I went to a new school, which didn’t look like a workhouse, and there I met Miss Davies, our Junior One teacher. I was in love with Miss Davies; I could have slain dragons for Miss Davies. In 1949, however, with Spam and Prem as the main sources of protein, there was a shortage of dragons. They weren’t on the card. But I loved Miss Davies, dearly.
Noticeably less lovable, was Miss McKay, in the class next door. She was what they used to call a ‘dour Scot’, though I’ve since formed the opinion that what folk really mean by that is ‘I don’t like their heavy accent’. My only contact with Miss McKay (built like an outsized chess pawn) was once weekly, when our class had to sit in with hers, presumably to free Miss Davies for other duties. Miss McKay always used this time to rehearse us in reciting poetry, or the words of hymns. I recall one of each, and possibly that was the whole gamut, alternating weekly. The first was a poem about the moon. I’ve never encountered the work since. I recall the words-‘the moon walks abroad in her silver shoon..’ the latter word meaning ‘shoes’ according to our instructor. I wasn’t convinced. Obviously, that was the intended meaning, but I suspected that the poet had made it up just to rhyme with ‘moon’. I couldn’t imagine anybody going into a shop and asking to try on some shoon, not even a Scotch person. I suspected the poet of being Scotch like Miss McKay, so he probably had mouth trouble, as well- not able to talk proper.
The other example was the words of the hymn-‘Blessed Are The Pure In Heart’. The way that Miss McKay made these two items peculiarly her own, for ever, in my memory, is that she used to beat time, with a short, fat, chair leg, which she kept for that specific purpose. It had other uses, too. It could raise a fine bruise on one’s upper arm. It had even been known to be launched, ground to air, in punitive mode, though this was rarely necessary. Having once seen the Scotch V3 in action, the natives all became appeasers, instantly. The time beating had enough menace, itself, because it wasn’t done in the air, but with hard, physical contact, on the front edge of the front row of desks- with enthusiasm.
Ronnie Barratt was neither lovable nor otherwise, but he was memorable for two reasons. The first reason was his mediocre piano playing. He could take any melody, any folk song, any ethnic or historic refrain, and turn it into a pub tune- um ching, um ching. His other suit in the small claims court of immortality was a work of art entitled ‘A Black Fellow at his Shadoof’.
Calm yourselves, ladies, you have nothing to fear. The Black Fellow in question is someone living between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, somewhere around the globe; I can’t cut it any finer than that. A shadoof is a pivoted pole, with a counterweight on the short side of the pivot, and a bucket on the long side. The bucket is poised over a well, to be lowered, filled with water, and its raising made easier by virtue of the counterbalance weight. Now, apart from bearing witness to the creativity and ingenuity of its creator/operator, the shadoof also indicates the delightful vagaries of the education system, at the time.
The shadoof appeared on no curriculum. It had no importance, social, practical, or religious. But Ronnie, being a bit of an artist, had at one time, contrived to draw a jolly useful picture of one. So any child passing through Ronnie’s artistic hands, learned about the shadoof, on the way. Pity the hundreds, nay, the thousands who were never so enlightened. It is because of this, I feel, unwarranted, good fortune on my part, that all my life, I have felt dispoged to acquaint, whoever I could, with the glories of the shadoof, lightening their darkness, as it were.
Mr. Jebbs was decidedly unlovable. His appearance was against him, for a start. He was tall, thin, swarthy of face, with bulging eyes, horse teeth, spiv’s ‘tache and coarse, lank, oily, slick hair. In spite of his well-tailored, double-breasted suit, with its 5” lapels, and 22” trouser bottoms, he still managed to look like a brigand at best, a thug at worst, and I’m afraid he often behaved like the latter. His favourite means of chastisement involved the ingenious use of a silver ring, which depicted the head of an Indian chief, with prominent face, and sharp, hooked nose. The ring was worn on the middle finger of his right hand, and the first sign of bad news was when he was seen to pull the ring up onto the knuckle. Thus prepared, he would seize his victim from behind, by the left arm across the throat, then he could run the big chief’s fine sharp nose up and down the victim’s spine, where, if not impeded by too much clothing, it could click, click, click merrily, over the vertebrae. Thank goodness I had the tender ministerings of Miss Davies. Even Miss McKay beat Mr. Jebbs in the popularity stakes.
Later, in my grammar school days, I encountered Miss Davies again, by chance, and she asked me how I was liking school. I told her I hated it.
“Oh, Neil,” she replied, “I can remember you used to tell me you loved school!” It was only later that I realised I loved school with Miss Davies because she made it lovable. It was the sadistic, pretentious, hypocritical bastards on the grammar school staff who made me hate it.
The house we moved into was at the top of a cul-de-sac, No13 Hartopp Close. There were three pairs of semis grouped round the dead end, and ours in trap two, had a very small, triangular, front garden, running from the mere width of the house plus path, to just the gate width, at the pavement line. The previous tenant had been a rag and bone man, with a horse and cart. The cart had been kept on the front garden, so the earth was packed hard, smooth and bare. Goodness knows where the horse was kept- this was a council house, remember. I suspect the rag business was a franchise deal, in that anyone could hire a horse and cart from Collins’ yard, with Collins’ name emblazoned on the tailgate, and sell the results into the yard, every few days. That would explain the cart out front, but not the missing horse. Maybe it slept on a nearby allotment, or at a farm with a pasture, 10 mins. away, down Litchford Road? Or maybe it don’t matter.
No one cultivated their gardens, front or back. Some were separated by random stretches of wild privet hedging, like the traces of a forgotten civilisation, but generally, the back gardens in particular were one vast, rolling, overgrown wilderness, stretching way over to the backs of the houses in the opposite road.
Now Charlie had been a keen gardener, in his younger days. He held an allotment for years, having no garden of his own. Between the wars, the whole family used to walk for over an hour, up to Fulwood, to spend the whole day, Sunday, at the allotment. There was a shed with a settee, curtains at the window, and a tiny fireplace- a little home from home. So, as part of the unpacking, at Arbourthorne, Charlie produced several parcels wrapped in sacking and tied with string. On opening, they revealed a complete set of garden tools, all thickly coated in grease, to prevent rust, as they lay in the cellar for over a decade, against the day when they might be pressed into service again.
The first job was to redefine the boundaries of the back garden, which we did by following the line of the original concrete post and wire fences, excavating, exposing, repairing, and reinstating, as we went, much to the chagrin of the local kids, who had been used to roaming freely over the range. At the end of the back garden, but within our boundary, was a large spoil heap, again the vestige of a lost tribe. When Charlie set me to digging it out, and barrowing the soil around the plot, the natives appeared in a sort of deputation to tell me I couldn’t dig that up ‘cos they played on it. Things could have turned nasty, had Charlie not been on hand to explain, curtly, that they could play where they liked- outside the fence.
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| The New House |
When the estate had originally been laid out, all the houses, including those in the road opposite, that is those with gardens backing onto ours, all these had been given their regulation-size strip, more or less, and this had left quite a parcel of ‘land-locked’ area, in mid field, as it were. By chance, all this extra space had all been included in our back garden. So when fully defined, our garden proved to be about 40yds average length, and 30yds average width, roughly kite shaped, so this gave an area of about 900 sq.yds. This may not seem much to the private pool and tennis court set, but I can tell you that, seen by an 8yr old, from the wrong end of a garden spade, it looks like a bloody rainforest, prairie and desert, all in one!
On the first suitable day, I was taken outside, given a brief but thorough instruction in the art of double digging, then set to work. Why, oh why didn’t it occur to me to say ‘do it yourself’, or even ‘Shovel it thi’sen’!
As he turned away, Charlie made a vague, pointing motion with his pipe, and muttered something like ‘Mind that privit’, then he was gone. I looked around for this mysterious privit, and the only noticeable feature I could discern in the general, grey-green wilderness, was a regular occurring, bright green growth, in low clumps, covered in tiny, white flowers. ‘That must be it’ I thought.
An hour or so later, Charlie came out to check on my progress. The expanse of fresh- turned soil was impressive, and the digging had been of the double variety, but-
“What’s that?” asked Charlie, indicating a general dispersal of bright green, white flowered clumps, all carefully dug round.
“You said to mind the privit”.
“Tha daft beggar!” and he turned to go indoors. When he finally condescended to identify the privet, in the hedge, I didn’t argue, but having spent several days restoring the boundary, I think I would have had the sense to preserve the hedge, without caution, regardless of what it was called. And- lo and behold- behold and lo- I had ‘minded’ it because, wonder of wonders, there it was- intact!
By the time our clearance programme was reaching the furthest part of the garden, Charlie had learned that an occupant, prior to the ragman, had been a keen gardener who had built a greenhouse right across most of the end of the garden. And wasn’t Charlie lucky to have his helpful little grandson to dig out the foundations for him? I might have been a daft beggar, but I was bloody cheap! I don’t ever recall one word of thanks, a sixpence, an ice cream, not a kiss-my-arse, nothing.
Charlie was in the habit of trawling the countryside, estate, allotments, woods, fields, looking for useable plunder. He thought nothing of reaching over a garden wall, to help himself to a cutting. He had a couple of dozen privet cuttings out of a hedge, on one occasion.
Returning from a picnic, in Alex’ motor car, via Ollerton Corner, Charlie called out ‘Stop!’ Alex did so; Charlie hopped out, retrieved his garden spade from the boot, where he had secreted it, when loading. He hopped over the fence, into shrubby woodland, to return, 5mins later, the proud possessor of a small rhododendron! I spent the rest of the journey home, on Charlie’s knee, between the rhododendron and the spade handle.
Whenever challenged by Jane, as to where something had come from, he always said ‘From my uncle’s garden’, and in my subsequent years, anything suspected to be of dubious origin, I always declared to be ‘from my grand-dad’s uncle’s garden’.
One day, he and I were out searching for stones to surface a garden path, me pushing the barrow to carry any finds. Wandering down a footpath between two plots of allotments, we chanced to meet Georgie Simpson, Jane’s nephew, who had an allotment close by. The two stopped for a chat. After a while, Georgie said something to the effect that it must be nice, having a grandson to help in the garden.
“Nay, he’s no bloody use! He knows nowt!” was Charlie’s kind reply.
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| “..no bloody use!..” |