My Canvey memories 1948 to 1970

This is a message that I posted on my other blog site but as it is about canvey Island I am posting it on this Blog site
Message
This is a message for any old Canvey Islanders who can remember the following person.
I received this e-mail last wek from Trish Nicholls nee Pat Newman asking me to put it on my blog so I am obliging her it is as follows.

End of e-mail.I hope she has some luck in locating her
Peanuts ( My nickname)

At this point I would like to thank my friends of nearly 60 years Harry and Val Court for jogging my memory on a lot of things that I had forgotten.
I have now come to the end of my memories of Canvey in the Fifties as a single man, my last ten years on the Island was spent working hard and establishing a home for my wife and kids so my errant roving days were over and at the age of 26 I became a responsible adult.
I thank all of those that had the patience and fortitude to read all of them, and I hope you had as much of a good time reading them and remembering some of the things that I have mentioned because I have had a wonderful time writing them.
Some people reading them might deduce that the youngsters of the fifties were a bunch of hooligans but nothing could be further from the truth, we may have upset some of the older residents with our outlandish behavior and dress sense and our flamboyant attitude but in all of us there was no malice, vindictiveness or vandalism.
Our only aim was to have a good time and enjoy ourselves, there were very few fights with any of the mainland and London boys that came to Canvey for a holiday because we all had the same goal, duck hunting, getting your leg over a good pissup and a good feed.
I myself cannot recall any of the Canvey girls being nasty or anti-social they were all nice and they looked forward to the summer months as much as us boys for the many new lads that would come down to Canvey on holiday.
If anywhere in these memories you find an inaccuracy I would be glad if you let me know, as one’s memory is not infallible
P.S. I might add a few articles of my time at Regent and about driving trucks in the 50s we will see how it goes
Some people say that you cannot live on memories but you can have a bloody good time recalling them.
Eddie

When I came back to England for a holiday in 1996 mainly because my mother had died and I had to sort out a few problems with the rest of the family, we had a small reunion with some of the boys we grew up with. We had it at the Windjammer Pub at the bottom of May Avenue, there was Reggie, My wife and I, Nobby Gubb and his wife, Harry Court and his wife, Lennie Hooker and another married couple from Canvey (Trevor and Ces) who are friends of Harry.
I called in to visit Reggie and we drove over to Basildon to see Lennie and had our photo taken and in the evening we all went to the Windjammer.
Now Lennie, who did not look all that well when he arrived by cab, was a real piss artist but had only one beer and
Complained about stomach pains, he looked crook all night and before the end he said he did not feel well and was going home.
We called him a cab gave him the fare and told him that if he felt ill in the morning to go to the doctors, on the way home he told the cab driver to take him straight to the hospital where he was admitted and died that night.
Now the sad thing was the next morning after the reunion we left on a 21 day tour of Europe and did not know of Lennie’s death and of course missed his funeral. I was gutted to say the least.

Whilst reminiscing about my enjoyable time on Canvey Island during the 50s I recalled one memorial occasion which, at the time, being young was then to me really nothing but looking back in hindsight must have been a terrifying thing for my father.
As I have mentioned in a previous posting we used to go down fishing and lay deadlines, bait them up when the tide was out then go back and collect the fish (if any) as the tide went out, there were usually up between 40 to 60 hooks on the lines and when it was cold it was not a pleasant job trying to push the worms onto the hooks.
The bait we used were rag worms which were large red multi legged worms with a pair of pincers in their head that could give you a nasty nip, these we used to dig up from around the base of the old pier supports.
This derelict pier was just over the sea wall opposite May Avenue and from there we used to walk out at an angle towards Chapman Lighthouse and when we were about a couple of hundred yards from the shore we would bait up our lines, these lines were left out on the mud all the time as nobody interfered with them and as we followed the tide out there was no chance for anyone to go out and steal the fish that were caught on the lines.
Getting back to this incident I recall. Early one morning my dad and I went down to collect any fish and bait up the lines ready for the next tide, it was very overcast with a slight mist coming in from the estuary but not enough to worry about.
Whilst we were concentrating on baiting up we were unaware that the mist had turned into a fog and we could only see 20 to 30 yards and when we went to go back to the shore we could not see it at all and had no idea which direction it laid.
What with all the tramping around the lines footprints everywhere we could not find our tracks we made coming out.
We started to walk one way for a while then tried another direction but we were hopelessly lost.
I had no idea of the danger we were in but I could sense that my dad was getting worried because if we walked towards the river there was what we called the 50 foot drop at the channel’s edge.
By this time there were tracks going in every direction so my dad started to shout out very loud “Can anybody hear me” time and time again but we could only hear the sound of the river which seemed to be coming from every direction and an echo of his voice.
After what seemed like an eternity of shouting there was a voice shouting back to us so my dad shouted back to him asking him to continue to shout so we could find our way back to shore, finally we emerged out of the fog and up onto the sea wall.
It was a bloke who was taking his dog for a walk and was the only one on the sea wall at that time.
The thing is neither my dad nor myself could swim so if that bloke was not there we could have been brown bread.
When you think back we were idiots for not taking safety precautions such as having a compass with us or laying out the deadlines in the shape of an arrow pointing to the shore.
As you get older you realize that fate decides whether you live or die, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fear is a very funny thing, for example when I was in the army and stationed in the Canal Zone our camp was on the edge of the Great Lakes and we had to do our share of guard duties and this entailed walking around the inside of the perimeter fence all on your Jack Jones with 10 rounds of live ammunition, every now and again the Arabs (just to annoy us) would fire the odd round into the camp which would alert all the camp, upset everyone’s sleep and cause havoc.
And walking around the perimeter you stood out like dog’s balls against the camp lights but nobody worried about this, you just took your turn of guard duty as a run of the mill thing.
Looking back now it makes me wonder why we were so blasé,

This period you could call the cream of my youth, I was single, had a car,(A black 1952 ford V8 Pilot with a lovely comfortable back seat) had one of the best driving jobs in the transport industry, plenty of money in my pocket and only my dick to keep, on top of this it was during (What I consider) to be the greatest decade of the twentieth century, the fifties, there was very little unemployment, not much violence in the pubs or streets, no racial problems and the rise of some of the greatest legends in the pop world.
There was Elvis Priestly, The Big Bopper, Paul Anka, Bill Haley and the Comets, Johnny Ray, Frankie Lane, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Ricky Valence and more.
I can remember standing for hours around the juke box feeding it money and listening to all of these stars; it was sixpence a record or five for two bob. It is impossible to describe the feeling of enjoyment and euphoria standing around the juke box while this fantastic new music was belting out and when songs like "shake rattle and roll" “rock around the clock" “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Dianna” were released and they were played none stop for days
When we came back onto the Island after a nights drinking binge we would drive to the Unic cafe, (which was next to Taylors garage down the village )drive up onto the pavement and skid to a halt about six inches from the plate glass window, (just to scare the birds sifting by the window, as you will have guessed we were show offs and lairs) swagger into the cafe' and throw a couple of bob to the girls standing around the juke box for them to play some music and then go into the back room where we would have a game of cards (the owner did not mind this providing we would keep buying food and teas and he also liked a game of cards) we played pontoon or nine card brag at sixpence a hand and he would keep the cafe' open until we all went, sometimes this was as late as early morning.
Now I will say this that during all of my teenage years I never once heard any talk of drugs or knew of anyone who took them, in fact, we did not even know they existed, and I cannot recall anybody even mentioning the word suicide (in fact life was too good to even contemplate it.

Having babies on Canvey in the fifties and sixties You might ask "What would a mere male know about having babies?." well I will tell you. Nearly everyone had their babies at home during this era and it was the expectant dads job, when the wife said she was due, to jump on his bike and cycle around to the mid-wife's house and let her know the situation ,and you were always asked the same questions " has the water burst? how long between each contraction? Etc". Now if the mid-wife was out on another call she left the name and address of her backup nurse so off you cycled (no matter what time of the day or night it was or the weather conditions were) to find the other one and hoped and prayed that she was in.
The midwives I can recall that worked on Canvey were a Nurse Robson and a Nurse Consella ,one rode a bike and the other drove a Morris minor car When our first one was due Nurse Robson came and that's when she took over ,she came in the door and the first words she said in a very draconian voice to the poor nervous father to be was "Make yourself useful and get me some clean towels and plenty of boiling water "when you had done all of that and sat down she found you another task, but the midwives were very efficient and very good .I wonder just how many Canvyites can say "I had my bare bottom smacked by Nurse Consella or Nurse Robson", thousands I would guess.
Now the in thing is all hospital deliveries to eliminate any complications but I would back the success rate of those old midwives against any hospital of today. being less clinical and more comforting.
My memories are inside me - they're not things or a place - I can take them anywhere.

The reason why we went off the Island for our clobber was because there was no decent men’s outfitters on the Island the only one being Rogers (who I think was located near Cockle Jacks) who stocked things like flannel jackets and formal shirts and catered for the conservative type of clientele so we bought our accessories in Southend and our “Whistles” from Maxie. Then a good thing happened on the Island, about the mid fifties a new men’s outfitters moved on the Island namely Alf Harley and Sons (I think they also had a shop in London) they had some good and in fashion clothes so we bought most of our gear at Alf’s, whose shop was located in Furtherwick Road between Lionel Road and Vaagen Road, (I think) but still bought our suits from Maxie. The suits used to cost 25 guineas and the Crombie overcoats 21 Guineas and considering we were earning about 7 quid a week they were very expensive. When I tell my sons and grandsons that I spent 3 and a half weeks full wages buying a suit they did not believe me and thought I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
One big difference I notice now is the style of walking, we walked with a spring in our step, backs upright,( this could have been due to our National Service training) even the odd skip and jump but the present day youth seem to drag their feet along and look towards the ground,(maybe that,s because of all the piercings they have in their heads and it's weighing them down LOL)

The fifties was the era of the Teddy Boys in which the dress was single-breasted fingertip length suit, velvet collar , drainpipe trousers, fancy shirt, bootlace tie, brightly coloured socks, and very thick soled brothel creeper shoes .Now we didn’t wear these clothes so we could gang up and kick somebody’s head in but just to stand out from the crowd and look flamboyant, looking back in retrospect we must have looked right prats ,but then again the style here now is to wear big baggy ¾ length shorts or trousers which I call "Victor Sylvester" trousers ,(plenty of ball-room) with the crutch four inches below where it should be , that look as if they have been purchased from the Salvation Army jumble sale and couldn’t find the right size , or full length jeans the bottoms of the trousers dragging along the ground where they become frayed and in wet weather they get soaking wet and wearing a baseball cap turned back to front so they all look like Jerry Lewis clones.We might have looked prats but at least we were smart looking ones. One thing I will say and that is us Canvey boys were always smartly dressed, The group I went with all bought our suits from Maxie Cohen “Bespoke tailor” who’s shop was beside the trolleybus terminus at Algate (by the underground station) this involved two or three fittings before you picked up the suit so we always made a day out, staying to have a few beers in that area. When we first went to Maxie and told him what we wanted i.e. single breasted, one button, velvet collar, fingertip length and drainpipe trousers he must have thought we were barmy but our money was good and we got on well with him also buying our Crombie overcoats from him too. I also think we must have been egotists because whenever we took out overcoats or jackets off we always folded them so the large Maxie Cohen label was on the outside.

MORE MEMORIES OF CANVEY IN THE FIFTIES
One thing I must stress is that during the Fifties even with all of the different groups of youths on the Island, and groups of Londoners coming down on holidays there was never any violence such as knives, kicking's or assaults, no graffiti or car stealing everybody enjoyed themselves and made their own recreation, maybe upsetting and annoying the then older residents but never resorting to viciousness, something which seems to be the in thing with the present day youngsters who after giving someone a kicking blame the government because they have nothing to do or nowhere to go!
There was always something to do on Canvey then, we used to go cockling, lay out a deadline which involved digging up the rag worms usually around the old wooden pier supports at the end of May Avenue, laying out the line as the tide came in then going back as the tide went out to collect your fish, we also made a quid out of it as we sold some of the catch to a builder Mr. Green and his wife who lived just off May Avenue. One of the lads who used to do a lot of fishing was called Lennie Carver
Also eeling in the small creek that ran through what is now Kismet Park I don't think I was ever bored nor had nothing to do in those days.
I do not know how much green open space there is now on the Island but back in those days my father, brother and myself used to go collecting mushrooms in the fields down Northwick Road, also my father bought himself some ferrets and we would spend many a happy hour chasing the rabbits that had escaped the nets.
Often in the summer our mum would take us kids to Benfleet by bus , we would then walk over the railway crossing opposite the Ferry Tea Rooms turn right and walk to Hadleigh Castle collecting blackberries on the way and then when we got home a lovely blackberry and apple pie was cooked
We used to do some silly thing such as - outside of Grooms second-hand shop which was situated opposite Holmes hardware shop stood a large tractor tyre, so one Saturday evening my mate Harry and I wheeled this huge tyre down the High Street and left it outside Venables the chemist, blocking the front door
More to follow Eddie

MORE MEMORIES OF CANVEY IN THE FIFTIES
In recalling memories the past you do tend to forget about the sometimes mundane things that you had to do and only remember the good things, one of the tasks my brother and I had to do in the early fifties was as follows
In those early years on Canvey there were quite a few houses with no main sewer and our job was to dig a rather large hole (about 18 inches square and 4 to 5 feet deep) in which to tip the bucket when it got full, now we lived on a corner block with a lot of passing pedestrians so one of us kept a lookout whilst the other grabbed the bucket from under the seat .ran around to the garden, tipped it in and rushed back before anyone saw you and the lookout would then cover the hole up with a sheet of corrugated iron
When the hole was nearly full it was backfilled and a new hole dug with the old one being marked by a stick so you would not dig in the same place again. Now this system did have it's pitfalls as sometimes the stick would disappear and you would be walking on the garden when you would slowly start to sink into the earth which meant a quick leap to the side or a very smelly disaster would occur.
What a relief when we had the sewer connected and you could pull the chain.
Also I'm not too proud to say that I also wore clothes bought from the Salvation Army jumble sale (and so did hundreds of other Canvey kids in those years as the hall was always full of mums buying clothes) and I sometimes wore Shredded Wheat shoes (does anybody remember them??.)
My mum did a fantastic job in bringing up us five kids under difficult times in London during the blitz and on Canvey after the war, on top of this she was widowed whilst still in her early forties with two of my young sisters still at school and she still found time to foster babies from Doctor Barnardo's home.
They may have come bigger than my mum but they did not come better.
Although the Rio cinema had a Saturday morning matinee for kids most of us opted for the cinemas in Southend, either the Strand near the railway station or the Gaumont cinema up near Victoria Circus now this cinema was an old one with a "Gods"(those who don't Know what the Gods are I will explain, the ground floor of the cinema was the stalls the next two levels were the circle and the dress circle and right at the very top was the Gods) miles from the screen, the seats set very steep so those at the back could see, and to get up there you had to walk up dozens of steps, and any object dropped accidentally from it took quite a while to reach the stalls.
Now because it was very tiring to climb up into the Gods the usherettes very rarely came up there so we virtually had the run of the place.
One of our favorite tricks was to blow up a French letter to a huge size , then release it to float gently down through the beam of the film where it appeared on the screen looking like a huge zeppelin . We also filled them up with water and dropped them from the balcony
It is also unbelievable how much water you can get into the aforementioned item.
On the few occasions when we did go to the Rio Cinema very few of us paid as the following system was carried out.
One of our number would pay the admission fee and then go inside and sit by the side door, when the lights went out he would then creep up to the side door and give the bar a push and the other members of our group would rush in and sit down all in different places . The usherettes would come down and maybe find a couple of non-payers and eject them and the rest would enjoy the film
This trick was difficult to stop as, by law , the side doors must always be left unlocked during performances for safety reasons.