Jellied Eels and Zeppelins

by Sue Taylor

  Regarding the abdication of Edward VIII, I thought the way he carried on with Wallis Simpson was awful. I mean - he knew what she was like. She’d already been married twice. And he abdicated because of her. He did what he thought was right, because he thought such a lot of her. But, if she thought she was going to be Queen, she was unlucky. I didn’t have any sympathies with her.

  I think that going through what we did during the Second World War, probably did make me a bit shell-shocked to a certain extent. I mean, we lost thousands and thousands of people and they never told us how many thousands were lost in and around London. All those who were lost in bombed houses and were never recovered - thousands of people. (According to records, there were 301 fatalities and 2,833 people injured in Walthamstow during World War II. In London, 29,890 people lost their lives. Many more of course had their homes and possessions destroyed.)

  But I think that my experiences during the war have made me a better person, ‘cos it makes you realise what can happen and not to take anything for granted. And you had to make do with what you could get and make do and mend. We always tried to get a decent dinner, no matter what.’

  Part Four

  1945-2003

  Twenty

  Pinks, Pails, Bricks and Nails

  Ethel had reached her mid 30’s by the time the war ended. She and Joe remained childless throughout their married life. Though Ethel would have loved children, Joe did not want any:

  ‘His mother warned me that he didn’t want children, but I told her ‘Oh, I expect he’ll have one with me, ‘cos I love ‘em!’ In his latter years, he would say ‘Oh, I wish I had a son to help me,’ but I said ‘Well, that’s your fault!’ My friend’s breakdown after losing her baby shortly after birth during the Second World War - that’s what turned my chap off from wanting children, I’m sure of that.’

  Instead, the couple directed their energies into trying to obtain building permission for their land in Doddinghurst, which Joe had earlier partly inherited from his parents:

  ‘Joe’s Dad had been pensioned off in the 1920’s - he had been a stoker for the electricity company - so he used his money to buy the land in Doddinghurst. It wasn’t quite enough, so Joe would travel by motor bike once a month to Billericay to pay off the rest out of his own money.

  Joe’s Dad would come to Doddinghurst now and again to escape for the weekend, and he would stay in the shed on the land. It used to cost him a shilling to travel by coach from Leytonstone to Brentwood. He would grow flowers on his plot - lovely pinks, which smelt like cloves - and would tie bunches of them onto a broomstick and sell them to the passengers on the coach on the way home to recuperate his bus fare.

  Ethel Elvin on Doddinghurst land. Winter 1940

  Joe’s father

  Joe started up his own business after the war. He’d had a dispute with Ensign about a camera lens, so Joe said ‘Thanks very much, I’m leaving.’

  He’d been doing some private repair work for Wallace Heaton in Bond Street, London, and also for Dolland and Aitchinson and Newcombes. He had a chat with another chap called Harry, who worked there, and the pair of them started up on their own. E.W. Repairs began in the back bedroom of our little flat in Walthamstow. Then we heard about an empty shop in Leytonstone from Joe’s brother, so we put all the shelves in for storage and they set up in there. We hadn’t yet started work on our house in Doddinghurst.

  I’d learnt some typing at evening classes, so I got a photography magazine, took down all the names and addresses of companies and sent out some letters. They got a lot of work. I did all the typing and mailing for them and all their accounts once a month, sitting up until the early hours. And I never got paid a penny - Joe said that I should do it for love!

  Every Saturday, after Wallace Heaton had telephoned me with a list of cameras, I would take the repaired items to Bond Street in a carrier bag. Although we had insurance for the cameras just in case they got stolen, I thought that the cameras would be more conspicuous if I’d taken them in a box.

  The hut in Doddinghurst, where Ethel and Joe lived while building their house

  It took us five years to get planning permission for our house. I used to do all the writing and everything and I got on to the House of Commons and got the water laid on. Because of the war, building was very restricted. We finally obtained permission in 1950 and it took us about another ten years to complete the house, because we kept running out of money. They said that we could start building once we lived down here and had got permission to put on the water. By then we’d exchanged our rented flat in Roberts Road with a lady, who sold us her house in Higham Hill Road. We sold that for a profit and never had no mortgage. The money from that helped to fund some of the building of our house. Then we had to wait until we had a bit more money to finish it.

  Mum and Dad bought the bungalow next door and we lived in that for a few months until they moved in. We stored our furniture and then we lived in a hut on the land for two years while we built the first two rooms. We lived in those until we finished the rest of the house.

  Joe would work on the house during the day and on the cameras at night, sitting in the shed. When the building was completed, he gave up his camera work.

  Living in the hut was absolutely freezing during the winter months. We had no running water to start with (although the couple had earlier received permission to put in a water main, they were unable to do so until their property had been built), so we used to have to carry it back from the large well up the lane in two pails swinging from a yoke across our shoulders. Then Joe managed to dig our own well, which is 32 feet deep. The water in that well has only ever dried up once. That was in the drought of 1976.

  One Sunday afternoon, the church bells were ringing when Timmy, the cat, frightened one of our chickens. It flew down the well and we had to pull it out with the bucket. We changed the words of the nursery rhyme ‘Ding Dong Bell’ to ‘Ding dong bell, chicken’s down the well; who put him in? A cat named Tim!’

  We eventually had the water laid on to the property on 24th June 1954. But we had a Jap engine generator for the electricity.

  In the shed, we had a little kitchenette at the back and a little put-you-up bed and then a little stove with a chimney sticking out over the brook. We used to take every drop of water out of the well and boil it all up for a bath. We had a screen that we’d put around us and my chap would sit in the armchair while I had my bath, then we used to pull the screen back, tip the water out in the brook and do it all over again. We both had a bath once a week.

  We did a good job building this house - just the two of us with our own hands, though someone did help for a while on the porch. The house has never moved in any way whatsoever. When we’d done the structure, I sat in the front room before we had any windows in, with a little iron block and straightened all the bent nails out, ‘cos we couldn’t afford any new ones - it took me hours. Dad had showed me how to paper a room when I was 17, but I never told Joe in case he got me to paper all the walls too! Joe made a wooden block and we made all the bricks with sifted ash and cement. And my husband was a wonderful plasterer. There were papers for the brickwork, the woodwork, the roof and every part of the building that you finished had to be checked. I had a pile of papers.

  I only had the central heating put on in the 1990’s, ‘cos I couldn’t keep getting on my hands and knees to make the fire every day.’

  Twenty-One

  Pigs, Teeth and Damson Jam

  ‘We got the pigs roughly when we finished the house. Someone Joe knew had some, which he sold to us. Joe thought he could maybe make a living out of keeping animals on our two acres. We got more and more animals and in the end we kept 150 pigs, 100 laying hens, 100 fattening cockerels, 100 turkeys as well as rabbits, ducks, a goat, a dog and a tame pheasant called Joey. Joe had a boiled duck’s egg every morning for 25 years.

  Just a few months after starting the piggery, we lost most of our stock to swine fever. Joe went with a friend to the ma
rket and bought six piglets there. Unfortunately, they had the fever and that infected the majority of the other pigs. When the inspector ordered them to be shot, I went next door to Mum and Dad’s and put my fingers in my ears. We didn’t get any compensation, but we re-stocked and fortunately were not affected by the foot and mouth outbreak during the 1960’s.

  We used to send up to one dozen pigs off for slaughter at a time - depending on how many was ready. The slaughter men allowed you what they called ‘the pluck’ - that was the lungs and the heart and all that - reasonably cheaply. And we had the pigs’ heads as well. The pigs were weighed and we were sent how much they were worth. If we wanted a dead pig, we marked it with special ink. We used to hang the carcass in the doorway. Once the meat was cut up, I used to weigh it and mark who it was to be sold to - this was mostly at Christmas time. We used to get orders from Cousin Flo’s firm. My friend, who taught me to drive, had the pig’s head and she made brawn with it. It was beautiful. She used to bring us three of four pots of gorgeous brawn, which we ate with bread and butter, ham and tomatoes and all that. It was lovely.

  Two days before Christmas, Joe and I used to load up our van and drive to London to sell the meat. Once, we were returning to Doddinghurst at about three in the morning, when we were stopped by a policeman in Woodford Green. He asked what we had in the back of the van. We told him that there was a pig’s head. He didn’t believe us at first but after he’d checked us out, he let us go refusing our offer of the pig’s head!

  I used to like the piglets, but once they went into the second sty to be fattened up, I didn’t want to know them. I did however, become very fond of one piglet, which I named Tina. Tina was the runt of a litter, so I kept her indoors for a while to feed her by hand. I even house-trained her. She used to love chocolate buttons, which she was often given by campers who came to buy eggs from us. We kept her for breeding.

  One sow, which was pregnant when we got her, had 24 piglets and was only able to feed 12 at a time, so I fed the others every two hours with dried milk and milk from my goat, Nan, who would only allow me to milk her. She always used to give me a kiss when I went to feed her. Cousin Les had come to see me on his birthday and was helping me with Nan. She thought that she would give him a kiss too. He thought that she was going to butt him, stepped backwards and fell into the brook! He was soaked!

  We bought our own boar a couple of years after starting our business. The boar usually served the sows twice a year. When close to giving birth, we put the sow into a furrowing crate, so that she didn’t crush the piglets. We stayed with her while she was giving birth in case there were any complications. We lost very few piglets.

  Nan, Ethel’s goat

  Joe had a very clean mind and would never swear nor tell a dirty joke in front of me. He didn’t think it right for a woman to see the boar and sow together, so I had to stand with my back to them after I’d helped him get the boar into the stall. When Joe said ‘ready’, I had to unbolt the door to let the boar out, but on one occasion, this big sow wanted to follow ‘im. She caught Joe unawares and charged right between his legs, so the sow was facing one way and Joe the other. She rushed out of the stall, looking for the boar and poor Joe had his fingers scraped on the silver birch tree.

  My chap was six feet two, but that sow took ‘im clean off his feet. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen and I couldn’t do anything for laughing, I just couldn’t, but he cried ‘Don’t just stand there, help me!’ He eventually fell off just near the house, but he wasn’t pleased at all, I can tell you!

  We fed the pigs with Tottenham Pudding (the product of boiling lots of kitchen waste - including potato peelings and pea shells - from London) - like a lump of black dough stuff, in a drum it was, we used to buy it in. The chickens loved it too. It made them lay lovely tasty eggs.

  We used to get the swill from a school in Brentwood, an old People’s Home and from shops in the High Street - vegetables and peelings - and leftovers that farmers were unable to sell at market. We’d put it into a huge coal-fired boiler and boiled it all up, and then it went into a massive tank as big as my table. When cooked, we chopped it up and, while it was cooking, oh dear, did those pigs holler! They smelt it and loved it. And they didn’t ‘alf do well on it!

  When they (The Board of Agriculture) wouldn’t let farmers make their own pigswill, because of the risk of disease, we used to buy in special dried food from the very old established firm, Marriage’s of Chelmsford (W.& H. Marriage & Sons Ltd. established in 1824).

  When we had chickens before the war in the back garden, we gave them corn in the afternoons and middlings in the morning, nice and hot, to make them lay well.

  I used to pull ‘em (the chickens and turkeys) standing out in the conservatory in the bitter cold, while Joe sat in front of the fire ‘cos he didn’t like the smell! A van used to come a few days before Christmas to take the birds alive and, after they were killed and plucked, I had to pull them (remove the giblets). My fingers would turn blue with cold sometimes when the birds were frozen during the winter. The first time, I tried to pluck them myself and stayed out in the shed all night. But it was too much for me, so after that, the dead birds were put into a steam machine to remove all the feathers. Good idea that was.

  All the dead poultry used to come back here. We would hang them in the shed and that’s how they used to get frozen, if it was a cold night. I weighed ‘em - some people wanted a small one, others a big one - and labelled ‘em and charged half a crown for pulling ‘em. Some of our customers didn’t want their chicken or turkey pulled so I marked those to make sure that I got that right - ‘Pulled’ or ‘Not pulled’, see. We mostly received orders for birds at Christmas time.

  I would also load the basket of my bicycle with dead and skinned rabbits and take them into Brentwood to sell. I may not have always liked rearing these animals for slaughter, but it was our living. Joe wanted to be his own guvnor, so I just got on with it.

  But times were hard then. When people came in for a cup of tea, I worried about how far my quarter of tea was going to stretch. You know what I used to have to do when they’d all gone? I drained the teapots, put all the dregs on a tin tray, put the tray on the stove to dry out the leaves and use them again. I couldn’t afford to buy another quarter of tea. That went on for years before I got my pension. I never ‘ad no electric kettle or anything. I always boiled up the kettle on the Aga stove, which I bought from Scotland for £37 in 1952.

  I had to make do with £2 a week. As well as a quarter of tea, I bought 2 lbs of sugar, as my chap always liked two teaspoons of sugar in his cup of tea and would not go without. I cooked myself a small dinner and gave him a larger one. Some days, I never had a dinner at all, but would always have a little one on a Sunday. I would have whatever I could find. Sometimes, it would just be a slice of bread and jam. I baked my own bread, because it was cheaper and used to make about 16 lbs of damson jam, which would last us all through the winter.

  When Joe and a friend used to collect the swill for the pigs at closing time in a horse and cart, the baker would sometimes fill up the egg basket with the cakes from his shop window that he hadn’t sold that day, so I saved a bit of money then. I would pick out the best ones for us and the rest would be given to the pigs.

  I used to earn £1 for doing four hours cleaning at a shop, but packed that up when Mum got ill. After she died, I got another job cleaning for a lady, who had arthritis. I used to earn £1 for perming her hair too and I earnt a little more from hairdressing for the neighbours. When we had the phone put on, I paid for all my own calls and used to save for one pair of stockings a month.

  We couldn’t afford a lot, so when I needed to have my teeth out, ‘cos I wanted a full set of dentures, a retired dentist came round one Sunday morning and pulled them out - after I’d had a local anaesthetic - sitting at the kitchen table. As each one came out, he placed it in a bowl then tipped the whole lot down the brook! Afterwards, I cooked me roast dinner, chopped it up fine and
ate the lot!! He did the same with Joe’s teeth and Joe then went and mucked out the pigs!’ (The brook is unofficially named Elvin’s Brook - not just because of the teeth episode, but because it is on land bought by Joe’s father).

  One extremely sad incident that Ethel remembers vividly, occurred during the early 1960’s while the couple were working on their smallholding:

  ‘I was in the garden one morning, when a man I knew who was out walking his dog, came round (Joe was seeing to the pigs). ‘Ethel’, he said looking worried, ‘There’s a man lying in the road. I know he’s dead, because I’ve seen enough dead men during the First World War.’ My next door neighbour was just about to take her two daughters to school and I didn’t want them to see the body lying in the road, so I went indoors to fetch a blanket to cover him with. And they didn’t see me, ‘cos I dashed out of the way quick. The man was lying in the road beside a delivery van. He had died of natural causes. It was very cold and I believe he had had a heart attack. We phoned the police and a woman police officer came and arranged for the body to be taken away.

  I didn’t know where the man lived, only where he worked, because of the van. I didn’t hear any more and a fortnight went by, so I went into the shop and I asked the manager to give the man’s wife a message: ‘Please tell her that I was so sorry how her husband was found, but that she could rest assured that he died in a nice quiet place and that the birds were singing.’

  We had to sell off the animals in the 1980’s when we couldn’t make much money out of them, because of having to buy in their food. It was a blessing in disguise really, ‘cos it wasn’t long afterwards that Joe became ill (Joe contracted cancer and died in 1992) and wouldn’t have been able to look after them and I couldn’t have done it on my own.’

  Twenty-Two

  Bombs, Buses and Dalmatian Bill

  ‘Joe and I had a Dalmatian called Bill with us in Doddinghurst. He had been bombed out in Wanstead during the Second World War and had been running loose for about three weeks. He had been seen scavenging for food in dustbins and was so traumatised by the bombs that he wouldn’t let anybody catch him. Eventually, Joe’s friend, Jimmy, managed to get hold of him - by putting linseed oil on his hands (he said that a vicious dog shouldn’t bite you if you did this). I made the dog some green trousers out of an old plaid skirt to stop him from licking his wounds after he had been treated at the PDSA Hospital. When the dog escaped again, we went round asking people if they had seen a Dalmatian with green trousers on!