Boy from Rod Alley

John Loveday

Description

The Boy from Rod Alley is an account of a 1930s childhood. This depiction of one boy's experience blends into a story of a decade, in the aftermath of the Great War, as ex-soldiers ride their old army bikes, 'widow-women' are familiar figures and 'Umbrella Joe' paces in shell-shock aimlessness.John guides readers past the deep pond in front of the house, both feared and loved, with surrounding willows simultaneously familiar and a challenge. The great village Green, with a mixture of humble or imposing dwellings, and school, church, chapels, shops, a smithy, and his family agricultural-engineering workshop and foundry around its edge, holds delights or threats. At each of its five corners, a road leads to other places which also become part of the story, a warren, lake, small stream, villages, small towns, the city of Norwich, the latter increasingly alluring as he grows. And from other places come strangers or familiar visitors. Among them, as among the 'locals', some are memorable.Discarding adult hindsight in favour of the immediacy of the narrative, John recounts feelings and notions inherent in his boyhood experiences and actions. In his head are characters from books, newspapers, songs, films, history and legend. His imagination relates these day-to-day, realities, shaping his attitudes and interests.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir
• Norfolk

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 03 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789019445
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE BOY FROM ROD ALLEY
Moments of lost times made new
Elusive, fragmentary, true
John Loveday
Copyright © 2019 John Loveday

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1789019 445

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd


Cover: oil-painting, Rod Alley, by the author.
Cover design and author portrait, Julian Loveday


To the memory of Hans Lindenmayer, former prisoner-of-war, who chose to stay in England, and loved learning of earlier times in his adopted village. Also to my cousin Russell Bower, with whom I have shared many experiences throughout life, and who suggested, long ago, that I should write about childhood.


I try to write a hope for those
Once true-life characters who live
Inside my book. May my words give
Us chance to linger when the pages close.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The characters in the book are called by their true names. In respect of anyone not seen as favourably as most, I should say that I have not recorded anything other than the manner in which people represented themselves to my boyhood eyes. It has been my intention, throughout, to avoid hindsight from an adult point of view.
This account of childhood reflects the way memory works, by making changes of scene or subject abruptly, often without linking words.
The name Rod Alley used to puzzle me. Eventually, I noticed that an alley could be a way between lines of trees, or shrubs, and found that ‘rod’ was an old name for osiers. I had painted them from a window in Rod Alley in 1949 (see cover).
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
CHAPTER 1
From our door, the gravel path was level as far as the May tree. From there, it sloped to an iron gate and railings. Beyond the railings, the little road, of stones and mud or stones and dust, crossed in front of the pond. Nobody who lived here called it the pond. It was a pit, Rod Alley pit, and the row of houses made Rod Alley Row. The pit was long, the length of about six of the ten houses and the spaces between them. It had steep sides, but was shallow at the ends, where the cattle came to stand in the water to drink. Usually they lifted their tails to piss at the same time. They stayed a while, then went back to graze on the Green. The water lay undisturbed except by wind or ducks. Away from those ends, it was deep, and in the middle somewhere it went down, down, down so deep that you did not dare to think of it. You quickly talked of something else, and the surface reflected the sky, just still or broken by ripples.
Sometimes, ‘down, down, down’ made you think of Australia.
Beyond the pit was the ‘Council Road’. Buses from Norwich turned round here at the wide space where Abbey Road met the main road. Abbey Road sloped away between stretches of the Green, towards the corner called Chattergate. The place probably had its name because the women who lived there long ago called to each other across the little yard from their houses on three sides, but nobody knew. My friend Alfred Etteridge lived there. His mother always called him Eric. I didn’t know why and never asked him.
The road we lived in was no longer to be called by its old name. It was now Post Office Terrace. My father was angry. He said we lived in Rod Alley Row, and Post Office Terrace was to be written on our letters because that sounded posher in the opinion of Mrs Moore, who ran the Post Office, which was the tiny shop at the Green end of the road. Dad said he would still write Rod Alley Row because that was where we lived, and the name couldn’t be changed just because Mrs Moore wanted it changed.
Jack Kemp the postman, in his dark blue uniform decorated by bits of red, with his rosy face, and his big brown bag, brought letters that sometimes had the new name on them. It seemed odd, but strangely posher.
The house called Sunnyside could be seen from Rod Alley Row if you looked towards Chattergate. It was off to the left, the north edge of the Green, facing south. From his desk in one of the two big bay windows, Grandad could see almost the whole of the Green. In the farthest corner, away to the right, anyone walking would appear very small indeed.
Grandad must have been proud to own Sunnyside. When he was a young man, he lived in Rod Alley Row. He had set his mind on one day being able to buy Sunnyside for his growing family. His dream came true, and he was able to take his Edith and the younger children of their family of ten to live there, to look across to the old home in Rod Alley. When his son Tom married, he was given the house where he had grown up. I always knew how old my dad was, because he was born in 1900. Perhaps the May tree was planted in Grandad’s day. Dad called it ‘the bloody old May tree’, and decided to cut it down to let more light into the living-room front window, which was also shadowed by being further back than the main front part of the house.
It was a beautiful tree in spring, full of red blossom.
My grandfather sat at his desk, in his grey suit which he always wore, with his longish silvery hair, which had been ginger, and worked at the books in which he kept the records of his business. From these heavy ledgers he took the details for bills, which were written with great care to look as neat as any human hand could make them. If he made the smallest error, it was removed by scraping with a specially sharpened knife. Grandad took pride in his skill with that knife. He took pride in his whole business. He said that his threshing machines could do a better job than any others. Except for the steam engines, everything was built by his father, his uncle, and their workmen.
People said that he looked like Mr Lloyd George. I didn’t know who Mr Lloyd George was, or what he looked like, except that he must have looked something like my grandfather. When I learned he’d been Prime Minister in the Great War and after it, he seemed to be worth looking like. But Grandad was not pleased when he was greeted as ‘Mr Lloyd George’ in a Norwich street.
When I was only two years old, Mum said, he had bought me a model steam engine. Sometime later, I was able to see it work, and later still I played with it. A small methylated spirit burner, with a flame lighted by a match, heated the water in the boiler, and soon a piston was working to make the flywheel spin, as on a real steam traction engine like those in Grandad’s business. It was fixed to a base of tin, so didn’t travel forward, but was like the engine in a threshing field. Perhaps he bought it because he thought that I would be an engine man. Mum told me that when I was two I stood for a while in the coal box of a working engine, behind Dad at the steering wheel. I had no memory of that.
The Post Office was built on to the first house in Rod Alley Row. Before Mrs Moore took over, it was run by her parents, ‘the old Allingtons’ who now lived in the house next-door with their daughter Cecily. Bob Moore was only at home at weekends, going off on Mondays to work as an engineer in Norwich. Mr Moore always seemed cheery when he stepped off the bus on Fridays. I was invited by Mrs Moore to climb the stairs to see her first baby, Peter, a few hours old. Before long, there was a baby girl. There was sadness and a hushing of voices when Bob Moore became ill and soon died. Mrs Moore stayed on, surrounded on three sides by her sweet jars and an assortment of things for sale. When someone was telling her something, she always gave true attention whether the subject was important or not. At the end, she said ‘Just fancy!’
In the next two houses were Loveday brothers’ families, Uncle Leslie with Ruth and four girls, and my father, Tom, with my mother, Kath, me and my sisters, Thora and Barbara. Beyond us, came the Sturmans, then Uncle Dick and Aunt Dolly, the Whitehands. Next were the Fosters, with daughter Brenda, the Barnards, who were old and always in their ‘Sunday best’ clothes, the Williamsons, with Iris, and the Watts, with Mary and Oona.
Mr Watts was talking angrily to Mum, at our front door. I knew what it was about. Mum called me out. I went slowly through the passage. She was just outside. Mr Watts had Mary with him.
‘Mr Watts says you’ve been unkind to Mary.’
I didn’t answer.
‘I’ve told him it will never happen again. You promise that, John?’
‘No.’ I said it very quietly.
‘It had better not,’ said Mr Watts.
‘It had better not, indeed,’ said Mum. Mary was looking all satis