I’m pretty sure my fifth birthday party was not held on my birthday because so many people were going to be away late August, including us.
I vaguely recall mum telling me that it was due to be held soon after school broke up but lots of people had measles/mumps/chicken pox or whatever was doing the rounds that season, so they rescheduled the party.
So perhaps it was held in early August.
It certainly looks summery from the cine film and photos.
Dad did a pretty good job of filming this event. Not exactly taxing on his skills.
This incident caused a long-term rumpus in our family. I’m not sure my mother ever forgave me for it.
I recorded about two-and-a-half minutes of childish nonsense…
…with friend or friends unspecified…
…on Mummy’s Tape.
She only had one tape, bless her, which I inadvertently desecrated that day.
Mummy’s tape comprises some of her favourite tunes and songs, recorded from various sources on the radio, probably over several years in the early to mid 1960s, around the time of my infancy.
Mum reckons I carried out the horrendous act of desecration when I was about four.
Here is the offending two-and-a-half minute clip.
The clip itself reveals little. I was clearly very young when I did this – I think mum’s “about four” estimate is about right. We (I am with at least one, I think probably two friends) mostly seem to be making noises to take pleasure in watching the recording level lights on the family Grundig dance.
Grundig TK35, ram-packed with thermionic valves. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.
…and I thus worked out how to record through the microphone. A non-trivial matter on a Grundig TK-35 I can tell you.
Mummy never let me live this down. A well-known bearer of minor long-term grudges was my mum…and boy did this grudge come back to haunt me for the rest of her life.
For a start, precious tapes, which meant those that mum (and to some extent dad) treasured were kept in a drawer in the living room cabinet that was out of bounds to me until I was much, much older.
But more importantly, subsequent minor infringements of various kinds (and there were many) were often “bigged up” with reference to the tape desecration incident, e.g.:
“you’ve never paid due respect to my property…do you remember that time you completely ruined my tape?”
Well, of course I did and do remember the incident in the sense that I was regularly reminded of it. But I was very small when the incident occurred and have no recollection of the actual playful episode, in which, presumably, I was showing off to a friend or friends and we played with the equipment for a while…
…two-and-a-half minutes or so to be a little more precise.
All the evidence suggests that there was actus reus for the criminal damage to Mummy’s Tape, but in truth I cannot believe that there was an ounce of mens rea for desecration. I doubt if I had even understood, by that stage, the difference between a blank tape and one that had recordings on it which might, if someone surreptitiously recorded on that tape while no-one was looking, would be permanently interrupted with inappropriate material, for the rest of all time.
Indeed, there is evidence that I took pains to avoid recording over anything – there is about 40 seconds of blank space between the previous recording on the tape and the start of my childish recording – so I guess I did have a careful listen to make sure that I was recording on blank tape, not over-recording anything.
At this juncture readers, especially younger people, might wonder what on earth all the fuss was about. Suffice it to say that editing tapes was an even less trivial matter than recording them in those days, which is why most amateur recordings of that era are diffuse with blips and occasionally lengthy intervals of inappropriate material.
I guess mummy carried on recording her tape and only discovered my childish interruption later, by which time it was, in her terms, too late to rectify the problem.
She could, of course, have recorded any material of her own choosing between two-and-a-half minutes and three-and-a-quarter minutes over the space and my material to reinstate her tape as a continuous one of her preferred music…
…but it was far easier and more fitting, instead, to kvetch or broyges for several decades.
I don’t like to point the finger at anyone else in this sorry tale, but something tells me that Andy Levinson might also have been at the scene of the crime at the time; possibly Fiona also. But only I have suffered a lifetime of guilt and shame as a result of two-and-a-half minutes worth of seemingly harmless, childish fun.
Not bad technical skills on the tape recorder at the age of four though – eh readers? This is, unquestionably, my oldest surviving self-made recording; quite possibly the very first one I ever made.
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.
This is a supremely cute little home movie, including “an outbreak of” kissing and eventually “an outbreak of” squabbling. Not quite a Tarrantino ending but…
…I certainly sense Dad’s cinematographic machinations all over this piece – good on him.
It was filmed at our house.
I’m no expert on children’s ages, but although mum and dad guessed summer of 1967 (making me and Andrew about 5 and Fiona about 4), from reviewing other materials (photos and cine), I think this one might be a year earlier, 1966, with me and Andrew around 4 and Fiona 3.
There are very few dates from the early part of my life for which I can write a dated Ogblog piece.
But family folklore, even from a virtually-sports-free household like my parents’ home, kept the memory of this day alive for me.
My parents had been invited to a “watch the final party” in the street – Woodfield Avenue in Streatham. I suspect it was at the house with the biggest TV and my guess is that would have been the Benjamins at No 36 or the Levinsons at No 42; probably the former.
Goodness only knows what the other parents did with their children, but the party was to be an adults only affair and mum wanted our cleaner, Mrs Nugent, aka Nunu, to babysit for me.
Strangely, Nunu and her family also wanted to watch the final, but they were willing (possibly even keen) to have a toddler – me – with them. So basically I was bundled off to Nunu’s house. I think it was in Tooting.
For reasons that I am unable to fathom, it seems that my hosts, the Nugent family, were not interested in making a fuss of me to their usual level. I tolerated this for a while, but towards the end of the second half of the match I started to seek more Nugent attention than was forthcoming.
I don’t think Ted Nugent was among them, but I might be mistaken
Mr Nugent, perhaps unwisely with the benefit of hindsight, told me that the match would be over any minute and that we would soon indulge in activity more to my taste. At that point everyone was in a good mood. England were leading 2-1.
They thought it was all over…
…but unfortunately for me and for the Nugent family, an inconsiderate West German (named Wolfgang Webber, I now learn) scored a 90th minute goal, levelling the match.
So when someone from the Nugent family broke it to me that the match was not in fact over as scheduled but that there was to be a further 30 minutes of play, to which they wanted to devote their almost undivided attention…
…I am told this did not go down too well with me.
And quite right too. Why can’t these idiots conclude their football matches on time as promised? Daft sport.
Anyway, the rest is history. An hour or so later all was smiles, celebrations and cup presentations.
I never really did reconcile myself with soccer football after that.
But the strange thing is, my preferred sports, cricket and tennis, tend to have matches that last much longer than soccer matches, with score-related, i.e. temporally-indeterminate breaks and endings.
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.
My mum kept certain things and threw lots of things away. Two artefacts from an event at Nightingale survived the sands of time and mum’s occasional “mad-on” clear-outs across the decades.
The above clipping from the Jewish Chronicle is dated 27 May 1966.
Children of the Yavneh Jewish Kindergarten [based at Brixton Shule], presenting fruits for Shavuot at the Home For Aged Jews, Wandsworth [now named Nightingale House]
What a wonderful way to entrench the Jewish festival of Shavuot into the hearts and minds of the little children. Except, that, as history showed 50+ years later, it didn’t work on me and at least one other of the attendees:
The document below provides more detail about the event, which was presumably held a few days before the date of the newspaper notice:
A better quality picture, clearly from the same event. But Reuben Turner’s note hopes that people “will enjoy the play”. My guess is that he used a picture from the Shavuot event in his promotion letter for a play that was put on some days or weeks later.
I can only wonder at what the play might have been – perhaps a depiction of the traditional Shavuot story – The Book of Ruth.
Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab. William Blake, actually. Not Reubens…and not Turner
But in any case, what a cast!
The picture with Mr Turner’s letter has survived better, enabling me to identify several of the youngsters. I cannot name the adults in the picture – I’d hazard a guess that the man is Reuben Turner. The picture of the woman looks disconcertingly like my dad in drag, but I don’t think that was the case.
I am pretty sure I can name several of the kids, working from right to left…
…oy, so I must have learnt something at Yavneh…
Sara Monty [fairly sure] (standing);
Me (standing);
Sandra Corbman (sitting);
Maxine [Camlish?] (sitting);
Eve Cedar (standing);
Boy I cannot name (standing);
Girl I cannot name (sitting);
Jonathan Davies (standing);
Girl I cannot name (sitting);
Girl I cannot name (standing);
Jonathan Gold [fairly sure] (sitting);
Half a girl I can barely see, let alone name (standing).
Any help that a reader might offer to help fill in the gaps and/or pass this relic on to those who were in it would be much appreciated.
If anyone out there remembers anything at all about the show, I’d love to know. But it might well be that my love of theatre started there, 58 years ago as I write in 2024.
“My First Girlfriend”
I have very little recollection of my time at Yavneh Kindergarten, other than an impressionistic sense that I was happy there most of the time and that the experience did its job of preparing me to start school that autumn.
My only tangible memory is one that has been handed down to me by my mum, who used to take great pleasure in relating the following story in circumstances that might cause me maximum embarrassment.
One day, when my father asked me, as oft he would, to “report on the events of the day at Kindergarten”, I proudly announced:
I’ve got a girlfriend. She’s called Sandra.
When asked for more detail about my girlfriend, I stated that:
…we roll in the barrel together.
Whether my parents were able to keep a straight face at the time, and if so, how, I’ll never know.
As it happens, Sandra and I never did go out with one another, but we spent a fair chunk of our youth together through BBYO in Streatham and are still very much in touch to this day. Indeed Sandra was one of the Shavuot avoiders at our 2017 regathering and I expect to see her at the 2024 regathering about 10 days after this piece is published…
…if she is still speaking to me by then!
Update: Sandra Responds…
Brilliant stuff Ian. I also have some memories of being happy there but unfortunately I don’t remember the barrel.
I know that my parents had especially fond memories of this holiday. They had a few holidays overseas together before I was born; this was the first of those.
The photo album is dated October 1958 but dad says on an early part of the Standard 8mm film that it is early November, so I guess the holiday spanned the timeframe set out in the headline.
No doubt they enjoyed their third wedding anniversary on this holiday – [insert your own joke along the lines of “000-errr, leather wedding anniversary” here]. I am posting this on 6 November 2022, which would have been their 67th wedding anniversary, which is quite a number with which to conjure. Star sapphire, apparently.
But I digress
Anyway…
…dad’s 8mm film of that holiday is probably his masterpiece in the matter of such holiday films. It has a full soundtrack with dad’s (Peter’s) voice transferred from the original standard 8 film. It includes many scenes from the Côte d’Azur, including Menton, Nice and Cannes. Also a trip to Grasse.
One highlight is dad (Peter) lighting a cigarette using just a magnifying glass. Another highlight is mum (Renée) showing off her legs. But the real highlight is at the end, where you see their car being driven onto the air ferry – there was a brief period when ferrying your car to France by air was the fashionable way to go! Here and below is a link to that classic vid:
As a child, I loved looking through our holiday pictures and films, including my parents ones from before I was born. The video of this one was my personal favourite.
A week or so later John messaged me to say that he and Pippa had uncovered a third reel, which was emblazoned with the mysterious words:
Proof. Do not erase.
Actually I guessed that this would probably turn out to be a recording of their parents’ wedding, as John had told me when we were going through the first batch that Pippa was half-exoecting to hear a recording of their parents’ wedding, as she remembered the folks telling her that such a recording existed.
Anyway, in early February 2020 John brought the mystery third spool round to Clanricarde Gardens and my trusty Sony TC377 (combined with the computer) did the rest.
The recording runs to just under 35 minutes and is surely a rare and wonderful relic for the White family to have.
