Читать книгу London Born: A Memoir of a Forgotten City - Sidney Day - Страница 14

Every summer there was an outing for all the women. They went from the Bay to Southend. That was their day out. Practically all the mums, aunts and grandmothers went. They went on a double-decker charabanc with four horses and a driver. The coach was belt driven. It had no springs and solid rubber wheels with iron studs banged in, so they was iron tyres more or less. The poor old horses dragged this forty miles to the seaside and back the same day. They stopped off at about four pubs on the way.

All the kids crowded round the coach before it went away, waving and singing, and the old gels would throw a handful of ha’pennies or pennies out. We all scrambled for these before they left. While we waved, the horses clopped away up the street on the cobblestones. Then up by Raydon Street the noise was muffled when their hooves hit the straw. There was a bloke up there, name of Bill Duggin, who had an illness what meant he mustn’t hear any row. So there was a load of straw in the road round and about his house, from Buckingham’s shop right down to the cemetery. What he had I do not know, but straw was often put on the road when people was ill. If someone in the street had scarlet fever or some very bad illness they would cover the street from end to end with straw so that when the horses come down they wouldn’t bother them.

When the women had gone we would spend our money on sweets or ice cream. In the summer there was an ice cream pitch right outside our house. The bloke had a barrow and a churn and the ice cream was a penny, while a cup of ice and half a lemon was a ha’penny. There was a bloke selling toffee apples too. If you was lucky you got the one with the thruppenny bit stuck inside.

Sometimes we spent our money on going to the pictures. It cost thruppence and there was two sittings of a night time and a matinee in the afternoon. In the evening they had two pictures—they showed you one, then a five-minute rest, then the other one. A pianist played the piano behind the curtain. I couldn’t read the captions so I just used me imagination. Before the film come on we would have a competition for the best call-out and everyone would start up. I liked to shout, ‘Bob each, wild rabbits,’ as loud as I could.

Not long after the women’s outing us kids would go away. We went hop picking in Kent for a month every summer. We really looked forward to it. First time I went there I thought I was in no man’s land. We slept in a pigsty full of straw and picked hops from dawn to dusk. We didn’t really work hard, but every day we filled huge sacks with hops. We worked with some travellers who went from farm to farm picking what was in season. I went with me brothers, Ruddy, Cocker, Joey and a lorry load of other boys. A few gels come too, but not many—most wasn’t allowed.

The hop picking trip was organised by Old Mother Ring. She was the moneylender for the poor in the Bay. The most you could borrow was a half crown and you paid back a penny in the shilling each week. You had to be at least sixteen to borrow money. Her old man was in the building game and she had a son called Mickey who we called ‘snotty nose’—dirty sod he was. She paid us three and a tanner a week and cooked for us. We kept some of our wages and gave some to our mothers when we got back.

After work we bathed and swam in the river, and in the evenings Mother Ring made a big pot of broth with bones and rabbit so we had plenty to eat. We carried on scrumping and thieving and Gawd knows what else when we got the chance. It weren’t long before we got lousy there and as soon as we got home out come the horse clippers and the red carbolic soap and off come our hair.

We was back in time for Barnet Fair when the gypsies arrived in London. It went on for seven days and seven nights. We was up there most of the time. I worked on the kiddies’ roundabout, turning the wheel—I think it was a penny to go round. I would watch the old gel who owned it and when she weren’t looking, nick a handful of coppers. Sometimes we took some poles and canvas up there and dug a hole for a toilet. Then we would stand by the screen and as people passed by we would cry out, ‘Penny-a-piddle-or-a-poop!’