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Harpper audio presents
Boy tales of childhood
Written by royal doll and red by daird
Jackobe
An autobiography is a book of person right to bod's own life
Added it usually for all of all sorts of boring details
This is not an autobiography
I would never write histstory of myself on the other hand throughout my young days at school
And just afterwards a number of things happened to me
That i've never forgotten none of these things is important
But each of them made such a tremendous impression on me
That i've never been able to get them out of my mind
Each of them even after a lapse of fifty and sometimes sixsixty years rereined seared on my memory
I didn't have to search for any of them
What i had to do
Was skim them off the top of my consciousness
And write them down summer funny
Some are painful
Some are unpleasant
I suppose that is why i always remember them so vipicdly all are true
My father helold girl was an norwean
Who came from a small town near osloo called sobborg his own father
My grandfather was a fairly prosperous merchant who owa a store in sousburg
And traded in just about everything from cheese to chicken wire
I am writing these words in one nineteen eighty four
But this grandfather with mine was born believed it or not in eighteen
Twenty shortenly after willington ton dedeat in epolia and at borerloo
If my grandfather were been alive
Today he would have been one hundred and sixty four years old my father would have been one hundred and twenty one both my father and my grandfather were late starters
If father's children were concerned when my father was fourteen
Which is still more than one hundred years ago
He was up on the roof of the family house
Replacing some loose tiles
When he slipped and fell
He broke his left arm below the elbow
Somebody ran defetch the doctor and half an hour later this gentlemen made a majestic and drunken arrival in his horse drorwn buggy
He
He was so drunk
That he was stook the frttured elbow for a dislocated shoulder
We all suldn't put this back in a place be cried out
And two men were called off the street to help with the pooling
They were instructed to hold my father by the waste
While the doctor grabgged by the risk of the broken arm
And shouted paul man
Paul paul as harder you can the pain must have been excruciating ating vicictiscscreamed
And his mother who was watching the performance in hotter ter ououted stop
But by then the pollers had done so much damage
That a splinton of bone was sticking out through the skin of the forearm
This was in eighthousand hundred and seventy seven and authpedic surgery was not what it is today
So they simply amputated the arm at the elbow
And for the rest of his life
My father had to manage with one arm
Fortunately it was the left on that he lost and gradually over the years
He taught himself to do modelist anything he wanted with just the four fingers and the thumb of his right hand
He could tie aee acaces quickly you were me and for cutting up the food on his plate
He sharpened the bottom age of a fork
So that it served as both knife and fok or all in one
He ket his engineerous instrument in a slim leather case and ccarried it in his pocket
Whatever he went the loss of an arm
He used to say caused him only only one serous inconvenience
He found it
It impossible cucut totop of a boil eg
My father was a year or so old than his brother oscar
But they were exceptionally close and soon
After they left school
They went for a long walk together to plan their future
They decided that a small town like soppbourg in a small country like norway was no place in which to make a faltune so what they must do
They agreed was to go away to one of the big countries either to england or france
Where opportunities to make good
Would be bound this their own father an amiyable giant nearly seven for tool lacked the drive and ambition of his sons
And he refused to support this tom full idea
When he for bad them to go
They ran away from home
And some are other the two of them managed to work
They wait to france on a cargo ship from kelly
They went to palace
And in palace they agreed to separate
Because each of them wish to be independent of the other unglaska for some reason headed west for a louof shell on the atlantic coast
While my father remained in palace for the time being the story of how these two brothers each started a totally separate business in different countries
And how each of the made of fortune is interesting
But there is no time to tell it here except in the brieff manner
I take my own glasser first loudter show was then and still is a fishing port by the time
He was
Was he
He had become the wealthiest man in town
Owed a fleet of trawllers called pesure er that launteee and a large canning factory to ccanvas ardinans his trarawlers brought in yet quite a wife from a good family and a magnificent townhouse
As well as as a large shadow in the country
He became a collected of blue in the fifteen furniture
Good pictures and rare books and all these beautiful things together with the two properties are still in the family
I have not seen the shadow in the country
But i was in the laura shell hahad a couple of years ago
And if really is something the furniture a loan should be in a museum
While ungalasco was batstling around in lauough show his one armed brother
How old my own father was not sitting on his rump
Doing nothing he admet in paris
Another young norwegian called arneism and the two of them
Now that is idea to form a pwnership and become ship brokers
A ship broker is a person
Who supplies a ship with everything it needs
When it comes into port
Fuel and food
Ropes and paint
Soapen
Tows
Hammers and nails and thousands
About tiddly little items
A **** broker is a kind of enormous shopkeeper for ships
And by far the most important item
He supplies to them is the fuel on which the ship's engines run in most days
Fuel meant only one thing
It meant coal
There were no oil burning motorships on the high seas
At that time
All ships were steam ships and these old steamers would take on hundreds and often thousands of tons of coal in one goal to the ship brokers
Coal was black gold
My father and he 's new ffrifriend ter r atneson understood all this very well
It made ate sense
They told each other to set up their ship broken business in one of the great coling ports of europe
Which was it to be the answer was simple
The greatest coling port in the world
At that time was cardiff in sousouwhees so after carcardiff
They went these two ambitious young men caring with them little or no luggage
But my father had something more delightful than luggage
He had a wife
A young french girl called maggie
Who would me had recently married in paris
In gardiff
The ship broken firm of arnesand and doll was set up and a single room in built street was rented as an office from then on we have what sones like one of those exaggerated fairy stored is of success
But in reality
It was the result of tremendous hard and brainy work by these two friends very soon artness and and dough had more business than the partners could handle alone
Large office space was acquired and more staff were engaged the real money then beyond rolling in within a few years
My father was able to buy a fine house in the village of land andarff just outside cardiff and there his wife money borght him two children ago at a boy
But tragically she died after giving birth to the second child
When the shock and solo with her death had began to subside a little
My father suddenly realize that he's too small children ought at the very least to have a step
Mother to care for them
What is more he felt terribly lonely
It was quite obvious that he must try to find himself another wife
But this was easier said than done
But in a wegion living in southwhales
Who didn't know that many people
So he decided to take a holiday and travel back to his own country norway
Way at who knows he might
If he was lucky
If find himself a lovely new bride in his own country over in norway
During the summer of ninety eleven
While taking a trip in a small coastal steamer in the oslow field
He met a young lady called sophie
Magdillie
Hesslberg being a fellow
Who knew a good thing
When he saw one
He proposed her within a week and maret it her soon
After that haerodll took his in norwegian wife on a honeymoon in palace
And after the act back of the house in land daf
The two of them were deeply in love and please icerly happy
And during the next six years
She bought him four children ago another girl
A boy
Me and a third girl
There were now six children in the family two by my father's first wife and four by his second a larger and grandanda house was needed
And the money was there to buy it so in one thousand and eighteen
When i was two
We all moved into an imposing country mention beside the village of a craddia about eight miles west of cardiff
I remember it as our mighty has with targets on its roof
And with majestic loans and terraces all around it
There were many acres of farm at woodland
And the number of cottages for the staff very soon
The meddows were full of milking cows and the skies were full of pigs and the chicken runs full of chickens
There were several massive shy horses for putting the plouds in the hay wagons
And there was a pouwman and a cowmen at a couple of gardeners and all matter of servants in the house
Itself like his brother oscar in loud of show harodarll had made it in no uncertain manner
But what interests me most of all about these two brothers
How old and oscar is this
Although they came from a simple unsophistiticated small town family
Both of them quite independently at one another developed a powerful interest in beautiful things
As soon as they could afford it
They began to fill their houses with lovely paintings and fine furniture
In addition to that my father became an expert garter
That above all a collector of alpiine plants
My mother used to tell me other two of of them would on expepeditions up into the mountains of norway
And how he would frighten up to death by climbing one handed up steep cliffaces to reach small outpine plants growing high up on some rocky ledge
He was also when to accomplishwoodcover and most of the middle frames in the house with his own work so indeed was the entire mental piece around the fireplace in the living room
A splendid design of fruit and foliage age entertaining branches carb in oke
He was a tremendous diary writer
That i still have one of his many no books from the great war in nineteen
Fourteen
Eighteen every single day
During those five four years
He would write several pages of comment and observation about the events of the time he wrote with a pen and although in revigion his his ther ther tongue
He always wrote his diet is in perfect english
He hobed a curious theory about how to develop a sense of beauty in the minds of his children
Every time my mother became pregnant
He would wait until the last three months of her pregnany
And then he would announced to her
That the glorious walks must begin
These glorious walks consisted of him
Taking her to places a great beauty in the countryside
And working with her for about an hour each day
So that she could absorb the splender of the surroundings
His theory was that if the eye of a pregnant woman was constantly observing the beauty of nature
This beauty would somehow become transmitted to the mind of the unborn baby within her whom
And that baby would grow up to be a lover of beautiful things
This was the treatment
That all of his children we see before they were born in one hundred and twenty
When i was still only three
My mother's eldest yhood
My own sister asterry died from a pendesiiters
She was seven years old when she died
Which was also the age of my own eldest dauto a libya
When she died from measles forty two years later
History was far in the way
My father's favorite
He and daughter beyond measure and her suthden n death led led him literally speechless for days afterwards he was so overwhelmed with grief
That when he himself went down with neumonia a month or so afterwards
He did not much care
Whether he lived or died
If they had
Had panasyilan in those days neither a pentciitters
Nor neumonia would have been so much a threat
But with no pennsylin or any other magical emptibiotic cuwers
Neumonia in particular was a very dangerous illness
Indeed the neumonia patient on about the fourth or fifday would invariably reach what was known as the crisis
The temperatures
Soword and the pulse became rapid
The patient had to fight
To survive
My father refused to fight
He was thinking i'm quite short of his beloved ed daughter
And he was wanting to join her in heaven
So he died
He was fifty seven years old
My mother had now lost the daughter and her husband bought in the space of a few weeks
Heaven knows what it must have felt like to be hit with a double catastrophe
Like this here she was the young norwegion in a foreign land
Suddenly having to face all alone the very gravest problems and responsibilities
Responsisibiliyou
You five
Five children to look after three of her own and two by her husband's first wife
And to make matters worse
She herself was expecting another baby here in two thth's time
Unless courageous woman would almost certainly have sold the house and packed her bags and headed straight back to norway with the children over there in her own country
She had her mother and father willling and waiting to help her as well as her two unmanried sisters
But she refused to take the easy way out
Her husband had always stated most empatically that he wished all his children to be educated in english schools
They were the best in the world
He used to say better by far than the norwegian ones
Better even than the welsh ones
Despite the fact that he lived in whales and had his business
There
He maintained that there was some kind of magic about english schooling
And that the education it provided had caused the inhabitants of a small island to become a great nation and a great empire
And to produce the world's greatest literature
No child of mine
We kept saying is going to school with anywhere else
But in england
My mother was determined to carry out the wishes of her dead husband to accomplish this
She would have to move house from whales to england
But she wasn't ready for that
Yet she must stay here in whales for a while longer
Where she knew people who could help and adviser
Especially her husband's great friend and partner mister arneisson
But even if she wasn't leading whales
Quite yet it was essential
That she moved a smaller and more manageable house
He had enough children to look up to without having to bother about a farm
As well so as soon as her fifth child
Another daughter was born
She sold ed big house and moved to a smaller one a few miles away in land death
He was called cambland launge
And it was nothing more than a pleasant medium sizzed suburban billa
So it was in vand off two years later
But i was six years old
That i went to my first school
The school was a kindergarten run by two sisters
Mris core field and miss tucker
And it was called entry house
It is astonishing how little bonn remembers about one's life before the age of seven seven or eight
I can tell you all sorts of things that happened to me from eat on woods
But don't be very few before that i went for a whole year to amdreree house
But i cannot even remember what my classroom looked like now can i pick to the faces of mrs core field or miss tka
Although i'm sure
They were sweet and smiling
I do have a bllood memory of sitting on the stairs
I'm trying over and
And over over again to tie one of my shoe laces
But that is all that comes back to me
That this distance of the school itself on the other hand
I can remember very clearly the journeys i made to infrom the school
Because they was so tremendously exciting
Great excitement is probably the only thing that really interest are six year old boy
And it sticks in his mind
In my case
The excitement centred around my new tricycle
I wrote to school on it every day with my oldest sister writing on hers no grown ups came with this
And i can remember
Oh
So vividly
How the two of us used to go racing
An enormous tricacical speeds down the middle of the road
And then most glorious of all when we came to a corner
We would lean the one side and take it on wheels
Yeah
All this you must realize was in good old days
When the site of a motoror gue on the street wasn't event
And it was quite safe for tiny children to go tricycling and wooping the way to school in the center the highway
So much
Then for my memories of kindergarten sixty two years ago
It's not much
But it's all there is left when i was seven
My mother decided i should leave in the garten and go to a proper boy school
My good fortune that existed to well known prepared to school for boys about a mile of my house
It was called cllandeaffed cathedral school
And it soured right under the shadow of landdaff cathedral
Like the cathedral
The school is still there and still flourishing
But here again i can remember very little about the two years
I attended land afaficcathedral school between the age of seven and nine
Only two moments remain clearly in my mind
The first last did not more than five seconds
But i will never forget it
He was my first term
And i was walking home alone across the village green after school
When suddenly one of the senior twilibe er old boys came riding four speed down the road on his bicycle about twthousand yards away from me
The road was on a hill
On the board is going down to slope
And as he flashed by he started back peddling very quickly
So the free wheeling mechanism of he's bike made allowed worning noise at the same time
He took his hands off the hantaabars and folded them gradually across his chest
I stopped dead and stared after him
How wonderful he was how swift and brave and graceful in his long trouses with bicycle crps around them and he's scouat school capital
John ty anger on his head
One day i told myself one glorious ous day
I will have a bike like that
And i would wear long trousers with buy school clips and my school cap will sit johnt on my head
And i'don't go with it down the hill
Piddling backwards with no hands on the hand of bars
I promise you that if somebody had caught me by the show that at that moment and said to me
What is your greatest wished lifely boy
What is your absolute ambition to be a doctor
A fine musiciician a painted or writer over lord chancellor
I would advance it without hesitation that my only ambition
My hope my longing was to have a bike like that
And to go wizing down the hill with no hands on my hands of bars
It would be fabulous
It made me tremble just to think about it
My second and only other memory at land afrcatheial school is extremely dizarre
It happened a little over a year later
When i was just nine by then i've made some friends
And when i walk to school in the mornings
I would start out alone
But i'll pick up four other boys in my own age
Along the way after school was over the same four boys
And i was set out acroross the village green and through the village itself hitting for home
On the way to school
And on the way back
We always psed the sweet shop
No
We didn't
We never passed it
We always stopped
We lingit outside
It's rather a small window gazing into the big glass jars for the bulls eyes and old fashion humburgs and strawberbuombons and glassia means that acid drops and peir drops and lemon drops and all the rest of them
Each of us received six months a week for pocket money
And whenever there was any money in our pocket
We would all troopin together to buy a penny bottle
This or that my own favorites were sherberit suckers and leicorish bookplaces one of the other boys whose name was sweets told me
I should never eat leicorish bootlaces sweetes his father who was a doctor had said that they were made from rats blood
The father had given his yungs on a lecture about lekorish bootlaces
When he had called him eating one in bed every rat catture in the country
The fathwis said takes his rats to the liicorish bootlace factory
And the manager pays topens for each rat maniwrat catture has become a millionair by senling his dead rats to the factory
But how do they turn the rats into ligorsh
The young sweghts to ask his father
They wait until they've got ten thousand rats
The father had answered
Then they dumped them all into a huge chinese steel cordren
And boiled them up for several hours
Two men stir the bubbling called drumc long pose
And in the end they have a thick steaming or red stew
And after that a cruunture is lowered into the coldreon to cunch the bones
And what's left is a poppy substancalled led red mesh
Yes
But how do they turn that into the liquorish bookplaces daddy
The young thweeghts had asked
And this question according to tweets had caused his father to pause and think for a few moments
Before he answered it at last year
Said the two men were doing the strting with the long pose now put on their willington boots and climbing into the coldren
And shubled the hot wattmatsh out onto a concrete floor
Then they run a steam rollover it several times to flath it out
What he's left looks rather like a gigantic black pancake
And all they have to do
After that is to wait for it to cool and to harden
So they can cut it up into strips to make the boot places don't ever eat them
The father has said
If you do you'll get red itters
What
What is red itus daddy young flets had asked all the rats that the red catches catch are poisoned with red poison
The father has said
It's the red poison that gives you red ites
Yes
But what happens to you
When you catch it
Young tweet to asked your teeth become very sharp and pointed
The father had answered and a short stompey tail rose out of your back
Just about your bottom
There is no cure for red titis
I ought to know i'm a doctor
We all enjoyed sweight story
And we made him tell it was many times
And our walks to and from school
But it didn't stop any of us except weights from buying liicorish boot laces and two for a penny
They were the best value in the shop
A bootplace in case
You haven't have the pleasure of handling one is not round
It's like a flat black tape about half an inch wide
You buy it rolled up in a coil
And in those days
It used to be so long
That anyone rolled it and held one end ded arms linked above your head
The other end touched the ground
Serbert suckers were also too opiniy each soccer consisted of a yellow cardmore tube be filwith sherbert powder
And there was a hollow liquorous raw sticking out a bit rats blood the gay young twights with warners pointing at the liquorous straw
You sacked the sherberit up through the store
And when it was finished you eat the liqurish
They were delicious those sherbert suckers
The sherbert fized in your month
And if you knew how to do it
You can make white throth come adof your nostles
Then pretend you were throwing a fit gob stoppers costing up penny each and enormous hard round balls
The size of small tomatoes
One gob stopper would provide about an hours where a num stop sucking
Then if you took it out to go a mouse
And inspected it every five minutes
Or so you would find it to change color
There was something fascinating about the way went from from pink to bluto
Green to yellow
We used to wonder how in the world
The gobs stop a factory managed to achieve this magic
How does it happen
When would
Would ask each other
How can they make it keep changing color
Each your spit that does it young sweghts were claimed as the sound of a doctor
He considered himself to be an auauonority and all things that had to do with the body
He could tell us about scams
And when theybe ready to be picked off
He knew why black eye was blue and why blood was red
It's your spit that makes a gob stop pa change color
He kept insisting when we asked him to elaborate on this theory
He answered he ouldn't understand
And it i did totell pair ddrops
But exciting because they had a dangerous taste
They smell of nail varnish
And they froroze the back of your throat
All of us were warned against eating them
And the result was that we ate them more than ever
Then there was a hard brown lossage called the tomomsall titicler
The council ticker tasted ted smsmelled ed very strongly of cloriform
We had not the slightest start
That these things were saturated in the radioanaesthetic
Which as theatts had many times pointed out to us
Could put you the sleep for hours at a stretch
If my father has to sort off somebody's leleg
He said if was ccrawdfor monmonth to a pad on the person snippts it and goes to sleep
And my father sauce his lego without me being feeling ing
But why do they put it into sweets and sell them to us
We asked him
You might think a question
Like this would have baffled tweghts
But twights was never baffled
My father says
Tomsauticklers were invented for dangerous christoners in jail
He said they give the one of each meal on the crowdformakes some sleepy and stops some rioting
Yes
We said
But why sell them to children
It's a plot
Thweight said a grown up plot to keep us quiet the sweet shop in landdef in the year in thousand nineteen
Twenty three was the very center of our lives to us
It was what a bar is to a drunk
Or a church is to a bishop
Without it
There would have been little to live for
But it had one terrible drawback
This switch up the woman who owned it was a horror
We hated her
And we had good reason for doing
So her name was mrs pretched
She was a small skinniold heg with a starsh on her upper lip and a mouof sour
As as gregreen oooo's bray
She never smile
She never welcomed us
When we went in
And the only time she spoke
But when she said things like i'm watching you
So how keep your thief and hands of them chocollates
Or i don't want you in air
Just to look around either your folks out
Or you're gatts out
But by far the most loasome thing about mrs project was the filth that climg around her
Her april was grey and greezy
Her blouse had bits a breakfast over it toast crums and tea stains and spotches of driry
Yyoke it was her hands
However that disturbed as most they were disgusting
They were black with dirt and crime
They looked as though they've been putting lumps of coal on the pad
All day long and do not forget
Please
That it was these very hands and fingers
That she plunged into the sweet jars
When we asked for depenny with a trickle toffee or whine gums or not clusters or whatever there were precious few health laws in those days and nobody least at all
Mrs project ewas out of losing a little shobble for getting out the sweet says they do today the mere ce sight of a grymmy right hand with its black fingernails digging and ounce of chocolate
Far jout of a jar would of courused a starving tramp to go running from the shop
But not us sweets with our lifeblood
We would have put out with flowers and that to get them
So he's simply stood and watched in silen silence
While this disgusting old woman stirred around inside the jarars with our foul fingers
The other thing we hated mis prepredit for was her meanness
And let you spend the whole six months all in one go
She wouldn't give you a bag instead
You've got your sweetwtwisted up in a small piece of newspaper
Which she told up available daily mirrrors ying on the counter
So you can well understand that we had it in infamuies practice in our big way
But we didn't quite know what to do about it many schemes were put forward
But none of them was any good
None of them that is until suddenly one memorable afternoon
We found the dead mouse
