Three word sentences.

Loss.

They say that three-word sentences are unforgettable, we hear them all the time on adverts and in politics—I have some that I will never forget.

 I love you. Please help me. The Liverpool pathway.

A few years ago, I lay in my bed waiting for the Goblin Teasmade to start its ritual. First a click and then a soft grumble, slowly getting angrier before it can take no more and noisily rids itself of the boiling water. The buzzer buzzes. Lights come on. Tea is made.

In June 2008, we would both lie here listening to this performance.

Three months later, September the thirteenth, is our Golden anniversary. I listen alone.

Back in June, we wake up to the ritual of our little Goblin friend, we have a nice cup of tea, and then a different ritual begins.

First the toilet. Then the shower. Hair is brushed. Face is creamed.

Now the painful bit. Legs are creamed. Compression stockings and creamed legs don’t go together. Teeth are gritted.

The room is now brightly lit with the June sunshine. This is the moment that I notice the purple blotches on her legs. She looks down with a weary look that says.  What now?.

I see her face is tanned, that’s odd, we have to avoid sunshine—so the drug people tell us.

It is Sunday. We have to call the duty doctor, a young man with a kindly face. He is gentle as he touches the blotches. His smile fades.

“We need to do some tests which have to done in hospital, I’ll arrange an ambulance for you both”.

This is nothing for us to be alarmed at, a trip to the hospital is a regular thing.

We see a familiar face. The tea lady. A student nurse. Our specialist doctor.

The bell rings. I leave her in good hands, she smiles and say’s.

“I love you”

This is not a thing we normally say to each other with words. We just know.

  I visit every day; we are always first through the door as it opens to the visitors. On Wednesday the eighth of June we walk in to see Ann sitting up in her chair. She is looking, but not seeing. She whispers a whisper we can hardly hear.

“Please help me”.

 The doctor is waiting nearby. He asks me and my son Jamie to join him in an office. He has the results of some tests, he apologises. There is something in his voice that was never there before.

The drugs he has prescribed that have worked so well in controlling the pain for the last forty years have a sting in their tail. The liver has finally given in to the onslaught. Now all the other organs are falling like dominoes.

A nurse comes to the office and whispers to the doctor, I hear him ask.

“Is it fresh”.

She nods and leaves the room.

Another doctor joins us and gives us the devastating news, there is just a few hours left. We hear for the first time, another three words, that I will never forget. The Liverpool Pathway.

The Liverpool Pathway is a way of making an extremely painful death seem like going to sleep peacefully.

Our other son Iain has just gone back to Manchester thinking all is under control. Amanda his wife, tells him the news. He has to make the most agonising journey back to London hoping it is not too late.

We all sit silently around the bed, watching the life drain from our lovely mother and wife.

I love you. Please help me. The Liverpool Pathway.

Three unforgettable three-word sentences.

Made in Chertsey, three. Iris’s story, part five.

Confession! In my previous efforts at writing about my childhood. I wrote it as if I could remember everything that happened all those years ago. That wasn’t possible, I was ‘vocally disabled’ for most of this time. I was five before I could utter a proper word and then I had a terrible stutter until I was about seven years old. I could hardly remember a thing until Iris told me her story, it sort-of rang a bell and I did remember some of it.  In this next story she told me how the neighbours and even people we didn’t know helped our family in the first few years.

Iris carries on with her story.

“It took us quite a few months to get back to normal, although we were supported by our friends, even the local shops gave us food sometimes. Miss Chase, the sister of Mr Chase, who owned ‘Chase of Chertsey’, the horticultural firm, kept our larder full for months, and gave us rides around Chertsey in her Rolls Royce, we loved it, waving to all our friends. Mr Salmon was amazing, she looked after you and Donald so that mum could work and earn some money; there was no social security then. She also arranged other friends to look after the rest of us, and this prevented the council from putting us all in council homes, at least for a while. Then there was the poor aid that was doled out by some well meaning ladies. Before they could give us anything though, they had to see if there was anything in our house that wasn’t really needed and could be sold. We had some nice figurines, and pictures that were handed down to dad; He came from a well-off family living in Brighton, they had a cook, a nurse and two other servants! The amount of cash that the ladies raised by selling this stuff was pitiful, it hardly lasted a week… probably worth a fortune now.

“Talking about dad’s well-off family, one of them lived in Longcross House in Chobham. A big house that now belongs to Sheik Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai.  Mum said, the reason they never helped us, was probably because they didn’t know about us losing dad. They had disowned our grandad, and the rest of our family years ago. This was when they found out he was a bigamist. He was cut out of his private income and had to start working for his living when he was in his late forties. He was a bit of rascal though, with two families. One was ours, a proper family with three children living in Bridge House, Chertsey, and another family in Chobham with another three children. The funny thing is, he must have cycled past Longcross House when he visited one family or the other.”

Iris’s story.

Made in Chertsey Three, Part 4.

Here is my sister Iris’s story. The second of the stories given to me. I already knew that my father had died when I was baby, but this was the first time I had heard about it in such detail. Although our family was in the same dire state of our neighbours, we were virtually adopted by these kind people. We were all aware that we lived in the wrong end of the town, but we took some sort of pride in that, as people do.

This is why I call my book ‘Made in Chertsey’. I was made in Chertsey!

Iris was in her mid-nineties when she wanted to tell me her story. At just eleven years old she had an amazing memory of that day. Her story is really about our mum, and of the years she fought the authorities to keep us all together. She didn’t always succeed though; I, David, and Sylvia spent a few years in various care homes, when it all got too much for her. 

Iris starts her story.

“I am the last person alive to have seen it all happen, and I now need to pass it on, and you are the only other one left Alan. I hope you write in your new story writing hobby.

“I was in the playground at the morning break when Miss Hutt came and took me into the school. She didn’t say anything but looked very upset for some reason. I just thought I was in trouble again. I was taken to the nurse’s room, and sitting there were Deirdre, Bernard, and Chrissy. Then our head mistress came in. Deirdre started crying, she knew something very bad had happened.

“We were told that we had to go home, but not why this was so. Deirdre thought one of the boys had an accident and kept asking which one, but nothing was said. As we were passing Tommy Garrett’s shop, we heard one of the teachers start crying and then talking aloud, saying.”

“How could the lord let something like this to happen to such a young man?”

Deirdre screamed so loud. 

“It’s dad!”

“We started running as fast as we could, the teachers couldn’t keep up with us, and as we turned the corner near Mrs Haley’s, we saw a big crowd outside our house.

“They held their hands out to stop us from stumbling and going indoors, but we just pushed them away. As soon as we were inside, we saw mum with the two boys on her lap. It was a terrible sight, the boys were hugging mum, not understanding why she was crying so. Mrs Salmon was standing behind the chair trying to comfort them all. Dr Ward was sitting at the table looking very sad. I will never forget this moment; I still dream of it even today.

I have lot more to tell you Alan, it does get a bit better.        

Made in Chertsey number 3

I have used the last three months of confinement, to rewrite yet again my story. It probably won’t be the last time!

In my first effort, most of the stories were from other people. I am still using these, but they are now told by those people. I’m not sure if it will work, but here goes.

The first story is told by Taffy Rees, a neighbour and friend of my father. 

It’s 1934, a sunny spring day in Weybridge. a town that attracts the rich and famous, it is complete with the famous Brooklands racetrack for their expensive hobby of motor racing. It is surprising that it is also home to many factories. It must be a bit disturbing for the residents of St Georges hill when all these factories sound their hooters at the same time calling the workers to start their day.

Taffy’s story.

It’s 12:30 am and in the Airscrew factory the sound of the dinner hooter is heard. It is like the start of a race in nearby Brooklands! The men in the propeller shaping workshop throw their work aprons over their benches and dash to the canteen. 

Today though, this is not for Taffy. He has been dreading this moment all morning, He has a story to tell that everyone wants to hear. All morning there has been a constant demand from his work mates for every little detail of a moment he will never forget. 

He places his work apron carefully on the propeller he is working on and glances at the bunch of Daffodils laying on the empty bench next to him.

The Airscrew is a fine example of a modern factory. It has a large canteen for its worker’s which is very well used. As he approaches the canteen, he hears the banter of men in the dinner queue. The dinner ladies behind the counter are used to the cheeky remarks coming their way and always have an even cheekier answer. 

Then the room becomes quieter as Taffy moves to his seat. A hundred eyes follow him. Knives, and forks hover above hot dinners. A mug of tea is placed on the table in front of him. Everyone is waiting.

At the serving counter, the dinner ladies are looking out at the silent room. Of course, they know nothing of the sad events of that morning.

All eyes are now on Taffy. He takes a gulp of hot tea and clears his throat. Like many ordinary workers he is not used to speaking to a large group. He stumbles over his words, the story he has to tell is hard enough for anyone to tell. He has witnessed some pit disasters back in the Welsh coal mines, the reason he came to the safety of Surrey.  He never thought he would see something like this first-hand in a place like Weybridge.

“We did what we could, but it was too late. Woburn Hill was just too much for poor Charlie. He looked very pale when I called round for him at home. We were a bit late leaving so we had to get a move on. You know what he was like, never late for work. If only I had known how ill he was, I would have told him to stay home.”

Taffy took a long gulp of his tea; he was having a hard time keeping the tears away. Charlie was a very good friend of everyone. He carries on with some difficulty.

“He started coughing pretty badly along Eastworth Road and when we started up Woburn Hill, he had to take a rest a few times. We walked over the top of the hill and freewheeled all the way down to the little humpbacked bridge. He was talking quite normally, then I heard his bike clatter into the bridge wall. I looked back and he was laying very still on the bank of the stream. I thought he was just joking… but he didn’t move. We all tried to bring him round, but he wasn’t breathing. 

I saw the works nurse arriving and shouted for her to come over. She took one look and said we needed a doctor. Someone had already done this and called an ambulance as well.

The doctor tried everything; he really did, and Charlie was taken to Weybridge hospital.

His father who works in the drawing office, came in to tell our foreman the bad news. Charlie had died of a heart attack”.

The canteen, full of Charlies mates was so quiet, just hushed whispers. How could something like this happen to a fit young man of just 34. He leaves a wife and six young children. 

My day in Manchester Royal Infirmary

This little piece is something I might add towards the end my story, as it happened recently.  

    My day in Manchester Royal Infirmary.

The day started out so well… My very good friend Stevie picked me up from my flat in Minehead Court, Withington. She’s an excellent driver and we soon arrived at the vast MRI. I had an appointment with The Heart Centre.  Unfortunately, I told Stevie to turn into The Children’s Hospital carpark… My first mistake, The Heart Centre is on the other side of the building. I’m not good at asking people the way to somewhere, so I tried reading the various maps… they are all very clear to people who are not colour blind, but to me the purple lane that would take me to my destination may as well have been the yellow brick road. After all, I felt I was in Alice’s wonderland.

What seemed an inordinate length of time, I arrived at the heart centre, and a little bit puffed out. Being puffed out after any exertion is my reason for being here in the first place, I have a heart condition.

After a few tests and stuff like that I was ushered into the Doctors office. I was told what I had been expecting, I need a pacemaker, and sometime soon. I stood up to leave rather too quickly and felt quite dizzy, I fell into the arms of the lovely Doctor Ahmed.

  Although at 91, I am approaching old age, I must admit I find lady doctors and nurses very attractive, but I think my involuntary actions were a bit out of order. Mind you, there was method in my moment of madness. I was admitted to the Acute Cardiac Centre straight away.

 The ACC is the cleanest hospital ward I have ever been in as a patient. The first hint of what was about to happen, was a lovely young nurse approaching my bed with three swabs. The first one was up my nose, easy-peasy. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw this lovely young nurse waving the other two swaps in an upward thrusting motion and asking me to lay on my side. Modesty prevents me from any further mention of the procedure, apart from it involved my nether regions, and…heaven forefend…we had never even been properly introduced!

Other than this, the place runs like clockwork, watching the nurses and other staff doing their work is like watching a high-speed ballet. How they keep this up for a twelve-hour shift I find amazing, especially as there is often more time added for reports to be made.

The day is really very quiet with just the normal tasks being done, and we patients are generally dozing, but when the lights go out, it’s as if a switch has been turned on. Some of my fellow patients seem to come alive. It’s like ‘A night at the museum’, and then in the morning it goes back to the normal super-efficient performance as if nothing had occurred.  

 I couldn’t help noticing one lovely nurse, Emma, who seemed to float about as if she is about to break into The River dance. I have this impression maybe because she had earlier told me she came from Derry. I finally told her about this impression, and Lo and Behold, she and her sisters, Orla, Molly, and Katie are famous Irish dancers. In fact, her youngest sister at the age of just eight is a champion with several first-class awards. They perform everywhere at weddings and such as that

When I was a child, I used to drive my mother mad with my habit of tapping to everything on the wireless. Can you imagine the scene in this family’s kitchen of a Sunday morning, if their father accidently played a River dance CD, and his four daughters went into overdrive on the kitchen floor.  I bet he wished they had taken up finger tapping… I could be wrong though, there’s not a lot of demand for finger tapping at weddings these days.What was going to be a day at the famous MRI has turned out to be wondrous 

Chertsey Tales Part sixty three.

madeinchertsey.com.

It’s Saturday morning, it’s our washday. Mum works all week doing other people’s housework, and Saturday is the only day she can do ours. So, the scullery is the warmest place in the house. Mum has already done the washing and I have put it through the mangle and hung it on the line. I don’t know how it’s going to dry; there’s no wind and the clothes are freezing as I hang them up.

I come indoors to get warm and look forward to finishing building my model aeroplane.  Before I could start, there is a knock at the door. It’s Thunder, he says he wants to talk about something. He’s followed in by Nutsan, who has the old book with him, he spreads the pages out on the table…I’ll never finish my model today that’s for certain.

How Nutsan can work out what the funny writing is about, I will never understand, but he has written it in plain English in his notebook. First of all, he shows us an old map of Stangarthes Hill, and points out our top field with the well and what looks like the Mulberry tree. And two other wells on the other side of the hill…one of them, the wishing well is still there in the same place. 

He starts to get excited.

‘I reckon if we can find this other well, we might find treasure that was given up to Stangarthe, and we’ll all be rich’.

Just as he starts to explain it all.  Wadie and Goldilocks are at the door, now all of our gang are around the table, but we only have four chairs since the bomb. Mum looks so pleased that I have so many friends…even if one is Thunder Bolton.

She brings a jug of cocoa made with the top of the milk from Mr Stanford’s farm. That’s a special treat for us, it is only my sisters that can have that normally.

There’s another knock at the door, this time it’s Mrs Salmon coming round for a chat with mum with all the Chertsey gossip. She drops into the big armchair as she always does with a sigh. Rosy, as we all know her, is a very good friend of our family. She looked after me and my brother Don until we started school when my dad died. 

She is holding a big fruit cake, I’m hoping it’s going to be shared with our gang, but mum just puts it on the shelf for later.

 Nutsan starts reading from his notebook. The story he tells is far stranger than anything I have told.

‘Chertsey is known as the most haunted place in the south of England, and St Ann’s Hill as we know it now, has been a hill fort with Stangarthe, and then a monastery at the same time as Chertsey Abbey. The stones for the Abbey were cut to rough size by the prisoners in various enclosures, and then floated on rafts in the many little streams that criss-cross Chertsey to be properly dressed by skilled stone masons at the Abbey site near the Thames.

One of these places is just behind Cowley Avenue. In fact, we use some of the left-over stones for our camp at the bottom of Wadies garden. Do you remember we were wondering what the scratches were on the big stone in our camp? Well, I have matched it with the writing on the pages of parchment in the book. Someone, all those years ago was counting the months and years he was imprisoned here. There are some drawings of gallows as well, this must have been a terrible place then.’ 

Goldilocks looked panic stricken.

‘It alright for you Nutsan but I live next door to this place’.

 Mrs Salmon piped up.

‘Yes, it still is haunted, we can hear moans and groans of the dying most nights’. 

There’s another knock at the door, It’s Mrs Jenkins and her daughter Mrs Balchin. (The ladies take turns to meet, and today is mum’s turn.) The four chairs are quickly taken away from our gang, and we have to kneel on cushions.

Being so close to the covering that is on top of our table. I notice for the first time it has a nice colourful picture.

Mum says it’s inlaid Lino that is hand-made, each small piece makes up a picture of a cat or a bird. It was some more of the stuff that was handed down from dad’s family, probably made in Egypt or India. It is usually a very expensive floor covering but being such a small piece, it ended up on our dinner table as a permanent tablecloth. 

Nutsan starts telling us about the old parchments. I notice he is running his fingers over a picture of a bird on the Lino…he is really looking at it as he is talking.

Now a funny thing happens, as he moves the sheets of parchment about, pointing out the pictures of animals and what they may mean, I look more closely at the bird on the Lino…they match exactly! I don’t say anything about this of course, they already think I’m a bit strange. Can this be happening? Perhaps Mr Wade is right, I am from somewhere else.

Mum comes over with some of Rosie’s cake for us. She looks at Nutsans notes for quite a while. Then she goes to the old oak sideboard that was also passed down from dad’s family, it still has some books and documents that came with it. It’s mostly about the family’s time in India, so no one bothers to look at any of it. She takes some things to Rosy and the ladies. There is a lot of chatter at first as she shows them. Then it all goes quiet while even they listen to Nutsan. Mum and all her friends are very superstitious, and what with the stuff mum is showing them and what they are hearing from Nutsan, something has really caught their interest. 

Nutsan picks up one of the other books that he found that day.

‘This one.’ He says, ‘Was published later, but still over a hundred years ago. It was with the bundle of parchment, and it explains the pictures and how to read the animal pictures that are thousands of years old. There is a lot about Chertsey Abbey, and how it had total control of the town, even with a curfew where the people of Chertsey had to put their fires out and retire to bed. There’s another chapter about the monastery up the hill at the same time. It shows the well and a tree in the top field…that may be the Mulberry tree that we have today’. 

Mrs Salmon couldn’t resist butting in, pushing Nutsan out of the way.

‘What about the story of the nun who drowned herself in that well?  It all fits in with the monk’s grave, and the well at the top of the hill called ‘The Nun’s Well’.

‘The story is that the nun and a monk were lovers and would meet under the Mulberry tree. But rather than commit a terrible sin, the nun drowned herself in the well. When the monk found her lifeless body, he carried her to the highest spring on the hill and buried her there. Now we know that as the “Nuns Well”. He returned to their love nest under the Mulberry tree and stabbed himself in the heart. He is buried in Monks Walk just inside the woods nearby. Which of course is supposed to be haunted’.

Our gang, ‘The Cowley Avenue Apache’s are fearless!  We are now as quiet as the stony grave that the monk is buried in. 



Chertsey Tales Part Sixty-two.

madeinchertsey.com.

Me and Dennis, our evacuee are the only ones who like Christmas pudding. The others have it on Christmas day but none after. So, we are both eating it for days and looking at each other to see who finds the silver thrupenny bit. No one found it on Christmas day, and we have nearly finished it, but still nothing. I’m beginning to think there’s not one in the pudding at all.

It was a good Christmas, Mrs ‘O’ knows so many songs and she sung them very loudly. I think she had too much brown ale! I had the most presents but I couldn’t buy anything for anyone as I have no money. I did some drawings, but I don’t think they were very good. Don bought me a book called, ‘Aircraft Recognition’. A real Penquin special book mainly for the aircraft spotters that look out for enemy planes. It has lots of aeroplane pictures. I think he will use it mostly because I can’t read. I can make him a model of his favourite plane, the Hawker Hurricane from the pictures though. It will take me a while because I only have old razor blades to carve it.

Don always looks after me although he is only just a year older. The teachers are always saying. ‘Why can’t you be like your brother?’ I can’t help my stutter. I sometimes know the answers, but the words just won’t come out, and they get fed up with waiting and ask someone else.

Kingy Edwards and Don are keeping track of all the ships that are being sunk. They have a book where they write everything down. They have a lot of shrapnel as well. I’m not keen on all this and a bit sad about all the sailors who won’t come home, we have a lot of sailors in Chertsey. My sister Chrissy is going out with Cyril Walker who is a sailor, his family live in Laburnham Road and are a bit posh.

It’s still very cold and still there are no bombers to see at night. We like to see them being chased by searchlights across the sky. The roads are like ice you can hardly stop from slipping up. I feel sorry for birds, they have such skinny legs they must be frozen solid.

We have heard that the German battleship has been sunk. It was scuttled by the captain and all the crew were taken ashore safely. I know they are the enemy, but I am glad no one died, although the captain is still missing.

Mum has heard a rumour that all the food is going to be on an even smaller ration soon. It’s a good job we are friends with Mrs Wade and Mrs Salmon, they always have something for us.

Our kitchen is full of ladies, I don’t know why they all come to our house, we have only a couple of chairs since the bomb. Mrs Salmon fills the old armchair to overflowing.

 I wish she wouldn’t keep pulling me onto her lap, I’m to old for that sort of thing now, I’ll soon be nine. Come to think of it all the ladies are very kind to me, I don’t know why. 

Mrs Young, she is Deirdre’s mother-in-law and lives just up the road in number nine Chilsey Green Road. If she sees me after she is on her way home after shopping, she asks me to carry one of her bags. Then she gives me tuppence for doing it, it’s only a few yards. She is a very nice lady. 

Chertsey tales Part sixty-one.

madeinchertsey.com.

Christmas is here, hooray!

One thing about having so many people living in our house is that mum can make some lovely dinners. This is because she and our evacuee, Mrs ‘O’ mix their rations. We can have a nice joint of mutton, if the butchers have any, that is. People on their own must be starving with their tiny rations, how can they ever have a nice dinner?

This Christmas we are having a chicken, not from Mr Fyson the butcher…we do have some ham from him though. The chicken was given to us by Mr Wade, he had to hide it in a sack in case anyone saw it. Mum had to pluck it and all sorts of things before it was cooked. It was the first time I have had chicken, not very much though…it had to go around nine of us.

Mrs O is very short, and a bit tubby. You would think she would use Mr Denyer for her grocer as he is just near Bell corner, not far away, but she goes right up the top of the town to Bushes. It’s a funny little shop next to Ethel Taylor the greengrocer…which is another little shop.

 Dennis, her son, does her shopping sometimes, he showed me some pork pie that they like to eat. It is as long as a loaf of bread and never looks very good. There’s some jelly stuff around the pork. I don’t think I would like to eat meat flavoured jelly… I like strawberry jelly best.

Another thing is, it has an egg all the way though the pie. Don says there is a special chicken that can lay these long eggs…He must think I’m stupid to believe him sometimes. On the other hand, they do breed dogs to look different, so I suppose it might be possible, but very hard for the chicken to lay the eggs, I should think. He told me about another thing they like in London but can’t buy in Chertsey, jellied eels!

It’s very cold, and everyone is wooding up the Hill, some are chopping down branches which they mustn’t do. The poor soldiers fighting the war are freezing, and their guns don’t work. Even the bombers can’t take off to bomb us, their engines are frozen, so it’s a good thing in some ways I suppose.

We don’t go to church in our family, although me and Don sometimes go to Sunday school in the church opposite The George pub. I like the stories and we have biscuits and lemonade. We said prayers for the young pilot who died last week in St Anns Hill. He must have flown directly over Monks Walk before crashing in The Old Coach Road. The rear wheel of the Spitfire was found in the field nearby. 

The prayers were very sad, his poor mum and dad, it could easily have been our Bernard, he is trying to join the army, but he is not old enough.  

Chertsey Tales Part sixty.

.

Madeinchertsey.com.

My last post was about cine film. Like everything that happens to me this has reminded me of another story. My sister Iris has found me a job. 

 It is 1946. Let me introduce Iris, she’s twenty-four, and has taken it upon herself to ‘Sort me out’ and to make me stand up for myself. 

I am quite happy as I am, but a bit odd. This is the fate of any-one who is shy. It isn’t my fault though, As Iris says, it’s the way I stand. 

She knows someone who works in Shepperton studios and has arranged an interview for me with the cutting room. It is a very good job if I can get it. She has bought me a new shirt, trousers, shoes and even a tie.

She has just finished knitting some sort of jersey. She calls it a cardigan, which I am trying on for the first time—it is not hanging well.

“Are cardigans supposed to be as long as this, Iris”? I ask as carefully as I can.

“Look at you Alan, how could anyone think that you would ever come to anything 

standing like that”? 

These are cruel words to say to anyone, leave alone to an exceedingly tall and skinny fourteen-year-old boy—with a voice impediment, but that is my sister Iris for you, she doesn’t beat about the bush.  

She stands back, looking at me with a sort of a wincing smile, I have the feeling that she is not happy with what she sees. 

“It’s the way you hold yourself Alan, you are not making any effort, are you? I’ve made it a little bit bigger because you’ve got such long arms”. 

She pulls the sleeves one way and another. I try standing upright as my sister says I have to, but she keeps telling me that I am a funny shape. The sleeves are now much too long and have to be turned up, I look down at my new cardigan with a sigh. 

“Dark green cardigans with big white buttons are for old people not for teenager’s”.

As soon as the words leave my lips, I know I should not have said anything, I can see by the way she is standing that she is going to tell me off. 

“Teenager’s, where do you get all these slang words from, anyway cardigans are very popular in America, I got the pattern from a film magazine. Perry Como and Frank Sinatra wear them. Over there they are called smoking jacket’s and they are worn rather long, it’s the fashion”.

 “Fashion, Iris? a smoking jacket! I don’t know what fashion is and I don’t smoke”. 

The afternoon drags on, I start to stammer, and my funny eye begins to twitch, a sure sign of stress, as Iris says.

 ‘It’s just the way I stand’.

 I don’t need to say of course that I didn’t get the job. When I told Iris the job that she had lined up for me had come to nothing, she seemed surprised and asked.

“You made sure you were nice and tidy with your shoes polished and did you wear the tie I bought you”?

“Yes of course I did Iris, I thought it was going quite well. They asked me all about my model making and said that was a good thing, because the job was in the cutting room, and you need to be able to work with very small things. The man wrote something down and then didn’t ask any more questions. He just said he would let me know, but he did say he liked the cardigan you had knitted for me”.

Iris looked at me as if I had said something bad. 

“You didn’t, did you? Alan, please tell me that you didn’t wear it to the office, did you? What am I going to do with you? It’s not meant to wear to work, it’s for when you are relaxing at home.”

She is hard to please, is my sister, here I am at about this time, wearing Chrissies Land Army shirt, and I can’t see anything wrong with my hair.

.



Brains?

 Hello. You may have read some of my ‘Chertsey Tales’ stories. I am often asked how I remember such detail of a moment 80 years ago. Well, I wish I knew. It is now 1:05 am, Friday morning, I have been woken up by a noise outside and it has planted a thought in my brain, and I can’t get back to sleep until I write it down…Most of my stories are written in the same way in the early hours.

The noise that woke me up is a bin being knocked over outside, probably by a fox. I immediately thought of the men collecting the bins yesterday morning. They are brilliant, it is like a ballet, as they run everywhere in their orange overalls. They are so efficient. My memory is fired up!

My younger brother David was also a ‘Dustman’ (in Chertsey that’s what we called them) one day he gave me a Canon Super Eight cine camera. It was thrown out as rubbish because the lens was hanging down. He asked me to mend it. I had never done anything like this before, but I had a go, and it worked.

I filmed a few things like CND marches that I used to be keen on and able to do, and they ‘came out’ lovely. I still have some undeveloped cassettes as well. I was a bit reluctant to send these away to be processed. This was because Jamie, my then fifteen-year-old son and his mates had been filming up Curley Hill in Lightwater country park…I wasn’t sure if they were ‘decent’. I have just been in the cupboard to find them and will now have them processed. I am wondering what the ‘brain’ of that old cine camera will remember. Watch this space.

Chertsey Tales Part Fifty-nine.

 madeinchertsey.com.

 Perambulators, or to give them their normal name; ‘Prams,’ are really amazing things, they have such an extended life, I can’t think of another every-day item in most people’s homes that are used in so many different ways, as the humble pram.

You could tell how well off a family was by the size of the wheels on the pram, not only did they have very large wheels, but the back wheels were also bigger than the front ones, such as The Marmet, a very fine coach-built affair and very expensive, or The Silver Cross, another brilliant design and very popular.

Large wheelers were for the people up Ruxbury Hill, or St Anne’s Road.

Sometimes one of these desirable vehicles would find it’s way down to ‘Apache’ country, and be highly prized, as they were so easy to push. The large wheels also allowed a large tray to be fitted under the body, perfect for the shopping. 

Chertsey was a baby factory, large families were the norm; at one time these family prams must have been new, but I can only remember old ones, a little past their best.

One pram could be used by several families, going backward and forward between them as new children arrived, no one seemed to own them, they were communal.

Eventually the plastic interior would start to crack and crumble, and they would start to smell—always like condensed milk for some unknown reason— and the pram would take on it’s next life, it was the perfect shape for logs, coke or anything heavy, that needed carrying any distance.

Once the coachwork had been worn beyond any safe use, it would have been stripped down for a trolley for the kids, the spring arms were perfect for holding on to when we were daring enough to hurtle down St Annes hill.

Then there was the commercial use, cheaper ones with a metal body, were prized by the muffin man, he could put a little pile of glowing coke in the bottom, to heat his muffins, it’s a wonder it didn’t go up in flames. He would be out for several hours in the evenings, around our streets, ringing his bell, in the same way as todays ice cream men do.

Another man would sell winkles and cockles, measured out in a pint jug, again from an old pram, not very hygienic, but no one seemed to be the worse for it, perhaps we were all immune to a bit of dirt in those days. 

Of course, as these families did all their shopping in Chertsey, they were perfect, but when Staines or even Addlestone began to have a better variety of shops; The folding push chair such as the McLaren was king, but to us kids, no way near as useful. 

Eventually, just the wheels and axles were used on a plank of wood with a bit of rope to steer; Such a simple fun making device, so much better than playing alone on some computer game.