BLOATERS. (1935)

Suppose Motor Bert also had something wrong with him, because he loved his motorcar. He would drive up to the corner shop, carefully putting on his handbrake, open the car door, close it again & go into the shop for his fags. Then when he came out he would get in his car, start the engine & drive away at full speed. The only thing was, he didn't have a car. I offered to clean it for him for tuppence but he wasn't that barmy.

Mr. P had a greengrocer's barrow in the high street & used his passage to store his fruit & veg & another family lived upstairs. Most houses in the street had more than one family living in the same small terraced house but we were lucky because my dad was buying his house (but mustn't let anyone know). The Fyffes banana lorry used to deliver to Mr.P every Tuesday lunchtime & we normally hung on the back to get a free ride. To stop us he used to accelerate away very fast. However to get a free ride home I with others hung onto the back & away he went. When his lorry arrived at my house I thought I would get off. The next thing I knew was sitting in a chair indoors by the hob, & my mother crying over me. Why was she crying, what time was it, was it time to go to school, or had I just come home? Why did my head hurt, my mother tried to stop me but I stood on a chair to look in the mirror over the mantelpiece? I had the biggest bump on my forehead that I had ever seen & I'd had a few before.

In those days you never called a doctor cos that cost money & never called an ambulance cos there were no phones, but she washed my face & marched me down to the local clinic about two miles away. My head was pounding; id got an awful headache & had a job to walk. However when we arrived at the clinic the sister took one look at my nut, and boomed 'take him home & put him to bed'. Then why oh why had we walked all the way down there & back, I could have gone to bed in the first place.

It didn't take me long to be up & about again, suppose we were street urchins really, & there was nothing to do indoors, Television hadn't been invented, only a few people had a wireless, & they required batteries & accumulators that had to be frequently charged up & even that cost three hapence. We had few games & even then it was difficult to read anything because we only had gas light no electricity. Met dad on the way home from work & said 'Dad got a hapenny', 'A hapenny, I haven't even got enough to buy myself a half ounce of tobacco', he replied oh well we could only but try, cos I never got any pocket money like other kids at school.

Humph lived in the next turning & I think he had to work & help keep his family even though he was only about 12 yrs old. He always had a streaming nose & yet he would only have trousers & shirt on even in snow. He had a big paper round & used to go all round the area selling newspapers, he also had a lot of hangers on cos he was able to give some of his friends a penny for helping him, so this became his gang. Bernard was a friend of mine (he later became a professional boxer) we used to spar together, & humph had challenged him to a fight. This was quite normal cos we often had to defend ourselves by fighting in the street & if one didn't fight then one could be bullied. Anyway Bern asked me to go with him to make sure there was fair play, cos Humps gang would be about thirty strong & there would be only two of us. So I went with him, as normal all the gang formed a circle in which the fight would take place, but before it started Percy a seventeen-year-old member of Humps gang challenged me to a fight. Now I wasn't afraid cos me dad had taught me to box, but I explained that I had only come to see fair play. Members of the gang said that I was a coward, so I agreed to fight Percy. Percy took off his overcoat, then his scarf, then his pullover & very care fully rolled up his sleeves & took up the fighting stance in the middle of the ring with all the gang cheering. Now the old man had always said 'son always get the first punch in & hurt them to begin with'. So I did, wallop right on the nose, his nose bled profusely & he ran home to his parents. Heard afterwards that he told his folk that a gang of men had hit him (but I was only a ten yr. old boy?).

Went back home to tea, & as usual dad had his favourite, two bloaters & I had two slices of bread & dripping (but it did have some salt on it, so it weren't too bad). Said to me mum 'Why can't I have a bloater mum' & she replied 'because your father has to go out to earn the money to feed us all'. So for years I looked forward to the time that I would be grown up & have bloaters for tea.

Many years later when I did have a family & I came home to tea, the kids would have bloaters & I would have bread & dripping. So I said to my wife, 'Why can't I have bloaters' she replied 'Because I have to build up the children's strength & feed their bones & bodies, whereas you are a fully grown strong man, so you don't need them'. Who could argue with that?

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