Lisa Smith Extract from The Land of Milk and Honey January 1981
A
t home time there was the usual procession of mums and children snaking towards the Geoffrey Chaucer Estate. Most of the pupils at Samuel Pepys Primary lived in the silver-grey maisonettes, which sprawled northwards from the school gates, until eventually nestling at the banks of the Thames. Some also lived in the two tower blocks that rose from the centre of the housing complex: Becket House and Pilgrims Court, each twenty-four floors of concrete, steel and glass. I’d heard that all the homes on the estate had fitted kitchens, modern bathrooms and central heating blowing out through vents in the wall. Mum had put her name on the waiting list for a flat on the Estate four years ago. We were still waiting. I lived in a house on a street the council had earmarked for demolition in the 1960s, but had never got around to pulling down. 59 Lime Grove had draughty sash windows and an ice-cold bathroom squashed between the kitchen and the outside loo. The house belonged to my Auntie Sybil and her husband Earl. They and their four children slept in the three bedrooms on the first floor, while Mum and I had the attic room. Miss Gladys slept on the ground floor, in what had once been the dining room. I was standing at the pelican crossing. The cold seeped through the knit of my scarf, so I wound it around my neck once more, doubling its thickness. I pressed the button again. “You walk home by yuself?” Connie said, arriving at my side. “Yeah. I’m almost eleven,” I said without looking at him, willing the green man to appear. “So you nuh live in the flats over there-sah?”
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