Each school day would start with Assembly. In the Juniors, this would take place in the ground floor hall. The eight classes of the Juniors (years one through four, two classes in each year) would gather to hear a piece of classical music played over the Tannoy loudspeaker system. Some Italian arias, I recall (Caro mio Ben). After a few words from the headmaster, Mr Beckford, we would sing a hymn. Ones that spring to mind: For Those In Peril On The Sea, Bread of Heaven, at harvest festival time, We Plough The Fields and Scatter, O God, Our Help in Ages Past, To Be A Pilgrim (though I recall the first line as "Who would true valiant be"). And of course Onward Christian Soldiers.
During Advent, of course, carols would be sung. More about this next month.
No concessions to multifaith other than a once-weekly assembly for Catholic children held in a classroom by Mr Sayer. Who drove a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 car.
But the Primacy of the Established Church (of England) held firm; Queen Elizabeth on the Throne, God in His Heaven, we all knew our place.
I very much doubt that any of my fellow pupils at Oaklands read this blog, but if you are one of them, and can recall anything else from Assembly, please let me know.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Monday, 12 October 2009
Autumn
Autumns started earlier in England than they do in Poland; to put it another way, summers would end sooner (and in any case were cooler and wetter). School would start at the beginning of September and all thoughts of summer would soon fade amid the wood-varnish and Magic Marker smells of the new school year.
By the time of my birthday in October, gloom would have descended; wet pavements, darkness just after tea-time and the early evening news in black and white, electric fires and, outside, the all-pervasive dampness.
I remember my tenth birthday; 1967. My present, well-remembered, was a Dinky Toys Rolls-Royce Phantom V. My father bought it at Confiscerie Francaise, the best toyshop in Ealing Broadway (on the Mall). We walked down the Uxbridge Road to Ealing Common, where I took the car out of its box (but not off the stand; as well as all four doors opening, the boot opened as did the bonnet (on two sides). It cost 10/6d. That's 52.5p expressed in today's money, though the equivalent value today would be more like £7.00.
On Ealing Common we collected conkers (horse chestnuts) under the large, wet, reddish-brown leaves until the drizzle became more like rain and we retreated to the car, returning home to Croft Gardens so I could play with my new toy.
By the time of my birthday in October, gloom would have descended; wet pavements, darkness just after tea-time and the early evening news in black and white, electric fires and, outside, the all-pervasive dampness.
I remember my tenth birthday; 1967. My present, well-remembered, was a Dinky Toys Rolls-Royce Phantom V. My father bought it at Confiscerie Francaise, the best toyshop in Ealing Broadway (on the Mall). We walked down the Uxbridge Road to Ealing Common, where I took the car out of its box (but not off the stand; as well as all four doors opening, the boot opened as did the bonnet (on two sides). It cost 10/6d. That's 52.5p expressed in today's money, though the equivalent value today would be more like £7.00.
On Ealing Common we collected conkers (horse chestnuts) under the large, wet, reddish-brown leaves until the drizzle became more like rain and we retreated to the car, returning home to Croft Gardens so I could play with my new toy.
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Summer
Childhood summers seemed quite short. I'd usually spend two or three weeks of the six-week school holiday on Polish cub scout camp. This was huge fun, especially when after a few years in old army barracks (Chipping Campden, Gloucs.), the camp moved to Stella Plage in northern France for my last two years as a zuch (Polish cub). By coincidence, we had our family holiday in Stella Plage in 1967, so I holidayed there three years in a row. Stella Plage was my first taste of life outside the grey jumper'dness of West London. France, with its different shops, typefaces, cars and smells, was a departure into the exotic.
But more about Stella Plage anon. Here, I want to write about the few weeks I'd spend in Croft Gardens in between holidays. In the back garden.
There was the fruit. My parents had tended small patches of strawberries, raspberries, loganberries and gooseberries at the far end of the garden. There were two apple trees, bearing Coxes (to the right) and Bramleys - those large, sour cooking apples (to the left). Incidentally, Bramley apples are entirely unknown in Poland. Towards the end of the school summer holidays, the apples were beginning to ripen, but all to often I'd eat them too early, and get a stomach ache for my troubles!
Aside from the apple trees, which I'd climb for the fruit, there was also a lilac tree which was extremely climbable, which formed my sailing ship with its masts and its crow's nest and rigging.
At the far end of the 80 ft garden was the summerhouse, more a storehouse for old rubbish that my parents couldn't bear to part with. The most interesting thing for me was a wind-up 78rpm gramophone player, and two records; Shine on Harvest Moon and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. There were very sharp needles, and with a bit of winding up, I could make the gramophone player work.
Between the garden and the house was the veranda, metal framed and glass roofed and sided. Black-and-white linoleum tiles and garden toys. My father had constructed some cupboard space with sliding panelled doors, this was where the smaller garden tools were kept (the shovels, rakes, brooms etc with their splinter-yielding wooden handles were kept in the summerhouse).
Around the corner from the veranda was a passage to the garage, in this passage was the coal-bunker, which as I mentioned in a previous thread, was not used as such, but as a store for sand. It had asbestos (!!) sheets covering it. To think my brother and I would play hide-and-seek in it!
But more about Stella Plage anon. Here, I want to write about the few weeks I'd spend in Croft Gardens in between holidays. In the back garden.
There was the fruit. My parents had tended small patches of strawberries, raspberries, loganberries and gooseberries at the far end of the garden. There were two apple trees, bearing Coxes (to the right) and Bramleys - those large, sour cooking apples (to the left). Incidentally, Bramley apples are entirely unknown in Poland. Towards the end of the school summer holidays, the apples were beginning to ripen, but all to often I'd eat them too early, and get a stomach ache for my troubles!
Aside from the apple trees, which I'd climb for the fruit, there was also a lilac tree which was extremely climbable, which formed my sailing ship with its masts and its crow's nest and rigging.
At the far end of the 80 ft garden was the summerhouse, more a storehouse for old rubbish that my parents couldn't bear to part with. The most interesting thing for me was a wind-up 78rpm gramophone player, and two records; Shine on Harvest Moon and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. There were very sharp needles, and with a bit of winding up, I could make the gramophone player work.
Between the garden and the house was the veranda, metal framed and glass roofed and sided. Black-and-white linoleum tiles and garden toys. My father had constructed some cupboard space with sliding panelled doors, this was where the smaller garden tools were kept (the shovels, rakes, brooms etc with their splinter-yielding wooden handles were kept in the summerhouse).
Around the corner from the veranda was a passage to the garage, in this passage was the coal-bunker, which as I mentioned in a previous thread, was not used as such, but as a store for sand. It had asbestos (!!) sheets covering it. To think my brother and I would play hide-and-seek in it!
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Toy cars
Artefacts of childhood, shapes once familiar on the High Streets of Great Britain, delivering the post, carrying the carpenter's tools.Saturday, 7 February 2009
Heating the house
At this cold time of year, I think back to my childhood years, when houses were not centrally heated. Compared to our present house in Warsaw, constructed of thick airbricks and clad with 15cm of expanded polystyrene (then plastered on the outside), pre-war British housing stock was not built to keep warmth in. Drafty single-pane windows didn't help much. But as London was rarely visited by frost, this did not matter much as it does here.
But when it was cold, you'd feel it in the house. Our house on Croft Gardens was warmed by open electrical fires, three-bar heaters. These would be switched on non-stop during winter evenings, heating the front room (where the TV was). Stepping out into the corridor was cold and unpleasant, as was getting changed into one's pyjamas in a cold bedroom. Worst was washing in a cold bathroom. Here, because of risk of splashing water onto the open heated electrical elements, we'd have an upright paraffin heater (Aladdin brand, made on a factory on the A40 in Greenford). The paraffin heater would use either pink or blue paraffin (boom-boom-boom ESSO BLUE - remember the TV ad?), and a wick would have to be lit by a match or lighted taper. Or a large, cylindrical battery, striped blue and white (EverReady?) with a long chromed metal tube with a sparking device at the end. The Aladdin factory is still there on the A40, a listed building, though many decades have passed since it last made stoves. Latterly, it was a B&Q superstore, before that closed.
The paraffin used to fuel the stove was bought at hardware stores that vaguely smelt of the stuff. Hardware stores, before going the way of haberdashers and fishmongers, were staffed by knowledgeable chaps called Reg or Alf, who wore light-brown warehouse coats, and knew whether you needed a 7/16th" Armstrong-threaded nut or how much creosote you'd need for your garden fence.
I would often accompany my father to the hardware store on the Hanwell-end of the Uxbridge Road in West Ealing, metal cannister in hand, to buy two quarts or so for the bathroom heater.
The burning of anything by smokeless coal in the fireplace had been prohibited by the Clean Air Act of 1956. On every single lamppost there was a note to this effect. The coalmen would call regularly on Croft Gardens (we never burnt fires in the fireplace, considering this old-fashioned, grubby and working-class). The coalmen would arrive in a lorry carrying scores of hundredweight bags of smokeless nutty slack, neatly arranged on the open flatbed. A coalman, as black as a miner, would heave the bag onto his back (he had a special hat with a leather apron protecting his neck and shoulders) and carry it into the back garden. Most houses, including ours, had a coal bunker, used for storing solid fuel. Ours, however, was half-full of sand, and a great place for games of hide-and-seek.
But when it was cold, you'd feel it in the house. Our house on Croft Gardens was warmed by open electrical fires, three-bar heaters. These would be switched on non-stop during winter evenings, heating the front room (where the TV was). Stepping out into the corridor was cold and unpleasant, as was getting changed into one's pyjamas in a cold bedroom. Worst was washing in a cold bathroom. Here, because of risk of splashing water onto the open heated electrical elements, we'd have an upright paraffin heater (Aladdin brand, made on a factory on the A40 in Greenford). The paraffin heater would use either pink or blue paraffin (boom-boom-boom ESSO BLUE - remember the TV ad?), and a wick would have to be lit by a match or lighted taper. Or a large, cylindrical battery, striped blue and white (EverReady?) with a long chromed metal tube with a sparking device at the end. The Aladdin factory is still there on the A40, a listed building, though many decades have passed since it last made stoves. Latterly, it was a B&Q superstore, before that closed.
The paraffin used to fuel the stove was bought at hardware stores that vaguely smelt of the stuff. Hardware stores, before going the way of haberdashers and fishmongers, were staffed by knowledgeable chaps called Reg or Alf, who wore light-brown warehouse coats, and knew whether you needed a 7/16th" Armstrong-threaded nut or how much creosote you'd need for your garden fence.I would often accompany my father to the hardware store on the Hanwell-end of the Uxbridge Road in West Ealing, metal cannister in hand, to buy two quarts or so for the bathroom heater.
The burning of anything by smokeless coal in the fireplace had been prohibited by the Clean Air Act of 1956. On every single lamppost there was a note to this effect. The coalmen would call regularly on Croft Gardens (we never burnt fires in the fireplace, considering this old-fashioned, grubby and working-class). The coalmen would arrive in a lorry carrying scores of hundredweight bags of smokeless nutty slack, neatly arranged on the open flatbed. A coalman, as black as a miner, would heave the bag onto his back (he had a special hat with a leather apron protecting his neck and shoulders) and carry it into the back garden. Most houses, including ours, had a coal bunker, used for storing solid fuel. Ours, however, was half-full of sand, and a great place for games of hide-and-seek.
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Air crash at Heathrow, 1963
Before stumbling upon these pictures, which I never knew existed, I did have a memory of a Trans-Canada Airlines crash near Heathrow in 1960s. The plane came down in a cabbage field (so my father christened it kapuśniak, 'the cabbagey one', something I remembered). Researching the previous post, I was looking for information on this incident on Wikipedia's entry about Heathrow Airport. Because there were (miraculously) no fatalities in this crash, it was not listed. Today, while archiving my father's b&w negatives, I came across these photos.
Right: Close-up of the aircraft's nose, with tracked crawlers in place underneath, in preparation for its removal.The aircraft, a Douglas DC-8-54CF Jet Trader, reg. no. CF-TJM, ship no. 813, crashed after an aborted take off (incident details here).
Overnight, the airline markings were painted over and what was left of the engines removed. The following morning, my father (who worked nearby), managed to get close-up to the plane with his camera.
CF-TJM was removed from the crash site and repaired. Trans-Canada Airlines became Air Canada, the aircraft resumed service. Tragically, it crashed again, this time in Montreal, on a crew training flight. All three crew members died. Below. A policeman watches as the airframe is jacked up.
TCA DC-8 Salvage
The Royal School of Military Engineering were called in to help move the TCA DC-8 which made a crash landing after taking off from London Heathrow on November 6. The aircraft has been towed back to the airport on caterpillar track bogies over a specially laid metal road, and is now in a hangar for a repair survey.
Monday, 5 January 2009
Heathrow boy
We lived just over eight miles from Heathrow Airport; my father worked very close to it in the offices of West's Piling on Bath Road. A real treat for me was a visit to the airport. A place of real glamour - international air travel; the Britannic, Europa and Oceanic terminals (to prosaically become Terminals 1, 2 and 3), and the ongoing sense of change (during the 1960s the airport was systematically being extended and developed). To the point that by 1968, Heathrow had more passengers flying through it (14m) than Warsaw's Okęcie did 40 years later (11m in 2008). The best place of all at Heathrow for me was the Queen's Building - below the control tower, on the viewing gallery. Here, the roar of the engines, the smell of kerosene, the romance of flight was at its most tangible. Above: British European Airways' airliners - Vickers Vanguard (centre and left) and a Vickers Viscount (right). Nearest the camera G-APEO. Photo by my father, Bohdan Dembinski, summer, 1962. I'd have been four at the time.It was at Heathrow one day in 1965 that we came to meet my uncle (mother's sister's husband) who'd come over from Canada. He had worked on the Avro Arrow project and brought me as a gift a large, white, plastic kit of the Arrow supersonic interceptor (1/50th scale?) along with some small white lapel pins of the aircraft. While we were waiting to meet him (Oceanic terminal!) we looked into a toy shop where there was a large, tinplate model of a Vickers Viscount in Lufthansa markings, which had operating features such as passenger stairs and retracting undercarriage. Cost a fortune (five or six quid!), so it was not to become mine.
Right: A period artifact, still in my possession. The New Esso Guide to Heathrow Airport London, 1968 edition (I recall also having the earlier 1965 edition). On one side of this map, photos of every passenger aircraft type flying into Heathrow (b&w), and colour illustrations showing the livery of every airline flying scheduled flights into Heathrow. The other side, there's a map of the airport, a map showing its location, and an article about the tanker trucks that refuel the airliners - Pythons and Super Pythons. More details on request.
Above: That's me at the controls of a Heli-Jet Mk VII at Queen's Building.
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