Memories of a childhood in London by Valerie Poore
My first living memory is of having an almost comical tantrum. I was, I think, three years old and standing in the ground floor passage of our house in St John’s Wood, an old suburb of London. My mouth was open wide, tears poured down my face and my little fists were clenched as I readied myself for an almighty howl.
Unfortunately for my small self, no-one was interested in this emotional demonstration. Both my parents were at work, my siblings were at school, and Elouisa, the Spanish au pair whose job was to look after me was unimpressed by my attention-seeking behaviour. I expect she was in the kitchen at the end of the corridor, probably washing the breakfast dishes; whatever the case, I recall sobbing noisily in the hopes she would come and comfort me. She didn’t, of course. She was far too used to the manipulative machinations of her charges, being an au pair of many years’ experience, as well as being one of a sizeable family back at home in Barcelona.
The reason for my display of infant outrage was that my sister Tee had started school that day, leaving me without a playmate. I was lonely and bored, although quite why I was so excessively upset, I don’t know. Maybe it was simply the sudden emptiness; the lack of company; the feeling of loss. I remember all these emotions assailing me in that moment.
Our home was in one of those Victorian semi-detached town houses so prevalent in London’s older suburbs. It had steps leading up to the front door and a ground floor that was lower than street level but not completely below. My father’s office window, which faced the street, was partially above the front garden. The rooms at the back of this floor were at ground level, so it was technically a semi-basement.
Next to his office was the kitchen, which was below the front steps and had a window looking out onto a path running down from street level to a gate into the back garden. There was a door into the house from the path too, which would formerly have been the tradesmen’s entrance.
The passage in which I was happily howling had doors leading off it to the kitchen, the office, our family playroom and a bathroom. I suppose it would have been quite easy to convert the entire floor into a self-contained flat, but we only leased the house so couldn’t make such structural alterations. That said, I was the youngest of a family of six so we used all four storeys for ourselves.
Despite having a formal lounge and dining room upstairs, and three bedrooms with two more in the attic above that, the playroom was the hub of our family life. When my brothers and my sister came home from school, it was the room in which we congregated to play, eat and do our homework; a real living room. At one point when I was a bit older, my parents found a row of old desks which lined one side of the room; we had one each for our school books and personal toys. Against the wall next to the door, there was an upright piano and on the other side, an open fireplace provided warmth in the winter with the anthracite which was stored in a coal cellar behind the kitchen. The middle of the playroom was taken up by an old oak table that had once been in my grandfather’s workshop. He’d been a tailor and its surface was marked by hundreds of tiny pits, apparently from the tracing wheel he used to mark his fabric .
The best thing about the playroom was that it had French doors opening out into a walled garden graced with a large lime tree at the far end. There was a bright, yellow swing in the middle of the lawn, which gave us hours of fun when the weather was fine.
But on the day of my tantrum, the playroom was silent and empty. Even the old wireless radio that always played music from whichever station my parents had been listening to was off, its glowing light behind the programme dial dimmed. The whole house seemed deserted and I felt abandoned, a frightening sensation for a small thing who was used to a home full of busy activity.
The passage was dark too, with only the light from the panes of textured glass in the outside door casting shapes on the shiny red floor. I don’t recall exactly whether it was tiled or cement, but it was always polished with Cardinal floor wax, which was a deep brick colour often used on quarry tiles.
The light from the door also revealed the damp creeping up the wall next to it. Our road was called Springfield Road for a reason, and it was years before I learnt that not everyone suffered from rising damp in their houses, and not everyone redecorated their ground floor walls every year to cover up the stains.
I could also see the coat rack filled with an assortment of garments, below which we kept all our various footwear. These were lined up against the wall below the stairs up to the first floor. There was a door at the top of the stairs that my mother would sometimes lock to prevent her rambunctious children from interfering with her peace time. From her perspective, we had everything we needed down below: a kitchen, a bathroom with a toilet, a playroom and the garden. We were quite indignant about it at the time; being locked in ‘the basement’ was humiliating. But I now realise we were perfectly alright and were free to do as we pleased in the playroom and garden.
As a three-year-old tot, I wasn’t all too experienced in how life worked in our home but as I grew older the patterns became clearer. My father was the carer and my mother the driver. They both believed in a formal upbringing, although my mother imposed it more rigorously, certainly when it came to my sister and me. Later on, I discovered that my father was much tougher on his sons than he was on Tee and me. To us, he was the one who took us to school, made sure our coats were properly buttoned up and our shoelaces tied; he was also the one who made sure we had fun.
Conversely, my mother believed in discipline before affection. Children should be seen and not heard at mealtimes and I can recall many a bruised shin when I spoke out of turn during dinner. To be fair, though, she taught us all to cook and sew; my brothers as well as my sister and me. They had to be able to mend their clothes, sew on their own buttons and do the ironing. Likewise, we girls had to learn how to change plugs, do basic electrical repairs and carpentry. Equality ruled in our home; no one was spoilt and we all learnt useful skills. My mother—never mum—was the original feminist, and there was no chance her sons were ever going to believe their roles were more important than a woman’s.
At three years old, however, learning how to navigate and negotiate life within the family was something for the future. When I stood, spread-legged and arms akimbo in that dark passage, I was convinced my world had collapsed. As is natural when you are that age.
****
Fast forward a year or so and at the age of four, the best of all news came. Exasperated by my tears and moans, my mother pleaded my case at the convent primary school my sister was attending near Regent’s Park. Although I was officially too young, they agreed I could join the first class.
This was perhaps my next clear childhood memory as I can remember my first day vividly. Dressed in the uniform of grey pleated skirt, grey jersey over a white blouse, long grey socks and black strap sandals, I arrived at the convent wearing my new blazer and pudding basin school hat holding tightly to my sister’s hand. I was ecstatic; we would never be separated again. But oh, how wrong I was.
As we entered the old convent building, one of the nuns, Sister Veronica, who quickly became known as Sister Bronica, detached me from Tee’s hand and led me away to my new classroom. I was devastated. This wasn’t the idea at all and I burst into tears, wet my nickers and threw a major wobbly.
I was placed in a class where I didn’t know any of the other children and had to sit at a tiny table on a tiny chair in a state of shock and distress, not to mention damp underwear. So at morning break when all the children were collecting their little third-of-a-pint bottles of milk from a crate and taking them outside, I found my way to my sister’s classroom and crawled under her desk.
Of course, I have no idea how I knew it was hers, but being just four years old I was oblivious to the fact I could easily be seen. When breaktime was over, the nun in charge of Tee’s class, Mother Katherine, gently but firmly extracted me from beneath the desk and shepherded me back to my proper classroom to the accompaniment of my howls of distress.
I know it sounds as if my childhood memories are all of wretched misery, but that wasn’t the case; it was simply that these incidents stood out. Indeed, it wasn’t long before I was quite happy at school and had my own friends in my class. One of these was a tiny Irish girl by the name of Helen Egan, and the other was Siobhan Cavanagh, also Irish and a redhead to boot.
Siobhan had suffered brain damage as a toddler and had also had polio, so Helen and I looked after her at school. Being her constant companions was quite a challenge for two little girls; Siobhan was quite stocky and we weren’t so it was physically demanding. We didn’t mind, though, and regarded our care-taking duties as totally natural, taking it in turns to guide her around, help her to the loo and spare her the taunts of the sometimes less understanding and compassionate children.
Overall, I enjoyed primary school. I liked the drills we did to learn our multiplication tables. I remember reciting them in what must have been a former school chapel as it was still arranged in pews and each row of children barked out a different table at our teacher’s instruction. When the school moved next door into a new building, I really liked my new class teacher, Miss Hobbs, who noticed how much I enjoyed writing compositions about nature and praised my descriptive essays. Incidentally, Miss Hobbs taught me the only arithmetic I’ve ever managed to learn in my entire life. When, aged sixteen, I eventually took my maths ‘o’ level, even my parents were surprised I passed it.
There were numerous ceremonies attached to being in a Catholic convent school. We celebrated all the church feast days and my favourite was one when four designated pupils carried a large statue of Mary around the playground and the rest of us followed singing hymns in her praise. I don’t remember which feast day this was, but I suspect it was the Annunciation because it was warm enough to go outside, and it was during the school term. Whichever it was, we all pulled our socks up, literally and figuratively, and sang our little hearts out.
I wasn’t so keen on morning prayers and confession, though. We always had to go to the chapel first thing to ‘say the rosary’; I know I gabbled through the beads just to get it over with and never felt the kind of reverence I knew I was supposed to feel. Confessions were a problem too. Half the time, I’d be making up sins to declare, most of which were variations on the themes of greed, theft, envy and lying; for those crimes, read pinching sweets from the jar on our dining room table at home (that covered greed and theft), hiding my sister’s favourite teddy (envy) and telling her I hadn’t seen it anywhere (lying). I lacked the life experience for anything more original.
At the end of the school day, while we waited to be collected, I liked sitting on the stairs in the old convent building watching Sister Bronica polish the beautiful parquet floors. She had an oblong piece of lambswool that she strapped to her right foot and skated around the hallway with her robes flowing out behind her. My father, who generally did the fetching and carrying duties, was sometimes late, so Tee and I would sit and happily watch the floor-polishing routine until he arrived. These occurrences were frequent enough for us to get to know the nuns better than others did, so when the convent received free tickets to see the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden from a benefactor who wanted them dispersed to worthy pupils, we were often the lucky beneficiaries.
But there was one more traumatic incident that marred my school life; traumatic being relative, of course. When you are only a handful of years old, trauma can occur in very small forms. I must have been around six when the school moved into the new building next to the convent and provided us all with brand new desks. Since each of us had our own place in the classroom, we could claim a desk as our own.
I remember how proud I was of mine and how carefully I placed my exercise books, fountain pen and bottle of Quink inside it. I was enamoured of its beautiful clean pine, varnished with a glossy finish on the top but plain, fresh, untreated wood inside. It felt like mine and even though it belonged to the school, I had all the pride that comes with possession.
One day, however, I opened the top in a hurry and knocked over the Quink. To my horror, a dark blue pool immediately bloomed on the floor of my pristine new desk. I couldn’t have put the cap of the bottle on properly and although it didn’t come off, it was loose. Ink seeped out and there it was—a stain never to be removed.
I was distraught; overwhelmed with shame and guilt. It was the worst day of my life and I was much too scared to confess my sin to Miss Hobbs. I barely slept that night, consumed with misery as I was. I didn’t dare tell my mother or even my sister and I lay in bed feeling sick with fear over what I’d done.
Over the years, I’ve forgotten how long it actually took for my heinous crime to be discovered, but it was probably not as long as it seemed at the time. In the end, all was revealed during a desk inspection, a normal event when our teachers would check to see if we were keeping our books and pens tidy. It was the day of reckoning for me. When Miss Hobbs arrived next to my chair, I knew I could no longer hide the spillage and I lifted the lid with trembling fingers.
Miss Hobbs peered inside.
“Oh dear, what’s that?” she asked, with only mild curiosity. The moment had come. I could only confess what had occurred, certain I would be sent straight to our Mother Superior for a severe punishment.
“Ah well, never mind. These things happen,” Miss Hobbs said. “Well done for having such a tidy desk, Valerie,” she finished, and moved on to the next child.
The relief that flooded me is something I still remember vividly. But it was a pity I didn’t learn from the experience.
****
By nature a clumsy child, I was also inclined to juvenile naughtiness at home, so I tended to have accidents borne out of a daredevil streak combined with unfortunate awkwardness. Kinetic intelligence wasn’t my forte.
In the winter, we’d go to Primrose hill when it snowed so we could toboggan down its slopes on the little sledges my father made. I nearly always fell off and came home with torn fingers and clothes. When spring came, we’d go walking on Hampstead Heath with our dog, Roy, a gorgeous golden retriever. If there was a tree to climb and fall out of, I did so. In the summer, we’d play on the swing in the garden and on one such day, my recklessness got me into more than usual trouble.
This time, I was driven to disaster by my hero worship of my brother, Nick. Six years my senior, I found him more adventurous and therefore infinitely more fun than my sister; such is the treachery of the very young. To prove the point, he thought it was a great game to swing as fast and hard as possible and then jump off as the arc of the swing’s seat reached its highest point. In those innocent days of childhood, I was game for most things—the riskier, the better—and if my brother could do it, so could I.
“Keep going until I say ‘jump’,” he instructed me after I’d pleaded with him to let me have a go.
I should say it wasn’t my first attempt at swing jumping; Tee, Kim, a friend of ours, and I had done it before without incident several times but from more moderate levels. On this occasion, with Nick’s encouragement, I pushed myself further and further, waiting for the call and feeling a thrill of excitement that I was swinging so high.
At last, he shouted, ‘Jump!’.
But it was the wrong moment and I was at the wrong angle. In an awkward twist, I flung myself off the seat, hurtled through the air and landed flat on my back.
I’d never been winded before but I certainly was that afternoon. The breath was totally and completely knocked out of me. I lay on the grass like a landed fish gasping for oxygen. It was the most terrifying sensation that was imprinted on my memory forever.
Somehow, amazingly, my brother knew what to do. With astonishing speed, he hauled me off my back, pulled me onto my knees and forced my head between them. Thank heavens his quick thinking worked. Within seconds, I was able to draw breath again and within a couple of minutes, I was back to normal: shaken, scared, but otherwise unharmed.
Given that I could have broken numerous bones, I’d like to say I finally learnt from that incident, but it wouldn’t be true. There would be several other frights in my future involving silly recklessness, although most of them would come later, after we left London. My mischievous streak seemed irrepressible when I was small, however, and I had other ways of wielding a wicked wand in the form of rather mean pranks. My poor sister often got the blame for these as she was supposed to make sure I behaved—an unfair demand given that she was only twenty months older and I was distinctly discipline averse.
By nature a clumsy child, I was also inclined to juvenile naughtiness at home, so I tended to have accidents borne out of a daredevil streak combined with unfortunate awkwardness. Kinetic intelligence wasn’t my forte.
In the winter, we’d go to Primrose hill when it snowed so we could toboggan down its slopes on the little sledges my father made. I nearly always fell off and came home with torn fingers and clothes. When spring came, we’d go walking on Hampstead Heath with our dog, Roy, a gorgeous golden retriever. If there was a tree to climb and fall out of, I did so. In the summer, we’d play on the swing in the garden and on one such day, my recklessness got me into more than usual trouble.
This time, I was driven to disaster by my hero worship of my brother, Nick. Six years my senior, I found him more adventurous and therefore infinitely more fun than my sister; such is the treachery of the very young. To prove the point, he thought it was a great game to swing as fast and hard as possible and then jump off as the arc of the swing’s seat reached its highest point. In those innocent days of childhood, I was game for most things—the riskier, the better—and if my brother could do it, so could I.
“Keep going until I say ‘jump’,” he instructed me after I’d pleaded with him to let me have a go.
I should say it wasn’t my first attempt at swing jumping; Tee, Kim, a friend of ours, and I had done it before without incident several times but from more moderate levels. On this occasion, with Nick’s encouragement, I pushed myself further and further, waiting for the call and feeling a thrill of excitement that I was swinging so high.
At last, he shouted, ‘Jump!’.
But it was the wrong moment and I was at the wrong angle. In an awkward twist, I flung myself off the seat, hurtled through the air and landed flat on my back.
I’d never been winded before but I certainly was that afternoon. The breath was totally and completely knocked out of me. I lay on the grass like a landed fish gasping for oxygen. It was the most terrifying sensation that was imprinted on my memory forever.
Somehow, amazingly, my brother knew what to do. With astonishing speed, he hauled me off my back, pulled me onto my knees and forced my head between them. Thank heavens his quick thinking worked. Within seconds, I was able to draw breath again and within a couple of minutes, I was back to normal: shaken, scared, but otherwise unharmed.
Given that I could have broken numerous bones, I’d like to say I finally learnt from that incident, but it wouldn’t be true. There would be several other frights in my future involving silly recklessness, although most of them would come later, after we left London. My mischievous streak seemed irrepressible when I was small, however, and I had other ways of wielding a wicked wand in the form of rather mean pranks. My poor sister often got the blame for these as she was supposed to make sure I behaved—an unfair demand given that she was only twenty months older and I was distinctly discipline averse.
****
London was more than just my home as a child. I loved the city, from the road in which we lived in St John’s Wood to the suburbs around us, as well as central London and the marvellous allure of the Thames.
In the late fifties and early sixties, our road had a wonderfully eclectic mix of residents. It was a turning off the renowned Abbey Road of Beatles fame, although in those days it wasn’t the prohibitively expensive area it is today. During the war, many families from the East End had been re-housed in London’s northern suburbs by the local councils, a policy which resulted in a diverse mix of folk from every strata of society. St John’s Wood was included and it was in this delightfully varied community that we grew up.
Our immediate neighbours, as in those who lived in the other half of our semi-detached house, were two families from the East End. The top two floors were occupied by the Lowes. Mr Lowe was a dustman (refuse truck driver) and Mrs Lowe was a cleaning lady, whom we only saw on occasions, but who was as kind as her husband. They called us children ‘lovey’ and ‘pet’ but they were busy people so we didn’t talk to them all that much. They had a son who was a bit of a boy-racer type and most likely scandalised the more genteel residents by painting bright red and orange flames up the side of his car, which was usually parked in front of the house.
Below the Lowes was Mrs Berry, whom my sister and I adored. Berry was short for Beresford, but she was as round, rosy and cheerful as a berry and a kind of surrogate granny to us. She occupied the lower floor, possibly with a husband and family at one time, but she was already a widow when we knew her and if there were children, I don’t remember meeting them. Tee and I used to go for tea with Mrs Berry and I have fond memories of her faded green kitchen furniture and yellowing cream-painted walls. She also had a tortoiseshell cat, whom we unkindly dubbed the ugliest cat in the world. Minty was neither pretty nor friendly, but she was a presence I remember well and I can still see her in my mind’s eye today, lurking among the undergrowth in their somewhat overgrown front garden.
On our other side were the Kays, a British-American couple who were wealthy, a conclusion I drew because they had a smart car and a television, which we didn’t have. On May the 6th, 1960, they invited us to watch the wedding of Princess Margaret to Anthony Armstrong Jones with them. This was a great event in my five-year-old life, more for the fascination of seeing a real TV than of witnessing the wedding.
Further up the road, Dick Bentley, the well-known radio presenter and comedian had one of the newer houses, outside which he parked his—yes, you’ve guessed it—classic Bentley. However, what made it even more special was its vivid canary-yellow paintwork. He polished it fanatically every weekend and we often chatted to him as we walked past with Roy. Dick Bentley was a kind soul, but perhaps obsessively neat. Here was a man who swept errant leaves off his lawn with a dustpan and brush and kept his privet hedge clipped with perfect precision; my father, being the teasing type, claimed he cut his grass with nail scissors; I, being gullible, believed him.
There were more council tenants in a few of the other old houses beyond Dick Bentley’s, one of which was home to children Tee’s and my age. They had a wonderful dressing up box that we spent many an afternoon sampling. Not to be totally outdone, we occasionally took our mother’s high-heeled shoes and frocks from her cupboard and went clattering up the road to play with them. I suppose we were caught eventually, but all I remember is the delicious fun of our forbidden games and friends.
Springfield Road was also home to the actors, Adrienne Corri and Daniel Massey, until they divorced in 1967. They had a Bassett hound called George, whom everyone knew because he was constantly escaping and taking off on a scent. One of the routine sounds in summer was of George’s name being hollered up and down the road. Despite his errant ways, someone always managed to capture him and take him home; luckily, he was a good-natured soul and amenable to being hauled back by adults and children alike. Adrienne Corri had an interesting car too but not in the same league as Dick Bentley’s; quite the reverse, in fact. Hers was an old Morris Traveller that was partially painted in psychedelic swirls—it was the sixties, after all.
There were, of course, many other folk both ordinary and extraordinary living in our road, but any fame and curiosity value they might have had was eclipsed when Paul McCartney bought a house in St John’s Wood in 1965. The purchase was the talking point of the neighbourhood; we were all amazed that such a star should move into our area, but since it was a mere stone’s throw from the Abbey Road recording studios, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising.
****
Our lives in London revolved around our home and its immediate neighbourhoods and we rarely needed to go further for our basic requirements.
The milkman delivered every day. He drove an electric milk float and the sound of rattling bottles still evokes memories of London when I hear them. We also had ‘the French onion man’ coming by regularly. Whether he really was Breton as his dress suggested, I don’t remember, but he had the typical beret and strings of onions on his bicycle. Of course, coal was also delivered once a year from a big flat-bed truck and then there was the ice man, who provided chunks of ice for those who didn’t have fridges. We did, but my mother had an old-fashioned ice-cream churn and she would buy ice from him to fill it.
At the end of Springfield Road, we could cross Abbey Road to the row of shops that had almost everything we needed. The most important of these was Brown’s the grocer’s. Pushing open the door with its clanging bell was to enter a world of wonderful aromas. I can still smell the scents of cheese, coffee and spices that met us, and see the grocer himself in his brown cotton dust coat that matched his name.
I loved watching him cut the cheese with an old-fashioned wire cutter, weigh it on traditional scales with their circular weights and wrap it in brown paper before popping it in my mother’s string bag; there was no plastic packaging then. He wrapped bread the same way but in thinner tissue and the care with which he folded the ends neatly was a deft skill developed over years of practice. The shop itself was as brown as its owner and its beautifully fashioned counter was crafted from oak as were the wooden shelves that rose to the ceiling. Mr Brown used a set of wooden steps to extract tins and jars from the upper shelves.
Next door was Pargeter’s, a poultry butcher who had chickens and rabbits hanging from hooks on a rail with cups under their faces to catch the drips. I didn’t enjoy seeing our Sunday roasts in quite so raw a form but the meat was undoubtedly fresh. A greengrocer, whose name I can’t remember, was on the other side of Pargeter’s, and like Brown’s, all the vegetables were weighed on old-fashioned scales and wrapped in paper, mostly old newspapers.
The row of shops included a chemist that had a machine outside from which Tee and I could buy tights (pantyhose). It must have been installed around 1966 and for us this was an exciting development. Putting coins in a slot and receiving a tiny box with a pair of tights inside was tantamount to magic.
The other shops I recall were a newsagent’s and my mother’s hairdresser. Every Friday, as many women did at the time, she went for a wash, cut and set and to have a manicure. Then on the corner of the row, was the pub where my eldest brother had his very first legal drink at the age of eighteen.
On Saturday mornings, we tended to go further afield to Marylebone High Street or to the Church Street market off Edgeware Road, where I could listen to the barrow boys ribbing each other while my mother shopped. These trips would often be followed by drinks either at Lion’s Coffee House or a similar café close to the market. I’d be allowed to have hot milk with a dash of coffee, which was a huge treat.
Going to the Marylebone library on Saturday afternoons was another joy. Having been an avid reader since I could first open a book, the lending library, which I think was in a part of the town hall, was a favourite place. I borrowed treasures from its well-stocked children’s section like Orlando the Marmalade Cat, Kathleen Hale’s classic book; The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf; and The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. Thinking back, we often sat in the library and read for an hour or more. The fact that our parents encouraged us to do so is an aspect of our upbringing I still value greatly.
On Sundays we went to mass. Being Catholics, our parish church was Our Lady at Lisson Grove, close to Lord’s Cricket Ground. However, our parish priest was a young, energetic man my parents disapproved of slightly. I’m not sure if it was because he was too modern in his style or because he smoked and rode a motorbike, which Tee and I thought was quite marvellous. Whatever the reason, we often went to different Catholic churches in London and, still being the time of Latin services, we frequently heard incredible choral music; it was as good as going to a recital and just as uplifting, with the added advantage of being free.
After church, we sometimes went for a drive along the Thames and through the docklands, which were completely silent on Sundays, like everywhere else in London. It was possibly my favourite time in the city and the only day the great metropolis was at peace, a tranquil atmosphere that has been lost the in recent decades of 24/7 life.
Our lives in London revolved around our home and its immediate neighbourhoods and we rarely needed to go further for our basic requirements.
The milkman delivered every day. He drove an electric milk float and the sound of rattling bottles still evokes memories of London when I hear them. We also had ‘the French onion man’ coming by regularly. Whether he really was Breton as his dress suggested, I don’t remember, but he had the typical beret and strings of onions on his bicycle. Of course, coal was also delivered once a year from a big flat-bed truck and then there was the ice man, who provided chunks of ice for those who didn’t have fridges. We did, but my mother had an old-fashioned ice-cream churn and she would buy ice from him to fill it.
At the end of Springfield Road, we could cross Abbey Road to the row of shops that had almost everything we needed. The most important of these was Brown’s the grocer’s. Pushing open the door with its clanging bell was to enter a world of wonderful aromas. I can still smell the scents of cheese, coffee and spices that met us, and see the grocer himself in his brown cotton dust coat that matched his name.
I loved watching him cut the cheese with an old-fashioned wire cutter, weigh it on traditional scales with their circular weights and wrap it in brown paper before popping it in my mother’s string bag; there was no plastic packaging then. He wrapped bread the same way but in thinner tissue and the care with which he folded the ends neatly was a deft skill developed over years of practice. The shop itself was as brown as its owner and its beautifully fashioned counter was crafted from oak as were the wooden shelves that rose to the ceiling. Mr Brown used a set of wooden steps to extract tins and jars from the upper shelves.
Next door was Pargeter’s, a poultry butcher who had chickens and rabbits hanging from hooks on a rail with cups under their faces to catch the drips. I didn’t enjoy seeing our Sunday roasts in quite so raw a form but the meat was undoubtedly fresh. A greengrocer, whose name I can’t remember, was on the other side of Pargeter’s, and like Brown’s, all the vegetables were weighed on old-fashioned scales and wrapped in paper, mostly old newspapers.
The row of shops included a chemist that had a machine outside from which Tee and I could buy tights (pantyhose). It must have been installed around 1966 and for us this was an exciting development. Putting coins in a slot and receiving a tiny box with a pair of tights inside was tantamount to magic.
The other shops I recall were a newsagent’s and my mother’s hairdresser. Every Friday, as many women did at the time, she went for a wash, cut and set and to have a manicure. Then on the corner of the row, was the pub where my eldest brother had his very first legal drink at the age of eighteen.
On Saturday mornings, we tended to go further afield to Marylebone High Street or to the Church Street market off Edgeware Road, where I could listen to the barrow boys ribbing each other while my mother shopped. These trips would often be followed by drinks either at Lion’s Coffee House or a similar café close to the market. I’d be allowed to have hot milk with a dash of coffee, which was a huge treat.
Going to the Marylebone library on Saturday afternoons was another joy. Having been an avid reader since I could first open a book, the lending library, which I think was in a part of the town hall, was a favourite place. I borrowed treasures from its well-stocked children’s section like Orlando the Marmalade Cat, Kathleen Hale’s classic book; The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf; and The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. Thinking back, we often sat in the library and read for an hour or more. The fact that our parents encouraged us to do so is an aspect of our upbringing I still value greatly.
On Sundays we went to mass. Being Catholics, our parish church was Our Lady at Lisson Grove, close to Lord’s Cricket Ground. However, our parish priest was a young, energetic man my parents disapproved of slightly. I’m not sure if it was because he was too modern in his style or because he smoked and rode a motorbike, which Tee and I thought was quite marvellous. Whatever the reason, we often went to different Catholic churches in London and, still being the time of Latin services, we frequently heard incredible choral music; it was as good as going to a recital and just as uplifting, with the added advantage of being free.
After church, we sometimes went for a drive along the Thames and through the docklands, which were completely silent on Sundays, like everywhere else in London. It was possibly my favourite time in the city and the only day the great metropolis was at peace, a tranquil atmosphere that has been lost the in recent decades of 24/7 life.
****
We lived in Springfield Road until 1967 when I was twelve, which was when the lease on our house expired. Up until that time, the annual rents charged by the landowners, the Eyre Estate, had been very low, but with a new lease, the price was set to increase dramatically. I’m sure now it was a coincidence, but I remember someone, probably my teasing father, saying it was all Paul McCartney’s fault for making St John’s Wood so desirable and fashionable, a reason which stuck in my childish mind. For years, I was convinced he was to blame for the loss of our London home. This aside, the fact remained that my parents could no longer afford to live in St John’s Wood and ultimately they made decision to move away from London altogether.
However, it wasn’t the end of my sister’s and my life in the city. By 1966, we were both attending a ballet and stage school where my mother wanted us to remain. But that’s another story and a different chapter altogether. For me, the twelve years we lived in Springfield Road defined our childhood; they were happy years that I remember with deep affection. In hindsight, though, I’m glad we moved completely away, as the rich diversity of the area’s residents probably diminished in line with the rise in property prices. I somehow doubt that it’s half as colourful now as it was then.
