Easter saw the first visit of the fair. Just across Lea Bridge Road, next to North Millfields, was a fairground used three times a year: Easter, Whitsun and August Bank Holiday. For a few days before it was due to open, we’d see the showmen turning up in their gaudily decorated caravans and lorries bringing their own particular ride or sideshow along. It always seemed to me that these people led the most romantic way of life, going from place to place, travelling the country, setting up fairgrounds. What a life they must have led!
It was a very exciting time and the Easter Fair was one of the highlights of my year. The official opening date was Good Friday, but we always used to go over on Thursday evening on the pretext of seeing if they were ready yet. They always were and, gee whizz, what a sight met our eyes! The coloured lights, the smells of hot dogs, doughnuts, candy floss and petrol generators, the barkers (especially ‘Ol’ Billy Fairplay all the way from Holloway’) bawling their attractions out to the crowd and the screams of people on the rides created an atmosphere that took me completely away from my everyday world. For the hour or so we stayed, it was like being in Paradise. There were the rides such as the dodgems, the waltzer, the Brooklands speedway racing track and, the centrepiece of the fair, the large gaily painted carousel with its golden galloping horses and the organ playing in the background; there were the game stalls, the coconut shy, roll the pennies, hoop-la and fishing for ducks; and sideshows like the boxing booth, where the ‘Champion’ challenged all-comers, the fortune teller and even freak shows with ‘The Bearded Lady’, ‘The World’s Smallest Man’ and ‘The Rubber Man’. Dad used to take me on the dodgems and we would also have a go at some of the games, quite often winning a goldfish or a cheap china fairing. Candy floss was a must and sometimes, if Dad was in a particularly good mood, a doughnut as well.
The fair stayed for about a week and then they all moved off to their next location. We usually returned at least once over the Easter holiday but nothing was quite like that first visit; the lights, sounds and smells never seemed the same again. To me it was second only to Christmas morning as the best day of the year.
Dad loved the fair and all that went with it as much as I did. In fact, he used to help Grandpa operate a fairground stall on Hampstead Heath in the 1920s. It was a game stall called ‘Cover the Spot’. The aim was to cover a large coloured spot entirely with five smaller discs. The shape and size of the spot and the discs was such that there was only one way the large spot could be covered and, unless you knew the secret, it was almost impossible. To encourage people to part with their money Dad and Grandpa had a little routine worked out. About every half an hour or so, Dad, who was only a young boy then, would wander past as if by chance and Grandpa would shout out to him, ‘Sonny, you look like a clever lad! Do you want to have a go?’ Dad, who of course knew how it was done, would then complete the puzzle and walk off. Everyone would think that if a young boy could do it then it had to be easy, so they would line up to try it, making Grandpa lots of money as he rarely had to give out any prizes. It was only those who stayed watching for more than half an hour who ever suspected anything odd!
Whenever we won a goldfish, it was given to us inside a small plastic bag full of water. The first time this happened, we had nowhere to put it when we got home so we had to make do with a large dish we had. As soon as we could, we went out and bought a large bowl. We then thought it looked a bit lonely so, the next time Dad went down the Lane, he bought an aquarium and some more goldfish and brought them home on the bus. A little while afterwards, I went to the River Lea to see if I could catch any fish myself to put in the aquarium and managed to catch a few sticklebacks. The next morning, they had all disappeared – we could only assume the goldfish had eaten them.
From this small beginning, we kept fish for many years, topping up our collection at regular intervals with prizes from the fair.
Easter was also the first holiday of the year when John came home, so I was able to spend some time with him. Being a sporty household, we had a number of games we could play. We had a dart board, a small billiards table and we also extended the dining-room table to play table tennis. John and I used to take each other on at all these, though I didn’t stand much chance against him. Nevertheless, it was brilliant having my brother home for a while.
On one of his early visits home, he introduced us to the wonders of coffee. We had never had coffee in the house, Mum and Dad always preferring a nice cup of tea, which, of course, in those days was made with real tea leaves – we always had Ty-Phoo – scooped out of the caddy with a teaspoon, one for each person and one for the pot, put into the teapot and boiling water poured over them. The teapot then had a tea cosy placed over it to keep it warm while it was brewing – none of those new-fangled tea bags then. John had discovered coffee at school and persuaded Mum to buy some for the house. His favourite brand was Bev, which was a liquid coffee and chicory essence sold in a bottle. I can’t say their first taste impressed Mum and Dad much and, in spite of John’s protestations that it was a great new drink, they continued with their tea and left him to finish up the bottle on his own.
The summer holiday was always a good time. Mum would arrange lots of outings to places like Epping Forest, which was only a bus ride away. We used to go to the Rising Sun pub in Woodford, not in it, but in the grounds, because they had a boating lake there and we’d take out a small boat and row round and round the lake until we heard the familiar cry, ‘Come in, number seven, your time is up!’ Sometimes we went to Whipps Cross lido, which, when it opened in 1932, was the largest open-air swimming pool in the country, with a 20-foot-high diving board, racing lanes and a paddling area. Sadly, it fell into disuse and in 1983 was filled in. I have to say I wasn’t much of a fan of the lido as I once cut my foot there and remained a bit wary of it after that.
We always took a picnic with us and would venture a little way into the forest itself to find a clearing where we could have our eats. One day, on returning to the road to catch the bus, Mum got her foot stuck in some mud. She started to panic a bit and I didn’t know what to do. I tried tugging at her arm but it didn’t do any good and it looked as though we might be trapped there until night-time – I had all sorts of visions of wild animals coming out of the forest and eating us. I got really scared so my poor mum not only had to try to get her foot free but also to calm me down. Eventually, she managed to wriggle her foot out of her shoe. Gosh, was I relieved when I saw her foot squelch out of that mud! The shoe itself was stuck fast and, although we both tried yanking it free, it just sank further in so she had to get on the bus and come back home with just one shoe on and the other foot caked in mud. Goodness knows what the conductor and the other passengers must have thought about this strangely attired woman with the black leg and only the one shoe getting on their bus.
Another fine-weather activity was to go to the putting green at the back of Millfields and play a round. There were also some tennis courts there but we didn’t have racquets so we never played. Near to the putting green was an old bandstand surrounded by trees, which often played host to a mobile cinema during the summer. This was a large brown van in which all the cinema equipment was kept. A big screen was set up outside the van and the films projected onto it from the van itself. There was no seating provided and the audience was expected to stand or sit on the ground to watch. Laurel and Hardy shorts were the staple diet. The trees gave some shade but on a very sunny day it was a bit difficult to actually see the flickering black and white films, though that didn’t really matter to all the chattering children that flocked to these shows as it was something different, a bit of an occasion and one where you’d get to meet all your school friends again during the holiday.
In the summer, we went a bit further afield for our shopping, travelling by the number 22 bus from the top of Chatsworth Road to Mare Street to visit the big shops, Marks & Spencer, British Home Stores and, best of all, Woolworths. Woolworths was much more my type of shop as it had plenty of toys and other
interesting items for sale, unlike M&S and BHS, which only offered clothes. I could spend hours in Woolworths gazing in awe at all the goods they had on offer – skittles and quoits, jigsaws, model cars, toy soldiers, carpentry sets, Meccano, train sets. It was a little boy’s paradise, and I loved our visits there. Woolworths also had their own record label, Embassy, which were cover versions of the hits of the day. Occasionally, when we went there, Mum risked Dad’s wrath by buying a couple of these, the Embassy versions of two big hits of the day, Tab Hunter’s ‘Young Love’ and Pat Boone’s ‘April Love’. Given Dad’s views on modern music and his insistence that we only have classical music, especially Gilbert and Sullivan, in the house, I thought this was very brave of her but I don’t think she ever cared too much what he thought as she was very independently minded in that way.
Mare Street was the place for buying shoes as there were two big shoe shops there, Dolcis and Lilley & Skinner. I always preferred Dolcis because they had an X-ray machine. After trying on a new pair of shoes, you walked over to what looked like a large wooden box, stood up against it, put your feet in a hole at the bottom and looked through what seemed like a pair of binoculars at the top. You then waggled your toes to see how much growing room there was inside each shoe.
The other shop we always visited was Sainsbury’s. Like the other grocer shops at the time, it wasn’t self-service and you had to go to the counter to ask for what you wanted. But this was much bigger and posher than the shops in Chatsworth Road and looked quite palatial inside, with its marble counters, mosaic floors and white-tiled walls. The staff even wore a uniform. It also had its own cooked meat and cheese counters where we could buy fresh produce. Mum normally bought Summer County margarine to go on our bread, but when we went to Sainsbury’s she would buy half a pound of butter as a special little luxury.
It was always a treat for me to see the shop assistant carve out a wodge of butter from a big mound of the stuff they had behind the counter and then pat it out with two grooved wooden paddles into an oblong shape. Although they worked fast, it took them some time as they were at pains to get it exactly right. The butter was then wrapped in greaseproof paper, put in a paper bag and handed to us. When we got it out at home and unwrapped it, the marks of the grooves in the paddles were still very clear.
We also bought sugar from Sainsbury’s in loose bags rather than the prepackaged type we got from our local shops. The sugar was scooped up from a large bin, poured into a blue conical bag and then weighed. The top was given a twist and handed over.
Another commodity we always bought on our visits was salt. This came in a large block, which was cut from an even bigger block by the assistant. When we got it home, we had to grate it ourselves into a glass jar. Sometimes I made models out of the salt block – it was very good for snow scenes.
When the weather was not so good, we would go to the cinema, mostly the Plaza in Leyton High Road, to see the cartoons. The Plaza used to put on programmes showing short cartoons, no main feature film, just a number of Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker or Tom & Jerry cartoons plus the obligatory Pearl & Dean advertising feature and Pathé News. We’d also visit other local cinemas if a good film was being shown. Over the years, we saw all the big Disney feature films, such as Snow White, 101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp. We also saw the latest ‘blockbusters’ and perhaps the biggest of these was Davy Crockett – King of the Wild Frontier, starring Fess Parker.
Davy Crockett had begun as a very popular television mini-series in the United States but, when the film was produced off the back of it, Disney launched it in a flurry of publicity and marketing to cash in on the UK market as well. There was an enormous merchandising campaign, something we take for granted nowadays with big films, but was quite rare then, and all sorts of toys and clothes were produced to coincide with the premiere, the most iconic being the Davy Crockett coonskin cap. Every boy my age had to have one and, sure enough, when we came out of the cinema I said to Mum, ‘Can I have a Davy Crockett cap?’ So we stopped off at Woolworths and bought one. I wore it on the way home and for a couple of days it was the envy of my friends until they all bought one as well.
As well as going on days out with Mum, I played with my friends. Quite often, it would be just Andy. Being very keen on sport, we also used to watch Test match cricket on television. I can remember we saw Jim Laker perform his remarkable feat of taking nineteen Australian wickets in the fourth Test of the 1956 Ashes series, a record that still stands to this day. As he bowled out more and more of the Australians, we both got very excited and jumped up and down every time a wicket fell, which is actually more than Laker or the England cricketers were doing. Whenever a wicket fell, there were no celebrations as there would be today. Everyone on the pitch just remained calm and carried on as though nothing was happening. When the innings was over, there were just a couple of handshakes for Laker and that was it. I can’t imagine everyone being so restrained today; there’d be mass celebrations, high-fives, everyone surrounding the bowler, thumping him on the back, throwing him up into the air. The bowler himself would probably be jumping about and punching the air and there’d be spectators running onto the pitch. None of that in 1956, but that was cricket in the fifties for you.
As we got a bit older, we started going to see cricket live at Leyton, where Essex played county cricket. At that time, Essex used to play their county cricket all round the county, normally playing two matches at each ground. Today they are mainly based in Chelmsford and, if you want to see them play, you have to go to them rather than have them bring cricket to you.
Being a great lover of sport, I got very excited about a number of other famous sporting occasions. I used to watch the Cup Final on television without fail every year. The first one I saw was the famous Stanley Matthews’ final of 1953 when Blackpool beat Bolton 4–3. Matthews had been our finest footballer for a generation but had never won an FA Cup winners’ medal. This was the final that changed all that as he played for Blackpool. There was a great outpouring of relief and goodwill towards him as the whole country, no matter what team you supported, felt that justice had at last been done for one of our greatest sporting ambassadors and that he had won the medal he so richly deserved.
Just a month later, there was a similar emotional event when the best jockey in this country, Sir Gordon Richards, won the Derby for the first time on Pinza. He had been champion jockey many times since his first win in 1925 but had never managed to win horse racing’s greatest prize, the Derby. As his horse came over the line, the crowd went frantic and to thunderous applause he was led up to be personally congratulated by HM the Queen. Like Matthews, he was feted throughout the country as everyone it seemed was relieved and pleased that he had at last achieved his greatest ambition.
The following year, 1954, was the year Roger Bannister broke the famous four-minute barrier for the mile at the Iffley Road track in Oxford. For years, this had been the Holy Grail for athletes and I was lucky enough to see this on television as well. I can still remember Bannister finishing absolutely exhausted and falling into the arms of his friend, the Revd. Nicholas Stacey, unable to move another inch. Nowadays, four minutes is commonplace and anyone doing it in that time would have no problem in trotting off to the changing room unaided. But then it was one of sport’s major achievements and, even though I was only six at the time, I could not fail to recognise its significance.
There were many other great sporting events I saw on television or heard on the wireless, such as the Jaroslav Drobny and Ken Rosewall Wimbledon Men’s Tennis Final in 1954, the first time a Brit won motor racing’s British Grand Prix when Stirling Moss took the chequered flag in 1955 at Aintree and the Don Cockell/Rocky Marciano fight for the World Heavyweight Championship in 1956. These were all larger-than-life characters and events that, in a world without computers or social media, only came along once in a while, and you had to be there or miss them – and I was usually there.
A shared
love of sport meant that Andy and I also played a number of games based on cricket and football. Our favourite was a cricket game, Owzthat. This was played with two six-sided metal cylinders. One was labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, ‘owzthat’ and 6, while the second was labelled bowled, stumped, caught, not out, no ball and L.B.W. Usually, we played the game as two Test teams, so that one of us would be England and the other whichever team was touring that year. Whoever was ‘batting’ started by rolling the batting cylinder; any runs scored were written down on our homemade scorecard. When ‘owzthat’ appeared, the other cylinder was rolled for the decision. The ‘batsman’ was out if ‘bowled’, ‘stumped’, ‘caught’ or ‘L.B.W.’ appeared and so on until ten players were out and the other team went in to bat.
I also played this game quite a bit on my own and tried to get through a whole county championship season. It certainly taught me the names of the county cricketers in the 1950s.
The football games we played most were blow football, magnetic football and Newfooty, which was a forerunner of Subbuteo and almost identical. But the highlight of the school summer holiday was undoubtedly the week or two weeks when we went away to the seaside…
CHAPTER SIX
BUTLIN’S, WARNER’S AND CLACTON PIER
My first ever holiday away from home and first experience of the seaside came when the four of us stayed at Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Clacton. Dad had been stationed in Clacton during the War, so he wanted to see what it was like during peacetime. I was three when we first went there and we followed this up by spending our annual holidays there every year until 1955.
Holiday camps and Butlin’s in particular became enormously popular in the late 1940s and 1950s. One of the main attractions was the fact that you paid your money to go to the camp for a week and everything was laid on for you: accommodation, food, entertainment, amusements and games. In theory, you could go to the camp with no money at all in your pocket and still have a really good time so it was a boon to most working-class families, many of them never having had a proper holiday before. Though, in fact, it wasn’t just a working-class pursuit, as plenty of middle-class people took advantage of their facilities as well. In a society still very much class-ridden, the holiday camps did much to break down barriers as solicitors joined in the sports with lorry drivers, head teachers ate their meals next to factory workers and bank managers danced in the Viennese Ballroom alongside bus conductors. For one week in the year, everyone was equal; everyone could have fun together. And for women especially, and possibly for the first time in their lives, it was a week away from the drudgery of housekeeping. There was no cooking to do, no cleaning and no beds to make.
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