Whitehorse Road was a long, straight road. The part that was our territory must have been about 1/3 mile long. It went on a little further but we knew little of that. The time it would have taken to walk along the whole length of the road by the shops would have taken, I should think, about 10 minutes.

The shops were on both sides of the road and in the middle of the road in the 20s went trams with the attendant tramlines. They were replaced in the 30s by trolley buses. Buses always ran. The buses had stairs going outside the bus. These were replaced with inside stairs in the 30s.

Also travelling along were delivery vans, flat open horse-driven carts, heavier horses and carts for milk, beer and coal. Then there were handcarts for people like knife grinders and chimney sweeps - and a barrel organ! There were many bicycles including delivery or errand boy bikes, tricycles with huge baskets in the front, ice-cream tricycles, usually blue and white Walls’ Ice Cream. There were Post Office vans and bicycles, telegraph messenger bikes, walking postmen, tradesmen of all kinds, road sweepers, but very few cars.

I cannot remember whether the bread van was mechanically driven or driven by horse and cart. The deliveries of bread were daily and the milk twice a day as were the posts – the last probably three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening.

The road started from Spurgeon’s Baptist Chapel. That end of the Road was nearest to Croydon town centre which was, I should say, about a mile away. In the other direction, the Thornton Heath, Selhurst direction, the road would have ended at a cinema, called, I think, the Luxor, which was called also the fleapit and we never went there! The Luxor was not exactly on the Whitehorse Road but on a fork, I believe in Windmill Road, but I always felt that it was at the extreme end of our road and was the only really identifiable building there that I remember. As I said, Whitehorse Road did, in fact go on further but I did not take that in at the time.

The only other notable building that I remember in the road was the ‘Gillett and Johnson’ clock tower (this firm is still there click on http://www.gillettjohnston.co.uk/ for more information). It was not actually in Whitehorse Road but a little way up a side street but the square clock tower overshadowed the whole area. They were bell casters and traded all over the world. I have seen almost identical clock towers in many places in this country. Whether Gillett and Johnson designed them as well, I don’t know.

The side street where they operated led to another side street that was out of bounds to us and was where the costers lived. Our Brown Owl took us down there once for some unknown reason, and we were booed and laughed at all the way and everybody there threw their vegetable peelings into the gutters.
On our side of Whitehorse Road, the side street by us, Strathmore Road was semi-out of bounds to us. There seemed no point in going down there anyway. There was nothing important for us there. A girl, who was an albino, from there once stood for a couple of days to hit me. I don’t know why. But she soon gave up. Other side streets along Whitehorse Road, as far as I remember, were the same, of no consequence to us. Our territory was the main road.

The shops were, as far as I recollect, all one-man businesses, largely terraced. They sold everything you can imagine. There were butchers, sweet shops, antiques, fish and chips, newsagents and sweet/tobacconists, knitting wools and crafts, spring mattress makers (ours), furniture, delicatessen which sold pease pudding and faggots as well as jellied eels and other delicacies, bakers, carpets, rugs and lino, hardware, greengrocery, boots and shoes, dairy, – you name it, it was there.

There were plenty of characters. I remember Mr. Burstoe, the coster who came around with his open, flat cart with greengrocery. Mother always bought from him though he was dearer than the stalls in Surrey Street in the town. He was a tall, thin man, always respectful but, as I remember him, never exactly friendly and addressed mother as ‘ma’am’.

Then there was the milkman, in his uniform, including peaked hat, very efficient, knew exactly where to leave the milk during the day at the top of the basement stairs down where we lived. Always pleasant but in and out in a trice. A nice, good, working man.

Our music teacher was one of two spinsters who kept the boot and shoe shop down the road. She was the dominant one of the two – a tall, big boned, angular woman we called fish face because when she was playing the piano she pushed her lips out and assumed a frog-like expression. She taught the piano for 6d an hour but naturally we were ‘posh’ and paid by the quarter. She wasn’t a bad musician, I believe, but what a soulless life for her, with a sister who wasn’t ‘xactly’, to use a Cornish expression, trying to teach little monsters who did only the minimum of practice that was required of them – and that under total duress and belonging to those families with delusions of grandeur.

Then there was the sanitary inspector mother called in from time to time. He was called Mr. Hunt. To my surprise and wonder, he turned out to be the man in charge of the Band of Hope club we went to on a Monday night at the Baptist chapel. He was a quiet, reserved but quite severe man. Within these qualifications, I never did see him smile in either of his capacities. But more of him on both counts later.

Then there was Mr. Risby! He opened the antiques shop nearly opposite us, and, as I remember, next to the fish and chip shop. He was a medium-tall built man, gingery in colouring I believe, wore spectacles and a soft trilby. Neat, dapper and very superior, well-mannered, - ‘proper’. He came for a cup of tea every Wednesday. I think mother liked him because she was very interested in old furniture. I don’t remember what their conversations centred around – if anything. But he was always a source of quiet, very respectful, of course, humour to Marion and myself. He sipped his tea very carefully and respectfully and was generally a very pleasant man though a source of fun for the two of us. I believe he gave Marion something. I can’t remember if he gave me anything, though Marion says he did.

We moved from No. 24 to No.28 in the 20’s I believe. We moved to a corner property that had a bigger shop area. We had a large picture of a lady, sitting on a fallen tree trunk dressed in a long, black skirt and lacy, white blouse – Edwardian costume - in our passageway and I can remember asking mother if we were going to take ‘the picture of the lady in the funny hat’ with us, and she replying, laughing, ‘but that’s me’. I cried and cried because I thought I may have upset her. This was, I believe, before I went to school and I was born in 1924 so I could only have been three or four years old when we moved.

The earliest memory I have is of Marion and I in the old-fashioned, bucket-like pram. Marion was at the top and myself at the bottom, facing each other. We were having a gay old time pulling her dummy between us, laughing and screeching. We stretched it as long as we could make it. I suppose they were made of rubber in those days. Mother warned her and warned her about breaking it – again. Eventually, I understand, she kept her word and didn’t replace it. Apparently Marion felt for it in the middle of the night but soon got used to the idea that it was not going to be there any more.

In our daily routine, we’d get up as late as possible – 8.30 am as I remember, go downstairs, perhaps wash our face and hands if we couldn’t get away with not, make ourselves breakfast with a slice of bread, butter and jam, a cup of cocoa with water and a dash of milk, and off to school we’d rush. I remember mother before that time cooking porridge for our breakfast, I’m pretty sure in a double saucepan, but it was always lumpy and burnt and I think she got fed up with complaints and refused to see us off to school so stayed in bed. I hated milk puddings anyway. I could tolerate normal rice, but not ground rice or tapioca. I cannot name the year in which Mum left us to see ourselves off to school. It seemed for ever.

We walked to Holy Trinity Primary School that was about a mile away, along Northcote Road to Selhurst . We walked home for dinner and walked back for afternoon lessons. To get to our senior School, Lady Eldridge Central School, being in the same direction but another mile away, we went to by trolleybus for which we bought special, cheaper tickets. I’m not sure, but I think the school administered these.

We would come home from school around 4pm and mother would have, usually, a sweet tea for us; plenty of bread, butter and home-made jam, plus one slice of cake. We had to ask for each thing before taking it from the serving plate. Very, very occasionally there would be meat or fish paste, which I liked.

We would then do various activities – knit, sew, draw, play cards, do homework if we couldn’t get out of it, do our piano practice, go to the Band of Hope on a Monday, then Guides, Brownies, Sunday School and sometimes chapel.

Before we went to Spurgeon’s Baptist Chapel (the chapel is still there, click on http://www.westcroydon.com/ ) we went to St. Michael and All Angels’ High Church (the church is still active today and has a web site, click on http://www.croydonstmichael.org.uk/ ). The boys had been choir boys there and Ivor, at least, attended there for some long time. The church people were not very pleased when Molly, Marion and I changed denominations!

Sometimes in the evenings or weekend afternoons mother would let us play with her button bag. We would sort them by shape, colour, size; any variation we could think of and sometimes they’d be soldiers lined up, etc. She may not have realised it, but young children are now given this kind of sorting to do in school. It is a precursor to calculation.

She would read us stories and poems and we took part in local concerts with Band of Hope and Brownies and with Sunday School, perhaps.

Sometimes Dad would play cards with us. Mother never, ever played cards. She was brought up as a Primitive Baptist so I suppose that was why.

From 6-7pm, according to age, would be bed-time. Every evening before bed, we would ask if we could have an apple or orange and would take one from the cupboard where they were kept, eat it and go to bed. Bananas were out of the question. We never had them because they were ‘bad for the digestion’.

We had no bathroom and I don’t think that mother was particularly concerned whether we cleaned our teeth or not. That supervision was more in principle rather than in practice. We had all the necessary ingredients and tools but it was more a matter of clamping down on us sometimes. I seem to remember washing face and neck in the bowl in the scullery and suppose that must have been a daily task, probably before we went to bed. After kissing Mum and Dad goodnight on the cheek, we went upstairs. They both, especially mother, accepted the kiss, but didn’t bother to return it. Perhaps there was a little more response from Dad.

This, then, was our general routine. We weren’t tired enough to sleep half the time and would stand at the window which looked sideways on to the main street. We would listen to the sounds of laughter and chanting which came from the pub on the diagonally opposite corner, which our family never frequented, it being a ‘coster pub’. Saturday nights were the noisiest, when the men and the women came out onto the pavement at chucking out time and continued their singing and dancing ‘knees-up’ before dispersing.

Our house was a four-storey place. The living quarters were behind and below the shop. Our living room was in the basement. Because Strathmore Road was on quite a steep slope, our garden was on a level with the basement. There was a small lean-to addition at the garden side of the living room which made the latter rather dark, where the gas cooker and the sink were.

On the left-hand side of the garden was an extremely high, wooden fence which was a hoarding with adverts on the street side. We had a gate at the far end of the garden in this hoarding. You had to walk up a slight slope to get to it. I don’t remember using it very much, if at all. It was probably forbidden to us children. On the right-hand side of the garden was the neighbours’ garden. Our neighbours were two maiden ladies, the Miss Hesters, who kept a craft and wool shop. They were very nice people and we rarely saw them. They were very reserved. We must have driven them mad.

Mother grew flowers in the garden. I remember the creeping jenny. I have it in my garden now. And we had a swing that Dad made for us, with very long ropes so one could go very high on it. The others enjoyed it but I could only have 3 or 4 single ups and downs on it before feeling sick so I hardly used it though I wanted to.

I remember in the hot days of summer when we were small, mother would put a zinc bath of water outside for us to play in. We pretended we were at the seaside and we had a doll’s tea service so held tea parties.

We had a dog called Bob until he was run over at the age of thirteen by, I believe, a motor bike and killed. He was our constant companion. He had a kennel in the garden and was a cross, I believe, between a wire-haired terrier and something else.

We would dress him up and would give him rides in our doll’s pram and on our wooden tricycle. He loved nuts and Ivor got him drunk one Christmas by feeding him nuts dipped in whisky. He walked downstairs backwards and went to off to sleep in his kennel, snoring loudly.

I shall never forget the day he died. I was absolutely distraught because the family had him from the time I was 1 month old, so he was a special part of my life. He lay peacefully in a box and we were allowed to see him. He just had a small area of blood on his head and otherwise looked at peace with the world. He did manage to get out sometimes and would chase motor cycles down the busy main street so perhaps it was a fitting end for him.

Brother Bill had a motor cycle and seemed to be constantly fiddling with it and its bits and pieces in the side street outside. But he went all over the place on it – to places like Brighton, with friends of his own sex and often of the opposite! They had a high old time.

Ivor we rarely saw. He had one friend, Robbie, surname Robinson, who was a master printer and who gave us children lovely birthday and Christmas presents. He gave me my ‘Alice in Wonderland’ which I still have – a part of my life! We were allotted seats once at the Lord Mayor’s Show in London in which he was taking part.

Marion showed him her new knickers once. She was wearing them at the time! He didn’t seem to know how to cope with that. She was very small.

He enjoyed it with us. Mother would open a bottle of her home-made wine. This was always an adventure because more often than not, when the cork was taken out, the wine would spurt up as high as the ceiling! Great fun.

She brewed it in the cellar that was on the same level as our living room but was under the shop and pavement at the far end where the coal cellar was with a coal hole in the pavement where the coalman would deliver the coal. Sometimes a bottle of her potent wine would break, the glass broken in two – with the cork still in the neck!

Mother did the washing in the cellar. There was a copper built into the wall that heated the water and boiled the whites. The water had to be carried from the lean to and then lifted and poured into the copper. There was a fire space underneath.

There was a large mangle there with wooden rollers that she had to turn. One day she turned her thumb in the rollers. Her thumb was a bit flat ever after. She used two baths and had a board – wooden with a metal, ridged plate on it – for rubbing the clothes clean on it.

Her wine-making took place on the right side of the cellar. She had a small wooden cask where she kept cider which I believe she made from apple skins. I used to ask her if I could have a glassful. She kept some very small glasses there. I usually asked before I went to bed. For some unknown reason she’d say yes and I’d pinch an extra glassful. I’m sure I staggered slightly up the stairs!

On the next floor at the top of the basement stairs was a small lavatory and further along the passage, a hallstand, on the right, a side door to Strathmore Road – our front door! On the left was a door into the shop. We went through the shop always or mostly.

Upstairs on the next floor were two bedrooms and our posh sitting room that wasn’t often used except for piano playing by the older ones and for piano practice by Marion and I. There was some lovely furniture there and it was carpeted wall to wall!

On the landing there was another flight of stairs to the attic which was one huge bedroom. Unfortunately, it being in the roof, there were bedbugs living there also. This was why the sanitary inspector, who was our Band of Hope chief, came to the house. Mother must have been absolutely beside herself over them. She always reckoned they were there because the place had been a cookshop at one time, whatever that was. We never ever saw one flea in the house.

The boys slept in the attic but where Alma and Molly slept before the boys got married I’ll never know. Marion and I slept in the small, second bedroom on the first floor next to mother’s and father’s. There was a small ‘office’ at the back of the shop. Perhaps that was used to sleep Alma and Molly before the boys were married. I don’t remember

We were taken out from time to time. We went to the Crystal Palace and to Croham Hurst and Selsdon, the last two of which were in the country. I think Croham Hurst was a nature reserve. I loved it.

We went to Riddlesdown which was fairly local. We were allowed to roll down the hill full length sideways. Great fun. We went to Brighton or some other South coast seaside for the day once or possibly sometimes twice a year.. One of those outings was, as I remember, with the ‘Equitable’ which, I believe, was a friendly society, insurance or perhaps a building society because No. 28 was on a mortgage. What different standards! You can imagine that happening today! I think the other outing was with the Sunday School. These seaside outings were always organised, I believe. I understood special trains were run.

We went to camp with the Brownies and/or Guides, again near the South coast.

Also there were various activities with the Band of Hope. Mrs. Windsor took us. It was really like a youth club and we did a lot of interesting activities like dancing and dressing up to give concerts, singing in our own small choir, games including table games, walks – all kinds of things. Mr. Hunt came to speak to us occasionally on the subject of the evils of drink and once they showed us a tear jerker about this man who was a drunkard and how his little daughter pleaded with him to stop. One evening, Mr. Hunt told us that no alcohol had ever passed his lips except when he was very ill and someone had poured a mouthful of whisky down his throat. I thought at the time, well if it can do you that good, perhaps it’s not so bad after all. I must have been preparing myself for my present nightly dram! Then there was the annual Temperance Queen crowning. One year a friend of Molly’s was chosen as Temperance Queen for all England and I, together with her young brother, was her attendant. I had a long, white, satin dress with, I believe, a blue sash around the waist.

We sang with mixed choirs at the Albert Hall once. I believe that may have been with the schools but I don’t really remember. We sang, if I remember, ‘Oh for the wings of a dove’. I remember practising that at school for a concert and some singers got part of it wrong when the big night came, but it seemed to recover somehow. We also went to the Crystal Palace for such occasions.

We were taken to Christmas pantomimes, either at the Empire theatre (if I remember that name rightly) or at the Davis cinema. Once we were taken to London for, I believe, ‘Sinbad the Sailor.’ In this one, on stage at one time, there was an extremely large open-ended cylinder on its side that was supposedly a ship’s cabin. The movement of the imaginary sea rocked it and once it turned a full circle with the players still in it!

I can remember seeing other plays. We may have gone with the schools to see these, but these were very, very rare events. The one I can remember was called ‘Where the Rainbow Ends’.

You’d think, reading this that we had the happiest of childhoods but that really wasn’t the case. It was spoilt by mother who was very hard to please and for whom we could do nothing right. I can only think that she used this ‘put down’ as a disciplinary method. Perhaps she was brought up with it herself. But I found it totally soul destroying. It affected our whole lives. None of us had any confidence because we thought we would fail. So one put on a brave face to get through life but if we were challenged, we folded. And we were told nothing whatsoever about the facts of life which made things very difficult and I wonder how we got through life as well as we did.

None of us was stupid but we never really achieved our potential.

It was like living on the edge of a volcano with her. She was a very unpredictable character. I have since wondered whether she suffered from a mild form, if there is such a thing, of manic depression. One never knew what the reaction would be to anything one said.

I have heard people say that to say that the ceiling falls down on you is a ridiculous thing to say, but I can tell you, that was exactly what it felt like when she was suddenly in that mood. And she could take it to extreme lengths. I can give you personal examples but I won’t unless you want them. I will say that one, no worse than others, entailed my being kept away from school for a fortnight, sent to the other side of London to an aunt I didn’t know very well, with an arrangement being made that I should go to school there. On the Sunday that I was to start at the new school, I was whisked back home again and sent back to my old school! I had to go back on my own. Nobody accompanied me. This was all over an utter triviality, as I knew at the time. The headmistress, Miss Mayhew was more than reasonable when I returned. She held out her hand at the school door and said, ‘Oh, Mavis, let’s forget it, shall we?’ and we shook hands. I could have kissed her though she was an oldish spinster with a hair bun and not very prepossessing! But I had been so frightened to return. I think if I’d had any money which we didn’t have, I would have run away. It was never taken out on me at school. When Mother lived with me at the end of her life, she brought up the subject as though she had been in the right. I said to her, ‘Did you ever see Miss Mayhew about it?’ ‘No!’ she barked in her usual way. I said, ‘Did you go and meet her and talk to her about it?’ ‘No,’ she repeated. I said, ‘Well I had to go back and face her.’ She looked thunderstruck. ‘I never thought of it in that way,’ she said. And that was the truth. She never did. Everything was done from her own angle. This is the sort of thing we had to live with.

Marion seems not to remember them but she had a special position in the family. She was the youngest and Mother raised her after she was born, probably slightly premature, at 4lbs. There was no assistance in those days. Alma remembered her in a small cardboard box in the hearth for warmth, wrapped in cotton wool. You either raised a child, no matter what, or it died. So I’m pretty sure that she was spoilt and was allowed to get away with things that the rest of us were not allowed to. I don’t remember getting any cuddles ever but Marion does. I think one’s position in family counts for a lot. She would be on Mother’s lap if she was reading a story or a poem, which she did, but I would just be standing at her knee, an also-ran.

When she wasn’t in one of these moods, life would be quite good, but the tension, the apprehension, was there all the time. One could never completely relax.

To speak for her, I think she had talents that she never allowed to use. It wasn’t much of a life for her, living in the basement, and she had 6 children to raise, all the washing, feeding, traumas to deal with, etc.

I’ve guessed, after reading Father’s letters from the trenches, that she started the business selling furniture when he was fighting in France. I think she would have made a good business woman and she loved good furniture. Her body lit up when I went to an auction with her once. And perhaps she enjoyed it when Mr. Risby talked to her, I imagine about his antiques. But when Dad returned from the war he changed the business from furniture to something that suited himself and I never ever saw her in the shop. I doubt if she was allowed.

I know she gave small inheritances she had from time to time to the shop because she told me so when she lived with us at the end of her life. So she must have been a very frustrated woman.

There were not so many busybodies around then as now and in spite of what she was like I would have hated for her to have been carried off and given electrical shock therapy. I think that would have finished her for good. I always loved her and tried to please her.

Mind, my father, who was a mild, laid-back man must have been a particularly frustrating person to live with, especially with a lively personality like hers. To an extent he was extremely selfish because he appeared not to consider her feelings at all. He never took her out and spent most of his time in the shop, even in the evenings when it was shut for business so he was no company for her. She was relegated to the domestic scene in the basement.

We used to have parties – for our birthdays when we could invite friends, usually school mates because we were not encouraged to have friends to bring home. We also had parties at Christmas time when very often, if not every year, either the Coopers from Littledean or the Coopers from Askern in Yorkshire came to stay. We all piled into the bedrooms as well as we could, top to bottom, girls and boys. I remember Olive staying with us at one time. She got under the bed and raised herself under us, playing at ‘ghosts. People said party pieces and games were played. I always felt unhappy with some of the games that were instigated by Mother and were designed to make fools of people. One of them involved some kind of tasting from a spoon but Mother substituted mustard from something sweet and the poor ‘victim’ suffered, much to everyone’s amusement.

She had a cruel streak in her. I remember fingers with gatherings on the cuticles being thrust into very hot water, much hotter than was necessary. And when she was told that the nit-nurse had visited school, she would bring out the nit comb and start at the top of your hair and comb through to the bottom all at once. We were not allowed to have short hair like everyone else but were forced to have ringlets. Also, we were never allowed to comb our hair but had to brush it with Maison Pearson pigs’ bristle brushes, the best that money could buy. We had one each of these brushes. So the nit comb routine was particularly painful, especially as Mother didn’t comb one’s hair with an ordinary comb first and she never held the top half while combing the bottom. It started at the top and went straight through to the end. Excruciating. I can feel it now.

I remember, too, walking along Wellesley Road into town with her at one time. A young family was on the opposite side of the road, the parents admiring our hair ringlets. Mine, the colour of ripe corn, curled naturally. One of their very young children stepped into the kerb and a vehicle came along and went over her foot and went on, not realising what it had done. The poor little foot must have been crushed and I was most upset and wanted to go over to help but Mother made us walk on as though nothing had happened which of course we had to do with the poor little child’s screams ringing in our ears.

I remember presents we had. We children always had a stocking, left by Father Christmas, with an orange and some nuts and small toys, etc. One year Marion and I were given a large dolls’ house. It was semi-detached, Mavis House and Marion Villa, made by Dad. We didn’t think too much of that. We never did get on too well and the houses felt like a shared present

Marion had a doll called Clara. She also had a teddy bear. I cannot remember having either. But after one Christmas, I was given the china fairy doll from the top of the Christmas tree. I loved her but I’m blowed if I can remember what I called her.

I remember Bill’s 21st birthday party. The shop was cleared and the office too. Everything was decorated and Bill invited his friends. He worked with Dad. I believe he earned his keep and had ten shillings a week pocket money. When he married, Dad couldn’t afford to give him a living wage so he left and made his own way in the world. He rode a blue and white tricycle for Wall’s Ice Cream for a while and in the evenings studied electricity by correspondence course, then managed to get an apprenticeship with a local firm and got his papers.

At Easter, we had Easter eggs – chocolate ones and marzipan. Molly had a marzipan one once but she didn’t like marzipan and it was put onto a high shelf in a cupboard in the recess beside the fire. She generously said that Marion and I could take some, so naturally we did – a bit at a time! She discovered this when it was nearly gone and she was absolutely furious with us!

Mother made painted faces on real eggs for us and baked Simnel cake etc. She was a good rich cake maker, for Christmas, birthdays and weddings. Ivor, coming in late one night, saw in the cupboard what he didn’t realise was the Christmas cake and cut a large slice for his supper. Mother had to make another.

We always had a card and an egg from Mrs. Bashford, a friend of Mother’s. We called her Mrs. Bash and she never forgot our birthdays or festive days until Mother decided she didn’t want her to call any more after what seemed like, and I think was, years. So on Wednesday nights, her weekly visits, we had to be quiet while poor Mrs. Bash knocked on our front door (at the side) and finally got the message after a few weeks. It was a source of sadness to me but one didn’t argue with Mother. Mrs. Bash’s father we called Granddad, and he was special because both our Granddads were dead. We never knew them. When we saw him out, Granddad would take from his waistcoat pocket a halfpenny tube of wine gums and give us each one. He never forgot. One day, he didn’t have any and he laughed when he reported later that I had whispered to Marion as we walked away that wasn’t Granddad mean not to give us some wine gums.

When Mrs. Bash was persona non grata we were embarrassed as to how we should behave to Granddad and missed Mrs. Bash a lot. I believe there is at least one birthday card from Mrs. Bash in my personal photograph album

I remember, indeed have never forgotten, extreme poverty in the 30’s. Welsh miners in the town singing for a few coppers, with gaunt faces and the large, vibrant eyes which come with starvation. I made friends with a lovely little girl whose father was born a cripple with a hump-back and club foot, the two of which seemed to go together. I haven’t seen this for many years. Her mother was a lovely, loving woman. She reminded me of my Aunty Ethel in Yorkshire where I would spend my summer holidays and never wanted to return home. These people have an aura of love around them and are usually, I find, very poor. I invited the girl to my birthday party and in return she invited us to hers. Her birthday tea was tinned pears and a tin of cream. Also bread and real butter! That was it.

Soon after, Mother said not to be friends with her because she wasn’t really very nice. I broke my heart quietly, but one did as Mother said. There was no alternative. But I felt a real desperation at the decision.

I learned much later that the Coopers in Askern had also been living below the official poverty line though Uncle Tom was working as a miner. But they had been involved in the 1926 general strike for better pay and conditions, both of which were atrocious. But their leaders had let them down and caved in and the men, all over the country were treated cruelly. Roy’s father, also, was involved as a railwayman, and they were taken back to work a trickle at a time and gained nothing but punishment.

In Yorkshire, the family could not afford to have cooked dinner every day. The children were threatened not to tell us when we visited but because Mother sent a few shillings for our keep, Aunty managed to cook us all a dinner. The only thing I couldn’t understand was about her gravy. It was made with just flour and burnt sugar. She kept a special spoon in which to burn the sugar over the cooker. I used to watch her, fascinated, when she made it. The gravy tasted awful. We always had a Yorkshire pudding first, to fill us up I suppose. Both those parents died in their 50s, I would say from malnutrition.

Mother was very careful about our clothes. We were taken to the tailor’s for our coats to be made. Molly, myself and Marion had identical, fawn and other colour dogtooth check coats in extremely good cloth. The trouble with them was, they were too good and were handed down one to the other. Poor Marion got the worst of that! With our school clothes Mother was her usual cussed self. We never had exactly the school uniform. There was always something not quite in accordance with it. This was the problem when she behaved so badly involving me, as I told you about earlier. She sent Alma to school once with a wide stripe of pink fabric down the centre of her tunic which apparently she had cut down lengthwise and inserted the strip. Perhaps Alma was leaving school soon and had outgrown her tunic. But our clothes were always handed down if that was the case and so Molly could have had it. But no, Mother knew best and the other girls ridiculed Alma for it. What did Mother care? If you told her about such things she soon put you in your place and said what others did didn’t concern her, she did as she thought. I was about 15 before I was able to choose a Sunday hat for myself. It was a beautiful, emerald green velvet halo hat that was fashionable at that time! I loved it.

She made us accompany her to Surrey Street on Saturday evenings in order to buy fruit and vegetables which were cheaper there than from Mr. Burstoe. This may have been more when the business was failing because spring interiors were coming on to the market and because Dad couldn’t get the wire easily any more because war was looming. Surrey Street was full of great characters plying their wares on the stalls. It was quite a long road with every conceivable commodity for sale, including sarsaparilla kept in a tank a bit like a fire engine. Perhaps it was one! We never tasted it. A rather pungent, peculiar aroma wafted over the area from a brewery, I learnt.

There was a pinch-nosed woman, very thin, dressed always as I remember, in brown, including a hat, selling bunches of lavender and saying in her thin voice, ‘Penny a bunch of lavender lady, penny a bunch’. And there was a man with a tray carried from a cord around his neck selling braces. He would stretch the elastic and shout, ‘Braces. Bob that pair!’ I could never make up my mind if he was bobbing that pair or charging a bob for them. Looking back of course it was a bob for them in price. We would help Mum to lug all this vegetable and fruit stuff home.

Saturday mornings were spent doing our household chores for our 2d. a week pocket money. My jobs were to sweep the three flights of stairs with dustpan and brush and to dust the front room furniture. I don’t know if you had the black glass cabinet come sideboard at home. It was a good piece of furniture, black with glass doors at the bottom half and an almost heart shaped but not quite mirror at the top half. Surrounding it all was this black, open, coiled fretwork. Every week, every single week, Mother would come to inspect my work, put her finger inside the coils and bark, ‘No, you haven’t done that properly! Do it again!’ and she’d go away and never return to see if I had remedied it. I say, ‘every week’, but one week she actually said, ‘Oh yes. You’ve done that very nicely.’ I walked on air for a brief while and thought she was wonderful. I doubt if it lasted long before she was at her old tricks. But I remember how it felt to have something nice said to me. The only trouble was, I hadn’t done the dusting any differently than always!

We're on a rather quiet front
And miles behind the line,
If it was only summer time
The billet would be fine.
But air is cold in winter time
And snow is colder still
We break the ice upon the stream
To have our morning swill
We grouse and grumble at the cold
Which nips our feet and thumbs;
We'll soon be moaning at the mud
When warmer weather comes.

Our luck is out this bright New Year
We've lost our weekly fags
We've got no cash, and grub is short,
Next week we may have bags.
When will some genius, great and good,
From out the land arise,
To put things straight, to right and wrongs,
And equalize supplies.
When war is O'er, and peace time comes,
And quiet is every gun,
Some clever bloke will up and say
How things SHOULD have been done.