London Born: A Memoir of a Forgotten City - Sidney Day

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and he could pick a penny up off the floor when you threw it down for him. That wants some doing for a dog. Me favourite dog was called Babs. She was an Airedale with a lovely brown and black coat, all tight curls, a lovely dog. Sometimes I took three dogs out at a time over Parliament Hill Fields. In the war it was a training ground for the Army. I seen many two-wheel gun carriages tip arse over head there. They come flying down the hill pulled by four horses, as fast as they could go. When the carriage tipped over the soldiers would put it back on its wheels and off they would go again, round and round.

      All the men was away in the war. Me dad was in the Army. He served the whole length of the war in the Royal Artillery, driving the horses that pulled the guns. That was how he got the name Driver Day. He was short and well built with brown hair and he was covered all over with tattoos. His nose was spread across his chops from fighting. When he had leave from the Army he would come home, straight out of the trenches, mud everywhere, filthy. The poor old bugger had puttees wrapped round his legs up to his knees and the mud was all caked in where they hadn’t been taken off for weeks and weeks. His legs looked like ladders from the marks round them made by the ties.

      When me mum said Dad was coming home, Jim and me would wait for him at the top of our road. He was always glad to see us. He brought these great big dog biscuits for us called ‘iron rations’ and we liked to eat them. Mind you, they was only nice cause we had nothing else. You had to have a hammer to break the bleeding things.

      Me dad was out in the front line for years in France. He was fit as a fiddle and a keen old fighter. When it was peaceful they put up boxing rings and he would organise boxing exhibitions. He was popular—anybody who done a lot of sport in the Army always got on. As well as boxing they larked about in the trenches, gambling for cigarettes, and sometimes, he told me, they would go into farms, nick a pig, take it back to the trenches and roast it. When a horse got shot in battle, as soon as it was down and out, they would carve it up with their bayonets and eat that as well.

      While me dad was away, me mum had to keep the seven of us on rations. I would go round and get food from Bucking-ham’s shop. Mum would say, ‘Take the cup with you and get an haporth of jam, a pennorth of sugar, a bit of tea, a tin of evaporated milk and a lump of margarine.’ We hardly ever see any meat.

       III

      The war ended and me dad come home. After he got gassed in France he never could breathe through his nose properly again. Sometimes he was in so much pain with his nose he would come home from work at dinner time and put his head over a bowl of hot salt water and sniff it up. That was the only way he could shift it.

      Me mum’s brother, Bob, who lived right opposite us, was much worse off. He lived with his wife Ginny and their kids. He was a typical looking Spanish man if ever there was one —sharp featured and sticking out black hair. His face always looked black from wanting a shave, what was left of it. He had half his jaw blown off in the war. For a pension he got the big amount of two and sixpence a week. The poor old bugger only had half a jaw and looked a sight but he got used to it at the death. He still knew how to drink a pint of beer.

      The men went back to work, if they could find work. On every street corner there was gangs of men chinwagging cause they didn’t have the money to go for a pint. It was hard to get a proper job and that was why so many young blokes from our street joined the Army, even after the war. They sent them out to India after they was trained. I think there was a place called Tiger Bay out there and that is how our street come to get its name.

      The winter after me dad come home he got the job of night watchman on the other side of the cemetery where they was putting in some drainage. On his first night me mum sent me up with some food. Dad told me to cut through the cemetery on the way back. I had to walk past the gravestones and stone angels glowing all white in the dark. I did that every night while he was up there and I never told him I was afraid.

      Me dad worked mainly in the building. After a day’s work he was always in the pub. He lived there. He loved his pint, they all did. That was all they had to do, let’s face it—drink and make babies. Our two local pubs was called the Totnes and the Brookfield—they was only a few minutes apart. Each of them had two bars and an off licence. One bar was for the navvies, the hard workers, and the other for the shopkeepers and people who had a bob or two. They called that the saloon bar and you had to pay extra for yer booze in there. It was a bit more upmarket, with chairs, tables and flowers. There was a brass rail running along the counter and red velvet curtains hanging round to make it look pretty. The navvies’ bar had big benches, sawdust on the floor and spittoons along the counter.

      The pubs opened at five o’clock and kicked out at ten o’clock on the dot unless they had the Law straightened up. The guvnor at the Brookfield always took out a pint of beer to a policeman who drunk it in the outside toilet. Saturday nights there would be hollering and shouting and fighting and blokes up to all manner of things. That was how it was. If you fell out with a bloke you stood up and had a fight. When it was over you was back friends again. Some of them went singing in the streets. They would come down our road from the pub, half drunk, get a comb out and a piece of paper and play a tune and people would give them a ha’penny or a penny. One bloke would put his foot in the door, stand there and sing his heart out and then take his hat inside for pennies.

      The next day they was back in the pub. The Irish blokes would go up to St Joseph’s, ‘Holy Joe’s’, at the top of Dartmouth Park Hill. They would confess and give the priest a shilling. Then they would hare down to the Archway Tavern. A while later the priest would go down there too, taking off his dog collar as he walked along and putting a handkerchief round his neck. He would go in, spend all their money and they would all wind up drunk as lords.

      On a Sunday morning our road was full up with ponies pulling gigs, come to race. The gigs was painted in bright blues and reds and the ponies had lovely shiny coats. They was all done up with ribbons and bows—a picture to look at. People come from all round to watch them fly up and down and they would bet on all types of things—whose pony would win, whose pony was done up best. The old ponies would prance up and down the street, lifting their hooves up high. They trained them to do that by tying a rope between the pony’s legs and the bridle. As the pony’s head come up his hooves had to follow. After the races and the betting all the ponies and chariots would be tied up outside the pub.

      Nearly everybody who went to the Brookfield on a Sunday took a bird in a little carrying cage. Me dad took his cage wrapped up in a red and white spotted navvy’s handkerchief so his bird wouldn’t be afraid. He would put the cage underneath his arm and take off the cloth when he got to the pub. Every man put his bird up on the shelf that ran right the way along the bar. The bar was filled with birds fluttering and singing.

      Me dad had dozens of different birds: finches, linnets, thrushes, blackbirds. There weren’t a type of bird that breathed that me dad didn’t have at some time. We caught them by going bush bashing. Me dad made eight foot by three foot double-layered nets out of black cotton. We would loop a net between two trees in Kenwood and then bash the bushes with sticks to scare the birds towards it. When a bird flew through the net it was trapped in a pocket.

      I went bird nesting and egg collecting with me brothers, too. We collected eggs, made two holes in them with a pin and blew them empty. Sometimes we took birds when they was near to being fledged. I reared them up, feeding them chewed up bread from me mouth or on a matchstick. I brought up lots of birds, including a sparrowhawk. It was a very pretty bird with zebra markings and I let it go at the finish.

      In the pub they bet on the birds. One might say, ‘Me bird will sing longer than yours.’ Another might boast, ‘Mine will sing better than yours,’ and another, ‘Me bird’s plumage is better than yours.’ Then they would have a competition. That bird in its little cage was their pride and joy. Everybody had birds, everybody.

      When the Brookfield kicked out after lunch me dad would walk home with his bird. As he turned into the Bay he would stop outside the house of Drummer Hawkins who lived at the top of our road. ‘Hawkins,’ he would shout, ‘come out here, I’ll see to yer!’

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