The roadsweeper
My friend the roadsweeper was very nice about it. Me, running out to greet him. His life was not easy. Pushing a broom along suburban gutters all day long cannot be one big laugh, and having a six-year-old running out and telling you he’s already swept that bit himself could end in something nasty.
That particular patch of road, kerb, gutter and pavement are clear in my mind. I suppose that being six does keep you close to the ground and these underfoot details make an impression. Much of life was spent on those square paving slabs edged with the granite kerbstones. I liked to get the soft house broom from the hallway cupboard, take it out and push it along the gutter towards our house, liking the sight of the fine grey-brown mound of grit slowly growing as I pushed, all ready for the roadsweeper’s arrival.
A man appeared one day as I was playing on this bit of pavement with my next-door friend Trevor Austin. Trevor had a trike. I did not. 'Ooh! Look!' he said, pointing along The Meadow Way towards Wealdstone. The man was unmistakably my father. He was stooping slightly, holding a huge brown-paper sack or parcel and dragging it along. Then I saw the wheels. It was a trike. A real tricycle, just like Trevor's, only brand new, bigger, brighter and altogether superior. I like to think I let him ride it now and again.
Sweeping the gutter in the road was entirely for my own pleasure. But Saturday jobs in the house and the little garden were taken for granted in the thirties and, for the most part, I was happy doing them. We kept chickens; collecting their eggs first thing on Saturday and Sunday mornings, bits of chicken poo and all, was one job I liked. When we had one of the hens for a Sunday dinnertime the plucking was my job. Dad did the quick and silent execution job and my mother did the drawing of entrails. I was glad to be excused both.
‘Cleaning the silver’ could come into the boring category; coating each fork and spoon with ‘Bluebell’ silver polish, letting it dry to a white powder and then the fiddly bit, rubbing between each tine of the forks - very tedious. On the other had, rubbing spoons with a yellow duster until the e.p.n.s. sparkled grandly was deeply satisfying.
But there was fun as well. Summer picnics out in the local Hertfordshire countryside, annual one-week holidays in Cornwall and Devon and Ramsgate meant no jobs of any kind and a great deal of laughing. My father enjoyed clowning and took every opportunity to raise a laugh among onlookers. Once, walking along a Ramsgate beach he stooped and scooped up a handful of the fine gravel. He turned to me and said, ‘Now, I’m going to show you a very interesting thing.’ He had the instant attention of a couple of families sitting nearby. ‘You see, what goes up must come down’, and he threw the gravel high in the air. Fathers. They can be so embarrassing. When I became one myself I was never embarrassing - take no notice of what our three tell you.
Once, when I was about ten years old and on holiday in Ramsgate, I spotted a beach photographer and his amazing stage scenery of grass-topped cliffs. And, in front of it, a lion. ‘A real lion’, as the photographer pointed out to us but without explaining why it was standing on tiptoes. I didn’t like to ask. The photographer placed me in position and disappeared under his focusing cloth.
‘Give him a cuddle, then!’ he cried, and took the snap.
But back to today. Well, last week.
Last week, a lion rescue was completed. A group of lions arrived in this country. Real lions. For a long time this group has been housed by an organisation in Romania, an organisation that finds itself no longer able to look after them. Their home is inadequate and, in part, cramped.
The rescuer is John Minion, Director of the Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Members of his staff accompanied these beautiful creatures and provided for them a home that is as near as possible to the wild surroundings they were born to.
As Summer approaches, the lions will welcome a visit from you. Unfortunately, cuddles cannot be guaranteed.