The death of The King.

Here we have a little story set in 1952 – and it's true! A little eight year old boy with the name of Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan was sitting in class at school. Christopher was his Christian name, being a Christian but not the kind of Christian as the school he was attending - as from an Irish immigrant family he was a Catholic – was being the operative word these days in any case.

Thomas was the second name on the birth certificate and Joseph the name on the Baptism certificate. Owen came later, when he was confirmed, and when the teacher asked for full names, in the senior school, he gave him all the names, and was known as that to that teacher forever; especially when he pulled the little side burns of the little boy and said 'so what's your answer to that, Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan? Something Irish? Something witty?'

But enough of that let's go back to 1952.

February 6^th 1952 little Christopher was sitting in class wanting a wee wee; the teacher on this occasion said it was OK for him to go and off he went.

On that same day, Raymond Simmonds was playing the wag from school; playing the wag being the vernacular for playing truant, although playing truant is usually knocking time off from school without your parents' permission. In Raymond's case I think his mother kept him from school that day.

So when I came out of the boys' lavatory – me being Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan - there was Raymond sitting on the school steps. 
Now if I had been playing truant, which I only did once, one afternoon, and which I have been sorry for ever since as that was, apparently, a great science lesson when Mister Edmunds, the science teacher, very bluntly told the class of fourteen year old boys the facts of life.
But back to 1952.
On that day, the first thing Raymond Simmonds said to me was 'The King is dead.'

We knew, even at my tender age of eight, that the king had been ill and in fact he had died in his sleep that morning.

There are two things I remember about the King: one was that he had the same birthday as me – December 14^th – and the other was that I thought he looked like Gary Cooper.

So now (or then) I knew what the teacher didn't know, nor the rest of the class or any of the other teachers. 
But if I went in to class and said something I would be asked how I knew and would get Raymond Simmonds into trouble.

I went back in class and kept it to myself for a while.

Sitting in front of me was Gillian Balmond and next to her was Winifred Bryant; even at that age I was deeply in love with both of them. They would turn around to chat and I would flirt in my little baby ways and eventually I had to tell one of them about the King.

I can't remember which one I told but when I did, she told the other and the other answered back 'Now Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.'

We went home for lunch and of course it was all true. 
There were no cell phones in those days, no Internet and no social media. 
Everything seemed safe and at eight I would walk home by myself; with maybe other kids; maybe a half mile walk and sometimes even raining or in the snow. 
Mothers were at home to feed and love us and the 50s never seemed dismal to me or in black and white. 
It's great me being able to publish this on the Internet and the 191,000 hits from people who read it but look what it has done and the number of zombies it has produced – millennials don't even know how to use a can opener.

On that day mothers outside the school told their children the bad news; the King is dead. Some kids would cry; some of those kids wouldn't even know who the King was as they were too young but the grown ups certainly did. 
The King's wife, Queen Elizabeth, who then became The Queen Mother, short for the Queen's Mother, always, till the end of her long life, blamed the late King's brother David (Edward VIII) who abdicated because of his involvement with Mrs Simpson. A lot of people said Mrs Simpson did a great service to Britain by taking such a dangerous and naïve man out of the running.

The public liked him even though he abandoned Britain during the war, leaving his younger brother and his wife, as The King and Queen, in Britain. During some of the war, David (Edward VIII) lived in America and whilst Churchill was trying to persuade Roosevelt to enter America into the war David, who sympathised with the Nazis together with the air pioneer Charles Lindbergh, tried to get America on the German side; now if you don't believe this look it up. In fact at one point Lindbergh was considering running for President – if you think Trump is bad just ponder on that for a moment.

I don't know who the guy on the left is but there they are: two good looking men, Lindbergh in the middle and David (Edward VIII) on the right.

Times changed a couple of years after the King died. James Dean became the first American teenager and when the draft finished – the call up – it produced plays like Look Back in Anger, music like the blues and Rock'n'Roll and, eventually, The Beatles.

I loved the influx of Jamaicans into our neighbourhood with their great double breasted suits – I remember light blue suits – with their casual walks and great music and their laughter. Even today they are still laughing even though they were treated terribly for many years and even now when some who have been here ever since then found they couldn't get passports to get back in to the country when visiting their homeland.

George VI and school days.

King George VI

There was a kid in my class at school called Raymond Simmons, and one day he took the day off. He wasn't playing truant – playing the wag, we called it – as playing the wag is when your parents send you to school but you don't go – you do something else.

I only ever did that once – I went around to Alan Chance's house and we smoked cigarettes and played rock 'n' roll records. Proper rock 'n' roll records by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis - maybe even Larry Williams.

On the day that Raymond Simmons played the wag, I asked if I could go to the lavatory and, when I went into the playground on my way to the boys lavatories, I saw him; he was putting a stick down a drain and wiggling it about.

I asked him what he was doing out there and he told me that he wasn't at school that day and not to tell the teacher that I'd seen him. His mother had kept him away, pretending he was ill; I went off for my pee and when I returned he was sitting on the steps.

'The King is dead” he said as a matter of fact.

“How do you know?”

“My mom told me; it was on the wireless.”

I went back into the classroom with this heavy piece of knowledge resting in my head. If I told the teacher she would have asked how I knew and I would have had to say that Raymond Simmons told me and then he would be in trouble; or his mother would be so I stayed quiet.

I knew that Princess Elizabeth would now be Queen and I salivated in this cognition knowing that for the time being I knew something important that nobody else in the class room did.

I was comfortable with my secret knowing full well that it was big news which would burst forth into general knowledge fairly soon and then into history.

I would have thought that someone, maybe the headmistress, would have come in and tell our teacher, but no; not a word was mentioned.

When we broke up and went out to lunch I told one or two of the other kids and Carol Ecclestone said “that means Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.”

“No she won't” said another “Princess Margaret will be.”

That was 60 years ago today; and it seems like – 60 years ago!!!!

That was the end of King George VI, who was in the news all last year as he was the subject of the film The King's Speech. His first name wasn't George at all. He was named after his grandfather, Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria's husband and known as Bertie, which is short for Albert.

However Prince Albert was German, and as Bertie came to the throne in 1936 when relations with Germany were at their lowest, he chose his second name to use as his title.

His birthday was on December 14^th – the same day as mine. They would commemorate it on the radio (the wireless in those days) every year and I think they would sing or play 'happy birthday' - and I would think it was for me.

I wasn't there for the first few birthdays, and in any case at that age, I wouldn't have heard it as I was a baby, but 1951 was the last time they played 'happy birthday' on my birthday; these days my children call and sing it to me.

Thought you'd like to know all that!