Minded

My Mum used to send me to Evelyn Williams while she went to work. Evelyn and Ernie Williams used to live at number 58 and they had the top half of the house, while Nina and Pop lived downstairs. A lot of houses in the 60's were divided into 2 flats, in our house we had Mr and Mrs Jones who lived upstairs.



Evelyn and Ernie Williams had 5 kids. 4 girls. Valerie, Sylvie, Vicky and Pat and 1 boy, Christopher. They were all a lot older than me and from the time I can remember they were all working, except for Christopher. He had sets of toy soldiers and used to regualrly tie a bit of string to the leg and dangle it in the fire so it melted. None of that health and safety lark then, no guard on the fire, just me and him lying close to the hearth watching the soldiers melt.



Evelyn used to insist that I had an afternoon nap, I was forced to lay in one of the beds and try to sleep, but after a few minutes I would get bored. She had wall paper on the wall that had very tiny roses on it and if I stared at them long enough, they used to move. That used to scare me as I imagined they were little beetles so then I would pick them off the wall. Evelyn would go nuts, shouting at me for picking the wall paper off and threaten to 'pay' me, which was usually a tap on the bum!!



When I was really bored, I would go down and see Nina and Pop who were in their 70's. Nina was a lovely kindly old lady and, as my only living Grandmother used to live in Wales, I adopted her as my nanny. She used to cook proper dinners, fish with parsley sauce, real steak and kidney puddings. Sometimes, we would pop out to the 'Thatched' to do some shopping. Up the 'Thatched' there would be a proper butcher, a greengrocer and fishmonger. Then on the way back, she would take me into the sweetshop opposite her house and get some tinned peas and have a gossip with Doll, the lady who owned the shop.



Occassionally, Evelyns daughters would take a sneaky day off work and then they would go back to my house, get a swimming costume and take me over to Whipps Cross Lido. I used to love it there, they had 2 fountains, one each end of the pool that looked like great big ice creams. The water used to come out of the middle and slash down the outside into a pool I could paddle in.
http://www.shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=993

A few years back, my Dad and I were over Whipps Cross and we decided to explore a bit and try and find SOME sign that a big Lido was once there. There wasn't 1 brick, the only thing we could find was a new pond where the pool must once have been.

I still see Evelyns Children on very rare occassions and they still refer to me as 'Little Carol' !