Month: September 2021

“Hot beverage” (3-letters)?

You didn’t have to be Alan Turing to be able to complete the Evening News crossword. 

In the ‘60s, the evening paper would be delivered to our south London flats.  I’d be given the page containing all the puzzles – including the children’s picture crossword.  (This was easier as I didn’t drink tea or any hot beverages!)

It was here that I learned how to identify a cat (no pet policy in the flats made that trickier than you’d think) and how to spell it.

I’d have tackled the grown ups’ cryptic crossword, except my knowledge of Greek mythology lets me down.  I think Hermes sell expensive scarves; Apollo took people to the Moon and Athena is where you went to get a picture of a woman scratching her arse.

After solving all the picture clues I’d move onto “spot the ball”.  I never won and assume the players chosen to feature in the competition has dreadful eyesight and simply had a guess where the ball might be before they tried to head, kick or punch it if they were Gordon Banks, Gordon West or Gordon the Big Engine – such was the difficulty of this prediction.

I miss the evening paper as I rarely commute – so I struggle to see where can I get the result of today’s 3.30 at Newmarket or find out the latest County Championship scores?

Hot beverage is off, love. 

FDR once said, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”; growing up and being pushed in a buggy across Wandsworth Common in the early ‘60s, I developed a pathological and irrational fear for one particular telegraph pole.

I’ve since acquired other fears: birds: it’s why Rod Taylor got the lead in the Hitchcock classic.  And thunder: if God had furniture, because He is God, He’d have someone move it around for Him.  Quietly.

There was a café on Wandsworth Common, in front of which stood this odd-looking (in my mind) telegraph pole; I could not go past it without shouting, screaming and, literally, throwing my toys out of the pram (Sooty never got so dirty than on these trips).  My perambulating relatives never reached the café as I believed I would be sucked into some electrical void, ending up inside an Earl Grey tea bag in the café’s industrial tea urn.

On my way to the café, we’d pass hundreds of other telegraph poles, but this one, in front of the café, had at its top, these two eye-like things – the shape of which could have been modelled by Charles Laughton for his screen test for The Hunchback of Notre Dame or something Picasso would have created on a bad day.

This fear may have been the reason I never applied to be a BT engineer (also I haven’t got a head for heights) and, because the Wandsworth Common tennis courts were behind the café, was another reason why I never became Balham’s answer to Emma Raducanu. 

In the ‘60s and ‘70s I lived in a block of flats in Balham which had radios built into the wall. 

My Nan, whenever she went out, would leave the radio (or wireless as she called it) on – to give the impression (mainly to potential burglars) that someone was at home.  One Yale, two Chubbs and an assortment of chains you’d not find at Fort Knox clearly not enough for peace of mind.

In my view, some background noise works as a far greater deterrent than others.

If you want to discourage burglars, then have “Mother of mine”; “There’s no one quite like grandma” or anything by Reginald Dixon on a continual loop blaring out.  These will work like the thing you put in your garden to ward off foxes. 

Playing anything by Mahler will make the burglar believe you’re about to top yourself and won’t want to engage in conversation. 

At weekends, any burglar hearing Two-Way Family Favourites will assume you have a relative based in West Germany and therefore will seek reprisals when home on leave.  Or you have Judith Chalmers held captive.

Back in the ‘60s the option was the Light, Home Service or Third Programme – so your burglar prevention could include Music while you work; Something involving Dame Isobel Barnett or 16-hours of The Ring Cycle.  It depended on how valuable your cigarette card collection was.

Nowadays you can simply say, “Alexa, play something which’ll frighten burglars”

I was brought up in a block of flats in SW London with various relatives.

I lived one floor away from my Nan, but was trusted to go back and forth, on my own, from my flat to hers.

I was also entrusted with a key: three times.  Such was the ease with which I lost each passkey, I was finally never assigned another – three keys and you’re out. 

So, my Nan taught me how to break into the flats.

This was the same woman who’d told me she’d been a waitress at a Lyon’s Corner House, when, clearly, she must have been breaking and entering throughout the fifties. 

All I needed, she instructed, were very thin wrists (easily done as I “didn’t eat enough to keep a fly alive”); a belt (which I owned, despite my daily intake of Virol) and the knowledge of the outer workings of a doorknob.

I was taught to put my wrists and belt through the letterbox, above which was the knob; attach the belt; get some traction and – Open Sesame – I was in.

As Balham’s answer to Raffles of Arsène Lupin, I was able to get into my Nan’s flat.

With this success, literally under my belt, I thought I’d try it out next door – where my aunt lived.

I assumed she’d be counting her trillion Embassy coupons, but, unbeknownst to me, she was getting dressed.  Successfully in her flat, I revealed myself, only to find my aunt peroxiding her hair – dressed only in her industrial bra and panties.

When you’re only ten, there are some things you simply cannot unsee.

It is the sole reason I’ve never became a hairdresser.