Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs (3 page)

One of the major events that took place at this time was the D'Oyly Carte Gilbert & Sullivan Festival of Britain season at the Savoy Theatre, the company's original home back in the nineteenth century. Dad was a great G&S devotee and we had lots of 78 r.p.m. records at home, plus some of the brand-new 33 1/3 r.p.m. long-playing records, giving about 20–30 minutes of playing time per side, which had only been introduced in 1948. As well as playing the records, mainly on Sundays, he would sing the songs around the house and I was brought up in this tradition. When the D'Oyly Carte came to London for the Festival of Britain season, Dad took the family to see a number of the operas,
H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance
and
Patience.
The first one we saw was
Patience
and this turned out to be quite a memorable occasion. It was the first time I had ever been to a theatre so I didn't really know what to expect. The lights dimmed and the orchestra began to play the overture. A short way into this, I suddenly recognised the song they were playing as one that Dad often sang, and I whispered out loud, ‘Patience!' In the silence of the auditorium, my whisper reverberated around the whole theatre, and there was a loud ripple of laughter.

Those were very happy days for me at home with Mum before school beckoned. Like most married women with children at that time, she stayed at home to look after me; there was no thought of her going out to work and leaving me with a childminder or grandparents or in a nursery, unlike today. That sort of thing was practically unheard of. My memories of that
time seem to be of eternally sunny days spent feeding the ducks on Clapton Pond or visiting ‘the swings', which was a children's playground on the opposite side of Millfields, containing hobby horses, a slide, roundabout, sandpit, paddling pool and, of course, the eponymous swings. On other days, we would go out into the field behind our house for picnics, to which I would invariably bring Arabella, a large sit-on, push-along toy in the shape of a snail.

Arabella was my favourite toy as a toddler. She got her name from the giant snail that appeared in my favourite storybook of the time,
The Travels of Jeremy Jukes.
Among my other favourite books was Enid Blyton's
The Talking Teapot and Other Tales,
which featured a pixie called Dimble Dumble, Mr Tweaky and his magic pockets and the Chocolate Cock. For me, as for many children of the time, Enid Blyton provided the delightful stories and tales of well-behaved and naughty children, gnomes and fairies. In particular, I had many Noddy books and I loved hearing all about the scrapes he got into and his adventures with Big Ears and Mr Plod the Policeman.

My other great storybook ‘hero' was Rupert Bear, who inhabited what to me was a truly magical and enchanting world. Many of his adventures took place in exotic lands with mermaids, pirates, jungles and mischievous imps far away from his home in the quintessential English village of Nutwood and in my imagination I was able to travel to these mysterious and glamorous lands with Rupert. His best friends, Bill Badger, Algy Pug and Edward Trunk, were my friends too. I was so immersed in Rupert's world that I didn't give him up until I went to grammar school, many years later.

All the books were printed in the same format, whereby the story was told in picture form with a simple two-line-per-image rhyming couplet verse immediately under the illustration and then as running prose at the foot of the page. I preferred the prose version because the verses did tend to be a bit repetitive and were not as interesting. ‘Algy's looking very glum. What can be the matter with Rupert's chum?' is a typical refrain. One particular story began with the sentence ‘Rupert looked out on the dismal scene' and was illustrated with Rupert looking out of his window as the rain poured down outside. This became a standard catchphrase in our family for years afterwards so that whenever it was raining outside one of us was bound to say, ‘Rupert looked out on the dismal scene.'

When it did rain or we didn't go out, I would play happily with Mum or she would read to me, teaching me to read and write. The first words I ever wrote by myself were ‘Tex The Cat', which I spelt out in brightly coloured plastic toy letters. Sometimes I wrote on the window with my finger after breathing on it, or I would write with crayons in an exercise book. I kept a box of toys especially for playing with outside, mostly containing cars, which I ran up and down the path next to our side door, as well as a spinning top. This was quite a large top, with the words to ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence' written on it and illustrations from the nursery rhyme. It had to be pumped up and down a few times and then, when it was let go, it would spin with a loud hum. At the point of letting it go, I used to say, ‘And the king said, “play my mu'ic”' – and it did.

On the occasions when I was playing happily on my own, Mum would get on with all the household jobs, like making
the beds, which was a much more complex job than it is today, what with all the sheets and blankets, which had to be neatly folded and tucked in around the bed. She would do the washing up from breakfast, some washing and ironing, dusting, polishing both furniture and the cutlery, and in between all this she would be making lunch for us and dinner for the whole family when Dad and John came home from work and school.

The wireless was always on while Mum was doing her work round the house. Her favourite programmes were all on the Light Programme rather than the Home Service channel and included
Housewives' Choice, Mrs Dale's Diary, Music While You Work,
the organist Reginald Dixon broadcasting live from the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool and Mr ‘Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow' himself, Victor Sylvester. His weekly worldwide request programme always fascinated me as he used to read out letters from places with very exotic-sounding names that I had never heard of and from countries now no longer in existence that were a real throwback to more colonial times, such as British Cameroons, British Togoland, Gold Coast, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Mum liked big band music, which was probably at the height of its popularity at that time. Her favourite musician was Mantovani, but she also liked Joe Loss, Oscar Rabin and Edmundo Ros. If there was no music on the wireless, she would sing away to herself, preferring the popular melodies of the day, especially Hoagy Carmichael's ‘My Resistance is Low'.

Another of her jobs, particularly in winter, was to clean out the ashes from the fire grate and give it a good polish with Zebra black lead. This came in small, square black blocks in black and
yellow striped paper. Along with everyone else in the prefabs, and probably across the road as well, our main source of heating was an open coal fire in the living room. The coal was delivered at regular intervals by the coalmen, who would have to hump one hundredweight sacks of coal up our path to the shed, where they would empty the coal out into the bin. Our coalmen were two brothers called J. & C. Edkins. They would arrive in their open-back lorry, which was piled high with sacks of coal. The brothers wore the clothes typical of a coalman of those days, a black waistcoat covering a red-and-white striped shirt with brown corduroy trousers. They also wore a leather cap on their heads, with a flap down the back to stop the coal getting inside their shirts. It was obvious that ours was not their first job of the day as their hands and faces were always covered in coal dust and looking as ‘black as Newgate's Knocker', as Mum used to say. There was another rival firm, which also delivered locally, called Tilley & Sons. One day, while walking up Sewdley Street, we saw a sign in the window of one of the houses that read, ‘Tilley, no coal today'. Although the occupants of this particular house were not close neighbours of ours, they were always known to us after this as ‘Old Tilley No Coal'.

Mum used to take me shopping to our local market street, Chatsworth Road. Market day was Tuesday, with early closing on Thursday, something that was adhered to by every single shop and market stall. Once a week, we used to catch the no. 22 bus to Mare Street in the centre of Hackney, where we would call in on the Welfare place next to the Town Hall to get my weekly supply of free orange juice and Virol malt extract. Free ‘Welfare Orange', as it was known, and malt had been
introduced during the war years to make sure that children under five received their vitamins C and A. This was continued by the Labour Government as part of the new Welfare State being introduced under the Beveridge Report's proposals for ‘cradle to the grave' social security and health provision. I loved the malt, which came in a big brown wide-mouthed jar. It was lovely gooey sticky stuff. I believe cod liver oil was offered as an alternative to malt, but I never had any as far as I can remember, or maybe I did and didn't like it so my parents settled for malt.

Mare Street was the main street in Hackney and, as well as the Welfare office, included among its buildings the Town Hall, the Central Library and the Hackney Empire, a still thriving example of a Music Hall theatre, as well as big shops such as Woolworths, Marks & Spencer and British Home Stores (BHS).

Being so young, I was rarely allowed out on my own, but one day I went for a walk into the field with Barry Tickton and Richard (Copper's son). I don't actually remember much about the walk itself but I can remember being sat on the table in the kitchen on my return and being given a good talking to. Apparently, what had happened was that Barry and Richard told Mum that they had taken me over to the far end of the field, near where the River Lea flowed. They lost me somehow and came running back, shouting to her that I had fallen in the river. Mum's face turned a ghostly white. She dropped everything and rushed out of the prefab, fearing the worst. Running into the field, she was yelling my name, barely able to control the tears. Suddenly, she saw a forlorn figure over the far side of the field, trudging slowly towards her. When she realised
it was me, she ran and caught me, holding me to her so tightly I could hardly breathe. We made our way back to the prefab with her still clutching on to me, not daring to let me go. I couldn't understand why she was crying so much and wondered what had happened and if I'd done something wrong. It was only when we got back home and she sat me down on the kitchen table that she spoke to me for the first time, saying, ‘Don't you ever go near that river again! I thought I'd lost you.' She then picked me up and gave me another big cuddle, far too relieved to see me in one piece to be cross with me. For my part, I couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about as I hadn't been near the river, let alone fallen into it. Why Barry and Richard told her that I had, I have no idea.

Although I hadn't been near the river this time, I did quite often go down there when I was older, either on my own or with friends. There was a big power station at the end of Millfields Road near the Marshes, which backed onto the river and was serviced by barges bringing the coal. The coal would be unloaded and lifted up into the power station by means of two large fixed-hoist cranes. Mostly the barges were pulled by tugs but some were still drawn by horses. It was fascinating seeing those barges make their way sedately up the river and then watching the coal being winched up.

In the evenings, I looked forward to Dad coming home from work and often used to look out the kitchen window to see if I could see him coming. If I did, I would run out to meet him. Once he was home and with tea out of the way, we would play games, usually paper games such as noughts and crosses and boxes, or simple card games like snap or ‘Old Maid', or read
until it was bedtime. In the summer, we might go outside and play a ball game, usually catch, though, after a hard day's work, Dad was usually too tired for anything too energetic. There were also a few occasions when he said, ‘Let's go and see what we can find in Chatsworth Road,' and he would take me out to buy a small toy. I can remember him buying me two buses and a set of picture transfers on different occasions. Transfers were quite popular then. They came on sheets of paper, about a dozen on a sheet, and you'd cut out the one you wanted, soak it in water and the picture would float free of the paper. You could then stick it down in a book or on a toy as a decoration.

We owned a cat that was almost totally black, with a large white spot under his chin, so I called him Spot (well, I
was
only four years old). He never grew much bigger than a large kitten and he was my companion until long after we had moved away from Hackney. I have had a number of cats since Spot and all of them have been quite fussy about which tinned food they eat. It was just as well Spot wasn't, as Kit-e-Kat was the only brand available then. When it was time to feed him, we put his plate on a sheet of newspaper on the floor. The newspaper was kept in one of the drawers in the kitchen cabinet and, whenever he went into the kitchen, Spot would jump up to the drawers to let you know it was time for food.

He went missing one day and, despite searching all of his regular haunts, we couldn't find him anywhere. The days passed into weeks, the weeks into months and there was no sign of him anywhere. Heartbroken, we gave him up for lost. Then, one day, we heard a faint miaowing outside the side door and, when we opened it, there he was. He presented a very sorry
sight. He was dirty, sore, dishevelled, bruised and with a torn ear. We took him straight to the vet, who told us he would recover if looked after and not allowed out for a few days. That cat became the most looked-after cat of all time and within a week or so was back to his old self. We never did find out what had happened to him, though.

As well as Spot, we also kept a budgerigar called Bluey (another one of Dad's little jokes as he was actually green!) and a couple of tortoises, known as Shadwell and Wapping, in the back garden. I'm afraid we weren't very good at helping the tortoises hibernate and both of them died in the winter. We also lost the budgerigar when it flew out of the door. Dad had taken it out of the cage in the kitchen to clean it out, as he had done many previous times. As usual, it was allowed to fly freely around until it was time to put it back. On this particular occasion, there was a knock at the side door and outside was a group of kids, asking if they could get their ball back as they had kicked it over into our garden. Because we lived on a field, this was a frequent request. Dad's response was always, ‘You can get it this time, but, if it comes over again, you're not getting it back.' Of course, they always did get it back, however many times it came over. It was while he was making his standard reply that the budgerigar saw his chance for freedom and flew out the open door, never to be seen again.