Memories from old Portslade

By Nicola Benge

Tom and others at the Brighton Pavillion tea rooms

Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus Archive

TOM KING'S REMINISCENCES

I was born on Boxing Day 1927, the oldest of three... two brothers and one sister, we were. My sister was four years younger than me.

Oh yes, I was good at playing the piano... I had lessons when I was a boy, with several different teachers. One lived in St Andrew's Road, Portslade, one in St Leonard's Road, and then one woman in Brighton. I remember she had stubby little fingers, but I remember her playing Greig's Concerto. Wonderful. From the age of 7 to 11, I had another woman, a middle aged woman, and she told me I was good enough to become a concert pianist if I worked hard. But I had to give it up, as my mother couldn't afford the lessons any more after that.

We had a piano indoors, when I was a boy. The neighbours used to hear me playing. I think they liked it.

Mum and Dad always had a lodger. They never ever owned their own house... the rent money helped them pay their own rent I suppose. Dad's money was low.

My Mum was very highly strung. She wasn't well much of the time.
But when she was working, Mum used to do dressmaking. She made dresses for people.

My Dad had a greengrocer's business. A barrow. He used to have that in Crown Road, where the flint walls still are. We used to go up to Steyning to get fruit and apples, and so on. He was doing very well.

But then one day two men came up and persuaded my Dad to put money on the horses. He soon got into debt, and the business suffered. He stopped doing it then. He went labouring at the gasworks after that.

I remember, at home, I did all the donkeywork round the house because Mum was sick much of the time. I did the housework and the shopping before I went to school. I was up at six, down to the shops every day.

One of my brothers was very clever... he ended up going to university. The other was a right one! He used to sleep in the bread carts, started playing truant from school. Dad used to give him what for though... and that brother ended up in the Navy at 17.

My sister became a top Windmill star. She went off to Sadler's Wells and studied to become a ballerina. I remember I used to pick her up from Portslade Station at 12.00, and bring her home... I used to watch her taking her makeup off before she went to bed. Then she got digs in London in the end, and then she quit doing that job when she got married.

I used to go to school at the top of South Street. St Nicholas' School. It was all uphill going to that school, I remember that!

I was never really bothered much about school.

When I was about seven years old, I went shrimping in the canal, with my little brother. We took tins with holes in them, on string. Suddenly my brother pushed me into the canal. Funny... I saw masses of shrimps under the water, and I hadn't caught a single one in that tin.
I hung on to a rowing boat. Luckily, there was a rowing boar ferry coming over from the gasworks, with two lady passengers. The ferryman was a big man in a boiler suit. He jumped in to rescue me, pulled me out onto his boat.

But that experience led to me having a rheumatic heart. The doctor said "When you are fourteen you'll grow out of it." But every year, I used to have to spend months in hospital. Sometimes six months. Sometimes, I was so ill over the winter I used to get given my Christmas presents at Easter! There were some tragic moments back then.

But the doctor was right. The thing lasted until I was fourteen.

When I reached that age, I also started working. First of all I got a job at the Southdown Bus Company in Victoria Road, Portslade, working in the depot, dismantling and assembling engine parts... pistons, cylinder heads, grinding valves. I worked there for four years until I was called up to the RAF at eighteen. That broke my apprenticeship, unfortunately.

With the RAF I went up north... this was 1946, and the war was finished by then... Then I was sent to Sudbury, to a square bashing and assault course place. It wasn't very pleasant... you had to do this assault course wearing and carrying all your kit and so on. I remember we had to jump off an eleven foot high wall, I was OK

From there I went to the Isle of Man, to Jerby Airport... they had this initiation ceremony, where buckets of cold water were chucked all over you!

There were moments... one night I missed the bus back to the base due to dallying with a lady friend, and I had to walk back...right round the whole island, all twenty five miles of it. Someone directed me through this chicken run in a field... "Your camp's over there," he said. I did it! Crept into bed one hour before reveille. I was really tired... then before I knew it I had to jump to it quick!

The Manx were funny, I thought. They still had horse-drawn buses in Douglas. It's a pretty island though; there were steamers everywhere in the sea in those days. To get to the place you had a crossing by steamer and most people were really sick. I was OK though. I think it was only once I was ill, and that was when we'd gone on shore.

Then I was posted to Germany, to Berlin. I remember travelling through Holland to get there, and being struck by the flat land, and so many ships... all that water everywhere.

Even thought the war was finished, you can't stop men fighting each other. The green berets used to fight one another all the time! Our barracks out there were fine. WE all had rooms, and women to 'do' for us. I remember we had a nice middle-aged lady with spectacles.

I worked on maintenance, and filling planes with petrol, and charging batteries for the two stroke engines that plugged in under the fuselage... we did that when the pilots were in the cockpit.

We also had one or two very old planes...People used to come in from Brussels in Mosquitos and Dakotas, and Wellington Bombers. The Mosquitos were extraordinarily light. Made of balsa wood and plywood, mostly. There was one occasion the pilot couldn't brake ... he was taking off, swerved and the whole plane just broke in half!

I went up in a Dakota once, with a test pilot. A nice, steady plane. One rotary engine stalled. We had no parachutes. Luckily, the pilot managed to get the plane down safely on one engine, but that was a dodgy few moments!

The highest I ever went was 19000 feet, it was above the clouds and it was lovely.

One evening we went out. I didn't drink much; I had one or two and was just merry. We were on the Berlin road... a road that is really wide, with traffic thundering up and down. There was a grass verge at the side with tram rails buried in the grass. I wasn't looking where I was going, walking along on the verge, whistling and looking up. I turned, and right behind me was a tram. I saw the driver's face, I was that close. It knocked me down then went right over me. There was a duckboard at the end of the tram that would have really chewed me up if it had hit me. He stopped, thankfully. An American jeep cam along and they pulled me out between the wheels of the tram, and I collapsed then. I'd had damaged my spine. L1 and L2 were compressed and damaged. The Americans took me to hospital, where I was for five months.

There was no special treatment in those days. I was just laid on pillows. I was nineteen. When it started to heal, a lady doctor gave me strengthening exercises for the back, arching and that sort of thing.

When I came out, I was transferred to a convalescent home on the Baltic coast. It was snowing, and very cold! One of the first things they did was say, "Right, into your shorts and vest, you've got to run round the streets..."

I was passed out A1, but I was left with some side effects of that accident, mentally.

I was demobbed in 1948, from RAF Tangmere, where I was working on the jets... but I wasn't really settled in my mind.

I came home to Portslade, and lived in Farway Crescent. I needed to sort myself out and get work. I got a letter from the Southdown Bus Company, where I'd worked before being called up. He wanted to know would I go back and finish my apprenticeship. But I wasn't interested. I did work for Hoover, doing metal polishing. Then, down to the bottom of South Street where there was a small factory, working on deep sea diving stuff, engines for special boats and so on. They brought up engines from the sea bed, and we had to clean them up and refurbish them/ I didn't last long there... about six months I suppose.

Then I went to somewhere on the other side of the Goldstone, doing chrome production. Radiators. It was a dirty job, that one. I wore aprons and goggles. It was horrible. Then to the leather factory, handing up the skins on a figure eight machine that stretched them out.  The lad that worked next to me lost his finger in that machine. That didn't cheer me up much.

Finally, years later, I went to Abex Dennison, working on hydraulic pumps and valves for mines, gearboxes and so on. That was based in Burgess Hill. In winter, I used to get the coach up there from Bentham Way, and often the other side of the hills was all snowy. It was a hell of a job to get over Ditchling Beacon sometimes. Sometimes we were diverted... we always carried shovels, just in case.

One day we were in an old coach going up a snaky hill near Devil's Dyke. We were going really slowly up that hill, and suddenly the coach stalled and there was a noise and the whole engine just fell out onto the road. We had to walk home. In the end they put newer coaches on for the journey to and from work.

Anyway. I ended up going to London for a while. I had to do a bunk from my first wife, sadly. There was something wrong with her... she could be quite dangerous, scratching and everything. In the end, I divorced her, and she was locked up in the mental hospital in Hayward's Heath. She was a very attractive woman... dark, Spanish looking. When I first did a bunk, she phoned me. At the time I was working for an optical firm, polishing lenses. They sent me to Scotland for eight weeks to help... I had solicitors taking up the case for me.

I remember up in Scotland, playing the piano for a New Year's Eve party... I played all night... knackering! I even had blisters on my fingers after that night... amazing really.

When I came back to Sussex, I started playing the piano in pubs and so on, to earn a bit of extra money to pay for the courts. I was on Legal Aid but still there were so many bills to pay. It took a year to get the divorce through.

I have children from that marriage. I did give the marriage a good go. But when the marriage broke up, so did the family. My son, Graham, took after his mother a little, and he had to go into care. One daughter Lorraine Rosita had died of cervical cancer now, but she married twice. She was a bit of a mystery... I saw her once or twice, but then she disappeared, met a postman and just vanished. Then there was another daughter, Lesley, born when I was away.

I have a grand daughter, and she had a baby at sixteen. The father left her and she now has another by someone else.

Anyway...after a while I met an older lady; she was Irish, from Belfast, called Sarah Isabel Brown. And she was the right one for me. I couldn't have picked a better person. We were together, happily married, for thirty three years. But sadly, she was too old to have children.

But when I was in London, I was also working for the optical company... polishing lenses. We used the same material as policemen's uniforms were made of to polish. Funny that. And I was playing the piano in the pubs and clubs to earn a bit extra.

I remember one occasion... I was playing the Warsaw Concerto... I used to play it from memory... it was always good for a good clap. And an American woman, a blonde, came in, and she was sitting at a table on her won, and smiling at me, enjoying the music. I finished, and got a good clap and a couple of free drinks. Then this tall fellow came in to the pub, in a trilby hat, and he sat with this American woman.

When it was time to go home, I put the lid of the piano down and the woman came over

"I enjoyed your playing," she said.

"Thanks."

"Where are you going now?" she said.

"Home."

"Why don't you come with me?" she said.

Then the man in the trilby came up...

"You're not taking her home," he said and punched me straight in the face! I was flat out on the floor.

Well, the pub blokes held him down, the woman caught hold of my hand and we ran out. Down alleys and across gardens we went. We just couldn't work it out... he managed to follow us. We ducked down in a garden and kept quiet, and we heard him walk away. We came out of that alley, and would you believe it, he was there, and saw us!

In the end we chatted for a while, and she resolved the situation. He just had to accept that she was doing exactly what she wanted and he couldn't stop her, and in the end he went away.

We ended up in someone's garden, that American woman and I... somewhere near her home, I think it was. And we...I reckon we must have squashed a few flowers at any rate!

She asked me to go back to America with her. Wanted me to go over there to play the piano... but I said no.

I reckon I missed a chance there...

***

I met my second wife when she was up a ladder in a shop! In LaystalSt, near Mount Pleasant it was. She had big blue eyes, lots of wiry hear. She was strong and healthy. She was very clever with figures. She worked for Woolworths in Holloway Road, and somewhere else too.

I remember one woman got jealous of me being with Sarah and threatened her with a knife... we got over that one when I told her straight out how I felt about my lady.

We got married in 1962, and came down to Brighton to live with my mother for two years. In 1964 I started my last job, working in Burgess Hill. I was there for eighteen years.

I was made redundant at fifty five. I was given a good reference but told I was too old to work. I got an appointment though, at Boundary Road Job Centre.

I went along for my appointment at 10.00 am. There was a woman with a green book under her arm...

"Follow me, Mr King," she said.

We went out of a door, through another, up flights of stairs right to the top of the building.

"Right," she said. "Sit down." Then she told me that there were no jobs for me because of my age.

Still, I had my redundancy money. I had three thousand pounds, in a lump sum. I have never wanted to be in debt. HP was always paid up regularly, and the rent. I didn't want my wife to go without.

But my savings were drained. I spent lots of money on my wife... she is fifteen years older than me, and she had retired herself before this. She was crafty, though. At 62 she called the office to say her pension was due... she had already taken two years over where she was meant to retire. So she ended up with a good full pension.

I couldn't play the piano at home any more, as we lived in a flat. But I found pianos in pubs and places like that, used to play a bit now and again. But they threw out the old pianos when juke boxes came in, didn't they?
Now, there's not really anywhere to play, not in ordinary pubs. I have played for one or two parties mind.

I am sorry I gave up the piano. It was a gift.