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....