with gusto in a way reminiscent of a flight controller on board an aircraft carrier guiding a drunken trainee pilot down on to the deck. Not only was it fascinating to watch, but on one particular occasion there was a highlight yet to come. So frenetic was her conducting that there was a flash of colour beneath the hem of her frock and a voluptuous red garter made its appearance, slid down her leg and rested round her ankle. We all waited for the other garter to appear, but we were disappointed. Sadly the garter never appeared again and I assumed she had bought herself a pair of braces. That is my only recollection of the headmistress. In fact I cannot bring to mind other members of the staff, even though they stood behind the headmistress at prayers.
I invariably looked forward to playtime, unless it was raining, when I would have to stand shivering under a sheltered bit of the schoolyard with the others who didn’t possess raincoats. No one except the staff was allowed to remain in school during playtime. Worse still, we could see the teachers staring through the rainspattered windows in order to keep an eye on us, steaming cups of tea in their hands, and biscuits. As we watched enviously there was a sound of thunder, but in fact it was the rumbling of a mass of small stomachs at the sight of the biscuits. When the weather was good playtime would be a blessing—a shrieking, screaming, laughing riot of sound, skipping ropes for the girls and tennis balls kicked all over the place by the lads. One of the more popular games was Jubby. Kneeling, we flipped marbles or glass alleys into a small dent in a corner of the school yard and then we—unfortunately I have forgotten what we did then, but we enjoyed it.
Alongside the ‘Jubby bandits’, another line of kneeling ragamuffins played in pairs a game of Skimmy On. This entailed skimming tab cards alternately at two other cards leaning up against the wall. If you knocked one over, you scooped up all the cards that had missed the target: then another card was placed up against the wall and round two was on. To see these lines of ‘skimmers’ and their intense concentration was like observing Northmoor’s version of one-armed bandits in Las Vegas. Incidentally, those tab cards, better known as cigarette cards, came in most packets of cigarettes. They disappeared about fifty years ago, if not more, and as cigarettes are not politically correct I don’t envisage those wonderful educational cigarette cards coming back, more’s the pity.
Another memory of Northmoor’s is when, after school had ended one day, I dashed out into the pouring rain. It was bucketing down and I was in two minds as to whether to run back into school or swim home. I did neither and, ducking my head, I raced across the street, only to find that the pavement was dry. When I turned round I discovered that the monsoon on the other side of the street was still pelting down. I stared at this phenomenon, a solid wall of rain two yards away. After a short time I rushed off home to relate this extraordinary experience. I expected amazement or at least astonishment, but all I got in reply was a bored, ‘It didn’t rain here.’ That’s all I can remember about Northmoor Council School…funny about the garter, though.
Every Saturday morning Dad sent me up to Grandma Sykes to see if she wanted any errands to be done. This was odd, because he and Mother were reluctant to send me on errands at home. Many years later my father told me that he would never send me out on errands because of my woolly-headedness. I would very likely not remember which shop I was going to, and even if I arrived at the right place I would have forgotten why I was there. Why, then, did Father send me to Grandma Sykes to see if she wanted any errands done? It couldn’t be because he disliked her—after all, she was his mother. Perhaps he just wanted me out of the way for a time. When I arrived at Grandma Sykes I asked her about it, but she just smiled, shook her head and sent me off on an errand, which was no answer at all. It must have been preying on my mind, because I went into the butcher’s and asked for five pounds of King Edwards, and by the time I reached the greengrocer’s I’d forgotten the potatoes and came out with a cabbage. Grandma sighed heavily, took the cabbage from me, donned a shawl over her head and we made our way to the shop together. As we walked, she casually remarked that she and Granddad Sykes together with Aunt Marie, Dad’s younger sister, and Uncle Ernest, Dad’s brother, would soon be moving in with us. This information was of such importance that it banished all the other rubbish from my mind.
Two or three days later, the invasion was upon us. They hadn’t far to come, as they lived in Tilbury Street, which ran along the top of Leslie Street. Everything they owned was carried from their house to ours—the cost of a removal van would have been infinitely more than the value of their assets. My father and Granddad Sykes staggered down the path lugging a large double bed, followed by Grandma Sykes and a neighbour edging sideways holding a mattress between them as if inciting the watchers to jump out of their bedroom windows on to it, Aunt Marie, with an armful of blankets and not far behind Uncle Ernest, hidden under a moth-eaten armchair, slipping and slithering in front of me. ‘Every little helps,’ they said, handing me an ashtray—‘A Present from Hastings’—and a three-legged stool which must have been handed down through generations of farmers.
Stanley Taylor, who was walking out with Aunt Marie, lurched along the uneven ground with a ragged, worn-out carpet on his shoulder. Mercifully it was rolled up, and so its threadbare condition was hidden from the critical watchers. As the column made its way to number thirty-six it must have been reminiscent of Dr Livingstone’s first expedition into darkest Africa. Within a few more hours the Tilbury Street house was stripped bare, and that evening the changeover was complete. Granddad and Grandma Sykes, Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernest had finally made 36 Leslie Street their new home.
So now there were nine residents: Granddad Sykes’s family in the front bedroom, and in the back bedroom Dad and Mother in their corner and John, me and Vernon in the bed opposite. Nowadays it would be deemed overcrowding but to Father it was halving the rent.
Our house, like millions of others, had four rooms, two up and two down, but the hub of all this domesticity, the nerve centre, the engine room, was the kitchen, the one room that was communal. Nine of us ate our staggered meals there. Washing up, washing clothes and washing ourselves took place at the sink, which was next to the stove. Breakfast time was the busiest period before the workers left. No one wide awake enough to converse muttered ‘Look at the time’ or ‘Is there any Shredded Wheat?’ It was feverish, like a railway buffet when the train is due in. During melancholy moments I fervently wished we could have our kitchen back and our own bedroom, but almost immediately I would be ashamed of my uncharitable thoughts.
Grandma Sykes was my favourite. Once I returned home from my primary school, stiff-legged, tearful and as far down in the depths of despair as I’d ever been because I’d messed my pants and had been sent home to get myself cleaned up; it was this disgusted dismissal in front of the class that had been the final straw. However, when I entered our front door I was met by Grandma Sykes. She was on her own and when she saw me she wasn’t cross or anything. She just said, ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’ Then she lifted me on to the draining board, and took off my shoes and stockings so that I could put my feet in the sink. ‘By jingo,’ she remarked as she peeled off my pants. ‘What have you been eating? Any farmer would pay good money for this lot.’ In spite of myself I chuckled, and by the time I’d been cleaned and dried, and had half a slice of bread and dripping in my hand, I felt a wave of warm affection for her. I stood in front of the fire, watching the steam rising from my damp, clean pants, and when everybody came home that evening Grandma didn’t utter a word about the drama that had taken place earlier in the afternoon; it was our secret. So as far as I was concerned, I’d be happy for Granny to stay with us for ever.
Granddad didn’t say much. He and Uncle Ernest worked at the same place, and when they came home in the evening, Granddad washed his hands and face at the sink, followed by Uncle Ernest. Then they’d sit down for their supper, which was usually a plateful of baked beans, and as I had eaten much earlier the sight of Granddad and Uncle Ernest slurping their way through those delicious baked beans had me salivating. To be hungry was the norm, but it didn’t help to be constantly reminded of it.
I saw very little of Aunt Marie. She was very rarely home by the time I went to bed. She worked in a shoe shop along with a man called Stan Taylor, and it wasn’t long before they were courting. She never brought him home to meet her parents, but that was understandable—where would he sit? And a meal was out of the question, unless he brought his own. Many, many months later they were married and the mystery