I was born in Edmonton, on the outskirts of London UK, on the 18th of January 1940. It must have been in the small hours of the morning, since my father actually registered me as being born on the 17th. There was always some mild disagreement between my parents over my birth date, so it was not until some years later, with occasions occurring when I had to refer to my birth certificate that I changed the annual celebration date to the 17th. The registration also involved another change, in that it was intended that my first name should be Anthony, so that our family first names - including my elder brother - would be Alfred William, Ada Grace, Alan Alfred and Anthony Edward. However, Mussolini at the time was becoming very friendly with Hitler, and my father vetoed a name that would inevitably be shortened to the Italian associated Tony, so I became Donald, and not one of the A Johnsons! A further point about my name was that, apart from at school, I was always universally called Don - only when I had misbehaved was I addressed as Donald, and if the crime was particularly heinous, the appellation became Donald Edward! . . . - usually followed by a long pregnant pause.
My brother Alan was four years older than me, and he was the reason I was born in Edmonton. Apparently, when he was about eighteen months old, he suffered from very bad bronchitis, and the family doctor suggested that it would be good for his health if the family moved away from London Fields, Hackney, in East London, where the ever-present fumes from the nearby soap factory filled the air every day, to somewhere less polluted. He even pointed out that new houses had been built in Edmonton, which he described as being almost out in the country. When my father began investigating this, his seven brothers and sisters, in typical East Enders' reactions at the time, thought he was mad to consider buying a house and putting a millstone round his neck, but my strong-willed father scraped together the deposit on a five hundred pound house - number 45, ShIrley Grove. The three bedroomed terraced house, which backed on to open fields, was a far cry from their old upstairs flat in Pownall Road, off the Broadway in London Fields, and whether it was the move or not, Alan's chest improved so that he rarely had any further health problems.
My earliest memory is very vague, but is of peering over the cream coloured side of a pram, at the window of a shop - Hibberds bakers perhaps - looking for my mother. Unlike my brother, who could remember lots of things from his early childhood, I can only recall just a few incidents, the details of which may have been added to by their being the subjects of family discussions in later years. One story was how Alan was urged by my father to get a move on in entering the Anderson shelter in our back garden at the start of an air raid during the war. Despite complaining about how it was dark without a torch, he was pushed forward in the rush to safety, only to find himself up to his neck in the flooded shelter. Another incident with shelters that I DO recall myself, must have occurred a little later in our indoor Morrison shelter, when I discovered how hard and unyielding the angle-iron frame was in comparison to wooden bedposts when I banged my head on one of the uprights. I do not recall it myself, but a flying bomb landed in the adjacent field, and blew out all our windows, although I do vaguely remember the crater that was created near the farmhouse in Cuckoo Hall Lane, which ran through the field. It filled with water which iced over during the winter, and my brother got wet again when he stupidly ventured out onto the frozen surface, only for it to give way and give him another cold bath. My own encounter with cold water occurred at around the age of four, when I was found up to my waist in the Blue Lake clinging to a tuft of grass after slipping on the muddy earth beside the chain link fence of the adjacent sewage farm. My neighbourhood pal, Peter Evans, had run back across the railway - crawling under the gate - and up Shirley Grove to our homes, crying Donald is drowning in the lake! Obviously I survived, to spend many happy days in later years, rafting or fishing for red-throats and newts on that lake, or walking on the moving bog down towards Pickets Lock. Even from a very early age, apparently, I was always wandering off somewhere, and when quite small I once become separated from Mum on the way to Edmonton Green, but had somehow navigated the many streets in between to find my way back to our home in Shirley Grove.
The only other vague recollection I have of the war years is of a large emergency water tank which I think was positioned at the top end of Shirley Grove until the end of the war. It had probably been removed when a street party was organised to celebrate VE Day, and I dimly remember seeing the long line of tables in the street, piled with lots of goodies, probably made from foodstuffs stored waiting for something to celebrate. I know that a stage was erected at the Nightingale Road end, which was covered with red white and blue decorations. Whether it was from then, but to this day, handling narrow red white and blue ribbon stirs strange good feelings in me that I cannot quite grasp. My brother Alan was nine at the time, and apparently caused a bit of a stir when he climbed up the lamppost beside the stage and stuck his finger in an empty bulb socket, but survived the experience.
My brother being four years older than me meant that I was rarely included when he was playing with his friends, mainly John and Peter Evans, who lived two doors down at number 49, and who were also both older than me. I still recall trailing behind the group as they ran away from me, plaintively crying, Alaaan - take me with you! There was one incident however where my presence was valued - it seems that some older boys had captured Alan and had him tied to a tree. It seems that I arrived on the scene shouting and screaming in a manic state, wielding some sort of weapon, and despite my small size managed to frighten off the captors. Being the youngest, I was left when the others got to go to school, and mainly spent that time in the company of the Evans' mongrel dog, Nipper. He and I became bosom buddies, and he would join me as we wriggled on our stomachs though the grass in the field playing cowboys and Indians. The other members of the Evans family were parents Betty and John, and Mum and Betty became lifelong friends. Uncle John worked in a pawnbroker's shop in Holloway Road, and it was on a visit there that I saw what were probably some of the last trams to run in London.
Eventually, however, at four years old, I did start school, at Houndsfield Road Infants, which was in the charge of the headmistress, Miss Forward a rather fearsome lady with long dark hair and a club foot. I quite enjoyed school, and was particularly impressed that the Friday afternoon lesson was handicrafts, where I got to play with, and become adept at, sewing with Binka. I was rather astonished that such a fun time was actually a lesson! I probably went on about this rather a lot, as my first school report, referring to the period following afternoon sleep time, stated that, As soon as Donald's eyes are open, his mouth is open. Moving on to the Junior section of the school, I joined Miss Hawksworth's class - forty-two of us if I recall correctly - for one year, but my only recollection of her was her catchphrase: As fast a greased lightning, with a bulldog after it. I was however, scarred for life at this time when I refused to eat the cabbage served up at dinner time, and was made to sit for hours in the dining hall until I was forced to eat one mouthful before I could escape. Strangely enough, I like raw cabbage - it is the smell when it is cooked that haunts me to this day. Another incident that also occurred in the school hall was when I was - typically - misbehaving in some way, and received a whack round the ear from Mr. Randall. This would have normally just have been just a little painful, but Mr. Randall had been injured during his wartime service and had one wooden hand, and unfortunately that was the one with which he hit me. My ear sang for days! The school was about three-quarters of a mile from home, and myself and couple of other young children were accompanied to and fro each day by Granny Wright from across the road, wheeling an old black pram to help with walking. With her would be Nipper, to see me off to school and welcome me back in the afternoon. My last, and saddest, recollection of those school trips is of the day that Nipper was so pleased to see me that he rushed across the main road and was run over by a car. For once the pram was not empty on the return journey.
The journey to and from school was made across a field between Nightingale Road and the rear of the bus garage in Tramway Avenue, and it was across this field that I would dash on Cub Scout nights. I would be racing along because the Dick Barton programme on the wireless finished at seven o'clock, which was the time that the Cub meeting in the hall in Tramway Avenue started. As soon as I heard the final summation from the announcer - something like, Will Snowy get to Dick in time to . . . . - and the strains of The Devil's Gallop were heard, I would be off and running. I was always late, but never forgot my woggle! Part of that field was known as the Zet-Alite, a reference to the fact that half-buried rolls of paper left from a factory previously on the site, or possibly just dumped there years before, would occasionally be ignited by local young scallywags. The smoke from one of these slowly smouldering bonfires could often be seen drifting up behind the houses in Nightingale Road. The other route to Cubs or school would be via Cuckoo Hall Lane, passing Wright's grocers on the corner of Turin Road. To give children something to suck without sweet coupons, Wrights sold ice cubes made in their shop freezer - plain water ones being cheaper than those made with lemon squash - wrapped in a scrap of newspaper. They were however, pretty tasteless in either version. Later, near the school, at the shop across the road from The Cock Tavern, we could buy ice lollies - with sticks! Uniquely, they were blue in colour, and tasted of Spearmint - not Peppermint. I loved those. On the other side of the road, in a chemist's shop, again without coupons, we could buy Monkey Nuts or Liquorice Wood - interesting for a few minutes but leaving a horrible taste in one's mouth afterwards. We could also purchase black sticks of liquorice, flattened at one end with a stamp of the maker's name, but these were as hard as iron, and tough to chew.
There would usually be only one car in Shirley Grove, belonging to Mr Wright - son of Granny Wright - which he needed, along with one of the few telephones in the street, as he ran a building business. This left the road clear for the different delivery vehicles that would occasionally interrupt the games of children in the street. The main one was of course the milkman, whose daily visits were necessary as nobody had a fridge in those days, only a stone or marble slab in a larder to try to keep food cool. Our milkman came from United Dairies, in his red painted cart, which he rarely had to get up on to drive as its horse knew where to stop each time to allow him to swap an empties crate for a full one for the next group of houses. The horse pulled cart was eventually replaced by a float, which although novel in that it was electric, never left occasional presents in the road for an enterprising child to dash out and collect for fertilizing dad's roses or rhubarb. The other daily was the baker - Gearys I think - who had a green hand cart rather like a one person hansom cab pulled by handles at the front, and with enormous side wheels. Occasional visits would be made by the coalman's horse and cart, and also that of the rag and bone man - I still recall his plaintive, hoarse cry: Any old rags or lumber? A quite rare visitor would be the man who sharpened knives, scissors and hedge clippers. The postman also came down the street at least once daily, but in those days before junk mail, receiving a letter was rather a special event.
The remaining deliveries were made by a paper boy, who brought the Daily Mirror each day - except Sunday when it was replaced by the scurrilous News of the World. I have a vague very early memory of staring blankly at these sheets of paper and thinking that one day I would be able to understand what the printed black marks really meant. I did actually learn to read when still quite young, but initially only looked for the Dandy and Beano, enjoying the exploits of characters like Corky the Cat, Desperate Dan, Lord Snooty, Pansy Potter and Biffo the Bear - who was later replaced by Dennis the Menace. As I got a little older, I became more interested in stories, and the picture comics were replaced by the Wizard, Adventure, Rover and Hotspur, which contained printed text tales, and which all used to arrive together on a Saturday morning. I would sit up in bed in my box room at the front of the house, avidly reading the adventures of my favorite characters, eventually swapping two of the publications with my brother in his bedroom. I did find illustrations of these comics from around that period of time, but could not see any front page references to the main characters and story titles that I remember to this day, over seventy years later. Some of those were: I Flew With Braddock, Smith of the Lower Third, The Tough of the Track - Alf Tupper a hard up athlete who trained on a diet of fish and chips, V for Vengeance, Red Circle School Stories, Limp along Leslie - a lame footballer who could swerve the ball better than Beckham, and Wilson the Wonder Athlete, who was supposed to be over one hundred years old. Along with the story comics, I would occasionally pick up an issue of Radio Fun, and later saw my favourites also change to all picture publications like the big glossy Eagle, but I think it was reading so many copies of those text story comics that really helped my education. Certainly in later years when I edited the college magazine or became a Technical Author writing about aviation and electronics equipment for a few years, and finally in retirement became the editor of my village magazine, it was that familiarity with the printed word that stood me in good stead.
The field behind our house in Shirley Grove had been part of Cuckoo Hall farm, and it extended to the small stream on the far side that formed the boundary between Edmonton and Ponders End. The stream ran through a culvert that created a bridge over a track which crossed the field and led past the gasworks on its way as a short cut to Ponders End station. It was near this bridge that some of us local lads would gather on dark evenings, carrying old tins such as those that had contained Lyles Golden Syrup, into which holes had been punched with a large nail, and to which a wire loop had been attached to the top as a long flexible handle. Using some paper and bracken to get it going, coal or coke - which had been liberated from the gasworks through holes in its chain link fence - would be ignited inside these tins, which would be whirled around on their wires to help with combustion. I often wondered what any of the residents in Shirley Grove who happened to look out of their rear windows made of the resulting group of fiery circles which appeared in the darkness across the field - this being a time many years before sightings of UFOs became somewhat common! In that same field, hiding amongst the trees and bushes beside the actual lane part of Cuckoo Hall Lane, I would have been discovered one day having my first puffs of a cigarette which I had somehow purloined. Unsurprisingly, it was not an experience I enjoyed, and I pretty quickly staggered away from the bushes and discarded the dog end. However, it must have been a long hot summer that year - weren't they all in those days? - because the still burning butt ignited the dry grass and scrub, eventually creating a wide wave of fire sweeping across the field that was way beyond my attempts to extinguish. When I realized this, and knowing that I was likely to be in terrible trouble if I was found to be the cause of the conflagration, I calculated that I needed to take evasive action. This took the form of making my way up to the Boundary pub, walking across to, and down, Nightingale Road, across the gap to its other side, past Shirley Grove and down Wellstead Road, to then appear - from the opposite direction and full of innocence - out of the alley that we used to access the pillar box in that road. I cannot recall there being any real damage caused by the fire, the scrub being quickly extinguished by the local fire brigade, and I don't think I was ever suspected of being the arsonist, but I kept my head down and avoided the area for a week or so just to be sure.
During the 1950s, the back field became the site of the Cuckoo Hall Lane estate, and with the houses came a new school. Along with other local children, I moved to this new, single storey, school, and promptly got the cane for damaging one of the gates by swinging on it with other boys. I knew better that to mention this at home, as I would probably have received more punishment rather than any sympathy! I did not need to be chastised on another occasion, when I once again tormented an older girl named Olive who lived in Coran Close and whose surname was something like Sunge, by following her as she walked home, chanting Olive Sponge, Olive Sponge! Her patience at this oft repeated treatment evaporated that day, causing her to turn and begin chasing me. I realised I was in trouble, so ran off home as fast as my little legs could carry me. However, she caught up with me just as I arrived at our house, as I came to a halt kneeling on the mat on the front step. Unfortunately she could not stop as quickly as I had, and thumped into my back, pushing my head through the bottom pane of our front door. Luckily the smashed glass did not cut either of us, but the resultant pain in my head was judged to be sufficient retribution, and Olive skipped off with a phrase I heard a number of times in my life - Serves you right!