Category: Pre-WW2

My father, severely gassed in WW1, had to take up a post with the Colonial Service to be able live in a dry climate. He was sent to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. My mother had returned in 1922 and I was born and lived for 6 years in South London. In 1928 my mother and I went out to Africa to join my father. It was an unforgettable and totally strange experience, what with the eccentric British Raj, meeting Africans in their own environment, and a foreign one to them, wild animals and scenery that is still marvelled at today.

The Journey Out In ’28, we, my mother and I, joined the Balmoral Castle. On board were the cricketing greats of the day, the English Test Team. At six brought up by women, the occasion was totally lost on me, so when .Jardine actually gave me a ball, I didn’t even know enough to get it autographed. Every day nets were erected on one part of the deck for practice. As the only child in First and Second Class, I was taken under the wing of a kindly deck hand. I suspect he was sorry for my solitary existence. The journey of several weeks was like prison. Phrases starting with ‘Don’t..’ took the place of conversation; I fed alone in the Second Class Dining Salon with the same pomp adults had, which only stressed the isolation. Much of the food, unsurprisingly, was new to me. The three classes were not allowed to mix, nor stray out of their territory, but I went everywhere as assistant to the Deck Hand – thank heaven. I can still see the rounded timber rail with its highly polished brass fittings, which allowed access from mid-ships – Second Class – into the other two classes and how empty the First and Second Class decks were compared with crowded steerage. I rose early, found the Deck hand, and helped set up the games paraphernalia for the day. The quoits were made of thick rope, smelled of tar and were as hard as stone when they rattled the knuckles. Apart from setting out the steamer chairs and the shuffle boards, that was my work done till evening when we put it all away again. The smell those ships, the older cross channel ferries, and the old navy ships had, has all gone long ago – it imparted a memory of a different and pleasurable sort, a mixture of hot engine oil and tarred rope. At night there was some form of amusement but I would have been asleep by then.

When we reached Madeira three things stood out for me. On each occasion, even before the ship had dropped anchor, there was a host of small boats laden with fruit and trifles made by the locals, which we could buy. There were also children who would dive off the boats for money thrown from the ship. At the time I thought it marvellous that they could catch the money before it disappeared from sight and it was many years before I discovered that the coins planed back and forth in the water and so descended slowly. Another take-on! The other vague impression I still retain is the wealth of colour of the Madeira I have been told we went on one of the famous dry sledge rides, but I don’t remember that,. Leaving Madeira, going South to the Equator, the whole ship came together for the Line Crossing Ceremony. You can imagine the welter of mixed emotions of a small boy who couldn’t swim, who was being taken on deck to watch a sailor dressed in a fierce beard, a paper crown, outlandish clothes and brandishing a trident, sitting on a throne set up above a tiny canvas swimming pot, about the size of a waste-skip, surrounded by his shouting henchmen lathering the faces of the passengers before they were chucked unceremoniously into the pot. I stood there, waiting my awful turn, petrified but went through it nonetheless. Later there were fancy dress parties. The categories for prizes were ‘Brought onboard’, ‘Bought onboard’, and ‘Made onboard’, mine was the latter. I was a Candelabra, swathed in some form of copper-coloured material, with a headdress of a copper-coloured candleholder with candle and a candleholder in each outstretched hand. I won second prize to a Red Indian. We went down to the shop somewhere in the bowels of the ship and I received my first camera, a leather-cased Box Brownie On the return journey on the Edinburgh Castle, I was dressed as what we Rhodesians thought of as mealy-corn, – maize to Europeans. I was strapped in a shaped, elliptical tube of green crepe paper, which rose above head level encasing most of me, but revealing bobbles of yellow paper corn on my chest. I believe it was very fetching, but as one can’t defend oneself with encased arms I entered the competition in tatters, having had a fight with, I believe, yet another Red Indian. Mother was not pleased. From Capetown we had a tedious journey for days, cooped up in a railway compartment.

Last Posted 23,10.06

Livingstone From the age of six until I was eight years old, I lived in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, as part of the British Raj, although then it was not thought of in that way, even if we behaved so. As a little boy, lifted out of a simple, stable environment, dumped into a totally rarefied existence, I was to find nearly everything alien and therefore a searing experience. For example, the ground was of loose, red sand, with sparse clumps of brown grass and insects and small creatures squirming away as I walked. To a child who went to the seaside only once or twice a year, the opportunity to run barefoot and enjoy the sensuous experience of loose, warm, or hot sand beneath my feet and between my toes, was a transition which was only renewed in my thirties and forties on the hotter beaches of southern Europe. Our house was on the edge of the Veldt, only a few hundred yards from land as it had been since the dawn of time. Certainly not like South London, you did not hear the roar of lions at night in Wandsworth. Cautionary warnings about the dangers of wandering outside the permanent encampment, our town of Livingstone, only fed my imagination and the sounds at night confirmed my wildest dreams, but then I was a dreamer who longed for impossible adventures. If I had any suspicions that the warnings might merely be some form of parental ruse to keep me within hailing distance, they were soon dispelled; at night I could hear the cries of animals in the distance.

In the garden at the rear of the house were huts, made of reeds from the river plastered with mud, and in these huts were seemingly huge black men, some single, a few with families, who were required, by a tradition imposed from outside, to be subservient, even to a little alien boy. I found that these huts and the occupants had a particular smell, one I remembered long after I had left Africa, it was neither good nor offensive, just distinctive. Years later I was to recall this with some embarrassment when I heard an African remark that whites smelled horribly to Africans. My father was a civil servant in the Colonial Service provided with standard, rubber-stamp type furnished accommodation, filled out by personal possessions collected along the way. To a boy of that age, the traditional civil service delineation of rank by the size and quality of the dwelling and its furnishings would have meant nothing, but the hardness of the tiled floors, the zinc lined boxes and steel trunks against the ravages of the red ant, stayed with me.

Livingstone, at that time, the seat of Government for Northern Rhodesia was also the Residence of the Governor at ‘Government House’. It was there visiting notables, such as Jim Mollison, the flyer, were put up, where parties were held , even for the children, and where one had to be on one’s best behaviour – children and parents alike. I still believe I can see most of Livingstone as it was then, the houses in rows, occupying such large tracts they seemed scattered, each with its small kraal for the servants, its chickens, its fruit trees and a few vegetables. The fruit trees made a great impact on me, the lemons were like Jaffa oranges, with thick skins which were as tasty as the fruit they wrapped, which in turn was so sweet no sugar was needed. There were tangerines, oranges, plantains and groundnuts – pea nuts, and what was more, for most of the year the sun shone and shone.

Looking back, now experienced in the ways of the Services abroad, I realise that the hierarchical system, the division between families according to the relative ranks of the bread-winners, certainly pertained, because my first few months were not all sweetness and light, there was a pecking order among the children which I didn’t understand, – at six, how could I? I found myself subjected to bullying by older and bigger boys, from families senior to ours. Strangely the most recurrent image of those days is the ‘Sundowner’ The white population of Livingstone was very small. The whites, by definition, were the masters, in authority; while many of the more menial jobs were either carried out by Africans or Asians. In the evenings, there being no commercial forms of entertainment, the whites tended to meet regularly at one another’s houses for drinks prior to the evening meal – for sundowners. The tantalus was unlocked, the whiskey decanter produced and the same old chat got under way. I, on orange juice, made myself invisible and sipped slowly – when the glass was empty I was sent to bed, and I suspect the real scandal was then discussed.

Floss was a handyman at Ramsgate’s huge funfair called Wonderland. He worked on the Big Dipper. Early every morning he sent two cars round the track loaded with sand bags, watching the reaction of the wooden structure as the car went round, to gauge any weaknesses. Next it was my turn for a free, if solitary ride, as a third check. Can you imagine what Health & Safety would make of that today?

Evening was the best time to be there, it was vibrant, with a cacophony of sound and a kaleidoscope of coloured lights winking on and off, and I absorbed the hectic atmosphere of the constantly eddying mass of humanity, along with the excitement of it all. When I went on these protracted holidays it was my practice, even duty, to return home with a small present for each of the family. This time I had had so many incursions into the wallet I was almost totally broke. What with the cinema trips, smoking, the funfair at Ramsgate and the even more expansive funfair at Margate, called Dreamland, I had only pence left and was at my wits end – well almost, I still had the slot machines to fall back on. Families descended like locusts on the one-armed-bandits. They were impatient to win and when the pickings were poor they too, like the locusts, moved on. It was then that I moved in, with just the odd penny here and there. I would give a heavily patronised machine, the opportunity to play one or two more games. Most times it worked. On the last evening I could not waste money on bus fares and cycled to the fairground. There I set about making enough from the slot machines to give me a fighting chance to win prizes at the stalls. Buying presents was out of the question, just a matter of playing the odds and knowing when to stop. Having increased my shilling into something like five, I went in search of other games of chance where I had reasonable odds, I won a glass bottomed tea tray, plaster of Paris elephants of all sizes, coated in black mica, a milk jug, toffee, and chocolates for Val. The things were equally disparate and cheap, but I was no connoisseur, merely a boy trying to get himself out of a jam.

That night I cycled back to Pegwell Bay with the tyres birring happily along on the tarmac, a smile on my face which could not be rubbed off by the passage of the wind, no matter about the lonely days and the long hours spent touring for its own sake, the elation of that evening put it all behind and made that holiday one I never forgot.

It was at this time that I bought a packet of Will’s Goldflake cigarettes and sat in the cinema, in the afternoon, in the dark, enjoying a taste I was only once again able to enjoy. There is something about the taste of those first cigarettes one smokes which is indescribably satisfying – like the taste of real Naval rum, never to be experienced again. In fact it was many years later, when I restarted smoking after a longer than usual period of abstinence, that I savoured for a brief period that wonderful sensation and taste once again.

Parents used to make strange decisions, with the best intentions and even self- sacrifice, but with little realisation what they were condemning their children to. Single parenting is not, and never was, easy, conscience has to be weighed against pragmatism, welfare, economic resources and what is possible. My mother decided I should not be kicking my heels throughout the summer holidays in London, so twice she sent me off, for a month on my own for a Holiday. Summer jobs were rare so vocational work was the exception. In the countryside, there was fruit picking or harvesting for nothing or a pittance, On the first occasion she took me to a boarding house in Worthing, introduced me, stayed a day or so, bought me a season ticket for a seat at the bandstand and left, giving the woman my pocket money to be doled out, a shilling daily, I was bored out of my mind, lonely, made no friends, and I sat and listened to the brass bands night after night.

The experiment was dropped for a year or two; then I was sent to stay with Floss and Val at Pegwell Bay, in Kent. Val was a roly-poly, rosy faced lady, with a sense of fun and generous nature, who had a handful of guests, mostly friends of the family. Floss, was small, tough and rugged, an ex-regular soldier with service all round the world in various regiments He had laid paths round the house in concrete, with regimental badges picked out in coloured cement. He and Val amicably shared the house and one another when visitors were not in residence, but cohabitation was something only whispered. The house at Pegwell Bay was furnished with brass ornaments from India and the Middle East, colourful china, and rugs which Floss had brought home from his travels, and there were flowers everywhere, both inside and out. The hangings were of rich colours – Val herself was colourful, like a Gypsy, with red cheeks, dark hair and huge earrings always dangling to her shoulders.

The house below, on the road leading to the beach, was occupied by an AA man I found interesting, who covered the district on his yellow motor bike and sidecar. He had small children I played with, although I think I preferred to play with Val’s goat which I milked, and was tethered beside the house in a small pasture. The goat, knew me so well it would baa even when I was a quarter of a mile away. It always wanted to play butting games and its forehead of solid bone often caught me unawares in the thigh. The goat’s milk I accepted with tentative caution as I did the vegetable salads which contained fruit, more colourful than Mother’s – Val liked colour. I liked the salad no more than I did the milk but the outdoor life gave me an almost insatiable appetite.

Feeding birds, cats, the goat and a tortoise which hibernated in the cupboard over the cooker through the winter, together with Floss’s influence taught me much about the wider aspects of life – full justification for the working holiday experience, but much of it solitary. There was wonderful hay making, the hay transported in horse-drawn wains and stooked. The fun of building ricks with horseplay among the youngsters, the lunches brought to the field and the smell of the hay itself. I liked guiding the horses by the bridle when on roads, but was always fearful of their huge hooves. I also got jobs as a way of filling in the day, plum picking up tall rickety ladders, with a sort of apron bag in which to put the plums and filling wicker baskets, we were allowed to eat all we liked while we worked, and were paid on the number of baskets we filled. I didn’t get rich, but I did lose time with diarrhoea on the second day. I cycled to some of the Cinq Ports, Sandwich and Canterbury,. and wandered through the remnants of the invasion defences left from the First World War and to Manston and watched the RAF planes taking off and landing

Down the road beside the bungalow I found another road running parallel with the beach and when I was cycling along there I was assailed with the marvellous scent of fresh lavender. I went into the lavender fields, which, like those in Grasse, in France, stretched in rows to fill the huge field. On the middle of one edge of the field was a gloomy wooden barn-like building which was store and shop and in there one could buy sachets to sweeten sheets in drawers, bottles of essence, hair grease in boot-polish-like tins, solid perfume blocks and sprays of all kinds and above everything was the concentrated smell of lavender. I was allowed to pick lavender and received sachets and hair grease for my trouble.

If you are a conscience ridden single parent, worried if your child should have a holiday, please make certain it is accompanied, or else forget it!

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 end less, and irrespective of how cheap or expensive the set was, they all had a hat, – no hat, no fun! I remember, when I was very young, receiving a tram or bus, conductor’s set, with a little spring clip board 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. Then my long-suffering family sat, line ahead, on kitchen chairs so I could pretend to be a bus-conductor. I don’t see such a proliferation of these sets on sale today at Christmas. Maybe the long suffering parents have put a ban on them for obvious reasons.

With so little traffic we played in the street, and there was one vicious game, which I’m sure the parents would not have approved of, 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 attempt to collapse them. The dangers in this game are evident.

We learned skills with hoops as high as ourselves, with a whipping tops and spinning tops, skills which were honed, because the pecking order was based upon skill. We learned to do tricks with practically everything that came to hand and when in the late 30s America sent us the Yo-Yo, that too was addressed with the same amount of care and attention. Some of us could not afford the real McCoy, and 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. My belief that the thirties were the ‘Golden Age’ has become a family joke. Not necessarily the happiest, nor, when I was the most fulfilled, far from it, but there seemed to be 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, while the parents stood on the bank. Later we propelled ourselves in a paddle boat, an ugly, blunt ended, green painted bucket, scorned by all but the tiniest. They had paddle handles for each hand, working independently, so one could steer and progress at a stately pace. One didn’t get too far before being called in. 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

I have had to exercise discipline on others, I have been the recipient of it being implemented in almost every form, from lines to a leather belt, and more than anything I have had to exercise it on myself, often unsuccessfully. I therefore believe punishment in any form is transient, and in excess is self defeating. Take a simple example of shock treatment – having, in the past, worked daily where swearing was filthy and as constant, I am no prude. I was in charge of a large team of men, rarely if ever swearing, and bad language was rarely used in my presence, not because of rules, but I assume, out of courtesy. Something was either done or said which was so criminally stupid that I swore,. The atmosphere was electric and still, and the expressions on the faces of the staff were enough to show the point had been thoroughly made. I was caned regularly in all my schools, by teachers and prefects, not for villainy, more from making fun, mild rebellion, or not suffering fools gladly. We all had to bear caning without malice or stress and accept it as the norm. Life was too absorbing to do otherwise. There were, though, sadists, especially in the teaching profession with egos out of all proportion. One primary teacher, was very keen on ‘may’ being used instead of ‘can’. When a child of nine put up his hand and asked could he go to the toilet, he went through endless torture until he used the word ‘may’ and some in extremis embarrassed themselves. The smile on the teacher’s face said all. One can only assume that no parental protests were made because taking the child from that school was worse for a parent than the child’s ordeal.

Now, on reflection, I believe self -discipline is the nub of the problem; there is no possibility of ‘imposing’ discipline, it can only be administered by oneself, a concept which rarely seems to be taken seriously and certainly never aired in the general context of the matter. I am firmly convinced from my own experience that a beating serves only to put a temporary full stop to a situation; it introduces a feature, so violent, that what went before it is dwarfed. Beating has a minor roll, and is only valid if it is then followed by persuasion to impose self-discipline – though not in those terms. The follow-up is rarely implemented and if there is no other outlet for the energy which has engendered the anti-social behaviour in the first place, and no self-discipline to quench the fires, the punishment as such ceases to have any validity.

The Secondary School Part 2 The educational system, so hacked over today, was relatively new to secondary schools when I started, (See LCC and the Secondary School ) and the philosophy of parents doing everything to ensure their little darlings got the best education was, if anything, more prevalent then than it was in the post-war years until now, the 2000’s. When I was very small my grandmother pushed me to and from school, four times a day, a mile or more away, to ensure I went to what was considered to be the best elementary school, and later when I was able, I walked it on my own. Next, I cycled four miles or more in heavy traffic, suffering two accidents during that time on the way to school, in order to go to the best secondary school in the area. Incidentally I do not believe any legislation, outside a totalitarian state, will ever remove the desire for personal choice completely.

Discipline By The Prefects At my Secondary School, with a prefect hierarchy and the school captain at its head, they had authority to thrash, in certain circumstances – I use the word ‘thrash’ advisedly. The system was severely flawed. The original crime was insignificant, the miscreant was awarded lines to be handed to the prefect by a certain time. I was both a customer of ,and part of a syndicate, who wrote lines for a fee, using a number of pencils taped together. The teachers and prefects never checked closely. Failure to hand the lines in on time doubled the dose. Failure again meant that one was called before the Prefects’ Meeting. This was a dragged-out pantomime, scripted to enhance the status of the prefects and belittle the criminal. One stood outside the library, laughter issued through the door, then there would be the serious mutter of voices and finally the door would open and the lamb would be led to the slaughter. The indicting prefect read out the charge, the School Captain asked the transgressor if he had anything to say – pointless, the decision was already made, any comment would be taken as insolence, and being harangued further and even receiving extra punishment. The malefactor was then asked if he wished to be caned by the prefects, which meant the biggest and strongest one there, with a lust for blood, or have the matter referred to the Head Master, a personage on conversational terms with God, both because of his Doctorate of Divinity, but also because of his exalted position – it was really a rhetorical question. Even though one had taken the opportunity of putting on two extra pairs of gym shorts, it hurt.

Indecent Exposure And The Rest I was in receipt of or witnessed discipline in the severest sense. The business of the witch doctor being arraigned for ritual killing could have been a case in point, but the first instance and the most frightful was to do with ‘indecent exposure’ and, if I had known of the trauma to follow, I would never have opened my mouth. It was mid afternoon and I was standing among the fruit trees on our patch, talking to one of the African servants, when suddenly he opened his trousers exposed himself for me to admire. Whether he had other proposals I don’t know, I was too taken aback to think and even if I had I was too inexperienced to know what they might have been. I had never seen anything quite like it before and its size and colour were a culture shock of the first order. I told my mother who told my father who was a strap man, that is, someone who takes off his belt to administer discipline. I remember hearing the young black man screaming and later crying, or more like howling, long into the night. I had not realised the enormity of what had happened and so the punishment seemed, to me unbelievably barbarous. Some time later, I was to receive the same treatment for what I would have considered a breach of etiquette – I had been rude as a seven year old will, from time to time, but little more. For this, with the help of the goading of Johnny Walker, I was stripped, held down on a bed with a hand across the back of my throat and whaled with the self-same belt. I’m sure I howled too. What harm did it do to me? Not much I think. I was never to receive worse, but I was destined to receive much more but rarely for even less.

When children living in Livingstone reached a certain age they were generally sent to Bulawayo or Capetown to boarding school, and then later they were sent to the UK to finish their education, so most were in boarding school from an early age. We, who were too young, were left behind and only saw the older boys at irregular and long intervals so we were a prey rather than playmates, objects to be teased and worse, harried, and bullying was our permanent lot. The family-life which existed then, now seems pointless. At eight years or thereabouts, the children would be sent off and, to all intents and purposes, never be seen again except for very short periods. It reminds me of a tea-room in Newcastle, County Down, circa 1950+. Ted, my brother-in-law and I had been spending a few days walking in the Mourne Mountains and had descended into Newcastle, tired but happy. We found a tearoom to pass the time until we would board the train home. Seated opposite me was a familiar cameo in which the father, a stranger to the boy in the uniform of the local boarding school, was vainly trying to break the ice. Both would leave with a mixture of frustration, disappointment and the knowledge that they knew nothing of one another.

Smoking and Whisky I took up smoking on an experimental basis somewhere between the ages of six and seven. Smoking was the norm and the non-smoker was not so much a rarity as someone with a deficiency. My smoking started with reeds. All the Africans’ huts were roofed and often walled with bundles of reeds taken from the river. They stood about six or seven feet high, were about half an inch in diameter and were hollow. If, while hiding behind the huts in the kraal at the bottom of the garden, one lighted the end of a short length, the reed would glow and give off an acrid smoke which we would draw into our mouths if not our lungs,. It was only a small step then to steal the odd few cigarettes which were kept in silver boxes for visitors. There was not much check kept on them as they were very inexpensive, unlike the whiskey which had a habit of disappearing. We would take turns in supplying the cigarettes until the whole thing became a bore and then it was dropped. Tangerine scrumping was much more fun and mildly more dangerous, because the best tangerines were not ours, they were grown by an irascible old codger who liked tangerines a lot more than he liked little boys.

I mentioned the whisky which dissappeared from the locked Tantalus and bottles at an alarming rate. I found my mother holding a bottle of drink upside down and marking the label. It must have seemed odd to me because she explained that whiskey had been disappearing and she blamed our African servants. She added that if the bottle was marked upside down, the level of the liquid when the bottle was righted, would bear no relationship to the mark on the label – crafty! At the time I believed her, but with the experience of time I suspect the thief was a good deal closer to home.

I am accident prone and wont to make snap decisions. At fourteen I bought my first bicycle, second-hand, for a pound, and learned to ride it. It was a heavy, characterless brute, with only one gear. A month later I went on my first real journey, to visit an aunt. She was out, so I thought the Crystal Palace is only a little further, six miles in all. After the Crystal Palace, I went on, and to cut a long story short, I found reasons every time I reached the goal to go to the next one, until I found myself on the beach at Hastings, 50 miles from home, at about two in the afternoon. I celebrated by sitting on the stony beach for an hour. I recall a marvelous name from the journey, a village called Peas Pottage. On the return, Pole Hill and River Hill were like crawling up the side of the Eiger. Twice I fell asleep standing on the pedals, going up the hill, and finished in the gutter with the bike on top. I arrived home near midnight – my reception was ambivalent, but I now had a taste for long rides on the bone-shaker. Today I would have been run over on that hill.

My first cycle accident was bizarre. Cycling up a steep hill, the handcart in front of me pulled out to pass a parked car; I pulled out to pass the cart, a taxi coming behind pulled out to pass me, we were strung out across the road like washing on a line. A cyclist coming down the hill at speed, shot out into the centre of the road to avoid hitting the cab head on, instead he chose to hit me. I flew over my handlebars, his handlebars and landed up the road. My front wheel was a mess. On the second accident, seated on my bike, supported on one pedal on the kerb, feet on the handle bar, waiting for a friend, an idiot on a racing bike, his hands on the low grips, cycling head down, ran straight into the back of me. I got his address, met his mother and that was that – a shut front door. No 3. Crash was on a wet morning with the rain teeming down. Stopped in the middle of the High Street, waiting to turn right, with a tram in the distance coming towards me, suddenly I was hit from behind 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.

The Bizarre World Of The Hospital There was one accident which outshone all the rest. I had a ‘new’ one-pound bike with three gears – a flying machine! Two friends and I set out. They were putting new bikes through their paces, mine needed servicing. Unfortunately my brakes were almost non-existent. >From the top of a hill, coming down at speed towards a major cross road, the others 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 saying words I could have been expelled for, being given brandy, and when I came to, a policeman was beside the bed asking me what had happened. I was able to tell him that I had been hit by a motorcycle,. That ended police enquiries. A distraught mother, hat askew, scarf equally awry from her hurried departure from home, informed me I had broken my back, and I was on boards and not allowed to move. In fact I had a week in hospital with a cracked skull, a broken collarbone, a cracked arm and concussion, beside minor contusions. In a fracture ward full of characters, the atmosphere between the patients and the nurses was a little like prison where the old lags know the warders and all the dodges – then. broken legs could mean months in hospital. The familiarity was an eye-opener to a fourteen year old. The man in the next bed, run over by a lorry loaded with bricks, had separated his chest area from his pelvis. 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. 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. They ignored the fact that it was also a demonstration of what could happen to a welsher at Epsom Downs. Of course he may ‘have seen the light’, people often do under those circumstances. Apparently at the closing of a bad day, 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 to pass the time, their stories were pretty lurid, especially about the night nurses, but I had been brought up to respect women, I was surrounded by them, so I took the jokes in the spirit intended. In short order I was put in a cot on the balcony, overlooking a square of grass, with windows opened every day and life totally transformed from the ward. There I met a man who had to stand considerable banter because he had fallen on ice on the front steps. of a brothel. On leaving, after breakfast, he slipped on the steps and broke his leg. The flood-gates really opened when the ward heard that little tit-bit. My education in barely a week was enormous.

Snobbery & Transport

In the 30’s the middle class had aspirations of, if perhaps not ‘ectually’ moving up a class, perhaps being accepted as an appendage to the upper classes. This involved display, like a cock pheasant in the spring, only it was even more prevalent among the females who were the prime movers, having nothing else to think about through the day. In ’39 I was evacuated to Sussex along with 500+ other boys and masters from our school, I was 16, impressionable, in a totally strange milieu, amid total chaos. The poor recipients were caught on the hop and so were we. It was then I met everyone from the Lord of the Manor, to gypsy itinerants – country folk.

At that time, it seemed to me, the boundaries of class were more clearly defined and more stringent than in London – more like the Raj I knew in Africa, and, ignoring the plight of the poor Africans, the rest accepted it and didn’t, as today, rail against it. In Sussex, the gradation ran roughly like – Landed Gentry, Lord of the Manor (LOM) – Gentleman Farmers, the Professionals, the Cloth, and New Rich – Tenant Farmer, Trades People and Craftsmen – Labourers – Itinerants, Seasonal Workers and the Unemployed – the Evacuee. The nouveaux riches wouldn’t even say good morning to us, yet the LOM, with the marvellous name of Sir Amhurst Selby Bigge, not only made our path smoother, he entertained us to tennis parties in summer, on his lawn. The Farmers welcomed us as did the rest, and as we were thrust on all but the LOM, we went to the local secondary school with the locals, we gradually melded, but even then, we knew our place.

In the 30’s mostly only the pretty rich had a car and an offer of an outing was an occasion. As far as I can remember I only rode about ten times as a guest from 1930 – ’39 In the days of the two seater, with the Dickey seat at the back, the visitors sat cramped in the Dickey seat, open to the elements, and lucky to be there even if they could see little past the hood. Later, with saloon cars we were all together, although ridiculous ritual and absurd display had to play a part. The visitor, to show gratitude brought along a large bar of – would you believe – Motoring Chocolate, fruit and nut, milk chocolate. On the back of the better cars there was a cast iron, hinged carrier on which it was obligatory to display a huge cabin trunk, plastered with hotel labels to demonstrate you were a traveller of wide experience. Inside it there might be nothing, or a wicker picnic hamper. It was de rigueur to hoot when you passed a car of the same make; years later people touring on the Continent hooted when they saw another with a GB plate. There were a lot of other rituals, the most absurd and class ridden was the salute of the AA Man. The AA were dressed in WW1 army cast-offs, rode on a motorcycle/side-car combination and directed the traffic as and where required, or else stood at a crossroads waiting to be called. As you passed with your AA badge displayed, the AA Man jumped to attention and gave a very smart salute. The bit that took me to the fair was that if he failed to, some drivers reported him.