Although I tended not to go out shopping so much with my parents up Chats once I was into my teenage years, there were occasions during the holidays when I still accompanied Mum to Mare Street, mainly to go to Woolworths, though I still had to put up with her insistence on visiting Marks & Spencer.
During the 1960s, a number of changes came to Mare Street, the first being the opening of a new American-style restaurant. Until then, whenever we went to Mare Street, we normally stopped for elevenses, tea and cake in the A.B.C. Tea Shop. A.B.C. stood for Aerated Bread Company, though we often referred to it as the ‘Aeriated’ Bread Company, which had the completely different meaning to a Cockney of being overexcited. This was a popular chain of teashops at the time, rivalling Lyons Corner Houses.
The first time I saw this new restaurant, I thought it looked very bright and welcoming, as opposed to the universal black and white decor of the A.B.C., so I said to Mum, ‘Can we go in there and see what it’s like?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ she agreed and we ordered something called a Wimpy.
It was a hamburger, a delicacy we had never had before, and seemed to be a real taste of America. I thought it was absolutely delicious and from then on whenever we went to Mare Street we’d look in for a Wimpy, progressing to various Wimpy meals, which often included a ‘bender’. It was all new to me. It’s hard to imagine youngsters not knowing what an American hamburger is today.
Another new shop was a record shop that opened near Woolworths. It was here, at the age of thirteen, that I bought my first record. Was it Elvis Presley? Del Shannon? The Everly Brothers? Sadly not! It was ‘Please Mr Custer’ by Charlie Drake. In mitigation of this lapse of taste, I think I should point out that the record did, in fact, reach number 12 in the British charts, so it wasn’t just me.
Although not new, a big change took place at Sainsbury’s as it was turned into a supermarket. In fact, Sainsbury’s was the pioneer of supermarkets in this country and followed a visit to the United States by the company chairman, Alan Sainsbury, where he saw for himself the benefits of this type of shop for the customer and realised it was the future. As I mentioned earlier, both Victor Value and Tesco had already been converted into small self-service shops in Chatsworth Road but they were nothing like the scale of the Sainsbury’s in Mare Street. One thing it did mean, though, was that there was no more butter patting or sugar poured out into conical bags. It was all in packets straight off the shelf now. The only grocer’s shop in Hackney now selling groceries in the old-fashioned way was the Home and Colonial Stores in Chatsworth Road, but we hardly ever went in there.
One thing Victor Value and Tesco did, however, that Sainsbury’s didn’t do was to give away trading stamps. Victor Value was first with their ‘King Korn’ stamps, but it was when Tesco started issuing ‘Green Shield Stamps’ that this form of customer inducement really took off. The idea was that whenever you bought an item in Tesco you were given so many Green Shield Stamps depending on the value of your purchases. These stamps were stuck in special books. Green Shield issued a catalogue stating how many books were needed for you to trade in for different items; these could range from very cheap items for just one or two books to more expensive items costing hundreds of books. You could order from the catalogue and have the item delivered or take your books to a Green Shield Stamp redemption centre. Our nearest centre was in Dalston and we often went there to trade in our books for small household items that we probably would not otherwise have purchased. For a while, these trading stamps, as well as ‘S&H Pink Stamps’, a similar scheme backed by Fine Fare Supermarkets, were very popular and many people saved up their stamps to be able to obtain goods they might not normally have been able to afford.
It wasn’t just Tesco who gave away these stamps, as many petrol filling stations and other smaller shops also participated in the scheme, but Tesco was by far their biggest customer and, when the supermarket chain pulled out in the late 1970s, it spelt the end for Green Shield Stamps, with the centres eventually becoming Argos catalogue shops.
What with staying on at school a couple of days a week and homework practically every night, something I hadn’t encountered at Rushmore, I didn’t get to see much children’s television on my return home from school. On the brief occasions I was able to watch, I saw some new programmes take the place of old favourites. Blue Peter started in October 1958 and Animal Magic, starring Johnny Morris, in 1962. There were a number of new cartoon shows from the States, including Huckleberry Hound, featuring Yogi Bear, and The Flintstones, which I can remember seeing for the first time one evening while Dad was putting up the Christmas decorations. Another new cartoon show imported from America was Top Cat, which was called The Boss Cat in this country, even though the name Boss Cat was never used at any time during the programme itself and the main character was always known as Top Cat (or T.C.). The reason for this bizarre titling was that there was a brand of cat food called Top Cat on the market and the BBC didn’t want to be seen to be advertising it.
In any case, as I grew into my teenage years, many of the children’s programmes were now too young for me and as I was able to stay up later I looked forward to some of the early evening programmes. These included sitcoms such as Bootsie and Snudge, a spin-off from The Army Game, The Charlie Drake Show (‘Hello, my darlings!’) and Here’s Harry, starring Harry Worth, which became most famous for its opening title sequence showing Harry stopping in the street to perform an optical trick next to a shop window in which he would raise one arm and one leg. This was reflected in the window, giving the impression that he was able to levitate. Along with most of the rest of the country I suppose, my friends and I tried to copy this when we were out on the street. In fact, the action became known as ‘doing a Harry Worth’. There were also a number of comedy variety shows starring British icons of comedy, including Tommy Cooper and Morecambe & Wise.
There were some new exciting adventure series such as The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed, which after one or two series morphed into an eccentric and surreal fantasy escapade with Macnee supported by a succession of intelligent and self-assured female assistants including Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson. Another new stylish adventure series, Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan, also eventually turned into an even more bizarre flight of fancy when McGoohan became The Prisoner – ‘I am not a number!’ It seemed that, while, on the one hand, television was getting away from the comfortable middle-class entertainment of the 1950s by putting on more down-to-earth gritty dramas, Coronation Street, Z-Cars and Armchair Theatre, for example, there was a balancing movement right at the other end of the scale, taking the viewer into a completely illusory and dreamlike world. Perhaps this was reflective of the fact that more and more people were able to afford televisions and both the BBC and ITV realised they had to cater for all tastes rather than the limited numbers of reasonably well-off people who could afford it in the 1950s and also that there was now competition for viewers.
At the age of about fourteen, I started going to a youth club in Bow with Herb, as it was quite near where he lived. It was attached to the local Methodist Church and run by the minister, the Revd. David Monckton. The club itself was not used to push Methodism or any other form of religion and welcomed youngsters of all or no religions. It was a place where we could play table tennis, snooker, pool, darts or just sit around and chat; there was also a small kitchen attached.
Not long after I joined, I was told it was my turn to make the tea and coffee, so I went into the kitchen to boil the kettle, something I had done many times at home, but, horror of horrors, it was a gas kettle and only having electricity in the prefab I had never come across this way of boiling a kettle before. I knew that you had to light the gas on the stove and put the kettle on it, but I had heard stories of gas explosions and I was very wary of the whole process. What I did therefore was to turn on the gas, light a match and then turn the gas down as low as I could before trying to light it to avoid blowi
ng up the whole youth club and everyone in it. However, what kept happening was that I turned it down so low that the gas went out altogether. I must have got through a boxful of matches before I decided that I had to be brave, turn the gas on and just light it. To my great relief, all that happened was the gas lit and I was able to boil the kettle. No big explosion and the youth club managed to survive. Fortunately, no one came into the kitchen to see what was taking me so long.
The other good thing about the club was that it brought us into contact with girls. Apart from some of my cousins, I hadn’t really seen any girls close up to speak to since Junior School. After a few weeks, we started to feel part of the club and became friendly with many of the other members. One evening, as we were leaving, one of the older boys, Don, said to Herb and me, ‘We usually go down the pub after club. Do you want to come with us?’
Somewhat naively, I said, ‘We can’t go there, we’re only fifteen.’
Herb gave me a withering look and said, ‘Well, you don’t have to come but I’m going.’
But of course, I did have to go! So we trooped across to the pub and, without asking, Don ordered us a pint of Red Barrel each. Red Barrel was a hugely popular drink in the 1960s and something of a cultural phenomenon. If you went into a Watney’s pub, you were expected to buy Red Barrel. The strange thing was that, as well as being so popular, it was almost de rigueur to deride it and complain that it was too fizzy or had no flavour. Its great rival was Ind Coope’s Double Diamond, which seemed to suffer the same fate of being universally popular while at the same time generally criticised.
This was my first alcoholic drink and I had heard stories of people being sick with their first pint so I drank it quite slowly and frankly wasn’t really impressed by it. I would have preferred a glass of lemonade but of course I didn’t dare say so.
My night of growing up wasn’t quite over yet, however, as, just after we arrived, I was a little taken aback when Herbert took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered me one. I wasn’t sure what to do as I had never had one before, but I didn’t want to seem odd so I took one, though, as it happens, a couple of the others refused, so I wouldn’t have been the only one not smoking. Just like with alcohol, I had heard stories about people having their first cigarette and choking or being sick so I was a bit apprehensive, but it was too late to go back now and, when Herbert lit it for me, I took my first drag and proceeded to smoke the whole cigarette without choking or feeling sick. Not only that but I actually quite enjoyed it. It was a different but pleasant sensation.
Although I don’t think the minister approved, our visits to the pub, the Lady Franklin, after the club became a regular part of the evening. It was during one of these after-club drinks that I at last summoned up the courage to talk to Minna Sheppard, a girl I had quite fancied for some time, but, having had no real experience with girls, had not really had the guts to speak to before, at least not in a chatting-up way. The evening went well as she responded encouragingly to my stilted attempts at small talk and I thought to myself, I really have got to ask her out the next time I see her.
There was a big pop concert, starring Del Shannon, Johnny Tillotson and The Springfields, coming up at the Walthamstow Granada in a couple of weeks. As it happened, the Walthamstow Granada was next door to our school clothing outfitter, Henry Taylor, in Hoe Street and I had to buy some new school shirts. So, after getting the shirts, I went to the box office and bought two tickets for the concert.
The following week, as usual we went to the pub and I decided that it had to be tonight or never, so armed with my two tickets I sat down next to Minna. I had never asked a girl out before and I felt very nervous, especially as there were so many other people around. Suppose she said no? Worse, suppose she laughed at me in front of our friends? This called for a bit of strategy to try to get her on her own. As there were so many of us, it had become a tradition to take weekly turns in buying the drinks as if we all bought a round every time we went we’d not only be there all night but we would probably have found it difficult to stay upright!
We normally stayed for two or three pints and, as it happened, this week it was Herb’s turn to buy the first round and mine to get the second. So I came up with a plan inside my head that when it was my turn to get them in I’d ask Minna if she’d help me get the drinks and ask her out when we were alone at the bar. At least this put the dreaded moment off for a while and I sat slowly sipping my first drink. I didn’t take much part in the conversation going on around me as words kept going round and round in my head. ‘Would you like to come out with me?’, ‘I’ve got two tickets…’, ‘I like you, Minna, so I was wondering…’ What was I going to say exactly? Suddenly I heard Herb saying to me, ‘You’re smoking a lot tonight.’
I realised then that the other thing I was doing was almost chain smoking. As soon as I’d put one cigarette out, I was lighting another. (I was now buying my own cigarettes, though I was only really smoking when I went out with my friends.) I smiled and then Herb said, ‘Drink up, it’s your turn. Everyone’s gasping.’
I noticed that most people had finished their drinks and, although I still had some way to go, I said, ‘Okay,’ and got up slowly to go to the bar.
My heart was pounding and my knees turned to jelly and I thought perhaps I could phone her. For some reason just at that point, she looked at me and smiled. I thought to myself, ‘No, it’s got to be now or never,’ so I said to her, ‘Come and help me with the drinks, Minna?’
She nodded and came to the bar with me. I ordered the round and turned to her. There was a pause while I metaphorically took a deep breath and eventually blurted out, ‘Minna, I don’t suppose you’d like to come out with me next Sunday, would you? I’ve got two tickets for Del Shannon at the Granada.’
Her head shot up as though I’d given her an electric shock. ‘Del Shannon,’ she squealed excitedly, ‘I’d love to! He’s my favourite. How did you get tickets?’
My mind was reeling. Did she really say, ‘I’d love to’? All I could say by way of a reply was: ‘You would?’ Just then the drinks arrived and we took them back to the table.
‘Norman’s taking me to see Del Shannon next week,’ she announced as soon as we got back to the table. ‘I can’t believe it. I love him!’ There was a spontaneous ‘oooo’ from everyone. ‘No, not Norman,’ she said, ‘Del Shannon.’
Even that slight put-down didn’t dampen my spirits and I felt on cloud nine. The first girl I’d asked out and she’d said yes!
The sequel to this wasn’t so good, however. I was used to Minna wearing very casual clothes at the club, mostly black, and I thought she looked very sexy in a sweater and jeans. We’d arranged to meet at a bus stop near where she lived, as for some reason she didn’t want me to call at her house, but when she turned up I had to look twice to make sure it was her as she was wearing a dress. But that wasn’t the problem and nor was the large feather boa she was also wearing: it was her make-up. She had put gallons of the stuff on her face. In particular, I found the heavy green eye-liner a huge turn-off. She just wasn’t the same girl! I expect she’d done it to look nice for me and Del Shannon but I actually felt quite embarrassed being with her. Being in something of a daze, we hardly spoke going to the concert, though once we were there we did manage some light, if stilted, conversation and, on the way back, we managed a brief discussion about the show. When we got off the bus, I said, ‘I’ll see you then.’
She took hold of my hand and said, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight then?’
It was something that had worried me before I came out. Having never been out with a girl I wasn’t sure of the protocol of kissing on the first date. But now, I didn’t really want to kiss her anyway. However, I said, ‘Oh yes, of course,’ and we kissed very briefly on the lips. Then I said, ‘I’ve got to go. See you.’ And I scooted off as fast as I respectably could.
When I got home, I felt terrible. My first date and it had been a disaster from my point of view
. The problem was I really did like Minna when she was herself, but all the make-up and fancy clothes wasn’t her, I felt.
Incidentally, it’s probably a real sign of the times that I worried about kissing on a first date. This was one of the things we used to discuss in the playground as well as the other weighty matter of should you go all the way before you were married, even if you were going steady. Perhaps the early sixties was the last time such conversations took place before the sexual revolution of the late sixties as the contraceptive pill became more widely available and there was generally a much freer attitude towards sex with the hippie era of free love.
We met again the following week at the club when she was once again dressed in her black sweater and jeans. After the meeting, I took her to one side and said, ‘Can we go to a different pub, just the two of us?’
She gave me an old-fashioned look and said, ‘I didn’t think you’d want to speak to me again after last Sunday.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that,’ I replied. ‘That’s why I want to talk to you alone.’
So, to the knowing nods and winks plus a few coarse comments from our friends, we walked off to another pub, a little further away. When we got there, I said, ‘I’m sorry about last week, but to be honest I was a bit shocked by your appearance. I’d really like to go out with you again,’ I added, ‘but I like you just as you are now.’
Much to my relief, she smiled and just said, ‘Okay.’
We went out together a few more times and she never again wore bright-green eye-liner, but in spite of this we were never really able to put that first date behind us and the relationship didn’t last very long as we didn’t really have a lot in common. For one thing, she didn’t like any form of sport. Can you believe it? Nevertheless, she was my first proper girlfriend.
After a couple of years at the club, the Minister started a new section for eight to twelve year olds and put Herb and me in charge of it. This used to take place earlier in the evening on the same night as the youth club, which didn’t give much time to get our homework done on those evenings. It was generally enjoyable and made me feel that perhaps my decision to go to teacher training college might have been the right choice.
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