Growing up in Lee-on-the-Solent

W Green John

Description

John Green's family moved to Lee-on-the-Solent just in time for the outbreak of war in 1939. For a seven-year-old, war sounded like an exciting adventure, but as he sheltered with his mother and sister under the stairs during an air-raid, someone said they thought they heard machine-gun fire. They all held their breath and listened, but the noise turned out to be the rhythmic rat-a-tat of his mother's trembling knee knocking against the panelling. In this delightful memoir, John W Green describes what it was like to grow up in a 'village of two halves', with the western end inhabited by well-to-do families, and the eastern end by the people who served them. It was commonly thought that the shopkeepers reserved the better-quality groceries and nicer cuts of meat for the west-enders and for the officers' hoity-toity wives.He vividly describes how he became a rebellious child, going bird-nesting, running wild in Court Barn, scrumping apples, collecting ammunition, scavenging on the Ranges, and 'borrowing' a boat to row on the Alver. As he grew up, his hang-outs changed and he met his friends 'up the Tower', at the Bluebird Cafe or in the amusement arcade. Despite his reputation for being a rebel, John followed in his father's footsteps by joining the RAF before becoming a 'Marconi man' in the merchant navy, sailing to every corner of the world.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Inglaterra
• Memoir
• England
• Hampshire

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 28 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909183643
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
GROWING UP IN LEE-ON-THE-SOLENT
by
John W Green



Publisher Information
First published in 2014 by
Chaplin Books
1 Eliza Place
Gosport PO12 4UN
www.chaplinbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk. com
Copyright © 2014 John W Green
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of any nature suffered as a result of the reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in the contents.



Dedication
In memory of
Robin A Money
1956-2013



A Vision of Beauty
It was that day - the embarrassing one, the one when the father takes his son to one side and talks to him ‘man to man’ about the facts of life. ‘ Well son, you’re going out into the big wide world and in places like London there are women who will get money from you by other means than robbing you, so take care .’
This was the day that I was leaving to join the RAF as a Radio Fitter Apprentice. So much for the sex education! It was not as descriptive or lurid as the version given to me by the older boys of the various groups that I had been knocking about with for the last few years. ‘ Right Dad, ’ I replied. He gave me a pat on the shoulder and that was that.
Those past few months had been a period of reassessment, one of those times in life when fate unexpectedly dictates events. It was the summer of 1949, and I had taken my School Certificate the previous year, but to my utter surprise, against all expectations, and to my parents’ disappointment, I had failed. I had passed in seven out of nine subjects, with two distinctions, four credits and a single pass, but I had failed English Literature and - more importantly - I had failed English Language. A good performance in the other subjects counted for nothing: without a pass in English Language, the School Certificate was not awarded.
As a consequence of this failure, I could not progress to the sixth form and ended up in an educational limbo for the first term of the new educational year. Instead of attending Lower Sixth lessons, I had to prepare for the re-sits which would take place in the December and then, unlike today, all subjects had to be retaken.
The re-sits were held in the Municipal College building which was situated behind Portsmouth Guildhall. Later the ‘Muni’ became a ‘Poly’ until its eventual elevation to University status. Together with the other re-sit candidates from schools across Portsmouth and the surrounding area, I entered the foyer of the imposing Victorian edifice to be directed to the rooms where the exams were to be taken. Initially, the size of some of the rooms was quite daunting. The re-sit exam that I remember most vividly was ‘object drawing’, which was part of the Art exam. I was a pupil at St John’s College in Southsea, which was a single-sex school. Schools were known as ‘mixed’ or ‘all-girl’ or ‘all-boy’ schools, avoiding that awkward ‘sex’ word. I found all the re-sit exams to be quite exciting because they were held in rooms with girls! The object-drawing exam was especially exciting because we sat in a circle, with the object to be drawn arranged in the middle, and opposite me was a ‘vision of beauty’, a girl from either the Portsmouth High School for Girls, or the Southern Grammar School. I sat staring at the ‘vision’ for ages, pretending to be looking at the object to be drawn. Suddenly I came to my senses and realised that there was only about a quarter of an hour to go before the work had to be handed in, and I had hardly made a mark on the paper. I remember the object to this day - it was a cylinder vacuum cleaner - but not the girl. With the sudden realisation that I had to do something PDQ, I started drawing at high speed without time to think; it was virtually eye-to-hand without intervention or interruption by the brain. When I looked at what I had drawn I was immediately aware that it was easily the best art that I had ever done. It was almost like a black-and-white photograph. I suppose that I was inspired: I never saw my inspiration again, but I achieved an excellent mark for object drawing. Despite this, when the results came out, once again there was disappointment. This time no distinctions - only three credits and four passes which still did not include English or English Literature. However, this time I was given a ‘compensated pass’ and awarded my School Certificate. I wondered why that could not have happened the first time when my results were better. In fact I was not to pass English at this level for another sixteen years.
Although I joined the Lower Sixth for the rest of the academic year, because I had effectively missed the first term, life was quite difficult and I was playing catch-up all the time and not making the progress to which I was accustomed. I decided to rethink my future, and instead of continuing with my Higher School Certificate studies I decided to apply to take the entrance exam to become an officer cadet at RAF Cranwell. Shortly after applying I realised that it would have been a good idea to have talk about it with Dad. When I told him what I had done, he said to me: ‘ Look son, if you take the exam I’m sure that you would pass without too much trouble, but once you got there you wouldn’t’ fit in. You don’t come from the right background. Believe me, I’ve seen it and know how it works. ’ As he had served in the RAF for more than ten years I listened to what he had said to me, took his advice and withdrew my application.
Nevertheless I knew that, because conscription was still in force, if I just left school I would be called up anyway, and directed to any of the Armed Forces at random and to any trade from cook to infantryman. So in order to choose the service and trade that appealed to me, I applied to become a Radio Fitter Apprentice in the RAF, and that was how I came to be at the point of ‘going out into the big wide world’.



Raising the Flag
Perhaps before I tell you about how I set out on that journey, I should go a little further back into my past. When I was born in 1931, Dad was in the Royal Air Force serving at RAF Cranwell. He was later posted to RAF Manston in Kent (my sister Pat was born in Kent in 1936) and then to RAF Lee-on-Solent. To begin with, we lived in Southways in Stubbington, but moved to Lee after Dad transferred in 1939 to the new Fleet Air Arm: the base became HMS Daedalus.
Our new home in Lee was at 24 Anglesea Road. As coincidence would have it, our new next-door neighbours, Mr and Mrs Cottrill and Brian their son, who was just six months older than me, turned out to be related to the Knowlton family - at Stubbington, in my last year at the school, I had shared a bench seat with Brenda Knowlton. Our desk was at the front on the right-hand side. I had enjoyed my time at the school, but maybe I had not always been as good as I pretended to be. I remember kissing Brenda in class when everyone was there (except the teacher). The Earth didn’t move but I’d won the dare.
One of the first jobs that Dad did when we moved to Anglesea Road was to put up a post for the washing line. After duty one day he called in at a smallholding near Marks Road in Stubbington that sold, among other things, long poles for clothes-lines. He bought one that must been over fourteen feet in length, lashed it on to his bicycle and wheeled it along the road (on the airfield) to Anglesea Road, following the same path taken by Mum when she had, on one occasion, pushed Pat in her pushchair, with me in tow, from Stubbington to Lee. At home, Dad constructed an angle-iron triangular support which he set in a concrete base. Then the pole was raised, just as if we were explorers raising our flag on a newly discovered land. Instead of a flag, we had a clothes-line that was fixed to the house at the other end. Both ends could be raised or lowered by means of pulleys, which Dad had fitted. The clothes-line was fixed about two feet from the top and above this, at the top of the pole, Dad fixed a wire aerial so that we could receive programmes on our wireless. The aerial had ceramic insulators at each end and I thought they looked like white walnuts.
Within a few weeks of us moving to Lee-on-the-Solent, World War Two was declared. One of the popular comedians that we would listen to on the wireless at that time was Robb Wilton, who would start his droll monologues and sketches with the words ‘The day war broke out.’ [1]
Well, on the day that war broke out it was sunny and warm. Jim Palmer, a lad of about my age who lived in Gosport Road, about a hundred yards away, ran out into the road and called out in an excited, cheerful voice: ‘ we’re at war! ’ As we were young and did not understand how serious it was, we were quite elated about it, thinking it would be a new exciting adventure. We were very soon to be disabused of that notion. The first effect was the introduction of rationing of bacon, butter and sugar, then up went the blackout curtains and the tape (similar to masking tape) that was put in criss-cross patterns across the windows, as if imitating the lattice windows of country cottages. The tape was intended to reduce the chance of people being injured by flying glass by keeping it in one piece, or at least large pieces, in the event of the windows being blown out by a bomb blast. Then we were issued