KEELER FAMILY
PORTRAIT

A rough sketch

by Alan

1996

THE BEGINNING

I was the first child and the first grandchild on my mother’s side.  Born in my Grandmothers house at 11, Cecil Road, Redhill, Surrey and where I think I spent most of my babyhood.

Mother had taken rooms with a family called Furlong, Station Road, Redhill. The only thing I can remember of the house is a very elaborate brass fender in the drawing room and Mr Furlongs very early wireless set which had exposed valves on the top that glowed and a row of dials below. These dials had to be constantly adjusted to keep the station in tune.

To earn some much needed money Mother continued her work as a midwife until I associated her uniform with her absence and cried. Once this had happened she stopped work.  I was 2 years old.  When Mother was absent I would stay with my grandmother, whom I adored.  There was also Uncle Sid who would, on demand, draw me trains, make me toys and play with me.  Sid would have been 17 or 18 at the time.

I understand I started to talk at an early age, quickly learned my nursery rhymes and then, under Sid’s tuition, moved on to Music Hall songs, with actions. Financially the household was poor, poverty stricken by todays standards, but very rich in affection. I think I must have had a very privileged early childhood never lacking in love and attention.

I had hardly ever saw my father who was at sea.

Indoors and outdoors were very different worlds when I was young.  Indoors was normal.  Outdoors required special measures; changes of shoes and clothing, accompanied by grown ups or special permission as to the scope and nature of the occasion.

The day started with washing and dressing in the bedroom.  There was no running water upstairs and washing was done in an old fashioned china wash-bowl filled with luke warm water. I can still remember the feeling of cold lino under bare feet, the agony of a damp flannel rubbed into my face and getting soap in my eyes.

A bedroom was cold.  Heating was by coal fires or a Valor paraffin stove but one had to be ill for heat to be allowed in the bedroom. Warm bedrooms meant luxury - luxury was unchristian, and bad for the character. Breakfast was at 8 am. There was porridge for breakfast with brown sugar or golden syrup during the winter and the first cornflake cereal called Force in the summer. I was never a fan of porridge, which sometimes had lumps in it, but Mother said it was good for me and what Mother said went. What followed later was much better; a soft boiled egg in which one was allowed to dip fingers of bread and butter.

Bread was always stale.  Warm fresh bread was luxurious and bad for the digestion as well as for the character.  Toast was a winter treat. Made with a toasting fork in front of the fire and covered with butter or dripping.  Never enough butter or meat dripping because of the danger of luxury.

Treats were rare and made of quite ordinary things; sweet biscuits, a penny water ice, any sweets. Apart from having very little money I think that Mother had a fairly strict approach to upbringing. She had black and white views in what was right and wrong, what was good or bad. I must not be spoilt or pampered or allowed to be led astray by families who had a rather slack approach to proper behaviour.  In this she was fully supported by my father.

The main meal was lunch and these followed a familiar pattern. Saturday was roast mutton or beef; Sunday and Monday cold meat with potatoes in their skins or bubble and squeak accompanied beetroot and pickles; Tuesday and Wednesday were bits and pieces days; stews, boiled bacon and mashed potatoe, mince and sometimes sausages; Friday was fish, often boiled cod and haddock, very rarely fried fish and chips.

Puddings were plain. When Father was home there was always fruit pie on Sundays, but I have to admit Mother was not very good with pastry. I suspect economy was the cause. There were a variety of steamed puddings - jam roly-poly, spotted dick, awful frog spawn (tapioca) and sago served with jam.  During summer the greatest treat was summer pudding, that was wonderful. I enjoyed any form of stewed fruit with custard which was fortunate because local fruit was cheap.

When I was small there was grace before meals. “For what we are about to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful”; and afterwards (said very quickly) “Thank God for my good food please may I get down”.

As food had a recognisable pattern throughout the week so did each day.  Saturday and Sunday were different from the rest.

On Saturday surprises might happen, people called, it was shopping day (particularly for special things such as; new clothes etc).  Uncle Sid was home and sometimes took me to watch Redhill play football on the recreation ground. Sid was a good Uncle to me when I was very small.

While Saturdays might well be exciting Sunday was always boring. I am not certain if being bored was good for the soul, or what was good for the soul just happened to be boring.

My activities were restricted on Sundays.  I was not allowed to go out to play in the garden, touch a ball, or get out my toys.  The only concession were books but at that age I had no interest in them.  Mother would tell me Biblical stores but much as I wished to please her I was not drawn towards tales with a high moral tone.

We also had to wear Sunday clothes.  For some reason they were always more uncomfortable than weekday ones.  It was Mother who imposed these Sunday restrictions although many were conventions of the time she had a more fundamentalist Sunday Observance approach than most.

My father was more sceptical of religion than Mother and the regime was modified when he was home. At that time, and for the next 50 years, the Navy imposed compulsory church attendance after Sunday Morning Divisions and that tested most religious beliefs to the full.

Mother had a simple straightforward view and her religious convictions were unalterable.  She was not, however, given to parading these deeply held ‘truths’ they were private, but I was her son and she was responsible for my moral upbringing. My mother’s intention was to ensure that I became a good Christian which would lead in the end to a place in Heaven.

My early religious indoctrination did, I believe, strongly underline what was good or bad. Although the Christian beliefs did not out last my early teens

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