MEMOIR: THE WHISTLE

 

I don’t know where my Dad first learnt to whistle. Perhaps, it was playing in the outside orchestra of East End market streets; Billingsgate Fish market or Spitalfields? My grandfather, also called John Teal, was a driver of a horse drawn carriage for the Co-operative Stores, possibly picking up ‘flesh, fowl and roots’ from Spitalfields and delivering to retail outlets across London.

         My Dad was born in 1912, before the car was popular, and he told us stories about how as kids, he and his mates would jump on the back of horse drawn carriages hitching lifts, hidden from the driver’s view, or like Fagin’s children pinching fruit from wheelbarrows or market stalls. Perhaps he was whistled at by an irate carriage driver or incandescent market stall vendor?

       To whistle, he put his two forefingers and two little fingers in his mouth (what a mouthful!) producing the sort of screech that would have brought a pack of Arctic wolves or stampede of migrating caribou up the New Kings Road, no messing. He would lean out of the kitchen window of our top floor flat and whistle me home for dinner or tea. I was playing three streets away and not always outside, sometimes inside a friend’s house. But there was no mistaking that whistle and I knew food was about to be put on the table. Woe be tide me if I was late.

        Our annual holiday was sometimes spent at a Holiday Camp. On one occasion my Dad entered a knobbly knees competition. He could move his knees up and down whilst whistling or humming. At the time there was an act performed on a Saturday night variety show called ‘Opportunity Knocks.’ The guy had a face painted on his back. When he moved his back muscles it resembled a face smiling, angry or contorted. He did this to a well-known organ music tune. Dad could do that with his knees.  He won the competition.

      In later life in the rare event of calling a taxi he would use the same whistle and he could bring traffic to a standstill. He tried to teach me how but I could never get the technique, and whistling in those days was not considered to be very ‘ladylike.’ I can’t whistle now, even if I’m pursing my lips inviting a kiss. Although, without my denture I can produce a whistle while I’m talking, which can sound like I’m a ventriloquist or have a mild speech impediment. However, the tradition has not been entirely lost and is handed down through marriage.  My husband lead groups of children whistling, ‘Bridge on the River Kwai,’ and other songs at school Eisteddfods. They won prizes for whistling. If I’m feeling down my husband will whistle me a little tune like Julie Andrews in the film, ‘The King and I’. It’s the perfect cheer-up medicine.

Janet Daniel.   March 29 2013