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
Thomas & Helen 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.
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."
okay, you're listening to miles. This is long time ago. People and I'm with my mother.
Speaker 2:Hello mother hello my son where are we? We're at my house in warderslade in kent warderslade.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you do you call it warderslade or do you call it chatter?
Speaker 2:but it's warderslade never call it chatter. I pay my rates to maids. You can edit that bit out.
Speaker 1:Okay, no, that's fine, we'll leave that in. Okay, so who are we here to talk about today?
Speaker 2:We are here to talk about my parents and other members of my family that might be of interest.
Speaker 1:Definitely. And what are your parents' names?
Speaker 2:My parents' names are Ray and Tom.
Speaker 1:Ray 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 2:He was very funny. He had a very good sense of humor.
Speaker 1:He 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 2:Neither of them liked babies.
Speaker 1:Right, okay.
Speaker 2:They wanted to converse with children. Once there was a conversation coming back.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:But I'm afraid it's something I've inherited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you definitely have, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Earliest 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 2:I 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 1:Oh right, Well, that's interesting. And where was that?
Speaker 2:That was at Sandown.
Speaker 1:And Sandown right.
Speaker 2:And that pig farm would have been near the bridge at the bottom of Sandown.
Speaker 1:One of your aunts ended up in a house down the bottom there.
Speaker 2:That's right. That was Marge Towards the end of her life.
Speaker 3:Yes, she did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're talking about the bottom of Broadway and going out towards Braden and Thurston Road.
Speaker 3:Go left.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was there, which is now for her own ways. That's right, it is, yeah, okay no problems.
Speaker 1:Where was your dad born?
Speaker 2:Islington.
Speaker 1:And your mother.
Speaker 2:Croydon.
Speaker 1:How did they meet?
Speaker 2:They 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 1:Because 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 2:then they lived with the grandmother, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they did because he said that Possibly an auntie as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But 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 1:So you weren't born in Hill Street then?
Speaker 2:No, I was born in Station Avenue.
Speaker 3:Station Avenue right and.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:Doug.
Speaker 2:Thurston was in the Sandown one. Doug Thurston was in the Sandown one.
Speaker 1:Was 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 2:So 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 1:So tell me about the beaches.
Speaker 2:The 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 1:The Sandown Pier.
Speaker 2:All of the piers on the island literally had a cap made so that nobody could get on the end and come in.
Speaker 1:So were these just the beaches facing France, or would a ride be like this as well?
Speaker 2:No, 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 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So 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 1:So if you wanted to go to Wright you would have gone on the train then.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, but I didn't go to.
Speaker 1:Wright. No, no, it's funny, isn't it Because?
Speaker 2:none of the relatives were there then.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They all came later. Mum and Dad came to get away from them all and they followed.
Speaker 1:Talked about this billeting at the time.
Speaker 2:So 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 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, under the Do you remember them?
Speaker 1:clearly, the soldiers.
Speaker 2:I remember the RAF boys.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Some 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 2:And 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 1:So is that what you remember about the war? Do you remember anything?
Speaker 2:I remember being quite happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because people were, they lived for the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They 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 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that was secondhand, but I was really lucky to have it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But 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 1:So what do you know about the food from your youth?
Speaker 2:I 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 2:We 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 2:yeah, 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?
Speaker 2:what 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 2:There 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 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now he would not have done that to my mum.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:But 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 1:Okay, 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 2:Oh dear.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I should do you or this.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, okay, wendy.
Speaker 1:She's taken to jazz clubs.
Speaker 2:Oh, it never went anything in those days. It's a different era my own.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure that your son's era got it right. I don't think the girls have.
Speaker 1:I'm sure they have, Okay. So what did your mum do then?
Speaker 2:The 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 1:Oh well, there you are.
Speaker 2:There you are. I remember taking these pamphlets and we were going out of Lake up that long road and going up to Lansdowne.
Speaker 1:There you are.
Speaker 2:A 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 1:it yeah.
Speaker 2:That's where he would be, because you know he'd been a worker.
Speaker 1:When 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 2:I 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 2:That 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 2:So 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 2:You 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 2:And 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.
Speaker 2:It'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 1:how did people find out?
Speaker 2:so, 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 2:Oh 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 1:Mum 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 2:Well, when I came back from Bermuda, and you were born and then we had the kiosk and everything. So they went to Stenning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why Stenning then?
Speaker 2:They 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 1:Enoch Powell.
Speaker 2:Right, 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 2:I 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.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:No, you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Oh, am I? That's all good. What else don't?
Speaker 2:you 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 1:No, I was just interested in I mean obviously, staying in. So did your mum work in the house as well?
Speaker 2:I 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 1:And that was quite young to have that, wasn't she?
Speaker 2:Yes, 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 2:Yeah 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 1:But they washed literally everything they did everything and you had no dryer. Yeah, so how many bedrooms did the hotel have in there?
Speaker 2:then Nine, nine, right, nine.
Speaker 1:So you had to keep that at full capacity.
Speaker 2:But the auger gave you heat and they had one of those pulleys over the auger.
Speaker 1:So would you know them as Mr Brian? Oh, I know, mr Brian.
Speaker 2:Yes, 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 1:No, it was not just made sense. No, and stedley's obviously they liked selling.
Speaker 2:They 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 2:I 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 1:Tell me something funny about your parents.
Speaker 2:Did I tell you about the honeymooners? No, tell us about the honeymooners?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's not about them.
Speaker 2:Okay, tell you about the honeymooners.
Speaker 1:No, it tells about the honeymooners.
Speaker 2:Oh, 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 3:I 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 2:I 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 1:I remember him playing golf all the time. That's what I remember. Yes, but that's later in life.
Speaker 2:Yes, 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 2:So 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 1:The 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 2:We 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 1:So what did he do in the winter?
Speaker 2:decorate 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 1:was there?
Speaker 2:mum played the piano. Well, dad sung. I was useless. I only say that because obviously music was quite prevalent in our lives.
Speaker 1:Your 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 2:Chrissie 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 1:marvellous. So I mean, we're talking about the 1950s.
Speaker 2:Now 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 1:So what were your parents' reactions to that? Were they okay?
Speaker 2:Well, 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 1:Presley. Elvis Presley yes, he would mime. It must have been amazing to see the birth of Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2:That 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 1:Oh, dear, what from that era.
Speaker 2:Yes, come on.
Speaker 1:I'll help you there.
Speaker 2:Oh, they were terrible.
Speaker 1:OK, well, maybe we'll leave it at that.
Speaker 2:Their 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 1:I can't help you there. I love Malcolm and Wise. Maybe I came in on the end of them. They were pretty good.
Speaker 2:I didn't tell you that in my I did meet John Wayne in Bermuda.
Speaker 1:Yes, I knew that.
Speaker 2:And St Anthony's, we did have the Hermann Hermanns and we did have the Bachelors.
Speaker 1:The Bachelors. I remember the Bachelors.
Speaker 3:I 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 1:Wight? Yes, like the 70s and 80s or 60s and 70s.
Speaker 2:It 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 1:Yes, 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 2:Yeah, but we didn't overlap that much.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I didn't realise that you were like apart for 18 months, yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I wasn't allowed to visit you since.
Speaker 1:She 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 2:her address was 27 Oakley Road.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that was just round. From where Josh?
Speaker 1:is Josh is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And 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 1:I 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 2:Yeah, 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 1:She 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 3:That's a very good, uh, instantly I got that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he sort of looks like him and sound like him oh, he would joke with all sorts of yeah, that's a perfect.
Speaker 2:And 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 1:I 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 2:I 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 1:Well, thank you very much for your time no, that's fine.
Speaker 2:Do we get permission, do you?
Speaker 1:think it's a royal thing to do that. Bye.
