Jellied Eels and Zeppelins Read Online Free PDF

came over with red tapes in their tails. Dad used to go and sit with them, ‘cos the crossing was so rough. He said that some of them used to jump about a lot because they got frightened when the sea was rough, especially when the boats passed through The Casquets, where the tides met. It was always very choppy there and the horses used to get sick. I remember Dad telling me that he used to come out on deck sometimes, to get a bit of fresh air and then went back down again for fear of getting washed overboard. He had the horses on the island for so many months, then the officers used to come over and get ‘em and they’d be taken off to France.
    Dad really had a way with animals and he especially loved horses. He told me ‘Never hit a horse, ‘cos they always remember.’
    Dad and his mates also used to keep watch on the Channel for anything unusual. They were away from the fighting.’
    During his spare-time, Edwin and his friends used to sit on the rocks and wait for the ormer tide to come in bringing with it the ormers - edible abalones (marine snails), also called sea-ears, which have flattened, oval-shaped shells with respiratory holes and a mother-of-pearl lining, and are used as a food in the Channel Islands.
    ‘Dad was a very good swimmer and diver and he and his friends used to dive into the water before the shellfish stuck themselves onto the rocks and then they wouldn’t have been able to get them off. The shellfish were like oysters, but with knobbly bits on the outside. They had mother-of-pearl inside and Dad brought us all the shells back. They were different sizes and the fish were delicious when fried.
    He also used to buy lots of tomatoes and grapes from St. Peter Port (
Guernsey’s capital
) and bring them home for us kids and there were these large biscuits, which looked like dogs’ biscuits, but they tasted lovely too.
    I was about six or seven when Dad has his affair. When he used to come home on leave during the war, he would go straight round to this woman’s and my Mum found out. She went round there and said ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself - you’ve got a husband fighting on the front-line and you’re taking my husband away!’ I think it only lasted for three or four months, but I did lose a certain amount of respect for my father over it. I couldn’t help it. My mother was a good wife to him, she was. She thought the world of my Dad. She looked after us kids ever so well too and never took a day off. And that’s all the thanks that she got.
    On the huge field called The Elms at the back of our flat in Walthamstow, where we used to go and pick up the tennis balls for a penny, there were specially erected tents, where they made mustard gas bombs. My Dad came home on leave once and Florrie and I had just come home from school. Dad asked ‘Where’s your mother?’ and Florrie replied ‘On The Elms making bombs!’ Dad said ‘Right - I’ll make a bomb!’ and he went and dragged her out, shouting ‘You’re not making those sorts of things and you’re not leaving those two kids! I didn’t marry you to go off to work. Get home and look after the girls!’
    A lady up the road took the job and Mum looked after her two children, so she had the four of us and did her little bit that way.’
    With no television or radio to follow the events of the Great War, British families either had to scan the newspapers or watch the Pathé News at the cinema:
    ‘We always used to go on a Friday night. It used to cost threepence to watch the Pathé. My sister and I, when we was younger, we used to go to the Saturday morning pictures - that cost a penny. We would get a comic or an orange when we came out. They always cut the film off at the most exciting part to make sure that you went back the next week. The Carlton Cinema was a lovely cinema opposite the Walthamstow Palace. There was the Sarsaparilla Stall outside, where when we was older, we used to have a glass of sarsaparilla before we went