City to Shire Chapter 2 ~ Number Twenty (Revised Edition)

Windsor Street Days

Chapter 2

Number Twenty Windsor Street

I

WINDSOR STREET Cheltenham is just down the road from Pittville Gates.

Windsor Street and Pittville Gates are synonymous because they marked the boundaries of my first thirteen years, bar two months. The paternal family lived in both 25 and 20 Windsor Street on the opposite sides of the street, and my birth certificate records me living at Number Twenty.

Between Windsor Street and Pittville Gates is Pittville Circus, and between Pittville Circus and Pittville Gates lay all the local shops, pivoting, as it were, on a superb open-fronted grocers shop - Gilliers.

In a time of strict rationing, greengrocers and butchers were the mainstays of almost every high street and suburb in towns, villages, and cities throughout Britain. I grew up with Gilliers, at varying times accompanying Grandma or my aunt or my elder sister, and eventually on my own “to the shops”. 

Ken, would you be a dear and pop up to Mr Gillier, please? He has some bananas in. Here’s half a crown - 25 pence today - now mind the traffic at the circus roundabout, and don’t lose the change, dear. And this always earned me at least six pence and sometimes a shilling - 5 pence or 10 pence today. I was rich!

Today, the shop fronts have changed but the buildings haven’t. They are the same shapes and angles as in my twenties when, as a local constable, I walked the beat here. Gilliers has long since gone. However, the pivot still remains for, since May 2016, we have the delightful coffee house Havana’s - and this very welcome development has put Windsor Street and Pittville Gates truly in perspective again.

II

As a boy, Windsor Street was a cul-de-sac. At its far end - the opposite end to Prestbury Road, that mystical road of freedom that would whisk me to the village of Prestbury and then on over Cleeve Hill and down into that other world, the Cotswold town of Winchcombe - stood the sheet metal factory, and a large piece of land given over to allotments.

Both grandad and Uncle Arthur had allotments there. Before I was born, allotments had become vital to survival during the six long years of the Second World War, and rationing. And ten years after its end, rationing had, if anything, become vice-like.

You know, in my whole life, that six years has always seemed an immeasurable time. But today, we have had comparable destruction in Syria for eight years thus far, with little end in sight, a disinterested world, and a world population that, outside war-ravaged areas, no longer has any concept of total war. When I compare WWII - its sole aim to destroy Fascism worldwide - everything was committed to achieving this. And achieve it they did, in record time, if I compare then with now. 

War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line by David Nott, a British surgeon (published by Pan Macmillan 2020) bluntly, but eloquently, makes the point. 

When I penned this chapter, I genuinely believed that Afghanistan was very slowly emerging as a fledgling democracy. If only we had applied the same principles in helping it to rebuild itself as a middle eastern democracy, as we had done in our determination to help Germany and the German People rebuild their shattered country. Lack of higher education lends the population to its total reliance upon its religion, with the country operating along the lines of petty fiefdoms and local chiefs and local warlords.

III

I didn’t arrive until March 1953, with the March winds, but I still have my ration book, and it reminds me that this rationing, ironically, became even more severe after 1945, in spite of victory.

In fact, fourteen years of food rationing in Britain ended at midnight on July 4, 1954, when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted.

In other words, nine years after the end of the war.

Lend-Lease repayments now commenced, and whilst Lend-Lease certainly threw the lifeline to our beleaguered nation, or, in the words of its architect FD Roosevelt, President of the USA - the firehose to its neighbour whose property is on fire - peace, of sorts, meant repayment was due, and due immediately.

Help is often double-edged. There is a price to be paid. There is a loss to be endured.

IV

For Britain, it meant the near-instant demise of the British Empire. There is bad and there is good with empire. And historians are at one in recognizing that Roosevelt - for whom I have enormous respect, he is one of my all-time great men of history - knew that Lend-Lease enabled him to achieve his long-held personal aim: to destroy the British Empire, and for the United States to fill the vacuum and become the world’s new policeman on the block.

I wonder though, had he lived to see this, at his reaction to an empire that he did not like, morphing into a commonwealth of eight nations, and by the 21st century, comprising five-four nations and with very strong ties to the United Kingdom. Few, if any, empires in history can claim such an achievement.

What would he have said, in pondering that the monarch remained its head of state and that despite progressive trends in every other field, this same commonwealth deciding that, yes, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting on April 20, 2018, a statement was issued by these leaders declaring:

““We recognise the role of the Queen in championing the Commonwealth and its peoples. The next head of the Commonwealth shall be His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.” ”

— Commonwealth of Nations Conference April 20, 2018

Extraordinary. Nevertheless, it is a healthy sign that members of the Commonwealth are able to become republics if their people, not their governments alone, so desire. And there lies the salt in the wound. Governments do not have the interests of their people foremost in their minds. This has always been the case, but with one difference. In this 21st Century we have the phenomenon of the “career politician”, the “career diplomat”; not ‘what can I best do for my country?’ but ‘what can I get out of my country, better still, for free?’

V

Rationing meant that we usually saw bananas only on Grandma’s table at weekends. As with many young families, ‘tea at Grandmas’ - paternal and maternal - were the weekend treats. Dad’s mum and Mum’s mum were amazing cooks, their mastery in the kitchen undisputed. They had the knack of making toast, even, feel like the king’s banquet.

Bananas were too expensive for mum and dad except as occasional treats, and didn’t become a regular part of the nation’s daily diet until I was about fifteen, in 1968.

So, as a cul-de-sac, Windsor Street was a kid’s paradise.

No through traffic, and about a dozen cars parked outside houses at most. In fact, during the war, there was one car, Mr. Kent’s taxi at number 22, and therefore the street’s telephone, apart from Doctor Lyddadale in the big house up on the entrance to the street, but of course, a doctor would not have been the street’s centre of communication! That was Mrs Kent.

VI

The Kents were the point of contact for all families who had members in the armed forces, or engaged in war work away from home, and so on. And I see why Mrs Kent was such a friend of our family. Often, a hurried telephone call to say… “I’m coming home Mrs. Kent … got a 24-hour leave pass … can you be a dear and let mum and dad know, or Betty and Arth’?”

Mrs. Kent, to me, was always this mystical being with thick reddish-blond hair always with what seemed like me to be waves of the sea, always smiling, always confident, ‘Good Morning Ken’, Good Morning Mrs. Kent’. And I could never work out how she knew me as Ken. But I realize now when she received those telephone calls from my uncle, Ken, it would have pleased her that in some strange way, the memory of Ken whom she had watched grow up with her sons, hadn’t been forgotten. Here was another one. Playing in the same street, outside the same front doors, even playing with the same toys.

He still lived on in this little chap playing in the street, bombing ants, ear-wigs, and whatever else dared to cross from one trench across the doorstep to the other trench under the huge hydrangea bush, bouncing balls around and generally doing what all little boys do at that time of freedom, and before society at peace took an ominous turn for the worse, and children became very vulnerable and the victims of unspeakable crimes that only now, seventy years on, are coming into the nations’ public awareness, and conscience.

VII

All four nations - Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England - as one Nation, need to take heed but need also to guard against miscarriages of justice, and be very discerning when considering the complaint of a potential victim. I grew up with the phrase “with malice aforethought either express or implied.” 

I used to help dad with his legal definitions for his police exams; good training, as of course, I too, later became very familiar with that little yellowy-orange Police Definitions notebook containing seventy-two definitions, forming the bedrock of a lifetime in legal practice. They remain with me to this day. And of, what joy, walking the dog with Dad, Dad reciting his definitions, me looking for corrections, and all the while unaware of that deep and abiding respect for the Rule of Law, mystical awareness of a Latin phrase that I got into trouble with at school for quoting - Habeas Corpus - and explaining when asked by a none-too-pleased school-ma-am, that it meant ‘to produce the body Mrs. W’ and mum and dad being told that Kenneth is getting ahead of himself, ideas above his station.

The thing is Ken, you can’t go round quoting all and sundry. Peole will get the wrong idea, love. Learn to zip it.

Yes, Mum to mum’s closure of the imaginary zip on her lips that Mum would then hold tightly closed, and start to make noises and then

Mum. Mum, unzip it! Take a breath!!

Ah that’s good. Dear me! I thought you were never going to say it Ken!!!

This gives a hint of family life. Wonderful memories.

Kenneth Thomas Webb ~ Ken Webb Jr. Yet to graduate to long trousers.

The version Mrs. Kent from Number Twenty-Two knew ~ Kenneth Ernest Webb Sr Spring 1942, Craig Field USAAC, Alabama, USA

VIII

Around 1962, things started going awry in my dreamland - Windsor Street. Grandad died very suddenly, following complications with a hernia operation at the Cheltenham General Hospital. I was too young to understand exactly what had happened, or exactly the impact this had on the family. A lifetime on, and with the benefit of seeing my father’s letters to his mum as also to his wife Nancy when on police courses away from home, and talking with Mum about this period, it was a bleak period. When Dad died in January 2012, it was a shock. When Mum died in May 2016 in sight of the beautiful white apple blossom from her bedroom window at home, the loss of my father hit home, and not immediately either. I knew that Mum was coming to an end; we were all prepared. But when it did come, I still felt cheated.

Then started the five long stages of bereavement. In 2018, I was still thinking, why is this taking so long; in the ear of my mind I heard a clear and very simple explanation: Ken, you’re also dealing with the loss of Dad; while Mum was alive, Mum shielded you because Mum was still part of Dad. it was as if he had popped out and would soon return. But when Mum departed, then their combined absence becomes a double burden. Be patient. 

As a probate lawyer of almost thirty years standing, I knew this. But how strange that even people who deal with death on a daily basis, still get caught out. 

IX

Let us return to 1962.

Plans were afoot with the town council at the grand Municipal Offices in the Cheltenham promenade opposite the Cenotaph and which bore three family names, one from the Great War, two from the Second War (and an un-named fourth in the Great War but who drew family silence at mum’s family home, Grandad Marshall’s second brother - he lost both in France). These wars. By now, World War I and World War II, their long, dark shadow reaching out over us in post-war Britain, and complicated now by an Iron Curtain!

I asked Grandma, one day if the curtain was like the huge curtain that came down on the stage at the end of the Royal Variety Performance but made of metal and lots of bolts and rivets … I never did get an answer. But I do remember Grandma’s lovely giggle. Sounds in fact, I often hear in my sisters. How wonderful genetics is, that as well as mannerisms, even sounds carry through.

In the town council, the allotments were to go; the factory was to close, the new Cleevemount estate was to be built, and Windsor Street - a child’s wonderful safe haven - would become a busy through road. Progress, yes. We rarely count the cost of decisions made in council buildings, but there is always a human cost. I became aware of this as a probate lawyer. Time and again, demise could be traced back to “upheaval” in a person’s life, regular routine, or garden. This is inevitable. It is no criticism of town councils. It is a fact of life, but we tend to overlook it.

The new estate brought to an end a way of life, continuity, and happiness for Grandma, as her eldest son - Arthur (Arth’) - from Number Twenty had decided to buy a detached house five hundred yards up the road and on the same side as twenty-five. 

Windsor Street though, was our family’s epicentre, a view shared by Mum who also loved Windsor Street, both Twenty and Twenty-Five.

There is a wonderful reminiscence that stayed with my mother even through dementia. In 1948, one night, mum stayed at Number Twenty-Five, what we call a sleepover today, after the town hall dance. By all accounts, mum was quite the dancer, a talent developed in the war. And I can vouch for that. My sisters were surprised and had the damned cheek to question my recall even, that I could remember mum’s high heel, long thick skits, and the stockinged leg passing over my head in tune to the wireless. Anyway, on this first sleepover, mum had made quite an impression I think; for my grandparents were concerned about dad “losing the plot, “possibly going off the rails”, and “being rebellious”, all of which could be traced back to losing his brother Ken in 1943.

Let me tell it how mum tells it.

The house was so warm Ken. Quite different from Elmfield. An incredible atmosphere. Peace. I went to bed in the box room, your father’s old bedroom. I was lying there thinking ‘this is heaven’. Slowly the door opened and Grandma stood there. I pretended to be asleep. Suddenly, I heard Grandma say, “Oooooh! Little Duck!!” and she stroked my hair and then quietly shut the door. Yes, Ken. I WAS in heaven!

Mum also summed it up well, and I recall Dad did too when we chatted about going off the rails. Grandma saw mum as dad’s saviour, a fact that dad never denied. They had both lost brothers in the RAF, they both worked at the same factory, and they both had a lot in common. So I end this chapter feeling, well, very, very happy. For I am in Windsor Street again. Safe haven. Heaven.

2 May 2022
All Rights Reserved

© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2023

First written 16 March 2020