The Day War Broke Out

You Tube is amazing. I have found a clip of Robb Wilton a comic actor I used to listen to on the wireless. One of his funniest monologues begins "The Day War Broke Out". It still makes me laugh.

As far as I was concerned the day war broke out, 3rd September 1939, found me sitting on a tram going to Brixton Hill in London. Suddenly the most eerie wailing sound filled the air and the tram came to an abrupt halt. The driver, conductor and passengers got off so I thought I had better follow. I was only sixteen . I didn't want to get bombed and anyway I had to get to Civil Defence HQ and relieve my opposite number who had been on duty all night. I was conscientous, I was also scared stiff. I started to run. The idea that the war would not be won unless I was in my appointed place was soon scotched by a tall thin policeman who ordered me to go to the nearest air raid shelter. He wouldn't take no for an answer so I spent the first half hour of the war sitting with a lot of strangers in the basement shelter of the New Century Window Cleaning Company of Brixton wondering if I would be shot for derilection of duty.

After what seemed ages the "All Clear" sounded and I was able to continue my journey to the Brixton College where my opposite number at the telephone was waiting to go home. It was our job to send messages to five south London boroughs so they could co-ordinate their resources, e.g. fire, ambulances. heavy lifting gear etc. in the event of an air raid so that the best use could be made of them by assisting each other.
There was abit of excitement when the telephone warning "Air Raid message Yellow" came through. If a plane flew over London it would be "Air Raid message Red". Yellow was a preliminary warning. Some old sweat from the First World War must have thought yellow meant mustard gas . Panic Stations ! He handed out gas masks saying "Never mind the work,girls, save yourselves" However our young British girls were made of sterner stuff and put on their gas masks and continued working. They phoned the Town Halls wearing their gas masks. This made it somewhat difficult for the operator at the other end to understand what was said and caused further confusion. Fortunately the "All Clear" solved that difficulty.

Spring

It is almost time to say goodbye to February fill dyke as my mother used to call it. We have had a lot of wet days interspersed with some brilliant sunshine and I shall be glad when March comes.
When I was nine years old our school held a Spring Pageant. Because I had long fair hair I was chosen to be the Spirit of Spring. I was dressed in a sleeveless green dress and had bare feet. (The bare feet worried me rather.) Iwas given some elocution lessons by my teacher. She was hoping to get rid of any traces of Cockney. I said my piece from the Bible.

"For lo, the winter is past.
The rain is over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth
And the time of the singing of birds is come".

This I said in a cut glass voice. It must have been rather reminiscent of Joyce Grenfell being frightfully posh !
The passage goes on to say "And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land". This mystified me for many years as I tried to imagine what a turtle's voice would sound like. Much, much later I discovered it meant a turtle dove !

Cats

Reading about the new cat at No. 10 Downing Street reminded me of a handsome black and white Tom who used to stalk majestically through the corridors of the Home Office in Whitehall when I worked there. He was petted and given so many titbits that he would probably disdain to catch a mere mouse. If papers were disturbed and muddled up he got the blame as he loved to curl up on a desk, but like the ginger cat, Macavity, in T.S.Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Cats" we could never catch him at it.

I have always liked ginger cats. One year on the 1st of August my young daughter was given a little ball of marmalade fur - a ginger kitten. She named him Augustus. Gussie grew into a large, beautiful cat. He also grew into a veritable potentate ! We humans were his slaves ready to feed and pamper him and attentive to every mew, plaintive, demanding, querulous. His was the comfiest chair nearest the fire, the cosiest eiderdown upstairs, the sunniest spot in the garden. He needed one's full attention at all times. Any attempt of mine at writing resulted in him sitting on the notepaper. Knitting was impossible once he was on my lap. He would knead with his paws until he got comfortable regardless of my nylons. My husband, who once professed not to be too keen on cats, would find another armchair if Gussie was esconced in his. Such was his hold over us. Not only over our family but also the two elderly ladies next door who regularly fed him scraps.

On one terrible occasion he contracted cat flu. We sent for the Vet who gave him an injection and prescribed some pills and after a few anxious days he recovered. Our neighbours put his recovery down to their friend who was a spiritual healer and had held Gussie on her lap and laid hands on him. Maybe they were right but I forbore to tell them of the Vet's visit and the £38 fee.

Gussie gave us much pleasure and joy and lived to a ripe old age.

Replies to correspondents

I have just read Bernard Levin's reply to an insulting correspondent=

"Sir,
I think I should warn you that some dangerous lunatic has gained possession of your headed writing paper".

I've also just read that a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it is sunny and wants it back when it is raining.

Money may not solve every problem but it is quite an effective solution to being poor

The rain it falleth on the just
And on the unjust fella
But mostly on the just because
The unjust stole the just's umbrella.

A few things that cheered me up after a miserable visit to the optician.

The War Years

In these days when everyone seems to have a mobile phone attached permanently to the ear I wondered what had happened to the telegram. Except for wedding celebrations etc. the arrival of the telegraph boy was looked on with apprehension as the bearer of bad news, especially in wartime. My father-in-law started as a telegraph boy aged 12 and worked in the Post Office until his late sixties.
A telegram changed the course of my life. On 1st September 1939 I made my way home from work at the National Savings Bank at Holloway. North London. I had my evening meal and noted that this was the first night of the total blackout. The Government were preparing for aerial bombardment. I went to bed at 10.30 because I had to be up to go to work on Saturday until 1p.m. We worked five and a half days a week then. At about 11p.m. there was a knock at the door. My mother woke me to say there was a telegram for me. I read it sleepily and said "I have to report to Civil Defence HQ at Brixton tomorrow at 11 o'clock" Then I had another look and saw it said 11p.m on Friday, 1st September !
Well mother decided I had better get dressed and go. She didn't like the idea of my going alone in the blackout so she called on our neighbour to escort me. Now Jock, the kindest of men, was a steward on the "Flying Scotsman" (a famous train) and was known to take a little of his native brew - sometimes more than a little ! This was one of those occasions but, nevertheless, he agreed to come with me. So one 16 year old girl and one 40 year old inebriated Scotsman we set off. No street lights, car lights just a glimmer. I suppose it was rather dangerous.
To get to Brixton we had to take a tram. To get a tram we had to get out into the middle of Westminster Bridge Road. The tram lines ran down the middle of the main roads. At last a tram came along and we got on and got off at Brixto Hill. We made our way in the pitch dark to the Day Continuation Centre, a college which had been taken over by Civil Defence. Jock delivered me safely and went home.
Inside all was confusion. Some people had been there all day waiting for their relief shift to arrive. Some telegrams giving people their instructions were not delivered until the next morning by which time the recipients had gone to work and were not expected home until after lunchtime on Saturday. Consequently I found myself still at Civil Defence HQ, ready to man the phones until 1.30p.m. on Saturday September 2nd. I was then given fresh instructions. I was to return at 11.30a.m. on Sunday September 3rd. A truly auspicious day ! But that is another story.

At the Hairdressers

Today I went for a second visit to my new hairdresser. (The last one left to work with horses.) I once said to the male owner of a salon that as soon as I get a girl who kmows what to do with my unruly, thick hair she goes off to have a baby. He replied "Believe me, madam, I am not about to do that."

This lady is about 40 or so, is about 5 feet tall and weighs about 6 stone. She wears the briefest of mini skirts, black tights and shoes with 6 inch heels. She makes an excellent job of my wayward hair but I think she suffers from amnesia. She twice asked me if I was going somewhere nice this weekend. I told her I was going to see my grandchildren in Folkestone.

The proprietress couldn't be more different. She is about 6 feet tall wears a long black dress with a fringe at the bottom and sensible boots. What a varied lot we are !

Nightmares

Ther e is a report in today's paper about the wisdom or otherwise of allowing small children to come into their parents' bed. It is understandable that waking up alone in the dark can be frightening for a child. During the daytime there is always an adult to run to for comfort. What to do?
In order to get some rest we sometimes took one or other of our children into our bed. After some restless minutes my husband would move out and spend the rest of the night in the child's bed. He said it was like acting in a French farce. You never knew which bed you were going to wake up in.
When one child had terrible earache I remember reading chapters of "Three Men in a Boat" to distract him. Funnily enough I repeated this performance with a grandson who was staying with us many years later. A doctor friend said he saw no harm in the practice as long as we stopped by the time our son was eighteen ! Primitive tribes are much kinder to their children.

Archbishops

As well as hats Archbishops have been another recurring theme in my life. I started school aged five at Archbishop Tait's Infants School in Lambeth Road in south east London. It was a few minutes walk from Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. At seven I moved on to Archbishop Tenison's School for Girls in Lambeth High Street close to Doulton's Pottery. This school had been founded in 1706 by Archbishop Tenison for 12 poor girls.I think there were nearly 100 girls there when I went there.
My brother, Frank, passed the Scholarship at eleven and went to Archbishop Temple's School for Boys which had been built in what used to be part of Lambeth Palace grounds.
Whilst at the Infants' School we were all invited to have tea and birthday cake at Lambeth Palace on the occasion of Archbishop Davidson's birthday. When I was about nine I went on a school journey to stay in Broadstairs and whilst there we were in vited to have tea and cake by Lady Davidson at the Old Palace at Canterbury. You didn't realise this was going to be such a VIP blog, did you? One more bit of name-dropping= Charlie Chaplin went to brother Frank's school.

The Joy of Music

My son rang from Paris to tell me that my grandson , aged 7, recognised music being played on a CD as that of Mozart. Apparently he skates to the music of Mozart !!! This talent must be encouraged and nurtured. What a wealth of pleasure he has ahead of him.
As a child I listened to Caruso, Richard Tauber and Heddle Nash played, somewhat scratchily, on my mother's wind-up gramophone. That was when I fell in love with the tenor voice. This love has stayed with me even into old age despite various deviations into other kinds of music. I grew up with Bing. Sinatra and the Big Band era in the 40s. In the 50s I was probably singing nursery rhymes.
In the 60s my teenagers introduced me to Cliff Richard, the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkle. In return I introduced them to Gilbert and Sullivan. I seem to remember they also liked Handel and Bach so the music in our house was a pretty mixed bag.
These days I listen mainly to Italian opera. When there are only repeats or rubbish on the TV I seek refuge in my DVDs. My favourite being The Barber of Seville. Rossini's music is so clever. I have a DVD where the leading lady sings and acts the whole opera from a wheelchair. having broken a bone in her leg the night before on stage. I bet no one ever says to her "Break a leg".I also love "La Sonnambula" both operas featuring the talented Juan Diego Florez, the Peruvian tenor. Now we are back to where I started with my love of the tenor.