September 12, 2010		INDEX More video from September 12
'I think I've killed the old woman', 'here have a pint, mate'
[00:00:00:01,	" There's a big difference that different type of people all together in north London, south London. " ,So what is the difference?"Well, in north London, people had had a lot more hardship and they were a lot tougher in south London, life had been that little bit easier. And they were all thought. They were a little bit middle class."
[00:00:28:04	" Well, in the sense that during
[00:00:30:00	"the war, I presume you mean the docks got heavily bombed by the Germans?", ,,
[00:00:35:17,	" Yes, they the North London got, the docks got really plastered in the early years of the war. South London didn't get much of it until much later on when the doodlebugs arrived" , doodlebugs being the V!s" the unmanned aircraft, which are 1000 pounds of explosives in them. And when they they ran out of fuel and they dropped down and made a big bang."
[00:01:04:05	" Yeah, and they weren't obviously guided very well so there were as likely to hit south London, as north London. "Yeah, well, the reason they hit south London was because they rush. Sorry, could we stop it "Carry on until 6:00 anyway, shall we?"
[00:01:20:02	" Ok, that seems good. So Crystal Palace was the high hill.", ,,
[00:01:26:05,	" Yes, very. It was a high ridge of hills that. That the doodlebugs had to get over the top of before they came into London and they seem to run out of petrol after they got over the hill and landed all over the place." ,,
[00:01:45:19	"Yeah. Yeah", it was. ,,
[00:01:50:10,	" Quite strange, really, because everyone got used to the idea so that everyone went about their normal business, and if you had a Doodlebug coming you didn't take any notice while you could hear the engine. You were all right. If the engine stopped then everyone ducked for cover because it was going to land on you?" ,,
[00:02:12:11	, Yeah., ,,
[00:02:13:23,So what about the people in Bow? What were they like?, ,,
[00:02:17:16,	" Very nice, hardworking, very nice, straightforward people." ,,
[00:02:26:18	, Did you make any friends ever?, ,,
[00:02:29:13,	" Not any real friends, I mean, I liked them all, got on with them all all right, but I didn't make any positive friends." ,,
[00:02:37:00	"But they did things for us, didn't they? I mean, I remember when I was when mum was in hospital or whatever, that people looked after me and stuff like that.", ,,
[00:02:45:24,	" Oh, yes. They say they were they were lovely. They they cared. They in fact, I thought, you had all been kidnapped at one time you all disappeared because someone had taken you home to look after you. Things like that was quite, quite good. The way they just took over without it was do you want us to do this or that? They just took over." ,,
[00:03:15:12	" And there wasnt there an Irish woman who was very, very friendly. One of the one of the Irish women who knew" yes" Aileen or something was, her name",can't remember
[00:03:31:23	,, But there there were. There were. ,,
[00:03:37:04,	" Yes, it was an Irish woman there but I can't remember much about it because my brain's not as good as it used to be, you know, well dad. It was a long time ago. There's no reason why why I remember. I just thought I might jog your memory. What about Brush? What was he like? ,
[00:03:54:07,	"He was a nice man, but he had difficulties because he'd been in a German concentration camp and shattered his nerves a bit." ,,
[00:04:09:06,	" But he was a nice enough man, " ,how on earth did he get out of the concentration camp?,
[00:04:16:04,	" Quite simple, really during the First World War, he'd got been awarded an Iron Cross second class while he was fighting us at the front. So when he went into the. Concentration camp, he knew that Hitler had also been given an iron cross second class in the First World War, so he got permission to write to him and say, as, fellow members of the same organization, you know the iron cross organization didn't he think it was wrong to put him in here and they let him out." Probably not because Hitler intervened, but probably because they intercepted the letter and
[00:05:00:00	"they got scared." Yeah, probably."
[00:04:56:04	, Because Hitler Hitler wasn't like that. Was he, ,,
[00:05:06:01,	" Well, I never met him . But I think that." ,,
[00:05:11:11,	" My feeling is that Hitler was a stooge. My feeling is that they, the German generals and the German autocrats, were desperate to get something moving and the way to get things moving, is to have an enemy And you've got to remember that at that time, the early days of Hitler, it was Germany was chaos. People were starving to death because we pinched everything that they got after war, reparations. They didn't have any trains or anything. One City became an independent communist state for a while." ,,
[00:05:59:01	,, And They if you want to get something organized, you got to have an enemy, you've got to have someone you got to get prepared because they've going to come and get you. And then in the end, you have to go and get them." ,,
[00:06:14:05	,, But that's how things work. ,Right.,
[00:06:20:06	, So Brush spent several years in a concentration camp" where he spent some time, I don't think it was years, but months probably" , and then he managed to get out. ,Yes. And he. Jumped on a train. Headed for the. The French coast to get across to England because he thought he'd be safe here.
[00:06:48:20	, How on earth did you get a job at Chelsea Flour Mill?, Well. ,,
[00:06:51:04,	" When he was first arrived in England, he was automatically, as a German citizen, sent to, I think it was the Isle of Man, they all went they were all put on there. So sort of a camp until they could sort them out to see who was spies and who were genuine refugees. And when he was there, he met several people and became friends. And those one or two of those people ended up owning, buying Chelsea Flour millls. Don't ask me where the money came from, but they got it from somewhere. And Brush got the job. I think he had a few shares, too, but he got the job looking on the packaging department." ,,
[00:07:44:20	, I think he knew about packaging machinery from his from his time in Germany as well., ,,
[00:07:51:04,	" Yes, he'd done something like. Yeah, had a little business." ,,
[00:07:56:15	, And what was your role at Chelsea flour?, ,,
[00:08:00:21,	" Well, initially, I went there because I installed the machinery, packaging, machinery, things like that, and." ,,
[00:08:11:16,	" Every five minutes,they were phoning up getting me sent back there to get the machines accurate again, and in the end he offered me a job" , so he didn't know how to run them, Nobody knew how to run the bloody things except us few people who installed them. They were Buggers.
[00:08:31:10	,What was the pub next door famous for?" I don't know, I can't remember. " "Right, OK. There was a story about the people who committed murder going in there and being served a pint.",
[00:08:45:15,	" That's right. Yes. If you did if you killed your wife, mainly, which they did every now and again, because fighting was a part of marriage, that you went down the pub and said, I think I've killed the old woman, here have a pint, mate, I'll call the police, was the general thing that happened." ,,
[00:09:09:19	, What was the name of that pub? ,Can't remember." And. Were the people that you came across, were they kind of connected with the criminals and the Krays and all that sort of thing?",
[00:09:25:24,	" There were there were people I knew knew of who were villains, but. Most villains in that part of London were stealing out of the docks or selling the stuff that was sold out of the docks because there was not much point. That was the most profitable thing to do. It was steal from the docks." ,,
[00:09:53:05	, Because ordinary people didn't have anything that you could steal., ,,
[00:09:56:24,	" Yeah, very much hand-to-mouth living." ,,
[00:10:00:05	"I remember when we went to I think it was the Chrisp Street market and we got a spin dryer and it was the first time you'd ever had any kind of domestic machinery., Yeah. ,Did you often go to market?,
[00:10:14:22,	" Yes, your mum loved a market, so we used to often go and have a look around the stalls, you see. When we first arrived at the market. They obviously knew who we were, and in Backslang, one marketholder market holder said to another. Something about us and your mum could speak it. So she gave a reply. Of course we were in that was it. You know, we were we were part of the community then. It was she had made it for us." ,,
[00:10:54:08	"Yeah, but but the East End was supposed to be about rhyming slang rather than backslang wasnt it", ,,
[00:11:01:06,	" Well, cockney was rhyming slang, yeah, but they they liked, they had their own language because well, I suppose because of doing criminal things, you you didn't want to tell let anyone overhear what you're up to." ,,
[00:11:22:03	" And some of the I think it was Christopher was born at home	", ,,
[00:11:29:12	,, Yes. ,What was that like?,
[00:11:32:21	,, Well, It was Christopher, wasnt it? I think so""Lindsey was born in ware, ", I think it was Mandy. ,Was it Mandy? ,I think it was Mandy. And as Mandy was being born.
[00:11:49:02,	" I was I don't know if you remember, but there was a little back room and then the room led off. That was the one where you boys slept. And then. Yeah, the little back room was where your mom and I slept wasnt it, yeah, and you slept in the other room in bunk beds and I stood in there and there had been a problem?" ,,
[00:12:19:11,	" During the war, they'd taken the Bow Bells down because they didn't want them damaged by bombs and believe it or not, they were only just reinstalling them as Mandy was being born. And I opened the window and you could hear them testing bow bells. So she there hadn't been any cockneys in the sound of bow bells until the day she was born because there werent any bow bells. So she was the oldest cockney about then" ,, ,,
[00:12:52:17	,I'm pretty sure that was Christopher. dad not Mandy." I thought it was Mandy. There you, go. Who knows " ,well you could find out because you could find out when when the bells were hung again that, I could find out by the certificates.
[00:13:08:01	"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I tell you, where Mandy was born, yeah, yeah.", ,,
[00:13:13:01	" Um, did you, uh, I mean, did was that sort of a camaraderie amongst the people who worked at Chelsea Flour Mills?", ,,
[00:13:23:07,	" Yes, they were. Yeah, very much so. Uh. You know, I remember. One. The lorry drivers used to come from all over the place, bringing sacks of flour and." ,,
[00:13:46:04,	" I remember I was in the mill one day and one of the younger girls was outside and she screamed that one of the drivers had got her I think and old Alice, who was an older lady who had one knee that went the wrong way, went out to stomp down the door, knocked him over brought the girl back indoors." ,,
[00:14:12:08	,, Simple as that. ,,
[00:14:16:03	" I remember on the last day that we lived in Bow, all the girls sang all those kind of 1930s and 1940s songs like We'll Meet Again and All That. ",Yeah. ,,
[00:14:29:20,	" Yes, it was a very emotional time. I was in many ways sad to leave, but they were increasing the plant and Bow wasn't big enough anymore." ,,
[00:14:44:10	" Well, that was the end of that plant, they never opened again.", ,,
[00:14:46:20,	" No, now it just got demolished in the end" ,,
[00:14:54:03	, What did you what did you used to do when you mean did you and did you have any hobbies or anything like that?, ,,
[00:15:01:05	,, Not really. Not that I could remember. It seemed like the job took out most of the time. ,Were you active in the labour movement at all." Yeah, I wasn't very active in Bow they didn't like me because I was a South Londoner, they didn't think people in South London belong to the Labour Party, but. I had one or two big rows with them over it used used to occasionally go to meetings, but I
[00:15:30:00	"was outsider, you know, they didn't want to know."
[00:15:33:24	" Yeah, but in south London, you were quite active in the Labour Party.", ,,
[00:15:37:19,	" Yes, yes, well, it's in south London. I'd been in the Labour Party. I'd grown up in it. You see. And the older people knew my dad, even though it was you know, it was part of our life, our family" ,,
[00:15:54:20	,, The way things went ,Did the older people.tell you anything about your dad,
[00:15:56:21,	"Not that I can remember they were very, very respectful of him." ,,
[00:16:03:23	, What was that story about him having high insteps? About the way he walked., Can't remember ,you said some time that you met somebody who's seen you walking and said that your dad.,
[00:16:17:14,	" Oh, yeah, people could recognize him from behind because he walked. By the way, he walked they said I did, too, but I don't know. But he apparently walked in in a way that made him recognizable." ,,
[00:16:37:15	, And what did what exactly did you do in the Labour Party?, ,,
[00:16:43:12,	" In London, I used to go canvassing and knocking on doors and putting leaflets through doors and all that stuff, " ,did you ever stand as a councillor? "Yes, once, but I was and I was given a safe Tory seat to stand in."
[00:17:02:24	" The idea being to, uh, to show you, can you actually", give me a bit of experience? ,Yeah. And did you produce a newsletter or anything like that?,
[00:17:14:14,	" Yes, there was. I had a newsletter one time. I did." ,,
[00:17:21:12	, What was your newsletter called,cant remember? ,Did your father ever do a newsletter?,
[00:17:27:06,	" I don't know. I don't know about that. I know they. They didn't like my newsletter much. They thought I was being a bit saucy, I think." ,,
[00:17:43:18	, You were sort of anti-establishment., ,,
[00:17:46:02,	" Yes, very much so, of course, at that time, you see. We lived in one basement room in Bow." " No, no, no"" no one basement will be in Gypsy Road. And of course, they got. So incensed at this newsletter, I was writing that."
[00:18:08:12,	" Three gentlemen came round to collect all the stuff to belong to the Labour Party, the duplicator , so I couldn't do it more. And of course, when they got there, they were I mean, I think they were all councillors. I'm not sure about all, but they were so appalled at the way we were having to live in this place that in no time at all we got a nice council flat. So it did me a bit of good." ,You were bribed in other words,
[00:18:37:06	,,Yeah. ,Why didnt you stay in your council flat then?,
[00:18:45:11,	" Because I got this decent job in Bow, and we moved over to Bow." ,,
[00:18:50:09	, And in bow the house or the flat went with the job., Yeah. ,,
[00:18:56:13	"And I did it for a while before we got the flat, but after a bit, they thought I was worth keeping. So they they did the flat up, which was the top of two houses and. So that they keep me." ,,
[00:19:18:05	, So how on earth did you get there., A tram and bus. ,,
[00:19:24:09	, That must have been a "Oh no no, I didn't no I'd got the motorcycle and sidecar at that time. I used to go on the bike, the sidecar " ,called Betsy with Betsy or something.,
[00:19:37:10,	" Yeah, I used to call it Betsy" , and what did you do go through the Rotherhide Tunnel."Yeah, yeah, "
[00:19:44:06	"bloody unpleasant thing to do, go through the Rotherhithe tunnel on a motorbike" didn't think about it much in those days, Everything was a bit unpleasant." ,,
[00:19:55:20	, And what happened. When had you got the motorbike? "When had i got it, " ,,
[00:20:03:00	",you know how long you had it from before,. I don't know quite some while because we used to go camping with it. ,Where did you go camping?,
[00:20:16:01,	" We used to go camping in, although we've been everywhere, but in those days it was mainly Norfolk because it was fairly easy to get to and I knew it well. So we used to go camping in Norfolk for quite a lot." ,,
[00:20:29:18	,Id a thought you'd gone to the New Forest because you spent such a long time in the new forest., ,,
[00:20:34:04,	" Yes, we did go to the New Forest now and again, but it was. Not very suitable for children. I thought as you could get a campsite in Norfolk, which was open country, and the kids could run about more." ,,
[00:20:50:06	" I remember two or three years we went down to that town in the voting booth. No, no, no.
[00:21:00:00	"On the Kent estuary. Um, oh, uh oh.", ,,
[00:21:05:20,	" I just sort of the name of the campsite in the new forest. It was called Sandyballs. I don't know why. It was called Sandyballs, but that's what it was called." ,,
[00:21:16:22	, And is that is that where you went when you were snake catching., ,,
[00:21:20:15,	" Yeah. Yeah, but quite often when we were Snake catching, we just used to, we had little two man biv and we just used to set it up in the woods somewhere out of the way, you know, providing, you got a stream nearby so you could get some water you were alright ." ,and it was okay to drink from the streams I'd have thought that would have been dangerous,
[00:21:41:02	,,Well the animals didn't die. " Well, that's true, the ponies have managed to managed to survive it." Yeah, well, nor did we. John and I. We're still here, both of us. "
[00:22:23:12	,, ,Yeah. And you used to used to go there quite often then., Yeah. Weekends or even. ,And why did you go there there" because we liked the snakes, we we liked them we used to collect the snakes and take them, bring them back into the zoo. " ,Why on earth would the zoo want snakes, to feed to the bigger snakes? , And what sort of snakes did you catch,Adder and grass snakes. ,You used to catch adders as well. ,Quite a lot. Yeah. ,,
[00:22:33:24	,I would have thought adders would not be good for them?" Well, they seem to seemed to be pleased with them." , And did you do that for a long time? " Yes, did it for several years and we you both fellows of the Zoological Society " ,how on earth did you get that gig? , How did I become a fellow?
[00:22:53:20	" No, no. How did you get the job of supplying snakes to the zoo?", ,,
[00:23:00:01,	" I really don't know. We like we were both very interested in the reptile house. And. Because we spent a lot of time in the country and I knew that, I knew that. The bloke in charge of the reptile house, I can't remember his name, and he had a girl as an assistant, which amazed me, a pretty young girl in amongst all the snakes, which I thought was a bit strange.
[00:23:30:00	"But we said, you know. Why didn't they have any adders or grass snakes, like I said, well, the other stakes, eat em, oh dear do you want some more, you know? Oh, yes." ,,
[00:23:46:06	,, So we started bringing them snakes , and John then got a job working for the RSPCA. ,I got him the job.
[00:23:57:01	,How did you get that job?" Well. The local RSPCA clinic was supported by charity fundraising and the people in charge of the fundraising were a family, I knew vaguely and. they knew about me in the a fellow and all the rest of it, and they offered me the job of being the clinic manager. And I said I thought John would be better at it, so he took the job." ,,
[00:24:36:08	,, When you think? ,,
[00:24:39:16,	" When I started going out with your mother, her best friend." ,,
[00:24:45:22,	" Was sort of automatically paired up with my best friend, so that's how John got married. " ,So John John & Beryl were after you and Mum?" Yes, they were. Well, you see, John was my best pal and she was your mom's best pal. And we sort of made the foursome. " "And why didn't you take the job? Because that'd be a wonderful job for you, Dad.",
[00:25:15:21,	" No, I didn't. It was the job he ended up with, I would have loved, but the clinic wouldn't because all they seem to do in clinic was put animals down because somebody got fed up with them." ,, ,,
[00:25:33:04,	" And I didn't think I could do that" , so these days they'd have a vet doing that. "Yeah, they didn't then. So that's what John did when he first went to work for the RSPCA, just kept putting animals down. Yeah." ,, ,,
[00:25:48:18,	" I remember being there on one occasion when a woman came in with a dog and the baby and she said, now we've got the baby, we can't keep them both. And he said, which one do you want me to put down?" ,,
[00:26:06:06	" Yes, well, that must've pissed her off quite a lot. OK, so your your grandfather, he had other grandsons, one of whom was in the Air Force, didn't he?", ,,
[00:26:29:12,	" Yes, yeah, yes. " ,Ever meet him?" Yes, I met him a few times, but. I never got very friendly with any of the my father's family."
[00:26:43:10	, Why was that?, ,,
[00:26:46:00	","I think mainly it was my mother's influence, she didn't like em very much, the it was that bloody club. They spent all their time in the club and that's where she'd weened me father out of it, and she didn't want me getting there." ,,
[00:27:02:09	" Well, that's an irony there, that she was terribly admiring of her mother, who obviously kept the family together. And yet her mother used to famously be the local winemaker and make all these devilish brews. And yet she had this kind of thing against the club and the alcohol.", ,,
[00:27:22:24,	"I remember going there as a little boy, but. Yeah. And then, of course, you see, once we got we went to live in. I came back from the war. We got a house in Wolfenden or flat in all Wolfenden Road. And virtually back on to the. The house was the tennis club, and you could be a member of the tennis club without playing tennis because I got a nice bar, so I in no time at all. Soon as I was old enough, I was a member of the bleedin tennis club. So I didn't help a bit. Did it?" ,,
[00:28:01:05	,Yeah. And did you ever meet your great uncle? Your grandfather's brother." No, I can't remember." ,,
[00:28:15:17,	" Oh, yes, Teddy, Teddy, yeah, he lived." ,,
[00:28:22:05,	" Lived down in the country, little town, I can't remember the name of it, but yes, I've met them several times. He had a daughter. But. I think something happened to her. But, yeah, he was he was nice, I liked him, " "but presumably the daughter would have been the same sort of age as your parents, not your age. ""Yeah" , is that right?" I think she was a bit younger, but I think she was a bit. A bit doolally. Not you know not not very sensible. So there was no more the his side, the family sort of died down." ,,
[00:29:07:00	"But what about his wife, what was she like? ",I can't really remember. I can remember him. I think she was. Kept in the background a bit. ,What was he like? "Nice little man, a little littleish bustler and a bit hail fellow. Well, met but yes, good, nice man. Yeah. "And he was a printer, too, wasn't he?", He was a printer's reader.
[00:29:39:10	" Oh, that's a cut above, is it"" I think so, yeah, you didn't get ink on your hands " ,and say we sort of somewhere between the journalists and the printers.,
[00:29:47:13,	" Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it was like proofreading. You know you once something was printed. Somebody had to proof read it he did it to see that it was alright to send out." ,,
[00:30:02:12	, But would still be a member of the Freemasons and all that sort of stuff. ,Oh yeah. "And this place you went to, could you remember where it was? ",I'm trying to remember
[00:30:15:21	,Was it in Kent or Essex,Essex ,,
[00:30:18:14	, It was in Essex,And not too far from Crawley think. ,Can you remember how your mother took you there? Would it be like a train or something like that?,
[00:30:31:19,	" I think it was coach, but I can't really remember." ,,
[00:30:35:14	" Yeah. And. OK, I think I'm pretty much questioned out right now?", ,,
[00:30:44:15	,, You had covered it? " Well, I not covered it, but I mean, I've just tired.",
September 12, 2010		INDEX