A Postscript On Kentish Pubs

In recent years when back in my home town of Gravesend trips down Memory Lane invariably revolve around a great many pubs and churches. When I was a child an inordinate amount of time was spent in buildings that were definitely holy and those that were decidedly less than sacred. Perhaps not much has changed in the intervening years. I can recall going on a Sunday afternoon outings to Chatham, where my father grew up under the watchful eyes of the nuns at the children’s home, a town to which he was inextricably drawn from time to time. We would set out on an expedition of the narrow streets via motorbike and sidecar and very occasionally the outing might include a visit to the TRAFALGAR ARMS, an inn on a hillside out of town. My father said the place was once run by a woman called Jane Townshend who always dressed as a man and fought at the Battle of Trafalgar. Whether this story held any truth or not was immaterial to me at the time – I was more than willing to believe it. On these trips I was exhilarated to be riding pillion, my mother crouched into the sidecar with my brother on her knee, looking fearful. No compulsory protective headgear in those days which only added to the thrill of the occasion. Even more frequent were visits to the nearby village of Cobham where I am certain that the LEATHER BOTTLE at the time catered to families with a small room set aside for those with children. It was a dramatically old and beamed pub that had apparently first opened in the mid sixteen hundreds and had been a Royalist meeting place during the Civil War which was thrilling because at that time all girls like myself, under ten years of age, were automatically on the side of the Royalists. Each time we went there my father gave me the same little lecture about Charles Dickens incorporating the place into `The Pickwick Papers’ which of course I had not as yet attempted to read, and when I went to the toilet I was interested to stop every few seconds to admire the old prints that lined the corridor walls. Cobham Village must have been on the Dover to London stagecoach route and appeared to be one of the main stops. In my early twenties I took to patronizing the place once more and at that stage it was less convivial with large notices informing would-be-customers that young women wearing mini-skirts were not welcome inside. Nearby was the DARNLEY ARMS which claimed to go back as far as the twelfth century and was said to have a secret tunnel in the basement connecting to a building close by where smugglers stored their booty in the seventeen hundreds. I was told the place was haunted by Sir Thomas Kemp who was executed for some crime and spent his last hours there. My father was fascinated by tales of North Kent smugglers and from time to time took me with him on excursions tracing their general history. Once we went to Conyer to a place called the SHIP INN which overlooked a straggling creek and area of marshland and he said that battles took place in the vicinity between the gangs of smugglers and the Bow Street Runners. A number of the smugglers were caught and then they were either hanged or transported to the Colonies. One of my most favoured trips was that which took place fairly regularly to the village of Cooling where we always stopped to visit the church and gaze upon the thirteen little humped graves that featured in `Great Expectations’, the very place where terrified Pip met the convict. We sometimes admired the HORSESHOE & CASTLE from the outside but I don’t believe we ever went inside the place. Years later I returned regularly to Cooling with my own children, drawn always by those sad little graves in the churchyard. At one stage in the late nineteen forties we set off in a different direction to Dartford where we met an aunt or two at the WAT TYLER in the very active town centre, a building that was actually said to have been lived in by Tyler himself and where he planned the Peasants’Revolt of 1381. Said to have opened as a pub a few decades later, it seemed to be a long narrow, dimly lit place with no facilities for children so along with a number of cousins, I played on the busy footpath outside, the game of hopscotch impeding the progress of passers-by. From time to time we went to the VIGO at Fairseat on the North Downs Way and watched the locals play a strange and ancient game called Dadlums which seemed to be a kind of table Skittles. It was an imposing coaching inn between Tonbridge and Gravesend and later, my cousin Margaret upon her second marriage was lucky enough to live for a number of years in an equally imposing house nearby. One of my favourite Kentish towns was then and is now most certainly Faversham where over a couple of hot summers in the late nineteen forties we visited the ALBION TAVERN with its conveniently placed picnic tables outside, the BEAR INN where an unfortunate twelve year old boy was said to have been taken by a naval press gang and never seen again and the wonderfully named SWAN & HARLEQUIN outside of which I played happily for an hour or more with some local children. I now wonder what gossip, if any, was engendered by the casual and regular abandoning of young children outside the ale houses of Kent. It’s unlikely that the practice would be viewed kindly in these more enlightened times. These days it seems that children of all ages are more than welcomed within the walls of even the most upmarket hostelries. As my own children are now well beyond that particular definition, I’m not sure that I find this prevailing acceptance that under twelve year olds should be welcome in every area of our lives much of a step forward. But I expect that’s simply because I have become a Grumpy Old Woman!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Like all children growing up immediately after World War Two, Christmas was less a time for being showered with expensive toys and more a time for church-going, early evening carol singing under lamp posts and partaking in seasonal treats such as mince pies, tangerines and candied pineapple. Despite the lack of material things once the celebration of Guy Fawkes was over in early November, we turned with great determination to the celebration of Christmas, greatly anticipating the excitement that was soon to be ours. In Northfleet at St. Botolph’s School on The Hill we were by mid November deep in rehearsal for the annual `Show’ to which parents and friends were invited and by the first week of December lessons were halted for thirty minutes each day to allow us to make the two minute journey into the fourteenth century Church next door in order to practice the order of carols chosen for the end of term service. We sang the same pieces each year - `Once In Royal David’s City’, `The First Noel’, `It Came Upon The Midnight Clear,’ `Hark The Herald Angels Sing’, `Oh Come All Ye Faithful’, `While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night’ and `Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem’ and how easily the verses slip into memory even now when I hear the initial refrain of each. And there were times when one or more of the traditional carols were also sung at the end of year concert though the event I remember best was the one where Betty Haddon sang `Alice Blue Gown’, Pearl Banfield and I headed a group dressed as Crinoline Ladies in crepe paper costumes to dance a waltz and a contingent of the noisiest boys marched across the makeshift stage maintaining that there was `A State Of War On The Nursery Floor’ whilst banging drums contrived from old biscuit tins. The excitement was intense. Then, quite suddenly school was finished and it was home to new Council Houses with fires in `tiled surrounds’ for the luckiest among us and back to the tiny workmen’s cottages where the heating was pre-Victorian for the rest of us. Strangely we did not seem to notice how poor we were at Christmas, theoretically the time when it should have been most obvious, so powerful was the excitement of the impending celebration. On Christmas Eve the Salvation Army Band toured the streets for the final time and we donned coats and scarves and stood under the lamp on the corner of Springhead Road to listen before being ushered indoors once more for mince pies with cocoa for the children and a tot of cherry brandy for the grown-ups. Later my father would take me to Midnight Mass at the Roman Catholic Church where I happily shunted off my term-time St. Botolph’s Anglicanism and once again became a devout Catholic child both fascinated by the high drama of the Mass but bored at the same time because it went on far too long. He in his overcoat, demob suit and white silk scarf intent upon appraising any woman under thirty attending alone, was always in a good mood whilst maintaining an air of studied piety. At this time of year both the Parish Priest, Father O`Connor and a clutch of black-clad nuns made a fuss of me and told me I was a good child, hoping to lure me back to the school in Springhead Road and on one occasion I was given Rosary Beads, ebony and silver. At the end of the mass there was generally a little Christmas time conversation between the attending congregation during which my father was able to chat with the piano teacher from the top of Springhead Road and both the Murphy sisters who ran the Brownie pack next to the Library, hands nonchalantly in the pockets of his overcoat and laughing too loudly at their jokes. Of course all children woke at dawn next day feverishly excited at the thought of what Father Christmas just might have brought with him and we were never let down because he always did bring something. One year I recall a red plastic dolls’ tea set from a stall at Gravesend Market, and another a delightful pile of second hand `annuals’- Rupert Bear and Toby Twirl. Breakfast on Christmas Day always began with mugs of sweet tea, laced with whiskey even for the children though I have absolutely no idea how and when this particular tradition began. There always followed a range of festive snacks including the essential candied fruit, nuts and tangerines all so fundamentally part of Christmas that to this day the slightest hint of a tangerine or satsuma aroma instantly flings me back over decades to the late nineteen forties. Christmas Dinner was served fashionably late, certainly not before two in the afternoon and was always a stuffed and roasted capon, mashed and roast potatoes, sprouts and a salty brown gravy followed by home-made Christmas Pudding and a white cornflour sauce heavily sweetened. My parents drank beer with this repast and my brother and I were deliriously excited to be given lemonade, exactly as if we were in the children’s room at a local pub. We stayed up late and listened to the radio and on Boxing Day we went visiting either to Crayford to my mother’s family or to Waterdales to my father’s, either way it was something I looked forward to because among my many cousins there was sure to be one who had been given a second hand bike or even a passed on china doll as Connie-on-my-father’s-side was one eventful year. Although my relationship with my father was still fraught with difficulties, these were largely happy festive seasons during which we sensibly drew a truce. This was all to change dramatically in 1951 the year he chose most inconveniently to die on twelfth of December just a few days after an afternoon of Christmas shopping in Gravesend with my mother. This was the year when quality toys began to reappear in shops and there was to be a Junior Meccano Set for my four year old brother and an Art Compendium for me. These were facts we knew because he had been saving judiciously since Guy Fawkes. We were not actually told, however, that he had died although at eleven years old I was aware that his face had suddenly become far too yellow for his own good. The Thursday morning when my mother ran to the corner shop to the nearest telephone, I hovered in the doorway of their room and studied him strangely anxiously and noted the over-yellowness against the white pillow slip, newly changed for the impending doctor’s visit. He opened too-yellow eyes momentarily and made some inconsequential comment about me not being late for school and that was the last time I saw him, the last time he spoke to me. There followed the strangely embarrassing situation of neighbours calling in giving gifts to my brother and myself, boxes of scented handkerchiefs, Mickey Mouse Soap, chocolates. None of this felt quite right and people were speaking far too quietly. A parent dying at Christmastime is distressing for everyone and the guidelines for how to deal with it are sparse. The subsequent Christmases were melancholy affairs even though my mother without fail always provided half a bottle of cherry brandy for mince pies, a small bottle of whiskey for tea and lemonade to drink with the roast chicken. Sometimes there were colouring books for my brother and often sensible socks and underclothes for me. When he shuffled off his mortal coil so precipitously that year when I was eleven and Bernard was four, our father deftly changed for ever the Festive Season, forcing us each year that followed to appraise and examine indeterminate ghosts of Christmas Past as indeed I am doing at this very moment.

Bernard Hendy and His Very First Love

Since my brother Bernard died in April this year I have received a number of messages from those who knew him long ago, some of them school friends and some who grew up in York Road, Northfleet and the surrounding streets. Until now they have all been male friends, each saddened to hear of his death and wanting to tell me what a surprise it was, or relate details of an incident that springs to mind when they think of him. A day or two ago quite out of the blue I was greatly surprised to hear from his first girlfriend. They had each been sixteen at the time of their relationship, an intense romantic liaison that greatly concerned my poor mother and undoubtedly her parents also. She was a very pretty young girl and Bernard was so very proud of her and extremely keen to show her off, especially to me as I was seven years his senior and he saw me as sophisticated beyond belief. Living in my London basement flat and working in Murrays Cabaret Club in Soho at that time I undoubtedly saw myself in the same light! I can remember meeting with them both to sip gin and tonics at the Coach & Horses on The Hill at Northfleet where none of the Sunday bar staff seemed unduly concerned as to their obvious youth. At that time Bernard was quite convinced that their future was inextricably joined and that he and she would adore each other for ever. Sadly that did not quite happen though he never forgot her and often in the years that followed, spoke of her with a great deal of affection, exhibiting a fondness that clearly irritated both the women he finally went on to marry. Bernard was four years old when our father died and had little memory of him though he floundered emotionally throughout his life because of the loss. In the years that followed he grew to be very like him in many ways having inherited the same charm and charisma, the same generosity, the same disregard for truth and the same inherent weakness of will where attractive women were concerned. It was these last personality traits that got him into a number of tight spots at times and caused so much unhappiness to those who loved him. And throughout his nearly sixty eight years of life he was possibly loved rather more than he deserved, and admired and even respected, as his father had been before him. At sixteen, at the time of his first love affair, however, he was in many ways still diffident and lacking in confidence with a social awkwardness that would take a decade or two to entirely disappear. And since I heard from his first love, I have pondered on these things once again of course. What a pleasant surprise to hear from the young girl who knew him at the very beginning of his eventful journey through Life.

After The War....Forlorn Reminiscenses of Fathers Returning

My father did not feature in my early childhood and existed only as the photo on the wall, handsome, smiling, in his army uniform. Every night at bedtime I had to blow him a kiss. I knew that children had real fathers of course because even in wartime some still did; most though had what I suppose we would now call virtual fathers and that seemed a very satisfactory arrangement as far as I was concerned. He had been in the Eighth Army and his war was spent variously in Italy, Sicily and North Africa. He had loved the war and proved to be a natural soldier, rising rapidly through the ranks and though decidedly working class in origin was rumoured to be officer material. He was demobilised long after most husbands and fathers had returned and were back working again in local factories. He came back reluctantly with the aim of a rapid return to army life because what he really wanted was to become a `regular’. Towards the latter part of the war he had suffered some kind of medical condition, possibly Amoebic Dysentery which kept him in hospital for some weeks and afterwards convalescing for even longer. But he was spoken of regularly and from time to time there were letters and cards from him and once even an exciting parcel with dried bananas, dates and two dolls in strange costume. On VE day I was woken early, my mother waving red, white and blue hair ribbons in front of my face and jubilantly telling me that the war was over, all was going to be different from now on and my father would be coming home. This news, told to me again and again that morning as we drank our tea and ate our porridge, filled me with a great unease. Why was it so good that the war was over? The war just `was’. The war was what made life full of purpose. What was going to happen to us if it was over? And if everything was going to be different from now on was that necessarily a good thing? If it was true that my father was coming home what were we going to do with him? Would he live in our house, having his meals with us? Where on earth would he sleep? It might be better if he lived in the Working Men’s Hostel in Gravesend like some of the men who now emptied the rubbish bins. I had heard Joan Bedford’s mother discussing how good the conditions were there. Or perhaps he could rent a room from Mrs. Bessant’s daughter Ina who took in lodgers at Rosherville . Everyone said her `rates’ were reasonable. As days went on it became more and more obvious that my life as it had always been was definitely over and this was about to be celebrated in some style. On Saturday there was to be a street party with jelly and ice cream and little cakes with pink icing on them. Mrs. Robbins was making tray after tray of toffee apples. `My Dad is coming home!’ my cousin Pat told me as she and her mother tripped down our back yard path on the day of the party. Pat was going to attend the York Road party and I was going to attend the Iron Mill Lane one to ensure that we got plenty of partying. Aunt Martha was crying with joy and waving a telegram in my mother’s face, `My Paddy is coming back from Italy….I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. My Paddy’s never seen my little Pat….’ Little Pat Bounced up and down, anxious to be seen, but it transpired that was never to be as the next telegram received was one informing my aunt that her husband had been killed in a fall from an Italian roof whilst celebrating the end of the hostilities. I felt a bit confused and wondered if we would get a similar telegram and for a long time afterwards whenever I saw Pat I asked her about the outcome regarding the doll he had promised to send her from Italy and I couldn’t help noticing that her answers were always evasive. I had started school some months before my own father finally appeared and was, apparently, confronted by him when I emerged from the playground at 3.00pm. Instead of my mother, a strange man telling me he would take me home that day. I was not impressed and remained so for the next several years. He must have found life very difficult. I was the daughter he did not know. He had seen no part of my growing from baby to schoolgirl. He undoubtedly felt depressed, confused and inadequate and there were no army mates to laugh, joke or exchange trivial banter with, no camaraderie at all. In their place was a wife who had, after nearly six years of war, become used to managing alone and a suspicious and unlovable six year old daughter who clearly was not going to warm to him overnight. He had been plucked from trauma himself as a small child and brought up by convent nuns in a disciplined, clean and orderly environment. When they had finally tipped him out into the real world it had been harrowing but now the British Army had restored the order and regulation missing from his life for so long. He had reveled in the discipline, the good food, the regular pay and the respect that his rise through the hierarchy offered. His horizons had been greatly broadened now that he had seen the world and he was anxious for his family to join him in as rapid return as possible to army life. We too, would be able to see the world. He had undoubtedly had fantasies about introducing his family to a better life and was not prepared for my mother’s strenuous opposition which did not waver. Although he had many friends in the army, he now found it difficult to make friends. It was easy enough to exchange trivial conversation with neighbours but he had nothing in common with them and felt their values were empty. He was contemptuous of the bomb stories discussed with him. On a practical level in the army he had no money worries but now, if there was no possibility of returning, instead he had to find a job. He was reluctant to enter factory work. He disliked the appearance of the female factory workers in their turbans and peep toe shoes, their smoking and their `utility’ make-up. To him, in 1946, they compared unfavourably with women in uniform and after the initial euphoria of the welcome home from his many sisters-in-law, there was little sympathy for an ex-serviceman who did not immediately knuckle down to the mundane facts of life in post-war Britain. He resented the easy manner in which my mother now seemed to be able to manage household affairs and the fact that somehow her emotional dependence upon him had disappeared along with daily life in North Kent. To make matters even worse, having been exposed to Greek and Italian culture, he had developed a taste for foreign food and there had been an explosion of his intellectual development so that he was now intensely interested in art and opera. He took my mother to London to art exhibitions which were just beginning to reappear here and there. She was not totally appreciative. I had the greatest difficulty knowing what to call him and felt uncomfortable addressing him as `Daddy’ which was of course what both my parents wanted I clearly remember calling him `Uncle Bern’ once or twice because that’s what my cousin Margaret called him. Margaret remembered him fondly from before the war and delighted in his return. It seemed to me during that first post-war year that my father loved Margaret far more than he loved me and the feeling of him being a stranger persisted and subsequently always lurked beneath the surface of our relationship. Of course it did not occur to me that he would naturally respond warmly towards his excited niece with whom he had a remembered rapport and who ran into his arms eagerly; that it would be hard for him to feel similarly about the daughter who screamed hysterically when embraced. For the first few months of his return I insisted on giving his photograph on the wall a goodnight kiss rather than himself because I hated the strange, hard, stubbly feel of him and his constant presence in our house shocked and depressed me. I wished hard for him to go away again because the fact that my mother seemed to belong to him as well as to me was hard to comprehend. In so many ways he now became the prime focus of her attention and I was less important to her as he edged further into my place. He began to institute a number of rules that applied only to me. He insisted that I have a proper bedtime at seven o’clock, where once I had been allowed to sit up with my mother listening to the radio and drawing pictures as I did so. Now she seemed somehow perpetually pre-occupied with cooking him a `proper tea’ where previously we simply shared melted cheese on toast together. He tried very hard to take an interest in me but I rewarded this with suspicion. In spite of all the problems with flying bombs and broken sleep and streets from time to time demolished, the war that had initially deprived me of him, had offered a strangely comforting environment. People helped each other, I was a much cherished only child, my mother talked to me a lot, helped me with my drawings and taught me to write my name, read me passages from the newspaper and told me stories of her childhood. Despite the much talked of food rationing I don’t remember being hungry because bowls of porridge and slices of toast seemed plentiful enough. Once my father returned and life slowly got back to something akin to normal for the adults, things went downhill as far as I was concerned. Presumably he began to feel the same. He gave up trying to persuade my mother that life as an army wife would suit her. He got a job at the local cement works as a shift worker which meant that he was often available in the daytime to fetch me from school. This did not please me and so I began to maintain that I was big enough now, being seven years old, to walk home by myself. I said this with not too much conviction, hoping my mother would take over the collecting once more. She did not and so I ran the gauntlet of the dangerous big boys each afternoon. The big boys in my class, John Dyke, Billy Elliot and Peter Jackson struck terror in my heart. They were loud and untidy. They pushed each other into puddles, walked on walls and sang songs on the way home. There was no escaping them. They did not actually do anything to impede the progress of my daily journey from school to home but I was filled with alarm at the thought that they might. Each day I tried to be the very first one out of the classroom, streaking across the junior playground, towards home. My mother, always amazed at how quickly I covered the ground from school to home, advised me to walk `nicely’ with other girls like Milly Foreman or Joan Bedford. For almost a year, however, I declined to take this advice and continued my self inflicted training for the four minute mile. I was totally unaware that a far worse blight was on the horizon in the form of my baby brother. Just before my seventh birthday the midwife arrived and so did he – Bernard John Hendy, all nine pounds of him. My father came and collected me from playing in Milly Foreman’s yard at five in the afternoon and, bubbling with excitement, told me I had a baby brother and if I was very careful I would be able to hold his hand. He was upstairs in my old cot, beside the double bed which I used to share with my mother in the good old days during the Adolf Hitler years. I stuck my hand through the bars and was told to be careful with him. I could have cheerfully throttled him and indeed over the next few years tried to bring about his infant demise a number of times without any success. He became another close relative to despise because by now I realized that my dislike of my father was turning into something more tangible like hatred. My father was quite naturally immensely proud of my brother and could love him unreservedly as he noted every aspect of his growth from baby to small child. He was eager for him to grow bigger and stronger so that he could introduce him to the delights of fun fairs and country walking. His undisguised excited anticipation of the father-son relationship of the future filled me with apprehension and hardened my attitudes. He was a relatively devout man and went to Mass every Sunday if he was not working. My mother, whose attitude to the Church was an odd mixture of defiance and deference, generally avoided entering the building for anything other than a wedding or a funeral and certainly could not be accused of being pious. When it became clear that I had spent my first six years as a non-attender my father was horrified and quite determined to change all that. He took me to Mass himself as regularly as was possible, while my mother stayed home and cooked the Sunday dinner. The boring Sunday ritual did nothing to improve our relationship and I longed for Sunday shifts when he could only go to an evening service which was considered far too late for me. Ultimately I began to dread Sundays and that undercurrent of trepidation has stayed with me all my life. Because he had been brought up in an orphanage he had acquired basic standards of hygiene that my mother’s diddicai upbringing had been devoid of. He was shocked when he realised that I did not own a toothbrush and immediately bought me a bright pink celluloid Minnie Mouse one together with an even pinker tablet of Gibbs Toothpaste in a round tin. I hated the taste of it and rebelled immediately, telling him that my teeth would stay clean without all this palaver. Until he had reappeared in my life I had not known anyone who actually cleaned their teeth! Not only that, his horror knew no bounds when he found I had not been taught to wash my hands after visiting the lavatory and vainly tried to instill this habit into me, largely without much success. He took a great pride in his highly polished Sunday shoes and took to polishing mine for me which filled me with fury so that I took delight in scuffing them as much as possible on the way back from Mass. I had been accustomed to eating most meals, on my knee and with my fingers if I so wished, in front of the kitchen grate alongside my mother, listening to her chatter on either slandering her sisters or the neighbours and from time to time adding views of my own. Now he was back we had to eat sitting up at the kitchen table and I was compelled to use a knife and fork! My mother, for some rebellious reason which never became totally clear, had enrolled me at St. Botolph’s school which was Anglican although when discussing the matter by letter with my father before he returned, it had been agreed that I would of course be going to Our Lady Of The Immaculate Conception. He rectified this immediately and I was unceremoniously uprooted and told that I would love my new school. This lasted a few very miserable weeks and then for some reason, presumably instigated by my mother, I was returned once again to St. Botolph’s to my great relief. These disruptions to my life turned my dislike for my father into hard bitterness and accordingly over the next year my behaviour grew worse and worse although I was blissfully unaware of this and uncomprehending when it was regularly pointed out to me. It was in desperation I believe that he took to beating me. Now the beatings became more or less a regular event in my life. To me it seemed that I was thrashed for even the most minor infringement of the baffling rules – from the forbidden boiling of a kettle to provide a play bath for my doll to the strange incident where my two year old brother’s arm was apparently wrenched from his shoulder joint. Between beatings, however, he continued to make valiant efforts to build a paternal bond. He took me on day trips to London to visit museums and art galleries which except for the Egyptian tombs at the British Museum, I found relatively boring. He bought up large quantities of second hand books, mostly encyclopaedias but interspersed with Charles Dickens at auctions which I was, somewhat guardedly, more interested in but they were way beyond my comprehension which baffled him. He was what was in those days called a `womaniser’ and had over the years acquired a succession of female friends recruited mostly from the Gravesend & North Kent Bus Services, clippies with names like Else and Glad and finally one called Sadie of whom he become inordinately fond. As I have said he had a weakness for women in uniform. Despite this, however, I now believe he was basically a good man, eager to do his best for his family. Unhappily, because the war disrupted any vestige of essential social cement, his homecoming was never going to be a success. I have no doubt that many others of my age and background have similar sad stories about fathers returning to the bosom of the family.

Far Off, Long Gone Pub Sounds

When I was growing up in the Northfleet and Gravesend area of Kent in the nineteen forties and fifties, there seemed to be a pub on every corner and, unlike today, each of them flourishing. Although neither of my parents could have ever been described as dedicated drinkers, they seemed to spend a great deal of time on Licensed Premises. Some had what were called `Children’s Rooms’ where under eighteens were allowed to sip on orange juice or lemonade and flick through filthy piles of fly ridden Beano comics. If no such facility was available we simply hung around outside which was infinitely more lively. My mother always proclaimed loudly that she could not abide alcohol and told terrifying and possibly exaggerated stories about her own parents’ drunkenness which, if they were all to be believed should have resulted in neither she nor her siblings reaching adulthood. Later I learned that a couple of infants had indeed possibly died from being slept upon by a drunken parent. We had pubs of course where we as a small family group ventured on a regular basis but when visitors in the form of aunts, grandmother and numerous cousins descended we spread our patronage far and wide. I dimly remember The Black Eagle in Galley Hill Road near Swanscombe where my cousin Pat and I played hopscotch on the pavement and fought over a packet of crisps. That very same evening I seem to remember us moving on to The Plough in Stonebridge Road, or was it The Ingress Tavern? Some ten years ago The Plough still appeared to be open if memory serves me correctly. There were pubs aplenty in Northfleet High Street during those post war years – The Railway Tavern and the Edinburgh Castle being our most favoured with The Huggens Arms in nearby Creek Road, and The Rose in Wood Street coming a close second. Old Nan told a tale or two about a place she remembered from years past called The Blue Anchor that even then no longer seemed to exist and added that even if it did she would never `set foot inside the place’ and we assumed that she had at some time been unceremoniously ejected. Neither would she set foot inside The Little Wonder at 78 The High Street so presumably there was a story to be told there too. My older cousin Margaret liked to go to the Marquis of Granby or The Coach & Horses, both situated on The Hill, close by St. Botolph’s Church because then we could roam the churchyard that even then was derelict and offered all kinds of amusement. Infrequently we boldly entered The Queen’s Head at number 39 The Hill though my mother maintained they were `toffee nosed’ in there and she didn’t feel comfortable. When my father managed to purchase his first motor bike with sidecar (an Ariel I seem to remember) we embarked into new and to me until then unfamiliar areas patronizing The Bridge Inn and The Huntsman in Dover Road East and even The Six Bells in Old Perry Street. Occasionally we went to The Fleet Tavern in Waterdales and met up with my father’s oldest brother Uncle Walter and his wife, Aunt Lou. On such occasions I played sedately with my cousin Connie, fearful of the wrath of this particular uncle who ruled over his large family of mostly boys in a manner that was truly terrifying. At some stage in nineteen forty seven there was great excitement when The Battle of Britain in Coldharbour Road, Shears Green opened where there was not only a children’s room with lots of books to read but also a garden with swings. Some years later a local manor house appeared to be converted into the New Battle Of Britain and the old building was demolished. Decades on it seems that this iconic pub has teetered on the threat of demolition once more. On really special occasions when perhaps a wedding anniversary was to be celebrated, or Christmas was almost upon us we self-consciously entered The Tollgate Inn on the old Roman Road, Watling Street dressed in our best with my mother trying to appear as though frequenting such upmarket places was simply a daily occurrence. Public houses, Ale Houses, Beer Halls, Taverns - in those days these were, even for teetotalers, of necessity the centre of any community. Weddings were invariably celebrated in dusty rooms above the Public Bars as were engagement celebrations and sometimes twenty first birthdays. Theoretically we children were definitely banned from licensed premises but we were all totally familiar with the convivial though slightly tense bar atmosphere, the dark polished surfaces and mirrors with gold lettering in need of cleaning, the smell of stale sweat and yesterday’s spilt beer. We never seemed to patronize any of the riverside pubs between Northfleet and Gravesend such as The India Arms, The Half Moon or The Ship all along The Shore, or The Royal Charlotte in Dock Row or The Red Lion in Crete Hall Road. Later I learned that these were said to be the haunts of my father and Sadie the bus conductress over some months in nineteen fifty when his predilection for women in uniform appeared to be at its height. In the years following his death in 1951 my mother would avert her eyes from these buildings whenever we passed. Nothing would have persuaded her to darken their doorsteps. Strangely, neither would she ever consent to go into any of the pubs that were closest to York Road, where we lived. Never once did she sample a Half of Bitter or a Milk Stout in The Brewery Tap in Dover Road or the nearby Leather Bottel despite its antiquity and history, certainly not The Dover Castle, and under no circumstances, The Prince Albert in Shepherd Street or The British Volunteer in Buckingham Road. These latter two featured large in my life however on those Friday and Saturday evenings in summer when the crescendo of voices lustily joining in the last sing-song of the evening penetrated my bedroom enough to make sleep impossible. Undoubtedly those far off, long gone pub sounds somehow or other, for better or for worse became central to the sounds of childhood for a generation of post war working class children.

The Strange Resignation of a Prime Minister

Rozzie who has worked in the media for over thirty years rang yesterday evening with more than an edge of disbelief in her voice. `We heard that your PM has resigned – in the middle of the night too! What’s the story?’ I waited for a full five seconds before pointing out that to be fair it hadn’t been the middle of the night here. She ignored what I had hoped was irony and said that in her long experience of reporting what went on in the Hallowed Halls of Power, Prime Ministers just didn’t `up and resign’ at the very peak of their popularity and success; there must be more to it. I agreed I had heard the rumours too but it was hard to know what to make of them. The paedophile ring for instance. Believing the PM to be personally involved on a regular basis was tough, especially as its HQ was said to be in Dunedin which, when you came to think about it logically, was at least as far away from his home in Parnell, as Edinburgh was from her own bijou basement flat in West Kensington. The mere travel arrangements involved would be likely to offset much of the idiosyncratic gratification. I added that furthermore I didn’t give much credence to the more recent accusation that he had personally helped in the disposal of the bodies of two young men over the Huka Falls either. It was a decent drive from Auckland in the middle of the night for one thing. Rozzie asked if they had numbered among the Dunedin victims but I felt that was unlikely as they were said to be in their late teens or early twenties which hardly qualified them as children. After some discussion we both came to the conclusion that the claims revolving around the Dunedin group of lowlifes had in all probability emerged in the first place from somebody’s vivid imagination. `What about the financial decisions he’s been making to benefit his rich mates though?’ Rozzie rarely diverged from a core line of questioning so not for the first time I explained that I found it hard to believe he cared enough about his mates to make major fiscal choices on their behalf, and in any case if they were in the same league as himself they were probably wealthy enough already. I added that this particular PM was pretty bloody well off – so well off in fact that he chose to donate most of his Prime Ministerial income to charity. Rozzie was uncharacteristically silent for a while before saying in a voice that was almost deferential, `Blimey I never knew that – you would never get that from our lot over here.’ I then had to admit that you rarely got it from our own lot down here either but added, just to be honest, that there were still those who found a great deal to dislike about him and you only had to glance through social media sites to see that although the spite and venom that featured large was singularly at odds with the plaudits coming from the Real and much Wider World. She wanted to know what my own view was and I said that I was particularly non political and perhaps not especially qualified to comment but even so if she was pressing me I couldn’t find a great deal to fault him on. She said she was definitely pressing me so I added that his greatest strength in my own opinion, was that he was a polite man, slow to snarl and heap insults upon others; this seemed to generally distinguish him in the political arena. `What promotes all the odium from some then? There must be some basis to it.’ Again, she was nothing if not persistent and sounded genuinely mystified. Throwing caution to the winds I ventured that I had come to the conclusion that a great many of his opponents were only truly happy if they had a focus for their overall dissatisfaction with life and a popular Prime Minister often fitted the bill very nicely. Quite apart from all that, in a small country like New Zealand there were perhaps too many personal expectations laid at the feet of the PM. There was a tendency to want he/she who had attained this elevated position to behave more like a social worker than a leader on the world stage. Rozzie had to admit that there was little chance of expecting social-worker-like concerns from Theresa May or any of her immediate predecessors. As one who could distinctly recall the personal foibles of those from yesteryear such as Margaret Thatcher and even stretching as far as Harold Wilson and Harold MacMillan I found myself agreeing that very little empathy for the personal problems that beset the Little Man or Woman arose in much abundance from any of them either.

Kentish Rhymes & Coffee Dates

Met up with Jennifer yesterday in what remains of our usual city coffee shop that now appears to be part of a war zone, surrounded as it is by cranes and fallen masonry. We discussed, among other things blog merging (see https://jenniferbarraclough.wordpress.com), DNA, the town where we both grew up, eighteenth century pleasure gardens, the merits of the Honda Jazz as a reliable vehicle, how she learned to swim in the murky Thames and why I cannot swim at all. Jennifer had found a compilation of Kentish Rhymes assembled by John Alden hiding on one of her late mother’s bookshelves which she thought might make an interesting addition to my recent reflections on growing up in Kent. A fascinating little volume with verses relating to Blean, Ashford, Tenterden, Tonbridge, Maidstone, Sittingbourne and even The Hundred of Hoo. Nothing directly relating to Gravesend or Northfleet but one can’t expect perfection. Before we parted, she to the ferry across to Devonport and me to the Nespresso shop on the corner of Queen Street, we briefly commented on our most recent contributions to literature – her novella `Unfaithful Unto Death’ and my memoir of the 1960s, `In Disgrace With Fortune, neither of which are threatening to break records. Then she said comfortingly, `Well we never sell as many as we deserve to do we?’ - and of course we never do!