More Early Memories

We are in the sunporch. Mummy is sitting in the sun, with the baby (Olwyn) on her knee, feeding her. It is warm and pleasant. Mummy is singing popular songs to us. Ones like: “Tip-toe through the tulips” and “I’ve told every little star”.

Before her marriage, Mum and her sister, Win, had a collection of popular records (vinyls) to play on Grandpa’s wind-up gramophone.

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I am in bed with Mummy and Daddy; it is Saturday morning, the best time in the week. Daddy doesn’t have to go to work on Saturdays now (because the Government has passed a law making Saturday a full holiday). Daddy has his knees up and I slide down his legs. He turns me upside down.

Then he gets the paper from the gate, and shows me the comic strips at the bottom of the back page: Bringing up Father, and the Katzenjammer Kids.

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Mummy is teaching us a new song, and showing us how to do the actions. (It is an old version of what we would now call “the Hoky-Toky”). The words go like this:

Hi for Onomy-Conomy

Hi for Onony-Shoe

Hi for Onomy-Conomy

And all the children too.

Put your left leg in,

Put your left leg out,

Shake it a little, a little, a little,

And turn yourself about.

As I now understand it, this was a traditional song Mum had learned from her grandmother, Felicia Robinson, nee Tremain, whose original home was the village of Egloshayle, near Wadebridge in northern Cornwall.

Egloshayle, Cornwall, UK

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There is a feeling of tension in the air. Mummy and Daddy have moved their bed out of their bedroom, and brought the dining-table in there. This is so the doctor can use it. He is coming to take out Olwyn’s adenoids, which are stopping her breathing properly. He and a nurse will do the operation on the table; Mummy and Daddy will help him. I have to stay in the other room and keep very quiet so the doctor can do his work.

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We are at Sunday School at our church in Taumata Road, Sandringham.  We have just lit the candles to celebrate the birthday of one of the “primary” children, and now we are singing “Hear the pennies dropping” as the collection is taken up.

The teacher is my mother, with a couple of teenage girls helping her.

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