Taste flashback

The taste of Zott Jogobella pieczone jabłko (baked apple) flavour yogurt is identical in flavour to school apple crumble and custard. One mouthful and the memories of Oaklands' lunchtimes came flooding back! The subject of school dinners will be covered in full, as there's so many memories (pleasant and unpleasant!) associated with this.

On being Polish in West London

Both my parents are from Poland, they ended up in England after the War, unable to return. They bought the house on Croft Gardens, Hanwell, London W7, in 1955. When I was born, two years later, they'd speak Polish to me, and carried on speaking Polish between themselves to this day.

When I started going to nursery school on The Avenue in West Ealing, at the age of three and half, I spoke no English at all. My mother tells me that before going there for the first time, she taught me the words "please", "thank you" and "toilet". Because there were several other Polish children in my class, I never had any sense of being unusual.

It was only at Oaklands Primary School, after I'd been there for a few months, that I had the following conversation with my friend Gary Clark. I don't remember the exact words, but the gist was something like this: "Gary - you speak Polish at home to your parents, don't you?" Gary was puzzled - he didn't have a clue what I was on about. I explained. "At school, in shops, on the street, one speaks English. At home, with one's parents, one uses a different language...?" Gary replied "Er... no..."

Only at this precise moment (I must have been five and a bit), did I realise that I was different in this respect to other children. Until this moment, I thought everyone spoke Polish at home, only for some reason they didn't talk about it in school.

Polishness was for the weekends. Saturday mornings were Polish school, which I attended right up to 'A'-Level. Sunday morning was Polish cub scouts, followed by Polish mass at the Polish church. And so it went throughout my entire childhood and adolescence (scouts on Saturday afternoons).

Unlike many of our Polish friends' houses, my parents' house was not a temple to Polishness, full of folk art, pre-war maps, Black Madonnas, engravings of Lwów or Wilno, cavalry swords, bookcases solid with Polish titles. There were some signs of Polskość around our house, but it was neither deliberately being hidden nor made a show of. Which I think, in retrospect, is the healthiest balance. Not forgetting one's roots, yet not going full-on for assimilation in the host community - and then not cutting oneself off to the ghetto either.

This approach worked well. Throughout my childhood, I never felt picked on, discriminated against or victimised because of my Polish surname. This also says a lot for the basic decency and tolerance of the English host community. Not once, in all those years, can I recall a single snide comment aimed at me on account of my supposed national "otherness".

Playground games at Oaklands Primary (I)

Unique to Oaklands (I believe), as I never met anyone from any other primary school who’d played this, was a game called Buzzing (or Bunging). The game was played between two teams, one standing on the air-raid shelter side of the Juniors’ playground, the other team standing by the wire fence separating the playground from the Infants. The distance between the two teams was some 90 ft (27m).

A thrower from one team would throw a standard tennis ball from one side of the playground to the other. The other team would attempt to catch the ball. If they did so, they’d get three points (for a two-handed catch) or six points (for a one-handed catch). If they failed to catch the ball, the throwing team would win one point.

A simple game, but it kept us Juniors occupied for many a playtime. It helped hand-eye coordination, teamwork and – numeracy. Adding all those sixes, threes and ones and keeping tabs on the score. Whatever was going on in the rest of the playground, there was usually a steady barrage of tennis balls flying overhead!

There were many other games we played – many common to other schools (British Bulldog, chain-he, piggyback fights). I will describe everyone I remember in future posts.

Ealing Baths

Back in the days when not every house had its own bath, the local authorities provided public baths. These were in the same building as the swimming pool, which, once in Junior School, I would visit with my class once a week. These were in the Longfield building behind Ealing's rather splendid Victorian Town Hall.

The class would travel by coach (a Bedford Duple, if I recall) down the Uxbridge Road, and we'd troop off to the changing rooms. The swimming pool was to the right of the baths, a row of cubicles, a white enamelled bath in each. It was here that the working classes could sit and soak in warm, soapy water, and get clean for sixpence.

Those were the baths (which, having a bathroom at home, we didn't have to use). Then there was the pool.

Now... was there such as thing as First Class and Second Class pool? I can vaguely remember... or was this at Acton? One with a balcony? No trace on the Net...

The adjacent pool was white tiled, Victorian, smelling strongly of chlorine (if I close my eyes I can imagine the smell), with changing cubicles on either side (male to the left, female to the right). There was a pile of wooden (later expanded polystyrene) floats for learners to grasp as they propelled themselves with their legs, a lifebelt or two, some nets on sticks to remove debris. All was well-run, but showing signs of age. This swimming pool was a far cry from the modern, Olympic-length pools that the council would build in Northolt and Perivale. But at the time, in the early 1960s, pools like this were the norm (I also swam at the Brentford and Acton pools, both of similar vintage and style).

As well as the chlorine smell, the other characteristic of pools of this age were the pool attendants - chaps called Reg or Vic, wearing white slacks, white vests, white plimsolls - trim of physique, in their forties or fifties (probably ex-Army PT instructors). Their chief attribute was their tuneful whistling. They would use the unique acoustic properties of the swimming pool to optimal use whistling popular melodies from the 1930s and '40s.

Apart from school trips to the Ealing Baths, I'd also go from time to time with my father and brother, especially in summer. I'd be dressed in shorts (over my swimming trunks), sandals and t-shirt, so I'd be into the nearest empty cubicle to get undressed, and in the water in seconds.

Note: This was an age of social trust. No one nicked things from cubicles. You'd just find an empty one, leave your clothes (and watch,wallet and keys if you were grown up), go for a swim, and, having remembered your cubicle number, you'd return to find it all there where you left it.

Things obviously got worse by the time Northolt and Perivale swimming pools were opened; these had lockers, with keys, that you safety-pinned to your trunks.

Below: Ealing Town Hall, 1900. The baths were directly behind, entrance from Longfield Avenue, the road to the left of the Town Hall.

West Ealing

The nearest proper shops to us were on the Uxbridge Road as it ran through West Ealing. Here was a Sainbury's (not yet a supermarket), a Marks & Spencers (where nearly all my clothes came from), a Woolworth's, a British Home Stores (where we didn't shop), a MacFisheries and a Dolcis – the shoe-shop chain seen in any other suburb or city. There was a big(ish) department store, F.H. Rowse's, a smaller one, Daniel's, Parkers, a bakery which always had a marvellous smell of fresh bread, Bland's the optician - and the pubs. The Halfway House, towards the Hanwell end of West Ealing, the Green Man (with a pub sign I used to find scary), and between them, the Old Hat. I remember witnessing a fire in an upper-story room of the Old Hat one evening in the early 1960s; a crowd of people watching as firemen hosed water at the blaze through an open window from a Dennis appliance parked in the courtyard.

In the days before double yellow lines, the Uxbridge Road served as an experimental stretch with double red lines - denoting the limits of the pedestrian-controlled crossings; here you pushed a button, rather like today, but instead of an illuminated green man telling you when to cross, there was an animated walking matchstick-figure (cross) or stationary stick-figure (don't cross). I remember these very well (they were in the same places as the crossings are today), but can't find any reference to them online.

Toy shops... very important to me. Well, Woolworth's had a reasonable range of Airfix kits, Tanner's on Oaklands Road had Matchbox toys, but for Corgi and Dinkies (larger die-cast toy cars) there was only one shop on a short passage by Deans Gardens. Sadly, this shop either closed or else became a radio and TV shop, but while it was open, it was a great treat to be taken here by my parents to choose a Dinky or Corgi toy. The men serving at the toy shop wore brown warehouse coats, shirts and ties; when ordering a toy, I would look at the catalogue to see which toy car I wanted. The man would look at the catalogue number and would scour the boxes (yellow for Dinky, pale blue and yellow for Corgi) for the right catalogue number. If in stock, he would take out the box from the rack on the wall, open it and show me the car. If it met with my approval, my mother or father would pay, the box would be wrapped up and we'd take it home.

The Uxbridge road was served by red London double decker buses. There was the 207, from Uxbridge to Shepherd's Bush; this replaced the 607 trolleybus which I can still remember catching with my mother to visit friends who lived in Shepherd's Bush. The trolleybuses weron this route were withdrawn from service in November 1960 (I was just three at the time) and replaced by Routemaster buses. Below: A 607 trolleybus on the Uxbridge Road at Ealing Common, on its way to Shepherd's Bush. I always wanted to go on the upper deck, but my mother explained that 'bad people' (i.e. smokers) were up there.

Below: a lovely little film showing the 607 from Shepherd's Bush and onwards through Acton, via Ealing Common and on to Southall, Hillingdon and Uxbridge.

Our front garden

Our house at 15 Croft Gardens had a front and a back garden. (This is a reason why I could never live in a flat - all my life I've lived in a house with two gardens. ) The back garden, where I spent many a happy childhood hour, will be the subject, no doubt, of many separate posts, the front garden was less important from the point of view of playing.

A brick wall, some nine inches thick, separated the front garden from the pavement. A wrought-iron double gate opened up to the short drive up to the garage. The wall had three brick pillars between stretched which two sections of brickwork with a dip in the middle of each.

In my childhood makebelieve, the wall was like a railway train, the gates like a level crossing. I would sit astride the wall and imagine the train was approaching the crossing, which had to be opened, then closed.

The main feature of the front garden was a magnolia bush (today grown very large), which in bloom was quite magnificent.

The advantage of the front garden over the back was the ability to watch the world go by. Milk floats, the rag-and-bone man, cyclists, delivery vans, motorbikes, pedestrians and the occasional car, most of which warranted careful observation.

Oaklands Primary School - infant impressions

One day in early September 1962, a month before my fifth birthday, my mother took me to school for the first time. I'd gone to nursury school for a year and half before starting at Oaklands, but this was the first day at Proper School.

Oaklands Primary School was divided into two buildings; a single-story Infants school, with its own headmistresses, and six classes with the youngest three years. Across a driveway was the two-storey Junior school, eight classes, with four years.

I remember well the smell of the varnished wooden floors (always the same smell at the beginning of each school year), the solid Edwardian architecture, gloss-painted doors, brass doorknobs, the cloakroom with its coat pegs, the nature table. I also vividly recall the smell of Magic Markers, thick-tipped felt pens used to name everything in neat hand-written letters on large rectangles of coloured card; "Door", "Table", "Window".

Always having had a lactose intolerance, I hated school milk, which was delivered in wire crates full of one-third of a pint bottles (around 200 ml) to each class for drinking during the mid-morning break. Passable in winter when the cold took away the taste, in summer, it made me retch. Still, I had to drink it, no getting away from that. Everyone got a straw, either punctured the silver foil top or removed it (that yellow cream in summer!) and sucked it down with a slurping sound. The taste of the paper straw also comes back to me. Free school milk was withdrawn by the state in the 1970s by then Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher - "Milk Snatcher", but in the '60s, it was a daily ordeal I had to contend with.

The headmistress of the Infants School was Miss Golding; my first teacher was a jolly woman, Mrs Constance, (Class 6) who cycled in on a bicycle with a lady's frame and an enclosed rear wheel to prevent her skirt getting caught in the spokes. She taught me the correct way to walk with scissors (the blades in the palm of the hand).

Oaklands Primary was a state school - no fees. Yet there was a proper school uniform; a green blazer, piped in silver-grey, grey shirt, green and silver striped tie, grey V-necked jumper with green piping, grey flannel shorts for boys, with creases and turn-ups (which I'd wear even in mid-winter! Only in the final year were long trousers allowed), grey socks with green piping, and black shoes. And a green cap with silver piping and crest.

Although the vast majority of children were working class, there was a decency and sense of order. The infants school was run by middle class ladies who I sensed were dedicated to their jobs. Everything seemed in its place.

Oaklands Road

At the northern end of Croft Gardens is Oaklands Road. In my childhood, this was a serious road, more serious than Croft Gardens, or Manton Avenue, or Seward Road, because it had shops, a pub - and most importantly, my school on it. Plus, more cars drove up and down Oaklands Road.

I will write more about Oaklands Primary School, which I attended for seven years (from the ages of four to 11). But Oaklands Road itself was a rather ordinary road of Victorian two-up, two-down terraced houses; "working class". I can recall seeing children without shoes on it and indeed the same children taking a dump in the gutter, but they came from a problem family - the only one on the street.

Just around the corner from us on Oaklands Road stood a parade of shops (still there), of which the most significant for me was Tanner's. A 'tanner' was sixpence (six old pence - two and half new pee), and in the mid '60s, it could buy a lot. Two small Cadbury's chocolate bars or 24 Blackjack or Fruit Salad chewy sweets (a farthing each). Or an tetrahedron full of frozen orange juice (with tuppence change). Or a Zoom ice lolly. Two tanners would buy you a Matchbox toy. I will write more about toys and play anon. At the near end of the parade was Lawrence's the Butchers, at the far end was The Grosvenor pub, a Courage house (today a listed building). A smell of stale beer and tobacco that pervaded the air around it. My parents rather looked down upon it and upon those who frequented it.

Croft Gardens

From the time I left Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital in early October 1957 to 1 May 1970, when my family moved to the posher surroundings of Cleveland Park, West Ealing, I lived at 15 Croft Gardens, Hanwell, London W7. Our phone number - HAN 8068. No postcodes then. The 1930s-built house was semi-detached (well, end-terrace really), with a wooden lean-to garage and a drive. A magnolia tree stood in the front garden.

My father had a car - a light grey, four-door Morris Minor, registration number RMU 23. Although this was bought after I was born, I never remember a time when we didn't have a car. I remember the fridge being delivered to the house, but the car was always there. We were one of a handful of families on Croft Gardens to have a car at that time. Once I was tall enough to see out of the front room bay windows, the sound of a car driving down the street would have me running up to see what it was. Cars were still rare.

Apart from Manton Avenue, which joined Croft Gardens at the southern end, all the other streets in our part of Hanwell - bordered by the Uxbridge Road to the north, Northfields Avenue to the east, Boston Road to the west and Elthorne Park Road to the south - were Victorian. Most were terraced, some were larger and harked back to an era of domestic servants. However, my assumption was that our newer, airier houses with their 80ft gardens were posher. We, I assumed from my earliest days of class consciousness, a class above the other streets. In this view I was reinforced by the fact that we had a car, and that my father, a civil engineer, had a better job than the fathers of most the children I would end up going to school with.

My earliest memories are of the house at 15 Croft Gardens, of being in the garden, the veranda, the summerhouse, the coal bunker, the apple trees, the lilac tree... I shall return to our home in future posts.