“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun” so says the old song. No truer words were ever sung. My mother and her family are all “veddy British“. Being raised around them probably accounts for a lot of the reasons I am the way I am.
My grandfather, Lenard, was an engineer with the Rolls Royce Motor Company during the war. He was part of the development team for the engine design of the British Spitfire fighter plane. He spoke as any typical proper English gentleman would which was very rarely and mostly unintelligibly. When he would speak at all, he would do so with a pipe firmly clenched in his teeth and with a minimum of enunciation. The most I could understand was an occasional “good lad”, “stiff upper lip”, “pip pip”, “cheerio” and that sort of thing.
As a key part of the war effort, my grandfather was relocated to the relative safety of Australia during the height of the German bombing of England. His family was not. They were out in a small town call Yeovil near the coastal resort area of Summerset. My mother often related how she could hear the German bombers and later on in the war the dreaded “buzz bombs” flying over their house on the way to London.
It was during this time that my uncle Peter was born. This was very curious to the family as Grandpa Lenard had been in Australia for two years already and had not been able to make a visit home since he left. I suppose they assumed the he was indeed a very brilliant engineer and had somehow impregnated my grandmother via the postal service. My grandmother, Gwendolyn, was not offering any other explanation and it wouldn’t have been proper to ask.
I often wondered about my grandmother as she was certainly a very strange person to a young boy as me. I remember the time that she decided to model my Auntie Pat’s “work costume” for us during a visit. My auntie, my mother’s older and only sister, was a very famous exotic dancer during the war and afterwards in the USA. The entertainer Dean Martin would hire her to pop out of a large cake at his celebrity parties that he would host. I was told that my auntie had the incredible talent of making the tassels that were attached to the pasties on her ample bosoms go in opposite directions at the same time. This was the top half of her work uniform that my grandmother modeled for us three boys and our mother. Mom was not fazed but we were quite impressed. I told my grandmother,
“Gee, Auntie Gwen” as we were instructed to call her, “at least you will never have to sweep the walk as long as you have that on”.
This was met with a cold stare from grandma and a stifled “snort” from my mother. I have yet to develop the talent of being able to switch on my brain before engaging my mouth. I often recall the famous “Auntie Gwen” scrubs we would get in the bath when we crossed her. It consisted of a very short, stiff bristled, scrub brush applied vigorously to your bare body by an overzealous grandmother.
The blame for most of my family’s odd behavior can be firmly placed at the feet of this side of my lineage. For example, my mother and her twin brother shared a room above the bedroom of their grandmother. In those days the “W.C.” (toilet) was located outside in the back of the home. At night my great grandmother would use a white porcelain chamber pot that she kept under the bed.
My mother and her brother once tied a large elastic band between the chamber pot handle and the bed frame and then, that night, they would listen through the floor as “Granny” drug the chamber pot out for her usual nighttime “tinkle”. When she let go of the handle and tried to sit down on the thing, it slid back under the bed and granny’s bum when down hard on the cold floor. This started granny loudly voicing her displeasure and woke up the rest of the house.
The next night, they started phase two of their plan. Instead of the elastic band, they sprinkled seltzer powder into the bottom of the white chamber pot. As they listened, they heard granny drag the pot out and loudly feel around for any trick elastic bands. Finding none she settled down onto the pot and proceeded with the “tinkling”. When the warm liquid hit the seltzer, it caused a sudden foaming action that quickly met grannies unsuspecting backside resulting in round two of the previous night’s performance. My great grandmother died young I was told.
Another account my mother related to me was about her mother’s quite selfish and greedy sister. It seemed that during the war years the rationing of all goods was done. This included such luxuries as sweets and chocolates. A favorite snack of the day was called “confection balls” which consisted of small pellets of baked cookie dough rolled in confection sugar. It came in a distinctive red striped bag. On one occasion, my grandmother managed to get a bag of these rare treats. As she was sharing them with the family, her sister came into the room and exclaimed,
“Oh! Confection balls! May I have some?”
My grandmother offered the bag to her sister who promptly grabbed as much as she could fit into her hand and stuffed them into her mouth. This irritated my grandmother to no end. The next week she took the now empty bag and visited the rabbit pens behind the house. After procuring the conveniently similar shaped pellets that come out of a rabbit’s little colon, she rolled them in powdered sugar and placed them in the familiar red stripped bag. As she entered the home with her bag of treats her sister again exclaims her delight and asks for a taste. Grandmother graciously offered her the bag and got the same result as last time. She happily watched her greedy sister stuff a large handful on the “treats” into her mouth and she never had a problem with her again.
One of my favorite stories my mother would tell us about “Auntie Gwen” was the time early in my grandparent’s marriage when they took in boarders to their home. Today if would be called a bed and breakfast inn but in those days before the war it was a common practice in the English countryside. On this occasion they had just taken in a new boarder, a young man approximately my grandfather’s age that was passing through the area on the way to a new job.
Just before dinner my grandfather told my grandmother that he was going to go upstairs for a bath and to come and get him when dinner was ready. When my grandfather went to the bathroom door, he found the new border was using the bath at that time so he proceeded outside to finish some chores.
When dinner was ready my grandmother went upstairs to get grandpa. When she opened the bathroom door she was met with the sight of “grandpa‘s” naked backside bent over rinsing out the tub. She simply reached up between his legs and “rang his bell” while announcing:
“Ding Dong dinners ready!”
She promptly turned around and headed downstairs only to be met by my grandfather as he entered the home from his chores outside. To add insult to injury at dinner this now much shaken young man was seated next to grandma for dinner. She was serving fresh salmon. During dinner grandma glanced down in the man’s lap and saw a “pink thing” that she thought was a dropped piece of fish. Unfortunately for the new boarder it was not a dropped piece of dinner but was his “bell cord” that grandma had recently pulled to announce the meal. In his poor attempt to gather himself together after the dinner bell episode he had neglected to properly fasten the front of his pants. In those days “commando” was the common undergarment of the English working man.
The result of his neglect to fasten himself properly was grandmother plunging her fork into his lap attempting to impale the errant piece of dinner.
“Mustn’t waste!” she said cheerfully while jabbing the sharp instrument into his nether regions.
This was too much for the young man as he jumped up from the table, gathered all his belongings and promptly left the establishment in protection of his future progeny and to get away from that obviously mad young woman.
Meanwhile grandfather glanced up at the commotion with his ever-present pipe firmly clenched between his teeth and muttered
“I say, what an odd duck!”
He then blissfully went back to smoking his pipe.