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
Memories with My Mother: My Grandparents Recalling the Past
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Thomas & Helen (Rae) Part II - Toni 1938
parents/daughter
While talking with my mother, I explored my family's experiences, particularly focusing on my grandparents' move from London to the Isle of Wight. I discussed how they adapted during World War II and their journey from working-class backgrounds to owning and operating a guesthouse business. My analysis offers insights into family dynamics, the challenges faced during wartime, the evolution of the local hospitality industry, and the broader social context of that era.
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Memory is Fragile
"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."
Introduction to Family History
Speaker 1okay, you're listening to miles. This is long time ago. People and I'm with my mother.
Speaker 2Hello mother hello my son where are we? We're at my house in warderslade in kent warderslade.
Speaker 1I was going to ask you do you call it warderslade or do you call it chatter?
Speaker 2but it's warderslade never call it chatter. I pay my rates to maids. You can edit that bit out.
Speaker 1Okay, no, that's fine, we'll leave that in. Okay, so who are we here to talk about today?
Speaker 2We are here to talk about my parents and other members of my family that might be of interest.
Speaker 1Definitely. And what are your parents' names?
Speaker 2My parents' names are Ray and Tom.
Speaker 1Ray and Tom, ray and Tom. So I've already discussed about them in a previous episode, but it's good to have sisters' viewpoints on different things, so I'm going to just ask you a few questions. I can clearly remember them both, which is a privilege to say this. They'd always made me laugh because I found him quite funny.
Speaker 2He was very funny. He had a very good sense of humor.
Speaker 1He was a bit like an actor, and I'll think of his name in a minute and and your mum was uh funny as well, to be be perfectly honest, she, she, she always had time for us, which was great, so, uh, they both liked children when they could talk back. Right.
Speaker 2Neither of them liked babies.
Speaker 1Right, okay.
Speaker 2They wanted to converse with children. Once there was a conversation coming back.
Speaker 1And that's normally the other way around. I find, in my experience, People like kids when they're young and not when they talk back.
Speaker 2But I'm afraid it's something I've inherited.
Speaker 1Yeah, you definitely have, that's for sure.
Speaker 2Earliest memory of your parents? What, what would that be? I think it would be when. I was probably four or five, something like that, yeah, but that my mother made all her own bread. I remember that I went with her to collect eggs from various farms because they were not on on ration.
Speaker 2I do know that at one stage they had a quarter share in a pig right, okay and that, um, when the pig was brought up, there was rationing that they couldn't just kill and eat it all. So I don't quite know how they sold it on, but we were allowed to keep a proportion of the meat for ourselves.
Speaker 1Oh right, Well, that's interesting. And where was that?
Speaker 2That was at Sandown.
Speaker 1And Sandown right.
Speaker 2And that pig farm would have been near the bridge at the bottom of Sandown.
Speaker 1One of your aunts ended up in a house down the bottom there.
Speaker 2That's right. That was Marge Towards the end of her life.
Speaker 3Yes, she did.
Speaker 1Yeah, so we're talking about the bottom of Broadway and going out towards Braden and Thurston Road.
Speaker 3Go left.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it was there, which is now for her own ways. That's right, it is, yeah, okay no problems.
Speaker 1Where was your dad born?
Speaker 2Islington.
Speaker 1And your mother.
Speaker 2Croydon.
Speaker 1How did they meet?
Speaker 2They met because mum was a friend of his sister's Right. The two girls used to go out dancing. Hal mother got with dad, considering he couldn't dance because he had feet where one was a different size from the other, I don't know, but they got together. They got together they had no money, and when he wanted to ask mum to marry him, his mother sold a couch, so she had enough money for him to buy a really nice ring, which my sister has.
Speaker 1Because you had no idea that I had your mother's wedding ring. You got mum's wedding ring, yeah which was a nice surprise for her. Okay, so where did they live initially?
Speaker 2then they lived with the grandmother, I think.
Speaker 1Yeah, and they did because he said that Possibly an auntie as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2But then when they came to the island, as I said, they started in that little house, but then he's working at the aircraft factory.
Speaker 1So you weren't born in Hill Street then?
Speaker 2No, I was born in Station Avenue.
Speaker 3Station Avenue right and.
Speaker 2I think it was like four houses back from that little bit that used to be a shop. One of my earliest memories and I don't know how old I would be would have been going with the RAF man sitting on literally the engine between the two seats, to go to the top of Ventnor, because they'd go up and they had to man that station up the top there. I don't remember about the soldiers being in the Sandown one.
Speaker 1Doug.
Speaker 2Thurston was in the Sandown one. Doug Thurston was in the Sandown one.
Speaker 1Was he? Yeah, his army unit had something to do with that, but I don't remember much about it, but he and I talked about it.
Speaker 2So the Venter one, that was like a St Boniface, that's right, that was in the TV series called Wings of War. I remember thinking oh God they were monitoring because, if you think about it, the Germans had got into the Channel Islands. If they got into the Isle of Wight, they would have given them a base.
Speaker 1So tell me about the beaches.
Speaker 2The beaches. The wire was in enormous curls, probably as big as this room. It would be enormous curls like that and it wasn't right up, you could still walk on the beach, so it was far enough away that you could walk up and down with your dog. We had dogs. We had two little black manchester terrier. They were called emily and charlotte, after the bronte sisters. Okay, okay, good names. But the wire was completely across and the pier was broken halfway down so that nobody could land on the end and come through.
Speaker 1The Sandown Pier.
Speaker 2All of the piers on the island literally had a cap made so that nobody could get on the end and come in.
Speaker 1So were these just the beaches facing France, or would a ride be like this as well?
Wartime Memories on Isle of Wight
Speaker 2No, it was only the ones facing France. I'm not sure about that. We never went to ride. We never went. We didn't have a car.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2So we didn't actually go anywhere. As small children, it wasn't normal to go anywhere. You walked to visit your aunt, but of course Rosevick didn't come to the island until we were grown up.
Speaker 1So if you wanted to go to Wright you would have gone on the train then.
Speaker 2Yes, yeah, but I didn't go to.
Speaker 1Wright. No, no, it's funny, isn't it Because?
Speaker 2none of the relatives were there then.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2They all came later. Mum and Dad came to get away from them all and they followed.
Speaker 1Talked about this billeting at the time.
Speaker 2So what was next to the radio? Had these a big block at the back of very basic rooms yeah, really basic rooms, and no, I don't know about washing facilities, can't remember that, but they had to find homes for the soldiers and they had to find something there, so we had them all the while there was and these were the soldiers that were either vented down or up on sand yes, the soldiers would have been attached to the ones up on Sandham.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You know, under the Do you remember them?
Speaker 1clearly, the soldiers.
Speaker 2I remember the RAF boys.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Some of them, when the war was over, came back with their children. Wow, because some of them were from places like Lancashire and they'd never had a bathroom. No, they'd come from houses with outside toilets. Yeah, They'd come from houses outside toilets and we only had Two bathrooms. We may only have had one, but these lads were a mixture Of well educated, uneducated, a complete mixture of people. So it was all a big experience for them and I think many of them missed their families so they would make a fuss of me.
Speaker 2And make a fuss of children. In actual fact, some of them, after the war, brought their families back on families holidays to the guest house yeah to show their families where they've been, so maybe I remember them when they come back, more than remembering them in the first place yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1So is that what you remember about the war? Do you remember anything?
Speaker 2I remember being quite happy.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Because people were, they lived for the day.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2They weren't, there was no good worrying about next week. We did a lot of things with the church. Yeah, we did. There would be. We would go to church every weekend. There would be socials, there would be things for the children, there would be various things to join in which there wasn't before. I can remember, too, that nobody had any bicycles much, and the first bike Dad got for me was when Chris was in hospital.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And that was secondhand, but I was really lucky to have it.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2But it would horrify your children that I could go out on that bike with a friend on a bike and we'd drive as far. We'd go as far as Yavaland yeah we'd knock on the house and ask for a drink of water and we'd be furious if they only gave us water. We would expect orange juice. There would not be orange juice, there would be. Okay.
Speaker 1So what do you know about the food from your youth?
Speaker 2I remember that we had some very strange things. You had like a pie that had an egg inside it. There was a lot of corned beef. There was corned beef that was put in like a Yorkshire pudding to make it go a bit further, but we didn't have. You had your things in season. You never saw a banana. I never saw a banana until I was, you know, after the war, to know that I hated them.
Speaker 2We grew our own fruit, we grew our own vegetables and you had no, you put everything you could find in these trenches and of course there was a lot of tea leaves. Right, I had a lot of tea and the tea leaves. The tea leaves weren't used only once. And he had a metal pot and in the days when we did have the agar, he put the metal pot in the bottom oven and he would come up after it during the day to have his tea. But nothing fancy at all. There was a great shortage of fat. The weekly allowance for butter would be the size of a restaurant portion now and that would be your weekly amount of butter. Lamb was cheap and it went a long way and you would have the dripping, for that would be what you put on your bread?
Speaker 2yeah, because there was no butter so bread and dripping it would be bread and dripping, which was what marvelous, absolutely marvelous. It was like having the bottom of the joint and meat then was much tastier because we've taken half the fat out of it, which we needed. The fact we needed the fact to keep us warm and make us, you know, because nobody was overweight. And I don't remember margarine, I don't remember when margarine happened so what did your dad do for work on the island?
Ray and Tom: Meeting and Early Life
Speaker 2what he did was he would do whatever job came up. Often it would be carpentry, in-house building, which actually was below his skill level, because his skill level actually was very high yeah, you think of the table that chrissy's got in her that little one and some of his stuff, yeah, I remember yes, and there was a.
Speaker 2There was a lot of upset over his work because when mum and dad let us have St Anthony's Aunty Rose stored some of dad's original work and then she said it was hers and wouldn't give it back to mum and dad. Right, okay, so that was a real upset, upset within the family. Within the family? Yeah, but Uncle Vic was dead by then.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2Now he would not have done that to my mum.
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2But Aunty Rose did. Aunty Rose did, aunty Rose did, and so she hung on to this china cabinet, which was the first thing my dad had ever made in his apprenticeship.
Speaker 1Okay, so you think Uncle Vic might have had a bit of an eye for your mum. Oh, yes, that's probably why Aunty Rose wasn't too happy, like his son, had the eye for me.
Speaker 2Oh dear.
Speaker 1I don't know if I should do you or this.
Speaker 3No, no, no, okay, wendy.
Speaker 1She's taken to jazz clubs.
Speaker 2Oh, it never went anything in those days. It's a different era my own.
Speaker 3And.
Speaker 2I'm not sure that your son's era got it right. I don't think the girls have.
Speaker 1I'm sure they have, Okay. So what did your mum do then?
Speaker 2The fact that you did everything from scratch and she sewed a lot. She worked part-time for a tailor and they took people because there was no material. They took men's suits apart and reversed them and re-sewed them okay, wow, so she sewed she had a treadle. I learned how to treadle. She started with a treadle, so she used to do all sorts of repairs and different things for him. That's what she did during the time. After the war she canvassed for the Labour Party.
Speaker 1Oh well, there you are.
Speaker 2There you are. I remember taking these pamphlets and we were going out of Lake up that long road and going up to Lansdowne.
Speaker 1There you are.
Speaker 2A bit of politics, then Pardon, a bit of politics, then A bit of politics, then yeah, but that's where Dad would be, isn't?
Speaker 1it yeah.
Speaker 2That's where he would be, because you know he'd been a worker.
Speaker 1When you look at how little money he earned as a tradesman, yeah, so how did they make the from from working as they were into the guesthouse?
Speaker 2I think it came by accident, because people wanted somewhere to stay. There was a shortage of room. They had spare rooms, so they did it. So then they moved to the rose court. That was a bit bigger.
Speaker 2That was very hard though, because, as I say, they opened it as a cafe afterwards as well, I mean I was very young when I helped them I must have been nine or ten I'd lay the tables and do everything and and I can remember that I used to have a tray he had had these. He made little trays, one for every table that the and you had a teapot, a water jug and a milk jug and he made these little trays and I can remember having these all ready for the next day yeah so the minute people would finish their dinner, I would take a tray to each table and I would lay at the table.
Speaker 2So I helped them from a very, very early age because I was, I was bossy, I was bossy. I'd go in their cupboards and say you've got to throw that out. You know, there was no dates on anything.
Speaker 2You only knew the jam was no good if it had the fur on top. There was no date on anything whatsoever. So they, they got bigger and then I think what happened was the woman who rented Rose Court to them suddenly wanted the house back and they were really in trouble because they didn't have the money. And, as I said in there, two people helped them with money. The same way later Aunty had helped me, but anyway, these two people helped them. Uncle Jim, that's Ian's grandfather, oh, I don't remember him. Oh, he smelt like nothing on earth. He had the three tons pub in Stenning and he'd go up to the butchers and ask them have they got a cheap bone and this? And he had all sorts of money, but he again liked mum so he lent her.
Speaker 2And then there was this other little barber from London who used to come down with his suitcase Was that big for the week, so he didn't change often. He lent them money. But it was very hard because the place had been let go. It didn't have any plumbing, it was in a really bad state. But they did most of the work themselves and then they gradually built it up. It was all recommended those.
Wartime Food and Rationing
Speaker 2It's very hard to advertise your business because there's no internet no and people come and they try and say, look, buy this advert in a magazine or that's going out and they promise you that it go here, there and everywhere. You never knew. You never knew how people found you so how?
Speaker 1how did people find out?
Speaker 2so, when I was talking, christian recommend me in the main, but then the tourist board was set up yeah and then they started. Yeah, um, and later in my life, when I was a member of the tourist board, I used to go out and inspect hotels to see if they were scratch and some of them weren't no, they weren't no they weren't.
Speaker 2Oh right, okay, that's, that's all right. So I think they work really hard. I think, christian, that dad worked in the beginning. He would work in the day and then he'd just come back and he'd do the washing up.
Speaker 1Mum would have done the food that sort of gets us into the um, into the 60s yeah so at what point did they move to Stenning then?
Speaker 2Well, when I came back from Bermuda, and you were born and then we had the kiosk and everything. So they went to Stenning.
Speaker 1Yeah, why Stenning then?
Speaker 2They used to go there over winter when Dad couldn't get a job. When there was nothing on the island, They'd go to Stenning, stay with Jim and Els, and Dad would get a job there easily, and Mum. Well, when they sold to Ralph and I they went to work at Worcester and Howe Dad was the butler who knew nothing about drink and it was the days of who was the politician with the rivers of blood?
Speaker 1Enoch Powell.
Speaker 2Right, that's his era yeah dad knew him, they took, they talked about it all um. It was that era another connection. It's funny yes, it was that era, and dad did that and mum worked in the conference center on lunch and that and they had this rather dark um house and then the boppy came up. Well, chris says they paid four thousand for her house. Yeah, I understood, they paid two right but I don't know well when you think back, they left eight grand with me yeah, and we only paid 15 for saint anthony yeah so we only borrowed seven, but I had to troll around three banks before I got the seven.
Speaker 2I had a job to get the money and I got it and we always paid it back. That was always the first bill we ever paid yeah even when we were short.
Parents' Work and the Guest House
Speaker 2Yeah, and we were only short one winter when your dad went back on the boats and I taught at the school again because we had no money to last through the winter. But that was because we were, you know, we had to pay the mortgage, whatever happened when we didn't have the numbers in the coaches. We had too short a season to cover all of the expenses that you got. So that was then. It's really hard to remember the dates and the order of things.
Speaker 1No, you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Oh, am I? That's all good. What else don't?
Speaker 2you know about your mother? No, you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Oh, am I? That's all good. What else don't you know about your mother?
Speaker 1No, I was just interested in I mean obviously, staying in. So did your mum work in the house as well?
Speaker 2I think that mum helped in, might have helped in the pub. I don't know, I know that that couple had loads of rabbits and animals for food so presumably she helped with that. But she helped in the conference centre when we got St Anthony's. But her arthritis was dreadful. I mean, part of the reason I came back from Bermuda was her eyesight. She was taken into hospital. They thought she got glaucoma. She nearly lost her eyesight, which was very much why I came home.
Speaker 1And that was quite young to have that, wasn't she?
Speaker 2Yes, they whipped her into hospital and saved her eyesight and bear in mind, she had dreadful arthritis. But if you think about it, when she was cooking in St Anthony's, it was a concrete floor. There was no lino, it was a concrete floor, was no lino? It was a concrete floor. She did have a washing machine, which nobody else had. She had this great big round one that had come from some airman, yeah, from a RAF American okay so I don't know how we got that, but it was like a great big tub.
Speaker 2Yeah that you did all the washing. When you you think about it, they washed everything. Then I mean I washed towels and napkins, as you know, when it was San Anthony, but at least the sheets went somewhere else.
Speaker 1But they washed literally everything they did everything and you had no dryer. Yeah, so how many bedrooms did the hotel have in there?
Speaker 2then Nine, nine, right, nine.
Speaker 1So you had to keep that at full capacity.
Speaker 2But the auger gave you heat and they had one of those pulleys over the auger.
Speaker 1So would you know them as Mr Brian? Oh, I know, mr Brian.
Speaker 2Yes, mr Brian was the potteries man. He was the potteries man. They were a lovely family. But you got that. You got people coming every single year and the thing was they come and then if somebody was there last two years, wasn't there this year, they'd say, well, where's mr smith? You know, I say I can't ring up and say to someone, look, you were here this time last year, why aren't you here now? You can't round people up. But if you think of the north of england, they had wait wakes weeks, didn't they? This week was shut, that week was shut, so one week we had everybody from that part of the country. So this is how it was and that's why they came always on the same week and they got to know each other so it wasn't a difficult decision for them to move off the island in the end.
Speaker 1No, it was not just made sense. No, and stedley's obviously they liked selling.
Speaker 2They spent the afternoon, they spent the time there and I think, you see, it all got too much for them. They didn't care where they were. Really I don't. I think they wanted to give us a clear run. I mean, when I look back, they were so brave because they left me with everything they owned. It's amazing which, when I couldn't get your dad to pay them back it was dreadful.
Speaker 2I sold the range rover when I couldn't get your dad to pay them back. It was dreadful. I sold the Range Rover when he wasn't looking. I don't believe you and they made the check out to dad the minute mum died. He thought he didn't know it. I thought, oh, dear poor mum, never mind.
Speaker 1Tell me something funny about your parents.
Speaker 2Did I tell you about the honeymooners? No, tell us about the honeymooners?
Speaker 1Oh, that's not about them.
Speaker 2Okay, tell you about the honeymooners.
Speaker 1No, it tells about the honeymooners.
Speaker 2Oh, that's not about them. Okay, sounds good, though. Well, it was them who had to apologise, right? I'm a very intense little girl, right? If I'm given a job to do, it has to be done properly, right? So my job was turning the beds down.
Speaker 3I turned the beds down, even if the couple was there, oh dear, I got down to the stairs. What have you been? I said well, they were in bed. Look, it's only half past five. I've done the job. That couple must have died out of the depression of their life, oh dear.
Speaker 2I was in room 11. I still remember it. Oh dear right, oh dear Right, yeah, well, there you go. We did have a few laughs one way or another. Dad was very funny. I mean, when we had these parties, he was hilarious.
Speaker 1I remember him playing golf all the time. That's what I remember. Yes, but that's later in life.
Moving to Steyning and Later Years
Speaker 2Yes, he started playing golf because when they had the guest house on Sunday they did breakfast and midday lunch. They didn't do an evening meal. But Brown's golf course used to encourage people. So if he got so many of the guests 10 or something they went and had a little challenge. And that's how he started playing golf. It was on Sandown where it had the red course and the yellow course.
Speaker 2So every Sunday he'd take a group of people and it was from that getting quite good at that so that he joined Sandown right and I remember Sandown yes, and I went for a year with him and I had a few lessons, but it dawned on me that he was playing with me, who was not very good. No good, he needed to be playing with people better than himself. And that's when his golf started.
Speaker 1The job of your parents wasn't just to provide a place to stay at a hotel, bed and breakfast type thing. Also, they entertained them. Well, yes, yes.
Speaker 2We had the barbillio table in one room. That was that side of it. And on the Sunday I mean, I don't know how they had the strength to do it, but on the sunday, after everybody came back of an evening, we would do teas and coffees and sandwiches in the evening and that money was often the money that saw them through the winter.
Speaker 1So what did he do in the winter?
Speaker 2decorate the year. He put the wallpaper upside down. Well, he thought maybe they won't notice that the flowers are upside down. And the funny thing, was that he? Needed an extra roll, so he didn't. Couldn't get an extra roll, so he didn't wallpaper behind the wardrobe because, after all, who was going to see it? Until someone moves the wardrobe yes, well, don't move the wardrobe what about music?
Speaker 1was there?
Speaker 2mum played the piano. Well, dad sung. I was useless. I only say that because obviously music was quite prevalent in our lives.
Speaker 1Your music came from your dad, not from me, you say that, but you've got your radio here and Chrissie's got a radio and you like having your radio on in the background.
Speaker 2Chrissie was into classical music because Mum and Dad were into classical music, but I never got into either, because I went to college and I had a boyfriend who could really dance. So I was into Bill Haley and the Comets that era and at college every Thursday there would be a dance or a get together what was that like then?
Speaker 1marvellous. So I mean, we're talking about the 1950s.
Speaker 2Now this music's coming in mainly from America at the time. Yeah, it was all coming in. They were ripping out the seats in the cinemas and all sorts of things like that.
Speaker 1So what were your parents' reactions to that? Were they okay?
Speaker 2Well, I never discussed it with them because by then I'm in Portsmouth Monday to Friday. When I go home, I'm home with whoever I've taken home with me or not, the boyfriend I had then he used to mime on stage. Wow, and he died last year. He used to mime on stage to the American Grace Lads.
Speaker 1Presley. Elvis Presley yes, he would mime. It must have been amazing to see the birth of Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2That was the time it all came out. It all started happening. Have you seen the Elvis Presley film? No, not yet. You need to watch that. I remember going and seeing the two comedians.
Speaker 1Oh, dear, what from that era.
Speaker 2Yes, come on.
Speaker 1I'll help you there.
Speaker 2Oh, they were terrible.
Speaker 1OK, well, maybe we'll leave it at that.
Speaker 2Their language was appalling. Now this is a naive girl from the Isle of Wight who didn't know any bad language, had never been brought up with bad language, and half the NCUN jokes went totally over my head for Malcolm and Wise.
Speaker 1I can't help you there. I love Malcolm and Wise. Maybe I came in on the end of them. They were pretty good.
Speaker 2I didn't tell you that in my I did meet John Wayne in Bermuda.
Speaker 1Yes, I knew that.
Speaker 2And St Anthony's, we did have the Hermann Hermanns and we did have the Bachelors.
Speaker 1The Bachelors. I remember the Bachelors.
Music, Entertainment, and Tourism Heyday
Speaker 3I remember the Bachelors, the washer-up wearing his best jumper because the Bachelors were saying Would you say there was a prime time for the? Isle of.
Speaker 1Wight? Yes, like the 70s and 80s or 60s and 70s.
Speaker 2It would be the late 60s really, because after all, people weren't going anywhere else, they didn't have the money to go anywhere. There was this magic, I think, with the island that you were going on a boat, I mean, when we first you had Sandham House and the Yorkshire couple came down, you see, and they loved it, absolutely loved it, they loved Bender and all that, and they said, do we have to bring our passports? And you see, people not for the walk from Gap, that's exactly what they thought. Yes, do we have to take our passport? It wasn't like going to Bournemouth or somewhere that you could go by train. But sometimes they're lucky to get lost on route and all this sort of business, and you think, oh, dearie me. And you know they get sunburned. I mean, they put olive oil on their skin and laid on the beach. I mean, you know, I'm a little bit burned.
Speaker 1Yes, anyone listening who's young, use some factor. Now, it's been interesting talking to you both because obviously you've got to talk about the same people.
Speaker 2Yeah, but we didn't overlap that much.
Speaker 1No, I mean, I didn't realise that you were like apart for 18 months, yeah, and.
Speaker 2I wasn't allowed to visit you since.
Speaker 1She told me a wonderful story about your dad taking her to London on her own. Oh really. And she didn't know she was going to hospital. She thought oh, this is lovely, this is lovely, yeah. And then she realized that she'd been dropped off at hospital afterwards. And he took her around all Islington, all these places, showing her where he used to live? I didn't know that and she had an amazing day, yeah, and then she got dropped off in hospital Thank you very much, yeah, Grandma.
Speaker 2her address was 27 Oakley Road.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And that was just round. From where Josh?
Speaker 1is Josh is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2And the lions at the front were enormous. Yeah, she's very brave, but they're not. They're like tiny and you think, oh, dearie me. I think they were very brave to come from London, but London didn't have much to offer them Because she was so bombed out, there was nowhere to live and it was filthy it was, and Chrissie said that as well.
Speaker 1I was shocked at how she was describing the trains and just going on transport in. London and just walking around and sitting down and walking around.
Speaker 2Yeah, one girl was talking to me and she said she didn't understand why people wore petticoats. You say, who wants a petticoat? I said, well, if you don't have a washing machine those wool skirts you couldn't wash everything. I'd go to work at the old Whiteley's and come home and it would be black all round the bottom and I can remember the smog holding the wall. To walk home, get off the bus and it's disorientating, isn't it? You didn't quite know where you were. It was quite dangerous from that point of view.
Speaker 1She also said that he was always a Londoner. Yeah, he went from Islington CRI Sid James. Yeah, yeah, he does remind me of Sid James.
Speaker 3That's a very good, uh, instantly I got that.
Speaker 1Yeah, he sort of looks like him and sound like him oh, he would joke with all sorts of yeah, that's a perfect.
Speaker 2And I can remember him. I mean, he was an Arden Spurs supporter and I can remember him sitting on the stairs with some of the other guests with a little radio so they could hear what was going on he was very impressed with Luca then, wasn't he? Yeah, they do the pools once a week with the three two. You don't know about the pools.
Speaker 1I do. I remember the pools. The Dotson killed the pools once a week with the three two. You don't know about the pool. I do remember the pools.
Speaker 2I mean that was the extent of their gambling. They never won anything, but that was the extent of their gambling. But you thought, oh, dearie me but brilliant.
Speaker 1Well, thank you very much for your time no, that's fine.
Speaker 2Do we get permission, do you?
Speaker 1think it's a royal thing to do that. Bye.
