Michael and the Train

I started school when I was six years old; but the night before my very first day of school, Benson Road Primary School was damaged by a bomb. So I started school at one of the teacher’s houses instead. We sat on the floor by the coal fire in her front room and had a rather cosy time learning things that I don’t remember now. After a month or two, the school was ready to use again, so that’s where I went from then on, until I was eleven.

I quite liked it at Primary School.  Some of the teachers were nice, especially Miss Dumelow, who took us out for art classes and made us paint pubs. I don’t know why she didn’t get us to paint any other buildings  – just pubs. But we had to do lots of stupid things at school like practicing our times tables with our gas masks on. We sounded like a mob of diseased seals and nobody could tell if we were making lots of mistakes or not. Sometimes we had to walk around outside in the playground with our gas masks on, and make sure they worked, by putting a piece of paper over them to see if we could make the paper cling to the mask by sucking in air. Gas masks were a big nuisance, and of course it turned out that we never needed them at all.

My Gran, Emily Powell

After school I always went to my Gran’s cottage at 48 Bacchus Road, which wasn’t far away. Gran loved me more than any of the other grandchildren. Auntie Chris told me it was because I was the first grandson. My brother Michael said that he didn’t care that I was the favourite, ‘cause Mom always let him wear the vest in the winter, when the weather was ‘bitta’.

As I escaped from Benson Road Primary school each day (which was surrounded by a very high wall at the back and iron railings surmounted by spikes at the front), sometimes I was lucky as I ran out of the playground, to catch a glimpse of Georgina playing with her friends. Why do I remember her name as Georgina? Perhaps I have her name mixed up with the heroine of Enid Blyton's 'Five on a Treasure Island'. Georgina was about eight, and her head was haloed with very tight golden curls. She was always dressed very neatly, often in a ribbed green turtle neck sweater, a grey pleated skirt, white ankle socks, and shiny black patent shoes with a strap and a buckle. If she caught me looking at her she would peer at me with interest through thick 'jam pot end' golden wire glasses. Georgina never said a word to me, but engendered deep within me a longing, for I know not what.

Benson Road Primary School, now with blue railings instead of green

 After slowing down at the green cast iron gate, for there would be a teacher there, looking for pupils who were up to mischief, I ran on to Gran’s cottage. I would know where to find her from what day it was. If it was Monday, Gran would be in the brew house washing the clothes; and I would turn the mangle for her. I loved my Gran and still do, although she passed away sixty years ago. My brother would come to Gran’s too, but usually later on, for he was never in a hurry. We would dawdle there a while and then head off home. Sometimes we were a train, and one of us would hold on to the other's jersey and we would steam home. We would always go across the railway bridge, and occasionally climb over the parapet to the ledge and walk along it to the other side. It was a long drop down to the railway tracks and we were not allowed to cross the bridge on the outside of the parapet in case we fell down onto the track; so of course, that’s what we did.

My brother Michael, all dressed up

Usually we looked more like these kids, and Michael's socks were always falling down

One afternoon, we were walking along the narrow ledge, when Michael slipped and fell. Luckily there was a goods train standing still below him, and Michael fell onto one of its cars, which had a tarpaulin stretched tightly across the top. Michael bounced a little bit, then got up and shouted something and waved to me. Then the train got up steam and off it went; we found out later that it went to Crewe, which was about a hundred miles away. So, what to do… I decided that if I said nothing, no one would be the wiser. But of course Mom did notice that one of her children was missing, and got it out of me about what had happened. Then she got on to the police, and later that evening Michael was returned to the bombed street where we lived, in a black police car with its
bell ringing. He was looking out of the window waving to the kids in the street, looking very happy, until he saw Mom’s face.

Neither of us came out of that episode very well.

Fetching Some Coal

One winter's night Mom sent me outside into the barren little yard behind our house to see if there was any slack left. Slack is the little bits of coal that are always left when the big lumps were all burned. It was my duty to get the coal, because it was outside the house and I was a male. Well that was Mom’s rule anyway. Chores inside were female; chores outside were male territory.

The coal man brought a sack of coal once a fortnight and emptied it in a messy pile just inside the gate at the back of the yard. Then he would trudge back along the narrow little alley behind the houses, to the street where he had parked his truck, fill up his sack again and haul it on his back along the alley to the next customer. I thought it must be very hard work, and boring too. It was easier where my Gran lived; there was a ‘coal hole’ in the pavement in front of each house there, so the coal man only had to take the cover off and drop the coal down. I fell down a coal hole once - I rarely looked where I was going – and I still have the scar to prove it.

Queueing for coal

As the war went on, coal was in short supply, so everybody got less. Eventually people were queueing up for it with prams or wheelbarrows or anything else they could use to carry it away. This night, we had a meagre little heap of it in the yard. Maybe some of it had been stolen; during the war people helped each other out a lot, but there were those who were more interested in helping themselves.

It was a bitterly cold Birmingham winter night; the freezing wind caught my breath as Mom slammed the back door shut with a loud bang as she shouted ‘Keep the warm in’. There was a clear frosty sky, with a ‘Bomber’s Moon'. I shivered, remembering the terror of the latest air raid, and hoping there would be no bombing that night, or ever again.

I walked quickly past the air raid shelter. I didn’t like to think about having to go into that concrete and brick edifice that we had to share with the family next door and wait in extreme discomfort for Jerry to drop a bomb on our house. Sometimes the bombing raids got so scary, I wet myself. At least Mrs Gilks next door always brought a flask of tea along, and shared it with us, because my Mom never brought anything.

An Anderson shelter.
This one has a vegetable garden on top.

Not everybody had a solid shelter like ours. Most people with gardens had an Anderson shelter, named after Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary. We had one of those at the house where we lived before in Bacchus Road. It was so cold, wet and uncomfortable that to me it seemed worth chancing a direct hit from a German bomb and dying in bed. An Anderson shelter consisted of fourteen sheets of corrugated steel, forming a shell 6ft high, 4ft wide and 6ft long. It was buried 4ft deep and covered with 15 inches of soil. It could shelter six people in extreme discomfort. We spent more time bailing the rainwater out than sheltering in it. And one time Grandad Joe fell into the shelter when he was drunk, and landed right on top of the fat lady who lived down the road.

Only twenty percent of the population of the United Kingdom had a garden, so more than three quarters of British citizens didn’t even have the option of having their basic safety needs met, and had to shelter from the bombing as best they could. Lots of them had to go to public shelters, but some, like my Gran, had a Morrison shelter inside the house. It was a sort of cage thing with a steel top that was supposed to stop the house falling on you and killing you. Gran’s shelter had a snooker table on the top. My cousin Jean ripped the felt with a pool cue once and blamed me for it. I have never let her forget it.

Anyway, there I was on an expedition for fuel on that bitter night. There was only enough slack left to fill an old boot, which is what I was doing when I heard the air raid sirens start.

King Edwards Grammar School and the Eleven Plus Exam

After attending primary school, which I liked,  I wanted to go to a Grammar School. But to do that, you had to pass a test called the ‘Eleven Plus’. So on a certain day I went on the bus, by myself, to King Edward’s Grammar School to take the test. King Edward’s was a Grammar School just like the ‘Red Circle School’ in the Rover boy’s comic. Pupils wore blazers with gold badges on their pockets. I think that’s why I wanted to go to a Grammar School, to get a gold badge. There were lots of other boys there to take the test, but I didn’t see anyone from my school. The King Edward’s boys and teachers didn’t seem to think much of us boys from council schools, and mostly ignored us.

King Edward's Grammar School, Aston

I remember there was a statue of ‘King Edward the something’ in the playground. They called it a quadrangle; I’m not sure why - it looked just like a playground. Some boys called Prefects, who wore blazers with a coloured edging on the lapels, lined us up to go inside. We were told that at ‘lunchtime’ we could go to the ‘Tuck Shop’. I knew what lunch meant because I had read about it in the Rover and that’s what Auntie Jess called it.  But I knew it was really dinnertime, and Mom had given me two bob to spend.

The classroom was very old and the desks were all carved with boys’ initials of other times. The desks had ink pots and steel nib pens just like at our school. Biros were not allowed, a Master said; it didn’t matter because I hadn’t got one anyway. The Master - they didn’t have teachers - with a big moustache like a walrus, said passing this test was the chance for any boy with a modicum of intelligence, whatever that was, to get into a first class Grammar School. He told us confidentially that it was just basic English, Maths, and so on, some Civic Affairs and some common sense.

He said we must not start the exam until he said so, and if we turned over the exam paper before that, we would face dire consequences. Then after a pause, he wished us good luck, and said ‘Begin!’

The Maths questions involved things that I had never heard of, but the English ones were easy, except nobody had told me what an adjective was. The Civic Affairs questions were about who was the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, what was the name of the Prime Minister, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and things like that. These were things that any normal pupil would know, the Master had said, things that we would have gleaned from any newspaper that one would see at home, or during conversation around the dining table.  But contrary to his assumptions, I didn’t know the answers to the Civic Affairs questions. We didn’t have a dining room table at home, nor did we have conversation at dinnertime. And the only newspapers we ever had at home were the ‘Sports Argus’ and the ‘Sporting Buff’. There were lots of questions that I had no idea about. I failed my eleven plus.

SOME QUESTIONS FROM THE ELEVEN PLUS

Arithmetic

1 A man left home at 11.30 a.m. and cycled 5 miles to a railway station at the rate of 12 miles an hour. He waited 10 minutes at the station and then travelled by train a distance of 36 miles at the rate of 24 miles an hour. At what time did he reach his destination?

2 There were 9,975 spectators at a football match. This is 5 per cent more than were present at the preceding match. How many attended the previous match?

General English

1 Write out the following passage again, including only the one correct word from each bracket: The boy (who, whom, what) we met at the baths and (who, whom, what) spoke to (you, I, me) and (you, I, me) is Harry Baines; he (use, used) to live near me and he often (come, came, went) to my house to play with me. He had a good stamp collection; the total number of his stamps (are, was, were) more than three thousand. (He, Him, Me) and (I, him, me) (was, am, were) great friends.

2 Make adjectives from these nouns: beauty, slope, glass, friend, doubt, expense, delight, sleep, danger, sport.

Comprehension

Read the following story from Aesop's Fables, and then answer the questions:

Belling the Cat A large family of merry mice lived happily together in the cellar of a lofty house. Their only enemy was a fierce, black cat, who kept the mice in constant fear of a sudden and cruel death. Even in the dead of night it was not safe for them to stir far from their holes in search of food, and they found much difficulty in getting enough to eat. One day the mice met together to try and find a way out of their plight. 'I will tell you what to do,' said a young mouse. 'Let us tie a bell round the wretched cat's neck, then we can always hear her coming.' On hearing this suggestion all the mice began to squeak with delight, except one old grey whiskered mouse who said, ' The advice is very good, but who will bell the cat?'

Where did the mice live? What feelings had they towards the cat? What did the young mouse suggest should be done to the cat?

General Intelligence/Knowledge

The leader of a Guide patrol is named Mary Jenkins; so her surname is Jenkins, her Christian name is Mary, and her initials are M.J. There are 6 other girls in her patrol; each has 2 initials. Surnames: Brown, Smith, Evans, Clark, Jones. Christian names: Molly, Celia, Gwen, Ruth, Sally. Two girls have surname and Christian names beginning with the same letter; two others are named Ruth. One of the twins has the same initials as the leader, and the other has the same Christian name as Evans. Write down each girl's full name.

ANSWERS

Arithmetic

1. 1.35 p.m.      2. 9,500 spectators

General English

1. The boy whom we met at the baths and who spoke to you and me is Harry Baines; he used to live near me and he often came to my house to play with me. He had a good stamp collection; the total number of his stamps was more than three thousand. He and I were great friends.

2. beautiful, sloping, glassy, friendly, doubting, expensive, delightful, sleeping, dangerous, sporting/sporty

Comprehension

The mice lived in the cellar of a lofty house. The mice had feelings of enmity and fear towards the cat. The young mouse suggested that the cat have a bell tied round its neck so they could hear it coming.

General Intelligence/Knowledge

1. Celia Clark Sally Smith Molly Jones Ruth Jones Ruth Evans Gwen Brown

Swearing with Mary

When I was 12 I looked about 7

When I was about twelve, I belonged to a gang of boys called 'The Boys'; there were no girls allowed, except for one who was called Mary, or Big Bum. She was bigger than all of us boys, and when she spotted us having a meeting, she came along and joined us on my Mom’s front step, uninvited, and no one could think of a way of stopping her since she was taller and stronger than all of us. Desmond suggested that we could let her in to the gang properly, even though she was a girl, but only if she could share a new swear word. We then reminded ourselves of the swear words that we already knew. They included 'bloody', 'hell', 'sod', 'shit' and 'bugger'. Of course we didn’t know what all of them of them meant, but we did know that if we used them in front of adults, we would get a smack on the head, or maybe ‘the belt’.

So there we were sitting on the step dying for a smoke, when who should come running down the street but Mary, all out of breath.  Plonking herself between Fred and Henry she moved her hips suddenly sideways and knocked Fred right off the step.

Then Mary said, ‘So what are we going to do today?’ as though she was a member of the gang.

A gang of 'tough boys' like me.

‘Well,’ said Desmond, ‘we’ve just made up a new rule  - you can’t belong to the gang until you bring in a new swear word, and it must be one that we haven’t got’.

‘What swear words have you already got?’ said Mary.

So we told her the ones that we knew. Mary said they were pissy swear words and she had a much better one. None of us mentioned to Mary that we hadn’t thought of ‘pissy’ as a swear word, and waited eagerly for the new word, which might be even better

‘Fuck!‘ she said with an evil glint in her eyes.

‘What kind of a word is that, Big Bum?’ said Fred. ‘I’ve never heard it before.’

‘I have,’ said Henry. ‘I heard my Dad tell our cat to fuck off once.’

So we agreed to let Mary into the gang. And then find someone who could tell us what the word meant.

Well, you might think that was the end of the story, but no. On Sundays I had to have dinner at home with my family in Preston Road. I usually stayed all day with my Gran ‘cause she loved me the best of all my cousins  - girls and boys - which I thought was perfectly natural. Any road up, that Sunday I came home for dinner and there we were round the table, and I dropped my fork on the floor, and said, 'Oh fuck.’

Dad lurched up and came running around the table and I thought he was going to kill me. So I headed for the door and ran all the way back to Gran’s house, with Dad chasing me. When we both got there I hid behind Gran’s long skirt.

She said to my Dad, ‘If you touch this child, you and I are going to fall out.’

So Dad backed off and went home. I was a bit miffed at being called a child, but grateful nonetheless. So I made up my mind to definitely ask Big Bum what fuck meant; I obviously didn’t know what I was dealing with.  Learning to swear with a gang of ‘tough’ boys and a girl was going to be more serious than I thought .

Going to Church with Gran

I spent a lot of time with Gran during the war, but always had to go home to Preston Road to sleep. On the wall at Gran’s house there was a black and white ‘lithograph’, that’s what Gran called it, of Great Uncle William who got killed in the Great War, which was called ‘the war to end all wars’. He stood there proudly in the uniform of a private of the South Staffordshire Regiment; on his head was a pillbox hat tilted to one side, and in his hand was a swagger stick. Every year on Armistice Day all the members of the family put a poppy around the frame of the lithograph to remember Gran’s twin brother who died serving his country. Sometimes after church Gran would let me look at Great Uncle William’s medals and the special plaque that soldiers got in the Great War, when they were blown up by the Germans.

Gran and I always went to St Chrysostoms Church of England in Winson Green. The church was in Park Road where Auntie Chris lived; Uncle Edwin was her husband and he was in the army serving in India. Gran said that St Chrysostom’s was opened in 1888 as a mission church and consecrated in 1889 as a real church. I think that a mission church was for poor people; I didn’t know that we were poor, nobody ever told me. It was a rough old church; there was a woodyard opposite and scrap metal yards, and a railway bridge 50 yards away. To complete the picture, weeds covered every spare inch of space. When it was built, in Victorian times, the church would have been the centre of parish life. But even then, Winson Green, which makes you think of a quaint village with a central green and a duck pond, was a dark, dirty industrial area, infested with factories.

St Chrysostom’s Church, which was demolished in 1970

At the church door, I gave out the hymnbooks, mostly to women and young girls. Then I sat down next to Gran and pretended to sing as the organ started to wail. The hymns 'For Those in Peril on the Sea' and 'Onward Christian Soldiers' are indelibly imprinted in my memory. It was at church that my interest in girls gathered momentum, and increased my confusion about my feelings for them. Blonde and brown headed girls giggled a lot outside of St. Chrysostoms. Upon entering the cold gloomy silence of the church, with its dusty battle flags of the First World War hanging from poles on the wall, these chattering girls became almost angelic. Stern penitent mothers admonished their clutches of angels sitting on hard pews, to ‘shush’.

The vicar, who was aided by three young boys in white frocks, also wore what I thought was a lady’s frock, and he had a piece of coloured ribbon around his neck with a large medal dangling from it. I didn't understand anything about what he preached, but I remember that he almost sang his words and I noticed that some of the moms would nod off to sleep. That was when I cast furtive looks at those enraptured girls, as I had looked at Georgina in the playground.

At the end of the service, some of the congregation milled around the arched doorway, while others
pushed through the heavy doors, eager to be the first away to listen to the radio. But it was compulsory to shake the vicar’s hand, which meant that there was a queue and it took some time to get out.

The evening service was a repeat of the morning one, except that only half of the congregation turned up, and worst of all, almost no girls. At the evening service there were no compulsory handshakes with the vicar at the church door, so the congregation disappeared as quickly as soap suds down the sink once the plug had been pulled.

Church over and a slow stroll home, and Gran and I would listen to ‘Grand Hotel' on the BBC Home Service. That was where I was introduced to classical music. I also listened to ITMA - 'It’s That Man Again' featuring Tommy Handley. I didn't understand the jokes, which were topical, some concerning the current war. I was old enough, however, to understand the terror of the nightly bombing.
 

Radio was everyone’s ears to the world. There were many comedy shows and drama series as well as music. I don’t remember hearing Princess Elizabeth on the radio, but she did some encouraging talks for children during the war.

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.