The Escape Artist's Origins.

Dad was born on St Michelmas’ Day, September 1922, in Manchester where his mum had returned to her family for the end of her pregnancy. They soon returned to the Isle of Wight where her husband, a postman, lived. I have no memories of that grandpa although I have been told he was a lovely man. He died of stomach cancer when I was 5 : I remember that event well as we were away on holiday in Great Yarmouth where my dad was leading a youth camp. I heard my dad’s name on the radio when they announced that he should return quickly to his parent’s home as his dad was dying. And off he went by train leaving us at the camp. Grandma I remember quite well as I went on holiday to the Isle of Wight quite often to stay with dad’s sister Nancy, her husband Ted and my cousins, Robert and Diane, more of whom later.

Dad did well for a working class lad and won a place at the Newport Grammar School but had left by the age of 16 to take up a mechanic’s apprenticeship in a local garage whilst playing violin in a jazz/dance band at night, with his sister on piano. Their gigs were mainly in the pubs and guest houses along the Parkhurst Straight where families visiting loved ones locked up in the Island’s three prisons stayed. Beer, gin and a knees-up before catching the ferry back to the mainland in the morning.

Then two things happened to change his life, war was declared and he got religion, both things independently I believe. He applied to join the RAF but was initially too young and had to wait a year and during that wait he met my mum while she was convalescing on the Island after a bad bout of rheumatic fever that left her with a weakened heart.

I have learnt various things about her family due to the interest in family trees shown by one of my cousins. One half of the family came from South Wales, the other half from North Devon, on the edge of Exmoor. During my study of these ancestors I noticed the absence of a Spanish branch that I was sure existed until the beautiful, crafted ancestral tree kicked that false memory into touch. The Thorne family ended up on the Old Kent Road, working class slums south-east of the Thames. Jack, my grandfather, one of eleven surviving children became a skilled printer and, as such, managed to take his family out into the suburbs, one of the many villages surrounded and captured by the never-ceasing growth of London. Beckenham has kept its white-collar status till today and must have been quite heavenly after the Old Kent Road.

Jack’s father used to sing for his supper in the pubs of Millwall but there was no need for such activity in this upwardly-mobile family. Jack became a type-setter and proof-reader for the Daily Telegraph having overcome the gassing he had received during the First World War which had left him with rather a temper. He was a very irritable man who ruled his roost with a rod of iron. Grandma Thorne was a dear who spent her time trying to compensate for the prickliness of her husband. My mum was the younger of two sisters. They both won places in grammar school but Jack wasn’t going to have two daughters ‘wasting’ their time studying so mum was sent off to become a trainee nurse, a training interrupted by her bout of rheumatic fever. She was sent to recuperate on the Isle of Wight where she briefly met my dad before he went off to join the RAF.

He found himself in Egypt where he seemed to spend the war supervising Italian prisoners as they worked on our damaged planes. Imagine the scene : in his squadron there is only one other Christian and the two of them would sit in a tent at night while their mates went to get tanked up in the NAAFI bar. They both spent their time writing to their girlfriends, in dad’s case my mum who had agreed to be his penfriend. Then one night my dad offers to post both their letters and discovers that they are both writing to the same address, they are writing to sisters.

So the war continued. Dad’s other war stories are quickly told. He managed to get some leave to go and visit the Holy Land, Bethlehem and Jerusalem in what was still Palestine. This made a big impression on him. Also, on the way out to Egypt, his ship had been dive-bombed by Stukas as they sailed too close to Malta. He said he was in the shower at the time and had never got dressed so quick.

Mum had been invalided out of nursing and worked for one of the Ministries. Most of her war stories concerned the bombing that London received. Her dad worked in Fleet Street all thru the war at night so was right in the centre during the whole bombing campaign and became even more of a nervous wreck. Mum speaks of going to work after the weekend to find her office had been wiped out and of cycling to church one Sunday and returning 90 minutes later along a street, one side of which had been pulverised into dust during the service.

All good wars must come to an end and dad found himself, along with a couple of million other blokes, de-mobbed and looking for fairly scarce work. Mum was still employed at the Ministry dealing with ration cards and dad stayed in London to be near her and then, after weeks of searching, he spotted a large poster offering jobs in the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force. So he signed up and found himself on a short course at Hendon Police College before being posted to Penge, a working class suburb just down the road from Beckenham where mum lived. Married officers were being offered accommodation and on December 13^th 1947 they got married at Penge

Baptist Church and moved into their first small home. I arrived eleven months later on November 15^th, 4 hours after Prince Charles, though he was born on the 14^th (as I should have been). Mum always pretended to be miffed because, if I had been born on time, she would have got a telegram from the Queen. ‘You started late and have been trying to catch up ever since,’ she would say to me in later years.