Christmas has gone. Again

Christmas seems to last a long time these days and suddenly its over.  Last Christmas was like no other and for many is best forgotten.

 I can't say that I have many memories of the Christmases of my childhood. Just a snapshot here and there. My earliest is perhaps not a particularly happy one. I was quite young and was given a chocolate policeman. What I do remember is that were always taught to share so when my Dad asked for a taste of my chocolate policeman I offered it to him not expecting him to actually taste it. I burst into tears when he bit the head off tthe policeman. I never forgave him for that

I appeared in the Christmas pantomime at primary school . Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the panto you have to guess which dwarf I was. I won't go into any further detail except to say that I left the stage part of the way through as in those days and for a long time after I had difficulty in controlling my bladder

At the Infant School in Wapping the children were given a Christmas present which were all laid out on the table and the children could walk around and choose something.

I chose a toy cowboy cap gun which was immediately confiscated as soon as I got home as my dad was a pacifist and did not approve of guns as toys

Midnight mass  everyone went to midnight mass in Wapping. I don't know the proportions but most of people near where we lived were Catholics and so there was always a big crowd and even the children went and on one occasion my older brother Tom rushed home and played practical joke by dangling a lighted skull from the roof of the block of flats where we lived .

 In our house Christmas dinner was one o'clock sharp and everyone had to be there. The main thing I remember about those dinners was the overcooked Brussels sprouts and cabbage..

My first Christmas away from home, apart from the evacuee years was the first one of national service When I finished my Military Police training we were just given a short home leave but had to return to Barracks the day before Christmas Eve. Christmas was spent in the barracks and there was some kind of silly tradition there that the sergeant brought round cups of coffee laced with rum which I found quite disgusting

My second Army Christmas was in Moascar in the Suez Canal Zone. It was free booze all day long and then there was an evening meal. The cook Sergeant fancied himself as something of a chef and laid out a really tremendous feed. However in the middle of the table there was this enormous salmon which he had decorated with coloured piping of some kind, possibly mashed potato.

I took one look and went straight outside and brought back up all the free beer I  had drunk during the course of the day. 

The A.F.S in Wapping

 The AFS in Wapping

My brother Tom joined the Auxiliary Fire service in 1938 soon after it was established.  The AFS was a volunteer service set up to supplement the London Fire Brigade in anticipation of the forthcoming war. Tom' was 18 at the time and probably thought that being a fireman would be a bit more exciting than his day job as a typewriter mechanic . 

Although the London Fire Brigade estimated that they needed 28000 volunteers there are no statistics about how many men, young and old, signed up to be trained as firemen.  In Wapping there is a kind of snapshot of some of men and women who had volunteered to become a part-time firefighters .

There were 18 men listed on the National Register on the 29th September as being on duty at the substation and two young women.  Their ages ranged from a 55 year old taxi driver to a 26 year old warehouse packer.  Most of the men were married and generally older than many would have expected. 

The occupations were also disparate including a shipping clerk and a barristers clerk as well as a tailor and a meat Packer, a lorry driver and a hardware salesman There was of course a couple of wharf labourers as well as a rubber stamp maker and a painter and decorator.  There was just  one full-time fireman on duty that night who  was no doubt responsible for the training of these volunteers.. The  two young women at that time would have been learning the control room duties: one was a typist  during the day and the  other a dressmaker. 

Tom learned the hard way about the dangers of firefighting.  Whilst he was at the top of a ladder with a hose a colleague, No doubt with insufficient training, increased the water pressure without warning with the result that Tom was thrown to the ground  damaging his knee.  That ended his firefighting career but of course it did not prevent him being called up into the RAF when the war started. 

The valiant work carried out by the firefighters both the full time men of the London Fire Brigade and their part-time colleagues in the AFS during the Blitz of the following years is well known but it doesn't hurt to be reminded of this from time to time and realise that firefighters today face equal dangers.

Two Wapping Gardens

There are two gardens in Wapping in London's East End which were not there when I was a boy before WW2.

The Rose Garden is alongside Vancouver House on Green Bank.  Before the war it was a derelict yard full of rubble and surrounded by a brick wall and cast iron gates.  The security of course was not sufficient to deter small boys who regarded brick walls and gates as a challenge rather than a deterrent.   Even the warnings of our parents about the enormous rats which were supposed to inhabit the rubble kept us out.  A clip round the ear from a parent rarely materialised as we were safe out

before father came home from work.

Of course there was the playground just across the road but swings and the roundabout and so on supervised by a dragon playground lady were no competition in terms of adventure.

The Waterside gardens on Wapping High Street are opposite the end of what is now called Reardon's Path but which used to be Dundee Street. This area was open storage for the huge rolls of newsprint which used to be offloaded there before being carted up to Fleet Street where most of the national daily newspapers were printed.

More water in number three

Back when the average home did not have a built in bathroom,which is a lot less than a century ago, for having a bath there was a few options.  A strip wash in the kitchen, a tin bath in front of the fire in the living room or a visit to the municipal baths.

Most towns had what were called slipper baths, often in the same building as the swimming pool.  The cost of the bath included the use of a towel and as much hot water as you liked, except the water was controlled from outside the cubicle.

We lived in a relatively modern block of flats in Wapping built between the wars, which had a bathroom so naturally that was all I knew and assumed that everyone had a bath.  When the war came and we were evacuated to Brighton, we were billeted with a family who did not have a bath so we had to go to the public baths.

Every Saturday morning off we went and it was an occasion not just for getting clean but for having a laugh as well. The baths in Brighton was quite a jolly friendly place and it didn't take long to learn the rules.  You paid for the bath, were given a towel and told which cubicle to go to.  The bath already had water in it but if it wasn't to your liking then you could call out to the attendant "More hot water in "Number three please" and the attendant would turn the tap on the outside of the cubicle for a while.  Of course if your mate was in Cubicle four then for a laugh you could call out "more hot water in cubicle four please"  Cant remember why we though that was funny!!

The guardian and observer

I stopped buying the Guardian and the Observer a while ago. I don't fit their reader demographic in anyway that makes any sense to me.  Despite their green credentials, they are still wasting acres of paper on full page adverts and celebrity photographs.

The ads are not for me, supposing I could afford it or even wanted to ride a bike I wouldn't spend two thousand pounds on buying one, nor would I spend one hundreds a fifty quid on a jumper or over four hundred on an overcoat.  And then they have got the nerve to print hand-wringing articles about the disparity of wealth in the country!

By the time I had cast aside the sports , travel and foodie pages there is not much left for me to read.  OK the news pages contain more background information than the other papers, but there is a lot of stuff that doesn't appeal to me.  

The magazines are full of overpriced clothes worn for the most part by models who also don't read the foodie pages either.  And what's with all those girls standing around with their toes pointing inwards ?  Was there an outbreak of rickets 20 years ago that didn't get reported?

The only regular columns I read was Katherine Whitehorn and Clive James  who are both older than me and still makes sense.   When these stopped being regulars, then I gave up.

I can't go back to the News Chronicle, the Daily Herald or Reynolds News and these days I only understand every third and fifth word in the  New Statesman.  So it will have to be the Beano instead

Blue knickerbockers and the seven dwarfs

Small boys often have a problem learning to control the bladder.  I was no exception and at school was frequently asking to leave the classroom.  Despite teachers and others  knowing this I was often put in a situation which made it impossible.

The earliest I recall was being one of the seven dwarfs in the school pantomime.  Make up your own mind as to which one I was.  Being no more than  toddlers, we had very little part to play but were under strict instructions not to move about or to leave the stage.  By the end of the performance where I stood on the stage of the St. George in the East Town Hall was a very large puddle.

The Catholic Church of St. Patrick had an annual May procession.  Quite a long one, three bands and  all the school children, girls in their white communion dresses and the boys in best clothes.  The May Queen had several attendants including two page boys in blue velvet suits, white stockings and buckled shoes.  No doubt based on Little Lord Fauntleroy.  For some inexplicable reason one year I was chosen to be a page boy.

 The procession took some time  to go around the parish, stopping frequently at the kerbside grottoes put up by the parishioners.  By the time we got back to the church my white stockings were as blue as the knickerbockers.

Even when a little older being an altar boy still presented problems particularly during longer services so the strain of holding myself became too much.  Even after passing out in the side benches on the altar I was still included until on one occasion there was quite an spectacular fall while the Bishop was preaching, so I was not an altar boy again.

St. Johns Church,Wapping

As a child, between the wars I lived round the corner from the Anglican church of St John of Wapping. Catholic children in those days were told not to go into Protestant churches for fear of eternal damnation.

As usual for children, this morphed into the belief that the devil lived there so that not only did we not go into the church we would cross over to the other side of the road in order not to pass by.

There was also a  churchyard there then with many gravestones but most have now been displaced and the area is a garden, the church itself being bombed during the war, with only the tower remaining.

St. John of Wapping was the parish church for a small area of Wapping which dated back to 1760 and it was in the churchyard here that Robert Hartup Jury, my wife's four times  great grandfather, was buried in 1824. He had been apprenticed as a Lighterman in Wapping in 1773 although born in Maker, Cornwall, married and raised nine children and lived in several addresses in Wapping some of which he owned. Robert also owned several barges at the time of his death as well as a share in a coastal brig.There were several other members of the Jury family buried in the churchyard but there are no signs of their resting places left now.

Needless to say, that as a young boy walking and playing nearby I had no means of knowing about the connection with the Jury family and this church which would occur later.