Page 28 - My Story

Peter & Ruth circa 1956

Our friends in those days were two cousins of Peter’s, Marg and Julie. Julie was an artist and
married to an artist, Alan, and they had two small children, John and Katherine. We used to take a bottle
of wine over to them in an evening and just sit and chat and sometimes Peter and I baby sat for them
while they went out to see a film. Marg was Julie’s younger sister who was being courted by Don Pettit.
They eventually married and had two sons, Ben and Gerald, believe it or not.

Peter and Marg worked for Teddy Webb, an accountant and husband of Connie who was Marg’s
eldest sister. They lived and had the office in a large house on Tooting Bec Gardens, Streatham. Peter
had two rooms at the top of the house for which he paid ten shillings a week rent and that included a
bottle of milk delivered every morning! Somewhere in the house were also accommodated Robert and
Anna, children of Connie and Teddy. I believe Connie had another child, a little girl, who was born while
Peter lived there. There were three boys in the Allday family, Ernie, married to Vera, a jolly man who
became head of the London Fire Service, Robert (Bobby) who was a major or even a lieutenant general in
the army. He had spent much of the war in the United States as a liaison officer between the Americans
and the British and was married to a rather upper-class lady called Tags, and Freddie, a loner who spent
quite a lot of time at Connie and Teddy’s house. Peter occasionally played tennis with him.

The Allday mother, Alice, Peter’s mother’s older sister, had been in service when she fell in love
with the youngest son of the house and the two of them eloped. He became a butcher, opening his own
shop and the two of them lived happily ever after. The children, other than Freddie who was morose,
were all lively and great fun. I only knew Aunt Alice as a little white-haired old lady and I do remember
her funeral. Several cars pulled into the car park at the same time and the same face appeared from each
car. It was like watching Alec Guiness in “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, in which he played several members
of the same family. The family resemblance was uncanny – there was the Taylor family (Peter’s mother’s
family) over and over again. The same big blue eyes, the same curly hair, sometimes fair, sometimes
white, the same vivacious laugh. This was no sad occasion – it never was with the Taylors. Alice had
lived a good long life and it was to be celebrated.

Other good friends were Norman Diamond and his cousin Bonnie who had been at Mimi’s party.
I think Bonnie had been at school with Peter and he always hung out with Norman who was a little older.
Peter and Norman played tennis together. We often visited Norman at his home in Crouch End and got
to know his parents quite well, Dave and Dolly. Dolly remembered my parents from the shop in Ridley

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