It surprises me that I cannot remember what my parents' income was or where it came from. Dad must have had some income from the GWR but he was often absent from his job of Storeman because of illness. He made a little more by drawing cartoons for people and by mending and cleaning clocks and watches. Mum, having been trained as a dressmaker, did dressmaking and alterations fairly constantly to get a little money in. I suppose she must also have had Child Allowance when that came into operation but I am guessing. I have a vague idea that Dad had some sort of disability pension from the Army but I am not even sure about this. One sure fact is that we had very little money at any given time.
We were very poor for as far back as I can remember and I had to tramp all over Swindon to try to get something cheaper, perhaps only by a half-penny. One hot Summer day I came back from touring the shops, including those in Old Town, absolutely worn out. In desperation, and in an attempt to abort further errands of a similar nature, I told my Mother that we might have saved a half-penny but that I had worn out two-pennyworth of shoe leather doing it, so had we really saved anything? Her answer was a swift clip around the ear for being cheeky.
This reminds me that my shoes and other clothes were mostly hand-me-downs from my elder brother who was six years older than me. My clothing and shoes were mostly very roomy for this reason but it had one very good result. My toes are not all cramped and stunted like most other people I have known.
This in turn reminds me of the Swindon Fair which was held once a year in the GWR Park. Many different things were there such as penny-in-the-slot-machines, bumper cars (too expensive for me), swinging boats, fire-eaters, the Wall of Death motor-cycle riders (very noisy, smelly and worrying) and a variety of interesting side-shows like the Fattest Man on Earth or the Miraculous Mermaid. One of these side-shows was of a young lady who had been born with no arms. As a result, her hands, which seemed to be fully functional, were attached to her shoulders. As we filed past her in the tent she demonstrated how she could do everything with her bare feet, things like eating, drinking, scratching, writing and picking up objects. Most impressive of all, she could knit at a very fast rate with her toes, winding wool and casting stitches on and off in a very expert way. This inspired me to practice picking things up with my toes at home and I got quite good at it.
The main horror to me of our family never having enough money to get by on was the mysterious Mr. Marshall. At least, he was a total mystery to me. A Mr. Marshall session always started off like this: Mum and Dad would be arguing about not having enough money, say, for shoes for us kids. Mum would then suddenly jump up saying, "Right then, we're off to Marshalls' Office!" My heart sank at those never-to-be-forgotten words because it was always me that got dragged off up the town at a fast pace, to a building where the mysterious Mr. Marshall resided in his office. I suppose Mum picked me because I was usually the scruffiest member of the family.
Mr. Marshall was protected from clients visiting his office by a huge, solid wooden counter. Mum would explain the problem to Mr. Marshall and then ask him for money. Mr. Marshall would always refuse to start with. An argument would then develop and Mum would eventually thrust me forward as some sort of exhibit and say something along the lines of, "Look at the poor little bugger. He'll soon have to go barefoot. How would you like your kids to go around barefoot. If you don't give us what we are entitled to, I'll be over that counter and sort you out sharpish!" Mr. Marshall would then very reluctantly give Mum a voucher, in this case to take to the designated shoe shop to buy me some shoes. These episodes were an extremely embarassing trial to me and I dreaded them. Sometimes I could see one coming and I would nip out the back door and get lost but it always awaited me on my return. "Where have you been? Come on, were off to Marshalls' Office or we don't eat this week."
Mr. Rees, who lived with his wife next door to us at No.7 Emlyn Square, was a pipe smoker. He told me one day that if I would go around the streets picking up fag-ends, unroll them and fill a jam-jar with the tobacco thus obtained, he would give me sixpence for as many jars as I could collect. I was off like a shot.
This job was "money for old rope" because fag-ends were everywhere. In those days, very few people smoked filter-tipped cigarettes and every fag-end provided tobacco right through. As I collected more and more jars however, the supply naturally dwindled so that I had to ease off on the number collected to give the supply time to build up again.
At the beginning I only collected the cleanest and driest fag-ends but as time went on I began to use the others. Some were really disgusting, being slimy and wet, especially when it rained. Nevertheless, I spread the stuff out at home on a sheet of newspaper and let the tobacco dry off a bit before filling a jam-jar and taking it next door.
Dad found out one day what I was at, said it was disgusting and that I would get "consumption" or something like that and then he tackled Mr. Rees about it because he didn't believe me. He came back looking very thoughtful and suggested that I collect them for him instead. So that was the end of that little caper because Dad didn't pay.
At about the time of the end of the war it was practically impossible to obtain soft drinks like Lemonade. Then one day on my way home from school, I spotted some packets of a powder called "Lingfo-Fizz" in a shop (Woolworths, perhaps?). This powder, when mixed with water, was supposed to make a marvellous, brightly-coloured fizzy drink which was better than Lemonade. "Lingfo-Fizz for happy boys and girls!" it said on the packet. It was very cheap so I bought a few packets.
Back home at Emlyn Square I made up enough to fill one small bottle and it didn't seem too bad. It wasn't very fizzy, though and it didn't taste of much at all but it was brightly coloured. Sugar being scarce, it tasted mostly of saccharine. After that one prototype I collected some small bottles and made up all the powder I had into drinks. It was imperative to fill and seal the bottles quickly or all the fizz disappeared.
Disaster came when I attempted to sell the bottles at sixpence each, which, if successful, would have given me a handsome profit. After a couple of friends had tried it, at a discount because they were friends, and had screwed their faces up, I began to get worried. The end came when I sold one to one of my sister's friends. She eagerly removed the bottle cap, which had taken me so long to put on, and took a big swig at it. Her face distorted and she spat it straight out again and demanded her money back.
Well, I wasn't going to waste it, so over the course of a week, I got through most of the bottles I had made up. The stuff was utterly flat and foul-tasting by then, although still brightly coloured. The rest got poured down the sink when I discovered that it made me bleed at the rectum. Project abandoned.
Having collected so many fossils from Okus Quarry and lots of quartz and other minerals from the GWR Park, I decided to make the shed in our back yard into a Museum. My parents agreed provided that I cleared the shed out myself. This took a while because it was mostly full of huge black spiders, firewood and odds and ends of all sorts. The spiders made me a bit anxious because Dad had made one of them into a sort of pet. He fed it every day with blow-flies or whatever was about at the time. It would wait in its nest until he placed the prey on its web, then would rush out and drag it back in. This spider was enormous, very hairy and coal-black in colour.
When all was ready I arranged all the specimens in the shed and put a notice on the door stating that it was a Museum and that the entrance fee was sixpence. I fondly thought that people would flock to see my specimens because, after all, it would have saved them having to go to Okus Quarry or down the Park.
No-one came. Eventually I abandoned the project and gave up any idea of making money. As soon as I did this, lots of my friends and grown-up visitors too, came and marvelled.
This story is rather funny when I look back on it now but it was deadly serious for me at the time. I was always very interested in cars, especially the Standard Vanguard, for which I have made another website (see the home page of this website for the address).
Each time I could get enough money for a stamp, I was in the habit of systematically writing a letter to every car manufacturer I could find an address for. My letter would express an interest in their products and I would ask for catalogues of them all, whether cars, trucks or buses. The Rootes Group sent such a large parcel that I could hardly carry it in from the front door when the postman delivered it.
Eventually I got around to writing to the Jaguar company and they sent me some very colourful and interesting material. A week or so later, there was a knock at the front door and I answered it. At the door was an impressively dressed man of a type rarely seen around Emlyn Square and, even more impressively, parked on the road behind him was a brand-new gleaming Jaguar.
Having recognised the model from the literature I had received, I began to feel uneasy about the way things were developing. After staring at each other for a while, he brightly but doubtfully asked, "Does Mr. Williams live here?" When I replied that he did, he said, "Oh, he's been inquiring about the new Jaguar model. Could I speak to him please?"
Staggered for a minute, I eventually blurted out, "I'll fetch him for you," and went back into the front room to get him. "Dad," I said, "it's somebody for you." As Dad went to the front door, I made my way out of the back door with all possible speed and ran like mad.
I stayed out for the rest of that day until it got dark and I was starving. Then I attempted, unsucessfully, to creep in without being seen but Dad was expecting that and he was waiting for me. "It's a good job you cleared off out of it," he said, "or I would have thrashed the living daylights out of you for dropping me in it like that. Don't you ever do that again."
It seemed that Dad had a hard job to get rid of that salesman but, thankfully, he began to see the funny side of it later that evening. I was getting worried because he kept looking at me in a funny sort of way and making remarks such as, "Don't you send for any more catalogues, you've got hundreds already."
I finally breathed more easily when, a few hours later, he laughed and said, "You'd have thought the man would have had more sense. Surely he could see that this was no place to sell a Jaguar!"
Home address of this page: http://www.johnw55.freeuk.com/village
Page updated 21 July 2008