It would have been John's 74th Birthday today and we are all still grieving his loss. He was my oldest brother, seven years older in fact, and the one who stood up for me whenever I was in trouble with our Mum. He has always been there for me throughout my life, as a brother but like a father too after our Dad died. I miss him immensely but I hear his voice often in my head, cracking jokes or taking the mickey out of someone (he was excellent at that, but never maliciously). Yesterday I was looking at his photo and I heard him say "It's alright here love, Mum and Dad are fine and it's OK". So I guess I don't have to pick up the phone to talk to him anymore - I can talk to him anytime and he's ALWAYS got something to say in return!!
So, as a tribute to him on his birthday, I am sharing some of his Memoirs here on Jimmy's Lambeth. He sent them to me years ago and I believe he added more to them over the years. He believed, the same as our Uncle Jim, in the importance of writing memories down before they are lost forever. These are random snippets which I hope will jog your memory and make you smile or even belly-laugh - that's what John did best. It was an honour to be his little sister.............
"The trouble with writing something like this is because so much happened to us as children, I find I keep switching backwards and forwards in time and from place to place. It's difficult to edit, so I won't bother and just tell it as I remember it" John
"At that time in London, we were still suffering the aftermath of the Second World War as far as bombsites were concerned. Large areas close to our home were bombsites and these were our only playgrounds when the neighbours got fed up with us in the streets. We were told to piss off up the "debris" as it was called.
Our favourite place was the Lollard Street School bombsite, which was situated between Lollard Street and Ethelred Street at the end of Wake Street. This was the site of my mum's school, which was firebombed during a particularly heavy air raid and totally destroyed.
As kids we would light fires on it, burning anything we could find. There were still some interior and exterior walls remaining and these were the subject of climbing and efforts to knock them down with our bare hands failed miserably. The whole area later became the first ever adventure playground in the UK, known as The Lollard Adventure Playground. It still exists in a different form today and celebrated its 50th birthday on the 27th August 2005. Back then it was run and organised by a couple named Mr & Mrs Turner. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who visited the site on a regular basis, supported the idea - I still don't know who she was.
They transported an old massive army hut onto the Adventure Playground site, which was used as the main meeting place for the local kids. A second smaller hut housed the craft workshop where kids could paint and draw, make pots and figures from clay and have them fired.
Those involved even moved a railway carriage onto the site via Wake Street - a task that took hours due to the narrow end of Wake Street at the Lambeth Walk end. This, I recall, caused awful problems for the local Lambeth Walk market, having an entire railway carriage going through it on a huge low-loader.
What the playground did do, was this; it kept kids out of trouble and off the streets. It allowed you to have hammers, nails, pick-axes and other tools for making dens and huts etc. You could take up boxing there if you wanted to. Kids were allowed to light fires providing they were reasonable and cook potatoes in the ashes. If you were lucky you could nick some beans or tinned fruit from the stalls in the Walk and have a picnic! Parents knew where their children were and they knew they were safe. We didn't know of child molesters that I could recall..............."
"Tracey Street was only about 2 miles from both Lambeth Bridge and Westminster Bridge. In fact, you could see Big Ben from Mum's bedroom window if you ignored all the chimney pots. There were times when that was the only way we told the time, by looking out of the bedroom window!
"Mum was a hoarder, the place was full of piles of clothes, curtain material, bedding, towels, you name it, Mum collected it. She was like that all her life - she never chucked anything in case it comes in handy. I have picked this up from her, as I believe has Jan and my brothers. I think we were the only family in the street not to get a goldfish off the rag and bone man who called round weekly for old clothes in return for a goldfish in a jam jar. No old clothes - no fish! The only thing Mum used to throw out of the window was the odd penny to the street singers who walked the streets singing on Sunday mornings. I can remember her throwing the coin out and telling the poor sod to piss off up the street and annoy someone else.
The Salvation Army used to come around on Sunday mornings as well. The entire brass band would stop outside our house and after spouting off for a few minutes would burst into song or play a rousing hymn. This would go on for about 15 minutes or so then they would move on. The one we liked calling was the Hokey Pokey Man. He sold ice-cream from a three-wheeled bike with a large container on the front. His cry would be: "Hokey Pokey, tuppence a lick"! Another visitor to the street in those days was a bloke with a horse and cart that had a roundabout on the back. We would get on the various wooden animals and he would wind a handle to turn the roundabout.
"I was once reliably informed that horses were only allowed to piss on a certain side of the street. Guess whose side that was? Yes - OURS! A huge stream of yellow urine flooding down the gutter into the nearest drain right outside our house. I wouldn't have minded but this was where we played marbles.
One of the things that went with the horse drawn deliveries was that, after they had gone, a bloke would appear from nowhere with a shovel and bucket and scoop up the horses manure left behind. It was almost as if he knew when they had done it, as he was on it so quick. I understand it was for putting on rhubarb. Well, we used to have custard on ours....................
"Several gangs roamed the streets in those days. 'The Tinworth Mob' from an infamous block of flats named Tinworth House in Vauxhall and The Lollard Boys, which I suppose we were in. Finally although we did not get involved with them, there were The Elephant Boys from the Elephant and Castle area. This lot were the worst - they always armed themselves with cudgels with nails in the end and were never afraid to use them. They used to turn up suddenly on our ground, armed to the teeth and beat up anyone they saw and they would search them and steal whatever money they had. We would get the other gangs together, visit their ground and do the same to them. I often wonder how I never got either badly beaten or ended up locked away in Borstal. Many of my school friends did end up there.
"Local families were assorted oddballs as well. I remember one lot who lived a few streets away in a small end of terrace opposite a bombsite. One day, I found an old lorry tyre on the site and rolled it down a slope into their road. It rolled straight across the road and through the open front door, down the hallway amid sounds of smashing crockery and it came to a rest in the back kitchen, having knocked everything over in its path. Somebody saw me do it and told the lady of the house (who shall remain nameless due to possible repercussions!) who promptly called round to have a go. She turned up on the doorstep and started carrying on - Mum looked out of the top window to find out what all the fuss was about, only to be berated by this woman from three floors down. She wouldn't listen or let Mum get a word in, so Mum told her to piss off and shut the window. It didn't end there............. she continued to 'eff and blind' whilst banging on the door so Mum being Mum, tipped a washing up bowl of dishwater out of the top window right over the old cow's head. She was soaked through and hurried off in a rage swearing about calling the Police but she never did. Later Mum gave me a wallop for causing the trouble, even though I swore it was an accident!
Copyright: The Crow family
More snippets from John to come................
Happy Birthday John
We will raise a large Gin & Tonic to you tonight!
xxxxxxx
