We Learnt About Hitler at the Mickey Mouse Club by Enid Elliott Linder

Author:Enid Elliott Linder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Several months had passed since the Coronation before I began to realise that our father did not drink in the same way that other men did. I had never ever seen him go into a public house as quite a number of men in Crawford Buildings did – every Friday night without fail, some of them. Some fathers sent their children out with the big china jugs off their washstands to buy quarts of beer for them from the jug-and-bottle hatches of The Beehive or The Grapes. The fathers would then drink this at home, giving the mothers a glassful or two if they wanted it. Sometimes the mothers went down for the beer, occasionally with more than one jug to be filled. But more usually the men would ‘pop out for a quick one’ by themselves on Friday or Saturday nights, and come home for their suppers, merry but not drunk. Our next door neighbour Mr O’Brien, was like this. He had his drink but didn’t get drunk.

The O’Briens were a really nice couple in their late twenties. She had a lovely Irish face with dark hair, high cheekbones and an expression similar to the angels in the stained-glass windows at church. He was not as tall as she was and looked quite like the crooner called Bing Crosby, whose picture I had seen in still photographs outside the Blue Hall cinema on the Edgware Road. It was a delight to take their son, Patrick, for walks around the block in his smart grey hooded pushchair with chromium mudguards.

Our mother often went into number 66, to share a cup of tea with Mrs O’Brien and of course Joan and I went too. As usual we would listen to their conversations. A lot of adult talk I fully understood, but some of it was still incomprehensible to me. Like when Mother told Mrs O’Brien that our father had been coming home late from the Grosvenor House Hotel one night after a long and arduous term of duty, when he was accosted outside the Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch by two ‘street women’! Apparently they had said to him: ‘We haven’t eaten for two days Guv’, so you can have either of us for ten bob.’ When Father had protested that he hadn’t got ten bob, in order to get rid of them, they had put the price right down to ‘half a dollar’ which was half a crown, or two shillings and sixpence. Father still refused, and increased his walking pace. They had clung on to the lapels of his dark grey Melton overcoat and cried: ‘Oh, come on sir, you can have the BOTH of us for half a dollar.’ Father had then stopped and explained to them gently that, sorry for them though he was, he was nevertheless a very tired waiter who had just come off duty, and would not have been able to take advantage of their kind offer even if they had paid him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.