Dispatches from London

Followers of this blog will know of Michael Sherbourne, a British WWII vet still forming an outpost of reason in what may yet become Londonistan. Michael has exchanged e-mails with other readers about his life, and I earlier posted his recollection of a meeting of famous British leftists extolling Stalinist Russia.

Below, with his permission, are some of his exchanges. They should keep him in the Tower of London, with other British national treasurers. ~Bob

I was born in London's most poverty stricken area, in February, 1917 into a very poor family, as my father was more out of work than in. The "dole" as they then called the government payout to unemployed was never sufficient for a family of two parents and four growing boys.

We didn't have bikes until we left school (mostly at 14)

We had no cars to ride in (never mind safety belts). Cars were only for the rich -- and I mean RICH.

Our milk was delivered in a horse-drawn "chariot" with two large churns into which the milkman dipped a pewter measure of either one or two pints which he then poured into the customer's jug. His milk was not refrigerated. We had no "fridges".

We had no gardens so no garden hose to drink from. If we were lucky we had a back yard. Our houses were all back-to-back.

Where we lived there were no trees for us to climb and fall from. We climbed lamp posts

We had no radios (which were called wireless sets) and of course television had not yet been invented. We had no telephones.

To play football (soccer) we had no ball, so we screwed up into a ball-shaped mass, old newspapers tied round and round with string and for goals we used chalk lines drawn on facing walls.

The same for cricket. The wicket was three vertical lines chalked on a telegraph pole with a short line on top and the ball was a smaller version of the football, using less newspaper. For a bat we would find an old plank of wood and fashion a handle on it

WE LIVED THROUGH TWO TERRIBLE WORLD WARS AND WE SURVIVED.

AND TODAY I AM NINETY-TWO, IN REASONABLE GOOD HEALTH, WITH NO FALSE TEETH (DENTURES) AND 22 GOOD TEETH ALL MY OWN

--Michael

Through the medium of this 'ere contraption they call a "KompYouTer", I have made a
number of what used to be called in the bygone days, when people actually WROTE to
each other, "Pen-Pals", which includes yourself. Today's youngsters probably don't know
what is meant by "pen and ink", when even before the days of fountain pens, people used
a steel nib in a wooden holder which was dipped into an inkwell holding LIQUID ink.
Our school desks, built to accommodate two pupils (in those days we were "pupils" and
"students" were at university) had two inkwells, which were refilled by the ink-monitor, a
favoured pupil, every Monday morning. When the nib became rusty from use, it was
replaced by a new nib. And we used to go home from school with ink-stained fingers.

When the "fountain pen" was invented (I don't know when, but I would guess about the end of the 19th or early 20th century) it was rather fatter than the old wooden penholder because it had a small bladder inside which received its ink by being squeezed by a small lever outside, creating a vacuum when the lever was released and the ink was sucked in from an ink bottle.

Today's young people use their mobile(cell) phones to send Text Messages such as the
following:-- "U R 2 Yz 4 me" and are forgetting to read and write their own language.

The word "pen" comes from a bird's feather or pen or quill, which was sharpened and split at the end, and which was the writing instrument from as far back as early historic times when Man first began to write, until the Industrial Revolution, when iron and steel came into usage.

That's enough for today.

Best wishes to all my new American "pen-pals"

--Michael

I have mentioned a little about my childhood days in an earlier message.

Let me add a little more.

I recall one occasion when we playing our own version of "cricket", with just one wicket instead of the correct two, and that was chalked on a nearby telegraph pole, and our "ball", was old newspapers rolled into a ball and tied round and round with string. A policeman strolling along "on his beat" saw us and crudely said: (in a pronounced Cockney Accent) "Come on, now, enough of that now (pronounced "nah"), clear orf nah!

My mother was sitting on an upstairs window sill, cleaning the outside of the windows. She saw and heard this remark and called out to the copper (or "bobby" or "peeler" as they were commonly known) "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. They ain't doing no harm. Weren't you ever a child yourself" The copper looked up, turned red and without another word, walked away.

We had no bathroom (I'll come to that another time), and the toilet, or lavatory as we called it, was outside in the back yard. During the winter it regularly froze solid. There was no lock on the door. On one occasion, when I think I was about 8 years old, I stole a cigarette from my father who was asleep in a chair, a box of matches from the kitchen and crept out to our lavatory. Unfortunately for me my mother came out to get some toilet paper for my baby brother, and I was caught red-handed, (and very red-faced). After that I have never smoked at all ! ! !

Incidentally, for our so-called "toilet paper" we again used the perennial newspaper, which my brothers and I used to have to cut into squares about 5 ins. X 5 ins. watched carefully by my mother who would then pierce a hole in one corner, through which she threaded a piece of string and then hung the packet on a nail on the lavatory wall.

More will follow in due course.

--Michael

Correspondence from London

Michael Sherbourne is a correspondent from London, a British WWII veteran, and, in my opinion a British national treasure. Below is his correspondence with another writer, which I thought worth sharing with you. Michael kindly gave his permission.

Dear Don,
It was good to hear from you, and I found the time to look up your website.

I hadn't heard of you as a writer as we in this little island don't get much information about literature "across the herring pond" (i.e. the Atlantic Ocean).

It's a pity, as I am a great fan of mystery novels, and years ago both Mickey Spillane and
James M. Cain were among my favourites. I shall make enquiries at our local bookshop to see if I can get any of them over here.

Your website is quite interesting, but unfortunately I don't have one, partly because I don't feel that it would contain much of interest and partly because I am quite a novice to this contraption they call a computer, and at age 92 I don't find it easy to get used to all its capricious (seemingly independent) activities!

In addition I have so much here to read, that it will take me two lifetimes to read all that
I would like to read, both fiction and non-fiction, especially world history, politics when I am in a mood to be cynical, language as well as languages, particularly the origins and growth of the English language, and as a fluent Russian speaker I have translated quite a lot of material.

It's quite interesting how I learnt Russian, of which I had no knowledge whatsoever until I was 32! When I was a boy of 14, in 1931, I attended a meeting in East London, addressed by 4 people who had just come back from visiting the Soviet Union. They were the playwright Bernard Shaw, the Novelist H.G. Wells, and two politicians (Socialists of course) Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

They were full of enthusiasm for the wonders they had seen. The Sun seemed, in their eyes, to shine out of Stalin's anus, as they described the "Workers' Paradise". At question time a man in the audience, asked for more information as he had heard that there was famine in Ukraine. Bernard Shaw stood up and most indignantly declared (and these are his exact words, which are burned into my brain):- "Famine! Nonsense! I've never eaten so well in all my life!" As a boy of 14 I was astonished at such a stupid remark from such a famous writer, and I became suspicious and discovered that 1930-31 was just when Stalin was exterminating ("liquidating" was the term used) the small farmers and small landowners, known as the "Kulaks" and that many MILLIONS died of starvation. The figures vary from 8 million to 12 or 13 million deaths from starvation.

My anti-Soviet and anti-Communist feelings culminated in the notorious Non-aggression Pact between Hitler and Stalin in August, 1939 (Molotov/Ribbentrop).

After the War (WW2) I found that several of my friends were active communists and I was constantly at loggerheads with them, and one day I was with one of them in our local public Library, still arguing, when suddenly he looked at a shelf and pulled down a book titled "Teach Yourself Russian", and he challenged me to learn Russian. I did, and became quite fluent, even took a degree at London University in Russian Language and Literature (Upper 2nd Class Honours) some years later. It changed my life.

Enough for one night, I'm going to bed.

Best wishes

Michael Sherbourne