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Wednesday, 10 December 2008

A Magic Childhood

By Pat Temiz who writes a community information website, Fethiye Times, for ex-pats living in southwest Turkey.

My parents married in 1943, when my father was home on leave from the Royal Air Force. After a three-day honeymoon, he went off to North Africa and my mother didn’t see him again until he finally came home in 1946.

As a child he had been fascinated with the entertainers who appeared twice nightly at the local variety theatre; he had an uncle who was caretaker of the building and sneaked him in for free. In North Africa he got involved with entertaining the troops and learned his first simple magic tricks. When he came home in 1946, he was determined to be a magician and, I have no doubt, he saw fame and fortune in his future.

His first act comprised himself dressed as an Arab sheikh, my mother and two of her friends in flimsy harem costumes and lots of large cabinets and brass bowls in which flames could be kindled. By 1948, when she was pregnant with me, my mother had vetoed this performance, as she worried about his performing alone with flimsily clad females when she was too large to take part.

Instead, he created a new act which involved white doves, rabbit and lots of smaller props that he could easily transport to the church halls and private functions where he mainly performed.

My mother’s mother lived with us so, when my parents were out at night performing, she looked after me. However, my grandmother was a dour, teetotal widow, not in the best of health and by around 1954, she no longer wanted the responsibility of an active child several evenings each week. So I became part of the act.

Here we all are in 1954. This was our business card and on the back, along with contact details it says “If it’s laughter you’re after - magic, mirth and mystery with The Bartons.”

I loved it. Traveling all over the north of England in a succession of beat-up vehicles, sleeping on the back seat on the way home and never missing a day of schooling. For me it really was magic. I had my own tricks which I did with my father. I remember walking on stage with a huge painting book that had no colour in it. One wave of my father’s magic wand and I flicked the pages to reveal all the beautifully coloured pictures.

Then in early 1959, disaster struck. I was kept in after school for misbehaviour by a teacher with whom I had, to put it mildly, a personality conflict. That evening we were to perform in a place called Halifax about 40 miles away but, in those days of no highways and bad fog in the winter, at least a two-hour journey.

I sat in the classroom as ordered and watched the hands on the clock tick by. Mrs Litherland, the teacher, was at her desk catching up on marking. At 5PM, I burst into tears and when Mrs Litherland said, “And what is it now?” I replied, “We’re on in Halifax at half past seven.”

And my illicit evening employment was no longer a secret. She let me go, warning me that she would be speaking with the headmaster the next morning. Fortunately, he was also the organist at my mother’s church so a few days later, when my parents were called to the school, he offered them the choice of my “retiring” from the act or their being prosecuted for “child labour.” Obviously they chose the former option and I retired just short of my eleventh birthday.

Whilst he never achieved the fame and fortune he had aspired to, my father did become a pillar of the local community and the extra money earned from performing was always a very welcome supplement to the wages from a variety of “day jobs” he did throughout his life. And I certainly had a magic childhood.

[EDITORIAL NOTE: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. Instructions are here.]

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