大象传媒

THE EFFECTS OF WARS ON A LONDON SCHOOLGIRL.

It was the flu` epidemic, immediately after the First World War, that killed my mother鈥檚 first husband, and one week later, her 10 week old baby son. Some years later she told me that when she and the baby were so ill the room lit up and a lady in white held the baby in her arms and told my mother to sleep, she would look after the baby for her.
My mother also had a daughter, Winifred, about five years old I believe. Life was hard for the little girl after losing her father, baby brother, and then her mother working all hours at menial jobs . Soon after this she contracted St.Vitus Dance, a 1nervous complaint, and then Rheumatic Fever, which led to a heart complaint called Mystralstanosis. She was in hospital for months and not expected to live beyond her teens, in fact she lived to be 75 years. My mother must have been made of very stern stuff to cope with all these tragedies.
My mother and father, George and Maud were married in 1925. He had survived Ypres and other hellholes in the First World War. One of his jobs was to tend the horses, which were mostly terrified; this must have been awful for him because he was so fond of animals. He was a very strong man with a soft heart and a quick temper.
My father had a hard life; he had a loving mother and a brutal father who used his thick leather belt on his eight children and his wife. Dad, and his brother Cornelius, known as Corny, said if they could get a gun they would shoot him. They did`nt of course.
I was born on 4th April 1927 and Christened Edna May, after Edna May Best, the actress. My father had not seen a newborn baby before and he was not impressed. He told my mother he would not be seen in front of his mates with that! My poor mother! My looks must have improved sufficiently for him as I have many photographs of us together and he was a loving father.
My father was often out of work. He was a painter, decorator and scaffolder and worked for Hampton鈥檚 of Pall Mall. When the weather was bad the men were sent home, no wages, sometimes for weeks on end. He put scaffolding on very tall buildings in the West End of London, and there is me, terrified of heights?
My parents were very poor, there was no money when my dad was not working, how they managed I cannot imagine. My mother worked at Nestles, a local chocolate factory, so that helped. On Friday nights she would come home with a bag of damaged chocolates, they were a delicious treat.
Dad mended all our shoes. He would buy squares of leather, just bigger than the shoe sole, soak it to make it pliable then put it on an iron last with three different shoe sizes. He then cut the leather to fit and nailed on the new sole. He also cut our hair. I had a fringe, it was not straight hair and they said I had a kink in it?

We lived at 26, St.Phillip Street, Battersea. There was no garden, only a yard with a small rockery, an outside toilet, a coal shed and a scullery. We lived upstairs and the family living downstairs were Mr.& Mrs Shiekle and their son Freddie. Mrs Shiekle had to use a wheelchair, a large wicker chair with two large wheels at the back and a smaller one in front, she used to steer the thing with a small handle while her husband pushed. When the news from Germany was getting pretty grim they decided to change their name and move away. We then moved downstairs.
After school all the children in our street would come out to play. We had seasons when we played with hoops, tops and whips, five stones, marbles, skipping ropes and later we all had roller skates.
One day when we were playing 鈥淧iggy in the Middle鈥�, which meant two children throwing the ball to each other whilst the third child stood in the middle and tried to get the ball. I was the 鈥淧iggy鈥� and fell over, landing heavily on both knees, hands and finally my head. The road had recently been tarred and my knees and hands had small pieces of tar-covered grit embedded in them. My parents spent ages trying to bathe away the tar and picking out the grit. There were no antibiotics then and going to the doctor was too expensive, but I survived.
We had a super dog called Tiny, she was a six month old black and white mongrel, very nervous and intelligent. She was on her way to Battersea Dog鈥檚 Home when my mother saw her. The lady taking her there said that her husband beat the poor thing for the slightest mishap and she could not stand it any longer. Fortunately for Tiny my mother said she would keep her. We all loved Tiny to bits and I taught her to skip with me in the skipping rope, she would jump with me as long as I could
It was Easter 1938, I had just reached my 11th birthday and I had two Easter Eggs and sixpence to spend. Now, with sixpence I could buy anything in Woolworth鈥檚, or, I could go to the Lambeth Walk. The decision made, I took a penny bus ride to Lambeth where they sold just about everything. A man selling one-day-old chickens, something I had never seen before, caught my eye. I bought two chicks for three pence and carefully carried them home in a paper bag.

My mother wondered what on earth we would do with chickens, but I think she decided that they would probably die before morning. Nevertheless, we put them in my Easter Egg box in front of the kitchen range and my father fed them, with heaven knows what, and they thrived and grew to be large cockerels. My father made them a wooden house in the yard and Tiny used to lie in the sun with the two birds roosting on her. I wish we鈥檇 had a camera.
Inevitably, when the cocks began to crow we had complaints from the neighbours. My father told them they would have a lot more noise to put up with than a couple of cocks crowing before much longer. He was right, of course.
Upsetting the neighbours was not on as far as my mother was concerned and told dad he would have to kill the birds. The poor chap was incapable of doing this and went to the pub, thinking that would help, it didn鈥檛 but he found a man willing to do the deed.
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