The Ancestral Home
I believe my parents were the first tenants of this council house, they tell stories of moving in mid-winter when the building site was still all around. I was physically born in my parents bedroom in that house. In fact, I think the actual bed I was born in was only got rid of a few years ago! I think my sisters were born in hospital and lived in earlier rented digs, "the attic flat at Avondale Road" rings a bell.
I feel very strongly about this house, that it is "our ancestral home." There is only one thing that would upset me more than this house being sold and someone else living in it for the first time since it was built and obviously I don't even want to think about that event. The fact that both these things may happen at the same time is beyond words.
I feel like I know every brick, rafter, pipe and floorboard in that house, the ones not to tread on at night when padding to the toilet! I helped my Dad do so many improvements to that house when I was a kid, so whether I actually helped is probably debatable. Its where I learned how to do all the stuff which I've since done to my own houses. Putting in new windows, the central heating going in, fitted furniture, remodelling "the shed."
The Rustic Rose Garden
My earliest memory is Dad putting in the rustic fences around the
edge of the rear garden. They were siver birch like boughs
arranged like horse rails.
Of course the first thing we did on
them, and continued always to do on them, was that which is not
allowed - sit on them and roll off backwards ending up
swinging underneath. No wonder father learnt to build his
projects over-engineered! Up the side of the garden these were
done about six feet high for roses to trail over.
The right hand side of the garden in front of the kitchen window had a big dip with a manhole cover in the middle. This was "the bank" down which we could rolly polly. I remember it as a big hill. In reality it was a one foot drop which dad has since landscaped away when he built the outside patio. The only birthday party I can remember was me and my friends rolling around on that bank and playing with toys. Me, Clive Robinson, Dennis Jordan, Dave Corby.
The Front Rockery
Then I can remember the landscaping of the front garden, a crazy pathing rockery affair at the top of the lawn by the steps and the path to the front door. Backed with a trellis fence outside the front step. I remember helping to mix the cement outside the backdoor (really a side door).
The front step
I can remember on sunny evenings Mum and Dad would sit on the front step watching the older kids and men play soccer on the green across the road, the one with the council sign "No Ball Games," while I'd play in the front garden rolling down the lawn. The front garden is a really steep lawn from the house down to the privet hedge.
The Front Wall and the Bus Stop
I have early memories of Dad trimming that hedge with a pair of handshears every week. The hedge and the little green/blue fence that he put on top was to stop everyone at the bus stop sitting on our front wall! The bus would stop right outside our house, the 130b route, so if the curtains were open in Mum and Dad's bedroom or the girls room, the top deck passangers would all be staring in. My room was the only bedroom at the back of the house so my room was always quiet and dark, whereas their rooms would have the headlights of cars and busses sweeping round like a lighthouse at night.
The Cars Take Over
When we first moved in the roads all had grass verges with trees on both sides. This was because as council tenants we weren't expected to have cars, our sort all used public transport. There were small blocks of detached garages scattered around the estate where the few who might have cars could rent space. There were no cars parked outside houses. I can still remember the childish sense of outrage I felt when they came round and ripped out the verges every other tree or so, to make "lay-by's" for people to park their cars. So my early memories were of wide open green spaces where you could play outside with plenty of space and only the occasional bus or car going by. Today, it feels like there's no road at all, everything double parked with the houses right on top of the cars and some people having concreted over the front lawns to park yet more cars. To drive down these roads you have to dodge oncoming traffic every 10 yards weaving in and out of the double parked cars.
Of course, as with all these then and now comparisons you have the problem of seeing the then through the lens of a child to whom everything was big and new and wonderful with the memory of that image softned by the magic of nostalgia whereas the now is the jaundiced eye of an adult surveying unforgiving reality.
The aviary!
I have a memory of my Dad, shirtless, in summer, putting the last boards of the roof in place and realising that he was standing up through the roof nailing the planks down and that if he nailed these last few planks he'd be stuck in the remaining hole. I remember us laughing about it and then him precariously crawling over the roof to nail the last planks in place. It was a beautiful structure, painted white, with a inner nesting area and an outer flight area, separated by glass windows with little sliding doors to let the budgies in and out, a big door for humans to get in and out, all covered with green roofing felt to keep the rain out. I'm not sure but I think its still got that original felt on it today.
The Vegetable Patch
Between the house and the aviary at the bottom of the garden a lawn with a path and clothesline down the middle and a "vegetable patch" garden up the side. Again, many memories of Dad complaining about his back but every year "digging over" his patch from top to bottom of the garden to grow veggies.
Whether his back got worse or our economic state improved or both it eventually got replaced with dahlias. I think we went back to veggies on and off over the years.
The Aviary Extension
A big flight cage, angle iron framework with wire covers covering the grass and the fishpond in front of the aviary. Cool. Birds drowining in the pond. Not so cool. Wire cover over the pool. Cool again. My rabbit sitting in the middle of the pond on the wire cover with his feet wet. Still cool, its only my rabbit after all!
So here is Cindy with Bambi in the run next to the pond. You can see the angle iron and wire and the rockery flower-bed outside.
The Bedroom Makeovers
The girls got a big built-in wardrobe set in their bedroom. I got a set of cupboards and a printed mountain view picture "window" beside my bed. I can't remember clearly who got which first, my impression is that mine came after the girls. I do remember that I was spoiled again cos mine was this extra special thing, theirs was just a set of cupboards. Women, you just can't win.
The Shed
Dad built all this stuff with a combination wood machine in "the shed," the side downstairs room off the kitchen with the side door to the back garden. It was called the shed because this room contained the coal bunker, hence coal-shed.
There was room for the machine, a set of drawers on the wall and some wooden shelves. The washing machine lived under the stairs next to the coalbunker. There was room to stand between the coal bunker and the machine. This was a saw-bench, bandsaw, lathe, sander, planer. Great, except they were all little 8", 4" things, not the great big machines he used at work, and of course, there being no room to swing a cat, he couldn't saw up lumber from scratch even if he could afford it. So everything got built from scraps or precut at work as "rabbit work," and the projects actually got assembled in the kitchen. Much to Mum's delight I'm sure. You'd go in the kitchen one moment and there would be little pieces of wood all over the floor and Dad sitting there smoking a fag thinking about "the plan." (I never saw a written plan or cutting diagram.) "Don't tread on that" he'd shout at you. Next time you'd go out there, there would be a fully assembled whatever-it-was with Dad sitting there smoking a fag thinking about how to fix it in where ever it was going. "Don't touch it!" he'd shout at you. In reality it was all just standing there balanced with dry joints and no clamps, a tribute to the ingenuity of "the plan." So when you went out there again a few minutes later it was all in pieces on the floor again! And yes Dad was sitting there smoking a fag. This pattern would repeat several times before suddenly, usually with colorful language, it would appear in its final place and form. Magic.
There was a time, to make extra money, when Dad used to disappear every evening to the shed to cut out funny shaped pieces of wood on his bandsaw using an aluminium pattern. They were the arm pieces for crutches. He was paid piecework rates, he'd be there for hours, stacking them up all around him.
Phil Terry Last modified: Sat Dec 30 12:11:45 PST 2006