After Uncle Len’s visit, it was mine and our Dave’s turn to do some visiting when Dad took us by train to see Uncle Len and other relations in Wales.
Sometime that summer Dad
built a partition in our kitchen, to divide the cooking area from the dining
table, with glazing at the top and shelving in the middle. The acquisition of a
goldfish tank for the upper shelf was a nice finishing touch and how we laughed
when one of the goldfish did a poo.
Granny Gray lived with us but, like Dad, she was at work most days. With
five boys at home during the long school holiday, Mam spent a lot of time preparing
food. As a matter of convenience we might have jam butties or German Toast
(bread dipped in egg then fried), or she might hand us a bag of broken biscuits
from Woolworth’s. And when she made cakes, someone was always waiting to scrape
the last of the mixture from the bowl and lick the spoon. That’s not to say Mam
never cooked us a proper dinner.
Kevin Garlick: “I remember a day when I came to your
house and there was a buzz in the air, a sense of excitement. You told me that
‘Mam`s cooking Hot Pot,’ a term unheard of to the indigenous population.
‘What`s Hot Pot?’ I asked, imagining it to be some kind of Bolton
bush tucker. It was only when your Mam lifted the lid on the saucepan and I saw
the simmering contents with a layer of sliced potatoes on top, something I’d
not seen before, that I understood. I remember us boys all taking turns to
stick our noses over the pot to draw in its mouth watering aroma. I also
remember being allowed a taste.”
Mam was in the kitchen again
when the subject of hair cuts came up. She’d given up taking her brood to the West End barbers on Twydall Green due to the expense, and had taken to doing it herself. Of Mam’s two styles, a pudding basin or a crew cut, I
favoured the latter but I liked the idea of being a full on baldy like
Yul Brynner. Mam said no, as she did to a suggested compromise; a Mohican like
wrestler Billy Two Rivers.
Mam was at the stove once more when Linda and Sally Heard from next door came in for a chat. Seated at our dining room table, they’d made one of those salt cellar fortune telling things and were prompting Mam to give them a number, colour etc. Having played with one of these things at school – where lifting the last flap usually revealed an insult like Monkey Face or similar – I listened with interest.
Hearing that Mam was going to marry actor Johnny Briggs (from No Hiding Place,) and have four children was alarming. When I quizzed Mam about it later her reply shocked me.
‘You’ll find out when you grow up and get married.’
‘I’m not getting married. I’m never getting married!’
‘You will,’ said Mam with worrying confidence.
Appalled, I went off in a huff.
~
The Heard girls were okay…
for girls. Linda, the eldest and her sister Sally, a school year senior to me, showed
me how to play a catching game called Nelson, so called because the loser (me)
ended up trying to catch the ball one handed with one eye shut. Vivienne, a
school year younger, gave me a memorable first snog when we played Postman’s
Knock at her birthday party. Jill, 6, was youngest of four girls born to Albert
and Zelda Heard. The most striking thing about Mrs Heard – apart from her
Christian name – was the size of her. Indeed, she quite a big lady. And Mister
Heard had to be a Roy Orbison fan because on warm summer nights when the windows
were open, I’d sometimes hear him singing Roy Orbison songs in the bathroom. It
was in the Heards’ back garden one afternoon that I experienced one of life’s
perfect moments. Where everyone had wandered off to I don’t know but finding
myself alone on a lawn littered with hula hoops and the various components of a toy tea set, I settled down to do a Hanna Barbera jigsaw and loved it so
much that on completion, I broke it up and did it all over again.
Summer wouldn’t have been
summer without a plague of flying ants bringing hungry seagulls up from the river;
and great excitement to the kids of Twydall. It was ant activity that drew our
attention to the small inspection chamber by our front gate. Lifting the lid
revealed a nest that only needed poking with a twig to send ants scattering in
all directions. Of those that escaped our stamping feet many were captured and
studied under a magnifying glass and yes, some were burnt till their bums
popped. In truth, along with the fragrance of privet blossom, the oily whiff of
Arnold’s toy
shop and the unique smell of a record player with the lid up, the stench of
frazzled ants was one of the great smells of childhood.
A Saturday afternoon trip to
the pictures was a treat for the Lynch boys. While Granny looked after the
little Andrew and baby Garry at home, Mam took me, Dave and Mike to see
Pinocchio at the Rainham Royal. Dave and I were particularly thrilled because
after paying to see a special screening of Pinocchio at our old school in Bolton,
we’d missed out when the family moved to Gillingham.
‘Oh no!’
Our Pinocchio jinx struck
again. Mam had misread the advert in the Rochester,
Chatham and
Gillingham News. Pinnochio wasn’t on for another week. This week’s offering was
The First Men in the Moon.
‘We can see this or we can
come back next week,’ said Mam, trying to soften our disappointment. Given the
choice of something or nothing, we opted to go in…. and see the most boring
film we’d ever seen.
All’s well that ends well. A week later we were back at the bug hutch to see Pinocchio and an
equally enjoyable support film. Good old Mam.
Another film we saw was
Lawrence of Arabia at the ABC in Chatham.
A brilliant film, but of greater interest to many was A Hard Day’s Night,
showing across the street at The Ritz, where a long queue of people were waiting
to get in.
A school holiday bonus was being allowed to stay up and
watch Call the Gun Expert, a new series dealing with killers convicted on the
evidence of ballistics expert Robert Churchill. Much as I liked the programme the chance to
earn the 4s 6d I needed to buy the mini crossbow I’d seen in Forbuoys window
meant I had forgo further episodes in order to get up early and go hop picking
with Kevin and his mum.
‘Sevenoaks’ said Kev, when I
asked him where we were going.
I was still wondering where
Sevenoaks was when a canvas topped, army style lorry came to pick us up. Just as soon as
we and other waiting hop pickers had piled into the back and parked our bums on
the bench seats inside, we were on our way. Wherever Sevenoaks was, it was nice
to travel with plenty of fresh air and for once, no fear of travel sickness.
Though hops smell very much
like oranges, they taste nothing like them. So I learned when taking a bite out
of one left me spitting what felt like mouthful of sour feathers. For two, possibly three weeks at the back end
of the school holiday, Kevin and I picked hops. But the baskets were big and our
progress was slow, and when our enthusiasm waned there other attractions, none
more so than a mountain of stripped vines; wonderful for playing on, that was
regularly topped up by more waste coming up a conveyor belt to a big chute.
Kevin Garlick: “I remember that heap of vines; there was
a conveyor belt that came out of a big tin shed that ran up to a chute
that sent a cascade of leaves and vines down on the big pile. Although I did
not know it at the time inside the shed, men fed the hop vines into a machine that
picked the hops and got rid of the rubbish. Machines like this one would
replace all those women and kids and hop picking would be no more. Times were
changing even back then.”
For all our skiving off, slowly
but surely I earned the money for the crossbow in Forbuoys window. Alas, when I
went to buy it, it had gone.
Blast!
~
Graham
Wilson: “I remember the shops along Ashley
Road, I always referred to the newsagents as
"Tuxworths" but I don't think that was the name over the door. At
the opposite end was a greengrocer (possibly called Longstaff's) and somewhere
in the middle was a general grocer or convenience store.”
‘Cherry trees,
loads of them… wow!’
Scrumping
cherries was a new activity for me and my friends, and highly enjoyable once we
got to filling our faces in the lower branches but alas, we were soon
interrupted.
‘Hoi!’
Nobody hung
around to see who the angry voice belonged to. In defiance of his build Kevin took off like an
Olympic sprinter and left me and Bim trailing. There was no catching Kev, who
was first to the gate and halfway up Pump
Lane before he slowed enough for us to catch up.
As rewarding as
it had been, we decided scrumping wasn’t something we'd chance again.
~
Linda Underhill moved too, along with her mother and father, brother Douglas and sister Trudi. Not just out of Crundale Road but out of Twydall altogether.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Strood.’
I was sorry to see Linda go. I knew I’d miss her. And I did.
Just for the record, some of the people living in our little corner of the world at that time…
18 Milsted Road: Eddie Churchman and his little sister Susan.
20 Milsted Road: Dean Hunter.
22 Milsted Road: Linda, Helen and David Webb.
39 Crundale Road: Tony Davidson and big brother Keith.
40 Crundale Road: Kevin Delahay and Pamela Savage. Quiet father, fearsome mother.
41 Crundale Road: Brendan, Diane, Julie and Sylvia Wright. Dad Jack Wright typed up the Twydall newsletter and made an impressive rose arch at the front door. I think Mrs Wright was called Lil.
42 Crundale Road: Home of Mrs Hewitt, a grey haired lady who kept a lovely rose garden.
43 Crundale Road: Our house.
44 Crundale Road: Mrs Revell, old Pop Revell and sons/grandsons Brian, Colin and Peter.
45 Crundale Road: The Heards, as previously mentioned.
46 Crundale Road: Charlie Elliot, little brother Raymond, big sister Christine. Don’t remember his dad though I think his mum was Italian.
A little further up Crundale Road lived Hugh Weeks, Leslie Shea, Linda Varnum, Edwin Thomas and in the house at the top of the alley that leads to Wingham Close, lived buck toothed Peter Watling and his older brother (Alan, I think.)
As for the top end of Crundale Road (between Minster Road and Waltham Road,) other than Michael Strudwick at number 3, and his big brother Jimmy who I knew by sight, I only knew of a couple of boys named Shepherd.
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