The Concert (Memory Lane)

This is the story from my childhood when my brother and I were taken to a concert.

My father was what you would call a highbrow. He was a clever scientist but sometimes not always on the ball when it came to common sense! I always found him to be rather remote and my brother Godfrey and I learned not to bother him too much because he could get very annoyed with us for the slightest thing. When I look back I realized that he was not very good with children's needs at all but he mellowed into a lovely grandpa to my children. They have very happy memories of him so I think he must have practiced on Godfrey and me, before moving on to become that lovely Grandpa!

However, when I was a child, his favourite saying was, "Children should be seen but not heard!" This was completely old fashioned even when I was a child. In some ways he treated us like adults and took us to see some operas, recitals and concerts that were totally unsuitable for young children.

I can remember when I was about five years old and Godfrey only half that age, my Mum and Dad took us to a very stuffy church concert. I can picture it all very clearly in my mind's eye......... a church hall that was very dreary and rows of chairs filled with very old people. The women all wore hats, so where we were sitting, we couldn't see much of the stage at all, even though we were quite near the front. We were the only children there. Large fat ladies trilling out arias that seemed to go on for hours. We were getting very bored as there was nothing at all to interest young children. Nothing to see, no reason to be there at all. Naturally we were restless and must have whined and moaned, as the lady directly in front of us, turned round and offered my brother and me a boiled sweet each out of a white paper bag. I popped one into my mouth, glad of the diversion, but before Mum could stop him, Godfrey had put one into his mouth and promptly started to choke! He literally couldn't breath.

My Dad swooped him up under his arm and calmly walked out of the hall. My Mum looked very distressed and after what seemed like an hour but could only have been a few minutes, father and son returned to the hall and walked with smiling faces to their seats and Godfrey was munching his sweet! Apparently Dad had turned him upside down and slapped his back and the offending sweet dislodged from his windpipe!

We both sat still as mice for the rest of the concert and I think that little emergency shocked us into silence while the arias droned on.................!

Funny I should remember that so clearly!

The Face That Spoilt Everything.

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

When I was nine years old I was friendly with April, a girl from the same school that I went to. We had recently moved house and I didn't know many people, so April was one of the first friends who I saw out of school. We started to see each other in the evenings and at weekends. She told me she had a baby sister called Suzie. It turned out that Suzie was a life sized doll and that April's father had died young, so there were no other siblings.

Suzie must have been the envy of every girl for miles around. She had a porcelain face and was dressed in real intricately knitted baby clothes. She had fair curly hair and was pushed around in a pale blue "carry cot on wheels" type of pram, that was very unusual in that era and I would have given my eye teeth for one like that. Girls in those days seemed to play with dolls much longer than children do today and on the whole they seemed much younger in comparison to the same aged children today. The above photo obviously does not do justice to the real Suzie and this doll is just a cheap one belonging to my grand daughters.

Apart from the fact that she was a much loved doll, Suzie must have been valuable. She was April's most treasured possession, so much so, that she thought of her as her own sister.

One day after playing at our house, April ran home for her tea, leaving Suzie in her pram with me. She was supposed to come straight back for her after her meal but as the time ticked by, I realized she had not been allowed to do this.

I took Suzie out of her pram to play with her. I cuddled her and carried her around with me like a baby. I then made a crucial mistake of sitting her on the dining room chair next to the table and pretended to give her a meal. Crash...... Suzie fell sideways to the floor and her face cracked in half!

To say that I was mortified was the understatement of a life time. It might just as well have been the end of the world. How could I tell April that Suzie was dead!

After I'd cried and was almost sick with fear, my mum, who was very matter of fact, said, "Well if she was so precious, then why did she leave her here in the first place?" She then went on to tell me that I must give April one of my own dolls to make up for it.

I took my doll, Elizabeth, with the cheap pottery face and the bald head. Although she was much loved, she wasn't a patch on Suzie.

"Come on then, better face the music," said Mum as we pushed the pram towards the road where April lived. I could hardly walk.

The bell rang and a look of pleasure fell upon April and her mother's face when they saw the pram.

Then they noticed the face! Tears welled up in both their eyes, though politely they took Elizabeth and closed the door. Mum had done the talking, but what could be said?

Things were never the same after that. Mum said that the friendship would have cooled anyway, as April passed a scholarship into a boarding school so we wouldn't get the opportunity to see much of each other from then on. However, I knew the real reason why we didn't stay in touch. It was because of Suzie and what I had done.

I still squirm with embarrassment and remorse at the memory and April if you happen to be reading this, then I am truly sorry!

This is my true story written for Photo Story Friday which is hosted by Cecily and Mama Geek

The Story of the Roly- Poly Poo!

When I was a child I lived in a tiny two bedroomed cottage on the edge of a small town in Lancashire. It had a lovely garden and I was very happy there. Because of the cramped conditions, my brother Godfrey and I had to share a bedroom.

I distinctly remember one night, lying in bed, when I was about four years old. Godfrey was already sleeping in his little bed just a few yards away. Downstairs I could hear my mother in the kitchen ironing the clothes. Every time the iron went down, the table she was using made a squeaking sound. The radio was on and she was obviously listening to a play, that she really enjoyed on the BBC Home Service. I found these sounds very comforting as I lay in bed, but that night I was restless and did not sleep. Too bad I needed to poo!

The toilet was downstairs and to get there I had to pass the kitchen. I would be disturbing my mother if I went down and it did seem a long way to go. 

There was a potty under the bed but we were only supposed to wee in it. I got out of bed and before I could help myself, I'd done a large poo in it!

"Now what shall I do?" I pondered.

Suddenly, inspired by an idea, I rolled it into a ball using a page from an old magazine.

There was a window on the landing that opened outward, overlooking the lovely back garden and directly below the window, was the sloping kitchen roof.

"If I roll it down the roof it will land in the garden and no one will know it was me," I thought.  

The plan seemed to work very well until the ball of poo got stuck on the roof only an arm's length away.

"Now that would be noticed," I thought, "Better get it back!"

It never occurred to me just how dangerous this was becoming. I now had to really stretch to get it. At last it was in my not so clean hands!

I decided to put it back in the pot and say nothing and with this resolved, I got into bed and fell asleep.

Funnily enough, nothing was ever said about the strangely shaped ball of poo with newspaper wrapped around it!

I Was Only Six Years Old.........

I was only six years old, in the days when children could run down the road to play with a friend. I was returning home from such a visit when I saw a lady lying in one of the neighbouring gardens. She was lying on the path and I recognized her as the old lady who worked in the grocer's shop in the High Street.

Her basket was turned over on its side and the unwrapped crusty loaves were scattered all around her. She had been delivering bread as she always did. 

I ran up the path & gently shook the lady's arm. "Excuse me, are you alright?" I asked her. Even at that age I knew she was not alright as she was not responding and there was a rattling sound coming out of her throat.

I ran home as fast as I could and told my mum, who got a blanket and cushion and then she hurriedly took me next door and left me with Mrs Lewis and off she went to try to help the old lady as best she could. The nearest pay phone was in High Street at least five minutes away. No one had phones in those days unless you had a shop or some other business. Doctors were usually called out in these circumstances.

I was very upset that my mother had left me with Mrs Lewis, after all I had been first on the scene and now I was being treated like a baby.

When my mum returned and took me home, where my brother was still sleeping in his cot, she told me that a neighbour had got a doctor, but that the lady had died.

This was the first experience that I had of death, and it played on my mind for a long time and started me thinking of my own mortality and that of the people who were closest to me. When I think of my oldest grand daughter being only a little younger than I was, I wonder what she would have done. Of course this would never have happened today, as children are accompanied every where by grown ups.

I worried about death for a long time after that incident. Not surprising really.

My Mother

This week, David Mcmahon  in his Weekend Wandering asked us "Who was the most important person in our childhood?"

Without question I can say that my mother was the most important person in my childhood.

I was born slap bang in the middle of the Second World War, in our living room, where my mother had a bed, so that she could get under the table in case of an air raid. Thankfully there were no air raids while I was being delivered, as I think my mum would have had severe problems getting under the table anyway. Nurse Wright, who was the mid wife, had put on a nice clean apron and as I was born, I splattered her with my first poo! She exclaimed , "Well out of  all the babies I have delivered over the years, none have done that to me before!" 

We lived in a small industrial town for my early years in Lancashire, which is now called Cheshire! I seem to have a problem with counties and kingdoms changing names!

By the time I could remember anything, the war was over but food rationing was still in force and I can definitely remember us queueing for every item in the shops and also handing in the ration books, and the coupons would be taken out. I never went hungry as my mum used to make delicious omlettes out of egg powder sent over by the Americans. We used to have salad stuff from out of the garden and fruit because by now we were living in a cottage on the edge of the town, with a lovely garden and fields all around us. There was always bread and milk but by todays standards, we had very plain food and not many sweets.

I really loved my Mum and I know that she did her best for my younger brother and me. She taught me to sew and knit and helped me with reading and spelling. She could make a really tasty meal out of nothing! She played the piano fairly well and I loved all the pieces she played, particularly her Chopin and a piece of music that had me spell bound called "Rustle of Spring" by Sinding. I used to ask her to play it over and over again. If I hear the music now, it brings a lump into my throat.

You might think that my dad was away fighting or that he was not living with us, but he was........ he was there. Because he had a Ph.D, he was excused fighting or going down the mines, but he was in the Home Guard and had to guard  Runcorn Bridge with a rifle.

However, my Dad was a scientist and was not very good with children. He seemed to be in a world of his own and was very remote. I did not have a good relationship with him, but will leave that story for another time.

For some reason I was an insecure child, and was forever worrying that some thing would happen to my mother. My brother was treated exactly the same as me, but he didn't have any of these worries, so I'm wondering whether I inherited a worrying gene or something! My mother was the same! Some nights I crept out of bed to see if her bag and coat and shoes were still there, just in case she had left. I'm afraid that she did sometimes threaten us with that, as she probably had her hands full with all the problems there were in that particular era. Anyway, I loved her in spite of "the threat" when we were naughty. Children in those days were treated so differently and what we would think of as child abuse today, was quite common then! I thought of it as normal.

You can see from my baby picture that I am looking worried even then!!!!!!!

There were other people who were important to me during my childhood, but Mum was the person I loved most. My own children loved her to bits and I'm sure she lives on in all of us.

I have many of her things scattered about my house and quite often on Mother's Day, I buy a little plant or something to remember her by. I will always remember her Birthday, her Wedding Anniversary and the date she died.

Go To Church And Lose A Brother?

Some of my early memories are quite vivid and every now and again I start to think of my childhood..........

We lived on the edge of a small town in the north of England and when I was five years old and my brother Godfrey was only half that age, my mum and dad tried to get us to go to church. I was, by then attending the local church school so I think they were both under pressure to attend the church, next door to it. During the services there was much sitting, kneeling and standing and Godfrey used to crawl along the pews at an amazing speed and my parents managed several times to rescue him from large ladies and gents who were about to squash him when they sat down.

It was decided, because of the difficulty of controlling Godfrey, that Mum would take me to church while Dad stayed at home and looked after my brother. There were no creches in those days.

"You will keep your eye on him, won't you?" Mum implored, as she knew only too well how absent minded my father was when he was absorbed in his music & reading and all his other hobbies that completely engrossed him.

"Of course I will," he said, closing the door behind us. I think I knew even at that age that there might be a bit of a problem looming up!

On our return home from church, Godfrey was nowhere to be seen. Dad said he could remember him playing in the garden only five minutes before we arrived home, so he couldn't be far away. Mum was very distraught and rapidly searched the house, garden and near friends and neighbours. However, he was not to be seen anywhere.

There was a duck pond down the lane and my mum thought Godfrey might have gone there on his own. We were used to going with her to feed the ducks, so he knew the way. A  local man had once told us that a horse and cart had galloped into the pond out of control and had disappeared into the water without trace, so we knew it was deep.

Mum grabbed me and together we rushed down the lane towards the pond as by now we had visions of him lying face down in the water. Thankfully, when we got to the pond, there was no trace of him, but we both remembered the story of the horse and cart that was never seen again.

I remember feeling really uncomfortable & despairing when my mum collapsed into a heap on the grass verge with her hands over her face, sobbing uncontrollably. I happened to look up the lane towards the main road and I saw an old lady holding Godfrey by the hand and she was knocking on the doors of houses along the road.  My mum dragged me and we raced as fast as my legs would carry me to the main road.

"What do you think you are doing with him?" she accused the old lady. 

The lady looked hurt and told Mum that she had found Godfrey by himself trying to cross the main road & she had been knocking on house doors trying to find out where he lived, without success. Mum caught him up in her arms. "I've been looking for him everywhere," she said "And you've been taking him further away from home."

Although I was only five years old, I can remember thinking how unfair my mum was being with the old lady, who had obviously been only trying to help Godfrey and I felt very embarrassed by her remark.

We turned towards home.

My dad was the centre of a major row and it was years before Mum and I ever went to Church together again.