Password Purgatory

There is definitely a lot I like about modern life:   the immediacy that ensures wants and wishes are satisfied for instance and the relative ease with which a taxi can be called to the door.   No more regular episodes of trawling through the yellow pages, or queuing up at Tom’s Happy Pizzas because all fast food can be ordered to arrive at your convenience.  What’s more instead of telephone calls costing painful pounds per minute, a two hour block to your best friend in the Orkneys can take place every weekend if you so wish for simple sums that represent a four year old’s pocket money.   I like on line banking and the ease of using Eftpos cards especially those you simply have to wave in the general direction of the machine.  Magic!   I’m a fan of being able to order books on my Kindle and have them available to read within minutes (even though on balance I still prefer proper books with paper pages to turn).  

Yes, modern life is a great improvement on those years growing up in York Road, Northfleet even though there was something to be said for joining the queue for Fish & Chips in Shepherd Street on a Friday, especially in late autumn when on the way home, clutching the hot newspaper bundle the temperature had dropped another degree and your breath formed small grey clouds ahead of you.   True it was highly inconvenient to have to wait at the red telephone box on The Hill for Jacqueline Haskell to complete the call to her boyfriend at the Sea School but to be fair it didn’t affect me too much as I didn’t really know anyone with a telephone that I could call in the first place. 

Modern life can be delightfully stress free, or it should be and probably is for many of us.  What I despise and detest about this brave newish century is Passwords.  Yes Passwords, those codes that grow ever more intricate that you must at all costs remember because without them you might well find yourself quite unable to accomplish any of the above listed delights and the joys of online banking will become a dim memory not to mention the bliss of ordering the new volume on the life of Pepys that was just reviewed on radio.  In fact it is highly likely you will never be in a position to listen to radio again because unless you still have one of those old fashioned ones tucked away, those operated via battery, electricity or steam, you will be quite unable to access the programming.

To think that all those years ago (1931) Aldous Huxley predicted the massive societal and technological shift that brought us to the frontiers of this brave new world where we seem to have become dehumanised and disoriented and yet delightfully happy to be the owners of mobile phones via which we can text those we know, and others we don’t know, in an instant. Although Huxley does not specifically mention Passwords in the book, I feel free to lay some of the blame for them at his feet because he was in many ways simply asking for trouble by writing the wretched novel in the first place.

Passwords are all very well as long as you remember them but that of course is easier said than done considering that you must under no circumstances write them down and you must never use the same one more than once.   I might even have had a reasonable chance of success with these restrictive password parameters thirty years ago but I don’t have a dog’s chance now.   And it’s all very well reminding myself that in the final analysis I can always pretend I have Forgotten the Password and simply apply to make a change because I can assure you that does not always work as I found out to my cost this very morning.

The lovely Samsung people, out there in the ether, those who are in total control of my account and forgive me the trespass of Password forgetfulness, like Huxley’s world government want me to be happy.  They want my Password to be restored despite the lie of forgetting it.   They probably know I didn’t really forget it because I had actually written it down hadn’t I which is an even worse trespass.   Nevertheless they are more than willing to give me a chance and allow me to change it, they send me a code which I must not share with anyone.  I obeyed them and didn’t share – there was nobody around to share with.     I know I got the code right – I wrote it down and when I entered it, it actually worked!   Success!!!    I am all at once ecstatic.  My cup runneth over!   But not for long.

Minutes later when I confidently returned to the Apps store to access the Sky TV Guide I am told that my account is unauthorised.   And that is when I realised that I must never, ever write down Passwords again or use the same one too frequently because the modern day equivalent of Huxley’s chilling world government, controlling every aspect of our lives will surely KNOW when I do and their wrath will assuredly descend upon me. 

In essence I have not really moved very far from that dire childhood situation when I suddenly realised that God KNEW every time I lied, each time I spent my Brownies sub on bubble gum and every time I cheated at long division and copied Pearl Banfield’s answers.  But to give Him His due, at least He did not add into the mysterious mix of Catholicism the terrifying possibility of becoming ensnared along the way and toppled into Password Purgatory.  

Memories of Gravesend

 

When I first came to New Zealand I was a little surprised to find that, oddly to my mind, my newly adopted country had a few definite ties with Gravesend.  Those who proudly told me their ancestors were from England, often added that in fact they left from a place called Gravesend, one or two adding to be precise, Bawley Bay.  The only connection I had previously had with Bawley Bay was going there with my mother and Old Nan to buy shrimps for tea;  always a treat.   So when next on a revisit we headed for Bawley Bay because by this time my husband had discovered that his own forebears had made that self same journey and he was therefore now keenly involved in family history.

In general the most memorable tie was for New Zealanders interested in the history of aviation.   Apparently the town had developed an airfield by the 1930s and by the middle of the decade the much revered New Zealand aviator, Jean Batten, took delivery of her new Percival Vega Gull from there.   Later the RAF took the facilities over and by the time I was a young adult it had become a housing development called Riverview Park.  

My own personal memories of the town start as a five or six year old being taken to the market on Saturdays and watching Old Strongey sell china tea-sets and the finest wool blankets, then walking past Papa’s Ice Cream Rooms and being told he was Italian and anyway his ice cream was nowhere near as good as the British variety which we would be able to get again soon once rationing was over.   And always coming into view that iconic Clock Tower, nearly twenty metres tall and made of Portland stone.   Later as a schoolgirl I learned about Princess Pocahontas with great interest because she was the daughter of a real Indian Chief, they who were always the Baddies in the movies we saw and thus seen as totally exotic by me and my best friend, Molly.   It took a while for us to process why Gravesend had a connection to her but eventually we learned that she had died in the town in 1617 and was buried in St George’s Churchyard though the actual site of her grave had been long lost.  Sometimes we went looking for it, convinced we would be successful.

Sometimes I reluctantly went shopping with my grandmother and she told me tales of what life was like in the town years before, boring facts concerning the time when buses took over from trams because, believe it or not, by 1930 there were no more trams and when that happened you could have knocked her down with a feather because she did so love them no matter how slow and noisy they were.  However, they put on new routes and one went right out to the Kings Farm Housing Estate which was good for anyone who wanted to go there though for the life of her she wondered why they would.

I  loved many of the old buildings, the Town Hall which had been replaced in the mid 1700s, the new building added to in 1836 and dramatically enhanced by an impressive classical entrance portico.  I told myself that it had been built by the Romans because I didn’t know of any other ancient culture including the Greeks and anyway I ignored all facts that did not fit this narrative. 

My favourite street was Harmer Street for the elegant houses and particularly the Grand Theatre building for its links with times past.  I was devastated when it was finally demolished without much ceremony late in 1952.   Why wasn’t there outrage?  There should have been outrage – and I felt the same when the arch at Euston Station met a similar fate a decade later.  

Old Nan said never mind theatres and stations because what she missed was the hotels of long ago like The Mitre in King Street where when she was a young mother Mr Harold Mott was the licensee of both it and the adjacent Public House.  The pub had been up and running from the early seventeen hundreds and at one time was called The Pelican and didn’t become The Mitre for a hundred years or more.   At the time she spoke of it, the building remained intact, the pub still doing well and wasn’t to be closed until 1970 by which time she had definitely departed from this life herself. 

Her hotel of choice, however, was The Prince of Orange which had been built in the early nineteenth century when the New Road was first developed.   At the time it was built the pub of the same name in Windmill Street was hastily renamed The Old Prince of Orange.  However, by the 1930s Burtons had firmly replaced the newer version.  

When I was growing up Gravesend offered a multitude of pubs, and the family favourite seemed to be The Three Daws which I was told was the oldest pub in Kent.  Always an attention grabbing building, much of its structure dates from medieval times and it is said to have seven staircases and three underground tunnels reputed to have been for the convenience of smugglers and those avoiding press gangs.  It remains to this day a firm favourite for me when visiting the old town. 

The Tilbury Ferry always seemed to be up and running and in fact my father maintained that the Gravesend crossing to Tilbury was the oldest of its kind and could be traced back to the thirteenth century.   We used it frequently because it was the easiest way to get to Southend for a day by the sea.   When I attended Wombwell Hall school several girls in my class who lived in Essex used the ferry on a daily basis.   I was particularly friendly with one such river traveller, whose name was Gloria Glover and whose parents had both died of cancer and so she lived with an aunt.  She said she had to be especially well behaved or she might be thrown out. Because of Southend and Gloria the ferry crossing has a firm place in my memory.

My mother and aunts felt that nobody with an ounce of common sense would say that Gravesend had a beach, well not a respectable one at least.  And by New Zealand standards the idea of the town beach is even vaguely embarrassing.  However, the line of pebbles and the lapping waves certainly made it a beach for me and as a very small child I very much enjoyed sitting on the sea wall and contemplating the town pier extending out into the river. 

Those old wooden clad houses I fondly recall have now largely disappeared and I wonder how that was allowed to happen.  In New Zealand that style of building is known as weatherboard but in Gravesend I seem to recall it was called clapperboard.  Whatever the correct term, for me the old houses made up a firm childhood memory.  I had no idea how old they were, who lived in them, whether they were comfortable or not but lining the narrow streets down by the river they seemed to me that they had always been there and would remain part of the town’s configuration and structure.   In fact in that first year or two in Auckland, when feeling particularly homesick I often retreated into the inner suburbs of Ponsonby and Parnell simply to sit and look at  houses of similar construction because they were like a comfort blanket and reminded me in many ways of what I had left behind.  I was cheered in recent years to notice that a modern block of waterside homes, smart flats looking out across the river now echo the traditional design of those white wooden clad houses of old.    Progress has a habit of throwing little arrows  of consolation from time to time. 

The Magic of the Wireless.....

 

A week or two ago I learned that Radio Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand had been continuously broadcasting for one hundred years and in fact reports with pride that as an uninterrupted broadcast network it is five weeks older than the BBC!

When I first came to New Zealand in the early nineteen seventies, one of the things that impressed me was how advanced radio appeared to be when compared with England.  Every town seemed to have its own radio station and cities like Auckland boasted a number of choices with miniscule operations in surprising suburbs, all heavy on providing advertising opportunities for local businesses.   Talk radio was alive and well and very nearly an institution after a decade of development and it immediately became my number one listening choice.  And back then I quickly turned into a contributor, phoning in regularly and giving my views on a variety of subjects.

I was delighted to partake of radio on any level.  It has always been a familiar medium to me.  Listening to the BBC with my mother is one of the enduring memories of my earliest years because in our house The Wireless was always on, down low for Workers’ Playtime and Forces’ Favourites, the volume increased for Children’s Hour and definitely for The News.  One way or another we listened to everything, news, entertainment, music, plays, recipes, health advice and always to Winston Churchill and the terrifying Lord Haw-Haw broadcasting ominously from Germany.  Via The Wireless we were thrust through a number of emotions beginning with the jollity and jauntiness of ITMA and Variety Bandbox and concluding with the horror and disbelief conveyed by Richard Dimbleby when describing Belsen Concentration Camp.  Through good times and bad The Wireless was a reliable source of information and companionship and what we would have done without it I dread to think.

Years later as an impressionable young adult my inherent trust in all things to do with broadcasting led to an exciting relationship with those setting up pirate radio on a Dutch ship in the North Sea, Radio Veronica.  Dazzled by the excitement of it all I totally failed to see that the Technical Director I admired so much was actually embezzling money from the company which rapidly led to its collapse almost before it began.   Just a handful of years later commercial radio took off properly via yet another pirate ship and Britain edged just a little bit away from the total control of the BBC.   Meanwhile it would seem that in New Zealand it had long since stopped being embryonic and was well established throughout the country and that was probably so in Australia, Canada and undoubtedly the USA.

As a small child I don’t remember programming that could be described as Soap operas but I do have memories of my mother and aunts waxing lyrical about something called Arnold Grimm’s Daughter which apparently was broadcast from the mid 1930s until 1942.   And of course by 1948 we had Mrs Dale’s Diary which was still going strong in the 1960s though it never had much appeal to me.

One of my first significant purchases when I became a wage earner was a transistor radio called Pam and I think, produced by Pye.  Pam shared my bed every night and I was blissfully able to listen to Top Of The Pops until it finished at midnight followed by The Shipping Forecast which to me seemed to be a bridge between nostalgic poetry and a hint of longed for travel to romantic places.   Other listening favourites were The Goon Show, Hancock’s Half Hour, In Town Tonight, Letter From America, Any Questions, and A Book At Bedtime.

Contemplating those years that followed WW2, two absolutely first class stand-out programmes spring to mind almost immediately and I associate both of them with the early 1950s.  To my mind where radio always had the edge on television as far as youth was concerned, what it was able to do deftly, was amplify the magic of any story by allowing the visual images to spring from the listener’s own imagination. 

The Box of Delights I associate most particularly with those weeks leading up to Christmas.   The book was written in 1935 by John Masefield as a sequel to his earlier novel, The Midnight Folk.   It told the story of a boy called Kay Harker played by Patricia Hayes whose chance meeting with Cole Hawlings, a Punch-and-Judy man, leads him into a world where almost anything is possible.   The story captures the true spirit of Christmas better than any other similar drama and I might still shudder on hearing the Punch-and-Judy man proclaim his ominous warning that evil lurked close by – The Wolves Are Running!   Hawlings is the keeper of the elixir of life and the custodian of a magic box that he is so anxious to keep out of the hands of wrongdoers he has been on the run for seven hundred years.  To say I was transfixed by this early evening tale does not adequately describe my fascination and my young brother was equally engrossed.   And while we hunched beneath the wireless, barely daring to breathe, my mother boiled eggs and made toast and a coal fire burned snugly and brightly and we could almost smell the tangerines and taste the marzipan treats that heralded the coming festivities.

Completely different, Journey Into Space was a BBC Radio science fiction programme written by producer Charles Chilton.   In 1953 it attracted a bigger evening audience than the up-to-the-minute  TV sets that people were beginning to buy.  Several series were produced, then translated into seventeen languages and broadcast worldwide.  It would be true to say that it enthralled the nation, nearly every one of us tuning in on Monday evenings at 7.30pm happily abandoning Robin Hood & His Merry Men, Kaleidescope and even The Quatermass Experiment.   No such decision had to be made by us as we did not become TV owners for several more years.     

Operation Luna, the first totally gripping tale was set in the far flung future of 1965 and concerned the conquest of the Moon.   Andrew Faulds played Captain Jet Morgan and David Kossoff played an amiable character called Lemmy and I seem to also remember Alfie Bass, David Williams and David Jacobs.  The second series was called The Red Planet and the final was The World In Peril.  Charles Chilton became a household name so when I came across him many years later working as an occasional guide for London Walks I was definitely impressed.    Retired from the BBC, he was in his late seventies and seemed bewildered when shown the admiration and regard accorded him by so many of his walking clientele.  I had by then discovered that he had also written  a radio programme called Oh What A Lovely War which led to the musical and the film.    A Kings Cross lad from a very poor home he had joined the BBC as a 14 year old messenger boy and was later to be described as `the one true genius the BBC ever produced’.

Destined to remain in our lives as a viable and essential piece of technology eventually The Wireless had to relinquish a great many of the gripping stories that had so entertained us as one by one they vanished from the air waves and were claimed by television.  But many of us maintained that they were destined never to be quite the same and failed to enthuse and energise us or create the same magic as the originals.

The Wireless had always been a force in our lives but it was a force that had never needed our full attention at all times and we had always been able to cook, clean and carry out a host of other tasks whilst listening.   By the 1960s fuller attention was being given to the no longer new-fangled television sets and The Wireless half returned to its original position in the background of our lives.   And as it did so local commercial radio stations were finally taking off in the UK and were firmly established in places like New Zealand.

Today radio holds its place as an important source of information and a venue for the exchange of ideas.  When I was in London for several months this year I listened a great deal and in general as a vehicle for the dissemination of news, knowledge and analysis radio broadcasting takes some beating.  For the insomniacs among us it’s invaluable.   Radio flings you face to face with a range of ideas you may not like very much and forces you to examine bigotry.  Whether you like it or not you find yourself listening to the reasons why a section of society takes on a cause or an individual sees themselves as a warrior for social justice.  And from time to time it becomes apparent  that your own thinking is taking a different path.  No matter how incomprehensible or nonsensical some ideas you stumble across may seem at the time, every bit of information provides part of a patchwork of data that accurately reflects what is actually taking place within a society and may very well form stability for the future. 

All ideas have value but some have an obvious significance that can be all too easily overlooked.   One of the stories told about the great Charles Chilton is that he was the very first British DJ and as such had recorded a number of programmes in the 1930s for jazz enthusiasts.  However at a time when Received Pronunciation was the order of the day when his cockney accent reached the ears of the great Lord Reith then Director General of the BBC he pulled him from the programme very fast indeed asking ‘what kind of accent do you call that?’ to which Charles rapidly responded, ‘It’s the accent of the capital of the British Empire’ which left Reith flummoxed.   However, he still pulled him off the air and I cannot help wondering what he would have thought of some of the accents happily accepted without comment today.

Times change and whether we like it or not, we change with it. 

A Love Affair With Department Stores

 

I fell in love with department stores from the moment my mother and I stepped through the imposing access doors of Bon Marche in Gravesend in 1945.    Later I learned that the original store was in Paris and it was said to be the oldest such emporium in the world.  By then I already realised that the doors had not actually been as imposing as I at first thought.  However, when I was five years old I had not yet heard of Paris and didn’t know all that much about doors and what made them impressive. 

What I did know was that Bon Marche was, at least as far as we were concerned, high-class and exclusive.   Their goods, according to my Grandmother were on the dear side, and my mother definitely agreed with her and sometimes said daylight robbery was involved.  Nevertheless we browsed their shelves and departments on a reasonably regular basis, observing Pringle twin sets and Burberry raincoats from afar and once we even bought some hair ribbons.   I couldn’t help noticing that we were reluctant to scrutinise some items of clothing too closely for fear of attracting the attention of a staff member who might enquire whether we needed assistance but at the same time look as if that notion was most unlikely.  

If we were on a serious buying expedition we avoided Bon Marche completely of course and went directly to British Home Stores where the goods were less costly and the staff less intimidating.   And we remained great fans of the market where back in those days both underwear and outerwear items were priced within the reach of those like us who weren’t made of money.  The only exception made by my mother was when we were buying shoes because she maintained that cheap shoes were a false economy so I never had to wear those the market offered. 

We definitely saw window shopping of all kinds as a pleasant pastime. From time to time we ventured further afield and went by bus to Chatham which I really enjoyed because on the way we saw flying boats on the Medway and caught glimpses of Rochester Castle.   The main reason for the Chatham trips was the vast and daunting Bentalls Store in the High Street where a whole morning could be spent loitering in the aisles and where staff attitudes were less alarming than those at Bon Marche.  Even more attractive was the fact that they used a cash carrier system that sent customer payments whizzing across the ceilings to the cash office whilst making a satisfying humming noise.   Watching this happen was for some reason extraordinarily exciting and seemed to place me at the cutting edge of technological advances.  Just as thrilling, there was also a café on the top floor where waitresses in black and white uniforms took orders for tea and scones or even hot meals.   We only patronised the café when in the company of several aunts or my Grandmother and when we did so we always ordered from the afternoon tea menu and I had to eat up every crumb ordered for me or I was in Big Trouble.  Meanwhile my love affair with Department Stores grew ever stronger.

I no longer recall if top floor cafes featured anywhere in Gravesend but if they did we didn’t go to them although I would have liked to though I knew my mother was of the opinion that they catered more to those who had more money than sense and anyway she was much more comfortable at the tea stall in the market.  All this might seem tedious now but the fact was that at an early age I developed a keen desire to be Upwardly Mobile even if I hadn’t much idea what that meant.

          Somehow the Department Store conveyed both style and glamour with its firmly designated areas, nightwear and underwear together in one almost welcoming space, women’s daywear adjacent, children and menswear separated by a journey in the terrifying lift perhaps even operated by a uniformed attendant who announced whether you were Going Up or Going Down just in case you were confused.  The magic started for me immediately upon entering the store, hopefully via astonishing revolving doors.   The unfamiliar and exotic fragrances emanating from ground floor perfumes and beauty items immediately transported me into a pleasantly parallel day-dream world where the possibility of a rooftop café was forever on the horizon.  Just as memorable, there might even be a bookshop hidden away in one of the corners where Enid Blyton story books, at that time still permitted, might be on sale for those children whose parents actually went in for buying books.   

          In those post-war years our serious purchases were invariably made at markets.  When she became interested in dress-making my mother always bought what she called Off Cuts from the fabric stall in Gravesend Market and then purchased the appropriate Simplicity pattern from the drapers in Northfleet High Street or Perry Street.   Nevertheless this didn’t stop her making a thorough examination of the fabrics and patterns in Bentalls.   By this time I was considered just old enough to be allowed to browse in the Children’s Books & Toys Department which I did very happily.   My worship of such shopping emporiums increased with each visit we made.

Little wonder that when I first went to work in London at nearly sixteen I spent a great deal of time savouring the delights of Oxford Street - Selfridges, Peter Robinson, Bourne & Hollingsworth, D H Evans and John Lewis.  The possibilities were breath taking.  Within just a few months I ventured further to Gamages of Holborn and The Army & Navy Stores in Victoria.   And somewhat belatedly I discovered Swan & Edgar at Piccadilly Circus.  In those early days I rarely made purchases and so I was very impressed when my cousin Connie, just a year older than me paid thirteen pounds for a pale blue raincoat at Gallery Lafayette in Regent Street without a great deal of accompanying drama.  

When tentatively stepping into bedsitter-land the fact that I was relatively close to the delights of Derry & Toms and Pontings and just a hop, skip and a jump from Harrods made the move from riverside North Kent seem enormously safe and secure.  Later with a move to Bayswater the proximity of Whiteleys of Queensway was comforting.  

Unsurprisingly as time progressed I was to deeply mourn the loss of the Department Stores and the disagreeable handover to the Age of the Shopping Mall.   It’s possible that I’ve never even tried to come to terms with the idea of Malls with their faceless, windowless thoroughfares and their food plazas where bright orange curry outlets sit dutifully alongside those offering dumplings or pizza and the same low key music plays in the background as you hurry with your tray to locate a table in the allotted space that offers a modicum of privacy.   Neither do I like their terrifying ability to ensure that it will be difficult for you to ever escape from their bland interiors by never providing proper Exit directions.

The Mall does of course offer elongated shopping hours together with endless parking bays whilst the Department Store of long ago might close its doors firmly at six pm leaving you stranded outside to struggle home by bus with your packages.   However, at the conclusion of shopping hours the soft interior lights would still glimmer and flicker invitingly and certainly enough to summon the would-be customer to hesitate for a moment and perhaps linger to examine what might be within.   Even a brief consideration of the window displays rarely let you down with their promise of what would be possible at 9am once the doors opened again.   Even if there was no purchase to be made there might at least be a café on the top floor where wait staff in uniform would take your order for afternoon tea.        

C o r o n a t i o n D a y

 

I remember Coronation Day 1953 very well indeed and that’s because it was my thirteenth birthday.   I was a teenager at last, it was a Tuesday and by rights we should have been at school but instead a Public Holiday had been declared, what my mother and the aunts called a Bank Holiday.      Twenty miles up river in London apparently it was raining but in our part of North Kent the sun shone, at least that’s how I remember it and what’s more a Street Party had been organised.  The Street Party was not the only unusual and exciting event because someone highly pro-active had also organised a Fancy Dress Parade and someone else was to judge a York Road, Shepherd Street & Surrounding Areas Talent Contest.

The lead up to the day seemed to involve endless conversation between my mother and her favourite sister about what had happened before the War when the now deceased King George VI had been forced to take on the burden of kingship because of his wayward brother and that American Hussy who had waltzed into his life and tempted him.   It was all reminiscent of Harry & Meghan eight decades later only not nearly as shocking because at least The Royals of the time had not been accused of Racism.   There seems to have been a lot more basic respect for Royalty back then and quite apart from that Racism didn’t feature in everyday conversation nearly as much as it does now. If we indulged in prejudice and bigotry we certainly didn’t realise it.   My Grandmother focussed more on the coronation of the previous Monarch, George V which was also held in June but way back in 1911 and followed hard on the heels of the Empire Festival at Crystal Palace.   She and her Edgar had joined the throngs lining the streets outside the Abbey together with Little Maggie and Nellie and Martha and Maudie, all waving flags.   Maudie was still a baby bless her heart but she was very knowing even then and she screamed blue murder until she got her own flag.  All of the little buggers dropped their flags when Edgar bought them toffee apples of course but then what else could you expect?  It was unclear as to whether there had been a street party back then or if in fact the family managed to get back to Maxim Road, Crayford to take part in it if there was.

There was no chance of us missing the York Road party all those years later because the day’s various activities had been cleverly staggered in order that none of us should miss a single moment of the fun if at all possible.    In fact the very first event was the Fancy Dress Parade and I was definitely going to take part as a Crinoline Lady.   My mother had always been overly fond of Crinoline Ladies and bought endless embroidery kits featuring them which became table cloths and cushions.    She had also become adept over the years at making costumes out of crepe paper and now I can see she harboured a strong creative streak which when I was young I failed to appreciate.    Using an old petticoat or similar suitable garment as the base, frill upon frill of pink and blue crepe were attached to great effect and in no time at all I emerged from number 28 looking for all the world like an extra in Gone With The Wind.   You can see why I felt sure I would win one of the prizes – jigsaw puzzles of the golden coach, but of course even back then the prizes went to those who had come as cardboard boxes or balls of wool, and that’s always been the case.   Anyway my poor mother was more disappointed than I was.

So we didn’t miss the street party and I even had time to change out of my crepe paper costume back into whatever else I was required to wear that day before attacking the fish paste sandwiches, lemon jellies and jam doughnuts that were piled up on the trestle tables in the road.   I don’t know where the tables had come from but Alan Bardoe said knowledgeably that they had been hired.  I had no real idea of what that meant at the time.   We did have to bring our own chairs, however.    During the party our photographs were taken many times and then we sang songs before dispersing, most of us towards the Talent Competition which was taking place outside The Prince Albert in Shepherd Street.  

It had inevitably been suggested that I enter the event singing Bless This House or even We’ll Meet Again but I did not have the confidence in my singing voice that my mother had.   Molly, who had a much better voice than I did, considered entering with a Doris Day song, favouring The Silvery Moon but changed her mind.   In the end it seemed that only the more determined and hardy souls among us or maybe just those with the pushiest mothers actually fronted up to display our talents on the day.

Rita Jenkins did a tap dance dressed as a Dutch doll and wearing one of her famous embroidered bonnets of which she seemed to have a great many.   In my opinion she was now becoming too old to emulate dolls of any description and in any case now I had reached the great age of thirteen I had stopped being jealous of her for being allowed dancing lessons in the first place - and I had been thirteen for a number of hours.  So I agreed with Molly when she observed that Rita had done quite well.  A girl with a great deal of confidence who was, her mother said, as keen as mustard on ballet, performed what seemed like a complicated ballet routine whilst an elderly relative played a piano accompaniment from inside the pub.  There wasn’t wholehearted approval of her because apparently she wasn’t local enough.    A small group from the Baptist Sunday School sang a rousing hymn and Betty Haddon sang Alice Blue Gown which she was always willing to sing given half a chance.   Little Elsie from Buckingham Road who was wheelchair bound was supposed to recite a poem about a mouse but she got an attack of nerves at the last minute and burst into tears instead.

As we watched Molly said that we should have performed a One Act Play because there were plenty to choose from that needed just two actors.    Although both of us at that time were keen on a future in acting, me in the London Theatre and she in Hollywood, I was quite glad that we had avoided it on this occasion.  Serious acting I felt was not going to earn total support in York Road and in any case I didn’t really know any one act plays for two performers and I doubted if Molly did either.  Later she said well if we couldn’t find one in the library we could have written one ourselves and I was even more doubtful.

There were a number of other hopeful contestants but most of them I have no memory of at all.   To my mind in any case the star of the show was most definitely Colin Bardoe, Alan’s twin, who had a good, strong singing voice and sang a song about dying in the desert under the Libyan sun which was very sad.  I can still remember him with his head held high and plenty of dramatic gestures.  I can’t actually recall if he did win the five shilling postal order but he certainly should have done.  As far as I recollect he didn't even have a pushy mother.   No matter what the neighbours thought of Colin, and back then his insistence on playing with the girls rather than the boys did provoke a certain amount of disapproval, he had a lively and engaging personality coupled with an ability most of us lacked.  Of all the contestants he is the one who still stands out vividly in memory for me.    

Of course by 1953 a number of our neighbours had already acquired television sets on the Never-Never and were watching the proceedings at Westminster from the comfort of their living rooms but mostly with the street doors open so they could exit with ease if something more exciting happened outside.   The more generous hearted among them invited a selection of the neighbours to join the viewing and some of the Best Front Rooms, normally only used at Christmas, were filled to bursting point with interested adults standing or perched on the sides of sofas and children crammed on the floor.

Our family was not to feature among those who could afford modern technology for some years to come and even Aunt Mag was not to reach that dizzy zenith until 1955 so I suggested to Molly, who was in the same situation, that we simply peer through windows from time to time which we did.  Meanwhile my little brother waited hopefully for Hedley Davis to invite him in because Hedley had told him the Davis family were definitely going to buy a TV set in time for the Coronation.   Whether they did or not I still don’t know but poor Bernard definitely wasn't invited in.

Death of a Queen

 

We were of course expecting the death.  After all, she was ninety six years old and couldn’t go on for ever.   Nevertheless it still came as something of a shock in the early hours when I was once again not sleeping and wondering how sensible it would be to simply get out of bed and let the day begin.   But I hesitated and listened to Kate Hawkesby on radio instead and felt unexpectedly saddened by the news.   I was still listening an hour or so later and was then strangely cheered at the unexpected emotion showed by Mike Hosking.

 I’m one of a diminishing group who can remember when Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary became Queen all those years ago, the death of her father George VI following hard on the heels of that of my own father.  At school that morning the blinds in our classroom were down and Sylvia Smith said it was because the King had died but that turned out to be wrong – it was because we were, rather excitingly, going to watch a film show about the mountains of Scotland and possibly Wales as well.   We learned that Ben Nevis was the highest.  

We had never actually seen the Queen in the flesh of course and never expected to; she was only visible via Pathe News Gazette playing before the main feature at local cinemas.   There was great excitement therefore when it was announced that this glamorous new Monarch would be touring our area of North Kent and the points where she might be best seen were listed.    Molly from number 31 decided that we must definitely not miss out and that the best view of her would definitely be from what we still called The Old Roman Road.   It was quite a walk from York Road and we set off early one Saturday morning in high spirits.   We had to wait for a considerable length of time at the roadside, still relatively rural at the time and I don’t remember hordes of others.   The motorcade slowed down as we were noticed waving and cheering fervently.  The young Queen looked directly at us and smiled broadly.   We were ecstatic of course, could hardly believe our good fortune.   The real life Queen had actually noticed US – Jean  and Molly, two insignificant twelve year olds from Northfleet!  When we got back to school a day or two later we found that we were definitely not the only ones that the sleek black vehicle had slowed for, not the only twelve year olds the dazzling new Sovereign had noticed and waved at.

As the months passed we became more and more accustomed to catching glimpses of Elizabeth the Second, not in the flesh sadly but on newsreels and we even persuaded ourselves that we were desperate to see films that under normal circumstances we might have definitely avoided – simply to see the young woman who had smiled and waved at us as her car moved slowly by on The Old Roman Road.

The luckier ones amongst us came from families who during that year became the proud owners of TV sets and they regaled us with reports of viewing her regularly on News At Six as she went about her Queenly business, cutting ribbons and making speeches.   We weren’t unduly envious because she hadn’t smiled directly at them had she?   We definitely felt we had an important connection with her and this feeling did not wear off for a long time.  

We began to read The Young Elizabethan magazine, available at the local library which had emerged around the time of her wedding to Prince Philip and which until the encounter on The Old Roman Road we had largely ignored.   It became a favourite because it ran competitions, published poems and puzzles and recommended new titles by writers like Noel Streatfield and Monica Edwards.  

All these memories seemed to engulf me earlier today and I began to realise how great a supporter I have become of a constitutional monarchy.   This is in no small part because of the strength, stamina and resilience shown over the years by Elizabeth Alexandra Mary who had never really wanted the job of being Queen – but did it anyway, and did it in an exemplary fashion.  

The Depositing of Ashes . . . . .

It had taken more than eighteen months to do something seemly, appropriate even with his human remains.   The pale wooden box containing the ashes, all that was left of him, had stayed on the rarely ever used cane tea trolley from the day they were delivered to me by Davis Funerals.   To be honest I had at first imagined I would find that situation quite macabre but as the months passed it was strangely comforting to have him there.   I could place my hand on the box and talk to him and wonder if he somewhere, somehow heard me.  In fact I developed a regular habit of speaking with him, often as I walked the streets of Parnell compliantly getting the daily exercise that was supposed to be good for my back.  Later I conversed with him in London and then I cried more than I had in Auckland because he should have been there, walking alongside me. 

It would be true to say that I did not deal with his death as well as I might have done and probably that was simply because in a disturbingly infantile manner I refused to believe that it had actually happened.   Somehow or other providence should have intervened like a good fairy at a story book christening ensuring that normal life be restored in all its predictable certainty.   But that wasn’t ever going to happen was it?  The B-cell Lymphoma did not allow for such an outcome and as a doctor’s wife over so many years I should have realised that very well, except that I didn’t.   So I withdrew into a mini-fortress, did not answer the telephone, and threw away the endless flowers that relentlessly and exasperatingly arrived day after day.  The neighbours, witnessing the latter piece of eccentricity gaped and I smiled and might have even wished them Good Morning.      

There was definitely not going to be a funeral.  He and I had at least discussed that and I told him it was never going to happen and disapproving friends and colleagues could think whatever they liked.  Perhaps I imagined that if there was no funeral – (oh the finality of such a thing) – possibly there had been no death.  He elicited a promise that I would at least put a notice in the New Zealand Herald and I agreed that I would.   And then he asked me what I would do with his remains.   Ideally, he said, and with only slight hesitation, and only if I felt able to do so, he wished for his ashes to be scattered in the South Island, in Oamaru, perhaps Dunedin and at Whitechapel by the Arrow River – and if I could face it, some in London because it was a place that held many precious memories.    He told me he realised I might find it very testing to make any promise in this respect and so I didn’t.   He understood me well of course after so many years.

He slipped from life without too much kerfuffle, grateful for the morphine that gave some respite from what he was by that stage calling his Galaxy of Pain.   And I withdrew from life also for the most part, avoiding human contact where possible, crying torrents of tears, throwing flowers away and watching Coronation Street where Leanne’s little boy, Oliver, was struggling with a life-threatening illness, a story line that at the time seemed comforting.     A modicum of solace also came from those who also coped with the death of someone greatly loved but I was astonished to feel fury and resentment at others whose nearest and dearest were still living.  This I concluded was because, as I had long suspected, I was not a very nice person; no surprises there then. 

He had died on a Sunday morning in October 2020, leaving me emotionally stranded, astonished that it had actually happened.   Several people said I would feel a little better in six months but in April 2021 I felt the same, missing him as fiercely as ever, still weeping copious tears on a regular basis, still avoiding social contact as much as possible.   The people I agreed to see and speak with were very few and I used every possible excuse I could dream up not to attend groups I had somehow or other been cajoled into joining - even the Zoom meetings.  I became eternally grateful for Covid lockdowns because month after month I was most at ease when completely alone except for laptop, Ipad and Patrick’s collection of CDs that for a number of years had been left in my care.    The world’s greatest violinists were eternally helpful, the musical genius of Menuhin, Heifetz, Hassid, Huberman, Kreisler and Ricci was infinitely sustaining.   Outside my cocoon of misery normal life continued to jog along of course but after eighteen months for me it was still mostly long dead violinists and the ashes on the cane trolley.  

It was Sinead who urged me to consider some positive action as far as a farewell to her father was concerned.   It was time to do so she thought, and she would come from London and give help and direction.   We would go to the South Island and visit all the places that had been important to him, and then go on to London and do the same.   It might turn out to be difficult but we could be certain he would be proud of us.   And so it was agreed.

In the end three of us set off South early in May 2022.   Patrick joined us and we were in good spirits, keen to rediscover favoured and significant places in Dunedin and Oamaru once more and perhaps with just a little difficulty find the site of Whitechapel on the Arrow River where the previously Jewish Harrises, confusingly each generation possessed of the name Samuel Lewis or Lewis Samuel, ditched their former customs and traditions and became Anglican.   We had been told that this dismissal of heritage was not particularly unusual at that time and we were content to believe what we were told.  

The mission was seamlessly accomplished and by the last week in May we were already deep in plans for a return to London, though sadly without Patrick who was unable to extricate himself from his workload.   Sinead and I would go together and I was to stay for three months and become re-acquainted with all that I had left behind me in my favourite city nearly five decades previously.  

And it wasn’t just going to be a trip down Memory Lane because my daughter was eager to show me her new house, ideally situated in an area of Hackney called De Beauvoir Town in honour of Richard de Beauvoir who in 1640 bought up a large amount of local farmland.  Further down the track in the nineteenth century a keen descendent began to build houses on the land which was fortunate for women like Sinead, intent upon becoming owners of acceptably priced Victorian properties.  We both agreed that her father would have been extraordinarily proud of her and perhaps more than a little bit envious because his own ambition had been to become a London property owner.  The closest he came to fulfilling the dream was the acquisition we made together of a tiny basement flat in Cloudesley Square, Barnesbury and even then financial constraints forced us to sell it within a year.   

Now in mid 2022 it was from the house in De Beauvoir Town that I set out again and again on journeys of re-discovery.    And once more, somewhat predictably, I demonstrated to myself that I was still unable to come to terms with the death of the man I had been married to for forty-eight years.   Again I walked the streets in tears and conversed with him, fervently wishing that the last year of his life could have been lived with less pain.  And on a daily basis I berated the son who had caused us so much misery by ignoring the terminal illness and then the death of the father who had loved him so much -  and I lauded and was thankful for the son and daughter who demonstrated on a daily basis their deep regard, their love and their care and concern.

Over those three months we made pilgrimages to his favourite pubs, in total forty such excursions and from time to time we wondered which had been our own favourites, in finality deciding upon The Old Mitre, The Princess Louise, The Cittie of York, The Black Friar, The Mayflower and The Barley Mow.    And of course we went to the restaurant in Maiden Lane that had meant so much to both of us – Rules.   In fact, ignoring the expense, we went there twice.   

I was in the final weeks of my visit when we at last spoke of the London scattering of ashes.   We walked at dusk to the Holy Trinity Church in Cloudesley Square, comfortably bounded on all sides by Georgian houses where Sinead had made a ritual visit at the time of his death armed with candles and melancholy memories.  And as previously she determinedly provided a link with Patrick in Auckland via her phone and the wonders of modern technology.   This final dissemination felt like completely losing him and it was gruelling though I was comforted by Sinead’s assertion that we had now created a physical place where it was possible to stop by and reminisce about his life and that part of him would always be there.

Gordon James Harris, an ordinary man, came into our lives at a time when he was sorely needed, when I was in dire need of someone to depend upon and Patrick just four years old, longed for a father.  He more than fulfilled all our hopes and expectations.  He was an exemplary husband and father and became dearly loved and greatly respected.   His daughter’s resolve, her relentless organisational skills have allowed us to ensure that his mortal remains have been deposited with certainty in the places he would have most wanted to be.

A week or two ago when I returned to New Zealand I was oddly cheered to see that the pale wooden box that had once contained his ashes was still in place on the rarely used cane tea trolley.  I can still reach out and speak with him at will.

Too Much Time in the Midday Sun ...?

Those of us who take up residence in far flung and sometimes obscure places in what remains of the British Empire and beyond undoubtedly all too often leave our fractured hearts back in Nottingham, Bristol or Brighton or in my case Central London.   We are therefore apt to bore others with endless comments concerning the benefits and virtues of life back in the Old Country under Wilson, Thatcher or Blair and others equally notorious from the past.  And we fail to notice the lack of interest in the eyes of patient and less than patient listeners.  

And analogous with various characters in stories by W Somerset Maugham despite the hankering to return to the places of our birth many ex-citizens of the UK opt somewhat strangely to stay on in the suburbs of foreign countries for far longer than we need to or expected that we would.   This in itself irks those of our acquaintance who so frequently comment one to another that there was nothing to stop us from buggering off back to Birmingham years ago if we really wanted to.    These are comments of which we were invariably blissfully unaware.

   It all adds up to a syndrome that those who lived their lives in India prior to 1947 would immediately recognise.   Essentially we stay put because life in our adopted country is frequently more comfortable than the lives we left behind.   We understand how everything works for example and we really appreciate little things like the Winter Energy Supplement when the Government chips in to help pay our power bills during the coldest months of the year.   We are grateful that we can generally access an appointment with our local doctor, often on the very same day that we apply, often at the time of our choice and we are thankful that half price taxi fares are on offer to those over sixty five who for some reason cannot manage the buses and have long since stopped driving.   So we put the Returning Home decision on the back burner for yet another year or two.

Then there comes a time when we begin to examine those choices more closely, observing that whilst the current residents of London, Leeds and Cardiff are loudly proclaiming that their weekly trip to the supermarket is costing far too much, we feel and have just commented in texts to friends and acquaintances that groceries seem astonishingly cheap compared to the prices we have become accustomed to in our adopted corner of the globe.  On the other hand petrol appears to be jarringly costly and some hardy souls who dare to air their opinions on talk radio allege that it now costs very nearly one hundred pounds to fill the family car.    We decide they must be exaggerating on a grand scale and are thankful for the more moderate fuel prices in Sydney, Auckland or Papua New Guinea.   We note that people discuss the fate of those who fail to pay their television licence fee, are told that occasionally this criminality might involve a prison term – and we make little comment but wonder if that information is totally accurate.

Prison sentences in general seem far more punitive than those we have so effortlessly become accustomed to so it is easy to imagine a monstrous fate awaits the unfortunate pensioner reduced to pilfering at an Ecco shoe sale or using inter-city trains without a ticket on a return journey to the Old Country. Perhaps the streets of London and Liverpool are not paved with gold after all.

 Noel Coward might have inadvertently uncovered the germ of the consequences of staying in foreign climes for decades.   It is never a good idea and undoubtedly clouds the judgement to spend too much time in the Midday Sun.   The Return Home requires more thought than we might have imagined.  

Language Lost ......

When I posted a photo on my Facebook page the other day, posing alongside a Cloudesley Square sign I noted that it was harking back to the past and it evoked precise comment from one reader.  In the mid1970s we lived at No 6B, five of us crammed into a tiny basement flat. At least three of us were under the age of ten and therefore took up little room but the remaining duo were definite space users.    Even I had become accustomed to occupying large areas after several years of New Zealand living of course and the little London apartments that once seemed not only normal but desirable were suddenly cramped and miniscule.  

But it’s not space that’s under discussion at the moment, but language and specifically that language we have lost.   And we discard and eliminate words and phrases effortlessly over time without giving too much thought to the process.   Hark, Harken, Harking peppered the conversation of my mother and aunts, undoubtedly passed down to them by their own mother.   When observing the early speech of my own daughter during those Cloudesley Square days when she was still a one year old infant intent upon understanding the intricacies of confining straps and escaping from her push chair, everything that she disliked she loudly described as being Bum!  My own mother commented somewhat disapprovingly that my own first words in 1941 had been the more genteel Hark Whatz Dat? In response to the approach up the Thames of a terrifying drone of bombers.  She managed to make it sound as if I had cleverly chosen from a random vocabulary I had somehow been born knowing rather than responding to her own World War 2 anxiety. It was a time when the Constants, young and old rarely used the word Listen.

Not only did they Hark and Harken, but they often went Abroad when simply leaving the house, were Afeared, Learned someone something rather than taught them, were up and about Betimes rather than early and frequently gave Short Shrift when they deemed it necessary.  A broken cup might be described as Asunder and stolen goods definitely Fell Off the Back of Trucks.

Old Nan, always reliably profane, described those she judged to be lacking in intelligence as Thick As Pigshit and those with a streak of meanness as reluctant to Give Their Shit to the Crows, and when in a less disrespectful mood relatives and neighbours might be Slippery as Eels, Blind as Bats or Eating like Pigs.

Uncle Edgar was often Sold a Dog, found situations preposterous enough to make Stuffed Birds Laugh, Made Tracks when he was about to Make Himself Scarce and once or twice Smothered a Parrot when rapidly downing a glass of alcohol.   Less colourfully his daughter Daphne as late as 1980 Killed Two Birds With One Stone, Let the Cat out of the Bag and frequently felt Under The Weather.

The lad my cousin Pat married when she was only sixteen because she turned out to be No Better Than She Ought to Have Been, was described as being decidedly Thin On Top by the time he was in his late twenties.   Meanwhile my more sophisticated cousin Margaret who Did Well For Herself and therefore dropped a great deal of the vocabulary she was familiar with in her earliest youth except for describing those who had recently died as Having Passed Away.

Exposure to years of BBC radio and later a great many hours of TV, my own mother slowly began to relinquish the old speech idioms of her North Kent youth and my brother was less likely to be Bootless and I was no longer in danger of Driving Her to Bedlam or Colney Hatch though she always hung onto the fact that both of us were Economical With the Truth which at least was accurate.

Old Nan, however, even in her dotage often was guilty of doing things Thrice because she had become a Blithering Fool and a Laughing Stock and she always preferred the term Eventide to evening.   

A Belief in What is Unbelievable

I don’t know when I stopped wholly believing in Father Christmas but even as a very young child I only half accepted the idea of a benevolent personage dressed in that eye catching ermine trimmed red robe careering through the night sky pulled by a team of reindeer.   Naturally enough I certainly wanted to believe but my faith was only ever half hearted.   These were just thoughts never voiced aloud and openly for fear of upsetting my mother who to all intents and purposes appeared to believe in the myth herself.   I didn’t care as much about my father’s hurt feelings.  Anyway it’s hard to be a true and steadfast believer when you’ve stood in Gravesend market in early December whilst your parents thumbed through second hand Rupert and Toby Twirl Annuals and discussed in whispers whether they would be suitable for you.   It might of course eventuate that they ordered and paid for the Christmas gifts then sent them off to Father Christmas for delivery like some kind of international postal service but it seemed unlikely.  It was Alan Spooner who came up with that idea and it was hard to take seriously much of what he said simply because he had a definite reading problem and lagged well behind the rest of us when we had Reading Out Loud around the class.  In any event it seemed prudent to allow the adults in my life to have their secrets no matter how improbable they might seem to me.  

We didn’t have the Tooth Fairy in our family and that was probably on account of my mother having so many siblings and my father being raised in an orphanage.   It could have been a most expensive exercise for my maternal grandparents and would have surely needed a sponsor if multiple visits to the orphanage in Chatham were to be carried out.   My cousin Pat said only Toffs had the Tooth Fairy anyway but there were a few children in my class at St Botolph’s who I knew to have a firm relationship with her (back then fairies were to me always female).    Maureen Bowler was one of them but Pat maintained she came into the Toff category on account of her father being a primary school teacher.  I could never quite make my mind up about Maureen but it was clear the teachers viewed her differently from the rest of us, speaking to her with a kinder tone and paying more attention when her hand shot up to answer a question which it tended to a great deal of the time.   They treated Helen the vicar’s daughter similarly but I don’t quite recall if I was ever aware of her Tooth Fairy status and I’ve forgotten how frequently her hand went up.   The majority of us who lacked any position at all with that munificent dental sprite unkindly labelled those receiving sixpences for their expelled teeth as Babies.  

By the time we reached the age of eight or nine we were ambivalent when it came to a belief in Witches because they were at a surface level ordinary women, old with stringy grey hair, who were simply likely to own black cats and these days you might even say they were just part of a Special Interest Group.   We knew it wasn’t necessary for them to wear black conical hats all the time and use broomsticks for transport.  And even in the unenlightened days of the late 1940s we were aware that some of the Magic involved might even be for the greater good of the community.  Jennifer Berryman said that her grandmother’s neighbour was definitely a Witch and always used the buses but added a little hastily that she only worked Really Good Magic.   Sometimes Witches were easily recognised by the houses they lived in and Kathleen the red-haired daughter of the couple who kept The Queen’s Head on The Hill once swore me to secrecy before disclosing that the cottage directly opposite the pub definitely housed a Witch and added that she once saw her taking off on her broomstick from the roof.  I found that very difficult to believe but I didn’t say so at the time.   When I asked my older cousin Margaret whether she believed in Witches she said it was an old-fashioned idea and nobody with any sense thought they were real.  

On the other hand where the paranormal was concerned, when it came to Ghosts we all seemed to hold an acceptance and certainty that they existed and even walked among us.   At any age we were likely to catch a glimpse of a family member or neighbour who had departed from earthly life and these sightings, though often unsettling were rarely commented upon negatively.  My mother and aunts regularly told each other stories of communing with the unfortunate siblings recently succumbed to TB who sometimes reappeared and gave advice with regard to the babies they had left behind.  And for years my mother was inclined to talk about that terrible time following the death of her beloved fiancé, Fred, who should by rights have been my father and what a comfort it had been when he came and stood at her bedside at night and told her not to mourn him.  Decades later my younger brother, then almost grown to adulthood claimed to have had a long conversation with our dead father who appeared to him in his army uniform on the night his own son was born.  Because I only half believed anything my brother said I reserved judgement on this incident whilst nervously hoping he would not also choose to make a similar visit to me.   Unlike others in the family I never quite reached a state of nonchalance regarding apparitions.

We showed a definite eagerness when it came to a faith in the predictions of Seers and Soothsayers and at any age were keen to patronise the latest fairground clairvoyant.   All my aunts looked forward to the annual Fair that for a number of years visited the local Northfleet parks before deciding to favour Gravesend because of some kind of Falling Out among the promoters.  Despite the inconvenience of a longer bus ride they queued up outside Madame Desiree’s striped tent with eager regularity, each opting to pay for both hands plus the crystal ball.   I was destined later in my life to be astonished by the accuracy of a range of predictions emanating from one Madame Sandra then working out of a small office in Oxford Street.

During the chunk of the twentieth century during which I grew up it would be fair to say that the working classes were familiar and comfortable with those who predicted the future not simply on a personal level.  Francis Moore, responsible for producing what was known as Old Moore’s Almanack had been himself born into poverty in Bridgenorth in the 1660s.  His Almanack published from 1697 became enormously popular.   Despite his humble beginnings he became a self taught physician and astrologer and eventually served at the court of Charles the second.  His early publications seemed to cautiously revolve around weather forecasts and even my illiterate grandmother claimed that folk swore by them.   Even the rather less familiar Nostradamus was a prophet well known to my mother who was fond of announcing that he had known all about Adolph Hitler and what a pity it was that the World did not heed his warnings.  

 Guardian Angels were definitely a popularly accepted idea among children in the 1940s and 1950s and frequently credited with saving them from danger and injury.   Roger Ribbins’ mother told all and sundry, including the local newspaper that her little Roger was being looked after by his Guardian Angel the day he hurtled from the top of the cliff and into the adjacent chalk pit and yet had astonishingly been able to get to his feet and want to carry on with the boisterous game that had initially put him in that dangerous position.  In these infinitely more forward thinking days of Health & Safety and common concern there might be more questions posed as to who had allowed little Roger and his friends to cavort on the clifftop in the first place and why more safety measures had not been installed to prevent such an alarming experience.  To be fair my mother voiced similarly judgemental comments at the time of the accident, adding rather uncharitably that she thought that any Guardian Angel detailed to keep an eye on the Ribbins children would definitely have his work cut out.  All things considered it would appear that there is rather less need for Guardian Angels in these first decades of the twenty second century.

More of us aligned ourselves with religion in the middle years of the last century even if we did not hold a totally firm conviction that God was real.  My older male cousins, especially Les and Young Harold were apt to ridicule me if I announced a belief in God and say I was Soft in the head to believe such rubbish and Aunt Mag never once reprimanded them which made my mother give them very cold looks.  Whether or not we accepted the existence of the Almighty all of us aligned ourselves firmly with Christian precepts and when asked which religious line of thought we followed unhesitatingly answered Church of England or Catholic or Presbyterian even if we regularly declared that the idea was nonsense.       This flexible attitude allowed us to pay little attention to Church attendance if it proved to be inconvenient  yet at the same time look kindly upon ideas like Re-incarnation and should an elderly relative die at around the time a new family member was born, the new child was often named for and cheerfully spoken of as some kind of second coming of he or she who had passed.

Overall it was a time when as a society we were loath to entirely dismiss matters esoteric, possibly even viewing such ideas as a kind of primitive intellectual glue and aid to understanding difficult concepts.  And perhaps that is why there was a reluctance to upset our parents by passing on negative ideas like a lost faith in Father Christmas.  

As time passed some of us came to the conclusion that there is something about the human condition that makes us as a whole extraordinarily susceptible to the acceptance of incongruous notions, very often belief systems that we know instinctively to be false or, worse still that ordinary common sense dictates are false.   It is no doubt this that allows us to be hijacked from time to time by those who would have us move in a specific direction and take on ideas that we know to be monstrous yet lack the good sense to say so until it is too late.   Once an outrageous idea has its tentacles firmly in the group consciousness and the accompanying dogma is nicely settled in concrete we might begin to whisper one to another that we don’t actually Believe …… but of course by then it is too late.    Hopefully not too much harm is done.