Recalled to Life
Rob aged 6
Rob aged 55
In the last few months, as I approach my 56th birthday and outliving my father who died just short of the age of 56, I have been thinking a great deal about how I became the person I am now.
Someone wrote that "The child births the man". As I think about growing old, I , perversely, have been thinking a lot about my childhood. What was it about my early years that shaped me?
So I intend to explore parts of my early life in public in the hope that I may discover the answer. Mine is a story set in a time warp - it is set in post war Britain, in Ghana just after independence, in English Boarding schools before they became like hotels and, above all it is set in an Edwardian family culture, where the children were ignored by the parents and who were raised entirely by professional or by institutions.
I want to do more than tell a rambling and episodic story. I want to write less a narrative than to paint a series of pictures. So my starting point is to offer some sketches. Here are some of the ideas I want to pursue:
- Crossing the Atlantic with Granny and Nanny in 1954 (Of course our parents were not with us)
- London in the 1950's - Bomb sites, coal fires, smog and rationing (Life with nothing)
- The "Garden" - Our magic world of Airlie Gardens (What is was like to roam London aged 5 with no supervision)
- The nursery - nannies - ogres and angels (Saved by Fluffy)
- The nursery - The routines, parties and the dress code (The silver carriage)
- Sweets - What we lived for (Gobstoppers, Trebor, Sherbert Fountains and Mars Bars)
- Comics - The Eagle, the Dandy and War Picture Libraries
- Our parents - The mystery people
- My introduction to Havana cigars aged 7
- The war and how it informed everything and everyone
- School - Miss Murphy's and Gibbs
- Out of control - The meaning of "African Lemonade".
- Sailing to Ghana and into adventure
- How our house worked - How Diana and I were looked after by 15 servants
- Life as a wild thing and with my sister Diana - Snakes, rabid dogs and Ju Ju
- School in Ghana - What I really learned behind the gym
- Race and color in Ghana - what color?
- My first loves - Beth and my father's secretary
- The beach and decapitation - life and death
- Traveling unaccompanied aged 8 - Camels, BOAC and Daggers
- Off to Dotheboys school - Rob as Molesworth at Amesbury School
- Boarding school in the 1950's - Stalag Luft 17 for boys
- School Food the beginning of an addiction - Toad in the Hole, Dead Man's leg and Treacle tart
- General Montgomery and me - How the war was won
- Tony Peel and Tony Webb - my wonderful teachers - who were these wounded men?
- Discipline - Matrons and bath inspection - beating, beating and beating
- Life on the farm - pigs, shit and cricket - The Allans my cousins and guardians
- Saint Andrews - the link to Atlantic Canada - 5 generations of imprinting
- Summer in Canada - the home I would return to
- Books and reading - my escape and the time warp of the school library
- Returning to England - the Kings Road in the 1960's
- Fifield - A home at last
- Harrow as a new boy
- Public School in the 1960's
- Charlie - my cat burglar brother - the model for Alfie
- Hormones - what I "read" and my 16th birthday present!
- Sidney Patterson - My other father
I intend to keep each section short and include as many pictures as I can. some of this will be about me of course but also I want to remind myself of the world as I experience it then.
So when I talk about comics, I will do my best to show you what comics were like then. I want to bring back the thrill of waiting for the next edition of the Eagle and of course the adventures of Dab Dare and the Mekon, When I will talk about English School food, we will explore the recipes and the look and taste of this underrated sublime pinnacle of global cuisine. When I talk of my hormones, I will investigate why Harrison Marks led me down the wrong path when it came to how the female body was really constructed, I will reveal what the sign on Compton Street that offered "French Lessons Upstairs" really meant.
I want taste post war England and Africa again. This was a time before the swinging sixties. When the war seemed to have ended the day before. When a 5 bedroom flat in Kensington rented for 200 pounds a year. When there were hardly any cars and still many horse drawn vehicles such as milk and coal wagons. When most men and women still wore their pre war clothes. This was a time when no one had any money but most had a good time. This was a time of great hope. Hope for a new Elizabethan age in England and hope for a new post colonial Africa.
It was a time of innocence and naivety as well. I was one of the few white boys in a black school. I was the odd one out and found out how much fun it was in checking out the differences! This was a time when having 15 servants seemed quite normal to me. This was a time when all middle class boys went away to school. It was a time when school was a mysterious male world where boys where confronted by men. By men who had just returned from war. This was a time when there was no contact with home other than a weekly letter. You stood your ground or crumbled.
This was a surprisingly safe and good time, where beneath the surface of formality were warm and generous people who had been through a lot and who were glad to have survived. It was the time that shaped me.
Most of all I want to explore what it was like to live a paradox. The paradox of not having the love that most children hope for while having a level of freedom that most children could not contemplate.
Diana and I had a fantastic time. We did not simply read about adventures - we had them. We knew what it was like to sail a tramp steamer around Africa right out of a Conrad novel. We would hitch rides on wagons around London as boys did in a Dickens novel. We killed snakes and rabid dogs, ate weird foods, got lost in the bush, kidnapped horses, became initiates in black magic, got buried in pig shit, saw people burned alive and decapitated.
We were also institutionalized. But then it was different. Then nannies and schools were not seen as a "Business" as they are now. But they were vocations filled often, but not always, by men and women who gave themselves to their charges in a way that I think hardly happens anymore. We not only had a childhood filled with adventure but also filled with special people.
Please join me. I don't know how this is going to turn out so hopefully, it will be as much of an adventure for you as for me.
Technorati Tags: Family, Rob's Life
Recent Comments