If my mother or father thought we weren’t
working hard enough, or we weren’t that
bothered or we didn’t appreciate how hard
it all was back in this place they came from
but where we never went, this place called
the ‘East End’, one of them would say,
‘You’ll end up like the Michaelsons.’
Who were the Michaelsons? We never met
the Michaelsons. It didn’t matter. If we weren’t
working hard enough - out it came: ‘You’ll
end up like the Michaelsons’.
‘I’ve never seen poverty like it,’ my mother
said. ‘They had bed bugs. There were bed
bugs in the tenements. The Michaelsons
had bed bugs. That’s how poor they were.’
So we didn’t end up like the Michaelsons.
