A friend mentioned Brixton Academy to me the other day (January 2022) which immediately triggered the memory/thought:
didn’t that used to be the cinema we knew as “The Flea Pit”?
Which triggered my one clear memory of going to that cinema – although I’m sure I was taken there several times as a child. I especially remember Grandma Jenny taking me to see the film Living Free there.
Cursory research on Living Free at IMDb uncovers the UK release date as January 1972, so I am writing this memory up almost exactly 50 years after the event.
I remember the experience especially clearly, as Grandma Jenny had loved the film Born Free. She was so excited that there was a sequel to Born Free and that I was now old enough to accompany her to the flickers.
Unfortunately, Grandma Jenny’s excitement turned to disappointment, as she felt that the film Living Free was only a shadow of the wonders that she had enjoyed in the film Born Free. Grandma Jenny felt bound to let me know that the original was much better.
Disappointed
Frankly, I don’t think I would have discerned much difference between the two films at that age. Lions are/were exciting charismatic megafauna to see on the screen. The humans waffling on about lions and each other was comparatively dull.
Even the theme music for Living Free was cheesy and disappointing for Grandma…
…who subsequently serenaded me with the theme from Born Free, in the hope I would thus discern the relative quality of the latter theme. Unfortunately, Grandma Jenny did not share her sister-in-law Marie’s wonderful BBC Singer singing voice.
But fifty years on, the thing I remember most about the experience was my dad wanting to have me checked over for fleas for the rest of the weekend, after I had visited The Flea Pit. And dad insisted on referring to the movie as “Living Flea”.
Postscript -Memory Corrected By A Four-Year-Old: The Flea Pit Was The Ritzy, Not The Astoria
Within an hour of me posting the above piece on the Streatham, Balham & Tooting (yes, as you’ll soon see, geography was not my strongest suit at school) Memories Group on Facebook, Paula chimed in with the following remark:
I went to see Living Free in Brixton too! I always thought it was the Ritzy… but I was only 4, so what do I know
As soon as I saw that comment, I knew that she was right, a fact confirmed within minutes by Paul:
I’m pretty sure the ‘flea pit’ was the ritzy, not the odeon( as stated in the article….)
In my own defence, I know that Grandma Jenny did take me to see movies at the Brixton Astoria as well as the Ritzy back then. I have a feeling that my first “date” with Grandma was to the Astoria, but that was to see an afternoon matinee of the Sound Of Music…
…something that Grandmas everywhere did with/for their grandchildren back then, before the days when such movies were shown on the TV every bank holiday and certainly before the days that you could stream those old movies whenever you like.
The Hills Are Alive…
I can report that Grandma Jenny’s serenading with the Sound Of Music theme sounded no better than her rendition of the Born Free theme.
But I digress.
Yes, my memory from age nine has been bested by someone who was less than half my age at the time.
This recording is the only clearly dated family recording I have. Little me proudly announces at the start of the recording that it is the 5th of November, 1967.
I am Ogblog-publishing the recording on its 50th birthday.
As it happens, both the original recording and its 50th anniversary fell/fall on a Sunday.
But those others are, I believe, all quite a bit earlier than this Hare and Guy Fawkes one. I believe this 5 November 1967 one is the last of the readings tapes, not least because I think my personal interest in the tape recorder transformed at that time from passive listener to active recorder on our trusty Grundig TK-35. Another story – I’ll cover that story a little more below and separately later.
Grundig TK35. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.
Folman’s – scraped from : https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/534521049506003800/
Grandma Anne had, I think, fairly recently been widowed for a second time (my Step-Grandpa Nat I only recall vaguely from when I was very small), so it became our habit to take Grandma Anne to that strictly kosher restaurant in Soho for Sunday lunch.
I recall liking the chicken soup and the chopped liver but not much else there. I also recall my father’s favourite dish being “boiled capon” – a large chicken cooked in broth. I don’t believe that the kosher restaurant capon was a castrated bird – I’m not sure that kashrut would allow even the circumcision of a cock of the poultry variety. I think it was simply a big old boiler chicken that would make a tasty broth; the slow cooking of the aged creature would soften what would otherwise be rather tough meat.
My Vietnamese-style dish, chicken cooked in its own broth, is an exotic and delicious variation on that theme, which Janie and I love as comfort food. I remember distinctly not liking the Folman’s version much as a child, it was nothing like as tasty as my mum’s chicken.
But I wildly digress.
On the recording, you can hear my mum in the background, in another room, having an argument by the sound of it. I’m not sure whether she is arguing on the phone or with someone else who is in the house who is talking far more softly than my mum. I might do some audio-forensics on the sound file one day and see if I can listen in on that aggro from 50 years ago.
The argument can only have been family stuff…probably family business stuff.
I’ll guess that the Hare and Guy Fawkes story-telling at that time was as much about getting me out of the way while the family argument played out as it was about anything else.
But I’ll also guess that my beady-little eyes were, at that time, working out how to make recordings, because the rest of that side of that tape is strewn with recordings from the radio. One of those recordings I believe was made the same afternoon/early evening; I’ll Ogblog that a little later today.
As with our other story book recordings, I ring a bell at the turn of the page. I think the idea of that was to help me learn to read by following the story in the book while listening to the tape.
I also interject with some questions at times, which is rather cute, but I interject less in this one than I did in earlier recordings. I guess the question I really wanted answered by then was, “how do I operate this machine so I can make recordings for myself?”
Here’s the Hare And Guy Fawkes sound file and book cover again.
Both of my parents, dad in particular, made recordings of my favourite books being read to me. This was mostly, I suspect, because they knew that I couldn’t resist fiddling with the old Grundig and so would listen to the recordings rather than nag them to read the book again. Fiendish, cunning and I very much approve.
Grundig TK35, ram-packed with thermionic valves. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.
One of those wonderful recordings is The Gingerbread Man, the very book that Joe over on King Cricket was complaining about having to read three times a day.
Always keen to help out, here is the recording of my dad reading The Gingerbread Man to a very little me:
I don’t have a picture of me around that time with that book, but I do have a picture with a similar book, long since forgotten and I don’t think ever recorded:
A Very Little Me With the Big Brown Bear Book
Simply adorable I was; goodness knows what went wrong.
I do still have my dilapidated copy of the Gingerbread Man. Not too many of my children’s books survived the cull, but (probably because of the recording) I couldn’t bear to part with that one.
Thanks for triggering the nostalgia, Joe. I’d been trying to pluck up the courage to listen again and start uploading these recordings to Ogblog. You gave me cause.
It is one of my earliest memories. All I remember is having so much fun, climbing in, out, around, and through sculptures.
Playing hide and seek by dint of the artworks.
In my memory it was a Henry Moore exhibition, but on discovering a little pile of long-forgotten photographs (fiendishly mixed up with some of my parents’ late 1980s prints), followed by a little on-line research, I learn that it was a much wider exhibition, organised by the Greater London Council (GLC), that Battersea Park affair in 1966.
My guess is that we, the Harris family, ventured to the exhibition the following weekend, the late May Bank Holiday, although it’s possible that it was later that summer, perhaps the August Bank Holiday.
The reason I suspect it was the earlier holiday is because the photos look to me as though dad wanted those pictures from that exhibition to use as examples for his photographic studio classes that spring and summer.
Dad’s shop and studio was in St John’s Hill, Battersea.
Such a photogenic exhibition up the other end of Battersea would have been too good an opportunity to miss in those days, when (as I understand it) the studio was still a key part of dad’s business.
Anyway, that was dad’s job. My job was having fun.
The “pictures for the studio” theory would also explain why I hadn’t seen the pictures before now. Dad probably rescued those prints from the shop when he closed down the shop in the mid 1980s and the packet got mixed up then with mum and dads holiday snaps from the late 1980s. The negatives, sadly, seem lost.
Still, it was quite extraordinary seeing these pictures when I discovered them in March 2021, nearly 55 years after the event.
I have such a strong memory of having a wonderful time that day in Battersea Park and the pictures bear that out.
I have a feeling that mum didn’t really approve of this “let the children play” style exhibition. I can imagine there was a view in a fairly large section of the public that such sculptural works are to be revered rather than toyed with by children.
Mum doesn’t look 100% sure. I look sure.
But I think such exhibitions are a superb idea.
Personally, I have always been drawn to sculpture. Perhaps my fondness for sculpture would have happened anyway. But something tells me that my love of sculpture was forged that day in Battersea Park, which I so clearly remember as being just the most amazing fun.
George & Edith Corke are John Burns (aka John Random)’s great-grandparents. (John and the diary are shown above). This is a blog version of their fascinating and charming honeymoon diary from the summer of 1901. The original is in fading pencil but was diligently transcribed by John’s mum into biro many moons ago. Notes in square brackets are mostly hers. John has now digitised the words. Additional notes, links and some insight into our editing process (May/June 2020) can be found through this link.
THURSDAY JUNE 27th 1901
Arranged to be married at Halewood [Parish Church]
John Lord / St Nicholas’s Church, Halewood / CC BY-SA 2.0
Arrived at the pretty church at 8.45. We were met by the rector the Rev. Gibson Smith who greeted us very cordially and performed the ceremony without any hitch. After signing the register Edie and I went to Mr. Millen’s in Wood Lane, so that I could change my suit for travelling. The others of the party were looking round the graveyard as the rector is very proud of it and has great care bestowed in the cultivation of flowers, especially roses.
From ‘A Centenary of Halewood Parish Church’ by James Eccles (1939) p.48 Halewood Parish Local History Pages, www.halewood.org.uk – with thanks to Mike Royden
We all met again and went to the station. The party returned home and Edie and I came on to Liverpool in order to catch the 12am train for London.
Called at Kardomah [Coffee House] and had light refreshments. Proceed to the London and North Western Railway Station and at 12am [noon] then started travelling via Runcorn Bridge. We could see our house in the distance.
Kardomah picture borrowed from https://sites.google.com/site/kardomah/ – permission for fair use assumed – would actively seek permission if we could work out how to do so.
We had very good places in corridor train occupying the seat solely all the way, which was very pleasant. No crushing whatsoever. We arrived in London at 5pm at Euston and took [a] hansom [cab] to 37 Bedford Place, Russell Square, which is kept by the Misses Dobson. After tea we went by bus to Strand and along the Thames Embankment over Westminster Bridge and on to Green Park through Pall Mall and then on home.
Hansom cabs at Temple
FRIDAY JUNE 28TH
We walked down Oxford Street to Regent St. to see the shops. On the way we saw a regiment of Horse Guards mounted, who were going as a guard to the Mansion House where Mayor and officials proclaimed the month for the coronation of Edward VII and his queen next year [August 1902]. After lunch, we went from Tottenham Court Rd. station in the two-penny tube to Bond St. and thence to Hyde Park where we saw the London society driving in their carriages and parading Rotten Row. There were hundreds of carriages mostly with two horses in each and the largest number of smart society people ever in our lives. The sight was one of great splendour.
The traffic and carriages were controlled by the police both mounted and on foot with such order that not the slightest accident occurred amongst the assemblage. We came home by bus to dinner and then to the Vaudeville Theatre see a comeditta entitled Sweet and Twenty in which Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss were the principal actors. The piece was very well staged and played.
Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss
SATURDAY JUNE 29TH
In the morning we went through the Houses of Parliament. The House of Lords and Commons. The Lords was better fitted. All seats were covered with crimson. The gilded throne for the king and queen being at one end. In the centre were tables containing books and writing material. Also, the woolsacks were in the centre. We passed then to the House of Commons was arranged with raised seats on each side covered in leather with a desk in front, the Speaker’s chair and mace being in the centre. The walls of the buildings were covered with paintings and the grand staircase had a great number of statues of eminent men. After leaving the Parliament we came home by the Horse Guards after seeing the government offices and Downing Street.
After dinner to Hyde Park via Piccadilly to see the swells again and this time we saw the Queen (Alexandra) who drove with only one lady. They were both dressed in black. We had a very good view of her twice. Bus home to dinner (7pm) and stroll round the Square. Bought new white felt hat 7/6 in New Bedford St.
Sunday June 30th
Morning Westminster Abbey to service. Thence to Hyde Park, Rotten Row to see the Church Parade. Ladies and Gents in all the latest London and Paris style. Dinner at 1.30. Then to Albert Hall Sacred Concert. Great Organ. Royal Artillery Band. 80 performers and lady and gent for solos.
Tea at Kensington. Passed Palace. Statue of Victoria put up at Jubilee by her daughter Princess Beatrice. Kensington Gardens and park by the lake and home via Hyde Park where military band played in evening. Rain came on, home by bus and escaped the wet.
P.S. Walked to Marble Arch through park and home down Park Lane on Sunday morning.
Monday July 1st
Bus to Paddington via Edgware Rd. Train from Bishop St. to Richmond via Hammersmith. Very busy little place. Good shops. Bus on to Hampton Court via Twickenham, Teddington and Bushey Park. The drive is lively, well-wooded, especially the park in which were numerous deer, quite tame.
Stephen Williams / Deer in Bushy Park / CC BY-SA 2.0Andy Beecroft / Private Gardens, Hampton Court / CC BY-SA 2.0
Hampton Court 1.45. Had lunch. Then to Hampton Palace. Picture galleries, apartments of former Eng. kings and queens. Courtyard, corridors, apartments let to ladies in reduced circumstances. Changing guards. The magnifÂicent gardens: orange trees. The vine. Fountains and goldfish. The lake or canal. The maze. Beautiful avenues of trees. Swans. Dull morning. Beautiful afternoon. Started home 6.15 by bus to Richmond. Pretty place very busy. Pleasure boat in river and beautiful scene looking from the bridge. Tea at Richmond and look round. Train home 8pm to Bishop St. Bus home arriving 9pm.
Tuesday July 2nd
Bus to Strand. Called at Sharp Perrins. [wholesalers to the drapery trade. The bride and groom ran a draper’s shop in Victoria Rd. Widnes.] Mr. McIntyre not in house. Asked for Mr. Freeman who took us into private office. Was very cordial and said he would do his best for us. Edie bought some things to be sent on. Up in lift. People all very nice. After lunch Burlington House to see the pictures. Very fine collection. Entrance and catalogue 1/-. Special picture Queen’s funeral. Portraits of King and Queen. Duke of York. Roll call etc. The statuary very good also. Rained very heavily. Tea in Piccadilly. Home for dinner 7pm. Strand Theatre in evening. HMS Irresponsible. Mr. Arthur Roberts very clever actor. We thoroughly enjoyed the piece which has many absurd situations presented.
This original page from The Sketch is available from Vintage Edition – click linkBorrowed from The British Music Hall Society Facebook Group (linked) where this is image is unattributed; assumed public domain and/or fair use
Wednesday July 3rd
Bus to Strand, Fleet St, Cannon St. to Bank and Exchange. Went through both places. Fine painting round Exchange Walls. Lunch. Then to Mall and saw Buckingham Palace, Marlborough House, St. James’s Palace and saw company of Horse Guards who looked so bright and interesting in their pretty uniforms and trappings. Walk up Piccadilly and home by two d. Tube. Dinner 7. Bus to Earls Court Military Exhibition. Various types of soldier in life-size wax models. All kinds of guns. Hotchkiss, Krupp, Howitzer, Maxim, Field etc.
Public Domain, with thanks to the Getty Research institute & Hathi Trust Digital LibraryPublic Domain, with thanks to the Getty Research institute & Hathi Trust Digital LibraryPublic Domain, with thanks to the Getty Research institute & Hathi Trust Digital Library
Beautiful grounds and gardens. Several military bands. Canadian water-chute very exciting. Electric launches. Canton river. Had sail around; water kept in motion by water-wheel driven by steam. Big wheel. Oriental market. Egyptian coffee saloons. Chinese soldiers. Endless staircase lift. You stand still and it takes you to the top for 1d. Refreshment room. Ladies band. Home by Rails Underground.
Home by tram over Westminster Bridge. On tram nearly 1 hour for 3d. Bus over halfpenny. Westminster Bridge from Trafalgar Square only a halfpenny. Wrote letters and stroll round Russell and Bloomsbury Squares.
Bus to Sharp Perrin’s to give small order. Bus to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Right up to the altar and sanctuary. Splendid view. Bought paper dish covers. Home. Lunch. Bought tickets for Paris. £9 12/- 6d. Ordered box to be called for while Edie packed. Paid Mrs. Dobson. Wrote letters. Dinner 7. Hansom to London Bridge Station at 8. Left at 9 for Newhaven. Arrived 10.30. Left Newhaven 10.45. Arrived Dieppe 3 a.m. Slept most of the time in berths. Fairly rough passage.
Met Daisy Jarnke on board just arrived at Dieppe. We travelled together to Paris arriving 7.30. Bus to Hotel Rapp et Duphot.
Coach to Versailles Trianon. State coaches. Bois de Boulogne. Longchamps St. Cloud,]. Lunch. Versailles. Gardens. Grounds. Fountains etc. State rooms. Picture. Furniture. All very beautiful. The day’s drive was really fine. Home 5. 30. Dinner 6. 30. Walk through Tuilleries [Tuileries] Gardens. Sat by Monument. Rue de Rivoli. Tea 9.30. Home 10.p.m
Paris – Rue de Rivoli (c 1900) Source: Les anciennes rues de Paris
Breakfast 9.30 Fiacre [a French horse-drawn cab] to Station St. Lazare. Left at 10.00am. Arrived Rouen 12a.m. Saw cathedral. Fruit 1 Franc. Arrived Dieppe 1.00 close to steamer. Left Dieppe 1.45. Found it much colder on the steamer. Slight fog at sea. Horn blows.
c1910 Publisher: Eugene Le Deley. Paris.
Epilogue
GEORGE CORKE BORN 1857 ST. HELENS LANCS, DIED 1913 WIDNES
EDITH ELIZA WILKINSON BORN STOCKPORT 1862, DIED 1935 WIDNES
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