Back on the farm

Posted on 14th July 2018 by Ruiha Smalley

Mr Marks came to see me and asked if I would go back to work, said it would be better to be with folk.   So I started down the hall again.   I used to look at the lawns and think of when Ern used to do all the mowing.  If only we could turn back the clock.

I didn’t tell you this, when Ern was about seventeen he used to work in the hall big generator house (which gave all the light to the hall) well one Boxing Night he locked all up and when he got back to the lodge he looked and saw flames shooting up in the sky.  They called the fire brigade but the whole place went.   All burnt away.   It was a big worry for Ern, they said it must have been a fault of some sort, mind you, it was years old.  It was a shame because it was next to the big old clock which used to chime.  Mind you later years they did their best to make it like it was. It was up in what they called the square, it was very pretty.  When I first worked down there it had a lovely pond with fish in and weeping cherry trees with bright pink blossom all around it.  It used to look gorgeous with all the daffs planted in the grass surrounding.

Lord Darnley had a Rolls Royce he used to go to the House of Lords on a Tuesday so at least we knew where he was on one day at of the week !

We used to get some funny people to work with down in the kitchens.  Some hadn’t a clue.  One girl was told to wash the lettuce, she did it really clean, under the hot tap with suds coming out!

Another time Rene had to thicken up eight pints of cream, she put the machine on top speed, in a matter of a minute it had turned to butter so she threw the whole lot in the pig bin.   Rene was my very good friend but she could be so dopey at times.  Another time we were all ready to go home she went prancing through the kitchen, her apron caught a huge gallon drum of cooking oil, it went everywhere.  We spent ages trying to clean it up, it went all under the gas cookers, we used soda but it didn’t help a lot.  When the kitchen did dry out it was all white, it looked awful.

One Sunday morning while at work Bessie, a lady that worked on the washing up machine came in very late.  She used to drink a lot, well she seemed to me still drunk, she said she didn’t feel well.  She was Roy Parker’s wife so she lived down the hall in the caretakers flat.  After a while she went down home.  Well she didn’t come back.  In the meantime the Bursar came in and asked me what I thought was wrong with her.   Well I didn’t want to get her into trouble so I just said she had a very bad headache. Next thing they had an ambulance to take her into hospital, I was so worried I thought I should have said she had been drinking.  Anyhow she died soon after getting her into hospital, it was awful. She had always been good fun.  One time she came into the Guilt Hall still drunk and sat down at the Grand Piano and played ‘let’s all go down the strand’.  She could play really well but we were afraid she might be caught.  She just laughed and said I’ll play some of Cliff Richard’s songs and she did.  After we finally got her away from it she just kept saying don’t worry they can’t shoot me for it.  I really missed her after she died.

Now I am a firm believer in fate.  When I was first working on Lawrence farm and my mum had come to live with me and Ern and I never seemed to get ill.  Well one morning I was busy doing the washing, I started to get the most awful pains in my tummy, it was worse than giving birth.  My mum said it sounds like appendix to me.  I was scared stiff of the thought of going into hospital but eventually we had to get the doctor in.  He said you will have to go straight into hospital I think it is your appendix.   So I was packed off into hospital, they were not too sure but they got me all prepared in case I had to have an operation.  Well I nearly died I had never been away from Ern, ever.  I was so worried.   They asked if I thought I was pregnant.  I said I wish I was but no it wasn’t a baby.  Next day I saw Mr Chester one of the top ones.  He gave me a right going over, he said you have a very large cyst on the ovaries I will have to remove it but I said the pain has gone away at the moment.  He explained the cyst was on a stem like a mushroom when it twisted it gave me pain, when I vomited it righted itself.  Anyway he said go home, when the pain comes back, which it will, you must come straight back into hospital and I will remove it.  So I came back home, on the Friday it was back again so Ern took me into hospital.  They operated straight away and Mr Chester said it was as big as a grapefruit.  I had to stay in for ten days.  I hated it.  I was really homesick.

Well back to fate. One morning I was coming home (I’ve told you my dear brother was in Joyce Green for two years) well I asked the nurse if I could go and see my brother before I went home.  It was in the morning so it wasn’t visiting time.  Anyhow she said yes so I went to find Fred, he was so pleased to see me but he looked so very ill.  I just wanted to cry.   I didn’t stay long he looked so tired.   I looked back at him when I was leaving the ward, he called out ‘Goodbye Blue’ bless him. I hadn’t been indoors long when they phoned and said he had died.  Now I was the last one to see him alive and it would never have happened if I hadn’t been in hospital at that time.  So now you know why I believe in fate.

Fred was such a good man.  He came over to cement all our paths and runway for the car, he loved to go down into the cherry orchards with Ern and Dixie our dog.  He used to say to me you are so lucky girl.  I never felt so at the time.

We used to have some lovely times all of us together.  Lena, Len and Les were much like one big family.

When I worked with Babs on English’s farm we had so many laughs.  One day we were having our lunch break, Babs and I were discussing what each person looked like.  Mrs Dray was very fat and always wore cut off trousers to look like shorts.  Mrs Day was like a pole with a mac and hat on. Mrs Claydon was getting a real hump on her back.  We had spoken of this to each other and all of a sudden Mrs Claydon said ‘I went up to the market on Saturday and bought a really lovely camel coat’.  Well we didn’t know how to stop laughing.  Wicked we were.

Another time it was Joyce Barden’s birthday so we took some drink in for her to have at dinner time.  Well after dinner it was Joyce’s time to walk behind the potato machine and pick up the loose ones that were left.  Well we were on the machine when we looked back Joyce was lying on the ground laughing her head off.  Len her husband was not amused, he had a right old moan.

When we were down the Hall working (Babs and I) Mr Marks was the manager over us all, he was a very funny man with a wicked sense of humour.  One day he was bragging as usual and he said ‘I bet you would all like to see me in my underpants and look at my bulge’ so Babs piped up with ‘why have you got a boil on your bum’ he went down like a popped balloon.  It was silly things like that we used to laugh at.

Another time we were picking up potatos and a chap called Michael (he was very shy and used to go very red when we spoke to him) used to stop the tractor every so often to put the odd potato in the truck where we were.  Well Babs had this big stick and whenever he popped his head over the side of the truck Babs would tap him on the head and say in a very funny voice ‘That’s the way to do it’ like Punch and Judy.  In the end he said ‘Put that bloody stick down Babs’ I think he was getting a headache, he took it all in fun.

This is the end of my years on the farm.  It was hard but so carefree and happy.

The end of my years with Ern and happy times.

 

 

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On the farm

Posted on 8th July 2018 by Ruiha Smalley

If on the farm I was picking after my flask was empty I would shuck the peas and put them in my flask, they would be already to cook when I got home.  Beside that I would also fill a bag up with peas for another day.  Whatever we worked with we would take some home, we were never without something.

Sometimes Ern would take Robbie up the field in the evenings. Nine times out ten he would bring a rabbit, a hare or even a pheasant. Once the pheasant had got to close to the wire in the hedge, it couldn’t fly that’s when Ern would catch it. Mind you he was a very good shot with a gun.

We used to feed our dog on hares, they were really big.  He had a 12 bore shot gun and a 10 bore they were not as popular as the 12 bore.  He had a license for them and also permission to walk the fields.  Sometimes he would take Robbie (I’m sure he used him as a gun dog).  You could hardly see his little head above the brussel tops.  His little cheeks would be like bright red balloons when they came home.  It made him feel very important and he loved every minute of it.

Ern was a good man, he made a lovely dad.  I said I would have liked four boys, Ern used to say we can’t afford what we’ve got, he was very down to earth.  He loved music, he was always whistling away or playing his mouth organ.  The first tune he ever played was ‘Now the day is over’ we all loved to hear him play.

When Vi came over to visit from Australia we put on a good old party.  No TV, we had Gert and Vi and all of us mob also Rene and Tubs Spellar.  We had a really lovely time, Gert sang ‘Only a bird in a gilded cage a wonderful sight to see’.  Ern played very softly so that we could hear her.  Vi and Gert sang quite a few songs with Tubs joining in.  He said it was the best party he had ever been to.  When he was a boy they used to sing around an old piano, nearly always someone could knock out a few old tunes.  Rene and Tubs were good friends of ours.  I always sent him a valentine card and sign it with lipstick from ’Hot Lips’.  At Christmas I sent him a card which said ‘Meet me under the Christmas tree and I will kiss you under the balls’. We used to have some really good laughs. He said to Rene one day (they were having a few words) ‘I can’t say two words to you these days’ she said ‘I can SHUT UP’. I suppose in one way I was very lucky.  I had some really nice friends as well as family.  I have had lots of love all my life the benefits of being the youngest of ten children.

We used to have moth balls in drawers and cupboards everywhere, they were little balls of camphor, we, well most people smelled of them.  When Lil was very small she put one up her nose, mum had the devil of a job getting it down.

Now getting back to our days on the farm.  We had work all year round, you were not supposed to take children on the farm at all really, especially not in winter months but as a lot of the work was in the barn he allowed us to take them.

I loved all the work, except picking potatoes, God it was hard work.  We used to have cherries in very high trees, we used to pick in buckets, before that it was baskets lined with fleece, but when it was wet you had a job to lift them.  We also had a long hook to pull the boughs in that one couldn’t reach, it made your feet ache standing on the ladders all day.   Ern and Maurice were ‘our men’ for moving the ladders. Mr Burns would weigh our fruit and mark how many we had picked.  We were paid so much a box.  It was called piece work.  You really had to keep going to earn anything at all but if we worked in the barn it was ‘day pay’ which in those days was one pound a day.  Most of the outside work was ‘piece work’.  In the winter and early spring we were pruning, we collected all the twigs up and burnt them on a big fire.  I loved it at break time we would find a big twig with two prongs and lay our cheese sandwiches on it and toast it over the embers till all the cheese melted and ran over the sides.

Mrs Redsell had been a gypsy so she could always get a fire going.  We picked the wood up in big sack aprons so she would light the fire and to get it going she would lay her apron on the side of the wind on the fire and in no time it would really get it going, even though the wood was wet.  She would also tell us how when anyone feels faint or even have fainted, light an old piece of rag or paper and let the smoke go into their nostrils, also anyone who has cut themselves pull some old cobwebs from an old shed or anywhere you could get them from and put them tightly on the cut, it would stop the bleeding.  She would then hum all day and picked quicker than anyone on the farm.  She would never run off for a wee, like we did, we all liked her though.  I wouldn’t cross her, I really think she could put a curse on you.

Then there was ‘Aunty Flo’ she used to bike out every day from Gravesend, never knew her to be late or ill. She was telling Jen one day that there were some wild kittens in the barn, Jen said ‘You won’t kill them will you Aunt Flo’.  Flo said ‘My dear girl I wouldn’t kill a flee’ so Jen said ‘Ooo Aunt Flo do you just let them itch’, so she thought Aunt Flo had a few.(Got your matchbox handy Ern).

Then we had Hilda, Flo’s sister, she used to bike out later because she worked at the bakers shop before she came out to the farm.  I must tell you this, Hilda loved cats, Flo’s husband couldn’t stand them.  One day Hilda’s cat went into the bakery, it followed Hilda and fell into the doughnut vat which was full of oil. Well Flo’s husband found it in his back yard (they lived next door to Hilda) when he took it round to her she thought he had tried to drown the thing.  You can imagine what it looked like. Well Flo said Hilda was going to kill him, they had a job to hold her off. They did finally manage to clean him off and take him to the vet. Flo said Bill (her husband) couldn’t stop laughing.

Then we had Emeline, she was an old spinster, she always wore a scarf, summer and winter, her name was Emeline Dunne.  Ern would sit on the bottom of her ladder she would be picking cherries and he would sing ‘Old mother Dunne never been done’ and she would sing back ‘And she’s proud of it too’. The men used to sit on the bottom of the ladder to hold it firm and stop it slipping.  She was a very jolly person and could take a joke.  She used to bike out from Gravesend and go home for dinner (made of good stuff in those days).

One day Mr Burns had a big green tarpaulin tied to four trees for a shade or to keep the rain off us.  One day it had been raining so we were in the barn, the children were playing.   Come dinner time we yelled for the nippers to come up from the orchard.  Two ends of the tarpaulin had come undone and the kids had been using it as a slide, when they arrived they looked like little green men from outer space, they were covered, faces, legs the lot.   They looked so funny we all had to laugh, mind you it was one heck of a job to get it off.   Even old Mr Burns had to laugh.

After a few years they got  machine in for planting potatoes, I used to go on it with Ern and Maurice.  Mr Burns would drive the tractor we sat on three seats on the back to make sure the potatoes went down the holes one by one.  I loved it, nice and easy work just sitting there.  Then eventually they bought a new machine for picking potatoes up.  I liked that as well, but you really had to keep your wits about you.  Sometimes it would pick up huge flints, a bit dangerous they could easily crush your hands but I loved breathing the air from the fresh earth, it made you feel alive.

That is one thing I remember about being in the land army in Gloucestershire, being on an old Fordson tractor and using ring rollers on a field of corn.  It was a really massive big field.  The morning was early in spring and on the way down to the field I had seen a whole nest of stoats, all ginger and white.  Once in the field it was like another world, the sun just starting to warm up, the smell from the dew on the young corn shoots, a soft breeze on my face, it made me feel so happy it was like paradise.  It would take me all day when I stopped for my dinner I could hear the sky larks high in the sky, I hoped they hadn’t nested in the corn. I went back to the hostel at night, I would lay on my bunk thinking about it.

Years before one used to have men cutting the corn and we would have to put them in ‘stocks’ that was stand the stems down in sacks of eight all across the fields to dry.  They later went into a machine called a ‘binder’ which cut the corn and threw each bundle out to the side.  When it was fairly dry we went into the fields with a two pronged pitch fork to pick them up and take to a corner of the field and two men would make a large stack of them.  Then it would have thatching like a house on top to keep the weather out.  Come winter we would have the threshing machine come to thrash all the corn out, it was a very hard and dirty job to do. The dust would get right into ones eyes, no goggles those days and the string would make your hands bleed.  We used to have to change jobs every so often.  Mind you everyone just took it in their stride, no moaning we were all in the same boat.

Then we would work round the potato clamp when it was freezing cold, kneeling down on an old sack sorting the chats from the ware, also the rotten ones.  Your feet would get so cold it was a job to walk on them ‘Why should I have to work such rotten jobs’ feeling sorry for myself, mind you it didn’t do me any good ‘or harm’.

I think the good days outshone the bad. The weather made such a difference to all the jobs.  Sometimes we would pick early Worcester apples, they were nice low trees, the fruit was the most beautiful colour, all red and warm from the sun, they used to smell gorgeous.  Then we would have to pick Victoria plums, they were nice low trees.  In Mr Lawrence’s chicken run there were more nice low trees and I have never seen such large ‘Vics’ in my life, they were really delicious. He also had Morello cherries for cooking, we used to have to cut their stalks with scissors, not pick them, they had to have stalks intact, they looked like wax in the chips.   The chips were made of ply wood.

When we worked in the barn we had a machine which would grade the apples by size, then we would pack them in tissue paper, not just place them, they had to be on their sides, bright side up, we would have a circle in the middle without papers so they could see what they were buying.  The small apples went into larger wooden boxes with a blue paper collar round the inside to save the bruising.  We also had to do the same with pears and the Bramley apples.  We each had our own stand for packing.  Then Mr Burns would inspect them and put paper tops on with clips.  The names and all the details would be put on with a rubber stamp, it was a nice job.  We always had two or three robins in the barn singing away.  They knew they would be well fed at ten o’clock break.  The time used to go very fast in there but if we were out in the cold picking Brussels it would seem forever.

The barn was always nice and clean, we all cleaned it up every day once we had finished.   We had a piece of wood and an old sack to stand on to keep our feet warm.  We all had something most times to keep our feet warm.  We all had something most times to talk about. Bert Bowyer was the lorry driver, so he would be full of jokes that he had heard in the market.  I won’t write them down.  He was always singing that song called ‘Try a little tenderness’ he was quite a nice chap, one of those who always took his time.

Later years when my mum was living with us, Bert was taken ill, he had to go into hospital for an operation, for at least two weeks they said.  Mr Lawrence asked Ern if he would be willing to help him out, so good old Ern said ‘Yes’.  We couldn’t have done it if mum hadn’t been living with us.  I went with Ern because we worked all day on the farm, back after tea to work in the barn, home at eight o’clock back to the farm at eight thirty to a full load of fruit to the market in London!  By the time we had unloaded and stacked all the empties to bring home it would be two o’clock in the morning before we got home.  This was every day or night I should say, even on a Sunday.  It was a nightmare, this went on or eight weeks until Bert was fit again.

 

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Back to Sunnyside

Posted on 6th July 2018 by Ruiha Smalley

Now to get back to our life in ‘Sunny-Side’.  We were very lucky because we could get all our veg and fruit from the farm, also quite a lot of fruit from the farm, also quite a lot of log wood, we also had a pig club, everyone would take turns in cleaning and feeding it.  Mr Lawrence would buy it and keep it in the yard on the farm then when it was big enough they would take it to be killed and prepared by the butcher in Gravesend.  They would then draw numbers from a hat and whichever number you received you would get that joint.   The liver we would share, some people did not want the ‘chitlings’ (as we called them we loved it.

We didn’t ever eat pork if the month had a letter ‘R’ in it. (I never did find out why.)

At Christmas Mr Lawrence would give each worker a large hundred weight sack of potatoes, a box of Cox eating apples, a box of Bramley cooking apples, a big bag of oranges and one week’s wages in a brown envelope.  Also two bright shiny halfcrowns in a little brown envelope for each child.  It was so thrilling, we used to go into Mr Lawrence’s house to receive all this.  He was very kind I would have liked to give him a hug.  There was no other farmer who was so good.

When we had used all the potatoes we would give Erns mother the sacks, she used to make rag rugs with them, she was very good at it, they would look very pretty when she finished them, but how she could lift them to shake them I never knew, they were as heavy as lead.   Once thing was they would never wear out, she would cut up all sorts of things for them, even old coats.  She was a lovely old dear, always put ‘Libbys milk in her tea (that is evaporated milk).  She also knitted the most gorgeous socks for men, they were so soft.   When Ern had a hole in his she would unpick them and re-foot them as good as new. She used to remind me of a ‘Mammy’, her name was Suzannah (most unusual), her sister was Floss who was marred to Theobald (he used to play the violin).  They were a devoted couple, Ern and I used to visit them. They had three children, Mary, John and Alan. I still keep in touch with the children.  Ern’s mother’s name was Earl, very unusual to hear that isn’t it.  The children live in Halling near Cuxton.

I forgot this bit:  When Mrs Bicker made a cup of tea she always put loose tea leaves in the strainer, poured hot water over it into the cup, she never ever used a teapot.  You didn’t have tea bags in those days.

I loved the ‘Lodge’ where they lived, it had been thatched years before and the porch was made from the boughs of trees.  [I must take you down one day, perhaps you could take a camera then we could take the boys up the park to show you where I used to live. Also when the hall is opened to the public we will go down there, you would love it.]

Cobham Park Lodge Gate

Lodge Gate today

Another baby

When Jen was two we thought we were ready for another baby (a boy), after a while I was pregnant or rather ‘with child’, again Mum came to the rescue, said I could go to her for the birth.  Lena had moved into Mrs Knight’s house (she had moved to Lawrence Drive) which by the way was named after Mr Lawrence the farmer.  So Lena said she would look after Jen for me while I had my baby.  I was still working on the farm we were picking apples one lovely sunny day. Jen was talking! and playing with the rest of the children, when all of a sudden someone said to me ‘Jenny has eaten some black berries from under a tree’.  When I looked they were deadly nightshade (very poisonous) so I took her up to Mr Lawrence’s house, he had a friend with him who took me to Gravesend hospital.   They pumped her tummy out, quite a few came out, enough to make her very very ill they told me.  She was soon her old self.  Mind you I was very scared, I was about three months pregnant so I was a bit worried about the baby.  Then Jenny had a bad cough, the doctor said to keep her in the one temperature in one room so Ern brought our bed downstairs in the sitting room.  We kept a small fire going all night with a few logs.  Well I must tell you this, in the middle of the night I had an awful nightmare, I felt I was awake and looked in the bottom of our bed and my sister Ivy was lying there dead. When I looked around there were little angels flying all around the room.  When I woke I was really upset, I felt something had happened to my baby.

I think it was the fire flickering and I must have been half awake, so I suppose that would account for the angels.   Then I kept saying to Ern ‘I cannot feel any movement’  I kept moving about to wake this baby up.  I think it was being so worried about Jen that caused it.  Anyway all was well.  Then I was at my mum’s one day and Jen was running and fell over and knocked a tooth out.  Never a dull moment.

When at last it was time for my new baby ‘boy’ Lena and Len came round for tea and I started to get pains, so after their tea they took Jen home and Ern and I walked across the church fields up to Mum’s.  I had to keep stopping while the pains went away.  When we arrived at Mum’s my brother Fred was there with his family, it was Whit Monday.   Anyway they soon went home, so I prepared for the big event.  Everyone said the second one is a lot easier, so I felt confident.  Mum and I got the bed all ready but the kettle on to boil on the old Kitchener, a big draw sheet on the bed, a piece of old blanket to wrap the baby in when ‘he’ arrived.  Then came the big wait.  Mum said to keep walking about as long as you can, it will make the birth easier.

Well at three o’clock in the morning I am still walking about, apart from killing back pains, nothing! Mum kept saying he won’t come until you get a show of some sort. Ern said he would go and get the nurse, so we agreed.  He was gone for ages. When at last he came back, he had cycled all the way up to Laughing Waters Nissan huts to find the nurse, she was attending another birth so could not come. Mum said not to worry she knew what to do.  All at once I was on the bed everything was happening, Robert was born so quickly my poor mum was really crying, I said ‘mum what is it, a boy or a girl’, she said ‘it’s got so many bits hanging I’m not sure’. When we really looked at him he was a boy but he had extra little fingers on both hands.

At last the nurse came, she said the doctor would have to come in because I was so torn and needed stitches. So Dr Kagan came in the next day and put stitches and took my sons little fingers off.  I said to Mum isn’t he like Jen, my Mum said no he was very different.   When Jen came into see me and the new baby brother, she said ‘not very handsome is he’ mind you he was very red, even the doctor called him a little red lobster.   I thought he was just everything I ever wanted.  Mind you Jen was such a good girl, she never wanted to come along to see me or worry Mum.  She really loved being with with Unc, she went everywhere with him.  He was so proud of her she was always holding his hand. It was a nice feeling knowing she was being well looked after. We were so happy. I would just lay there thanking God for being so kind and giving me everything anyone could want.  I wanted this to last for ever. My son was nine pounds.

We stayed with Mum for two weeks, it was lovely. Then came the time after being ‘churched’ to go home to ’Sunny-Side’, it was a nice sunny day so we proudly walked home with our little family. Ern said ‘I will get the copper alight ready for you to have a nice bath’ I sure needed one. The nurse used to put this huge bedpan under one’s bottom and pour a large jug of Dettol water through your legs, mind you even that made you feel a bit fresher.

Anyway Ern had been down home in the morning to light the fire and get the room warm.   We only ever had heat in the kitchen.  Ern said he reckoned the water was hot enough now, I got Jen ready I thought I would pop her in first then get in after.  My house wasn’t anywhere near so comfy as my Mum’s.  I was already missing her.  Just as I got Jenny ready the darling little baby started to cry.  Ern had put an old rubber pipe in the copper which was in the kitchen to reach the bath he had made a small hole in the door to put the pipe through. Well when he opened the door the pipe had come out of the bath and all the boiling water was on the floor.  It was too hot to even mop up, the baby was still crying, Jenny was whinging she was getting cold. ‘Well’ Ern was saying ‘ I didn’t think it would come out of the bath’.  I just broke down in tears, I wanted my Mum, I thought I will never be able to cope with all these things.  I did find it very hard at first, it seemed never ending.

Hop picking

I didn’t take my new baby on the farm to work, I was feeding him myself so it was a bit awkward. So I went ‘hopping’ we would walk up to the village as soon as it was daylight. Ern would push the pram with Jenny and Robert in. I would push Ern’s bike for him to come home on. In those days you had to be on the hop fields very early, there were quite a few do’s and don’t’s. At dinner time a man would call out ‘pull no more bines’ so one would make sure you had plenty hidden in the bin so you could pick a few more after time. Then he would tell everyone when to start again.

Hop pickers (KAS ref HPM04)

We had a short break in the morning and again in the afternoon.  We would have what they called faggots, they were bundles of twigs to light a fire.  A big tank on wheels full of water to fill the billy can for tea. We just put leaves in the can and a tin of condensed milk to spoon into our mugs of tea.  Most of the mugs were enamel, so they didn’t break.   Everyone had bread and cheese, might have been one or two onions if there was an allotment close by.  The stain from the hops would make the bread all green and very bitter tasting, but we all loved it.  The tea would taste of wood smoke but we didn’t have time to moan about it.  In the morning it would be very foggy and everywhere was wet and cold.  In the afternoon when the sun came out it would be so hot it nearly baked everyone sitting on the bin.

When it was time to walk back home, I would go into my mum’s house to clean my hands with a paraffin rag to take the hop stain off, then dash back home to cook dinner for us in the evening. We always had potatoes with our main meal and not much else, perhaps a rasher of bacon and some cabbage, followed by apple and custard. Ern did love his puddings. Then it would be one mad rush to bath the nippers and get them to bed. I had about twelve pounds at the end of it all. You only got paid at the end.

Back to the farm

After that year I went back to the farm, mind you the women were very good to me.  There was a lot of work in the barn so if I had to work outside they would let me leave my baby in the pram with them. Mr Burns was the foreman and he very often gave me work in the barn, packing fruit.  We were very happy working  for Mr Lawrence.  Ern used to take his mouth organ and when everyone was settled up in the trees picking cherries, he would play us all a tune we would all join in singing even old Mr Burns used to smile which was very rare. Everyone was so happy we all got on so well. There were about twenty of us.  We used to have a break at ten o’clock then twelve to one dinner and finish most times about four.  You had to finish your box of fruit. It was nice being able to work with Ern.  We never came home without something, either pieces of wood for ‘mornings wood’ or logs for the fire, fruit or veg of some sort, it helped out such a lot.  We used to get corn for our six chickens.  My children loved to run up when the chickens were telling us they had laid an egg, they would cup it in their little hands all warm and brown.  I often wondered how many they dropped.  Sometimes the chickens would eat them so we would fill up a shell with mustard to stop them. We also kept a few cockerels to fatten up for dinner and if we sold any I would get them all ready for the table and get one pound  for each of them. We really thought it was wonderful. Bet they did as well, I mean the folk that bought them! Ern used to get Maurice to come up to kill them as he could not do it himself.

When Robert was seven months old Lena went into All Saints hospital to give birth to Les. He was such a poor little thing, only weighed four pounds. Lena had to keep him rubbed over with oil and not put him in a bath.  I did feel sorry for her. Robert was just at that bonny stage so it made it seem worse.  Poor little love I felt I wanted to take him and care for him.  I never did think anyone could look after them as well as I could.  (Things never change).  It was nice when after a while Len and Lena came down to live next door.  I loved old Len nearly as much as my Ern, he always seemed to be the same, bless him. Ern and Len got on very well with each other.  They were always having a laugh.

When we worked in the orchard, they had a hut with a long handles at each end, like a hop bin, it had a closed front with a lavatory seat on top.  The men would dig a large hole in the ground and put this hut over the top, it was for everyone to use as a toilet (well for a wee).   There was a nice lavatory up at the farm with flush toilet. The men used to move the hunt, which was called a ‘Dunacan’ every few weeks.  Also up the farm for everyone’s dinner hour was a nice room with an open stove to boil the kettle and wash basins.

I stayed for dinner, I would sit on the carrier of Ern’s bike then he would haul me pulling the pram behind him.  When we got home we would have bread and milk. We both had it down to a fine art, Ern would do the milk and I would cut the bread up, then I would sort the nippers and pram out while Ern got the basins ready. I used to say to the kids, it anyone asks what you have had for your dinner tell them you cannot remember.  I did not want them all knowing we were hard up.  Mind you it kept us going. I did cook a meal when I finished work at night. Good job we liked bread and milk

When I was a girl I used to think people were very posh if they had cows milk.  I thought everyone had tin milk, it only used to cost about three pennies a tin. We used a lot of tin milk even after we were married, Ern loved it in his flask.

When Rob was three months old, Lena and I took him to a baby show over at Istead Rise, he won first prize. I was so proud of him, mind you I don’t like baby shows, because everyone thinks their babies are the best.  Anyway Lena and I brought some raffle tickets between us, we couldn’t afford many and we won a lovely chicken meal, all the veg, stuffing, fruit and even a Christmas pudding with cream, there were also some nylon stockings.  We came home very pleased with ourselves. We had dinner together on Sunday.

When Rob was about fourteen months old, just learning to walk, he fell in the garden and split his lip open, I was so scared I couldn’t stop it from bleeding.  Ted Body lived next door, he said ‘jump in my gal, I’ll get yer to the quacks’ which he did. Dr Kagan stitched it up.  In the morning he had pulled them all out with his teeth, he looked awful.  So I go round to Mr Lawrence, once again one of his friends took us to the hospital. The doctor said he was far too young to have been stitched, so he put something on his lip and said bring him back every day.  I had to keep it bathed, the doctor said don’t let it heal too quickly or he will have a big scar.  Anyhow it did heal very well thank goodness.

Rob was always knocking his head and would get awful nose bleeds. One day they were playing blind mans buff, he put a sack on his head, of course he fell and hit his head on the wall.  I said to Ern I’m sure I can see his brains, it was a bad cut, it must have been muscles I could see, but it sure did bleed. My children were never indoors, even when they were in the pram I would put them in the stable (‘No Ern, not feed them hay silly’).

One day we were over Thong picking up potatoes, ruddy hard work. I was sitting on a sack of spuds for two minutes waiting for the spinner to come round, little Rob put his arms round my legs and said ‘Mum I love you with all my blessed heart’.  Mr Burns was close by, he said ‘Well you can’t say better than that’.  I worked like ten men after that, it really made up for everything.  I never ever forgot it.

They were very good kids, they could always find something to do.  When they were at home they used to tie a piece of hop string on an old stick, let the chickens out and play ‘Raw Hide’ it was a series from television.  The blinking chickens would be all over Ern’s garden, squawking and hollering, I think they laid two eggs a day after that.

We didn’t have anything modern, we had what we called a ‘safe’ on the wall outside it was like a box with wire gauze on the door, we used to keep things cool in it making sure it was in the shade.

We had Jim and Pete, butcher boys, who came round twice a week with meat.  Mr Cook used to come once a week, he sold all hardware stuff including paraffin.  There was also a baker and milkman.  We didn’t buy very much from any of them.  We would sometimes get a small cheap cut of meat on a Friday. I used to cook it in the summer the same day, we had to as there was no fridge, when we had milk I used to boil it as soon as it came, otherwise it would go sour. It was funny really because I thought that was how everyone lived. Mind you the old Kitchener was a good stove, I used to boil bones which one could get for nothing, on top of the stove for a stew.  A kettle would be kept boiling on top for whatever hot water was needed.  I kept an old big bucket type thing in one corner for the nappies.  A milk pudding in the oven.  On the top shelf I would bake potatoes in their jackets, if I had bacon I would put that on an enamel plate in the bottom, it cooked really well.

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Ern and myself

Posted on 5th July 2018 by Ruiha Smalley

Now to get back to Ern and myself. We saved twenty pounds (felt like millionaires). Ern’s Gran was selling her home furniture well we went out on our bikes to have a look at it all and it looked good as it sat in her house, we couldn’t afford much anyway. So we gave Gran our money (the whole twenty pounds). When we went back to get it the rest of the family had taken what they wanted and we were left with all the junk. There were straw pallias’s (I didn’t know what they were used for) my mum said years ago people slept on them instead of mattresses. There were two pictures which took up all the wall (of Queen Victoria’s funeral) a towel rack full of wood worm and a round table that tipped up when you leant on it and a big iron bedstead with big brass knobs. Anyway we bought it all back to Mrs Bicker’s lodge until we had a place of our own to live.

Getting married

We had a cheap wedding at the Registry Office on 14th October 1947 (same day as my mum’s wedding). Lord and Lady Darnley came to see us on the morning of our wedding, shook hands and gave us a lovely cake. We had just a few people back to the hall and a very small buffet. I had a couple of Land Army girls, Tim had quite a laugh with them, it was a really bright full moon, we all walked up to the village in the evening it was great.
Vi gave birth to a baby girl on 27th October ‘Trudy’ so I was kept pretty busy as housekeeper for them all, seven days a week. Mum used to get cross, she said they expected too much of me. Anyway when Vi was up and about (in those days you would stay in bed for two weeks) I told her we were going to look for a place of our own, she said ‘Why? We get on so well’ which we did but we also wanted to start off on our own. Ern went to see Mr Lawrence the farmer. He said if Ern was willing to train for pruning trees he could have work.

Mr Lawrence was the main figure in the village. Mrs Wilson was his sister she had a lovely photo of her and her brother taken when they were presented to the Queen. Mrs Wilson had one son John, he was not interested in the farm. Mrs Lawrence was mostly in a wheelchair, she had three miscarriages so they didn’t have any children. Such a shame because Mr Lawrence was a real toff, such a lovely man (to look at as well as his nature). He was a Justice of the Peace as well as President of the Agricultural Committee. Anyone who needed help, he knew the answer. He let us move into a Nissan Hut down Lodge Lane until he had a house vacant on the farm, it was huge and very nice if we had some furniture for it !!

Mr Lawrence said Bert Bower can move your things for you, well really we could have put them in a pram. When Bert came I felt awful, he was a right old gossip! He put our bits in the lorry, they all fitted in one corner for Mr Lawrence. The first night in the hut was awful. We sat without music, there was no noise at all, we both looked at each other and said ‘Isn’t it horrible not having Vi’s children around us’. We had never been without them, always playing snap or snakes and ladders or just playing with them. I didn’t tell Vi.

After six weeks of living in the hut Mr Lawrence said the house at Round Street ‘Sunny-Side’ is available, you can move in any time so if you want t go and see it you can. Well we came round to have a look. A Mrs Holmes was living there but Mr Holmes had died. I most certainly did not want her moving out on my account so I went to see Mr Lawrence but he said Mrs Holmes wanted to go to live with her sister who lived at Brighton and had two teenagers. So I went to Mrs Holmes to make sure that it was true. I told her we were in no hurry to move in but she had made all her plans, so on the 1st May 1948 we moved to Sunny-Side. I loved everything about it. We had hardly anything, nothing on the floors and no curtains but still we didn’t mind too much. We had each other. BIG THRILL I thought I was pregnant. You didn’t go to see the nurse early, in those days you waited until your waist thickened. We were so thrilled, Ern went to the lodge to tell his mum, she said ‘surely that could have been avoided’ I could not believe her. Mind you I wondered how we were going to manage. I suppose that is what she thought.

We were so happy. We used to walk in the cherry orchard in the evenings, the birds would be singing. I used to stand and watch the bumble bees on the blossom. They looked like they had little yellow wellies on with all the pollen on their legs. They looked like black and yellow velvet.

Having a baby

We had a little canvas crib given to us, so we titivated it all up, Ern made a v shaped top ‘It arf looked posh’. We put muslin all round it and wait for it a Big Blue Bow, I got really excited about it. We never stopped talking about it when we were on our own. I kept saying to mum ‘What’s it like mum how will know when it’s on the way’. ‘Don’t worry my girl. You will know soon enough, it’s no picnic’. But I used to think it cannot be that bad for mum to have had ten. Mum said I could go up to have my baby in her house, so that gave me a nice safe feeling. I said ‘What happens at first’ she told me how it should start with a small plug of jelly followed by back pains then front pains, so now I was all ready for the word go.
Mr Bates daughter who lived opposite us used to do a taxi business, she said she would take me when the time came, up to the villages for three shillings.

Nurse Backhouse used to call in once a month to feel my tummy and tell me all was well. She did not come the last month just said I will come when you call me for the birth. She said the baby should come on 29th August, she was nearly always right and was very good.
A week before I was due I got out of bed and was bleeding quite a lot so panic panic. I go up to my mum. Doctor Hasler came to see me and said I had a small opening but it was the afterbirth (placenta) breaking away. He told me to take things easy. Anyway Mrs Walker lived opposite my mum she told me I could walk down her garden which was nice and private and down to the college lane. I did not want to be seen by folk. When at last it was time for the nurse to come in, Nurse Backhouse was on her day off. So you will not believe it but a nurse Backaline was called, she was very old, she had been with my mum when I was born. So they had a lot to chat about while I was in agony. In those days one had to lie on your side to give birth. I did not even want to take my knickers off in front of my mum. Nurse kept saying ‘bear down dear’ I thought she meant bow over. Eventually my mum said ‘just strain girl as if going to the toilet’ I understood then, so after what seemed a lifetime I gave birth to a lovely baby GIRL!!! Eight and a half pounds, mind you she was beautiful lots of black hair and all nice and round. I found a small pink bit of ribbon out of one of mum’s bed socks to put on the crib. Mum was very proud. Mrs Walker gave me a very pretty ‘Vyella’ dress, it was ever so posh. In those days you kept them in long nighties for six weeks and long petticoats we called ‘beds’ (can’t think why). They had ‘belly binders’ and a cork with cotton wool over their tummy button so that it would be nice and flat.

I had to stay in bed for ten days, everyone did. The day you got up, the first place you went was to church to give thanks for the Lord for safe delivery. It was always called ‘being churched’. Only myself, mum and the vicar. You were considered very wicked if you did not go.

Now my baby was the best one ever. She was so good, always feeding and sleeping (still very good at it now). She was really pretty with big brown eyes and fair hair, we loved her to bits. Ern used to say will I ever see her awake. She was such a happy baby. I fed her myself for nine months. We were so happy, still broke but money could never buy us such happiness. I felt a bit like the nightingale, God gave us a pretty baby to make up for not having any money.

Ern cut the tall irons off our bed to make it a bit more modern, mum gave me a very old twill unbleached sheet so I bought a green dye to make it look like a bedspread, I thought it looked very ‘posh’. We painted liquid lino (also green) on the kitchen floor which was cement, so it was very easy. We bought some cheap lino for the sitting room as that had a wooden floor, it was more like cardboard, it nearly broke up when you touched it. We varnished a border where the lino didn’t reach, it was the biggest border I had ever seen. I had an old jute mat given to me, I couldn’t shake it because it would fall apart, so I used to use a dustpan and brush, before that I had used a shovel (none of your hoovers for me). My sisters had them but we could manage with what we had (‘little heros’). I had a small kettle which we put in the Kitchener (stove), you could open the top of the stove and pop the kettle down in and we had a cup of tea in no time.

When I first moved here in 1948 I had an old bucket lavatory, it had to be emptied every day (lovely job). I was lucky because in August they put us cisterns and flushes in.
I must tell you this, the workmen were nice chaps. I had only one smock before Jen was born. In those days you tried to hide your bump. Anyway I washed it out in the morning brought it in and put it on to walk up to see my mum. One of the workmen looked at me and said ‘I hope that’s not damp love’, funny what one remembers.

Cobham Hall, badgers and daffodils

Cobham Hall postcard c.1900

Now a few more yarns from Cobham Hall. One morning Lord Darnley told Ern’s Dad (Mr Bicker) that a badger had fallen into the swimming pool, it was lucky because it was dry at the time. It had been a lovely pool in its time. They reckoned Lady Marguerite would run across the south front lawns ‘naked’ to jump into the pool. Mind you it was very private so I suppose she made the most of it. It was a gorgeous spot, the lawns sloped down and it was next to the ‘acacia gardens’ (they were beautiful trees, covered in white blossom and the leaves were shaped like little French nickers and the most sweet smelling). I do get carried away, I relive every moment that I am writing about. Anyway we had a large plank put down and up the side of the pool. Mrs Knight had one side and me the other, we stood at the top with long poles to prod and poke the blessed thing he was very big and fat, black and white with a long nose. It took us ages to coax him out but in the end he ran up the plank and away to the cover of the trees.

We used to plant hundreds of daffodils, all those you see down the hall are what we put in.
Mr Bicker used to be the grave digger for Cobham so when he used to be off I was left to milk Buttercup and Daisy the cows. He was very good at digging graves.  He would have to measure the ground to get it about right, it had to be the shape of the coffin, people were very fussy in those days. They put green netting stuff all around so that no one saw the earth. It wasn’t an easy or nice job, he used to get ten shillings for doing it. When he had an old grave he said that sometimes the old coffin would cave in. I will tell you more about that later.

Anyway when we used to be planting bulbs we would have three barrows filled with them, we had a special tool for planting them, one at a time, right way up. One day Mr Bicker said ‘I will leave you two to plant them, it is four o’clock and I have to go to milk the cows’. Off he trots, well we looked at each other, we both decided we were fed up so off we go up the Avenue, we took two barrows and we just broadcast them under the trees and covered them with leaves. When Mr Bicker came back, he just looked at us and said ‘Didn’t take you two buggers long to get rid of them did it’ we said ‘No we have really worked hard while you have been away’. We had a good old laugh about it BUT next spring I think every one of the blighters had grown. Mr Bicker said he didn’t recall planting that lot. They did look pretty. I think even Lordy thought they looked nice.

Daffodils at Cobham Hall

Ern would shout his father’s name just like Lord Darnley, it used to be so funny, we would hide behind the shrubs when we knew his dad was close by, he used to like to be with Mrs Knight on her own sometimes, so we would wait, then Ern would shout very loud ‘BICKER’ his dad would run out from where he was, come past us and say ‘Watch it, the old mans about’ meaning Lord Darnley. We had so many laughs. Mr Bicker never found out it was Ern.

Sometimes when it was snowing, we used to go inside the hall, it had lots of flat roofing, so it let the water in, so we would go in to mop some of the water up. Used to be quite interesting. When we worked outside every morning we had a place called Pinkies Hut, a man called Pink once lived there. We used to light a big fire, put the kettle on and have our ten o’clock break and again in the afternoon. It was really cosy, we had chairs to sit on and an old sack on the floor, we used to dry our clothes off as well. When we had to cut tall flowers we would get soaked, like Lupins, Delphiniums, Manarda, Dhalia, Plox of all colours, Tulips and even Snowdrops. We would put them like a little posy with ivy leaves around them. Sometimes we would get an order for a hundred bunches for the florist, so we were kept pretty busy. I got on well with Mrs Knight, her name was Emily, she had lived in the village since she was a young girl.

Tom Kingman worked down the hall in the kitchen garden (nice looking chap). He was Bill Kingman’s brother (you know Aunty Min’s husband). He told us he had his calling up papers to go into the army. He came down to see us just before he was being sent too war. Next news was he was killed first time out. I cried when I heard the news, he didn’t want to leave the hall, it was so sad. His poor mum never locked her door and always left her light on, she was sure he would come home to her. She was about to have her 100th birthday, (she lived all alone in a bungalow in Manor Road, Sole Street called Glengarrie) when one night she put her electric blanket on and it smouldered and she was suffocated with the fumes. Poor soul, she had always looked after herself and got around right up until the end. She had one daughter, her name was Nellie. One day she was walking along the pathway on the Meopham road on a Sunday afternoon when a motor bike mounted the footpath and it killed her instantly. She was doing someone a good turn at the time, she had been to Nurstead to feed someone’s cat. It was tragic, some folk get more than their share of sorrow. They were a big family, lots of boys.

Getting back to Mum, she had a big black and white dog named ‘Chuff’ we were walking over the church fields one day, I was about six months pregnant with Jen, when out of nowhere came this huge dog. Our dog was on a lead, this beast flew at Chuff, they had a terrible fight, I was scared stiff.  I kept saying to mum ‘Let go of the lead’ but mum wouldn’t. A man came along, the shepherd (owner of the dog) pulled the dog away, when I looked at Mum her hand was bleeding really badly. I kept crying I was so worried about my poor Mum. She just kept saying don’t get yourself all upset, think of your baby. When we got her to the hospital they thought at first she would lose one of her fingers but luckily they were able to make it better. Mind you mum could never use it after that as it was always bent. After that she found a good home for Chuff, he went to a farmer somewhere. One thing for sure, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with it. Remember Dandy?
Now I must tell you this, my mum attended all of us girls at the birth of our babies, except for Lena (she went into hospital for Les) mum told me after Rob’s birth ‘that’s the very last baby I will deliver’ she said and it was.

Mum should have been a midwife

When Lil lived in Manor Road Sole Street ‘Glendale’ she was giving birth to Maureen, mum was on her own the nurse and the doctor were already with someone else. Mum was very good but when the baby came Mum said she had never seen anything like it, first the baby did not cry and she had a thick skin all over her, by this time the baby was going blue, mum was worried sick, then she noticed a pucker of skin on her shoulder, mum said she took a chance and pulled at it, it came away like a big plastic bag. Mum kept pulling and it came away from all over her body, then the baby started to cry so did mum. When the doctor arrived, he said ‘Well done Mrs King, you have saved her life’. He said he had seen this before but it was most unusual, it was what was named a ‘caul’ it was in fact just a skin that sometimes forms on the baby as it grows, he said years ago they used to give them to sailors for ‘good luck’. The saying was that you would never go down if you owned one of them (horrid thought). Mum burnt it along with all the rest of the rubbish, that was another belief. My mum always stuck to it as well. The saying was when the birth was over you had to burn the afterbirth, otherwise you would have bad luck and the baby would not survive. Good job they had closed in fires, not central heating. I think my mum would have been a wonderful midwife. She never got into a panic.

Entertainment and days out

When I was a girl living in the village we used to go to the ‘Old Mill’ behind the Mill Café or rather tea rooms every Tuesday night we would have a magic lantern show. We thought it was wonderful, there was a big white sheet they put the pictures onto it from a big machine thing, when it was on the man would tell us about it. He would tap the pictures with a big long cane, sometimes he would put music on to blend in with it.

It used to be really exciting if you sat next to a boy that one liked. Some of them would be more like a history lesson. Then we would have a part from the Bible so we could sing, one of the songs we sang was…

Climb climb up Sunshine Mountain, heavenly breezes blow,
Climb climb up Sunshine Mountain faces all aglow
Turn turn from sin and sorrow look into the sky
Climb climb up Sunshine Mountain you and I

After a while they had a few old out of the arc pictures but at least it was something to do.

Some Sundays I was allowed to catch a bus into Gravesend to go to the real pictures. It was six pennies to catch the bus and six or nine pence to sit up the back in the pictures, much nicer in the back with a boy friend, always a chance he might put his arm round your shoulders. In Gravesend there were four cinema’s The Majestic, The Regal, The Super and Plaza. You could stay as long as you wanted, some people would sit and watch it all over again. The Majestic was the best one, it used to have a man playing the organ before the film, he used to be right down the front he seemed to rise up out of the floor. I hated it but all the old dears loved it, including my mum. They would come round in the interval with threepenny tubs of ice cream, we didn’t have them many times.

The Empire Theatre, Gravesend, today

One day we went into Gravesend, Mum, Lena, Ern and myself before we were married. We went across the Thames on the ferry boat (it was very cheap) then we caught a train and went down to Southend for the day. We went into the Kursal Amusement Park, the rides were also very cheap. We had a wonderful time. We went into Kelly’s house which was all wobbly, on the ghost train, the caterpillar which blew all our dresses up in the air and showed my mum’s knickers with elastic in the legs. We laughed all day. We saved our money for ages so we could go. We talked about it for ages. Never did go anymore.

Another thing when we were kids, whatever we had wrong with us Mum would make it our own fault. If we had a stiff neck she would say ‘I expect you have been sitting in a draft’. If we had a cold, ‘Expect you have been sitting on wet grass’. If it was a pain it was ‘What have you been eating?’.  Mind you Mum’s cures were worse than whatever you had wrong in the first place. If we fell over or had any cuts she had a bottle of iodine with a little brush in the lid, she would paint it on and it drove you nearly crazy. It would smart something awful. We had Epsom Salts for tummy ache, you couldn’t get off the seat of the lavatory next day. We had to gargle with salt water for sore throats. Mum would cook the tops off the turnips and then we would have to drink the green water to ‘clear our blood ’. We could not have vinegar because that we supposed to dry you blood up.

Until we moved into Gravesend we had never seen ‘chips’ let alone tasted them. Mum would boil joints of bacon and we would have the brown rind from the outside, I loved it (I still do).

It was always horse and carts in those days, we would try to stand on the bar at the back, until the driver saw us, he would give us a good clout round the ears and tell us to ‘Bugger off’, we didn’t dare to tell mum. The first bus I saw that came through New Barn, was number 49 and a man called Pat was the driver.

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Now for another little yarn…

Posted on 1st July 2018 by Ruiha Smalley

When we lived in Gravesend we didn’t live far from the swimming baths as you know.  My mum said you are not allowed in the water until you can swim, so I had an old chair without a back on it so that I could practise.  I would put my tummy on the chair and move like a frog, arms and legs going like the clappers.  Very good I used to think to myself.  So dear Gert knitted Lena and me two swimming suits, ‘arf lovely’, bright red, mine with a big blue letter B and Lena’s was a big L. On Sunday morning you could get into the swimming baths for a penny (that was if you went at seven o’clock).  So off we go, put our swim gear on, hat on (mine nearly covered my eyes as well as my hair).  It was so exciting, very cold, we put our bands on our legs (we were the only two in there) walked down the steps giggling as well as shivering, got really wet.  Well you should have seen the water, all the red dye came out of the wool and when we stood up the crutch of our costumes were around our ankles, we tried to grab it up and tried to wring out the water, the thin little straps looked like string, it was awful.  We never wore them again.  So I still swim on my chair with all my clothes on…

We could get into the pictures on Saturday mornings for a penny to see Roy Rogers etc.   We all used to sing when we got there:

‘ Oh come along and join the party,

Let’s enrol you as a chum with all your pals so gay and hearty,

You can hardly wait for Saturday to come.

So along at every meeting the Majestic takes some beating,

That’s why I shout whoopee, I’m glad I am a union chum’.

We would shout as loud as we could.  The film used to follow on just when Roy Rogers was caught in a huge fire…will he get out, see next week.  We just couldn’t wait to see.  Mind you Trigger his horse was so clever.

We had to go to church every Sunday.  At Easter time most people would have a new outfit. Lena had a new coat and hat in blue, it was ‘Deanna Durbin’ style.  She did look nice in it though, bless her.

In the winter the ice would freeze on the pond at the bottom of Battle Street, it was not all that deep. We, the whole gang of us would go down on a full moon night to slide on it, being moonlight made it more exciting, boys had to hold us up.  None of your ‘hanky panky’ then ‘honest’.  I still didn’t know where babies came from let alone know how to make them, we must have been a bit thick.

Years ago we used to have a big block of salt, like a loaf.  We used to grate it to put it in a salt cellar, also the nutmeg would look like an acorn, it was a swine to grate.  When mum made the puddings for Christmas we would have to grate the suet which came in a big skin.  Thus the saying, ‘a bladder of lard’.  We would all have to help clean the fruit and take all the seeds out.  It took a long time and then we would have to go out the next day to the hop fields and find all the old bits of poles and bring them home.  Mum would poke them up the copper hole and put a stick across the copper to boil for about six hours, it took ages and they would be made six months before they were needed.

Mum used to keep the bars of carbolic soap in a big box so it went very hard, it would last longer then.

We would pick sage and wash it then hang it up to dry and then put it in brown paper bags to hang in the pantry.

Wash day was all day.  Mum would wash it put all the whites in the copper, take it out, then what she would call ‘sudsit’.  Put it in clear water, rinse it again then put it through the water that had a ‘Reckitts blue bag’ in a little muslin cloth. Then starch what was needed and put it all through a big wringer with big wooden rollers and finally peg it on a line and prop it up with a big two pronged pole (just a pole each end to hold it tight).  I hated wash day.

Dinner would be mashed potato and swede. Poor mum would be wet through with sweat, but she loved to see it blowing in the breeze.  I can never remember seeing it get wet with rain.

My brother Fred mended our shoes.  When he was angry, which wasn’t very often, he would only have to look at us and ‘dearo dearo dearo’ we would be off like a shot.  He was really lovely.  We were all proud of him.  He built a shed for himself which he used to bath in.  His mates would come round and he would put on boxing gloves to spar around.  He and Lil got on very well, Lil would have a go at most things, ride on the back of his motor bike.  They were always singing and Lil would yodel.

Getting back to Mum’s Dad, he used to wear ‘toe rags’.  They could not afford socks, so he would take a strip of old sheeting and before he went out he would bind it round his feet before putting on his boots.  Mum said he would do it very neat.  They used to wear ‘combinations’ ‘coms’ for short in those days.  Men and women wore them.  They were like vests with long sleeves and long legged knickers, which came down to your knees, all in one piece.  They had a big opening front and back which you just pulled apart to use the toilet.  They were made of woollen material which must have made one itch like mad  (worse than your petticoat Em).

Food and shops

This is a bit about the food and shops we had.  The cheese would be in a thick muslin, round in shape and weighed fifty six pounds before being cut.  They would take the muslin off and then a thick skin or rind as they called it.  The balls of Edam cheese would cost about 2/6d each for a whole one.  Dried peas were sold by the pint, they were all in a large hessian sack on the floor of the shop, they used to have a little block of soda to cook in with them. Dates would also be in one big block and they would cut out how many you wanted.   Woolworths was a six penny store nothing was sold over sixpence, they had a rail that went around the stores quite high, the girls would put your money in a little box then put it on this line and pull a lever which would take your money to another assistant who would take it out and put your change into it, then it would run round this bar and bring it back to you.  There was always a chair for people to sit on, you needed to sit and wait for your change.

Woolworths, Gillingham, Kent, c.1923

Drapers was another old shop in Gravesend , they sold all really old fashioned gear like fleecy petticoats, long johns, bodices and even fleecy knickers, they used to have three farthings on all of their stock.  Then there was Caveys, they used to give you pieces of tin money, after you had collected so many you could get something with it (like reward cards of today).  We would get three pen’oth of chips and a big bag of crackling from Maxfield’s fish shop.  The fish was nine pence a piece. Milk was tuppence for a pint, the well off kids at school could have little 1/3rd pint bottles of milk for a half penny (too dear for us kids).

As school we had a desk with a hole for the inkwell, we had to dip our pens in it for writing.

The used to sell live animals at the market in Gravesend, dogs, cats, birds, rats, mice even monkeys.  By the side of them would be a man selling roasted chestnuts on top of an old barrel.  They used to smell lovely.  You could also take a basin and get it full of ice cream from Papa’s ice cream parlour for six pence.

Back to Cobham

Now to get back to my youth in Cobham.  As I said Vi lived next door to our mum, she now had Barb and Glenys (Gen Gen always called her).  She was very tiny but she was the most stubborn child I have ever come across. Well Vi wanted to move up into the house in the wood, right up in Cobham Park past the Mausoleum, very lonely.  It was a lovely house, Neville was away in the army so mum decided that I would have to go and live with her and the children.  Well we were both very frightened at night so it was decided that Ern came up there to live with us. It was only three bedrooms, I had to sleep downstairs in the sitting room.  I couldn’t understand why Ern couldn’t sleep downstairs.  Vi’s bedroom had a small nursery leading straight off from her room.  There was a huge cellar under the house which had lots of room and was very cold.  The sitting room was big, then a hallway with red brick flooring and a kitchen.  There was no electricity and in the summer no water.  Ern and I would take a big bath down to the farmer’s house to bring water back, the farm was called Knights Place.  We were very happy living there.  At Christmas Ern would cut the top from an old Ern would cut the top from an old Yew tree or Holly and Vi and I waited until all the nippers were in bed and then we would titivate it with all the bits of toffee papers and made pom poms out of wool.  We took a Dr White’s (sanitary towels) to bits for cotton wool and cut silver bits from chocolate wrappers (which we mostly found along the way) and hung holly berries from cotton.  We put flour on the earth to look like snow and in the morning Ern would build a nice big log fire then play carols on his mouth organ.  We would then call the children to come and see it.  On top of the tree we put a star made from cardboard.  If you could see their little faces, it made us want to cry.  Then we would all sing carols together. For lunch we would have pheasant and rabbit pie for tea.   The children would help me making mince pies.  After tea we would play I spy or hunt the thimble, saying ‘hot’ or ‘cold’.  If we had a balloon we would play for hours until it burst on the holly above the pictures.   We would tell those stories and then have a sing song with Ern playing his mouth organ and the rest of us with a comb and paper.  If nothing else it tickled your lips and made the kiddies happy.   They were really lovely kids.

When I said we lived up the park, it was past the Mausoleum which was built like and Egyptian pyramid it had been built for Lord Darnley’s family when they died.  It was a lovely building and had an alter up the front steps and when you went round the back and down the deep steps there were all the divisions for coffins.  It was really a vault but it was never consecrated so therefore they could not bury anyone there.  It had a six foot or more spiked fence around it, shame it has been ruined now by hooligans.  I won’t tell you what was painted on the walls, some very funny things, it is so sad how these things happen.

The Cobham Mausoleum today

One night I was walking with Pam through the wood, she said ‘Aunty what is the moon’ it was a very windy night when the clouds raced across the sky, well I said ‘God made the sun to give us nice warm days so we could leave our coats off and he gave us the moon so that when it is dark we can see the way’.  Just after saying this, the moon popped through the clouds, we were just going by the mausoleum she looked and said ‘good old God, thank you’.  I am sure he heard her.

Barbara used to walk all the way down to Cobham school on her own, bless her.  We would hear her coming home long before she reached the house, she would be singing ‘coming home my darling, coming home to you’.  I think she heard Vi, her mum, singing this often.

Ern and I would go out every evening setting snares for rabbits and very often a pheasant or two and enough wood for Vi for the fire next day.  One night we had been out in the pouring rain and Ern shot a hen pheasant.  Now we tried not to let the children know about them, so we would take them straight in the back shed, which was behind the house.  Well this night we went into Vi and said we have put the rabbit (and winked to let Vi know what we meant) in the back shed.  After a while Pam came down from her bedroom wanting the lavatory, so we said ‘well hurry up and get back to bed’.  She was only a minute when she came back I hear her say to Barbara ‘they told mummy it was a rabbit, but it sure looks like a brown  chicken to me’.

Ern kept the garden filled with veg, he grew some lovely little cucumbers but our silly cat used to eat them as they grew.  We also had a black Leghorn chicken, her name was Clara Cluck, she would crow very loud every morning but she used to lay lovely brown eggs.   The children would hold her, she never used to mind.

After a while they put a barrage balloon up near our house, they were very nice lads.  They would chat away to Barb on her way home.  That was when the doodlebugs were coming over.  The siren was at Singlewell it was called Wailing Winnie, it would give one long blast when the danger was over and wailing ones when the air raid was on.  It made ever such a loud noise.  We all breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.

Then Vi gave birth to little Nev, Glenys was only about fifteen months old and being so tiny made it look worse.  Anyway Vi was getting a bit fed up with being up the park, Neville was hoping to get out of the army soon.  Ern and I were hoping to get married.  Mind you, I loved living in the wood.  We used to watch the bracken peep through in the spring and get to beautiful ferns by summer, then come autumn it was gold, it was so lovely.  To this day I never see bracken without re-living those gorgeous years we had.  To be in love with the most handsome guy and walk hand in hand through the park stealing a kiss here and there.  Also sometimes we would see the deer and their fawns and dad close by with his big antlers, on guard. Rabbits running here and there and listening to the pheasants calling to each other, it made up for everything else that had happened and having no money.  We didn’t even feel poor, I would lie in bed at night and think how lucky we were. I felt secure now I had Ern by my side. Mind you I had always had a lot of love from my sisters, not Gert so much but I knew Fred loved me ‘cos he told me so and I now had my very own man to love me.  Sorry I am getting a bit carried away sounds like a Mills and Boon yarn.  Just you remember the most important thing in life is to be loved, you can do without money but to be loved you can deal with anything else.  It always got me through everything in life, sometimes you feel as if no one in the world cares or understands you.  You think ‘I’m not like other people, I’m sure they don’t feel like I do about things’ but deep down they do.  Anyway sorry I get a bit carried away.

We asked Lord Darnley if he could find work for Neville, he said ‘yes and you can come and live in the Hall’, so we moved down there.  By this time Vi was expecting another baby.

Ern and I decided to get married, we still didn’t have any money.  Our new address was: Chauffeur’s Quarters, Cobham Hall, it was where years before Lord Darnley’s chauffeur lived.  Mrs Knight (who I mentioned before) her husband was the chauffeur.

Another little tale while on the subject, Lord Darnley’s mother, the Dowager of Cobham Hall moved to a place called ‘Puckle Hill’, now I am going back seventy six years.  Mrs Knight had Doris and Irene, she lived in the gate house of Puckle Hill, then Ken was born he is now fourteen months old.  Mrs Knight waited for her husband to come home, (thought he cannot be driving the Darnley’s around this late) so she went down to the big house (by the way it was right in the middle of a huge wood) to look for him. When she went by the garage he was in there with the head cook from the house….Well you can imagine they went mad at each other.  Anyway Mrs Knight said he went off with the cook that very night and she never saw him again!

One day I will show you where all this happened. Mrs Knight hated men after this, Doris has never even had a boyfriend, she is ninety years old as I write this.  Rene lived it up a bit, but sadly Ken died in his sixties, it must have been like the series ‘Upstairs Downstairs’.

Another story was one or the servants at Cobham Hall fell in love with one of the Lords, so she went up to the top of the pleasure grounds to one of the big ponds and took all her clothes off and jumped in and drowned herself.

Another yarn was about a girl called Peggy Taylor who was madly in love with one of them but she walked up the pleasure grounds and went out to the golf course and hung herself.   The path she took is still called Peggy Taylor’s walk.

There was also a gorgeous marble seat and shelter where Charles Repton did lots of his writing you may come across his name in history books.

I cannot begin to tell you all the different yarns.

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