HERNE BAY
The Little Restaurant on the Prom
A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
My Sister Josie
My sister Josephine was, it seemed, always in a mood. I say always but it only seemed like that. She was nearly 4 years older than me and she had, of course, older friends. She was nearly a teenager. But she was beautiful. She grew up to be a real stunner. She had black hair the colour of coal and skin so pale that she looked like snow white of seven-dwarf fame. Her eyes were ever so slightly Chinese looking. And she wanted nothing to do with us younger kids, cramped her style. When she had to go out with us for some function or other, like a family trip to the pictures, she made sure she kept her distance.
When she was 16 she attracted men like flies around a jam jar. There was a particular band of bikers. Of course they weren't called bikers in those days. In fact I don't think they were called anything but 'blokes that drove motorbikes'. There were the Webber brothers, Brian and Roy, who vied for her affection. Then there was John Hougham who had eyes more chinky than Josie's, though he wasn't Chinese. He went by the nickname of Chang. Now John was into weight lifting and had a body like Charles Atlas (a body builder who advertised his method of dynamic tension in the newspaper and was seen flexing his considerable muscles in a leopard skin). Every time John went past our restaurant he would swell up his chest to full proportion, anything to get Josie's attention.
The Webber brothers were always in the restaurant and became good friends of our family. Then there was a bloke whose name I forget. He had protruding teeth and smelt like an oilcan. He drove a motor bike that had a 750cc B.S.A. engine built into a Norton frame. He had the handlebars really low so that he had to lie across the petrol tank like he was hugging it. But even that didn't impress our Josie. Josie was free and vivacious and flirted with them all. And when she became Miss Herne Bay the Queen of the Carnival everybody but EVERYBODY wanted to know her. Later on she became an actress, taking the name of Sherrie Day and joining up with my uncles Bob Bura and John Hardwick. Later she was taken on as a formation swimmer for Sam Shnider's Water Follies and toured America.
Brian Webber with Melly and Kevin. They didn’t Call ‘em Hells Angels in those days
(One day, Josie was left in charge of the kitchen in our restaurant. She suddenly realised that the deep fryer was smoking. The oil was too hot. Obviously she had the gas up too high. But what did she do? She poured a cup of cold water into the fryer to try and cool it down. The fryer erupted with a huge roar, rose up and overflowed the side of its banks like a miniature volcano, magma flowing everywhere. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to switch the gas off. There was boiling oil everywhere! The restaurant had to be closed temporally while we mopped up. Boiling oil and water just don't mix!)
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