Read Online Jellied Eels and Zeppelins by Sue Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

was goin’ up to Wood Street to catch the train once, when Doris bought some stink bombs and jumping crackers from a shop near the station. She said that when we went through the tunnel at Hackney Downs Station, we’d let these crackers off in the train. She told me to sit on one side of the door and she would sit on the other. When it all went dark in the tunnel, we let the crackers off. The girls screeched and, when the train had passed through and it was light again, I saw that one girl was hanging onto the luggage rack! A jumping cracker had burnt a hole in her coat. Were we sorry, but we still chucked the two stink bombs into the carriage just as we got out at Liverpool Street! I tell you, that snobby girl never came with us again!
    Doris was the one who suggested all those pranks, not me. And there was another one called May - she was just as mad. May was a lovely person, a real tomboy. She was six feet tall and full of life and fun. Whenever you went out with May and Doris, you knew you were going to have a good time. I used to do all the organising and they used to arrange all the fun.
    When we went to Walton-on-the-Naze one summer, there were some photographers from the Walton Gazette up on the cliffs, who asked if they could take some photographs of us. Doris arranged us all for the pictures. Lots of other people wanted to take our photos too, as they could see what a fun time we were having! We would take any unused film from the cameras that were brought into Ensign for repair out in the darkrooms and use it up on our days out.

    Ethel (2nd from left) on a seaside outing with friends from Ensign Cameras
    Doris, May and I played for the Ensign Netball Team - I became the captain eventually. Doris played Goal Shooter. May only played for a little while. We used to play behind The Billet (
public house
). Doris and I thoroughly enjoyed that, but when Doris suddenly took a fancy to walking, we both dropped out of netball. The team weren’t all that good, so it was quite easy to give it up.
    Doris was marvellous at walking. I wasn’t all that sporty really. Doris was the sporty one and so was May. Doris rode a Matchless motor bike when she was 14 (she was four years older than me). The motor bike had a long red tank. She used to rev up and down our road like mad and make me roll up.
    Doris was a good runner too. She won quite a few races on sports day. She always used to go nice and brown in the summer - you could always pick her out in photos. I was no good at running or walking. Cousin Flo was the runner in our family. I went to keep fit classes mostly. I was about 15 or 16 when I went to the school at Mission Grove to do keep fit. Doris would come along sometimes - when she wasn’t out walking!
    If I went out with Doris to go to a dance, she would take the man’s part and I would take the lady’s. I used say to her ‘You know that I’m not allowed out after 10 o’clock?’ Sometimes, a friend of Doris’s, who was a Freemason, would give her two free tickets for the dances at the Masonic Hall. The chap I was engaged to only came round once a week, so I used to go with Doris. We were back late once or twice and she came home with me. One night after a dance at the Chequers Pub in the market, we arrived back late. We’d got some balloons and Doris shut one in the door - I thought it was going to wake up Dad, but we were lucky that time!
    Trouble was, some of the dances used to be on a Wednesday night and we’d got to go to work in the morning. Dad used to get up early to go to work and, as he walked past our bedroom door, he would bang on it. ‘Get up you girls! You’ll be late!’ He used to make out that he was going out by slamming the front door and then he would creep back in. He made sure you got up, my Dad did. He was good in that way. My foreman used to say ‘You’ve never been late once in all the 18 years you’ve been here.’ Yet Doris was always late when she lived with her sister.
    Doris