Melting tar …… a busy butterfly ….. and a long lost adventure

Now the thing about getting old is that there seems to be heaps more time for the memories of the past to invade the doings of a busy day.

Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 

And once that flight of nostalgic fancy starts to run its course it is easy to reflect on how your experiences of 60 odd years ago diverge from those of your kids or grandchildren.

I say that, but much of what our sons did when they were younger are only now being revealed as in their own bouts of nostalgia, they share stories of daring dos which they wouldn’t dare to have admitted to when they were 10.

Some of those stories do resonate.  Their adventures on the meadows on long summer days, chime in with my own, when armed with just a warm bottle of lemonade and a day stretching ahead of us, we wandered off in search of adventures in some faraway park, or along a stretch of the Thames.

Often it was at the end of a train journey or the limit of a Red Rover bus pass, and it usually involved a quiet suburban spot, unhindered by other people. 

One such place was at the end of a railway line, and rather than explore we just sat on the platform.  

There were no trains, no passengers and the only sound was that of a lazy insect collecting pollen, mixed with that distinctive smell of mown grass, which competed with the equally powerful smell of the oil-soaked wooden railway sleepers cooking in the sun.

We must have sat there for hours before boredom and the empty bottle of lemonade prompted us to move on.

The spot where we played  with the hot street tar in 1958

These of course can be replicated by our kids, but those of exploring bombsites have gone as is the simple pastime of watching the tar slowly melt on a hot summer’s day sitting on the side of the road and carefully making patterns of the black oozy stuff with a discarded lolly stick.  

Today the street surface doesn’t melt, and the lolly sticks are no longer there in abundance.

And in the same way those Clean Air Acts of the 1960s have happily done away with the heaps of polluted air which in turn gave us the smog’s which meant we got sent home early from school making our way along roads devoid of landmarks.

Nor today are there those thick sooty deposits on trees which when you climbed them left your hands and clothes grubby and grimy.

But enough of such nostalgic tosh.

Smog's and fogs, 1953

Our grandchildren I hope will never have to use bomb sites as playgrounds or come home with soot smeared clothes.

These they can leave to their imagination fed by granddad’s tales of aimless adventures on long ago summer holidays in that place called the 1950s.

I might try and pretend this is all about the historical context, but perhaps it is just a nostalgic wallow.

Location; nostalgia land

Pictures; Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the spot where me and Jimmy O' Donnel played in with the hot street tar in 1958, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, 2015, and Nelson’s Column during the Great Smog of 1952, N T Stobbs, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Glenton Tours …… the coach company that was the luxury motor holiday

Our dad worked for Glenton Tours for over half a century and the story of his part in that company and its part in the modern holiday industry is fascinating.*

Dad and Elizabeth recieving awards, date unknown

It started with an estate agent settling a debt and acquiring five motor coaches which became the core of a business which ran sight seeing tours across Britain and into Europe from 1929.

Elizabeth and Dad, date unknown

The company was in the right place at the right time, as rising disposable income allowed midddle class families the opportunity to go on a new type of coach holiday.

Not that these were run of the mill excursions, but carefully planned tours which lasted for seven, twelve and fourteen days and guaranteed the customers first class hotels, three good meals a day and an itinerary which provided the travellers with all they might want to do about the places of interest.

Added to which there were commentaries which offered up instant historical information along the way.  

These were provided by the driver on home tours and by a courier on the Continental journeys.

Father did both, starting with trips across Britain at the start of the season but slipping in to the Continental tours in late Spring and through to autumn.

Elizabeth, Dad, Frank and unknown courier, date unknown

We still have many of the notebooks and pictures he used for the home tours, and these are now a wonderful insight into the Britain of the 1930s and 40s.

He was pretty there from the start, and so we also have photographs which record the different coaches the company used from the beginning and the differing style of uniforms, from the peaked hat and white long coat to the fitted and style uniforms of the 1950s and 1960s.

And because father kept everything we also have some of the brochures which advertised the individual tours, prices and helpful information.

So from the 1951 brochure came the reassuring comments that “You do not have to bother about luggage, frontier, monetary or language difficulties” and the cost included “the inclusive charge provided for all food and accommodation, the sea crossing and gratuities to hotel staff."

Dad and unknown courier, date unknown

But given that this was soon after the war passengers were informed that “Ration Books are not necessary on any of our tours” but that passengers are advised take "a towel and soap in case some hotels are still unable to supply them.”**

All of which has reignited my interest in the company after receiving a collection of photographs from the grandson of the founder of Glenton Tours.  

Some of the pictures are of a Brighton Coach Rally which I can date to sometime in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

 In his covering note he  wrote  “If your Father went to Brighton Coach Rallies there is a good chance that there is a picture of him”.

And there are heaps of him, mostly holding trophies he had won for successfully competing against other drivers in demonstrating driving skills before the public.***

Interior of one of the 1950s fleet, date unknown

What makes the pictures even more significant is that in the group pictures I can identify not only Dad but also his fellow Continental driver who was called Frank and who lived very close to us on Queens Road, and one of the couriers who we knew as Elizabeth.

One of the Glenton fleet, date unknown

All of which is a nice Sunday afternoon trip back through the story of Glenton Tours and our dad.

Pictures; Brighton Coach Rally, date unknown, courtesy of Peregrine Smith

*Glenton Tours, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Glenton%20Tours

*Motor Coach Holiday Tours, 1951

** UK Coach Rally, https://coachdisplays.co.uk/history/

Back with the Eagle in the 1950s

Now if you were born sometime between the early 1940s and the mid ‘50s, the chances are you were a fan of the Eagle comic.

It is a topic I keep coming back to and the reason is that back then it amounted to the best of British comics.

Its appeal crossed class lines as well gender and if my father was anything to go by attracted an older generation as well.

It came out each week and like other comics of the period had its own Christmas annual which was supplemented by books on some of the other leading characters.

But for me the Eagle Annual which first appeared in December 1950 was a must under the tree and it kept me going through the year, because here as well as comic strips were extended stories articles on sport , history science  and nature.

In between there were practical information on how to make a Kite-released parachute, sending secret messages using invisible ink and making your own printing set.

Never being particularly practical most of these DIY projects rated little more than a second glance.

For me it was the sections dealing with history and the stories which drew me in.

And of the stories it was Dan Dare Pilot of the Future who always was my first choice.

At this point I have to say this is no nostalgic trip. Instead is an exploration of how a popular comic managed at the same to introduce a whole pile of educational information which never led you to think you were back at school.

Nor were the books or comics aimed at the middle class, for there was enough here for any lad like me whose highest aspirations seemed to be a secondary modern school and a future mapped out in one of any one of a number of practical occupations.

The activities were all rooted in things any nine year could do and the stories were  in a world I understood.

And when they were based in space the Wild West or North Africa they were believable.

What is more the science of the future was our everyday life just a little different.

So Dan Dare’s spaceship used dial and buttons and levers, the command structure of Space Fleet including the uniforms which  mimicked the armed forces and of course many of the expressions used were rooted in the language of the 1950s.

None of which should surprise us but allowed every nine year old to feel that this imaginary world was not so far off from their own everyday life.

Of course the Eagle was ruthless in its use of its name which was marketed for all sorts of types and products, but again there is nothing new there.

So that said I shall this evening retreat into that world of the Eagle Annual leaving the cares of the 21st century behind.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Eagle, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Eagle

What we did in October when we were still a farming community

Cows on the meadows, 2003

An occasional series reflecting on what we did in the township when we were still a small rural community.

Now if I had been farming here in the 1850s I might well have turned to The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens.*

It was written in 1844, and ran to countless editions. It was the manual for anyone wanting to be a farmer.

Everything is here from what crops to plant and when to how to make a well, as well as sound advice on hiring labourers, the construction of a water meadow, and the best location for the milk house and cheese room. I learned which materials were best for building a farm house and how much I could expect to pay for materials, as well as the most up to date scientific information on planting wurzels.

It was a practical book and so “the cost of digging a well in clay, eight feet in diameter and sixteen deep and building a ring three feet in diameter with dry rubble masonry is only L5 [£5] exclusive of carriage and the cost of pumps.”

He calculated that that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income.

Nor should we forget that these animals were destined for the table and so the slaughter of pigs was best done around Martinmas in early November because “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured” and doing so in early November had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

But today and over the next few weeks I want to drop in to another farming book which is H Rider Haggard’s A Farmer’s Year, written in 1898 and published the following year.

Now he was farming in Norfolk a full half century later than Mr Stephens and of course Norfolk isn’t rural Chorlton or Eltham or anywhere in south east London..

Harrowing in Mustard on stubble

That said this is what he wrote for the beginning of October.

“Since harvest about 250 loads of manure have been carted from the yards direct to the various fields where they are to spread, and sundry dykes on the marshland have been drawn.  

Also a little thrashing has been done and we sold some barley at sixteen shillings and fifteen shillings according to its quality.

Today October 5th we are ploughing on the bean stubble but with the soil in its present condition it is dreadfully hard work for the horses.”


*Stephens Henry, The Book of the Farm, 1844

** Haggard, H Rider, A Farmer’s Year,  1899

Pictures; the Meadows, courtesy of David Bishop 2003, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899

When a comic story holds more than a truth .............. stories from the Eagle

Now I have no recollection of post war rationing after all I was only four when it was finally abandoned.

But there will be plenty who not only remember it but will have stories of its impact on their daily lives.

Some of them will also have been regular readers of the Eagle comic which began in 1950 and continued into the following decade and here is the connection because running through several of the stories beginning with the first was how at a critical moment the Earth’s government was forced to introduce food rationing.*

Now even though I have read and re-read the stories countless times it never quite occurred to me that older readers of the Eagle would have vivid memories of both wartime and post war rationing.

That first Eagle story  was followed by the Red Moon Mystery when the planet was threatened by a rogue planet which had once destroyed all life on Mars and caused havoc before it was destroyed, which was repeated later by other stories which saw the earth’s population forced to be evacuated from their homes and ultimately  off the planet.

And when it wasn’t a natural disaster of sorts then there were always evil galactic nasties out on inter planetary domination of which the worst was the Mekon a not very nice dictator from Venus and his army of followers whose slavish devotion to their leader and ruthless behaviour would have been all too familiar to a generation that had been children during the last world war.

Of course such events are the stuff of good adventures and in slightly different forms will have appeared before and since but for those of us growing up in the 1950s they were pretty much a backdrop to the real thing.

Location; The 1950s

Pictures; from Eagle Comics in the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Venus Story, April 14, 1950 – September 28 1951

When a chunk of your history takes an unexpected turn ….. Glenton Tours

I have lived with the story of Glenton Tours for 75 years.*

Luggage label, undated

It was a coach company, offering tours of Britain and the Continent from the 1920s and was at the luxury end of the market.

They began when an estate agent in south east London settled a debt by accepting two coaches and entering the touring business.

Dad & Elizabeth, undated

It was the right thing to do at the right moment, as the growing middle class with money to spend sought holidays which combined a bit of culture, with a lot of sightseeing.

 Added to which Glenton’s promised to do the lot, and the lot included the itinerary, the hotels and meals with drivers and couriers who were pleasant, knowledgeable and always attentive.

In the age before cheap air travel and decades before the internet this was the way to see Britain and a host of European countries. 

Tours lasted between seven, twelve and fifteen days, with plenty to take in and free time built into the journey.

Brochure, 1951

And our dad drove their coaches across the UK and on to France, the Low Countries as far as Switzerland and Northern Italy.

He joined the firm sometime in the early 1930s and continued working for them until he retired in 1986.

Very early on in his career he was chosen as one of the two drivers to take coaches into Europe, and apart from a break during the last war, dad did the business and was highly thought of by the firm, his colleagues and the passengers.

And we grew up with that job, which from spring through to autumn would see him leave one morning to return seven, twelve or fifteen days later.

My treat when younger was to be picked up by him at the end of a tour and after the passengers had been dropped off Dad and I would go up to the garage in Nunhead where the coach would be serviced before starting all over again in the morning.

Now, while we had accumulated a lot of memorabilia from Dad what was missing was the detailed story of the firm itself.

And despite years of research, I had drawn almost a blank, until someone who worked with him got in touch. The message was simple enough with “I ran Glenton Tours until 1985. I am happy to supply information” and the promising news that “the archives are held in the Dover Transport Museum”.**

Dad,ready for the off, undated

So the next chapter is about to open up.

And like all such new twists, the story will offer up much about Glenton's along with how some of us spent our holidays during the last century, and maybe even something about our Dad.

We shall see.

And just before the story went live the museum got back to me with a picture of a vehicle Glenton's acquired in the 1960s. 

It is CC 9305 which Mr. Flood of the museum tells me "is a 1929 Dennis GL fitted with a 'toastrack' body by J.Roberts for Llandudno Urban District Council who used it for tours of the Great Orme until 1953. CC9305 was acquired in the 1960s by Glenton Tours of Peckham Rye and still carries the Glenton Livery".

Now l remember Dad talking about it and given that in the winter he worked in the paintshop of the garage he may well have worked on it.

CC 9305 which is a 1929 Dennis GL, bought by Glenton's in 1960

All of which adds to the excitement of the new chapter.

Pictures; Glenton Tours memorabilia from the Simpson collection, and the Glenton's coach, courtesy of Dover Transport Museum

* Glenton Tours, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Glenton%20Tours

**Dover Transport Museum, https://www.dovertransportmuseum.org.uk/

Travelling on LCC tram number 1622 with memories of the Old Kent Road and Well Hall

Now I missed travelling on a tram by just a matter of years, but had I been born a little earlier I might well have been on this one that rattled its way up from the Old Kent Road to Westminster.

And just possibly also taken the 44 and 46 which connected Eltham with Woolwich.

According to family legend I was actually there at New Cross when the last London tram took its last journey in the summer of 1952 but until yesterday I never thought I would come close to one.

Now I know I could visit the London Transport Museum where there is a fine 1910 tram from West Ham Tramways Corporation, but my number 40 which was the one my dad would have used is even closer to home.

It is in the collection of CRICH TRAMWAY VILLAGE just south of Matlock which is no distance for me but I accept is a long way from south east London.

But your loss is our gain and I have planned my visit.

In the meantime I have settled for a picture of LCC number 1622 which plied route 40 from New Cross.

It comes from my old friend Andy Robertson who has been recording the changes to the twin cities of Manchester and Salford and decided to take an afternoon off and visit the museum.

And there is plenty else to see from a Blackpool tram complete with its destination board announcing a Tour of the Illuminations to the Red Lion Hotel which was once in Stoke on Trent and facing demolition was rescued by the museum rebuilt and happily once again serves up a pint.

In his collection of pictures from the day is the sign on a Leeds tram informing passengers that “Spitting is Forbidden” which made sense in an age before antibiotics and the dangers from a range of infectious diseases was all too common.

It is I think Andy's favourite  while for me it will always be the number 40

Which just leaves me to mention Trams in Eltham by John Kennett** and The Campaign To Save The London Trams by Ann Watkins which includes a chapter on that last tram at New Cross.

Picture; trams at the Crich Tramway Village, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson, 

* Crich Tramway Village, http://www.tramway.co.uk/

** Trams in Eltham  by John Kennett, Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/publications.php

*** The Campaign To Save The London Trams by Ann Watkins, http://www.kentarchaeology.ac/authors/019.pdf

An adventure, a fish market and the promise of some gruesome stories ..... Saturdays at the Tower of London part 1

Now the thing about adventures is that they are best done with friends.

It lessens the risks and more importantly offers up plenty of opportunities to relive the events which with the retelling become more exaggerated and all the more memorable.

That said there was always one place I did on my own and that was the Tower of London.

I may well have done the odd trip with Jimmy but I was best pleased when I did it alone which allowed me to explore the place for as long as I wanted, following  which ever guide took my fancy and above all just letting the walls, the stories and the exhibits work on my imagination.

And on a Saturday it was free to anyone under the age of 16 which meant that after buying the return ticket to London Bridge what was left of my pocket money could be spent on a packet of toffees and a couple of postcards of the Tower.

But as powerful an attraction as the place was it was just part of the day which began with the wait at Queens Road Station standing on the platform in the sky looking down between the gaps in the wooden floorboards at the ground below.

Once on the train there was the journey which got more exciting as the railway lines grew on either side offering up a shedload of other trains to stare at and making the arrival at London Bridge a pretty spectacular affair.

And there were all those flats, warehouses and factories to take in including the old Peak Frean biscuit plant which announced its presence by that thick sweet smell which lingered in the compartment long after the place had been passed.

But for me in anticipation of the Tower there was the walk across the old London Bridge with the warehouses fronting the south side of the river, each with their cranes and more often a ship lying alongside which was followed by the descent down a flight of dark steps to the Lower Road and the fish market

I usually got there around 10 on a Saturday by which time all the fish had been sold and apart from the odd porter there were just the men sweeping up.

That said there were still the odd bits of ice and discarded fish in the gutters and of course that all pervading smell.

A few hours earlier and the place would haven teeming with activity but even given the emptiness of the Lower Road there were those promising smaller roads including the one that led to the Monument which at the time had one of the best views across the City from its observational platform. And cost from memory 6d.

Not that I over dawdled around here for the prize was the Tower.

Pictures; The Tower of London , 2015 from the collection of Ryan Ginn and Billingsgate Fish Market, 1927, courtesy of MARK FLYNN POSTCARDS, http://www.markfynn.com/index.html

Waiting for the tally man

There is always a tally man.

The name may change, and so to the description of the business.

We knew it as “tally” but others will remember it as “the never never” or “HP” and today it’s simply  “credit.”

But the process was pretty much the same and consisted of the opportunity to buy goods in advance of the full payment up front.

Now I am not being sniffy about this.

For my family and for many others if we wanted to share in that new consumer boom of the 1950s and 60s, we pretty much were forced into putting down the deposit and paying monthly.

In our case it was a chap with a van who came round each week collected a small regular payment, brought back the shiny catalogue and if mother had decided on something he would bring it out of the said van.

I have completely forgotten the chap’s name which might have been Terry and until recently I had also forgotten the name of the firm which was John Blundell Ltd, but also seems to have traded as Edward Evans and maybe also the Hartlepools Mutual Trading Company Ltd.

But as you do in going through some old family stuff there, dating back to the 1960s were the payment cards.

There are no dates on any of the cards, but we were round 116 and our payment day was “day 6” which I suppose was a Friday and was always in the evening.

The weekly sums paid back range from 4 shillings up to a £1 and mother never seemed to miss a payment which given that a £ in 1964 was still a substantial amount of money was a serious commitment.

I have no idea when it began but Terry or his name sake was already a feature of the weekly routine in the late 1950s when were still in Lausanne Road and carried on when we moved to Well Hall.

From memory Dad always paid on the nail for the big domestic items like the washing machine, telly, and wireless and so the tally man was there for those items of clothes, bedding and shoes.

And these were always in demand given that there were five of us all at school.

The down side of the system was that it was no cheaper than credit today.

So the “Terms” on the card announce that “5p per week for every £1 in value or as arranged, Payments may be used as a deposit on a later purchase [and] Special terms arranged for Furniture and Cycles.”

Added to which of course many of the clothes items may well have been almost worn out before mother had finished paying for them.

But that was the price you paid, and while some more virtuous than me will mutter “we always saved up for and then bought” I have to point out that there was and still is not an option for many.
Not that this is a rant, or a reflection on the power of consumerism, just a reflection on how we lived prompted by the discovery of some old credit card payment books.

Location; Eltham, New Cross, Peckham and pretty much everywhere.

Pictures; tally Payments Cards circa 1964, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Birthdays, cook books and a television series .............. watching the years go by in Lausanne Road

Toys I knew ........... the Dinky petrol tanker, 1956

Today was  my birthday, not that there is anything particularly remarkable about that, after all they come round every year and at 75 there are fewer ahead of me than behind.

But surrounded by the cards and the texts and other electronic messages I got to thinking about birthdays I have known.

The first thing to say is that we didn't go in for parties back in the 1950s in Lausanne Road although I am not quite sure why.

Hornby Doublo railway carriages, 1958

My very earliest birthdays would have been during the last stages of rationing after the war.

So while bread and flour came off ration in 1948 followed by canned and dried fruit, chocolate, biscuits, treacle, syrup jellies and mincemeat the year after it would be 1953 before sugar was de-rationed.

But I suspect the truth is we just didn’t do birthday parties.

Instead you got your cards a few presents and that was it.  They were still magical and the run up to the day was exciting but there was none of the hype that surrounded the birthdays of my kids.

Toy boxes I received, 1958-60

They and their friends had themed parties which might have been football, swimming or an adventure playground followed by the meal which became more sophisticated as they grew older, until parties were something they did in a pub with friends usually after we had gone to bed.

In Lausanne Road the parties we did have were strictly family affairs and I can think of only one which involved having some friends around and that points up the simple fact that we rarely had anyone who wasn’t family in the house.

I am not sure how typical that was but I can’t remember my parents ever entertaining.

The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book, 1972

Meals were family affairs and if someone did call they never outstayed their welcome, restricting themselves to no more than two cups of tea and would be gone long before Dad came home from work.

The dinner party and the more casual impromptu fry up after a night in the pub would not come for me until I was in my twenties, married and a long way from home.

By then the height of a sophisticated evening would be the prawn cocktail, followed by the cheese fondue and black forest gateau accompanied by a bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower.

And there was nothing wrong with that, they were fun evenings some of which were quite memorable and all the more because they were the first stab at being grown up.

I still have a few of the old cook books which have stayed the course and can still be guaranteed to offer up something interesting.

That said my copy of the Galloping Gourmet was lost a long time ago but by then it was much stained with food, had lost vital pages and was as much a history book as any of the comic annuals I got for my birthday.

The Complete Galloping Gourmet Cookbook, 1972

So much so that I have tracked a copy down and ordered it up from Texas.

Its arrival was a reminder of the disastrous baked salmon dish from 1974 which stands in my memory alongside the Dinky petrol tanker that I got as a present on the birth of my twin sisters.

I had just had my ninth birthday party and it seemed a pretty neat way of celebrating their arrival.

Nothing as momentous came my way today but I did call up some old clips of the Galloping Gourmet  demonstrating that cooking can be fun.

Pictures; Dinky petrol tanker and train carriages, courtesy of Ken Jaggers, http://www.jaggers-heritage.com/ cover of the St Michael All colour Cookery Book Jeni Wright, 1974 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and The complete galloping gourmet cookbook, Graham Kerr 1972 soon to arrive from Texas

On being 10 and a bit in Edmund Waller School ........ still living with a humiliation

Some memories just do not go away despite the passage of a full half century.

Edmund Waller School, 2007

This one I have carried for 63 years and goes back to Edmund Waller School and Miss Reeves sometime in 1961.

I was the lad who had been promoted at the end of what now we would call Year 5 into the top class, which I greeted at the time as a mixed blessing.

4A was what passed in Edmund Waller as the top class from which the bright and gifted would have their chance at the 11 plus and all the promise that followed from a grammar school place.

Not that I was one of them, having attained a place in 4A, the following September I joined the lads from 3B along with various other schools in the neighbourhood and began five years at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern  School for Boys.

In the past I have been harsh about Samuel Pepys but on reflection given that they were afforded less cash than the grammar schools, I had an excellent education from teachers who were committed to giving us the best.

Me, 1961

None of which is relevant to the memory, which at the time confirmed by own low esteem.  Having not cut the muster with Miss Reeves I was made to feel even lower by a group exercise where working in teams of four we were tasked with a project.

I can’t now remember the topic, only the burning humiliation of being told by the other boy in the group that I shouldn’t make contribution.  I remember his name, and found him some years ago on a social networking site,  full of his achievements on this and the other side of the Atlantic.

I do remember one of the girls intervened on my behalf and I think I did add something, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Looking back almost sixty years I chide myself for continuing to harbour the memory, and reflect that many 11 year olds can be cruel, arrogant and self opinionated but even given those caveats, the humiliation burns deep, and will follow me to the grave.

Not that I wallow in that bitter moment, instead it is a permanent reminder that I went through an educational system predicated on the idea of failure, for with every 11 plus achiever there had to be a legion deemed second rate.

Detail of the school

The apologists for that system, then and now, will advance the fatuous argument that we were not failures just not suited for an academic career which is a falsehood, and a falsehood challenged by the many talented individuals who went on to achieve in a full range of activities despite having failed to make the grade at 11.

So I will continue to let that memory bubble to the surface from time to time.

I could have confronted the individual on his social media site, but I doubt that he would remember such a trivial incident, secure in his glittering achievements.

Nor will I name him.

Location; Edmund Waller School

Pictures; Edmund Waller School, 2007, courtesy of Liz &  Colin Fitzpatrick and me in 1961, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On becoming your dad

I have become my dad which I suppose is not that surprising really.

It is less the physical appearance although that is clearly there it is instead all those little ways that creep up on you and take you back four decades.

So I caught myself sitting in an armchair recently talking to one of my son’s and all the speech rhythms, along with the words I used and even the hand movements were dad.

He retained his hair longer than I ever did and unlike him I am useless at making and repairing things but the rest could be him.

He was a calm gentle man who always put the five of us first even down to the nightly winter task of putting a hot water bottle  into each of our beds and today whenever our kids are sleeping over I will do the same, even given that the eldest is nearly 40 and the youngest just 28.

And it made me reflect on just how much we carry forward from the lives of our parents and pass on to our own children.

Now dad was born in 1906 and mum in 1920 which pitched their formative years in the first half of the last century and some at least of those experiences flowed into how they brought us up.

Our Christmases blended the growing consumerism of the late 1950s with older traditions which with just a little tweeking could even have come out of the novels of Dickens.

Of course much of it was down to that simple fact that so much of everyday life was still the same.

The coal, the milk and the papers were delivered to the door,  Sidney the knife sharperner made a regular appearance with his hand operated machine which he pushed around the streets and Sundays remained the day you endured with little to do and little on the television to watch.

That said there are clear differences between me and my dad.

I never shared his politics which were grounded on a belief in Empire and property or for that matter his preference for plain food which “was not mixed about.”

Instead I very early adopted  mother’s politics coloured as they were by the mass unemployment and Means Testing of the 1930s.

For her class politics remained at the bedrock of how she voted and how she saw the world.

But then mum died when I was 25 while I had my dad until 1994 which perhaps has something to do with that simple fact that I grew more like him with the passage of time.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When Mrs. Jane Knapman of New Cross made the Manchester Guardian ……

Mrs Jane Knapman lived on Dennett’s Road, just off Queens Road at number 64.

Breaking news, 1885

I will have passed it most days during the 1950s and early 60s as I made my way from Lausanne Road down Mona Road, and on first to Edmund Waller School and then Samuel Pepys.

And it would have been on the route to call on John Cox who lived on the other side of Dennett’s Road.

All of which is an introduction to a story of a fire in 1885, which appeared in the Manchester Guardian later the same day.

I suppose some might murmur that it must have been a slow news day in Manchester for the paper to report the incident and even more so for people to read of a “Destructive Fire in London …. Narrow Escape”*

Equally there will be those in London who see the news story as confirmation that even a minor fire in a small road in southeast London proves the pre-eminence of the city.

The full story, 1885

But not so, this was still the first big period of mass news when papers across the country fell on stories and events from John O’Groats to Land End to feed the insatiable curiosity of the public.

Go back into the early decades of the 19^th century and murky stories of murders, sensational robberies and cases of infanticide were regularly picked up by all the regional press and passed on.

The Dennett’s Road fire was no different.  It had begun in the early hours of Tuesday was “an alarming and destructive character, by which two aged and infirm persons nearly lost their lives.”

And the story included great heroism as two policemen and a neighbour repeatedly went back into the blazing property to rescue two of the occupants.  “Constable Thursday rushed in through the suffocating smoke and found Mrs. Knapman in her bed almost unconscious … [and taking] her in his arms with some difficulty succeeded in carrying her safely into the street”

And while Constable Simpson tried to rescue Mrs. Mary Ann Saunders “who is almost bedridden” she was saved by a “neighbour James Jacobs of no.60 Dennett’s Road who twice ran into the burning building before successfully reaching Mrs. Saunders and carried the woman to the window where police constable Simpson received her”.

Dennett's Road, 1872

No sooner had Mr. Jacobs made his escape than the flames burst through the floor, and all seven rooms including the contents “were reduced to ashes”.

Along with the two elderly woman, Mr Knapman and a young woman Annie Cole escaped.

On the surface it is a pretty humdrum story despite the drama, but there is more.

I know that Mrs. Knapman who had been born in 1795 and her son were living in the house in 1881, and were still there a decade later, suggesting that despite the devastation to the house it was rebuilt.

In time I will go looking for the stories of all four, along with Albert Sanderson and his widowed mother who were lodgers in the house in 1881, and the five people who were squeezed into no. 64 a decade later.

Their occupations offer up a snapshot of the area in the 1890s.  So while John Knapman was a wheelwright working for the railways, two of the lodgers described themselves as “Railway Carriage cleaners”, Emily Hodge and her daughter were “needlewoman on shirts” and the youngest resident was a labourer.

And here there is the hint of tragedy, because Emily Hodge was a widow at 38, which replicated the story of Marian Sanderson who lived with the Knapman’s ten years earlier who was widowed by the age of 44.

Lausanne Road, 2007

Nor can I walk away without mentioning James Jacobs who was 30 years old, married to Sarah and worked as a “Leather Bag Maker”.

Together they had four children aged between 8 and just 6 months, and who had spent the early years of their marriage in the City of London and later in Surrey and had only recently settled in New Cross.

So it’s all a twisty turny story made more so because I had originally been trawling the Manchester Guardian for a piece on a Mrs. Wild who officiated at the introduction of street gas lamps in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

What caught my eye was the breaking news that in 1885 the “Madras municipality in India had extended the suffrage to women”.  There was no more just the statement that the news had come from “Madras states by telegram”.

And below that was story of the destructive fire in Dennett’s Road.

Just shows what random history can throw up.  And yes in the absence of a picture of no.64 Dennett's Road which has vanished, I include our house on Lausanne Road .... because I can.

Location; New Cross & Manchester

Picture; the news story from the Manchester Guardian, 1885, Lausanne Road, 2007 from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, and Dennett’s Road in 1872, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*“Destructive Fire in London Narrow Escape”. Manchester Guardian, September 28^th, 1885 

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 42 ............ the not so rosy glow of memories

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

It’s odd what you begin to remember and even more how once you start there seems to be no stopping the memories.

Added to which once they are published they bounce off the collective memory confirming some and bringing forth new ones.

And so it was with The Family of One End Street** which I pretty much devoured at one sitting back in the November of 1961.

It was the story of a dustman’s family set in the late 1930s and told the story of Mr and Mrs Ruggles and their seven children.

Rereading it today bits of it appear a tad sentimental but it struck a chord as a way of life I was familiar with and certainly one my parents would have recognised.

Not that the book or the story is really the point, it is more that this was the year which set me as a serious reader, falling on everything from history to science fiction and the books of Ian Fleming.

I have Mr Rhodes who was my form teacher in my first year at Samuel Pepys to thank for that.

He and later Mr Berry had a simple approach to literature which was let them read what they want and bit by bit they will either move on from science fiction to Shakespeare or they won’t but either way they will have read some books.

In the case of Mr Berry’s class it was a battered old bookshelf at that back of the room filled with whatever he could pick up from second hand book shops.

And in that fourth year of secondary school in Mr Berry's class I worked my way through a lot of science fiction, a couple of ghost’s novels and the odd master piece.

But then not all my reading was the stuff mother would have approved.

For a short while I became hooked by PARADE a magazine I have since seen described “a magazine for men” which at a shilling was a lot cheaper than Playboy but worked on the same principle, mixing pin ups, jokes and “serious” article.  Not that the articles or even the jokes were of much interest to me, nor I suspect to any other young 13 year old back in the 1960s.

Recently I came across some of them on line with their distinctive yellow or blue banner which ran along the top and down the left hand side.

Briefly they had pushed the Eagle comic into touch but it was a short love affair because by the spring of 1964 we were on the move and while some at least of the Eagle collection went with me, Parade with its pin ups and dashing titles like “June is bursting out all over” were not destined to make the journey.

Some ended up behind the garden shed and others were slowly slid one by one through a space into a locked cupboard the key of which I lost.

It is one of the few memories which has never left me and one that even now makes me a tad guilty.

But no one was hurt, and I appear to have got away with it, which is more than I can say for those memories of Edmund Waller School and the class of 4a run by Miss Reeves.

I doubt that either of us would have chosen the other as companion on a desert island and that year of unmitigated failure and humiliation was pretty much laid to rest till Robert posted his school report from 4a at Edmund Waller.

Robert had followed me the following year and like these things are Miss Reeves had taken up the mantle to see another top year 4 class through.

Her signature was there for all to see and for once I rather wish the memory of that year had laid quietly in the past.

Robert went through the year after me but there was that signature of Miss Reeves, which brought back the dismissive words to a mother that "Andrew was not academically minded" a sentence which carried a judgement which had been weighed and delivered but in the long run proved as worthless as those piles of Parade.

Pictures; cover from The Family One End Street, Puffin Edition, 1976, The Great Invasion, Leonard Cotterell, Pan edition 1961and detail from the Eagle Comic, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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*The story of one house in Lausanne Road http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**The Family of One End Street, Eve Garnett, 1937