A Long Long Time Ago

A Memory of Tottenham.

We were a dyed in the wool London family, some time before World War 11, 1939, we moved from Earlsmead Road to Breamar Road off West Green Road and lived there at number 73 untill 1951, when we moved out into the country to Waltham Cross.
I was born in 1945 and had two older brothers Bill and Brian some 7 and 9 years older than me. Even though I was only 6 when we moved away I have some vivid memories of Tottenham. We lived directly opposite Seven Sisters school and my mum used to tell us that during the war a doodle bug came over and the engine cut out, it glided down and crashed into the school playground blowing all the windows of the house out. We used to go to the public baths at Tewkesbury Road once a week whether we needed it or not. I can still remember shouting to the attendant "more hot water in number 6" we had no taps on the baths it was all done by the attendant and a valve outside the cubicle. I remember The Swap Shop in West green Road. What a wonderfull place that was for a kid, you could buy or swap almost anything from cigarette cards to a miniture steam train. Our house was a three bed terrace house of which we had the top floor. The ground floor was rented by another family, my mum had three rooms and a landing to raise her family of three boys rising to four in 1951. The toilet was down the end of the garden and we had to walk through the skullery of the family downstairs to get to it. Our ladies of today often crib of how tough it is these days, try that for size girls before you complain again.

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