Better Late Than Never

by Len Goodman

  'All you kids get out of here, go on, get off out, and get off home.'

  Nan said to him, 'Why are you being like that Albert?'

  'Kids are like farts – you only like your own.'

  Another of his funny sayings was something he would often say to my nan:

  'It's freezing cold out, you'd better wear two hairnets.'

  Another time he said:

  'Lou' – my nan's name was Louisa, like my mum's – 'this toast is as hard as a beggar boy's arse.' I suppose it's because a beggar boy would sit on the hard cold ground, but whether it was something he made up, or just heard someone else say it, I've no idea. It's a shame I never thought to ask him at the time, but how many of us have those kinds of regrets?

  I often think of Granddad Albert when I'm critiquing people's dancing on the television or in beginners' classes because you can't explain to inexperienced dancers what they're doing right or wrong if you try and use technical terms. It's no good saying, 'On that double reverse spin you missed one of your heel leads,' or something similar. It's hard enough for them to learn to dance, let alone know the technical terms.

  I once said, 'Dancing is like a garden. You want a lawn, which is the basic requirement, but you also want some flowers. Too much lawn and it's too bland, too many flowers and it just becomes overpowering. A proper dance routine should be some grass and some flowers – some basic stuff and a clever move.'

  A lot of what I say is down to Granddad and his queer little anecdotes.

  One incident I remember vividly occurred when I must have been five or six. The whole family had been to the pub. I sat outside with the other kids and every now and then Mum or Dad or one of my uncles or my aunt would pop out with a lemonade or maybe a bag of Smith's crisps, the kind that had the little blue packet of salt inside that you sprinkled on your crisps yourself. When it came close to closing time the whole family trooped back up Harold Street with my dad and my uncle George carrying a crate of beer. Once back inside everyone, except Dad, Uncle George and me, was crammed in the front room where Nan and Granddad were playing the piano. We were sat in the kitchen listening to the others singing and carrying on. My Granddad fancied himself – he should have been on the stage or in the music hall; the singer he loved best was Harry Champion and he was always trying to emulate him. While he liked to think he was pretty good, his singing voice was actually rubbish; in fact he had the worst voice in the world. Dad explained to me years later that it turned into a real problem because as soon as he said, 'Right, I'm going to sing,' everyone in the room would look down at their feet or try and avoid Granddad's gaze. It was inevitable that he'd hit a bad note and as soon as he did, if he caught anyone's eye looking at him, he'd say, 'That's your bloody fault, you were looking at me funny like.'

  Things would go off, which is what must have happened this particular night because it quickly went from him laying down the law to a full-scale fight! My Uncle George calmly picked the phone up, dialled 999 and said, 'Would you send a police car please to 26 Harold Street. There's a fight broken out.' Just as he said it, there was an enormous crash bang wallop. 'Better make it two.'

  Nan and Granddad had only just got a telephone at their house. I'm sure we must have been one of the first families in the street to get one. It gave everyone in the family a good laugh when Granddad had to answer it. He always wore a flat cap known as a cheese cutter. He was never without it; he even slept in it. If the telephone rang he took off his hat before saying, 'Advance 3762, Albert Eldridge speaking.' This was way before telephone numbers became just numbers. Advance covered the area around Bow and the Mile End Road, including Harold Street. I've always wondered why it was Advance and found out recently that it was because the exchange was originally to be called Bethnal Green, but people objected to the downmarket name and so Advance was picked; it tells you a lot about where I came from.

  As a little kid my favourite day was a Sunday because Mum, Dad and me would go up Petticoat Lane, which was a real experience. The noise, the market traders shouting about their wares was brilliant and the smell of cooking made it seem like a magical place to me. My dad would carry me on his shoulders when I got tired and as I got older and we went down the lane I was introduced to roll mop herrings, which I still adore, and to salt beef sandwiches. The market was full of stalls and shops selling everything: birds in cages, dogs, cats, household goods – just about everything anyone could need; it was the East End's version of the Bluewater shopping complex in Kent. The geezers that sold stuff had a line in patter that was brilliant, too brilliant in some cases.

  One time we went there and Mum said she needed to buy a present for someone whose wedding we were going to; she and Dad settled on a set of china. There was a guy selling the stuff off a lorry with a tarpaulin cover on the back; inside it was crammed with plates, cups, saucers and every other piece of china imaginable.

  'C'mon gals, I'm not asking for 18 quid, not even 15, not even 12, nor ten quid, but eight quid for six cups, six saucers, six tea plates, six dinner plates and three serving dishes. I ask yer, is that a bargain or wot?'

  At this point a bloke standing near us says he'd have a set. He pushed his way through the crowd, handed over his £8 and walked off with his purchase.

  'Now, c'mon ladies and gents, I've sold me first set, anyone for any more? Come on and help make both our days. But I have to tell yer, that bloke was a bit hasty 'cos I was about to drop the price to six quid a set. Have I got any takers?'

  With that my mum and several others said they'd have a set. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book, the first customer was a plant, but I didn't understand such things aged seven or eight.

  When we got the box of crockery home, and believe me it was heavy as my dad kept saying, Mum said, 'Let's not bother unpacking it,' as it had been wrapped up nicely and packed properly in the box. So they left it and the following week before the wedding they wrapped it in proper wedding paper. After the wedding when all the presents were being opened, to my mum's horror it turned out that the crockery was all odds and bloody sods and some of it was even damaged. The shame!

  Other times we would go to Columbia Road market on a Sunday where the array of flowers for sale was astounding. The East End was a mass of markets and streets on which you could buy specific goods. My uncle George, before he started working in the family firm, had a job on Hackney Road, where all the carpenters and joiners had their businesses. Uncle George made ball and claw feet for dressing tables, cabinets and all sorts of things – he got a penny a foot. Wentworth Street, not far from us, was where you went to buy your shoes. There was another Sunday market in Hare Street that specialised in tools and wirelesses – what we called radio. Before the war there had been lots of tailors and clothing companies all around Bethnal Green but when I was growing up these were on the decline.

  One of my last memories of when we were still living in Bethnal Green was not about the East End but about the East End moving en masse to Kent. The Eldridge clan plus various other friends and relatives went hop-picking in the county where I was born and would end up living for most of my life. The hop-picking season started in late August and lasted about a month or six weeks, not that we went for that long. I must have been five when we went for a week; I had a brilliant time playing with all the other kids. We'd start out doing some picking but usually our efforts lasted about 20 minutes or so. Then we'd bugger off to play with our mates or other kids we had befriended at the hop fields. In the evening we'd all sit round the campfire where people sang songs and others told stories.

  In 1950, shortly after my sixth birthday, we moved permanently to Kent, but it was only my mum and dad and me that went south-east across the River Thames to Blackfen, which is near Welling. Despite having been born in the county, my home, my mates and everything I knew and loved were in the East End so I wasn't best pleased. I'm sure Granddad must have helped them with the money because they bought a greengrocer's in Falconwood Parade and we moved to a small semi-de
tached house. The parade was a little line of about 15 or so shops that catered for just about all the local area's needs. The houses and shops had not long been built, part of the post-war building programme to make up for what had been lost during the Blitz. Granddad's business must also have been doing really well because around the same time he got another greengrocer's shop on Bethnal Green Road, about 200 yards from the first one – the family was becoming a greengrocer dynasty, not quite Sainsbury's, but still good considering what it all started from. Granddad had stopped pawning his watch a long time ago.

  Uncle Albert and Aunt Ada were promoted from the stall on Bethnal Green Road to the other shop, while Granddad and Uncle George took care of the original shop. It was also Uncle George's task to go and buy the fruit and veg. The horse had died by this point; I think he was pretty knackered when we first got him – he was replaced by a lorry. Around four in the morning George would go up to Covent Garden market, the one just north of the Strand in London that has been turned into a tourist attraction, to buy the fruit and veg for all the three shops. He would then head south through the Blackwall Tunnel to deliver the first load to our shop in Blackfen and from there it was back up north to Bethnal Green by eight o'clock to drop off the rest.

  From when we first moved to Kent I'd still spend a lot of my school holidays back in Bethnal Green, often staying all week at Nan and Granddad's. To get there I would take the train from Welling to London Bridge and then get on an 8A bus.

  'Now, Lenny, tell the conductor you want to get off at the Salmon and Ball,' said Mum. The pub, which is still there and looks much the same, is on Bethnal Green Road, very close to where my granddad had his original shop. And it wasn't just when you went on buses that you asked an adult for help. When I was a boy and wanted to go into a film, one to which you had to be accompanied by an adult, you would stand outside the picture house and ask a man to take you in. 'Mister, will you take us in, mister? We won't sit with you, promise.' This was especially important if he was with his bird.

  A few years after we moved I was staying in Bethnal Green when Nan told me there was going to be a street party in Harold Street for the Queen's Coronation. It's difficult probably for anyone who is below 60 to understand just how exciting this all was. In 1953 hardly anyone had television: there was not anything like the kind of entertainment available to kids like there is today. You made your own entertainment. The excitement building up to 2 June was virtually unbearable. I was forever asking my mum or my nan how many days it was until the party.

  Every street in Bethnal Green was having a party and each street wanted to outdo every other street. Our street couldn't have been much more than 100 yards long and in every house there were kids. When it finally came it was a beautiful day, there were trestle tables laid out the length of the road, there was bunting hanging from house to house on opposite sides of the street. I'm not sure now what time we all sat down but whatever time it was every seat was filled with an expectant kid.

  The first course was a currant bun, which both then and now is one of my favourites; back then not so much the buns as the currants. I carefully ate the bun and made a small pile of currants on the paper tablecloth on one side of my plate; I was saving the best till last. I watched as my pile of currants grew, taking my time, but I also noticed that some kids had wolfed theirs down in a matter of seconds. It was the mums' job to clear the tables after each course and just as I was about to finish my bun and start on my pile of currants one of the mums came clearing the table.

  'What? You don't like currants, luv?'

  In the blink of an eye my precious pile of currants was brushed into a bin, they were gone. I was devastated and fought hard to hold back the tears. Luckily at that moment the sausages and beans arrived. As they did all the kids started shouting out, 'Yum, yum, pig's bum.' We always said that for some reason before tucking in. What was truly amazing for us kids was that we could have as many sausages as we liked, not just one or two. There were huge frying pans over open fires full of great big fat sausages. For kids who were still used to living in a world of rationing this was nothing short of miraculous.

  While we were still eating, a man came along doing conjuring tricks; he was followed by jelly and blancmange. Blancmange was one of my favourites and this time I took no chances and ate that first. All this was washed down with gallons, or so it seemed, of lemonade and cream soda. My granddad provided fruit, which was laid out all along the table; there were apples, oranges, pears and bananas. Some kids had never even seen a banana, let alone eaten one. I had to explain to one boy that you didn't eat the skin.

  After our feast was cleared the tables were taken out of the street and games began. There was an egg and spoon race, eating a doughnut on a string and other races along the length of Harold Street. As the day came to an end we were all lined up and given a five-bob bit as a memento. The next day it was back to normality and I went back home to Kent. I took my crown to school, showing it off, but I ended up swapping it, in a fantastic deal as far as I was concerned, for 200 fag cards and a marble with a Union Jack in the middle of it. That evening Mum asked me where I'd put my five-bob bit so she could have a look at it. When I told her what I'd done she went mad and confiscated my cigarette cards and my marble for over a week – an eternity at nine years old. But all in all, the lesson I learned from the Queen's coronation is eat your currants quickly. I'm convinced that's why I eat so fast today; I'm worried about someone nicking my currants!

  During the summer holidays, just after the coronation, I was staying over at Harold Street and was out playing with my mates. Much of the East End was still showing the effects of the Blitz and Harold Street was no exception. Halfway along the road a bomb had dropped – this was an area we used to call the glory bumps; kids used to ride their bikes over it, despite us always being told not to in case there were any unexploded bombs. Opposite it was another piece of wasteland that was mostly grass but there was also a large area of tarmac. At one end of the tarmac were two low brick walls that stood slightly above the tarmac and were about nine feet apart. This used to be the entrance to an air-raid shelter. Some of the boys I played with were a bit older than me, maybe 10 or 11, and someone suggested we dig out the entrance to the air-raid shelter that lay between the two brick walls that had been filled in after the war ended.

  It was a great idea, but we had nothing to dig with. All of us headed home and got little forks or trowels or whatever we could lay our hands on, so that we could start digging for Britain. This was no easy task given our tools and we spent several days digging out quite a lot of soil until we finally got to expose the whole of a wooden door about eight or ten steps below the surface. The door was pretty manky and while we could easily have broken it down, somehow a little trepidation set in.

  'What if there are Germans behind the door?' said one boy.

  'Don't be daft, how could there be, we won!' the oldest boy in our gang said.

  'They might be dead Germans,' added another.

  Before anyone could offer another contribution to the debate a copper came along Harold Street. He probably saw the huge piles of recently excavated earth and wondered what was going on.

  'What are you boys up to?'

  'Nuffink,' said the oldest boy.

  'Well, if it's nothing you better clear off, hadn't you? Go on, be off home.'

  We never did find out if there were Germans, either dead or alive, in that old shelter. At around the same time Dad and George, the man who lived next door to us in Blackfen, demolished the Anderson shelter in our garden. It took a lot of clearing up. War to us seemed so very close.

  It was the following summer, when I was ten, that I took a step up in the world as I went from playing my way through the summer holidays to helping the family firm. Besides the two shops there was also money to be made from selling fruit and veg off a stall so I was put to work. I became a part-time barrow boy.

  'Hello missus, c'mon girls, I've got some lovely celery, a tanne
r for two bunches. I've got lover-ley lover-ley tomatoes too.'

  Looking back I think it was one of the things that helped me when I became a dance teacher. The ability to talk to people is something that can help get you ahead, and selling off the barrow in Bethnal Green Road gave me some great tips. When I wasn't at my pitch I'd hang around with Granddad Albert at his shop. While I know he liked having me around, he would get on my case for being a pain in the arse at times. I was fascinated by his till, in which they kept the shop's takings. I was forever ringing up the amounts of money that appeared on little tabs in the window on top of the till. Six shillings and 11 pence, two shillings and eight pence, and sometimes I would press too many numbers and jam it, which would really get my Granddad going. 'Len! Len! I've told you, don't keep playing with the Jewish piano.' That was his name for the till because it played the dulcet tones of money being made.

  Eventually the Eldridge family bought a third shop in Bethnal Green. I drove by it recently and now it's an estate agents', which probably tells you a lot about how much the East End has changed. But even so, there are still lots of small shops along the road, which continue to ply their trade and make money in much the same way as the Eldridges did.

  Life for me with Mum and Dad in Kent was like most kids growing up in the fifties. School, followed by going out to play with my mates in the street or at the local rec – the recreation ground. Dad had given up being an electrician shortly after we moved to Blackfen and started working with Mum in the shop. Life went along relatively smoothly with no great dramas, or so it seemed, but I was becoming increasingly aware that Mum and Dad were arguing more; it got to the point that they were rowing every day. When you're that young you have no idea about relationships and all that kind of thing. Years later I found out just how unhappy together they both were. Dad went to see his doctor, a man named Geddes, who was also a friend of his, and he told him in no uncertain terms that unless he got out of the marriage he could end up killing himself. Dad was so stressed that he lost almost four stone in weight. Soon after seeing the doctor my parents split up – Dad left with a suitcase. I know what he did was right; it's not an environment that anyone wants to be in. It must have been very difficult for everyone involved.