CHAPTER 4 – March 2002
4th March – Monday
Having decided to study for a second degree, following immediately on from the 'year of the journal', I have purchased the required set books. This degree will be purely the study of literature and for pleasure only, to give some sort of focus to a sedentary life. The books have been purchased already and the reading begun. What a lovely surprise to find that Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott written back in the nineteenth-century, is one selected for study. From the very first sentence of the book I was taken back to being a child and reading it over and over again.
Once each year the Sunday School would award each pupil with a book which was presented during a Sunday service not long after the Sunday School Anniversary in May. The value of the book depended on how many times the pupil had attended Sunday School in that year. Being ill didn't count as being absent so I was always pretty confident that I would get a decent book. Inside the front cover Granny would have written on a special 'Award' label something like: 'This prize was presented to Joan Holman for good attendance in 19..'.
Reading Little Women as an adult I can see why it was so suitable a prize for me, as a young girl who acted for the most part as a boy. The recommended and expected behaviour for young girls and young women was that of being passive and submissive to the male sex. The advice that Mrs March gives to her four daughters is that which will fit them for being wives and mothers. In the book fourteen year old Josephine, Jo for short, is always getting into scrapes and being neglectful of the state of her dress. She thinks of herself as a good 'fellow'. I can see why at ten years old I would identify with this particular character. More subtly though I can also see how I would try to follow the advice given to her. As a child I would dearly want to earn the respect of Granny and would modify my behaviour accordingly. In some ways it seems that I have always been sensitive to conforming instead of standing up and being myself. Whenever I have stood up for something I have considered important life has been pretty harsh whereas the easiest path is that of least resistance. However, I would now advise youngsters to follow their dreams just so long as they are kind to those around them. What this generation counts as important the next generation will no doubt throw out and the following generation re-instate. Such are the vagaries of human society. What is important is that we all continue to question and hopefully pass this trait on to generations who follow.
Yesterday we went for a drive on Exmoor up to Molland Moor where we could see the deer in the distance. I can't remember having been up on the Moor at this time of the year and was interested to see how black the heather was and how some of the marsh grass was pale and fluffy. The farmers had been busy cutting and laying the hedges. When I was little I remember how clever Dad was at laying hedges. In many ways he was a solitary man who took a pride in his work. Then, fields were fields divided by hedges that were a haven for wild life. Each field would be sown with a different crop. As the years passed and it became more economical to sow many fields to the same crop the hedges were scuffed up and earlier paths sown over to maximise the yield. Somehow it seemed as if the very land itself had lost its distinctive personality.
8th March – Friday
Speaking to Margaret on the telephone earlier this week I was pleased to hear her news that she has been invited to the July Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. Of course Colin will go with her. Apparently this honour is in recognition of the many years of service that she has given to the community.
On the 22nd March she will have been married for forty-four years. For the first few years of being married she lived in a small semi-detached house across from Warp Farm, in Newsholme, which Colin worked with his father. As the years went on Colin's father found the farmhouse just too big for him so an extension was built on to the farmhouse and he moved into that and Margaret and Colin moved into the farmhouse with their two young sons Neil and Stuart. Old Mr Wright died many years ago but Colin and Margaret continue to live in the farmhouse. It is unlikely that Colin will ever really retire but Neil has now taken over the running of the farm and he himself lives at the other side of the stackyard with Julie and their two boys, Christopher and Matthew. Stuart runs his computer business from a purpose building next to the farmhouse and lives in the next village with his wife, Tracey, and their two new twin daughters.
The whole family has worked hard for the parish with Wressle at its centre. Newsholme, where my sister lives is no more than a hamlet of a few houses, straggling either side of the busy Hull road. Margaret has always been a great organiser and for many years was Chairman of the Parish Council. For almost all of her married life she has also been the organist at Wressle Parish Church that serves as a home for both Anglican and Methodists. She is the eldest sister who has been there whenever anyone from our large extended family needed her.
On 22nd March 1958 she married Colin Wright at Cliffe Chapel. She was only nineteen at that time but they had been 'going out' for many years. When Colin first asked Dad if he could marry Margaret that winter Dad suggested that they wait awhile. They did as was asked waiting until spring! It was a lovely wedding but the first big family event without Granddad who had died the previous September. There were five bridesmaids, cousins Pauline and Linda, Colin's younger sister Christine, Gerry and me. I can't remember why cousin Heather wasn't a bridesmaid but perhaps it had something to do with the cost.
To this day the wedding is overlaid with a sense of guilt arising from something that happened forty-four years ago to this day.
At school March was an excellent time for playing netball. All being well the snow and heavy frosts had cleared sufficiently for us to be able to play netball in the 'seniors' playground. We were usually divided into coloured teams with one team wearing the appropriate coloured band. There were three colours at school and I happened to be in yellow like my sister Gerry. John and Margaret had been in blue with the third colour being red.
As mentioned in an earlier entry my life centred round reading, playing the piano and ball games. I think on balance that playing ball games has been the main love of my life and would be my first choice if health allowed it.
In netball there is only one position that allows the player access to all areas excluding the shooting circles. I was always centre and always greedy for the ball. Sister Gerry who was tall for her age was always shooter. Forty-four years ago though Gerry had long since left the primary school and I hoped that 1958 would be my last year as it was expected that I would pass the eleven plus scholarship to go to the Grammar School in Selby.
That particular Friday afternoon we had been playing against the school in the next village of Hemingborough and were watched by a selector for the County Junior Team. Imagine my delight when afterwards I was approached and asked to go to the trials in Beverley on 22nd March. Thinking that this was the most important day of my life and that the rest of the family would see it in the same light I rushed home to tell everyone of my good fortune. Imagine my reaction when Mam burst my bubble of excitement. There was no question of me missing Margaret's wedding, how could I possibly have imagined otherwise. Being a spoilt brat I reacted with tears and shouting that nobody cared about me and didn't they realise that I would never be given another chance. Surely Margaret would want me to go to Beverley, she always wanted what was best for everyone. I was told in no uncertain terms that when Margaret got home from work I was not to mention it again. Of course I did and of course she couldn't believe that her wedding wasn't the most important thing in all of our lives. Being frightened of Mr Wright, the bully who we had as headmaster, I couldn't think how it was possible for me to go into school and tell him that I wouldn't be able to go to the trials.
Could we possibly have imagined all those years ago that any one from our family would be going to the Palace. If anyone in our family deserves such an honour then it surely is Margaret who fusses and bosses but who is always there and never gives less than her all to whoever might call on her for help.
13th March – Wednesday
On Monday I managed to get to the monthly lecture on World Religions that takes place at the Lantern in Ilfracombe. Jim Bates, a retired lecturer on World Religions is a broad-minded Methodist. He always sets out the lecture in note form along with various books that might be relevant to the topic being addressed. This week he had on display a book written by his son-in-law, David Brazier, The Feeling Buddha – A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and Passion. Today I finished the last chapter with a sense of contentment that I nearly always find in Buddhist literature.
Writing this journal is thought provoking, not only about certain incidents that happened in childhood but also thoughts of how five children who were exposed to the same influences have developed in their different ways.
For Margaret, Gerry and I the importance of religious thinking has been a strong thread running through each of our lives and yet we have all moved apart in how we practice and what we believe. Gerry is probably the only one who has retained the creedal faith of our childhood. She belongs to an urban non-conformist church in Pickering near Toronto in Canada. When Margaret and I stayed with her in the year 2000 Gerry was keen to introduce us to the many members of her large and active community of Christian women. Their lives of Christian witness and social activity were centred for the most part in the activities of the church. The Bible, prayer life, church attendance and life of Christian witness were of central importance to Gerry.
Margaret seldom misses a service held at the local Anglican Church in Wressle, Yorkshire. This is mainly because she has been organist at the Church for about forty years. But there is a considerable distance between the urban non-conformist Christianity of Canada and the Anglican Church at Wressle that serves as the place of worship for both Methodist non-conformists and Anglicans. In this case the Anglican Church is certainly broad and inclusive.
As a child I remember listening to many sermons with a concentration not given to other childhood activities. In some ways I have always thought that religious questions are central to our understanding of what our lives mean. However, as the years go by it seems more important than ever to go beyond any one religious line whilst being tolerant of other's beliefs. As a consequence I am a Unitarian belonging not to a specific church but rather to the postal fellowship of the National Unitarian Fellowship. This small denomination with its emphasis on 'Freedom, Tolerance and Reason' is very different to both Margaret's and Gerry's understanding and practice of religion.
Brothers John, Andrew and their families have never spent time considering the role of religion in life. With respect they attend Church for the various rites of passage but anything beyond is irrelevant in their day to day lives.
When we were small the family was identified and separated from others in the community by our Methodist label. I was born at the end of 1946 but my early years were set in the context where our family was still in touch with ideas from the wider world that had been introduced by various people and families who had been thrown amongst us during the war. Many of these contacts became life-long friends.
In a nearby village there was the 'Prisoners of War' camp and some of the men came to the farm each day to work. Our family was definitely not tolerant. The men who came to work each day missed their own families back in Germany and made much of Margaret, Gerry and John. Somehow it was clear that these real men were good people and yet the 'Germans' in abstract were hated. Uncle Jacques fell in love with a German girl and they actually had a child and yet when the war ended his family would not allow him to marry her. Jacques, now an old man, always kept in touch with his daughter and I believe financially was generous. He never married and has become a lonely figure now that his mother, Auntie Hilda and his father, Uncle Billy, are dead.
Another figure was someone called Uncle Leo. He wasn't really an uncle and I don't know how he became connected with the family. What I do remember clearly is that he was lively, funny and outgoing and he was a Catholic. Our family was rather derisory of his faith. It allowed him to drink and do what he liked all week as long as he confessed each Sunday. At the time I didn't recognise just how narrowly our life was defined through our Methodist roots. As time went on we saw less of Leo; perhaps he appeared a threat to the many young women and girls in our family. Whatever he was and did that was good, would count for nothing set against his Catholic background. What I never could understand was the derisory way our family could talk about the big families which Catholics seemed to have when Mam was the eldest of fourteen and Dad the eldest of seven and in turn they went on to have five children of their own.
Our favourite family was Queenie and Jock with their young daughter Anne who was about the same age as my brother John. I think that Jock was in the RAF and in some way made friends with our family during the war. They had an appetite for life that always seemed fresh contrasted to the narrowness of our lives as Methodists. After the war they returned to their home in Wisbech where Anne and her husband Laurence, Lol for short, still live with their family. A good memory is one of being taken to Anne and Lol's wedding. Margaret and Colin bought a small Ford Popular OBT 839 early in their marriage and we travelled many miles in that small car. Looking back I can't believe how we all managed to fit in to the small space. Mam and Dad sat in the back with Andrew on their knee and I sat on the bottom of the car between the front and back of the car with what seemed to be feet everywhere.
There were others who came to stay during the war whose names are now long forgotten but they still left a mark on my young mind. Evacuees from towns were always described as 'townies' in a way that was meant to give us a sense of our superiority. We were told that they were dirty and didn't know how to speak properly. With hindsight this is ironic considering our own standards or lack of same in terms of cleanliness. Along with my sisters I suffered times of humiliation in my progression through school as I was singled out and brought to stand in front of the class to highlight my broad Yorkshire dialect that wasn't acceptable. Even after many years of living away from Yorkshire, a trace of the old dialect remains, but thankfully these days people are not dissuaded from using local dialect.
Being a native of Yorkshire was always important to me and not more so than when we were planning to move to Long Eaton in Derbyshire in 1969/70. Instead of moving with John at the end of 1969 I lived with Nan and Grampy, John's mum and dad, until the birth of our second child, Andy. It was important that if it was a boy he should be born in Yorkshire as at that time the county cricket team stipulated that players must be Yorkshire born. It seemed for much of his young life that he might well become a professional cricketer as he had style and presence on the cricket pitch from a very young age. Instead of being consumed by sport his adult life has been devoted to his family but who knows what the future might hold.
16th March – Saturday
There is much talk in the house about whether the weather will be good for John's game of golf tomorrow. I know that I must prepare again for a hole by hole blow of the game. The European Tour seems to have got going again and today we are watching the 'Quatar Open' that the young twenty-one year old from Australia is leading by six shots. The most difficult thing about the past few years has been coming to terms with the fact that I might never play golf again. Instead of the situation becoming easier it becomes worse. As a youngster it was impossible to imagine a life not connected with farming and one without playing some type of ball game.
March was always a time to look forward to, a time when Dinah and I might get to play cricket or hockey along either her drive or the lane. I came to hockey early as Dinah started at the High School a couple of years before me. Whatever the weather, we would play just so long as there was daylight.
It wasn't unusual in the decade or so after the war to have parents who were heavy smokers. These were the days before the connection had been made between smoking and cancer plus all the other myriad of diseases associated with the dreaded weed. Added to this was the cheapness of this addiction. In spite of this youngsters weren't generally encouraged to smoke although Dad did let me have a puff at Christmas.
Soon after Dinah started going to the High School she started trying the odd cigarette. Sometimes when we played hockey down the lane she would take out a packet of cigarettes and we would hide behind the back of the fold wall that ran alongside the lane that served as our hockey pitch. I remember the naughtiness of it all but I can't say that the actual smoking had any attractions in itself. Dinah, on the other hand, was hooked from a very early age. As she went through her teenage years she seemed to be far more sophisticated than me. From a very young age she seemed to be very 'arty' and went on to study art at Manchester College of Art. She always seemed to be her own person and confident in shaping her own somewhat unorthodox life, or so it seemed to everybody who knew her. In winter she would go to school without a coat or a blazer and then in summer she would wear layer upon layer of clothes. She insisted on being different and her mode of dress plus the smoking was all part of the way she defined her own independent personality. She got on well enough with everybody but never really had what one would consider a close friend of her own age.
Sometimes as we played hockey her brother, Alec, would come along the lane and join in. Unlike other boys in the village who passed their eleven-plus and went to Drax where rugby was played, Alec went to a boarding school in Bridlington and had played hockey. He was a good few years older than Dinah and had already left school by the time our hockey days started. We were all surprised that after having gone to a 'paid' school he came home to work on the farm and showed very few signs of having any ambitions beyond that. Considering that Dinah's father had played for Yorkshire and given encouragement for his two sons to follow in his footsteps it was surprising that it was Dinah who flourished on the sports field. We were always pleased to have the opportunity of using a real cricket bat, hockey sticks and tennis rackets but very envious that we weren't allowed in the 'nets' where Mr Jacques coached Alec and David. David, Dinah's eldest brother, the one who wasn't very bright, played for the village team but I can't remember Alec so demeaning himself. He was never a good mixer and his education had set him apart from other boys in the village.
Whether David went away to school I can't remember but he certainly was a regular figure in the village pub. I remember when he broke his leg and was laid up in his bedroom plastered from the top of his leg to his toe. At the time I didn't really recognise what he was doing but he would ask me to sign my name on the plaster all the while asking me to write it even higher. In hindsight I realise that he was turned on by my naivety. However, David never made any attempt to touch me unlike Jack Allen who lived with his unmarried sisters, the Miss Allens, Phoebe and Amy. Jack Allen was a little old man wearing black trousers and black waistcoat over a white shirt and a flat cap. He was always recognisable by his small stature and predictable clothes.
When I was about ten Dad put together a bike for me that opened up all sorts of opportunities. At last I could cycle to school along with Miriam Fell who lived up the Common. We left our bikes at Miss Phillips who lived just a short way from the school in a fairly large house with the outbuildings being used by George Durham, one of the local undertakers and carpenters. We would prop our bikes against the house wall and then run the last few yards to school. Jack Allen lived in a little cottage just opposite to Annie Phillips and it wasn't long before he used to be waiting for us. Now he did touch my bottom and I was by this time old enough to know that I didn't like it. But on the other hand I felt that he wasn't doing anything to me that I could tell anyone about. Gradually he tried to touch more and more and pin me up against the wall until I decided that I could no longer leave my bike there. On telling Mam what was happening she responded by telling me not to be so daft. Everyone knew what Jack Allen was like but he was harmless really. She tried to dissuade me from upsetting anybody so I continued as usual until a bike-shed was built in the school playground. Even then I had trouble getting past Jack. At the back of his house and running alongside the path Jack had a big garden and he would work until he saw me leaving school and then come out to the path. I always tried to keep my bike between us. This episode left such a mark on me that even to this day I can't bear even John pinching my bum. Part of growing up in a small rural community is the suggestive tit-bits overheard by children and not quite understood at the time. There were village children who 'belonged' to somebody other than their parents. There were known married couples 'seeing' someone else.
Today, with all the news coverage on paedophilia along with the warnings not to talk to strangers parents would not dream of dismissing such behaviour as I endured. It is easy to see why in this generation it is appreciated that as much threat comes from friends and relatives as from strangers. Knowing how much these relatively harmless incidents in my childhood have left their mark I can't begin to think how many women of my generation have been damaged beyond what others can comprehend. Thank goodness women have become braver in the face of such behaviour and that now children are able to ring 'Childline' for help. It isn't enough but at least it is recognition of a major problem that continues to exist and continues to grow.
22nd March – Friday
I love the 'yellow' time of year. The Devon Banks are covered in primroses with daffodils growing wild. The sheer rock-face, which rises steeply from the back of the garden, is covered in yellow gorse. This is the time of hope and physical renewal, the time to leave the greyness of winter.
Of all people farmers are in the best position to appreciate this time of year, especially if emerging from winter frosts and muddy fields. It does seem though that in recent years there has been too much rain that directly impacts on the farming cycle. It is difficult to shrug off the prophets of gloom and doom who point to global warming accompanied by climate change. Fortunately this year seems to have been less extreme than usual and hopefully the farmers will be able to work the land and drill the seed.
Flooding was very unusual fifty years ago, so much so that families talked and still talk of the great flood of 1946/7. This was the winter when I was born. There were heavy falls of snow followed by a long frost and then the big thaw preventing the land from being worked in readiness for Spring sowing.
It was far more usual in March to see farmers ploughing the land and preparing it for the sowing of sugar-beet and corn. Potato planting was usually done later in June. By the time I was ten or so we had both a grey Fergusson and a blue Fordson Major tractor. John was able to plough right from the age of twelve or thirteen. He never really enjoyed school and after Granddad died when John was fourteen he would often stay home from school and work the farm with Dad. When I started The High School in Selby I too would be encouraged from time to time to stay home and help but unlike John I raged against having to give up any school time particularly times when important games were being played.
Come drilling time the red drill would be taken from the cart-shed and prepared for use. The drill was wider than the tractor onto which it was hooked and attached was a foot-board where Dad would stand and regulate the drilling. Big bags of corn seed would be emptied into the drill trough and evened out then off they would go, John driving the tractor and Dad and me, if I was lucky, standing on the foot-board. I had to be very good and alert to keep out of the way.
On the very fringes of my memory are pictures of Dad walking up and down the fields and with a regular rhythm scattering seeds that he carried in a big seed bucket fastened to his front by a leather strap around his neck. I couldn't understand what he could possible have been sowing until Margaret reminded me that it would be the small clover seeds that were sown after and on top of the corn. This crop would take about fifteen months before it was ready to harvest and would not interfere with the cropping of the corn in August. In fact this double sowing was a rich source of nitrogen and very much part of the crop rotation that farmers use to maintain the quality of the soil.
The period when Margaret and Gerry were active on the farm was before Granddad died. Afterwards they were too busy working and Margaret got married this day forty-four years ago just after Dad began farming on his own. At this time Yew Tree Farm was sold, the stock was sold and the tenancy on the Warp land was given up. For the next five years Dad, John and I worked hard together. There were no restrictions as to children using farm machinery and driving tractors. John had driven from being quite a young boy and although I didn't plough I certainly had to drive the tractor and trailer from the age of nine or so when picking up crops and anything that wasn't too technical. I was frightened of driving the tractor and doing it wrong and getting shouted at and that was often. By the time Andrew was ready to start helping on the farm there were strict rules about children under thirteen being allowed to drive or sit on tractors whilst moving. I doubt very much whether any notice was taken of this and I'm sure Andrew was just as young as we were when he began driving.
In many ways my childhood ended when Granddad died and the farm belonged to Dad. The various farm labourers and relations who had been employed when there was more land and when much more of the work was done manually, found other employment. Those first five years when the three of us spent many hours working together were years that instilled in us the value of working hard. John was certainly driven by the possibilities of making money and expanding the business. He left school as soon as he could at fifteen although by that time he stayed home more than he went to school. Unlike John I couldn't wait to get away from farm working that I found hard and dirty. I hated the thought that Mam and Dad were expecting me to leave school early and divide my time working on the farm and in the house. Fortunately for me the expectations of Mam and Dad did not come to fruition.
28th March – Thursday
The world continues to be a very sad place for very many people. After being at war for many years Afghanistan has now been devastated by an earthquake which has killed 300, seriously injured 3,000 and left 30,000 homeless. I cannot begin to understand what it must be like to grow up in places like Ireland and Afghanistan where violence is the norm.
Being born in 1946, soon after the Second World War had ended, and in a country which had been 'victorious', there was a sense in which we were made to feel as if we were in control. Perhaps our standard of living wasn't very good, but it was improving and it was certainly better than had been experienced during the war.
Although we weren't well-off the family were 'true blue' believing in the British Empire and believing that the Conservative Party was the only political party capable of running the country. Winston Churchill was held in high esteem, running a close second to the Royal Family. Granny was the only one who dare stand by her Liberal ideals and get away with it. Nobody would ever consider criticising any decision that she might make. She was venerated by the whole family expect Mam and that was understandable considering how Granny and the women of the family put Dad on a bit of a pedastel. As it was, our family was a bit like that of Alf Garnett although we didn't have a picture of the King and then the Queen on our wall, but there again we didn't have anything on our walls.
But there was an underpinning fear that developed in the 1950s. We lived in the shadow of the Atomic Bomb. Russia, who had been an ally in the war against Germany, and along with America and Britain, had moved into Berlin to rebuild Germany. It was soon clear that there could be no long-term alliance between the three. As the 'Cold War' developed it became clear that there could be no going back to the time before the knowledge of Atomic Bomb had been unleashed. For many years we would see pictures repeated of the bomb dropping on Hiroshima with the accompanying mushroom of deadly radiated dust. Then the Berlin Wall was built dividing not only that city but creating East and West Germany. East was communist and 'belonged' to Russia and the West had a democratic political system.
As a child I couldn't see how it was possible to avoid being bombed. The grown ups talked openly of the dangers and spoke of how we must stand up to Russia who were deploying nuclear arms throughout the Communist world. There is little wonder that I had nightmares as we had no underground rooms in which to live whilst the radiation subsided. It isn't surprising that many of my generation were drawn to the CND – Campaign for Nuclear Dissarmament.
The question I'm left with is whether fear of fear is worse than actually living through the traumas. How the Afghan refugees cope I don't know. The worst of it is that they have never known the comfort of a life such as mine. Life when seen from the standpoint of the Afghans looks somewhat different and causes us to reassess our abstract worries.
31st March – Easter Sunday
How long ago it seems since this day was one of the most important in my calendar, when the focal point of the day was the Easter Service with the Sacrament followed by Easter Breakfast in the Sunday School room with the men serving at the long tables covered with white cloths and vase after vase of daffodils. Fifteen years has done nothing to dull the memory. This yellow time of year, when everything in the natural world seems new again and the lengthening days signal the end of cold winter days and the beginning of longer days and warmer weather, is appropriate to the Christian Easter story. Good Friday with its dark and deathly tone is followed by the joyous resurrection and new birth of Easter Day.
This year we have had a whole week of sunshine leading up to today, warm enough to sit outside wearing our shorts and short-sleeved shirts. Today though has been dull with a light rain never seeming far away. And yet we are still reminded of summer to come as the clocks were put forward last night and tonight we shall have an extra hour of daylight.
Being a chocoholic Easter and Easter Eggs are inseparable. One year when Richard, Andy and Pete were little they managed to have six Easter Eggs each. We didn't have enough clear surfaces on which to display them. I dread to think how many Kelly and Amy will have eaten today and whether they managed to wait until today to start eating them. As a child I always tried to persuade Mam that Easter really began on Good Friday but she would never give in to the pestering.
When I was very little I can't remember having boxed Easter Eggs that had more chocolates inside. We must have started having those when I was about ten or so. What I do remember is being sent with John down the back lane and across the fields to where Sid Tune lived with Mrs Sid as we always called her. She always made a big Easter Egg, decorated with icing-sugar flowers and our names iced onto the chocolate. Perhaps John only went with me the once as I remember going alone for several years. I would set off, wearing my Wellingtons of course, and trudge through the fields. The problem with wearing wellies was that the socks that I wore were 'hand-me-downs' from John and they never fit properly and as I trudged along they would gradually work down into the toe. I knew that Mrs Sid would ask me in and I would have to take off my wellies so I usually tried to keep pulling them up. This was a 'no-win' situation as if I did manage to keep them pulled up then the tops would be all baggy when I took off the wellies but to walk far with them bunched up at the end of the toe was very uncomfortable. It was more usually the case that the socks would be baggy and down in the toe and full of holes and if not holes there would be darns which covered earlier darns.
Sid Tune worked on the farm when Granddad was alive at the same time as looking after his own smallholding. He lived in a large white house that could be approached three ways. The back way across the fields and across a dyke was the most difficult but the one we usually used. The second way was by a lane opposite to Dinah's house and which went by another small cottage. The third and longest way was the one that people, other than the Jacqueses and ourselves, would use. Down the common road past Dinah's and on the left was Clay Lane. A few hundred yards along Clay Lane there was a turning and then a long lane down to Mr and Mrs Sid's. After they moved and Major Wilson moved in we wouldn't have dreamt of using any other road than the official one.
I didn't see Mrs Sid often but when I was little, Sid was always one of my favourite farm workers along with Jack Penrose. Each year I would wonder whether the invitation would come when Mr Sid told me that Mrs Sid would like to see me on Easter Sunday .I was much relieved when the invitation was finally given but of course I would always appear surprised. It was much better when the invitation was given just to me as it meant a whole Easter Egg had been made especially for me with just my name iced onto the chocolate. Being the fourth child of five this was an unusual event, as most things had to be shared. I'm sure that the Easter Egg would be shared round but it was special to be able to be the one to hand it out.
Now that we are all able to eat a wide range of chocolate whenever we wish, the special feeling that accompanied Easter has long since gone. We now suffer from a surfeit of chocolate and yet our addiction to eat it does not diminish. The more we have the more used we become to eating lots of it as can be seen by our expanding waist-lines.
A lovely memory remains of the months before Andy was born when Richard and I lived with Nan-Nan and Grampy whilst Dad spent the week in Long Eaton working at his new job and preparing a house that would be ready for Richard, the new baby and me to move into as soon as the baby was born. Each evening Grampy would bring home two Cadbury's Cream Eggs, one for himself and one for me. These could be bought from the beginning of February through until Easter. Now they are available throughout the year at most stores but they still evoke happy memories of those months spent in Sherburn-in-Elmet.
