A Cockney's Journey

by Eddie Allen

  A COCKNEY’S JOURNEY

  by

  Eddie Allen

  Beaten Track

  www.beatentrackpublishing.com

  Beaten Track

  Published 2013 by Beaten Track Publishing

  Copyright © 2013 Eddie Allen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Illustrated by Hilary Ellis

  ISBN: 978 1 909192 28 7

  Beaten Track Publishing,

  Burscough. Lancashire.

  Beaten Track

  www.beatentrackpublishing.com

  FOREWORD

  In my experience, very few people know of the enormous impact brought to bear upon us earth dwellers from those outside influences often referred to cumulatively as ‘the spirit world’. During the course of our busy lives, few of us pause for very long to dwell on the notion of eternity. It’s a difficult concept to get our heads round; not least because it involves envisaging a time when we won't exist and marrying it up with a time before we came into being. But part of us is timeless; our spirit has travelled infinite miles before finding our bodies and will carry on along its eternal quest long after our physical being ceases to exist. The spirit is as wise as it is immortal.

  During my life, which has spanned the last 49 years, I have had many encounters with this ‘other side’, and you will read about these on the forthcoming pages. It is my opinion that the spirit should not be taken lightly. We are all here on Earth for a reason and we all have a time frame within which to find the right path for us to travel, and to get in touch with our own spiritual self.

  Much of this time, however, is taken up by surface reading. We judge people by their looks and what they have gained materialistically but what you surface-see is only that person's overcoat. Look deeper and you will find the real spirit. Only then should you feel free to pass judgment on what you find.

  As a child I was taught that the eyes were the windows to your spirit and soul. As I grew older and met many people along my path, I have tended to agree with this. The eyes show love, kindness, pain, sorrow, sadness, evil and horror even. You may stand before me as the ‘perfect’ size eight with long blonde hair, or be as bald as a coot with a jelly belly hanging over your waistband. Your body is just an overcoat; the real person before me lies inside looking out.

  Similarly, the survival of the spirit after the death of the body is not dependent on whether you have been good or bad. Universal law dictates that all spirits survive the death of their host. When you buy a coat in a shop it fits nicely, however, after many years of use it becomes old and baggy and thus time to discard it and buy a new coat. The same principle exists with the spirit. The physical body is capable of lasting only a certain time. Once worn, the spirit moves on to another body in order to carry on its journey.

  One of the most fascinating things that happens daily on this planet is the spirit world guiding us towards the right path and helping us along our journey. It goes largely unnoticed, however; we tend to put things down to coincidence or fate or just plain old-fashioned good luck. There is a well-known saying that says spectators see more of the game than the players. As the players in a universal game, it is we humans who are being watched by those in the spirit world. But they are far-seeing, observing not just the beginning, middle and the end of the game, but before and after also. They have already experienced all that we are going through now, and have a desire to help us. They must not interfere, giving only guidance.

  Many people talk about communicating with the dead, but dead infers the extinction of a life. The spirits who once occupied a worn-out body are very much alive but occupying a different realm. There is nothing frightening about the spirit world. They are here to guide us through our journey. Now let me tell you about my journey and the spirits I encountered on that journey…

  CHAPTER ONE

  As a young child I had many encounters with the ‘other side’. I was a rebellious youngster and very unhappy; my father was a violent man who took out his aggression on me with regular beatings and blame for everything that went wrong. I had two brothers and sisters and they appeared to get away with blue murder. I never felt loved by my parents; I can‘t ever remember being shown, and I was never told by either that they loved me. I can only remember their hatred. Consequently, this fuelled my rebellion and as I grew up I found it hard to trust anyone. Not knowing what love is and what to do with that precious feeling has followed me through my life. Today I still feel that I have missed something special and not being able to give something that I never received from my parents ultimately destroyed my marriage.

  Nanny Bennett, or Rosie as she was known, was probably the only person in my family who could have shown me what love was all about. Unfortunately, she was never around me long enough; my father hated her with a vengeance and banned her from the house, which upset me greatly. She always stood up for me and paid the price. But I will talk more about my nan later on.

  Let’s go back to a cold November evening when I was eleven years old.

  As was his usual custom every night, my father had forced me to sit and study after school for three hours. This made me very unhappy. All my friends were out playing, enjoying their free time. I was only allowed to enjoy playing on Saturdays and Sundays. Each night, my father would shove Look and Learn books under my nose to study, but as was often the case, my mind was elsewhere; dreaming about playing football with my mates. I just flipped the pages of my books and made out I was reading. This, however, was just one of many mistakes I was going to make in my life. After three hours of daydreaming and fantasising, to my horror my father picked up the book and began asking questions. I froze with fear, knowing what was coming. It didn’t take long for him to twig that I hadn’t even read the title. He gave me a good hiding and sent me to my room for the night. I was not even allowed to leave for toilet breaks. That night, it all started.

  I was sound asleep when I suddenly jerked awake. Turning over, I lay on my back trying to focus my eyes in the dark. I was very aware of a presence in the room. Once my eyes were accustomed to the dark, I could see a transparent apparition of a man silhouetted against the foot of my bed. I could only just about make out what he was wearing. It was evident that he was talking to me, but I could not hear a word. This vision lasted a few moments before vanishing. What I recall most about this encounter was that I wasn’t scared at all; in fact I felt quite warm and peaceful inside. I snuggled back under my blankets and promptly fell back to sleep.

  The following morning I awoke to a horrible smell. As I slid out of bed, it was quite obvious that I had pissed myself during the night and this did not go down too well with my parents. I remember my father slapping me around the face calling me a filthy little bastard.

  After a vigorous wash down in the tin bath with cold water, I got dressed for school and went to have my breakfast. Sitting down to eat my powdered scrambled egg, I mentioned to my mother what had happened during the night. Within an instant she screamed at me, telling me off for lying. This did not sit very well with me, because I wasn’t lying. I described what I had seen and what the man had been wearing and to my complete astonishment my mother started to cry, babbling on about why he had chosen me and not her. I later discovered that I had described to her exactly what her father was wearing when he departed this
life. This was not going to be the last time I encountered William Charles Bennett; his spirit would visit me again.

  Entering my teenage years did nothing to halt the weird things that had started that night several years earlier. But at the time, I did not comprehend the significance of those events. When I was thirteen, I went scrumping with my friends, Brian and Tony. I remember that afternoon like it was yesterday; it was during a very hot summer in August 1969. We climbed onto some garages and pulled each other up onto a wall that had broken bottles cemented upside down with barbed wire eighteen inches high on top. We all stood on the wall balancing on our toes twenty feet above a concrete car park. The apple and pear trees were full of fruit and we were filling our holdalls like there was no tomorrow. My friend Brian jumped onto a branch and then climbed down. The garden was at least 100 feet long. He shouted out that there were strawberries everywhere and he started to help himself, cramming his holdall full. What we hadn’t noticed, however, was that there was a vicious dog on guard. We must have disturbed it because the next thing I remember was hearing a loud howling and snarling. I stood and watched in horror as this mad dog ran up the garden baring its teeth. I shit myself, so God knows how Brian felt as he legged it up the tree. It was at this point that I lost my footing on the wall and fell backwards towards the concrete car park. It happened so quickly I never even had time to think. Just before impact, a strange feeling came over me. I felt cold and my body was tingling, but not with fear, only excitement. When my body made contact with the ground, at that moment I could have sworn that I had landed on a soft bed; the softest bed you could imagine. I lay there for a few moments, dazed and confused. Tony was staring at me in silent horror but as I stood up, a smile appeared on his face. He shouted to Brian, who was still climbing up the tree, that I was OK.

  After the pair of them climbed down to the car park, I tried to explain what had happened; well what I thought had happened anyway. I told them that, just as I hit the ground, it felt like I was being lowered to the floor and placed very gently on a soft surface. As a thirteen year old, I had no comprehension of what had just taken place. Looking back now, however, I am convinced angels or some presence had just helped me from the spirit world. Nobody believed me, even though I had Tony and Brian as witnesses. Everyone I told was convinced that we had made the whole story up. It was so frustrating; absolutely no one would listen or take me seriously.

  That weekend my nan turned up out of the blue. My father told her she wasn’t welcome at the house and I remember how we all protested vigorously. I recall saying to my mother, “How can you let him turn your own mum away, when I love her so much?”

  After a heated confrontation between my parents, Nan left the house, dejected. I followed her outside and we strolled towards the park where we spent a few hours together just chatting before Nan got the next train back to Margate. While we sat on the park bench enjoying each other’s company, Nan started to tell me things about William Charles Bennett, her late husband; how he made my father marry his daughter because she was pregnant with me.

  “So that’s why he hates me, because he had to marry her?” I said to my Nan. She looked at me and nodded.

  After a brief silence, I asked her whether she believed in angels, to which she replied, “Of course I do Eddie, why do you ask?” So I told her everything that had happened when I was scrumping. She believed me, saying that I was a special boy and that she would always love me no matter what happened. I wasn’t sure what she meant by special and I still don’t.

  Nan said they will always look after you; I assumed she meant angels. I went on to tell her about the visit from William Charles Bennett. She told me that her husband was thrilled to bits that their daughter was having a child. However, during her pregnancy he sadly died and never got to see his grandchild.

  “Eddie, do you know where we get the cleft in our lips from?” Nan asked me, smiling.

  “Not really, Nan,” I replied.

  “When we are in our mothers’ bellies as little babies, an angel comes to us, pressing our lips with their finger blowing us a kiss, telling us a secret! The secret of where we come from. The memory of our entry back to the living world is erased.”

  Amazing story, I must admit.

  “I must go now, or I will miss my train,” Nan said.

  She gave me a big hug, kissing my cheek. Nan always smelt of lavender and jasmine. To this day, I am obsessed with the smell of lavender and jasmine, and I always have their beautiful calming fragrance engulfing every room of my home. As she waved goodbye, I didn’t realise that it would be nearly a year before I would see her again.

  Three weeks passed and we were at it again; Tony, Brian and I were on a mission. There was this large spooky house at the top of Talford Road; the owner was a weird-looking guy. There was an alleyway at the back of the house with a ten-foot wall. All my friends reckoned the owner of this house was something to do with the Devil, and that the house was haunted. This made nicking his apples even more appealing. The only problem I envisaged was the barbed wire on top of the wall.

  “Tony, how the hell are we going to get up there?” Brian moaned.

  “Have a look over there,” Tony said, pointing behind me excitedly.

  I looked around and noticed a long scaffold board lying on top of some old tyres. Well, you can imagine the rest; Tony footed the board and Brian shimmied up, making it look so bloody easy.

  “Come on, Eddie,” Brian chuckled.

  “You must be joking,” came my uneasy response.

  Tony looked at me and smiled. “Lost your bottle, Eddie boy?”

  With that barbed remark I started shimmying up the scaffold board. On reaching the top, I was slightly alarmed by the position of the board, resting on top of the barbed wire. I looked down and shouted for Tony not to move and to keep the board footed.

  “Don’t worry, me old China,” he said reassuringly.

  Straightening up, I joined Brian. We were both balancing with one foot on the board and one foot on top of the barbed wire. I was holding on to a branch with my left hand and picking apples with my right. Anyhow, the inevitable happened and I felt sure that this was going to be one of the most painful experiences I would ever encounter.

  “Oi,” came a loud shout. “What the fuck are you doing on my wall?”

  The ever-reliable Tony legged it, the board slipped down the wall and Brian jumped with a loud scream. As the board fell, my leg went straight through the barbed wire and down the outside of the wall. All I can remember is spinning round, hanging upside down with the wire wrapped around my thigh. It was while I was bobbing up and down screaming in agony, that I could hear Brian shouting, “Fuck, we’ve got to get Eddie down.”

  Suddenly, the wire gave way and I crashed to the floor, landing on my right shoulder. Riddled with pain and fear, I untangled my leg, got up and legged it down Talford Road, raging at Tony. At the end of the road, we stopped. I felt sick and I was visibly shaking; my right leg felt wet. I glanced down at my thigh and, to my horror, I could see streams of blood running through the tear in my jeans. My lovely white pumps were red. “Mum is going to kill me,” I said to myself. Slight exaggeration, I know. The one good thing about my mother was that she was good at patching me up. Being a state registered nurse had its advantages.

  Well, here I am in the kitchen feeling like shit, while she cuts my jeans in half. I wondered if she would buy me a new pair; the thought came and went as she started to push all the tissues back inside my leg. She stuck a bowl between my legs.

  “Don’t look,” she shouted. “Look up at the ceiling.” So I stared at the ceiling. What a dismal sight; it hadn’t been painted in years. Curiosity then got the better of me; I looked down, which was a very stupid thing to do. I missed the bowl completely and threw up all over the kitchen floor. “Right, that will do. I’ve stopped the bleeding and we’re now going up the hospital,” she said.

  “What for?” I cried, panicking.

  “Stitches,” sh
e replied. “Come on.”

  I am now on my way up to St Giles’s Hospital, being pushed in a bloody pram!

  “You look choice,” Tony said, jokingly. The pair of them helped my mother push me in the direction of the hospital. Two hundred stitches inside and out; the pain was unbelievable. That was the last time I ever went scrumping!

  CHAPTER TWO

  My favourite pastime was playing football in the sand pit with all my mates. In this case, the sand pit was a large disused area that the council were going to change into a car park but never did. A four-foot brick wall with a gate surrounded it, so we painted goals at each end. I have many happy memories of the years I spent playing in the pit. One night in particular stands out. It was a warm summer’s evening at about 7:30 p.m. and we were all playing football. When I say all, I mean there were six of us playing three-a-side! Tony jumped over the wall and called Brian and me over. Tony never played football; in fact, he was the only one of my mates that didn’t enjoy the game.

  “You both gonna play that stupid game all night?” he whispered, not wanting the others to hear him slagging off the game.

  “Yeah,” I replied, “unless you’ve got something better for us to do?”

  “As it happens,” Tony said, “I have.”

  While we were chatting, the other guys decided to call it a day, packed up and went home, leaving the three of us deep in conversation.

  “Well,” Brian said, “what you got in mind, Tony?”

  “Yeah it better be good,” I said sarcastically. “Our match is over.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Brockley Jack?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah, I have. Why?” I asked curiously.

  “So have I,” said Brian.