The eagle eyed will have spotted the photo I've published here of a very battered home made Morse key that Granddad Thomas made for me when I was about eight or nine, around the same time when the other picture was taken of me Mum and Dad standing outside No 12. I think the latter photo is one of my favourites of all time in the sense that I see within it a whole range of emotions. I have it on a frame in front of me now, an ever present feature of my work desk.
Dad has his stern face on. Mum has her poker face. I'm wildly oblivious to their stresses and strains and looking forward to the day ahead, whatever it was we were about to do, and now lost in time. Both parents exude a feeling within me of 'Let's get on with this quickly! We have things to do!'. How much of that is true or are just my emotionally catalysed memories I don't know but I do remember that most of the holidays we spent in Ireland over a period of thirty plus years were highly charged emotional times. I've not mentioned my sister yet... She will make her appearance soon but suffice to say that this photo was taken around the time Mum and Dad must have been 'trying' for my brother or sister. I'm not sure she or I really want to think too deeply about that but I have a feeling that Mum was even pregnant when this photo was taken. Significant is the strategically placed jumper (mine and it was blue, knitted by Granny Shaw) which she is holding over the revealing area.... Hmmmm???....
Mum, bless her, was constantly homesick for Ireland throughout the many many years she spent here in England. The holidays we spent 'back home' were regular and mandatory. At least twice a year we would trudge back to Bray for as long as possible often with Dad returning to England to work whilst mum and I stayed put for the duration of the long summer school holidays. The benefits of this was that she was able to recharge her emotional batteries whilst I could roam the beach at Bray, collect platform tickets and train-spot at Bray Station. I also got to know my Irish family as cousins regularly popped up, in good Irish catholic fashion, over the years. One of the best things was playing radio with Granddad Thomas and that Morse key in the photo is the one he made for me and which I used to learn The Code. Only he knows what on Earth he made it from but a ceramic toilet fixture certainly looks a part whilst the buzzer coil, now long since silent (I'll fix it one day!) was a hybrid commercially made thing but which he had re-wound the coil?... Yes, I don't know why either... The main thing was that slap on a bike battery and it worked. Over that particular summer I can still remember the shout 'Get that thing out of here!' from various family members, mainly Dad, as a result of the constant noise. Granddad Thomas often came to the rescue and I can remember many an hour spent out on the balcony alone practising my Morse. Happy days....
It would be nice to report that the efforts I made at the time instilled within me an efficient and speedy competence at The Code which has served me well over the years and helped me to capitalise on my Amateur Radio exploits. Sadly no. It wasn't until the mid 1980's that I got my Morse ticket and I'm ashamed to say that even today I rarely use it on the air. But its nice to have the memories and the skill. One day, in the distant future, I might need it to save The World, just like when the Earth got invaded by Aliens in that Independence Day film!
Going back to the other picture... It's significant to recall that Mum's homesickness was a result of many things but looking back I reckon that she was always uneasy in England due to several combination of factors. Chief amongst them was her belief that she had married a man, who she loved dearly, but who had to be nurtured and repaired following his own loveless upbringing. I don't think she ever reconciled her drive to love and support Dad whilst at the same time plucking herself out of and losing the support of her own loving environment in which she was grown. In those days, without telephones, mobile phones, the internet, skype, TV , email and all that stuff, communication was far from easy. Ireland was a long steam train ride to Holyhead followed by a rough Irish Sea crossing in the unstabilised mail-boats..... The Princess Maud, The Hibernian or The Cambria. Sometimes it was an expensive and bumpy sick bag flight across Snowdonia in a Dakota from Elmdon Airport. This was a journey made from time to time when an emergency emotional re-charge back 'home' was a necessity. I remember that the cost of the flight in those days was about £8 which was much more that a week's wages for Dad at the time but well worth it from his point of view in the hope that it would remedy his wife's ensuing depression, the Black Dog ( to quote Winston!) which was to feature several times throughout Mum's life.... And save the marriage....
As a newly married couple in the early 1950's they had tried to make a go of it in Ireland but with no success. Remember that Ireland's history is characterised by constant migration and the norm was to leave the country to seek fortune rather than to stay put. They tried hard between 1950 to 53 to settle but came back to England just before I was born. I'm sure another factor was that living in Bray in that two roomed flat with Thomas, Rose and the other five McGuire brood must have been pretty difficult to say the least... Privacy? No bathroom or hot water ?? The mayhem? The loud music from Granddad Thomas's piped surround sound 'thunder' system?
When an offer of room at No 42 in Birmingham with Granny French came up after Granddad French had died, they took it. Mum often described the sickening feeling at the pit of her stomach as she looked out from the top deck of the No14 bus from Town to Alum Rock on her first visit to Birmingham and surveyed the vista of rows upon rows of regimented slate grey back to back terraced houses smothered in smoke and grime as you crossed over the high Saltley Viaduct en route to Hartopp Road. She must have been so unhappy yet she was with Dad, and he was going to be living with Granny French who was the only other person in the world that had ever loved him like she did.
They soon picked up work with Mum at the BSA putting together Bantam motorcycles in Small Heath and with Dad becoming an Aerial Rigger for 'Antiference' a company formed in 1936 and still going today. (There must be something 'radio' in my genes then??) Unfortunately Dad didn't stick at this and he never had a trade or profession, spending his entire life drifting from one unskilled job to the other. As Granddad Thomas had warned Mum before the marriage 'You'll never be rich financially' . He was so right.....
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