Home Alone

I am only nine-years-old, but Papa tells me that I am a big enough girl to manage on my own after school until Mama returns from work at the Thermos factory. It is the Autumn of 1972 and I have just moved up to the nearby Junction Road County Juniors School from the even closer Crescent Roads Infants school (see posts  Peas And Poverty and Hot Pants). During this time alone, I am to promise to be careful at all times and under no circumstances to do either of the following; one is to leave the house, and two is to never ever touch the gas cooker. Papa has taken an extended tea-break to pick me up from school after my school day is over, and as we walk the short journey to our home at 51 Crescent Road, I solemnly promise to do neither. But as soon as Papa leaves to return to work at Warley Hospital it dawns on me that he has suggested two marvellous extra-curricular activities to fill up the empty hours alone at home, and it does not take me long to break the first commandment.

Our home has a meter for the electricity, this means that it periodically runs out and when this happens you need to put a coin in the slot to restore the flow. When I am home alone after school, Mama always makes sure to leave me a ten-pence coin to make sure that I never run out of electricity. She also leaves me a small snack for after school which is ravenously devoured as soon as I arrive home. After a while I become newly-hungry, what to do? I think to myself. The ten-pence coin gleaming on the kitchen table next to my empty plate of sandwiches soon resolves my dilemma. I pick up the coin and resolutely walk with it to the local store at the end of the road, where I proceed to exchange it for a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a heavenly melt-in-the-mouth chocolate bar called a Mars. 


My treasure trove has cost me all of five-pence and I am now in food paradise. But now I have no intact coin for the meter, and if the supply runs out I will have to spend the rest of the afternoon at home with no electricity, and even worse, with no television. What have I done? This awful realisation is however soon discarded, the taste of the sumptuous Mars Bar delicately melting in my mouth is appropriately distracting, and as I turn the key in the lock I logically reason that neither Mama or Papa are at home and with a bit of luck no-one will simply ever find out. I have already broken Papa's first rule with impunity, it will not take me long to break the second.

During these long solitary afternoons at home after school, the television set becomes my trusted companion, and from it emanates the most marvellous new world of captivating activities; one of them is called baking. In the school books that I read, the two main characters called Janet and John get to bake cakes with their Mama, and I decide that this is exactly what I want to do. But my own Mama is not at home, she is working at the Thermos factory assembling flasks day in and day out; in any case, her presence is irrelevant, even if she were home she would not know what to do for she has never baked a cake in her life and neither has her own Mama before her. Following in my Spanish Grandma's footsteps, Mama uses the oven at our home in 51, Crescent Road for the general storage of pots and pans and not much more. 


Luckily for me, there are things on the television called cooking programs to teach me how to bake such a thing, so Mama's skills will not be needed. I am transfixed as I watch the presenter converting a bunch of ingredients into a shiny batter, transferring this to a nearby cake tin, sliding the contents into the oven, and hey-presto, after a short while a delicious cake appears for the viewers to drool over. It clearly seems so simple that I reason no Mama's assistance will be needed. I am perfectly capable of this procedure all on my own and rush into the kitchen to create my own little peice of culinary heaven. Whilst doing this, I conveniently forget all about Papa's second command; never to use the gas cooker. In any case, Papa's instructions were not that explicit I reason to myself, he forbid me to use the gas cooker, no mention was made of an oven.

I raid the larder and fridge for the same baking ingredients that the presenter on the television program has just used, find a bowl and in it enthusiastically mix together liberal amounts of the same flour, sugar, milk, egg, butter until it also becomes a glossy batter. This mixture is then poured into the nearest thing I can find resembling a cake tin; It's not really a cake tin, rather it is a square metallic dish that Mama uses for heating food in the oven, but I can find nothing else so it will have to do. I then slide the cake tin into the oven, switch the gas dial onto mark four, sit back and await with excitement for the appearance of my own exquisite creation. After a suitable amount of time has elapsed I grab a towel and open the over door to retrieve what I am certain will be the most marvellous cake. I am disappointed. Residing in the square cake tin is still the same glossy batter that I put into the oven just a short while earlier, it's just hotter.

The art of baking has eluded me. It's clearly not as simple as it looks on the television, because the runny gooey mess in front of me bears absolutely no resemblance to the delicate work of art turned out by the presenter on his cooking show. On top of this runny mess in the place of a delicious cake, I am also faced with an additional dilemma; the electricity has just run out. The ten-pence coin that Mama left me for putting into the meter when this happens has long ago been traded in for a delicious Mars Bar and packet of salt and vinegar crisps, so I am in a bit of a quandary. Now I have no television, no heat from the electric fire in the corner of the living room providing the only source of warmth in the entire house, and soon it will start to become dark. What will I tell Mama? Of course, I will have to lie. When Mama returns home from work later that evening with Sis in tow, she finds me huddled in my coat and sitting in a semi-darkened room. I tell her that the electricity has just run out literally minutes before her arrival.

Mama is not stupid, she takes one look around the room and informs me that the house is stone cold, clearly the electricity has run out ages ago so I may as well own up and tell her what I have done with the money. Now I am all of nine-years-old and mature enough to reason that if you are caught out lying you may as well come clean, so I tell Mama about the delicious Mars Bar and packet of salt and vinegar crisps that I traded the money in for. Just like me, she too adores chocolate bars so will surely understand why I caved into temptation. Mama does not disappoint and I am not scolded. Next time I am left alone after school, a heavenly Mars Bar and packet of salt and vinegar crisps miraculously appear besides my plate of sandwiches and next to the usual ten-pence coin for the electricity metre. Mama has understood my needs beautifully, I think to myself as I happily munch my goodies. 

When the afternoons are sunny, I sometimes forget about television and baking and then wander into in the back garden and peek into the hutch to look at Papa's ever-expanding rabbit family (see post Hot Pants). After a while the glamour and aura of baking subsides; I am becoming despondent from continuously turning out one gooey mess after another with no hint of a cake in sight and decide to put baking aside for the time being. I have yet to realise that you cannot just randomly mix ingredients and slide them into an equally randomly heated oven, rather you must follow a precise set of instructions using something called a recipe. I am done with baking, it's time for a change of direction and I correspondingly direct my culinary skills to the top part of the cooker: I am going to try my hand at frying! In doing so, I will break Papa's most insistent rule; never, ever to use the gas cooker when I am home alone. This blatant disodience will bring with it serious consequences.

To be continued...

Next post: 5th November: English Breakfast


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.

Hot Pants

It's September 1972, summer has already given way to autumn and within weeks I will be nine-years-old. The academic year once more resumes and along with it I am delivered a new school; The Junction Road Juniors School. My former school, Crescent Road Infants School was just on the other side of the road from our home at 51 Crescent Road, this new school is a short ten-minute walk away at the top of the next road intersection, Junction Road. Along with other eight-year-olds, I begin my school year in the second year and completely skip the first class. My English has clearly been deemed sufficient enough to join the children of my own age and it feels good. Now, I no longer stand out as a giant surrounded by class mates clearly a whole year younger than me (see post Peas And Poverty).  

Papa is no longer working on the pig farm, rather now he has found a new job as a Nursing Assistant at a nearby Psychiatric and Geriatric Hospital known as Warley Hospital. I don't really understand what the words Psychiatric and Geriatric mean so ask Papa to explain and he tells me that it basically means a hospital for the old and the mad in reverse order and sometimes even both together. Mama meanwhile has also found work in a local factory called Thermos, and her job is on the production line assembling thermos flasks. Day in day out, Mama puts flask together, and day in day out, Papa looks after the old, the mad and maybe even both together. And while they both do that I go to my new school, the third one of my life in this strange new country, and Sis is found a place in day-care near to the Thermos factory.

Today is the first day of the school year and Mama is not working at the Thermos factory so she can walk me to the school gates. We get up early and I dress with a new outfit that Mama and I carefully picked out from the shops just last week. The first day of a new school always merits new clothes, Mama tell me and today will be no exception. At home Mama takes meticulous care brushing my long black hair until it shines like ebony and she then ties it into two tidy pony tails. I proudly don my new outfit along with coat, and then alongside Mama and Sis who is sitting dutifully in her push chair, we set off for the short walk to school. But when we arrive at the school gate I notice that the other girls are wearing tidy dresses or skirts, topped off with demure coloured jumpers or cardigans and I am most certainly not. 


I have turned up at school in the skimpiest micro-shorts of the seventies, otherwise known as hot pants. Now, as far as I am concerned, hot pants are the coolest item of clothing in the England of the 1970's that I land in, and everyone is wearing hot pants; the celebrities, the pop stars, the young girls who want to dress like celebrities and pop stars, and then there are soon-to-be nine-year-old girls like me. However, stood in front of the school gate with Mama, I realise to my horror that school is most certainly not the place for hot pants. What were Mama and I thinking of? How can we have got it so wrong? No-one told us that in England you have to go to school in sensible clothes!

The school bell has already rung, and now it's too late to go back home and change, so there is nothing for me to do but spend the rest of the school day clad in hot pants. The item of clothing which only five minutes earlier exuded within me a feel of luxury and glamour at the school gate, is now a source of deep shame. To mitigate this enormous lack of judgement, I resort to drastic measures and stubbornly refuse to part with my coat in the cloakroom as all the other children tidily place theirs on hooks complete with names. My latest attempt at discreetly fitting into a new school and class has spectacularly backfired, and all because of those dratted hot pants! Now all my class mates want to know why I am wearing a coat indoors, and I tell them that I am feeling rather chilly. I dare not say it is because underneath I am dressed up for a visit to a disco, or the Top Of The Pops TV show and not for an English school day.

My new teacher is called Mrs Bagley and I like her straight away. I think that she likes me back because she welcomes me into the class with beaming smile, even with hot pants underneath my coat, and tells the other children that I am the new girl and that my name is Marie Garrido. Mrs Bagley behaves as if it's the most natural thing in the world to have a girl in the class with her coat on all day, and I am very grateful to her for this. I love my new English first name, its just a shame that Papa made sure that my Spanish surname was not discarded along the way with Maria del Carmen which long ago made way for Marie (see post Girl With Television). Mrs Bagley assigns me a seat next to a nice English girl called Sylvia, and there I spend the rest of my school day, stifling hot with a coat hiding hot pants, but with my dignity intact. After this first school day is over I learn a valuable lesson about how to dress for school in England. Never in hot pants.

After school is over, if Mama is still working at the Thermos factory, Papa obtains permission from his supervisor at Warley Hospital to take an extended tea break so he can meet me at the school gate and then walk me home. I love Mama and Papa, but I feel rather uncomfortable that they speak to me in front of the other children in Spanish and I would much rather walk home alone. That way no-one would hear me speaking Spanish and with a bit of luck no-one would notice that I am not English. But I would never tell Mama and Papa this, I think it would make them feel extremely sad, so I smile warmly when I meet them at the school gate and say nothing. Sometimes Papa is in no huge rush to return to work, so when we return home he looks in on the rabbit family at the end of the garden housed in the wooden hutch that Papa has especially built for them. The only problem is that they are no longer the adorable bunnies from when they were born. Rather now they have grown into enormous specimens and I can see with Papa that they are beginning to outgrow the hutch.

Our elderly next-door neighbour, Mrs McCabe sometimes happens to be in her own back garden when we are in ours. The fence dividing the two garden is very low so you can always see what your neighbour is up to and she sometimes sees Papa fussing over his adorable rabbit family. Mrs McCabe thinks its outright charming that Papa should harbour such a love for pets and animals in general. She tells Papa that it's a very English quality and she can see that Papa is already fitting in well into English society. Very commendable indeed. Papa does not respond to Mrs McCabe's overtures in any way, he is too busy concentrating on the immediate task at hand, the care of his ever-expanding rabbit family. They are growning so fast that soon they will not be able to fit into the hutch that he not so long ago lovingly built for them. What will Papa do with them? I think to myself. It will not take long for Mrs McCabe and myself to find out.


To be continued...

Next post: 22nd October: Home Alone


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.

Peas And Poverty

Alongside a new life in England, my education at The Crescent Road Infants School continues. It is still 1972 and Mama, Papa, Sis and I have now been living in the town of Brentwood for the past year (see post Girl With Television). During the school day I hungrily devour my reading books one after the other, and along with it the fascinating adventures of the two main characters, Janet and John in this strange new language called English. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that children could do such marvellous things such as go to a zoo, or even bake a cake. I also never knew that an oven was for baking, my Spanish grandma uses hers for storing pots and pans and this is exactly what Mama also does at our new home in 51 Crescent Road. Even though I like my reading classes, I must admit that the school moments that really captivate me are those that rotate around food; one of them is the afternoon story time and the other is called lunch.

In the afternoons, we have this marvellous drink called ice cold-milk from adorable miniature glass bottles, and I have never had such a thing in my life. Back in Tenerife we generally drank goats milk which was never deliciously chilled in this way. The machine they use to chill the milk is called a fridge, and this is also something I have never seen before back on my island. We children eagerly take it in turns to distribute the milk bottles out between everyone in the class, after which we sit quietly at our desks and sip our drink from long straws as Mrs Jones reads out the newest instalment of the afternoon story, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. England definitely has some good sides to it, I think to myself as I sip and listen. It may not have the beaches of Tenerife, but I could definitely get used to this wonderful drink every afternoon, and whenever I am afforded the slightest opportunity I make sure to help myself to two. 

The Headmistress, Mrs Chapman often supervises us at lunch time in the school cafeteria and this for me is another strange experience all together. English food is like nothing I have ever seen before; it's made up of different components on the plate and separated by multiple invisible barriers. In Spain, we normally have it all mixed up together. Today we have sausages, runny potatoes called mash, peas and nothing else. All of this is then drowned on the plate in a tasteless brown liquid called gravy. Mrs Chapman tells us that we must all eat our food like fine ladies and gentlemen, slowly and elegantly with our knives and forks in hands at all times. No shovelling of peas into the mouth is allowed. Rather they must be must be piled delicately onto the back of the fork and then inserted into your mouth that way. But the problem is that you cannot pile more than about five peas onto the back of your fork at any one time before they start dribbling off, so it takes me an absolute eternity to eat the pile of peas on my plate. I would really want to shovel them onto the fork as we would do in Spain and then pop the whole thing into my mouth, but I dare not even contemplate the thought, Mrs Chapman does not look like she would tolerate pea shovellers lightly. 

I have also never eaten with a knife in my hands at all times as Mrs Chapman equally demands. Back home in Tenerife we cut up the tricky bits with a knife, let it drop on the table and then forget about it as we shovelled the food into our mouths with the fork. I dare not tell Mrs Chapman this either, I have a feeling that she would be appalled. It's no wonder that the English school children around me are generally thin. By the time they have manoeuvred the pile of peas onto the back of their fork to delicately transfer to their mouths, the bell indicating that lunch break is over has rung, and they can forget about the rest of the food on their plate. When I am home after school, Mama asks me what I had for lunch today, and I reply that runny potato, sausages and forty-seven peas. Mama and I cannot understand why anyone would want to load peas delicately onto the back of a fork when the other side of the fork does a more efficient job, nor why anyone would want to take a perfectly good potato, smash it to bits and then put it on a plate. We have teeth for that, so why do they bother? Sometimes it feels that we will never understand these English and their strange ways.

One a weekend day when I have no school, Papa sometimes takes me with him to work on the pig farm. The owner, William has two children called Stephen and Jane. Stephen is a lot older than me, but Jane is just two years older. I still do not speak too much English but that does not deter Jane and I from playing together on the farm and we roam within the confines of the farm perimeter, just as I had done on the chicken farm with the daughter of Papa's supervisor (see post Watching The English Part III). We peek into the area where the adorable piglets live along with their siblings and cannot in our wildest dreams imagine that they will eventually end up on our breakfast plates as bacon. Jane and I always make sure to return back to the house for The Tea Break, this is when both our Papa's sit down with the other farm workers and have their sacred morning break (see post Watching The English Part I And II). We children do not get to drink tea, but we get something equally wonderful and that is juice and biscuits. 

If it is rainy or cold, we play inside Jane's home and she sometimes takes me up to her bedroom. I notice that Jane's home has things in it that I do not have in mine; She has her own bedroom with her very own bed, at home I share a room and a bed with Sis but I don't mind because in the winter the house is very cold and sleeping next to Sis keeps us both warm. She also has a wardrobe full of beautiful dresses which captivate me. Most of my dresses are handed down by Mama and Papa's kind friends and I am forever growing out of them so that the sleeves always look ridiculously short. Jane also has a large pile of dolls all called Sindy and they sit grouped in a corner of her bedroom surrounded by a sea of Sindy accessories; Sindy clothes, Sindy shoes, Sindy handbags and whatever else you could imagine that a Sindy doll would need. 

I just have Emilia, the doll that Papa sacrificed all his money to buy me at the fair in Andalusia when I was three (see post Meet The Family). Emilia also sits in a corner of my bedroom, but unlike Jane's many Sindy dolls, she only has the clothes she is wearing and nothing else. Also, she is alone. Jane also has something called a carpet. Its thick and inviting and cosily covers all the surfaces of the floor throughout the house. In our home, we have small patches of it here and there covering the wooden floor boards and the staircase is completely bare. Finally, I notice that Jane has an unimaginable luxury. It's called a telephone, and this is something that I have never seen inside a home before. As my eight-year-old mind and eyes slowly absorb this opulence, I gradually comprehend that we are not living in the lap of opulent luxury, rather I begin to understand that we are dirt poor (see post Toast And Television).

To be continued...

Next post published on 8th October: Hot Pants


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.

Girl With Television

It's early 1972 and Mama, Papa, Sis and I are now living in a town called Brentwood, not far from a big city called London. Two years will have soon elapsed since we bid farewell to our beautiful Island home of Tenerife to begin a new life here in England (see post Toast And Television). One of the lifelines connecting us to this new world opening out before us is The Television. Occupying pride of place in the centre of the living room, we all love our black and white television set and from it learn copious amounts of English. Everyone has their list of favourite shows and for Mama it will be the soap operas; Crossroads, Emmerdale, and Coronation street. She is already beginning to evolve her fascination for predictable story lines along with an inability to separate fact from fiction. Papa's own interests will lie elsewhere. His favourite program will be called The News and when he is not working, he will religiously tune in on the hour to the news; at six o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, in fact any o'clock. If The News is on the television, then Papa will watch it. 

For Sis and I, it is the children's programmes which will captivate us; Jackanory, Blue Peter, and Magpie. As Sis and I grow older, we will include Top of the Pops as another of our must-see television programs, and along with it will come the big names of pop music of the seventies; The Osmonds, Sweet, Slade, Gary Glitter, and Mud are amongst many of the names that will greet us as we sit down together on Thursday evening. But for the moment, this is a faraway dream for we are still aged only eight and three. For now, in the evenings we will all huddle around this wonderful transmitter of Anglo-Saxon culture and watch comedies such as Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language, taking our cue from the taped laughter on the soundtrack and laugh when the audience laugh. Even if we don't always understand what is said we still laugh along with everyone else. The entertainment and English life that emanates along with it from our television is good. 

Watching television has also taught Mama what the English feed their offspring. The advertisements are full of jolly children munching away at their cereals in the morning and that's what we now get for breakfast. Mama is at last happy she's getting it right, our days of mistakenly eating raw sausage on toast erroneously thinking it was pate are firmly over (see post Toast And Television). Our absolute favourite advert is one with cartoon cats sat round a table happily pouring cereal into their empty bowls. There they all are chattering away with one another, clearly this is the best cereal in the world and there's the box right in the middle of their cartoon table. It's the same cereal that we have in our cupboard and it's called Shreddies. Sis and I are having breakfast when this cartoon advert comes on and Mama is suddenly transfixed. She takes one look at the advert, another at the cereal box sitting on our table and is appalled, 'Dios mio, Good Lord not again,' Mama says to herself with a weary sigh, 'Now I've given the girls cat food!' And just as with the toast and paté, our cereal unexpectedly disappears never to be seen again.

I am now at Crescent Road Infants School and my teacher is a nice lady called Mrs Jones who is about Mama's age. Mrs Jones is friendly and always smiling, not so the Headmistress. Mrs Chapman is a stricter-looking older lady and we children are slightly in awe of her. Serious looking, she is always immaculately turned out with skirt suits and freshly coiffured silver hair. All this is topped off with reading glasses dangling from her neck around a silver chain. I am already eight and should really be at the nearby Junction Road Junior School with children of my own age, but I have been kept back a year at the Crescent Road Infant School and I guess it is because my English is still not at the level of other eight-year-olds. My new school is just on the other side of the road from our home at 51 Crescent Road, and if Mama looks out of her bedroom window from the upstairs floor she can see me at break time in the school playground. She says that it makes her feel content to see me playing happily with school friends just as I used to do so with my cousins in Tenerife. The playground is simply a large playing field next to the school building and dotted with a clump of trees in the far corner. One them is a majestic oak and especially enticing for climbing; many times I scale this tree and sit on its low gnarled branches, sometimes falling off and gently thudding onto the green carpet of grass below me. After dusting myself off I simply climb back on. Mama often watches my antics from her bedroom window and once I am home from school she tells me to be careful, I am precious to her.

My new English name is now Marie, Maria del Carmen has long ago vanished (see post A Girl Named Marie), and combined with my Spanish surnames I am now known as Marie Garrido Sanz. But this is soon shortened to Marie Sanz; the English do not seem to comprehend that a person can have two surnames instead of one and they simply skip the first one and use the one at the end. Big mistake, the end name is the Mama's surname, but the first one is the Papa's surname and the one that predominates. Sanz is then mis-spelt and I then become known as Marie Sang. Now, I don't really care about not having Papa's surname, nor about the misspelling, all truth be told I am ecstatic that at last I now have a completely English-sounding name. Armed with this fabulous new name and a bit of luck, no one will notice that I am not originally from here. My ecstasy is however short lived, because I soon take a school letter home with the name Marie Sang written on it and when Papa sees it he becomes incensed.

The following morning Papa accompanies me to school, marches straight into the class room alongside me and in his best broken English politely but firmly informs Mrs. Jones that he is Garrido and so are his daughters; change the name back and change it now, he tells her. Now, Papa is an imposing man that you do not want to mess around with and Mrs Jones quickly realises this, so in an instant Papa's surname is restored and I now become Marie Garrido. Oh well, at least I was English for a few days, I think to myself accepting with resignation this newest and final version of my name; Along with Papa's conversation with Mrs. Jones, the little Spanish girl named Maria del Carmen Garrido Sanz finally and irrevocably vanishes. Consigned to a past life that cannot be reconciled with this present one, she is now replaced by Marie Garrido, the name which will identify me for the rest of my time in England.

51 Crescent Road is lovely and cool in the summer, but summer soon gives way to autumn and this in turn gives way to the chill of the English winter. Our new home does not have central heating, and on particularly cold days Sis and I awake to a thin layer of frost covering the inside pane of the bedroom window. On weekend mornings when there is no school, we run to Mama's bed and the three of us snuggle in together. I notice that Mama has a huge unwieldly scar extending from her back and winding its way across to her stomach in a snake-like line. When I ask Mama where it came from she becomes serious and tells me that its nothing, covers herself up and immediately changes the topic of conversation. I am only a young child, but I comprehend that this huge line across Mama's back is no small thing. It will still take another thirty-six years before the cause of this scarring is revealed, and when we are made aware of its origins, the resulting shockwaves will unleash an emotional tsunami of epic proportions.

To be continued.........

Next post published on Sunday, 24th September: Peas And Poverty



Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.

Toast And Television

                                                   
It has been a while, but I am once again the little Spanish girl navigating herself around a new life, a new culture and a new language in an unfamiliar land called England. The year is 1971 and soon it will be 1972. I am now seven but soon I will turn eight and along with me is Mama, Papa and Sis who is not yet three. A whole year has passed since I left my beautiful Tenerife Island home (see post Share The Moon), and with each day that passes the memories of my previous life fade one more degree. In the daytime the little Spanish girl within me is slowly eradicated as Maria del Carmen is gradually replaced by Marie (see post A Girl Named Marie), but at night I escape on my magic carpet and return to my beloved island. During these precious twilight hours England cannot touch me, as the mountains, the beach and the blue Atlantic waters all rush to welcome me home, enveloping me in their warm blanket of comforting familiarity. Once the first light of dawn begins to break outside the bedroom window my bewitching nocturnal adventure slowly concludes, and by the time the sun has risen into the morning sky I am once more on the emerald island of The English (see post 

Watching The English Part III). 

We are no longer living on the chicken farm in the village of Bloxham near to Banbury, and Richard, the English boy with the cobalt-blue eyes with whom I shared that magical first kiss has disappeared from my life forever (see posts This Lion Can Talk and B Is For Bullied); Papa has found a new job on a pig farm in a place called Ingatestone and we will now live in a nearby town called Brentwood just outside London. He tells me that London is the capital city of England and that means the biggest town in the country. We also no longer have to live in a mobile home and Mama, Sis and I are very happy; the owner of the pig farm is called William and he rents us a small terraced house in Brentwood. At first we live at number 37, and after a few months we move to number 51. This becomes our new home, and unbeknown to me at the time the enduring residence for the rest of my time in England.

In the beginning, Papa travels to work on the pig farm on his scooter, after while he has saved enough money and we have our first family car, a Hillmann Imp with number plate EUD-244C. While Papa does that, Mama stays home and looks after Sis and I go to my new school, the second one of my life in this strange new country. The house we now live in is a lot better than the mobile home; it has two bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs there is a lounge, kitchen and lavatory. It also comes with some basic furniture; two beds, one for the grown-ups and one for us girls, a sofa in the lounge and a table in the kitchen. The kitchen also has a cooker and a variety of kitchen utensils most of which I have never seen before. One of them is called a toaster. 

At the front and back of the house there are small gardens. Sis and I love the grass in the back garden, this is something we never had in Tenerife; for us it feels and looks like a luxurious green carpet, and we race one another from one end to the other as fast as our little legs will carry us. The back garden has a fence on either side separating us from all the other similarly sized back gardens, which are all in turn attached to houses similar to the one we live in. They all look the same and are bunched together in a long row. Papa tells me that the English call these homes 'terraced'. There's not a chicken in sight in our new neighbourhood and I am very happy, but I think that Papa is missing his previous charges, because he soon sets up a hutch at the end of the back garden and after a while it is inhabited by an adorable family of rabbits. From the other side of the fence a luscious plum tree overhangs our garden, and in the summer-time our luxurious grass carpet is covered with crimson-coloured, ripe and juicy plums. In the summer months to come we will have our fill of this delicious fruit. We even have our own address, 51 Crescent Road, and after having spent the past year living in a rudimentary caravan surrounded by chickens at every turn, this new home feels like opulent luxury.

Living next door but one to our home is a wonderful elderly lady and her name is Kathleen Robinson. When she finds out that the only family Sis and I have in England are all resident in the house next to her, she takes pity on us and declares that since we girl do not have a grandmother of our own in the whole of England, we will just have to call her Nanny Robbie. We also have other elderly ladies living around us: to our right and directly next door between us and Nanny Robbie we have Mrs. McCabe, and on the other side we have Mrs Hunter. They are all nice ladies, but none are as special as Nannie Robbie. Sis and I fall in love with her and she becomes for us the much-loved grandma that remained behind on our Island in Tenerife as we departed for this new land called England.

                                                     
Some time has passed since Mama first introduced us to English sliced bread (see post Watching The English Part I ), and by now we are eating it morning, noon and night. We notice that it tastes a lot better if you toast it and especially if you spread on some delicious sausage paté that Mama buys us from the new local food store called Sainsburys. For Sis and I, toast and English paté becomes our staple breakfast. One day Nannie Robbie comes by for a visit as Sis and I are half way through our delicious feast. Horrified by the sight that greets her, she shrieks to Mama: 'Heavens above, Francis, you're feeding the girls raw pork sausages, you'll be lucky if they don't end up with worms!' We don't understand exactly what she is saying, but we sort of get the drift that we're eating something we shouldn't and this spells the end of our toast and paté for breakfast. 

We soon get out first ever television. It's black and white and rented. Once a week on a Saturday when Mama is not working, Sis and I walk the short journey from 51 Crescent Road to the King's Road Rental shop where we faithfully pay our one pound seventy-five pence weekly rent. Mama pushes Sis in her pushchair and I dutifully walk alongside her. On the way, we pass a shop called Larry Morgan's that is really two shops in one; part of it is a photographer's studio, but there is also another part to it which sells a variety of bicycles all displayed in the shop window facing the street that Mama, Sis and I walk past as we slowly make our way to our destination. The photos in the windows do not interest me, but I cannot say the same for the bicycles. They captivate me and I gaze longingly at them each time I pass by. I have never seen such wonderful things in my short life, and there is one that particularly enchants me, it's called a Raleigh Chopper. I want one more than anything, but for me it feels like a far-away fantasy with no hope of realisation; Mama need not tell me, my young mind comprehends that that we do not have the money for such a luxury. I any case, even were I to be the lucky recipient of such a marvel I would not know what to do with it, for I do not know how to ride a bicycle and cannot in my wildest seven-year-old dreams ever imagine being able to do so.

I love the television rental shop; all around me are televisions galore and all simultaneously tuned into the same program creating an immense sea of repetition which mesmerizes me. Mama could leave me here all day and I would be happy as a lark, watching the same program hour after hour on all the sets around me until she finally stopped by to pick me up and take me home. Sprinkled in-between the black and white sets dotted around the store are also a few colour televisions but they are way too expensive for us. Maybe one day if we have enough money we can afford one. At home, we all sit in front of this marvellous thing called The Television, captivated by a new world opening out before us and in a language that we don't really understand. One of my favourite programs is of a simple picture: In this picture, there is a girl with a red dress and long brown hair sitting in front of a blackboard with a funny clown for company. She is called the Test Card Girl and is on television in-between programs when there is nothing else on. There is a piece of chalk in her hand, and on the blackboard beside her she is drawing circles and crosses that never seem to get anywhere. There she sits motionless hour after hour, with a never-ending stream of peaceful music playing in the background. And by jolly does she need the calming influence of that music; it must be excruciating sitting still in front of that blackboard for eternity and never getting to the end of your game of noughts and crosses! No-one else wants to watch this program but I like this girl and the fact that she remains inert. I'm only seven turning eight but have undergone so many changes in my short life that watching her frozen in time makes me feel safe and anchored. 

Next post published on Sunday, September 10th: Girl With Television


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.