EMAIL:
From: "Margaret"
To: "Joseph LAWLER"
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 11:33 AM
Subject: Early 30s
Thoroughly enjoyed your revelation of our "30's life" on Skidmore Street, Joe. I had no idea you still resented me for having taken over what you had considered "your bedroom" at 54. You did realize, at some point, that I had to share that room with my three younger sisters, didn't you?
Something you may not have remembered was that the bed we slept in, an old iron bedframe, was given to Mum by one of the neighbours. I am not sure if it was the Isaacsons or the Del Montes but the bed came complete with bed-bugs. I remember having to help Mum scrub all the cracks and crevises with carbolic. I also had to scrub the old wooden milk crate that came with the bed. It was placed under the side frame of the bed, next to the wall, because the frame was broken. Fortunately, none of us girls weighed very much so the frame held up until we were evacuated from London, a period of about five years. Norah was a newborn when we moved from number 66 and was five years old when we were evacuated in 1939.
I remember that small back bedroom very well. The entire floor space was taken up by the double bed, with a two-foot space by the window wall. Many a night we girls sat by that window, looking down into the next-door neighbours kitchen window. The "old lady," the mother of Mrs Barker, would sit next to the gas stove and would light her lucifer (a long strip of twisted paper) on the gas flame and use it to "light" her clay pipe. She could never manage to do it but, repeatedly, discarded the old lucifer into the grate and twisted up another one and tried again. Now you, Joe, have told me that the old lady never did have tobacco in the pipe, I feel sad for her, for she must have suffered much frustration with the damned pipe.
What we girls had expected, was that she would eventually set fire to the house, or to herself, so it was exciting yet horrifying to watch the nightly performance.
Those were the days....we had to "entertain" ourselves with whatever came our way...with no t.v., radio, computer, or other diversion available to us, we girls found all the excitement we needed in the "Barkers" kitchen window.
