Longtime Ago People
In a world where family connections shape us, stories bridge generations. Many of us carry cherished memories of those who touched our lives, which I think deserve to be shared.
Each episode I hope will feature guests recounting touching, funny, and inspiring memories, celebrating the impact these individuals had on their lives. I aim to beautifully remember loved ones, offering listeners nostalgia, warmth, and connection.
I am looking for people to reflect on the impact of these relationships.
Longtime Ago People
From London to the Isle of Wight: The Story of Thomas and Helen Miles
Thomas & Helen Part I - Chrissie 1936
parents/daughter
When my Aunt Chrissie was born prematurely, a doctor's warning about London's pollution prompted Thomas and Helen Miles (my grandparents) to make a significant move to the Isle of Wight—a decision that profoundly shaped their family's story. Sitting in Chrissie's cosy Steyning cottage, we chat about everything from wartime beach barricades to life on the Isle of Wight, where her parents welcomed holidaymakers from the Potteries. Through stories of family hustle, resilience, and a love that endured through the years, I hope our conversation offers a warm, nostalgic glimpse into a time when life seemed much simpler yet full of meaning.
Have a story echoing through time? I’m listening—300 words or fewer.
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"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."
You're listening to Miles, and this is long time ago, people. And today I'm with my aunt, chrissie, in the lovely village of Stenning in West Sussex. So, chrissie, I'm going to start and just tell me what your, your parents, names were, just to start there.
Speaker 2:So Thomas Augustine Miles, we used to call him Disgusting.
Speaker 1:You used to call him Disgusting.
Speaker 2:We used to call him Tony and I used to call him Disgusting. Thomas Augustine Miles and Helen Gladys Reigate.
Speaker 1:Because if I said to you what's the very first thing that you can remember about your parents, what would that be?
Speaker 2:You don't go with reminiscences, whether that's what you remember. People talked about of it and you've made a picture in your picture you might mean, you don't know if that's a real reminiscence oh yeah, I feel the same about photographs.
Speaker 1:You sometimes think about something and you think, well, am I remembering that or am I just remembering a photograph?
Speaker 2:yeah, that if you know what I?
Speaker 1:mean, when did they move to the island?
Speaker 2:What happened. My mother didn't know she was pregnant. This was in London and they were in Islington and I was born four weeks early and I was only four pounds and in those days to be four pounds was pretty lethal. And they said because London? The doctor said because London was so polluted, they should go to the country. So they went to the Isle of Wight, but I'm not quite sure which I think just after I was born, in fact.
Speaker 1:I don't know but I'm guessing no, so were you, did you have to stay in hospital for a while?
Speaker 2:because obviously nowadays there would be an incubator no, they just said I was yellow and skinny all right? I don't think so, because there wasn't a house over no so and there wasn't care in incubators as we know it? I wouldn't think so, because there wasn't a house over there and there wasn't care in incubators as we know it.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't have thought so why the Isle of Wight? Why did he pick the Isle of Wight?
Speaker 2:because mum's sister, Aunty Hattie lived in raiding in the Isle of Wight so they thought they might go to the Isle of Wight. It was countryside. They rented a little house. As far as I remember and I can remember the house, strangely enough you went up steps to it but I don't remember where it was. And then they had a hotel called Rose Court Right and that was in Sandown in Station Road and they rented that the earliest real memories of mum and dad. And there again it was told to me.
Speaker 2:Yes, Some of it wasn't it, and so I made pictures of it perhaps, but I do remember the beaches and the scaffolding on the beaches and the barbed wire, because you couldn't go on the beach.
Speaker 1:You couldn't? Yeah, I mean, I can see that in my mind's eye now, you know I've never seen it, just because I've seen.
Speaker 2:But if you saw Foyle's War, you should see?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to check that out. Foyle's War.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Foyle's War is wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely, I'm sure, as it was as it was.
Speaker 1:yeah, no, that's good so do you? Remember the end of the war.
Speaker 2:It was strange that we still had news, because I thought news on the radio only meant news of war.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So it was funny having news of anything else I can't say I remembered. I don't remember celebrations at the end of war which must have gone on.
Speaker 1:Okay, so where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:I went to school with Tony at the local Church of England school or whatever, when I was, when I went into hospital, when I was 11, and I was supposed to have done the 11 plus, but I was in hospital. I was 11, and I was supposed to have done 11 plus, but I was in hospital. I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And I was in there 14 months Now. In those days they didn't have the health service. So the consultant, as a charity, he ran clinics. So my parents would take me at 8 o'clock in the morning and we would sit and stand in a queue and if time didn't run out, the consultant would see you.
Speaker 1:But if in a queue and if time didn't run out, the consultant would see you but if his time was up, you'd have to do it all again, and this is pre-national health as well, isn't it?
Speaker 2:pre-national health? It was a charity, yeah, and he saw you as a charity. And then, um, I had leg irons, so really I would. I was, um, got a, I was bullied at school a bit and tony, to fight my battles. So when I came out of hospital they sent me to the convent because they thought I had to be fight my own battles.
Speaker 1:Fight your own battles at the convent, yeah, at the convent.
Speaker 2:The priest got me in there free and I only had to buy my uniform. Actually, my education was nothing. I mean it was. It was naff how I ended up nursing.
Speaker 1:I don't know, because I was absolutely badly so how did you go from that to nursing then?
Speaker 2:Well, in those days there wasn't much that women could do. You either became a teacher, if you were clever, or you became a nurse, or you worked for other people as a servant, or you know whatever.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to do it, I suppose because I've been in hospital alone and I thought I'd like to do it yeah so my mother got me and I said, went to the convent and then I went to a school for a year in newport and it was a pre-nursing course and it would told you anatomy and physiology and all the basics so that when I applied to do my nurse training I said I've done this pre-nursing course, so I I've got depth of anatomy and physiology and things like that.
Speaker 2:So I was accepted yeah, good stuff and, and the training was three years and then your hospital demanded you you work for them for a year because they trained you which?
Speaker 1:but you got paid yeah, and that was off the island and that was southampton yeah, three years yeah, four years.
Speaker 2:And portsmouth I did midwifery, yeah, and that was a year, and the eye of white okay, coming back to my granddad, your dad.
Speaker 1:So what did he do for a living then?
Speaker 2:Well, when he came on to the Isle of Wight, he worked for a building firm and they wanted to employ him all the time. But then, when they opened Rose Court and when they had the billeting and all that later, I don't remember what he did. Well, in the war, of course, he was at the shipyard. But when the war was finished and they had their house back and made it a hotel, then in the, he worked there. But in the winter, when there was not much money coming in, he worked for this building firm who would have liked to have had him all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but couldn't no. And what did your mum do at the time?
Speaker 2:She did all the cooking and Dad did all the waiting. I did the bedrooms. Go up and do the bedrooms and don't let Aunty Marge try on that.
Speaker 1:Sounds very similar to my childhood.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, I know it was a big one, wasn't it? And Tony did the dining room. It was all very labour intensive, wasn't it Because you didn't have any. I remember Simington soup. Suddenly there was Simington soup that you could, you know because you made them from vegetables.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You cooked.
Speaker 1:You know everything was cooked from. They cooked on an agar. So how long was it before they got the bigger hotel that I remember?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but I was out of hospital so I was at the conference of St Anthony's. I don't quite know but I was about 12. I would have thought.
Speaker 1:So these were just people coming down for holidays that they catered to? Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2:Well, it was a bit like yours. It started in May, a little bit in May, june, july, august, a little bit of September, so you had to have all your money made then. Now when it came to in the town. If you could pay your rates in February instead of the 1st of April, you got an absolute amount off. All right, so it was great things the 1st of April you got an absolute amount off.
Speaker 2:So it was great things. You had to save this money to be able to pay your rates in February, because the town was poor. It had no money left. It was waiting for the next season.
Speaker 1:It was very seasonal. So what decade are we talking about? What decade are, weren't you? Well, no, I think I mean. So what decade are we talking about?
Speaker 2:What decade are we talking about? Well, I qualified in 57.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're talking 50?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 50s and 60s.
Speaker 2:Well, I came out of hospital in I was 11, so that was 47.
Speaker 1:Yeah, end of the 40s, End of the 40ss, 50s 60s. Where were these people coming from? London?
Speaker 2:oh well, no, they came from all over. They came by train, didn't they? They came from the potteries. Now, if you look up on there, on the top, there behind your photo, behind, my photo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, yeah, the cut. What year does that say? Ah right, ok, it says on there presented to Thomas Marles 1963.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, these people came from the Potteries Right and when the factories closed they always closed the factory for a week or two. Glendale used to call it. She had some word for factory closures that the Midlands used, but they closed their factories and mum used to be very worried in case if the Bryans they were the people who the Bryans hadn't booked and they didn't want to sell there two weeks.
Speaker 1:So they came every year then.
Speaker 2:So people came every year. Oh yes, I can remember my mother going to the newsagent and telling the newsagent that Mr Bryan was coming, so that Mr Bryan's newspaper would be there. Would be there and then, of course, when Mr Bryan went to the shop, he was greeted by.
Speaker 1:He was greeted as Mr Bryan. Yeah, that's right. This is long before package holidays or trips to Spain.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, exactly People, the island. To go to the Isle of Wight from the Midlands would be quite exotic.
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely yeah, especially with a ferry journey.
Speaker 2:Yes, you'd be on a train, and then you were on the ferry, and yeah, and anyway, there were steam trains, weren't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you see on these films.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know when they moved here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when did they move to Stenningham?
Speaker 2:I only remember them here, you only remember them here, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't remember them anywhere else.
Speaker 2:So here we are, 69. 69, right, okay 69, they moved here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think Dad told me there's paid £4,000 for this. Wow, I think it was a little bit more. I think it was about 4,000 to 5,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But of course it was derelict. But actually they moved here and they got a cottage at Worcester Estate which is run by the Foreign Office. So Dad had a job in the bar and he looked after the chief steward. He was chief steward, the administrator, the champion charge was a German, Herr Kuppler, Herr Kepler. He was Herr Kepler's steward and he ran the bar.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine him running the bar Tea totally, and all these Americans. They'd say, oh, oh, have a drink on me, and he'd have this sort of um so did he never drink, he'd never drank, wow. And so he'd have this beer filter up there and he put money in. He'd take some money, you know, and put it in a pot. So yeah, he did quite I remember him drinking tea.
Speaker 1:All the time he drank tea, he really wasotaler.
Speaker 2:He drank leaves and he had this old tin, black inside. I think it added some out of it.
Speaker 1:So did your mum work there as well? Yes, she worked there.
Speaker 2:She worked in the kitchen and Dad didn't like it. He didn't like it, it was on a field. It was in a field.
Speaker 1:He was a.
Speaker 2:Londoner, wasn't he? He was a Londoner, wasn't he? He didn't like it and when this was for sale. I can remember Mum standing there with me Because where you parked the car, that wasn't a parking space it was just a little gun wall came up and I built the wall.
Speaker 1:There was no wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember that yeah, we stood and looked at this derelict house and my mother said, oh gosh, we'll have to have it. Well, you see, it was either that or a flat. That's all they could afford. So they had this.
Speaker 1:So this house we're in now. So did they. Was it built then? Oh yes, this is it, this was it.
Speaker 2:This is it, but it wasn't, it was derelict Right, okay, well, it was all right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they didn't knock it down and build it again. He got a roof on I replaced the roof in 2000.
Speaker 2:It had a tile roof.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it didn't have this brown cedar wood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dad did that yeah.
Speaker 2:It was just well. It was a bit terrible.
Speaker 1:So when you said he was doing the building on the Isle of Wight, did he use those skills here? Because I remember him being a carpenter. Yes, oh yes, he used his skills here. That was his skill, was it?
Speaker 2:Yes, but this wasn't. I put this on. Yeah, in the kitchen it was really the bathroom. Was the coal hole? Yeah, so he had to incorporate the coal, take away the coal hole and the extension I built.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because he had. It just went out and it had a plastic roof, a single wall, and that was his work room where he had his machinery and all his pots, all his tools. So was he doing this up at the same time as working as a barber?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yes yes, because he'd come and sit in the garden and I'd come down from London and the garden was full of brambles and rubbish and beer bottles, because the last owner had been an alcoholic and it was full of beer bottles and rubbish.
Speaker 1:Just through the bottles in the garden. Yeah, yeah, that's right it was dreadful.
Speaker 2:All the neighbours were quite pleased to see us, actually, but I wasn't here a lot. I used to come down and sit in the guard and, of course, in those days, if you had a house that you didn't live in, you didn't have to pay rates on it. I'm sure you do now, as long as you didn't occupy it. So while we weren't occupying it, and where that cupboard is, it had a lay-bone which I took out, what they used to do.
Speaker 1:I remember that.
Speaker 2:I didn't have the boiler in the extension, because the extension wasn't there and the boiler was up in this corner covered with a curtain.
Speaker 1:And where the cupboards are.
Speaker 2:Before he got rid of the coal hole was a bath. So, you took the lid off the bath and then you put it back for your table.
Speaker 1:Put it back for your table it was all a bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was all a bit, but it was all right, because Mum wasn't. She wasn't like Tone. No, I don't know where Tone gets it. He certainly didn't get it from Mum, because Mum didn't care, as long as she only came in here to get out the garden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the garden was her passion. She didn't care what you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I remember her very clearly sitting in the chair you're in now. I think it was angled slightly different.
Speaker 2:She smoked a lot. Yeah, she smoked all the time. I remember her smoking a black ashtray it was a black ashtray.
Speaker 1:It was almost like a triangle type thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It was weird. She had old Hoban. She rolled her own. I'm sure she had one of those spinny ashtrays that you saw in the 70s.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right, yeah you push the top of it and the cigarettes in it just dissipate, spun round, but they somehow went into the bottom of the Astro.
Speaker 2:I remember that because.
Speaker 1:I remember, just playing with it, I used to hit the top of it and watch it spin round all the time. It was, um, yeah, yeah, really, really funny, and I mean when they gave up working.
Speaker 2:She used to volunteer for the hospital car service.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, I remember that.
Speaker 2:She got petrol money for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so your dad didn't smoke then.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, he was. Oh, he smoked as well. Oh right, I don't remember him smoking.
Speaker 1:That's weird, isn't it? He smoked and by the time he came here, he smoked and by the time he came here he gave it up because he was oh.
Speaker 2:that's why I don't remember, yeah, and he had very bad breathing, he had pneumonia.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the GP stood at the end of his bed and said Mr Miles, if you don't stop smoking, you'll die and I won't do anything about it. They wouldn't say that today.
Speaker 1:No, they wouldn't it worked. It worked, you know. But that's what we need. Yes, say that today it will, it will, but that's what we need.
Speaker 2:We need some home truths really yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:If you had to think something funny about your dad, what would that be?
Speaker 2:I think what was lovely one day I was coming in here and they were having a cuddle in them, let me see, and I said something. And Tony and mum said to me well, I still laugh at his jokes, don't I? I can remember when we were I was with Tony. She might not remember this, but I remember we were in the car or her friends were coming or something, and Tony turned round to mum and said don't cuddle daddy, when my friends come.
Speaker 1:She might not remember that one.
Speaker 2:I thought, that was rather lovely. They were letting the side down, you know, in front of her friends.
Speaker 1:As far as like things that you remember about them, is there any particular? I mean again, we grew up with music. Did they grow up with music?
Speaker 2:Well, when we were children I don't know where it was, it must have been with my grandparents I had this feeling that we all sat there on the piano and things. And I know when we came to Stenning they had this friend who they had local concerts in the local it's not there now.
Speaker 2:A local hall, and it was terrible. Dad used to say, oh, a local hall, and it was terrible. Dads used to say, oh gosh, we've got to go. You know we'd have to go and this chap was catawalling on and you know what I mean. You think that you tend to think that these things were so lovely, weren't they? But some of them weren't. The thing is, I think, that when we were on the, we were all Catholics and the Catholic Church was the pinnacle.
Speaker 2:It was the centre of your social engagement as well as your religion. Like they had wish drives and they had socials and dances, but the children went with it. There was no case of having babysitters. The children sat around the edges. Do you know what?
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:And they had bands and things like that. The other thing they had because we didn't have television, we had in Sandown they had two cinemas and they had a different film. On Monday, tuesday and Wednesday they had one film, and then Wednesday, thursday and Friday they had a different film, and then on Sunday they had a different film. And there were two cinemas, so you could work it out that you could actually see what three, four, five, well six, if you went to a matinee. You know, and we went to the cinema a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there was only the one, wasn't it? Next door there was cinema. One of them was next door, absolutely next door yeah, was.
Speaker 2:We made all our own clothes and things. So the hotel, they didn't have much money, so you cut the. If your sheet wore out in the middle, cut it in half and put sides to the middle. So all this thing, this maintenance, went on. My mother had a sewing room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you had to mend everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah you know and like, if you didn't have enough pillowcases, you made pillowcases out of the sheets. That were all right.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, so did they have favourites from film stars at the time?
Speaker 2:Oh well, oh yeah, who's my favourite? Oh someone, Jameson.
Speaker 1:Oh right, ok, I think I can't remember now, but anyway.
Speaker 2:His Right, okay, I think I can't remember now, but anyway, yeah, his favourite film, and, of course, some of the films. You talk about them with nostalgia, but some of them are pretty awful.
Speaker 1:They're pretty bad, you know, but it must have been amazing going back to the cinema, an amazing experience, especially being so close.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they always had a trailer, and then they always had two films. They had the main event. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah that's true.
Speaker 1:There was always a pre-film, wasn't there? It wasn't in colour, no, no, obviously not.
Speaker 2:It was in black and white and sometimes it broke down in the middle of it. You know to me, and when I was working in Ryde, when I was a community midwife, I was on call all the time except one and a half days off, night and day. So it was really not that I worked particularly hard, but I had to be there and I remember thinking I'd go to the cinema and over the tan I had it asked me would I go to the reception because somebody was in labour? Oh really, would I go to the reception because somebody was in labour?
Speaker 1:Oh really. So if there was one thing that either of your parents taught you that stood you in good stead all your life, what do you think that would be?
Speaker 2:I think if you looked at them as a couple, you would think my mother was the dominant, you know the organiser.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I can see that. I think my father had a real solid.
Speaker 2:You know he was a bit laid back and he was lazy. He was a bit like me. You know he never did it. I remember mum saying to him Tom, will you do the gutters, because if you die tomorrow I couldn't do the gutters. And he used to do some of the gutters and he'd go off and play golf. I'll never come on to that you know and then he so, but I remember when I was I was very upset and I was training and I didn't want to go back.
Speaker 2:So he sat me in. I remember we sat in the car, by the boat, and he said to me you can stay at home here. He said and you can. You know, you needn't go back. He said, but if you don't go back, you won't have a qualification that you could use for the rest of your life and go all around the world. He said so and I remember him sitting there and he didn't say you've got to do it. He said you could stay at home with us, but it won't be a very good, you know, sort of life and I always thought he was quite sort of I. I think he was quite brave because he didn't have shoes made like me no his feet.
Speaker 2:I think his feet hurt a lot yeah, I mean because he didn't, people didn't get looked after. I mean, I know we moan about the health service.
Speaker 1:It's very different if you haven't got a health service isn't it?
Speaker 2:If you haven't got a health service, isn't it?
Speaker 1:So the golf thing, because I remember him playing golf. You remember him playing golf? Yeah, I remember him playing golf.
Speaker 2:Played on the Isle of Wight.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But when he retired and played here he used to go off and play golf, but after he died it was a bit sad. But one or two of these people rang up and they really quite crossed with me because I didn't know who they were. But of course they found out on the grapevine that he died. Well, I hadn't put it in the papers or anything. So I felt a bit sad because these people obviously felt they should have known and should have come to the funeral.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, they lived a large part of their life here, didn't they? In West Sussex.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, 15 years, weren't they really yeah?
Speaker 1:So did they ever get to go on holiday or anything like that?
Speaker 2:Oh yes, they did, strangely enough, because they used to deposit Tony and I, with Aunty Elsie and go on holiday. I remember one year they went to France it was sometime after the war, wasn't it and a friend of theirs had friends in France and said well, go and stay with them, I'll bring them up and they went off and they just walked into these strangers and they had the time of their life and these French people made a great fuss of them and took them all over Paris in days where people didn't go.
Speaker 1:Straight. After the war they went to Bournemouth, or all the Isle of Wight, all the Isle of Wight Of all places.
Speaker 2:I think they occasionally went on holiday, but then of course you, they worked all the summer didn't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, we always went away for Christmas. Ah, so like a family holiday, yeah, we went to.
Speaker 2:We always went to Aunty Rose and Uncle Vic. Now Aunty Rose was Dad's sister, yeah, and she lived next door I remember that, yeah, I remember that. And Uncle Vic, we didn't like Uncle Vic when we were a bit older saying to Mum and Dad once do we have to go to London for Christmas? And they were devastated because they spent money on taking us to the pantomime and taking us to London, thinking they were giving us the great treat you really want to go.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it was Tony.
Speaker 2:It was probably Tony.
Speaker 1:But they then moved from London down to the island.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they went back for Christmas you know, as a treat sort of thing. So they I mean I don't suppose they went away from holiday very much because it would be winter, wouldn't it? Yeah, I do remember being staying at Aunty, so they must have gone somewhere if we were staying with Aunty in the village.
Speaker 1:So quick, last one for you. Do you know when they met or where they met your parents?
Speaker 2:Because Mum lived in Croydon, because I remember her telling me she had a lovely engagement ring. It was opals and surrounded by diamonds. She gave it to me and the burglar took it.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:But I can remember her saying that I don't know how true it is they sold a sofa so that Dad could buy her this ring and Mum always felt a bit embarrassed because it was a little bit opulent as composed to her contemporaries. This is all she told me about, but where they met I'm not sure and how well I might know.
Speaker 1:I will definitely ask her.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've still got your mother's wedding ring oh yeah that is your mother's wedding ring she lost it in the garden, you know. She found it so uh I inherited that and I've had it on my finger ever since oh, really, did you not know that?
Speaker 1:mum gave me it. So that is. You want to hold it for a second. That is your mother's yes, because it's wearing.
Speaker 2:Dad got another one, but this is the. This is the original I've had that on my hand ever since then.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it is lovely yeah, it's very special to me. So how old would they have been when they met then? Would they have been quite young, I don't know. It just seems that most people in the past they met quite young, normally in their twenties.
Speaker 2:It's funny that I've no idea where they met.
Speaker 1:No, this is why I'm doing this sort of thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I can remember this house in Islington and if I remember Now, this is the very first memory.
Speaker 1:Ah, there it is. How old is?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but we lived in the basement.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there were two lions In my mind. They're big but I suppose they're little. And then the next floor. I think Dad's mother lived. And then the next floor, one of the cousins, I think Auntie Eve or one of them, because that grandmother my father's mother. I never saw my father's father but, my father's mother.
Speaker 2:She had a stroke and she was in bed until she died. She was in bed for about 10 or 11 years, looked after by her family. She didn't speak. She recognised you, but I think as children we were a bit fine. So I can't remember who lived where, but there were four floors and the whole family lived in this house. They must have rented it.
Speaker 1:Well, what's funny about that house is that? So my son Josh, he lived round the corner, or he did live around the corner literally, and we didn't realize this until mum realized it. She realized that literally josh was and he was literally around the corner. I'm talking 200 feet out of the corner, around the corner, so it'd be quite easy for him to go and see if those lines are still there I'm going to make it.
Speaker 1:I don't know I'm going to make him go. Look, oh they, I don't know I'm going to make them go, look oh. Because I think Mum remembers the address.
Speaker 2:I don't remember the address. No, I think she does One address. We stayed with the place we stayed. It was called Oakley Road. Yeah, but I don't think the one with the lions was Oakley.
Speaker 1:Road no.
Speaker 2:Sometimes your memories are not it right at the beginning.
Speaker 1:It's one of these things when you sort of remember things, or you remember being told things, yeah, and then you think, you remember, then you make your memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you fill in the gaps, but I often think about things and I realize actually that's a photograph I'm remembering not really what actually, yes, what really, yeah, or somebody told you something and you made a picture, almost yeah okay, that's it, I think we're, I think we're there.
Speaker 1:Anything else you that you can remember, I don't know? Okay, that's it, I think we're there.
Speaker 2:Anything else that you can remember? Yeah, because I was a bit sad because I didn't realise that mum and dad were struggling at the end before they moved here.
Speaker 1:But it was a brave thing to do, wasn't?
Speaker 2:it. Oh, I think it was a brave thing.
Speaker 1:I mean it was a brave thing that they moved from London in the first place once you had your diagnosis and it was like get to fresh air. Well, you can't get any more fresher air than Sandown on the other side.
Speaker 2:I mean, that was equivalent almost to going to Australia to go, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Definitely, absolutely. It was such a long way, people just didn't do it, and they didn't have the.
Speaker 2:He didn't have the security of a job. You know he didn't have a promise of a job or something.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I mean? So again going from like central. London and Islington central London to something like Sandown on the Isle of Wight in the 40s.
Speaker 2:I think he always liked London.
Speaker 1:You said he was a Londoner. He was a.
Speaker 2:Londoner. Before I went into hospital I didn't realise what it was about. But Dad me to london yeah he and dad yeah just he and me yeah and took me around london. It was a treat. I didn't know I was going to be dispatched to hospital no, I think it was a treat.
Speaker 1:It was a treat before he got dispatched to hospital I think it was, you know, a treat.
Speaker 2:It was lovely it was lovely but it was totally dirty. It was absolutely filthy. Your clothes got fed from sitting on these buses and all the smoking chimneys and things. Often I was quite sick in London.
Speaker 1:When I watched the Crown the first season of the Crown I was quite shocked at the smog episode. When they talked about how bad the smog was. I remember talking to Mum about that. I said do you remember this particular? And that was in 1953, and she was saying how bad the smog was in London around Christmas time. Lots of people died, but no, all right, there we are, it'll be interesting to know what you've got all over.
Speaker 1:I will. I will put it all together and then I'll play it back to you. That's it, I will. I will put it all together and then I'll play it back to you. That would be lovely over and out. Thank you.
