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.....

  

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!!