REFLECTIONS ON CHILDHOOD.

Once upon a time there was a time when there was no time, well not for me anyway for I was not here yet, and wherever “here is”.

          But I am informed (on as good as authority gets) that the evening of the 31^st October 1938 was a dark dank foggy miserable night in West Green Road Tottenham London N 15.

          It was pushing midnight in an attic room at the top of a large Georgian house where I was about to make an entry into this world, yuck

          But I guess that I must have subconsciously thought ….Hang on chum that is Halloween inint, stuff that, I will hang on here for a few minutes and wait for the 1^st of November, for that is All Saints Day, yeah sounds more fun does it not.

          And so it came to pass, I was born! Well you have to smile eh, otherwise we would weep.

          Fancy being born into a place like this! Not a lot, but there you go eh.

          Funny old thing memory is it not, you have either got it or you aint, and even if you have you cannot be to sure as to its reliability.

          The first thing I can ever remember was being pushed along in a push chair at a place called Wembury Point, near Plymouth in South Devon.

          The sky was full of German bombers coming to bomb Plymouth, and I thought “Oh Shit!” they had already flatted our joint in Tottenham a few months earlier and we had no place to live, and the only cloths which we stood up in.

          My father had been posted to  an anti aircraft base at Wembury Point and my mother was looking for some digs in the area, I guess we must have looked like a couple of tramps.

          Prior to that for a short while ( just as we were being bombed out) my father had been doing his basic army training near a place called Bishops Lydeard in West Somerset and so my mother and I had gone down to that area and stayed there for a while.

          I have just a couple of fleeting memories of that place, but they may have been a bit later, for when he got posted yet again we could not follow him, there so we were asked (by the house owners who thought the world of my mother) to go back and spend more time with them in Bishops Lydeard, a nice little house called Wall Cottage, so my memories of that place perhaps stem from the second time I live there.

          Many years later there came to be a third time, in the same house strange coincidence, life is full of strange coincidences, however.

          There comes a time in out life however when memories seem to “jell” and then we experience being in this world all the time so to speak.

          I imagine that memories simply get joined up and thence flow in a continuum from that point onward.

          Quite funny really for I can distinctly remember exactly when that happened to me.

          I was back in London and standing in a small front garden of a terraced house in Tottenham and rearranging the twigs on a hedgerow, in a manner which I thought looked better.

          And I thought, I seem to be here all the time now! Strange thought eh.

          Some months later we were given somewhere to live by the local council, it was the upstairs flat of a house that had been bombed, or should I say the first house in the line of destruction which could be patched up again.

          I lived there until I was fourteen; it was a rough old area in many respects and quite close to the industrial areas and major reservoirs of North London, and not too far from where we had originally been bombed out at Tottenham Hale.

          My mother was a weaver and they had been told to weave webbing for the military, on their way to work the German dive-bombers used to swoop down and machine gun them along the streets.

          And at night they would endeavour to flatten the whole place, came close to it as well I guess.

          Who the hell would have been a mother on her own with kids in those days?

          Not that I had any brothers or sisters, for it take two for procreation, and I guess they had already decided that this was no place to bring any more kids into, and who can blame them.

          But being alone turned out just fine, for I had all the company of the kids in the street that I could ever want or need and also the opportunity to be alone and take time out just when I wanted to or felt like it, so it was good.

          Mind you, the first introduction the street was not so good, I was three at the time and my mother had given me a couple of bob ( two shillings) and asked me to pop to the corner shop and get her a packet of fags.

          On the way I met this small gang of kids, most of them a little older than I was, I was stopped and asked if I had any money on me, I told them I had only the money for some fags which I had to get, they demanded it, or the one who seemed to be the ring leader did, the others just watched on.

          Before I had a chance to reply the money was taken from my hand by force. Oh shit!!!!

          On returning home I told my mother that I lost it, but she simply gave me some more and asked me to go again, and don’t lose the money this time.

          Oh shit! Lightening it seems can strike twice, for the whole scenario was about to be acted out again, and I thought well you know what I thought.

          What does one do I wondered, I was a very quiet and gentle lad, and very sensitive so they tell me.

          But when faced with a no win situation then what the hell, so I said well if you want it chum you come and get it again.

          So he made advances, I let out with a right hand punch from hell that laid him flat on the ground and bawling his eyeballs out.

          And they welcomed me into the gang, such are human beings eh, I thought.

          I began to wonder why people were the way they were and what made them tick. Why do they act the way they act?

          Why are some nice and some nasty?  Why are some clever and some stupid, emm, enough to make one wonder to be sure.

          From that point on however life was a ball, such adventures we had that they could fill a book or two.

          I discovered that I had many interests (and going to school was not really one of them, so we often skipped out and would go scrumping for apples whilst bombs dropped all around us, and we did not give a damn, for we knew nothing else) and yet I did like learning.

          I would ask a thousand and more questions a day, but there was nobody to answer them, and there were no books to read, well I could not read anyway, so I guess I simply asked myself and left it at that, perhaps it formed a life long habit.

          I remember one night when there had been reports of German paratroopers possibly landing.

          The flat downstairs had not yet been taken, and was thus empty, prior to my going to bed my mother and I heard this noise from the flat below. Oh shit! She my mother was a case and a half however.

          She found what must have been a spare pair of army boots and put them on, she picked up the large iron poker from the fireplace and went slowly down the stairs like a heard of elephants, and shouting in a deep voice, who is there.

          She heard some scuffling about and then rushed the rest of the way like a mad thing brandishing the poker above her head.

          On pushing the door open and entering the room a dark figure was in the process of leaping out of the open window and scurrying off into the night and darkness, there were bomb sites all round.

          A small half hearted fire was burning in the hearth, and a slice of half toasted bread lay abandoned beside it, and I think she wept, for it had been a tramp sheltering from the night.

          In this place we had no air-raid shelter, so we just slept in our beds as normal, and sod the lot of it.

          Every night when the bombs started falling she would rush into the bedroom and throw herself on top of me, saying do not be frightened my love, I remember saying one night, I am not frightened of the bombs (I knew nothing else other than bombs every night), but I am a bit seared of you squashing me, I can’t breath mum!.

          And she laughed as was the way with most folk in those days, and we all laughed, for there was nothing else to be done anyway.

          Tis strange how war brings out the very worst, such is the strangeness of human beings.

          Perhaps they need something important to do in their lives before they actually wake up and come alive.

          At least in war one does not sleep walk through life, but what a way to live.

          I must have been born lucky however, for I have never been ill or even had a headache or a hangover, or maybe I have never had the time, who knows.

          Strange thing is time. As I look back now it seems like yesterday I can still smell the smells of those days, and if I close my eyes I can see the pictures of those times in my minds eye, and feel it all again as it was then. Huh, I wonder why.

          What it is to be ignorant eh, and if we were not ignorant then we would not ask questions would we, for we would know it all.

          And to what degree asking questions solicits genuine answers, I often wondered about such things.

          A popular pursuit for children of that time and place was that of exploring the debris found on bomb sites, which comprised what seemed to be half of London in those days.

          Moreover they were the playground of the local tribes, early one bright spring morning I found myself (full of the uninhibited joys of childhood existence) across such a dereliction.

          I had no idea now as to what was on my mind at that time, but one was probably seeking anything that might be found on such a site that could be deemed useful, like bits of string, tools. Bicycle wheels, and who knows what other such childhood artefacts of great value.

          Well, you never know what might be found in the next pot hole- eh.

          The part I will never forget however, was that for some unknown reason I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks (whilst running quite fast), almost rooted to the spot in fact.

          Suddenly thoughts came gushing into my head, thoughts which would never have occurred to me to think about, yet alone I as a mere child to have any interest in.

          As I stood rooted to the spot, it was as though another part of myself were talking to me.

          Questions came, such questions that I would never dreamed of asking my self or even thinking about, I asked myself What am I doing here? What am I? Why am I me? Why am I not somebody else? Why am I not a cat that lived on earth many years ago, or a dog that will not exist here for many years yet to come? Why me, here and now? What am I, where have I come from; and why am I here?

          These questions popped up in mind of their own accord from nowhere, and without any forethought, intent or deliberation.

          I later came to call these pop in thoughts, however that weird experience indeed made me think and ask questions even at that age.

          They had a direct and motivated the tangible and volitional thought process, and even directed it.

          However I laughed, shrugged my shoulders and continued running about looking for treasure, and never gave it another deliberate thought.

          What a strange bucket of tricks the mind is to be sure.

          One night I was looking up into the dark sky for the impending drone of aircraft and realised that there were none there.

          It was oh so quiet and peaceful, and there was not a cloud in the night sky, all I could see was tiny little lights, thousands of them, you do not often see the stars in London, so the blackout had some advantages I guess.

          I had never really noticed the stars before, but I did this night, and wondered wow, what the hell are they and how beautiful they are?

          It must have been within the next couple of days that whilst during an air raid at school, we all did the usual things and got dragged down into the hole below ground where we would sit cooped up until the raid was over.

          Lessons (for what they were worth in those days in that place) were abandoned, the teacher used to ask what shell we talk about today?, I never used to bother to answer for it was all too dammed boring to get excited about.

          But this day I shouted out first Tell us about the stars, and I awaited words of wisdom and knowledge which would hole me entranced.

          Do not know anything about stars son, what else shell we talk about!!!!!!!!! Oh shit.

          One foggy night in London town we kids were mooching around as per normal on a dark early evening when I noticed a sign outside the library in the High street I could just about read simple words by then, never got passed that stage alas.

          It stated that there was a lecture on this evening about the moon, Wow! Come on I said to the kids.

          Sod orf, came the reply, so I did and crept into the lecture room like a lost sheep.

          But the old grey beards bid me welcome and I set listening in awe and wonder for ages, I discovered that they did other lectures, on psychology and various other things, wow!

          So on regular occasions I would tell them to play Cowboys and Indians on their own, for I am toddling orf to the Library.

          And I did but no sod ever argued with me or took the micky any more, once bitten twice shy.

          It was like a new road opening and unwinding.