Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs

by Norman Jacobs

  Mum used to take me shopping to our local market street, Chatsworth Road. Market day was Tuesday, with early closing on Thursday, something that was adhered to by every single shop and market stall. Once a week, we used to catch the no. 22 bus to Mare Street in the centre of Hackney, where we would call in on the Welfare place next to the Town Hall to get my weekly supply of free orange juice and Virol malt extract. Free ‘Welfare Orange’, as it was known, and malt had been introduced during the war years to make sure that children under five received their vitamins C and A. This was continued by the Labour Government as part of the new Welfare State being introduced under the Beveridge Report’s proposals for ‘cradle to the grave’ social security and health provision. I loved the malt, which came in a big brown wide-mouthed jar. It was lovely gooey sticky stuff. I believe cod liver oil was offered as an alternative to malt, but I never had any as far as I can remember, or maybe I did and didn’t like it so my parents settled for malt.

  Mare Street was the main street in Hackney and, as well as the Welfare office, included among its buildings the Town Hall, the Central Library and the Hackney Empire, a still thriving example of a Music Hall theatre, as well as big shops such as Woolworths, Marks & Spencer and British Home Stores (BHS).

  Being so young, I was rarely allowed out on my own, but one day I went for a walk into the field with Barry Tickton and Richard (Copper’s son). I don’t actually remember much about the walk itself but I can remember being sat on the table in the kitchen on my return and being given a good talking to. Apparently, what had happened was that Barry and Richard told Mum that they had taken me over to the far end of the field, near where the River Lea flowed. They lost me somehow and came running back, shouting to her that I had fallen in the river. Mum’s face turned a ghostly white. She dropped everything and rushed out of the prefab, fearing the worst. Running into the field, she was yelling my name, barely able to control the tears. Suddenly, she saw a forlorn figure over the far side of the field, trudging slowly towards her. When she realised it was me, she ran and caught me, holding me to her so tightly I could hardly breathe. We made our way back to the prefab with her still clutching on to me, not daring to let me go. I couldn’t understand why she was crying so much and wondered what had happened and if I’d done something wrong. It was only when we got back home and she sat me down on the kitchen table that she spoke to me for the first time, saying, ‘Don’t you ever go near that river again! I thought I’d lost you.’ She then picked me up and gave me another big cuddle, far too relieved to see me in one piece to be cross with me. For my part, I couldn’t really understand what all the fuss was about as I hadn’t been near the river, let alone fallen into it. Why Barry and Richard told her that I had, I have no idea.

  Although I hadn’t been near the river this time, I did quite often go down there when I was older, either on my own or with friends. There was a big power station at the end of Millfields Road near the Marshes, which backed onto the river and was serviced by barges bringing the coal. The coal would be unloaded and lifted up into the power station by means of two large fixed-hoist cranes. Mostly the barges were pulled by tugs but some were still drawn by horses. It was fascinating seeing those barges make their way sedately up the river and then watching the coal being winched up.

  In the evenings, I looked forward to Dad coming home from work and often used to look out the kitchen window to see if I could see him coming. If I did, I would run out to meet him. Once he was home and with tea out of the way, we would play games, usually paper games such as noughts and crosses and boxes, or simple card games like snap or ‘Old Maid’, or read until it was bedtime. In the summer, we might go outside and play a ball game, usually catch, though, after a hard day’s work, Dad was usually too tired for anything too energetic. There were also a few occasions when he said, ‘Let’s go and see what we can find in Chatsworth Road,’ and he would take me out to buy a small toy. I can remember him buying me two buses and a set of picture transfers on different occasions. Transfers were quite popular then. They came on sheets of paper, about a dozen on a sheet, and you’d cut out the one you wanted, soak it in water and the picture would float free of the paper. You could then stick it down in a book or on a toy as a decoration.

  We owned a cat that was almost totally black, with a large white spot under his chin, so I called him Spot (well, I was only four years old). He never grew much bigger than a large kitten and he was my companion until long after we had moved away from Hackney. I have had a number of cats since Spot and all of them have been quite fussy about which tinned food they eat. It was just as well Spot wasn’t, as Kit-e-Kat was the only brand available then. When it was time to feed him, we put his plate on a sheet of newspaper on the floor. The newspaper was kept in one of the drawers in the kitchen cabinet and, whenever he went into the kitchen, Spot would jump up to the drawers to let you know it was time for food.

  He went missing one day and, despite searching all of his regular haunts, we couldn’t find him anywhere. The days passed into weeks, the weeks into months and there was no sign of him anywhere. Heartbroken, we gave him up for lost. Then, one day, we heard a faint miaowing outside the side door and, when we opened it, there he was. He presented a very sorry sight. He was dirty, sore, dishevelled, bruised and with a torn ear. We took him straight to the vet, who told us he would recover if looked after and not allowed out for a few days. That cat became the most looked-after cat of all time and within a week or so was back to his old self. We never did find out what had happened to him, though.

  As well as Spot, we also kept a budgerigar called Bluey (another one of Dad’s little jokes as he was actually green!) and a couple of tortoises, known as Shadwell and Wapping, in the back garden. I’m afraid we weren’t very good at helping the tortoises hibernate and both of them died in the winter. We also lost the budgerigar when it flew out of the door. Dad had taken it out of the cage in the kitchen to clean it out, as he had done many previous times. As usual, it was allowed to fly freely around until it was time to put it back. On this particular occasion, there was a knock at the side door and outside was a group of kids, asking if they could get their ball back as they had kicked it over into our garden. Because we lived on a field, this was a frequent request. Dad’s response was always, ‘You can get it this time, but, if it comes over again, you’re not getting it back.’ Of course, they always did get it back, however many times it came over. It was while he was making his standard reply that the budgerigar saw his chance for freedom and flew out the open door, never to be seen again.

  The kitchen cabinet where we kept the newspaper was also home to the shilling jar – an old malt jar – for the electric meter. We tried to remember to put a shilling in before the electric ran out but very often forgot, so quite frequently we would be watching television when suddenly it, and all the lights, would go off. One of us then had to grope our way through the dark to find the shilling jar and then the electricity meter, which was in the hallway on the other side of the house. Whenever we got a shilling in change, it would go in the jar – I don’t think we ever actually spent a shilling piece in the shops.

  Every quarter, the electricity man would come and empty our meter. He would give us a small rebate and we’d put the shillings back in the jar. Once, we completely ran out of shillings when the electricity went out. The only shilling in the house was an eighteenth-century George III shilling, which Dad had managed to get hold of somewhere. Reluctantly, he put this in the meter but told Mum to make sure when the electricity man came to get this one back in the rebate. Fortunately, it was rebated safely.

  While I was enjoying what can only be described as an idyllic childhood in my prefab on the field, I was blissfully unaware of the major trauma my parents were going through. John had passed his 11-plus exam with such a high mark that he was offered the chance of going to public school, either Christ’s Hospital, Westminster or Bancroft’s, on a scholarship. John’s headmaster, Mr Foreman, advised my parents that, of th
e three, Christ’s Hospital near Horsham in Sussex would be the best bet. Mum and Dad didn’t want him to leave to go to a boarding school and couldn’t understand why a child should be removed from the security of his family at the very young age of eleven. However, they also realised that this would be a wonderful opportunity for him and, after much agonising and discussions with John, it was decided he would fill in the application form for Christ’s Hospital. Shortly afterwards, he was asked to sit an entrance exam. Dad took him up to a place in Holborn, where he underwent a medical, an interview and a written exam. When he came out, Dad asked him what sort of questions he’d had to answer.

  John said, ‘How many 2½d stamps can you buy for a £1 was one of them.’

  Dad pulled a face and said, ‘Did you know?’

  John replied, ‘Of course, ninety-six.’

  Dad knew then that he was going to lose his elder son to a boarding school in Sussex. Shortly afterwards, a letter came from the school confirming his place and instructions on when and how to get there. He was to go to Victoria station on the appointed day and join up with the other masters and boys on the train to Horsham.

  When the day came, there was hardly a dry eye in the house – apart from mine, as I had no idea what was going on. He took his leave of Mum at the prefab and Dad accompanied him to Victoria station on the 38 bus. Grasping his small attaché case in his hand, John made his way to the appointed platform and was caught up in a vast milling crowd of old hands and new boys, many of the latter in tears, along with their parents. John joined his group and Dad hung around, waiting for the inevitable guard’s whistle. It came all too soon and the train slowly but surely chugged out of the station. Dad waited until the train finally disappeared from sight then made his way back to the bus stop with a very empty feeling inside. It was the end of an era. In fact, more so than anyone imagined at the time as, apart from holidays, John never again lived at home, eventually going straight on to university and then to work, sharing a flat with a friend before getting married.

  Bad as this was for my parents, the trauma wasn’t over yet. When John came home for the Christmas holidays, he told them he didn’t want to go back and didn’t like it at school. Mum would have pulled him out there and then, but, in spite of wanting nothing better than to have John back home, Dad knew that this was a wonderful opportunity for him and felt it was essential he should see it through. Two wretched people left the prefab on a bleak January morning to catch the bus to Victoria. In fact, it turned out that an older boy was bullying John and this was the main cause of his unhappiness. A bad enough thing normally, but being on your own and miles away from your loved ones must have made it a hundred times worse. When the problem was eventually sorted out, John took to life at Christ’s Hospital with great relish and never looked back.

  It wasn’t long before I too was to experience a mini-trauma of my own when I suddenly found myself parted from Mum and plonked in front of a desk in a classroom with about thirty other children. A woman was introduced to us as Miss Leach who, apparently, was to be my teacher, whatever that was.

  Yes, schooldays had arrived. On the morning they did, I was blissfully unaware of the life-changing event about to overwhelm me. That fateful day, Mum got me ready and took me out (I suppose I thought we were going shopping or something). Instead, we entered this big building with hundreds of other children, went into a large room where I was placed behind a desk while Mum stood by the door, waving… and then left. I had never been parted from her before so I just leaned forward, put my head in my hands and sobbed. I’m sure it must have been just as hard – if not harder – for Mum to leave me in that state.

  At lunchtime, when she came to pick me up, I’m sure she must have been very worried about what she would find and how I was bearing up but she was in for a bit of a shock as I told her I couldn’t wait to return to school. Miss Leach was reading us a story and I was eager to get back to hear the rest of it!

  And so, with school now about to play a major role in my everyday life, a whole new era of growing up in London’s East End in the 1950s and 1960s began.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MARBLES, CONKERS AND ‘BASH-UPS’

  A normal school day usually started with Mum waking me up. Getting out of bed could be a real chore in the winter. Without central heating and with our main source of warmth just the open coal fire in the living room, it could be, and usually was, freezing cold. Many times I would get up and see the window covered with Jack Frost’s patterns expertly drawn all over the inside of the bedroom window. After shivering my way through the morning ablutions, it was with a great sense of relief that I went into the living room to warm myself up before the roaring coal fire. Then it was into the kitchen for some breakfast. This was usually cereal: Weetabix, Rice Krispies and Shredded Wheat were my favourites. Mum always made them with warm milk and it wasn’t until many years later that I realised most people had cold milk on their breakfast cereal.

  At that time there wasn’t the great variety of cereal that there is now and, when a new one hit the market in 1953, Mum gave it to me to try out. I took one mouthful and decided that I didn’t like Shreddies at all! I don’t know what happened to the rest of the box, but I certainly couldn’t eat any more. At the time many different small toys were given away inside cereal packets. About a year later, Shreddies were offering some glow-in-the-dark stickers that I thought looked really good so I persuaded Mum to buy another packet with the argument that perhaps I might like them now. I still only got as far as the first mouthful, but at least I had some excellent stickers.

  Mum always took me to infants’ school. It was about a seven-minute walk if you crossed the bomb site in Chatsworth Road, a little bit longer if you went round it (this was the same bomb site where John had injured his leg just before I was born). The site, a whole block of about ten former shops between Elderfield Road and Lockhurst Street, was left derelict well into the 1950s and was a real adventure ground for children as we used to climb about over the rubble and broken glass, looking for anything that might be valuable or just playing in the ruins. There was no thought of it being cordoned off as it surely would be today; it was just left open. The fact that it was actually quite dangerous while at the same time a magnet to young children never seemed to occur to anyone.

  The school I went to was Rushmore Road Primary School. Our school colours were maroon and grey and I proudly wore my cap, blazer, school tie and socks. My shirt was white in warm weather and grey in cold weather; I wore grey flannel shorts whatever the weather.

  School introduced me to a whole new set of people, but Barry Tickton, whom I already knew, took me under his wing to explain a few things about life at school and, indeed, life generally. Barry’s first piece of advice was to avoid the large dogs called ‘sarnations’ as they would bite you if you got too close. His second was to avoid old men as they would ‘pinch’ you and run off with you. For some time, I was very wary of the old boys who used to sit on the park benches in Millfields, puffing away at their pipes, taking snuff and chatting. As I passed them by, keeping my distance as much as possible, I often wondered where it was they would take you after they’d pinched you. Fortunately, we had neither ‘sarnations’ nor old men at Rushmore Road school so I felt pretty safe once inside.

  My first teacher was Miss Leach. Mysteriously, at the beginning of the second term, she became Mrs Farioni. We all speculated on this change of name with some wild imaginings but I don’t think any of us hit on the truth that she had got married to Mr Farioni during the holiday. Being a spy or a criminal wanted by the police seemed a much more plausible and interesting reason to change your name.

  The Headmistress was Miss Taylor. On our second day at school, she came round to introduce herself and to find out our names. I sat next to a boy called Freddy Loosey, and when Miss Taylor asked his name he, of course, said, ‘Freddy Loosey.’ Miss Taylor put on a very serious face and said, ‘Well, you’d better tighten yourself up then.’ For some reason
I thought this was really funny and laughed out loud. Freddy scowled at me.

  I had two more teachers in the Infants’ School, Mrs Raymond and Miss Corbett. Miss Corbett had grey hair and seemed to me to be at least a hundred years old. Sometimes we had to take our exercise books out to the front and stand by her at the desk while she went through our work. I always hated it when her hair touched my face as it seemed to sting; I don’t know what she put on it.

  Of course, it was at school that we learnt about reading, writing and doing sums, though I could already do a bit of each before ever going to school, thanks to my parents. In our first year, we wrote on individual blackboards with a chalk but progressed to small books and pencils as we moved up the school. Although we did our three Rs through most of the week, it wasn’t all hard work. Miss Leach/Mrs Farioni sometimes used to take us out into the playground to play games with us, the most popular being ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolf?’ and ‘The Farmer’s in his Den’: