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Brought up in Dagenham, Ted Tierney, who was born before the Second World War, has many fond memories of the town.
These days and accidents aside, Dagenham railway station may be seen as a welcome convenience, for others mostly as a mundane transit point. But in earlier times the platform would at times have witnessed scenes of really intense emotion, Dagenham more than most other stations.
Gladness of course, as new family arrivals joined in to swell the ranks of the influx of workers of those days. But with departees it was quite another matter entirely, with folks gazing on faces unlikely to be seen again for years, or if ever again.
Worse still with hardly a camera image to fall back upon. Like going to the moon almost.
Children like ourselves, failing to recognise the potency of the event...until much much later. However as children we had our own Cruise missiles and Exocets.
A straw pushed into a rolled up marble sized ball of soft mud and thrown to stick on windows, walls or whatever is a technology lost to the children of today. Our house at times took on the appearance of a hedgehog with all the quills sticking out from the wall.
I muat mention the presence of 'the bogeyman' for on good information from my elder brother this gentleman resided unseen in our bedroom wardrobe. Elder brothers duty of course is to inform on such matters.
Arty, our bread delivery man, let us kids feed his horse when he stopped by. A well fed horse, however slow the bread round. No TV and no radios for us in those days but this mattered not a whit. For the MP's seeking a catchment of votes this entailed vociferous activity.
'Vote-vote-vote for dear old Hutchinson.......
Punch old Parker on the nose.........
If it wasn't for the law----I would punch him on the jaw.....
And he wouldn't go-a-voting anymore.'
Guy Fawkes & fireworks ? ......no chance. They cost money. No, but unknowst to our parents, we only had to go to the Ford's dump. For there was an Aladdin's Cave of thick silver paper along with rolls of camera film (why I never knew, or cared) for the film rolled up in silver paper, flattened, set aflame, stamped on......and run...... for it.
With a copious billowing of dense black smoke, far more satisfying for a lad than bought sparklers. So the Grooms, the Sharps, the Jones, the Lanes and all the neighbours and our parents would think we had just done a day's work down the mines.
One day on looking skywards I actually saw an airship floating low over our garden, travelling from the Diamond and over our house and on to Hedgemans Road. Good times or what ?
Ted Tierney, Co. Antrim, 2001
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