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JACKIE'S OTHER BLOGAutobiographical Bits
The ultimate in self-indulgence is to write about one’s life when one is neither famous not particularly interesting. Though it is to be pointed out that many of the ‘celebs’ who write biographies come into the ‘who?’ category. (Unless you are an avid viewer of reality tv.)
I was born in Shoreham-by-Sea, in West Sussex, on the south coast of the UK, in 1950. I was not a particularly unusual baby, and one day I hope to be able to post photos on this site to prove that. I was taken from Shoreham in 1953 to live in the then town of Brighton, (now the city of Brighton and Hove). It was at the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second, and so the town was bedecked with bunting and flags. Which I thought was jolly nice of them, to welcome me like that! What did I know at two and half of monarchy?
We lived in a Victorian house in Elm Grove, on the way up to the Brighton Race Course, not far from Brighton General Hospital. The hospital had been used as a workhouse in the later part of the nineteenth century, and it has always struck me how today it’s location, on the top of a hill offering magnificent views, would have been grabbed for the houses of the wealthy of the town, with the poor left to live in the lower parts, without the views. How attitudes have changed.
The house was rented from a private landlady. It had three bedrooms, and a lovely view across the town to the golf courses. We are back to the views again. It was always nice to look from the upper windows at twilight and see all the lights coming on, twinkling away in the near and far distance. There was a bock of flats way off, and I could see (courtesy of a telescope), a small boy riding his bicycle round and round a grassed area. Day after day he was there for many a month, whoever he is he must be well grown by now. (We moved from Brighton in 1961, but more of that eventually).
The house had lots of mice. There was a butcher’s shop next door, and the wall at the bottom of our garden was in fact the sidewall of a barn like structure that had once been the stabling for the butcher’s horse, which pulled the delivery cart. By the time I arrived the horse was gone, replaced by horsepower, and the barn was used for storage of bits and pieces, --- and the nesting of mice. Our cat disappeared within a short time of our arrival, leaving in her wake three kittens. We never found the cat, despite advertising and following up several leads. The three kittens were taken to the pet store for sale, but one clung like a limpet to the basket and so came home with us. She lived to be eighteen years old, and was a fluffy tortoiseshell named, with no imagination, Fluff. Unfortunately I do not remember Fluff being a great mouser, and so we had to resort to traps, which could be heard going off at night with a resounding bang, even from upstairs. The mice seeming to prefer the ground floor for some reason.
The house had no hot water, only one coldwater tap in the scullery. The toilet was outside, at the end of a small yard area, with a small garden area beyond. There was no garden at the front, but the steps down from the front door meant we were not straight onto the pavement. The houses are built on a fairly steep hill, and so there is a step effect if you look at the roofline. We had a range in the kitchen, which was usually the only heating in the house in winter, although there were usable fireplaces in the front room, and in each of the three bedrooms. We had one of those large walk-in larders, that you could have run a small grocer’s shop out of. There were still gas mantles in some of the rooms that had not been removed, although by then they had been disconnected from the gas supply, and electric light fitted. We had a large standing clothes boiler, that could be fired with wood from underneath, but we usually used saucepans of hot water heated on the cooker, in the scullery. We had one of those huge old mangles in the yard area. We also had something rather grandly called the woodpile, which was not logs or anything so upmarket, but any old wood, furniture etc. that could be collected up. This included driftwood, which could sometimes be a bit on the spitty side when burnt, sending the cat scurrying away from the hearthrug. One thing the house did have was lots of cupboard space, something that the Victorians understood is needed, unlike the architects of today.
The buses that ran up and down Elm Grove were trolley buses, that needed to be connected to their power supply, electricity, by a contraption on the bus roof that was hooked onto overhead power cables. Many times, especially on their way up the hill, the connector would become detached and fold down onto the bus roof. The driver would have to get out with a long pole, made up of sections that he had to slot together, and reach up and rehook the connector to the power line. They did not like being watched whilst they did this, and were particularly upset when observed by a group of kids who offered useful advice. Luckily this was in the days before The Golden Shot tv show, and so the driver was spared the cries of ,”left a bit”, “right a bit”, just as well when he had that long pole to swipe us with!
We lived just opposite the schools, infant, junior and senior, all close together. I attended the infants from September 1955, even though my fifth birthday was not until the October. This was no problem until the time came for the move up to the junior school, when seemingly something had changed, and now I could not advance through the school system until the beginning of the term after my birthday. There were three of us in the same boat. What to do with us, we were in a no-man’s land. We had completed the work at infants level, and as luck usually has it, had done so with the sort of ease that meant we did not have to do any of it again. So there we were spare parts in the infants. The teachers made good use of us, I can tell you! We ran errands, we watched over the youngest class whilst they took their afternoon nap (as they did in those days) letting the teacher pop out of the room for a break herself, we picked up litter in the play ground, we went to the head teacher’s office and were shown how to file alphabetically, we sorted and rewound bandages for the school nurse. In short we were the jack of all trades for that term. I’m sure I picked up many a useful skill at an age much younger than I otherwise would have, and became a right cocky little madam in the process!
Back in 1955, just after starting the school I had an accident in the playground. I fell as I was running, and as there was a slope to the playground and a hard gritty surface, my knees and hands were badly skinned. So much so that after a visit to the hospital it was decided that I needed to take care not to be bumped into, in case this led to my newly forming skin being damaged. So I arrived at school late, left early, and stayed in the classroom at break time. The weather was nice, but the other kids were jealous, especially when I was allowed to have my school lunch at my desk. I could have two kids in with me for company, and let me tell you this was a sure fire way to be the most popular girl in the class. Other kids use to gather outside the open windows and have to be shooed away by the teachers on playground duty.
In the early part of 1957 I became an aunt for the first time, and took part in the measles epidemic. I was very ill, and was rushed into hospital on a Sunday morning in February. It was the hospital in Ports lade, which was being used as an infectious diseases hospital for the whole area. It has now long since been pulled down to make way for housing. I had deteriorated to the extent that I could see all sorts of hallucinations on the wall (some of which I can remember to this day). I can remember the bell of the ambulance ringing, and being able to see treetops out of the top part of the windows, that were not ‘blacked out’. I can still hear the sound of the ambulance man’s voice, and see his face close to mine as he shouted at me to keep breathing. By the time I reached the hospital it all failed, heart, breathing. I wont recount in detail what happened next, as you will either believe it or you wont. But I was there and I know what happened. A near death experience, as I now know it is called, was not something the average six and a half year old child could make up in 1957, we didn’t even have a tv at my house until 1960. But it was not something that was to be believed (have attitudes changed much!), and so the little one was of course dreaming/hallucinating.
When I eventually awoke fully a couple of days later, I was greeted by a lilting Irish voiced nurse, who seeing I was aware of the world, asked if I had decided to rejoin us. I had no idea who ‘us’ was.
I was in hospital for several days after that. Every day at mid-morning a small plate of pieces fruit was put in front of each child. The problem was that I couldn’t touch orange skin in those days without coming out in a kind of mild blister like rash, although I could eat the fruit and drink the juice. The segments of orange on the plate had the skin on, and when I said I couldn’t touch it like that I was assumed to be difficult, and the curtains were pulled around my bed, until I stopped being stubborn and ate the fruit. When the Sister looked at me later I had gone to sleep, and she was not best pleased, and took the fruit away with a lot of complaining. The Matron came round and told me I would have to eat the orange the next day, and when I told her that I couldn’t she got stroppy too. When my Mother phoned to see how I was, from the phone box down the hill, hardly anyone was on the phone then, she was told how awkward I was being, and was able to confirm that I couldn’t touch the orange skin. My parents were not allowed to visit as the hospital was quarantined. So the Sister the next day brought me no orange, but a double helping of apple, but nobody ever apologised for not believing me.
Whilst I was in the ward with the sicker kids, (one progressed ward by ward to freedom) there was a boy who wasn’t there one morning, and when we asked where he had gone we were told “he has entered the next room”. It puzzled me for years that phrase, until one day the penny dropped, and I realised ‘the next room’ was probably death. I wonder why those of us who walked away did so whilst others died, is there a great plan, or is it all just luck. As an atheist since the age of ten I should say it’s all luck. I got home and found that I had a new pair of roller skates, which I never mastered. I haven’t the balance for skates or bicycles. The end of that year Whooping Cough did the rounds, and of course I got that too. Not that I was very ill this time, but it finished off the year.
Living near to Brighton racecourse was a fascination on race days. These often fell mid-week in term time, and there was always the careful thinking for an excuse not to go to school, but to the races. At the end of the day the crowds would come pouring down the hill from the course, some cars, lots of buses and many on foot. There was a race tipster, by the name of Prince Monalulu, whose famous phrase “I gotta horse” echoed around racecourses countrywide. He was a very tall man, said to be a Zulu, who wore a head-dress of ostrich feathers dyed purple. One day as I watched the crowds coming down the hill there appeared an opened top double decker bus, with seated upstairs on the very back seat Prince Monalulu, with his head-dress on the seat beside him, but still managing to hang over the back of the bus. I watched the bus all the way down the hill, until it turned into the Lewes Road, with those purple ostrich feathers shining in the late afternoon sun.
Sometimes on Saturday afternoon race days the tv cameras would be at the course. The cameras were enormous pieces of equipment, and often mounted on tall scaffolding. Everyone knew that the cameras followed the action, so when the horses were passing the cameras would be pointed our way. How many finishes were missed by giving into the temptation to turn our backs on the horse race and wave in the direction of the cameras? We never knew if we got ourselves on tv, but we could dream.
In the summer of 1959 the film Ben Hur was taking big money, and several Oscars. I saw the hoarding outside the Brighton cinema where it was showing, and decided at that moment that one day my name would be up in big letters like that. I had no idea how or why. I’m still waiting to find out!
My Father worked for the Brighton Corporation (as the council was then called) as a bricklayer/maintenance. In the summer there was extra cash to be made by those of the corporation’s workforce who were prepared to work into the evening, after a full days work in their usual employment, and take a shift collecting the deck chairs on Brighton beach. Even though there was a deposit included in the hire fee, many people walked off and left the deck chairs anywhere on the beach. As the tide came in the deck chairs would begin to float out to sea. I sometimes was down on the beach too, and even struggled up with the odd deckchair, but not often as the man in charge only gave me a halfpenny per chair, and not the full amount. There was a concession in the Arches that was the first I ever saw sell soft ice cream. Then as now, at the end of the shift any left had to be discarded, as it separates. The man who ran the soft ice cream stall used to dish out the leftovers in old tea mugs, and no spoons, it was fingers. And so started my life-long affair with ice cream!
There was also an Italian ice cream shop in a side street off the London Road that sold ice cream with little bits of ice in it. I always tried to go there when we were shopping. But my most favourite shop was the second hand bookshop, near the street market on a Saturday. I could spend hours in there, and as I didn’t like to be in the crowds, (I still do not like crowds), I would be left there. In the basement there were like millions of old copies of The Reader’s Digest. I used to spend lots of time sorting them into years, not that anyone cared, I doubt they ever sold many. Up the old stairs,(luckily there were no health and safety in those days, or it would have been closed in seconds), there were lots of books that were reference books, but I expect they were out of date even then. I don’t remember ever buying anything, although my Mother might have, we had lots of books at out house. When we moved it was a two bedroom maisonette, and so we could only bring about two hundred of the books, ‘cos you have to remember they were mostly hardbacks. The original word for paperbacks was soft backs, a little bit of knowledge for you there.
At the autumn time we could go and pick blackberries near the racecourse, in an area now built on. This piece of land was at the top of Bear Road, down which buses used to go frequently. Time to go home was not by the clock, even if we had wristwatches, but by the time that the buses switched their lights on. As soon as a bus went by with it’s lights on, we knew it was getting too dark, and time to go home. We could also go and pick blackberries in Wild Park. Once we picked lots, and had to go into a sweet shop and ask if they had anything to put them in as the paper bag was leaking, and the lady made us pay for an empty sweet tin, which we thought was a bit mean. My Mum used to try and make jam, but it would never quite set properly, and she over compensated, and so it was ever so thick from then on.
The first Christmas I can remember was in 1954, and we went into Woolies and bought a set of six glass baubles for the tree. They cost six old pence, and I still have them. The tree used to be a real growing one in a pot, but mostly they died when they were planted outside. Except one year the tree did grow, and by the time we moved away in 1961 it was quite tall. I expect someone had taken it out, either that or there is a house in Elm Grove with an eighty foot tall conifer in the back garden!
It was also about 1954 that I was playing with my ball whilst waiting for my Mum by the shops in Lewes Road, and my ball ran off into the road, and I went after it. I can still see the faces of the bus driver and his passengers, as the bus screeched to a halt. My Mum was in the shop, and so someone went in and fetched her and told her what had happened. I just pretended to be alright realy, even though I wasn’t.
I was the reason that hoola-hoops were barred from the school. This is the toy, not the snacks that came along much later. I had a lovely blue one, and on my way into school, where I was taking it for some reason, I tried to skip through it whilst crossing the road, and misjudged, and fell over. And so that was it, no bringing hoola-hoops to school.
For some reason there were several finds of discarded ordinance in the area where I lived. These were usually hand grenades. We had one turn up at school and some boys were playing catch with it, and someone told the teacher and she went ever so pale, and told them to put it down. And I dug one up in our back garden, and my Mum didn’t want all the bother of the police and bomb disposal at our house, so she took it in her shopping bag down the road to John Street Police Station, and handed it in at the front desk. She left the police looking for a bucket of sand to put it in.
I have always disliked butter. I find it too greasy. There were no ‘table margarines’ in the 1950s, so I used to have cooking margarine on my bread (unless there was dripping to be had, but that’s another foodstuff), and so when a school child came to tea I as usual had the margarine, and she went and told her people that we were so poor that I had to have margarine, even though she, as a guest, had been given butter, and my Mum said that from now on if there was anyone there I could eat butter and like it. (Which I didn’t!). Later ‘table margarine’ began to be sold in other countries, but was difficult to get in the UK, and so there were people who brought it in illegally and sold it through small shops and the like. It was called Marrianne, and it was a treat to get any of that. It’s strange to think now that we ate smuggled margarine.
Being as I never did like dolls much, I developed an interest in all things warlike. I had the biggest arsenal of toy weapons in the street, and furnished the needed for many a battle. There were still bombsites that were not redeveloped yet, and there were a good source of broken bricks to throw in the gang fights. Once in Shoreham, whilst staying with my Grandparents, due to the shortage of bombsites, there was an apple throwing fight, and I got hit on the check with a realy hard green one, and had to go to hospital and be x-rayed, which was something to brag about then.
We kids were taken in a double decker bus to a place called Burwash to a sort of mini farm. First of all there was the problem that I got travelsick easily, and so I spent the whole journey waiting for the inevitable, (which didn’t happen as it happens). When we got there, there was a pond to paddle in, and I had this new pair of sandals, the kind with the little flower like cut outs, and the buckles were too stiff for me to do them up again. The teacher got ever so cross, especially when she broke a nail, and said it was silly that I had been sent in new sandals, when it was known there would be paddling. Then there were horrible fish paste sandwiches for tea, and what with one thing and another I was not too good on the way back. That didn’t please the teacher either.
I don’t know why, but the teachers irritated me as I got older. So I took pleasure in getting my own back, although now I couldn’t tell you what for. Except for some occasions. Once I had painted a picture of houses in the desert, biblical like, and the teacher said I couldn’t have all different colour houses, as in the desert all the houses would be sand coloured, and I should change it. So when she comes back a bit later the biggest house in my painting had lots of black lines around and across it, and when she asked what that was I told her it was the scaffolding that the painters had put up while they repainted the house. I got sent to the head’s office. In those days boys got the cane, but we girls only got a slap on the hand, which was pathetic, and did no good at all. Then one of the teachers got the rats ‘cos my Mum had had books of stories for children published in the 1940s, and I know now that the teacher was probably jealous, but I didn’t know that then. And so I couldn’t understand why I got comments like “if anyone else had written this I would have given them a gold star, but you could do better, your mother is an author, and so the star is silver”. So I didn’t bother to try after that for ages, and then one time I wrote a brilliant essay, and I got a gold star. But when I went home with it all I got was to be told there was no need for all the fuss, and when I could a gold star every time there would be something to show off about. So after that I didn’t bother ever again. Until that is the eleven plus came round. I don’t know if I was expected to do well, but I knocked them all into a cocked hat them teachers. Now they knew what I could have done all of the time. I will always remember that as one of my greatest triumphs.
Every time there was “Round The Horn” or “Beyond Our Ken” on the lunch time radio at the weekends we would all listen, and retell the jokes in the playground. Our favourites were Jules and Sand, the ever so camp duo, played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams. One week in a sketch in the gentlemen’s outfitters there was an exchange between the assistant and the customer, Kenneth Horn. Customer “these trousers are a little tight, does it show?” tp which came the reply “not from the back, sir”. We were happily repeating this joke, although I’m not sure we all knew why it was funny, and one of the female teachers got into a right strop, and we were all told off and anyone telling it again would be sent to the head. (For more hand slapping!).
We had what seems like lots of choosing rhymes. You know one potato, two potato etc. We had one that went on so long that if we used it at morning break, we couldn’t get on with the game until lunchtime. It went, “There’s a party on the hill will you come. Bring your own cup and saucer and a bun. Who do you hope will be there? ???? will be there, with a ribbon in his/her hair. O-u-t spells out”. Well you can imagine how long this took if twenty kids were playing.
The year of my eighth birthday I had a party, with a homemade cake with chocolate teddy bears on it. The trouble was the chocolate was not very sweet, and we kids didn’t like it. The party ended when someone’s little sister was unwell on the carpet, after she tried to be polite and eat her teddy. A couple of days later my Mum couldn’t understand why there was a musty chocolate smell, as the carpet had been well scrubbed. When she looked into the top of the upright piano Mum found a chocolate teddy stuck to the strings, and it was mouldy. She was not very pleased! My Mum could play the piano realy well, read music on sight, and pick up tunes after only hearing them once or twice. She could even do Russ Conway, and he played realy fast. I wanted to learn to play, but I was told that learning was boring. I used to sit at the piano, but then I would get sidetracked by sort of seeing reflections in the shiney surface, and trying to work out if there was a person there.
We had lots of musical instruments around the house, you could buy them for pennies in jumble sales in those days. And we went to lots of jumble sales. Once that I was too young to remember, because it was when we still lived in Shoreham, Mum took me in my pram to a jumble sale, and bought so much stuff that not only did I return home in a pram loaded with second hand goods, but my Mum had got two Sea Scouts with a hand cart to bring the rest of the items. My Dad was in, and he was not amused. We had a concertina, an accordion, mandolin, guitars seemed to multiply by themselves, and all the usual ones like recorder, penny whistle, harmonica, and later electric stuff like organs, and I never learned to play any of them, because I don’t have the patience. Oh and of course the upright piano. That got played a lot by my Mum, and the customers in the butcher’s shop next door used to stand in the queue singing along to old favourites, or so the butcher told us.
When we still lived in Shoreham my Mum was a witness in a court case, involving a border dispute between neighbours. The new owner of a property said that the fence should be in another place, and so my Mum who had lived there for years, was to tell the court that the fence had always been in the place in now was. I was small, about two years old, and my Mum took me to the court, but there was no-one to look after me outside in the corridor, and so I was taken into the court room and sat at the back. I’ve been told that the pew type seats had very high backs, and so I was out of sight. I was to stay quiet.
After a bit, with my Mum in the witness box telling it like it was, I must have got bored, and so a tiny hand appeared above the seating, waving, whilst a small but strident voice announced “New gloves!” The magistrate or whoever, was none too pleased, and I was ordered to be removed from the court.
I spent lots of time learning to write. Forwards, backwards, left-handed, right-handed, mirror writing, upside down mirror writing, you name it. It comes in very handy if I am across the desk from someone and they have written sheets of words in front of them, because I can still read it, and they don’t know.
I can remember rationing. Shall I delete that sentence I ask myself. When I say I can remember of course I exaggerate, but I can remember standing in a shop and watching the shopkeeper cutting out little squares of paper from a book. I now know that those would have been the rationing coupons. What they were for I have no idea, but some items were still rationed until the early 1950s.
We used to watch people’s chimneys. No, this was not some weird game we children played because we were bored, it was to see who had got television. There were these large ariels that were H shaped. And everyday we would be looking to see who had a H on their roof that hadn’t been there before. In 1960 we got tv, and on the next morning in the playground I changed groups. There was the no-tv group and the we have tv group, which stood in different parts of the playground. On my first day with tv I walked past the no-tvs, to the tvs without a qualm.
I n the late 1957 the Russians launched a dog (Laika), into space, and lots of people got cross because there was no way to get the dog back, and it had to die up in the rocket. Lots of the shops and houses had pictures of the dog in their windows, cut from newspapers. Everyone said it was the sort of thing the Russians would do. I joined the Daily Sketch (then a national daily newspaper) Pet Club, and I signed that I would never let anyone be cruel to animals. The paper and the pet club may be long gone, but my signature is still out there somewhere.
We all had to collect saving stamps at school. It didn’t matter if families had several kids and couldn’t afford it, everyone had to take six old pence to school and buy a stamp with the picture of Princess Anne on it. Anyone who didn’t would be told they had let the class down, and their name would be noted in a book. Some kids used to miss stamp buying day because their parents couldn’t afford to give them the money. So they would be put in the book every week (Friday), and the amount they should have brought would be added up, and then their parent would be told how much was ‘owing’ at the end of the term. The school wanted to be able to report a one hundred per cent participation, no matter what. The savings stamp had to be stuck into a special book, with a pink/brown cover, and when it was full the money had to be deposited into a children’s savings account at the Post Office. Only when the child was seven years old could any money be withdrawn. There were one shilling ( twelve old pence) stamps with a picture of Prince Charles on, but I don’t think anyone at my school bought those.
On Saturday afternoons there used to be an auction of meat in a butchers in central Brighton. I expect they could have stored it until Monday (no Sunday trading then), but they just wanted it sold off. We used to walk down the hill and across The Level, and up a street on the other side to see if there were any bargains. This despite the shop next door to our house being a butchers. Later on my Mum used to cook the butcher in the shop next door a Saturday lunch, because the café across the road was only open on weekdays. The butcher used to give us a pound of his proper sausages, not the ones that he sold over the counter, but the ones for special customers. When I fetched his plate back I would get to sweep the sawdust out of the shop, and any that ‘got away’ just blew down the road. The sawdust was only swept out this one day of the week, and all the display area in the window was given a good clean. But often on a Sunday the cat of the lady who lived in the flat over the butcher’s shop would sleep in the shop window, so it wasn’t too hygienic come Monday. For sweeping the sawdust I would get a threepenny bit, a small coin with a shape not unlike the twenty pence today, but thicker. I was always annoyed if I had to have three separate one penny coins, because that was not the deal.
When I was ten I started to help in the dry cleaner collection shop on a Saturday morning. I would find the customers their cleaning off the racks, and later got to book in the cleaning. For this I received another three pence, but this was usually separate coins. I got two shillings and sixpence pocket money by this time, so with my earnings I had three shillings a week. (That’s fifteen pence today.) I would save up, sometimes for weeks, to buy whatever I wanted. The other kids, who had a lot less, couldn’t understand why I didn’t just spend it all every week.
We had this teacher who took singing. He was Welsh and thought he was humorous. Every time we sang Morning Has Broken he would say, when you get to line Born of the first light Eden saw play it didn’t refer to the Prime Minister (ha, ha,ha) We had not much idea what a Prime Minister was, but we thought it politically correct to laugh. One Christmas we put on the production of Babooshka , I doubt that spelling, but it means granny in Russian. There were only so many parts, and so for some reason I cannot imagine the frozen Russian Steppes were inhabited by a motley crew of vocalists, who as you would expect in Russia sang Christmas Carols in English. There is this carol that goes on about glooooooria etc, and none of us had enough breath to get to the end of the glooooorias. Hour after hour for weeks this teacher had us glooooorng like billyo. We all developed different amounts of staying power in the glorias, and so we would all sort of descend into silence at assorted moments, until one hardy soul (never me) would be left singing on alone, usually out of key and flat. You would have thought the teacher would have quietly dropped that carol from the selection, but he was a stayer. We all had to sing out alone, and those with the longer lasting breath were told to sing, whilst the rest of us were told to mouth the word Gloria. I have no idea how this sounded from out front, but that is what we did.
My favourite hymn was He who would valiant be. I liked all that imagery of battle and warlike rushing onto victory. It is the song that was used in the film Clockwise with John Cleese as the head teacher trying to reach a conference.
The school had outside toilets, right down the playground. The boy’s toilet had an area that did not have a roof on it, and so they could pee-over-the-wall. This was a respected feet, and if they could ‘hit’ the drinking fountain, that was just on the other side of that wall, there was even more cudos. Needless to say there were those of us who never drank from that fountain, however hot the day. At lunch break we had an hour and a half, and when there was only five minutes to go the whistle would sound several toots, and then on the long blast when it came we had to stop and go, walking quickly never running, to form several queues. The boys of each class were in the left hand queue, and the girls the right. On the command ‘walk’ the oldest year boys would step smartly forward into the school building, followed by the oldest year girls, and so on. School then was from 9am to 12 noon, and from 1.30 to 4pm, with a break mid-morning, and mid-afternoon, as well as at lunch. If you stayed to lunch this was always cooked on the premises, and served piping hot. On proper plates, made of china, with proper knives and forks, made of metal, and water in well, plastic beakers. If a child did not finish their meal they would be made to sit in the school hall, where lunch was served, for the rest of the lunch break, or until they ate the food, whichever happened first. There was a great deal of talk about children in the world who were starving, and who would be glad of that cabbage. We were not impressed by this argument, as by the time the cabbage got around the world it would even less nice to eat than we thought it was anyway. We made rubbish bins out of national dried milk tins, and these were sold to make money for the poor children who would have liked to have our cabbage. We had no idea what it was all about, this is pre-tv news reports, which if we watched them were always sanitised, no telling it like it is in those days. We did once buy ladybird shaped plastic stickpins for the Petzoloski Village, which was for orphans in Europe. I’ve still got my plastic ladybird, minus pin. But to be honest we were not expected to be that socially aware in those days, although Blue Peter had started those yearly appeals.
One of our year teachers had been on the CND marches to Aldermaston, and he told us about that, and he used to leave items cut out of The Guardian for us to read. I think that we sort of knew people were worse off than us out there somewhere. By this time the ships of workers who were being imported from countries like Jamaica were arriving in the UK, and some came to live near me. They were all strange sounding, and spoke in pidgeon some of the time. One lady told me how they missed their Plantains, which she said were green bananas that they fried. When I went home and told my Mum about green bananas she would not believe me, and I got told off for saying these foreign people ate green bananas, when everyone knew they were poisonous, and I must not make fun off them just because they had come from somewhere else. Most of the people that I met seemed to soon wish they could go back to wherever, but they couldn’t afford to, because the government who had brought them here would have made them pay full fare to go back, so they were stuck.
When I was ten I became an atheist, it was a vicar that did it. We were the top class and so, joy!, we received religious lessons from a real live vicar at the church in Whippingham Road. One day a girl was upset because her pet rabbit had died, and she asked the vicar if her pet was in Heaven, to which he replied that God would never give animals souls as they are not in his image, and without a soul her rabbit could not go to heaven. That did it, no god could behave like that, and so there could not be a god anywhere. I have never wavered, not through illness or major operations. When I was in hospital in the late 60s I put atheist in the religion space on the form, and they would not let me have that on my file, and said I would have to be c of e, ‘like everyone else’. Ill as I was I complained all the way to the top at the hospital about denying me my rights. After all if I had written catholic, or hindu, or something they would never have crossed that out and put c of e, would they? But it did no good. This in the days when I asked what was in an injection, and they wouldn’t tell me, ‘you don’t need to know’, and so I wouldn’t have the injection until the doctor came and explained what and why. And the ward sister said she knew all about my illness, and I asked her if she had had it, and she said no, but she had been a nurse for forty years, and I said that had nothing to do with it, if she had never had it she could never know all about it. I was a stroopy nineteen year old. (Yes, I know what you are thinking, I’ve not changed in the years since).
When I was eleven I decided that it only made sense if there is reincarnation. By this time my grandparents were into spiritualism, and even though I’ve never realy got round communicating with the dead, I did get lots of influences from that about then. I figured that it would be wasteful to only live once, because all that knowledge could be used and built on. It was obvious I would be into recycling when that came along. People then were more open about death. It was only a few years since the second world war had ended, and so lots of the people had lived though that. They respected death a lot more, and if there was to be a funeral all the curtains in the street would be drawn closed. And you never failed to stop and stand very still if a funeral passed you when you were out, not even very young children.
I went to see Billy Smart’s Circus, and for weeks all I wanted to do was go off and live forever in the big top. I thought it would be all fun, and lots of sweets and ice cream, and happy people. I’ve never been to another circus since. In the sixties onwards I didn’t agree with the use of animals, and since I can’t seem to find the inclination. It would never be as good as I remember that one time.
By this time the National Health Service had been in existence for a decade, and was still offering people care from cradle to grave, which is a pretty good slogan by anyone’s standards. My Mum said that when the NHS had started, in 1948,people had queued for hours to have all their teeth out so they would be supplied with dentures. They were in a hurry as they did not expect the NHS to last. I think they were wrong, but I’m not sure. For some reason we still had visits from the School Doctor, why I don’t know, as we were all registered with GPs by then. This somewhat formidable lady would appear at intervals and ‘inspect’ all the children. The boys would go in first, and we girls would hear such gems of advice being given as ‘you should pee more’ (I still cant work that one out!), or ‘try sleeping on your back’ (mind boggles). We girls would be told to ‘stand on your tippy toes’, and then madam doctor would walk along looking at feet. We would be told we did not have fallen arches. The first time we were told this we were not sure if it was good or bad, but our teacher told us fallen arches were not something to aim for, so that was alright. We all found it boring having to wait around for the doctor.
Then there was the School Dentist! Another somewhat formidable woman, who would poke about in the mouths of us innocent kids. There was a School Dental Clinic in Brighton, and sometimes we would be referred there. Although kids did get free care at the dentist anyway. I can only remember going there once, I don’t know why, and I was chewing gum when the dentist came through the waiting room. Ooops!
We were not allowed to wear the brightly coloured ankle socks of the time. These were fluorescent and I had a green pair. I tried puting my green socks on under a pair of boring white ones, but I only got hot feet, and caught. I hated all the ‘girly’ things that we were allowed to do, like cooking, needlework etc. I wanted to do woodwork, but I would probably have hated that too, if I could have done it. Boys were allowed to kick balls in the playground, but girls could only throw balls. Any boy who threw a ball instead of kicking it would have been made fun off. Any girl who kicked a ball instead of throwing it got sent to the Headmaster. I never got to be blackboard monitor, that was only for boys. Even though I sat up realy straight when the blackboard monitor was picked, it was always a boy. Girls could be milk monitors, but so could boys. The teacher said this was to be fair. So what about the blackboard then!
At the end of one school year we asked why all our exercise books were being put in the bin to be burnt. Why could we not take them home? The teacher, (Aldermaston march man), said it was because he didn’t always correct all of our work fully, he let wrong spelling stand for example. He said if our parents saw the books he would get into trouble, and we were not to tell them what he had told us. I didn’t hear that any child had told.
In the Infants we had ‘stilts’ made out of baked bin tins and string. Of course they were only low, but they seemed quite high enough at the time. The school caretaker made them out of empty bean cans turned upside down and painted, and string put through holes he made. These cans were fought over at every break time, and they were strictly rationed so everyone got a go on them. The other big thing was small beanbags. (I don’t think they had anything to do with the baked beans, although I could be wrong).
There was a branch of the railway ran past the school playground then. It’s gone now, and it’s a nature walk. The trains were the steam type, and we could only see the puffs of smoke from the playground.
My brother was eighteen years older than me, and had joined the army as a boy drummer at sixteen. So no-one at school would believe I had a brother, and said I was making it up. My Mum was asked by the teacher, and then it was given out at assembly that Jackie does have a brother, and not to be making fun, and saying she is a nutcase who imagines she has a brother. Once when the Trooping The Colour used to be on a weekday, my Mum went to a neighbour’s to watch it, as my brother was the drummer who walks out on his own, and then beats his side drum. I wasn’t allowed to stay off school to see it, and there were no video recorders in those days, nor was it repeated in the evening like now (no BBC 2 then), and so I never saw it. But Mum said he was hidden by a horse whilst he was drumming, and so I hadn’t missed anything.
We didn’t have any grass at the school to play on, and so we either had to be walked in a ‘crocodile’ to the racecourse, or to the Level. We had to carry all our equipment, as no-one seemed to have a car. Down the road we would troop with the hurdle (singular, nicked from another school I believe), on our way to ‘athletics’ practise. There was (still is), an inter-school athletic event at the Withdean Stadium every year. I can only remember going the once, to watch. That was the first time I drank 7 Up, which I thought was called Zup. I only had one sip, and spat that out, I cannot drink that stuff to this day.
Something else I cannot even stand the smell of is whiskey. I had a taste of that when I was five, at home, and it was like the worst medicine ever! Years later we had a next door neighbour who used to brew ‘potato wine’. We had no idea that this could be potent. So there I was a very happy eleven year old. I tried smoking for the first time when I was eleven, and was not at all enamoured with it. Stinky!
The pubs in those days had ‘jug and bottle’, which could usually be accessed through a door separate to the door to the bars. In the J and B it was possible to purchase beer by the jug, which would be measured out in a pint glass and then poured into the customer’s jug. They also sold the most wonderful arrowroot biscuits, which you could not buy anywhere else. These were the size of side plates, for one pre-decimal penny. This was the only part of licensed premises that kids could enter, with an adult. The smell of beer in the distance, as I pass a pub with it’s doors open, always brings back the memory of those arrowroot biscuits.
We had a neighbour who was a guide at the Royal Pavilion, and one day we went in and had a private tour. I was allowed right up to the exhibits, and even to touch some of the things that visitors are not usually allowed to touch. There were people going round on the public tours, and they must have wondered who I was, that I was being allowed to do this. And I saw around looks of the behind the scenes too. I liked the kitchens best, turning the spit. I am obviously of the below stairs class. Well actually I am, but more of that another time.
We always went on the West Pier (now derelict, through neglect), never the Palace. That was the pier for the ‘trippers’. The Palace charged to get on, and we thought it was snobbish. The West was much more fun. There was no Brighton Marina back then, and Black Rock was lots of black rock, with many little rock pools. “Little worlds encased in time”, if I may quote one my own published poems. It was a sad day when all that was ruined for the sake of a few yachts. Very rarely we would have a ride on Volkes Railway, that runs along the front to the (now) Marina. It was too expensive to go on often. There is a place on the road out of Brighton called the Rookery, which as it’s name suggests was once the home to many rooks. I cannot remember ever seeing many birds there, but it is realy nice, with landscaping. My favourite was the stepping stones over the water, even if sometimes I did step in and get my foot wet. It was only shallow, but I could pretend. I had a camera by the time I was seven, though I had taken photos before. It was less usual for kids to have stuff like that then. I have some photos of the Rookery, but because of the old film they were printed ever so small, and it cost lots to have them enlarged. They are also a bit too dark.
I had a tortoise named Bandy. He/she didn’t survive hibernation one year, and was placed in one of those big old red Oxo tins, and buried beside the pond. The pond was actually an old metal washing up bowl, with a broken ornament on an old chair leg in the centre. An early, cheap, water feature. We used to get frogspawn from around the park’s ponds and this would become tadpoles, but once they could get out our pond and hop about the birds would spear them, so none grew up. I would watch the ants and they would carry or drag their dead to a spot near the back door, and dead ants would pile up there until my Mum would sweep them up and throw them in the dustbin. I cannot think why the ants would do that. I’ve not seen it again anywhere.
One day in the summer a bee flew in the classroom window, and our teacher was obviously scared, and started that ‘don’t panic’ routine that people go into when they are about to. The bee landed on me, and the teacher was shouting to me to stay still, but I knew the bee wouldn’t sting unless it had to, because it was one of those that only get to sting once and they die. I knew it wouldn’t throw it’s life away stinging me. She got some of the other kids into a state though. Every now and then they would test the air raid sirens, the same ones as from WW2. They would always warn in advance so everyone would expect it. We were all ready in case the Russians attacked us with missiles, which we knew could be any day. When we heard the test siren we would have to get under our desks, big heavy wooden things, and wait for the test of the all clear signal. Our teacher said that if there were a real attack she would expect us to get under our desks quietly, there would be no need for chatter. We thought this was funny, as we couldn’t see what difference talking would make, but I think that as she like all adults would have lived through WW2, she was probably thinking of how to keep us calm if the worst did happen.
Bread was price fixed in the 1950s, and so it didn’t matter where you bought it, it cost the same. There were not many supermarkets then anyway. One morning in the local bakers the assistant told my Mum that a large loaf was to increase in price to one shilling, (five pence post-decimal) and my Mum said “they wouldn’t dare!” What would she have made of bread prices today? There was always lots of women standing about talking in those days, just like the films make it look. I suppose it had something to do with so few being on the ‘phone.
Photosby Jackie - 09:44 on 24 October 2007Add your comment Please note that whenever you submit something which may be publicly shown on a website you should take care not to make any statements which could be considered defamatory to any person or organisation. |  |
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