My first nursery was just around the corner from where we lived in Ilford. This was the 1960s and it was run by a lady called Doris Church who I remember had a blonde beehive hairdo, and a husband called Chas, who drove a large Rover. My dad was very envious of his car at the time, because his company car was a Ford Anglia.
Doris ran the nursery from her house and my parents considered her to be very well off. She had a whole house for herself and her family, whereas myself and my parents occupied a downstairs flat.
Whenever I smell hessian it takes me straight back to that nursery. I’m not sure where Doris had obtained her toy sacks – the local post office perhaps – but they certainly had that overpowering, slightly musty smell that endures (not unpleasantly) in one’s memory.
The sacks of toys were stationed in her living room. Myself and the five or six other children there at the time were expected to dig around in them and see what we could find. I remember a lot of metal vehicles and soft toys. The assortment of dolls – mainly naked and decidedly raddled with use and old age – were less appealing than my troll (pictured), which had to stay at home. For the most part we were left in the living room to amuse ourselves.
Doris spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Sometimes she gave us plates of Garibaldi biscuits and red plastic beakers of orange squash or milk. Not a lot of sustained shared thinking with her went on. I lived entirely in a world of my own.
There were two main activities that stick in my mind during my afternoons spent there.
I liked to go out in the garden and swing around the metal poles that supported the washing line. I could quite happily spend hours doing this.
Then there was hanging out with Doris’s daughter, Lorraine. She was about ten at the time and appeared to be the most sophisticated person on the planet. She liked to hold court with the younger children and do it in the privacy of the downstairs toilet.
With the toilet cover in its fluffy cover placed firmly in the down position, Lorraine relentlessly talked at us. She was the queen, we were her subjects. To say I adored Lorraine is an understatement. She wore pretty dresses. She had long hair. She always looked clean and tidy. While I can’t remember anything she specifically said, the information she imparted seemed very important at the time, and utterly spellbinding.
My abiding thought was, one day I’ll be grown up, and I hope I’ll be able to talk like that.
