Category: Essex Elegies

If Reform were a car…and slim pickings in the High Street

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Altered Images: People with sharp eyes will notice that there is a blur, like an inverted shadow, just under the front bumper of this car. This is where the number plate is in real life. Thinking it discourteous to the car’s owner to identify it that precisely, I found what I thought was a rubber/block out tool in the “edit” function to cover it up; which turned out to be an AI tool to erase parts of a photo you might not want and replace it with something that looks like the background. Images have always been fakeable, and to some extent the camera has always lied, as well as enhanced; but now anyone can do it. The saving grace of this is that it is so obvious, once you look. A bit like AI as such, close to reality, but a bit off. As Eric Morcombe might have said, “you can see the join”.

On the Reform principle that everything was better in the old days, this is an Austin Cambridge from the 1960s, but adorned with a St Georges flag badge that no one would have used back then. Perhaps its a bit unfair on the car, which is clearly loved, and has a sense of humour. A sticker in the back rear widnow reads “In rust, we trust!” Of course, Reform doesn’t much like the 60s, a decade forged in reaction to the loss of Empire. With the possible exception of 1966.

Romanians in the High Street in December, singing Christmas Carols. There is often music there now. A young woman this afternoon was singing Bowie’s Life on Mars from Hunky Dory, an album with a lot of songs I feel compelled to sing along to, regardless of who’s watching. Take a look at those

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh, man, look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh, man, wonder if he’ll ever know…

I tell her she has a voice and a half and make a small offering. There’s a slightly hollow feel to all this, as the quality of the music and the performances is much better than the audiences it gets, which is rather sad. Just a few rather alienated looking shoppers drifting slowly past and not paying a lot of attention.

A damp Tuesday morning and there’s a guy playing the guitar in a style that has the sort of echoey spciousness you get with Mark Knopfler or, on a good day, Hank Marvin. As I limp up from George Street, the tune seems familiar, but I don’t recognise it until he starts singing.

They wanted me to go to rehab…

But I said, No, No, No!

I don’t have the time…And my Daddy says I’m fine…

He finishes just as I draw level.

“The sad thing is, her dad was wrong, wasn’t he…”

A smile and a nod.

“Lovely version, by the way” and another small offering to add to the tiny number of coins in his guitar case.

Meanwhile, up at the big, all the things you ever might need at knock down prices thats where Marks And Spencers used to be, and had a closing down sale for about six months…

Better able to plan ahead than the old one?

A magnificently retro poster in the local laundrette, that has probably been on the wall there since it opened in 1967. Built to last. Better than the Austin Cambridge anyway. The styling was quite old fashioned even then. The wasp waisted, stylish woman in high heels and tight knee length dress (because you always dress up to do your washing) has a feel of 1962 about her. The washing machine is clearly happily besotted with her.

That Time of Year #2. A Carnival for Carnivores!

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Grays High Street was not its usual quiet self on Saturday morning. A blue tent with a sound stage flanked by huge loudspeakers was deployed at the strategic centre between Clarence Road and George Street. Manned by a tiny, grey complexioned DJ in his fifties, it was belting out Romanian techno beats, while he rapped along with it, hopping about with an enthusiasm appropriate to someone a third of his age like a gleeful goblin.

We have the meats….

In front of the shops on either side were lines of Eastern European market stalls, most selling meat. Steaming meat, cured meat, barbecued meat, meat to take away, meat to eat. Tables were laid out in between so people could sit and munch in their anoraks while the vibrations from the sound stage thundered through their chests.

Giblets steaming on gibbets…

There is something almost medieval about it. All you’d need is some jugglers and fire breathers.

In case the last stall didn’t have enough meat, here’s some more…and a bit of cheese.

In case you were in any doubt where the meat comes from, this makes it pretty apparent. Not Kosher, pretty Haraam and no place for a vegetarian.

It was quite sparsely attended when I passed it in the morning, but it was rammed in the afternoon. A mix of local people enjoying being swamped by an alien culture. The Disco King on the stage was playing a Techno verison of the Lambada as I walked past; proof positive that multiculturalism is dead.

One of the regular young black evangelists a little further down offers me a leaflet. I politely decline and he says “Jesus loves you”; which is quite a pitch when you think about it, particularly to anyone who feels otherwise unloved.

A finger of hot schrapnel

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One afternoon in 1940, before he was evacuated, my dad, his parents and their neighbours were drawn outside their house in Ireton Place in Grays by the shattering percussion of the Hogg Lane Anti Aircraft battery opening up at Luftwaffe bombers heading upriver towards London. Everyone stood in their front gardens and looked anxiously upwards.

The aircraft could not been seen because of low cloud. Bursts of flak puffed amidst it.

The anti-aircraft battery was loud. It was barely a quarter of a mile away at the crown of the Hogg Lane hill, just beyond Wallace Road, the other side of the thin end of the Titan pit and the allotment. Being on the top of the hill, it had a command over the Thames flood plain below. Navigating by eye, Luftwaffe pilots found the Thames a useful routemap up to London, but had to run the gauntlet of dozens of Ak Ak batteries on the way. This map just shows the heavy batteries. Regular batteries like the Hogg Lane one are not marked.

These are Vickers 3.7 inch anti aircraft guns – the main calibre used in the UK during WW2 – about the same as the more well known German 88 mm gun. It could fire a 13 Kg shell up to 9 kilometres high at a velocity of 800 -1000 metres per second at a rate of 10 – 20 rounds per minute (one every 3 to 6 seconds). This is not a photo of the Hogg Lane site but looks similar, with, from memory, four concrete bases in a kind of four petal shape to make a firm platform for each gun, with a concrete bunker in the middle to store ammunition. This was abandoned at the end of the war and was used to play on by successive generations of children – “let’s play over the army barracks” – until the landscape was obliterated by the Chafford Hundred development in the late eighties. Photo Wikipedia

These guns didn’t often hit anything, but it was devastating when they did. At around this time a Junkers 88 was hit flying at 30,000 feet over Purfleet, disintegrating the plane and killing the whole crew of seven. The youngest member of it was 19, the oldest 26.

Standing outside during an air raid is never a good idea. A friend who grew up in Mumbai told me that during the 1967 Indo Pakistan war – the second one over Kashmir – people would initially go up on their roofs to look at the show when the Pakistan Air Force made raids – and many were killed or injured from falling schrapnel – so that was a short lived diversion.

It surprises me that my grandad’s curiosity got the better of the ingrained caution built into surviving almost three years as a teenage soldier on the Western Front. At one point his regiment was redeployed to Ireland, so perhaps I owe his survival, and my existence, to the IRA, whose insurgency got him out of the trenches for a while.

My family and their neighbours were luckier than the people hit by schrapnel in Mumbai.

There was a “ping” as something hit the roof and a piece of metal bounced off onto the garden. A warning in a way. It was about the size of a fat finger, smooth on one side but visciously jagged on the other. Hot too. As no aircraft were hit by the bombardment, the shell fragment must have been “one of ours”. My granddad picked it up and kept it as a memorial for about twenty years, wired down to a piece of hardboard to keep it safe in the glass fronted bookcase with the tiny ivory elephants and three wise monkeys he had brought back from India when deployed there in the 1920s.

Carer’s tales

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There are rhythms to the deployment of carers. Some arrive according to a rigid timetable set by tablets. If a certain medication has to be taken at regular intervals, with no more than a 10 or 15 minute variation, the carer has to turn up at those times.

This tends to mean that the carer who arrives is more often than not the same one. They have their regulars and a regular schedule so they can get from one client to the next on a predictable timetable. They are, of course, not paid for travel time and the pressure to get from one job to another can lead to road accidents. One we know was trying to save a second or two and crocked her car gliding into the one in front, damaging it enough for it to be out of action for a week. She was unable to get work until it was fixed because they are all dependent on cars to get from one job to the next. She now drives very carefully because the pressure isn’t worth it.

Because they travel by car, they come from quite a range of places, from Forest Gate in the West to Canvey Island in the East. One had moved from a flat off Tottenham Court Road in the heart of London down to Purfleet – because the housing is more affordable – and taken the job for the excitement; explaining that “Nothing ever happens in Purfleet”.

Pay for each visit is presumed to match the half hour or 15 minute slot that the company is paid for. This does not always match reality. If a client has a medical emergency it can take longer, so there has to be a scramble to fill the slots that are down the line. If all goes well, the routines of getting a client onto the commode, sorting all that out, getting them washed, dressed and chatted to can be done more quickly. In the case of housebound people with no family support, the last job is the only social contact and conversation they will get all day and is a crucial part of the job.

One that came to ours a few days ago said that she has a core of bedbound people who are her regulars. Somehow she has got into the habit of singing to them, and taking requests. Some of the old ladies like the Ronettes, and bands like that, but she has one old gentleman who is into heavy rock and usually wants something by Metallica – which is truly above and beyond.

Some carers are chatty, some quietly get on with things and converse functionally. Most are pretty upbeat. Most of them are women. Many are black. Most of the white ones have tattoos. There is a high turnover. A core of veterans keep things going while newcomers either adapt or, finding it too much, leave.

Some of them wear fans around their necks because, even during a heatwave, some of the clients have their heating on, and cranked up high.

None of them are in a union.

I complement one on her pair of colouful converses and she says that she loves them, has 14 pairs, but is now boycotting them because of Nike’s sponsorship and partnership deals with Israel.

Several have said they like coming to us because we are friendly and take an interest. Many of the clients have dementia, so can be terrified and aggressive. Some are racist and don’t hold back about it even though they are being looked after – possibly because they are being looked after and resent it. This is sometimes the case with relatives too.

If the family is covering meds and, to a lesser extent, food, the schedule for visits can swing quite wildly, with the getting up arrival ranging from slightly before 7am one day to well after 9am the next. During the Summer holidays schedules get stretched because carers with children have them on their hands, but as Winter approaches they also get harder to fill because its getting dark, dank and miserable and, people get ill.

Some of the overnight crews, who are always in twos and arrive in the wee small hours to give bedbound people a turn, or deal with pads, can be loud – car door slams, a conversation that would be loud for the middle of the day erupts up and down the path to the back door, a scrabble for the door lock, the door goes crunch and the loud conversation imposes itself on the living room downstairs for a while, before the whole thing repeats itself in reverse on the way out. Others arrive with the stealth of Ninjas, but greater consideration. Some of them close the side and front gates on the way out. Some let them swing in the breeze.

Aromatherapy in Thurrock, and other bits and bobs.

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Overheard in Boots.

“If she says she caught thrush from sitting on a toilet seat, she’s doing it all wrong.”

Walking down to town I am passed on the other side of the road by an elderly Irish bloke I chat to sometimes, absolutely bombing along in his mobility vehicle. He hurtles off up the sharp incline of Cromwell Road, leaving me limping behind eating his electric dust.

The trees on Cromwell Road now look almost primeval, with huge boles you couldn’t put your arms round anymore. Oak. Lime. Massive crowns hissing in the wind. At the brow of the hill there used to be a Horse Chestnut, magnificently flowered in May and the source of many a childhood conker. Now gone, diseased and rusted and eventually chainsawed, leaving a sawdust and a naked stump; and the road looking like a smile with an extracted front tooth.

Further down the hill a bloke built like a silverback gorrilla – arms like hams, big belly, a neck with one of Rusell Kane’s “Essex triple ripple” rolls of muscle – is drilling and hammering insulation panels on the outside of a house as though he is attacking it. Despite the power in his body, he carries an air of nervous truculence about him.

The street name plate by the car park outside the Tae Kwando Centre at the foot of the hill, pointing to a pair of houses evidenty constructed as an afterthought to fill in a bit of spare space overlooking the Titan pit, is a rhyming couplet. “Quarry View – Nos 1 – 2”. As mind worms go, this is the road sign equivalent of “baby shark”.

As I pass the war memorial opposite the old police station (now posh flats and renamed “The Old Courthouse”; which has a slightly Western feel about it to me) workers from the council are planting out dense blue banks of lavendar in the flower beds on either side. The waft of aromatherapy is almost overwhelming even from the other side of the road.

The vista approaching Wallace Road across “The Field”. More homely state than stately home.

In the playing field opposite the house, now glorified as “Hathaway Park”, a strikingly tall woman stands alone on the bank of grass, bright green in the sunlight, looking up towards the redbrick facades of Wallace Road – a proletarian version of the entrance to Blenheim Palace – wearing a chador from head to foot in the same celestial blue as renaissance painters used for the Virgin Mary – so a sort of Muslim Blue Nun. he is alone in a sea of green, and looks as though she has been beamed down from the heavens. It looks like a still from a film. The staginess of everyday life.

Things my Grandmother used to say.

On the News. “Not to worry, it won’t happen here”. On the “nothing ever happens in Grays” principle.

On illness. “What’s moveable’s curable”. Which, I suppose means that if you’re not dead, you can be fixed.

On the elasticity of the perception of time. “It don’t half get late early, don’t it?”

The Gay Gnomes of Fenchurch Street.

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And WAVE!

On a seemingly inaccesible girder opposite platform 4, someone has arranged a line of happy looking gnomes, some carrying rainbow flags.

The barrista at the Costa in the station now sees me as a regular, which I guess I am, passing through about once a week seeking a caffeine boost on my treek to Essex, and anticipates my order because its always the same. Creature of habit. Give it a year and I’ll have a mug hanging up behind the counter.

The tiny young barista in a hijab swiftly sets up six coffees of different sorts at once, causing the well spoken gent in the queue behind me – a man with a slight touch of the Alan Bennets – to complment her on her speed and efficiency. It occurs to me that had she been digging coal in the Soviet Union they’d have given her medals and put her on posters. Shock Barrista! She explains that getting the coffees done quickly en masse is essential when people are catching (or might miss) trains.

Fenchurch Street always used to be smoky, closed in, quite dingy, in a cosy and friendly sort of way. Rather down at heel bar and cafe with curly sandwiches, more routine than inspirational, dark brown tea and watery coffee. The recent remodelling has opened the concourse up to a floor to ceiling window at the back which floods it with light and a sense of space that makes getting to London somehow more optimistic.

Just round the corner towards Tower Hill is St Olaves church and graveyard, where Samuel Pepys and his wife are buried. The gateway to the graveyard is surmounted by a carving of three skulls – just as a reminder. “Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that”, as Hamlet put it to another skull. The churchyard is tiny, green, a peaceful haven with a stone labyrinth in the corner. This is a representation of a labyrinth, being decidedly 2 dimensional, not an impenetrable stone maze that a Minotaur might be found at the heart of. The idea is to walk along the route from the edge to the centre while thinking about the almighty. The route loops around and back on itself, so it has the same disorienting effect as ecclesiastical architecture; designed to make you dizzy and vertiginous when you look up.

St Olaves itself is one of the few medieval City churches to survive the Great Fire. Going in, there’s only me and a middle aged black woman with a huge Bible, who seems slightly offended that I’m in there with such little Faith, but situating herself on a higher plane to cope with it. It is extraordinarily quiet and peaceful inside, set lower than the street, with colourful Tudor looking carvings of praying figures around the pulpit and beautiful stained glass that seemed to have survived being “knocked about a bit” by Oliver Cromwell and Restoration plaques and carvings of Pepys types with magnificent flowing wigs framing plump and sensuous faces.

Stands still the station clock at nine thirty one…?

A flying visit to the ruins of the “thousand year Reich” in 1947

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My Dad in ATC uniform in 1947.

My Dad was in the Air Training Corps towards the end of WW2 and for several years afterwards. It used to meet in the Main Hall at Grays Tech (now the Hathaway Academy) – where I was to stand through many an Assembly 20 years after.

The high point of being in the ATC, literally, was to get flight experience, usually in a Lancaster (painted white). The best of these was a trip in the ball turrent on the spine of the plane at the top. Some of these flights involved dogfight simulation, where a Spitfire or Mustang fighter would suddenly appear and act out an attack, so the bomber pilot would have to take evasive action, involving yawing, rolling and corkscrewing in a manner guaranteed to give everyone on board acute airsickness. My Dad felt he was very lucky to have avoided one of those.

In 1947, someone higher up in the RAF thought it would be a good idea to send keen cadets from the ATC to have a look at some of the places the RAF was based overseas. A brasshat came down and interviewed my dad and his cousin Len and, a little later sent a message through that they’d decided to send my Dad to Germany and Len to Egypt. Len’s Dad put a veto on that for him, but my Grandad didn’t. So, my Dad got a warrant to go to Northolt for the flight to Germany.

What’s weird about this is that they were sending 17 year old cadets off on their own, with no apparent plan or purpose beyond the trip as an end in itself. The aircrew Dad was flying with in their DC3 didn’t know he was coming, weren’t keen to have him aboard, and had no idea what to do with him. After a bit of discussion they decided to give him the title “Air Quartermaster”; and got him to dish out the sandwiches (dainty things from BOAC on the way out) coffee, and pass on messages – “we’re now over the Hague” etc. Air Safety demonstrations were not part of the job description, and he got to sit in the co-pilot’s seat which had an exellent view of the impenetrable cloud cover they were flying over.

When they arrived at Bucheburg (Bookyburg to them) the cloud cover was still solid and the pilot had to confer with the navigator to make sure they were in the right place – as the airfield was surrounded by hills on three sides; which at that time presented an obvious risk if he couldn’t see where he was. The Navigator being confident enough, they descended through the cloud flying in a spiral until they broke through to clear air beneath and landed.

On landing, no one knew what to do with my Dad, the crew had places to go and Frauleins to see and didn’t want a 17 year old cadet cramping their style, no one from the base was expecting him, nor had he been given any guidance on what he might do. One of the crew grudgingly took him to the bar on the base where the German barman protectively refused to serve Schapps when the crewman ordered it, possibly for the entertainment value – “not for the boy”. After a while the crew member went off leaving Dad to his own devices and to finish his beer. On a visit to the toilet he was approached by a German civilian who asked him for cigarettes – “Zigaretten?” – so he gave him three. In the late 1940s in Germany these were not usually to smoke, but use as currency.

He then walked a little way into the town, which was lively in a “Bachanalian orgy” sort of way. There were “no fraternisation” bans on relations with German civilians, but the RAF crews and the local women did not seem to be paying much attention to them. Leaning on a lampost at the corner of the street, taking some of this in, he was shouted at by a Military Policeman sitting in a jeep on the other side of the road. “Airman! Over here!” Standing in front of him the MP noticed the ATC patch on the shoulder of his uniform and asked what it was. The other MP in the back of the jeep said “He’s just a boy”, so the first one contented himself with telling Dad off for standing with his hands in his pockets. “It creates a bad impression”. Wouldn’t want that with a Bachanalian orgy going on.

The following morning at breakfast, the crew were sitting around regaling each other with tales of exploits and conquests from the previous night, some of which might have been true. Before the trip back Dad went for a walk to the hanger where the DC3 was waiting. The doors to the hold were open, giving off an overpowering smell of coffee – which implied a certain amount of off the books trading.

On the trip back – in which one of the passengers was a former German soldier in handcuffs heading for a war crimes trial – the “Air Quartermaster” had to dish out the sandwiches again – thick RAF doorsteps filled with Corned Beef this time – and, having landed was, as with every other step of this trip, left to his own devices to get home.

Other cadets must have had these trips, but there seems to have been no debriefing beyond the local ATC CO asking if it was a good trip. The expected (opaque) response “Yes Sir!” may not have been universal, because this particular experiment was never repeated. Unless it simply petered out in the same aimless way that it seems to have been set up.

So endeth my Dad’s first trip overseas.

Pride in Thurrock and Evangelicals in the High Street.

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A crocheted Freddie Mercury atop a bollard on Titan Road outside the Thameside Theatre

Further along from Freddie is a similar figure for Cher, but about as X rated as you can get in crochet. The steps outside the library are painted rainbow, the lamposts are hanging vertical flags (in hideously clashing colours) alongside huge dream catchers with bright coloured streamers, outside tables are neatly arranged, a sound system is being set up. Glad confident morning for Thurrock’s first ever Pride Festival. Had to get here eventually. Inside the library the cafe is all spruced up in rainbow colours and workshops are advertised for the afternoon, make up, song writing, Bollywood dancing. What looks like a band with clothing that could best be described as “optimistic” bubble out of the lift and head for the doors, giving me a grin on the way. I ask a couple of the blokes setting up what time its all kicking off and wish them luck. There is something necessarily exhuberant, and life affirming about all this. Something that we could all do with a bit of at times like this.

Alongside the posters downstairs, a small group of pensioners sit in a small grey huddle getting one of those advice sessions that libraries run now, and make them such an important community hub. Next to them, an even older pensioner – in his dark blue army blazer and regimental beret – stands with a D day books stall from the museum but seeming almost to be one; looking slightly bemused but friendly. I slightly regret not speaking to him – and just asking as one of the last survivors. They won’t be here for much longer.

Half way up Cromwell Road, someone has put a huge Palestinian flag in their window. Which feels like waking up.

On the High Street, at that strategic corner with George Street that all the buskers use, the Saturday posse of evangelists is out. A couple of young black guys with a sound system, some younger women with leaflets. One of the men is preaching to the unconverted in a way that makes no connection at all. “Jesus Christ who died for the sins of the world”, and all that. Shoppers hurry by as though they don’t exist. Not even bothering to avert their eyes. As the parable goes “And some fell upon stony ground”. They have no crowd around them (missing a trick there; even faking an audience might generate a little curiosity from the otherwise lost and vulnerable). But perhaps thats not the point. Going out, giving testimony, being ignored, a sure sign of elect status. A smiling small boy offers me a leaflet and invites me to their Church. I smile back, thank him for the invitation and tell him that I’ve been an atheist since I was his age so I didn’t suppose I’d fit in. I don’t know if he thought that an “atheist” was a different denomination, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecontalist, Angloican, catholic, Atheist. It seemed kinder than telling him I didn’t believe in God.

A Wet Tuesday in Grays

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As the steady drizzle descends there is a cultural clash outside the precinct.

On the corner of George Street one of the increasingly classy breed of buskers they have here now is playing some limpidly amplified acoustic guitar, staring quietly and camly towards the trees, the war memorial and the old Courthouse. He is playing a slow, gentle, rather yearning tune, with an emotional underpunch that sounds a bit like the B Side of Mark Knopfler playing Local Hero.

Directly opposite, outside the pawnbrokers, a short black woman in an enormous hoody declaims from an equally enormous Bible held in front of her – a burden and a shield – calling for people to “repent” and “follow the Lord Jesus”. No one is paying her any mind. In the bag she carries at her side there is a magnificent brass trumpet, which she must use at some point with a divine blast to rally the faithfull and startle the faithless.

In the market on George Street, the same bloke who was selling four perfumes for a tenner before Xmas, now has piles of those ugly high crowned half baseball hats emblazoned with “Prada”, Gucci”, “YSL”. Producing bootlegs with the inverted commas might be the next stage in cool.

At the top of Cromwell Road an armada of several dozen snails sails bravely across the pavement towards the promised land of the allotments over the far horizon.

Doing the exercises for my arthritic knee in the absence of weights, I use fat, heavy books instead. James Holland’s Normandy ’44 in one hand and Vasily Grossman’s extraordinary novel Stalingrad in the other. Possibly misguided even handedness. In reality, the Ostfront was much heavier in all respects.

On the Beach – 1938

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Back Row: Cecil (Tom) Atkin (with parasol), Henry Cunningham. Middle Row: Fred Pond, Win Pond, Ruth Atkin, Daisy Cunningham (all three sisters, formerly Ellis). Front Row: Len Cunningham (with ball) Ron Atkin (with life belt).

A week of collective freedom

This picture captures some of the excitement and happiness unleashed by the legislation that set up a weeks paid holiday for workers introduced in 1938, after “a tough battle, one that pitted campaigners against government intransigence and resistance from employers”.

Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose.

The French here is deliberate; as one of the pressures on the government here came from legislation introduced by the Popular Front government in France for the 40 hour week and paid holidays for all two years earlier, after a massive wave of strikes and factory occupations, as well as similar developments in Belgium, Norway and the USA (with FDR’s New Deal).

So, to some extent, my family owe the good time they had and their carefree smiles to Leon Blum.

Daan to Margit...a long time before Chas n Dave

My Dad’s family, like so many others, took off for Margate for the week. The back of the photo shows it to be a post card. So photographers would set up a bespoke postcard from holidaymakers that they could have taken and copied to send off home, as a personal and more taseful alternative to the “cheeky” sort.

My Mum’s family, not pictured here, did the same. “We went to Margate. It was so COLD”. Miles of lovely beach, but the wind was so cold.” Both families stayed in B&Bs. “When you went back to where we were staying all you could smell all through the house was greens being cooked” (Mum).

Sunday School outings

Margate came at the end of a train journey, and gave a more exciting view of a seaside more expansive and a seaside town grander by far than those provided by the Sunday School charabang trips to Maldon, travel sickness included, that both my parents had been on for the preceding couple of years to see the sea; complete with refreshments from a tent that served up mugs of very brown tea from enormous enamel pots.

Woolly Cozzies

My Dad is wearing quite a classy boys swimsuit here. Not the one his Mum had knitted for him, as a lot of Mums did at that time; because it was much cheaper than buying one. These had the advantage of being warm before you went in the water, but had the downside of becoming incredibly heavy (and hard to keep up) as soon as you did.

Not Lobby Lud

As workers on holiday were much less likely to buy a daily paper – getting away from it all meaning getting away from it all – so, with all the factories closing pretty much at once, and facing a disastrous, if temporary, slump in circulation, the Daily Mirror and a few others like the News Chronicle used to publish a photo of a repesentative who would be present at the seaside during the holiday, so people who recognised him could approach and say “You are Lobby Lud and I claim my £5”; but with a variation printed only in that morning’s paper without which it wouldn’t work.

With average worker’s wages at 1 shilling and 2 pence an hour in 1938, this was equivalent to two weeks wages; so, worth buying a paper for.

At one point on this holiday, my grandfather was convinced he’d seen him, walked over and staked his claim. To no avail. The man said he wasn’t the mark. So, he bought a Daily Mirror to get the right form of words and tried again and, once again, and slightly more irritated, the man said he wasn’t. So, perhaps he was, but was off duty for a bit and was therefore irritated to be approached. Or he was a Lobby Lud lookalike and got approached all the time; in which case its a wonder he wasn’t more irritated than he was.

Darkness at noon?

Fred, sitting at the end of the line with the parasol, had a dark skin. After the outbreak of World War 2, just over a year later, he was in the RAF and, like a lot of other RAF personnel, was sent to Southern Africa for training; where he found that his uniform was no guarantee of being allowed into “Whites Only” bars or cafes, applying the strict colour bar that was the precursor to the fully fledged Apartheid entrenched there after 1948.

This photo was taken 20 years after the end of the First World War, and just over a year before the start of the Second. No cloud seems to dim the happiness. The sun is shining. The wind is fresh. The sand is soft and gritty. The ice creams are cold and sweet. A little bit of heaven outside the daily grind and in between two horrors.