TASHY DID - A LIFE
1954
After the automobile incidents of the previous year, 1954 was rather quiet. In fact, so quiet, there is only one family photo and, once again, the sartorial
style which I have carried through life, is showing signs of emerging; as are my underpants but if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em. Of course, we now had no car
and I had reached the age when I would be starting school. I have no idea how my parents made the choice for my prep school except, possibly, that the boy
next door, who was a few years older, had started there. On reflection, knowing what I do now, it was a strange choice. The school was Quainton Hall School in
Harrow-on-the-Hill, two stops on the metropolitan line from Rayners Lane.
Unfortunately, the school was then a further mile or so walk from the station. Most mornings I would get a lift from the people next door and in the
afternoon either my grandfather would come and pick me up in his car or mother, lugging my little sister with her, would catch the train from home, get off
at Harrow, carrying a push chair up the stairs, and then walk the mile to meet me at school from whence we would repeat the journey although she now had my
help for the stairs down at Harrow and stairs up at Rayners Lane, not to mention the steep flight of stairs which led from the main road down to our little
road in Oakington Avenue. Aye lad, life were tuff. Oh sorry, haven’t moved north yet, just practicing.
I hated school. Full stop. I hated playtime because I didn’t have any real friends. Apart from the boy next door who was a year or two ahead of me, no
one in my class lived anywhere near me. I hated lessons because I was always afraid of making a fool of myself if asked a question. I had, as I’m sure many
people do, this way of going bright red if something embarrassed me and of course if you do that people notice you even more. If you gave me a test I was
happy because, until the results came out, no one knew how I was doing and I used to do pretty well anyway. Each day, at morning break, we would have a
third of a pint of milk and, when you had drunk it, through a straw in a real glass bottle, you could go outside for the remainder of the break. I always
made my bottle last the full 20 minutes.
I was also a sickly child suffering numerous ear infections, swollen tonsils and general colds. This was the only time in my life when I have ever taken
any medicine to help cure whatever it was. They made little orange flavoured aspirin specially for children and I used to take these for the above and
toothache. As my children will well know, since the age of about 16, I have not taken more than, perhaps, 10 aspirin like pills in all that time. I do not
consider I have had a day’s illness in over 30 years but more of this later.
It was also a very religious school. Each morning we had prayers and a reading and a hymn in the chapel and on Thursday, older boys, of which I would
later become one, were expected to arrive early for a full service with swinging incense and I don’t know what else, mainly because…… I never went. Having
said all that, I did like my teacher but we only kept them for a year before moving on.
Other exciting things for this year were the end of sweet rationing and that saw a family custom that would continue for many years. Each day, on
Harrow station if mother came to meet me, she would buy my sister and I a bar of chocolate each. My preference, I remember, was for a Fry’s five centre as
was and it would cost five pence or roughly 2p in modern money.
Another ingestible fact was that as children we were all given a spoonful of cod liver oil each day. Rather weirdly, I liked this, so when my picky,
choosy little sister always refused hers, I had two. I had earlier also developed a taste for gripe water and this continued when my own children were young.
I was also fascinated watching mother, or father, make my sister’s bottles. Sliding a knife across the top of the scoop generously provided by Ostermilk to
ensure a level scoopfull was pure poetry to my eyes. I also loved doing this for my own kids too and in view of my desire to level things off with a knife,
it may have been a blessing that they weren’t breast-fed.
OK, here comes father. My father was born, at 79b Dorothy Road, Battersea, on May 14 1906. His parents were not, like my mother’s, particularly well-off.
I know nothing at all about his early life but at the age of 13, he won a scholarship to Emanuel School in Wandsworth. He left there aged 18 and went to London
University, Kings, where he got a BA in Classics, which was to haunt me for many of my teen years. According to his sister he had to re-sit his final year as he
had spent too much time with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. One story I do know from his early years was that, while out playing cricket with his friends, and
taking his baby sister, 12 years younger, in her pram, somebody managed to hit the ball into the pram. Luckily it missed her. It was a hard cricket ball. He also
used to recall playing his finest game of rugby on a steak and kidney pudding. No, this was not some new surface they used before drop-in pitches. He had,
apparently, been unaware he would be playing that afternoon and eaten a very large lunch.
He was a very fine piano player but I recently learnt that he could play most instruments, being particularly good with any from the woodwind section.
From university, he went straight into the civil service, where he remained for over 40 years. Toward the end of his life, once I had moved into working with
young people, he told me he had always wanted to be a teacher but felt he needed to experience the real world first. Unfortunately, that was where he stayed
and whilst I would agree that a life going from your own school, through university and then back into school is not the best of training for teaching, the
danger is that if you don’t do it immediately you may get stuck in a rut. He did; I was lucky.
The next part of his life is interesting for one very good reason. Father married, for the first time, on 2 April 1932 at the Parish Church of St Michael,
Wandsworth Common. He and his wife had a daughter born 30 April 1935. They separated sometime before 1943 and father left the family home in Epsom and moved
into a flat in DuCann Court, Balham.
The interesting thing is that it wasn’t until 1970, when I was 21, that I knew anything at all about his first marriage. Neither my sister, nor I, were
ever told. Now I think about, it is strange that father had no photos of his early life but it never occurred to me that he had been married before and an ex
could seemingly take away from him a part of his existence. To me, that is cruelty and I admired him for never, ever, complaining about this, once I knew his
situation and we talked about it. It would appear, from things I have heard, that, as in most cases, father was not solely to blame for the situation. I am also
certain that he, at the time, firmly believed he was doing the best thing for everybody.
During the war he was a fire watcher, who, I understand, would spend nights out in tall buildings assisting the fire brigade in locating where fires had
broken out following the bombing raids on London. He spent the war years continuing at the civil service and that was where he met my mother. They first went
out on 22 September 1943 and, bearing in mind future developments within the family, it is amusing that they went to Stoke Poges. By 1945, they were living
together in Balham and tomorrow I will tell you about their life together before I interrupted their peace.
One other thing about him and the influence he had on future generations. During the thirties he spent some of his spare time going to Crystal Palace
and the motor racing circuit that was there.. The first race he watched, he would tell me, was held on my birthday-to-be in 1937 and won by Prince Bira, who
father subsequently met a few times. Later on, he took me to Crystal Palace a couple of times and helped spur on my love of motor sport.
After the automobile incidents of the previous year, 1954 was rather quiet. In fact, so quiet, there is only one family photo and, once again, the sartorial
style which I have carried through life, is showing signs of emerging; as are my underpants but if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em. Of course, we now had no car
and I had reached the age when I would be starting school. I have no idea how my parents made the choice for my prep school except, possibly, that the boy
next door, who was a few years older, had started there. On reflection, knowing what I do now, it was a strange choice. The school was Quainton Hall School in
Harrow-on-the-Hill, two stops on the metropolitan line from Rayners Lane.
Unfortunately, the school was then a further mile or so walk from the station. Most mornings I would get a lift from the people next door and in the
afternoon either my grandfather would come and pick me up in his car or mother, lugging my little sister with her, would catch the train from home, get off
at Harrow, carrying a push chair up the stairs, and then walk the mile to meet me at school from whence we would repeat the journey although she now had my
help for the stairs down at Harrow and stairs up at Rayners Lane, not to mention the steep flight of stairs which led from the main road down to our little
road in Oakington Avenue. Aye lad, life were tuff. Oh sorry, haven’t moved north yet, just practicing.
I hated school. Full stop. I hated playtime because I didn’t have any real friends. Apart from the boy next door who was a year or two ahead of me, no
one in my class lived anywhere near me. I hated lessons because I was always afraid of making a fool of myself if asked a question. I had, as I’m sure many
people do, this way of going bright red if something embarrassed me and of course if you do that people notice you even more. If you gave me a test I was
happy because, until the results came out, no one knew how I was doing and I used to do pretty well anyway. Each day, at morning break, we would have a
third of a pint of milk and, when you had drunk it, through a straw in a real glass bottle, you could go outside for the remainder of the break. I always
made my bottle last the full 20 minutes.
I was also a sickly child suffering numerous ear infections, swollen tonsils and general colds. This was the only time in my life when I have ever taken
any medicine to help cure whatever it was. They made little orange flavoured aspirin specially for children and I used to take these for the above and
toothache. As my children will well know, since the age of about 16, I have not taken more than, perhaps, 10 aspirin like pills in all that time. I do not
consider I have had a day’s illness in over 30 years but more of this later.
It was also a very religious school. Each morning we had prayers and a reading and a hymn in the chapel and on Thursday, older boys, of which I would
later become one, were expected to arrive early for a full service with swinging incense and I don’t know what else, mainly because…… I never went. Having
said all that, I did like my teacher but we only kept them for a year before moving on.
Other exciting things for this year were the end of sweet rationing and that saw a family custom that would continue for many years. Each day, on
Harrow station if mother came to meet me, she would buy my sister and I a bar of chocolate each. My preference, I remember, was for a Fry’s five centre as
was and it would cost five pence or roughly 2p in modern money.
Another ingestible fact was that as children we were all given a spoonful of cod liver oil each day. Rather weirdly, I liked this, so when my picky,
choosy little sister always refused hers, I had two. I had earlier also developed a taste for gripe water and this continued when my own children were young.
I was also fascinated watching mother, or father, make my sister’s bottles. Sliding a knife across the top of the scoop generously provided by Ostermilk to
ensure a level scoopfull was pure poetry to my eyes. I also loved doing this for my own kids too and in view of my desire to level things off with a knife,
it may have been a blessing that they weren’t breast-fed.
OK, here comes father. My father was born, at 79b Dorothy Road, Battersea, on May 14 1906. His parents were not, like my mother’s, particularly well-off.
I know nothing at all about his early life but at the age of 13, he won a scholarship to Emanuel School in Wandsworth. He left there aged 18 and went to London
University, Kings, where he got a BA in Classics, which was to haunt me for many of my teen years. According to his sister he had to re-sit his final year as he
had spent too much time with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. One story I do know from his early years was that, while out playing cricket with his friends, and
taking his baby sister, 12 years younger, in her pram, somebody managed to hit the ball into the pram. Luckily it missed her. It was a hard cricket ball. He also
used to recall playing his finest game of rugby on a steak and kidney pudding. No, this was not some new surface they used before drop-in pitches. He had,
apparently, been unaware he would be playing that afternoon and eaten a very large lunch.
He was a very fine piano player but I recently learnt that he could play most instruments, being particularly good with any from the woodwind section.
From university, he went straight into the civil service, where he remained for over 40 years. Toward the end of his life, once I had moved into working with
young people, he told me he had always wanted to be a teacher but felt he needed to experience the real world first. Unfortunately, that was where he stayed
and whilst I would agree that a life going from your own school, through university and then back into school is not the best of training for teaching, the
danger is that if you don’t do it immediately you may get stuck in a rut. He did; I was lucky.
The next part of his life is interesting for one very good reason. Father married, for the first time, on 2 April 1932 at the Parish Church of St Michael,
Wandsworth Common. He and his wife had a daughter born 30 April 1935. They separated sometime before 1943 and father left the family home in Epsom and moved
into a flat in DuCann Court, Balham.
The interesting thing is that it wasn’t until 1970, when I was 21, that I knew anything at all about his first marriage. Neither my sister, nor I, were
ever told. Now I think about, it is strange that father had no photos of his early life but it never occurred to me that he had been married before and an ex
could seemingly take away from him a part of his existence. To me, that is cruelty and I admired him for never, ever, complaining about this, once I knew his
situation and we talked about it. It would appear, from things I have heard, that, as in most cases, father was not solely to blame for the situation. I am also
certain that he, at the time, firmly believed he was doing the best thing for everybody.
During the war he was a fire watcher, who, I understand, would spend nights out in tall buildings assisting the fire brigade in locating where fires had
broken out following the bombing raids on London. He spent the war years continuing at the civil service and that was where he met my mother. They first went
out on 22 September 1943 and, bearing in mind future developments within the family, it is amusing that they went to Stoke Poges. By 1945, they were living
together in Balham and tomorrow I will tell you about their life together before I interrupted their peace.
One other thing about him and the influence he had on future generations. During the thirties he spent some of his spare time going to Crystal Palace
and the motor racing circuit that was there.. The first race he watched, he would tell me, was held on my birthday-to-be in 1937 and won by Prince Bira, who
father subsequently met a few times. Later on, he took me to Crystal Palace a couple of times and helped spur on my love of motor sport.
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