大象传媒

First Impressions

My first recollection, with which to start my memoirs, must have occurred sometime in 1940 or 鈥�41, dad allowing me to pop my head out of the air raid shelter to see the night sky ablaze. 鈥淐oventry鈥檚 copping it鈥� according to Dad. Our shelter, immediately to the rear of our house on Studley Road, was a wonderful one. It was brick built with a concrete roof, bunk beds, electrical heating and lighting and a seat made from a cut down barrel. We would all troop down to the shelter in our pyjamas and nightgowns whenever the sirens sounded. I do have vague memories of before this, of sudden cessation of Victoria sponge cakes. Dad was a long distance transport driver, going out into the marvellous world beyond Studley Road and I was always begging him to bring home the 鈥済oodies鈥� as he had used to do every Friday evenings when we would have cake for tea. It was a long time before I saw a proper Victoria sponge again.

Our Family

I was born on the 10th March 1937 at our house on Studley Road, a house owned by my Nan, a three-bed roomed semi. We lived there, me, Mam and Dad with Nan and my cousin Geoff. Geoff was a son of my Aunt Lou who had a very big family in one of the first Batchley houses. Granddad Wright, according to Nan a ne鈥檈r-do-well, died when I was very young. Again according to Nan, by falling down the Parade toilet steps while drunk and breaking his neck. (There were underground toilets on the Parade, between the top of Unicorn Hill and the Smallwood Hospital, in those days.) I used to sleep with my Nan, in the back room, Mam and Dad in the front bedroom and Geoff in the box room.

Studley Road

About that time that I was born a large factory began to be erected at the rear of the house, the BSA factory, for the making of the BESA machine guns. My early years were accompanied day and night by the rattle of those guns as each one was tested and they made thousands! From the other side of the town, as a sort of bass accompaniment, came the dull boom of the HDA (High Duty Alloys) Big Hammer. There is a photo of me sat on my Aunt Beat鈥檚 shoulders with the BSA girders rising behind. On the opposite side of the road was a bank, a hedge, then open fields rising to Lodge Farm, owned by Mr. Stanley and his sons, while going down the road, from town, the houses on the L/H side ceased where they do now, Uncle George鈥檚 being the last house. Further on there was a derelict farmhouse and then the Monochrome (a chrome plating factory). On the R/H side the houses were intermittent, finishing just after Pinder鈥檚 and Danks鈥檚 shops. Salt Hill, to Studley, was little more than a cart track, rough and potholed.

Pig Killing

During the war years nearly every house kept domestic fowl and ours was no exception. About every fifth house kept a pig. The pig, two doors away, was eventually attended to by the pig-killer while I watched over the garden fence. Such squeals! Then the flaming straw heaped on the carcass to burn off the bristles and then the gutting of the pig. Later I was given the bladder. Remember; there were no balls to play with and with the visions of wonderful games, I tried to blow the bladder up with my mouth. I鈥檝e never tasted pig-pee since nor have I the wish to! Brother Derek, when he was about three, was set upon by our enormous white cockerel that sat on his head and pecked him unmercifully.

Further Afield

Down Studley Road, (on the L/H side coming from Redditch) just before the entrance to the BSA club, was a piece of waste ground which us kids called the Big Back, while the large sports ground behind the houses was called the Little back. Don鈥檛 ask me why because I have no idea. Down the R/H side of the sports field was a path that went from the Club down to the footbridge, over the River Arrow, continuing across the fields to St. Peter鈥檚 church where I was christened. This footpath was bordered on the R/H side from the club to the river by a line of magnificent elm trees and a little stream. One day, when I was with my brother John in the front garden of our house, a German aircraft had a go at the BSA, one of the bombs landing in the middle of the line of elms. It destroyed three of them leaving a large crater, which filled with water. The blast tipped brother John out of his pram, ripped out a section of fence and deposited it on top of us. We used to play around this crater, despite warnings from parents that it was 鈥榖ottomless鈥�. Shortly after, us kids decided to that one of the stumps had become a Jerry machine-gun nest with a friend, Donald Danks, as the Jerry machine-gunner. I was the commando who crept up to him and pushed him off, resulting in a broken arm for Don and the fire brigade had to collect him. The crater was gradually filled in by the BSA over a period of years. They dumped what must have been furnace bricks into the hole. Some of the bricks actually floated! I鈥檇 never seen floating bricks before. Little did I know that in later life I would be closely associated with them for many years.

Elm Trees

Elm trees were probably the biggest living things in the countryside. To a small lad, they seemed capable of hiding all sorts of strange birds in their immense towering branches. On the way across the fields to Greenlands, on a 鈥榬aid鈥� on Colin Lees and his gang, me and my friends decided that there were savage hawks watching us from a line of elms and crawled for hundreds of yards past the trees! How this was supposed to stop them I don鈥檛 know. Later we watched a gang of men fell these trees by hand. They used a big, double handed saw which they swished back and forth. We also found that, when the plough had been close to an elm tree we could pick up the broken exposed roots and smoke them like cigarettes. 鈥淗ello, how are you today, fine weather we鈥檙e having鈥� like the toffs on the radio or the flicks. They were foul and acrid to smoke and soon turned you green.

Sports Days

Sports days at the BSA ground were great occasions - fancy dress, running, sack races, egg and spoon race, slow bicycle race and a race by work鈥檚 fire teams. They had to connect up to a static water tank and send a jet of water at a disc set on a pole to make it spin. As a grand finale, the three teams would send jets of red, white and blue water high into the air, when we would all cheer. Someone made me a cutlass out of a sheet of aluminium so that I could go as a pirate. All our toys were hand made - wooden pistols, wooden Tommy guns with a ratchet for the noise etc. Dad did manage to get me a second hand Fairy cycle when I was about four years old, on which I would pedal manfully down the road towards the BSA club. Unfortunately I had a tendency to topple towards anything that was near me. A dangerous fault when a lorry passed close! Mostly I travelled on the pavement, itself fraught with hazards. Once when passing fat Mrs. Knight, who was gossiping over the garden fence, I fell onto her and pushed her and the fence down. I scarpered, unfortunately the wrong way, and once down the road I daren鈥檛 return and remained for hours hiding in the waste ground (Big Back).

Fun and Games

The waste ground was the next area to play in after I had exhausted the back garden (where I used to make underground fires with a National Milk tin and a bit of pipe, wherein to roast potatoes, always burnt and raw but delicious.) and the bank on the other side of the road where we kids had our 鈥榯reasure safes鈥�. These were cocoa tins dug into the bank and camouflaged. This was where we kept our marlies, fag cards and shrapnel. The waste ground was covered in long grass and burdock bushes. One day we devised a game where we hid in the grass and tried to burn each other out by throwing lighted matches at each other. Good game but not to the liking of the neighbours, who called the Fire Brigade to put out the burning grass. I bet the Fire Brigade was getting fed up with us!

Another game I discovered was to collect balls of 鈥榮ticky鈥� burdock seeds and climb into a small oak tree (still there), which had a branch projecting over the path that led to the BSA club. All men in those days wore hats, either trilbies or caps, and it was a cinch to drop a sticky ball onto their hats as they past underneath. I spent hours doing this and no one ever found out how they got burdock seeds on their hats!

Our Collections

The Home Guard used to manoeuvre around the area and us kids had great fun following them and imitating them, much to their annoyance. Collecting shrapnel and bullets was another hobby to go with fag cards and marbles. As was, later, American sweet wrappers and cigarette packets. I never managed to taste any American gum, despite saying 鈥楪ot any gum, chum?鈥� to anyone who looked even vaguely American. I must have caused Mam and Dad some anxious hours by inventing a friendly Yank who fed me the sweets represented by each wrapper that I found or swapped. One that intrigued me was Beechnut chewing gum, which I imagined to be made from beechnuts. There were no beeches anywhere near so I didn鈥檛 taste beechnuts until later on in life, when they contrasted sharply with the actual gum!

Even Further Afield

I must have been adventurous before going to school because when Mam went up town shopping I would leave the house and go and meet her. The first waiting place being the white steps (still there) at the junction of Studley Road and Sillins Avenue, that led to the 鈥楻ec.鈥� (the recreation ground) and from there, as I found out later, to St. Georges school. Later I went further up the Holloway to wait for her at the bushy bank just below the Kings Arms pub. Mam used to have a terrible time queuing for everything. Once when I was with her outside Richmond鈥檚 fish shop, opposite the present library, she fainted. Mam was always pregnant and Nan鈥檚 house was filling fast although the child that followed my brother John, who was christened Robert, died at an early age from internal problems.

Once, after attending his grave in the Plymouth Road Cemetery, Mam gave John and me baskets and we all set to filling them with acorns from the fine oaks trees at the entrance. These we lugged home for our neighbour鈥檚 pig. (The one with the bladder!). Every little helped! A bright spot in these sad visits was that Mam would hoist us onto the fence to watch the trains in the station (Where the entrance to car park one is). Years later I read in one of Fred Archer鈥檚 books about how a market gardener neighbour of his from Bredon picked up a potato from off the platform. He planted it, sowed the seed potatoes and eventually ended up with fields of 鈥淩edditch Platform鈥�.

Going To Gran鈥檚

Our other Gran, Granny Taylor, Dad鈥檚 Mam, lived in a house down a track that led to a farm just off Longbridge and Grovelly lane鈥檚 crossroads, now called Beeches Farm Drive. Behind the house were fields stretching across to the Bristol Road with very little in between except the Austin Works. Whenever Mam was about to produce another offspring, us lads would be packed off to Granny Taylor鈥檚 house. The first time this happened, John and me were put up in a high feather bed, where I was overcome with a bad bout of homesickness and cried myself to sleep.

Apart from this bad start, going to Gran鈥檚 was an adventure. It was a proper country house with an earth closet half way down the garden, an ivy covered little loo that had a very large fruitful damson tree by the side of it, heavily scared with .22 air-rifle pellets. The garden had a pigsty at the bottom, together with a fowl-pen. Granddad Taylor was a tall, spare man with a waistcoat, trilby hat and a walrus moustache who always seemed to be either boiling up pig food or mashing middlings and boiled potato peel for the hens. After work he would sit by the side of the large fireplace, carefully slice up his black shag tobacco and carefully fill and light his pipe. The house was filled with stuffed birds in glass cases and was a bit eerie going up the stairs to bed under the beady-eyed gaze of the barn-owls, hoopoos and sparrow hawks that lined the staircase.

In one corner of the living room was a pile of rifles, one of which, a Lincoln-Jeffries, was an eye-opener. It was so accurate that even such a small boy as me couldn鈥檛 miss the target (pinned to the fruitful damson tree!). On one wall of the room was a large glass cabinet filled with bullets, cartridges and also a large box of gunpowder. Uncle Ralph, Dad鈥檚 youngest brother, once showed me how to roll small paper tubes, attach a stick and fill the tubes with gunpowder to make tiny rockets. A pyromaniac鈥檚 delight!

Leaving the back garden by the stile in the hedge, we would bear right over the fields to a grassy hill crowned with Scots Pines which Gran called Fox鈥檚 Knoll. There we would have a picnic and gambol about in the soft grass. It was here that Ralph showed me how to make a screech by blowing on a blade of grass held between the thumbs. Many years later, returning from the South Birmingham Tech, I drove through the housing estates that now cover the area, and came across Fox鈥檚 Knoll - a bare mound of earth, a few sorry pines and a broken pram on the top. A sad sight.

Here is a photo of me stood among the hoar-frosted vegetables (still in shorts!) holding my Christmas present, a wooden six-shooter. Uncle Bob and Uncle Ralph used to call me Purple Pete, which I hated - I wanted to be called The Cisco Kid or something like that!

Hospital

I also had problems about now, developing mastoids, which had to be removed from behind my ear. Dad managed to beg a car from Stain鈥檚 Garage, as I was desperately ill and drive me to hospital in Birmingham. Birmingham was a dangerous place at that time as it was taking quite a battering from bombers. I suffered at that hospital. I remember being very wary of the mask that they tried to fit over my mouth and was tricked by being asked to pretend to hide under the sheets, whereupon, wham! The mask was clamped on my face. I鈥檒l never forget that first suffocating smell. After, the cavity behind my ear was stuffed with yards of bandage and plaster stuck on top. This was the cause of much fiction between me and the nurses as the bandage had to be changed. I fought vigorously to prevent this from happening, as they would tear the plaster off in a quick stroke - very painful when it took your hair with it as well. I usually finished up under the cot, fending off all comers with teeth, feet and fists. I do have a vague recollection of the end of the ward being wrecked and smoking, but not from my efforts.

Apart from this small interruption, life was happy, playing wherever we wished. One day, two grown up girls came and asked Mam if they could take us for a walk. They must have been about eight years old. So with John in the pram and me walking they took us down Watery Lane and along the river towards Ipsley Mill, over a very rickety bridge to the mill and back along watery lane. We arrived home with armfuls of sticky buds (horse chestnuts) and pussy willows. Later on this area became part of my playground.

To read the rest of this Redditch childhood during the Second World War go to:
^{About links}

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.