Old Gaffer

Category: Pre-WW2

  • A Childish Adventure

    The house we occupied was at the corner of a roadway leading North into the bush. Across the road on the opposite side was the residence of my inseparable friend, Mike. For the two of us, 7 or 8 years old, every activity took on the drama of an ‘adventure’. Who was the instigator didn’t matter, the ‘adventure’ was important; and this was the ‘Run of the tank’. The tank had come from my house. It was a galvanised iron water tank, serving a number of houses and had been replaced. It had lain at the edge of the garden for some time and had served us as a hideaway, as a fort and any number of other guises, but on this day it became a tank, not a water tank but an army vehicle of destruction.

    In the First World War my father had not been a conscientious objector exactly, because he had voluntarily joined the army with his friends from the Surrey Walking Club, rather he wished to be categorised as a on-combatant because he objected to killing; with the result he had been enrolled as a stretcher bearer. Ironically, if it was at all possible, it was an even more hazardous category than the infantry to which he was attached. He had been wounded at least twice and severely gassed and in consequence he abhorred war and never allowed me to play with soldiers nor as a soldier; indeed one Christmas my Grandmothe sent me a box of soldiers and these were confiscated as soon as I opened them, and I never played with them at all until I returned to England. Because the bungalows were generally used only for relatively short tours of duty, when one moved in one might find a small accumulation of other peoples goods, things they had no room for when travelling or were just left. We found a trunk left by someone who had served from subaltern to major at least, in a number of regiments. There were buttons, shoulder badges, regimental names in brass, cap badges and other insignia in mint condition and by the handful. My mother and I never told my father, it was our secret and while I never played with them then, I fondled them and dreamed. When I returned to England I had enough to outfit several of my pals and made my own army, using drainpipes as howitzers and stones for ammunition. We, all officers, were dressed to kill, in every sense of the phrase.

    While I was in Africa there was no hint of rebellion in my readiness to play at soldiers, it would have taken a more mature mind to have done so. It was just that playing soldiers offered more excitement and breadth for imagination, hence the ‘tank’. The tank was circular and shallow, but with a fair diameter. The bottom was sealed, in the top was a manhole which had lost its lid; this had given ingress when it had served its many other functions. Firstly Mike and I raised the tank on edge, then, one at a time, we climbed through the hatch and were able to stand, side by side in the dim interior. The tank had been constructed of long sheets of corrugated steel so our feet were precariously supported along the corrugations. We started to walk up the inside of the tank, steadying ourselves against the sides and one another. The tank began to roll and with confidence it rolled ever faster. We were totally unaware of where we were going until a stone got in the way of one edge and the whole thing collapsed on its side. Unhurt we climbed out and started over again, the idea was marvellous – just a few snags to be ironed out. After several abortive attempts, it dawned on us to roll it to the road outside where the system took on an entirely new aspect and from then on it was a breeze.

    We could not steer and we could not see, but we were totally confident it would travel in a straight line, seeing no problems we concentrated on rolling as fast as our legs could climb the side like two blind gerbils in a rotating cage. At some point we must have been aware we had left the track and were ploughing through the tall grasses of the veldt, because I still vaguely remember the sense of elation when we felt the grasses being rolled flat like a real tank.. Finally it fell on its side, fortunately the right side up, but when we climbed out of the steel oven, heated by the afternoon sun, we found we were out of sight of civilisation, surrounded by the bush, apparently miles from anywhere. I was convinced we had travelled miles, but two small boys working in that heat could not have gone far. My mother was made aware of the escapade only years later.

  • Willie And The Suitcase

    My mother’s nickname was Willie, and you can imagine the confusion in small minds when my children referred to ‘Granny Willie’ – but that’s our family way.

    Willie was one of those who constantly find themselves in alien situations, mostly because of a determination to right wrongs – a sort of latter day, female Don Quixote. Before WW1, she left Deal and went to London to work as a bookkeeper. She worked for Simpson’s or a similar chain of restaurants in London; establishments where middle-class people would dine on special occasions, and while not in the top echelon, they were in their day considered more than acceptable to all but the very wealthy. Once, between the wars, Willie took me there I found it very dull, the dark, deep-piled, patterned carpet, the heavy dark mahogany and the hushed atmosphere were all too sombre for me at that time – it was a wasted expense, I preferred the Brasserie of the Lyons Corner House where it was bright with a lively orchestra competing with the clatter of plates and the chatter of conversation.; just what a young person looked forward to on his next birthday.

    Willie was housed at the top of one of the restaurants in a sort of dormitory under the roof, where the company maintained lodgings which the female staff were obliged to occupy unless they lived at home. Situated on the borders of Soho, she sometimes heard screams from outside which made her hide under the bedclothes. I asked the obvious question, ‘what caused the screams?’ but she said it was better not to know.

    At some point she was promoted to stock taker as well as bookkeeper and went round the restaurants checking stocks. This included the stocks in the kitchens and as the implements would be part of the stock, the chef had to be on hand. On one such occasion she watched with horror while the chef nonchalantly dug a boiled rat out of a cauldron of congealed fat that had been set on the floor overnight to cool. He then proceeded to place the fat on the stove to reheat for use through the day. This incident, related to me when I was about ten years old, had a profound effect on my enjoyment from then on. Blessed with a highly developed visual imagination I could see the whole scene and never forgot it, but it was not the idea of the dead rat nor the casual attitude of the chef to common hygiene which affected me so markedly, it was the way these considerations had affected my mother all her adult life; she would never again be able to sit in a restaurant without being confronted in her mind by that incident in her past.

    She was not the only one affected in a material sense, as a result of her almost, irrational, and certainly singular views on restaurants and the catering industry. She introduced the ‘dreaded suitcase’, an article I loathed every time an expedition was muted. The suitcase was an albatross I had to bear, not around my neck, but it turned an outing into a drudge. I was envious of my friends, and added to this, toward the end of a long day round Hampton Court Palace, when the shins were complaining at the battering from the suitcase and the arms were tired from my turns at carrying it, there was a deep, heartfelt resentment. My specification for a day out, consisted primarily of being taken to a restaurant for a celebration lunch, the odd ice cream, sweets and maybe another meal later. My school friends would regularly relate visits to places like the Zoo, describing how they had lunched in the open air at the restaurant, what they had eaten and drunk. I could see it all, and envied them. For me, however, the disgusting chef had scotched this level of debauchery.

    On the rare occasions Willie and I set out by train or bus to visit such places as the Tower of London, full of anticipation in some respects, I was burdened by a suitcase containing a ham salad for two, complete with plates, ironmongery, salt, pepper, salad cream, indeed all a person could possibly need for a picnic out of a suitcase, including tea, milk, cups and sugar. The whole procedure was ludicrous, especially as other members of the family would take me to cafes and restaurants. Willie’s sister, Josie, would think nothing of eating winkles from a stall on any promenade you care to mention.

    There has been one plus to this unusual saga, however – my own children ate all manner of food in all manner of places and, as far as I know, were none the worse for it.