Sisters of the East End by Helen Batten

Author:Helen Batten [Batten, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448175642
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

* * *

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

I was amazed to discover during my nurses’ training that every cell in a person’s body is renewed within seven years. This means that there is not one bit of my body that now exists that was on this earth seven years ago. We are, literally, physically reborn many times during our lifetime. It’s no wonder then that societies as a whole are never static. But sometimes the pace of change becomes more intense. Just as at critical points in a person’s life – childhood, adolescence, pregnancy, old age – this rate of change speeds up, so the Sixties was one of those moments in this country’s history when the pace of change became turbo-charged.

I became aware of this while doing my rounds on the district. The new tower blocks that were going up on the old bombsites or replacing the tenements instantly changed the whole nature of our area. Suddenly the material well-being of the Poplar housewife was transformed. There was an end to the communal outdoor privies, instead there was a lavatory and indeed a proper bathroom for every family. Out with rugs and lino, in came fitted carpets (they seemed the height of luxury!). The women of Poplar started to have things that their grandmothers and their mothers could only have dreamed of – washing machines, telephones, vacuum cleaners. But in the midst of this something was lost, something that money couldn’t buy, something that might have been more precious.

I had an inkling of this the first time I visited Ivy Bucket in her flat in the new high-rise tower block by the Blackwall Tunnel. Before this Ivy had been living in what to an outside observer these days might look like something close to medieval squalor. The house was always a tip – dirt, dust, insects, you name it. There were clothes drying everywhere, plates piled up, broken toys on the floor, her countless cats and children getting under everyone’s feet.

Because Ivy’s friends and family lived in the surrounding streets (sister one door along, Mum the street behind, cousins on the corner) there was always another Cockney companion putting forward an opinion on every antenatal visit, and there had been quite a few because Ivy was on her fourth child. It felt overcrowded, but friendly. However, at the back of the house she always kept a special room for her newest baby. It was clean and warm, with a cot and perfectly pressed clothes all laid out neatly. I found it touching. As her fourth pregnancy advanced she received word that the council had found her a place in the brand new Balfour House tower block. Ivy was very excited.

‘Bloody marvellous, Sister! Imagine, getting away from all this,’ she said, sweeping her arm across her tiny, tatty kitchen, ‘Everything brand new and even me very own loo.’

So for my next antenatal visit I had to cycle across the length of the district, which was no mean feat. The area we covered was a long ribbon stretching for miles.

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