The Better Bad Times - just a glimpse of the shadows behind me - part 4
In previous posts I've told you about the early impressions of a childhood home we as a family had to endure for 2 years. I count myself lucky that we didn't have it for longer. Many children reach adulthood and beyond still living in abject poverty in the UK - even in 2018!
However, this is my story and so I tell it from my viewpoint only.
As I have already said, our house was depressing, dank, damp, dreary, dismal, and any other adjective - not necessarily beginning with 'D' that you care to think of to describe a rundown building loosely called home.
Apart from the fun with mice we had some really good times there.
We had little money. Dad sent £13 a week for 4 of us. Mum earned a wage but spent a lot on going out ballroom dancing, her escapism from the labour of love that was motherhood. There was never a lot left so as kids we often got creative.
Food was mostly school dinners as they were free for poor kids (nothing like making you stand out in a crowd!) We all often had double helpings and stuff like roast potatoes or bread was ensconced in a wrapping of some description in our school bags for later consumption. Allotments were a favourite haunt as we helped ourselves to peas, carrots, fruits etc under the cloak of dusk, not long after the toilers of the soil had left for their tea. We never took a lot and never from the same patch in the same month, but we needed food, and there was food. I don't know why, but we never considered it as stealing. Besides who would miss a couple of carrots and a dozen pea-pods?
Coal for the fire was another commodity we had little of so again creativity arose. Chris and I would walk through the brook nearby to the railway tracks (its been filled in now). We'd paddle carefully along the lichen and mossy lane of water for about half a mile with a couple of old bags tucked in our coat pockets. There was a factory which had stores, piles upon piles of coal in their yard right by the brook. There was only a chain-link fencing holding it in so we'd wheedle out the smaller chunks that would come through the holes or under the bottom and fill our bags then drag our weary selves back home. We usually had enough coal for a week. It wasn't too bad to do that in the summer, or even spring and autumn, though that was a bit rough. But the winter.. freezing water up to my mid calf, Chris's knees, would turn our feet blue and sore. We tried it with shoes, without, with socks, without... all as bad. We both asked mum for wellies (wellington boots) for Christmas but didn't get them.
Why didn't she ask where the coal had come from? Oh she did. We said that there was an old shed by the railway that had some in and whether she believed us or not is unknown, but she left us to it. She was out when it was cold a lot of the time anyway.
Now, I know our mum was far from the best in the world but one thing she did was 'spoil' us on a Saturday. In those days we could all go to the Saturday afternoon matinee and see 2 films at the Odeon and still have change from £5, so we did.
Most Saturday afternoons we would see Disney films, some kind of documentary or a lesser well known production effort and would invariably be singing the Disney songs as loud as we could all the way home. We walked as the money saved from bus-fare went towards sweets and popcorn. I would hold my sisters hand, mum held the other and we would hop-skip-jump her home as she was usually very tired by then. We sang Half a Pound of Tuppenny Rice, Chittychittybangbang, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Thomas O'Mally's Everyone Wants To Be a Cat, to name but a few. We were happy and playful, high on sugar and laughter. I loved Saturdays.
Having very little brings out the best in people at times. There's less to fight over, less to envy, less to want. My brother and I shared everything during that time. We played make believe games for hours, ran up the stairs of a high rise - all 22 flights - for the race. Heck we even sat on the roof once we found we could get there via the boiler room. Sit me on the roof of a high rise now with my feet over the edge and I'd die of heart failure, but it's true what they say that kids have little sense of danger. Or maybe just little sense at all.
Rowlatts Hill Flats where we used to run the stairs, sit on the roof and visit Rose
We befriended an old lady called Rose. She was stood at her door of her little flat one day when we were chasing each other around like bumblebees. She asked if we would mind fetching her a bottle of milk. No problem. We trotted off chattering carrying 50p in my hand and came back with milk. Rose invited us in and gave us a drink of water and a slice of cake. She smelled funny. Old person funny. But she was nice.
The next time we were there she must have been watching out as she asked us to pop to the shop again. We thought she must have been at least a hundred years old so we didn't mind.
Once returned we again had the delights of a drink and a cake. We sat and chatted and asked her about the old photos she had around. She seems glad of the company and we were OK being nosy.
After the next repeat event Chris and I seemed to go around to see Rose at least twice a week. We could only go when mum was home looking after our little sister.
Rose enquired about this and said that she'd look after the 'little one' if mum needed to go out. We told mum that, but she never accepted the offer.
We learned a lot about life during the war years and afterwards from Rose. She would take out her photos and show us one then describe it in so much detail that we were transported there in our imaginations. It was wonderful.
We had so many different types of cake and sandwiches I could never name them all. And Rose was genuinely pleased to see us. Each visit commenced with us earning a reward by shopping but we didn't mind. It was like having a granny and we hadn't ever really had one of those.
Rose died.
We turned up one day just as an ambulance was shutting its doors. As these were flats it could've been anyone so we wandered up to Rose's door and it was open, but no Rose. Perhaps she hadn't seen us arrive because the ambulance blocked her view we mused between us. We knocked, no answer. We walked in. No one was there, then suddenly, as we stood at the bedroom door a loud "Oi!" made us jump with fright. Turning round we saw a large (as in wide) woman standing there. Asking us what our game was we explained we came every week and did shopping for Rose, where was she? As the lady softened her features she explained that Rose had fallen out of bed in the night and broken her hip. She was very poorly. We were very sad. We promised to make her a get well card and come back when she got home. We made her the card and posted it through the letterbox of her little flat but I'll never know if she got it as the next time we went to see if she was home, there were new people living there who told us the old lady had died and to go away.
That was our first real death event and it sticks with me to this day.
When we were not at school or foraging or at the cinemas or running up and down blocks of flats we played in the street or in the house. We couldn't do a lot in the house but on the cold nights, especially those when mum didn't go out or went out later we sat by the coal fire, smelling dumpling stew cooking or toasting some bread over the flames, drank cheap lemonade or water and played cards. Chase the Lady, Newmarket and Rummy were our favourites and we'd play until one of us started a squabble about cheating or something - usually when we were getting tired - and then mum would shout, stop the games and we'd have to sit quiet for a while or go to bed. We liked those nights - until the shouting that is.
On the lighter nights we'd be outside playing skipping or Elastics or Ballies with some of the other ragamuffin kids in the street.
As hard as it was, life was still a game to a 10 year old, a 7 year old and a 4 year old... even in the slums of a UK city....
Until next time...
playing cards was a favourite passtime
