Our Granddad Joe Powell

 

Joe, my Grandfather, was a laborer. He lived at 48 Bacchus Road, Winson Green. He liked to drink beer. He was an imposing five foot eight man when sober, who became somewhat smaller when inebriated. At weekends he wore his dark blue serge suit, with matching waistcoat, and a hunter fob watch stuffed into the slit of his waistcoat. Medallions from darts and domino clubs dangled from his gold watch chain. On one end of his body, shiny black boots with pointed toes were fitted.  The other end of his body was adorned with a carefully brushed black bowler hat, perched squarely on his severely cropped white head; if he was sober.

At work or at play, he carried a walking stick, even before he needed it to walk with, he carried it. When he had the money, usually on payday, he would smoke a pipe. He would cut shreds from a hard black plug of tobacco called 'twist' with a brown handled pocket knife, and stuff them into a curly burnt brown pipe. Ignition rarely happened in my presence, for as soon as he had applied a match, selected from a large box of Swan Vestas, he would poke a gnarled finger into the bowl of the pipe, and kill the flame. This was a procedure that never failed to interest me as a young boy. If by some strange stroke of fate he succeeded in lighting his coronary instrument, his large white head quickly became enveloped in a blue haze of smoke, as he eagerly puffed away.  Gran and I tacitly agreed that this was better than looking at him.

I spent a lot of time with Gran, so I learned at an early age that Joe had no consideration for Gran whatsoever. He ignored the fact that every day in Gran’s life was a working day. He had a foundry job to justify his existence, but I never saw him turn the mangle in the brew house or help Gran in any other way. Each day of Gran’s life was defined by chores – washing, ironing, baking, cooking (which was different to baking) and cleaning. Gran wore a particular black dress for wash day, and a hessian sack tied around it, for greater protection.

On cleaning day we Zebo’d the black grate to a dull shine, and we polished the copper kettles until they reflected gremlin-like images of ourselves. We scrubbed the top of the kitchen table, using smelly yellow soap and a tired, almost hairless scrubbing brush. Then we washed the table down and mopped up with an old mutton cloth. The slops on the floor were also wiped up.  We dusted and tidied up the rooms, except for the sacred 'front room' which was only used at Christmas and funerals.  Then as though by a pre-arranged signal, Joe would burst through the door, flop into his chair in his dirty foundry clothes and instantly destroy our work.  And if he had run out of ‘twist’, he’d send Gran to the shop to get some – but not the shop right across the road, the other one, several streets away, where ‘twist’ was 2 pence cheaper.

They didn't speak much, my grandparents; one might wonder how they ever got round to making five children, six if you count the one that died.  But maybe talking wasn’t important for that.

Gran's Brewhouse

Emily Elizabeth Powell nee Horton was a small red headed woman, whose nose I have inherited and in turn given to my youngest daughter Sarah, who also has red hair like her Great Grandmother. She and my Granddad Joe rented a cottage – one of many that were built over a hundred years ago to house farm labourers.  They were known for maximum rents and minimum comfort. The rents were still being collected during the war by the descendants of the Lord of the Manor, and the cottages were in acute disrepair.

The brew house stood some thirty yards away from a row of six cottages. It was originally built to brew beer, but not in Gran’s time or recollection. She said it had always been used as a wash house. The six cottagers took it in turn using the brew house, leaving Sunday as a day of rest and worship. It would be nice to think that the landlord, who sent a bullying fat man with a leather bag each Monday, arranged it so, but in fact there was no space for any more cottages. And even he couldn't have made the cottages any smaller. The brew house was made of brick, which was crumbling and desperately held together with green sticky mortar. The building was shabbily topped with a slate roof, with several holes in it.

Inside there was a copper boiler that was recessed into a brick rectangle with an iron door in it, which allowed coal to be placed under the boiler for a fire.  Gran said that no coal should be left for neighbours to use the next day. For although wartime Britain brought out the best in some people; it also brought out the worst. Coal was expensive in this coal producing area, and cash was short. Once a fortnight the coal man delivered each household’s ration; two bags were chucked down through the street grating into the cellar.

Next to the boiler in the brew house, was a large wooden barrel, which was encircled by two broad metal bands. The boiler and the barrel were laboriously filled with cold water, brought by buckets from one green fungus-coated tap, which was far enough from the brew house to add a lot of trudging back and forth to this already labour intensive job.   The water in the boiler was heated, and some shavings of soap dissolved in it.  The clothes were washed in the hot water, being thumped about with a large wooden implement called a ‘dolly’ or a ‘maid’, then fished out and placed in the barrel of cold water, with some Reckitt’s Blue added to whiten them, and were thumped about some more.   

The clothes were then man handled  (or more correctly woman handled, for I never saw a man wash clothes) into the big cast iron mangle. The mangle rested on a rusty iron frame, and was turned by hand, revolving two grease-encrusted sprockets, which in turn revolved two long worn wooden rollers that squeezed the excess water out of the clothes. Then the clothes were hung on the clothesline. It was hard work.

The floor was made of cobblestones, very uneven, and inevitably swimming in frothy water, which collected in innumerable cracks and crevices. Feet soon got wet. In the winter I wore my hard leather boots, with metal sprigs on the soles and horseshoes on the heels. The ‘Birmingham Mail’ subscribers donated these to us poor kids, as everyone at school knew. Gran dressed in a special way for wash day. She wore her oldest rusty black dress, a hessian sack around her waist, tied with a piece of string, and big black baggy boots on her feet.

As I turned the mangle we chatted about school, my numerous aunts and uncles, who were serving their country, and the latest bombing, but we always avoided conversations about Grandad and 'poor old Bill,' my father.  No point talking about unpleasant things.

A Lazy Afternoon

One morning at work, several years after the war, I was thinking of becoming sick and having the afternoon off. I was working at Joseph Lucas, the big electrical company, as a production control clerk. I liked working there because the pay was good, and I could wander around the factory, and no one knew if I was reading a book on the toilet or not; which I did a lot. There were several girls in the office, who spent a lot of time making up their faces and giggling. One of the girls was called Nelly.  We did not get on.  I just couldn’t understand why she didn’t fall for my deadly charm. Of course she did have that monotonous Birmingham whining accent, but so did I, although mine had been moderated somewhat due to my travels.

Ever since learning to drive in a three ton Bedford with a crash gear box, I had wanted some wheels of my own. No one in my family, except toffee nosed Uncle George had owned a car. So I saved my pennies and bought a Ford Prefect that turned out to be a white elephant. The only good thing about it was that it was very shiny and black. At least it had a synchromesh gear box, so it didn't play a tune every time I changed gear. However, I soon found out that it had a six volt system, which meant that every day it needed a battery charge, if you stopped and started the engine more than twice a day. Also the windscreen wipers ran off a vacuum from the manifold. This meant, of course, that if you went uphill on a rainy day, the windscreen wipers stopped; I got used to running into other vehicles. Of course England has a rainy day pretty much every day, so this was a disaster of a car. And it had a cranking handle, which was imperative if one wanted this black shiny box to be of any use at all.

Anyway, or as they say in Birmingham and the Midlands, ‘any road up’, my brother Michael and I (I sometimes talked this way instead of using the common ‘Michael and me’ grammar that most people used, to impress certain people, especially my manager, because it confused him - he didn’t know if I was taking the piss or not) used to go for two pints of Best Bitter from the nearest pub, ‘The Strangled Magpie’, at lunch time. I can tell you that there is nothing like two pints of bitter on a hot day. The trouble is of course that one spends most of the afternoon on the loo, but if one sits on it to urinate, one can have a quick read of the paperback book that one always carries in one’s pocket.  (My manager really got confused whenever I talked like that.) I have been known to take a quick kip now and then sitting on the pedestal - which reminds me of the time I fell asleep, and was woken by Jock my Scottish friend, tapping me on the head with a broom; he was standing on a wooden box. Then later on we got pagers, so if Management were looking for you, you got woken up by the beeps instead and didn’t get into trouble.

But, to get back to the story, after a pint or two, with or without Michael, who didn’t always have the half a crown required for the beverage, if I saw a fellow office worker from Lucas on the way back to work, I’d stop and offer them a lift. That made me feel real good and I often refused the bus money that was usually offered by the more generous ones.

One afternoon, waiting at the bus stop after lunch was Nelly. She thought she was really something, and whatever top she wore, it was always one or even two sizes too tight. Although to be honest, I have never been averse to a large chest on a member of the opposite sex, but not so with male chests, not having a big one myself. I had vowed to woo Nelly because she was a bitch, and because I was good at it, wooing that is, and win her over, then discard her with a flourish. Once when we happened to walk in the factory together by accident, I thought I would start.

‘Nelly, what beautiful eyes you have,’ I said, with just the slightest tinge of passion.

‘I know,’ she replied, in that miserable moaning Brummie accent that we all had.

From that day on, whenever we met she widened her eyes. It was very annoying and yet somewhat interesting. Once I nearly walked into the manager, I was so interest in looking at Nelly’s eyes. In my wooing quest, I winked at her a lot as well.

 But, I digress.  To get back to the story, I was going back to work on my own, as Michael was out of half-crowns and I was fed up of shouting him, and I saw this big chest at the bus stop, and lo and behold, when it turned, it was Nelly, so I pulled up at the bus stop with a flourish and yelled,

‘Wonna lift Nelly?’

She ignored me for a few seconds, and then screeched in a high falsetto, ‘Not in that old wreck, I might get damaged.’

Then, she quickly changed her mind and said, ‘Oh all right,’ as though she was doing me a favour.  

When she got in the Ford Nellie moaned, ‘I don’t really wonna goo back to werk.’

‘I don’t ever wonna goo to werk,’ I replied in an equally annoying Brummie whine.

Let’s goo back to my place then,’ she said. ‘Auntie Doris’ll give us a cup o’ tea and a piece.’

But to go back to Nelly’s aunt’s house would be worse than werk. I had met her aunt at the works Christmas dinner. She also had a big chest, and used it mercilessly on young men. And she did my ears in too.

So I replied, ‘Let’s go to the Lickey Hills, and tomorra we’ll say we were taken ill with some mysterious disease.’

Nelly reluctantly agreed, and we headed off.  She ducked her head down as we drove past Lucas, and we kept going at thirty miles an hour to an afternoon of freedom and who know what else. It was exciting to miss work, on the spur of the moment. And I could continue my devious wooing.  

We had two ice creams from the shop at the foot of the Lickey Hills, then climbed up to the top and looked at the vista. Then we lay on the grass side by side and watched the clouds gently moving, to the east, I remember.

Then  Nelly asked, ‘Did anythin’ ‘appen to you or your family in the war?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘same things that happened to everybody - the bombs, no food, Dad in the Army an’ that.’

Then after a bit I said, ‘How about you, Nell?’

She didn't answer for a minute, and I thought she hadn’t heard, but then she said in a soft voice, that sounded like somebody else, ‘We got bombed out; Mom, Gran, Emily, my sister, they all died.’

Then she added, ‘I aint got nobody now, except Auntie Doris.’

‘Oh.’ I said, ‘Sorry.’ For what else could I say.

We lay there for a while, looking at the clouds, moving languidly across the very blue sky, and then her hand crept slowly over the grass, and interlocked my fingers, and we held hands. Although not really liking each other much, we were soulmates.  We’d lived a childhood different to most; we had been children in wartime, children amongst the bombs, the fires and the rubble – others born before us or after us weren’t the same. No more needed to be said. I couldn’t pretend to court Nelly anymore, because I had grown to like her. And we became friends.

We continued looking at the sky, holding hands for a while, and then we slowly got up and walked back down the hill where the old Ford Prefect was waiting.  I drove her home, neither of us saying much, each involved in our own memories.

The next day the staff in the office smirked when they noticed that we had both got our faces sunburned on the afternoon we had both been sick.

But no one said anything.