My Life by Lionel Graves. (Page 32)
We had only just found accommodation in Kidderminster a few weeks before the wedding, a ground floor flat in a large old house in Roden Avenue belonging to a Mrs Cook, not far from the Land Oak. This had been the result of an advert in the Kidderminster Shuttle along the lines of newly wed school teacher desires flat or apartment, I think it was the only reply.
After some time there we got on to a completely self contained unfurnished ground floor flat in the Ideal Buildings Mill Street. We had to slip the secretary £50 key money to get the flat, but it was well worth it as we were independent, although the window looked out onto the pavement. Diana got a job at Attwoods, a clothing shop, close to the place where a policeman's box, rather like a pulpit, used to stand in the middle of the street.
I forgot to mention the fact that before getting married, I was Chairman of Tenbury Young Conservatives, not a fact that I broadcast from the housetops these days. A dozen or so if us used to meet up in the Pump rooms and we didn't take ourselves too seriously, there were no William Hagues there, it was more of a social club. The only serious thing I had to do was to second the vote of acceptance at a large gathering in Kidderminster, for Gerald Nabarro as prospective candidate at the next election. Needless to say but because of my speech he was elected with a vast unanimous majority. Later as an MP we organised a meeting called 'A Hundred Questions' for the whole town, where he came and spoke.
While in the Ideal Buildings and at Birchen Coppice I had the job of teaching English to Walter Severinenko, a Ukranian engineer who was working at the sugar beet factory on the Stourport road. He told me that they, the Ukranians, had supported the Germans when they invaded as gaining freedom from Moscow, but the ill treatment they doled out soon caused a change of heart and they started opposing the Nazis. He never made it clear how he got over here after the war, but some Ukranians formed battalions to fight against Russia on the German side. He later emigrated to Toronto, Canada where he became a heating janitor in a block of flats.
I was still playing rugby and captain of that motley crew the 3rd XV. One week a player had dreamed he saw the winner of the Grand National and saw the colours and looked them up in the paper the next morning, that was enough for me and I backed it, the following Saturday it won and after celebrating too well after the match, I rode my bicycle shakily along Mill Street, losing the chain in the process and wondering why that despite my legs were going like the clappers the bike was slowing down till I fell off. I arrived home to a well deserved frosty reception. About five o'clock the next morning I had to rise for a bathroom call and thought I felt the carpet moving under my feet, on opening the back kitchen door into the car park a wave of water rushed into the kitchen and through the flat, I thought the outside drain was blocked and poked around the drain hole for a bit.
However it was the River Stour, just behind us, that had flooded, we heard later that a lock gate had been left closed when it should have been opened and the water just built up. We dressed fairly hurriedly and then told the secretary of the Ideal Buildings whose flat was above ours and he and the neighbours gave a hand carrying things up to the next landing. Our new three piece suite was bobbing about on the water which was brown, smelly and two feet deep.
We stayed sometime in his flat as the water was too deep to get through outside in the street and only boats or canoes were able to negotiate it. Finally it subsided and we were able to move in with Jim and Mary Lloyd, friends who had an upstairs apartment just round the corner from us, by Brinton Carpets big window which was always displaying a huge carpet.
The NVS brought round disinfectants and cleaning materials and we cleaned things up ourselves. There were no councillors in those days to advise us, so we just got on with the job. They sent round some RAF warm air blowers, for frozen engines to dry the place and the furniture out.
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220 Stourbridge Road, Kidderminster (1954).
Email: Lionel Graves (lionel@graf-tek.com).
Copyright ©2000-2008 L. Graves. All Rights Reserved.
