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- Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Trishna Singh OBE was born in Glasgow in the 1950s, a first generation Scottish Bhat Sikh. Her father came to the UK in the late 1930s and her mother followed after the Partition of India by the British in 1947. Trishna left school, at the age of 13, with no qualifications. She had an arranged marriage, aged 21, and moved to Edinburgh to live with her husband. As a young girl, she questioned the cultural requirements of her community which stated that married women were subservient to their mothers-in-law and their husbands, and existed solely to have children and look after their families, in direct opposition to the teachings of the Sikh religion which states man and woman are equal. And although Trishna's marriage was a marriage of equals, she was still expected to adhere to the social and cultural restrictions placed upon her by the wider Scottish Bhat Sikh community. Trishna's life has been challenging, in part. She has battled against her community's traditions which she rightly saw as archaic customs, begun in India, and designed to 'keep women in their place' and has lived her adult life in a city she did not grow up in but which is now her home. In 1989 she founded Leith Sikh Community Group, now Sikh Sanjog. Its aim was to provide support for women in the Sikh community who had been settling in Edinburgh since the 1950s. Thirty-plus years later Trishna remains a director of Sikh Sanjog, along the way having studied and attained a BA in Community Learning and Development. A Silent Voice Speaks is her story.
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A SILENT VOICE SPEAKS
The Wee Indian Woman on the Bus:
The Story of a Sikh Woman in Scotland
Dedicated to the memory of all our mothers: the epitome of shackled invisibility
And
My late husband, Harbhajan John Singh: for giving me the freedom to break the shackles.
Foreword
My name is Trishna Singh. I am a first generation Scottish Bhat Sikh woman and this is my story.
This book is dedicated to the memories of the mothers and grandmothers of the Bhat Sikh community who lived and suffered in silence but survived against all odds. The hidden heroines who left everything in India, the land of their forefathers and mothers. They came to this strange and foreign land that they knew nothing of.
To the generation of women of the Bhat community who stood up and made a life for themselves but remained true to their heritage and culture with pride.
These are the voices of a community of women who have lived in two cultures for over half a century: unnoticed, invisible, always on the sidelines. Watching the world move on; always the observers, never the participants. Their hopes and dreams constantly stifled by internal cultural barriers that no one could see.
The survivors of an invisible oppression that suffocated their thoughts, rendering them helpless. Only being allowed to do what everyone else demanded, never what they desired.
These voices speak to you through this book. Hear them and know that they may have been your neighbours for over half a century, and you didn’t get to know them…
Prologue
I wrote the following at the age of 62. I didn’t have a specific readership in mind for it, it was initially just my desire, even need, to express in a few words how I felt about my childhood. But perhaps it was more than just that; what I wrote seemed to encapsulate not only my childhood but the rest of my life as well – so it’s a foretaste of what this book is about.
The Wee Indian Woman on the Bus
Have you ever noticed her – the wee Indian woman on the bus? Have you ever wondered who she is? Maybe you think, ‘She’s not been here long,’ or ‘These people just keep themselves to themselves.’
Well, can I tell you something? This wee woman has probably been here longer than you. She was born in the 1950s, to the first wave of people who came here from India when the British carved up their land and made them homeless refugees. She was one of the invisible children. Always on the sidelines, watching the world go by.
Everything was always out of reach. She missed out on the Beatles, Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley: she could only listen to the transistor radio when no one else was in. The Beano, The Dandy and The Bunty were ok, but The Jackie – oh no! That was out of bounds. She might be corrupted: she might start wanting the same things as the white girls! All she ever heard was, ‘We don’t do this, we don’t do that. We are Indian.’
She wasn’t allowed to dream, because dreams were for other people.
Her life centred around home and school until she was 13 when school became a distant memory, but that memory is still very clear in her mind today, 54 years later.
What does she remember? The smell of the classroom. The teacher’s clear voice introducing her as, ‘Our visitor from a faraway land.’
That always made her laugh! She was born in Glasgow, and the school was at the end of her street! But it was fun to pretend and, by the age of five, she was bilingual. The desire to keep learning never left her.
By the time she was 12, it began to sink in that she was different. The other girls and boys were out playing after school, going to Mission schools and Sunday schools. Sometimes she went with them and sang along to, ‘Climb, climb, sunshine mountain...’ But there was a slow realisation of, ‘I am not like them.’ Home life was like living in the village in India that her mother had fled, but never really left.
Learn to cook, learn to clean, learn to knit, sew and embroider. Learn not to ask too many questions. Life was a ‘sweet prison’: everything was restricted and there was no freedom to go out, no freedom to be with people her own age. She grew into a young woman in that sweet prison, but she never stopped dreaming or asking questions.
What does she remember? Not India’s green fields, cool water ponds and breezes. No. Her memories are of Glasgow tenement backyards, playing kick the can in the street with her wee pals. Sitting at the corner of her street, pressing a penny into the hot tar. Smelling the cut grass of Richmond Park on a sunny summer’s day; walking through the park from the Rutherglen Road end, with the sandpit and the swings on the left, the rockery and the big swings on the right. Best of all, she remembers walking onto the concrete bridge that links the park with Glasgow Green and the shows.
That was the best time! Every summer she was told not to go without a grown-up, but she still sneaked across the road and into the fair. She can still smell the candy floss and the toffee apples: she can still hear the noise, and the music still rings in her ears. See that wee Indian woman on the bus? She’s not thinking of India: she’s remembering a childhood lost to a culture that was alien – even to her.
I dedicated this poem to all the mothers who left their homes in the Punjab in 1948 and created new homes and lives in Scotland. These women had to leave their whole lives behind through no choice of their own, but because the British arbitrarily partitioned India. This action entirely failed to consider the enormity of what partition would cost in human life and suffering. It was visualised in an exhibition and diary produced by Sikh Sanjog, called The Daughters of the Punjab, in 2002.
Mother
When Mother India was torn into two. You left your village of Galotian and Badewala
You came to Bombay, leaving behind friends, playmates, brothers and sisters
Then separated forever when you boarded the ships and planes to Britain.
Your mother gave you blessings, be happy in your new life and let the gentle breezes
Bring messages of your wellbeing, the unspoken words in your heart said we are being separated by oceans and mother and daughter may never meet again.
You made your homes in Britain but what did you see? What did you do? What did you enjoy?
You spent your life in a sea of nappies, cooking and cleaning, you tasted neither the freedom, the enjoyment nor the fruit of this land.
Only the men, the brothers, the husbands, the fathers reaped the fruits.
There were times when you sat together, remembering your mothers, your friends,
The fields, the spinning wheels, the cool water of the wells. And you knew that they all had become a distant dream.
In your heart was forever the desire to take your children back to your homeland.
The desire remained unfulfilled, you were caught in the money trap.
Then life takes a turn, your children are no longer children, the childhood pains and troubles are forgotten
Only to be replaced by new heartaches, and now when I think of your life
My heart fills with pain, now you are gone, leaving behind all your sorrows.
And in this life there are still unknown paths to tread
With whom do I share my heartache?
1
Roots, Childhood
My parents and grandparents came to Great Britain as economic/refugee migrants in 1948. My father, Puran Singh Pall, and grandfather, Babu Jiwan Singh Pall, moved to the United Kingdom first (in about 1936) and my mother, Sant Ajit Kaur, and grandmother, Besant Kaur, joined them in 1948. They had been forced to leave their land and homes in the wake of the partition of India in 1947. What had been their home in Bhadewala, in the outskirts of Gujranwala, Lahore, had become Pakistan. The largest, swiftest and most violent forced migration in history.
Fourteen million people were displaced, an estimated two million killed, and as many as one million women were raped. Some women spoke of being given small packets of poison powder that, if they should be kidnapped or taken from their families by force, they should eat and die with honour, rather than be raped or abducted and forced to convert to Islam. We never heard my mother or grandmother speak of that time openly. We only heard fleeting references whilst we were growing up. As time went on and pictures would be shown on TV about refugees fleeing from some war-torn place in Africa, my mother would say, ‘That’s how we left our homes with the “kafla”.’ (The word was mostly used in old times when people of one village or community migrated from one place to another.)Sometimes, they would share a memory of someone giving birth in the camp or someone losing a child and then finding them again.
There was never an explicit explanation of their journey from the camps to the time of their departure to Great Britain. Always references. Sometimes my mum would say, ‘The last time I saw my mother was when we were leaving.’ She never explained leaving from where. Was it from the Bombay Docks? Was it from the refugee camp? Or their village? To this day, I have not read any written account of a Sikh Bhat woman’s perspective on this subject. All the questions that we had no answers to, we could only surmise and piece together their history by reading other Sikh people’s accounts of what took place at that time.
Sometimes I sit and in my head I have a clear line of thought of what I want to write, then it disappears. So in some ways it’s best to begin at the beginning… I was born in Scotland to immigrant parents who were part refugees and part British subjects. My father had come to Great Britain in 1936 as a colonial subject. My mother joined him in 1947 as a victim of the Partition of India which had led to her home becoming Pakistan. Overnight she lost everything, including her identity.
To understand myself, I must write about my mother first. It was through watching her and how she dealt with all that happened to her that led me to where I am today. I was determined that no matter what, I would not allow myself to become a pawn in someone’s hand.
My parents got married in 1935 in a small village on the outskirts of Lahore (now in Pakistan). My father left India in 1936 to travel to Great Britain for work and experience the outside world. Unfortunately for my mother, his visit lasted ten years whilst she stayed in the marital home cooking, cleaning and looking after his family. She had a baby girl who died at three months from cholera, but this was something my mother never spoke about. I only know this through conversations with other female aunts who knew my mother’s life story well.
I can’t imagine the trauma of living as a single woman for ten years, knowing that her husband was in a foreign country with only letters as the connection. In fact, I don’t even know if my father ever wrote to my mum or if she was just included in the communications that came as general letters of wellbeing to the whole family. She never mentioned anything about that time, apart from telling me small stories of how she was treated by my paternal grandmother who was very strict and ruled the roost. My father’s family consisted of five children. He had two younger sisters who both died in infancy and a brother who also died at the age of 19, of cholera. So there was only my dad, his brother and his parents. My mother also came from a family of five – three sisters and two brothers; she was the youngest of the sisters. She was very beautiful – small and petite. She had lost her father when she was only five so her eldest brother had been the father figure in her life.
I was born in Duke Street Hospital, Glasgow, on the 21st of October 1953, the fourth child and the third girl to come into the family. I think my parents were a little disappointed. My grandfather, however, a man of great intelligence, patience, sincerity and love, coupled with compassion for all human beings, advised them that he had already named me ‘Trishna’, meaning ‘desire’, and that I would fulfil their desire and wishes to bring good fortune and luck to the family. Indeed, this prophecy came true within the next six years, during which time my mum gave birth to three more boys, bringing our family to a grand total of four brothers and three sisters, including myself.
We lived in the Oatlands area of Glasgow – 2 Logan Street to be precise. We were the only Asian family in the area. Our house was a two-bedroomed tenement flat with no bathroom but an inside toilet, which we gradually came to realise was a luxury for some families in those days. Our home was always clean and warm. My mum could speak no English at all; her whole life was spent fulfilling the needs of an extended family, from the day she got married till the day she died. She was hugely influential in shaping my thoughts and feelings, particularly my views on how the people of our community look at life. Too many within the community cannot see that we are part of the world, that we can achieve and become whatever we desire: that we were not born into this world just to do as we are told throughout our existence, we are not merely extensions of our husbands, fathers, mothers-in-law, that we are individuals in our own right. We can think! We have intelligence.
My mum was married in India and my father, who had already been to Great Britain, had returned for his marriage. They were married in 1934 or 1935 – dates and time had little meaning in the lifestyle of Indian people in those days. After the wedding, my mum came to stay with her in-laws: my father, his brother and my grandparents. This was no ordinary family. My grandfather was a much respected, well-travelled and educated gentleman. He was an astrologer and palmist to trade and he travelled to Ghana, South Africa and the UK many times before eventually settling in the UK in the late 1930s or early 40s. My grandmother was a typical village wife, not very educated but very strong-willed and also very aware of her standing in the village, being the wife of someone who was looked up to and seen as a village elder. Therefore, she commanded a great deal of respect herself. My mother, however, came from a small family and, having lost her father when she was very young, had relied on her eldest brother most of her life; she was also very close to her mother.
She was very beautiful, and when she came to my grandparents’ house, people came from surrounding villages to see the beautiful bride. She was very respectful and had three things instilled in her by her mother: never refuse to do any kind of housework, never answer back, even if you are right, and always respect anybody who comes to your house, whatever their age. With these teachings, my mum became well-known for her manners and genuine desire to help others without flinching from any of her duties as a daughter-in-law. My grandmother was the typical mother-in-law in that she was very dominant; she used her power over my mother, at times unfairly. Even years later, we would meet women who lived in the same village as my mum and they invariably related stories about how kind, generous and dutiful she was. My grandfather, who was seldom at home, treated her as a daughter, with respect, and showed her love as a father figure.
However, the kitchen and dealing with the daughters-in-law is the woman’s place. My mother spent ten years in this environment – cooking, cleaning, caring, never asking for anything in return, no children of her own, only allowed to visit her mother when my grandmother deemed it necessary to give her some space. She spoke fondly of Maa Jennah, a Muslim lady who lived next door and had no children of her own. Maa Jennah treated my mum as her own child and would spend time with her. So many relationships lost because of partition...
It was now 1946-47, a period in history when Britain left India, having first partitioned it in an almost random fashion. Unfortunately, the former part of India that became part of Pakistan was where my father’s and mother’s families were from, so they became refugees. Meanwhile, my father was in the UK, living a full life with no thought of the young girl he had married and left behind. My mother’s salvation was that her eldest brother was also in the UK at that point in time. He realised that my father was leading a full, rather selfish life, and had done so for the past ten years. It was apparent to my uncle that there was no intention on my father’s part to be reunited with his wife. Then conflict arose; my grandmother’s ticket for sailing from Bombay was later than my mum’s. The crossing would take three weeks. There were arguments about how my mother, being the daughter-in-law, should have the nerve to go on a ship without any children of her own. Eventually, it was resolved by the fact that sailings could not be changed and everything had been booked and paid for by my grandfather who was in London.
My mother arrived at Tilbury Docks, Southampton, in the autumn of 1948. It must have been very cold, grey and damp. My mum used to say that the sun did not shine in her new country. She had never worn a coat, nor had she ever seen white people before. The crossing was a mammoth step for her, but coming off the ship was an even more traumatic experience. On board, she had stayed in her cabin for most of the journey. The reason for this was that she had always covered her face with the veil (purdah) in the presence of all male elders who were related to my father.
Even though there were quite a lot of families on the ship from the same region as her, she felt alone. These other people, some had children, or their husbands, mothers or mothers-in-law with them. She was completely alone, going to stay with a husband whom she had not seen for ten years. They stayed for a few months in London, then moved to Liverpool. It was at this point that my uncle realised that my father should be made to part company with the group he was socialising with; they were a bad influence and my mother was constantly being left at home on her own.
There is not a lot I can say about my mum’s life at this time because she chose not to talk about it. And as we were growing up, we were too naïve to even think about asking her about this period of her life. It truly is only now, when she has been gone for 36 years, that I am wishing that I had spoken to her, asked her questions about it. But it is, of course, too late now. I can only imagine the pain and mental anguish that she must have gone through at that time.
My parents moved to Glasgow in 1949, and my eldest sister, Sukhwant, was born in Rotten Row Hospital in that year, followed a year later by my brother, Gurdev. My sister, Ashan, was born at home in Maryhill in 1952. My parents then bought their own house in Logan Street, Oatlands. I was born in Duke Street Hospital in 1953. My younger brother, Subash, was born at home in 1955, my next brother, Gadraj, born in 1957, and my youngest brother, Chander, was born in 1959.
My second-youngest brother was only 40 days old when my mother received a letter informing her that her mother had died in India. She was devastated by the news but received only the minimum of care and support from my grandmother. Having no daughters of her own, I think my gran found it very difficult to show any real feelings towards my mum. Throughout this time, my father was working as a door-to-door salesman, selling clothes and rugs; this involved travelling to towns and cities such as Aberdeen, Perth, Falkirk, Stonehaven and Greenock, which meant that he would sometimes be away for one or two weeks at a time.
My dad had enlisted, in 1944, in the Royal Pioneer Corps, British Reserves, Bradford. His time in the army greatly affected his behaviour for the rest of his life. He was very strict: shoes had to be polished until you could see your face in them, the bedtime routine involved making sure everybody was in bed, lights out, no socks to be worn in bed. He would actually lift the covers to see if we had our socks off! He was not going to let any of his children grow up to be namby-pamby softies.
In hindsight, this strictness stood us all in good stead. We all still make sure we have polished shoes. And as for my brothers, it was always suit, tie, shirt, handkerchief; these, he would say, were the signs of a gentleman! He himself dressed very smartly at all times and the blazer was a firm favourite of his.
When I got married, my husband was a very smart dresser but he didn’t really bother much about his shoes. So it became my mission to show this man that polished shoes were essential as a finishing touch. I went out and bought shoe polish and a brush set. It became an integral part of my husband’s dress routine after that, even if it meant me polishing his shoes!
We lived in the Oatlands house until 1963 or 64. During this time we spent many happy, carefree days at Wolseley Street Primary School. Our school was just across the road from our house, and I remember my first day at school. My dad took me in to Mrs. Brown’s class. At playtime, I decided I’d learned enough and walked out of school, straight home. Unfortunately, this was short-lived and I came to understand that this was not on. However, school was fun, the teachers were nice and we had many friends.
A couple of teachers remain in my mind. Firstly, Miss Eyre, who wore green overalls and a hat made of feathers. She was very strict, but when I think now of her manner, she would probably be deemed racist in today’s society. As children, we all thought Mrs. Nelson was a man dressed up as a woman. This is probably because she had short hair, unlike the fashion at the time, and strode up and down the classroom with her hands clasped behind her back. She assumed we had come from India and treated us with great respect, as though we were fragile china. We, of course, lapped this up.
I remember many events from my childhood in Glasgow, but one that sticks out is the time when I was five years old: my father, who had been drinking the night before, had really bad heartburn. All of us children were still in bed and he asked for someone to go across the road to McDonald’s sweet shop for some Rennies. Everybody kept shtum except me, so I got up, got dressed and went to the shop. Coming out of the shop, I failed to see a cyclist come speeding round the corner; he knocked me down. I remember it so well. All of a sudden there was a crowd gathered around me and I could hear people asking, ‘Who is she? Does anyone know her?’ Then someone broke through the crowd. It was Bob, a wee Scottish man who had befriended our family and was our very own painter and decorator. Bob always wore a bunnet.
He picked me up and started to walk towards our house, then there was this wild shriek – it was my grandmother. She had been on a trip to Doncaster and had just got off the bus on her return. She started wailing and screaming, ‘Who sent you to the shop? Why are you out at this time? Oh my God, her leg’s broken! She’s scarred for life! She will have a limp! No one will marry her!’ Remember, I was only five years old at the time. Then Granny decides to stop Bob midway up the stairs to question me.
‘Who sent you out at this time and why?’
So I told her I went for Rennies because Dad had heartburn. That was it, off she went again, calling her son all the names under the sun, cursing his drinking habits. My grandmother was mortified that my leg had been broken. I was in a stookie for three months and I remember being pushed around in a pram by my sisters. As far as my granny was concerned, I might be damaged for the rest of my life. Once the plaster was removed she started to massage olive oil on my leg on a daily basis for at least three months. This, she maintained, encouraged the healing process and prevented me from having a limp. I had been saved.
We had many white friends and we joined in their games and fights – the ‘big backs’ versus the ‘wee backs’ (‘backs’ was the word given to the backyards of tenement closes). Some names still remain in my memory: my best friend was Isabel Innes – she lived across from the ‘hot baths’ and went to the Catholic school. Then there was Kay Bishop who was at my primary school also, but remains in my mind because of how tall she was. Our neighbours, who lived next door to us, were the Carmichael family. They were very quiet and had only one child but were lovely to us. Sometimes we would knock on their door for something, but really just to peek inside their house which looked like something we’d see on the telly.
Next to our house in Logan Street, on the corner, was the newsagent’s shop, run by Mr. McGregor. We called him ‘McGreegor’. He would be termed nowadays as a complete racist – he disliked us with a vengeance. We were not allowed into his shop or anywhere near his newspaper stand that stood outside. What we did do was play ball against his wall that faced onto our side of the street. This drove him crazy, the constant thudding of tennis balls against his wall. We would be singing – more like screeching – the rhymes, ‘Over the garden wall, ah let ma baby fall, my mother came oot and gave me cloot, over the garden wall’. Or, ‘Up in Aberdeen, there lives a fairy queen, esha asha, you’re a wee smasha, up in Aberdeen’. And this one that always stays in my head even now, ‘Rabbie Burns wis born in Ayr and noo he’s doon at the Georges Square, an’ if you want to see him there, just jump oan the bus and pay your fare!’
There was also ‘the dunny’ that belonged to McGreegor. Dunny was short for what we called the dungeon, or basement in the tenements. There was a stone staircase that led to this and there was a kind of storage unit with a big wooden door where McGreegor stored his shop goods.
We thought he stored kids that he had murdered in it! All the kids in the stair and a few stairs along were petrified of him. He was a very big man, probably about six feet tall and very broad, with glasses and a big loud voice. When he shouted we all scattered. We lived quite dangerously at times… The dunny steps led out to the backs of the tenements and there was a big gap. There were windows that had bars on them so we would climb onto the side window and step onto the window that faced the steps and we would jump across the gap. There were two jumps – the wee jump and the big jump. The wee jump was when you just stood on the bottom sill of the barred window and jumped. The big jump was when you actually climbed the bars onto the second strap of the iron bars, and then jumped. It was a miracle that no one fell through the gap and broke their bones, there were plenty of near misses. We survived our childhood adventures and they are very happy memories of a time that has now sadly disappeared.
Enoch Powell ‘Rivers of Blood Speech’
When Enoch Powell made that speech we had no idea of what it meant, nor the implications. We lived happily in our own wee world. We would hear the stories of what was happening in England but it didn’t bear any kind of meaning to our lives. When we heard that a new bill was being passed that meant repatriation for all immigrants, we thought it was hilarious. We would annoy our cousins who had come from India in the late 50s, early 60s – ‘That’s it, pal, you’re goin’ hame! We wur born here, he’s not talking about us!’
It was a while before we were to understand the terrible implications his intentions would have had on everyone and everything in our lives.
The Stoddard family lived on the ground floor flat in the tenement next to our ‘close’. There were about ten of them in that family, mainly boys, if memory serves correctly. One Halloween, we were all dressed up to go out guising. My sister had put on my uncle’s suit and trilby hat and was standing on the landing, waiting for us to come down. All of a sudden there was this shouting, ‘Hey, Shuggie, is that you?’
Well, we couldn’t run fast enough and my sister was engulfed by a group of boys who thought she was Shuggie Stoddard. Then there was Mr. Smellie, who lived on the first landing of our tenement and was one of those stiff-upper-lip men who had probably fought in the war. Always immaculately dressed, with his bunnet on his head and a fine whiskery moustache. His door was always polished and the nameplate shone – you could see your face in it. He remains in my memory because we knew he didn’t like brown people. He despised us and would always make some grumpy remark if he saw us going up and down the stairs. Some things happen to you in childhood that remain in your mind forever.
I remember my grandfather sitting at his writing bureau, and sitting in his lap listening to his stories about Africa. Cuddling up to him in his bed and eating porridge with lashings of fresh butter swimming in it. Looking out of my grandad’s top flat window and hearing the screams of people on the rides at the Glasgow Green fun fair.
Richmond Park was our daily haunt: climbing the trees, having picnics and crossing the bridge to go to the fair. Summer holidays were great times. Every Saturday, we would pack a picnic and set off to visit the Campsie Hills. We would get as far as Polmadie Road, then check the time with a passer-by and return home because it was tea-time. We never did get to the Campsie Hills.
Oatlands people were working-class: genuine, down-to-earth and with real hearts. We went shopping for the old women who lived alone, knocked on doors and ran away, and held concerts on the stair landings where you paid to attend with ‘wallies’ – broken pieces of china. We lived opposite Richmond Park, on the other side of Glasgow Green. To me, it was a magical place where, each summer holiday, the ‘shows’ would arrive.
I was fascinated by the caravans, with their beautiful lace curtains and lanterns hanging outside. Looking up the steps, you could see inside where there were vases of flowers on the tables, bright rugs and cushions on the sofas. To a seven-year-old girl it was magical, watching the gypsy women with their big skirts and earrings, and the handsome gypsy boys, who always winked when you walked past. My parents would take us on one supervised visit to the shows and we were allowed on the safe rides – the swings and roundabouts. Waltzers, motorbikes and the Big Wheel were forbidden because the gypsy boys stood at the back of the Waltzers and swung the cars round as they speeded up. They swaggered about, chatting up the girls. We were warned not to go to the shows on our own and told that the gypsies would take us away and make us work like slaves in their camps. But we never listened and sneaked across, through the park and over the bridge, on to the Green to explore the shows.
