MY BIOGRAPHY. |
CHAPTER 4. More of my Mother. |
1. In between all that I was forced to attend the Village School and mix with the offspring's of these 'Corporation dwellers.' Fortunately they had their own church and so I went to one of the other 'decent' Sunday Schools. But we are digressing from my mother. She had very strong views on almost everything but had neither the intelligence nor the education to back many of them up. She constantly did the only thing she was really good at and that was keeping the house immaculate and that included us kids. We were fed and looked after but looking back and thinking about it a lot, I don't think she loved us or, if she did, had a peculiar way of showing it or perhaps it was just me? But I know my father didn't love me and would often make that quite clear, particularly later on in life when he blamed me for just about everything. What he felt for my sisters I will never know but I just hope that he was kinder to them than he was to me. 2. Up until, and well into, my teenage years I never knew my mother to get out of bed, on any single day of the week, with perhaps the exception of some Saturdays and Sundays, before mid-day. We got up and did what we had to do and took what was left and laid out for us, the night before, and went off to school. At the same time it was standard practice to put ourselves to bed as both parents would be out most evenings and would leave us for long periods and often until quite late. 3. Years later my mother embarked upon improving her education by reading every fictional history book she could lay her hands on and there after 'belched out' unadulterated rubbish about history, that to her was accepted and believed. Therefore, if she said that Henry VIII had 'nine' wives and 'no' children and then later and after reading further, stated that Henry had 'ten' wives and 'fourteen' children, then he had, or he had until the next time the subject came up and a different set of 'facts' were presented to set you right on the subject. 4. She treated my wife and son badly but fortunately did not live long enough to influence my grandchildren. 5. The irony of the whole thing is that when, years later, it all finally dawns on you, it is you who feels bad about it. It's as if you have been blamed for so much that you must be responsible for it all and the burden of guilt then lies heavy. When suddenly, after many years, you realize that you have been conned and that you have gone along with it all and in the process have caused so much heart ache to others, who didn't deserve it, with your ideas and attitudes, and that life is not like that, people are not like that. Then, of course, there comes the hard bit. You have to re-learn and re-adjust and start to learn to live with those aspects of your character and personality that are so deeply entrenched, from those early days, that you almost believe they cannot be changed. 6. But they can and I think I did it successfully. So ignoring the comments of others who might argue with that and respecting their rights to their opinions, later I will tell you how. Not only that but I will tell you of many other things I discovered along the way and over the years, that I hope you can use or will find useful. For it is my wish, that you, having followed me so far, might get something out of all this and that it will enrich your life or, at least, prevent you from inadvertently screwing up someone else's. 7. My Father. 8. Who, as you will have gathered, I have little respect for, as he did so little for me. As a youngster he had little to do with me and never took an interest in anything I did and that included my schooling and later life. He seldom took me anywhere except for when it suited his purpose and as for friends, acquaintances and in particular girlfriends all he could do was take the piss. If sarcasm was an art form then he was an artist of the highest calibre. 9. My earliest recollections of being indoctrinated into the aristocracy tend to be rather sketchy and vague with only the odd experiences remaining very clear. I was four years old when the 1939 - 45 war broke out, yet clearly remember my mother panicking, being issued with Gas Masks and queuing for Cod Liver Oil and Orange Juice. I vaguely remember some arguments with some kind of authority that resulted in an Air Raid Shelter being built in front of someone else's house and not ours. I remember the argument with Mr Jones, next door, because he had been issued with a Stirrup Pump and we had not and how according to my mother, our needs were greater than theirs and if there weren't enough to go round then we should have it and they do without. Also I clearly remember being sent to bed because I had tried to move the single Sand Bag, we had been issued with to protect the whole house, and it split and the sand ran out. For weeks I believed that someone would go to prison for it and that our house was vulnerable to attack without it. The Government also introduced a scheme called, 'Dig for Britain,' and the idea behind that was that all available garden space was turned over to agriculture and the local authority, or someone, allocated and shared it out. Anyhow, our next door neighbour, Mr Jones, lived on the corner and somehow we ended up with a large portion of his side garden, allocated to us, and throughout the whole war, because of the difference over the Stirrup Pump, we grew produce, for ourselves, in his garden and never spoke to him and rarely to his family and I was never allowed to go in there when he or any member of his family were working their patch. I also remember the lady, a few doors away, and where her son had been shot down in his aircraft and who, according to my mother, had decided to hide away until the war was over. He never came back and I thought it was sad that he had run away and made his mother cry all that time. Then there were the people who moved in opposite; what right had they to be bombed out and move in there and so close to us, and the refugees: well what right had they to anything or to move in anywhere and then send their children to our local village school? What would happen if we really needed it and all the other facilities, for that matter, that they were taking up? All these people sponging and sharing what was rightfully ours and costing money which should have gone into the war effort and not one of them from a decent background. You had only to look at them to tell that. A successful manufacturer who happened to have the misfortune to live in Hull and be bombed out, counted for nothing and those who spoke with different accents, well, there was just no answer to that and me, knowing no different, believed it all. At this stage I couldn't possibly move on without mentioning the Pig Bins. During 'the war' local farmers were allowed to place round metal bins at strategic points and in exchange for emptying them, on a regular basis, got the swill for their pigs, which the locals deposited, by law, into them. Well you can imagine what happened when the bins and surrounding areas deteriorated after a period of time and the farmers were not as regular as they might have been and in particular during the hot summer weather. The flies and blue bottles had a ball and not to mention the stink and the rats. My mother had the solution, first of all you don't go there yourself, you sent one of your kids. Secondly, if everyone did as she did and wrapped everything up well, there would be no stink and no mess. That was probably true but I wonder how the farmers and in particular their pigs, coped with all the wrapping paper that my mother thought necessary to wrap her waste in. 10. During the war my father was in a 'Reserved Occupation.' In other words he worked in a Mill, was 'the manager' if the people asking didn't know us, and was employed to help produce essential goods for the war effort and in his case for the Black Market also. Young as I was, I remember walking miles to deliver parcels of woven material and having to say, 'My dad says I am to give you this when you give me an envelope.' I thought that was good because it sounded like a code and I was often made to wait until after it was dark and made to promise not to tell anyone what was in the parcel and if a Policeman stopped me to say I had found it, show him where and say that I knew the person who's name was on the parcel and so I was taking it to them; anywhere but home. Later, as his personal war effort increased, I delivered Petrol Coupons, cans of Petrol and on more than one occasion saw the handgun or ammunition or military binoculars being closely inspected before the envelope was handed over. Years later and it all falls into place. Send a kid and the risks are reduced and apparently the army must never have missed the arms and ammunition or all of the food that was regularly brought home or taken to my grandmothers to stop my mother bawling and screaming, yet not refusing to eventually eat it. The Petrol Coupons were all part of the wheeling and dealing and would often be in the envelopes I brought back home. My father's involvement with the military came about as the result of his Reserve Occupation. Initially he spent a lot of time at a Barracks in Halifax, somehow got a commission (which later was never spoken about, particularly in the presence of 'real' soldiers) and then came home astride a Military 'Matchless' Motorbike which was used, among many, many other things, to travel on certain days, evenings and weekends between home, work, the barracks and the local Home Guard and a large Anti-Aircraft Battery set up on the moors close to the village. Years later I heard it said that he had been a Small Arms Instructor and I suppose that accounts for a lot of the packages that I toted around. One day the Military Police came and I gathered that it was because he had failed to turn up somewhere because earlier a large bail of raw wool had fallen off the back of a lorry and he hadn't stolen it, he had run into it, on his motorbike and damaged it. They went away with a nice piece of woven woollen worsted each. However, no one ever came to look at the Still, set up in the back of our shed. You see we didn't have a car at that time or a garage, so the shed had to do, to house the set up, for removing the red die from the military petrol, thus making it safe to use in private civilian vehicles. Throughout the whole of this time my mother flatly refused underwear made from Parachute Silk but allowed Army Blankets on the beds and of course a proportion of all the sugar, butter, meat and anything else that was rationed and which came our way was still reluctantly accepted. |
MY BIOGRAPHY. |
