Chapter One
THE EARLY YEARS
I first saw the light of day on the 26th January 1931 and was eventually christened....
Henry James Leonard Miles. So you could say I was a New Year present for my “Ma” - I called her “Ma” from the very beginning, as indeed I still do today and likewise it was with the rest of the family, 5 boys and 1 girl. I was the third born of the children. I followed Fred born nine years earlier with Charles born two years before me. As we evolved one after the other, six in all, we all called Mother “Ma” and our Father who, by the way, wasn’t the one in Heaven and come to think of it, he never ever came remotely close to it, was also “Pop” to all and sundry from the first moment that we could mouth the words. So “Pop” and “Ma” it was and remained for the rest of our lives.
So there we were, in the year of our Lord 1931, as a family trying to survive the terrible depression of the ‘Thirties’ with Pop working at Chiswick Bus Garage for the LPTB as a skilled Electrical Machinist with what would have been known, in those days, as the equivalent of today’s state-of-the art ‘electric machine’. It revolutionised the production of new and also the repair of, used upholstery on London’s buses, trams, trains and trolley buses. So professionally Pop would have been regarded as having a darn good job. However his weekly salary could hardly be called a King’s Ransom when compared with the cost of living of the day for a family as large as ours. To make matters worse for us all, another two boys and one girl were destined to be born to our family, one every year for the next three years. There was Dennis in ’38, Rose in ’39 and Victor followed in ’40. Needless to say, only Fred, the eldest ever had new clothes. I can honestly say that none of us younger five ever had anything new until we each bought our own and that would have been when we first went out to work. As it turned out in my case, the first new clothes that I ever had were with the compliments of King George VI, God Bless Him, but that’s for later. In any case, it was law in our family that, come pay day for any of us, woe betide you if your wage packet had been opened prior to putting it on the table in front of Ma on a Friday evening. Friday was pay day back in those days, for most people. Sorry, I’m jumping the gun now so let’s go back to where I was, my beginning. I am told that I was a touch-and-go baby and I tipped the scales at only three pounds which, in itself was considered pretty hazardous therefore, the doctor advised Ma to feed me well and leave me at the bottom of the garden, undisturbed in the pram as often as possible for as long as possible, regardless of the weather.
So I slept and grew and one of my earliest recollections was when we were all lined up at Belmont Bus Garage one bright Sunday morning, early in September 1939, about the time when war was declared, with our suitcases in our hands and our gas masks round our necks. We three older boys were despatched, together with 300 or so other tearful children, away from our respective, equally tearful Pop's and Ma’s, to various parts of the country.
After leaving Chiswick our bus wound its way north-westerly through London into Hertfordshire and in particular to a pretty place called Chorley Wood. Now we children had never been farther than our own school playground and men of the world we were not. The thing that struck me, in retrospect, was, a good few years later, that the average range of a German bomber was something like two thousand miles or so and our London bus took us just fifty miles! To safety?
Our six buses eventually pulled up outside the local Town Hall and, in those days it would have been the only public building of any significance for there were no Community Centres around then. I can remember most clearly the Lord and Lady Mayor on the steps of the building. He wearing his Chain of Office around his neck, looking very important like a Prime Minister and the Mayoress with her feather boa and a funny hat with a veil and her high heels.
Amid much shaking of hands, even with us very young children, although undoubtedly a P. R. exercise, it was rather frightening for my brothers and me. However the wise men and the dignitaries of our newly adopted home town just did not realise the huge burden that they were taking upon themselves in disturbing their sleepy village by inviting us to stay with them. I am sure, after it was all over that they would have been more than willing to have swapped places with us and that they live in London and face the German bombing nightly rather than what we eventually put them through. However, back to the reality at the time.
First things first, we wanted to eat. So we all climbed the elegant white marble staircase that led us up to the Mayor’s parlour and the Council Chamber where that momentous decision must have been taken to accept over 100 poor little Londoners and now, being duly implemented by a very generous, warm-hearted community. All the tables were laid with over 100 place settings as if for a Royal Banquet, with beautiful centre pieces of flowers and matching cut glass and, I am sure, they expected no less than the Royal Children. We were served by twenty or so ladies of the W. V. S. each of whom, every now and again, with total spontaneity, would pick one of us up, muttering something like
“Oh you poor little darling.”
They would then despatch a big squelchy wet kiss on our cheek with a ‘mwa’ and then hug us to their big bosoms in such a firm manner that they ‘crushed me marshmallows’ and ‘me conkers’ in ‘me trouser pockets’ until YUCK, eventually we made it safely to our seats. After an official introduction by the Lady Mayor we could get ‘stuck in!, Stuck in, that is, to what seemed a spiffing ‘nosh’ at the time until the dessert, or rather ‘afters’ as we used to call it, which was splodge that they called tapioca and as if that wasn’t bad enough it was accompanied by Libby’s milk. Now if there is anything in this life that is guaranteed to make we boys throw up then it’s got to be Libby’s milk. So naturally, after everyone else had cleared their plates and the dinner ladies started to clear away to the kitchen, dishes and all, Fred, Charlie and yours truly knew we had to clear our sweet dishes otherwise those very nice dinner ladies would certainly know what was good for us and, equally would know what would help us to grow into strapping young men ‘just like their sons’. So providence called to us and we made our way to the ‘Gentlemen’s Room’ with our plates, tapioca and all. Although the windows were barred we could just about reach over the window sill to scrape our plates out of the window into empty space. May God be our witness, we were absolutely innocent of the fact that, at that precise moment, all the important dignitaries were assembled on the Town Hall steps, immediately below us. They were organising the transport for moving us all to our respective billets. Needless to say, it was the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayor among others, who copped the tapioca and Libby’s milk. They were smothered in the white sticky mess.
The more athletic of the party and probably the least stuck up of the dignitaries was up those stairs four at a time and was in the Gent’s before you could say ‘pee’, let alone do one. They frog-marched us out, down the stairs to the Town Hall steps, plates and all. Now like that we were confronted by the whitewashed victims, the Lord and Lady Mayor. I don’t know if they expected an apology of sorts or not, as it would have been the worst thing they could have done, for we three boys started laughing. So would anyone, with a sense of humour, if they could have seen the sight that we were forced to look at. I know for a fact that the Mayor couldn’t see for the tapioca was in his eyes and his dress suit and shirt. Well, as for the poor Lady Mayor, she was certainly worse, for one plate had hit her fair and square on the tits and she had a very big cleavage and most of it had run down her ‘inner self’. It was then we got the giggles and although I am sure they would have said that we had a telling off, it really went over our heads. Sad accident it may have been, we just loved it. Thereafter we three were watched very closely and were dubbed the ‘Three Terrors’, ‘three t’s’, for short.
After that we were ushered into the assembly hall downstairs where the proceedings for the selection of the individual billets were under way. The great thing that tickled we boys were the funny hats that most of the ladies wore. I think they were called ‘Pill Box’ or ‘Pillar Box’ or something like that and some of them had a veil attached. We had never seen anything like them in our lives.
Now all of us boys were football mad. ‘What’s new?’ I hear you all say but we were and still are to this day, absolutely crackers about football. At this time the selection procedure was in full swing and we were bored stiff hanging around so we sloped off upstairs and we found two coat stands with which brother Fred made a superb goal post. He went into goal as Frank Swift and said I had to be Stanley Matthews and Charlie was Ted Drake. It was smashing, we were very lucky indeed to find a ball which was waiting for us hanging on the coat stand. It was a black round-shaped object with a little sort of net on it or something. Anyway it doubled for a ball marvellously. If you chipped it right, with just the correct amount of weight behind it, it would sail over the outstretched goalie’s finger tips and drop in the far corner just right. Well I must have scored ten, Chas scored six. As for Fred, now he was a sight to behold, he was absolutely black as the ace of spades, covered from head to toes in black grime from constantly diving full length on the floor. It was then we all heard a ‘clip-clop, clip-clop ’ and demanding in a very loud posh voice
“Has anybody seen my hat up here?”
And with that ‘she’ was upon us. She ‘clocked’ Fred first,
“What on earth have you been doing boy, have you been grovelling up the Chimney? Speak boy, speak”.
Poor Fred, his white teeth absolutely shone out of his black face. He looked like Al. Jolson singing ‘Mammy’. It was then that she saw it, she was speechless for the moment. Fred was clutching it to his chest as if he had just saved Arsenal in the Cup Final with a last-minute penalty save. Then she thundered
“That’s my hat you’re holding there, boy”.
Fred threw it down as if it were a hot potato burning his fingers. She picked it up and held it close, as if in a trance and as if it were a soft, live puppy. In fact, it more resembled a dead cat.
Miss Wardlaw, for that was that elegant lady’s name, was absolutely crestfallen. She confronted Fred with her hands on her hips and, very sternly
“Can you please explain to me the simple logic .....”
She was cut off in full flow by the Billeting Officer who magically appeared and instructed
“Can you bring those three boys down Miss Wardlaw as we are about to place them, thank you?”
We were reminded frequently, over the course of the next 6 months, of that particular incident and, as we left her, Miss Wardlaw was very cross but did, just about, keep her composure as she gazed at her ‘dead cat’.
We had made the point that everything in life revolved around football.
At that moment most of the children were being plucked out of the Assembly Hall by those red-faced, buxom, elegant-hatted, high-heeled future foster mothers, just like piglets at auction at the County Fair. All of the children had their ‘Sunday best’ clothes on, that goes without saying. They would only have had one suit and it would only have been worn on a Sunday, a Wedding or a Funeral. So they all would have had their ‘ Sunday Best’ on today. As for the three of us, we would have stood out, impeccably dressed in our heavily-patched short trousers, always well down below and baggy at the knees, large potatoes in our socks clearly visible at the heels with our socks hanging bedraggled around our ankles, sporting no crisp white shirt or tie, unlike most of the other boys.
Our shoes were always about two sizes too big (hand-me-downs of course). I was lucky that day, I was not wearing my usual Wellingtons. I normally had to, come rain or shine. Our shoes were badly scuffed all the time through the endless kicking of empty cans or anything remotely resembling a football. That day the three of us were looking like Red Indians because of that giveaway bright purple ointment that the school nurse had painted on our faces because of our impetigo. So no prizes for guessing - ‘who’s gonna be the last three children left in the hall today then’ since it was a process of elimination. As a further point of information, a lot of those interested elegant foster mothers might have asked a couple of intellectual questions at random, like Miss Wardlaw asked me. She owned the large Manor House at Heronsgate, called ‘The Grange’. She was an unmarried millionairess and she was very intent on helping the war effort by eventually adopting ‘some unfortunate under-privileged little creature’ as she put it. Yes, like Miss Wardlaw asked some such question of me
“What is your name child?” With a very large plum in her mouth.
“Jim, Miss,” I curtly replied in my best Cockney.
“You mean ‘James’ don’t you boy?”
I remembered, during the questioning, to whip me socks up quickly and to wipe me shoes quickly across the backs of each of me socks in a flash and, luckily and furtively remembered me Ma’s advice, that’s usually accompanied by a clip around the ear ‘to do me flies up’.
“No Miss, Jim”.
“Well now, Jim, can you answer me this sum, are you clever? Tell me, what is four pounds plus two pounds seventeen shillings”.
“Oh that’s easy Miss, that’s a bleedin’ lot of doh, ray, me” said I.
Well of course, that should have meant the end of Miss Wardlaw’s interest in us or would it?
When one reflected on why we were the only children left in the big hall, it was a totally superfluous question and now, being dark, it must have been almost tea-time and we hadn’t found a new Ma yet.
Being that we were so bored waiting for the grown-ups to make up their minds we decided to explore the second floor and we came across a king-size kitchen with the remains of our earlier meal in what I can only describe as a huge vat, rather than a huge saucepan. I had never seen a container like it. So, with the aid of my two older brothers we slid the vat to the edge of the table and, standing on the chair, we could look over the edge and see that it was still a quarter full of that tapioca. Well, being sports orientated as we were, we could see immediately that great fun was to be had if we met the challenge that confronted us. That one was different from school where we had found that by using the springiness of a school ruler to propel a farthing-sized, ink-filled blob of blotting paper 20ft or so, at the Teacher’s desk or blackboard, was chicken feed. Now, to squeeze a dollop of tapioca into the shape and size of a .303 rifle bullet and then project it accurately, with only the help of the springiness of an egg slice from the kitchen drawer, on to the nose of a full size facial portrait of King George VI, would take some doing but the outcome was never in doubt, especially from the distance of 25 ft. It was sheer magic! We must have scored about 50 bullseyes as well as a lot of near misses. “Never, in the history of such a Town Hall, has so much sticky mess been made by so few.”
By now the kitchen looked like the set of the film ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ and we were all quite oblivious of the ‘clip-clop, clip-clop’ once again of Miss Wardlaw’s high heeled shoes. As she came into view and she was upon us, folding her arms across her very generous bosom, she didn’t hesitate for one second, she gazed straight at and right through all three of us and said
“Now aren’t I the lucky one?
I’m about to embark on a new career of being the Guardian Angel to three Cockney kids from Chiswick and I need help from just one person and that is Jesus Christ Himself.”
We later learned that she was the Chairwoman of the local Town Council and the instigator herself and the prime mover, responsible for the implementation of the Churchillian-sponsored NationwideGovernment Directive that would ease the burden of the evacuation of the little loves from London.
THE EARLY YEARS
I first saw the light of day on the 26th January 1931 and was eventually christened....
Henry James Leonard Miles. So you could say I was a New Year present for my “Ma” - I called her “Ma” from the very beginning, as indeed I still do today and likewise it was with the rest of the family, 5 boys and 1 girl. I was the third born of the children. I followed Fred born nine years earlier with Charles born two years before me. As we evolved one after the other, six in all, we all called Mother “Ma” and our Father who, by the way, wasn’t the one in Heaven and come to think of it, he never ever came remotely close to it, was also “Pop” to all and sundry from the first moment that we could mouth the words. So “Pop” and “Ma” it was and remained for the rest of our lives.
So there we were, in the year of our Lord 1931, as a family trying to survive the terrible depression of the ‘Thirties’ with Pop working at Chiswick Bus Garage for the LPTB as a skilled Electrical Machinist with what would have been known, in those days, as the equivalent of today’s state-of-the art ‘electric machine’. It revolutionised the production of new and also the repair of, used upholstery on London’s buses, trams, trains and trolley buses. So professionally Pop would have been regarded as having a darn good job. However his weekly salary could hardly be called a King’s Ransom when compared with the cost of living of the day for a family as large as ours. To make matters worse for us all, another two boys and one girl were destined to be born to our family, one every year for the next three years. There was Dennis in ’38, Rose in ’39 and Victor followed in ’40. Needless to say, only Fred, the eldest ever had new clothes. I can honestly say that none of us younger five ever had anything new until we each bought our own and that would have been when we first went out to work. As it turned out in my case, the first new clothes that I ever had were with the compliments of King George VI, God Bless Him, but that’s for later. In any case, it was law in our family that, come pay day for any of us, woe betide you if your wage packet had been opened prior to putting it on the table in front of Ma on a Friday evening. Friday was pay day back in those days, for most people. Sorry, I’m jumping the gun now so let’s go back to where I was, my beginning. I am told that I was a touch-and-go baby and I tipped the scales at only three pounds which, in itself was considered pretty hazardous therefore, the doctor advised Ma to feed me well and leave me at the bottom of the garden, undisturbed in the pram as often as possible for as long as possible, regardless of the weather.
So I slept and grew and one of my earliest recollections was when we were all lined up at Belmont Bus Garage one bright Sunday morning, early in September 1939, about the time when war was declared, with our suitcases in our hands and our gas masks round our necks. We three older boys were despatched, together with 300 or so other tearful children, away from our respective, equally tearful Pop's and Ma’s, to various parts of the country.
After leaving Chiswick our bus wound its way north-westerly through London into Hertfordshire and in particular to a pretty place called Chorley Wood. Now we children had never been farther than our own school playground and men of the world we were not. The thing that struck me, in retrospect, was, a good few years later, that the average range of a German bomber was something like two thousand miles or so and our London bus took us just fifty miles! To safety?
Our six buses eventually pulled up outside the local Town Hall and, in those days it would have been the only public building of any significance for there were no Community Centres around then. I can remember most clearly the Lord and Lady Mayor on the steps of the building. He wearing his Chain of Office around his neck, looking very important like a Prime Minister and the Mayoress with her feather boa and a funny hat with a veil and her high heels.
Amid much shaking of hands, even with us very young children, although undoubtedly a P. R. exercise, it was rather frightening for my brothers and me. However the wise men and the dignitaries of our newly adopted home town just did not realise the huge burden that they were taking upon themselves in disturbing their sleepy village by inviting us to stay with them. I am sure, after it was all over that they would have been more than willing to have swapped places with us and that they live in London and face the German bombing nightly rather than what we eventually put them through. However, back to the reality at the time.
First things first, we wanted to eat. So we all climbed the elegant white marble staircase that led us up to the Mayor’s parlour and the Council Chamber where that momentous decision must have been taken to accept over 100 poor little Londoners and now, being duly implemented by a very generous, warm-hearted community. All the tables were laid with over 100 place settings as if for a Royal Banquet, with beautiful centre pieces of flowers and matching cut glass and, I am sure, they expected no less than the Royal Children. We were served by twenty or so ladies of the W. V. S. each of whom, every now and again, with total spontaneity, would pick one of us up, muttering something like
“Oh you poor little darling.”
They would then despatch a big squelchy wet kiss on our cheek with a ‘mwa’ and then hug us to their big bosoms in such a firm manner that they ‘crushed me marshmallows’ and ‘me conkers’ in ‘me trouser pockets’ until YUCK, eventually we made it safely to our seats. After an official introduction by the Lady Mayor we could get ‘stuck in!, Stuck in, that is, to what seemed a spiffing ‘nosh’ at the time until the dessert, or rather ‘afters’ as we used to call it, which was splodge that they called tapioca and as if that wasn’t bad enough it was accompanied by Libby’s milk. Now if there is anything in this life that is guaranteed to make we boys throw up then it’s got to be Libby’s milk. So naturally, after everyone else had cleared their plates and the dinner ladies started to clear away to the kitchen, dishes and all, Fred, Charlie and yours truly knew we had to clear our sweet dishes otherwise those very nice dinner ladies would certainly know what was good for us and, equally would know what would help us to grow into strapping young men ‘just like their sons’. So providence called to us and we made our way to the ‘Gentlemen’s Room’ with our plates, tapioca and all. Although the windows were barred we could just about reach over the window sill to scrape our plates out of the window into empty space. May God be our witness, we were absolutely innocent of the fact that, at that precise moment, all the important dignitaries were assembled on the Town Hall steps, immediately below us. They were organising the transport for moving us all to our respective billets. Needless to say, it was the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayor among others, who copped the tapioca and Libby’s milk. They were smothered in the white sticky mess.
The more athletic of the party and probably the least stuck up of the dignitaries was up those stairs four at a time and was in the Gent’s before you could say ‘pee’, let alone do one. They frog-marched us out, down the stairs to the Town Hall steps, plates and all. Now like that we were confronted by the whitewashed victims, the Lord and Lady Mayor. I don’t know if they expected an apology of sorts or not, as it would have been the worst thing they could have done, for we three boys started laughing. So would anyone, with a sense of humour, if they could have seen the sight that we were forced to look at. I know for a fact that the Mayor couldn’t see for the tapioca was in his eyes and his dress suit and shirt. Well, as for the poor Lady Mayor, she was certainly worse, for one plate had hit her fair and square on the tits and she had a very big cleavage and most of it had run down her ‘inner self’. It was then we got the giggles and although I am sure they would have said that we had a telling off, it really went over our heads. Sad accident it may have been, we just loved it. Thereafter we three were watched very closely and were dubbed the ‘Three Terrors’, ‘three t’s’, for short.
After that we were ushered into the assembly hall downstairs where the proceedings for the selection of the individual billets were under way. The great thing that tickled we boys were the funny hats that most of the ladies wore. I think they were called ‘Pill Box’ or ‘Pillar Box’ or something like that and some of them had a veil attached. We had never seen anything like them in our lives.
Now all of us boys were football mad. ‘What’s new?’ I hear you all say but we were and still are to this day, absolutely crackers about football. At this time the selection procedure was in full swing and we were bored stiff hanging around so we sloped off upstairs and we found two coat stands with which brother Fred made a superb goal post. He went into goal as Frank Swift and said I had to be Stanley Matthews and Charlie was Ted Drake. It was smashing, we were very lucky indeed to find a ball which was waiting for us hanging on the coat stand. It was a black round-shaped object with a little sort of net on it or something. Anyway it doubled for a ball marvellously. If you chipped it right, with just the correct amount of weight behind it, it would sail over the outstretched goalie’s finger tips and drop in the far corner just right. Well I must have scored ten, Chas scored six. As for Fred, now he was a sight to behold, he was absolutely black as the ace of spades, covered from head to toes in black grime from constantly diving full length on the floor. It was then we all heard a ‘clip-clop, clip-clop ’ and demanding in a very loud posh voice
“Has anybody seen my hat up here?”
And with that ‘she’ was upon us. She ‘clocked’ Fred first,
“What on earth have you been doing boy, have you been grovelling up the Chimney? Speak boy, speak”.
Poor Fred, his white teeth absolutely shone out of his black face. He looked like Al. Jolson singing ‘Mammy’. It was then that she saw it, she was speechless for the moment. Fred was clutching it to his chest as if he had just saved Arsenal in the Cup Final with a last-minute penalty save. Then she thundered
“That’s my hat you’re holding there, boy”.
Fred threw it down as if it were a hot potato burning his fingers. She picked it up and held it close, as if in a trance and as if it were a soft, live puppy. In fact, it more resembled a dead cat.
Miss Wardlaw, for that was that elegant lady’s name, was absolutely crestfallen. She confronted Fred with her hands on her hips and, very sternly
“Can you please explain to me the simple logic .....”
She was cut off in full flow by the Billeting Officer who magically appeared and instructed
“Can you bring those three boys down Miss Wardlaw as we are about to place them, thank you?”
We were reminded frequently, over the course of the next 6 months, of that particular incident and, as we left her, Miss Wardlaw was very cross but did, just about, keep her composure as she gazed at her ‘dead cat’.
We had made the point that everything in life revolved around football.
At that moment most of the children were being plucked out of the Assembly Hall by those red-faced, buxom, elegant-hatted, high-heeled future foster mothers, just like piglets at auction at the County Fair. All of the children had their ‘Sunday best’ clothes on, that goes without saying. They would only have had one suit and it would only have been worn on a Sunday, a Wedding or a Funeral. So they all would have had their ‘ Sunday Best’ on today. As for the three of us, we would have stood out, impeccably dressed in our heavily-patched short trousers, always well down below and baggy at the knees, large potatoes in our socks clearly visible at the heels with our socks hanging bedraggled around our ankles, sporting no crisp white shirt or tie, unlike most of the other boys.
Our shoes were always about two sizes too big (hand-me-downs of course). I was lucky that day, I was not wearing my usual Wellingtons. I normally had to, come rain or shine. Our shoes were badly scuffed all the time through the endless kicking of empty cans or anything remotely resembling a football. That day the three of us were looking like Red Indians because of that giveaway bright purple ointment that the school nurse had painted on our faces because of our impetigo. So no prizes for guessing - ‘who’s gonna be the last three children left in the hall today then’ since it was a process of elimination. As a further point of information, a lot of those interested elegant foster mothers might have asked a couple of intellectual questions at random, like Miss Wardlaw asked me. She owned the large Manor House at Heronsgate, called ‘The Grange’. She was an unmarried millionairess and she was very intent on helping the war effort by eventually adopting ‘some unfortunate under-privileged little creature’ as she put it. Yes, like Miss Wardlaw asked some such question of me
“What is your name child?” With a very large plum in her mouth.
“Jim, Miss,” I curtly replied in my best Cockney.
“You mean ‘James’ don’t you boy?”
I remembered, during the questioning, to whip me socks up quickly and to wipe me shoes quickly across the backs of each of me socks in a flash and, luckily and furtively remembered me Ma’s advice, that’s usually accompanied by a clip around the ear ‘to do me flies up’.
“No Miss, Jim”.
“Well now, Jim, can you answer me this sum, are you clever? Tell me, what is four pounds plus two pounds seventeen shillings”.
“Oh that’s easy Miss, that’s a bleedin’ lot of doh, ray, me” said I.
Well of course, that should have meant the end of Miss Wardlaw’s interest in us or would it?
When one reflected on why we were the only children left in the big hall, it was a totally superfluous question and now, being dark, it must have been almost tea-time and we hadn’t found a new Ma yet.
Being that we were so bored waiting for the grown-ups to make up their minds we decided to explore the second floor and we came across a king-size kitchen with the remains of our earlier meal in what I can only describe as a huge vat, rather than a huge saucepan. I had never seen a container like it. So, with the aid of my two older brothers we slid the vat to the edge of the table and, standing on the chair, we could look over the edge and see that it was still a quarter full of that tapioca. Well, being sports orientated as we were, we could see immediately that great fun was to be had if we met the challenge that confronted us. That one was different from school where we had found that by using the springiness of a school ruler to propel a farthing-sized, ink-filled blob of blotting paper 20ft or so, at the Teacher’s desk or blackboard, was chicken feed. Now, to squeeze a dollop of tapioca into the shape and size of a .303 rifle bullet and then project it accurately, with only the help of the springiness of an egg slice from the kitchen drawer, on to the nose of a full size facial portrait of King George VI, would take some doing but the outcome was never in doubt, especially from the distance of 25 ft. It was sheer magic! We must have scored about 50 bullseyes as well as a lot of near misses. “Never, in the history of such a Town Hall, has so much sticky mess been made by so few.”
By now the kitchen looked like the set of the film ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ and we were all quite oblivious of the ‘clip-clop, clip-clop’ once again of Miss Wardlaw’s high heeled shoes. As she came into view and she was upon us, folding her arms across her very generous bosom, she didn’t hesitate for one second, she gazed straight at and right through all three of us and said
“Now aren’t I the lucky one?
I’m about to embark on a new career of being the Guardian Angel to three Cockney kids from Chiswick and I need help from just one person and that is Jesus Christ Himself.”
We later learned that she was the Chairwoman of the local Town Council and the instigator herself and the prime mover, responsible for the implementation of the Churchillian-sponsored NationwideGovernment Directive that would ease the burden of the evacuation of the little loves from London.