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A DANCE THROUGH THE FIRES OF TIME
9504 LIFE STARTS - 1940s
As I have already said, I was born in 1940. I was my parents’ first and only child, as was then the fashion brought on by the uncertainty of war.
What I now must add is that my arrival, during the blitz on Merseyside, had a spectacular accompaniment. It was a time when the fires raging in Liverpool were so bright that, even where I was born, at night you could read a newspaper by their light. This was even though we were half a dozen or so miles away on the Wirral peninsula.
More specifically, a German reconnaissance aircraft had been shot down just a few fields away the day before. This had been much to the delight of the locals, who within hours had stripped it of every conceivable souvenir. The Nazi high command had been less impressed, and – in retaliation - that night I was born in the middle of my own special air raid, with bombs exploding all around. My father, who had been left with the jam-making which my mother had been forced to abandon, was unable to get through to see his new son until daylight. Thus did I come to this world in a fashion which foreshadowed the drama which has characterised my life.
I can remember nothing of my time as a baby, though its is clear I was brought up in a relatively privileged household where my father was in a reserved occupation; a manager in the chemical industries. It was a loving family, and – like other members of my middle-class peer group - I was denied nothing. Thus I was weighed regularly at the local clinic, to ensure that I was the chubby baby which was then thought essential for good health. Further, to keep me in good health despite wartime rationing, I had the only eggs available while my doting parents went without.
My first, albeit hazy, memory was of my uncle calling on us prior to leaving for the front overseas. For years I assumed that I must have been three or four at the time, for I had clambered unaided down the stairs from my bedroom to see what the commotion was But, in fact, it must have been when I was just eighteen months old. Maybe it was an especially important memory at the time, for the heart-breaking wrench of soldiers going away - for nobody knew how long, in fact in his case it was for more than three years - was visited on almost every family. But it was no less traumatic for each of them when it came.
During the Second World War my Father was a member of the home-guard. He was in a reserved occupation, since the chemicals produced in his factory were of national importance. So the only alternative he had was to join the home-guard. This British institution has been immortalised by the 'Dad's Army' programme on television, though in this its own home-guard members are seen as amateurs who enjoy themselves playing soldiers. I don't think my father's own home-guard was amateur. It once defeated a guards regiment in mock battle, but they certainly enjoyed their work -- and were totally committed to it.
I guess, therefore, I saw my father in army uniform quite often in my younger days; though I can't really remember it. On the other hand I can remember him keeping his sten gun on top of the wardrobe -- and making me a wooden one of my own! He found out after the war that he had been the sten gun champion of Merseyside. They used to test soldiers on a range in Birkenhead docks, in a bombed warehouse where dummies were made to pop out of all sorts of places and my father -- despite his spectacles -- was apparently the holder of the highest score for the region!
He really did love his time in the home guard. In particular he enjoyed the map reading exercises, since he was very good at this -- as I was later on. He, and his fellow homeguards, used to chase all over the Wirral, building their knowledge ready for the invasion; which of course never came. He was particularly happy that his commanding officer was also his boss at work. He was the boss my father considered was the best in his whole career. The family name was 'Giffard' and he was due, on the death of his father, to become Lord Halsbury. He treated my father and the men much better than the other managers at Prices did. And the same was true of the home guard contingent, and was the main reason for the spirit he engendered in it.
Mind you, even that was not enough my father, for he was also an ARP (Air Raid Protection) warden. His busiest time, needless to say, was when Liverpool was being very heavily bombed. He was able to go out in the garden and -- even though he was 6 or 7 miles away from the fires - being able to read the newspaper in the light of the flames from them.
Surprisingly his own factory, which was next to Bromborough docks, was not bombed. On the other hand, there was a rumour at the time that the docks and factories were protected. Unilever, which was already a major multinational, reportedly had done a deal with both governments (it had significant manufacturing plants in Germany as well). The British would not bomb its German factories and the Germans would not bomb its British factories! Such is the cynical nature of politics and business, even in wartime.
So, when not in the home guard, he patrolled the streets; though in fact we never got bombed at home. The fact that I was born – in Prices’ own nursing home - in the middle of a raid was occasioned by a German plane being shot down by an anti-aircraft battery in the vicinity. The only other problem was when my mother accidentally put an incendiary primer on the fire. When it exploded in it blew the fire all over the dining-room!
My father worked all the hours God gave him during the war, and undoubtedly – as you will see from my uncle Sid’s diaries -- he worked much harder than any of the soldiers. But he enjoyed life as he never did at any other time. And so did the most of the soldiers. It was a time when everyone pulled together. Even the upper classes, or at least the usually stand-offish middle classes, mixed with everyone else. But this spirit finished the day the war ended! In the war itself everyone had a feeling that they had something to do, their life was fulfilled, even if it was just beating Hitler.
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 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.
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!” John was older than me and, though he too went to Birkenhead School, I never had any contact with him after we left Croft Avenue. I was told he ended up in the mental hospital at Chester; a scandal for his parents in those days, and a virtual custodial sentence for him!
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 cool spaciousness – along with the distinctive smell of the wax used on the floor tiles. 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.
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 designated 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 –my father graphically describing 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 main 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 a 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 frozen 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 they 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 in 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.
Although the time represented a fundamental change in their lives for my parent’s generation, especially for those who had spent five years of their lives in uniform, my memories of the Second World War are somewhat limited. I don't, for example, remember any bombing; which, in any case, had stopped by the time I was two years old.
The only time I have ever heard fighting, even with small arms, was half a century later in Ethiopia. Even then, comfortably ensconced in my hotel bed, all I could hear - in the distance – was the battles ranging between the army and the gangsters who were still at large after the Civil War. At one point, at later time, I had tracer pass within ten feet or so; but that was from an over-enthusiastic celebration! I never saw or heard anything like that in the second world war itself.
The nearest I got to it - then - was, I suppose, watching the army, or rather the home guard, practising at Colwyn Bay. They were on the beach, towing a target across the sands and firing on it with Bren guns. I suppose that must have been with live ammunition. But I reckon that it really was to be seen almost as entertainment for us holidaymakers rather than any threat to anyone.
In my small world the only time the war intruded was when, towards the end of the war, the Americans arrived in preparation for D-day. They transported vast quantities of stores across the Atlantic to Liverpool and then across to the Wirral; where it was unpacked for their soldiers camped there to use. They then deposited the empty packing cases in various locations throughout the Wirral, one of which was near my home. The local population used to get a warning that this was about to take place and, when this happened, my parents used to rush out and get as much of the wood as was possible; to save on the scarce fuel ration. I suppose their absence at night must have been very scary for me. I hated being alone and used to stand at my bedroom window watching out for them. I hated sleeping in the dark, and used to wake up screaming, and my parents had rigged up a pulley system so that, from their bed, they could turn on the light switch in my bedroom without having to get up!
I can’t even remember very much about the upper storey of that house, which I left when I was five, though I can just about remember the layout. It was a three-bedroom house with a small box-room at the front, which was my nursery. The main bedroom, also on the front, was my parents' about which, though, I can't remember anything. The second bedroom, originally meant to be the guest bedroom, was – at least as I remember it - primarily used to store apples. I remember that, because we had apple trees in the garden and my father stored their fruit in this room over the winter.
Apart from that I can remember very little. I can remember my father having a motorbike, which was all they could support on the meagre petrol ration. I was scared of the noise it made when he tried it out on the front drive. All in all I must have been a timid child! I had frequent nightmares, with a giant threatening the valley I was travelling through. Freud would have had a field day with that! They also had a car, but it remained in the garage for the whole war, albeit lovingly tended to by my father, because there wasn't enough petrol for it to ever be used.
The stories about what had happened to me at various times, which were told to me later, are a different matter. According to these, for example, when I was much younger I went out without parents knowing and came back dripping from head to foot and covered in water-weeds. I had tried to walk on a pond nearby, which looked just like a lawn with the weeds floating on it. How I survived I don't know, but I had a lucky childhood.
Later, I was running across a pond in the freezing winter of 1947, when the ice was nearly a foot thick. Unfortunately, someone had chopped a hole in it and I went straight through, plunging deep down into the icy water. Fortunately I came straight up and my father, who was just behind me, pulled me straight out. We ran all the way home so I didn't have time to get really cold. But it was a very, very close call. If I hadn't come straight up and been pulled out immediately out, I would have been drowned for sure. Even when indulging in the fun of tobogganing I managed to head off the gentle main slope onto a steep side slope which ended with a river. Again, the potentially disastrous slide ended a few feet from the water.
In terms of near death adventures, I suppose I have – like the proverbial cat – had at least nine lives. However, I have never thought of myself in any way as especially lucky.
Things improved as we got towards the end of the war. I suppose this, celebrated by VE day, was another milestone for my parent’s generation. I can’t remember a thing about it. I can, though, remember them bringing in new buses; mainly because the comfortable leather seats were replaced by slatted wooden ones, so that was perhaps not too much of an improvement. I can also remember the smell of the new paint in them.
Some of my most evocative memories are stimulated by such smells. Newly cut grass always reminds me of the cricket field in front of the house at Bromborough Pool, where we used to play in the mounds of grass-cuttings after it was mown. Farmyard smells, which – apart from in Ethiopia – I am rarely exposed to these days, immediately takes me back to my time on holiday at the cottage. Candy-floss inevitably reminds me of fun at the fair.
I never went short of anything to eat, though I'm certain my parents did; in order that I could have enough. My mother was very conscious of the days of her childhood when -- because Uncle Sid was very ill -- he got all the best food and as a result my mother developed rickets.
In 1945, after the end of the war when I was just five years old, we moved to a new house. This is where most of my memories start. It was on the factory village owned by Prices, who by then had become part of Unilever. The village itself was made up of three parallel roads about half a mile long, each of which was lined with houses for the workers. Two of the roads, originally meant for the ordinary workers, were made up of terraced houses facing each other. The other was lined on one side by semi-detached houses of slightly better quality, for supervisors, with a view over the allotments on the other side. That was where my nana (grandmother), on my father's side, lived.
In the far corner, away from the road that led to the village and the main part of the factory, there was the cricket/recreation field; simply called ‘The Green’. The field itself was big enough to contain a full-size cricket pitch and two football pitches along with a sports pavilion. Beyond this, at the bottom edge nearest the river Mersey, was Bromborough dock. This was where Unilever’s imported raw materials were unloaded. Alongside this were the grounds of the factory itself. On one of the other sides of ‘The Green’ were the village hall, the church and the village school; the company provided for its workers almost from cradle to grave – it once even had its own nursing home, which was where I was born. On the remaining side were the best houses; originally for use by the senior managers. These were large Georgian semi-detached villas, built in the 1850s. It was in one of these that we then came to live.
It was owned by the company, and as such we paid rent for it -- all of 25 shillings a week! Each of these large houses had an extensive garden which was probably something like a quarter of an acre in size. There were two blocks of houses, in other words four semi-detached houses. Two were still houses but the two nearest the river had been converted into flats, with an enclosed outside staircase built for access to the upper flat.
Number three ‘The Green’, which was our house, was -- as I have said -- a Georgian villa. It was built around 1850, and was fairly typical of that period. Thus on the ground floor it had quite an elaborate vestibule, on the side of the house, through which you entered; and then a hall which was typical of that period, with decorated plaster coving. At the far end there was a staircase going up to the second-floor which had a wonderful mahogany handrail down which I loved to slide.
On the ground floor there were three main reception rooms. One of these was used as the ‘front room’, only to be used – as was the custom in those times - for special occasions. This contained the good furniture, including our most expensive carpet square (fitted carpets were then an unknown feature, and black japanned floorboards were the norm) and three-piece suite. The other room on the front of the house was the dining-room with a heavy oak dining table and sideboard. In it there were also a couple of easy chairs and ultimately this was where the television was. So, although initially we rarely used it - eventually we spent our evenings watching television in there. The final reception room, at the back, was only used as my playroom. It was big enough, though, to contain a table-tennis table - with enough room to play a fairly vigorous game. Later this was interchangeable with a small pocket-billiards.
That main living room was, paradoxically, what would originally have been the servants hall; though we used it as our main room (and called it the 'kitchen'). In it we had another dining table with chairs etc and this was where we had the radio; which in the early days was the main source of all our entertainment. In essence this was where we spent most of our time; much as the servants originally would have done. When we first got there this room had a wonderful array of bells. These had been linked to bell pushes in all the other rooms so that the servants could be summoned to wherever the family required their service. It also had a wonderful built-in dresser, reaching nearly up to the ceiling and covering a whole wall I guess it was contemporary with the house itself, because, when it was taken out to make more room, they had to put new floorboards down – since there was nothing underneath it. Behind that room was the actual kitchen. I guess that was where the servants originally cooked all the food. It was thus a smaller room, and we used it as the standard kitchen with a cooker, sink and the usual array of features; which initially included a large food safe made of perforated zinc, which was - much later - replaced by a small refrigerator.
The 'kitchen' (living room) was also where I had my desk, around which my homework revolved! This was a sloping clerk's desk – in beautiful polished mahogany - sourced second-hand, as were many of our fixtures and fittings, from Price's.
My memories of food, or the lack of it, during the war are rather limited. I guess the one thing I can remember, which is reported elsewhere, is the 'scollops' (potatoes dipped in batter and deep-fried). I really liked those; though, to be fair, in the days of tough rationing there must have been few other luxuries to outshine them. In any case, they were delicious. Other than that, I can remember being given a daily dose, a dessert-spoonful, of 'Virol'. This was a form of malt extract, full of all the vitamins and other goodies which was meant to give me an extra intake of energy. But, as it was made up with syrup, it tasted delicious; rather like the caramel you now get inside chocolates. Like most children of the time, I liked barley sugar, though it was in the form of a twist you sucked rather than as the individual sweets you now buy. I guess, these are things that I enjoyed most between the ages of five and ten.
But, I can also remember the sherbet that you sometimes made into a drink. You got it measured out in the shop as a powder in a paper cone. It was sugary but it was also acidic, so it fizzed. Mostly you dipped your finger in it and then put in on your tongue where it tingled deliciously.
Surprisingly, I don't remember much else up to the age of five, when I went to my first prep school, which I hated (as I describe elsewhere). My mother used put me on the bus to the school, together with my packed lunch which was in a blue box with writing on it. I think it had contained Smiths crisps, or something like that. The main thing I remember about it was that, along with sandwiches, I always had an orange. I can't remember eating it, I just remember taking it with me on the bus and then opening the box to release the orange’s sharp smell which drifted up into my nostrils.
I didn't notice the shortages, even in the late Forties. I suppose I never knew what might otherwise have been available. When we did have chocolate, for instance, it was something of an event. But the thing I do remember most of all was our first banana. I remember it even more because of the ceremony surrounding it. The whole extended family was allocated just one banana between all of us. That was for myself and my parents but also for my grandparents along with my aunts and uncles. For what seemed like weeks all of us regularly came and gawped at this banana, which wasn't yet quite ripe, as it sat on top of the sideboard in my grandparents house. We waited patiently for it to ripen. When it was finally ready it was cut into perhaps as many as a dozen pieces, so we could all have a taste of it. That, I suppose, was symbolic of the rationing that was then taking place.
We lived by our ration books then You took them with you to the corner shop where the various coupons were cut out for the food you bought; for meat, butter, sugar, and all those things in short supply - which indeed was almost everything, even including clothes, that mattered. It was quite a rigmarole but, as a result, your ration book was incredibly important to you. Almost everything was on ration. There were very few things, apart from what you grew in the garden (which is why my father was then such a keen gardener), which were not on ration.
One thing I do remember, though I can't remember the food itself, was the fish and chips when I was about five. I had it at Llandudno, where we used to go to a hotel on our holidays. I remember it because of going in to the fish and chip shop, which we usually went to, and finding the whole place smelling of new paint. Again this is a trivial memory, but it nicely demonstrates the power of smell to fix such memories; especially where I have suffered my whole life from catarrh which limits the odours I can detect. At the hotel itself, the other thing I remember was the smell, and the delicious taste, of Brown Windsor soup. Since then people have rubbished Brown Windsor soup, as a symbol of the bad old times. Now discontinued almost everywhere, it is almost forgotten. But somehow it then symbolised the luxurious side of hotel life.
During the war, and through to the 1950s, we were subject to rationing. This meant we had to go without many foods. The paradox is that our diet during this period was the healthiest we ever had! With so little to spare, the ration had to be well-balanced.
The food we ate probably was, however, most constrained by the previous working-class culture. It was not until the 1960s, when people started taking foreign holidays, that new dishes were introduced. It was later still before traditional British dishes were prepared in an appetizing way. Until then the signature of British food was overcooking!
The peak of post-war British cuisine was thus roast beef, pork or lamb – always overdone. With this came roast or mashed potatoes and overcooked vegetables; usually cabbage, but possibly cauliflower or carrots or even sprouts. All were cooked for far too long, so that they were mushy and tasteless and too often grey in colour!
In a popular variation, pork and lamb came as chops, to be served with deep-fried chips. Or, more often, there would be pork or beef sausages – albeit with little actual meat content. For a treat, the only ‘take-away’ was fish and chips; from the local chippy (fish and chip shop) wrapped in newspaper. That, however, was a – rare – delicious luxury.
Despite the shortages, offal – apart from liver – was shunned. All in all, it was a filling diet, and even nutritious to a degree. But, as we now realize, it was unimaginative and boring. But, at the time, we knew no better; and looked forward to the occasional luxury of a roast chicken.
School was supposed to be worse, but the cooks at my school turned out some decent meals – albeit in the popular tradition. They did use offal, at least in the form of liver, but they braised it. Best of all, they served us delicious stews and meat pies, full of juicy beef. Sausages, when they came, were chipolatas – unusual for the time – and, cooked in the oven, were delicious. Even the fish, again roast in the oven, was tasty – where most other fish – apart from that from the chippy – was bland, served with lumpy white sauce.
With these, though, we had mashed or boiled potatoes – only occasionally roast ones but never the chips which we used to eat at home and our now the staple diet of modern schoolkids – and of course the usual overcooked green vegetables. The only real problems, however, came when there were shortages; and the potatoes, for example, were replaced with (desert) rice!
The one thing we all hated was salad, since this was inevitably replete with a selection of insects!
Of course, for sweet we had all the traditional stodge of the public school; spotted dick, jam roly-poly, rhubarb crumble, bread & butter pudding – all with thick custard. We loved them all. As traditional dishes they have never been bettered.
Meals out, in restaurants, were only for the rich or for special celebrations.
One of my earlier memories - perhaps in 1946 or possibly even as early as 1943 - is the hotel in Llandudno in Wales where we went to on our first holidays after the war; when I was five or six years old. This hotel was on Llandudno’s West shore, right on the unpretentious promenade. It was then owned by Prices, the company my father worked for.
It had originally been a convalescent home. Afterwards, for a while, it became a hotel where Prices’ staff were allowed to take their holidays. We took our first holiday there in 1943 – though I am not sure I can remember anything about that – and went there again in 1946. I can't remember much more from then, not even how big it really was for everything as a child seemed huge. But I guess it had 10 to 15 bedrooms. Even so it was a real hotel, and I loved the smell of Brown Windsor soup drifting through its dark passages as the lunch was being prepared. I don’t know why Brown Windsor had so bad a reputation, or why it later disappeared from menus.
I can especially remember going there when it was stormy and the waves were breaking on the beach. The spray was blown right over the promenade.
Inside it was a wondrous place. Down in the basement they had a games room where you could play table-tennis, or at least as much as I could at that age. They also ran some simple forms of entertainment. Rather than the now ubiquitous bingo, I can remember beetle drives - rather like playing hangman in groups - that they used to run in order to keep us busy in the evenings. I suspect that later, after the children were put to bed, they had whist-drives for the parents. There was, of course no television in those days to keep guests occupied.
Llandudno itself was one of the favoured watering places of the gentry of the mill towns in earlier times. As a result the main part of the town, on the East shore, was very much a 19th-century seaside town; with all the gentile entertainments that might suggest. In contrast the West Shore was populated by 1930s villas, without any entertainments at all. As a result it was almost deserted, which made it ideal for swimming in the sea. We always did this when we continued to visit, albeit in later years just for the day. The East shore was the popular place, though. It had the pier, for example, from where you could take the steamer to Liverpool. Precariously clinging to this there were a few amusement arcades. But nothing was too raucous of course, for alongside the pier - clinging to the side of the Great Orme was the best hotel. In better times it had been to hand ready for the gentry as soon as they had disembarked from the steamer.
The main town, was indeed built right up against the Great Orme, a massive rock several hundred feet high which reared up at the end of the penninsula. You could climb up this, to the grass covered top; which was then populated only by sheep and seabirds. Most of the gentility, who made up the majority of the holiday-makers, wandered around the bottom of it where there were attractive public gardens. These contained an open-air theatre where concert parties performed, which we watched – for free - from the hillside above.
I can remember going on the tram in Llandudno for, like many other seaside resorts, it had trams in those days; as, indeed, did the main cities – including Liverpool – where they were then the main form of mass transport. In particular I can remember a form of tram which was deliciously different. It was called a 'toast-rack', and was a single deck tram which - with wooden seats - was completely open to the elements. It was great fun to ride on this in the summer.
Then, when I was seven, we went instead to Rhyl. This was a much more popular, more ‘downmarket’, holiday centre; ; typical of the seaside towns where most people took their one week of annual holiday. There we had a chalet, not far from the beach, which we shared with my mother's friend Eileen and her family. It was located on a chalet park, with lots of other chalets surrounding it. These days you would have a static caravan instead. But the chalet was an interesting building in its own right. Almost jerry-built, out of second-hand timber, it had a had an air of impermanence. The smell of paraffin permeated everything, for all of our food was cooked on paraffin stoves; though it had coal-fired stoves for heating. Eileen, who was quite well off (her husband was a cotton-broker), lost a diamond from her ring in the coal dust and she had everyone sifting through the coal until it was found.
I spent much of my time there playing in the large grass field which was in the centre of the camp, just outside of our front door. In particular I remember buying little balsa-wood planes, with a solid main body onto which you tied the flimsy wings by means of elastic bands. You launched them, as gliders, by hand and then chased wildly after them as they fluttered unpredictably around the field. Once, when I was ill, I was given the great treat of being allowed onto one of the horses which were brought there for the adults to ride.
From there every day we went to the beach. This was across the main road and then through the grounds of a ruined old house. I guess it had been quite big house in the 1930s, but it was now an impressive ruin. Just the other side of it was the beach itself. This was usually quite empty, so we could swim there all day in peace and quiet.
Half a mile or so away, Rhyl itself was full of amusement arcades and all the rowdy fun of the seaside. Along the sea-front there was the road on which were located most of the games arcades, full of slot machines. Between this and the shore there were carefully manicured municipal gardens, but no pier. Located amongst these gardens there was a roller skating rink, where I saw the little girl who became my first love. I guess I must have been just seven at the time. I thought she was wonderful, roller skating around in a proper skating dress. I used sit and watch her, my heart beating unmercifully, but I never dared to approach her. She was the first of many girls I worshipped from afar, but was always too shy to approach.
Most of it was, though, laid out to formal gardens where you could sit to enjoy the sun. On the other side of these was the beach itself. But we never used this. It was always too crowded.
Nearby, in the town, were the theatres. I remember being taken to one and seeing 'Hutch', who was at the time a famous singer with a rather hoarse voice. His full name was Leslie Hutchinson. I suppose I went to see him as part of a music-hall performance, which still represented the popular entertainment of the time.
At the other end of the beach was the fairground which had all the rides that you would expect of a fairground at that time. But, in particular, it had a miniature steam train that went round a large lake. For me that was the highlight of a visit to the fairground. You got on board the steam train and enviously watched the engineer at the controls while it puffed and panted its way round the great circle of track.
All that changed in 1948, when the whole extended family got together and rented a cottage in the hills above Bala Lake on the edge of Snowdonia. It took us into a different world. The farms we then used to visit through the 1950s, high on the hills of Wales, depended upon working fields which were precarious affairs. They barely clung on to the mountains. It is true that, sometimes, their better fields did run down into the valleys, where there was more shelter and better soil, but this was a rarity. The one we knew best, that run - as a tenant - by Blanche Davies, was perched high on a just such a foothill and was typical of many such farms at the time.
The fields, such as they were, were stony with little real soil for anything to grow on. Accordingly they were usually only suitable for cropping hay, and occasionally for corn. The small fields were surrounded by dry stone walls that probably had been first built hundreds of years before. But, in keeping with many similar farms across the world, the locals were forced to use the resources they found to hand, and these were mainly the stones that they dug up while clearing the fields. These were used to create the dry stone walls. Even though they had no mortar to hold them together, the skills of the craftsmen from those earlier times meant that they had lasted well and still efficiently served the function of containing the livestock; though, latterly, the growing gaps were being patched with the ubiquitous barbed wire of our own times.
The fields were not just small but irregular, and even within them there were outcrops of rock covered with gorse. Each posed a very different challenge for the hill farmer, around which he had to work.
Some of the fields were relatively flat, otherwise the farmer would have had difficulty in using the mechanical equipment needed to cut the hay -- which was about the only element of mechanical work undertaken. Others, though, were quite steep and could only be used for dairy cows or beef herds. The moorland, which covered the highest ground, was only fit for sheep. Thus the, subsistence, farmer had to make his living how and where he best could.
Consequently, most of the area was allowed to run wild. In the lower areas this was where sheep lambed in the spring and the cows foraged during the summer, and even then was often being taken over by bracken. At the other extreme the farm depended upon its rights, shared with other farms, to run sheep on the moorlands which covered the upper part. These were covered in heather, with some small amounts of grass in between the clumps of heather. While this looked beautiful for tourists, the hills were a blaze of purple in late summer, it provided very little sustenance for the hill sheep which had to be very tough indeed to survive the vicious winters.
Most of the farmer’s day was therefore spent walking around - herding animals . In our case it was Blanche's brother, Roger, who did most of this work -- with the dogs he depended upon running with him. These working dogs were black and white collies, and they certainly earned their living. They were not pets, even though they were very friendly, and in fact were treated pretty badly. Even so they responded loyally to the farmer's every command.
After the early morning milking, the farmer’s first task of the day was letting the cows out into the fields. The last was bringing them back again to be milked for the evening milking. This was not as difficult as it sounds, because the cows were well used to this routine; and were usually waiting at the gate, to be allowed to make their own way back to the farm. The paths they followed, back to the farm, covered the whole hillside and had been carved out by the feet of the cattle for hundreds of years. The sheep were a different matter. They always wanted the better grass, away from the moorland where they were supposed to be, and were regularly to be seen jumping over the walls; only to be dealt with by the farmer who chased them back again, a never ending to task.
We were never there at times of shearing sheep, but we were often there when they were dipped. This was not the modern form of dipping, in insecticide to protect them from insects, but was a rather cynical process of dipping them in the water before the wool was sold. As a result the wool weighed rather more, though the excuse given was that it was washed to obtain a slightly higher price.
The dipping, though, was accomplished simply by plugging the stream that ran from the lake until the dipping pond filled up; then chasing the sheep through it and pushing them under the water to make certain that all their body was ‘washed’. Even at the time it did not seem a very productive process.
But then, as I have said, these were marginal farms and every little extra bit of income counted.
The cottage we rented, and used as a holiday home in the Welsh mountains, had originally been a small farm. The house part of it, which was attached to the cow stalls and hayloft, was small. It had one living room downstairs, along with a small kitchen. Up some very narrow stairs it had one main bedroom. The other room upstairs, which you passed through on your way to the main bedroom, originally had been part of the hayloft, but sometime in the past - perhaps the Victorian era (because the partition wall was made up of lath and plaster) - it had been separated off. This was where I slept.
Like all the hill farms in the area the cottage was made out of local materials. Specifically the walls were made out of the local stones, piled up with mortar to a thickness of something like 18 inches. The roof was made of local slate. The windows were very small perhaps only 18 inches square – and only in the living room, kitchen and the main bedroom. Roof flights, still small, had been inserted, probably at a later stage, in the two bedrooms. It was a very dark house, but also very cosy.
From the front door of which was partially protected by a large slate canopy you entered straight into the living room; though there was a wooden storage divider on the left as you entered, which created a sort of lobby.
The living room itself was perhaps 12 feet 16 feet, and the area near the small window behind the storage partition was used as the dining area. The rest of the room focused on the range. It incorporated a traditional cooking range, with a tank for hot water on the left and an oven on the right. It was, needless to say, a very substantial feature with supporting walls perhaps two feet thick. The room overall was floored in red earthenware tiles. On the other hand, it probably had slate or even bare rock underneath, which had formed the original floor when it was built.
The kitchen also had the tiniest of windows. By it, the very narrow corkscrew stairs went up to the first floor. Its floor of was partly slate and partly the original stone underneath the cottage.
Indeed the whole cottage was built into the hillside so that, around the back, the level of the earth was about five feet deep against the walls. The cottage itself must have actually been cut into the rock since the hillside behind was part of a rocky hill that went up at almost a 45 degree angle. But this sheltered the cottage and protected it from the worst gales. This seemed to be fairly common practice, because the larger farm over the hill followed pretty much the same pattern.
As I said, when you went up the stairs the initial first floor bedroom only had a roof light. It was also unusual in that one wall was lath and plaster, where the rest of the cottage had rough stone walls. The other side of the lath and plaster was the small hayloft; and indications were that in earlier periods this too had been part of the house proper and the workers probably slept on the hay. The old worker, Ned, in the farm over the hill certainly still slept in their hayloft in this way.
A door led through to the main bedroom which was again reasonably sized and had a fireplace so it could be kept warm in winter; though we, of course, never visited in the depths of winter and never had need to use that fire. As you might expect, this was a wooden floored room.
Underneath the hayloft there was a the byer for cows; just a room with a stone floor in which the cows had been kept. Indeed, the local farmer still kept cows in there during the winter; even when we were on-site, since – as the cottage was at an altitude of something over 1,000 feet above sea level - the weather was very severe at that height. Beyond that were a range of pigsties. At the back there was also a Dutch barn, which must have been added at a much later stage.
This pattern was fairly similar for the other farms around. In particular the farm that we spent much time working with, over the hill, had very much the same layout; though it was bigger. Thus in front of its farmhouse, where in the case of the cottage we had grassed the area over to a form a lawn, was a very muddy farmyard. The farmhouse itself followed pretty much the same pattern as the cottage. The living room was big, with slate floors and a massive range. Like the cottage the ceiling featured massive oak beams, almost 12 inches by 12 inches, holding the floors above. Here, though, hanging from the beams, dangled legs of bacon waiting to be carved for the meals that the farmers ate. They still used the range to do all the cooking, where - at the cottage - we used the separate kitchen, initially with primus stoves and eventually with Calor gas stoves, which enabled us to cook pretty much as normal.
Outside that bigger farmhouse again there was a range of buildings. There were the shippams, as the farmer called them, where the cows could be kept in the winter; and also originally one in which the horses, the cart horses, were kept. There were pigsties, which provided the bacon on which the farmer lived most of the year. The other side though there was also a milking parlour and the dairy. The milking parlour was quite simply another stone floor room but with rails to which the cows could be attached, so that the farmer could milk them by hand. The dairy was very much the same except that, in contrast with the rest of the farm, it was kept scrupulously clean and contained the equipment for separating the cream, storing the milk and making the butter.
As a favour, I was once or twice allowed to milk a cow, where these were still hand milked, and to separate the cream in a form of centrifuge; and then churn the small quantity of butter which was used by the farmers themselves. Most of the milk, in traditional churns, was however carried up to the road; where it was picked up by the lorry from the local dairy.
As the farmyard was often ankle deep in mud, along with less savoury materials, I always wore my Wellington boots when I visited -- though the farmer herself, and her brother who helped to run the farm, wore heavy industrial boots instead. Across the other side of farmyard were the sheds in which the mechanical implements, almost the only concession to modern times, were kept. Around the back, once more, was the Dutch barn where the main hay store was kept.
The interesting thing was that, if you accept the different local materials, the whole principle was very much like that which I found later in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia though, the local material was mud so the houses were built with mud bricks -- there was no heavy rain to dissolve them as there would have been in Wales. Their roofs were originally thatched, but now are corrugated iron since this is the most easily available roofing material in Ethiopia. The point was that the shape, and the feel, of the farms in Ethiopia was very much the same as that of the hill farms in Wales, taking advantage of local materials and local weather conditions. As a result, I felt quite at home there.
The highlight of our last summer holiday each year, was hay-making. This was also the highlight of the year for the local farmer, Roger, since - being a Welsh mountain farmer - he grew very few other crops; not even much corn. Even so the hay crop didn’t come until late July or early August, a couple of months behind that on the lowlands, which was fortunate for that was when we were on holiday. What little corn he had came in at the end of September, though – being back at school by then – I never had a hand in that.
Haymaking was almost a festival. It started when the hay itself was cut, often before we arrived, by a horse-drawn grass cutter; though latterly – as the horses were gradually phased out - this was drawn by a tractor, the one tractor Roger possessed.
I remember it well, it was an old pre-war Ford. It took an immense amount of skill even to start it; first on petrol then switching to diesel. Driving it, though, was not too much trouble, apart from the clutch pedal having a travel of at least a foot! I was often allowed the privilege of driving it, people didn’t worry about safety issues in those days; it would never have been allowed now!
Then, over the next days, the hay was turned over by the tedder, a wheeled device carrying large spiked wheels which tossed the hay around, and over, so that it was fully aired. This was also eventually drawn by the tractor.
The result was that we came to the hayfields to be faced with the hay laid out in long wide rows drying in the sun. The first task therefore was to rake the hay more closely together, into narrow lines of dried hay. For this we used the traditional wooden hay rake, and our muscles. We then started to load this hay onto the hay cart, using traditional pitchforks which were ideal for this task, and more muscle power. The hay cart was, even as late as the early 1950s, drawn by a team of two enormous cart horses; or at least they seemed enormous to me as a small boy. In fact this was a quite sensible approach, since the horses moved slowly along by themselves - munching the hay in their own nose bags - where the tractor would have required a driver to constantly stop and start. It was even possible for me to guide them along, though they towered over me, and when one of them once stood on my foot I really felt the ton or more it must have weighed!
The cart itself was flat but was high at the front and back, so that the hay could be piled up to a great height. In fact it often reached 10 feet high.
I used to enjoy myself guiding the horses, sometimes even riding on their broad backs. They were beautiful animals and well looked after, which was unusual for the animals on a hill farm; and they were immensely powerful.
But I also took my turn with the pitchfork, tossing the hay up to the people who were packing it down on top of the hay wagon. It was tiring work, but it was great fun - with everyone enjoying themselves in the sun. It went on through the day from early morning until dusk. At the end of the day we were all incredibly tired, but happy. The only stops were for meals, when food was brought out in baskets and everyone sat down and ate the farm’s own produce. The farm produced its own butter, and cured its own bacon, though it did not make any cheese,. Nothing ever tasted quite as good as that. The men drank their beer and I drank my fizzy drink; and we all rested in the sun.
When the cart was finally full it was taken back to the farm and the hay transferred to the Dutch barns, which were essentially just roofs with open sides in which the hay was piled twenty to thirty feet high. I used then to be on top of the hay stack, helping people bed it down, since I couldn't throw the hay up that high at my tender age. The hay stack was a wonderful place to be in those days. Later on, long after the harvest was in, we used to play there; sliding down its sides and using it much as a children's playground slide. No slide was ever as much fun as that was.
At home, for the rest of the year, from a very early stage I was an avid reader. My first reading book was ‘Mac and Tosh’, a book about two Scotties -- the dogs that is -- from which my grandfather taught me to read. At an early age I read everything put in front of me, even the labels of sauce bottles standing on the table at mealtimes. There was no way people could stop me reading, as I was transported to different worlds. Regrettably, in recent years, I've had to ration myself so I can get on with other work.
I remember a few individual books in my early years. One I can remember especially well must have been about the Arabian nights, for I remember the image of a ravishingly beautiful princess lying on a silk-covered bed, surrounded by silk curtains, with - by her side - a sleek black puma. That was the most exotic and, in my early years, sexy image I had for a long time. I also had another book which I loved, which was a series of short stories. The linking theme was about a boy who, having become lost in the fog, found himself transported back to a gentleman's club – in the 18th-century. To entertain him until the fog rolled away, the gentlemen each told a story; the one I remember particularly well was about monks catching eels for their meal.
I started to read a series of books, following a BBC radio programme, which was about the natural history of the countryside. The radio programme was I think given the title ‘Nomad’, but there were also books available from his predecessor and I was given these as Christmas presents. I read them avidly, as the narrator took me through the countryside; describing what was happening to the water voles and the other animals I had never come across in the countryside myself.
My real love of fictional books, though, was sparked by Arthur Ransome with his series of childrens’ books. Unlike others I didn't start with Swallows and Amazons, but with Pigeon Post. I can even now remember sharing the life of the children as they undertook their various adventures in the Lake District; starting with the thrill as the branch line train pulled into the lakeside terminus. Eventually I gathered together a complete series, of a dozen or so, books. I still have them and I have read every one several times. They were, of course, the books recommended for (middle-class) children then -- and even now.
I didn't, though, read any of the other books which now seem to be all the rage. I never, for instance, read any Beatrice Potter. I did to read some of Enid Blyton's books, but only the ‘Five’ series. I remember I had a book where they were staying at the seaside in an old house which had secret passages everywhere – I loved the mystery these held.
I also read, and enjoyed the children’s classics; Black Beauty, Coral Island, Swiss Family Robinson (which I especially loved – with all its crazy inventions!).
One of my earlier factual books was about an idealised farm. It was full of cutaways which showed how the dairy farm, in particular, worked. I've always been fascinated by cutaways, which - very visually - show how things work. I suppose I am a very visual person. Having said that, my main visual stimuli are the words themselves!
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