Childhood Memories

At the end of August 1939 my maternal grandmother took the decision that her children would not be evacuated because of the war. My grandfather had little say in the matter and accepted that if the worst came to the worst the whole family would go together. Thereafter the matter was never discussed again.

A few months later, at the height of the Blitz, a German bomb landed at the end of the street and jettisoned a piece of metal through the roof of the house. It passed through the attic, continued through the second bedroom and was brought to a halt in a blanket box by the pantry door. The family, having sought refuge in the cellar, were unscathed. It is strange to think that I owe my very existence to a blanket box.

I was born during a thunderstorm in the second bedroom of my grandparents’ house at the beginning of August 1957. My father had gone for the midwife at 4-30am and was delayed in his return by her reluctance to venture out on such a filthy morning. My grandmother was, as ever, extremely practical. My grandfather sat in the back parlour and smoked a pipe. I am told my arrival was at 7-30am and that I was brought to life by being hung by my ankles to receive a sharp slap.

My first memory was not of family but of the wallpaper in the room where I first saw the light of day. It was a mock William Morris print in rose madder and blue picked out with exotic birds. I do not know why but it fascinated me and seemed to come alive when I woke up. At the same time I seem to recall a candlewick bedspread, sash windows, a blue lampshade that hung from an old flex and a black lead fireplace with a mantelpiece that had upon it a pot figurine of a fisherman embracing his wife and a picture of Jesus with a halo carrying a lantern.

My grandmother exuded warmth, my grandfather less so. He was old school Methodist, self disciplined & had been a great supporter of the early Labour Party. In his own way he liked children but was too stiff-upper lip to admit it. He was however kindly to me.

Six doors up from the family abode lived Uncle Charlie and Aunty Kath. She was tiny and wore the trousers and he was built like a bear and was henpecked. From time to time he would plonk me on the front bench seat of his Wolseley, let off the handbrake and freewheel the car down the hill to the corner shop. It was here that I first tasted flying saucers, two ounces in a paper cone, and the delightful burst of sherbet on the tongue. It was also where the men bought “Baccie” and the ladies came to collect their “Women’s Realm.” The shop itself was quite small, with a high counter, a myriad of well stocked shelves and a hand operated bacon slicer. At the same time it also had a distinctive smell of damp overlaid with detergent and bread and vegetables and cheese until the blend of aromas became almost intoxicating.

My mother did all the things that mothers do, my elder sister taught me how to get into trouble by almost stripping a bush in the front garden, to use the leaves as money, while blaming it on me. My father went to work. My grandmother spoiled me rotten and my grandfather grew tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse.

The other thing I really remember was the outside toilet. It had a huge wooden toilet seat, a metal chain to operate the high level cistern, which I could not reach and Izal toilet paper or newspaper to wipe your bum. It also had whitewashed walls, a three quarter door and was invariably occupied by spiders.

My mother’s brother lived nearby. He was 6’ 5” tall and used to carry me on his shoulders, which used to please me no end. His wife had a telephone voice and they lived next door to Lavinia. The poor girl was a Mongol, before Downs Syndrome came along and she used to take great pleasure in hugging me to the point I couldn’t breathe.

From time to time in summer we used to go on a charabanc trip to the coast, usually Scarborough or Skegness and invariably we were joined by my grandmother’s cousin who went by the name of Uncle Lija on account of the fact that I couldn’t get my tongue around Elijah. He was perhaps the kindliest man I had ever met and he used to tease me rotten. Lija had been afflicted by polio as a youngster and had a built up right boot which made him walk with a rolling bow legged gait. He was also never to be found without a three piece worsted suit, which he wore with a shirt that had a detachable collar. The ensemble was completed with a flat cap, which had a peak somewhat larger than anyone else’s.

On these merry jaunts we would stroll nonchalantly down the promenade, build sandcastles and go for a paddle. I liked the seaside because unlike from whence we came it was bright and airy. In the mid-afternoon we would have fish and chips, wrapped up in newspaper and liberally sprinkled with salt and vinegar. It was like tasting ozone.

On the way home I would be given “spice” to keep me quiet.

I never did find out why sweets were called “spice” but I do remember having a competition to see who could make a Polo mint last the longest. I also remember stopping off at a pub for a toilet break, where I was given a bottle of pop with a wax straw, which always seemed to get chewed up before sucking up the last of the fizz. Uncle Lija had a glass of stout and I distinctly remember smelling beer for the first time while watching a rotund man pull on a pump to make the liquid spurt out.

My grandfather was a teetotaller and referred to pop as sugared water (rhyming with hatter) which he frowned on. He was however partial to crisps which came with a little blue parcel of salt. He would also fall asleep when we were nearly home and snore until he got an elbow in the ribs. This amused my parents and usually led to a fit of the giggles, especially when he exclaimed,

“I weren’t asleep, I was just resting my eyes!”

At or around my third birthday I had my cosy little world turned upside down. My father had secured a job and a house down south. The furniture van, complete with men in long leather aprons arrived very early one morning and unlike trips to the seaside this was going to be permanent. My sister cried and hugged a porcelain doll which she had named Percy. I was more philosophical about the whole thing and got to ride in the back of the van on a grey sofa where my only concern was that the men didn’t damage my birthday gift of a blue pedal tricycle complete with stabilisers.

The new house had a front and back garden, a porch with a front door leading into a small hall, where the stairs led up to three bedrooms, a bathroom and joy of joys an inside toilet bereft of spiders. Downstairs there was a lounge diner, a kitchen with a larder and a small scullery which in turn contained the back door.

It was home but not as I knew a home to be. More than anything I missed my grandmother, my grandfather and of course Uncle Lija.

As things are wont to be we gradually settled into a new life. There were no chimneys belching out black smoke, just green fields, woods and endless days of sunshine.

I went fishing for sticklebacks and discovered that if you put them in a jam jar with a newt they would gang up on the poor unfortunate creature and eat it.

The new life was not however without sacrifice and I remember my mother skipping meals so that we could eat instead. My father used to go to work with Shipham’s meat paste sandwiches and while we were not on the breadline we were not exactly well off.

Four doors up from us were a couple who had also moved down from Yorkshire. At the time a lot of houses were being built and I remember Uncle Trevor and my father doing battle with a disturbance of rats, armed with garden spades, lest they were to attack any baby in a pram of which there were many round about.

On a day late in June, when I was coming up to my fourth birthday, my grandmother and grandfather suddenly arrived. They had a brown suitcase with leather straps and I surmised that they were going to stay. This pleased me but I was rather concerned to learn that I was soon to have a new brother or sister.

A week later a rather dour man with a bosomy woman arrived. They went upstairs and a little later I could hear my mother scream. I was convinced that they were trying to kill her and struggled to leave the tight grip of my grandmother so I could run upstairs and save her. In the afternoon I was taken by the hand to find my mother in bed cradling something pink with a face peaking out. I was singularly unimpressed and jealous at the same time. I had hoped for a fully fledged brother to go on adventures with but fate decided otherwise.

Not long after that our neighbour died. Apart from watching a newt being eaten alive by sticklebacks it was my first encounter with death. She was carried out of the house in a wooden box that had big brass handles and everyone was crying. I remember thinking how unfair it all was and in some ways inconsiderate because I had to sit in a room with the curtains drawn and be quiet when all I really wanted to do was fly my kite. The concept of heaven was alien to me and I didn’t for a minute see the benefit of sitting on a cloud playing a harp all day.

My mother occasionally took us to the Methodist Church which was on the other side of town. While she did whatever she did I was left in the capable hands of Mrs Downing who ran the Sunday School. She did her best to teach me that Jesus loved me but I was unconvinced, not least because I did not know him.

My second encounter with human death came with the news that Uncle Lija had passed away. I was not there when it happened but I remember thinking that Jesus couldn’t have loved me that much if he took away my friend. From then on I despised Jesus for meddling in things he had no right to meddle in.

On my fifth birthday I was given a watch and not only that I could tell the time. It had a big round face, with a dial made up of cartoon characters and hands that seemed to whirl around faster than time itself. It was my pride and joy. Being a big boy now I used to sit on the front gate and announce the time to anyone who passed by. The women with front zip up boots would pat me on the head and declare how clever I was and I believed them. The men were less enthusiastic. It was the first time I heard the word ‘f***’. I had no comprehension of what it meant but felt I had to use it to show how grown up I had become. It was also the first and only time that my mother hit me.

The first day of school came on a crisp September morning. It was something that I had chattered on about for weeks but when the day actually dawned my bravado disappeared. My grandmother had bought me a satchel which was twenty sizes too big and I found that hitching it off my shoulder until it draped round my ankles was a sure way of delaying the inevitable. My mother, pushing a pram, decided otherwise and as she lost patience I learned a new word. It was bugger, a word which I had never heard my mother use before.

My teacher was young, fresh faced and smelled of soap.

Her name was Miss March and she led my scholarly advance with an enthusiasm which was captivating. I was given a bottle of milk with a straw and plonked next to a girl called Elaine who had Shirley Temple ringlets and a willingness to make new friends. In time I would be done with girls until puberty but for now we used to sit in the playground holding hands and once she kissed me and unlike my aunts she didn’t taste of lipstick. Unlike Jesus, I was also convinced that Elaine loved me and I loved her with all my heart.

In 1962 we went on a corridor steam train to visit my grandparents for Christmas. I remember being most confused at Nottingham where the train went out the same way we had come. For a moment I thought we were going home. My father told me we were going on a loop line which meant nothing to me. It was bitterly cold.

Father Christmas brought me a mouth organ which pleased me more than it did everyone else. My elder sister got a Scottish outfit, complete with a sporran and my younger sister got a teddy bear which was bigger than her. We also all got a sock which contained an orange, some new pennies and a bar of chocolate. For dinner (not lunch) we had goose which I didn’t like and sprouts which I hated. In the afternoon we listened to the Queen on the wireless and had tea with best ham sandwiches, pork pie and trifle.

We returned home in the snow which was to last a long time. There was ice on the inside of the windows and six foot drifts across the road. While adults bemoaned the weather I loved it and spent my time building snowmen, having snowball fights and getting my blue hands thawed out in front of the fire.

My father liked Eddie Calvert and Mario Lanza. My mother was more a fan of big musical numbers. The first song that captured my imagination however was Love Me Do by the Beatles. It was played at least ten times a day on the radio and I knew all the words. I also liked The Clitheroe Kid and Beyond Our Ken which would have my father in tears of laughter. To me the radio was a glimpse into a world where you had to paint a picture in your head.

After a summer of playing football, climbing trees and flying kites I moved up from infant to junior school. My teacher was Mr Forbes and unlike the lovely Miss March he was a bit of a disciplinarian. Play and stories made way for sums, reading and writing. My first story was about family and on account of my grandmother always telling me she was twenty-one, I wrote in a spidery hand, ‘My mother is twenty-eight, and my grandmother is twenty-one.’ It is a wonder that Social Services were not called.

In my class was a boy called Neil. He was fat and also the school bully. I spent playtimes avoiding him but once got caught and in a flurry of punches was taken down and sat on. The ordeal lasted a long time, squashed under a mountain of blubber and it was the first time I felt hate.

Our family doctor was Dr Divine, a tall man who spoke in a gentle Scottish lilt addressing me as “wee laddie.” I was taken to see him for the first time when I was diagnosed with measles. He also kindly told me that the cure was ice cream and lots of it and for three weeks every time the ice-cream van stopped I reminded my mother what he had said. My second visit was not as lucky. I had a stomach bug and had to drink some horrible pink medicine from a spoon and not have food for twenty-four hours. My dad said it served me right for eating too much ice cream.

One afternoon, in the middle of class, we were all told to go to the hall. When the school was assembled Miss Smith the headmistress told us that the President of America had been shot and had died. She was almost in tears. We were all told to pray for his family but having no idea who Kennedy was I felt rather stupid and instead stared at Miss Smith’s multi-coloured patent shoes. We were then told we could all go home.

The first time I saw a television was for the funeral of Winston Churchill. We were all invited into a neighbour’s house to watch the proceedings. At the time a telly was considered a luxury and by today’s standards the screen was tiny. I couldn’t quite get my head around how the pictures got into the box but was fascinated by the pageantry. It was to be three months before my father invested in a Rediffusion telly which sat in the lounge to be proudly regulated by my parents. The thing I remember most was Saturday afternoons. We used to have cockles with bread and butter and mugs of extra strong tea. Then not to be missed was the wrestling with Kent Walton featuring such luminaries as Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, Bert Royal and Les Kellett. It was then time to be quiet while my father wrote down the football scores to check on his pools coupon. Every week we hoped for the jackpot. Every week came the same disappointment. I often wondered what it would be like to be rich but as I had no point of reference I figured it meant having roast dinner every day.

My father would tut at the injustice of it all and calm his nerves with a Players No Six. My mother would just sigh and say, ‘Oh well, there is always next week.’

One day at school we were all sent to the brook to collect frogspawn. It was carefully placed in a pond which had been lovingly created and surrounded by greenery at the back of the classroom. Day by day we watched the tadpoles grow legs and waited for the full transformation into frogs. Just before the miracle took place we all went on half term and when we returned the pond and the greenery were no more. Poor Mr Jarvis the school caretaker had had the unenviable job of getting rid of over 200 frogs which had taken over the school.

My first bike arrived one Friday afternoon. My father had bought it second hand from a man in a village five miles away and had ridden it home. The bike was candy apple red with an off white saddle and a black pump. My mother said it was too big for me and on my first outing was proved right when I fell off and ricocheted off a brick wall.

My father said I would soon get the hang of it. That bike became my constant companion for years.

***

Looking back I had an amazing early childhood. It was full of fun and love and incredible experiences. I consider myself very fortunate to have lived at a time when the world was a much happier place. I feel sorry that the children of today cannot share what I had.
 

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