Barr_Beacon
The Prodigal Brummie
Roses in December
“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”
JM Barrie
It was my last summer in the only house I had known as home. I was ten years old and my family were one of the last remaining in the street. The structure they called Spaghetti Junction was well under construction and it had to be linked to the centre of Birmingham by a road that was to be called The Aston Expressway. My house stood right in its path.
Mrs Crowe, the old lady who owned the nearby sweet shop said there was more damage being done to Birmingham now than Hitler ever did in the war. ‘Progress!’ she used to hiss under her breath. She told us she missed her friends and that she hated the new residential tower blocks that were rising slowly upwards in Newtown. ‘Streets in the sky, I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous.’
‘It’ll be the death of me, you’ll see’, she warned me and she was right. She was found dead in her flat a couple of years after she moved in. I think the last ‘Lucky Bag’ I ever bought was from her shop.
Aston was changing. Every so often you would hear the sound of breaking glass, walls shattering and wood splintering as another house would succumb to the merciless might of the demolition ball. The air had a constant smell of smoke and paraffin from the burning timber and every morning it seemed that a few more houses and bits of streets had been nibbled away.
Nearby streets seemed to be covered in small herds of bull dozers, lorries and earth moving equipment whose exhaust fumes made them look like dragons exhaling sulphurous smoke and the roar of their engines making them sound like prehistoric monsters defending their territory. In the daytime they never seemed to stop moving as they consumed everything in their path but somehow they seemed more threatening and sinister at night as they stood still and silent.
Most of the houses in the streets were empty now, quietly awaiting their fate with dignity, some of them looked as though they had been abandoned by their owners in a hurry. Every so often you would see a house that was still occupied but for the most part nobody lived here any more.
I liked to explore the abandoned houses to see what I could find. I remember discovering a medal hiding beneath some rubbish in the corner of a damp room once. ‘The Great War For Civilisation 1914-1919’ was cast on one side and on the other was a beautiful angel holding out an out stretched arm. On the rim of the medal in small letters and numbers was stamped ‘17682 Pte G Parker Leic. R.’
Now you would think that no one would move into a place that was being demolished but you would be wrong. I first encountered Charlie and Prince sheltering inside a closed down picture house called ‘The Newtown Palace’ on Newtown Row.
Prince was a young Alsatian and his owner was Charlie, who was a tramp but it was difficult to know who belonged to whom. People couldn’t avoid Charlie in those days. He would always engage you in polite conversation whether you wanted to or not and after you had spoken with him it was clear that beneath the dirt and the smelly exterior was a kind, intelligent and gentle man. Later Charlie and Prince moved into an empty house on my street three doors down from my family.
My mother would take pity on them both and often gave them something to eat. Charlie told us that in the war he had been in the navy and that he had sailed to Russia in the arctic convoys but couldn’t settle down after the war had finished. He said he had tried but he had never got into the habit of staying in one place too long.
Charlie would let me take Prince to Aston Park and supplied me with a leather collar and lead which I used with him when walking along the busy Aston Road. I’ll never forget to this day the smell of the spices coming from the HP sauce factory and the sight of the lorries crammed with hops as they were driven to Ansell’s brewery.
One day when we visited the park I removed Prince’s lead and he bounded off across the grass chasing imaginary rabbits outside Aston Hall. In the bright summer sunlight the hall looked as old as time itself and I couldn’t help wonder if they were going to demolish this beautiful old building as well as my home.
Prince nudged me with his wet nose and I noticed he had a tennis ball in his mouth. We spent the next hour playing, me throwing the ball and him chasing after it and picking it up. He would gallop back to me and drop the ball gently into my open hand.
When we returned home I found mom clutching a crumpled letter in her hand and I noticed that she had been crying. The council had written to her saying that we were moving to our new home in two weeks and there could be no delay.
I never saw Charlie or Prince again after they had left their empty house a couple of days later. Charlie said he did not like goodbyes as they were too sad and I think he was probably right.
On the day of our leaving, Mrs Crowe gave us all a tearful hug and some sweets. She told us that she had also been given notice to leave her shop the following month to live in a flat in one of the newly completed high rise towers.
Looking back now everything seemed a blur. The removal lorry came on time and without any fuss the men loaded our belongings into the back of it. My mother, sister and grandmother sat in the front of the lorry with the removal men and the driver suggested that I should sit in the back with the furniture. My mother agreed and as we moved off, I looked out through a narrow gap between the removal lorry’s doors and watched as the street and the house I grew up in, gradually receded into the distance. A wave of sadness descended upon me that to this day has never really left.
At the junction, just as the lorry turned right onto Newtown Row, I thought that I could hear the sound of a young Alsatian barking above the noise of the traffic.
Michael O'Reilly
February, 2012
“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”
JM Barrie
It was my last summer in the only house I had known as home. I was ten years old and my family were one of the last remaining in the street. The structure they called Spaghetti Junction was well under construction and it had to be linked to the centre of Birmingham by a road that was to be called The Aston Expressway. My house stood right in its path.
Mrs Crowe, the old lady who owned the nearby sweet shop said there was more damage being done to Birmingham now than Hitler ever did in the war. ‘Progress!’ she used to hiss under her breath. She told us she missed her friends and that she hated the new residential tower blocks that were rising slowly upwards in Newtown. ‘Streets in the sky, I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous.’
‘It’ll be the death of me, you’ll see’, she warned me and she was right. She was found dead in her flat a couple of years after she moved in. I think the last ‘Lucky Bag’ I ever bought was from her shop.
Aston was changing. Every so often you would hear the sound of breaking glass, walls shattering and wood splintering as another house would succumb to the merciless might of the demolition ball. The air had a constant smell of smoke and paraffin from the burning timber and every morning it seemed that a few more houses and bits of streets had been nibbled away.
Nearby streets seemed to be covered in small herds of bull dozers, lorries and earth moving equipment whose exhaust fumes made them look like dragons exhaling sulphurous smoke and the roar of their engines making them sound like prehistoric monsters defending their territory. In the daytime they never seemed to stop moving as they consumed everything in their path but somehow they seemed more threatening and sinister at night as they stood still and silent.
Most of the houses in the streets were empty now, quietly awaiting their fate with dignity, some of them looked as though they had been abandoned by their owners in a hurry. Every so often you would see a house that was still occupied but for the most part nobody lived here any more.
I liked to explore the abandoned houses to see what I could find. I remember discovering a medal hiding beneath some rubbish in the corner of a damp room once. ‘The Great War For Civilisation 1914-1919’ was cast on one side and on the other was a beautiful angel holding out an out stretched arm. On the rim of the medal in small letters and numbers was stamped ‘17682 Pte G Parker Leic. R.’
Now you would think that no one would move into a place that was being demolished but you would be wrong. I first encountered Charlie and Prince sheltering inside a closed down picture house called ‘The Newtown Palace’ on Newtown Row.
Prince was a young Alsatian and his owner was Charlie, who was a tramp but it was difficult to know who belonged to whom. People couldn’t avoid Charlie in those days. He would always engage you in polite conversation whether you wanted to or not and after you had spoken with him it was clear that beneath the dirt and the smelly exterior was a kind, intelligent and gentle man. Later Charlie and Prince moved into an empty house on my street three doors down from my family.
My mother would take pity on them both and often gave them something to eat. Charlie told us that in the war he had been in the navy and that he had sailed to Russia in the arctic convoys but couldn’t settle down after the war had finished. He said he had tried but he had never got into the habit of staying in one place too long.
Charlie would let me take Prince to Aston Park and supplied me with a leather collar and lead which I used with him when walking along the busy Aston Road. I’ll never forget to this day the smell of the spices coming from the HP sauce factory and the sight of the lorries crammed with hops as they were driven to Ansell’s brewery.
One day when we visited the park I removed Prince’s lead and he bounded off across the grass chasing imaginary rabbits outside Aston Hall. In the bright summer sunlight the hall looked as old as time itself and I couldn’t help wonder if they were going to demolish this beautiful old building as well as my home.
Prince nudged me with his wet nose and I noticed he had a tennis ball in his mouth. We spent the next hour playing, me throwing the ball and him chasing after it and picking it up. He would gallop back to me and drop the ball gently into my open hand.
When we returned home I found mom clutching a crumpled letter in her hand and I noticed that she had been crying. The council had written to her saying that we were moving to our new home in two weeks and there could be no delay.
I never saw Charlie or Prince again after they had left their empty house a couple of days later. Charlie said he did not like goodbyes as they were too sad and I think he was probably right.
On the day of our leaving, Mrs Crowe gave us all a tearful hug and some sweets. She told us that she had also been given notice to leave her shop the following month to live in a flat in one of the newly completed high rise towers.
Looking back now everything seemed a blur. The removal lorry came on time and without any fuss the men loaded our belongings into the back of it. My mother, sister and grandmother sat in the front of the lorry with the removal men and the driver suggested that I should sit in the back with the furniture. My mother agreed and as we moved off, I looked out through a narrow gap between the removal lorry’s doors and watched as the street and the house I grew up in, gradually receded into the distance. A wave of sadness descended upon me that to this day has never really left.
At the junction, just as the lorry turned right onto Newtown Row, I thought that I could hear the sound of a young Alsatian barking above the noise of the traffic.
Michael O'Reilly
February, 2012
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