Category: humour

I never had as much as a chocolate sprinkle from the ice-cream van growing up. 

I lived on the fourth-floor of my Balham flats; the moment I heard the strains of Greensleeves or ‘O Sole mio (which means raspberry ripple in Italian), I’d put on my Tufty Club slippers and leg it down four-flights of stairs.  I’d reach the bottom and hear Greensleeves dying in the distance as the van made its way down the High Street towards Clapham, a town where most people would do anything for an Oyster.

To get any form of lolly, tub or 99, you had to be as fast as Roger Bannister; I was more Minnie Bannister.   I would arrive to see hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands lying on the street.  Evidence I’d missed out yet again.

Having attained a semaphore badge with the Cubs, I could have sent a message to Mr Whippy. 

When learning semaphore we tended to learn phrases like: “I think the boat is sinking” not “one cornet, please”.  By the time I’d have gone down the many flights of stairs, it would have melted. 

Flake’s off, love

Do people still have room-dividers?

I didn’t in my Balham flat, but I would often go to friends’ houses where the kitchen had a series of beads and/or coloured strips hanging down from the doorframe, separating it from the rest of the house. 

What were they there for?  Was it to give an air of mystery to the kitchen holy of holies?  Hide embarrassing old relatives? Stop herds of wildebeest rampaging into the lounge?

Anyone going to the cinema in south-west London in the sixties would remember the ad for a local restaurant which advertised: “it’s so good, even the cook eats here”.  The reveal would be the chef, behind the dangling beads, literally eating his own lunch.

I think, budding cooks believed that the magic ingredient to a good meal wouldn’t be to add a selection of exotic spices, but to erect a series of dangly things.  Who needs Mrs Beeton or Fanny & Johnny if you’ve got the threads of Joseph’s coat hanging from your kitchen doorway?

How were these things created?  My belief is that many a room divider was made out of beads stolen from school abacuses.  This would explain why many people at my school could only count to five by the time they were eleven.

If there was to be privacy, you couldn’t knock, as your hand would go straight through – thus knocking over the embarrassing relative.  At least that would have saved her from the stampeding wildebeest.

In the Balham ABC, during the ‘60s and ‘70s, the ladies serving the tea – which they poured from a great height above their heads – would slide the mugs across the metal counter; no words would be exchanged. You certainly didn’t say, “this tea has more of a head on it than my mum’s Guinness”.  If you did, you’d find yourself, and your accompanying iced bun, in A&E. 

What the tea ladies never said was “Enjoy!”  Nor did they say it, which seems commonplace in coffee shops nowadays, with incredible menace.

There is clearly no alternative to not enjoying it.   If you don’t, the barista will find you and creep up beside you, as you’re devouring your blueberry muffin.

They will ask, if you had to state your level of enjoyment on a scale of one to ten, it must be eleven. Or else! 

Iced buns were the only pastry option in the ABC on Balham High Road.  There were no croissants as many of the people serving there still had very raw memories of the Hundred Years’ War; the thought of having to speak French was abhorrent.  These were the days before sell-by dates. If you couldn’t eat it, you could use it as a weapon and reenact the Battle of Agincourt on Balham High Street.