Open Writing

We called her Nanna, but her name was Martha Harris. She had lost her husband Bert when he died of throat cancer, possibly the result of his job. He was a painter and decorator and once worked high up on scaffolding, cleaning, plastering and painting the ceiling of a local theatre. When her girls, Flo, Kit and Alice were growing up, she took in washing, and the girls would take it back on a small handcart to her customers.

Often, with not much money to spend, she would tell the girls ‘you’ve only got soused herring and bread pudding for dinner’, not realising what healthy food she was giving them with the dried fruit in the pudding and an ‘oily’ fish which these days we are always being told to include in our diet.

In the 1920s and 1930s Nanna Harris lived in Aunt Alice’s second-floor flat in Crouch Hill. Her bedroom at the back had an iron bedstead with a white quilt. She always made sure her bed was made before she went out.

Above her sideboard were two large photos of her daughters, Eileen’s Mum Kitty, who married Fred Coan, and Alice, who had married Charlie Acome. Both men had been in the Army infantry in WW1. Charlie had been a pipe-case maker, but after coming home from France was soon short of work. He ended up working as a road man for the Council.

In her back room Nanna had a carpet chair beside the fireplace, and a small footstool nearby. On a small table in the centre of her room there was a large aspidistra and many family photos. Outside on the windowsill were pots of geranium, which were brought in over the winter. She once sang to me one of her favourite Music Hall songs – Kate Carney’s ‘Three Pots a Shilling’. It was too bad she didn’t have a garden.

She always wore black stockings and carpet slippers, and black bar shoes when she went out. She wore the inevitable black dress, lightened up with a small lace collar and a slim silver brooch with one small stone at the neck line.

She did her thin hair in a bun at the back of her head and had a wispy fringe that she put into metal curlers each night. She had lost all her teeth.

This was before the N.H.S. (National Health Service) came into being in 1948.

There was no Old Age Pension so she earned herself a little money by helping out with cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing at a Jewish house in Muswell Hill.

Sometimes she would bring home a basin of meat dripping or the remains of a joint.

Small things I remember, for example, how she always made gravy with Bovril - no Bisto for her - and at tea times would sprinkle sugar on her sliced tomatoes. At bedtime she liked Ovaltine and an Osborne or rich tea biscuit.

Several times a month she visited us in Islington, coming by bus from Finsbury Park

In fine weather on Sundays she would take a bus to Waterlow Park at the top of Highgate Hill, to listen to the band, and as long as she was able she went on Saturday nights to the Finsbury Park Empire to the music hall, and the Christmas pantomime.

Once for a special surprise for us children at Christmas tea time she had helped her daughter Alice to wrap up little gifts to put into a big pie made from a cardboard box and crepe paper. Each gift was hidden under the paper ‘crust’ and had a string attached. The children had to choose a string and at the shout of ‘Go’ pull hard so that the paper pie burst open and they each had a present.

The next year Aunty Alice and Uncle Charlie had the idea of making a cardboard airplane full of presents, which burst out from beneath when the strings were pulled.

In later years, in July 1945 when I was married from Mum and Dad’s house in Tiverton Road, Queensbury, Nanna arrived at St.Lawrence church, Canons Park, in a cab on her own, determined not to miss out on my wedding.

After all, she had helped Kit to bring me into the world when I was born.