Memoir (an extract)

‘Clouds scudded across a milky sky, raindrops tapped on the port hole in our cabin, the harbourside of the Hook of Holland was now in sight. The engines of SS Avalon rumbled as the ship began the process of docking. The horns from various ships sounded, you could hear a distant ‘clang, clang, clang’ from the land and the voices of men shouting instructions in Dutch. The Night Service from Harwich, Parkeston Quay to the Hook of Holland was arriving.

It would have been a morning in late July 1970. I was with my mother, on our way to spend the summer in the flat belonging to my grandmother on Leopoldstraat in Rotterdam, a journey we had carried out many times in my childhood. Once we returned to England after over five weeks in the Netherlands and my first language was Dutch.

The journey was always the same. My paternal grandfather, Alfred Johansen, would arrive early in the morning at our house on Warrington Road, Brislington (that’s Briz for anyone who’s a proper Bristolian) and drop us at Temple Meads station. We’d take the train to Paddington and – luxury upon luxury – take a cab to Liverpool Street to catch the ‘boat train’ to Harwich. My Dutch grandmother – Oma, as Dutch folk called grans – paid for everything otherwise we’d have been stuck in Briz every year!

I have fleeting memories of the trips. I remember arriving at smoky Paddington (diesel fumes, cigarettes – steam engines had long ceased to operate), I remember boarding the boat train, I remember everything about boarding the SS Avalon or the SS Arnhem and I remember going to our tiny bunk-bedded cabin which we never left during the trip except to visit the bathroom. The next thing we would be squinting at the land of my mother.

The smooth, electrified railway to Rotterdam was such a contrast to the rattly diesel-hauled expresses at home, which I still loved more by the way, and soon we’d be pulling up at Centraal Station in Rotterdam where my only uncle, Koos (Jacobus) Verburg would be there with his car to take us to Leopoldstraat. There I would spend the summer watching trams, playing football with the local Dutch boys and on one glorious day holding the European Cup, won by Feyenoord, which was on public display on the Coolsingel.’

That’s kind of how my memoir is beginning to shape up. I don’t have much of a story to tell, but I still want to tell it, for my benefit, for my family and for my loyal reader. I’ve written circa 50,000 words so far but it needs a complete re-write and a lot more research if I am to self-publish it later this year or early next. Thank you for reading and supporting my writing. It means everything to me.

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