Part 1 (1956-1966) - A New Home but Further Disasters - 1963

A New Home 

But 

Further Disasters

As a child you have little recollection of some crucial events, and crystal clear recollections of trivia. I have no idea of why or how we moved from Elmer Sands. I have no recollection of being in the new house for the first time. All I do recall is vivid memories of my next house and next home. We called it the Big White House, at the cul-de-sac end of South Road, Felpham - I was 7 years old.  

South Road - Felpham - The Big White House

I will paint the House in words from my childhood memories. To me it was indeed a big house, a ground floor and 1^st floor. It sat surrounded by a garden on all four sides – a considerable garden to the rear with a large vegetable patch, all enclosed by hedges. Behind the hedges – fields with Horses and Donkeys – and one day they strayed through the rear garden gate – pandemonium as my mother attempted to usher them away.  There was a kitchen with a coal fired cooker that also served to provide a limited supply of hot water to the house.  There was a central open plan ornate wooden staircase that wound up through the centre of the house like some scaled down stately home. A large living room with a single coal fire place opened to a conservatory that overlooked the back garden.  Upstairs: bedrooms, and a rudimentary bathroom and toilet. The house I know was rented, my mother fretting over stains on a new carpet and what the landlord would say. 

This was a time when memories multiplied, now becoming complex, detailed, and more connected to  real time events.  I remember going to the local infants school in Felpham. 

I remember learning to read, a book about a “Big Red Lorry” looms large. And then I went to Pennyfields Juniors, a “new” school. I was in the “B” Class – for slow developers – the B Class did woodwork instead of maths which the “A” class did.  And sitting cross legged in a big hall for assembly, singing hymns and learning prayers.  And Sue sitting her Eleven Plus – and goes to a Grammar School in Bognor.  I remember her playing a Fairy in the School Play of a Midsummer Nights Dream, I adored and idolised my Sister Sue.

I remember playing with the farmers sons in the sun soaked Wheat Fields. I remember my bedroom, standing on the bed looking through the window to the South Downs, a storm at night, lighting forking across the hills. 

I remember getting up in the morning, getting dressed in the bed as the room was freezing, frost on the inside of the window.  I remember having baths with just a couple of inches of lukewarm water.  I remember going to the beach with my mother and Sue, and being treated to Cheese and Onion Crisps after an afternoon of splashing in the English Channel.  I remember a tricycle that I loved, and that I road with gusto down South Road. And I remember running away from home, sitting under a tree at the end of the road for half an hour until I was hungry, and returned home sulky and grumpy.  And I remember climbing trees in the woods with my Sister and our friends.

There was a dog, called Coco – a lovely Labrador. He roamed widely, and was found often by my father miles from home. My father, he was away all week in London, coming home only at weekends. I have no idea what he was doing, but he appeared tired and harassed and he was sometimes abrupt and terse in his interactions with his family when he was home.

South Road - The Back Garden - Coco the dog

Me - South Road - Felpham

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2015 - 52 Years Later
Robert - My 25 Year Old Youngest Son visits Felpham
And takes these pictures.... 
The House where I lived - the Beach where I played

And in 2018 I visit Bognor - after an absence of 56 Years

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And then – my Father disappeared. He simply stopped coming home, and my Mother could not contact him. Short of money – my mother, sister and I found ourselves living in a rather run down Static Caravan. I remember - My mother looking hopefully through the Caravan Windows every evening - looking for my father .... He never appeared. 

Part 1 (1956-1966) - Moving On - 1962

MOVING ON

From Tiny Child to Slightly Older

And so all that material belonging and wealth was lost. This disaster I would not fully comprehend until later in my life – it meant little, if anything, to me then - I was 6 years old.

There are flickering memories with no links; no continuity that would make sense of my parents lived experience. These are a young child’s memories. 

Then there was a Chalet. This is as best that I may describe. A large Beach Chalet, a bedroom, a small kitchen area in a main room, a single un-shaded electric light. There was my mother, my sister – there is no image of my father. My Sister complains bitterly that we have to share a mattress in the main room area, my mother sleeping on a tiny bed in the tiny ‘bedroom’.

That image flickers away; I recall no more of it.

Next – a house, traditional detached 1930s style house on the sea front, one in a line of similar houses.  A place, Elsoner Flat. Elmer Road, Middleton on Sea. How do I know this - I have found it in old documents.  An upstairs flat. A small bedroom room shared by Sue and I. A slightly bigger parent bedroom. A Living Room, a Kitchen, a Bathroom. A set of stairs from the door to the outside (much like a fire escape – ornate and iron in construction) leading down to a green well kept back garden that backed seamlessly to the stony beach with its large wooden ‘breakwaters’ that reached out in straight lines into the breaking surf of the English Channel.  

Of this place I have my first crystal clear childhood memories.  A small black and white Television, a small grainy screen.  

Going to bed and hearing the music to Coronation Street. My Sister getting cross with me and “telling on me” to my mother – “Mum – Butch is telling lies”. BUTCH????

Butch??? An old family friend, Uncle Les.  Not actually an Uncle – a Canadian Friend – an old business acquaintance from Nigeria.  As a baby he nicknamed me “Butch” in the colloquial American parlance of the time for a ‘boys boy’, a man. It stuck – and to my family I would always be “Butch” . By young adulthood, and with its later alternative connotation of the fashions of the Gay revolution, they restricted its use to family conversations only.

A image of a Christmas Tree burns in my memory – my 1^st Christmas Tree. I remember it glittering next to the little Black & White TV – and it captivated my attention, the shimmering decorations that moved seductively in the least draft.  I remember looking at it, distracted from the TV and the frightening Daleks of Doctor Who. It glittered and shimmered I was mesmerised by its beauty.

There was a moment- my Mother sitting anxiously by an old fashioned radio, focused, listening with unusual attention – I didn’t understand. And then a sigh – the moment had passed – the Cuban Crisis! And a while later she wept at the side of the same old radio – when a president was assassinated. 

My father - he was there, sometimes, intermittent – new enterprises and employment opportunities consumed and failed him.  I believe I went to School, I MUST have gone to school – but the memories are patchy and the timing uncertain. School memories emerge more clearly shortly.

Then there was a morning. Before School - I went out to the windy grey garden and crossed to the Stony Beach.  I sat on the wooden Break Water – dangerously close to the towering crashing surf. The wind was high, it howled, and the grey foamy waves crashed relentlessly and dangerously on the stony beach with ferocity, and the salt spray stung my young face. The stones were sucked noisily back as the waves reluctantly retreated from their assault. I was at once fascinated and fearful – the draw of the sea  deep in my psyche, a primal instinct.  

An in the face of that raw natural energy I was moved, for the first time in my life, to reflect on the meaning and complexity of life. My mother appeared – “What are you doing – come back up here” she asked and demanded anxiously... I looked at her – “Mother, why are waves so big”.... 

Part 1 (1956-1966) - The Beginning – My Earliest Memories - 1959 - 1961

The Beginning – My Earliest Memories 

Before I paint the picture of my very young life I am bound to give you some indication of what was to come. The affluent life my parents had enjoyed was to go irrevocably wrong, and that fall from grace would set an unusual childhood path for me.  In my first decade of life I would live in 10 different homes, this the effect of my parents financial collapse and subsequent struggles. And although that would provide an unusual foundation for my future life, it curiously was not something that I would really become aware of until much later in my adult life.

However, let me start at the beginning. As I have already said I was born on a Sunday Morning – April 22^nd 1956, in a Maternity Home in Lagos, Nigeria. I was naturally unaware of this important event. However, I was a joy to my parents, who already adored their pretty little 4 year old daughter Susan. They were living in a large house and had African servants to manage all their household and domestic duties. I was primarily cared for by African Nannies, whilst my parents indulged an affluent life of dinner parties and mixing with the white aristocracy and business community, and with the diplomats of Colonial Nigeria.  

1957 - On Board Ship on on of many journeys to and from Nigeria and the UK - Me Learning to Walk

This is not to say that that I was not loved by my parents, but simply that they were living a life style that was all too soon to be washed away by Independence. Nigeria’s path to Independence started in 1960, and its impact saw my father’s business affairs in Cocoa Plantations fail and my parents return to the United Kingdom.  This was not a complete disaster, as he would then seek to establish new commercial enterprises with the money he had retained from his Nigerian business.

I have absolutely no recollection of Africa – nothing at all. My earliest flickering images are of a old thatched house, with a beautiful green English Garden – and a place name - Caterham. In the house there was an open ornate wooden staircase that wound its way upwards – and I remember a piano that I would noisily pluck at. My bedroom was small, and in the eve of the thatched roof. I remember being disturbed at bedtime by a humming noise, and my parent’s realisation that there was a Bees nest in the Thatched roof – later duly disposed of I suppose. I remember a glitteringly sunny afternoon – walking down from the bottom of the garden and downwards through a flickering green wood, my parents, Sue, others (family friends perhaps).

A quarry at the end of the wood, precipitous, large, daunting. We turn for the return journey uphill. I am little, 4 years old perhaps, the air was warm, weariness washed over me, and I was swept up by big strong hands, and rode the journey home on my Fathers shoulders, safe and protected.

And then there was another home, a Bungalow. I can see it so well, my bedroom, Sues bedroom, and my Parents bedroom. There was a garden that had a Pond, and I met for the first time with fascination (and just a little trepidation) 'Newts'.  I had toys, and a particularly splendid Electric Train Set. 

64 Buxton Lane - Caterham

I started a School, Infants – I vaguely remember not liking it – I was away from my Mother who had always in my memory been at the centre of everything. I have a vague recollection of being made to stand in a corner for failing to eat my dinner adequately.

My Father always had to have the "best". I remember his car at this time - a shiney new Sunbeam Rapier. I remember sitting in the back on sunny Sunday afternoons when we would go out for a 'drive'.  I remember vividly the day a cyclist made him break suddenly, and a whole new vocabulary opened up before me as he yelled out of the window, and my mothers ensuing remonstrations with him....

Then there was a day – it made little impression in a strange way – and yet it was a turning point. I remember men walking into our Bungalow home. My mother was crying, my father nowhere to be seen. I was surprised when they took the furniture, and a little anxious when they took my train set. My Mother hugged me and told me that everything was alright. I wondered as they took all her jewelry boxes, the ones I so loved to explore.  I was four years old.

It was many years later before I was to realise what Bailiffs were, and what Bankruptcy meant! I would never know the full story - they took it to their graves. 

Although I did not know it - from this time on everthing would change!!