The second port of call was the island of Mykonos. I remember especially liking this place. I guess I was rapidly acquiring a taste for slightly out-of-the-way places rather than the heaving crowds of very touristic places. I was charmed by Mykonos, as were my parents, who I suspect fed me that sense of charm and calm while we were there.
While I am not a lover of garments generally, I remember loving that Tom & Jerry tee-shirt you can see me wearing in the pictures and the film.
The other wearables I remember falling in love with on Mykanos is a pair of sandals my parents bought for me there, which we called my Mykanos sandals and/or my Jesus sandals interchangeably. I loved those sandals for years, wearing them beyond outgrowing them, until they fell apart from having been worn so much.
The Mykonos part of the film runs for 90 seconds between 4’50” and 6’20”.
The first port of call and day of touring was Athens.
Temple Of Athena
Dad’s pictures and cine suggest that we basically spent the day at The Acropolis looking at the various temples and The Parthenon.
Mum and Me at the AcropolisView of Athens from The Acropolis
This was my first ever day of serious sightseeing tourism away from home. I remember feeling hot during it and very tired at the end of it. In truth I don’t remember all that much about it.
Thank goodness, then, for the pictures and 140 seconds of film, between 2’30” and 4’50” in the cine.
After boarding The Delphi at Rimini, we spent, I think, three nights (including two whole days) at sea.
Dad took a fair bit of cine during that period, mostly showing an insanely crowded swimming pool area – most of the first two-and-a-half minutes of the filum:
He hardly took any photographs at that stage, though. Mum would normally want to avoid being photographed until she/we had acquired “some colour”.
There were lots of activities for kids. It looks from the filum that I did some swimming but was edged out by the bigger, bolder boys. The pool is tiny and, to my older, wiser, possibly now more timorous, eyes it looks more like an open sewer than a swimming pool.
Anyway…
…there were activities galore for youngsters and I remember making several friends on the ship. There was more than one costume party but I am pretty sure those were later in the voyage – I’ll post some pictures from those come the appropriate time.
The following picture, from a talent competition, looks suitably pale-faced and sandals-from-home-ish to have been on one of those first couple of nights.
What was I singing? – I hear all readers cry. Haven’t a clue. I think I had one or two music hall songs up my sleeve by then – Any Old Iron or I’m ‘Enery The Eighth I Am perhaps.
I’m sure I did very well. I’m sure everyone did very well.
The above picture is labelled Port Of Piraeus, Athens by mum. It must have been taken the morning we arrived in Athens, ahead of our touring, unless mum got the transparencies numbers mixed up.
Fifty years later, writing in August 2023, I can state with conviction that sea cruises are extremely fashionable amongst the travelling classes, while Janie and I are both relentlessly keen to avoid such holidays.
But in 1973, ahead of my eleventh birthday, my parents took me on this Mediterranean cruise ahead of me starting at Alleyn’s School for my secondary education.
Context
I suspect that dad bought our holiday at a bucket shop price in a travel agent on or near St John’s Hill Battersea (near his shop) and I suspect that it was sold to dad as a “holiday of a lifetime”.
In truth, we were probably lucky that it didn’t lead to an extreme shortening of all our lifetimes. Our ship, the Delphi, was part of a cobbled together fleet of ships owned by Costas Efthymiades, one of whose crowded tubs, the Heleanna, had caught fire and led to dozens of fatalities on my birthday two year’s earlier. “Hold the front page!” news even in the Evening Sentinel, although the typesetter, in their rush, seems to have jumbled the headline!
While word of the above tragedy and the negligence cases that arose from it almost certainly evaded my father, I don’t suppose it had a positive impact on the market for that particular family of passenger ships. Hence, I’m just guessing here, the bucket shop price that I imagine would have attracted dad at that time.
Hold on…wait a minute…SW11 5RG – Lavender Hill – dad must have known some of those Clarkson’s people. I bet dad didn’t pay £73 per head.
Our tub, The Delphi, was probably not quite such a death trap as the ill-fated Heleanna. It had started its life primarily as a passenger ship, Ferdinand de Lesseps, rather than a cargo ship, so its conversion to a cruise ship was probably more appropriate and safer.
I do remember the days at sea feeling very crowded, albeit fun-packed for kids like me. The first two-and-a-half minutes of the cine film (see links below) looks even more crowded than the following photo.
Still, I have very happy memories of this holiday. We even cruised again as a family, one last time, a couple of year’s later. By that time, I think I was able to express my opinion: I loved seeing lots of different places on a holiday, but I did not love being on a cruise ship.
Itinerary
I didn’t start keeping a diary until 1974, so I have had to try and reconstruct the itinerary from the photographic/cinematographic materials (see links), from memory and from a vague sense of routing, geography and timings. There might be some inaccuracies:
18 August – Day Zero: Streatham -> Luton Airport -> Porto di Rimini;
Historians might note that, within a year, all of the countries we visited, with the exception of Yugoslavia, had been involved in a war. Within a few weeks of our trip, Clarkson’s Cruise-Jet holidays were avoiding the Lebanon and Israel stops as a result of the Yom Kippur war, which made the term “Holy Land Cruise” somewhat of a misnomer.
Links
There is a movie of this holiday. Not one of dad’s best; he/we never got around to adding a commentary so the soundtrack is just music. Also there was some film spoilage which destroyed most of the film from Lebanon and all of the Israel/Crete footage is lost.
Dad’s main shtick for this holiday was Stereo (3D) still photography. Here is a link to the digitised stereos I have painstakingly made from the stereo transparencies.
Stereo images in stereo – click the above picture link
You either need a viewing gadget or extremely strong eyes trained to be able to see stereo images in stereo.
The following link shows the stereo images in mono, as it were:
Stereo images in mono – all the left ones followed by all the right ones – click the above picture link
There are also a few prints from the single roll of film dad put into his ordinary camera. They are mostly pictures taken with flash in the evenings. Dad clearly forgot about this roll for some time – there is one picture from December of 1973 in the little batch of prints and they are all dated May 1974. Fifty years later, can you imagine anyone waiting nine months between snapping and seeing the results.
Print scans – just a few – click the above picture link
The expression “cobblers children” comes to mind. I expect dad took the camera with the half-finished roll to the shop with a view to doing something or other with it and then “rediscovered it” months later – possibly on more than one procrastinating occasion.
Day Zero: Streatham To Porto di Rimini via Luton Airport
Nowhere in the materials we have retained does it mention Rimini – I just firmly remember that we embarked and disembarked there. In my mind for much of my childhood that place was a major port from whence the Mediterranean opened up. Most likely it was a place where Clarkson’s and/or Efthymiades had done a good deal, because it doesn’t otherwise make sense to start and end a Greek islands/Holy Land cruise at Rimini.
I remember that Dad was very excited that we would be flying on a Lockheed TriStar, which was a relatively new plane at that time.
This holiday was my first, and to date only, experience of flying from and to Luton Airport. For much of the remainder of my childhood, I took pleasure in having been there, whenever the then ubiquitous Campari advert was shown:
I remember little about my journeys to and from Luton Airport, but paradise it wasn’t.
I graduated 50 years ago. Graduated from primary school, I mean. Writing in July 2023, it hardly seems possible that half-a-century has passed since then, but it has.
I hadn’t seen these photographs of the prize giving ceremony for a very long time. In truth, I found them recently while rummaging for something completely different.
Strangely, I can remember a surprising amount about the event and the names of many of my fellow pupils. Still, some of the memories are hazy and apologies if I have misremembered, spelt wrong or misidentified anyone. Feel free to get in touch and help me correct the record.
Looking at the headline photo, in which I seem to be picking up some sort of award on my own, I can see my mum on the far left of the picture (fourth mum along) looking a little pained. I recall that she had an attack of sciatica that day and nearly didn’t come to the event. I also recall that she found the seating in the nissen hut – where we held a pre-prize-giving performance – so uncomfortable that she stood at the back throughout the “show”.
I remember little about the show other than our class singing Que Sera Sera as a choir, which, I also recall, my mum told me had made her cry.
I suspect that a children’s choir rendition of Que Sera Sera in such circumstances was pretty standard fare back then.
Then outside for some element of outdoor performance ahead of the prize giving.
I’m pretty sure I can identify and name all five of these kids: Russell Holland, Deborah Horton, Alan Cooke, Julie Wheeler and Deborah Silverton
I’m still in touch with Alan. He might have some additional information about these pictures.
Russell and Deborah I must have befriended very early in my time at Rosemead, because they are there to be seen in the film of my fifth birthday party, six years before this prize giving event:
Returning to the 1973 Rosemead event, I have a few more pictures.
The lady in red is, I believe, Mrs Pavesi – behind her, David Pavesi with Nigel Palmer. I think the “back of a boy’s head” is Alan Cooke again.
Signor Pavesi was a restaurateur/chef if I recall correctly. David and Nigel were pals of mine.
My mum took issue with Nigel regularly being chosen to play Jesus in the school nativity plays. Mum felt that I probably bore a closer resemblance to the original Jesus than Nigel did; she oft threatened to challenge the school with cultural appropriation for that casting. Fortunately, mum was either joking or too timid to raise the matter, or both of those things.
There’s Nigel picking up a prize. Best Supporting Actor? Jesus is not a big part in nativity plays.I think this prize-winner is Christopher Stendall
Chris Stendall is one of three Rosemead alums who went on, with me, to Alleyn’s School, the other two being Alan Cooke (see above) and Jonathan Barnett (not depicted in these 1973 pictures, but who can be seen in the 1967 film).
Seems I collected several prizes that day. Ho hum – nobody really likes a smart-ass. In the upper picture, behind me, collecting is Russell Holland and behind him, I believe, Nazareen Ali.In the lower of the above two pictures, behind me looks like Mandy Goldberg.
My main memory of Mandy Goldberg was of Richard Dennis accidentally hitting her with a cricket bat in the playground, which resulted in cricket being banned at Rosemead by the headmistress, Miss Plumridge. I reported that event some years ago in a piece about my juvenile cricket, linked here or below:
Those seven pictures are all I could find from that event. But hopefully this piece will help track some people down who might have more memories and/or photos. If so, please do get in touch – I’d love to hear from you and/or add more material to this piece.
The pictures are all in Flickr at higher quality than above, along with a few other pictures from that era. Click here or the picture link below:
A peachy holiday. Mum, me, Denise, Steve & Tony Lytton.
Oh boy did the memories come flooding back.
Just before the end of 2020, I tracked down Steve Lytton, with whom I hadn’t been in touch for many decades, on the back of a memory trigger about limbo dancing:
We had a very enjoyable e-chat. At one point, Steve said he couldn’t remember how we met, but I remembered it clearly. We met as a chance encounter between our two families in Golden Sands, Bulgaria, in August 1972.
Our parents got on well with each other. Steve and I got along well too, which I’m sure pleased all four parents, as Steve and I were both only children.
Not only did our families hang out together a lot during that holiday but (unusually for holiday friendships) that connection continued for a good few years when we got home, despite the Harris family living in Streatham and the Lytton family living in Hendon.
This was not one of our more photographic holidays, but still there were half-a-dozen pictures from this holiday in “Mum’s maroon album” and I managed to find an envelope with a few more pictures of varying quality/vintage, some black and white from “my camera” (I was only allowed simple stuff at that age; dad wanted me to prove my bona fides as a photographer before letting me use better equipment and materials) and some contact prints, I’m guessing from the Lytton collection. I’ve put them all (16 of them) in the following Flickr album – click here or below:
There is also just a couple of minutes-worth of cine film. The Lytton family feature as much or perhaps even more than my own family in the film. I think dad possibly shot more, but some of the film got sun-damaged – there’s some slight evidence of that damage in the surviving film.
You get 15 seconds of the previous year’s holiday (Port Leucate in Occitania, South-West France, since you asked) as well as the couple of minutes of Bulgaria. A fair bit of clowning around, but the highlight of this movie is unquestionably the beach football, in which mum takes a tumble and then Steve, rather than assisting the injured player, cynically takes possession, playing on. Shocking sportsmanship, caught on film for ever.
I had a few abiding memories from this holiday, despite this holiday being 18 months or so before I started keeping a diary. But the very best of the memories was triggered by Steve, when we e-swapped reminiscences.
Let’s start with my abiding memories and use Steve’s wonderful recollection as the grand finale.
In those days they were using Ilyushin Il-18 Soviet Russian planes that had shown a recent propensity to crash, apparently, although mercifully we were in blissful ignorance of that fact when we flew:
What I especially recall, though, was the “standing room only” short hop from Sophia to Varna in one of those. People were standing in the aisles of the plane holding on to grab-handles like passengers on a bus or tube.
Abiding Memory 2: Viennese Waltz Chicks
Bulgarian Viennese-Style Music Trio Dressed Like 1970s Grandma’s Curtains
Was it really the music of Johann Strauss II that touched my heart, or did I have a kiddy-crush on these lovely musicians? I’m well over the Strauss now, anyway, but here’s the piece that particularly sticks in my mind from that holiday:
That really is a superb barnet and tasche sported by the great Austrian waltz dude
Abiding Memory 3: The Olympic Flame
There was a great deal of excitement when word went around that the Olympic flame, doing a circuitous route from Athens to Munich via several Balkan/Eastern European countries, would be staying outside OUR hotel, The International in Golden Sands, for the night.
We had rooms overlooking the front. I am pretty sure I joined my parents on their balcony to watch the excitement unfold.
A crowd within and without the hotel, pregnant with anticipation.
Then cries from within and without:
Es kommt…Sie kommen…Hier kommt es…
…that sort of thing. The vast majority of tourists in Golden Sands in those days were East Germans.
The torch bearer ran up some steps, ignited the “eternal flame cauldron” where the Olympic flame was to repose for the night, stepped back down to the sound of tumultuous cheering and applause…
…while the Olympic flame petered out in the cauldron.
There was a rapid inspection and rejigging of the cauldron, then the ceremony was repeated, this time successfully.
I was just shy of 10 and was already aware that Santa doesn’t exist. Now I learnt that the Olympic flame is not as eternal as the authorities would have us believe.
Thanks to Steve, I have recovered another wonderful memory of this holiday.
We all had rooms with excellent views overlooking the seafront. But Steve’s room, at one end of the hotel, had an especially splendid view. It overlooked a sectioned-off nudist beach.
Steve, very kindly, shared this world of wonders with me. We would sneak off to Steve’s room whenever the opportunity arose, to have an ogle and a giggle. Steve was around 11, I was coming up to 10 – I’m pretty sure neither of us had a clue what we were ogling at or where all those moving parts might go.
Fortunately for genteel readers, I have no images from that aspect of the holiday and am averse to Googling “1970s East German nudist sunbathers” for fear of the dreadful dark recesses of the internet that such a search might reach.
However, the image of dad, above (modestly attired in shorts, of course) gives a sense of the size and scale of the (mostly) East German gentlemen who frequented that beach. And I have managed to find a similarly modest but suitably scaled East German woman shot …
Anyway, I do now recall that my mum liked to dine out on this story for quite a while. Apparently both sets of parents wondered why Steve and I seemed so keen to sneak off to Steve’s room. I fear that it was me that blew our cover in this innocent yet guilty secret pursuit, by asking to borrow dad’s binoculars.
The parents worked us out, caught us out, made light of it and shared in the humorous side of this story. Dad taught me that quality rather than quantity is what matters when observing the human form, a lesson that has served me well in art and in life.
Tony, perhaps emulating the sights from the neighbouring nudist beach
I remember the excitement of planning the trip. I remember the crowds outside the British Museum and having to queue for ages.
I remember being shepherded through the exhibition, in truth not seeing much as a tiny tot, but still being exhilarated by it all.
To compensate me for the long queues and not all that much to see once we’d been through the exhibition, my parents bought me a souvenir of the visit; a Tutankhamun Mask Mug, which still to this day forms part of my minuscule trophy cabinet, in itself part of a slightly larger drinks cabinet:
For several decades, that “Treasures of Tutankhamun” relic of mine has served as the collection dish for small coins that are better off in the charity coin jar than in my pocket. While it still serves that purpose, in theory, in practice (nearly 50 years later) I rarely use cash these days so the jar fills up mighty slowly.
Earlier in 1972 – The Curse of “Toot”
My favourite memory surrounding the huge public phenomenon that was the Tutankhamun exhibition was my Grandma Anne’s take on the topic, in early spring of 1972.
“Keep away from that park. It’s dangerous”.
Grandma Anne, bless her, was more than a little deaf by 1972. Also, despite having lived in England since just after the first world war, English was not even her second language, after Russian and Yiddish.
Driving away from Streatham one Sunday, I’ll guess just before the arrival, or early in the days of, the exhibition, Grandma Anne exclaimed, as we drove along Bedford Hill, that someone had cursed the common.
We asked her what she was on about. She’d heard it on the radio. She was emphatic. Grandma Anne didn’t know the details, but someone had put a curse on the place and if you went there, bad things were likely to happen to you. She was keen for me especially to keep away from the place.
Something wicked this way comes, in Tooting Bec Common’s cursed tombs
The curse of Tooting Common. It took us a while to twig her confusion and we three were in stitches about it. I’m not sure Gradma Anne ever got her head around why they named a park in South London after an Egyptian Pharaoh …or maybe a Pharaoh after a South London park.
Anyway…
Cursed Or Lucky? Autumn 2012
…roll the clock forward more than 40 years after the 1972 exhibition in London – Janie and I got something close to a private viewing in Cairo in 2012 when we inadvertently arrived in Egypt on the day some trouble kicked off, so we visited the Cairo Museum in the absence of 95% of the normal number of tourists:
Rabbi Morris Davidson, Bolingbroke “Field Trip” To Camber Sands, early 1970s
I started keeping diaries at the start of 1974, at which time my diaries are peppered with many mentions of “classes”, on Sunday mornings, plus Tuesday and Thursday evenings. By that time, my religious instruction had been transferred to Brixton.
I shall write up those Brixton cheder diary extracts and stories soon.
But my memory retains a few impressionistic memories of my earliest experience of cheder (Jewish Sunday School), which was Sunday mornings only at my family’s synagogue, South-West London, otherwise known as Bolingbroke.
I attended cheder at Bolingbroke from quite a young age (perhaps age 5 or 6 onwards) until the cheder closed in the early 1970s and the handful of us who were still of cheder age transferred, mostly to Brixton but some, I think, to Streatham.
I am only in touch still with one or two people who shared that Bolingbroke cheder experience. Mark Phillips (and through Mark, perhaps also his older brother Simon). Wendy Ornadel was there at Bolingbroke and I think switched to Brixton cheder afterwards. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Andrew (Andy) Levinson (and perhaps also Fiona) joined us, for a while, in a futile attempt to keep Bolingbroke cheder going by poaching friendly kids who would more naturally go to cheder at their parents’ own synagogues. For sure the Levinsons, like me, switched to Brixton rather than Streatham. I’m pretty sure Andy is with me in the cine film of our field trip to Camber Sands in the early 1970s, which is the only photographic relic I have of that era.
Two-and-a-half minutes of low-grade cinematography (not dad’s best day with the hand-held) but high-grade historic value follows:
Impressionistic Memories Of Bolingbroke Cheder
Here are my highly impressionistic memories of the cheder at Bolingbroke. I’m hoping that others might chime in with some additional memories in the comments or send me private messages to enable me to beef up this piece.
There was a senior and a junior class. The former I think was for kids over 10 (or perhaps 11) who were preparing for bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah – my cohort never made it to that senior class at Bolingbroke. If I recall correctly, Rabbi Davidson instructed the senior class himself. The junior class was for us little ‘uns;
Our teacher in the junior class was a bearded fellow named Mr Herman, imported from North London, solely for the purposes of our instruction on a Sunday.
Mr Herman looked a bit like this public domain image of cheder instruction, except my memory (perhaps false) recalls Mr Herman with red hair, a bit younger than the beardy depicted.
I remember wondering in my very young days whether the pop group Herman’s Hermits had something to do with our teacher, Mr Herman. I vaguely recall that Mr Herman had a northern accent and had some connection with Carmel College, as did Herman’s Hermits’ talent manager, Harvey Lisberg. So there might, coincidentally, have been something in my seemingly childish nonsense word association between the two…but probably not;
Rabbi Davidson was a kindly and gentle man. I looked forward to a time when I would receive direct instruction from him, but it was not to be, as classes at Bolingbroke folded before I got to his level;
When Mr Herman was unavailable and no relief teacher was sent as a direct replacement for him, which I think started to happen increasingly frequently towards the end of our time at Bolingbroke, our class was minded by the Rabbi’s son, Cyril Davidson;
I say “minded” rather than “taught”, because I don’t think Cyril was willing and/or able actually to teach us. He would set us tasks from our work books, which (in my impressionistic memory at least) tended to be quite trivial such as colouring in pictures from the Bible or working through simple alphabet/language exercises, while Cyril sat at the desk in front of us drinking coffee and reading The Observer. Frankly, my guess is that he was a reluctant child-minder in these circumstances and I have some sympathy with his stance. When I was in my 20s, all I wanted to do on a Sunday morning was drink coffee and read The Observer.
Nice one, Cyril
While researching this article on line I managed to trace Cyril and I hope he doesn’t mind my having grabbed his thumbnail picture from the public domain. I am certainly granting him the right of reply when I send him a link to this article. I also hope he might add some thoughts and insights of his own.
Update: Correspondence With Cyril Davidson Through Facebook
Cyril Davidson writes:
I totally reject your recollections of my teachings at SW cheder l was and always have been a conscious and serious teacher who received a distinction in my teacher’s certificates at the university of London Institute of Education I never read the Observer in my life
I responded:
I am sorry that our memories of the cheder are at such variance. We were very young and only there for a few years at the end of that cheder’s time. We must have mistaken the confident competence of your calm, relaxed demeanour (which was a relief when compared with the hard-scrabble educational method of some others) for indifference.
TRIGGER ALERT: HEALTH & SAFETY & SAFEGUARDING ENTHUSIASTS MIGHT FIND THE NEXT PARAGRAPH DISTURBING
I recall breaks being quite wild affairs. We were largely unsupervised and there was quite a sizeable area to explore and use for hide and seek type games. Further, there was a dumb waiter that connected the first floor kitchen with the downstairs public hall. Braver kids would liaise to use the dumb waiter as a mode of transport between the upstairs and downstairs. More timorous kids would be threatened with involuntary journeys in that device. I think the weaker of the timorous kids were occasionally transported against their will in that thing. From memory, I fell into the “timorous but sufficiently resistant” category, as I recall fearing getting inside the dumb waiter, but don’t recall having been encouraged/forced actually to do so.
Update: Subsequent Correspondence from Cyril Davidson After My Responses
Having cleared up the misinformation earlier did enjoy reading about the South W Cheder and the kind References about my revered father Rabbi Morris Davidson I do remember pupils riding up and down the service lift in the hall and playtime in front area opposite the cemetery
I also remember having interesting chats with Mr Herman at play time
I had not seen the picture of my father at one of the great [Cheder] outings he used to arrange
Happy days
I have one other memory, from an event put on for the parents, when the older children performed a play. It was about Pesach (the Passover story) but it might have been performed at Purim time. One of the boys was very heavily made up to be afflicted with boils (one of the ten plagues) and I found this look so startling that I couldn’t watch that bit and took cover in the arms of my parents. Later, when the boy had removed his make up, my parents tried to help me overcome my fear by pointing out that the boy in question, whose look was no longer frightening me, was in fact the boy with the boils. Just the mention of “the boy with the boils” again spooked me, even though the sight of the actual boy, now boil-free, did not. For years, my parents would threaten me with “setting the boy with the boils on me” if I didn’t comply with their instructions.
More About Bolingbroke Generally
The Jewish Community Records site has a short tombstone piece (stub) for that long-defunct synagogue (it closed in 1997) – click here to see that stub.
The Harris family were members there for most of that synagogue’s life, from when the Harris family moved to Clapham Common North Side (c1930) to the bitter end.
I have written a fair bit previously about the Harris family’s shul/community in Soho, roughly 1916 to 1930 prior to moving to South-West London:
What I didn’t realise, before researching the current piece, is that the revered Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber, who instructed my father and Uncle Michael in their younger days, was the father-in-law of Rabbi Morris Davidson. That fact is there to be read in Rabbi Ferber’s Wikipedia entry if you bother to read that far.
I wonder whether this was a coincidence or whether there was a connection.
Did Rabbi Ferber possibly encourage the Harris family to move to a community where he knew that his son-in-law Rabbi was residing (or soon to reside). Or, if the South-West London community was looking for a new Rabbi soon after my family moved there, was it my family that connected Rabbi Ferber’s machaton with their new community?
Also interesting to me is to discover that Rabbi Ferber (and indeed Rabbi Davidson) subscribed to a movement known as the Musar Movement which, I paraphrase perhaps to a fault, focuses on contemplative and ethical matters, including commercial ethics, to a greater extent than theological absolutism and/or strict orthodoxy of practice.
Update: Further Correspondence With Cyril Davidson
I am fascinated to learn this about your family. My father was a great admirer of your Grandfather, Rabbi Ferber, who was revered at the West End Talmud Torah when my father was a small boy. I can see from the several Wikipedia articles on Rabbis Salanter and Ferber, and on the Mussar movement, that you are a direct descendant of the founder. I have added your comments to my piece in the interests of balance and to enable those interested to search further. One additional point that might interest you – in researching my family’s early years in the UK as part of the Soho community, I have acquired (but not yet read) a copy of your Uncle Chaim Lewis’s book “A Soho Address”. I am very much looking forward to reading it. With very best wishes to you and your family.
Although none of the religious stuff filtered through to me in adulthood, the ethical stuff most certainly did. That dynasty of Rabbis (Salanter, Ferber and Davidson) might have approved of my Gresham College Commercial Ethics lecture, for example, while probably not warming (or relating) to all the examples I used, nor to my extremely limited approach to religious observance.
Strangely, towards the end of researching this piece, I discovered a recent article on a Jewish website, ukjewshlife.com, about our old South-West London community – click here. If by any chance that site isn’t active once you get there, you could instead click here. That article has some lovely photographs of the old place including one of a wedding inside the shul. That wedding photo, if you look to the rear right of the shul, you can see the little block of four seats where the Harris family would sit. A place of honour but not prominence, I always considered it. In the early days, my grandfather and his four sons. Then just the four sons. Then Uncle Manny, Dad, Cousin Anthony and Me. Anthony until just before the place closed down, dad and I (once a year in my case) until the bitter end in 1997.
Memories from anyone else who shared these experiences would be most welcome through the comments section or private messages if you prefer.
Update: Cousin Angela Writes
My cousin Angela experienced the Bolingbroke Cheder in the 1950s. She writes:
I remember the cheder really well. We had Rev Davidson in the top class…I remember Cyril but he was older than me…Rev Davidson had a metal ruler and he used to rap the boys’ s knuckles if they were cheeky.
We had 3 years. The youngest one was a woman teacher (can’t remember her name) then the next class was the chazan (can’t remember his name either) and then Rev Davidson. I remember passing most of synagogue time either in children’s service or outside.
A good trip down memory lane…
Update: Mark Phillips Writes
I loved seeing the images of Cyril and Rev Davidson…I think your recollection of Cyril’s teaching was more accurate than his!
Names to add. Michelle Brown, who I still see, John Rosenthall and David Craig. David’s family owned a pen shop in Balham.
Cyril Davidson Recalls Yet More (FB postings 5 May 2024)
For many years there were three classes at S W L Cheder the beginners class which I attended was taken by the formidable Miss Kutner, the middle class by the synagogue shammas who lived in a flat above and the top class by my father the Headteacher which I originally attended three times a week
By the way Rabbis Ferber and Davidson were strictly observant Jews
The shammas was Mr Rosenbluth
It was large cheder in it’s heyday My fellow pupils included Joy Stein Ann Landsberg Harvey and stuart Katz Ronald and Alan Zeegan Sheldon Weitzman Michael Butler Raymond Davies Steven Freedman stamps Album and Michael Billig. Also Laurence and Steven Slater and Rodney Press
Rabbi Morris Davidson, kindly and gentle as I remember him, but I wasn’t in the top class in the 1950s.
When I was a small child, growing up in Streatham, there was not exactly a vast choice of restaurant cuisine to choose from. But there was a Chinese restaurant near home. Mum, dad and I all liked the food there.
In my memory it was named Yang Chow – perhaps the proprietors changed the name between 1958 and my childhood visits there in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But that was the place. The “theatre” mentioned in the advert above is apparently the Streatham Hill Theatre, subsequently the Mecca Bingo Hall, although the restaurant was no more opposite the Bingo than it was opposite The Locarno, or The Cat’s Whiskers as it was known when I was munching food in the restaurant almost opposite those two landmarks.
My parents were friendly patrons in any restaurant we visited and we became friendly with the proprietor family. I cannot in truth remember the name of the matriarch patron, but for some reason the name Li pops into my head, perhaps falsely, but I’ll refer to her as Li in this article. I do remember the name of the proprietors’ little boy, Christopher, who was a similar age to me (perhaps a year or so younger), who would tend to show his face during our visits to the restaurant. Christopher and I became friends.
On one visit, Li announced that the restaurant would be closed for one weekend only as the family was going to celebrate Chinese New Year with family and friends in Soho that weekend. They wondered whether I would like to join them, to keep Christopher company.
I was keen. My parents were content. The date was arranged.
I’m not 100% sure that it was the 1972 new year, but I’m pretty sure I was around that age and something about “The Year Of The Rat” rings a bell. Again, the vague memory might be flawed.
But I am 100% sure how excited and awe-inspired I was by that event.
We went upstairs in a Soho Chinese Restaurant – sadly I have no recall which one it was. The beautiful sketch below might be the very one; who knows?
We sat at a large table and the upstairs room was packed with Chinese people. I think I might have been the only western face in the room.
Everyone seemed to know everyone – not only the people at our large table – which was presumably Christopher’s family and close friends – but the whole room felt a bit like one big party. It was probably an informal gathering of the suburban Chinese restaurateur community.
Writing 50 years later, it seems extraordinary that local Chinese restaurants might close for Chinese new year – a guaranteed busy time for all Chinese establishments today – but back then I don’t think the annual Chinese event had any traction in the wider community.
I remember lots of people making a fuss of me and I remember several people, especially Christopher’s parents, worrying that I might not like the food and letting me know that they could arrange for some food with which I was more familiar if I didn’t like the “party fare”…
But by gosh they needn’t have worried. The smells, the look of the food, the textures, the flavours. I’d never seen, smelled or tasted the like of it before.
I fell in love with dim sum that day and have never lost the love for it.
Little me, around that time
It was not all that long after this seminal event in my culinary journey through life that the Yang Chow closed and that family moved on, we knew not/know not where.
Before the end of the Yang Chow era, I do vaguely remember my mum insisting on reciprocating the hospitality I had received by inviting Christopher over to our place for a homely meal. Whether he liked the meal and/or ended up associating matzo balls as a variant of dim sum is a matter seemingly lost to history…
…unless, by some chance, my posting of this article somehow helps re-establish contact with Christopher and/or that kind family, who initiated my love for westernised Chinese food at the Yang Chow and utterly entranced me with dim sum at a more authentic Chinese restaurant in Soho, all those decades ago.
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.
