A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Show Business and Bob and John
Bob and John were coming for a whole week! Bob and John were my childhood heroes. They had style. They would say things like 'sure' and ‘yeh’ and 'okay', words that hadn't hit Herne Bay yet and wouldn't for a whole decade. They wore suits that were fitted. Bespoke, made by the best Jewish tailors (unlike Mr Russell. His suits were only carbon copies). And not only ONE suit but many! I admired John's terylene shirts with the cut-away collars that you didn't have to iron. But most of all I admired his Windsor knotted ties. He taught me how to tie a Windsor knot.
And Uncle Bob (my father's brother Barnet, Bob for short), he owned a long, leather coat that was so heavy that I could hardly lift it. My Uncle Bob: talented and very entertaining who would burst into song at the drop of a chip: a child entertainer who grew up in a world that I so envied: a world of puppetry, film acting and recording. The world of SHOW BUSINESS!
Peter Sellers and John Hardwick. John dressed either as a fisherman or an archer
is closely scrutinizing Peter’s camera with an intense scrute!
Mother and Josie give uncle Bob and John a hand with the Singing Waiters.
Bob Bura and John Hardwick stood out in a crowd. Well, at least the crowd in Herne Bay: the holidaymakers, the punters. Not only did they stand out in sheerstyle, but also they brought with them the most amazing sound equipment and cameras, which they carried as if nurturing small, but delicate children. Bob and John worked for the BBC! The BBC was in the habit of asking them for special effects: like the trailing string of a balloon that spelt out the title of a film, or the Flying Dutchman, the said vessel making its way through the misty realms of dry ice was actually shot in the sea at Herne Bay (they used a scaled down model of the Flying Dutchman, of course).
CAMBERWICK GREEN and TRUMPTON were added to their list of achievements.
They stood out in our restaurant, too. We were so proud of them. Uncle Bob would roll his sleeves up and take his turn at the fish fryers. Whilst John would be recording the sound of the chips as they were blanched in the back yard, lowered by a pulley into the waiting, boiling oil, their roaring, spitting fury played back to us in an instant on their Simon SP4 reel-to-reel sound recorder. John too would also roll up his sleeves and do the washing up…if called for.
We would all look out for them. John, over six feet tall and red headed, and Bob just over five foot eight, dark haired and immaculately bearded. We would look out for them striding from the train station, knowing that a piece of magic was about to take place, just by having them with us. And it usually did.
One glorious, never-to-be-forgotten week, I spent with Uncle Bob and John in their flat in North London. It was NOT the way I had imagined. I had imagined that they lived in a flat that was as immaculate as they were. I imagined that the furniture was modern and expensive and with all mod cons, that they had a studio cum workshop where they did their fantastic work.
Yes, they had all of that, only the flat wasn't modern, the furniture wasn't exactly modern, the mod cons were not modern.
The whole of the flat was their WORKSHOP, their STUDIO! Oh except for the bedrooms, but even they spilled over into that giant workshop with a tide of string-puppets, rod-puppets, hand-puppets and all the paraphernalia that made up the world of puppetry and animation: cameras, lights, cables, film projectors, tape recorders. Oh and the SMELL? That smell! The smell was a cacophony of paints, glue, latex rubber, olive oil and fried onions and London.
Yes, North London flats have a smell all their own: a smoky, lived-in sort of smell that permeates everything. And I loved it! I loved the food that Uncle Bob used to cook (he deep-fried chips in pure olive oil): halibut steaks fried in egg batter and left to go cold and served with a salad dressed in garlic, vinegar and olive oil. His spaghetti sauce with meatballs was a revelation, no, a revolution. His curries were superb and his simple stews were masterpieces. He'd whip up an omelette in seconds: light and fluffy and sprinkled with fresh Parmesan cheese. But he could not make Yorkshire pudding. He would count how many people were coming for dinner and he would add an equal amount of eggs! Result? Yorkshire pudding that did not rise but instead lay there and did nothing. A puddeny pudding. But I LOVED it. With his gravy everything tasted good.
I was in paradise. Every corner of the flat was crammed with equipment. Even a four foot string puppet of Gracie Fields and Johnny Ray (complete with hearing aid) hung lifeless by the golden strings that animated them, golden only when the skilled hands of Bob and John pulled on them and brought them to life. But it was some years ago since they had last used them. Now they lay gathering dust. Relics of the past that had seen their day as indeed have these memories: revived and then forgotten: threads of a time past that I wouldn't have missed for the world.
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