Jul 25 2007
My Story, by Geoffrey Foster, Aged 74 and a Quarter (Part One)
I was born at my Grandma’s, a big house by the River Thames in Greenwich, London, England. The house was attached to the Greenwich Inlaid Linoleum company, where my Grandad was Works Manager.
I have only vague memories of him; he must have died when I was quite young, and I think he was rather remote anyway, a Freemason who spent a lot of his time at his local Masonic Lodge. I have an impression of a walrus moustache and a smell of pipe tobacco.
I have much better recall of Grandma Morris, my Mum’s mother; she was an intermittent visitor to my life until my mid-teens. She was a little chirpy Cockney sparrow, a keen player at Whist Drives, a competitive lawn bowler (she was several times President of the South of England Bowls Association, I believe), and a member of the Primrose League.
My Dad was a Constable in the Metropolitan Police, a London ‘Bobby’, who had met and courted my Mum while stationed in Greenwich. On their marriage, he was moved to a police-station in the nearby county of Kent; it was police policy to move their officers on marriage (or promotion), because of possible conflicts of interest with extended family members (or former colleagues), I assume.
Here is his wartime Identity Card
My Mum was working as a Pitman’s Shorthand Typist before my birth, but then became a wife and mother exclusively, until I and my two younger sisters had grown up. Among the stories she related to me, I recall two in particular; one about a cricket match the family was watching when a strongly-struck ball hit a spectator on the head and killed him. Another about her experience when she was learning to drive, in the family Crossley sedan (it had doors only on the near-side, I suppose so that you wouldn’t get out into the traffic), when the steering-wheel came off as she was driving through Blackwall Tunnel, under the River Thames. Fortunately, the car veered to the left, and rubbed against the high kerbstones, which brought it safely to a stop. The tunnel had been built for horse-cart traffic, so it was fairly narrow.
This her Driving Licence (so she passed!)
The first home that I remember was a semi-detached (pair) house in Orpington, Kent. Our road, Court Road, was otherwise known as the Orpington Bypass, and it could have been seen then as a boundary line between the suburbs that spread from London and a much more rural countryside. I used to tell people that I could have walked one way, in urban streets, from my house to Trafalgar Square, and the other, across fields, to the coast of the English Channel. In this picture, ours is the house closest to the centre, with a car parked head-on to it (not our car!).
Even though the road was a bypass, and therefore carried a higher density of traffic than the residential streets around us, in the thirties, forties and fifties there were nowhere near the numbers of cars that there are today. Our family did not have a car until 1948, and then it was pre-war, a 1938 model Hillman Minx.
Of course, during the second World War, the entire output of the vehicle factories was diverted to the war effort, so cars were hard to get hold of. Even after the war, when production resumed, there were lengthy waiting lists. My Dad put his name down for a new Hillman (and a Triumph Mayflower) three or four years before the Hillman finally came up, in 1954 (see picture - not my Dad’s, but like it).
Buyers of new cars had to sign a covenant that they would not resell for a stipulated number of years, to counter anticipated profiteering. I learnt to drive in this Hillman, and when Dad, Mum and my younger sister (then called Gail) followed me to Australia in 1962, they brought it with them on the SS Orion (below) on its last voyage as an immigrant ship before it was broken up for scrap.
But I’ve run ahead of proper chronology, so I’ll rewind now to 1939, and the outbreak of WW2. We lived, as I have said, in Orpington, which is on a route that bomber aircraft often take from Europe to London. So, from the age of 6 when the war began, to just turning 12, when it ended, I and my friends and families had the opportunity to be bombed and to be showered with shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns. Strangely though, none of my family, both close and extended, were killed or even injured. My Grandma, however, had to move house twice, as she was ‘bombed out’ of her original house on the Thames that I have mentioned already, and another not far away.
After the war, when I would visit her and my Aunt Ivy, it was possible to raise great clouds of pulverised plaster by beating on her three-piece suite - the result of two lots of ceilings falling down onto it. I do have memories of that house at ‘The Lino’, including the large ‘laundry’, which was really a roofed-over courtyard. For a while there was a big cage in there, occupied by a pet monkey who would get up to some entertaining tricks when fed pieces of cake soaked in sherry. I stayed there at Christmas once during the war, when we all slept in bunks in the extensive cellar that served as an air-raid shelter. Family Christmas celebrations were always in that house while it still stood; my Mum was one of five siblings, so there were always tribes of aunties and uncles and cousins around. There was a Christmas tree set up in one of the large drawing rooms, with the children’s presents piled on and around the grand piano.
At home, in Orpington, we had an air-raid shelter half buried in the back garden; it was built of brick, very thick, with a reinforced concrete roof. Dad rarely slept in the shelter; he was often on night duty anyway, or doing extra shifts with the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) Wardens; spotting incendiary bombs and similar tasks. My Mum, my first sister and I slept there, and sometimes the lady next door joined us; her husband was in the RAF and stationed somewhere else.
Later, toward the end of the war, we got a ‘Morrison Indoor Shelter’ This was like a big meat safe, with room for a double mattress in it. It was made of heavy steel members, with a thick table-top of steel, also, with sides of steel mesh, and it was said that it would withstand the force of an average brick house collapsing on it. We never found out whether this was just propaganda! It occupied most of our lounge-room.
“By the way, did you remember to feed the canary?”
I remember the first few nights the V1 flying bombs came over; at first we thought they were aircraft on fire, as they trailed flames behind them. It wasn’t until a few had come down without exploding that we found out that they were pilotless planes, powered by a ‘pulse-jet’ engine. When the engine cut out, on a timer, they were trimmed to turn to one side and plunge to earth, where the ton of explosives in the nose would explode, causing immense destruction if it hit a building. If you want to hear what they sounded like, here is a link.
This was all just exciting stuff for we kids; by that time I would have been 10 or 11; it would not have been so much fun if we had known anyone who was killed or injured, of course. Later, toward the closing stages of the war, the flying bombs were joined by V2 rockets, a completely different proposition, since they gave no warning, just the explosion. I was always told that the last V2 of the war fell in our district. I can certainly remember walking to school past piles of smoking rubble that had once been houses, and picking up pieces of shrapnel (we used to collect it) that were still hot enough to burn our fingers.
Stay tuned for the next gripping instalment!
If you liked this, why not treat me to a coffee (or a bone for Kafka)? Thanks, mate!
