The Boys from the Bush

By Ken Baker

Shepherds Bush, in the immediate post-war years, was a thriving and busy community. In many ways it was an exciting place in which to grow up. Despite there being no TV, computer games or mobiles and even very few private telephones, there was never enough time in the day for The Boys from the Bush. We could always find or invent things to do. Boredom was a state of mind that simply didn't exist in the boys' world.
Games and schemes were hatched in our H.Q. - a perilous bombed-out house with no floors and only its bare rafters remaining. A 60ft drop awaited any one of us if we were to slip.
This was a period where regular visits to the cinema and the "wireless" provided the main sources of entertainment.There was a proliferation of cinemas in those days with long queues of people waiting to get in to see the latest films. Saturday morning pictures were not to be missed. at 6.45 every evening the streets were empty with everyone home and glued to the light programme, avidly awaiting the latest episode of Dick Barton - special agent.
It was a time when authority was respected and the words of parents, teachers and 'grown-ups' generally were rarely questioned - not that this prevented the boys from having fun.
Apart from the colourful street characters the main protagonists are:

Reggie: the tallest of the boys and the best at all sports.

Joey: the asthmatic one, generally hopeless but always the most immaculate from the top of his brylcreemed hair to the tips of his cherry blossomed shoes.

David: the storyteller - with tales that usually involved dead bodies or, at the very least, lots of blood.

Ken: the observer and narrator of those wonderful times of over 60 years ago.

and not forgetting:

Baby sister: just a pain in those days. she hasn't changed...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Baker
• Release date: Mar 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476092614

Ken Baker

Ken Baker is the author of many books for young readers, including Old MacDonald Had a Dragon, Cow Can't Sleep, and Brave Little Monster. In addition to writing books, he enjoys spending time with his family boating, wakeboarding, snowboarding, swimming, and camping.

Book preview

The Boys From The Bush

Ken Baker

Smashwords Edition

Copyright of text and cover design remains with the author and artist

© 2010 Ken Baker

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Sue, my lovely wife.

Without her this book would never have seen the light of day

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Prologue

Chapter 2 - ‘The Bush’ 1948

Chapter 3 - The Boys

Chapter 4 - My Family

Chapter 5 - HQ

Chapter 6 - Street games

Chapter 7 - The Fish and Chip Shop

Chapter 8 - Saturdays

Chapter 9 - Joey’s Dad

Chapter 10 - The Pow-Wow

Chapter 11 - Newspapers, Bottles and Brassware

Chapter 12 - The Funfair

Chapter 13 - Mornings with Dad

Chapter 14 - Sunday’ best for Sunday tea

Chapter 15 - Mum The Hat Maker

Chapter 16 - The Meccano Set

Chapter 17 - Reggie’s Birthday

Chapter 18 - Christmas Eve

Chapter 19 - Christmas Day

Chapter 20 - Blood Brothers

Chapter 21 - Under the Lamplight

Chapter 22 - A Bad Day Gets Better

Chapter 23 - A Foggy Night

Chapter 24 - The Circus

Chapter 25 - A Sad Day

Chapter 26 - Wrong

Chapter 27 - Funeral in Irving Road

Chapter 28 - Norland Market

Chapter 29 - School

Chapter 30 - The Gaumont

Chapter 31 - A Photograph

Chapter 32 - A Mystery

Chapter 33 - Tommy

Chapter 34- Swimming

Chapter 35 - The Library Book

Chapter 36 - John George Haigh

Chapter 37 - Shepherds Bush Market

Chapter 38 - The Commodore

Chapter 39 - Cricket on Brook Green

Chapter 40 - Another Lie

Chapter 41 - Kensington Gardens

Chapter 42 - Fathers

Chapter 43 - An Overheard Conversation

Chapter 44 - Detectives

Chapter 45 - Watching out for Joey

Chapter 46 - Special Agents

Chapter 47 - The Next Day

Chapter 48 - The Pads

Chapter 49 - Madame Tussauds

Chapter 50 - Leaving

Chapter 51 - Brumas

Chapter 52 - Early to Bed

Chapter 53 - The Robbery

Chapter 54 - The Hero

Chapter 55 - Famous

Chapter 56 - Explanations on a Stormy Morning

Chapter 57 - The Dance

Chapter 58- Rations and Reg Harris

Chapter 59 - David

Chapter 60 - Sports and Surprises

Chapter 61 - The Letter

Chapter 62 - Eleven Plus

Chapter 63 - Different Directions

Chapter 64 - Epilogue 2009

Prologue

To most people Shepherds Bush tube station is just a stop on the Central line but for me it was home – at least it was for a while.

I was born in 1940 and during the early years of the War the tube station offered some protection from the falling bombs. Hundreds of families like ours used to huddle together in blankets and sleeping bags down there on the station platform, trying to get some sleep. ‘Trying’ was the operative word as the tube trains were still running until quite late and they made possibly even more of a racket then than they do today. Still, at least it was warm, being sheltered as we were from both the bombs and the icy blasts of winter.

It was always winter during the War.

That’s how I remember it but I was only five years old when the War ended. I remember I could read a little before I went to infant school as my mother had given me some pre-school lessons. Those lessons were probably what led to my becoming fascinated by the advertisements on the walls of the tube tunnel. Whether I could actually read the slogans, or had them read to me, who knows? I distinctly recall being urged to Smoke Craven ‘A’ For Your Throat’s Sake. As a precocious child, growing up with the Boys from the Bush, I took this advice when I was about twelve years old and was violently sick.

Sadly, I was not deterred and by the time I was fourteen, rebellious and attending senior school, I became a proper smoker. Incidentally, Craven A was the only brand that actually gave me a sore throat. They were advertised as ‘cork tipped’, a sort of forerunner to the filter tips that were so despised by my father. He didn’t like cigarettes with ‘spats’ on, as he called them.

Equally sadly, despite numerous attempts over in excess of fifty years, I am still trying to kick the habit.

There were several other tube station ads that caught my attention when I was very young. There was the Fry’s Cocoa poster and, next to that, the one with the Ah! Bisto kids. They were sniffing at the aroma of a tasty meal cooking away somewhere in a cosy, red-roofed house in the distance.

The thing that really got my attention, though, was the toucan in the Guinness ads. At the time (I was only around four or five years old) I thought it was a ‘made up’ bird but my father assured me that such a creature really did exist. He never mentioned that the bird was not native to England and for months I kept my eyes peeled every time I went near Shepherds Bush Green. There were plenty of pigeons, sparrows, starlings and blackbirds but not once did I ever spot the exotic and obviously elusive toucan.

Young children never doubted the word of their parents then, but as I grew older I did begin to wonder. My father definitely left me with the impression that his job in the RAF had been that of an Air Commodore or at the very least he’d been one of ‘The Few’. Years later, probably when I was about twelve or thirteen, I learned that he only ever rose to the rank of LAC, the RAF equivalent of something like a corporal. In fact, Dad’s service days were entirely spent stationed on the Shetland Isles, where the only action he saw was some sporadic sheep rustling.

As I say, you never doubted the word of your parents. At only eight years old I thought Dad cut a dashing figure in his RAF uniform. He was very much a hero to me. I used to brag about his exploits, which I embroidered and made ever more lurid when I met up with my pals, the Boys from the Bush. At least two of their fathers were supposed to have been commandos who’d parachuted behind enemy lines armed only with throwing knives.

My Uncle Percy was hit in the face by a piece of shrapnel. This was the lie told to me that I passed on; a lie that I believed implicitly, until I eventually discovered that hundreds of people are born with cleft chins – perhaps the most notable being Kirk Douglas.

Today, with such a disillusioned childhood, being lied to by my family and friends, a social worker would doubtless be trying to justify my turning out to be some sort of serial killer.

Baby Sister was born in 1943 so she really was only a baby during the War. We spent many nights in the shelter at home which was just a steel-reinforced kitchen table. It wasn’t much fun lying there, convulsed with whooping cough as I was, listening to Baby Sister crying and the doodlebugs droning on somewhere in the night.

I wasn’t actually frightened at the time, presumably because I’d known nothing else, but my mother used to shiver. I thought at the time she was just feeling the cold.

It was ten minutes walk from the tube station to our house. Some nights, with Mum either carrying Baby Sister or wheeling her in a pushchair, it was quite a struggle to get home. There were no streetlights and all the houses had specially heavy curtains as the Blackout regulations were strictly observed. Often the only light there was came from the army searchlights that snaked across the sky. The few cars there were had their headlights taped with black adhesive so that only the smallest beam was made available to see them home.

We wrapped up against the eternal winter with coats and scarves and, in my case, a balaclava helmet. This almost rendered me too warm as when I took it off my hair usually began to steam. It was a wonderful piece of headwear, however, and very efficient at keeping out the sudden gusts of wind as we turned the corners.

Nowadays only bank robbers, terrorists and serial killers see it as the height of fashion.

During the War my grandmother, who lived with us, always used to try to hide whenever an aeroplane flew overhead. I distinctly remember looking out of the kitchenette window and shouting to her, It’s all right, Gran, it’s one of ours!

Someone must have told me that the planes with the red, white and blue roundels belonged to the RAF, our side. The question I never asked was where was Gran going to hide if it had been a German bomber? We never had an Anderson shelter in the garden like some of the other houses near us; all we had was the steel-reinforced table. I suppose that was where Gran meant to go but it was downstairs from the parlour and, as soon as she heard a plane’s engines, she immediately darted upstairs. She used to get a bit mixed-up at times. Gran survived the War but died of a stroke the year after it ended.

Once we had an incendiary bomb fall into a garden right next door and men in steel helmets came and shovelled earth on it until eventually it stopped burning. It destroyed next door’s chicken hut but luckily the chickens all escaped, even though they never laid eggs again.

I don’t really remember all that much about the War even though it might seem as if I do. At the time I didn’t even know it was the War. As far as I was concerned there had always been searchlights at night before the bombs and doodlebugs started falling. There was always broken glass from windows that were hit by the blast of a bomb that had fallen often miles away. Several times our own windows were boarded up after being shattered in the night. It was just what happened, nothing unusual. I don’t even remember actually feeling concerned, let alone frightened. I do vaguely recall there were all sorts of celebrations and a street party when the War was over and our side had won.

With all the shortages, the ration books and so on, some people might think of us as being deprived. Well, maybe we were but we certainly didn’t feel that way about ourselves. I know I didn’t and neither did any of my three friends: Reggie Brooks, David Cornish and Joey Pepper, otherwise known as the Boys from the Bush. We all lived within a couple of hundred yards of each other.

Reggie was the consummate sportsman and our unofficial leader. David was our storyteller and Joey the asthmatic one – hopeless at most sports but always immaculately turned out. As for me, I was ‘Kenny’ Baker in those days – I prefer ‘Ken’ now. Well, what about me? I was just me – that’s all. I’m not sure how I’d describe myself. Perhaps I was in a way the ‘observer’ of our little band of friends.

The mid to late 1940s in West London were quite different then compared to today. The pace of life was slower but never actually as slow as people imagine it was in those days. Shepherds Bush was a thriving and busy community. In many ways it was an exciting place in which to grow up.

There was never enough time in the day for the Boys and me and we could always find or invent things to do. Boredom was a state of mind that simply didn’t exist in our world.

Not for the Boys from the Bush.

‘The Bush’ 1948

We always referred to the Shepherds Bush area as just ‘The Bush’ and Shepherds Bush Green was known as simply ‘The Green’ even though there were other ‘Greens’ in the area – Brook Green, for example. ‘The Bush’ was always teeming with people: people going in and coming out of shops, people getting on and off buses, or heading for the tube station.

The whole of the road on one side of The Green was crammed with all kinds of shops, including a large Woolworth’s. There was a cafeteria at the back of this huge store where, when we could afford it, The Boys and I used to go for cups of Oxo.

The din of the traffic was never-ending. Motorists and taxi drivers would hoot at the trolley buses that were forever coming to a sudden standstill in the middle of the road. Lorry drivers, trying to make deliveries to the shops, would shake their fists and swear at the stationary red monsters blocking up the roads all around The Green.

It wasn’t that the trolley buses actually broke down, it was just that they became disconnected. What happened, usually on the tight turns around The Green, was the trolley arms became detached from the two overhead power lines. Without power the buses simply stopped dead. It was then the job of the conductor to hop off and go to a large metal tube under the bus from which he’d take out a long bamboo pole with a hook at one end. Using this he’d reconnect the trolleys with the power lines and the bus would be on its way again. The conductors never hurried; they took their time and completely ignored the hooting, honking, shouting and swearing.

Shepherds Bush Market was always packed, but on Saturdays it was almost impossible to move. Everything anyone wanted could be found at the many stalls and shops there. People came from Chiswick, Fulham, Chelsea, Hammersmith and even further to visit the Market.

At night, even after the Market and the shops by The Green had closed, people were still milling around. There were long queues for the shows at the Shepherds Bush Empire and even longer ones for the Palladium Cinema next door. A doorman in a maroon uniform with lots of gold braid used to parade up and down outside there, barking out orders: "Step this way for the one and nines, or, Move along there, please."

The more annoyed he got with people not taking any notice of him, the more he was booed by everyone. His face began to match the colour of his uniform as he struggled to make himself heard over the laughing, jeering cinemagoers. The pub on the corner, like most of the others in the area, had a piano player and the noise from in there didn’t help him.

Usually it was close to midnight when the pubs finally shut and the customers, singing out of tune and slurring the words of the songs, started weaving their way home. The traffic then thinned out and ‘The Bush’ was almost quiet.

The next morning the hustle and bustle started all over again.

Although only ten minutes walk from the busy Green, Milson Road, where Mum, Dad, Baby Sister and I lived at number 6, was a much quieter place. There were almost no cars at all in the whole area. Mum said that most of the people around us couldn’t really afford one.

With there being hardly any traffic it was quite safe for The Boys and me to play in the street. Now and then there were lorries delivering beer barrels to the Bird in Hand and The Havelock. There was also a fish truck, with the fish packed in ice, which delivered to old Potter’s fish and chip shop.

Once every few weeks a coal lorry would come along. The driver wore a strange leather helmet with flaps that covered the top of his shoulders. His face was so caked in coal dust that only the whites of his eyes could be seen, making him look like a ghost. He would hoist the hundredweight bags from the back of his lorry and set them down on the kerb. Next he levered up the heavy iron coalhole covers in the pavement and poured the coal straight into the basement cellars of each house. Well, not every house exactly. Before he poured the coal he looked at a grubby sheet of paper and sometimes moved on to the next coalhole. Mum said he only delivered to those houses where the last coal bill had been paid.

The Boys and I thought how nice it must be to have a job where you could get so dirty without getting told off, but we didn’t think we’d ever be strong enough to lift those heavy bags.

The Boys

Although we were often called a gang, we never really thought of ourselves as being one. We were just four friends who lived near one another and did everything and went everywhere together.

There were some gangs in the neighbourhood, especially in Raleigh Road, just a few streets away from us. ‘Railey’ Road, as it was called by everyone who lived nearby, was a place we avoided. Most of the windows in the houses there were broken and dustbin lids were left scattered on the pavements. Even our parents wouldn’t go to ‘Railey’ Road in the dark, especially after closing time at the pubs.

It was never ever quiet in that road. During the daytime mothers shouted and screamed at their children. At night the drunks took over, each one singing a different song, each getting louder trying to drown out the others. Windows were forever being opened as people leaned out and yelled to the drunks to go home. All this did was to make them sing even louder so the windows were slammed shut again.

Dustbin lids were kicked off the pavement and left in the middle of the road along with broken beer bottles. The sound of breaking glass was almost never-ending, night after night. It only stopped when the police arrived on the scene in their Black Maria. For a short while the road then became almost peaceful. The shouting soon started again though, when a policeman caught one of the unlucky drunks too slow to get away.

Whenever there was a house burglary, a shopfront smashed or a handbag snatched, the police always seemed to start their investigations by visiting ‘Railey’ Road.

We certainly got into mischief often enough but we were too scared of our parents to do anything really bad. At least I was. Dad was very strict and was always telling me off when I got in late or came home with my shoes scuffed up.

Reggie was tall and strong for his eight years of age but he wasn’t at all fierce. Mum called him a ‘gentle giant’. Although we never had an actual leader it was usually Reggie who decided what we would do, what games we would play and so on. Sometimes though, he made up his mind after a little prompting from me.

Reggie was easily the best of the four of us at sports whether it was football, cricket, swimming or scooter racing. Although he was the best he never boasted about himself and he always tried to help the rest of us get up to somewhere near his level.

Joey had asthma, which made it difficult for him to run. In any event he was very awkward with ball games, always dropping catches at cricket and having two left feet when it came to playing football. He was however, the smartest of all of us: immaculate from the top of his Brylcreemed fair hair to the tips of his Cherry Blossomed shoes. He never seemed to get holes in the elbows of his jumpers, not like the rest of us. His socks, too, stayed neat and tidy, never falling down around his ankles.

We all had scooters made out of two planks of wood with ball-bearings for wheels but Joey’s was different and again, smarter than ours. He’d decorated his front plank by nailing on some beer bottle tops in the shape of his initials, ‘JP’ for Joey Pepper. Scooting, like running, used to make him get out of breath so he often had to stop to take a few puffs on his inhaler. He never made a fuss about his asthma but that didn’t stop David and me from taunting and teasing him, something Reggie never did.

There was one strange thing about Joey: his dad wasn’t his real dad and we didn’t know why. Joey never talked about him and we never asked any questions. To the rest of us Mr Pepper was a mystery. There were weeks and sometimes months when he wasn’t around and we knew he wasn’t in the army or anything like that. Every time he turned up after being away his hair was cut very short and he always looked pale, even in the middle of summer. He had what Dad said was a port-wine stain birthmark all down one of his cheeks, which showed up more against the whiteness of his face.

Unlike Joey, his dad was very scruffy. His jacket was stained and torn at the collar, his shirt was never tucked into his trousers properly and the heavy boots he wore had no shine on them. He was as different from Joey as could be.

David liked to tell stories, usually involving dead bodies or at the very least lots of blood. The funny thing was that although he loved to talk about blood, he didn’t like seeing his own. If he grazed his knee or, even worse, had a nosebleed, he went as white as a sheet and almost fainted. He wasn’t bothered at all when one of the rest of us had a fall and injured ourselves. He was usually the first to help by letting his hankie be used to bandage any cuts or bruises. He didn’t seem to notice that his hankie was never very clean but neither did we mind that too much.

We never got into any real fights but we used to get very annoyed when any other kids tried to play on our cricket pitch. If there were other boys already there when we arrived, Reggie would just stand tall and glare at them until they decided they should perhaps get on their scooters and go.

It wasn’t really a proper cricket pitch, just a long narrow yard at the end of Milson Road where the milk churns for the dairy next door were kept. We’d chalked up some stumps on the back wall. In the winter we used the chalk again to draw up some goalposts on the dairy wall and took penalty kicks from the middle of the road.

Sometimes our ball games used to annoy the people in Milson Road, as they were always frightened their windows would get broken. Sissy Taylor, who lived near the dairy, scowled whenever our ball went anywhere near her house.

She didn’t like us and called us a ‘little gang’ but we weren’t really.

My Family

I found it very difficult to understand who was who in my family. This was because some of them were called by different names at times. I was also told that certain of my relations were ‘Uncle this’ or ‘Auntie that’ when often they were neither.

Dad was named Reginald Arthur; Mum was Rose Lilian, Baby Sister was Jeanette and I was Kenneth. Why Baby Sister and I didn’t have second names I never asked. Second names didn’t cost anything, so why was that?

Neither family nor neighbours ever called Dad anything but ‘Reg’. His workmates though, had a different name for him. They called him ‘Jim’ and I never really knew why.

My explanation to The Boys was that Dad had been a secret agent during the War and had to use a false name whilst flying on special missions for the RAF. I’m not sure they believed me. Then again, I never believed their stories about their dads being commandos. David said his dad had been parachuted in behind enemy lines. He was then supposed to have sneaked up on a German sentry before killing him with a single jiu-jitsu blow to the back of the neck.

Mum was always known by everybody as ‘Rose’. Baby Sister was usually ‘Jean’ or ‘Jeannie’. Only Auntie Florrie used to call her ‘Jeanette’. No-one ever called me ‘Kenneth’. I was ‘Kenny’ to my family and because I thought that was a ‘baby name’, I told The Boys I wanted to be known as ‘Ken’.

Uncle Percy was my Mum’s brother, so that was why he became my uncle. He married Doris, who was my Dad’s brother’s daughter. So Doris was really my cousin but, as she was married to my uncle, she was also my aunt. I could never quite get the hang of all that so it was much easier to call them ‘Uncle’