Part 9 - Joyce and Burnett
Joyce and Burnett
We were in the flat in Shepperton for a little over a year. That first Christmas we spent with Mum and Dad Rodgers in Southwick. The one memorable part of that Christmas was the turkey. Mum Rodgers had ordered a fresh turkey and when it arrived on Christmas Eve it was put straight into the fridge. On Christmas morning it was brought out to the realisation that it was in fact frozen and should have been left out in the kitchen to defrost at room temperature! I was told that cooking a frozen bird was just not on and of course microwave ovens for defrosting were some twenty-five years in the future. Mum Rodgers at that point gave up and went off to have morning coffee with her friends, leaving Joyce to solve the problem. I cant remember which of us had the bright idea of filling a hot bath and putting the turkey in it, but with much hilarity we did just that.
Turkeys must be very good swimmers because the blessed thing floated high in the water and we had the devil's own job trying to hold it under the surface. Dad Rodgers and I were nearly in hysterics the whole while but eventually the bird's flesh seemed to be soft and pliable so it was brought out of the bath patted dry and transferred to the kitchen where Joyce got on with the preparation of the dinner. I don’t think E-coli could have been invented in those days because we thoroughly enjoyed our 1960 Christmas dinner and felt no ill after-effects whatsoever.
Come the Spring of 1961 we started house hunting. House prices in the Shepperton-Sunbury area were a bit out of our range, so we had to start looking farther afield. The estate agents Gale & Power gave us information on a new estate being built in Crowthorne in Berkshire by a small firm Brocarston Ltd. Messrs BROwn, CARgill, and BeeSTON, were just setting up in business on their own so they were intent on building good solid standard houses. We went out to Crowthorne one Saturday morning, had a good look round and determined to put a deposit on a "Wokingham" three-bedroomed house with garage to be built on plot number 51 on the Leacroft estate. The plot size was 45 feet by 115 feet. The price was quoted as £3995 to include £55 legal fees and choice of wallpaper and kitchen floor tiles. Choice of kitchen cupboards was, I believe, an optional extra and after much exploring round the shops we chose Wrighton Californian: At that time pretty snazzy if we did say so.
At the time of ordering the house, the estate where our house was to be built was just a green field so for the rest of that year we made constant journeys out to Crowthorne to inspect the erection of our new house. The initial completion date was some time in the Autumn but as time went on it became clear that that date was very optimistic and it was not until the middle of December that we finally took possession of No. 15 Leacroft.
However, that long wait gave us ample time to look for the furniture for our new house. We went from Heelas in Reading to Bentall's in Kingston and all points between looking for the right furniture but it was at The Ideal Home Exhibition in Olympia (or was it Earl's Court?) that we finally found what we wanted or could afford. It must have been good stuff because we still, 40 years later, have most of that furniture in the house, though the three piece suite has been re-covered three times which I suppose indicates the quality of the frames. Actually, come to think of it, we ordered the dining furniture and the bedroom suite from a small shop in Lambs Conduit Street in London that had been recommended to us by the BP stores people in Sunbury who could arrange a discount for us.
It was a poky little place with no showroom facilities but the man there suggested to us that we might like to go over to Tottenham Court Road and have a look round Maples and Heals. If we made a note of anything that took our fancy, and go back to him with the information, he would order it up for us and give us the appropriate discount. The whole system was not perhaps completely ethical but money was a bit tight in 1961 and BP seemed to accept the situation so who were we to argue!
When we finally got our moving-in date we arranged a delivery day with the furniture people. I went out to Leacroft on that day to get the solid fuel central heating and the Esse Autovector stove in the living-room fired up. Having done that I had nothing else to do but wait for the furniture. Joyce of course meanwhile was giving the flat a good-old spring clean. I waited and waited and come about half-past six I called it a day. Goodness knows what had happened, and of course I had no access to a phone so there was nothing to do but go back to Charlton Road and report the lack of progress to Joyce.
The next day we went off to Leacroft again to get No. 15 cleaned up preparatory to getting the carpets down and the curtains up. What was our surprise when we looked in the garage to find that shortly after I had left the evening before, the furniture men had arrived and finding the house empty had filled the garage with our new furniture.
We managed throughout that day to get all the furniture into the house without too much difficulty. The only problem was the 5ft bed that we struggled to get up the stairs to the master bedroom. We very soon found that the gap between the first flight of stairs and the landing was not much more than 4ft 6in, there was no way we were going to get the bed up the stairs! Getting it back down to the hall we found that with a screwdriver it was possible to take out some screws and the bed could fold in two. Having folded the bed we found that it practically flew upstairs on its own with some judicious help from us. We managed to struggle upstairs with the Dunlopillo mattress and got it on the bed. Joyce then set to and got the sheets and blankets and pillows on the bed, so we were well set up at last in our new home.
That was our first Christmas in 15 Leacroft. The rest of the house still needed a lot done to it to get it acceptable to Joyce's scrutiny but we did manage to get the kitchen and livingroom spick and span in time for the festive season. (I like that 'we' bit it makes me feel that I did something towards the spit and polish).
