by Pam Weaver
In the hotel, we mingled with some of the elite of the British Armed Forces and Ben renewed acquaintances with old friends, including one who was dressed in army uniform. We were still eating our meal, but his friend was on the way out of the dining room.
‘I say, Tommy,’ said Ben. ‘What suite are we in this year?’
The army chap looked a little confused and then he said, ‘I don’t know, old boy. Had apple pie and ice-cream myself.’
I nearly choked but neither of them seemed to see how funny it was. When we got back to Evie’s and I told them everything that had happened, including the ‘apple pie’ incident, she and her husband fell about laughing while Ben took a deep breath. ‘Well, of course,’ he said stiffly, and clearly not seeing the joke at all, ‘he’s Army.’ And we all fell apart again.
Poor Ben, we teased him mercilessly and yet he was always a really good friend. He once showed Evie the menu he had in the officers’ dining room on his base. She gasped at the high-class cuisine, each course complete with its own wine. We were more used to eating mince and mash with peas. The next time we all sat down for a meal, Evie’s husband reprimanded her for not putting the napkins on the table. She gave him a withering look which said, ‘you know we don’t have any napkins’, but he rushed off to the bathroom and came back with the toilet roll. The three of us tore off a piece each and lay it on our laps as if this was what we always did. This time Ben joined in the joke and we laughed our way through the meal.
Our old friend Ros had gone to work in a nursery in Bermuda and a couple of times, Ben hitched a lift with one of his RAF mates, going all that way to see her and take her out for a meal. Wow, how cool was that?
If I had thought Christmas 1963 had been miserable, when Matron Dickenson had been difficult and two members of staff had walked out, Christmas 1971 came a close second. I was on night duty, which I never enjoyed, so I missed out on a lot of the socialising that went on around that time. The night sister must have been a pupil in the same Queen of Mean charm-school Matron Dickenson went to. When the day staff gave us the report they said, ‘We’ve put all the Christmas stuff upstairs in Room Six. There are mince pies and Christmas cake and someone has given us wine and there’s a big tin of sweets. Help yourselves to whatever you want.’ We all licked our lips and looked forward to our meal breaks but Sister had other ideas. As soon as the day staff left, she locked the room and put the key in her pocket. ‘I don’t want you girls sloping off all the time,’ she announced. ‘We’ll open up once we’ve done all the feeds.’
The canteen was closed for the holiday and she made sure we had plenty to do all night so nobody had a break at all. We were starving hungry and we’d resorted to cupping water in our hands to drink because we were so thirsty. When the day staff came back and we waited for the report to finish, she feigned surprise as she put her hand in her pocket. ‘Oh dearie me! We never went in for any Christmas fare, did we girls? What a shame!’
Of course by that time we were too tired to want to eat mince pies. All we could think about was getting our weary bodies to bed. It’s not very nice of me but I think if I had had a magic wand, I would have turned her into the Christmas turkey.
I began having difficulties on the ward with Sister Booker, the sister in charge. She was a hard taskmaster but I grew to respect her, and she me. The greatest compliment I ever had in that place was one I overheard accidentally. We had just had a very sick premature baby admitted to the ward. He weighed less than a bag of sugar and had little chance of survival. The doctor had just finished doing a thorough examination when I walked into the ward to put some clean nappies in the cupboard. The cupboard was round a corner and the two of them hadn’t seen me come in. As I knelt to pack the nappies away, I heard the doctor say, ‘I want this baby on fifteen-minute observations. I want someone who will do it for the next two hours without fail.’
‘I’ll get Nurse Cox,’ said Sister Booker, ‘She’s one of my most trusted nurses.’
Wow! I felt a mile high and somehow all the angst and frustration of the past year had been worth it for that one moment.
I never did like it in that place but at last the date of my leaving was moving slowly closer. I had almost completed the course and the final exam was looming large. With about a week to go, I was in the ward with a baby, giving her a cuddle when someone came in to leave her some clean gowns. She hesitated by the door. ‘You’ll be really sad to leave here, won’t you?’ she said sympathetically.
I stared in disbelief. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you’re always singing,’ she said, closing the door.
I thought a lot about that. I wasn’t even aware that I was singing all the time but I guess it helped me to think about something else rather than my feelings. I still wanted to go early, but by staying the course, I had learned more than I bargained for. I had learned to rise above my circumstances and get on with it, but it was more than that. I had come to a place where I was at peace with myself and so long as I had that, I could survive anything.
When I left Birmingham, I left behind some good friends, with whom I still keep in touch, and I left a much stronger person. I had my qualification and I had gained the respect of my tutors and Sister Booker, but now I wanted a change. I took a complete break from looking after children for eighteen months, first going to a Bible college and then to a Christian holiday conference centre, where I took up housekeeping duties and was a general dogsbody. Everything changed when a young man called David Weaver came for a holiday. He was handsome and he had a ready smile. We liked each other straight away and went out together on my day off. In the evening, he spent a good deal of his holiday ‘hanging around’ the coffee bar where I was working. When he went back home, we wrote to each other several times a week and spent hours on the telephone. I had fallen hopelessly in love! Eventually I moved to Worthing so that we could be together and that was a cue to apply for another post working with children. When I came back to child care, it was in a totally different set up.
My new post was in a private day nursery. The owner euphemistically called it a nursery school but we had no nursery teacher and no teaching area. There were three rooms with a total of thirty children in each room. They weren’t always there all the time: some did mornings only, some did afternoons only and a few were there all day. The nursery had been the lifelong dream of the owner. It had been purpose-built and was open from 8.30 a.m. until 6 p.m. I was in charge of the middle room. I started in November 1973 and by January 1974, David and I had just got engaged and were looking for somewhere to live. The pay was terrible. I only earned fourteen pounds, fifty pence a week and with stoppages, I took home eleven pounds, eighty pence. That sort of money wouldn’t even cover the rent on a flat. We found a furnished flat for thirteen pounds a week but I still had to find the train fare to get to the nursery. David’s wage was only twenty-nine pounds a week; he was a delivery driver, so things were going to be tough. The trouble was, despite the money, I loved it in the nursery.
The fees were low in comparison to today’s childcare costs. Full time was eleven pounds, fifty pence per week, a morning and lunch was five pounds, twenty pence and an afternoon and tea was also five pounds, twenty pence. Sometimes the children would have something for lunch that they weren’t used to at home.
‘What did you have for dinner?’ I heard one child’s mother ask when she came to collect her.
‘Dicky spot,’ came the reply.
Her mother shot me a concerned look. ‘Spotted Dick,’ I replied with a grin.
Then there was the other time when I saw Gregory poking his piece of lettuce with a fork.
‘Come on, Gregory,’ I said. ‘Eat up your salad.’
‘I don’t like salad,’ he said dourly. ‘I only like beef burglars.’
Lunch wasn’t the only meal when the children encountered something they weren’t used to. ‘What did you have for tea today?’ one mum asked as she put her child’s coat on.
‘Bla
ck sandwiches,’ said the child.
Once more I grinned. ‘They were Marmite,’ I said.
The owner cut a few corners as far as the meals went because a standard catering tin of luncheon meat was cut up so small, it fed the whole nursery AND the staff. Potato came in a large container. There was one ice-cream scoop for each child and two for the staff and each of us had a dessertspoonful of peas. Yes, I was hungry, but I got deliciously thin in preparation for my wedding!
The mid-morning break was always taken with the children, as was the afternoon tea break. We had one biscuit each. The staff had a lunch hour but we weren’t paid for that.
My housing problem was solved about three weeks before I got married. My employer’s husband was a local builder and she told me to go to his offices. I was offered a one-bedroom unfurnished flat within walking distance of the nursery at the princely sum of five pounds a week. The offer was amazingly generous … or was it? I worked for another three years in the nursery at the same fourteen pounds a week. When I came back from my honeymoon, I was told that because I had only worked in the nursery for six months, I wasn’t entitled to the two weeks I had just had as paid holiday. That meant I had to take it as unpaid leave. Things were very tight that month! When I pointed out that if this was the case, I should be able to have two weeks’ holiday in November, I was told I could do that but it would be classed as my holiday for the following year. When I finally took two weeks’ holiday in the summer of 1975, it was the first paid leave I had had since I joined the nursery in 1973!
I wasn’t the only one to feel the pinch. The girl in room three, Helen, used to buy things out of her own pocket for the nursery. She bought some toys and puppets to go with the books we read with the children at the end of the day. After a good few months, the bookcase looked very impressive. One day the owner came in and saw them.
‘These are lovely,’ she said. ‘Who bought them?’
‘I did,’ said Helen.
‘Umm,’ said the owner thoughtfully. ‘I’m obviously paying you too much.’
We more or less did what we wanted in the room in which we had responsibility, and that was the beauty of it. I split the day up into sections and began with free play in the room. After drinks time, we went outside and the children enjoyed playing on the bigger toys in the nursery garden. We used to meet up with the children from the other two rooms so they had plenty to do and lots of other children to play with. We came back just before lunch and after we’d taken everybody to the toilet, we ate a lunch with the children. We took an hour break after lunch and made the children sleep on stretchers for an hour, with one girl looking after them. One day when I was helping to get the children up again after their rest, Robert put his hand over his trousers. ‘Oh,’ he said blushing a deep red, ‘my botty just burped.’
During the afternoon, we would have another play session with different toys so that the children didn’t get bored with playing with the same things. People donated us toys so we had a great many lovely things. One man from my church used to work for the GPO (General Post Office, which was the name of the Royal Mail back then). During some restructuring he got hold of some obsolete telephones. The nursery had two Bakelite phones in each room. The children loved playing with them and I wish I still had them – they’d be worth a small fortune now! After tea time, someone took the children into the staff room for that story just mentioned while we cleared up the rooms. By the time the last of the children had gone, we had cleaned the classrooms and put everything away. It was hard work but we were a good group of girls and we enjoyed ourselves.
My room had a book corner. There were a couple of easy chairs so that the children could sit comfortably as they read a book of their choice. There was also a Wendy house, which was well furnished with toys. The nursery guinea-pig, oddly named Quackers, lived in my room while room one had the fish and room three looked after a rabbit. At Christmas time, we would create a nativity tableau and invite all the mums to come. The children always rehearsed very well and knew their parts. They didn’t have to learn any lines but the children could recognise when it was their turn to ‘go on stage’. The owner always wanted her little bit of glory and every year she would turn up just before it started and stuff a sweet in everybody’s mouth as they walked into the room. The Worthing Herald sent their photographer and he would get them to wave at the end but somehow Joseph complaining that the toffee in his mouth was stuck on his teeth didn’t do it for me. Never mind, we all enjoyed the experience.
It’s funny how the average nativity play sticks in the memory not for its brilliance but the faux pas that usually accompanies it. There was that tender moment when Mary laid baby Jesus in the manger and a loud clatter rattled along the wooden floor. It was followed by an even louder wail, ‘Jesus’ arm has fallen off!’
Then there was the time when the innkeeper, having been given instructions to shake his head and put his hand up to refuse entry, was so moved to hear that Mary needed help that he took her arm and said, ‘Don’t cry, you can have my bed if you like.’
Another year, the Angel Gabriel decided to settle an old score with one of the Wise Men on stage. Give him his due, the wise man gave as good as he got, but until we managed to break it up, a wailing angel and a screaming Wise Man had rather spoiled the heavenly image we were trying to recreate.
Then there was the time another angel who was part of the ‘heavenly host’ arrived with her dress tucked in her knickers. And there was the angel who, obviously feeling tired after a long rehearsal, lay down in the crib, put her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes. Deaf to my frantic off-stage whispers, she slept throughout the whole performance. There were no video cameras to catch the scene but they will be indelibly marked in my memory until the day I die.
In the final run-up to Christmas, the children had a Christmas party. We had jelly and cakes and played party games. Their present from the nursery was small (usually a few sweets) but gratefully received. Whenever a birthday came along, we would celebrate it by giving the child a birthday card and letting them stand in the middle of a circle while we all sang ‘Happy Birthday’. I had a wind-up cake decoration which had been in my family for years (and still is). I used to bring it in and the birthday boy or girl was allowed to wind it up. It played ‘Happy Birthday’ as it revolved and each child was so excited when it was their turn to turn the key. We also had a pretend birthday cake made out of a sweet tin and covered in paper to look like icing. I would put the appropriate number of candles in the holders on the cake and the child was allowed to blow it out after we’d all sung. Such simple pleasures but the children thought it was wonderful.
We all put so much extra into everything we did. The girl in charge of room three wasn’t the only one to use her hard-earned money for the children. We would buy craft materials and we spent time painting the windows with cartoon characters and lining the walls with coloured paper to put the children’s pictures on. We often did a ‘show’ and then invited the children from the other two rooms to come and watch, and they would do the same for us.
Once a year, a professional photographer would come to the nursery and we’d spend the morning or afternoon having their pictures taken. They were expensive but most of the mums bought their child’s first ‘official’ photograph. We would also arrange for younger siblings to come in as well to have their pictures taken with big brother or sister. The older siblings would have been at school. The only time I remember a mum refusing to buy a photograph was when Thomas had his picture taken. The day the photographer arrived it was his first day at school and he was missing his mum. I still have the picture she refused. Poor Thomas is staring down the lens of the camera with two huge pools of unshed tears in his eyes and an obviously quivering chin.
The children came from ordinary homes and most of them were happy and well looked after. Their mums either worked full or part time and the nursery met their requirements for childcare. Having said that, we did have a few children who were not so
well looked after. Joshua’s parents were getting an acrimonious separation. One evening just as we were locking up, they both came to the nursery in separate cars and argued over who should take him home. I was in the office with the woman in overall charge of the nursery, Mrs Lucas, when I saw the pair of them, one holding Joshua’s feet and the other his body, begin a tussle in the car park. I was partially hidden behind a curtain, but Mrs Lucas ducked down on the floor and pulled the telephone with her. While I was giving a running commentary, she was phoning the police. They arrived very quickly and persuaded the warring parents to put Joshua in one of the cars. They didn’t intervene in the fight but stood beside them as they argued about who was taking their son home. Fortunately, Joshua seemed to think the tussle was a bit of a game. He certainly wasn’t afraid and eventually the matter was settled and everyone went away.
Jenny and Nigel had a really beautiful mother. She had a lovely personality and was glamorous as well, with a perfect figure, blonde hair, blue eyes and immaculate make-up. The family were quite well off because she was always beautifully dressed and she drove a flashy red sports car. Sometimes her sister would turn up to collect the children from the nursery. The sister could have been a twin. She was certainly as blonde and glamorous as Jenny and Nigel’s mother. One Monday morning, the sister came in to tell us that Jenny and Nigel might be a bit upset.