Page 1.

  


     Forward:


     I was there when it happened.

     I was there when the world radically changed direction and never looked back. When the lower leg width of men’s trousers, or the lack of it, became a sign of decadence, miss-spent youth, and the road to mortal sin. I was there the day the music was born.

     Actually, it was my Dad, Alfred Bradley, who set me on the wicked path to apparent damnation in the first place. As a boy of about 9, I was reading in the Sunday Pictorial (the Sunday version of the Daily Mirror) reports of how cinemas throughout the country had had their seats ripped up by strange, alien groups of young men in peculiar outfits of long drape jackets and tapered trousers described by the newspaper as ‘drainpipes’.

     They were dancing in the aisles (Heaven forbid), obviously doing the Devil’s work and generally creating mayhem. There were riots and fights with the police. Things were thrown, things were smashed, and voices were raised in protest. Policemen’s helmets rolled. People were punched. People were kicked. People were arrested. People had fun.

     In Britain, it all started with a film called ‘Blackboard Jungle’, about a high school teacher given the job of taming a class of renegade teenagers in a New York school. The teacher, played by Glen Ford, whose painful deadpan expression was enough to put the average jungle sized big cat off its milk, was thrown to the lions and not expected to survive. But then, Blackboard Jungle was nothing to do with jungles the way I understood them. It was a dreadfully over-acted melodrama; dark and moody; threatening, silly.

     The main thug addressed the teacher as: “Teach!” The teacher’s name was Mr Daddier, contrived so that the same thug could call him ‘Daddy-o’ whenever the occasion arose, which was quite often. Half way through the film, a ‘teenaged’ girl with a pony tail, bell shaped skirt, short white socks and flat shoes put a record on the turntable of a tinny little record player which miraculously filled the cinema with several hundred decibels of sound the like of which had never been heard before and the whole world went berserk – well, the whole of the Western Democratic world went berserk. The Russians would have to wait another 40 odd years to get at the music legally in their own country and the Chinese were totally unaffected as their government was as potty then as it is today.


ONE, TWO, THREE O CLOCK,
FOUR O CLOCK ROCK,
FIVE, SIX, SEVEN O CLOCK,
EIGHT O CLOCK ROCK,
NINE, TEN, ELEVEN O CLOCK,
TWELVE O CLOCK ROCK,
WE’RE GONNA ROCK AROUND
THE CLOCK TONIGHT...

…Sounds pretty daft written down like that but when belted out by ‘Bill Haley and The Comets’ it was quite ‘arresting’ as many of the cinema rioters would have agreed. The Comets had already dipped their toes in the water with the first Rock ‘n’ Roll record release in the UK, ‘Shake, Rattle And Roll’ which got to number 4 in what was called the Top Ten in July 1955. That December, ‘Rock Around The Clock’ went straight in at number 1 and the biggest bomb in the history of popular music, before or since, went off. The shock waves are still being felt by whole generations not even born at the time.

     Bill Haley, an already ageing ex-country singer (he was 28) with a silly curl plastered flat onto his forehead like a giant squashed fly, was handed the formula for this mixture of Gospel and Rhythm and Blues on a plate as an experiment. The plate turned into a silver platter, and though the music had obvious black origins, it was a white man who made it famous.

     “Disgraceful!” said the papers.
     “Isn’t it disgraceful?” I said to Alf.
     “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”Alf said to me, “It’s great!”

     Yes, I was there when it all started. I was there the day the Music was born. I was there the day the Music died in a light plane, slammed into the ground by the vicious fist of an Iowa blizzard along with Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Vallens, the first Rock’n’Roll stars to be immortalised by sudden death at the height of their fame in 1959.

     Their demise was anything but romantic. Buddy Holly suffered multiple fractures to both arms and legs; his chest was crushed, his head split almost in 2 and half his brain was missing, what was left of his body tossed like a rag doll 40 yards from the mangled ball of metal that seconds before had been an aeroplane.

     I was there when the Music was born again out of the art schools with the Beatles, The Pretty Things, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and David Bowie, though the then, David Jones, didn't actually go to art school but hung out with a lot of folk who did. I was there when girls’ skirts were flouncy, upside down tulip shapes of crisp taffeta and a thousand layers of net petticoats that rustled alarmingly when a bloke’s hand tried to explore the jungle of material.

     I was there when girls’ skirts shrank to the size of Christmas cake frills and when their legs seemed to grow a couple of foot in length; when their eyes turned black and grew long lashes like painted spiders and when the tiny belt-like skirts made no sound at all as these dreamlike, expressionless mannequins slowly swivelled their hips to the sounds of rhythm and blues and Mowtown, their purple lips and finger nails glowing in the half dark.

     I was there when Grace Archer was barbecued in a barn fire as a wicked ploy to steal people away from the telly on the night commercial TV was launched. I was there when half the Manchester United Football Team were wiped out in another plane crash in another blizzard in Munich. I was there when Anthony Eden ordered the bombing of Egypt because Colonel Nasser, whoever he was, closed the Suez Canal, whatever that was, and was both excited and terrified that Britain was about to go to war again.

     I was there when the Mau Mau terrorists created a blood bath in the Congo, when Russian Tanks rolled into Budapest and murdered hundreds of Hungarian protesters and when the first Russian cosmonaut flew round the Earth in a space capsule to celebrate.

     I was there when England won the Ashes from Australia - in England; when England won the football World Cup without David Beckham - in England; when Everest was climbed for the first time long before it became a tourist trap covered in litter. I was there when the Queen was crowned and Roger Banister ran the mile in under 4 minutes. I was there when Ruth Ellis was hanged for shooting her lover and boys in her son’s school playground counted down on their watches and announced the moment when she was ‘swinging’.

     I was there when Stirling Moss didn’t win the F1 World Championship and Mike Hawthorn did by one point and promptly killed himself by smashing his Jaguar into a tree on the Hogs Back near Guilford. I was there when Max Bygraves sang ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’ and wished I wasn’t. I was there when Ivor Fowler fell out of an oak tree in a field on the edge of the Edgebury Estate and broke his neck. I was there when he didn’t die, was no longer considered a celebrity and people lost interest.

     I was there when summers were long and hot and when it snowed at Christmas, when real fires still burned in the grates and the men who delivered the great black bags of coal, skilfully humped off huge flat bed lorries, looked like pink eyed golliwogs.

     I was there when you could still say the word golliwog without offending anybody, especially golliwogs.


* * * * * * * * *


You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

Well they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Yeah they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine




     Chapter 1: TAKING A DEEP BREATH

     The 1950s stank. Life today would be pretty dull without a nostril full of roasting chestnuts; freshly cut grass; just sawn wood; Marmite on toast; bacon and eggs; spent fireworks on November 6th; Kiwi Shoe Polish or the Sunday Roast, but in the 50s the magic aromas from coal fires, sewing machine oil and freshly laid horse dung on Tarmac added magnificently to the mix.

     In the 1950s, the collection of street horse shit in buckets (I assume to slap onto the odd tomato plantation) seemed to be a perfectly acceptable and respectable pastime, sitting comfortably alongside the spreading of rancid pipe tobacco smoke, the carefree transmission of male body odour, the cultivation of thin, Clarke Gable moustaches, the adoration of motorcycle combinations, (Motorbikes with sidecars.) and the display of sharply pointed female breasts appearing to grow unnaturally high up on female bodies beneath pastel cardigans and sweaters.

     The smell of horse crap lingered insistently if no one laid claim to the stuff, gradually getting flattened into 3ft wide pancakes and welded to the road by passing vehicles, eventually being diluted by rain and fading to a huge indelible stain until the next horse came along and skilfully dumped another load smack in the same bit of road.

     Horses were still a common part of street traffic when us Boomers were about 4 years old, along with those wonderful, clattering, sparking monsters called trams. The baker had a horse to pull his cart, so did the milkman and the greengrocer. The coalman had a cart with pneumatic tyres pulled by a couple of hefty looking brutes the size of small elephants they called Shires which could obviously crush a small boy to powder with one stamp of an enormous white, bearded hoof.

     The rag and bone man always had a tired looking nag to which he owed his entire livelihood, though you’d never have thought it by the way he cursed and whipped the poor beast.

“OL-UMM-ER!” cer-lip-cer-lop, cer-lip-cer-lop, “OL-UMM-ER!” cer-lip-cer-lop, cer-lip-cer-lop, “OL-UMM-ER!”

      It took me years to figure out what the old boy hunched over on the cart behind the tired and equally hunched old nag was actually shouting in his crusty voice, as the whole lethargic combination struggled slowly up the road.

     “OLD LUMBER!”were the real words being sung, using the 8th, then the 5th, then the 8th notes of a major scale, of course. Connie thrust a pile of old clothes into my 4-year-old arms and told me to go and give them to the man in the cart and wait for a present. I stood at the curb outside 15 Robin Way, St Paul’s Cray, where we lived and waited for the cart to draw level.

     “WHOOOOAR!” commanded the old pilot and the blinkered, grey old gee-gee, its head hung depressively towards the ground, and the whole caboodle, shambled to a clanking, jingling, creaking stop.

     The cart was painted in what had once been bright colours that had seen better, brighter and probably more enthusiastic days like the old man and his horse. The wheels were a dull red and had rubber tyres. Unsmiling, the old man offered a slightly less than enthusiastic outstretched arm and I offered up my bundle. He took the clothes and dropped them on the seat next to him reaching behind him into the over laden cart with it’s mountain of old twisted bits of metal, lumps of wood, and a single gas stove without a door. He stretched out his arm again with a white shiny object clutched in grimy, black-nailed fingers. I took the object in both hands and with a “GIIII-DUP!” and a slap of the reigns, the old nag summoned whatever last gasp of strength it still had and heaved the cart shakily forward.

     I examined the object. It was a saucer - bright; shiny; sparkling and pure white. I was overjoyed. The special thing about this saucer was...it was MINE. Gleefully, I turned back to the prefab to show Connie my prize. A few days later, I heard a similar sound to the one before and I rushed to Connie and asked for some more old rags, anxious to get my tiny fingers on another saucer. Two saucers had to better than one.
     “GREENOHO!” came a cry in perfect harmony with a more positive clip-clop, clip-clop, “GREENOHO!” clip-clop, clip-clop, “GREENOHO!”

     I waited, beside myself with excitement, and as soon as the cart drew level, I stepped into the road and I offered the driver my bundle of rags. I was surprised by his response.

     “Nah, son. I don’t want ‘em.”

     He drove on and I watched the cart laden with a pile of old boxes, get smaller as it continued up the road. I was mortified. What was wrong with the rags? They looked perfectly fine to me. Connie came through the gate and did her best to stem the flow of tears welling up in my eyes. She smiled, comfortingly, and told me I hadn’t been talking to another rag and bone man but to the greengrocer.

     Horses and carts were a common sight in those days, along with beautiful roadside, stone and concrete, 8ft long horse troughs with moulded feet, and a brass cup and tap for the driver. Later on, all the charioteers got issued with three-wheeled electric carts and did away with horses all together - except for the rag and bone men whose horses seemed to stay around for as long as they did into the Nineteen Sixties.

     Yes, I was there, and sometimes drank the freezing cold water from one of those brass cups attached to a horse trough by a heavy brass chain. These days, people steal bikes. Back then they stole the brass cups.



     WANNA START MOVIN’

     Alf had always been a great music lover playing the mouth organ and the piano on the black notes when we lived in our post war prefab in St Paul’s Cray, Kent.

     ‘Gigareets And Whiskey’ was my favourite, and he really used to bash it out. I can see the terrified goldfish now in his bowl on the piano, rushing round and round at breakneck speed in a whirlpool of blind panic. Poor old Stan also suffered torture from our tomcat, Tibby, who’d sit on the piano with his nose pressed up against the bowl and fix the poor old sardine with a killer stare, the strategy being that Stan would eventually die of fright, float to the surface and slip easily down the cat's gullet. Stan didn’t have a heart attack and survived to make the trip in his bowl on Connie’s lap, in the back of a removal van from the St Paul’s Cray prefabs to the new Edgbury Estate in Chislehurst in 1951. Tibby wasn’t so lucky and I wonder if, as he was staring into the water in the goldfish bowl, he had any premonitions about his own watery fate in the prefab water butt.

     Alf stalked him armed with his old Royal Navy kitbag, which was to act as the mangy old creature’s submarine coffin, but cats have acute senses, especially when someone’s trying to kill them and Tibby wouldn’t play ball let alone ‘let’s drown the cat.’ He ran for it. I joined the chase, my bloodthirsty 5-year-old mind enjoying the prospect of Tibby’s execution with great enthusiasm. I happened to come across the handle of my old rickshaw (a kind of backwards facing pushchair with big solid wheels – very trendy in the late 40s early 50s) and thought the 3ft piece of wood with its hammer-shaped cross member would make an excellent cat killer. I offered it to Alf.

     “Here, Dad. Hit him on the head with this.”

     Alf declined the offer, an appalled look on his face.

     Tibby was inevitably caught and dispatched to pussycat heaven and even now the thought of the poor old moggie trying to claw his way out of the bag in the dark as the freezing water closed over him fills me with the heebie-jeebies.

     TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP

     Alf was a great dancer - the Samba; Rumba; Tango; Waltz; Quickstep; Foxtrot; all part of his repertoire. During the war, he'd spent 2 years in Seattle, and was taught to Jitterbug, amongst other things, by a Scandinavian-American girl called Mary Neilson who showed him the bright lights of San Francisco where a gangster by the name of Leo, a swarthy, scar-faced chap of probable Italian descent, befriended him. Leo was straight out of Central Casting for ‘Casablanca’ with his white Sydney Greenstreet suit, Peter Laurie complexion, and Humphrey Bogart hat.

     Leo carried a 38 snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster, and a stiletto knife with a blade that shot straight out of the handle, unlike your common-all-garden flick knife with its boring rotating blade. But Leo’s most lethal weapon was concealed by a false right hand. Alf never found out what happened to make the real hand go away but figured if Leo did happen to have caught his mitt in the path of a circular saw, he would’ve been held down while someone placed it there. Leo took Alf to some pretty dodgy dives where fights often broke out. There were 2 choices - join in or find the exit. The second option meant you had to fight your way out anyway, so Alf was indoctrinated into the gentle art of self-defence, more commonly known as bust him before he busts you.

     Leo would take his hand off and use the knuckle end part of the stump like a piston to devastating effect shattering jaws, noses, teeth, ribs and busted windpipes, not to mention what it did to kidneys, livers, spleens and pancreases. But unlike with a fist, Leo never felt a thing. He and Alf would be running down the street away from the MP’s whilst Leo re-attached his hand on the trot.

     Leo vanished as quickly and quietly as he’d appeared at Alf’s side in a downtown bar one night and Alf never saw him again having been advised not to ask why. Alf wasn’t a big man but was fairly wiry, and in Leo’s company, learned to take care of himself. Long gone were the days when having joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15 and being told one year later that he was going to China for 2 years, he sat in a dark corner of HMS Warspite’s deck, sucked his thumb, and asked himself what the fuck he’d done by joining up in the first place.

     Now, if some bloke was standing on Alf’s hammock so that he couldn't reach his own above, the battle-hardened little Yorkshire man didn’t ask him if he’d mind stepping off. He told him:
     “Get off my fucking hammock!”
     And when the bloke replied: “Up yours....” Alf chinned him, and to both his and his playmate’s surprise, the bloke went down like a whore on honeymoon.

     Alf was in Seattle when the attack on Pearl Harbour happened. The Yanks were caught totally unaware and the country went into deep shock. Actually, an Army Major warned them it would happen but no one took any notice, a mistake the Americans would surely never make again! A week later, people in Washington State were out in their cars with binoculars and rifles looking for Japanese planes. There was absolute panic even though Pearl was a couple of thousand miles away.

     “That’s the bloody Yanks for you. Bloody panic mongers.” said Alf, dismissively. But Alf loved America and he really quite liked the Yanks and always loved their music. To him, 1954/56 just brought another new phase of it. He didn’t care what the papers called it, whether it was ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’, ‘Stick Of Rock’ or ‘Roll ‘n’ Butter’. It just did that certain something to his feet that made them want to get up and move about on their own. As far as Alf was concerned, Rock ‘n’ Roll had a pass mark and he just wanted to rock on.

     COOKING

     I met Roger Cook, who lived 3 doors up the road, one Saturday in 1955. He was circling the perimeter of the wide triangle of pavement on the corner of Imperial Way and Gravelwood Close on his rubber-wheeled roller skates. (Most kids had the cheap, steel-wheeled ones that made a teeth-grating noise like a jet plane on the concrete pavements but never seemed to get them anywhere.)

     “Didjoo see Elvista Pelvis on telly last night?” Roger said, not stopping.
     “Who?”
     “Elvista Pelvis. He was singing, ‘You’re a Hound Dog.” Roger executed a perfect backward semi-circle turn.
     “A what?” I said, spinning round and trying to keep eye contact.
     “Hound Dog. He was wiggling.” Roger went past with one leg raised and casually crossed over the other.
     “Who, the dog?” He shot past me at close range, our noses almost touching.
     “No. Elvista.”
     “Oh, right.”
     My mind went cloudy.

     So this Vista was wiggling with some kind of dog. Or was he widdling? Or was the dog doing it? Widdling, I mean. Roger still had the silver spacer in his mouth from his accident with the stick of rock and the pile of stones on Dymchurch beach and the skates were stretched to their maximum length to accommodate his fast growing feet.
     He was 11 years old and already his shoe size was 10. For such an apparently ungainly lad, he moved like a ballerina on his wheels and he rolled majestically off down the road leaving me to contemplate piddling bloodhounds and Viggly Vesta, or whatever his name was.

     Hardly had the local flee-pits been re-fleed after ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and then again after ‘Don’t Knock the Rock’, when the world went crazy over this Vista bloke. Everyone was talking about a string of songs with strange titles.

     ‘Heartbreak Hotel’; ‘Teddy Bear’; ‘All Shook Up’; ‘Love Me Tender’; ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and the biggest shock of all, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. What the hell were they, when they were at home?
     Most importantly, this Vista chappie played the guitar, though the instrument spent most of the time resting on his pelvis as he violently shook his hips about obviously trying to exterminate the tarantula nestling in his under pants.

     ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was actually written and originally performed by Carl Perkins whose style of music was kind of up-tempo Country and Western that he named ‘Rock-a-Billy’, a style which Elvis Presley and his management ruthlessly stole and projected into the world as their own version of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

     And so the world’s love affair with the guitar began because of Elvis Presley - but not as far as I was concerned. I’d adored the instrument ever since I first saw Tex Ritter playing one while riding his horse, White Flash, in an old 40’s kids’ film on the telly. I used to go to my Nan’s for tea every other Friday and have ten slices of toast and jam or Marmite and sit spellbound as the BBC churned out black and white pre-war westerns that girls hated and boys adored.

     They usually showed an hour long Hopalong Cassidy or Tex Ritter film, but Tex was my favourite. There was something I didn’t quite like about ‘Hoppy’, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The black outfit with the tall, ten-gallon hat was OK but he was just a bit too twinkle-toed for my liking. I think it had something to do with the silly little boots he tucked his trousers into. He might just as well have been wearing bike clips for all they did for his charisma. And what the hell did ‘Hopalong’ mean? Pretty daft sort of name for a gun totin’ sharpshooter, I thought. ‘Hoppy’, the shortened version used by his mates, was even worse. It made him sound like a one legged rabbit with cystitis.

     At the opening of most of his films, Tex would be riding along with a sidekick either side of him while he played the guitar and sang a plaintive cowboy ditty. He later became famous for his rendition of ‘Do Not Forsake Me O' My Darlin’’, the theme song for the famous Fifties western, ‘High Noon’, in which Gary Cooper couldn’t make up his mind whether to leave town and marry Grace Kelly or stay and have some fun ‘throwing lead’ at some guys in black hats.

     At the tender age of 8, I couldn’t see there was much of a contest between the company of some soppy woman in a long dress and maybe blowing a hole in our shed door with a Colt 45 if I’d had one. (A colt 45, that is. We did have a shed door.)

     The horseback guitar interlude of Tex’ Ritter’s was always a sure sign that he and his buddies were about to be attacked by a load of under cranked extras on horses and that he’d have to drop the guitar, ride like crap and get the fuck out of there.

     Right on cue, the extras, wearing regulation black baddie hats galloped onto the scene firing their six shooters with gay abondon, without a thought for passing jack-rabbits and coyotes. If a redskin got in the way, so much the better. (These were days when you could use the word gay without implying anything about anyone’s sexuality – including that of the horses.) Tex’s guitar seemed to disappear into thin air, with the arrival of the baddies, but I thought he’d looked the absolute dog’s sitting astride the horse and plucking it like that, (the guitar, not the horse) and I wanted a guitar from then on.


Cartoon woman in cartoon
Motorcar talking to cartoon driver: “You’d better hurry, George. That programme starts at 6.15.”

Grandma, from back seat: “Slow down, George. It doesn’t start till 7.20.”

Irate kids: “Quick, Dad. It’s on now!”

Refrain: Don’t forget the TV Times,
Don’t forget the TV Times,
The only way to see,
What’s coming on ITV,
Is to go and get the TV Times.



Phil Archer: “GRAAAAAAAAAAACCCCE!!!”



* * * * * * * * *



Say, You can bring Pearl,
She's a darn nice girl,
But don't bring Lulu.
You can bring Rose,
With the turned up nose,
But don't bring Lulu.

Lulu always wants to do,
What we boys don't want her to,
When she struts her stuff around,
London Bridge is falling down,

You can bring cake,
Or Porterhouse steak,
But don't bring Lulu.
Lulu gets blue and she goes cuckoo,
Like the clock on the shelf,
She's the kind of smarty,
Who breaks up every party,
Hullabaloo loo, don't bring Lulu,
She’ll come by herself.




     Chapter 2. NAN’S BIG HOUSE


     CROQUET CUSTOMS & COURT ETIQUETTE

     The following customs and court etiquette, while not warranting specific penalties, should be considered as helpful to the conduct and enjoyment of the game of croquet for everyone and as important as the numbered rules of play. Should a conflict exist with the numbered rules, the numbered rules shall prevail. Remember, croquet is a sport and as such should be enjoyed by all players as a sport played by gracious losers and winners.

     Sportsmanship

     USCA croquet is a game that should be played with good sportsmanship as the foremost attitude of how a player approaches the game. The paragraphs of this section help describe some of the ways which players should play the game and conduct themselves while playing the game. If a specific incident is not covered in the rules, then the spirit of good sportsmanship should be considered in addressing the situation. Players should strive to play by the rules of the game and not try to circumvent the ethics and the morality of the rules of the game.

     Dress Code

     Croquet players customarily wear all white apparel on court. In all USCA titled events, such apparel is expected. The tournament director must approve any exceptions.

     Courtesy to Players

     Courtesy should be extended to one's opponent(s) as well as to one's playing partner at all times. Players should respect each other's playing abilities and opinions, and treat an opponent or partner in the same fashion that they would expect to be treated themselves.

     Presence on Court

     In the interest of good sportsmanship, players should avoid any behaviour that distracts a striker attempting a shot.

     Players should avoid listening to any audible comments from spectators about the game. A player may ask a spectator a question about a point of fact only if the opponent has given consent.

     Advice

     No player is entitled to advice from anyone other than one's partner when playing doubles. It must be a matter of conscience how a player acts after receiving unsolicited information or advice. Warning a player who is about to run a wrong wicket or play the wrong ball constitutes advice.


     In 1928, Harold Leslie Roud, my Granddad, or Pop, as we sometimes called him, was transferred from his post as signalman at The Brick Layer’s Arms Station, near The Elephant and Castle, to take up a similar gig at Chislehurst Junction. He moved his Wife, Emma and 3 year old daughter Connie, to number 41, Mill Place, a 2 up, 2 down, terraced cottage, near The Rambler’s Rest Public House, in the prettiest part of the village.

     Emma Rebecca Roud, my Grandmother, secured herself a job as housekeeper for a wealthy American named, Searle, who lived only a couple of hundred yards away in a large Victorian mansion, Ravenshill. It sat like a comfy armchair monument to the privileged Chislehurst upper classes at the top of Summer Hill just through the arch of the Victorian water tower that straddled the road.

     Mr Searle was a bachelor but shared the house with a redheaded lady friend who was no doubt painted a few different colours by respectable, but nosey locals. During his spare time, Pop helped Ted, the Ravenshill gardener, tend the green houses and huge grounds, which surrounded the house. The Americans loved the quaint old mansion and seemed to like the Rouds almost as much, Nan being virtually born into service like many of her piers, taking the noble art of waiting hand and foot on the rich to an almost religious extreme.

     CECIL

     After only occupying Ravenshill for less than a year, Mr Searle and his lady friend were devastated when a sudden fire ripped through the ground floor gutting the dining room and nursery. The couple were so shocked they felt they could no longer live in the house and sold it to members of the famous Adkin tobacco family. The Rouds carried on with their housekeeping duties though they hadn’t met their new employers, and every now and then, Granddad would take a stroll through the grounds and air the house, making sure everything was ship-shape for their impending arrival.

     One morning, he opened the heavy oak-panelled front door to find a strange little man in an old raincoat and bowler hat sitting at the foot of the grand staircase, eating sandwiches out of a tiny brown suitcase perched on his lap. Granddad was not noted for being backward in coming forward.

     “Oi! What the bleedin’ ‘ell d’you think you’re doing?” he enquired somewhat earnestly.

     The little man stood up, brushed the crumbs from his Hitler style moustache, closed his suitcase and extended his hand in greeting. “Er, hello. You must be Mr Roud. I’m so very pleased to make your acquaintance. We’ve heard so much about you and your lady wife. You must forgive me. I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning.”

     Granddad wasn’t about to be put off. “And ‘oo the bleedin’ ‘ell might you be, when you’re at ‘ome?”

     The man smiled delicately and extended his hand further, “Well, yes. I suppose I am really. At home, I mean. I’m Cecil Adkin.”

     HOME FIRES

     In those days, Mill Place was a delightful, close-knit community of Victorian cottages, nestling in a tiny valley down steep, grassy banks away from the main road and surrounded by green common land. With two shops that sold everything from corn flakes to boot laces, and two pubs, The Ramblers Rest, where off duty butlers and gardeners from the many nearby well-to-do residences, would congregate of an evening to play darts and vent their feelings about their employers; and The Imperial Arms, where a select few of their employers met to discuss cricket and the stock market, not giving members of their staff a second’s thought. Mill Place was a secluded haven. Everyone knew everyone else and people never locked their doors.

     Mill Place is still a delightful community of Victorian cottages nestling in the same little valley, but the working class no longer lives there. The cottages now are worth shed loads. The community isn’t so close-knit and everybody locks their doors, windows and skylights in case they get robbed, raped, murdered or all 3.

     KNUCKLES

     When Connie was 5 she started at the little village school of St Nicholas near where the old cock pit lay in the most beautiful and picturesque part of Chislehurst, opposite the church where she would eventually marry Leading Seaman, Alfred Bradley, in 1943.

     Connie’s friend from school, Jack Boyle, lived at the Imperial Arms. His Dad was a policeman and drove a squad car like the one the Keystone Cops had. The car was kept in the yard at the back of the pub and Jack, Connie, and several other kids would sometimes sneak through the gate and play in it, taking turns pretending to drive.

     Connie sometimes went for lunch at The Imperial Arms with Jack and a couple of his mates and they ate at the big pine table in the kitchen, the food prepared by Jack’s Granddad who ran the pub. The meal was modest and usually consisted of soup, bread, potatoes and beans. Connie found Jack’s Granddad a bit severe, as he wouldn’t allow talking while the children ate their lunch, swiping a soup ladle across the knuckles of anyone who dared disobey.

      Jack seemed to delight in winding the old man up and played his own version of Russian Roulette by deliberately chatting and then pulling his hands out of the way at the last possible moment so that the ladle only connected with air and landed on the table with a resounding crack. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t, but jack reckoned that the pain he had to endure when the ladle caught his fingers was well worth it as he watched his Granddad’s dismayed expression every time he missed his target. The old man seemed to enjoy the game as well, in his stone-faced fashion, and clearly relished the times when he won a round, giving away his pleasure with a discernable twinkle in his eye.

     THE PEISTE

     The grassy slopes that swept down to the Ramblers Rest were steep and overgrown and the smooth, wild grass made an excellent toboggan run if you were lucky enough to have a Mum who owned an enamel tea tray. After several runs, the long grass would curve flat and become as slippery as anything Val D’Isere has to offer today, providing a sure way to loosen competitors’ front milk teeth when a tray came to a sudden stop on the gravel path at the bottom of the run.

     The local part time tearaway and full time bully was Tony Irvin, an urchin member of an Irish Catholic family who lived in one of the corner cottages in the tiny centre street of Mill Place. With his scruffy, tousled mop of black hair and his grimy grey flannel breeches held up by a pair of his dad’s old braces, Tony Irvin cut a wild figure in the community, dashing about like a whirling Dervish and threatening anyone who’d gone to the shops to buy things for their Mums.

     “Gi me the bloddy change, or o’ll flatten ye.”
&
nbsp;    Hardly anyone handed it over, preferring to burst into tears instead. Irvin's response was direct.

     “O’ll cot yor bloddy troat next toim oi see ye, ye bloddy croi baby. You see if oi don’t.”

     Several families complained about the little psychopath to his parents but they were always met with protests of innocence from Tony’s Father, Big Bill Irvin, or Mrs Irvin, with her perpetual Woodbine waggling agitatedly between her lips.

     “Moi Tony wouldn’t dew a ting loik dat. He’s a god lud. He’d never hurt a bloddy floi, sew he wouldn’t.”


     THE EYES DON’T HAVE IT

     Old Mr Turvey owned the corner shop. He was well into his late seventies when Connie was still a single number age. He wore wire glasses perched uncertainly on the end of his nose, but the specs didn’t do a lot to correct his wayward right eye that always seemed to be looking elsewhere whenever he was engaged in face-to-face conversation. Mr Turvey’s manic eye reminded Connie of Ben Turpin, the mad looking character from the Fatty Arbuckle films of the twenties, with the one eye that looked directly at the bridge of his nose while the other stared straight out.

     Tony Irvin would go into the shop and demand something that he knew Mr Turvey kept in the basement, and while the old man made his weary way down the stairs at the back of the shop, Tony would steal as many sweets and knick knacks as he could cram into his pockets, and make off, leaving the old man to return confused to an empty shop. Perhaps his age was getting the better of him, because Turvey fell for it every time, hook, line and Licorice Allsort.

     Though officially a Catholic, Tony Irvin was sent to Christ Church, in Lubbock Road, near the famous caves, to Sunday school with all the other kids from the neighbourhood. As regular as clockwork, he was turfed out after about 5 minutes usually for punching someone or pulling a girl’s hair, to stand against the church wall in disgrace. He’d spend the rest of the time until the children were dismissed to go home for their Sunday lunch, standing on the low wall outside and making faces through the window.

     Sometimes, he’d creep back in and give the gathering the benefit of his lack of expertise on the organ, literally pulling out all the stops, and giving a blast mighty enough to wake those at eternal rest in the graveyard. But still, his parents protested his innocence. To them, it seemed he was born an angel, but if he was, in the opinion of most Mill Place residents, he was an angel who’d fallen from a great height and was still plummeting.


     CRUSHED STRAWBERRY

     The family, who lived in the opposite corner to the Irvins, were the Pinkmies. Pinkmie was a little bloke with a bushy moustache who worked for the council and was often to be found in The Ramblers Rest of an evening expounding upon the problems of the world and how, if he were ever in the government, he would put things to rights. He talked so much for so long that no one else could ever get a word in edgeways, and folks were so bored they tended to drink more than they usually might, often buying a few more rounds than they otherwise would have. For his efforts, Joe Pinkmie was immortalised with the name of ‘Dodger’, which was slightly unfair considering that he suffered a dreadful malady - his hands breaking out in blisters whenever they came into contact with the money in his pocket.

     Nan bought 8-year-old Connie a crushed Strawberry coloured overcoat one winter. It was a pretty garment with a fitted waist and fur trimmed collar and cuffs. She pleaded with Nan to let her wear it to St Nicholas Church of England School she attended on the Common next to the Crown Pub. Nan wasn’t over keen but eventually gave in, and the next day saw Connie tripping happily along Prince Imperial Road anxious to show off her new acquisition to all her friends. The coat was much admired by all and sundry and the day went well until the morning break.

     At the back of the school was a pit-like area about the size of a football pitch with steep banks and a wall of Silver Birch trees round the perimeter. This was the senior boys’ playground, out of bounds to girls. But Connie’s coat seemed to give her new found confidence and refreshed vigour and, catching sight of the boys racing around, having what looked like a hell of a lot of fun, Connie decided to join in. She raced through the gap in the tree wall and down the well-worn slope, the hem of her coat billowing in the fresh morning breeze. Unfortunately, the previous day’s rain had turned the slope into a mudslide and Connie slipped and fell face first into a huge puddle.

     When she managed to stagger to her feet, she was mortified to see the front of her coat had changed colour from crushed strawberry to crushed muddy water. Confused, ashamed, terrified at what her mother would say and balling loudly, Connie ran back towards the school building. 3 workmen who’d set up camp near the school door and were settling down for their morning brew, did their best to help out. They took Connie’s coat and rigged up a makeshift clotheshorse with a couple of scaffolding poles and hung the pathetic item over their brazier for the rest of the day.

     When home time came, the coat was dry, and though the workmen had managed to remove some of the mud, it was now a stiff as board and felt as if it the coat had magically turned into a folded cardboard box with her body pinned inside it, as Connie cried and sobbed her way home to Mill Place and the inevitable lecture on the care and maintenance of one’s clothing.

     “WHAT DID I TELL YOU? I KNEW IT! I RUDDY WELL KNEW IT!”

     IN THE MIGGLE

     Almost right next door to St Nicholas School, was St Michael’s Children’s Home, a converted double-fronted Victorian House where children from broken homes were looked after by a famously kind, and much loved staff of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’, while the parents of the unfortunate children sorted out their problems.

     Sometimes they did the sorting and the children were able to return home but more often than not, things didn’t get resolved and St Michael’s all too often became a permanent home for the less fortunate children.

     Most of the children at St Michael’s attended St Nicholas and Connie found thought them happy-go-lucky, despite their predicament. One such child was Aubrey Thompson, a black child with a friendly disposition to whom the real pleasures of life were very simple. Nothing pleased Aubrey more than to ‘sit in the miggle’. If Aubrey could sit in the ‘miggle’, then everything in the garden was rosy as far as he was concerned. That is until his parents came to visit.

     They'd return to the classroom some time later usually upset, and sometimes sit in a corner shaking with silent tears, trying desperately to compose themselves in front of their classmates and probably wishing that the cruel, confusing world in which they found themselves would simply swallow them up and end the pain there and then.

     What bothered these unfortunate children most, Connie said, was the uncertainty of having to face their parents and not know if they would be taken home or not. They’d become part of a discussion between their parents and the staff about their welfare and would be talked about as if they weren’t really there in the room. It was these encounters Aubrey and the other ‘orphans’ feared more than anything, and it always reminded Connie how lucky she actually was to have the home and family that she did.

     For kids like Aubrey, these mid term upheavals were almost more than they could bear. It was bad enough not knowing if you were really wanted by your natural family, but to have the equilibrium and stability of school life interrupted, rocked and wobbled to the foundations, was soul destroying. Aubrey just wanted to be left alone to sit in the miggle.


‘Domestos kills all known germs – dead’

Daphne Oxenford: “And now it’s time for the story, and today, it’s called: ‘Toast And Jam For Tea’. Are you sitting comfortably?
NB: “No. I’ve forgotten my teddy, just a minute…
MW: “…Then I’ll begin.”
NB: “No. I said wait, you stupid cow. I’ve got to find my teddy.”
MW: “One day, little Jonnie Figtree was sitting in his mummy’s kitchen eating some toast and jam.”
NB: “Are you deaf, or what? Can’t you wait a minute? Surely that’s not too much to ask.”
MW: “Jonnie’s mummy was out in the garden hanging out the clothes…”
NB: “Yeah, I know….’when down came a blackbird and pecked off her shnozzle’…I’ve heard it all before. You’re just so predictable. Can’t you think of anything a bit more original? And you’re so patronising, treating me like I’ve got no intelligence – like I’m some kind of moron, or something. Why can’t it be a pterodactyl that swoops down and rips her pecker off? No, I wouldn’t be frightened. I’ve seen more blood and gore than you’ve had hot dinners. I’ve listened to things on the radio that’d make your hair curl. You should listen to ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ like I do. It might give you some ideas. ‘Toast and Jam For Tea’. I ask you! Where’s the excitement in that? I have that every day. Sure, it’s great, but it isn’t exactly the turn-on of the century, is it? Yeah, I have nightmares. So What? Nothing wrong with that, is there? Dreaming of being chased by hairy monsters is better than dreaming about a plate of toast, I can tell you. And who wants everyone to live happily ever after all the time? Life just isn’t like that. You ought to know. You must’ve been around for a couple of thousand years. And another thing….”
MW: “...and so Johnnie and his Mummy, skewered the dead pterodactyl with a toasting fork and held it over the flames till it went all shrivelled and brown…”
NB: “Now you’re talking!”


     * * * * * * * * *


Nymphs and shepherds, come away.
In the groves let's sport and play,
For this is Flora's holiday,
Sacred to ease and happy love,
To dancing, to music and to poetry;
Your flocks may now securely rove
Whilst you express your jollity.
Nymphs and shepherds, come away.




     Chapter 3. THE ADKINS


     The Adkin family consisted of Cecil, Edna May and 3 children, Tim, Francis, and Diana who was a couple of years older than Connie. Born into a wealthy Gynaecologist’s family, Diana’s Mother, Edna, had been brought up in a large double-fronted Victorian house in Brockley, South East London. She attended Rodene and at the age of 16, was sent to Switzerland to complete her training to become a prospective wife and mistress of household to somebody incredibly wealthy and well-connected who was expected, quite naturally, to pitch up at some stage.

     Edna was quite well connected herself and, as a young woman, was on first name terms with several members of the Royal Family of the time, having been presented at Court to the then King George V and Queen Mary, and often spending long weekends with other ‘well-connected’ and their entourage idling about on yachts in the Mediterranean or on the verandas of some of the more exclusive hotels on the French Riviera.

     Despite being a big woman, standing over six feet in her silk stockings and just managing to squeeze her feet into size eleven shoes, Edna managed to skip the light fantastic on the rooftops of several expensive limousines during the Mayfair coming out ball in 1921, probably leaving a few expensive panel beating jobs in her wake.

     The marriage in 1922 between Edna and the heir to the Adkin tobacco fortune was peculiar only because of the difference in size and bearing between the diminutive Cyril and the Amazonian Edna. In all other respects, it was considered an ideal match within the social circles they both sacheted about in. Few marriages, apart from theirs, ever made the pages of Tatler, except Royal ones.

     The wedding took place at St Margaret’s, Westminster and was attended by many famous celebrities of the day, and was followed by a big bash at Claridges in Mayfair.

     EDNA MAY

     To Emma, or Nan, as we called her, Edna May Adkin was Royalty, or damn near the next best thing. She was everything Nan thought a lady should be - elegant, sophisticated, cultured, staggeringly wealthy, and a completely and utterly helpless individual who, quite literally, found the simple task of using an electric toaster not only outside her experience but way beyond her comprehension, not to mention, inclination.

     Nan always addressed Edna as Madam and referred to her as Mrs ATKINS. Edna addressed Nan as Emily, and Nan would rather have been barbequed by a sudden bolt of lightning than ever correct the mistake and inform the Mistress that her name was not an abbreviation, and that she’d actually been christened just plain and simple Emma.

     Nan sometimes had trouble with the interpretation of the words she heard, or thought she heard. For instance, to her Fred Astair was Freddy Stair; Webster Booth was Webster Booster; Liberace was Chippalarter; and when commercial TV was finally foisted on the general public, Omo was translated into Moo oo.

     Nan had Mr Moore, the local grocer on the Edgebury Estate, taking his store apart looking for this new miracle washing powder along with a margarine called ‘ Country Cousin’. It was half an hour before Moore was able to translate Nan’s product names into ‘Omo’ and ‘Summer County’.

     Edna May Adkin was a kind person, good hearted and generous to a fault. She just seemed to live in a completely different galaxy to the rest of the comunity.

     “Emilee, dear, would you be so kind as to ask Pop (Granddad) to have a look at the table light in the drawing room? It’s making a funny noise and I think the bulb is about to expire. Mr Adkin is away on business and Francis isn’t to be trusted with screwdrivers and suchlike. He’s very accident prone, you know.”

     “I’ll speak to him this afternoon when he gets home from the late turn, Madam. I’m sure he’ll be able to come over tomorrow morning and have a look.”
     “Oh thank you, Emilee. You’re so kind. I really don’t know what I’d do with out you.”
     Edna May never spoke a truer word.
     Later…
     “You can go tomorrow, ‘Owl, (Hal, short for Harry), can’t you. She’s really worried about it.”
     “I dunno. I dunno. She’s bleedin’ opeless, she is. Ain’t she got no light bulbs, then? Don’t suppose she’d know what to do with ‘em if she had, would she? I dunno. I dunno. You do far too much for ‘er, you do. It’s a wonder she don’t ask you to wipe ‘er bleedin’ arse for ‘er. You’d do it, ‘an all, wouldn’t yer? Yeeeah. Course you bleedin’ would, and well you know it. I wouldn’t put it past you. No, I wouldn’t put it past you. Blind Old Kate!”

(I never did find out who Blind Old Kate was, despite Granddad mentioning the woman at least once a day.)

     Nan never took any notice of such castigation, being profoundly deaf to any criticism of Edna May. As far as she was concerned, Edna May was far above anyone else’s opinion of her, and even though Nan was technically no more than the daily help, her dedication to the Adkin family was unsurpassed by any other member of the staff, such as the cook, the housemaid, the gardener, or even Miss Hill, herself an adored and dedicated member of staff and governess to the Adkin children.

     Granddad never let the Adkins down either, despite his whinging. In his own way, he respected the family and saw them at least, as kind, genuine people, maybe with more money than they knew what to do with, but never-the-less, all right as folk went.

‘Ah, Woodbine - a great Little Cigarette’

Weed: “Weeeee-eeee—d?”
Soppy sounding woman: ‘Hello, little Weed.”
W: “Weee-ee—eed?”
SW: “Why don’t you knock on the plant pots and see if Bill and Ben will come out to play?”
W: “Weeee-eee-eed?”
SFX: KNOCK, KNOCK.
SW: “Ooh, look. Here comes Bill. Here comes Ben.”
Hello, Bill.”
Bill: “Eberdidle.”
SW: “Hello, Ben.”
Ben: “Ubulodle.”
W: “Weeee-eee-eed?”
SW: “What shall we play today, Bill?”
Bill: “Ahdiddledoo.”
SW: “What about you, Ben? What would like to play?”
Ben: “Ahdoddledo.”
SW: “Oh, look. Here’s old Slowcoach, the tortoise. Let’s ask him what we should play.”
BILL: “Slibberdick.”
SW: “That’s right. Slowcoach.”
BEN: “Slobberlock.”
SW: “Hello, Slowcoach.”
BEN: “Slobberlock.”
SW: “Yes, you’ve already said that, Ben.”
BEN: “Slobberlock.”
SW: “Yes, we HEARD you, Ben, didn’t we, children?”
BEN: “Slobberlock.”
SW: “SHUT UP! Sorry, children. Ben seems a little belligerent today, doesn’t he?”
W: “Weee-ee-eed?”
BILL: “Sniperlick.”
SW: Where did you get those scossors, I mean scissors, Bill?”
BEN: “Sniperdock.”
W: “Wee-ee-eed?”
SW: “What are you doing, Bill?”
W: “Weee-ee-eeed?”
SW: “No, Ben. I really don’t think you should be doing that.”
SFX: SNIP!
W: “Weee-…”
SW: “Oh, Bill, what have you done?”
BILL: “Sniperlick!”
SW: “Yes, I can see that. That’s very naughty of you, isn’t it, children? No, Bill. I don’t think Slowcoach is very hungry. He doesn’t want to eat the little Weed.”
BEN: “Minchlicky, minchlicky.”
SFX: CRUNCH! MUNCHING…
W: “Weeeee…AAAAAAAGH!”
SW: “ Bill, that really is very naughty.
SFX: BURP!
SW: “I think its time to go now.”
SW: “Goodbye, Bill.”
BILL: “Minchlicky, minchlicky.”
SFX: Shotgun blast, sound of collapsing pile of plant pots.
SW: “Goodbye Ben.”
BEN: “Sloberdock.”
SFX: Shotgun blast, sound of collapsing pile of plant pots
SW: “I’ll give you slobberlock, you half-brained pot man. How d’you like them apples? Someone call The Woodentops!”


* * * * * * * * *


Once upon a time there were three billy goats called Gruff. In the winter they lived in a barn in the valleyspring came they , but when the longed to travel up to the mountains to eat the lush sweet grass.

On their way to the mountains the three Billy Goats Gruff had to cross a rushing river. But there was only one bridge across it, made of wooden planks. And underneath the bridge there lived a terrible, ugly, one-eyed troll.

Nobody was allowed to cross the bridge without the troll’s permission - and nobody ever got permission. He always ate them up.

The smallest Billy Goat Gruff was first to reach the bridge. Trippity-trop, trippity-trop went his little hooves as he trotted over the wooden planks. Ting-tang, ting-tang went the little bell round his neck.

"Who’s that trotting over my bridge?" growled the troll from under the planks.

"Billy Goat Gruff," squeaked the smallest goat in his little voice. "I’m only going up to the mountain to eat the sweet spring grass."

"Oh no, you’re not!" said the troll. "I’m going to eat you for breakfast!"

"Oh no, please Mr Troll," pleaded the goat... this is too tedious for words!

     Chapter 4. PAST LIVES

     To describe Ravenshill as impressive would be to do the place an injustice. It was spectacular - a large, square, 3 story Victorian Mansion built in 1860, it stood in about an acre of ground with two gatehouse lodges at the perimeter, a substantial coach house, boasting a Swiss style 4-sided clock as a roof feature, and three 30ft long greenhouses. There was a stable yard, an orangery, a winter garden, fig trees, an orchard with apple and pear trees, a crazy paved tea garden which led to a black door in a red brick wall, enclosing boxed hedges lining a flagstone approach to the back door, kitchen and scullery.

     Three sets of French windows, one from the nursery, one from the main dining room, and one from the drawing room, opened onto a patio which ran the length of the house beneath a corrugated glass cupola supported by iron pillars, from where it was a mere step onto the sumptuous lawn, with turf luxurious enough to play croquet on.

     At the end of the main building was the summerhouse. Rich with woody and linseed aromas with a conical birch roof, the summerhouse itself was pretty impressive. So it should have been. After all, it was where one kept one’s croquet mallets and hoops.

     I can boast, unlike millions of other folk, that I’d already played croquet (after a fashion) by the age of 7. The kit was wonderfully tactile even to a little kid like me, with its long wooden box, brass fastenings and mallets that were big and heavy and polished to a deep shine. The resounding ‘clack’ they made when swung gently against the wooden ball, and the ‘clink’ when the ball contacted the metal hoop (wicket) was poetry to the ears and had a strangely calming effect, almost slowing down the heart rate and magically conjuring up a butler stepping out of the shrubbery carrying a tray of iced tea.

     FRENCH WINDOWS

     The nursery, the last room at the Summer House end of the building, was an Aladdin’s cave. A baby grand piano languished next to the French windows opposite a double-door Victorian cupboard about the size of a semi-detached house. This was the toy cupboard, crammed full of the most amazing goodies, mostly from the pre–war era. There were train sets, dolls, American style model cars, a Meccano set in blue and gold, rather than the red and green of the day – all manner of exotic things to entertain young children when the governess needed time out to study her copy of Horse and Hounds or Woman’s Weekly, or just put her feet up and have a scratch.

     The icing on the cake was a magic lantern, which in the days before we owned a television set, was to us at the cutting edge of technology. To be able to project huge coloured pictures onto the wall was an experience beyond our wildest dreams, and with a quick flick of the glass slide, you could make them move to a new position. If television had never been invented, I’d have been happy enough with the magic lantern. In fact, TV was a relatively passive pastime by comparison. Someone else always moved the images for you. Where’s the turn on in that?

     The front door of the house was flanked by white marble pillars with two full sized marble gun dogs to keep watch, lounging to one side of the door which opened into an extravagant mishmash of twenties and thirties décor, constituting the front hall where the centrepiece was a wide, winding staircase adorned with a deep Royal Blue carpet. At the foot of the stairs, sat a large gold Buddha guarding the sinister looking dinner gong that voiced its terrifying rumble three times a day for breakfast, luncheon and dinner, the menus for the day written out in ink by Edna May herself every morning and delivered to the cook.

     Edna May also arranged the vast arrays of fresh flowers delivered from a local nursery into the many crystal vases that littered the corridors and sun-flooded rooms of the mansion, also liberally sprinkled with choice antique heirlooms from both families.

     On the lower lawn at Ravenshill was placed a solitary tennis net without pitch markings as it was uncertain whether the lawn would actually become a proper court or accommodate a swimming pool. The swimming pool never materialised and the tennis net remained, largely unused, as a mark of an exquisitely elite, but already dying way of life.

     GOING SLOW

     At the bottom of the garden, past the manicured flower beds and rockeries, next to the gardener’s lodge, stood a white gate that led onto the Adkin’s private walkway to the cricket ground opposite The Ramblers Rest. On many a sunny, Sunday afternoon in the early 1930’s, Cecil would stroll with his two sons to wallow in the special atmosphere evoked by the languid sound of leather against Willow and slow, lazy ripples of applause, and to partake of a little tea in the pavilion, in the curly shape of the odd cucumber sandwich and cup of weak, milky Twinings. If there had been a musical score to accompany the scene, it would have been scored by Chopin.

     In some ways, the Adkin family seemed to live in a time warp. On one of the visits we made to the house, my sister and I discovered at least a hundred pairs of Edna May’s shoes in a neat line around the walls of her dressing room. It was like looking at an array of gondolas, they were so large and multi coloured, all in the styles of the Twenty’s and Thirties, with their lavatory-shaped heels and cross straps.

     Her dresses were from the same eras, long flowery garments with the distinct flavour of ‘Black Bottom’ raves, long gone, but definitely not forgotten. There seemed no rush to move with the times, but instead to languish peacefully preserved in an aspic jelly of ultimate civilised Englishness, untroubled, and unclouded by what was going on in the real world outside.

     DRIVING FORCE

     Cecil Adkin didn’t drive, but Edna May did. That’s to say she sat behind the wheel and managed to point the machine in some sort of direction, avoiding pedestrians and immovable roadside objects such as pillar-boxes and concrete horse troughs more by luck than judgement.

     Day to day Edna drove a pale blue, 1931 opened-topped Morris Cowley that she affectionately named Minnie. Sometimes, her mode of transport was a green 1950 Sunbeam Talbot, a model famous for doing quite well in the Monte Carlo Rally. It was a beautiful, sleek car, with a long bonnet, leather interior and white Bakelite steering wheel, and the way Edna May drove it, she might well have been in the Rally herself.

     Every year, as regular as clockwork, an RAC patrolman on a motorcycle and sidecar would appear at the coach house which doubled as a garage to check and service the vehicles. For his trouble, he was always supplied with a bottle of brown ale and a sandwich. By the time he’d finished, both the cars were gleaming examples of exactly what had come off the production line as our man sat on an overturned beer crate enjoying his lunch and proudly surveying his morning’s work.

     THROUGH THE FRENCH WINDOWS

     To my sister, Kathryn, and I, Nanny’s Big House was a wonderland soaked in excitement, intrigue and adventure. There were door bells to press, (only the very privileged had door bells) red, white and green telephones to play with, more toys than the average child could throw a pogo stick at, acres of garden to run about in, hedgerows to hide behind, long winding pathways to follow, nooks and crannies to explore, pianos to thump about on, and the familiar, cacophony of smells from expensive cigarettes and pot purée that nostalgia would bring rushing back to our nostrils in between visits, and in later years when the big house had long since disappeared.

     And the Big House really was big. I got lost twice as a small child. Once was in Woolworth’s in Sidcup where the tall, varnished counters with the green glass edged shelves provided a frightening maze for a 4 year old, and once in Ravenshill. In Woolworth, I turned around, and suddenly all I could see were loads of adult legs, none of them belonging to Connie.

     My screams of terror brought her running, much to my relief, and hers too, finding that I wasn’t actually being murdered or carried off by some weirdo in motorcycle goggles and a flying helmet. At Ravenshill, having one day left the nursery by the main door instead of the French windows which we usually used to go in and out, I found myself in the long, mirror polished, wooden floor of the main corridor that connected the Drawing room, Dining room and Nursery. As I left the nursery, the door had slammed behind me with a resounding boom. I started to walk along the dark floorboards, got suddenly scared and decided it was safer in the nursery.

      I turned back and opened the door and went in. The nursery had vanished. In its place was an enormous dining table, polished to another mirror shine like the hall floor. Huge oil painted portraits hung on the wall, the eyes in the pictures staring scornfully down at me.

     “Who the devil are you, you nasty, common boy? How dare you come in here with your dirty knees and unkempt hair! This room is for privileged guests only, whose culture and conversation would be far beyond your comprehension and those of your kind. Be gone before I get really angry and climb out of this Godforsaken frame and squash you like the insect you are.”

     Back in the hall, I tried the next door along but that didn’t lead back into the nursery either. This room contained a large colonial type desk and a couple of walnut sideboards and there was a sickly smell of polish. A sumptuous rug was placed beneath the desk that sat in the centre of the room. An ornately edged blotting pad lay neatly on the desktop next to twin crystal inkwells and an old-fashioned quill pen. The desk gave the room a feeling of austere authority, as if it was the kind of table small boys would be brought to stand before to be punished. I backed out into the hall again and closed the door, panic taking hold.

     Someone was crying, the wailing quickly developing into a woeful scream which echoed off the high walls and the ceiling. Then there was the sound of running feet, someone tripped and sprawled headlong onto the dark, polished floor. The crying, screams and footsteps were all mine, but I felt strangely detached, disconnected, like I was observing from somewhere way off. Someone grabbed me and the screams became louder, more frantic, and then…

     “Shhhhhh. It’s all right. It’s all right. You just got a bit lost, silly boy.”

     It’s amazing how Mums always had the habit of turning up just when you needed them. As young children, Kathryn and I always assumed that Ravenshill belonged to Nan and Granddad, and Nan often referred to it as ‘Nanny’s Big House’ herself. Privileged backgrounds and money or the lack of either, was never part of any equation. There simply wasn’t one to be considered so we just accepted Ravenshill and all its pampering luxury as a natural part of our lives that was there for our enjoyment and indulgence.


     Quite who we thought the Adkins were I’m not really sure. Probably just some extremely nice people that spoke funny and who Nan allowed to share her big house sometimes. When she was a child, Connie sometimes accompanied her Mum to Ravenshill during the school holidays. She was introduced to Diana, the Adkin’s daughter, who was a couple of years older than the little girl from Mill Place and already used to a much more priviledged lifestyle. But two little girls from vastly different backgrounds got on very well and formed a friendship that was to last for decades.

     Edna visited all the very best girls’ schools in Kent, Sussex and Surrey to find the right one for her daughter, turning down the exclusive Benendon which Princes Anne attended as ‘not being quite good enough.’

     Of the 2 boys, Tim, went to Eaton and Frances to Harrow, both later going on to university. During the war, Tim served as a Fleet Air Arm Pilot while Francis began to show signs of the eccentricities that would eventually lead him to life as a recluse away from the family and especially Ravenshill.

     Diana married Alan Hitchcock, an eminent architect with the appropriate family background, and the couple moved into Ravenhill’s coach house which Alan had gutted, and redesigned, producing an interior that was to become a regular feature in glossy coffee table magazines.

     After the children had all left home and feeling that Ravenshill was far too large, Edna May and Cecil moved to Bishops Well, a double-fronted, well-appointed Georgian house at the end of Crown Lane overlooking another of Chislehurst’s beauty spots opposite St Nicholas’s Church, The Crown Public House and The Tiger’s Head.

     Soon after, Cecil became ill and ironically died of lung cancer leaving Edna to live alone in what was still quite a large house, though after the might of Ravenshill, it probably felt to her like a broom cupboard, not that broom cupboards were remotely within the bounds of her experience.

     I visited Bishops Well with Nan one summer evening when I was about 13. She went to draw the curtains to create the illusion to the local criminals that Edna May was at home and not really in St Tropez or swimming in the sea off Folkestone. There was always a fascination about visiting an Adkin home with its pleasant smells and ambience of utter decadence, especially when there was no one at home and you could take a sneaky look around.

     But I was to be disappointed this time. As we approached the house along Crown Lane, we could see a grimy looking Vauxhall Victor Estate car (an ugly, American influenced, chrome and metallic eyesore of the day) parked by the front gate and the wideopen oak front door of the house.

     I thought Nan was going to have a heart attack. Here was the precious Adkin family abode being burgled in broad daylight. As she quickened her already nifty pace, I felt sorry for the unsuspecting burglar. But Nan suddenly applied the brakes.

     “Oh, it’s alright. It’s Mr ‘Itchock.” She puffed and wheezed in obvious relief. “Oooh, dear. Whoooffff. That gave me quite a turn. Oooh, it really did. Good evening, Mr ‘Itchcock.”

     A very skinny, scruffy looking bloke in his forties and swathed in a very large, tatty old pale blue sweater that wrapped itself round his skeleton like lagging round water pipes came out of the house carrying a pile of crockery and visibly staggering under the over ambitious armfull he was carrying. He started when he heard Nan’s voice and for a moment I thought he was going to drop the lot. He looked to all intents and purposes as if he’d been caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, or, in this case, the bone china cabinet.

     The tailgate of the Victor was raised and Mr ‘Itchcock carefully laid the pile of soup plates onto a spread of old sacking on the flatbed and stood up, smiling sheepishly. “Hellay, Emilay. Hararyor? Jest borrowing some of Ma’s chainar. Got some cheps coming rinde to dinnar und we dain’t hev ‘nuff plates.”

     “Right ‘o, Mr ‘Itchcock. We’ve come to do the curtains. This is my grandson, Nilw.”

     He stretched out a bony hand revealing an even bonier wrist beneath the thick sweater sleeve, and smiled through a mouthful of jagged teeth. “Hard’youdor, Neeel?”

     Visually, this geezer didn’t exactly fit the level of aristocracy his voice implied and looked more like a window cleaner to me, and I thought the Victor was a bit crap for a posh architect. Still, he seemed pleasant enough, “I’ll give yor a lift beck when your’ve finished, Emilay.” he offered, probably, I thought, more out of guilt at having been caught red-handed having it away with a priceless amount of Spode.

     Nan was horrified by the idea. “Oh, no! There’s really no need for you to go to all that trouble, Mr ‘Itchcock. We’ll get the 61 bus, really.”

     Mr ‘Itchcock was having none of it. “Nonesense, Emilay. You just dor what you hev to dor, and I’ll drop you orf in a jiffay.”

     I think Nan’s protestations were in part to do with her really not wanting to put a member of the ‘Royal Family’ to any unnecessary trouble but also, I suspected, there was a tinge of anxiety about exposing this doyen of the upper crust to the downmarket environment of a council estate. Perhaps she thought he’d catch something that would damage his accent, though as an architect, I guessed he knew more about council estates that we’d had hot bowls of gruel.

     On the way back to Edgebury in the Vauxhall, its cargo clinking ominously behind the back seat, Nan and Mr ‘Itchcock chatted merrily. “And ‘ows Diana and the family, Mr ‘Itchcock?”

     “Very well, Emilay. Very well.”
     “And the children?”
     “The chuldrunerinbed.” (The children are in bed)

     I thought this was a bit early even for 6 and 7 year-olds, it being only about 6 o’clock. I watched Mr ‘Ithcock’s bony fingers on the end of his twig-like wrists delicately toying with the steering wheel as he turned the filthy Vauxhall into Slades Drive and pulled it to a stop with an even more worrying chink from the contraband in the back. He drove off with Nan standing on the pavement waving until he was completely out of sight.

     There was a distinct look of relief on her face when Mr ‘Itchcock finally disappeared, untouched and untroubled by the great revolution that had been going on for the past 5 years. This fact was obvious from the type of shoes Alan Hitchock was wearing. They were light brown, suede lace-ups with thin leather soles and not a jot of crepe in sight. Nor were the toes making any attempt to be pointed, as was the incoming ‘Italian style of the time, but were just plain rounded – ordinary and boring.

     I’d come to realise that Rock ‘n’ Roll really belonged to the working classes and that it was probably looked down upon by the likes of the Adkins and Hitchcocks as something to keep us common folk amused and occupied while they got on with real life. There was something about this revelation I found a bit disturbing.

     Ravenshill was eventually torn down by developers in the early 60s and turned into an exclusive housing estate, the sole remaining lodge itself becoming a desirable residence for some nouveau riche, wiz-kid couple or other. The Hitchcocks sold the coachhouse and moved into a beautiful Queen Anne cottage in Royal Parade next to the poshest pub in Chislehurst, The Bull Hotel.

     Nan continued working for Edna May till the mid 60’s and trudged to Bishops Well through whatever the elements threw at her, catching a very bad cold just before Christmas in 1965. Instead of taking time off, as she should have done, I came across her taking a short cut through the long wet grass of the Common one morning and she was ill over Christmas with symptoms a rasping cough’s breadth from pneumonia.

     Emma's health seemed to deteriorate from this point on and she was forced to retire, a notion she hated mainly because she worried that Edna May wouldn’t be able to cope without her. Though her fears were probably quite well founded, Edna’s daughter, Diana kept a careful watch on her elderly but energetic mother and made sure she didn’t go near the toaster and set fire to herself, Bishops Well, and half the common.

     Edna May visited Nan a couple of times while she was ill, looking slightly out of place on the sofa in the council house living room only because of her size. She usually brought a friend of similar upbringing and breeding with her and the 3 ladies would chat about this and that, Nan still referring to Edna May as Madam at every opportunity.

     Edna May was in her mid eighties by this time but still went swimming in the sea at Folkestone and meeting up with her chums in Monte Carlo for a little Roulette and Bridge occasionally. Nan invited her to both my sister’s wedding in 1968 and my own in 1971 and Edna May gladly accepted the invitations, making her usual proclamation about both events.

     “Larvley wedding, Emilee. Larvely wedding.” which, I’m sure, were quite genuine sentiments as Edna felt entirely relaxed in the company of classes a million light years below her own status, and really did love weddings.

     While having lunch with a friend in a Bromley restaurant in 1975, Edna May choked to death on a piece of meat. It was an ignominious end for a very noble lady, and to Emma, totally devastating. She seemed to give up the fight against her own ailing health and became weaker and weaker over the next couple of years. She died of pneumonia in Queen Mary’s hospital in xxxx 19xx.

     ONCE A RAILWAYMAN, ALWAYS A RAILWAYMAN.

     In 1958, when the Bradley’s dog-sat the two huge Alsatians that belonged to the Smythes, an Irish family Connie worked for in Bickley who were away somewhere posh on holiday. One of the high points of each day was to rush up the road at 11.00 to the little bridge across the main line from Victoria to Dover and watch The Golden Arrow muscle its way past in great clouds of grey smoke, sparks and spats of boiling water.

     As the 600 ton monster came barrelling through from Bickley on its way to the coast, the glimpse I caught was very brief as the train came rushing under the bridge 100 yards further up the line before the belching cloud of soot escorting it, covered it so completely that by the time it got to the next bridge where I was standing, I just got a face full of smoke.

     The first time I experienced the spectacle of the Golden Arrow during those 2 weeks, I wasn’t standing on the bridge – I was sitting in the lounge of the house. Suddenly, I became aware of the floor vibrating slightly beneath my feet and the ornaments on the mantelpiece starting to move about and rattle against the wall above the fireplace. There was an almost inaudible rumble coming from somewhere deep beneath the foundations of the house like the prelude to an earthquake. Only the long blast of a frantic steam whistle dispersed my fear that we weren’t all about to get swallowed by an earthquake.

     The Golden Arrow consisted of a Battle Of Britain Class locomotive (for all the anoraks out there) towing 16 cream and maroon wood panelled Pullman coaches with their unmistakable elliptical doors. The engine was obloid in shape and looked like a giant loaf of bread badly sliced at the front end and cut at an angle, a huge 3 dimensional golden arrow displayed diagonally across the front and along the length the sides of the sides.

     The first Golden Arrow train service started on 15th May 1929 carrying posh passengers to the Continent in luxurious style. The train departed from Victoria Station at 11.00 am daily on its journey to Dover and was soon established as the most famous and successful of all the boat trains. On arrival at Dover the passengers embarked on a ship for the Channel crossing to Calais from where they continued on their journey by connecting train, this time under the French name "Fleche D’Or", through the Normandy countryside to Paris.

     The "Golden Arrow" was originally an all Pullman train but the provision of this type of luxury accommodation reduced in line with falling passenger demand over the years, particularly with the growth in air travel.

     The memory of The Golden Arrow still conjures up images of comfort, glamour and sophistication, and of a time when life was travelled at a more leisurely pace. In 1964, steam driven trains just disappeared overnight and with them one of the most magical, adrenalin pumping experiences a person could ever have. Killed off by a sudden awareness of pollution in general and a craving for better travel efficiency.
Someone had clearly missed the point.

     These mighty, puffing, wheezing, clanking foundation shakers didn’t just pass through a station, they commandeered the space where the station stood. They demanded respect and attention. They inspired awe. They penetrated a person to the core with their very presence and power. And that was just the guard’s van.

     People rushed from the waiting rooms and tea bars to stand as close to the edge of the platform as they dared just to be in the aura of one of them - to feel the hot spit of water from the locomotive; the sparks fly from the belching chimneys; breathe in that unforgettable aroma of coal and boiling water – it was all an enormous high. To disappear into a violent cloud of thick, black smoke and emerge black-faced and elated, after the great fire breathing beast and its entourage of cackling carriages had gone, was as good as life gets.

     The worshippers were brave idolaters: men in suits; men in bowler hats; women in flowery dresses, handbags looped over their arms; children desperately trying to escape their parents’ clutches so they could demonstrate their allegiance freely and be counted amongst the true followers. Those who were afraid or just plain boring, skulked in the dark corners of the waiting room or hid in the toilets in case the great wheezing beast spotted their cowering weakness and admonished them with a merciless jet of white-hot steam.

     A loan locomotive would do it. Even travelling backwards. Worshippers still came running to witness the oily, sweating, gasping metal dragon shug-shug-shug-shug its way by, the dripingly lubricated pistons heaving it along in an ultimate display of harnessed power. No one was ever accused of being an anorak. They weren’t invented.

     These days, it’s different.
     “Oh look, there’s a train coming.”
     “And your point is?”

     Did I want to be train driver when I was a kid? I’d have to have joined a pretty long queue of those who’d been first rejected by the Seventh Cavalry. No one in his or her right mind ever dreamt of questioning the ambition. To be privileged enough to become a slave to one of those beautiful brutes was a respectable fantasy. How many kids want to end up driving one of today’s so-called trains?

     To be a fireman would have been enough for some, standing soot-faced on the plate (the platform where the driver and his mate stand, for the ignorant amongst you) heaving coal into the furnace and cooking the bacon and eggs on the hot shovel and most importantly, waving to the crowd as you swept past. What could be better than that, except driving the thing? The 2 locomotive crew members could’ve been cast in the Black And White Minstrels TV series that appeared in the 50’s, the pink rings of their eyes and brilliant white of their teeth glowing luminously from the shiny black of their faces as they swept by. (No applogies to PC's, and I'm not talking coppers.)

     Even the fire brigade joined the fun, often enthusiastically putting out fires on the railway embankments caused by sparks from the engine’s funnel. It was all part of the great ritual of steam travel.

     SLAM SLAM THANK YOU MAAM

     Any train journey in the Fifties was an adventure. Nothing surpassed the anticipation of standing on a platform and gazing along the empty track waiting for the long metallic snake to ease itself into sight. Most of my train experiences were on the Southern Region, which was mainly electrified. The trains were green and as they pulled into a station, hundreds of doors would swing open along the entire length, as impatient passengers attempted ritualistic suicide by trying to alight before the train came to a stop.

     These trains were the ‘slam door design, and that’s exactly what the doors did before the train left the station – a thousand times over. Each door led into a separate compartment, with a window either side of the door. It was window, door, window, door, window door, all the way along. Later, each carriage became one big compartment, though still using the slam door design. The layout wasn’t nearly so exciting and some of the romance was lost, to my mind.

     It was a good few years and several fatal accidents before it was decided that the slam door system was structurally weak and allowed carriages to collapse under impact causing horrendous injuries to the unfortunate passengers, before the building of any more was abandoned.

     Windows in the early trains were lowered by means of thick leather straps and the smell and squeak of the leather added to the ambience and atmosphere. But the really special atmosphere belonged to corridor trains. In the early days, these were only be found on long haul steam trains, and there was something really special about pushing back the sliding compartment door and entering into that world of private luxury that exuded privilege even in 2nd class.

     I once managed to step up a further level in 1968, when, on a photographic assignment, I was able to join the real elite in a1st class Pullman Car, simply because someone else was a paying for it. I partook of afternoon tea in a winged arm chair with my own walnut table with lace doyleys and side lamp as the train rocked and rattled its way from Swindon to Paddington. It was the first time in my life I’d been addressed as ‘Sir’, but I noticed as the waiter poured a second cup of coffee that the chair was chained to the floor. It was probably so that it couldn’t be moved into the gangway and cause an obstruction and not, as I thought at the time, to prevent me from making off with it when I reached London.


     THE OTHER BOYS IN BLUE

     Throughout his fifty odd years as a signalman, Granddad hardly ever wore anything other than his uniform, or bits of it. There seemed little point, when you consider that he was either working one of his shift turns or waiting to start one. It was 8 hours on, 8 hours off, 8 hours sleep, 8 hours on..

     The regulation British Rail uniform of the day was a white or dark blue shirt with a black tie worn beneath a blue serge waistcoat, or ‘weskit’, as Granddad would say, with light cotton sleeves, a jacket with silver buttons and blue serge trousers. Top this with a cap with a shiny peak and an enamel BR badge, black boots, and you have the complete picture.

     When he left school at the age of 13 and joined the railway as a trainee signalman, Granddad’s job was to sit on a high stool in the office overlooking the track at London Bridge and write down the number of every train that passed through. Being a very small lad for his age, he had to be lifted onto the stool, and when he was given his first uniform in the winter of 1911, the hem of the overcoat almost covered his shoes and walking down the street with his shiny peaked cap perched on his head, from behind, he looked like a King Penguin.

     Being a railwayman was always something he wore with pride, from the green enamel Southern Region cap badge to the shiny mirror-toed, regulation black boots. His uniform buttons were brass in the early days and once a week he’d lay out the uniform and, with Connie’s help, polish them till they shone like gold. Every year, a brown paper parcel tied up with white string would arrive by British Rail special delivery. It contained a brand new uniform of trousers, jacket, shirt, tie and 2 waistcoats, one with sleeves for the winter and one without for the summer.

     Overcoats and boots were only replaced every 2 years. Often, he wouldn’t bother to open the parcel if his present uniform was still in good shape, confining the package to the back of a cupboard on the top of the wardrobe in the bedroom. Being an economist by nature, over the years, Granddad managed to collect enough uniforms to equip a small army, declaring that they‘d come in useful when he retired, which indeed they did. He hardly ever wore anything that didn’t include something in blue serge.


     POP

     Granddad was a friendly, smiley sort of chap who always had time for his Grandchildren. He called me Basher or Buster, and was quite inventive when it came to finding things for a toddler to do, even though the toddler’s Mum wasn’t too sure about the safety aspects of some of them.

     “’Es all right. Leave ‘im alone. ‘Es ‘avin’ a lovely time.”

     His favourite toddler pastime (and mine) was to give me a lump of wood, a hammer, and a handful of nails. To be able to spend hours banging nails into a piece of wood with no other aim than to simply bang in the nails was absolute bliss for a 2 1/2 -3 year old. I didn’t have to make anything, or worry unnecessarily about the end result, or running out of nails as there was an endless supply. I’d simply sit outside the Anderson Shelter in the garden of no 6, Marsham Close, and give my block of wood what for. I don’t ever remember hitting either of my tiny thumbs, though I didn’t always manage to hit the nail on the head, so to speak, and the lump of wood always ended up with the surface texture of crocodile skin.

     Granddad was by no means a craftsman himself, a bit of a bodger in fact, but he did make a few of things for Kathryn and me that we were very proud of, like a couple of stools which were box-shaped, about 18 inches long, and about 6 inches off the ground. One green and one blue. Mine became a fort or a battleship when I turned it upside down or Noah’s Ark for my farm animals when the weather turned a bit iffy.

     Sometimes, when he was on late turn and had a morning free, Granddad would make the trek from Chislehurst to St Paul’s Cray and look after me so that Connie have a break and go shopping in peace. He’d wear an overall over his railway uniform with a blue tweed jacket on top and a cloth cap and muffler. The configuration of his teeth always fascinated me. The top row seemed to start at the left front and spread to the left. In the other direction, there was just a long dark gap. Eventually he had them all ‘whipped out’, as one did at his age in those days, but he never got used to the idea of false ones and hardly ever wore them.

     His jaw shrank over time so that the teeth didn’t fit, leaving him with the typically elastic mouth of the seasoned ‘gurner’, and the ability to form the most hilarious comic faces.
Looking back, his facial contortions were both revolting and sad, though he did manage to wear his teeth on special occasions like when he went on the family’s annual holiday to Devon, when he’d wear them for the train journey and take them out when he got there. He’d sometimes wear them on Christmas Eve and I think he shoehorned them in for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11, or was that for the conquest of Everest? It was one or the other.

     LEWISHAM

     Pop was on duty the night of the Lewisham train crash. In thick, freezing fog, (before the Fifties, there was fog and frost – someone saw fit to come up with the combination ‘freezing fog’, a much more dramatic and threatening sounding term.) a Ramsgate bound express train from ran into the back of a slam-door suburban passenger train parked in St John’s station in the rush hour, one Thursday evening in 1958.

     The 100 ton Battle of Britain Class locomotive towing 400 tons of carriages and passengers ploughed into the stationary train at about 30 mph, jack-knifing its first 2 carriages up into the railway bridge overhead where an approaching train only just missed tumbling down onto the wreckage below due to the power cables being severed in the initial impact.

     Over 90 people were killed and 150 injured. The St Aiden’s choir practise was abandoned after we’d spent nearly 2 hours messing about with torches in the fog outside the church waiting for Norman Harris to come and unlock the doors. Norman never turned up and when news of the disaster filtered through it was accompanied by gruesome rumours that he’d been a passenger and was killed. Fortunately for Norman and the survival of the choir, it wasn’t true. He’d been delayed by the accident along with thousands of other commuters, but arrived home safely in the early hours of the Friday morning.

     Pop, in his usual no-holds-barred style, was vociferous about the event.

     “I noo something was wrong. Me 6.40 to Ramsgit was overdoo by ‘arf an hour. I phoned down the line and reported it. When the noos came through, I noo it would be bad. It was lucky the bugger was only doing 30. It was the driver’s fault. ’e went through a red light, see. Just didn’t see it in the fog. Cor what a mess, eh? Bit ‘o bodies everywhere.

     "Lummy! What a mess. I tell you what else, it was lucky them trains didn’t roll down the embankment. There’s a row of cottages at the bottom. Core! It don’t bear thinkin’ about, it don’t. Course, they’ll all bloody blame the driver, poor sod. No one would’ve seen that red light in that bleedin’ pea soop. No one, I’m tellin’ yer. Gerr. They always blame us. But I’m tellin’ you. They’re lucky it wasn’t a bloody sight worse, all them bleedin’ know-alls, They don’t know ‘ow luck we was that night. They don’t ‘ave a bleedin’clue.

     “People just don’t understand the power of trains, or what they can do. A mate of mine got ‘it by an express. Walked out from behind a line of goods wagons in the pourin’ rain and crossed the track just as the train got to the same place. Never knew nothin’ abart it. Neither did the train driver. They can creep up on you real quiet, see, trains can. You don’t always ‘ear ‘em till they’ve gone past. Then you ‘ear ‘em alright. It’s 600 odd tons movin’ at 70 miles and hour. 600 tons movin’ at that speed! Can you imagine it? Nah, course you can’t. No-one can. Not unless you ever bin that close – like I ‘ave.

     “Fand ‘im beside the track, I did. What was left of ‘im. Thought ‘e was just an old bundle of rags as someone ‘ad just chucked there. Ooor, right mess, ‘e was. Smashed to pulp. Every bone in ‘is body in splinters. ‘e was mostly in one piece, but ‘e was all red. All the blood was just under the surface of ‘is skin. Split every vain. Ooor, right mess. Right old mess.

     “There was this little dog, once. Got on the track between the electric rail and the one next to it. It was runnin’ along, yelpin’. It swayed from side to side as it run, like that, you know? Every 2nd step, its bum would catch the live rail and shove it back the other way. Then it’d catch it again. Right comical, it was. 660 volts, it is. Fell across it meself once. Burned all me shins – set me trarsis alight. Coor, I tell, yeh. Whoooor. Blind Old Kate! It didn’t ‘alf ‘urt, I’m tellin’ yer.”


‘Don’t just say brown, say Hovis’



Ben Lyon: “Bebe, have you seen my aeroplane anywhere. I’m sure I left it in the garage but it seems to have disappeared.”

Bebe Daniels: “What aeroplane? We don’t have an aeroplane.”

BL: “You know, the one I flew in that film we made about the heroic 1st World War pilot and his sweetheart, what was it called?”

BD: “ ‘Hell’s Angels’. You know your trouble, Ben? You’re always living in the past. You got shot down, remember?”

BL: “So I did. That’d explain all these holes I keep finding in my body. I was beginning to think a particularly nasty breed of Mosquito had ravaged my manly frame.”

Barbara Lyon: “Daddy, I hope you’re not going to talk about all that ‘yesterday’ stuff when Richard Gere comes to dinner on Sunday.”

BD: “Actually, Ben, you got ravaged by a particularly nasty Fokke Wolf.”

BL: “Language, Bebe, language! I was thinking, it’s funny your name is Daniels, the show being called ‘Life With The Lyons’, don’t you think? You know, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and all that.”

BD: “Hilarious.”

Babs: “Because if you do…”

BL: “Where’s Aggie? I haven’t had my breakafast and I’m starving.”

Babs: “I’ll die…”

BD: “She’s gone. She’s run off to Bethnal Green with our son, Richard.”

BL: “Don’t you mean, Gretna Green?”

BD: “No, Bethnal Green. Our son always was a hammer short of a tool box.”

BL: “What?”

BD: “Keep up, Ben.”

Babs: “I’ll just die.”

BL: “That’s another funny thing, him being called Richard – Richard the LIONHEART. Weird, that.”

Babs: “I really will. I’ll die…”

BD: “It’s not L I O N, its L Y O N.”

BL: “Well, I’ll be… All this time I’ve been thinking I was King of the Jungle and it turns out I’m just a packet of tea. Perhaps we could change our name to Tyger. ‘Life With The Tygers’. Yes, I quite like the sound of that. What do you think, Bebe?”

Babs: “I’ll just die.”

BD: “I think ‘Lemming’ sounds better.”

BL: “No, I don’t think ‘Life With The Lemons’ has quite the right sort of ring to it.”

BD: “Oh, I don’t know.”

Babs: “Is no one listening to me?”

B: “What‘s that, dear?”

Babs: “I said: I’ll die. I’ll just die.”

B: “Oh, not again, dear. Go and do it in the garden, would you? I’m busy trying to remember why I didn’t listen to my Mother and married your father.”



     * * * * * * * * *



I tawt I taw a puddy tat a treeping up on me
I did I taw a puddy tat as plain as he could be...


Chapter 5. THE BLOODY SODS

"I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this county is at war with Germany.Bugger.”


     In Mill Place, the Rouds had Moles living nearby - next door, to be precise. There was Mr and Mrs Mole, and four children, Ronnie, Renee, Brenda and Derek. Brian Mole was born much later after Ronnie was killed in the war and the Roud’s had moved to no 6, Marhsam Close, a mile away from Mill Place, on the edge of the London Boroughs. The Moles also moved and again lived next door but one to the Rouds at no 8.

     After the 1939 Munich crisis, and Neville Chamberlain had brought his infamously useless piece of white paper home and waved it pathetically at the British public and the rest of the world at large, Brian Mole and the Roud family were standing outside No 6 Marsham Close discussing the current events.

     “Chamberlain’s a fool.” Ronnie said in an uncharacteristically serious tone, “It’ll happen again. The bastard will invade Poland, you see if I’m not right. Then we’ll all be for it. Fat lot of good his bit of paper will be then. He might as well light his pipe with it.”

     Ronnie was right, of course, except that Chamberlain was a non-smoker. Ronnie enlisted and was killed in Crete two years later.

     Marsham Close formed part of new estate of cheap, asbestos-lined houses off White Horse Hill. Connie was enrolled at Edgebury, a new mixed school opened the same year, and at the end of the 1st year, bulldozers moved in and churned up the earth that formed part of the playing field out outside the main classrooms.

     A strange, subterranean concrete building was constructed with a door at either end and earth was piled on the top and re-turfed. This was to be the air raid shelter - a formidable structure that looked like it belonged in an Ancient Egyptian graveyard.

     The shelter was never used despite the fact that Chislehurst and the surrounding area was often a dumping ground for the Luftwuffe pilots who’d missed the docks and didn’t want to suffer the indignity of returning to The Fatherland with a fully loaded bomb bay.

     On the morning of September 3, 1939, the 14-year-old Connie rode to Downham on her bike to visit her Aunt Mary, Nan’s sister. Nan told her to be back by 11.00 because, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, was going to speak to the Nation at 11.15. Connie got back at 11.10 and she, her sister, Janet, and Nan gathered round the wireless to wait for what everybody was sure would be bad news. Granddad was at work, and ten minutes after the speech declaring war on Germany had left the Nation in stunned silence, the first air raid siren started up in the distance.

     The mournful wailing was joined by others, the ghostly moan growing in formidable strength until the one on the roof of the police station in Chislehurst High Street brought the chorus to a chilling climax. After a few minutes, the ‘all clear’ was sounded and though Nan didn’t exactly panic - she wasn’t the panicking kind - she did leap into action, putting up the blackout screen that Granddad had constructed from a piece of hardboard covered in black cloth that fitted exactly into the recess in the front room window.

     She pushed an armchair into the middle of the room, turned all the lights on, and, with her children sitting on the floor at her feet, sat clutching the family cash box containing all her insurance policies tightly on her lap. Quite what she expected to happen, no one was sure, least of all Nan herself, but one thing she was sure of - no ruddy German was going to get his mitts on her insurance policies unless it was over her dead body, and even then she wasn’t about to give them up.

     Its hard to imagine how terrifying it must have been for those who sat huddled in their Anderson Shelters in their gardens crapping themselves night after night, while 27,173 tons of high explosive rained down on the Great British public over a 2 year period. (This was only about a sixth of the amount the Americans dropped on Japan in 1945.)

     According to Connie, at the beginning of a raid, the oscillating drone of the Dornier and Heinkel engines above seemed to be saying: “Here he comes, here he comes, here he come, here he comes…” as the family sat crouched in the dark wondering if this night was going to be their last.

     MARRERS

     During the Blitz of 1940, it became almost accepted practice for families to spend at least a third of their lives huddled together for often 8 hours at a time in the cramped Anderson Shelters. Designed in 1938 by Henry Anderson and a chap named Wilson, the Anderson shelter consisted of a 6ft wide hoop of corrugated metal sunk four feet into the earth and covered with a layer of soil for extra protection. The ability of the crude shelter to withstand fall-out from a German bomb was dubious to say the least having been only put to the rigorous test of Mr Anderson himself, jumping up and down on the roof of the prototype and declaring the thing safe and sound.

     During one heavy night raid, the Rouds had a visitor.

     “’Ay, Emma.Ye in there?”
     “Yes. Is that you Jock? (It was Jock Martin from next door)What the ‘ell are you doin’ out there?”
     “Ye feelin’ a bit warum doon there, Em?”
     “No, its bloody cold. Why.”
     “Well, there’s an incendiary bomb aleet on the roof o’ ye shelter an’ it looks like your wee marrows have bought it.”

     A popular use for the earth that covered the garden shelters was to use it to grow plants and vegetables, and Granddad’s proud speciality was marrows. His spouse came storming out of the shelter like a woman possessed, shaking her fist at the mayhem of searchlight beams and bursting AA shells above.

     “Bloody sods! Bloody Sods! Look what you’ve done to my bloody marrers. Get a bucket of water, someone. Me poor bloody marrers. Bloody sods!” Amongst the deluge of falling bombs and whizzing shrapnel, fear was often overlaid by more pressing emotions.

     But even the marrow incident didn’t upset Emma as much as when the dreaded Hun ruined her Sunday lunch. The sirens started just as Nan had dished up roast beef and 3 veg’ for the family who made their way down the garden carrying their plates with Nan following behind with the gravy.

     Seating herself near the door curtain, she took each plate in turn and poured on the gravy. She was on the third one when a bomb exploded near enough to almost shake the shelter loose from its foundations, sending the gravy showering over the gathering like muddy water. If Hitler himself had been anywhere close at the time, he’d have got a taste of Nan’s Sunday offering full in the face.

     JOCK

     Throughout the mayhem of The Battle Of Britain and The Blitz, Granddad never once deviated from his shift pattern as signalman at Chislehurst Junction; early turn; late turn; nights. Often, he’d ride home on his bike from the night shift through the pitch-black tunnels of trees arched over the roads that passed through the common. With shrapnel ricocheting off his regulation tin helmet the intrepid signalman pedalled home to find the back door of number 6 had been forcibly removed from its hinges and transplanted elsewhere.

     He’d stand in the garden of no 6 surveying the damage while the bombs fell all around him and tiny burning particles from burning houses drifted about like fire flies. There was a loose drain cover on the back garden path, and when Granddad made his way to the shelter in the pitch black, he always stepped on it and it responded to the weight of his foot with a dull, echoey clunk.

     “That you, Owl?”
     “No, it’s bloody Rommel. ’Oo the ‘ell d’you think it is?”
     “What’s it like up there?”
     “The back door’s half way up the stairs again, your curtains are burnt and you ain’t got no windows. Apart from that, everything’s just fine and bloody dandy.”

     If Granddad was at work during a raid, Nan demanded complete silence in the shelter, not that anyone could hear themselves think with all the racket going on outside. She’d listen intently between the bangs for the distant sound of trains and was immediately relieved if she heard one.

     “Listen. A train. Good. Dad’s alright, then.”

     If Emma could hear the trains running, then it meant her husband was still at his post. It was of no consequence that it could have been any old train on any of the hundreds of lines that didn’t run anywhere near Chislehurst Junction that she was hearing. But if the trains, any trains, were running, then her ‘Owl’ was OK.

     One night, he came home in the blackout after a particularly nasty raid had finished, and as he got to the front gate, someone tried to strike a match a couple of feet away.

     “Oo the bleedin’ ‘ell’s that? What the ‘ell d’you think you’re bloody playin’ at? Don’t you know there’s a ruddy war on? This is a blackout.Why d’you think there are no bleedin’ street lamps? D’you think we wander around in the bleedin’ dark for a laugh?”

     Harry couldn’t see a thing and had no idea, who he was talking to.
     “That yee, ‘Arry?”
     “Yeah, that you, Jock? Where are you?”
      “Aim doon be the front door.”
     “Where? I can’t see you. What’re you doin’ down there?”
     “ Ah shtumbled in the daruk and I couldn’a gerrup agin. Been ‘ere for ewrers.”
     “You drunk, Jock?”
     “Eye. Happen ah must be. It’d explain why ma legs dinna work veery weel. ‘Ere, gis us a leet, ‘Arry.”

     Jock Martin lived next door at No 8. He was a Glaswegian, and like many others from his hometown, occasionally partial to the odd dram. He wasn’t actually a regular drinker, but every couple of months or so, would go on a bender and disappear for a couple of days until he managed to find his way home. He’d often arrive back in the early hours of the morning and feel his way into the house in the dark, trying desperately not to wake anybody up.

     Jock's favourite party trick was to knock over the goldfish bowl as he groped his way through the sitting room to the kitchen for a glass of water. This brought his family running to rescue the poor fish from being squashed by Jock’s clodhoppers and to stop the jovial Scotsman falling into a stupor by plying him with hot tea laced with soda.

     It actually didn’t take much for Jock to get totally out of his skull. He worked at the brewery in Park Road and as pot man for several Chislehurst pubs in spare time and, according to his doctor, he breathed in so much alcohol through fumes, he was potentially a giant walking bottle of uniquely blended ‘hard stuff’ and all the first real dram did was act like a lighted match to all the dry tinder in his system.

     One night, a German bomb scored a direct hit on a local garden chicken run and the effect, according to Connie’s sister, Janet, was as if someone had blown up a mattress. A blizzard of feathers came raining down and covering everything in down snow. It was more evocative than any common old white Christmas. To the well-oiled Jock, it probably was Christmas.

     “It’s snay-in ootseed. Jest looket tha’. Never seen flakes as big a’ zat affor.”

‘Surf. Hold it up to the light. Not a stain and shining bright.’

Detective Inspector Wilson: “How many times do I have to tell you, Fortynine? The next time you arrest 24 criminals single handed, make sure they ARE all criminals. The Vicar of St Luke’s is mighty peeved at being charged for armed robbery and driving a stolen vehicle, not to mention, resisting arrest.”
PC 49: “Sorry, Inspector, I thought the dog collar was a disguise.”
W: “Just think yourself lucky he wasn’t the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
49: “Actually, he was the dead spit of Slimy Logan, the forger. And when I saw the ink on his fingers, well….”
W: “It wasn’t ink, you dunderhead! He’d just finished decoking his Royal Enfield 500. It was oil.”
49: “Oh, my Sunday helmet! That would explain the goggles. Actually, you’ll find this quite amusing, Tee-Hee. I thought he might’ve been using the goggles to keep the acid out if his eyes while he was etching counterfeit plates.”
SFX: Lunging across the room noises.
W: “JUST LET ME GET MY HANDS ON HIM!”
Sergeant Wright: “Out you go, Fortynine.”
49: “Yes, Sir. Just going. Sorry, Sir. Goodnight, all.”


     * * * * * * * * * *



I know a fat old policeman
He's always on our street
A fat and jolly red-faced man
He really is a treat
He's too kind for a policeman
He's never known to frown
And everybody says
He is the happiest man in town!

A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa
Oorr-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa

He laughs upon point duty
He laughs upon his beat
He laughs at everybody
When he's walking in the street

He never can stop laughing
He says he's never tried
But once he did arrest a man
And laughed until he cried!

A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa
Oorr-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa

His jolly face is wrinkled
And then he shut his eyes
He opened his great big mouth
It was a wondrous size!
He said: "I must arrest you!"
He didn't know what for
And then he started laughing
Until he cracked his jaw!

A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa
Oorr-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa

So if you chance to meet him
While walking 'round the town
Shake him by his fat ol' hand
And give him half a crown
His eyes will beam and sparkle
He'll gurgle with delight
And then you'll start him laughing
With all his blessed might!

A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa
Oorr-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haa


Chapter 6. LITTLE BOXES

     Granddad’s signal box, perched high on the up-bound side of Chislehurst Station, was immaculate. The pine floor was kept scrubbed and polished so that you could eat off it and the brass signal levers sparkled like crystal with not a single fingerprint in evidence anywhere. It was just the place to commit the perfect murder.

     I remember being taken onto the opposite platform in Connie’s arms when I was about 2 years old and Pop leaning out of the box window and tossing a bag of Liquorice Allsorts across the line to us. Every time I eat one of those black rolled jobs with the white cream through the centre, I can smell the smoky steam the big locos used to chuck out as they rushed past.

     During the war, if an air raid got really bad and he was on duty in the box, Pop would climb down the stairs on the side of the box and clamber into the cramped signal gear and electrical cupboard underneath. This was potentially a far more dangerous place to be than taking his chances standing out in the open in the middle of a field wearing a white sheet with a target painted on it.

     The cavern under the signal box was regular spaghetti bolognaise of cables, fuses and live junctions carrying up to 660 volts. The slightest move of an arm, leg, or even a fingernail in the wrong direction, and the intrepid signalman could have been barbequed to a nice golden brown.

     When there was a lapse in a raid, and railway traffic and all was quiet, Pop would stretch out and get his head down for a while on the polished floor of the box itself. He was deep in slumber in the early hours one morning when something stirred him and he opened his eyes to find himself staring down, or in this case, up, the barrel of a revolver - 4 revolvers in fact.

     4 men stood round him, each pointing a pistol at his face. They were dressed in civilian clothes and one of the men quietly told him to stay still, a suggestion that he found easy to comply with.
     Two of the men kept him covered, as they used t o say in the movies, while the other two examined the signal box. The task completed, the man who spoke told him to stay on the floor for at least the next hour. Then they left.

     Exactly an hour later by the brass clock on the signal box wall, Pop got up and phoned his supervisor at Hither Green. The supervisor didn’t seem at all perturbed by what Pop told him asked him not to mention the incident to anyone and that he would be contacted the following day.

     The next morning, as he was about to leave for home, a plain-clothes detective visited the signal box and while his mate on the next shift took over, Pop was taken outside and interrogated thoroughly about what had occurred the night before. He was told not to ask any questions and again instructed not to discuss the matter with anyone, even his family, and to forget that anything had happened.

     Pop never found out who his visitors were or what they were doing in the box and only ever mentioned what took place 20 years or so after the war was over.

     FLAP

     Another time when Granddad was on night work during the war, he was awoken from his wooden floor bed by a strange flapping sound. It sounded like a bird with enormous wings coming from somewhere outside. Taking a flashlight from a shelf, he climbed down the steps and shone the beam around in all directions.

     The sound seemed to be coming from the road bridge, which carried the main line across Summer Hill, so Pop walked down the slope at the end of the platform to investigate. It was a warm, balmy summer night and the flapping sound got louder as he approached the bridge. He shone the torch onto the bridge and made out something large and white flapping in the brisk breeze about 20 feet above the bridge.

     As he got closer, he recognised what appeared to be a parachute wrapped round the telephone lines that ran parallel with the railway line and it was this that was making the flapping noise. There also seemed to be something hanging from the chute, something large, dark and heavy. He walked right up to it so that the object was about 3ft above his head. He shone the torch beam at the object, which appeared to be made of metal.

     On the wall of the signal box, was a chart of enemy and British aircraft and munitions supplied by the Ministry Of Defence, and for some reason, Pop walked back to the box and examined it. There it was. The dull metal object that was now swinging 30 ft above the road was a 500lb German-made land mine.

     BUZZ BOMBS

     In June 1944 the first flying bombs fell on London. It wasn’t clear what they were at first. They were obviously not dropped from a plane. It was soon reported that they were in effect self-propelled pilot less aircraft, which, when they reached their maximum range would crash with their explosive load. At first only one or two fell, but soon it became obvious that a regular bombardment was under way.

     One of the most frightening things about a V1 in flight was the sound. Quite unlike any ordinary plane, it was a strange, tearing, rasping sound, more like a two-stroke motorbike. It had a more sinister and disturbing quality: if the motor cut out when the thing was approaching, it was likely to drop nearby or on your head. South London was on their regular flight path, where many of them fell, causing dreadful damage and loss of life.

     One particularly nasty incident was on 28th July 1944 when a flying bomb fell in the main shopping centre of Lewisham. It landed on an air raid shelter, causing 51 deaths and many horrendous casualties.

     V-1s were literally flying missiles that had enough power to fly over the Channel and were capable of destroying 2 to 3 houses. As soon as the horrible droning noise stopped people had about 15 seconds to escape from the powerful blast that followed except that no-one knew where the thing was till it hit the ground so when you were running for cover, you might well be running towards disaster.

     The V-1s, which were more commonly known as "Doodle bugs or "Buzz bombs", were fired from France when it was taken over by the nasty little corporal and his mad entourage of Blitzkrieg troops and were launched during 1944. About 8,000 were launched at Britain, and 2,000 of them hit London. Over 6,000 Londoners were killed and about 50,000 homes were destroyed. 2,500 anti-aircraft guns were moved to the south coast to try and shoot down the deadly V-1s before they reached London.

     As if the V-1s weren't enough, on the 8th September 1944 the first of the even more destructive "V-2" rockets was launched. It landed on Chiswick near London. The V-2s produced a mighty double bang. The first was caused by the missile breaking the sound barrier as it hurtled to earth from the maximum height of 60 miles at twice the speed of sound. The second was the explosion on impact.

     The first rocket killed three people and the terrifying V-2s proved even more destructive than the V-1s. They flew very fast and much too high to be shot down by the anti-aircraft guns or fighter aircraft. Luckily, less of them were launched than the V-1s. 500 hit London, killing 2,855 people.

     Pop was in his signal box one glorious summer afternoon when he caught sight of a brief flash of something glinting in the sunlight. Squinting his eyes, he could make out the stubby, short-winged cigar-shape of a V1 not that far away and hear the telltale throb of the motorbike engine.

     The image of the missile suddenly disappeared and seconds later, Granddad was sent sprawling across the box onto the floor by a huge blast. He was flat on his stomach before the dull thud of the explosion reached his ears.

     In Chislehurst itself, the missile was seen travelling north about 500ft above the High Street and when it reached the top of White horse Hill, it inexplicably turned completely round and headed south.

     The motor cut out, and the dustbin-sized load of explosives glided silently down onto the Church Of England Junior School in Willow Grove near the junction with Park Road. Luckily, it was a Saturday afternoon and the school was empty of children though the lives of two teachers were lost. The Annunciation Church in the High Street also sustained considerable damage which wasn’t repaired till the 1950’s and was still visible right up until I’d been at Red Hill School for a couple of terms.

     2 houses in Green Lane which runs parallel to the High Street suddenly disappeared one day leaving not much else but a gaping hole where they’d been. This assumed to be the terrifying work of a V2 rocket which, fired in a direct arc, ground to ground, gave no warning of it’s arrival. One minute a building was there, the next, it wasn’t.

     A FEW OF THE FEW

     During The battle Of Britain, Connie and Mavis Martin from next door in Marhsam Close, would stand on the top of White Horse Hill and watch the vapour trails of the dog fighting Spitfires and Mechershmidts thousands of feet above. They couldn’t see who was who but would shout encouragement to whoever looked like he was winning.

     “Go it, boy. Give him hell. That’s it. Shoot the bugger down. Go on. Let him have it.”

     Occasionally, a smoking Spitfire or Hurricane would struggle low in the sky trying to get back to Biggin Hill. Sometimes they’d make it. Sometimes they wouldn’t. Some of those that did would die later of burns or terrible injuries and it was hard for the two young girls to comprehend that many of these pilots were not much older than themselves.

     Another sight from the hill was the night sky lit up in a red glow like the most amazing sunset that could be imagined, except that it wasn’t a sunset, it was the London docks ablaze like so much dry tinder as the Lufftwaffe relentlessly and mercilessly tried to obliterate the country’s supply line taking with it large chunks of the East End of London.

     Along with many other migrants, the Roud family were thankful they they’d made the trek from Deptford to greener pastures all those years before.


     MY BILL

     My life from birth up to the age of 20 was part filled with cats. The first was William, Nan’s brick outside privie of a black monster who worshiped the ground she walked on. He followed her everywhere, even to the toilet, where he’d jump onto her lap and cuddle up till she‘d finished. She called him ‘my Bill’ and spoiled him beyond belief. Nothing was too good for ‘my Bill’, much to the exasperation of Granddad.

     During the war, his friend at Double’s the butchers in Chislehurst High Street, slipped him half a pound of liver when no one was looking. (liver was like gold dust, and hardly ever available with a ration book) Granddad gave it to Nan and told her they’d have it for tea when he came home from his afternoon shift.

     Nan left the liver still wrapped on the kitchen table and got involved in some ‘serious gossip’ over the garden fence with May Martin, her next door neighbour. As if by magic, William materialised in the kitchen and, believing it to be pussycat Christmas, swiftly and skilfully shredded the wrapping paper and filled his furry boots with the liver.

     Rather than boiling the cat, however, Granddad was philosophical about the incident, observing quite justifiably, that it was hardly William’s fault, the cat having been presented with such a mind boggling and generous a feast out of the blue that it was quite beyond his pussy cat powers to ignore it. Granddad was not often so generous when it came to matters involving William and his wife.

     “You know, she’d give away her ruddy arse for that cat and shit out of her ribs.”


     THE CUCKOO

      I was born in the house where the Rouds lived in Marsham Close, a 30’s built cul-de-sac (known affectionately to the family as number six) off Whitehorse Hill in Chislehurst. It was also the house where Connie and her sister, Janet, spent their teenage years and most of the war, including the Blitz and the doodle bug attacks in 1945, and, as I mentioned, the back door often finding itself relocated half way up the stairs.

     Alf was in China for two years after I was born and we lived for a while with Nan and Granddad at No.6. My sister was born two years before me in a converted workhouse in Selby, Yorkshire where Alf was brought up, (not in the workhouse, I hasten to ad) and then went to live at No.6 while Connie was carrying me.

     William absolutely adored the blonde, curly-haired toddler and allowed her to do all manner of things to him while he sat on the table of her high chair. She’d put her fingers in his ears, poke at his eyes, pull his whiskers and his tail, lift his lip pouches, scrape at his fangs with her spoon, and bury her face in his fur grabbing handfuls of it and twisting it till his eyes watered. William just purred in appreciation, such was the bond between the mighty cat and his torturer.

     One cold day, a small electric fire was placed on a low table near the high chair. Old Bill was in his usual ecstatic state on the high chair table as Kathryn performed her usual ear-twisting, investigative surgery. A smell similar to that of toasted Shredded Wheat brought Connie hurrying into the kitchen a nano-second before the mighty moggie turned into a dog and go ‘Whoooof!’ The fur on his back was singed to a crisp brown. He was red hot and about to sacrifice his carcass furthering his cause for love and affection.

     Then I came along, and William hated me at first sniff. His jealousy found him on occasions staring into my cot while I slept, no doubt hoping that my guardians would disappear leaving him to settle down for a kip using my face as a pillow.

     He was always scolded and chased away which must have made the cat really paranoid and he took it out on Alf when he was home on leave one Christmas. Alf and William were playing hide and seek round and round the sofa and at one point in the game when William was crouching on the floor round the back, waiting for his playmate to appear from one side or the other, Alf got onto the sofa seat on his knees, stuck his face over the back and said: "Boo.” The startled cat leapt up and hooked a claw from each front paw into the sides of Alf’s nose and hung on. It took a couple of hours to stop the bleeding, and Alf looked like Geronimo in war paint for a couple of weeks.

     William, however, did do one thing that really upset Nan. Like all cats, he was a vicious, merciless killer when it came to the birds that shared his garden. He once made the unforeseen mistake of bringing what was left of the carcass of one poor Thrush home to drop at Nan’s feet. Instead of the congratulations he expected, the irate lady chased him with a cane. Every time she let him out after that, Nan would show him the cane and threaten him.

     “Now, you bugger, leave them birds alone, or you know what you’ll get!”

     The poor animal must have been totally confused. Here was the one human being in whose eyes he could do no wrong offering him violence for reasons that were totally beyond his feline comprehension.

     During the blitz, the most terrifying sound to be heard must have been the wail of the air raid sirens, a signal of the nerve-wrenching hours that were to come. They’d start in the distance and then get picked up and joined by all the local sirens warning that the impending onslaught was a matter of minutes away.

     At the time of the Cuban crisis of 1963, the old air raid sirens were tested in Sidcup when I was in my first year at the art school. Brian Keoh, the head tutor in Graphic Design, thought it would be quite a wheeze to spread the rumour that America had declared the 3rd world war up and running and were preparing to launch a couple of hundred missiles at the Soviet Block countries.

     Some of the more emotionally charged female students, with their misguided anti-American left wing sympathies, decided not to sit down in the road in protest, but threw their ideology out of the life room window and instead and ran off home in panic.

     EARLY WARNING

     Long before the approaching drone of the Heinkels and Dorniers reached earshot, as the German war machine launched itself once again across the Channel in 1942, the Rouds and their immediate neighbours were already ensconced in their Andersons.

     Up to 8 hours before the raid, William would take himself off upstairs where he was usually forbidden from venturing, and crouch down in that wonderful, comfortable-looking position that cats adopt, with their paws tucked under, and stare at the ceiling. Usually, if Granddad found the cat upstairs, he’d chase him and William would try and to run for it getting nowhere fast with his claws scrabbling and sliding on the polished lino. If the cat wasn’t at her side and she knew he was in, Nan would say:

     “Where’s Bill?”
     “He’s upstairs on the landing.”
     “Right. The sod’s - (the Hun) - definitely coming tonight.”

     Nan would knock on the wall to of the adjoining house to warn the neighbours and prepare the family for a long night in the shelter. When everything was ready, she’d open the back door and usher everybody into the garden and the Anderson corrugated shelter.

     Sure enough, the sirens would start up and a ninety-mile-an-hour black furry flash would pass them as they descended the back steps and when the blackout blanket at the entrance of the shelter was pulled back, there would be William, sitting in his usual spot in the far corner, on the low-slung shelf that Granddad had made for him. There he’d sit, tail wagging till the all clear sounded.

     If Alf was on leave, it was a race to see who got into the shelter first, the monster cat or the sailor. William usually won, even when the intrepid sailor didn’t trip over his bell-bottoms and fall headlong in the rush. When the dull drone of the all clear sounded, William was first out.


     NINTH LIFE

     When in 1950 it was time for Bill to depart this world and go to the bird aviary in the sky, Nan couldn’t bear to take him on the required single fare journey to the vet, so Wesley Barton from next door elected to do the deed. He came round to Nan’s, put the poor old cat in a cardboard box and took him away. Nan Rushed out and bought some whiting and cod roe and put it in Bill’s dish. She met Wesley at the door when he returned, but all he had was the empty box. Poor old Emma cried for days.

     “It was only a ruddy cat.” Granddad observed.
     “No he wasn’t. He was my Bill.”

     FUR HATS ALL ROUND

     Nan only ever had one more cat after her Bill. In 1955, someone gave my Mum’s sister Janet a pretty black and white kitten. The family had moved to No. 2 Slades Drive on the Edgbury Estate by this time and Nan was totally entranced by this new addition to the Roud household and named the cat Dinah.

     At the same time, Walt Disney released the Film Davy Crocket starring Fess Parker and Barney Ebsdon. Davy Crocket fever swept the country and the song from the film reached the top of the hit parade along with the Man From Laramie and Doris Day’s Secret Love.

     Boys everywhere replaced their six guns with muskets called Betsy and their cowboy hats for imitation Coon Skin hats with tails. Manufacturers couldn’t turn out the hats quick enough but they kept appearing in all shapes and shades. Significantly, hundreds of domestic cats began disappearing at the same rate. Dinah vanished along with a dozen more Edgebury puddy tats when Nan and Granddad took their annual holiday in Paignton. She wasn’t quite full grown.

     Luckily, our two cats down at 120 Imperial Way, Fred and Spike, survived, possibly because anyone approaching Spike with a sack would probably have been ripped to pieces.


‘Rice Crispies, Snap! Crackle! And Pop!’


     “Here is the news with Alva Ledel reading it. According to reports being received from The Air Ministry, the Battle Of Britain seems to be over. No German aircraft have been seen over South East England for over a week and though Air Chief Marshal, Lord Dowding, has advised that the situation should be viewed with extreme caution, he feels there is evidence that the Luftwaffe no longer have the strength in numbers or more importantly, the moral, to continue what has been seen as their softening up campaign prior to a full land and sea invation of the British Isles by German forces. Intelligence reports strongly suggest that the German Army is showing definite signs of packing up and turning away from Calais altogether and that Hitler has postponed his plans to conquer the United Kingdom and is turning his attention towards Russia instead. The Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, stated in a speech to The house Of Commons today that the entire population owes a great debt to Lord Dowding, his chiefs of staff and the brave pilots of The Royal Air Force for delivering us from a fate far worse than we could ever imagine if the Nazi war machine had succeeded in it’s evil task and taken us over.
     Moreover, Mr Churchill paid a special tribute to Miss Gracie Fields, without whom even the might of the RAF may have failed to save us. Indeed, Mr Churchill said that were in not for Miss Field’s brave last minute gesture and willingness to step into the breech, all could have been lost, and it was without doubt her live rendering of ‘The Biggest Aspedistra In The World’ on the BBC World Service that finally turned the tide and persuaded the Germans to turn Eastward and face the horrors of the Siberean Winter rather than face life inside our shores. Rule Britania.”



     * * * * * * * * * *





Twenty tiny fingers, twenty tiny toes
Two angel faces, each with a turned up nose
One looks like Mommy, with a cute little curl on top
And the other ones got, a big bald spot
Exactly like his Pop Pop Pop, Pop a da Pop Pop, Pop Pop

I put on the light in the middle of the night and whispered "Dear lets go!"
He grabbed his sock and called the Doc, He told me "Don’t be slow!"
He got me there with time to spare and then he sat on pins
Until the doctor shook his hand and told him "You've got twins!"

Twenty tiny fingers, twenty tiny toes
Two angel faces, each with a turned up nose
One looks like Mommy, with a cute little curl on top
And the other ones got, a big bald spot
Exactly like his Pop Pop Pop, Pop a da Pop Pop, Pop Pop

We've got cribs and bottles and bibs, all round our three room flat
No time to see what's on TV, no room to swing a cat
We're on the run, we're never done, it's like a steeplechase
Oh they came in and they took over like they owned the place

Twenty tiny fingers, twenty tiny toes
Two angel faces, each with a turned up nose
One looks like Mommy, with a cute little curl on top
And the other ones got, a big bald spot
Exactly like his Pop Pop Pop, Pop a da Pop Pop, Pop Pop

Twice the laundry, twice the milk, it's twice the baby clothes
Its double this and double that, oh how the money goes
But Pa and me, we both agree, when all is said and done
We’ve got twice the blessings and we’ve got twice the fun.

Twenty tiny fingers, twenty tiny toes
Two angel faces, each with a turned up nose
One looks like Mommy, with a cute little curl on top
And the other ones got, a big bald spot
Exactly like his Pop Pop Pop, Pop a da Pop Pop, Pop Pop





Chapter 7: MATELOT

     When Alfred Bradley left the Royal Navy in 1950, all he had was a dark grey demob suit, a watch with a square face, the bottom half a Zippo lighter and a few Sailor outfits. He also had a young family and was living on a pre-fab estate in St Paul’s Cray, Kent. I was 4 and my sister Kathryn was 6. Our Mother, Connie, was 24, just a bit older than the then Princess Elizabeth, but better looking, I thought.

     The strange, geometrically stark fashions of the 40’s with their sharply padded shoulders and regimentally styled shirts and jackets was still very much in evidence and even as a tiny child, I used to wonder why Connie’s hairstyle sometimes looked like she had a scrubbing brush stuck on top of her head, the sides of her hair scooped up severely and secured with huge butterfly shaped tortoise-shell grips.

     I always thought Connie was pretty the way that every 4-year-old thinks his or her Mum is, but Connie really WAS pretty. She had soft, gentle features, and a soft and gentle nature. Little wonder Alf fell in love with her that day he climbed over the fence from his half-sister’s garden into Connie’s Mum’s at No 6, Marsham Close, off Barham Road in Chislehurst.

     GOING SOUTH

     Alf’s half - sister, Lillie lived at No 8 Marsham Close next door to Connie’s family, with her husband George and 3 children, Peter, Wesley and Joan. Lillie’s Father, a shoe repairer from Chesterfield to whom she was an only daughter, married Alf’s mother, Tillie Bradford, during the first world war and between them they produced a further 5 children, Alfred, Joan, Bessie, Mary and Paul.

     Though Alf and Lillie were never particularly close they got on OK, but Lillie and her stepmother never saw eye to eye. When the Old Man died from various forms of tobacco poisoning including lung cancer* when Alf was 12, (*Not surprising when you consider he smoked 80 Gold Flake a day plus copious amounts of pipe tobacco - in a pipe, that is, not rolled in fag paper) Lillie was ostracised, left home and headed South, leaving her stepmother to spend the family business, now based in Selby, Yorkshire, out of business.

     Tillie had always had a habit of helping herself to whatever was in the shop till as a matter of course, (Maybe that’s why she was called ‘Tillie’.) and had no understanding of how business worked and that she was in fact taking the profits from it’s heart and by doing so, actually robbing herself and her own family of their livelihood.

     Harry Bradley, Alf’s uncle bought the business and Tillie had to go out to work to support her family, sending Alf to stay with her brother, Alf Bradford, to work in his butcher’s shop in Birmingham. Alf Bradford bullied the unfortunate Alf Bradley mercilessly and the young lad threatened to run away and join the navy as soon as he was old enough.

     The butcher just laughed and told Alf he had neither the guts nor the nerve, but as soon as his 15th birthday came around in 1935, Alf stuck up his fore and middle fingers and signed on the dotted line.

     There followed 6 months tough training at Chatham Royal Naval Barracks where every morning the new recruits, many of whom, like the young Alf, had never been away from home before, were required to go ‘over the mast’, a hundred foot high pole with galleon-type rigging attached, set in concrete on the parade ground.

     At 6.ooam, the recruits, or ‘boys’ as they were known, had to shin up one side to the top, whatever the weather, cross over the small platform, and then, their stomachs lodged in their throats, clamber down the other side, praying and promising God they’d never lie, cheat, steal, or fornicate again, or at all if they never had, if only he’d allow them to get back to Terra Firma safely.

     On the day Alf joined His Majesty’s Royal Navy, they ‘buried the bits’, as he put it, of a 15 year old rating who’s prayers God chose to ignore. On a particularly damp and misty morning, the kid lost his balance at the top of the mast and hit the concrete slab at 100mph.

     HMS Warspite whisked Alf and a couple of hundred, now not so wet behind the ears, young sailors off to China for 2 years. 4 years later, Alf was smack bang in the middle of World War 2 behind a gun, and perhaps thinking the kid who fell off the mast on the parade ground was better off.

     Having lost touch with Lillie for a few years and being billeted at Chatham Naval Barracks, Alf tracked her down to the house in Chislehurst, and spying the pretty young Connie in her garden next door, climbed over the fence, tore his trousers and lost his heart to the 17 year old art student.

     Connie and Alf Married in 1943 at St Nicholas’ Church and spent the first couple of years living at No 6, Marsham Close with her parents, Emma Rebecca and Harold Leslie Roud, and Connie’s sister, Janet.
     During the latter half of the war, the pregnant Connie went to stay in Selby giving birth to my sister, Kathryn, at the age of 18 in a converted workhouse in 1944. After the bombs stopped falling on our little island, and the funny little man with the Charlie Chaplin moustache had shot himself and was sautéed in his pyjamas, I arrived at No 6 Marsham Close on September 3rd, 1946 - in a bed, that is, not by taxi.

     I was part of what they call the post-war ‘baby boom’, which occurred when British Servicemen returned home, and exercised their loins for the first time in ages. (In some cases.) They threw precautions to the wind, and were responsible for helping to create lots of babies and some of the largest school classes ever seen.

     (Alf once told me he had a mate in the navy called Len Neasdon who thought about and talked about not much other than sex. When the war ended Alf asked Len what he was going to do when he got out of the navy and went home.)

     “I’m going to do and do and do and do, till I can’t do any more and then I’m going to do and do and do and do all over again.”

     The same sentiment was obviously in the forefront of most male minds, or underpants that made it back from the war.

     ALF ON THE NAVY:


     “Sea sick? People who get a bit dippy crossing the Channel don’t know what real seasickness is. You just wanted to die. Believe me. You literally went green and what came up was green. I mean, just imagine, you’re on a 75,000-ton destroyer and you run into a Typhoon. The whole bloody ship comes right out of the water and gets tossed around like a bloody ping-pong ball, and you with it.

     “I’ve seen captains hanging on for dear life and throwing up with the best of ‘em. Everyone got seasick. There’s no one can tell me they didn’t. I was in the South China Seas once in a Typhoon and staggering along the deck when a steel door slammed shut on my hand. It broke these the 3 middle bloody fingers.

     “A mate found me in shock just walking up and down cursing everything: Hitler, my Mother for having had me in the first place, the bloody navy for taking me so far away from home, your Granddad for lecturing me about keeping his daughter out late, the war, the fact that I’d run out of baccy, everything. And my bloody fingers were all gnarled and swelled up to twice their size.

     “The ship’s doctor just got hold of ‘em like that (he demonstrated with his left hand pushing against the folded fingers of his right) and just straightened them. Jesus! The pain was incredible.

     “I called him all the arseholes under the sun but he said if he hadn’t done it, they’d have got gangrene and he’d have to have taken ‘em off. He just wrapped ‘em in a couple of splints and sent me back to work. He was right, ‘an all. Look. You can hardly see anything now. I tell you, I learned a few new swear words that bloody day.”


     FROM ASBESTOS TO ASBESTOS

     The houses in Marsham Close and the surrounding roads were built in the early 1930s quickly and cheaply and included in their construction was a brittle, dull grey fireproof material later used to build the prefab estates of the post-war South East. But it was to be another 40 years before anyone admitted that the dust from this Asbestos stuff was the cause of some forms of cancer by which time it was too late for hundreds of folk who’d lived with the stuff for as long as they could remember.

     The Bradley family moved to such an estate in St Paul’s Cray, near Orpington in Kent in 1947, which brought one of the coldest British winters on record. Our detached prefab was one of the well-appointed American style Asbestos bungalows that were neat, spacious and fairly comfortable, and it was here that we started the first part of our family life away from the in-laws.

     The layout of the estate of little Asbestos dwellings was also neat and kept clean and tidy by the residents anxious to make the most of their new post war start in life. The streets had Robin Hood themed names - we lived in Robin way and there was a Sheriff's Road, Sherwood Drive etc. Our prefab was situated on one of the perimeter roads at No 15 Robin Way, St Paul’s Cray, and overlooked Cork’s Meadow, host to the largest gypsy camp in Britain.

     The camp was a spectacular sight with multi-coloured buses, trams and trailers providing living accommodation to 1,000 odd travellers, (that’s what they called themselves though they never actually went anywhere) but they were aggressive people, very protective of their domain and not exactly overwhelming in their hospitality to the local people who had to cross the field to get to the main line railway station at St Mary Cray.

     There was always the strong smell of burning rubber and a fair amount of black smoke in the air and the gypsies would stand about in groups like grimy ghosts and point in any direction that was out of the meadow. In their mind, there was good reason for the tough line they took with visitors. They were protecting not only their way of life but their earning power as well.

     Cork’s Meadow was named after George Cork, an entrepreneurial odds and ends trader who’d originally bought the land from the local council for next to nothing just before the war. He’d started a scrap metal business and used to buy up all the old retired buses and trams from bus garages in the London area. He needed a large plot of land to dismantle the vehicles and employed gypsies to do the work, allowing them to live on the site and act as security guards, a task they performed with great enthusiasm.

     Blokes, raddled old hags, and children - they all conveyed the same message in much the same way.

     “You fuck off! The lot ‘n’ you, or’ll be the worst! Fuck off out!”

     George Cork eventually sold some of the land back to the council so they could build the St Paul’s and St Mary’s Estates, and with the profits and proceeds from his scrap metal business, he retired a millionaire. The Gypsies stayed, some of them living in the remaining trams and buses until they were moved out of the meadow and into the prefabs after we’d all moved on.

     After the war, there wasn’t much work about for 30 year old Ex-Petty Officers or for anyone come to that, and Alf plumped for a job at The Water Board Pumping Station in Old Bexley. The pay was £8 10s a week for watching the water in the reservoir rise and fall and turning a few stopcocks once in a while, but £8 10s wasn’t really enough to feed and clothe a growing family so Alf got on his bike, literally, and took a job at the big Kolster Brand electronics factory in Foots Cray, Sidcup.


     RATIONS

     I had a ration book. So did everyone else. I never thought about why there was this blue booklet thing with my name on it, at least I was told it had my name on it. Connie used to take me to Harrisons, the grocers in St Paul’s Cray High Street, where she presented the ration books when she bought stuff for us to eat.

     Harrison’s had a bacon slicer – a fantastic red machine with a great silver coloured disk that used to whirl round and slice the bacon. I was fascinated by this beautiful object and would sit spellbound on the counter while the smiling Mr Harrison fed wads of bacon into the machine which made a very satisfying swishing noise as the blade sliced through the meat. I wanted one for Christmas or my next birthday when I was about 4, but I never got one.

     Back in the late 40s, a woman could leave a baby in a pram outside a shop in perfect safety while she went about her business inside. I must have been about a year old when Connie did exactly that and left me outside Harrison’s in the October sunshine in my new bobble hat and mittens. She’d been in the shop about 5 minutes when a woman came in from the street.

     “ I don’t know who’s baby that is outside,” she said, giggling, “but he’s having the time of his life with a packet of ginger biscuits.”

     Connie rushed outside to find her son had smeared a whole packet of half-sucked ginger nuts everywhere. Sitting in the pram wasn’t the fresh, spotlessly clean baby she’d ‘d left outside the shop, but a fairly gruesome looking ginger monster with a ginger face, wearing a ginger bobble hat and mittens, and sitting in a ginger pram, surrounded by ginger goo.

     THE MERITS

     Eileen Merit was married to Harry who didn’t work because of a bad foot. He sometimes used a stick and sometimes a crutch and sometimes he couldn’t walk at all. The word Dunkirk was mentioned a few times and I found out later that Harry, an Infantryman in the war, had been on the beaches with the rest of The British Expeditionary Forces as they tried to make their getaway back to England in 1940.

     Harry caught a bullet in the left side and it passed right through him exiting his right thigh. Luckily, he was stretchered onto a waiting landing craft and ferried back to Blighty. His wound healed but an infection broke out in his right foot rendering him a virtual invalid.

     The foot troubled him for most of the rest of his life and such was his discomfort that after about 15 years he elected to have the festering hoof amputated. The foot went but the infection stayed. He asked to have more of the leg removed but was advised that the infection would probably travel even further up his leg and that there didn’t seem to be a way of stopping it. It makes you wonder what those canny Germans dipped their
bullets in!

     The infection eventually led to cancer and Harry died in the 1980’s.This, in a way, must have been a blessed relief for Eileen who’d patiently nursed him through many years of pain and discomfort, to the detriment of her own social and personal life. Soon after Harry passed away, Eileen married Peter, a childhood sweetheart and lived a happy and more fulfilled life.

     Before Harry Merit became a TV addict he was a record addict. The Bradley’s, after we’d moved to Chislehurst, would occasionally visit the pre-fabs and stay with the Merits for a weekend. This enabled us to rummage through Harry’s collection which was pretty eclectic, ranging from Frank Sinatra, Jonnie Ray, Tab Hunter, Mantovani and Ted Heath to the latest hit parade including Elvis Presley, Lonnie Donegan and everyone else who was happening at the time. These visits were what inspired Alf to buy our first record player and start our own collection.

     The Merits had a daughter, Andre, and as a misguided 4 year-old, I’d often herd Andre, Kathryn and a couple of their female friends into a corner of the Merits front garden with the aid of a garden broom. I’d swing it about like a club and usually bring them all to a state of tears before some interfering adult came to their rescue.

     “Girls! I hate ‘em. Girls! I’ll bash ‘em. I’m gonna bash ‘em all.”

     In 1953, after we’d been living on the Edgebury Estate for 3 years, we rented our first TV from Radio Rentals especially for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth 2. It was basically a cheap wooden floor-standing box with a sloping bit at the top, in which sat a 12-inch screen.

     We had the Merits over from St Paul’s Cray to watch the ceremony with us, as they didn’t have a TV of their own. There we were, 4 adults and 3 children all crowded round this strange object in the corner of the room. God knows how we all managed to see anything - the picture was so small.

     At the crucial moment, when the crown was placed on Her Majesty’s head, some of us missed it. Just think of it. A monumental moment of history, live. And we missed it. Alf and Harry Merit fought each other viciously over the one pair of binoculars we had. Not a pretty sight.

     Undeterred, we all sat in front of this silly little box until the last programme, a dreadfully boring variety show called Cafe Royal featuring Maurice Chevalier complete with cane and straw hat. It was finally over at about 11.00 and we were confronted with the Queen again - well, at least her theme tune.


     A CAREER

     On the other side of No 15 Robin Way at No 16, lived the Harringtons, Mr and Mrs, and their sons, Michael and Rodney. He was a sergeant in the Army, she a pretty, redheaded housewife. By our standards, the Harringtons were quite posh - at least, very well spoken for pre-fab dwellers.

     Mr H. was posted to Korea, which for years I thought was ‘career’, and it was a long time before I realised that if you had a career, you didn’t have to wear a uniform and go and fight in some far distant country or other.

     Michael, who was the same age as Kathryn once showed me how to cadge a lift on the baker’s green Morris Minor van. He grabbed hold of the back door handles, tucked his knees under his chin and hung on as the van pulled away. He also showed me how to suddenly let go and fall onto the gravel road and take all the skin off the same knees. Very neat, I thought.

     Several years before, Alf had performed a similar trick when travelling back to Chislehurst from Gillingham late one night. Getting a bus from the station, he promptly fell asleep, waking up just as the bus was pulling away from his stop. Without thinking, he leapt up and jumped off the platform into the road. The bus was moving faster than Alf anticipated and he landed on his knees, removing a fair amount of blue serge from his bell-bottoms and an equal amount of skin from the right-angled bit of his legs.

     He staggered home doubled up and in tears where two Florence Nightingales, aka, Connie and her Mum, did their best to sooth the injured sailor, bathing his torn skin and doing their best to remove what looked like a buckshot blast of gravel from his bloody knees.



     THE BODY

     My Sister, Kathryn, started school while we lived in the prefabs. She was enrolled at the little village church school in St Paul’s Cray, a tiny purpose-built, pretty Victorian building that looked more like a doll’s house than a school. I just couldn’t wait for my turn, now I was at home with just Connie and ‘Listen with Mother’ for company. Not that I had anything against ‘Listen with Mother’. It just didn’t last long enough, and with no sister to bash, life can get pretty boring for a four year old, one way and another.

     Even little village schools had their touch of glamour. In St Paul’s Cray, it was Miss Gaby. She was a flawed beauty with a strange extra front top tooth protruding over the other two so that she couldn’t close her mouth properly. The tooth was usually stained with the bright cherry red lipstick she wore with the consistency of fish paste spread on the bread of a hungry post-war urchin.

     Miss Gaby, or ‘The Body’, as Alf called her, was tall with the classically scrunched-in waste line achieved with the aid of a thick black patent leather belt whose real function was to promote her Dakota-nosed breasts, stretching her sweater precariously close to bursting point. A one-eyed, Veronica Lake hairdo completed the picture.

     By all accounts, Miss Gaby was a tyrant and an absolute cow. All the kids were terrified of her and, as Kathryn’s form Mistress, she often upset my sister to the point of tears. Alf, who had a phobia about authority dating back to the dark shadows of his own apparently difficult childhood, was always incensed by such carryings on and angrily faced ‘The Body’ on the subject at the school’s open day.

     Miss Gaby was totally nonplussed by the ranting of the irate sailor and made it plain that she would conduct herself in any way she saw fit and that her teaching methods were not about to be compromised by some common-all-garden matelot – in the politest possible way. Alf was putty in her hands, or perhaps he just wished he could‘ve been.

     SCHOOL

     When the day finally came, I marched into the little schoolyard clutching a red rose wrapped in silver paper for my teacher and a couple of wafer biscuits wrapped in newspaper for my mid-morning snack.

     School was smashing, just like I imagined it would be, with lots of painting to be done with huge brushes and enormous jam jars full of filthy water, and plastic table cloths so that when you knocked the water over, which one did as a matter of course, it just floated on the surface like a muddy lake.

     My teacher was a pleasant-faced woman called Mrs Kirk, who looked like a mum rather than what I expected a teacher to look like. She could be quite stern though, and used the heel of her shoe to thump on the wooden floor when the class of writhing 5 year olds got too noisy. It was a very effective technique, recreating the sound of a Brenn Gun at El Alameine, and bringing the place to an abrupt hush instantly.

     I managed to lose track of my snack on that first day and while everybody was tucking into theirs, I scoured the vicinity in panic. I spotted my newspaper package on the shelf above the fireplace and by standing on tip toe, I just managed to retrieve it. I found a vacant table and sat down to enjoy my feast, which when I unwrapped it, discovered the wafer biscuits had turned to a pile of crumbs. Undaunted, I set my thumb and forefinger to work and scooped the stuff into my mouth as best I could.

     “WHO’S TAKEN THE NEWSPAPER PARCEL FROM THE MANTLEPIECE?”

     It was Mrs Kirk, and she sounded a mite pissed off, “Come on. Own up. I found it on the floor and put it on the mantle piece for safe keeping. Who’s taken it?”

     The place fell quiet save for the sound of 30 odd sets of munching jaws. I felt myself redden, but luckily, my back was towards her, so I just kept stuffing the crumbs in till they were all gone, then screwed the newspaper up into a ball and slipped it into my pocket. I never realised that a mid-morning snack could be so traumatic.

     In 1951, when we left St Paul’s Cray and moved to the new Edgebury Council Estate in Chislehurst along with Connie’s family and almost the entire population of ‘prefab city’, the old piano was left behind and the only means of making our own music was Alf’s old mouthorgan which had a lot of busted notes. Connie bought him a new one for the first Christmas we spent at the new estate, and he seemed able to play almost anything on it, though standing round a mouthorgan wasn’t quite the same as standing round a piano.

     Alf, nevertheless, seemed to have a thirst for music, something that I’ll be eternally grateful for. Maybe it was the sensitivity of his world travelled, toe tapping hoofs that turned him on to Rock ’n’ Roll so eagerly, because by 1956, he was already in his mid-thirties and probably considered by the new ‘teenage’ generation to be past it and ‘square’, thought I never did work out what the literal translation of the term was.

     To Alf’s delight, the popularity of Rock ‘n’ Roll just grew and grew. Even die-hard 9 year olds like me were soon touched by the spell, and after a couple more visits to the Merit’s, our old neighbours in Robin Way with their Aladdin’s cave of black wax records, Alf decided it was time to get our own record player. He settled on a BSR, which consisted of an armour-plated auto-change system* housed in a red and black dogtooth patterned ply wood box. It cost 18 quid on HP. A bloody fortune, we all thought.

     *(This meant you could load up to 10 78rpm records at a time, and if you loaded them correctly, they’d drop onto the turntable one at a time. If you didn’t, the whole 10 would fall with a resounding crash and the whole machine would shake as if there’d been a mini earthquake somewhere inside.)

     The record player had little power and the speaker was only a 7inch elliptical job. The first record we bought, was no 1 in the British single charts at the time: Guy Mitchell’s ‘Singing The Blues’ on the blue Philips label.
     We didn’t like Tommy Steele’s version. He deliberately slurred the words presumably to make a more rebellious Rock ‘n’ Roll sound, but it just sounded like he was slurring the words. Perhaps Mr Hick’s management figured he’d have more appeal if he sounded pissed. He didn’t.

      From then on, Alf bought a 78 record every week. Such was the depth of our ignorance it was decided that we’d choose our record from the top ten so we’d be fairly safe in our selection. We all took turns so our collection was quite varied. More varied than it would have been if I’d had my way.

     Occasionally, Alf allowed himself to ‘slip the wrong way’, as far as I could see, strangely choosing things like Perry Como singing ‘Marching Along with the Blues’ (I just couldn’t imagine marching along with anything alongside Perry Como though the blues seemed appropriate - he was an OLD MAN, well, older than Alf.) or ‘Around The World’ by Mantovani. But mostly, Alf got it absolutely right and included Jackie Wilson’s ‘Reet Petite’, and ‘Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Goin’On’, by some manic piano player called Jerry Lee Lewis, amongst his early discoveries.

     It wasn’t long before our record collection was pretty impressive and we had at least a dozen 10 inch ‘78s’ of our own and began to consider ourselves pretty hip, or was it hep, were we ‘real cool cats’? We weren’t sure really. (78 signified the number of revolutions per minute the record did on the average turntable, though speed actually varied alarmingly between machines) Whatever, we knew we weren’t ‘square’, which seemed to be an extremely important state not to allow oneself to get into. The more the R&R craze grew, the more hip, hep or cool the Bradley’s became. Well, we thought so.

     EVERYBODY’S DOING IT

     While I was still at Red Hill Junior School towards the end of 1957, all the boys in my class were suddenly singing what sounded like:

     “CUMERLUNGAB, CUMERLUNGAB, FIFTEENMILESINACUMERLUNGAB,”
over and over and over again.

     I asked Jeff Miller in my class what ‘CUMERLUNGAB’ was and he said it was the latest record by Tommy Donegal and his skiffle group, and it was great. I said I’d never heard of the song or Tommy Donegal but ‘Yes Tonight Josephine’ by Johnnie Ray was the record to have as far as I was concerned. He looked at me as if I’d caught some disease, which I suppose I had in a way. I invited him home to tea and played him the Johnnie Ray record and he agreed that...
     ‘YIP YIP, WHIP-UPTY BOOM-DIDDY, BOOM-DIDDY,
YIP YIP WHIP-UP-DE-BOOM,’

…really was the cat’s pyjamas, but he still preferred this skiffle stuff.


     My Sister became a Johnnie Ray disciple and ironed a black and white transfer of his autograph and that she got free with Mirabelle Magazine, across the front of a pink sweater. True, I quite liked ‘Cry’, ‘The little White Cloud that Cried’, ‘Walkin’ in the Rain’, ‘Look Homeward Angel’, ‘No Wedding Today’, but I couldn’t work out what she saw in this gangly, bandy, horse-faced bloke with his side parting, dandruff and hearing-aid.

     Johnnie Ray did have a lot of energy and stage presence and, at the time that counted for everything. Well, almost. The only letdown for me was that Johnny Ray didn’t play the guitar and I was only really interested in those who did. In fact, I was interested in anyone who did.

     Kathryn’s best friend at the time, Kathleen Birchell, was nuts about Frankie Vaughn, who, apart from his broad shoulders, hairy chest; even hairier singing voice; staw hat and cane, didn’t have a lot to recommend him as far as I could see. His sudden, weird screech during his rendition of ‘Green Do-OR’ probably amplified by his customary gonad straining high kick, was apparently a bit of a turn on, though it didn’t do much for me. Middle-aged mums loved him, especially Jewish ones, but he didn’t have a guitar, and was a bit sweaty and as far as I was concerned belonged in the crap bucket along with Johnnie Ray.

‘Domestos kills all known germs – dead’


Harry C: "Sooty, dorn't do thut!"





* * * * * * * * * * * * *


I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing, my knapsack on my back.

Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
My knapsack on my back.

I love to wander by the stream that dances in the sun;
So joyously it calls to me, "Come, join my happy song!"

Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
Come, join my happy song.

I wave my hat to all I meet, and they wave back to me,
And blackbirds call so loud and sweet from ev'ry green wood tree.

Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
From ev'ry green wood tree.

Oh, may I go a-wandering until the day I die;
Oh, may I always laugh and sing beneath God's clear blue sky.

Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-da-ree, val-da-rah,
Beneath God's clear blue sky.



Chapter 8. THE STATE OF THE ESTATE


     My Grandparents, the Rouds, were the very first to move onto the Edgebury Estate in 1951. They took up residence of No 2, Slades Drive, the first semi-detached, 3 bedroom house near the junction with Imperial Way. Granddad, who’d worked on the railways as a signalman since leaving school at the age of 13, worked the same shifts for nearly 50 years by the time he retired: early turn, late turn and night work, in strict rotation.

     Eddie Ford, who was a painter and decorator, lived almost opposite us on the end of Gravelwood Close, with his wife, Olive and their two sons, Tony and Trevor. The Fords were also from St Paul’s Cray and became quite friendly with Connie and Alf. Eddie was a big man, quite genteel in his way, with a grey moustache he’d acquired from his RAF days, and grey, almost white hair he’d acquired from marrying Olive.

     Normally, he was the kind of guy you’d say wouldn’t hurt a fly, but his diminutive, ample-bosomed wife was very feisty and wound him up with the greatest of ease. She was a very sweet lady in lots of ways but was incredibly impatient with her gentle giant of a husband. I guess he just never moved at the right speed for her and she always knew when to strike with maximum effect - usually on the days when he was playing cricket.

     There was always something that he should have done but hadn’t, like maybe finishing some decorating or putting a new lock on the coal shed door or clipping the privet hedge, or putting a new lock on the privet, and clipping the coal shed door. Decorating was his day job so he possibly wasn’t that keen to carry on when he got home.

     Ed always wanted to be a commercial artist but it never happened. He always maintained an interest when I went to art school and often asked me how I was doing. To Olive, he just seemed to be a big loveable, dopey lump that she found frustrating. If there wasn’t anything she could obviously pillory him for, Olive would invent something.

     His cricket days were his only freedom days during the summer and maybe she resented it. She’d often forget to iron his white shirt, which he only found out about when he was packing his kit bag on the afternoon of the match.

     He’d end up doing it himself and he’d come charging down their long flight of front steps, obviously late, fling his kit bag onto the back seat of his little Standard 8, and then fling himself into the driver’s seat. The little car was never that reliable and Eddie spent a great deal of his spare time underneath it in his white painter’s overalls.

     Of course, on these cricket madness days, the odds were about 6-4 that it wouldn’t start. It was all poor old Ed could take, in front of the neighbours and all. For such a placid man, he seemed at times to glow a very violent shade of purple.

     After a couple of years at the mercy of the ever temperamental Standard he got himself a grey Mayflower - one of those square jobs with the sharp corners everywhere. It was in good shiny nick and was his pride and joy. He parked it in the lay-by in front of our house, as we didn’t have a car. This spot was in full view of our front room window, an excellent panoramic vantage point from where to take in neighbourhood drama during the Sunday ritual of Roast beef and 2 veg.

     HOWZATT

     One such a Sunday, Ed came scampering down the steps right on cue, and though this wasn’t a cricket day, it was very clear from his colour that he was in mid conflict with Olive. The Mayflower always started first time, which on this occasion was a pity. If it hadn’t, and Ed hadn’t driven off in such a rage, he might have had time to cool down and not hit the coach.

     It was only a slight ding and no one was hurt, Ed’s pride being what ended up in the breaker’s yard. Give Olive and Eddie their due; they were both able to laugh about it all later. Well, Olive was. I think Ed sometimes had a notion to chop the love of his life up into little pieces and bury her in the garden. He probably would have killed her first.

     Tony Ford was 3 years older than me and his brother, Trevor, was 3 years younger. Tony had the one thing I craved that my parents were reluctant to let me have - a bike. I got to ride it later when he handed it down to Trevor and I used to borrow it when the Fords went out for the day. Tony went out with my sister later on and became the stereotyped older sister’s boyfriend. I turned into the typical young brother of the girlfriend prompting him to suggest I go out somewhere, ideally somewhere like Scunbthorpe or Death Valley, when he was cuddled up on the sofa with Kathryn, but I always played the ‘this my house and I don’t have to go anywhere’ card.

     Trev, on the other hand, became my imagination and fantasy soul mate for many years. From as early as the age of 4, he’d come and play in our garden and over time we developed a great harmony when it came to games of invention. That greatest of all dying men, Mick Rickards, would also sometimes get involved, and with the 3 of us, things would grow to epic proportions - in our minds, that is.

     The sloping bank beside the washing line in the garden really came into its own and was everything from Mt Everest to a parachute jump from a burning Lancaster. I got my first wasp sting on that bank. I put my hand on it when Trev and I were in the French Foreign Legion fighting off hoards of bloodthirsty Arabs. The pain from the sting on my finger added to the reality of the death of a thousand cuts I’d just become the victim of from those terrible slashing scimitars. Trev could do nothing to save me having been riddled several times with machine gun fire. Then, miraculously, he suddenly declared that miraculously he’d become God, so everything was OK once again. He was, of course, the Christian God so he wiped out all the Arabs, with one wave of his Godly right arm.

     The estate was quite a pretty place in the early years, right up until I married and left there at the age of 25. All the gardens were immaculate and the houses were well looked after by the council. They were laid out in alternative blocks with green doors then brown and all the houses had proper wooden framed windows rather than the old metal ones found on the pre-war estates like the notorious Mottingham and Downham Estates.

     (We were given to understand they were rough places and I have to say that when I went to Secondary school the kids from those places had been, shall we say, a lot less protected than us Edgebury lot).


     FOLKS

     Next door to us, going down the road were the Rollingsons, Doug, Joan and Hillary. Nice people. Doug was a sales rep for Unilever - Ex-RAF with a Slim Whitman moustache, though he couldn’t yodel - at least, I never heard him. Doug eventually joined the wheelies brigade and bought himself a brand new Morris Minor - four-door at that. Hilary was a couple of years younger than me and had the most beautiful auburn hair you could imagine.

     GREY AREA

     Next door to the ‘Rollys’, as we called them, were Charlie Grey and his son Stuart. It was Charlie, Peggy and Stuart to begin with, but Peggy, a very pretty Doris Day look-alike, buggered off with someone else on account of Charlie’s alleged meanness and general non-interest in the finer things of life like smiling now and again and enjoying actually being alive. I thought Charlie was OK. He used to play cricket in his garden with Stuart and I using the grass box off their mower for a wicket.

     “Ouzzatt!” was accompanied by a resounding “doyinggg!” if you were clean bowled.

     Some said Charlie was a miserable bugger, though he did take us to see 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea at the pictures, so in my book he was all right. He was a tall man with thick black curly hair and always wore a dark blue suit with a white shirt and braces, even at weekends.

     We were all once at a party in Doug and Joan’s - the Fords, the Bradley’s and a few other Edgebury Estate socialites, and Charlie, who forgot to bring a bottle, sat in an arm chair for a couple of hours, drinking whatever there was to drink. At 10.00 sharp, Charlie decided to leave and before he went asked Doug if he’d mind turning the music down.


     Doug was flabbergasted, but like a good neighbour said he would. I think he turned it down one notch, and then Charlie banged on the wall. The banging was met with cries of derision from the entire Gathering.

     One day Stuart told me his Mum and Dad were getting a divorce one day when we were playing Dan Dare in his bedroom. When I left to go home I went into their sitting room to get my coat and Charlie and Peggy were in the middle of a slanging match.

     She was standing in front of the mirror powdering her nose and he was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette. They were screaming at each other and Charlie blamed Peggy for ‘letting me get an earful.’ It was very embarrassing, and sad.

     WOODY

     Next door to the Greys were the Woods, Stan, Doris, and their two young daughters, Aileen, 5 and Francis, 10. The girls were very quiet due in part to their mother being dour, prim and proper Scottish lady with prematurely grey hair and a complexion to match.

     Stan was a turkey. He certainly looked like one with his scrawny neck, protruding Adams apple, and ‘comb over ’ Bobby Charlton hairstyle. He thought, however, he was Charlton as in Heston, not Bobby, or some such handsome he-man.

     Turns out he chased all the women in the neighbourhood, chatted them up, dropped innuendos like a blind cricketer drops catches. If he saw one of them walking along behind him from the station at New Eltham, he’d stop and wait for them to catch him up with his rolled up newspaper, greasy raincoat and lecherous smile, and then make pathetic conversation, which always started with some kind of personal comment about the lady’s appearance.

     “Hello, dear. You’re looking very lovely today. I do like your dress. I’d say that hem is a good six inches above your knee. Tut tut. (Grin, grin. Leer, leer.) Drool, drool.”

     If one of the ladies from the estate saw him first they’d dive into a gateway or behind a hedge or under a bus. He knew Olive Ford travelled home from Charing Cross as he did, and she’d see him walking up and down the terminus platform looking for her on the train. She’d always make sure she had a broadsheet newspaper with her so that she could hide behind it. She said he made her feel physically ill.




‘The Esso sign means happy motoring,
The Esso sign means happy motoring,
The Esso sign means happy motoring,
Call at the Esso sign.’

A.A.H.

“Innit marvellous? “ ‘ere I am sittin’ on the beach in perfect weather; me trousers rolled up to me knees; me knotted ‘anky on me ‘ead; bucket and spade at the ready and not a care in the world. Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? I mean, just look at it: ‘alf a mile of silver sand, clear blue water gently lappin’ at the shore and not soul in sight.
No screamin’ kids or fat old old ladies to spoil the atmosphere; no municipal deck chair attendant tellin’ you your time’s up and that you have to pay another ‘alf a crown; no candy floss stalls or dodgy bloke sellin’ rude post cards; no sticks of rock, Punch and Judy show or carrousel with its excruciating twinkle twankle music; just peace and quiet.

I’VE NEVER BIN SO BORED IN ALL ME LIFE!

Still, I’ve got me 8 gramophone records to keep me amused. Pickin’ ‘em was a real task, though, I can tell you. Oh, yes indeed, for a man with my cultural tastes and jois de vivre, it was very difficult. Very tryin’, it was. I just couldn’t make up me mind between ‘Beethoven’s 5th’…and ‘The Laughin’ Policeman’. But the thought of hearin’ old plumb in the gob, Plumly, introducin’ me on the programme spurred me on no end.
I can ‘ear ‘im now:
‘My guest on Desert Island Disc this weeks is the well-known comedian, broadcaster and raconteur, and general, all round jolly good chap, Yours Truly, of Railway Cuttings, East Cheam.’

Ah, yes, I thought, recognition at last, and bound to get the ears flappin’ in all the right places.
But ‘ow was I to know that when the BBC asked me if I wanted to be cast away alone on a desert Island with only a few mouldy records, the Bible and the complete works of flippin’ Shakespeare for company, that they really meant it? Stone me! What a liberty.

Oh, well. I spose I’d better think about catchin’ somethin’ for tea. These flippin’ cocnuts a startin’ to get right on my wick, I can tell you.”

* * * * * * *



Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Come back tomorrow night and try it again

You said you love me and you can't come in
You said you love me and you can't come in (wooooo)
You said you love me and you can't come in
Come back tomorrow night and try it again. (woow)
(instrumental break)

Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
come back tomorrow night and try it again
You said you love me and you can't come in
You said you love me and you can't come in (woooo)
You said you love me and you can't come in
Come back tomorrow night and try it again (wooooo)
(Instrumental break)

Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Keep a knockin' but you can't come in (wooo)
Keep a knockin' but you can't come in
Come back tomorrow night and try it again
You said you love me and you can't come in
You said you love me and you can't come in
You said you love me and you can't come in
Come back tomorrow night and try it again (woooow)







Chapter 9. A FRESH START


     The popular joke is that the Queen thinks the world smells of paint because wherever she goes, there’s a team of men a hundred yards in front of her painting everything in sight. This was certainly true of Michael Hesteltine when he visited Hackney as Minister for the Environment during the early 90s. There was wet paint everywhere. Railings, lampposts, pillar-boxes, park benches, shop fronts, OAPs, cats, dogs, everything got a quick lick.

     Later that year there was a TV documentary called ‘Summer On The Estate’, during which old Tarzan was shown visiting one of the borough’s most notorious dwelling places, The Kingshold Estate, near Victoria Park. I had first-hand experience of this dark, forbidding concrete nightmare as my parents-in-law lived there until 1994 when they were re-housed and the place dynamited.

     Tarzan was obviously out of his depth in this particular jungle environment and out of touch
with the stark reality of such a place. Resplendent in his camel overcoat, Church’s shoes, Turnbull and Asser shirt and Huntsman suit, in one scene he was being shown around the base of one of the concrete towers, where a local resident was explaining that the new childrens’ play area at the foot of the tower was unusable because of falling objects.

     “Falling objects? Where do they fall from?”
Hesletine was shown peering round the tower in a skyward direction.

     “Up there. It’s fings what people chuck art the winders or of the flipping (fuckin’) top.”

     “Chuck off the top?” he said incredulously, wondering if he’d suddenly landed on an alien planet, “What sort of things?”

     “Anyfink. Fridges, armchairs, used nappies. Some bloke (cunt) even frew a flipping (fuckin’) pianer daan, one time, though Heaven (fuck) knows ‘ow ‘e got the flipping (fuckin’) fing up there in the first place.”

     “But why do they chuck things off the top?”
     “’Cos they don’t flipping (fuckin’) want ‘em.”

     The Kingshold Estate was completed in 1968 as part of the ‘Brave New World’ urban renewal campaign dreamed up by the then Labour government and its team of ‘modern’ architects. Great swathes of once proud Victorian terraces were wiped out to make way for these monoliths of contemporary utopian living.

     In theorie, it seemed a good solution in the aftermath of the 2nd world war when bombsites were a familiar part of urban landscape in most major cities,and what with the already overcrowded and overstretched ‘ribbon development’ of the pre-war 30s style semi-detached suburban sprawls, the only way was up. It was a brilliant idea. You could cram 500 families onto the same ground space previously occupied by half a dozen conventional houses, while preserving a bit of open space all of which would look pretty commendable come election time.

     For the first time in some lifetimes, people would feel the benefit of proper sanitation, central heating, lock-up garages to keep their five quid cars in, centralised shopping facilities and community halls for social gatherings. AND these new mini cities were cheap to build using very basic materials like concrete and Asbestos. Everything was going to be tickety-boo from then on.

     What no one realised at the time, or took the trouble to consider, were the psychological effects that living in a huge multi-layer sandwich would have on the occupants - that becoming the integral human part of such a scheme would destroy the very thing that had been the backbone of suburban life for countless generations - the feeling of being part of an open community; of belonging; of trusting and of being trusted. Anonymity and feelings of isolation would take over and with it a creeping, silent, lethal enemy: depression. In short, the towering sandwiches soon became stale and turned mouldy.

     Living up in the air was like being cut off form the real world. This new type of community was closed; shut away; disconnected, soulless. I remember as a young art student, standing drawing one of the new structures being erected at the Elephant and Castle in The Old Kent Road and wondering why anyone could ever bear to work in such a dismal, ugly and oppressive office block, not realising that what actually was taking shape was a block of flats that people were expected to live in.

     This was all part of what was loosely described as the ‘Modernists Movement’, based even more loosely on the work of pre war architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, who’s beautifully proportioned buildings of the 30s and 40s grew out of rocks and natural surroundings amongst cascading waterfalls and trees.

     As with so many art forms, Lloyd Wright’s work was seriously misunderstood because of its apparent simplicity and turned into sprawling monolithic cites of cold grey concrete slab-like dwellings. Lloyd Wright had a clear vision of how urban life could be revitalised by the careful juxtaposition of geometric shapes against existing landscape. Judging by the way the town planners of the 50s and 60s didn’t totally misread that vision they might as well have been blind.

     It’s ironic that in the case of the St Paul’s Cray prefabs, one of the building materials used in the construction was a major contributor to the demise and destruction of many high-rise estates: Asbestos. Just think, the very buildings themselves were eminently capable of killing the residents from the inside if they didn’t commit suicide first. The Kingshold Estate in Hackney lasted just 24 years before it’s twin towers literally bit the dust to the enthusiastic countdown of hundreds of ex-residents.

     “FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE… ‘KAABBBOOOOOOM!’…There goes the fucker. Bloody good riddance, ‘an all,” was the general consensus of opinion.

     There was a smell of fresh paint everywhere when our family moved onto the newly built Edgebury Council Estate in 1951 with building sideways still an option. One of the first new council estates to be erected after the war, it was an unusual place because of its small size and its location - 3 and half roads (one was an unfinished cul-de-sac) smack in the middle of about 1000 acres of green belt land and surrounded by huge wild fields, home to hundreds of beautiful mature trees.

     From the air, it would have resembled a figure 6 with a main circular perimeter road and a long curling through road running at a tangent connected the green fields of the estate to the existing 30s ribbon development of Greater London. The roads were still just sandy tracks as the concrete surfaces had yet to be laid and the garden areas similar in texture and consistency to the heaving muds of the Somme in 1917.

     We’d all lived in various parts of Kent and outer London in temporary accommodation after the war, and before the Edgebury estate was finished, we all moved in more or less together. We all smelled the new paint at the same time and apart from making most of us feel sick and nauseous, it signified a new beginning.

     I was 5 when we moved from the prefabs in St Paul’s Cray and was pretty impressed with the sparkling new houses surrounded by roads of sand that to me, looked like strips of Margate beach. I couldn’t wait to get out and explore and when I did there are two incidents that stand out in my mind.

     The first was when I got stuck in the pre-pavement quagmire. I knew that it was meant to be pavement because the curbstones were already in place, so it seemed to me that this was the sensible place to walk. Connie had taken the precaution of fitting my tiny feet into an equally tiny pair of wellies so I was suitably prepared for my first expedition.

     THE TRENCHES

     There was no traffic - not just because there were no roads, but for the first few years there were only three cars on the entire estate and only one of them at any one time was mobile. The others were off the road because of lack of road tax or up on jacks while the owner tired to figure out why his vehicle wasn’t doing what it was originally built to do: actually travel forward or backwards under its own power.

     And so the intrepid explorer got stuck in, literally. It took just two steps for me to sink to the tops of my wellies, held fast by the slurping, sucking mud, my arms outstretched trying to maintain some kind of balance. But the more I moved about, the more a permanent fixture I became. I must have looked like some kind of miniature scarecrow blowing in the wind. More scared than crow, I started to bawl.

     “Hang on, son. Hang on.” came a commanding voice from one of the nearby battlefields of a garden.

     A tall man wearing olive green army trousers tucked into his gummers and an impressive ginger moustache strode defiantly to my rescue through his own patch of slime. Such was the authority of his voice (he’d obviously been a general in the war) that my instinct was to try and stand to attention. At least my feet were firmly planted together. Strong hands were thrust under my armpits just in time before I fell flat on my face and my rescuer lifted me out of my wellies, tucked me under one arm, retrieved my almost unrecognisable footwear with his other hand, and marched me back across the road.

     It was the only kind act I saw Ernie K perform. I was to meet up with him again a few years later at Edgebury School where the ex-Royal Engineer was senior metalwork master and military dictator.
     (He always thought he should have been Headmaster, as he knew how to command the unruly rabble that to him made up the populous of the school. Fear was his weapon, but thankfully, the real headmaster, Mr G. Hill, was more accomplished in the field of pastoral care, though no weakling himself when it came to exercising discipline.)

     Cut to similar scene further down the road a few days later. This time, I stayed clear of the quicksand and was strolling inquisitively along the sandy track when something caught my eye. I stooped and picked it up.... by the tail.

     “PUT THAT DOWN!”

     I dropped the cat-sized dead rat as if it had burst into flames and turned to face whoever it was that possessed this voice of God. It was another great big bloke; similar to the first, but this time the moustache was grey. He was standing up to his knees in his own patch of mud, legs astride in a definite God-like posture.

     It seemed to me that there were a lot of people about who liked to give orders, like soldiers. Come to think of it, Mum and Dad, Connie and Alf, often talked about ‘the war’ as if it hadn’t happened that long ago.

     vv“NOW GO AND WASH YOUR HANDS!” God commanded, and I ran home in tears, not wishing to be incinerated by a bolt of lightening.

     And so I met Alf Crook, who with his wife, Eileen, and two daughters, was to become a friend of our family for many years, though I’m ashamed to admit I never really got over my fear of him.

     SHOPS

     We had a neat crescent of shops in Edgehill Road, which joined the ends of Slades Drive, the circular road that ran round the entire estate, with everything catered for. From left to right there be an off-licence, a grocer runs by a really stuck up woman from Edgbury Road and her husband - the Moores. (She had a similar superior attitude as that of Annie Walker, the original landlady of the Rover’s Return in the days of Ena Sharples.)

     Then there was a real sawdust-on-the-floor butcher, a hairdresser, an alleyway, then Maurice’s radio shop, a hardware store, a baker’s shop run by Mrs Herd who lived next-door-but-one to us, a newsagent and a fish and chip shop which saw loads of different owners over the years because it apparently never made any money.

     Sadly, all these shops have now closed due to vandalism, robbery and generally because nobody gives a shit. Most of the shed buildings have been converted into garages and there’s a steady line of cars on both sides of all 3 and a half roads as most households have at least 2 vehicles. Mock stone cladding has sprung up everywhere, different coloured front doors abound as quite a few people elected to buy the properties during the Thatcher years. There are still quite a few decent people who still live there who can’t get away because no-one in their right mind would buy onto a place that’s seen so much degeneration.

     Not that I’m a communist who believes in order for the sake of it but what has disappeared with the neat uniformity of the old days seems to be self respect, though these days those words don’t appear to be part of the English language, or at least in the computation of the shaven headed, tattooed masses who make up the majority on the Edgebury Estate today - and you should see the men.

     Something definitely died when the church in Gravelwood Close shut up shop and became derelict, and recently demolished. It was a focal point for many community activities like youth clubs, a tenants association, scouts, a practice place for bands. Few people know that Led Zeppelin started out there. I sure didn’t.


     CHANCES ARE

     I was in the church choir for a few years and when I left and was ‘studying’ for O levels, there was a knock on the door one evening and there was this posh sounding bloke standing there. He wore a 3 piece pinstriped suit and bike clips. Parked on the curb was one of those French Sole motorised bicycles, you know, the things that went OK on the flat, but you used to have to pedal like shit going up hill. The bloke, who sounded like Nigel Pargiter on the Archers, said:

     “Oh, I see you’ve noticed my devious means of transport. I hear you’re a pretty good guitarist. I’m putting a band together. I’m organist at St Aiden’s and I play bass.”

     I turned him down as a dress rehearsal for turning down the Rolling Stones a few years later. I heard a programme on the radio recently, narrated by this bloke who’d been organist at St Aiden’s describing how the early years of Led Zeppelin had been difficult what with having to practice in the church where the doors dividing the hall from the chancel (the bit where the alter is) had to be pulled across. It was the same bloke.

     Gone was the plummy voice - replaced by the familiar, husky, too-many-years-of-shagging-yourself-stupid-on-the-Rock‘n’ Roll-road, and smoking everything you could get your lips around voice. (Well, almost anything you could get your lips around.) The sandpaper drawl perfected and unsurpassed by the gratefully undead Keef. My bike-clipped friend from the past explained how it wasn’t till he contacted an old mate of his by the name of Jimmy Page that things really started to take off. Jimmy who?



‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.’

Billy Cotton yelling at the top of his lungs:

“WAKEY-WAKAIIIIIIIIIYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Music: The highly polished sound of Cotton’s 12 piece dance band crashes into
‘Somebody Stole My Gal’ at 90 mph and the entire British nation chokes over its traditional Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at the sudden shock, though the same onslaught is repeated every week from 1949 till 1968.

BC: “Hello. I’m Billy Cotton and this is my Band Show, not that you need remindin’, and for the next half hour I shall bash you sensless with a stream of passable jokes from a few up and coming comedians while I interject with my own crass comments. They’ll be some light musical interludes from my fabulous band including a few little dities from my resident singers, Alan Breeze and Kathie Kay, who’ll do their level best to slaughter any current popular songs wot I think are worth slaughterin’. Just wait till we get ‘old of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. We’ll turn ‘em into open-toed summer sandals easy as pie. You might, understandably, be led to believe that I’m shoutin’ but this is my normal talkin’ voice. I’m just a very big bloke with an enormous pair of lungs wot need a lot of exercise.

Don’t you just love me? Course yer do. Right you lot, let’s ‘ave a rousin’ chorus of ‘Knees Up Muvver Brahn. A-one-two-free-fowah…”




* * * * * * * * *


I'm a gonna raise a fuss
I'm a gonna raise a holler
about a workin' all summer
just to try to earn a dollar

ev'ry time I call my Baby
try to get a date
my Boss says
No dice, Son you gotta work late.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.

A well my Mom 'n' Papa told me
Son, you gotta make some money
,if you wantta use the carto go a ridin' next Sunday,
wellI didn't go to work
told the Boss I was sick
Now you can't use the car,'cause you didn't work a lick.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.

(I'm gonna) take two weeks
gonna have a fine vacation
I'm gonna take my problem
to the United Nations !
Well I called my Congressmen
and he said, quote:
I'd like to help you, Son, but you're too young to votedemanded.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the Summertime Blues.


Chapter 10: MOLES


     So Alf attacked the Jungle that was to become our garden at 120 Imperial Way on the Edgebury Estate. He had quite a job on his hands. The land was much as it had stood for several hundred years, rough pasture, brambles, tree roots, bits of old fencing, and now builders’ rubbish: half empty bags of cement that had got wet and solidified; old overalls; the odd shoe; (why did you never find a pair) old milk bottles; bits of concrete fence post; tons of old newspaper; rusty barbed wire and enough small boulders to build another estate.

     The clearing and carting away took a couple of weeks, and then Alf had to scythe down the tough long grass and get at the soil underneath. We had two chunks of garden land at the front of the house, one about 40ft square and the other about 20ft by 10. At the back, there was the length of two cricket pitches laid end to end about 30ft in width. There was a sloping bank at the end near the house where a purpose-built concrete pathway was laid beneath where a washing line would hang.

     This caught my eye; the possibilities appealing to my imagination were enormous. I could already see the bank, for example, as the perfect cliff for tossing Sioux warriors over, given that I could find a couple small and light enough. Or it could easily double for the North Face of Everest if only we could get the oxygen supplies and the Sherpas.

     It took Alf about 6 weeks to clear the rough pasture land. After dragging down all the brambles and carting away all the chunks of stone and old building materials, he made himself a wheelbarrow from some old wooden boxes and some pram wheels and set about turning the earth with a fork and a shovel.

     It was a humungous job but thankfully we were experiencing a long dry summer (summers always were in those days) so there wasn’t much of the famous Kentish clay about that had grabbed me by the wellies.

     Alf had soon turned the wilderness into a moonscape of chunky dry soil, but he still had to
get it into a state where it would host grass seed and there was so much of it. What he did next was a stroke of genius and an amazing demonstration of ingenuity. From an old bedstead, some heavy wire mesh and the handle of the same old pram, he constructed a giant sieve.

     It stood in the shape of an 45 degree step ladder, and he shovelled earth onto the mesh that he’d stretched across the frame, beat it with a spade, and shook the thing forcing the dried mud through the wire. It cascaded down as a giant mole-hill of fine soil about 2 ft high which he left and moved the frame on to the next load of mud.

     CUMBERLAND GAP

     In 2 days, the entire area at the back of the house was covered in giant molehills of fine soil ready for spreading. He was halfway through the smallest patch in the front when George Cook, neighbours from 3 doors up the road, walked by on his way to work and stopped. George Cook was a well-meaning know-all and the thing he knew more about than anything was how to cultivate a garden.

     “What sort of grass-seed you gonna plant, Alf?”
     “Woolworth’s, probably.”
     “It’ll never work. George scorned, “What you need is Cumberland Grass like I’ve got. 10 bob a pound and worth every penny.”

     Alf’s grass-seed cost him one and six a bag.

     George walked on, confident that Alf was on a hiding to the Gobi Desert. It was true. George had planted Cumberland Grass in his front garden and treated it with a special mixture of light sand and fertiliser. It had started to come through, and, though it was patchy, the special fine grass was there to be seen. And these were early days yet.

     Unfortunately, the early days hung on for 10 years or more and poor old George’s beautiful Cumberland Grass never provided the sleek, lush Wembley-like turf it was supposed to, but Just a dry, crusty, sandy, patchy, wasteland.

     I half-expected a couple of balls of tumbleweed to go rolling by and the bleached bones of a bison wouldn’t have looked out of place. I swear I saw a vulture perched on the flat porch over their front door one day, but it was probably a Wood Pigeon that had swallowed a cat.

     Alf’s lawn, on the other hand, was a resounding success. After carefully spreading the soil with a rake, he chucked down a load of his cheap Woolies grass that George had warned him against, and left it to the elements.
Within weeks, not only were we the proud owners of cricket pitch sized lawns but also cricket pitch quality lawns. George must have been astounded but he never commented. He just walked on by.

     Prior to levelling the mole-hills of finely-sieved earth, we were invaded by a mob of ‘upper-class’ kids, or ‘poshies’ from the privately owned 30’s semis in Brownspring Drive, which started where the estate finished at the bottom of Imperial way. Word had spread about the spectacular molehill field, which had suddenly sprung up in some pleb’s front garden on the Edgebury Estate.

     The gawpers turned up in droves on trolleys, skates and bikes to have a good laugh and a jeer at these working-class morons and their moley landscaping. And that’s what they called us. ‘The Moleys’. Every time any of us stepped out onto the front garden path, the chorus of catcalls started. I couldn’t work out why they were calling us ‘MOULDY’, until Connie explained that it was actually ‘MOLEY’, they were chanting.

     The gang leader was an over-sized 12-year-old called John Gold, or Goldie as he was better known. You could tell he was the leader because he had a steering wheel on his trolley made from the wheel of a Lee Way, the Rolls Royce of prams. He just sat there in the middle of the pavement like ‘Jabba, The Scout Hut’, surrounded by his minions, his tanned legs bulging from his khaki shorts, long socks rolled defiantly down to his ankles, grinning his superior grin. He never actually said anything himself. He left that to his merry band of sycophants.

     Alf, having a fuse length similar to that of a tuppenny banger, was incensed, “Booger off, you lot.” he yelled from the midst of the molehills. “Just booger off!”

     But they didn’t booger off, so Alf tried a more direct approach, containing more Royal Navy type language. But though he’d fought in the Battle Of The Atlantic, this was a battle Alf was to lose. They didn’t ‘Royal Navy language’ off either. They came back day after day and occupied the pavement outside 120 so that passing residents had to walk in the road - until the Twinnies intervened.

     THE TWINNIES.

     There were two distinct ends to Imperial Way - our end and the Twinnies end. The Twinnies were David and Derek Thompson, thought by most to be tear-aways and a possible bad influence on the all the local angels. Dave and Del certainly were a tough pair, indentical in every possible physical respect except for their faces that were so markedly different they could have been mistaken for being anything but brothers. Dave had a brown-haired, round-headed boyish look but Del had thick black hair, strong, pointed features and a head that leaned forward in a menacing sort of way.

     They were physically well proportioned without being over big. Stocky and broad-shouldered, they were physically confident and gave the impression that they were absolutely fearless. They always dressed in identical clothes, probably not through any conscious choice of theirs or their parents but more likely because it made economic sense and that their clothes wore out at the same time.

     The Twinnies end was up by the end of the first downhill trolley track section and they lived on the end of a crescent. The two ends of Imperial Way didn’t mix except for me. Mick Rickards lived directly opposite them and I got to know them and the rest of the lads who lived up that way because of being close friends with Mick.

     Also at the Twinnies end of the street was Peter Bladon and his bother Michael, Alan Blake, Spud Cartwright and his brother Alan, Roger Bourne and his brother Jeremy, Roger and Peter Haywood, Peter and Michael Scarborough whose head I once split open with a jagged piece of flint. I’d never seen so much blood and was convinced he was going to die. The stone caught him on the forehead and he just opened up like an exploding tin of tomato soup. He had eight stitches and miraculously, his parents were very kind about it and put it down to an unlucky shot. It was certainly unlucky for poor old Michael, who looked down at the brand new red shirt growing on his body post impact and just said:

     “Jesus!” I’d never realised he was religious.

     The Twinnies were natural born leaders - it helped there being two of them - and ran things up their end of the street. But Dave and Del weren’t the young thugs that the parents down our end thought they were. They commanded respect from the kids at their end, certainly, and yes it’s true they could probably have bashed the living daylights out of anyone who stepped out if line, but I never saw them do anything like that. They were outspoken, sure, and impatient with anyone they thought behaved in a stupid fashion, and weren’t backward when it came to public admonishment of the culprits.

     “Are you gonna be a prick all your life, or is it just for today?”

     Strangely, no one argued with them. If there was a psychopathic edge anywhere I always thought it lay with Del who was the less academic and, he claimed, the stronger of the two. After Red Hill, Del went on to Edgebury Secondary School and never made it above the mid-year forms, whereas Dave went to Grammar School and later to university.

     They just exuded strength and bearing that some adults at our end of things were suspicious of and they became ‘those Thompson Twins’ getting the blame for a lot of things they didn’t actually do when they were young. If someone set light to a pig-bin* it had to be ‘those twins again’, or if someone broke a window, they got blamed. They were even interviewed by the police after my ‘explosion’ and they hadn’t even been on the estate at the time.

     *(Pig bins were curious, dustbin like objects, placed in the street every 200 yards or so where residents placed vegitable scraps, orange peel or stale bread, through the special flap in the lid. Presumably, this stuff was to become pig food, though a lot of kids used to toast the bread on workmen’s fires and eat it. There was nothing quite like eating food outside, even if it was well past its sell-by date).

     AN IMMOVABLE FORCE

     One day, the whole top end of the street gang, led by the Twinnies turned up and surrounded Goldie’s gang who were in their regular position outside 120. My sister and I were watching from the living room window, excited by the prospect of a fight. But we were to be disappointed. Some kind of dialogue took place between the Twinnies and the leader of the Brownspring Drive pack.

     Slowly, laconically, Goldie placed his tanned legs aboard his trolley and the minion on the back gave a shove with his feet, and the entire gang moved off back down the road to Brownspring Drive. The Twinnies and their followers ambled back up Imperial way. I never found out what they said to Goldie, but I assume they must have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Goldie and his mob never came back.

     SATURDAYS

     But it was the Twinnies who got me into Saturday Morning Pictures as we called it. When I was 9, my sister came home from school and announced that she was going to the Regal in Sidcup the following Saturday with a whole gang of kids from the estate. Mum asked who was going and Kathryn gave her a list of names, which included the Twinnies who were apparently ‘Monitors’ at the cinema and in charge of a whole block of seats.

     They were chosen because they were big and could probably keep order. Splitting the place up into blocks was a the managements way of keeping control of 1000 maniacal kids who for a couple of hours were away from the authority of boring things like parents and teachers. The principle was divide and rule and it worked. There was intense rivalry between the blocks and prizes for the Monitors who kept the best order. Block 4, the Twinnies block always won something.

     As soon as Connie heard the Twinnies were in charge she said Kathryn could go but only if I went as well. I was over the moon. Saturday Morning Pictures was a Mecca I’d often dreamed of and relished the thought of, never believing the somewhat over-protective Connie would ever let us go. It turns out that, a lot of Mums on the estate allowed their kids to go for the same reasons and the Twinnies had collected quite a band of various shapes, sizes and ages which, by the time it got to our house, was about 20 strong.

     They kept collecting until they got to Ivor Fowler’s house at the bottom of Imperial Way. Ivor was a block 4 monitor as well and was the proud owner of a big round badge about the size of a jam jar lid, which said so.

     The cool place to wear a monitor’s badge was on a sleeve just below the shoulder where sergeant’s stripes would be. I knew I’d never be a monitor. I just wasn’t big enough. I didn’t care, the important thing was that as far as Saturday Morning Pictures was concerned, I was IN.

     For the definition of bedlam, I’d refer you to the Regal Sidcup on any Saturday morning in 1955. Walking into the place for the first time was quite a frightening experience. The noise was deafening. Kids were running about all over the place even though it was forbidden. Stuff was being thrown. What stuff? Any stuff that you could throw: sweets, someone’s hat, preferably not your own - someone else would grab it and throw it for you - the odd plimsoll, conkers, peanuts, lolly sticks....

     The monitors always had a meeting with the manager in his office before the show so there was about 5 minutes when there was no control over the rabble whatsoever. Then the monitors would march in and start bashing heads until some semblance of order was restored. Then the manager, Mr Penny, would get up on the stage and make the week’s announcements.

     There would be a couple of birthdays, and those concerned would be invited up onto the stage and given a free lolly while we sang happy birthday and pelted them with Mint Imperials. This never, I have to point out, sounded remotely like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the Vienna Boys Choir or any other choir come to that but more like the baying of 1000 hounds. Penny would announce a few forthcoming events, and sometimes there’d be a competition to win a free ticket to some event or other.

     THE PRIZE

     I once won a free ticket to the Boys and Girls exhibition at Olympia in a prize draw one Saturday morning which they ran just before the show started. I never got to go though. Some kid at the bus stop asked if he could see the ticket and when I showed him he grabbed it and ran off. I cried all the way home. The next week I was invited to an identity parade in the manager’s office.

     There was only one suspect: the bastard who stole my ticket. I was asked to identify him and he immediately started crying. I was amazed to see the monitor’s badge on his arm. I thought these guys were supposed to be Penny’s special agents. They weren’t supposed to nick a blokes prize tickets. I was asked to leave the manager’s office and return to the auditorium. I never found out how they punished the guy but fantasised that they took him out the back, beat him up then shot him in the head. Penny wisely got the announcements over quickly to stop the mob baying for his blood and the show commenced AFTER we’d sung our anthem.



WE ARE THE BOYS AND GIRLS WELL-KNOWN AS,
THE MINORS OF THE ABC,
AND EVERY SATURDAY ALL LINE UP, TO SEE THE FILMS WE LIKE AND SHOUT IT OUT WITH GLEE.

WE LIKE TO LAUGH AND HAVE A SING SONG,
JUST A HAPPY CROWD ARE WE,
WE’ER ALL PALS TOGETHER,
WE’RE MINORS OF THE ABC!!!!!!!!!!!!!


     It has to be said that this bore absolutely no resemblance to that wonderfully sick-making middle class ‘jolly good’ sound produced by the Ovaltinees. The noise didn’t subside though. It turned into cheering. Now this was a first for me. I’d never heard cheering and clapping in a cinema before.

     Usually it was very quiet except for the occasional cough from one of the many smokers or someone who didn’t smoke but who was forced to inhale from the blue cloud of fog illuminated by the projector, from the dozens that that did smoke. Being able to cheer and shout really made you feel part of the action. It was also a real laugh to upset the females in the audience when the feature film ran across what we men described as a soppy bit.

     “Darling, I’ve always leved yor. Yor mest nay thet. You dew, daint yor?”
     “BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”     “Darling, why hev yor got your hand arind may thrate lake thet? Ohhh, your chaking mae...
gggggggggggssssssssssshhhhhhucckkkkkk!!!!!!!!”

     “HURRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!”

     The show went like this:

     Cartoon - anything from Tom and Jerry to Mickey Mouse.

     The Serial - anything from Flash Gordon to the Bowery Boys getting involved with Nazi spies and motor torpedo boats.

     My favourite hero actor was Rod Cameron who starred in the first serial I saw which was called ‘King Of The Congo’. In this, he was a secret agent living in the jungle like Tarzan, you know, loincloth and all that. He spent a lot of his time fighting tigers and lions IN THE SAME JUNGLE with just a knife, as any good secret agent would.
     He was also fighting Nazis who just happened to be in the same jungle at the same time, and who kept setting the tigers and lions on him. Damned clever, those Germans.

     There was always a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode. One week he’d be unconscious on a burning boat, which blows up. The same scene would open the next episode the following week, only this time, we’d see him wake up just as the boat catches fire, find his way out of the cabin, find the heroine in a different cabin, untie her, have a cigarette, make a pot of coffee, show the girl some pictures of his wife and kids, then dive off the boat with her. THEN the boat blows up.

     This was followed by what we called the interest film, which meant it was boring and educational. The managements of all ABC cinemas were required to show at least one educational film in their Saturday programme so we had to put up with it.

     Next up would be a comedy - probably the Three Stooges, who I never thought were the slightest bit funny, or Laurel and Hardy. Then it was the main feature, this is where the management tried really hard - heaven help them if the feature was disapproved of.

     Girls were easy to please but boys were a different story. I only ever saw the natives get really restless on one occasion and the manager bought the show to a premature end and showed a hastily prepared extra cartoon reel thus escaping being lynched. The film in question was so boring I can’t remember what it was even called.

     A PENNY FOR YOUR FARTHING

     On their 14th birthday, the Twinnies were given new identical new bikes. The bikes were delivered in bits wrapped in cardboard and they eagerly set about the bits with an array of spanners, and pretty soon had the two machines together, 2 gleaming maroon and white roadsters. Del announced that they were off on a long ride and that anyone was welcome to join in if they could keep up.

     Bikes were produced from everywhere as if this gentle spin down a few country lanes was really a search for the Holy Grail. I managed to borrow Dad’s heavy Raleigh Roadster, which he suddenly didn't seem to mind as the Twinnies were in charge of the expedition.

     David Jeffries, or Gaffer as he was known, a hefty 14 year old the same size and shape as the Twinnies, borrowed his Grandma’s sit-up-and-beg machine with the U shaped frame and basket on the handlebars. There were about 15 travellers of various shapes and sizes and differing types of pedal machines when we finally set off. Kent suddenly became a much smaller place.

     The ‘fleet’ of bicycles travelled everywhere. Eyensford, Farningham, Wrotham, Blackheath, Dartford Heath, Chelsfield, Woolwich - though I don’t remember Woolwich being in Kent - the swimming baths in Eltham Park, Danson Park, Sevenoaks, which is now Oneoak after six of the trees were destroyed in the Hurricane of 87.
     We did the Blackwall Tunnel one Sunday morning and Chislehurst Caves several times, and would’ve been the ideal cast for a film entitled: ‘Those Magnificent Men On Their Cycling Machines’. The Twinnies were always right out in front, but then the Twinnies always were in everything they did.



‘Ah, Woodbine - a great Little Cigarette’

HC: “Sooty. Ah said, Dorn’t do thut!”


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *





Well c'mon everybody and let's get together tonight
I got some money in my jeans and I'm really gonna spend it right
Well I been doing my homework all week long
Now the house is empty and the folks are gone....hey!
C'mon everybody!

Well we're gonna have a party so we better put a guard outside
Cause if the folks come home well they're really gonna have my hide
Well there'll be no more music for a week or two
No more hangin' round with the usual crew....hey!
C'mon everybody!

Well c'mon everybody and let's get together tonight
Well c'mon everybody and let's get together tonight
Well there'll be no more music for a week or two
No more hangin' round with the usual crew....hey!
C'mon everybody!


Chapter 11. NAGS


      In my early years at RobinWay in St Paul’s Cray, I acquired my first horse. Ned was a big chestnut with a white blaze. (That’s the bit above the nose which you pat after you’ve fed the mouth a lump of sugar) I kept Ned in Eileen Merrit’s coal shed next door at No 14. This arrangement came about after I’d forgotten I’d left him in there one day and woke up crying in the middle of the night.

     Connie managed to pacify me by assuring me that Eileen would look after him and feed him till I could go and collect him the next day. Eileen was true to Connie’s word, and Ned looked none the worse when I went next door in the morning and led him out of the shed. After that, Eileen told me I could leave him in her coal shed any time I liked and that she’d make sure he had fresh hay and was comfortable.

     When we moved to back to Chislehurst in 1951, there wasn’t room for Ned on the removal van, so I took him on the 21 bus with Granddad. I think he enjoyed the ride. So did Ned.

     TERROR

     Following a spate of vivid nightmares Connie took me to see Dr Baldachino, our Maltese GP, who told her I had an over-active imagination and that he doubted the wisdom of allowing me to listen to ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ on the radio at the age of 4 and a half. I think the old doctor missed the warmth of his homeland. He’d always stand with his back to the electric fire in his surgery and lift his jacket to warm his bum. This usually caused him to fart loudly, the importance of which he’d dismiss with the declaration that it was a:

     “Natural function of the body.”

     Connie told the old doctor about Ned and he said that a lot of children had imaginary friends and that it was something I’d grow out of. What did he know? I knew that Ned would be extremely angry being told he didn’t exist and I decided not to mention it in case he kicked the doctor up the bum the next time he called round.

     THE WILD WEST

     Gravelwood Close on the Edgebury Estate was Indian country. It was incomplete as a road for several years after the rest of the estate was finished. The road came to an abrupt end near a line of trees and at the edge of a deep hole, about 30ft long and 10ft wide. It was where the entrance of the estate’s main sewer was located, the main drain manhole sitting proud of the pit on top of a vertical concrete pipe.

     The rest of the area was a couple of acres of wasteland that would eventually be the site for about a dozen houses and flats. In the meantime, it was a place to play. It was witness to the Battle of The Little Big Horn, a few test matches, a couple of FA Cup Finals and the entire 2nd world war.

     I first ventured onto these wild Montana plains at the age of 5. My keen frontier senses had told me there was definite cowboy activity going on one day, and I persuaded Connie to let me mount up and ride Ned down the garden path and across the road to join John Wayne, Tex Ritter, Geronimo and whoever else might be there. It didn’t matter that my Stetson was a converted trilby or that Connie had made one of my holsters from an old piece of brown felt and that my pair of guns didn’t match.

     I pulled Ned to a rearing stop by a massive tangle of twisted rusty wire and old fencing that sat like a monster bird’s nest in the middle of the prairie. The nest was about 4ft high and 15ft across and to the unimaginative observer, it was just a twisted mangle of dirty old rusty rubbish. To the seasoned cowboy it was obviously a stagecoach. Having been born a cowboy, I was always interested in authenticity.

     Barabara Heard, who lived next door but one to us, mentioned ‘Cowboy Land’ one day as if it was some mystic place up in the clouds or something. I didn’t bother explaining to someone with such an obvious deep-rooted ignorance that there was no such place.

     I was so astonished; I just pulled Ned’s head round, and headed for the hills – well, to the field in Gravelwood Close. By the age of 6, I was already quite an authority on early American History - well everything that happened West of the Rio Grand, that is. I gleaned most of it from probably the greatest encyclopaedia ever written on the subject, ‘The Buffalo Bill Wild West Annual’, a copy of which I hungrily received two Christmases in a row.

     I knew all about Henry Colt and how he invented his famous Colt 45 ‘Peacemaker’ which was much lighter and more efficient than the earlier ‘Navy’ Colts with their longer barrels and cap and ball loading mechanism. I knew that the Colt 45 was favoured by the gunfighters of the day. I knew that William Bonney, aka, Billy The Kid had killed his first man at the age of 12 and that his tally of murders rose to 21 by the time his age in years had reached the same number in years. I knew about General Custer and the Battle Of The Little Bog Horn, and the famous Indian chiefs of the time, like ‘Rain In The Face’; ‘Crazy Horse’; ‘Sitting Bull’; ‘Red Cloud’;‘Roman Nose’; ‘Shadow That Comes In Sight’ and loads more. ‘Cowboy Land’ - I ask you!

     Bouncing up and down on the top of the stagecoach was a tall lad of about 10. He wore the most fabulous outfit I’d ever seen. I was so stunned I almost forgot I was on a horse. The kid wore a checked shirt, jeans, a proper cowboy hat and a REAL GUNBELT AND HOLSTERS. The guns weren’t real of course, but it was pretty hard to tell. I was slightly disappointed to notice that they weren’t a matching pair. One was gold, the other silver, but, hey, he probably lost the twin in some kind of gun battle or swapped it for a load of marbles or a dead toad. Whichever way, I was impressed. The kid was good-looking to boot, even though he was only wearing plimsoles.

     “Hello, bud.” he said.

     I nearly fell off my horse. This guy didn’t just look cowboy, he was talking cowboy!

     “Can I play?” I said, trying to stop Ned from bucking around too much.
     “Search me, Bud. You’d better ask him over there,” he said pointing to the pit, “ The guy in the red hat. It’s his game.” (If you instigated a game, then it became ‘yours’ and the unwritten law as that anyone who joined in obeyed your orders) The Kid on the stagecoach started bouncing higher like he was on a trampoline. “I’d come with you but I’m lookout.”

     I pulled Ned round, waved my trilby in the air like I’d seen Tex Ritter do, and galloped over to the pit. The guy on the stagecoach was Tom Ryall, later to become the estate football team’s goalkeeper and hear throb to most of the teenaged girls on the estate.

     BIG BOSSMAN

     Dismounting, I tied Ned to a bush and cautiously approached the guy in the red hat. He was stooping over some important task or other on the edge of the pit. Inside, several cowboys of various shapes and sizes were scurrying about and digging here and there.
&
nbsp;    “Can I play?” I uttered quietly to Red Hat’s back. Without stopping what he was doing, Red Hat turned round.

     “Yeah. Just grab a piece of wood and start digging. There’s not much time to get this fort ready before the apaches attack.”

     For a moment, I felt I’d been concreted to the spot. I’d seen Red Hat before: on the Front page of the Eagle Comic. He was a hero of mine and of Alf’s. I’d been invited to join in a game by one of the most famous heroes in the universe: Dan Dare. He looked a bit younger of course, but all the features were there: the square jaw, the chiselled chin, the protruding Adam’s apple - maybe not quite the eyebrows, but the qualities of natural leadership were there as plain as the nose on his face. Now and again he’d bark an order at someone and it would be obeyed without question.

     Dan turned back to his task, so I found a piece of wood and settled next to another hombre in the pit and copied what he was doing. He was poking earnestly at the clay wall of the pit so I did the same, the blood coursing through my veins like hot lava. If this wasn’t Heaven, then it was definitely somewhere in Wyoming.

     Dan Dare was really Kenneth Pugh; respected, hero-worshipped and revered by at least all in the present company - later to become a Queen’s Scout, School Captain, Prefect, Captain of Football, get 5 O levels while at Edgebury Secondary Modern and end up working in a bank, though in all probability, this was only a cover and he actually worked for MI5 or 6 or even 7.

     For a few years Ken ran all the imagination games at our end of the estate. He chose the subject of the games, decided when a game was ended and which new direction to take. If we were Indians, he was chief. If we were cowboys, he was Marshall. Ken Pugh just knew everything there was to know about the Wild West, at least the way it was portrayed in films - who the latest hero was, who was yesterday’s and out of date, and therefore out of the game. And when Ken Pugh took on a part, he lived it.

     Often, he was Cochise, the famous Apache chief. Just a red silk scarf tied around his head and a garden cane as a spear, and there he was: the fearless, charismatic leader of a great, historic people - chilli flavoured - all the way from New Mexico. Sometimes, we'd play scenes from one of Ken's favourite American, made for TV cowboy films. If he particularly liked it, then we'd play it over and over again until he got bored with it or more commonly, if the rest of the cast got bored with losing and getting shot full of holes so easily.

     Most western heroes from the old TV films had one or two sidekicks. Tex Ritter had Lucky and Pee Wee, Hoppalong Cassidy had Jim and Gabby (Hayes), and Ken Pugh had Tom Ryall and Roland Hayes. One hero Ken introduced us to was Crash Corrigan, who I'd never heard of, and doubted many of the others had. The favourite scene was of Crash, his two buddies either side of him, coming cantering down the top alleyway which led to the field only to be treacherously ambushed by a load of outlaws hiding behind invisible rocks. Crash, of course, always came out on top - the rest of us being mercilessly dispatched by the guns of the 3 heroes, which had extremely large chambers carrying a hundred or more bullets each.

     We'd do this scene about six times, and more, except that the cast became irritated at the number of times they had to die and the fact that Crash seemed immune to flying lead. Ken would always read the signs early and would already be planning the next game scenario in his mind for exactly this predicament.

     Suddenly, we'd all be in the 7th Cavalry, or instantly converted into a band of bloodthirsty, half-breed renegades. Everybody would feel renewed and refreshed and the games went on until Ken himself got bored. Then he just went home.



‘Put a tiger in your tank’

Mekon: “At last, I have you in my power, Dare. The time has come for you to depart your miserable life, along with the rest of the inferior beings you call the Human Race.”
Dan: “Not so fast, you green ghoul. You’re forgetting one thing. Well, 4, actually. The Great British Stiff Upper Lip and our sense of justice, truth, and high moral values. Not even you and your vile kind stand a chance against those kind of odds, so you might as well give in right now.”
M: “Confound you, Dare. But these so-called virtues you speak of will give me victory, and you yourself will hand it over. What you fail to realise is that I have captured all your friends and companions, and unless you surrender, I will annihilate them with an overdose of paralyising gas from a superior Treen ray gun and put an end to your pathetic comic strip at last.”
D: “Jumping Jets! You don’t mean: Digby, Professor Peabody, in her Playtex Girdle; Sir Hubert Guest with his truss; Hank; Pierre; the original space cadet, Flamer Spry; the funny little elephant thing from Terra Nova that we affectionately call ‘Stripy’; my Treen friend, Sondar; and the other, slightly less famous space cadet, my nephew, Alasdair?”
M: “The very same, Dare. So you see, for you, all is lost. I predict, that being the nauseating, sickening, holier-that-thou arch hero that you are, you’ll give yourself up to my mercy and save them.”
D: Thinks: (“Got him! The ghastly, green gremlin doesn’t realise that I’ve been trying to get rid of that lot of losers for ages so that I can launch a solo career and run this strip the way I want. The question is, how can I allow them to perish without my fans realising that I’m really a narcissistic poser who’s only out for himself and that I don’t really give a toss about that bunch of boring old farts? Hmm…”)

To be continued

“Dad, can I have my Eagle back?”

“Bugger Off!”


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Please go to: http://blindoldkatepage2.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepage3.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepage4.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepart2.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepart2page2.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepart3.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepart3page2.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://blindoldkatepart3page3.blogspot.com