Act I - Early Years
Primary School - November 1937 to August 1949You’ll be happy to know that I’ve no recollection of my infant life. So that immediately eliminates a lot of baby talk. However, I suppose I ought to admit that I was born on 9th November 1937 some twenty minutes ahead of my twin sister Heather (known from birth by the family name of ‘Dots’). To jump ahead some twelve years, we went to school with another boy-girl set of twins who usually made it into the national press - even then! - by virtue of the fact that they were born a full week apart!
We were born in the City of Lichfield in Staffordshire. This is a city I never got to know, and which I visited as a tourist only once or twice. This is because it was never on my route of travel and, like most people, I was always in a hurry to get to another destination. I usually take time these days to stop off at all such interesting places.
Our cradle residence was in a married quarter in Whittington Barracks, Lichfield, but by the start of the Second World War we had moved to 7 Frimley Grove Gardens in Frimley, Surrey.
This was the first time my parents had their own house, after some years of married quarters. We were a family of six; mother and father, then Pauline (‘Pill’) some seven years older than Brian (‘Bal’), who was about eighteen months older than the twins. My father was posted to Aldershot, just a few miles away. As it was now war time one apparently had a frightening but spectacular nightly view of the red skies over London as the bombs dropped; I can certainly remember running to the air-raid shelter, at the bottom of the garden. Apparently, father had built this with corrugated iron for the roof, and the usual earth and sand for the walls, the whole being as deep into the ground as he was able to make it. Later on in the war, as the bombing became less intense, although still a danger, we slept in the house. The three children in the lounge under a massive old bookcase with drop-down sides This meant that had the house been hit, we would have been safe under this structure, with the rubble all around us. Frimley was of course very much in the middle of military territory, with Aldershot just a short distance in one direction, and Camberley and Sandhurst just up the road, so it was not the ideal family location in wartime. But life went on, and us kids went to the local Frimley Junior School.
By the end of the war we had moved to the City of Chester, because father was posted to Western Command. It was impossible to get housing in those days, but somehow he managed to persuade Jo and Johnny Cross whom he’d met, and who were to become close family friends, to put up the Hunt family at 26 Filkins Lane. Chester became my home for the next quarter of a century, and to all enquirers of my area of descent I say that I am a Cestrian, even if only an honorary one.
Jo Cross (who was the male) was in the RAF. I remember his uniform, the photographs, and his homecoming at the end of the war. My future brother-in-law, Peter Hughes, was in the army.
Eventually we moved to our own house, at 17 Lord Street, Chester. This was a small cul-de-sac with about ten or fifteen terraced houses on each side, and was probably very much what would have been called lower-middle class. It was definitely a rung up the social ladder, compared to some of my school chums, and was perhaps a fitting residence for a Captain in the British Army.
I can remember the moment the war ended, as I was woken up to listen to the broadcast on the wireless. Father was saying "This is a historical moment son - it’s the end of the war." And then we heard the voice of the King making his broadcast to the Empire.
Next day, a public holiday, we tramped the streets of Chester. It had been raining, and everywhere was damp, but the flags were proudly hanging from every possible building.
In June ’45 I was issued with, and still have, my own National Registration Identity Card (signed by my mother). This became my National Health Service card, and the number on it was the official means of identifying me for the next fifty years; the number finally changed in the nineties, to an all-digital number. Rage on, all ye against identity cards.
I went to Cherry Grove Primary School, which still stands today in all its Victorian glory. I remember very little of those days, but certain events do come back. I remember that all boys at primary school, and even up to the age of about 13 or 14, always wore short grey trousers, whether it was for school, for playing, or for Sunday best. Long trousers were just out of the question, and we knew it as a fact of life, so never even considered that the rules could ever be changed. We accepted the fact that, until we were in the second or third year at Secondary School, we would always wear shorts. There were no such things as track suits of course; after school, we took off our grey school shorts and put on our scruffy grey playing-out shorts; on Sundays we put on our best grey shorts. And we always wore grey shirts, with a school tie. There was no question of a boy ever wearing any colour of tie, other than his school tie; it was just never done – mainly because there were no dyes and no colours in those days, just grey.
I can also remember having my daily 1/3-pint of milk at morning break time; in the cold weather it was a great prize if you managed to get one that was frozen. This was an age when one did not have a refrigerator, let alone ice cubes. Ice-lollipops were a summer dream. The milk came in glass bottles, with a round cardboard lid or top. These milk bottle tops became great collectors’ items over the years, as in those days the bottling factories, showing great enterprise, produced many eye-catching bottle-top designs.
My biggest memory of those days at school was the cane; one lived in dread of it. It was either delivered across the hands or on the backside. I can honestly say I never had it, as I’m sure it’s the sort of thing I couldn’t forget. But what lives in my mind was the cynicism of a witch-like female teacher, fortunately I forget her name, who announced to my class that, after lunch (we used to call it ‘dinner’), some-one was going to receive the cane for an, as yet, undisclosed misdemeanour. We all shook with fear. These were the days when you went home for lunch, (you always walked - no school buses), and you never ever missed school unless you were ill in bed. There was no question of truancy, at least at that age. So every boy (the girls occupied the other half of the school with their own entrances, classrooms, teachers etc.) had a miserable lunch, all assuming that he was the guilty one who had been found out! Anyway, when we had all returned for the afternoon session and were sitting at our desks in absolute silence, the wrongdoing was explained and the guilty person was named and caned firmly. The relief on the rest of the class, that they had survived - but what sadism!
We all used to go to Tarvin Road Methodist Chapel, three times, every Sunday. We would be sitting there a good ten minutes before the start of the service, knowing that father was still at home, finally putting on his Sunday best with five minutes to go. He would then sprint the couple of hundred yards along the back alleys, calmly walking into the chapel as the organist was playing the introduction to the first hymn. That was his style, and he never changed in his life.
I can remember when we did not go to Chapel once, for whatever reason, and that Dad made us have our own service at home! Mother would lead the singing, and he would read a couple of prayers. We all had our own hymnbooks. Chapel itself was no doubt something of a chore for us children, but was always a source of some kind of amusement. My memory is that everyone seemed so old, the men in their suits, the women - without exception - always wearing their Sunday hats.
When we had visitors at home, the ladies would take off their coats but always kept their hats on, if it was going to be only a short stop, say for a cup of tea. Things were very formal. We kids were expected to say very little.
Sunday evenings we were always in bed trying to sleep, when Sunday Half-Hour was on the wireless, still as it is today at the same time of 8.30pm. I knew this because we could hear it on the Phillips’s wireless from next door, and one could always hear Nellie Phillips warbling away; this would have Brian and I in fits of laughter.
My mother was a member of the Women’s Bright Hour; they used to meet weekly, make cakes for the usual functions, and so on. Father used to run a keep-fit-cum-sports-night for the local youths; they called it "Capn’ Hunt’s Night". I always remember when dad was promoted to Major, they would still knock at the door and ask "Is there any Capn’ Hunt’s tonight, Major Hunt?"
I can also remember a Concert Night in the little hall under the chapel, and I even took part in it. There was a conjuror, and the usual singers. Then there were a couple of sketches that dad organised, and a demonstration of gymnastics by the lads from his classes. This is where I did a forward-roll onto the stage, wearing the Army Physical Training Corps vest, saluted and said "In 1944, Hitler went to War, he lost his pants in the middle of France, in 1944." I then did a forward- roll off, and into the wings.
At the end of the war, every schoolchild in the land received an impressive certificate, bearing the Royal Coat of Arms, from HM The King. This was to thank us all for our fortitude and courage, and to continue working together …. and so on. It was ‘signed’ "George R I"
We all had a day off from school for the Royal Wedding in November 1947, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip of Greece. It was broadcast on the wireless. When one thinks of the size of the old wireless, compared to today’s modern transistors, one can only marvel. The wireless was a large wooden cabinet - larger than the size of today’s microwave oven - and it relied on a number of valves inside, these being like small electric light bulbs. If one valve went, then the wireless wouldn’t work. Also in those days, there was no FM, so on either long wave or medium wave one would pick up an ever increasing number of foreign - and pirate - stations.
The year 1947 also lingers in the memory for two more, very British reasons - the weather! The summer had been the hottest and driest ever, and we kids spent the whole six-weeks summer holiday at Talacre, in N Wales. We were all bronzed and the only protection we ever used was calamine lotion, at the end of the day, to relieve the burning skin.
Then, would you believe it, but that winter was the coldest ever, with snow so deep that I, being particularly small, was in danger of not being able to see over the top. It was great; the City of Chester has never had anything like it since. Even the River Dee was frozen over, for the first time in living memory. Snowmen and snowballs were the order of the day, all day, for quite a long time. The clothing we wore was never waterproof, so we were always sogging wet; and our feet would be frozen, as in those days there was nothing more protective than normal wellington boots.
In these years, in the late forties and early fifties, our summer holidays were invariably spent in the rented bungalow at Talacre. It was only small but somehow it slept us three kids and mother. When he was around, father would come and join us at weekends. Pill and Pete also managed to fit in from time to time, plus the occasional friend of Dots’, and not forgetting our two cats. Mind you we did have a tent outside, so Bal and I slept in there. Talacre was Heaven for us kids in those years. Swimming in the sea, using an old aircraft inner tube as a float gave us hours of fun; dad had made sure that we kids would all be swimmers as soon as we could walk. The fun we had in the miles of sand-hills (now sadly all gone). We used to go mushrooming in the early morning, and at the end of August it was blackberry-and-apple time.
I still have a vivid picture of the red flag flying on certain sections of the beach, with barbed wire fencing areas off. This was the unexploded mines area, a relic from the sea defences during the war. On the beaches and in the sand hills, we would forever be picking up empty bullet cases. The prize trophy, and we managed to get one, was the cartridge belt that they used in machine guns. This could be worn over the shoulder in bandit style, and with all the empty cartridges in place it looked formidable, giving the wearer a great deal of cuedos, but it was very heavy.
It was in these early, and very formative years that we kids became adept at playing whist and bridge - favourite games of mum. I was also keen on chess, but as Brian kept on beating me, and as the game was ever so slow, "Hurry up," he would say, "I haven’t got all day." my enthusiasm soon waned.
Perhaps it was this memory of our days in the bungalow that was a sub-conscious call that made me invest in the mobile home nearly half a century later.
I can always remember going to London and seeing the rubble of bombed buildings. I was amazed at seeing the grass and weeds growing up through the mounds of bricks and masonry.
We only ever passed through London in those days, moving from Euston station to the next terminus - bus or train - to go to Aldershot, Camberley and Frimley. It seemed that the capital was no attraction to those who had no business there. I often wonder whether there were any tourists in the late forties, and what they did - with so many bombed out buildings to navigate. They must have toured the rubble I guess.
It was in 1947 that father went on a three-year posting to Singapore. I never really asked, even years later, whether he could have taken us lot with him. Service children’s schools certainly existed then, but that was no guarantee that his type of posting allowed him to be accompanied. Indeed, I was aware that he travelled all over South East Asia. However, had we gone it would have caused so much domestic upheaval, and I guess that in his mind (remembering his own youth) our education was the all-important thing, and we must not have that interrupted. So I can’t speculate how the history of our family might have changed, had we gone to Singapore in the late nineteen forties.
(Only after I had finished this manuscript did I learn that my father was in fact very keen for us all to go with him to Singapore. It was mother who was set against the idea, not wanting to give up her home, and naturally worried about the trouble spots of the world – having survived the gruelling six years of war.)
Whilst father was out there, we received regular food parcels containing sweets, jellies, packets of sugar, tins of evaporated milk and so on - all unavailable in this country; you must remember that everything here was rationed, (some things until almost ten years after the war), so we had to have coupons to allow us to buy just a few boiled sweets - per week.
I particularly liked the Chinese newspapers that all the food parcels were wrapped in, and there were various games and puzzles for us kids. I still have the Japanese paper money that dad claimed to have picked up off the streets, as it was quite worthless of course.
I don’t recall dad’s departure for the Far East. Perhaps it was deliberately played down to avoid upsetting us, and in this the family were very successful; I certainly never recall being sad, but do remember that dad was a bit of a tyrant and we kids lived in a certain amount of awe of him. Consequently we probably viewed the immediate future, without him, with some hopeful release. We couldn’t easily forget being herded out into the back yard, for early morning exercises, before then cleaning our teeth, in military style, and having them inspected. No matter how hard dad tried, (and perhaps because of this), he never succeeded in attracting any of his children into the world of either physical fitness or recreation.
My school report for ‘The School Year Ending Mid-Summer 1947’ bore the non-congratulatory statement, written by the form teacher "His examination results were very gratifying. He came top of the form." I can’t remember anyone being wild with enthusiasm, which is just as well as I never repeated the performance.
Life in the nineteen forties would seem dull by today’s standards, but we children always seemed to be busy enough. There was no television to turn to, and if one was bored one went out and looked for something to do. In the autumn it would be a game of conkers; the secret was to make a hole through the centre of the conker, using a meat skewer, then bake it in the oven, until it was rock hard; now thread the string through, and you had a potential champion in your hand - one that would smash newly harvested conkers to pieces.
A variation on the use of conkers was to make a long sash of them, worn over your shoulder; it gave little boys playing ‘cowboys and indians’ a feeling of having extra armour.
Other seasonal games would include the playing of marbles; this you did along the gutter, trying to hit your opponent’s marble and so winning his supply. You could also swap marbles, but for a beautiful large glass marble, with swirls of colour inside, a coveted trophy, no number of small clay marbles would suffice.
A variation of amusement would be to follow the rag-and-bone man. He came around from time to time, yelling out his call sign, and people would offer him their old junk for which they would receive something like a penny - invariably they would be glad just to get rid of their stuff. The rag-and-bone man had an old cart, pulled by an equally old donkey, and if the latter went to the toilet in the middle of the road, there was a veritable pile of manure for the rose bushes. We always admired the rag-and-bone man, and thought what a wonderful way of life it must be, so much better than being at school.
Having mentioned pennies, I must say that the children of today are missing so much just in the collecting of these items. In the fifties you would have the heads of all the sovereigns on them, right back to Victoria. The latter consisted of two types, the older, more mature head, and the young head or ‘bun penny’ because Victoria’s hair was depicted in a ‘bun.’ It was quite the normal thing to receive half a dozen pennies in your change, and to see the heads of Queen Victoria, King Edward the Seventh, King George the Fifth and Sixth, and - later - our present Queen.
Roller skates always seemed to have their season. In those days they were of a heavy metal construction, with wheels that always jammed and got rusted up. Consequently they rarely worked effectively, and one couldn’t build up any speed. But they were a source of entertainment, and it was quite usual to see one child on a bicycle pulling along another child who had just one roller skate. He rolled along on the one skate, the other leg off the ground, and if they were lucky a fair amount of road could be covered. Falls were hard, and injuries were heavy, be it off roller skates or out of conker trees, but no one seemed to get hurt like today’s skiers, footballers and horse riders, who end up in plaster.
Bicycles were in the same league as roller skates - old and clapped out, and forever getting punctures. And you just couldn’t get spare parts for them. It was rare to see a bicycle with mudguards, and none had the shiny, slender chrome frames of today, but dull, camouflage painted, heavy tubes prone to rust. The braking system was equally suspect, but as long as it had something to slow you down a bit, then you were fine. The tyres were absolutely bald; no tread on them whatsoever. Another thing; there were no kids bikes then, just different sized adult bicycles so invariably any child seen riding a bicycle was doing so in a standing-up position. Some would have large blocks of wood strapped to the pedals so that they could reach them. We used to fall off bicycles as well as roller skates.
An occasional event in every house was to have the chimney sweep. As we all used coal for the fires that kept us warm - just the one room in the house, the lounge or sitting room - so soot built up in the chimney, all the way to the roof. This soot could be pretty dangerous stuff, and when it got to the stage where the smoke from the fire was coming into your room, you knew that the chimney was full of soot and so the services of the expert were needed.
You always needed a day to prepare for the visit of the chimney sweep. The furniture that could be removed was taken to another room in the house. Pictures off the wall, carpets rolled up and out, curtains down - the lot. Any heavy furniture remaining would be covered with newspaper. Doors were sealed. Animals and children were banned.
The arrival of the chimney sweep himself would be greeted with murmurs of approval from all the kids in the street. Filthy clothes, a face black with soot so that the whites of his eyes would seem like big white saucers, a workable bicycle, with the rods and brushes attached along the cross bar; scruffy jacket and clothes, soot falling off him with every step, unspeakable grimy hands. Here was a real man.
The unpaid job of the children of the household was to shout when they saw the big circular brush, the size of a dinner plate, sticking out of the top of the chimney. The sweep would then know that he could start to withdraw his pole, which fitted together in sections like a fisherman’s rod. The soot in the fireplace would be collected into sacks and taken away. The whole episode could take an hour or two, and the mess left in the house required something of a spring clean to get it back to normal. Soot seemed to find its way around the house for days afterwards.
Mentioning the black face of the chimney sweep reminds me of the time in the late forties or early fifties when mum came home from shopping and announced that she had seen a black man walking along the main road. The first one ever seen in the City of Chester. This sent us into shivers of excitement, and off went a posse of us, to look for him. Remember, we had never seen a black man - only photographs in our geography book. It was some days before I actually saw him, big build and everything that I had imagined a black man to be. From that first encounter I never gave it another thought, as I grew older and travelled to Liverpool or London and saw more and more of them.
I can always remember going to Liverpool, with all its devastation from the war, and having my first experience of a moving staircase. My excitement had been building up for days, as mum and Pill wound me up, about being a good little boy, and so on. Finally they took me to one of the large department stores, still with a lot of cladding and scaffolding around as rebuilding continued, and they let me enjoy myself going up and down the escalators. What fun it was.
It would have been at Liverpool that I made my first ever visit to see Father Christmas in his grotto, in a large department store. In those days it was the big annual event for every child - to see Santa. I can remember mother coming in and excitedly saying "Father Christmas has arrived in Lewis’s, and all the good little boys and girls can pay him a visit." That one statement would send me into a quiver; after all, he was a Deity. There were no televisions with Santa featuring in every soap, and in every commercial. You didn’t see bus drivers and road sweepers wearing Santa’s hat. There was only one Father Christmas. And my excitement knew no bounds on Christmas morning, particularly when I discovered the traditional orange at the bottom of my pillowslip. You just couldn’t buy them in the shops in the years of austerity, after the war.
My parents never seemed to show any fear of us kids living so near to a canal. Dad had ensured that we could swim from birth, and so I assume they felt that we were safe. Certainly the canal held no awe for us, and we all knew the bits where we could play safely, and the areas best avoided. In fact, we didn’t really use it for swimming - more for fishing. The occasional eel is all that I can ever remember catching - my rod being a finely pared branch from a nearby tree, the line being a length of thread, the hook a bent pin, and the bait being a worm..
But the canal and its bank held lots of attractions, and walking its length, either side, and watching barges navigate the locks, kept us occupied for much of the day. We would even sit for quite some time - if not hours - and watch the frequent angling competitions, marvelling at the types of fish that the canal held, and which we had never seen. Thus would be rekindled our interest in fishing, and the next day - when the real fishermen had gone - we would start all over again, but ultimately with the same non-result.
Likewise with the river Dee. A bit of fishing; a bit of bathing, but close to the shore; and walking its length for miles. Again, there were no stern family warnings of forbidden areas, and no list of do’s and don’ts.
Mum was a keen member of the Chester Amateur Operatic Society, and I used to love going behind the scenes at the Chester Royalty Theatre to have a look at the stage and the general goings-on from the wings. The Operatic Society always performed for one week a year, following on from the six-week Christmas pantomime run. This latter was, for me, absolute fairy land and I used to go many times each year. The cheapest place for me to see it each time was up in the Gods, the wooden tiered gallery up at ceiling level. There, one could observe the three lighting men, with their large follow spots. I would observe that the spot-man on the left had his green filter ready for the genie, the one on the right the red filter for the baddy, and the one in the centre his white spot for the fairy godmother. So one used to know all the moves, but the magic never failed.
During the war years, the operatic society did not perform, but in the years immediately after I can remember The Student Prince, Bitter Sweet, The Vagabond King, Old Chelsea, and Monsieur Beaucaire.
As a result of mum’s contacts, she arranged for me to be admitted into the choir of St John’s Church in Chester. I remember insisting that my pal, Derek Ledsham, join me. ‘Led’ead’ as we all knew him, came from a large and rather poor family, but we were great pals. Our fun and enjoyment at choir practice, every Friday evening, and at church services twice on Sunday, kept us amused for some four or five years. We even got paid, depending on length of service, seniority, attendance, and quality of voice. I remember Led’ead got 12/6d on one occasion and I got 15/- this being the year’s salary; but I think we evened up later on. We were not the best; others got as much as 17/6d.
I liked being a choirboy. It was never a chore in those days; indeed, Led’ead and I would arrive in church a good couple of hours before anyone else. Churches were never locked up then, and were open all hours for everyone in the world to enter. We also took a historical and non-macabre - indeed, quite a respectful - interest in all the tombstones outside the church; the ancient, overgrown cemetery (all now gone) was an excellent hiding place for choirboys in those days.
The highlight for me was Christmas, particularly Midnight Mass. I loved the glitz, the candles, the carols, and the vast congregation. Mother regularly went up into the organ loft, and sang Silent Night during the Communion. We were both now confirmed in the Church of England, so we could take Communion. It says a lot for my God-fearing father that he had no objection to us moving away from Methodism. In fact, he would frequently pop into the hidden choir stalls of St John’s, after his own chapel had finished their service. At something like one-thirty on Christmas morning we would therefore see father with hymnbook in hand, singing the final carol.
The immediate post-war buses displayed economy in a most uncomfortable way; with the shortage of materials there were no softly padded and upholstered seats – merely wooden slats. Upstairs on some buses, there was one long bench-type seat, with a narrow side aisle; they held about four or five people, so you can imagine what it was like struggling to sidle past all those knees to reach an empty part of the seat. I’m sure it must have lent itself to sort of problems, but I was too young to have been aware of any.
We had regular Sunday school outings, going either to Rhyl or Blackpool; these were organised by Gertie Hughes, Pete’s sister. These trips were a highlight for us ‘kids of the back-streets,’ and gave us ice-creams, candy floss, fish and chips, and rides on roundabouts; not to be missed!
On 27th May 1949 mum received a letter from the Chief Education Officer, Town Hall, Chester - "I beg to inform you that your son, David Hunt, has qualified for admission to a Grammar School in Chester on the result of the Secondary Schools Admission Examination."
I sent an airmail letter to dad in Singapore; I’ve still got that letter. "Dear Dad, I have passed my 11-plus….." Immediately we received the news, mum presented Dots and I with a watch - our first ever - for having passed the exam. Unfortunately, Dots hadn’t passed, but as with my later failures in life, perhaps this was Dots’s rubicon, and the rest of her life started at this pre-determined point.
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