My sister, Edna, and my elder brother, Douglas, were 11 years and 6 years older than me respectively, so I had little to do with them whilst growing up. My younger brother, Maurice, was a year or so younger than me but he was ill with TB and spent a great deal of his early life in and out of hospitals or convalescent homes. For these reasons, although I had two brothers and one sister, I was left to my own devices for most of the time.
Edna, being so much older than me, was understandably happier spending time with friends of her own age than with me. As the only girl, she also had the privilege of her own bedroom, while the rest of us had to share the other bedrooms with Dad and Mum on a rota basis. We were not allowed into Edna's room under pain of death.
Doug was very keen on the Scouts and he eventually became a Patrol Leader. When Maurice was recovering from his TB operations, he and Doug were both enthusiastically into the Cubs and Scouts scene. Most evenings were spent by them in swotting-up for the various tests and badges, and forthcoming camps were eagerly looked forward to. And me? I took no interest whatsoever in such things. Instead, my passion was for books, painting and drawing, rocks and fossils, microscopes, films, cameras and lenses.
My Father was born in Queen Street, Swindon in 1900 and his Father was living in Saint Catherine Street, New Swindon in 1879, having moved from his birthplace in Carhampton, Somerset to work with the GWR. My Father chose the Army as his lifelong career and he loved the life. Unfortunately, after many years of service, he was "invalided out" due to injuries received in service. He met my Mother in Woolwich whilst in the Army and they married there in 1924. After my Dad left the Army, my parents moved to Swindon, where my Dad obtained work with the GWR as a Storeman in the Railway Works. His health never fully recovered from his Army injuries and he suffered various serious health problems and operations throughout the period detailed here.
Dad was a very talented man but he was held back by his illnesses, his occasional drinking binges and his belief that whatever he did would fail. I suppose that would be called an Inferiority Complex these days. He could paint and draw but he was especially good at drawing cartoons. He would often nip over to The Gluepot or The Cricketers' Arms and come back asking if anyone had a piece of paper. Having got some paper, he would take a small, grubby stump of pencil out of his pocket and commence to draw. It was fascinating to watch him because his face would mirror all of the expressions as he drew them. A suitable caption was then added and he would nip back to the pub again.
His first trip to the pub was to pick up the story of some juicy event and the characters involved. Armed with this he would draw the cartoon and reappear at the pub with it. Whoever the story had been about was so amused and pleased that they readily gave him money which he promptly spent on beer. That was his normal method of financing his drinking. Other ways came to light when objects mysteriously disappeared, which often happened.
Dad also spent many hours making and painting plywood fretsaw-work toys, mostly for sale. The most delightful things he made were small Noahs' Arks complete with people and a whole host of animals in pairs. They were not for us kids, though, but were taken over the pub and sold for £3.10s which was a fortune in those days. I wonder if any of them still exist?
My Father would only wear old military clothes. I remember him from the first wearing old Army battledress uniform day after day. When my elder brother, Doug, completed his RAF National Service, he let Dad have the battledress (working blue). This RAF jacket then became his daily garb until I left home in 1958 and probably until his death in the 1960s.
My Mother was born in East Wickham, Kent in 1901. She was extremely hard working because it was a full-time, thankless task looking after all of us and trying to keep the family together. And all this with very little money. My parents often said that they only remained together for the sake of us kids so that we would not have to go into a "home."
Mum worked hard at all hours with her Singer sewing machine to make our clothes and to get some money in by making or altering clothes for other people. Usually it was me who had to deliver the clothes and collect the money. She also had a part-time job as a cleaner at the GWR Offices in Oxford Street and she often took me with her when I was younger. When the railways were Nationalised, I remember that all the office bins were stuffed with the old £1 GWR share certificates, each with a Victorian purple stamp. I took home as many as I could carry and had them for many years but they seem to have disappeared now.
Monday was a particularly heavy day for my Mother. She had to light the fire under the copper in the lean-to kitchen and the washing was boiled in there for hours, making the place hot and steamy. From time to time she would remove the heavy wooden lid from the copper and bang the washing about with a club-like, wooden implement called a copper-stick. The rinsing was done in the tin bath we used for bathing on Saturday nights. This had to be repeatedly filled and emptied again, in between keeping the fire under the copper made up. Next in the washing sequence was "mangling." For this purpose we had a huge cast-iron mangle with wooden rollers made from tree trunks. Turning the huge cast iron wheel to rotate the rollers and squeeze the water out of the clothes was very hard work, especially when us kids tried to help. The final stage was to attempt to hang all the washing out to dry in our small back yard. Usually there was too much to hang out, so the rest was placed on wooden clothes-airers in the kitchen. In between all these tasks she prepared and cooked all of our meals.
How she managed to do all this work week after week I do not know. From time to time she would stay in bed all day in the dark because of what I now think must have been Migraine. She could tolerate no form of light whatsoever at these times and the blinds and curtains were drawn in her room until she could cope again, which was usually the next day. I wish I had understood the situation at the time but, as it was, I took it all for granted, assuming that all this work was simply something that Mothers did. I am ashamed to recall that I didn't help much at all.
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Page updated 21 July 2008