大象传媒

Part 4
RETURN TO EWELL
In the summer of 1942 my mother, sister and I returned to live with my grandmother and aunt at Green Lanes, West Ewell. The enemy at this time was busy elsewhere and the bombing raids on Britain were infrequent. I was now 11 years old and about to attend secondary school. I was fortunate enough to get a place at Danetree Road School, West Ewell. Danetree Road School provided very good facilities for its pupils. There was purpose built science classrooms, a gymnasium with showers and changing rooms. It also offered those who had the ability, the opportunity to take school certificate and to matriculate, which in those days was very prestigious. This required gaining a pass in five subjects that were not all of the pupil鈥檚 choosing. Mathematics, English Language and English Literature, plus a foreign language were compulsory subjects. A failure in one subject required taking all examinations again. The fantasy of going to University in those days was in the same bracket as a present-day dream of being an astronaut and travelling into space. Much later, in the era of reducing everyone down to comprehensive education Danetree changed its status to a junior school when a new high school was built in Ruxley Lane.
During 1943 the Government organised a network of canteens called British Restaurants, which served sound Basic English cooking, very much to my taste at the time. For example bacon roll followed by suet pudding with golden syrup or sultana suet pudding (spotted dick) with custard, nowadays considered being a heart attack on a plate. There had been no provision of lunch for schoolchildren up until this time. Most pupils lived near enough to school to be able to go home for lunch and be back in time for afternoon school, those who didn鈥檛 took sandwiches. But with increasing demands for women鈥檚 work effort to be directed to war work, school dinners became a must, and so from Danetree Road School we would walk along to the British Restaurant that had been established in the Church Hall of All Saints Church in Fulford Road.
Much of the time throughout the whole period of the war and to some extent the immediate years after whilst the government did its best to feed the nation on as balanced and healthy diet as it could in very difficult circumstances, a point that has been much publicised ever since. As an adolescent growing up fast, I always felt a little hungry and the need for additional food. The Minister for Food was Lord Woolton and his Ministry were forever coming out with ideas to make a rather dull diet more interesting without much apparent success. One such idea was Woolton pie, the ingredients I can no longer remember, but I do recall it was quite bland and found few takers. Another idea was to bring into the fishmongers whale meat. I suppose there were some who found this appetising, but it was not to my liking or any of my immediate family.
My recently acquired northern accent caused more than one lad to become irritated. I had picked up some of the Lancashire dialect, and I guess I did rather keep going on about the wonders of Blackpool. This resulted in one or two playground scuffles, however, my toughest adversary later turned into my closest friend. Possibly our opposing characters matched in some way. He was a self-sufficient latch kid whilst I was of a more cautious nature. In later life Roy had what you might term the adventurous life as a steward in the Merchant Navy. We eventually drifted apart, possibly at the time when Roy's parents moved to Plymouth and he went with them. There he met Vera his future wife and he settled there.
It was during my days at Danetree that I joined the Boy Scouts along with Roy and another friend called Peter. The Boy Scouts ranged from 11 to 18 years of age, so as newly joined scouts, Roy and I, at 11 years of age, were at the bottom of the heap so to speak, our Patrol Leaders being 16 to 17 years of age. At 18 they would be called up for military service.
In April 1943 I was invested into the brotherhood of Scouts and became a full member of the Beaver patrol of the 1st Ruxley St Francis Scout Troop. The Troop used to meet in the hall attached to St. Francis Church in Ruxley Lane. The Scoutmaster was over age for call up into the armed forces, and combined running the scout troop with being a full time postman and a member of the Home Guard. The Home Guard later became better known to a wider public audience as 鈥淒ad鈥檚 Army鈥� through a television comedy series. In those darker days of the war we took the whole matter a lot more seriously.
Each week the scouts in our Troop paid a penny each into a fund to send our assistant Scout Leader, Jack Frost, a letter and a parcel every so often. He had been taken prisoner of war at the fall of Calais. Jack came back to us after the war was over and took over as Scoutmaster.
At the Whitsun holiday of that year we Ruxley scouts went to camp for 3 days at a campsite in a small field along side the River Mole at Esher on land owned then by Thompson鈥檚, Market Gardeners. Today it is part of Garston Farm, a pick-your-own operation. In order to get to the camp we had to load all our kit and equipment onto a home made handcart and then walk pulling and pushing the cart all the way from Court Farm Avenue, West Ewell to the campsite, which took about two and a half hours. We had to put up camp before it got dark, having set off quite late in the day. No lights were allowed it being wartime and the blackout regulations being in force. Although the weather had been hot during the day, the nights were decidedly chilly. Lack of money and resources being scarce in wartime, all I had to sleep in were two army blankets. These I folded around me to form a sleeping bag held together by blanket pins. These were akin to the pins used for the front of Scots kilts. Being a complete tenderfoot I undressed to go to sleep, mistake number one, during the hours of darkness the temperature dropped considerably. I woke up cold and was unable to get back to sleep due to the fall in temperature not to mention the hard ground. Whoever said if you make a hole for your hip you can sleep well on hard ground has either never done it or has no sensitivity what so ever. We were not used to central heating, a term yet to be heard by our young ears. Houses were heated downstairs only. Heating in the bedrooms, was considered to be quite unhealthy. In the very cold weather we would huddle round a coal fire, scorching our legs from the heat of the fire by sitting too close, with our backs shivering from the draught caused by the fire drawing in air for combustion. Sadly, most of the heat went up the chimney. When there was a frost it formed ice from the condensation on the inside of the windows and us children would draw pictures and write our names in the frost. Floors were covered with lino, which was jolly cold to step onto when leaving a warm bed. It would still be some years before wall-to-wall carpets were designed and afforded. So you would think I would be quite hardy and that the rigours of the outdoor life easy to adapt to, not so. Nevertheless I enjoyed my first scout camp; there was the fun of making an open fire and cooking on it. The outdoors life in the company of other boys was new, different, and very exciting.
Our summer camp that year was on the same farm but in a different location. This time our tents were provided so we only had to haul our kit and cooking equipment on our handcart. This made the load a lot lighter, but the walk was just as long. Our route was along the Kingston Road to Tolworth and then down the old A3 Portsmouth Road to the Scilly Isles and up through Esher High Street. In wartime the traffic was light. In fact the sight of a motor vehicle even on the A3 was quite exciting. A strong contrast to today鈥檚 traffic congestion, a phenomenon we could not have envisaged at that time.
Summer camp was a 'Lend a Hand on the Land鈥� type holiday, which the Government were promoting at that time. We boys thought this was a good idea as we would be paid sixpence an hour (2陆p). Whilst the concept of being paid money was attractive the actual work of hand hoeing out weeds had considerably less appeal. Our tools were short handled hoes and it was back breaking work. We were under the control of land girls as our forewomen. Land girls were women who chose to work in the Women鈥檚 Land Army in place of joining any of the women鈥檚 armed services or to work in munitions factories. These girls worked on farms and market gardens doing all the jobs that farm labourers did, as whilst farmers were exempt from military service their labourers were not. As far as our working efforts were concerned they gave no quarter although we boys tried all we knew to duck and dive as boys do. The Camp lasted for a fortnight and overall was good fun and the work was forgotten when we went back home with a few coppers jingling in our pockets. Scouting was to become part of my life over the next 30 years. Although at this period of the war air raids were infrequent, the unpredictable nature of air raids added a certain spice to cycling to and from Scout meetings.
Another of our scouting 鈥渉elp the war effort鈥� was to collect waste paper, scrap metal, bottles, and jam jars for recycling although we called it collecting salvage. Our favourites were beer and pop bottles. You could get a penny back per bottle and two or three pennies was quite a nice supplement to pocket money, which by and large was non-existent. Mums had little or nothing to spare from their armed forces pay once the basics had been paid for, so any income we had came from the bottles or from doing a paper round.
The war seemed at this time to grind wearily on and slogans began to appear on walls and bridge abutments saying 'Start the Second Front Now鈥�. This meant nothing to me and I cannot recall hearing any of the grown ups mention it either. Much later on I learnt it was the British Communists urging the Government to invade Europe and relieve the German onslaught on Russia. Having now reached the grand age of twelve, two things happened to mark this. Firstly, I was bought my first pair of long trousers, and secondly, I started my paper round. A pair of long trousers was recognition of reaching the sturdy age of twelve and a sign of approaching manhood. School leaving aged was 14. I got my first pairs of 鈥榣ongs鈥� as we called them one Wednesday at lunchtime when on this occasion I had come home for lunch. My mother having bought them that morning on her way home from her wartime job of tending to the ailing behind the counter at Boots the Chemist in Worcester Park, Wednesday being half day closing. The acquisition of the long trousers was not entirely a success because up till then I had worn shorts, which afforded a young lad quite a deal of liberty of movement. Of course natural youthful impatience immediately came into play and the 'longs' had to be worn back to school that afternoon. What happened? I arrived back at school and went out onto the school playing field to meet my friends and swank about my new long trousers. I soon forgot my change of attire and got involved in a game that in shorts would have worked out fine. The game hideously resulted in a much-lamented fall on the grass and a much stared at green smear, too large to get past my mother鈥檚 keen eye and I was left smarting to remember to be more careful next time
Secondly, I started my first job by becoming a newspaper delivery boy. This of course meant getting up early. This was not very popular with the rest of the household. However, I wanted the cash, a matter of five shillings (25p) a week and was prepared to take the early shift. Delivering newspapers in the summertime with the light mornings was quite good, provided it didn鈥檛 rain of course, but the winter mornings was a different story. There was the cold and the damp and then trying to read the house numbers on the newspapers in almost total darkness by the light of a very much-shielded flashlight added extra difficulties. It didn鈥檛 take me long to learn my route and my houses so well that I just took the next paper from the bag and pushed it through the letterbox of my next customer. This got me into some trouble on the occasions where changes had been made and although the Newsagent may have informed me, this not very wide-awake boy proceeded as if on automatic pilot. The result was some occasional upset customers complaining to the shop that they had not received the correct paper or no paper at all. However, despite the occasional mishap I kept the job. One of the perks of delivering newspapers was that being out early we paperboys could pick up any war souvenirs left from the previous night鈥檚 air raid. For example, we might come across the remains of an incendiary bomb, or more commonly shrapnel from anti aircraft shells. Often this was still hot and had to be handled with extreme care. The satchel for carrying the papers could end the round heavier than it began if the souvenir collection was plentiful. Bartering and swapping bits of shrapnel was a fairly regular schoolyard activity.
Entertainment was still either the wireless around which people gathered every day without fail for the six o鈥檆lock and nine o鈥檆lock news, or there was the cinema. Films were classified as being fit for certain age groups. For example, a 鈥楿鈥� meaning universal was available to all ages. An 鈥楢鈥� was available for adult viewing only. Young people could go to the pictures alone or with a friend or friends, as today for 鈥楿鈥� classified films. Otherwise it was necessary to be accompanied by an adult and herein lay the root of the dilemma, however this young teenager was not to be denied his visit to the cinema by rules and would muster all his powers. It meant that if none of the grown ups in the family were going at the time and I wished to go, then an adult stranger would be approached and convinced into taking me or us into the cinema. A practice not to be recommended nowadays, but somehow then we felt safe, and frequently employed this tactic without a problem. Gaining entry to a cinema by this method also meant dodging the doorman who always looked like an ex-policeman or ex-soldier. He controlled the queues and if there were any 鈥楲ittle Herbert鈥檚鈥� like me who were trying to get in when they should not, he would send them packing. The cinema was quite a centre of entertainment, in and around London the programme was continuous. The main film, a second film called a B picture, a newsreel, and a cartoon or in some cinemas an organist entertained. The organ was kept in a pit in front of the screen. When it was time for the organist to perform the wunder worluritzer organ rose up from its pit lit up in all its glory and boomed out music for all its worth. The main casing was formed of transparent panels with coloured lights, which flickered and flashed throughout the performance.
Continued in Part 5

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