Amityville
Amityville
The house I grew up, in the place that became known as Amityville, was not in fact a house. It was a bungalow built in the 1920s with the original fireplaces that worked if you were to use them so they’ve never been bricked up but storage heaters had been added that used electricity on the cheap nighttime rate. there was otherwise no heating in this house was often cold. single glazed metal framed windows and my mother had it painted pink. The pink was the colour of paint that used to be toxic because it contained lead or some other chemical and as a home the bungalow was toxic indeed.
My parents bought it when they were in their late 20s and I was 11 months old. they were moving out of An area of London that is now densely And diversely populated. Both my parents were from poor working class London backgrounds. Both were raised in council properties; my mum in a council flat and my dad in a council house by single parents - my dad because his own dad died when he was three and my mum because her dad walked out, returning when she was 14.
Mums mum worked at the car factory as a metal assembly and dads mum seemed to work in some kind of factory canteen. Both sets of grandparents smoked, with nan smoking continuously. I swear she even smoke when she slept.
They bought the house to get out of London and couldn’t really afford to do that properly so it was a small house that was somewhat ramshackle when They bought it and was never maintained since. two bedrooms one for the parents and one for the children my parents wardrobes and the fridge freezer all lived in the hallway. a washing machine lived in the shed, and everything else for the kitchen was well in the kitchen which was a kind of extension That had been built on the house previously. there is no driveway but neither of my parents drove. that is common for Londoners, but in my dad‘s case it was because he was blind. Mum never drove, and she did try to learn later in life, but her bipolar disorder made on suitable for learning to drive and she never achieve that before her premature death at 64.
Being a Quaker not driving and not owning a car fitted with the idea of simplicity. But that’s not really the reason.
So this cold house with single glazing and metal windows it’s condensation and ice on the inside of the windows it’s lack of heating it’s draughty fireplaces there is no central heating so hot water was quite rare and quite often we filled the bath with kettles, is where I grew up. All the floors were covered with plastic floor tiles for the walls with white washed until later when mum added a green carpet to the hall and rainbow coloured doors and a paper hot air balloon for a lampshade.
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