September 1949 to June 1954

Scene 1 – Early Days

remember my innermost excitement in the summer of 1949, when I first tried on my new clothes for the grammar school. I was so looking forward to it all. To have a blazer, with badge, and a cap with badge, together with new grey short trousers, was the ultimate possession for me. Despite my later indifference to school, although I came to rely on it as a safety valve, I really enjoyed my first couple of years at the grammar school. Obviously, there was comfort in having many of my old pals from primary school, including Led’ead but we seemed to gel in with the new arrivals from other schools as well.

I was in class 1B, which was for the slightly less able. Class 1A was for the swots, which meant that they did Latin as well as French. There were thirty-five boys in my form, and with my birthday falling in November, I was always one of the oldest. Had I been a bright scholar my talents would have been recognised a year earlier, and I would have been pushed forward to be one of the youngest in an older class.

We had a school report at the end of each term. I often think the teachers must have hated that, but then I realise that today, with one school report a year, teachers have to write a paragraph on each student. In my day the words ‘satisfactory’ or ‘satis,’ were all that were scrawled on the report sheet - in any colour of ink - and against every subject. It is also interesting to see that each pupil’s height and weight was officially recorded on the report. My statistics make particularly interesting reading, because I was very small and frail. In December ’49 at the age of twelve, I was just four feet two inches tall, and weighed four stone four pounds. Even a year later I had grown in height by only one and a half inches, and had put on just two and a half pounds.

here were two female teachers, in this all-male bastion, one who took music and the other history. ‘Daisy’ Riley came from the girl’s school next door, at certain times of the week, to train our angelic voices for singing on speech day. We also seemed to have innumerable hymn practices, because a hymn was sung every morning at assembly.

For history, we had ‘Fanny’ Wilding. Her nickname, so legend had it, was because you could see up her skirt if you sat in a certain position in the classroom, and she sat in another. However, you had to get it right, and anticipate where she would sit, and at what angle. Try as I might, in the days when you did not have to occupy allotted desks, I never seemed to get the combination right. Led’ead and I would sit together, sharing our dismay but living in hope. Then a message would surreptitiously reach us, written on a scrap of paper, ‘Ikey Barlow has just seen ‘it.’’ We would turn and look at Ikey Barlow, sitting there, blushing at his few moments of fame, knowing that we all envied him. There was no way of proving his claim, of course, and in those impressionable days anything was possible, so we believed him and hoped that our turn would be next. It never was, but the legend lived on.

he only distinction I can recall during my first year at grammar school, was to be joint-first in an extended-essay-competition on Roman Chester, as part of our history lesson. In those days, one visited the Grosvenor Museum in Chester quite regularly, making drawings of various artefacts. In fact, it was my drawings in the essay, particularly my attempts at pop-up figures that pulled me from obscurity and gave me a prize. I laugh now when I look at some of my sketches - a yellowish circle and the caption ‘a Roman bracelet,’ and a brown twig-like thing and the words ‘a Roman key.’ Still, the curator of the museum himself came and presented the prizes. A book on Roman Chester!

can recall my elder sister Pauline being married to Peter Hughes. That seemed to be a happy event, and dad wore his smart uniform, with medals. I was a little shrimp of a kid, and Pill tells me that ‘I was wasting away before their very eyes.’ Photographs seem to prove this.

Pill was now ‘off our hands’ which released bed space in the ever-cramped Lord Street. Pill and Pete went to live in Christleton Road, above the hairdressers that Pill was now managing, if indeed she was not the owner - with dad - of the entire business.

This meant that for the next few years, and particularly when we had moved to Thornton, my father and I would regularly descend on Pill for our midday meal. How the hell she managed it, I’ll never know. However, after a full morning’s work, and whilst some customers were still under the drier, Pill would have the pressure cooker on with meat, potatoes and vegetables therein. Pill was the pioneer in our household for this previously unheard of domestic gadget. Dad viewed anything new with great suspicion, and felt that there was nothing to compete with a good old-fashioned saucepan. For my part, I hated the noise the pressure cooker made, and I was disappointed that it didn’t make chips.

However, Pill taught me to love gravy, lashings of it, and I am renowned to this day, in various ports of call around the globe, as the one who loves roast potatoes and a jug of gravy.

In addition to the main course, this was an era when you had to have a dessert - or pudding, as we called it. It was unthinkable to do without it, and it invariably involved some kind of pastry or pie dish with hot custard. Again, Pill was an expert in the latter, which she made in generous proportions, and again I have always had a liking for lots of custard whenever I have a dish that requires it; a mere spoonful of the stuff is of no use to anyone.

Because of these lunchtime meals, ‘poor old Pete’ - as he was forever known - came home to an evening meal of beans on toast. Pete was forever uncomplaining, and all he ever wanted at night was a simple meal, but my parents thought it was wicked that he only ever got this light snack. I am sure that mum, on one of her off days, was convinced that Pill was trying to do him in.

Pill was the first in our household to purchase a loaf of this new-fangled American idea for bread; it was called ‘sliced bread’ and came wrapped up in wax paper with the baker’s name on the wrapping. Dad would go berserk, because it cost a penny more than the same sized loaf at the bakers. He would say “More money than sense; any-one would think they were rich. They’re just too idle to cut their own bread.” Anyway, we kids were not bothered with it because it didn’t have the thick, burnt crust that our ‘proper’ bread had. However, in the fullness of time mum started to use it - and it was particularly useful for afternoon tea on a Sunday when visitors called. We would all have sandwiches that looked the same size, rather than some uneven ‘door-steps’ that could be off-putting. Father remained convinced that sliced bread was a gimmick that would not last.

t was in these early days at the grammar school, and certainly by the second year, that I must have been keen on French. In fact, I think I was merely swept along with the general enthusiasm of my class, for I was booked on the ‘trip of a lifetime’ - namely to go to France with the school, and to stay with a French family. This would have been my first ever trip out of the country, which was quite something for any young person to consider, just six years after the end of the war. The scarcity of many material goods and rationing of food (we still used coupons to obtain our weekly ration of sweets - as well as many other grocery items) was the order of the day.

ut it was not to be. My small stature had been causing some concern, and at an annual school medical examination, it was decided that I had a bad case of anaemia, so much so that I could not go on the trip. I was confined to bed for a couple of months, and put on iron tablets. I suppose that, from that moment on, I gradually started to improve. It was to take forty years for me to know - and the doctors who treated me at that time obviously did not know - that I had the classic symptoms of the coeliac condition - bloated or distended stomach, anaemia, tiredness and so on. If only I had started the gluten-free diet then! This was at Easter 1951.

o a boy called Robert Alexander (an A-stream swot) was going to France in my place, to stay with the French boy and his family whose name, by now, we had learned was ‘Pollard’ - Monsieur et Madame Pollard, and their son Jean. (Even now, close to half a century later, the name ‘Pollard’ still fills me with dread). Anyway, the school visit went ahead without me - and I do not recall being the least bit upset; in fact, I forgot all about it.

It was also at this time that I was runner-up in the local judging for the National Road Safety Competition. “Your entry form has been chosen to be forwarded for inclusion in the finals ……. You have also won a theatre prize ….. You can choose any prize you want up to the value of £1.” So went the blurb from the local committee for road safety. I did not come anywhere in the national finals. For my prize I chose a little slide projector; it was really a small kind of rubber torch that came with two strips of film, each with 6 black and white still pictures. It gave me a lot of pleasure, but was rather limited in scope. Dots went up to the Gaumont Theatre, on a Saturday morning, to collect the prize for me.

This was a big part of our weekly life - Saturday morning cinema for children. The entrance fee was very cheap but you all had to sit downstairs - unless it was your birthday. Then you were allowed in the circle and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ The cinema would then start with cartoons - always my favourite. In those days, it was more or less wholly Charlie Chaplin, or Walt Disney and his Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck et al family. The serial followed this; Flash Gordon on Mars was always a chiller, for me. Finally the feature film itself, usually in black and white - films in technicolour were still quite rare. The all-time favourite would be a Laurel and Hardy film.

More than once us kids would then return to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon, particularly if it was a good feature, like a Tarzan film. I suppose it was the jungle and all the frightening animals - and somehow you could feel the heat of the steamy tropics. We would pay our entrance fee, then sit from two o’clock in the afternoon until something like ten o’clock at night. We would see the complete show three times round. You could do that as the programme was continuous - adverts, cartoon, newsreel, trailers, B movie, then the feature film. There was no question of being challenged for having seen the programme. I know that mum always loved it when we were at the cinema, for she knew where we were and it gave her a bit of a break.

The National Anthem was always played on the screen, at the end of the evening, with pictures of the king. However, you were allowed to rush for the doors, and if you reached them before the anthem started, you could continue on your way home, with a clear conscience. But if you did not quite reach the exit, or for those in the middle who did not stand a chance of rushing out, it was mandatory that you all stood to attention silently and respectfully, until the anthem had finished.

A visit to the fish-and-chip shop was then the custom; this is when they made their money, as the cinemas and the pubs emptied.

will always remember that day, in February ’52, when I left the classroom to go home to lunch - or dinner, as we then called the midday meal. There was a teacher, whose name I’ve forgotten, looking out of the window and, as I made to walk past him he said to me, shaking his head, “What a sad day, Hunt; it’s just too bad to be true.” Rather alarmed I asked “Why? What’s happened, sir?” and after a pause he mumbled “The King … the King is dead.”

Not quite with it, and still uncertain about this distressed teacher, I asked him which king. He soon put me right, telling me that there was only one king, and it was ours.

I ran all the way home - but already I’d seen several flags flying at half-mast. I burst in the house, but mum had already heard the news. As a youngster, I seem to recall that we all wondered what would happen to us now. We did not immediately understand the continuity of the crown and therefore the fact that the king had died - with no more kings to take his place, it seemed - then what was the next likely move?

A couple of days later the Princess Elizabeth arrived back at London airport - they were all calling her The Queen now - and in the papers we saw three veiled ladies at the lying-in-state, the Queen, the Queen Mother and the Queen Grandmother. (The latter was the old Queen Mary, widow of King George the Fifth who died in 1936).

It was all very sad. I remember dad coming home and mum trying to find him a black armband, which she finally made from a pair of old stockings or something similar. All officers were required to wear a black armband on the death of the Sovereign, and had to wear them for the period of court mourning, which was something like three months. It seemed to me, everyone in the land who wore a uniform also wore a black armband - they were everywhere.

At school, I can remember so well the whole school being assembled in the hall, to listen to the funeral service. This was quite an event, and was certainly the first time that the school had actually tuned into the radio for a live broadcast; indeed, this was probably the first live broadcast of a sovereign’s funeral. The order of service had been published, so we joined in the hymns and prayers. It was right at the end, when our tension gave way to relief. Led’ead and I started to get the giggles when we were all required to sing the National Anthem. For all of our little lives - with our little brains - we had sung about ‘the king’ and ‘send him victorious,’ now we had to substitute the words ‘queen’ and ‘her’ and we found it a bit too much. Fortunately, we did not disgrace ourselves on such a sombre occasion.

um was busy rehearsing for Chester Amateur Operatic Society’s production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, when she dashed home one night and said, without pausing for breath, “The producer wants a little boy to be in The Mikado and he knows I’ve got a little boy so he said can you come along and let him have a look at you to see if you’ll fit the part.” Naturally, this caused great excitement, and a couple of days later I saw the producer and got the two-minute role.

The society had, after nearly half a century with just a couple of producers, and because of ‘natural wastage,’ decided to hire an expert from the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. He immediately declared, having known both G and S and Richard D’Oyly Carte, that Koko should have a little boy in attendance to carry off his sword of state. You may know that Koko arrives with this great sword, all the chorus singing “Behold The Lord High Executioner,” and he finally staggers forward implanting it into the ground - because of its great weight. I then step forward, casually swing it round and onto my shoulders, and walk off.

That was my part, not even a curtain call at the end; because it was so late and I had, supposedly, to be in bed by then (the law of the land about exploiting under-age children). Nevertheless, it was great fun being a part of the show, and I loved being dressed up in kimono and wig.

here was one teacher at school, ‘Tubs’ Ramshaw - a keen G & S fan - who was forever-after calling me Koko Hunt. ‘Tubs’ taught history to the senior end of the school, and unfortunately I was never one of his star pupils. I only managed to pass ‘O’ Level in the sixth form, and so was never considered for ‘A’ Level. It is a shame really, if not a crime, that his style of teaching left one completely unmotivated. Reams of duplicated sheets, dog-eared from continuous use since the 1920’s, were the sole means of imparting knowledge. The only one historical fact that every boy in the school remembered was the Monroe Doctrine, because it gave us an illusion of screen idol Marilyn. His unfortunate style, untenable today, was “learn these dates or you’ll get caned.” History is the one subject in which I have become increasingly interested in my adult years, purely through the reading of campaigns, biographies and the like. I always say to enquirers about my alternative choice of career, that if I could not have been the director of the National Gallery in London, then I’d liked to have been a Historian.

he next Easter, the year after my non-trip to Paris, it was the turn of the French school to visit us, in Chester. We were not expecting to be involved in any way, but my French teacher asked if we - the Hunts - could put up both the Pollard boys. Apparently, there was a younger brother to Jean, called Jacques, and they were both so ‘very keen’ and their mother wanted them to be together on their first trip to England. It seemed that the parents of Robert Alexander would not be able to put them up - we were always suspicious of the reasons given, and assumed that they just did not want the bother.

So it came to pass that the Pollard boys stayed with us, and it was very largely mum and Dots who did the talking to them, with dad as well, when he was home. Dad was one of those who shouted, in a loud voice, to foreigners. Brian kept a very low profile, refusing even to acknowledge their presence, and I was involved only because of the several school trips that were arranged. We were also helped by the fact that the Alexanders had them for some of the time.

I always remember dad being furious with the French boys for dipping their buttered toast into their cups of tea, in typical foreign style. He just could not tolerate it, and eventually he would not let them do it, telling them that they must live like we do. They were very puzzled by this and Jean, the elder and brighter of the two, would question why he couldn’t eat his toast any way he wanted to, just as he could in Paris. He would also say, ominously, “When David comes to Paris, he too will eat like we do.” Well, this was like a red rag to a bull, and father would go orbital in his denunciation of manners that were so un-British.

n December of ’52 I was a member of the cast for the Grammar School production of Abraham Lincoln. I was chuffed to bits. I had the part of a butler-cum-clerk and when Abe rang the bell on his desk I would enter and take his orders. I just could not understand why everyone tittered on my first entrance, chuckled on my next entrance, and positively laughed aloud on my next entrance. Even the producer, in the wings, was enjoying it and did not put me right. Perhaps I was the only light relief in a rather heavy, wordy play.

What was happening, and I was rather too dumb to realise it, was that I was waiting behind the door in the wings and, as soon as the bell tinkled I opened the door and entered - the ultimate eavesdropper on the president! It never occurred to me to pause a few seconds, because it had been drilled into me to be on cue - and I had heard enough of a wrathful producer yelling at various cast members for being late. I do not suppose there were any talent scouts in the audience, and so I remain undiscovered.

he death of Stalin in Russia was indeed world headline news; we all wondered what it would mean, in terms of a lessening or increasing of the chances of a third world war. I remember dad being particularly agitated, as there were suddenly many meetings he had to attend at Western Command regarding the changed world scenario. He knew at first hand what it was like to live through two world wars, and his generation felt that the third war was only a matter of time. We all knew it would be between Russia and America, with the rest of the Allies tagging along and taking the full force of battle in Europe.

ut this was 1953 and we were all becoming excited about the Coronation. Apparently, all school children were to have a day’s holiday – a very rare event. Before then, however, our family moved out to Thornton-le-Moors, a hamlet just six miles from Chester. This large, rambling house, known as Thornton Green House, was going very cheaply - mainly because it was in a dilapidated state - and it gave us space, and accommodation, for three growing teenagers. It also took us kids out into the country.

t would be impossible to give a brief picture of Thornton Green House with any accuracy. It was old, stood in nearly three acres of uncultivated ground, and had suspect drainage with a septic tank that kept blocking. But we all loved it there, and over the coming years dad and Pete, as the head labourers and architects-in-chief, with Pill and mum as secondary helpers, advisers, and horticultural experts, and us kids as general dogsbodies and light-duty wallahs, changed the landscape of Thornton into one of envied beauty. A full-sized tennis lawn was at the back of the house; we had proper tennis nets, and even a roller and a contraption for making the white lines. The only drawback of the tennis court was that it had an incline of some fifteen degrees from one end to the other; eventually we hardly noticed this, as we had devised a fair system, which meant that we were forever changing ends.

The vegetable garden at the lower end of the back garden was a tribute to dad’s skills and knowledge; the only drawback was that over-large portions of vegetable dominated every meal. At the front of the house, a large circle had been changed from a wild patch into a beautifully manicured lawn with flowerbeds. We will all remember for ever the one thousand tulip bulbs that came up each year; dad had ordered these from Holland, and at the end of each season all the bulbs would be pulled up and stored until it was time to plant them again. Other flowers would then dominate the beds, throughout the year. How it was done, I will never fully comprehend, but deep trenches, with lime and plenty of dung (lots of that from the next door farmyard) seemed to be part of the secret.

The woods at the extreme front of the house, as well as at the back, hosted a number of fruit trees, of which the apple dominated, in many varieties. We also had a large conker tree - all to ourselves. It was ours! The woods became a good training area for hiding in, and Bal and I built - or laid out - a track all the way around the perimeter of the house. Today we would call it a jogging track, but that word had not been invented then so it was simply our racetrack. The only problem was that I was no competition for Bal in our timed races, and likewise I easily beat the two small boys next door, so there was really never an event to get too excited about. However, it did lead us to building the odd den or hideout, in the undergrowth, and these were good fun, particularly when we invited friends from Chester to come along.

In Thornton house itself, we all had our own rooms, and Pill and Pete were soon to join us from the hairdressers and occupy ‘the flat’ that was attached to the house. In due course, we were to make an entrance from their bedroom, in the flat, through to our house; this worked beautifully, and gave Pill and Pete an extra bedroom as well as access to our bathroom, which they lacked.

The lounge at Thornton was much larger than any front room we had ever seen before, and had French windows opening onto the patio, and the tennis court. All the downstairs rooms had interior wooden shutters, which blocked out the daylight when closed and would no doubt delay potential intruders at night. The hall was large enough to take a full-sized table tennis table, and together with the half-sized snooker table - bought from the rector of Thornton-le-Moors! - we always had plenty of games to occupy us. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of challengers, and ‘poor old Pete’ was challenged as soon as he arrived home at night, having spent a ten-hour day labouring away as a car mechanic. For my part, I was an easy target and never excelled at any of the games that required a good eye, co-ordination and skill. In fact, I was a waste of time but as an available competitor, it gave others a chance to improve their skills.

This was Thornton. We loved those summers in the mid-fifties, when the crops were harvested late in the evening; the men would have guns to shoot rabbits, and the children would sit on the tractors. We had free access to the farmyard, to see the cows being milked, to look with fright at the bull, seemingly forever tied up in his own quarters. We climbed the haystacks, and played in the barn. In the very early dawn, we would - just occasionally - go looking for mushrooms and in the daytime, we would pick blackberries. Our favourite pudding was blackberry-and-apple pie.

In the winter there seemed to be more snow than there is these days, and the ponds would all freeze over, giving more fun - and bumps - and looking, oh! so picturesque. We have very little photographic evidence of such events, which sadly can never be repeated. The house still stands, with vast new wings added to make it into a hotel, and the fields have given way to roads - all in the name of progress.

Ironically, Bal and I had a photographic studio upstairs, with all the equipment needed for developing, printing and enlarging films (black and white only, of course). We took general shots of weddings, and household events, but nothing of any future value, and nothing that showed every room of Thornton in all its glory, or the surrounding landscapes through all the seasons. I could weep, now, when I think of the lost opportunities - when none of us thought that what we were experiencing was unique.

We all loved Thornton, not a bad word would be said against by any of its former inhabitants, but …… eventually the family started to migrate, and it just became too much for dad and mum to keep up. It was in the mid-sixties that they finally gave it all up, after something like twelve years there. There is no doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to do.

Also, and I have to say this, I do think that Thornton altered my own way of life, interests, and life-style - not necessarily for the best. The problem was that Thornton was cut off from the rest of civilisation, and was just too far for all our friends to make casual visits. They had to come out to see us on specially arranged day trips - when we would invariably fetch them in the car, and take them home again at night. I feel that it did not encourage friendships, let us put it that way, being so far out of things. I even started staying away from St John’s Church, and finally gave up the choir - no doubt, my voice would have had something to do with that. I feel that had I remained a town boy, in the mid fifties, I would have - unquestionably - had a lot more to do in the evenings and at weekends. No doubt I would have merged with various groups of my peers - and, who knows, maybe I would have turned out worse than I did, and maybe I would have been led astray, rather than being the virtuous brat that I tried to kid people that I was.

hester Amateur Operatic Society were going to do Edward German’s Merrie England, and Dots and I were going to be the two royal pages. We even had a few lines to say, so it caused great excitement. The choice of opera was, of course, to celebrate Coronation Year, and I must say that the singing of such numbers as “The Yeomen of England” evoked patriotic thoughts. It was a very musical show, by which I mean that all the tunes were catchy. I can recall the Sunday afterwards, when the show was over, and feeling the effects of a great anti-climax. The magic of the week before, of the night before, was hard to shake off. I was quite sad, and felt that I could never re-live such a happy experience. Well, in years to come, I did, with different musical productions, and the Sunday after the show always remained an anti-climax.

I produced an article on Merrie England for the school magazine. Reading it now I blanch at my puerile style of writing, and hope that I have improved somewhat over the years.

he ageing Queen Grandmother passed away during the springtime, not unexpectedly, and it was immediately decreed that the official court mourning period, again with black armbands for everyone, would be for one month. It was also quietly said that the plans for the Coronation would go ahead unhindered. Apparently, they had all feared this clash of events, but Queen Mary herself had decreed that nothing was to stop the happier of the two.

he main colourful feature that I can recall about the Coronation is the way that bread, sweets, and all other kinds of goods came in souvenir wrappings. Sadly, the only evidence I have to this day is a collection of half a dozen loaf wrappers - but they do evoke such memories of those days.

We were one of those households that purchased a television for the big day, but before then we had the opportunity to view the Cup Final from Wembley, when Blackpool (and Stanley Matthews) beat Bolton Wanderers. It was magic. The small television, about a fourteen-inch screen (black and white, of course), was housed in a polished wooden cabinet. It had folding doors to protect the screen - for all those many hours of the day when there was no transmission. In fact, we were typical of thousands in that we used to sit and stare at the test card for hours.

All schoolchildren in the land received a coronation mug, which had a small package of boiled sweets inside (the equivalent of a week’s extra ration). I often wonder how many mugs got broken, as young children rushed home to show their parents. Also, I often muse that a great percentage were used as a normal piece of household crockery, with very little effort made to preserve them as souvenirs.

Coronation Day arrived, and we were glued to the television set. The house seemed pretty full with various locals present. Mum had made a large supply of sandwiches to keep us going. We had a full day’s viewing, which was unheard of for television in those days, and the fact that it was an ‘outside broadcast’ meant that this was a pioneering broadcast for the BBC. Consequently there were some hitches, but we managed to see it all, including the non-stop rain all day.

The Coronation Day newspapers were full of the news that Mount Everest had been conquered. That night there was a Coronation Variety Show on television, from the London Palladium, which was the first time we had seen anything like this. It was a great day but by the end of the week, it was all forgotten by us kids, and it was business as usual.

can remember the dreadful day when we received a letter from The Pollards, inviting me to Paris. I seem to think that Brian was also included in the invitation. Obviously, Madame Pollard thought it would be excellent for us two boys to pal up with her two boys, possibly starting a life-long friendship. She did not know Brian, and his defiant and once-off declaration ‘I’m not going,’ was taken as final. The grammar school had now finished the liaison with the French families - it had served its purpose for the previous two years, but they had reckoned without Madame Pollard, who wanted the relationship to continue.

I was the main target, of course, because she would have thought that I was still heartbroken at missing the trip initially and, naturally, she assumed that on receipt of her offer to visit them in France I would have jumped at the chance. Well, I did not want to go to France either and so some pretext was found for mum to send a polite letter saying that I could not make it.