The Life of an English Boy in the 1920-30s
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The Life of an English boy in the 1920-30s
By Deana Aref
My Grandpa’s name is Ian Rayner Nichols, Rayner being his mother’s maiden name. He was born on the 18th December, 1924 to Winifred and Frederick Nichols. They already had three sons, Ronald, Geoffrey and Derrick and a daughter called Cynthia. Three years after Grandpa was born, they had another son called Terrence. They lived at 148 Hilliard Road in Northwood, Middlesex, England and continued to live there till he was seven years of age, when they moved to a new house; seven, Hazelwood Drive in Northwood Hills, county of Middlesex.
His mother Winifred was in service at a large house in Northwood before she met Frederick Nichols, my great grandfather. Winifred’s family came from Bramford in Essex and her only brother worked for the Foreign Office in Sierra Leone on the North West coast of Africa as Lord Mayor.
Great grandpa or вЂ?Pops” as he was affectionately known as, was fortunate enough to run his own thriving business supplying building materials to construction firms in and around the Northwood area. His haulage firm had 15 to20 shire horses pulling and heaving the outsized carts that were laden with building materials. Apparently, Pops’ business was the first in Northwood to start operating a motorized lorry. What a shame to know that those magnificent shire horses, the backbone of England’s rural work force had been made redundant and put out to pasture all in the name of progress!
Whilst growing up in the 1920’s and 30’s, life for Grandpa and his family seemed to be peaceful and untroubled. Television or “Game Boys” and “Playstations”were unheard of so the children would draw on their own creativity and resourcefulness to entertain and amuse themselves at weekends and holidays. There were no boundaries to their eager young minds and most of the entertainment or made up games would entertain for hours on end. The inert streets in his immediate area soon became the beguiling Pied Pipers, silently enticing all children to leave their homes and partake in the playgrounds of paradise. With virtually no traffic, except for the occasional work horse or lorry passing, a feast of endless games of football, cricket or roller skating were played out in earnest till either the sun had set, tummies were grumbling or the familiar shrill voice calling “Tea Time”, could be heard in the background.
Gramps first met his good friend Bernard when he was about seven or eight years old. The boy had just moved in up the road. One day whilst standing on the corner of the road near Grandpa’s house, Bernard and his younger sister mustered up the courage and decided to introduce themselves. Bernard’s sister Gwen bashfully offered Grandpa some old fashioned English sweets called вЂ?Dolly mixtures’ and said, “Don’t take one, take two”, which has been a standing joke between the two of them ever since. Bernard and Grandpa, both octogenarians, are still best chums to this day apart from the odd sporadic disagreement. “Cantankerous and contrary” is how Grandpa describes Bernard. Nevertheless, they still manage to endure each other’s company and regularly set off together on exotic cruises all over the world. The trips can sometimes last for three weeks or more in which they get to visit some of the most amazing places on the face of the planet.
Another young lad had also moved into the area, across the road by the name of Ramsey Tilbury, and they all soon became great friends. When World War II began, they mutually became interested in joining the RAF as aircrew. Unsurprisingly, they joined the A.T.C.(Air Training Corps), at North Harrow, where they participated in parade drills, learnt Morse code, navigation and then on to gliding at Northwick Park Gliding club. Grandpa also joined the A.T.C. football team. In the evening after A.T.C. the three boys would perch on their bikes, enthusiastically trying to pick out the diverse star constellations that they had learnt that evening, vying against each other as to who was the most knowledgeable.
One of the luckiest boys that my grandfather ever knew was a young lad by the unusual name of Ginger Zola, who was a real life daredevil. One day the boys decided to play and skylark around at a newly built house still sheathed by scaffolding. The wet cement between the brick work forming the chimney stack had not yet completely dried.
Ginger, the red haired rascal decided that he would be the one to climb that chimney and excitedly started to scale it. To everyone’s horror the recently built chimney stack started to wobble and teeter under the boy’s weight, till finally it toppled over completely. Ginger tumbled backwards over the scaffolding and plummeted down from a height of two stories to ground level where a long bank of sand lay with a foot deep pit of lime scattered along the middle. Amazingly Ginger didn’t regard the mishap seriously; after his landing, he rose, dusted off his clothing and then roared with laughter about the incredible hair raising experience. Somehow, with luck on his side, Ginger had managed to survive a bad fall without so much as a scratch to his scrawny little body.
Now a dynamic foursome, Grandpa, Bernard, Ramsey, and Ginger Zola often created their own amusement when they met up. At the bottom end of their road, a small tunnel could be found that led to a large garden allotment and pig farm on the left by an open field. After crawling through the tunnel the young boys would set off together for hours on end, hunting for bird’s nests and gathering edible mushrooms that were as big as tea-plates. Possibly the nearby pig farm had something to do with those mushrooms being as big as tea-plates! On the other side of the garden allotments, saturated with the mingled scent of midday heat and a cornucopia of raspberries, the diligent gardeners would fuss over and admire their potential prize-winning marrows. Later that day, those same gardeners would soon discover that some rather wayward children had artistically carved their names into their cherished vegetables!
Bernard was living two hundred yards away on the other side of the road, whilst Ramsey was sandwiched between Grandpa and Bernard on the right hand side, so they had by chance formed the perfect triangle for all sorts of communiquД©. This proved to be an excellent arrangement for the three of them to practice their Morse code that they had learnt from the A.T.C. and many evenings were spent flashing their torches at