CHAPTER TEN – NEW ELTHAM AND NEW LIFE
The 1930s semi-detached house in Domonic Drive, New Eltham – up a steep road off the Sidcup by-pass close to the then boundary with Kent – was the cosy home of my parents’ dreams.
A hateful landlord was replaced by kindly neighbours, the bicycle store in our bedroom was replaced by a garage, used initially in the absence of a car for games of darts and table tennis, and where there had been a scruffy forecourt filled with a lorry and builder’s scrap there were pretty gardens front and back.
As we posed for photographs before the arched front door, it must have felt like Paradise Found for my long-suffering mother and father.
My train journey from Mottingham to Wyborne school in New Eltham, by now renamed from its urban-sounding Pope Street, was replaced by an easy walk through pleasant suburban streets to the quiet village.
I loved my primary school years as much as I was to loathe the grammar school years that followed.
With my best pals, John Curtis and Peter Gillow – he had the same initials as me, lived in the same road and also had a teacher mother – the days passed in what now seems like perpetual happiness.
There were sunny summer holidays spent at Great Aunt Flo’s house, 15, Southcliffe Avenue, Eastbourne, now turned into a B&B, where Nige and I were to stay over 50 years later at the start of our tackling of the South Downs Way long distance footpath.
The family travelled to Eastbourne by train, completing the last leg by taxi, which led to heated arguments between Hugh and myself over who should sit up front with the driver – Hugh normally won with a masterful display of devilish deviousness.
We boys spent all day on the beach, swimming, exploring rock pools and fighting, and in the evening there were trips to the pier, where the penny machines brought the mixed entertainment of graveyard ghouls and What The Butler Saw.
For my parents it was the chance for a rare escape from London and must have re-kindled memories of their honeymoon years strolling along the promenade in Exmouth.
My father’s happiness brought his sense of fun into full focus and he delighted in teasing me for several days on one Eastbourne holiday with the promise of seeing a Water Otter at a Beachy Head family attraction – it turned out to be an old kettle on a rope down a well.
In 1953 I remember counting the Union Jack flags flying on cars in celebration of the Queen’s crowning on June 2 – Hugh’s birthday - and going to the Gaumont cinema on Eltham Hill to see the double bill of the Coronation and the ascent of Everest – not conquering of the world’s highest mountain as I would later be told by my colleagues at adventure holiday company Himalayan Kingdoms during my time as their publicity officer.
There was also victory in the school three-legged race with Peter Gillow, although this was soured when the prize was shared with my partner – he received the Fry’s assorted fruit cream bar, which he liked, and I was handed the mint version, which I hated.
It was an innocent, carefree time, which I recalled in a poem I wrote for John’s 50th birthday, when he was living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with his wife, Sky, and their children, Sarah, Katie and Charlie.
It’s half a ton or two score ten
And takes me back to past times when
We went to Pope Street in our shorts
And sweets not girls were in our thoughts.
Those licorice whirls and sherbet dips
The Wagon Wheels and candy lips.
Recall the faces if not names
Of those who shared our playground games.
The ciggie cards to flick and swop
The lines of chalk across to hop
Conkers held on knotted string
Splitting ’neath a practised swing.
Desks of wood with pots of ink
The morning milk with straw to drink
The niff of greens and shepherd’s lamb
The frog spawn topped with blob of jam
The smell of chalk, of powdered paint
The tables chant and manners quaint.
And then the wait to hear that bell
At four o’clock and run like hell.
Through labelled gates with freedom’s speed
To seek the park and home to lead.
Coronation flag and pen
And Everest climbed by those brave men
The highlight of my final year was a school journey to Sandown on the Isle of Wight with all my pals – the first time I had been away from home without my parents.
There was a visit to Carisbrooke Castle, where I came out with my first remembered pun – “Is that the path to the keep or keep to the path?”
We also went to Alum Bay, where I dug different coloured sand out of the cliffs – allowed at the time, but strictly forbidden now – and carefully filled a glass lighthouse with the pretty layers.
It survived on the dining room mantelpiece in Domonic Drive until sent crashing to the floor by an ill-placed foot of one of my father’s budgies – he loved these tiny feathered mimics, teaching them to say such memorable phrases as “Where’s Hugh – gone to church?” and “Where’s Peter – still in bed?”
It was also on the Isle of Wight that I fell in love for the first time – the object of my 11-year-old affections was a pretty twenty-something waitress at our Sandown hotel, who was persuaded to accompany us to the beach where I photographed her with my heart trembling. Thankfully I never found out what she thought of the pre-teen adulation.
During our stay on the island I learnt that I had passed the 11-plus – news that I relayed to my parents on a postcard, but my pride was slightly dented when my father pointed out that I had mis-spelt grammar and I remember that wayward final “e” to this day.
A further postcard informed them that I was homesick, despite the many pleasures of the holiday and my father of course responded to the plea to meet me on the return to Waterloo Station.
In my carefully-written account of the school journey that I discovered recently, I reported that “Daddy met me at Waterloo and took me to a cafe because I was hungry.”
With a mother and father of such proven intelligence my passing of the 11-plus was pretty inevitable and I also scored one of the highest arithmetic marks in London, but did not win the coveted Christ’s Hospital nomination awarded to the top few in the city, which would lead to a prized education at this celebrated boarding school in Sussex.
Its cachet was increased by the pupils’ distinctive uniform, still worn today, of a long outer blue coat; the boys with breeches and the girls with pleated skirts, yellow socks and a white cotton shirt with ‘bands’ (similar to those of a barrister) instead of a regular school tie. Each pupil also wore a leather belt, tied and buckled differently according to the pupil’s year.
I was obviously disappointed not to join this elite group, especially as one of my friends, Edwin Phillips, had made the grade, so I decided in a moment of sheer madness to tell my parents that I had been nominated.
It was a boyish joke, but it snowballed horribly as the proud news was rapidly conveyed to all the relatives, including Great Uncle Hugh and Great Aunt Mim, as well as all our new neighbours.
Of course I had to come clean eventually and even today I can remember the cold feeling as I stood shame-faced in the dining room with my father’s budgie tweeting happily behind me, my parents taking in the full enormity of my sin and unhappily contemplating the unavoidable task of untelling everyone.
It would be good to attest that I never lied again in my life, but that, as they say, would be a lie.
My brother at this time was at Colfe’s Grammar School in Lewisham – my parents had originally wanted him to go to Eltham College at the end of our road back in Mottingham, but the entrance exam proved too much for him.
It was decided that I would join him at Colfe’s , although a pre-visit to this inner-city cluster of pre-fabs – the original school had been flattened in the war – and a meeting with the stern headmaster (a far cry from the warm and supportive Wyborne headmistress) filled me with less than joy.
I was also aware that I would have to make a long train journey there each school day – albeit often accompanied by Hugh – and that the only two of my Wyborne acquaintances also destined for Colfe’s would be going by bus.
But gloomy though my anticipation of big school might have been, it did not prepare me for the disaster that happened a week before the start of term.