Category: Pre-WW2

I was on board a corvette in Belfast Harbour; while repairing a set and talking to the wireless operator, an officer stuck his head into the office and said “Williams…” and then he stopped. “I thought you were Williams, ” he said, “You sound just like him.” I smiled, he left and I got on with the job. Then Williams turned up. I discovered I knew him, he had been in my class at school. It was strange meeting him under those circumstances, and later, thinking about what had happened it led me to believe that schools have a stronger moulding influence on their pupils than they are credited with.

In our school, situated as it was in the heartland of the cockney accent every Friday during a pupil’s first term, all the new entrants were gathered together and taught phonetics and what amounted to elocution. We mimicked the vowels, the consonants, silly phrases about cows, peas and pace which stressed the difference between what was said inside and outside the school. We mimicked the master, Oxbridge to the teeth, so we too were now receiving an Oxbridge slant.

To extend the theme of mass moulding even further, both geographically and educationally, when I started at Queens University Belfast, as a mature, ex-service engineering student, there were only a few English students, most were Northern Irish with just a smattering of foreigners and members of the Commonwealth. Out of forty of us I believe there were something like fifteen of us who were ex-service, many married, some with children, all on grants, all with only one chance, no second bites of the cherry, all ambitious with ground to make up, all studying like mad. For the rest, they were straight from school and within a few weeks they found we were a force to be reckoned with.

From my perspective as an outsider, both from origin and age, I discovered unconsciously that the men and women who had come straight from school seemed to fall into categories conditioned by their schooling. Their attributes and outlooks seemed the same within each group and yet so disparate group by group. Without being specific, there were schools which produced people who were relatively innocent to a point of being almost naive. One group could have been classed as puppyish; another had the insouciance of the English Public School. There were some who had suffered such a strict and rigid regime that now they were out from under the repressive supervision, they did not seem to know quite what to do with their freedom. There was a tough crowd, polite but hardy, nothing would get past them and there were others who seemed so reserved as to be non-existent. To generalise is unfair to the individual, and probably many would not agree with my assessment. However, the fact that I have convinced myself that I discovered this apparent segregation in attitude and approach subconsciously, and that I believed it to be true at the time, must say something for the mass moulding of character and the responsibility the teacher has for the end product of his school.

Oxbridge and ex-Public School staff ran our school on Public School lines – as closely as one could for a day school. We had PT every day, vaulting over boxes, doing running somersaults, walking the high beam and everything one can imagine doing in a fully equipped gymnasium, including a shower afterwards. We played seasonal games twice a week, assembly with hymns every morning. Prefects were allowed to thrash, yet no one complained. A strong sense of pride, fostered by a good academic success rate both at school and after, ensured the popularity with parents. The pride was greatly publicised by names on mahogany-faced boards in gold leaf in the Great Hall, that could be read when the message from the platform was too banal. This pride was dented a bit when some Hitler Youth came over on exchange, taught us hand-ball and thrashed us, then proceeded to beat us at tennis. If cricket had not been beyond the German vocabularies of our upper sixth, we could well have be beaten at that too.

There was snobbery between us and other schools in the area which we thought beneath us, which I place squarely at the feet of the staff. We had a woodwork department in which the woodwork master was replaced by a teacher who spoke with a working class accent, worked very much with his hands and had probably come from an artisan background. I suspected he had started life apprenticed to a trade in the North and then had worked hard to reach an academic level. One never saw him in the staff room and rarely, if ever, in the company of members of staff. He taught maths as a subsidiary subject but woodwork and metal work were his preoccupations. We had to choose between learning Classics, or Woodwork and metalwork for Matriculation, I chose the latter, and have never regretted the grounding which has helped me throughout my life, and which made training in the Navy considerably easier. Looking back though, I think tuition in both subjects would have been more beneficial,

It was in my second year the new crafts teacher arrived. Below average height, built like an international rugby hooker, he had hands like vices. He appeared dour. Looking back, and taking into account later experiences with him when we were evacuated, I believe he was probably just reserved. In two terms he single-handedly ripped the workshop to pieces, built steel covered metal work-benches, installed a forge, a lathe, a vertical drilling machine and a plethora of new implements we had never seen before’, while teaching. Then he proceeded to teach us to make EPNS pierced napkin rings, twisted pokers for home fires, the dangerous art of spinning copper – improperly set up, one could lose fingers, ears, chunks of cheeks, as men in the engine Sheds at Crew did, spinning the copper domes for the valves on top of the steam engines. To me it was a period of my schooling I looked forward to every week.

In his store he kept all the expensive and or dangerous bits and pieces which today would walk the plank. Stealing then was not a problem, there was the odd thief who was generally caught and expelled, but nothing was locked up anywhere in the school, except the school shop and the tuck shop. With permission, we were allowed to fix things, as a privilege, and if we had taken on a project which was behind or took more time than allocated, we could work at it in free periods. It was then I discovered him sitting in his office with a cup of tea or sandwiches for his lunch, something the other Staff would not have dreamed of doing, they were entitled to school meals, even when they were not on ‘dinner duty’. I felt sorry for him, a childish presumption based on my own gregarious outlook. In fact, later, I was to find he was a very sophisticated man with cultured tastes and he probably preferred his own company to the racket of the Staff Room.

When we were evacuated in Sussex, he had to try to maintain our progress in metalwork without proper facilities as we would be examined not only on written work but a half-day practical. That first winter in ’39 was fierce and the snow was heavy. One day he came upon some of us trying to make a toboggan out of scrap timber, fruit boxes and the like. He called us into his house, produced some decent wood and guided us in the making of one which would seat three grown boys at a time and was properly constructed with metal runners. Once the ice was broken, we went there on several occasions for tea with his family and it was then that I really appreciated the worth of the man. I have often wondered if he was ever really accepted by his peers at the school, or even whether he wanted to be. All I know is that I owe him more than just matriculation in metalwork

The Bizarre World Of The Hospital There was one accident which outshone all the rest, it was spectacular, it was predictable and it might have been my fault – concussed I never really found out, I had just sold my cycle and bought another one, once again for a pound, another second-hand one which was to last me well into the 60’s. It was another sit-up-and-beg version, but the paint was pristine and it had a three speed Sturmy Archer gear which rated it as a flying machine in those days. Three of us were out on a ride around. The other two had new bikes and were putting them through their paces. Unfortunately I had not done all the servicing I should have done prior to my first venture on the new bike, the brakes were almost non-existent. We had been cycling from the top of a hill and were coming down at speed towards a major road, which crossed, and, of course, had right of way. The other two stopped at the junction, I went on, and on, until I was brought up short by the handle of the rear door of a car against my head behind the ear. That was the last I heard until I awoke in hospital.

Apparently I lay in the road using language I could have been expelled from school for and being given brandy, the worst stimulant for someone with concussion. When I came to I found a policeman beside the bed who asked me what had happened and I was able to tell him what I believed to be true, that I had been hit by a motorcycle,. That ended police enquiries. The next visitor was a distraught mother, her hat slightly askew from her hurried departure from home, and her inevitable diaphanous scarf equally awry. She informed me I had broken my back, and I was on boards and not allowed to move. This was the prelude to the main event, which was a week in hospital with a cracked skull, a broken collarbone, a cracked arm and concussion, beside minor contusions.

I was in a fracture ward, which was full of characters. In those days broken legs could mean months in hospital and I suppose the atmosphere was a little like prison where the old lags know the warders and all the dodges. The familiarity between the nurses and the men was an eye-opener to a fourteen year old. I was the only young person in the ward. The man in the next bed had been run over by a lorry loaded with bricks which had separated his chest area from his pelvis, or something like that. Whatever was actually the case, it was greeted by all as a miracle that he had lived, let alone that he could now walk with only a slight limp, because one leg was shorter than the other, after they had sewn him together.

Then there was the bookmaker who was wheeled from ward to ward as a living and breathing reference to the skills of the staff and the surgeons in particular. The fact that it was also a demonstration of what could happen  to a welsher at Epsom Downs seemed to have escaped the staff in their desire for plaudits. If it had been me in that wheel chair I think I would have insisted on some sort of mask, say a balaclava, so no one would know who I was. Of course he may ‘have seen the light’, people often act out of character under those circumstances. Apparently at the closing of a very unsuccessful meeting he had been sneaking off when someone thrust a knife into his heart and the surgeons not only got him from Epsom to Tooting, they took the knife out of him and sewed up his heart.

I think some of the men tried to embarrass me just for something to do and some of their stories were pretty lurid, especially of what they assured me the night nurses got up to, but I had been brought up to respect women, I had no choice, I was surrounded by them, so I took the joshing in the spirit I assumed it was intended. When it was discovered that my back was not broken I was put in a cot on the balcony, overlooking a square of grass, where the windows were opened every day and life seemed transformed from what it had been in the ward. There I came across a man who had to stand considerable banter because he had fallen on ice on the front steps of a brothel. Apparently he had spent an enjoyable night with one of the ladies, she had provided breakfast, but as he left he slipped on the steps and broke his leg. It is not difficult to imagine the flood-gates that opened from the other men in the hospital ward with that little tit-bit to work on. My education in barely a week was enormous.

I often wonder if young people, with shiny new degrees lecturing us on TV, in dictatorial terms, with such conviction, have really had any experience of the problems they are allegedly solving. I have met a number of those problems head on, at a time when they were not thought to be so. From the age of eight, I, and many of my mates regularly carried blood blisters on our buttocks or hands from caning. We were high spirited, and when we thought we were right. rebellious, but not vandals, nor did we feel oppressed.

In a music lesson in secondary school, the teacher was playing a record of the Overture to the Mid-Summer Night’s Dream and explaining how a few bars of the music imitated the braying of an ass. Gilly Potter, my mate, and I sat together; we were undoubtedly asses. The teacher replayed the record, Gilly and I, instinctively brayed on queue. I had to fetch the punishment book and cane, Gilly and I received 6 blood blisters on our buttocks to take home.

In elementary school, a poem set for homework was twice tested the following day. After further learning in a classroom, where the rest were being taught something more interesting, those still below par, had to learn again, then bend over and had strokes of the cane punctuating each omission to help the appreciation of poetry. In my own home, a cane hung from a hook on the kitchen door and could be applied for all sorts of reasons. There were other abuses, bullying, clips round the head for incompetence, etc,

At secondary school we were caned by the prefects for minor infringements, like not doing the lines they had given us for running in a corridor. Most of us took it as part of life, it hurt momentarily; it was an obvious risk one took for disobeying the rules, but psychologically, life was so full, we hadn’t time for it to become a real concern.

As to sex, in single sex schooling, and unless we had sisters, we had no truck with girls until we were about 15, and even then we were totally naive; and while there were dirty stories going the rounds, I distinctly remember when I was about eleven, having no idea what the guy telling the story was talking about. Swearing, sex and salacious talk was rare in front of children, to the extent that when an aunt was being divorced, it was only discussed when I was absent, I was ten at the time. Sexual child abuse and other deviances, to my certain knowledge were never aired in general company, mainly because they were ‘not nice’ the final arbiter in so much pre WW2.

Would I be wrong in thinking that religion-supplied recreation and stimulation in the old days served the community well, particularly in those dull, dark winter nights, through clubs, Scouts and Guides and other activities for the young, even if they abandoned it later in life; but that the root causes of delinquency today are through the lack of parental control, exercise, stimulation and also debilitating boredom, not abuse and some of the other factors usually offered? Am I right in thinking, in effect, the parents should be held actively responsible, and there should be more recreational areas and facilities?

I don’t think I ever met anyone, outside of a professional cyclist, who had more accidents within a year than I did and most of them were not my fault – hand on heart!

I was about fourteen when I bought my first bicycle and that I’m sure was mainly to save money on tram fares to school. For whatever reason I was allowed to buy a second-hand bike for a pound, not an insubstantial amount when considered against the basic wage, a ‘sit-up-and beg’ bike and characterless. It was probably WW1 vintage. It needed painted, had only one gear -I was enamoured with it. I had it about a month when I decided to go on my first real journey, I would visit an aunt. , some two to three miles away. She was not in, so I thought Crystal Palace is only a little further, I’ll go and look at that – only another three miles. When I had seen the Crystal Palace, perfunctorily, I thought I would go to see an uncle at Orpington – about ten miles. They were out too. It was at that point I saw a signpost which said that Tonbridge Wells, only ten miles more and I was becoming blas?, and once there Hastings beckoned – with no thought for the return journey, just the sea, the pebbles and the glory to come. I had no food, no protective clothing, but enthusiasm. There were some marvellous names of small settlements along the way, but the only one I now recall was Peas Pottage.

Pole Hill and River Hill to a cyclist are like crawling up the side of the Eiger, Hasting was about 55 miles from home, some ride for someone who had only been cycling for a month. When I arrived at about two o’clock, I carefully put the bicycle in the under-promenade car park and sat on the beach for an hour until I knew I had no choice but to leave for London. That return journey towards the end, was torture. As I climbed the last of the two great hills I fell asleep while standing on the pedals going up the hill and found myself in the gutter with the bike on top of me. Ultimately I arrived home close to midnight to find a very worried mother. The following day I stayed in bed, exhausted, but the expedition had given me a taste for long rides and from then on I went to Brighton, Hastings and other seaside resorts, and back, for a day’s outing as a regular occurrence, still on the bone-shaker.

For me, cycling is best as a solitary occupation. Most of my companions wanted to stop for refreshment, couldn’t mend a puncture and did everything to hamper the smooth progress of the day. The whole essence of long distance cycling is rhythm, the rhythm of the pedals, the wheels on the road surface, regular eating, a little at a time and the same with drinking, and above all the rhythm of the mind. I found cycling gave one room to think without distraction, a solitary ride did not have to be a lonely one. With all the time to see the countryside, the clouds, the wild life and to just think about all of that or just anything, it was wonderful and if the war had not come along I am sure I would have pedalled the whole of England.

I have always considered myself accident prone and some say that being so is an indication of laziness. I can’t agree. Take my first cycle accident, nothing could be more bizarre. I was cycling up a steep hill when the handcart in front of me pulled out and started to pass a parked car. I then pulled out to pass the cart and a taxi coming behind pulled out to pass me. There we were, strung out like washing on a line, right across the road, when a cyclist coming down the hill at speed was forced to shoot out into the centre of the road to avoid hitting the cab head on, instead he chose me to hit head on. I flew over my handlebars, his handlebars and landed several feet up the road. My front wheel was a mess. Again, I had been ice-skating and was seated on my bike outside Streatham Ice rink waiting for my friend when it happened. The bike was supported on one pedal on the pavement and I was lounging on the saddle with my feet on the handlebars, my arms across my knees and my chin on my arms when I received a blow which changed all that. An idiot on a racing bike, with his hands on the low grips of his handlebars, cycling head down, ran straight into the back of me. More than my pride was bruised and the rear wheel was twisted out of recognition. I made him give me his name and address but I was never able to persuade his mother to pay for the damage and in those days there was neither Legal Aid nor a Nanny State, it was every man for himself. No 3. It was a wet morning with the rain teeming down. I was stopped in the middle of the main road waiting to turn right, if and when the opportunity presented itself. In the distance was a tram coming towards me. Suddenly I was hit from behind with a resounding thump by a motorcycle and I skated along the tramlines like a stone in the Scottish game of curling, until I was brought up against the cow-catcher device on the front of the tram which was shuddering to a halt. Laziness? I think not.

To most boys coming from my background, religion was a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It was an entre into the Scouting Movement, which, was church affiliated, offered bun fights and picnics’ in lieu of TV On cold wet winter evenings, apart from the Cubs and Scouts, there was the CCC, Children’s Christian Circle. Held in a barren church hall with rows and rows of hard chairs, we sat to be entertained by missionaries, back from all corners of the world, with lantern slides of people in strange lands with even stranger habits, such as having wooden plates in their lower lips or fingernails which seemed to go on for ever and clearly made life a plague. If we were enticed beyond the attraction of the eccentric, it could only have been by something cheap and innocuous like a glass of orange squash at half-time, Missionary Societies were hard up. Our church had had a change of vicar, the new one hailed from Ireland, that place off Wales where music hall artists came from.

The night which changed my religious outlook was totally unheralded. It was the usual CCC night, wet, cold and dank, with little heating and the regular crescendo of noise. We were awaiting the arrival of the speaker and the vicar to introduce him. I was cocked up comfortably on the back legs of my chair, my feet on the rails of the one in front, chatting happily,. The new vicar appeared. He looked round, and started to walk down the centre aisle surveying the rabble. I took little notice of him – was just aware of his presence, so did not recognise Nemesis when it arrived. My first intimation was when I disappeared over the back of my chair to hit the floor with a thump. When he had approached, the vicar had asked, “Would you do that at home?” – indicating the feet on the rails and the tipped up chair. Truthful to the point of being, in the eyes of the vicar, impertinent and unrepentant, I had said I would, which was true, at which instant the vicar’s fist struck and struck hard. What followed that evening was a blur but in spite of the combined efforts of my mother, and Miss Batley, my Sunday school teacher, I ended my association with our church. I was sorry. I loved church on Sunday, listening to the bobs, doubles and trebles being rung by the full peal. I was a bugler, drummer and patrol leader in the Scouts, I would miss the fun of it all.. In spite of the ‘turning the other cheek’ bit, Miss Batley was hammering on about, I believed that Christianity’s preaching of ‘love thy neighbour’ should start at source and not be interpreted as a thump in the chest. “Enough already!” It was worse than I had anticipated. By not attending church parades I was then chucked out of the church Troop, I was a pariah – I was unacceptable, by inference unclean! For a while I mooched about on Sundays with my heathen friends, but Mother finally put her foot down and demanded that I must attend church, any church, so I and the heathens inaugurated the Religious Round.

The Religious Round It shows the cohesion we had as a group, told to attend; the others decided to accompany me. We would turn up at a meeting, it might have been Sunday School or a church service. At each new venue, the greetings we got were amazing. To find a small group of boys, aged about eleven, turning up on the doorstep, un-coerced, was probably unheard of. We, in turn, found it amazing, that so many sects could preach the same message in so many different ways. On one occasion, we went up some stairs to a scruffy loft, where the chap in charge was an ex-Canadian Mounted Policeman we all knew. He, as usual, was in the Mounty dress uniform, green-khaki trousers with a yellow stripe down the sides of the legs, polished riding boots and a blue jacket with chain-mail epaulettes but for once no wide-brimmed hat – incongruous, to say the least. We always attended for a few weeks, reading and discussing the handouts on our way home. Whether we learned much I cannot say, but I think many of the protracted arguments with Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses on the front doorstep in later life might show that some of the teaching had been absorbed, along with growing scepticism, agnosticism and general apathy, leading to atheism.

We went out of our way to sample all we could; the one we liked best was the Salvation Army. They sat us in the front pew, opposite the roaring brass, and it was fantastic. There was an atmosphere almost akin to hysteria that was infectious. Looking back in retrospect, it was the street corner service transferred indoors. Of all the religious groups I have come in contact with, I believe they are among the most selfless, and their contribution to the lot of the stranded serviceman was invaluable in its intrinsic if not religious sense, and I will always be grateful. Presumably now the cardboard-city dwellers are the recipients of their care as we were during the war.

Throw art y’moldies! This was the period when people went everywhere in charabancs, those overblown, single-deck buses with their thin tyres and great over-hang at the back. Derby Day, early in June, was a great outing in our part of South London, especially as it was on the route directly to Epsom Downs. There was a lot of talk about the race and every year there was a tremendous fair at the course, it attracted crowds of all ages and classes. I don’t know if the custom still exists, but when I was a child, we would go to Balham High Road to see the charabancs coming back from the races. The passengers were in high spirits, streaming coloured paper out of the windows and as the traffic was slow due to its volume, there was time for interchange between the people on the bus and the people lining the road. We were there in crowds; the atmosphere was almost like that at the Coronation. People were shouting and laughing and children used to call out ‘Frow art y’ mouldy coppers!’, one assumed that the winners were so well heeled a few coppers meant nothing to them. A window on the bus would open and a fistful of coppers would descend in a hail on to the pavement and then there would be a scrum between those whom my Gran called the ‘gutter-snipes’ for what they could grab. I was not allowed to join in, I had merely to observe and enjoy the ambience, although I suspect she found it hard when a fistful would land at our feet. Sometimes dolls and stuffed toy animals would come sailing out, won at the funfair, and often sweets too. The excitement felt by the gutter-snipes and the returning gamblers was contagious and had to be experienced to be appreciated, what with the heads and smiling faces leaning out of the bus windows and the cross talk between the pavement watchers and the passengers, it was almost as if we had all been there to see the races. As I got older I used to go to see the return of the revellers on my own. There was no chance of missing the event, the roars of the crowd as another fleet of busses passed at the top of the road was alarm enough.

DEAL – The Big Catch. My mother’s family, her uncles and aunts, all lived in or near Deal, where I went for short holidays with an aunt. The whole atmosphere was a revelation, they were all so ebullient, so full of fun, nothing was too much trouble, and meal-time was like a feast with everyone talking at once and the place filled with men. It was a new world. The family business was still going and they had this huge house with an immense garden at the bottom of which they kept chickens. I had already been blooded in Africa, so when my great uncle instructed me in how to pull a chicken’s neck, while I know I hated the idea, I did not flinch. I suffer from what the French call the English Disease. I think I could dispatch a human quicker than an animal, sometimes I think, with more reason. My cousin was about ten years my senior but he took me under his wing during that visit. He showed me his BSA 0.22 rifle, a powerful gun, and demonstrated how, with three shots he could shoot the stem off a pear hanging at the top of a huge tree and drop the fruit. It never occurred to me then to wonder where the bullets finished up. The rifle had belonged to the boy next door who had foolishly been using bottles for target practice when one piece of glass had ricocheted back into his eye and permanently blinded it. I was allowed to shoot at the stems of pears too, but with no success, except it gave me a love of target shooting I have never lost.

It was on an earlier holiday, before going to Africa, that I discovered how considerate and resourceful families can be when they set out to entertain, and how much fun can be had when they are all together. My Great Uncle suggested we should go fishing off Deal pier. They bought me a line, sinkers and hooks, and a rectangular wooden frame on which the fishing line is wound. The whole lot probably cost sixpence. Off we set. We went to the very end of Deal Pier for deep water and they showed me how to bait a line with a worm and throw it over the rail. I was barely the height of the toprail, if that, and had difficulty seeing where the line finished. They explained that when I felt a tug on the line, which was the fish biting, I was to tug back and then wait to allow the hook to catch the fish, then if it tugged again I was to haul in the fish, which I did, several times, going home as proud as Punch with the string of fish I had caught. It was only years later that my aunt told me that the others had been standing on the lower tier of the pier, tugging the line and putting on fish they had bought at a fish shop. Many a time I have fished since and been exhilarated with my catch, but never since did fishing give me the thrill those few fish, which in truth I had not caught, did that day.

My mother, Willie, was always inventive and resourceful and was consequently a horder. Unfortunately she passed the latter tendency on to me and I own a choked workshop to prove it. It was my first scout camp, I had only left the Cubs and been promoted to the Scouts in the late Autumn and here it was Summer, and I was off on the ‘great adventure’. My grandmother had come up with an army kit bag and I was provided with a printed sheet in that greenish-blue ink which had been rolled off from a sheet of impregnated gelatine, the forerunner of the Roneo, the photocopier and the Fax machine. It was slow, messy and prone to human error, but useful, and I suppose, at the time, quite a wonder in its way. On the list was all I had to provide.

I remember the tarry smell of the kit bag, war issue to Sonny, my uncle. There was all the fuss about knives and forks, the enamel mug and plate, and the blankets to sleep in, held by huge safety pins – there were no sleeping bags at our level in those days. The first time I came across a sleeping bag was in 1946 when a cotton liner was de rigueur in the Northern Ireland Youth Hostel Association.

On the day we set off in a lorry, hired from a local merchant, it was very hot. Unfortunately the canvas cover of the lorry was in place and as the mudguard of one of the rear wheels was rubbing on the tyre, we were all ill from rubber fumes. What with the repair to the mudguard and the repair to the passengers, we arrived at the camp site very late and as there was no time to initiate the novices in camp craft, we were relegated to digging the latrine while the more experienced members of the party set up camp, and the tents in particular, as quickly as possible – WW1 bell tents, a real thing of the past. The tents were a great source of fun if you were the perpetrator and annoyance if you were on the receiving end. We all slept, feet to the pole, so our heads and faces were positioned under the triangular segments of the canvas, at the edge. If it had been raining and was still raining, and one ran a finger down the segment, and stopped just above the head of a sleeping comrade, it temporarily ruined the waterproof characteristics of the canvas and would drip, very nicely, inside the tent from where the finger had stopped.

We had had tea, our patois for the evening meal, and the younger members were glad to get to bed, it had been a disappointing and gruelling day. I was still hungry – I was always still hungry – so, with the aid of a torch I searched my kit bag and, low and behold, kind considerate Willie had put a jar of peeled almonds in my kit bag. Greed brought on by hunger made me put a handful in my mouth and I hardly munched before swallowing. It was therefore a moment or two before I discovered the supposed almonds were, in fact, little pieces of soap, those annoying little pieces that fill the soap dish, too small to hold comfortably, about the size of a good almond. It was barely light when I was introduced to the horrors of the scout latrine, with its single pole suspended across a most unpleasant chasm, but the alternative was unthinkable. I later discovered that Willie, the resourceful, had included the almonds for putting in a punched baked bean tin, to shake in the washing-up water to make suds. Unfortunately she had forgotten to include the instructions.

The Bee Sting On another occasion we went to Battle – the place not a fight – near Hastings, 1066 country, and camped in a field next to the one in which we were told Harold had lost an eye and subsequently his life. Relishing stuff for young scouts! We ate on a long trestle table beneath a colossal oak which could well have sheltered Harold, and as ever, there was one among us who had an immense appetite and an even greater aquisitiveness – a long word for a long arm – if it was on the table he could reach it and would. He had a propensity for looking round him while eating – possibly to miss nothing, but this proved his downfall and near death. He was on his Xth bread and jam, we fared well but simply. Suddenly his head stopped rotating and he let out a screech that was deafening. Authority in the form of the Scout Master and the Cub Mistress rushed, as you can imagine. He had bitten a bee and it had bitten him back, or rather stung him on the tongue. There was no panic, rather controlled energy at high speed. We had a truck cart – also WW1 vintage, which we regularly pulled apart and assembled to get it into lorries. Fortunately it was assembled. Tubby was bundled into the cart and about six of us ran, pushing and towing him across the fields to the town to find a doctor. – and how we ran, because we were expecting Tubby to choke to death in front of us at any minute. I think his parents collected him after that, but he was not the only Tubby I encountered as I shall relate another day.

What sparked this off was the difference between the toys of my grandchildren and great grandchildren. The quantity, the quality of design, the variety of textures made me look back on the past. Not only that, as we needed some toys in the house for when they visited, we were amazed at how cheaply the most beautiful toys can be bought at car boot sales. I was going to a wedding and the kit required was black-tie, and I remarked that ‘I had to get my waiter’s set on’. I then realised that to talk about a ‘set’ was probably a throwback to the 30s when children at Christmas were given every type of set, cowboy, Red Indian, conductor, nurse, it was endless, and irrespective of how cheap or expensive the set was, they all had a hat, – no hat, no fun! I receivefd a tram conductor’s set, with a little spring clip of coloured tickets, a strap to go over the shoulders to carry the puncher, a bag for the toy money, not supplied in the cheaper sets, and an identification badge. My long-suffering family sat, line ahead, on kitchen chairs so I could pretend to be a conductor. I don’t see such sets on sale today at Christmas. Maybe the long suffering parents have put a ban on them for obvious reasons.

With little traffic we played in the street, and there was one vicious game, that was regularly played in our district. We divided into two teams in competition, a boy from one team stood braced against the gable-end of the house, the next boy put his head between the first ones thighs and his shoulders against the thighs, so his head would not be thrust against the wall. The rest of the team bent down and one after the other copied the second boy, until there was a row of hunched backs. The second team then successively ran and jumped as far up the backs, and as hard as they could in an attempted to collapse the – very dangerous!.

We learned skills with huge, with a whipping tops and spinning tops, honed, because the pecking order was based upon skill. We learned to do tricks with practically everything that came to hand and in the late 30s America sent us the Yo-Yo, – really tricky. Those who could not afford the real McCoy, were palmed off with an English version, which never attained the heights of invention of the American ones. Earlier, as I had no father, my grandmother taught me boyish arts. She took me to the butcher’s to buy rib-bones of the right thickness and lengths, taught me to boil them until the meat fell free, to probe out the marrow, clean them and shape them to the hand, so they could be used, one set in each hand, one member held loosely between forefinger and thumb, one between second and third fingers, to rattle out rhythms like a music hall artist. She also taught me to play the Jews’ (jaws) Harp, the tin whistle, the mouth organ, to hoot like an owl through my thumbs and boxed hands, and I had sores on each corner of my mouth learning to whistle with four fingers.

Because life itself was simple and almost preordained, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that my generation must, from grandparents to grandchild, have played games that were very simple and a lot of them naive. Meccano and toy trains are probably the most common sophisticated choice that children enjoyed. Jigsaws, toy soldiers, scale models of cars, dolls and dolls’ houses for girls, were general. One can draw comparisons, and give explanations, but the rate of change in every sphere has been a progressive move to the more automated and sophisticated, and the throwaway society.

Boating ponds. For me the thirties were the ‘Golden Age, not necessarily the happiest, nor, the most fulfilling, far from it, but there was security in that nothing much changed and yet there was plenty to do, innocent things, such as a small child, being rowed, round the Boating Pond on Tooting Bec Common by the attendant, paid or bribed, Later we propelled ourselves in a paddle boat, an ugly, blunt ended, green painted bucket, scorned by all. They had paddle handles working independently; one progressed at a stately pace. The next stage was a one-boy or two-boy canoe. At Tooting Bec Common the large pond with its inlets and islands gave scope for imaginative role-play. Later one advanced to the rowing boat, blunt ended to limit speed and damage. Here one learned to spin on a sixpence, hide from the attendant when time was nearly up, ram and splash and to take it when one was rammed or splashed in turn. We also learned when to hire the boat so that we had more than the prescribed time, one only needed to understand the operation of the crude timing system. The Council did a worthwhile job supporting the Boating Ponds; we expended energy, used our imagination and passed many a happy half hour for little cost. I can’t help wondering what affect the Health and Safety Regulations have had on boating ponds today

Latchkey Children

As one who was the child of a single parent family and have survived unscathed, I find among commentators, politicians and some of the general public, a level of ignorance and misunderstanding which can malign both the parent and the child

In the past, with extended families and no artificial insemination, there was a smaller percentage of unsupported mothers – and single parent fathers were few. Today, with housing provision for single mothers, the lack of the extended family, the increase in promiscuity, and the strange phenomenon of single women choosing to become single parents by insemination, the subject has moved to the top of the agenda.

With personal experience and observation I believe most single mothers are caring, but are overwhelmed by the basic logistics of being the breadwinner and a mother. In my case the result was that from a very early age, 8 or 9, the single child, or the older child becomes the purchaser, the quasi-housemaid, the short-order cook, and if there were more than one child, the baby sitter. If the parent, through stress becomes an intermittent invalid, then the child was nurse, and comforter. Pre-WW2 there were few homes with fridges; the perishables were hoarded in a cool place in a ‘safe’ a wooden cupboard with a perforated-zinc-covered door. Food needed cooked if it was not to be lost, and as economy was paramount, the child soon had to learn to make most meals.

The parent had to work and the child go to school, but these activities never jelled, with the result the child might have lunch at school or with a relative, but in the afternoon and early evening he or she was alone for long periods. From leaving school until the friends had to go home, the child had some company, but from that point was alone until the harassed and tired parent returned. In a small flat, up flights of stairs, it is easier and more attractive to wander than return home, but wandering only underlines the loneliness.

Today the children don’t have to learn to cook, with pre-prepared meals. They have no need to wander because there is the TV and the computer, but their world has shrunk even further and I am sure they are just as lonely, – assuming they are not part of a gang made up of other single parent children. With the expanding single parent phenomenon, exercise and stimulation beyond the electronic screen is needed both summer and winter in an irresistible form, but who is to provide it, , and fund it – more to the point stop it being a seven day wonder? Am I right in thinking that if something isn’t achieved soon, the gangs will grow?