SALLY...PART 232. I CAN'T ACTUALLY REMEMBER EATING !

Did I eat and if so when did I eat what I can't remember eating ?

Did I have breakfast before I went to school and if I did who gave it to me and what was it ?

I know I was collected for lunch but what was I given before being taken back to school ?

I think I probably ate crumbs as I had no flesh on my bones and nor did my brothers until the youngest came along when I was ten and my mother took advantage of the newly opened Wimpy Bar and fattened him up on them and he went on to develop ulcerative colitis !

I remember sugar sandwiches ! Brilliant for a growing child eh ? And in a doctors house too ! Mind you my father had no breakfast, a cup of milky coffee at eleven after surgery and nothing until my mother eventually somehow managed to conjure up a plate of roast potatoes and cabbage at about eight in the evening which he mashed together into a mountain and ate with no meat whatsoever and probably whilst smoking one of the forty plus Players cigarettes he smoked every day and ruined my lungs with !

I have a keen sense of a treat being getting taken to a Southend on Sea cafe where we ate buttered toast washed down with Coca Cola !

So that's my childhood neatly set out in food for you !

There was no fish, no bacon, no Full English or kedgeree or anything containing goodness but I do remember that my father developed a large paunch so was he secretly eating out ?

I don't know but I DO know that when Shirley says that I MUST remember more, I DON'T !

Right so let's carry on next time with more things I have no memory of !

SALLY...PART 231....IT'S TIME TO START TELLING THE TRUTH !

 

Shirley said I should leave the following generations at least a glimpse into what my childhood was really like so here goes !

I was born in Forest Gate in North East London in January 1949, the third of five sons of the local NHS Doctor whose practice was based in the front room of our house, a room we never entered unless it was for injections from a huge glass syringe and monstrous needle that got used for everyone and which lay in a cracked enamal dish covered in disinfectant when it wasn't causing terror !

These, you must bear in mind are my very hazy recollections !

My mother basically lived in 'the cloisters', the family name for a covered walkway between our house and the neighbours which contained hugely long coat racks with every coat that had ever been owned hanging mouldering from them and which were still there in 2001 when we sold the house, a stinking gas geezer, a washing machine with a mangle on top, three huge Dublin sinks with open drains under them and a HORRIBLE toilet at the end with an old fashioned virtually unflushable cistern high up near the ceiling which I dreaded having to visit !

Along the route to the toilet were two ancient wooden multiple washing lines that were always full of dripping clothing and sheets and which were raised and lowered by ropes that passed through rusted squealing pulleys and which were tied to the wall on double ended hooks you never see these days !

The floor seemed to be perpetually full of baskets of laundry and the sinks full of soaking clothing with the taps running permanently to rinse every trace of life from the fibres !

My mother stood losing control of this empire until it was time to take a break and prepare the meals that were inedibly unpleasant and scarred my infant mind !

I think this autobiography is going to take some time to write !