Some Personal Recollections
During
1941, about a dozen of us lads decided we'd learn to dance,
and went
to the Magenta School of Dancing. We had
one lesson where we actually learnt the basic steps of
the waltz: one-two-three, one-two-three. Like idiots, me and another
fella asked two girls at a youth club we
used to go to if they'd like to come with us to a dance,. So on
Saturday night we took them to Barking
Baths, but when we got there all we could do was sit
and try and make conversation until a waltz was played - then go
one-two-three, one-two-three down one side, stop and turn around to
get round the comer and so on. Needless to say they refused all
future offers of going to a dance with us! Later on, owing to one of the (by then)
sporadic air raids, we'd moved to Katherine Road, and
we had the two top floors of a three storey building. It was quite big up
there, it had three bedrooms, a sitting
room, kitchen, bathroom, and the door from the kitchen led out onto
an iron balcony with some steps down into the garden. In one of these
raids they'd managed to damage the gas
supplies, so we were left without any cooking facilities thus forced
to use a primus stove we had.
One day it was standing on the kitchen floor
cooking something when it caught fire. We managed
to get the kitchen door open and kick it out onto the balcony, then
down into the garden where it promptly
exploded. Some of the neighbours thought there was another air raid
on at the time. Almost directly opposite was another block of
three storey buildings, but the bottom part was shops, one of which
was a newsagent and sweetshop. The lads, including Dennis and I, used
to assist from time to time when we were available, helping him
deliver the newspapers - partly out of a sense of public duty but
mainly because he had two daughters! Anyway, Christmas 1941 he
invited all us lads to come and have a Christmas party.
We all had a jolly good time except for one poor person, one of my
mates Martin Crowe who developed a
whitlow. While we were enjoying ourselves in the main room he was
sitting in the kitchen most of the time holding his finger up or in a
bowl of hot water -they're bloomin'
painful things!
At that time, drink was getting a bit scarce
for the civilian population, but the newsagent produced
some bottles.
"I managed to get hold of this stuff, it's
called Green Goddess."
We all said "What's that?", and he
replied:
"Oh, some sort of cordial" and
proceeded to pour it out in half pint tumblers. So you can imagine we
all got a bit merry to say the least of it, in fact he finished up on
the kitchen table with his carpet
slippers on playing a toy trumpet and doing a little dance, so you
can guess he had a good time! (Research
indicates that this drink is the notorious Absinthe!)
When the party was over, Dennis and I had to go
back home, so we carefully steered ourselves
along the pavement until we were opposite our place. We crossed the
road and went up the path, but we
realised we'd gone up the wrong side of the railings and we were
next door. So we carefully turned round and steered ourselves back
down the path, crossed the road, back to
the Newsagent, and started again. Ahem. Anyway it was the next
morning that I discovered that I was immune, at least mostly immune,
from hangovers. But it was quite a good
time, except for poor old Martin. He's one of the people
I've been trying to trace and never could. He became a W/Op
(Wireless Operator),
before me actually; I know he went out to the Middle East but after
that I lost track of him.
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