Indelicate & Unseemly Knowledge

In the late 1940s in working class families generally speaking the adults around us imparted no information whatsoever about puberty or sex and we knew better than to ask questions. It may have been different for the middle classes but we, who knew our place in society, relied mostly on facts gleaned from local twelve year old girls who might have started to menstruate and couldn’t keep quiet about it, or those who had an older sister, married or about to get married or, even better, a newly pregnant sister, unmarried and still young enough to pass on a detail or two to those younger still. It was Joan Bedford, daughter of my mother’s closest local confidante, who told me what could possibly happen when mothers and fathers retired nightly to the marital bed. She was pink with excitement at the thought of passing on what she had recently learned. `Do you know what your Mum and Dad do when they go to bed?’ Our mothers sat drinking cups of tea at our kitchen table. `No – what do they do?’ I was only half interested because without the stimulus of other children, Joan was a very boring playmate. `They DO one another!’ she whispered, leaving me totally confused. When I belligerently demanded to know what she meant, Joan was more than eager to enlighten me. `Your Dad puts his willy into your Mum’s belly and that’s how you get babies. Men really like doing it but women don’t – they hate it but they have to do it if they want babies!’ Joan was breathlessly thrilled but I told her that it sounded most unlikely to me and then added, just in case, `Anyhow, I knew that already.’ The sad fact was that my understanding was so minimal I was not going to be easily convinced. Could it really be true? To test the information, a day or two later I passed it on to Brenda Stewart who said she did not believe me because she knew perfectly well that the midwife had brought her baby sister, Judy – she’d seen her unwrap the newborn from her bag. So I relayed the news on to Milly Foreman who said she didn’t think that was quite right but she would ask her older sister June if she could get her by herself. Later she came back with the startling news that a couple who wanted a baby first had to make an appointment with the Doctor. We debated what the purpose of the visit to the Doctor might be because Milly did not actually know. June had been vague. We decided between us that the most likely scenario was that he would blindfold the young husband and wife, so that they could not see as that would obviously be indelicate if the genitals were to be involved, then he would engineer whatever act was necessary – possibly even that described to me by Joan. That was that for the time being so I was totally unprepared for my parents’ joint verbal assault on me a day or two later as I wandered in from school. My father must have been on either an early or a late shift as he was in the kitchen painting a door, then drawing a metal comb through the wet paint to make extraordinary patterns. The effect was not unpleasing but the general atmosphere in the room was distinctly hostile. I looked from my mother to my father and nervously asked if anything was wrong and my stomach began to churn. What had I done? I asked again what was wrong. `I think you KNOW very well what’s wrong,’ My mother said at last. I stared at her at once fearful but uncomprehending whilst rapidly going through all my transgressions of recent days and wondering which one it was. Did they know I had kept the collection money I’d been given for Church? Or that I had thrown the new blue woolen and much hated Pixie Bonnet knitted by my mother away over a Springhead Road garden wall, and that it hadn’t been stolen by another girl at school? Did they know I had said Shit and Bugger twice to Peter Dyke during Silent Reading when he insisted on grabbing the book I wanted to read? My father combed wet paint furiously and did not look in my direction. `If I thought for one moment she had said that I would give her a beating she wouldn’t forget for a month,’ he told my mother. Whatever iniquity I was guilty of it was obviously Bad! I became dizzy with dread and black fingers of sick panic clawed their way from my stomach into the back of my throat. What terrible thing had I said? My mind raced as I tried unsuccessfully to recall everything I had said to everyone I knew over the past week. `Well what DID I say?’ I sounded like a whimpering animal even to my own ears. My mother maintained that I already knew what I had said and her cheeks were red-spotted with anger. My father nodded agreement, and the metal comb scraped painfully on the wood making classroom blackboard sounds. For once they were ominously in total accord so it must be a sin of truly gigantic proportions but my memory still failed dismally to recall it. I began to cry. `I don’t know what I’ve said – I truly don’t know what I’ve said.’ She fiddled with a milk bottle top on the table and straightened the sugar bowl, and looked as if she was struggling to even voice the depraved offence, finally demanding, `Did you tell Brenda Stewart that when grownups go to bed at night they DO one another?’ A bombshell! So it was true after all. They actually did engage in that unlikely act no matter how unlikely it had seemed. It had to be true or the re-action would not be so terrifying from them both. I felt hypnotized with horror. My unfortunate mother hated doing it but she did it anyway so that my brother and I could be born, and presumably my father, like all men, actually liked doing it. How could he? I was overwhelmed with disgust and decided there and then that nothing was ever going to induce me to do it and I would simply adopt babies in the unlikely event that I ever wanted them. I wondered if God really understood what these grubby grown-ups did when they retired for the night and if so why He did not do something to stop it. He of all people should be able to think up a more acceptable way to bring babies into the world. I said firmly, `I did not say that and Brenda Stewart is a dirty liar! But of course Brenda’s mother had already angrily confronted them both with the facts of the matter, dragging a tearful and protesting Brenda with her. She no longer wanted her Brenda to have anything to do with me. Brenda, it turned out, was being brought up properly and must not be contaminated by the likes of me who everyone knew was a child with a dirty little mouth. Not for the first time my unfortunate parents were advised to do something about me. Undeterred, I continued to lie. I told them Brenda was lying in order to protect Joan Bedford because I had heard that Joan Bedford was saying that kind of disgusting thing at school to people though I most certainly did not listen to filthy things like that and I would never, ever pass such information on to others. My father looked at me with distrust and and repeated that if he thought for a single moment I was capable of saying such a thing I would get the thrashing I deserved. My mother said she would most certainly investigate via Mrs. Bedford but all the same she thought it more likely it was me who was the liar. `Your trouble is that you lie all the time,’ she said, `And that’s why you’ll never have any real decent friends because you’re a born liar. Nobody will trust you.’ I could think of no cogent argument because this was true. `Well perhaps,’ I retorted furiously, panic subsiding a little now as I began to realise that establishing Joan Bedford as the possible initial culprit had introduced a lifesaving seed of doubt, `Perhaps it’s just possible that nobody in this house sets a very good example where lies are concerned.’ I astonished even myself with this sudden burst of daring. As my mother’s open hand flew towards my face, I ducked and she was only half successful. I was a little cow, she said, and what on earth did I mean. I looked meaningfully towards my father even though I knew that as far as duplicity was concerned my mother was no saint herself. Strangely, he had turned his attention totally to the half painted door. I wondered what he was thinking. He did not say anything more and seconds later, to fill the silence, began to whistle. A few days later I was in Joan’s back yard watching her dog Lily, newly delivered of puppies, feed them, something my mother would not normally allow because I might ask awkward questions about birth. In fact she was half correct and I might have done so a year earlier but I was now nearly nine years old and knew better than to discuss the arrival and subsequent suckling of new life, even puppies, with adults. I strained to hear what was going on through the open window. But when the what-grownups-do-in-bed story was repeated to Mrs. Bedford, she seemed to receive it far more sagely than my own parents, and said that kids picked up a lot of things they shouldn’t these days and maybe it was best to ignore it. Though she hastened to add that she did not believe for a moment that her little Joannie would have said such a thing, or if she did, she certainly did not understand what she was saying. Later, whilst pretending to practice times tables, I listened as my parents further discussed the episode. My mother said that although she still had a lot of time for Mrs Bedford in her opinion that youngest Bedford girl knew far too much and was just a bit old fashioned and this unfortunate situation wasn’t helped by knowing all the ins and outs of the bloody dog and the bloody puppies. It just wasn’t natural. My father looked towards me briefly and away again when I met his gaze determined not to blink. He said something vague in agreement. I was up to the eight times. I chanted a little louder, a little jubilantly. So I had been granted a stay of execution – even an unofficial pardon – a reprieve! I resolved that In the future I would be far more careful about passing on unusual snippets of information just in case they turned out to be true and part of that raft of indelicate and unseemly knowledge I was too young to be privy to.

Approval of Obesity

Let me state here and now that I was once what was then generally known as a Fat Lump. At sixteen I was decidedly overweight and on only one occasion made the horrifyingly embarrassing mistake of getting on the `I Speak Your Weight’ machine at Charing Cross Station. The memory makes me shudder. It seemed to me that I was fighting flab for years and I often claimed that I could gain weight on a diet. I’m not sure now how true that latter contention was, but I do remember saying it. Once upon a time it simply was not a good thing to be fat and not so very long ago either. Thankfully I lost the weight dramatically, suddenly (long story not for today) and though I would like to say that from then on I never looked back that would also be untrue. I tend to gain weight very quickly and easily but these days I seem to have less trouble losing it. When I was still running school holiday courses for children as recently as 2006 I can recall being advised by those who knew best to remove an image of an overweight ten year old on our advertising leaflets because it `sent the wrong message’. I took the advice. So it was with some scepticism that I began to take note of the Embrace Fatties trend that is firmly taking hold in this part of the globe – and I am sure elsewhere also. New Zealand is host to large numbers of large people of course and as every local schoolchild is aware, in some Pacific Island communities Big Is Beautiful. The Oldest Son reminded me quite recently that here in God’s Own Country, we long since ceased to argue about that. He said I would get used to the trend then he added that not so very long ago we all had to remember not to use the term Mongol and keep up with how we were now required to refer to African Americans. He further pointed out that excess weight is a disability like having no legs. Nevertheless the hasty manner in which we are being primed for not just Acceptance of the Obese, but Admiration also is a little too rapid for me. Overweight twelve year old boys waxing lyrical about healthy budget food cartons delivered to the family’s door pop up during commercial breaks on Prime Time TV, followed by travel ads fronted by larger than necessary young women cheerfully displaying their holiday wardrobe of huge and unflattering sundresses and the corpulent middle aged no longer make room for others on buses during rush hour travel. All of this headlong and reckless rush towards approval and approbation has been eclipsed for me this week, however, by an astonishing video clip on social media featuring a most unfortunately obese teenage ballet dancer. Even more bewildering are the comments made by one viewer after another, applauding, boosting and encouraging her. Maybe I’m simply becoming a crabby and cantankerous old crone – after all it would be true to say that I still grapple with same sex marriage so it could be that a confidently rotund teen proudly pirouetting will never get my vote.

Cataract Surgery...A Very Sad Saga

One way and another, Eyes have been to the forefront of discussion lately with me. Even The Skin Man politely enquired about my recent eye surgery as he menaced above me with his gadget that dispenses icy and agonising horror to oust alien skin blemishes. When I finished telling him and he had stopped looking slightly bored he said cheerfully, `Well, if something like that’s going to happen, you can be sure it will be to a doctor’s family.’ Then he added, `He probably feels worse than you, and there I had to agree with him. Later I told The Husband that the overall level of interest from friends, family and those considering eye surgery themselves, deserved a blog update and he murmured something but didn’t look up from his book which probably meant that he wanted to take a break from the subject. So, further to my initial post on Sunday 2nd October 2016 (See: A Very Nearly Uneventful Case of Cataract Surgery….) the situation four months on is that things have definitely not progressed as well as I had hoped. Vision for reading and computer work is now greatly improved but vision for driving (my greatest concern), watching TV, navigating the aisles in the supermarket and even seeing across a room is definitely not good at all. The Eye Man calls it a Refractive Surprise which makes it sound almost like something from a restaurant dessert menu. He explained that this particularly unhappy Surprise is an outcome for only a small percentage of patients and added that it certainly renders my distance vision as `less than ideal’ to which I could only enthusiastically agree. The problem seems to lie with my Axial Lengths and The Eye Man has shrewdly noted (and I can’t help wishing he had noted this earlier in the saga but there again perhaps I am just being picky) that these are on the short side. This shortness coupled with something called the Intraocular Power of the particular lens used being moderately high, has resulted in an outcome that neither of us wanted and The Eye Man is just as upset by this as I am. Correction: his level of distress probably outstrips my own judging by the manner in which our previously cosy relationship has crumbled. His acute disappointment on my first post-operative visit at the end of last year has been compounded further by the fact that he has more recently discovered a second quite separate problem that also only applies to a small percentage of unfortunates. It involves something called Clouding of the Capsules which I cannot say I altogether understand and did not like to enquire needlessly for clarification on account of the level of The Eye Man’s obvious pain concerning my case. I just tried to give him as much support as possible during what is clearly a harrowing time for him but it’s not easy because he has rapidly gone from smiling, charming and chatty to scowling, indifferent and distant and when he can bring himself to speak, I even thought I detected a note or two of hostility. On the other hand that might simply be my inbuilt paranoia. The Husband is wont to remind me forcibly and frequently that I do have a tendency towards obsessive distrust in some matters. To solve the problem of the initial Surprise (regarding Refraction) The Eye Man was at first going to insert a further lens that he assured me would correct the error. That was immediately cheering! A week or two later he seemed to have abandoned that plan and instead arranged for me to see his friend over the road, John The Optician. A contact lens in the offending eye was the new plan until Stability took place. John, happily far less hampered by disappointment in my plight than The Eye Man, said that if I preferred it, old fashioned glasses for driving could be organised and even be tinted for glare. I did prefer it. So there the matter rested until The Eye Man and I met once again recently. Over the summer break the glasses worked reasonably well for driving, and also for TV watching if I remembered to bring them up from the car. However, I believed this to be an interim measure and all in all I was very much looking forward to seeing The Eye Man once again, confidently expecting he would perhaps suggest laser correction similar to that he offered to a friend who had surgery on the same day with a similar sad result. She also had mid distance problems for which his prompt laser surgery seemed to work wonderfully well. I’m not sure about the Length of her Axials of course and my own unfortunate Shortness in this regard might mean that this particular fix is just not feasible for me. On all this, I determined to consult The Eye Man’s expertise and experience. Sadly, in the event he was clearly too distressed for in depth discussion on the matter, and I could not bring myself to heap more problems upon him Nevertheless, despite his obvious angst he did valiantly manage to remind me a fair number of times that I had been warned about all the possible negative side effects of cataract surgery and that some people simply fell into those Small Percentage Categories and that furthermore I had made Choices on the basis of the information he had helpfully provided. He used the word Choices a good deal. He also reminded me that I could now see well enough for reading and if I actually needed to drive I had the glasses from John the Optician. He pointed out that it had been my Choice to turn down what he now called The Contact Lens Trial. This sounded significant so despite misgivings I did summon up the courage to say (as gently as possible) that John The Optician seemed to be of the opinion that whether I chose the Contact Lens or the Glasses was beside the point because the outcome would be the same. As John was clearly the expert in this respect I decided to believe him and simply made another Choice. The Eye Man had his back to me now, silent once again and observing his computer screen. I rashly took the opportunity to ask a question pertaining to the whole unhappy business of my surgery. Would I have had a happier result perhaps if something more simple than the ultra-complex and costly Symphony Lens had been used? He answered at once `No, not at all,’ he said decisively and turned to look hard and meaningfully at me, adding, `You made that Choice remember – just as you made the Choice about the Contact Lens Trial’ and I began to imagine that his tone was slightly ominous. This was clearly no time to burden him further and after all, this wasn’t All About Me. To be fair, just before I left he did tell me that if laser treatment was found to be necessary in the future, when things had Settled, he could in fact actually do it for me if I wanted him to OR I could have it done through the Public Hospital System. The good news is that he plans to see me again in one year. I’m really hopeful that he will be feeling far less fragile by then; and if not, then there’s always the Public Hospital System isn’t there?

The Afternoon Tea Party

For several weeks following the death of our father, my four year old brother, and I were given treats by the neighbours and generally approached with care and even caution, presumably due to the possible emotional trauma we were suffering. Bernard was simply confused, having not been told that his father had died and I was under strict instructions not to enlighten him, my mother feeling the best way forward was that he should simply forget he had existed in the first place. This strategy was unwise and was to have a profound effect upon him in the future but for the time being, unused to treats being lavished upon us, we revelled in the attention. We were invited to tea by my father’s foreman from the Cement Works who had a family of two slightly hysterical girls called Brenda and Sylvia, and two foster sons called Kevin and David. They were what my mother called `Good People’ and attended a Methodist Chapel regularly. We were excited and more than a little anxious. Being invited out to tea was not something we were accustomed to. Dressed in our best clothes, we walked the two kilometres from York Road and I had to hold Bernard’s hand all the way. It was a bitterly cold January day but there was a cheerful fire in the Foreman’s living/dining room which was impressively quite separate from their kitchen. Theirs was an upper working class terraced house but with a little front garden and a narrow entrance hall. I was only too aware how badly our own home environment compared and would have cheerfully had my finger nails pulled out to have lived in such luxury; imagine coming home to a house with an entrance hall and thus not having to walk directly from the street into the front room! Furthermore I later discovered this lavish residence also had an inside toilet in a real bathroom where little pink fluffy towels were available if you happened to want to wash your hands. As I was not in the habit of washing my hands after visiting the toilet I did not use them but instead tried to imagine the indulgence of never having to don coat and scarf before traipsing forth into the backyard on winter nights. There was a freshly ironed blue and white cloth on the table and it was set for six – the two excitable girls, their young foster brothers and we two. A plate of bread and butter was in the centre and beside it a little dish of strawberry jam with a spoon, another plate of assorted biscuits and pieces of homemade gingerbread and in the very centre of the table, in pride of place, six chocolate tea cakes wrapped in silver paper. I knew what they were because I had often longingly examined them in their tempting red and white boxes in Trokes’ corner shop, and at the Co-op. My mother never bought them because they were, she said, `too pricey’ but occasionally opted instead for a more substantial Lyons Individual Fruit Pie which could be cut into sizeable portions and still feed three. We two sat at the table more than a little ill at ease because of our excitement. It was just like being in a Noel Streatfield story. Bernard was offered bread and butter with jam which he unhesitatingly turned down in favour of gingerbread and biscuits. I had read enough about this particular social situation to know we were meant to begin with the bread and butter option and so, glaring at him just a little, I did, working my way methodically towards the gingerbread and biscuits. Bernard was asked if he would like another piece of gingerbread which he refused. Would he perhaps like a chocolate tea cake the hovering foreman’s wife asked? He nodded enthusiastically and could scarcely get the silver paper off fast enough, then looked at the dainty morsel as if he could not believe his good fortune before beginning to slowly nibble around the edges. The rest of us began a stilted afternoon tea conversation about the latest Enid Blyton book that Brenda was reading, all the while taking glances at the miscreant in our midst. I was torn between fury towards him for letting me down on the very first occasion in my life I was invited out to tea, and anger at myself for not warning him in advance about social etiquette. Of all this my brother remained blissfully unaware. One of the boys pointed out that it wasn’t fair to get a chocolate tea cake without eating any bread and butter. He was quelled by a fierce look from his foster mother and in the interim Bernard’s progress around the edges of the teacake had become rapid and he was already licking odd bits of chocolate from his fingers. `That was very nice’, he remarked conversationally and shook his head when offered biscuits or more gingerbread. Meanwhile even whilst engaging in conversation, all the host children except Kevin had demolished the required amount of bread and biscuits and were tucking into their own chocolate tea cake. I joined them. One solitary silver wrapped cake remained in the middle of the table, now eyed anxiously by Kevin. The host mother urged him to hurry up and began to take off her pinny and fold it, cheerfully asking if her two guests would like something more. I shook my head. Bernard was now sitting on both his hands, his cheeks slightly red, a smear of chocolate on his chin. He paused for an agonising two or three seconds and then to my extreme horror said loudly, nodding towards the centre of the table - `I’d like that tea cake please’. She gave it to him immediately whilst Kevin began a howl of protest, `But that one is mine – it’s mine – it’s mine.’ He was ignored by Bernard who hastily ripped off the covering and began to cram it into his mouth before she could change her mind. Kevin threw himself on the floor and crawled under the table, continuing to cry loudly. David swung to and fro on his chair making baby noises. The two girls looked wide eyed and shocked, mouths open. I wished a hole would appear in the Axminster carpet for me to disappear into. I had never in my eleven and a half years of life felt so utterly humiliated and let down – imagine having a brother who ate the last tea cake! What could possibly be worse? On the way home I did not hold his hand. `Why did you ask for the last tea cake?’ I demanded to know as we reached the corner of Perry Street. `Because I wanted it,’ he said unhesitatingly. Through gritted teeth I snarled that it was obvious he wanted it but that eating the last teacake simply wasn’t done. `Why not?’ he wanted to know. I considered giving him some extended punishment but in the end thought better of it. Probably as he grew older and learned to read proper books with chapters, he would begin to understand the rather complex social rules pertaining to those who aspired to join the lower middle classes and thus be invited out to afternoon tea where exotic items like teacakes were served in the first place. It had begun to snow on the way back and when we got home there was a huge fire in the kitchen. `Well did they give you a good tea?’ our mother wanted to know. Bernard said, `Yes, it was good. They have different jam to us – it doesn’t come in a jar - it comes in a dish…….and they have chocolate teacakes in silver paper. I ate two of them and I kept the paper.’ He pulled several wrinkled and creased pieces of silver paper from his pocket, placed them gently on the kitchen table and began to examine them reverently. I was astonished to find my eyes filling suddenly with tears. I bolted upstairs before either of them noticed.

York Road Revisited

By the time I was eight years old I was already thoroughly mortified to admit that I lived in York Road, Northfleet. You could say I was an eight year old elitist or simply a snob. This attitude was not helped by a steady diet of Enid Blyton books from the local library where the child characters, when they were not actually rushing about the countryside in horse drawn caravans solving mysteries, dwelled in detached houses with garages alongside. Even before I held a library card I had realized that some children, including local ones, lived a completely different lifestyle to us and our York Road neighbours. The local doctor for instance, who ran his surgery from his home on nearby London Road. De Warren House was a rather grim Victorian building which seemed impossibly tall and grand to me and whilst I was urged to be good and quiet and wait patiently for our turn, the doctor’s children could be clearly heard, and sometimes even seen, being decidedly less good and definitely less quiet. Even as a pre-schooler I envied them their freedom and their rowdy confidence. Life in less salubrious areas of Northfleet was of necessity quite dissimilar, the very communities coming about as they did out of a sudden jolt of economic expansion. In the nineteenth century this thrust forward had led to the speedy creation of suburban London and an unprecedented demand for the supply of building materials to the capital. The long abandoned mines of North West Kent, some of which dated back to medieval times, were admirably positioned to meet this demand. The Thames and Medway Rivers and the rapidly expanding rail network provided an easy route for movement of materials and so the area between Lewisham and Sittingbourne was subjected to massive opencast excavation of chalk for the cement and clay needed for the yellow bricks that built most of Victorian London. So it was that our little corner of Kent was created. Sleepy Thameside fishing villages were abruptly displaced and redesigned for the purposes of industry. Victorian `new towns’ such as the environs of Northfleet High Street and Jeremiah Rosher’s extravagantly named Rosherville began to host rows of hurriedly erected worker cottages. Northfleet’s cherry orchards at Huggins Fields, first planted at the behest of Henry VIII himself were said to have been swept aside during this period of change and this was when the village at The Hill reluctantly became part of a small but well developed township itself uneasily poised between the extremes of that which was urban and that which was rural. And this uncomfortable position still remained when I was growing up in the nineteen forties and fifties when the older people reminisced about collecting watercress at Springhead years before and their own parents gathering cherries where Huggens College Alms Houses now stood. They shook their heads and wondered at the rural idyll seemingly so recently lost. They also spoke of dene holes and told elaborate stories of the ground collapsing beneath them as they played as children, how one child simply disappeared into the earth and was never seen again. The very siting of some of the rows of terraced housing did nothing to ease the underlying feeling of instability, perched as they were at times on narrow ridges of land between the once again abandoned pits, and interconnecting passages beneath. York Road was lined on both sides with identical cottages built in eighteen forty and we lived at number twenty eight for a weekly rent of eight shillings and sixpence. The original colour of the bricks had long turned to an unappealing sludge grey. Each dwelling was of the two and a half rooms up and down variety, the half being the scullery extension into the yard at the rear and the attic directly above it that was too small to act as a bedroom. Downstairs was the room entered directly from the street known as `the front room’, and the kitchen beyond it. Between them was a narrow steep staircase leading to the bedrooms above. In the kitchen was a coal range of the type much admired these days by beautiful young people struggling into their first homes. In other words certainly not a greatly coveted Aga but nevertheless better than nothing and looking a little similar to the untrained eye. Most of the cooking was done on this range, roasts and jacket potatoes cooked in the oven, and of course proper toast at the front grill as long as the fire was right. A gas stove had been installed in the miniscule scullery at the rear not long before the war in an effort to modernise, but this device was only rarely used. The scullery also had a big stone sink and a `copper’ in which the weekly wash was done once a fire had been lit underneath. The wash was churned up and down by hand with a copper stick that was not of course made of copper and later I wondered at the terminology. Big bars of yellow Sunlight soap were used and little bags of `blue’ which apparently and inexplicably kept the sheets white. In the very early years of the war, some houses still had to collect their water from communal taps in the street even though most of the pipe work had been carried out to run water into each scullery and it must have been a great day indeed when the work was finally finished. Even when the thoroughly modern up-to-the-minute gas stove was in use occasionally on a Sunday morning, the scullery was always cold, presumably because of the stone flagged floor and the gap between the bottom of the door and the flags where the wind whistled mournfully through. Once a bat must have somehow accompanied that gusty airstream and hung in the corner above the copper and would not be shifted no matter how hard my mother tried. Eventually my grandmother grabbed it with her bare hands and threw it out of an upstairs window. Bat or no bat, and raging gale notwithstanding, the scullery was where the once weekly bath took place. The aluminium or `tin’ bath was taken from its hook on the outside wall of the scullery, pots of water boiled on the range and everyone in the family took turns to luxuriate in soap suds – often that very same `Sunlight’ that served the family wash. My mother was baffled by those who would extravagantly use `toilet soap’ as an aid to bathing. Between 1940 and 1945 we were a family of just two so the water remained relatively unsoiled. The Smiths of Shepherd Street would have had a greater water pollution problem on bath night, there being nine of them. I now wonder if they were forced to change the water half way through. Our front room was only used at Christmas or when extra special visitors came such as a visiting priest and it was always very cold. For years it served instead of a refrigerator as far as food storage was concerned. Jellies could be set in a mere hour and the butter always remained firm, the milk cold, and leftover meat could be safely left for days. It, and both the bedrooms above each had a fireplace. A fire was always laid in the front room `in case’, but the grates upstairs were permanently empty, the only time they came close to a fire was when someone was ill. I can recall one in the back bedroom when I was four years old and had pneumonia and certainly a cheerful blaze in the front bedroom seven years later a day or two before my father died. The lighting was by gas and little lamps stuck out from the walls of each room, close to the chimney piece, the scullery and attic having no `laid on light’ at all. The gas and electricity was metered and fed with shilling pieces into the meter in the coal cellar. If the gas `ran out’ and you were short of the correct coins then you found a candle, relied on the light of the range fire or sat in the dark. I loved the soft yellowness of the gaslight in winter, and shivered at the exciting shadows it cast across the walls. Electricity on the other hand, burst forth and lit up every corner of each room, even the scullery, and it seemed to me to lack magic. Quite the most inconvenient thing about the house in York Road was the convenience itself, situated as it was in the yard at the back beyond the scullery. Our `lavvy’ had spiders in all corners and of course no light. There was a candle in the corner for those intending to spend more than a minute or so late at night. Torn up newspapers on a length of string hung on a nail on the wall and when they ran out it was either a case of remembering to take a piece with you or suffering the indignity of calling for help. Adjacent to the lavatory, high on the wall, was a meat safe with a mesh door. The only other structure of any significance in our yard throughout my childhood years was the Anderson shelter which later became a shed where my father kept his motorbike. I now recall these details of 28 York Road with melancholy affection but when I lived there I was humiliated and ashamed of each and every aspect of the place longing as I did to escape into the security and protection of the middle classes.

Remembering To Hate The Greeks

One Sunday afternoon a black taxi swung around the corner into York Road, scattering the big, rough boys like John Dyke and his cronies who were playing marbles in the gutter. The boys ran beside the car as it slowed and finally stopped outside our door, right in front of me sitting sedately on the doorstep reading a book, which was just about allowed by my mother on Sundays during her bouts of pursuing upward social mobility. There was to be `no racing the streets of a Sunday just like it was any old day of the week’. A car coming to our house? Surely not! Out of the taxi stepped three plump women in fur coats, impossibly high heels, and small velour hats each adorned with a feather and a veil. Two were old like my mother and the fattest one was very old like my grandmother. They shrieked at each other in a foreign language as the driver was paid dramatically, with a white five pound note, the first I had ever seen and much fuss was made about the change being handed over in notes. Then they checked the numbers on the doors either side of our house, now surrounded by the interested group of boys who had somehow been joined by a couple of mothers who tried to look nonchalant without much success. I kept my eyes as far as possible on The Further Adventures Of Worzel Gummidge whilst paying great attention to their shoes. A pair of puffy ankles in silk stockings wobbled towards me and I was tapped smartly on the head with a hand laden down with rings. Her nails were an unseemly length and colour for her age. My Nan never grew her nails and my mother’s were bitten to the bone. `And you must be dear little Jean….’ My name came out all wrong from her mouth and sounded more like John. A wonderful aroma pervaded the air around her; this old lady was so impossibly glamorous I was struck dumb and could only nod but by that time my mother had appeared on the doorstep behind me with `….I think you must have come to the wrong place – who are you looking for?’ They told her they were looking for `dear Bernard’ and as Nellie tried to narrow the door space, my father also appeared and then all three of them threw themselves forward and covered him with kisses. I had never seen such a public display of emotion and could only gawp, my mouth open. Later my mother was to describe this scene as disgusting and maintain that their behaviour `turned her stomach’ but at the time she, like me, simply stood and stared. By this time the three women were inside our front room, now suddenly made smaller by the sheer volume of their combined furs and the pervasive fragrance emanating from them was stronger than ever. Inside our house! Strangers simply did not come inside our house. Only family and the occasional close acquaintance were ever allowed over the threshold. Strangers were kept firmly on the doorstep but somehow or other these three alien women – foreigners to boot – were actually inside our front room, the older one by now had settled herself on the arm of the sofa with a kind of thud, her fur coat opening at the front to reveal a shiny red frock that seemed to me so beautiful it could have been a bridesmaid’s outfit made for a very stylish wedding. At some stage in the next few minutes my mother ushered me upstairs, pulled my grey skirt and pullover off me and out of the wardrobe came the lemon cotton summer dress recently bought at Gravesend Market that was supposed to be saved for going to church and for visiting. I was hastily re-dressed – clean white socks, hair brushed. She fluffed up her own hair, dabbed some Velouty for Beauty on her cheeks and pushed me downstairs again. The three women were still in the front room, now all seated with coats off, hats still on, the younger two also garbed in bright silk and adorned with strings of glittering beads. They perched on our drab and dreary 1930s three piece suite with easy self assurance like a clutch of exotic birds, filling the room with an unfamiliar thrill of excitement. I began to observe them with growing enthusiasm, already rehearsing the stories I was going to tell the girls at school about their glamorous lives. My father had recovered his composure and was talking animatedly. My mother’s mouth was set at a grim angle. One of the younger women hugged me and told me I was a `beautiful little girl’ and greatly heartened by this I asked her if she thought my new dress was pretty and added that I was wearing it because she was a very special visitor. My mother pinched my thigh painfully as I said this and told me to speak when I was spoken to and not to interrupt grown-up conversation. The woman who my father said was my new Aunt Philomena, told me that my dress was very lovely and she was humbled that I should wear it in her honour, and that of her sister (my new Aunt Mariella) and her mother who was not an aunt but a Madame Something Very Foreign. I became much more chatty at this stage and told my new Aunts that they were wearing the most beautiful dresses I had ever seen (except at weddings) and they must have come from very expensive shops and they all laughed and again said how truly sweet and clever I was. My mother then called me into the scullery to `help’ her make the tea and hissed: `…you just button your lip for once or I’ll give you what for after they’ve gone!’ So I reluctantly buttoned my lip and with very bad grace because there were so many questions I wanted to ask. Who were these extraordinary women and how could it be that they knew my father so well? Just how did he get to be on such obviously good terms with foreigners who dressed in silks and furs and paid their bills with five pound notes? Later in the afternoon I was sent across to Troke’s Corner Shop because they were the only people for miles around with a telephone, to ask them to telephone for a taxi to take us all into Gravesend to the Nelson Hotel where they were staying and where we were all going to have a cooked tea! Only my brother was to be left behind, with Mr. and Mrs. Bessant next door. The Trokes were very interested. Who are the three ladies? How do they know your Dad? Are they friends of your Mum as well or just your Dad? Did they write and tell you they were coming to visit or was it a lovely surprise? I was thrilled to provide information that was later to incense my mother and truly make her `blood boil’. `The three ladies come from a country called Greece and they’re my new aunts.. They met my Daddy during the war. They’re just Daddy’s friends – not Mummy’s. Their visit is a lovely surprise!’ For the very first time in my life I rode in a motor car. A huge black shiny taxi that had to make two trips to get us all to the hotel. The old lady with many dramatic gestures insisted on paying for it. The excitement mounted as we sat in the hotel lobby whilst one of the new aunts negotiated a table in the restaurant for us all and a chair with a booster cushion for me. My mother, by now changed into her Sunday best black taffeta dress, also worn for funerals, her black Cuban heeled shoes and wearing crystal beads, looked more and more miserable. My father in his demob suit looked somewhat overconfident and strutted a little saying he had heard the food at the Nelson was extremely good to which she responded in a loud stage whisper that she wasn’t hungry and anyway her stomach was churning and she wouldn’t be able to keep a thing down so to tell them not to waste their money on her. The restaurant was quite the most dazzling place I had ever been inside with tapestry wallpaper and glass chandeliers and a very sombre atmosphere. The narrow tables were covered in starched linen cloths and each place was set with a considerable amount of heavy silverware. There were napkins rolled up and secured with silver bracelets. I had never seen such glamour before and I was entranced. I was allowed to choose what I was going to eat and was urged to choose chicken because it was very special and only normally eaten at Christmas time. Then I ate something called a Peach Melba which was a tall glass filled with tinned peaches and ice cream covered in a delicious jam sauce. A bottle of wine somehow appeared on the table which the foreign women shared. My mother of course only drank lemonade and my father ordered beer. Poor Nellie looked more uncomfortable than ever and sat mostly in silence eating very little. After a while the new aunts stopped trying to draw her into the conversation and instead reminisced with my father about things that had happened during the war when he had apparently, been great friends with them. Sometimes they spoke in their own language – and sometimes even my father spoke some of this strange language! They began to bring photographs out of their lizard skin handbags and these were scrutinised with care over cups of Nescafe coffee. There was a lot of laughter and as it grew dark and the evening drew to a close, there was also a great deal of kissing and hugging and tears from the younger women. We did not go home in a taxi. We waited for the 496 bus and while we were waiting it began to rain a soft, seeping drizzle that relentlessly soaked through our Sunday best clothing. My mother kept up a non stop diatribe in a low voice, waiting at the bus stop, on the bus, on the walk down Springhead Road, all the way home. `I never thought I would live to witness the day you would show me up like that. Shown up I was in front of the `ole street, in front of all me neighbours. I’ll never be able to `old me `ead up again after wot you’ve done. Fancy `aving to put up with yer `usband’s fancy pieces coming and knocking on me door – and on a SUNDAY if yer don’t mind! And not just one of them – three fancy pieces- THREE! – three tarts all dolled up in fur coats and silk stockings. And the way they carry on! All this kissing and cuddling in front of people! `ow `ave they bin brought up that’s wot I’d like to know. You’d catch things from trollops like that. And the old girl as well – sixty if she’s a day and all dolled up like a spring chicken.. I’ve never seen the like of it in all my born days. And on a SUNDAY! I can’t get over the nerve of them – coming into my `ouse, stepping on all me mats, without so much as a please or thank you. Coming into me front room and sitting on all me chairs in their fur coats and their silk stockings and their painted fingers!’ After the visit of trio who came to be known as The Greeks and who never visited again, the relationship between my parents got much worse, the arguments and insults more frequent, my mother’s tears more or less constant. She never had to be reminded to hate the Greeks and as the months passed I often thought about the strange new aunts in their bright shiny frocks, their high heeled shoes and the heady, piquancy that wafted about them, a fragrance tantalisingly reminiscent of both bluebell woods after a violent rainstorm and heavily spiced bread pudding fresh from the oven. The neighbours asked me about them: Old Mrs. Bessant next door – `Has your Dad heard any more from those Greek friends of his dearie?` Mrs. Bedford from across the road – `When are your foreign relatives coming to visit again?` Mrs. Troke from the corner shop – `Has your mum had any news from those friends of your Dad?` And to each one of them I replied: `We get letters from them every week and next summer I’ll be going all the way to Greece for a holiday at their big house.` Whether they did send letters or not I cannot recall but I do know that my mother deftly steamed open a fair amount of mail before resealing it and placing it in front of the mantelpiece clock. Sometimes my parents did not speak to each other for days and my father would come back from his shift to be greeted with a vacuum of quiet. His dinner would be placed before him, eaten quickly, then he would wash and change and disappear `off for a walk’ and he stopped taking me, or even the dog, with him.

Visiting The Corner Pub, A Very English Custom

There was a time decades ago when, young, impressionable and much in love, I sat enthralled at the feet of one Vidar L’Estrange and listened attentively to his many informative stories some of which concerned how he faced life as an eighteen year old newcomer from Germany after the war intent upon studying first English and then perhaps medicine. At least half of his edifying accounts involved episodes he thought I would find fascinating that occurred in his family such as how his mother’s first husband had regrettably died on the honeymoon and what led to his paternal grandmother to go to Paris to become a follower of nineteenth century magician Eliphas Levi. Others were directly personal accounts - how he starved himself out of the German Army the previous year or how he reacted to his initial introduction to the quintessential English Pub. Apparently Pubs as the English know them certainly did not exist in Germany in the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties. He had been in South East London for one week only and under strict instructions from his mother to always behave well, when the motherly Mrs Morrison with whom he boarded in Sunnydene Crescent said that her husband and oldest son would be visiting the local Pub after tea and added that she thought her young boarder might like to accompany them. Vidar’s English was still not entirely fluent and so he asked for clarification as to what exactly the `local Pub’ was. She said it was a Public House and was called The Star Tavern. Her Boarder was confused and not a little shocked at this further information and even more so upon hearing that the men in the family `usually visited the Public House on a Friday and Saturday evening after tea’. However, the men were by this time bundling themselves into their coats and caps and waiting politely for him so he felt he could do nothing else but join them. He felt compelled to tell them, however, that he would wait outside the establishment rather than go in with them. Mr. Morrison said, `Not even one drink then?’ but Vidar was firm and said he would rather not and was happy to simply wait. The reason for his reluctance to join them inside was not because he was completely averse to alcohol but rather because the term `Public House’ in direct German translation became `The Brothel’ and the fact that these Londoners so casually visited their local bordello on Friday and Saturday evenings after tea was immensely shocking to him. Furthermore, that there seemed to be such establishments conveniently placed on every corner scandalized him and he wondered how the decadent British could possibly have won the war. He stood outside and peered fearfully through the window at the bar where now more than a dozen men between the ages of twenty and seventy stood and ordered pints of beer. He imagined this would be to occupy them while they waited their turn and marveled at their nonchalant attitude, their casual banter, their jokes and their laughter. This could never happen in the suburbs of Berlin or Munich even under the worst excesses of Adolf Hitler. The crowd at the bar grew thicker but every few minutes one of the customers would leave his pint unattended and head up the stairs in the corner of the room where an arrow pointed the way to the WC which the watchful Vidar decided was something to do with where the wantonly degenerate and now very busy woman could be found in some room above and her services engaged. He noted that even the septuagenarians headed up the stairs and that their absence from the bar was longer than that of the younger men which he felt from his so far brief encounter with medicine, was only to be expected. To his continuing horror even though he had fully expected it, his landlady’s husband and son also mounted those stairs when their turn came. Later when they emerged from the Public House into the growing darkness of South East London they seemed to have not a hint of shame about them. Mr Morrison even slapped him on the back heartily and said that maybe next week Vidar would join them inside The Star Tavern rather than waiting without in the cold. And Vidar for politeness sake said perhaps he would but felt compelled to add that he would simply stay downstairs in the bar and drink a pint of beer. Mr Morrison nodded but looked confused so Vidar told him firmly, `I will not be going upstairs to the WC,’ then added by way of explanation, ` because my mother would be very unhappy if I did so.’ Years later when he told this story, Vidar was still discomfited by this youthful blunder with regard to the very English habit of regular visits to the Pub and in all the years of my devotion to him, never all that keen to patronize them.