My childhood part four – early tears at home

My childhood – the early years Part 4

I don’t really recall my first summer break at home, I had started school in the Easter and the main Summer holiday was soon upon me, I do recall the excitement of my elder siblings thinking it was the best day of their lives when it was the last day of term.

So let’s jump forward to when I am six years old, it is the Summer of 1958. The main thing stored in my memory bank for some unknown reason is the fact that the fish shop around the corner put a notice in their window saying that they apologised for having to put up the price of Cod because of the war, I couldn’t understand why after being over for 13 years the war should suddenly affect the price of the much loved fish, I found out later that the ‘war’ they were talking about was the Cod war between England and Iceland over fishing rights.

Even at that early age I was always the budding entrepreneur and looking for ways to make a penny or two for treats like an everlasting gobstopper or sherbet dip, The chip shop was one way I could make a few pennies, all fish and chips in those days would be wrapped in newspaper, I would go around the street asking the neighbours for old newspapers, if they weren’t propping up a dodgy armchair cushion these would then be taken to the chip shop in exchange for a penny, a small fortune in the hands of a six year old. Of course, farthings were still legal tender back then, they actually stopped being legal in 1960. Another way of making money was with potato peelings! As I said, I came from a large family, so you can imagine the pile of potato peelings that would accumulate on a Sunday morning, well I would take those peelings to Mrs Charles on the estate, she kept chickens and would always take them and give me a penny. Another favourite was to scour the local tip – or rubbish dump, there were always old bottles with a threepenny return on the top, find one of these and you could retire for the day!

Anyway, back to my Summer of 1958, the last week in July and the first week in August was known as the factory fortnight, not many could afford to go away and travelling abroad was never heard of, that was only for the rich. But the difference it did make was in the town centre, on a normal working day at exactly twelve o clock the town filled up with people pouring out from the carpet factories, the men would all make their way to the nearest pub (yes, you could drink in those days and return to work to run machinery), the women would fill the food shops looking for the teatime meal, the younger women filled the record shops and few clothes shops, or the youngsters as in boys and girls fresh from school would normally walk around heckling each other or arranging dates.

At exactly one o clock the town was drained of all life once again by the return to work, all that was left were pensioners and young mums pushing their newborns proudly in their new silver cross prams. So, as I said, in the factory fortnight the town was like a ghost town, well perhaps not that bad but very quiet.

In the heart of the town was a huge indoor market, this was an Aladdin’s cave for youngsters, you could buy lead soldiers, toy guns, dolls, you could even take your old comics and exchange them for a halfpenny! There were record stalls, where you could don headphones and listen to new songs from stars like the young upstart that shook his hips evocatively, his name was Elvis.

Music has always played a big part in my life, I hear a record and it conjures up so many memories for me, Elvis had dominated so far but Cliff Richard was about to burst onto the scene with ‘Move it’. Along with Bill Haley, the Everley brothers and Buddy Holly they were the forerunners of rock n roll. The charts previously had been dominated by crooners like Pat Boone and Michael Holliday, Connie Francis led the invasion of the girls, The Quarrymen were also formed in 58 and were later to rename themselves the Beatles.

The big story of the year was so sad and has been etched in my memory over the years. In February a plane carrying Manchester United’s ‘Busby Babes’ crashed with a great loss of life, this was later to be known as The Munich Air disaster. Twenty three of the forty four died, they included eight Man U players and three of the staff. Duncan Edwards survived the crash but died in hospital 15 days later and the whole world mourned once again. Bobby Charlton survived and went on to play for his country in the 1966 winning world cup squad.

So, back to the summer of 1958, as I said earlier, my dad worked permanent nights so it was a bit of a headache for mum, she had no choice but to send us all out in the morning about nine o clock with strict instructions not to return until four o clock. There were three or four lads in our street around my age and we all grew up together, we would meet in the street in the early morning and sit on the kerb for a while picking the tarmac out of the road or playing with an ants nest till we decided what we were doing that day.

For six year olds at that time there wasn’t a lot to do, so we had to make our own adventures, they would involve a bit of scrumping, or getting a pair of mothers old stockings, making a net and looking for sticklebacks or tadpoles down the stream. We all made our own catapults, we made our own buggies out of old pram wheels and our own rafts to sail on the ‘cut’ (canal) using old oil drums and planks, we put a lot of faith in that raft as none of us could swim! Some days we would simply walk for miles exploring ‘our territory’. If we got hungry we would simply go scrumping in the one of many orchards that were around in those days, failing that, we would find a potato field and just ‘dig up ‘ our lunch peel it with our pocket knives and all was well with the world.

That was another thing about my childhood, every young boy carried some sort of knife, whether it be an ordinary penknife or perhaps a sheath knife hanging from your belt when you were older, in fact you were actually encouraged to have one, it was part of your growing up and a necessity if you were a Boy Scout or in the Boys Brigade, my point is that a knife today is used to inflict harm on others, never ever dreamt of back then. Yes, I know that the Teddy Boys later used ‘Flick Knives’ but even then not on the scale of today.

A regular visitor to our street in those days was the rag and bone man, he would either shout, blow a trumpet or ring a bell, either way you could hear him in the next street, this of course gave you plenty of time to find ‘something’ to exchange for a goldfish which was in a little plastic bag and would never survive the day, it was guaranteed to be flushed by mother sometime during the evening! I have seen many a mother running down the street to ‘reclaim’ Fathers best jumper, cardigan or coat lol!!

Then there were the grass slopes, the Summers were always hot in those days (so it seemed) so we would go to the grocers shop and ask for some big cardboard boxes then use them to slide down the grass banks, that could last all day or until the cardboard wore away and you were wearing out what was left of the seat of your pants, of course the hill would be full of kids of all ages!

If it did dare to rain, then we had to stay in and be quiet, so it was a day for catching up on the comics, the Beano, the Dandy, the Topper, the Boys own, the Beezer, and when I had read all those I would read my sisters comics, I knew more about the Four Mary’s than I did about Lord Snooty or Desperate Dan!

I remember one evening we were playing in the street when Ian’s mother called him in to have his hair washed, about fifteen minutes later we saw him through the downstairs window, his mother was scraping through his mass of blonde hair with a steel nit comb! We ragged him for months about that and made sure that if any of our mothers used a nit comb she drew the curtains first,

Produce was seasonal; for example, in winter a favourite replacement for a green salad was shredded carrot, Cabbage and onion dressed with Heinz Salad Cream – a 1950s version of coleslaw, and very tasty with a couple of slices of haslet or luncheon meat! All bread was mostly freshly baked or brought round by the breadman, that would mostly have been Mother’s Pride. Of course, those amongst us in the street who thought they were a cut above the others (snobs lol) would have their groceries delivered by a lad on a bike with a basket in front (a job I would do a few years later).

Bath night for every child I knew was religiously on a Sunday night, but of course most hot water in those days was only available in the home by lighting a fire, the back boiler would heat the water to fill the bath, but there was never enough so there was always a couple of us in the bath at one time, and usually it would be your elder siblings bathwater, a luxury to the old tin baths though!

My Mum would often open the door to a gang of kids asking if so and so could come out to play, If for some reason my friends weren’t available there was always earwig poking, let me explain, all our gardens were separated by four foot concrete posts with wire running through holes, you could guarantee that earwigs would nest in those holes, so I had fun poking them out with a stick and seeing how many I could find, yes I know – sad – but I was only six years old!

But then, I have forgotten the highlight of the Summer, the local estate days outing, Watch out for it!

Until next time………..