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Childhood Memories
This tells you a bit about my early life as a baby boomer in North London. What freedom we had as children then. We could take off for the day with a bottle of water and an apple with our pals without being deemed at risk and our parents prosecuted for child neglect!
This tells you a bit about my early life as a baby boomer in North London. What freedom we had as children then. We could take off for the day with a bottle of water and an apple with our pals without being deemed at risk and our parents prosecuted for child neglect!
In fact, parents could be heard commanding children to 'get out from under my feet and don't come back until tea-time'. Older children would be given responsibility to care for the younger ones whilst out and of course got blamed if anything went wrong.
Back then in the early fifties, people were materially poorer but at least they owned the street. We children inhabited it more than the grown-ups, sitting and playing on pavements swept by our mothers’ brooms.
We dug out crevices with lollypop sticks to flick our marbles into. Lifting them up to sunlight, the clear glass revealed translucent swirls of garnet and turquoise jewels inside them. With legs curled to one side, we challenged each other to jacks, taking the steel snowflakes out of home-made drawstring bags. How often we grazed our knuckles as jacks were clutched from the ground whilst throwing a small rubber ball, which was only allowed to bounce once each go.
It’s all coming back to me now. Hopscotch squares chalked at intervals down the street. String games to create cat’s cradles and other intricate shapes that required the concentrated co-operation of a friend. One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four...that’s how decisions were made and accepted. Kingie, Queenie – how did those games go? My faded memory forms lines of children with one at the front throwing an old tennis ball blind over their head, which everyone rushes to catch. The winner would shout Kingie or Queenie.
The words of the jingles sung as we skipped elude my memory. Everyone could afford a bit of rope and we collectively had a long one which spanned the street. With a child at either end, using two hands to keep it turning, the rest of us dodged into its arc in ones and twos. On a good day, a whole line of us were jumping and singing in unison. When ropes were replaced by lengths of plastic washing line, they could be heard whistling through the air as we turned them twice for each jump. Sore red weals on our bare legs were an accepted part of the acquiring of skill.
Two balls, a game at which the girls excelled, sent a pounding rhythm onto the walls of our large council houses. This, together with sing-song chants, drove the parents inside demented until 'Stop that racket!' moved us on to the next house. I am sure it was around that time that yo-yos came into fashion and boys and girls vied with each other to see who could do the most variety of moves.
Ration books for sweets – liquorice pipes and strips, jelly dummies coated with sugar, penny chews, pink sickly shrimps and green jelly frogs which congealed in our teeth. The king of all was the gobstopper which distorted our speech and turned our tongues into rainbows. I never bought a bag of sweets (called a quarter of a pound of sweets then) until I went to work.
It is hard to think now that our bread was delivered by a horse-drawn vehicle but I can recall vividly that combined aroma of new bread and horse. The keen gardeners would rush out to collect a free source of manure for their vegetable patches. Several gardens had chickens at the bottom and rabbits in hutches - some destined for the pot.
Coronation Day! Is that when the first black and white television arrived on our street? A Brownie camera captured in black and white my curtsey to our young Queen Elizabeth. The backdrop was no palace but my father’s bean canes, tomato and potato plants and a fine compost heap. My six year old self scrubbed up well in a home-made white satin frock.
Playtime at junior school. Fields of fresh mown grass on long summer days. Daisy chains patiently threaded into necklaces. Petals strewn: he loves me, he loves me not. Buttercups shone under jutting chins to see if you liked butter. School dinners swiftly eaten to play ‘tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor’ with the prune stones to forecast who you would marry. Girls wore cotton check dresses and headbands or slides. Boys wore short grey flannel trousers with even shorter haircuts.
Playtime at junior school. Fields of fresh mown grass on long summer days. Daisy chains patiently threaded into necklaces. Petals strewn: he loves me, he loves me not. Buttercups shone under jutting chins to see if you liked butter. School dinners swiftly eaten to play ‘tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor’ with the prune stones to forecast who you would marry. Girls wore cotton check dresses and headbands or slides. Boys wore short grey flannel trousers with even shorter haircuts.
At home, I coerced my reluctant younger brother to play schools. 'I’ll take the register and you can pretend to be the class and answer ‘here Miss’ when I call out the names...come back!' Next, he is my opposing knight in battle as we clash our roughly made wooden swords, shielding ourselves with dustbin lids. Then he goes off practising on stilts our older brother made, leaning precariously against the wall of our house.
My older brother is out careering round the bend on a prototype go-kart made out of old planks of wood and pram wheels. With friends bent double pushing to gather speed, the karts were guided by lengths of rope wrapped round the wheels. Soles of shoes wore out quickly as they were the only form of brakes. Our other form of speedy transport was roller skates - if we were lucky enough to get them for Christmas or birthday presents.
I recall one hot summer's day when a travelling man walked down the centre of our street, belting out 'Bread of Heaven'. My mother ran out to praise his beautiful singing and give him a glass of well-deserved lemon water. They reminisced about the Welsh homeland they had both left in the thirties to seek a better life in London.
All the children would rush like a swarm of bees round a honey pot when Mr Cross drew up in the only car on the street. They knew the chosen ones would be given a threepenny bit to lift off his low creosoted fence while he parked in his front garden. The rest of us would sit silently on the pavement, chins on hands, resolved to run faster next time.
I recall one hot summer's day when a travelling man walked down the centre of our street, belting out 'Bread of Heaven'. My mother ran out to praise his beautiful singing and give him a glass of well-deserved lemon water. They reminisced about the Welsh homeland they had both left in the thirties to seek a better life in London.
All the children would rush like a swarm of bees round a honey pot when Mr Cross drew up in the only car on the street. They knew the chosen ones would be given a threepenny bit to lift off his low creosoted fence while he parked in his front garden. The rest of us would sit silently on the pavement, chins on hands, resolved to run faster next time.
Then there was Mrs Dunning who gave me bits of old jewellery to play with. Her broken salmon pink coral necklace and ruby scarab brooch were treasures I stored in a shoe box for years. When she died, we moved across the road to her house - going up in the world as it had three rear lawns, flower beds and fruit trees. Conference pears and apples were now wrapped in newspaper and stored in cardboard boxes to last the winter. My father grew even more vegetables and salad in the garden. How we took for granted his labour to provide us with fresh food.
My bedroom overlooked the garden as it led on to extensive recreation fields, lined by a long avenue of trees, and known by us all as ‘the rec’. After visits to the bigger park across the arterial road, I would return home covered in dust after accepting a dare of older children to slide down steep dirt slopes on cardboard toboggans. Another challenge regularly issued was who could go the highest on the swings and get the ‘bumps’. The really brave did this standing up. After the long school holidays in summer, we would proudly compare the number of bruises and scabs on our legs - witness to our energetic scrapes and games.
Looking back has been like lowering a bucket into a well - unsure of how much would come up. Each memory recalled triggered another, bringing with it the smells and tastes of a London
The pendulum swings and the Government is encouraging children to leave their computers and get outside exercising. Perhaps there's a role for us over-sixties to pass on the games which kept us active, without costing very much, throughout our childhoods.
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| threepenny bit |
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| Me on Coronation Day 1952 |
Autumn visit to Beacon Fell
It should have been expected – being the morning after a damp Bonfire Night – but it was still a surprise to discover the mist swirling in front of my car. With heightened anxiety at setting out on an expedition to unknown woods, I poured over the Ordnance Survey map, dismayed at the network of narrow country lanes to be negotiated.
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| My younger brother bravely trying out the stilts |
Autumn visit to Beacon Fell
It should have been expected – being the morning after a damp Bonfire Night – but it was still a surprise to discover the mist swirling in front of my car. With heightened anxiety at setting out on an expedition to unknown woods, I poured over the Ordnance Survey map, dismayed at the network of narrow country lanes to be negotiated.
With the help of directions from a bedraggled man walking his dog, I arrived safely and let out a sigh of relief. Booted and waterproofed against the penetrating damp and drizzle, I followed the way-marked path into the woods. A blanket of cold mist permeated the larches, their lacy fronds hung heavy with droplets of moisture. Further up the path, beeches bowed their ebony branches towards the earth, where their roots were nourished by layer upon layer of copper leaves surrendered every autumn.
This enveloping mist was a gentle invader even in the deepest part of the wood, where its tendrils wafted around stark pines. They stood like dark sentinels blocking out light to form a tunnel. A distant circle of pearl-filled light transformed this leafless part of the wood into a mysterious place. A place to stand still and reflect as winter’s mark is beginning to be felt.
In contrast to a bright sunny day, when the spirit would expand, gazing up into the canopy of spruce and luminous green beech leaves, this all pervasive mist turned the wood into an inward-looking place. The mosses, lichen and moulds glowed grey-green on shiny, rain-soaked logs and fragments of dry stone walls. As the trees thinned out, burnt orange grasses burst upon the eye like fireworks on a dark night.
With laboured breath, I reached the highest point above the trees. The distant views of fells, mountains and towers, hidden behind this opaque veil, now had to be taken on trust. Descending by the short route and looking forward to being warm and dry in familiar surroundings, I stored away this memory of an autumn wood. It had filled my senses and caught me up, for a moment, in the endless cycle of death and rebirth.
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| Beacon Fell |
I had the privilege of working with carers in my last job and this is inspired by them:
The Love of My Life
Some days when I feel I can’t go a step further, her expression clears and she cradles my worried face in her hands. ‘I love you – don’t leave me.’ And I retreat into the garden and listen to the blackbird’s clear song in our cherry tree, abundant with blossom. It was planted when we married. ‘This sapling will mature along with us,’ she had said pensively. I now think, ‘Yes, love, and it will still be growing when we are pushing up daisies.’
I feel I could carry on if only this build up of bitten-back irritations, mounting day after day to volcanic proportions, could be released. To confess that I come close to throttling the woman I love, the mother of my sons, and perhaps defuse it with laughter. The relentless torture of a tap constantly dripping the same questions over and over again is never appeased by my patient answers. “No, love, I’ve just said, it’s Tuesday today.” Some nights, when I need to just relax with a glass of wine and good conversation, I feel a grief as intense as if she had died.
With her illness, both our horizons have narrowed. The holidays we planned to take now we are free of responsibility are watched through a television set. I don’t blame people for being embarrassed and not staying to chat but it hurts. I have categorized those who do still call as the well-meaning and the official.
Growing along with my bone-tired exhaustion, is a mountain of letters and glossy leaflets, all couched in the latest politically correct language. They tell me my rights as a carer and the help available. If only it all lived up to the promises! On top of everything else I have to do, I feel I’m an unpaid trainer for the care industry. So few of the professional workers have time to listen without immediately giving advice or solutions and hurrying on to their next call. And, of course, everything you do tell them is written down and passed on. “Well, love, one good thing to come out of your illness is we are keeping a lot of people in employment.”
Something I have been surprised by is that at times like this, of being challenged to the very edge, all your senses are heightened. I can be moved to tears by an unexpected act of understanding or by the luminous young leaves of our beech tree spreading dappled sunlight over the lawn. When the battles of washing, dressing and eating are done, we sometimes sit and look out at our garden. The cheeky robin, which perches on the garden seat, head cocked, looking in at us, seems to be saying, “When are you going to dig this garden again? I’m missing my worms!” He is one visitor who isn’t put off. We can relax and laugh at his antics.
These shared moments of simple pleasure and unspoken communication have become what I call my oasis times. She will become still and listen, as though this unaccustomed peace is an unseen presence. When her mind and body finally shut down, I sense this peace will embrace and free her spirit. And mine too.
