Val'srambles: November 2005

I am doing a creative writing exercise for my first seven years. What do you think of this first draft? Any criticism welcome…I might extend to include first ten years..First seven years…Even my birth was unusual. I was my mother’s third child and when I had decided to
be born, I only took 20 minutes on the journey to arrive.. Meanwhile, my mummy had
told my daddy to get the midwife. This meant him getting on his bike and going to the
phone box in the cold winter darkness of a February night in the black out, as this was
during the war. By the time she arrived at our house on her bike, my mummy called
down the stairs, “I have a little girl” and her reply was “I am supposed to tell you that.
Not you me”. So there I was. Twenty minutes past midnight. No cone shaped head
from boring hours of tunnelling to
escape the confines of a soft warm place in the dark, but a pretty little girl, with big
blue eyes, and long eyelashes, ready to face the big wide world, which was to be a
fascinating and challenging experience. I was welcomed into this world by Mummy
Daddy, Michael, Deirdre, Peter and Roger, my three brothers and sister into a tiny
cold house on the railway estate in Hayes, very near what was to become Heathrow
Airport. My daddy worked on the railway mending the engines, which is how we
came to live in that house. My mummy was a nurse. I shared a freezing cold bed with
my sister with blankets and coats on top of us. It took ages to get warm. There were
beautiful ice patterns on the insides of our windows and I had terrible chilblains on
my fingers and toes, which cracked and bled and were very sore...and there was a
crucifix on the wall and an electric red one lit up and holy water at the door. We
prayed to be warm. Oh dear I did have a lot of religion in those days. Full time Roman
Catholic school and shipped off to Sunday school too to get rid of us. We used to
stand on the walls there and watch the Salvation Army play their music. After all
they said “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?” and they enjoyed their
band. We used to shout out “Salvation army have all gone barmy” and run away.
We had shamrock sent to us from our relatives in Ireland in envelopes for St. Patrick’s
Day and wore it proudly to school on March 17th pinned onto our uniforms.

We never did have a telephone or a car. We eventually got a black and white
television but not until after the coronation in 1952?, which we all watched at Alan
Spenser’s house, 4 doors away sitting on benches, riveted by a flickering black and
white screen. Watching the privileged rich from our humble place, I wonder when I
first became aware of the class system in this country? I used to go to the pawnshop

with my mum with granddad’s gold watch, and get thirty bob, and we all got fed and
we went to get it back again when we had money again.
We loved going to Saturday morning pictures at the local cinema and I nagged my
brothers to take me with them. Their reluctance was validated by their insistence that I
was too young and not big enough. “I am I am! “ I insisted, but they said “you’re not
big enough and when you are big enough you will be too old” but I wore them down
and they promised to take me if I lied and said I was six, so they made me practice
saying “I am SIX, I am SIX, I am SIX” as I was quire desperate to go to the cinema
with them. So when I was finally taken there, I was very excited. After all, there
would be a cowboy or war film, Pathe news, the cartoons etc all for four pence in
1949. What more could a little and determined girl want? So when the very big
Commissionaire, in a red uniform with shiny brass buttons, on looked down from his
colossal height and said “Little girl. How old are you?” I said, “I am four “ My
brothers said, “She is SIX!!” “I persisted “ I am four and I am going to be five on
February 16th” and we were all told off and sent home and my brothers were very
cross with me at missing the films because I couldn’t even tell a lie properly and
convincingly. Sometimes I learn things the hard way.
However when I was allowed to go, I was part of the team, which let the girls in
without paying, by opening the outside door by the girl’s toilet. A boy did the same
by opening the door on the other side of the film theatre by the boy’s toilet.
One day in the cinema a spiteful girl sitting behind me twisted chewing gum into my
lovely long hair. I was so immersed in the film I was unaware of this and it took my
mum a long time to get it out... However we did love our Hollywood stars and we used to get on the 140 bus and go
to London Airport to see them fly in. They were so glamorous. We saw Humphrey
Bogart and Lauren Bacall Doris Day and other such heroes and heroines. Heathrow
was so small then. It was only huts. This was before the Queen’s Building was
opened which is now Passenger One Building. We went on the roof to see the planes
come in. It was very exciting. We yearned to go on planes. We got autographs from
these beautiful and glamorous great people who spoke to us. .It was so exciting. I
have them still. And a wonderful authentic black and white autographed photo collection..

We never did have a phone and I had one friend whose family had one. So I could
talk for hours from the red telephone box at the end of my road for four big pennies,
when there were 240 pennies to one pound, until my brothers taught me how to tap
the phone, then I could talk for nothing, for as long as I wanted to. The black receiver
had to be pressed the same number of times as the number you wanted to call. It was
that easy.
We did have an inside bathroom and I didn’t know until 50 years later that we were
the envy of our Leicester cousins. When we went there we went to a toilet in the
garden and they had a tin bath hanging on the wall in the kitchen, which was used
when boilers of water were heated up and we had shallow baths. In our house we
always shared the water and I was about third in. It was an unforgettable occasion
when I had first water in a shallow bath. I did feel important .The water was heated
from a back boiler when we burned coal fires in our one living room.
We got cheap coal and cut up sleepers as my daddy was a railwayman,
and we all chopped firewood with a big axe.
Sleepers were once the big timbers on which the rails were set for the railways. Two
of our three bedrooms had fireplaces and when we were sick we could have a fire lit.
When I was three, my brother Kevin was born, so I wasn’t the baby any more. So now
we had six children. The four boys were in one room. My sister and I were in the
tiny room. And Mummy and Daddy were in the big room
He was always very good natured but he couldn’t keep secrets. I had bought
Roger a plywood aeroplane kit for Christmas and I told Kevin and he told Roger and I
was furious and I never ever forgave him. These things mattered to me when I was
six. He was someone my brother Roger, who is two years older than I am could beat
up, and did so for very many years until little Kevin realised he had grown to be as
tall as Roger. I worked very hard at peace keeping even then. Holding two brothers
apart so Kevin wouldn’t get hurt and cry. I also wrote notes and left them under the
budgie cage “Dear Mum. Rog said bum” because I was a good little girl. However I
never could drink tea. No matter how many times I tried to swallow it.
When I went to school I could always call on my brothers to defend me if someone
took my place in the bus queue or committed some other equally serious malpractice.
Simply the knowledge that “I’ll get my brothers on to you” gave me some standing
and personal power. And I was seven then.
On our way home from school we jumped on the backs of the steamrollers for a ride
home. And on the farm behind us we rode on the combine harvesters. We rode horses
and pigs and cows too, and all bareback. Pigs and cows didn’t like it. We were
fearless and immortal. We all double dared each other and you couldn’t be a ninny or
you would really lose face. And then you couldn’t be part of the gang.
None of us ever had any teddy bears as children. We didn’t have many toys. We made
lots of things. Like catapults and bows and arrows. Such as crystal sets and we
listened to the radio coming through a small thing in one ear. That was really exciting.There were very few stations then. We used to play marbles and my daddy used to
bring us home big shiny ballbearings from the engine sheds and we could swap these
for a hundred marbles. We used to say “Lardy on you” for first turn and play on
pavements in our road. Sweets were on ration for a long time after the
war. My mum left the coupons from her ration book in the sweet shop so when we
had spare pennies we spent ages evaluating what we would most like. Such as two
ounces of liquorice comfits so we got a lot, or sherbet lemons, which were very
heavy, so we only got four or five. We watched them being weighed and hoped it
would be five. Or penny gob stoppers, which we sucked for hours, and the colours
changed because we kept taking them out of our mouths to see them and compare
them. Aniseed balls were good too. We played cards and any other games we could
lay our hands on. I could play brag and poker from an early age. And gamble with
buttons and matchsticks. We spent a lot of time in the fields at the back of our house
making camps and we hung ropes from trees so we could swing over the river. We
made rafts, which sometimes floated, and sometimes disintegrated, so we fell in the
river. We scrumped Bramleys cooking apples from the derelict orchard and gave them
to neighbours. One day we found a cow in a clearing with two baby calves. We were
so excited. It had found somewhere private and safe to give birth and we were very
quiet. We were always out until we were hungry and then we came home. We didn’t
have watches and no one knew where we were.
We played “knock down ginger” when we knocked on peoples houses and ran away.
.I had a pretty new dress and I was so proud of it. I sat on a kerb side one hot sunny
day, just thinking, and watching the world go by. When I tried to stand up I was stuck
as the tarmac had melted under my bottom. I was very upset when I got home, as my
pretty dress was all sticky. My mother was furious, so I got rid of the sticky tar on the
back of my dress with a pair of scissors, and I cut the back out of it, and I couldn’t
understand why my mother was even more cross!!
One day, my life was so miserable, for one reason or another, that I ran away from
home on my scooter. I scooted about 10 miles and I planned to live in a concrete
shelter next to the canal. But I got cold and hungry so I scooted home exhausted. My
mum was furious again and took me the shops and told the shop assistants what a bad
girl I was, and thoroughly humiliated me, and took me to church and made me go to
confession. Nobody ever asked me what had made me run or scoot away.
One day we had an air gun so we put tins on the back fence and aimed at them. We
weren’t experienced marksmen, or markschildren so we often missed. Later that day
big policemen arrived on our doorstep asking if we had shot up the school as all the
windows were smashed a whole field away. We hadn’t realised the gun had such a
range. Of course we denied it but it was rather a coincidence.
When I was seven I could read. Kevin and I were in the town centre and in
Sketchley’s dry cleaning shop there was a teddy bear in the window, which was a
raffle prize. This was in 1952 and none of us had ever had a teddy bear. Kevin said,
“I would really like that teddy bear”. Well I could have said “Wouldn’t we all like a
teddy bear like that?” but mischief was inside me so I said airily, “It says on that sign
that this teddy is for anyone who birthday is on July 11th”. He was five years old and
incredulous. This really beggared belief, but when you are five and really want
something really badly like that teddy, you can have tunnel vision. “My birthday is
July 11th,” he said with uncontrolled joy, commitment and anticipation. “ No yours is
on the 10th” I said with cunning and control in a sympathetic way. “No really, really
it is 11th. What must I do now? “ He said “Well”, I said in a doubtful way” If your
birthday really is on 11th July, and I personally think it is 10th, you must go in and tell
them that and claim that teddy. “Are you sure?” he said with suspicion. “Well my
birthday is in February and I think yours is 10th and I can read and you can’t. I am
only telling you what the writing means.” I said with resignation. “Let’s go”. “No” he
said. “ I believe you and my birthday is on 11th and I will tell them”. He marched in
to tell the lady. I watched through the window as the entertainment started. One very
small and sincere boy of five was telling a very confused lady about his birthday and
demanding the much wanted teddy and pointing to it in the window. She explained to
him that it was a raffle prize. He realised with utter dismay and disappointment that
he had been conned by his sister and was very angry, and I was laughing myself silly
watching all this happen. I stayed watching too long as I was still there when he
emerged from the shop and beat me up with all the fury of a disappointed and duped
five year old..
We all went to mass on Sundays and at school in the week the nuns always wanted us
to bring in money for the missions in Africa. We all had little ladders on paper on the
wall, with our names on going up to heaven, and because I had my older brothers and
sister, I got money from them, so I had more ladders going to heaven, with changing
people’s beliefs in savage Africa, than any other self righteous little girl. We also had
mass registers on Mondays so we could say eight o’clock and 10 o’clock masses
Holy Communion and confession and get lots of stars and self satisfaction. And
relieved that we wouldn’t go to hell with all the eternal fire and damnation that week.
In between the two masses we were insulting the Salvation Army. I had had a pretty
white dress for my first holy communion and when we went to confession we had to
think up sins we had committed. “Bless me Father for I have sinned. I said shit.” And
he would give us a penance of three Hail Mary’s and make us promise to make a firm
purpose of amendment, And we knew if we got knocked down by a bus that day then
we wouldn’t go to hell..
We always had pets of a kind. We always had a dog and we mended birds with
broken legs in our air raid shelter in our garden. We splinted their legs with
matchsticks and lolly sticks. I don’t suppose any of them ever flew again but we gave
them our utmost expertise, which was mostly made up of enthusiasm and care. We
were all under 8 years old when we ran our sick animals hospital with little beds and
all made from wooden boxes with cotton wool. We played with the gas masks too and
one day I found a rusty egg shaped metal thing and I couldn’t get it apart. My oldest
brother Michael was around and recognised it as a hand grenade and they called the
police. When the big policeman collected it and peddled off with it in his saddlebag,
we watched him cycle up our road with terrific attention as we thought his bottom
would be blown off. We were quite disappointed that nothing happened. We loved
our dogs. Our dog Bambi was named after the deer in the Disney film. Our dog Judy
was red with curly hair. One morning she was on my tiny bed in my tiny room I
shared with my sister and I called down to my mum, because I didn’t dare move,
“Mummy. It’s Judy” “Leave her alone. She is having pups” my mum called back
“ But Mummy” “Leave her alone” “But Mummy she is having them on my bed” so
my mummy arrived very quickly and I lay in bed watching these red wet puppies
being born and they all had their eyes shut. It was a beautiful experience and our dog
had chosen my bed to have her litter. My sister was at work by then and missed the
excitement. I remember my mum cutting off puppies tails with a razor blade in the
kitchen and of course, putting a dressing on. My mum was a nurse. My daddy
mended the engines, which is why we lived in a railway house and why we all got
privilege tickets to travel on the railways. We went to Ireland and Scotland and
Leicester where our cousins lived and we often shared beds with them, top to toe, as
we all had big families and we all lived in small houses. We stayed in my
grandmother’s house in Rathmines in Dublin, which was the top floor of an old
house, and we played in the garden and sometimes we sneaked into O’Malley’s shed,
which was like a warehouse where furniture was stored and played hide and seek in
quite some fear because O’Malley was very cross if he ever found us in there and
chased us away.. We were quite alarmed when my uncle Joe belted his children across
their bottoms with a big buckled belt but he didn’t belt us for the same transgressions.
Like invading O’Malley’s shed. We also had the same god fearing belief in our safety
when we used to chant from the holy and safe part of the church’s grounds “Proddy
Woddies on the wall. Half a loaf will feed you all. Farthing candles show you light to
get you home on Friday night.” Because we knew they would all be drunk on payday
. And we would run back onto the sacred turf. Protected by our god and our religion
. Poor Protestants! We used to suck fuchsia stamens and I don’t know why. I think we
thought if bees liked them there might be some nutrition in them.
When we went to Scotland on a train we went on a little train from Glasgow to
Lennoxtown. Two Irish families lived in the same road. So we had eight cousins to
play with. We used to lose ourselves in Campsie Glen, which is very beautiful.
Sometimes we were put on trains in London, without adults, and were met in Dublin
or Glasgow or Leicester by aunts and uncles. Once my father found a nun on the train
in Paddington and asked her to look after us but when he left, peaceful in his heart
that a holy person was looking after us, we lost her, as we knew then what we could
manage. And we had enough of nuns in school. They caned us. Girls on hands and
boys on bottoms.
At home we were busy enough. We helped the milkman and the baker who both had
horses and carts. My brother Roger got his foot run over by a bakers cart and we all
got free delicious factory cakes until he got better. Of course he limped for a long
time on purpose. My mum baked good cakes but nothing like a factory one.. I helped
Mrs. Gilbert in the dry cleaners sort her buttons. She used to send me to the
fishmonger to get her an eel, which was so fresh it was killed in front of my very
eyes. I used to stay for tea on eel day and have a boiled egg. And oh the ice cream
from the Italian man three doors away on the shopping parade was wonderful. Oh the
cornets and wafers we had. We had a cake factory near us and they had a piggy bin,
which was like a coalbunker, where left over cakes went unless they were intercepted
by us. They used to hold my feet while I was upside down in the bin stretching for
iced fancies or some other such treasures.
One day I found a three-penny bit and I sucked it clean and by mistake, I swallowed
it. My mum made me put my fingers down my throat to be sick, and, sure enough, on
the pavement in the middle of my vomit, was my three-penny bit, and she just would
not let me extract it. I was so disappointed. I really had been so thrilled to find that
three-penny bit and I was not allowed to keep it.

One day we were out with our dog Judy and we called her across the road right in
front of what was then, a very occasional lorry and she was run over and killed The
driver had to face three distressed children accusing him of killing our dog. The poor
man put our dead dog and us in the back of his lorry and took us all home. We were
all crying. We buried her in the field at the bottom of our garden. And prayed for her
to go to heaven so she would be there when we got there. We knew we could have
everything we wanted when we were in heaven. We put a cross on her grave..School dinners were dreadful. We walked single file and silent to a canteen where we
had to eat both courses with the same fork and spoon, and if we hid cold hard lumpy
potatoes under our pudding plate and were discovered, we then had to eat it. Greasy
Spam fritters and chips and fatty stews and soggy cabbage and other such dinners we
were supposed to be glad of because starving children in Africa would be, and we
tried to work out ways of posting lumpy potatoes to appreciative African children,
wherever Africa was.
The local theatre closed down after Noel Coward’s play “Hay Fever” and this made a
wonderful place to play in. We took a panel out of a door and squeezed in. Imagine
the fun we had when we discovered the spring door on the stage and the mechanism
that propelled a person through it. We gathered lots of friends to enjoy all this and
took it in turns to spring through the floor. We dressed up in all the costumes too and
performed dramas on the stage. Sadly one day our entry hole had big planks nailed
across it and a NO ENTRY sign. So that was the end of that game.
We collected jam jars and took them to the jam factory in an old pram and got a
penny each for them and we got a penny for the lemonade bottles too.
There was dreadful pea soup fog when we were little. We couldn’t see our hands
stretched out in front of our eyes when we went to school. We had scarves over our
mouths, which were wet by the time we got to school, but Saint Christopher looked
after travellers so we would never get lost.. St. Francis looked after animals. St.
Anthony found lost things and Saint Jude was the patron of hopeless causes and we
often needed him.

Val'srambles

Thursday, November 10, 2005

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