Autobiography

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="12ad4c00dduajq.gif"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 ><NOBR><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="stan hedges homepage"><U>Home Page </U></A></div> <bR> <div>  <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Times New Roman" >Chapters</FONT></div> <div> One</div> <div> <A HREF="id144.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 2"><U>Two</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id145.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 3"><U>Three</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id146.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 4"><U>Four</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id148.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 5"><U>Five</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id149.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 6"><U>Six</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id151.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 7"><U>Seven </U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id156.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 8"><U>Eight</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id158.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 9"><U>Nine</U></A></div> <div> Ten</div> <div> Eleven</div> <div> Twelve</div> <div> Thirteen</div> <div> Fourteen</div> <div> Fifteen   </div> <div>  </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="stan hedges homepage"><U>Home Page</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFBF0" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>'Any Umberellas?'</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> A Memoir of My Early Life </div> <div> by<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> S. T. Hedges<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Chapter 1</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> Early One Morning<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> The way of my coming into this beautiful, strange and utterly bewildering world can only be described as hapless, unwanted and unsung. Some would say I have always been feckless. But I say no. For in the womb I was anything but feckless. In fact, that period was to prove a high water mark in my first forty years, a time when I actually had a fixed purpose as well as the necessary drive to achieve it. </div> <div> I first realized this at the age of fourteen. </div> <div> 'You, you little sod, you never ought to be here! Three times I tried to get rid of you! Three times!' </div> <div> It was not meant unkindly.  It was just Mum's way.  Nevertheless, it did come as a shock.  For until that moment I had enjoyed the happy illusion that I was one of a chosen few, because (having seen so many furtive women coming and going over the years), I already knew Mum was something of a dab hand at reversing the downside of a few minutes' abandoned passion. </div> <div> So it takes little imagination to see how information of this nature might easily disturb the mind of a sensitive adolescent.  After all, you will agree that such revelations are almost bound to affect one's idea of 'place' in the overall scheme of things: learning that one is the son of a skilled amateur abortionist.  I mean to say,simply everything was up for review, having to face the fact that, along with a few other misbegotten predecessors, I too had been earmarked for a watery grave at the eastern end of London's Northern Outfall, marked down as no more value than all the rest.</div> <div> Yes, those first forty years were most definitely feckless, with almost everything dictated by chance.  But in the womb... my word, I must have been tenacious, a death-defying warrior of a foetus, an Achilles without a flaw, an East End kid with a truly fine pair of heels! </div> <div> But though the news may have come as a mighty blow to the ego initially, my perverse nature soon came to believe what I had long suspected: that I was different from other boys.  I <I>was</I> special.  After all, Mother may not have chosen me, but I certainly chose to live!  I was a maverick!  Life after that could never be the same.  How could it, faced with such a challenge?  I had something to prove.  I simply had to make something of myself in order to prove her remiss to even think of extinguishing my nascent talents.  For such is the ignorance of youth. </div> <div> From that moment, my journey towards self-affirmation needed no psychiatrist to predict I would squander my youth searching for the unattainable. By which I mean someone who could love me for being who I am, and not as mother had done, through a stoic acceptance of her fallibility as an abortionist. </div> <div> And so, while most fourteen-year-old grammar school boys are laying the foundations of a brilliant career in law, medicine or politics, my thoughts dwelt mainly on who and where she might be, this paragon of true love destined to imbue me with a sense of destiny in having conquered the minefield of my mother's womb. </div> <div> I never did find it, of course; that kind of love.  Painfully, I discovered what others seem to know instinctively -- that no one ever does.  Like all Romantics, I would eventually realise that what I sought cannot be found, for it only finds.  I now know that Love is a 'happening'.  Either it happens or it doesn't.  If it does not, then no amount of wishing or conniving can make it so.  All the romantic artifices known to lovers -- bouquets of roses purchased in Covent Garden at four in the morning, personally delivered to her sleepy doorstep; desperate missions to her office with a ready umbrella on a rainy day, love poems and all such and suchlike -- none has the power to convert an everyday occurrence of physical desire into a lifelong attachment glorified by deep understanding, loyalty, friendship and affection. </div> <div> After half a lifetime I would discover that if we're astute enough to recognise the carnal traps crafty Nature has set for us -- that infatuation which consumes us for a year or two before burning out in a welter of acrimonious mutual shame and remorse -- such affairs can be enjoyed for what they are without the pretence of everlasting love as an object.  No, if we're lucky, love just 'happens' once we cease 'looking' for it.  How could I take almost forty years to learn something so elementary? Perhaps the answer will reveal itself in the coming pages.<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> But there, already I'm ahead of myself -- my literary scheme, that is.  A mind like a grasshopper, that's me.  After all, what could be simpler than writing a memoir?  All that's necessary is to start at the beginning and work through to the end, right?  Ha! But have you never read Sterne's, 'Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy'?  Well, there you are.  So please excuse me for a moment while I tear up the plan. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> So it came to pass that my first journey from darkness into light took place on a cold, dark morning in the early hours of Sunday, 16th December, 1934. Sid and Rose, my young parents, were then living (for they moved often) in two rooms above a fish and chip shop in Hermit Road, Plaistow. Here they shared a kitchen and downstairs outside privy with another couple. By that time my oldest brother, Ken, was six years old and living with Gran and Grandfather Hedges - an odd fact which need not concern us for the moment - while my four-year-old brother Sidney (named after Dad), lay sleeping in a cot beside the bed. </div> <div> 'Wake up, Sid! It's coming!' </div> <div> 'Eh? What?' </div> <div> 'I said it's coming! You'll have to help me round the Nursing Home.' </div> <div> 'Jesus!'<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> 'Well I <I>am </I>sorry! I didn't get like this all by myself, you know. If you're fed up with this sort of carry on, you should've done what I told you....' </div> <div> 'God! You really know how to give a bloke a thrill, don't you? D'you realise the time? It's five o'bloody clock in the morning, for Gawd's sake!'<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> 'Don't tell me, tell the baby!'<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> Both were in their mid-twenties, tied in a loveless match where both had lost out to the age-old adolescent gamble. In their day (and in mine too, for that matter), working-class Londoners still held strictly to the rule of 'no sex before marriage'. Unlucky transgressors were expected to pay the full price, usually spending the rest of their days cursing Nature's libidinous compulsions. Indeed, it was Dad's own father who forced marriage upon them. </div> <div> Born in May, 1910, Mum was the fifth of ten children raised in abject poverty at No 8, Walmington Street, Plaistow, a street off the Barking Road near the `Abbey Arms' junction with Balaam Street and Freemasons Road. (Only a few yards of Walmingtron Street remain today, the remainder having been erased during the Blitz). </div> <div> 'You think you're hard done by?' she'd say, 'I'll have you know we slept five to a bed on straw palliases, and only our coats to cover us. I used to swear if I ever had kids, I'd never rest till they had sheets and blankets over them in bed.' </div> <div> In the 1890s, her father, Ben Treloar, had sung on the music halls for a year or two before meeting Louisa Foster and settling down to his trade as a master plasterer. When young, Mum's greatest ambition was to become a singer herself. 'The Old Man used to say: "Mark my words, Rosie, gel, I'll have you up on that stage at the 'Ackney Empire one of these days, or my name's not Rump nor Stiltskin. Just see if I don't. You could be another Florrie Forde, you could. A Marie Lloyd, even!" And I might've done an' all,' she'd say, 'if I hadn't been daft enough to take up with your father. Well, all the girls were after him, weren't they? He could play the ukulele. Good at parties, he was. Always the life and soul, your father. '<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> Dad was born in April 1908, and raised in Alexandra Street, Canning Town, a few hundred yards west of Walmington Street. And as to Canning Town, and simply by way of interest, there's still some doubt which of two noble gentlemen leant his name to this part of London's East End. They say it was either George Canning, the early Nineteenth-century statesman and short-lived prime minister; or his son Charles, first Viceroy of India. Only this much is certain: In the 1850s, in order to house the labour needed to build and man the new Royal Victoria Docks, a square mile of jerry-built housing was thrown together on the disease-ridden marshes of Bow Creek, which straddled both sides of the A13, the ancient Roman road from London to Tilbury. It hardly needs saying that the area was never likely to become a place where either gentleman would feel inclined to invite his loved ones for a day out in the old family brougham. </div> <div> When Mum and Dad met in early 1927, Sid was a handsome, black-haired youth of nineteen, and Rose a pretty sixteen-year-old with blonde hair and grey-green eyes. He was working in Tate & Lyle's sugar factory at Silvertown, while Rose was training to become a barmaid, working alongside her best friend, Molly Fitz.<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> 'I should never have married him. Couldn't stand the sight of him at first. Never one to hide his light under a bush, your father. I can tell you that for nothing. I never forget the first time he came in the pub. Full of himself, he was. The sort who'd charge you half-a-crown to lick his boots. Oh, good-looking, I'll grant you. And always kept himself clean and smart. But cocky? T'cher, never met one like him.'<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> Though she liked boys with 'a bit of go in them', it appears his vanity offended her so much that, on a matter of principle, she refused his first two invitations for a night out with jellied eels and a cuddle in the back row of the flicks. Molly thought she was a fool, that he was 'dreamy', that she was mad to turn him down, and if she didn't want him, she jolly well knew where to throw him. Mother had second thoughts after that. To her eternal shame, failed to refuse a third invitation. However, she and Molly remained good friends for the rest of their lives, even though Mum caught them at it five years later. That's when Dad confessed, or perhaps boasted, he'd inseminated every one of her friends at some time or another, so why all the fuss over Molly? Poor Molly; she never forgave herself for being the cause of Mum's blighted life - not snatching him when she had the chance, that is. But there, I digress.<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> So at seventeen Mother was pregnant, and in April 1928, just before her eighteenth birthday, and under the stern gaze of Dad's father, she and Dad were married at West Ham Registry Office. Dad had just turned twenty-one. My brother Kenneth was born in November, and Sidney came along two years later, in September 1930. </div> <div> When my turn came, in 1934, it was the tail end of the Depression. By that time Dad had spent years in and out of work, taking day labour and anything else he could get, but on the morning in question he happened to be working on the assembly line at Fords Motor Works, Dagenham. And he must have been doing all right, because he was making the six-mile journey backwards and forwards on a push-bike. That morning, he tried sitting Mum on the crossbar but it was no use, she was just too big, unable to get me over the handlebars. There was nothing for it but to walk. </div> <div> At five-thirty, contractions coming thick and fast, still dark and the weather freezing, they set off down Hermit Road to walk the three-quarters of a mile to Plaistow Nursing Home. They hadn't gone a hundred yards when, as luck would have it, wonder of wonders, they happened upon the United Dairies' milkman going about his rounds. </div> <div> Now this milkman may have been an apprentice - he certainly hadn't graduated to commanding a wise all-knowing horse with built-in route map drawing a wagon shod in the latest pneumatic tyres. No, he could offer no more than a simple three-wheeled pushcart with ironclad wheels and not much in the way of springs. Nevertheless, he must have been a decent sort of chap, because Dad didn't have to ask twice. In a jiffy, Mum was up and sitting on a milk crate, legs dangling between the handles, and me champing in the starting blocks. </div> <div> The two men set off at a cracking pace, snaking and weaving over the cobbles, avoiding tram lines and pot-holes, half a dozen milk crates clanging and banging about, empty bottles jumping up and down, making enough noise to wake the whole street, Mum said. 'Windows were popping up all the way down the road. I've never been so embarrassed.' So, who knows, if I'd been a little older, I might easily have picked up my first swear words that morning. </div> <div> Now anyone could wish the story ended there, but unfortunately, there's more. </div> <div> By the time we arrived at the entrance, what with all the swerving about and jolting up and down and everything, Mum and I had just about had enough. So the moment we were off that cart we went hell for leather in bringing matters to the swiftest possible conclusion. Which is I how I come to hold the distinction of being born on the brown, marble floor of the entrance hall to Plaistow Nursing Home. Some might say an inauspicious introduction to the greatest mystery known to mankind but, as you see, it proved effective enough. Well, until now, that is. You see, it was inevitable I would become a philosophical bore, even if only a dilettante.<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id144.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 2"><U><B><U>Next Chapter</U></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" ><A HREF="id144.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 2"><U> </U></A></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>