TASHY DID - A LIFE
1951
After all those firsts in 1950, this was a rather quiet year it seems, bookended by two hospital visits for me. The first occurred at the start of the year and
was required as I had an abscess on a tooth. The story mother used to tell, for years after, was that, the day before, I helped her pack my little suitcase, gently
laying my large blue bunny rabbit on the top, I was spending a couple of nights in a local, private nursing home. We then both went downstairs. She and I talked
and she explained what was happening and then she got on with cooking dinner. A half hour or so later, she went back upstairs and found an empty suitcase on the
floor. I had unpacked it all as I wasn’t really that keen on going into the nursing home. She said I told her bunny had done it. Seems reasonable.
I should point out, if you’re interested, that, for the whole of my childhood, in fact till I got married and left home, mother, my sister and I had private
health care. I have no idea how much this cost but it did mean that I didn’t have much idea of how the health service worked. If we needed a doctor, we rang him,
and he called round. As for many years through the fifties and sixties, mother’s health meant she had weekly visits and injections, I shudder at the cost. By the
way, the photos accompanying this blog seem to come from a set done by a professional photographer. I can be seen going from worried, to apprehensive, to relaxing
and, after the lamplighter, positively ecstatic and wearing a rather fetching piece of headgear.
The operation left me with a scar under my right jaw, one that can still be seen to this day, until I decided at the back end of 2015 that a beard suited the now
enforced elderly look. For a little boy who was incredibly shy, this was a source of
much embarrassment when I first went to school, as fellow pupils would notice it and ask me what happened. For some, this might have been a fantastic opportunity
as you could become the centre of attention but, if your sole aim was to be a nonentity, it wasn’t a good thing. If you look very closely at the photo on the
right, you can just see a lighter area, presumably pinkish in colour, and if your eyesight is poor, I have marked it with an arrow. Actually, if your eyesight
is good, I have marked it with an arrow too. It was quite a big scar, it needed four stitches.
The good thing was that for a few weeks after this, I was allowed to sleep in my parent’s room at the front of the house. This meant, instead of having tube
train lights cascading around my room, I could see the street light outside our house and also, watch car lights as they too ran around the room. This may be one
of the reasons I have always loved night-time at Le Mans, or for a period in the eighties, at the old 24-hour race they held at Snetterton. The headlamps painting
their own picture through the night and along the track. Ah, Ians Flux and Taylor and a Mercedes 190 I seem to remember. The crepes at Snetterton at 4am were
pretty special too. As my operation took place in February, I could also watch, from our lounge window, the lamplighter who would come round each evening and
light the street light outside our house and then return each morning to extinguish it. You don’t know what you are missing these days. All done by a switch,
no one to know when they fail and high unemployment. Sometime in the eighties, when my students were discussing different writing styles, I wrote them a poem
about life as it was and I included this memory of the street lighter.
I was born in a time that has sadly gone by
When people lived on this earth
I’ve grown up to be, well a child of tomorrow
And I constantly ask, what’s life worth? We are run by machines who take care of our needs
We’re controlled with a flick of the wrist
But the truth of it all, well for one who knew more,
We no longer live life, we exist. In my time as a child, when we wanted streets lit,
Each evening a man would pass by
And he’d lighten our life, and come back in the morn
And put them out as we’d light from the sky. Now the whole thing is run from a far remote place
By a being who sits on his own.
And when things go wrong, there’s no one to know
And machines will then answer the phone. And, after spending time in the so-called third world countries of the Pacific, I think they could teach us a thing or two. There may be some good reasons for using people to do jobs for which we now use machines.
But enough of that, the rest of my year seems to have been normal until late November and my first attempt to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. I think
I mentioned in another blog that my grandparents house had a very large hall, in the middle of which was a circular oak wood table, about seven-foot in
diameter and, according to Pythagoras, 22 feet in circumference. On one of our weekend visits to my grandparent’s house, whilst the adults chatted after
lunch in the dining room, I set out to lap this table a few times. Roundabout, I would guess, lap 50, gravity and dizziness became enemies. The “bucket
round the head – water stays in” theory was surpassed by the “whoops I’m getting dizzy” feeling and I left the closeness of the table and took a wider circle.
Within this wider circle was a glass-fronted bookcase and I went, head-first, straight through the glass part. My year, therefore, a bit like my Indy practice,
went full circle and I returned to hospital to have glass fragments removed from my head. Thinking about it now, I may have been a trifle lucky or maybe my
survival instinct convinced me not to place my whole head, and highly vulnerable neck, through the shattered glass.
Now a few words about my paternal grandfather. I have absolutely no photos of this side of the family but there was, until 2015, a surviving member who was
able to fill me in with some details. She passed away at the age of 96 and, if at that age, I am as alert and intelligent as she was, I will be more than happy.
My grandfather, Thomas Edward, was born on 12 December 1872. It was his father who worked for Ordnance Survey, then part of the military, and who recorded
the height of Ben Nevis. My grandfather also entered government service and, at the time of his wedding in 1905, was shown as a clerk in the Board of Agriculture.
By the time of my father’s birth, a year later, he was shown as a draughtsman at the Board Of Agriculture and he remained, in various roles, as a civil servant
for his whole working life. I will tell you more about the other children when I write about my grandmother.
Grandfather was the youngest of ten children, although it seems that at least a couple failed to survive infancy as my aunt never knew them and remembers
being told that they had died at a young age. In the 1901 census, he was shown as living in Harley Street, which may sound grand but it seems he may just have
occupied a small attic flat.
By 1906 the family were living in Dorothy Road in Battersea and, courtesy of google, I have found a copy of how the house looks today. It is the red brick
one in the centre of the picture. However, as my father’s birth certificate says 79b, one must assume that they had one part of this property but whether up
or down, I do not know. During the First World War, grandfather served as a special constable. Shortly after the war the family had holidays along the coast of
Northern France and Belgium. I know very little more until sometime during World War Two, with all their children off their hands, grandfather and granny moved
up to Harrogate, in Yorkshire, where many of granny’s relations lived. Grandfather had been an air raid warden at the start of the war but it was felt, as he
was then 70, that they would be safer away from the bombings in London.
They then settled in Harrogate but sometime before I was born, grandfather had a stroke and was left paralysed on one side. On my journey from Newcastle
to London, at the age of six weeks, we stopped by to see them. In early 1950 they moved down to live with their youngest daughter, my longest surviving aunt, who had
bought a house in Slough. On 23 November 1950, ironically the same day 31 years later that my father entered hospital for what turned out to be his last move,
grandfather died. My aunt tells the story that she and her mother were sitting downstairs when her mother said, “he’s gone”, and, when they went upstairs,
grandfather was dead. I have a vision of an old man with a fringe of hair around the back of his head, playing with me and I was told, by my mother, that as
grandfather had lost the power of speech from his stroke, he enjoyed my company as, at that age, my power of speech was limited too. I would like to think this
was true.
After all those firsts in 1950, this was a rather quiet year it seems, bookended by two hospital visits for me. The first occurred at the start of the year and
was required as I had an abscess on a tooth. The story mother used to tell, for years after, was that, the day before, I helped her pack my little suitcase, gently
laying my large blue bunny rabbit on the top, I was spending a couple of nights in a local, private nursing home. We then both went downstairs. She and I talked
and she explained what was happening and then she got on with cooking dinner. A half hour or so later, she went back upstairs and found an empty suitcase on the
floor. I had unpacked it all as I wasn’t really that keen on going into the nursing home. She said I told her bunny had done it. Seems reasonable.
I should point out, if you’re interested, that, for the whole of my childhood, in fact till I got married and left home, mother, my sister and I had private
health care. I have no idea how much this cost but it did mean that I didn’t have much idea of how the health service worked. If we needed a doctor, we rang him,
and he called round. As for many years through the fifties and sixties, mother’s health meant she had weekly visits and injections, I shudder at the cost. By the
way, the photos accompanying this blog seem to come from a set done by a professional photographer. I can be seen going from worried, to apprehensive, to relaxing
and, after the lamplighter, positively ecstatic and wearing a rather fetching piece of headgear.
The operation left me with a scar under my right jaw, one that can still be seen to this day, until I decided at the back end of 2015 that a beard suited the now
enforced elderly look. For a little boy who was incredibly shy, this was a source of
much embarrassment when I first went to school, as fellow pupils would notice it and ask me what happened. For some, this might have been a fantastic opportunity
as you could become the centre of attention but, if your sole aim was to be a nonentity, it wasn’t a good thing. If you look very closely at the photo on the
right, you can just see a lighter area, presumably pinkish in colour, and if your eyesight is poor, I have marked it with an arrow. Actually, if your eyesight
is good, I have marked it with an arrow too. It was quite a big scar, it needed four stitches.
The good thing was that for a few weeks after this, I was allowed to sleep in my parent’s room at the front of the house. This meant, instead of having tube
train lights cascading around my room, I could see the street light outside our house and also, watch car lights as they too ran around the room. This may be one
of the reasons I have always loved night-time at Le Mans, or for a period in the eighties, at the old 24-hour race they held at Snetterton. The headlamps painting
their own picture through the night and along the track. Ah, Ians Flux and Taylor and a Mercedes 190 I seem to remember. The crepes at Snetterton at 4am were
pretty special too. As my operation took place in February, I could also watch, from our lounge window, the lamplighter who would come round each evening and
light the street light outside our house and then return each morning to extinguish it. You don’t know what you are missing these days. All done by a switch,
no one to know when they fail and high unemployment. Sometime in the eighties, when my students were discussing different writing styles, I wrote them a poem
about life as it was and I included this memory of the street lighter.
I was born in a time that has sadly gone byWhen people lived on this earth
I’ve grown up to be, well a child of tomorrow
And I constantly ask, what’s life worth? We are run by machines who take care of our needs
We’re controlled with a flick of the wrist
But the truth of it all, well for one who knew more,
We no longer live life, we exist. In my time as a child, when we wanted streets lit,
Each evening a man would pass by
And he’d lighten our life, and come back in the morn
And put them out as we’d light from the sky. Now the whole thing is run from a far remote place
By a being who sits on his own.
And when things go wrong, there’s no one to know
And machines will then answer the phone. And, after spending time in the so-called third world countries of the Pacific, I think they could teach us a thing or two. There may be some good reasons for using people to do jobs for which we now use machines.
But enough of that, the rest of my year seems to have been normal until late November and my first attempt to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. I think
I mentioned in another blog that my grandparents house had a very large hall, in the middle of which was a circular oak wood table, about seven-foot in
diameter and, according to Pythagoras, 22 feet in circumference. On one of our weekend visits to my grandparent’s house, whilst the adults chatted after
lunch in the dining room, I set out to lap this table a few times. Roundabout, I would guess, lap 50, gravity and dizziness became enemies. The “bucket
round the head – water stays in” theory was surpassed by the “whoops I’m getting dizzy” feeling and I left the closeness of the table and took a wider circle.
Within this wider circle was a glass-fronted bookcase and I went, head-first, straight through the glass part. My year, therefore, a bit like my Indy practice,
went full circle and I returned to hospital to have glass fragments removed from my head. Thinking about it now, I may have been a trifle lucky or maybe my
survival instinct convinced me not to place my whole head, and highly vulnerable neck, through the shattered glass.
Now a few words about my paternal grandfather. I have absolutely no photos of this side of the family but there was, until 2015, a surviving member who was
able to fill me in with some details. She passed away at the age of 96 and, if at that age, I am as alert and intelligent as she was, I will be more than happy.
My grandfather, Thomas Edward, was born on 12 December 1872. It was his father who worked for Ordnance Survey, then part of the military, and who recorded
the height of Ben Nevis. My grandfather also entered government service and, at the time of his wedding in 1905, was shown as a clerk in the Board of Agriculture.
By the time of my father’s birth, a year later, he was shown as a draughtsman at the Board Of Agriculture and he remained, in various roles, as a civil servant
for his whole working life. I will tell you more about the other children when I write about my grandmother.
Grandfather was the youngest of ten children, although it seems that at least a couple failed to survive infancy as my aunt never knew them and remembers
being told that they had died at a young age. In the 1901 census, he was shown as living in Harley Street, which may sound grand but it seems he may just have
occupied a small attic flat.
By 1906 the family were living in Dorothy Road in Battersea and, courtesy of google, I have found a copy of how the house looks today. It is the red brick
one in the centre of the picture. However, as my father’s birth certificate says 79b, one must assume that they had one part of this property but whether up
or down, I do not know. During the First World War, grandfather served as a special constable. Shortly after the war the family had holidays along the coast of
Northern France and Belgium. I know very little more until sometime during World War Two, with all their children off their hands, grandfather and granny moved
up to Harrogate, in Yorkshire, where many of granny’s relations lived. Grandfather had been an air raid warden at the start of the war but it was felt, as he
was then 70, that they would be safer away from the bombings in London.
They then settled in Harrogate but sometime before I was born, grandfather had a stroke and was left paralysed on one side. On my journey from Newcastle
to London, at the age of six weeks, we stopped by to see them. In early 1950 they moved down to live with their youngest daughter, my longest surviving aunt, who had
bought a house in Slough. On 23 November 1950, ironically the same day 31 years later that my father entered hospital for what turned out to be his last move,
grandfather died. My aunt tells the story that she and her mother were sitting downstairs when her mother said, “he’s gone”, and, when they went upstairs,
grandfather was dead. I have a vision of an old man with a fringe of hair around the back of his head, playing with me and I was told, by my mother, that as
grandfather had lost the power of speech from his stroke, he enjoyed my company as, at that age, my power of speech was limited too. I would like to think this
was true.
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