|
||
|
9th October 2019, 17:47 | #1 |
This is my second home
75 Auto 2.5 SE Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Westcliff on Sea
Posts: 5,195
Thanks: 423
Thanked 1,680 Times in 1,014 Posts
|
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.
__________________
member no. 235 |
9th October 2019, 18:17 | #2 |
Moderator/Club Shop
MG ZT 1.8t+. No.3 of 4 in Sunspot Yellow & Ford Fiesta in Black. Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Rattler Farm
Posts: 22,568
Thanks: 9,270
Thanked 15,645 Times in 6,806 Posts
|
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.
__________________
233,431. That’s our second meet done, no.3 next weekend. onen hag oll Last edited by FLYING BANANA; 9th October 2019 at 18:20.. Reason: Further info |
9th October 2019, 18:26 | #3 | |
This is my second home
rover 75 1.8 vvc club se wedgwood blue Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Seaton Carew
Posts: 26,921
Thanks: 65
Thanked 7,142 Times in 4,642 Posts
|
Quote:
|
|
9th October 2019, 20:04 | #4 | |
This is my second home
75 Auto 2.5 SE Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Westcliff on Sea
Posts: 5,195
Thanks: 423
Thanked 1,680 Times in 1,014 Posts
|
Quote:
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.
__________________
member no. 235 |
|
9th October 2019, 20:38 | #5 |
Moderator/Club Shop
MG ZT 1.8t+. No.3 of 4 in Sunspot Yellow & Ford Fiesta in Black. Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Rattler Farm
Posts: 22,568
Thanks: 9,270
Thanked 15,645 Times in 6,806 Posts
|
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.
__________________
233,431. That’s our second meet done, no.3 next weekend. onen hag oll |
10th October 2019, 23:21 | #6 |
I really should get out more.......
Rover 75 saloon Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: London
Posts: 2,958
Thanks: 263
Thanked 538 Times in 431 Posts
|
I know The Red Lion in Leytonstone but have never known one in Walthamstow. An area mix-up perhaps?
__________________
Reducing the size of my Rover fleet by adding a 75 to it. |
|
|