CHAPTER 2 – January 2002
1st January 2002 – Tuesday
Woke up late to a perfect day, sun shining, sky a clear blue and hardly a ripple on the calm blue sea.
John and I had to rush up in the end to get down to the sea to watch our friend and neighbour, Barbara, take a New Year's Swim in aid of the Children's Hospice. We parked at the seafront and gently walked across the frozen grass to find the best seat to get the optimum pictures.
The day was as good as possible for a swim at this time of the year but as we awaited the swimmers a very cold wind got up and some small waves appeared. However all was well and we were pleased to see on the sand below our swimmers stripping off to their bathers, take a quick run across the sand and into the sea. Barbara had promised us no more than a dip in of the toe but in the end she took the plunge and a few strokes before shivering her way out and towelling then putting on her husband's large coat.
As a child I can't remember celebrating the New Year as anything special but perhaps it was the night when Mam and Dad went dancing, which they did regularly when I was very small. Granny next door was there in case we needed anyone but Margaret, who was eight and a half years older than me, was usually left in charge. It is difficult to describe how close the four of us were during my early childhood. As children we could never imagine life without this closeness but I presume this feeling is normal in large families.
Yorkshire was usually a pretty cold place over the Christmas holidays and there were lots of potential skating rinks. We were repeatedly told not to step on the pond at the end of the field behind the house, but being normal children we took little notice. It was an easy pond to test with a good flat area trampled flat by the cows where we could gradually try the ice bit by bit.
Along the lane we would crack the thinner ice on the puddles until we found a really good one that we polished slide by slide. Mam and Dad had little need to worry as I was always rather timid in risking any hurt to myself. John might climb down the dyke banks and try the ice but that was just too risky for me.
We lived in our black 'wellies' for most of the year and our sore legs where they rubbed on our flesh seemed to hurt even more in the freezing weather. Our feet would get cold as socks went to sleep and finished up as balls in the toes of our boots. My socks were often ones that John had grown out of and which had been darned or needed darning. Needless to say the 'wellies' too were passed down and were always either too big or too tight, never ever just right. It was the cold that always forced us back indoors to sit by the fire drinking cocoa. I never seemed to get rid of chapped hands and legs in spite of liberally rubbing on 'Snowfire'. It wasn't until much later that I recognised just what a ragamuffin I was when playing round the farm.
There is nothing to recommend continually having to wear clothes too big and it is with a certain contentment that I know Kelly and Amy will always be wrapped up warm although I regret that they will never experience the wildness and freedom of playing round the stackyard, down the lane or at the pond.
2nd January – Wednesday
Both John and I seem to be suffering the effects of a prolonged period of eating too much chocolate, Christmas Cake and nuts. Consequently we are spending a couple of very quiet days. For me this has meant pondering on possible entries about my childhood.
Perhaps this exercise is giving me the chance to pull together the many threads of my early life and recognising that the previously simplistic explanations as to the time and impact of change within our family were never due to one event but the coming together of many.
My sisters have always thought that the birth of our younger brother Andrew was the time when my Dad became quieter and more burdened with worries about family finances, the state of Mam's health and the need to make sure that there were no more pregnancies. It is true that life did change for all of us at that time but it must not be forgotten that Margaret and Gerry were growing up fast. The summer before Andrew was born Margaret left school to work in Huddersfield with I.C.I. lodging with my Dad's sister Gladys during the week and coming home at the weekends. She had also met her future husband Colin with whom she wanted to spend as much of her spare time as possible.
Gerry had found the responsibility of looking after the rest of us at home very hard as she left home at eight in the morning and didn't get home until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon. She left school in October after Andrew was born and became an apprentice hairdresser in Selby, handing over most of her hard-earned money to our Mam each pay day. However, she too met her future husband Tom around this time. He just happened to be Colin's cousin. The relief of having our Mam home must have been the greatest for her allowing her some time to enjoy her teenage years.
Margaret too returned home soon after Andrew was born getting a job in the laboratories at Sturgess of Selby. However, she shortly began working a four day week always taking each Tuesday off to help our Mam who struggled with bilious attacks from this time. This arrangement continued even after Margaret married and moved to Colin's father's farm in Newsholme, just a few miles away. After Andrew arrived it seemed as if the rest of us needed to be away from home in order to have space to be ourselves. Could it be that our Mam tried to blame everyone else for her loss of youth and energy. Margaret always seemed to get the worst of our Mam's temper. I clearly remember Mam complaining because Colin spent too much time at our house and ate too much of our food. In spite of Margaret foregoing a day's wage to help our Mam she still had to pay her 'keep'.
Before Andrew arrived John had been utterly spoilt by Mam. John and I were very close but I did have to suffer unending teasing partly because he could do no wrong and was allowed to do more or less what he wished. But when Andrew arrived our Mam was totally engrossed with her new boy baby to the exclusion of John. We all loved Andrew, particularly John and me but whenever we did anything naughty we were told that we were being jealous. Perhaps in Mam's absence we had become rather wild but jealousy was never the reason for our misbehaviour. Even at a very young age I had become used to being told that boys were more important to a farming family than girls so the arrival of Andrew made little difference. Examining what happened from this time on it would seem that it was our Mam who was jealous of us. In her absence John and I had become very close to our Dad and throughout the rest of her life she tried to push John out so that she and Andrew could be the centre of our Dad's life. It is true that Mam and Dad would go on many trips, holidays and outings with Andrew and that he was a great comfort to his mother until the day she died. She could not, though, break the close ties that continued to grow between Dad, John and me. However she did succeed in pushing John away as Andrew has always been the main beneficiary of any family assets. Strangely though, Mam continued to make demands on the rest of us as well as blaming us for whatever might have been wrong in her own life.
At almost the same time as Andrew arrived in the world I became good friends with Dinah Jacques. She lived at the first farm in Cliffe Common whilst we lived at the last farm in the village of Cliffe. There were no houses between the two farms. We were distantly related to each other, my Granny having been a Jacques before she married. My Great Uncle Tom was Dinah's Granddad. Mr. Jacques, Sandy, was a gentleman farmer who had at one time played cricket for Yorkshire. They always saw themselves as a step up from the Holmans and there was a family rivalry that went back over the generations. But somehow Granny and I were not involved in old arguments and my friendship with Dinah was acceptable because of Granny.
3rd January – Thursday
Yesterday evening Margaret, my sister, rang and we talked for a very long time about the problems surrounding the sorting out of Mam's will. It is all very complicated but emphasises yet again how important our youngest brother was to his mother and of how little importance daughters can be. For some years before Dad died and certainly afterwards, Mam was quite manipulative in ensuring that Andrew had as much as possible of the business. The resulting conflict between my two brothers could certainly have been avoided.
It seems that in order to understand what was happening in my childhood it is important also to understand what was going on in my Mam's life. Around the time that Andrew was born Granddad had a stroke and spent the last five years of his life watching everybody else work. He also bought Yew Tree Farm across the road from Tythe Farm where we lived. Minnie, recently married, moved into the other end of the farmhouse, with Ken, who we called Sut, who happened to work on the farm. Although Minnie and Jean had been like sisters to my Mam she remained jealous of whatever they might receive from Granny and Granddad. We were still in the old part of the damp farmhouse, Granny and Granddad lived in a renovated Yew Tree Farm, Minnie and Sut lived in the new part of the farmhouse with carpets, Jean and Cyril, known as Squib, had a small detached house in the next village and all my Mam could see was my Dad working all hours to make ends meet. It's very easy when one is working hard to be unable to recognise that others were working hard too and with no children to clothe and feed.
The walls of our house were very thin and we would lie in bed hearing our Mam grumbling at Dad and threatening to leave. From my perspective it seemed that life had been much better when Mam was in hospital and from her return I found myself either playing at Dinah's or helping on the farm. Even from the earliest age we were taught to work on the farm and I could barely make a cup of tea when I married at the age of twenty although I could load a trailor full of bales, pick taties and hoe with the best of them. I now recognise the sadness that my Mam was experiencing even though she was consumed with jealousy. Where could she run away to even if she wanted to? Even Andrew wasn't really hers. For the last five years of Grandad's life he could be seen wandering in the stackyard and down the fields accompanied by a toddler who had a precocious knowledge of tractors being able to identify the make and whom it belonged to just from the sound of the engine. Our Mam needed Margaret and Gerry more than they needed her. After all they gave most of their money to her. John was always our Dad's right hand and I couldn't wait to get away from the house either to be with Granny, Minnie, Jean, Dad or Dinah. It's always prudent to recognise the complexities and hardships which others might be experiencing before judging too harshly whilst at the same time not falling into the trap of looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles.
However useful I might have been on the farm it was in play that I flourished. This was nurtured not at home but in a very different atmosphere at Common End Farm of which more next time.
5th January – Saturday
Today John and I have been married 35 years. We were the last couple to be married at Cliffe Methodist Chapel. The day was a bitterly cold Thursday. We had recently had a covering of snow, which by the time of the wedding was frozen hard.
Dinah, of course, was my chief bridesmaid. Being fifteen months older than me she would have been 21 years old when I married. Because her birthday was in August making her one of the youngest in her class at school and mine was in December, making me one of the oldest in mine, it always seemed to me that she was very much older being two years ahead of me at school.
I never really understood the reason why my Mam wouldn't let me have friends to play at home and certainly none of my friends were ever allowed to go upstairs as long as we lived in the old part of the farmhouse. It couldn't be because she was ashamed of our poor conditions as Margaret, in particular, did have friends over to sleep. However, this was no real worry for me as after I was eight I preferred being at Common End Farm to being at home.
Not only did I want to be with Dinah but everything she had seemed so much better than anything I had at home with the exception of our piano. In the corner of their big kitchen was a cupboard with the bottom half completely given over to toys. As long as we were good, and we were, then we could stay indoors to play. I didn't even mind playing with the three dolls the black one being called Greta. We would pretend to play schools, sitting them on the third step of the stairway. It was Dinah's bedroom though which was the real treasure-trove for me. She had bookshelves full of children's books particularly those written by Enid Blyton. She had also been given the Just William series from her brother Alec who was by this time away at boarding school.
Reading had been my passion always. There was never a time within my memory when I couldn't read. But we didn't have books at home beyond the Beano and Dandy Annuals plus Rupert the Bear. I believe Margaret had The Fairy Stories of Hans Anderson and Tales by the Brothers Grim that I dipped into from time to time but we didn't have adventure stories about real children. There was one book that I do remember though and I believe it belonged to Minnie or Jean. It had a green hard back and was called Mary is Five. This book I read over and over before I reached that mighty age because I remember thinking that when I became five I would be able and allowed to do all the things which Mary did. She went off to the seaside alone and watched a family of cormorants and puffins. The reason I remember the names of the birds was that 'cormorants' was a long word that I had never heard before. However, when I did get to five I still didn't have any adventures and what's more there were no more adventure books in our house. In fact there weren't many books at all. My Dad did have a Teach Yourself Maths, which for the want of anything else I used to try and understand but at five or six it was just a bit too hard for me however precociously bright I might have been. I don't know what age I was when either Dad or Mam or both were talked into having a set of the Encyclopaedias by Arthur Mee. Volume 10 was much thumbed as it was a valuable reference book that throughout our childhood could be used for references to help us with homework.
Dinah allowed me to borrow a book at a time and it wasn't long before I had worked through the Famous Five, Secret Seven and The Adventure Stories. All the red Famous Five books were covered by brown paper to keep them clean. However much I enjoyed being able to borrow those wonderful books it was always tinged with a modicum of fear in case one might get damaged in our house which was mostly in a state of untidiness and messiness. Even at that young age I was beginning to learn how to behave and look after things through the influence of my Granny and Mrs Jacques at Common End Farm. These were my role models and even now in middle age I can think of none better.
Occasionally I would be asked to stay for tea. This meant being alert as to how to behave in a real dining-room with Dinah's mother and father. They were very kind and gentle towards me and there was no difficulty in expressing just how much I enjoyed the food. Mrs Jacques made the lightest of meringues that we often helped to prepare. She knew this was my favourite and seemed to genuinely enjoy making Dinah and me happy.
Very, very occasionally Dinah and I would be allowed into the lounge for a few minutes after tea. The walls were covered in bookshelves full of books and there was a sense of calm in this room.
From time to time but always just after Christmas Granny was asked over for tea and I would be included in the invitation. It was very difficult to understand why my own family hated the Jacqueses so much and that the hate has continued down the generations although this has now been tempered by change of circumstances. Mr and Mrs Jacques are dead, Alec and David, Dinah's brothers, no longer farm and Dinah lives in Pinner. What's more the farmstead and house now belongs to Minnie's son Robert a cousin of mine on my Dad's side.
Only a couple of weeks before Christmas I spoke to Alec on the telephone. When I was little Alec seemed to speak in a rather posh voice rather then the broad Yorkshire which I spoke. I was always painfully aware of my roughness. After being away from my native Yorkshire for 35 years my dialect is almost gone and the roles seemed reversed as Alec answered the telephone in what seemed now to be a Yorkshire tongue.
Hoping that some day Kelly and Amy might read my account of a Yorkshire childhood the extent of our play must stretch throughout this brief snatch of an autobiography.
6th January – Sunday
Following last evening's dinner party with Jackie and Dennis next door, I am spending today in bed recovering. There was too much good food eaten followed by a lively game of 'Articulate' until close to midnight, way past my bedtime.
It would have been unthinkable forty-five years ago that anything would have kept me away from worship on a Sunday but this has been the case for a good many years now. Questions of faith, belief and meaning have dominated my adult life though, and each Sunday I prepare a 'Thought for the Week' which John adds to the National Unitarian Fellowship (NUF) site on the internet at www.nufonline.co.uk. The NUF is a postal and internet fellowship which takes up more of my time than if I was to attend worship each Sunday. I organise the Books of Fellowship. This is a letter writing group and the email discussion group both activities keeping me busy throughout the week. John is the webmaster for the NUF web site which is based on our computer. It is a tolerant and reasonable faith that appeals to some in today's secular society but few have heard of Unitarianism and certainly few understand the specific between it and mainstream Christianity.
My memory of the first Sunday of the year is the importance of the Covenant Service. On this day each year the Methodist Church celebrates each individual's commitment to the Church celebrating it through a special Sacrament taken at the end of the service. As a child the Sacrament was something mysterious and magical that we as children were excluded from. During the penultimate verse of the last hymn the Sunday-School pupils filed out of the Chapel and back into the School-room until the oldies had taken the Sacrament. The atmosphere as we walked out was one of great solemnity that hung over us as we quietly waited for the adults to finish.
It was a good long walk home afterwards, about a mile and a half from the top-end of the village past the Post Office, railway station, school and all the village houses to our farm at the end of the village. Although Granny and Granddad never had to say anything to make sure we were on our best behaviour, Margaret, Gerry and I walked home happily and demurely. On Sundays we always wore our one decent outfit of clothing and that seemed to put a dampener on our normally high spirits.
Throughout our childhood Sunday was special and it would never have occurred to me that it was possible to call on Dinah and play. Although my Great Uncle Tom, Dinah's Grandfather, attended Chapel to the end of his life, Dinah and her family were atheists and never went near the building. Religion was a subject that we never discussed which was surprising considering how central it was in my life. Perhaps our play was too full to include an interest not shared between us.
It will be interesting to see whether Kelly and Amy will discuss religious matters as they grow up. Are questions of meaning central to everyone's life and is religion necessary in order for us all to get in touch with the spiritual side of our lives? Only time will tell.
8th January – Tuesday
On the news today we were told of the continuing difficulties being experienced by a website of the 1901 Census launched last Friday. The response has been so overwhelming that the site crashed on the first day. It was always thought that it would be a popular facility on the internet with a projected number of visits estimated to be around 2 million on the first day. That figure was reached after only two hours and before the site was likely to be accessed by the U.S.A. It is causing huge problems for British Telecom with an overloading of their systems. The 1901 Census website has been a victim of its own success.
The interest people now have in tracing their ancestry is growing. Even friends from our early married life emailed us only yesterday outlining their plans to set up a small company which would investigate genealogies on behalf of other people. Strangely enough I find the activity itself unappealing but do wonder whether in today's rapidly changing world we are all trying to locate meaning in the context of our family past and present.
As I continue with this present exercise of examining my own childhood I find that the farming cycle of nature held a central role for me and influenced later religious understanding of a pantheistic kind whereby life is seen as a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. There is much to commend the fertility rites of paganism. As a family it wasn't only the adults who took for granted generations of farming knowledge, we children were part and parcel of farming life too. Rituals accompanied the regular rhythm of farming life both on a daily and annual basis. Implements specific to a particular job would be taken from the cart-shed and prepared for use. On completion of the job for the year they would be stored away once more. Planning which crops were to be planted in which field, when the harvesting was to start followed by the ploughing were matters discussed at the table as we ate. The meaning of all our lives was the growing of good crops and good care of stock. For Granny and Granddad this was also part of the religious meaning for their lives. Back then it was never a possibility that work, other than looking after the stock, would be done on a Sunday. Our success as a family depended on living a religious life and that meant adherence to Methodist values of working hard during the week and giving thanks to God on a Sunday. This is not to say that 'God-thoughts' were reserved for the Sabbath as Granny and Granddad were deeply religious and kind people seven days each week.
In Autumn and Spring the farming event which caused most excitement was the arrival of Charlie Sweating's threshing machine which would tour all the farms in our part of Yorkshire calling for a day's threshing at each farm three or four times in a year. I was always upset when it was expected to arrive during a school day as the whole business caused a sense of rushed activity during this rather dull time of the year. It was very labour intensive and there would be farm labourers who more or less travelled round with the threshing machine. It would be a time to see workers who returned year after year.
The elevator would have been prepared in readiness for the big day. The huge red machine would slowly lumber its way into the stackyard and park up next to a stack where the sheaves of corn from the harvest had been stored. As much as possible of the corn harvest was stacked under a Dutch Barn and certainly by this time of the year it would be this which would be threshed. The later the corn was threshed the better price it could command in the market place.
The threshing machine was high enough so that at the start of the day several 'pickers and forkers' would be able to throw sheaves straight onto the top of the big machine where a couple of workers would cut the band thus loosening the corn. The whole machine shook as it ate the sheaves separating the corn from the straw and chaff (always pronounced 'caff''). Under the machine a large hession sheet of sacking caught the caff. The job of carrying the caff into the fold was always done by a tramp called 'Hutchy-m-up' who gathered the four corners of the hession sheet carrying away huge quantities of caff in a single go. Someone else would lay the next sheet down ready for Hutchy-m-up's return. It is only now in writing down his name that it's derivation becomes clear. Dad and others would collect the grains of corn in bags that were carried into the barn ready for grinding at a later time. Another team would collect forks full of straw taking it into the barn to stack in the corner to be used later as bedding for the stock. As can be imagined John and I watched with eager anticipation the replenishing of our play area in the barn.
As the stack diminished it became more difficult for the forkers to toss up the sheaves of corn onto the high threshing machine and so the elevator would be pulled up to the stack, cranked up a couple or more times to get it going, and then sheaves would be dropped on the bottom of the revolving belt riding up until they dropped onto the top of the machine.
It was vital that as much as possible was done in the one day before the big red machine was trundled away to the next farm. This meant taking meals and breaks for drinkings in shifts. Granny, Minnie and Jean would have had to work hard in preparation for the amount of food and drink needed to get everyone through the day. Cans of cocoa, big cheese sandwiches and chunks of sweet-cake were carried round to the stackyard in relays. There is no doubt that the standards of safety would not pass required tests today. As children we could only look on from a distance as accidents did happen.
Returning home from school one threshing day all was in a panic. Apparently Dad had crawled under the machine to put the hession sacking in place to catch the caff, carelessly lifting his head and received a gash followed by loss of consciousness. He had been taken quickly to the hospital in Selby, just four miles away, where the wound was stitched. It wasn't long before he regained consciousness and was sent home with the instructions to return the following week to have the stitches removed. He had been very lucky to come out of the incident with no greater damage than a split head. Throughout his life Dad would not go to the doctors and the week following he took out the stitches himself never returning to the hospital. If he hadn't lost consciousness in the first place I feel sure he would have tried to sew up the wound himself!
Unlike today's farmyards that are dangerous places for children we had a great freedom other than on the days when the threshing machine arrived. As children we greeted the great red shaking machine with excited anticipation just as children today might welcome the circus if it was to drive into their gardens. There was a sense of loss as it shook its way along the lane and out onto the road and the next farm.
10th January – Thursday
Today a salvage team began to pump diesel from Willie, a ship grounded at Plymouth Sound. This news immediately prompted an important memory that had long since been buried in my long-term memory.
Whether it was because I was a little tom-boy or whether Dad felt that I should have a boy's name so that I didn't feel out of place in the Scout Troop which he led, I'm not sure, but the result was that I was always known as 'Willie' right up until the time I went to the High School in Selby. It was a randomly selected name from the Yorkshire Post that Dad read every day. Whatever the real reasons for re-christening me Willie, it added to my sense of being one of the boys. Fortunately it didn't leave me with any confusion as to my adult sexual orientation but it did mean that for much of my life I've had no fear of becoming passive and submissive in the presence of men.
Before starting school, at almost five years old, I would wander in the yard and down the lane to the stackyard talking to myself. Jack Penrose, a casual farm worker, was one of my favourite workers who would ask me who my friend was that I so earnestly talked to. In an instant I introduced him to my invisible friend 'Forkin' explaining that he was a friend who could be seen only by special people. After that everyone got to know about my invisible friend and would always ask after him. I grew out of Forkin much earlier than the rest of the family. He continued to be a valuable friend in that it gave me an excuse to talk aloud to myself about so many things created in my imagination. In fact I began to view others as being a bit daft for thinking that I could possibly believe in an invisible person. Looking back I realise the importance of that part of my development in that I could be always be happy in any imaginary world which I might want to create. Imagination wasn't a value that the family could appreciate and I was sorry when Mam and Dad tried to persuade me that I was getting too old for Forkin. They didn't realise that he only continued as a cover so that I could develop make-believe scenarios. I always knew the clear distinction between my many imaginary worlds and real life but I suppose my defensiveness was due to a need to have a private life in which I played an important role in contrast to being the youngest of a large and extended family in real life.
At the same time, probably from four to six years old, I insisted on wearing a pair of trousers passed down from John. In the end they began to fall to pieces and must have been filthy as I hated to wear anything else to give them a chance to be washed. At the same time as Mam and Dad were trying to persuade me that I was too old for Forkin they were encouraging me to throw the trousers away. They were part of my identity and there were many harsh words before I would admit the trousers were no longer wearable and were falling to bits. It was almost as if parting with the trousers and with my imaginary friends meant putting childhood behind me.
These days when we visit our sons and grandchildren I delight in watching Amy playing in her imaginary world. Hopefully she will be encouraged to develop this private world all her life recognising the joys of an inner life where limitations have no part.
12th January – Saturday
Whilst John is busy in the kitchen trying out another new recipe, this time for Leek and Potato Soup, I am sitting at my computer remembering times when I would not be at school, being either on holiday or a Saturday. He has reminded me that we are nearly out of butter that we continue to enjoy in spite of being warned about the dangers of fat.
As a child I much preferred the thinner school milk to that which we had at home, straight from the cow. I also enjoyed margarine even though the new soft margarines were still a thing of the future. This is no longer the case and I remember the butter churning and fresh butter that I would now regard as a luxury.
Granny had a square butter-churn that seemed to be much superior to that of Mam's round churn. Whether this was because Granny used to leave me winding the handle on the wooden churn whereas Mam always seemed to be in too much of a hurry and too busy to give time for me to play at making butter. On reflection I realise that she was too busy. Our house was much more difficult to keep clean and Granny had lots of help from Minnie and Jean.
Although turning the handle seemed an attractive job when others were doing it, when I came to help I was easily bored and my arms became stiff very quickly. What's more I didn't seem to have the knack or the patience to make and wait for the butter to thicken. This didn't stop me trying even though the job had to be handed back to Granny to finish. When the milk had turned and the butter was at the right consistency, Granny would take it out of the churn and shape it with two ridged butter patters. We never sold butter but there was a large family to feed so we could never have too much.
On reflection I realise what a nuisance I must have been as a toddler and young child. The words 'what ye doin wi yersel now - can't ye get out from under mi feet' come quickly to mind but these were words never said by Granny. As soon as I was old enough that's exactly what I did with the consequence that I grew up with a minimal number of domestic skills.
Before the age of two had been reached I had managed to scald myself quite severely. Mam had left a jug of boiling water on the table. On toddling past I had pulled the tablecloth tipping the water over my head and down my neck. Going to hospital I was accompanied in the ambulance by Heb Ward for no reason I can think of. During the three weeks stay in Selby Hospital there were no visits allowed from family as in those days it was felt that children would be unsettled by visits from home. How things change. These days every effort is made to accommodate parents when a child is sick and away from home. The story was that after the three weeks were over I had become so attached to the nursing staff that I had to be pulled away screaming by Mam. What a horrid little toddler I must have seemed to her.
14th January – Monday
This morning I popped some dark pieces of clothing into the wash, tumble-dried them over lunch and now being ironed lightly they are hung back in the wardrobe. What a difference to the washdays of my childhood.
Even before we were away to school on a Monday morning, Mam had already lit the copper in the wash-house half way down the yard. At this time of the year it was quite normal to get home from school in the afternoon to find the clothes-horse and the drier, which was hoisted up to the ceiling, covered in damp washing. The kitchen was cold and damp and we would try and get inside the clothes-horse to warm ourselves up by the fire. Of course being children and totally selfish we were unaware of the sheer hard work of wash day in spite of being repeatedly told about it.
During the holidays it was difficult to get out of the way as the whole process of washing seemed to consume everybody. I presume that Granny and Granddad's washing plus ours and Jean and Minnie's was all done at the same time as Jean often used to be helping. The wash-house always struck me as a rather dirty place. At one end and behind a low wall was the place where the coal was kept. On wash days the floor was always awash with muddy water mixed with coal dust.
The copper was heated by a coal fire underneath which once lit had to be kept going. The things needing boiling would be put in first along with a 'dolly-blue' bag. If memory serves me correctly this was some sort of bleach or blue whitener. After having boiled for a good length of time the large white sheets and towels would be pulled out of the copper with sturdy tongs and put in a ready waiting tub of clean water straight from the tap on the wall. Then someone would rinse them by giving them a good posh with the posher, a long wooden handle with feet on almost like a stool on the end of a brush. Then they would be put through the mangle. Once a corner had been inserted between the rollers someone would wind the handle and the soap would drain back into the tub as the sheet wound through. Sometimes this process would be done once or twice more to make sure the sheets were thoroughly rinsed. Mangling was a hard but safe job until we got an electric mangle. Sometimes it would be touch and go whether we got to the safety button before nearly losing a finger or loosing our clothing as the electric mangle was no respecter of washed or worn clothes, all got mangled in the twink of an eye. The soapy water would then be used for other things not needing to be boiled.
Before the copper had reached boiling some water would be put into other bowls and tubs for hand washing. What with washing, boiling, scrubbing, poshing and mangling women of my Mam's generation had neither time nor need to go off to the gym for a session of aerobics to keep fit.
I never minded poshing, winding the handle on the mangle or helping empty the wash-tubs down the drain in the yard giving the yard a good sweep at the same time. What I did hate was going with Mam or Jean to hang the clothes on the line in the field. Always they said it would be all right and the cows, hens or cockerel wouldn't hurt me but almost every time it wasn't all right and I would finish up running away screaming, mainly from the cockerel.
It must have been very hard for Mam to wake up to a wet wash-day. There was no tumble-dryer in a utility room. The only alternative to the wash-line in the field was wet sheets and clothes hanging in the kitchen/living area of the house. There is little wonder that we all accepted constant colds, runny noses and wheezing as the norm throughout the winter months.
Having tea together as a family in the kitchen that wasn't very big can't have been a very pleasant occasion with wet washing all over the place. After all, until I was eight there would be four growing children plus Mam and Dad. Having no central heating and no carpets it must have been a relief to fill our hot water bottles from the boiler at the side of the coal fire and go up to bed. We would place our bottles strategically to warm as much of the bed as possible as we hurried to take our clothes off and put our 'jarmers' on. We would slip between the cold sheets and tentatively keep touching the bottle with our feet that had got frozen on the cold lino as we got ready for bed. Mostly I shared a bed with Gerry and we often shared the hot water bottle that seemed to get colder quicker than we got warm.
Tonight when I toss and turn due to overheating it might be worth thinking on the cold and dampness of wet winter wash-days fifty years ago.
18th January – Friday
It's not a thing to be proud of but I am basically lazy at learning new tasks, especially if someone else is happy to do them for me. Since becoming less able to do many of the basic things around the house such as hoovering and anything else that demands a level of energy and strength long since gone, I've lost the excuse of expecting John to do the technical things whilst I do the housework. I count setting the video and sorting out problems on the computer amongst these technical tasks. I feel quite upset at the level of difficulty presented by learning any new embroidery stitch beyond the regular cross-stitch. Working on this piece of autobiography it has become clear that my adult patterns of behaviour were laid down in my earliest years, particularly my early school days.
I started school a few months before my fifth birthday being able to read, do mental arithmetic, play the piano, juggle with two balls and play a reasonable game of cricket. However, I was unable to use a pencil or a paint brush, play with toys or play alongside other children of the same age. It is much clearer to me now that I missed going through some of the essential stages in the development of growing up.
Mrs Jones was the infant teacher during my first year at school. She was the wife of the headmaster and well-loved in the village. Mr and Mrs Jones knew Mam and Dad well having organised holidays for groups of children when Margaret and Gerry had been at the primary school. She seemed less of a teacher and more a friend of the family. I wouldn't believe the older children who said that she wore a wig. It is very likely that the first year with Mrs Jones only compounded the problems that I had but did not recognise at the time. I was not alone in grieving for her when, along with Mr Jones and her son Christopher, she left the area.
Returning to school after the first summer holiday a new infant teacher and headmaster had started so things seemed very different. There were never more than sixty pupils at the village school with three teachers and a travelling music teacher coming each Monday afternoon. Mrs Jones was soon forgotten as we got to know Miss Fawcett. However, our normal routines were changed. A sand-box was introduced in a corner of the classroom, two double sided easels lived at either side of the fire and a range of musical instruments were bought including two drums one red and one blue, two tambourines, several triangles, castanets and bazookas. Everyone wanted to play the drums but the boys used to get more turns than the girls. Nearly always I was given the bazooka, an instrument into which the player had to hum and sing at the same time to give the tune, a bit like playing a comb covered in paper. However, I found it all a bit childish, it wasn't real music just an absolute din.
Although I didn't want to play in the sand-tray we were all made to take our turn. At the time it seemed very babyish to be playing in a sand-tray after helping with real jobs at home on the farm. We might not have had toys at home but we did have child-sized tools and were encouraged to use them properly. I really didn't know what to do with the sand. But my worst nightmare was being told that it was my turn to paint at the easel or make a potato-print. It was just such an awful mess. Other pupils would stay clean at the same time as having completed a bright picture. I would be covered in paint, the paper would be a soggy mess with holes made from the overuse of paint and worse still the colour would be a khaki sort of colour. Needless to say I tried my very best to get out of any sort of 'playing', it was just too difficult. These problems continued throughout school-life surfacing in subjects like biology and chemistry. It wasn't anything to do with being squeamish, but my partner was the one who had to dissect the cow's eye or carry out all the practical experiments.
After the war and up until my own children had been at school for some time, every schoolchild was supposed to drink a third of a pint of milk each day, this was supplied by the school. My practical difficulties even extended to this area. Two milk monitors were appointed each week to hand out the milk. How I dreaded my turn. I was bound to knock over a bottle either spilling or breaking it. It must have been lack of confidence and fear that made me accident prone as I had no trouble winning the egg and spoon race each sports day.
To this day the problem persists, but for a short while during my working life with adults with learning difficulties, I was fearless at trying out new things and believe other people's assessment of my work was correct when they saw my students attempting new activities because of the special relationship I had with them. Little did anyone guess that I understood my students' lack of confidence at trying out anything new as together we overcame our difficulties.
However, life as a child and as an adult has been tremendously rich because of those other gifts that were nurtured from the very beginning. Mrs Jones and then Miss Fawcett did recognise my love of reading and it wasn't long before I had moved on from 'Old Lob and Percy', and was sent to choose my reading books from the Junior and Senior classes. It was the same for arithmetic and 'intelligence' that to me seemed another form of play.
Margaret, Gerry, John and I always stayed for school dinners. Each day at about 11.45 a.m. metal containers would arrive from Barlby School and be carried through to the canteen that doubled up as a room for indoor games. Mostly the food was fine but there were some things that I couldn't eat. Milk puddings of any sort were the worst. Mr Wright the new headmaster was cruel. One day I tried so hard to eat rice pudding but was sick in it. He wouldn't believe me and stood looking on whilst I tried hard to eat it. I can remember crying but can't remember actually eating it. Mashed potatoes were fine but sometimes spoiled by having a sprinkling of grated cheese on top. Even this though didn't rival my trouble with the rice pudding.
In the infants we used to go into the canteen for musical movement. We usually followed the educational programme on the radio. How silly I thought to have to pretend to be a cat or an elephant, shine like the sun or blow like the wind. Structured, educational play just left me cold. Most of the other children looked forward to these lessons and found the lessons I liked very difficult. I really was a bit of a misfit.
It was strange though that during play-time when I could be with the older children all was well. Skipping, cart-wheeling, hand-stands, walking on my hands, standing on my head, two balls against the wall, wheelaway, hopscotch, stoolball and many other games were wonderful. I had a gift for play but not in the schoolroom.
Perhaps when I was about six, before Mrs Ridolsh known as Raddish, stopped teaching the Juniors, my best trick was hand-standing against the low school wall around the playground. Many of the older girls could hold onto the wall with their heels and lift one hand of the ground. I could lift both hands off the ground and stay like that for ages. One day Mrs Raddish came storming into the playground and gave me a real telling-off. This was nothing new. Released from the classroom I flourished but at the same time it must be admitted that I was wild and scruffy, quite a contrast to the fearful little mouse who dare not move or touch anything inside the classroom.
It is with so much joy that I watch Kelly and Amy playing with their toys and with each other. However, there is still pressure on children to behave in certain ways. At one time Wendy was concerned by well-meaning comments which pointed out that Amy tended to play in her own little world rather than joining in with the other children. One must ask why it is that everyone is expected to conform to the norm? Certainly I come from a family who have little time for conformity and for that I am thankful even if it has meant difficult times as I've tried to adjust to a world that I often feel has gone mad.
20th January – Sunday
Last evening John and I played Rummikub, a game very like Rummy but in this instance played with numbered tiles. When John was working he had little energy left for playing indoor games especially during the week. If I was lucky he would play something at the weekend or during his holidays. Now that he is retired it's quite usual to find ourselves playing indoor games at any time. We have even found friends with whom we can play Mah Jong, our favourite game in the early days of our marriage back in the 1970s.
When I was little we used to play cards a lot. Not having a television meant more time for us to play. We didn't seem to have many board games or else they were so cheap that they quickly fell to pieces or were lost. We didn't seem to have anything that was worth taking care of. But we did have cards, maybe not full packs of cards but enough to make a full pack of fifty-two cards putting them all together. When that figure dipped below the full number we would take any spare card and just write on the missing number. It wasn't a perfect situation as it was almost as easy to identify the cards from the back after we had been playing for a while.
Up until the age of eight I was the youngest of four. Margaret, Gerry and John would reluctantly include me in a game of whist which meant that I learned early the pleasure to be gained from playing cards. The highlight of the week would be a Saturday evening when I was allowed to go with the rest of the family to the Whist Drives. They weren't held every week but they were regular in the winter. Usually Mam and Dad would be the organisers for any one of a number of organisations like the Cricket Club, Boy Scouts or Gymkhana Fund.
The Whist Drives were held at the Village Institute in Cliffe. The Institute was, and still is, situated on the main Hull to Selby road, marking the spot where the 'Top End' of the village starts. It always did seem a low, old building from the outside that it's difficult to believe that it has served the village well for a very long time. It was used for all the village functions from cricket club dances, whist drives, concerts and scout gang shows, spring fairs, Christmas bazaars, youth clubs, snooker and darts club and we mustn't forget the good old jumble sales. Immediately on entering one was confronted with an enormous snooker table and a couple of dartboards. This room included the kitchen area and during chapel bazaars the huge table would be covered with a board on which were set plates and plates of sandwiches, buns and cakes all counted and shared out carefully onto individual plates. The main room in which most of the activities took place had a low stage at one end with a piano just below. At the end was a small cloakroom. On reflection it had everything a village could need and perhaps that is why it continues to flourish. One added attraction was the proximity of the village pub, the New Inn, only a few yards away.
This time of the year though, was the whist drive season and cricket club dances in the lull following Christmas concerts and bazaars, spring fairs and cricket, a time to make money for the summer activities of village cricket and Gymkhana.
At first I wasn't allowed to go near the frenetic card playing. It was all played in deadly earnest with everyone striving to be in the prizes at the end of the night. It was all so very fast but I think I must have been born with the gift of playing indoor games as it wasn't long before I was being asked to make up a four instead of leaving a spare dummy hand. There is no better way of learning to play whist properly than being thrown amongst regular adult players. There was no corner given just because I was little. I always knew that if I did something wrong I would be out. As it was I remember the enthusiasm I caught from the village card players and how I didn't just play to make up a four but how, even then, I played to win. The problem was though that even if I did win I wasn't allowed a prize!! I don't know whether the following happened only once or often but I do remember during the interval for tea and cakes Dad lifting me onto the stage and singing, accompanied by him on the piano:
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy when skies are grey,
You'll never know dear, how much I love you,
Please don't take my sunshine away.
How often it strikes me these days how much confidence I had as a child when asked to play games, confidence that seemed to leave me as I moved into adulthood. However, even now the playing of the game can make me forget any reticence I might have. Friends and family are wrong when they might think I don't like loosing. Of course I prefer to win but it is the sheer pleasure of playing that is important. Last year, when visiting Andy, Wendy and the girls, I was thrilled to arrive and find the table already with the cards dealt ready for us to play. Lacking confidence to give advice that may be unwelcome or misplaced I try to leave our family to make their own decisions freely. However, such is the pleasure of play and my wish that others may share this pleasure that last summer I was brave enough to tell Andy that he really should have shown the girls how to throw and catch a ball and hit a ball with a racquet.
24th January – Thursday
The weather has been very dismal for these past few days. The sea, when it has not been shrouded in mist, has been big and loud, with waves of six to eight feet tall producing masses of white foam. Our time has not been wasted though as we've been sorting out airing and kitchen cupboards.
Our kitchen at Pipers Pool is small and compact and was one of the features that attracted us to the bungalow in the first place. Every bit of space has been utilised and it is amazing just how much the various cupboards and drawers can take. Along with a split-level cooker there is a built-in micro-wave oven, fridge, washer and dishwasher. It took a while to remember which appliance was beyond which door. An unseen table pulls out from above some drawers with suitable stools hung on pegs just through the second kitchen door into the study. As well as corner and eye-level cupboards for food, crockery and pots and pans there is a full-length larder cupboard that has a deceptively large capacity. One of the best features though is the wonderful view across the sea and down to Combesgate Beach when the tide is out. Although the kitchen is small enough to stand in the middle and almost touch each side it is well planned and always light. The window that is above the sink is large and faces West, looking out across Woolacombe Bay, bounded on the left by Hartland Point in the distance and Baggy Point to the South, and Morte Point much closer and to the North..
It's almost impossible to bridge the gap between this modern kitchen at Pipers Pool in North Devon at the beginning of the new millennium, and that at Tithe Farm, Yorkshire in the middle of the twentieth century.
Although we had a front and a back door the former was hardly ever used being swollen by damp for much of the year. Instead the house was approached across the back yard and through the back door that was never locked and hardly ever closed. The first stoned area inside the house was badly lit by a tiny window that was denied any light by the high sides of the fold just a couple of yards across the passage. For many years there was no way of cooking besides using the oven next to the fire in the room we called the kitchen although it had none of the usual appliances that we would understand as being part of a modern kitchen. Eventually we did get an electric cooker but it was no more than an oven on legs with two rings. It lived just under the little window and shared this small entrance space with coats, overalls, shoes, boots and Wellingtons. This small cream cooker didn't have a grill so we had to continue toasting bread and making waffles in front of the coal fire. In my early childhood there was no sliced bread to be had. Whether home made or bought our bread was always substantial as were our toasts that once buttered we dipped into our mugs of tea. Although our mugs were big Dad and Granny always used pint ones.
On entering through the back door and turning left, a continuation of the entrance area was a small room housing the big, deep white pot sink which usually held a chipped enamel bowl. Having no piped hot water there was just the one, large, cold tap. Fixed onto the sink was a wooden draining board, not big and usually cluttered with dishcloth and flannel. To hide all the various clutter under the draining board there was a curtain strung on a bit of curtain cord. Directly under the sink was the pig swill bucket for all our slops which was tipped into the pig troughs just through the fold door. Above the sink, and out of reach for most of my childhood, was a shelf with pans and yet more clutter. The sink was our washing-up sink, our wash-basin and when very small our bath. I always had tide marks round my neck, wrists, ankles and tops of Wellington boots. Every so often one of the oldies would see just how dirty I was and send me in to scrub the dirt from my arms and neck. I can remember the sink being filled with hot water from the boiler by the fire and the cold water tap being run until the temperature was right. I would plunge my arm in and feel the water right up to my elbows and even higher. The flannel, an old piece of worn out sheet was always slimey and smelt terrible. I hated it anywhere near my neck and face but Mam or Dad would roughly ignore my squirms and squeals and scrub me clean. Having gone to all the bother of filling up the sink it would have to do for the rest of the family. Mostly we just washed our hands and faces, not necks, in the chipped enamel bowl. Occasionally we would save the water and soak our feet and wash our legs up to the knees. How I hated the sound and feel of my nails catching on the chipped bowl.
There was a tiny window on the opposite wall to the sink, which meant that standing in front of the sink there was no light falling into the washing up area. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why this part of the house seemed the dirtiest and smelliest, what with old cloths and a bucket of pig swill.
Continuing on from the sink area were two stone steps down into the larder. That was far too posh a name for us. We called it the dairy, one of my favourite rooms. It was long and thin with shelves all along the outside wall, a small window covered with a grill, a marble slab at the end, hooks for hanging meat on the roof and along the inside wall large containers for various cooking ingredients, milk and crates of eggs waiting to be collected by the egg man.
Each Thursday Mr Pop would come round the village delivering lemonade amongst other things. We would have two bottles of fizzy drinks, one lemonade and one dandelion and burdock or cherryade, and from time to time one bottle of orange squash to dilute. The new bottles of fizzy drinks were to accompany Sunday lunch as a special treat. Any that was left we might be given if we behaved well during the week. The bottles of pop were kept on the top shelf just inside the dairy. I can't remember how old I would be, about eight or nine perhaps, when I started realising that I might reach the top shelf if I stood in the sink room before the steps down into the dairy, and stretched precariously up to the shelf. The dairy was dark even in the daylight but at night, without a light, it was pitch- black. I got into the habit of pinching just a bit of pop from time to time and even when it was dark I knew exactly the feel of the bottle and where it would be. However, my habit must have been discovered as one night when it was dark I did the usual thing. Stretching up I nudged the bottle to get a good hold, carefully let it fall into my other hand, screwed of the top and took a good gulp. It tasted terrible as in place of the usual bottle of pop someone had put the vinegar bottle. There was nobody to tell what had happened as that would have been admitting to being guilty which I didn't want to do.
I loved creeping into the dairy to take desiccated coconut, raisins and sultanas but not currants. When Mam returned from the market in Selby I couldn't wait to sneak in and go through her bag in case she had brought home something nice.
From time to time Basil Jewitt, the local butcher, would come and slaughter a pig that was usually shared between our family and Granny's next door. There was always a deal of excitement preparing for the day. We would get huge blocks of salt that needed to be ground into grains to put on the meat to preserve it whilst it hung suspended from the ceiling. Although John and I played at preparing the salt for Mam to use I think that perhaps we were useful. Starting from different ends of the salt we would turn our knives in the salt drilling tunnels and passageways until we met somewhere in the middle. We would continue to make as many holes as possible until the whole thing collapsed. My favourite bits of the pig were the ribs. It was one of the things Mam cooked well served with tasty juice and mashed potatoes. We would all sit at the table holding the ribs in our fingers whilst we chewed and sucked until there was nothing but bone left. I wasn't very keen on the bacon though as it was thick and fatty, not at all like any rashers sold in shops.
It's hard to believe that I have failed to mention another very valuable member of our family. Timmy, our one eyed, white terrier, was old for all the time I knew him. It was said that he had more lives than a cat. He did very well after the pig had been killed and would spend hours chewing bones, but more of Timmy another time.
25th January – Friday
Henry, our elderly cat has a sore eye at the moment that we are bathing with cotton wool and warm water. It doesn't worry him enough to disturb his almost continuous snoozing. He must be almost seventeen now and is probably more content than at any other time in his life. I bought him from the Cat's Protection League, in Spondon near Derby when he was only a small kitten. He chose me rather than the other way round. He was playing with many other kittens in an enclosed area. When I stepped inside he wouldn't leave me alone whilst I selected a kitten to take home to Castle Donington. I would put him back and straight away he would jump back onto my shoulder. He was by no means the prettiest kitten in the run but he was certainly the most persistent. Almost as soon as we arrived home he went down with cat flu and we had to spend the next few days dropping medicine and liquid food directly into his mouth. He recovered well and it wasn't long before he was lost having followed Andy into the village. I rang up the local newspaper to place an advert for a lost kitten only to find that the finder had already placed one for a found cat.
We already had a dog called Jack, and only a couple of years later we acquired a stray cat who we named Benjie. Henry was very nervous of the smaller cat and wasn't sorry when he died. Henry was probably even more pleased when Jack had to be 'put to sleep' after a long, cruel illness. Henry then came into his own becoming boss of the house, and to some extent he continues to do what he want when he wants. He used to spend hours hunting for mice and birds many of which he would bring back as presents for John and me. Then he started sitting at the window for hours just looking out to sea. Now he seems to sleep other than when he has to respond to the call of nature after which he returns to sleep some more. Since Christmas I have relented and allowed him to come into our bedroom at night. Earlier I was nervous that he might deposit his catch on to my pillow whereas now I feel pretty sure that he's happier to continue resting. We could learn a lot from cats on how to grow old gracefully and sleep ourselves well when poorly. Last week we even bought him a new bed so that he wouldn't sleep on one half of our bed whilst John and I had to share the other half. It took him a while before he realised it was bought especially for him but now he's discovered the pleasures of a covered house just for him he seems to sleep forever.
At one time there were fourteen farm cats at Tithe Farm, none of which needed feeding by us. They would earn their keep by keeping the mouse population down to a manageable level. None of them had a name although the Ginger Tom would sometimes creep past Granny into her house. If the number of cats began to grow too large my Dad was the one who had to take the new litter in a sack and drown them in the pond at the bottom of the field. Sometimes we would find new-born kittens and not tell so that they would be saved as Dad wouldn't drown them once they had opened their eyes.
Although the cats never seemed to be part of the family our dogs were. Timmy was the first of our dogs that I knew. Being younger by many years than Margaret, Gerry, and John I spent many hours playing alone. Well I wasn't really alone as Timmy enjoyed being talked to and I was very good at talking. When I first started reading The Famous Five books by Enid Blyton I would imagine having adventures with Timmy just as Julian, Dick, George and Anne did with their dog Timmy. Together we would walk down the Middle Lane stopping off at the pond before reaching the Moses and Jimmy Longs. We would keep a constant watch for the villains who might jump out and take me prisoner at any time. But I was safe as long as Timmy was around. He would always run back home and tell John or Gerry who I was sure would come and rescue me. It never occurred to me then that I was in more danger of falling in the ponds or dykes than I was of being captured by convicts on the run. All the dogs I knew had their own personalities. Timmy was mine, or so I thought. He was a sad looking thing with his blind eye and his increasing lameness but he talked to me if not in words in looks and movements.
Dinah's first dog was called Roger, a beautiful brown collie. I would have to walk past Roger to get to the back door but he was so friendly and never boisterous although he did like lots of fuss. Dinah was devastated when Roger died but in no time at all they had got a black collie who they named Jack. He was very different from Roger and as he grew up I dare not walk past him and Dinah would make sure he was tied up if she knew when I was to arrive, otherwise I would knock at the front door. Nobody ever used front doors but nothing would keep me away from Dinah's.
Heb Ward lived a couple of hundred yards away on the other side of the road. Back in the 1950s there was no real danger from the road. Sandy Jacques had a car but rarely used it and when he did he went very slowly. The local bobby called P.C. Hogg didn't get a car until I was about nine, up to that time he would pedal along slowly on his big black bicycle. Other than that the main road users were the various farm tractors and cyclists. Consequently nobody seemed to worry when I wandered off to the Wards. I was even more frightened of their dog, Flick, than of Jack Jacques. He sat for most of the day at the hole in his shed but he was always alert, he never slept. I was convinced he was always waiting especially for me. Luckily he was on a chain but I never believed he couldn't pull himself free and take lumps out of my legs. First I would knock at the back door and ask Mrs Ward if I might go through to their buildings or into the orchard where there was a broken old tractor on which we sometimes played. She always told me not to be frightened and that really Flik was friendly, nevertheless I would either shuffle along the house wall to the left of Flik or follow the grass on the right to get through the big gate. Either way I had to be very brave to do either as Flik strained on his long chain snapping at my heels.
Granny's collie dog was called Jock. In fact the first Jock died when I was very young. He was soft and gentle with everyone and wouldn't hurt a fly. The second Jock, who looked identical to the first, was totally different. Nobody could cycle past without him snapping at their heels. Mrs Jacques and Dinah seemed to come off the worst. We weren't a very nice family in the way we laughed at other people. We would watch people coming from the common trying to get up speed so that when they actually passed our house they could lift their legs high up from the pedals until they were safe. Jock never went beyond the boundary of the dyke at one side and the lane at the other. He did from time to time manage to actually bite passers by or visitors to the house, but back then people didn't report things like that, instead they just grumbled and left it at that. Jock wouldn't have survived long in today's world. Although I was frightened of other people's dogs I loved Jock and he was a very faithful friend to Granddad in the last few years of Granddad's life of which more at a later date. As long as Granddad was a working farmer it was Minnie who seemed to love the dogs. In fact she had a way with all animals, a no-nonsense sort of approach whilst managing to be gentle at the same time.
Timmy died when I was about nine or ten and we then got the most wonderful and talented dog that I've ever known. He was a black and white collie who was called Bing. Mr Hopkinson lived on a farm beyond the Common Station and he would regularly go passed, walking briskly and singing happily. He had long since been known as Bing after Bing Crosby, a famous American singer of the time. One day he happened to say that his bitch had just had pups and would we like one. He was the most beautiful puppy and the best natured of dogs as he grew up. John and I used to play tennis in the stackyard, football in the field and cricket down the passage. Bing was ball-boy, right wing or extra fielder. In fact he was a real nuisance. He would leap into the air and catch the serve in flight, he would never pass at football and would dribble the ball away from the pitch and as for cricket the ball rarely reached the bat. But he was tremendously clever and he loved ball games almost as much as me. He died the same day as our eldest son Richard was born, October 8th 1967.
I was glad to hear only just last week that Peter, our youngest son, and Claire, his partner have got a black Labrador called Figgy. In my eyes, now they have got a dog, they are part way to being a real family.
27th January – Sunday
Often on a Sunday we eat Scampi, chips and peas for lunch, today being no exception. For most of our married life we have treated Sunday as a day to do things rather than to be greatly bothered with cooking. This is in stark contrast to Sunday lunch as a child. Although we always had our main cooked meal at lunchtime it was always dignified by calling it 'dinner'. Usually it was 'Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding' served at the same time on the same plate. Granny and Granddad used to serve up one large Yorkshire Pudding to each person mostly accompanied with gravy but occasionally Granddad would have it served with jam.
On this particular Sunday forty-seven years ago we had a belated Christmas dinner, partly to celebrate the Christmas just past but mainly to celebrate the return home of Mam with our new baby brother, Andrew. Sadly it didn't work out quite as well as we had all hoped and for this there was a very good reason.
Back in the summer of 1954 we had been given two baby goslings. Colin, my future brother-in-law had earlier taken me over to his father's farm at Newsholme near Howden, the farm where now my sister Margaret and family live. In the large room attached to the kitchen where Wellingtons and overalls were kept, there was an incubator where Colin used to incubate the eggs. He promised that if all was successful and he got a good hatch then he would bring over to Cliffe two baby goslings for us to keep. He was successful and the two young birds, Henry and Oscar became great pets. With Mam being away in hospital from September onwards we didn't discourage the growing geese when they pushed open our back door and waddled into the entrance room although they were never allowed to walk into the house proper. The geese became great friends and part of the family. Mam never really recognised just how much we thought of Herbert and Oscar.
The Christmas of 1954 was very subdued as we waited each day to hear when Mam would be allowed home with Andrew. Dad had given us lots of instructions as to how we must treat Mam when she finally came home. At first she would be able to do little so we must continue with all our existing household chores. It would be a long time before she would be able to return to normal duties. In the circumstances it didn't seem long at all before she seemed back to normal. Early in the New Year she arrived home, pleased to see us all again, her stay had stretched to four months. By the end of the month she felt ready to prepare the belated Christmas dinner. This year it was to be special, instead of the usual chicken we were to have goose. Dad and John teased the rest of us who pressed for the reprieve of our friend Oscar without avail. We appealed over and over again but with no relenting from Dad, and Oscar was duly killed, plucked and prepared for the dinner table. Even now I can remember clearly where I was sitting at the table and how upset I was along with Gerry and Margaret. Not only could we not eat Oscar but the whole meal was an absolute failure made worse by Dad telling us off for being so silly and not being grateful after all the effort which Mam had made. For her sake we were told to eat up but even then we couldn't. We couldn't bear to think that the meat on our plate was our own Oscar who had felt so safe with us that he would pop in each day to see us.
This meal was a turning point in our relations with Mam. Up to that point we had behaved and done everything to show her how pleased we were to have her back. After that dinner all was back to normal. Mam began nagging again and we quickly stopped being thoughtful and helpful.
30th January – Wednesday
Yesterday we popped into Braunton to the hairdressers. I don't have anything special these days other than a trim every six weeks to keep my hair short and manageable. It wasn't until after I was married that I went to a hairdresser. Before that my sister, Gerry, used me as someone to practice on. Consequently I went from tightly permed hair to short and straight. Sometimes forward over my ears and at other times swept back. Over the years I've had many images but these days it's always neat and tidy and always the same.
When I was nine Gerry was fifteen and at that young age started a three years hairdressing apprenticeship with Mr and Mrs Farmery in Selby. It was a very poorly paid job until she qualified but I do remember that she had to pass most of her hard earned wages over to Mam for her 'keep'. Obviously it was quite some while into her training before she would be allowed to perm customer's hair but that didn't stop her practicing on me.
About the same time as Gerry left school we had major alterations at home. Mam and Dad's bedroom was divided into two with one half becoming the bathroom with an inside toilet and hot and cold water. There was great relief from us all. As we were growing up we recognised just how dirty we had been and didn't like it.
Gerry had always cut my hair but on one particular occasion, probably when I was about ten, she decided to give me a perm. The memory of that day will always stay in my memory. Mrs Burns, the chapel-goer with the voice, was visiting and sat chatting away with Mam and us whilst Gerry wound lots of little rollers with papers into my hair. I didn't like being messed around and I certainly hadn't wanted a perm so that when the neutraliser had been put on and Gerry said that I could go, as long as I returned in ten minutes to get it rinsed off, I was much relieved. She stressed that I definitely must not be longer than the ten minutes. However, no sooner had she said this than Mrs Burns jumped on a chair as she had seen a mouse and then the house seemed to start shaking as water gushed out from the fireplace. As I rushed to go up the stairs another mouse ran out and then water cascaded down the steps. As usual I was told to get out of the way. Could they all panic more easily without me there I asked? Panic they did and for a very long time. I suppose the water had to be turned off at the stop-tap. Whatever went on I kept out of the way. Eventually Gerry remembered that my hair had been neutralised for a very long time, certainly three-quarters of an hour. What a disaster for her first attempt at a perm. The end result was a very tightly frizzed hair-style which I quite liked. Everyone said how nice it looked whilst secretly thinking, 'thank God it wasn't burned off'. I was totally unperturbed by it all but Mam and Gerry were certainly nervous as Dad hadn't approved of the experiment. He never did like fancy hair and make-up.
However, she did go on to become a very good hairdresser setting up her own business in Canada for a very exclusive clientele. This couldn't have been easy as in Canada they have much stricter rules as to who counts as a qualified hairdresser. Not only did she have to take practical exams, which would have been daunting to her, but also she had to pass written ones that she would have found even more difficult. That she passed both demonstrates the tenacity that she shares with the rest of the family.
