It was often said when I was young that I was conceived in luxury but born into abject poverty. The circumstances my family were now living in must have been very humbling.
Looking back, I can’t imagine how mum felt, let alone coped with her small family in such reduced circumstances, but through her solid faith, fortitude and shear hard work, she not only coped but was also determined that her little family should be built on foundations that neither circumstance nor money could buy.
I have no recollection of the lodgings in which I was born, in fact we eventually moved into rented accommodation some four houses away but still sharing the same ‘back yard’. Neither can I remember much of my very early years, that is before attending primary school. However, what I do remember I am not too happy to relate but I will, not only for the sake of openness and completeness but to indicate the simple fact that even little children are not such ‘innocent’ little souls as we sometimes think they are.
I had a mass of blond curly hair and probably looked quite ‘cute’. I can imagine people thinking that ‘butter would not melt in my mouth’. Nevertheless, I was not as innocent as I may have appeared.
Granted at such a tender age I could not be held responsible for all my apparent misdemeanours, but ‘innocent’ I definitely was not.
I had a little girl friend. She was about the same age as myself and I would delight in getting her to hold nails while I hammered them into the ground. Needless to say, I had no compulsion in hitting her fingers more times than the nail head. But there seemed to be an even darker side to me. One day while playing in our house and mum was in the scullery, I asked her to strip naked, tied her into a chair and packed the underside with paper. The only heating, we had in the house was an open fire which was burning so I lit a piece of paper and was about to apply the flame to the underside of the chair when mum came in and rescued my little girl friend.
Looking back, I must have had complete control over her for not once did she complain or resist!
Psalms 51 verse 5 records:
‘Surely, I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.’
I still wonder what went through mum’s mind and if she thought maybe she had given birth to a potential monster!
At junior school I often got into trouble of one sort or another but bravely took the consequences of a beating by cane, usually on the hand but sometimes on the backside. The number of strokes administered would depend, arbitrarily I thought, upon the considered seriousness of the offence. Offenders would be lined-up in front of the class while punishment was administered which, I assume, was designed to act as some sort of deterrent to the rest of the class. Whether physical punishment should form part of a discipline solution is, for me, an open question since, looking back, I don’t think such apparent Draconian treatment did me much harm but probably more good in teaching me that there are, sometimes painful, consequences to one’s actions.
The second world war broke out when I was six years of age and by the time, I reached eight it was quite common to see service men and women in the street. One such was a WREN (Woman’s Royal Naval Service) who I would frequently notice standing on the corner of our street.
I can still see her in my mind’s eye, slim and impeccably dressed in her naval uniform. She intrigued me but I was at a loss to understand why.
Later a WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) came to our house. Mum was a good seamstress and dressmaker and during a ‘fitting’ session I just happened to be in the room when mum noticed I was showing more interest in what was going on than, she thought, was maybe good for me; I was immediately expelled from the room. I mention these little anecdotes simply to suggest that unless children experience discipline and are provided with a moral compass early in life some decisions made later can prove disastrous.
I had a reputation for questioning everything. This did not mean that I was a wayward child, disobedient or cheeky, in fact I was quite polite by all accounts. I remember on one occasion when I was presumably making more noise than our next-door elderly neighbours thought fit and my parents were out, I replied, “Excuse me Mrs Perry but my father pays the rent for this house”, in other words ‘mind your own business’!
About this time too I would frequently stand on the gas meter which was hidden by a bookcase in the corner of our front room. This combination formed a ‘pulpit’ for me, so closing the door to the room I would ‘Preach the Gospel’. In fact, I would conduct a whole ‘service’ announcing Bible passages and hymns, reading and singing them myself. I understand that mum would listen behind the closed door and again wonder what the destiny of this her offspring would be.
I still ponder these activities of someone so young. They remind me of the seeds which the farmer of Matthew 13 verses 24 to 25 sowed and those of his enemy, deceitfully, under cover of darkness. Both germinated in the same soil, the good seed produced wheat and the bad seed, tares. I think, like the farmer, I had a very wise mum indeed in the way she brought me up and took it all, like the farmer, quietly in her stride, she being the disciplinarian in the household.
I can only remember dad once getting angry with me. I have no idea now what I had done but I decided that a hasty retreat was the best course of action, and the only way out was upstairs thinking that he would not follow me. In the event he did, so I dived under the bed and so did he! Although he was not a big fellow, he was a little portly and hence not as nimble as I was, so I quickly got out the other side, jumped on the bed, and proceeded to use it like a trampoline with dad trapped underneath. Fortunately for me, mum, who had been following, entered the room and defused the situation. Why I felt I could take such a liberty with dad is a matter of conjecture now, what I do know is that I could never have done so with mum. I think there is probably a lesson there for today’s parents.