The Three Lives of Ged

By John De Roach

Ged has lived three lives, each of them quite different from the other two.
In Life One he finds himself growing up in the tough back-to-backs area of Birmingham, forming friendships that will last throughout his three lifetimes, going to Germany with the occupation forces, working at a number of semi-skilled jobs, always with a view to bettering himself, until finally he sets out with a mate, bound for Australia.
Life Two sees him courting his future wife, getting married, building a home with his own hands, raising four children, and wholeheartedly embracing the family life of a working class man.
When Life Two ends abruptly and unexpectedly, Ged starts anew with a new partner, throwing himself into energetic pursuits, travelling widely, and participating in activities aimed at helping his fellows or the broader community in which he lives. Meanwhile, his four children have provided grandchildren and great-grandchildren to concern himself with.
This is a story similar to any number of tens of thousands of such stories of migrants who have travelled to Australia to make it their home, while still retaining a love of their homeland. It is, therefore, a remarkable story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John De Roach
• Release date: Jun 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781921968402

Book preview

THE THREE LIVES OF GED

by

John De Roach

© 2012

eBook v 1.0

Smashwords Edition

JOHN DE ROACH

John De Roach was born in Melbourne in 1951.

He completed a PhD in Physics at Melbourne University, and began working as a research scientist for ICI.

In 1980 he moved to Perth with his family, where he has lived and worked as a medical physicist in a teaching hospital ever since.

He has two children and four grandchildren.

He writes for a hobby.

Smashwords Edition

ETEXT PRESS PUBLISHING

PO Box 3488, Joondalup,

Western Australia, 6097

Australia

[e-mail]

www.etextpress.com

THE THREE LIVES OF GED

AN ETEXT PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-921968-40-2

Copyright © John De Roach 2012

John De Roach has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and any and all other applicable international copyright laws to be identified as the sole author of this original work.

This eBook (electronic book) is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, transmission or otherwise, be redistributed, sold or hired, without the publisher’s prior written consent. Further, this eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by the applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

LIFE 1

Lying

As a youngster

World War II

Goodbye school, hello work

Ron, Tom and Stan

The army needs Ged

Germany

Demobbed

Goodbye England

Hello Australia

The Youngs’

LIFE 2

Life 2 begins

Mrs G’s

A tricky courtship

Roseberry Street

Married

Building a home

Family life

Work

Goodbye Mum

LIFE 3

Life 3 begins

Bron

India, Nepal and the Himalayas

Surrey Hills

First trip to the UK

Home again

Malaysia and Sumatra

Tasmania, here we come

Back to Avondale

A new career

Bike riding, running and swimming

Life goes on (and sometimes doesn’t)

Tennis

Australian (mainland) adventures

Masters games

Visitors and visitees

Another UK trip

Burma

Cambodia and Laos

UK, Europe and India

Now

INTRODUCTION

This is an account of my dad’s memories. I haven’t taken the trouble to check the accuracy of what I have written, as it would be irrelevant. I am pretty sure a lot of what is written here reflects reality, but if you know that some of what I have written is inaccurate or simply couldn’t have happened, don’t bother to tell me so that I can make a correction. This is an account of my dad’s memories. It has been compiled from notes of many pleasant one-hour sessions I spent with my father, encouraging him to remember and articulate as much of his life as he could, or at least was willing to, tell me. Not that he needed much encouragement. Most of the anecdotes I had heard many times before, but this time I paid attention, and heard much more than I had heard previously.

It is a project I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who is fortunate enough to have such an opportunity. I am very pleased, now that it is completed, to have captured much of my father’s life so far in print.

Oh, yes, Dad, nearly forgot - thanks.

John De Roach

June 2012

LIFE 1

Lying

One of the earliest memories I have of my dad is going with my mother to visit him when he was living in the bungalow at Mrs G’s house in Nairn Avenue in Ascot Vale. I recall him happily lying on the couch on the wooden veranda in front of his cramped living quarters, dressed in long trousers, shoes and socks and a shirt and tie, with a pipe or fan in one hand, a book lying on his chest. Dad’s mode of dress has always effortlessly merged the casual with the formal. He would spring to his feet with an enthusiastic greeting when he saw we had arrived. He could hardly contain himself. I reckon I was about five years old. That was near the beginning of Dad’s second life.

On the other hand, one of my dad’s earliest memories is from early in his first life, when he was about five years old. He remembers when he was first taught, not very successfully, to tell lies.

It was the practice at that time for the rent man, the milk man, the coal man, the insurance man (!) or any number of other traders, to call weekly at the doors of the houses around where he was living, in the Birmingham back-to-backs, to collect the week's rent money, milk money and so on. Everything was paid at the end of the week, because payday was at the end of the week, and there was certainly no money to spare between paydays. The house he was living in at the time was in a courtyard, a cobblestone area surrounded by single-fronted, double-storied dwellings with their toilets, each one serving several families, situated at the end of the courtyard. A brew-house, or washhouse, and a series of dustbins were located next to the toilets. The front and only door of the house led into the lounge room cum dining room cum living room. Consequently, anyone standing at the front door could survey the whole interior of the ground floor with the merest movement of an eye.

On this day, Gerald’s mother must have seen the rent man approaching. Not having the money to pay the rent, which was not unusual for those times, and, therefore, not wanting to face her creditor, she elected to, well, hide. However, the only place to hide in the small room was under the table in the middle of the room, on top of which was a cloth that reached down to the floor. With a hurried, ‘tell him I'm not in’ to her young son, the 27 year-old Rose Elizabeth De Roach scurried under the tablecloth.

The rent man towered over little Gerald as he answered the door. ‘Is your mother in, son?’ he asked.

Dad can’t remember how confident he was feeling, but he replied, ‘No, mum's not in.’ Then, after a pause, in order to ensure that the rent man was convinced, he added, ‘She's not under the table.’

Dad can't remember what the consequences were, but there must have been at least some embarrassment, although probably not as much as you might think as, in the time and area in which they lived, it was usual to delay paying bills for as long as you could by whatever means you could manufacture.

As a youngster

Gerald Henry De Roach was born in the depths of a Birmingham winter on Monday, the sixth of February 1928, at Dudley Road Hospital, to Rose Elizabeth De Roach and Henry Joseph De Roach. This makes him about the same age as Mickey Mouse.

Stanley Baldwin was the Conservative Prime Minister of England, so this was Dad’s first piece of bad news, and George V sat on the throne (not at Dad’s place, at Buckingham Palace).

When baby Gerald was brought home from the hospital, he already had a two and a half year old sister named Irene waiting for him. The following six years would see another sister born every two years – Edie, Dolly and Joan, in that order. His mother, Rose Elizabeth Welsh, press worker and daughter of a builder, and his father, Henry Joseph De Roach, Vice Hand and son of a Scottish gunsmith and Black Watch soldier, had married in 1926, when Rose was 21 years old and already had baby Irene. Henry was 10 years her elder.

Henry, or Harry as he was more commonly called, had been in the army, serving in the trenches on the western front in World War I, and in India and on the northwest frontier in Afghanistan after the war to end all wars had, ironically, ended. He had two puckered wounds in his shoulders that were prominent when he was stripped to the waist, souvenirs of the time served in France.

Over the next 23 years of Gerald’s life, he would live in five or six houses in the Birmingham area, most of them in Aston.

Houses Gerald lived in, in Life One (most of them back-to-backs):

Kingstanding (a new suburb, not in Aston). The first house of which Dad has any recollection was in a suburb called Kingstanding. He has no recollection of the house itself. One would think that Kingstanding must surely have been a grand suburb. It was, in fact, a council house estate for occupation by lower income families.

Tower Road, Aston, from when he was about four years old until he was about six years old. Like most of the houses in which he lived in Birmingham, it had brown butcher’s paper for wallpaper, which had been stuck to the walls with flour and water. If you wanted to, you could peel back the paper and watch the bugs scatter.

Some other place, the details of which he can’t remember. This was the most basic, which is maybe why he can’t remember it – because he didn’t want to. It had no water connected, but instead had a communal water tap out in the courtyard.

Strentham Place, Aston Road North, from when he was about seven years old until he was 11 or 12 years old. This house – situated on a central courtyard adjoining the main road, one mile from the city centre, two rooms up, one down, no garden, outside gas lamps – would be an expensive townhouse today. But, not so then.

2 Sutton Street, Aston, where he lived from about 12 years old until he joined the army, and again after he was demobbed. This house was palatial compared with previous houses and it was the first time he had a bedroom to himself. Not only that, but after the war it had electricity connected. This was the last house Gerald lived in before migrating to Australia.

Families in the area at that time didn’t always move voluntarily in an effort to better themselves – sometimes it was because eviction was threatening through non-payment of rent. Men were often out of work throughout these years, necessitating a moonlight flit. When moving house became necessary for Gerald’s family for whatever reason, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, Harry would hire a cart and a big cane wheelbarrow, the kind used for carrying coal and coke, and the family would cart what furniture they had, including beds and so on, to their new premises.

Most of these houses were back-to-backs, so named because they were built in rows, and were mirror images of the houses to which they were joined by their back walls. An arched entry led from the sides of two of the front houses on the street to the back houses in the courtyard. They were built from the 1840s onwards, and at one time there were 40,000 of them in Birmingham.

A typical back-to-back consisted of a lounge room cum dining room cum living room, about four by three metres, which occupied most of the ground floor. Next to this room was the scullery, a small room about a quarter the size of the main room. The scullery housed a gas stove, a sink for washing up and a small bench for preparing food.

Opposite the scullery was the coal ‘ole, a space into which the coke for the fireplace in the living room was delivered down an outside chute, a half a hundredweight at a time, or else a ground floor area for storing the coke that would be carted in by barrow. (On one occasion, when collecting coke from the gasworks, Gerald, on a whim and for fun, left his youngest sister, Joan, in the three wheeled wicker basket as he pushed it under the chute and while their coke was being deposited into the barrow. I think the fun was mainly for Gerald, not Joan.)

Between these rooms was a short narrow passage leading to narrow winding stairway that, in turn, led to the two upstairs bedrooms. The houses were lit by gas light until after the war. If you were a Mum, Dad, and five children, your home was cramped.

There was never enough money, of course, and Rose sometimes had to beg for money or for food, and do things she wouldn’t want to do. On one occasion, she became so desperate she went to the local Catholic priest seeking help. She was turned away and firmly directed elsewhere, as she wasn’t Catholic and therefore, presumably, not worthy of being afforded help. I wonder what Jesus’ opinion was of that sentiment at the time.

Everyone’s clothes were second-hand. One day, Rose was laboriously running a flat iron over Harry’s second-hand clothes, so that he would be as well-presented as possible when he reported for labouring at the factory the next day. Gerald, who was about eight years old at the time, was playing on the hard, thinly carpeted wooden floor at his mother’s feet in the living area of their back-to-back. The flat iron Rose was using was heated by standing it on the hotplate of the nearby smoking coal stove. (Everything was nearby in a back-to back.)

As Rose turned to place the ironed shirt on the ironed pile and retrieve a crumpled one from the un-ironed pile, she placed the iron on the metal rest on the table. Unfortunately, Gerald had just placed his hand in that same spot, and so the hot iron was placed firmly on the back of his right hand instead. Gerald let out a piercing shriek as all the skin burnt off the back of his hand. Quickly, Rose went to the larder, took out what little butter was in there and spread it all over the burn, the recommended best practice at the time. Then, leaving Edie and Dolly in the charge of the 11 year-old Irene, she gathered up Gerald and carted him to the tram stop, where they waited for the tram that would take them to the hospital. Not that she had the fare to pay, but there was no possibility of an ambulance or taxi, of course.

Dad remembers waiting in long queues, and having to return regularly to have the wound re-dressed. The dressing would be ripped straight off his hand each time by the nurse, causing Gerald to cry out in pain, and causing the nurse to tell him not to be a sissy. The scar happily disappeared completely, although not until some 70 years later.

Gerald was involved in another home accident, but this time as the perpetrator rather than the victim. Gerald and his sister Dolly were helping to do the washing with their mum. Gerald was turning the mangles. Dolly’s fingers became caught in the rollers, and three of them were flattened before Gerald realised why she was screaming and stopped his vigorous turning. So, another tram trip to the hospital, followed by long waits in queues. Dolly’s fingers always remained somewhat flat after that, and in adulthood she would occasionally remind Gerald of the terrible thing he had done.

Schools Gerald attended in Life One:

Dartmouth Street, from where he graduated at 10 years old.

Upper Thomas Street, where he remained until he was (almost) 14 years old. Gerald was academically very good, and as a result skipped a class. He won a scholarship when he was 13 years old to attend an Anglican College, but his parents couldn’t afford the uniform and books and, anyway, they were banking on the 13 year old Gerald starting to bring home money from work soon.

Gerald grew to be tall, but very thin, and found himself bullied a lot at school. Harry’s response to this problem was to insist that his son face up to the bullies, be a man, and so Dad was brought up thinking that to back off from a fight was unmanly. Harry’s