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....

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!