My father's early life as a farmer's son was a hard one. He tilled the stony fields of Connaught in all weathers behind a horse drawn plough. He walked three miles to school in his bare feet so as not to wear out his shoes. Whenever a car drove by, everyone in the fields stopped to look because they were so rare. He was one of 12 children, of which just three were boys, my dad being the eldest. Discipline at home was strict, it had to be in order to produce enough food for such a large family to survive. Eventually, as he grew older, he looked forward and realised that the land could only support one of the brothers, so in 1951 he left for England and soon after, the youngest brother Jimmy left for America, leaving behind Ambrose, the last brother, to inherit the farm. Only one of the sisters stayed in Ireland, the rest left to make new lives in England or America. The old farmhouse they grew up in is now abandoned but still standing, and the stream that provided their drinking and washing water still flows by.
My mother grew up in a small single story terraced house just off Ballybricken market square in Waterford City. Her mother worked in various jobs where she could, because her husband was a semi-invalid due to ailments picked up as a prisoner during the First World War. He was captured at Ypres in 1914 in the same battle where his father, my great grandfather, was killed. She had two sisters and two brothers, one of whom died from tuberculosis in his twenties. It was a simple life of poverty, so like very many other young people in her situation she and both her sisters came to England to earn money to send home to keep the house going. The house is still there, and I remember visiting it when I was small. The memory of the cramped, dark smoke-stained rooms and the sweet smell of burning peat sticks in my mind.
My parents met at a dance in the Cricklewood Irish Centre in north London. I was born in Ealing hospital on the 30th of September 1958, a year and a month after my older brother Peter John. I was christened James Alexander Blaine, and was followed the next year by Stephen Anthony, and then four years later by Anita Mary. Our early lives were of course influenced by the experiences of our parents. My father was the remote disciplinarian whereas my mother had traditional expectations and gave up work to look after the family.
When he first arrived, dad started doing factory jobs before getting a break as a salesman going door to door selling Hoover vacuum cleaners, he was even awarded salesman of the month once or twice. During this time, he met a man called Reg Clarke who had an electrical and gas shop in Perivale on the A40 from London, and they went into partnership. Dad did the gas and plumbing side of things while Reg stayed in his shop and did the electrical. Dad then built his plumbing knowledge and ultimately set up his own successful plumbing and heating business which, when at its height, he had a dozen guys working for him and was re-plumbing whole blocks of flats in central London. Working for my dad in the school holidays was my first experience of work, and a baptism of fire it certainly was.
My parents settled in the Harrow area of Northwest London for the rest of their lives. In later life they sometimes talked about 'going back home' to Ireland, but they never did. Their Ireland was long gone, so there was no going back for them. I think that ultimately, they both considered themselves lucky and grateful for escaping the poverty and hardship of their childhoods. And because of my dad's success, they were able to ensure we had a good start by providing money for our house deposits and cars. Thanks Mum. Thanks Dad.
My first home was a flat above some shops on the Kenton Road, which I have no memory of. We then moved to a semi-detached house at 7 Alicia Avenue in suburban Kenton, this is where my first memories were formed. We must only have been there a couple of years before moving about a mile to the house where I grew up, this was 11 Hawthorne Avenue in Kenton. Before starting school, I remember these early years from a series of chronologically disconnected snippets: -
- Walking along the street with my mother, and not being able to see over the snow piled on each side of the path. This must have been the winter of 62-63.
- My mother putting jelly outside the back door to set in the freezing cold. Again, probably the winter of 62-63.
- Waking up with my eyelids stuck together, and my mother wiping the glue from them with warm water.
- Cycling around the block for the first time and feeling very brave and grown up.
- Seeing washing drying on a wooden rack hung from the ceiling in the hot humid kitchen.
- Sitting down around the table in the kitchen for a meal and suddenly the ceiling fell on top of us. Lots of dust and plaster as I recall.
- Eating Vesta beef curry with rice and liking it.
- Sitting on my father's knee and watching him smoke a cigarette. (He gave up while we were very young)
- Watching my brother drop a plastic bottle full of orange squash on the floor to prove plastic bottles were unbreakable. It broke.
- Eating cat food sandwiches.
- Being taken to jumble sales, and then watching my mother wrap old clothes with brown paper and string to send back to Ireland.
- Hearing about the death of JFK and noticing the grief in everyone's faces. That was November 12th, 1963.
- Despite having photos of my brothers and me playing in the sand on various beaches I don't remember any of them. Holidays are wasted on the young.
- I do remember one detail of a holiday. My dad took us to an abandoned military base in Kent, where he produced a screwdriver and started unscrewing handles from the windows.
- My dad coming home from work and eating his dinner while soaking his feet in a basin of water (after a long day going house-to-house selling vacuum cleaners.)
- One day my dad's mother visited us from Ireland. I only remember being asked to say hello to this little smiling white-haired woman while sitting on the stairs in my pyjamas. This was the only one of my grandparents that I actually met.
- One morning I woke up and a baby sister had appeared. I remember standing in the bedroom looking into a crib, but none of the other details around the event has stuck in my mind.
Because my parents were both good Irish Catholics, we were a church going family. Every Sunday we all got into the car (no seat belts by the way) and went down the Kenton Road to All Saints Church, which was a very modern angular building on the main road. Despite this regular church going, we never got involved in the wider church so religion in our household started and stopped at the church door. We never said grace at the table, never said prayers at bedtime or met with church groups, so to us kids, going to church was a weekly chore to be avoided if possible because it was sooo boring. The church did have close connections with a nearby Catholic primary school called St Bernadette's, which all of us attended. In later years, I suspected that we only went to that church in order to get places in the school.
My young life was a happy one. We were not wealthy, but we had enough. We had a stable nuclear family to grow up in, with two parents. I can only count myself as lucky, and I can once again thank my parents for that.
