Life At Home- Part 2

 My mother had a drawer in the kitchen for all manner of odds and ends. Offcuts of string, paper bags, brown paper, and elastic bands. You name it, if it could be rescued and saved, it went in this drawer.  Many items you bought often came wrapped in brown paper and tightly tied with string. We had to go to Braggins, the main department store in Bedford, to buy our school uniforms. 'Ovr Boys' was over the front of the shop, on the corner of Harpur Street and Silver Street. Why the name had a V in it I could never discover. Braggins had a fascinating system of tubes and, I presume, compressed air, which was used to send cash and receipts for things bought to the cash office, hidden in the bowels of the store. This was long before computers, bar codes and all the modern conveniences we now take for granted, but as a young boy, this system intrigued me. The shop assistant put whatever it was in a capsule sort of thing, which then fitted in the lower end of the tube. The thing was closed up, a button was pressed, and there was a whoosh noise, and the capsule was gone. I have no idea how they managed to send it to the right place in the store, but it really interested me, and it made shopping for boring school uniforms far more fun.

I digress. Returning to my mother's oddments drawer, I never knew her to actually use any of those oddments. Perhaps she did, but I never saw her go to the drawer for any of those bits and pieces. I think this may have been a sort of throwback to the Second World War, which she lived through, when there was a 'make do and mend' culture. Everything was saved, even the least important things, such as ends of string, brown paper and so on. When I think, I was born barely five years after the end of the war, so I suppose it's not surprising.

People did reuse things and had their clothes repaired.  I remember a lady used to come to the house every week to do mending, darning socks, jumpers, turning up trousers and so on. Her name was Miss Fuller, and she lived in a cottage right next to the garden of Malting Farm. She then started taking my younger brother, Andrew, out in his pram when he was a baby. He was born in 1961. Then, her work doing the ending got less and less, and she spent more and more time looking after baby Andrew. She was always 'Miss Fuller' and I never discovered her first name. It was the same with the two ladies who used to come into the house, to clean and do domestic jobs, Mrs Jakes and Mrs Fremantle. Mrs Freemantle lived in a cottage at the rear of Malting Farm house and was married to Bob, who was a ploughman on the farm. Mrs Jakes lived with her husband in a cottage which was possibly the last cottage, going out of the village, going towards Bedford. 

Malting Farmhouse was large. As I have already mentioned, it was old. Being owned by the Whitbread Estate, they were responsible for the maintenance of the place, and at one point, when we lived there, the roof had to be partially replaced. There was a traditional-pitched roof, but also a flat section, which ran across the front of the house and out into a semicircular area near the garden. This was made of lead, and it was replaced, no doubt at vast expense. 

There were two attic rooms at the top of the house (where attics are usually located), which we used as playrooms. My older brothers had a train set, which I believe came from a cousin, but I can't be sure of that fact. It meant we could play up there and away from everyone else in the house, but as a child, I found it somewhat scary, because there were a couple of doors which appeared to lead to nowhere in particular. A lot of ancient stuff was stored in a small room, such as paintings, ancient sports equipment and elderly suitcases, which probably hadn't been used in decades. The narrow and steep staircase to access the attic rooms could be tricky to ascend.  There were good views of the village from the windows and, if you were so inclined, you could go out onto the flat roof and walk around, but it was rather dangerous, because the parapet was very low and it would be quite easy to fall over the edge.

The house was large, and it was a great place to have games, such as hide and seek. There were no end of strange, secret places to hide, and you could spend hours hunting for someone who had hidden.

We used the dining room as the central room to watch television and generally relax in. In the early 1960s, my father bought a black-and-white television. In those days, television was in black and white and on 405 lines. Later, around 1964-5, BBC2 opened and was broadcast on 625 lines, meaning, if you wanted to watch it, you needed a set capable of viewing in the new 625 format. My dad eventually bought such a set, I think the brand was KB, nothing like a modern set, large, with most of the works underneath the screen, and to watch BBC2, you had to push over a switch, but I don't think we watched it much. In around 1970, the BBC and ITV introduced colour, but my father wouldn't commit to it until a good deal later. The first colour programmes were experimental in some way, and in 1967 the BBC broadcast Wimbledon in colour. I remember seeing it for the first time when I was taken on a school visit to the Robinson Rentals offices in Bedford (later to become Granada Rental) and saw colour television then, but I have to say, I wasn't over impressed by the quality.

Remembering Louis Fussell- Part 2

Christmas at 35 Rutland Road was interesting. I think Louis rather liked the Christmas season. He didn't have any children of his own, and liked to make a fuss of the children of families who had children who came to learn violin with him, together with any other people around him. I was  to learn quite soon that it wasn't to be anything ordinary. Over the weeks of the Christmas period itself he went to stay with friends in Germany, and in the weeks leading up to his travelling over to Germany he made cakes and food, particularly a Hansel and Gretel house made of ginger bread. It seems amazing when I look back on this particular period and think that he made all this in pieces and then packed it up carefully and then took it to Germany and constructed this house over there, quite why he had to do this as it was rather like taking 'coals to Newcastle' as no doubt the shops there would have been full of such gingerbread houses. The cost of taking it on a plane must have been more than the cost of actually buying one in Germany, but that was one of the eccentricites of Mr Fussell. In German the gingerbread is called 'pfefferkuchen' (translating as 'peppercake') or 'lebkuchen' (translating as 'life-loaf.')

In the weeks leading up to Christmas there was no end of activity as Louis decorated the house. He didn't drive, only possessing a bicycle, and to obtain a Christmas tree he went off somewhere to the depths of Bedfordshire (I thinking about it with hind sight  perhaps the Whitbread Estate at Southill.) and came back with a huge Christmas tree strapped to the bicycle. I can't imagine how he managed to ride a bicycle all that distance with a pine tree tied to the side of the machine. Seems incredible to me. He could have had it delivered somehow or got one of his friends who had a car to drive him there and bring it back on a roof-rack or something. But, no, he was obviously determined to do it on his own. Then this huge piece of fir tree was assembled in his front room along with a vast array of ancient Christmas decorations and lights. The rest of the house was also festooned with ancient decorations which had really seen better days. He spent weeks rehearsing this weird Christmas entertainment with the children and this was put on at the party he held in the last week before he departed for Germany. The first year of my time living in the house I was somewhat shell-shocked by the whole Christmas party process, and in particular the strange game he played with the children. I came home one day to find that there were pieces of paper stuck on doors and other odd places throughout the house, with the names of places on them, mostly British towns and cities. My room door had one on it, but now I'm not sure what place it was, Edinburgh or Glasgow perhaps but I can't actually remember. The afternoon of the party I was in my room when the children began to arrive. Part-way through the afternoon there was the sound of children charging up and down the stairs and banging on my door. I think it had something to do with a game where the names of railways stations were read out and the children had to find that station's name on the bits of paper pinned to the doors all around the house, my door included. I soon learned in future years to be elsewhere when this party was on so as to avoid this assault on my room door!

As Louis was a member of the Bedfordshire Orchestra (I'm not sure of the exact name, so apologies if this is wrong.) and during their season of concerts he would be playing viola. On these occasions he would make a great deal of fuss and I occasionally attended some of these concerts, being a classical music fan. He also wrote music and had some of his symphonies performed in Bedford Corn Exchange. He would often have parties in his lounge and invite people along and spent a great deal of time and effort preparing food. Unfortunately Louis's hygiene standards weren't up to much and as a result I think a lot of the food got uneaten.