Brixham and the Perfect 1950's Childhood

Brixham is a traditional fishing village in Torbay. South Devon and 40 years ago was fairly unspoilt and the perfect place to spend one's schools holiday.

The first time I saw Brixham was in at Easter in 1954. My two maiden aunts Flo and Jo Thorpe had bought a small  gift shop which they named Variety Fayre in Middle Street, Brixham. It was love at first sight.  Originally the shop had been a typical Fisherman's cottage hewn out of the rock with a brick frontage, which was actually falling down and inside was a rickety staircase which led to three floors.

It was the place itself that I fell in love with. It was so different from the semi detached streets of Stanmore. It was wild and romantic.

Across the road was the William of Orange Pub which date back to the 17th Century and in which King William of Orange spent his first night on  English shore in 1688. A statue of the King, with the usual seagull on his head, graced the harbour. Middle Street had just enough room for one car and and one could almost touch the butcher's. When it rained the water ran down the street. This historic building was unceremoniously pulled down in favour of a road to ease the traffic flow. It took a season and cost a fortune and on the first day of the road opening cars parked on it this narrowing the road again. It was the most expensive car park ever and took years to receive a no parking zone. What a cultural crime.

Brixham in those days was a working harbour with the daily fish market and the smell of fish a few yards away. It was fun to watch the fish being hauled ashore and hear the auctioneer's prattle.  The harbour was full of trawlers and sea gulls. Brixham seagulls are garrulous and noisy.

The little town was built layer upon layer into the cliff. The church had the only clarion of bells in England that played a tune. "Abide with Me" was struck out at 6 pm every night to honour the fact that this most famous of hymns was written by the local vicar who decided to commit suicide and jump off the local cliff at Berry Head on to see the sunset and sit down and write Abide with Me instead. This hymn was a favourite of George VI who had it played at the Cup Final at Wembley where my grandfather was chief accountant so I suppose it would be a suitable choice for my funeral if I have one. My family do not do funerals.

It was heaven and in this heaven I spent every Easter and summer holiday until well into my teens usually with my cousins Gillian and occasionally John and my mother. We all adored it. It was like a living Swallows and Amazons, as children had more freedom in those days and we spent days messing about in boats, swimming and for me riding. Primrosing was another delight, long walks across the cliffs with poles to tie bunches of primroses on. We even found a few wild violets.

What I adored was the fact the grass went right down to the beach not the miles of concrete esplanade that I was used to see.

I have not been back in 40 years and in truth Brixham does not look so different today in the postcards but I suspect it has been prettified. This started very soon after my aunts arrived. I can see from the maps that vast areas of rustic farmland have been covered in concrete and the primrose and violet paths have gone but I still love it. Ah the dreams of youth!

PS:  Recently I watched Restoration Man, a TV programme that featured  the restoration of a church in Brixham which I found fascinating. There seemed to be parts of Brixham that I did not recognise, in fact a lot of Brixham that I did not recognise. A quick tour on Google Earth soon filled me in. In my day 1954 to 1970 Birixham did not look like an apology for an Italian fishing village with all those pink and blue houses. In my day Brixham was grey and working class and I loved it like that. Now it is a bit precious.

Also a coastal path has been added which I think looks rather nice. The restored church looks wonderful but I am not sure the old fishermen would have approved.

Fishcombe Cove - a favourite swimming spot.

Auntie Jo'sThamesway Theatre

Dance Tales Story Ballets - The Little Match Girl

I think my love of theatre can be attributed to my beautifully, brilliant and eccentric Auntie Jo who played the piano, taught dancing to young ladies, was a superb secretary and manager and loved the theatre.

Auntie Jo had a theatre of her own, a toy theatre which had lights and a curtain. She would produce a pantomime for the family at Christmas. Rehearsals were held in secret so that we children had no idea of what was in store and then after the Christmas feast was cleared up the huge dining room would be turned into a theatre.

It was magic. Christmas at Thamesway was unforgettable and for me every Christmas is judged on this standard. So far only one has been as good.

Local children were invited to this performance and this is how I met Pam Vincent/Burke who's mother and father ran the cafe down the road. Pam and I loved it and I think this is what made us both decide to go on the stage. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and Pam has become my sort of sister. She too can verify that this performance was magic and made the rather bleak postwar Christmas truly one out of the box.

Jack in the Beanstalk,1946 was the most memorable pantomime and the grown up's worked so hard to make it a proper grown up affair. We all loved Jack hiding in the fireplace and we screamed at the Giant who because he was paper on a stick weighted with a penny was enormous. We all rushed to the theatre when the Giant fell down the beanstalk to his death!

Daddy took it home  to Stanmore and made a few additions. He rewired the footlights and added a proscenium arch. Mummy made a new curtain. 

Aunty Jo went on to produce The Coronation and I had to spend hours cutting out the Royal Procession. We did it in 1953. Aunty Jo had the night before at the Palace with Princess Margaret dressed in green tulle and sequins, smoking and playing the piano. Aunty Jo made my cousin Gillian and I rehearse for days to get it quite right. It was very impressive.

Later I owned the theatre and I produced Red Riding Hood. It was my first production and it took me a whole year, to make the puppets and paint the scenery. I used it in Dance Tales, in The Little Matchgirl, and the children in the studio still loved it.

The theatre unused and unloved lives in my attic. I have not the heart to throw it away. Nobody wants a toy theatre in 2014 but it is my Rosebud.

Canons Park Tube Station The Least Used Tube Station

The trouble with a blog is finding interesting things to write in it. Other people's lives can be so boring and so can one's own life. Mine was particularly boring and Canons Park Tube Station has taken up hours and hours of my youth.

I came across this photo of Canons Park Tube Station in Wikipedia. It actually has its own Wiki page! I was astonished at anywhere so uninteresting and ugly could be worth a mention in an Encyclopedia. I was wrong.

Canons Park Tube Station was about three quarters of a mile from my semi detached  house in Stanmore where I lived from the age of four to 21. The only way to get anywhere was to either walk or get the bus to this tube station. The  daily decision of whether to walk the distance or wait for the 18 bus which seldom if ever came and when it did was usually full up was source of annoyance for 16 years.

I have spent hours of my life waiting for the bus or walking to this station. In the 1950's the fog was so bad I could hardly see my hand in front of my face and I had to count to curbstones to find my way home. I had to do this in the rain and the snow and even in fine weather I hated it.

My father who had a van and later a car never once gave me a lift in all those years. I had to cart all my heavy school books and later ballet paraphernalia each day. Even when Mummy and I went to Brixham for our holidays Daddy never gave us a lift with cases and later dog. On this occasion we waited for the 18 bus. Even when I was performing Daddy refused to help and I had to leave at 6.30 am and do the walk before the TV recording of  'The Turn of the Screw' which was not the easiest thing to sing for a 16 year old. I had to get the train back after at around 11 pm and do the walk. In fact even after the Royal Gala at Covent Garden the train ride back at 11 pm took the gilt of the ginger bread and bought one down to earth. Merle Park was on the train too with me plus bouquet. 

The 18 Bus is itself worth a blog. It never came! Once  waited for two hours for one and missed the first Act of 'Ondine' at Covent Garden for which I shall never forgive it. Its route went from Wembley Stadium through Harrow to Edgware Station.

Canons Park Station itself must be the ugliest station on the whole tube. It is, so Wiki says, the least used. It is just a bridge and two windy cold platforms which are high up and battered by the elements. Freezing sleet and snow in winter and  rain in summer.

A waiting room you may ask? Yes there was one but only held about ten people and in the morning one had to be right at the front of the platform to get a seat on the train as it was twenty minutes to Baker Street if you did not change to the fast train at Wembley Park. Again decisions should one change to the fast train and stand to Baker Street, sometimes the fast train sat in a tunnel for hours or sit and stop at every station and again be stuck in a tunnel.

The hours I have stood waiting on that platform must add up to months if not years of my life. Outside the rush hour one just never knew if a train would appear. There was nothing to do but wait.

My journey there and back during my London years must have taken up about two hours of every day. During my convent school days the school bus had a pick up point so I past it every weekday.

The last memory of Canon's Park is waiting at the 18 bus stop on the way home in the pouring rain as if I remember there was no bus shelter. The queues were long as there was the 114 that also stopped there. Sometimes I would walk the mile home as the chances of getting on a bus were slim and it was a long walk past dreary semi detached houses.

I vowed as soon as I could I should escape from the bleakness of the landscape. For me it had not one redeeming feature perhaps only the gasometers nestled in the elms trees was the only thing of beauty and I kid you not.

Now when I look out on the beautiful Auckland Harbour which I do daily I am so grateful that I never have to see Canons Park Station again because I doubt if I could ever afford a house in that area even if I wanted to.

Honey & Tippy Thorpe's School in Belguim

Honey & Tippy Thorpe Belgium 1920s

How the middle upper classes educated their daughters in 1920s/1930s

Pop and Ma Thorpe had four beautiful daughters. The first two Auntie Flo and Auntie Jo were born in England in Manchester in the early 1900's then there was a big gap of 6 years before Auntie Tippy( Eileen) was born in Ceylon in 1911.  My mother Honey (Agnes) Thorpe was born in Datchet near Windsor in 1915.

My grandparents must have wanted a son but sadly they had four daughters. What to do with them? Boys would have gone to Public school and Oxford but girls?  Girls education was non existent at that time so the two elder girls were sent a boarding school in Herne Bay and later a rather classy establishment in Chiswick. They remained in England.

The fate of the younger two was not so happy as they got shipped off to a convent in Liege in Belgium. My grandparents socially arisen from the slums of Manchester into the Upper Middle Classes copied what other Middle Class families did and dumped their girl children and in the case of my mother and her sister for years in boarding schools far from home. My mother hardly went home in 11 years! At the age of six my mother and her 9 year old sister travelled across the English Channel to Belgium never to return until they were grown up. In the case of my mother 16. Her mother visited them occasionally and once or twice they went home for Xmas but that was it.

Now this was not all doom and gloom. My mother seemed to enjoy it. My grandmother was a bit of an acid drop so the nuns must have seemed kinder and nicer and indeed both sisters opted to stay in Belgium for Xmas. Says something about granny I think.

Both girls learned to speak perfect French. They were educated in French and my mother learned all her secretarial skills in French. She had very high speeds as her certificates prove. The big problem was that she did not learn English. She was totally uneducated in English and I discovered when I was 45 that she could hardly read in English. The Daily Mail was about her limit although we did change to the Telegraph when I insisted. Reading the world's masterpieces was beyond her.

They were taught religion naturally, and needlework. Belgium young ladies were trained to become lace makers. Brussels Lace to be exact. This is the finest of lace and is a mixture of torchon lace and embroidery. Mother's leaving certificate was a magnificent embroidered table cloth which I use as a bedspread. If she had stayed in Belgium she would have gone to a school in Brussels to be taught this difficult craft.

The problem is that my mother was brilliant academically. She should have gone to Oxford. When it came to numbers her accountancy skills were exceptional. Like her accountant father mother could run up a column of £.s.d. in one go. She did the Family Books all her life to the last farthing.

Sex education was sadly lacking too. On one of the few occasions the two sisters did return to UK Auntie Tippy had her first period on the ferry across the channel. Nobody had informed them that this was natural. My mother thought Auntie Tip was dying in the loo! They made the journey on the boat alone but were met at the other end.

I don't think my mother wanted to return to England. She was totally unprepared for life in London socially and educationally. Life in a big city must have been a shock.

2014 Janette Miller's Strange Life Part 2

2013 has passed away and 2014 looms ahead. 2013 has been an exceptional year and in some ways a tidy up year when one gets to read the last chapter of a detective novel and all the  plots come to fruition and happy endings abound. This happened to me and I did not have to raise a finger.

Why was it good? Well Vitamin B12 healed my compromised nervous system, I got to know Alice, my garden was glorious thanks to the water meter and a mild summer which seems to have disappeared already for 2014 and the Benjamin Britten Centenary.

The last of these is rather serious. Anything to do with Britten is serious. It was gratifying after 56 years to realise just how much the work we did 56 years ago is appreciated. I knew at the time it was special but I was never included in the media mix. I should have been but women were really not wanted in 1959. Now I am. BBC interview, Tony Palmer Documentary Britten Nocturne shown on Sky and DVD, The Britten Centenary book published by Bloomsbury where my and Hannah Nepals's contribution is right after the writer Alan Bennett and lastly the special screening of Peter Morley's 1959 iconic  TV production of Britten's masterpiece The Turn of the Screw by the British Film Institute's fully remastered version on the South Bank which I am told looks and sounds amazing.

2013 will be hard to better.

So now on to 2014. My first family volume was well received and I have been asked to do another so during January I shall try to oblige.

Tippie Atkinson Westham Speedway

Tippie/Eileen Atkinson Speedway promoter

My last true Auntie, Tippie Atkinson, had died in 2007. I lost touch with her  many years ago but I did miss my wonderful Aunt. She was 94!

Auntie Tippie was an amazing woman for her time. She married a Speedway Rider, Arthur Atkinson in the 1930's and went on to promote  manage and run West Ham Speedway in London, which in those days was as popular as football is today. A glamorous, high powered and unlikely occupation for a woman at that time. It would be like a woman running Manchester United Football team today and she would possibly do a better job.

Tippie Thorpe was the third of my grandfather's daughters. My mother Honey Thorpe being the fourth. As with all middle class children of that age they were shipped off to boarding school in Belgium and left there for years. It must have been daunting for them both and I know my mother never recoverd. At sometime my Aunt lost an eye but she never let it bother her all her life.

Tippie was most impressive and fiesty. She could be quite forceful if displeased as I found out when I was three! I bit her daughter who though the same age was much bigger than I and would never let me pass on the stairs. This bite caused a family uproar as it was Xmas 1946. Tippie was furious with me packed up her family went home to Southend taking the turkey with her. You can imagine the scene. One family Christmas dinner all set to go and no turkey! My grandmother took three years to forgive her but I suppose even at three I was to blame. I still feel guilty.

Tippie and Arthur were well off by my family standards. Arthur owned a munitions factory in the war and did well. They had  big houses, mink coats, Jaguar cars and world cruises to Australia when the rest of us were on rations but my Auntie was just so nice it didn't seem to matter to me. Think it did to my mother. Living in a semi detached in Stanmore on nothing and watching your sister cruising around the world leading the life of a Movie Star could not have been easy.

Once in M&S I desperately wanted a Mohair Stole like my cousin and Auntie Tip would have bought it for me but my mother's pride did not allow. I shall always remember her kindness that day. When  I was 8 my grandmother died  AuntieTippie could not bring herself to go to the funeral so we sat alone together in the strange Indian Room at my grandfather's home  and she talked  to me seriously and treated me like an adult. It was the first time anyone in my  family had done so. That's what I liked about Auntie Tip, she alone in my family treated me as an adult and not as a silly little girl.

Later Auntie Tippie put on fabulous Christmas parties, real glass balls on the Christmas trees and real pork. Her family had to do without bacon for a whole year to save the rations and I feel sure she saw to it that my Xmas presents were on par with her own children as Mummy and Daddy could never have run to it.

Auntie Tippie showed the 1930's world what a woman can do given the chance! She ran a top class Speedway club for years. I loved watching her putting on the events and she and Uncle Arthur once took me in their Jaguar to Bristol to watch Uncle Arthur ride. I was about eight and it was such an adventure for me. She did not even seem to mind me being sick in the car!

Here is a gorgeous picture of them both when young and in love to remember them by! It was taken by my father and I think it is just so young and fresh and shows something of her enjoyment of life.

Tippie was worth much more than with which she has been  credited. Had she been a man with an education who knows what she might have achieved. I  am proud to be her neice.

The Secrets of the Upwardly Mobile Victorians

The Richard Wakefield family of East Molesly Lodge, paper merchants

All families have secrets! Mine was no exception as both the Millers and the Thorpes were upwardly mobile in a big way. They had risen into the middle classes and the Thorpes epecailly were only too pleased to leave their working class relations behind in the slums of Manchester. Unpleasantly Pop and Ma Thorpe just simply dumped them and no one in the family knew either their names or from whence they came. They never imagined that anyone would find out. I did!

I always knew that I didn't belong to the upper middle classes. I was never at ease with any of them. I realised I was considered Trade and Trade was not what any well bred middle class man would look for in a wife. However to my astonishment my very top draw Oxford educated GP husband Miles Wakefield Castelhow Heffernan did.  I never got to meet his Irish gentleman farmer father Dr Patrick Heffernan. Miles wisely waited until he died before proposing.

I did have to meet his mother Winifred Wakefield Heffernan who was a great lady. No woman would have been classy enough to marry  her son and she made it quite clear that she was the real thing when it came to class and I was rather young and perhaps too pretty and she could overlook the Trade.

Winifred or Mume said she was related to Sir Edward Gibbon Wakefield who colonized Wellington, New Zealand. She was oh so proud of him, so much so that I had to give my daughter his name. Miles too always wanted to live in New Zealand because of this connection and in fact eventually we did.We met a grand niece of the great man, Miss Irma O'Conner and as she was a single lady with few friends I was able to befriend her as she badly needed a family. She and I searched her family tree but could find not a sign of these Wakefields.

The Spicer Paper connection was equally well favoured. It appears that Mume's grandmother was a Mary Spicer of the Spicer Paper Maufacturers and were rich beyond belief. I was even taken to the paper mill in Enshem outside Oxford. In truth Richard Wakefield was a rich paper merchant as can be see above in the very Victorian photo of him sitting outside his family home in Bridge Street East Molesey, Kingston on Thames.

Mume liked everything just so and I was hard pressed to come up to standard In fact I never think I never  did. I did get a bit concerned when she insisted that the milk in tea went in first!  This was a no, no in our household as it was in most upper middle class homes but I put it down to eccentricity.

Somehow I inherited the old Wakefield family wills as well as every spare chair that Miles's brother did not want. After Miles died I spent some time working out the family tree but still I had no idea who the Spicers and the Wakefields were. The wills looked oh so grand. Then along came Genes Reunited and all was revealed. What a surprise!

Mume was no more a grand lady than I was! In fact it was worse than my family. The fact that Richard Wakefield, Mume's father was a paper merchant who married a Mary Spicer was a coincidence of names for Mume's grandmother was of very humble birth. Sarah Spicer hailed from a seafaring family from Folkestone whose mother had had 22 children and practically single handedly populated Kent.

Richard Wakefield  Paper Merchant
1830-1905

Richard Wakefield was a self made man going from a humble clerk to owning his own paper firm and becoming rich into the bargain. No connection with Sir Edward Gibbon Wakefield at all.   My daughter who had been lumbered with Wakefield as a middle name never forgave me as Edward Gibbon Wakefield is not liked in NZ ! In fact he is hated for what he did to the Maoris.

Richard Wakefield married Emma Hill who was ten years older than he and after four children  and a huge amount of upward mobility, she died. Mume was not one of the four children!

This is where the secret of the Wakefield /Heffernan's arises for after his first wife's death Richard Wakefield. at the rip old age of 70 moved to Hove with his housekeeper Hannah Walker who had been the maid to his first wife Emma. There he fathered a child with her and did the right thing and married her. Winifred Wakefield Heffernan, the great upper middle class lady, was the daughter of a housemaid! Nothing to be ashamed of as it is thought the Queen Mum had a similar parentage.

Hannah Walker
1863-1922

Mume's housekeeper mother became the lady of the house. It did not last long for Richard Wakefield died just five years later leaving a five year old daughter whom he adored. His other children were furious and their father just cut them out of his will leaving everything to his young daughter. Her brothers and sisters were not amused and have disappeared in history.

Her mother, Hannah, saw to it that Mume was educated and bought up to be a fine young lady, sending her to a very swish Swiss Finishing School and Mume was married off to a 44 year old elderly Irish doctor from County Tipperary. It was not the happiest of marriages. Mume and he lived on the fortune for the rest of their lives and their sons were oblivious to the fact that although they appeared top drawer the truth was slightly less. The Spicer and Gibbon Wakefield connections being nothing but dreams!

Winifred Wakefield Heffernan
1897 -1976

I am, like Mume proud of Richard Wakefield. He was as clever and astute as my own grandparents. However he too left his poor relations behind. His mother Sarah Spicer ended up a widow in London clawing a living by beading chairs. I have one! It is now very valuable as beading is rare today. The census reveals all the secrets.

I had no need to feel ashamed of my Miller/Thorpe families because the Wakfield/Heffernans were just the same.