Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs (4 page)

The kitchen cabinet where we kept the newspaper was also home to the shilling jar – an old malt jar – for the electric meter. We tried to remember to put a shilling in before the electric ran out but very often forgot, so quite frequently we would be watching television when suddenly it, and all the lights, would
go off. One of us then had to grope our way through the dark to find the shilling jar and then the electricity meter, which was in the hallway on the other side of the house. Whenever we got a shilling in change, it would go in the jar – I don't think we ever actually spent a shilling piece in the shops.

Every quarter, the electricity man would come and empty our meter. He would give us a small rebate and we'd put the shillings back in the jar. Once, we completely ran out of shillings when the electricity went out. The only shilling in the house was an eighteenth-century George III shilling, which Dad had managed to get hold of somewhere. Reluctantly, he put this in the meter but told Mum to make sure when the electricity man came to get this one back in the rebate. Fortunately, it was rebated safely.

While I was enjoying what can only be described as an idyllic childhood in my prefab on the field, I was blissfully unaware of the major trauma my parents were going through. John had passed his 11-plus exam with such a high mark that he was offered the chance of going to public school, either Christ's Hospital, Westminster or Bancroft's, on a scholarship. John's headmaster, Mr Foreman, advised my parents that, of the three, Christ's Hospital near Horsham in Sussex would be the best bet. Mum and Dad didn't want him to leave to go to a boarding school and couldn't understand why a child should be removed from the security of his family at the very young age of eleven. However, they also realised that this would be a wonderful opportunity for him and, after much agonising and discussions with John, it was decided he would fill in the application form for Christ's Hospital. Shortly afterwards, he was asked to sit an entrance exam. Dad took him up to a place
in Holborn, where he underwent a medical, an interview and a written exam. When he came out, Dad asked him what sort of questions he'd had to answer.

John said, ‘How many 2½d stamps can you buy for a £1 was one of them.'

Dad pulled a face and said, ‘Did you know?'

John replied, ‘Of course, ninety-six.'

Dad knew then that he was going to lose his elder son to a boarding school in Sussex. Shortly afterwards, a letter came from the school confirming his place and instructions on when and how to get there. He was to go to Victoria station on the appointed day and join up with the other masters and boys on the train to Horsham.

When the day came, there was hardly a dry eye in the house – apart from mine, as I had no idea what was going on. He took his leave of Mum at the prefab and Dad accompanied him to Victoria station on the 38 bus. Grasping his small attaché case in his hand, John made his way to the appointed platform and was caught up in a vast milling crowd of old hands and new boys, many of the latter in tears, along with their parents. John joined his group and Dad hung around, waiting for the inevitable guard's whistle. It came all too soon and the train slowly but surely chugged out of the station. Dad waited until the train finally disappeared from sight then made his way back to the bus stop with a very empty feeling inside. It was the end of an era. In fact, more so than anyone imagined at the time as, apart from holidays, John never again lived at home, eventually going straight on to university and then to work, sharing a flat with a friend before getting married.

Bad as this was for my parents, the trauma wasn't over yet. When John came home for the Christmas holidays, he told them he didn't want to go back and didn't like it at school. Mum would have pulled him out there and then, but, in spite of wanting nothing better than to have John back home, Dad knew that this was a wonderful opportunity for him and felt it was essential he should see it through. Two wretched people left the prefab on a bleak January morning to catch the bus to Victoria. In fact, it turned out that an older boy was bullying John and this was the main cause of his unhappiness. A bad enough thing normally, but being on your own and miles away from your loved ones must have made it a hundred times worse. When the problem was eventually sorted out, John took to life at Christ's Hospital with great relish and never looked back.

It wasn't long before I too was to experience a mini-trauma of my own when I suddenly found myself parted from Mum and plonked in front of a desk in a classroom with about thirty other children. A woman was introduced to us as Miss Leach who, apparently, was to be my teacher, whatever that was.

Yes, schooldays had arrived. On the morning they did, I was blissfully unaware of the life-changing event about to overwhelm me. That fateful day, Mum got me ready and took me out (I suppose I thought we were going shopping or something). Instead, we entered this big building with hundreds of other children, went into a large room where I was placed behind a desk while Mum stood by the door, waving… and then left. I had never been parted from her before so I just leaned forward, put my head in my hands and sobbed. I'm sure
it must have been just as hard – if not harder – for Mum to leave me in that state.

At lunchtime, when she came to pick me up, I'm sure she must have been very worried about what she would find and how I was bearing up but she was in for a bit of a shock as I told her I couldn't wait to return to school. Miss Leach was reading us a story and I was eager to get back to hear the rest of it!

And so, with school now about to play a major role in my everyday life, a whole new era of growing up in London's East End in the 1950s and 1960s began.

A
normal school day usually started with Mum waking me up. Getting out of bed could be a real chore in the winter. Without central heating and with our main source of warmth just the open coal fire in the living room, it could be, and usually was, freezing cold. Many times I would get up and see the window covered with Jack Frost's patterns expertly drawn all over the inside of the bedroom window. After shivering my way through the morning ablutions, it was with a great sense of relief that I went into the living room to warm myself up before the roaring coal fire. Then it was into the kitchen for some breakfast. This was usually cereal: Weetabix, Rice Krispies and Shredded Wheat were my favourites. Mum always made them with warm milk and it wasn't until many years later that I realised most people had cold milk on their breakfast cereal.

At that time there wasn't the great variety of cereal that there is now and, when a new one hit the market in 1953, Mum gave it to me to try out. I took one mouthful and decided that I didn't like Shreddies at all! I don't know what happened to the rest of the box, but I certainly couldn't eat any more. At the time many different small toys were given away inside cereal packets. About a year later, Shreddies were offering some glow-in-the-dark stickers that I thought looked really good so I persuaded Mum to buy another packet with the argument that perhaps I might like them now. I still only got as far as the first mouthful, but at least I had some excellent stickers.

Mum always took me to infants' school. It was about a seven-minute walk if you crossed the bomb site in Chatsworth Road, a little bit longer if you went round it (this was the same bomb site where John had injured his leg just before I was born). The site, a whole block of about ten former shops between Elderfield Road and Lockhurst Street, was left derelict well into the 1950s and was a real adventure ground for children as we used to climb about over the rubble and broken glass, looking for anything that might be valuable or just playing in the ruins. There was no thought of it being cordoned off as it surely would be today; it was just left open. The fact that it was actually quite dangerous while at the same time a magnet to young children never seemed to occur to anyone.

The school I went to was Rushmore Road Primary School. Our school colours were maroon and grey and I proudly wore my cap, blazer, school tie and socks. My shirt was white in warm weather and grey in cold weather; I wore grey flannel shorts whatever the weather.

School introduced me to a whole new set of people, but
Barry Tickton, whom I already knew, took me under his wing to explain a few things about life at school and, indeed, life generally. Barry's first piece of advice was to avoid the large dogs called ‘sarnations' as they would bite you if you got too close. His second was to avoid old men as they would ‘pinch' you and run off with you. For some time, I was very wary of the old boys who used to sit on the park benches in Millfields, puffing away at their pipes, taking snuff and chatting. As I passed them by, keeping my distance as much as possible, I often wondered where it was they would take you after they'd pinched you. Fortunately, we had neither ‘sarnations' nor old men at Rushmore Road school so I felt pretty safe once inside.

My first teacher was Miss Leach. Mysteriously, at the beginning of the second term, she became Mrs Farioni. We all speculated on this change of name with some wild imaginings but I don't think any of us hit on the truth that she had got married to Mr Farioni during the holiday. Being a spy or a criminal wanted by the police seemed a much more plausible and interesting reason to change your name.

The Headmistress was Miss Taylor. On our second day at school, she came round to introduce herself and to find out our names. I sat next to a boy called Freddy Loosey, and when Miss Taylor asked his name he, of course, said, ‘Freddy Loosey.' Miss Taylor put on a very serious face and said, ‘Well, you'd better tighten yourself up then.' For some reason I thought this was really funny and laughed out loud. Freddy scowled at me.

I had two more teachers in the Infants' School, Mrs Raymond and Miss Corbett. Miss Corbett had grey hair and seemed to me to be at least a hundred years old. Sometimes we had to take
our exercise books out to the front and stand by her at the desk while she went through our work. I always hated it when her hair touched my face as it seemed to sting; I don't know what she put on it.

Of course, it was at school that we learnt about reading, writing and doing sums, though I could already do a bit of each before ever going to school, thanks to my parents. In our first year, we wrote on individual blackboards with a chalk but progressed to small books and pencils as we moved up the school. Although we did our three Rs through most of the week, it wasn't all hard work. Miss Leach/Mrs Farioni sometimes used to take us out into the playground to play games with us, the most popular being ‘What's the time, Mr Wolf?' and ‘The Farmer's in his Den':

We never played these games with Mrs Raymond or Miss Corbett but Friday afternoon was always set aside for play, when we were allowed to bring in a toy from home.

I have two outstanding personal memories of Infants' School. The first was when HM the Queen and Prince Philip undertook a six-month tour of the Commonwealth, starting in late 1953 after the Coronation. One morning in Assembly with the whole school present, Miss Taylor asked us if we knew where the Queen was at that moment. I was the only child in the
whole school to put his hand up. ‘She's crossing the Tasmanian Sea,' I said. I think I must have heard this on the wireless before I left for school that morning, but, anyway, it was the correct answer and Miss Taylor was suitably impressed with my general knowledge. (This must have been the start of my quiz career that was to see me defeat C.J. in my head-to-head challenge on BBC TV's
Eggheads
in 2007 and win £10,000 on ITV's
Tipping Point
in 2013!)

The second was when Miss Taylor was casting for the school's Christmas play. All I can remember about the play now is that it starred three pixies called Hop, Lol and Gig, who came across a little girl lost in the woods. The first line was spoken by Hop, who said, ‘Hello, little girl.' I was given the part of Hop because I was the only boy in the school who could pronounce girl as it was written. Everyone else said, ‘'ello, little gel,' except Bob Marriott, who was keen to show that he had learnt not to say ‘gel' and said, ‘Hello, little gol,' instead.

The Junior School was across the road from the Infants' School and took up the whole block on Chatsworth Road between Rushmore Road and Rushmore Crescent. Whereas the Infants' School was very straightforward, with all the classrooms being situated off the main hall, the Junior School was a maze of corridors, stairs and rooms that took me the four years I was there to get to know my way round. There were some strange doors that just seemed to lead nowhere and stairs you could see from the outside but couldn't find on the inside; also a staircase with a door halfway up it, which took you on to an entirely different staircase, leading to the library. Hogwarts could well have been modelled on Rushmore Road Junior School.

My first class was 1A, which was on the ground floor and reached through a tunnel that led off the playground and into a small corridor, off which were three classrooms: one on the left, 4A, and two on the right, 1A and 1B. The hall was also off this corridor to the right, while the dining hall was off to the left. My teacher was Mr Moore. He was quite a pleasant sort, though he did have his off days when no one could do anything right, but these were fortunately quite rare. He was probably in his late twenties, though he seemed very old to me, as did all the teachers. Whereas in the Infants' School we mainly learnt the three Rs, in the Junior School we now began to learn other subjects such as history, geography and nature study, all of which I found infinitely more interesting than English and arithmetic.

The normal school day was broken into several lessons, all of them, with the exception of music, taken by Mr Moore. We sat in blocks of six, with our desks pushed together. Our desks had a circular hole in the top at the front made for a porcelain inkwell as we were now expected to use pen and ink. We were all issued with a standard pen made up of a yellow wooden shaft with a small nib on the end. There was no ink reservoir, so we had to continually dip the nib into the inkwell, scratch out a few words and dip in again. The first thing we did with these pens was to learn ‘joined-up' writing.

Classes were streamed by ability and, even within our class, Mr Moore streamed us by putting the top performers together on one table and so on down to the bottom end. The desks were arranged so that the top table was in the back right of the class and the bottom table at the lower left. There were three of
us who were always on the top table: my friend Andy Shalders, Margaret Smith and me (the other occupants varied over the course of the four years). The only problem with being on the top table at the back of the class was that from about the age of ten onwards I couldn't see the blackboard! I didn't say anything about it as I thought it was normal and that no one else could see it from that distance. However, it was the first sign that I was actually short-sighted. Eventually, at the age of eleven, I started wearing glasses and things improved.

Looking back on it, I am sure that it was here that I first developed my love of history, which is something that has defined my whole life and career ever since. It was the Ancient Egyptians that did it. I found stories about mummies and pharaohs absolutely enthralling. Ancient Egypt was a completely different world, and as fascinating to me as any alien planet. One of the school history books described the life of the Ancient Egyptians through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy of the time and I was able to identify with him completely as I became fully absorbed in his world.

As well as these more academic subjects, we also had time for the arts, music and painting. Not that my painting was anything to write home about as I could never get the hang of drawing a human body properly and simply drew a big round circle for the body, a smaller one for the head just stuck on top (no neck) and four limbs sticking out at forty-five-degree angles. We used to do painting once a week when some of the better artists were chosen to paint a big picture that would be stuck up on the wall. I think in the four years I was in Junior School I was only once asked to paint a big picture and this was mainly because I
had written a good story and Mr Moore thought I should have the chance of illustrating it. I seem to recall the picture was of a large green fire-breathing dragon, which had a big round circle for the body, a smaller one for the head, etc., etc.

At the end of playtime, the teacher on playground duty blew a whistle and we all had to line up in our classes – no talking – to wait for the signal to move off to our class. A few weeks after I started Junior School, we were lining up in the playground when Mr Brown, an ancient teacher with snow-white hair, appeared and led us up the stairs to a different classroom. ‘He's made a mistake, he thinks our classroom is upstairs,' I thought to myself. However, I soon discovered he wasn't wrong as he took us into the music room; this was a room with a stepped floor. At the front of the room was a piano, at which Mr Brown sat, while the rest of us sat on the steps. His first act was to ask all the boys to sing a few notes individually. After listening, he proclaimed us either a ‘singer' or a ‘growler'. I was designated a growler and had to sit with my fellow growlers on the front step. Growlers were never given a second chance, so I remained one all my Junior School life and was mostly ignored by Mr Brown as he felt we had no chance of ever being able to sing properly.

Most of our music lessons consisted of Mr Brown teaching us to sing Olde English folk songs such as ‘Barbara Allen', ‘Sir Eglamore' and ‘The British Grenadiers'. One of the first songs he taught us was ‘The Owl', with words by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which had the refrain: ‘Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.' After we'd practised it a few times, Mr Brown felt that we were ready to sing it all the
way through. As he struck the first chord on the piano, the boy sitting next to me, David Burt, whispered in my ear, ‘Come closer to me and listen to what I sing.' He then sang his own adjustment to the refrain, ‘Alone and warming his five tits, The white owl in the belfry sits.' He thought this was hilarious, but, having led a sheltered life myself, I didn't understand what was so funny.

Mr Brown was very much an old-style teacher. He had been at Rushmore many years and was well known to my brother, who had left Rushmore Junior School three years earlier. In fact, my family all knew about Mr Brown because John had told us a story about him, some years previously. Apparently, one morning, just before school was due to start, one of the boys walked out of the playground intending to go to Willis's sweet shop across the road. Mr Brown saw him leave and followed him. Just outside the school gate, he put his fingers down the back of the boy's blazer and hauled him back, saying, ‘Where are you going, cre-a-ture? Get back here!' As befitted a teacher of the old school, Mr Brown was not above doling out corporal punishment on a frequent basis, most often a clip round the ear or a ruler across the knuckles. Sometimes, if it was serious enough, he would send the miscreant to the Headmaster to be caned and the misdeed written in the dreaded punishment book.

Of course, such behaviour would not be tolerated these days, but even worse was the game Mr Brown recommended we could play when we were outside school. He told us that when crossing the road we should wait until a car was fairly near and then run across in front of it. We could earn two points if it was
really close and one point if it was not so close. Just writing this now makes me shudder to think a) what would have happened if there'd been an accident while we were playing this, and b) what would happen to him, had he said this to a class now. Mainly because of the fact he quite often resorted to corporal punishment, Mr Brown was feared and hated by all the pupils. Everyone avoided him if they could.