The world first came to my notice in about 1951 when I was about three or four: scrambling up grassy banks over Anderson shelters with my friends and screaming with delight as we rolled down the banks of grass that grew over them. Only a short time ago, people would have crouched in these shelters during air raids, listening to the bombers overhead and waiting to see if the RAF aerodrome above would be targeted. Inevitably, because it was a forbidden and dark mystery, I explored the inside one of the shelters and found that it only contained broken bricks and glass amidst puddles of water, smelling of abandonment. What did I expect? Treasure? Carpets? One wonders.
I wasn’t born on an airfield, rather in a London hospital not long before, but I liked to think that I felt I should have been. Home was bleak flatness all around, the drooping windsock waiting for the wind, the air traffic tower dozing mysteriously in the sunshine, listening for the buzz of aircraft. The colour of that world was simple: the orange of the windsock above the stretches of green grass: all else grey whether in sunshine or rain. RAF airfields look pretty much alike, then as now – the wide hangers huddling together, the concrete runways crisscrossing amongst the grass, the odd scatterings of functional vehicles. These places always looked to me as if they’d been abandoned by humanity and that everyone was somewhere else; the only sign of life being the movement of planes and the tiny humans hidden inside them. Like a rite that kept worshippers at a decent distance, the business of the aerodrome kept to itself but subtly accompanied our daily life.
On the edge of the aerodrome, well out of harm’s way of the planes taking off and landing, stood the caravan we lived in. Around it were a few others grouped together amongst the shelters. This wasn’t an official caravan park, but a small collection of RAF families numbering about half a dozen.
Neither the name of the aerodrome nor the squadron that used it, are known to me. Station names from the past echo in my head, particularly those in southern England: RAF Middle Wallop, Debden or perhaps Old Sarum, but I can’t be sure of any of them. It doesn’t seem possible now that caravans would have been allowed to be positioned right on the edge, since they weren’t outside the aerodrome, they were within; there was nothing in between the airstrips and us. If there was relatively little traffic on the runways, maybe exceptions were allowed in those post war years since the need for particular skills were acute. The experience of pilots like my father was in demand as the western world moved from WWII quickly into the Cold War.
My mother would talk about those times of austerity, proud of her skills and ingenuity in making me clothes out of odd scraps of material. A photo shows me being excitedly delivered to the camera outside the caravan door in some kind of jumpsuit. Stuffed into this item and confused at the attention, I stare at what might have been my father on the other side of the camera.
My parents belonged to the make do and mend generation, but truly, it was my mother who did the making do and mending. Clothing Coupons were strictly rationed; the shop carefully stamping her little ration book as you bought what you needed. Rationing was gradually phased out over the years, so providing for a family couldn't have been easy. Even if there hadn’t been rationing, I doubt my parents would have been able to afford much anyway. With the war finishing at the end of 1945, despite the initial relief and joy, most people were having a hard time financially and psychologically.
Much to the surprise of my dark teenage self, my mother said I was a happy baby and I do have a photograph to prove it. There used to be another one of my small naked self, squealing in delight in a little tub on the floor with the inevitable duck. I was also surprised I survived at all since my mother admitted to falling into a dustbin when she was pregnant but more disconcerting than that, was that on one occasion she came seriously close to strangling me. Maybe all mothers reach this somewhere along the line? In defence, she spoke of grim days before that, when she existed in dank, cramped accommodation with a screaming child and a stressed husband.
My father didn’t start out well as a new parent – sent to register me; he spelt my first name wrong on the birth certificate, which had my mother fuming. Then my mother gave him some spare money to go and put it on a horse called Sheila’s Cottage running in the Grand National. When he returned and admitted that he hadn't, she went bananas. He thought she’d be pleased when it didn’t win as it was running as an outsider with Long Odds of 50/1. It was a prudent action but unfortunately for him, Sheila’s Cottage won and became quite a legend in the racing world because she was so heavily ‘unfancied’. A mare hadn’t won the National for many years, which had led to disinterest from punters, which reveals a rather interesting social peculiarity of that era, but even allowing for that fact, the odds were still extremely low. I understand the winnings would have been substantial.
Looking at the film of the National in 1948, it seems a bit rough and brutal compared to the relative politeness of racing now but it did have a raw chthonic energy with horses and jockeys falling about everywhere. Sheila’s Cottage wasn’t that enamoured by the whole thing – just after the race she bit off the jockey’s thumb.
I might not even have had the life I have had, had my mother not made a fuss soon after she had me in hospital. She'd been handed her baby by a nurse for feeding and immediately knew that there was something wrong. She flatly declared to the disbelieving staff that she knew her own baby, that the one she held wasn’t it, and stubbornly refused to allow herself to be placated. Nurses in those times were rather narrow in their assertiveness of their own authority and wisdom, echoing the medical profession’s aura of infallibility. Eventually it was found to have been a mistake with the nametag, so everything was sorted out with the nurses and the other mother agreeing on the correct distribution of the children. Later I was tempted to believe that actually I belonged to some other family, that I was really a changeling but I’m too like my parents to have ever been seriously doubtful.
How close was that tiny turning of fate of an individual life on an almost insignificant error? My mother, with the full force of a mother's ire, realised that her perception was right, alerted the ward's authority to examine the situation and held out in the face of their scepticism.
I can’t even imagine another life. It’s intriguing – how much of what I know as my character would remain? Would I have been a better person or worse? Would the inner core of me be the same and how differently would I see the world?
I can’t even imagine another life. It’s intriguing – how much of what I know as my character would remain? Would I have been a better person or worse? Would the inner core of me be the same and how differently would I see the world?
Memories from those very early days are I assume, like most people’s - looking at the world through the reflection in a puddle of water on a dark day or perhaps like a series of dreams: out of order and with no apparent connection existing within vast blank areas. I was mainly a receiver of life; the bright spots were those ecstatic moments caused mostly by tactile examinations of all things that came within my greedy little grasp. I can’t remember the carriage pram that held me, though I have a photograph of it, but I can almost feel the texture of the pillowcase, the blanket, the whole atmosphere of being within it and even the atmosphere of the day. In the photograph, you can see the wide field and the married quarters beyond. Maybe I remember it; maybe I don’t. It’s hard to tell with photographs whether you’ve placed a later memory on it, or mixed it up with another time, possibly even another place. I believe the ones I don’t have photographs for hold more genuine memories, but even then, a later recollection may have coloured them. I can’t remember screaming my head off in the local NAAFI or throwing my toys out of the pram, but I’m sure I would have done so. Mercifully, so much is lost in babyhood.
As I wrote this I had a sudden memory of wearing reins in light leather - pastel coloured with bells attached and long reins, a useful parental contraption, which wasn’t uncommon then. Wrapped securely around your chest, a parent had complete control when out and about. Of course, it was your job to try and be as annoying as possible, weaving in and out of people and trying to run as far and as fast as you could.
Things that I had forgotten have come surprisingly alive and fresh when I can imagine feeling a toy or an object, its texture or sense of movement. But some things do stand out in my memory without a prompt, one of which was my set of wooden bricks; they were a never-ending delight. Almost warm to the touch, their simple shapes, colours and the endless fascination of relationships between one and another kept me totally entranced.
The toy rabbit that I had wasn’t that responsive; it was rigid with stuffing, not fluffy or cute; certainly not the cuddlesome floppy creatures we have populating our shops now. Bare felt, plain brown and beige it was nothing to look at, but I loved it nevertheless. No charm about it, just a bolt-upright bunny. Decades later, I saw one exactly the same as mine in a picture and was surprised with a stab of recognition to miss it, wondering when it had disappeared. I’m sure everyone has experienced that feeling.
I don’t think I had any other toys apart from the ones mentioned and my beloved teddy bear, which I’ve completely lost the memory of. My parents certainly couldn’t afford very much. Nowadays, if I’d had the same material possessions, they’d probably be interviewing my parents to see if they’d have to take me into care. But I was lucky for the time in which I lived – we were not suffering like many others and I wasn’t deprived at all. In fact I was told all through my childhood and teenage years that I was privileged and they were right.
An exciting treat for me was to visit one of the nearby married quarters. On the floor, complete with stuffed head and glass eyeballs, lay a real tiger rug. While my mother talked to a friend, I sprawled on its flat glossy body and sat on its head, exploring every form including its wide-open teeth, totally enthralled with its exoticism and the sense of wickedness that you get being so close and intimate with such a huge and scary beast.
Events were soon to arrive that would eliminate the need for an available married quarter, but not knowing this or having any choice, my parents continued to wait and live in the caravan; housing was short within in the service as well as out of it. The caravan was a medium sized one – not even a big one. Anyone who has lived in a caravan at that time remembers most of all the soft pop-pop sound of gas mantles on the walls. Like many people of that time, my parents smoked, although my memory is blank on that: it must have been something I grew up with and accepted as normal but it must have been uncomfortable in that confined space with the two of them puffing away. It was likely to be have been tight in there but easy for work and easy to keep an eye on children playing outside.
This was not our caravan, but borrowed from someone else. It looks the same type.
Food was also in short supply and in a fenced off area next to the caravan, my parents kept sleek brown chickens or more correctly, my mother kept chickens: the common, good hearted, good laying classic brown chicken. All day long we could hear the soothing sound of their conversations, the friendly smell of them, the straw and the warm eggs, the chickens thriving on corn and leftovers from the kitchen. Eggs and chickens were in great demand during the war, so to have them available even then was a luxury and I grew up on their wonderful goodness.
For many years, I wondered if this could be true, but I have looked it up on the web (the source of all truth ;) and it is possible if the timing happens to be right: a chick was discovered alive in an egg bought from the NAAFI shop. Fed, it lived, so we put it with the others and raised it to be a healthy adult. The eggs may have been supplied locally at that time, which could explain the potential for hatching. The family favourite, she was naturally christened Naafi and lived longer than the others, doing her bit keeping us humans fed. Eventually though, it was decided that she had to get the chop, and my father was pushed into doing ‘the manly thing’ with an axe. I remember it in part, the execution taking part just outside the pen in front of the other chickens but I was shielded from ‘the act’. My father did it badly possibly because he really didn’t want to do it – and I do remember the shock of the body half running around headless for a short while, flapping: something that haunted me for a long time. My mother spent time carefully plucking and roasting it but none of us could eat it. In despair, my mother made sandwiches, which we gigglingly called Naafi sandwiches (maybe that’s an in-joke) but not one of us could stomach eating them, especially the one who had had to do the dirty deed.
1948 Grand National Film clip:
Hatched chick from supermarket egg in 2008:
