The War Years

When war was declared in 1939 I was less then two years old, and my first memory of war was the building of the Air Raid Shelter and the start of the Blitz.  Early on everyone was issued with a gas mask, which was to be keep with us at all times for the duration and I still recall the rubbery smell and tightness of the bands round my head, holding it in place. It’s fortunate we were never called on to use them as I’m not sure how effective they would have been.
I do recall the confusion of being put to bed on the sofa downstairs instead of in my own bed, to be wrapped in blankets and carried into the shelter at the first eerie wail of the warning siren, a sound that never fails to send shivers up my spine.  I don’t know if I slept through the menacing drone of aircraft and muffled explosions of bomb blasts, and I have no idea how long we would have stayed each night in that dank hole, sharing its protection with our next-door neighbours. Both young couples at the beginning of married life and with a very young child, among so many other families; fearful and unsure at this unexpected turn in their ordinary lives.  My Dad and Mr Savage spent part of the night in some voluntary capacity as Air Raid wardens or Fire-watchers, no doubt shouting ‘Put that light out!’ whenever someone opened a back door or lit a cigarette.  All I know is that Dad wasn’t immediately pressed into combat, and I was three when, in anticipation of conscription, he volunteered for the RAF as the apparently less combative of the Armed Forces.
Dad’s RAF training entailed a perilous sea voyage to South Africa, with the ever-present danger from German U-boats, and Mum would frequently take me to the News Cinema in Manchester to watch the latest Pathe film account of the war.  On his return Dad was posted to an RAF Bomber Base.  With our house let to tenants, Mum took me to stay at her mother’s, which was our second home anyway, and very shortly found a way of being near her husband, wherever that might be.  Making the journey by train, bus and hitch-hiking to the nearest town or village to the Base where he was stationed, she would find respectable lodgings, commonly known as Digs, (or dig-ins, from trench warfare I believe) for us both, and return for me.  
This was high adventure for a three year old!  I imagine there must have been a taxi to the Station in Manchester.  What I do recall is the hustle and bustle of travellers hastening in all directions under the vast edifice of dusty old Victorian Railway Stations, waiting on the platform amid the smell of acrid smoke, noise of machinery and steam hissing in billows from huge black engines; rain glistening in the darkness on polished metal and stone flagged platforms, while every now and then an express train whistled past in a thunderous roar, while Mum held me away from imminent danger at the edge.  Then the excitement as our train arrived with the scramble for seats, stowing bags and coats on the overhead rack.  A corridor train would often be packed from end to end with servicemen and women in their various uniforms sitting on kit bags, but sometimes we  found ourselves in a train of separate carriages, usually on smaller branch lines.  
I’m sure I was never bored on those journeys and Mum would have supplied enough reading, writing and drawing materials to keep me busy. And there were wonderful illustrated posters of holiday destinations; golden sands inviting ‘Come to sunny Blackpool’, and more enticingly, lush green hills and blue waters of ‘Windermere, the heart of the Lake District’, the mountainous temptation to ‘Holiday in Snowdonia’ and so many more. Maybe it all stems from those days, but the truth is, I have a love of travelling… just watching the unfolding countryside, fields of growing crops or herds of cows or sheep, crossing above and below roads and canals, thundering over river bridges, large and small.  Fascinating glimpses of other people’s back gardens as we pass through towns and cities, shunting yards with engine turntables and other passing trains… come and gone in a flash… until we would reach our destination at a small rural station, stepping out into fresh country air.
The small villages we stayed in during those years seemed in some ways to be in a completely different world to the one we’d come from; rural in a very real sense. At four years old, my first experience of country life was in Morcott, a small village in Rutlandshire, to be near to Dad who was based at North Luffenham.  Our first ‘digs’ was with an old lady in her tiny ancient cottage with a rambling garden… more of a field… at the bottom of which lived hens and a large pig in a pen.
When I say that life was primitive, water was obtained from the village pump and there was a bus just once a week to the nearest town of Stamford, where we went to the Municipal Baths, not to swim, but for a proper bath!  Mum wrote a short essay about her experiences there when she joined a writing course some years later, which I’ll include in the next episode. 

Please feel free to leave a  comment if you find this of interest or your have any memories of your own. I'd love to hear from you! 

Families

When my Dad joined the RAF and went away for training, Mum let our little house and we moved in with her parents, who always seemed more relaxed and friendly than my Dad's family who were a bit 'posh' and emotionally restrained.

Memories of food are so emotive. The smell of caramelised (or burned) onion always takes me back to my Grandma’s house where it usually heralded dinner.  I’ve always loved that smell, maybe because I loved being there. My mother's parent's home was homely in the best sense of the word.  Everything in it had seen better days in those years of make-do and mend; threadbare patches in the carpets disguised with rag rugs, diligently made from scraps of material left over from making garments, or even old clothes, sewn onto sacking by Grandma and her daughters.  The ancient furniture that we might regard now as antiques had been cleaned and polished over many years, and the window had faded curtains.  The curtains were of no consequence however, as the wartime blackout demanded black material thick enough to prevent any light escaping that might betray the whereabouts of this huge city to enemy bombers and I remember the window glass being crisscrossed with sticky black tape in case of bomb blast.  A long floor-sweeping curtain of thick dark velvety material hung at the corner of the living room to prevent draughts from two doors, one leading into the hall and the other into the kitchen.
The kitchen itself was quite large but rather dark, as the window looked out onto the side of the next house.  It had a big white sink with brass taps and wooden draining board, gas cooker and a small larder off to one side with marble shelf that served as the fridge of the day and the indispensable meat safe, a small cupboard with mesh sides to keep out flies. This larder stored all the foodstuffs, butter and homemade jams, and a large earthenware jar that held dripping, that delicious fat from the Sunday roast beef, not only used in frying, but amazingly delicious spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. Nowadays this fare would be considered most unhealthy, but at the time it was a real treat. A scrubbed wooden table at one side of the kitchen held an enamelled Bread bin and round wooden breadboard, a pair of cast-iron scales and a clutter of other culinary items.  A couple of shelves held herbs and spices, Oxo and Bisto for seasoning soup and thickening gravy, while the cupboard next to the gas stove always seemed to be covered in a clutter of jars and cooking utensils.  The floor covered in linoleum was patched where it had worn badly, or else concealed with homemade rag rugs that could trip up the unwary.  Looking back, it was rather cold and dingy and not at all like the bright attractive kitchens expected today.  On the kitchen door hung a print of Christ, the Light of the World by William Holman Hunt; “I stand at the door and knock.”  As with other women of her generation Grandma, though not overly religious, had a strong protestant faith.  She wasn't a regular churchgoer, though she may have been at some time in her life.
A door from the kitchen led into a passage, with toilet and coal store off, and the back door leading into the garden, where Grandpa grew roses over a trellis, and vegetables in season, a small greenhouse full of growth and a couple of apple trees.  Back in the house, the toilet was scrupulously clean but cold in winter, and furnished with neat squares of newspaper hung by a string through the corner.   However it was worth braving the cold for the pleasure of reading the daily tear-off calendar with amusing or philosophical saying for each day.  Grandma must have had a standing order for these calendars, as there was always one hanging there!
A gleaming brass and black-leaded Victorian Range warmed the living room; it’s hot and warm ovens with big black kettle constantly simmering on the glowing coals, lit every morning by my Grandfather.  Part of his morning routine that I remember was to take some salt and soot from the chimney to clean his teeth, and I have it on good authority that he still had his natural teeth when he passed on at the age of ninety three.  At either side of the chimneybreast, floor to ceiling built-in cupboards served as storage for crockery, bed linen, materials and Grandma’s sewing paraphernalia.  When I was quite young, my favourite diversion was a large box of buttons of every shape and size that I would empty onto the floor, though what I did with them I can’t now imagine.  Each of these cupboards had large drawers half way down filled with papers and letters and things that were put there because there was no other place for them.  One drawer however, held a large collection of loose Photographs, and these I found fascinating, especially old sepia portraits of past family members; those beautifully posed and softly illuminated records of elegantly coiffed young women in decorously attractive dresses, upright matrons in dark high necked, long sleeved garments, moustachioed young men in stiff suits or smart uniform, sober old men in starched collars, newly married young couples and family groups; my grandparents’ forebears.  In later years I was to add to this collection with photos of my own marriage and young children.  They never went into Albums as they did at home; Dad fixing them onto the black pages with special corners and writing in white ink very artistically.

An upright Piano had pride of place and was as usual in such a home as a Music centre or Television is now.  Every Sunday morning with the smell of dinner roasting in the oven, Grandma would play hymns in lieu of going to church.  Grandpa would be sitting in his armchair by the fire reading the Sunday paper and smoking a cigarette.  I’m reminded by Auntie Nance that Grandma would also smoke Woodbines that she kept in her drawer along with her makeup and cheap scent, though what that combination did to the taste of said cigarettes I leave to your imagination!  I loved playing on the polished mahogany rocking chair, an elegantly carved Victorian upholstered haven of delight to a small child with imagination.  That chair was my sailing ship and horse-drawn carriage; and would carry me away to wherever I wished to go.  (Sad to say, after my Grandma passed away and Grandpa re-married, that wonderful old rocking chair along with all the photos and other things of my Grandma’s, apparently ended on a bonfire instigated by the new wife who wanted no such reminders of her new husband’s past.  Such is the insensitivity of possessiveness.)

No TV or Movie Drama would be complete without music and I’m reminded of the pervasiveness of music in our lives, due in no small part to the popularity of the Radio which was a constant companion, with the humour of stand-up comedians such as Max Miller in Workers Playtime, broadcast live at lunchtime, and Tommy Handley’s ITMA in the evening, with plenty of popular music in between to keep the country happy!  At an early age I learnt to sing, not only all the traditional Nursery Rhymes, but also ‘You are my Sunshine’… ‘Run Rabbit Run’… and the amazingly profound lyrics of… ‘Dozidotes and Marezidotes and Littlelambsitivy, a Kidllitivy too, wud’n you?… If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey, sing… Mares eat oats and Does eat oats and little Lambs eat ivy…’etc.  Mum also loved to sing and play the piano in our front room, her favourites a mix of classical and popular music… ‘The Wedding of the Painted Doll’… ‘Claire de Lune’ ‘The Warsaw Concerto’ from a wartime film, and Grieg’s A Minor concerto, among many others.
Back at my Grandma’s, a small front room was ostensibly the dining room, with a beautiful polished folding mahogany table.  However, this room was hardly used at all, especially in winter, and although it did have a small fireplace in one corner I can’t remember a fire ever being lit there.  There was a wind-up record player, probably belonging to my Auntie Nance, on which I was allowed to play if I was very careful, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, my introduction to Jazz and the wonders of recorded music.
Grandma was an accomplished tailor and her bedroom was a jumble of clothes and materials, of garments in the making, so at times I had to suffer the indignity of being stood on a stool to have the hem adjusted of a new dress or coat or even worse, have newly cut pieces fitted and pinned on me; admonished to keep still as I stood there fidgeting and complaining of pins sticking in me!  It mattered not if the material was new, from Grandma’s hoard, or from my aunties’ cast-off garments, easy to cut-down for a small child; I always had new clothes.  Grandma was large and cuddly, with an open face, embellished with several lumps or cysts that always fascinated me.  I believe she taught me a lot in her quiet way, songs and stories, and made me aware of nature, in the garden, or on walks down country lanes, observing bees going from flower to flower and listening to birdsong.
I remember sleeping in a bed of feather pillows and quilts with a very special smell, maybe not as pristine as my little bed at home, but so cosy.  There was a time we had a family party and everyone stayed the night, when I shared the big bed in the back bedroom with my mother and her two sisters, my aunts.  Sharing one bed meant two at each end, which was accomplished with much laughter!  Whenever my mum's family came together, I remember such mirth and hilarity that tears would roll down my mother’s cheeks.  Their sense of humour was acute but not barbed, farcical but not cruel, risqué but never crude.  Their code of behaviour was fed by spiritual rather than religious conviction, with a sense of honour and rightness rather than moral righteousness.  It felt warm and safe in that family.
In the big back bedroom where my mother and I would stay, a large framed Victorian print hung on the wall opposite the bed, portraying a scene of a little child picking flowers on a grassy bank perilously close to the edge of a precipice, but thank heaven, a wonderfully radiant Guardian Angel with magnificent wings standing right behind the child with hands outstretched to catch him should he fall.  That picture was such a comfort to me as I said my prayers, asking God to look after my Daddy in the war, and fell asleep wondering if anyone ever saw their own Guardian Angel.

I realise this episode is a bit long and I make no apology for getting carried away with all these memories, because the more I write, the more memories come flooding back. So if this resonates with you, please let me know in the box for comments below and I'll keep on writing!

My 40's Childhood

My Grandparents, Ada and Charlie, lived in a council house unlike any council house I've seen since.  In fact I think that 11 Broom Crescent might even be considered a rather ‘des.res.’ nowadays in Salford 6.  Anyway, it seems in my memory to have been more spacious than the house I called home at No 3 Russell Road.  However, my parents must have been very proud of their new home, which I think they may have saved up and paid for before marriage.  I believe it cost all of £400; about two and a half years pay for my father, who was earning £3.00 a week when I was born.  Anyway, they had picked out the site and watched it grow among the neat rows of the new estate sprouting out of an area of sand hills on the edge of Salford.  I knew about the sand hills under the estate because when we went to the local shop in Hayfield Lane, (how is it I remember that so clearly? Yes, I know, we once took the train to Derbyshire and got off at Hayfield, a happy memory of walking in the hills when I was five with Dad and Mum and her friend.)  Anyway, at Hayfield Lane were the sand hills that all the kids of the neighbourhood loved to play in.  I only had the opportunity to play there briefly when my mother took me to the shop.  You see, I was a nice little girl and didn't play with the ‘other kids’.

I remember the shop so clearly, I could be standing there now amidst the wonderful aroma of a typical grocery store filled with unwrapped goods filling my nostrils.  Watching the grocer in his white apron and hat expertly wield two wooden butter pats to form neat pats of butter and fold them neatly into greaseproof paper.  Transfixed as his buxom lady assistant carefully poured sugar into a white paper cone, carefully folding over the top, and the same with a quarter pound of tea.  All carefully weighed on big brass scales with polished pans suspended and balanced with brass weights marked in ounces up to pounds.  Sides of bacon, taken down from a large hook on the ceiling and placed on the gleaming bacon slicer.  “How thick would you like it madam?”  Their whole existence was to serve and the customer was always right!  Our world revolved around polite manners and good service.


Our home, a small but stylish semi, was a step up the ladder for this newly married pair.  The window in the Hallway depicted a ship in full sail in stained glass.  As far as I remember, the front room was furnished with a novel settee that turned into a dining table and an easy chair that turned into a single bed.  It’s no wonder that I've also had a fondness for multipurpose furniture.  The hall led into the narrow kitchen with under stairs larder, gas cooker and sink, then to the back door and washroom with big galvanised tub, heated by gas, and obligatory washboard and mangle.  Come rain or shine, Monday was Washday.  Beds were changed and the strenuous ritual of washing and scrubbing, rinsing and wringing seemed to go on most of the day.  In good weather, very soon sheets and towels billowed on the line strung across the garden.  When raining, the house would be filled with the peculiar smell of damp laundry drying off in the washroom; the heavy linen sheets festooned over a large wooden clotheshorse and indoor clotheslines. 
The back living room, also my playroom, looked out onto the garden where Dad built trellis and laid winding crazy paving paths between flowerbeds.  When the war started, along with everyone else, he and our next-door neighbour Mr Savage dug out an Air Raid Shelter, (subject to periodic flooding) furnished with rudimentary Bunk beds and roofed in corrugated iron covered by a rockery.  As soon as wailing sirens alerted us to an air raid I would be wrapped in blankets and carried into this structure along with the Savage’s daughter Barbara who was also my age, and tucked up safely while planes thundered overhead and bombs dropped onto the city.  The sulphurous smell of a striking match can still evoke the hazy memory of lighting candles in the musty darkness of that tiny shelter.  There was a hole in the middle of our small lawn that I was convinced was a bomb crater.  At least that’s what I told everyone although I really don’t know what it was.
Up the stairs was a tiny box room, bathroom and two large bedrooms, the back one that was mine looking out over Salford, as our house stood on top of a hill.  I noticed this only when we returned home after the war, having spent most of four years in the country.  I was then seven years old and stood at the window, looking in horror at the rooftops stretching away to the horizon wailing… ‘Where’s the country?’

As I write these memoirs from so many years ago, I send them out to anyone who may appreciate the flavour of a world that has mostly gone... and I'd love to read any comments you feel moved to leave here!

My 40's childhood

  Although the second world war started when I was twenty months old, my memories are not of food shortages and rationing, as it is for many people of my age.  I know we didn’t have a lot of food; nowadays we might even consider it a Spartan diet, but we didn’t starve.  My mother had the fortunate ability to make a meal out of anything, or almost nothing!  Normally it was meat and two veg; only I didn’t like meat!  All I remember of meat in those days was fat and gristle, which made me gag.  My mother in desperation to get me to eat, tried to tempt, cajole and threaten, making me sit at table for hours in a vain bid to overcome my stubborn behaviour.  Once she got so mad she took my new bus conductor’s outfit that I wanted to play with and threw the smart peaked hat into the fire.  I was shocked as I watched it burn!  But I still wouldn’t eat. Eventually in despair she would just give me potatoes and vegetables with plenty of meat gravy, which seemed to do me no harm.  I think I was just a natural vegetarian!

Of course my mother was only doing her best to nurture her first child, while she may have secretly yearned to have a career and life of her own.  She did confide in me when I was older, that she had married Norman because it was expected of her.  Apparently she’d wanted to take a job in London as receptionist in a big Hotel, as she was a trained telephone operator, but family and cultural expectations over-ruled her, if she even dared express her revolutionary desires!  My Mum was elegantly beautiful and I can still recall her fashionably styled dark hair and the touch and texture of her blue-grey crepe dress as she tucked me into bed before Daddy came home from work, with a necklace of red, black and silver that my daughter Julie now wears, or one of green glass and gold that my other daughter Anne has, dangling over me as she kissed me goodnight.  My Dad would be at work all day, but when he came home he’d come up to say goodnight before I obediently went to sleep.
When I was maybe eighteen months old Mum briefly went back to work, leaving me with our next-door neighbour, Mrs Ruscoe, an older lady who had two sons, both in the forces. (I became concerned about one of these young men who was in the Navy, because when I asked if he could swim and was told he couldn’t, I was shocked and considered this a serious oversight.)  The arrangement with Mrs Ruscoe must have been short-lived.  I remember that while she left me in her immaculate lounge to eat a bowl of porridge, the thought of which made me feel sick, I carefully put a spoon of the offending mixture on each arm and seat of every armchair in the room.  Did I do this to ensure that Mum didn’t desert me again?  She probably got her mother to look after me instead while she continued to work, and this would have been fine with me.  What she did about porridge I’m not sure, but I’ve never liked it.  I seem to remember my main objection was to lumpy porridge but would reluctantly eat it when cooked to a good texture and embellished with a generous dollop of Lyle’s golden syrup.  Later on I remember Force Cornflakes for breakfast, when I would read all the information on the packet with its stylised 18th Century soldier marching stiffly across the front.  Mum taught me to read and write before I went to school. Education was paramount in this family who’d been “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps” in the attempt to advance in work and society for generations.
So its  no surprise that I've always loved to write about my experiences and if you enjoy these reminiscences I hope you'll leave a comment.

REFLECTIONS

Mum in Llandudno

You may, or may not, have noticed that I've not been posting regularly for some time, but I have been thinking about my life as a Travelogue... not just travelling in a literal sense, but my journey through life. Being born before the second World War I've lived through possibly the most momentous time in history, as the world has been changing for not just one part of the world, but globally. 

My travels began at an early age as my parents were quite adventurous for that time and would take me, secured in a baby carrier, on their hikes in the Peak District and possibly North Wales, which were quite accessible by train from Salford where we lived. However, that was short-lived, as by the time I was two, the war had started.

When I was three years old, my Dad joined up, volunteering for the RAF instead of waiting to be called up as a soldier.  On his return from training in South Africa, my Mother rented out our home and we moved in with her Mother, my Grandma, so as to be free to travel around the country to wherever my Dad was stationed.  When she knew at which airfield he was stationed, she would go by train, bus and hitching lifts to the nearest village to find a local householder that would take her and young child as lodgers. On her return, she would pack up a suitcase and off we’d go to one of Manchester’s Railway Stations to take a long, slow train or two, to some remote part of the country.  The airfields were mostly situated in the Midlands and eastern side of the country and our destinations ranged from the tiny shire of Rutland to Lincolnshire, Shropshire and up to the wilds of Northumberland.

I believe these experiences either formed or reinforced my love of travel. Of course, I could have hated it; leaving the security and comforts of home, to sit in a grimy, crowded carriage for several hours, breathing in soot-laden air from the coal fired steam engine whenever the heavy sash window or door was opened, to arrive in the middle of nowhere, often late at night and put to sleep in a cold unfamiliar bed in someone else’s house.  The fact is though, I really enjoyed the adventure.  I do remember waking in the morning to the joy of exploring a small, quiet village with a church, school and village shop, surrounded by fields, woods and gently rolling hills; such a contrast to the dirty, crowded streets of the city.  That’s the way I would always draw it; the sun rising over green hills.

I witnessed a way of life virtually unchanged for centuries but this rural England that I saw as a child would soon be gone as modernisation swept through the country after the war.

I write these memories for my own benefit and the interest of my family, but if you enjoy these reminiscences, please feel free to leave a comment and watch out for the next instalment.  

patricia@who2lifeprocess.co.uk

My latest adventure, as you can see, is being dis-abled enough to qualify for a mobility shopping scooter in Asda!  As this is the first time I've had the opportunity to drive one of these, which are common in Llandudno... the geriatric capital of North Wales... I think its worth commemorating with a blog on mobility! I trust no-one has an objection to this description of the place where I am very happy to live, but the fact is that the flatness of the town is ideal for disabled and elderly visitors who throng the main street in wheelchairs and mobilty scooters.
This form of transport is great freedom for those, myself inclded at the present, who are no longer able to walk far, cycle or even drive, although there are those killjoys who complain in the local press about the 'danger' of being mown down by over-enthusiastic users!  These are no doubt the same persons who refuse to allow cyclists on the long, broad and generally empty expanse of Promenade, seeing danger in every pair of wheels! 
I realise I'm beginning to sound like a grumpy old woman and I can certainly identify with anyone who complains about the attitude of able-bodied people who seem to be oblivious to those making their way through crowds just below eyelevel.  In negotiating my way through Asda, carefully avoiding bumping into others, I was constantly blocked by clumps (or chumps) of shoppers who appeared to see me, but didn't move out of my way. It was as if they were looking through me... as if I were a mirage... and I certainly began to feel invisible... stopped in the middle of an aisle as people flowed by me unconsciously, like a stream around an immobile rock. With Julie walking ahead of me there was no problem... they could see her ok!
Actually, my tactic was to raise myvoice in a cheery salute... 'Watch out... can't find my hooter!'  and 'Hello... coming through', which usually had the desired effect although even this sometimes fell on deaf ears.
It was a very interesting experience that I hope to repeat on a hired scooter to go around town when the weather improves! Then I'll find the lack of dropped curbs and other hazards that face wheeled users, as I know from caring for disabled people some years ago! Watch this space!!