Bill The Parrot And The Three Stooges

A Memory of Hounslow.

My Grandad Ken Williams lived in Grove Road, he was a Tube train driver and his best friend was Jack Minty. When I was very small he was married to my Grandma Dorothy Williams who worked at the baths and taught a lot of kids to swim but later he was married to Jean. Next door was Colin and Tracy, she and I would walk to the cinema down the High Street to see a film which in those days was always preceded by the 'B' movie, this was often 'The Three Stooges', the cinema was always brimming with kids. On the way to the pictures was a pet shop and outside on a perch was a parrot named 'Bill', he was blue and yellow as I remember. Next door was an indian shop and it always had colourful indian sweets in the window. Sometimes I would have to take the Green Shield stamps to exchange for some item, this was either in or near Woolworths I think. My Grandad's mum lived in flats
further up Grove Road and she always sat in front of the bar heater and had a very distinctive voice which I can still remember even now. I still have the wooly patchwork cover she knitted. Across from Ken's house they eventually built flats and our cat got built in one time and we had to get a man out to rescue him. Colin as I remember had a bit of a temper and one day as Grandad and I cut the apple tree down it fell on Colin's garden fence. Grandad would always buy something like Liquorice Allsorts and hide them behind the curtain for me, but as I got older I used to know this was going to happen and eventually it came to an end. He had a set of fire tools by the fire place and I used to enjoy mucking about with the fork and poker. One day I knocked over the whole tea table trying to pull a stick of celery apart trying to show how strong I was. Ken had one of those wobbly handles from the Tube carriage fitted in his wardrobe, I always found it funny. He had a dog named Biddy and a tea-towel over the oven door with a dog on it just the same. Once, I crept through the conservatory and made him jump whilst he was getting the chicken out of the oven, I learnt a new word that Grandad had never said before. He had a biscuit barrel with lid that went ping! and looked like a chinaman's hat, I enjoyed finding a biscuit that I liked, but eventually this barrel got stolen from my mum's house by burglars. I had a cousin called Glen who I haven't seen since and he would visit occasionally. Ken had a mint green Hillman Minx which was kept in the front drive near the flower bed. The porch was done out in gloss black which always struck me and the doorbell always went PING PONG! and I always enjoyed that. Inside the door was a little telephone table and further down the hallway was one of those brass convex mirrors with blobs round the edge and you could make good faces in it. In the bathroom was an overhead light that had a built-in heater and I liked turning that on and off and feeling the warmth. He always had a bottle of Old Spice and I used to try it out. He had a swing chair in the conservatory and we often had dinner in there on the red formica folding table. If I have white pepper now it makes me think of those times. One day I was warned that Jean had dyed his hair and when he answered the door I was not to laugh because it had turned orange! My first lesson in diplomacy. He died years later in Church Crookham and I lost touch with Jean because I was a teenager and life was moving fast and it dismays me to learn that she only died a few years ago, she always treated me as her own and now I wish I'd kept in touch.