August 22, 2010		INDEX More video from September 12
A bit disgraceful ,, ,,
[00:00:01:14	,"When I spoke to Tommy about your dad, because. ", ,,
[00:00:08:02	," There are very few people around who actually know your dad but Tommy did, he said, and he couldn't tell me much. But he said the one thing that surprised him he expected him to be an MP one day.", ,,
[00:00:21:17,	," Yeah. Yeah, well, they used to. I mean, I remember that them trying to pressurize him into standing. Council and all the rest of it. Like They did me eventually they wanted me to be an MP." ,,
[00:00:45:09	,"Yeah, and as far as your dad goes, it wasn't that he just didn't didn't like to do that. He wanted to be a backroom boy.", ,,
[00:00:53:19,	," Yes, he he he would do everything. He'd work 24 hours a day,
[00:01:00:00	but he couldn't speak in public." , Did your mom get involved with the Labour Party? ,"No, she I don't think she approved of him doing anything like that at all, really. She was she never knew anything about politics. She never, never crossed her head that there was anything to be done about in politics."
[00:01:21:23	," I did speak to your mom about matters political. I was quite surprised that she was on the left of the spectrum. And she is, she was
[00:01:30:00	for an old lady. You know, she was quite sort of leftward leftward inclined. I would be say sophisticated. But she had good instincts.", ,,
[00:01:40:16,	," Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you were brought up in where she was, you knew about it. You know, that not everybody was equal." , How was she brought up?,
[00:01:55:00,	,"Well, there was a I don't know how many girls there was, but there was a there was I
[00:02:00:00	think there was 11 girls and a boy brought up in the cottage and had one room downstairs and two rooms upstairs. And obviously, they weren't all there at the same time, because as soon as they had got to be 14, they were put out to service somewhere to work as a slave for somebody else." ,,
[00:02:21:08	,"Yeah, they became servants", Yeah. ,Many of them went to London.," Yes, most of them did."
[00:02:30:18,	," Except
[00:02:30:00	one or two of the older ones didn't, I think, because they well, one of them got married early. And I think that was the only one who stayed all the time, really was Gerty, who got married and had a family at." ,,
[00:02:50:03,,	Like ,,
[00:02:52:02,	," But then most of the others, once one went to London." ,,
[00:02:57:22,	," They as soon as another one was 14. They said, give her her fare and I'll meet you at the other end and find her somewhere." ,,
[00:03:06:17,	And how did your parents meet?, ,,
[00:03:12:18,	," I don't know, I think. I think it was something to do with that club again." ,,
[00:03:21:03	," I think your mom told me that your dad came round, knocked on the door with a bunch of flowers and asked her out where
[00:03:30:00	she was working, where she was at the time. I can't exactly remember, but it's a long time ago now", ,Leigham Court Road SW16,
[00:03:36:00,,	She was working in Leigham Court Road at the time. ,,
[00:03:39:22,	Who was she working for?, Uh. ,,
[00:03:43:10,	," I think it was just a businessman, I can't remember their name." ,,
[00:03:49:09,,	But Aunt Rosa worked there as well. ,,
[00:03:55:23,,	And. ,,
[00:03:58:11,	," That they had one or two jobs
[00:04:00:00	before that, and the older girls would, you know, watched over them? I know there was some story about some job they had where the older girls, two or three of the older girls, turned up and took them away for having, you know, I would be told the gory details. But obviously, it wasn't a good place for them to be as young kids." ,,
[00:04:29:03	," Well, there was there was a lot of stories about servants, you know, being molested by their employers or seduced by their employers", ,,
[00:04:41:10,	," I guess it was something like that, but they were very quickly ripped out of it by the older girls." ,,
[00:04:49:17,	," And if you had seen the older girls, you'd know that you didn't argue with them." ,,
[00:04:54:09	," Yeah. And this club that you went to, there was a lot of alcohol there.", Yes. , What was your mother's attitude towards alcohol?,"a bit disapproving because people got a bit silly with it, "
[00:05:19:05	,"but what about Uncle Arthur and, you know, the falling, falling and falling?", She very much disapproved of Uncle Arthur. ,,Yeah.
[00:05:21:15,	What about a mother making a world of wine?, ,,
[00:05:24:16,	," Well, it seemed to be alright because what she was doing was using up things. And you were only supposed to have one glass. I was supposed to have half a glass when I was a kid, have some water with it, but my grandmother used to say 'I haven't put any water in it." ,,
[00:05:47:13	," Yeah, it sounds like your mother was sort of a very early environmentalist.", ,,
[00:05:53:15,	," Yes, I don't know that she thought of it that way. I think it was mainly that she thought it was 'waste not want not'." ,,
[00:06:05:10	," Well, she she had this mentality of being dirt poor because no doubt, when she was brought up, her father wasn't earning very much money and there were no big family. And she was, you know, very conscious of of I mean",if you got one meal a day. ,,
[00:06:23:08,	," You were lucky, I should think." ,,
[00:06:24:16	," Yeah, I think that's probably right. And this club that they used to like or your father used to know, what attitude did your mother have about that later on?", ,,
[00:06:37:10,	," Well, she wasn't very happy about it because it there wasn't the spare money to spend." ,,
[00:06:48:02,	,"and once people that had a couple of drinks, they weren't too careful about what they did with their money and." ,,
[00:06:57:09,	," It was a bit sinful, I think, yeah, and it was a long night for you to go to loughborough junction wasn't it.",
[00:07:05:20,	," Yeah. Yes, it was a long ride. Well, you see, we had to go over. I suppose, had to choose a different word but yeah my father wanted to see his father I suppose his mother,in the early days and his sisters lived there. But of course, if you wanted to see them, you've got to pop into the club because that's where they'd be." ,,
[00:07:28:03,	So they used to spend a lot of time in the club. What did your mother think about that?, ,,
[00:07:33:13,,	She thought it was a bit disgraceful. "She didn't really approve of alcohol, but I mean, she didn't approve of them spending a lot of time in the club",
[00:07:36:13	," no because of the drinking. Yeah, but they were quite prosperous, weren't they? I mean, your grandfather got a good pension and had a wonderful house and", Yes he had a very good job. ,,
[00:07:57:10,	," Of course, he was in charge of the print for the. What do you call it, stationery office? He was in charge of all the printing, which is hell of a lot of printing isn't it, the stationery office." ,,
[00:08:14:07	," But he was a compositor. Yeah, but he wasn't just an ordinary he wasn't a Linotype operator. He was. He was",I don't think they had Linotypes. ,"Oh they had Linotypes, Yeah. Yeah. Linotypes were invented in the 1880s",
[00:08:27:11,	,"Well, that would be about time. "
	,"Yeah, but your grandfather was working until 30s wasn't he.",
[00:08:37:15,	," I expect so. I find it I don't think he was really. I could always go and see him, and he had he got so fat he could hardly move and we used to go and see him in his house. Eventually, I knew it was once I was born, the club was ruled out, I think." ,,
[00:09:04:10,,	And. ,,
[00:09:07:07,	," He was still president of the union and all that jazz and you know the people used to come and see him, even quite important people, I'm told used to come and see him, but." ,,
[00:09:22:12,	Do you have any idea why that so fat?, ,,
[00:09:25:09,	," I think it must have been the beer, That would be my guess, " ,they used to drink a lot of beer at the club,
[00:09:31:07,	," Yeah," ,and he had this thing about smoking and ash would fall down his front, Yeah. Yeah. ,What did it say it was? ,You see his front went out....
	,"No sorry, We've got to stop this.",
[00:09:48:03,	did your grandfather smoke at all. " Yes.what used to amuse me when I was a youngster was he had a great big belly and the ash used to fall on it. And then he used to slap himself like this, but it used to fly everywhere." ,,
[00:10:02:02,	And what sort of things did he smoke?" "He smoked, cigars." ,,
[00:10:06:12	," Now, that's quite unusual for a compositor. I mean, I've known a lot of compositors never known one to smoke cigars.", ,,
[00:10:12:13,	," Uh. Well, I don't know, I suppose they were cheaper then." "No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, I think he must have been pretty damn well paid.",
[00:10:25:11,	," Yeah. Well, he did seem to. He always seemed to be prosperous. Yeah." ,,
[00:10:33:07	,"And so why did your grandmother, your mother, disapprove of him", because of the drinking and the socializing and. ,,
[00:10:45:03,	," I suppose she thought it was money going to waste, but of course, when my father died. He offered to support us, but she would not have it. And I don't know, I suppose because she, words, you don't hear now, she didn't want to be beholden to him" "No, she very proud lady",
[00:11:04:17,,	, Yeah. Yeah," It's a great shame in a way, though, because your father, your grandfather would have sent you to a Masonic school.",
[00:11:13:14,,	Yes. He wanted to or the boat. They had a boat in the Thames and he was looking at that for me. ,,
[00:11:21:16	," And you'd have got a good, good job proper career and all that. ",Yeah. ,And probably never met Mum and I'd never been born.,
[00:11:28:02,	," Yeah, well, you would have been born, but you might have had a different father or mother, whichever way you look at it." ,,
[00:11:35:04,	,Yeah. Yeah. Right. Let me just stop this., ,,
[00:11:38:24,, ,,
[00:11:43:13,	," I was born in south London, in West Norwood." ,,
[00:11:48:09	,and who were your parents?, ,,B
[00:11:51:18,,	My father was Leonard Brind and Charles Brind my mother's maiden name was Hutton Hilda Hutton. ,,
[00:12:02:00,	And what was what was your dad's job?, ,, ,,
[00:12:06:01,	," He was a civil servant. It sounds strange today, but he worked in the for the post office, in the savings department, but it was a civil service job in those days." ,,
[00:12:24:13,	So it's like a bank., ,,
[00:12:26:05,	," Yeah, it was an unestablished civil servant " ,working in a bank. ,
[00:12:30:17,	," Yeah, " ,but your grandfather was also an unestablished civil servant wasn't he,
[00:12:35:03,	," Yes, because he worked for the he was a printer in charge of whatever the stationery office." ,,
[00:12:45:00,	And what did your mother do?, ,,
[00:12:49:15,	," She she's just a housewife, she was just she was a housewife, cared for the house and me" ,,
[00:12:56:21,	And how did your parents meet?, ,,
[00:13:01:03,	," I am not absolutely certain, but I think they met at a club in Loughborough Junction" ,pretty unlikely.,
[00:13:11:15,	," Your mother going to a club, isn't it?" ,,
[00:13:14:05,	," Well, her and my Aunt Rosa, her sister and the next sister were a couple of girls in those days. They wore the hobble skirts. And, you know, they were the girls of the. You're making a fuss of everything and having a a real lot of fun." ,,
[00:13:37:01,,	I think ,so. They were sort of flappers.,
[00:13:40:18,	," Oh, yes, that's right. I'm told, that the skirts were so... their hobble. skirts were so tight that the bus conductor used to have to get off the bus and lift the on because they couldn't lift their foot up high enough to get on the platform." ,,
[00:13:56:12,	Who told you that? ,My mom. ,,
[00:14:00:10,	," Might have been, Aunt Rosa" ," so she was quite proud of it, being hoisted about by bus conductors.",
[00:14:07:03,,	Yea they thought that was a bit special. ,,
[00:14:11:08	,"Well, in those days, of course, quite a lot of the bus conductors were women, clippies", ,,
[00:14:16:06,,	Only during the war. ,,
[00:14:18:17	," Oh, so in the thirties, when we're talking about, twenties aren't we're talking about the bus conductors were not women?","No
,"	," so it was only the first of all, the first war? ""The first and the Second World War, they recruited women because the men had gone off to shoot Germans."
[00:14:41:03,	,And what did your father during the war?, He was a sniper. ,,
[00:14:45:03,	," Which seems a bit strange because he always wore glasses and apparently he had to hold a rifle on the wrong shoulder and all the rest of it, but he was a very good shot." ,,
[00:14:56:18,	Why did he have to hold the rifle on the wrong shoulder? , ,,
[00:15:00:01,,	I don't really know. But I've been told he had to. But he got captured. ,,
[00:15:05:10,	," Of course, " ,one would have assumed it was because he was left handed.,
[00:15:09:21,,	I don't think he was he was ambidextrous. He could foot he could write.... He used to play about a lot. He could write extremely small print and he could do it with both hands. And he was a bloody genius 0at adding up. He could go down a four figure column with his pencil and write the answer at the bottom.He was very good. ,,
[00:15:39:12	,"Well, where did all that ability go the ambidextrousness and writing very small. Your handwriting is not very good is it?",No and I can't spell. , Well you don't have to be able to spell to be a mathematician do you?.,
[00:15:53:10,	," Well, I suppose I'm not too bad at that, but my father was er, I obviously didn't inherit his brains." ,,
[00:16:03:12	," I don't know that your mom wasn't too stupid, really.", ,,
[00:16:09:01,	," No, she wasn't stupid, she was just uneducated, like she'd been to a village school until she was 14, I think, but I'm not sure and then, of course. Straight out to work boarded in, in a farm house somewhere way out from anywhere and doing the housework for an old couple." ,,
[00:16:36:06	," Well, it wasn't long before she went to London. Though was it.", ,,
[00:16:40:03,	," Yeah. Older sisters. There were some, um, I don't know happened, but something was wrong. And a couple of her older sisters went and collected her and took her up to London and found her job up there." ,,
[00:16:56:01	," And what you're talking about, your father's war and and him being a sniper, what happened to your father in the war.", ,,
[00:17:06:14,	," Well, the war was fought over in flanders over the fields and the snipers used to be in. It sort of shell holes in front of the line, they are, you know, shooting anyone they saw and of course, the problem was the line retreated and they didn't tell him. So he suddenly found himself behind German lines." ,,
[00:17:36:04,	And what happened then,He got captured by the Germans and put in a prisoner of war camp" that was very kind of you them I'd have thought if they come across a sniper, they'd have shot him?",
[00:17:47:21,	," Well, I don't know. I suppose the problem is, you see, if they did and he got out, we would have shot there's as well." ,,
[00:17:55:24,	And so it was a sort of gentleman's agreement that they took., ,,
[00:18:00:13,	," Yeah, but they did, but they were in awful trouble. They didn't have any food and he didn't get fed very much when he was released from the prison camp. They wouldn't bring the prisoners home. Because they looked in such a poor state, they took them on a trip round up to Norway and back to feed them up before they release them to the public." ,,
[00:18:32:07,	Right. And how long was he in he was in a German prisoner of war camp., ,,
[00:18:39:09,	," I don't know, two or three years, I think." ,,
[00:18:44:06	," Well, I don't think he was captured until 1917.", ,,
[00:18:49:13,	," I don't know. He was you say he was very young when he joined the army. Put his age up, I think." ,,
[00:18:57:17,, ,,
[00:19:04:10,	," Because he came out, the army went straight back to the post office. But I really don't know." ,,
[00:19:10:17	,"He didn't really leave the post office though did he because he joined the post office, rifles? "," Yeah, ""and what they were was they were territorial regiment. So he was actually training with the post office rifles, while he was still working."" I should think so, yeah. " "So, I mean, he didn't he wasn't in right
[00:19:30:00	at the beginning because he was still being trained up, I think by the", Probably.
[00:19:35:24,	," Yes, it's hard to tell. I mean he was. He couldn't have been very old, could he?" ,,
[00:19:45:19	," I think I can't remember offhand, but I think he was born in eighteen ninety five ish, so 1914 he'd have been about nineteen ninety.", ,,
[00:19:56:06,,	Oh well plenty old enough there was a lot younger than that going. ,,
[00:20:00:07	,"Well,
[00:20:00:00	I believe I may be wrong, but I believe that the average combatant was 17 years old in the First World War",And in the second. ,Well that's the usual way. ,Seventeen and a half in the second. ,"Yeah. So he'd have been, you know, by the standards of the time. Yeah. Not not particularly young. No. And did he ever tell you anything about the German prisoner of war camp?",
[00:20:28:15,	," No, no. He never talked about it at all, but I was very young when he died." ,,
[00:20:36:00,Did your father smoke?	,"Yes. He rolled his own, ","did you notice anything about his hands,", a yellow stain from the tobacco? ,And why was thAt?,
[00:20:51:10,	," I think it was strange tobacco they had in those days and of course, had no filter tips you see.. So you rolled them up and put it in your mouth and when you took it out, the end was soggy." ,,
[00:21:07:20,	And did he manage to smoke while he was in a prisoner of war camp?, ,,
[00:21:12:09,	," I shouldn't have thought so. They weren't the Germans were very, very stretched for everything. They didn't have any food." ,,
[00:21:23:11,	,"I doubt if they had tobacco, ","but they got Red Cross parcels, didn't they?", I suppose I don't know.
[00:21:35:20	," I mean, the Red Cross was certainly active in the first war."," Yeah, no, I, I assume they did, but I don't know." ,,
[00:21:41:03	," And when when when he came out of the war, he was he went back to the post office, did he?", ,,
[00:21:47:16,,	Yes. ,What was his job in the post office?, Just bookkeeping.
[00:21:53:24	," And what when when you, uh, young, do you remember him sort of going to work? did he go to work on a Saturday morning, for example?", ,,
[00:22:05:17,	," No, no, he only worked five days a week and they went on, I'm not sure whether it was the bus or the tram, but one of the other." ,,
[00:22:17:16,,	Up to London. , So where were you living then? ,We were living in West Norwood ,and what was that knollys road?,
[00:22:29:11,	," He died when we lived in knollys rd, but before that we lived in Landsdowne Hill." ,,
[00:22:35:03,	," And. When, I was born we lived in." ,,
[00:22:41:03,	," Gypsy Road, I think it was" ,were you born in a hospital.," A nursing home, " ,which which nursing home ,"it was on Knights Hill I don't know what it was called and it's gone now, I think "
[00:22:59:16,	why were you born in a nursing home?," I don't know, I assume because they were slightly better off today than most people, because he had a decent job and that seemed a good thing to do." ,,
[00:23:12:10,	Yeah. And did your mom have any connection with the nursing home?, ,,
[00:23:18:07,,	No no my mother. ,,
[00:23:21:22,,	I don't think I ever had any connection at all that anything like that. She was just a. Servant until they were married. ,And how come you were an only son?, I don't know. I think perhaps. She wasnt very prolific.
[00:23:46:11,,	I don't know ," well your dad wasn't very well, was he I mean, he suffered terribly in the first war.",
[00:23:53:06,	," Yes, well, as a result of starvation and he got. It ended with peritonitis, but. Before that, it was, you know, kidney trouble and." ,,
[00:24:08:14,	," That kind of thing" , but peritonitis wasn't wasn't to do with being unwell in the First World War because people can have peritonitis. Simon had Peritonitis. when he was young.,
[00:24:24:02,	," Yeah, but." ,,
[00:24:28:15,	," They said, you know, he was in poor health because of the prisoner of war thing so he got these" ,, ,,
[00:24:36:11,	," Yeah, things could be and could be right." ,,
[00:24:44:17	," So what were we talking about? Sorry,"," we're talking about my father after the war, ","your father after all? Yeah, he got peritonitis. ","Yeah, well, appendicitis, which became peritonitis, "
[00:24:59:07	,which was quite common in those days.," Well, they weren'tvery, the first appendicitis operation, had been done not long before on the king. It was quite a new thing to operate on." ,,
[00:25:12:09	," Yeah. You talking about Edward the seventh end, with the seventh in like before the First World War", was it I thought it was George V. ,"No, I think it was Edward the 7th, I'm pretty sure it was.",
[00:25:24:08,	," Yeah, well, it was a fairly, you know, not a commonplace thing to do and I think." ,,
[00:25:39:23,,	I think what happened was they got it wrong. ,"Yeah, well, it was a it was a difficult thing in those days.","Yes, the dogs barking. " ,Which dog is that? ,William no there's william , Sasha?,
[00:25:58:19	,"Right. So. Now, what happened to your father?", ,,
[00:26:05:04,	," Well , he went into hospital with appendicitis, turned into peritonitis, and he died, " ,but wasn't wasn't at a particular time when it happened.,no
[00:26:19:21,	Wasn't he campaigning in an election?, ,,
[00:26:22:05,	," Oh, yeah, well, I mean, he was the secretary of the local Labour Party, so I think there was an election all the time. And he was working quite hard doing all of the work that secretaries do." ,,
[00:26:38:12,	He was secretary agent., ,,
[00:26:41:09,	," I don't know, he probably probably was, yeah." ,,
[00:26:46:18,,	Cause he ,,
[00:26:48:18,	," He believed very strongly in. In the Labour Party, but. He didn't feel. Able to stand up and make speeches, and that's what he wished on me, so I was able to."
August 22, 2010		INDEX