‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the …’
‘… WALL …’
‘… Humpty Dumpty had a great …’
‘… FALL.’ It kept us amused for ages.
One year Amy was given a little turntable that played nursery rhymes. It was all you heard from her room. Then she had a xylophone and taught herself – slowly and painfully – to play ‘Home On The Range’. The noise would carry through the house, plink, plink, plink, and I’d will her to hit the right notes on time – it was agonizing to have to listen to it.
Despite her charm, ‘Be quiet, Amy!’ was probably the most-heard sentence in our house during her early years. She just didn’t know when to stop. Once she started singing that was it. And if she wasn’t the centre of attention, she’d find a way of becoming it – occasionally at Alex’s expense. At his sixth birthday party Amy, aged two, put on an impromptu show of singing and dancing. Naturally, Alex wasn’t best pleased and, before we could stop him, he poured a drink over her. Amy burst into tears and ran out of the room crying. I shouted at Alex so loudly that he ran out crying too. After the party, Amy sat on the kitchen floor sulking, and Alex wouldn’t come out of his room.
Despite such scenes, Alex and Amy were extremely close and remained so, even when they got older and made their own circles of friends.
Amy would do anything for attention. She was mischievous, bold and daring. Not long after Alex’s birthday party, Janis took Amy to Broomfield Park, near our home, and lost her. A panic-stricken Janis phoned me at work to tell me that Amy was missing and I raced to the park, beside myself with anxiety. By the time I arrived, the police were there and I was preparing myself for the worst: in my mind, she wasn’t lost, she’d been abducted. My mum and my auntie Lorna were also there – everybody was looking for Amy. Clearly, Amy was no longer in the park and the police told us to go home, which we did. Five hours later, Janis and I were crying our eyes out when the phone rang. It was Ros, one of my sister Melody’s friends. Amy was with her. Thank God.
What had happened was just typical of Amy. Ros had been in the park with her kids when Amy had seen her and run over to her. Naturally, Ros had asked where her mummy was, and mischievous Amy had told her that her mummy had gone home. So Ros took Amy home with her, but instead of phoning us, she phoned Melody, who was a teacher. She didn’t speak to her but left a message at the school that Amy was with her. When Melody heard that Ros was looking after Amy, she didn’t think too much about it because she had no idea that Amy was missing. When she got home and heard what had happened, she put two and two together. Fifteen minutes later, Melody walked in with Amy and I burst into tears.
‘Don’t cry, Daddy, I’m home now,’ I remember her saying.
Unfortunately, Amy didn’t seem to learn from that experience. Several months later I took the kids to the Brent Cross shopping centre in north-west London. We were in the John Lewis department store and suddenly Amy was gone. One second she was there and the next she’d disappeared. Alex and I searched the immediate area – how far could she have got? – but there was no sign of her. Here we go again, I thought. And this time she’d definitely been kidnapped.
We widened the search. Just as we were walking past a rack of long coats, out she popped. ‘Boo!’ I was furious, but the more I told her off, the more she laughed. A few weeks later she tried it again. This time I headed straight for the long coats. She wasn’t there. I searched all of the racks. No Amy. I was really beginning to worry when a voice said over the Tannoy, ‘We’ve got a little girl called Amy here. If you’ve lost her, please come to Customer Services.’ She’d hidden somewhere else, got really lost and someone had taken her to a member of staff. I told her there was to be no more hiding or running away when we’re out. She promised she wouldn’t do it again and she didn’t, but the next series of practical jokes was played out to a bigger audience.
When I was a little boy I had choked on a bit of apple and my father had panicked. So, when Alex choked on his dinner, I panicked too, forcing my fingers down his throat to remove whatever was obstructing him. It didn’t take Amy long to start the choking game. One Saturday afternoon we were shopping in Selfridges, in London’s Oxford Street. The store was packed. Suddenly Amy threw herself on to the floor, coughing and holding her throat. I knew she wasn’t really choking but she was creating such a scene that I threw her over my shoulder and we left in a hurry. After that she was ‘choking’ everywhere, friends’ houses, on the bus, in the cinema. Eventually, we just ignored it and it stopped.
* * *
Although I was born in north London, I’ve always considered myself to be an East Ender: I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandparents, Ben and Fanny Winehouse, at their flat above Ben the Barber, his business, in Commercial Street, or with my other grandmother, Celie Gordon, at her house in Albert Gardens, both in the heart of the East End. I even went to school in the East End. My father was a barber and my mother was a ladies’ hairdresser, both working in my grandfather’s shop, and, on their way there, they’d drop me off at Deal Street School.
Amy and Alex were fascinated by the East End so I took them there often. They loved me to tell them stories about our family, and seeing where they had lived brought the stories to life. Amy liked hearing about my weekends in the East End when I was a little boy. Every Friday I went with my mum and dad to Albert Gardens where we’d stay until Sunday night. The house was packed to the rafters. There was Grandma Celie, Great-grandma Sarah, Great-uncle Alec, Uncle Wally, Uncle Nat, and my mum’s twin, Auntie Lorna. If that wasn’t enough, a Holocaust survivor named Izzi Hammer lived on the top floor; he passed away in January 2012.
The weekends at Albert Gardens started with the traditional Jewish Friday night dinner: chicken soup, then roast chicken, roast potatoes, peas and carrots. Dessert was lokshen pudding, made with baked noodles and raisins. Where all those people slept I really can’t remember, but we all had a magical time, with singing, dancing, card games, and loads of food and drink. And the occasional loud argument mixed in with the laughter and joy of a big happy Jewish family. We continued the Friday-night tradition for most of Amy’s life. It was always a special time for us, and in later years, an interesting test of Amy’s friendships – who was close enough to her to be invited on a Friday night.
I spent a lot of time with the kids at weekends. In February 1982, when Alex was nearly three, I started taking him to watch football – in those days you could take young kids and sit them on your lap: Spurs v. West Bromwich Albion. It was freezing cold, so cold that I didn’t want to go, but Janis dressed Alex in his one-piece padded snowsuit, which made him look twice his size – he could hardly move. When we got there I asked him if he was okay. He said he was. About five minutes after kick-off he wanted to go to the Gents. Getting him out of that padded suit was quite an operation, and then it took another ten minutes to get him into it again. When we got back to the seat, he needed to go again so we had an action replay. At half-time, he said, ‘Daddy I want to go home – I’m home-sick.’
When Amy was about seven, I took her to a match. When we got home Janis asked her if she’d enjoyed it. Amy said she’d hated it. When Janis asked why she hadn’t asked me to bring her home, she said, ‘Daddy was enjoying it and I didn’t want to upset him.’ That was typical of the young Amy, always thinking of other people.
At five Amy started at Osidge Primary School, where Alex was already a pupil. There she met Juliette Ashby, who quickly became her best friend. Those two were inseparable and remained close for most of Amy’s life. Her other great friend at Osidge was Lauren Gilbert: Amy already knew her because Uncle Harold, my dad’s brother, was Lauren’s step-grandfather.
Amy had to wear a light-blue shirt and a tie, with a sweater and a grey skirt. She was happy to join her big brother at school, but she was soon in trouble. Every day she was there could easily have been her last. She didn’t do anything terrible but she was disruptive and attention-seeking, which led to regular complaints about her behaviour. She wouldn’t be quiet in lessons, she doodled in her books and she played practical jokes. Once she hid under the