CHAPTER 7 – June 2002
1st June – Saturday
Today is the first day of the Spring Bank Holiday and the weather is glorious bringing out the sailing fraternity. It’s always good to look out from the window and see the various yachts and fishing boats on a sea that is blue and tranquil. Andy rang last night but it was clear that he was not going to be persuaded to take the family out whilst the world football was being televised.
Having no television when I was little, there was nothing to keep us inside. Spring Bank Holiday wasn’t heard of either rather it was a ‘long-weekend’ off school for Whitsuntide. Whit Saturday was a day that we looked forward to very much as it was often the day on which we would go on our Sunday School Trip. Until I was seven or eight we would go on a ‘special’ train which would stop at the Cliffe Common Station and go straight through to Bridlington. It wasn’t only Sunday School pupils who went on the trip but also many other villagers who would make the best of the opportunity of having a ‘special train’ stopping at the local station.
The evening before the trip I would pop round to see Mrs Wright next door and any other family members who were likely to give me some spending money. Mostly I would be given sixpence but Grandad and Granny would always give me just that bit more, enough to buy a bucket, spade and flags.
It would be a good ten years later before diesel trains came into being. At this point in my childhood I took the big lumbering steam engines for granted. Sometimes the compartments in the train would have doors opening into a corridor but far more usual were the trains where we stepped from the platform into a compartment from which the only exit was back out onto the platform. I always hoped to share a carriage with a group without adults as we would be pretty safe to misbehave without being told off. The compartments were much more luxurious than those of the later diesel trains. The first thing to do on entering the carriage would be to climb on the seat and put our coats and other baggage on the stringed luggage racks. Then in and out went the arm rests followed by the opening and shutting of windows. Just above the high-backed seats were two paintings at either side of a mirror. Of course I must stand on the seat in order to see my face in the mirror.
When we arrived no time was lost in getting down to the beach. Rarely did we have a really hot day and memories of the sea at ‘Brid’ were nearly always of cold, grey seas. Nevertheless, down to the sea and sands we went after buying a patterned, tin bucket with spade. The oldies hired their deck chairs or found a sheltered spot up against the wall. The rest of us took it in turn to hold the towel whilst we all put on our swimming costumes and rubber bathing hats. I hated anyone seeing me change and yet Margaret, Gerry and Minnie would get quite cross at me for making such a fuss about changing. It seemed that my elasticated swimming costume went on stretching from year to year.
It was such good fun being able to get into the sea knowing I would be safe with my sisters and Minnie.
After spending time paddling, getting dried and dressed and then making sand-castles, I would pester and pester to have a pink candy-floss from the man on the path just above the sea wall. How I loved candy-floss but oh how sticky I became and how the sand seemed to get in the candy-floss and then right up my arms and all over my face. I couldn’t put my wet bathers back on so my dress would be tucked into my knickers and I would be taken to the sea to be ‘washed down’. It seemed that every Sunday School trip I spent much of my time being wet, cold, sticky and sick. We would eat sandwiches and buns covered in sand and later in the day have fish and chips. We seemed to pack so much into the one day.
It would be just about getting dark by the time the train left for home and if we put our heads out of the speeding train the engine would seem to be billowing fire and smoke which we would be able to taste. It was very difficult to stay awake as the train clickety-clacked along. The walk home in a state of semi-sleep was very hard.
It was sad to say good-bye to Cliffe Common Station when it was decided to close the line and take up the tracks. This was long before the Beecham cuts of the 1960s. It was the end of an era. As a child my Mam too went on trips to Bridlington but living in the next village of Hemingborough she remembers being taken to the train on a rulley pulled by a horse.
After the railway line was closed we went on Butch Collins’s Coach and didn’t always go to Brid. One year, when Margaret and her friend Freda were leading the Sunday School we went to Millington Pastures for a picnic. It was all right but there wasn’t any sea and sand, just grass and hills. It would be at this time that I first went to Hornsea, Filey and Scarborough. All seemed far superior to Bridlington but perhaps that was due to being luckier with the weather.
Now I am used to the changing nature of the sea living as I do right on the coast. Today, the sky is blue, the sun is out and the blue, calm sea sparkles with stars in the sunlight. Tomorrow the wind might get up, the clouds roll in and the sea will be rough and grey and not the least bit inviting. My memories of Sunday School trips to the East coast of Yorkshire reflect both these extremes.
5th June – Wednesday
There has been no time to spend writing during the last two days as I have been captivated by the television coverage of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. It seems that we as a nation still respond to a ‘right royal party’. The Monday pop concert held in the gardens of Buckingham Palace was highly charged with emotion as singers from the last fifty years performed. Good as this was, everything was surpassed by the firework display that followed using the Palace as the focus. Using sophisticated camera techniques, images representing events of the Queen’s reign were projected onto the façade of the Palace over which fireworks cascaded down. As well as the 12,000 guests at the concert it was estimated that a further million were crowded in front of the Palace and stretching along the Mall as far as the eye could see.
It was estimated that as many people were there for the processions on the following day. Even John had tears in his eyes as we watched the various displays representing all the nations of the Commonwealth. The climax surely was the Queen’s appearance on the balcony accompanied by other members of the Royal Family as a fly-past by the Red Arrows and Concorde followed by the crowd singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.
I have never really known any other monarch but Elizabeth II as I was only five when her father King George VI died. The Golden Jubilee celebrations were to mark fifty years since Elizabeth ascended to the throne but the childhood celebration that I remember came the following year in 1953 when the Coronation took place.
A public holiday was given so that everyone could celebrate in whatever way they wished. Granny and Grandad bought a television especially to watch the ceremony. Even on a 9 inch screen, with Granny’s room filled to bursting, the atmosphere was emotionally charged. Many memories flood back as the Coronation was the first time that we had the opportunity to watch a great national event on television. We were luckier than most families as there were only two televisions in the village at that time. Richard Dimbleby’s commentary made is voice familiar on royal occasions for all of my generation. Fifty years on his son David carries on the family tradition.
Everyone at school looked forward to the day itself as it was to be a holiday when there would be fun and games in the afternoon of the big day. We all received a cup and saucer and a book entitled ‘Eliazbeth II’. The senior class received a dark blue covered book whereas the Juniors and Infants had the same book but with a light blue cover. At home we were all given a cased Crown Coin depicting the young Queen on a horse. Try as I might I can’t remember whether this was from Mam and Dad or Granny and Grandad.
There was to be a race down Station Lane where all the fun and games were to take place. Everybody taking part had to ride something unusual. Dad decided he would put together a three-wheeled tricycle so that I could take part. I was so ashamed. It was a terrible thing with nothing matching and very difficult to get moving at all without something or other dropping off it. I knew other children would have good things that worked but ride it I must. I really wanted something like the go-kart which John Theakston had, mindst you he cheated really as the go-kart was a bought one from a shop. The race was even worse than I had imagined. All the others finished as I struggled to get my machine to move at all. Now I realise that everyone was cheering me on to finish but at the time all I was aware of was much laughter as bits of trike littered the racing track behind me. However I did finish eventually and there was much cheering. The memory is a happy one but at the time it seemed to be the moment in childhood of great shame.
Andy told me that before the school holidays Kelly and Amy had been on a school picnic down to The Spittall and all the children had been given a Golden Jubilee Mug. Hopefully their day was much more successful than my Coronation Day seemed to me at the time.
12th June – Wednesday
Today I was up and about very early to watch England play Nigeria in the World Cup Finals being held in Korea and Japan. I left John sleeping as he seems to have little interest in the proceedings. The draw which resulted means that England are through to the quarter-finals where they will play Denmark.
Somehow it seems wrong watching football in the middle of summer. Over the years the summer break seems to have become shorter and shorter allowing little time for the summer sports. However, we do have the Commonwealth Games to look forward to.
Dinah and I used to follow the football very closely. She supported Burnley with my team being Leeds. By the end of April all the football matches were over other than the Cup Final which was played early in May. Then we would concentrate on the cricket, tennis and athletics until well into September. For some reason Dinah was an Australian fan with her pin-up being Richie Benaud and mine being Peter May the English captain.
June was the month for practising for the school and regional sports. We never raced but we did work hard to be the best of our age group in the high-jump. For this we found two good pieces of straight wood from a tree and banged nails in onto which we balanced a cane. We never had things like canes at home but to the side of Dinah’s front lawn, which was made private by the surrounding high hedge, Mrs Jacques grew a patch of raspberry and loganberry bushes plus runner beans supported by a framework of canes. Dinah’s mother, when not tending her garden, would sit in the shade reading a book whilst we jumped.
It seemed that the support sticks were forever working loose as we kicked the cane on our attempts to jump higher than we were able. One evening I managed to knock the whole thing down and in the process managed to get a nasty cut on my lower leg from one of the nails. Mrs Jacques did the necessary first-aid but sent me straight home saying that I should go to the doctors to have a stitch in it and get a tetanus jab. However, in those years my family weren’t keen on either going to the doctors or calling him out. Because Mrs Jacques had said I must go I began to get very upset and terrified that I would get tetanus. At an earlier time there had been much talk of someone in the village dying from tetanus or lock-jaw as we called it. For a couple of weeks after this incident I went to bed terrified that during the night my jaw would lock. Each morning I was relieved to wake up and still be able to eat my breakfast and talk as normal. My family were always ready to make fun presumably believing that this would lessen my fear but the teasing only made it worse. However, the wound healed quite well and I live to tell the tale.
It was my target to jump 4 ft before I left the school. Dinah and I had tried to learn the ‘Western Roll’ technique but when it came to sports day I always ‘chickened out’ and reverted to the ‘Scissor Jump’.
On Friday, 13th June, on my last term at Cliffe School, I went to school as normal, looking forward to our afternoon sports day against the school in the next village of Hemingborough. It certainly turned out to be a red-letter day. Along with Miriam Fell I had passed my 11-plus which meant that I would be going to The High School in Selby in September. Immediately following morning Assembly we were told that we could go home to tell our parents but must be back in good time for the afternoon’s visit to Hemingborough. Miriam Fell was a tall girl for her age and a good runner and I was to do the high-jump.
Imagine my delight when in the afternoon for the first and last time I managed to win the high-jump competition having cleared 4ft. There was a price to pay though as somehow I managed to sprain my ankle that had to be strapped up. High-jump isn’t an activity that we normally associate with injury but within a few months of that year I managed to knock myself up twice.
I was also a good skipper but I can’t remember what happened in that race. It’s so good to see and hear how well Kelly can skip. Earlier this year her enthusiasm for skipping prompted her to start a skipping club after school. Hopefully she will go on to enjoy her sports days as much as I did.
15th June – Saturday
Today the Test Match between England and Sri Lanka was rained off. After having a heat wave in April the weather in May and June has been pretty miserable and wet.
Cliffe didn’t have a playing field reserved purely for village activities until shortly after I left Cliffe School. I suppose it might have had something to do with Grandad dying and my father selling the cricket field to Mr Wilson, a farmer up the village, who owned the field backing onto ours.
However, the village cricket team were very enthusiastic in spite of having very basic facilities. The pitch itself was roped off during the week but the outfield was pretty filthy from the cows which were in the field most days in summer. There was a blue/green cricket pavilion made of wood which was very rickety, so much so that everyone had to be careful where they walked to avoid their feet going through the rotten, wooden floor.
I can’t remember what position Dad held but Mam and him were very active in fund raising for the cricket team and we never missed a match. From a very early age I would be taken with them to both home and away matches. After Andrew was born Mam and Dad seemed to give up most of their social activities but their earlier involvement left me a keen supporter and when older I was scorer for several years.
Those early years though are remembered for the potted meat sandwiches and butterfly buns which were always served up at the interval. I remember too helping to hook the metal numbers onto the nailed scoreboard and getting upset when I couldn’t do it properly because we didn’t have sufficient numbers. Later, after Mam and Dad stopped going I continued and along with Dinah learned how to fill in the score book. We even continued scoring after we were at The High School when we had the proper playing fields down Oxen Lane. It was always a rush to get back from our Saturday morning rounders or tennis match for the school team and very occasionally we couldn’t make it which caused great consternation as there wasn’t a replacement for us at that time.
Unlike these days when cricketers all have their own cars we had to go to away matches on Butch Collin’s bus which he always parked by the side of his council house just beyond the railway station. I only wish that someone had taken the time to capture the cricket team and Butch Collin’s bus on film. I believe his bus was a bit of a joke even then. There was no MOT required fifty years ago and I vaguely remember breaking down on a regular basis and turning up late for the match.
Dinah and I loved the game and in the interval would bat and bowl with whoever we could persuade to play. I think the team felt that we must be humoured as without us they would not have had anyone to score at that time. Dinah’s brother David and my Uncle Sut were both good batsmen for village cricketers. The match against Hemingborough was always closely contested as my mother’s seven brothers were all in the team and the Cliffe team was made up of cousins, uncles, brothers and friends of Dad’s family.
Our middle son, Andy, father of Kelly and Amy, would never have been allowed to let his cricketing talents go to waste had he been around fifty years ago. Just in case he turned out to be a cricketer we delayed my move out of Yorkshire until he was born so that he would fulfil the criteria which at that time stated that anyone playing for the Yorkshire cricket team had to be born in that county. However, he did go on to enjoy the game at village level and even now might return to a game in which he had so much natural talent.
22nd June – Saturday
It has been very difficult to focus on anything this week as John has been suffering the effects of a bad migraine that began last Sunday. His vision has been so distorted and partial that he has been seeing people with feet as long as legs, things that aren’t there and not seeing things which are. In the context of the ensuing anxiety it has been difficult to think of the past when steeped in worry about our future. This morning the optician checked him well and is pretty sure that these visual disturbances are as a direct result of the migraine attack and will gradually subside over the next few days.
As soon as I heard the above diagnosis I was flooded with great relief and can now manage to give some thought to what I might have being doing on June weekend fifty years ago.
Dad was an enthusiastic scout leader until I was eight and before my youngest brother, Andrew, was born. Of course I used to trail around with all the older boys, many who came to play with my older brother John. I remember learning the skills of tracking down the Back Lane, Middle Lane and Fenwick Lane. Three or four of us would set the trail using bits of straw, stick or stone to make the arrows and crosses and the final circle with a dot in it to show the final destination. The rest of the troupe would work on other things for half an hour or so before beginning the tracking. The group would also have a list of objects that they had to find on their way round.
Sometimes on a Friday night the group would camp out in tents, usually at the bottom of our field but sometimes they would camp at the Spinney down the Common. I wasn’t allowed to go with them on camp but if they were at the bottom of our back field I always managed to join them and I suppose it was easier to let me stay with John than send me home.
On one occasion John, Peter Haigh, Derek Thorpe and I set the trail for tracking down the Middle Lane, up to the Jimmy Longs, through the Moses and back along the Fenwick Lane. One of the boys had brought a box of matches with him and so when we returned to the tent in the corner of the back field not far from the pond the boys decided to light a fire ready to boil some water to make a cup of cocoa. Unfortunately one of the boys was wearing a pair of long trousers instead of shorts, which the scouts usually wore, and his trouser leg caught fire. I remember a great panic and a lot of flapping as the boys rushed to the pond. Luckily there was little damage done but things could have been very serious if the tent had caught fire. Brother John was always made to feel responsible for me and he was more worried at the telling off he would get for having taken me along and exposed me to such danger. It must have been hard for him as I’m sure I made it impossible for him to leave behind as he must so often have wished to go off without me and always I would find some way to follow. As I often shared a tent with the other scouts it never occurred to me that I wasn’t one of them. I knew I was too young to be a scout proper but it never crossed my mind that I should have been excluded for being a girl.
This summer we shall resurrect the tracking when Kelly and Amy come to stay. There is such little freedom for the hurly burly of growing up in a social climate quite different from that of fifty years ago. Somehow, though we must make a big effort to overcome the fear that every other adult male is just waiting around the corner to make off with our treasures, or else we shall miss something valuable that every child should have - the freedom to take risks, to explore and to be wild just for a time.
26th June – Wednesday
On Monday evening Wendy rang to say that they had just returned from a weekend at the Blue Dolphin Holiday Park in Filey to find that Peggy, their cat, so poorly that they had taken her to the vet to be ‘put to sleep’. Kelly and Amy were naturally very upset. Peggy, who was very old has always been around for them, and was a very affectionate cat.
Andy said that on their way home from Filey they had called to see my sister Margaret and then to Asselby to see Stuart’s house. Andy remarked how much the village had changed from a farming community to a rural idyll for town workers. This reminded me of the strangeness when visiting my childhood home that has now been ‘infilled’ creating quite a different community to the one which I remember.
Fifty years ago the residents of Cliffe either farmed or worked in jobs connected to agriculture. Since the arrival of Selby Mine, some twenty or so years ago, and the decreasing demand for manual labour in the farming industry, most people in the village are employed elsewhere living in relatively newly built houses. Most of the new houses have been built by my Uncle Squib who fifty years ago was a farmhand on Grandad’s farm; he went on to marry Dad’s sister Jean.
In the half mile stretch between Tithe Farm, the first house in the village, and the station most of the houses were maintained directly from the land. Opposite our farm lived Agnes Wright and next door lived her brother and his family who worked the market garden, taking their produce each week to the market at York. About a quarter of a mile away lived Mr and Mrs Dalby with their one son, John and across the road from them Mrs Dalby’s mother and sister, Mary Sayner. Between them all they worked a sizeable market gardening business with Mary going to the York market each week with their own produce plus anything that Harry Houghton might have from his smaller market garden. Mary also did quite a bit of dressmaking and if memory serves me correctly she made bridesmaid’s dresses for Minnie’s, Margaret’s and Gerry’s weddings. Next to Agnes Wright was Yew Tree Farm which Granny and Grandad had for a few years when I was eight or so. Between us and the Sayners lived Heb Ward with his wife and daughter Wendy. Their’s wasn’t a very big farm but was sufficient to maintain their family. Opposite the Ward’s farmhouse was a little grey farm cottage where Uncle Squib was brought up. Presumably this had always housed farm workers. Before getting to the Dalby’s house there was a very grand house called Ashville. This stood well back from the road and I can’t recall the occupants before Dinah’s brother Alec moved there just before I left home. I do remember that on the way home from school we would pick the ‘goose-gogs’ which grew along the hedge.
Geoff Bramley’s farm backed onto Harry Houghton’s market garden. The fold yard there was close to the footpath so we would see the cattle in there as we went to school. In the lane leading to Bramley’s stackyard the Irish men who came to pick potatoes each year and do whatever casual labouring they could on the local farms, lived in an old caravan. They left their families at home and could earn enough money to take home to last them through the rest of the year. They really knew how to work hard. This custom dropped away as farming became more mechanised. It was always good fun, when the Irish men arrived they brought something different into what was a closed community.
A bit further along and on the opposite side of the road, was the Stone’s farm. I wasn’t very old when Mr and Mrs Stone built a new house for their retirement. It was unusual fifty years ago to see a new house being built. It seemed to stand out in a village where everything was old. Basil Jewitt, who had been the local butcher, moved into their farm. We heard Mam and Dad talking often of Basil Jewitt and one day I happened to shout ‘Hello Basil’ and caught a good telling-off.
Opposite Basil Jewitt’s front field were a cluster of four or five houses where the various farm workers lived. Stan Holey worked for Dinah’s father. Behind their gate was a dog which frightened me every time I was sent with a message. Beatty and Kath used to be involved with the Chapel when I was very young and their mother would give me so much each week for my missionary box just so long as I called to collect it. I believe Mr Ullathorne who lived next door worked for Basil Jewitt. Emily, Phoebe and Jack Allen lived in a little cottage with a market garden. Opposite lived Miss Phillips in whose yard Mr Durham had his carpentry business. He was one of two undertakers and the building had probably been a blacksmiths at an earlier date.
The last house before the station house was Mr and Mrs Kirby’s farm although they didn’t arrive in the village until I was about seven or eight. They had two children who went to the Methodist Sunday School each week. Opposite Kirby’s lived the Theakston’s in a fairly new brick bungalow built just within my memory. Perhaps Mr Theakston worked for the BOCM in Selby. It seemed the few who worked outside the village were either at the BOCM or the Sugar Factory. John Theakston was the boy who had the green go-kart which I so wanted. His sister, Anne, was a friend of my sister Gerry. That only leaves the school to mention which backed onto the station itself.
In the telephone conversation with Andy earlier this week, I mentioned most of the above and his response was that he was sure that back when Cliffe had been primarily a farming community there would still have been strange ‘goings-on’. He was absolutely right in his assessment. I can distinctly remember gossip of the farmer across the road coming home from the New Inn drunk and his wife jumping out of the bedroom window and through the greenhouse. One day his wife was found sitting at the bottom of our stairs. There were also rumours or rather, common knowledge, of various men in the village who were fathers of other men’s children. The make up of the community might well have changed but the gossip hasn’t.
