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Monsters
Some children are convinced that there are monsters under the bed. For me they didn’t live there, but instead they floated overhead, whispering to and fro in ghostly apparition. They would dive down to attack me and then ride back to the ceiling and taunt me. They were very REAL, grotesque disfigured shapes competing with the suspended model aircraft. Like most children I was a bed wetter so I presume I would only notice them after waking up. The solution was to get into bed with my parents possibly as late as age 6 or 7.
On later reflection my thought is that these shapes might have been shadows cast from trees waving in the wind, though I don’t recall any trees outside the house. Option B would be something to do with the dairy across the road maybe flags waving in the wind, OR option C, my latent psychic abilities were allowing me to see apparitions from another dimension? My preference is option B as C opens up a large can of worms.
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Building models
Until I was nine, I shared a room with my older brother. He was into building model aircraft, which were suspended from the roof by cotton: Spitfires, Stukas, commercial jets and more. It was natural for me to want to build models too. At Elston’s – the local toy store – there was a wall of plastic model kits reminiscent of a wall of shoeboxes. I’d go and look at them longingly but never had enough pocket money to buy one – the concept of saving had not yet been established.
Elston’s also served as the local newsagency, so my pocket money would stretch to an edition of ‘Beano’ cartoon magazine, so I could catch the latest ‘Dennis the Menace’ episode. Dennis had a red and black sweater, a shock of black hair, oversized shoes and a mangy dog called ‘Gnasher’, if I recall correctly. He was the archetypal, badly behaved schoolchild/bully. Maybe in this day and age he would have been diagnosed with ADHD?
At some point either as a special present or a gift or by saving my remaining Beano money, I obtained my first plastic model kit. I now realise that instead of starting with an easy project, I had set about to tackle one of the more challenging model builds- a 72nd scale German Panzer tank.
In what turned out to be a lifelong pattern, I started assembling the model WITHOUT looking at the instructions, probably in haste to get the finished product in my hands. My mild dyslexia might also have been a factor, similar to the musical notes on the page moving around. Thinking about it now the polystyrene cement that was used to ‘melt’ the plastic together would probably be considered a candidate for glue sniffing- perhaps I got high every time I set out to build a model through inhaling the fumes?
The impatient lad got to the end of building the model.
The reason that tanks are challenging build is that the tracks need to be made to fit tightly over the wheels of the vehicle. When the correct number of wheels are on the model it requires some leverage to put the tracks on. I learn this later in life as I build larger scale models, but at age 5 or 6 this was an unknown. After the ‘rush’ of building the tank, and maybe getting a little high, I was surprised to find that several wheels were still on the sprue (the framework that the pieces are all attached to prior to assembly, which is pressed at the factory). How can this be I wondered?
On later reflection (much later!) I understand that my impatience to get to the end result is the cause of this and many other failures. I learn to adapt my inclinations and direct my ADHD hyperfocus towards slowly and deliberately reading instructions BEFORE building or using equipment. The impatience still sits beneath though, resulting in questionable spellings in texts, emails and even published websites pages as the impulse to finish overrides the impulse to do something correctly; or perhaps my dyslexia does not allow me to see things until much later. Why can’t it just turn out the way it is in my head?
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The Waterloo Hotel
In another ode to the Duke’s of Wellington, another pub in Crowthorne was called the Waterloo hotel. The hotel, even though called the Waterloo, was colloquially known as ‘the penguin’ as in: “I’m going down the penguin’. Memory serves a reminder that there were penguins kept in a pool on the property. These I would suggest were captive Fairy Penguins. I think you could purchase food to feed them. The pen they were in had an odour somewhere between decaying vegetable matter and rotting fish. Nevertheless seeing the tiny ones wriggling and waddling around was something to look forward to.
The reason the pub features bright in memory is that my father’s brass band , The Sandhurst Silver Band– played there monthly during the warmer months. My elder brother and two sisters played in the band, so it seemed a natural evolution that I would also one day. My father had learned to play in the navy and his preferred instrument was Trombone. My brother specialised in the tuba, and it was the euphonium for my sisters. As long as there was no inclement weather they’d be camped on a patch of lawn next to the rear entrance.
As well as brass band classics I seem to think that the band played popular tunes of the day such as Cliff Richard‘s congratulations and celebrations and Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree. It was the 70s and Vietnam war was in full swing.
As part of my musical evolution my father started trying to teach me music around the age of six. He meant well, but had already moved on to semi-demi quavers whilst I was still struggling with crotchets. I felt inadequate and that I was letting him down, but he did not seem to understand. (Later in life I realise I have some form of dyslexia, or Dysmusia as I have now discovered it to be called!} the consequence was that the dots on the page seemed to move around, so no wonder it wound up in tears. As the music was in me and looking for an outlet, I found a way to achieve my musical aims by learning where the sounds were on a guitar. I learned to hear the sound in my head and make my fingers go where the sound was. almost 60 years later I am reliving the trauma by learning piano, facing up to the dots and squiggles again. They are still moving!
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The teapot incident
As with most people, awareness of the world was limited until maybe the age of 18 months (friends tell me that I was unusual in this and they don’t have any memories before age 3). Already I was showing signs of adventurousness and ambition. An early target for this was a teapot left on the stove as a ‘rolling’ pot of tea. Having seen how the oven door worked, I apparently used it as a prop to reach up so I could be like the adults and drink tea. In doing so, the pot of boiling tea was knocked off the stove and all over mydelf.
The incident not actually remembered but spoken of by my parents, involved a stay of several weeks or months in hospital. Layers of skin had peeled away from the face and top of my head as a result of the adventure and one of the earliest memories is that of being tied to the edge of the bed or cot so that I could not scratch the wounds and be left with permanent scarring.
Was this an early imprint that suggested that taking a risk might not always result in the desired reward? The first evidence of succeeding at failing? -
The Iron Duke
Wellington Road Crowthorne is a street named in honour of the 1st Duke of Wellington- Arthur Wellesley, the victor at the Battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon Boneparte was defeated in battle before being exiled to the isle of St.Helena . Wellesley’s imprint was spread across the town of Crowthorne, from Wellington Road to Waterloo Road and the Duke’s Ride.
As children, we had unsupervised free range wandering to and fro around the town, part of this was playing in the grounds of Wellington College, built in the Victorian era for children of officers killed in battle, named in Wellington’s honour.
There was always a sense of danger as ‘officially’ we were not meant to be there, but no-one ever ejected us. It was almost mystical, fronds and ferns tickled as we worked our way through undergrowth avoiding roughly dug drainage ditches (on the verge of becoming sewerage channels) filled with breast stroking tadpoles and frogs. A curiosity to behold.
As the township expanded with construction of nearby Broadmoor Hospital and the school, a public bar sprang up close to the edges of the college grounds – the Iron Duke. In the nearby military town of Sandhurst the Wellington Arms continued the tribute. To many of us children it seemed that World War 2 had only just ended, we were obsessed with war games and building scale models of WW II planes and tanks, with Sandhurst Military college nearby, Aldershot army base and Farnborough RAF base in the immediate vicinity, it always felt, along with the presence of the Duke that war was never far removed from this place.
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A promise to marry
Having experienced the hardships of World War 2, psychological hangovers were still being dealt with by Peter (who turned out to be my father). He joined the navy at 16 in 1937. Basic training turned out to be more about the skills of seamanship than the reality of war.
Sometimes, after a beer too many at the social club, overheard stories would emerge about picking up body parts of former friends from the deck of a ship after a well-placed German shell had done its damage. It seems these experiences shaped his capacity to engage with people at a deeper emotion level based on the fear or the pain of loss he experienced- hence he always seemed somewhat distant and inaccessible. Could this be transmitted genetically?
Ida, (who turned out to be my mother), was born and raised in Gosport– a suburb of Portsmouth – a naval port and the home for many sailors during World War 2. She was drafted as a ‘Wren’ (Women’s Royal Navy Service) at 18 when the war started and learned skills in commercial level cookery while avoiding being strafed by rogue Messerschmitt BF109 fighters looking for trouble.
As it was the end of days, one the few escapes from it all was a dance at a local hall. In nearby Eastbourne, to the muted tones of a Glenn Miller style band, they met, which led to the ages old age-old tradition of ‘courting‘ which in turn became a promise to marry after the war.
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Seasoning babies
It might be hearsay but there is a legend that mothers in Britain leave their babies out in the yard to be ‘seasoned’ (also a common Scandinavian practice) , to harden them up against vagaries of weather and cold that can come sweeping in from the Atlantic, the Hebrides or the North Pole. Unthinkable in this day and age that a child could be left on it’s own in the wild, but these were the sixties.
Every parent was doing the best that they knew. There were no self-help books, online support groups, best selling books or talkback shows to educate and inform on the proper rearing of children. Growing up in a generation where they themselves experienced a late Victorian era offhandedness around child-rearing- the child should be seen, not heard ideology – they were just repeating the pattern.
Maybe it was the shock of having a baby again after six years (this was not a planned pregnancy), but when the newborn was wheeled to the Post Office and left outside to season while the mother attended to matters inside, all seemed normal. It was only after arriving back at Wellington Road some twenty minutes later that the shocking realisation hit home that the baby and pram were still sitting outside the post office. After a frantic dash (as she did not drive) , the carriage and child were found exactly as left and no harm done – the chubby cheeks of the infant might have been a little on the blue side however.
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Seventh child of the seventh child
Apparently the winter of 1964 was one of the coldest of the century (later I learn this is not quite the truth). Due to the severity of the weather, an ambulance is unable to get through to convey a soon to be mother to the hospital in Reading for the birth of child number seven. A midwife is dispatched to battle through furrows and flurries of snow bound for Wellington Road, Crowthorne. A street named in honour of the Duke of Wellington- the victor at the battle of Waterloo, whose influence has spread across the town from streets to schools named in his honour.
The subsequent days remained bitterly cold with snow rising up to window sills. The youngest is settled permanently in front of the grate of the coal fire to maintain circulation. The weather eases and the blood of an entire country starts to circulate again as does the blood of the newborn.
