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Though born in Bromley in 1927 I have no recollections of that borough, wrote Ted Tierney. My Father, being a postman/sorter at the Mountpleasant office, though originally from Omagh in County Tyrone, lived for a period at 2 Lloyd Road, Dagenham.
While only a child at the time, Dagenham seemed a very quiet town indeed to me. Dagenham, as most people know, suddenly sprang from being a village to a sizeable town owing to the influx of workers from everywhere to swell the ranks of workers at Ford's down at the Docks.
There was my father Frank and his wife Bridget with four boys and one girl, only three boys surviving. My mother Bridget died quite young also due to the prevalence of tuberculosis in those days.
Smoke, smells, gas lamps, horses and carts, street tradesmen and their calls everywhere was the norm. As a child I remember one dark evening standing at the corner of our street with Dagenham Avenue.
I clearly remember staring upwards at a corner gas lamp intently. For it struck me as so odd that the falling snowflakes (invisible above the rays of the gas lamp) seemed to immediately crystallise out of 'nowhere' while falling so thick and heavy, close and all around.... all in utter silence.
Another memory was seeing a house in Dagenham Avenue with windows and the door being sealed up to undergo some form of decontamination purpose I suppose.
Then there was the route to school via (was it Fennimore Park?) with temptations, at times fulfilled, to play truant. But with mud from the stream and a tree to skin the shins...boy what heaven, adding to my parents' woe no doubt.
In those days the sudden influx from Ireland and elsewhere meant that there was little provision for say the church and school for the newcomers.
So although a lad had to go to a Convent school until the school for boys, St Peter's, was erected. But the teachers remained the same, a good educational grounding with Sister Stephanie and Sister Edwina presiding.
Christmastime came around and I was a kindly thrust forward first, to take my pick from a pyramid of toys at the base of the tree. Trying to put an 'adult choice' to work I selected a box of numbered/lettered wooden cubes. In reality I immediately hated myself for making such a choice at the time.
However we had kindly aunts living in Omagh who invited us to 'write up' what we wanted for Christmas, knowing full well my parents had hit on hard times, owing to my dad's premature and permanent deafness and illness.
'Don't be asking for too much,' he warned me. But the great day came and there arrived a huge sack of goodies, our eyes popping with expectancy.
Even to this day I cannot fathom how my aunts sought out and bought a toy motorbike (with sidecar if I remember it right) and even more stunning a toy lorry with lights.....can you believe it!
Edward (Ted) Tierney, 2001
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