Jellied Eels and Zeppelins Read Online Free PDF Page B

in. St. James Street Cinema was a flea pit. It was known as ‘The Jameos’ and you used to see serials there. We used to pay for ourselves to get into the cinema - a penny. My Dad gave us our ‘Saturday penny’ for washing and drying-up and for cleaning the knives and forks on an emery board. And that penny, or the penny we were given by anyone who came to visit, was split by Dad into two ha’pennies or four farthings.
    We had two money boxes like pillar boxes on our mantelpiece marked ‘F’ for Florrie and ‘E’ for Ethel. We used to put a ha’penny in there every Saturday, but, if we went to the pictures, we’d use the whole penny. With the two farthings we had, we’d get two lots of sweets. Two we saved and two we could spend. Sometimes Mum borrowed our money, but she would always pay us back. I can see her now putting a knife in the slot of the box to get the pennies out. ‘Look girls,’ she would say afterwards, ‘I’m putting it back!’
    When I was two and a half, Mum took me into the post office. I put my hands on the counter and I could just see over the top. She gave me a book just like a pension book and it had 12 spaces in it. Mum said ‘Each one of those spaces is a penny - when you’ve got a bookful, you’ve saved one shilling. That’s your savings book.’ I saved from when I was two and a half to when I got married and I spent it all on my wedding and on some of the furniture, the curtains, lino, the lot - it even paid for my car to the church. My chap hadn’t got it, so I paid it.’

    A souvenir of the silver jubilee

    The King and Queen during the First World War were George V - who succeeded to the throne on the death of Edward VII in 1910 - and Queen Mary, whom he had married in 1893.
    ‘He was very nice, but she was a domineering woman. Queen Mary always seemed very stuck-up and strait-laced. She always had one of those hats on her head and she used to walk with a parasol. The King would do as he was told and always did the right thing.
    Gran (Aunt Polly) and Grandad (paternal) were the caretakers of a big old house in Bramham Gardens, Earls Court, before and for a while during, the First World War. It was a big five-storey house - I can see it now - and Gran and Grandfather lived in the basement. Gran was the cook and Grandfather was the butler. I can remember going down into the kitchen looking for Grandfather once. There was an iron spiral staircase at one end. Grandad was sitting at the top playing ‘The Merry Widow’ on this brass thing like a bicycle wheel, like a hurdy-gurdy. That song has stuck in my mind ever since.
    Grandfather’s nickname for me was ‘Pins and Needles’, because he said that I could never sit down for five minutes (I think it was because of the St. Vitus’s dance I had when I was a baby!).
    Us children weren’t allowed to go upstairs, only when requested by the family. We used to have to curtsey. Gran caught me going upstairs once without permission and she told me off. Right at the very top of the house was the nursery. Gran took me upstairs once and I remember seeing all these dolls in glass cases all the way round.

    Bramham Gardens, Earls Court, London
    It really was like that television programme, ‘Upstairs Downstairs.’ Downstairs there were six bells along the kitchen wall and an electric light up in the ceiling. When they wanted to see anything at close range, they used to pull it down on a pulley, right onto the table, so they could see what they were doing. There was a big butler sink too - it was very posh. Gran used to buy pigs’ chitterlings (
the smaller intestines of pigs
), put them in salt water, clean ‘em and fill ‘em with sausage meat and cook ‘em for the downstairs’ staff. They were lovely. There was also a real sunken garden full of fuchsias with another big garden further on.
    The German Baron and his family, who owned the house, also owned another at Littlehampton. Grandfather used to stay there for a couple of