Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Acker Bilk takes five






Have anly just noticed that Acker Bilk has decided to call it a day from performing.  Am very sad about that as I had hoped that we would have had the chance to see him on stage  one more time before he came to this decision.

Acker is 85 and entitled to give up the hectic life that is the lot of the performing musician, we have seen him several times both here and in Australia and it was always a memorable experience, particularly in those joint gigs with the late Kenny Ball.

Hope that Acker has a long a restful retirement.


Don't know who owns the cartoon above but hope that they don't mind us using it as that is Acker

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Bread Pudding On the High Seas

On board HMS Whimbrel, Dad was the messman for the Petty Officers Mess.  Probably regarded as a cushy number but it wasn’t, but he got the job because he was the oldest member of the crew.  The role of the messman on board a Royal Navy ship was normally to keep the mess clean and tidy, serve up the meals and to clear away afterward.  He collected the meals from the galley and carried to the Mess  and  served them up.
Whilst the POs were not on the same level as commissioned officers in the wardroom, none the less they expected to get a better class of food than the ratings. Presumably it was related to the fact that unlike ratings, mess bills were deducted from the Petty Officer's pay, so that they were well aware of the fact that they were paying for the meals.  Or it may just be that a world war would not end the usual class system in the Royal Navy.

Although I heard this story many times I did not fully understand how the episode of the bread pudding came about.  I think it had something to do with some grizzles from the Petty Officer about a particular dessert served up.  Not that the menu as such had anything to do with the messman, but being the sort of man that he was he probably decided off his own bat to do something about it and serve them bread pudding.

A bread pudding is not to be confused with bread and butter pudding, it is a different animal completely.  Presumably most people know what a bread and butter pudding is , made with slices of buttered bread in layers with dried fruit placed in a dish with an egg custard and then baked. ( How's that for a one line recipe?).  Anyway a bread pudding is completely different, being made with stale bread which is soaked in either water or milk and then squished into an amorphous mixture to which is added dried fruit, butter and sugar and mixed spices.  This is then baked very slowly until it is crisp on top.  If eaten hot it is like a steamed pudding, and if served with custard is perhaps like a poor mans Christmas pudding.  Left to get cold, however, it is different and is more like a fruit cake.

Anyway, somehow or other Dad got involved in making a bread pudding in the galley, presumably because the messman had a fair amount of spare time in between serving the meals to the various watches and clearing away before the next.  Not one to be sitting about, no doubt he spent a fair amount of the spare -time to nosing around to see what others were doing.

 Dad was fond of bread pudding and knew how to make them.  Bread pudding is a traditional Maltese dish called Budina tal hobz and as his mother was Maltese his liking probably stemmed from that.  Dad's version of the pudding is not strictly the Maltese way, perhaps he didn’t remember how his mother made them or he just developed his own recipe.

If you know what bread pudding is, then you may not understand that there are people who have never come across it, and so it was that when Dad introduced it into the Petty Officers Mess as a dessert one day, then he was surprised to find that not a single one of them had ever tasted it before.

Now a bit like the island of  Malta itself, you either love it or hate it and that was the response in the PO's Mess.
On another occasion the complaints were about the spotted dick coming from the galley.  If you have ever tasted catering style spotted dick you will no doubt appreciate the complaint.  “Like mother makes” it is not.  (Had better add here for those who don’t know,  “spotted dick” is a suet pudding with sultanas in)  Of course he was asked if he could produce a spotted dick in the galley for the Petty Officers Mess, which of course he could.  Unfortunately by this time he was becoming a little unpopular in the galley as it appeared that he was trying to upstage the cooks, which of course was not his intention.  In typical east end style he circumvented the antagonism by making two puddings, one for the POs and one for the cooks.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

No tie- no job

Can you imagine these days being sent home from work because you were not wearing a tie.?

On my first day at my first job I turned up one July morning without a tie and very nearly got sent home because of that. There are or weren't apprenticeships for office work in those days, so it was a question of learning on the job.  In large offices if was known as "sitting next to Nellie" in other words the new recruit was sat alongside someone more experienced and learned by watching or being lead along.
In terms of dress of course, you did not know until you arrived, unless you already knew someone who worked there.  There were obviously fairly universal rules and some specific to one place, fads and foibles of the owner or manager etc.
I went to work at a branch office of a large insurance company and had been interviewed at the Head Office in London, so I had not even been to where I was later assigned.
So early on that first Monday morning taking an early tram to New Cross Gate I stood outside the office and waited for someone to arrive.  The Chief Clerk was first, he looked at me a little strange after I had told him who I was, but he made no comment about my grey slacks and open necked shirt and my jacket over my arm.

As the other staff arrived, he introduced me and still no one made any comment about my attire until the Branch Manager arrived.  The Chief Clerk took me into the Manager's Office and introduced me and the first words the Manager said were "Where's your tie?".  I replied that I did not have one.  " You cant work here without a tie" he responded and told the Chief Clerk to take me away, as though I was fouling his office.
The door to the office had been standing open all this time, so of course everyone outside could hear
 all that went on, and most of them were grinning like apes.  To this day I don't know if they were laughing at me or the Manager.  One of the male staff, beckoned me over and pulled a tie out of a drawer and handed it to me.  He explained that all male staff were expected to wear suits complete with ties, but as I was a junior I was excused the suit but not the tie.  Just as well really as at that time I did not own a suit.
This then was my introduction, not just to the world of work, but to the intricacies of office life.

Tell us about your first day at the office.


Saturday, July 19, 2014

Hop flavoured cheese

I know that there are many varieties of cheese- Cheddar, Cheshire, Edam, Gorgonzola, Brie, Leicester just to name a few.  And like the wine buffs who go on (and on, and on) about the different vintages and so on  trying to put you down if you admit to drinking plonk,  there are cheese buffs as well.  I have met a lot of these, and of course many of them are quite knowledgeable and clever although when they try to tell you that they can tell what kind of clover the cow was eating the day before, well ..........

Anyway, when I meet these types, I have a little game and ask their opinion on "hop flavoured" cheese.  Many of course get a bit snotty cause they  look down on flavoured cheeses anyway, only fit for tesco types not those who order from Harrods, but most have to admit they have not come across "hop flavour".  There are hop flavoured cheeses these days of course, but that was not what I had in mind.

The hop flavoured cheese that I recall  always had a limited clientele and is not even available anymore, as it was handmade just before being eaten.

During the last war (can we still call it that considering the number of "conflicts" since ?) agricultural labourers used to get a larger cheese ration than city citizens, so when the east end families continued to go to the Kent hop-fields, they got extra cheese as well.  Not surprising then that lunch most days was cheese sandwiches.


Picking hops resulted in fingers covered in a sulphuric kind of black coating, impossible to wash off, and in any case lunch was taken in the  fields.  So cheese sandwiches eaten with blackened fingers had a taste like no other, and is quite impossible to describe.  The taste of hops was not unpleasant as imbibers of real ale will tell you, and it had an affinity to cheese.
I am not suggesting you go out and buy the modern speciality hop flavoured cheeses to see what I am on about as it is not the same thing at all.



Sunday, July 13, 2014

Seven year old stole a silver teapot

I nearly acquired a criminal record at the age of seven by being accused of stealing a silver teapot !
It was all a case of mistaken identity.  My accomplice and I mistook a family heirloom for a common old teapot which was never used and we could not find anything else to use to collect conkers.

As this was during World War Two it is surprising that the irate owner didn't accuse us of being enemy spies or at least saboteurs.

As London evacuees in Guildford, my mate an I already had a record as it were.  We had originally been billeted on two spinster sisters in Shalford, who despite being teachers could not cope with having two unruly seven year old boys actually living in their house.  So after one scrape after another, usually involving not arriving home from school in Guildford at least a couple miles away, until it was dark, we were moved on.

Our next billet was with a family who had only one child, a daughter.  Again it was a question of a lady, her husband in the army, and having no experience of the ways of little boys,  not really knowing how to deal with this species of wild animal.

All went reasonably well for a while, apart from the odd misunderstanding during the school holidays when we boys found it difficult it conform to the restrictive regime regarding our comings and goings.  We were not far from the Quarry park where were quite a few horse chestnut trees and it was the conker season.  We looked around for a receptacle to use to go and collect conkers and all we could find was an old tin looking teapot that was never used.
We took that and off to the park.  As was our won't we did not return to the house until dusk and found a policeman there.  Our landlady had called the police and claimed that we had stolen the valuable teapot and absconded.  As far as she was concerned we were no doubt already back in London with Fagin, Oliver, the Artful Dodger and the rest of that crew.

Despite being assured by the policeman that it was a misunderstanding and no harm had been done, she refused to allow us to remain in the house being convinced that our next act would be to murder her and her daughter as soon as the policeman was gone. So the poor fellow had no alternative but to march us off the the police station to await arrangements for another billet.


And that, as they say,  is another story .

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Walking to see grannies


Walking to see Grannies


Hopefully children frequently visit their grandparents.  But of course it is not always easy, time, distance etc.  How many primary school age children today walk to see their grandparents, do you think ?  There has not been a study, as far as I know, but I would guess that there has not been . (Do think there is a research grant out there for this ?)

Up to the age of five, I and my siblings (except we didn't have any siblings, only brothers and sisters) spent Sunday afternoons alternately visiting our grandmothers. Both the grandfathers had died before we were born so we did not know either of them 

It wasn't that far, about three quarters of a mile, and the route could be varied.  Normally,  straight up Green Bank,  past the Gibbs toothpaste factory which always smelled soapy even on Sundays when there was no work going on.   The factory building, by the way, is still there, unlikely many of the other structures we would pass on those Sunday afternoons.
Turn left into Old Gravel  Lane  which for some reason is now called Wapping Lane , past the small group of closed shops up towards the  bridge. Going  past St. Peter's church we would be careful to keep to the other side of the road; being good Catholic children we didn't know what terrible things could happen to us if we went too close to a Protestant church.


Sometimes the bridge which went over a short canal which joined two sections of the docks was closed so we would have to wait for some barges or a ship went through, but was not often on a Sunday.   The bridge and the docks  are gone now of course but the one on the right hand side was filled in and trees were planted on it and called "Wapping Woods".  It was not a particularly successful project. 

Up to the Highway at the top of Old Gravel Lane.  Sometimes via a short cut through St. George in the East  church yard, even though by then it was a public gardens, there were still gravestones around the edge so we still had to be careful of any dead Protestants that might still be lurking.









 By then,  if we were going to "big Granny"  we were nearly there. She lived in Shovel Alley, at least that is what they called it, buts it's proper name was Mayfield Buildings.  During the summer months she would be sitting outside the front door on a wooden chair with a thick Sorbo cushion.  Invariably she asked "have you got a hankie". Whether we had or not she would always produce some from underneath the cushion.  We never stayed long, she was not a cuddly sort of grandmother, very stern of face which seemed to disapprove of you, even if you had been good. I have the impression that most grandmothers were like that in those days, not like the huggy kissy Nannas and Pops of today.
So it was question and answer sessions, and then, duty done  off we would go on the return journey.

If we were going to see our other grandmother "little Granny"  then it was a slightly longer walk as she lived with our Uncle Joe and Aunt Martha further along the Highway in Pell street.  We much preferred this visit, we only had to go into grannies room and say hallo as she was always unwell in bed.  Then we could go and look at the rabbits that Uncle Joe  kept in the tiny yard out the back, which also contained the outside toilet, so you could never tell where the worst smells came from. 

The return journey would often take us along Pennington Street passed the house that my father was born in, but that is not there either.
When we got home to our top floor council flat, we passed by the front door of the flat occupied by our family friends, the Connolys.  That flat was sold a couple of years ago for £295,000.

You could make this same journey today using Google Earth, but you would see very little today that we saw then.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

My Great Grandad went to Brazil in 1857.

My Great Grandad went to Brazil in 1857.


There was no World cup of course and there was no organised Carnivale either, the only street processions in those days were on religious festival days.



He was on board HMS Ganges a Royal Navy sailing ship, which at the time was the Flag ship of Rear Admiral Baynes who had recently been appointed Commander in Chief of the Pacific Squadron based in Valparaiso.

They arrived in Rio in November after 71 days after leaving Sheerness without any of the crew having been ashore.  The ship spent two weeks in Rio and it is hoped that the crew were allowed ashore there to sample the delights of this special city.

My Great grandfather, Alphons Eder was a bandsman on Ganges and had been born in Laibach (now Ljubljana) in Slovenia.  He was 20 years old and would never have experienced anything like what he found in Rio.  It would not have been just the distant scenery which was a new experience for Alphons and his band colleagues. There was the tropical heat even in November and there was no football !!

In most respects Rio was a modern city for its time with some fine buildings including an opera houses amongst the numerous churches, gas street lighting and electric trams.

HMS Ganges went on to go round Cape Horn and on to Valparaiso and other ports in Chile before going on to Canada.

Alphons Eder and Ganges finally returned to England in 1861. Two years later the Football Association was formed and thus changed the world forever. The first Football international took place in 1870 between England and Scotland and it seems as though the match isn't over yet..