Nostalgia Comp

I remember it like it was yesterday. Only I can’t remember yesterday. Or five minutes ago, come to that. Got to write things down. So much paper, around the house now. I think. Or was that before? No. I remember: I remember the Sketch, torn into haphazard not-quite-squares; the nail head poking through. Mum knowing you hadn’t washed your hands by the newsprint smears. Not much other paper in the house. Was there? I’m not saying it was better, mind. Or worse. Just different.

How? What do you mean? Was I? Different? When? Oh then.

We did leave the front door open. Of course we did. Nothing to steal. No telly. You’d have broken your back trying to steal the wireless. Certainly no money. Not after the weekend, anyway. I tell a lie. We locked it sometimes. If the man from the Pru was in our street, or the one behind. Mr Jorrocks, Ernie, he collected round our way for thirteen years.One day he had hold of Johnny Vickers by the ear outside their house. His mum and Alice hunkered down beneath the window. Mr Jorrocks went to jail for bigamy. Not much divorce then. Needed photographs and Mr and Mrs Smith in the hotel register, or you wouldn’t get it.

Did we have our tea yet? Oh yes. That’s right, lunch in an hour.

I remember the first banana I ever had. Bit brown, the skin. Soft and mushy inside. I thought ‘is that what all the fuss is about?’ Orange in a sock at Christmas. Don’t peek at your present or it’ll turn to coal. Coal in the bunker, heaving the hod, pour it in the scuttle, clean it up you clod. Ha ha! My gran used to say that one, coal dust on the carpet, she hated it. She wore the same headscarf every day. Legs raw from warming them at the fire. The livid red patterned by the blue of her ‘veins’. ‘Veins, I’m a martyr to me veins.’ And her feet ‘gave her gyp.’ I never had a new pair of shoes until I got a job. Imagine, the pleasure of shoes that fit. See we appreciated things then. That’s it. That’s the difference, I think.

Hello, what’s your name again? I wrote it down, did I? So I did.
Johnson? I don’t know a Johnson. Are you sure?

Wilson, I knew. National Service. The Corporal. A mean and vicious bully. Square bashing they called it. First time most people had left home. We all hated him. I heard someone shot him in Malaya. Wasn’t a native. I did my time in Romford. Home most weekend passes and leave. I met Jean at a Naafi dance. She looked like Rita Hayworth, she called me George, said I had a look of George Raft. The lads said she must have meant George Formby. Made me laugh. Where is Jean? Jean! Jean! She’s probably round at Nora’s, thick as thieves those two. I wonder what they find to talk about.

What do you mean, dead? Jean? Oh, I see.

We just had one boy. Jean never said, but I know she wanted a girl too. Just wasn’t to be. I’m proud of my boy though. Yes, he’s a doctor you know. Oh you are too? Perhaps you know him? John, my son.