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make his way to the Lane and the ‘commission agent’ office, to take bets from the more affluent punters who had a phone, could ring through their bets and run an account: all totally legit. Early evening – and at lunchtime – once the pubs were open, he’d stroll round the corner to Houndsditch and park himself at the bar of the George & Dragon, drinking, wisecracking, swapping stories or taking illegal bets from punters; his usual gang of cronies, small-time crooks, market stallholders and cops around him, ordering big rounds of drinks for all and generally having a whale of a time. The Old Man, now in his sixties, would sometimes join him. But he was slowing down somewhat, hence his need for his son and heir to step in and keep the punters happy.
    The pub doubled as a virtual office. If Ginger had a good day’s wins and came out ahead, the rounds for his gang – and often anyone else who happened to drop in – were frequent and generous. If he’d lost, the rounds were a bit more muted. Then, usually at closing time, he’d hail a cab by Liverpool Street station to take him down the sometimes foggy, almost traffic-free, streets to Dalston and home. On Sundays, when there was no racing, he’d usually venture out to the pub for the 12 to 2pm session, come home, eat lunch and sleep off the week’s transactions.
    This was his working life, primarily a man’s world and a pretty macho one at that.
    The first time he took my mum into a pub and asked her what she wanted to drink, she timorously suggested an orange squash.
    My dad looked at her and started laughing.
    ‘An orange squash!’
    ‘Umm … well, I think that would be nice … or a lemonade,’ said my poor mum, floundering, not really knowing what she should be asking for since it was the first time she’d even been inside a public house. Public houses, East End or otherwise, did not form any part of the world she’d grown up in. They were totally unknown territory.
    ‘Look, I can’t go up to the bar and ask for lemonade,’ explained my dad patiently to this attractive young woman he’d already fallen for. She always seemed to be smiling. Or laughing.
    ‘They all know me in here. They’ll think there’s something wrong with me if I do that. ’ave a gin and it (gin with Italian vermouth), instead.’
    That, in a nutshell, was my dad’s world. Buying stiff drinks, taking bets, having a laugh, taking the mickey out of his cronies – my dad was a terrible prankster, often crudely humorous. The butt of his jokes would often be the neighbours in the Lane and their families. One example was a Polish family who lived around the corner from the office. At some point, the family, whose surname was unpronounceable to locals, had been dubbed ‘The Polos’. Over time, as the mother produced child after child, one each year until there were seven kids, the nickname changed to reflect the popular advert of the late fifties: Polo, the mint with a hole.
    Then, somehow, Mrs Polo became known around the place as ‘the bint wiv an ’ole’.
    Having the bookies’ wad of readies to flash around obviously gave my dad a bit of gravitas in the upside-down, post-war East-End world, where one section of the population had very little and really struggled to get by, while the others, the traders, black marketeers or stallholders with cash, traded back and forth in virtually anything portable that you can think of – and didn’t really go without much. Unless, of course, they had a serious betting habit – and many did.
    Even in those cash-poor years, it wasn’t unknown for the occasional dedicated punter to lay down a ‘monkey’ (£500) on a single bet. When you consider that even a ‘pony’ (£25) represented roughly two-and-a-half times the average working man’s weekly wages in the late forties, it’s obvious that some bookies were scoring very high in the prosperity stakes. And quite a few gambling men lost their shirts – and more.
    All in all,