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We used to have a rag and bone man round the streets with a horse and cart, giving away goldfish in bowls in exchange for rags, wrote Tom Newman, who was born in the East End in 1937.
The fish man came on Sundays, selling shrimps, prawns, cockles and whelks by the pint and half pint, from a handcart. Sunday tea was bread and marg. with shrimps and jelly and custard for afters.
The milkman had an electric trolley that he walked in front of. The baker had a horse-drawn cart, and we used to help with deliveries, ooh that everlasting smell of fresh crusty bread. My future mother-in-law wouldn't buy the bread because it was too near the horses back end.
Dicky Bird's ice-cream and Glojoys. The ice-cream seller had a 3-wheeled bike with a cool box between the two front wheels.
My youngest brother suffered from a collapsed lung while still a baby, and the doctor told us to get tar blocks and melt them on the gas cooker.
Hop picking in Kent 1944-48 at Goudhurst, Tenterden, Horsmonden and Paddock Wood. Telfers meat pies! We used to ride into Goudhurst from Mason's Farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane, then bought the daily papers and sold them to the pickers for a ha'penny extra.
We used to go down to Kent in the back of an ex-army Bedford with a canvas cover, taking our ticking cover which was stuffed with straw on arrival. Five people slept in the same bed, and cooking was over an open fire, with wood faggots supplied by the farmer.
The smells from the oast houses were quite something. We picked hops into a bin, then they were measured with a basket made of cane and straw a bushel at a time. We used the 'pokes' to cover our heads when it was raining, when the hops were wet our hands and arms were stained with the juice and smelled terrible.
The poles holding the wires above ground were dipped in liquid tar, which was kept in pits in the ground at the side of the road. The baker used to come to the end of the field and sell loaves of bread and bread pudding squares.
We had our own orchard for pickers, with little sweet white apples, because scrumping was a hanging offence!
The Eagle came out about 1950 with Dan Dare, etc. Inside one of the first editions was an exploded picture of a Triumph Mayflower, which at that time was the latest model.
In 1952 I went to work for a solicitors' in the City of London, Drapers Court, off Throgmorton Avenue. There was a lift operated by a member of the Corps of Commissionaires, a lift which worked by pulling on a rope.
The tube fare from Barking to the bank was 10s for a week's season ticket. Wages were £3 10s, which I gave to my mother, who gave me back the money for the fare plus a shilling a day to spend. She put some in a Co-op savings account to buy new clothes. (Our Co-op divvie number was 645192.)
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