Or you can read Laurie’s story below:
I was born just after the war. My mother carried me for nine months in 1944, and in 1945 I popped out into a world that I was totally unsure of. A nipper, kid in and around the East End, often hearing people shouting at each other, ‘ere the wars ended.
What we going to do? We’ve got to make a better life for ourselves. Because in the time of the war, the bomb, the Luftwaffe, the sirens, incense. And when I got to an age of six/seven, and then mooching around the streets, short trousers, snotty nose, playing on the bomb sites. That’s all they were. Bomb sites surrounded by bomb sites and waste ground. The atmosphere was one of depression.
But then when you are young, you’ve got a vibrance of energy in your mind and you’ve got romanticism. And so therefore, we nicknamed our bomb sites Chinatown, the Black Panther, the American Hole. All these things that gave us excitement cor blimey, the Black Panther.
We immersed ourselves in a jungle. We are running through it and there’s this black cat come out. Oh, and we are all scared and then running down the streets and on the bomb site.
As we got a bit older, we graduated to the cinemas in and around the East End. There were so many of them. We used to go to one in Brick Lane called the Mayfair Cinema. Can you imagine that name? Mayfair, in the east end of London in the fifties. All we knew about Mayfair was up west. They’re posh up there. Buckingham Palace the Queen. The Mayfair Cinema, it conjured up excitement, mystery.
We used to queue outside and the usherette would come out, and then we’d pay our money at the box office, six-pence, and we’d go in there. The Emporium, the inner sanctum of The Mayfair, excited us enormously. It was large. There was seats in abundance. On the stage, there was a piano. And before the film started, there was always a bit of a tinkling, and there was little songs.
Then it would start off cartoons, loopy loons, Popeye, Olive Oyl, Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse. And we’d all be up and down, whooping away with them because it had captured a youthful mind, a young mind, the impressionable mind. We needed to be uplifted. We would just come from the bomb sites to the East End in Brick Lane.
But then when you’re in there, it was warm. You were with your mates, a bit of music and excitement. It brought sparkle into our lives. After the films, there would be someone come on board and say, right this morning, we’ll show you. This man’s come on board. He’s going to do the yo-yo. So he started playing the yo-yo. And of course, the kids loved it.
So the following week, there’d be someone doing the hula hoop. Oh, that was fantastic. And the girls would get up there near the hula hoops. But on one occasion, manager said, anyone would like to sing a song that they’ve learned from their mothers or fathers or whatever.
So I, and my china plates, so we got up there, he said, all right, boys, what you fancy doing? I said, well, my mum, she used to sing a song called Sugar in the Morning, and I think it was by a woman called Al McHogan. Fella on the piano, do you know it? He said, yeah, I know that one. So he started doing the old ivories.
So we started, sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at suppertime, be my little honey. I love you all the time. Put your arms around me. Swear by stars above, you’ll be mine forever. In a chapel of love.
The kids went riotous. Yo, everyone loved it to bits. And we were hugging each other and he said, right, boys, you’ve all done very well. Here’s your little present. And he handed us all a mars bar.
Singing has always enhanced my quality of life externally and internally, I honestly think it’s fundamental. If you can sing, you can always be in company. It introduces not only energy into your lungs, but also it brings companionship in your life.
I sing swing with a choir in St. Joseph’s Hospice. We are called the Hackney Songbirds. I sing in Toynbee Hall, also. I’m an old man now. I’m nearly 80 years of age, but I’m sort of meeting people that have got singing as a cornerstone in their life.
