Looking Back

A Memory of Hornsey.

I was born in St Peters St, Islington, 1935, bombed out late 1943, with nowhere to go, had a makeshift home in Aloysius College for a time until we were given a place in 4 Montague Road, Honsey, N8, that's where I knew what it was like to be hungry. I remember to this day with my three sisters & mother given different colour tickets to show at the YMCA to prove we were homeless, waiting all night to have a nice breakfast in the morrning, only to find out that the YMCA was bombed during the night, and was reduced to rubble. I thought I was going to die of hunger, as a result of that I never leave a scrap of food on my plate.
I went to Crouch End Infants then Crouch End Secondary. After the war we used to go every Friday night to the Harringay speedway meetings, most of the weekends we would go to the Alexandra Palace roller rink. (If you hadn't been there then you hadn't lived.) Getting back to 1944, I remember many an air raid, on one very bright moonlit night the air raid warning sounded but we stayed put & didn't go down in the shelter at Britain's Pickles factory, as my father always told us it was very safe under the stairs, so thats where we got, my three sisters, me and my mother, who I might add tried to shelter us from any harm had we got a direct hit. We also had a black cocker spanial dog, he wasn't going to be left out. We heard the buzz bomb from a long way and as it got near it got louder, it was now right overhead of us when the engine cut out, we all thought this was our destiny, but for the grace of God it glided on to Cranley Gardens near Muswell Hill. Another time together with two of my sisters we went to see Roy Rogers at the Ritz in Turnpike Lane, it came up on the screen that there was an air raid  and that we could leave if we wanted to, my two sisters left but I stayed, then it came up on the sceen, all clear. Ten minutes later there it was again, yes another warning, that was too much for me, I got up and left. Just as I was going up Turnpike Lane this buzz bomb came over the top of us and stopped. Everybody ran for cover, and so did I,  into a shop doorway with glass all around me. Next I knew I was slung to the ground, in the gutter of all places, by some big copper. The buzz bomb landed in Hornsey Park Road on a church
 The next time was one morning getting ready to go to school and my elder sister asked  me to hold a glove so that she could undo it and knit something else. As we were doing this a V2 rocket dropped on the weight bridge, Warrens coal yard in Tottenham Lane alongside the Railway Hotel, in fact I worked there  soon after for Lotus cars, Colin Chapman. The back of our house was badly damaged and I was knocked unconscious, as a result I hit my head after going over the gas stove on the butler sink. A young girl was on her way to the train station when the rocket went off and she was never seen again, very sad day. We all had jobs to do in those days, my first job was to go down to the gas company and get the coke on Saturday morning for mother, then go around to the wet fish shop and cut the ice up to lay on the fish that was on display, then go inot the greengrocer and deliver all the orders to the old people in the area. On Sunday I went to all the people that had newspapers delivered all week and collected the money, that took from 9 untill 1 o'clock.
On Monday I did a paper round morning & night, but on Wednesday I did another round for the Victoria Wine company, and on Friday I cooked the beetroot for the greengrocer. I am now 73 years of age and still working, is it any wonder.
 I could go on but iIam running short of words now. I went in the army in 1953 in the Middlesex Regiment then transferred into the parachute Regt, got demobbed in 1957. Married my childhood sweetheart but she sadly died in 1982 at the age of 42.
How has Hornsey changed? It would be easier to ask how the whole country has changed.