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Below is a story of the early years of myself and my brothers and sister.  the original story was titled "A Fairly Story" Why?  because everything is relative to the perception and memory, not only of the story teller but others who remembered or percieved events from a different Angle.

TERESA AND I, AGED 7

The following is an excerpt from  "MY REMINISCENCES"  which I am writing for my children.

TERESA & I.
My earliest recollections are of being with my Mother and father at “Dawlish Warren”.   Here is a photograph of Teresa and I at Dawlish Warren, lying on a rug beside the kerbing stones, on a patch of grass near the hut.  I remember being there, quite distinctly, although we could only have been several months old at the time. 

DAWLISH WARREN

My Father had a large wooden hut near the main entrance and close to the alighting point of people coming from the trains.  Here, he sold ice cream, sweets, and sandwiches, teas and coffees to the holiday makers.  The refreshment hut was in the car park at Dawlish Warren and the Long sandy beach was not far away.  Being on a direct route from the railway station platform steps to the beach people would stop and buy one.   My Father with his usual aptitude for knowing a good thing, had chosen his site well, and continued to choose them cannily for selecting business sites the rest of his life.  

I remember My Mother,  with her gentle smiling sunburnt face, her long jet-black hair put up in a bun at the back. She mostly wore coloured aprons over black dresses and sometimes a scarf over her hair. Any human being would have been blessed to have this woman as their Mother, to this day she epitomises for me the perfect Woman.   I remember Teresa being there, but I only saw her as a mirror image of myself.  When I cried, she cried.

TB.  My Mother contracted Tubercolosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious disease. Like the common cold, it spreads through the air. Only people who are sick with TB in their lungs are infectious. When infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they propel TB germs, known as bacilli, into the air. A person needs only to inhale a small number of these to be infected.

Left untreated, each person with active TB disease will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year. But people infected with TB bacilli will not necessarily become sick with the disease. The immune system "walls off" the TB bacilli which, protected by a thick waxy coat, can lie dormant for years. When someone's immune system is weakened, the chances of becoming sick are greater.

Mum was sent to several Sanitoriums for treatment, therefore for several years we were unsure if she would survive and if we would ever see her again.  This left my father with no option but to work 18 hours a day to provide for us and to give her the best treatment he could afford.  This led to his early death.

Shortly after this episode at Dawlish, a nanny who lived up Dunsford Hill looked after us.   I know that there is a photograph somewhere, of us with her.  We were happy with her; she had a lovely back garden where there was a swing. There were a succession of Nanies after that, some good some bad, some strict some gentle kind and loving.  This was when My Mother had become ill with tuberculosis. 

Teresa and I shared a large handsome coach built double hooded black pram. Teresa would bounce up and down on the soft springs, until I was catapulted over her head onto the ground. I screamed blue murder, but as always, I escaped from this indignity unscathed.  About this time I remember a young girl of about 13 or 14 years of age called Pauline who looked after us, Pauline lived on the bowhay lane Council Estate and her family were very poor. She fascinated me and I adored her.  Pauline had freckles on her face, and she was soft spoken and very kind and gentle with us.  Pauline had a sweet nature and a lovely smile all the virtues she had I still value. 

There were several more Nannies to look after us, they didn't seem to last long.

This was a proper Nurse Nannie. We were kept spectacularly clean by this one!                                       

Running across the photograph is the clothes line?  During the War The forte's of Exeter had Irish linen on all their beds.  How was this?  In South Street we had a fish and chip shop before the Blitz.  To make our famous batter in which we daily fried our fresh fish we used the finest flour available, and where did that come from? IRELAND.  the Irish Millers packed their flour in Irish Linen Sacks.  On that clothes line out of sight of the public gaze each week would hang our bed sheets each one with the legend "Fish Fryers Friend" stencilled across it, and indeed we were.  Ho! Ho!.

Picnic with our Nannie.

Our favourite cousin Josie Morelli also helped to look after us from time to time. When we older and were bored or auntie Mina was in a bad temper, we would take a walk down Dunsford Hill and along Cowick lane to see if Josie was at home.  She made toffee from treacle and flour that she baked in the oven.  I can taste it by just thinking about it to this day.  Yummy, yummy. Josie was always patient with Teresa and I. She would read us stories, talk to us and take us for long walks into the countryside up Redhills and down long country lanes.     According to some, I was a very naughty little boy, always up to mischief.  My parents thought this bad behaviour and mischief a big joke, and my peccadilloes were tolerated with amused love.

When we were very young, and living above one of the shops in South Street, Teresa and I each had moneyboxes. One was a bright red pillar-box. The other, mine I think, was a “Sambo” or Piccaninny [you could say that then]. Yes! A chocolate brown Sambo, you could put money in through his mouth, I think that they were made of papier Mache'.    Our moneyboxes were always full.

Our cots were by a window in a flat above one of the shops in South Street Exeter. I remember we lay swaddled in blankets beside a sideboard, which seemed to tower above us. The grownups smoked a lot and on top of all this was the aroma of freshly ground coffee and various Italian foods being cooked and wafting up from the restaurant below.   It was always quite noisy there with the chatter of my Uncles and Aunties.   Teresa and I were handled, hugged kissed and warmed by them in many ways. My Father was a big bear of a man, or so it seemed to me as a child. He towered above me and had a big hairy chest and hairy arms.  In contradiction to this was a warm and kind nature and a ready smile and the ability to make fun out of the day-to-day things of life including himself.

IT WAS IN THIS ROOM ABOVE THE DINING ROOMS THAT WE LIVED DURING THE WAR.

This is the interior of the Forte's Supper Rooms in South Street Exeter Before the Second World War. Teresa and I were born in rooms above this dining room.

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