This is something I wrote 10 years ago for the benefit of my grandchildren and perhaps, in the fullness of time, their grandchildren.
Coming across this website for the first time this morning, I offer it virtually unedited for the interest of anyone else.
It doesn't include much about getting bombed on the night of August 27/28 1940. If anyone can offer other memories of that air raid, I'd appreciate it - hospitals, orphanages or finally evacuating after being bombed out again in May 1941.
Maybe next time...
Although my birth certificate shows that I was born in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, the earliest home that I can remember was 1a, Walford Road, Sparkbrook – behind and above Werff’s shop, which specialised in furs, on the corner of Stratford Road.
There was a fairly substantial garden running down and behind the house on the Walford Road side. The Number 8 ‘Inner Circle’ bus stopped immediately on the other side of the garden wall (and still does, long after the wall and the garden have disappeared).
Immediately across the road was the Waldorf Cinema – later to become skating rink, Bingo Hall and who knows what else – where Elsie worked as an usherette.
In those distant days cinema programmes ran continuously. “This is where we came in,” was the point at which patrons rose, annoyingly disrupted their neighbours as they pushed their way along the row en route for the exit.
If it was a particularly good programme or the weather was particularly bad, or the patron was a penurious unemployed workman, it was common to watch the programme again or even to remain in the relative warmth and comfort of the cinema all day long.
Naturally, newcomers whose eyes were still not adjusted to the darkness needed assistance and guidance to locate empty seats. They were assisted in their endeavour by torch-bearing usherettes.
Small boys and other miscreants used to try to sneak in through the exits as paying patrons opened the door on their way out. I’m told that it very frequently worked as there were always more exits than the sole entrance.
The consequence of getting caught in those politically incorrect days were not a great deterrent, consisting as they did of a severe bawling out and generally a ‘box on the ear’.
