Music

When I was very young I received from my grandparents in Italy the 78rpm record 'Little Red Monkey' that I think appeared in 1955. Despite the careful wooden packaging the record was partly broken, but I think it was still playable. Music mostly came from the radio, and 'Workers' Playtime' on weekday mornings, and on a Sunday morning we heard 'Two-way Family Favourites'. When an Italian operatic aria was played this was the cause of major excitement, and my mother had her special moment. My mother occasionally performed music - the nose harp - or sang a little. The nose harp consisted of humming through the nose whilst thrumming the nostril to define each note. I remember the song 'La montanara': 'Lassù sulle montagne', which was her particular favourite. Another song of the mountains I remember well was the 1953 song 'I see the moon', with its chorus 'Over the mountain, over the sea.' My parents did have an electric gramophone that played 78rpm records, and some time in the mid 1950s my father bought my mother a record player that would play 33rpm and 45rpm records, and I still have some of the records.
78rpm records have always fascinated me. There was a portable wind up gramophone of Geoffrey's that I remember, and some of the records, but when I was a teen ager I worked with my father at the home of one of his customers and acquired my own wind up gramophone that I still have. Miss Agnes Wormald in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, somewhere near St Werburgh's Road, had a chip pan fire, and I was given the task of scrubbing the smoke and fat off the kitchen ceiling ready for redecoration. She gave me some gifts: a set of recorders, descant, treble and tenor, that I still have, and some sheet music that I also still have. She also gave me her wind up gramophone and several records. I played Beethoven's fifth symphony repeatedly, and followed it on a miniature score from the Henry Watson Music Library at the Central Library. I also had a Schubert piano trio played, as I remember, by Pablo Casals, Thibaut, and Cortot, that I also repeatedly played. A special favourite was Fritz Kreisler playing the Beethoven violin concerto with his own cadenzas. These records were an important part of my education in classical music.
It was around this time that I started attending concerts of the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Miss Maureen Hedwig, who lived across the road at number 15, was a season ticket holder, and when she was unable to attend a Sunday evening concert she would give me her ticket and I would go on my own. I also in consequence started to buy tickets myself. It was in this way that I saw performances of Elgar's 'The Dream of Gerontius', Strauss's 'Also sprach Zarathustra', and a concert performance, over two Sundays, of Berlioz' opera 'The Trojans'.
We had a piano at home, and my sister had piano lessons, but I managed to teach myself following the fingering on scores, such as Bach's 'Anna Magdalena Notebook' and easy pieces by Clementi. I also acquired a harmonium, on which I would play opera music arranged for keyboard, and hymns. I acquired a second instrument, this time a true French harmonium - my other instrument was in fact a reed organ - which was in fact more difficult to play well, and which I unfortunately painted white.
When I went to Exeter university in 1968 I elected to study music for two years as my subsidiary subject, and had had to learn quickly to catch up with fellow students who had already studied music and an instrument. I bought a double bass from Forsyth's in Deansgate, and I had a weekly lesson from the kindly and patient Mr Duguid of Exeter, and played in the university orchestra. I also attended concerts in the Great Hall by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and spent many hours in the music collection at Knightley, then the music department, catching up with my musical education. David Cawthra was our lecturer, and Professor Arthur Hutchings an eccentric but inspirational lecturer. I remember a seminar with him before our examinations when he reassured me that I would pass because of my writing skills despite my lack of musical training and knowledge.
Whilst at university I also bought a grand piano that I still have, an enormous Erard dating from the 1860s. I paid £25 for it to the owners, who lived in a Victorian mansion in Plymouth Grove whose whom was to be demolished in the next few days. I brought the piano to Manley Road with the help of my father and his carrier, whose name I forget, managing to manoeuvre the piano down many steps from that house to place it in the bay window of what we called the dining room (though we never ate there) at Manley Road. It was tuned, and there I played duets with my sister Dana when home from university, especially Schubert's 'Marche Militaire'. By this time my parents were using the house to provide bed and breakfast accommodation for actors, singers and musicians visiting Manchester and performing at the Opera House and the Palace Theatre, and the piano was often played by them. I remember in particular it being played with pleasure by Monia Liter, a Russian born musician once of considerable renown. It was also played when a group of boys in a choir from Seaforth school stayed. I remember one was an Armstrong-Jones, and, I think, half brother to Lord Snowdon. With their choirmaster they would sing around the piano; I particularly remember Franck's 'Panis Angelicus'.
My first job after my  BA at Exeter and my MA at Leicester was as assistant teacher of general subjects at Okehampton School, for six months from January to July 1973. In some ways this was a challenging and unhappy time, living in inadequate accommodation, working without guidance and support, being taken advantage of by other members of staff, but also enjoying having some impact on children's lives. The first year 'remedials' I taught for six subjects in their timetable, as they were unloved and unwanted by the other teaching staff. They made a lasting impression on me. I did teach them music somehow, but I also ran a lunchtime recorder club, where we played seventeenth century music for recorder quartet, with myself playing the bass recorder, that I purchased at Greenhalgh's in Fore Street, Exeter.
After a year training as a teacher at Southampton university I became a lecturer at the College of Building in St Albans. I started going in the evening to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. I had grown up hearing snippets of opera, and when my parents became providers of theatrical digs I was able to attend opera performances in Manchester. I think the Royal Opera went on tour while its home in London was being rebuilt.
It was whilst I was a lecturer in St Albans that some of my colleagues in the department of General Studies helped to widen my musical education to include some popular music. During my first year at Exeter I had shared a room, and had thus discovered Leonard Cohen and still love his music.
It was at this time that I worked in France as a youth leader, and learnt many songs there, including the Italian partisan song 'Bella Ciao'.
In 1979 I left St Albans for Israel and got to know and love Israeli music, thanks to the free live concerts at kibbutz Ein Hashofet where we were studying Hebrew on the ulpan. It was there, when we went to meet my partner's aunt Inge at kibbutz Kfar Hanasi, that I also met her uncle Lou Segal and wrote down the notation for chanting the torah. When we returned to England I met Andrew White at a counselling workshop who taught me how to chant torah tropes. At Exeter synagogue when we became involved in the early 1980s it was Harry Freedman who took the services and was ba'al koreh - torah reader - but when he left Devon with his family and I asked him who would be able to take the services, he replied, 'You will, Frank'. I felt it my duty to do so, and learnt all the tunes so I could lead a service and chant the torah and haftorah, skills that I have never forgotten. I also studied at Jews' College in London under Chazzan Geoffrey Shisler, so that I would know the tunes for Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. Later I learnt the tunes for New Year and the day of Atonement, and was privileged to lead services in Exeter and Plymouth synagogues. I also officiated at the last service to be held in the Torquay synagogue, and led part of the service for Sukkot in the Trieste synagogue in 2001. I have officiated at several weddings over the past thirty years, and at many funerals, and these also entailed learning new tunes. My Judaism has been very much expressed through traditional Ashkenazi nusach, even though I have studied a great deal as well. It is something I feel in my emotions rather than intellectually in my head.
Acquiring a small apartment in Trieste in 2002 gave me access to a whole new world of music and culture, and we regularly bought tickets to attend opera performances and concerts in the Teatro Verdi, but often there were other musical events taking place, or wonderful gypsy musicians performing in the streets and squares. Their music was similar to the klezmer music that we discovered in the 1980s when it was rediscovered and reinterpreted especially by American bands. It was at this time, when we went to live in Bideford, that I started playing the violin myself, my grandfather's violin that had been silent for eighty years. We had become friends with Joel Segal, and I had lessons in folk violin with his friend and housemate Ben Van Weede, and whilst living in Factory Cottage I practised a lot.
Nearly ten years ago we bought the flat in north London, and once we were able to ose it ourselves over the past few years we took advantage of it to attend performances at Sadler's Wells, the National Theatre, the Coliseum and the Royal Opera House, both for ballet and opera. I was due to attend a performance of the ballet 'Frankenstein' in June of this year when my illness prevented me attending, and three days later I was taken to hospital in Exeter where I discovered I was seriously and terminally ill. During my first three months in hospital music has been tremendously valuable: I am still deeply touched by music. I played repeatedly the songs of Georges Moustaki, having met his sister and other members of his family once at the synagogue in Plymouth, and had enjoyed talking to them in French and Italian. Carla Bruni I also played, having discovered her through our friend Armelle in Durtal when we had the cottage in La Chapelle St Laud. When first diagnosed I often played Tosti's song 'Vorrei morir', which others found morbid, but I loved its sentimentality and how it allowed me to grieve and come to terms with my own mortality.

Books

I grew up in a home with very few books. My mother purchased at some time from a door to door salesman three volumes: Odhams English Dictionary and Odhams Encyclopaedia, both thick and heavy single volumes with orange-red binding, and a Complete Works of Shakespeare in a black binding. Shakespeare was beyond me - I can only have been seven or eight years old - but I used to read the dictionary, and the encyclopaedia was a constant favourite. I especially loved the page illustrating the history of the alphabet, and it was here that I first became acquainted with the Hebrew alphabet.
Once, walking back from the shops in Wythenshawe, I noticed for the first time a library van, and somehow had the courage to enter and discover the world of books. I think that moment counts as a turning point in my life. One of the first books I borrowed was 'We have Reason to Believe' by Rabbi Louis Jacobs, published in 1957. I read it all, though of course it was far beyond the limits of my understanding. I also discovered the books in my grandparents' attic, when I went to stay with them each weekend, and these stayed behind when they left Manchester for Devon in 1959. I read many of these, and some I still have, such as 'The Torments of Protestant Slaves in the French King's Galleys…', and a book presented to my grandfather as a prize when a pupil at Princess Road School in Moss Side, and my great grandfather's commonplace book containing quotations from poetry, and his notes on the Gent family history.
When I started going to Bishop Bilsborrow School I also discovered the nearby Moss Side Public Library and started going there when I was ten years old on my way home from school, though it did involve a detour. Now demolished, this was a fine library of the old type, with a reading room, an excellent reference section, and many newspapers.
I must have been about eleven years old when I discovered the Central Library in St Peter's Square. There were two main reasons for this. One was the St Bede's quiz, which included finding the source of very abstruse quotations. The other was my great grandfather's family history research, as I followed up his sources with the help of the librarians in the reference library. I spent many hours here over the next few years, and also started attending performances of the Library Theatre repertory company.
It was also at this time that I started attending Shudehill Market, initially to buy pigeons that I kept in the garden, but also because of the second hand book stalls, where I particularly sought out antiquarian books, one of which I still have. This is a Book of Common Prayer printed in 1720 which has been translated into classical Latin. Over the years I have added several volumes to this interest in different liturgies.
When I was went to university in 1968 I was sent a reading list, and in my ignorance I bought several of the books, most of which were useless. However, one book was to change my life: 'The Making of the English Landscape' by Professor W.G. Hoskins. I had spent over ten years between my home in Manchester and my grandparents' farm at Dowland near Iddesleigh in North Devon, and had spent many hours walking and exploring, and suddenly this book opened my eyes to what I was seeing. I was bewitched, and started going regularly to the Devon Record Office, with Mr Kennedy, then at County Hall, and to the East Devon Record Office with Mrs Rowe near Bradninch Hall, and even to the Exeter Diocesan Archives with Mrs Erskine, but very often to the Westcountry Studies Library where I received the useful guidance of Mr Paley. This was in addition to a very busy timetable for my degree which involved the study of six different subjects, both arts and sciences. I mastered many skills and decided to follow my degree by studying for the MA in English Local History at Leicester University that I paid for from my own savings. It was because of this that I started to accumulate the money books I have related to English history, local, social and economic.
Another substantial section of my library relates to witchcraft, and was started in 1982 when I researched and wrote a booklet about the trial of the Bideford witches, which took place in 1682, so I was able to mark its tercentenary.
When I came to live in Crediton in 1985 I acquired a large garden, and somehow discovered the writings of Gertrude Jekyll, and built up another large section of my library. As I always have done, I devoured and absorbed all I could from books, and then applied what I had learnt. There is a small section of my books devoted to the Japanese garden, dating to the time when I replanted my parents' garden in Manchester in the early 1970s, and another devoted to English traditional crafts which relates to my interest in making corn dollies at my grandparents in about 1970, and to Honiton lace, which I learnt to make whilst living in Okehampton in 1972.
With the arrival of the internet in the late 1990s I had access to vast new resources, both for research and for purchase. I was inspired by the copy I had inherited of the "Life of Thomas Gent' to find out more about him, and to build up a considerable collection of works printed and sometimes also written by him. This is now quite considerable, and a valued part of my library.
In addition to this book there were some others I inherited. The two large volumes of 'Middleton's Complete System of Geography', printed in 1778, were no doubt read by my great great grandfather Dr Henry Gent and his sister and brothers, but they were also studied by myself and my sisters in the front room at Mons Hall, my grandparents' Devon home. The engravings fascinated us, and I read much of the text too. Another volume I studied there was 'The Reades of Blackwood Hill and Dr Johnson's Ancestry', by Alleyn Lyell Reade, a volume which bore the name of my great grandfather, Frank Turner Gent, as a subscriber.
I was aware of a volume that had belonged to my great great great grandfather, John Gent of Spen Green, Henry's father. This volume had gone to Frank Turner Gent's brother, George Frederick Gent of Liverpool, but I was able to buy another copy in 2001 on the internet, and have it restored, and place inside it a copy of the inscription originally written by John Gent recording the details of the births of each of his children.
Over the years I built up what was once the largest section of my library: Judaica. Much of this I have now given to Exeter Synagogue. I have kept some of the books though.
I have a small section of books of English poetry with fine bindings, reflecting my interest in bookbinding that goes back to 1962 when a delightful art teacher at St Bede's taught us simple bookbinding. These include books bound by some of the greatest English bookbinders of the past hundred years.
Over the past fourteen years I have built up a very large section of my library relative to my mother's parents' families. This has grown considerably in the past few years. Some deal with the history of Trieste and of Gorizia, some of Jews in these places and north west Italy, and many with the history of the Schiff family, especially the life and work of Sydney Schiff. This is extensive, and the section that I want to collate and write up in the time that remains to me.

My Childhood Family

My parents came from very different backgrounds. They met in 1946 in Milanino, a suburb of Milan, where my mother and her family had settled with the ending of the war after their return from Albania, and where my father was stil on active service with the  British army. In the early 1950s they made their home together in Manchester, marrying at St Margaret's church, Whalley Range on 29th June, 1946 in a simple ceremony attended by my father's parents, brothers and sister. Their first child, Valerie Liliana, was born on 4th October, 1946. Their second child, Stella Grace, was born on 6th December, 1947. Initially a healthy child, she was affected by a congenital heart condition, and died on 10th October, 1948. I was born just over nine months later on 24th July, 1949. My sister Rina's birth two years later on 7th November, 1951, I do not remember, but I do remember my early years with them. I also grew up close to my paternal grandparents, and my uncles and aunts who lived with them at the house in Whalley Range. Also part of my childhood memories was my great grandmother, my paternal grandmother's mother, whom we all knew as Mother, and who lived alone at Sharston Farm in Northenden, of which I have clear memories even now, though I must have been six or seven the last time I went there.
I saw little of my father in my early years. He would leave home in Woodhouse Park at 6am every day except Sunday to cycle to my grandparents' home in Whalley Range six miles away, which was also the base for the decorating business: there was a large paint and tools store below the house in an extra cellar excavated by my grandfather, and also a room in the attic with racks around the walls where rolls of wallpaper were stacked and paint brushes kept. My father usually got home quite late in the evening after we had gone to bed and gone to sleep, though I remember once being woken up as he had small gifts for all of us after receiving a bonus. I think he also went on a Sunday to his parents to help his father with the business paperwork, returning in the afternoon, when he and my mother would have time together alone in their bedroom, and later he would light the living room fire so that there would be hot water, and I would have a bath with my sisters and he would tease us with the towel. I also remember being affected around that time with scabies, allegedly transmitted by a young woman who lived a few doors away who occasionally babysit for my parents, and who asked us to scratch her feet. The treatment entailed being naked and being painted head to toe by my father with a liquid treatment applied using one of his paint brushes. I also recall the terror of poliomyelitis which descended like a plague on Egypt leaving children damaged. There were always children at school who wore calipers on their leg.
I have a recollection when three or four years old of being taken by my auntie Lynn with her to the nursery where she worked, I think at Chorlton Park. I remember we would lie down for a sleep after lunch each day, and that my blanket was marked with my particular symbol, a pipe. I have no idea why I must have been staying with my grandparents and going with Lyn to the nursery, but I do remember her in the kitchen at Manley Road, sitting me on her knee and reading me stories, something I did not experience at home.
Six weeks after my fifth birthday I started school at Oldwood Primary School, perhaps half a mile from my home on the other side of Portway. This was a desperately unhappy time. Classes were huge because of the postwar baby boom, and Miss Hallam was not the kindest of teachers. I was so terrified of her that I would not ask to go to the toilet, and most days I would end up wetting my trousers, which increased my isolation. On my first day when told to go and wash for dinner, I washed both my hands and my face, which caused huge ridicule. I would try to find my older sister Valerie for support, but she would spend her lunch hour hiding with friends in the school toilets to avoid me. I was subject to bullying, and this led to me being taught some self defence by George Musgrove, but when I retaliated and hit the boy who was bullying me I was punished by the school. Once I was allowed to be outside again I would go each lunchtime to an area at the end of the school playing field where there were trees and bushes and enjoy my own company. On summer days I can remember lying on the grass looking for four-leaved clovers, or gazing at the sky and discovering floaters.
My mother must have been working at this time at Fairey Aviation at Ringway Airport, as after school we did not walk home but I went to a childminder near the school who had many children. I remember not wanting to play with the girls and as a punishment being made to sit on the ground in the dark in an outbuilding with other naughty chidren. At some stage I and my sister went instead to a lady who lived near Franca behind Portway, but there we were required to sit on a bench in the hall until my mother arrived, while her son and only child David played with his toy cars. We were never included.
When I was seven years old my sister Dana was born at our home, in the front room of our council house. I do have memories of this, in particular of me vacuuming the carpet in the living room where my mother was in bed, but of her getting angry with me that I wasn't doing it correctly, so that she took it off me and vacuumed the carpet sitting on the edge of the bed. I was mortified.

Franca Erriquez

I don't remember when I first met Franca, my mother's friend for many years, who also lived in Woodhouse Park, and was one of many Italian war brides who, like my mother, had married an English soldier and come to England with them.
Franca was born in Ferrara in northern Italy. She was an only child, whose father was one of 60,000 Italians who were captured by the Red Army during the Second World War, and of these only 10,000 remained alive at the end of the war and were repatriated to Italy. According to the story I was told as a child there was a bombing raid on Ferrara towards the end of the war, most likely in the summer of 1944, whilst Franca was at school, and Franca returned home afterwards to discover her home had been destroyed and her mother had been killed. I do not know how she survived after that as she would have been a teenager. Ferrara was liberated officially on 24th April, 1945 by the 8th Army. I believe that Franca survived like many other war orphans and hungry children by hanging around a British army base. It was here that she met a soldier, George M—, from Manchester, by whom she became pregnant. I don't know when they married, but their son Rex was born in Italy and his birth was registered with the Italian authorities there.
It must have been in about 1951 that Franca and George, like my parents, moved to a new home in Woodhouse Park, Their home was on Portway, about a half a mile from our home, and it ws here that summer that their daughter Sonia was born, only a few months before the birth of my sister Rina. I remember going to their home with my mother, and I particularly admired for some forgotten reason a typical Smiths wind up clock on their mantelpiece. Like us they had very little in the way of posessions. George was a bus driver with the Manchester Corporation Transport Department, and here he became friends with Mahmoud F—. Mahmoud was an Egyptian seaman who in 1934, when he was aged 42, married a girl from Sculcoates in Hull, called Eva Hill. I was told that she was only sixteen years old, but having checked the records I believe she was in fact twenty two years old. The couple had twelve children, the last being born in 1957. The couple appear to have moved to Manchester at the beginning of the war, and he died there in 1968. I attended his Muslim funeral in Manchester that summer when I was 18.
George took his friend home to meet his wife, and I believe the visit was reciprocated, and that was how Franca met Mahmoud's son Hussein, always known as Hosney. He had been born in Sculcoates in 1935. I remember him then as tall and handsome with glossy black hair and brown eyes he had inherited from his father. He had an extravert personality and a wonderful, infectious laugh. He was generous too: he bought for my birthday an iced cake with range roses, something I had never known.
Franca and Hosney fell in love. France left George, and left the family home. While matters were sorted her son Rex came to live with us at Manley Road, so it must have been about 1959, and Rex shared a bedroom and bed with me. Roy had been away at a summer camp run by the Salford Roman Catholic diocese, and had learnt a lot from the older boys. As he was three years older than me he also taught me a lot, so we were often naked together in the bed, enjoying each others young bodies, and he taught me how to wank properly and how to wank his cock for him. I enjoyed our innocent fun together.
Franca and Hosney set up home together with Rex and Sonia at 92, Rosebery Street in Moss Side, not far from my primary school and close to Maine Road, the Manchester City football ground. i often went round there to visit them and to play with Rex. These were never the games of our youth, to which we never referred, but much more exploring on our bicycles. Rex taught me the correct way to lean into corners on a bike. He was for a short while an older brother to me.
I enjoyed being in their home, and Franca's cheerful company, and would also run errands for her occasionally to the shops in Princess Road.
We did not know that there was a dark secret in 92, Rosebery Street. I did not know till some years later that Hosney was sexually abusing his stepdaughter, and that she fellated him each morning. When Hosney and Franca separated, we were told it was because Hosney wanted a child, but it may well have been that Franca discovered what was happening to her daughter.
I know that Rex married Carole in 1970. I also know that Rex divorced his wife after Carole had an affair with his stepfather, Hosney. I do not know the date of this. This must have antedated Hosney and Franca's separation.
At some time after this Hosney married an American, and they had a daughter, thus satisfying Hosney's wishes for a child. When his daughter was about five years old Hosney collapsed and died of a heart attack upstairs on a bus in Manchester. His body was robbed of any valuables: his wallet, and a gold chain round his neck. His wife returned to America taking their daughter with them. Some years later I did correspond with Hosney's widow, but I let the correspondence lapse as I fely I knew too many secrets.
I did see Sonia again. I was buying a pair of thick socks for hiking, and went into a shop in market Street, Manchester facing Lewis's and was happy to find her serving, and was able to chat a little. I believe though that Sonia became a drug addict and turned to prostitution. She died very young after a cigarette she was smoking in bed set her bedding on fire causing severe injuries.
France always worked at the Dunlop factory in Manchester making inflatable dinghies; demanding but poorly paid work. In her old age she suffered from heart complaints and underwent surgery. I met her ten years ago at my parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary celebrations in Chester. She came once to visit us in Crediton, and was happy in the warmth of our conservatory, and shrugged off my mother's rudeness to her. Franca spent her last years in a nursing home in Manchester, including at Heathlands near my parents, but they no longer bothered with her and did not visit her. I remember her with affection.
[Written in affectionate memory. I have changed names.]

Early Days

I am now 67, and I know I haven't too long to live, months, possibly years. I know that this may not be read for a long time, possibly never. My great grandfather wrote notes about his family and about his own life that were not read until I discovered them sixty years later. My own notes, like those of many other people, may be thrown away and destroyed. I was brought into hospital three months ago, and knew, as I had always known, that one day I should add to my great grandfather's story my own, and have had time during these three months to think about my own life, and to make notes, though weakness has prevented me from actually writing as I am now. Even though I am approaching my own death, I am happy with my own life. Of course I should have liked ten years more, there are tasks I have not completed, but I am also aware that I have been fortunate to have lived a good and fulfilling life.
I was born on July 24th, 1949, the third of six children, of whom five survived. Significantly I was born nine and a half months after the death of my sister Stella, who died when ten months old in October 1948. I had an older sister Valerie, my parents first child, born in October 1946, just three months after their wedding on June 29th, 1946. I was born on a Sunday afternoon, whilst my father was at a football match, presumably watching Manchester United, and my birth took place i the front room of my grandparnts' home at 16, Manley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, a large Victorian house where my parents lived on the top floor following their marriage. Two years later early in 1951 we moved to a newly built council house in Woodhouse Park on the large Wythenshawe estate. I can remember it well, even though it has now been demolished, and we left it in, I think, 1959, to return to Manley Road where I lived for the rest of my childhood. We had very little in the way of possessions and furnishings. The woodwork of the hall, staircase and landing was painted by my father in a rather gruesome acid yellow, purely because it was probably left over from a job and was free. There was a unit with drawers in the living room constructed by my father from scrap timber and wood effect paper. I remember a large mural my father painted on the living room wall, scaled up from a greetings card, showing a deer and its calf. He told me later that he painted it as they could not afford wallpaper. The kitchen was simple, and I remember my father redecorating it in poppy red, and making a flip up table and shelves which we ate ate. I think the surface was covered in dark red linoleum. Outside was a toilet, coal store and a separate wash house. Upstairs was the bathroom and three bedrooms.
My earliest memory is of lying in a cot in my parents' bedroom at the front of the house. My cot was just inside the door and parallel to my parents' bed. I remember dropping a toy through the bars of my cot, and in my memory a hand came out from under the bed and removed the toy. It was about this time that my mother became pregnant for the fourth time, and at some stage I ceased to sleep in their room and moved into the tiny front bedroom adjacent to theirs and lying over the hall and stairs. It was also when I was weaned, which happened, according to the story, when I was crying to be fed on the bus from Manchester to Woodhouse Park, and when offered a sweet by a passenger I cried, "No, I want totty, not toffee.' It seems myfather was so embarrassed he took me off the bus and walked the rest of the journey home with me.
My sister Rina was born on November 12th, 1951, presumably at Painswick Road, but I have no memory of that or of her early years. I have a vague memory of being given a small black puppy called Pootchie who somehow soon vanished, dying, I believe of distemper. I have a memory too of my father sitting on a Utility armchair in the living room on a Sunday morning with his legs stretched out as he read the Empire News, and I entertained myself rolling round his thighs as a game. The other game was to put the chairs in the small dining room between the kitchen and the living room on their backs to make a train.As a boy I was very much a solitary child and played alone, whether in the house or our garden, or later when I went out to play down the cinder track or across Portway in the brook.
There are few photographs of me as a child, these were difficult days immediately after the war. I recall a small Polyphoto of me about a year old, and there is a photograph of me around the same time in my mother's arms at my great grandmother's birthday: she must have been 75, and her birthday would have been on 1st March 1951. Photographs of me and my sisters taken in front of 6, Painswick Road on 2nd June, 1953 for the coronation, with decorations created by my father have become a memory.