The lantern and the lucozade plus a mysterious room

I was five years old and my mum was taking me to see Booba who was sick. We threaded our way along those winding Whitechapel back streets where unusual and quaint dark shops popped up now and again. Inside were Eastern European shop keepers and a medley of interesting and fascinating objects.

"What would you like to take Booba as she's not feeling well - she's got the flu and is very poorly," said my mum. She was in one of her loving, gentle moods. Just then my five-year old eyes alighted on a mysterious red lantern and I thought - "YES!!!"

"That!" I said, pointing to a red, old fashioned and rather Dickensian lantern. It had something about it that I loved and I was sure my Booba would like it too and would be cheered up from the dreaded flu.

Mum was in an especially good mood and ready to indulge my childish whims. She bought the lantern but added that Booba would really like some lucozade for her flu. I agreed and we proudly took the lucozade and the lantern to Booba in her old, musty flat in Thrawl Street in a tall dank tower block with no lift. Fortunately she lived - with my single eccentric uncle - on the ground floor.

The walls of the living room were plastered with floral fly papers which totally caught my attention. They were thoroughly mesmerising, which was the idea I suppose to attract the unwanted flies and kill them. But more sinister, and beckoning a feeling of mystery, was the door to an unvisited room on the far right corner from where I sat quietly, docilely, listening to the conversation in Yiddish between mother and grandmother. Maybe I wanted some attention and certainlyI wanted to have my curiosity satisfied, so I called out imperiously, "Who is in that room, Booba? Who does that room belong to?"

The women giggled and looked knowingly at each other. Booba said something in Yiddish. Mum then said, "Uncle Henry is in there - he is still asleep and it is 4.o'clock in the afternoon! It's about time he got up - why don't you knock on his door and tell him to get up?"

That is what I did. I longed so much to be allowed to go near that room and I liked to be given a job to do. It was my job to make my uncle get up - what was he doing in bed at that time of day?

I called out, "Uncle Henry, it's time to get up.!"

The response was deafening and the most scary thing that had happened to me in my short life. I guess I screamed and ran back to sit docilely at my seat and the two women just laughed and laughed ....

Childhood literature

I've always loved books right from when I was very young. My first children's books, now up in my loft, were secondhand gems picked up from either Petticoat Lane market near where we lived in Whitechapel or nearby little secondhand shops, equally fascinating.

Now as I am writing this something new occurs to me. Those two first children's books I owned at age 2 or 3 were bought for me by my wonderful, witty but - illiterate - grandmother! Yes, my grandma whom I called Booba in Yiddish, never went to school and so never learned to read or write - yet she bought me my first books! Perhaps she thought - that's not going to happen to my granddaughter, she's going to be - literate!

The books were brightly illustrated so I'm sure my grandma was attracted to the pictures - and I loved them too! One is about a boy called Timmy and it's called Timmy is a Big Boy Now - the drawings of Timmy and his daily routines still bring back memories of a feeling of love transcending language barriers - my grandmother couldn't speak English either!

To be continued:...