Off To School I Go!!

A Memory of Newcastle upon Tyne.

It’s so strange that you can remember so many things from early childhood, all those years ago! And it still feels clear as if it was yesterday and they bubble up into your brain after lying there undisturbed in the pits of time with no effort from you..,such as finding a jar of Pond’s Vanishing Cream on the dressing table in Mother's bedroom and thinking, ok I will try it out! Stripping off and spreading it all over my little body and going downstairs and opened the door to the lounge very quietly and going in, Mother and her friends were playing Bridge and me being invisible I knew they could not see me, so why are they laughing? After being frog marched out of the room, smacked and scrubbed down, I was told that it was NOT that sought of cream! Was I really that silly?
When I was five Mother burnt my Teddy Bear on the fire and packed me and my trunk off to boarding school. It must have been something to do with me wanting to go off into the Royal Navy and fight the Germans! I only went home twice in all those years ...

Dad owned 36 cinemas and 5 theatres in the north of England, he was also head of Forces entertainment in the war years, a body called ENSA. My God Mother was Gracie Fields, I am told that I peed on her lap when a baby (what a start to life!!, if you read my blog you will see how I got started in Pantomime! (like father like son). Mother was a very strange person, she used to wash all her money and hang it up to dry in the bathroom! And she carried with her always a little scent spray bottle BUT it was filled with Dettol! And she would spray the seat in the car before she would get into it and also did that with the tram or train seats! And God could she drink sherry! That's why I never came home at holiday time, as I must have got in the way of her drinking habit. Dad left her quite early on. They had met on the stage in Sir Charles Froman's production of 'Are You A Mason', he had the main part of Amos Bloodgood and she was in the chorus and thier eyes locked as he went one way across the bridge as she and the chorus went across the other way. Very strange to say but she liked to lock me in the coal shed! So boarding school became a way of life! But thats another story...


Added 05 September 2009

#225863

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