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.