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I was born in 1938, wrote Mike Couzins, and as a child I lived in a small cul-de-sac called Basin Street near Kingstone Crescent, Portsmouth. In those days families tended to live in one area and Basin Street was no exception.
My parents, Tom and Elsie Couzins, and I were at number 7, two maiden great-aunts Augusta and Mabel Couzins were at number 13 and at number 19 my widowed grandmother (my grandfather having been killed in WW1) lived with her sister and husband Alf and Flo Forsey.
During the years of WWII Basin Street was a wonderful place to live because, for such a small street, it had everything the barter system, which operated in those difficult times, could ask for.
Next door to us was a Co-op slaughter house and butchery producing pies and sausages where my mother worked at some time. Opposite was Smith & Vospers bakery, at the end of the street a Co-op dairy and next to the bakers a Lyons tea depot whose long distance drivers often lodged at our house sleeping on a put-u-up in the downstairs front room.
So it was all there; meat, pies and bangers could be swapped for butter, eggs and flour and we never ran out of milk.
The only other business in the street was Hoad Bros., Blacksmiths and Wheelwrights whose yard full of cartwheels, old machinery and nuts and bolts (for making match head "bombs") was a great adventure playground.
Apart from the Lyons depot manager's "big house" all the other terraced housing was down one side of the street. Numbers 7 to 15 opened straight onto the pavement and the rest, the "posh" end, had small forecourts with wooden fences in the front.
There were two other children in the street beside myself, Ian Fletcher at number 15 and Gloria Malley at number 25. Poor Gloria, being the only girl, always ended up as the "Red Indian" and I once knocked her out with the butt of a wooden six-gun, which had been made by Ian's father. The hollow butt had been filled with lead shot so you could twirl it like Hopalong Cassidy !
As father worked in the dockyard he was not called up but did his bit instead as a volunteer fireman. Mother also supplemented the family income by working as a barmaid in The White Hart on the corner of Kingston Crescent which naturally brought her into contact with a lot of servicemen and two of them used to leave their "civvies" at our house: Frank Cull and Irishman and Jimmy Lumsden a Scot.
I am sure many will remember the wartime phrase "Got any gum chum". Well I was never short of it because another of Mum and Dads friends was a US soldier by the name of Tommy Whintle and chewing gum was not the only commodity he supplied.
Sadly he went off to Normandy on D Day and we never heard from him again.
Dad was a very keen darts player and won a number of medals with the team from The Admirals Head in Kingston Crescent. I remember going with him once to see an exhibition match given by Jim Pike (I think it was) who, as part of the evening gave a demonstration playing with sharpened 6 inch nails.
I first went to school at the age of four, attending Daly's Private School before moving to Wellington Place School and finally, after 11 plus exams, The Northern Grammar School.
Until my voice broke I was a chorister as St.Mark's Church, latterly becoming chief soloist. At that time the vicar was the Rev. Gerald Ellison who was to become eventually the Bishop of London.
On the wall of the vicarage hall were hung several oars for he had been a rowing "blue" and several years later he umpired the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. I think it was the year that both crews sank!
Once old enough I joined the sea scouts. On one occasion sailing back from a jamboree at Portchester Castle the Skippers navigation rather let him down and we ended up stuck on a mud bank with a falling tide.
No mobile phones in those days of course and as we were likely to be there for several hours there would be a lot of worried parents. We finally waded ashore on Whale Island where the shore patrol took over.
I arrived home very late, very cold, very hungry and covered almost from head to foot in very smelly mud. In many ways those war years were magic ones and I know my mother always thought of them as the best years of her life.
Mike Couzins, Bristol, 2002
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