School Reports From Way Back When!

Having rediscovered my school reports from Wombwell Hall a few days ago, I have been glued to them! That’s clearly what a global Lockdown is likely to do and admittedly this sudden surge of interest has been magnified by the plethora of wounded comments emerging from my laptop and revolving around Miss Hoffman who sounds like the headmistress from hell. Fortunately for me, this legendary Principal arrived after my time and presumably directly followed the rather less brutal Miss Fuller. Although I was greatly in awe of Miss D Fuller and now wonder if she might have been Dorothy or Dierdre or even Demelza - and was certainly filled with dread when sent to her for something like a uniform breach, I cannot recall any direct sadism at her hands. My mother cautiously admired her but regularly commented in a low voice on what she termed her Mannishness! During that transition period when the old order changed there was an overhaul of the school uniform because in my day it revolved around green gored skirts and cream blouses. A couple of years after I left it seems to have become blue.

Analysing the end of term comments on the now yellowed and slightly musty pages issued by the Kent Education Committee in the early part of the 1950s, I see clearly I was never going to be a runaway success academically. Considering that I would always have placed English as my most favourite subject I have no memory whatsoever of Miss MMH who appeared to be Form 1G’s first English teacher. Well that is almost true because I do know that it was she who put to me the horrifying question in the very first week or two of that very first term. It came out of the blue, asked in front of the entire class and I was both startled and embarrassed. Was anything worrying me she wanted to know – did I have any pre-occupying concerns?

I think I had been staring out of the window, across the wide park towards the field where another junior class was attempting to master the rudiments of hockey. Whatever was happening in Miss MMH’s English class at that time was clearly of little interest to me but had she asked me the question in a less public manner I might now recall more about her. It’s unlikely that I would have revealed any of the numerous anxieties in my thirteen year old life because at that age the last thing you want is counselling from your English teacher but a little more sensitivity might well have prompted a place in memory for her at the very least. The trouble is I suppose that schools did not really do Sensitivity in a big way back then.

Now had it been Miss SMH who queried my state of mind I would have understood both the question and the inattention much better. Miss S M Hart taught us Arithmetic, a subject I both feared and detested. She notes that I found her subject Difficult, later that I was a Slow Worker, later still that I should try to learn the Basic Principles. I had no idea what she was talking about. She was a broad, angular woman with iron grey hair in tight sausage curls at the nape of her neck, sometimes held in place with a hairnet and she wore a great deal of Prussian Blue; suits with military style jackets. She did a lot of staring into the middle distance herself when she spoke of matters other than mathematics and of aircraft in particular which appeared to be one of her favourite subjects. It was years later that someone told me she had in fact been one of those extraordinarily courageous women who delivered Spitfires and Hurricanes around the country during WW2. I so wish I had known that at the time, that she had once had once led such an adventurous life. I might even have concentrated harder in her classes because anything is possible.

Another subject I found extraordinarily difficult was French, taught by Miss SMS – the infamous Miss S. Smith who was also predetermined to eventually hold me up to ridicule when I revealed to the woman we all thought was her cousin – Miss K Smith, that my great ambition was to become a famous actress. Strangely I did not hold the rather wonderful Miss KS responsible in any way for this interlude of horror. Her putative cousin, Miss S also taught hockey and appears to have thought I was a promising player which only shows that she too was not concentrating as hard as she might have been.

A woman I grew to detest was Miss DKS, she of the tiny and neat handwriting and lilac knitwear. Miss D Springate taught Geography and I might well have done better at identifying the rivers of the world had we got on better. I might even have later understood that Costa Rica might well have been a desirable holiday spot but it was not in Spain. I can’t remember now when we first came head to head but we did so regularly and I have memories of being quite openly rude to her. She must have been delighted when I was absent for more than a month with Chicken Pox during the Summer term of 1955 and she therefore did not have to make cautiously negative remarks alongside the lowest grade she dared to give me. Fortunately the more pleasing Miss W Wood noted that the only reason I had not been placed in an exam position for shorthand and typing that term was merely because of the absence – but I had worked hard and not been unduly hindered by my illness. Directly below these heartening remarks Miss PHR, whoever she was, notes that my work in her Accounts class was erratic which I still feel was unfair of her under the circumstances. Had the woman not noticed I had been missing for weeks? A few months later she observed that I had little interest in the subject. I imagine it became obvious to me that Accounts was simply a form of Arithmetic in disguise.

I remember Miss MJE quite well, Miss Eatch our form teacher for several terms and our History teacher. She was tearful with big breasts and often wore blouses that should have been a size bigger. Perhaps she simply bought them in haste, unwilling to draw attention to her breast measurement by trying them on, and then reluctant to return them. We were cruel and reduced her to tears on more than one occasion which she did not deserve. None of us could have been all that interested in her subject and I see that I once came third in the term examination but was still only given a B grade. Perhaps she had not quite forgiven me for leading a small rebellion of some kind against her.

I also recall Miss EN perhaps only because she was also our form teacher for two terms. Miss E Norman had a loud voice, a country accent and taught Science. She was astonished that we could not identify Romney Marsh Sheep and didn’t know what Animal Husbandry was. Her name I feel might have been Elaine or even Elspeth.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Wombwell Hall and was completely in love with the old house the adoration in no way extended to the educational opportunities being offered me and have little memory of many of the staff. A Miss SMM felt I definitely needed to concentrate more in Music, yet another Music Teacher, a Miss MB said I showed no interest in the subject. An Art teacher with attractive calligraphic initials – HMK, that still manage to jump from the page made comment that I needed to work more thoughtfully and vigorously and months later that I was still making no improvement whatsoever.

Safe to say I was not a good student. Perhaps I was just too consumed with the house itself, the sweeping cantilevered staircase, the lofty library ceiling, the tall windows with tantalizing views, the narrow back stairs that only the staff members were allowed to use. Caught once on this forbidden staircase by no less than Miss Fuller herself I even dared to query why it was we students were not allowed to use it and added that in the heyday of the building surely it would have been the wide staircase in the hall that was prohibited. I had so frequently visualized maids enveloped in linen overalls scurrying up and down with trays of morning tea for the gentry whilst girls dressed in velvet and satin used the much more magnificent flight at the front of the house. Although I did not verbalise this picture of late Victorian life the Headmistress looked at me sharply as if trying to judge if my remark necessitated a threat of a detention before saying that the narrow back staircase was in sad need of repair and until that work could be carried out the less people walking on it the better. She even half smiled. She was most definitely no Miss Hoffman!

Miss Sands of Wombwell Hall

Looking back on those largely halcyon days of memory at Wombwell Hall I no longer know whether the staff member I have locked into recall as Miss Sands the Religious Education Teacher might have actually been Mrs Sands. As this thought somewhat strangely occurred to me at 3 am and as I still have all my relevant School Reports I even spent some time searching through the various comments made during the time I was there but she always designated herself as simply MLS. And before you mention it, yes of course I realise this is quite neurotic behaviour. She may have been Margaret Louise or Mary Leonie or maybe something much more innovative. It’s hard to know after so many years but what I do know is that throughout my several years attending her classes and feeling that I benefited from her tutelage it was only in the final term that I shone in any way because it was then that I came top in the Spring Term Examination. It was the first and only time I had come top in anything at all, either before or since so little wonder that it is committed to memory. To be fair I think Miss Sands was as surprised as I was.

Until that significant result her comments on my Reports had hovered around remarks noting that with added application I had done better recently or even that I had worked with interest at a particular time but when I unexpectedly excelled she noted that I had not merely worked hard but done extremely well as my final examination result attested. The sudden success was bewildering as far as I was concerned and I later sensibly came to assume that it had something to do with the more academic students having little interest in matters pertaining to religion whereas I could always be relied upon to become quite engrossed in the idea of a Special Being and all the ideas both metaphysical and logical that accompanied His presence. I had not at that time yet considered that God might be a woman. I was too engrossed in wondering if any particular idea or ideal connected to spirituality was in fact a force for good or evil in the world. You could argue either way and that’s generally what I did if I couldn’t find a real person to argue with. I blame Roman Catholicism because there is something about growing up within the Faith, even via a group of rather lapsed believers such as The Constants and The Hendys that predisposes their young towards a general commitment and allegiance to the philosophy of One True God. And quite apart from that of course the Catholic Church has always been overly fond of sinners and basks in the glorious idea of Penitents. Little wonder that some bored teenagers such as myself toyed seriously with the idea of a life spent in a Nunnery.

At that time at Wombwell Hall the R.E. classes were taken in what I had long decided had once been the Dining Room of the old house. This idea of mine was not based in fact and I came to that conclusion largely because there were two doors to the room opposite each other and one led directly down to the kitchen area, past Miss Fuller’s office. The other door opened into the central hall where we had a Group Assemblies three times each week. I harboured pleasant daydreams where the Colyer-Ferguson family entertained friends to lunches that were obviously quite formal, and had candlelit suppers together in the room where Miss Sands later conducted her R.E. classes and servants bustled to and from the kitchen with platters of all things nutritious. And of course I wondered what led the family to abandon the rather lovely house though later found that the artisan housing of the latter part of the nineteenth century began to creep ever closer across once green fields and verdant orchards and definitely had a large part to play in the momentous decision they made in 1937.

Nearly twenty years later Miss M.L Sands trod firmly upon the boards of the Colyer-Ferguson dining room and instructed us on spiritual matters. She had an appearance that was almost as sandy as her name. Although she was not in any way overweight she always appeared bulky and seemed uncomfortable in her clothes. She wore plaid patterned skirts in various sandy shades and hand knitted cardigans with intricate patterns, one of which featured a swan on a beige background stretching from left to right across the shoulders as it paddled upon a lake. Miss Sands’ knitwear was never made of ten ply QuikKnit yarn but always of four ply which as every knitter knew took forever to complete. For this reason my own Forest Green school cardigans were always without fail constructed from QuikKnit purchased from a stall in the Saturday market because my mother was an inveterate and impatient knitter and greatly irritated by lack of progress. Once I learned to knit competently myself I was astonished at how unlikely it was for her to unpick even a line in order to retrieve a dropped stitch. Such irascibilities were definitely not a feature of the workmanship displayed by whoever created the collection of cardigans worn by Miss Sands in the early 1950s, however.

Julia Hill who had until I excelled so surprisingly usually gained the highest R.E. mark had confidently been expected to do so once again. She was a great favourite with the sandy R.E. teacher and they were consequently rather appreciative of each other. Julia admired the Sea Island Cotton shirts worn under the four ply cardigans and the careful embroidery on the collars, featuring woodland flowers and from time to time the wearer’s initials – MLS, beautifully sewn and displaying the effortless assurance of a confident stitcher. Julia, never known to lack confidence said that had she not been playing Malvolio in the class drama production of The Merchant of Venice that term she would certainly not have allowed herself to be beaten by someone like me. I definitely did not like the way she said that but did not particularly wish to make a complete enemy of her so did not retaliate. Miss K Smith, she added, was a hard taskmaster where performance was concerned and when I feigned disinterest she looked at me knowingly and added that everyone was aware that I was wildly in love with Miss K.S and couldn’t understand why I had not bothered to audition for a part myself. With three rehearsals weekly there would then have been no time left for useless and boring R.E. exam swot. I ignored these remarks and continued to consider how unlikeable this particular classmate was.

Although I found the R.E. classes a great deal more interesting than mathematics or science or geography at times I thought some of the things Miss Sands said hard were to accept and she was most of the time disinclined to debate a point. On one occasion when she was talking about Simon Peter washing the feet of Jesus she hastily added that it had not been an act of humility or obeisance but simply because that’s what people did in those days in that part of the world. They lived in an arid climate where the heat was searing and whereas we might wash our hands and face, Jesus and his Disciples would rather use any available water to wash their hot and dusty feet. It was a sensible use of precious water in fact. People did not waste water back then the way we were inclined to in the Spring of 1956. I asked her if she was absolutely sure of that and she seemed quite annoyed and said of course she was sure. Jesus would have been one hundred per cent against such Acts of Humility and Obeisance – he simply was not that kind of human being and that was totally clear. It wasn’t altogether clear to me but I did not query this line of thought further.

Valerie Goldsack and her best friend Yvonne from Swanscombe told me they were amazed that the first time I came top in anything it happened to be R.E. because Miss Sands did not seem to like me all that much. I agreed that I had been quite startled myself but put it down to having a particular interest in religion which made them look at each other knowingly and exchange smiles before Valerie ventured that her father had said it was something of a Soft Subject, a bit like Anthropology had been for him at Gravesend Grammar. It wasn’t difficult, she said, to do well in R.E so I added that I was definitely considering devoting my life to God by becoming a nun which seemed to amuse them even more. Yvonne said that R.E. was the most boring class of the week in her opinion and she really disliked Thursday afternoons simply because of it except for the times when Miss Sands used Bad Language which could be hilarious. Valerie said that when she told her father about that shocking incident he checked out the details in their Home Encyclopedia because he had definitely not liked the sound of the expressions that had been used.

They were referring to the recent occasion when Miss Sands told us that the Ark of the Covenant and furniture of the Tabernacle were made of Shittim Wood. There had been sharp intakes of breath from girls like Valerie and Yvonne and perhaps also Julia and barely suppressed giggles from at least a third of the remainder. The rest of us looked at each other uncertainly and then watched with horror as Miss Sands began to write squeakily but firmly on the board in bold letters – Shittim Wood! After an interminable silence Julia asked in her Malvolio stage-projected voice if that particular wood had always had that name because she had never heard of it and then outbreaks of proper laughter erupted from various areas at the back of the room so she tossed her head and looked behind her, appreciatively and then sat up a little straighter. Julia Hill the Actress – Miss Hill the Entertainer! Miss Sands said in a voice that did not change in any way that it was the wood of the Shittah Tree now more commonly known as the Acacia. She carefully added the words Shittah and Acacia to the chalkboard. The various woods mentioned in the Bible were interesting, she told us. Some people she added, seemed to think that Dogwood had been used for the cross on which Our Lord was crucified for instance and that later the tree became ashamed so God ensured that it would henceforth grow small and twisted and never be used for such a purpose again. She added that according to the sacred tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church the True Cross had been fashioned from three different varieties of wood – Cedar, Pine and Cypress. These varieties she carefully added to the list on the board. Then she looked directly at Rimma Klotz because her family was Russian and therefore she must surely have insider knowledge with regard to the Orthodox Church. In point of fact Rimma’s family was Jewish and had fled from a village pogram early in the twentieth century. They were possessed of little of the knowledge Miss Sands attributed to them. But that was hardly her fault as she couldn’t be expected to know everything. I wondered how the mysterious Orthodox Church differed from the Church we were all reasonably familiar with but did not like to ask.

On R.E. afternoons I usually walked to the bus stop with Gloria Glover who was on the Shittim Wood occasion still highly amused by the incident that had brightened up the last class of the day. She said you could always rely on Religious Education to provide a few laughs and wasn’t Miss Sands a card? I nodded doubtfully and a few weeks later when I wanted to discuss with her the fact that I had come top in the exam Gloria just said well somebody had to come top and it might as well be me if I was really serious about becoming a nun. I should know, she said, that if Julia Hill had wanted to, she could easily have beaten me because she was what all the staff called An Outstanding Student and Gloria had actually heard Miss K.Smith mention her Outstandingness one afternoon after Hockey to Miss S.Smith. I wondered if that was true but even if it wasn’t I found the idea of Miss K.Smith saying such a thing strangely irritating.

Several months after I left Wombwell Hall I very nearly came face to face with Miss Sands the R.E. teacher in the Promenade Gardens, in Gravesend. She was accompanied by a woman who to all intents and purposes was simply an older version of herself, sandy and bulky and bent over, leaning heavily upon a stick. Perhaps it was her mother. She was in a heated altercation with a teenage boy from whom she appeared to have confiscated a catapult. He had attacked one of the swans, apparently, a fact that she had clearly found deeply distressing. I paused to see what might happen next, but far enough away from them not to be noticed. As the confrontation refused to descend into anything more excitingly violent, after a while I began to walk away – but not before I noticed that she was wearing her Four Ply cardigan with the paddling swan across the back. There was something strangely uplifting about that and for the briefest second or two I wanted to say Hello.

My thoughts turned back to Miss Sands, the swan and the Shittim Wood when I learned rather more recently that the final demise of Wombwell Hall had come in 1994 when ownership of the place rested with a nursing home. The place was totally demolished overnight that Easter to make way for a housing development.

The Very First Paddyfield Warbler

In the early 1950s we were not aware that the desolate North Kent marshland just a hop, skip and a jump from our York Road terraced house, and stretching from Dartford in the west to Whitstable in the east would in the not too distant future be recognized as one of the most important natural wetlands in Northern Europe. It simply was not something that crossed our minds although my ornithology obsessed young brother always seemed to have known that up to 300,000 migrant birds used the Thames mudflats as a regular stop off point in their routine journeys between the Arctic and Africa. The Estuary marshland is now one of more than twenty environmentally sensitive areas recognized by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs now known as DEFRA. In more recent years the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has taken over considerable stretches of the Hoo Peninsula including Northward Hill, High Halstow and parts of Sheppey. Even the Medway Council’s Riverside Park at Gillingham is an example of managed public access to the wetland but way back then the area was largely uncontrolled. It became totally familiar to Bernard as he ventured ever further from home and deeper into the ambiguities of local wildlife.

He was not generally lacking in confidence as far as meandering away from York Road was concerned but there were definitely times when he would actively cajole me into accompanying him and this might have been more out of a desire to convert me to a particular enthusiasm than a lack of self-assurance. I recall several trips to the Rook Roost at Northward Hill in particular which necessitated interminable bus changes and lengthy periods of walking. Little wonder perhaps that I displayed somewhat less apathy when he first mentioned the Paddyfield Warbler he was quite certain he had discovered in reed beds where Swanscombe merged into Northfleet and should by rights be nominated as Our territory. He urgently wanted me to return with him to see it and when I asked why it was so important he claimed it was a most unusual discovery because the Paddyfield Warbler was quite unknown in the area. I may have said something about him possibly being mistaken in that case but without a great deal of conviction because I knew from experience that where identification of birds was concerned he was invariably right.

For days he could speak of nothing else, bombarding me with details as to its likely wingspan -15 to 17cm, and possible weight - 8 to 13 gr, and the fact that the example he was certain he had seen was definitely light brown in colour though with paler plumage beneath. At first he had thought it might simply be a Sedge Warbler, still exciting but hardly inconceivable but upon a second visit he became convinced that it was in fact the known to be elusive Paddyfield Warbler itself, not ever seen in this part of North Kent previously – at least as far as he was aware. At his insistence and in heavy rain we set forth for Swanscombe one Saturday afternoon and spent an uncomfortable hour or two awaiting the arrival of Our Bird back to the reed beds that should by rights have belonged to Northfleet.

Sister Joseph, head teacher at the school in Springhead Road reported that my brother had been missing for over a week when he finally and triumphantly waved a series of blurred and out of focus photographs of the kind we referred to as Snaps back then in her face. She was singularly unimpressed. The thoroughly modern Kodak camera borrowed from Cousin Margaret's unknowingly generous young husband was returned intact and unscathed and the images that could have been clearer were displayed to all and sundry who had ever shown an interest in local birdlife. The problem was that not a great deal of interest ensued.

It would be true to say that Bernard paid little attention to what was happening at school, feeling it was largely an imposition in his life. Having very little understanding of mathematics as he grew older he avoided attendance on days featuring that subject and so his understanding diminished even further. His interest in ornithology was already established as a passion and he spent as much time as humanly possible wandering the marshes from Crayford to Higham identifying birds. By the time he was fourteen he had engaged in a great deal of deceit and petty crime in order to finance bus fares, bird books and the acquisition of a pair of binoculars that eventually resulted in a brush with the police. Old Nan who was engaged in a fair amount of petty crime herself said little about his minor thefts and the ongoing duplicity in his life but was definitely of the opinion that the sooner he discarded that Tomfool Bird Business the better. He was going to be a grown man in next to no time and it looked like he’d end up being one with a mania - It wasn’t natural! My mother, who had unwittingly and somewhat surprisingly first inculcated the obsession by pointing out to him when he was two and three years old, thrushes in the hedgerow and the occasional chaffinch in the hawthorn bush, was in despair. What had started as a pre-school diversion had developed into an overwhelming fixation. By the time he left school at just fifteen he had not distinguished himself academically in any way, preferring at all times not to catch the attention of the teaching staff. Largely he succeeded and emerged ready for the workforce with no practical skills.

It was our mother who noticed the card in the window of the New Road Butchery in Gravesend, announcing that a Boy was Needed. It was she who informed the prospective employer that she had just the Boy at home and in need of employment and that four pounds five shillings a week sounded very fair to her and that yes indeed he was a very keen lad, and most anxious for a future in butchery. But although he dutifully started the job and was even there on time each morning it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it and quite apart from that the daily close proximity to raw flesh did nothing to inspire him. He began to talk to the butcher of the bird species that could be seen daily in the nearby marshland and acquainted him with the fact that once he had seen a Paddyfield Warbler, a rare variety but the trouble with that was that nobody really believed him. The butcher did not show a great deal of interest and so during his lunch break he spoke with those working along the road in the Co-op just in case they proved to be more ornithologically friendly than his employer but they turned out not to be. When a month or so passed and the butcher was beginning to wonder how he might best break the news to our mother that her keen son was not proving to be as eager for the job as he had hoped, Bernard decided that the only acceptable future for him was one spent living on the marsh in a pup tent of the kind first designed and used in the American Civil War. Also known as Shelter Halves, he had read of their basic construction, ease of assembly and the fact that as recently as WW2 they were still being used. A pup tent was definitely what he needed! He would erect it close to where he first saw the Paddyfield Warbler and with the aid of a butane gas device and a torch his future might well be idyllic.

A splendid plan that paved the way for an immediate escape from years of butchery but unfortunately it was not going to be realized as rapidly as he had hoped. Neither pup tents nor primus stoves were quite as cheap as he had imagined them to be and might take as long as six weeks of hard saving. It was then that the germ of an idea that eventually involved the theft of the week’s takings on its way to the bank was first devised. The degree of violence that ultimately accompanied the theft was not part of the original plan, of that he was adamant when persuaded to talk about the incident many years later.

Following this episode of undisputed criminal violence Bernard quite naturally panicked a great deal before making the much coveted purchase of tent and primus. He also bought a rather expensive torch, hiking boots and a great deal of chocolate before heading towards the point where Swanscombe mudflats joined the Botany Marsh at Northfleet. It was several days before the police finally found him there and he knew at once that he had probably been betrayed by his own mother.

The Aunts were collectively shocked and talked in low voices about what had happened for months. Mag said it had been no surprise to her on account of Nell not having it in her to be much cop as a mother. She’d always been too hard on him – she was generally hard on both her kids if the truth be told. Sometimes it was necessary to know when to hold back and not give too many hidings. Nell handed out too many wallops and she was too inclined towards thick ears especially since her Bern had Gone. Martha said she thanked the Almighty that she only had her Pat and had never had to bring up a boy especially one like him with his mind stuffed full of Tomfool ideas but you had to admit that life wasn’t easy for widows and she knew that only too well since the war took her Paddy. Maud, who still Thank God had her George, was glad her Desmond had been just that much older and not influenced by Nell’s boy and at least he was at a different school because it was at school where most of the trouble started in her experience. Old Nan was of the opinion that too much was made of school and she herself had never had a day’s schooling and it had done her no harm whatsoever. The problem with that boy was that he was Bad Through and Through though she wouldn’t mind betting that it had been the school that had filled his head with all the bird tripe in the first place.

Meanwhile our mother felt more inadequate than ever, attended the Juvenile Court Hearing, and tried to listen attentively to those who Knew Better than she as to what would become of her lawless son. The Children and Young Persons Act had recently raised the age of criminal responsibility to 10 but it had also required local authorities to undertake preventative work with families who had children at risk of re-offending. My brother was deemed to be at risk even before he was discovered cold and hungry in his new pup tent and so he progressed through the hands of a number of well-meaning officers assigned to him by the Court. It was discovered that the unfortunate butcher had not been his first victim as far as straightforward theft was concerned and that he had been responsible for various acts of pilfering ranging from raiding the purses and wallets of relatives when they came to visit, appropriating our mother’s carefully saved Christmas fund from the top of her wardrobe, and helping himself to a number of LPs, purchases I had made in advance of owning a record player but hopeful that someday I would. These he sold in Gravesend Market. For some time he had not lacked energy and enthusiasm for delinquency on a small scale and it had undoubtedly been the single act of sudden violence that had propelled him towards a category more alarming and with infinitely more consequences.

The Probation Officer called Ken managed to get alongside Bernard and earn his trust sufficiently to ensure that from time to time he listened to the advice offered him. Ken organized a weekly amount of spending money and was hopeful of sorting out a place at the Gravesend School of Art until he realized it had merged with the Medway College. Bernard had of course revealed the well-thumbed photographs of the Paddyfield Warbler and Ken quite sensibly believed he might benefit from a course in photography which would not only cater to his innate creativity but it had nothing directly to do with mathematics which was a bonus. Bernard was in agreement but cautious all the same because it sounded just a little like school in disguise and our mother was elated to be able to say that she had a son who would be attending College which was odd as she had shown little interest in Further Education for either of us previously. However, when the idea came to fruition and Bernard took the train to attend on a daily basis she was almost bursting with pride and told all and sundry that he went to a Proper College where the uniform was a cap and gown. In retrospect I think this odd idea must have filtered down via comic books from her youth featuring a mish mash amalgamation of Gem, Magnet and Greyfriars School. It also had something to do with the continuing censure and disapproval of her mother and sisters who voiced ongoing criticism of both Bernard’s criminal behaviour and her own less than ideal parenting that had probably facilitated it.

The completion of the photography course and the skills acquired ensured that he would undoubtedly be in a much better position to produce first class images of the Paddyfield Warbler should the situation ever again present itself. At some stage I remember pointing that or something very similar, out to him. He seemed immediately dejected at the thought and said that no matter how hard he had tried he was never able to persuade anyone in the ornithology world that he had actually seen the bird. He was repeatedly told that it did not appear in the area and he had definitely been mistaken.

Decades elapsed before an account appeared in a number of Bird Watching Journals concerning the fact that for the very first time a Paddyfield Warbler had been observed on the North Kent Marshes. An astonishing event! Great excitement was caused. Bernard said it might have been unusual but it certainly wasn’t the first time the bird had been seen. His had been the very first Paddyfield Warbler and in fact he had photographic evidence of that!

British Birds of Prey

There were two doctors in Northfleet, Dr Crawford and Dr Outred and you swore by whichever one of them you favoured and that very much depended on how much you considered they had done for your family and whether they had ever gone above and beyond the Call of Duty. They were invariably known simply by their surnames. We swore by Outred rather than Crawford because he was renowned for being able to do surgery if needs be and more importantly had saved my life when I was four. He didn’t actually perform surgery upon me but he drove at breakneck speed to Gravesend Hospital to access what he called a Wonder Drug when I had pneumonia. I was busy watching relays of dancing Dutch dolls climb the walls of my bedroom and by the time he returned was not aware enough to know how I felt about the size of the needle he used. According to my mother it was enormous! Needless to say with the aid of the Wonder Drug I quickly recovered and rather generously bore him no grudges about the needle. As for surgery, he had at one stage lanced a nasty throat abscess for my mother whilst bombs rained down on his consulting room in London Road, Northfleet at least that is how she described the occasion and at one time she described it a great deal.

Aunt Mag said that when all was said and done you could quite understand why Nell swore by him. However, she stopped all the swearing once she came to understand that he had been complicit in my father’s death by not realizing that he was suffering from Acute Hepatitis rather than some kind of fairly harmless seasonal influenza. It was my Grandmother and the combined efforts of the Aunts that finally convinced her that the once much revered Outred was undoubtedly responsible for the unexpected and most inconvenient sudden death. Even way back then there were those who were keen on a place to lay blame when faced with life’s slings and arrows. We had not got to the stage, however, where we demanded apologies; we simply seethed with indignation at the injustice of it all. My poor mother seethed a great deal because at the time of the death that by rights should never have happened she was not altogether on speaking terms with my father. This was because she could not forgive him for being a serial philanderer. Later she maintained that it was The War that was responsible for the philandering and the Eighth Army in particular because that was where his fascination for women in uniform began and had it not been for that he would never have looked twice at any of the conductresses on the 480 bus route.

As a child I spent a reasonable amount of time in Outred’s waiting room, most especially once the National Health System was up and running and we no longer had to pay for each visit. Prior to the NHS every consultation had to be paid for and I remember that for an adult this was a costly two shillings and sixpence because it was indignantly discussed frequently. I’m no longer sure what was charged for children. There was general dissatisfaction when a half crown had to be handed over despite no firm diagnosis being made and my mother was most satisfied when she was prescribed a Tonic, preferably a red one in an interesting glass bottle. The red Tonics did her a lot of good, of that she was certain.

Outred did not run an appointments system which was undoubtedly sensible as telephones were largely absent in working class households but he did run two surgeries per day, morning and afternoon. You simply turned up and sat on one of the hard wooden chairs and tried to be quiet if you were a child which was difficult if the wait was a particularly long one. If you were an adult you could speak to those around you if you so wished. There were no toys and books to amuse younger patients as would be usual these days. This would have been a forward thinking initiative had Outred been forward thinking enough to think of it but it was clear he regarded most of his child patients as future delinquents and was disinclined to provide benevolent diversions. Following the incident of the redistribution of pills I was involved in when I was too young to fully comprehend the consequences of what I was doing, he did not trust me one iota and I came to accept that. I can’t say I blame him and fortunately for me the said incident took place after he so valiantly saved my life and had it not done so I wonder about the outcome of that bout of pneumonia. I won’t go into all the unhappy details as the particular tale of woe has been fully documented elsewhere but it would never have happened had I not been left alone in the waiting room whilst my mother discussed something personal with him. As I had at the time an over developed sense of what was fair I simply wanted to make sure everyone got at least some of the brightly coloured pills that had been left for collection by the sick. It seemed grossly unjust to me that some people only got white ones. None of this reasoning went down well with our medical man.

In my defence, and although I don’t want to labour the point, things might not have progressed to the redistribution of medicines had our doctor gone in for providing one or two amusements for child patients. The only diversion he did have was a series of framed prints on the walls of the waiting room. British Birds of Prey! The Glorious Golden Eagle, Falcon in Flight, Common Buzzard Cruising, Descending Sparrowhawk and Hovering Kestrel. By the time I was seven years old I could confidently read the captions beneath each picture and my favourite was Falcon in Flight because the terrain below looked almost like local farmer, That Bastard Beaseley’s pea fields. According to my grandmother Farmer Beasely failed to pay the going rate when he hired pickers in early June and therefore could be viewed with disdain and spoken of with derision using any expletive you chose.

The London Road waiting room could only be described as functional, with a disparate collection of chairs jammed close together against three of the walls. There was a no longer wanted dining table in the middle of the room, highly polished but with only a vase of flowers in the centre and three ash trays around the edges. Mrs Outred was fond of flowers and grew a great many in her garden even in wartime when we all knew she should have switched to onions and carrots and she generally remembered to ring the changes with what was in the vase. Against the fourth wall was a tall, narrow side table and by late afternoon an array of jars and bottles sat on it carefully labelled for patients to collect. It was this table that had proved too enticing for me to ignore as a pre-school warrior for justice. So single minded had I been that I had to drag over an empty chair to climb on – a demanding task but the execution of it exhilarating.

There was no receptionist and as patients arrived they simply seated themselves where they felt comfortable and remembered who was in the queue before them. Mistakes were seldom made. As each consultation ended and the object of it hurried out into London Road with head down, a little brass bell on the wall above the tall, narrow side table tinkled and whoever was next in line headed along the short, dark corridor to the consulting room. If you were unsure of the direction or lost your way you could look on the wall where an arrow and a sign in what had once been gold lettering read – Consulting Room This Way.

The reason for the frequent seeking of medical attention for me once the NHS was well and truly up and running and there was no chance of money changing hands was because I had always been Delicate. I was also Highly Strung. I recall with clarity family and neighbours being advised that it was the doctor himself who had pronounced this which was in point of fact quite incorrect. It was apparently impossible to feed me which was at least partly true and had more to do with the end of strict wartime rationing than fragility of constitution. I had become happily accustomed to a plain fat-free wartime diet which by 1948 had morphed into a great many fried items and stews top heavy with mutton fat which was food that met with my father’s approval but was not entirely to my taste.

Usually sick children attended the morning surgery with their mothers or with their grandmothers if their mother was avant garde enough to still be working shifts at Henleys or Bowaters . Old Nan was definitely not the kind of grandparent who had ever been known to exhibit enough care and concern for a grandchild to accompany them on a doctor’s visit and in any case my own mother liked to be firmly in charge of health matters. She looked down on working women and called them Flighty because they were no better than they ought to have been and their minds were on silk stockings and lipsticks rather than their Poor Little Mites and some of them even Carried On with other women’s husbands down in Crete Hall Road after their shifts ended. It was their poor husbands she felt sorry for because they were likely to be working their fingers to the bone and might have bad backs to boot. And how were they being rewarded? That’s what she would like to know. She thanked the Lord that at least she had never been one known for Carrying On.

As for the late afternoon surgery, that was largely attended by sick adults such as Mary Newberry regularly bent over with abdominal pain that was the bane of her life every month as regular as clockwork and men with the kind of cough that never quite went away despite changing to Players’ Weights. At least half the patients smoked relentlessly to while away the lengthy waits for attention. From time to time a flurry of excitement would be caused when someone was brought in by a relative and clearly more in need of immediate medical help than those who waited patiently on the mismatched chairs. Then when the bell tinkled the person poised to rise from their place might virtuously announce in a voice intended for all to hear, that the sicker one should go ahead without delay on account of their need being greater. They were profusely thanked and the offer invariably taken up.

When this happened all the waiting women would sit up a little straighter and fold their arms and exchange glances one to another signaling disapproval. These pockets of malcontent were never directed towards he or she being rapidly ushered towards medical assistance, but rather they who had so charitably given up their place in the queue. General opinion dictated that the public spirited one should by rights take the turn of the sick newcomer and go to the end of the line. Nothing was actually said until the miscreant themselves headed towards the consulting room when a murmur of discontent would arise. It was all very well to give up your place, it was pointed out, but by rights you should then go right down the queue. When all was said and done there could be no argument. In fact there was no argument because one and all knew what was fair and those who did not perhaps entirely agree simply remained silent, sucked on the end of their Woodbines and stared into the middle distance.

The discontent triggered by this scenario was so predictable that it became uninteresting and I would rapidly turn my attention back to Birds of Prey and wonder if Hovering Kestrel was in fact preferable to Falcon in Flight. Years later my brother who was so drawn to all birds of prey whether or not they were British, said that he always enjoyed his visits to Outred’s waiting room even when suffering severe ear ache and revealed to me that his love affair with the Kestrel that had begun with the stuffed bird in a glass dome in Great Aunt Martha’s Station Road Parlour, was firmly established by the local doctor’s choice of waiting room wall decoration. Later still when I found myself charged with the care of the aggressive bird temporarily housed in the spare bedroom of his Chatham semi-detached, my mind strayed back to those Birds of Prey prints. I took comfort from the fact that had it been The Glorious Golden Eagle rather than Hovering Kestrel that ultimately met with the overall approval of my ever more fanatical sibling this period of guardianship might have been a great deal more challenging. But that of course is another story.

Eating Posh .......

Once I felt I had cracked the perennial problem of speaking as posh as possible, I was very keen on exploring any avenue that offered an opportunity to Eat Posh. As a child the only time I came anywhere close to upmarket food was at family weddings where cold ham or chicken was generally served with salads followed by pink blancmange and every flavor imaginable of jellies. Although this might seem remarkably mundane from where I now stand in the year 2020, back in 1949 it was fare that provoked a great deal of excitement in anyone under the age of fourteen hailing from the less salubrious streets of working class Northfleet and Gravesend. Family weddings were something we all looked forward to.

The only restaurant I had ever been taken to was very occasionally a branch of British Restaurants set up in WW2, where spam was served with mashed potatoes and split peas and also, most excitingly, dumplings with golden syrup. I remember one in Maidstone close to the cattle market with particular affection because we went there on two occasions. What we were doing at the cattle market remains a mystery but in the early 1940s Maidstone was a most desirable destination on the local green buses.

Years later as a pupil at Wombwell Hall my classmate Valerie Goldsack boasted of a trip to Cliftonville where her entire family lunched at The Lido and she had egg and chips for two shillings and ninepence. Even more excitingly her father had ham, egg and chips for four shillings and sixpence. When I told my mother she said it sounded like daylight robbery to her and that them seaside places were known for it. As our own seaside trips only ever occasioned bowls of cockles or whelks and fish and chips to eat on the beach I was very envious and urged Valerie to tell me what else was available on the Lido menu. She said something called scampi was being served also with chips but at seven shillings it was unlikely there were many takers. I wondered what scampi might be and was quite certain that she was as uninformed as myself so did not pursue the matter further but determined that at some future date I would try this clearly upmarket menu item. It was to be several years before this became possible.

By the time I left school early in 1956 Gravesend definitely had at least one Indian restaurant, a Chinese Takeaway, and what’s more either a Berni Inn or an Angus Steak House that flourished from within the Royal Clarendon Hotel. The latter was a destination I developed a great desire to visit. Both Vic and Peggy Troke who ran the corner shop in Shepherd Street, Northfleet and my ever more worldly cousin Margaret who was already considering abandoning her young husband in favour of an attractive alternative keen on dining out, had stories to tell about the various steaks available. There was Filet Mignon she told me, together with Prime Rump or T-bone and delicious saute potatoes that were available if you didn’t quite fancy chips. If you were seriously hungry you could opt for a starter such as soup or melon with Parma ham or even something called a prawn cocktail which sounded suspiciously like a drink. There were desserts such as apple pie, sorbets and meringues. Really sophisticated diners ordered half bottles of wine – Spanish Burgundy or Mateus Rose. This latter fact was detailed to me by Peggy Troke, who was only marginally surprised at my interest and was responsible for fanning the flames of my increasing desire. To make matters worse my cousin began to talk to me about an exorbitantly expensive dessert called Crepes Suzette upon which was apparently poured large quantities of brandy. Although I had no experience whatsoever of brandy it became ever harder to imagine never being in a position to at least try something made with copious quantities of it.

It was Mr Frank Blackburn whose filing and minor typing I was responsible for at Francis, Day & Hunter, 138 Charing Cross Road, who ultimately was to provide my very first experience of what I at any rate considered to be Fine Dining. I can no longer remember what actioned the momentous occasion but he was to take his secretary, Pat who was eighteen years old, typed all the really important letters and was engaged to someone called Lionel, and me out to lunch at Lyon’s Corner House at Tottenham Court Road. Pat told me this one Monday morning using her most important voice. With seating for two thousand the first Corner House had opened in nearby Coventry Street in 1909. It proved an enormous success providing a wide range of eating choices over four floors together with the opportunity to book theatre tickets, buy flowers and chocolates and make telephone calls. A mere hop, skip and a jump from Piccadilly Circus the exciting new venture certainly attracted large numbers of theatre goers and decades later was a magnet for young office workers such as myself except I had not as yet gathered together enough courage to enter such a place. I don’t know when the Tottenham Court Road Corner House had opened and until the point of the proposed lunchtime visit had of course only admired the building from the outside. However, Pat was certainly knowledgeable about it because on the occasion of their engagement Lionel had taken her there as a very special treat and had presented her with the all important Ring over coffee and after dinner mints. Disappointingly when I asked her what eating choices had preceded the mints she said she couldn’t remember.

Mr Blackburn booked a table for one o`clock on the top floor at the most prestigious restaurant choice, the one with a rather exotic name that I no longer remember, and a string quartet on Fridays and Saturdays though not at lunchtime. I had been in a state of some excitement for three days and wore my best black felt skirt adorned with applique butterflies and a pale blue orlon twinset. I sat in excited anticipation at what was to come, admiring the lines of white linen napkins and heavy silver. This was most definitely taking part in the High Life! We were given glossy white menu cards imprinted with gold and red lettering offering a range of breathtakingly exciting fare. Most of the dishes were a complete mystery to me and so considering Pat to be an expert I waited to see what she would choose.

After a great deal of consideration she finally said she would have melon with Parma ham followed by a Filet Mignon with saute potatoes and a garden salad so after a regretful glance at other items on offer that might have been quite delicious had I been courageous enough to order them I decided to have the same. Mr Blackburn chose soup followed by a chicken dish of some kind. Rather disappointingly we were not offered wine but were able to have pineapple juice whilst Mr Blackburn drank beer. I was of course still extremely nervous but the only hiccup came when I mistook granules of ginger for brown sugar rather spoiling the melon because I had sprinkled it liberally over the plate. I then had no alternative but to pretend that I always liked to eat melon that way and in fact I think I said that when my mother served it that’s what we always did. It was disgusting and definitely difficult to consume. I noticed our employer giving me sympathetic looks as I determinedly swallowed one adulterated spoonful after another. However, the only thing that was daunting about the steak that followed was that I was asked how I wanted it cooked and whilst I was contemplating this odd question Pat said she wanted hers medium so I said I would have mine the same.

Apart from the shaky start with the melon it turned out to be quite the most exciting meal of my teenage life and I had quite decided that before we reached the stage of ordering sherry trifle from the very impressive dessert trolley. It had not been totally without anxiety though and I was most definitely still completely over-awed by my surroundings and impressed with the ease with which other diners seemed to order items from the menu, clearly without any underlying fear of being unmasked as working class aspirants. If only I could reach those dizzy heights myself! Just imagine how it would feel to be completely confident in such a situation.

That Friday lunchtime visit to the top floor of Lyons Corner House was a culinary watershed moment for me and I became ever more determined to Eat Posh as frequently as was humanly possible in the future hopefully starting with the Grill Room at the Clarendon Hotel close to home in Gravesend where neighbours might hear about it and be impressed at my rise through the lower classes. It was to be some time before that ideal was realized and in the interim I discovered to my horror that a large number of restaurants describing themselves as offering High Class Dining , tendered their menus only in French which made me wish that I had paid a great deal more attention to Miss S Smith’s classes at Wombwell Hall. In some despair I eventually resorted to the local library to try to discover how to recognize the more frequently appearing staples of French dining and commit them to memory. The librarian wanted to issue me with a book called French Cooking for Beginners and gave me an odd look when I tried in some discomfiture to explain my actual dilemma. She used a slow pace when she spoke to me. So I wanted a book about menus in French offered by restaurants I had not as yet been invited to dine at? She would like to help but it appeared I would need to be much more specific.

The next snag I was to encounter was not the actual language of Posh Eating but hunting down those who might be persuaded to indulge what I hoped was to become my key hobby for the foreseeable future. Eating Posh did not come cheaply. Clearly young men of my own age and background were quite out of the question for obvious reasons and so I gravitated to the atypical and anomalous. This meant that much coveted restaurant meals were not always a comfortable experience. I had moved on from Francis, Day & Hunter via Lawrence Wright Music, David Toff Music, and a recording studio in Bond Street where I was hoping to meet the rich and famous but it wasn’t until I found myself typing in the basement of Pye Records for a man with a vicious tongue called Bernie that an actual employer was cajoled into using his expense account to lunch out with me. Bernie said that if he did so this should be at his favourite little restaurant in Frith Street, Soho where he was well known and where the food was divine and where a sommelier advised on the choice of wine. No, he said, he most definitely did not want to go to the grill at the top of Lyons Corner House either in Tottenham Court Road or Coventry Street – only the gastronomically challenged would consider such a thing . Wary of his underlying spitefulness I hesitated only for a fraction of a second before of course enthusiastically agreeing.

Bernie was of course a gourmet of the most exasperating kind and he took a great deal of pleasure in humiliating me as much as possible and referring to me as the rather gauche little girl who did his typing. Even the over attentive waiter began to look rather disapprovingly at him and gave me a wink. I won’t go into all the humiliating details but later Bernie accused me of having a steak and chips mentality which although I realized was part of his particular brand of sadism I did not completely understand. It all had to do with the fact that he ordered something called Coquille Saint-Jacques and urged me to do the same. I was reluctant only because I had no idea what the dish comprised of and was too embarrassed to say so and so instead I opted for Steak Frites. As I was still at the stage where I viewed a piece of steak as an enormous treat it was a shock to realise that there were those who saw my choice rather as I might view chicken nuggets today. Bernie lost no time at all in commenting disparagingly on my unfortunate lunch choice with the waiter but also an hour or two later with all and sundry keen to listen at Pye Records. Fortunately only an elderly woman from the Copyright Department paused by his desk to agree with him because his favourite restaurant was also one she favoured. The positive aspect of all this was that I learned not only how to order and eat scallops but later how to cook them which might have pleased the Northfleet librarian.
Over several years of sharpening and honing all the attributes necessary for Posh Eating and of necessity dealing with the needs and expectations of a great many unusual dining companions, I gained a degree of valuable experience. Elderly American tourists recently widowed who were on the Trip of a Lifetime were often to be found wandering The Strand and Fleet Street and always eager for conversation and a break from dinner at The Savoy. The recently bereaved were never in any way sexual predators and merely grateful for a dinner companion I came to realise and therefore only too keen to be directed to Rules in Maiden Lane or Kettners in Soho or whichever establishment happened to be my current obsession. Dating men in their sixties and seventies meant that I was exposed to a decidedly different style of conversation and learned how to listen attentively. Asking questions about their grandchildren and the career they had recently retired from meant that generally they did most of the talking.

I did not of course confine myself to the geriatric because the inhabitants of bedsitter land in South Kensington also provided a hunting ground. Young men from the Middle East who all seemed to be studying at the London School of Economics were definitely not hard up in the sense that other Londoners were at that time, and luckily for me they were bored and anxious to find English girl friends. Although their eating habits were largely confined to that which they found familiar, some of them were also keen to try pastures new and accompany me to various of my favourite haunts in the West End. Of course they had a keener interest in sex than the elderly tourists and that was something I had to develop tactics for dealing with when I found their attentions overwhelming.

It would be true to say that with a certain amount of grim determination, over a five year period I was indeed able to achieve the aspiration of getting to grips with Posh Eating first anticipated whilst still a child. Of course there were hazards and pitfalls along the way and a great many mistakes made. Progressing to working in a series of nightclubs during my twenties then helped a great deal particularly when it came to assessing the qualities of various champagne houses and the joys of oysters and caviar. Nightclubs at that time leaned towards the most expensive gastronomic treats. And all the experience gained meant that once I had children and of necessity turned my full attention to cooking I became a most enthusiastic cook and consequently their diet was not nearly as mundane as my own had been at a similar age. I am not sure, however, that they were ever completely aware of this fact.