LAMENT OF AN OLD MAN.

My Dad drove a lorry, he knew all the best places to get a good dinner, in East London and far flung places like Luton or Watford. “The best coffee shop is in Fairfield road” he’d say, “the plain and syrup is the best.”

He often took me with him, I loved going in his lorry and the places we stopped at for our dinner in the middle of the day were all ‘coffee shops’. The one thing they had in common were big portions of home made food followed by a big mug of tea. If coffee was on the menu I never saw it served.

Another day out was getting a bus to the ‘other end’ we, my pals and I, got off at Oxford street and went into all the big stores to play on the escalators, I particularly liked Bourne & Hollingsworth but my favourite was Gamages, the poor mans Selfridges It was known as but the Sports department was full of stuff that I could only dream of, new football boots, shirts, punch balls, boxing gloves, table tennis bats and tables, cricket balls, games, none of which I could afford even if one had clothing coupons. Then down to the basement to look at the pedigree puppies, rabbits, kittens, parrots and even snakes.

Once a week I’d take the household bag wash to a laundry near Roman road, while by the market I’d get my Mum’s shopping, mainly potatoes and greens. It was all right taking the bag wash because it was dry but when I collected it was soaking wet and twice as heavy, to add to the misery the kitchen, as we called our main living room, was festooned with damp washing making the air damp to breathe.

At times like this I would escape to the library down Wick lane, this was my sanctuary; a blessed place nearly always empty, lots of dark wooden surfaces and brass fittings all highly polished and gleaming, always hushed a place where no one raised their voices above a whisper. For me it was treasure beyond compare; Percy Westerman and his adventure books, Capt. A.E. Johns and ‘Biggles’, R.M.Ballantyne and ‘Coral Island’ Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Kidnapped’ books about Public schools where the boys boarded and had midnight feasts out of hampers filled with plum cakes and potted tongue which I’d never had but longed to, these schools had heroic captains who were always hitting the winning six or scoring the victorious try and who ultimately triumphed over the vicious bully, how I longed for my lorry driver dad to send me to one of these schools. Best of all was ‘William’, William Brown. I couldn’t get enough; William the Outlaw, William the Good, William the Conqueror, Just William every week I’d find another one and when they finally ran out I would sneak into the adult section and take a book by Richmal Crompton only to be disappointed that it was a silly romance. But William meeting with his trusty outlaws Ginger, Henry and Douglas in the ‘Old Barn’ was who I wanted to be, it didn’t matter or I didn’t notice that all my heroes were upper or middle class and I was just a slum boy in a little tiny house in a little tiny street in Bow.

Comics were another love of mine, the Dandy, Beano and Film Fun all made me laugh when I was very little but as I got older I preferred ‘Boys books’ they had lots of text and fewer pictures than ordinary comics, the Hotspur, Wizard, Adventure, Rover, Champion all featuring heroes like Strang the Terrible, Morgan the Mighty, Rockfist Rogan, Wilson the greatest Athlete that ever lived, the Wolf of Kabul who slaughtered Pathan tribesmen by the dozen with his cricket bat, the boys of ‘Red Circle’ public school featuring school captain ’Cripple Dick Archer’ and a horrible house master Mr Smugg who suffered with corns and was always in a temper with his cane at the ready.

Similar hero to those boys books legends was the wireless’s Dick Barton whose unlikely adventures with his sidekicks Snowy and Jock were broadcast every evening, other unmissable programmes were ‘Happidrome’ on a Saturday night starring ‘Ramsbottom, Enoch and Mr Lovejoy’ or ‘Appointment with Fear’ starring Valentine Dyall as the ‘Man in Black’. Listening to that while your Mum and Dad was down the pub on a Saturday night could be an unnerving experience and could haunt your dreams until the next episode which would be even more frightening.

Saturday morning pictures was so anticipated, a serial, cartoons, a comedy short and a film. The serials were varied and the cliff-hanger always so exciting you daren’t miss the next episode, ‘Deadwood Dick’, the ‘Queen of the Jungle’, ‘Flash Gordon’, and most scary ‘The Clutching Hand’. But the joy, the sheer joy when to an almighty and thunderous cheering that has never been surpassed the ‘Three Stooges’ came on. Oh I used to think heaven would be a place that was spent watching “Larry’, ‘Curly’ & ‘Mo’ all day.

All the things we used to do are not an option today, none of it exists,playing football, cricket and games like ‘high Jimmy Nacker’ in traffic free streets, climbing on the roofs of bombed and blasted houses, risking our lives walking along the narrow parapets of the roof tops, live cables coming out of the ground that would flash and emit a noise when hit with a stick, we had sense enough to make sure the stick was wood and not a metal railing; but it wasn’t all good there was kids that died while swimming in the cut and the locks, being told of whole families dying in the bomb wreckage of houses where we were busy looking for shrapnel for our collections; carrying bedding to the shelters night after night listening to the bombs raining down and later the doodlebugs and rockets, carrying the bedding back to the house soon after dawn and being relieved that the house was still there; holes in socks, brown paper and cardboard in shoes, patches on trousers,hankerchiefs made of rag, looking with longing at dummy bars of chocolate in empty sweetshop windows; sadistic teachers who caned so hard as if trying to break your fingers. Playing truant and then wishing one hadn’t after spending miserable weeks filling in time and hiding over Victoria Park, starting off from home as usual, dinner money in hand pretending to go to school and then killing time hoping to meet other kids that were playing truant but one never did.

Taking the accumul;ator to be recharged for the wireless, being careful not to spill the acid on fingers or clothes.

Getting older and working in a dead end job for thirty bob a week, giving Mum ten bob but she giving most of it back to help with fares on the buses going to Aldgate on a long nine hour, five and half day week, and for the shilling dinner in the canteen.

On long summer evenings there was consolations, going to the ‘Wilderness’ at Eton Manor Boys club practising cricket at the nets, diving into the ‘splash’ the tiny swimming pool where boys were not allowed to wear swimming costumes as they swam under the benign gaze of the Honourable Charles Villiers, the old Etonian who founded the club.

Going dancing at the bandstand in the park, completely free and with top dance bands. everyone dancing but some ‘jiving’ with American soldiers in the corner.

Laying in bed till late on a Sunday and then going ‘down the lane’ and meeting all your mates at ‘Solly’s’ record stall in Wentworth street before buying Beigels and pickled herring to take home for Sunday tea.

Every generation pines and looks longingly at their past but no generation has lost so much of the past so quickly and in the space of a lifetime all the traditions and pleasures of youth have disappeared. Like the trams and trolley buses we let things go too quickly, all that is good in the world is disappearing and no one knows what to do.

Future generations will have plenty of history to look at if the world continues to exist and I don’t think they will be very grateful for what we have preserved for them, I hope they can forgive us but I doubt it.