Chapter 6 - House Hunting in Glasgow

Jane is left to the search for a house while Eric is at work.

I am deeply involved in this moving business. Don’t us girls have fun? Makes me feel quite at home.

 

It is May 1939 and Jane is getting ready for their move to Glasgow. The reference to “girls having fun” would be a thinly veiled reference to the fact that the girls of the day did most of the organising �" and work �" for such things as moving house. After all, men had to go out and earn a living.  We could possibly detect the first glimmerings of the Women’s Liberation Movement here? A realisation, perhaps, that things could be different for women.  One day.  Perhaps.

 

I have been toiling all day and hoped to finish much earlier than this, and write you a really creditable letter, but time has marched almost out of sight, and Eric will be home soon demanding cups of tea and egg sandwiches. Which he will get, because he has a dutiful wife. Two of his pals are coming  round after dinner tonight to finish up the beer so we don’t have to cart it all over the country. So considerate of them.  So as well as packing I have made a million coconut biscuits and a stack of sandwiches, and done a lot of washing and ironing and cleaned the sitting room up, and darned a pair of working socks and mended a singlet - now I am thankful to sit down.

 

One month later…

 

We are now in the North, and all very nice, too, if one has a portable dwelling place. A full day’s search for somewhere to live has proved fruitless, and I begin to think we shall have to live in a tent. It isn’t a question of not finding a place we like, either, it is simply that there isn’t a house or flat to be had. All very discouraging, but we can’t be worried. We can only stay in this hotel (Paisley’s only one) until Monday, so unless we have found something by then, we shall have to stay at some Glasgow hotel, or camp by the roadside. I have been to every estate agent in Paisley, and all of them were downright rude to me when I made enquiries about houses, so I feel quite annoyed with everything. Newspaper columns only advertise “kitchen with two beds inside convenience” which doesn’t sound very attractive.

This is a nice hotel, private and quiet, and with plenty of good service, and we shall be all set for a week anyway, even if we have to starve afterwards.

We took two days to drive up here, because the car was very heavily loaded, and we didn’t want to bust the back axle. We stayed at a dear little country hotel near Pontrefact in Yorkshire, amid the most beautiful country. The fields were absolute sheets of yellow, where the buttercups grew, and we had a picnic lunch  in Westmorland, in a field full of pink clover, primroses, daisies and buttercups, and a river at the bottom with white ducks swimming about on it. Rufus saw a rabbit and was very excited about it, but liked the ducks even better, and offered to swim off and catch them for us, but we said we didn’t need any just then, thank you. He is marvellously good in the car, and never makes a fuss or leaps wildly about, but sits on the floor and plays with his slipper, or goes to sleep, which is very good, I think. Sorry to be so pessimistic this week, and hope to be able to write a letter full of good news next time. I have no doubt that tomorrow will be another day, and that something will eventuate soon, so I will cheer up about everything, and have another search tomorrow.

Cheerio, Mummy darling, and Eric asked me to send you his best love because you are about the nicest mother-in-law he has - just at present, he added.  All my love, your little Jane.

 

That was on the 1^st June, 1939, and it is now a week later. A lot can happen in a week.

 

As I foretold in my last screed, everything has come right again, and at 5.30 on Tuesday night we signed the Missive, paid a quarter’s rent, and took possession of a flat at the above address. All this after an unceasing search on my part, during the most awful heat, all through a strange city and walking thousands of miles over granite cobbles and pavements. I never realised what an awful  amount of courage is required just to get on a tram in a strange place, and be whizzed off to ‘parts unknown’.

I felt that I was taking my life in my hands every time I did it, and wondered if I would ever see Eric’s dear little moustache again. Truly a terrifying business. After ploughing about in slums, and all sorts of horrid places, and interviewing endless offices labelled ‘McSporran, Kilt and Haggis. House Factors’ and finding nothing but attic flats, (up five flights of stairs and a community bathroom) or bed-sitting-room  with use of kitchen and bathroom, or else ‘Tasty furnished modern flat, suitable for married couple, 8 bedrooms, 3 reception, 2 bath, handc, 2 garages, kitchen, chauffeur’s quarters and rooms for staff, etc., Very Mod terms’  - well, after all that I was half dead with exhaustion and disappointment, when Roy rang early one morning and said, ‘Mrs Frood heard from a friend that there was a board up outside a flat in Dennistoun. Get a green tram outside Marks and Spencers’ in Sauchiehall Street, and go to 6 Ingleby Drive. Can’t stay to explain further, Goodbye.’

First I found Sauchiehall Street on foot, then the tram stop, then decided that by “green tram” Roy must have meant the bright orange two-decker tram with narrow green stripe round the top (almost invisible) and uttering a few prayers for my safe return, I set out on my perilous journey. The conductor directed me to Ingleby Drive, and it was ten minutes’ walk from the tram to the flat. Apply to McSporran and Haggis for information, at a different address, which I did, and walked 20 minutes back along the tram line, to be sent back to Ingleby drive for the keys, which were left at a house further along!

I examined the flat, which had been occupied previously by a man and his two sons, and there were entanglements of odd electrical wiring all over the place and festoons of flex and gadgets in every odd corner.

The place was fairly clean, however, and beautifully light, but certain repairs want doing to window cords and blinds. The sitting room is lovely, a good size with a lot of windows at one end, and a single one at the other end, a good plain mahogany coloured mantel shelf, and a built-in cupboard. It is a large enough room to be both dining and sitting-room, which means that we can use the proper bedroom for a spare room, because it is very small, and the medium-sized dining room will be our bedroom. The kitchen is large and light and airy, with lots of cupboard space and an alcove at one end big enough for a double bed - a common idea in Scotland, where nearly every main kitchen has an alcove that can be curtained off, with a bed in it.

The stove is a long fuel one, with gas rings set on top of the oven end of it, and in the oven as well, so the range need only be burning when hot water is wanted in the tank, for baths and things. Everyone burns coal in the fuel stoves here, which is a messy business, but doesn’t worry me. The bathroom is quite all right, although the bath is a tiny bit leprous, but we can paint that quite happily. There is a hall, out of which all the rooms open, and on one side of the front door is a place about as big as the Roseville pantry, only wider, with a few shelves and hooks. We shall hang all our overcoats in there, and shall use it as a wardrobe too, to save buying one until we are rich. It has a door and is close to the bedroom, so it will be quite handy.

The other side of the front door there is another room, the size of the maid’s room at the flat, only long and narrow, and rather dark because the window is small and high up, and only opens into the hallway entrance  to the building. This will be a fine place for all our baggage to be stored in, and Rufus and Beezer can sleep there at night too, so it is very handy as well.

Eric could only examine the flat from the outside, because when I took him to see it that evening the woman who minds the keys was out. He peered under the blinds and saw enough to satisfy him, and we went straight to the factor’s and fixed all the business arrangements. The rent is £43 p.a. with rates amounting to about £17 a year. Even at this (and they may be less) we shall be paying less than 30/- a week, and that includes electricity too, so we are lucky again with our rent accounts.

Well, the next excitement was about buying furniture. During my travels I certainly learnt my Glasgow, and spotted second-hand furniture shops where we got a very good 3 piece lounge suite for £4/5/-!! The cover is a tiny bit repulsive, but we can live with it very happily, and next month will be able to afford loose covers for it. The springs are all perfect, and the couch has three cushions and good castors, so have the chairs, and we were extraordinarily lucky in our purchase, don’t you think? Then we got a large old chester-drawers, like the cedar ones you had, only mahogany, with a secret drawer, and all for 25/-! - in good condition and nice and solid, and all the drawers run so well that I expect Daddy or grandpa must have made them.

We move in next Wednesday, so I shall be rather busy for a day or two. We are going along in the weekend to varnish a few floors and paint the bath, and they should all be dry by the time we go there to live. At present we are dwelling in a bed-sitting room, (being cheaper than a hotel) in a quiet street in the city, but the back of the house is in a slummy district and not over pleasant, or cheerful, but one can’t worry about that when one only has “slender means”. The food is poor too, but darling Eric is very patient about it, and now that we have a house to move to everything seems much better, and we are very happy wherever we are.

Well, the next excitement was about buying furniture. During my travels I certainly learnt my Glasgow, and spotted second-hand furniture shops where we got a very good 3 piece lounge suite for £4/5/!! The cover is a tiny but repulsive, but we can live with it very happily, and next month will be able to afford loose covers for it. The springs are all perfect, and the couch has three cushions and good castors, so have the chairs, and we were extraordinarily lucky in our purchase, don’t you think? Then we got a large old chester-drawers, like the cedar ones you had, only mahogany, with a secret drawer, and all for 25/-! - in good condition and nice and solid, and all the drawers run so well that expect Daddy or grandpa must have made them.

 

Jane’s father was a fine woodworking craftsman, and owned a lot of woodworking tools left to him by his wife’s  father, Edwin Stow Berry (1845-1934), who himself was a woodworker of some note, who in turn was left the same tools by his father, William Berry (1805-1888), a cabinet maker from Essex and London. Some of the furniture they made is still in use by members of the family.

 

The most exciting purchase was a set of six old rosewood dining chairs, with curved backs, and curved front legs and hideous white and pink loose covers over even worse red seats - all of which I shall remove. When
we have the lounge suite covered I shall get extra stuff and do the dining chairs myself, to match, and they will be lovely. I’m so thrilled with them, and they go with the mahogany dining table quite well, and have quite an air about them. They are very like the cedar dining chairs Janet bought, but instead of a straight bar across the back, they have a very graceful curved piece. Anyway, I shall certainly send you a photograph some fine day. They only cost 12/6 each, but when they have been covered and polished they will look very expensive and beautiful. Yesterday I visited a thousand furniture shops to find out about beds, and after talking the matter over with Eric in the evening, I went this morning and purchased a nice plain dark oak bed, with
a “dull” finish to match the wardrobe Eric already has. I also got a “spring” mattress costing £4/15/- but well worth it, and a cover for the wire mattress, so as to prolong the life of the mattress ticking. The mattress is one of those thick ones with springs inside and a pretty blue cover. The bedstead had a plain head- and foot-boards with curved and bevelled tops - and I got one with practically no figuring in the wood because I hate the tortured-looking wood that most modern furniture is made of.

So that is that, and by next letter we will have just moved in, so I shall only be able to write a little bit, but will tell you all the fun. I write on Thursdays, and we move in next Wednesday, so I shall be rather busy for a day or two. We are going along in the weekend to varnish a few floors and paint the bath, and they should all be dry by the time we go there to live. At present we are dwelling in a bed-sitting room, (being cheaper than a hotel) in a quiet street in the city, but the back of the house is in a slummy district and not over pleasant, or cheerful, but one can’t worry about that when one only has “slender means”. The food is poor too, but darling Eric is very patient about it, and now that we have a house to move to everything seems much better, and we are very happy wherever we are.