Fading Memories

Outside in the garden

Opposite the kitchen, across a small concrete yard, were two creosote-black shed doors. On the right was the coal shed. The coalman used to come regularly to deliver coal, emptying sacks of it onto the small heap at the back of the shed. Mum or dad would go out to the shed a fill the coal scuttle using a large shovel, so there was always coal by the fireplace.

Both mum and dad were meticulous about laying and lighting the fire. After cleaning the cold ash out of the fireplace, they would first take sheets of newspaper, folding and rolling them tightly into spiral cakes which they’d arrange neatly. Then a small amount of kindling, and a little coal. They’d strike a match to ignite the newspaper, and add more coal once the fire was burning. Occasionally, they’d hold a sheet of newspaper over the fireplace, which apparently helped the fire to draw better.

The chimney sweep came to visit perhaps once a year. He would spread a dust sheet in front of the hearth, then insert his round brush into the chimney, adding lengths of pole, one by one, until the brush had gone up two storeys. We loved to stand outside and watch for the brush to poke out of the chimney pot!

The other shed door was the entrance to dad’s space, his workshop. Although he didn’t actually do much DIY, he had the tools and equipment to do almost any handiwork, and he was quite obsessively neat and organised. He was also extremely capable, and a perfectionist, when he did make anything. There was a heavy workbench for carpentry (it would make a fortune these days as a yuppie kitchen table!), and shelves and drawers all around. Tools hung from the walls, and glass jars of screws and nails hung under the shelves, all carefully organized in different sizes. At the back of this space was the indoor area of Sheba’s run.

Sheba was a beautiful German Shepherd dog that we got when I was a toddler, probably after Dinah was born. She was the gentlest and best-behaved dog imaginable, and was wonderful with us children. She lived mostly outside; her run was spacious and had a roomy outdoor section on the side of the shed, accessible from the garden, as well as the indoor part. She wasn’t shut in very often, and was frequently out in the garden keeping us company. She was powerful and protective; once she leapt right over the garden gate (6 foot high?) because she felt threatened. She had to be put to sleep because she went totally blind and couldn’t really manage; I can still see mum going out with her, walking past the living-room window with Sheba on the lead, and coming back without her, heartbroken and trying not to show it.

The garden was roughly L-shaped, around two sides of the house. Towards the front of the house, opening out to the road, there was a one-car garage between the garden gate and the pub next door. I’m sure we had a number of different cars, but the one I can see in the garage was a blue Morris Minor Traveller. Its distinctive wooden frame at the back, and the retractable indicator arms that sprung out at the sides (put the winker on, dad!) were wonderful. You could enter the garage from the garden; there was a small door at the side.

The tiny lawn backed on to the garage. Concrete pathways joined everything together, and we’d ride tricycles or scooters, or push dolly prams around these little roads. Sometimes, we’d have friends round to play, and mum would erect a little Wendy-house in front of the kitchen. We had tiny chairs and stools to sit on, and a little tea-set so we could play house!

We weren’t allowed to play in the street, even though it was a cul-de-sac and most of our neighbours’ children were out there. Perhaps when I was older the rule was relaxed a little; street friends included Jane Monk, Elizabeth Montgomery, Carolyn Ranson, and Peter Death (De’ath). Cherry and Vanessa Harvey lived in Upper East Street, a short walk away.

Opposite our house, in a detached bungalow on the corner plot, lived Mr and Mrs Poulson. They were already elderly when I was a child. They kept a vegetable garden and occasionally I would go there and be given carrots or potatoes. Mum made the most wonderful thick root vegetable soup in the winter which would often be our main meal of the day.

I know mum and dad weren’t too happy about the house being next door to the pub, the Black Horse, and I think more than once pub customers came in through our garden gate looking for the toilet, but I don’t remember any disturbances. At the bottom of the road, just opposite on East Street, was Sepping’s butcher’s, with green and cream tile outside and slaughtered animals hanging in and over the windows. Just around the corner on East Street, going towards the town centre, there were a couple of small and very ancient shops. One of them sold vegetables, among other things, and at least once I was sent there to get carrots in exchange for a thrupenny bit. I think the same shop had bins of loose biscuits, too. Anything you bought would be weighed and wrapped in a brown paper bag, no plastic anywhere.

Monday was Wash-day

With four children under 5 years old, there were always nappies – terry-towelling nappies soaking in buckets, being laundered, hanging on the washing line, and being ironed. How did she keep up with it? Wash day was only once a week, on Mondays, and pretty laborious. Everyone did their laundry on Mondays; it was time-consuming, and there was no need to cook on Mondays because there would be leftovers from Sunday’s roast, so that opened up time to finish the washing.

We had a twin-tub washing machine (we still had the same one when we moved to Priory Road when I was 14!) which was wheeled out from under the counter. The lid of the washing tub was removed and the tub was filled with water by running a hose from the kitchen sink. Then I think the soap powder was added, and the machine turned on to heat the water.

When it was steaming, the laundry was dropped in, and another switch started the agitator to swirl the dirty things around. Meanwhile, mum would fill the sink with clean water. After some time, she would turn off the agitator, and transfer each piece of clothing from the machine to the rinsing water, using a pair of long wooden tongs. Did she spin the soapy clothes first? Or hand wring?

After rinsing, the laundry went into the second tub to spin the water out. Each basket of clean laundry was then carried outside and hung on the washing line to dry. This was often my job when I was a little older. Our washing line was raised and lowered by turning a handle mounted on the garden wall. The wall was two storeys high, up to the guttering level on the house, and built from red brick. It was very old and quite blackened and mossy in places, and sagged alarmingly in the middle, so I often felt afraid that the tension of the washing line would pull the wall down into the garden. It never did.

Lovely picture of Sheba with Dinah, but look at the wall and the washing-line winder!

That washing machine must have been emptied and refilled several times every Monday. In the winter, drying was finished off on wooden clothes horses in front of the fire. Mum ironed everything. The ironing board was made of wood; I think she may have still had the same one when she died! Every so often dad would re-cover it with a new layer of foam and a clean piece from an old sheet, held together with a neat row of tacks on the underside; this was a job that I did a couple of times later on. Ironed clothes and linens went upstairs into the airing cupboard – shelves built into the cupboard around the boiler which meant that clean clothes were always fresh and warm.

In Newman’s Road, we had a “pantry” under the stairs: a cool dark cupboard in the kitchen, lined with shelves to store cans and jars of food, as well as mixing bowls, a flour bin, and other kitchen essentials. Once I was asked to get a mixing bowl from there, a large stoneware bowl, and I needed both arms to carry it. Out of the pantry and into the daylight, I saw there was a very large spider in the bowl. Afraid as I was of spiders, I was much more terrified of dropping and breaking the bowl, so I kept it in my arms until mum noticed my predicament and took it from me!

The kitchen was really crumbling; the wall that backed onto the alley between Newman’s Road and Girling Street was painted in a horrible utilitarian mustard colour. For years that paint was blistered and peeling, and mum was complaining about it. We always had enough to eat, and clean clothes to wear, but it must have been a struggle as there was rarely any money for anything extra like redecorating.

The kitchen had a window that looked out into the conservatory and from there onto the garden, and two doors, one from the living room (always open) and one to the hall, known as the “middle door”, and usually closed. The sink was in front of the window, a big deep white sink that was pitted with age – I always used to think the pits and scars were germs!

Me going up to bed through the middle door, pantry door on the left.

Probably because it was so cold upstairs, we were all bathed in the sink sometimes, an operation that I think dad was involved in. We’d be undressed to our pants and lined up on the draining board, legs dangling, then given a wash in the sink and passed to dad, who was waiting with towels for each of us in turn.

When I was tiny there was a gas cooker in the kitchen, with a pilot light inside it, and blue flames towards the back of the oven when it was lit. Next to that was some kind of counter or cupboard which was used as a work surface. On the other wall there was a dresser with open shelves. There was a fluorescent strip light in the middle of the ceiling – Michael lifted me high up one time and my head shattered the fluorescent tube! I wasn’t hurt, and I don’t remember the consequences – worse for him than for me I imagine!

Another baby sister

Dad went to fight in the Second World War, but can only have been 16 when he joined up. He was stationed somewhere in northern India, close to Burma perhaps. He didn’t talk about the war, but he never wanted to travel abroad again. He had a “war wound”; he’d lost the end of a finger when it was shut in the door of an aircraft! The nail grew out of the end of his damaged finger like a little rounded end of a peanut. He told us about mangoes before we’d ever seen one, how they were so juicy you could only eat them in the bath, and he would count to ten (ek, do, tin, sha, pon, sey, set, art, now, dus) and say “tora peachy” and “kiswasti?”, all of which must be Hindi.

He wasn’t a great dad in many ways, because he could be so bad-tempered and unpredictable, but he was very hard-working and, I think, devoted to his family. We would have times when he’d be laughing and joking, particularly at meal times, and he’d turn in an instant and shout about something that annoyed him. He was very strict: bedtimes, being quiet, helping at home, homework, school work, and general good behaviour and good manners were all essential. He wouldn’t tolerate answering back, or any kind of dissent. He smacked us occasionally for bad behaviour, but never violently, and there was a fabled stick in the “conservatory” that we were threatened with but which was never used.

The “conservatory” was really just a rather ramshackle brick and glass lean-to on the back of the house that you had to go through to get to the garden and to the outside loo! It got very hot in summer and if mum ever had time she would coat herself in olive oil (then only available in small bottles from the chemist’s), hitch up her skirt, and sit with legs splayed and head tilted back to catch the sun, on a folding chair in the doorway of the conservatory, which could be a real suntrap.

The garden was mostly concrete but we made good use of it. There was a tiny lawn where dad erected a swing, painted red, and with “bottoms up” scratched into the paint on the underside of the seat. There was a japonica which grew on a trellis against the wall of the pub, and a honeysuckle that was quite wild and overgrown at times. There was lilac and a few roses, too. At one stage dad became interested in dahlias and he had quite a few different varieties planted between Sheba’s run and the sand pit. He built the sandpit for us to play in; I watched him from the bedroom window.

The windows throughout the house were old-fashioned sash windows; two sections that could slide up or down, held by a sash in the casement. Single-glazed, and with two large panes in each of the upper and lower sections, they were quite heavy but relatively easy to move. Upstairs in the house, there was no heating at all, and on winter mornings Jack Frost would have visited, leaving thick icy swirls of frost inside the glass so that we couldn’t see outside. A penny pressed into the ice for a minute or two would clear a peephole, which was particularly exciting if it had snowed outside, and we’d all be jostling for a peek.

All four of us shared a room when we were little. At first, there was an assortment of cots; I have an image of an uncle (Chicker?) putting me to bed one day and me proudly telling him which cot was mine. There were perhaps only two or three of us then. Later, we had two small double beds in the room, and we’d sleep two by two, me with Jayne, and Suze and Dinah together. Duvets, or continental quilts, hadn’t yet reached England, and our beds would be heavy with blankets tucked in over the sheet, and a feather eiderdown on top, then a bedspread on top of that. The bedrooms must have been freezing but I was never cold.

The morning Dinah was born, Dad was in our doorway, waking us very early. That was unusual; Mum always woke us up. We all got up and followed him into their bedroom, very quietly, and there was Dinah, tiny, well wrapped up and lying on her back in a fold-out canvas crib. I feel I remember her face very clearly, with garnet-red lips and wispy dark hair. I don’t really remember mum that morning, but I think the midwife was still there. I suppose Dad took a day off to look after us, and later in the day he cooked us his perfect and very memorable potato chips, which were an enormous treat. We all must have been at home, as I was only 4 years and 5 months old, so none of us would have started school, and the very next day I’m sure mum was up and about and back into her usual routine, which must have been punishing with four children under 5 years old.

More about Harold

Dad told me once that he never bought anything he couldn’t afford, so he wouldn’t take out HP (a hire-purchase agreement that allowed you to pay in instalments), but instead saved up first for what he wanted then paid in cash. They did have a mortgage on the house, at 1A Newmans Road, and I used to go to the Halifax with the mortgage book to pay the instalments, which at one time were £11 per month!

As we got older, the teak dining table was the place where we did our homework, played board games, or covered with newspaper to make things we’d seen on Blue Peter. At Christmas and for birthday parties and other family celebrations, the table would be opened up and its extending leaf unfolded and set in the centre, making enough room for eight, ten or even twelve to sit round. Mum and dad rarely had friends round to the house, but big family meals were a little more frequent, with one or more of dad’s brothers or sisters coming to eat and spend an evening, together with their families.

Stephanie, Gary, Mum (she wouldn’t thank me)
Must be Boxing Day – Pimm’s, trifle, cold meats & gherkins!

We always had fun with Uncle Chicker (George), who knew how to entertain us and had a small repertoire of nursery rhymes and songs that he doctored to make us giggle and squeal. (Baa baa black sheep/have you any wool?/Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full/One for the master, one for the dame/And one for the little boy who hasn’t got a bum!). I think his wife was Pearl, and they lived somewhere on the coast, maybe Felixstowe.

Uncle Bob at far left, then auntie Blanche (?)
Gary & Stephanie’s wedding at Lavenham Church

Uncle Bob was Stephanie’s dad. When I was 4 or 5 years old, she married her American sweetheart, Gary, in Lavenham church, and I was one of the bridesmaids. They settled in America and had two children, Julie and Shelley. On my last trip with mum, in 1992, we went to stay with them in Washington State. Julie was newly married then, and Shelley was their “black sheep”, living her own American Dream in Seattle. We loved Shelley, and stayed with her in Seattle for a couple of days; later, in my first year in Turkey, she and her friend spent a day or two with us in Bandırma and on our holiday in Adana. Stephanie died a few years ago, and I think she spent the last years of her life in a care home because she had dementia. She had suffered with debilitating migraine headaches all her life.

Bob came to visit once, at Newmans Road, following a trip to the States, and I think he and dad fell out after that because Bob only brought us very small gifts, maybe even freebies, from his trip, and dad felt hurt and insulted, I suppose. (Not for the first time – I think we were estranged from mum’s father for a similar reason.)

Two of dad’s sisters, Alice and Olive, came to visit fairly regularly (although not often) when we were children. I don’t remember Olive well, although I stayed with her in Sheffield for some reason when I was small. All I remember of that visit is a very neat little house, and soaked prunes for breakfast and dessert! Alice is more clearly defined in my memory. She was a very speedy and prolific knitter; she always had something on her needles. She could talk for England, chatting tirelessly for hours on end, with her needles clacking at the same time.

Another sister, Kit, lived in Lavenham, and another, Phyllis, probably lived nearer to George. Two more sisters, Blanche and Ethel, were probably in Lavenham too. There was another brother, Edward, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1930, aged 22, and another, Alfred, who only lived a year. Some sources show that Alfred had a twin, Lily, who also died.

I vaguely remember dad’s dad, my grandfather, although I think he died in 1964, so I’d have only been about 4 years old. He also lived in Lavenham, in a house on the market place where you had to go down a long corridor of a hallway to get from the front door to the living room. He was born in 1881, the same year as Atatürk! I know little of his life; he had a big family, 11 children (of whom 9 lived, I believe), and dad was the youngest of them, born on 5^th July, 1923. By the time dad was born, he was already an uncle; one of his sisters had already had her first child. The whole family lived in a house in Prentice Street in Lavenham (number 11 perhaps?), which at the time (we were told) had just two bedrooms, one for the parents, and one for all the children!

Early days

In one of my earliest memories, I’m standing in the living room, carefully placing freshly washed and dried cutlery into the top drawer of the sideboard. The sideboard is teak, and I understand that it was expensive and must be treated with care, as should the dining table and chairs that go with it. All are reassuringly solid, a glowing reddish-brown colour and (with hindsight I can see) very well made.

The sideboard had four drawers (or perhaps three) in the middle; the top two were quite shallow and the bottom ones were deeper. Cutlery was in the top drawer, and another drawer contained table cloths and place mats. On either side of the central drawers was a cupboard door. One side was full of drink, bottles of alcohol arranged, no doubt, with those most-used nearest the front, within easy reach. The other side contained an array of glasses, some of which were quite old and beautiful. Both cupboards smelt of alcohol and wood, a smell that wafted out each time a door was opened. The cupboard doors opened quite easily, and closed with a satisfying click.

I must have been about four years old. Mum and dad were in the kitchen, and I could see them through the open door between the two rooms, dad at the sink washing up, and mum with a tea towel in her hand, drying. I was putting away, trying to help. It must have been after Sunday lunch, as dad didn’t help in the kitchen at any other time.

That living room was, I suppose, a fairly typical room of its time. Sparsely furnished, but what we had was good quality, built to last. There was a television in the corner between the fireplace and the window. On the other side of the fireplace was a chest of drawers painted bright yellow. Next to that was a little two-seat settee, upholstered in a dark red and with wooden arms. That was a later arrival, new when I was around five years old. All this was against a background of busy patterned wallpaper with grapes and decanters.

The fireplace had a metal guard in front of it and every morning in winter there would be a fire going long before we children were downstairs. Later I learned that mum got up at 5 every morning in order to get everything done. By the time we got up, she would have laid and lit a fire, vacuumed (we always said “hoovered”), and got our clothes ready – 4 sets of clothes all ironed and laid neatly over the backs of two chairs which were turned towards the fire so that they weren’t freezing cold when we came down to get dressed.

There would be a warm drink for each of us, in plastic cups set on the brick fireplace surround. We ate breakfast: ReadyBrek in winter, Cornflakes, Shredded Wheat, or Rice Krispies in warmer weather. We children had our evening meal at around five o’clock, and there was a small rotation of menus, so limited that even now I associate particular meals with TV programmes. Oxtail soup was Scooby-Doo, while fish fingers and chips was Crackerjack (It’s Friday, it’s five to five, and it’s….Crackerjack!). With only two channels on TV (I don’t think there was even BBC2 when I was tiny), and children’s programming limited to a couple of hours each afternoon, this part of our day became utterly predictable. For family meals, I’m sure we weren’t allowed to have the television on, but at tea time the four of us would sit around the table in such a way that we could all see the TV. Even earlier than this, I watched Bill and Ben, and Andy Pandy, on Watch with Mother in the early afternoon, and still recall the words of the Andy Pandy theme music!

Andy Pandy theme tune

Forty years today

Dad, around 1970, Norfolk Broads (perhaps)

40 years ago today, at a little after 9 a.m., the phone rang in our student house in Hull. I ran downstairs, knowing exactly who and what it was going to be – no-one else would have called at that time of day. I grabbed the receiver from its cradle on the wall and listened.

“It’s all over.” Those may not be the exact words Mum used, but that was the message. A little over three years after being diagnosed with lung cancer, Dad had died in hospital in the early hours of the morning. He was 56 years old.

I had last seen him just a few weeks earlier, in hospital in Ipswich. He was by that time in a private room, receiving palliative care, I suppose. I know he was being given morphine and other drugs. He drank tea, and had a bite or two of a biscuit, but his weight had dropped to around 7 stone, perhaps a little over.

He was bright and talkative through the pain, that last time I saw him, bantering with the nurses who came in and out, and replying to one of them (who had asked who I was and commented that I was beautiful), “Of course she’s beautiful, she’s my daughter!”

I know I felt both guilty and relieved at being far away from Suffolk at university during the worst times of his illness, and have often thought since of what everyone at home must have had to cope with on a daily basis.

At Christmas, a few short weeks later, Mum gave each of us a solid gold pendant on a gold chain, each one inscribed with our initials on one side and “Love from Dad 1979” on the other. He’d planned the making and the giving of them before he died. I’m wearing mine today, quietly remembering the man who was my dad.

He could be a tyrant at times, unpredictable, quick to anger, and hard to please, but in those last few years of his life he made it very clear just how much he loved us all and how sorry he was to be leaving us so soon.

Original Earthlady!

Earthlady was my very first online username, for a quiz site run by a well-known stationer and bookseller back in 1992. Since then, the Internet has grown beyond recognition, and my username has been appropriated hundreds of times, hence the addition of original!

I’ve kept a handwritten journal, intermittently, for many years, and have recently started to write some memories of my childhood, conscious of the passage of time and of the disconnect that sometimes exists between my daughters’ lives and experiences in Turkey and my own early life in England.

In an effort to close some of the gaps and at the same time to share my reminiscences with family and perhaps with a wider audience, I intend to write here occasionally. Eventually, I might even curate from my journals, and save my girls the chore of going through all my belongings one day!

Later I’ll add more colour and some personality, but since today, 3rd December, is such a special date in my memory, I just want to get started.