大象传媒

Memories of a War Baby
Part Two
By John Giffen

SCHOOL DAYS

The most important event for me at this time was starting my education at infant school. It was overwhelming at first for a four-year old 鈥� all those big boys and girls to look up to. Some of them spoke with funny accents. They were the locals. Soon I was getting to make lots of new friends 鈥� some locals and some evacuees like us. Then we learned the alphabet from all those pictures of an Aapple, Bball, Ccat, Ddog, Eegg, Ffeather, Ggoat, Hhat, Iink, etc., pinned on the wall. Learning how to count and how to draw and eventually write with a pencil and later pen and ink. I remember causing some consternation among two of my teachers at this time. We were shown how to use scissors and were to cut out shapes from paper. I could not do it. The two lady teachers stood over me and showed me how to do it again and still I could not make the scissors work. Then one of them realised my problem. I was left handed or 鈥榢ack-handed鈥� as it was usually referred to. Scissors designed for right handed people do not work so well for left handers. You should try it and see. So I had to learn to use my right hand for scissor work from that day onwards.

This kack-handedness has had several effects on my life, mostly less than fortunate. Writing with an old fashioned dip pen and ink had long lasting repercussions. When you write with your left hand starting at the left side of the paper you have the problem of smudging what you have just written by halfway across the page. Unlike modern day ball point or fibre tip pens, ink does not dry very quickly so you have to find a way around this problem. You can bend your wrist to an acute angle and write from above. You can try to bend your wrist the other way, pointing up and away from the body, but this can be quite painful as the wrist does not bend very far in that direction. My solution was to hold a piece of blotting paper beneath my left hand and the paper and dry the ink as I wrote. The problem with this method is that unless you are writing on lined paper, your writing tends to go up or downhill - rarely in a straight line - as you are covering up the words you have just written. Yet another problem is that school steel pen nibs seemed to be very sharp (as witnessed by the dartboard marks on the wooden panelling and the underside of many desk lids) and the angle of the pen means that you tend to spear into the paper. This invariably causes scratchy letters, flicks of ink and the inevitable smudging. My handwriting has been a constant source of complaint by my teachers throughout my school life 鈥� not helped by the ironic punishment of teachers who use to give me one hundred lines to write 鈥� 鈥淚 must learn to write legibly鈥�! As I wrote these as fast as possible, it totally defeated the object of the exercise, which was to improve my writing. These are apart from the ones like 鈥淚 must not act the fool in class鈥� or 鈥淚 must not forget my PT (Physical Training) kit鈥�.

By the time the Biro had been invented and we were eventually allowed to use it at school (in the 1950s) it was too late. My writing style was firmly fixed. Even though I no longer needed blotting paper, I still slid my hand along the line I was writing and those early ball point pens were unreliable and as likely to cause smudging as the old dip pen and ink. Another favoured job disappeared in schools throughout the land 鈥� the ink monitor. It was their job to ensure that all the inkwells set into the top right hand corner of each desk, (another thing to favour the right handed) was filled at the beginning of each day. I still remember the great big salt-glazed brown pots which held about a litre of watery looking ink (but which was nearly impossible to remove from fingers, cuffs or shirt).

Being kack-handed in a right handed world is rather disconcerting as illustrated by the scissor fiasco. Now I eat 鈥渘ormally鈥� with a knife and fork, kack-handed with the spoon, use a cup or glass in my left hand and eat my bread with my right hand when taking soup. This has caused many embarrassing moments at formal dinners when I start eating the person on my right鈥檚 bread roll with the soup course and drinking the wine of the person on my left.

When I played football I was left footed, at cricket I bowled left handed but batted right handed. Luckily I can now drive a right hand drive car in this country and a left hand drive on the Continent, which 鈥榥ormal鈥� drivers find very difficult. I was unable to peel potatoes with a right handed potato peeler. Unfortunately someone invented an ambidextrous one, so I have no excuse now. I use a computer mouse right handed, because my index finger is more dextrous on my right hand than is my middle finger on my left hand 鈥� just! My mother was ambidextrous. She was born at a time when all school children were forced to learn to write with their right hand. Left handedness was simply not tolerated when she was a girl during the early 1900s. My sister Olive suffered the same fate in the1930s. Being naturally left handed, she was forced to write with her right hand. Would we tolerate such intolerance these days?

AUTUMN 1943

Having been evacuated in the summer of 1943, autumn was soon upon us. I can remember the Jones鈥檚 stored some eating apples under a small dresser at the top of the stairs. They were clearly visible at eye level, as you climbed the last few stairs. My brother and I helped ourselves to this autumn bounty but were quickly discovered and punished for stealing. Mr. Jones was a strict but fair authoritarian and regular chapel goer. We had to attend chapel twice every Sunday 鈥� once in the morning and once in the evening. This was the first time I had ever experienced religion and it was a profound one. I wasn鈥檛 too keen on the hellfire and damnation bit, but I did enjoy the hymns and, at Christmas, the carols. This was the foundation of a lifelong love of singing. From school choirs to pub singing; to 34 years of singing, dancing and performing on stage in amateur musicals with Croydon Stagers and lately, to singing with Croydon Male Voice Choir.

One night we were woken by Mr. Jones. 鈥淐ome and see the fireworks鈥� he said. His bedroom faced east. We were amazed to see these brilliant white lights falling slowly through the air. 鈥淲hose side are they on?鈥� I asked. 鈥淭hey are jerry (German) parachute flares鈥� he explained. 鈥淭he jerry bombers drop them to light up the target before dropping their bombs. It looks like Derby is getting a pasting tonight鈥� Derby was 15 miles away and a very important engineering town, specialising in railway manufacturing.

It was about this time of the year when most fruit and vegetables are harvested. Due to the war there was a great shortage of labourers in the fields. Somehow my brother and I and several other children were 鈥榲olunteered鈥� to help with harvesting potatoes. It was a cold rainy day and picking up potatoes from the cold wet dirt, after somebody bigger had dug them up, was not much fun. Eventually somebody appeared and had a blazing row with the farmer accusing him of exploiting child labour (which is what he was doing). He had promised to pay us something like 6d (2陆p) a sackful. I think we were relieved as it was backbreaking work, although any opportunity to boost our pocket money was usually welcomed.

POCKET MONEY

My brother and I received pocket money from the Jones鈥檚 and occasionally from home in the form of a postal order. I cannot remember how much we received or how often it arrived, but it was enough to make it a great occasion. We would go to the little post office which was also the village sweet shop. This meant that we lost the least amount of time spending it 鈥� you simply walked from one counter to the next 鈥� about six steps (or three skips in my case). Sweet rationing was in force then and it made choosing which sweets to buy an even more exquisite decision. Boiled sweets of all flavours, or lollipops, mint humbugs, liquorice allsorts, treacle toffee that was broken up with a little hammer, sherbet dabs or aniseed balls? The biggest aniseed balls were called gobstoppers and they changed colours as you sucked them and they made your tongue sore. They were so big that once you had forced them into your mouth you couldn鈥檛 get them out until you had sucked them smaller 鈥� about an hour later. Sherbet suckers were something to avoid, I found. They were a cardboard tube wrapped in paper with a little liquorice straw sticking out of the top. You bit the ends off the straw and sucked. If you sucked too hard, an explosion of sherbet powder hit the back of your throat, which then fizzed up you nose and made you cough and splutter, while your eyes watered so that you could barely see! There were jelly babies which gave you great satisfaction when you bit the baby鈥檚 head off. Why are children so blood thirsty? Bundles of liquorice root were a good buy. This was a pencil sized bit of root from the liquorice plant, grown in and around Pontefract in Yorkshire. I don鈥檛 think they were rationed. Naturally sweet and of course liquorice flavoured, you could chew them anytime and anywhere (except in class). They gradually dissolved into little chips of wood pulp, which you either swallowed or spat out, depending how hungry you were. They lasted a long time as well, as you could put them in your pocket half chewed and enjoy the rest later. The variety of sweets may have been limited by war time shortages, but it was still tantalising, choosing from what was available. There was never any chocolate, but after our Ex-lax exploit, Arthur and I weren鈥檛 too keen on chocolate anyway. You had to narrow your choice down to 3 ounces (87g) a week and it made the resulting selection that much sweeter. You also had to learn self control to make them last as long as possible.
Sweet rationing continued long after the war finished. In 1947 the government took sweets off ration, but the demand far exceeded the ability to supply enough sweets to go round, so they returned to rationing. In fact they were rationed until Thursday 5th February 1953. A note in my diary of that momentous event reads; 鈥淪weets of (sic) ration today. Bought quarter pound (4oz/112g) liquorice toffees and Spangles and bar of choc鈥�. I had finally learned to trust chocolate again.

Our pocket money also had to cover the cost of Saturday morning pictures. This was the highlight of our week. We got the once-a-day bus into Ashbourne and joined the milling throng outside the cinema. I can鈥檛 remember a single film but whatever we saw was beyond the criticism of any member of that noisy, excited audience. The villains were booed, the heroes cheered and any romance was totally ignored, being the cue for another sweet or fight with another member of that joyful crowd. How we loved it. Then afterwards we would rush over to the fish and chip shop and buy a newpaperful of the most delicious salted and vinegared chips imaginable. I can still remember the mouth-watering smell of those hot, golden, crisp-on-the-outside, succulent white-on-the-inside, fried-in-purest-lard, chips. Who knows, they could have come from that very field where we had stooped to conquer those potatoes?

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