Advent Calendar Day 20

 

Elizabeth White

I was born in Hertfordshire and had one elder sister.  The photo above was a polyphoto; it was the done thing to get polyphotos taken in a studio when you were very small.

The family lived in the locality until I was eight, having moved house once when I was about 18 months old.  I don't remember the first house at all.  We moved to a cul de sac that was close to Cassiobury Park where I went to primary school.  The park seemed huge to me and we would walk, ride our bikes or push dolls prams  through it to the Grand Union Canal.  We were allowed to play out in the cul de sac but not on the road.  On Sundays we were only allowed to play quietly in the back garden.  

I only remember a few neighbours that lived up our end of the cul de sac and these included a family that had a corgi dog that I didn’t like because it went for your heels and a lady who lived on the same side as us used to come round the houses collecting for National Savings stamps.

Savings stamps and book

 They don't sell these now and haven't done for many years.  Buying those stamps on the doorstep was on a par with the man that visited to collect your insurance money or to collect your football pool money each week.

We had a black and white cat called Sooty; he was a lovely cat.  We also had 2 quinea pigs but my sister didn't like handling them as she didn't like the feel of their claws so I would move them from hutch to their run and she would have to clean out the cage in return.  We didn't always look after them very well and one night they disappeared...we never did find out where they went to a new home.  When my sister was 8 she had a miniature black poodle for a birthday present.  She named her Candy.  Unfortunately Sooty and Candy didn't get on and during a storm the cat hid under Mum's bed and Candy too decided to go in from under the other side of the bed.  What a fight ensued with the Candy's eye getting scratched!  The following weekend we took her down to my grandmother's house in Robertsbridge to live a long and happy life.   I had a miniature black poodle for my 8th birthday as well but unfortunately Suki, my dog, went blind after about 6 years and she relied on Candy as her eyes.  When Candy died, Suki didn't cope very well and sadly she didn't live much longer.  I also kept tropical fish for  while during my late teens.

We had no television in my early childhood so we made our own entertainment and loved the usual children's games of marbles, Jacks', cycling, roller skating, skipping and other playground games.  Indoors I loved reading and playing card and board games....some of the board games I still have and the grandchildren have enjoyed laying with them too.  I would make indoor theatres and little characters to perform the plays and so I was very happy to receive a Pelham string puppet one year for a birthday present.

Pelham Clown Puppet

I was about 10 when we were living in Essex and I learned to swim there with school lessons and also belonged to Brownies and flew up to Guides.  I went to one Guide camp before I was enrolled and the chemical loos put me off and I stopped going to Guides, having never enrolled!!  I also started learning to play the piano and when we moved back to Hertfordshire 18 months later, I continued lessons for a few years but was then told I either practised more or the lessons stopped....needless to say, the lessons stopped.  I regretted it when I was an adult though.

We enjoyed tobogganing down our hill when it snowed in the winter of  1962/63 which was a very bad one with lots of snow.  We enjoyed helping the milkman dragging milk up the hill on our toboggans.

As a teenager I sang in the school choir, played goalkeeper in Hockey for the school U14 team and was also in the teams for tennis and netball.  My first job was as a Saturday assistant in the library which was right up my street as I always had my head in a book.  In my late teens I used to ring the bells in the Parish church and also played the handbells.  

All school homework had to be done before we were allowed to watch TV except for 30 minutes when we were allowed to watch Coronation Street or Emergency Ward 10.  They were on on different days.  Homework was done in the bedrooms apart from winter when it was too cold upstairs and we sat in the dining room to do it....oh the days before central heating and you could draw pictures on the ice on the inside of the bedroom windows!!

I wasn't encouraged to stay on at sixth form and take A levels but I did go to a College of Further Education in Watford (yes, nearly gone full circle!!!) where I took an Ordinary National Diploma in Business Studies and picked up 4 more GCEs and an A level.  Whilst at the College I used to do Social Studies, one of which was swimming and I was really chuffed when I managed to swim 52 lengths of the pool!!.  Another option I took was local studies and perhaps that was the start of my love of local and family history that I only really had time for in my late 40's.

Whilst at college I had a Saturday job in Sainsbury in Boreham Wood.  I was a checkout operator, a somewhat different role the ones in the 21st century.  No conveyor belt to move the shopping; customers would put their shopping on the checkout inside a three sided wooden “rake” that was pulled towards them by the checkout operator.  Items were priced individually (no bar codes) and the operator had to pick the item up, turn it round until they found the label and then manually press the keys on the till.

My first full time job was as a secretary in a very large firm of solicitors in London; my interview day was the day of the first moon landing.  I earned £20 a week. I then went to the Home Office as a secretary in Whitehall but secretarial work really wasn't my thing and I was much happier transferring over to HM Customs and Excise (now called the HM Revenue and Customs) when they were just introducing VAT.  I then had the opportunity to transfer from VAT to their Investigation Branch.  I had found my place in the workplace at last. 

I got engaged to Peter and we both took extra jobs to get a deposit together.  I worked as a shelf filler at the local Sainsbury, yes, full circle again, and Peter worked in the petrol station.  In 1973 the petrol cost 33p a gallon!!!  The garage also gave Green Shield Stamps so he was often given stamps that customers didn't want.  Those together with stamps that Dad collected for some of his business mileage meant we could get some tumblers and cutlery for when we were married.  We've still got some of them!!!

Green Shield stamps