In the early hours of a wet November day another baby was delivered. Not a normal delivery by any means, but one which could be described as difficult. A future character trait which might be described as cussed, can such a word describe the actions of an innocent baby, anyway the baby, either voluntary or involuntarily was doing its best to be cussed and remember we are talking of 1940 when gynaecology was still in its infancy and the options open to the gynaecologist were limited.
The little fella (not a frightfully accurate description since he turned the scales at 10 lb ) was presenting as a breech delivery, feet first. Given it was the first and only child my Mother was to have, plus the fact she herself was tiny at 4' 11", the odds were stacked against both mother and child but miracles happen. My poor Mum bore the brunt of the damage, dreadfully painful they tried to turn the baby for a head presentation but little Johnny, refusing to play ball, insisted on coming into the the wrong way round,world feet first.
Perhaps a character trait was born and how often I seem to have repeated the action of going into something feet first without thinking the problem over. Anyway the difficulty he presented his Mum who, having suffered so much she was kept in hospital for a number of weeks to allow her to get over the experience was never discussed but I think she suffered some sort of mental breakdown and certainly awoke in her a sense of over protectiveness which my Father was always trying to balance.
The world of Bradford in 1940 was on the whole a grey, grimy one, with a town given over to narrow streets and woollen mills noisily producing some of the best woollen cloth the world has ever seen. Bradford was the centre of the worlds woollen industry and the Wool Exchange, in the centre of town was where the prices were set for a trade which spread to all corners of the globe.
Merchandise from this tiny island were seen world wide. There was not a harbour which didn't parade the massive cranes on the wharf side, the buses and motor cars, the electric motors of Compton Parkinson the tell tale plaque or inscriptions "Made in Britain" were all over the place.
The architecture, repeated from Cairo to Cape Town from Sydney to Calcutta linked by the same guiding hand. Later when I was to wander around the world these familiar names and remnants of a great manufacturing period in our history were a constant reminder and a comfort that my predecessors had laid down something of value, but back in the hospital ward my memories were still forming and not much beyond the eternal question "when the next 'bottle' was arriving".
The first house I lived in was situated on top of a hill looking out across the fields towards the Hawksworth Golf Links. These Links were to attract my only ever feeling of panic amongst my parents when in World War II a bomb fell not more than a mile away onto the golf course.
I suppose the intrepid golfers simply added it as another bunker hazard on the 9th fareway making it a par 5.
The house, a bungalow was my Dads first and only attempt at house ownership, thereafter we rented in a series of different houses, all were never more than a few miles apart. Locality in those days meant a lot and above all needed to be close to the place of work.
We only had basic transport other than "shanks's pony" and Dads motor bike was typically the only option other than the bus, (the train which didn't really cater for the villages). Esholt fore-instance had a bus service which called twice a day, turning off the main Bradford to Skipton road and dropping down to the little square at the centre of the village before resuming its journey back up into the real world. The square also housed a shop, a tiny general store sort of shop, the pub and the village policeman's house.
Esholt was as yet in the future since my Dads innate sense of responsibility caused him to move the family to his mothers house when she had grown old and sick and in need of care.
My Grandmother, a taciturn character had experienced a hard life living in a working class area of Bradford. It was identified by the cobbled street leading to the mill, a road lined with identical houses, joined together like rabbit hutches, each the same and set apart and only given a sense of individuality by the women living there keeping everything clean. Cleanliness was close to God.
The early morning 'lamp lighter, and the 'knocker-up' tapping on the window to wake people for work, have gone but they were the fabric of every day life in this type of neighbourhood.
The street was the universe for many with its early morning sound of boots tramping on the cobbles on their way to work. Once that had died away the school children came bursting out of the regimented rows of doors leading onto the street, each child living cheek by jowl, each intimately aware of each other on their way to school, chattering and larking about as children do, walking or running the mile or two to school. A little later it was the turn of the housewives conversing with their neighbour, sweeping the pavement and burnishing the step leading up from the pavement into the house, a simple act of adding ones signature, of being proud, when there was little to be proud about other than good behaviour.
Behaviour, linked with a sense of doing the right thing was immensely important and whilst material things were in short supply, ones standing with the people you knew depended on behaviour, it formed the backbone of who you were and how you saw yourself.
My fathers father had died and his step- father had also died in a horrible accident when he fell into a scolding vat of liquid and was literally boiled alive.
My Dad was placed in an orphanage at the age of 10, his mother unable or unwilling to afford to keep him, he was forced into a world of strict discipline with little scope for love. An institution based on discipline, induces discipline.
It seemed to have taught him to understand, not only the importance of family but the important message that life could be hard and that it was up to his own endeavours to educate himself to better his circumstance and become a more rounded person.
Having been eventually removed from the orphanage to return home to become the bread winner for his mother, younger sister and brother, he became the person, whilst still a child, who carried the mantle of responsibility for the family.
Life throws us many curved balls and I am sure whilst he assumed this responsibility without question it distorted and accelerated his move to maturity and handed him a weight before he had had a fair crack at childhood. His views were formed by the path forced upon him and whilst his mind was ever fleeing amongst the characters and institutions of his mind which his reading revealed, he was hobbled, at an early age by his need to provide for the extended family.
It was this philosophy of doing the right thing which brought him, his wife and their recent addition, me, back to Bimbrook Street, to once again look after his mother when his other siblings had flown the nest for better things.
His sense of responsibility was always with him, it was what made him "the man in my life".
Our stay in Binbrook Street was fairly short.
Two women (from different families) living under the same roof,( as I was to learn many years later,) doesn't work. Women for all their unstinting generosity towards their own family, can not concede when it comes to other people, particularly other women, living under their roof, there is always the potential for friction.
A man is often ambivalent about such matters but women seem to have little or no flexibility and so we were soon under pressure to move again, this time to the little village of Esholt made famous, much later by its pub used for a television soap, Emmerdale Farm.
Growing up in a village has much to recommend it, particularly back in the days, prior to the Internet when one could be 'anonymous' with only the woods and the fields to constrain the imagination. Falling down a tree was par for the course as one limped home to be patched up and then out again to this wonderland of freedom and adventure.
When the snow came we were on our sledges from early morning until twilight excited by the days fun and games. We happily put up with chapped knees (the blood vessels closing down with the cold gave us real gyp (pain) when they expanded again in a hot bath). That first fall of snow overnight and the immediate sense as we awoke that something was different, something had happened !! Pulling the bedroom curtain back the world was changed under the bright reflection of new snow, the sounds were deadened, cushioned and there was a magical silence. Mummy, Daddy it's been snowing !! Our excitement to be out knew no bounds as we wrapped up to go find our friends and plan the day. Snowball fights, building the snowman finding ice to use as a slide, taking out the sledge and trudging off up the road to ascend the hill just beyond the viaduct with its fast exhilarating runs. What fun we had !
I must pause and consider the image of a hot bath. Today we turn on the tap and hey presto the bath fills with hot water but back then the bath was no fixture, made of tin it had to be brought inside the house from where it hung outside on a nail when not in use.
The hot water was laboriously heated in a succession of pans and kettles placed on or close to the fire in the living room. This small coal fire was the only source of heat in the house, other than the kitchen stove, and it heated the water, pan by pan until slowly you had enough water to bathe in. Understandably bath night was not as it is today a daily feature. Friday was traditionally "bath night" for the whole family. As the youngster I got pride of place, entering the warm water first, then it was Mums turn, and last, into the now soupy mixture went Dad, the water much cooled and distinctly used !
Our house consisted of two bedrooms upstairs and two rooms, a living room and a kitchen downstairs. The bathroom was the kitchen as described and the toilet was outside in a cold dark little stone shed which in winter was not a place to indulge any but the shortest time to do the business !!
Stumbling outside down the path in the pitch dark to visit ones bodily functions was not something to be taken lightly and only the fear of constipation and its discomfort made the trip a necessity. Toilet paper was only for the posh who could afford it and so, we had, by chance a second opportunity to catch up on the news as we waited for the bowel to do its magic, sitting and reading the torn up news paper prior to wiping the bum !!!
Education is a fine thing no matter how or where you obtain it ?
From today's perspective one can wonder at the primitive nature of it all and yet in a sense, ignorance was bliss and one of the main reasons for discontent today is not so much that you don't have something, it's because we have to much and are continually forced into seeing what other people have and being reminded what we didn't have ourselves.
I was genuinely happy with only the simple things of life around me since I was blessed in having the most important commodity, a families love and protection. The things in my closed world were normal and sufficient, I never felt the need for envy, I was rich in the opportunity to have fun and discover what was going on in and around the village. There was no parental fear of a motor car knocking me down and somehow we kept our list of childhood knocks to a minimum and usually only reported back to parents if serious.
Childhood was full of scrapes, how could it be otherwise but we learnt from the exposure to pain and discomfort. I worry that today's child, having been "over protected" and "over influenced" by the concerned parent, a parent who can only see the "downside" of events "what might happen if and when the child is exposed" when outside the smothering corset of the concerned and worried parent.
Climbing trees, walking the narrow ledge across a bridge, swimming and jumping into the less than clean waters of the canal, fighting battles with other boys,trying to fathom out what made the girls tick (still unfathomable) these were activities we worked on for ourselves and in so doing we sparked our imagination.
One area was defiantly the province of the adult. Going to church.
Going to church was a lopsided affair in our house. Mum the believer was the one doing her duty to the church and encouraging me to go with her. Dad avoiding the issue with his atheism sceptical but never overtly so he had decided to let the passage of time and the unavoidable questions which religious belief provoked come to the surface in their own good time. In that way I have a rich memory of the community of the church, its formality and celebrations, the hymns and the incantation of the lesson read from the pulpit. It's a good society to belong to with good well meaning people in the congregation but it does require faith and faith is not a commodity you can purchase from a stall, it has to be entrenched in your mind so strongly that it can withstand the vicissitudes inflicted by the secular society around it.
The church at Esholt was set apart from the main village. On the one side the vicarage, a big rather forbidding house housing the vicar, his wife and his bespectacled daughter who with her long plated hair was a stranger to the rest of us children in the village. I suppose in retrospect she was schooled outside the village, probably privately and warned not to associate. On the other side of the church was the church school taking pupils from 6 until 11. It was tiny and consisted of a single room divided into some sort of age relevant segregation where the basics were pummelled into our heads with rote learning. What ever the criticism, this method of teaching has held good, to this day, I can recite my times tables, without a pause, no mean feat in this era of calculators and scant knowledge of the basics of numeracy or solving simple mathematical problems my mental arithmetic.
In some ways the power of the calculator and the power of the Internet has fragmented our learning making the answer more important than the method !
There were two teachers to cover all the classes and interpret what each child needed in their schooling. Schooling to some degree was about fulfilling a statutory need. So many pupils 'x' so many hours 'y' and the responsibility was assumed to be fulfilled. But of course, the actual responsibility was ignored, even discarded since the kids going to a village school were somewhat discounted, perhaps in the eyes of authority, destined for agricultural or menial jobs like many of their parents.
The church its self was set amongst trees and skirted by gravestones, a somber setting as we dutifully plodded our way through the church gates towards the door of the building at 6.30pm on a Sunday evening, Evensong. The hymns were usually the same, old favourites sung with vigour, words recited parrot fashion, Sermons about goodness and evil. Phraseology plucked from a book and a period that seemed of little relevance other than the humanity which lay behind them.
The vicar, a thin unassuming man led his congregation as many before him, more in hope than optimism. The women were there in obedience to some duty closer to life than their menfolk, they were congregating as women love to do and, after the service, having been noted for their attendance amongst their peers, they would discus with each other what ever was on their minds as we kids trudged home at their heels.
This community of Service to God was an important binding element in village society, it brought out from hearth and home the mainspring of the village, the women, who made the seasonal observance and the community tick over like a well oiled clock.
The men were largely in the back seat or not even on the bus in so far as village society was concerned and its a pity since much of the warp and weft of society was played out in these church orientated proceedings.
I suppose it was for the men not only a lack of faith but a sense of the agnosticism towards much else when, brutalised by the work they were asked to do and by the rampant disregard for conditions under which the work was often carried out, made them sceptics. They turned to the things they could control, the football match and the commerarderie they obtained from supporting the same team. The pub with its Amber liquid to sooth the harsh clash of personalities at work and the implied need to be the provider what ever the cost.
Divisions lie even within the home as Mum is there to care for her offspring on their return from school whilst Dad was engaged in some more "overtime" to pay for a trip to the seaside. The children asleep when he got home were a mute testimony to his labour and his love.
Mention of the church school and its lack of proper teaching was crucial in the system that was current then. At 11 each child in the country was tested in an exam called the "Eleven Plus Exam" and on this exam hinged the future of most of the children. Private education was available to only those who could afford it and to the majority of children, passing the Eleven Plus was the gateway to the Grammar School and a proper education with educational tests and exams to measure your progress. If you didn't pass you were relegated not only to a Secondary Modern School but relegated in effect to a second class ticket to life.
The Secondary Modern fulfilled the statutory requirement to educate up to a very basic minimum standard but the school was not much more than a holding pen for what we're now adolescents, holding pens until they were released into the world of jobs, not careers but jobs for a weekly wage without much scope for advancement.
Some people rose above the limitation of their school and through diligent application and significant sacrifice (although education to these people was a joy) they spent their free time in night school, after work obtaining what the Eleven Plus had denied them, a proper education and an opportunity for a success in a career.
My father was one of those sensible, gifted and educationally driven people. Having been 'put into' an orphanage at 10 and when necessity beckoned, withdrawn to become the household breadwinner, working half days and then full time he never the less went to night school, initially passing his Ordinary National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering , Higher National Certificate and eventually his Institute of Mechanical Engineers exam which was equivalent to a BSc in Mechanical Engineering.
His was no flashy intellect, his notes reveal a precise logic which covered each subject in all aspects. Methodically he pursued the answer to a problem in maths or science evaluating each stage of the intellectual process, a dream for the examiner ! His handwriting was the perfect script, he had the penmanship to produce beautifully precise, flowing, clear drafted correspondence. Page upon page of crafted text.
It was a generational thing when the effort to present thoughts on paper was accompanied by the art of calligraphy. Its an art not taught any more with the advent of computer aided word processor and its collaborator, the "spell check". He would have been amazed and saddened at the sight of a modern text message !!
There are always the memories of shock and horror, when things got out of hand and the consequences could have been dire. The very nature of growing up is that one hadn't assumed what any London cabbie would claim, "the knowledge" and you were always confident without much reflection on what would happen if things went wrong. Slipping off the slippery bank into a swollen River Aire and being lucky to grab a branch and pull myself out was as close as it got but I can remember the moment to this day. On a far less dangerous occasion but at the time one which was full of foreboding. I was wandering home as darkness fell from a happy day playing in the woods to discover to my horror that I had left by bow and arrow in the wood. I retraced my steps to look for them as the wood was coming to life with the nocturnal sounds, the owls and the foxes the rustling and the night calls were enough to make a balanced head shake but for a frightened little boy it was terrifying. I plunged on and found the bow but another strange noise in the undergrowth was enough for me to turn and run for home with my heart in my mouth. It was all part of life's rich tapestry to learn to push oneself when your fear demanded something else.
In the early days of October boys and girls, largely boys would go out in the evening and at weekend to search of wood, anything combustible, old chairs and old furniture in general anything which would make a good bonfire. As November the 5th approached, each village driven largely by the children started to build up the material for a fire to celebrate Guy Fawkes and we would scavenge the village for what ever would burn. There was competition. In the village we had a division, a fire was sited on land in the main village and there was also one where I lived on land adjacent to a group of houses lying just outside the main conurbation. Raids were occasionally undertaken to pinch some bits and pieces from the other pile, nothing on a grand scale but it necessitated a guard on our fire and so the lead up to the 5th was full of activity and excitement. Of course when the great day arrived the adults, our parents were invited to join us and of course, bring the fireworks we hoped they had bought. It was a great night bringing the community together standing around the huge pile of wood on a cold winters night toasting ones self as the flame leapt high in the sky, rockets shooting into the night sky and the bright exciting volcanos of light and sparks issuing from those expensive fireworks we instinctively buy at this time of year.
In today's world, the Health & Safety over protective culture has whittled down the Bonfire Night celebration to only those fires and firework displays which are officially controlled by the authorities. There's no participation by the children any more and with all the warnings the event of bonfire night is dying !!
It's hard to imagine how different the world of the 1940s and 50s was compared to today.
The assumptions that people held back then are chalk and cheese from the concerns of today.
I think we lived a more instinctive life then than today. Now the media forms so much of our collective thought and through the sheer weight of 24/7 television we find it hard to hold individual opinions. The collective might of "socially contrived" standpoints, contrived to maintain harmony amongst a mixture of dissimilar cultures is so acute that the plethora of messages and directives simply overwhelms anyone who would like to take an alternative view.
Then the space was so different. There were fewer people, fewer cars which meant fewer people congregated at places of interest, the countryside was not clogged up, likewise the beaches and the hotels or boarding houses, the camp sites were all places to get away, the mountains isolated and the view uninterrupted by other people !!
Cycling was cheap and for many the only means of transport. The clubs and the events such as time trialing were what many a young guy and girl joined to get away and on the weekend 100/120 miles on a Sunday meant you slept well !
Having woken at about 5am slipping out of the door into a dark, cold, possibly wet street to push off down the road swinging into the saddle for a 20 mile ride to the start of the 25 mile event near the small town of Otley, close to the River Wharf is not the sort of thing people of the current batch of teenagers would probably think cool. We were of a mindset that all our activities were practical and really just an extension of our everyday life since very few of our friends had even thought of purchasing a car. The bike was our normal method of getting around, we covered the miles to work and general trips on a bicycle and so we were used to the vagrancies of the weather and had a general fitness level much greater than today. Even our diet was far simpler, no fast food outlets very little advertising to tempt people into stuffing their face and so I suppose we were in better shape. Perhaps not altogether true since the quality of the food we put in our mouth was stodgy traditional stuff but at least it was cooked from scratch not bought as a ready cooked meal stuffed full of preservatives.
Early morning cycling through Otley we were excited by the buzz of other cyclists congregating for the event. Meeting friends, we pulled off our warm wet gear revealing the racing Jersey with its colourful emblematic advertising the club. The early competitors had set off up the road at 6am whilst my start at 7am drew closer and the tension rose. Feet clipped tightly onto the peddles supported by the starter 5,4,3,2,1,off you go pushing hard on the peddle to get up to speed as quickly as possible. The effort soon emptied and refilled the lungs in a steady rhythm and it was rhythm that was so important in an event like this as we competed against the clock.
The bench mark was doing the 25 miles in an hour. Our idols were twiddling their legs around to get under the hour and as we laboured up the road trying to get as close as we could these super human machines flew past. One of the idols of my time, the first to get under 4hours for a hundred miles was Ray Booty, a big man with legs like tree trunks. I remember him coming up to my shoulder like a supercharged BMW the power exuding from his magnificent athleticism. "Dig in" he called out as he steamed past whilst I desperately was forcing the final kilowatt of energy through my less than athletic frame . Man and Superman !!
