The Long Shadow of Mr Scrooge

Maria said that when she considered Christmases Past she was usually plunged into family times she would rather forget – grand gala meals in frankly forgettable restaurants where the bill invariably fell to her long suffering husband. That was because he had his own small export business and was seen as being better off than the rest of them, not to mention being the Senior family member. Her brothers and their partners were all almost a decade younger and being a decade younger let you off the hook for a great many things – at least that was Maria’s opinion.

I had to admit she had something there, having regularly been poised and hopeful in downmarket Pizza Palaces, vainly optimistic that the cousin with the BMW parked outside would for once think of paying the bill or even a portion of it. He never did of course, not even when it was quite evident that payment was going to fall to the same long suffering one who had shelled out on several previous festive occasions. Judith says that maybe the BMW owner had quite forgotten who paid last year and the year before. But these are facts most unlikely to have been lost to memory no matter how vague the perpetual offenders might seem to be.

In fact such money conscious miscreants are usually quick to calculate and although unlikely to fork out for an actual meal might occasionally score points within a group by leaping to their feet suddenly anxious to foot the bill for coffee, over-riding everyone else in tones that are ever loud and clear - `this one’s on me!’. And that’s them off the hook for the next five years!

But as Tom says, some people are simply more innately generous than others whether they are rich or poor. My brother was one such and throughout his life, through times of hardship and wealth, always wanting to be the bill payer at any celebratory event, firmly brushing aside the one or two half-hearted protests. In his latter years it hardly mattered because he could definitely afford to do so. Even-so he once mentioned to me the names of one or two who had repeatedly over years taken care to avoid paying even for lime and soda water if it was possible to do so.

We agreed that meanness is a most unlikeable trait. It’s even more unpleasant when it emerges in those closest to you. Maria says it's harder to bear at Christmastime and maybe it's something to do with the long shadow of Mr Scrooge.

The Threshold of Forgiveness

We were discussing the pain caused when those who once were Loved Ones let you down, who studiously ignore the very people who should by rights count as Nearest & Dearest for over a decade, when they fail to acknowledge important dates and even ignore a sick and ageing parent for months on end. Sonya said that abandonment is invariably distressing, most especially when it emanates from a much loved son or daughter. Maria was more in agreement with me and felt that with the passing of time the anguish diminishes and then she added that so indeed did the anger. But there I disagreed with her.
Tom was more pragmatic and his view encompassed forgiveness but then Tom is a very Good Person and forgiveness comes easily to him. He thought that in the end a mother’s love would always prevail and reminded us that even the Yorkshire Ripper’s mother loved him when the rest of the world was filled with odium because that’s the way mothers are emotionally configured. Sonya thought he might be right. Later as we sipped gin and tonics together I told her that some of us were simply not built that way. She thought I should work on my forgiveness threshold but I quite like the level at which it is currently pitched.

Wombwell Hall & Womanhood

Back in the years that followed World War Two the Nit Nurse regularly visited St Botolph’s School in Northfleet, and very likely every other school in the area. It was a visit that mostly we looked forward to because it broke the day to day monotony of Primary School life. The only other school medical visit I can recall was made to Wombwell Hall in the first few weeks of term two, nineteen fifty five when I had just had my fifteenth birthday. It was definitely an event of some significance because we were warned about it in advance and a note went home with us during the preceding week upon which there was a space for our mothers to write down anything specific about us from a medical viewpoint. That information was to be returned to the office in advance of the visit. I was careful to make sure nothing was written about me by not delivering the note in the first place.

It might have simply been our particular year and not the entire school but we were to have eye and ear checks together with an assessment of our physical development to ensure that we were all progressing in an expected manner. I wasn’t concerned about the eye and ear checks but the assessment of our physical development certainly raised some apprehension and I wondered if we were all to undergo a test of some kind to prove we were normal. This was largely because I knew I wasn’t normal and my lack of normalcy was both mortifying and distressing. It wasn’t something that could be discussed easily with friends firstly because I didn’t really have any friends that I was close enough to and secondly because it was a fact so shockingly embarrassing that I was very fearful of being publicly ridiculed on account of it. And in order to avoid the horror of schoolgirl community shame I had already told a number of lies about it, some of them quite extensive. The fact of the matter was that at the great age of fifteen I was destined to continue life as a Late Onset Menstruator, a situation so shameful that even typing it now makes my arm pits tingle and my heart beat anxiously a little faster.

My absence of menstruation was definitely at odds with other aspects of my physical development and since my thirteenth birthday men on building sites had been yelling out to me that I had a Lovely Pair. You don’t need that at thirteen of course so it didn’t actually make me feel any better. Neither did classmates with minimal development themselves who assured me they were envious. Shirley, measuring us all amid the trees next to the hockey pitch, now a favourite lunchtime occupation, said mine were the biggest in Form 2SC and perhaps I should stop drinking school milk in case they exploded. We were not terribly well informed overall.

This was a time of a complete lack of sex education either at home or at school except a brief session or two called Human Biology but it was also a time when, somewhat strangely, girls seemed to share every aspect of growing up with each other and if they had nothing much to share, they made it up. Stories abounded of ten year olds in white dresses playing on the swings in Woodlands Park on summer days suddenly and profusely beginning to menstruate and having to rush home through throngs of curious Grammar School boys. For some odd reason there were always throngs of Grammar School boys ever watchful. The distraught girls were invariably comforted by caring older sisters or aunts and put to bed with Aspirin and hot water bottles to ease the physical pain of which there was always a great deal. They also had a stirring tale to share with friends. One by one over several years my schoolmates had each joined the ranks of Becoming Women, even those with no breast development whatsoever. Accordingly whenever the subject was discussed, which was often, I found myself adding to the tales of unbearable pelvic pain and being excused from team games.

You might well wonder why in the light of my well-constructed web of deceit the visit of a school Doctor or Nurse, or both, should concern me in the slightest but the fact was I suspected that they would know simply by looking at me that I was a physical oddity, an aberration like poor Auntie Queenie who my grandmother said was One of Them There Aphrodites and none of us should ever go into a toilet with her. My affliction was more than likely something hereditary like haemophilia and the apprehension I now felt definitely had something to do with the respect generally afforded the medical profession at that time, a group of special beings with special powers.

As it happened, when the much dreaded day arrived, despite the combined abilities of the attending doctor who was much younger than any of us expected, and the rather elderly nurse who most of the time seemed to be directing rather than assisting him, it turned out that my lack of growth towards Real Womanhood was not as glaringly obvious as I had suspected. Neither of them seemed to suspect for a moment that I was in any way abnormal.

The Headmistress’s study had been turned into a consulting room for the duration of the examinations and she shared her desk with the nurse whilst the young doctor sat uneasily on a folding chair in the centre of the room. On another chair beside him was a pile of pink pamphlets with the title Growing Towards Womanhood. As we entered in our underwear Miss Fuller announced us as if we were attending some kind of formal event, by full name then adding our exact age. I was Jean Bernadette Hendy – 15 years and nearly 2 weeks.

My sight and hearing was briefly checked together with my teeth. I was measured and weighed. The nurse simply filled in a vast chart in front of her. The young doctor did not look at me at any stage but most especially when he noted I had `Well-developed breasts’. Oh the humiliation of that announcement, particularly for a fifteen year old who would have been quite incapable of ordering Chicken Breast at Chicken Inn had I ever been fortunate enough to be taken there. Breast was a word firmly absent from my vocabulary. Both the nurse and Miss Fuller looked up, alerted by the word, the latter advising me to stand up straight, there was no need to hunch my shoulders. How I despised her with her straight back, in her silk blouse with no obvious mammary development whatsoever.

Alert for a possible abnormality to lighten the moment the nurse then wanted to know if my periods were regular and if I experienced any undue pain at which I froze and said nothing at all. Miss Fuller repeated the question slowly and in a voice that indicated she was getting just a little bit irritated but I was still mute, immobile, quite unable to give any reply. The silence that followed seemed endless, all eyes were upon me and I could hear my heart thumping loudly. At last the nurse asked in a slightly more gentle voice if my periods had actually started yet and then I was able to shake my head. She rose from her chair and came over to where I stood, pulling my voluminous forest green winceyette knickers down enough to peer at my private parts and returned to her chair with an obvious waning of interest. She wrote a sentence or two before instructing the doctor that he did not need to give me one of the pink pamphlets as they were only to be given to girls who were already menstruating. Cheeks burning, ears thumping I was then dismissed.

I blame Jill Butler for what happened next, the further and more extensive mortification back in the Science Block as we waited for our usual post morning break Monday class of Human Biology to begin. There was a frisson of anticipation in the room because not only was Miss Norman a forthright and entertaining teacher, we would be discussing The Development of the Human Embryo. Jill Butler, from Burnt Oak Terrace in Gillingham and full of confidence since she became a prefect wanted to know why I had not been given a pink pamphlet like everyone else. A number of students now sat idly studying them as they waited. I said she should mind her own business because she didn’t need to know everything about everybody.

But she was not a girl who gave up easily and sensing a victim she added that at her cousin Brenda’s school they had been handed to everyone who had started their periods – the only girls who missed out were those who were in no danger of becoming women any time soon. Surely this must mean that I also fell into that category? Foolishly, as was my habit, I immediately restorted to lying. Why break the habit of a lifetime? Lowering my voice and asking her not to spread the information far and wide I told her it was because I only had one ovary. That I thought might shock and silence her but Jill was unstoppable and to my horror she rushed towards the chalk board and wrote in capital letters JEAN HENDY HAS ONLY GOT ONE!

And of course everyone wanted to know what she meant and there was no use hissing at her that I had believed she could be trusted with sensitive information and that only having one while everyone else had two might well mean a number of unpleasant medical events were in store for me. The truth of the matter was that Jill quite sensibly did not believe me and was utterly determined to continue the humiliation with clever taunts including comments that she would have thought somebody who wore a size 36 DD bra as she knew I did would have started at eight or nine and not still be still waiting for Womanhood at fifteen! By the time Miss Norman arrived, only two minutes late for class, most of the remaining class members were dutifully sniggering, and some were laughing uproariously.

If she had left it at that I might even have re-ignited our quasi friendship at some later stage but being Jill, and from her lofty Prefect perch she was quite unable to let the topic lie and halfway through the Human Biology class when we were drawing embryos and Miss Norman was hovering in our row offering help and advice, she queried in her piercing voice with its stage-like natural projection if it was abnormal for a girl to be born with only one ovary. Miss Norman said she had never really come across it and thought it must indeed be quite unusual.

That lunchtime Jill and I were on plate duty together and I took the opportunity to tearfully tell her that I would never, ever trust her with confidential information again, that she was totally unreliable. She said she’d rather be unreliable than a complete weirdo like me with tits like mine. She said it was called Abnormal Breast Development.

The Peep Toe Shoes

That day when I told Miss Fuller that I was unaware that peep toe shoes were not acceptable footwear for Wombwell Hall I was, for once, telling the truth. We were both looking at the shoes in question at the time and it was only just beginning to dawn on me that I was in fact in breach of the uniform rules and that the violation had been going on for almost that entire term. There were three weeks to go before the Christmas break and we were already deep into the daily practice of appropriate Carols of which my favourite was definitely Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.

Miss Fuller looked slightly irritated when, because my mind had strayed to traditional Carols, she had to ask me twice if I had alternative footwear available. I hastily told her that yes I did even though this was a lie unless you counted too tight summer sandals passed down by my cousin Connie and Wellington boots. I knew neither were an option for daily wear to Wombwell Hall. I hoped she would not remember that it was the second time I had stood before her for breach of shoe rules and in fact she didn’t seem to. She looked up from the chart on the desk in front of her and stared directly into my eyes, stopping herself from demanding that I look at her when she was speaking in the nick of time because by a mere millisecond I already was. Instead she told me that she need not remind me that I was a Fully Funded for Uniform Pupil. I nodded agreement and she added that there was really no excuse for me to be wearing the forbidden peep toe shoes and I hastily agreed and wondered what was wrong with them considering that they fitted the required colour option of brown or black. They were black and well-polished. There was still a lot of wear left in them even though I had a tendency to Roll Over the left foot which rendered the level of the sole uneven.

I was always accused of being Hard on footwear and my mother only wished Old Hammond the cobbler could fit metal clinks like in the old days but he’d told her they were only used for work boots in the thoroughly modern 1950s. I didn’t mention any of this to Miss Fuller of course, knowing perfectly well that she would not be interested being a woman unlikely to ever have encountered a clink on a work boot. The Headmistress was always fair and it was not as if I was constantly hauled before her for misdemenours but she was also Posh in the way that those who went into teaching back in those days, and rose significantly were. And she was stylish and wore tweed suits with gored skirts and cream silk blouses. Her hair was short enough for my mother to describe her as Mannish and her own shoes were as highly polished as mine but sensibly laced and of course without any vestige of a peep toe about them. Her voice always seemed to be hiding behind her teeth and when she spoke she sounded a bit like the military men in the films my mother liked so much about officers escaping from prisoner of war camps in World War Two. In fact there was no doubt that she was not the most feminine of women but this applied to more than one of those entering the teaching profession in my opinion and I had already decided it was a consequence of some aspects of higher education probably Mathematics. She was telling me that as I had alternative footwear she did not want to see the peep toe shoes again and to remember that I was Fully Funded so I nodded enthusiastically and assured her it would not happen again. I did, however, hope my mother would not get too angry about it all and wondered what I would wear the following day.

I need not have worried at all because the next day was a Friday and instead of going to school I was taken on the 480 bus to Dartford to Dolcis Shoes where my cousin Margaret was now working. We bought proper school shoes with sturdy soles and long laces and I was allowed to choose either black or brown so I chose black. Then we had cups of tea and biscuits in the café over the road because Margaret was entitled to a forty five minute lunch break. We paid for the café treat because Margaret had managed to organise for us to get the shoes at sale price even though the sale did not start for another week.

In the cafe Margaret talked about the Wednesday evening typing class she was doing in order to better herself and my mother talked about schools having a Bloody Cheek telling students what kind of shoes they should be wearing and how women like that Miss Fuller didn’t know their arses from their elbows and those peep toe shoes still had plenty of wear left in them. I talked about not really understanding what Fully Funded for Uniform really meant even though of course I did, and was pleased to note my mother’s discomfiture. I even elaborated and said Miss Fuller had explained that Fatherless pupils were considered Orphans and so a regular sum was awarded to us so that all our uniform needs could be fully met. This meant, I said that expensive items like regulation cardigans could be purchased with ease from the Uniform Shop in Gravesend. We did not have to wear hand knitted ones that our mothers made.

My mother said there was plenty of wear left in the school cardigan she had knitted and it was exactly the right shade of Forest Green and she wasn’t made of money.

The Death of Motherly Love

Judith is a blogger from Northern Ireland and we are good friends – at least in the sense that one can be good friends via the internet which is akin to how we once felt about our relationship with pen-pals. I have actually met Judith because several years ago she was on a visit here – primarily to Melbourne which I think she thought was a great deal more exciting than Auckland and anyway she had family living there, a number of stalwart women, all widows who somehow or other survived the Holocaust. Of course they may no longer be living and indeed I may never see Judith again. Not that this is in any way relevant to our relationship. Long ago those of us fond of letter writing occasionally met up with pen-pals but nonetheless such friendships always differed substantially from those we have always known in the flesh.

Judith read my latest blog post, ruminating upon the celebration of Christmas and said I sounded angry. She has always half celebrated Christmas herself under pressure from her daughters and she even thought seriously about observing Diwali at one stage. She definitely understands festivals.

I brought her up to speed with regard to the pressures of our present family situation and she said she would be angry too – and shamed and humiliated. There are times when parents need the support of grown children if they have them but that I should bear in mind that there are some whose need to feel powerful overcomes all other sentiments, certainly that of filial duty; definitely that of love or even kindness.

Later on in the still silence of the sleepless night I pondered upon the astonishing extent of the rage I felt and knew that there could never be forgiveness for one who so cheerfully engages in the ongoing torment of a sick parent. That was as unlikely as ever uncovering a new affection and fondness for an alcoholic or heroin addict whose excesses continued relentless and unabated, impervious to any chaos caused. It is liberating, cathartic even, to realise that some behaviours emerge as so astoundingly significant that they can totally release us of all maternal obligations. Imperceptibly aversion takes the place of tenderness, revulsion replaces concern and where love once lived a dark loathing festers.

Further Revisiting the Rite of Christmas

We are again inevitably creeping towards Christmas, strangely always a little bit sad but somehow uplifting at the same time. Memories of family festivities are ever special, small children in dressing gowns feverishly tearing open parcels in the chilly dawn recalled with delight. Of course that dawn was never quite as chilly when transferred into the South Pacific no matter how much bogus snow was sprayed beneath the gaudy Australasian tinsel tree. No real ones readily available back in the 1980s and in any case my small daughter was totally captivated by tinsel. All the grown children keenly recall the annual celebrations although for one they are central to the misery we relentlessly spooned into life. Anachronistic Yuletides can prevent growth towards assimilation for some, denying them the opportunity to integrate into local society. Others, happily more emotionally robust remain unscathed. For the afflicted, however, the pain does not ease simply because thousands upon thousands of immigrants experience the very same syndrome – Smothering Mothers intent upon forcing Diwali or Lantern Festival or Hanukka upon their helpless infants who struggle to escape.

Being a run of the mill Christian from North Kent for me it was the replication year after year of an old fashioned Victorian Christmas complete with roast goose and plum pudding. And let me tell you here and now that although plum pudding was not impossible, a goose in Auckland, New Zealand in the middle of summer was not altogether without complications. But if you were determined and left no stone unturned and began the search at the beginning of October, it was not impossible to find one and once located it was really only the roasting to perfection that needed attention.

It was undoubtedly selfishness that propelled me to work so determinedly towards the Very Best Christmas possible and that was because that significant time of year had been, for me and my brother, inordinately exciting. Not that we were to be blessed with more than those around us but it was a time when extreme poverty could at least be cast aside for a day or two, neediness giving way to the smell of tangerines and spices and the sounds of carol singers and Salvation Army bands, to the excitement of second hand Toby Twirl and Rupert Annuals and brand new school socks from the market. For the grownups there were always early morning cups of tea fortified with tots of whiskey adding yet another distinctly festive aroma that hovered pervasively in the humidity of the kitchen until that of roasting chicken overpowered it. There were unusually from Christmas Eve on, always two fires in the house, in both the kitchen range and the normally icy front room, where all pecuniary caution was thrown to the winds and the grate heaped extravagantly with precious black coals. Oh yes indeed we were definitely guilty of splashing out for Christmas!

Little wonder that in later years I was not prepared to be controlled and quelled by the New Zealand fondness for barbecues on local beaches, for sausages and cold ham with mustard for tinned peaches and Hokey Pokey ice cream. My own extravagantly organised festivities in the depths of bushy Kohimarama had been born in a world peopled by characters from the imagination of Charles Dickens and predestined to be barbecue free. Thus my powerless children were to endure for years a strictly Northern Hemisphere rite. A relic unbefitting for a True New Zealand family and certainly damaging to the future happiness of the vulnerable. But to me, the doggedly determined architect of the annual plan, it was an embodiment of the little bit of England I had grasped from memory and held fast to, so fast that even now when I close my eyes I can very nearly catch the aroma of tangerines and tea with whiskey.

On Distant Fathers Deserving Better

The Very Important Specialist said he was very sorry not to be able to impart better news but the fact was no matter which way you looked at it the cell had become much more aggressive despite all the treatment. The Overwhelming Mother and the Distant Father sat a little closer together and tried to look totally attentive. The words spoken by this Most Significant Person definitely had an air of unreality about them like something said by characters in books, maybe even a book written by an Overwhelming Mother where in fact a happy ending could be produced if needs be. A decision might be made NOT to become the Overwhelming Mother in the first place; now there was indeed a pertinent thought. Had the Overwhelming Mother not been quite as overwhelmingly overwhelming the son living in a far off country might have chosen to acknowledge the Distant Father’s serious illness rather than ignoring it. He might even have sent birthday and Christmas greetings – possibly a text on Distant Father’s Day when the phones had stayed monitored just in case….. Now there indeed was yet another pertinent thought!

When these meanderings were laid before Good Friend Sonya, her immediate comment was that perhaps a Christmas and a birthday greeting should have been sent to the Prodigal Son under discussion to help sew the seed of that excellent idea, enable him to see the generally acceptable way to behave just in case it wasn’t clear to him. When told that in fact that had been done she grew silent for a while and at last said what a totally self-seeking, self-centred, self- interested, egocentric piece of human waste he must be in that case. It was then that the erstwhile Overwhelming Mother began to weep and said it seemed so recently he had been the little boy she had loved so dearly. Good Friend Sonya advised that there were times when it was better by far to face reality and waste no more emotional energy upon those with no understanding of filial obligations . So that is what the Overwhelming Mother did!

East is East & West is West

It’s probably only recently that I have quite begun to quite understand the vast differences that exist in styles of parenting in different cultures. Who could fail to be impressed by eight year old Mimi who lives nearby for instance. How willingly she attends to her piano practice every afternoon after school. How calming, comforting, and reassuring are her endless repetition of scales and studies as her efforts drift along the walkway. How polite and co-operative her conduct.
My erstwhile neighbour, Rebecca, now living deeper in the depths of Parnell, touched upon the parenting topic only a week or two ago when we met for coffee. Her familiarity with cultural disparities comes from years of living in Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand and the United States. She spoke of the firm anticipation Asian parents have that their children will always love and support them and a great deal of the time, even as adults, conform to their wishes. I commented that Eastern and Western attitudes are often poles apart and she nodded. Later I wondered why it was that we in the West, so quick to consider ourselves superior in the art of child rearing, can so frequently get it so wrong. Later, Lucy ringing in to discuss book sales wasn’t really interested but did suggest that more exposure of our self-obsessed offspring to the Eastern way of life would surely help. Instead of Gap years they might have benefited from Swap years in China she thought. I agreed but did not of course explore the idea further. Sometimes attitudes simply don’t rub off no matter how fortuitous the circumstances appear to be. Anyway fortuitous doesn’t always mean fortunate does it?

Not A Patch on Going Hopping

In the nineteen forties and fifties People didn’t go on holidays nearly as much as they seem to nowadays. One good reason for several years was obviously the war but I’m not sure that people like us holidayed a great deal in the nineteen twenties and thirties either. Some in the community who were designated by my mother as Better People than us, Mrs Frost of Springhead Road for example, were determined to ignore the war and courageously set off in 1941 for their annual week in Broadstairs, or Folkestone often to visit relatives. In Mrs Frost’s case it was the sister who conveniently ran a guest house in Hastings but on this occasion her plans were ill fated. The reason for this was we found as she breathlessly relayed the story to the curious customers in Hilda Simms’ corner shop, that she had been targeted by a Dornier just overhead when she and her sister were about to step into Plummers. They were almost gunned down where they stood and would have surely perished if it hadn’t been for a brave little Spitfire, rising up above the enemy plane and giving chase. Later her nephew told her that the Dornier had fallen into the sea and the Spitfire had done a double victory roll to cheers from the onlookers on the blustery seafront below. After that experience which grew ever more dramatic with each retelling, Mrs Frost paid more heed to the fact that we were a country at war and decided to put all thoughts of holidays on hold for the duration.

It was all very well for people like the Frosts, I was told, whose income was very well supplemented by the piano lessons given in the front room after school each day, but those of us further down the social scale could only contemplate such extras once the Holidays with Pay Act was passed in 1938 whether or not a war was on the horizon. Even then it benefited only those workers whose wage rates were fixed by Trade Boards and were thus awarded one week on full pay, no questions asked. This was seen as a great step forward. By 1948 a couple of our neighbours spoke of booking a week at Butlin’s in Clacton. The Scutts family who lived at the top of Springhead Road quite close to The Leather Bottel had actually been there twice according to Barbara who was in my class at St Botolph’s. However, Barbara was known to exaggerate. Rita Jenkins confidently told us that she was being taken to a place called Skegness which was miles away and her mother was busy sewing her two new summer dresses. I began to seriously hanker after the undoubted glamour of a holiday camp!

The first such camp was opened by John Fletcher Dodd at Caister-on-sea in 1906 and called, unimaginatively, Caisters. Nobody I knew ever talked of going there so I have no idea what it was like but the one run by the entrepreneurial Billy Butlin at Clacton sounded most attractive. My father got a week’s paid holiday along with everyone else at Bevan’s Cement Works and after a great deal of argument, with my mother maintaining that she would prefer to have a day here and a day there such as Southend-on-Sea and Whipsnade Zoo, Clacton began to be discussed and then quickly discarded once it was realised that all campers were expected to join in the Fun. Apparently we were a family who were not especially good at Fun and so, disappointingly, a week was booked in a boarding house at Ramsgate instead. We paid for bed and breakfast, a cot in the room for my brother, one bath each during the duration of our stay and no eating fish and chips in the room.

I no longer remember a great deal about that week except that it was not an unqualified success and the sun did not come out until the day we were leaving. My mother complained a lot about it being impossible to wash and dry nappies and berated me each morning for not eating the breakfast that had been paid for but I was a picky eater and not keen on anything that contained obvious globules of fat which I was always told was the Goodness in the meal and which I most decidedly did not believe. There seemed to be a great deal of Goodness in the slices of black pudding and fried bread on my plate. The grim faced landlady was clearly not overly enthusiastic on her chosen profession and once the guests left the premises after breakfast the front door was firmly locked until five pm when they were reluctantly allowed to return, minus fish and chips and without making undue noise.

The seaside for me meant sticks of rock and sometimes candy floss, brass band music and pebble beaches. I was not at all eager to go on the enforced walks along The Front in gale force winds and longed to be back in York Road playing Hopscotch with Molly. I feared and detested the wheeling gulls, suddenly of an infinitely more massive variety than those that circled the Gravesend promenade. Their eyes seemed permanently fixed upon me and whatever it was that might be edible about me yet they observed my small brother in a much more benign fashion. Even then and only in his second year of life, his joy at their presence was palpable as he stretched out plump infant arms towards them making earnest sounds in a baby argot that they half seemed to acknowledge. Their hostility was reserved mostly for me so when walking I kept as far away from their sea wall perch as possible and concentrated my thoughts on the ice cream I had been promised. But all ice cream cones appeared to cost sixpence in Ramsgate which was Daylight Robbery and so put on hold in favour of fish and chips. Although eating fish and chips on the beach should have been fun it turned out not to be because of the ongoing proximity of the scavenging gulls. I found myself once again being mercilessly harangued on account of food, this time for not eating my allocated piece of battered hake which was what the avian predators were intent upon taking ownership of. And so I cried bitter tears of frustration and misery and told my long suffering parents that I hated holidays and never again wanted to have one.

By way of compensation and what now stands out as an island of excitement was being taken into a bookshop and being told by my father that I could choose a book to read and to keep. This certainly did not happen very often because I was expected to get all my reading matter from the local library except at Christmas and birthdays when I was sometimes bought second hand books from Gravesend Market. I didn’t mind that they were second hand because having my own collection of books was wonderful and made me feel important as I read them again and again. I can’t actually remember any other time when a book had been purchased, pristine and immaculate from a proper bookshop. My father strongly recommended Tales From Shakespeare by some people called Charles and Mary Lamb or A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens but to his dismay I firmly rejected both of these ideas and instead spent a long time deliberating the various merits of The Enid Blyton Book of Fairies as opposed to the The Enid Blyton Book of Nature. I finally chose the latter which at six shillings and sixpence also turned out to be Daylight Robbery. All in all it was not a successful holiday which was a pity with it being our very first and my mother said she would be glad to get back to her own bed and holidays were not all they were cracked up to be. What’s more she wouldn’t be making the same mistake again and would never have believed the price of things in Ramsgate. She would certainly not complain about Gravesend and Northfleet prices again. If the truth be known, a week by the sea wasn’t a patch on Going Hopping and that was a fact.

When we got back to Northfleet, however and people began to ask how our week away at the coast had worked out, I was surprised to find that far from revealing how disastrous it had been she chose to wax lyrical about it and said we were already considering booking for the following year. We might even book early to be sure of getting a good room in the afore-described and previously much maligned guest house. When I protested that I thought she had hated the experience just as much as I had I was told to Button my Lip because that was no business of anyone else. Only my grandmother and aunts were told the truth and it did not seem to surprise them with Old Nan making comment that Ramsgate and Margate were much overrated and she had never held with them and would sooner go to Southend any day where both the weather and the whelks were glorious. And she agreed that as true as she stood in our kitchen none of these new-fangled seaside guest houses with their fancy prices were a patch on Going Hopping!
Such a disaster was never to happen again and the following year, my Uncle Harold who had become a senior foreman at Dusseks in Crayford and had no fears about using the telephone for the purposes of making holiday bookings suggested that the entire family should try a week at a place called Swalecliffe at the Hilltop Campsite to be precise. My Grandmother immediately approved and said it was not far from Herne Bay and within easy reach of Whitstable and the delights of everything that Pearsons had to offer and that was a place she remembered well from donkey’s years ago. Three chalets and two caravans were duly organised to be shared between us and walks to Tankerton to try the icecream together with visits to Whitstable for oysters and chips were already being excitedly discussed. We four were to occupy one of the caravans which turned out to be called Victoria and was situated directly opposite the much more desirable chalets appropriated early in the piece by Old Nan and various aunts and cousins. The second caravan, called Waterloo, was bigger and generally more impressive than ours and four teenage cousins had immediately taken possession of it. This did not meet with my mother’s approval of course but the occupying youths maintained that their heights demanded more room than Victoria offered and then even my father looked affronted.

My mother was definitely Put Out but she said so only to my father who pointed out that if she hadn’t agreed to Harold doing the telephoning more claim could have been made to one of the sea-facing chalets. He was perfectly capable of making a telephone call if needs be and that was a fact. Then they had the kind of argument I had become in recent months accustomed to which generally resulted in tears and a long silence followed by my father storming off on his bike. Later I was to understand that he then had a habit of meeting a Fancy Woman at the Ingress Tavern in Stonebridge Road where they had Shrimp Brand beers and was said to have even contrived the conflict in order to keep these appointments. On this occasion, however, he had little chance of doing so as the campsite at Swalecliffe necessitated a rather complicated journey back to Northfleet. Instead he stalked determinedly over to the clifftop and navigated his way down to the cold, windy, pebbly beach and sat hunched against one of the groynes.

Swalecliffe was not by any means perfect and couldn’t be compared with Going Hopping but nevertheless our annual holiday for a number of years was to involve the Hilltop Campsite which over time became more acceptable and gradually we were able to rise through the hierarchy somehow and ensure that we occupied one of the cabins rather than Victoria or even Waterloo. Overall each member of the extended Constant family found these sojourns by the sea infinitely preferable to boarding houses in more salubrious parts of the Kent coast. The campsite afforded a great deal more freedom and tolerance for the kind of familial behaviour that came naturally to us, sing songs and beer drinking after dark for instance, and the occasional robust altercation. To be sure it was conduct that sometimes earned disapproval from other campers and caused comments about Diddicais, but in later years even that would be seen by my brother as eccentric and quaintly tribal.

Things were to remain that way for a number of years with a regular group migration of the Constant aunts complete with spouses and offspring from Crayford and Northfleet for the annual invasion of Swalecliffe. 1954 was the fateful year when Aunt Mag, the sister who had always been closest to my mother, suddenly announced she wasn’t going to go to that Hilltop Campsite again now that their Margaret was getting married and their Ann growing up so fast too. In fact her Harold had booked for them to go to Weymouth that year, to a very nice boarding house on the Front. A first floor room with All Found and as many baths as you wanted. They might give Hopping a miss too because it wasn’t as if they really needed the money now that Harold had got his promotion to Foreman in Chief down at Dusseks.

My Aunt was never to be forgiven for this particular piece of perfidy because she had announced it out of the blue and as Bold as Brass with not a thought that her widowed sister might like to join them because by then my father had been dead for several years. Oh No never a mention but that was Mag all over. She had never really been one to consider the feelings of others and you only had to think back to that time at Margate before the war and the way she had behaved about the borrowed shoes to get the measure of Mag. Anyway we wouldn’t have gone with her even if she’d gone down on bended knee, not for all the tea in China. As far as we were concerned Mag could stick her holiday plans in Weymouth where the sun didn’t shine! I mean who would want to go to a dead and alive hole like that anyway? And as for giving Hopping a miss that year, well you could have knocked my mother down with a feather when she said that. She could be a crafty cow at times and it didn’t do to trust her and she’d always been one for putting on airs and graces when she’d no reason to. Her Harold liked to throw his weight about too if the truth be known. Well we could go down Hopping on our own couldn’t we? We certainly didn’t need Mag nor Harold to hold our hands, promotion or no promotion because we were perfectly capable!

And in the end that’s what we did, on one of the special Hoppers’ Trains from London Bridge that left in the early hours of the morning carrying hundreds of pickers to Paddock Wood, Faversham and Maidstone to the Hop Gardens. We didn’t know it at the time but it was the last season of the special trains because the need for hand pickers was fast coming to an end. Old Nan and Little Violet came with us because it turned out that they hadn’t been invited to Weymouth either, not that they would have gone even if that cow Mag had begged them to. As we settled into our train journey Old Nan, never slow to lay criticism where it was due observed that though she said it herself, Mag, her first-born, was at times All Fur Coat and No Knickers. As for that good for nothing Harold of hers, that silly bugger never knew whether he wanted a shit or a haircut. But you couldn’t help some people. They wouldn’t be told!

THE FUSE BOX IN THE COAL CUPBOARD

Tess Leyton came back to Northfleet after an absence from the area of seven years and rented the Finches’ old house just a few doors away from us. She brought with her a brand new husband called Bill, an impossibly handsome teenage son called Ramon, named for a cinema heartthrob of the nineteen thirties, and a small daughter called Junie. She was also proudly accompanied by a breeding pair of canaries because she was seriously contemplating going into the cage bird business. We had not quite decided upon the acquisition of the budgerigar called Ricky that we eventually owned for several years and so a canary was being earnestly considered because of the anticipated beauty of its song. My mother was confident she might learn a great deal from Tess Leyton because investing in a bird and a cage was of necessity an expensive business in those days and we were a family that did not have money to burn as I have probably explained previously.

Tess immediately renewed her acquaintance with us saying that she and my mother were Old Mates. My mother, not accustomed to people seeking her friendship, was flattered by the attention though she said that back in 1944 they hadn’t been particularly close and one of the reasons for that was that Tess had then lived in Shepherd Street. It might only have been a hop, skip and a jump away but wartime was wartime when all was said and done and Doodlebugs were known to be unpredictable. What’s more in those days Tess had been considered somewhat Blousy and some locals, like Grace Bennett of Buckingham Road even referred to her as a Slummock and a Proper Two Ton Tessie which wasn’t altogether congenial. But then Grace always had a sharp tongue and it didn’t do to get on the wrong side of her. To be fair Tess Leyton could never have been described as a small woman and was always loud and opinionated. Before painting her too black though there was the tragedy of her Little Nova, the previous small daughter, to be considered. That poor little mite had been lost following an accident involving boisterous play on top of an Anderson shelter which might never have happened if the shelter had been properly installed in the first place and not just thrown up half baked.

Little Nova had been named for Nova Pilbeam, a well-known actress of the nineteen thirties. We wondered who Little Junie had been named for but it seemed rude to ask and Tess did not venture to tell us right away. What she did tell us, however, was that Little Junie was precious and that they had almost Lost her at birth, she was also delicate and Dr Outred was very keen indeed to keep a special eye on her. My mother seemed to debate as to whether or not to reveal that I was also delicate and decided not to for which I was grateful. Eventually we were to learn that Little Junie had been named in honour of June Allyson, an up and coming American actress that the rest of us had barely heard of. Tess was an avid film fan and went to the Majestic in Gravesend with her Bill every Saturday evening without fail. Occasionally when her Ramon was not available for watching Little Junie, she would come along to our house and share a bed with my brother until her parents returned.

Back in the Shepherd Street days of World War Two when Grace Bennett said there had been talk that Tess had at times been no better than she ought to have been, she was not a Leyton at all and I’m not even sure if I ever knew what her name once was but I did know that her original husband was called Ron and he had met with a nasty accident when his old push bike with the basket on the front collided with a 496 bus in the blackout. The basket had been piled high with purloined paper from Bowaters where he was doing essential war work because of his eyesight. Sad though the accident was my mother had never really taken to Ron and that might have had something to do with him not having received his Calling Up papers. She always found such situations challenging. Old Mrs Bassant next door said if his sight had been better he might have actually seen the bus and he should have been issued with proper cycling glasses in the first instance if the work was so essential.

With Ron now completely out of the picture, when Bill appeared on the scene with the return of Tess and her canaries, my mother found him much easier to take to in the early time of their acquaintance. However, even this scant regard was to diminish following my father’s death and that unfortunate development was one hundred per cent due to the fuse box in the coal cupboard.
Each small dwelling in our York Road terrace, and also those similar that surrounded us was blessed with the convenience of electric light and the necessary fuse box lived adjacent to the coal in the cupboard under the stairs. Before the dawn of electricity in the area lighting came in the form of gas lamps attached to the walls, supplemented at times with conveniently mobile paraffin lamps. I can’t remember, and perhaps I never actually knew when the gas lighting became totally obsolete and when I was very small I clearly recall the wall lamps still being lit in my bedroom from time to time.

Both gas and electricity supplies were fed with coins into the mysterious slot meters that lived among our coats and scarves at the bottom of the steep narrow stairs leading to the floor above. Gas had been installed throughout the country at the turn of the twentieth century and by the 1920s there were more than seven million users with average families spending between one and two pounds per annum on the commodity. Our gas meter had a very Edwardian look about it, was only slightly threatening and was regularly and confidently fed with dull, dark pennies. For years I had been allowed to drag a chair underneath with a coin in my hand and, feeling important and grown up, operate the lever when the supply inconveniently expired during the roasting of the Sunday dinner. The copper coins dropping into the receptacle gave a satisfying clank which grew more muted as the meter filled. Even though its odour was disagreeable and the lighting of the rings of the stove in the corner of the scullery was exhilarating even to watch, in its entirety the miracle of gas was familiar. I knew that middle aged women who lived on their Nerves or had husbands who Drank sometimes chose to end their lives by uncomfortably placing their heads in ovens, often without even a cushion to support them, but nevertheless I had few qualms regarding its danger. This was only because electricity was said to be much more perilous. It was certainly much more costly.

The spread of electricity had been slow to proliferate through English towns and villages, particularly so in unambiguously working class streets and terraces such as ours. When it did come to York Road the small and sleek, much more modern and important looking meter sitting alongside that of the gas company demanded one shilling pieces. This was to my mother’s mind an eye-watering expense and therefore leaving lights on by accident when exiting the house was an ofence that would not be forgotten for days and she was open mouthed in amazement when my newly engaged cousin Margaret announced that what she wanted more than anything as a wedding present was an electric bar heater. Quite apart from the infinitely lower cost of gas, in our house we came to feel that whatever its shortcomings, it was a much more convenient energy source. This feeling became ever more entrenched and this was largely because its delivery did not depend upon fuses of any kind. Fuses were what was categorically wrong with electricity although we had not quite realized this whilst my father was still alive. This only proves that what looms large and significant in anyone’s life depends entirely on their current circumstances.

For instance Pearl Banfield from number six, once she started Going Steady with someone called Graham at the age of seventeen said that the local electricity supply was definitely the thing she found most abhorrent about living in York Road. What had previously been insufferable to her and where she had my total support, was the outside lavatory but now her engagement was looming her attitude had changed. This was because now that they were Serious, Graham was allowed to visit on Saturday evenings and sit with her in the front room. The humiliation of the lights suddenly going out and everyone rummaging in pockets and purses for a shilling piece was embarrassing in the extreme Pearl declared. It did not happen at Graham’s house where electricity was delivered effortlessly followed by a monthly bill which his mother ensured was paid regularly. Pearl lived in fear of the extinguishing of the Saturday evening lights, just as she had once lived in fear of Graham needing to use the toilet.

My mother became equally preoccupied with possible interruptions to the supply and for her it was not the fact that there might be a paucity of one shilling pieces because she now took the precaution of having one or two at hand, but rather because a Fuse might need to be Mended and that was most definitely a man’s job. After December 1951, with my father no longer present and my brother still much too young to be considered male enough for the job, we would of necessity remain without avant garde lighting until an Uncle or older cousin dropped by to visit. I never thought this was too much of a calamity as we still had the illumination of gas available to us but she was distraught to be without the comfort of the wireless, unable to do the weekly ironing and as the years went by, unable to watch the ten inch television set.

On a couple of occasions Mary Newberry who eventually replaced Old Mrs Bassant next door promised to send her Charlie in after work but obviously forgot all about it and had to be reminded twice because she was a silly cow if ever there was one - and even when he did turn up he said he needed the right kind of fuse wire and a special trip had to be made over to Woolworths next day. All this caused a great deal of stress so once a friendship had been re-established with Tess Layton and innumerable afternoons had been spent with her drinking Mazawattee tea and dunking Nice biscuits, a tentative request was made that her Bill might come along and deal with the fuse problem. Tess said he would be only too pleased to help out because if there was one thing you could say about her Bill, it was that he was obliging. Everyone said so! He turned up as promised just after five o’clock, even armed with fuse wire and was delighted to find that we had stocked up and had several different thicknesses of wire wound efficiently around a card just waiting to be deployed. There was nothing worse, Bill said, than using the wrong wire because you didn’t want to overload the circuit did you? And of course we didn’t want to do that under any circumstances.

Bill Leyton most willingly, with very good grace, did mend the fuse and executed the task in just a few minutes, refusing a cup of tea and even saying that he was only too glad to be of assistance. So all would have been well had it not been for my mother, overcome with gratitude after several power-less days pressing a two shilling piece into his hand urging him to treat himself to a pint at The Prince Albert in Shepherd Street. To be fair he initially vehemently declined to avail himself of this unexpected pint and she, just as resolutely insisted that he should do so and so after a small tussle he pocketed the florin and thanked her very much.

This was undoubtedly a faux pas extraordinaire although I was seriously perplexed as to why at the time. My mother’s indignation was extreme as she both rebuked herself for the folly of the request for help and berated the now long gone recipient of the reward to all who would listen. My small brother and I were harangued over hours and asked what kind of man takes a couple of bob from a widowed neighbour? Did he really think she had money to throw away on the likes of him? Mending a fuse was a doddle after all for a man like him. It took the biscuit, it really did. Did he think she had money to burn? Would she be scrubbing her knuckles to the bone around at the Lovell’s every Monday morning in all weathers if she could afford handouts for what rightly should have been a favour?

My grandmother and aunts were similarly addressed because when you considered the fact that he was happy to take her money, bold as brass in fact you had to ask yourself what decent man would lower himself like that. What about all the tea that lazy slummock of a wife of his could knock back? Not to mention the biscuits! Yet when you dropped by her place you’d find the milk would only ever be sterilized and the biscuits never ever Bourbon or Custard Creams.

When she told Grace Bennett the criticism which had now turned into a barrage of abuse, was of course strictly between the two of them but you could have knocked my mother down with a feather when he actually put his hand out to take that couple of bob from her. Quick as a flash he was – couldn’t wait to pocket it! She was never going to stoop to ask him again and next time she ran across Tess she would clean her something rotten. And Grace said well she herself had never taken to Tess Leyton and hadn’t she always said that Blousy Cow was not to be trusted? You only had to think back to the first husband and the stolen goods and then there was the pair of them always out on a Friday night gallivanting and those poor kiddies left to fend for themselves. Grace was only glad my mother had finally seen the light because she wouldn’t be told would she?

Of course the matter of the pocketed florin was never brought up with Tess Leyton because if there was one thing that my mother lacked it was moral fortitude or what we would now refer to as backbone. Furthermore the next time the fuse needed attention, after almost a week without power, and no convenient visits from teenage cousins she did in fact ask for Bill Leyton’s help once again. And once again she firmly pushed a two shilling piece in his direction, only this time with pursed lips and a raised chin. And once again after an initial refusal he pocketed it at which she bridled a little and folded her arms disapprovingly as she thanked him very much for his help in a voice that was imperceptibly too loud.

She was thus destined to continue to feel affronted but as far as was possible she spent less time drinking Mazawattee tea with Tess Leyton. It was around that time that the decision to buy Ricky the budgie was made and in any case the canary breeding idea came to nothing in the end – like all that woman’s tomfool notions!

Theft in Lord Darnley's Woods

For us Cobham Woods was never a place for quiet meanderings on Spring evenings such as those described in volumes with titles like `Kent Walks’ or in information leaflets for ramblers but always a special destination, much planned for in advance. There had to be a certain amount of pre-planning because a kettle had to be packed together with the oldest and most chipped cups, leaf tea, sugar, milk, sandwiches and biscuits and of course matches for igniting the camp fire. It had to be leaf tea because this was a time before even the most rudimentary tea bags. Sometimes if Molly was to come with us the cups would include the one that was kept at the back of the shelf for the aunt on my father’s side who my mother said looked consumptive. The milk was never fresh but usually what was left in a can of sweetened condensed. As for the sandwiches, my mother was very fond of cheese with Branston’s pickle or even Daddy’s sauce when the pickle was running low. The biscuits were usually of the broken variety that I was regularly sent to Penney, Son & Parker on The Hill to buy on Friday afternoons because either the Trokes of Shepherd Street did not stock them or Peggy and Vic were not to know that broken was always our first option. I didn’t mind too much because biscuits of any kind were a treat as far as I was concerned.

Occasionally the picnics took place more spontaneously as a weekend family outing but in Springtime they were prearranged as more strategic exercises specifically for the purposes of stealing Lord Darnley’s primroses. I doubt that Lord Darnley himself was aware of the thefts or if he was he chose to ignore the fact and to be fair at the time I did not really understand that what we were doing amounted to theft. That’s what happens when you grow up in a family where shoplifting was not discouraged and minor embezzlement and pilfering was accepted as the norm as long as you were not silly enough to get caught.

Garden Centres as we now know them did not seem to exist back then, or at least not for people like us. Vegetables and flowers were things you grew from seeds in little packets with colourful pictures on the front so that even if you were unsure of the word carrot or cabbage you knew what it was you were likely to end up with. You could buy them at the back of Rayner’s in Northfleet High Street and sometimes even in Woolworths. Some people, more mysteriously, produced the plants they desired from cuttings donated or perhaps filched from the gardens of neighbours known for having Green Fingers. In any case it is unlikely that my mother would have easily sanctioned the idea of spending money on something as frivolous as flowers when they existed in abundance in nearby farmer’s fields and gardens, on roadsides and of course in even further diversity in Lord Darnley’s woods. Old Mrs Bassant from next door whose cousin had once been in service at The Hall said that The Darnleys had taken less and less interest in the entire estate over the years which was understandable since the place had been overrun with evacuees and RAF officers from the Battle of Britain squadron for years and they must be sick to death of not being able to call their home their own any more. Even the family mausoleum had fallen into disrepair and deer and cattle were to be seen grazing around it because they had ceased to care enough about it.

The mausoleum was always the first place we visited, entering the strangely foreign looking construction in silence, breathing softly and hardly daring to allow our shoes to reverberate, as if we were in church. When my father explained in a low voice that we must show respect because this was the final resting place of the Darnley dead I could feel my heart pounding in my chest so loudly that I was fearful that the souls of the dead might also hear it and leap out of their stone alcoves to remonstrate with me. Later, gathering kindling for the fire with my mother, she would tell me of the local man who had for a wager elected to be locked in the place overnight. He had entered with a shock of black hair which by morning had turned completely white and he could never be persuaded to speak of his experience. Even then this story sounded slightly implausible to me but nevertheless I repeated it to Molly from number thirty one at the first opportunity knowing that she could be relied upon to be interested albeit disbelieving.

We always attended to the serious business of the picnic before tackling the unearthing of primroses and the best part of that was the lighting of the fire and keeping my brother away from it because it was dangerous and he was too young to understand the dreadful consequences of being burned. My mother’s own recollection of being left in charge of younger siblings in Maxim Road, Crayford in 1917 on the occasion of a fire breaking out was all too vivid and although she never quite revealed all the pertinent details as to how it happened and what the actual damage to life and limb had been, the trauma of the event was still evident on each occasion the possible dangers of fire were spoken of.

It wasn’t too difficult to keep Bernard away from the flames because even before he could walk he was much more entranced by the antics of the woodland birdlife and on each visit over several years his attention was completely captivated by them. As he grew older and the picnics ceased upon the death of my father he frequently ruminated over the memory and maintained that he clearly recalled that his first sightings of quite uncommon avian types was in the woods at Cobham, birds that included the Hawfinch, Willow Tit, the Spring migrant, the Nightingale and on one occasion even a Goshawk. But the most exciting of all had been what he years later recognized to be the Night Jar, the master of disguise, a bird with an almost supernatural reputation said to be able to feed from milk stolen from unwary goats. There were limited numbers of goats in the area and to be completely honest the only one I had ever seen was in a library book called `Farm Life for City Children’ which didn’t even mention stolen milk but my brother’s recollections in later years were vibrant if not exaggerated. At the time, while he was so occupied, sometimes not even demanding to be released from the confines of his push chair, the kettle was placed on the flames to boil and the cheese and pickle sandwiches were unwrapped and set out upon the verdant grassy area within view of the mausoleum. Mrs Bassant had told us that when The Hall was first built a landscape designer, a Mr Repton, had been hired at enormous cost to ensure that the family should have an undisturbed and sweeping view of their resting dead as they sat in the drawing room sipping gin and tonics. At the time of our picnics the undergrowth of decades ensured that view had completely vanished.

The initial campaign for stolen plants had emerged shortly after my father arrived home from his six-to-two shift one afternoon uncharacteristically late with squares of turf in the sidecar of the motor bike, carefully protected by newspaper but all the same causing my mother some annoyance. There was shortly to be a lawn installed adjacent to the old Anderson Shelter. A place for her to sit in the afternoon sun and perhaps read a newspaper he told her persuasively but she remained what she described as `none too keen’. For me it was an exciting development because people in books had gardens, albeit rather more elaborate than our own was going to be. I knew ours would of necessity be modest but a proper garden all the same and a garden promised endless possibilities. To my father, carefully laying the intriguing squares of turf in the small space between our outdoor lavatory and the now largely disused shelter, it first and foremost meant a border of flowers and where better to start than with Lord Darnley’s primroses? Old Mr Bassant commented that a border of carrots and cabbages would have been equally pleasing to him and that might well have been so because his eyes were known to light up at the thought and sight of vegetables. But as my mother morosely pointed out, we were currently dead set on flowers and my Aunt Mag, not known for love of growing things herself, commiserated and said that she blamed these ideas on the aftermath of the war and in time he might well go off the idea but of course he didn’t. In fact that very next weekend found us engaging in our first foray of woodland robbery. Later my brother claimed he remembered it as the day he first saw the Hawfinch which was far more exciting than the squabbling sparrows and starlings in York Road, though again he may have been exaggerating.

Although at times I pretended to be half-hearted I was never completely disinterested in trips to the woods because entering a space where mature trees dominated was invariably energizing and the reason for being there did not seem to matter very much. Oak, Beech, Hornbeam and Sweet Chestnut could be relied upon to provide a canopy beneath which in imagination, assignations could take place and secrets might be divulged. Woods were places where Enid Blyton’s characters habitually came face to face with dangerous criminals, explored long abandoned buildings, solved perplexing mysteries long before the local police force, and of course topped up their energy levels with cold tongue, ham sandwiches, jam tarts and lashings of ginger beer. Our own picnics were of course more humble but I was pleased that because the Five had access to the ginger beer I was so envious of, they missed out on the campfire necessary for kettle boiling.

Molly joined us when her mother said she could and was very keen to do so at Conker Time in late September or early October when the horse chestnuts lay in thick prickly carpets underfoot. Northfleet children were enthusiastic conker players back then and Alan Bardoe always said that to win a game you had to start with really hard conkers because they were the ones that would win. As they hardened with age he was in favour of keeping a selection of the biggest and best to use the following year. He called them Laggies because that’s what his father said they were and was known to soak them in vinegar and paint them with clear nail varnish which his opponents said was definitely cheating. His twin, Colin, said all that was nonsense in any case and the way to ensure a win was to make sure that a clean and round hole had been bored through in the first place. Both Molly and I were of the opinion, with no basis of fact to back it up, that the Cobham conkers were the best in Kent.

We would have been astounded had we been able to look ahead to the turn of the century when the game was to be banned in many schools for fear of unnecessary injuries and that particularly caring parents would provide their offspring with goggles as a precaution. The fact that some schools would choose to forbid conkers completely for fear of causing anaphylactic shock in students prone to nut allergies would have been a completely outlandish idea. In the late 1940s nut allergies were something that also belonged in the oddly fanciful country of the future together with Aspergers Syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder.
For my father, intent upon establishing a garden oasis in our York Road back yard, the visits to the woods simply meant the acquisition of free flowers, and we appropriated them with enthusiasm during the months of March and April until the borders of our tiny green space was strident with various shades of yellow. My mother was, overall, more fond of the stately rows of rhododendrons that emerged in Spring and seemed to last for weeks into the summer, calling them Glorious. I disliked them for their lofty determination to be noticed and was glad when she seemed far too intimidated by their presence to carry blooms home with her. My favorite flower became the bluebell, growing alongside the primroses and delightfully easy to gather in armfuls for Molly and me as we pulled them from their beds with a savagery that ensured they would not re-emerge the following year.

Mrs Gunner, the vicar’s wife, observing our plundered spoils shook her head disapprovingly and told us that she was of the opinion that no good would come from stealing plant life from Lord Darnley’s woods because it was called Vandalism. She added that in years to come we would realise the damage we had done, the kind of harm in fact that would kill off the woodland completely if we were not careful. Then we were offended knowing that she should have better directed these observations towards the adult thieves but saying to each other that it was none of her business and in any case there was no good reason why we should pay any heed to what she said. Of course none of us were to know then that by the year 2001 funding would be provided for the local Council to purchase the woods together with the mausoleum on the understanding that ownership would eventually pass to the National Trust to ensure that the 600 acres of natural beauty would be preserved. The general idea of caring for the environment was again something that belonged to the strangely unpredictable future. My father would have been astonished to know that with the dawn of environmental concern a total of ninety five abandoned cars would be removed from the periphery of the woodland, the very space where we regularly left the motor bike and side car. Vehicular access therefore was to become severely restricted for the would-be primrose purloiners of the future.

Weddings & Woodpigeons

Old Nan said you could save a lot of money where weddings were concerned if you didn’t have fanciful ideas leading to fancy items like chicken salads. There was plenty of free food to be had if you only took the trouble to look for it. For somebody who had rarely been known to cook and whose dietary highlights revolved around fish and chips on Fridays and whelks on Sundays she came out with some very strange comments concerning food. Flo, engaged to my cousin Leslie and at the time planning her wedding breakfast pretended she hadn’t heard.

Old Nan looked annoyed which was never a good sign and spoke louder. She said that chicken was very dear and a tomfool idea if ever she’d heard one and nobody had starved back in 1930 not if they could be bothered to get off their fat arses and go out over to Crayford Marshes or them Cliffe marshes out wide of Gravesend where there were rabbits and woodpigeons aplenty. Aunt Mag, who Flo had recently started addressing as `Mum’ in a slightly self-conscious way, said that it was never a good idea to go out with a gun when it was foggy though because that’s how next door’s Raymond had managed to get himself shot in the arm and very nearly killed. We all knew of course that he had come nowhere close to being killed but nobody was inclined to argue.

Flo was saying that it would be nice to have a fruit trifle made with proper sherry and perhaps some Libby’s or even ice cream and what did Mum think. But before my aunt could think anything at all, my grandmother had got to her feet and with the aid of a knitting needle pointed our forcibly that a fruit trifle was another tomfool idea because how could you make one big enough for fifty people. Flo snapped that it didn’t have to be one trifle because it could be three or even four. So she sat down again saying that Iced Fancies ordered from the self-same place as made the wedding cake had been good enough for young Margaret and Jack and were going to be good enough for young Harold too before That Cow Joan had thrown him over. There was a silence then because nobody liked talking about Joan and the jilting. My cousin Pat had told me that she certainly hoped Joan had thought long and hard before dumping Harold because after all she was twenty-eight and definitely well and truly On the Shelf. In fact it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say our Harold had probably been her Last Chance. In any case, she added, it wasn’t as if he was much of a Looker but then at twenty eight Joan could hardly afford to be too fussy. I didn’t altogether agree with her because to me Young Harold seemed definitely better looking than his recently betrothed brother and at least he didn’t have a stomach ulcer and still had all his own teeth if what he said was true.

Aunt Mag had been almost as distraught as her jilted first-born when That Cow Joan made her momentous decision to dump poor Harold three weeks before the wedding that had been booked at St Paulinus Church for more than six months. Old Nan said it was a Sign and the whole shebang had been doomed before it got off the ground and should always have been planned for St Mary of the Crays and she certainly hoped that the ring had been returned. She wouldn’t put it past that Fast Floozy to try to get away with it. But that could not have been further from the truth and the only getting away had been Joan getting away from Harold. According to my mother, there had been one helluva barney and the ring had apparently been thrown across the room, landing in the very-nearly-dumped groom’s plate of Saturday evening tripe and onions.

You could have knocked his doting mother down with a feather because Young Joan had never previously displayed such behaviour and she did wonder if it was all down to the time of the month – or even not the time of the month. At that thought she and my mother exchanged knowing glances. But when she had tried to intervene on Young Harold’s behalf she had been told to keep her pointy nose well out of it because it was between him and Joan and nothing to do with any of his interfering family. The Linyards were altogether too interfering as far as Joan was concerned, always meddling and snooping and wanting to know everything not to mention spreading other people’s private and personal business throughout the family so that in the end even the kiddies were aware of things they should never by rights be aware of.

Relaying all this to my mother the day that followed what they both agreed was a palaver if ever there was one, she could not emphasise enough what a shock it had all been and what a common, vulgar cow that Joan had turned out to be and her language had to be heard to be believed because things had been said that my aunt could never bring herself to repeat. To be fair she did bring herself to whisper them once my brother and I had removed ourselves to the scullery and my mother’s sharp intake of breath confirmed the extent of the profanity. Harold was well shot of that Joan of that there was no doubt.

Once she knew the ring had been returned, well retrieved really from the middle of her astonished grandson’s supper plate, Old Nan ventured to comment that it was a pity about the new wedding suit made to measure by a tailor in Dartford. That, of course, had been another one of that Joan’s tomfool ideas and a complete waste of money though it could probably be worn at his brother’s forthcoming nuptials. The pale lemon satin bridesmaid’s dresses with chiffon overskirts, also demanded by Joan and made by the woman in Horton Kirby, were another problem because chiffon might have been all very well for Joan but Flo had made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t prepared to accept pale lemon or chiffon under any circumstances. Her own bridesmaids were to be clad in pink with definitely not a trace of chiffon. The three dresses hung like pale ghosts in Aunt Mag’s wardrobe, swinging softly back and forth each time the door was opened. Whenever they were mentioned she said to just leave it and Flo would Come Round but Leslie the husband-to-be was not convinced. The dresses got mentioned frequently of course and with increasing anxiety by the two small cousins on our side of the family who had been destined to wear them. Little Susan even wondered if the four year old flower girl from Joan’s side would come to claim the smallest one with a view to perhaps wearing it to a Christening. She did not do so though.

It became clearer than ever after the dumping of Harold that his younger brother’s formerly more malleable fiancée was becoming less flexible as the date of her own wedding approached and was beginning to address his mother as Mum with more and more confidence. When my grandmother unwisely again brought up the subject of putting woodpigeons on the wedding breakfast menu Flo turned on her firmly and said hell would freeze over before any wedding guest of hers would be forced to eat a bloody pigeon so drop the subject once and for all. And rather surprisingly that is precisely what Old Nan did, after muttering a bit about never having been spoken to like that before in her life and what was wrong with pigeons and there were some, especially toffs, who’d pay a fortune to lay their hands on them. At which of course, Flo said well the toffs were more than welcome to them and then softened the retort by buying the next round of drinks because it was a Saturday evening and this conversation took place in The Jolly Farmers an hour or so before my mother decided we should catch the next 480 bus back to Northfleet.

My brother, lingering in the doorway with two cousins and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps said in his experience people often got woodpigeons muddled up with Stock Doves and he wasn’t sure if the latter were altogether as edible. My mother said to button his lip and that chicken salad had now been quite decided upon. We both knew she was firmly taking this stand because Flo was well within earshot, standing at the end of the bar with two pound notes in her hand and an attitude of largesse about her.

We had rapidly developed a new respect for the woman who was shortly to marry our cousin Leslie even though it would be some time before Old Nan Constant would entirely forgive her for her steadfast attitude with regard to chicken salad and trifles made with sherry. Flo had very recently taken to distributing packets of Smith’s Crisps to those family members too young to enter Licensed Premises and therefore congregating outside the pub which of course ensured her ongoing popularity with the young. Her insistence that her wedding was definitely to take place at the Holy Apostles Church in Swanley was a hurdle harder to manage by the family elders. As the day grew closer though even Aunt Mag now firmly established as Flo’s `Mum’ was beginning to accept the fact that as the girl grew up in Swanley it stood to reason that she would want to be married there and you had to allow for the other side of the family having some input into wedding arrangements. Predictably not everyone agreed with her and freshly married Margaret, now wed to Jack the owner of a smart red sports car, rather uncharacteristically commented that was the problem with the Constants and the Linyards. They really did not understand the meaning of co-operation and teamwork.

But in fact she was not completely correct because by the time the wedding day grew closer Flo had as predicted Come Round at least with regard to the pale lemon bridesmaids dresses and had even found someone in her Swanley family belonging to a second cousin who was small enough to be the flower girl. What’s more Young Harold did indeed wear the tailor made suit at the event and looked very dapper indeed although to be fair he was still shell shocked from the unexpected jilting and though a number of female relatives pressed him to provide a reason for what had actually happened he steadfastly refused to elucidate further.
In spite of her new-found flexibility Flo did not waver for a moment with regard to the wedding breakfast menu and was heard to say more than once after two or three Saturday evening Babychams that if anyone thought she was going to allow pigeons to be substituted for her proposed chicken salads they could think again and that Nan Constant could take a running jump and she would tell her so herself if need be. She did not do so of course and at the wedding everyone, including my grandmother complimented her on the excellent food. All in all it turned out to be a most successful event.

In particular the photographs were much better than average and definitely a step up from those taken at Margaret and Jack’s wedding. This, Margaret maintained, was only because Our Lady of Assumption on The Hill at Northfleet always seemed to be in shadow. It was, she thought, a church that was better suited to funerals than to weddings. Flo of course was delighted because in her photographs not only was nobody wearing plastic ear-rings which she abhorred but perhaps more importantly everyone was smiling. Everyone except Young Harold, who stood morosely in his smart suit with shoulders hunched and a cigarette between his lips looking for all the world like Marlon Brando except of course taller and without a motorbike. Because he and I did not exactly get on well together as cousins go, after two forbidden glasses of orange juice laced with gin I asked him if he was missing Joan and if he still loved her. He stared over my shoulder fixing his eyes on the doorway at the very end of what the Jolly Farmers at that time called The Function Room. He said that Joan had meant everything to him and then he added that I should Piss Off. So I did.

No-one was to know of course that within a very short space of time Jilted Harold would meet the love of his life, Sylvia who lived in Hemel Hempstead and, as Aunt Mag pointed out, differed from That Cow Joan in every way. When within a matter of months the two got married, Harold was able to once again wear the made to measure suit and Sylvia endeared herself to everyone by agreeing with both the Constants and the Linyards when they offered wedding advice. She was even heard to tell Old Nan that the idea of woodpigeons at the wedding breakfast sounded like a smashing idea. Flo told her she was making a rod for her own back by agreeing to the ideas of That Wicked Old Cow but Sylvia just laughed and when the great day dawned what was served was very similar to the menu that had been offered by Flo.

My brother, tucking into slices of white breast meat adorned with a single piece of lettuce said that although the idea of the woodpigeons had been interesting he was still unsure as to how easily they might be muddled up with Stock Doves. He was not at all convinced that the latter were edible. They might even be poisonous. He thought that Flo might very well agree with him.

Ultra Short & Shaped

In 1951 the girls in their last year at St Botolph’s began to opt for a hair style called Short & Shaped which the rest of us still burdened with plaits, bunches and ringlets thought enviably boyish. Wendy Selves and Jennifer Berryman both elaborately ringleted were decidedly more envious than the rest of us on account of regularly suffering the uncomfortable reality of curling rags which even my mother said was something you didn’t adjust to easily. She didn’t quite put it like that but I knew exactly what she meant because I had experienced the pain and horror of curling rags once or twice on the eve of the weddings of older cousins when it was important that I looked my best. Sleeping with them in situ on a regular basis was not something I was all that keen to try. Jennifer Berryman’s grandmother said that it took her a full half hour to prepare the ragged-up hair each night and she said it proudly adding that she didn’t mind because hair was a woman’s Crowning Glory. Jennifer herself didn’t say whether she minded or not. Wendy Selves maintained that her own hair had a natural curl in it and as a result her ringlets were not nearly as difficult to effect and maintain. Her best friend, Jean Taylor said when Wendy was out of earshot that it was a lie and Wendy’s hair was as straight as her own.

Molly from number 31 went to Northfleet Secondary Modern a whole year before me because of a well-timed birthday and during the week before she was due to start she joined the trickle of schoolgirls waiting for the attentions of Miss Joyce at Bareham’s in Northfleet High Street clutching a two shilling piece in her hand. I was inordinately impressed later that day, greatly admiring her newly styled hair which was the shortest and most shaped Bareham’s could deliver. Later my mother said it looked altogether too boyish for her liking and she was surprised that Miss Joyce would do such a thing on a child who didn’t know any better. But Molly did seem to know better and was delighted with her new style and her own mother said as long as she was happy that was the main thing as she was the one who was going to live with it. Predictably my mother sniffed several times and said not for the first time that some people had no idea as to how to bring up kiddies. All in all it didn’t seem the right time to campaign for the restyling of my own hair. In any case she had already reminded me several times that the recent Bareham’s price rise for children from one and sixpence to two shillings was Daylight Robbery especially since Beryl’s in Dover Road were still holding their prices down.

By the time Molly had been at the Secondary Modern for a month her own Ultra-Short & Shaped had grown enough for it to be cautiously admired even by some of the staff and she was told she had a beautifully shaped head that leant itself admirably to modern styles. The boost to her confidence was enormous and she could quite see why my primary aim in life became to sport a similar style especially when the main female contenders in St Botolph’s Eleven Plus exam that year began to follow the example she had set. One by one Jacqueline Haskell, Brenda Head, Pearl Banfield and Jean Taylor made visits to Bareham’s or Beryl’s after school and emerged with Ultra-Short & Shaped heads. They had mothers who were either aware of how important it was to be as similar as possible to every other girl of like age or, as I was firmly told, had money to burn. I knew we didn’t have money to burn even though my father was not due to die from Acute Hepatitis until December and that was some months into the future. The other thing I knew without question was that there was not much point in appealing to him because unless I campaigned for books or trips of an edifying nature such as a Saturday afternoon visit to Rochester Castle, he wasn’t ever much help to me. My cousin Pat who was a year my senior and whose father had already died at the end of the war by falling off a balcony in Italy in an inebriated state, frequently pointed out that fathers were not worth all the trouble they caused and she was very glad she didn’t have one. Then I felt obliged to argue with her although I did so half-heartedly being quite aware that my own was not altogether ideal due to his ongoing obsession with both education and Fancy Women. These fixations caused both the women in his life, namely my mother and myself to view him with some misgivings.

As far as hairstyles were concerned in any case Pat and I had very different ideas as to what was worthy of admiration as since the age of eight her own straight blonde tresses had been regularly subjected to what Aunt Martha, her mother said was a Wella Cold Wave. This meant that Pat’s head sported a halo of tight curls for several months before it grew a little, became frizzy and not nearly as attractive and the whole cycle was repeated. According to most of my aunts this attention to Pat’s hair cost a fortune and definitely indicated that she was Spoilt Rotten. My mother said it was only affordable because the positive outcome of the unfortunate death of Uncle Paddy had been a War Pension which meant luxuries could be afforded in their household. She did not of course say this directly to Aunt Martha. Other luxuries Pat had were hand knitted silk boleros edged with angora and the regular home delivery of the Dandy and Beano comics. Apparently the home delivery confirmed that Aunt Martha had more money than sense. I was definitely envious of Pat a lot of the time but not because of the Wella Cold Waves and only marginally because of the angora edged boleros. The home delivery of the comics definitely caused me some resentment because although my father was all in favour of reading matter, comics were not included.

When my occasional friend Margaret Snelling arrived at our house one Saturday afternoon to show off her new bike and sporting her new Short & Shaped hair I was at a very low ebb and beginning to feel extremely infantile compared with my peers. Having plaits that when unplaited became a mane of hair that almost reached my waist was no longer the source of any degree of pride no matter how often people mentioned Crowning Glories. When I burst into tears after Margaret had gone home my mother said there was no use crying like a baby simply because I didn’t have a bike and refused to believe me when I said that I didn’t want a bike, all I wanted was to have my hair cut. My father tentatively suggested that surely it wouldn’t be the end of the world for me to have a bike if I should actually make him proud by passing the Eleven Plus. But my mother looked very doubtful and said she didn’t think I really had what it would take to become a Grammar School girl. He snorted a bit and told her that in his opinion I was as Bright as a Button and that The Grammar should be glad to have me. My own opinion was that what I wanted most in life was not a bike but Short & Shaped hair and to go to The Secondary Modern with Molly. But my opinion was not sought.

Over the next few days my father talked a lot about me being able to cycle to school and saving on bus fares and dropping into The Rainbow Stores to talk about time payment with them. My mother continued to express doubts and said a bike was an expense they could well do without and in case he hadn’t noticed she was still saving up for a budgie in a cage like the one the Bennetts of Buckingham Road had. She fancied a blue and yellow one because they were said to be good talkers.

The Rainbow Stores had always sold bikes and was opened in Stone Street in 1921 by Arthur Ernest Barnes who later branched out into radios and television sets and provided an excellent after sales service. Later still you could buy almost anything at The Rainbow and as Hire Purchase was becoming extremely popular and the selection of household goods impressive the business went from strength to strength. At the time of which I speak, however, I was much more interested in a Short & Shaped haircut than anything else although Molly said that was just silly and I should definitely accept the idea of a bike if one was being offered. Both the haircut and the blue and yellow budgie being saved up for could wait for a more auspicious moment. But of course I didn’t see it quite that way. It was all very well for her with her Short & Shaped hair firmly in place and the regular upkeep of it now accepted.

Eventually I was allowed to have my Crowning Glory cut to just above my shoulders and even my grandmother shook her head and told my mother she hoped she wouldn’t regret it because it was hair that helped to make a girl beautiful and some needed more help than others. My new semi-short hair was tied with ribbons into unattractive bunches and I did not feel that much progress had been made toward the modern world and of course hated them. In the interim my father announced that he had come to an arrangement with The Rainbow and if I passed the Eleven Plus I would definitely be getting a bike. He began to give me tests in arithmetic and the capitals of countries on Sunday afternoons which was a horrifying development, well at least the arithmetic was.
Despite the extra coaching my mother was proved right and I was not destined to become an exam success and so did not become the owner of a bike. I felt she took some degree of pleasure in telling me that I had broken my father’s heart. Back in those days parents were less indulgent than they are now and actually meant what they said. My cycling future had depended one hundred per cent upon academic success. However, this was not as traumatic to me as it might have been had I been born fifty years into the future.

It was not until after my father’s sudden death that I actually found myself in Beryl’s of Dover Road with two shillings in my pocket because they had now matched Bareham’s prices, having been instructed to have something done about the length of my hair that now hung untidily about my shoulders, still too short to properly plait. Controlling my excitement I told my mother that I would definitely make sure I came back with it much shorter and much tidier. She, being still distracted by the recent bereavement, barely looked up from the afternoon tea session she was sharing with Mrs Bennett from Buckingham Road. Half nodding she went back to the discussion on the shock a sudden death brings with it and how she was in a way relieved with regard to my exam failure though my poor father had set his heart on The Grammar. The problem was that I definitely favoured her side of the family rather than his. Her family had never been good at passing tests. It was in the blood and there wasn’t much that could be done about it. Mrs Bennett nodded in agreement and said her Joan was exactly the same.

Beryl of Dover Road settled me into the freshly adjusted chair and said she supposed I wanted Short & Shaped like all the other local girls. It had been all the rage for nearly a year and certainly had kept her busy. I told her Yes, I wanted it as Short & Shaped as possible – Ultra-Short & Ultra-Shaped and as thoroughly modern as she could make it. So that is what she did. On the way home I felt distinctly nervous but elated and strangely light without my thick hair. I had prickly armpits but I admired my thoroughly modern self in every shop window. New bikes and going to The Grammar might be all very well for some but Short & Shaped was more my cup of tea!

Cups of tea were still being consumed at number 28 and Mrs Bennett observed that my hair was certainly very short but now much tidier. My mother absently agreed with her and then said that I looked more grown up somehow. Well with my father gone I would need to grow up a bit and take on more responsibility, perhaps look after my brother more she added. Mrs Bennett said you could never tell what bereavement might do to a child but at eleven it was probably time I grew up a bit. Then they began to talk more about budgies, blue and yellow ones, that were reliable talkers.

Fantails & Finches on Silk

Child labour is often associated with Victorian Britain and something somewhat mysteriously called Dark Satanic Mills that for years I thought were a form of windmill. As mills in my experience were always eye-catchingly attractive, I was at a loss to understand how anyone could possibly describe them as Satanic. This was clearly because I did not move very far from the riverside towns of industrial Kent where the darker variety were definitely absent. We were reassured that the evils of child labour had been eradicated by the great reforms that followed on the heels of the industrial age and at school a great deal of emphasis was placed upon books like The Water Babies. Tom’s misfortunes were discussed in depth at St Botolph’s and it was constantly reiterated how fortunate we were to be born in the middle years of the enlightened twentieth century but in actual fact nothing is ever quite as it seems. My mother and her many siblings living in Maxim Road, Crayford in the early years of the new century and supposedly attending the local Roman Catholic school did so on an irregular basis because all too often they were needed for seasonal field work to bulk out the family income. There was no question that paid employment came first.

Maxim Road still exists though the cramped terraced housing has changed markedly and the Constant’s two bedroomed rented cottage, so inadequate for thirteen lively children can no longer be found. Old Nan always observed that despite its shortcomings it had been a Bleeding Sight Better than the farm cottage at Hextable where the oldest had been born and which had boasted a single sleeping area. Going up in the world always depends on how far down in it you were in the first place. Aunt Mag told her own four children that they were indeed fortunate compared to her and her sisters. The house in Iron Mill Lane on the estate built in the 1920s for Vickers’ workers with its own garden, front and back to play in was almost luxurious. Living in Maxim Road, she said, had meant often playing on the Heath at Old Bexley and having to take the youngest ones along with you, rain or shine and staying there all day long or risking a clout around the ear for coming back early. Life had not been perfect and there hadn’t been as much time for play as they would have liked but they didn’t complain about their lot and overall they had been happy.

They probably did not realise that their road was named after Hiram Maxim, an American émigré who appeared to have abandoned his original wife and family and run off with Sarah his secretary. Not an unusual story of course but likely in those days to raise eyebrows in the district. Before long, however, Hiram had redeemed himself with the invention of curling tongs and efficient mouse traps and it was even rumored he had been a contender for inventing the electric light bulb. What brought him most renown, though and caused the enormous admiration of his brother Hudson who hurried from America to bathe in reflected glory, was becoming responsible for the Maxim Gun. This killing device had been updated and improved by 1912 when Vickers proudly presented it to the world where it remained in service until 1968. No wonder Hiram had his very own named local road.

When they weren’t working of course the Constant girls were allowed to roam the local streets, amusing themselves by knocking on doors and running away, swinging from lampposts and if they could find a length of rope, becoming totally occupied with skipping games. However, by the time each of them reached the age of twelve Old Nan, who had never had a day’s education in her life, felt that too much school was of no advantage and applied for permanent exemptions which were granted without comment. This meant that each girl was free to enter a local factory and work not more than eight hours a day. Vickers was always the workplace of choice. Crayford was inordinately proud of Vickers.

Back then children were rarely asked what they wanted to do when they grew up and if my mother had been asked she would have said, if she had been aware of the term, that the work of a textile artist greatly appealed to her. She would have liked to hand paint silk scarves and shawls with fantails and finches. There was little chance of this career choice ever presenting itself, however, and in effect each young Constant had worked on a part time basis before and after school for years at various times selling newspapers, as occasional milk girls, street hawkers, errand runners and frequently as artificial flower makers. The latter was popular because it could be done at home until late into the evening and from my mother’s point of view the artistry and creativity took her a step closer to the painting of fantails and finches. An investigation into child labour in London in the early 1900s found that a quarter of all children between five and thirteen had paid jobs of one kind or another but at twelve it was generally accepted that a child was old enough and responsible enough to take on a regular employment.

Although I was suspicious of the authenticity of some of these stories of the generation that preceded my own they did much to convince me that by 1940 when I was born the British child was a great deal better off than those who immediately preceded them. There had clearly been far less time for fun for those of my mother’s generation but by 1950 I don’t recall ever being stopped from play in order to help with household tasks and there was never any suggestion that I should take a job before or after school. At times I was even asked what I wanted to do when I grew up and encouraged to mention working in an office. The working class child was at last definitely recognized as such which was a step forward because the State had treated Edwardian children much the same as adults and they were seen as legally responsible for their own behaviour from a very young age but by the 1940s life had changed dramatically. Some of the local teenage boys might well have regretted the loss of the degree of independence that was previously offered them and the surprisingly adult privileges that went alongside such as the right to smoke, drink and even to gamble. Restrictions with regard to visiting pubs suddenly became the vogue and schoolchildren were no longer offered sugary gin spoons in public bars to keep them quiet. By my time lemonade and packets of crisps had been ushered in and we were placed firmly outside the pub doors.

In fact this new attitude had been developing well before the First World War when the Children’s Charter was established. It had introduced juvenile courts and decided that all under the age of fourteen should henceforth be seen as children. It then became illegal to sell children alcohol and tobacco but this was never enforced to any extent and fifty years later in Northfleet my grandmother could safely send me to the off license happy in the knowledge that I would come back with a jug of beer. Some things were slower to change than others though when she was asked my mother admitted that the dream of hand painting birds on backgrounds of silk remained with her long after she had left childhood behind.