by Sylvia Smith
My parents allowed me to have a kitten from the litter produced by my friend Susan’s cat. My kitten was a Tom and I called him ‘Lucky’. Unfortunately my mother had little idea how to take care of a pet and she fed him Kit-e-Kat twice daily (in those days it was only the one flavour) and would only vary his diet once a week when she would boil him some fish. Lucky must have found it extremely boring eating the same food six days a week and when he reached adulthood he was quick to move in with one of our neighbours, a Mrs Needler, who lived four doors away from us. She would leave a variety of food out for Lucky to eat and Lucky found her diet much more interesting than ours. I was very upset at the loss of my cat. My mother went to see Mrs Needler and had a flaming row with her for enticing Lucky from me. Her final words to Mrs Needler were, ‘Now that you have taken our cat from us you can keep him,’ which was not the result I had been hoping for.
On my fourteenth birthday my father bought me two lovebirds. They were beautiful birds but they were too frightened to leave their cage to fly around our lounge so they spent their lives sitting on their perch. They were certainly male and female. Each evening at dinner time they would make love and my father, hearing a tapping sound, would look up from his newspaper, fold it, and whack the top of the cage with it, which frightened the birds and stopped them mating.
One hot summer’s day my mother put the bird cage in our outhouse attached to the kitchen before she went to work, but she didn’t open any windows. On my return from school I discovered both lovebirds dead, lying on their backs at the bottom of the cage, having suffocated in the intense heat created by the hot sun shining through the closed outhouse windows.
During my mid-teens I lost interest in having pets and my parents didn’t buy me any more.
1950-60
MY SCHOOL DAYS
INFANTS AND JUNIOR SCHOOL
I was five years old and had just started school. I was playing happily in the sandpit building castles when another five-year-old girl emptied a fire bucket full of water over my head. The teacher in charge took me to the Headmistress’ office where I was undressed and my clothes placed over a heater to dry. I was told to sit down and I sat naked on one of the wooden chairs. There was a knock at the door and, much to my embarrassment, a seven-year-old boy walked in. He looked at me in surprise and handed the Headmistress a message. As he left the room his eyes examined me from head to toe.
I fared much better at Junior School.
During the lunch hour one of the male teachers gave me some money and told me to get him a Kit Kat from the local shop. I did as he bade me but returned with a tin of Kit-e-Kat. He insisted I exchange the cat food for his chocolate.
One of my classmates wasn’t too bright either. When asked by the geography teacher, ‘How can you tell the time in the desert?’ Jeanne le May’s hand shot up. The teacher pointed at her and Jeanne replied, ‘By the twelve o’clock hooter.’ (In those days factories would blast hooters informing their workers it was time to down tools and go for lunch.)
At the age of ten I was put in the school play as the ‘north wind’. I had to stand with my arms above my head, swaying occasionally, and I had two lines to say. My parents proudly attended the play. At the end of the evening I realised I had forgotten my lines and had said nothing throughout the entire performance.
SENIOR SCHOOL
I attended a secondary modern school for girls in the days of extended point shoes, fluorescent socks, dirndl skirts with fluffy petticoats, and Teddy Boys.
At the age of thirteen I was caught smoking in the toilets in the company of several other teenage girls during the break. We were passing the one cigarette around with each of us taking it in turns to have a puff, when a teacher came in just as I was having my turn. She took me to the Headmistress’ office. I was told my parents would be informed of my misdemeanour and I was asked who else was sharing the cigarette, but I gave no reply. After a ticking-off I returned to my class. When the other girls discovered I had not let them down I became a heroine for the remainder of the day. My parents did not receive any type of communication and the incident was soon forgotten, but it was also the end of our surreptitious smoking.
Window cleaners would occasionally work at the school. As they all seemed to be aged nineteen they were soon surrounded by teenage girl pupils chatting them up, much to their amusement.
I also remember two fifteen-year-old girls had fiancés and they married at sixteen after leaving school.
1952
RINTY
I was seven years old. I lived next door to Joan, aged six. She owned an Alsatian puppy called Rinty. I asked her mother if I could take him for a walk. She put him on his lead and passed him to me.
I decided to take Rinty to the Recreation Ground as he was very keen to have a run. He raced up the road, straining at the leash, pulling me along with him, forcing me to run through the streets. I managed to steer him in the right direction and we reached the ‘Rec’. I used all of my strength to bring him to a halt on the grass. As he was so energetic I decided to let him off his lead and allow him to run around freely. He did just that. He ran all over the playing fields, around the tennis courts, straight past me and out through the ‘Rec’ gates into the street. I chased after him and was just in time to see him turn the corner. I sped up the road looking for him but he was nowhere in sight. I made my way home wondering what I was going to say to Joan’s mother after losing her dog. I need not have worried. Rinty arrived home fifteen minutes ahead of me.
A few months later Joan’s mother told my family not to tell Joan but Rinty had been sold to a farmer as he had become too big and boisterous to cope with. Joan was told he had run away.
1952
MISS GEE
At the age of seven, I was sent by my parents to Miss Gee, a piano teacher who lived in the next street My father told me he thought I would go down well at parties in later years if I knew how to play the piano. Miss Gee was deaf and in her seventies.
Miss Gee used to sit beside me at the piano wearing a hearing aid and it seemed to me that the only way she knew if I was playing correctly was to watch my fingers. She still managed to teach me. My favourite piece of music was ‘The Dambusters Theme’.
I didn’t like the theory at all so Miss Gee used to let me get away with my lack of written homework.
During one lesson I played a piece of music badly so Miss Gee rapped my knuckles with her baton, which hurt and made me cry. After I had dried my tears she said, ‘Promise me you won’t tell your parents.’ I promised and kept her secret safe.
1954
TRIXIE
Brenda moved into the street I lived in when we were both nine years old. We were friends until I moved away with my parents at the age of twelve.
One day in early summer I knocked on Brenda’s street door and asked if I could take her black-and-brown mongrel, Trixie, out for a walk over the park. Brenda said I could but not to let any dogs near Trixie as she was ‘on heat’.
Trixie was full of spirit as I walked her on her lead. We were soon over the park and running across the grass, with Trixie pulling the lead at full strength. As we approached the tennis courts a huge black mongrel appeared and began to pay her a lot of attention. I tried shooing him away but he would not obey me and quickly mounted Trixie. In my horror I let the lead go and a small crowd of children gathered to watch our threesome. The park keeper came across the grass to see what all the fuss was about and I suggested that if he had a bucket of cold water we could throw it over the dogs and possibly separate them. He ignored my request and silently watched the spectacle. Eventually the black mongrel dismounted and walked away from us. I picked up Trixie’s lead and took her home.
I told Brenda what had happened and she told me not to tell her parents as she feared they might have Trixie destroyed.
Some weeks later Trixie gave birth to four black-and-brown puppies.
1954
ROLLER-SKATING
I was nine years old. It was t
he school summer holidays and I was spending my time roller-skating up and down the street I lived in with my nine-year-old friend Brenda.
The street I lived in was very long with a hill at the top and ideal for roller-skating. Both Brenda and I were having fun skating up and down the hill and racing round the block and down the hill again. I was thoroughly enjoying myself until I turned the corner at the bottom of our road. I had skated at top speed and the pace I had set had taken me too fast around the corner. I totally lost my balance and fell. I put both hands out to save myself and landed flat out, face down on the pavement with my right hand settling in an enormous runny mound of dog mess. When I realised where my right hand had landed, all pain left me in my disgust.
I lifted my hand out of the excreta and wiped it on some tufts of grass growing along the kerb. Despite being only nine years old I had the sense to skate home to my parents’ flat and wash and scrub my hands with disinfectant in the big butler sink in my mother’s kitchen, disinfecting the sink afterwards.
1955
THE SCHOOL-TEACHER IN THE FOREST
I was ten years old and attending junior school. The headmaster thought it a good idea for the class to see the local wildlife and arrangements were made for us to be transported one afternoon each week to a school room inside the forest.
The room was full of stuffed animals and birds in jars, and various dried fruits. The male teacher would take us deep into the forest showing us how to tell the ages of trees, how to identify each tree by its leaves, and pointing out the lairs of otters and stoats.
On one of our excursions the teacher stopped at a clearing and suggested we all have a rest. He called me to him and told me to lay down on the grass beside him, which I did. He held me in his arms, squeezed me tightly and stroked my hair. He did no more than that but I didn’t report the incident to my parents or to any other school-teacher.
1958
MY FIRST KISS
I can’t remember his name or what he looked like but I can remember going to the coffee bar after school with my fifteen-year-old friend Maureen. He and his friend sat down at our table and ‘chatted us up’ and a date was arranged for a foursome a few evenings later. I was thirteen.
It was a crisp November evening on the occasion of our date. Maureen and I met the boys at the top of the local High Street.
Our happy foursome wandered aimlessly through the back streets of Walthamstow. Somehow we found ourselves in the cemetery picking our way through the gravestones in the darkness.
My beau and I left Maureen and her partner for a while and we sat down on a large tombstone outside the church. After some conversation he put his arms around me in the moonlight and he kissed me. I responded eagerly and did my best to return his passion. We embraced for a few minutes and then rejoined our friends.
We made our way to the main road and parted company without making any plans for the future.
I was quite pleased with my experience but my pleasure turned to anger when Maureen told me my boyfriend was only twelve years of age and not the older teenager I had thought.
1959
BETH
I met Beth when she joined my class at school We were both fourteen. Her mother had died so her father had Beth and her younger brother placed with foster parents because he was not able to look after them.
Beth was blonde and very pretty and a very knowing fourteen-year-old. We became friends and went out together after school hours and at weekends with both of us wearing the latest fashions, which were dirndl skirts with puffy petticoats underneath, or pencil-slim skirts.
Beth and I had no trouble in meeting young men. I would talk to them and go out with them occasionally but I would not do more than kiss them. If Beth liked her young man she would have sex with him. She had only just moved to the area and she told me she had already had several affairs with boys whilst she had been living at home with her parents.
One weekend Beth took me to see her married sister Mandy. Mandy was heavily pregnant with her third child. Beth told me she had been, and still was, having sex with her brother-in-law whenever he could see her, but of course Mandy knew nothing about this.
1959
BRIAN
Brian was a twenty-one-year-old Teddy Boy who rode a Lambretta. I was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl and we met in a coffee bar. I went out with him once.
I used to go to the coffee bar with my friends of an evening and Brian was usually there with several other Teddy Boys. I accepted his offer of a date and a few nights later we met outside a greengrocer’s shop around the corner from my home as my father didn’t allow me to have boyfriends.
I climbed onto the back of Brian’s Lambretta and he drove me to his family home. He showed me into the lounge and told me to take a seat while he selected some LPs for the record player. I settled down in an armchair and he left the room to make some coffee.
The house was small with just a lounge, kitchen and hallway downstairs and, I guessed, two-bedroomed with a bathroom upstairs. There was no sign of his parents so I decided they had gone out for the evening, leaving just the two of us indoors.
Brian returned with two coffees and sat down in the remaining armchair.
For a while we sipped our coffees and chatted and listened to the music. My cup empty, I remained in my chair innocently talking to Brian about my life in general. At his request I sat on his lap and kissed him. His kisses soon developed into gropes and I spent the rest of the evening resisting his advances. He already knew my age.
My parents did not allow me to be out later than 10.30 p.m. so at ten fifteen Brian drove me home and stopped at the bottom of my street. I got off his Lambretta and gave him a quick peck on the cheek and crossed the road as he drove away.
I did not see my father in the darkness. He was standing on the other corner of the street and had witnessed our ‘goodnight’. He was furious with me and slapped my face and I was not allowed out for a fortnight.
1959
JENNIFER
Jennifer was a very attractive redhead who I sat next to at school. We were both fourteen and we went out together a couple of times.
One day after classes Jennifer said to me, ‘Why don’t we go up the Assembly Hall Saturday? There’s always a dance on and there’s stacks of fellers there.’ I agreed. On the special day we donned our best dresses, stilletto heels, and make-up, and back-combed our hair into the latest bouffant hairstyles.
Jennifer was right about the dance. The hall was full of men under the age of twenty-five and we spent the evening jiving to a rock group playing on the stage.
We met two young men who we discovered were friends. Jennifer particularly liked ‘her one’. ‘My one’ was a nice enough young man of twenty and I jived with him. We were able to speak to each other when the music slowed down and we did a type of shuffle. I innocently began talking about my life at school and how my father would not allow me to stay out late until finally he asked me, ‘How old are you?’ I replied, ‘Fourteen.’ He asked, ‘And how old is your friend?’ ‘She’s fourteen too,’ I replied. He continued dancing with me until the music stopped then he said, ‘Thank you’ and returned me to my seat. He rejoined his friend who was standing beside Jennifer and told him, ‘These two girls are only fourteen.’ Jennifer’s young man made his excuses and both men walked away from her. She came over to me. She was very annoyed and said, ‘Why did you tell him our ages? I told my feller I was eighteen and we were talking about going out with one another. Now it’s all over.’
1960
CAROL D
Carol and I were childhood friends, living in the same street until I was aged twelve and my family moved to another part of Walthamstow. We kept in touch until we were sixteen and became involved with long-term boyfriends. We were both fifteen at the time of this incident.
My first job on leaving school at the age of fifteen was as a trainee hairdresser. I worked in a salon for a three-month trial period but I turned down the offer of an apprenticeship a
s I found the work to be uninteresting.
One Sunday afternoon I walked through the back streets of Walthamstow to Carol’s family home. We spent our time drinking tea and catching up on gossip until she asked me to trim her blonde, shoulder-length hair. I agreed and Carol supplied me with a pair of scissors.
Unfortunately I had only watched hair being cut and had not actually tried it myself. Carol was my first attempt. She said she would like one inch taken off the bottom so, scissors in hand, I snipped away at the right side and then did the same with the left. I looked at the finished result and saw the left side was shorter than the right. I trimmed the right side again, only to discover I had cut too much off and it was now shorter than the left. Carol gasped and put her hand over her mouth as she saw me slowly ruin her hair. I just could not get the hang of it and merrily clipped Carol’s beautiful locks, one inch out each time, until I reached her ears. Trying to make a good job of my disaster I finally decided to layer what was now a short bob.