Bonfires, Busses, firewood, innocence,Guy Fox ,in Portsmouth ,Portsea

Bonfires, Busses, firewood, innocence, Guy Fox , in Portsmouth , Portsea





This is a photograph of ,yes you guessed it, me! ,
with a friend of the family Gloria Hawkins ,taken at my sisters Iris and Bill's wedding .







We used to have lovely bonfire in them days, by
the Marlborough Gate but behind old Mac’s Paper building , he used to get all the morning Papers ready , Bonfire Corner , on Cumberland street it was , all the red and I think green busses would line up along the road in anticipation of the Dockyard kicking out , all the men would burst forth like the cork from a Champagne Bottle , one minute nothing next hundreds of them , some on bicycles , scooting on one peddle until they got out of the gate , then on they would jump and ride off , but most headed for the busses that were waiting for them , on they would jump , the conductor taking their monies , turning the handle on his ticket machine and giving them their ticket, the end of the ticket roll he would put into the bin by the steps on the way in , often when the bus conductors was not there we would raid all the bin on the busses to get the end of the rolls , and take them home to play with .

We would go to the bombed out houses to get as much wood as possible for the bonfire , we would store it under the arches with all the paper and cardboard we collected from all the different flats , it was a good way for them to get rid of their rubbish , once when emptying the boxes onto the Bonfire we found some very nice plates and dishes from a dinner service , we took it back to the house that gave us the box , and in gratitude they gave us six pence each , it paid for our bangers ," Fireworks ".



One day we had put more wood and paper into the shed under the arches ,there was me my brother Peter and on this occasion 4 girls , just friends helping with the wood and paper ,there came a knock on the door , it was Mrs sprawls (that may be spelt wrong, ) she lived two verandas below us in the flats , she wanted something ! I have forgot what " why is the door closed" , she said " and why is your flies undone ", being an innocent I did not understand the implications , indignantly she ushered the girls out , and I was at a loss to know what I did wrong .( I do remember a kind of quirky knowing look on her face,) perhaps she though it was funny.

Later being older and wiser I can understand what being caught with your flies undone implies .

Of course my brother and I would go GUY FOXING , we would make up our own guy , and go begging ," penny for the guy mister", lay the guy in the doorway and wait for the sailors to come by , penny here , penny there , we did alright , until the playful sailors came along and would kick ten bales of s---t out of our guy , a shirt or jumper here a pair of trousers there , the paper bag face floating off into the wind , as children we would call them a few choice words , try to kick them in the shins , they would put their hand on our head and hold us off at arms length and just laugh at us , no point in going on then , start again next day.

PENNY FOR THE GUY MISTER.



As children we used to collect foreign coins , we would go to the Dockyard Gate , and wait for the Germans , American , French , and others to come out of the gate , run along side of them with our hands out stretched and ask if they had any foreign coins, we did all right, but we could not spend it , it was just something to do.

One of my happiest memories is playing British Bulldog , the whole of Private House , was formed in the shape of an "e", with the middle part of the "e" missing in the middle , (it is still there today ) , a very large roundabout , the children would all stand at one end of the roundabout and a volunteer would be waiting in the middle , at his command the children would run from one end to the other , on the way through the volunteer would grab or try to grab the nearest child , lifting the child they would call out , " British Bulldog 123 ", then that child would help in turn to get more children on the next run , and so on until all the children were caught , the last one being caught the winner , only one rule , once you start to run you can not turn around and run back . ( My sister told me that when she was a little girl , the roundabout was a large square green of lawn and that she and others used to played on it ) .

I learnt to ride a bicycle around that roundabout , a young girl lent me hers to use , I did very well , after about an hour I was ridding very well , I rode up the straight part towards the bend , when I got to the bend I found to my amazement I could not turn the handlebars to go around the bend , my arms were kind of locked , I just could not turn , there was only one vehicle on that roundabout , a Milk float , and I had to hit it , the girl was not very pleased , I had hurt my chin , making it bleed , but I had also buckled her wheel , she was very upset .

It may have been the same girl that I saw have an accident on the same part of the roundabout , for some reason the girl fell of her bike , she went foreword across the handlebars and the stiff hand brake leaver went up into her armpit ,piercing the skin and going in about 5"inches , I know this to be true because I saw the break leaver slide all the way out of her arm pit , kind of in slow motion , the girl pushed herself up off the  road and it slid out , she ran off home crying for her mommy, I did feel sorry for her .

Peter My Brother had a bike of sorts , no tyres no seat and a fixed wheel , " let have a go of your bike Peter I said ", " NO" said Peter , there started the argument ," if you will not let me use it, then you can’t ," I said , pushing the bike over and stamping all over the spokes , turning them into a mangled mess , " now ride it " I shouted at him and as usual I ran off.

I THINK THERE IS A PATTERN HERE,!!

To earn a few pennies to spend my brother and I, (still good friends) used to get the old floorboards from the bombed out houses, bring them up to our balcony, saw them up into about 8 inches long , chop them up into fire wood , put the kindling into shopping bags and sale them six pence a bag , it used to pay for us to go to Saturday Cinema.

Saturday Morning Cinema , what fun that was , if we could not afford to get in , we would get a friend to open the back door , not far from the toilets and let us in, the films were usually cowboys , Flash Gordon, that sort of thing , we made lots of noise stood on the seats , stamped our feet , ate our sweets , if we had any , and generally made a mess of the films, we could not wait for the next week to sneak in again .

I do remember Verrechia ice cream , just under the Portsmouth and Southsea train station , not because we used to get some , but because we used to hang around there after school , once I went into the back to where they made the ice cream , there on some kind of stand , were lots of lollypop molds just waiting for the different fillings , I seam to remember it being cold with a wet floor , Verrechia was a well liked ice cream.

Charlotte street was a street well remembered , fruit stalls a plenty , packed out from one end to the other , busy people going on their way doing their shopping , my brother and I used to look for the discarded fruit , sometimes it would only have a little bruise on it , and sometimes it would be half rotten , then eat what you could , it would be the only fruit we were to get .

Watch out for maggots.