It’s odd – and showing that 62 years after leaving North London for the flat where I was brought up, I still think of home. I can still remember the phone number: Pinner 1826.
I can walk around the flat in my mind, running my hand over the “disease” on the bathroom wall, on another Parisian wallpaper. I can hear the “geyser” spewing hot water into the bath, I smell the cat dying in its red “hospital” blanket, I see the man in the moon as a sign of the inn, in Bruegel’s painting, Belgian Proverbs, ours. in front of the wall of the room.
My parents, Harold and Connie, moved to Pinner from London’s East End. My mother lived in Pinner, but my father was irritated. We would walk the suburban streets together and he would say, “Why do we live here?” And I say: “I don’t know. I am seven. What do I know?”
We basically lived in two rooms, separated by a hallway that my brother and I used for our Dinky toy car. The end was the kitchen where we ate and the wet clothes hung in the air, close enough to the fireplace that I came to school in shirts that smelled of liver and onions. At the other end was the front room which also annoyed my father because of its “phoney bloody Tudor” windows. “A hundred diamond-shaped tablets. Each one of them lets in the draft!”
For these drinks, the father sent out months ago a court stove, which had a front of very beautiful black enamel, two doors, and each mirrored window. It was my duty to empty the ash pan. All the rest of the hearths were taken care of by my father, who was kneeling like a domestic chamber, polishing and smoothing, and repeating: “The fire is not too old there, boy,” which we scolded NABOFTL.
each of his parents had a room; my mother would sit and tie us jumpers and socks. My father sat reading, making notes and smoking. When the ash fell on the front or the side of the chair, my mother would say: “Look at your father, he’s a pile of dung. He will not do anything about it until he walks in it. When he gets his tukhes [bum] she is stuck in that chair, she can never get out of there.’
In the winter we heat the kitchen with a cook’s fire, which is lit by a metal tube that blows blue flames. He looked out the window over the back with a pile of coal in it, which I climbed up and pretended to go to the moon. Beyond the alley was an alley lined with brown stones where I played ballgames with the butcher’s son Keith; States Dairies struck by a horse cart and roared; and where my brother, the owner of the old shop, was called Mr. “speeding past-dust,” on account of his wild haste into our little sack.
Under the window was the “pan”, a homemade rolled surface and where I would stand and help my mother make the cake, garlic and collected. In the corner was a bacon rack that my mother said kept the milk fresh. No – it sours, but he reminded me of his mother’s smetana – a sour cream from a distant place my father called “Heim” – Poland, Lithuania, Russia.
The food could lead to rough moments. My father would often reminisce about his bubba’s cholera – a lamb and barley dish Grandma would make. Turn mother would say: “Cholete? Don’t think I’m standing by the stove for 24 hours… Your Bubbe has robbed you. Remember this, I am not your bubbe. My father would look at us and ask: “What did I say? What did I say wrong?”
We did Christmas. Presents appeared secretly beside my and my brother’s bed. Every year, the latest Puffin Picture Books, then later, the Puffin Story Books. One Christmas, the plain walls were covered in glowing dragons that the art group had done at the school (where my father taught). My friends said, “What do you want dragons on the wall?”, but they loved coming to see a man peeing on the moon.
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