THOSE WERE
THE DAYS
Someone gave me a newspaper article
about carefree childhoods, the way things
were different when we were young. It
brought back many memories of growing up
in Harrow in the fifties.
Thinking about the article (you know,
teachers threw blackboard rubbers, we fell
out of trees, ate all the wrong things, etc), I
started wondering, what were the risks back
then? Surely it wasn’t all cosy and safe?
When I was about nine or ten, I was sent up
the road to the shop round the corner. A few
doors along, I was called over by an ancient
lady standing at her gate, who wondered if
I could get her something from the shop (I
didn’t know her, but things were different
then). On my return with the goods, she
took me inside, and to cut a long story short,
kept me there for two or more hours, talking
about her son who had died in the war. I
was brought up to respect adults, and I
couldn’t find a way to cut across her
reminiscences and leave. My parents had
everyone out looking for me. We were
always told not to talk to strangers, but of
course, this was a grey area for me. I had
seen the lady before, so she wasn’t
technically a stranger.
The main difference between then and now
was, of course, the motor car. We had it
instilled into us how to cross the road safely,
always at a zebra crossing, despite the
comparatively empty roads. My family didn’t
have a car, nor did most of our friends and
neighbours, nor indeed, the majority of the
population of ‘our world’. Consequently, the
perceived danger was from what were then,
as now, referred to as ‘perverts’. They didn’t
drive either, they hung around the streets
and recreation grounds. If a ‘pervert’ had
been reported in the local rec, we were told
not to go there for a few days. (We did,
anyway, eager to see what a ‘pervert’
looked like.)
The absence of cars meant that it was
extremely rare for children to be snatched
off the street. We knew not to take sweets
from strangers; my best friend at 12 was
actually stopped on the way home from
school by a man who offered her sweets to
go with him. She ran like the wind!
Looking up comments about my old
teachers on one of those ‘Reunited’ sites
recently I came across an oblique reference
to our old maths teacher (a scout leader,
and the same one famous for throwing the
blackboard rubber). It mentioned, in
passing, the boys’ reluctance to join him in
his ‘stationery store’ – that’s something the
boys never shared with the girls at the time!
At school, the cane was the ultimate
punishment. It was usually boys who were
caned, I can’t ever remember it happening
to a girl, although I have never forgotten one
particular event where the headmaster got
it totally wrong: he caned a boy for hitting an
older girl. She had made a very unpleasant
bigoted remark. I know who should have
been punished. I’m pretty sure the boy
didn’t tell his parents – you didn’t in those
days, and unlike today, it was practically
unheard of for parents to show their faces at
school except at the open evening.
Carefree? Yes I suspect those days were,
in many ways, although back then we didn’t
have these lovely rose-tinted glasses I’ve
just picked up from the optician!
Belle Walker
11