Our house... In the middle of the street... Well towards the end really!
Nostalgia... it's such a powerful force. And you'll find out just how powerful it is when you find yourself returning to the first house you ever called home. If you've lived to my grand old age (where we don't actually need to discuss just how grand!) chances are you've called more than one place home in your lifetime. But how many of you still think about your very first childhood home? Maybe at the time, you thought it would be your forever home. I know I did. Do you ever wonder what it looks like now? Who might be living in it? What changes might have occurred on the street you once lived on? Do any of the old neighbours you once knew still live there?
Over the years, the first house I ever called home sometimes flits in and out of my mind. But it was all so long ago. In fact it often feels like a whole other lifetime ago. Although I spent most of my formative years growing up in a north-west London town, I was actually born in East London and lived there just long enough to acquire a Cockney twang that I've never been able to do away with completely. It doesn't bother me at all that I have an accent which means I could successfully audition for a part in EastEnders. Unfortunately it bothers my mum - a lot!
MY PAST LIFE
I grew up in Manor Park (once Essex now London since 1965) a place that was home for a period of time to Jimmy Greaves, Greer Garson, Clive Burr, and Steve Marriott. So I was in good company! A lot of my extended family lived just a stone's throw away in East Ham, and just round the corner in Forest Gate was where I got my first taste of school. This brief chapter of my life, living in Manor Park, was a happy one, and I have lovely memories of my time there. I may be guilty of looking at my past life through rose-tinted glasses but if I could go back - I would!
I suppose that's not so surprising as many of the memories that I have of that particular time are connected to family; great friends, infant and junior school, and good neighbours. I also remember get-togethers, dinner parties, and Saturday night suppers my parents used to throw and I reckon this is where I get my love of entertaining from. In those days we didn't have to work all the hours God sent unlike now, so we had more time to relax and actually have a life, socializing with family, friends and neighbours. Yep, those were the days when people didn't move around as much as they do now and people actually knew their neighbours. And those big family Christmases back in the eighties were nothing short of magical. Christmas has never been the same since. Not bad... Just different...
TIME TO MOVE ON
Then came the time when my parents decided it made more sense to make the move to north-west London so they could be closer to their business rather than make the long and tiring commute to work every day. So we sadly waved goodbye to our family, friends, neighbours, our schoolfriends and the only place we had known as home in order to start the next episode. Even though we didn't live there anymore, my parents still owned our old house, renting it out for almost two decades before deciding enough was enough and putting the house on the market. It wasn't a decision my dad made lightly. As the first property he had ever owned, he wasn't keen to get rid of it. I guess I'm not the only one bitten by the nostalgia bug! It had been a happy house with happy memories so we were sad to say goodbye to it. I don't know who ended up buying it - or even if they still live there now - but I hope that the house has been equally good to them too and is filled with happy memories of their own.
GOING HOME
Over the years I've always made trips back to nearby East Ham where my mum's family have lived for years. But for some reason, I hardly ever turned right outside of East Ham Station and made my way towards my old neighbourhood. But it's because I did have such good memories of my time there, that it was always my plan to someday give my husband a tour of my old neighbourhood, showing him my old house; the schools I used to go; the places we used to frequent, even the places where my mum used to shop for groceries! To be honest, I have no idea why it never occurred to me to go and take a look at the old place whenever I was nearby visiting family. I suppose it's because my mum's old family home has always been just as much home to me as the first house I grew up in, and was filled with just as many happy memories for me. So I didn't feel the overwhelming desire to go and seek out my old house.
But on a recent trip home, as I made the usual plans to go see the East London contingent of my family, nostalgia took over and I decided that I just had to see my old childhood home. The Fella was tempted away by a canoeing trip with our nephews so I couldn't give him the grand tour of my past life, but I realized that there was absolutely nothing to stop me from having a wonder around the old home town - probably for the first time in more than twenty years. So as I made my way out of the station, I headed in the direction of Manor Park...
AND HERE COMES MEMORY LANE!
Walking up the high street towards my old house, I saw the street as it is now... but in my mind's eye, I also how it was all those years ago. Where The Burnell Arms once stood - a pub that spent more time shut down and boarded up (in my lifetime anyway!) than heaving with punters - was now a place of worship (yes really!) The newsagents, owned by the nice lady who lived near my school who would let me use her phone if ever anyone was late to pick me up, was unfortunately no longer there (and I only ever had to use her phone once!) The grocery store where my mum was a regular shopper was still there but with a different name and probably under new management. The Kentucky Fried Chicken (as it was then and not KFC!) had crossed state lines and was now Tennessee Chicken. My old nursery school used to be just around the corner from it - maybe it still was. And the old Victor Value was now a 99p store.
There was no sign though of the steakhouse that was easily the poshest establishment in my neck of the woods back then - and no, we never got to go! And then there was the bridge that stretched across the road to connect the two buildings that made up Plashet School which would probably have been my secondary school had we still lived there. I've spent way more years living away from East London than I spent living there; I was still a young child when we moved away so how I remember it all so vividly, I don't know how or why... especially as these days, I can't even remember what I've opened the fridge door for!
As I reached the top of my old road, I saw that it was as familiar as it was different. There were many things that had changed but there were also just as many things that remained the same. The flats that were adjacent to my old street were still there. But the youth club - which had some of the rowdiest kids we ever did see - was gone and in its place stood a new apartment building. There was also a bus stop for the 300 route bus which wasn't there before. And there is now a medical centre that takes up most of the area that was once for ball games, and may have been part of the youth club.
THIS OLD HOUSE
As I made my way over to my old house, my thoughts turned to the people who used to live on my road: our elderly next-door neighbours; the quiet man who lived on the other side of our house; the owner of the first Invacar I ever saw (I always remember that car in its familiar shade pf blue always parked at the top of our street) the family where all the members had flaming red hair that would make Cilla Black jealous (all except the blonde mum!) the family of builders who lived in the end-house on our side of the street; the end-house on the other side of the street that always looked a bit squashed-in to me for some reason - as though the property developers decided there was just enough space to squeeze in another house... so they did! Then there were the goths who lived in the totally black house - interior and exterior! As a child I was always frightened of that house and its inhabitants. I always felt there was something eery and sinister about them. But then this was years before I dabbled in being a goth myself!
There were tons of kids who lived on our road and the surrounding streets who went to the same schools as my sister and me. So we literally saw them everywhere! It's a good job that we all got on ( most of the time!) and used to play together. I think there were only two kids on my road who went to a different school. They weren't always the most pleasant of kids but then I suppose they couldn't handle not being down with the cool kids! There was also a family of I think fifteen kids - one of whom was in my class - who lived around the corner from my house and they were right opposite Plashet Park. I remember one November when they were dotted all around our area with their various 'Guys' asking everyone if they had a penny for the Guy. Being part of a massive family definitely has it's advantages!
And then there it was - the first home I'd ever known. As I stood outside my old house, a ton of memories came flooding back: Birthdays... Christmases... My First Communion.... My little sister's christening... Of course I didn't know what it looked like now on the inside but on the outside very little had changed. The new owners had put in new windows and a porch door but otherwise it was like looking at the exact same house all those years ago. All that was missing was my dad's beloved Ford Capris parked outside the house!
I wondered if the garden had changed much. If the greengage tree was still there... or the gooseberry bush... the strawberry plants... and the rose bushes that formed a border in various colours and were my dad's pride and joy. Hopefully the grape vine was still there. Yep we may not have been in the South of France but we had a thriving grapevine. It produced the tiniest, sourest grapes, you'd ever tasted but my little sis and I weren't complaining!
EVERYBODY NEEDS GOOD NEIGHBOURS
I can't pretend we lived on Ramsay Street. But for the most part, a lot of us who lived on that road knew each other and were on first name terms. At the very least we recognized who lived on that street and which was their house. And of course every Christmas, cards would be popped through letter boxes. But when it came to friends, that was undoubtedly the neighbours who lived the the two houses right across the road from us. One was a very friendly family with five (or was it six?) adult boys; one of whom was a very good friend to my dad, and my sister and I got to be flower girls at his wedding. The other family had children who were of a similar age to me and my siblings and we were always in and out of each other's houses. Both families were regular visitors to ours, and were always welcome guests whenever we were celebrating an important family event.
The family with the five or six lads moved away long before we did and we all ended up losing contact. Back then people didn't keep in contact the way we do today. We didn't have Facebook or WhatsApp - we didn't even have email! So if you wanted to keep in touch it would be letters, phone calls, plus the odd visit. But because these methods of communication weren't as 'instant' as it is today, and could sometimes be a bit time-consuming, people eventually stopped putting in the effort and just drifted away - especially when real-life gets in the way. However, as I stood outside of the home of the neighbours whose children we used to play with, I wondered if it could be at all possible that they still lived there.
What after all this time? Nah - they couldn't be!
But then I found myself doing a very un-Angel-like thing. I suddenly found myself pushing open the gate to their home and ringing the bell. Not something I would normally do as I totally hate bothering people and coming across as a nuisance. When I relayed the story to my sister later that evening, she was totally shocked that I would be so bold, as that is definitely more her department! I wanted to turn and run after ringing the bell but aside from being too old to be playing Knock Down Ginger, I saw a lady I didn't recognize walking towards the door with a young child, so it was too late for me to make a hasty get-away.
"I'm sorry to bother you," I began suddenly feeling quite foolish, "but I was looking for the people who used to live here..."
Read the second part of our post to find out what happened next... and to see which soap legend's former home I got to see (well only from the outside but that's good enough for me!)
Photos: Angel Noire, YouTube and Wix
Blog graphics: Angel Noire
My mam still lives in the same place that we grew up in. I go home a lot to visit her as she's quite poorly. And while it's always 'home' to me as much as the home and homelife that I've built with my husband, I'm not sure I necessarily feel that sense of nostalgia that Angel has talked about but that because it's always been home and it's always been there if it makes any sense. Perhaps if I'd gone back after being away for years, it would be different.
I live in America now. I try to go home to England as often as I can. But I'm well aware that there may come a time when my visits home may become less frequent. It's like that for many expats. We all have intentions of going home at least once a year but it's not always possible. I wonder how I'd feel if I went back home after such a long time. Would things be the same or would it be completely unrecognizable? This post was a good insight into what my future might be.
Until I got married, I'd only ever had one home and my family still live there. So I always see it and my old area every time I go back. So I never have time to miss it! But it's great you had the chance to go back to your old hometown.
This is beautiful. Such lovely memories. I'm now inspired to go check out my old family home (the one I lived in with my mum!)
Wow, this is my neck of of the woods too. I'm from Upton Park so just walking distance from where you're from. This was a lovely read. My family and I have all moved around so much in our lifetimes. I'm 51 now and I've lost count of the places I've lived in so I never really had much of an attachment to one particular house or the people who lived there.