Day of service, East End style

Until the middle of the twentieth century many East Enders, and those who lived south of the river, in the poorer boroughs of London, went hop-picking every year. It was quite an industry and a practical way to earn a few pennies, enjoy a family vacation, albeit a working one, and breathe clean country air. Of course, the descendants of those hop pickers are now barreling down the motorway in their land cruisers, roaring past those old hop fields and disused kilns without a second glance, as they head to the Channel Tunnel and the promise of warmer, richer pickings on the other side.

Made in Dagenham

Many of you have, very oddly it seems to me, expressed a desire to visit Dagenham after reading A Yank Back to England. Well, this one's for you (don't say I didn't warn you!).

An inauspicious beginning

When England was celebrating the Festival of Britain and cheering for the Queen, I came into the world without many cheers but quite a lot of tears. Mum bawled her eyes out when I turned out to be a boy and not the girl she always wanted. Regardless, after the nurse offered to take me, mum reluctantly assumed the maternal role.

East End...to East Side

During our fabulous weekend in New York, we stayed on the ritzy East Side and yet, and yet, what do we see as we're walking down the street? A Barking Dog sign! Oh, no! Where are we again? Is this the East Side or the East End? This Barking Dog is a restaurant attached to a hotel, and probably a lot nicer than the pub in Barking, but nevertheless...
We also saw a Baker Street Pub with a charming Sherlock Holmes sign, but were running late and did not take a photo.

One sherry too many

“Is Mum alright, Dad?”
“Don’t wake her, for Gawd’s sake!” Lew’s face registered fear. “She’ll start doing a ‘knees up’ or get all funny. Either way, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“A knees up?” Frances whispered. I explained it was an East London dance that is only difficult to do if very drunk, which is the only time it is ever performed. A “knees up” requires the linkage of arms, the stomping of feet, and high-kicking legs in order to get the required “knees up” while singing “Knees Up Mother Brown.”
The image of my drunken aunts performing like inebriated Rockettes, trampling on each other’s feet, was not far from my mind.

"You did what to Tony?"

Here's another bit I read from A Yank Back to England. We dined on this story for a long time; a little bit obvious but it still makes us laugh. And yes, that's just what Mum said...

Quick walk 'round Dagenham

But first, Frances insisted on exploring the immediate vicinity. A quick walk before dinner. It was where I grew up, she said. She was curious. I was not. But then, maybe I was. A little.
The landscape in Dagenham had no contours, except for the occasional tarmac hillock to accommodate London Transport on its bold thrust eastwards. Yet, even with its flatness, Dagenham didn’t have a big sky like Aldeburgh. It narrowed at the edges of one’s horizon, cowering in one corner and skulking in the other. And so it was with Castle Green, the vast playing fields located a few blocks from my old home. Frances and I went for a walk there, following the path I took years ago with Rex, our family dog. We headed diagonally across an empty expanse, past a muddy soccer field and the sagging narrowness of an unkempt cricket pitch. Past the brick sports building that was always locked and always reeked of pee because the local soccer players could never get to the inside toilet. Past the wooden notice board with pasted-over information of long-gone events. Nothing new to announce. Nothing I did not know about.

My Aunt Vi

Vi was one of my favorite aunts. She was my mum’s younger sister but looked on first glance to be older. She had silvery gold hair spun as thin as cotton candy and set on a vivid pink skull. She had a wizened chin, rounded at the end like a small doughnut. And when she smiled, her jaws caved in thanks to ill-fitting dentures. But her eyes twinkled with the mischief of a sixteen year old. Vi quickly changed the subject back to things meteorological.
“I bet the weather’s all lovely where you are, Denis, ay? Ay? In America, isn’t it, Denis? Like in the pictures, innit? Hollywood. Lovely. Love it over there, don’t you, Denis?”
I had never lived in Hollywood, or in California for that matter, but when Vi thought of America, she thought of sunshine and glamour and excitement. I suppose anywhere in America was a kind of Hollywood back-lot, if you had not been there.

Dagenham? You come from ... where?

“Dagenham? You can’t possibly come from Dagenham!” a flamboyant acquaintance in the West End of London once told me. “You simply must tell people you come from ‘Darn-em’ and you must place your hand over your mouth as you say it, just in case.”
Just in case? In case of what? I felt an urge to defend the place, but then thought better of it.
Dagenham. “Call it Daggers,” said another wag. Well, I called it home.

Teaching Frances Cockney rhyming slang

“I’m just going up the apples and pears,” said Lew, without explanation.
Frances looked puzzled. Lew pointed to me for the answer.
“You know, Cockney rhyming slang. He gets into it sometimes,” I said, still a bit morose.
“Oh, apples and pears, stairs – I got it.”
“She’s got it,” said Lew, chuckling to himself as he mounted the stairs.
“Where you off to then?” I asked.
“Just got to see a man about a dog.”
“A man about a dog?” asked Frances.
I pointed to the closing toilet door. Frances asked what was the rhyme in “man about a dog.” I told her, I did not have a clue. My old man and his expressions! But at least that one had caught me smiling again.

Not a knees up, for Gawd's sake!

“Is Mum alright, Dad?” I asked.
“Don’t wake her, for Gawd’s sake!” Lew’s face registered fear and concern. “She’ll start doing a ‘knees up’ or get all funny. Either way, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“A knees up?” Frances whispered. I explained it was an East London dance that is only difficult to do if very drunk, which is the only time it is ever performed. A “knees up” required the linkage of arms, the stomping of feet, and high-kicking legs in order to get the required “knees up” while singing “Knees Up Mother Brown.” The image of my drunken aunts performing like inebriated Rockettes, trampling on each other’s feet, was not far from my mind.

A tree grows in Dagenham

“See that! First tree planted in our street! I did that,” I said. Through the gaps in houses I pointed out a rusty red, wooden telegraph pole. This was implanted in the early seventies, when I ordered a phone for my parents’ home, the first on our road. At the time, the arrival, the hoisting and planting of the pole had caused no little stir. Our neighbors and people from nearby streets stood on the sidewalks and watched. In total silence. Even when wires were cast from the pole to the outside wall of our house. Fascinated and disinterested in equal measure, nobody asked what was going on, and we did not tell them. They might have thought we were bragging. Now of course, there were wires leading to other houses. And somehow, I don’t think the purchase of a cell phone today would have the same impact we created back then. Even in Dagenham.

A cauliflower grows in Dagenham, part 2

For some unknown reason, the cauliflowers attracted an inordinate amount of caterpillars. Every day these green and white creatures would promenade across the plants’ bulbous surface. When they first appeared, Lew was going to spray them with DDT but thought better of it. Using a stick he knocked the insects off and I had the fun job of smashing and mashing them to bits.
Eventually a caterpillar-free, fully grown cauliflower was delivered to Jessie. The large, heavy plant was divested of its outer greenery, then plunged whole into a pot of water in which it was boiled.
And boiled.
Eventually, the cauliflower was retrieved like a hot and soggy sponge, with all its flavor and nutrients drained away. The cauliflower was divided and served as a side dish. The remains of the florets had turned grainy and mealy, and overall the cauliflower tasted of hot water with fibrous bits.
To suggest to Jessie that a vegetable could be cooked less and retain a touch of crunch would have evoked derisive laughter and looks of incredulity mingled with pity. The idea that a cauliflower could be enrobed in a velvety cheese sauce would have caused my mum great consternation and might have had her doubting my masculinity. Mum would not brook such adulterations.

Club Row and my first bagel

Club Row was a place to itself. Located just out of the stream of pedestrian traffic that either spilled out to Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate, or double-backed up to Aldgate. When I was a kid, Club Row was derelict, the enduring result of bomb damage from the London Blitz. But on Sundays, this empty space filled up with vendors. There were birds for sale, exotic parakeets, gaudy parrots, tiny songbirds, and hundreds of racing pigeons warbling with discontent, stacked up, cage upon cage, way beyond my gaze. Bordered with old warehouse buildings, ancient offices, and clothing sweatshops, Club Row also housed a variety of stores at street level, open on Sunday because it was an old Jewish neighborhood.
I particularly loved the bakeries, with their weirdly shaped loaves, twisted and plaited and covered with what I thought was bird seed. And rolls with holes, threaded onto long sticks! Amazing. No bread was sliced, or pre-wrapped in printed waxed paper. Fresh. Lew once bought us a bag of small, hot breads that were soft on the inside and crusty on the outside. Steam filled the bag and a yeasty, sweet aroma filled the air. My first bagels. What a treat. We ate most of them as we mooched around, looking at budgies and songbirds and kittens and puppies. For a few hours, I had become a part of Lew’s polyglot, unpredictable, and distant past.

For whom the school bell tolls

“You weren’t much for school,” said Lew.
“Out when I was fifteen.”
“Not much older than when I left school.”
“You didn’t want me to stay on,” I said, wanting to know why.
“Wasn’t like that in my day. I got this lovely job, I did, at a bank. On account of me being tall. They gave me a uniform, with a lovely thick overcoat. And all I had to do was stand outside. But Mum found me another job that paid sixpence more a week. So that was that. I had to give up my job at the bank and give back that overcoat, all for sixpence more a week.”
“You could’ve said no,” I said.
“No? Naaaw! Didn’t say ‘no’ in those days. What your mother told you to do, you did. Gawd help you if you didn’t.”
“I never did what you wanted me to.” I said.
“You passed that exam, you got in the print. You did what I wanted you to do.”
“I think I really wanted to stay on at school.”
“Well, you weren’t much for it. Told you at the time. You weren’t good at maths.”
“Not much cop at algebra. Physics. The teachers...they weren’t bothered.”
“Gawd’s truth! You should’ve seen the teacher we ‘ad. The headmaster tried to cane me once. I broke his cane for him. Got me expelled. But,” Lew said expansively, “I was leaving anyway—”

Stopping for directions

“Now, when you get up there, you’ll come to this thing we call a ‘roundabout.’ Got that, yeah?”
He talked slowly. He talked loudly. We realized he thought I was foreign. He thought I was an American! He said again, but slower, “a ‘ran-da-bhat.’ ” Bloody nerve.
“Anyway, you’ll come to this ‘ran-da-bhat’ and—”
He never explained what a ‘ran-da-bhat’ was exactly. Instead, he started making large circular movements with his oddly bent hand and arm. If I had been American by birth and not by choice, I might have imagined he was describing a carousel with gaudily painted wooden horses placed on the highway to amuse passing commuters, rather than a traffic circle. I stared at him. He smiled, nodding, looking like the amiable idiot he thought I was.
“Yes, yes, I know what it is, I’ve been ‘ere before.” I tried to thicken up my Cockney accent. He went right on, ignoring me and my strategically dropped aitches.
“But don’t go right a-rhaand it. Turn off before you do, and that’ll get you on the Ilford Road. Can’t miss it.”
I thanked him and we were on our way.

Variation on an East End symphony

My elementary school did have something the Weald schoolroom did not possess. Electrical equipment! Once a week, two teachers wheeled in a large gray box covered in stretched cloth. In the box was a gramophone – without a wind-up handle! Through this mysterious contraption, we heard Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolf and Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Of course, I did not know it was Britten at the time. I found out years later, when I heard it again, without the school version’s patronizing narration. Back then, the energy and excitement of the music was lost on us. We stared into space, trying to fathom why our teachers were so happy. They beamed at each other, rocked back and forth on their feet, and nodded sagely over something or other. One teacher conducted an imaginary orchestra with his hands in his trouser pockets. A little provocative, even to our innocent eyes. Occasionally, and with less gyrations, he conducted by gripping the lapels of his tweed sports jacket; then only his folded arms would flap about, like stunted wings. He tried hard not to betray the passion he so fervently felt and we hopelessly lacked.

Parental chitchat

“Have we missed the East Enders?” asked Jessie.
“That was ages ago,” said Lew.
“Bugger it,” said Jessie.
And surprisingly predictable. She’d missed her favorite show, so she settled for what was showing. Lew had brought a book and was not bothered either way. When Frances entered the living room, Mum had already nodded off and Lew was looking at the racing page.
“’Glorious Goodwood,’ that’s what they called it. Glorious, my arse! Nothing special. Lose your money on that course as well as any other course.”
“We could visit Goodwood. If we had some binoculars, you could see the racing from the garden.”
“Naaaw, better to see the racing on the telly.”
“What’s going on?” Mum woke up, blinked at the TV. “Did I go to sleep?”
“You were out like a light, come on, time to get you up to bed,” said Lew.
Lew pried Mum out of the armchair and together they toddled upstairs.

A Brit’s Christmas in America

In Dickensian England, goose was the bird of choice for the big feast. When I was growing up in the East End, most families served turkey at Christmas or, in small families like ours, a capon, which is a fat and juicy, knackerless chicken. Since Christmas comes so soon after Thanksgiving, and perhaps because I am so far away from the Green and Pleasant, my American Christmas dinners are invariably roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, based on the traditional Sunday lunch.
For the uninitiated, a Yorkshire pudding is like a popover, only better. Sometimes made with beef drippings in a large tin, I prefer a pan with small indentations that proffer individual servings. This way everyone gets a pudding that resembles a golden, crusty well just waiting for lashings of rich gravy.
Mum was not always a bad cook, but she was always a surprising one. Sometimes her puddings would rise like golden mountain peaks, other times they would sit there, in a pool of meat fat, looking and tasting like a rubber bathmat. There was never any way of knowing in advance. Although inured to Mum’s culinary failures, we could still be buoyed up her erratic successes.
When it is done right, as it will be tomorrow, nothing can beat this classic Sunday lunch of a rib of beef, pink-to-rare on the inside, crusty on the outside, with a freshly made Yorkshire pud, crispy vegetables, as well as meltingly roasted potatoes and parsnips, and a little horseradish cream on the side. This feast is a thing sublime, with the looks, aromas, and flavors of Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled into one.
Merry Christmas. Eat and drink hearty!

Sunday seafood teas in Dagenham, part 2

The fishman showed up regular as clockwork. A few honks of the horn was all it took to attract his regular customers. I always went out with Lew, to help him make his selection. The fishmonger’s thick cheeks, hands, and forearms were lobster-red. He always wore a floppy green jersey and a bright, starched white apron. The crustaceans were never weighed out, but rather scooped up in pint and half-pint tin mugs. Mum always requested pinky red prawns.
“Knock ‘em down,” Lew would say in his gravelly growl, and the fishmonger would reluctantly bash the tin mug on his makeshift counter, bending a sea whisker or two but allowing a little room for a few more prawns. The cockles were like very tiny clams and, along with winkles, were my favorites. Winkles, those very tiny black sea snails, were tasty but required patience and a little skill. Needles or hat pins would be distributed with saucers filled with vinegar and pepper. Using a needle, I would flip off the winkle cap then twist inside the shell and pull out a tiny crustacean. I preferred ‘winkling’ out a whole bunch at a time and making a sandwich.
“We didn’t always get prawns,” said Jessie, half remembering.
“No, WE didn’t.” Lew cast a knowing smile in my direction.