Tales of the Unexpected

By Helen Baker

I want to share the experiences which have set me back on my heels, either rocking with laughter or shaking my head in bewilderment. If any conclusion can be drawn, it must be that nothing is ever what it seems. Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244528577

Helen Baker

Helen Baker is a licensed Australian financial adviser with a Masters in Financial Planning. She is the founder of On Your Own Two Feet and the author of two books: On Your Own Two Feet – Steady Steps to Women's Financial Independence and On Your Own Two Feet Divorce – Your Survive and Thrive Financial Guide.  

Book preview

Tales of the Unexpected

Tales of the Unexpected

by

Helen Baker

Copyright © 2019 Helen Baker.  All rights reserved

ISBN:  978-0-244-52857-7

Preface.

You can pack a lot into seventy years if you are not interested in nappies, sport or films.  Living in all four corners of England, tackling a variety of careers, visiting over fifty countries and living in five exposes you to the quirks, oddities, inconsistencies and downright peculiarities with which this book is crammed.  I wanted to share the experiences which have set me back on my heels, either rocking with laughter or shaking my head in bewilderment.  If any conclusion can be drawn, it must be that nothing is ever what it seems.  Enjoy!

1.  Babies are the only people I actually trust as far as I can throw them.

The baby wakes up in the wee wee hours of the morning.

Baby: Nine months interest on a small deposit.

When I was about seven, I thought I was having a baby.  I did not know much about babies, except that they were associated with bottoms and pain.  I had both.  Mother took me to the doctor.  I was eternally grateful to her for the way she discreetly referred to 'between the legs'.  He looked.  I had piles.

This was not surprising as our loo was outdoors with no light.  Just a bucket, only emptied when it was brimful.  There were spiders and my torch revealed all sorts of creepy-crawlies scuttling away.  I used it as rarely as possible.

It was over sixty years later that someone posed to me the very sensible question - Why are haemorrhoids called haemorrhoids and not asteroids?

* * *

My earliest recollection was the feeling of confinement.  I wanted to sit up in my pram but my harness prevented it.  Later on, I was encased in a so-called liberty bodice.  This was a tight garment with tiny buttons down the front that it was hard even for my mother to do up and undo.  I hated it but at least mine was short-sleeved.  When, in my teens, I compared notes, I found others had been pinioned in long-sleeved liberty bodices.  Restriction did not end there.  When I could walk I wore a harness, called reins, rather like a dog with a double lead.  It meant my mother always knew where I was – about two feet away from her – and unlikely to hurl myself under a bus.  At night, which started about Six pm, I was penned up in a cot with barred sides.  In those days, mothers tucked you in so firmly, you found it difficult to turn.  When, eventually, I could only lie straight with arms and legs protruding out between the bars, I graduated onto a real bed.  Just as well I was penned in - they told me I was ‘venturesome’. 

* * *

Not only was I an only child but my parents were, by today's standards, old enough to be my grandparents.  My real grandparents lived next door.  Nearby stood an almshouse full of old people.  Everyone was old.  I remember thinking I did not want to grow up because it meant I could no longer run.  Not that I would be unable to, just that it would be unseemly.  Dad used to take me to watch the village football and cricket teams.  Nobody ever ran.  Bowling was a hop-skip-and-jump from the wicket.  Football was kicking the ball on to somebody else.  When I was in my teens, the house attached to ours on the right-hand-side caught fire.  The fire brigade swiftly appeared.  I stood open-mouthed watching grown men run, unreeling hoses as they actually ran.  It was a first.

* * *

Not surprisingly, I grew up precocious.  I learnt to read from the hymn book on Sundays.  I was sent to Sunday School from the age of three.  Before that, Dad used to take me with him shooting on a Sunday morning.  One day, I returned home in triumph, brandishing a huge dead rabbit, its blood dripping all over my smocked cotton frock.  Dad was pleased with me but Mother put her foot down.  In order that she might cook the Sunday roast in peace on our temperamental and primitive stove, run on bottled gas, I must go to Sunday school.  She was church, that is Anglican of course, while Dad and family were Wesleyan Methodists.  But, although in the village, it was a matter of eternal life or damnation, which service one attended, she had no say in the matter.  I went to the far nearer and much more lively Methodist Sunday school.  I attended weekly for the next fifteen years until I left home for university.

* * *

There was a grocer's-cum-post office in the village half a mile away.  It was housed in a Nissan hut, as was much of the new village in the early 1950s.  The post mistress struck my pre-school self as ingratiating.  When Mother proudly showed her a page of my scribbles, she praised my 'writing'.  Yet I knew it was rubbish.  Everyone else I knew told me the truth.  Life was straightforward then.  Still, encouraged by the village schoolmistress (who had taught Mother some thirty years earlier) I did produce a book at the age of five.  It was real writing, a story which I invented and illustrated.  I wonder that happened to it.  It probably lit our open fire.

* * *

I had little interest in dolls.  Who would have with a lucky black double-pawed kitten and a terrier dog at home, chickens in a run, rabbits in cages and ponies and cows in the nearby fields?  Of course, I was given dolls.  Their arms and legs, held on by rubber bands, soon detached themselves.  Dad or Mum readily replaced the bands and hooked the limbs back on but the illusion was lost.  I dressed my cat in doll's clothes plus my old smock left over from baby days.  One Christmas I received a walking doll, rare and expensive at the time.  But it only walked because below the waist, its body was missing.  That way, its little owner could manipulate the legs forward in turn using her fingers.  Big deal.  Thoughtless aunts and uncles gave me unsuitable presents although their chocolate variety boxes were always welcome.  When I received a trumpet, it somehow vanished before Boxing Day.  So did my drum.  It did not take me long, when I received a peashooter, to swallow the large plastic pea.  Mum carefully took all my infant poo to pieces until she was certain the pea has passed right through me.

* * *

Of course I grew up a tomboy.  Dad had hoped for a son.  When I was little I knew no fear.  'Venturesome' they called me.  ‘A live wire’ which, as electricity had arrived not long before I did, was a modern compliment.  Neither parent could swim.  Nor could I of course.  Once, I frightened Mother by clambering through some barbed wire which kept in our hens.  Then straight down into the stream and across it, despite the current, with my head tilted back to keep the water out of my nose.  I thought it a good lark, soaked clothes and all.  Mum had to run back to the road, cross the bridge, run along the bank on the far side, hoping I was keeping my footing, before she could get anywhere near me.

* * *

Similarly, when in the Summer we went to Weymouth – my idea of paradise – I walked out into the sea quite alone until the odd wave rolled over my head.  My parents watched anxiously from the beach, which is a long way off in shelving Weymouth.  Fear came only with puberty and the need to appear genteel.

* * *

Just as well that I was brave the day I was attacked by two snakes.  It started innocently.  I went into the fields to pick primroses.  Dasher, of course, came too.  While I was busy gathering up a bunch, my dog discovered something rather more interesting – a pair of vipers.  Before I paid much attention to his excited yapping, both sprung up at me where I bent low at the base of the hedgerow.  I lurched back, with a scream, astonished that the adders could launch themselves so high into the air.  At least, it seemed high to a small child.  Perhaps a foot or eighteen inches right off the ground.  In rushed Dasher to protect me.  He managed to seize one adder by its tail and shook it violently, tossed it in the air and pounced on it again before it could escape.  You always find adders in pairs – something professional biologists do not seem to know.  Soon, my dog was fighting both.  Abandoning both him and my flowers, I ran off home.  Mother was accepting a loaf from the baker when I burst out with my adventures.  Both adults soothed me with indulgent smiles which clearly said they did not believe a word.  That night, Mother, curious, walked to the field where I had been earlier.  She found a dead snake.  At least, nearly so.  It is a tradition in the country that snakes do not truly die until the sun sets.  Dasher was treated as a hero.

* * *

Weymouth was the scene of my first appearance on the public stage when my parents managed a week's holiday in a caravan.  There was a theatre on the pier and a nightly show – with a band.  From the first time I heard a jangly upright piano being thumped to accompany choruses at Sunday school, I have loved music.  It was magic.  How I envied the elderly matron who sat and pounded.  I wanted to be able to do that.  Other than Sunday, our only access to music was a radio although Dad still kept his pre-war wind-up gramophone and collection of dance music. 

When the seaside bandleader invited children up to conduct his band, I hardly needed Dad's urging to go.  By far the youngest, I am not even sure I had started school.  All the others conducted standing: when it was my turn, the showman brought me a chair to stand on.  The problem was the choice of piece.  All the others wanted The Teddybears' Picnic.  There were even tears and sulks over it.  I looked on sniffily.  Finally, all the others had performed, the conductor managing to satisfy all the rivals and the audience in fits of laughter.  He lifted me onto the chair.  What did I want to play?  Without hesitation, I demanded 'The Swedish Rhapsody'.  Despite its name, this was a very popular piece at the time and the band could manage it.  I conducted, swinging the baton as I had seen him do, or thought I had, for what seemed to me a very long time.  Then, fearful of boring the audience, I swung it down to finish.  Dad said afterwards I was about halfway through.  Horrid little brat, I enjoyed my time on-stage but looked askance at the presents we were given.  The bigger children received far better presents than my tatty bit of plastic but, for some reason, I had given the audience many more laughs.

* * *

Dasher was my dog, the latest in a series of terrier-type, middle-sized mongrels.  Most of the time, he roamed free.  That is, around our and granfy's adjoining sizeable gardens.  There was no question of allowing him to roam further.  Any farmer would shoot a dog likely to upset his livestock and be within his rights to do so.  Even if it was a family pet.  Dasher did get out one day, inevitably.  He followed me to Sunday School where he caused chaos.  It was not my fault, truly.  I tried to shoo him away.  It seemed to encourage him.  In the end, it was agreed that if he sat quietly at my feet, he could stay in the classroom.  He obliged – until the piano started.  Then he lifted up his voice to howl.  He showed musical talents that we had never suspected.  What a row.  There was no stopping him.  Finally, in the interests of religion, it was settled that I should drag him home by his collar but – not to worry, I would get full credit for my attendance.  (This mattered.  It counted toward such treats as your present at Christmas, your right to attend the Christmas party and to go on the annual outing.  My word, the Methodists were organised.  If one Sunday you happened to be away from home, you were expected to attend another Methodist Sunday school in order to get your credit.) 

* * *

Dasher also starred in the incident of the Indian carpet salesman.  We had regular deliveries from postman, baker and butcher, rarer ones from fishmonger and three-weekly ones from the dustmen.  Other than that, being far from a town, callers at our door were very rare.  One salesman tried his luck – I will call him an Indian but where this exotic Asiatic actually haled from was anyone's guess.  Under each arm, he carried a sizeable, rolled-up carpet.  Of course, Dasher warned us of his arrival.  My mother dragged the dog indoors.  She shut the door behind her, preparatory to telling the visitor she wanted for nothing.  Unfortunately, she forgot the back door.  Before she could give her refusal, the dog had lived up to its name.  It dashed through the house, out of the back door, around the side and headed for the stranger.  This wretched man thought the dog had been loosed on him.  He turned on his heel and, despite his two carpets, jumped without hesitation over the garden gate which stood nearly four feet high.  Mother and I gaped after him.  Dasher could only bark and bound in frustration.

* * *

Like most dogs of his kind, Dasher loved water.  One day I took him out on his lead.  I expect I was collecting rabbits' food – dandelions and succulent milk thistles.  When we reached the river, he immediately put his front paws on the parapet.  Then, in an instant he was over it.  But he was still on the lead, dangling by the neck over the water far below.  What a dilemma.  It was impossible for tiny me to lean over and pull him back up by the lead.  Indeed, I knew I was lucky not to have followed him over.  I could not hold him there to choke to death either.  But if I let him go, surely the ten foot fall would kill him.  Finally I admitted it was the best option.  I released my already numbing wrist.  Dasher vanished.  The water was not deep enough for a splash.  Gripped by fear, I rushed to the gate and around the field to the riverbank.  There frolicked Dasher, trailing his lead.  None the worst but reluctant to be coaxed from all the attractions of the water.  His only consolation was in dousing me as soon as he climbed back on land.

* * *

In 1952 the North Devon town of Lynmouth suffered sudden and catastrophic flooding.  Wikipedia tells us of thirty-four fatalities, a hundred buildings and twenty-eight bridges destroyed and thirty-eight cars washed out to sea.  I do not suppose my family was any more ghoulish than others but, the following Summer, we drove the long distance to see the damage for ourselves.  Our neighbours drove us, Sam and Winny Phillips, in their diminutive old Austin.  Four adults and a nipper was asking a lot.  The road to Lynmouth is notorious for Porlock Hill which has claimed so many victims that the AA had a permanent hut partway up.  Wikipedia refers to it as the A39, the steepest A road in the UK and with repeated gradients of one in four (25% in modern language).  Of course our Austin overheated.  So did many other vehicles in the queue.  Even with us walking, ascent was impossible.  After many attempts and some bad temper, it was agreed that there was only one alternative.  We had to return back down the hill to Porlock and use the toll road.  It added considerably to both the cost and the length of the journey.  At least we found plenty of damage and debris to exclaim over at our destination.

* * *

Chapel and Sunday school rarely contributed to my entertainment.  For services, I sat between Granny and Granfy on one side and Dad on the other, always in the same pew.  Dad would slip me a boiled sweet to help through the long emotional sermons.  At least one listened to a wide range of different preachers because lay preachers, even women later on, would come from as far away as the next county.  One of them sticks in my memory because of his particular earnestness and youth.  The pimples and boils around his neck afflicted all young men in those days before pain-free Dettol replaced agonising yellow iodine.  The pulpit was reached via a spiral of three steps with, on the top, just room for a chair.  The young preacher stood up from his chair, ready to preach.  He missed his footing, slid down the carpet of the steps, along the carpet of the aisle and ended up in the middle of the chapel on his back.  There was a horrified silence.  Then everybody laughed, including, I am glad to say, the preacher.

* * *

Sermons were serious, repent-or-be-damned affairs.  One visitor introduced a lighter note.  He discoursed on the Children of Israel carrying the Ark of the Covenant to the river of Jordan.  Of course, he read from the traditional King James Bible whose language was so much more similar to daily talk then.  (My granfy always used Thees and Thous.)  Joshua was off to the Promised Land and the Ark was carried at the head of the throng as their signal to advance.  Little did anyone expect that the river, a significant barrier, would immediately and miraculously dry up.  Or that the Jordan would begin to flow again only when all the Israelites were across. 

'The whole point is,' stressed the preacher, his arm raised, 'That the priests had to get their feet wet first!"

* * *

When I was well into my teens, a lay preacher came, the like of which we had never seen before.  He was black.  African black.  Throughout the service, the attention of the entire congregation was riveted upon him.  We took in every visible detail.  He was a wonder.  His tongue was pink – just like ours.  So were the palms of his hands.  But his hair and his eyes were quite alien.  Just to look upon him was an education.  As for what he said, the strange accent did not bother us so much as the content.  He talked about something called a 'promissory note'.  No doubt he made some clear connection with religion but it was lost on us peasants.  Nobody had any idea what he was talking about.

* * *

As I said, Granfy and Granny lived next door.  Of course, they were both retired.  I have written more about their lives in my biography of my father.  (Donald Baker – Countryman, see details at the end.)  Granfy still supplemented his pension – he sold cigarettes.  He was duly licenced to do so.  The nearest shop was half a mile off and kept shop hours.  Chapel people would not be seen dead going to the pub, even to buy a packet of innocent Woodbines.  So Granfy offered a useful service, especially at weekends.  I doubt whether any private people have licences today.

* * *

The subject of alcohol was a difficult one.  Of course, it was forbidden to good Methodists.  That said, a bottle of sherry was hidden away in a cupboard.  There it would remain for years, unless a quick nip was needed for medicinal purposes.  Or to help Dad, already struggling with ‘flu, to face a day of cold, dirty hedging and ditching under winter rain.  Then, a slurp would find its way into his breakfast tea.  Very occasionally, a toothmugful would be offered to Aunty Ivy and Uncle Jim on their Christmas visit.  They lived in London, so were more sophisticated.  It is harder to justify the barrel of cider which was always to be found outdoors between the toilet and the copper.  (A copper is a metal bowl placed over a metal grate.  People filled the copper with cold water and lit a