Dad actually wrote an autobiography  ten years ago- here is the first volume which takes him up to the start of WW2

NORTH LONDON MORNING

Volume I of a memoir

By Alfred Baker

CHAPTER ONE

Memory began for me in Harringay in 1930, though a very tiny part of Harringay is all that I can remember: the two rooms in which we lived; the dark womb of a cinema with shadows playing on a screen at the far end; some streets by night; a school hall crowded with people for a church social, and my mother on the platform giving a solo violin performance; and a hall, or could it have been a theatre, where a Christmas pantomime was being performed, and my sister on the stage as a little golden-winged fairy. I was three at that time, and what I believe to be memories may not be totally true, for they are jumbled up with the stories that my parents have told me of those days; so that I really cannot say where true recollection ends and hearsay begins: but some mental pictures are still so vivid, eighty-four years on, that I can almost see them today, so perhaps they are true memories.

            Those two rooms of the Harringay flat are with me now: though I remember that they did not start out as two rooms, but as three, until, for some reason, the landlord removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, which certainly gave us more space, but left us with one fewer room.  The change meant that the  floor of the kitchen was higher than that of the living/dining room, so that when Mum was cooking the dinner or attending to the weekly wash in the kitchen half,  if I was sitting in the dining/living section, playing with my toys, and looked up at her, I saw her  almost as if she was on a stage.

            Our bedroom, which I shared with my parents and my sister, was at the end of a landing, and, to get there, we had to pass the door of a room occupied by another first floor tenant, a dark witch-like lady, whom we seldom saw, but could sometimes smell, for she doted on cats, and kept four or five in her room.  I was told that she kept scrapbooks containing pictures of them, and, about her neck,  wore a locket on a chain  which contained a scrap of fur from a much loved but long dead pussy.

            She was probably a rather sad and lonely creature, starved for human affection: but I'm afraid she had none from me.  I was terrified of her, and under no circumstances would I walk along that passage alone,  even if my parents had allowed me to.  Always, when it was bed time, I was carried past that door by Pop, with my eyes tightly closed for fear that if I kept them open I might see that dreadful witch.

            Downstairs lived Mrs George.  There may well have been a Mr George around at the time.  Indeed, I have a vague memory of a large, grey suited, waistcoated, and silver watch chained, heavily moustached man, filling an easy chair in her parlour; but it isn't a very clear memory, and the individual, if he existed, could well have been a tally-man, or even the landlord.  But Mrs George is still quite clear in my memory today.

            She seemed very old: though so did almost every adult when I was three.  Perhaps she was in her forties.  She was usually dressed in black, which seems to suggest that Mr George was dead.  Nevertheless, despite her sombre clothes, she was contagiously cheerful.  When we were with her, everyone seemed to be laughing, and though I never understood what was going on, I would usually be laughing too: once, to such an extent, that I almost became hysterical, so that our visit had to be cut short with Mum carrying me back upstairs, sitting me down and telling me that something dreadful would happen if I didn't calm down.  The  threat worked fairly quickly, though I can't remember what it was that was so dreadful as to make me stop laughing.

            We were so often in Mrs George's front room, that it is as clear in my memory today, as are the rooms of our own tiny flat. If someone held me up, from the window of her front room, I could look  out over a pocket-handkerchief of garden, to the dusty road beyond.  There wasn't much to see: a little traffic, rather slow in those days, with few cars, some vans, rather more horse drawn carts, one or two petrol driven lorries, and even the occasional  steam lorry; very large, moving slowly as it puffed along, and very, very smelly.

            I remember very little of that road, but quite a lot about the interior of that room.  By the window, Mrs George had placed an aspidistra in a brass pot.  Now I know this must seem a detail that I have simply put in for effect; but it was quite true.  She really did have an aspidistra, as did my grandmother.  They were still quite common in working-class London in 1930.

            I didn't much care for the aspidistra; it was a very dull piece of vegetation.  What I really loved about that room, was that it contained a splendid piece of furniture shaped like a flight of three steps, with, on the top step, a lid, which when opened, displayed inside, a rather beautiful chamber pot.  Whenever Mum, with me in tow, went downstairs to have a jaw with Mrs George, I would soon find my way to that delightful object, scramble up the three steps and sit on the top.  Of course, I never used the chamber pot.  Even at three, I realised that that would be unforgivable; but just to sit there and dream, was quite delightful.

            I loved Mrs George: perhaps not with quite the devotion that I extended to my parents, but certainly with as much love as I was willing to give my sister, Ruby.  As Pop carried me along the corridor to bed, I would always call down the dark well of the stairs: "Good Night Mrs George and God Bless You."  She never replied.  I don't suppose that my voice, at three, had enough volume to carry down the stairs and to penetrate the closed door of her room.

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            My sister Ruby was dark, and very pretty.  At eighty-nine, more than  ten thousand miles away, in Perth, Western Australia, she is no longer dark, though she is still an extremely attractive woman.  At six, she had been at the local Catholic elementary school for just one year.  When she was home from school, she seldom played with me, for I was only half her age.  She already had the reputation of being a ‘Tom Boy'. Her best friend was Dougie, the boy next door, who, may have been an albino, for he had a head of snow white hair, and was known as Snow-Ball. From Snow-Ball, or, perhaps,  from some other juvenile delinquent, she picked up the word 'Bugger' which she used with devastating effect one afternoon when we were about to have tea.  Mum seemed ready to explode. She put down the teapot which she had been about to fill and turned to Ruby: "Don't you use that word in this house."

            For some inexplicable reason, that remark seemed to goad Ruby: "Bugger," she said again.  Then at once, realising the extreme folly of that action, she ran out the back door, closely followed by Mum. 

            Mum did not immediately catch her, for my sister had a good start, and managed to climb the low wall into the garden next door, and then dashed into Snow-Ball's outside lavatory, and bolted the door.

            Mum's hammering on the door, and her cries that that wicked little Scalpeen should come out and take her medicine, brought out Snow-Ball's father and mother, who managed to pacify Mum.  In time Ruby emerged from the lavatory, and tearfully begged for forgiveness.  I think she was forgiven, but I don't think that I ever heard her use that word again: though today, my own daughter complains that I use it far too often.

            Not everybody saw the Tom-Boy side of Ruby.  To  outsiders she appeared a sweet, and very feminine little girl.  That winter, she was picked to play a fairy in a Christmas Pantomime, at a local theatre, probably the Wood Green Empire.  I imagine that it was a professional production, with local children, and perhaps some adult amateurs, in tiny parts.  I don't know how many performances she had to attend; not too many, I suspect, they probably had a number of little girls playing the same part on different nights; but I was taken to see her.

            I think the pantomime could have been "The Babes in the Wood", for I seem to remember seeing the babes, who were both adult girls; with one dressed as a boy.  They were sleeping in a painted wood, when Ruby, and other young fairies appeared, dressed in white ballet dresses, with golden tinsel wings, and waving little wands over the sleeping babes to signify that, whatever the machinations of the wicked witch, as they were now under fairy protection, they would come to no harm.

            As a fee for her acting she was given several boxes of sweets.  These I remember very clearly: particularly one large and sumptuous box of crystallized fruits; most of which I ate one morning when I was lying in bed.  Perhaps I was in bed that morning because I was sick.  I was certainly sick after I had eaten the crystalised fruits, if not before.

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            I don't suppose waving a wand on the stage of the Wood Green Empire required very much acting ability: but if we had any artistic talents, they were probably inherited from Mum.  The only such talent displayed by dear, gentle, Pop, was his ability to draw fairly good copies of the Bisto Kids, the two urchins, whose upturned faces, enchanted by the delicious odours of food cooked with Bisto, which wafted across the page to their nostrils, were to be regularly seen in advertisements in the popular daily papers.

            Mum, on the other hand, had an artistic past.  Before her marriage she had been a professional violinist.  As a child I thought that she was the greatest violinist in the World, or at least the greatest violinist in England: but now I think that she was just rather talented.  At that time, she still occasionally played the violin when we had company, and I loved to hear her play old Irish melodies.  She had a musty book of Irish songs, which was illustrated with sad pictures of minstrel boys off to the wars, and shawl clad Kathleen Mavournins.  She knew all the melodies by heart, and never referred to  the book; but as she played, Ruby and I would sit looking at its dark pictures as we listened.  The sight of that book both fascinated and repelled me; and left me with some very strange ideas about modern Ireland.

            When not playing Irish melodies to our guests, Mum would sometimes entertain them with party tricks on the fiddle (When treated in that  undignified fashion, the instrument did not seem to deserve the respectable title of 'violin').  I thought that the tricks were wonderful.  They were certainly unusual.  She could play the fiddle in the strangest fashion.  Sometimes she played whilst it was resting on top of her head; at other times she placed it behind her back as she  played.  She could also do a fair impersonation of the bells of Shandon Church in Cork.  I had to take it on trust that it sounded like those particular bells, for, I didn't visit Cork until I was twelve.  Another trick was to place the bow firmly between her knees, and then, holding the violin in front of her and turning it onto the strings of the bow, she would give an impersonation of the sound of Scottish, or, perhaps of Irish, bagpipes.

            I loved all those tricks, and thought that conventional violinists who were content to play the violin with their instruments resting under their chins were far less talented than my Mum.  I think if I had heard Yehudi Menuhin at that time, I would have sneered at him for his lack of manual dexterity.

            When Mum was a girl, the great Polish pianist, Paderewski, had visited Cork and had come to her school.  She was very proud of the fact that after the great man had listened to the school orchestra, she, as leader of the second violins, had been permitted to shake his hand.  I don't suppose that she demonstrated any of her tricks on that occasion.

            Mum had come to England, with her family, as a refugee, during 'The Troubles'.  Her brother, an ex-serviceman, had been killed, by mistake, it was thought, by Sinn Fein.  Not wishing for any repetition of that mistake, the whole family had quit Ireland, and had moved in with their English relatives, in Edmonton, North London.

            The house, in Denton Road, was very small, and with two families living there, must have been extremely  overcrowded and uncomfortable.  Whether that was the reason for the wedding, I can't be sure; but, after a few months, Mum married her eldest cousin and they moved out.  Dad and Mum lived for the next few years in a single room in Silver Street, where my sister was born; then moved to a room over a rag and bone shop in Pretoria Road, Tottenham, where, three years later, in January, 1927, I appeared.  The move to Harringay followed shortly, to the luxury of three, then later two rooms: and there, as I have already written, memory began for me.

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            At about this time, talking pictures began; but the part-time occupation of baby-sitter not having been invented, if Mum and Dad wanted to enjoy the pleasures of the picture palace, they had to take me with them.  So, on a few occasions, when Dad had  his Thursday half-day off, and arrived home early from the grocer's shop where he worked, Ruby and I would be taken to the cinema.

            I can't pretend that I was an ardent film fan.  I'd fall asleep almost as soon as we got inside.  I may have slept through many of the great screen classics of the early thirties: then again I probably did not, for I don't think that my parents' tastes ran much to classics of any kind. However, I would often wake up in the middle of a film, and then I would be terrified.  It was the colossal size of the images of the performers on the screen that would frighten me in those waking moments.  They were so much bigger than ordinary people and they were the wrong colours, appearing in varying shades of grey and black: and some of them; the ones shown in close up; didn't seem to have any legs.  Even worse were the all too frequent occasions when the hero and heroine would kiss; and then I would be appalled by the sight of two vast heads, unattached to any bodies, filling the entire screen.

            I sometimes dreamt about those monsters.  In my dreams, I'd see our family leaving the cinema, and being confronted by a vast film-star, towering over the roof tops; or else by a great head which would bounce across Harringay from the direction of Alexander Palace, wrecking houses with each bounce, until, just before it reached us, I would wake up, and find myself, if I was lucky, in my bed at home, or, if I was not quite so lucky, sitting beside my parents in the cinema, with the grey giants booming to each other across the silver screen.

            It may be that those frightening experiences have had a lasting effect on me, filling me with numerous frustrations and phobias; but somehow, I doubt it.  In time, I forgot my fears, and even managed to stay awake for quite long periods in the cinema.  On occasion, it was the films that kept me awake, but more often than not, it was because my presence in the cinema seemed to ensure me an almost unlimited supply of sweets, peanuts, or other goodies.  I would munch and chew happily through even the most unsuitable film, making each sweet or nut last as long as possible.

            Once I was so intent on obtaining the very last crumb from a penny packet of dolly mixture, that I let my left shoe slip from my foot and fall beneath a seat in the row in front.  I thought about the lost shoe for a moment or two, decided that it was a major tragedy, and then burst into tears.  Mum asked me what was the matter.

            "I've lost me shoe,"  I sobbed.

            "How did you manage to do that?"  asked Mum.

            "It dropped off me foot.  I think it's under the seat in front."  

            "Well, you'd better get down there and find it.  Hadn't you?" replied Mum.

            I slipped from my seat.  'Slipped' isn't really the most accurate of verbs, for, although the movement started as a relatively gentle slip, it ended with a sickening thud, as  my posterior had lost contact with the edge of the seat a little before my feet had made contact with the floor.  The thud, though painful, surprised me so much that I stopped crying.

            I found myself in a new, slightly frightening, world: a dark world of legs.  Some were metal seat legs, with cast iron spars bracing them to the floor: some were human legs, male and female, crossed and uncrossed, and with feet splayed in all directions.  The floor was covered with sweet papers, peanut shells, cigarette ends, and other items of garbage.  I crawled under the seat in front.  I could not see very clearly, but I took hold of what I thought was my shoe.  It was a shoe, but it was not mine: it had a high heel, and it was attached to a female leg.

            From way above my head, a female voice protested: "Stop that John.  Leave my leg alone."

            A male voice replied, indignantly: "What are you talking about?  I've not touched your leg."

            "Yes you did," said the first voice."You're up to your old tricks again. I'm sick of you groping me, every time we go out.  It aint nice. This is the last time I let you take me to the pictures.  I'm going home."

            With that, the first pair of legs suddenly straightened up, and began to move along the row towards the centre aisle, followed immediately by the legs of John, who was protesting that he hadn't done a thing.

            In the space that they had left, I soon found my shoe, and returned to my own row, to be lifted back onto my seat by my mother, who consoled me for my temporary discomfort with a fresh bag of sweets.

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            A regular visitor to our Harringay home, was my paternal grandfather.  Grandfather Baker was a very intelligent man, who had never managed to achieve his full potential.  He had suffered a great handicap in life.  As a young man, he had inherited some slum property, which assured him a guaranteed income without his having to do any work for it.  The income was small: just enough to keep him and his wife; but certainly not enough to keep a family; and, in time, he had eight children. 

            Unfortunately, the tiny income gave him a feeling of independence; and, although he would sometimes take a paid job; as soon as anything went wrong, he would leave of his own accord, and hang around the house until something else turned up.  As the years went on the intervals between suitable things turning up became greater and greater. 

            If fairness to Grandad, I must admit that he wasn't that choosy.  In his time he had been a night-watchman, a door to door salesman, and even a cricket coach in a private school.  With a friend, he had started a business shortly before the Great War, which had lasted until his friend had been unfriendly enough to depart for South Africa, taking all the available cash with him, and leaving several unpaid and unpayable bills.

            If he had not had an independent income, I expect that Grandad would have carved out some sort of career for himself.  As it was, the only thing that he seemed to do pretty well, was to be a very lovable old grandfather: and, as that is not all that easy a task, I think he had some cause to be satisfied with his life. 

            Sometimes, when he visited us, the table would be cleared, and he would settle down to play cribbage with Pop.  It was a very intent game.  Both would be smoking their pipes, and only talking when the rules of the  game demanded speech.  I was fascinated by what they would then say: though I didn't understand it: "Fifteen one, Fifteen Two, One for his nob."

            I longed for the time when I would be a grown up: and would be allowed to play cribbage with Grandad or Pop, and could chant the strange incantations, and have 'One for his nob' all for myself.

            Often Grandad would arrive before Pop had returned from work; and then he would while away the time before cribbage, by listening to the crystal set.  Those early radio receivers had a delicate part known as the 'cat's whisker'.  To obtain reasonably clear reception, the operator had to adjust the cat's whisker until the programme could be clearly heard.  The slightest involuntary movement was enough to move it from its place; and then the whole process would have to begin all over again.       

            Grandad, wearing the earphones, would crouch over the set, his slightly trembling hand adjusting the cat's whisker.  In time he would tune in to the station, and then he would relax, leaning back in his chair, and listening  to the crackling music emanating from Savoy Hill. He never remained  in that state of contentment for more than a few minutes; for, invariably, either Ruby or I would jog the table, I think that we often did it on purpose, and then the cat's whisker would jerk from the true position, and the music would stop.  Poor Grandad would then curse, glare at us, call Mum to take us from the room, which she seldom did, and then begin fiddling with the mechanism once again.

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            There is just one other event that I still remember from those far off days in Harringay.  I may have been playing in the garden, I was certainly outside the house, when suddenly the day grew colder as if clouds were covering the sun.  I looked up, and, there in the sky, was a huge cigar shaped grey object.  It didn't frighten me, but it did puzzle me, I could see that it wasn't an aeroplane, it was far bigger than any aeroplane that I had seen in my short life; and, in any case, it didn't look a bit like an aeroplane.  I now know that it must have been a rigid airship, and was probably either the R100 or the ill-fated R101.  Could I have been looking at that vast machine on its final flight in October, 1930 from its base in Cardington in Bedfordshire, to the French  hill into which it was fated to crash, with the loss of almost all of those on board?

CHAPTER TWO

A few months before my fifth birthday, we moved to Edmonton, the working-class North London Suburb, where I was to spend most of my remaining childhood, and almost all my adolescence.  Edmonton was a sort of tribal home for most of my father's family, and also for my mother's family when they came to England.  In various houses within the town lived  my paternal grandparents,  several uncles and aunts, and many cousins.

            We moved into the top floor of a large Victorian house in Church Street, opposite the footpath leading through the churchyard past the grounds of the Girls' Junior Technical School.  Our accommodation was more spacious than the two rooms of the Harringay flat: there were, I think, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a main living room; though we had to share the lavatory with the people on the first floor: and the only sink basin was placed, rather oddly, in an alcove half way down the stairs.  There was no bathroom, but that was no great hardship, as there had not been a bathroom in Harringay.  We children were bathed in a galvanised tub.  I have no idea what my parents used.  I don't think the tub would have been big enough, even for my tiny mother: but I am sure that they bathed somewhere.  Perhaps they used the public slipper baths in Edmonton Town Hall.

            The greatest drawback to our new home, was the fact that our flat was on the second floor so that two flights of stairs had to be climbed before we got there.  Mum was not over-strong, and, each day, the effort to go up and down those stairs, often carrying a heavy shopping basket, must have made her just that much weaker.

            The move also entailed the purchase of extra furniture, for what had been sufficient for two rooms, was certainly not enough for four.  The most impressive new item so far as I was concerned, was a white kitchen cabinet containing special spaces for individual items, and containers for tea, sugar and flour.  I thought that the cabinet heralded a promise of a richer future, where every separate space would be filled to overflowing with succulent food.  Actually, considering the low wage that my father then received, we were fed pretty well, and certainly never went hungry to bed: but food from a dull brown larder in Harringay had little of the glamour of food from a spanking new white kitchen cabinet in Edmonton.

            The house had a magnificent garden, the largest that I had ever seen.  Near the   house was a smooth lawn with, at its edge, three flower beds, one for each family of tenants: but, beyond the beds began the real glory of the garden; for suddenly it was no longer a garden but a small orchard, with apple and pear trees, and bushes containing what seemed to be almost every type of English berry.

            The orchard was an enchanted place where the most magical, wonderful, games could be played.  At the furthest end was an open three-sided shed, built from old packing cases and tea chests.  Nearer the house, in the middle of the orchard stood a pile of empty wooden boxes.  It was about ten feet high, and in our games became a mountain to be climbed; a desert fortress to be defended from attack by Bedouins; a ship in a storm on the high seas; or, even, with me tied by a rope for safety six feet from the ground, an airship on patrol over the North Sea searching for U Boats.  When we weren't playing in the hut, or on the pile of boxes, or even below ground in the corrugated iron roofed pit on the orchard edge, we would be eating and eating and eating the fruit that was there to be taken, until our hands were stained and sticky, and our stomaches uncomfortably rumbling.

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            We were not the only children living in the house.  Soon after we had arrived, another family moved into the first floor flat.  Like us in that  they were also a young couple with a daughter and son; like us in that the daughter was the same age as Ruby, and the son was my age; but even more like us in that their family name was Baker.  I don't think that we resembled them in any other way.  We didn't much like them, and they didn't seem to like us.  We thought that the two children were dreadfully spoiled.  Perhaps they thought the same about us. 

            Within a very short space of time, they, or perhaps we, began the silly game of 'keeping up with the Bakers, for whatever we acquired, they acquired too.  At that first Christmas in Church Road, I met the other Baker boy on the stairs.  He was carrying toys that seemed to be identical to the ones that I held in my arms. I suspect now, that it was all probably a matter of coincidences, there wasn't all that much variety in the range of presents that our parents, or the other Baker parents could afford to buy, so inevitably many of the choices would have been the same.  After less than a year, they decided to move.  We were glad to see them go.

            The basement and the ground floor were occupied by a very different breed of flat dweller.  They were one large family: so large that we never managed to sort out which was which, apart from the fact that one or two members of the clan had quirks of personality that set them apart from the others.  At the time, there seemed to be at least twenty people living on those two floors, though today, my reason tells me that there could not possibly have been such a large number: but certainly there were between ten and fifteen people in that family.

            They ranged in age from over sixty to around fourteen; and they seemed all to be living in relative comfort on the profits of one small coffee stall that stood on Edmonton Green, and was operated two at a time by members of the family, though seldom by the same two.  It was a very small stall, yet despite its diminutive size the family appeared quite prosperous.

            Oddly enough, one of the basement rooms was filled to the ceiling with consumer goods which were  mostly still in packing cases.  Two or three times a month, our sleep would be disturbed by the noise of lorries stopping and starting, and by what sounded like loading or unloading operations.  It was all quite mysterious; but no doubt there was some perfectly innocent explanation for it.

            The fourteen year old was my particular friend.  We were quite well matched: I at five, he at fourteen, were at roughly the same stage of mental development.  He did not go to a normal elementary school, nor to a school for the retarded.  I don't know how his parents managed to keep him at home, but they did; perhaps his birth had never been registered.  He led an almost idyllic life, playing in the garden if the weather was fine, or in the house, if it was not.  He had some wonderful toys, including an expensive Meccano set, with which his elder brothers had made some elaborate working models.  Together, we would play with them for hours, until becoming slightly bored, and giving in to our natural delight in destruction, we would pull the models to bits.

            I had a small, cheap construction set of my own, not a Meccano, but an Erector.  Like my fourteen year old friend, I was a little too young for it, but Pop got a lot of fun out of it.

            My friend also owned an airgun.  On one very enjoyable morning, out of sight of the house, we sat perched on the wall at the end of the garden, systematically destroying every piece of glass in the windows of our neighbour's garden shed.  My friend did all the shooting.  I was happy just to point out areas of glass that had still to be shattered.  Without my help, I don't think he would have destroyed half as much as he did: he tended to be a little slap-dash in the performance of  the tasks that he had set himself.

            We had such wonderful times in the garden in the summer sun.  In my memory of that year it seemed always to have been sunny, yet reason tells me that it must sometimes have rained. There was fruit to gorge from the trees and the bushes: we could take what we liked.  Sometimes the adolescents from downstairs lit bonfires at the end of the garden.  Once somebody, possibly my retarded friend, placed on a bonfire a bottle of water.  We wanted to boil it to make some tea.  Of course it exploded and a large chunk of glass tore a gap in my sister's leg.  The wound looked horrific, but it wasn't very deep.  We never tried to boil glass again.

            Sometimes we would sit on the garden wall, out of sight of the houses, stealing apples from our neighbour's trees.  Behind us, in our own garden, there must have been at least ten trees bearing apples that we could legally pick, but they were never so inviting as the forbidden fruit from over the wall.  At other times we would race madly about the trees in frantic games of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, British and Germans, or just simply chasing for the sake of it.  When we were tired we might collapse in the middle of the lawn, then lie on our backs and look at the bees buzzing over the flower beds.  I was told that one bed, of sweet peas, was my very own.  I longed for the day when the peas could be picked, cooked and eaten.  I had never tasted sweet peas from a flower bed.  To this day, I still haven't tasted them.

            When I was on my own, the other children at school, and the fourteen year old somewhere else; perhaps out of sight pulling the wings from butterflies, I would ride on my tricycle, or perhaps in my pedal car, which was the twin of the pedal car ridden by the other Baker boy.  I never went anywhere in my vehicles.  I don't suppose that there was anywhere that I could go.  I just rode round and around in circles, leaning further and further towards the centre of the circle, until I would find myself tipping over, and with the car or the tricycle on top of me, I would then start to yell for Mum.

            My sister was too old for pedal cars; but she was learning to ride a small bicycle.  Someone had given her an old, rusty, saddle-less machine, which had been taken from a scrap heap.  Where the saddle should have been, only the mounting remained, an iron pipe, with sharp edges.  It must have been dreadfully uncomfortable to ride, and I am sure that in time it would have done her considerable injury; but before that happened, or, perhaps because she could no longer stand the pain, the bike was returned to the scrap heap.

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            My horizons were starting to widen.  Soon I was going to start school.  Already I was taken to mass every Sunday to St. Edmund's Church in Hertford Road, across the street from the school.  It was an early twentieth century neo-Gothic building; dark inside, and always, at the 12 o'clock mass on Sunday, filled to overflowing.  We always went to the 12 o'clock mass.  I expect it was because there was no 1 o'clock mass.  We were sometimes late, and would then stand, with the rest of the overflow, in the porch, from where my view of the service was limited to fleeting glimpses obtained when the person in front shifted slightly, or perhaps opened his legs a little.  Even when we did get seats inside, the altar seemed to be miles away.  I didn't enjoy it very much.  It was just something that had to be endured, but I didn't complain, I seem to have been a rather placid child.  Perhaps children in church were better behaved in those days.  Today I usually go to the 9.30 mass, which in our parish is called the family mass.  There are many young families present, and the younger children play with toys, move about, talk and even shout during the service.  I don't remember any Catholic children doing that in Edmonton in 1932.  I am quite sure that I did not.

            Mass wasn't entirely a purgatory for me, though: some of it I enjoyed.  I loved to see all the candles on the altar when they  were lit: then  I had the feeling that I was looking at the dazzling battlements of a fairy castle.  I half believed that the candles were deliberately arranged in that fashion to give that impression: but that could hardly have been so, unless the arrangement was arrived at through a subconscious feeling on the part of the parish priest, that such an castle-like arrangement of lights would remind the congregation that we were all part of the church militant.

            I don't suppose that we lived more than a quarter of a mile from the church, but to me, at five, that seemed to be a great distance to walk: and on Sundays, everything looked so different from the way it appeared on weekdays.  All the shops were shuttered, there were no stalls on the green, no noise of hawkers, and of passers by: there did not seem to be any passers by.  As we traipsed along the deserted Sunday streets I often thought that the buildings that we passed were glowering at me and decidedly threatening.  I had the feeling that they did not like me very much.

            So much on the way to church seemed to be connected to   someone called Charles Lamb.  The old Church of England parish church, on the other side of the road, had, in its churchyard, the grave of that person.  Just beyond our house was the Charles Lamb Institute.  I never discovered what went on inside.  Then there was Charles Lamb's Cottage.  Some years later I learnt that he was a nineteenth century writer, and that people in the town were rather proud of his association with Edmonton: but I was never to meet, during my childhood and adolescence, any Edmontonian who admitted to having read a word that the man had written.

            On our perambulations to church, we would, after passing the Institute, walk past the convent, and then the fire station, with its great red doors, and its huge bell push marked 'Fire Alarm'.  I couldn't understand why my parents would walk me past that building so casually, once or twice even stopping whilst Pop would light his pipe.  Didn't they realise that at any moment, a fire alarm could have sounded, and the red doors would be thrown open and fire engines burst out at great speed, knocking us over, and leaving us dead on the roadway?  Had I had my way I would have run past the forecourt of the station.  Surely that would have been the only sensible thing to do: but I'm afraid that my parents were never very sensible on that score.

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            Edmonton, though still within the Greater London Conurbation, had a distinctly rural air in 1932.  So much in our neighbourhood was green.  Apart from our wonderful orchard garden, there was the churchyard opposite; and Church Street in the summer seemed almost to be a country lane, as it meandered lazily to its junction with the Great Cambridge Road.

            We lived quite near a recreation ground, and every Sunday afternoon we would walk there.  In the Spring the whole of our little family would walk there together, but in Summer Pop went on ahead, and Mum, Ruby and I would follow: and when we arrived we would sit on the grass and watch Pop playing cricket, for he was a member of a team connected with a local factory.

            Pop and his brothers, all passionately loved cricket, and would play, or watch others playing, on every possible occasion.  Alas, as I grew older, I must have been a dreadful disappointment to Pop on that score, for I came to loath the game.  But at five, my great loathing was yet to develop; at that time, I merely found it rather boring; though it was quite pleasant to be sitting on the grass in the summer sun, whilst Pop enjoyed himself on the pitch: or, with friends exploring the tangle of undergrowth away from the pitch, or playing He, or some other ball game.  However, more often than not, we would simply sit and watch the game; or in my case, simply sit.

            This summer idyll came to an abrupt end about three months into the cricket season.  One afternoon, as we approached the ground, we were met by a distressed Pop, supported by a friend.  Pop was holding a hand to his bandaged head.  he looked to be in considerable discomfort.  The friend seemed rather cheerful.  He grinned happily at us, as he explained that Pop had been hit, just above the eye, by a cricket ball.

            The injury, though not particularly severe, was enough to keep him away from work for the next few days.  Mum collected thirty shillings on an insurance policy that she had taken out through the magazine, John Bull, so we were not very much out of pocket during Pop's absence from work: but the whole episode had been a great shock to her.  She made Pop promise that he would not play cricket again: a promise that he more or less kept.

            Though in retrospect this may appear to have been a rather trifling accident, it need not have been so.  The doctor told Mum that had the ball struck at a slightly higher point on the skull, Pop could have been killed, or at least have lost the sight of one eye.

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            At that time, my grandparents still lived in the little house in Denton Road, together with my Uncle Dennis, then in his teens, my Aunt Queenie, whose given name was Madelaine, but who had been nicknamed Queenie as a child, and my Aunt Eve, who was soon to be married.

            Despite its lack of size, and its gross overcrowding, it was a friendly house, and the usual gathering place for parties, at which not only the Bakers, but the O'Sullivans from Ireland, and some of the Hurlocks, the Lepleys, the Burkes, and all the other tribes of in-laws of the Bakers, were to be found.

            Perhaps like Dr. Who's Tardis, the house was much bigger inside than out, for certainly at Christmas, there would be massive family parties.  The parlour, which was seldom used at any other time, would bulge relatives.  The piano would be playing, there would be singing, and games, and talk, often all at the same time.  Now and again, some adult, perhaps a little the worse for drink, would show off and try to entertain the whole company.  I remember seeing Uncle Reg, though technically not yet an uncle as his marriage to Aunt Eve had yet to take place, demonstrating with Pop, their version of a torrid love scene from one of the latest films. 

            On another occasion, Uncle Eddy, one of Mum's brothers, over from Cork, attempted to demonstrate his great agility by jumping over Grandad's walking stick which he held in both hands.  It was a very noisy trick, and I think he made several attempts, bruising his knees in the process, before he managed to do it successfully.  I may have been the only person watching: I think most of the company were too busy eating sandwiches or drinking tea, lemonade, beer or port to pay much attention to Uncle Eddy.  He became rather annoyed when he realised that no one was watching, and insisted on performing the feat again and again, until, at about the sixth attempt he fell on his chin, and gave himself a nasty gash: a mishap that did have the desired effect of making the company pay some attention to him at last.

            We were often at Denton Road, even when there were no parties: for, although Mum would complain to Pop about the way his mother tried to tell her how to bring up her children, the truth was, that there was a strong bond of affection between them: though Mum would never have admitted that.  Nevertheless, despite that secret bond of affection, the tedium of the many visits, was frequently relieved for me  by the arguments between Mum and Grandma.  As neither would ever admit to the other that she was in the wrong, those visits would often end with Mum swearing that if it wasn't for the fact that Grandma was Pop's mother, she would never go near the place again: and Grandma replying that if Mum had not been Pop's wife, she would never open the door to her.

            Another house that we often visited, was the home in Western Avenue, of Uncle Mick, Mum's eldest brother, and his family.  When the family was complete, which was not until 1940, there were three daughters and two sons, but in 1932, there were just two boys and one girl.

            This was another house, where spice was added to our visits by family antagonism.  Mum and Aunty Monnie, did not like each other very much, and hardly a visit would end without harsh words being exchanged, though happily, not blows.

            I think Mum may have enjoyed the visits for that very reason; but she claimed that she only went there out of a sense of duty.  Just as she claimed that she visited Denton Road because of her sense of duty to Pop: so she claimed that she visited Western Avenue because of her sense of duty to Uncle Mick.

            Whatever was the true reason for the Western Avenue visits, I didn't care very much.  I was just very pleased that we went, for I really enjoyed being there: there was so much for me to do: my cousins to play with or fight; the garden swing to swing on; and several caged birds in the kitchen to admire.

            Uncle Mick had the idea that he might make a little extra money by breeding budgerigars for sale: though, so far as I know, he only ever managed to sell one, and that was to us.  Ruby and I loved that little bird, but it didn't ever sing or talk.  Indeed, almost the only sound that it would make was a sort of dry cough, which we soon got used to; but which would startle visitors.  It sounded rather as if the bird was a heavy smoker.

            So far as I can remember, most of Uncle Mick's budgerigars were sickly creatures; perhaps they were not given the right food.  I used to poke my finger between the bars of their cages until stopped by an adult: but the birds would pay absolutely no attention to me; remaining silently perched on their perches, until one or other, like the one that we had bought, might give a dry rasping cough.

            My happiest visit to Western Avenue took place one cold November evening.  As soon as we arrived, Aunty Monnie said: "The boys are having a bath.  You'd better join them,"  and before Mum had time to protest, I was naked and sharing the grimy suds with my cousins, Gussy and Gerard.  I thought it was splendid.  I had never enjoyed a bath so much in my life.  We didn't bother much with soap or flannel, but had a perfectly gorgeous time splashing each other, and in the process, getting lots and lots of water on the bathroom floor, and on the seat of the lavatory.

            From the kitchen I could hear snatches of what sounded like a most interesting quarrel between Mum and Aunty Monnie, punctuated with occasional gentle notes of protest from poor Uncle Mick.  But all too soon Mum appeared, pulled me out of the now cold bath water, and said: "Get your clothes on.  We're not staying here."  I don't remember if I was even given time to dry myself.  It was nearly a year before we were to visit Western Avenue again, and I was never again to be asked to share a bath with my cousins. 

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            A few months after my fifth birthday, I was enrolled as a pupil in the infant section of St. Edmund's Roman Catholic Elementary School.  My sister had been a pupil there for a whole year, and sometimes, at the end of the afternoon, I had stood in the playground with Mum, waiting for Ruby and the other prisoners to be given their freedom for the rest of the day.  I was scared of the place, and had been dreading the day when I should be left there alone without Mum to protect me.

            I have no idea why I joined the school at that particular time, for I appeared to be the only pupil enrolling on that day, so it could not have been the start of term.  Perhaps I had been sick and kept away from school for that reason. We arrived about an hour after the school day had officially started. I had a sick feeling in my stomach as we crossed what seemed to be acres of asphalt. We entered the building by a large green double door, and climbed the stairs to the first floor. There, we walked to the office of the headmistress, Miss Bell,  by way of a long green corridor, the walls punctuated with polished wooden doors, and decorated with pictures in glass frames of saints and angels.  I thought that it was the largest and nastiest of buildings that I had ever seen.  In fact, it was a rather small school; but, at five, I too was small, and, in any case I had known no other school with which to make comparison.

            Once we were in the office, Mum sat on a chair facing Miss Bell, and I stood beside her.  I was at once distracted by a large picture on the wall.  It was of Kaiser Wilhelm and King Leopold of Belgium.  They were standing on some kind of battlefield, for a number of soldiers were sitting on the ground and appeared to be wounded, dying, or already dead.  Underneath some words were printed.  At five I could not read them, but later when the picture was removed from the office and placed on the corridor wall, I learnt that they were of the Kaiser saying, "So, you have lost everything," and the King replying, "Not my honour," or perhaps it was "Not my soul."  It was most edifying.

            Miss Bell was white-haired, thin lipped, and bespectacled.  As an only son, aged five, I only knew adults who were kind to me, who treated me as if I was someone special, who often smiled when they spoke to me.  Miss Bell was quite different.  She spent a great deal of time dealing with five year olds, and obviously had neither the time, nor, perhaps, the inclination, to constantly smile at them and encourage them to believe that they were the lords and ladies of creation.  As that first meeting she terrified me: though for all that I knew, behind that grim exterior she may have been a kindly, warm, person. For a few minutes she spoke only to Mum, asking her about my health, my behaviour, and why we were so late that morning.  Suddenly she turned to me.

            "Alfred.  What do you like doing best?"  she asked.

            "Drawing," I replied. 

            "What do you draw?"  was the next question.

            "People."

            My reply seemed to satisfy her, though I can't imagine what sort of answer she really expected from a five year old.  If she had seen my 'People' she might have been less satisfied.  In my drawings they always looked like potatoes with dot noses and eyes, a half moon for a mouth, and four spidery limbs, with, if I remember correctly, two to four extensions which represented fingers, on the two upper limbs.

            Suddenly Mum was no longer with us.  I was alone with Miss Bell.  Taking my hand, she led me out of her office, and down the stairs to a large oak door on the ground floor.  I could already read numbers, and I saw the the upper part of the door contained a white card marked '1'. Miss Bell opened the door and entered the room, pushing me before her.  Forty-eight children sat at twenty-four double desks facing a high old fashioned teacher's desk, a blackboard and easel, and Miss Keough, a high old fashioned teacher, who was in charge of Standard 1.  Forty-nine pairs of seemingly hostile eyes were gazing at me.  I wanted to run, but Miss Bell still held my hand firmly and escape was impossible.

            Miss Keough was a thinner version of Miss Bell.  She had a difficult job with such a large class to teach, but I don't think that I am being unfair when I write that her methods were certainly not calculated to make five year olds happy.  Like at least half the teachers at St. Edmund's School, she was Irish; a fact, that for me should have been a mark in her favour, but one that I quickly overlooked because of my general fear and dislike of the lady.

            Miss Bell spoke: "This is another new boy, Alfred Baker.  He is Ruby Baker's brother.  I hope that he isn't going to be late every morning."

            "He'd better not if he knows what's good for him," was Miss Keough's reply. Then she continued enigmatically: "Ruby Baker's brother, is he?  Is he going to work, I wonder?"

            I was placed in the back row where I shared a desk with a boy who appeared to be wearing a pair of girl's long black woollen stockings, and the lesson was resumed.

            I remember little else of that first day of school.  In fact, all my memories of that first school year are lumped together as if they all took place during one eternally long grey twilight day.  I thought that I would never learn to read; it seemed such a difficult skill to acquire.  I now realise that my progress was comparatively swift, for I could read quite well by the time I moved up to Standard 2, in the following year.

            I never lost my fear of Miss Keough, and that fear caused me to do some very strange things, many of them bringing upon me the full force of her anger.

            On one occasion I was standing with some of the other children at the blackboard whilst Miss Keough was trying to instruct us in the mysteries of subtraction.  Perhaps I had become hypnotized by the sight of the left-hand blackboard peg: or perhaps I was simply visited by a poltergeist; for, suddenly, without knowing why, I pulled the peg out.  The blackboard fell onto Miss Keough's head, and shortly after that, Miss Keough's wooden ruler fell sharply several times onto my hand.

            I can remember another occasion when I was standing in one corner of the classroom one afternoon waiting for Ruby to come from her lesson and take me home.  I don't remember why I was standing in the corner.  Perhaps I had been naughty, or just stupid, for all the other children   already seemed to have gone home.

            It was late, and I was tired, and I only had the hated Miss Keough, seated at her desk marking books, to keep me company.  I felt miserable and unloved.  It was late and I was tired: and then I became conscious that I was peeing down my leg.  An action just as involuntary as the pulling out of that blackboard peg.  It was too much for me.  I began to cry.

            Miss Keough looked up from her task: "What's the matter with you, then?" Then noticing the slowly spreading pool at my feet. "You dirty little boy! Look what you've done.  I should make you wash your face in in.  Go to the toilet at once; and when you've finished, go and tell the caretaker."

            I fled from the room, damp at both ends.  After that incident I would wait for my sister in Miss Donevon's room.  I liked Miss Donevon, and looked forward with happy anticipation to the day when I should join her class, Standard 2.

CHAPTER THREE

In the summer of 1933, we had the first holiday that I can remember with any clarity.  Together with Grandad, Grandma, Uncle Dennis and Aunty Queenie, we rented a bungalow for a week on Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary.  The bungalow, which was named 'Carrie Lou', stood in a paddock a short distance from the edge of the mud flats within smell, if not within sight, of the estuary.  It was described as a bungalow in the advertisement in Dalton's Weekly, and it was as a bungalow that we thought of it, but it didn't really deserve that title.

            Even to refer to it as 'it' is a trifle misleading, for the pronoun 'it' surely implies one thing.  Carrie Lou was not one structure but several.  It had four distinct parts set down in about a quarter acre of meadow.  Part One was an asbestos garage, which was grandly called the dining-sleeping room; Part Two was a small wooden lean-to, which didn't lean against anything, but stood alone, several yards away from Part One.  It was the type of shed that in remote country areas might hold a lavatory.  It was the kitchen of Carrie Lou, and contained a rather grubby oil stove.  Cooking was unpleasant at the best of times, but particularly so when it rained, for then the cook became wet, for the door had to be kept open for otherwise he or she, it was usually she, was in danger of death by asphyxiation from paraffin fumes.  Fortunately, it only rained once in that week.

            Part Three was the main bedroom.  It was the back of an old lorry, sans wheels.  The interior was divided in two by  a curtain.  Each section contained a double bed.  Mum, Pop and I slept in the driving cab end: Grandma and Grandad in the other end.  Our half was raised about four feet above the other half, which meant that my grandparents slept in great danger of death, for were our bed to have shifted slightly during the night, its legs  could easily have slid over the ledge and onto their heads.

            Part Four was, of course, the lavatory: another lean-to, also leaning against nothing, and placed in a corner of the field.  But for our sense of smell, it would have been very difficult to find on a moonless night.  It was a straw privy, and, in theory, a representative of the owner was supposed to change the straw twice a week: but we never saw him during our week; and, from the state of the privy when we arrived, neither had the previous tenants.

            Ruby and Aunty Queenie slept in the asbestos garage.  Presumably Uncle Dennis slept somewhere also, but as I seem to have exhausted all the possible sleeping places, I can't imagine where that could have been.  Perhaps he slept standing upright in the kitchen; or maybe he had a tent which he pitched somewhere in the quarter acre meadow.

            There was no water supply in Carrie Lou, so twice a day Grandad and Pop carried a small tin bath to a tap by the side of the road, half a mile away.  Sometimes, when they returned, the bath would contain, in addition to water, numerous small insects, so Grandma and Mum would always strain it and then boil it before we could use it for drinking purposes.

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            Canvey Island was rather primitive in 1932, and Carrie Lou even more so: yet in spite of all the discomfort, or perhaps because of it, we had a wonderful holiday.  Across the road we would walk about a hundred feet through the grass and scrub to the high sea wall, and climbing to the top of that, see beyond it, acres of black mud, and in the distance the waters of the estuary.  Twice a day, the waters crept almost up to the wall; and then, as the tide changed, crept back again, uncovering again the acres of black goo.

            In those days, some people thought that mud had therapeutic properties (I believe some people still do today), and the score or so of stranded black seals to be seen each day, were, on closer observation, found to be humans sitting motionless in the mud, and covered from head to foot in the slimy black ooze.  Apparently these mud worshippers were not social animals, for they were never to be found in groups: instead, each sat in solitary state, hundreds of yards apart from the others, with legs outstretched towards the distant sea, and their backs bent, as if with the weight of the world on their shoulders: though it was more probably the weight of the mud.

            They never seemed to speak, to move, or do anything else: just sit there encaked.  For all I know, for I never stayed to find out, they may have remained there as the tide came in, letting the sea wash the sludge from their bodies.

            On some days, the only humans in sight were the mud worshippers: but at other times, when the wind was so high, that a little boy could be blown off the wall if he had not held firmly his parent's hand, other people appeared: serious adult kite flyers.

            Their kites were huge box affairs, constructed of canvas and balsa wood, and attached to strong fishing line.  Once they were launched they would climb higher and higher until they seemed to be tiny shapes up amongst the clouds.  Of course they never reached the clouds: but to a five year old looking up at them, they appeared to be so high that I wondered if one could step onto the Moon from one of them, if the Moon had chosen to appear during the day time.

            Some of the kite flyers were very skilful, and by adjusting the slack on the line, could make their playthings dip and whirl. Others were more pensive, and would stand, pipes in mouths, staring, silently up at their kites for endless minutes as if they were celestial fishermen hoping to catch swallows, sparrows, or swifts.

            Once Pop stood talking to a kite-flyer; and suddenly the line was thrust into my hands.  I hung on as tightly as I could, and  fancied that I could feel, thousands of feet above my head, the great blue kite leaping and dancing, and trying to take me with it into the stratosphere.  It wasn't likely that that would happen, for the owner was also holding the line, but I was a little frightened, and was relieved when Pop said that we should be getting along.  As we walked away along the sea wall, I turned and saw the kite-man pulling  in his balsa-canvas bird.  It seemed to be struggling in a mad dance of anger and frustration, as the line grew shorter and shorter with every minute and it saw that it was losing the freedom of the skies. 

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            On another part of the Island a small fun fair was being held in a meadow behind a pub.  We went there once with Mum and Pop, but for us children, it was very disappointing.  There was only one roundabout and a single pair of boat swings.  The rest of the fair consisted of a roll-a-penny stall, a shooting gallery, and a few other stalls of a similar kind.  After less than an hour we left for the mud flats and the kite flyers.  But one of Uncle Dennis's friends had turned up on his bicycle in the middle of the week, and the two young men, they must have been about sixteen at that time, spent the whole afternoon at the fair.  They had the most phenomenal luck.  They spent all their time at the dart stall, and came back laden with prizes.  They might well have taken more had not the proprietor told them that the stall was closing, even though it was only 5 p.m., at the time.  As they left the fair, they noticed that he was opening the stall up again.

            I do remember that that night Uncle Dennis and his friend slept in the garage.  I don't imagine that Ruby and Aunty Queenie slept there too, so perhaps there was a fifth part to Carrie Lou that I have forgotten.  In the middle of the night Uncle Dennis had a nightmare.  He dreamed he was being chased by the proprietor of the stall who was throwing darts at him.  In his effort to escape, he kicked out violently, and his foot went through the asbestos wall of the garage.  Oddly enough, that did not wake him up, but what did wake him up, about two hours later at 4 a.m., was a friendly dog who was licking his big toe.

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            Grandma and Mum spent much of the holiday sitting in deckchairs and enjoying the sun.  I think that Grandma must have been wearing a low backed dress.  That is a horrifying thought, and, at this distance in time, seems most unlikely; yet surely it must have been so, for every evening she would be heard moaning that the skin of her back was red and raw from sunburn.  However, now that I think of it, the mystery thickens, for surely the sun would not have been able to burn her back through the canvass of a deck chair.  Perhaps she had found a way of lying on her tummy in the chair.  But whatever the reason for the sunburn, it became my nine year old sister's duty to treat Grandma's painful back.  Every evening Grandma would lie on her bed whilst Ruby would gently apply sunburn lotion.

            We did very little on that holiday, but, as I have already written, it was tremendously enjoyable.  I was heartbroken when Saturday came and we had to leave: and I think all the adults were nearly as sad as I was.  Ruby was crying, as the bus took us down the lane, away from Carrie Lou, and across the bridge to the mainland. There we sat sadly at a table outside a pub, the children drinking lemonade, the men drinking beer, and Mum, Aunty Queenie and Grandma drinking nothing, as we waited for the arrival of the coach that would take us back to Edmonton.

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            After the joys of Canvey Island, the rest of the school holiday, was very much an anti-climax.  I would wander aimlessly round our flat, Not knowing what to do, and  wishing that I was with the kites and the sun worshippers. Of course that wish could not come true.  What happened instead was that I caught the measles, and was put to bed. 

            I rather enjoyed being ill.  Mum fussed over me, the people from downstairs visited me and sympathised with me in my non-existent distress.  I was given colourful books to read, or rather to look at, and stories would be read to me.  All this was intensely satisfying to my ego.  I had known for some time that I was the most important person in the world: now, all the attention that I was receiving was concrete evidence that others thought so too.

            I was particularly pleased to be visited by a Goan doctor.  He must have been the first person that I had met with a colour other than North European pink, and as he bent down to place his stethoscope to my chest, I would happily gaze up at his shiny brown skin.  He never spoke to me, but would mutter to my mother, instructions about medicine, then take up his hat and bag and leave.

            The measles kept me in bed for a week or so, and then, just as I was getting better, I managed to catch chicken pox as well.  I am puzzled that this should have happened, as I did not seem to be in contact with anyone who could have brought the germs in; unless it was the doctor who carried them in his little bag.  This second illness kept me in bed for another week and a half, and it was already three weeks into the new term before I was able to return to school, and join my new class, Standard 2, which was taught by Miss Donevon: who greeted me with her customary kindness.

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            However, I was not to have an uninterrupted first term in Standard 2, for a visit by the school doctor for the termly medical examination, disclosed that I now had a slight cast in my right eye which may have been brought on by my bout of chicken pox.  As a consequence I missed rather a lot of my lessons over the next few weeks, for I spent a great deal of time in  the eye clinic at the medical centre in Pymmes Park, and on several occasions was taken to the out-patients' department of Moorfields Eye Hospital.

            I disliked the eye clinic, I loathed the eye hospital.  In both establishments I spent ages sitting in draughty waiting rooms, with nothing to do.  Of course, Mum was always with me on these visits; but perhaps the surroundings frightened her a little, or, what was  more likely, perhaps she was worried about me, for she was very subdued and would whisper that I should be quiet when I fidgeted in my boredom.  In the eye hospital I remember the waiting room as being long and dark, with just one other young victim sitting awaiting his fate on a chair far away against the opposite wall.  Sometimes a doctor or a nurse would hurry through the room, but they never said anything to Mum or to me; and we would just continue to sit and wait for endless ages, as my legs, dangling from my chair and too short to touch the floor, would begin to ache.

            At last a woman in a white coat, I was sure that she was not a nurse, I knew that nurses wore funny caps, came to me and said: "You are next.  Come this way please."

            We came this way please, to a white walled consulting room, where a white coated doctor examined my eyes for all of two minutes, then sent me back to Edmonton and the eye clinic, and ordained that for the rest of my childhood I was to wear spectacles.

            As I walked, bespectacled with Mum from the clinic a few weeks later, I felt, for the first time in my life, profoundly unhappy.  Through my new lenses, the whole world had become a misty blur: a dull palette of indistinct colours and changing shapes, which I could nearly, but not quite, make out.  Of course, this condition only lasted a short while, probably not more than half an hour, but it was long enough to make me extremely depressed.

            I was convinced that never again would I be able to play with the other boys in the school yard and that I would never be picked for the school football or cricket teams.  I had never given a thought to team membership before, but now that I was sure that it was unattainable, it became intensely desirable. Nobody would ever want to play with a boy who wore glasses.  It was impossible.  In the depths of my despair I forgot that there were many bespectacled boys and girls in my school, and that they all seemed to be perfectly happy.  I knew that from now on I would be known as 'Four-Eyes' to be mocked and reviled by all members of decent school society.

CHAPTER FOUR

Soon I was to forget the humiliation of my bespectacled state in the excitement of our next move, which took place just after Christmas, to a slightly larger flat, above a chemist's shop in Bounces Road.

            It was a sensible move: the school was close at hand, there were fewer stairs to climb, and we were surrounded by shops, which made life much easier for Mum.  However, there were some disadvantages to the place, the chief of which, though we did not notice it at first, was that the flat was very damp.

            For me, the most wonderful thing about our new home was that it was lit by electric light.  I had heard of electric light, but had never experienced it; for all our previous homes had been lit with gas.  So far as I knew, I had never been in a room before where light could be obtained simply by pressing a switch.  Actually I had, for the school and the church, were both lit with electricity, but I had not been conscious of it.  The school rooms were so big, and the ceilings so far away, that I had never considered how they were illuminated.  In any case, only in Winter were the lights turned on before the end of the school day.

            I had thought that to obtain electricity you needed  a battery like the ones that were inside torches.  I had seen Dad's electric torch, but that had a very small beam, it was in no way powerful enough to light a whole room.  I knew of nothing else that was powered by electricity. We had a radio, but I never thought that that was run on electricity. So far as I could tell, it obtained its power from a dirty glass object called an accumulator, which had to be taken to the radio shop every month or so to be re-charged.  Sometimes I accompanied Mum on this errand.  I always hated it.  I knew that the accumulator contained acid, and I was afraid that some of it would spill over and burn my bare legs.

            It was just before we moved to Bounces Road, that I was told that we were to have electric light.  I was very  puzzled. Would  the rooms each contain a number of large torches?  Perhaps the torches would be mounted on a sort of chandelier, their beams pointing to all parts of the room, leaving here and there a few dark patches to add an air of mystery.  I may have been disappointed by the reality, though it was certainly much more convenient.

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            One great sorrow for me was that the move coincided with the loss of  my pedal car.  It was my favourite possession, but, as it could not grow as I grew, I could no longer sit in it comfortably, and my parents decided that it should be given to my cousin, Gerard.

            I hated the idea. I pleaded, I yelled, I cried: but it was no use.  Within a few months I would be too big even to get my legs in the car, let alone sit on the seat.  While I could still just about fit into it, I was to be allowed to ride it, for the last time, to Western Avenue, to present it to its new owner.

            It was an exquisite torture for me. One afternoon, as the street lamps were starting to glow, and the air took on that smoky smell of a late November evening; I sadly pedalled the car, with Mum walking beside me, along the churchyard footpath, and then through the maze of streets to my cousins' house.  An hour or so later, I walked back to face a carless existence.  Of course I still had my tricycle, but now I was wise in the ways of the adult world, and knew that before long, voices would start telling me that I was too big for that also.

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            Today, if I were to visit Bounces Road, though, as I now live in Tunbridge Wells, it is not a journey that I am likely to make, I expect that it would look like a thousand other roads in Greater London: but, to me, in 1933,  it was unique.  It was, and still is, a street running off the main road, with lots of small shops; houses with tiny front gardens, or no gardens at all; and, about halfway along its length, a 19th century church.  At the far end of the road were the rural wastes of the Edmonton Marshes, the nondescript continuation of the Hackney and Tottenham Marshes, and flowing through the Marshes the grubby waters of the River Lea.

            At first, life seemed better for us in Bounces Road.  Perhaps the rent was lower than in Church Street, perhaps Pop was earning more; but, for whatever the reason, we did seem to be  slightly more prosperous.  The fewer stairs meant less work for Mum, though the damp which we were just beginning to discover, may have cancelled out that advantage.  But now I had become a cause of worry to my parents, for I had developed a persistent cough which no medicine seemed to cure, and it was starting to drive Mum almost frantic with worry.

            It had begun in Church Street, and the Goan doctor had prescribed an extra strong cough mixture, and said that I should always wear a thick scarf when I was out in the winter air.  Neither the cough mixture, nor the scarf seemed to have had any effect.  By the time that we moved, the cough had become louder, and I was coughing more often. 

            We consulted a different doctor, and I had a change of cough mixture, and was given a vapour rub on my back each night before I went to bed, which I found rather pleasant.

            The cough continued.  We changed doctors again, and then again, but to no avail.  My parents were now convinced that I was suffering from TB., though the whole pack of doctors poo pooed that idea.  The doctors were right.  After about a year, the cough disappeared of its own accord.

            It was probably psychosomatic: though, as that was not a term that they would have known in those days, I expect that my parents would have been even more worried if a doctor had told them that I had a psychosomatic cough.  I suspect that the truth of the matter was that the cough was bringing me a great deal of attention: and I dearly loved attention.  After a while I must have become bored with the whole thing, and a miraculous cure followed immediately.

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            I had already begun to develop my dislike of cricket: yet I won a rather nice cricket ball in a raffle, and Pop gave me a bat with which to use it.  It was rather a good bat, and probably cost him more than he could reasonably afford, and, as I had no objection to batting, I was pleased to have it.  It was all the other aspects of the game that I disliked.  I was not able to bowl overarm, and I knew that only girls and sissies bowled underarm.  I did not wish to be thought a sissy, so when I played cricket I tried to avoid bowling.

            I also had a horror of fielding.  I was scared that the ball would come my way, and that I would hurt my fingers trying to catch it.  I found myself in that unhappy situation quite often, for flying balls are very common in cricket.  I suppose fumbling fielders are common too, though hardly as common as when I was fielding.  I don't think I ever managed to catch the ball.  On rare occasions it would hit my fingers, stinging them in the process, and I would at once drop it, and suffer the jeering contempt of the other boys.

            Matters were even worse when we played with my own equipment.  Most children usually played with soft tennis balls which did not hurt if they landed in one's fists.  With my good, hard, wooden cricket ball, it was quite a different matter.  It stung like blazes when it made contact, so that picking it up from the ground afterwards was a rather painful business.  Then I had to throw it back to the wicket-keeper or the bowler.  I'd try to throw it overarm, and then one of two things would happen.  Either the ball would fly off at an acute angle and land in totally the wrong direction: or, if I was very careful in my aim, it would travel in the right direction, but would fall so far short of its target, that the other person or I would have to run and pick it up.  If I did that, I would not dare to throw it again, but would simply carry it to its destination, and ignominiously hand it over.

            I carried this inability to bowl overarm into later life, and, when I was called up for the Army, no one wanted to be near me when we practised throwing grenades.  My colleagues thought that I was dangerous.  For that matter, so did I.  I wasn't allowed to throw a grenade underarm, so I had to attempt it overarm, and, although at that age I was a little better at throwing it some distance, I was no better at aiming it in the correct direction.  I didn't actually kill anyone during grenade practice, which I suppose was a minor miracle: but I suspect that some of my instructors may have been close to nervous breakdowns because of me.

            Poor Pop! I was such a disappointment to him.  Whilst cricket wasn't completely his life, it was quite a large part of it.  I do not think he could have known how much I hated it. He would have loved me to become a professional cricketer; an ambition for me that was even less likely to be fulfilled than his later ambition that I should become an engineer.  I just wasn't cut out for cricket.  I never really understood the rules of the game until I was in my middle twenties.

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            School was so much nicer now that in Standard 2, I was under the tutelage of my beloved Miss Donevon, Irish also, but, unlike her colleague, Miss Keough, plump and motherly, and always smiling.  She seemed to like me, and I liked her, and suddenly it seemed that I was not a stupid child, but quite bright for my age, with a good memory, and a fair reading speed.

            Only in Arithmetic did I still have problems.  Later in my school career I caught up with my fellows, but, in Standard 2, as in Standard 1, the numbers could have been expressed completely in the original Arabic for all the understanding that I had of them.  Miss Donevon helped me as much as she could, but progress was painfully slow.

            I remember one occasion when each pupil had to multiply a pair of numbers in two ways; the greater with the lesser, and then the lesser with the greater: the idea being to show that whichever way they were multiplied the result would be the same.  We had to stand by the walls of the class chanting in turn: "Six twos are twelve. Two sixes are twelve," "Five threes are fifteen. Three fives are fifteen," and so on.

            I took it as a mark of especial favour that both the numbers I was given were identical, so that my task was made that much easier: "Four fours are sixteen.  Four fours are sixteen," I chanted.  Today, I suspect that Miss Donevon may have taken the line of least resistance and given me identical numbers because that made things a little easier for her also.

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            Pleasant as school was in Miss Donevon's class, it was still more pleasant to leave school at the end of the day, and it was absolute heaven to finish on Friday afternoon, knowing that one was free for over two days.  Saturday mornings meant shopping on the green with Mum, going with her in and out of crowded shops; being given an ice cream cornet from a stall in summer, or a baked potato from a different stall in winter: and always, winter or summer, spending some time in Woolworth's.

            In those days Woolworth's was still a threepenny and sixpenny store, and it was surprising what a wide range of goods were available for 6p or less.  I remember seeing a camera for sale, though they bent the rules a little to include it, for its full price was more than 6p, but they advertised each bit of it, the lens, the case, the mechanism, as costing sixpence, so that the whole thing came to about 2 shillings.

            Whatever the reason Mum chose to shop in Woolworth's, for Ruby and me, our goal was always the toy counter, or, more specifically, the games section.  Week by week, our indulgent parents would buy sixpenny games for us: Snakes and Ladders one week; Ludo the next; Lotto on the third, and so on.  We loved those games.  Winter evenings we would play them, sometimes three or four in one evening.  We may not have had very many other toys, but we had lots and lots of games: about twenty-four by the time the game buying spree came to an end.

            I don't know why it ended.  Perhaps there were no more new games in Woolworth's, perhaps Mum and Dad had begun to find it a little too expensive.  Perhaps storage space in the flat had run out.  For whatever the reason, a time came when Mum would drag us past the games counter without letting us even stop to look at the merchandise.  I don't think that we minded too much, twenty-four games were really quite enough for the two of us.  I think that we kept them for a couple of years, until having brought them out at a Christmas or a birthday party to be used by our guests, discovered next morning about twenty-one assorted boards, some assorted counters and pieces, and little else.  The collection was ruined for ever.

            Even though there were no more sixpenny games from Woolworth's,  Edmonton Green was a wonderful place to explore: though there was nothing green about it, as Edmonton was no longer the country village celebrated in William Cowper's 'Ballad of John Gilpin'.  The Green consisted of a wide cul-de-sac, blocked at one end by the railway line and a level crossing.  On both sides of the wide road were shops, but, facing the shops on the Eastern side were a row, or rather rows, of stalls.  On Saturdays the whole area was jammed tight with stall holders, shoppers and children.  It was noisy and smelly: the smell being a medley of the odours of decaying vegetables, fish, and meat; and, in the winter, smoke and heat from the hot potato stall. 

            It was impossible to walk in a straight line down the rows of stalls.  Instead you had to weave in and out, and on and off the pavement, and round and about the other shoppers.  Sometimes the throng was so thick, that I would temporarily lose contact with Mum, and experience the agonizing fear of a six year old suddenly alone in the world.  That panic never lasted long.  Suddenly Mum would be with me again: asking where I had been; telling me off for straying; and, for the rest of the time holding my hand with  a much firmer grip.

            Now I remember, there was a little bit of green about the Green: that is, apart from the cabbages, cucumbers and lettuces on the stalls.  At the railway end, there was a small patch of grass, with a low fence surrounding it.  I did not seem to serve any useful purpose; for it was far too small to be even noticed in the midst of the crush of stalls and people: and it was in the way, for several stalls might otherwise have occupied that space.

            Only on Sunday mornings, when the stalls had been cleared away, could one see it clearly; and then one saw that it was a rather sad and shabby little patch of green, and hardly worth a second glance.

            I found some of the permanent shops quite interesting. On the Western side was a men's clothing shop where Mum sometimes bought shirts or pullovers for me or for Pop.  What I liked about that shop was that it did not have any front wall.  You just walked into it from the street without bothering to go through the door, because there wasn't any door.  The shop was a large three sided room with racks and racks of clothing, open to the wind and the rain.  It did not seem to be a suitable shape for a clothing shop, though I thought it much  more inviting than the conventionally doored tailors' shops.  Inside, it was surprisingly dark in the Summer for the proprietors only switched on the lights in the Winter.  It must have been quite difficult for  Mum to select the appropriate shirts and pullovers during the summer months in that ill-lit cavern.

            Near the clothing shop was a grocer's, also open to the front.  It was a mouth watering place, for at the front stood a small electric grill on which hot waffles were heated, and in the process gave off a delicious hot sweet smell.  I had never tasted a waffle, and, despite my entreaties, Mum never bought any.  Perhaps I would have been disappointed by the taste if she had.  Nowadays one never sees them, and it may be that I have got the name wrong, but, in 1933, I was quite sure that I would never be happy until I was allowed to taste them.

            A large fishmonger's stood near the grocer's.  It too was open fronted, perhaps they all were on the Western side.  It always swam with water from its display; fish of every sort laid out on marble slabs.  There were also rabbits and poultry hanging by hooks from rails near the ceiling: the rabbits split open along their ribs, each displaying a long savage red gash bordered by the grey fur of its coat.  Along one side of the shop were tanks containing goldfish for sale, and at the far end, two or three tanks of live eels, for sale, not as pets, but as suppers.  Sometimes as we passed, I would see an assistant who had removed a live eel from its tank cutting it up for sale: the separate parts continuing to wriggle after the operation. Once I saw segments falling from the slab and writhing on the floor, until the assistant picked them up and continued the process of dismemberment. Next to the fishmonger's, on a patch of land, stood an old fashioned gypsy caravan; which belonged to the fishmonger, who was, we thought, of gypsy stock. 

            As we left the Green on our way home, I used to drag Mum towards Lesley's, a large toyshop.  There I would stand for as long as I was allowed, gazing wistfully at the wealth of toys on display.  I knew that unless it was Christmas, or my birthday, there was not much  chance of a purchase from Lesley's, but it was nice to gaze.  However, touched by the wistful way that I gazed at the window, one Thursday Pop bought home one of the toys that I had been admiring.  It was a toy yacht, Bermuda rigged, with a solid wooden hull and lead keel.  I think it cost Pop, 2s/6d, and it was my pride and joy for the rest of the year.  The night it arrived, the bath was filled with cold water, and there I spent a happy and rather wet hour before bedtime.

            Next day, Pop  neatly painted 'Pride of Erin' in small gold letters, on each side of the bow.  The following Sunday we took it to the park and sailed it on the pond.  Within seconds of it entering the water, the name was washed from the sides: but, apart from that, the expedition was a great success.  The little yacht sailed beautifully, and, though I had some anxious moments when the wind dropped and the vessel lay becalmed, out of my reach, in the centre of the pond. Those moments passed very quickly, the wind rose again, and my little ship returned to my outstretched arms.

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            In the evenings, the Green was out of bounds for Ruby and me, as was the street for that matter: but we were allowed to play in he back garden, or in the alleyway behind the garden.  One evening, special circumstances led us to break the rules.  We were playing with some friends in the alley, when someone yelled: "There's a fire on the Green."

            Without waiting for parental permission, which would certainly have been withheld, we rushed out into Bounces Road, and followed the crowd which was streaming towards the Green.  As we approached we could see smoke rising from the public house on the corner, in front of which the crowd was gathering. 

            There was a fire-engine outside the pub, and a number of firemen were standing about, not doing anything in particular with a large hose.  A ladder led to the roof of the single storey extension of the building, and on the roof, a fireman was standing.  He too was doing nothing in particular, though he did hold in his hand a rather splendid looking hatchet.

            Smoke was still coming out of some of the windows, though, now that we had arrived, there didn't seem to be very much of that.  It was all rather dull, and, extremely disappointing.  But we still hoped, and stood and watched for at least fifteen minutes, but, absolutely nothing happened.  The crowd by then had begun to disperse, though new spectators were still arriving.  A fireman emerged from a first floor window and spoke to his companion on the roof.  His companion stuffed his hatchet into his belt, then descended the ladder and joined his colleagues on the pavement.  Soon the hose was folded up and attached to its fitting on the engine.  The fireman from the first floor window, who had vanished inside again, emerged from the public bar door.  All the firemen climbed back onto their vehicle, and the motor was started. 

            We children were the only remaining watchers: but even we realised that there was nothing else to see, so we turned away and walked back to Bounces Road, trying to dream up a suitable excuse that we could give to Mum and Pop for our disobedience.  That problem so worried me, that I didn't even bother to look at Lesley's window; though that toy shop stood just across the road from the pub.

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            I had now reached an age at which I actually enjoyed going to the pictures, and, two or three times a month, on Pop's half day from the shop, we would visit the cinema: either the Alcazar in Upper Edmonton, or the Empire, which was close to the Green.

            The Empire had begun life as a music hall; and it was there, twelve years before, in October, 1922, that Marie Lloyd, the great music hall artiste of the first two decades of the century, had made her last appearance: collapsing in her dressing room after the performance, and dying that night in a hotel room close by.

            At seven, I knew nothing of this, and would not have been particularly interested if I had known, but even in 1933, the Empire, though principally a cinema, had not totally abandoned live entertainment.  In the fairly long interval that took place between the screening of the two films of the week, an orchestra would play, and the audience would join in and sing.  I also have a vague memory that there were sometimes artistes entertaining us from the stage; but they didn't make very much impression on me at that tender age: but I have very clear memories of the orchestra, and, in particular, of its conductor, Charles Manning.  He was a flamboyant figure, and when the orchestra played, he seemed to go berserk, bending and jerking his frame at astonishing speed, particularly when his musicians were playing the Poet and Peasant Overture, which seemed to be one of their favourite pieces.  He had rather a lot of hair, which would stick out from his head, giving him something of the appearance of a large pink golliwog.  Years later, when reading a book about Berlioz, I saw a picture of that composer conducting 'The Trojans': and for a moment I was carried back to my childhood in the Edmonton Empire, for the image in that picture, was just how I remembered Charles Manning.

            I don't know how long he held the post at the Empire, but, in time he accepted  an offer to conduct in South Africa.  We were in the cinema on the night of his final performance.  The orchestra played all our favourite tunes, including Poet and Peasant, then Mr Manning went onto the stage and made a farewell speech.  At least I think that was Mr Manning, though I suppose it could have been the manager of the cinema, or, perhaps, the chairman of Edmonton Urban District Council.  Then lots and lots of flowers were on the stage.  I presume that they were all for Mr Manning, though I don't know how he managed to get them home afterwards.  Next a presentation was made by somebody or other, and various people came onto the stage to shake the conductor's hand or to kiss him.  Then Mr Manning made another speech and told us how sorry he was that was leaving, and that the only thing that stopped him refusing the South African job was the thought that if he did so, he would have to give back all the presents and the flowers.

            Finally, the orchestra played Poet and Peasant for the last time, followed by the National Anthem, after which we left, feeling sadly that the Empire would never be the same again.

            It wasn't, for soon afterwards the members of the orchestra joined the ranks of the unemployed, and we had to make do with an electric organ.  The organist was very competent, but he was not an adequate  substitute for glamorous Charles Manning and his sixteen frenetic musicians.

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            Our relationship with our landlord, the chemist, was at first extremely amicable.  He seemed to take a fancy to Ruby and me, but particularly to Ruby, and sometimes after school she would help in the dispensing room.  I think that she washed out beakers for him.  For this little service, which she delighted in doing, she received each week  presents from the fancy stock: one week, a couple of bars of scented soap; another week, a toothbrush; and another week, perhaps, a bottle of scent.  We both did very well by him on our first Christmas in Bounces Road.  Ruby received a charming little vanity set, and I was called down to his dispensary and presented with a Noah's Ark Book, not out of stock, which, in addition to lots of interesting stories of Noah and the animals, contained attached, to the end pages, a large ark, which stood up when you opened the book, and could be filled, when the roof was raised, with pairs of animals cut out from the previous pages.  I was enchanted by it.

            My parents also seemed to be on very good terms with the chemist: so much so, that in a composition about my family that I wrote for Miss Donevon, I concluded with the words: "And Mum loves the man downstairs." 

            Miss Donevon found that so intriguing, that she had to tell Mum, who was probably rather embarrassed by it.  So far as I know there was no truth in the statement: apart from in the Christian sense that we should love everyone; and I can't imagine what made me write it.  But even love in the Christian sense was somewhat lacking between my parents and the chemist by the time that we came to leave Bounces Road.

            However, there was one member of the chemist's household whom we certainly did love, and that was his dog.  She was a large alsatian bitch, and was rather neglected by her master, and spent much of her time with us.

            On Saturday mornings, when we were still in bed, we would be awakened by the noise of the dog whining outside our door.  Someone would get up and let her in, and she would bound into the room behaving towards us as if we were the true centre of her universe. She was much bigger than me, and I could easily have ridden on her back; but the only time that I attempted that, Mum pulled me off, and gave me a lecture on how foolish I was behaving.  She had read somewhere that Alsatians can turn vicious at times.

            In time, the dog became rather an embarrassment, for it took to following us to church on Sundays, and would whine outside the church door, and once followed a late arriving Irishman inside.  Then it wandered down the centre aisle, sniffing at the legs of the congregation until it found us.

            Occasionally, it also followed us to school; and once it came into my classroom just as the register was being called.  Ruby rather enjoyed these occasions, for, being older than me, she was the one detailed to take the dog home, and see that it didn't stray out again. In that way she missed quite a lot of the first lesson of the day.  I am now of the opinion that she may have found some way of encouraging the dog to follow us to school.

CHAPTER FIVE

That summer, we  trekked again to Canvey Island, the previous year's holiday having proved so successful: but this year the party, in addition to Grandma and Grandad, included Uncle Ted, Aunty Kath, and their three children; the oldest, Terry, being two years younger than me; their youngest, Margaret, still a baby in arms. The accommodation was more luxurious; a real bungalow, not just a hotch potch of assorted lean-tos and sheds like Carrie Lou.  Yet, despite this relative comfort, the holiday was nothing like as successful as the previous one had been, and has left no vivid pleasing memories in my mind.

            The sad fact was, that there were too many people crammed into a rather small bungalow, and we soon began to get on each others nerves.  Grandma thought that it would be a good idea if Ruby, then aged ten, looked after the younger children when the family were together on the beach.  For a day, this arrangement seemed to work quite well.  Then Mum got the idea, which was quite a reasonable one under the circumstances, that her little daughter was being expected to act as a nanny to her younger cousins, and said so, in no uncertain terms.  In the ensuing argument, some adult tempers became rather frayed, and for a while there seemed to be a danger that the Bounces Road Bakers would pack their things and go home. We did not go home, but the rest of the holiday was marred by the distinct coolness between Mum, on the one hand, and Grandma and Aunty Kath, on the other.  I think even we children were quite glad when the week ended and we started the journey home.  Mum vowed that she would never go on holiday with the extended family again.  A promise to herself that she managed to keep to the end of her life.

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            Back at school, at the start of the Autumn term, I was moved to Standard 3, Miss Whitty's class.  I accepted that move with mixed feelings of pleasure and regret.  On the one hand, I would miss Miss Donevon, and I suspected that I would not receive the same favoured treatment from Miss Whitty: but, on the other hand, going up to Miss Whitty's class was a most important step.  It meant far more than moving from one class to another, for once with Miss Whitty, I would be officially no longer an infant, but had become a junior.  Our superior status would be marked by two great changes: firstly, we would now be using pen and ink instead of pencils for writing; and secondly, the writing itself would change.  We would be learning the mysteries of what was then  called 'Real Writing', in which we would join together all the letters of a word, and would attempt artistic curves in our calligraphy.

            I soon settled down in my new class; which was not so new as far as the personnel were concerned, for the entire membership of Standard 2, had moved en masse to Standard 3. The work in Standard 3, was neither difficult nor exciting, and contained little that was new, apart from raffia work, which I found boring and pointless.  One of Miss Whitty's teaching techniques does remain in my memory.  She would make the whole class stand along the back and side walls of the room and question them on what they had learnt.  I could never fathom out the reason for this strange and rather pointless procedure: though it may be that she thought it cut down on the wear and tear of trouser and knicker fabric if we didn't sit down all the time. 

            I greatly resented this practice.  It was not that I resented standing up; in fact I didn't really stand, but leant against the wall, but it was because I usually found myself standing next to a particularly objectionable girl.  I can see her today: about my own size; rather thin; wearing a dress made of some felt like material, and having straggly mousy coloured hair and protruding teeth.  None of this did I mind very much, for I didn't have to look at her if I did not wish to.  What I did object to was her smell, which was unpleasant, and extremely strong.  That may not have been the poor child's fault, of course, but I couldn't bear it: yet no matter where I chose to stand on these occasions, almost always I found her standing next to me.  Perhaps she rather fancied me: but I certainly did not fancy her.

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            The main purpose of Miss Whitty's class, at least to us it seemed the main purpose, was to prepare its members for their first confession and first communion. We had to learn a huge new section of the penny catechism; and week after week, one of the priests from the church across the road would come to the class and question us.  Finally, the great day came; or rather the great days, for there were two of them: first the day when we should go to confession for the first time; and then on the next morning we would receive our first holy  communion.

            I can remember entering that dark confessional box for the first time: kneeling down and peering through the gauze opening at the indistinct profile of the priest on the other side.  At this point my memory fails, for I haven't the foggiest idea what I said to him, though at that age I could not have had very much to confess.

            As I left the church having been shrived, I saw a large black car drive up and a dignified looking man wearing a cassock with a red cummerbund around his waist, emerged.  He patted my head when he saw me, and asked if I was a good Catholic.  I said "Yes", which I suppose was rather presumptuous of me, but at seven I rather thought that I was.

            I seem to have had the impression that this was the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, or at least a bishop of some sort.  I have a feeling that he wore gaiters, though I don't think Catholic prelates do wear gaiters, and, in any case, he would have hardly worn them if he was wearing a cassock.  Perhaps he was an Anglican bishop on a ecumenical visit to the Catholic church; but, whoever he was, he made a very positive impression on me; and I proudly told my parents of the encounter when I got home.

            Like the righteous little Catholic that I was, I was quite sure that the following day would be one of the most important days of my life.  I got up earlier than usual, and was washed thoroughly by my mother. That is to say that I was washed on all the parts that showed.  I did not have a bath.  Then, without any breakfast, Mum and I made our way to church.

            The front rows were filled with my classmates, all dressed, as I was, in Sunday best.  Leaving Mum in a seat at the rear, I joined them and shortly afterwards Mass began. It was little different from the mass that was celebrated on any other day; though there were far more altar servers than was usual; and whole battlements of candles lit up the sanctuary.

            After the gospel had been read, in Latin, of course, so that none of the new communicants could understand it, Father McGrath ascended the pulpit and preached directly to myself and the other members of Standard 3.  I don't remember anything of that sermon, and I don't suppose that he did much more than impress on us the importance of regular confession and of regularly receiving the Eucharist.  But I was awe-struck by the solemnity of it all, and my awe increased as the mass continued to the moment when we children were kneeling at the altar rails, and received the sacred host for the first time. Then I was back in my place, on my knees, and praying as fervently as I could, whilst the host dissolved in my mouth.

            When Mass was over I stood outside the church with Mum for a few minutes, then she kissed me goodbye, and with the other children, I trotted into the church hall for the communion breakfast: cold ham and pickles, with lots of bread and sweet tea, all laid out on long trestle tables in the centre of the draughty hall.

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            At this point in my childhood, I had become very conscious of the church, and of the part that it played in our lives and in the school.  It would have been surprising if I had not been conscious of the church, for we saw a great deal of the priests in and around the school.  Apart from the parish priest, Canon Bickford, St. Edmund's Church always had  two or three assistant priests: no one called them 'curates' at St. Edmund's.  Apart from Father McGrath, there was Father Keenen and  Father Cummings, who was also known as Dr. Cummings, and had the letters 'D.D.' placed after his name on the confessional.  I used to wonder where his surgery was; and was quite disappointed when someone told me that he was not that sort of doctor.  Apart from his doctorate, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Father Cummings: but I certainly thought that Father Keenen was a most unusual priest.

            He was a large, hearty, man; and would sometimes come over to the school to talk to Standard 3, shortly before he went off to play a round of golf.  On those occasions he would be wearing plus-fours, and would carry his golf clubs in their bag slung over his shoulder.  He was not in the least like the other priests; very English, and with something of the appearance of a sporty, rural Church of England vicar; in marked contrast to the Irishness of the other curates.  I think that I was rather shocked by the man.  At seven I did not approve of golfing priests.  I must have been a puritanical little horror.

            The whole family attended mass together every Sunday; though we rarely went to Benediction, the evening service.  We usually went to the 12 o'clock mass, the lazy people's service;  always packed out, because, as I have already written, there was no 1 p.m. mass to follow it.  I enjoyed he feel of the church when it was packed to overflowing.  It was never empty at any service, but at the 12 o'clock you were lucky to get a seat if you arrived any later than five minutes to twelve.  The porch was usually crowded with latecomers, despite the fact that the priest would often make sarcastic remarks about them at the start of the service.

            Sometimes during the mass there would be a sudden harsh scream, which would always send a tingle down my spine.  It would come from one of the patients from the hospital for epileptics, who had stiffened into a fit.  Two or three of the men near him, would catch him before he had time to fall, and would carry him out.  I was always rather frightened by these interruptions, but Mum would tell me afterwards that I should say a prayer for those poor men in the hospital.

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            One of the most important events of the school year, was the annual May procession.  Ours was a fairly simple affair compared with the elaborate processions through the streets of the town, that I could just faintly remember from my days in Harringay, but, all the same, we all looked forward to it.

            A May Queen would be chosen from the girls of the top class, not by the teachers or the clergy, but democratically by the votes of her classmates, and, assisted by two pages, who carried her train, she would, during the evening service nearest to May 1st, crown with a garland of leaves and flowers, the statue of the Virgin Mary that stood near the high altar.

            During my year in Standard 3, I was picked to be one of he page boys, not by vote, but by the decision of the headteacher, much to the delight of my parents. In the hearing of my friends I expressed great disgust at my being chosen, for the page boys wore velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy suits, which smelt very musty, and must have been handed down from the first May procession after the church was built near the start of the century; but the truth was, that I was delighted by the attention that I was going to receive.

            To Mum's total disgust, the other page boy was my cousin, Gussy O'Sullivan; but she consoled herself with the belief that Miss Bell had only chosen Gussy because she knew that Aunty Monnie would make a colossal fuss if I was chosen and her son was not.  That may have been the case, but I have a feeling that Miss Bell was probably more afraid of Mum than of Aunty Monnie, and may well have chosen me to prevent Mum from complaining that Gussie had been chosen.

            Whatever the reason for my presence; I enjoyed the whole business enormously.  In particular, it was pleasant to be removed from school during a particularly tedious lesson, and spend the rest of the morning in the cool quiet of the church, going through a rehearsal of the ceremony.  Our part in the proceedings was simplicity itself.  All we had to do was walk behind the Queen carrying her train: though we had to learn the technique of walking at just the correct distance from the Queen so that the train did not trail in the the dust; but that did not tax our minds to any great extent. 

            Taking part in this ceremony would have been a dreadfully prosaic affair, if one had accepted that this was just a little procession in a small Catholic church in a working-class suburb, and that I was just a small  boy holding a slightly tatty train up for a girl who, when she left school next year, would probably become a trainee machinist at Peggy Page's dress factory: but those were facts that I refused to accept.  My imagination ran wild.  For me, this was the wedding of some great medieval princess; and I was not a simple page boy, but a gallant knight who would protect her from all harm, and probably, at the appropriate point, sweep the groom aside, and marry her myself.

            When it came to the moments before the actual procession on the Sunday evening, my imagination really did run riot; and the fact that I had by then put on the fancy velvet suit and a shirt with a lace collar, and that I wore white gloves to carry the train, all added to the magic; and it was with great excitement that, dressed as a suburban Eric, I walked to the church with Ruby and my parents.

            Yet, once the actual ceremony had begun, all the romantic dreams evaporated.  Though I did have some feeling   of awe by all that was happening: nothing much really happened.  We walked: the May Queen, her pages, the clergy, the altar servers, the members of the various parish guilds, and finally the congregation, in procession around the church, with the crowned statue of Our Lady carried at the head of the procession.  Then we walked through the porch and out of the door, for a few yards along the street, round the corner and in by another door; singing hymns all the while, one of which was almost     certainly 'Faith of our Fathers': thus making a small defiant  gesture proclaiming  our catholicism to the totally indifferent non-Catholic population of Edmonton.

            Later, the May Queen, Gussie and I, posed for a photograph.  It does not show a great queen, but instead a rather plain girl wearing a veil and a long white dress, with an overdecorated be-flowered train held by two shy little boys in velvet suits.

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            An important event of the school year was the annual outing, a day by the sea, usually at Shoeburyness, a suburb of Southend on Sea.  For some of my classmates, whose parents were unemployed, this was probably the only visit to the sea that they would get that year, and for a few of them even that brief day's outing was denied, for their parents could not afford the single shilling that the trip cost.  For those, whose parents could afford the cost, the money was collected in class at a penny a time, on the Mondays of the twelve weeks that preceded the event.

            On the great day, we would pile into two or three coaches that had been hired from the Modern Transport Company, and sing and shout for all of the forty or so miles to our destination; arriving there at about 11 a.m.  For the rest of the day we were more or less left to fend for ourselves: the staff exercising almost no supervision, and relying on luck, or the grace of God, to ensure that no one came to any harm.  So far as I know, that faith, or that indifference, was justified, for no one got lost or drowned.

            I can only remember with any clarity, just one of these expeditions, which must have been during the year that I was in Standard 3, for I remember that we walked along Bounces Road to pick up the coach.  I had been given 1s3d spending money, and I spent the lot on boat trips at 3d a time, an activity that took up most of the day.  I began with two friends as the only passengers in a small sailing boat.  That was a very pleasant jaunt, for we became very friendly with the boatman, who let us take turns at holding the tiller; and for our threepences, gave us about 45 minutes on the water.  I would have gladly have spent 6d with this kindly sailor, for I fancied myself then as an embryo pirate captain: but after that first 45 minutes at sea, I wanted to go to the lavatory when we landed; and when I returned to the jetty, the friendly sailor and his boat had left with a full load of passengers. 

            With another friend, I transferred my allegiance to a petrol launch, and spent the next four trips trying to get friendly with its crew.  By the time my money ran out, I had reached the position of being allowed to sit with them on the engine hatch, but then I had to return to dry land and join the class for our meal.  I was disappointed, but, on reflection, I rather doubt that they would have let me steer their craft, for it was carrying about forty passengers on each trip.

            The one shilling that we had paid for the day included the price of the meal, which we ate at trestle tables set up outside a beach cafe.  It had much in common with that First Communion breakfast and consisted of cold ham, bread, spring onions and pickles, with cake to follow and, instead of tea, fizzy lemonade to drink.  That pleased most of my friends, but it didn't please me, for I doted on tea.  Not that I disliked lemonade.  I was quite pleased to drink it, but I wanted a cup of tea as well.

            The meal was eaten quite late in the afternoon, and as soon as it was finished, at about four thirty p.m., we boarded our coaches and sang, quarrelled, and ultimately, slept, our way back to Edmonton.

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            Though our Bounces Road home was certainly better than the flat in Church Street, it was by no means perfect.  Our main complaint; or rather my parents' complaint; Ruby and I didn't give a fig; was that it was a very damp flat.  There were times when the main bedroom was vacated and our parents had to share our bedroom, because water was seeping through the roof.

            In addition, after the first few months of amicable friendship, Mum and Dad were not quite so happy about our landlord.  He was a bachelor, and would sometimes have lady friends up to his bedroom.  We children did not know why, but Mum disproved of this, and being a very outspoken person made her disapproval quite clear to the landlord.  In addition, his sister kept house for him, and Mum thought that the girl was badly treated by her brother, and told him that too.

            I think that he must have been rather relieved when we accepted an offer from the Middlesex County Council of a house on one of the new out-county estates which they were building in Dagenham in Essex.  We were to move at the end of the summer term.

            I suspect that Ruby was the only person who was sorry that we were leaving: though not because of the flat in Bounces Road, but at the thought of leaving her dancing school. She had been a pupil at Madam Margaret's dancing school for the past two terms.  Madam Margaret taught modern and tap dancing in a house on the Green.  This was Ruby's second dancing school.  At the first, Madam Edward's, she had been learning ballet steps, which though graceful, were not to her taste: so she had persuaded Mum to transfer her to Madam Margaret's establishment where she would learn what she thought of as real modern dancing.

            Mum was not convinced that Madam Margaret's was better, but as Ruby was so insistent, she let her have her way.  At Madam Margaret's, she learnt to stand in line with a lot of other little girls and then to shake her arms rhythmically, but even then I thought, monotonously, as they tapped away with their toes. It was certainly not as graceful nor as attractive as the dancing that she had been learning at the other place, but the music was modern, and that made Ruby happy.

            The pupils of the little dancing school, became, at times, a concert party, with some of the older children becoming solo artistes, dancing and singing in front of the chorus.  Ruby was always in the chorus.  The performances were presented in halls above, or beside, large pubs, and the audiences, apart from the parents of the performers, consisted largely of members of a Freemason, or, perhaps, Ancient Order of Buffaloes, lodge.  Madam Margaret's husband was a member of the lodge, and it appeared from the content of the speeches that were invariably made at the end of each performance, usually by a red-faced gentleman wearing some sort of regalia, that Madam Margaret's spouse  was getting browny points for providing free entertainment to his fellow lodge members. The dancing school was clearly a cheap way of rounding off a lodge meeting. 

            Mum and Pop had just come to that conclusion when the time came for us to move, so Madam Margaret never had to endure a verbal battering from Mum.  Ruby, for her part, was quite happy to dance in seedy smoke-filled halls, and wept bitterly after her last performance. 

CHAPTER SIX

In Dagenham, we moved into our first real house.  It was wonderful to have a two whole floors to ourselves, with no other family sharing any part of them: and, as if that wasn't glory enough, as the house was semi-detached we had three whole external walls of our own.  There was a nice-sized front garden, and a nice-sized back garden in which we could grow our own flowers and vegetables.  For the first time I was to have a room all to myself, a pleasant little box, with one small window set rather high up  in the wall.  I could just get my chin to the window, so when I looked out, I couldn't see very much, chiefly the tops of some trees and a lot of sky, but I didn't mind.  It was my own room: I didn't have to share it with Ruby, and in it I could do whatever I wished.  In fact, what I chiefly did there, was sleep.

            For a while, there was a kind of magic about that council house, not only for us children, but also for our parents.  I think at first we did little but revel in the fact that we had so many rooms, five in all, all to ourselves.  It was such a happy time.  We were particularly happy at having a bath room.  On Saturday nights, after a hot bath, I would climb into bed,  between clean, freshly washed, starched, white sheets, which had a wonderful crisp feeling about them.  When I put the light out, I could still see through the small gap at the bottom of the door, that the light was still switched  on in my sister's room.  She was probably reading in bed.  From downstairs I could faintly hear the radio; and very soon Mum would come up stairs, tuck me in, then kiss me good night.  It was warm, it was safe, it was our home, it was wonderful.  Soon I would drift off into contented sleep.

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            Dagenham appeared to consist almost entirely of council housing estates.  Both the London County Council and the Middlesex County Council, with limited building space in their own geographical areas had purchased land  in Dagenham, in Essex, and built vast, almost identical estates.  That worthy building programme was to generate new problems some years later, when the children of the tenants, born in  Dagenham, wanted to leave their nests and rent houses of their own. The were not eligible to rent LCC or MCC houses, as they were not residents of Middlesex or London, so they had to turn to the Essex County Council and the Dagenham Urban District Council for housing, which simply wasn't available in the quantities required.  All that was in the future, though, I suppose if we had remained in Dagenham, in time Ruby and I would have become part of that problem. 

            Most of the houses were very similar, but the monotony was relieved by lots of greenery, little patches of grass and bushes at corners, in front of houses, and at the end of roads, which made it all look very attractive to us  after Bounces Road.  We had one such plot beside our own front door; for ours was a corner house, and marking the end of the road was a little triangular green.  At times we played on it, though by doing so we were breaking municipal by-laws, but it seemed too good an area to waste on birds and insects.

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            When we arrived in Dagenham, the schools were on holiday, though, on our second day, we went with Mum to look for the Catholic school.  With the help of passers by, we eventually found it.  It was a nice little school, a bungalow building about five years old, next to the Catholic church.  It was even smaller than St. Edmund's School, and was staffed entirely by lady teachers, including two nuns, one of whom was the headmistress.  The only adult males connected with the establishment were the caretaker and the parish priest, who used to take the older boys for cricket in the summer months. He looked rather odd when he batted in his black cassock, particularly if a wind was blowing, when the skirts of the cassock would sometimes rise up and get in the way of his bat.  He was very popular with all the boys, and not just those who liked cricket.

            I liked the school much more than St. Edmund's: though to start with I was placed in a class of children lower than my chronological age: but that was only a temporary misplacement, for I moved up at the end of the term.

            My new class, in which I stayed for the whole of our time in Dagenham, was dominated by a boy who seemed to be twice as large as the rest of us.  He was of low intelligence, and had been kept down when his age-cohort had moved up.  This had happened to him twice, so he was by this time two years behind his age group.  Nevertheless, despite his lack of intelligence, his size ensured that he became our natural leader. 

            Someone, I hardly think that it could have been our dim leader, had devised a very attractive form of playground gang warfare, which took place every morning and afternoon break.  All the boys in the class, apart from our leader, would link up in pairs, a process known as 'bussing up'.  The leader would stand behind the first pair, holding onto their backs to steer them.  The rest of us would be lined up in about fifteen pairs behind him.  On the other side of the playground, the slightly smaller children of the class below us would also be bussed up in pairs.  Then, when both armies were formed into their columns, we would take preliminary canters round the playground, then each class would turn, and charge into the other, meeting with great noise in a glorious mix up.

            The rule was that you must remain within your pair; but we would butt the enemy with our heads, or push at them with our shoulders, or knees.  After a few minutes of the melee, our leader would pull his troops out, and we would hare off to the other side of the playground; then wheel back and charge the enemy once again.  We always got the better of these encounters, though that was certainly not due to the tactical skill of our beloved leader, but rather to the fact that we were older and slightly bigger than our opponents.

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            Soon after we joined the school, we learnt that a violin teacher was employed for one day each week to teach children whose parents were willing to pay 3d a lesson.  This was the great opportunity that Mum had longed for.  She had always wanted us to carry on from where she had left off, and, perhaps, become great violinists.  Money was tight, but this opportunity was not to be wasted.  Ruby and I were enrolled in the violin class.  Ruby was given Mum's old violin, and for me, a few pounds were found, and a new violin bought.  Now, once a week, with about 20 other children, we would congregate in the school hall, and, standing in a semicircle facing the stage, would spend half an hour, whilst our friends played outside in the sun, scraping our bows across the strings.  Oh how slow our progress was at first!  What strange sounds were produced, as we learnt to hold the bow and the violin, and to draw the bow across the strings.

            One reason for the discord that our little ensemble produced may have been because only about half of us had real violins.  The other children, whose parents either could not afford the instruments, or were waiting to see how their offspring progressed before purchasing them, had to make do with strange substitute instruments provided by the violin teacher. I used to wonder if they were her own invention, run up, perhaps by her husband in his shed.  These instruments had violin strings, necks and fingerboards, but there the resemblance to real violins ended. In place of the curved body of the traditional violin, their bodies were rectangular boxes.  They looked and sounded, extremely odd.

            However, after a few weeks, even the users of those ersatz violins began to make some progress, and soon we were playing, reasonably competently, simple nursery rhymes.

            Mum gave us  a great deal of encouragement; or perhaps coercion would be a better term; for every night she made us practice for half an hour before Pop returned from work.  For some reason our teacher insisted that each tune be learnt in two ways: first in the normal way, from left to right; and then backwards from right to left.  I have never understood why she considered this necessary; unless it was that she hoped that, as adults, some of us might find employment as members of Arab orchestras.  If you have not heard 'Ba Ba Blacksheep' played slowly backwards as 'Peehskcalb Ab Ab', you have not plumbed the furthest depths of musical experience.

            After about six months of our lessons, we were told that the entire group was to take part in the school concert, a grand affair, which, apart from our recital,  would include poetry recitation, song, and even a little dance accompanied by percussion band.  For this performance the orchestra was divided into two groups, advanced, and not so advanced, and Ruby and I were placed in the not so advanced group.  We stood with the other N.S.A. violinists behind the advanced group, and with them played two pieces, 'Old Black Joe', and an arrangement of 'The Meeting of the Waters'.  Then we removed our violins from our chins and listened as our six advanced colleagues played 'The Londonderry Air'. There was no disgrace in being in the N.S.A. group.  It was just that the advanced group had begun their lessons a term earlier.  No doubt by next term we would have learnt 'The Londonderry Air', though, of course, by then the advanced group would be on to something more difficult.

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            As I was younger, I was not involved in as much public activity as Ruby, who, in addition to playing the violin with the N.S.A.group, also had a small part  in the Christmas Nativity play.  Perhaps her earlier experience in the Harringay Christmas Pantomime stood her in good stead.  Certainly the two performances, though six years apart in time, were strangely similar, even if more of her was to be seen in Harringay, for there she was allowed to stand completely on the stage, which was not the case in Dagenham, where, only her head and the top part of her body was seen as, with three other angels, she peered round the curtain onto the tiny, but already crowded stage, which was filled with the holy family, the Ox and the Ass and the three kings.  However, despite only being partially seen on stage, she was allowed to speak, as, in unison with the other three she chanted breathlessly: "Oh look at the tiny baby in the Manger." After which, she and her companions were gone.

            Though Pop and Mum nudged me to look at my sister when she came on the stage, I nearly missed her performance, for I had dropped my programme just before she appeared, and had bent down to pick it up.

            That Christmas in our Dagenham council house, was very much a tribal gathering, for numerous Bakers had been invited to join us for the celebrations in our new home.  Somehow in that three bedroomed house, we managed to fit Grandad, Grandma, Aunt Queenie, Uncle Dennis, Uncle Alf, and his wife Aunty Lil, with their little son, Peter.

            My uncles Alf and Dennis shared my bed, and I slept that night with Mum and Pop.  I have no idea where everyone else slept.  On Christmas  morning, when Mum took them tea in bed, she had a dreadful fright, for she thought that one of them had hanged himself, an impression that had been created by Uncle Alf hanging his trousers from the lampshade.

            Having so many people in the house that Christmas may have been a mistake.  At least Ruby and I thought so, for it was impossible for us to enjoy playing with our toys on Christmas Day, with so many adults to trip over.  Most of the space in the living room was taken up by Pop and his brothers who were playing cards.  However, the general atmosphere was pleasant enough, and we were quite sorry when on Boxing Day, they all left.

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            Though coming to Dagenham, and having a house to ourselves for the first time, had begun so splendidly: in the following year, 1936,  our lives began to darken.

             Our unhappy time began with an event that had nothing to do with us personally, for in January, the old King, George V, whose Silver Jubilee had only just been celebrated, died.  Despite the adulation of the Royalists, in this century, kings in Britain have had little real effect on the lives and fortunes of their subjects, and for all the good that they can do, there might just as well be a monkey seated on the throne: yet, whenever a monarch dies, a gloom seems to settle upon the nation.

            I remember one grey morning, when walking to school, and seeing a flag flying at half mast from the church I knew that the king was dead. Everyone was particularly quiet in school that day.  The headmistress came into our classroom before break, and told us what a good king, George V had been, and how the nation felt the loss.  At then end of the morning, there were special prayers said for the repose of his soul.  Later, his funeral service was relayed on the radio, and Mum and Pop insisted on listening to it; which meant that Ruby and I had to listen to it also, though I certainly had not wished to do so.

            Then began our own personal troubles: the first of which were financial.  Perhaps in coming to Dagenham, our parents had underestimated the expenses we would face.  I imagine that the rent for a council house was considerably greater than that for a small damp flat in Edmonton.  Also Dagenham was much further from Pop's work, which meant that he had to pay higher fares and had to leave much earlier each morning.

            For these reasons we were forced to economise, and the first thing to reduce was the lighting bill.  Cheap oil table lamps were purchased, and, to our disgust, our evenings were now to be spent in oil-lit gloaming.  Mum and Dad were depressed by the state of the family finances, and, of course, we children became depressed also.  For all of us, that worry meant that the joy of having our own house in Dagenham had now completely vanished.

            Then, to add to our troubles, Mum became ill.  Daily she lost weight, and, at first, the doctor didn't seem to know what was wrong with her.  He thought the loss of weight might be due to financial worry and told her not to worry: but people do not stop worrying simply because doctors say that it is bad for them.  Mum continued to lose weight.

            Ruby and I took to helping in the house.  We would wash the dishes every night after the evening meal; though we never seemed to make a very good job of it, and poor Pop often had to do them all over again.  Mum began taking a concoction called Radio Malt to build up her strength, and Ruby and I pooled our pocket money to buy her lemons.  We meant well, though much later we discovered that, if anything, lemons had the effect of making her become even thinner.

            Nothing seemed to make much difference, and, finally, the doctor decided that she would have to go into hospital.  Mum resisted that move for as long as she could, for she felt that if she went to hospital it would be the end of our Dagenham home; and in that, she was correct.

            Even at the last moment, when she knew that she would have to go to hospital, she continued with plans for our future in Dagenham, as if those plans  could stave off the evil day.  We children were to play in a violin concert with a combined school children's orchestra in Ilford Town Hall, and she made plans for what we were to wear on that occasion.  In addition, the parish priest had suggested that I become an altar server, and discussions were held about the purchase of a cassock for me: though, where the money for that was to come from in our straightened circumstances, was never made clear.

            But we were never to take part in the concert, and I was not to become an altar server in Dagenham, for the doctor finally insisted that Mum must go to hospital, and she was admitted into the King George V Hospital in Ilford.

            As Mum had feared it was decided, almost certainly by Grandma, that Pop could not possibly keep the Dagenham house going by himself: so, on the day that Mum went into hospital; all our furniture was put into storage, and Pop, Ruby and I, moved back to Edmonton, to share the tiny house in Denton Road with Grandad, Grandma, Aunty Queenie, and Uncle Dennis.  Naturally, Ruby and I were not consulted about the move: but looking back, I am convinced that neither my grandparents nor Pop thought that Mum was going to live, and had she then died there would have been no way that Pop, without help, could have held down his job, looked after his two children, and kept the home going in Dagenham.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I cannot pretend that I enjoyed living with my grandparents.  Naturally I was desperately worried about Mum, for it was clear, even to me, that she was extremely ill, and Grandma, though she did her best, was no substitute for Mum: but even had that not been the case; I missed the house, the garden, the school, and all that I had enjoyed in  Dagenham.  I hated returning from our nice new council house to that tiny house in Denton Road, into which, when  we had settled in, were crammed four adults, one adolescent, and two children. Perhaps, most of all, I objected strongly to the school to which I was sent.

            Silver Street Boys' Elementary School, which following the 1944 Education Act suffered a metamorphosis into The Huxley Secondary School, was, and as far as I know still is,  a gloomy brick building of three storeys.  It stood in the centre of an asphalt playground, on which also stood a wooden woodwork centre.  On each floor the classrooms were grouped round a central hall, an arrangement that meant that when a hall was in use, for PE., or a music lesson, the pupils in all the adjoining classrooms were distracted by the noise.

            My classroom was on the first floor, where the central hall contained a platform, the design of which made it unsuitable for any performance of a play or similar entertainment, in that it was surrounded by railings on three sides. Perhaps the intention had been to provide a physical barrier which would symbolise the exalted status of those who occupied the platform, compared with the lesser mortals who stood below them on the floor of the hall.

            I suppose Grandad and Grandma hoped that I would like the school.  Pop had been a pupil there soon after it had been opened; leaving there at thirteen to enter the world of work.  He had been bright enough to pass the school leaving test.  Had he failed that test, the enlightened education authorities of 1913, would have insisted that he stayed at school until he was fourteen.  In fact I loathed the place; but I had to go there.  The Catholic School, St. Edmund's, which I had attended before moving to Dagenham, was in Lower Edmonton, and was thought to be  too far away.  Ruby was found a place in a girls' school nearby.

            I settled in, reluctantly.  It was my first experience of single sex education, and I found it  strange and very drab without the presence of girls to add colour to the place, I also found it rather frightening at first.  Yet in spite of my fears, I seemed to do rather well there.  After a short while I became a reading monitor.  This office was awarded to the six best readers in the class; and, during certain periods we would each take six or seven of our less-able classmates and attempt to teach them to read. I think the teacher used to use those periods to catch up with his marking.  With forty-eight pupils he had a lot to get through.

            Had I known it, I was taking part in a historical relic, for the monitorial system had been used in the early part of the 19th century.  Silver Street Standard 9, must have been one of the last places in which it was practised. Modern educationalists tend to frown on that system, yet I am convinced that it did me a lot of good, particularly to my sense of personal esteem: though whether it did much for the unfortunate seven placed in my care, is another matter.

            I do not seem to have made many friends in the comparatively short period that I was a pupil in Silver Street School, and even if I did, their names and personalities have faded completely from my memory. As a consequence, I did not much enjoy playtime, during which I stood alone, cold, and bored, waiting for the bell to be rung so that we could return to the warmth of the classroom.  However, for a change, I quite enjoyed the games lessons, chiefly because I was introduced to a new game, Handball, which I liked very much, though I was not particularly good at it.  It had much in common with soccer, the same number of players for a start, but unlike soccer, where the goal-keeper was the only person permitted to handle the ball, and all the other players could only kick or head it, in handball, the goal-keeper is the only person allowed to kick the ball.  I believe that the game is very popular in Holland, and that even in England, there is a league of teams; but I have never personally encountered it anywhere else, apart from Silver Street School

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            As we no longer attended a Catholic School, religion did not play a very important part in our lives whilst we lived in Denton Road.  Grandad was a protestant, and Grandma, only nominally a Catholic.  If St. Edmund's School was too far away for us to attend: so by the same token was St. Edmund's Church, standing as it did across the road from the school.  Some Sundays, we did not get to mass; though, occasionally Aunty Queenie took us, but not to St. Edmund's Church, but to St. Francis de Sales Church which stood opposite the Tottenham Hotspur Football Ground.  Perhaps Pop came with us, but I do not remember that he did.  I rather think that on many Sundays he used the time to visit Mum in hospital.

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            One cross that I had to bear when we lived in Dentin Road, was that I was expected to escort my young cousin, Terry, to school. Terry was two years my junior, but, as he had been a pupil at the school for some considerable time, he knew the way much better than I did. Despite this, it was decreed that I should be his guide and protector on his daily journey. That meant that each morning I had to leave for school about a quarter of an hour earlier than would otherwise have been necessary, hurry round to his house, and there wait whilst he finished his breakfast, put on his coat and school cap, and kissed his mother goodbye. Then we were out in the street, and moving as fast as we could to the school, for by then we were usually rather late; and at Silver Street School, lateness was punishable.

            Poor Terry.  In those days I disliked him intensely, though he did little to merit my dislike.  It was just that I hated being, in an almost literal sense, his pedagogue, though, unlike the Greek slaves of old, I wasn't actually expected to carry his books to school.

            In the afternoon, I had to wait at the entrance to the Infant Department for my cousin to emerge, and then we'd be off for home again.  Oddly enough, I quite liked having him with me on the return journey.  If the sun was shining, it was pleasant to dawdle along Silver Street, past Klingers Limited's mock Gothic factory, and the home for epileptics.  If we had any money, we would call at the corner sweet shop; and spend our pennies and spoil our tea by buying lollipops which always left a sticky mess on our hands, and on our clothing.

            A novelty in those days was white chocolate.  On one occasion when I had been given some extra pocket money by a benevolent uncle; I bought, in addition to a green lollipop, a bar of white chocolate and gulped them both down in considerable haste as I knew that I should finish them before I reached home.  Alas, the hot sun, the mixture of confectionary, and the glass of lemonade which Grandad kindly gave me soon after I entered the house, all resulted in my being sick on the floor of the kitchen.  I don't think that I was allowed any tea after that, and I spent the rest of the evening in some distress.

            The exams which we sat at the end of my first term at Silver Street, produced a singular result for me. For the first, and the only time in my life, I was top of the class. If I was surprised, Grandma was flabbergasted. She couldn't understand it at all.  I believe that she held a rather low opinion of my mental capacity, and, in any case, I do not think that I was her favourite grandson. She was not given much to praising me or Ruby, though on one occasion she did say that she thought that my singing voice might be quite good if it was trained.  Though even that remark carried the implication that the voice was not very good as it was, but I think that it was kindly meant.

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            Living in Denton Road meant that I was expected to look after myself rather more than in the past.  That was probably rather good for me.  In particular I was told to polish my shoes each day.  In Dagenham, Mum had always polished them for me: so it was a new, and not a very pleasant experience.  On one occasion I was sitting on the back step, polishing my shoes in a rather perfunctory fashion, when Grandad pushed past me on his way to the outside lavatory. 

            He looked down at me, then said: "You should use a bit more elbow grease if you're going to get them clean."

            I was puzzled, and when he emerged from the lavatory a few minutes later and asked me why I had stopped polishing my shoes, I told him that I was looking for the elbow grease, but it didn't seem to be in the shoe-cleaning box.

            I didn't know why he laughed, but he would not tell me what was funny: and that evening he got a lot of fun repeating the incident to Pop, Grandma, Aunty Queenie and Uncle Dennis.  It took me quite some time to forgive him for that.

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            In those days, my favourite reading matter was contained in two weekly magazines, 'The Gem' and 'The Magnet', in which each edition carried one long complete story written by the same author, Frank Richards, about a fictitious public school.  I think in The Gem it was St. Jim's, and in The Magnet, Greyfriars.

            I loved those stories.  I thought that the code of honour practised by Frank Richards' boy heroes was an ideal that I should try to follow.  It wasn't that I particularly wanted to attend such a school.  In any case, the obsession with cricket and rugby that seemed to pervade those establishments would have quickly put me off: it was just that the boys seemed to be such noble creatures.  I was rather preoccupied with goodness just then.  I would make resolutions not to commit actions which I thought to be evil, but I would, almost invariably, break them: and then would follow a black feeling of guilt. I must have been a rather insufferable little prig: and, come to think of it, so must have been my public school heroes had they come to life from the page; and appalling snobs into the bargain: their real life public school contemporaries would certainly have thought of me as a ridiculous little cockney yob. Happily at ten I had no experience of snobbery or social class, and I did not know that I spoke with a cockney accent.

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            Though Denton Road was part of Edmonton, it was a very different Edmonton from that of my earlier childhood. It was in Upper Edmonton, Postal District N18: Bounces Road had been in Lower Edmonton, Postal District N9.  In a totally indefinable sense, Upper Edmonton seemed more gracious than Lower Edmonton: perhaps simply this was simply due to its possession of the adjective 'Upper'.  But Upper Edmonton did have one superior asset in the shape of the green glory of Pymmes Park which had formerly been the estate of a nobleman, His mansion still stood in the centre of the park, but had become the medical centre where I had received my first pair of spectacles.

            For me, the main attraction of the park was its boating lake.  I would go there whenever I had a penny to spend, and use it to  hire one of the little paddle boats for a quarter of an hour. On rare occasions when I had 3^d to spend, I would take one of the round the lake trips, crammed with about twenty other people into a motor boat, which was pleasant and petrol smelly, and took rather longer than the fifteen minutes of the penny paddle boat  ride. Yet, in some ways the motor boat trip was not such fun, for  boys were never allowed to take the helm.  Much better was to sit with a particular friend, turning the handles of a paddle boat for dear life, racing other boats, or, if we thought that the attendant wasn't looking, ramming or being rammed, by other boats as we played at being pirates.  Sometimes we would suffer a sudden attack of deafness, when, at the end of the fifteen minutes, the attendant, using his megaphone, would shout that our time was up.  However, we did not attempt that trick to often, for to do so could have lead to our being banned permanently from hiring the boats.

            There were other ways of parting with pennies in the park: in particular, refreshments in the tea room: and once, when I was with Ruby, a visit to the Old English Garden, which was in a walled enclosure beside the clinic, and contained a really beautiful display of flowers.  In retrospect it seems a rather unusual way for a boy of ten to spend a penny.  Ruby must have been particularly persuasive on that day.

            The park was at the end of Denton Road, and sometimes we would hurry there straight after tea and remain there until dusk.  I always felt a little excited, and also a little afraid, as that time approached,  and the impending closure of the park would be indicated by the ringing of bells.  We would then hare as quickly as we could to the gates for fear that we would be locked in. Yet at the back of my mind was always the unspoken hope that we would be locked in, and have the excitement of trying to climb over the railings, and, perhaps, not being able to do so, having to spend the night in the mysterious darkening park.

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            All this while, Mum was very ill in the hospital.  Pop would visit her regularly, though it was a long journey to Ilford, and, on his small wage, seemed  very expensive   by public transport.  On his return from those visits, he always seemed distressed: for the doctors still had very little idea of what was wrong with Mum and every time he visited her he could see that she had lost weight; until she had become so thin that when she  drank, the movement of the fluid could be seen through her parchment-like skin as it descended to her stomach.

            Finally, a specialist was able  to diagnose the problem, which was caused by a malfunction in the thyroid gland, and she was prepared for an operation on her throat.  This was a relatively new procedure at that time, and was still very much a hit and miss affair: but if they did not operate she would have had no chance whatsoever.

            I don't think anyone told me how serious things were, though Ruby, at thirteen, probably did know: but I could tell from the fact that Pop no longer smiled or laughed, that Mum was still very ill. Later I learnt that that sadness had an adverse effect on Mum when he visited her.  She worried about him, particularly as he had begun to develop a skin complaint, an eczema on his face, and had to stop shaving.  For a time he sported a reddish beard, which made a rather odd contrast to the sleek black hair on top of his head.

            Then came the operation: and everyone's delight at learning that it was a success, and that Mum would be all right. Within a very short time, all our worries seemed to be over.  She was coming home, to be the eighth person in the tiny Denton Road house. Dad's eczema began to heel: it had probably been psychosomatic, and very soon he was able to shave off that silly ginger beard. Then came the day when he was to bring Mum home.  I seem to have been away from school that day, perhaps it was half-term.  I can still remember her  coming through the door, still pale, still thin, but clearly Mum, and wonderfully alive.

            No hats were thrown in the air: perhaps we were displaying English, or Irish reticence. In fact the atmosphere that evening seemed a little tense. Grandma and Grandad didn't know what to say. Pop didn't say much either, though he was clearly very happy. To this day I do not know how my grandparents really felt.  Of course they wanted Mum to get well: but I don't think that they had ever expected that she would. Perhaps they had already become accustomed to having their eldest son and his children living with them.  Clearly this could not continue. Mum's presence meant that the already overcrowded little house was almost bursting at the seams: and the moment that she walked through that door; Pop had ceased to be the eldest son to be cossetted by Grandma, but was, once again, Mum's husband, the father of her children: and it was to his own little family that his loyalty would now be directed.

            There were arguments, some of them almost violent arguments, between Mum and Grandma almost every day, and they did not always end when Pop came home from work.  Apart from the obvious reasons for such friction; it was clear that two women of such dominant personalities, could not continue living together for very long in such a small house.  All four of us missed the independence that we had enjoyed when we lived in our own house in Dagenham.  The housing authorities were approached.  The impossibility of our situation was pointed out: and, by some sort of municipal miracle, we were allotted another council house, but this time in Lower Edmonton.  Late in 1937, our furniture was taken out of storage, and joyfully we moved to our new home, 150 St. Edmund's Road.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When we moved in the house had only just been completed.  The road was made up for, perhaps, a hundred feet beyond our front door and then became mud and slush.  We had the third council house in the road.  Four doors away ended the estate of privately owned houses, or, as we knew them, 'houses you buy'.  You may have been able to buy one.  On Pop's wage we were certainly in no position to do so.  At least two-thirds of St. Edmund's Road contained 'houses you buy'.  They provided much the same sort of accommodation as the council houses, though, I think that they were slightly smaller.  Yet so that no one could mistake them for council houses, they carried visible signs of their superior status.  Their exteriors were criss-crossed with mock Tudor wood and plaster beams.  Some of them had coloured glass in their hall windows.  Many of them had names instead of numbers. 

            Many of their occupants believed that they were entitled to be recognised as superior beings to the Oiks who lived in the council houses; though, in truth, there was very little difference between the two groups.  Many of the people in the 'houses you buy' had the same sort of jobs as the people in the council estate, though I suppose that there was a slightly greater proportion of workers holding down low level supervisory positions: shop managers, charge-hands, foremen and such;  and there were rather more clerical workers than on our estate. 

            All this was new to me.  In our beloved Dagenham, we lived in a council house, but so did everyone else for miles on every side.  Dagenham  appeared to be one gigantic council estate.  That being the case, we had not suffered from the petty snobbery of the residents of the 'houses you buy'.  In St. Edmund's Road we did: and it rankled.

            Although traffic could proceed all the way along the road from private to council housing, or at least it could once the council estate was completed and the road made up; there was a physical division, which acted as something of  a psychological barrier between the two sections.  This was a plain wooden fence which separated the last of the private houses from the first of the council houses.  When you lived beyond that fence you knew that socially you were inferior.

            None of this mattered all that much at first, for there were plenty of friends to be made from the children who moved in as the council houses were completed and occupied: and there were even some non-snobbish 'houses you buy' children whom we befriended: but, all the same, it was rather humiliating to be pointedly ignored by so many near neighbours, and I detested it.  However, as time wore on, the silly snobbishness seemed to largely evaporate; and, by the time the war came in 1939, it had largely vanished, and the two sections of the street were as one.

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            That was in the future. For the first few months after we had moved in our end of the street was a delectable confusion of building workers and their equipment.  The quickly formed gangs of council house children, which grew rapidly as more and more houses were completed, had a marvellous time darting in and around the half-completed buildings after work had ceased at the end of each day, and when the watchmen were not looking. 

            This was an era when there were still night watchmen employed to guard building sites and road works. They were usually elderly men, sometimes walrus moustached, and wearing shabby clothes and battered bowler hats, who would sit through the night at the entrance to a temporary hut, warming their hands with the heat emanating from a crude brazier.  I suppose that they did provide some sort of deterrent from the more timid thieves, though, as they usually looked extremely frail, they could hardly deter any criminal of a reasonable degree of toughness.  When the war began, all able bodied men, and many who were not particularly able bodied,  were soon in the armed forces, or in the fire service or civil defence, or working in munitions factories. Under such conditions,  contractors had to do without night watchmen, who would have frozen to death in any case without their braziers, which owing to the black out regulations  would have  remained unlit.  No doubt the contractors found that even without the services of night  watchmen they did not lose all that much stock; and what they lost was more than compensated for by the fact that they no longer had to pay night watchmen, so that occupation ceased to be.

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            I think that the relief that Mum was still alive, and the joy of knowing that once again we  had a house to ourselves, caused our parents relax their standards a little.  For the first time, Ruby and I were allowed to experience the joys of playing in the street, and of belonging to gangs.  Now we were, during the hours of daylight, constantly out of the house and playing with our new friends: but not just in the street and on the building sites; there were many other places to play.  One of our favourite venues, was across the road, and up the alleyway to a level crossing over the railway.  Fortunately it was not a busy railway: just twice a day a goods train would puff along the line.  Here we would play for hours.  I don't think Mum realised that we were playing by the railway, for otherwise she would have worried about the danger: though in truth there was very little danger, for the twice daily trains travelled extremely slowly, and would often stop for as much as an hour athwart the crossing, till somewhere down the line, someone finished a game of cards, finished his lunch, or, perhaps woke from his afternoon snooze, and sent the signal to the driver that he could proceed.

            Just beyond the crossing stood a tall signal column, from the base of which a thick wire hawser ran down the line to the distant signal box. Groups of six to ten children used to test their strength by pulling on the hawser, gripping it with their handkerchiefs to prevent it tearing the skin.  That may have been of some help to the skin, but it didn't do much for the handkerchiefs, which after such an exercise would be torn in places, marked with oil from the hawser, or both.

            The object of this criminal exercise was to raise the signal, and see how long it could be held up.  It usually stayed up for about half a minute, until one of us, less tenacious than the others (usually me) would let go, and, without his or her help, the others would one by one, and then more rapidly, two by two and three by three, also let go, until the signal fell with a loud crash to its normal position. 

            I don't suppose any harm was ever done by this exercise, for the line was so little used, but had there been more than two trains a day, we might have caused a serious accident; even though we never deliberately played the game when we knew that trains were coming.

            Another trick that was often played, was that someone would put a large stone on the line when a train was due, in the hope that the wheels would crush it into fine powder,  I don't think this ever worked; and, even if it did, I have no idea what we would have done, if anything, with the powder thus obtained.  When this activity paled, we took to placing long rows of stones and bricks on the line, which, though not likely to derail a train, and  never crushed, would shoot off at acute angles when the engine wheels dislodged them, to the peril of anyone standing close by.

            I have a memory of the line being visited by a policeman one day, just as some of the gang were placing a new row of stones on the line, and after that visit that particular activity ceased.

            The following year a footbridge was built to replace the level crossing, and the area on either side of the bridge fenced off.  I suspect that this bridge and the fencing was constructed less to protect children and pedestrian from danger, than to protect the railway from danger by the children.

            Even with the bridge, the railway remained a fascinating place, though the bridge put a stop to one perilous activity, for bold children used to climb the metal ladder to the top of the signal, and then, swing from the metal ring at the top.  I never had the nerve to do this, but Ruby attempted it once, and had got about three-quarters of the way up the ladder, when Mum, glancing out of the bedroom window, saw what she was doing: rushed downstairs, out of the house, across the road, and up the alley to the crossing, where she screamed so fiercely at Ruby to come down, that the poor girl nearly fell down the ladder in her haste to obey.

            Even when the actual track was fenced off, we could still play on the patch of green beside it, which continued for almost the whole length of the backs of the houses of St. Edmund's, and in places broadened out to include a few stunted trees.  It also contained a little brook, which emerged under the railway through a wide drain pipe, and continued, seldom more than a couple of inches deep, until it vanished into another pipe about a quarter of a mile down the line. This brook, or perhaps one should call it a ditch, was a splendid place for paddling in Summer, or piddling, for that matter, if taken short.  We made dams across the little stream, skimmed stones along it, pushed others, or was pushed by them, into it: and sometimes, just sat on its bank and read comics.  We thought that it was a fine place: the little stretch of greenery that is so necessary for children in towns, and without which an urban landscape could be unspeakably dreary.

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            However, even without our little brook valley, we were pretty well served with greenery, for just a few hundred feet away, and bordering Galliard Road, which ran parallel to St. Edmund's Road, were the green and brown acres of the 'Brick Fields' which were soon to suffer a metamorphosis into 'Jubilee Park', but at that time still remained in their wild rubbish dump glory, the joy of every child, and the despair of every parent for miles around.

            The fields had been used in the past, as the name suggests, as a source of raw material for bricks.  They consisted of about 100 acres of lumpy grey ground, divided into two, more or less equal parts, by a ridge of low muddy hills, which were all that was left of the larger heights from which the clay for the bricks had been obtained.  This ridge was a great place for intrepid young mountaineers to practise running along the ridge path.  Path is too grand a word, for no normal sized adult would have attempted it; and I never managed to stay on my feet along it for more than about fifty feet.  However, when I lost my footing, it was rather enjoyable to roll down the side of the slope and finish in a messy heap at the bottom.

            Near the centre of the ridge, was a small hole into which two boys could just about squeeze.  This was our cave, and we were continually climbing into it; though it was only deep enough to admit the lower part of our frames as far as the waist, which viewed from a distance, must have looked as if a pair of boys had been planted in the hillside.

            The Brick Fields also contained a ruin.  This was the remains of a small brick hut which had been destroyed by fire.  When we got to know it, it had become a ten feet high blackened cube.  It seemed to be made of a substance rather like coal, and having much the same effect as coal when it came into contact with our clothes and bodies.  The hut had no interior, or rather I have no memory of ever having been inside it, but, you could climb on to the roof if you were brave enough.

            I did it just once.  The bravery had nothing to do with any danger of falling from the top; but rather consisted of daring to face Mum when I returned blackened from the escapade. Alas, after we arrived, we enjoyed perhaps three months of the Brick Fields in their raw, untamed, state, for after that municipal authority took over and began the process of converting the area into a public park.

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            Our new house had much in common with the house in Dagenham, having two rooms plus lavatory/bathroom downstairs, and three bedrooms upstairs: but the main living room was considerably larger than any of the rooms in the Dagenham house, and boasted a bay window of which Mum was inordinately proud.  We were to remain there for the next twelve years, and consequently my recollections of the place are much stronger than my memories of the Dagenham house: but it is particularly our near and not so near neighbours that remain in my memory.

            The neighbours were extremely friendly, though not excessively so as to be on top of us when we wished for privacy.  On one side lived a large family of Glaswegians; and on the other side a retired company sergeant-major and his wife and three daughters.  The daughters were in their teens when we arrived, and were married and with families when we left.  Mum considered that we were a cut above the Scots family, and were more or less the social equals of the retired warrant officer.  We children absorbed these judgements and unquestionably accepted them, though outside the irrationality of petty snobbery they could never be justified.  We were poor, the sergeant-major was poor, the Scots were poor, and that was all that there was to it.  However, Pop was now a manager of a shop, and our house was the end of the terrace, which were both plus points I suppose, though, as the Scots' house was semi-detached, that should surely have balanced against Pop's minor managerial status.

            There were other families in our block, some of whom have totally faded from my memory.  Though I do remember that  two doors away was a family with two extremely pretty daughters, though I only became conscious of that fact in my late adolescence.

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            Our household had increased in number, though not with humans, but on the feathered and feline sides.  We obtained the first of our many tabby cats.  I think that over the next twelve years we had at least five, though only one at a time.  From Uncle Mick, as I have already mentioned, we purchased a tiny, feeble little budgerigar, which stayed with us for about the next seven years, and was certainly with us for several of the war years.  Its longevity was rather surprising, for within a short while of its arrival, we had become convinced that it would soon be dead. Something was clearly wrong with its throat, for it had a persistent croaking cough.  Unqualified medical opinion diagnosed asthma, which may have been the correct diagnosis, though, as I have been told that asthma in humans is largely psychosomatic, it seems unlikely that a little bird could have worried itself into having an asthmatic cough.  Day in day out, it would give vent, every ten seconds or so, to its little croaking cough, which would continue until it went to sleep each night.  We soon got used to it, but visitors would almost invariably say after about twenty minutes: "There seems to be something wrong with that bird of yours."

            "Yes," one of us would reply, "We think it's got asthma."

            Then the visitor might reply: "You aught to get something done about it."

            In retrospect that seems to have been rather good advice, and in not heeding it we may have been guilty of extreme cruelty to the poor little creature: though if the condition was psychosomatic, surely we were only guilty of mental cruelty: but we had grown used to the cough, and in loving the bird, we loved the cough also, considering it part of its personality. After all, several of our friends had canaries that sometimes sang.  We were the only people in our neighbourhood that had a budgerigar that could cough.

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            Now that we lived in Lower Edmonton, there was no question of my continuing at Silver Street School, nor Ruby at the girls' school.  St. Edmund's School was much closer than either of those establishments, and, in any case, it was the Roman Catholic School, so to St. Edmund's School we both returned.

            It was still a fair distance from our house, though not so far as to prevent me from walking home, eating and digesting lunch (which we called 'dinner'), having a short rest, then returning in time for the afternoon classes.  I rather think that the lunch hour must have been considerably longer than an hour.  It probably was, for only the children of the unemployed had free dinners at the Eldon Road Meals Centre, all the other children had to go home for their midday meal.

            It felt as if I had been away for an eternity in Dagenham and Silver Street School, but it could not have been all that long, for I found myself in the class just above Miss Whitty's, which was the class that I would have moved into had I remained at the school.  This was Miss Sheehan's class, the top junior class.  Ruby had passed through that class some time before our move to Dagenham, and had not enjoyed the experience; but I didn't mind it.  I was so pleased to be back at St. Edmund's. 

            Miss Sheehan was a tall thin Irishwoman, who, in later years, after I had left school, always greeted me very kindly when I met her in the street: but at school, I did not think her kind.  I may have been blinded to her many virtues by my sister's attitude, for Ruby disliked her intensely, and would complain that sitting in the front row put one in constant danger of drowning from the fine spray of spittle that emanated from the teacher's mouth at all times, and also in danger of a split skull from the number of times it was rapped by Miss Sheehan's ruler when that lady noticed that Ruby was inattentive.  For my part, I sat at the back of Miss Sheehan' class and was therefore both dry and uncloven.  I wasn't long there anyway: just one term, I think; then, with the rest of the class I transferred to Miss Doyle's, the lowest class of the Seniors.

            At that time my best subjects were mental arithmetic, history and geography.  My written English and general arithmetical ability was only average, in spite of the fact that I was already an avid reader.  Oddly enough, despite my proficiency in both subjects,  I have no clear memory of any history or geography lessons.  I rather think that during history and geography periods, all that the pupils were expected to do, was to get out their text books and read them, whilst the teacher got on with more important tasks such as marking books, or writing letters of application for posts in other schools.  So far as I know, we were not expected to take any notes of what we had read, nor did we listen to any exposition of important points on the part of the teacher.

            Yet despite this lack of direction, I have, over the years, retained a great interest in both geography and history.  That is even stranger to comprehend in view of the fact that there did not appear to be any attempt at continuity between the topics covered by the text books in successive forms.  I think that in Miss Doyle's class, the text books were on the Tudor period, and in the next class on the 19th Century, including a large chunk on the American Civil War.  Nowhere did I ever  find any textbooks on either the Stuarts or the Hannoverians.

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            By now my particular school friend was Jimmy Graulisch, the son of a German garage mechanic, who lived in one of the 'houses you buy'.  As I was about a year older than Jimmy, he was not in my class, but as we were from  the same street, we would go to and from school together, and meet in the evenings on the comic exchange circuit.  This circuit was an elaborate exchange system operating on door-steps up and down the street.  All barriers between council and private housing were ignored, as boys set out of an evening carrying piles of comics and magazines. 

            It was best to take about ten: knock at a door where a boy of your own age lived, who would then produce goods for exchange; and the two of you would sit for about a quarter of an hour on the door step examining each others merchandise. Boys weekly magazines such as Wizard and Hotspur were popular, but best of all were American comics: fat, at least three times as thick as the Wizard; full of cartoon strips, and with very little text apart from that in the balloons emanating from the mouths of the characters.  We grew to know and love such regular features as  Li'l Abner, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Bringing up Father, and Little Orphan Annie.  We loved them, but parents disliked them intensely, not because of their lack of words, but rather because they were exchanged so often, that they became extremely grubby, and could possibly harbour unwanted little beasties such as fleas.

            Funnily enough, I never saw any of these popular American comics on sale in Edmonton shops; so I have no idea how they came on to the circuit.  Perhaps somewhere in St. Edmund's Road lived a family with American relatives who had sent them the comics: perhaps there was an attache‚ at the American Embassy whose task it was to spread American culture, and who employed hundreds of thousands of little boys as agents who received the comics regularly and dutifully  passed them on to  unsuspecting English children, who would, it was hoped, absorb the material, and one day become indistinguishable from Americans.

            For me, the exchange process always started with my going to Jimmy's house, or Jimmy coming to mine. After we had checked through each others supply, we would then go off together to other houses.  Of course some houses had to be avoided.  We soon stopped visiting Paddy, another council house dweller. He would spend half to three-quarters of an hour squatting on his doorstep reading the papers you had bought, and then he would tell you that he didn't wish to make an exchange, as he had seen all the magazines already.  Another house to be avoided was one across the road from ours, that was occupied by a large family, who were known collectively, though not to their faces, as 'The Dirts'.  Though we were not in the least fastidious, we never went there, for any comics obtained from that address would almost certainly have needed to be fumigated,

            Jimmy was not the only boy from the houses you buy with whom I became friendly.  There was also Reggie, the son of an upwardly mobile bus conductor, but we saw very little of him of an evening, as his mother insisted that he be in by seven pm.  I gather that my being allowed to associate with Reggie, was a great privilege, for his parents had no time for most of the council tenants: but I suppose I looked relatively clean; and the fact that Pop used to set off for work wearing an overcoat and a bowler hat may have convinced them that I was not verminous, and that I would not teach Reggie any nasty swear words.

            Then there was Don, who lived in a house you buy round the corner.  I was never quite sure whether I was a friend, or an enemy of Don.  Part of the time I liked him a lot: part of the time I was afraid of him.  He was something of a bully, which usually I didn't mind too much, as he usually bullied someone else, particularly poor Reggie: but I certainly didn't like him when he bullied me. I was, and probably still am, a frightful coward.  Don was only a tiny fraction bigger than me, and, if I had stood up to him, he would probably have left me alone: but I did not stand up to him.  Once I came in in tears from the Brick Fields after Don had chased me with a bunch of stinging nettles.  Mum, who had rather forthright ideas on manly behaviour, insisted on taking me back to the Brick Fields to find Don, and then to fight him whilst she looked on.  I was scared stiff, but fortunately, we couldn't find him, and when I saw him the following day, Mum was not with me, so I did not have to challenge him.  Instead, I think I helped him tantalise Reggie or some other victim. 

            In later life, Don tuned into a well mannered and affable young man, with no trace of his brutal childhood.  So in his case, Wordsworth seems to have been wrong: the child was not the father of the man.

            The only boy from the council estate who sticks in my memory, was the aforementioned Patrick, who, apart from his gamesmanship on the comic exchange circuit, was a nice enough lad.  As he was also a Catholic, he and his  brothers also attended St. Edmund's School.  Sometimes they would call on me and we would walk to school, with Jimmy Graulisch: but as Patrick and his brothers were mad about football, a game I have always found boring, conversation on those journeys became rather stilted, and after a while I was left to journey to school alone with Jimmy.

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            St. Edmund's did have a football team, but I was never a member of it, nor was I a member of the school cricket team.  Indeed the only game that we all played when supervised  during our games period by the one male teacher, Mr Long, was rounders.  I wasn't very good at that, yet I quite enjoyed it.  Or rather I enjoyed the idea of it, particularly when my side were batting.  I always imagined that when it was my turn to pick up the slim rounders bat, I would do well.  Of course I never did.  If I managed to hit the ball, it was only by chance.  But I liked running for the base.  I disliked fielding, but I found that if I exercised my intelligence I could find a spot on the playground where the ball was not likely to come, and I would be in no danger of having to try to catch it.

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            In Miss Doyle's class we were expected to get down to serious work, for in that year, we were to sit the scholarship examination, following which, a small minority of the class would transfer to what was then called a secondary school, and is known today as a grammar school. As the year wore on, a certain tension began to be felt by all the sons and daughters of ambitious parents: into which category I fell.  Mum was very keen that I should pass the scholarship, if only because she was convinced that my cousin, Stan, was bound to do so, and she hated the thought of the disparaging remarks that Grandma might make if I did not succeed.  Finally came the first examination, which lasted, so far as I can remember, the whole of one school day.  Candidates were examined in their own school and in their own classrooms, though they took care to place us all in separate desks as a precaution against cheating.  Now I wonder if all the class did take the examination, for had they done so, I don't see how we could have sat at separate desks in that room for there were well over forty children in the class.

            Each candidate was given a four-to-six page booklet in which to write.  On the first page we had to write an essay (Though I thought of it as a composition) on one of three given subjects, and on the remaining pages to answer what seemed to be general knowledge questions and arithmetical problems.

            It was, more or less, the sort of thing that we had been doing in school, so I didn't find it too worrying.  But this was only the first stage: though geniuses , who did particularly well, were excused the next stage and assured of a place at St. Ignatius College, the Jesuit establishment in Stamford Hill, and the alma mater of Alfred Hitchcock, the film director.

            Those of us who had merely done fairly well, perhaps eight children in the class, went on to the next stage a few weeks later, which they sat at the secondary school of their choice.  I was the only St. Edmund's pupil to sit the examination at the Edmonton County School.  Mum and Pop decided that St. Ignatius was too far away, and the danger of my losing my faith in the pagan atmosphere of the County School, was, in their opinion, rather less acute than the danger of my being involved in a traffic accident on the long journey to Stamford Hill.

            On the day I stood silently in the playground of the County School.  The other boys were silent also.  We were all rather subdued, for we were competing for a strictly limited number of free places.  In those enlightened days, it was possible for someone of low intelligence to get into a grammar school.  All that was required was the ability to pay the school fees: but a few places were made available for the children of the deserving poor, into which category I fell.

            Then a teacher emerged, wearing an academic gown, and, I think, a mortarboard, the first time that I had seen such attire outside the pages of the Gem or the Magnet.  He told us to line up in two rows, which we did: and then led us into a classroom where we were seated at individual desks.  I sat beneath a large globe which was suspended from the ceiling.  That globe fascinated and frightened me, for I couldn't see how it could remain in place, and I was afraid that it might suddenly fall on my head.  I like to believe that those speculations were what prevented me from passing the examination, and then being able to boast in middle age that I went to the same school as Norman Tebbitt, but I don't suppose that that was the reason.  Probably the other candidates, at least at the age of eleven, had a better, more accurate writing style, and knew more of the relevant facts than I did.

CHAPTER NINE

Much of my disappointment had evaporated by the time that the summer holiday came round.  We spent a fortnight at home, and then, when Pop began his annual one-week holiday from the shop, we set off for Margate.  As it was to be our first real holiday since Mum's illness, we all thought that it meant that for our little family, our times of trouble were over.

            As Saturday was always one of the busiest days in the shop, we did not get away until Sunday morning.  We were to travel by coach because it was cheaper than the railway.  I didn't mind.  I thought that coaches were far more comfortable, you were assured of a seat, and you could see   much more from a coach window than when you were seated in the middle of a crowded railway carriage, from  which, for much of the journey, the view would have consisted of the backs of houses and scrappy little back gardens.

            We began by taking a bus to Enfield Town, which then was new to me, though a few years later I would regularly walk there of a wartime summer evening with my new friend Tommy Perkins.   I wasn't particularly impressed with the little of Enfield Town that I saw that day; but what did impress me was my first sight of a new form of transportation, the trolley bus, a hybrid vehicle which was   a cross between a bus and a tram: looking like a large bus, but drawing its power as did trams, from overhead cables. Unlike a tram the trolley bus was   not restricted to rails in the centre of the road but could move as freely as any petrol driven bus to any part of the carriageway. I think it was the fact that they were neither orthodox trams, nor orthodox  buses, that really fascinated me.  I have always been charmed by items that do not comfortably fit into a particular category.

            I gaped at a brace of trolley buses, as they stood at the end of the line, and then, as another appeared from the direction of Green Lanes, the first drove off with an electronic hiss and buzz that sounded somehow more romantic than the normal reverberation and shudder of a petrol or diesel powered bus. I was quite sorry when our coach arrived, for, after we had driven off, we were soon on a totally different route to that of the trolley buses.

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            The journey to Margate was uneventful, and not particularly interesting; though we did stop twice at oddly named 'Halfway Houses'.  Even then, my knowledge of mathematics was sufficient to tell me that no journey could possibly have two halfway points.  At the first halfway house we took on liquid refreshment: I think I had grapefruit juice.  At the second we used some of the facilities of the house to discharge some of that liquid.

            At around noon I began to be excited for I realised that I could actually smell the sea.  It must, I thought, be just over the horizon.  As it happened it was: and around 12.30 we rolled into the coach park; picked up our luggage, took it to one of the cafés on the front, where we had a meal, which was  probably sausage and chips, or egg and chips.  Certainly it was something with chips.  It was the sort of place where there were chips with everything.  Then we found our way to our bed, breakfast and mid-day meal inclusive, lodging house.  I assume that the terms that Pop had negotiated by letter, did not include a mid-day meal on the first Sunday.  I know that the landlady did not provide us with one on that first day.

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            It was not a hotel.  Indeed, I was not to stay in an actual hotel for at least another eight years, and neither, so far as I know, were   my parents or my sister.  This was a time when working-class people did not use any establishment grand enough to call itself a hotel.  You looked in Dalton's Weekly, or in the small ad . columns of a daily paper, for a boarding house at the seaside, and that is where you stayed.

            I'm not even sure that our lodgings deserved the title 'Boarding House'.  No one else seemed to be boarding there that week; and, as the house was not much bigger than our grandparents' house in Denton Road, that was hardly surprising.

            We occupied one bedroom on the first floor.  Most of the floor space was taken up with a double bed, in which I slept with Mum and Pop.  By the wall was a couch which at night became Ruby's bed.  There was a small table containing a jug, a bowl and a mirror, which we used for our ablutions, though at meal times those objects were removed, and it became our dining table.  The one large window looked out, not on the sea, but on a street containing almost identical grey brick houses, with postage stamp gardens to the front.  It could have been anywhere in North London, but we could tell by the whiff of ozone when the window was open, that we were very near the sea.  It was enough. I was thrilled.

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            As I have written, things were looking up for us; but they were not looking up all that much.  We were on holiday; we were a complete family together again; and Pop was now a manager.  But, even bearing that, not particularly, grand title, he was still earning a rather small wage which didn't allow us very much to spend on that holiday: so   much of the pleasure that we obtained that week had to be the sort that could be obtained free.

            It took me a little time to realise that elementary economic fact, and when I did realise it, I very much   resented it and kicked against it constantly. I was an ungrateful child: there was much that could be enjoyed gratis: the beach was free, the sea was free; we could swim, or, in my case, paddle in it, to our hearts' content.  We could play on the beach, and we could make friends with other children.  Actually, that last activity was not too easy because of our parents' choice of beach.  On Monday morning when we went to the beach we found it packed tight with other holiday makers all noisily having a good time.  Ruby and I were delighted: Mum and Pop disliked it, and each day would look for somewhere quieter and more suitable.  By Wednesday they had found a beach that satisfied their tastes, and to  this beach we went for the remaining three days of our holiday. Mum and Pop sat on deck chairs, reading, or just enjoying the sun and the scenery. We fidgeted and moaned and begged to be where people were.  We were unsuccessful.  We just had to sit on that strangely deserted beach, with only the noise of the gulls and our thoughts to keep us company.  To this day, I have no idea why any beach in prewar Margate, which was a very popular working-class resort, should have remained so empty.  Perhaps it contained a sewer outflow that no one had told us about.

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            Sometimes even Mum and Pop would tire of that tranquil beach, and then, in an exquisite form of torture for children and parents with very little money, we would wander into Dreamland, the large fun fair in the centre of the front.

            Dreamland was always noisy, crowded, and intensely frustrating.  There were so many delightful ways to part with money; yet we had very little money.  Occasionally Pop's budget would run to a ride   on a roundabout for us, and, perhaps our parents could afford a try on a side-show: but usually we just wandered around, watching wealthier souls enjoying all the things that we could not enjoy.

            Some of the amusements were very expensive and quite out of our reach.  There was a track, around which small petrol driven cars raced.  I would spend hours looking at luckier people racing around.  The charge for a go, was 1s: 5p in today's decimal currency. I longed to race on that track; but  I knew that even if I lived to be a hundred, I would never earn enough to be able to afford such luxury.

            There was also a scenic railway, for which the charge was 6d a go.  Perhaps, at a pinch, Pop could have afforded to take us on that, if we didn't spend any money on the following day. He spent a long time arguing with Mum as to whether it was worth it.  Mum won the argument, and the money was not spent.  Secretly I was rather glad, for the scenic railway looked extremely dangerous.  However, there was a smaller version, perhaps two-thirds the size of its big brother, for which the charge was 3d, and he did take us on that, which I found thrilling, and not over-terrifying.

            Mum spent quite a few coppers on a side-show run by a bewhiskered young man, with an amazing line of patter which he would deliver into a hand microphone.  For much of the time I could not make out what he was saying, for his words emerged from the loudspeakers as either bellows or grunts: but, when we got very close to the stall, and craned over the ledge, we could hear his actual words, before they reached the distortion of the loudspeakers system.

            "Come along, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls," he would cry.  "This is the finest fiddle in Dreamland.  Remember that all the money we take in goes to poor widows and orphans.  I'm the orphan, and me mother's the widow: and the old lady will be delighted to 'ave what's left after I've taken me cut."

            At that point he would usually break off and start distributing cards to the punters who by now had collected around his stall, at 2d a time. His booth consisted of an octagonal stall surrounded by a number of seats for the customers.  In the centre, which was decorated with numerous attractive prizes which never seemed to leave the stall, was a numbered board looking a little like a bingo card, but with photos of film stars interspersed between the numbers.  When enough cash had been collected and enough cards distributed, the show man would press a button, and the board would begin to revolve, slowly at first, but increasing in speed, whilst lights would flash along the rows of numbers.  After two or three minutes, by which time the board would be spinning extremely swiftly, it would stop suddenly, and the light would rest on one number.  Anyone who held a ticket with that number would receive a prize; though I judged that from the disappointed expressions that sometimes appeared on the faces of the prize winners, not one of particularly great value.

            Dreamland also contained various live entertainments.  There was a boxing booth, which we never entered; I think there was a fire eater; and, there was also Dwarf Town.

            Our parents took us into Dwarf Town.  It was contained within a very large tent which inside was   divided by sheets of canvass into a number of compartments, each representing the home of a dwarf. In each compartment stood or sat one or two midgets.  So far as I remember, they didn't do anything: just looked at us: and we looked at them.  They were clearly adults, though they were all smaller than me.  They looked rather sad.  I don't think any of the family really enjoyed that experience.  We didn't talk for some time after we had emerged from the exit.

            One side show that I did enjoy watching, even though we couldn't afford to use it, was the bowling alley.  It fascinated me for two reasons.  The first was its first prize, which stood on a stand, and, which, like the prizes on the bingo type stall, was never destined to be won.  It was a full sized new motor bicycle.  It was clean and beautiful, and gleaming, in the sunlight by day, or in the electric spotlights focused on it by night.

            The second cause for fascination, was the nature of the typical clientele of the bowling alley.  Very many of them were young airmen from Manston RAF station, which was nearby.  I had never seen airmen before, and, in their blue uniforms, they looked very glamourous.  I imagined them at the controls of World War biplane fighters, dicing with death and shooting down hundreds of Fokker Triplanes.  Of course, these young men were only born in the concluding years of the Great War, and as they seldom had any rank badges, and none of them wore wings, it was not likely that many of them would ever fight in the skies: though, if they remained at Manston, they would certainly see some action in a couple of years, for during the Battle of Britain, it was the target of such heavy German attacks, that for a while it became impossible to operate fighters from that station.

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            There were establishments on the sea-front into which money could flow just as swiftly as in Dreamland: in particular, a boating pool, where, for 3d a time, children could hire slowly moving motor boats.  Poor Pop, we nagged and nagged until he gave in: so bang went 6d.  Ruby's boat seemed to go much faster than mine.  I couldn't understand why my boat should be so slow, and also why it didn't answer the rudder commands very well.  The controls were simplicity itself.  They consisted of a car-type steering wheel, and a foot-button.  When the button was pressed the propeller turned.  When the button was released the propeller stopped.  Nobody bothered to explain that  simple  technique to me.  I got into my boat.  The boatman released the rope and gave the boat a push, and I drifted off into the middle of the pool.  Ruby circled round my craft several times, and shouted something to me that I didn't catch over the noise of my engine, which, all this time, was running in neutral.  I spun the wheel in an attempt to follow her boat, but without any real success, though the boat did turn slightly, I suppose the movement of the rudder acted a little like the action of a single paddle, though it was not enough to propel the boat to any extent.  I began to feel extremely frustrated, though frustration was an emotion that I was already fairly familiar with.  Then, about two minutes before my time was up, I discovered the foot button, and managed in the next 120 seconds, to ram two other craft.  I hate to think what might have happened had I found the foot button a little earlier.

CHAPTER TEN

            All too soon, that frustrating, but, on the whole enjoyable week in Margate came to an end, and we were back in Edmonton.  Then three weeks later the Summer holiday was over and we were back at school.  Now I was in a higher class, and also rather nearer the top of that class, for some  of the brighter children had transferred to secondary school.  I enjoyed my slightly higher status, but enjoyed even more the fact that, at last, I was to become an altar server, completing the process that I had begun in Dagenham, where I had got no further than being measured for a cassock.  Father McGrath had called one evening and asked if I would like to be an altar server.  Mum was delighted and, without consulting me said that I would: but in truth, I was delighted also.

            For the next month or so, on a couple of afternoons a week, after school, I would walk across to the presbytery, ring  the bell, and when the housekeeper opened the door, follow her in to the servers' room, where she would leave me.  I would sit on one of the chairs and look at what there was to see, which wasn't very much, just four chairs, and curtains along three of the walls, which when drawn back, revealed cassocks and cottas hanging from racks, in various states of disrepair, and in many cases liberally bespattered with candle grease.  Before some services, and in particular before High Mass or Benediction, the room would be crowded with boys, the four biggest usually occupying the chairs, and the others standing around or sitting on the floor: but on these occasions, when I was learning to serve, I was the only occupant of the room.

            I would sit there for perhaps fifteen minutes, and then, having finished his tea, Father McGrath would come for me.  We would enter the church, and go to one of the two side altars and, under his instruction, I would learn to serve mass.  It wasn't a particularly difficult chore, and I don't know why I needed so many lessons, unless Grandma was right, and I really was rather stupid.  I was given a booklet with full instructions, and the Latin words of the mass.  My main task was to learn them; that was to learn the actual Latin responses parrot fashion,  not to learn their meaning in English.

            I thought that the Latin words sounded wonderful, and as soon as I had learnt the Confiteor, I stopped saying the English version.  Before confession I would recite it in Latin.  Of course I did know the meaning of that particular prayer because I had learnt it in English several years before; but that didn't matter.  I would have used the Latin even if I didn't understand the words.  I suppose as a prayer it was about as effective as turning a Tibetan prayer wheel.  Perhaps less effective, for the Tibetan Buddhists do believe that what they are doing is of some value. However, I may have had some idea that the language of Heaven was Latin.  I hope that I was wrong about that, for in the event of my ever getting there I am going to find it impossible to communicate with the other spirits.

            After a while the clergy decided that I could be let loose as a member of the regular team of altar boys; and, from then on, each Sunday I would arrive at the presbytery at 10.40, change into cassock and cotta, and then join my colleagues in assisting in the 11 o'clock high mass.  The assistance that most of us performed was minimal; though our presence did help to dress the altar.  Between eight and ten of us would be packed fairly tightly into what would have been called choir stalls in an Anglican church to the left and right of the  high altar, and there we would remain for most  of the mass.  Our choir never used the stalls, they sang from the choir loft to the rear and above the main body of the church. We did not have to practise the Latin responses, for they were spoken by the two priests who assisted the celebrant; but despite our lack of function, I always liked being up there, looking down from the stalls at the ordinary members of the congregation who sat at a lower level in the main body of the church. 

            We were not totally inactive, for when the time for benediction approached, under the watchful eye of the MC, a distinguished looking man in his early thirties,we would leave the stalls and walk two by two into the sacristy where each boy  would take a lighted candle held in a four-foot holder, and, still under the leadership of the MC, would, two by two return to the altar and kneel on the steps until benediction was over.  Then we went back to the sacristy, where the candles were extinguish, and some of us had additional candle grease stains on the sleeves of our cassocks.  Our little moment of glory over, we would return to the stalls, and remain in them until the end of mass, when we would process out, in front of the priests.

            As I was now an altar server, on most Sundays I went to church twice, though as neither Pop nor Mum insisted that I did so, if I did not feel like it, I did not go a second time.  The second attendance was for the evening service, which was not a mass, but the ceremony of benediction which was always preceded by a very long sermon by one of our priests.  It may be that these sermons were of an extremely high standard: it was quite obvious that the priests put a great deal of effort into their delivery.  No doubt they slaved for days in preparation, polishing up the words, and introducing subtle apposite theological arguments: but for me, and I suspect for many of the altar boys, and possibly for much of the congregation, they could have delivered the whole address in Urdu for all the attention that we were prepared to give to it.  I found it almost impossible to remain completely awake during those sermons.  Often, as the minutes crawled slowly by, I would find myself nodding forward, until, with a jerk, I would suddenly come to my senses and try to pretend that I wasn't going to sleep, but merely examining my shoes.  On one occasion I must have snored, for suddenly I was nudged simultaneously, and extremely painfully, by the boy sitting to my right, and the boy to my left: as, at the same time, the MC whispered indignantly from his place at the start of the row: "Shut up!"  When the interminable sermon finally ended, we would rise from our places in the stalls and return to the sacristy to prepare for benediction.

            At this point some of the more experienced altar servers were given interesting tasks to perform. My favourite, but one that I was not allowed to perform for at least two years, was that of thurifer, the person who swung the thurible, or incense censer.  When I was finally permitted to be thurifer, I was extremely  nervous, and afraid that I might drop it and set the church on fire: in fact, I did nearly drop it, when I swung it a little too high.  However,  despite my nervousness I did enjoy those brief moments.  The censer gave out such a delightful smell, particularly after the thurifer had held it open, half way through the service, and the priest had put extra incense on the glowing charcoal: from that point, the censer emitted great clouds of aromatic smoke as it was swung, though, by the time the service had ended, the clouds still emitted had been reduced to relatively small puffs.

            I'm afraid that as well as being an inefficient and clumsy altar server, I was also lacking in the correct spiritual attitude towards my tasks.  At no time did I think of them  as a way of humbly serving God: rather I regarded myself as an important player on a stage.  I gloried in my position out there in front of the audience, the congregation, even though, at both high mass, and at evening benediction, I was only  one of about twenty boys on the altar. My worldly pride became even greater, when, after about a year, I became a member of the Guild of St. Stephen, and was given a medallion to wear on a long cord over my cassock.  I then became quite bloated with a sense of my own self importance.  I almost came to believe that the whole  congregation were there to admire me in my glory.  That may have been one of the reasons why I had been so upset when I had been awoken from sleep that time.  In falling asleep I was letting down my public.

            When I had been an altar server for six months, I joined the rota of schoolboys whose task it was to serve during the weekday masses. About every two months my turn would come, and I would serve with another boy for the whole week, though not on Saturday.  In some respects it was an onerous task, for it meant getting to the church some time before school was due to start, though it did give us a legitimate excuse for missing half of the first lesson. 

            But the discomfort of early rising for a whole  week, was far outweighed for me by the pleasure of appearing before my public for five mornings, when I would not have to share the stage with twenty other boys, but have only the priest and one other boy to distract the audience from the enjoyment of my performance. Actually, the 'public' at weekday mass was seldom as many as twenty people, and often only five or six; but I revelled in it, particularly at the point at which I took the communion plate down to the altar rails and gave it to the first of the communicants.  Then I was physically in contact with them.  It was a little like being a star and giving autographs.

            As an adult, I have tried to analyse this appalling conceit.  I really can't understand it, unless it has something to do with my later ambition to be an actor.  The mass is said to be theologically an enactment of the life of our Lord, and, in that sense it has some elements of a play: but at that age I was not aware of that.  Yet I considered myself an actor on a stage: a deception justified in part by the fact that the altar area was raised a few inches above the nave, so that when one passed through the gates at the centre of the altar rail, one had to step up.

            Yet, if I was acting a part, I was not doing it particularly well, and I knew it. What I have written about nearly dropping the thurifer is not a figment of my imagination, and there were other incidents during my career as an altar server.  Sometimes I would be dreaming and would forget the responses, or say them too late, too soon, or in such a tiny whisper that the priest would not hear them, and would say them himself.  As an altar server I was probably of slightly more use than a cardboard cut-out would have been, but only just.

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            Suddenly I was alone in school, for Ruby had transferred to another establishment.  Like myself she had failed to obtain a scholarship place at secondary school, but successfully negotiated a second hurdle, and obtained a place at the Edmonton Girls' Junior Technical School.  Despite its name, there was nothing  particularly technical about the studies there.  The most technical pieces of equipment that the girls used were sewing machines.  There were four fields of specialist study: tailoring, millinery, dressmaking and upholstery.  Ruby, or rather Mum and Pop on her behalf, chose the latter: possibly because Uncle Dennis, now out of his teens, was working in an upholstery establishment, and apparently doing quite well.

            The school, which occupied premises near our old flat in Church Street, was nothing like as prestigious as the Edmonton County School, but its status was considerably higher than that of St. Edmund's. Ruby loved it there, even though she had to leave home earlier than I did each morning to catch a train from Bush Hill Park to Lower Edmonton, from where she would walk the short distance to the school.  It was an all girl establishment, and they wore a uniform rather like that of the County School.  For the first time in her life, Ruby found that she was particularly good at something.  In her upholstery classes she did very well.

              The girls remained there until fifteen, a year later than the school leaving age for elementary schools, and, were generally assured of 'good' jobs on leaving.  The standard of teaching of the ordinary school subjects was probably no higher than that at St. Edmund's but the girls were introduced to French, though, as an adult, my sister was never prepared to admit to any acquaintance with that language. However, I was impressed by the fact that the games they played were definitely those of the County School: tennis and hockey.  In the latter game, Ruby became a goalkeeper, but, as she was very small, when she had put on the pads, her team mates sometimes carried her out to her position in goal.

            I was fascinated by the stories that she told me about the school, by the fact that they sometimes played hockey against the County School, or against the other secondary school, The Lower Latimer School.  I thought that the friends that she made, who came to her birthday party that year were very superior young ladies.  However, when the war began and I got to know the school better, I rather lost that feeling of awe.

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            When one is young, compared with the accelerating gallop of the years in middle and old age, time seems to go incredibly slowly and there seems to be almost a century between one Christmas and the next.  Thus it was that it seemed to have been an eternity since the time when, during our Dagenham sojourn, the old king had died, and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales became king.  Now it  seemed, that he wasn't to be king any longer.  I didn't understand why that should be so, though from some of the remarks that Mum made, I learnt that he had been extremely sinful, and intended to marry a divorced woman.  For pious Mum, that meant that he was almost certainly destined for eternity in Hell, unless he repented, abandoned the fallen woman, and became a Roman Catholic. He was not prepared to do any of those things, but was  pressurised by Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, to abdicate in favour of his younger brother, The Duke of York who would become king.

            I think I remember hearing the sad voice of King Edward as he told the nation over the radio that he was giving up the throne for the woman he loved: on the other hand, I may not have heard it, but just heard talk of it in the years that followed, for it became one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of the BBC; and, as a girl, my Austrian wife was told to listen to a recording of it, as it was considered to be an example of perfectly spoken English.

            I wasn't bothered by the constitutional implications of all this, and, as I had yet to develop the belief in republicanism that I hold today, I was quite keen to take part in the junketing that would follow the coronation of King George VI.  In the week of the coronation, though, presumably not on the actual day, which must have been a public holiday, every child received a lavishly illustrated official booklet about the great event, with pictures of the Royal Family, and also with pictures of various potentates such as the Sultan of Zanzibar and other dignitaries from the Empire.  That  is  from the British Empire: not from the Edmonton Empire where Marie Lloyd had met her end.

            On the day before the coronation, lessons were abandoned, and we all trooped into the school hall for a party at which each child received a cup of lemonade, a slice of cake, and a fruit trifle in a cardboard carton.  These delicacies were provided by the generosity of the Edmonton Urban District Council, which, despite its Labour majority, was flamboyantly royalist on this occasion.  I presume that some enterprising caterer made a tidy profit out of that contract, for similar delicacies were supplied to every child in every school in Edmonton on that day.

            But if that had been all, I don't think the coronation would have remained so firmly in my memory.  It was the vision of the streets of the town that remains with me to this day.  Off the main roads, every street was decorated with lines of flags, and almost every house festooned with bunting.  It was like a mammoth, communal, mid-year, Christmas party in which everyone rejoiced.  Bakers' and milk roundsmen, and drivers of other delivery vans must have had a dreadful time, for along the centre of each of the working-class residential streets were set rows of trestle tables with chairs for all the residents.

            Each street had a party on Coronation Day, though in St. Edmund's Road, we went one better.  We had two: one for the posh end of the street, for the houses you buy; and the other for the Hoi Polloi, the council tenants.

            Fortunately it did not rain on the day, or at least it did not rain in Edmonton, and it was pleasant to sit out there in the middle of the street and tuck in to that vast open air feast, whilst officious individuals made loyal speeches that could not be heard from our end of the table.  That evening a dance-cum-party was held round the corner in Galliard Road School, which culminated in a beauty contest for the teen-aged girls, which, to my intense surprise, was won by my sister. 

            I loved Ruby dearly, but had always thought that she was very plain, and regretted that fact.  It was in Galliard Road School that I had the first intimation that my judgement on this point was totally at fault.  A few years later, when I was serving in the Royal Fusiliers in Iraq, I used her photograph to win two competitions for pictures of beautiful girl friends.  I didn't have a girl friend at that time; but her photograph made such an impression, that shortly after I was demobilised, one of my ex-sergeants arrived in St. Edmund's Road, ostensibly to renew our acquaintance, but in reality to get to know my beautiful sister.  It was a wasted effort.  He met Ruby, she was very polite to him, but by then she was already happily married.

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            Galliard Road school had been under construction to serve the council estate when we had first moved in, and had opened in the Autumn term of the same year.  As it was just round the corner, we got to know it quite well.  In the following year, we would visit it every Thursday evening.  The local authority, at least I imagine it was the local authority, provided for the children of the district, a weekly showing of silent films.  A penny was charged for admission, but even in those hard times, that was low enough for almost every child on the estate to afford it, and the school hall was always crammed to almost bursting point. There were four cinemas in Edmonton, and another three in Enfield Town, but they only showed modern talking pictures, and cost a lot more than 1d for admission: and the films they exhibited were nothing like as amusing as the slapstick comedy on offer in Galliard Road. Another attraction about those evenings, was that you could make as much noise as you liked, for you couldn't prevent others from hearing the dialogue, because there wasn't any dialogue.

            We loved those silent films, and used to long for Thursday evening: but all good things come to an end in time, and this particular good thing came to an end rather sooner than we had anticipated; for, after our third or fourth visit, Mum was horrified to find nits in our hair.  She was convinced, probably correctly, that we had picked them up in Galliard Road School: and, despite our vehement protests, most of which took place whilst Mum was painfully scouring our hair with a fine comb in search of other unwelcome visitors, our Thursday evening jaunts were over.

            We soon got over that disappointment because, at about this time, Pop got into the habit of taking the whole family to the real cinema during his Thursday afternoon half-day break from the shop.  Usually we would go to the Empire, which was within walking distance; but sometimes we'd take one of the trolley buses which were now running along Hertford Road and Fore Street, to the Alcazar, or to the new Regal Cinema which had just opened.  The Regal quickly became our favourite: not so much for the quality of the films that it showed; but because, between the films it sometimes presented fairly elaborate stage shows: and even when there were no stage shows; the resident organist would provide up to half an hour of entertainment between films, when the words of the songs were projected onto the screen and the audience would all sing mightily.  Other cinemas had resident organists, but none locally so prestigious as the Regal organist, who sometimes could be heard playing on the radio; and who bore a household name; but I must have left that particular household, for by now, I have totally forgotten what it was. I can still see that individual at the end of his performance, turning to wave to the audience with one hand, as he continued to play his instrument with the other hand and with his two feet, as it slowly descended out of our sight.

            Financially, like so many working-class parents of that period, Mum and Pop were metaphorically walking on a tightrope.  They always managed to feed us well, and to cloth us, and they were determined that no bills should remain unpaid: but the extra little luxuries, such as the visits to the cinema, could not always be kept up, and in some weeks we stayed in the house on Thursday afternoon.

            I think that generally we did not complain too much; though I am afraid that there was one dreadful Thursday afternoon when I behaved so disgracefully that to this day I feel guilty about it. The film at the Empire that week was 'Mutiny on the Bounty' staring Charles Laughton.  It was one of the most talked of films of the decade, but its arrival coincided with a period when our finances were stretched, and Pop did not have enough money to take all four of us to the cinema. However, he did have enough for just one ticket, and Mum suggested that as he worked so hard to earn what little money we had, that he should go alone. Reluctantly he agreed, and was about to leave the house when I realised that we were not to go with him. 

            I almost had hysterics, I begged, I implored, I screamed, that he should take us with him; though I wasn't really so much concerned that Ruby and Mum should see the film as long as I saw it myself.  In that charming fashion, I made poor Pop feel so thoroughly miserable, that finally he said that he would not go.  At that Mum got very angry with me, and insisted that he should.

            Finally, he did go out and saw the film, but my conduct had upset him so much that he  could not enjoy it. For my part I spent the afternoon and evening in a state of high dudgeon, and went to bed that night convinced that I had been treated extremely badly by my selfish parents.

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            Another event that was imprinted in my memory from that period, was the half-day holiday that we had in honour of the town receiving the charter which raised it from the lowly status of an urban district, to the much grander rank of a borough. This was regarded as of great significance for our school, for the first mayor of the new borough was the uncle of one of my fellow-pupils.  I think that we were proudly told this somewhat banal fact by Miss Bell, our headmistress, at a special assembly in the school hall.

            On the great day itself, we attended school in the morning, but only remained in the afternoon long enough to have our names ticked off in the class register.  Then the whole school traipsed outside and lined up on the pavement of Hertford Road to see the Mayor's car.  We didn't have to wait very long; though the actual arrival of the car was something of an anti-climax.  I don't know what I was expecting to see, but I thought it would be something more than a large car decorated with the new coat of arms of the borough, and containing a fat man wearing what looked like a red dressing gown, with a gold chain around his neck, and a funny hat perched on his bald pate.  I discovered the head was bald when he removed his hat to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd.  His hearing must have been very good, for I did not hear any cheers.

            After the car had passed, we all dispersed to our homes, and I spent the rest of the afternoon reading Hotspur in front of the fire. Next day we were treated to a lecture on the significance of the various items on the coat of arms.  Rather strangely I found that rather interesting, and for a little while forgot how bored I had been on the previous day, when the fat gentleman had waved to us.

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            People talking about those prewar days sometimes say that life was slower then.  If by slower they mean less strenuous, I think that is a nonsensical observation.  Most manual jobs, and many clerical jobs, were much more stressful than their equivalents today.  Generally working hours were longer, and pay, in real terms, much less.  Life for most people was much more difficult than it was to  become by the 1970s.  However, if the comment about life being slower is to be taken literally as a reference to traffic speeds, then there is something in it.  I suspect that road traffic in towns travelled, on average, at less than ten miles an hour.  A very popular game amongst my contemporaries, was to grab the tail board of a passing lorry, and hang on to it as it travelled down the street.  Sometimes there would be four or five children hanging on to a lorry, unbeknown to its driver.  I played that game two or three times, it wasn't particularly dangerous; and neither was the way that we often crossed the road.  We would disdain the new Belisha beaconed crossings, and stroll across the road well away from them: and I do mean stroll.  Cars, vans and other vehicles would be approaching from both directions, but it was a matter of pride that one should not run or even walk particularly fast.  As the vehicles were usually trundling along, they could easily be avoided.

            One reason for the slow speed of the petrol driven vehicles, was that they shared the road with other, slower forms of transport.  As I mentioned in my first chapter, there were occasional lumbering, smelly, steam lorries.  There were also very many horse drawn vehicles such as  coal carts and delivery vans. Now and then, one even saw a pony and trap, though by then, the few  people who could afford to run one, had bought motor cars.

            Only one member of our extended family had entered the ranks of the car owners.  That was my Uncle Joe, one of Pop's brothers, who had become the works manager of a very small factory.  I think he had about ten subordinates.  Small or not, the salary was enough for him to be able to buy a car that year; and we were all very proud of him.  The car was a second, third, or fourth hand, Austin Seven.  I think that he may have paid £10 to £15 for it: certainly not much more.  I travelled in it once.  Like all Austin Sevens, it was extremely small, and even at my size, I was conscious of the lack of space.  A circus had arrived in town, and, as we were slowly driving past the Regal Cinema, I looked out of the back window of the car, and was terrified to discover that a large elephant, was walking along the road just behind the car.

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            In spring and summer, the quiet of the residential streets would be disturbed by the bell of the ice-cream salesman, riding a tricycle containing a large container from which he dispensed ice-cream.  These men were employed by large companies.  The best known was probably Walls, though I favoured the products of the Daily Ice-Cream Company.

              Throughout the year, at weekends, St. Edmund's Road enjoyed the services of an itinerant sweet seller, who would push his barrow along the street, stopping when a customer approached.  He did not have a bell or any other signalling device, but we all looked out for him on Saturday mornings, and he did a very good trade.  I would be watching for him through the living room window, and when he approached, I would rush out, buy something for a couple of pence, and return to my easy chair and whatever I had been reading, and chew as I read.

            Then, as now, we had daily milk deliveries, but the milkman did not ride on an electric milk-float, but laboriously pushed the milk-float through the streets. There was also a bread delivery man, but he had a horse and cart to make his task that much easier. 

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            Soon after the coronation, the workmen who had been encamped in the Brick Fields, brewed their last cups of tea, packed up their tools and departed: and shortly after that the Brick Fields were reopened in their new splendour as Jubilee Park, named in honour of King George Vth's Silver Jubilee, which had taken place shortly before he died.  My friends and I regretted the passing of the Brick Fields.  In comparison, Jubilee Park was much too tame, and not half as interesting.  All the same, in its new guise, it did have its finer points.  In particular it contained a miniature golf course, which was, as miniature golf courses go, quite a large one: so large, in fact, that never having seen a golf course, I thought that it was full sized, and was rather disappointed at not seeing large tweedy men in plus fours arriving to play. One of the holes, perhaps the ninth, was set on an island shaped like Great Britain.  Not a real island, for it was not surrounded by water, but by a sanded area at a lower level.  I suspect that the intention had been to turn that into a little moat, but it never happened.  The golf course proved a very popular feature of the park, and on Summer Sunday afternoons, was always thronged with players.  I played on it once or twice myself, but as a general rule, I thought that I could find better things to do with the little money that I had.

            The park also contained a children's playground which was one of the largest that I had ever seen.  It seemed to have two of everything: two slides, two roundabouts and two sets of swings.  This was because, as well as providing spanking new equipment, the Council had removed the play equipment from the nearby Henry Barris Recreation Ground, and re-sited it in the park.  The play area also contained a concrete pit with sloping sides, and two entrances through which some children hurtled on their roller skates.  That pit was a constant puzzle to all of us, for we could not think what it was for. Sometimes we would sit on the top of the sloping sides and argue for hours (well for quite a few minutes) about its purpose.  I inclined to the view that it originally had been intended as a sand pit, and, in time, I  managed to swing most of my friends round to that viewpoint. However, my theory could not have been correct for sand never arrived, apart from the grit blown into the pit on windy days.

            The pit must have been built to give pleasure to children, for it was in the centre of the children's playground, but, as the Edmonton Borough Council never thought to tell us what we could do with it or in it; we generally did nothing with it, and fairly soon stopped going near it.  To sit on its edge and engage in philosophical speculations about its purpose was not a particularly rewarding activity.

            Soon after the park opened, some bright individual in St. Edmund's Road hit on the idea of organising a paper chase in the park for the children of the council estate, and for the less snobbish children from the houses you buy.  Accordingly, one Sunday afternoon, Don and I, with newspaper delivery boys' bags on our backs, set off ten minutes before the pack, through the gates of Jubilee Park, and then on a diagonal course across the golf course scattering scraps of paper about us as we went.  I don't know whether the pack would have caught up with us in time if we had continued on our chosen route to the other end of the park, but we were not permitted to continue on our chosen route, for after we had run about a hundred yards across the course, we were suddenly confronted by an irate park keeper, who, using words, that would have got me a thrashing had I used them; demanded that we pick up all the rubbish that we had dropped.

            Shamefacedly, we retreated back to the gates, collecting paper as we went: at which point the pack reached us and we had to explain that the paper chase was off.  I think most of us spent the rest of the afternoon fairly happily on the swings, slides and roundabouts in the playground.

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            The same summer, Uncle Eddie, Mum's brother, arrived from Cork with his friend Billy Stephens, to stay with us for a few weeks.  I have no idea where we put them, we only had three bedrooms and I was getting too old to share a bed with Ruby: but presumably we found somewhere for them to sleep.  We enjoyed their company, and they seemed to enjoy ours, though they did not seem to do anything very exciting on their holiday, apart from visiting other members of the family, or going to a pub or to the cinema: but they were a change from our English relatives, and Ruby and I both grew to love Billy Stephens.  He was a cheerful, fresh faced, curly haired young Irishman, with a wonderful way with children: and though he was of an age to concern himself with chasing after girls, he was always prepared to spend a lot of time with us; and never minded giving Pop a hand in the garden, or Mum a hand when she was peeling potatoes or shelling peas.  We were rather sorry when they both left.

            Years later I learnt that they did not have any train tickets, but just return tickets on the Fishguard-Cork ferry, but that somehow they managed to hide themselves from the ticket collector on the train from Paddington. I had some doubts about that story, and always intended to ask Uncle Eddie if it were true.  As he is dead now, I suppose I will never know; though even if I had asked him, I could not be sure that he would have given me the real facts.  He had a great imagination, and would never let a little thing like accuracy get in the way of telling a good story.

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            As I have already said, I was now near the top of the class, my really bright contemporaries having departed for St. Ignatius College. With a number of the other brighter children in my year, I was given a second chance to improve my educational status.  There was a possibility that some of us would be accepted by the Edmonton Higher Grade School, an institution somewhat better than an elementary school, though not as prestigious as a secondary school.  One afternoon, we went along to the Higher Grade School to take the test, which was similar in nature to the scholarship examination, though rather to my surprise, I found it to be rather more difficult.  No doubt it was, but for me the result was the same. Once again I had blown it; though this time I didn't even have the excuse of fear that the great globe would descend on my head.

            Much to Mum's fury, my cousin, Gussy, did succeed.  She was going through one of her many bouts of not being on speaking terms with Aunty Monnie, and couldn't bear the thought of Aunty Monnie crowing about Gussy's success, and my failure.  Though provided she was prepared to remain on non-speaking terms with her sister-in-law, there was no danger of her suffering that indignity.  However, on this occasion, I did feel rather humiliated also.  Back at St. Edmund's with a little more of the competition translated to another school, I moved up a few more places, and was in spitting distance of being at the top of the class.

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            At this time I had ten living uncles, fourteen aunts, twenty-four cousins, and four grandparents.  We were a large family in the widest extended sense, and geographically, apart from an off-shoot of my mother's side, in Bradford, concentrated in two areas, Edmonton-Tottenham, and Cork. Despite it being such a large family, it was one that had suffered no deaths in all the years since I was born. Now came the first death that I can remember, the death of my father's brother, my namesake, my Uncle Alf.

            One Thursday I returned from school to find my Grandfather sitting in the living room and everyone strangely sombre.  Uncle Alf had died, quite suddenly, leaving Aunty Lil, a widow, with two young children.  He had been watching a cricket match, and suddenly he had collapsed.  When a doctor arrived on the scene, he was dead.

            I had seldom seen Uncle Alf, perhaps not more than once or twice a year, for he had lived in Faversham in Kent, away from the family tribal ground; yet, when I had seen him, I had rather liked him.  I was sent across Jubilee Park that afternoon on some errand, and, as I walked past the golf course and then the bowling green, over and over again in my mind I was reliving the moments when I had seen my uncle alive and well.  I think that I was trying to will him to be alive again.  I would retrace in my mind those moments that had only just passed when Grandad told me the news: it was as if I was trying to find some flaw in the sequence of events, that would prove it wrong, so that the logic of Uncle Alf really being dead would suddenly be illogical, and he would be alive again. I did not want to admit to myself that he was dead. 

            This was, after all, my first experience of death.  I suppose I was unusually lucky not to have experienced it at an earlier age.  Now I have experienced it a number of times, and always, as during that first time, I find myself mentally trying to will the dead person back to life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I was now making firmer friendships at school, and, in the process, weakening the bond with Jimmy Graulisch.  My particular friend now, was a boy of my own age, Harry Powell, the son of a regimental sergeant major.  I was very impressed: Mr Bonnar, our retired sergeant major neighbour, had only been a company sergeant major.

            Harry was considerably bigger than me, and a very solid character in more than one sense.  There was something almost rock-like about the degree of conviction with which he held any opinion, even the daftest, and they often were rather daft.  But daft as they were, I'd almost always agree with him, not because I was convinced by the logic of his argument, but because it seemed impossible that anyone so solid and sure of himself could ever be wrong.

            He lived in Galliard Road, and I would walk with him  from school each afternoon, listening to, and agreeing with all his pontifications.  Then we would reach his house and I would continue on to my home, which took me about another fifteen minutes; but now, able to let my mind wander in any direction that I wished without feeling that I should think what Harry thought.  He was my friend, I suppose that for a while he was my very best friend; yet always, when I left him at his gate, a feeling of relief would come over me.  The solidity of his convictions was so strong that it was positively oppressive, and it was pleasant to be alone at last with my own thoughts, and my imagination free to wander in whatever direction it chose without any risk of contradiction from omniscient Harry.

            At that age I had not yet become politically conscious, and had very little idea of what was happening in the wider world. Of course, Harry, who like myself was eleven in 1938, knew all that there was to know, and had me, his timid and unwilling acolyte, helping him stick little posters on lamp posts and telegraph poles on our way home from school, which bore the words "Sanctions against Italy.  Hands off Abyssinia". 

            Today, I am a little puzzled by that wording, for Italy had conquered Abyssinia two years before that date; but Harry had said that he had attended a meeting in Trafalgar Square to protest against Britain's recognition of that conquest, and no doubt the organisers thought that it was a good opportunity to recycle some old stickers. I was, as always, very impressed that Harry had been allowed to go to London by himself.  Now I am sure that if he wasn't simply lying,  his father or some other adult must have taken him, but then, I completely believed him. I was very naive in those days.

            Harry was not all solidity and political commitment, however.  He had his lighter moments, and Harry being Harry, and me being me, inevitably they became my lighter moments also.  Often they took the form of playing "Knock Down Ginger" on the way home from school.  It was a peculiarly pointless amusement for many boys, and consisted of knocking on street doors, or ringing bells, though there did not seem to be many doorbells in those days, and then running away, and watching from a safe distance the householder's frustration and annoyance when she opened the door to find no one there.  Apart from the fact that I was frightened that we would be caught and arrested, I felt rather sorry for the householders. But Harry thought that it was great.  So we did it.

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            At school we formed a little private group of friends, Harry, Peter Keogh, Pat Messer, Myself, and one or two others whose names I have forgotten.  We seldom took part in the current playground activities which followed a regular sequence throughout the year, glarnies (glass marbles), five stones, playing cards, tops, catapults, then back to glarnies again.  We would stand aloof from all that: literally stand aloof, on an old wooden bench over by the fence at one end of the playground, and create our own private fantasy world.  We didn't do very much during the playtimes, but in our imaginations roamed the world and ventured into outer space.  As a group we were great on imagination.

            Pat Messer was particularly imaginative.  Like Reggie, he was the son of a bus conductor, and lived in a little bungalow in Galliard Road, though when we first knew him he lived in an old house in a turning off Bury Street.  He convinced us that he was a member of the Secret Service; and, after some persuasion, agreed to enrol us as members.  This he did.  He signalled our initiation by presenting us with little metal badges one Monday morning, which we were to wear inside our coats where no one could see them.

            Strangely enough, we were never called upon to perform any duties for the Secret Service, and, as I never officially handed in my resignation, no doubt I am still a member. 

            He also told us that he had working models of space ships, which could remain in the air for at least an hour, and, in that time could fly from Edmonton to Wales and back.  He had a whole fleet of these models, but, for reasons of security, no doubt there was some Secret Service link, he never got round to showing them to us.  On the other hand, he did show us his set of non-working replicas of the space ship models: little lead constructions containing the words 'Buck Rogers Space Fleet', but compared with the reality, which we never saw, they were a considerable disappointment.

            Harry and I used to spend much time on his door step before he moved to Galliard Road, playing with his toys.  He was well endowed with toys, even if his space ships didn't actually fly.  He had an army of lead soldiers with cannons and howitzers, spring loaded, that actually did fire tiny projectiles.  Though every time one was fired, we would then have to spend a lot of time looking for it in the grass, for they were not easy to replace.

            After the Messer family moved to Galliard Road, his mother put her foot down, and totally prohibited such door-step activities.  However, occasionally she half-relented to the extent that she let us come inside; and when that happened we usually played with one of Pat's many board games: Monopoly, Totopoly, or Buccaneer.  Those games had not long been on the market, but as soon as they came out his parents bought them for him.  He was an only child.

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            That same year had begun what was for me a weekly purgatory: the compulsory visit to the swimming bath at the Town Hall. I used to spend a considerable part of that day brooding about the coming visit. I think we went on Tuesday afternoons, when, straight after registration, all the boys would be lined up in the playground, and then, towels and swimming trunks under our arms, Mr Long would lead us, in a long crocodile out of the school, and along Hertford Road in the direction of the Town Hall.

            Always it seemed to be a drizzly day; and always my spirits were drizzly also.  At the Town Hall we would go to the second class swimming pool, we would enter the cubicles which  lined the walls, and then quickly or slowly, in my case, extremely slowly, we would undress and put on our swimming trunks.

            From the start I hated it.  I hated the awful smell of chlorine as we entered the building; I hated the appearance of the oily water which I could see a few feet before me as I undressed; but most of all I hated the aggressive instructor, who, having to cope with fifty boys, had no time for finesse, but taught by threats, and occasional blows.

            It was weeks before I could bring myself to jump into the pool.  At first I would climb gingerly down step by step, with the water becoming colder with each step, until my feet touched bottom, and I stood shivering in the shallow end with the water up to my waist.  I would spend most of the lesson, hanging on to the bar at the side, and making ineffectual swimming movements with my legs, but getting colder and colder as the minutes passed.  Sometimes the instructor would order us to swim a width.  Then would begin a straggling movement across the bath, the advanced pupils, swimming in slow breast strokes; the incompetent, myself included, bringing up the rear, walking across the bath, and making swimming movements with our arms that deceived no one.

            Yet, though I hated everything connected with these weekly swimming lessons, I desperately wanted to be able to swim.  How I envied the fortunate ones, who having swum two lengths, received the special tickets which enabled them to go to the open air Lido pool at a cheap rate.  I had the idea that if the beginners lessons had been transferred to the Lido, I might have learnt to swim: for I was convinced that it was only the fact that we had to use the shoddy, smelly, second class pool that prevented me from learning to swim.  I even went along to the Lido from choice, a couple of times during the school holidays and had a most enjoyable time, splashing around in the shallow end in the open air under a fairly hot Sun in July.  But while I was forced to walk each week to the hell of the second class Town Hall bath, I never learnt to swim.

            It wasn't until eight years later, when I was serving in the Army in Greece, that I managed it; in the Agean, and then only after I had plucked up the courage to open my eyes under water.  After that, it was almost plain sailing, or rather fairly plain  swimming, though I actually learnt to swim under water before I could swim on the surface.

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            Another weekly descent into purgatory took place on Thursday afternoons.  Now that I was one of the senior boys, though only just, I had to attend at the woodwork centre in Houndsfield Road School.  The centre was a large brown shed in the corner of the boys' playground.  It was filled with standard work benches, and smelt unpleasantly of new wood and glue.  It was staffed by two teachers, one quiet and rather gentle, and the other ferocious, who scared me half silly.  There were no seats in the room, and we made to stand with arms folded as the register was called by the ferocious teacher, and answer smartly, "Present, Sir" at the appropriate time. 

            Then the lesson would begin.  The teacher would order us to gather round as he talked and demonstrated a particular technique: but there were so many boys that I was seldom near enough to see what he was doing, or even hear what he was saying. If you were caught leaning on a bench in the absence of a seat, you were rewarded with a sharp slap from the ferocious teacher's steel ruler, and a promise that next time he would use his cane.

            I was completely hopeless at woodwork.  We started with simple joints, but I never found them simple.  My joints were always too big.  I would chisel and chisel away until there was hardly any wood left to chisel.  Then I would sometimes be rewarded with the teacher' steel ruler on my hand, which did not make me any more accurate when I tried to fashion another joint.  Then we were set to make our first practical piece of work: a wooden cigarette box.  Mine finished on the rubbish heap.  After that I drifted into a dreary sequence of never completing any work at the woodwork centre.  Nothing I started was ever finished; yet, as neither master seemed to have the time nor the inclination to give any individual tuition, I persisted in my mistakes, and gradually got worse and worse.

            Strangely enough, I never injured myself with any of the tools that I mishandled.  That may have been because the only instruction to which I paid any attention, was that given on our first afternoon when it was explained that for reasons of safety, we must always hold sharp tools away from the body, and must place chisels and any other dangerous tools in a safe position from where they could not inadvertently slip off the bench.

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            School itself could be quite a violent place, whether that violence was inflicted by the teachers for disciplinary reasons, or by the pupils on other pupils.  Hardly a week passed without some sort of rough and tumble in the playground between groups of boys.  These encounters were usually of a fairly friendly nature, and though they might lead to  a few bruises and bloody noses; nobody minded very much.  In a different category were the grudge battles which were fought between sworn enemies, over series matters such as an accusation that someone had pinched someone elses glarnies or fag cards.

            These encounters always took place in the traditional duelling ground, the 'alley', which was not an alley, but a small open space at the end of an alley on the other side of Bounces Road from the school.  The combatants would agree to meet after school following a dispute during playtime, and the news would spread like wildfire through the whole school; so that when lessons ended, almost the entire school population would troop across the road, and up the short alley, to gather in the field of battle.

            Though these were serious matters over important things, after all a good glarny could cost as much as a 1d, rather less blood was spilt during the fights than during the good natured but boisterous conflicts at playtime.  After all, in the alley there were only two combatants, compared with the ten or so in the playground, and consequently there was rather less chance of an unexpected blow making contact.  In any case, by the time that the fight was due to start, both contestants were in a state of nervous apprehension, and when they began each would spend some time waving his fists aggressively in the general direction of his opponent, calling him names, and threatening him with dire punishment.  There was never much action: perhaps two minutes of fist waving and swearing, followed by a clinch which would last about ten seconds, and during which a punch or two might land.  Then the contestants would break apart and spend another two minutes circling each other at a distance, and beating the air.  That might be followed by another short clinch. 

            Usually after about seven minutes, honour was satisfied, the 'boxers' would call a halt: might even shake hands; and sometimes even walk off together, apparently the greatest of friends; and the crowd would disperse.

            Only once was I a principal in a fight of this type, though it did not take place in the Alley, but in a turning off Bury Street.  I can't think why there was this break with tradition, unless it was that, abject coward that I am, I was on my way home and my adversary and the crowd of spectators caught up with me.  But I don't think that was the reason, for much as I may have been afraid of getting physically hurt, I was much more afraid of the ridicule I would face if I returned to school next day having run away from a fight.  It is more likely that we had learnt that the teachers had got wind of our intention and were waiting for us in the alley, thus causing us to chose that new venue.

            We could hardly have chosen a more unsuitable place, for we fought in the middle of the road, with the crowd, standing around us, some on the pavement, but most on the road. Twice, after we had begun, we had to break off to let traffic pass; yet strangely enough, we did not attract the attention of the police, even though, in my estimation, our fight lasted half an hour.  That was what it seemed to me.  In reality, it probably lasted less than six minutes.

            To this day, I cannot remember what we fought about.  My opponent was a boy from the Murphy family, shorter than me, but very broad shouldered. I think he issued the challenge during afternoon playtime because of a real or fancied insult: or perhaps, he just thought it would be a good idea to have a fight with me.  Whatever the reason, it ruined my afternoon.  I couldn't work; and just when I was trying to forget what was going to happen, someone would lean over to me and whisper: "You gonna 'ave a fight wiv Murphy after school?  Bet 'e makes yer nose bleed!"  I didn't take that bet, for I was sure that he would; though in the event I was wrong; though Murphy certainly won that fight.

            What depressed me so much about the whole business, was that tradition demanded that we should box. I always considered boxing to be a pretty soppy and painful way of fighting.  On the other hand, I rather fancied myself as being a skilful wrestler: yet we were never allowed to wrestle in the Alley fights, as wrestling wasn't real fighting.  In fact, if the ferocious master at the woodwork centre caught two boys playfully wrestling, he would box them both on the ears; then tell them to square up to each other and fight like civilised men. Civilised men always boxed.  The Empire was built on such traditions. I preferred to fight if I had to, in my own  uncivilised, but considerably less painful way.

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            The Murphys, and there were at least five of them passing through the school, were one of the poorest families in our Catholic community.  I believe that their father was unemployed for all the time that his children were at school.  Not that he was a feckless individual, but, as an unskilled Irishman, he was always at the back of the queue when work was being handed out.  Every school day, just before the bell sounded for the end of the morning school, the Murphy children would have to stand with other children of the unemployed by the class teacher's desk, to be given little yellow tickets.  Those tickets they took to the dinner centre at Eldon Road, each lunch time, where they received a free meal.  In those prewar days, there were no school dinners for the majority of children.  It was expected that they would go home to their mothers for their midday meal, or eat their sandwiches in the playground, or in the hall if it was raining.  Only the children of the really poor, the unemployed, or the fatherless children, had meals provided, though not in the actual school: and, for that privilege they were forced to suffer the indignity of lining up for their yellow tickets each day.  The rest of us felt very superior.

            My lunch break was always quite pleasant.  I would walk home, sometimes with friends for part of the way, and, when I got home, there was always a hot meal ready for me.  I used to think that my mother was the best cook in the world: though, when I became an adult I realised that she had only limited competence in that area.  But as a child, my favourite dish was stew, which I now realise is a relatively easy dish to produce.  I loved having stew for dinner, and we had it at least once each week.  I would always begin with some stew in a cup, into which I would stuff pieces of bread until the level rose to the rim and would sometimes spill over onto the tablecloth.  I would eat it with a large soup spoon, and when it was finished, turn to the  stew on my plate, which was of exactly the same quality as that which I had just had in  the cup.  I don't know when the ritual of the preliminary cup of stew had begun, but I know that it continued until well after I had left school and was working in a factory.

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            Apart from the weekly visit to the swimming pool and the weekly session in the woodwork hut, and the hazard of being challenged to box, life at St. Edmund's was comparatively pleasant during that year, even if I was the only member of our family at the school.  Though now that I think of it there was another Baker as a pupil.  After the death of Uncle Alf, Aunty Lil had brought the two children to Edmonton, to live with her parents in Bury Street, and now her son, Peter, had become a pupil at St. Edmunds: though, I did not see that much of my cousin, as he was a junior and I was in the seniors and therefore far above him in status.

            It was now the run up to Christmas, and I felt a little sad that Ruby was not with me to take part in the school celebrations.  It was a tradition that on the last afternoon of term, before the school broke up for the holiday, a little concert was held in the hall.  It was never very much of a concert, and no parents were invited; but we enjoyed it.  We all crowded into the hall, which was only as big as two classrooms: in fact I think it was two classrooms with the partition wall between them removed.  There we would be entertained by our school-fellows, usually with many of the same items as in the previous year's concert.  One boy stood by the piano, at which sat his friend who played as he sang:

            "Lazybones,  Sleepin' in the sun,

            How d'you hope to get your day's work done

            How d'you 'spect to get it done?

            Sleepin' in the mid-day Sun."

I think it was a song made famous by the great coloured singer, Paul Robeson.  My school colleague was no Robeson, but we enjoyed it and clapped heartily when he had finished.

            Other children recited poems, or perhaps juggled, or, usually it was a girl, tap danced.  In the previous year Ruby had sung a song with two of her friends.  I had hoped that, like the performance of the Lazybones singer, this would become a school tradition, and that we would have a repeat performance this year; but, as she was at the Junior Technical School, it was not to be.  As for me, I couldn't think of anything that I could do that the public would want to see.

            Christmas for us had begun to develop into a regular pleasant pattern since we had moved to St. Edmund's Road.  Pop would arrive home rather late on Christmas Eve.  It was a busy time for him at the shop, but he would usually be a little merry, having had a few drinks with the staff before they locked up.  We would be staying up very late, as we always went to Midnight Mass, and, as we intended to take Holy Communion, we never had any food or drink after 9 pm., but as it was Christmas, Ruby and I were allowed a little glass of port or sherry just before nine. 

            We would start walking to the church at about eleven.  That meant that we would be there before the doors opened, but there would always be a long queue waiting to get in, and, had we arrived any later, we would have had to stand through the whole service.  I suppose that now that I was an altar server, I could have had a place on the altar sitting with the others in a stall; but I don't recall ever serving at Midnight Mass, preferring to remain with my family in the congregation.

            The church was full by at least 11.40, and, long before the service began, the choir and the organ would be leading the congregation in the singing of hymns and carols.  Then, at last, the altar would be crowded with priests and servers, and the great mass would begin.  There was a very special atmosphere in the church on these occasions, which had little to do with solemnity.  It may have had something to do with so many people being crowded into that relatively small space: yet there were plenty of other times when the church was full, without there being the same atmosphere of expectation.  I think it was the warmth that seemed to be generated by a special feeling of goodwill that was shared by all the congregation.  We were together, part of the Christian family that was celebrating at this time all over Britain: and, in the course of the next few hours, as the globe spun, the same pattern would repeat itself in other parts of the world.

            A fair part of the sermon, which followed the gospel reading, would be a list of all the people who had helped in the church in the preceding years. This I found rather tedious, and, as a consequence my eyes would begin to close at that point, and my head start to fall forward: though I usually managed to stop myself from actually falling asleep: but from then on, the proceedings seemed to go on almost for ever, particularly when it was time for communion, and the great numbers meant that three or more priests had to administer the sacrament, which must have taken twenty minutes or so before all the communicants had been served.  Soon after that the mass was over, though by then it was well past 1 a.m.  But even then we didn't leave the church immediately, as, on our way out, we would join the crowds waiting to kneel before the crib and pray before the image of the child Jesus and the Holy Family.

            Finally we were outside the church in the winter weather, though, this being England, rarely into snowy weather: but we were not to go straight home, for always we would be buttonholed by Phylis Risley, a distant relative, whom I should, perhaps, have called aunt, but never did; or by one of the Burk family, Uncle Alf's in-laws.  Whoever was the buttonholer, the result was always that our journey home was broken by a visit to their house, where a cup or two, or three, of tea would always be drunk before we were allowed to continue on our way.  This refreshment was quite welcome, but it was sometimes difficult for my parents to tear themselves away afterwards, and I would be asleep in a chair before the adults had concluded their conversation.

            At last we would get away, and, perhaps by 2 a.m or even later we would be back in our own little house, where, perhaps after a ham sandwich or some other snack, I would be in my bed, soon asleep, and not to rise again until noon.

            Thus, we seldom saw any of Christmas morning.  For us, Christmas was the rest of the day from Noon to sometime after ten.  A short enough time, but I loved it.  For me, at that age, the whole day passed like a slow wonderful dream: a dream that I had been anticipating for the whole long preceding year.  Year after year, I experienced that special feeling of joy, which I never needed to discuss with my family, for I was quite sure that they were experiencing it also.  Christmas was such a special time: The Time.  No other time really mattered.  It wasn't that the presents that I received were so wonderful.  On Pop's meagre pay they were never very numerous, and they were certainly not expensive: But it was the special family feeling that made that time seem so miraculous.

            Some Christmases other members of our extended family would be with us: our grandparents, or perhaps an uncle or an aunt or two. Or we might visit them for part of the day; though never for the whole day. The afternoon of Christmas Day itself, or what was the afternoon to us as we had risen so late, from about 4 pm to 8 pm., might be spent by our parents in dozing in front of the fire, whilst Ruby and I got to know our presents.

            During one Christmas in St. Edmund's Road, perhaps it was our first, our principal presents were roller skates. We had both asked for them, for in our street they had become very fashionable, and almost all the children had them, or were getting them. To be honest, I didn't want them very much, I suspected, rightly as it turned out, that I would have great trouble mastering them: but, I knew that if I did not have them, I would be left alone by my sister and all our friends when they skated off together.  That Christmas afternoon, we put them on, and set off, and, in the street, were joined by the other members of our gang, all mounted on skates.  We began to skate round the block.  For me it was a terrifying experience. To stay upright I had to constantly clutch walls and gates which slowed the whole party down: and I was roundly abused by my friends for being a coward.  Funnily enough, I did not fall down, though almost all the other novice skaters did so several times.  I was far too careful for that.

            When we finally returned home, I took the skates off and thankfully put them away.  I used them extremely infrequently after that, and finally not at all.  They ended up rusting away in our coal cellar, which was not a cellar but a very large cupboard, with space for coal, and an adjacent area where other items, could be dustily stored.  Ruby, far more courageous than her timid brother, continued to use her skates.

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            In the 1930s, no male in our society wore his his hair below his collar, or even touching the collar.  Most men would visit the barber at least once a month, and usually more often that that. I used to get my hair cut every three weeks, which cost, I seem to remember, 2s/6d, which is 12p in our coinage.  The barber's shop that I usually frequented was not a very attractive place. It was a long rectangular room with two adjustable chairs, in which the men having their hair cut sat, and a row of chairs against the back wall for the people waiting their turn.  There were old papers to read, and lots of tuft of hair scattered about on the floor, which every quarter or an hour or so, might be swept up by one of the staff.   For a while I patronised a barber's shop in Bounces Road, which Mum had taken me to before we left for Dagenham.  All the children in the school must have had regular haircuts, yet I never remember seeing any other boys in the place when I was there.  I felt rather intimidated amongst all those cigarette and pipe smoking men.

            After we had moved to St. Edmund's Road, I used the same shop, but as it did mean going a little way in the opposite direction from home,  I looked for somewhere else, and finally found it in a tiny shop in Hertford Road, operated by one man without any assistants, and with very few customers.  The barber looked a little like 'Old Bill' from the Bruce Bairnsfather First World War Cartoons.  Perhaps he was the model for the original, for he was of about that generation.  The old man took rather a fancy to me, and after I had been coming there for several months, suggested that when I left school I might care to come to work in his shop.  His idea was that I should put in some money and become a partner in the business for a few years, and then when the old man retired, take it over completely.  It was quite an attractive idea, apart from the fact that we had no money to spare.  I did discuss it with my parents, but they both thought that it was totally impractical.  Apart from our lack of cash, with my two left hands, I would probably have made a very incompetent barber, and with me in charge, very soon the barber shop's few customers would have been reduced to no customers. Once we had decided that I was not to be the barber of Edmonton, I stopped using that shop.  I felt too embarrassed to explain to the old man that we had too little money and I was too incompetent to take up his suggestion.

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            Uncle Ted, Aunty Kath, and their children, had now moved from the house round the corner from Denton Road, to a new 'house you buy' in Potters Bar, and, a few months later we were invited to spend the day with them.   Potters Bar was then largely a building site set down in one of the few areas of countryside that the largely urban county of Middlesex possessed.  It had yet to become the suburban sprawl of the postwar years.  Uncle Ted's new house was at the top of a newly built street that ran up a hill, and at the end of the back garden were green fields, that were to remain in nature's hands until the developers were ready to turn to them and cover them with bricks. I loved the house, and I loved its setting.  Mum was rather disdainful, though not in her brother-in-law's presence, and later said that he had taken on a a crippling debt which would take him the rest of his life to repay.  About  that she was wrong.  He died before he had repaid it, but she wasn't to know that.  I think that the truth was that she was very envious.

            Our visit took place on a beautiful summer's day, and we children spent much of it out of doors.  Their garden was then attractively untamed, and, at its end was a crooked tree, to which Ruby made a beeline, and from where she spent part of the afternoon, hanging upside down from its branches. I thought it was an odd thing to do, and wondered if, perhaps Mum had been frightened by a bat shortly before Ruby was born.  Somewhere, I know,  there is a faded photograph of her in that position.

            I spent part of the day reading as many copies as I could find of my cousin, Terry's Mickey Mouse Weekly magazine, and then I was introduced to one of his new Potters Bar friends whose father had made a model racing car of plywood construction, but with no controls, apart from a steering wheel and a handbrake.  Its owner was generous enough to let me ride in it.  Once I was seated, he and Terry gave it a far from gentle push and with mounting speed I began to descend the hill, with the now frantic owner chasing after me, and calling me to stop.

            He was nothing like as frantic as I was.  There were no cars on the road, but far below, was a T junction, and plenty of traffic on the road that crossed it.  I applied the brake, but nothing happened.  I pulled hard on it, but still nothing happened.  I was going faster and faster.  Finally, in desperation, I spun the wheel and crashed the vehicle into the kerb, stopping it instantly.  I suffered no physical damage, and, so far as I could see, neither did the car.  A few seconds later, its owner arrived.  He glowered at me and said: "Get out", which I did.  Never again on my visits to Potters Bar was I offered a ride in that car.

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            Relations are relations, and, as such, are a necessary part of one's life: they are not necessarily one's friends; but sometimes, if the fates are kind, they can be.

            One such friendly relation, was my cousin, Stan, the younger of two boys.  He was  a couple of months older than me.  His elder brother, Laurie, achieved brief local fame by becoming a Liberal parliamentary candidate in the 50s: but even in those prewar days, the whole family were convinced that Laurie and Stan were bound to do well. Like his brother, Stan had won a scholarship to the Tottenham Grammar School. 

            I was often over at their house.  Sometimes we would be visiting my grandparents, who had moved from Edmonton and taken the house next to theirs in Tottenham. On such visits, I would shoot next door to visit Stan, leaving Mum talking to Grandma.

            Most adults seemed to think that Stan was rather shy.  Perhaps he was, for, though he was a superb mimic, and often entertained me with impersonations of radio stars, and of members of the family, I discovered many years later, that I was the only person before whom he was prepared to demonstrate this gift.  With me, he seemed to blossom.  We would play billiards on the small billiard table that they had, but I would never win.  I don't suppose under any other circumstances I would have won, because my coordination has always been poor: but it didn't help that he kept me in fits of laughter by his inspired clowning all through the game.

            He also taught me to play chess: or, to be more accurate, he taught me the rules of chess.  He certainly didn't teach me to play the game.  On each of my visits, we would have a session at the chess board, and each time I would lose.  It was only about eight years later, when I was in the Army, that a sympathetic officer, showed me what I had been doing wrong, which was to always begin by moving rook's pawn to rook four in a vain attempt to protect my king.

            When I came home on leave, I played Stan again, and, to his surprise beat him: but once was enough.  I don't think that I ever played him again.  Once he had got over the initial surprise, he would probably have trounced me again.

            However, all that was in the future.  In 1938, apart from losing at chess and billiards, I enjoyed being in that upstairs room which contained lots of books and magazines, many of them belonging to Laurie.  One I particularly remember, was a magazine called Armchair Science.  I would browse in copies of that whilst Stan was engaged in a long winning break at snooker, a game which he had also taught me to play (badly).  Much of the material in Armchair Science was above my head, particularly when it was dealing with technical matters, but there would be articles of pure speculation which were couched in highly romantic terms, painting visions of a wonderful future.  These I would devour avidly.

            In some ways, to drop into sociological jargon, my cousins' family at 1, Trulock Road, Tottenham, constituted a reference group for me.  Uncle George was a master carpenter with wide intellectual interests.  Aunty Ethel, was always considered to be the most brainy of Pop's sisters and brothers, and, had she been born some forty years later, she would certainly have gone to university, as did her younger son, though not, strangely enough, Laurie, who I had always considered to be an intellectual giant.  She read a great deal, and was a most accomplished pianist, and supplemented Uncle George's carpentry earnings, by teaching the piano.  In the 1920s, she had been an active member of the small Marxist, Socialist Party of Great Britain, and it may have been at a Party meeting that she had first met Uncle George; or it may have been some time later when they were both members of the Clarion Cycling Club, a body of energetic socialists who would discuss ways of setting the world to rights as they sped on their bicycles through the English countryside. Intellectually, they seemed to be well matched.

            In their parlour was a large cabinet of books.  The only large collection of books in any of the family homes that I visited then. There were several volumes of plays by an author that I had heard of but never read, William Shakespeare.  I tried reading Julias Caesar on one visit, but I didn't make much of it at the time. Yet whilst I did not become a Shakespeare lover at that age, that had to wait until my twenties, my visits to Trulock Road did lead to a change in some of my reading habits.

            As I have already mentioned, I had been a regular reader of the magazine Hotspur.  Stan took Modern Boy, and his copies of that magazine seemed very interesting, so I switched to it from Hotspur  and continued reading it regularly until it died at the start  of the war.  It was very different from the boys' magazines that I had been used to.  There was a series about Captain Justice, a millionaire airline owner, who had his own private state on a floating island in the Atlantic, and who spent much of his time leaving his airline to look after itself, solving problems from all parts of the compass, and even at times in outer space.  In these endeavours he was assisted by a teen aged boy with whom the readers could identify; a large but, strangely enough, uncomic Irishman; and a benign scientist who had the title of professor but was never shown to be occupying a chair in any university.

            I suspect that if I read Captain Justice today, I would find latent fascism in the behaviour of its characters: but in my relatively innocent childhood, though real fascism was stalking through Europe, I just saw the stories as demonstrating the triumph of virtue, assisted by considerable technological superiority, over vice.

            The other regular features that convinced me that Modern Boy was a superior periodical, included the Biggles stories of Captain W.E. Johns.  They had quite a lot in common with the Captain Justice stories, though without the same degree of technological know-how.

            A second magazine of that period, I discovered for myself, with no help from Stan.  That was Modern Wonder, a sixteen page paper, which made up for its lack of size by the splendour of its colour illustrations, which were often cut away diagrams of aircraft, ships or machinery.  There may have been some fiction in Modern Wonder, but I think not.  It consisted almost entirely of illustrated articles on scientific and mechanical topics.  I think that I may have liked the idea of the magazine rather more than I liked the reality.  I got more pleasure from reading Modern Boy, or even from reading Hotspur; but there was a certain cachet about being a reader of Modern Wonder that no other boys' periodical provided.  It was a matter of pride to be seen with a copy in the school playground.  Like Modern Boy, it ceased publication in the early months of the war.

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            In the summer of 1938, I joined the 11th Edmonton Troop of the Boy Scouts.  I had wanted to be a scout for years, but Mum had been reluctant to give her consent as she believed that it would lead to me wanting to go to a scout camp, which, for some reason, she thought undesirable.

            I was very proud to be a scout, though I only attended for one evening each week.  The meetings were held in the hall of Croyland Road School, which was only a few hundred yards from my school.  The town did possess a Catholic scout troop, with a distant relative of mine as the scoutmaster.  Perhaps that was why I chose not to join it.  I used to spend much of the rest of the week looking forward to the next Tuesday when I would be with the troop.  I was placed in the Buffalo Patrol.  Our patrol leader, a boy of my own age, named Foster, was a pupil at the Edmonton County School.  We would pass each other every morning on our way to our respective schools, and I would always give him the scout salute, which he would gravely return.  To any passer-by, the spectacle of two young boys saluting each other must have seemed comical, but it was important to me, and, presumably, important to Foster. 

            Now that I have written that I was proud to be a scout I find it difficult to remember why I was so proud, and why I loved the Tuesday meetings; for we didn't do very much.  We would parade in the hall, or outside if the weather was fine, and after a little drill, would play some sort of team game, or have an organised rough house.  Then we would split into the four patrols, and concentrate on work towards various badges.  The only badges that I managed to get, were those for passing the Tenderfoot stage.  Had I stayed a scout for more than a year, I would, no doubt have passed my Second Class examination, and put on another badge.

            There was a lot of talk about honour, and about the things that a scout should do, and should not do, and an oath to learn.  I can still remember it:

            "I promise to do my best; to do my duty to God and King; to help other people at all times; and to obey the Scout Law."

I suppose it was inoffensive enough, though I can't go along with the bit about duty to the King, unless one considered it one's duty to relieve him of his onerous position and replace him with an elected president: and as for obeying he Scout Law; as we were not told what the Law consisted of, it was a little too vague.

            We were supposed to do a good deed a day, but I rather think that I neglected that obligation, though I do remember once going to the church  one Friday evening, at the suggestion of Father Wheeler, our new young charismatic curate, who subsequently rose to be Bishop of Leeds, in order to pump the organ during a service.

            I enjoyed wearing the scout uniform of khaki shirt and shorts, socks almost to the knee, a polished belt, and a wide brimmed hat like those worn at that time by members of the New Zealand Army.  I liked to walk down the street in it of a summer evening, convinced that everyone must be admiring me.

            When I had been a scout for about six weeks, the troop held a display, and Mum came along to the gas-lit hall on a Cold Autumn evening to sit through, what must have been a rather boring demonstration of scouting lore.  My part in the display was to demonstrate the tying of a sheepshank knot, and also, to give a little lecture on the history of the Union Jack, which I illustrated by building up the flag from the basic cross of St. George, followed by the St. Andrew's Cross, and then the St. Patrick's cross.  I don't know what my audience of mums and dads got from that exposition.  For my part, not much of it rubbed off on me, for I still do not know how to tell whether a Union Jack is being flown the right way up.

            The evening finished on a slightly lighter note.  The more talented, or, perhaps, the more extrovert troop members, did individual turns, and then the rest of us sat by an imaginary camp fire, provided by a pyramid of red paper held up with sticks, with within it a couple of electric torches switched on to make it glow; and sang camp fire songs.  The assistant scout master then concluded the evening with two items, the first of which I have forgotten, but the second of which has stayed in my memory ever since.  He recited a ballad about an unfortunate old lady who had swallowed a fly, and who then, in order to kill the fly, swallowed various other creatures, until finally she swallowed a horse, which killed her.  I never heard the ballad again, until some twenty years later, when two Danish singers, Nina and Frederick, sang it quite charmingly on the television; yet from the start the words were imprinted in my memory, and I could recite it today, if anyone were foolish enough to ask to hear it.

            I never did get to scout camp, though the subject was unsuccessfully broached shortly before Easter, 1939.  In fact the only scout expedition that I joined, was a visit to The Discovery, Captain Scott's ship, which was moored by the Embankment.  The whole troop went to it one Saturday morning.  We had about an hour on board.  I was particularly impressed by the retractable wash basin in Captain Scott's cabin, and also by the fact that, despite the age of the ship, it had many modern fittings.  At least I thought them modern, mostly they were electrical switches, which probably had not changed very much in design since the ship had been built forty years before. I had thought of the Victorians and Edwardians as being part of history, and living in primitive squalor, but it was clear that whilst they were on board, Captain Scott and his men, or at least his officers, lived quite well. At the end of the morning we returned to Edmonton, each boy clutching a leaflet about the Discovery, and one boy at least, wishing that he had joined the Sea Scouts.

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            Despite the war clouds that were gathering: this was a happy time for me.  We had a home, Mum was well, we had friends.  We even had parties.  I think we had had one or two parties in Bounces Road, but, apart from the family gathering at Christmas, none in Dagenham, and certainly none during the few months that we lived in Denton Road.  Now we seemed to be invited to lots of parties and to be inviting  other children to parties in our house.  I remember, sitting with my friends and Ruby's friends at the table during one such party, it may have been for my twelfth birthday, or perhaps it was for Ruby's fifteenth, and thinking how splendid everything was for us now.  We had gone through our time of trouble but now things had come right for us, and the future was going to be bright.  I was very naive.

CHAPTER TWELVE

By now I was conscious of little changes which were taking place in the urban scene.  One that was not so little, was the change from gas street lighting to electricity.  That change was taking place street by street, though, right up to the start of the War, I don't think that it had reached St. Edmund's Road.  There, as the light began to fade of an evening, the lamplighter would be seen, with his long pole, which he would hold up to each lamp, and do something technical to make it glow.  I rather think that he first used the hook at the top of the pole to pull a ring down which caused the gas to flow, and then, with some other device, ignited the mantle: but I could be wrong on both those points, for I never bothered to watch the lamplighter closely, not realising that had I done so I would have been observing the final appearances  of a character from history.

            I suppose, that, romantic as it may have appeared, it was a very inefficient form of  street lighting, for it took the lamplighter a long time to light all the street lamps on his round, and he would not reach the last until well after dark.  Once the gas lamps had been replaced, lighting up was instantaneous, for it only required a switch to be thrown at the power station for all the lights in the town to come on.

            But the passing of the gas lights meant the passing of the lamplighter, who, like the redundant night watchmen was forced to join the ranks of the unemployed.

            Much grander lighting was now provided in Hertford Road and Fore Street, which together formed the main North-South shopping street of Edmonton.  These were sodium-vapour lamps placed high above the roadway, which, with their bright white glow, brilliantly illuminated the carriageway.  I did not like them, I thought that somehow the light that they emitted was cold and unfriendly.

            However, I did admire another innovation that appeared at this time.  On the corner of Hertford Road and Croyland Road, just by St. Edmund's Church, was erected a very distinctive telephone box.  It was blue, and larger than the normal red telephone box, and on its roof was a lamp.  At various times in the day and night, this lamp would flash, and shortly afterwards a policeman would amble along; open a little door in the side of the structure, and take from it a telephone into which he would listen to instructions from the police station;  and as he did so,  the light on the roof would stop flashing.  Though these blue police telephone boxes were the models for the space ship Tardis in the television series Dr. Who, many years later, I never saw an alien from another planet enter or emerge from the one in Hertford Road.  In fact I never saw anyone enter it, for whenever a policeman used it, he did not bother to go inside. 

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            Television, in those days, was something that we had heard of, but not something that we ever expected to own.  Television broadcasts had begun from Alexander Palace a couple of years before, but at over £60 for the cheapest set, it was not a luxury  that the average working class family, or even the average lower middle class family, could aspire to.  We had to be content with our radio set, which at least was better than the crystal set with its temperamental cat's whisker of a few years earlier. 

            We did not have all that much choice of programme, as the BBC had a total monopoly of broadcasting in Britain, though English Language commercial programmes were beamed across the Channel by Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandy.  We used to listen to Radio Luxembourg sometimes on Sunday afternoon.  I don't remember anything about the content of the programmes, though I do remember some of the advertising jingles: "We are the Ovaltenies, Happy Girls and Boys.  We are here just to amuse you..." and, sung seductively: "Palmolive time, is like a Melody, that haunts you night and day."

            I think that we generally preferred the BBC broadcasts, in particular, 'The Children's Hour', with its regular features including  'Toy Town'; and 'In Town Tonight' which was broadcast on Saturday Evenings, and always began with traffic noises, and the cries of street hawkers, including a plaintive sounding flower seller offering "Lovely Sweetbriers".  Then would come a stentorian voice crying "Stop" and all noise would cease, and then the same voice would say in quieter tones: "Once again we halt the roar of London's Traffic to bring to you some of the interesting people who are In Town Tonight."

            My parents enjoyed listening to plays, which I enjoyed too, when I could understand them, but I preferred lighter programmes such as 'The Plumbs', which today we would call a soap, though that term had yet to travel from America to Britain.  That always began with the signature tune:

                    Come, Come, Come,

                    Says Jolly Mr. Plumb

                    Never stop to worry

                    When things look glum.

                    For it doesn't matter

                    What the weather,

                    Plumbs will always

                    Stick together:

                    Come, come, come,

                    Remember you're a Plumb.

I think that the rest of the programme was just as banal, but I enjoyed it.

            That radio set was the only piece of electrical or mechanical equipment that we owned.  Like most of our contemporaries, we had no electric iron, vacuum cleaner, toaster, washing machine, or telephone.  We certainly had no refrigerator.  Our food was kept in a larder with  ventilation holes in the outer wall to keep it cool.  Of course it could not remain cool for long, so it had to be bought in quantities small enough to be consumed before they went off.  Our milk bottles would rest in an earthenware container which was half filled with cold water to cool the milk.  Even so, we drank milk which people today would think had gone off.  In fact it often had gone off, but we survived.

            I suppose the knee-jerk reaction of people of my age, when reminiscing about this time, is to say that despite having so little, we were much happier, and knew how to enjoy ourselves much more.  I suspect that such judgements are nonsense, in all except one respect.  I believe that the almost total ownership of televisions, and the widespread ownership of videos and of computer gains, has had an adverse effect on literacy.  Even the more stupid of my contemporaries, did take and attempt to read, children's magazines, which had far more words than seems to be the case today.  They may have been rubbish, but one needed a reasonable degree of literacy to read them, and from them, one might graduate to more worthy reading matter.  I fear that such is not the case today.

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            In childhood, anything that happens outside the small circle of family and friends, never seems very important; but after my twelfth birthday, external events did begin to register on my consciousness.  It seemed possible that our cosy existence in St. Edmund's Road might be disturbed.  A person referred to on the radio as Herr Hitler, was disturbing the order of Europe.  His name was being mentioned increasingly on the news bulletins, and he and his followers were even becoming characters in the stories in Modern Boy, some of which were set in Spain where war was already raging, and, increasingly, stories were set in Czechoslovakia and in Germany.

            Adults were becoming anxious about the future, and we children began to share their anxiety as we began to realize that we might soon be at war.  This was an important matter: not of first rate importance, of course; not as important as birthday parties and other domestic events; but certainly as important as the Tommy Farr-Joe Louis heavyweight boxing title fight which had recently been fought.  It was all a little frightening, but at the same time fascinating.  I couldn't really believe that if war came it would affect my life, unless, of course, Pop was called back into the Navy, though I thought that at his age, that was probably an unlikely eventuality.

            Then came the news that we were all to get gas masks, or respirators, as they were officially called. One evening, the family trooped along to Eldon Road School for the fitting.  We waited in line: we found ourselves doing rather a lot of that in the years that followed; and then it was our turn to be fitted.  I found the actual moment when I first put on the gruesome object, rather unpleasant.  The black rubber from which it was chiefly made, was cold and clammy and felt damp where it clung to my cheek.  The official held a cardboard square against the pig-like nozzle of the thing and told me to breath in.  I did so, and at once, the mask altered shape as it was sucked towards my face.  I was exceedingly glad to get the thing off.  The official placed it in a little cardboard box with a long loop of string attached, so that I could hang it over my shoulder, gave it to me and told me to take it home and keep it in a safe place.

            Then there was the matter of evacuation.  When war seemed imminent, all the children of the Borough were to leave their homes and entrain for safer areas, well away from the bombing which everyone thought would begin as soon as war was declared.  That meant a problem for our family, as Ruby and I attended different schools, and our parents did not want us to be separated: neither did we, for that matter.  Fortunately, Ruby's school was willing to include younger brothers and sisters in its evacuation plans, and it was agreed that I was to become a pupil of the Girls' Junior Technical School, if and when the occasion arose.   My school had a similar arrangement, and Ruby could have returned to being a pupil at St. Edmund's, but our parents felt that it was much more important that Ruby should continue to receive her advanced technical education, than that I should continue my elementary studies without interruption.

--------------------

            Yet all these preparations were still a little remote from real life: and real life for us hinged on the fact that we were to have a rather expensive holiday this year, all four of us were to cross the sea in August, to visit my Irish grandparents in Cork. It was to be my first trip over the sea and I was very excited about it.  Ruby was excited too, though she had been before, but as that had been when she was a baby, she remembered nothing about it.

            I don't think we even considered that the outbreak of war might stop us going.  The only problem so far as my parents were concerned was the expense.  The fares alone meant spending all their savings, even though Ruby would be travelling half-price.  She should have gone full fare, as she was now over fourteen, but she was small for her age, and they thought, correctly as it turned out, that we could get away with the deception.

            There was a further hazard which I thought might stop me making the trip: though now I realise that there was absolutely no danger that it would.  I had lately developed the habit of saying 'Cor Blimy', a habit that my parents found extremely offensive, for they believed that it was a shortened version of an ancient curse, 'God Blind Me'.  Mum became so tired of hearing me say it, that she warned me that if I ever said it again, they would not take me to Ireland. I was terrified by that threat, and, by dint of a considerable effort, I managed to avoid using the offending expression for some time: but then, one Saturday morning, about a month before the trip, when I was out shopping with Mum, for no particular reason, I said it.

            Mum swiftly rounded on me: "That's it," she said. "I warned you.  You're not coming to Ireland with us.  You can stay here with Grandma Baker.”

            I was horrified.  I pleaded with her all the way home.  At one point I burst into tears: but she was adamant.  I spent a miserable Saturday afternoon and when Pop came home from work, I was preparing to plead with him when Mum said: "He came out with those words again this morning.  You're going to have to warn him that if he says them again, he is not going to Ireland with us."  Suddenly I realised that I was safe.  They hadn't really meant to leave me at home. I would be going to Ireland after all. Oddly enough, without my making any effort, I don't think I ever used that expression again.  The fright that I had received had driven from me all desire to use it.

--------------------

            Two other events remain in my memory from those pre-Ireland and prewar months. The first was linked with the preparations for conflict. One morning, just after the summer holiday had started, with a friend, I was walking across Jubilee Park, when suddenly there came the noise of aircraft, and from the South East, over our heads, flew three bombers.  They were flying so low that we could clearly make out the shape of the bulbous gun turrets, and even see some of the crews, particularly the men, bomb aimers perhaps, who were sitting forward in the plexiglass nose of each aircraft.  What made the sight particularly strange was that the red white and blue rings on the wings were reversed.  Instead of the outer rings being blue as was normal on RAF planes, they were red.

These were French aircraft of the Armee de L'air, taking part with the RAF, in a joint exercise in preparation for the war that now seemed inevitable.

            The second event, which may have occurred earlier, was during a parade of all the Edmonton scout troops in Pymmes Park.  For some reason or other, I did not take part in this parade.  It may have been because it would have entailed attendance at a non-Catholic open air church service, which my mother would have thought might put my soul in danger of eternal damnation.  Instead, I spent the afternoon curled up in a chair reading.

            At about two o'clock, we heard an aircraft overhead.  It was a small biplane that circled for what seemed to be about half an hour, though it was probably only for a few minutes.  Its behaviour was so odd that all along the road people were standing out in their gardens watching it.

            Suddenly the sound of its engine changed.  It coughed, stopped momentarily, started, stopped again, started again, ran for a few seconds,  then stopped for good. Swiftly the plane lost height.  My sister who had been watching it from where she was seated in a deck-chair in the garden said later that she was almost sick with fear.  The rapidly descending plane passed out of sight beyond the roof tops, and shortly afterwards we heard a muffled crash.

            This was the event that was reported next day in the national press with the headline, 'Edmonton Air Disaster'.  The biplane had crashed onto the roof of a council house. It appeared that when the engine had begun to cut out, the pilot had been hoping for an emergency landing in Pymmes Park, but then, seeing the hundreds of Boy Scouts on parade had realised that it was impossible.  That Sunday parade cost him his life; and also the lives of the two young men who had tried to pull him from the cockpit of his plane, but were burnt to death with him as flames engulfed them.

            Uncle Mick looked in on us a few days later, and said that he had been in that area about fifteen minutes earlier.  "If I had been there a quarter of an hour later," he declaimed. "Your uncle would have died a hero."

            We had our doubts about that.

--------------------

            The war did hold off long enough for us to enjoy our Irish holiday. On a warm Saturday in mid-August, we made our way by bus and tube to Paddington Station, where we boarded the boat train.  The journey to Fishguards was long and extremely tedious, and, by the time we had arrived at that port, I was uncomfortably asleep in a corner seat of the compartment.  It was after midnight, and as soon as I was woken up, I knew that I must be in Fishguards, even though I had never been there before, for there was an extremely strong aroma of fish.

            We clambered from our compartment, out onto the platform, through the customs hall, and out onto the quay, and there she was, the Inasfallen, a real ship, to me a little liner, with about eight lifeboats.  Obsessively I tried to count them, and wondered whether they would be enough for all the passengers if we were to strike an iceberg or a rock. 

            We shuffled along the gangplank to the third class section of the ship.  Most of the passengers seemed to be going third class, which, as it only occupied about a quarter of the accommodation on the ship, meant that the few first class passengers, and the rather more second class, had most of the ship to themselves.  About seven hundred plebeians, were confined to a very tiny space in the rear of the vessel, which was the way shipping companies conducted their business before the war. 

            My feelings were a mixture of tiredness, excitement and apprehension.  Mum had told us before we left home, "If you can sail across the Irish Sea without being sea-sick, then you will know that you are a good sailor."  Was I going to find that I was a good sailor?  The furthest out to sea that I had ventured before then, was a little way out from Shoeburyness on the school outing.  I was desperately anxious to be a good sailor: I hated the thought that I might be sea-sick.  But it was so crowded on that boat.  The reek of packed humanity, even before we sailed, was surely going to be enough to make me sick.

            We did manage to find two seats in the not quite black hole of Calcutta that they called the third class saloon.  Ruby sat on one, Mum and I on the other, whilst Pop pushed his way to the counter to buy tea and sandwiches.  When he returned, I stood up in order to eat more comfortably.  I remained standing, for it was preferable to being squeezed onto a narrow seat with Mum.

            It was almost airless in that saloon, so, after a while Pop and I went out on deck.  We managed to find seats of a sort in the lee of a deck house.  Now the ship was moving.  Sailers wearing black sweaters with "City of Cork Steam Packet Company" picked out in white on their chests, were doing technical things with ropes and wires: and, beyond a barrier marked 'First Class Passengers Only', some of the first class passengers only, were standing on their privileged uncrowded deck looking down at us disdainfully.  I looked back at them, then looked at the sea, then looked back at them.  There wasn't much to see at sea, it being a moonless night, and the first class passengers were as uninteresting to view as we must have been to them, so I soon grew rather tired of the view. This great adventure was proving to be not particularly adventurous; and what is more, I was very uncomfortable.  I leant against Pop.  He put his arm around me, and in a few minutes I was asleep.

            I awoke some hours later, feeling very stiff, and rather cold.  Pop still had his arm around me; but I don't believe that he had slept.

            "Are you all right, Son?" he asked.

            "I think so," I replied. "Are we nearly there.?"

            Pop laughed. "No", he said. "It's only six o'clock.  We don't arrive until noon.  I think that we're going to miss Sunday mass.  You were snoring a lot.  All things considered, I think that you must have slept quite well."

            Six o'clock! I'd never been up that early before, so far as I could remember; and it was certainly the first time that I had spent a whole night out in the open air.  It was already light, and extremely cold.  The Sun must have been somewhere overhead, but I couldn't see it.  But the sky was unclouded so perhaps the day would continue fine.  The sea was now a light grey, and above us dived, wheeled and squawked a couple of dozen sea-gulls.  At the top of the mast was flying a strange new flag: a tricolour of green, white and orange.

            "Look over there," Pop said. "There it is. That's Ireland."

            I looked in the direction to which he was pointing.  At first, all that I could see was the horizon: but then I realized that dark mass just rising from it was land.  It was little enough to get excited about; but I was thrilled all the same.

            "Will you be all right if I leave you for a bit?" enquired Pop. "I want to see how Kit and Ruby are doing.  I'll see if I can get us some tea, and something to eat."

            He was gone through the narrow door to the saloon, and I was alone on the deck.  Alone that is apart from several hundred other third class passengers: but it didn't matter.  I was far too excited to mind my crowded solitude. I gazed and gazed at the distant land, trying to convince myself that I could already see more than just that dark outline rising from the sea. Soon Pop was back with tea and sandwiches, and with Mum and Ruby, who was complaining that she had a stiff neck. 

            After I had eaten and drunk, with Pop, I went to the men's toilet.  At that time of the morning, it was not as crowded as the rest of the third class accommodation, but it smelt very unpleasant, for someone had been sick by the side of one of the washbasins.  We kept as far away from that spew as we could, and washed as well as we could, which in my case was not very well, but Pop didn't seem to notice. 

            Then we went back on deck to find that Ireland had now become a green country of rolling hills, with tiny dots that must have been cows or sheep, and matchboxes here and there that were probably farm houses.  I found myself standing beside a talkative Irishman (What Irishman is not?), who asked me my name.  Despite his disappointment at my Cockney accent and the fact that my surname did not begin with an O, he was friendly enough.  He told me that he had travelled this route hundreds of times, and that at just about the point we had reached, a ship had sunk in a storm five years before, and that her superstructure was a danger to any vessel passing that way during foggy nights.  He also pointed out that, strictly speaking, we were no longer at sea, for we had entered the broad mouth of the estuary of the Lee, the entrance to Cobh Harbour, or as my mother insisted on still calling it, twenty years after the establishment of the Irish Free State, Queenstown Harbour. 

            I could now see that there was land on both sides of the ship.  My new friend told me that this was one of the largest harbours in the world.  I believed him.  Certainly there was a great deal of water around us still, even though we were no longer on the open sea.

            Now we could see many more buildings, and ahead of us stood a town, dominated by a large church.  "That's Cobh," said the Irishman,"It's on an island. Do you see the cathedral?"

            That remark puzzled me.  Surely the whole country was on an island.  Wasn't that why it was called Ireland?  In any case, just then I was far more interested in the smart motor launch, flying the Stars and Stripes, which was cruising just ahead of our ship: its occupants waving at the passengers on the promenade deck.  Mum had told me that her father had once owned a motor boat.  Could it have been as nice as that one?  Perhaps it was that one, sold to a rich American: though if it was, Grandad must have been a very  wealthy man when he owned it; and I didn't think that he was.

            With a final wave from its crew, the launch surged ahead and was soon out of sight.  Mum and Ruby, who had gone to the ladies' to freshen up before we landed, now returned.

            "She's been sick," remarked Mum, unsympathetically.

            "I couldn't help it," protested Ruby.  "I felt all right until I went in there. People have even been sick on some of the lavatory seats."

            I felt smugly superior.  Obviously I was a very good sailor.

            Now the crew were doing things to ropes and bollards.  I think they were bollards; though even today I'm still not sure what a bollard is.  There were even one or two officers on deck directing the men, though the officers did not have 'City of Cork Steam Packet Company' emblazoned on their chests.  We were now quite clearly in a river, the banks fairly near, though there was still plenty of room for other ships to pass.  But there were lots of houses on both banks, traffic noises, and many church bells ringing. 

            The ship was moving very slowly now as we were approaching the jetty.  Ahead of us on the shore were a crowd of people all waiting to great their friends.  We had no time to look for our relations, for queues were already forming on deck near the exit points.  We rescued our baggage and joined a queue.  Now the ship was reversing, and swinging round so that when moored, she would be facing the sea.  Mum glanced down at the crowd on the jetty and suddenly cried: "Oh look, Bill.  There's Dad and Eddie."

            I looked down too.  There in the front of the crowd was my Uncle Eddie, waving frantically to attract our attention.  Beside him stood a little man wearing a black suit and a bowler hat.  He had a long pair of curved moustaches.  It was my Irish grandfather.

            Now that the ship had moored, with the queue, we moved forward, up a step, on to the gangplank, then down to the jetty.  We were through customs almost without noticing it,  Irish officialdom didn't seem bothered about what we might be smuggling in; and then we were greeting our relations on the dock side.  Even close up, Grandad was tiny, almost as small as Mum, but in spite of his diminutive stature, I could see that he wasn't the sort of grandfather to stand any nonsense from an English grandson.  Mum was nearly in tears as she had not seen her father for over twelve years.  She hugged him warmly, then we were presented. Ruby, he had already met, though she had only been a baby in arms on her previous visit: I was a complete stranger to him.  He looked me up and down; and I had a sinking feeling that he was not too pleased with what he saw.  Then with a, "I should think you're all very tired," he turned and lead us to the hired car which was to take us to their home.

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            Home for Grandma, Grandad and Uncle Eddie, was on the upper floor of a tenement building at the back of the infirmary.  They occupied three rooms: a living room, where I imagine Uncle Eddie usually slept, a bedroom, and a large kitchen, heated by an iron stove, where the family ate.  The kitchen overlooked the concrete paved yard which contained some dustbins, clothes lines, and the single outside toilet, which was used by all the families living in the building.

            To one side of the yard, beyond a low brick wall, and at right angles to the wall of the hospital, was a depot belonging to a large firm of carriers; which was crowded by day with carts, delivery men, and horses waiting for loads.  Surrounding the horses were large swarms of flies, which, unfortunately did not all stay in the yard, but ventured on exploratory visits to the upper floors of the tenement, and found their way in through open windows whenever cooking was in progress.  I stayed out of the kitchen as much as I could.

            The view from the living room was not quite so fly infested, but it was not particularly pleasant either.  It was of a long street of dusty three-storey houses, all past their best days: though even during their best days, they could not have been much to get excited about.  There were no gardens, the front doors opening directly on to the street.  Most of the doors seemed to be open all the time, their tenants rarely having the use of a front door key. 

            Years later when I appeared in a play by Sean O'Casey, I recognised the scene  within which it was set.  But for the fact that it was set in Dublin, in a shabby Georgian building, it could have been the Cork tenement in which my grandparents lived.  The place would probably have delighted an artistic middle class romantic with its scene of picturesque squalor, but for a twelve year old from a North London council house it was just horrible, and a dreadful let-down after the excitement of the journey.

            The rooms were musty, and the furniture was old fashioned.  There was an ancient radio set, but the programmes it broadcast were strange to me.  The announcers spoke with Irish accents, and didn't think that they had  the same authority as the posh BBC announcers that I was used to.  There was also a gramophone and a stack of records: old songs, Irish Jigs, and a series of dialogues between a pair of Irish comedians.  The latter I played several times until I grew tired of them.

            Our arrival had created many problems for my grandparents, which I did not really appreciate at the time.  I have a feeling that Uncle Eddie slept away from home in the house of a work-mate, and that Mum and Pop occupied his bed.  Ruby slept in a put-you-up in one corner of the living room, but I had to make do with a contraption of two chairs on which were balanced wooden boards to make a primitive, very primitive, bed for me.  It was an uncomfortable arrangement, though I don't suppose that it did me any lasting harm, but I complained bitterly about it.  This distressed my Mother, and annoyed my Grandfather, who began to think that I was too self-centred for my own good; and certainly for the good of all the rest of the family.

            Mum was distressed too: not at the thought that the holiday would be spoiled; actually it was not; but at the conditions in which her parents were now living. When she was a girl, Grandad had owned a small forge, and money had been fairly plentiful.  She had been educated at a private convent school: they had lived in a large house in a middle-class part of the city, and they had plenty of food and lots of little luxuries.  Now she found the obvious poverty of her parents, heart-rending. 

            They had lost everything during the 'troubles', the birth pangs of the Irish Free State.  I could never understand why this had happened; but it may have had something to do with the fact that, as a family, they had backed the wrong side.  In so far as they had any opinions on the conflict, they would have preferred the British to have remained the rulers of Ireland.  Even at the age of twelve, I felt that this was rather perverse, and although I never let it on to Mum, I was fairly sure that had lived in Ireland at that time, I would have supported Sinn Fein.

            Such an idea would have shocked Mum.  She blamed Mr De Valeria, for all the ills of Ireland.  She often said that Ireland would never be the same again, now that the best people, the members of the great Anglo-Irish families had left.  As I didn't know much about the facts of the matter, and as I never wanted to distress her, I did not openly disagree.

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            I quickly found that I could not satisfactorily use the communal lavatory.  I hated crossing the yard and entering the place.  There were always some flies buzzing around, and I would wipe the seat several times, then cover it with several layers of lavatory paper before I sat on it.  I would then sit there for a long time, unable to perform.  I had became dreadfully constipated by the end of that first Sunday.

            Next morning, after breakfast, Pop took me into the City, across St. Patrick's bridge, and to the Savoy Cinema.  Not to see the films; none were showing at that time of the morning, but so that we both could use the cinema lavatory, which cost us a penny each, or rather cost Pop two pennies, but which were clean, and relatively unsmelly.  I think that we made the same expedition each day for the next two weeks.  It cut a little into Pop's budget, but it reduced my constipation, and Pop's too, for that matter. 

            After paying our daily visit to the Savoy, we would often return by way of a tiny pub on the water's edge that was kept by a man with whom Pop had become friendly on his previous visit to Cork.  His business did not seem to be prospering in that thirsty Irish city, for we were always the only customers in the little bar.  Pop would drink a Guinness, and I would drink a grape-fruit juice, whilst listening to the conversation of Pop and Jack, the publican.  Though much of the talk was on local and domestic matters, the European situation cropped up again and again.  Not, was there going to be a war, but, when would it start?  Would Ireland come into it?  Jack thought that Ireland would stay neutral.  I think he may have suggested that we stay in Ireland, but Pop didn't think much of that idea.

            Jack was a nice man, though rather morose, but as we seemed to have been his only customers, I suppose that he had good reason to be.  On our last morning, he warned me against drinking too much grapefruit, as the acid that it contained could do untold damage to the lining of your stomach.  As I had drunk one or two glasses of the stuff nearly every morning  in his bar, that advice had come  a little late.

            Some mornings we did not go to Jack's bar.  Instead, Pop took me into a milk bar near the bridge, and treated me to a Knickerbocker Glory, a king amongst ice-creams, which lasted a good ten minutes no matter how quickly I attacked it, and seemed to contain every delicious flavour of ice cream, fruit and nut.  During the six war years which followed, when that Cork holiday had all but faded from my thoughts, I still treasured the memory of those Knickerbocker Glories: I would have exchanged six of the grape-fruits in Jack's bar for just one Knickerbocker Glory.  The fact of the matter was, they were rather too expensive for Pop to buy me one each day.  In any case he deserved his Guinness, and he couldn't buy that in a milk bar.

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            St. Patrick's Bridge was a favourite spot for Ruby and me, and we loved to lean on the parapet and look down at the hundreds of silver fish swimming in the water below.  Mind you, you had to choose your moment to view the fish.  If you were crossing the bridge in the early morning, the parapet was no place to linger; for the stench that wafted up from the surface at that time was so pungent, that I suspect that the fish were all wearing little gas-masks as they swam about below.

            I don't know what caused that early morning pong.  It never lasted very long, for always when we returned to the bridge following our morning cinema visit, the air smelt sweet and clean.  Perhaps somewhere up river there was a daily discharge of sewerage into the stream timed to float down river and assist in speeding up the early morning bridge traffic.

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            I liked Cork.  It was large enough to be truly a city.  I know that technically size has nothing to do with city status; the cities of St. David's and Ely are both little more than villages; but to me, at twelve, cities had to be a certain size, and Cork just about made it in my estimation.  But it was not too large.  It was easy enough to leave the city streets and be in the country.  It had fine shopping streets, particularly St. Patrick's Street.  It had Paddy's Market, a covered arcade where Grandma did much of her shopping, and where you could still see market women in shawls, and sometimes wearing robes of red flannel.  It had a fine statue of the great 19th century temperance reformer, Father Matthew; which showed him looking out into the countryside with his back to  the city.  Uncle Eddie said that Father Matthew's back was turned on the place because he was so disgusted by the besozzled state of so many of its citizens.

            There were lots and lots of churches, and most of them were Catholic, which, coming as I did from Protestant England, I found rather refreshing.  The Catholic church where we attended mass on our second Sunday was particularly fine; a neoclassical building looking rather like a Greek temple with towering columns in its entrance.

            We were taken especially to see one  Protestant church, Shandon Church, whose bells had inspired an appallingly bad poem that I had the misfortune to read many years later:

                   ...the bells of Shandon

                   That sound so grand

                   On the quiet waters

                   Of the river Lee

However we were not there to look into the church, or to hear the bells; but to see the gates which had been wrought in Grandad's forge about thirty years before.

            Another church that I particularly remember, was a very modern one, which was closed to the public.  We were told that it had been built on sadly soil, and was slowly sinking into the ground at an angle, like the leaning tower of Pisa, but at a far greater speed.  The architect,  a German, had committed suicide when the error had been discovered.

            At twelve I knew nothing about architecture, but I was interested in any building that had a fascinating story connected with it, and the sinking church certainly fitted into that category: but my chief interest was in people, and the differences in behaviour that I saw when I was in a new place. 

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            Certainly some people in Cork were very different from their counterparts in Edmonton.  The police were different, or the Guardia as they were called in Ireland.  I loved to watch the Cork policemen on point duty; flat capped, directing the traffic with a wealth of swift gesture that was totally foreign.  Then I knew that I was abroad, that though everyone spoke a heavily accented English, this was another land.

            Foreign also, was the sight of the soldiers in the town: though they may have been militia, mobilized because of the threat of war.  They were wearing grey uniforms, and looked like the pictures that I had seen of German soldiers in Great War stories in the Hotspur or the Wizard.  Things German seemed to be quite popular in Ireland then, though the German style of the uniform may have been less an attempt to ape the Germans as to appear quite different from the British.  I think the reason for the Germans' popularity was not due to any perceived or imagined Germanic virtues, but rather from the fact that the Germans were not British, and that as they were the former enemies of the British, and likely to be the future enemies of the British, they were all right, as far as Irish opinion was concerned.  A sentiment that did not stop vast numbers of Irish citizens crossing the sea when the war began and enlisting in the British forces.  Though, perhaps that was due more to a native love of a scrap than to any sympathy with Britain. 

            The 'Troubles' had ended twenty years before, but that was too short a time to dispel the bitter memory of the firing of their City by the Black and Tans during that period.  Irish natural courtesy ensured that generally British visitors were treated well; but there were times when that courtesy broke down.  Once we were standing in Cobh, talking to a friendly stranger, when suddenly, realising that we were English, without finishing a sentence, he turned and walked away.

            Another unfamiliar sight to me were the beggars; not many of them, indeed no more than could be found in the streets of Thatcher and Major's Britain, though in prewar North London, they were  virtually unknown.  Sometimes they would accost us in the streets. 

            Then there were the gamblers: groups of men, sitting in the open playing cards.  Perhaps these card playing groups were peculiar to Cork: certainly on a subsequent visit to Dublin I saw none of them, though I did not venture into the working-class suburbs on that occasion; perhaps by then they had also vanished from the streets of Cork.  In 1939 we would come across card schools of an evening, sitting on the pavement in a side street, or on a patch of waste ground intent on their game.  Most of these groups were men, but once or twice we saw boys of my own age, just as intent as their elders, and apparently playing for silver coins.

            By the banks of the Lee stood the Cork Opera House.  This was an especially important place for Mum, for, once or twice she had played the violin there when she was young.  No violins were played there any more, for, despite its name, the place had become a reparatory theatre, with a permanent company of actors presenting a different play each week.  On this visit, we didn't actually go into the Opera House, though once or twice we stood and looked at it, as Mum remembered the musical triumphs of her youth.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Much of our time during that holiday in Cork was spent in visiting family friends.  There were several such visits to people whom Mum hadn't seen for years.  Some of these visits I quite enjoyed. Others I found horribly dreary, though I'm afraid that it was those tedious visits that were to be repeated again and again. Soon I began to believe that there was some sort of mathematical law that the length of any visit was in reverse correlation to the amount of interest that it engendered in me.

            One of my favourite visits was to an ancient lady who lived with a companion in a few rooms.  Perhaps she was some sort of distant relative, but I rather think not.  We went there twice, and each time, as we left, she gave me a shiny, horse engraved, Irish half-crown.  I think all the Irish coins contained pictures of live-stock.  However, it wasn't simply  financial greed that caused me to enjoy those visits.  Actually, I hardly spoke a word to the lady or to her companion whilst we were there; but what I really enjoyed, was looking at her books.  Whilst she was talking to Mum, she would let me browse amongst the musty books in her bookcase. My favourite book was an illustrated guide to the city of New York, which was dated 1892. It was filled with delightful woodcuts of the buildings of Manhattan; and of the city traffic, horse carriages, and horse drawn buses.  I would have loved to have kept that book, but I did not have the nerve to ask the lady if I could have it.  Instead, on my final visit, she gave me a book about Nelson and his Captains, which was just as old as the New York guide, and probably just as interesting; though I never did manage to get to the end of it.

            I have a feeling that in the same building, or at least close by, lived a family who occupied the two floors above a grocer's shop, or rather a victuallers, which was the term by which such businesses were known in Ireland.  They were a very jolly family, and they seemed to be quite prosperous.  They had children who were about the same ages as Ruby and me.  We received a most marvellous tea there (By tea, I mean a huge meal in the late afternoon, not simply the beverage).  They had just returned from a holiday in England, and the mother of the house regaled us with the story of how she had outwitted the customs officials and smuggled in the contents of a whole canteen of cutlery which she had hung around her waist,  suspended from a strong belt inside her skirt.  I could not  imagine how she had managed to move without setting up a jangling that would have alerted the customs officers immediately.  Perhaps she only really smuggled in a few items.  It was a lovely story, but I suspect that like many of our Irish acquaintances she was a trifle economical with the truth.

            Then there was Poor Cousin Nan.  Even before we had arrived in Ireland she had been Poor Cousin Nan to us, for that was how Mum always spoke of her.  Of course, she was Mum's cousin, not ours.  She lived alone with her father, Uncle Joe, in the rooms behind their little newsagent and tobacconist's shop in a back street.  It is probable that with energetic management the shop could have been fairly profitable, but Uncle Joe, in his seventies, had very little energy, and Cousin Nan, permanently confined to a wheel-chair, had no energy whatsoever: so the little shop became dustier and dustier, and the customers fewer and fewer.  The two lonely people spent their time in the dark back room behind the shop, Uncle Joe only venturing out if he heard a customer enter, though that did not happen very often.  Once I was standing behind the counter, pretending that it was my shop, when a men entered, and asked for a packet of Sweet Afton.  I gulped, and, in a panic, fled to the back room and told Uncle Joe; but by the time he had roused himself and gone to the shop, the customer, no doubt tired of waiting, had left. 

            Cousin Nan and her father were the victims of another of the feuds that sometimes seemed to sour relationships in our extended family.  Grandma and Grandad had not seen them since the troubles.  I think that my grandparents  were quite offended when Mum insisted on taking us to see them.  Certainly they did not come with us.  Poor Cousin Nan was thrilled to see us, and begged us to come again before we left.  We did so, but I didn't really enjoy either of the visits.  The sight of that huge woman immobile in a dilapidated wheel-chair filled me with profound gloom.  Uncle Joe looked a little like my English grandfather. He wore a cloth cap, even though he was indoors, and was in his shirt sleeves with an open waistcoat.  He moved very slowly, though I don't think that was because he had any particular disease, but rather because he was very, very tired: and the effort of looking after his invalid daughter, and of trying to run the shop at an age when just one of those tasks was really too much for him.  Perhaps once he had been an energetic man: he had managed in his youth to start his own business, but that was all in the past. Now he was old, his wife was dead, and his only daughter was incurably sick.  He just couldn't make the effort any more, and, in any case, under his dreadful circumstances, the effort itself must have seemed pretty pointless.

            There were other visits that I enjoyed enormously: to the Stephens for instance.  This was the family of Billy Stephens, Uncle Eddie's nice friend, who had stayed with us in St. Edmund's Road.  They had a little house, right on the edge of the city: literally on the edge, for beyond their low stone wall began the green fields of County Cork.  Mr Stephens Senior was an Englishman who worked for the Irish State Railway.  I think that he may have been a porter.  The house was railway property.  They had several children. Billy was the eldest, and, at twenty-five, he was several years older than Nora, the next in the family.  She was in her late teens and became a particular friend of Ruby.  I got on particularly well with Mary, a girl of my own age, who was very good fun in a rather unfeminine sort of way.  We made all sorts of promises to visit them again, and they promised to visit us: but the events of the next few years made it quite impossible for either family to keep those promises.

            Six years later, when I had just begun my army service in Canterbury barracks, I received a letter from Mary.  Uncle Eddie had shown her a recent photograph of me, and she wrote to tell me that she was in love with me.  Poor girl!  I wrote her a very pompous reply, in which I told her that though we might remain friends, as we hadn't seen each other for so long, we could hardly be in love.  I never heard from her again. I hope she found someone else who would love her.

            Then there were Uncle Henry's in-laws.  Uncle Henry was the second of Mum's brothers, was now married, and living in England and working, with thousands of other Irishmen, in the Ford factory in Dagenham.  His wife's family lived in Monkstown, a pleasant village not far from the city, which we reached in a bus that took us there through verdant winding lanes.  Mrs Cunningham, Uncle Henry's mother-in-law, lived in a large house in the main street of the village.  There were only about seven rooms to the house, but those rooms were so big, that I was sure that she must be very rich. Now I realise that like most of our acquaintances, she was rather poor.  She gave us massive, farm house meals with fresh butter and eggs.  I was always ready for those meals, for since our arrival, I had spent the hour or so before them, clambering up the hill behind the house, or playing in the grass in the ruins of Monkstown Castle. 

            After we had finished the meal, it was nearly time to go, though not before the oil lamps had been lit, and I watched the moths flying in ever decreasing circles towards the flames.  Finally we would make our way down to the bus stop by the waters' edge; and return to Cork so late, that at once, for me, it would be straight to bed on those hard bare boards.

            There were other Cunninghams, grown up, or nearly grown up, sons; but I think they must have all been away when we called, for I only remember Mrs Cunningham.  Mr Cunningham had absconded years before, leaving his wife with a large family to bring up; a task that she seemed to have accomplished extremely successfully, possibly rather better than if he had stayed.  She had heard vague reports of him since the day he had left.  She thought that he might be in America, though at other times she thought that he might be dead.  If he was alive, he didn't show any interest in the fate of his family.  I could never understand how a man could leave a place as nice as Monkstown and a wife as delightful as Mrs Cunningham; but, had I met the man, perhaps I would have learned his side of the story.

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            Sometimes it would just be the four of us: Pop, Mum, Ruby and me, making these visits; sometimes we would go with our grandparents and our uncle.   On some of these visits, Grandad acted as our guide: but those visits were more often to places than to people.  One such expedition, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, was to Sunday's Well, the prosperous suburb where Mum had spent much of her childhood.  I don't think that we actually saw their old house, but I do remember walking extremely swiftly with Grandad.  Mum had said that in his youth he had been a walking champion, and he could still walk as fast as a thirty year old.  Sunday's Well was a green place of large houses and cool tree-lined streets.  There was even cricket being played on a green: a most unusual sight in Ireland. Later we walked through the grounds of Cork University College.

            I was very proud on that occasion to be the only one to keep up with Grandad as he walked.  I was anxious to get into his good books, for I was fairly sure that he disliked me.  I had managed to upset him at least twice during the first week of our visit.  The first time was when I didn't want to spend half a day visiting Uncle Christie's grave.  Then he had told Mum that I was a very spoilt boy.  The second time was when I asked him to read something.  That caused him acute embarrassment, and he was grumpy for the rest of the day.  I had not realised that he was illiterate. He was a very proud little man, of strong principles, who had had, I know, too many sadnesses in his life. He had had no schooling, yet by dint of hard work, he had managed to build up a prosperous business and support a large family in comparative comfort before the Great War.  Now the business was gone, he no longer lived in the house in Sunday's Well; one son had been shot during 'The troubles' and all his children, apart from Eddie, were living in England.  I could see that he was sad.  I wanted to please him, but I could never learn the trick of doing so.

            Ruby learnt the trick without even trying.  He took an immediate liking to my sister.  So much so that he insisted on taking her to an elderly photographer to have her photograph taken with himself standing proudly at her side.  I think that the photographer must have been one of Grandad's friends from the old days.  Certainly his methods were those of the old days, and must have driven many customers away.  He sat Ruby in a chair that contained a special collar which he fastened around her neck so that she would sit bolt upright.  She told me she was terrified.  Grandad stood beside her, as the photographer took an inordinate amount of time to take the photograph, with an ancient plate camera on a tripod.

            On another occasion Grandad took us all to Blarney Castle.  I was very excited, for Mum had often told us that when she was  a girl she had kissed the Blarney Stone, an operation that in those far off days necessitated being hung by the legs over the outer walls of the castle, and then being lowered down to reach the stone.

            Before we ascended the castle tower, Grandad took us into some caves under the castle, which contained, he said, dangerous otters, which were sometimes hunted by men wearing high boots which were filled with ashes.  The otters would bite at the legs, and hearing the crunch of the ashes, believe that they had broken their victim's bones. Their intended victims, unharmed, would then kill the otters.  Grandad told us that anyone foolish enough to enter the caves without ash-filled boots, was in danger of getting a broken leg.  As we were then some little way into the cave I became very apprehensive, and asked if it would be all right for us to get out.  He gave me a withering look, but consented.  I had slipped a further notch down in his estimation.

            When we climbed up to the battlements, we found that stone kissing had been made much safer since Mum's day.  Blocks had been removed from the floor of the battlements so that the stone could now be reached from the inside.  One could still see the distant ground below, but iron bars had been fixed across the cavity, so that in the unlikely event of someone being dropped, they would only fall a few inches to the bars, and would suffer nothing worse than a couple of bumps and a headache. 

            Ruby was let down to kiss the stone: but when it was my turn I decided that I did not want to risk that slight headache. I was very quiet on our return journey to Cork, for I knew that I had failed my grandfather once again.

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            Now the holiday was nearly over, but we were to go on one other important outing before we left. Grandad had hired a small motor launch from a friend, and in it, with the friend as skipper, we were to set out one afternoon, and cruise down the Lee to visit the regatta at Cobh.  It was a grubby little boat, but I thought that it was wonderful; particularly as it even had a little cabin where we could sit in lordly semi-comfort and watch the river flow by.  Uncle Eddie told me that it wasn't as good as the boat which the family used to own, which he assured me was ninety feet long.  Even at twelve I was fairly sure that that must have been a gross exaggeration.

            At Cobh we moored alongside a jetty.  We had arrived some time before the regatta was due to begin, so we went on a stroll around the town.  Pop took a photograph of the cathedral, though with his simple box camera, he had to walk a considerable distance from it before he could get most of it in: and even then he didn't completely succeed, for when the picture was developed we found that the top of the spire was missing.

            For a while the family sat by a sort of cliff that ran up from the side of the road.  I climbed about four feet up the face of the cliff, then Pop, kneeling down below, took a photograph of me.  That photograph made it appear that I had climbed high up on a sheer rock face. For years I would show a copy to my friends in order to impress them with my daring.  Some of them were suitably impressed; but then I would usually have a twinge of conscience and admit that I'd had only been a short way up the face and could have jumped down without much difficulty.

            We returned to the jetty, to find the regatta in full swing. Out on the water racing eights manned by white clad rowers, with small peak capped men in their sterns shouting stroke times, were moving swiftly across the harbour.  We watched them for a while, though I found the races very uninteresting.  At that distance, it was not possible to see which boats were winning, and the announcements over the loudspeaker system were in such strong Irish accents that I could not make out what any of them meant.  However, I did enjoy watching the greasy pole contest.  This was quite close to hand.  Men in bathing costumes ran as far as they could along a greasy pole until, inevitably, they lost their balance and fell into the water.  I didn't know what factors determined who was to be the winner, but it was fun to watch grown men making such fools of themselves.  Generally they came to no harm as they fell in the water, but one contestant, as he slipped managed to bang his knee on the pole as he fell.  He swam ashore with some difficulty and was then tended by the first aid team.

            When we had had enough, we returned to our launch to find that our skipper had gone off for a drink. We were sitting comfortably in the cockpit, when a voice from above called out: "You'd better move away from there.  With the tide that's falling, you'll be aground in twenty minutes."

            Under the surprisingly able supervision of Grandad, we cast off, and, using the boat hook, polled her round the jetty until she lay about thirty feet from her original berth.  Whether we were safe from grounding there, we never discovered, for within a few minutes our skipper returned, and we were soon on our way upstream to Cork.

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            We visited the cinema two or three times during our holiday, that is apart from our morning visits to its toilet; and the news films that we saw strongly emphasised the seriousness of the European crisis.  There were lots of news items from Germany with shots of Hitler inspecting German troops; and their were items from England with pictures of a worried Mr Chamberlain leaving 10 Downing Street.  There was also at least one shot of Mr De Valera reviewing soldiers of the Irish Army. 

            When we left the cinema at the end of the performance we would always find a large crowd gathered before the bridge.  They were looking up at the wall of a newspaper office on which news headlines were flashed electronically. I remember one from our last night in Cork. It read: "War Imminent". Even I could see that the storm was gathering, and my parents were very quiet as we walked home.  Only once do I remember Mum breaking the silence before we reached the tenement; and that was when she asked Pop if he thought that we might stay in Ireland until the crisis had blown over.  I suspect that she was thinking less of the possible danger of air raids, but of the thought that despite his age, he was thirty-nine, Pop might be called up and be killed in action.

            We did not stay in Ireland.  We left on the Sunday night on an Inasfallen bursting at its seams with passengers (Do ships have seams?), including many reservists in uniform, recalled for active service.  Grandad, Grandma and Uncle Eddie were at the dock-side waving to us as we slowly moved down river.  I didn't know it at that time, but it was to be the last time that I was to see my Irish grandfather, for he died in 1945 during the week in which I was called up for service in the Army.  I still wish that we had got on better during that fortnight.  I know that I was a disappointment to him, and I am afraid that he was rather a disappointment to me.

            That journey down river to the sea, was lovely in the gathering twilight.  Just before we left the estuary we passed a large American liner heading for Cobh.  It was the George Washington, filled with Americans hurrying back to New York before the storm broke.  When it had passed we were already in the open sea.

            For the rest of the voyage I stayed in the saloon, and slept uncomfortably wedged between Mum and a fat lady.  I woke once, shortly before we docked, and was distressed to find that a sailor was sleeping literally across my legs.  I could do nothing to make him wake up, so for the remaining half an hour of the voyage I tried, unsuccessfully to get back to sleep, despite his dead weight on my legs.  I was still awake when the time came for us to move, but, unfortunately, because of that treatment, my legs were not, and I found it rather difficult to stand.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Once we were back home, I learnt to my great disgust, that the school holidays, which should have continued for another week, were to be cut short.  Evacuation was no longer a distant prospect.  It was going to happen very soon, and the schools had only a week to prepare for it.       I joined Ruby as a new pupil at the Girls' Junior Technical School, feeling rather a lemon amongst all those girls.  There were a few other younger brothers apart from myself, but in that first week I did not find them.  The time was spent in a frenzy of activity on the part of the adults who were getting us ready for the great move: and in considerable boredom and inactivity on the part of the girls and the few boys.  I spent a fair part of that week standing, with or without my sister, and waiting for someone to tell me what to do with myself.  Perhaps it would not have been so bad, if someone had found the time to give us some lessons: but there was no teaching that week.

            Finally, on Saturday the 2nd September, we were to move.  Carrying our gas masks in their boxes, and small suitcases, and wearing labels with our name, our school, and our address, we made our way to Lower Edmonton Station.  I felt deeply humiliated knowing that my label read, "Alfred Joseph Baker, Girls' Junior Technical School".

            The station platform was packed with children and teachers from a number of schools.  We waited for what seemed like two hours, but was probably less than one, until our train arrived.  We were packed in like sardines.  I was wedged between a large, thin girl and a small, fat girl.  Ruby was in another part of the compartment.  We waited in the stationary train, and at last.  after some preliminary snorts from the engine, we moved off.

            From my seat I could not see much of the view from the window; just patches of greyish sky, and, occasionally one of the barrage balloons, which that day were aloft in large numbers round London, almost for the first time, as part of the anti-aircraft defences. I was mildly excited when I saw the first one, rather less excited when I saw the second, and by the time that I had seen the tenth or the eleventh, I had become completely  bored with them.  That unexciting vista, and the rumbling of the wheels in time sent me to sleep  and I dreamt of Ireland, and, oddly enough, of cricket.

            About two hours later I awoke with a start and realised that the train was slowing down.  All around me girls were standing up and reaching onto the rack for their luggage.  Somebody said, "We'll soon be there." But as I had no idea where 'there' was, that remark did nothing to dispel my gloom. 

            The train jerked to a stop and we dismounted.  'There' proved to be Clacton-on-Sea, a town that I might have enjoyed visiting with my parents, but which, in these conditions of enforced separation from them, held absolutely no charms for me.  I did not then consider the idiocy of a government that had chosen to send thousands of London children to the Essex coast where they would be in the direct path of any bombers flying from North Germany.  I suspect that the Home Office priority was simply to get the children away from London, with almost no thought given to which were the most suitable and which the least suitable areas for evacuation. I have an idea that the very first bomb to be dropped over Britain in the war, was to fall on Clacton.

            The Girls' Junior Technical School lined up upon the platform in uneven files.  Someone blew a whistle, and we marched through the barriers, whilst the headmistress and her senior staff counted us through. Whilst they checked that all were present, we halted below a poster advertising the latest Diana Durban film, 'A Hundred Men and a Girl', I never got to see it. Then we moved off again to board double-decker buses which were to take us to our next staging post.

            We were driven through flat Essex countryside, away from the sea, until, after a few miles, the little convoy of buses stopped beside a small village school.  When we alighted we were shepherded into the playground.  This was the village of Great Holland, which, in spite of the adjective, is much smaller than either Little Holland or Holland-on-Sea.  It was to be our home for the next six months.

            The events of the next hour or so, may have had something in common with the scene in a slave market.  The emergency regulations compelled people in the reception areas to accept evacuees, but if they were going to take them in, they were determined to have the best ones: if possible evacuees who could help in the house, the shop, or the farm.  Villagers would come into the playground, walk around the crowd of girls and occasional boys, inspect them, and then point to the one or more that they were prepared to take.  The billeting officer would write something on his clip-board, and the victim or victims would be marched off.

            I found it intensely depressing, but even more so because no one seemed to want me. Several times people pointed to Ruby, but as she refused to go without her brother, the offer was always withdrawn.

            Finally there were about eight of us standing forlornly on the playground, and no villagers in sight who were prepared to take us.  Some of the girls looked as if they were about to cry; but the billeting officer seemed remarkably cheerful.  "Right," he said. "This little group will be just right for Veasy Farm."

            We piled into two cars.  I found myself sitting next to Ruby in the back of the billeting officer's little Fiat. We were driven a mile and a half from the village, and through a pair of iron gates, worthy, perhaps, of my Irish Grandfather's forge, and into the grounds of Veasy Farm.

            Veasy Farm was quite small, at ninety acres, it was little more than a small holding: but as I knew nothing about farm sizes, I thought that it was enormous.  It had four main fields, and the livestock, apart from two dogs and a brace of cats, consisted of ten cows, twenty ducks, eighteen turkeys, and nearly two-thousand chickens.

            The farmhouse was a large, off-white, two storey building,  with what looked like a belfry rising from the centre of the roof.  It contained about eight bedrooms, and had been functioning as a guest house during the summer months.

            The property was owned by a retired opera singer, who insisted on being addressed as Madam Wilmot.  Her husband was a slightly deaf, wizened, little man, who did most of the work around the farm.  He was to be known as The Commander, a rank which he had held in the Royal Navy, though anyone less like my idea of a retired naval commander would be difficult to imagine. He seemed to have no say in the management of the farm and guest house; for it did not belong to him, but to Madam and her business partner, a middle-aged, plump, red faced gentleman, who had a half share in the property.  There was also Miss Wilmot, who was, we were told, a concert pianist.  A brass plate fixed to the wall of the property informed the passer-by that Miss Dorothy Wilmot, L.R.A.M. was available to give private piano tuition. The final member of the establishment, was an extremely old farm labourer, who occupied a room on the ground floor, and was seldom seen in the house, as he rose very early, and was also in bed extremely early.

            The billeting officer ushered as in through the front door, in some haste as if he was expecting trouble.  We were met by Commander Wilmot: Madam and Miss Dorothy were still on holiday on the Isle of Wight, and would not be returning until the following day.  Commander Wilmot looked a little surprised at seeing us, but, on behalf of his absent wife and her partner, made no fuss, and accepted us.

            We sat in the dining room, waiting for nothing in particular.  I took stock of my companions.  They were, as was to be expected, all girls and as such were relatively uninteresting to me.  Five of them were of my sister's age, though there was one younger sister, about two years younger than me, to whom I took a hearty dislike on the spot, suspecting, correctly, that I would find her a great irritation in the coming months.  After a while, we were given some sort of evening meal, which I suppose must have been the first meal that we had eaten since leaving Edmonton that morning.  Yet I don't remember having felt hungry at all during the whole day.  I suspect that anxiety about the future completely took away my appetite.

            After the meal we were told that we could go outside for a while, but that we should not go into the fields; so we stayed close to the house.  We saw that there was an attractive conservatory at one end of the building, and behind it, a rather pleasant garden, with a smooth lawn, with a clock golf course laid out in its centre.

            I was admiring the golf course and wondering if we would be allowed to play on it, when Commander Wilmot came out and told me that I had to go to bed.  As it was only seven p.m., I was shocked: but I learned that I would be sharing a bedroom with the Commander, who had to rise at the crack of dawn every morning to milk the cows.  Although he was a little deaf, he wasn't so deaf as not to be woken up if I entered the bed room later on in the evening, so whilst I lived in Veasy Farm to bed I would have to go to bed at that disgusting time. I was shattered.

            It was still broad daylight.  The bedroom was large, with the Commander's double bed by the door, and a single bed, in which I was to sleep, opposite the window.  The Commander did not retire at seven, that was just my fate.  He wanted to make sure that I was in bed, and, he hoped, asleep, before he came in.  I undressed quickly and climbed into the unfamiliar bed.  From where I lay, I could see clearly the view from the window, for the curtains had not been closed.  There were fields, and in the far distance woods; and, I imagined, over the fields, out of sight because of in the haze of early evening, and very far away, the rooftops of London.  As it happened, London was at least 60 miles away and in the opposite direction, but I was not to know that.

            I lay there wide awake, not feeling in the least bit tired.  Suddenly, I knew that I was desperately homesick.  I had got into bed without saying my prayers, for the idea of being discovered on my knees by Commander Wilmot rather frightened me: now I decided to pray before I drifted off to sleep.  I went through the accustomed words that over the years had become my nightly ritual; but as I finished I added a new prayer, and prayed genuinely for, perhaps, the first time since Mum's serious illness.  "Oh God, please don't let there be a war: and please let me and Ruby go back home soon."  I'm afraid the first part of that prayer was not answered; and neither was the second, unless one regards going home after six months as soon.

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            Next morning, Ruby and I had breakfast before the others, as we were going to make our way to Frinton-on-Sea to hear mass.  Whilst I waited for Ruby to complete her toilet after breakfast, I stood in the corridor outside her room, and gazed in fascination at a a picture frame containing a double page spread from the Illustrated London News of June, 1892.  The picture was a drawing of the entire Royal Navy drawn up for inspection.  Somehow the artist had managed to cram all the hundreds of vessels into that small space, and each had its name printed below it.  In the coming months I was to examine that picture again and again, and in time grew to know the names of all but the smallest ships by heart.  For a while I fancied that Commander Wilmot might have served on one of those ships, but then I realised that though he seemed old, he certainly wasn't that old.

            Ruby emerged from her room, and somewhat unreasonably told me that we would have to hurry.  As if I had been keeping her waiting!  We set off on the four mile journey.  Ruby had been told the way by our hosts, and they had lent her a bicycle to make the journey easier.  Easier for Ruby that is; not for me.  At that time I had not learnt to ride a bicycle, so I walked beside her as she cycled slowly. 

            Of course we were late for mass.  The church was crowded, but we did manage to find seats at the back.  I didn't take much in at that point, apart from noticing that the church was extremely small, and was painted blue.

            Just as mass was coming to an end, an altar server came in from a side door, and without ceremony went straight up to the priest and whispered something in his ear.  I think the priest must have been expecting such a message, for immediately he turned to the congregation and said: "I have just been told that we are now at war with Germany."

            The mass concluded, extra prayers were said for our cause and for peace; then the congregation filed out into the sunlight.

            I ran much of the way back to Veasy Farm.  I had to run to keep up with Ruby.  She was crying, and as she cried she seemed to cycle faster.  I think I may have been crying too.