Remember when.....

[Captain Kong]

In the 30s we had stone floors, no carpets and a peg rug made by ourselves out of old rags, new rags we wore.
All our clothes were handed down, I felt a right twit in my big sisters clothes, We had three of us kids in a bed, with a WW1 Army overcoat on to try and keep us warm., Dad was in a brass band and would sit on a stool in the candle light, a big shadow on the wall and play his E-Flat Bass, nice and softly, while we went to sleep. he was the best player in the country in the 30s.
We would scramble on the tip and collect clinker dumped there from the furnaces in the mills, to burn again on the fire. One gas lamp in the front kitchen, none anywhere else, so candles. The man from the Parish would come around and say, Sell those chairs, you can keep two, childer can stand up at the table and sit on the rug they do not need chairs, when that money is done then you may get a couple of bob off the Parish. We lived in Candle Alley, No bathroom, just one cold water tap, no sink just a slopstone. the toilet was the midden at the bottom of the yard, up three steps and a hole in a plank, the ashes from the fireplace were dumped on top of the crap, the Night soil men came round every week and shovelled it out through a little gate on the outside wall. For a bath we went to the swimming baths once a week and for three pennies the three kids would have a bath, 5 inches of hot water, a towel between the three of us and a small piece of soap, in Summer we played in the street in bare feet and other times we wore clogs.
In December 1938 we got a council house, very posh it was, a garden front side and rear three bedrooms and a bathroom and a real toilet.also electricity. .
They dont know they`r born today, I say , they dont know they are born.
All kinds of benefits, free money and free food banks . what a load of rubbish.
Brian.

[Red Lead Ted]

In the 30s we had stone floors, no carpets and a peg rug made by ourselves out of old rags, new rags we wore.
..
Brian.

Brian, Sounds like an old yellow peril I was once press ganged into. Terry.

[Fouro]

Re No 30.
Apart from what John has described about the syrup tin with the carbide inside it, we also enjoyed annoying people who were miserable sods by fastening a couple of large buttons on a thread above their window. This was done by sticking a safety pin into the putty and then unwinding the thread as far as it would stretch. When out of sight, we kept on pulling the thread which caused the buttons to tap on the window repeatedly. This annoying proceedure was always carried out when it was dark. I remember old Geordie Halkett who had a club foot attached a long piece of wire from the fence on to his drain pipe. When he appeared cursing at us we then burst into speed and never expecting the trap he had set up for us, we all tripped over the wire and finished up with gravel rash and skint knees.

FOURO.

[Braid Anderson]

But it wasn't all good, was it? This is from my book 'Flag Mc Andrew', but it's actually the story of my childhood. I'll never forget Dr Howden for what he did, which was unusual for those days:
Inglis started to tell Kerstin the secret story of his childhood...
"My mother left when I was two and a half years old. I can only vaguely remember her as a beautiful loving woman, and picture her on the last day I ever saw her. That was the day she left, with my father throwing clothes after her - that I remember. I was on hands and knees, peering through the living room door. It was during the War, and my father was rarely home. This time he had found her talking to a refugee land worker, and accusations had flown.
For years afterwards we had a procession of mediocre or just plain lousy housekeepers, most of whom couldn't care less. I can remember wandering round the streets in winter, when I was about three and a half, freezing cold and crying, wearing nothing but a torn vest. Another time one of the housekeepers stole everything of value she could carry, and disappeared while my father was away. It was days before the neighbors realized something was wrong, by which time my young brother and I were cold and hungry, dirty and frightened. I had been stealing milk from the nearest houses, but I couldn't leave my brother alone for long, because he was only a baby.
Often we went for days, or even weeks, without decent food, because the current housekeeper was stealing or misusing the food ration coupons. At times like these a mug of gruel was a treat. This comprised rough oatmeal - used for feeding the chickens - mixed with salt and water. I would gulp it down as if it was the best and last meal I would ever see. But it was crude stuff, and gave me worms - and that scared me too. I would go to the toilet, and watch all these squirming worms that had come from inside my body, and I would cry.
Then, just after the War, when I was five years old, we got a housekeeper who was good, and we called her Auntie Jean. Things got better, and it was almost like having a mother, like most of the other kids. For nearly two years life was good, and I was happy. I had decent food and proper clothes - even if they were second hand - and the other kids didn't call me Ragbag any more.
Then one day my father married a widow, when I was seven years old. Her husband had been killed on a submarine during the war, and she had two sons, both older than me. Our good housekeeper was replaced by this big strong woman, who immediately began laying down the law. My father was now working on the opposite coast of Scotland as a foreman joiner, and was home only twice a month. On the day he was due home I would walk for miles along the road he used, until I met him coming the other way. He would scold me for it, but next time I would do it again anyway, walking for hours in the country, glad to be away from the terrible woman he had married.
Oh, she fed us well enough, which was one thing to be grateful for. But she set her heart on breaking my spirit, because I refused to bow to her bullying tactics. I would be beaten for the things I'd done, and for things I didn't do. At times I would make it worse for myself by taking the blame for things my younger brother did. He was eighteen months younger than me. He was different, and couldn't take her bullying. In the end he was put in a home for the mentally ill, because he couldn't take it any more. He's out again now, and the last I heard he was about to join the merchant navy too. In the meantime I tried to protect him from the worst she could do, and defied her to break me.
The more I would grin and bear it, the harder and more determined she became, but at least it focussed her nastiness on me, and away from my brother. Sometimes she came close to breaking me, but she never once saw me cry. She would beat me with her special belt - from a railway carriage window - until the blood ran down my back. Tie my hands and feet and lock me in a dark cupboard for hours on end. Once she tried to make me kiss her feet, and I spat on them instead, so she beat me nearly senseless once more. Another time she split my head open with a frying pan, and told the doctor I fell off a wall. Then I was badly scalded with boiling water" - Inglis showed Kerstin the scar - "an accident with the cooker. I developed boils and carbuncles, and she would put hot kaolin poultices on - deliberately too hot - and I would scream. When the poultices were taken off I would have burn blisters as well as the boils. She would sometimes hold my head under the water in the bath until I nearly drowned. At other times she would empty the bath in winter, and leave me standing there wet and freezing, and refuse to give me a towel.
One day, when I was ten years old, she caught me looking at a Blighty magazine my eldest step brother had brought home. In it was a photograph of a woman in a see through top. She tore the picture out and pinned it to the wall of my bedroom. Then she tied my hands behind my back with string, pulled my pants down, and clamped a clothes peg on my willy. She locked me in like that for hours, and it was nearly the death of my poor wee willy. She told the doctor I'd been playing with rubber bands, and I was too scared and humiliated to contradict her. When I slashed my elbow on a broken bottle, she 'tended' the gaping wound before taking me to the doctor - by scraping the bone with a kitchen knife. I nearly fainted from the pain. One time, when she was really angry, she picked me up and THREW me into the wall - I told you she was a big strong woman. I hit the wall sideways, nearer the ceiling than the floor, and that time I REALLY thought I was going to die.
I began to have nightmares, and would wake up screaming with terror in the middle of the night - and she would beat me for waking her. The nightmares lasted for years, at the rate of three or four times a week, sometimes every night for weeks on end; leaving me tired and shaken, and scared deep down inside. I wet the bed until I was more than eleven years old; and I was beaten for it, again and again. Time after time I ran away from home, sleeping in the council depot among the piles of waste paper, or on a bed of pine needles in the woods. And time after time the police would drag me back again.
Until one day the police inspector came to the house, and warned my step mother that his men were making enquiries about what went on between her and me. Our family doctor had finally summoned up the courage to lodge a report with the police that I was having far too many 'accidents', and my body was covered with bruises, boils and scars. The inspector made me take off all my clothes except my underpants, and looked at my body. It was the first time I ever saw a grown man crying, and he lifted me gently in his arms and cuddled me, like my father should have, but never did. Then he cursed and swore at my step mother, long and low; not loud, but strong and serious; and threatened to take me away. He asked me what had happened to me, but I was too frightened and ashamed to tell him anything, and I didn't want to be taken away to a strange place or an orphanage.
After that, things improved a little. She still abused me, but now she was more careful not to leave obvious marks. My uncles and aunts would make excuses for using me to do odd jobs at weekends, just to get me away from her. They had their own suspicions about what was going on, but never cross questioned me too much about it. Thinking back on it now, I think that maybe the police inspector had a talk with them, but I don't know for sure. They just tried to make me feel that at least SOMEBODY cared for me. I took my baby cousin for long walks in his pram, and even at the age of eleven I was an expert nappy changer.
On Sundays I would cut the grass at the hotel owned by another uncle, who had no children of his own. Sometimes he would let me watch television in the hotel lounge for a while. That was really something, because there weren't many televisions around then. And always, his oldest housemaid would pamper me with biscuits, and a hug and a kiss. She was quite old, and she usually smelled of sweat, but I loved it when she cuddled me, and told me how she would love to have a son like me. The same uncle let me 'credit' payment for the grass cutting, until I had enough money to buy his old bicycle, at a special price, when I was thirteen. That led to the best holiday of my life. For the whole of the school summer holidays, I cycled right round Scotland, with my tiny tent and frying pan. I snared rabbits, found pheasants' eggs, and caught fish to eat, and drank beautiful sweet clear water from mountain streams.
As I grew older, things weren't helped by the fact that I did better at school than my step brothers, in spite of the fact I was a lazy student. My English master once told me I reminded him of Thackery, which I thought a great compliment, until he continued - 'he was a lazy clever dick too!' But I was determined to get out of that house as soon as I could - and here I am. Not that she’s hit me much in the past couple of years - she wouldn't dare any more.
I still occasionally have the old nightmares, but now I'm a free man, and I can sort out my own problems. There's more to the story, but that's the condensed version, and you're the first person I've ever told."

[Fouro]

Re No 34.
Braid,
After reading thro' your well written true tale about your childhood experiences and upbringing, I've got to say, I am dumfounded.
Many thanks for sharing it.

FOURO.

[happy daze john in oz]

Braid tells of some horrific events during his childhood. But lately during the Royal Commision hearing into child abuse here in Oz in facilities owned and run by the church. Some of the submissions were so horrific they had to be heard in camera. A priest in a school here in Sunbury where I live has been given ten years for offences against young boys.

[john sutton]

started writing this for the kids and never finished it.this is the first part of the memoirs titled lucky bastard




People say that Bastards are lucky. They could be right. I have to say that I have never been lucky in games of chance or “luck of the draw” activities, apart from one function I went to in later in life and won a raffle with a prize of six walking stick billiard cues but I suppose at seventy four(now 80) and still here, is a form of good luck. The billiard cues, by the way were obviously designed by a resident of a trailer park some where in the Deep South of the US. As a walking stick they were useful I suppose although I never used them for walking.They were ornate with a heavy brass ball at the top. As a billiard cue they were an absolute waste of time ,making my playing even worse than it normally is , several years later I got rid of them, by donating them to another charity raffle, and years after that, one of them was used in a murder in Manchester. I often wonder whether someone had found the original designer and was making sure that he never designed anything else.
I have always believed that whatever has a downside also has an upside. For instance nobody can tell me “you’ll never be as good as your father”, unless of course they are referring to the ability to disappear, at the same time nobody can say “if you don’t buck your ideas up you’ll finish up like your father”. If you don’t know your father he can be anything you want him to be. I can remember when a child, imagining my father being a fighter pilot, ships captain, or a millionaire and he was going to take me away from whatever situation I was in at the time. If I really had known my father, I would have missed out on all that daydreaming. Of course in later life the compensation was that I never had to look after him in his old age, assuming he had one and I never had to attend his funeral, or pay for it. So being a bastard isn’t all bad. So I’ll tell you my story. Most of it is without names as seventy years dims the memory for names and likewise with the exact years or my age at certain times in the story but its all true and the times are fairly accurate.
In later life people have said to me that life must have been difficult for me as a child. Not so, if that’s the hand your dealt then you really don’t know any different and I probably thought that all children had the same sort of life. A wise man once said to me” If you were the only man in the world how would you know if you were short or tall?” Same thing.


CHILD MINDERS

I had a mother, that I knew, but as I was born in nineteen thirty four, single mothers were a rarity and not very much admired by relatives. My grandfather was quite a wealthy individual and apparently a complete despot. He threw my mother out of the house to fend for herself even before she got pregnant and as far as I know he never knew of my existence and my mother nor I ever benefited from any of the proceeds of his estate.
My first memories are being lodged with a family in Norris Green in Liverpool and most of that time has faded into the mists of my memory. I do remember that these people had a teenage son and he was made to take me out occasionally when he was taking his girlfriend out. He didn’t want to do it and made it patently obvious, although I was too young to understand that. If we were going to the Liverpool Pier Head he would send me to press tar bubbles between the tramlines, while he and his girlfriend “necked” and a clear memory was a visit to New Brighton beach, they were stretched out on the sand and I was playing in the sand, I wanted to go to the toilet and asked if he would come with me, I think I was three or four at the time and had never been in a public toilet before. The youth wasn’t interested and told me to get on with it, even after I told him that I wanted “number twos”, so I went into the toilets and there was a row of doors, all of which were locked and a gutter which I now know was a urinal. I dropped my shorts and squatted in the urinal and performed my act. Men coming into the toilets were looking at me strangely but I thought that was what one did in a public toilet.
I wasn’t very happy with these people so my mother took me to Southport to stay with a woman she knew. All the people that I stayed with were paid to feed me and look after me. In Southport the woman’s idea of looking after me was to send me out into the garden to weed while she and her boyfriend, or fancy man, whatever, watched me out of the window laughing at my efforts. The fancy man must have been a regular feature at the house because he had toiletries there. I know this because among the toiletries was a razor strop and I always had the impression that this was used more on me than for stropping his razor. One day I was told to go “as far as the park”. It was a nice park and to a four year old on his own it was great. There were ducks to feed, I had nothing with which to feed them but there were other people throwing them bread. Some of them gave me some bread to feed the ducks but while they weren’t looking I ate some of it. I didn’t think that anyone saw me do it but now looking back they probably did. It seems that I was always hungry. I suppose I stayed for an hour or more, four year olds can’t really keep track of time. When I got back to the house there was shouting and screaming that I was told to go “as far as the park” not “into the park”. The razor strop came out and I swear that even at four years of age I could see the relish the man was getting in the use of it. From memory it was the worst beating that I had ever received and I cannot remember ever being beaten as badly at any time in subsequent years.
This woman must have had a fetish on toilet training and every day I had to go to the toilet whether I wanted to or not. If I didn’t produce the goods then I was strapped for not trying and I can remember sitting on the toilet for what seemed like hours trying to do number twos. Right next to the toilet was the dreaded razor strop. I sat on the toilet for so long and strained to “do something” so much that by the time I left their “care” I had what I was told were haemorrhoids which is quite unusual for a four or five year old (at the age of 75 I finally realised what I had was an anal prolapse also caused by straining on the toilet). I used to think that my insides were coming out and when I used to tell the woman that my insides were coming out she used to say “don’t be stupid” and clout me round the head. If I wasn’t gardening I had to spend the time in my bedroom and I used to lie on the bed with the curtains closed looking at the shadows cast on the ceiling by people walking past the front of the house and wonder who they were and where were they going. It didn’t occur to me to open the curtains and look out as I thought that might result in another bout with the razor strop.
It must have been obvious that I was unhappy so one day my mother came to pick me up and take me back to Liverpool. I remember the train trip .It was an electric train and the middle of winter, somewhere outside Liverpool the snow brought the train to a halt. There was a long wait and finally we were told that the train couldn’t go further and we would have to walk to the next station. I didn’t care; I was away from those frightful people.
While I was staying with these various people my Mother would see me about once a month and usually take me to tea. There was never any excitement when the visit was pending and very little affection on her part. She would call me her “Johnsy” and take me to some tea rooms, I think in Liverpool city centre and we would have tea, usually creamed mushrooms on toast I hated creamed mushrooms on toast but that was what I was always offered and I was always hungry, I mean always, so I ate.
While writing and trying to recall my childhood it occurred to me that I can’t remember having any toys during this time. As I was moving from house to house frequently I would have thought that carrying a teddy or a toy would have remained in my memory. In fact the only toys that I remember owning were the toys that Harry in Suffolk made for me. I also cannot remember ever having a bedtime story read to me or in fact getting a goodnight kiss. In fact in my whole life I don’t think that my mother ever gave me a kiss and I don’t actually remember a hug. Maybe time has dimmed the memory. They do say that good memories fade and bad ones stay with you.
So I went back to the family in Norris Green again. She wasn’t a very good picker as although these people didn’t beat me they also didn’t feed me. During this time I started going to school and my mother was paying the people for school dinners. It was the start of the war and rationing was on so nobody had an excess of food but I had to walk home from school at dinnertime to eat at the house. Dinner was always the same. An OXO cube in a cup of hot water with a slice of bread in it. I believe that the bread was stale but then I was too young to know and soaked in OXO it was difficult to tell. Breakfast, also was the same every day. Bread and milk and not a lot of that. Sometimes they would send me to the shops to get some bread from the bakery. There always seemed to be a lot of people waiting to get served but I used to wriggle my way to the front, right by a tray of broken cakes and slip some into my pocket to eat on my way home.I,m sure that the lady serving behind the counter knew what I was doing but she never stopped me. She must have felt sorry for me.
The air raids were taking place at that time. I remember that our school had a near miss which did considerable damage but not enough to close it down. I believe the Germans were aiming at Liverpool docks so it is not surprising that they lost the war. Norris Green must be at least eight miles from the nearest docks. We had an “Anderson” air raid shelter in the back garden, as everybody did in those days. I was put to bed there every night on the pretence of being safer as I was difficult to wake in the case of a raid but I am convinced that it was just to make more space in the house as I was normally sharing with one of their children. This didn’t bother me as once down there I was in my own world and could be any where I wanted. My usual world was a motor torpedo boat with my father as the skipper, chasing German ships and firing torpedoes at them and then zooming off on another mission. Sometimes I would be driving a tank and there were other fantasies all of which took me into a land where there was only me and someone who I believed was my father. Usually the fantasies didn’t last long as sleep came along and took me somewhere else. When I think about it the torpedo boat dream must have had some significance on my life as later I went to a naval school, the merchant navy and then owned my own boats for about thirty years. Although I never owned or drove a torpedo boat the memory of those fantasies always stayed with me. Strange to say, one of the boats I owned was a high speed sports cruiser which if required could “zoom off” and I never enjoyed “zooming off “ in it.
During this time I was still having problems with my “insides coming out” but nobody seemed to take any notice until I got a showing of blood and then I was taken to a doctor who had me admitted to a children’s hospital in Liverpool. Because of the air raids the bulk of the patients in the hospital were moved to somewhere out on the Wirral and the memory I have of this is sleeping in a corridor because all the wards were packed. From my knowledge of the National Health Service in the UK today, nobody has told them that the war is over as apparently patients are still sleeping in the corridors in some hospitals. I had my operation which stopped my “insides coming out” and in spite of the crowded wards and the pressure of work the nurses always had time to talk to the little boy with piles. They must have suspected that some sort of abuse had taken place as at that age a child shouldn’t be bothered with such an ailment.
My mother got a position with a wealthy family in Heswall on the Wirral. I suppose that she must have thought it was time to get me away from the type of people who exploited situations such as hers. It would appear that if the authorities thought that she couldn’t look after me they would take me away and as she was a domestic cook she usually “lived in”. The people in Heswall must have been Christian souls as not only did they allow me to live with my mother, they gave me the run of the house including their children’s nursery and I can still remember playing on a real rocking horse. I mean a “real” rocking horse with a hair mane and tail. Their children must have grown up and left home as I never seemed to be in contact with any of them. The head of the family, I believe was in business in Liverpool, in tea, and it must have been in a big way judging by the size of the house and the number of servants, my mother never told me the name of the firm or exactly what they did (she was always secretive with me, never telling me anything for fear that her shame would spread to others. Even her family were kept from me apart from one uncle and his wife where we visited,once,and I was instructed never, ever to tell anybody that I’d been there).The family used to go to church every Sunday in their chauffer driven car,I,m not sure that it was a Rolls but it certainly was big. I used to sit in the front with the chauffer while the family sat in the back, separated by a glass screen. It must have been summer while I was there as I can remember trekking over some heath land to look at the Dee Estuary and seeing a building that was a naval training school. Who ever it was that was with me at the time told me that it was where bad boys went. I think it turned out to be HMS Conway, I,m not sure but I am sure now that it wasn’t a borstal type establishment. These were great days but they didn’t last. Once more my mother made a decision about what “she” wanted and this time it was to join the Womens Royal Air Force. It didn’t seem to matter that she had a good position where she could have her child with her permanently, she wanted to do her bit for the war effort, or whatever, and I would have to get on without her. So I went to Dr Barnardos and one day was picked up by one of their very kindly travelling staff and taken to a temporary home in Bromborough, Cheshire.
It always seemed to me that my life was dictated by what her wishes were .It wasn’t that my mother was evil, quite the reverse it was just that her focus was on what was best for her at the time and so many times through my life I was set aside to satisfy her needs. After the war she started a guest house with her sister, who incidentally screwed her up financially for the most of the rest of her working life but at the time she started the business she could have called herself Mrs Sutton, there were plenty of war widows around then and nobody need to have found out her true situation. No she was Miss Sutton and to the day she died at age eighty, I was married with two children and I was known as her nephew by all but my wife. Even my children didn’t know the true situation until after she died; they had always called her Aunty Margaret. I can remember the undertaker, whose business was next door to the house and had known us for many years, being very surprised when organising her funeral to find out that I was not her nephew but her son. Being a gentlemanly sort of person he was really embarrassed but by now I was fifty years old, married, divorced and accustomed to making these revelations to people who for various business reasons needed the exact relationship. She had even planned to screw me after her death as by pure good fortune I had a reason to look through some drawers in search of some clothes to take her while she was in hospital and I came across an envelope which was obviously lawyers stationary. I opened it and it contained her will. The will left her house and everything else in trust to my children with a lawyer in complete control of the trust and the permission to charge fees against the trust for any services rendered without any limit on what could be charged. Without that lucky break not only would I have received nothing but there probably be very little left for the children after the lawyers fees. On questioning her as to why she should do such a thing she told me that she was determined that my wife would never benefit from any of her estate and that this will and trust was on the advice of her solicitor. Nice man. My wife incidentally cooked Christmas dinner for my mother every year for at least sixteen years without knowing that she was hated by her.
It was only after long discussions and explanations as to the charges that could be made against the trust that I persuaded her to change her will using my solicitor and not putting anything in trust. None of these machinations were meant to be to my detriment she just thought, as usual, that was a way of getting at my wife. From whom I was already divorced...
In my early adult life I found it easier to live away from my mother. As a teenager in the fifties it was customary to have a home to take your girlfriend and have tea with the family. Although I could take females to the house, I had no privacy as my room was the guest lounge when the residents had gone to bed or the kitchen where my mother/aunt spent her time and then questions could be asked regarding the whereabouts of my parents. It was easier, and I was happier living in a foreign country where nobody would expect to meet my parents and I could socialise without fabricating a history.
I always told myself that the reason for staying out of the country after leaving the sea was to avoid National Service but deep down I knew it was to avoid relationships that would expose my true family situation. Looking back now it seems a ridiculous way to think but I suppose I was not so much trying to hide the fact that I was a bastard but to protect my mother from being exposed as an unmarried mother.
As I write this I am, at the age of seventy four, seeing what a screwed up way of life she pushed me to. The upside was that from the age of sixteen I could do what I wanted and go where I wanted whereas if I had been living a normal family life I would have missed out on living in the places and seeing the things that I did and quite honestly I wouldn’t have changed any part of my life and to this day I still think bastards are lucky.
As an aside ,when getting a credit check for banking or credit card checks it is now customary to ask for mothers maiden name. Fortunately when I was a teenager these checks didn’t apply or I am sure I would have ducked the question. I did have a problem in a high class jewellers when in my sixties when the snooty assistant asked the question in quite a loud voice. I took her on one side and quietly told her the situation which embarrassed her greatly.Probably, she never asked that question out loud again and I might have saved a few younger bastards some embarrassment.
The decision to send me to Barnardos was the greatest favour that my mother could have done me. Once again there was an upside. I lost the opportunity to live with my mother but I eventually gained the opportunity to live with a family where the man was one of the best “real” men that I ever met, also later in my association with Barnardos I was to learn disciplines that carried me through the rest of my life.
So here I was in Bromborough, about six years of age and in a home with maybe forty other children.
I didn’t cry at night the way most of the new entrants did when they were separated from their parents. For me it was really routine as apart from the previous few months I had never lived with any parents. Time spent at this home was short, it really was just a temporary home and children were sent elsewhere when it was decided what their future should be.
Very quickly I found myself with one of the travelling companions in her uniform which I always found to be intimidating but they were always very nice to the children that they had to move around the country. We caught the train to London and during the war years trains were full of uniformed people. It seemed to me that on the train, everybody we met went out of their way to be kind to this uniformed lady with a podgy child in tow and no doubt enquired about the situation. In my dimmed memory I seem to remember quite a lot of chocolate bars being consumed during that journey to London which included the customary wait at Crewe for several hours.


SUFFOLK
London meant Stepney Causeway which was Barnardos main establishment but I didn’t stay long and in very short time I was on another train with a uniformed lady to an unknown destination.
The destination was Woolpit in Suffolk or to be more precise Bawley Green, to the home of Harry and Lena Fordham. They had a son called Ivan who as an only child living out in the country needed some company. Probably Mrs Fordham could not have any more children, I think she was not very well and childbirth would put a strain on her system. So they fostered and I was the lucky, very lucky little boy. It’s nearly seventy years since that evening I arrived in this cottage on the edge of a wood that would contribute so much to my life for several years. My meal the first night was “Toad in the Hole”(smothered in onion gravy) which I had never heard of before, it has been a favourite of mine since. I had never had a meal that was so tasty or so plentiful and I sat in that little kitchen and looked around and thought that this was where I really wanted to be.
Harry Fordham was a “cowman” on the farm that owned the woods behind the cottage, Woolpit Woods to be exact. They also owned the cottage in which we lived; it went with the cowman’s job. The cottage was actually in the woods and they were our back garden where the chickens roamed and where we collected our firewood and gathered mushrooms to fry for breakfast. It also contributed rabbits from Harry’s snares which he checked every day. There was a war on and all food was scarce but we lived far better than most people in England at that time. We had no electricity and oil lamps and candles were our illumination and all cooking was on a range in the kitchen which burned permanently in the winter, fuelled by wood gathered in the woods and sawn and split by Harry, Ivan, and myself, when I got the experience. Every morning Harry would set of through the woods, either walking or on his bike at some ungodly hour to do the morning milking. I knew it was an ungodly hour as he used to bring everybody a cup of tea in bed which we would drink and go back to sleep. When we rose the routine was the morning wash first. Water for drinking was pumped up from the hand pump in the yard, this could be used for washing and water from the kettle was added to the hand basin that we all washed in. Water for washing clothes or cleaning came from rain barrels that collected rainwater from the roof. The main reason for this was that rainwater was soft water and lather could be raised for washing, pump water was hard water and although very tasty, especially on a hot summers day was very difficult to raise a lather. After washing and doing any jobs allotted to us, we would have breakfast. Harry always came home for breakfast .Very often he would bring mushrooms, sometimes the size of dinner plates and if he’d had chance to check his snares there might be a rabbit that would be gutted and there would be rabbit pie the following day. I have to say that I haven’t eaten rabbit since world war two as I had so much of it then that I’d had my ration for as long as I live. He also brought the milk with him. This would be straight from the dairy and it would be set in a jug in a bowl of cold water (we obviously had no refrigerator, nobody did in those days), not to be disturbed until cream had settled on top which was the collected and Lena would sit in the kitchen for hours shaking a sealed jar of cream until it became butter, and what butter.
There was no electricity or running water and baths were taken in the time honoured way of working class England. The tin bath on Saturday night in front of the cooking range. First Harry, then Lena, Ivan next and finally me then we would listen to the radio and check the pools. The radio was worked from an accumulater, I still don’t know what one of those is but we could get the news, pools results and ITMA which was the big comedy series of the day.
Bawley Green was what I suppose people call a hamlet. There were only about a dozen houses including Tom Pecks bicycle shop and Mrs Pecks newsagent and sweet shop. Tom Peck had fought and lost his leg in the First World War and Ivan and I would spend hours in his little shack of a shop listening to spellbinding stories from that war and the time he spent in the trenches. I suppose he was the first raconteur I met and many a summers evening was spent with Ivan, watching Tom fix a bicycle wheel or a puncture surrounded by the magical array of bells,handlebars,pedals and all the gadgets that went with the “must have” sports bike of the day. Of course we both knew that these were not bikes that we could ever hope to own but we could at least watch them being fixed.
Thursday was market day in Stowmarket,a town about five mile away and very often Tom would have reason to make the trip and he would take both of us for the afternoon in his little Morris eight saloon. This was a treat as all the way he would be regaling us with stories and anecdotes about his past life and this was magic for two small boys living right out in the country.
There was a bus service from Bawley green to Stowmarket.It ran twice a week. Once on Thursday morning to take anyone needing to go to the market and once in the afternoon for anyone wanting to come home from the market. Any other bus trips we needed to make involved a two and a half mile walk to Woolpit village where a bus ran several times a day between Bury st Edmunds and Stowmarket or Ipswich.
The next house to ours was also owned by the farm.It was the gamekeepers cottage.With great originality some ancestor of the then farmer had named the cottages when they were built. Ours was Wood House, the gamekeepers was Wood Cottage. They were about four hundred yards apart and identical apart from the cottage being thatched and ours tiled with a corrugated roof on an add-on section. Our neighbour, the gamekeeper, I never saw. While I was living there he was a Japanese prisoner of war and when he returned I had already gone to naval school. The few times I returned for school holidays he never appeared. I think it took some time for him to recover his health.
School was in Woolpit.There were two sorts of boys at the village school. Village boys and non village boys. If you were a none village boy, as we were, you were prone to being bullied. If you were a non village boy who originated from outside the local area, as Ivan was, you were definitely bullied. If you were a non village boy from a place called Liverpool and a Barnardos boy (although there were several fostered boys at the school) which I was then you were prone to being bullied by the boys who were being bullied .As usual I was at the bottom of the totem pole.
Ivan didn’t like a scrap, boys would push him around and he would stand for it but once I got into the ways of the school I would stand up to anyone. Many times Ivan and I have had our backs to the wall against several bigger village boys with me stood in front of him with some sort of weapon. I was a tough little “Scouser” who could take and give a beating and gradually they learned .I was called “Chinky”.I never found out why but that was a name that stayed with me even after I left the area to go to naval school and even when I went back with my wife as an adult, twenty years later, people who saw me still called me “Chinky”.I bet if I went to Woolpit today and met someone that was at school with me they’d call me “Chinky”.
Mr Ruddlan was the headmaster. I can remember only him by name because we were thrown together on so many occasions. He was the only member of staff that administered corporal punishment and I’d probably worn out several of his bendy walking stick punishment canes. It always struck me as strange that somewhere there must have been a factory producing walking stick handled bendy canes and there must have been a designer. Fancy talking to someone in a pub and saying “what do you do for a living?” and the reply is “design punishment canes”.You,d want to give them a smack.It,s different these days as there probably a niche market for these items as it would seem a lot of politicians and judges enjoy receiving strokes. What used to leave me in agony now leaves them in ecstacy.Funny old world.
So life went on in Woolpit.At Wood House I learned the culture of “no waste”. Nothing went to waste.Potatoe peelings and vegetable waste went into a boiler and were boiled up and added to chicken meal, with what I believe was cayenne pepper to make the chickens lay quicker. Also egg shells were recycled as they added strength to the new eggs. Manure from the chicken shed went on a manure pile to be rotted down to compost and put in the soil. We had an outside toilet with a bucket under a commode type toilet and the bucket was emptied weekly by Harry into a freshly dug pit in the area of the marrow patch. The marrows were absolutely huge but I hated them and will still not eat marrow. I wonder if all marrows are grown on a heap of human waste. Toilet paper was the “Daily Herald”, or “Christian Herald” (God forgive us), torn into strips and hung behind the door on a hook. In fact the Daily Herald never had far to travel as Harry always read it while on the toilet and always with the door open and smoking his “Woodbine”. Ashes from the range were spread on the footpath in the lane leading to the house to firm it up and also give a better grip in icy weather. Eggs were in abundance at times of the year and scarce at others, when there was an excess they were dropped into jars of isinglass. Whatever that was. Fruit was made into jam or bottled and tomatoes became chutney.Mrs Fordham didn’t waste anything and what couldn’t be utilised was trade off for items we couldn’t grow, bacon or flour. She was a superb cook, her steak and kidney suet pudding was an experience that has never been repeated, as far as I’m concerned,Yorshire pudding and toad in the hole were so light we had to tie them down to stop them floating away. Sunday dinner was always roast, preceded by Yorkshire pudding with gravy (Yorkshire style) we had rabbit, occaisionally moorhen, if a hen dared to cease laying it went into the pot, duck eggs, moorhen eggs and once even pigeon eggs. There were apples plums and various berries from the garden. Windfall apples were eaten or cooked and picked apples were stored for winter, both eating and cooking apples. The eating apples were Russet, a type that is very seldom seen in the UK now, probably because of the European food rules. They probably spent five years looking for a place called Russet, not being able to find one they discouraged the marketing of them. Fresh peas, picked, shelled, cooked and eaten the same day. There were an abundance of blackberries to be picked and eaten or taken back for Lena to use in a pie or make jam. Hazelnuts grew wild in the hedgerows and a Sunday afternoon walk could reward us with a pocket full of nuts, some of which would be put aside for Christmas. There was a demand for rose hips, some of it could be made into rosehip syrup but it was mainly for the war effort. To this day I have no idea what was done with them, but we got paid by the pound. In fact we were doing what Greenpeace and the “Save the Earth” crowd are telling us to do today, sixty years later.
When we were children there were “crazes” that came along. There was the craze for spinning tops, elastic band guns, kites etc, etc.The Fordhams couldn’t afford to buy most of these things so Harry made them, and they were always good. When the conker season came along Harry would come back from work with pockets full of conkers, he had to ride or walk through what country people call parkland, which was really grazing land. Sometimes Ivan and me would make an occasional foray to the parkland and come back with loads of conkers which could be traded at school. He made us cricket bats. Not actually as good as the real thing but good enough to play in the clearing behind the house. Had he been interested he could have been the cricket star of the Woolpit village cricket team. We could hear the ball whirring as it came down the wicket and I don’t think that I ever played against such a fast, accurate bowler. I am certain that he didn’t play for the village for two reasons, one, he was almost deaf (through gunfire in his army service) and wouldn’t be able to hear his team mates calls and, two, he was only interested in being with his family having spent years in the army in the Far East his only wish was to be with his wife and son.
Harvest times were always an occasion. We would follow the “Binder” round the last few circles of its journey waiting for the last of the frightened rabbits to make a run for it, with our sticks or clubs we hoped to be the one to catch one of them but they could always outrun us. The big boys with their catapults or their dogs would sometimes get one but the only people to be sure of a “bag” were either the tractor driver if he had his gun with him or local poachers who waited round the edge of the field with their lurchers.After the binders we would help to set the sheaves by leaning them upright and a few days later we would ride on the horse and cart while they loaded the sheaves for stacking in the farmyard. If this activity took place on a school day I would rush home from school to take Harry’s tea up to the field and on a bright summers evening we used to sit around having a picnic tea. Lena usually made cucumber sandwiches for me. It was great to sit around with the labourers listening to their stories and thinking one day I’ll be able to tell stories like that. Someone showed me how to control the horses that pulled the haywagon, in those days more horses were used, as fuel was rationed and hay wasn’t. It was a proud day when I sat on the driving seat and took the cart into the yard. I thought I did but I think one of the labourers was controlling everything without me knowing. I rushed home to Lena and shouted “I know how to drive a horse”
Threshing time was good also. The contractors steam traction engine would turn up at the farm and set up with his elevator and threshing machine and we would help to cut the bindings on the sheaf’s and throw them into the hopper to be thrashed and baled and the bales stacked in the Dutch barn. The farm lads that were not helping with the thrashing would be hanging around with clubs and dogs, waiting for the rats to appear. We did better catching rats than the rabbits which is sods law as rabbits can be eaten, not so rats
Religion was taken care of by the village Methodist chapel, we attended Sunday school and various functions Mr Allen was the preacher. His proper job was in a flour mill and occasionally he would stop at our house on the way home, especially when the new wines were open, (parsnip or rhubarb), he was always covered in a fine coating of flour.I,m surprised that on a hot day when he sweated, that, when he went into the sun he didn’t bake into a pie. The closest Anglican Church was Shelland Green church. That was about a mile away but they didn’t do Sunday schools and fetes so we went there only occasionally. It was a very old “Sheep Church”. These were churches built in the days when the local sheep farmers where rolling in money and hoped that building a church would get them into heaven. We sat in cubicles with high sides that children couldn’t see over so only the preacher in the pulpit was visible. It cut down on “messing about” Music was supplied by a barrel organ which only had about ten tunes but it was easy to play, somebody just turned the handle after selecting the tune that was needed.
The time that I lived in Suffolk were happy days. My dreaming of a father coming to collect me or driving a Motor Torpedo boat was gone. I had a father, Harry.During my life I have met many men. Some thought they were men, some said they were men and many were real men but nobody has ever come close to being the man that Harry Fordham was. He was a man that was absolutely “complete”. He had no money or any prospect of having any money and I would be surprised if he lusted after money, he did however do the “pools” Before settling down he had been in the army, I think most of his time was in the Far East. I never knew him to go to a pub, although he may have done so after Ivan and I went to bed, but I doubt it. He wasn’t teetotal as he enjoyed a glass of home made wine or a bottle of beer but that was taken at home with his family. We had a dog,Jock,all dogs were called ,for some reason,Jock.He spent the nights outside in his kennel chained up with a chain attached to a wire runner giving him about fifty foot of running space. We also had cats, all called Tibbles.I fact we had several cats that kept wandering off and Harry would bring another home, in a sack, slung over his shoulder so he could ride his bike. Apparently there were dozens of them around the farmyard.
During the time that I was in Suffolk my mother visited once although travel wasn’t easy during the war and after that I cannot recall seeing her again until I was about seventeen. She did however once send me a second hand bike for Christmas, which arrived in January, or February. As usual she had been stitched up and the bike was almost unridable, I don’t think that she had even seen the bike in question but trusted whoever she bought it from.”Mistake”.Tom Peck fixed it up for me and made it safe to ride, so things turned out o.k. After that I never saw my mother again until I was in the merchant navy and about seventeen. When I rang her bell and she answered the door she didn’t know who I was.
During the war Suffolk was one of the main areas in the UK for the Americans to establish bomber bases, we were surrounded and early in the mornings we would hear then taking off to do their daylight raids on German cities.Occasioanally they wouldn’t make it either there or home. We had a fully loaded Flying Fortress fly over our house one morning and crash two fields away, which seemed like two doors away. There was a crater there for years afterwards and for all I know it might still be there. A “Lightning” crashed in a fir plantation on Sandy lane a half mile away and there were fire engines storming round the place trying to stop the whole wood going up in smoke.
Fortunately, I suppose, the seriousness of these crashes didn’t really register with nine year old boys. It was just exciting and what mattered to most of us were the souvenirs that could be collected and swapped at a later date. We were surrounded by “Yanks” and every time they drove through the village or past the bottom of our lane the cry would go up “got any gum chum?” There was a camp in the parklands that was established just before “D Day”. They appeared one day set up and trucks and jeeps and all sorts of weird vehicles turned up. This went on for a while and then one day they were all parked down the road. There were miles of them al full of equipment and some towing trailers with tanks or some other unidentifiable machinery. Apparently they were parked in our lanes because the lanes were overhung with trees and difficult for enemy aircraft to spot. One morning we woke up and they’d gone. Just after that was D Day.
I sat some exam at school to go to the Grammar school when I reached ten. I failed. This didn’t bother me as I wanted to go into the Navy and I knew that Barnardos had a naval school so I asked the Fordhams to apply to get a place. They were reluctant as they thought that I would make a good joiner when I grew up. Why, I don’t know because apart from sawing firewood I’d never cut a piece of wood straight in my life. If the truth be told I still havent.Also I don’t think I ever grew up.
Harry and Lena didn’t seem to have many blood relatives; at least I can’t remember seeing any. In Suffolk it seemed to be a tradition that good friends were called uncles or aunties by the children but not by their first name by their sumames.There was one uncle called Uncle Hogg and very well named he was. He was no relative but visited quite often. The man was a monster. Everywhere the family went he took his walking stick which he always rested against the meal table. Any transgressions, however small by one of his many children was rewarded with a crack across the back, shoulder, head, legs, whatever. They were completely cowed and I don’t know what they were like when they grew up but it must have had a severe effect on their characters. Those sort of things made me realise how lucky I was not to have a father.
There are many things I remember about Suffolk. It would appear that the weather was always sunny. It must have rained, as things grew. Building a bicycle with Ivan that consisted of two wheels and a frame with handlebars, all scrounged from Tom Pecks scrapheap. No brakes no pedals no tyres, nothing .Ivan used to push me from the top of the hill at the end of our lane and I’d finish up at the Wheatsheaf pub, about two hundred yards away. The only thing was pushing it back up the hill. I remember a ford across a stream at the back of the village where we used to watch the few vehicles that used that lane, hoping one of them would get stuck. I remember the swimming pits at what was once Woolpit brick factory .Woolpit bricks were supposedly famous at one time but that was some time before I lived there. I remember the fishing we used to do in one of the quarries and remember going fishing on my own when on holiday from naval school and being propositioned by a queer. Fortunately I was big enough and wise enough to tell him to f**k off and threaten him with a crack with the fishing rod. It never occurred to me that there was any danger of violence toward me. When I told Harry, on getting home he set off to the quarry with a club and I suppose we were all lucky the guy was gone. Harry would have killed him. The man never appeared again at our fishing quarry. I remember the sea of bluebells in our wood(it wasn’t ours, we just lived there)which people from as far away as Bury st Edmunds would come to pick and the Lilies of the Valley that were the only ones growing wild for miles around. People used to come and try to take plants to set in their gardens and Harry used to have to chase them off. I remember watching the foresters thinning the trees deep in the woods and sometimes dragging branches home for firewood. I remember going beating through the woods with Harry and Ivan on days that a shoot was organised through the woods and the Park. I remember that steak and kidney suet pudding, with the underneath of the crust floating in the juices of the meat, oh yes I do remember that and I can still see it in my minds eye, sixty five years later. I remember the carbide headlamp that Harry had on his bike because batteries were in short supply and getting a piece of carbide and making a gun by putting it in a treacle tin with a hole in the bottom, spitting on it, clamping the lid on and setting a match to the hole in the bottom to see how far the lid would fly. I remember all these things; there are no bad memories of my time in Suffolk.
Many years later when I was married I took my wife and baby to visit Lena who by that time was a widow, Harry died some years earlier of cancer. She no longer lived at Wood House as it being a tied cottage the farmer evicted her when Harry died. I don’t think he was particularly vicious about it and he probably gave her some sort of settlement but he needed a new cowman and the cowman would need a house. The local authority found her a council cottage in the village, probably with a bit of prodding from the farmer who had been Harry’s employer. While visiting Lena we took her to Bury st Edmunds on a market day for a walk round the stalls and although she had very little money she sneaked off to Woolworths where things were cheaper and bought the baby a little present. They were that sort of people. As the afternoon wore on we decided to have a cup of tea and a sandwich. Lena admitted that she had never been into a restaurant before where one sat down and was served by a waitress. At that time she must have been at least sixty years old.Thats the way it was in her day for country people. Eating out was not part of their life.
That was the last time we met although we always wrote and sent cards at Christmas until she died. I have never heard from Ivan since and efforts to locate him have always failed.


WATTS NAVAL SCHOOL
On September the eighth, nineteen forty five I went to Watts Naval Training School. The escort lady came for me in her nice blue uniform and we caught the train to Norwich and then to County School station (which still exists as a private residence and has a web site called County School) and I became John Sutton, 204, Sturdee Division. It is significant that if I go on the “old boys” web site every body sending emails signs of with their name, number and division, sixty years or more later.
Most of the boys there were Barnardos boys in some form or other.Some from other homes and some, like myself from foster homes.There were boys straight from their own homes either because of straightened circumstances or in some cases because they were unmanageable and somebody thought the discipline of Watts might sort them out. Whatever the reason we were there until either enrolment in HMS Ganges, the naval entry ship, or, until school leaving age. It wasn’t unusual to hear sobs at night after lights out as new boys cried themselves to sleep as they realised that this was their home for a few years. This was mainly boys direct from their own homes or from long term foster homes. It didn’t occur to me to cry as ,although I enjoyed my stay with the Fordhams I had always known in my own mind that it was temporary, like every other place that I’d stayed. This was my eighth move and at that time I was eleven years old. The cries in the night by the way were not always homesick new boys. Very often it was a call from a bunch of bullies taken nocturnal revenge for some mythical slight and the only time for revenge was after “light out”. There was a Petty Officer/leading hand (equivalent to a school prefect) in each dormitory but very often he was the one leading the midnight beatings.
Watts Naval School was situated in Norfolk, right out in the country about eight miles from Dereham.The building was huge with outbuildings and sports fields, every thing to make it self contained. We had our own chapel and there were outlying houses for some of the officers and teachers. (Sir John Mills the actor was born in the executive officers house as I believe that his father was commander of the school). There was a farm and vegetable garden with several gardeners even our own railway station. Called County School.
Discipline was strict, as you would expect with three hundred boys many of them from backgrounds that gave rise to rebellious behaviour. We had routines which were adhered to and straying from these routines gave cause for retribution. I know this because in my time I had plenty of retribution.
The mess hall where meals were taken was huge. There were two rows of tables, about thirty-two in total. Each table had nine boys seated, in theory. My table had ten boys, one at the head, known as the Leading Hand, four down each side of the table in age order, the oldest next to the leading hand and one sat on an upturned bucket at the bottom of the table, known as the new boy.” Me”. This situation existed for some time, from memory until we got another new boy and I moved up to the “normal “bottom of the table. Our table seemed to be the only one with ten boys so I was the only boy in the school with the honour of eating while sat on an upturned washing up bucket.
Each boy took a turn at being “cook of the mess” an old navy term. This meant that at breakfast and tea time the cook had to get to the mess room early and collect the bread and butter and “lay” the table. Butter (read marge) came in a chunk and had to be divided up. Normal routine would be for about half to go to the top three then the rest portioned according to their position on the table or their relationship with the cook of the day. At the bottom of the table the slice of marge would be about as thick as a piece of paper and any jam or marmalade would be barely visible. Very often the Officer Of the Day inspected the tables before the doors were open to let the crowd in, and ordered that everything should be equal, then when we sat down to the meal the leading hand would utter the dreaded words “pass up for contributions” and we’d have to send our plates up which would come back almost devoid of food. A couple of the officers were wise to the situation, Especially the PT instructor, Bert Busby, who had been at the school as a lad. When it was their turn to be “Officer of the day”, after Grace they would order everybody to make a left turn then march around the table until told to halt. On the order “halt” we would be ordered to sit down on the seat in front of us and anyone switching seats or passing food around the table would be on captain’s report. They obviously timed it so that the small boys were at the top of the table and the leading hand was at the bottom. In our case, sat on the bucket. All through the meal there would be threats like “If you eat that I’ll get you after the meal”. Boys like me would be giggling and eating a full meal for a change and risk a good hiding or stay out of his way for a while. Dinner times, a trolley would come down the centre isle with trays of food. These trays would be passed to the leading hand who was supposed to portion it out, equally.What usually happened was, he took what he wanted and passed it to next in line who took took what he wanted and passed it on down the line and so on. There was usually very little for the boy on the bucket. The upside was, although I’ve always had the sort of build that puts weight on easily, my early years at Watts never gave me any worries on that score. Pudding course was the same, only more so. The boy on the bucket usually got to scrape the tray and that was all. I suppose the habit stayed with me all my adult life as I still like the privilege of scraping the dessert dish.
Our day started about six AM when we got up, made our beds, according to the rules with the mattress rolled and blankets folded neatly on top each the same as the next If we failed inspection the work was torn down and a new start made. After bed parade there was wash parade where we went to the washing trough ,washed ,cleaned our teeth and then lined up for inspection by our divisional officer.Hands,front and back ,elbows,neck,ears and knees and legs. Failure on any one point would result in another wash and go to the back of the inspection queue. Some boys just wouldn’t wash and I have seen occasions where an officer had two big boys hold the culprit and he would scrub him down with a yard brush. Very few boys had a second session of this.
Then breakfast parade.
Followed by school parade
At lunchtime there was dinner parade.
Followed by sports parade. In winter we played football and we all had to assemble in divisions to sort out the teams. This meant standing in our football kit until sent out to the sports ground. We were not allowed to wear anything under our football strip and were inspected any one caught with a vest or shirt under their football strip had it taken off and then sent for a run around the track to warm up. Winter days in Norfolk were cold, especially if a north wind was blowing. Being a flat county there isn’t much break for the wind. I got around the problem of standing in the cold by becoming a goalkeeper. Goalkeepers got to wear a “goalies” jersey and although at first I was an absolute waste of space as a goalie I developed and eventually played for my division.
I became adept at “dodging”. I joined the school band to dodge some duty or other and became a drummer, as a drum was easier to keep clean than a brass instrument and I didn’t have to learn to read music (something that I’ve always regretted). This didn’t last long as I was renowned for “playing up” (misbehaving) and Mr Joyce the bandmaster, known as Bandy Joyce threw me out.
I then joined the colour guard because this got me out of some other duty and also we got to go out on exhibitions with the band and this meant that while out on the “gig” we got tea and cakes.
One outfit that I did want to join was the “Night Riders”. This was an organisation that sneaked out of the dormitory at night to go out and get up to mischief of one sort or another. The instigators were from my division, Sturdee and the members were all older boys. I badly wanted to join and although the leaders of the organisation kept telling me to f**k off that I was too young I persisted. Finally they agreed on the provision that I took a punch on the chest from each of them. Bearing in mind that I was maybe twelve and the leaders were probably fifteen it was a bit daunting but I had visions of sneaking out at night and going “ scrumping” and various other activities so I agreed.The ceremony was in the dormitory just before lights out. I stood there and each of them took the best shot they had to my chest. It hurt especially as the last one to hit me was the school champion boxer, Peter Barnes who knocked me off my feet. I didn’t care I was now a fully fledged member of the Night Riders. The following morning at assembly the Captain, Commander Felton made an announcement to the effect that he was aware that there was an organisation called the Night Riders and there would now be a special watch kept by the staff and anyone caught out after lights out would be in really serious trouble and we would be advised to disband the organisation. So they did and I never got the opportunity to ride with the Night Riders. He should have announced it the previous day; it would have saved me some pain.
During the summer boots were not worn, anywhere, apart from what was called Divisions. This was the major parade of the day, also church parade, probably because somebody in the past must have thought that God listens to people with boots. Winter, boots were worn outside only. No boots were ever worn in the building, winter or summer. Our feet became hardened and marching was not a problem in bare feet, even yard football was do-able. One problem we had was the swimming pool. This was at the bottom of a hill next to the river. We used to have swim parade (another parade) and march to the pool. The path was laid with cinders, probably as it would have got muddy on rainy days. Marching down there on the cinder path was no problem. Marching back up the hill on the cinder path after an hour in the pool was very painful as our feet had softened. We still had to remain in step though. We were tough little bastards.
I learned to swim at Watts. There was no choice. Anyone who wouldn’t swim because they were afraid of the water went on report. The only excuse was an ear complaint; some boys always seemed to have cotton wool in their ears, to no avail. If you didn’t have a sick note you went in the pool. To be honest it was one of the good things to come out of Watts, for me. We were taught to swim, properly and when we became proficient we were then tested on a standard test. A “duck suit” was donned, this was like a judo suit but made of “duck” canvas and we had to swim several lengths with it on and then tread water for three minutes, which seemed like a lifetime. One of the problems with is was that the trousers had no belt and kept slipping down so that as well as treading water we had to keep pulling up the trousers. At a later date we were tested in lifesaving and had to swim backstroke holding another boy up. All under the watchful eye of Bert Busby. Swimming was an activity that took place starting in the spring and going on until early autumn regardless of the weather. We were marched there, ordered to get undressed and into the pool. Costumes were not worn, unless there were female visitors. There was no toe in the water to see if it was cold, we knew it was cold; it was England and an unheated pool. If there had been ice on it Bert would have ordered someone to dive in and break it. If you were on the class roster to swim, you swam.
I was never one of Bert’s blue eyed boys. To start with I was never any good at gymnastics which was always a point scorer with Bert.Also; I was always “playing up” which earned me many hours on the running track carrying a Lee Enfield (old) rifle over my head or if it was raining hanging off the wall bars, with Bert shouting every now and again “feet off”. It is a surprise to me that my arms aren’t twice as long as normal. He also had his famous “histonicy”which was a canvas sausage about eighteen inches long which was stuffed very tightly with what must have been horsehair. A whack around the legs or shoulder with that usually stopped any skylarking for a while.
One of Bert’s favourite instructions was cross country running. Occasionally he would say at the start of a gym lesson. “Right were all going for a cross-country run,Smith,go and get my bike” We would then set off down some country lane with Bert following the last boy(usually me)on his bike ,trying to run over the boys heels. It was only if the run took us over meadows and Bert had to do a detour to meet us back on the lane that we could have a skylark. Very often several of us would walk the rest of the way and at the finish we would all cross the line at the same time. He could never find out the instigator (usually me) so nobody got punished
My sport was boxing. Not that I was particularly good at it although I boxed for my division but there was always someone at my weight who was really good and I tended to get a few good hidings.Slogger Harrington was the boxing instructor, he was also the divisional officer for Sturdee division which was my division. It was a bit of a disadvantage because if I “played up” and he caught me, the next time I was in boxing he’d stick me in the ring with one of the older boys and tell him to give me a good hiding. If I quit or complained he would do it again the next lesson. We had three choices, don’t play up, don’t get caught or take your punishment with a grin. Sometimes I think that Muhamed Ali had lessons from Slugger. He certainly did the Ali Shuffle long before we saw Ali do it. Apart from the shuffle, if he got you into the ring he would drop his guard and say “go on hit me” of course we never could as his reflexes were much faster than ours, which he went on to prove when he whacked us quicker than we could get our guard up. What I learned as a member of Sloggers boxing team stood me in good stead in later years during my life, being a joker by nature, bullies tend to think that your also soft and there to be taken advantage of .There have been many occasions where Sloggers lessons got me out of trouble
There were other unforgettable characters at the school among the teachers and instructors. One of the most notable and longest serving was Mr Bates, “Tiller Bates” commonly known as “Tiller Bonk”.I think the tiller title was due to the size of his nose, which was prodigous.How he wound up teaching a bunch of hooligans like us I don’t know. If you met him at a function you would swear that he was a lecturer at an Oxbridge college or at least taught in a public school. He was a gentleman, his suits and his shoes said so. He had a variety of what I suppose were Harris Tweed suits that he must have had since his youth (which would have been many years before his days at Watts). He was obviously a very intelligent and intellectual man. He had one great weakness. He couldn’t abide wind breakers and if somebody “dropped one” in his class he went “bananas”. “Open the windows open the doors, whoever made that smell get to the back of the class”. Some of us became adept at imitating “Farts” and when the usual “who made that noise?” we would own up and get sent to the back of the class where he never ventured. We could then get on with reading a comic, or whatever.
Sid Pointer was the signals officer and taught us Morse code, semaphore and signal flags. Over the years he had developed a style of teaching that made learning very easy. I can still remember some of the Morse letters by relating to the stories he told, also the signal flags. Today they would be called memory aids.
Mr Frost was our welfare officer.I,m not actually sure what that entailed but I do know that he used to have the best “spin ups” at the school. We used to sit on the grass by the cricket pavilion and listen to these wondrous stories about foreign countries. I am of the impression that he had been an officer in the Royal Navy, he wore a lieutenants’ uniform but gave the impression of having been involved in something special in his younger days. He was well past retirement age when I was at Watts. I suppose that one of his responsibilities was to give us advice towards our future well being. One piece of wisdom he treated us to was that when going into a dockside bar where there were females available on a financial basis, was to never pick the best looking or the loudest. He claimed that there was always a girl there who was not particularly good looking or outgoing. She was the one to go for on the basis that she wouldn’t cost as much, would give more value for money and there was less chance of catching some unwanted medical complaint as there wouldn’t be as much passing traffic.
We had a gunnery officer whose means of recapturing a boy’s attention was to throw a Lee Enfield rifle at him. If the boy was paying attention he would catch the rifle, if he didn’t catch the rifle he should have been paying attention. It is worth mentioning that the boys were between eleven and fifteen and a Lee Enfield rifle is quite a heavy piece of kit. They were of course old rifles that had been made safe.
The gunnery officers main interest is school instructions was the artillery race. This is the one that is shown at the Edinborough Tattoo every year. We had two ancient artillery pieces together with ammunition carts and the object of the exercise is to cross a chasm with these guns which meant taking them to pieces and transporting them across an imaginary chasm piece by piece on a hook suspended from a rope slung across the chasm, then re- assembling them on the other side, firing an imaginary shot and then retreating back over the imaginary chasm. In fact the only things that weren’t imaginary were the weight of the pieces we transported and the blood when we trapped our fingers. All this was done in competition between the various school divisions, or occasionally exhibitions at school open days to show the public how clever and brave we were.
I saw a few acts of bravery while at Watts but the bravest act of all wasn’t from one of the boys or even a member of staff but from a girl who cycled to work every morning and home every evening and had to ride through our parade ground which straddled the road that ran between a village and the town of East Dereham. In the summer she used to wear typical summer frocks that tended to lift in the breeze and when there are nearly three hundred horny little boys straining to catch a view of an extra length of thigh or even a piece of knicker it certainly takes courage to continue the practice. Or maybe she was just an exhibitionist. After she had past there would be long discussions with various boys claiming how high up her legs they had seen, each boy making claims to a higher sighting.
Every activity was preceded by a parade, one of them was “work parade” .This entailed being allocated a job to do for the day that we were scheduled as workers. One of the jobs was to take the school bike and ride to the village for the mail. The officer of the day would dole out the jobs and one of his shouts was “who can ride a bike?” In anticipation of a mornings freedom riding to the village for the post, the uninitiated would put up their hand” Right captain of the heads” the order would come back. There would be a groan and the unlucky boy would set of for the heads (toilets) to spend the morning scrubbing and mopping about thirty toilet cubicles. My favourite job was working with the gardeners. They had a little hut where they did their “brew ups”, in the winter the job entailed making sure that the fire was going so that the hut was warm for their break. We were supposed to do some vegetable gardening but the gardeners used to make excuses for us to stay in the warm. Other jobs included working in the boiler house taking barrow loads of coke and stoking the boilers which used a considerable amount of fuel as they were for heating the whole establishment. Washing pans it the galley. Helping the grounds man to mark out the ten football pitches or the cricket pitches and all sorts of other tasks
Summer holidays I spent at the Fordhams and they always made me welcome. As I got further into my teens the holidays were getting more interesting. Firstly there were girls and being able to ride a bike into the village in the evening helped my social life and being in a sailors uniform set me aside from local fourteen or fifteen year old lads. Then there was fruit picking spent some time one holiday picking plums. This was a double bonus of earning a bit of money and also there were some girls picking plums as well. There was a swimming spot at the old brickworks where one of the clay pits had been flooded years ago and on a hot afternoon some of the girls would come swimming. Now that I could swim I felt safe even though the pits were reputed to be almost bottomless and dangerous for novices. We didn’t care it gave us the chance to see the fourteen year old girls in bathing costumes, which was a thrill for us and in addition the girls liked to show off their figures to the boys. We did do some swimming as well.
Between the fruit picking, harvesting, threshing and swimming, summer holidays were idyllic.
Christmas holidays were spent at Watts and although it wasn’t as good as a family Christmas the school made a real effort. We all got some sort of present on Christmas day so that boys who had no family would at least get a Christmas present. At Christmas dinner we were waited on by the officers, which is an old navy tradition which they carried over from their service days. Some of the Barnardos homes closed down for a few days over Christmas and their residents transferred to us. We actually had some girls staying with us for a few days over the holiday. This was very exciting as we spent hours figuring how to get some of them away and find out how to have our wicked way with them. At that time of our lives we were pretty ignorant as to the actual mechanics of “Getting” a girl but we were all anxious to learn. Quite honestly on those occasions none of us did any learning. As far as I know!
Three hundred boys between the ages of eleven and fifteen always have among their number trouble makers and mischief makers. My whole time there was spent not in gaining knowledge but in dodging lessons, dodging work pulling strokes and any other mischief that could be managed and there was plenty of opportunity for a determined boy to pull stunts.
Every day at about teatime there was a changeover of electric generators (we generated our own electricity on the premises).The lights would gradually go dim then out and after a short break before the next generator was connected. In the winter during this time of darkness all hell would be let loose. It was a chance to throw some fish paste(which nobody seemed to like)at someone that had “got” you the previous day, it was the opportunity to throw something more substantial to damage someone who was bigger and had probably done some bullying in the recent past. When the lights came back on everybody sat looking angelic and completely innocent of any wrong doing.
One night we played a trick on the” night officer”. It nearly gave him a heart attack as he was at a really advanced age and had the night watch as it was usually an easy berth. The main building consisted of a ground floor and three floors above that with galleries running round a central atrium and dormitories off the galleries. A little like the prisons that are in films where they have netting to stop inmates committing suicide. We didn’t have the nets because either life at school wasn’t that bad or the authorities didn’t care as that would be just one less mouth to feed. Across one end of the first floor was what we call the quarter deck. This was where the bugler stood to blow reveille or last post and it was also where the night watch officer stood his watch.
One night a bunch of us went to the top deck with a dummy dressed in full “number ones” (best suit) with a rope tied around it and threw it over the side. It fell three floors and at the same time somebody gave a huge scream. The officer looked over the quarter deck in the half light and saw a body lying on the floor. He rushed down the stairs to see what happened and as soon as he was out of line of sight going down the stairs we pulled the dummy back to the top deck and disappeared back to our beds giggling. Nobody got caught on that one but me and several others were questioned quite heavily.
One of my pals was “Fatty” Walters. I don’t know why he had been christened “Fatty” except that when we first arrived someone would stick us with a name and that was ours for the rest of our stay, and probably long after for boys that went into the Royal Navy and sailed together. My name incidentally was “Dopey” Again I’ll never know why but that was the name that I was stuck with for five years. Anyhow Fatty and I looked very much alike and we could have been taken for brothers. If Fatty was fooling around in class the teacher might look at him and say”Sutton, stand up” at which point I would stand.”What are you standing for Walters?””I,m Sutton sir” Usually at this point Fatty and me would finish up outside the classroom. The usual teacher for this was the science teacher who never ever got to grips with Fatty and me and his only answer was to send us both out. While I was with the Fordhams they wanted me to stay on and then become an apprentice joiner and eventually a proper joiner. The people of Suffolk should thank their lucky stars that I resisted the temptation and went to sea school. We had woodworking lessons and in five years of attending these lessons I never completed one single project. I used to set off with all the enthusiasm possible on some highly complex project, not for me a set of simple bookend which everyone else seemed to be able to complete, I had to plan a fancy bookcase with twiddly bits, after about five weeks when I could see that the whole project was going “pear shaped” I would slip it into the bin where all the waste wood was, instead of stowing it in on the shelf for work in progress. The following week I would spend the first part of the lesson pretending to search for the project, complaining loudly that “someone’s pinched my project” until the woodworking master would say “Get out of the class, Walters” at which time Fatty would make to leave. Both of us finished up sat on the water tank outside the classroom.I don’t think Fatty ever finished a project either.
The tricks weren’t one sided and the officers had their own way of repaying pranks. Boys would often be sent to see the chief engineer in the engine house to get a left handed hammer, he would then explain that he had recently loaned his to the maintenance engineer and the boy should go to the maintenance shop and get it. This could go on for some time with the order to hurry; run don’t walk and eventually he would be sent back to the original officer and get rollocked for not finding one. Another joke was to send a boy to the engine house to as the engineer for a long weight (wait) the engineer would tell the boy to stay there while he went to find a long weight. This also could go on for some time. The older boys were wise to all this because they had been caught in their early days.
I was at Watts just after world war two and in those days anyone in uniform had special treatment wherever they went. We occasionally had leave to go to Dereham and there was a services club there that served cheap tea and cakes to servicemen.We were in navy uniform but had no money, even to buy the cheap tea and cakes so the boy I was palled up with at the time, called “Tich” used to get me to distract the women behind the counter and he used to stuff loads of cakes down the front of his jumper.
When a number of boys get together I suppose that it’s like a number of prisoners getting together. All sorts of ingenious ideas come forth and nobody knows who thought of them, they just exist and pass from generation to generation.Smokers.I never got involved with smoking at school; in fact I never smoked until I was about thirty. There was a smokers club at Watts. Their clubhouses were the toilet and behind the cricket pavilion. Lighting cigarettes could have been a problem except for some clever individual who invented the light switch lighter. The light switches in the school were the old fashioned brass covered bell shaped ones .The idea was to unscrew the cover and expose the works, take two pencils sharpened at each end, put one end of each pencil in the terminal and the other two ends meet then flick the switch on and of while an accomplice holds a piece of Dura Glit(brass cleaning cotton wool soaked in spirit) close to the spark.Hey Presto you have a fire which you then apply to a bootlace and when that is lighted hang it behind the cistern in the toilets.
Watching a smoker trailing an adult walking around smoking was an education. If the adult was uninitiated he would smoke the cigarette and drop the fag end, possibly putting his foot on it. As soon as he was out of sight the smoker would pounce and add the fag end to his stash. The knowing officers would nonchalantly walk around smoking, knowing they were being stalked by a smoker so when they had smoked the cigarette as far as they wanted they would shred it and scatter the remainder of the tobacco around, look at the smoker possibly with a grin or in the case of Bert Busby a wink then walk of whistling.
When we entered Watts we were given certain items of clothing. In the main our “kit” consisted of a “number ones” suit with the blue collar with the three lines round the edge representing Nelsons three great battles, a black silk, worn by all sailors since Nelsons death and a hat. This outfit was only worn on Sundays for church parade. A number two suit to be worn in the winter for other parades and instruction, football kit, gym kit socks, underwear a pair of boots and that’s about it. In the summer we wore shorts instead of number twos. As we grew we could put a chitty in to have larger clothes but only after approval by our divisional officer .When we had kit inspection these had to be laid out on our beds in regulation order and anything missing would result in a report.
Occasionally items would be lost. Whoever found the item would take it to a room with a hole cut in the door. This was called the “scran-bag”and articles were put through the hole to be retrieved at a later time. It was an old navy tradition that any thing found sculling around went in the “scran bag” and it cost a piece of soap to recover it. As we didn’t have a soap ration it cost us an hour of kit muster at the foot of the mast. In the event of rain it would be on the main deck. It was very good training for later life as it taught us to keep our living space tidy. My wife would argue that the training didn’t last.
Watts was a very old building and it must have cost fortunes to maintain and to heat .Barnardos had another school, Russel Cotes Nautical School in Parkstone nr Poole where the buildings were much newer and easier to maintain and heat, so we moved. I believe that the school was eventually pulled down and the land used as a turkey farm.
One day coaches arrived and took us thirty or forty at a time with our kit and what few private belongings we had on the trip to our new home. It really was quite luxurious compared to Watts and in addition it was close to the town which meant that we were out more. I have the impression that the Russel Cotes boys were not quite as unruly as the Watts boys. Very quickly we became barred from the boating lake as boys were renting row boats for half an hour keeping them well away from the attendant for an hour or so and then abandoning them on the other side of the lake to save paying the extra time. We were warned off Woolworths in Bournemouth where some of the boys went on a Saturday afternoon to do some shoplifting and the headmaster of the local boy’s grammar school asked our Captain if we would stop beating up the grammar school boys.
When I became fifteen at Watts the captain called me to his office and pointed out that it was time that I made a decision whether I wanted to go to HMS Ganges and on to the royal navy or join the merchant navy or move on to a trade school that Barnardos had and train for a shore job. He explained that if I wanted to join the navy I would have to sign up for at least seven years and an additional five years in the reserve. Even at fifteen, the idea of signing a contract for seven years or more horrified me so I opted for the merchant navy.Thats one of the advantages of having no father to guide me; I was making my own decisions at fifteen.
As I got closer to my sixteenth birthday which qualified me to go to sea I decided that I’d like to do my first trip with one of my pals who was a week older than me. A request to the skipper got the permission so we waited .A week before my pal’s (Buzzer Bysouth) sixteenth birthday the skipper told us that there were two berths on the Capetown Castle and she was due to sail on the seventeenth of may, Buzzers birthday, and a week before I should have gone to sea, but he’d arranged for me join the same ship. I think he was glad to be rid of me. He had been captain of Watts and then Parkstone for the whole of the time I was there so we knew each other quite well. Having shared some “punishing times” together.
So of I went to sea.

[Braid Anderson]

Wow, took a while to read, but worth it. The 'accumulator' was a large battery-like thing, full of liquid, which you could see through the transparent sides. We had two of them, and it was my job on Saturday afternoon to take the old one to Jimmy Christie's bike shop and collect the new (charged) one. I took it in the wheelbarrow, as they were too heavy to carry.

[j.sabourn]

#14.... 4 farthings one penny, 12 pennies 1 shilling, 20 shillings 1 pound, (21 shillings 1 guinea), wonder what the kids of today would do if had to change back from the metric system. Same applies to their tables had to repeat up to I think it was the 12 times tables from memory. Now if you take a calculator away from anyone they are lost. When they started using the metric system at sea in chartwork and such I always subconsciously thought and converted to fathoms and feet and cables, and never did think any other way but Nautical miles, as was always there on a mercator chart. Everything changed during my time at sea, there were 3 sets of Articles or Rule of the Road which had to be memorized. Barometric pressures went from inches to millibars to hectapascals, doesnt alter anything just makes it easier I suppose of you speak French. Draft marks were suddenly not inches anymore but decametres. However as far as I know they havent managed to get the name changed for the Plimsol mark. Time will tell. GMT disappeared and in its place appeared UTC, Universal Time, something to do with atomic clocks or something, this however in no way changes the principles of Astral navigation, so I still think of as GMT. There are probably numerous other things if I sat and thought about it, so while the outside world changed, the mariners of the world had to go along with this big world wide changes for the so called future and prosperity of the world. Going back to the start of this missed out 2 farthings 1 halfpenny. Coins farthings halfpennys, pennies, threepenny bits, sixpences, shillings, florins, halfcrowns, ten bob notes, pound notes,guineas, and if you were rich and just paid off maybe one of the old fivers. JS

[Braid Anderson]

This Universal Time is a load of codswallop. Nobody knows how many millions of years we are already into universal time. GMT is for this little planet alone, nothing to do with the rest of the universe. Wonder what spindoctor thought up the meaningless name in the first place.