YESTERDAYS CHILD. Chapter12

[Maywalk]

CHAPTER TWELVE

OUR WEDDING DAY.
The year of 1948 passed very quickly and it would not be long now before Cliff would be de-mobbed. Not only was I looking forward to him being at home I also wanted to get away from the incessant rows between my mother and father because I was the one who cleaned up after them.
Not a very good atmosphere to live in but funnily enough no one could say anything bad about my mother to my father and it was the same with my mother about my dad.
They could knock hell out of each other but NO one dare interfere.
They were both fiercely loyal to each other.
It was their life I suppose and their way of keeping the adrenalin going.
They were married for 59 years.

In the August of 1949 Cliff visited me saying that he had two rooms for us in Loughborough and we could get married as soon as we could get the banns called.
So from then on it was all systems go.
I told my family and my mother decided to start putting an odd tin of Spam and various other tinned stuff away for that day.

I do believe that many folk thought that because it was so quick it was a shotgun wedding but it definitely wasn't. Cliff had kept his promise when he said that once he got a job he would find rooms for us and we would be married.

My youngest brother had been demobbed by this time and he was engaged to a young lady named Beryl who worked her way up over the years and became a lecturer at Lewisham College. She wrote books on advanced needlework and became well known for her bead work.
She was a beautiful dressmaker and although she was younger than myself she made my dress and the bridesmaid dresses within two weeks. I had to beg clothing coupons to get the material for the dresses and the shoes.
I had just a very plain 'A' line dress just below the knee with peeped toe high-heeled shoes. My bouquet was Chrysanthemums.
The bridesmaids wore a deep turquoise blue with smaller bouquets.
Cliff wore his brown de-mob suit.

Beryl was my chief bridesmaid and Cliff's sister was the other.
It was nothing spectacular because we neither had the coupons nor the money to have fantastic do's.
They were not heard of years ago. You had to make do with the front room as the reception hall.

While I was in Loughborough for the few months when I left home, my eldest brother got married in a registry office to which NONE of his family were invited.
He and his wife did come to my wedding but I was on pins in case he had too much to drink and started a fracas. As luck would have it they did not stop. It sounds nasty, I know, but Billy had come back from Burma with SO much aggression, it was unbelievable the way he treated the family.
The day dawned bright and clear on the 17th of September 1949.
We were to be married at 4pm at St Pauls Church, Peckham. It was post war years and we were still on rations.
My mother had been round to all those she knew to see if they had any spare food coupons to make up a buffet of sorts.
The London barrow boys had been a great help because when they knew I was getting married they supplied cucumber, tomatoes and lettuce and many other vegetables to go into a salad.
Our house in London was where the street market used to be so the barrow boys had got to know us, especially when I took cups of tea out to them when the weather was bitterly cold.
If they knew I was in any time they used to shout out "Get on the joanna ( piano or as they said it pianner) and give us a tune Gal." They were a great bunch.

My future husband's two brothers, sister and his mother were to arrive at 11am at St. Pancras Station.
No problem there because they all arrived on time ready for a bite to eat and change their clothes after a quick wash.
My future hubby's father didn't come because he classed me as a foreigner.

Meanwhile, my father had gone off for a drink at the nearest public house with his brothers. My mother was cursing him up hill and down dale because he had gone and left her to it. She, with the help of my sister conjured up quite an edible array of goodies for the guests to come back to.
No fancy receptions in those days, apart from the fact we could not afford them even if we could have had one.
My mother brightened up when my father came home with his brothers laden with eight crates of beer. Where to put them was another problem in case anyone tripped over them. They finished up in the scullery stacked on he side of the old copper. Problem solved we thought.

By 3-30pm everyone had gone to the church and it just left my father and myself.
At 3-40pm the wedding car drew up outside the door and as I emerged all 10 of the barrow boys were lined up singing "There was I, waiting at the church."
It was hilarious because all the pedestrians stopped to see what was going off. After the door was opened on the wedding car by the biggest barrow boy my father and myself got in to start the journey to the church to clanking of tin cans that some bright spark had tied to the car's rear bumper.
With much clattering and shouts of "Good Luck, Gal" from the boys we proceeded on our way. We arrived at the church dead on 3-55pm.

Once in church, my father, who was usually very particular to make sure he had his hanky was turning round asking who had got all the b****y hankies?
He had one in his top pocket just peeping out as they used to wear them years ago but evidently he had come out without the one that my mother had put on the piano for him. My mother was ready to slay him for blaspheming in church.
My mother started crying her eyes out and the ceremony had not even started. Someone fainted in one of the pews and was being administered with smelling salts. We finally managed to say our vows and get out to have our photos taken.

Was I glad to be going back home!

The wedding proceeded with the buffet and a speech from the best man (my brother) and when we had all had enough to eat the room was cleared for the typical Cockney knees up after we had all come back from the pub.
We went to my father's Uncle who owned a pub, which was a tram ride away so the whole wedding party filled one flipping tram to go and make merry.
When it was chucking out time from the pub we had the same journey back on the tram.
As soon as we got in someone got on the piano and started playing all the songs that the Londoners liked and could have a knees up to.

When it got to 1am, some of the guests had dwindled and I thought they had gone home. It was only when I went through the long passage I found quite a few sitting on the stairs in a drunken stupor.
The others were still making merry and suddenly there was an almighty crash from the scullery. Someone had not put the copper lid on the boiler properly where the beer was situated and about 12 bottles fell in smashing the flipping lot.
All this took place at 2-30am but funnily enough it never woke those who were sound asleep on the stairs.

By 3-30am Cliff and I were ready for bed and the wedding bed was on the top storey of the house. We bid goodnight to those who were still supping ale and made our way to the bedroom. Oh Boy! Did we get a surprise because there were four people in it already snoring their heads off, two at the top and two at the bottom of the double bed. They were all women thank goodness.
The bed was sagging down with the weight of all four folk and was hitting the chamber pot underneath the bed, which with every movement was clanking and pinging.

We started giggling and decided to leave them to it so down we trotted much to my mother's surprise. She said that she would get us a bed to lie on and promptly marched upstairs in to her own bedroom where my father and his two brothers were snoring their heads off in the double bed. My mother tried to waken them but with SO much beer down their throats they were dead to the world. I have to say here that in those days we used to have what was known as a palliasse ( a mattress filled with horsehair ) as the base on the bed which covered the springs and on top of that was a flock mattress.

My mother was SO cross that she could get no answer from the three stooges, as she called them, she performed a superhuman feat by just grabbing the flock mattress and lifting it high up in the air.
All three men fell out of the bed on to the floor with such a thud and the bewilderment on their faces was a picture. I was in the room with my mother as all this was taking place. There I was at 4am doubled up with laughing.
I could not even help my mother with the flock mattress as she struggled down to the kitchen in a temper and threw it on the floor by the kitchen table, saying triumphantly, "There you are you can get a few hours kip on that" I had heard of some queer places in my time to sleep but for a wedding night ( what was left of it ) to be spent on the kitchen floor lying on a flock mattress.
WELL.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By this time though Cliff and I were absolutely shattered and decided to make the best of it. My mother came in with a blanket to cover us over.
The time was 4-30am. We certainly were not in the mood for any conjugal consummation because we could not stand up with tiredness never mind anything else.
We both dropped off into a very restless sleep because I had the chrome fender up my bottom that went round the fire hearth and Cliff kept banging his head on the table leg.

At 6-30am we were rudely awakened from our troubled slumber by my brother-in law who practically stood on our heads to get the cups and saucers out to make some tea.
Then someone came in for the sugar.
Then some other person came in for the plates.
It was like a bus station with SO many folk wandering in and out.
We had enough by 7am and decided to get up but we had to barricade the door while we got dressed.

After we were up it was another performance to get some hot water to have a wash. This in itself was a work of art because we had no bathroom and we were queuing up to use the kitchen to get washed with hot water from the kettle.
We were going back to the Midlands on the lunchtime train where we had two rooms to live in. We had also got to struggle with the massive carpet that my old boss had bought me.
It was a good job that Cliff's brothers were with us to help carry the load because we all travelled back to Loughborough together.

I must mention here that we had 5 teapots bought us for wedding presents.
We were still on rations so the teapots would last us a ruddy lifetime.

Houses were in very short supply after WW2 so we were lucky to get two rooms with a married couple who had four children.

That is the story of my wedding day but to top it all we had paid the photographer £7-10 shillings for the photos but we never got them because we found out the photographer owed quite a lot of money to the landlord and he did a runner. We only got two proofs.

We had been married for three weeks when I heard on the radio that all weddings that took place after 4pm were not legal.
Oh Blimey! I got panicky because I could not go through that farce again.
I went to our local National Insurance office to find out about this. I could not phone them because poor folk never had a phone.
I was very relieved to know that we were in the time limit. Ours took place dead on 4pm.
Don't ask me why it was illegal after 4pm. I have no idea. I think that rule has been lifted now though.

It gave my hubby and I many laughs over the years when we look back because he said who could get amorous with a table leg bashing their head at every move.

We will have been married 56 years in this year of 2005 if the Lord spares us.
.........................................

Since the booklet was published hubby and I was married for nearly 67 years before he died in 2016.

[GrannyMac]

What a lovely photo May! You look stunning! 

[Sheila]

Gosh, that was an eventful wedding but at least you got that lovely photo.

[Scrumpy]

Absolutely wonderful.. 
So interesting about the 4 o'clock deadline..
Great photo.. Good old black and white.. it never lies..
You suit one another.. 
 Thank you so very much.. 

[Maywalk]

Thanks for getting back to me folks.

I hope you enjoyed your trip back in time. 

[klondike]

Thanks for your memories. An interesting read. I did already know that 1949 was as excellent year as it was the one I was born. After your wedding though. I was close to being a Christmas present.