Arnold and The Barkingside Fables.
 

Celia’s dad was a lorry driver after the war. Big ones. He was a big man, 5’ 11” in his socks and 17 stones. Reg could drink any man under the table and frequently did. He was into all kinds; a founding member of the Ilford Motorcycle Club and had several Velocettes and a Rudge. He was the only customer to pass a big white fiver over the bar of the Fairlop Oak (Barkingside) in 1949 for a pint.
Celia was born in 1940 and idolised but rarely listened to her Dad. Unlike her brothers and sisters, and being the youngest, she could wrap him round her finger. Nothing’s changed, it seems, she’s the same with me.
This was the true story she told me shortly after we met.

At that time, 1949, Arnold, an elderly gent and a surviving old soldier with a WW1 limp, used to door-knock and sell Old Moore’s Almanac which was the 1940’s equivalent of Google in a A5 booklet. Not dissimilar to The Big Issue. He also had a part-time job with a wash board in a one-man-band along with a concertina player and a chap that had a big base drum on his back and sticks on his elbows, cymbals on his knees and a kazoo on a frame round his neck.

One day Reg was sitting in the ‘front room’ (the only lounge in those days was in the Fairlop Oak) eating his tripe and onions with Celia at the table, frowning in disgust, when a knock came on the door.

Celia jumped down from the table, ran to the door and opened it. Then came the wonderful cry “Dad, it’s Arnold with his old whore’s almanac”. Arnold was not pleased and Celia wondered for a long time why there was tripe all over the Queen Mary anniversary plastic tablecloth. That was the day I asked her to marry me.

I was born in Barkingside and have had many a pint in the Fairlop Oak. The last pint I had there was last month. It’s now a Wetherspoon, but it has been a Schooner Inn, A Watney pub along with being a Truman house. It also had a off licence at one point.

Barkingside was a small hamlet that got it’s name from being on the “Barking” side of Epping Forest. Barking being the principle town at the time as it had an Abbey.

What a lovely story Ray and happy memories I'm sure:bowdown::D

For some reason I associate you with some masionettes/flats about halfway between B'side and Gants Hill? I lived over the Sainsbury's shop at Gants Hill when I first arrived 'down here' from Runcorn in 1960. What a time that was, the Beatles breaking out all over the place. I still had a Liverpool accent then and the girlies thought I was fascinating! Not that I played up to it at all....

Pubs to be in at the time were Two Puddings, Stratford - Rising Sun, Bethnal Green - Red Lion, Walthamstow. The Blind Beggar was exceptional with many groups that went on to big things. Manfred Mann with Long John Baldry played everywhere. All for free!

Following a magical 'courting', mainly in Valentines Park, we married and lived in Fencepiece Road, a wonderful start.

I was born in a maisonette in Fulwell Avenue and lived there right up to June 2018. Lived there with my big brother, mum and dad. Mum moved in in 1940, dad was away fighting those pesky foreigners.

I know The Red Lion in Leytonstone but have never known one in Walthamstow. An area mix-up perhaps?