EARLY YEARS & LINEAGE
0044 EARLY MEMORIES - 1943 to 1945
As might be expected, I have very few memories from before the age of five, and I can only really identify the fact that these took place before my fifth birthday because they took place in my first house at Croft Avenue in Bromborough, on the Wirral peninsular. We moved from there when I was just five years old.
Amongst these early memories of is one which stands out, for what reason I don't know, with my grandfather - who was to play a big part in my early life - playing with me in the garden. In particular, he was helping me to build imitation birds’ nests in the rockery which was on top of our Anderson shelter; using dry grass, with stones as the eggs. As I said, don't know why this stands out. I suppose it may have been because in some respects it was one of my first educational experiences, and - as we will see elsewhere - my grandfather was a very good teacher and probably was teaching me something about nature.
It is difficult even to remember the garden there, except that - memorably - the bottom part of the garden was separated off by a fence topped with trellis. That part contained apple trees. The reason I remembered this again is idiosyncratic. It came about because I remember my father spreading the soot, which had come from the chimney being swept, all round the trees to protect them from pests. The rest the garden is something of blank except, as I mentioned above, the Anderson shelter which was near the house. It was covered -- as was nearly always the case -- with a mound of earth and this had been planted as a rockery by my father, who was always an avid gardener.
I vaguely remember the drive at the side of the house, because that's where my father tinkered with his motorcycle. This was all he could use during the war - when petrol supplies were almost non-existent.
Outside the front gate, on the opposite side of the road, was the local school, although I cannot really remember any children being there. My friend, John Gerard, lived next door. I can barely even remember him except -- paradoxically -- for an argument we had where I threw dirt in his face; not a very nice thing to do. In penance I had to give him a relatively new toy, a circus ring with miniature figures of all the performers. In any case, it was not a toy I really liked. In my one and only visit to the circus, I reportedly yelled at the lion tamer ‘Stop hitting him you nasty man!”
I suppose I must have had contact with other children and their parents, because the house I lived in was a fairly normal semi-detached house, built just before the war. Although it was on a small – middle-class - development, it was surrounded by new housing estates.
On the other hand I sometimes went to a nearby colony of much more expensive up-market houses to play with children there. Again I can't remember the children. But, I can remember the quarry- tiled floors in one kitchen and the sense of spaciousness. Even so, I don't know if that had any impact on me whatsoever. The shared community, which the war had produced, represented for a short time at least a classless society.
The house in Croft Avenue
In my own house I can vaguely remember the kitchen, and in particular a minute detail: that my father had rigged up a light in the Andersen shelter and the light was connected to a plug in the space underneath the sink. Of such small minutiae are our lives constructed. Apart from that I can barely remember that room or any other room downstairs, except of course the main room - which was the family room -- supposedly to be used as a dining-room. This was the room where we lived, as did most people in those days when the lack of central heating meant that you had to have a coal fire to keep warm; and it was expensive and difficult to have more than one room heated at a time. It was the custom then that the front room was, of course, for Sunday best. I remember nothing of it.
The dining-room suite was made of heavy oak. I remember, in particular, the bureau with a drop-down flap and bookcases on either side. I remember this because of - perhaps very influentially in terms of my later developments as a futurologist – how my father graphically described to me how television would look, like a big screen on the wall above this bureau. This flight of intellectual fancy was unusual for my very pragmatic father. It was very prophetic, though, when you consider that at the time was no television due to the war, and even the pre-war audience had consisted of just been a few hundred people watching it in London.
Perhaps, as with most children, the memory of my early childhood is of sunlight flooding into everything. And of happiness everywhere, even though there was a war going on. In particular I remember the sun in the dining-room, with its french-windows. These were, in summer, opened out on to what must have been a small patio or maybe a lawn. I also clearly remember the striped, roll-down awning which protected us from the sun in the summer. I don't really remember eating there, but I do remember a lovely water set comprising glass jug with a green swirly pattern, which fascinated me, along with a set of matching glasses; and the orange juice I drank out of it is. And of course the wonderful thing was that it was the orange juice then provided by the state for young children. It was real orange juice, albeit concentrated, which was never available to me again for a couple of decades, until we got fresh orange juice in the supermarkets.
The one food I remember, or at least the incident I remember, was wondering why my mother talked so often with her friends about scallops. Scallops are the delicious sea food that we now eat, but then were sliced potatoes - thinly sliced potatoes - dipped in batter and fried. I loved them. They were probably my favourite food, but it still did not explain why there was so much talk of scallops when my mother's friends were talking, or rather whispering, in the kitchen. It was years later when I realised that word hadn't been scallops, but scholarships. It revealed the preoccupation of my slice of society with education, and particular the need to obtain scholarships to get to reasonable schools. In those days, before the 1948 Education Act, schools were of very variable quality and the opportunities available even for middle-class children, such as myself, were often quite limited. Hence the preoccupation of the mothers, in getting their children scholarships to the best schools. I guess this unspoken preoccupation was to dominate my young life, as my mother - in particular - strove to get a good education for me.
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