When Granny Annie died the family on her side all met at Aunt Lizzie’s house on Lillands lane. Our godparents Aunt Ethel and Uncle Tommy weren’t there. I was nine at the time and Mam and Dad took me along to translate the proceedings. The meeting was about dividing up Granny’s property, namely the house. We were completely ignored; no attempt was made to draw us into the proceedings. I stood up and said,
“What about us?”
I was told it was nothing to do with us and to sit down.
I said, “It’s where we live.”
I was informed I was too young to understand and told to shut up. They argued amongst themselves I can’t remember what they decided, but we all know, ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’ There was a will; Granny left the house to Mam. They never spoke to us again.

The house at Thornhill Road was sold and we moved from our cellar across town to 9 Crown Street, Lightcliffe road. Brighouse. It wasn’t quite salubria, the house was just round the corner from Albion Street were Granny had moved to live. I thought it was a pity we hadn’t moved earlier and saved her all that walking to our house. It was also much nearer to my school but still far enough away for a free bus pass. Dad was really proud of my bus pass and the school uniform. You see the pass was official. He used to mime to me how to use it. He’d mime, taking the pass out of my top pocket and showing it to the bus conductor. He’d then stick his thumb up, as if to say.
“Yes that’s a real official bus pass, very few people have one but my son ‘s got one and that’s good.”
The government had given it to his son personally. He would borrow it from me to show visitors and repeat the mime whether they knew what it was for or not. The only time he been given a kind of a pass was in the war when he went to work at Blakeborough’s. Going to work one morning he was nearly shot. He couldn’t hear the armed guards asking for the password and he couldn’t have answered anyway. He was issued with a luminous badge with, ‘DEAF AND DUMB’, written on it so the guards wouldn’t shoot him. He wasn't issued with one in German because it was considered defeatist. So, if we had been invaded, Dad was done for!

The new house was a terrace house, not a back to back but a proper through house with a front and back door. This was considered very important. The lowest in the hierarchy was, 'back-to-back', 'steps and in'. That is a terrace house with another behind it and no garden where you entered straight from the street. Next, was a back to back with a garden. Followed by a'steps and in', through house. Then a through house with garden. This was all very important.

I knew a chap who’d worked his way up to being a millionaire. He lived in a through house but unfortunately it was so situated that you could only get to the back door by going through the house. This was all right till he got his Rolls Royce and uniformed chauffeur. It wasn’t the done thing for the chauffeur to go though the front door and he couldn’t get to the back door. The solution was simple, another back door was put in the front. The millionaire would enter by the front door. The chauffeur would drive the Rolls into the garage, which had mock Tudor hinges on the ‘Up and over' door, then he would enter the house by the less ostentatious back /front door, to the left of the main door.

Ours was a similarly placed house but you could get to the back door by walking down the street and through a back yard. In the back yard was a row of outside brick toilets the doors facing away from the houses. Along the backs of them we all had two dust bins, yes two! This was class. One bin was the ordinary type; the other was painted white with, ‘WASTE FOOD’, stencilled on it in red. The owners of each brace of bins were extremely territorial.

If your bin was full, or you had some embarrassing rubbish, you didn’t want the bin man to spot, you’d slip it into someone else’s bin. One fellow up the yard thought he’d solved this illicit dumping problem. His bin had. ‘OUT OF ORDER,’ painted on it.

That was at the back of the houses. At the front we had a tiny garden with a grand crop of chickweed. Under it was a cellar, which we used as a cellar, not to live in. The garden had a low stonewall which originally had a iron gate and railings on top. These had all been removed in the war. People think Feng Shui is new in the West but we inadvertently evoked it in the Forties with the removal of the ‘Bad luck’ spiked iron railings. They were all carted away, it was said for the war effort. Later we learned they had all been dumped in the North Sea. We didn’t know it at the time, but this of course brought the good Chi that won the war.

We were on our way; we were passing the mammon milestones. We’d jumped a few rungs up the ladder of life and a few steps up the stuff stairs.

At the far end of the street was a park. At the other side, over to the left was a small road leading past an exotically named house, the ‘Villa Bellisima’. Down the hill at the bottom was The Bradford Dyers Association, past which you could go up the hill to Southowram and the ‘Southowram Nudist Colony.’ Little was known or said of that, but the Bradford Dyers Association (the B.D.A) was infamous. All the local kids knew the initials B.D.A. It was written on the side of Bradford Dyers Association green vans. When you spotted one, you immediately, very vigorously touched the nearest person and shouted, “B.D.A - No touch back”. Why? The only reason I can think of is it very satisfying to be able to belt some one with impunity. Being a kid who frequently failed to spot these B.D.A. vans, I was often very vigorously touched and it was very annoying particularly if it was a smaller kid. ‘Vigorously touched’ would be considered a violent assault anywhere else. I therefore have a deep-seated hatred of the use of initial letters and acronyms, which are fast becoming a language of their own. I’m now the founder of G.R.O.A.N., which stands for, “Get Rid Of Acronyms Now”.

Mam’s favourite initials were H.P. Not the sauce,but Hire purchase. Hire purchase restrictions were lifted in 1954. The letters H.P. were my first experience of the use of initial letters instead of words. Although in my case H.P. applied to ‘Houses of Parliament’ sauce. The label on this bottle was also the first time I’d seen written French. I mentioned this before. Early bottles also had the maker’s name, Garton’s, on it. To the discerning eye Garton’s is of course, snotrag backwards. Later I heard of T.B. followed by F.F.F, ‘Fish Friers Federation’ Then F.M.F, the Fs were joined to the M. The first. F being reversed. This logo stood for 'Ministry of Food and Fisheries' and was on the bottom of most jam jars. We had to collect only these jars for school. I heard much later that you could pay to get into the cinema with one of these F.M.F. jars. One lad whose mam hadn't an empty F.M.F. jar sent him with a very large Shaw's pickle jar. He thought they wouldn't let him in. He was amazed when they not only let him in, but they gave him three jam jars change. I suspect this story is apocryphal. 'Fiscal Foolishness?

Anyway back to H.P. It was very popular because the best way to hide your poverty was to have lots and lots of stuff, and stuff could be got for ‘The best room’ on the so called ‘Never Never.’ You were still poor, but what was important was that you didn’t look poor. ‘The best room’ was the front room with good wallpaper that stayed on the wall, the china cabinet with the coronation mugs from Uncle Tommy, a three piece suite and eventually a tiled fire place with a companion set (poker, small shovel and coal tongs with little claw hands, all hanging on a purpose made stand). The one I liked was the one shaped like a man in Anodised Armour, but that was beyond our pockets. Some lucky people had the ‘Rolls Poker.’ This was a poker with a black rubber ring just below the handle, so if it was dropped it didn’t crack the tiles. The same chap from Huddersfield invented the ‘Four Edge Razor Blade.’ Edward Greenhalgh of the Standard Fireworks company first told me of these inventions made by a friend of his. Try as I might I couldn’t interest him in my ideas, until I mentioned my Air-cooled Toasting Fork, Cat and Lady Tormentor. He thought this might be a goer made from old sparkler wire. He always had three pieces of advice. The first was ‘Always make a start’. I can’t remember what the second was, but I’m sure it was equally wise and indisputable. The third was, ‘Brown paper cures any thing not malignant.’

HOW TO MAKE AN AIR-COOLED TOASTING FORK, CAT AND LADY TORMENTOR

I didn't quite believe Edward Greenhalgh's story about the 'Four Edge' razor blade. Later I found a full packet in Leeds.

My toasting fork was put into production. I like to think it was the lack of real fires that made it a total failure.

The best room was sometimes so good that it was only used on special occasions such as funerals. Some people didn’t even use the room for that, because their best rooms hid a secret. If you looked through the window you couldn’t tell what it was. They had cheated, putting the best wallpaper only on the wall opposite the window to create a look of opulence, but only when viewed through the window.

We still had the stone floors and unfashionable, unflushed doors. All that had to wait until August 19th 1961.

The lavatory was still outside, but we were one up on the neighbours. We had a bath in the house. Not only was our bath flushed round the sides, it was flushed on top In other words it had a lid. The bath was in a big box. The bath and probably a toilet had originally been upstairs. The previous owners, unlike everyone else who aspired to turn bedrooms into bathrooms, had turned their bathroom into a bedroom. The bath was now under the window in the back living room/kitchen. The chimneybreast had an alcove on each side. In the right hand alcove there was a Belfast sink and draining board. This was concealed by two large folding doors.The tap end of the bath was under the sink draining board and it stuck out in front of the window. The whole thing was flushed in or, if you want to be technical, boxed in.

To get in the bath you opened the Fablon covered lid. This effectively blocked off the window so you couldn’t be seen through it. To stop the lid falling back on your head, you opened the big folding door in front of the sink and folded it back on itself, like closing a book. This held the lid up. Because the boxing was working top height, you still had a raised flap board round the bath. This wouldn’t fold down until you opened the little door under the sink, because the flap hit the little door handle. So, you had to open the little door, fold the flap down and then close the little door. You were now ready to fill the bath. This involved reaching under the sink draining board to the bath taps. The hot water came from a fireback boiler. Despite all this modern convenience, I could only face having a bath once a week.
The box lid stopped you being viewed from outside the house. Your modesty in the room, which was also a living room/kitchen, was catered for by using the ‘clothes-horse’.

GETTING INTO THE BATH

The ‘clothes-horse’ was two simple wooden frames joined together on one side by wrapped-over cloth hinges. Why it was called a horse, I haven’t any idea. Some called it a ‘Winteredge’, country folk I suppose. ‘Winteredge’ with the ‘H’ dropped was the local pronunciation of ‘winter hedge’. I assume that in summer the clothes were hung on the hedges to dry and in winter indoors on the ‘winteredge’ or, as we called it, the ‘clothes-horse’. The only hedges round our way were in the park and any underwear hanging on bushes wasn’t there because it was drying.

I once met an American touring Britain. He was lecturing on his invention and it’s use in theatre set construction. He was not amused when I pointed out we’d been using it for years on the clothes-horse. This cloth hinge opens both ways and doesn’t rust. When opened like a book the clothes-horse is freestanding. The clothes are hung on the crossbars to dry. It also made an excellent frame for a tent when tipped on it’s side and covered with a sheet. The clothes-horse also had it’s use in household diplomacy. When we were living with Granny Annie, Dad returned home one evening ‘Worse for drink.’ He smashed the clotheshorse to smithereens with the poker. I suppose it was his version of the severed horse’s head on the pillow, an implied threat. You see, the clothes-horse belonged to Granny Annie. In the morning when she saw the broken wood on the rag rug her first angry thought was that we were being unbelievably extravagant with wood for lighting the fire. Then, the slow realisation came that she was looking at the remains of her clothes-horse. It had obviously not collapsed on it’s own. The poker ominously lay on top of a ration book. It was all something to do with Granny pinching our ration coupons.

When threatened, my school chum Edward Graham Dyson Smith, used to say, “He who resorts to violence has lost the argument.” Then again, smashing a clothes-horse gives you a very satisfactory feeling. It also pisses the owner off and makes a point, although you’re left with nothing to hang the clothes on; you do however have something to light the fire with.

All this aside, on bath night, the clothes-horse was the modesty screen. Friday night was always bath night, which struck me as bad planning because Monday was clothes wash day, so you were lucky if there was anything to hang on it. So, before undressing, I would spend some time carefully arranging my modesty screen. This involved strategically placing things on the clothes-horse, usually items that couldn’t be hung outside for pride’s sake, (i.e. things with holes in) or my clean clothes for after the bath. (It was like being a painter placing the leaves on an Adam and Eve picture. These skills can lead to careers in window dressing.) Then when I was happy with the arrangement, I would quickly undress filling the gaps with my dirty clothes.

Once whilst I was in the bath, there was a knock on the door. Mam was sitting alone in front of the fire reading her ‘Red Letter’ magazine. I waved at her over the clotheshorse. The water from my hand splashed her and she looked up. I indicated there was someone at the door.
Why! Oh why! Did I do that?
If I’d ignored it, they would have gone away and she would never have known. I suppose I thought she’d go to the door and send them away. No, she came behind my modesty screen and before I could do anything she put her hand on my head and pushed me down into the bath. Just like the police do to stop you banging your head on their car and later claiming compensation for violence. She shut the lid and closed all the flaps. Leaving me in the dark. The knocking on the door stopped. She opened the door; the door closed, then, nothing. I listened, not a sound. I waited. The water got cooler. Many thoughts went through my head.
Was Mam in the room? Had she gone off with the person at the door?
Had the black man she was always running away with eventually turned up?
Had she come back in alone and was waiting for me to get out?
Had she completely forgotten I was in the bath?
Was she with someone in the room? I couldn’t hear talking. Could it be a deaf friend! You can’t hear sign language, especially if you’re boxed in a bath. I strained to hear the sound of slapping fingers.
The water got colder and colder. Should I put more hot water in?
No! I must keep absolutely still in case someone was there.
I didn’t relish any gasmen laughing at me. I listened for the sound of shillings being counted, nothing. Perhaps the wooden box was blocking out the sounds?
There could be a party going on for all I knew. I listened; my ears were getting keener. Odd sounds but nothing I could recognise. I waited. The water was getting colder. She’d forgotten me!
My eyes started getting used to the dark. The soap in the water had separated and formed a scum like the fat in an old chip pan. My imagination was taking over. I thought maybe the room was full of silent people all looking at the boxed in bath, waiting for me to come out, Lazarus Lunn.
The water got colder. I started forgetting my life before I got into the box.
Maybe if I just lifted the lid just a bit I could see what was going on?
Oh no! What if I looked out and they were all there looking back with slight smirks on their faces?
Rubbish, I must, I must, look.
I reached up and pushed the lid. My god, it didn’t move. The bastards had nailed it down.
No! I’d have heard. Crafty swine, they’d quietly screwed the lid down.
I was trapped - Stop being silly, it couldn’t be screwed down.
They could be sitting on it!
I pushed again, did it move? Perhaps it was only the weight of the lid holding it down.
If I put both hands on it and pushed, I could maybe open it just enough to look out.
I then realised that lying on my back I wouldn’t be able to see through the open crack.
I must slowly and quietly get into a crouched position, like Atlas with the World, then push up with my head and shoulders. When the lid moved my eyes would be in the right position to look through the opening.
Slowly I got myself in the crouching position below the lid. The cold scum from the water was sticking to me. I braced myself and started pushing. My body was in a state of dynamic tension. The muscles were pushing hard but being held back, like a spring under tension, slowly being released, pushing against the lid as if it was a ton weight
Suddenly the lid burst open. I shot up like a Jack in a box into the light.
I was dazzled. I couldn’t see.
Panic! Who was there? My eyes adjusted to the light.
Mam had opened the lid and was repositioning my next week’s clothes on the clothes-horse and hanging a towel. Modesty was preserved. I couldn’t be seen.
I removed my hands, which had instinctively covered my crutch. I don’t subscribe to the logical Eastern idea that, when caught in the starkers, you don’t cover your crutch, you cover your head so no one knows who you are. Who else could it be in our bath disporting ginger pubic hairs?
That is what I thought they should have meant in the T.V. advert when they said, “Your Weetabix is showing.”
Nothing could be seen anyway. The cold water had caused me to suffer from the 'frightened tortoise effect', willy wise. The long immersion in cold water had turned me dead-body white, with a slight hint of pink, which was a blush struggling through. I looked like a pewter-pink wrinkled prune.
Looking over the clothes-horse, I could see the cause of all my misery. Mam’s deaf friend Doreen.
She was smiling, she then knowingly put her forefinger to her temple, which either meant,“You’ve missed a bit” or the meaning I would have preferred; “Big boy’s are wearing their sideburns longer this year.”
I suspect she really meant. “I think you’re crackers.”

I was furious with my Mam for putting me through the humiliation. But it was my humiliation and she didn’t feel it. I had caused her embarrassment by unthinkingly having a bath when Doreen called. She forgot she forced me to have the bath because it was Friday. Friday was bath day. Why? Because Monday was washday. Why? Because the clothes had to be washed and ironed for Friday. Why? Because Friday was bath day. This was how it was and how it would always be. Why? "Cos for". She pointed out I was lucky she’d remembered I was in the bath, forgetting that she’d shut me in the first place. I should thank her.

She had this ability to forget I existed. Little things like not buying any food for me. Food was bought almost meal-by-meal, because there were lots of small shops around and no one had a refrigerator. The cupboard was always full of tinned dog food and a tin of what I said I liked, always replaced till I got sick of it. There was tinned salmon, but I daren’t touch it. The salmon was eaten only on Sundays and then it was mixed with bread and vinegar to make it go further. To this day I’ll eat any thing as long as it comes out of a tin.

One summer I went away to a youth drama course for a week. I painted scenery with Walter Spradberry who did the London rising from the ashes, Phoenix posters. Mam completely forgot about me. At the end of the week, I came home in the afternoon. It was a really hot summer’s day. The neighbours were all out in the back yard sitting in deckchairs, sunbathing. They were all wearing cotton frocks with knotted handkerchiefs or “Kiss Me Quick” hats on their heads. It all looked very weird because they were all in a straight row as if on the deck of an ocean liner. I think that’s where they imagined they were when they closed their eyes.
When they opened their eyes they were back in Brighouse looking at the back of the outside toilets.
I lugged my suitcase passed this seated rank of inspectors. As I passed, each one, saying the obvious,
“Been away?”
Then, “Anywhere nice?”
As if you’d admit to going somewhere horrid. They all knew where I’d been. They just wanted me to say it, so they could say:
“Drama school, you don’t need to learn about drama. I’ll tell you about drama. I went to the University of Life.” Or words to that effect.
I could of course have used a stock evasive reply:
"‘There and back to see how far it is.”
These women were my elders and what I considered wit, they called cheek, to which their stock reply was delivered in Morse code on the head with the flat of the hand. If you were lucky the hand was not an arthritic one, which was like being hit with a bag of nuts, very painful, and then you were accused of hurting them with your head.
I passed this gauntlet. To my surprise where Mam would have had a reserved deckchair, there wasn’t a deckchair and there wasn’t a Mam. I went up to our back door and it was locked. I looked at the window the curtains were drawn. This could mean only one of two things, either it was night, which it most obviously wasn’t. It was definitely day and the only time curtains were drawn in daytime was when someone had died. Apparently daylight was not suitable for dead bodies perhaps it made them fade. I also think this was a spin off from the Yorkshire work ethic. Which was, if it was daylight you really should not be lying down. You should be up working and unhappy.
The neighbours were sitting up and now showing interest. They had been facing the back of the lavatories, so they hadn’t noticed the drawn curtains, till now. The obvious conclusion was that someone was dead. They immediately showed a ghoulish sympathetic concern.
“Hadn’t I a key?” they asked. “Of course you haven’t. You’re not twenty one yet.”
Then the question on everyone’s lips was, “How’s he going to get in?”
They didn’t seem realise that if there was a possibility of finding a dead body, I might not want to get in. No one seemed to want to invite me into their home to wait. They were all, technically out. They were out for the day, sunbathing. It didn’t matter that they were only six foot from their back doors. They were all, as the butler would say, “Not at home.” Anyway it looked decidedly dodgy inviting me in with my bag already packed, I might just turn out to be an orphan and never leave. They were determined I had to get in some how. I refused to go down the coal grate.
Mrs. Wood decided to forgo her day out and went home returning with a kitchen knife. I took the knife and climbed onto the windowsill. The window was the sash type. By pushing the flat blade into the gap between the top and bottom window frame, it was possible to lever the catch open. I did this, then pulled the top window down. The neighbours were all lined up admiring my cat burglary skills. With window now open I put the knife into my mouth, pirate style and faced the closed curtains. So for effect, wasn’t I just back from drama school, in front of my first audience?
With the knife clenched in my teeth, I dramatically whipped both curtains open.
Then for the first time in my life I heard my Mam’s natural voice. It was in the form of a high pitched scream and it was coming from the bath under the window.
I immediately looked up from her into the room. Dad was sitting in front of the fire trying to read the Daily Mirror in the dim light. Unaware that I was at the window and totally engrossed, he adjusted his paper, tipping it towards the window to take advantage of the extra light I’d let in.
I closed the curtains to no applause. I turned to my audience they were all gone. They were back sun bathing, with that “We know nothing about this” look on their faces. I was approached later and asked to return the knife; apparently they were having company for tea. There’s posh!

On another occasion I returned to find my self locked out once again. It was raining slightly, what we called locally "spitting", an allusion to what we thought our God thought of us. It looked like it might start to pour down or as we termed it "sile it down". I thought it would be a good idea to avoid God’s greater displeasure and get shelter. I'd ask Mrs. Bass next door if she knew where my Mam was and hopefully she’d invite me in. It worked like a charm. Mrs. Bass didn’t say the usual; that Mam had run off with a black man, which made a nice change. She said Mam had just gone out for a minute and wouldn’t be long and would I like to wait in her house out of rain till she got back? I couldn’t of course refuse this kindness, so I went inside and she sat me down to watch the television. My attention was soon drawn to the noise in the corner of the room where there was a large birdcage on a pole. Not so unusual, but what was in it was unusual.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Instead of the usual budgie, Mrs. Bass had what appeared to be a crow.
Strange, but not the most peculiar thing I’ve seen in a budgie cage. I once visited the house of the Mayoress of Brighouse, Mrs. Mona Mitchell and she had two dead lobsters in her budgie cage.
I was just pondering that perhaps Mrs. Bass was not all she appeared to be. She could be involved in the black arts and this bird was her familiar. Mrs Bass some how sensing my feelings turned from the telly and spotted me looking at the bird.
“He’s called Simon, he’s a Mynah bird.” She said.
This of course could have meant he was a bird that belonged to a coal miner, the bird actually dug tunnels itself, or it was a minor bird, that is not an adult bird, in which case it would soon need a larger cage.
This bird was an extremely messy eater, tearing up grapes and flicking the pips and skins all over the place; he didn’t give a toss about the expense. You had to be pretty sick in our house to be given grapes.
Mrs. Bass ignored the bird and concentrated on the television. The bird was a novelty but the telly was more so and Frankie Howard was on doing a monologue. He suddenly produced a large pair of pink lace up corsets and said,
“Are these yours Mrs?”
I was embarrassed, sitting alone with an older woman, while underwear was being flashed around. Mrs. Bass looked uneasy, she perhaps felt that this was corrupting a youngster and, to deflect attention, she turned to the mynah bird. I thought,
“It’s not me she’s worried about it’s the bird.”
Then she said, “Dirty bird, dirty bird.”
The Mynah bird is of course well known as an excellent talker and mimic and quick as a flash he replied.
“Ergogert im, ergogert im, ergogert urn.”
I thought, “Someone’s flogged her a duff bird it can’t talk properly.”
Then I realised the intonation sounded very familiar, perhaps the poor chap was deaf.
I looked at Mrs. Bass she looked at me despairingly and said,
“Yes, yes, he’s copying your father calling in the dog.”
“Sounds just like Dad.” I said enthusiastically, thinking this might make her feel better about it.
She brightened up and said,
"Oh! Yes, and you should hear him do your Dad coughing.”
I felt sorry for her; all that expense and the bird had decided to mimic my deaf Dad. I daren’t say,
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of teaching him sign language.”
I never saw Simon the Mynah bird again, but learned later from a neighbour, Susan Wood that he did learn to speak very well, with out a trace of a Yorkshire accent. Mrs. Bass’s son Rodney had been a musician in the Guards down south so he could have had some influence. I suspect Simon acquired his ‘Received Pronunciation’ from strict elocution lessons. Where he learned his long A’s such as in; barth for bath, parth for path, grarse for grass and what about, garse marsk? I wonder if Simon called Mrs. Bass, Mrs. Barse There are so many arses in this form of pronunciation I always find it strange when they actually pronounce ‘Arse’ itself they say “Ass.”
I understand sometimes Simon found it all too much and would lapsed into an occasional therapeutic loud and joyful, “Ergogert.” Then he sadly had to return to his elocution exercises;
"Farther’s car is a Jaguar and Par drives rather farst".
"Carsels farms and drarfty barns we go charging parst".

Or my elocution poem:

I like to tell people, “I’m an Anonist.”. They’re look worried and not sure that I should admit to such a thing.
It sounds suspiciously like something to do with the anus. Not as much as ‘Arsonist’ does (or should it be pronounced “Assonist”).

Anyway, everyone knows what an arsonist is but not so an ‘Anonist’. Christians and Jews assume it’s a perversion. They dimly remember the first ‘Onanist’, The son of Judah, Onan, who spilled his seed on the ground (Genesis 38. Verse 9). By ‘Anonist’ I mean of course I wnte poems and don’t put my name on them so they are simply, ‘Anon’. Thus I’m an ‘Anonist’ for good reason. Here’s one of my poems:

Uncle Fred and Auntie Molly Mann lived just outside London at a place called Staines pronounced, “Stines.” Founded, I think by a chap who was a very messy eater.
They had two sons, Terry and Edward. When we stayed with them for a week I had great difficulty communicating with my two cousins due to our different accents
My cousin Edward baffled me when he said, “We’re going to the barfs at free.”
Not only long A’s but Fs for Th’s.
It was quite a while before I figured out what a “Vjoiner” was.

Uncle Fred was a civil servant and he was completely different to any adult I’d ever met. He would read the stories in the Hotspur or Wizard comic to us. He took us to see Guy the gorilla at London Zoo. Guy showed what he thought of us by filling his mouth with water and spitting at us. Later, Uncle Fred told me how he led the rescue when the first ‘V’ bomb was dropped, for which he didn’t get any recognition. He also got a sabre slash when he was involved in a demobilisation riot. Uncle Fred and me were together in the gallery shortly before the Duke of Wellington portrait by Goya was stolen. The day after, at lunchtime, in Piccadilly Circus, I was stopped, as a suspect. Thinking about it later, I thought I’d probably been recognised as having been in the gallery, but actually it probably had more to do with the large oblong parcel I was carrying.
The police over reacted.
I was made to lean against the wall with arms and legs outstretched. This method of searching is quite common now, but then, I’d never seen it. This all took place under the Guinness clock with hundreds of tourists circled round, watching. The parcel, a small hessian sack, contained my sketchbook. They let me go. I think people may have thought I’d made the story up if Uncle Fred hadn’t confirmed it. Uncle Fred always said when he retired that he would run away with me and we’d become film extras; alas it was not to be.

It’s always useful having an extra witness like Uncle Fred to confirm the more bizarre incidents. I was waiting to board a plane to Boston U.S.A. My companion on the flight was Dave Blackburn, the artist. Suddenly an American, further up the queue, interrupted our conversation. He said,
“Excuse me I was just admiring your moustache.”
At that time I had a waxed moustache, one-foot from tip to tip.
“Is it real?” He continued.
“Yes,” I replied and trying to be a smart-ass added “But the nose is false.”
To my amazement he replied, "That’s interesting, so’s mine.”
It transpired his nose had been rebuilt by plastic surgery after being ripped off with a claw hammer.
How? I never asked him.
I still envisage him, a claw up each nostril, and puzzle how it could possibly have happened. My father-in-law, Ian Claude Imlac Lamb MBE, suggested he may have been using the claw hammer to remove a particularly tight pair of false teeth. I thought of Mam’s cautionary tale of the blind man undoing the knot in his shoelace with a fork.

I found out recently that animals use sign language. There’s a frog that lives near waterfalls and because of the noise of the water frogs can't hear each other croaking, which apparently is very important in the mating season. Girls in the textile mills had the same problem because of the noisy looms - I mean difficulty hearing, not mating! The girls solved the problem by carefully articulating their mouths and lip reading. The frogs obviously decided that carefully mouthing croaks and lip reading were not for them, so they communicate by semaphore using their back legs as flags. The ‘semaphore frog’ is quite happy with this system, apparently there’s never any confusion due to regional accents.

Talking of strange animals, I hear the Volcano rabbit is becoming extinct ... I wonder why?

Wilf's new book 'My Best Cellar' (his autobiography up to the age of eleven) can now be ordered online. £ 9.99   download book sample here

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