This is a book about growing up in South East London in the 50’s and 60’s, times were hard and poverty was the norm for many families but we did not see ourselves as deprived in any way because everyone was in the same boat. I must have been 6 or 7 years old before I saw a banana and that was treated with great suspicion.
This book contains a lot of humour because when times are hard you are inclined to laugh at most things including the poor old lady who slipped on the snow, clutching her wicker basket between her legs and flew down the hill in Ballamore Road, Downham with her legs in the air showing her bloomers, I am smiling as I write this!!
Who remembers scrumping? Mother told us that it was illegal but collecting windfalls was legal, now we were never sure about this bit of “legal advice” from mother but we always told her that we had collected windfalls (ok so we told some fibs)
Saturday morning flicks at the bug hutch (the Splendid on Bromley Road) were great fun and we did not need iPads, iPods, laptops and various other devices to keep us occupied and I ask you, how many grown-ups have fought off aliens and dinosaurs in Elmsted Woods? Not as many as us and then we would arrive home after spending all day up the woods, filthy dirty and hungry but very happy and contented.
We had many weird but wonderful people who lived on the estate, we had our very own tramp who was nicknamed Dog End Bennet, because he spent most of his time going around our streets and around Grove Park station looking for cigarette ends on the pavements so he could then use the tobacco to roll up new fags!!
We would go with mother every Friday near the Downham Tavern to do the weeks shopping, we would take the old pram because with 12 or more people living in our 3 bedroom flat we could not have carried it, for instance we would have 2 x 28lb bags of potatoes that would sit underneath the main part of the pram and the weeks shop in the pram and the last port of call would be the butchers where we would get the tea of peas pudding and faggots, they would be wrapped in loads of old newspapers and placed in the middle of the pram to keep warm and on arrival home mum would take the food and the boys would unload the pram and with luck we could finish the unloading and get our food just in time to listen to “Journey into Space” on the radio.
This book will bring back a lot of memories for a lot of people, if you have relatives who emigrated please feel free to share this with them.
For those of you who may like to buy this book, it is available on Amazon in either Kindle or paperback form and the link is below.
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Reviews for "Memoirs of a London boy in the 50’s and 60’s"
Memoirs like this are so important for chronicling the way things were for ordinary people. Until Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, few books were written about ordinary people. Books were written about the wealthy, landed and famous. Almost none of Shakespeare's work are about ordinary people.
I grew up in the 40s (poor) and 50s (part of the growing middle-class) in America. As I read, even though we both spoke English, how much different common terms were. For example, I still don't know what "scrumping" is but I know what windfalls are (I think). Fags were cigarettes or cigs and faggots were food? But it was words like these in poverty that created the British invasion of wonderful and wild rock bands like the Beatles and the Stones. Making us dream about Abby Lane or the Ferry 'Cross the Mercy.
In so many ways, our paths were similar. The adventures in the woods getting very dirty and sometimes, being dirty. Arriving home and grabbing snacks and then listening to the radio or watching the telly.
Jack Kelly was a child performer, son of New York model, Nan Kelly, brother of actress, Nancy Kelly, brother-in-law of actor Edmond O'Brien and cinematographer Fred Jackman, Jr. On TV, from 1957 until 1962, he was James Garner's brother on the show,
