D.I.Y. And A Trip To The Seaside.

A Memory of Croydon.

My father (who lived 98 years) was an amazing character. Back in the 1950's when we lived in Jesmond Road, Croydon he built this strange 'shed' in the back garden. It was thoroughly air conditioned by the fact that it had only three sides and was made up of bits of old wood, beams, brick and the corrugated iron remains of an old Anderson shelter. His economically driven D.I.Y was totally individual and eccentric. He also built this extraordinary wall made of breeze blocks. Instead of conventionally interlinking them, he merely piled them one on top of the other and then proceeded to defy all the laws of gravity by smothering them in so much cement that the end result resembled a miniature version of Hadrian's Wall. By contrast the next door neighbour had their wall built by a professional builder who gave his expert opinion that my dad's wall was bound to collapse. I payed a return visit 40 years later. The wall was still there but no sign of the correctly built one. The trip to the seaside from East Croydon Station to Hastings or Brighton(?) must have been when I was about 10 years old in 1952. This was pre-Beeching days when we still had the finest railway in the world. There were special weekend cheap day excursion trips for families to the seaside. In addition to being an eccentric shed and wall builder my dad was also a forthright salesman with the gift of the gab who stood up for his rights. Arriving at the station and being confronted with a massive queue and only one ticket window open he marched straight to the front of the queue , tapped imperiously on the sill with a coin and demanded instant attention."Look at all these people waiting" he loudly remonstrated. cleverly invoking their support."If you think you can do any better" the harassed railway worker replied, also tapping on the sill,"You should come round this side" Meanwhile my mum out of embarrassment had drawn us to one side. Eventually the crowd of families were all crowded on to the platform and the special steam train arrived. It consisted of only two 3rd class carriages and several virtually empty 1st class ones. All the families were crammed into the 3rd class seats and the rest stood passively in the corridor. Was my dad going to stand for that? Not on your life! He insisted that we sit in the 1st class carriage under the disapproving gaze of the few haughty occupants. When the ticket collector arrived, before he could even open his mouth my father verbally waded in to him."I paid for a seat. I didn't pay to stand up in a corridor. This is supposed to be an excursion train.Why? etc etc etc.........!" Eventually the inspector interjected "Ok Ok. if you let me get a word in I'll get you a seat!" So we sat down all the way to the coast. Now my father was the thin wiry type with plenty of stamina. On the beach at the seaside out comes his ancient bathing suit (and I mean suit), apart from the moth holes it covered his entire body. No modern trunks for him. His style of swimming could only be described as erratic. To avoid walking over too many pebbles he would leave his shoes as close to the sea as safely possible. He once started wading in and then remembered he still had his teeth in. To save walking back he actually asked a passing couple if they'd mind placing them in his shoe! First came the tentative slow walk into the sea, then the ritual of violently splashing himself all over before the sudden dramatic dive in. There then followed a furious flailing and thrashing of apparently uncoordinated limbs which bore a vague resemblance to 'the crawl'. It always reminded me of those old films of Tarzan being chased by crocodiles, except that unlike Tarzan the extremely fast arm movements seemed to make minimal progress. Despite this my father was actually a good swimmer. He once paid good money for a beach ball which got blown out to sea. He determinedly swam after it. In fact he swam so far in pursuit of it we feared we might never see him again! His head from being a tiny speck on the horizon vanished altogether. He later said that he actually managed to touch the ball but couldn't grasp it .Swimming back against the tide he eventually emerged about two miles further along the coast!