Jane told me a story of how, one Sunday dinner time, as they were about to sit down to eat, there developed the sound of a hue and cry, outside, with policemen running hither and yon, and whistles blowing. Suddenly, there were heavy footsteps hurrying down the stairs, the stair door flew open, and a dishevelled and desperate-looking stranger burst into the room. His eyes found Charlie, to whom he said-
“I shan’t trouble you long, Mester”, then dropped into a chair, at the table. No one spoke, until Jane asked-
“Have you done summat wrong?”
“No. I swear it, but they need a villain, and they’ve decided I’ll do as well as any”. So Jane promptly served him dinner. All the while, the racket was still going on, outside. Once, a policeman stuck his head in, took in the domestic scene, mumbled an apology, then left. Eventually, the chase moved away. The stranger rose, thanked Charlie and Jane for their hospitality, then he left.
With Betty back in full time work, I spent most of my infancy at Jane’s knee. I’m told I once crawled under the sink and took a slug of some cleaning fluid, or other. When I came out, still clutching the bottle, and saying ‘Nasty!’ burping, puking, and spitting, Jane waltzed me straight up to Casualty, and had me pumped out.
In our madcap whirl of shopping errands, the plainest, most unprepossessing, commercial establishment that we ever visited, and we visited it weekly, was on Moore Street. Just beyond Pickering’s Cardboard Box Factory, there was a row of terrace houses with house yards behind them, like ours, and about the fourth house along was just like all the others, with its framed and panelled door, sash window with lace half curtains, sham blind and heavy curtains to each side. It differed in only one small detail. On the clear glass fanlight above the door, was painted in block capitals of a mustard colour, with a black shadow line, the word-
BARM
On opening the door, one stepped into a screened cubicle, a door’s width, both ways, and in the facing screen was a little serving hatch, with a 4 or 5” ledge incorporated into the sill. Our entrance was announced by the jangling of the spring-mounted bell on the top corner of the door. As one closed the door, the obscured glass serving hatch would slide up, to reveal an old lady, of ample proportions, dressed, shawled and scarved, all in black, seated by the hatch.“Yes?” was all the encouragement one received, and Jane would state either ‘two- or ‘three pen’orth’, laying the coppers on the sill. The old lady would turn away. There would be a rustling of paper, a chink of scales, more rustling. Then a little paper bag, its neck screwed tight shut, would be placed on the sill, and the money removed. Finally, with an exchange of thanks, the hatch would close. Off home we would go with fresh yeast for Jane’s next weekly bread baking session. This old lady eeked a living, just by selling fresh yeast, or barm, as we called it, from a hap’orth upp’ards, for home baking. There goes another socio-historic jewel, swept from sight, forever.
I remember one of my favourite ‘errands’ was to the butcher, Teddy Wilde. He would always give me a sliver of corned beef, cut from a huge block, on the counter. The cut end of this block was patterned, like a sheet of marble, with large chunks of solid red meat, seemingly ‘glued’ together by veins of rich yellow fat. I still like corned beef, but its more like meat paste, now. You can’t pick up a slice in the fingers. You must use a spatula, and even then, the slice will fall apart.
Jane must have found me quite a trial, at times. Like the day we went on a pedestrian shopping trip, and I insisted on taking my toy tortoyse. I can’t say ‘tortoise’.
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| Tortoyse |
Imagine a shell, the size of a soldier’s tin hat, but carved from solid wood, like an up turned wooden bowl, mounted on wheels no bigger than castors. When pulled along on a string, a system of cranked axles made the head go in and out, the tail go up and down, and the legs paddle back and forth. Of course, with wheels less than 2” in diameter, the progress was- realistic, in pace. We must have been out for an hour or more, up and down kerbs, in and out of shops, across busy roads, with the added frissance of tram lines, and I insisted on pulling the tortoise all the way,
Whenever I saw Jane putting on her coat, I would ask her where she was going, and no matter what the answer, I would want to go with her. One of her favourite stories was of one such time, when she replied, to my usual enquiry, in desperation-
“Oh, I’m goin’ to drown meself!”
“Can I come wi’ yer, Gran?”
There was an occasion when I decided to go somewhere without Jane, but not alone. The Black Hand Gang decided to go camping, but where to? Somewhere that has wild animals, seemed to be the popular idea. I don’t know who suggested Russia, but we all agreed it fitted the bill, so we each went off to our respective homes, to announce our intentions, and to draw supplies. This was just after lunch, on a warm Summer’s day, as I recall, so we wouldn’t need to eat again, until teatime, by which time we would be nearly there, so we decided, all we each needed to draw from our quartermasters was a packet of jam sandwiches and a blanket.
To save going upstairs for a blanket, Jane asked if the cover off the back of the settee would do. I accepted because it was longer than me and wider than me, it weighed less than a whole blanket, and took up less space, especially with a piece of string tied round it.
On assembling at the base camp (bottom of our entry) we found that Barry and John had been barred. So the Samuels boys, and Roger and I, all set off. We had decided that the best route would be up through Encs, across to Whitely Woods, and up via the Forge Dam short cut, arriving in Russia not much after tea time.
Well, going up past the teashop in Encs, we realised we hadn’t made any provision for drinking. Of course, there was the fountain, where we could drink our fill, but no means of carrying any water on with us. We struggled on, manfully, up into Whitely Woods, by which time, the Samuel boys were arguing about who’d had a sneaky sandwich. A little way into Whitely, on the left, is a little grassy knoll, looking for all the world like a little burial mound. We stopped there to have a breather, and the Samuel boys developed their argument into a duel to see who could eat most of the sandwiches they had left, after which they had none left, so they went home.
This meant Roger and I had to seriously reconsider our prospects. We had reckoned on a minimum of four pairs of hands to bring down a decent animal, like a giraffe or a buffalo say, for the evening’s supper. With the original six, we might have managed an elephant, which if we were careful, would have seen us through the weekend until the Co-op opened, and by that time, we would have picked up enough of the Russian lingo to trade with the natives. We could have offered them the ivory, and the elephant’s feet for umbrella stands, in exchange for gold and diamonds, or even slave girls- not for owt mucky, just laundry, and cookin’ an’ that. We could have turned them into Christians, after.
But with only the two of us- well we had to be realistic; we had to be practical. We had to face the facts; see things as they really were.
We went home for tea.
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A propos of the geography of my childhood, I must confess it took me quite a while to determine that there was no such place as ‘Bunkley Funks’. It was merely a
term signifying anywhere and nowhere. It could be anywhere between ‘I’ve no idea’ and ‘Mind your own business’. I think there ought to be a smattering of signposts, throughout the country, indicating ‘To Bunkley Funks’ with no intimation of distance. It would be quite charming- very British- a small boost to tourism.