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Thursday 29 August 2019

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.

Tuesday 13 August 2019

Knowing What a Witch Hunt Looks Like


Witch Hunts are usually associated with the middle ages, a time that spanned more than eight hundred years when most of Europe was shrouded in ignorance and superstition. Conversely it was also a time when the population was most fearful of challenging anyone thought to be a witch. Anything could happen if you were foolish enough to do so and it was considered as reckless as challenging one of the blessed saints. Times had to change of course and what with the launching of the printing press and people like William Shakespeare feverishly writing plays to tax the imagination, a new age of practical enquiry emerged. By and by Newton alerted all and sundry to the laws of gravity and Galileo did his dash with astronomy. The Renaissance had truly arrived and along with the galloping progress the Witch Hunt as we know it was more than due to take off with a vengeance.

It wasn’t altogether surprising that arthritic, bad tempered elderly women living alone were first in line for the stake, quickly followed by a colourful variety of other eccentrics, primarily female. You wouldn’t have stood a chance if you read tea-leaves and if you were over sixty and kept a cat you might as well have screamed from the rooftop – come and get me! Owners of black cats wouldn’t need to scream at all. As the arrests mushroomed so did the stories of Satanic gatherings and meet-ups by moonlight. Whispered one to another after Sunday Church services and in the bars of local Inns these tales greatly exacerbated the general anxiety and caused some to suggest that a certain amount of torture might be introduced in order to encourage those already accused to name their accomplices. It was all that people could talk about in some villages and it wasn’t long before even the more level headed and rational were drawn into the frenzy of denunciation. Those named as witches became responsible for all that was wrong with society and within a short space of time local bigwigs had decided that it was primarily because they were also members of a secret society controlled by Lucifer himself who of course had all the organizational skill needed. Even the most educated and influential began to talk about the number of pacts that had been made with the Devil, how many innocent babies were being sacrificed and eaten and the obscenity of the sexual rituals that took place on a regular basis.

Needless to say we would not be so easily persuaded to believe such nonsense these days would we? We would definitely know a Witch Hunt if we came across one but folk were more gullible back then.

However, during the more intellectually and socially backward sixteenth and seventeenth centuries panic regarding witches spread with ease throughout what was considered to be the civilized world. In Scotland alone one thousand five hundred witches were burnt at the stake and in Germany, the efficiency of the populace drove this figure to almost one hundred thousand. In the rather more enlightened atmosphere of England torture to produce confessions and associate naming was not generally approved of and thus only a thousand witches were eradicated. The last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 in the British Isles was Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan, a Scottish Medium sentenced in 1944. The Act itself was not repealed until 1951.

Extraordinary now to look back on such barbaric times isn’t it?

In the late nineteenth century the idea of Baby Farming caused a similar degree of terror but did not last as long and the victims were fewer overall. Perhaps the relative ease of transport via the train system and the regular dissemination of newspapers helped with both the spread of the fear and also the curtailing of it. Amelia Dyer is believed to have murdered hundreds of infants in her care and her crimes led to one of the most sensational trials of the period and shone a very bright light on the practice. Other criminals with a similar bent included Margaret Waters, Amelia Sach, Hans Oftedal, Sarah Makin and in New Zealand, the infamous Minnie Dean. By the beginning of the twentieth century communities throughout the world were totally alerted to the idea of unwanted children being murdered for monetary gain and the merest whiff of suspicion was likely to swiftly lead to a court case.

Now of course we wouldn’t be so easily influenced. Generally speaking we’ve got more sense.

Half a century later in the United States the hunting down and exposing of those with any interest in the idea of Communism led to similar hysterical accusations, exposure and panic. Allegations that Hollywood was rife with communist sympathisers led the House Committee on Un-American Activities to pursue actors, writers and directors with determination and the mere suggestion of a basic admiration for the ideas of Karl Marx or a regard for communal farming might be enough for them to be barred from working in Hollywood. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy took advantage of this widespread paranoia to advance himself politically by accusing State Department employees of communist leanings. Television might well have assisted with the passing of the mania because within a decade or so sanity prevailed, McCarthy's accusations were judged to be unsubstantiated, and the Senate eventually censured him in much the way we might now swiftly censure the wildly successful Matthew Hopkins, once the most successful Witch Finder of the seventeenth century.

Fortunately for the human race we definitely learn from history.

In the years approaching the close of the twentieth century perhaps the foremost obsession that swept through the world concerned the wholesale sexual abuse of children. Foreign Experts ventured far and wide, certainly into New Zealand, armed with their medical qualifications and ran seminars for General Practitioners so that the evil practice could be rooted out as fast as possible. With their help the situation took a smart U-turn and neatly mutated into the Satanic Ritual Abuse of preschoolers and before long it was found to be prospering in places you would never have thought possible a few short years previously.

In Christchurch, the unfortunate Peter Ellis was said to have hung children in cages, urinated over them, forced them to eat his faeces, and stuck needles into their genitals. The three and four year olds trustingly left at the Civic Creche by their well-meaning parents were regularly removed from the facility by him, taken through tunnels which connected with cemeteries, a Masonic Lodge and five star hotels where they were abused by adults dressed in black and wearing terrifying masks. They were forced to participate in mock marriages, buried in boxes, made to watch the torture of animals and encouraged to eat human flesh. Yet in the final analysis nobody seemed to notice any of this at the time, including their parents. The reprehensible Peter was certainly a clever Ritual Abuser and how effectively he was able to pull the wool over our eyes.

The internet was in general terms in its infancy but it certainly served to assist the speed of our acceptance of the horrific accusations. Twenty five years on of course we are infinitely more aware and mindful of the fact that some of Peter’s activities were unlikely – that’s the nature of progress. Regardless of how we might view such allegations today, Peter Ellis, still protesting his innocence, served seven years in prison which wasn’t a good thing at all. Luckily for him, however, the prison population generally not known for their ability to suffer child molesters gladly, did not dish out their own retribution. In fact on the whole they showed a great deal more common sense than the New Zealand judiciary. They jogged along with him quite well and saw no reason to chastise him further. Possibly they were simply not in a position to access internet searches with such ease as the rest of us.

The good thing is that we’ve learned a lot since the early 1990s and we no longer believe in Satanic Ritual Abuse.

It is astonishing how effortlessly we could once upon a time be seduced into the parameters of a Witch Hunt. How cheerfully we seemed to don the mantle of the overseer, how quick we were to point fingers to accuse and condemn. It simply wouldn’t happen now would it? We would recognize the signs immediately.

And before someone mentions the Me Too Movement I simply won’t have it. Those young people used so sickeningly and sordidly need our support and love, not our criticism and condemnation. They would not lie about such serious matters as being touched inappropriately, in a sexual manner and without permission. They who ventured so trustingly into the hotel rooms of movie magnates late at night for a chat and a lie down deserve our sympathy not our censure. The hardy one or two who returned a second time in the desperate hope of a mini-part in the man’s next movie should be awarded medals not have judgement heaped upon them. Their only blunder after all was to become blinded by the position and stature of a manipulative fiend who thought nothing of using his power and influence in order to solicit sexual favours. These hapless victims should be pitied rather than held responsible.

And don’t call the movement to expose the monsters who preyed upon them a Witch Hunt because we all know perfectly well what a Witch Hunt looks like. We’re not stupid!

Friday 9 August 2019

The Undoubted Benefit of a Writing Companion


Jennifer and I meet regularly usually at the same time each month primarily to discuss our current writing projects. For her this means a ferry ride from Devonport and for me a twenty minute walk into the city – sometimes a short bus ride. We’ve been meeting up for ten years and during that time have sampled a fair number of cafes and coffee shops from back street brasseries with nothing but the coffee to distinguish them to five star tourist hotels with astonishing views. Of course the sole subject of conversation is not wholly writing and we often stray into a variety of other topics both philistine and scholarly – sometimes it’s simply cooking and how the day to day provision of food has a habit of interfering with what we see as the purpose to life. We have definitely learned a lot from each other and that very fact was what we discussed at length the other day sitting in Notting Hill Café in Parnell Road. The following is what Jennifer wrote later on her blog and I think it is of sufficient importance to all of us who write to republish here. We could perhaps all benefit from a Writing Companion – a Tinder Site for Those Who Write perhaps?

AUGUST 9, 2019 ~ JENNIFER BARRACLOUGH
Writing is a solitary occupation and the writer’s life can be lonely. Festivals, courses, talks and local groups provide valuable opportunities for professional development and social contact, but attendance can cost a lot of time and money and distract from the writing itself. For myself, one of the most productive, economical and enjoyable forms of support has come from a long-term partnership with one other person.

My first meeting with Jean was serendipitous. After being introduced at a lunch party in Auckland given by mutual friends, we discovered that we had both been brought up in Gravesend, a small town in north Kent, and had left England because of being married to New Zealand men. We arranged to meet for coffee a few weeks later and then found that we were both already published authors, Jean in the field of education and me in that of medicine, and both working on new books. This turned out to be the first of 100-odd coffee dates that have taken place almost every month for the past ten years.

Over this time we have developed a close friendship, discussed many topics ranging from animals to the afterlife, and supported each other through the trials of family illnesses and bereavements. But the main focus of our meetings has always been writing, and we have exchanged a great deal of factual information as well as encouragement and support. When we first met, we were exploring what was then the relatively new option of self-publishing. We have since both gone on to self-publish several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Most of Jean’s are set in north Kent, and my next one will be too.

We have read each other’s draft manuscripts and offered constructive criticism; shared information about the technicalities of using the various publishing platforms; exchanged recommendations for editors and cover designers; and tackled the challenges of marketing.

I have been very lucky to have found such a faithful and compatible “writing companion”. Maybe, if it does not exist already, there is a place for the equivalent of a dating website to pair other writers up?

Thursday 8 August 2019

Of Canaries & Coalmines

Writing about Wombwell Hall invariably stirs up more memories in others than almost any other topic I examine. We past pupils may be quite different as far as our lives have developed but we are in total accord when it comes to the astonishing level of affection we still hold for the school. It’s a fondness that does not merely relate to the grand old building, sadly now very much in the past, but extends to members of staff including some of the most unlikely candidates. In my own case there were probably more teachers I disliked or I was at least wary of than those I liked and I don’t imagine that any of them would recall me with any degree of fondness. However, my love affair with the place itself has ensured that I have kept every single one of the eight school reports that document my academic progress between Christmas Term, 1953 and Spring Term, 1956. It’s clear that the Hall had a similar effect upon its staff because not only did the majority of those noting my lack of scholarly headway remain in the job throughout the years I attended, many of them were still there ten years later.

Miss D Fuller was headmistress during my time and it’s possible she was a Dorothy or a Deborah with friends who were not intimidated by her and called her Dot or Deb when they met up in the village pub for Sunday morning drinks. She seemed to me to be a tall, angular woman, slightly hunched with a wardrobe full of tweed suits which she wore with striped blouses and occasionally men’s ties and I kept as far away from her as possible. I was only sent to Report Myself to her on a handful of occasions usually as a result of conflict with other girls but once simply because I was wearing peep-toe shoes. I was confused as to why the shoes were expressly forbidden and as I did not own a substitute suitable for school wear, was worried as to how to break the bad news to my mother.

During my first term Form G1 appears to have had two supervising Teachers, Miss S Smith who I now know to have been a Stella and who I remember well, and Miss M Cox who I have no memory of at all. I see now that my English teacher for the first three terms was someone with the initials MMH who never gave me a mark higher than B but said that at times my work showed thought and originality and that I should continue to apply myself. She may well have been the person that Miss S Smith got quite excited about, telling us we were indeed fortunate girls to be taught English by someone with a Master’s Degree. She then gazed around the room waiting for us to gasp in astonishment but with the exception of Valerie Goldsack who was prone to gasping at almost anything, we looked at each other in bewilderment and confusion. What on earth was a Master’s Degree?

Furthermore MMH might in fact have been the very person who, lacking a considerable amount of insight and empathy suddenly and completely out of the blue stopped short in the middle of an explanation of the finer details of the plot of `Prester John’ to stridently ask me if anything was worrying me. Not having the vaguest understanding of what she might be referring to I simply shook my head and so she said in that case perhaps I would like to stop staring out of the window and come to sit in the front row of the class. Additionally, once seated I might also like to explain to the class how Buchan had linked the Zulu uprising of 1910 to the medieval legend. As I did not want to do either of those things I said nothing at all but wondered why it was I was being seen as inattentive in the first place. Decades later it occurred to me that some of the ongoing distraction problems I had throughout my school years might have been due to the fact that I suffered from undiagnosed Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. On the other hand I might simply be giving myself an excuse as I was still most definitely more of an Enid Blyton aficionado than anything else. `Prester John’ may simply have been too difficult a work to engage me at that time no matter how brilliantly it was being taught by this woman who possibly had a Master’s Degree, whatever that eventually turned out to be.

During my first year a Miss SMH presided over Arithmetic, awarding me three lots of C- and noting that I found the subject difficult, was a slow worker and finally that I had a great deal of work to do before any kind of standard could be reached. She wasn’t wrong and when we gave up the subject by Spring 1955 in favour of Accounts, although she was moved to say that I seemed to be making an effort and gave me an unadorned C, it is my firm belief that she was mistaken. For the duration of my Wombwell Hall years anything to do with figures continued to elude me and if I am completely honest nothing has changed since.

Miss Springate who taught Geography was our 1SC Form teacher for two terms and I well recall clashing with her regularly and at times speaking to her quite rudely. My failure to get on with her is reflected in one documented examination result where I came twenty second in a class of twenty three. I’m still quite surprised by this result because I don’t remember disliking her subject to that extent. Some of the topics had been moderately interesting and particularly so when we examined the history of coal mining in Kent, an industry that existed in our midst but was almost invisible. Miss Springate was able to inform us that in fact an open cast mine as close by as the environs of Cobham had reliably produced a quantity of useable coal which had actually been used by Lord Darnley to heat Cobham Hall. Two further drifts had recently been dug into the hillside and at one point the mine was thriving and producing 80 tons weekly. For some reason I found the idea of mining in Kent quite fascinating and even asked questions which was not like me and seemed to unnerve her. Were canaries taken into the Cobham drift just as they were in South Wales and in the North for instance? Were they found to be useful? I think I had recently read at least part of `How Green Was My Valley’ and was captivated by the possibility of all the drama that mining seemed to offer the working classes.

Miss Springate did not seem to know a great deal about the canaries except that they were invaluable for detecting toxic gases so she moved quickly on to the village of Aylesham, not so very far from where we now sat she said and built in the 1920s specifically to house Kentish coal miners. Originally 20,000 residents were expected but the building had turned out to be slower than expected. It was still, apparently, a work in progress. It was at that point that Valerie Goldsack said she knew a little about the village herself because an Uncle of hers was actually living there on a temporary basis as a mining consultant. He most definitely did not own or need to own a canary she hastened to assure us and then went on to explain about Test Bores and Failed Sinkings further exhibiting her somewhat precocious knowledge.

Miss E Norman was our Form teacher for three terms and she taught several science subjects and might have been an Elizabeth or an Emily. She seemed to be fascinated by the sheep of the Romney Marsh and appeared astonished when we admitted to knowing very little about them because after all they were virtually on our doorstep so our lack of knowledge was abysmal. More importantly they were famous throughout the world. Why didn’t we take the pride in them we should? We looked at each other helplessly and a few of us, like Valerie and those who sought to emulate her, might even have felt apologetic. Miss Norman had a habit of being surprisingly astonished by various aspects of our lives. On one occasion she was quite incredulous because only a handful of her form class had hot running water at home and they were the girls whose families were fortunate enough to have been recently moved into newly completed housing estates.

When she recovered enough, she asked us what on earth we did when we needed to access hot water then? Jill Butler, a quiet girl, said, somewhat aggressively for her, - `We fill a kettle up with cold water and boil it of course!’ When Miss Norman looked as if she might have to sit down before she fainted, she added `What else would we be likely to do?’ The very nearly speechless science teacher looked about her and asked in a smaller voice, `How many of you have to boil a kettle on each occasion you need hot water?’ As a cautious plethora of hands began to rise she returned to fiddling with the Bunsen burners on the benches at the front of the room. I did not allow my own hand to rise though it was itching to do so because at the time I was engaged in a fantasy of mythological proportions about a substitute family living in a delightful thatched cottage in Cobham village which unlikely though it seemed had every modern convenience available.

English was always my favourite subject and Miss K (Kate? Kathleen?) Smith was my favourite teacher despite her habit of only once giving me a mark above B- and repeatedly littering my reports with phrases like `examination result very disappointing’….. `at times can produce good work’ …. `capable of much better. ….. `should spend less time daydreaming about the future’…. Despite these comments she gave me time whenever I seemed to need it and suggested places where I might send short stories for publication. She became for me the fount of all knowledge and when I had her complete attention I was in the habit of asking her opinion on all manner of issues that had little to do with the study of the English language. What was her opinion with regard to the use of canaries in Kentish coal mines? Why was the wearing of peep-toe shoes such an abomination? Her evasive replies did little to reduce my devotion to her. When she revealed to Miss S Smith my secret ambition to become a famous actress I was mortified but eventually was able to forgive her because it was difficult to hate her for too long and in any case we all knew that Miss S Smith, by that time definitely not my favourite person, and she were very close friends. So close that some girls, more sophisticated and worldly than me, sniggered knowingly when their friendship was mentioned. I had absolutely no idea what the suppressed mirth was all about and despite being thrown abruptly headlong into knowledge of sex and sin within a very short time of leaving school it was a long time before I actually gave any real thought to the subject of same sex relationships.

Some years later I was startled and embarrassed to come across the rather wonderful Miss Katie/Kathleen Smith holding court one Saturday evening in The Gateways Club in Kings Road, Chelsea. I had been taken there by a man I was obsessively in love with who thought I needed to broaden my horizons with regard to matters sexual and what better place to start? She had definitely gained weight but her voice and bearing were unmistakable. She sat half astride a barstool in exactly the same way she had on a number of occasions sat beside me in the library at Wombwell Hall, advising me how to improve my writing, the wisdom of certain types of footwear and whether or not canaries had a special place in the hearts of Kentish miners.

She was wearing a look-alike tweed jacket to that which I remembered from 1955 and she had clearly had more than one gin and tonic but was by no means intoxicated. Had I been capable of doing so I might have engaged her in conversation but I did not take that option simply because I could not on the spur of the moment think of a convincing reason as to why I should be in what was described back then rather inanely as A Girls’Club. It did not occur to me that she might well have the same problem of course because she was Miss K Smith, and thus still neared perfection as a human being.

Years later, courtesy of other ex-Wombwell Hall students I learned that she and Miss S Smith had indeed been extremely good friends and even shared a house together. I also learned that she was not everyone’s favourite which came as a surprise to me. How could that possibly be so?

Thursday 1 August 2019

Rhode Island Reds

It was my father who initiated the keeping of six hens and a rooster because just imagine having a plentiful supply of new-laid eggs not to mention the occasional Chicken Roast? The manner in which he enthused had me hooked very quickly even though I had some doubts with regard to the Roast, infrequent though it was promised to be and this was because when questioned he failed to explain that part of ownership even though I posed a fair few questions. In the end I decided that he could not really mean that we were eventually going to eat the birds because that was an easy enough question to answer and in any case we usually bought our Chicken Roasts already quite deceased and oven prepared from the butcher at Christmas time. It saved a lot of trouble as far as I could see.

My mother was much slower to reach any agreement about the idea because she really did not like roosters and said they could be vicious. The rooster we eventually got was only four weeks old at the time we first owned him and was not vicious at all and she suggested that maybe he wasn’t a rooster in the first place because he was nothing like Spiteful Stanley the bird who had reigned supreme in the house in Maiden Lane, Crayford when she was a girl. My father told her he was most definitely a rooster and pointed out that his comb was already developing and was a healthy pink colour. We called him Cecil because of Cecil Rhodes at least that’s what I called him and that was because of Miss Biggs at school pointing to a pink bit on the globe and talking about Mr Rhodes very enthusiastically. I was told that our batch of fowl were Rhode Island Reds and American in origin, all supposedly Reliable Layers. I did not know if there was any real connection between Rhode Island and Cecil Rhodes but fancied that he may at one stage have owned the island. Cecil’s six wives, and I mean our Cecil of course, were not supposed to have names because it was very difficult to tell one from another although I claimed ownership over the smallest one and named her, unimaginatively, Clucky.

The sad fact was that she did not make an entirely satisfactory pet but I was to grow quite fond of her simply because when you are six or seven years old there is an understanding between you and most of the animal kingdom and although you might infinitely prefer a cocker spaniel as a household pet you can make do with a goldfish if the situation dictates it. We had a rather unfriendly cat at that time called Micky and my father was still negotiating with my mother regarding dog ownership which I felt he did rather better than me though to be fair he wasn’t having much success. There was also Ricky the budgie and once the Rhode Island Reds arrived it amounted to almost a surfeit of pets but only if the seven of them could be included of course. My friend Molly who could be relied upon to know most things I didn’t know because she was several months older than me and her birth date actually placed her into the year above me at school, said they could not be included under any circumstances because hens were not pets. I pointed out that Clucky was most certainly a pet and I had almost been given her for that specific purpose. Molly said well in that case, Jonah, old Mr Bassant’s pig could also count as a family pet and nobody in their right mind would want him on account of the smell. You would never be able to keep him inside the house no matter how much you might want to.

The best thing about the hens was definitely the supply of fresh eggs and even Clucky joined in and did her bit now and again. As time went on Cecil Rhodes became more more self important and more unpleasantly aggressive and most especially when he became father to a clutch of fluffy yellow chicks four or which eventually added to his harem. There had been several rooster chicks in the bunch and they were just as sweetly loveable as their sisters but overnight they disappeared and I was told they had gone to live on a farm owned by Lord Darnley near Cobham village. No matter how loveable the group had been when first hatched though, once they grew out of their fluffy, downy infancy, both Molly and I lost interest in them.

The worst thing about the whole poultry project was the fact that from time to time as had been predicted, a hen that had been pecking corn happily amongst its sisters and aunts one day would somehow find itself served up as a special Sunday dinner. Well it didn’t quite happen like that because there would generally be a degree of discussion between my parents regarding what I could only view as the willful murder of an inoffensive member of our extended family. My mother would invariably justify it by pointing out that the victim had not been such a reliable layer lately as if the bird had almost brought it upon herself.
My father would be sent out into the yard after tea to Ring its Neck as fast as possible and meanwhile I observed him from the kitchen window as he approached the coop that had once been our Anderson Shelter. It must have been the increased determination in his stride that alarmed the hens because they seemed to foresee what was about to happen and a shiver of apprehension would pass amongst them. Their flapping and squawking would grow a little louder and more urgent and Cecil might courageously attack the lower legs encased in scruffy wellington boots that approached. Within the kitchen I held my breath and tried to curb the tears as I contemplated the injustice of the slaughter that was about to take place telling myself that when I grew up and gained status and power no hen of mine would ever meet such a fate. I would only ever order poultry for cooking from the butcher in Dover Road just as we had always done ourselves before we became back street chicken farmers.

By next day the murdered fowl would be plucked and de-gutted and hung above the kitchen sink ready for Sunday roasting. And by Sunday when roasted potatoes, parsnips and carrots had been added and a bread sauce made by my father on the oven top, I would have recovered enough to tentatively eat a little of the white breast meat along with my aunts and cousins and whoever else might be sharing the meal.

At times like this my mother would preside over the vegetables proudly, pretending to be a competent cook and my father would carve the bird listening to her telling the room that there was a lot to be said for owning hens and it wasn’t just the reliability of an egg for breakfast whenever you fancied one. In fact that wasn’t quite true because in recent months she had decided that the majority of the eggs should be sold to my father’s foreman from Bevan’s Cement Works who was willing to pay a very good price as they were freshly laid. This was because he had a family of four children, two slightly hysterical girls called Brenda and Sylvia and two foster children, boys called Kevin and David who replaced a son dead at three from Leukemia. Such a family needed the input of freshly laid eggs in an age of austerity when their regularity was hard to come by.

I was charged with the weekly delivery and carried them carefully wrapped in newspaper and placed in a hessian bag to their house in Vale Road. It was a house that befitted a Bevans foreman, one I greatly admired and for a time desired to live in myself, Edwardian with a small front garden and a narrow entrance hall. A few years later when after my father’s death I became familiar with the more upmarket houses in Darnley Road I was shocked that I had ever hankered after such a place but at eight it was my dream house and the inhabitants were very nearly my dream family. It wasn’t that I modeled myself on either of the girls but the fact that they put a tablecloth on their table at teatime rather than sheets of newspaper was impressive and I couldn’t help noting that their jam was not served directly from the jar it came in, but was put into a little glass bowl instead and you helped yourself with a spoon. When I told Molly about this she said they must be middle class and most likely had packets of real toilet paper in their lavatory, scratchy white stuff called Bronco. We generally used newspaper torn into wipe size pieces.

Over time we were to eat a number of our Reliable Layers and so I slowly became accustomed to the fact that murder lurked in our backyard and very possibly in other corners of York Road also. It did not go unnoticed that a number of neighbours kept rabbits and my cousin Harold jeered at me when I suggested they did so because they loved them. From my own point of view the ownership of rabbits would have been a great improvement on hens even if there was a vague intention to turn them into stews and pies at some stage. I might even have become accustomed to devouring the flesh of something I had cuddled to my breast and loved unconditionally, wept over and named because it had to be admitted that after a slow start I generally did my bit with regard to the consumption of the hens. I could only assume that over time my compassion became jolted and I realized that life was not always fair, especially where animals were concerned. And the shocking habit I knew to be not merely confined to animals because at school Mr Clarke had discussed cannibalism with us and told us that the taste of human flesh was said to resemble lamb a little. There had been sharp intakes of breath among the girls in the class when this was revealed whilst the boys nudged each other in excitement and sat up straighter.

When it was Clucky’s turn to be eaten, sadly I had to draw a line because as an animal lover it was necessary to show the world that I had standards and it simply wasn’t fair to expect children to eat their pets. My mother did a poor job of convincing me that it wasn’t Clucky in the oven sizzling away, that in fact she had been sent to that lovely farm at Cobham to live out her days alongside her relatives. As I tearfully related the details of the hen’s demise to Molly, hanging over the gate on Sunday afternoon whilst two aunts and Old Nan tucked into my pet hen, she said well it had been on the cards for a long time. In her experience that was the way of the world and just imagine being the owner of the pig, Jonah because eventually he would meet the same fate and would take much longer to polish off. You could find yourself eating bacon rashers for weeks. You couldn’t argue with that.