Police Whistle

On two separate occasions in my early twenties I lived in Stamford Hill in North London. It's quite an unremarkable place where not all that much occurs outside of its big Hasidic community. It did seem to attract peculiar people though, and one couple that I would often see during my expeditions to Safeways stood out. They were in their forties but carried on like they were in their twenties, always exclaiming and laughing and pushing each other in the street. She had long blonde hair, was quite plump and always grinned, he wore a huge red felt hat, a coat with massive lapels and was as tall as a ten year old boy. On one occasion he stopped me on the street, as I was walking past the overground station.

He pointed to an old police whistle that I used to have tied into the button hole of the breast pocket of my coat. It had been my father's, from the days when he had been a police cadet in Birmingham. He remarked on it in a squeaky voice and seemed very pleased when he correctly identified it. 'I've always wanted one of those' he squeaked.

Later that week, in answer to a classified ad that intrigued me ('an Aladdin's cave of marvellous junk and antiques. Everything must go!'), I found myself in a Chelsea townhouse. A lady, who had amassed an astonishing amount of junk, was selling the lot. She was a compulsive hoarder, every bit of space in the rooms, every step of the staircases even, was filled with ancient rubbish. When I got there she explained, in a Chelsea drawl, that her son and daughter, who arrived while I was sifting through the junk, were forcing her to conduct the sale on anticipation of the house being sold. Having to part with her rubbish was making the old lady anxious and short tempered. 'But can't I just keep this, can't I just keep that,' she would say as she stumbled on this and that, 'Just remember Tigger,' she screamed in her son's face, oblivious to my being there, 'I'm only doing this because you tell me to do this.' The daughter sighed and stroked her hair, saying, with a lisp, 'stay calm mother, do try to relax.' There was also some ongoing dispute between the children regarding the Parisian hotel that the daughter managed and they hissed and chastised each other constantly under their breath, apparently it was something to be kept from their mother.

Tigger drove me to Sloane Square Underground Station in his battered Volvo and narrated constantly. He was friendly, absent minded and candid, telling me his life story as we waited in traffic, although he was reluctant to talk about the mysterious dispute with his sister. Years later the film 'Grey Gardens' made me think about this family.

I had travelled quite a distance to experience the Aladdin's cave of rubbish but, despite their being such a huge quantity of stuff, there had been very little worth buying. I went home with some London Underground information leaflets printed in the 1950s that I didn't really want and two police whistles. One for the man with the hat and one for me.

A few days later I spotted him from the window of my room, at the crowded bus stop across the road. I rushed downstairs and made straight for the man in the felt hat, searching my coat pockets for the whistle. He took a step back and gave an odd, accusatory yelp of ‘I don’t know you!’ I tried to explain but he didn't seem to understand a word. We had already attracted a lot of attention and I was unsure how long it would be until a well meaning member of the public saved the man in the hat from me if I didn't find the whistle soon. The disapproving eyes were suddenly focussed on the bus that arrived in a flurry, the man looked relieved, I found the whistle, I held it out, he paused, grabbed it and jumped on the bus.

Whenever I saw him again on the streets of Stamford Hill he didn't appear to recognise me.