Full Transcript

Bomb damage
There was a lot places bombed in this area. I know where I lived, I lived in Braybrook Street then, and they were hit by what they called ‘fire bombs’ and I always remember the ceiling come down and hit the banister. My dad was bringing me down the stairs and down come . . . you know, it just missed us . . . and there was all this part of the ceiling where it had been replastered where the bomb had come down . . .

Adventure playground
I remember walking home from school and stopping in the adventure playground (on White City) and then carrying on, on the way home.

Yeh, that was like an iconic place.

Memories of White City
I went to Champlain House [White City]. They had a play centre there and they had the school. Pope John. My children always lived in the park. They were always in the park . . . and then when I moved to Champlain House, and he lived in there till he was only five, six, he used to play across the road between the play centre and the school. Cricket and everything else there, and of course, he goes out, back up again, knocking on the door . . . and I said, if you knock on that door once more, he’s in for bed and that’s it, and I never let him out and that, but his big brother and that was over playing cricket . . . he wasn’t used to the roads, and lucky enough it was White City and he was used to the racing there, Saturdays, and they always go slow round the estate knowing that there’s children all around, and he said ‘that car tripped me up,’ he said [laughs]. They had the open air swimming. They lived in it. Lived in it . . .

That was in Wormholt Park, was it?

Bloemfontein [Road], where the health centre is [now] . . . the open air, you go in at ten o’clock in the morning, and never come out till eight o’clock at night. That was fantastic. Then they had Lime Grove . . . the Water Gypsies, teach the children for fifteen months, help to swim, because it was always the same, because the Thames . . . if you fell into the Thames, in the middle, it was a hundred yards each side to get back to safety, so we had to teach them how to swim, a hundred yards . . .

Childhood in Ireland
Children back then, they had everything . . . I lived in Ireland [as a child] . . . just parks and that, and walking to the park and back home again, looking after the little ones . . .

You had to look after each other . . .

But we had a bomb as well. We were neutral as you know, just fifty minutes over the river [the sea?] . . . the Germans, he dropped his bombs and blew up . . . you know . . . I think every generation, no matter what country you came from, we all did the same as a family, you know . . .

Looked after the younger ones.

Rationing, I always remember that.

Life as a child during the war
Well, it wasn’t really that different. You know, everybody looked after each other.

I don’t remember much of the war really.

Neighbours were neighbours, and we all knew our neighbours, and nobody had more than the other, and everybody helped each other. Now, when I was a kid at home, living in Ireland on an estate like this [Old Oak] . . . you wasn’t well off and that, and my mam used to get off a club and order the coal, get four bags of coal every six weeks . . . now, if someone ran out of coal, you’d lend them a bucket of coal till they got theirs and then you’d have to bring it back, and that’s the way . . . everything, everything . . . sugar and everything, we ran out, neighbours were neighbours. Shared everything.

Interviewer: Do you not feel that’s the same way now then?

No, no. No.

No. You don’t even know your neighbour.

We live in four floors, in my house.

About strong childhood memories
You had two separate families. I was the youngest of six, at the time, and five years later my sister came along, three years my brother . . . but we used to all have to look after each other, and then you’d take them to the park . . . and I remember being in the park . . . and it came down, the rain came down. Now I wasn’t scared of thunder or anything, so I walked all the way home . . . and they [siblings] walked all the way home, and they were soaked . . . and two days later, my little sister, she was very ill, scarlet fever and she [mother] blamed me cos I’d brought them in the rain . . . with the scarlet fever, you don’t hear of it now. The house had to be fumigated, the whole lot. Everything was fumigated . . . and you weren’t allowed to visit them, and my sister was in there for six weeks, in the hospital, and my mam could only look through the window, and when she brang her home she couldn’t . . . anybody that touched her, she screamed and screamed and screamed, and Mam said ‘What am I going to do with her?’, and it just happened that I had . . . you know, a white dress, and I wore this white dress, she shut up and came to me. She told the nurse . . . you know, the different stories . . . the things we used to do and get in trouble . . .

I always used to get in trouble. We always used to play in the street, and that was alright until we started making a noise and then the neighbours come and knocked on the door and got us in [laughs] . . . we used to have skipping ropes . . .

Mind you, there was not that many cars there.

Yeh, we used to have great big skipping ropes right across the street. There weren’t many cars there.

And then you had a swing . . . the lamp-post, swings on the lamp-post . . . and then you had playing cricket on the road . . . throw the buttons into the [??]

Ball and catch . . . we used to call it ‘pick ups’ . . .

[Plenty of garbled memories of play]

I was born in Barbados, and in those days, as you said, the family was . . . everybody was a big community. If I did something wrong with the neighbour, he could spank me . . .

Memories of play
[Interviewer tells a story learned about the local game played and told and known as ‘Knocking Dollies Out of Bed’]

Interviewer: I don’t know if any of you know this game, but apparently it’s called ‘Knocking Dollies . . .’

Out of Bed! We used to play that!

[Plenty of overlapping talking]

What is this?

Knock on the door, and you all run!

Hopscotch . . .

There wasn’t a lot of cars in the road so every game [in Barbados] was played in the road. The cricket, as you say, and although we played cricket in the road, the ball never hit people’s cars, direct . . .

Never.

One of the main things with a bank holiday, we would get a lot of traffic, we would sit down with papers and mark down all the car numbers, who got the most car numbers and from which parish. Because each parish had a different number, like P for St Peter . . . and we went to the beach and played on the beach and pick up these small pebbles and bring them back, and we’d play these different games with them. The skateboards that they have here now, we didn’t have skateboards. We used to have a tin and put tar on it [??] and skate down the road on that [laughs]. So all of these things that they’re doing here . . . even cricket balls, we had to make the cricket balls. It wasn’t going out and buying things . . . a bat, you got a piece of wood and chopped it out.

Interviewer: What did you make the cricket balls from?

We had a lot of twine . . .

Rubber bands . . .

Rubber bands. You had a coconut . . . a coconut tree and you beat it. You get a lot of that fluffy thing and put that in . . . then you take a canvas, these bags, cocos [?] bags we used to call them . . . nice consistency and then you take the twine and you got a big needle and you make . . . that’s how you make the bags and everything, so you do that from childhood . . . there was no money to buy these things so we had to, we started work . . .

I remember a pram that my dad made of wood. Marvellous, that was. I thought that used to be good . . . my pram, my doll’s pram, because he was a carpenter then, and he made out of wood, and also what he done he had a bike, and he made this kind of a square box and he used to hook it on his bike and me and my brother used to sit in the back and he used to take us off for the ride.

South London from 1939 onwards/the Scrubs prefabs
You could play as much as you liked, in the road, cos there wasn’t cars. It was horse and carts. The horse did his business, someone had to run with a bucket and spade . . .

We used to have the trolley buses in Du Cane Road. I remember them, the trolley buses.

Where I lived [in South London], I grew up with a big school, bigger than this one round the corner [Old Oak Primary School], about four or five times as big as that . . . the one I had to go to, which was a mile or so up the road, was a big one as well. South of Battersea Park. They sold that one to another school cos they wanted to build another school near to the other one. So to do that they had to clear two complete streets of houses, which was OK in some ways because the houses were pre-39. If you wanted the toilet in the middle of the night, you had to go outside [laughs]. If you had a bath, it was a tin bath.

Interviewer: No power showers or anything like that!

No, nothing like we’ve got now. So really it was good when the LCC wanted to clear this estate, the two streets to make a new school, and of course that’s when I moved out so I don’t know if they ever did, but I take it they did because [we] literally had the choice of going to further out like Stockwell way, or they offered one to my father in the White City estate, and he said ‘No, you can stick that!’. Just like that to them.

Interviewer: Why did he say that? Because White City Estate was fairly new then, wasn’t it?

Yeh, and we got about three offers to go to the new place, and they said ‘Where do you want to go then?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve been travelling since about 1939 from Battersea to Park Royal’, where he worked, cos he was in like an engineering thing which was, he was safeguarding against going in the army, and the feller in the factory said, ‘Ask him for an ‘ouse on this estate.’ [Old Oak]. Just like that, and of course, when he asked the LCC, they said ‘One has just come up.’

But they never called them houses. Those were cottages . . . and then they had the prefabs, along the Scrubs.

‘64 I come here, they just been pulled down.

They had the shelter, and changing rooms where the footballers and all that used to . . .

Interviewer: Were the prefabs on the Scrubs?

Yes, where the [Community] Centre is, it used to be all prefabs along there . . . they were lovely.

It’s a shame because the prefabs in South London I’ve seen . . . brilliant . . .

There’s still some going. Some people bought theirs.

My grandmother lived in a prefab and they were supposed to be up for five years and she lived there for nearly fifty years.

Interviewer: Everyone I speak to says prefabs, around the areas, were really good and I suspect that maybe it’s because they had gardens. Certainly the ones on White City, where the playground is now, there were prefabs up to about the 60s, I think, and the stories that get told about ‘Oh, their gardens’ . . .

They all had their gardens, didn’t they?

There was one massive garden — it was called the Scrubs, I guess! [Laughs].

You could play there, anything, and then all of a sudden they started building . . .

It wasn’t a single row, it was a double row.

My husband worked up here and he’d say how beautiful, immaculate, and the likes of Jean living here, they had landlords, the rent man coming to pick up the rent, and if your footstep was dirty or your curtains were dirty you were told to have them clean again — he’d come back next week. It was immaculate.

And we used to have the School Board Man around here. You never went out if he was out[?]

Interviewer: The School Board Man? What did he do?

He used to come round . . . you was off school.

Interviewer: He was like the Truant Officer?

Yeh.

In White City as well, in terms of washing all the stairs and everything down, we had to.

Interviewer: That reminds me of a story someone told me about when the Rent Officer came round and they had to scrub the steps. Not just scrub the steps but scrub the steps!

Dangerous things and getting in trouble
Interviewer: Did you do anything in your play [as children] that today might be considered either dangerous, or let’s face it, frankly quite stupid?

We used to do so much. We had the cots with the poisonous paint — we grew up with those. We’d gone around without seat belts. We’d done all the stuff that everyone now put laws on. We’ve grown up. We’re fine.

Interviewer: Did you ever do things like jumping off of high places [or things your parents would have disapproved of] . . .?

I lived by the seaside [in Ireland], but we was only allowed to the park, and then three quarters of a mile up we had the start of the sea, and it was called The Rocks, right? And you were never allowed on The Rocks, but we would all go to The Rocks, go down there, just paddle . . . we used to put our dresses . . . and we got them soaking wet. So we lit a fire, to dry them. And, of course, my cousin, she was brought up she had to tell the truth. She always hung on to us . . . anyway, she’d gone home . . . and I said, now when you get home, tell Granny that you sat down on the grass and someone had dropped a butt, but you say a dog-end, right? And you sat in it, and it burned ya. And that’s how you got that hole. That night my Gran was a lion [??] cos we were more scared of me Gran . . . more scared of me Gran than me Mam . . .

I tell you another thing we used to do, always used to look forward to Guy Fawkes. We used to get the clothes and what we used to fill them with was the leaves, the dry leaves, and make a Guy . . . and go Guy Fawking. Stand on the corner and get the pennies.

I remember when I was young and all the doors were open. All the doors.

We used to have a key hanging on a string and when you got home, you put your fingers in the door, pulled your . . . no-one ever bothered you. Can’t leave your door open now.

Perceptions of children and young people and the way things were and are
Interviewer: Can I ask everybody about what has changed between the story about pulling the key on the string and . . . being more fearful these days? What’s changed?

I think it’s the youth of today.

Discipline.

It is. It is. I mean, you can’t discipline your children, you can’t . . . it’s right. It is right.

The moral standards.

They took too many laws [??] away like they used to . . . they took discipline from the schools . . .

And the parents . . .

I go to church . . . we were scared of the priest. Scared of the police, and teachers. The cane . . .

I had my fingers rapped a few times . . .

Interviewer: Is that fear a good thing? Is that what you’re saying?

It wasn’t fear. We had respect for people.

You had respect for a priest. You had respect for a [??]

Interviewer: So is it, just to clarify, is it a fear or is it a respect, or is it both?

Respect. You took that away from . . . how can I explain?

No respect for . . . [??]

The children have no fear of their own space. They’re given their own space.

You go to school up till you were sixteen and you were brought up how to behave and respect people, other people’s property, you name it, the lot. I mean, I had an incident when my boy was eleven, he went to St Stephen’s then . . . and he came home with a beautiful pen. Right? In them days, in the 60s. It was a Parker pen. Now I knew I couldn’t afford to buy a Parker pen for him . . . [doing] homework, I said ‘Where did you get it from?’ He said, ‘Oh, so and so gave it to me.’ I said, ‘Oh, so you’re going back tonight, give it back.’ So, brought it back, and the headmaster was there, Mr. Castle, and he said ‘What’s the matter, Mrs. M.?’ I said, ‘Well, he’s come home with that pen, and I didn’t buy it for him, and nei’er did his father, and he has no money, right?’ So, he said, ‘Where do you get it from?’ ‘So and so lent it to me’ . . . Teacher’s pen was found missing . . .

Interviewer: Can I ask, and feel free not to answer this question . . . did any of you steal anything when you were a child?

We all did [laughs] . . . me dad’s cigarettes, out of his pocket . . .

Only indoors, but not outside.

Not off anybody, no.

Only indoors . . .

More about the adventure playground and Ravenscourt Park
Interviewer: Another link I’ve got, as you’re talking about this respect and discipline thing, I want to go back to the adventure playground: it’s not a direct link, because we’re not in it to make children respect, or discipline them, but there’s the potential for a link there. So I was interested because we never really followed through that conversation about what the playground was like when you first started talking about it . . .

Well, when that started first [the playground, 60s/70s?], that’s when that little girl got killed . . . a nail in the head. Got brain damage . . . [Note: story needs to be verified]

Interviewer: On the playground?

Yeh. I know, before. That was in . . . um . . . the Seventies. Yes . . . she was only a little girl, yeh.

Interviewer: So what was the playground like for any of you who were around at that time?

They all built it themselves. [It’s] modernised, your lot, but these lot, the boys and the children all built that place, with nails . . . the swings, you name it, they built it.

Interviewer: We’re trying to bring that back . . .

It wasn’t healthy . . . with nails sticking out here and there, I mean you’d come out and you’d have a gash here, and that, but they were brought up to be tough, but today . . .

You probably haven’t been down there lately but . . . they’re bringing in lots and lots of bits and pieces and allowing the children to create stuff and add to that. So there’s old, I don’t know what they’re from, big old tunnelling, big old pipes . . .

The first one started in Ravenscourt Park, the playgr-, the play centre, and that was in the 60s, late 60s. You know? Ravenscourt Park was the same thing made . . . that’s why I said to you ‘imagination’, they did have an imagination . . . the discipline went out of the schools, and they listened to people. They don’t listen to nobody now. They do their own thing.

The politics of gender in families, and play in families
But I think too it’s the male . . . women have taken over so many key positions, and the men are not there to stand up because youth stand up . . .

Cos they used to say, ‘You wait till your father comes home!’

Yeh, that’s right.

If it wasn’t the fathers, then it was an uncle, or some . . . in the community you had respect for . . . and you just mention that person’s name . . . absent fathers, there was always a male person in the community that they could go to for guidance. Or that person would come to see them.

Interviewer: Of any of your fathers who were around at that time, what were your relationships like with them?

Oh, we were very close. Very close to our fathers, yes. My father was in the racing business and, as you know going back years ago, you only had racing from March till September, and then from September to March there was no work. My father had to go out looking for the Tick Tack Man . . . we’d get up in the morning, we go in, and he’d teach us how to pray, singing the prayers, the whole lot. We’d be all sitting around . . . we’d be all sitting around the bath, he’d sing to us . . . we were very close. Our mothers were strict. Very, very strict.

[In Barbados] the women never really worked. The men worked, the women . . . and if the mothers couldn’t handle you, the words were, ‘I’m not going to touch you. Wait till your father comes home.’

My dad used to take me to the pictures, and everything . . .

I’ve got step-brothers and sisters, they now tell me my dad used to put the strap to them if they didn’t behave themselves.

I remember my dad, he was in the army [in Egypt], he was very strong man but he was very kind, lovely man. Lovely man, and I remember when he was coming down the stairs, we have twelve kids, six sisters, six brothers, big family, my father was in the army and he was coming on the steps [she bangs her feet on the floor], like that, so if you’re not wearing trousers, you put your trousers on, if you’re not wearing, if you’re a girl, you put your hijab on. If you’re shower[ing], you put clothes on. If you’re asleep . . . he’s coming. When he’s coming, you jump, and you do everything. If you don’t study, if you don’t do your homework . . . ‘You don’t do your homework and you sleeping before ten o’clock?’ Oh, my God, he was very, very sharp [??] . . .

[In Barbados, my mother] when we were misbehaving, she didn’t have to say a word. It was just a look.

A look. That look.

You just stop whatever you were doing, and when he [father] get home, you’re in for it.

Interviewer: What are your very best memories of your parents?

They stayed together.

The teamwork that went on between them, because my father worked for the money but my mother controlled it!

[Laughing]

He was a strong man but she was the woman. She controlled it. He brought the money and she decided this, that, that. Together they would do it.

Interviewer: Is that particular to your family or particular to Barbados?

No, no, quite a lot of women . . .

Well, girls . . . the talking, cos you go in, say go and ask your father . . . does he want a cup of tea, what does he want for breakfast? And I said, ‘Here we go again!’

Interviewer: Did you ever play with your parents?

Yes.

Well, now and again [in Barbados], the football, cricket and things . . .

The only time we all played together was like Snakes and Ladders and things like that. Family games . . . on a Sunday afternoon, I’d have me brother and his wife and all them doing the same, playing skipping across the road, and they’d all come out and joined the rope and that for us, you know, we were all at it.

Interviewer: Your parents would do that with you?

My parents and all people, and then they was all neighbourly every day . . . and all the neighbours would be sitting on the steps, having their tea and their biscuits, and whatever they had, for an hour. All the neighbours together. You know, and we’d have an elderly person on the road and we used to do the shopping for them, and ‘Don’t you take a penny off them’, and they used to give you a penny or a ha’penny or something. ‘Don’t you dare take . . .’ They haven’t got enough money for themselves, ‘Don’t you dare take that . . .’

You never paid babysitting fees, looking after the children . . .

No. You never paid babysitting fees. I mean, that was another thing during Ravenscourt Park . . . and we’d all go to the one O’Clock Club, when they opened the One O’Clock Clubs, and they were fantastic cos I used to have to have our lunch and all over by half past twelve, my daughter she loved it . . . and you leave them there, you go, and that, and be here till half four, four o’clock . . . and they’d [neighbours?] look after the children. Then if you have a big Christmas shop, as you know, they take the pram for the shopping, did that, bring it all back home and then pick up the children, and they do the same for us[?]. They all looked after each other. They don’t do that now. [They think the children] will be taken away.

Now that I’m adult, I can look at and see. There were certain men my mother say, ‘I don’t want to see you chatting to him.’

Exactly, but you didn’t know why.

There was a certain way you had to dress. Like at home you playing all day in shorts . . . [when Dad came home] ‘You’re a lady, can you put on something . . .’ They never told you why they were telling you those things, but now I can see . . . they didn’t explain to you. They just tell you, ‘Keep away from that. I don’t want to see you chatting . . .’ I want you to be dressed modestly when you go to certain places. You can dress like that indoors but not outside . . . no sitting on Daddy’s lap.

What?

None of that.

My dad, he served in both wars — the first and the second — so I didn’t have him when I was sort of young, you know? We had to wait until they was demobbed.

When I got married, I come to this country, I didn’t see him [father] for three years. So when I [went to] go see him, I sit on his lap. I was so happy.

More stories from far-flung places and time
Interviewer: We need a story from Colombia!

Come on . . . Tell us a story.

What did you do when you were small?

I don’t remember.

Did you live in the countryside or town?

I live[d] in the city.

And did you play with friends when you were small?

Yes. But my friend had times. She just put a time to the woman who look after her. You had to be there . . .

That’s right. You had to be in at a certain time.

Now, you see the children, young children, on the streets. Late at night. You never had that in the olden days. You had to be in.

I was seventeen years old . . . and at six o’clock I had to be indoors.

The boys, boys it was ten o’clock. Boys. Big boys, but for us you not allowed. You not allowed to see your friends, you not allowed to go to cinema, you not allowed to go any place . . .

About one group member growing up in the 90s, and further memories that come to mind
Interviewer: Tell us a story [of play from the 90s]. Everyone’s told us of back in the day, is there anything you can add in?

Well, I guess I was quite lucky because I grew up in rural Cumbria, in the countryside, in a village, so your stories are very similar to what my childhood was like. Not so much discipline! [laughs] . . . but yeh, we all knew our neighbours, we knew the parents of the neighbours. We used to play with all the children nearby. We used to ‘Knock a Door, Run’.

Interviewer: ‘Knock a Door, Run’? Is that the same as ‘Knocking Dollies Out of Bed’?

Yeh [and we played] ‘One, Two, Three and In’ . . .

You know another thing? Saturday morning cinema. We used to love that, down the Savoy.

One of the things that stuck very much in my childhood memories . . . because Barbados tourist used to like the cricket and everything coming to Barbados, when the tourist was passing, they would see us all, the black children, and they would call us together, to take photographs . . .

[Laughing]

We were a novelty, cos we lived in the country so we were all dressed in a certain way . . . they were fascinated . . . they line you up in a line and they took all these photographs. Without our parents’ permission, you know?

I remember when Bill Haley came over, do you know, and . . . all the papers taking photographs. So Bill Haley came to Dublin to the cinema, right, and I was only, what, sixteen and a half, and we all went to the cinema, and the riot, you know about . . . all the benches, they were throwing the benches down so we could all dance to Bill Haley and that, and in the end the riots and that, and we were all charging up the road, the main road . . . and I got in just about twelve o’clock, but before that this guy came up and said, ‘I know you, don’t I?’ And I said, ‘No. You don’t know me whatsoever. No.’ And I didn’t know he’d taken a photograph. Right? Anyway, I gets home and Dad coming in from the races, the greyhound races, said to me about quarter to twelve . . . I just got in time, got ready for bed . . . ‘Where were you tonight?’ I said, ‘Oh, I been in all night.’ [He said] ‘Oh, there’s riots up in the . . . Couldn’t get the bus home, couldn’t do this, that and the other.’ Next morning, the [paper?] come out and . . .

There you were! [Laughing].

Bill Haley, I’ll never forgive ya! [Laughing]. It was silly things like that, you were always caught out with. Do you know?

But it was nice days. Nice days.

They were good but . . . we take out the bench . . . that’s all we did, and they get into a riot.

Cultural converging, and community
In Egypt, we’re not allowed to talk to boyfriends . . . my husband, I’m not allowed to open the door, if the door’s closed, the door always wide. If I go out with my husband, my brother-in-law has to be with me . . .

But what about now that you’re here? Like, sitting there? Ya alright for that?

[Laughing]

Interviewer: This is why it’s so important for me to have the opportunity to talk with people who grew up in different countries and different areas, because I don’t know what it was like. You tell me what it was like . . . you tell me what it was like in Barbados, you tell me what it was like in Ireland . . . and I can look at the children around me at the moment and I can appreciate their play in different ways, because they all come from different families.

But there’s not much of a church in their life these days. I know the church have done [some] really wrong things, but the Christian aspect is not there.

But I think there was something we were talking about earlier, which reminded me was the same when I was growing up, that one doesn’t really feel exists any more, and it’s that concept that when you do things your parents say you don’t take any money for it. Right? You know, if you do something in your community, and it’s how I grew up, we were told, I would say ‘Oh, I’m helping this neighbour doing this’ or ‘I’m doing this because they’ve asked me to do that’ and they would say, ‘Yeh, go and do that then, but don’t take any money.’ And very often people would say, ‘Have this, have this’ and I’d say, ‘No, I can’t take that home.’ And it was that idea that the community is a successful community because everybody says, ‘We do this for you, you do that for . . . We don’t know when you will repay the favour, it doesn’t matter when you . . . or you may never repay the favour.’ But it doesn’t matter. People don’t pay each other. Now, one feels, you know, that if a child were to do something they would expect recompense.

Now I say . . . maybe you don’t like the person . . . but you don’t say anything wrong about them cos you never know when you’re going to knock on their door for help.

That’s right.

You never know when you’re going to knock on that person’s door for help.

You never used to have to ask somebody when you get on the bus, a old person, to get up and give you the seat. If an old person came, you just up and . . .

Not now they don’t . . .

And you find a lot of people sit on the outside seat and they won’t move in!

Interviewer: Can I add a good news story to all of that? I appreciate what you’re all saying, I do respect that. I was on the Tube the other day and an older lady on crutches got on, and this young guy just got straight up and said, ‘There you go.’ And I went, do you know what? My hat off to you, mate.

There is some good ones out there . . .

Interviewer: My personal opinion is that if you look around, you can see pockets of the good stuff happening, and you’ve told me some good stuff today as well. So, it’s out there. We’ve just got to find it.

Of working with children
What you’re doing today [working with children], going back . . . you could have just walked in there and [not been checked to work with??] those children . . . I worked in the London nursery, right? And as soon as Tony Blair’s kids came in there, I was [checked] . . . because it was his kids there . . . like you’s all have to be . . . [back in the day] you never had any of that. It was all trust and everything else. Now, you’re watched for everything . . .

Interviewer: I’m going to be very, very biased — I love [working with] the children I work with, as you would expect . . . the vast majority of them are like, ‘Yeh, we’ll do things for you’ because they see that the adults are listening to them. I have bad days, sure I do. Some days I’m not listening, but more often than not I like to think that if I’m listening to this child, like we’re saying about getting rid of the money [obligations], that will come back.

Endings
Interviewer: Anyway, I am going to have to wrap it up because we will talk all day! Thank you so much everybody, ladies and gentleman. I really, really, really appreciate that . . . unless anyone has got any objections, I shall [write it up and put it] on our website. Is everyone OK with me doing that?

Yeh, yeh.

Until [they appear] on National Television and you think, ‘Oh, my God!’

[Laughing]

Interviewer: If you have second thoughts about any of the stories that you’ve told and you think, ‘I would rather not that go up for public areas’, I will do something [to respect that]. Thank you all.