Sheila Monincx, née Bush, account of her early life in Winchester Road (off Honeypot Lane), Queensbury, Middlesex, UK during the '40s.
2007
Sheila Monincx, née Bush, account of her early life in Winchester Road
(off Honeypot Lane), Queensbury, Middlesex, UK during the '40s.
2007
I was born in 1935.
The reason I now have a strange surname is that I married a Dutchman, Johannes Monincx - AKA Joe. We have two children, a son and daughter and four grandkids.
Joe has a passion for clocks. We run a business from our home in the small village of St. George (west Ontario), making clocks with wooden gears (all Joe's invention) and selling them all over the world. We are linked to an American who has made our web-site: www.woodenclockworks.com for us.
The Americans supplied Glebe School with cocoa chocolate powder so we all took tins with us to school to get some.
Also I brought home khaki wool for my Mum to knit long scarves for our soldiers.
1943 was the worst blitz year… looked like we were losing.
I remember sitting at my desk and looking up at the date on the blackboard: "1943".
We all knew how large Germany was. Our teacher tried to cheer us up by saying, "It's brains that will win this.
Not brawn".
… I remember the Anderson shelter being full of water when the siren went …
sky full of barrage balloons and search lights criss-crossing each other every night outside my bedroom window
… I saw a plane coming down spinning leaving black smoke behind it. I hoped it was one of theirs - awful thing to say, I know.
One German came down in Hyde Park. Six housewives sat on him and yelled, "You want England?
Well, here it is. Eat it!" and stuffed mud in his mouth, … a little girl running down the street sobbing with a huge piece of glass embedded in her hand.
Sorry, these memories just won't go away.
Tons more - like going round to Kingsbury and just seeing the pink and white square tiles on the floor where Woolworth's once stood. You'd expect to see pots and pans etc lying about, wouldn't you? But not a thing was there.
The only photo I have from Glebe Primary School is that small head-and-shoulders of me. All the children in the 'Victory Party' picture went there too.
I remember once, my Dad talking about when he bought his motor bike around 1929, and when he stopped outside a pub,
the village yokels were sitting along a bench outside.
They were asking each other, in amazement, how on earth it managed to stay up, balanced like that on two wheels.
First time they had seen one. My goodness - times have changed rapidly, haven't they? |
Those were hectic years, 1940-1945. Trying on those gas masks in a class room which was set aside especially to fit us all out with them, was the one day I clearly remember. Mickey mouse ones for the little kids. I can still remember that smell of rubber putting them on - so tightly fitted, really tight. Most of the little children hated them and cried loudly. They were in a cardboard box with a string attached which enabled us to carry them over our shoulders. They were very heavy for little kids of 6 and 7 years. We had to have them with us every day, at all times.
Some additions by Sheila's sister, Barbara Buiel (from the 'Route 79' forum): My name used to be Barbara Bush. I used to go to Glebe School and then Orange Hill Girl’s Grammar school. I was quite a tomboy. I think that was just an excuse to hang out with the boys in my class! When I was 11 and went to Grammar School I missed my old school chums. I left there when I was 14 ... got on the RMS Samaria and got off in Quebec City. I often dream that I am back in 62 Winchester Road and living there! Did you know that Mollison Way used to be an airstrip where English aviatrix Amy Johnson took off for Australia? Her married name was Mollison. We were bombed-out twice.
The Air Ministry was happy to discover that, what is now called Queensbury Park, looked like an airstrip from the air.
It had been a sewage farm and a concrete trough ran down the length of it in the middle.
After the war it was turned into allotments. One of the bombs that landed there exploded on a Sunday.
No air-raid warning! My Dad was in the hallway at 62 Winchester Rd.
A piece of schrapnel came through knocking out the front door, glanced by my Dad
and cut his neck, then took out the kitchen door. My mother was bending
down putting a highly prized chicken into the oven in a pyrex glass dish, and luckily both doors missed her!
The dish cascaded to the floor and the chicken was full of glass shards and was thrown away later!
Then the two doors took out the back door. The Anderson shelter was used extensively. My parents tired of having to get up in the middle of the night when the alert went off so we all hit the sack at around 6 p.m. in the Anderson shelter. Mum used to read us the 'Just William' stories by Richmal Crompton. Candle-light accentuated the long hairy legs of the intruding spiders; I can still smell the damp concrete and hear the sound of the enamel potty my Mum used to bail out the water when it rained. |
In about 1943 - behind Winchester Road there was a field where people had allotments. They grew food like cabbages etc. Well, down the middle of these allotments was a long, wide, white cement path.
Those stupid Germans thought it was an airfield so they blitzed it.
It took off our roof; the front door went flying past my Dad, hitting him on the shoulder.
Mum was about to pluck feathers off a chicken someone had given to us,
and what was so funny, was that chicken got plucked alright - there were feathers everywhere.
Mum went up stairs, looked up and saw the stars twinkling - roof completely gone.
My sister was in a cot and there was a brick just beside her head.
We had to be evacuated for a year whilst our house was getting a fast first-aid re-build job done. We went with another family, Mrs. Irish with her children Gladys, Leslie and Hilda, from up the road. We all stayed in a country cottage in Frome.
Leslie was such a 'naughty' boy.
He tied a long string to the out-house toilet seat and passed it though a hole in the wooden door, waited til his little
sister Hilda went in and gave it a mighty yank! Well the screams that rent the air.
He got a good walloping for doing that.
Then he ate a lot of green apples one night which he had smuggled up and hid under his bed. He started moaning and groaning. When his mother came in and found the apples he got another good old walloping.
Mum was pregnant with my baby sister. If you were pregnant you got a green ration book so you didn't have to wait at the end of a queue. She told me to take it round to Dewhurst the Butcher at Queensbury Circle and use it for meat. Well, I thought this was great. I went right to the front of the queue, not realizing you could only use this book if you were in that condition. The women that were lining-up thought this was so funny, they roared with laughter especially when I looked at them so indignantly. The butcher served me right away with a roar of laughter too. I thought everyone must be laughing at something. Then, when we did get eggs, I was pushing my sister Pam around in a pram… walked for miles, all the way through Canons Park, up to Stanmore and back down Honeypot Lane and noticed that one of the eggs was cracked. I went back to the butchers and asked him if he would kindly exchange it for a new one. But he wouldn't do that. Huh!
My first date was when I was 8 yrs old with Tony Dolton.
He went to Glebe School too and lived down Shrewsbury Ave.
He called round for me on Saturday morning, all dressed up spick-and-span and we went to the cinema at Kenton.
Wish I knew what that cinema was called … Odeon? … Paramount?
Well anyway, we got in for one shilling each.
The place was packed with children … there was a bouncing ball that would go over the words for us to sing along with the tunes.
Saturday morning 'flicks' continued to be an 'institution' right up until domestic televisions became ubiquitous in the late '50s.
Kids from the locality would be fed a two-hour diet that comprised cartoons followed by
a cliff-hanger serial, then a cowboy or swashbuckling or 'space' adventure film.
The proceedings at Edgware's Ritz began with: "We are the boys and girls well known as - minors of the
ABC … " sing-along [including bouncing-ball], accompanied by the formidable (3-manual, 6-rank Compton) organ.
Our weekly visit would inevitably conclude with the obligatory ogle at neighbouring Cresta's (Models and Toys) shop window.
Cinema chains probably consided it their civic-duty to facilitate a few unfettered hours for parents at week-ends. - CP.
When someone had a birthday party up the street all the mothers would help with the food - little knobs of butter, etc. - bits left in jam jars for sandwiches. We kept rabbits for food. One day I came home from school and saw the cage open and 'Frisky', the name I called my rabbit, gone. Mum said he must have got lost. I looked for him next door at the Reese's who were away. The grass had grown tall. I looked in-vain… we had eaten him in a stew. Mum told us it was lamb stew.
Macaroni with blackcurrant puree that when mixed turned a frightful purple color we often had to eat… Never had an egg for 6 months. TRUE!!!!
There were two girls at school that were real bullies, (I won't say their names, it might upset them to read it - if they're still alive).
They would often make little kids cry. They made my sister, Barbara, who is 3 years younger than me, cry too.
Well that did it. My friend Mavis Trout and I thought something should be done.
We were only 9 years old at that time.
We thought we'd better get a few kids together to show her what it was like, being bullied. I had a plan.
Mavis was my lieutenant, I was captain. "We want to join, too" said
a couple of them. "You can, if you bring one more with you and that one has to bring another one", I said.
Well in no time at all we had lots of kids all lined up against the fence.
Suddenly, I saw that miserable pair walking across the playground.
"There they are. Go and get them". I commanded.
Suddenly they all charged and I will never forget seeing that one bully taking flight with her 2 plaits sticking out at the back.
But she thought she would be safe. She ran to the dug-out air raid shelters which were forbidden for anyone to go and play there.
Well, my 'army' didn't give one hoot about that and charged after her.
I happened to glance up to one of the windows of the second floor … never forget seeing Mr. Bishop with his glasses on, staring out at this spectacle.
Next morning the school was all gathered in the Hall ('auditorium' it's now called)… All the children sat cross-legged in rows on the floor.
The teachers wanted to get to the bottom of this.
One kid yelled out. "It's Sheila Bush, she has a gang".
"Stand up, Sheila Bush". All heads turned around and they looked at me. "Who knows Sheila Bush has a gang?". Well a sea of hands shot up. (What a lot of ungrateful traitors I thought).
Miss Brown called me to her desk when we got back into the class room … telling me I shouldn't have a gang. I said I never had a gang.
So then she went on-and-on about well if it isn't a gang you could call it something nicer like a tribe or a club. (… Yawn).
P.S. Years later, after I went to work at Harrow, I was on a double-decker bus near the back where the seats face each other. Sitting opposite to me was that bully. Gone were the plaits. She had a pretty, curly hair-do. We looked at each other. Then suddenly we both gave each other a slow smile. Neither spoke a word. Memories of that 'to-do' were in both our minds. She got off at the stop before I did and gave me such a mischievous smile. Funny, isn't it.
Sheila's black and white photo album - including a few photos from Chandos School and school trips away.
Feuds between Malvern etc.: poor people from the slums in London were given houses in Malvern. Their living was different to ours in Winchester Road.
They swore a blue streak, they tossed pots and old kettles over the fence … the kids had fleas and worms … the men went out in just their vests
- which was never the thing to do in those days - so henceforth the fights between all the kids.
During the blitz clothes and fabrics of any kind were rationed. Before Kleenex was invented kids used handkerchiefs. My sister would gather-up the ones dropped in the playground so my mum could boil them up in the boiler using a large wooden stick to stir them round with steam rising everywhere.
Girl Guides had a two-week holiday camping at Black Boys Farm in Sussex. We stayed in bell tents that soldiers used to have.
We took a blanket with lots of large safety pins and went to the farm, pinned the edges of the blankets and then stuffed them with straw. Amazingly, this was very comfy to sleep on.
We each peeled one spud so no one had to do all of them. We learned to lash three twigs together with string to make a tri-pod
to sit the basins on for washing (in cold water). We dug our own latrines. We had this glorious holiday on a shoe-string.
I'd like to see people do this now. Can you just imagine all the moans and complaints? Look how they go camping now.
I wonder if you remember (or knew) about the miniature railway train that was in a field just off the Kenton Road? For a couple of pennies the kids could go and sit on little 'carriages' and be pulled along on the rails that were about 3 feet off the ground. It went chugging along for quite a way.
I left secondary school, Chandos, Thistlecroft Gardens, at the end of 1950.
On January 2nd 1951 I went up to Old Street in London to train as a telephone 'operator' and that was when London was 'manual'.
No one had dials on their phones then. We had to physically connect every call that was made.
Then I was transferred to an exchange called 'Corinthia' at Wembley.
Then I went to Pinner. I then worked the switchboard at Spiral Tube, a company on the top of Honeypot Lane - opposite a road called 'Broadway' I think it was, the road that went to Chandos School.
Then we all left to go to Canada in April 29th 1953 and sailed on a ship called the RMS Samaria. Landed May 8th.
We had sold our house, 61 Winchester Road and took with us 14 large suitcases and 2 kit bags (- and my violin).
Just thought about that first TV we had just before we left England.
It was a 9 inch and had a magnifying bubble on the front screen to make the picture look larger.
But if you weren't sitting straight in front of it, the picture would look distorted.
So my little sister would sit cross-legged in the front of it and we would all be sitting in a row behind the other.
(You know - I'm having a good laugh thinking about all this).
Brantford is the telephone city where the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. I got a job there at the Bell Telephone Company after 4 days in Canada.
Brantford is where we lived and it's just a 10 minute drive away from where I live now. I worked there til I got married in 1963.
You know what's so funny? - I still have my English accent and when people ask me how long I have been here,
I tell them "since 1953" and they look flabbergasted.
They think I have just stepped off the plane.
I have often wondered if anyone from Chandos ever emigrated to Canada.
A lot came here in the late 40's and early 1950's.
Just think … there could be people I used to know living not far from me and I don't know it.
I have to admit, I am still (after all these years) homesick for seasides and country lanes etc.
August, 2007
