Gordon and Connie

 Gordon my dad, had met Connie my Mum when he was a trainee manager for Stevens and Steeds provision merchants.  Manager of the Maury Road Stoke Newington branch was Frederick John Parker who lived over the shop with his wife Fannie Elizabeth and their four daughters, Violet, Constance, Evelyn and Joan. 

In 1925 when Connie was eighteen she and friends had a holiday at Herne Bay. 

Gordon followed on his motor bike.  As you see, they were good buddies by then. Gordon had various bikes including a Norton, an AJS and a BSA. I think.  

At Herne bay Connie is fourth from the left in the group.  

Also below, Frederick John Parker. is on the left with brother-in-law Alf Saunders taken about 1920. F.J. died, stomach cancer, about 1925. He had  spent time in the Great War at the Royal Naval Air Service base at Otranto Italy. 

Gordon and Connie and Paul

Well, on the 28^th September 1928 Connie and Gordon married and they honeymooned in Babbacombe near Torquay where they met up with other honeymooners.  C. and G. are on the right.

Gordon opened 'Steeds' Store' in Angel Lane Stratford.  They bought 137 Capel Road Forest Gate - just across Wanstead Flats from Empress Ave. And on the 9^th Sept. 1930 I, Paul Howard Gordon Steeds was born there.  Here I am about ten months old. 

Paul's 'Largely Before 1936'

   PAUL - LARGELY BEFORE 1936

I walked past 137, Capel Rd. Forest Gate -it's now Manor Park I think, with Gwen, Andrew and Janet in 2002. Took a photo of it including me, before we carried on across Wanstead Flats to 12, Empress Ave… I was born there, at No: 137, on the 9th September 1930, overlooking the grassy tree-lined Flats, but at that time I wasn't taking much notice of the scenery… I was crying and getting slapped.  In fact we left there when I was about a year old, so this is all hearsay.  I heard that Dad built a rose-covered pergola in the back garden. I've got some photos of me in a tin bath.  

Another story goes that Dad's brother Frank who, -unmarried until 4th June 1931 must have been staying with us, saw his father, my Grandpa, -from 12 Empress Ave., at the door one morning. He hopped over the back fence into the cemetery.  He should have been at work. Possibly Frank was working at his father's grocery at the time but for a large part of his working life he drove a London tram. 

Two of Grandpa's brothers, Willie and Reggie I think, had groceries, 'provision merchants'.  They extended to about a dozen shops at one time, in London, in partnership with another person and trading as 'Stevens and Steeds'. "Stevens and Steeds where a light to determine goodness is shone through every egg sold." Grandpa had his own grocery but said he couldn't afford to set Dad up. So Dad traded on his own as 'Steeds Store' in Angel Lane, Stratford.  I think the whole lane has now succumbed to a new road system for the 2012 Olympics stadium.  

My first memory is/was of seeing a fire, possibly only a grass fire, from my uncle Holford's little Hillman. I remember/ed it had a pram-type hood with fake chromed hinges at the sides.  Excuse the vacillation about memories but they are reinforced by previously 'remembering' these things over so many years and so are they 'memories'?  In that file also is the recollection of my sitting on Dad's shoulder, (how young?) while he walked along a quayside, with tie also flying over his shoulder, and then onto the "Golden Eagle" which he and I took as a day trip from Margate to Southend.  From that memory I have always known which is the port side of a ship. 

In 1932 we left and moved to No:2 Frimley Rd. Seven Kings.  I remember lots of happiness in our four years there.  It was a fairly new house and Mum and Dad had a sunken lawn excavated out back.  I've a photo of me toddling among planks there before the grass grew.  I only recall the green lawn which had clumps of crocuses planted in the lawn that appeared near the four corners in Spring.   

Then, further down the garden was a big pile of earth. Taller than me, I could run up and down it. Then  I discovered masses of ants in it and I just knew that it was an 'ant hill' There was a small damson tree nearby too by the neighbour's fence.  Not very pleasant to eat but the damson jam was very nice. Then there was the aviary up near to the kitchen where Dad used to breed canaries.  It was my job to take them their feed… Hard-boiled egg and 'Osborne' biscuits crushed up. It was only a few steps to the aviary. Just as well because that mix tasted lovely. There was always something to do, if only setting snails to race each other on the concrete. I was a very patient lad…

Grandma Parker lived with us all the time we were at Seven Kings.  She was not impressed when one time just about the whole of the ceiling plaster fell down in her room. A near new house!  I remember sleeping in her bed one time when I had a 'made me cry' bout of ear-ache.  My room was the small one on the corner at the top of the stairs. Dreams are what I remember that room for… I was on the platform of an Underground station… The tunnel opened to my left. It's floor was a metre or so above the track level but, no tracks, it was a river, and there were monkeys playing in the waterfall it made!  

I enjoyed my books of course.  There was one story that impressed,- it was supposed to!  It was called ‘The Forty Winks’ This little child used to cry a lot in its room - which had a fireplace. There was a goblin that lived up the chimney.  The crying disturbed its 'forty winks' and it came down the chimney, and with its sooty hand, plucked the 'forty winks' out of the childs mouth, -one by one!  Then there was the painting book I had. A promo from OXO.  There was an athletic type… 'Felix Tremely-fit on OXO', and there was 'Greta Colday with a cup of hot OXO'…

Our's was the end house in the row and our neighbours were the Parishes.  John was a little younger than I was. What we played at I don't know. When you're three or four imagination is 90% of the game. Funny the things that stick though.  I was at his place one time when he had a bleeding nose.  Apparently one treatment was to put a cold key down the neck. I rather freaked out.  I thought they meant down his throat!  

John had a slightly older sister Doris. I rather liked her but don't remember ever getting to play with her… I think there was another older sister but our paths never crossed.  

Mrs. Parish had a father who lived about 100 metres away on the other side of us, fronting on to South Park Drive. He was a great carpenter. He used a shed down the Parish's garden and I'd spend quite a bit of time with him. I was really thrilled when he made me a board game called 'Bobs' I think.  There was a wavy green baise covered plywood base with brass lined holes on the middle ridge and you had to roll big ball-bearings to get them in the holes. I had that for many years…  Here I leap sadly to 1941. Mum's Mum, Grandma Parker, took me back one day to Seven Kings to visit cousin Maureen who lived in nearby Barking…  We walked past No:2 Frimley Rd.  There was nothing.  Just a front door step.  A bomb had been dropped nearby and demolished several houses.  It had also killed my friend Mr. Beamish.  By the way he had spent most of his life I believe in New Zealand and had apparently retired to be closer to his daughter.  One of the Hawkes Bay or Gisborne Beamishes? I don't know… And another by-the-way,  the Parish's apparently survived the bomb and, so I heard, retired finally to Auckland.  I never did try to contact them.  Such is life.

Frimley Road to Empress Avenue

Mother, me and cousin Michael at Frimley Road. 

 We left 2 Frimley Road in July 1936.  I visited it in about 1942 with Grandma Parker. There was just the front door step left. It had been bombed about a year earlier. A good friend of mine was killed. He was the grand father of the Parrish kids at no: 4 and had lived off to the other side of our garden. He had made me a green baize covered game where you rolled balls down a slope and up into brass cups.  Mr Beamish had lived in N.Z. and was a relation of the Hawkes Bay/Gisborne Beamishes. 

Here's one at 12 Empress Av.  Taken about 1933 I think it was Mamie and Alex's wedding. They are on the right. Mamie is obscuring Alex's face.  In front of them is my cousin John and his sister Jose sitting on a knee. In the middle is Grandpa Steeds with white moustache. On his left is Grandma looking round to me standing in the doorway, being shy. On Grandpa's right with back to camera must be Chris, baby Michael on her left held by his Mum, Auntie Mary. Where my parents are I don't know. I can only guess about all the ladies on the left. Grandpa had five sisters and five brothers.  

At another time in their large drawing room, on the left beyond the conservatory, Grandpa was sitting in an upright chair.  I was at the 'why?' age.  His reply, 'Paul, why's got a long tail.' Shame, he could at least have told me the meaning of Life the Universe and Everything. He died in 1935 just before I was five. Chris had a pianola in that room. It was great to pump the pedal and watch the perforated roll turn and play 'The Blue Danube'. It was there too that I first met my brother Martin.  He was lying on the settee and about a week old.  I'd been sent away to Barford for six weeks. But that's another story. 

    Then there was the lady next door, at 10 Empress Ave . I was sent in there occasionally to say hello.  She was Belgian and I think she'd lost a husband and /or son in the 1914-18 war.  The only English she knew seemed to be  'na-eece leeddle boyee'  It was a bit embarrassing for a six year-old. 

1936. - a Momentous Year

 …I was going to be six that September and 1936 was quite a momentous year for our household.  Very early in the year Mum must have discovered she was pregnant. Then while we were still at No:2 Frimley Road  Seven Kings I got measles.  I was in bed for a while with the curtains drawn.  Then I got mumps.  Steeds Store at Angel Lane Stratford had failed, due largely to the closing of the railway workshops nearby and the loss of a large part of their customers.  So money was tight.  Jobs were not easy to find and Dad finished up in south London at Caters provision merchants in Brixton.  I remember going there later. It was in an arcade by the side of the railway over bridge just to the east of the London Road.  So, we moved. 103 Gonville Road Thornton Heath I've always known as 'my home in England'.  Don't remember anything specific about the actual event but yes, I do remember meeting the out-going people.  They were a Mr. & Mrs. London.  They had a son David who's age was about… well, he was a 'big boy'. The Londons had won a garden prize while they were there.  'Fraid it went downhill rather in the subsequent War Years but it was a very enjoyable place for a young 'un.  There were masses of standard roses either side of the lawn and stepping stones down the centre to a rustic 'summer house' at the bottom. This was overhung by a rambling Philadelphus (mock orange blossom). Up by the house was a shed which cousin Jean and I called 'The Nook'  or did we change it to 'The Nest'? It was overhung by a large prunus. 

But I'm rushing ahead. Back to Frimley Road. In 1935 I had my fifth birthday party. My Mum was quite a goer. She used to play ‘Aunt Sally’, -hide behind the settee and pop her head up for us kids to throw soft things at her. Later she used to embarrass me by saying, -yes I fed him for a long while. I used to feed him through the railings of the school playground! Well, party on Sunday, the next day was the 9^th. and I was dragged to school with ‘…I know I won’t like it… I know I won’t like it…’ But I did. Dad came to meet me at lunch time that day with a stick of chocolate, -for being a good boy and not coming home at playtime. I still visualise numbers up to ten in the groups they were on my classroom wall. Grandma Parker lived with us then. Mum worked. She was manager of Yates the dry cleaners. Then there was the time that Dad came off his motor bike and broke his wrist…

But, in June 1936, before we moved, Mum was heavily pregnant. It was near the end of my first, my only year at South Park school and I was sent for six weeks to stay with Auntie Mary and Uncle Mat in Barford Norfolk.  Auntie Mary was Grandma Parker's sister and she, somehow, from Much Haddam Hertfordshire she had met a Norfolkman, married him and went to live in a cottage in the village seven miles west of Norwich.  Mat was a hedger and ditcher all his working life for the County Council.  A lovely, quiet man who gave Mary two sons and two daughters.  By 1936 Albert was married to his Annie.  Ivy was courting her David about this time.  They married but David died within a couple of years, meningitis I think.  Lilian was beginning to be sought  by likely lads.. I remember one who had a coupé with a 'dicky seat'  -to own one like that used to be a dream of mine.  And then there was Harry, a handsome guy with very blond wavy hair, only nine years older than me.  Cousin Jean was staying there with me too and Harry made us a wagon. There must have been old pram wheels at its base and there were cut barrel hoops over the top covered with sacking, a real covered wagon.  There was no electricity at the cottage.  We went to bed up a steep staircase with a candle.  There was a sink in the kitchen, but only a rain water butt outside with a basin for hands and face. Water was also brought in from a well or was it a pump?  The loo of course was a brick one at the end of the garden under a big old elder bush.  It was Harry that taught me birds' names.  Hedge sparrow and yellow hammer I remember from that time. Jean and I went to Barford school for a few weeks till the summer holidays. It was surrounded by fields. One was called Long Acre, on the corner of Cock Street that led down to.. 'The Cock'!  Mrs Burton was head mistress but the teacher for us littlies was Miss Dann and she rode a large bicycle with lots of strings from the rear mudguard to the hub to keep voluminous skirts from tangling in the back wheel.  Then at play time I learned to make a spear to throw, with a folded up metal milk top and a straw, and then, or was it lunch time, the ice-cream man used to come by, his cart pulled by a pony.. or was it a donkey?  Just down the road from the cottage at that time, was Bennell's bakery and we used to watch George or Billy pouring sacks of flour into the long wooden trough.  12 ounces of yeast was mixed in and then bucketsful of water.  Then came the interesting part.  They, one or other, would roll sleeves up to the armpits, bend over the trough and paddle away steadily with fists and forearms to mix the dough.  Billy used to get indigestion and when he found a small lump of yeast he might stickily pop it in his mouth.   It was there behind the bakehouse that I first saw a sow suckling her piglets.  And there too that I first saw a basket of kittens so young their eyes weren't open.  Saw my first apples on a tree there too.  A very impressionable time.

Back to London and I was taken straight to Grandma Steeds at 12 Empress Ave. Wanstead…  And there, lying on a couch in Grandma's sitting room was my new brother. Born with dark hair and quite blond later, it was weeks later that, in our new house, -Julian having been toyed with, he was named Martin, Martin James, for what it's worth, born on St James' Day 25th July. 

The rest of 1936 that I remember is of Gonville Rd. School, just 200 metres down the road from our house. I was put straight into the 3rd. class 'K3' with a very kind Miss Speller. Shall I bore you with how I can remember all nine teachers at that school!  K1 had Miss Silvester, then there was Miss Bailley, -and, soon replacing my Miss Speller was Mrs Price in K3. She was alright I suppose... Then Miss Barr, Miss Hernaman, Miss Lloyd, Mr. Wood, Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Hurst who was also a scout leader. Mr Reynolds was Headmaster…  I jumped Miss Barr’s K4 and in 1937 went to Miss Hernaman in Form1. 

   But it was November of 1936 that Dad called me into their bedroom one morning and we looked out to the east and saw the glowing sky that was a fire, and the end of the Crystal Palace…

                                                                                                                                                                                                paulsteeds@xtra.co.nz

 

1938 -1939 Holiday at Felpham, Martin, Cousins and Friends.

 From being a self-employed grocer Dad was determined to provide for his family a bit better than as an ordinary wage-earner but the daily bread had to be earned and after leaving Caters, for a year or two he read electricity meters. That took him into the country and Sundays he sometimes took us out for walks into fern clad Surrey. In 1938 with Dad's friend Harold Booker and his wife Elsie, her sister Vi  and a Mrs. Moore and young daughter Ann, we rented for a week, one of many converted train carriage homes on stilts at Felpham near Bognor Regis. Jean and Jill came too and Auntie Joan. Quite a cheap holiday shared between the twelve of us.

Vi, Elsie and Mum in the back row.
Then me, Martin and Jean, with Jill at the front.

Here she is, at the top.
Here also is Mrs. Moore  and Ann.
Yes, we're all ready to return to London. 

  

Dad And Mum, and 

  Jean down in the corner.

 Mum acting up as usual.

 

Paul, Martin, and cousins Jean and Jill.

Our last day by the look of our town clothes.  Mum's costume was dark grey with purple spots. There was a cape to match. Made by Uncle Sid, who was also an artist and sculptor. In their house there was a bust of Auntie Eva -without anything on her top! Tut, tut! Jean and Jill's Mum Auntie Joan also had a similar Grayston costume. 

    

...And here's another date. It was 25^th July 1938. -alright it may have been a day or two after his birthday, that Martin, having learned how to say it, went to the frontdoor at home and said to the milkman, 'I'm two'...  With all the appreciation he got, he said it quite a lot after that. I enjoyed having a brother. One Sunday about this time we four were at a cricket match Dad was playing in. I decided to run away with Martin and have adventures. There was long grass in the nearby field and off we went. After about a quarter of an hour I couldn't find any adventures . So we went back to Mum at the club house. -Little things you remember....

   I say I enjoyed my brother but, and it's only in my later years that I've thought about it, I went off my food at age about seven, and I wonder if after six years being numero uno, I found a way of getting that attention that had recently been diverted to Martin. I wonder... In fact I was so seedy apparently that I was sent to Coombe Cliff convalescent home for a week or two. The porridge was awful. They put salt in it! About then too I started having nightmares. Always the same one. I was in a big ball and couldn't get out... Got a bit of attention there too when Mum or Dad came in to give a bit of comfort. This must have gone on for about a couple of years but come 4^th September 1939, the war, and after my first night with the Gillies in Brighton, I got, -we'll have none of that nonsense Paul...  Never again did I have a nightmare! In fact in all my years since, nothing but pleasant dreams! Then there was the time Dad took me up to London to the Coronation. We slept on the pavement the 11^th May 1937 in The Mall. Come the 12^th the procession and all the grown-ups stood up and this 7 year old saw hardly a thing.. particularly the Coronation Coach as I remember! Then, as I also remember, upon arriving home it was -from Mummy, 'Gordon you look like a tramp! Go and have a shave!' 

   After my 12 inch wheeled 'fairy cycle' -a scar on my lip I've still got if I look closely, from a fall, I'd had  a pair of skates given me, one Christmas I guess, and I enjoyed them up and down the pavement. But then Syd next door, persuaded me to take the four wheels off one of them and nail them onto a wooden box. With a swivelling board for steering  by a rope we had fun that way. I don't think Dad was impressed at spoiling the skates. It was Syd, who was 9 months older than me who had the bright ideas. We used to play explorers in his shed. He had a wooden box, -or was that imaginary as well, and we'd pretend to smash it, and there would be.. another box that was bigger, and -smash, and there would be another box, even bigger! ...with I don't know what inside! I enjoyed wrestling with Syd, but when he got a pair of boxing gloves I wasn't interested in that. During the war we lived together in a couple of towns but later Syd went into the accelerant class at Selhurst to pass the School Cert exam in four years instead of five and we had different friends. Much later I heard he became a dentist.

   Cousins Jean and Jill used to stay often at Gonville Road, and I used to stay with them at London Lane Hackney. In between times there were school friends other  than Syd to visit and swap comics with. At school June Castleton with long dark curls was the beauty of Form 1. but I preferred Eileen Tuck. Sometimes on a Sunday with tuppence for a Lyons apple pie I used to walk to Croydon Airport and watch the big four motor H.P. 42 biplanes take off for Paris or India. It was the airport for London in those days. Over the road from the Airport was a new open-air swimming pool with a tall diving tower. I was a timid boy I think, but Dad pushing me in backwards from the pool edge, would not be recommended parenting nowadays I think....

Wartime for Paul

I was eight when 'The Crisis' was the main news topic... The Munich conference pact  of September 1938 had not stopped Hitler. The Third Reich was still expanding.  I was making a scrap book in 1939 and the cartoon I remember pasting in was of Hitler standing in front of a shed, in back of which were the bodies of Austria and Czecho-slovakia. His bloodied and gloved hand behind his back was holding a dagger. He is facing John Bull (Britain) and Marianne (France) and the caption was, 'I offered Britain and France my hand in friendship, -said Hitler in his latest speech'.

   The summer holidays in 1939 I'd spent in Barford Norfolk with cousin Jean at Auntie Mary and Uncle Mat's cottage. There had been no electricity in 1936 when we were there but now there was. No longer a candle up the steep stairs to bed. Still the loo at the end of the garden though, and a basin on a water barrel outside the kitchen door for washing face and hands. Guess there was a tin bath used in front of the fire. Don't remember. We were only there a few weeks! 

   Within days of returning to 103 Gonville Road the news grew worse. It was  Sunday 3^rd. September. Our wireless had been on all morning and about 11:00am Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that he had not received an answer from Herr Hitler demanding that he withdraw from Poland... 'and that therefore this country is at war with Germany'...  I think it was Uncle Frank and Auntie Mary that were with us. We had just sat down to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding when the air raid siren went... We trooped down the garden to the Anderson shelter that I guess Dad had dug out and erected while I was away in Barford. It was just an exercise of course, but I remember being more than a bit of a wimp and not wanting to put on my rubber-smelling gas mask.

   The next morning there were buses just 200 metres away outside my school. With rucksack on my back and with a lot of my school I boarded and we were off to East Croydon Station, then by train to Brighton. It was only 21 years since the last 'Great War' and the government had been preparing for the worst for a year or so. In Brighton I think Mr and Mrs Gillies had been asked beforehand, but in some cases children were toted from door to door to see who would take in evacuees. So, No: 64 Waldegrave Rd. was home for nearly a year for me and Syd Redding my neighbour at 101 Gonville Rd.. After a few days Mum and 3 year old Martin managed to be taken in by Mr. Gillies' mother next door to us. They stayed there for about three months but it was what was called the 'phony war' and they returned to Thornton Heath before Christmas. 

   Our school used the local Ditchling Rd. School, alternating with the locals kids mornings, or afternoons. On the free half days our teacher Mr. Wood used to take us to places of interest like the newspaper printing works, or on one occasion we bussed out to Lewes and, pick-a-back, we re-enacted the 1264 Battle of Lewes. Mr. Wood had just married that summer and he told us all about their honeymoon on Guernsey. 

The Palace Pier was still open at some early stage and the amusements were popular. I remember making 4d. once at a 'ball into slot' machine. If you won you got your penny back and a free ball... 

   Our Headmaster Mr Reynolds had stayed back at Gonville Rd. school but his daughter Judith was also billeted in Waldegrave Road. She was nice, and blond. She smiled at me once! ...Little things I remember. The new film Wizard of Oz was on at the cinema in Beaconsfield Road, but -also new, I saw Gunga Din instead at that time. Preston Park was popular. There was a Great War tank rusting under a conker  tree there early on, but it was taken away later. One day while we were playing there Syd broke his arm. There was, strangely for 1939-40, an American army presence in a building in the park and they attended to him. I was a bit shocked to see them cut his jersey sleeve to give first aid. The Gillies were a lovely older couple. They had a son Duncan who lived away from home. He had a girl friend and they were given the front room on an occasional Sunday afternoon to do their 'courting'. I got into trouble once, -listening at the door. The Gillies took us out sometimes. Mr Gillies would give us 3d. each that autumn for collecting a sack of leaves near his allotment, -that he composted I guess, but he complained if the sacks weren't pressed down hard! Another time we were at a cricket match. I wasn't paying much attention, and then there was a shout and I felt the wind of the ball in my hair as it landed nearby. -Moments that could change your life!

 

   But the lasting memory was jamming two fingers in the front door. Mrs. Gillies hurried me up the road to the doctor. The two nails had lifted at their roots. The doctor gently took my hand , then with tweezers sharply pulled a nail off, first one then the other... There were Cubs to attend each week. I was made a 'sixer' and got a few badges. One was for stamp collecting. Mr Gillies too had a collection and he coveted my 4½ d. orange and blue Malta... The one he needed to complete his set... So I gave it to him, -and broke my own set! The winter of 1939-40 was a cold one and the steep Waldegrave Road was icy and exciting. Quite unusual for the south coast of England. 

   The British and French were retreating and the Germans isolated the Brits at Dunkirk ..whence followed the well known evacuation by 4^th June. So Brighton was not a safe place and we all returned to Croydon. For the life of me I can't remember going to school at Gonville Road after the summer holidays until I moved to Uppingham in October or November. You see, in Form 3 at Brighton we had Mr. Wood, but  Form 4 was always taken by the rather stern grey haired, grey suited Mr. Edwards in the room next to Mr Reynolds office. I must have been in that class, but it was a short while. There was a plan to evacuate me to Australia, but that's another short story, ('Paul's History' doc and 'Paul's family pics' ).

   I recall a lot of other stuff about that time. Going to Cubs, -the 47^th Croydon Pack at a church near Norbury. Walking home that summer and watching dogfights overhead. 

                                                                                                                                      3.

Of course there were the barrage balloons one saw. They were positioned                                                                                                                                      at intervals on open ground to prevent low level bombing and secured on lorries. I've recently read that some broke away in high winds and with their steel cables dragging caused problems with electric power lines as far away as Sweden. With this knowledge 'Operation Outward' was a cheap hydrogen balloon venture of the British, and thousands of them were let go with trailing steel cables, and were an annoyance in Germany. A whole power station near Leipzig failed once due to the shorting of a 110,000 volt line by one of these balloons. 

  During a daylight raid, at home one time there was a ping, ping, ping, ping, as four cartridge cases landed in our garden. They were a great addition to my collection of jagged shell pieces, shrapnel. Cousin Fritz from Stuttgart Germany told me that he also collected shrapnel during the war. This was The Battle of Britain, about August - September 1940 and locally it seemed to be focussed over Croydon Aerodrome. But the Germans lost too many aircraft and soon changed their tactics and started coming over at night. That was called the Blitz(krieg)... On the night of the 8^th September, I've recently read, and for seventy six consecutive nights, London was bombed -except on the 2^nd November because of really bad weather,... 

  The scene was that every night, about 8:00 pm. Mum would make a thermos of cocoa and we'd troop down to the Anderson shelter, -whether the siren had gone or not, -where Dad had fitted a double mattress on packing cases for the four of us, although about this time Martin went to live with Auntie Mamie and Uncle Alex at Buckhurst Hill where he stayed for at least a couple of years. The mattress just about  covered the whole of the floor area. Dad had made a wooden flap for the doorway. The covered vent in it was all our ventilation.  Croydon was on an aerial corridor to London and there was a lot of activity in the sky. The twin motor Bristol Beaufighter was developed about this time as a night fighter. Until I was sent away again to Uppingham the only serious incident at home was an incendiary bomb that landed in our garden one night while we were in the shelter just 5 metres away. Quite a spectacular firework display, but luckily it was not of the exploding variety. Later, after I'd gone to Uppingham a bomb exploded about 200 m. away, the other side of the houses over the road. We lost all our windows and many roof tiles. Mum and Dad were in the shelter at the time. The story goes that there was a -very lucky, man who said he was on the lavatory at the time. 'I just pulled the chain and the house fell down!' 

   Anyway, was it later in October or November, that some of us were bundled onto a train and we headed north to Oakham in Rutlandshire.  There we got a drink and a bun at a school. I know we'd eaten on the trip because I've still got the stain on Auntie Chris's stamp album from a tomato sandwich... And then some of us were bussed to Uppingham, which is the only other town in Rutland actually. Syd and I landed with a Mrs. Draper at Newtown Road. She was a widow -of the Great War I think. She was very nice but made us polish our shoes in the outside shed, and it was a very cold winter that year. Uppingham is quite hilly and we had lots of fun tobogganing and making monstrous snowballs as we rolled small snowballs onto new snow. But 

melting snow in your gumboots is not fun. The private Uppingham School had a Tiger Moth and was training pilots on a field nearby. But we saw nothing of the boys of that school. In the middle of the small town, Uppingham School seemed more like a sandstone castle with the bigger windows facing inwards.

   Syd and I must have been a bit much for the elderly Mrs. Draper and after about three months I was billeted with Mr. and Mrs. Snodin and their eight year old Alan, while Syd stayed with another elderly couple not far away in the town. Mr. Snodin was the local butcher. I remember Mrs Snodin made a delicious apple batter as well as toad-in-the-hole, -sausages in batter. I had one particular local friend Derek Chapman. His father was a painter. There were some interesting sheds in their garden and Derek showed me how to put a rag round a stick, soak it in turps and light it.. Made a good statement for ten year olds but better done outdoors.. Upstairs in Derek's house a wardrobe had a number of Boer War scarlet tunics and helmets that we dressed up in. Then there were fields nearby and a pond with frog spawn in the spring. Lots of outdoor stuff. There was a play area in the town with swings and slides, and often Kathleen Ainsworth. She was nice.. 

I got a box brownie camera from Mum and Dad.
This is Martin, Syd Redding, Alan Snodin, Me and Derek Chapman.

   We were always told by Mrs Draper to go for a long walk on Sundays after church and before going home to mid-day dinner. There was a 'dew pond', a temporary pond in a hollow in a field with grass pasture at the bottom of it, -in a field near Newtown. It was iced over in the winter. And a quarry there too to play in. There were always sticks and leaves to float in the gutter after rain. I don't remember much about church except that the Rector was a C. C. Aldred. I've still got the Bible that he signed and gave me. At one time there was a 10 ton, -22000lb. bomb, vertical, on display next door to the vicarage, promoting war bonds or something. The school we went to was the ancient flint stone church school just down the hill from the church. There were two playgrounds, each about the size of a small classroom and with high walls. Girls and boys were separated at playtime! The school's gone now. Now it's 'Old School Mews'. 

   What else...  Oh yes, I remember one night many bombers going over in the evening. It was while we were still with Mrs. Draper. It was the devastating raid on Coventry. Was it a full moon? I expect so. It used to be called a bomber's moon.  But otherwise life in the country town was very peaceful. Mum used to send me a shilling a week. A postal order I guess. Tupence for a stamp to write home, -it went up to 2½d in that time. Tupence for a comic -The Dandy, -no, I'd graduated to 'The Wizard' by then -few pictures, all stories. Tupence for sweets and sixpence for a 'Savings Stamp'. I must have saved a bit in the kitty though because, amongst others, I finally saw 'The Wizard of Oz' and a scary film called 'Gaslight' … The gas light went down when the baddie was in the lady's house. 

     

   In July we sat the 'scholarship exam' in Oakham which decided that Syd and I were 

academic enough to start high school with Selhurst Grammar School for Boys at Croydon. Some of Selhurst had evacuated to Bideford and so, after the summer holidays back at Thornton Heath, that was where I was headed in September 1941. My first billet was at Torridge Mount on the east side of the Torridge river, with Mr & Mrs Andrews. He was ancient and more or less bed-ridden. Mrs A. too was ancient. I remember arriving. I was shown into their front room, -and left there. 'They don't know what to do with me... they don't know what to do with me...' for several minutes. I remember that vividly. But Mrs Andrews was very kind. He was always in bed. She'd come from a farm and married Mr A. late in life. Very conveniently for him I guess. There was always bacon for breakfast. But I was only there for a few months. I guess it was a bit much for the aged Mrs. A. -with Mr. A. upstairs. I never saw him up and dressed.

  I saw Mum and Dad once that year, when they came down, just for a couple of days while I was there with the Andrews. Dad was an inspector of canteens in the NAAFI for most of the war. He was posted first to Dover, then to Stranraer and then to Dingwall. I've still got the wooden suitcase he made to sit on in the trains which were so crowded. -It's leather covered and Martin painted it orange at some time ...But then, Martin was living with the lovely, but child-less, Auntie Mamie and Uncle Alex. Buckhurst Hill was a safer area, hardly in London... Epping Forest started just across the road. Mum lived at home alone and worked in a grocery, Coopers, about fifteen minutes on the tram or bus, in Streatham. Of course usually, in those days  two-way communication was three or four days by snail-mail. We didn't have a phone, although there were the red phone boxes all over the place to use , -if you knew someone that did have a phone...

   But back to Devon, what I recall mostly is being there at Bideford Grammar School. It was a modern single story place. There was a tuck shop, -3 half-chocolated biscuits for a penny, ...and I did a creditable 12ft. 9ins. long jump I recall. Don't know why but I didn't get into any team sports, if there were any... I started wood work there. I made a wooden teapot stand. But importantly I remember our first science lesson. 'Jazz' -J. A. Stevenson, had a burette full of soap solution, and with sea water, rain water or tap water we had to drip carefully, the soap solution into a measured amount of the different waters and see what was needed to make a lather. A good introduction to precisely measuring. But,  an embarrassing moment too when I read out my written composition to 'Charlie' Vallins, ...'I caught some green crabs and one red one which was edible..'  to much laughter, most of the rest of the class seemed to know they only go red when cooked! Then there was Scouts, and a penn'orth of chips afterwards. And taking the bus at the weekends to play in the rock pools at Westward Ho. 

  So, I was moved again. I went to stay with Mr. & Mrs. Stirrup. Early middle aged and without children they were my favourite foster parents but in a few months they  told me they had bought a pub at Instow, just down the river from Bideford. So, I was 

shipped off again, only a little way down the road to the Clarks who were Londoners, and with their two year old Pamela were keeping away from the bombing. I stayed there for the rest of the school year till July 1942 when all the evacuated Selhurst boys returned to Croydon for the summer holidays and resumed school for the rest of the war with those that had stayed at The Crescent. 

  Yes, apparently the bombing had eased. In 1942 the Americans, after Pearl Harbour, were beefing up to help in North Africa. Hitler was closing in on Stalingrad. He wasn't learning that with long lines of supply, it was like Napoleon at the gates of Moscow. The Japs were still advancing from island to island in the Pacific and threatening Australia and there were a lot of naval battles there. 

  But, back to Croydon. There were nearly two years of, I suppose more or less normal life at 103 Gonville Road before the buzz bombs started. I can understand most folk these days not being able, without referring to a diary, to recall events in their 'normal' life, because those two years hold little of note. Mum, late for work, would hurry up the road each morning to Thornton Heath Pond to get the bus to Coopers. I would trudge to the Pond to get the tram to Thornton Heath station then walk to Selhurst. I dropped out of Latin after one year. General science gave way to physics, chemistry and biology. English was two  subjects, grammar and literature. There was French and of course  maths and geography, with art on Friday afternoons to wind down the week. And from a half hour of homework a night at age eleven it worked up by stages to three hours a night. The wireless had 'Music While You Work' and 'Forces Favourites' and between radio programs there was, on a drum, 'da, da, da, dum..' 'V' in Morse code, 'V' for Victory. And Beethoven's 5^th -the 'V symphony' it was called, was popular. 

  By 1944 we had acquired a couple of extra pianos in our front room -apart from Auntie Emmie's! One was a full size grand. I guess Dad's idea was to sell them for a profit! They finished up as firewood would you believe, when we later had to present the house for sale. ...Anyway, back to 1944. After D-day when the Allies were advancing through France the first of the Germans 'V' weapons started coming over. They were the V1 flying bombs, -buzz bombs or doodlebugs, -pilotless planes of 16 ft. wing span and powered with a pulse-jet. They were launched from the Pas de Calais area and from Holland, at London. More than 100 a day at their peak.  The grand piano came in handy. We started sleeping under it, Mum, Martin and me. Mum would read us stories, getting louder as one of the buzz bombs came closer. But it was OK while you could hear the jet motor. It was when it cut out that you held your breath because it was then programmed to dive.  This life style was just too much for us and it was only a couple of weeks or so before Mum, in touch with her sister Joan decided to ask Auntie Mary in Barford Norfolk for accommodation. And so we left London again. I remember walking over broken glass in Mare Street Hackney to Auntie Joan's in  London Lane Hackney where we all slept one night on a downstairs floor.  There was Joan, and cousins Jean and Jill, Mum, Martin and me. But it was a 

quiet night there.

                                                                                                                                     

  Next day it was off to Liverpool St. Station and we all left for Norwich and Barford. Auntie Mary and Uncle Mat had moved from their cottage and were renting a big house, for 2/6 a week, -2 shillings and sixpence! We all were there for only a week or two when Mum heard of a cottage for rent down Style Loke not a half mile away. The three of us moved there and that was home from June to December. Our other cousins Maureen and James visited with Auntie Eva that summer and Jeanne Edwards a friend of Mum from Coopers and her Bert too. The cottage was by the small River Tiffey and I made a raft with some drums and planks that we kids all had fun on.  Grandma Steeds too lived with us in the cottage but poor Grandma was bedridden with the later stages of Parkinson's. She moved back to Buckhurst Hill before  Christmas 1944 and very soon died. 

                                                                                                                             

There was no high school of course at Barford and I had no way of getting to Thetford.  I made a friend of my own age, Bobby Tillet. His Dad was a jeweller in Norwich. I made an Ajax 30in. wingspan rubber motor model plane. Pretty wealthy I guess, Bobby got me to make him one, and he gave me 5 shillings for it. I think he also paid me the 5 shillings for the kit set. Surely!  I didn't have much of a business head...  So, eventually the Education Dept. in Norwich offered me a bike to cycle to Wymondham where I caught the train to Thetford. This wasn't until November and I only had about three weeks at Thetford Grammar School before the Christmas holidays. Of course cousin Jean too missed out on a term at high school but she, at 13 years old, helped out at Mrs Burton's Barford primary school teaching littlies.

Mum and her cousin Ivy were good mates and although Mum was tied to Grandma during the day they'd pop off sometimes to the Kings Head pub at the other end of the village. She'd settle Grandma down for the night, then as she walked down the Loke she'd indicate to me by touching her head where she was off to! There were a lot of Americans around from the many bomber airfields in Norfolk and no doubt there was  an attraction there, ..for both of them! Nice blokes of course, in the main, and the fancy free Ivy had her 'Punch' Marvel. No, he didn't claim to be Captain M! I don't suppose many of them gave their right names! He said he was a 'mid-upper' gunner in 

a B17 Flying Fortress.  We heard later that he was a cook! Or was it a 'belly' gunner that he told her!  I say they were mostly nice, the story went round that one evacuated Londoner, married with kids, had been pack-raped one evening...  Nothing was done about it that I know of.  ...Different times!

  The V1 buzz bomb threat to London seemed to have abated after Christmas 1944, and although V2 rockets had taken over, they came down at supersonic speed so you were dead before you knew it. So we returned to 103 Gonville. Dad too came  home then. Perhaps he'd managed to return from Scotland for his mother's funeral, but he wasn't in Norfolk with us. The Allies were moving east into Germany. The 'black-out' had given way to a 'dim-out' as there was no more threat of manned bombing. It was great to see light coming through people's curtains. Generally life became easier 

although the re-taken lands had to be fed and only in early 1945 was bread rationed in  Britain for a year or so. After VE Day (Victory in Europe on the 8^th May) some goods were still in short supply for years. It seems we were determined to get Germany on it's feet economically to prevent the financial 'raping' of the country by Britain, France and the USA that had allowed Hitler to take over after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

  It was Whitsun just a week or so after VE Day, and Dad took us to Scotland for a holiday and to meet the people he'd stayed with in Dingwall. Our first experience of  sleeping coaches on a train. I remember when we stopped at Crewe, hearing, while dozing, the early morning clank of milk churns on the platform. While in Dingwall we had a long climb on the slopes of Ben Wyvis and generally that very summery Whitsun was a lovely bit of family togetherness for the four of us after so many years. 

  Later in the 1945 summer holidays Martin and I were sent to Dover for a week or so to stay with the lady that Dad had boarded with earlier in the war. Mum and Dad no doubt had a lot of personal catching up to do after years apart.  It was my first time alone with my brother. I was still fourteen, Martin was just nine, we just wandered around mostly. I was feeling my feet, being alone and responsible for someone else... We walked around and through Dover Castle a lot and the cliff top where Louis Blériot had landed from France in 1909, and I remember we went to Shakespeare Cliff near where an 1881 attempt had been made to bore a Channel Tunnel, but otherwise nothing adventurous of note... 

   

                                                                                                                                 

In the summer of 1946 we had a super week's holiday on a 36 ft. motor cruiser on the Norfolk Broads. Our cousins Jean and Jill came too. The 'Sparkling Foam' is still dear to  the  hearts of the two of us remaining... The boat also towed a tender with a mast to be erected and a sail, so I had my first experience of controlling a sail boat. We cruised from Wroxham, down the Thurne and under Potter Heigham bridge, -just, we had about two inches to spare on either side of the cabin top. Then down to Yarmouth and on to Lowestoft, -where Dad slipped and badly bruised his knee and I 

became helmsman, then back to Wroxham in the week. Nightly we'd tie up by a pub, but Mum made us all our lovely dinners aboard.  

   That July I'd just completed School Cert, later called GCSE. I got a 'pass' in English Grammar, English Literature, Maths, Chemistry, and Art.  In Geography and Biology I got a better grade, a 'credit'...  I failed, -yes in the old days kids were allowed to  fail, ...in French and Physics...  But I got my first real bike for my efforts. The first day on it I cycled from Thornton Heath to Windsor and back. It was getting dark when the Castle loomed in front of me. I turned and pedalled home without stopping, 70 miles -112 km.  …..These days it would take me a week to get over that... Later I cycled  at times across London for weekends at Auntie Joan's -and Jean and Jill after they had moved to Southgate.

1940.

 I was still nine in the summer of 1940 and after Dunkirk there was a plan put into operation to evacuate children to the overseas Dominions.  I was booked to sail to Australia where I was to be sponsored by  (later Sir?) Henry Jones the IXL 'Jam King' in Perth.  Auntie Chris gave me my first watch.  I was fitted out with my first suit.  I was given a Panama hat too.. to preserve my English pallor?  These are July 1940 photos of Mum, Dad, Martin and me at 12 Empress Ave. Wanstead with Grandma Steeds.  Then the Germans sank a boat loaded with children going to Canada and the scheme was cancelled.

…And, at that time, with Grandma there is her sister Auntie Emmie and Chris, Dad’s sister, (neither of whom married). There's my cousin Michael on my right. And sitting with Martin is Auntie Mamie. I guess Uncle Alex was taking the photo. These might have been my farewell photos!

To New Zealand

In December 1944 just before the end of the war, Grandma Steeds died. During the war Dad had had several years as an inspector of canteens in the NAAFI round Britain, first Dover, then Stranraer, then Dingwall, then for a short while he was a 'Special' constable in the Police. Then as conscription must have caught up with him, he was in the army, -the Pay Corps. After the war ended he worked in the office of Stones, builders merchants back in Thornton Heath but did not feel settled in England. 

We would have had to wait two years for a ship to New Zealand. Why New Zealand? I don't know, except that the only contact we had 'Down Under' was a sister of Harold Booker a friend of Dad. Joan had married Ian Kelt a New Zealander, a bomber pilot and he had returned to N. Z. with her. Dad had found there was room on a ship sailing from San Francisco. He said he could be earning and settling down there and as there was some money from Grandma's estate we planned to fly from London.

In 1947 it was a great adventure for us all of course. I remember that, to obtain a visa, we all had to swear with a hand raised I think, -to the U.S. Consul in London, to be good while we were crossing America! We sold our house in Croydon to an older couple retiring from the civil service in India. Nineteen years later this ex 16 year old took his wife Mollie and two daughters Kate and Jane, 10 and 6 years old, back to see them and we had tea off some of the plates, and amongst the furniture of my childhood that we had left with the Andersons when we sold 103 Gonville Rd.   

                               

 So, it was, leaving  about seven cabin trunks which were sent by sea, that on the 4^th  May 1947 the four of us boarded a Pan American Lockheed Constellation at the new Heathrow Airport. It had been opened to the public on the 1^st January 1946, taken over by Civil Aviation from the RAF Heston wartime airfield, and enlarged by bulldozing the little village of Heath Row. Pan Am started trans-Atlantic flights that January too. But even the four motor Constellation's range was limited and our first stop was Shannon in Ireland where I had my first, but rather tough I recall, steak. The 'Connie' then managed the Atlantic crossing to Gander in Newfoundland. There were just wooden huts there and a bit of snow I think. Finally, after about 13 hours for that day, we flew south to La Guardia Field, New York. There had been an outbreak of smallpox and we all had to be vaccinated before we could leave the airport. By the way, our arrival, individually, was on a website that I found recently. 

We had two nights in New York, downtown, and mostly we just walked around locally. Mum bought a dress at Saks Fifth Avenue for niece Susan who was about two. One time, on my own, I wanted directions to somewhere. I walked up to a policeman on traffic duty. I was about 5 metres away and he put his hand on his holster and said 'don't move, what da ya want' ...A bit of an eye-opener for me!

Our last 'Connie' flight was Trans World Airways to Los Angeles. This overnight flight stopped at Kansas City then again at Chicago. We got to L.A. early morning and by breakfast time we were heading north by DC3 'Dakota'  with wings flapping it seemed, to San Francisco. Again we had two nights in S.F. before the S.S. Marine Phoenix was due to sail for Auckland. The day we were to sail I took 10 year-old Martin by tram to Seal Rocks where we had our first 'Coke'. But it was not chilled and I was not impressed. When we got back to the hotel Mum and Dad were relieved. The ship was due to sail in a couple of hours! 

The Marine Phoenix had been a troop ship, from the Kaiser shipyard and fully welded, which was unusual at that time. It was leased to the Matson Line, -who charged full passenger fare. Mum was in the fore peak with 22 other ladies. Martin and I were together in a six berth cabin. Dad too was in a male only, six berther. But the food was marvellous.  Buckwheat cakes with maple syrup was my favourite for breakfast. We all sat at long tables, and when the weather got a bit rough they used to wet the tablecloths to stop things sliding. I remember the loos were a bit smelly and messy sometimes when it was rough. I spent a lot of the time leaning over the bow with my camera. I've got snaps of flying fish scudding in front of us. Dad seemed to spend much of the time below, playing bridge. Nurse Adelaide Sheridan -strange names these Americans have, was a dear. We met her again a couple of months later when the ship berthed again at Auckland. Our ship called first at Pago Pago where I spent time in the crystal water looking at the tropical fish. Then on to Suva where we took a taxi and toured mainly sugar cane plots. This is all boring nowadays but was new to us of course. The main export seen and smelled on the wharves seemed to be coconuts, or was it just the copra.

26^th May 1947 is the date I always note, -in fact we had a party in 2007 before we left Hawkswood, on the Saturday when I'd been in New Zealand for 60 years...  So, we berthed at Auckland. It was Whitmonday but Kiwis don't celebrate it and we noted all the shops were open. We knew no-one of course but had been told of the Peoples Palace in Queen Street as being reasonable accommodation. It was a Salvation Army hotel. It was dry of course and even packs of cards, and the ball game 'Bobs' available in the lounge, were removed on Sundays. We often ate at a, -typical for the time, Kiwi café. The first thing they brought to your table was a plate of bread and butter and a pot of tea. But, there was often a power cut between 5pm. and 6pm. There was pressure on   power generation in New Zealand in those days. Hydro power stations were it seems, in their infancy. 

Within a week or so of being at the Peoples Palace a cabin mate of Mum from the ship looked us up. Pauline Barnes had been married to a GI name of Schaeffer, but, in a nutshell, back in America she had not been accepted by the Germanic family so back she came to Kiwiland. Pauline's mother Sally Barnes owned the store at Surfdale on Waiheke Island. Pauline said we'd be spending all our money in hotels and there was a bach behind her Mum's store that we could use while we were deciding where in New Zealand to live. So we did. Pauline's brother Ken ran the store with his mother and he used to take me in his Jeep to deliver orders. Had my first driving lesson in that Jeep. On the 25^th July Martin had his 11^th birthday in the bach and a little party including, I remember, a couple of Maori boys, -another first association for us. 

We stayed a month in Surfdale before bussing down to Hastings where Joan and Ian Kelt lived. Ian's dad John owned Kelt Motors in Hastings. We stayed in Hastings for a week at the Pacific hotel then the three of us went back to Waiheke for another month, while Dad stayed on and got a job and a house for us. We then joined him and moved into 309 Lumsden Road Hastings while Dad, having bought a 1939 Vauxhall 10 from Kelt Motors, commuted daily to Tomoana Freezing Works in their office while I went to Hastings High School for the next year and a term. We had been taken under the wing of the Kelt family who lent us bedding and stuff until our trunks arrived. We were happily settling in to be Kiwis.

We had won out financially. Moving the proceeds of the Gonville Road house to New Zealand, the exchange rate was £NZ1.25 for £1 sterling and house prices were controlled. Within a year the exchange rate became £1 for £NZ1 and with the removal of the Land Sales Court house prices escalated. Incidentally in February 1948 there was an Immigration Act passed by which newbies had to be officially approved and sworn in as Kiwis. I just applied for, and got, my Kiwi passport when I wanted it in 1965. 

...And also, just by the way, I remember hearing Dad paid £750 in 1936 for 103 Gonville Rd. I think it sold for about £2000 in 1947. And I think it was £NZ1750 that he paid for 309 Lumsden Rd Hastings. . . .