Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs (8 page)

The severity of the disruptions and adverse health effects forced the British Government to bring in various measures in an attempt to end the crisis, culminating in the Clean Air Act of 1956. Among other measures, the Act introduced smoke control areas in towns and cities in which only smokeless fuels could be burnt; it also included measures to relocate power stations away from populated areas and increased the height of some chimneys. It was hoped this would reduce the amount of smoke in the atmosphere and therefore the number and severity of smogs. Although it took some time to fully take effect, the Act was eventually successful in completely eliminating the London pea-souper. For the rest of the 1950s, however, smogs did continue to blight the capital and there were several occasions when Dad was forced to walk home from work, a distance of some three miles. At times, visibility was so bad that he got lost on the way home, even though he knew the route like the back of his hand. On those days, he arrived home very late indeed, but fortunately these were rare, and became even rarer as time passed.

By the time Dad had finished his dinner, television was back on and we usually watched the early evening programmes until it was bedtime. These included
The Grove Family
(Britain's first television soap),
Fabian of the Yard,
starring Bruce Seton, Eric Robinson's
Music for You
and the American comedy series
Amos 'n' Andy
and
Burns and Allen. Sportsview,
introduced by Peter Dimmock, was naturally very popular with Dad and me, though I'm not sure what Mum made of it. We also watched the very first cookery programmes to appear on television with TV's first chef, Philip Harben. Little could he have known what he started!

When ITV began in 1955, British viewing habits were revolutionised in two ways. Firstly, they filled the 6–7pm gap with programmes like
Emergency Ward 10,
ITV's first soap opera, and, secondly, they introduced advertising to television for the very first time, beginning with Gibbs SR toothpaste. Some of the early commercials were of truly epic proportions, especially those for petrol companies like Shell and Esso. They sometimes lasted anything up to three minutes and must have cost a fortune to produce and air. Our favourites were Omo with Mrs Bradshaw, who got her shirts so white you had to wear dark glasses to avoid the dazzle, and Murray Mints, the first company to inject some humour into their advertising with thirty-second cartoon commercials – ‘Murray Mints, Murray Mints, the too good to hurry mints'. ITV also introduced popular quizzes to television, with Hughie Green's
Double Your Money
and Michael Miles'
Take Your Pick,
both transferred from Radio Luxembourg. Other popular ITV programmes included
Murder Bag,
which eventually transformed into
No Hiding Place,
starring Raymond Francis,
The Army Game
and American imports such as
I Love Lucy, I Married Joan
and
Dragnet
– ‘The story you are about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent'.

In the early days, they also combined programmes with adverts by running what were called ‘Admags'. The most popular of these was
Jim's Inn,
starring Jimmy and Maggie Hanley as the owners of a village pub. Each fifteen-minute episode consisted of customers coming into their pub to discuss the price and quality of a variety of real products over a pint. They were hugely popular at the time but the BBC objected to 
them on the grounds that they blurred the distinction between advertisements and proper programmes and amounted to sponsored programmes, at that time banned by ITV. They were eventually deemed misleading and unfair and were banned by an act of parliament in 1963.

The BBC fought back with programmes like
Hancock's Half Hour, This Is Your Life
with Eamonn Andrews and their own American imports such as
The Perry Como Show
and
Highway Patrol
with Broderick Crawford, which gave us two new catchphrases, ‘Ten-Four' and ‘Ten-Twenty', which were in constant use in our playground for a while.

By the time ITV arrived in 1955, a number of other houses in the street had television as well as us, but, just before the new channel started, we got a new set, a 17-inch Sobell, able to receive it so we were ready from day one. In the very early days, ITV was broadcast over the air waves on what was called Band Three, as opposed to BBC being broadcast on Band One. Bertha next door bought her new television a couple of months after the start of ITV but she was determined to let everyone know she was the proud owner of a set that could receive the new station. On the day it arrived, she got her husband to stay indoors monitoring it while she ran up and down the path outside with a piece of aerial wire in her hand attached to the television, shouting loudly, ‘Can you see Band Three yet, Geoffrey?' Poor Geoffrey replied several times that he could, but this didn't stop Bertha running up and down, continuing to shout about Band Three! She only stopped when she was sure that the whole neighbourhood knew they were wealthy enough to afford a new television with ITV.

Although we watched a good deal of television, the wireless was still important and we carried on listening to a number of the popular programmes such as
Henry Hall's Guest Night
and
Have a Go
with Wilfred Pickles – ‘Give him the money, Mabel'.

When I reached the age of ten and was allowed to stay up a bit later before bed, we started going to the pictures on a fairly regular basis. This began with
The Wizard of Oz,
and moved on to most of the big films of the 1950s, including war epics like
The Cruel Sea
and
The Colditz Story,
adventure films such as
The Buccaneer
and
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men,
Brian Rix comedies like
Dry Rot
and
Sailor Beware
and Dad's favourite,
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan
starring Robert Morley and Maurice Evans.

We also went to the Hackney Empire to see live shows on a few occasions. By the mid-1950s, the old Victorian and Edwardian type of Music Hall show had mostly vanished but a few theatres still valiantly battled on, the Hackney Empire on Mare Street being one of them. I can remember seeing the comedian Terry Thomas, also one of the first drag acts, Mrs Shufflewick, and the Billy Cotton Bandshow there. To me live theatre was a wonderful experience and much more interesting and exciting than the cinema. The plush seating and surroundings made me feel as though we were going somewhere very special and I really looked forward to our all too rare visits to the Hackney Empire. These visits gave me a love of the theatre, which has lasted to this day.

T
he weekend started at nine o'clock on Saturday morning when I got up to listen to Derek McCulloch, universally known as ‘Uncle Mac', introduce
Children's Favourites
on the wireless with the familiar words ‘Hello, children everywhere.' There then followed an hour of records requested by children of all ages, ranging from hymns and classical music to children's songs and novelty records. The most popular songs turned up regularly and it was always somewhat comforting to hear ‘The Ugly Duckling', ‘Tubby the Tuba', ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff', ‘The Happy Wanderer', ‘The Laughing Policeman' and my personal favourite, ‘The Runaway Train', week after week.

One week, I even sent in a request myself for ‘Nymphs and Shepherds'. Written by Henry Purcell, this was one of the classical pieces that was played fairly regularly. Although I
did quite like it, it wasn't my favourite and it was really Dad's influence that made me request it. He thought it would sound better if my name was read out asking for that rather than, say, ‘Tubby the Tuba'. So I wrote in asking for it to be played for me and ‘my brother also' as I felt I'd have more chance of getting my letter read out if I was requesting it for someone else as well as just me. The week after I'd requested it, Uncle Mac did indeed play the song, but, as he was reading out the names, Mum asked me what I wanted for breakfast so I missed it and I never knew if mine was one of the names read out or not. It was very frustrating; it might have been my first moment of national fame but I'll never know!

When the programme finished, we went out to the shops and stalls in Chatsworth Road. In the early fifties, some food was still rationed. Rationing had been introduced during the War to preserve food stocks, a vital necessity for an island nation. With the country still in bad shape following the end of the War, food rationing was only gradually faded out. Bread was the first to come off in 1948, while the last was meat and bacon, not taken off until June 1954. Families were issued with ration books, containing coupons for the various different commodities that had to be handed to the shopkeeper when buying goods. They removed the coupons while you handed over the appropriate amount of money. To buy most rationed items, each family had to register at one chosen shop for each type of foodstuff and the shopkeeper was then provided with enough food for registered customers only. As an example of this, we were registered for meat at a butcher's in Chatsworth Road called Gunner's and we had to buy all our meat there. There were two other butcher's
shops in Chatsworth Road, Harry Blyth and Hammett's. I can remember my parents becoming increasingly disillusioned with Gunner's. They looked longingly into the windows of the other two butchers, who they felt offered better meat. In the end, after some prolonged correspondence with the Ministry of Food, Dad managed to get our designated butcher's shop changed to Blyth's. About a month later, meat rationing was ended.

For some reason, most of the shops and stalls we frequented were on the left-hand side going up from Millfields Road. The first, on the corner, was the Stadium Stores. This was a small shop piled almost up to the ceiling with cans and packets of groceries. There was only a narrow passage through to the one part of the counter that was free from clutter. This was where Mr Bogush, the owner, sat and where you bought your goods. The main thing we used this shop for was cat food. I was generally sent out to buy four tins of Kit-e-Kat. They were 7½d each, so four came to half a crown or 2/6d (12½p). For some reason, however, they came in packs of three, so Mr Bogush always had to break open one pack to give me the one to go with the other three. The Stadium Stores was also used for emergency supplies if we'd run out of something, but it was not on our general Saturday shopping route.

Next to the Stadium Stores was a café where we sometimes stopped to buy ice cream. They had a serving hatch that opened directly onto the street, and we would take a bowl along and they would scoop the ice cream straight into the bowl with wafers for Mum and Dad and a cornet for me. We never used the café itself and as far as I can remember we never actually stepped foot over its threshold. The only other shop we used
in this lower part of Chatsworth Road was the greengrocer, Godlonton's. At that time everything was loose and you'd take your large shopping bag along, ask for 5lb of potatoes (or whatever) and they would just be tipped straight into your bag. We bought all our fruit and vegetables here including bananas, which Dad considered to be the height of luxury. Bananas had been very scarce during the War, which is what had led him to this conclusion and, even though they were not so difficult to find by the 1950s, he still treated them with the utmost respect. Because of this, we had them only very occasionally and, when we did, he always told us we weren't allowed to eat more than one a day.

Next door to Godlonton's was a shoe mender called Thomas. We would always re-sole or re-heel a shoe rather than throw it away and have to buy a new pair.

The shops we frequented on Saturdays were further up and included Gunner's, and later Blyth's and Hammett's after meat had come off ration, and Sorrell's, where we would buy our cooked meats, such as ham and liver sausage. A great favourite of Dad's, which we regularly bought here, was wurst, a German salami, which he fried with egg. I thought it was delicious.

Our chemist was formally known as Benjamin's, but we always called it Benjy's. There were a couple of chemist shops in Chatsworth Road, and the other was called Fox, Wells. They were both easily identifiable by the four brightly coloured carboys (large bottles) that stood in their window. Like the red and white striped pole that projected outside barber shops, these carboys were signs that immediately identified the type of shop it was.

Getting a prescription made up took a bit more work than it does these days when most items come as pre-packaged pills. Then, all the pills were loose in large jars and the chemist had to pour out the requisite number through a measuring device into a plain cardboard box. There also seemed to be a lot more medicine in bottles rather than tablets dispensed in those days – again poured out of a larger container into the chemist's own stock of bottles. Ointments and creams too were made up by the chemist, often grinding the ingredients in a pestle and mortar. It seemed a much harder job in those days than just picking the requisite boxes off a shelf.

As well as getting our prescriptions made up here, we used the chemist to get our film developed. This was in the days when photos were taken on 120 or 127 roll film, usually with just eight photos on the roll. After the photos were taken, the roll would be removed from the camera and taken to the chemist who would then send them away for developing. After about a week of eager anticipation, the photos and negatives would be returned in a small paper wallet and collected. All so different from today's instant digital age!

The baker we used was Carrington Brothers; here we bought Wonderloaf or Carrington's own baked split tin, which was wrapped in tissue paper. This was on the corner of Chatsworth Road and Rushmore Road.

On the opposite corner was an off-licence and next to that was Harry Shaw's magnificent corn shop. His whole shop, as well as the pavement in front, was full of sacks of seed and grain, such as barley and oats, which all together gave off a wonderful smell. We frequented the shop often to buy items such as lentils and butter
beans and especially split peas, which Mum used to make pease pudding, a staple item of our diet, but you could find all types of food and pet food for sale in those sacks. You bought it by weight and the seeds or beans or whatever it was would be scooped up out of the sack and poured into a paper bag.

Next to the corn merchant was my favourite shop in Chatsworth Road, Willis's, the sweet shop. Most of its contents were just heaven! My absolute favourites were Refreshers but I also liked aniseed balls, bull's eyes, Love Hearts, blackjacks, rhubarb & custard and fruit salad (at a farthing each), sweet cigarettes, sherbet dabs, sherbet fountains and Spangles, which were small square boiled sweets in a packet and came in many different flavours, my favourite being the Old English packet containing liquorice, mint humbug, cough candy, butterscotch and pear drop flavours.

When I had a bit of extra cash, I was able to buy chocolate bars such as Fry's Five Boys, Tiffin, Punch and Milk Motoring. Another favourite was ‘Spanish', which was what we always called liquorice and it came in various forms including long strings, wheels, pipe-shaped and even liquorice root. You could also buy packets of Smith's crisps here. There was only one flavour – plain. But they came with a little blue bag of salt that you had to undo and sprinkle over the crisps yourself, except that most times you couldn't because the salt had got damp and would just fall out of the bag in one lump. But we still loved the crisps whether they were all equally salted or not. Willis's was also where my parents would buy our Easter Eggs – it was such a thrill to see mine on Easter morning with curly white icing spelling out my name on the chocolate.

A little further along was Arthur Toms, noted eel and pie house. This was where we bought our pie and mash and eel liquor, the only takeaway we had in those days. Whenever we decided to have pie and mash, I would be sent off with a large basin and a jug to buy this ambrosia of the gods. The pies and mash would be put into the basin and the liquor poured into the jug. Pie 'n' mash and eel liquor was a longstanding cockney tradition dating back to at least the eighteenth century. Originally, the pie filling was eel caught in the River Thames but gradually meat took over as a filling and they were made from any meat that was cheap and available. By the twentieth century, the pie had become standardised to contain minced beef.

The pie itself is a normal pastry but it is important that, while it is firm and crusty on top, the bottom has to be soft. Originally, the accompanying liquor was made from the water used to cook the eels in, flavoured and coloured with parsley. Even after eels were no longer used as the filling, the liquor was still made with eel stock. Before starting on it, the pie had to be opened at the top and a liberal dose of vinegar poured in. The whole meal was then eaten with a spoon and fork, never a knife. In common with all other Pie & Mash shops, Toms continued the eel tradition by selling jellied eels as an additional accompaniment or a separate snack. These were eels chopped into rounds and boiled in water and vinegar and then allowed to cool. As eels are naturally gelatinous the cooking process released jelly, which solidified on cooling. This was bolstered by some aspic jelly made from eel bones and the whole dish was served up in a small bowl with vinegar and a liberal dose of pepper.

As an alternative to having cold jellied eels, you could have the eel stewed and eat it while still warm. In the front window of the shop was a large tray of live eels, wriggling away for all they were worth. If you wanted one with your pie and mash, you told Mr Toms which one you wanted and he'd hoick it out of the tray, cut its head off and drop it into a vat of steaming water. A few minutes later, it would be done to perfection, taken out of the vat and chopped into rounds to make a tasty supplement to your meal. Although we usually bought our pie and mash to take home, we did sometimes eat in the shop, and, here again, Arthur Toms followed the age-old tradition of white-tiled walls, a black-and-white patterned mosaic floor and marble-topped tables laid out in rows with bench seats on either side.

I still hold to the view that pie and mash is the best food in the world, even if nowadays you don't have to take your own jug and basin along to the shop.

There were two more grocer's shops on the left-hand side of the road, Tesco and Victor Value. When we first started using them, they were just like any other grocer's shop of the period, with the assistant fetching your shopping for you from the shelf or the stockroom. If you wanted a lot of shopping, it was normal to have it all written down and to hand the list to the assistant. However, quite early on, first Victor Value and then Tesco turned into self-service shops with baskets at the entrance so you could do the shopping yourself and take your purchases to the till. It was a completely novel idea but a sign of things to come. That there was an early Tesco ‘supermarket' on Chatsworth Road was very appropriate as Jack Cohen, founder of the modern-day, multi-billion-pound worldwide business,
began life as a market trader. His first stall was in Well Street in Hackney, his second in Hoxton and his third in this very same Chatsworth Road, some years before he started the famous Tesco brand name.

We probably used no more than three establishments regularly on the other side of the road. Right at the top, where Chatsworth Road changed its name to Brooksby's Walk, was the laundry where we used to take what we called our ‘bagwash' once a week. No sitting in front of machines spinning your laundry round in those days. You took your washing in a large bag to the laundry and collected it a few days later, undried and unpressed and reeking of bleach.

Once, the laundry lost our bagwash and, in spite of Dad producing the receipt, they denied all responsibility for losing it. Dad was furious and wrote to our local M.P., Herbert Butler, who took up the case on our behalf. After several letters backwards and forwards, the laundry agreed to pay compensation, though they never accepted liability. It didn't really matter whether they did or not as Dad refused to use that laundry ever again.

Back in Chatsworth Road, the other two shops I loved were next to each other; the first was called the Biscuit Box, and it just sold biscuits. Like the corn merchant, the shop and the pavement outside were piled high with tins of loose biscuits. These were bought by weight, scooped out and placed in a paper bag. The tins of broken biscuits were our favourites, as you got a big variety of different biscuits for a lower price. Next door was Williams Brothers, a grocery store. They operated a loyalty token system. Every time you bought something, the cashier would give you tokens based
on the amount spent and you could use these towards future purchases in the shop.