Part 2 (1966-1979) - Grosvenor Square - 1966 - 1968.

   

OK

Welcome to Part Two of my Life Diaries.

If you have followed the journey so far you will have found the 1^st 10 years of my most early life a muddle of homes and experiences. And of course I only really recall about 5 years of that time, with those recollections being vague and disconnected. I have spent much time trying to piece those memories into a coherent sequence and timescale, but even now I cannot be 100% sure that these are 100% correct.

But in Part Two the lens focuses, the memories are clearer, and the timeline is clearer. I have said that it is not my intention to bore the reader with minutia – but to provide a broad sweep of the key events that moulded me, transformed me – and set me on the path that would be my adult life. Some of these memories are perhaps random in their presentation – but they are there because they are:

WHAT I REMEMBER.

The following Chapters cover those events and memories that cover the time from moving from Albion Gate to live in Grosvenor Square in 1966 through to 1968.

Let us begin.

In 1966 my Father took a post as Head Porter at a very grand apartment building in Mayfair – 49a Carlos Place

I was 10 Years Old......

49A Carlos Place - Grosvenor Square - Mayfair - London

Of this eccentric Basement Flat I shall talk about more - in the next Post

It was another new beginning that would herald many new discoveries.

What of my Parents and my beloved Sue... My parents had reconciled their financial disaster - and moved on as best they could. I was never privy to their way of dealing with my Fathers bankruptcy - as I had no inkling of it. As a young child they seemed on the face of it happy - and loving parents. However my later reflections have always noted an air of tension, perhaps discontent. But what was clear was that  loved each other with an abiding bond. I was to see that tested in forthcoming years - but it was never fully lost.

Sue - my beloved Sue - she was striding ahead of my to adulthood - and i loved her so dearly - she had always been my everything....  

Part 1 (1956-1966) - St Georges School - Hanover Square - Mayfair 1965-1968

St Georges School - Hanover Square - Mayfair

We had moved to London - it was 1965.

This was my Junior School in London. An old quirky, eccentric, character full  building. A Red Bricked & Portland-stone Jacobean style building with large mullion & transom widows.  

My Teacher was Miss Blackmoore. She told my Mother at a parents evening "David will never get there 1st, but he will always get there in the end".

There was a Girls playground and a Boys Playground - curiously below street level. 

I have the same School Tie to this day - 50 Years later

I played football in the playground. We were sent to Victoria Swimming Baths and I learnt to Swim. I played Dick Whittington in the School Play. I walked up and down that ridiculous spiral staircase in the School. 

I was happy at St Georges

I was shy, but I was learning to learn, learning to live. I was becoming aware. I was learning what it was to be anxious, concerned. I was learning what made you happy, and what made you unhappy. I was growing up. I walked across Hyde Park every day - my mother waving goodbye and welcome.

I was growing up - and then we moved again - to Grosvenor Square in Mayfair. 

Moving on again.... The next Chapter... 

NO - More then that - my young child life was finishing - this was to be the the next phase - from Child to Adult (with all that this would entail). 

This was to be

PART TWO

in 

My Life Diary

1966 - 1979

Part 1 (1956-1966) - From Bogner to London – Hyde Park - 1965- 1966

From Bogner to London

Hyde Park - Albion Gate

After our rather strange round trip to Birmingham everything seemed to settle down into a normal Bognor routine – School, Beach, Play. My Father returned home from London for weekends, and I gathered that he was in a more secure employment situation.

Coco the dog was still there – what had happened to him during the Birmingham episode I have no idea – but he was still there. And so where the friends I had 9 months previously. I would like to say that a sense of calm and normality returned (or indeed arrived for the 1^st time). But this was not to be, as I quickly realised that new plans were afoot. My father had a job as a “Head Porter” in a very posh apartment block on the Bayswater Road on the north side of Hyde Park. Plans were made – and before I knew it we were on another Train. 

I Was 9 Years Old....

A Grand Place – so posh – a flat in a huge millionaires apartment mansion - Albion Gate on the Bayswater Road.

AlbionGate - The Bayswater Road, London

And a basement flat with windows that opened to a narrow court yard with steps up to the ornate iron railings and a gate that opened to the pavement. But it was Palatial to me. My own bedroom, and a bath that you could fill to the top with hot steaming water; I discover for the first time the joy of the ‘long hot soak’. The flats front door opened into the basement of the grand building, store rooms and boilers, and a stairwell that led up to the grand carpeted entrance with its Porters Office.  

My Father and Mother and Sister - a sense of stability. 

The memories flow like water now.  The Rotten Row on the edge of Hyde Park, playing with Sue in great piles of autumn leafs, brown, crisp and fragrant. 

Going to a new Junior School, walking home down Mount Street, passing the Police Box (a veritable Tardis) at the junction of Park Lane, and then across the Park and seeing my mother walking toward me in the distance – arms out and smiling. 

Playing with my Meccano set, and extravagant Xmas gift from one of the Mansions residents. Sitting of the plush carpets by the caged lift shaft, watching the lift going up and down, transporting its wealthy occupants.

And there was a windowless store room in the basement, where curiously there were stacks of National Geographic Magazines. I sat for hours, poring over their glossy fading pages – stories and images from around the world. People and cultures in bewildering variety, images that burned into my young mind. I sat there in that jumbled untidy store room, a single bare electric bulb, and I journeyed the world, captivated by great piles of dusty magazines. A world without end, so many places, so many people, so many mysteries.

And I wondered what the world held for me. It was 1964 - the youth revolution, feminism, and racial equality were about to happen. The 1960s, a time of change, of challenging outdated values, of liberation, Hippies, and Music that would change the world. 

I was 10 Years Old.

Part 1 (1956-1966) - From Bogner to Birmingham – and Back! 1964

From Bogner to Birmingham – and Back!

Our time in the Caravan was brief. I remember there was a telephone kiosk nearby on what was evidently a caravan park. She had left a forwarding address when we had hastily left the Big White House.  Whenever it rang my mother would frantically dash to answer it, hoping that it was my father trying to track us down.  But it never was, and she would return despondent and tearful. 

She had a job serving in the local Grocers Shop.  She would bring home scraps of vegetables that  were to be thrown out each day as unsalable – and we lived off stewed greens for weeks. Sue and I continued to go to School – but life was strange – and we knew that something was deeply wrong. When we asked where Daddy was, she simply said she didn't know, but that she was sure he would be back. We were children - and believed this as truth. 

And then - later in life my mother told me that at this darkest hour something very strange and inexplicable strange happened. Uncle Len (the old family friend who named me "Butch") sent her a letter. "Dear Dot - had a feeling you may need help - hope this helps." Enclosed a cheque for £100 Pounds..... ??? !!! Whether my Father had a hand in this I will never know....

And then – one day we packed our bags, and caught a train from Bognor Regis. I remember it well, it was a big impressive steam train that rattled and spewed smoke as it hurtled to London. 

I was excited, we arrived in Victoria Station, a huge cavern full of smoking wonders and a vast seething crowd of people all hurrying everywhere I could not imagine. Into a Black Taxi, and for the 1^st time I travelled across the heart of London. I remember vividly going down Park Lane and seeing the towering Hilton Hotel – recently built. I had never seen any building so magnificent or huge. 

Paddington Station – another steam train – a journey, my mother pensive, introspective. 

Birmingham – and we are met by Uncle Dick, husband to my mother’s sister, Auntie May.

My mother had 2 siblings, her sister May, and her brother Jack. Sadly Jack had died in the early 1950s from what I suspect was Leukaemia.

Jack Humphries - 1940s 

May had married Dick Brittan, had settled in Birmingham, and had 2 daughters and 1 son, Anita (who had left home), Diane and Richard. 

Sarah May Humphries and her Husband Richard - Early 1960s

In desperation, and desperately short of money, my mother had used Uncle Lens extraordinary gift to save the day - and contacted her sister to seek refuge.  Auntie May and her family lived in a traditional 1950s new-build semi-detached house, 3 maybe 4 bed rooms depending on how creative you were. Richard, 5 years older than me, slept in a small box room of his own.  Auntie May and Uncle Dick had their own bedroom. Anita, Diane, my mother, Sue and I shared the houses biggest bedroom. It was snug – to say the least.  My Mother and I slept on a single bed, head to toe. Sue slept on a small mattress of the floor. Diane had a small single bed.  There were fractious exchanges!

Auntie Mays House - 33a Lindon Road, Bournville, Birmingham

I think we stayed at Auntie May’s house for about 9 months. I remember how she chain smoked (literally lighting one fag from the other).  Trails of ash hung perilously as she cooked food. 

Uncle Dick was generous, particularly on a Friday evening when he would return home very jolly with a great mass of greasy Chips in Newspaper that he would liberally handed around. 

He kept pigeons in his back garden and was an ardent Pigeon Racer. I remember watching the skies keenly looking for returning birds. 

My mother got a job in a local Woolworths and would me little sweets from the penny sweets counter. 

I went to School, it was just a walk away, and I remember very little of it but that I didn't really like it, or know anyone. My southern accent rather estranged me from the other children.

Then there was a day, an afternoon – Auntie May rushed excitedly into the living room. “Dot (my mother) – Tom is coming down the road.”  My Mother ran from the house, weeping uncontrollably.  Minutes later she returned, with my father. He looked drawn, pale, but he smiled and embraced my sister and I.

Out of work and penniless, my father had become destitute and homeless on the streets of London. Unable to call my mother, unable to pay for travel, he lived on the streets, struggling to survive. And then something happened. This I cannot fully articulate, because I do not know what happened. Suffice it to say my father acquired a benefactor, a rich old female benefactor.  I realize this sounds bizarre, but this is what I remember being told. She furnished my father with some form of job, and with new found income he tracked his lost family to Birmingham, and we were reunited.

He only stayed in Birmingham a few days, and then returned to London. But we were to return to South Road in Felpham – how this was realised I have no idea. But in no time we found ourselves at Birmingham Station, surrounded by Smoking Steam Trains – Uncle Dick pressed a 10 Shilling note into my and Sues hands (a small fortune) and patted our heads – and we journeyed south.

I was 8 Years Old

And then.....