeth, though now she was Queen Elizabeth II, with her daughter Anne and her Uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. They were going to a premier and were just stepping out of their cars.

In my childhood, I also saw the Prince of Wales, later to be the Duke of Windsor, and I can vaguely remember the furore that went on over his association with Mrs Simpson. I recall being taken to Madame Tussaud’s  where there were wax models of them both and that they had to be placed well back behind a barrier, out of harm’s way, for feelings ran so high that people would have torn them to pieces. Now, in later life and having read a lot about him, I don’t think he would have made a very good King.

The star of the play ‘Child’s Play’ was Laurence Harvey and both my daughter and I thought he looked very ill, so we weren’t really surprised when later the play came off and Mr Harvey died of cancer. During the interval of this play, we went into the foyer for a cigarette and there I was, back to back with that rude jumped up little tyke, Ringo Starr.

December 1980

Spent Christmas at Paul’s. Went down to London the week before and stayed at Margaret’s. I have taken their presents down with me. Margaret met me off the coach. We went straight into Owen’s. Margaret chose a short, quilted coat for her present. We had bought Matthew a digital watch, Julia Tiny Tears Transporter, Rob a TV game plus I had collected together a bag each for Margaret and Rob of small gifts. Also bought Rob a cardigan. After having something to eat and dropping off the gifts at Margaret’s we went down Wood Green to do some shopping. Margaret bought me two summer suits, Bert a battery razor and a jumper, Anne 18 carat gold butterfly earrings and necklace. As I say, a week later I went down again, this time with Bert. We stayed at Paul’s and went for a couple of hours on Boxing Day to Margaret’s. Then later, David and Leslie came round. Was told Jago and Ann are expecting a baby. It was very nice, but we were glad to get home.

Fortunately, the weather men were wrong and we didn’t have the severe cold weather they promised us. It was, in fact, sunny and mild in the main, so it wasn’t a cold bungalow to come back to. I must say, I do like my two armchairs. Bert has already got himself busy setting up cages on tables in the shed as his friend, who breeds Gloucester Canaries, is going to let him have half a dozen cheap.

An odd thought

Why it should come to me, I don’t know. One post is about myself just before the 2^nd World War. It was coming up to my birthday, which one I don’t know, but my mother and I went to the shops for a little shopping. I didn’t want to go, but Mother kept on about it. Well, at the time, my father had recently bought her a short fur cape that draped over the shoulders of a coat. I, being in a mood, said, ‘I’ll come if I can wear your cape.’ Mother said, ‘Everyone will laugh at you,’ but I didn’t care and eventually I got my way. Off we went and there were quite a few smiles, I can tell you. But I forgot about them when we came to the bakers and I found out that my mother had ordered a birthday cake for me. I can remember it as though it were yesterday. It was in the shape of a fruit basket and piled on top were marzipan fruits and the sides were done with coloured icing in a lattice design, so it looked like a wicker basket. What joy! Going home, my mother stopped to read a notice that was stuck to a lamppost, saying that Moseley and his Blackshirts were giving a meeting that night. She was so scared, she had me almost running home.

In these days of the automatic washing machines, it seems inconceivable that in my young days, washday was darned hard work. I can always remember coming home from school on Monday lunch time. Mondays were always washing day and I knew I would always get cold meat, mashed potatoes and pickles to eat. It must have been the same in so many other houses. The copper in the corner of the kitchen would be lit, although the whites would be washed and thoroughly soaped in hot water in the deep butler sink and rubbed on the old wash board and then boiled in the copper. After the boiling came the rinsing in cold water, the last rinse having a dolly bag swirled in the water. This was a bag with a solid blue block inside. I never did know what the block was made of, but it made the water blue and gave the whites a lovely blue whiteness. Then the washing was carried outside to the large mangle with its big wooden rollers and large black open-work metal wheel handle. (We had our mangle in a small shed outside. This must have been rotten in the winter.)

The house always smelt on a Monday of warm suds from the Sunlight Soap. It’s a lot easier these days. Going back to the copper, ours was the very latest design. It had a pump fixed to the wall. A hand pump with a wooden handle, and on bath nights the water was heated and the pump lowered into the copper, and by working the handle backwards and forwards, it pumped the water up the pipes, where it came out of the hot water tap into the bath. This was the very latest thing, but again, an arm aching job.

My birthday

Shopping was never so exciting as it was when I was young. On a Friday night, my father and mother, with my sister and I, used to go to the market. This one was called Crisp Street. It was a road with shops either side, but along both sides were also stalls and each stall had a naked naphtha light. They were like large flares and they hissed and dark smoke came off them. I used to love to watch the sweet man – he used to make bulls eyes and twists and different kinds of boiled sweets. He would pull the stretchy stuff about, then lift it up quickly and twist it like a rope. Then, putting it on the stall again, he would chop it into little pieces. I can’t say that I remember the price of food in those days, except 2 pennyworth of pot [?] herbs. Where, for your two pennies you got onions, carrots and turnip, and also my sister and I used to buy a pennyworth of specks [?];  these were a couple of oranges, apples and pears, that were bruised or had a speck on them. I was 7½ when we moved to Becontree which, at that time, was out in the country and you could walk across fields, over the river Thames.

On a Saturday, in the Barking Broadway Market, my father would buy 5lb tins of biscuits or a tin each week, for he never ate breakfast except on Sunday, when he had smoked haddock, but always had tea and biscuits before leaving for work. Every Friday night he would fetch home a large brown carrier bag which would be half full of all kinds of fruit which he always washed and dried before placing in various bowls. The rest of the bag was taken up with a pile of about 12 comics for me and maltesers in a bag shaped like a man, sweets for my sister (who was 6 years older than I) and chocolate liqueurs for my mother. It seemed each Sunday I had a different outfit – my father was always buying us clothes. His were always made at the tailors, as were costumes for my mother and sister. He always wore silk shirts when not at work. His working shirts were always white with a fine coloured stripe and he changed every day. His shoes were always hand stitched. I’m sure he had Jewish blood in him. Each year, he would decorate the house but he would change the furniture in the sitting room as well. He didn’t drink much, although he always kept a drinks cabinet stocked with drink. He could make the most marvellous cocktails; he learnt while living in China, where he lived for 5 years.

I can just remember his mother, my grandmother Louise. We used to visit her quite often when I was young and before we moved. He was the second eldest of 6 children, 3 boys and 3 girls. When we went to her house, the men used to send us children (for I had numerous cousins) across to the sales room in the local pub (now called an off licence) with a large jug to buy beer. When my grandmother died, we all had to troop into the front room, which was darkened, to file past the coffin and take one last look at her before the lid was fixed down. I remember her funeral was a grand affair. The carriage was drawn by four glossy black horses with long black plumes on their heads and velvet palls hanging either side of them. The top of the hearse was covered with more plumes and the bearers wore long black coats and tall crepe-covered hats and they walked either side of the carriage.

Going back to the Crisp Street Market, there used to be a stall where a woman had great blocks of salt which she chopped into whatever quantity  you wanted, Then there were the barrels of salt beef and roll mops. The smells were exciting. Of course, a lot of the streets were cobbled then and you often heard the clip clop of the big cart horses that pulled brewers drays and the rattle of the trams. I remember those trams – for 1/- (one shilling) you could travel all day on a Saturday on them, changing as often as you liked, going where you liked. My father used to take us on these Saturday rides sometimes and that is when I saw quite a bit of London.

People used to come calling round the streets then. The muffin man in his apron and tray on his head, ringing his bell. The cockle and winkle man, barrel organs, fish man. On May Day, at school, we always had a maypole and to music we made intricate patterns with the coloured ribbons. Also in May was Empire Day, when we had a half day holiday. In Becontree, I remember the Italian ice cream man who came round. He sold Italian ice cream and water ice. You always had to take a receptacle to put it in. My father used to send me with a basin. If you had water ice, you always got a slice of lemon with it.

Now at Bath, in 1939, I well remember seeing the milk man wheeling a barrow with a large churn on it which had a large ladle hanging on the side. Women came out with their jugs and he opened the lid of the churn, dipped in his ladle (4d a pint) and that was how the milk was delivered. In these days of ?lygere? with pasteurised milk, I dread to think of all the germs with the old method.

You don’t seem to see children play games like we used to. Our games went in seasons. Skipping ropes, then would come balls and every space of wall would have the continual thump thump of the balls as we played quite complicated games. Then marbles, whip and tops, diablo – this was difficult for you had to spin this waisted top up into the air from string attached to two sticks.

I was born 5^th January 1928 in the East End of London. We lived at 70 West India Dock Road until I was 7½. Not that I was there very much for it was found, when I was very small, that I had a leaky valve of the heart and was sent away to stay in convents quite often for the peace and quiet. I wasn’t allowed to jump, run, dance or do all the normal childish things until I was about 10 and then I wasn’t allowed to be too boisterous. I had to attend the Children’s Hospital (can’t remember the name but I think we used to go through the Rotherhithe Tunnel to get there. My doctor in Limehouse was a Dr Moss) once a week, then every fortnight, then monthly, then six-monthly. It was during these six-monthly visits that I went to the convents.

First one was at Hazelmere, then one in Broadstairs, then one at St Leonards, which I went to several times. We were never taught lessons there and in the short stays, I had at home, I attended Gill Street School, but my mother taught me mainly. So, I never really started my schooling until I was about 8. By then we had moved to Becontree and I attended Monteagle School. I was 11 when the second World War broke out and I was sent to Bath in Somerset and left school at 14.

The East End was the place to which refugees and outcasts came. Jewish refugees from Russia, Germany, Poland. They opened up small businesses and it became a tightly packed, thriving community, but in the part where we lived in the narrow streets which clustered around the docks, came the Chinese. You would have thought you had stepped into China and in fact the area was called Chinatown. There were chop-suey shops, laundries, gambling dens, brothels and many opium houses. We lived opposite the famous Chinese restaurant which the Duke of Windsor and his friends used to go and where all the local people knew him as David. From Limehouse and Poplar, going toward Whitechapel, were older communities such as Lascans (?), Indians, Arabs, Turks and Portuguese. A real cosmopolitan place, the East End. While my mother was carrying my sister Thelma, my father was sent to China where, as I say, he lived for five years. They lived then in Millwall but my mother fell out with my grandfather, with whom she then lived, and went to live in the top part of no.70, which was the house of her friends, Romanian Jews called Balbeski but always known as Balbs.

The lower part of the house was cut in two, one half being a barber shop. The lower and middle parts were the Balbs’ living quarters and we had the top half. But my childhood was a happy one and one of great contrasts. The quiet and gentleness of a convent, then the teeming life of the East End. My father spoilt me, I think, because I couldn’t lead a normal child’s life. I was showered with toys. At one time, I had 21 dolls, including a 3ft double jointed doll, loads of books, a huge dolls’ house and two dolls’ prams; these apart from other games and toys. If I went out to play, I was told never to stray from the front door, but one day I did. I went with a little friend who lived round by the Chinese Causeway. After a little while, I thought I had better go home and started off, when all of a sudden, all hell let loose. Chinese were running in all directions with knives and choppers. A man grabbed hold of me and dragged me into a doorway, where we stayed pressed against the darkness of the doorway. It was a Tang fight. Fortunately, the man knew my father, so knew who I was and managed to get me safely home.

By this time, I had been missed and my parents and the Balbs were frantic with worry. I never strayed again, although I did cause another panic and this time the police were called out. Apart from there being toilets inside the house, there was one in the yard at the back, not a lot used but it was always kept clean in case any of the customers of the barber shop needed to go desperately. Well it appears that when I played out and wanted the loo, I used this one, this particular day I was missing my parents and Mrs Balbs looked everywhere with no luck, so they went across the road to the Police station and two policemen (they always worked in twos in that area) were sent out to search and make enquiries. Mrs Balbs was beside herself with worry and the waiting was a strain. It affected her tummy, so she went to this particular toilet and there I was. I had gone to the loo and fell asleep there. Fortunately, everyone later thought it quite amusing. But it was after this episode that us children were told if we wanted to play out, to play at the yard at the police station.

In the East End, was City Road, and one of the pubs there was called the Eagle. Now, in those days, a lot of families used the pawn shops a lot, taking in their things on a Monday and getting them back on a Friday night, when it was pay day. Women used to take in washing for those who didn’t go to a Chinese one and they had various kinds of flat irons for different uses, like doing collars, ironing lace etc., and one iron was called a weasel. These were also pawned or ‘popped’ as they called it. I am writing this because this was what the nursery rhyme was about.

Up and down the City Road

In and out of the Eagle,

That’s the way the money goes

Pop goes the weasel.

The flat iron was pawned for beer money. Nearly all nursery rhymes were about real people and real things.

I don’t remember much about the food we ate in those days, but we were always very well fed. All I can remember is that the hospital insisted that I took a daily dose of cod liver oil and malt. I grew to like this. Also, every day, I had chicken broth and one of my favourites was Lincoln biscuits, which my mother bought from Hoffman’s, the little Jewish shop on the corner. Then there were the dairies; lovely clean sweet-smelling places, with marble counters where you bought your milk, butter, eggs and cheese. When you told the shopkeeper how much butter you wanted, he took off the required amount, weighed it, then patted it into shapes with wooden butter pats which were always kept in a bowl of cold water. The grocer’s sold everything; dried fruit, dried peas and beans, and the like were kept in small drawers fitted into a unit behind the counter. The pork butcher sold faggots and pease pudding. On occasion, my mother, sister and I had faggot stew; faggots boiled with onions and potatoes. I enjoyed this. Everywhere there seemed to be pie and eel shops where you could buy either a pie or stewed eels, mashed potatoes covered by a liquor in which the eels were cooked, flavoured with parsley.

When we lived in Becontree, often on a Saturday afternoon, my father would say, ‘Right, get ready’ and we all would go. It was always a surprise. Perhaps it would be to Romford to go to the greyhound stadium or off to Southend to see the lights and go around ‘never, never land’. Very very often it would be to go shopping to buy clothes. He had a funny way of going about this. For instance, he would decide we would go out somewhere and tell me not to wear a coat, for we would go to a friend of his (Jewish of course) who owned a large clothes shop where he would buy me a new coat, which I would wear right away. It seemed every week I had something new to wear, so, as most children had one outfit which was worn only on Sunday and called their Sunday Best, I had something new all the time.

He was very fussy about clothes and he would never take me out without I had a hat on and wore gloves. He was quite appalled on my wedding day when I lifted up my dress and train and he noticed I was wearing ordinary silk stockings and not white silk ones, as they used to in his Mother’s Day. On my wedding day, he was more nervous then I was and that was saying something.

I noticed the other day that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is once more at the cinema. My mother took me and the boy next door, called Bobbie Burke, to this film when it first came out around 1936/7/8 (I can’t remember now). She took us also to see Robin Hood and I remember before we went into the cinema, we were all given a pair of cardboard glasses with one red cellophane eyepiece and one green one. We were told to wear them between the two films, when you saw the newsreels and short adverts. We put them on and several different pictures came on and it was the first time that 3D was shown. I remember one of the pictures was a girl on a swing and she seemed to swing out toward us in our seats.

I have mentioned my great friend in those days, Bobbie Burke. We were always together. His mother and father were not very well off and she used to take in washing. Poor old Bobbie was given the job, every Monday, to take a large parcel all the way to Barking to the pawn brokers (I never knew all that was in the parcel other than the parents’ Sunday clothes). The money helped them through till pay day and the first thing to be paid out was to get back the parcel so Bobbie had to go again on the Saturday. He had to walk there and back because to give him the bus fare he would have to go without his 2 pennies (1p) pocket money.

At first, unbeknown to my father, I went with him once or twice. Then Dad found out and strangely wasn’t angry but we both got a lecture on minding the roads etc. He didn’t give us bus fare and later I understood this, for he would have been going against Bobbie’s parents if he gave the fare, plus we would have been insulting to them; after all, they had their pride. Bobbie got right fed up with walking all that way, so he collected an old pair of pram wheels and scrounged an orange box and made, with the help of his father, a cart. We had great fun with this. The parcel used to sit on it going and I used to sit on it coming back. He had a little platform on the back and while I steered, he would grab hold of the back and run till we got up a speed, then jump on the platform, and when we started to slow down, he would use his foot like on a scooter. I couldn’t pull or push because of my heart condition. He never had much of his own. After I read my comics, I passed them to him. I shared my toys with him for I had a train set and a cinematograph which showed silent films. At the start of the war, my father put all these tins of films into a large biscuit tin and buried it in the garden, and as far as I know, it’s still there.

Unlike a lot of our neighbours, we went away on holiday. They had a holiday of sorts going hop picking in Kent, where they lived rough like gypsies and picked hops all day for money. It was very hard, I’ve been told, but they seemed to enjoy it. It was mainly the mothers and children that went what they called ‘hopping’. Our holidays were different. Once, Dad rented a bungalow at Minster, on the Isle of Sheppey; 1937 I think. Another time he booked a bungalow at Jaywich Sands. It was here that, whoever had stayed there before, had left behind a cricket set. We took it home with us; it was almost new. The bat was a good one. When we got home, my father called Bobbie in to get his usual stick of rock and then gave him the cricket set. Bobbie was speechless. Dad patted him on the back and was a bit gruff, which meant he was touched, and Bobbie, full of pride, went out in the street to have his bat and stumps admired and drooled over by the other boys, who only played with sticks. Now this bunch of kids had a real cricket set to play with. That was the best kept cricket set ever.

On Saturday mornings, our crowd used to go to the pictures which was called the ‘tuppeny rush’. That’s what Bobbie wanted his pocket money for. We paid a penny (½p) to go on the tube train and tuppence (1p) for the pictures, where we saw several different serials. Things like ‘The Clutching Hand’, cowboy films, the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Will Hay, Harrold Lloyd, Pearl White. I used to love these Saturday mornings. I remember the first time I met Bobbie. In those days, Shirley Temple was all the rage. My Aunt Pat taught me a little bit of tap dancing for she used to go to dancing school. She encouraged me to do a take off of Shirley Temple, singing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’. She used to say, ‘One day your name will be up there in lights’, pointing at the front of a cinema. It was all good fun.

Well, when we moved to Becontree, while Mum and Dad were sorting out the furniture, I was told to go out into the garden out of the way. I had been out there a little while, getting more and more bored, when a head bobbed over the fence and a voice said, ‘Hello, I’m Bobbie. Who are you?’ From that time on we were inseparable. We talked about ourselves and I told him I could sing like Shirley Temple and he asked me to do it, and I did. When I think now what I must have looked like. But Bobbie thought I was wonderful. It was a great friendship we had. He was an only child and looked on me as a sister. I got a brother I always wanted and Dad had a boy to make a fuss of. Although he had the run of our house, I never went inside his. I don’t think I ever spoke to his mother. When we played out and it was time to go in, my father would come to the gate and call and that wasn’t only for me but Bobbie too. He never stayed out if I went in; he always went in too. Funny, it’s years and years since I thought about Bobbie.

He was about 2 years older than me and went to a different school, but we had some wonderful times together. Around the corner from where we lived there used to stand a converted van which sold all sorts of sweets and cigarettes. During the week, my father used to give me some money to buy sweets with and I always went halves with Bobbie. We would dawdle going and try to decide what we would buy, then stand ages looking at the sweets before deciding.

Becontree in those days wasn’t all built up like now. It had a lot of farms there still and if you walked down the road opposite our houses (I can’t remember its name) then crossed the main road which wasn’t busy like today, there was a pub standing all on its own surrounded by fields, called the Ship and Shovel. If you went on past the pub and walked over these fields, it brought you to the river Thames. Cutting through these fields were fairly wide streams and lots of wild flowers and grasses grew. One summer, Bobbie and I (mainly him) built a raft and we went along these streams pretending we were sailing to far off places he’d read about in his boys’ adventure books. Dad had a blue fit when he found out and we were banned from going there again. But he used to take us for walks over there.

One Sunday he told me to put on my coat and go with him. Where we went I don’t know, only that it was a person’s house and when we left, I was the proud possessor of my first bike. Dad told me to get on and to ride while he held the back. I was going along quite happily, very proud of myself, said as much to Dad, got no answer, turned my head round and saw he wasn’t holding on to the back of the saddle any more and promptly fell off. The rest of the morning was spent in Dad teaching me how to ride and turn, etc., outside our house. Thinking back on it, it must have looked very funny; me cycling around in circles with Dad standing in the middle something like a ringmaster with a circus performer. The following Saturday, Dad had got a brand-new bike for Thelma; a lady’s bike. As she was 6 years older than me, she wouldn’t need another size later on as I would.

Anyway, Dad borrowed hers and said to me, ‘Go and get your bike and we will go for a ride.’ We rode around the streets for a bit, then finished up at the Becontree station end of Sheppey Road, where there was a hill. We cycled up, but Dad forgot to warn me about lightly putting on the brakes when I went down. At the bottom of the hill were one or two shops and outside one was a delivery van with its back doors open (fortunately). Going down, I went faster and faster and went along right through into the van. When Dad had satisfied himself that I wasn’t hurt except for my dignity, he thought it was extremely funny. We rode slowly home with me having the shakes and wobbling a lot. It was a few years before I ever rode a bike again.

I had a little dog around this time; a mongrel named Peter. I put him in a dog show at the seaside once and everyone laughed when he went up before the judges and the MC called him the Brown Bomber. I’m not sure what happened. I think he went for the postman or something. Anyway, Dad said I was to take him to the vet and have him put down. I cried and pleaded but he was adamant and when I asked if someone else could take him, he said no, he was my dog and I had been responsible for him so it was up to me to take him. I met Bobbie on the way out and he was as upset as I was. He came with me. We were a very sad couple taking this dog on its last walk. When we nearly got there, I broke down again and cried so Bobbie, although choked himself, took the lead and said he would take him in. He wasn’t gone more than a few minutes when he was back saying the vet wouldn’t put him down unless we had a letter saying so from my father. He stayed there with the dog while I went back home again to get the letter, hoping all the time that Dad would now change his mind, but he didn’t and poor old Peter was put down. Bobbie and I cried most of the way home. I swore I would never forgive my father but after a week or two it was all forgotten as I suppose he knew it would be.

It’s funny the things you remember suddenly then pop into your mind, some little thing triggers it off and you go years backwards in time. I mentioned earlier about us having a holiday at Minster, the Isle of Sheppey. In those days, 1937, you went onto the Island over an old wooden bridge on a little train. There was a level crossing at Minster (where you got off) with a little sentry box. When the train arrived here, the engine driver stopped the train, got down from his cab, opened the crossing gates, took your tickets, gave out tickets for anyone getting on, drove the train through, stopped, got out and went back to close the gates. The end of the line was Leysdown. We all went there one day but didn’t stay long  because there was nothing there. I think a pub was there, but in the main it was a dismal place with a pebble beach and one ice cream cart. That was it, nothing else.

The bungalow we rented was called ‘Rookery Nooh’ in Station Road. It had lamps for lighting and a good garden and, oh! luxury, a radiogram. The cows used to wake us in the morning by ambling past the bedroom windows which were in the front. Minster itself was a tiny village with lovely cliff walks and a nice beach. At that time, just before we had arrived, there had been a big manhunt for a murderer. I can even remember his surname was Brain. Well, shortly before, he had been found and caught at Minster, hiding down in the side of the cliffs. What he had eaten to keep himself alive I don’t recall, but I do know that where he hid there was a tiny drip of water from the cliff and he had an old enamel mug which he used to prop up under this drip for water to drink. It used to take a long time to get any amount in the mug. Well, while we were at Minster my father located this spot where this Brain fellow hid out and we climbed down to have a look. Dad pointed out this drip of water and there on the ground was this old battered enamel mug. By today’s standards, I don’t suppose he had been a very vicious man.

Also, while we were at Minster, Dad got one of his clever ideas and suggested one day we went into Sheerness, which was the only place on the Island that was lively. We were all for it, but what we hadn’t realised was Dad meant us to walk there. Which we did. I don’t recall much about the day except we went to the cinema and saw a kind of horror film. I’m sure the reason we went was for Dad to sit and sleep off his walk. How we got back I don’t even remember. As there was no radio in the bungalow, Dad and Mum and Thelma used to read. As for me, well there was a funny little shop in the village run by an old lady which sold all bits and pieces, where for ½d (there is no equivalent in decimal money, I suppose it would be half of half a p) I used to buy a tiny wooden barrel, about 3 inches big and inside like hundreds and thousands only bigger, were tiny glass beads, which I used to spend hours threading on cotton to make necklaces and bracelets.

Now I want to finish my story about Bobbie. He wasn’t allowed to be evacuated like some of us. His parents wanted him to stay. They thought it all a waste of time. I remember seeing him waving in his garden as we went by in the train. He was crying.

During the first year at Bath, my parents and Thelma stayed at Becontree, then the docks got badly bombed and Dad and the rest had no work, plus the fact that they were having to go down the air raid shelter every night. Just a word about these shelters. Well, before the war was actually declared, everyone had got these shelters. They were made of corrugated iron and were this shape [drawing of upside-down ‘U’ with door in middle], something like an igloo. You had to dig a certain size hole to a certain depth then erect this shelter and then cover it in some way. Most of it, when finished, was underground where you put in camp beds and the like. They were dark damp places smelling always of damp earth but it did give you protection. Well, Dad put up with this for a while, then decided enough was enough and one day, Sylvia Bryant told me that the family were coming to stay.

They arrived and for a while we all shared the house of Sylvia’s, then the old chap next door died and his son said Dad could have it furnished, so we all moved in there. Dad got a job in the Admiralty, so did Thelma and later so did my mother. But at the beginning, Mum said that if we were now going to live in Bath for god knows how long, she would have to go back to London and shut down our house and make arrangements about the rent and all that sort of thing. She was writing to her friend and telling her about what we were doing when her friend mentioned that Bobbie had been taken to hospital and was asking for me. So it was decided, much against Dad and Mum’s wishes, that I should go to London with her.

When we arrived, Mum called on Mrs Burke and found that Bobbie was very ill and she agreed to let Mrs Burke take me into London, where the hospital was, to see him as he had constantly been asking for me. I went and I cannot say what we talked about or what I did, but I do know I was stunned when I saw him. His mother had warned me that I would see a change in him but I didn’t expect this great balloon of a boy. He had always been thin. I cried all the way back home and I kept on asking when I could go to see him again, but both his mother and mine put me off all the time, for they both knew I wouldn’t see him again because very shortly after, he died. He died of heart dropsy. He was, I suppose, about 15 years old. I haven’t thought of Bobbie for years. I think sometimes the mind puts up a mental block on things you don’t wish to remember. His death was, at that time, a very bitter blow to me. It was the first time I had lost someone very close to me and it was a shattering experience. I don’t know what happened to Mr and Mrs Burke. I never saw them again, I don’t think, or if I did I don’t remember. I was to lose several other friends during the war but none were so close or whose deaths affected me in such a way, except one and he was another Bob. Bob Oakley. But that’s another story which comes into the section on war memories.

Another Football Tale

It was Bertie’s 84^th birthday and a week before was Paul’s 45^th. We made it a joint celebration and went out for a meal. During the evening, I mentioned these jottings, saying that they were for you and your Dad said, ‘Your Mother’s writing my life story down.’ Paul said, ‘What will you do with that?’ I said, ‘Margaret wanted it done, so of course it’s for her.’ Paul said that he would like a copy for Bianca. It got onto the subject of football, and I told them about Bertie’s mother burning the old man’s football boots. Paul raised his eyes up and tutted and said, ‘That sounds familiar.’ Val laughed and said, ‘You remember when Paul played for the Post Office?’ and referred to the game where the guy on the other team tackled Paul hard – dirty – and broke his leg. Val was at that game and when she saw what had happened, she went hairless [?] and chased after him, shouting all the time. ‘I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.’ She never caught him for the bloke ran like the wind to get away from her. If you remember, Paul had a lot of trouble with that leg. He had to have a steel plate put in at Poole hospital, then he had to go back and have it taken out because his leg wouldn’t accept it and it put him out of action for quite a while. ‘Well,’ said Val laughing and giggling, ‘I didn’t burn his boots, but put them and the whole of his kit in the dustbin.’ That was something I didn’t know before.

Then it came up about Jack, Bertie’s brother, who also, like his father and Bertie, was football mad. When he was a young lad, his father got him a football and Jack was in the living room and was highly delighted with it. He couldn’t wait to kick it about and right away gave it a good old boot and cleared the crockery off the dresser. So Bertie’s mother wasn’t exactly a fan of football.

1948 

Bertie and I were married on Easter Saturday (27.03.48) of that year at St Margaret’s church, Barking, Essex. It was a very pretty church. As Easter was a very popular time for weddings, you were married two pairs at a time, each couple going up a separate aisle and meeting at the altar. My father, who had been in a panic all the morning, was really jittery. I could feel him shaking as I held his arm, waiting to start walking in to the music of the Wedding March. When we got along to the aisles, he started to go up the wrong one. The other bride pulled him back and this made him more nervous than ever. I seem to have a vague recollection that at that time during the services, he and us and ???  to kneel down at one point because I recall him being on his knees and not being able to get up and the two older bridesmaids had to help him. He was stiff with nerves. I had borrowed Bertie’s sister Muriel’s wedding dress, which was cream figured [?] satin with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a train. The two older bridesmaids were his sister, Margaret, and my friend at that time, Gladys, and the two younger ones my cousins, Blanche and Stella. We came out to the music of Handle’s Largo. We went on to a reception in a hall, where I can’t remember. Although food was still on ration, the caterers my father had hired did us well with a sit-down meal and a nice wedding cake. When I look at the photo that was taken outside the church, everyone had dressed up to their best ability, but to me now, it looks like something from Fred Karno’s Circus.

We never had a honeymoon and went to 3 Hampton Road after festivities were over, where we were offered a cup of cocoa. Granny and Grandad Williams lived in this double fronted house built by Collins the builder (who built most of the properties in Muswell Hill). There were 12 of these houses. First 3. then 6 set back a bit with a green in front, then the next 3 in line with the first three. All built in the Italian style. The middle one of each 3 had shutters and 3 alternates of the six had tiny iron balconies. They were always painted white and the shutters green. They were built to house Collins workers. Grandad Williams was a skilled plasterer and did a lot of fancy work. One such job was a ceiling in the Tate Gallery. In those days, they walked everywhere and the old lady used to go up to the bedroom every morning and pour the old fellow out a whiskey before he left for work. She always wore ankle length skirts and one morning she missed her footing and fell headlong down the steep stairs and caught her head on the door latch. She needed 25 stitches across the top of her head. This started her off into her peculiar ways. The family all knew this, of course, but I found out the hard way. Norah and George, who married just before us, were offered the top half of the house (at that time, getting somewhere to live was a nightmare.) I couldn’t understand why they turned it down.

Then Bertie was offered it and he accepted. I soon learnt, to my cost, what we had let ourselves in for. I became pregnant very quickly and the baby was due on 7^th March, 1949, just a short time before our first anniversary. Instead of which, it was born on 12^th January 1949, 2 months premature and weighing in at under 2lb. I don’t know the exact weight because when she was born, bells started ringing and nurses came rushing into the labour room, and one gave her mouth to mouth and got her breathing. They put her on a scale but she was whipped off very quickly and I was told they couldn’t say what her exact weight was but it was under 2lb, for she had to be rushed into an organ ???? and incubator. Miss Milne, who was the doctor, later told me that I couldn’t take her from the hospital until she weighed a regular 5lb. This took 5 weeks and I had to stay with her. She was 7 days old before I was allowed to see her for just a few minutes. As I was still kept in bed they wheeled the incubator in to me but it couldn’t be switched off for too long. I spent most of my time knitting dolls clothes so that she would have something to wear when she was able. All this took place at Well House Hospital, Barnet.

While there, with a couple of other ladies who also had to stay, we helped out at the nurses’ change over (which then they did every 6 hours), by helping make beds and getting breakfast for the other patients. One sister, called Sister Hawes, was a very dour sort of person but was a marvel with premature and deformed babies. By the [?] was the same time my baby was born, a little boy. He was a bit  bigger than mine and I remember his surname. It was Perry and the nurses always referred to the two of them as Penny (the little boy) and halfpenny (who was to be called Margaret). This Sister Hawes tramped around Barnet shops and further afield to buy the smallest vests and nighties she could to dress them in. The weather couldn’t have been too bad because once these two were out of their incubators, we were told to take them out in the grounds for walks, muffled up in 2 old fashioned prams that Sister Hawes had rustled up from somewhere.

The babies, P & H, had to be fed every 2 hours night and day, only a pen filler amount at a time. When at last I was allowed to go into the nursery, I always had to wear a mask etc. Then came the day Bertie could also enter and see her. Sister Hawes came in to meet him. He was standing there looking all sorts of a fool in a long white gown and mask and hat. She said hello, then she looked me up and down, then Bertie. Then she said, looking again at me, ‘You’re ;not exactly short to your father, and you are very tall, yet this is all you could produce.’ She made a derogatory sound and stamped out of the room, leaving myself and Bertie speechless. Poor old Bertie, dressed up, red in the face, arms outstretched with the baby laying across his hands. He was terrified he would drop her and I had to rescue the poor little soul. Six years later, when I had Paul, who was 8 or 9lb and had a mop of black hair, Sister Hawes heard I was in maternity and came hurrying over. She took Paul out of his cot, looked at him and casually dropped him on the bed, saying ‘That’s not a baby, that’s a lavatory brush,’ and wanted to know all about Margaret. She did see Margaret when her father brought her on a visit and was pleased how she had got on. Then I never saw Sister Hawes again. She was the one who said to me, ‘If you can keep her alive and thriving till she’s 6 months old, she will never look back.’

It was a very difficult 6 months, feeding every 2 hours day and night, room the same temperature day and night, wipe her over in olive oil, don’t immerse her in water, go in to it gradually a bit at a time as time went on. The reason I was told for not having seen her till she was 7 days old, by a staff nurse, seems it was because they tried out a new thing on both her and Perry. I was only told this when I left the hospital to go home.

What I forgot to mention was that Margaret was born in Well House Hospital, but the maternity unit had been transferred to Victoria Nursing Home in the same road, but before you got to Well House, and that was where Paul was born, and I had my two miscarriages. Miss Milne was still there and she said to me when I asked, ‘Why am I having this trouble?’ ‘There is still [much] we don’t know about. Your daughter was very tiny and you were lucky to rear her. Then your son was exceptional in his weight, now these two misses. All I can say is you will not be able to rear another child, so forget all about that and be thankful that you have the two you do have,’ and that was that.

Staff Nurse Seaman, by the way, was in a terrible car accident and her lovely face was badly disfigured. She must have gone through the windscreen. I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think she went back to nursing. Pity, for she was brilliant. To show you what she was like, when Paul was born, after a while I noticed that he was pale and had a blue line around his mouth. This to me spelt heart trouble and I got upset. SN Seaman spotted this and asked what was bothering me. I told her and she said that a Heart Specialist was coming to the hospital the next day to look at another baby on the ward and that she would have a word with him about Paul. But she said, ‘In the meantime, will you let me take the baby away for the night?’ I agreed. That evening she came and took the cot and Paul away. The next morning, she brought him back all pink and lovely. I said, ‘What did you do?’ She said his heating powers hadn’t been working properly and she had put his cot near an electric fire for the night to give it a boost and that was the result. But she still asked the specialist to look at him to put my mind at rest. He tossed him on the bed and examined him and did various things that assured me that what Staff Nurse had said was quite right and he was a healthy child. That was what SN Seaman was like.

Little Paxton

During the summer, when Matty and Julia had their holidays, we used to enjoy having them down with us. Paxton wasn’t all built up then and you could walk over fields to the river. At the end of our avenue, we had a large lake. There were 10 of these around the village. They were originally gravel pits, plus we had the River Ouse going through. There was a zig zag of paths running through one end of our lake and the kids used to say, ‘When we come, can you take us on an adventure,’ and he used to say ‘Yes, but remember to fetch your wellington boots.’ He used to take them various places. Through the paths on our lake or in the Goat [?], across the common, along Mill Meadow, along the Haylings to the lock where they would watch the boats go through, point out the different trees, dragon flies, wild plants, the occasional King Fisher and other birds, and of course take them fishing. Julia enjoyed it for a time then dropped off and Matt used to come on his own.

George Macmillan, a friend and neighbour used sometimes to take him over the Village Hall Green and kick a football about and they would finish up in the village pub; well, sitting outside actually, and Mac would buy Matt a shandy. He felt very grown up. We used to take him on the outings we ran for the Old People’s Club. Hunstanton was one place and a couple of people used to give him some money to spend. But his favourite place was Felixstowe and we went there a couple of times. He joined in the activities at the village fete, doing well in the races and he once won first prize for making a garden on a plate. This went in the local paper, as did the time he won the Junior Fishing Contest, under the watchful eye of Grandad.

On one occasion, though, he got a telling off from his Grandad. We we were down at the river and it happened to house a very large but elusive pike. Matt had stopped fishing and was wriggling his fingers in the water. His Grandad told him not to do it because it was dangerous with a pike around. He did it again when there was an almighty splash. Fortunately, his reactions were fast and he got his hand out just as the pike surfaced briefly. A near thing, I can tell you. But, as they say, we loved having Matt with us.

We got a punt and a 12ft fibreglass canoe for Paul and when he came down with his mates, they used to go on the river with these. On one occasion, they were going to go off up river and camp like ‘Three Men in a Boat’, but they only got as far as the nearest pub and came back again. If you negotiated all the locks along the way (we had our own lock key), you could eventually reach the Broads. One evening we went along to the end of the village where St Neots Fishing Club had a very large lake or rather a series of lakes, and coming home at dusk, Bertie, myself and Matt, all was still and quiet when this large white bird flew out of a tree and across our path to the woods the other side. That was Matt’s first sight of a white owl [Barn Owl]. He was quite excited once he got over the scare it gave him. Unfortunately, so much building has gone on there since we left that its no longer a village as such and as for the afore mentioned St Neots Fishing Lakes, they are now a marina and an area for all kinds of water sports. It’s called progress.

Going back to the pike, it used to pull ducks down under the water and as it used to be when they had their young, the poor little things used to flounder around not having a clue.  What to do? A friend of Bertie’s had a kind of sanctuary. So, they used to go out in a punt and collect the young and take them to this chap’s place where he kept them until they were bigger and could fend for themselves, then take them back to the river. When we were leaving Paxton, we had no further use for the boats. Someone offered to buy the punt and outboard motor so we sold those, but gave the canoe to the local Boy Scout Troop who, I was told, made good use of it.

World War 2

War was declared at 11 o’clock on Sunday September 3^rd 1939. The Prime Minister of that time, Neville Chamberlain, announced over the wireless that, ‘We are now at war with Germany.’

After the terrible bombings in the winter of 1940, homeless and frightened people needed food and shelter so emergency feeding centres were opened. The Ministry of Food offered each local council throughout the country a government grant so that they could start restaurants where every man, woman and child could, if necessary, obtain at least one hot nourishing meal a day at a price they could afford. They were called British Restaurants.

In 1945, a typical lunch they would serve would be roast beef, 2 veg, treacle pudding, bread and butter and a cup of tea or coffee, price 1/-  (5p).

At the outbreak of war everyone was issued with a food ration book, a clothing coupon book and an identity card. There were also dockets issued for the purchase of furniture Everyone was also made to go and try out and be given their gas mask, which was put into a cardboard box with a length of string attached to carry over the shoulder. You were supposed to carry them with you always. Fancy covers for these cardboard boxes were soon on sale in the shops. Different items of clothing had different value of coupons on them so once you had used up your year’s allocation, you couldn’t buy any more. There was a good trade of the black market for these. Furniture also had different value of dockets. All food was rationed, including sweets. Petrol was also rationed.

1950

After five years of peace, food was still rationed. Bacon 3g a week, sugar 8oz, cheese 2oz, meat 1/6d worth (7½p), about to drop to 1/- worth; this was per person a week rations. Some prices went up at the end of this year. Petrol was 2/6d (17½p) per gallon, beer to 1/3½d (6½p) a pint.

In 1939 I was 11 years old. I had been attending Monteagle School for a little while. Although us children didn’t know much about the politics of the world, we felt there was something happening. There was a lot of talk about a crisis but what it meant we didn’t know and the grown-ups wouldn’t tell us. But one day at school, we were all given a paper to take home. I vaguely remember that it contained a list of items and the name of two places, namely America and somewhere in England. My father explained to me that the list was of items of clothing etc. I was to take to school because one day I would be going away with all the other children. Having been away so often before, this didn’t worry me too much. My father had to sign this form stating where he wished me to go. I remember pleading with him to let me go to America, but he was adamant that I go somewhere in England. America, to me in those days, was somewhere like a bus ride away. I really had no idea where it was but I liked the sound of it.

Well, all the things on the list were got and put into a knapsack and we had to take this to school. Each morning we went off to school saying cheerio to our mothers, not knowing whether we would be home again that night. This went on for a while. We did no work at school, just played games or read comics and books. Then one day, the teacher came into the class holding a handful of tickets and we were told to pick up our knapsacks and assemble in the school yard. Labels were pinned on to us and buses began to arrive. We were told to get on them in an orderly fashion. Some mothers who lived near the school realised what was happening and came weeping to the school gates but were told not to upset the children. Word soon got round to the other mothers. The buses took us to Becontree tube station, where we were ushered onto a special tube train. I was fortunate that the railway ran past the bottom of our garden and my mother was there waving with all the neighbours as we went by. We waved them out of sight. Finally, we arrived at I think it was Paddington Station, where there were hundreds more kids all with their knapsacks or cases with their labels pinned to them. We must have looked like a lot of refugees. Anyway, eventually we were all found seats on the train and we were off. When we were nearly at our destination, our Headmaster came to every carriage and told us that we were going to a place called Bath. I must say here that everyone was under the impression that we would only be gone about two weeks. Hopes were still high that a world war could still be averted. Neville Chamberlain had gone to Germany to meet with Adolph Hitler who had signed a peace agreement which Chamberlain, as he stepped out of the airplane when he came home, held in his hand and waved about, quite convinced he had done the trick, but little did he know it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. This turned out to be such a blow to him that it killed the poor old chap.

Well, when we arrived at Bath, we were transported to various schools all over the city. Our school went to an area called Fairfield Park, up in the hills. At the school, we had to march in single file past a table where a lady handed each of us a carrier bag containing food, sweets and fruit, then we were told to sit and wait. Lots of cars began to arrive and women with lists in their hands. When our names were called, we were taken to a car. Six of us were squeezed into the car I got into one and we were driven off to a particular street. Ours was an avenue called Queenwood Avenue and it was a steep hill. The woman bustled us up this hill and, knocking on different doors, handed over one or two children. My house turned out to be almost at the top of this hill. I remember when the door opened, there stood a man and a woman and when told I was their evacuee, the woman looked quite annoyed, saying she had volunteered to have a baby. Anyway, the husband hushed her up and took me inside. Their name was Mr and Mrs Biss and I don’t think they had been married that long, but she was pregnant and I later found out she was expecting the baby in the December.

They were kind to me but she was always very cool toward me and it was he who always got me my breakfast before he went to work. I had to keep my bedroom clean myself and make my own bed. This didn’t worry me for I had done that in the convent. But if I made a hole in my stocking or a button came off my coat or dress, I was made to sit and sew them myself. This was to teach me to be careful with my clothes. I wasn’t allowed to play out but was allowed to have the front door open and stay in the hall, but at least I got to talk to my mates. One thing from my vantage point sitting in the hall, I saw most of what went on. Soon I noticed the most handsome looking boy that lived opposite. He would always be whistling or singing the same tune – ‘South of the Border’. All I can remember about him now was that his name was Francis Mascall and he must have been 15 and that was my first crush. He had not time for a plump girl with plaits as I was then.

The dialect of the West Country people had a soft burr, pronouncing their ‘Rs’ and Mr Biss spent a lot of time trying to what he called making we speak properly. His mother lived about ½ hour’s walk away and every Sunday after church, we had to walk there for dinner at 1 o’clock. After the fortnight we were all thinking that we were going home, but come the 3^rd September, we didn’t go to church. This was most unusual. Everyone seemed to be on edge. I remember I was in my usual place in the hall and the wireless was on. Everyone’s radio was on and then it was announced at 11 that we were at war with Germany. I remember everything went very quiet for a while, then everyone was crying. With tears running down her face, Mrs Biss told me that we wouldn’t be going home, then I began to cry and I ran out to my mates who also were crying. But childlike, we soon mopped up and carried on as usual. Mr Biss explained that I would stay with them at least until the baby was born.

The next day, I was introduced to a girl named Jean. She must have been about 16 at that time. Mr Biss told me she would looking after me. So there I was, 11 years old and having my first nurse maid. One thing that pleased Mr and Mrs Biss very much was that my father had brought me up always to wear a hat, gloves and stockings when I went out and it was Jean’s job to see that I never got the slightest bit dirty. She went with me whenever I went out. I liked her a lot, one of the main reasons being that she was absolutely dotty on the boy Francis and talked about him continually. (Several years later, she married and Francis was her best man.) Directly after Christmas Mrs Biss went into hospital and Mr Biss said I couldn’t stay in the house with him alone and 3 other people were prepared to take me in and I had the choice as to who I wanted to go to. By this time, out of the 22 children that were billeted in the avenue, only 3 of us remained. I chose to stay with a Mrs Sylvia Bryant and what a bad choice I made.

In the previous November, we had all been taken to the local school and we had to sit an exam to determine which school we were to be sent to. I wasn’t terribly good, so I was to start at Walcot Parochial School; in the new year. It was quite a walk to get there, down Snow Hill, which was very long and steep, then along a main road almost into the city itself. We went for a couple of weeks then broke up for Christmas. Never will I forget that winter of 1940. It was severe, ¼ inch twigs on trees were 2 ins thick round with ice and snapped off all the time. I forgot to say that when you reached the top of the avenue, you walked along a short lane and you were in the woods. They were a good size woods, too. The view from the lane was beautiful. All the houses in the avenue had very small front gardens with iron railings round each one. In this winter, they were thick with ice. None of us children could go to school, men couldn’t go to work and when the women went shopping, they sat on trays or used skis to go down, then they would be pulled up by ropes by the men. This may seem a tall story, but it’s true. Later, all the railings were taken away to be melted down to help in the war effort.

Eventually the weather improved and we started at our new schools. As I say, I went to a church school. Walcot School, how I loved it there. They were really happy times, but the headmaster was very, very strict and we were all terrified of him. My parents hadn’t moved to Bath then, and as I have already said, I lived with Sylvia Bryant and her husband, Tot, and their adopted son who was just a toddler. Before the war, the West Country had a bad reputation for what was called baby farming. I’ll explain this. In those days, there were homes where orphans were brought up, though they were called ‘waifs and strays’. Anyone could go and select a child to adopt and the authorities gave the person a lump sum. People used this method of getting money. They didn’t want the children, just the money and in those days could buy a house for a couple of hundred pounds. Sylvia Bryant adopted two of these children and bought her own house, so did her sister. Her father adopted 12 and bought several houses. As for the children, one way or the other they got rid of them. Some were reported as being out of control and were placed in remand homes. The words baby farming, I believe, came from a famous West Country case of a woman adopting children for the money, babies always, then murdered them. My mother, who was very friendly with a Mrs Ferguson (her husband was a naval commander) and she was elected on the committee of one of these homes. My mother told her what had been going on and I believe it was from that time that Mrs Ferguson took up the fight that things began to change.

I only lived with Sylvia Bryant a short while, when one day I came out of school and standing there were my father, mother and sister. They had arranged with the Bryants to move down to Bath but I wasn’t to be told until it was all settled. Later, we all lived next door when the old fellow died, but it wasn’t very good and so we went from there to 24 Camden Crescent in one of the old regency houses. Being high up, it looked down over the city. Not that we spent much time in the house. We all worked; by then I had left school and went into the Admiralty, so we all worked in one department or the other, spread around. And we all ate out and would more or less see each other when we got up and that was just in passing. Each of us in our respective departments had canteens and we mostly ate there. On rare occasions, by father would join me for lunch.

My first department was in the largest hotel in Bath, overlooking the Avon and the weir. Mother’s department was way up in the hills, Thelma’s was out of Bath, just on the outskirts in the country and Father’s just outside the city. My mother worked part time and she made friends and they used to go to whist drives, theatre and afternoon tea. Quite the social life. Thelma had her own friends and boy friends and went her own way. My father worked 7 days a week, but found time to have a girl friend. Me, well I had lots of friends and joined a couple of clubs, went dancing often where I met up with Arthur Clark and sang with his band for a while. We all just had a lot of fun. Sundays, in summer, we would all go in punts or canoes and go up the Avon to the lido at Bathford.

One friend’s mother was a piano teacher and during winter we would meet at her place quite often. They lived in a large house together with her grandparents and we used to go upstairs to the drawing room, where we would gather round the fire and her mother would play the piano to us. That was great until the Yanks came to town and Barbara (that was the girl’s name, Barbara Smallbone) went a bit wild and was seen with one yank after another. She eventually became pregnant and that split the family and we all kept well away. She had got such a bad name. Pity.

Before my parents came to Bath and I moved in with the Bryants, I was still at school. Every Sunday, we had to go to her father’s place for dinner. There would be about 10 at the table and us youngsters had to be seated and quiet at the table by 10 minutes to one, then the rest had to be seated by five to one, when the radio was switched on for the one o’clock news. No-one was allowed to speak until it finished. Then in the evening, we had this fair old trek down to the Methodist Church, near the school I went to. In fact it was a church school so the church was very familiar to me. There I became friendly with one of the choir boys who was given permission to walk part of the way home with us. His name was Denis Wood and we stayed friends the whole time I lived in Bath. He didn’t like my first name and always called me Pat, the only person ever to do so. He was a plain looking chap with glasses but had the most wonderful smile.

I was 11 when war was declared in 1939. In January 1940 I was 12 years old. I left school at 14 as nearly everyone did at that time. By the time I was 15½, I had had 3 proposals. Looking back on it, it was all pretty stupid. I think what it was, was that a lot of the chaps at the clubs we went to were that much older, were all being called up and they wanted someone they could call their fiancée while they were away. I turned them all down, after all 15½, I hadn’t really lived yet. There was one exception though. I mentioned him somewhere else in this book. His name was Bob Oakley.

Half way through 1943, myself and a friend went to a concert. Those days, a lot of artists gave concerts free. Not famous ones, but some fairly well known. This time, it was a pianist. When we arrived, the place was pretty well packed. We shouldered our way through to the last row of seats, but of course they were all taken. All I can remember of this concert was that the pianist began to play the Warsaw Concerto, just as we settled down to having to stand, I felt someone touch my arm and there, in one of the seats, was this sailor. He whispered that he apologised for not giving me his seat as he was just recovering from illness and it was his first time out, but I was welcome to sit on his lap. Well, by now I had heard some chat ups (especially as the yanks were in town), but this was a new tack. But I liked the look of him and sat on his lap. Some little while later he looked around for his friend who was with him and had been standing after managing to get a seat for Bob, and he then took up with my friend. It turned out that it was true about Bob. He was a stoker on an oil tanker on the Russian Convoy. The weather in that region had been so bad that he had developed double pneumonia and as he said he was just getting back on his feet again.

That was it, while he was home we were inseparable. I went often to his house and got on well with his mother, father and sister. Then he went back to sea and was again on the Russian run. Now how did I know? Two ways: one I now worked in another department of the Admiralty in a private house taken over by the the Admiralty and my job there was (not just me of course), but in these rooms were lots of steel filing cabinets and in them were the names and files of every ship, small or large, of the British Navy, free French and our Empire comrades. When a ?true show?  was on we had to remove the files and notify the top boys who sent out the familiar telegram, ‘missing presumed killed’. In the quieter moments we dealt with their pay problems. We didn’t know their exact position, but this is the second way I knew. My sister was in the naval plotting department. I gave her the name of Bob’s ship and she told me where it was. Not exactly, but that he was again on the Russian run. He had leave toward the Autumn and he said that Christmas he was hoping to be home and it was a double celebration as it was also his 21^st birthday and he wanted the hat trick by announcing our engagement, which would be made official on the 5^th January 1944, my 16^th birthday. I fell in with this plan, did I just! I told my mother who said, ‘Your father won’t allow it but if that’s what you want, leave him to me.’ I was at work one morning just before the Christmas, when I was given a list of ships just sunk and his was on it. No survivors. If you were a stoker in the hold of an oil tanker and received a direct hit, no chance. It sent his mother off her head and for a while I still visited but it got too much and I eventually stopped going there. My mother and I would see her on occasions, but she would cling to me and ask me to find out where he was. She would not accept that he was dead. Thinking back, no way would my father have let me get engaged at sixteen. But who knows what would have happened if he had lived. He was a wonderful chap and it took me a long time to get over him.

During the war, basic foods were rationed and depending on imports and shipping losses, the amount per adult per week was: bacon/ham 4oz, sugar 8oz, cheese 3oz (though in May 1941 it went down to 1oz), jam/marmalade 2oz, butter 2oz, margarine 4oz; meat varied but again, in May 1941, it went down to 1/- worth of meat. Offal and sausages were not rationed. The distribution of milk, eggs and oranges were controlled so that priority allowances went to babies, expectant mothers and invalids. The rest of us got 1 pint of milk a week and we had to cook with dried milk and dried egg powder. Points had to be handed over for tinned goods, dried fruits, condensed milk and biscuits. Sweets went on ration in July 1942 and were 2oz per person a week. Meat was still rationed right up to June 1954.

Toward the end of the war, when the docks were running again, the PLO wanted my father back, but the Admiralty wanted him to stay with them. So it came to a court case. I believe at the time, my father was quite happy about it. So arrangements were made for us to return to London. My sister stayed in Bath and we returned to Becontree. The place had changed. We didn’t know many people any more and it was so different to what we had been used to in Bath. My mother felt it most; she had left her friends behind – no more tea dances, theatres, outings and whist drives. She became very lonely and had nothing in common with the neighbours. Whenever my father wanted to go shopping, he always took me along and about 6 months back in London, we were sitting on the bus going home when he said, ‘I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life. I should never have come back. I should have put up a fight to stay in the Admiralty,’ but of course, things couldn’t be changed. I got a job at Nestles at Cheapside where I met Bertie. Thelma turned up heavy with child and at least this gave my mother something to devote the rest of her life to. The child, Louise, was thoroughly spoilt. I married and moved to the other side of London.

Isle of Dogs, Millwall

 I haven’t been there since the building of Canary Wharf and the rest has been built. I also understand that the Chinese Causeway and Pennyfields in Limehouse have gone. I remember it as it was. Streets of terraced cottages, one road called Manilla Street, was where my grandfather and Uncle Jim lived. A cosy old-fashioned cottage with an outside loo and no bathroom. The main road running through was Cubit Road or Street. Manilla Street was at the end, coming from Limehouse. At the other end was Cubit Town and Blackwall Tunnel. When I was young you crossed a wooden bridge onto the Island. Once across, all along the right-hand side were the factories whose backs opened onto the wharfs and river So most of the houses were on the left hand side for a while. When my sister returned from Bath, she was about to have a baby. It was a girl, Louise. That’s all I’ll say about that and her. Anyway, I was working at Nestles and had become engaged to Bertie.

When the child was a few months old, it was arranged that my mother looked after the child and my sister got a job. She chose to work in one of the factories on Millwall and asked me to go with her. We got a job at Beacham’s. That’s where I met Gladys and we became friends. My sister always kept herself aloof, figuring she was better than them all.  I made myself known to them, much to the displeasure of my sister, but it stood me in good stead because I was given a cushy job. The only bugbear was the foreman of this department. I can’t remember his name after all this while, but he was a red head and fancied himself no end and thought all women were fair game and became an absolute pain. It became a daily occurrence fighting him off. I could have, of course, reported him but I knew if I did that it would be worse for me. It turned out that a much better idea copped up. Jim asked me one day what was wrong and I told him. He gave that deep belly laugh of his when I said the man’s name. I knew this guy used to go across to the pub of a lunch time. Jim said he would meet me the next lunchtime outside, by the pub. We used to go to my grandfather for dinner each day. Pat was alive then and was living there.

The next day, as planned, Jim was waiting for me and this guy who came along a little bit later, saw us together. Jim just glared at him and didn’t attack the guy. When I went back for the afternoon, he came up and asked did I know the bloke I was talking to and walked off with. I said, ‘Of course I do, he’s my Uncle.’ He went a bit white around the gills and I had no more bother with him. About 6 months later, when we arrived for work, there was a lot of excitement and we found out that the guy had hanged himself from the railings at work.

Bath

I wrote before about the school I went to in Bath. Walcot School; a church school, attached to Walcot Church, where I used to go Sunday evenings until I went to work. We soon learnt about Beau Nash and Jane Austen who lived there for a time, but it wasn’t until I bought a book of letters from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra that I knew that her parents are buried in the churchyard of Walcot Church. I also bought a lovely book that I read over and over. It was a diary of a curator called Kilvert and in it he remarks that he went to a friend’s house for dinner and two other guests were there who had recently arrived, one from Bath – a Lady Hobhouse of Monkton Farleigh who had lovely fair hair. When I read this it took me right back to our time in Bath. On the Friday night, we went with Tot Bryant in his large lorry, drove for miles and miles and eventually stopped and we all fitfully slept in the back of the lorry. When the dawn came, we all roused and got out of the lorry to stretch and move around to get warm. We looked around and found we were parked on an airfield and it only took us a very short while to drive home. My father was disgusted and furious.

The following night everyone evacuated from the city. My father, meanwhile, during the day, had made arrangements for him, my mother, sister and myself to be picked up with several other families of men he worked with and off we set for this place called Monkton Farleigh and this very large house with large grounds way out in the country. We were met in the grand hall by, yes, Lady Hobhouse. It couldn’t have been the same person for Kilvert met his Lady Hobhouse in 1876 and although our one was an old lady I don’t think she was that old. She was a Margaret Rutherford sort of character, though not in looks but she was tall and wore a long black cloak. She ushered us all into a large room and we were supplied with blankets and pillows and before we settled down, she had her butler serve us all with cocoa. Two nights we spent there and then my father decided that it was quite safe to go home and that was the end of our bombing. But it makes you think when you read something like that. Unfortunately, several of my friends were killed during that weekend of bombing. I remember walking to work the next day and seeing the rubble which had been their houses the day before. They had had a direct hit.

War Years, As We Were

October 1942 was the month when the fortunes of war finally turned in favour of the allies. In the Western Desert, General Montgomery had carefully fostered his resources so that when he finally attacked Rommel’s  weakened forces in the crucial battle of October 23^rd, he was certain of success. The battle started at 9.40pm when more than a thousand guns along the whole of the British line opened fire simultaneously upon German artillery positions. In 20 minutes, they had devastated the enemy’s guns and from the choking curtain of dust, the Eight Army advanced to the attack, to the wild skirling of bagpipes. After four days of intense air pounding, the line held, despite heavy German counter attacks. Churchill encouraged more feeling of optimism when he spoke at Edinburgh saying that Hitler’s latest speeches revealed ‘a dull low whining sort of fear.’

Earlier in the month, 115 Flying Fortresses and Liberators, accompanied by 500 allied fighters had bombed the German-held industrial plant in Lille, France, in the greatest raid on Germany occupied territory of the war. But just when most people thought it safe to sleep in their own beds again, 30 German planes bombed Canterbury on October 31^st in one of the most severe raids of the war. ‘Drip bombing’ continued intermittently and there were scattered bombs in the North-East on Hebburn, South Shields, Tynemouth, Whitby Bay and Sunderland. At that time, there were no bans on smoking and nearly 2,000 million cigarettes weekly were smoked in Britain. A tobacco controller, who had just returned from America to ensure further supplies, claimed there was no likelihood of shortages.

Meanwhile, sweet-toothed youngsters were having a hard time. Despite appeals from the trade, Lord Woolton [?] froze the manufacture of all ice-cream. Nearly 100,000 manufacturers were affected and one cafe in Totnes, Devon, gave their remaining stocks away to children. Some sweet shops found they couldn’t sell vast stocks of cheap confectionery, hoarded before rationing began, but the Food Ministry ignored requests from retailers to sell such stocks coupon free. Rationing had brought about a change in buying habits. Fewer sweets were sold since they cost precious coupons and the public preferred better varieties. An ordinary 2oz chocolate bar cost 2½d and two precious coupons. Milky Ways were no longer available but a candy bar called Starry Way, the next best thing, cost just 1½d.

Shopkeepers were beginning to realise the public would pay dearly for items in short supply. In Sheffield, a publican was fined £3 for imposing a condition of sale, insisting that customers had to buy spirits if they wanted ginger beer. Similarly, an Ipswich shop was fined £9 for imposing a condition of sale, this time on tomatoes. When the housewife asked for tomatoes, she was told she had to buy something else as well and a lettuce was just not good enough. But some women got round restrictions and Messrs. Kennards of Croydon, Surrey, were fined a total of £70 for supplying food without coupons. Five customers were also fined. The women had used various inducements to persuade the assistant to serve them with more than their fair share. One gave theatre tickets, another got what she wanted by ‘making eyes at him’!!!

When the Mayor of Newcastle went to congratulate the widow of Private Adam Wakenshaw, who had earned the VC in Egypt, he found she was not in her city tenement home. Lilly Wakenshaw had taken her two children along to the Civic Centre to ask for shoes for seven-year-old son George. She claimed she could not afford them from a pension of £2-17-3d and her rent was 7/- a week. George was promised new shoes to go to Buckingham Palace with his mother to collect his father’s medal from the King. Stanley Lupino, the actor, left the proceeds of a £10,000 insurance policy in his will to Sally Grey, a former £4 a week chorus girl, whom he steered to stardom. The rest of his estate went to his wife, Constance.

Our River Frontage

Our 25ft frontage cost me £100. It went back about 30-35ft to the tow path. It was fenced off and had trees on it and at the tow path end, a hedge of hawthorn. Bertie cut himself out a swim and it was very pleasant sitting there. We used to take two folding chairs and sometimes a sandwich and drink. Bertie would fish and we would also watch the river traffic. In the deeds were the most peculiar dos and don’ts. No burning of bones, no boiling of fat, no building an isolation hospital and no making of candles, which was a pity because I only bought the land so that I could do all these things as a hobby. They must have been very ancient laws. We picked up several old parts of clay pipes that the old fellows who walked the horses that pulled the barges had discarded. This old tow path was called the Haylings. You couldn’t put a building of any kind on this land as at times it flooded.

I mentioned how Bobby and I and a couple of others used to go over to the fields past the pub the Ship and Shovel and made a raft and paddled down the streams. Well, once and only the once, my father said he wanted to take me across these swampy fields for he wanted to show me something. It was quite a long trudge, for unlike being with mates, and larking about, I had to walk beside him and not wander off. At last we reached, the river Thames and after a little while, he said (we had just been standing looking at the river and I can’t remember if other people were there, but there must have been), ‘There, there it is. What do you think of that?’ and slowly came into sight this beautiful liner. He told me it was the Mauritania. It was a lovely sight – I had never seen a real liner, only pictures. We stood and watched as she slowly went by. What she was doing on that part of the Thames or where she was going, I don’t know.

Everyone over a certain age had to do their turn at fire watching duty. Either at work or at home. My father and sister did theirs at work, but my mother had to do hers at home. Before we moved to Camden Crescent we lived for a while in Fairfield Avenue, a steep fairly short hill with the woods at the top. Before you reached the woods at the start of a short stony path, stood a sentry box type of thing, only with a door which was kept locked. Well the first time my mother had to do her fire watch duty, which she had to take over from the person who had done their stint, it was pitch dark in the early hours of the morning. She was a bit wary of going on her own, so I volunteered to go with her. We wrapped up well and off we went up to this sentry box, which was the lookout post. The chap handed my mother a whistle, saying, ‘If you see any incendiary bombs falling within your section, you run down your avenue blowing hard on your whistle. The only trouble is, lady, the pea has come out so you’ll have to shout loudly.’ He looked at me and said, ‘You can do that can’t you miss. Oh, and by the way, we’ve lost the key to the sentry box.’ (In the sentry box was all the first aid stuff and a stirrup pump and bucket, etc.) Talk about Fred Carnie [?]. Anyway, it made my mother feel better because when he went and left us shivering in the dark, she got a fit of the giggles. Nothing happened of course. But after a little while, we noticed a red glow in the sky a way off and we stood that night and watched Bristol being bombed.

I went with my mother and one of her friends to my one and only spiritualist meeting, held in a well-lit small hall where the medium sat on a chair on a small stage, going into a trance and calling out names or initials of people who supposedly passed over to give messages to anyone in the hall who recognised the name etc. It was full of people who had relatives killed during the war, hoping to get some solace.

Again, with my mother and her friend, I went to a weekly afternoon meeting at another hall. The people were Quakers. How she got involved I don’t know, but they were lovely people. It was a social afternoon and at that time, so long as the sheet music had the tonic sol fah, (like the little piano in my music game, but letters instead of numbers) I could play it, though both hands doing the same thing. I would have a little go at this and we would all have a sing song. I’ve lost the knack now. It was fun and I enjoyed it while it lasted.

I went to Wells with my mother and another friend whose husband was in a mental home there. While she visited him, we would go to the Cathedral in time to see the swans going down to a small window and pull on a rope which rang a bell to get some food which would be passed through the window. In 1999 or 1998, we went on a trip there and we went to the Cathedral and I asked there if the swans still did this. The answer was yes, but of course the ones I’d seen in the 40s were dead and others had been trained.

A gang of us went to Cheddar Gorge for the day. My friend Doris and I met two local boys who told us that if we climbed up the gorge we would find lots of the famous Cheddar Pinks. We took this on and it was some climb, I can tell you, and we did find lots of pinks and violets. The only trouble was that it had taken quite a bit of time going up and down and we missed the bus that would take us to the station for our train connection (the last one). We got on a bus for we felt we had to do something and we arrived at the station only to be told that the next train was the milk train leaving at about 2.00 in the morning. The porter said he would get us on it and we could also wait in the waiting room. This was fine but I worried about the row there would be when we got home, so I asked him where the police station was and having got directions, we set off to find it. It wasn’t hard and I explained what had happened when we arrived there and asked it the police station in Bath could be notified so that a message could be got to our parents. He phoned through and, how’s this for lucky, the policeman he spoke to was just about to go off duty and said that he knew both myself and my parents (he lived quite close to us) and would call on them on his way home. That done, the police gave us a cup of tea and we stayed in the station until it was time for us to make tracks for the railway station again. The porter duly got us on the milk train, though we had to stand up all the way to Bath. We arrived tired, dirty and hungry, then we had this long trek home up the hills. There was no-one about and our footsteps echoed as we walked. It was eerie.

My mother had been the one who opened the door to our kind copper. She felt that she had better stay up, having a rough idea what time we would be back. When my father found out about it (I don’t know how), he was furious and I was about to get a roasting until my mother slipped in and told him what we had done and about the copper coming to tell her that he just gave me a lecture on making sure that I watched the time when on these outings. I didn’t need telling that. The next day, on the way to work, I called in at the police station to thank our friend. He said, ‘That’s OK, glad to help,’ and that he was glad to see that we had had enough sense to get in control. I wonder in this day and age whether two young teenagers wandering about and riding on a milk train would have got on. Plus, would today’s police have been so helpful. Remember, to them in those days, no lamps were on in the streets, it was total blackout. Though, when we got to Bath, the dawn was just about rising.

Back to Limehouse

Each week, a man with a barrel organ would come around. My sister and I used to hang out of the top window and listen and watched kids dancing to the music. There was one girl, though, who you would often see sitting on the kerb; she was mentally retarded but no-one bothered her. She was a big girl and would drone (her way of singing) just one line from a comic song of those days. I can remember the song itself, but just this one line that the girl droned on and on, ‘Ain’t it grand to be blooming well dead’. Then there was an old couple that walked the streets singing and collecting money. I can remember two of their songs; Silver Strands Among the Gold and A Bird in a Gilded Cage. Perhaps they were the only two they sang, I don’t know. In case you don’t know the songs, which I wouldn’t think you would, the firs part sang by her then him:

(Her) Darling I am growing old
Silver strands among the gold
Shine upon my brow today
Life is fading fast away.

(Him) But, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me
Yes, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me.

The only piece I remember about the second part is:I’m only a bird in a gilded cage
A beautiful sight to see.

I still remember lots of the old-time music hall songs, having been taught to me when I was young by my mother and grandad and others. Another thing I used to listen to was my mother singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs from their operettas. She was a great G&S fan. At our Friendship Club here at Wallisdown, we used to have an afternoon now and again of old music hall songs. On those days, no-one went home early; they would all stay and sing till we had to push them out the door. We used on our own entertainment in the hall at Christmas and there are two photos of me performing at different times.

Sometimes, as we lived opposite the Chinese Restaurant, my father would send me over for a bowl of chop suey. This is not and never has been a true Chinese dish, unlike bird’s nest soup which was made of certain birds’ nests. As there were very few cars around, only the occasional tram, he used to watch me cross the road and enter the restaurant, where I would make my way down to the kitchen. You must remember in those days, the Chinese wore their traditional dress – the trousers, the long gown, the plait down the back and the little hat. They shuffled along with their hands tucked up inside the wide sleeves of their gowns. Later, the only concession they made to modern dress was to wear ordinary shirts, but not tucked into the trousers. Once there, I sat on a little stool until one of them was ready to serve me and I would carefully carry the food home, accompanied across the road by one of the Chinese, where my father would meet us at the door of the house, because I couldn’t carry it up three flights of stairs.

During the day, the place was fairly quiet but come night time, all sorts of things went on. Sometimes at dusk, I was allowed to sit with my mother and father and see all the colour and activity. This used to be their entertainment and my mother used to tell me about some of the things that went on. I was, of course, older then and not so easily shocked.

Herbert Charles Simeon Bass 

Born 26.2.1916 to Anne and Herbert Bass at Southview Road, Hornsey, N London, weighing in at 13lb. He was named after his father (Herbert) and his two grandfathers, Charles Williams and Simeon Bass. At the age of 5 he attended Campsbourne primary school, by which time he had a sister, Muriel, born 1918 and a brother, Frederick John (Jack), born 1919. His other brother and two more sisters came later, Alfred, Nora and Margaret. They were not by any means a wealthy family and times were hard on occasions. His father liked playing football and on one occasion he got an injury which kept him off work. His mother was so angry about this that she burnt his football boots.

 

More Mind Pictures

Still in Limehouse. There was a parade I remember. It must have been a May Day Parade or something similar. It also must have happened every year, but this particular year I was at home, which is why only this one is clear in my mind. Girls and boys dressed up in fancy dress and marched in this parade. My father, on arriving home, asked my mother why I wasn’t in it. She assured him, ‘I never thought of it and anyhow, what would she wear?’ He therefore marched me across the road to a Jewish man’s clothing shop and asked for something I could wear. The only thing they could come up with was a navy blue one-piece swimsuit. My father bought it and told me to get into it  and join the parade. You never argued with my father, so I did what I was told and I think  must have been the most embarrassing thing that happened to me. It didn’t even have a ribbon or anything around it. Just a plain, woolly, navy blue one-piece swimsuit.

Hamden Road

As these are to be happy mind pictures, I will restrict it to a few which stood out. When Margaret could walk about, I suppose she must have been about 3 or 4, we used to walk down to the North Circular Road, which then was a two-lane road, cross over it and wait on the corner for Bertie to come home from work in Arthur Coleman’s car. There were no houses and flats built there then, just the grounds of Colney Hotel, with plenty of trees and a small stream. On the corner where we waited, it was grass and an old tree stump which had toadstools growing around and Margaret always called it the fairy ring. Further along, on the side of the road, was a rough wooded area which went in a fair bit along the North Circular Road. It was called the Rough Locks and Margaret was about 6-8 months. To get away from the old people, I used to wheel the pram to there, where we would picnic; well she would have a bottle and a rusk and I a sandwich. There is a photo of her sitting on the grass on one of these occasions.

On the opposite side of the road and again, further down (I think) was Strawberry Vale. I mean I think this is what it was called. Anyhow, there were horse riding stables and Paul was very keen. About 5/- a lesson, I paid for him to have riding lessons. I didn’t have to pay for long, because Paul, even at that young age, made a deal with the chap that instead of paying money, he helped in the stables clearing out and grooming. The chap agreed and things were well until that year there was a terrible epidemic of Horse Flu and one by one, the poor things succumbed and died. That was the end of Paul’s horse riding.

Another place we all used to go to on occasions was Hadley Woods. We would catch the bus and when we arrived there we would walk past some beautiful houses before entering the woods themselves. It wasn’t all wooded by any means, there were great areas of grass and 2 ponds, but lovely on a sunny day.

Alexandra Palace

We used to go up there quite a bit. The television came from there and everything was done in the grounds or in Muswell Hill. The race course was still there then and horse racing was televised from there, as were the gardening programmes, where there was a garden and a greenhouse. I liked the Grove best; that was a very pleasant place where you could sit and have an ice cream or cup of tea. When I was carrying Margaret, I was up on Muswell Hill and went in the Post Office. There were lights glaring down and men with cameras and a whole load of gear. The lead one said, ‘Queue up as you normally would,’ which we did. There were two girls, all made up with fur coats, and large parcels with wide ribbon with bows around the boxes. It turned out to be a ‘Post early for Christmas’ sort of ad. Silly, really, with large parcels done up with red ribbon, but it went out and although Margaret had no idea, that was her first TV appearance. You couldn’t walk around Muswell Hill without meeting someone from TV. Philip Harben, the Chef on the cookery programme, Richard Baker, a newscaster, Sylvia Peters, Mary Malcombe and various others. There appeared in the local paper one day that they were looking for new people – all you had to do was to fill in a form and then write about yourself.

Muriel talked me into going in for it. I duly filled in the form and wrote about myself, posted it and that was that. Then I got a letter with a pass inside and a day and time when I was to present myself with the pass to the studio. By the time the date came round, I felt I couldn’t do it so backed out. I often wondered afterwards if I had gone, what would have happened – nothing, I expect, but there was always that thought at the back of my mind, what if.

Muriel was always trying to push me into something like that. Another time it was to audition for TV again, only this time for presenting one of the children’s programmes they had at the time. Muriel’s husband, Stan, was a right s–. He was one of those charmers to everyone except his family. He was a lot older than Muriel and I think she only married him to get away from home. She knew he was a widower. I don’t know whether they went on honeymoon, only that they were passing this place, a children’s home, when he told her his children were there. Muriel was appalled and demanded to see them. There were three of them, Daphne, Sylvia and Geoffrey. She said, ‘This is terrible. We are taking them home.’ They lived in a council house in Coppets Road when I knew them, whether it had been his already I don’t know. Anyway, she brought them up and they were devoted to her. She went on to have 6 of her own; Heather, Rosemary (who died), Jimmy, Clive, Edward and Caroline. Geoffrey also died. She had her children at home and after the third, her doctor told Stan (or Nunky as we called him) that she really shouldn’t have any more. He didn’t take any notice of that and would even give her a black eye if he couldn’t get his way. I saw a lot of her in those days and saw the results of his clouts.

One day she was in a rare old state. I went over to her mantle shelf and picked up one of the two large copper vases she had on it and gave it to her (it was quite heavy) and told her to take it up to the bedroom and next time he came the old ???? to bop him one with it. Shortly after, she showed me this vase with a satisfying dent in it. She used to go out very early in the morning and do school cleaning, then get back to see the kids off to school, do her own work, prepare things for the evening meal (the kids had school dinners) and do a lot of baking cakes and buns and things for their tea. Then she would go and lie down and have a snooze for a while. (I timed my visits for when she got up.) Then she set the table for tea for the kids coming home. Nothing other than him put her out.

I have this impression of her of always laughing. At one time, he took them on a holiday to Leysdown and as usual made a right fool of himself. He went swimming and his false teeth fell out and when the tide went out, he had them all searching for them. Then he fell in the cesspit and had the nerve to write this adventure down and have it put in the church magazine. Then one day, Nunky, his sister Connie who lived around the corner to them, Muriel and myself were invited to go and hear Billy Graham speak. He certainly knew how to play on his audience. Having worked them all up, people were invited to go down to him and be saved. One of the first to go was Nunky and from then on, he got religion. He would go out of an evening clutching a bible in his hands and go and give (so he said) bible readings to lonely widows. Some of them used to say to Muriel how lucky she was to have such a charming husband. When he drank whisky he turned nasty and there were several punch reps at different times between him and Bertie and Jack and myself. At one time, when Muriel was upstairs having her baby and I was in the kitchen finishing off a great saucepan of stew, he came the cold acid with me, or tried to, at which I picked up the saucepan of boiling stew (I had to use both hands it was that heavy) and threatened to throw it over him, with which he ran out into the garden. I then slammed the door and locked it.

Next door to us at Hampden Road, lived a brother and sister. Neither had been married and they were a couple of bitter, sour faced pair of nasties if they heard anyone laughing or if the old people had company and there was a lot of noise and chatter. Grandad Williams was very deaf. They would bang on the wall. It seemed never a day went by without a bang on the wall. Then one time, at one such gathering, the laughing started and one of the company (I can’t remember who) said, ‘Just like their mother, eh Charlie.’ Grandad nodded and then out came the story that when their mother was alive, she went down with some illness and was bedridden, so they made one of the downstairs rooms into a bedroom. Unfortunately, this bedroom and the old people’s lounge backed onto each other and, like her children after, she would bang on the wall if she heard any noise. Well, one time, some friends had gone around to visit the old people – friends of Charlie – and they were having a bit of a laugh when the knocking started. They didn’t take any notice, for everyone was used to it, and would say ‘There goes the old Bessom.’  Anyhow, the knocking went on and one and they decided that something ought to be done about it. So, three or four of them went next door, and getting no answer from the street door, deciding that the old girl must be on her own, they couldn’t do much about it. But they still heard some faint knocking and one of the men peered through the window and was horrified to see that the old girl had fallen out of bed onto the fire. They broke in and went for a doctor but the shock, apart from everything else, did for her.

I had a very bad night with Margaret and she was crying and carrying on. I made a bottle for her and what with her and the knocking, I’d had enough. Bottle clutched in hand, I stormed out of the house, down their path and started pounding on their front door with the bottle, my fists and feet and eventually they had to open it. She looked very smugly at me but not for long. I had spent a lot of my anger out on the door, so I was fairly calmed down when all I said was, ‘I’m sick and tired of you knocking on the wall at the slightest noise. Your mother used to do the same and those people after a time ignored it. God forbid that anything should happen to either of you, but just recall what happened to your mother and if anything did happen and you knocked for someone to come and see what was wrong, you would be ignored like she was because no-one would know it just wasn’t you being nasty and spiteful as usual.’ I marched off and slammed our front door and that was that, and never another knock came after that. In fact, when she died and he was on his own, he asked me one day if he could have one of our kittens, which I gave him and he doted on it. This was a very pleasant change to the wicked practices he used to have of putting shards of broken glass between the fence palings to keep the cats out.

Next door to them lived a Mrs Westcott who was a friend of Bertie’s Aunt May. I wonder some times when I see that programme with Mrs Bucket whether the script writer knew Mrs W, because she was like her, not in looks and build, but in manner. Aunt May was also like it but not quite as bad. I think they both thought that they had really been born to gentry but had somehow got muddled up at birth. Not only did Mrs W act like Mrs Bucket, but also had a part of Thora Hird in Last of the Summer Wine in her make up. For the one and only time I went into the house before I and Aunt May (she had taken me there) stepped over the threshold, newspapers were laid on the floor leading to the lounge where newspaper was also put on the chairs. Not a happy visit, I’m afraid, and a short one where I was concerned for I soon made my excuses. When Paul was tiny in his pram, I met her out one day and she stopped to peer in at him. By this time, his eyes had changed to blue and she tutted and said, ‘Blue eyes, oh dear, he will always have weak eyes. What you will have to do dear is what I did with my boy. Chop up raw liver and give it to him to eat.’ I nearly threw up and as for her boy, he couldn’t leave home quick enough and made very rare visits to her. As for Aunt May, she went on her own way demanding this item and the other from poor old Uncle Ben. She led him a dog’s life until he finished up in Colney Hatch, which by that time was called a rehabilitation centre and had electric treatment. He was a very nice person. Nora emulated these two women when she first was married and for a while after, she also demanded this and that, which George could hardly afford. When I saw him quite recently, he reminded me of Uncle Ben.

When Nora and George first married, they lived with Bertie’s mother, for they said they wanted to save up for a deposit to buy a house (well, at least she did) and as I should imagine, they must have lived there rent free because when we went to Hampden Road, Bertie took on the rent for the whole house, which was 10/- (50p) per week. I often wondered how George thought about all of this for they had to help out in the house and the sight of George on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor along the passage always on a Saturday. Bertie, Jack, old man Bass and Georgie North used to meet and go off to see Tottenham play, trooping all over his clean floor. Jack used to tease him and say, ‘You’ve missed a bit there. You’d better do it quick before Madame comes out.’ George would just laugh but I wonder what he felt.

When the four of us went to the Isle of Man to stay on Bertie’s friend Arthur Christian’s farm (he always insisted that he was descended from Christian of the Bounty), what a journey that was! First a train to Liverpool, where we had to hang around for a long time. It must have been a Sunday or something, for I remember nowhere being open. At last we boarded our boat, The King Orry. We tossed and swayed all across the Irish Channel and I was seasick the whole way. In fact, many people were, even some of the crew. People were lying on the deck not being able to get to the toilets, through them being full. At one point, Nora (who looked after me the whole time) suggested a walk on deck in the fresh air. We went up onto a higher deck and I wasn’t too bad until we passed the open door of the bar and there, swirling out the door and around our feet was gallons of beer. Well, the smell knocked me back for a start and I was off again. When we arrived at the Island, we next had to get a train. Along it came (I was still walking like an old sailor, rolling from side to side. My father never lost this gait for he spent the best part of his life on and off ships at his work.)

Anyhow, the train. It had wooden bench seats and a half wooden partition between you in your part and the people in the next part and slow, you could have stepped out of the door and picked flowers off the bank whilst walking beside it. We at last arrived at the other end of the Island at a place called Ballachurry. We started to walk and I asked Bertie how far the farm was. ‘Oh, about 5 miles’ was his bright reply. It wasn’t 5 but a blooming long two. When we arrived at the farm, we passed a very old lady sitting on a stool preparing vegetables. She was dressed all in black, including her hat. She didn’t look up as we passed and I don’t think we saw her again. Much later, I was to ask who she was and was informed she was Arthur’s mother. Where or how she lived, I never knew. 

We were shown to our bedrooms and I looked out of the window of mine because I’d heard a noise, and saw just below several cows. Now as you know, I neither like nor trust cows. I wouldn’t go into a field where they were. So I wasn’t very happy in seeing them. Bertie said, when I told him, ‘Well, what did you expect. This is a farm.’ No joy there! After sorting ourselves out and washing, we were called down for supper. The room for this meal was fairly dark. Down the centre was a long scrubbed wooden table, chairs around and large wooden bowls filled with vegetables from which you helped yourself, and in the centre on a large plate was the largest, fattest piece of pork I had ever seen. I felt the gall rise in my throat and quickly excused myself and went to my room to lie down, leaving the others to explain about my bad journey. When I first got into the bed, I still felt a bit of rocking movements but it soon went off and I slept well, until those perishing cows woke me up.

Over breakfast, Evelyn had been talking to Bertie and she kept saying this name. I thought it was a person but it turned out it was a young bull. She had hand reared it and apparently, much to the amusement of everyone, it followed her around like a dog. The most sweetest, gentle thing, she said. Bertie smoked then and his party piece, which used to get right up my nose, was with his lighter – it was a perfectly good one – but he had this trick where he would flick it several times, it wouldn’t light. Then he would say to me, ‘Look away, you’re stopping my lighter from working,’  and I would dutifully look away and he would make it light.

But back at the breakfast table, where I sat, I had my back to the door but I had a very strong feeling that we were being watched. Nora and I went up to get our coats. Again, I felt I was being watched. Then I heard Nora gasp loudly, and say, ‘You frightened the life out of me.’ I ran to my door and found Nora was saying this to 5 boys. They had been brought up as soon as they could walk to be the farm hands and very rarely saw strangers, so were very shy. I can only remember the 3 eldest’s names which were Donald, Jackie and Derek. Donald was the mechanical one, Jackie broke in and trained the horses. Derek was the driver of farm vehicles. Anyway, off we set to go around the farm, the boys tagging along, but at first kept their distance.

All was going well until the men climbed over a five-bar gate and turned to help Nora and me, Whilst straddled across this gate I noticed, down in the corner of the field, an animal. I pointed at it and said, ‘Is that a cow?’ ‘No,’ laughed Arthur, ‘that’s so and so, Evelyn’s tame bull.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can forget getting me over this gate’ and pointing at this bull, said ‘I’m not going where he is,’ and scrambled down. One of the boys remarked that it was acting a bit funny, pawing the ground and giving a toss of the head.

We arrived on over the rest of the farm and then Jackie was asked to show us his horses. He brought a couple out and they are something else I don’t like being close to. Someone suggested that it would be fun to get up onto one and have a photo taken. Why they picked on me to be the first, I don’t know, but they hoisted me up. It didn’t have a saddle and just a rope arrangement around its mouth and neck to hold on to. Photo taken, I was very anxious to get off. Then someone, I never discovered who, gave it a slap on the flank and it took off, very much startled. (I found out later that it was only half broken in and would only turn one way.) I gripped hard with my knees, held on to the rope, his mane, his ears – anything to keep from falling. Fortunately for me, Jackie had jumped up on the other horse and managed to reach me before long and get the frightened pair (the horse and me) slowed down and made me stay on the horse and gently walk back with him in control of the reins or rope. I got off and said to Bertie furiously, ‘You call this a holiday! I’ll be lucky if I leave this island alive.’ Later that day, Arthur came into the house; he had been out with his gun and informed us that he had had to shoot the young bull as it had gone mad and had tried to attack Evelyn. They both gave me some very curious looks, after which although the farm was fairly remote, word had got around that I was a witch – the Witch of Ballachurry I was then known as, thanks to Bertie starting it all off with his stupid trick. The bull had already started going bad as one of the boys had noticed. Arthur laughed about what they were saying about me and thought it was a huge joke, until other things happened that made him uneasy. First it was the hermit. This old boy lived god knows where in a cave or something. Anyway, he only appeared at intervals to get food and go into a certain pub for a drink. He never spoke to anyone. His way of life must have gone on for years, because the shop knew what food he would take and the pub what drink he would have without a word being spoken. Arthur had taken us out for a ride and we had called in at this pub and there was the hermit sitting in the corner. Arthur quietly explained about him and that he was a hermit etc.

Anyway, we were enjoying our drink when Arthur suggested a game of darts. We agreed to that and started to play, and well I had a very good eye for darts but when it came to scoring I couldn’t at that time think quick enough as to what was left and what to go for. Well, Nora and I lost the first game and when we started to play the next (we were doing the best of three), I heard a sound and turning around found the hermit beckoning to me. He said, ‘You’ve got a good eye, but you lose out at the end. I’ll help you.’ Everyone was staring at us. They couldn’t hear what he was saying because he spoke very softly. I hardly heard him but he was actually talking to someone. Unheard of! Never happened before. Well, we got on with the next game and I took my instruction from the old fellow and we won. Also, the next game. When I went to thank him he had gone. Arthur was as amazed as the rest. ‘Never been known before,’ he kept saying. When we left the pub and got back in the car, he laughed (although it was a bit wobbly) and said, ‘Well, what can you expect, a witch and hermit getting together.’

A funny thing happened one day. Arthur had been talking about buying some more cows. There were some at the auction he was interested in. We all set off by train to the auction market and as it was early, the men told us to go on in and save some seats. They would just go and have a beer and would join us later. I saw them arrive in the doorway and waved to let them know where we were. Arthur signalled back, but I couldn’t understand what he was doing so I waved again. Without any more ado, he clambered over people’s legs to get to us and said to me. ‘You shouldn’t have waved. You have just had those cows knocked down to you. I know I want cows, but they are the scraggiest ones I’ve ever seen,’ and clambered back down to speak to the auctioneer and got him to ignore my stupid mistake. Fortunately, the auctioneer saw the funny side of it and no harm was done; they were withdrawn and brought on again later.

Once outside, everyone thought it was funny and a great deal of laughter and jokes were at my expense. We got the train back and sitting in the carriage was a man. He was drunk. He played the organ in the church on Sundays well. I think Arthur thought he would play a trick on me. He greeted the man (everyone knew everyone on the island) and said that we were friends visiting him and were from London, but patting my arm, said, ‘But this is my little colleen friend from Ireland.’ So, what happened, he kept talking to me and asking where I was from in Ireland and all sorts of things. Not to be outdone, and trying to get my own back on Arthur, I tried out a terrible Irish brogue, but the guy was too drunk to notice and became misty eyed at hearing, he said, his mother tongue. I did mention he was drunk, didn’t I. Then he said he was going to give me the advice to go through life that his mother had given him. After each sentence, he would slap me on my knee. He said, ‘As long as you’ve got a shilling in your pocket,’ SLAP, ‘And a pair of boots on your feet,’ SLAP, ‘Don’t give a bugger for anyone.’ He then opened the carriage door and fell out.

For a minute we were taken aback, but Arthur said, ‘It’s alright and he’s alright.’ Apparently, he did this all the time. I told you the train went slowly. Well, when we arrived at a certain place along the line, he would open the door and fall out. If he wasn’t that drunk, he would walk across a field to his cottage, but if he was really drunk, he would fall in a ditch and sleep it off until he was sober enough to walk home.

Another day, Arthur said, ‘Evelyn wants some crabs for tea so we will go to the lighthouse and go crabbing.’ We went to the lighthouse and borrowed some crab hooks and started going over the rocks which were very slippery (Nora and George didn’t come on this trip). Anyway, what you did was find a large cave-like hole among the rocks, push in your crab hook and if lucky, you felt a pull and you knew you had struck, then you tugged the hook out and out it came with a big crab attached. It was a bit of a dicey business, because of the slippery rocks, so after I’d got a couple and they were moving further out, Arthur said, ‘Right, you stay here and hold the sack.’ Each crab was put into this sack. That was fun, I can tell you, holding a sack of large crabs gnashing and fighting each other. After a while, Arthur said we had enough and we got into the car (Arthur returned the crab hooks) with me in the front still with this sack of very angry crabs. On reaching the farm, Evelyn had a cauldron on of boiling water and she tipped them in. I was appalled. It’s alright buying dressed crab from the fishmonger, but to see what they went through first wasn’t very pleasant.

Another day, (we were only there for a week, but so much was packed into it) Arthur was going to show us the rest of the island. For some reason, we couldn’t use the car but went in his van which had windows in the sides but one of the handles was missing on the door my side, so every time he stopped and we had to get out to see something, it was a hell of a job opening this door with a spanner. Also, a great bother getting it to open to get back in. The final straw came when, absolutely fed up with this door, we got out and Arthur pointed up this steep grass covered hill and said, ‘In the old days, they rolled witches down this hill in a spiked barrel. Of course, if they were innocent, then the barrel broke up and a tree would grow.’ Bad tempered me said, ‘That wasn’t much help to them if they were innocent,’ and I stomped back to the van, and still bad tempered, said, ‘I wish this damned door would open itself instead of all the blessed fiddling about.’ Now, I put it down and still maintain to this day that the door handle had been pushed home when we got out and the vibration of my feet stomping and their walking made this door slowly open. ‘Oh, thank God for that,’ I said, and got in the van. All was quiet and Arthur said, ‘I think we’ll get on home now and see the rest another day.’ As I said before, the word had got out about me and the women there didn’t wear coats, but shawls over their heads and around their shoulders and when any of them passed me, they would pull the shawl across their faces and turn their heads away from me so that I wouldn’t put the evil eye on them. I found out this evil eye bit off Bertie when I remarked about what they did with their shawls. Arthur had told him.

The only friend I made there was the one-armed grave digger. Though there were some funny moments. Like the time we were at Tinwald in the pub there, where an old man taught me a little bit of Manx. It was only a pub name. Now there was another pub in Castletown. Anyway, I still remember it to this day. The one at Tinwald had an old juke box in it with, I think, only two records, where I only heard two songs played in it. One I remember was called ‘Happy Days and Lonely Nights’ and that had whistlers on it then. It was playing this one when in came some farm workers. They had been muck spreading and wore old clothes and sacks laced up around their legs. One came right up to me and said, ‘Come on, let’s dance,’ and did this sort of jigging about not a bit in time to the music and everyone told me to join them in the dance. I felt a complete idiot jigging about but got tremendous applause and shouts when the music finished. I always felt that Arthur deliberately got me into these situations. There were some very pleasant evenings, though, when we would join lots of others outside a pub (the pub was the source of all their entertainment at that time), the men with their tankards of beer singing hymns. Wonderful voices, like the Welsh. I can’t recall any women being there.

Isle of Sheppey

There was a follow up years later to the I.O.M. adventures. We were down at the chalet at Minster, when as usual Bertie met someone he knew. This was a navy chap who had been stationed on the I.O.M. when Bertie was. He had two young boys. One evening, he came into the chalet and sat talking over old times and having a beer, when he laughed and said, ‘Do you remember that bridge, Bill?’ (Everyone called him Bill in those days, his workmates and his navy friends. Even I did when I first knew him.) He went on to say about how, whenever you were across this bridge, you were to say ‘good morning fairies’ or ‘good afternoon’, depending on the time of day. The Manx people always did it as they believed in them. If you didn’t, something bad would befall you. He went on, ‘Remember the truck, Bill?’ and they both had a good laugh. The story was that some navy lads had gone out in this truck one evening and, having had a few beers, the driver was a bit unsteady at the wheel and when they started to go over the bridge, the truck toppled over. No-one was hurt, but the locals insisted that it had been the fairies that had done that because the chaps had not acknowledged them and made fun of them. Well, one thing led to another, and of course Bertie started to relate my experiences over there. The chap roared with laughter all the time and was still chuckling when he left. Before going, he had said to Bertie, ‘How about coming with us to Harty Ferry tomorrow and collecting some mushrooms. There are some beauties there.’ Bertie said, ‘Yes, great!’ ‘Right,’ said the chap, ‘I’ll fill up with petrol and then come and pick you up.’ He duly arrived the next morning and we piled in his car. I don’t think I had Paul then. Anyhow, he said, ‘Right, off we go,’ but for some reason the car wouldn’t start. He tried several times with no joy and was very puzzled and  annoyed. Then he caught sight of me sitting in the back and asked me if I would just get out for a minute, which I did. He tried the car again, and this time it sprang into life. He called out of his window to me, ‘I believe it, I believe it. You can b– well walk,’ and drove off. I never did get to Harty Ferry and I never saw the chap again, though Bertie did for his holiday was over and they went home.

The Chalet 

It was through Nora and George that we first went to the Isle of Sheppey. There was this camp site called ‘Lazy Days’ where they were building a chalet. Margaret (Bertie’s sister) and her husband Peter Myzk, were helping them and Nunky at times and we were down one day as well. When theirs was finished, they helped Margaret and Peter build theirs. Next to Lazy Days was Bell Farm which the old chap had made into a camp site, but all chalets and not very many of them in that time. They ran a shop where you could buy all your needs. I must explain the ‘they’; it was run by the old fellow’s son, Reggie Frost, and his wife, whose name escapes me at the moment. Bertie and I got quite friendly with them. Nora kept on about us building a chalet alongside theirs and Margaret’s. We spoke about this to Reggie and he said, ‘Why bother to build one. There’s one for sale on the farm.’

He took us across to see it. It was on the edge of the farm all on its own. He opened the front door which was actually French doors, and we went inside. It was two rooms, quite large. The first had a small cooker in the corner, then table and chairs and on the opposite wall a large bed settee. The wall where the table and chairs were had a side door which, when opened, had two or three steps down and overlooked a large corn field. The bedroom had a double bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe. The lighting was lamps. When we came out again, the view from the front was overlooking the sea, the farm being situated on top of the cliff. We were interested and he gave us the woman’s address and phone number. When back at home, we discussed it and as usual it was left to me to contact the woman.

As we didn’t at that time have a phone, I had to go out to a phone box. She was a very pleasant-sounding woman and said she was asking £100 for the chalet. That was a fair bit of money in those days. When I returned and told Bertie, he said. ‘Didn’t you ask if you could pay a deposit and pay the rest in instalments over a short period?’ and said also, ‘Go back and put it to her.’ (He’s never changed, has he?) So back I went feeling embarrassed, though I thought, ‘well, it’s not a face to face, just over the phone.’ I put it to her and she  agreed the terms, for she said she was going into hospital and would no longer have the worry of it. So we sent off the deposit, which Bertie had set out the terms and payments within, and that was that. Then I had a piece of luck. I used to walk up to the shops with Margaret in the pram and I got to know a lot of people. One shop, called the Choc Shop, belonged to a young man called John Badderick; above the shop was a barbers and hairdressing salon, both run by his wife’s aunt and uncle who lived in Muswell Hill, though John and his wife lived at Bushy.

The front of the shop was a sweet shop, then you went down two steps to the back half, which he had made into a library. He ran them and he had one assistant for the other half. That’s how I got to know him so well, because of the library. So you can imagine my surprise one day just after I had phoned the woman about the chalet, for John to tell me that this girl was going to America for 6 months, but wanted her job back when she returned, so would I consider working part time there for the 6 months. I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. What about the baby (you)?’ ‘No problem,’ he said, ‘there’s a garden at the back and she can out there in her pram.’ Soon other friends said, ‘We don’t mind walking her out.’ So, I took this job on and enjoyed it and Margaret didn’t seem upset by it all. It paid for the Chalet, the money I earned, plus a bit more; not a lot, but enough to build a sort of kitchenette in the chalet later. That was my piece of luck. The girl didn’t return after 6 months and John got a new full time assistant.

He (John) used to ride a motor bike and while I was at the shop, I noticed he used to guzzle back upon a bottle of lemonade. I told him it wasn’t natural and he should see a doctor but he took no notice. Then one day, on his way home, he felt a bit queer and pulled into a garage, got off the bike and promptly had a bad black out. Ever after this, he was put on a strict diet and always had to carry a card on him in case it happened again. He had bad diabetes. He didn’t live to a great age.

Anyhow, there we (or I) were, the owners of a chalet at Minster. Bertie made the partition like a little kitchen, of wood, the bottom half closed in with hardboard and the top a fine sort of mesh. Very effective it was too. Of course, he had help with it all, for I think if he had made it all himself, it would have fallen down within a couple of days. We painted the inside and out and then Bertie (and he did do this himself) put up calor gas lighting. We used to go down at weekends and do this. After a while, I had Paul and then Muriel gave me a mongrel puppy which I named Bobby. Margaret had started school and Paul was at the crawling stage and when Margaret had her summer holidays, we used to go down to Minster for the whole holidays. Bertie used to come at weekends. I look back now and wonder how I used to make the journey. I would have a large bag with Paul’s nappies and things, bottles and milk powder and all we would need until Bertie arrived with the suit cases in the evening, having taken them to work. So, we always started on a Friday. Then I would be with the bag, the dog on a lead, Margaret hanging on to my skirt and Paul carried on my arm. We would get the bus from home to Victoria rail station, then walk that blessed long road to the coach station. Once settled, nearly always in the back of the coach we could relax until we arrived at Sheerness. Bobby was a good traveller until we reached the bridge to cross to the island. It was a wooden one in those days and going over it was bumpy and poor old Bobby lying on the floor was bounced up and down and he would cry.

Then from Sheerness another bus to Bell Farm Lane and down that long lane (well it seemed very long then), till we arrived at the chalet, then it was dump the bags, off to the toilet then over to the shop to get some groceries, then get a meal ready. Bertie ate at midday so didn’t want much. Bobby, being let off his lead, would go around the farm and see if any of his friends were there. One habit we had to break him of was to stop him taking a drink of water out of the buckets outside the other chalets that people had filled up for their use, for we had to get our water from a stand pipe. But none of this sort of thing bothered us.

We seemed to always have good weather and on a quiet evening, we would open the side door and sit on the steps and listen to the birds singing and the quiet sound of the sea. During those 6 weeks, there was always someone over on Lazy Days. Nora and George and Jonathan and Bertie’s mother were there mostly, but Margaret and Peter came and on occasions Muriel, Stan and their brood, but I think only a couple of times. It was nothing to see Bertie’s mother coming across the field carrying a large dish full of something she had cooked for our dinner. Sometimes, Bertie and I would take the children down to the beach below the cliff. Paul was walking then and, armed with a couple of hammers, we would break the large stones littered there to find fossils and we did find some which Margaret took home for her nature table at school.

As we always like to keep to ourselves, we didn’t let it out much, but we did enough to cover the cost of the ground rent (which wasn’t huge) and the calor gas. The chalet was built on railway sleepers so the air circulated under and around the chalet, if it was hot. Bobby used to lie under there. The only faintly annoying thing he did was to go out around the place, meet all his mates and fetch them all home for us to meet. It wasn’t much fun having around half a dozen dogs in the chalet with you and I had to stop that lash [?]. One time, there weren’t many dogs there and he must have got a bit bored, for I was in the chalet when there was a knock on the door and there was this farmer with a gun and Bobby with feathers sticking out of his mouth. The farmer said he had been chasing his chickens and trying to grab them, hence the feathers. He said, ‘He was lucky I didn’t shoot him. He’s such a stupid animal, he brought me right to your door after I’d given him a fright.’ He hadn’t killed a bird and never did it again.

Some of Reggie’s friends used to go shooting for rabbits of an evening sometimes; there were loads of the things. That was before that dreadful disease hit them. Come morning I would open the door and find a couple of rabbits hanging up outside. I hated skinning them and poking out their pellets, but they made a delicious nourishing meal. Reggie Frost had two large Alsatians, both called Rex. One was a guard dog and was always on duty, the other used to let the tiny kids ride on his back. I was always wary of them, but very grateful for the guard dog on one occasion.

At the last weekend of the season, everyone went down to close up their chalets for the winter. We, of course, did the same, but on this occasion, when we should have been set to go home the next day, Paul went down with the measles or something, and the doctor said he was to stay where he was in bed. Bertie, of course, had to go because of his work and we were left on our own. Everyone else had packed up and gone. Bertie, when he said cheerio to Reggie, mentioned about us having to stay and that evening he came over with Rex, the guard dog, told him to get under the chalet and stay on guard until called. Each evening, he did this and only left when he heard Reggie’s whistle the next morning. During that week, a prisoner had escaped from the prison on the island and had got down as far as Bell Farm and broken into one of the chalets. Rex didn’t leave us, but came out from under and his vicious growling and snarling and barking not only woke me up (frightened out of my wits) but the sound had carried to Reggie’s place and he got up and phoned the police. Whether the guy was caught, I don’t know, but I do know I was very grateful to have their dog there. What was strange, though, was Bobbie; he growled deep in his throat but seemed to let Rex do the work.

Another time, we were going back home and found when we got to Sheerness the bridge was broken or something. Anyway, we couldn’t get off the island but a small flotilla of boats were taking us off going around to Gillingham. I think it was where coaches were waiting. We had that chalet a few years, when I suddenly decided to sell it. So I advertised it in the Exchange and Mart, for £100, the same as what I had paid for it. After all, we had had good use of it for several years and many happy times. I got a lot of replies and wrote to about 5, I think saying I would be down there on the Saturday at a certain time and would meet anyone who was interested there. On the Friday, Paul went down with the mumps, so Margaret and I went. Strangely, I have it in my mind that we went there and back by train. Anyhow, when we arrived on site, the first thing we did was go to the toilets and when we went to the chalet, outside were standing a man and a woman. ‘Mrs. Bass,’ he said and introduced himself and his wife. We shook hands, I opened the door and they stepped in. He put his hand in his pocket and slapped £100 on the table and that was that. I picked it up, put it in my bag and explained about the ground rent, which was paid up and the calor gas which was due, and I was going to pay Reggie that day. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk over with you and settle that up.’ So off we went into the shop. I introduced the chap to Reggie, said our goodbyes and started back home. Didn’t even have time for a cup of tea, although I had timed it to get there a bit early. What I didn’t expect was to see someone waiting. Whether anyone else turned up, I’ll never know, but that was the end of the Isle of Sheppey.

 

My Uncle Jim

If there was one person who I ever idolised, it was my Uncle Jim. A big man, very dark hair and twinkling brown eyes; well they always did with me. But he had the reputation of being a hard man, a man you would be well not to cross. He had a great love of boxing and boxed himself. He was to have his first professional fight just before the war but unfortunately, he had a bad poisoned thumb and had had to have it lanced and was swathed in bandages. Then he was called up and that was that, but I believe he did a bit of boxing in the RAF. I was born in Poplar Hospital and I believe next to my father, he was the first person on my mother’s side to come and see me. He would often tell me that I was bound to have a strong life because there had been the worst storm that he could remember and some of the roads got flooded and he had to wade through water to get to the hospital.

He had a dark brown voice and a deep belly laugh. I was only a toddler but he always made a fuss of me and he would also scare me half to death. I can recall him darting his hand out into the air as if he had caught something, then bring that hand in his other and say, ‘I have a fly in here that I’ve just caught and it eats naughty little girls,’ and make as if he was going to open his hands to let it out, bending down close to me. I would run away from him, screaming and dive under my grandad’s table and his big deep belly laugh would ring out. I was scared and yet I sort of knew then it was a game. Sometimes, when we (my mother and I) went to the cottage, I would hear music coming from his room and I would creep up the stairs and into his room, where he would be lying on his bed playing the mouth organ. He must have played other things, but I only remember La Palansa. I liked that best. He would also, other times, say, ‘Get your coat on,’ and he used to take me down a couple of streets to the river Thames. This is the Isle of Dogs I’m talking about. He would tell me stories about boats we saw. It wasn’t till I was older that I realised a lot of the stories he made up. After all, how many pirates sailed up the Thames in those days?

One memorable day, though, when he told me to get my coat on, he said, ‘I’ve got a treat for you,’ and what a treat it was. He had got a rowing boat from somewhere and he lifted me on and he rowed me down the river. When we got back, I was all excited and rushed in to tell my mother, who was furious with him, saying it was a stupid thing to have done. He said, ‘She enjoyed it and as you can see, no harm has come to her,’ but I wasn’t allowed on the river again, although we would still walk down to it and he would still tell me tales. I think he must have frequented the opium dens in Limehouse, for as I’ve already told you, I saw him come out of one such place one day (not that then I knew what it was) and he gave me some money not to tell my mother.

When he joined the RAF, he quickly established a reputation as a hard man. When he was shipped out to what was then Ceylon, he walked into a hut and seeing a bed he fancied, threw his kit bag on it and said, ‘This will do me.’ Some of the others who had already been there a while said, ‘You can’t have that bed, mate, that’s Sailor Jones’ bed.’ Jim said, ‘You mean it was.’ They all seemed a bit nervous and he laid down on the bed. Soon after, in came Sailor Jones. One of the chaps had gone to find him and tell him about Jim taking  his bed. Jones came storming in and told Jim to get off his bed. Jim stood up and faced this guy who was much about the same build and height as Jim, and Jim said, ‘It was yours, now it’s mine. Do you want to make a fight of it?’ I don’t know what happened next, but Jones never got his bed back and they became firm friends and got up to all sorts of mischief. Why Sailor Jones I don’t know, but Jim told me that he had knocked about quite a bit all over the place and then decided he would settle down. He met this woman who owned a pub. She was quite a bit older than him, but he decided to marry her. He told Jim that when the war was over, he’d be set up for he would take over the pub and as far as I know, that’s just what he did. 

Jim had a bit of a bad patch at one time when he went swimming with Jones and was attacked by a shark. It bit into his foot. He showed me his mangled foot when he came home. He was very lucky. We used to write to each other during the war and his letters were great. He often wrote in poetry and from these poems we would find that he was telling us things that were happening. It’s my greatest regret that after keeping them for years, they eventually got lost. I don’t know where.

He loved the RAF and quickly got promoted. He told me one time (he would often tell the most outrageous stories, but with a frisson of truth in them), he had crashed a plane and that he was told he would have to pay for it out of his wages. So, if I had a couple of bob to spare, he would be most grateful. It was only my mother laughing fit to bust that I realised it was one of his jokes, not about the crash landing, but his having to pay for it. Jim and Sailor Jones were very lucky at times to get out of scrapes of their own doing. Like the occasion of the Temple of the Tooth in Candy. They decided to liven things up a bit and one evening, while drinking in a place with local people, they started (for a laugh) to talk just loud enough to be overheard by some about their pretend plan to go to the Temple and nick the sacred Tooth, which they would then smuggle out of the country and sell. It was a giggle to them and they were probably drunk. Anyway, the word got round and it became a bit hairy and they were very lucky to get away with their lives.

After the war, Jim said to me, ‘We will write a book together. I’ll tell you many things we did and you write it down.’ I said, ‘OK,’ but we both felt there was plenty of time and eventually we forgot about it. This was the book that Ellen told you about; she must have thought that Jim and I had written it. That was another regret, that I didn’t get down to it. Time went on, I got engaged then married and we didn’t see one another for a long time. But I did hear about him. He decided one day to take a trip to Ostend and when he arrived went to a cafe and found that the woman who owned it was having a lot of trouble with a drunken customer, and Jim got hold of the guy and booted him out. He and the woman, Augusta (can’t remember her surname) became great friends. She was married but her husband was in very poor health and it was left to her to run the place. Jim made quite a few trips to Ostend and then I was told by my mother that Augusta had had a baby girl and it was named Blanche and it was always thought by the family that it was his. When he died and Thelma and Louise turned his place over, Sheila told me that he had two photos by his bed, one of Augusta and one of the little girl, Blanche.

When my grandfather died, Jim and I stood a long time by his coffin (he looked lonely) talking. They then put the lid on and we moved away. I saw Jim once more. I went to live in Muswell Hill and that was it. But I always remember him as a wonderful part of my childhood.

My Mother’s Sisters and Brothers

 The eldest was Lily. Red haired. Never saw much of her. Married a chap called Moore, never knew is first name. Had lots of kids. There was an old music hall song that went, ‘Don’t have any more Mrs Moore, please don’t have any more. The more you have the more you’ll want they say. And a snack is as good as a meal any day.’ Whenever anyone mentioned Lily, they would burst into the song (the family, I mean) and fall about laughing.

Next came my mother, Blanche. Black hair.

Next came Bob. Red hair. Only saw him a couple of times. Don’t know what his job was. Married a woman named Tilly. They got a place out at Buckhurst Hill and felt themselves too grand for the rest of the family.

Then came Ellen. She married a nice-looking chap called Barry Biggs but he gave her a hard time. Was told by Mother he was a womaniser. The army suited him, for he seemed to act like a single man. Ellen was also a redhead.

Next there was Jim. Black haired and I’ve written about him.

Then last, but not least, Pat who had a lovely face and beautiful red hair. She married into the Bennet family. Before they were married, Tom came home from work one day and found his mother hanging in a cupboard. I say cupboard, it was more of a walk-in larder. No-one knows why. Pat died of TB. She had two girls, Blanche and Stella.

I’m not too sure of the absolute facts. I know my mother’s mother died after having Pat. My mother must have been married (Pat was 2 years older than Thelma), but I knew that my mother was at my grandad’s house one day when there was a knock at the door. My mother answered it and found two people from some child’s organisation who told her they had come for the children. Lily had gone to see these people to have Ellen, Jim and Pat taken into a home. My mother lost her temper and said, ‘Over my dead body! I’m looking after them,’ and she slammed the door on them. She went for Lily and that’s when I think Lily walked out. My mother did bring them up, then I don’t know what happened next.

This was after a while. Thelma was born to my mother and father. There must have been a row of some sort because while my father was in China (he was there five years) my mother and grandfather fell out and all I can remember is my mother saying I wasn’t to speak to him. I was small and didn’t know what it was all about. Then I had Whooping Cough very badly; the doctor said I wouldn’t last the night. Suddenly, by my bed was my grandfather and he sat with me and a nurse I had at night to give my mother a rest. He stayed in a chair during the night, singing songs. Two I remember, ‘Little Man, you’ve had a Busy Day’ and ‘Powder Monkey Little Jim’, also bathing my face and hands. When I got through the crisis, all I wanted was ice cream. My mother said no way could I have ice cream. My grandad said, ‘If she wants ice cream, she will have ice cream,’ and went out and got me some. From that time on, we visited him often.

I was married and Thelma still worked on the Isle of Dogs and went to Grandad’s every day for dinner. She noticed that Grandad was taking longer and longer to open the door. She told my mother and she went over. When he shuffled to the door after what seemed an age, my mother asked him what was wrong. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I was breaking up some coal and the hammer slipped and caught my big toe.’ When they got his sock off and his bit of bandage, she nearly passed out. His foot had got gangrene. She sent for the doctor and at that moment, Jim came in and he got a blast of her temper. The others may have had red hair, but by golly, did she have a temper when roused. She was also a thrower, Margaret being the other one that did this. Jim said the old man wouldn’t let him get near his foot. Anyway, the doctor got an ambulance and my poor old grandad was terrified of going to hospital, having always been ????? he hadn’t had much to do with Doctors, and as for hospital, he thought it was still like it was in his young days. The ambulance men wanted to carry him out but he insisted on walking. Anyhow, into hospital he went.

They took his foot off but the gangrene jumped the knife and he had to have his leg off to the knee. After this was done, he was quite surprised and thought he would make the most of his stay. When the doctor came around and asked him, ‘How are you feeling, Grandad?’ he said ‘not too bad.’ The doctor said he was sorry about the leg but it had to be done. My dear old grandad said, ‘Oh! That old dummy that’s alright, but I do think while I’m here I should have a good check-up. One of those X-ray things and I’ve had a bit of pain lately here and here, and perhaps you could give my eyes a check over too.’ He was certainly going to make the best of his stay.

Only one thing he would not have was a nurse giving him a bed bath. He complained and said it wasn’t decent that a young woman should be asked to do such a thing. They gave him a male nurse. He was great; he used to take beer in for the old fellow and put bets on for him, which was illegal those days, I think. Anyway, one afternoon, my mother was making her usual visit. The nurse said, ‘He’s all nice and tidy for you. I’ve just given him a shave and a wash and brush up.’ My mother walked up to his bed. He was sitting up on several pillows at his back with his eyes closed, looking very contented. My mother spoke to him then called the nurse and he had just quietly passed away. He was a true old sailor. When not at sea, he used to go on the boards doing the sand dance and the clog dance. A wonderful old man.

My Father’s Family

I can’t say I know a lot about them. I never knew his father, just as I never knew my mother’s mother. I don’t know how my paternal grandfather died. I wish I had asked more questions and been more curious. My grandmother, Louise, was diabetic and was a very large lady. A typical Victorian martinet. She always wore black and her word was law. The few times I saw her, she was always sitting down in a large carver chair, which she filled. I never saw her stand or walk, although she must have done, if only to go to the loo. She used to send any of us grandchildren that were there down to the pub for a jug of beer or stout. You never spoke to her unless she spoke to you. You were seen but not heard and had to sit quietly. She had 3 boys and 3 girls. The eldest was my Uncle George (good lord, I can remember his name), but he was the best of the bunch. He worked for the Blue Star Line, a clerical job; had a son, Alfred. Lovely chap. This uncle died of a heart attack. He was, while alive, head of the family and together with Grandma made all the decisions. My father, Alfred, when Uncle George died, became head of the family. He was a ship’s clerk, later to be superintendent of the PLA (Port of London Authority) with a company called Scruton’s. The other son, Tom, worked for the White Star Line and was a bit of a wide boy, but very likeable.

Then there were 3 girls, but I don’t know where they came in age. There was Louise, who lived not too far away from us. My mother and I visited her only a couple of times. She seemed to be surrounded by kids and the smell put us off. She always had nappies hanging over the guard, not clean ones. If one of the little ones wet its nappy, she just hung it over the guard and let it dry. The smell of urine pervaded the place. My father, when told of this, forbade my mother to see her again and in fact didn’t like her mixing with his family at all. When he went to see his mother, which wasn’t often, he would take me.

Then there was Nelly. She always spoke very Jewish and my father used to get so angry about this and would be very rude to her. It was probably because she married a Jew, Reuben, a Russian Jew. In his young days in Russia, he had been a Cossack. He was old when I knew him. When he got out of Russia, he went to America and had this apartment in Brooklyn. They spent 6 months over here and 6 months over there. They had two kids, a girl and a boy. The boy’s name I can remember was Jo-Jo and the girl Barbara. Reuben, even in his 70s, rode a motorbike. He had a tailoring business in the East End, along the Commercial Road.

Then there was Lotty. What can I tell you about her? So very different from the others, a tall slim woman and every time I saw her, she was dressed in grey and hardly spoke except to my father. Why I can’t recall most of my father’s family is because I could count on my fingers on one hand the number of times I saw them all together. The main time was at my grandmother’s funeral, which I have already written about. One cousin I remember, not his name or who his father was. Only that it was after the war and he had been a Japanese prisoner of war and it turned his brain. He used to just sit and stare in front of him and sometimes mumble to himself. I was a bit nervous of him, I must admit. What happened to him, I don’t know; put away I expect. Perhaps if I hadn’t had to go away so much I would have learnt more about both families. Time goes by and it becomes too late to find out. Anyhow, what little I know has now been written down.

Going back to my paternal grandfather, his name was Robert Penn de la Roche. His uncle was a Penn. The de la part of his name he stopped using unless it was for official purposes. I was always told that his forefathers came to England during the time of the French Revolution.

I never knew my maternal grandmother’s surname before she married. My mother always maintained that she once, when small, had met her great grandfather who, according to her, was a big man with a red beard. She also used to say that he came over from Russia and settled in Ireland first, then came to England. On arrival, they couldn’t (assume the authorities) understand him when saying his name, but put down what it sounded like to them and that stuck with him. Also, another tale of when she was young, her parents had this small chest which was always locked and one night late, she was woken up by a noise. Creeping out of her bedroom to see what it was, saw 2 men with her father and mother and saw them take away the small chest. God knows what that was all about, but she would often mention it. Writing this down has made me wonder if that is why I was never curious to know more about her family, for I feel she fantasised somewhat and I, of course, could be wrong.

The PLO asked my father to go to China to set up and organise something. It was all to do with shipping and docks. I don’t know exactly what, but he was in charge of it. He went, as we all know, but I don’t think he thought it would take 5 years. Whilst there, he had a bad dose of jaundice and was sent to Japan to recuperate. He also went down with malaria and would have attacks on occasions when I was young, though they got milder as time went by. I did know once where in China he was, but have forgotten now. Maybe if I looked at a map I would recall the name of the place. While he was away, Thelma was born. My mother being pregnant when he went was why she didn’t go too. My mother used to send him lots of photos of Thelma as she was growing up, so he at least could see what she looked like and what progress she was making. He seemed to have had a good life out there in China.

When he came home, he had 2 trunks. In one he had (I saw this was true because he himself told me and not my mother) these photographs, together with his evening clothes and  dancing pumps, his tennis gear and, best of all, his gifts that were given to him. Gifts of jade and ivory. Also, things he himself had got for gifts for my mother, but somewhere along the way this chest was stolen and although he tried every means he could to recover it, he never did. How it came about that he told me this was because when he came back to this country, he hit hard times. His job was safe, but the country was starting or going into the recession and he said the jade and ivory would have come in handy to sell to the Jews. My mother mentioned once that he had been to Russia. What for, for how long, what did he do there, I don’t know. When I asked him about it he just said he didn’t want to talk about it and that was that.

Again, what I’m going to write about now, I’m not sure of. It’s true, but timings etc. may be wrong. When a man had a position in the docks, for instance, or ship’s clerk, whenever he was born of a son, he put his name down in The Book so that when he was old enough and The Book was opened, he was assured of a job. I don’t know how often The Book was opened – every one or two years, I really don’t know. My grandfather put all of his three boys’ names in The Book, that is why they all worked for shipping lines. Now, when my father left school (this is all very vague and I’m surmising the correct order of events), The Book was yet to be opened. He had to do something so he went in the Admiralty. Your guess is as good as mine at this point. I don’t know how old he was when he left school, how long he was in the Admiralty before the first World War broke out. What I do know is that he was then, as all young men were then, to get involved.

So he joined up in the Navy. The next part, whenever my mother told the story, used to set her off giggling. It seems he volunteered for a particular part of the Navy. He was stationed up at Scapa Flow. The job they had  there had a special name but my mother always referred to it as the Suicide Squad. Apparently, the ships would go out from there to engage the enemy. At times when they heard that enemy ships were around somewhere, they had some of their men take to the life boats and row away from the ship as a lure to tempt the enemy ship to get closer, for having seen sailors in life boats rowing away from the ship, they assumed it was in trouble and an easy target. As it came closer, our ship would take action, catching the enemy off guard. That was why the rowing boat men were called the Suicide Squad. My mother used to giggle at this, but it was a dangerous job and not always successful. But it didn’t last long for him because he was arrested for desertion from the Navy – weird. But you see, the Admiralty was always part of the Navy, and still is as far as I know. And because he left the Admiralty to join the Navy, he was classed a deserter. Doesn’t make sense but that’s what happened. He was only reprimanded because of the particular job he did while in Scapa Flow.

It couldn’t have been too long then before The Book was opened and he officially resigned from the Admiralty and joined the PLO and went into the docks for his training as ship’s clerk. It was strange that in the beginning years of World War 2, the docks in London were bombed very badly and as there was so little work, he came to Bath and once again went back into the Admiralty, as did my mother, sister and myself. We were always referred to being in the branch of the Navy and once in, it was very difficult to get release from. Towards the end of the war, the PLO wanted my father back, the docks were operating again and it became a long and tedious court case, PLO versus Admiralty, for my father. PLO won and as it meant returning to London, my mother and I were given our release. Thelma stayed on a while, but not for long as she was pregnant and eventually returned herself to London.

Christmas

I can’t remember a great deal about Christmas when I was a kid. I know we always had a tree and decorations and lots of fruit, nuts and sweets and always a large goose for Christmas day dinner and a large iced Christmas cake for tea and jelly. But regards presents, I can’t remember much at all. I know I got them, for my father always took us around the shops to buy them. There was this department store, don’t ask me where, but we always went there up into the toy department where first of all I was pushed into the grotto to meet Father Christmas and get a present. Then we would tour the department. My father got more fun out of this than we did. There was no making of lists or saying what I would like. He would see various things which he thought I would enjoy and buy them. I always did, but I used to feel sometimes that I would have liked something I wanted, but that was Dad. Funnily enough, the one gift that always has stayed in my memory was the Christmas I spent with the nuns at St Leonards. I was given a wicker basket, round with a lid, and inside loads of tiny things – tiny dolls and animals, books (all miniature). My very best present ever.