THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

On the right hand corner of Desmond Street looking up towards St Benedict,s Church was our local greengrocers. Although the entrance was actually on Heyworth Street, there was a side window in our street. Harry Howarth and May Dreaper owned the shop and did a good trade there. I,m not sure why these proprieters had different names, were they living over the brush or living tally? as some called it in those days.

I used to go shopping her for the vegetables for the pans of scouse that we had in our household. Sometimes we were lucky enough to have meat in with the vegetables, moreoften not as there was not enough money for a trip to the butchers at the bottom of our street and across Breck Road.

May Dreaper would always give me an apple or orange or even a pear if she was in a better mood, when I went into her shop. The fruit always had a bit of bad in it, these we called "fades". The shop always smelt of thyme or sage and there were bunches of these herbs hanging in all corners of the shop, drying out. I would ask for a pennyworth of potherbs and would get a brown paper bag filled with carrots, a few potatoes, a small swede, a parsnip, an oinion and some of the dried herbs that were hanging up. This was all that was needed for our scouse or stew as it is called outside Liverpool.

At the bottom of the street across Breck Road was Unsworth,s our local butcher. Nan, my guardian, almost always insisted that Jim, the older man serve her as he always gave us a bit more or a bit better joint for our money. Ken, the son, never got a look in to serve the older customers who had been going to the shop during the war years and getting good rations.

Then there was our paper shop, Jim Maxwell,s. They lived in New Brighton over the water and travelled over to the shop each morning to open for six o,clock to give the workers their papers and cigarettes. I especially liked Jim because when I was ill and off school, nan would go up to the shop and tell him and he would send me loads of comics, dandy, beano,hotspur,beezer,topper and film fun. O.k. they were all out of date and old stock, but they kept me quiet all day reading and doing the puzzles in them.

Mrs. Mudd ran a cold meat shop at the bottom corner of Desmond Street and Breck Road. We never bought anything in this shop as it was too dear for us, but I did go there for my Auntie Louie who lived at number 40 Desmond Street. Mudds had some lovely Holland,s meat pies and puddings and her salmon paste was out of this world.

Another grocers shop where we didn,t go was Jim McQuaid,s on Breck Road, on the right at the top going into town. I used to go there for Auntie Louie,s weekly shopping order until the shop employed a delivery boy to bring the shopping to the customer,s houses. I used to wait for the order to be made up in the shop and sit on the steps behind the counter, or go into the room beyond and look around for the mop or brush that Stan, the man that took over the shop when Jim died, wanted. The lad who did the deliveries was a boy who used to live in our street next to Auntie Louie,s, Stanley Rickerby, a happy friendly lad. The shop was situated to where Dr. Madison,s surgery was, opposite the petrol station owned by, or sold, Shell oil.

There were two "Uncles" shops in our immediate area. These pawn shops were known as uncles by the people who used them as a way of expressing where the goods were. Perhaps also because they were more in there than their own homes, so they looked on them as family.
Say Uncle Ronnie came home from work and wanted to go out that night to a darts match, he,d want to know where his suit was and nan would say that it was in Uncle Erics, or Eric Milton,s pawn shop because we needed the money to get the tea with. These pawn shops loaned you money on goods for a short period. You could buy the goods back with the money lent plus a small amount of interest. The goods could be re sold if they were not redeemed by the customer within three months. The other "uncle" was Healings at the bottom of the next street, Northcote, and facing onto Breck Road opposite Fishguard Street.
,

On the top of Breck Road and corner of Heyworth Street was a pub called "the London Stores" sometimes my nan would find herself in there drinking her milk stout, Mackeson, which was supposed to be "good for you"
I heard a story later about a fire in the living quarters of this pub and that the two children of the landlord were rescued in the blaze and were tacken away by the social services.

A bit further away from our street was another watering hole frequented by my gran, "the Kings Arms" A local joke at the time was "Where,s yer gran? " "In the Kings Arms" "Where,s the King,s Arms?" "Around the Queen,s bum" This pub was on the corner of Creswick Street and Breck Road. Along near here were two more shops that I would go to, Beattie,s Dairy where I would shop for nan and Auntie Louie. We were frequent customers here until our credit stopped and then we moved on a bit further along to Waltons where was bought Kellys uncut bread for nan and us. I remember the shopkeeper here being a yellowy complexioned person who, at the time, thought was a foreign looking woman, and the owner of Beatties had a" turn in his eye" ( just like I had in those days) and you wouldn,t know if he was talking to you or looking at the shop doorway. I always had to be asked twice or more what I wanted when I went into his shop.

I would get my sweets from another shop along here and sometimes go a bit nearer home to a sweetshop known locally as "the tin hat" as it had a soldier,s tin hat nailed on to the fascade outside the shop. The shopkeeper had put it in pride of place outside his shop as a badge of honour that he had fought for his country...and survived. I would of course get some sweets at Jim Maxwell,s shop too, but he didn,t like going to the side counter to serve us kids and would leave us till all his customers were gone before serving us. He was not a well man was Jim. Sometimes you would go into his shop and he,d have his head in his hands and look really ill. He even confided in me once, a mere child of ten, that he felt awful and would I ring his wife up and tell her. I felt sorry for him sometimes.
Another of my favourite shops was on Heyworth Street on the sweep going towards my school, Jackie Balls. We boys used to say, "Are you coming to Jackie Balls for some of his mint balls."

There was a cinema at the top of our street over the main road and the corner of Rupert Lane (named I suppose after Prince Rupert who was reputed to have stayed there while trying to oust roundhead soldiers who had taken control of Liverpool Castle in the civil war) called "the Everton Palace." My Uncle Ronnie who lived in my nan,s with us, went there and to another one further along Everton Road and down Lytton Street, called "the Lytton." There was yet another cinema a bit more distance away towards town and over West Derby Road, called "the Royal Hippodrome." So really we were well off for something to do if we had the money to go and see a film. The one I always went to on a Saturday morning was back on Breck Road on the right going towards Townsend Lane. It was called "the Royal" and us kids made a hell of a racket in there watching Hopalong Cassidy or Tex Ritter or Roy Rogers, chasing all those Indians right across the prairie. Little did we know in those days that we were the bad guys chasing the people from their own land.

One of my favourite shops in the area was along Everton Road, the local pet shop run by Mrs. Lyons (joke there somewhere) she had a huge cage hung up outside the shop with a big green parrot called Laura inside. The parrot used to shout her name very clearly and whistle after the passengers getting on and off at the bus stop nearby.

At the bottom of our street around to the left was a huge three storey building that we called "packies" I,ve no idea why. It was a rag merchants that had floor to ceiling clothes and bits of cloth tied in huge bundles, baled and stowed. There was always a funny smell coming from there and the building attracted mice, rats and cockroaches, but it didn,t stop us kids playing around there at all.

The favourite walk by some of us kids in those days was to the local toy shops to peer into the windows at the array of wonderous items we,d dream about getting in our Christmas stockings. The nearer toy shop was "Addisons" near to where Breck Road meets Breckfield Road. This was a double fronted shop that stocked larger toys like doll,s prams and bicycles of all sizes. There was many a snotty nose pressed up against the glass peering into the wonderland of kids dreams.
If we were feeling more adventureous one day, we would go abit further afield and go down Breck Road a bit more and cross over to the other side near to where the Holy Trinity Church was. We had to transverse two main roads to get here and we were not even supposed to go out of our street. Woe betide us if someone told our parents. I,d get a good smacked bum for a start and maybe have to stay in with a face on for a few hours. It only lasted a few hours because once nan,s temper died down she was o.k. Anyway this other toyshop was well worth the punishment for us kids to gasp at the multitude of toys in that shop approprietly called "toyland" with toys in the windows of the double fronted shop, hung up on the ceiling and on the walls inside, oh it was a dreamland of bliss and contentment just to gaze; Well worth a shouting at and a slap around the chops to any kid.

Once there was a gang of us playing around the streets doing nothing in particular. We were walking along Jasmine Street which backed onto our street, when someone suggested that we push a taxi that was parked there so that the alarm would go off. I remember being one of the hands on culprits and the alarm did go off so we all ran down Jasmine Street towards the entry that leads to our street. The taxi driver starts running after us and seemed to have homed in on me. While the other kids disperse to their own houses I keep on running. I was so scared that he was going to hit me and I ran right across Breck Road, the main road I was forbidden to cross. If there had been traffic coming I would have been killed. I ran up an entry in Glenvale Street that I realised I couldn,t get out of, so I gave up running and the taxi driver grabbed hold of me and shouted at me and accused me of scratching his vehicle. I just lay there crying and denying all. If I,d have taken him back to my nan she would have made mince meat out of him, but I decided out of the goodness of my heart, to let him off....this time. I still don,t like taxi drivers to this day. I think they are milking the times, sitting in warm vehicles all day getting a fat bum.

The back room was wallpapered and painted, and a new gas mantle was bought for the fitting. It was the first time in seven years that I had seen this room properly and wondered why it was being done all of a sudden. I was told that we were moving in there for a little while out of the parlour that had been the only living space for tens of years for nan.
A day or so later grandad,s body was brought home from the hospital where he had died a few days before. McDougals the funeral directors on Breck Road had brought himin a plain blacked out windowed van. The neighbours were on the steps peeping out and muttering about the colour of the coffin or the fact that nan could afford to have had grandad insured at all. There was shuffling and talking low in the parlour and next thing the house was quiet again and I was left sitting in the chair with a piece of toast that had burned while it was being made on the open range of the back room.

This room had been so dark and miserable since I,d been brought here those seven years ago. The window in here was so thick with ground in dirt that it looked like it had never been cleaned since well before the war which had ended eighteen years before. The old smelly curtains and nets just fell away having them taken down and went right in the bin in the wall out in the small yard where a hundredweight of coal lay sprawled on the concrete. We only ever passed through this room on our way to go to the toilet in the yard or to go to bed, feeling our way in the pitch black of night or with a dripping penny candle to light our way up the cold bare staircase and into one of the equally cold bare bedrooms. How strange this room was now with a bit of light coming in through the still dirt ingrained window.

There was comings and goings in the front room over the next few days in this cold, snow filled January week. The neighbours had been and gone to show their respects to grandad. Mrs. Mac next door could be heard blubbering away and quickly muttering her sorrows. Mrs. Thompson giving my gran her support in volunteering to cut the sandwiches and butter the bread. and Mrs. Boyn promising to lend nan a table cloth that once adorned the funeral tea of some relative or other back in the last street she came from. Then my Uncle Bob asked me did I want to go in and see grandad, I nodded and we went into the parlour to see the coffin laying under the closed curtained window with the lid standing erect at the bottom against the wall. I noticed immediately that the room had been wallpapered and that the room felt cold as there hadn,t been a fire lit in there for a week. I look at grandad who looked so clean, the cleanest I,d ever seen him, and shaved too. His face looked like he had make up on I thought. I asked Uncle Bob why he was like that. (I felt awkward and just said that for something to say) He told me that it,s the way we go when we die. I then made a remark about they had spelt grandad,s name wrong on the coffin lid in gold letters too, and left to go and read my Bronco Lane annual that I,d got off somebody for Christmas.

I was to witness another death in the family in number 21 two doors away. It was Ganny, my grandma,s mam. I remember going up the stairs in their house to see her in her bedroom. The bed seemed huge to me in that little front room, and all I could see of Ganny was her small white haired head on the pillow. She lived here alone since great grandad had died of a brain haemorrhage during the war years. Ganny was lying flat in the bed and nan was putting vaseline on her lips to keep them moist. I knew that she was dying as young as I was at the time of the tender age of six.

Grandma was used to death. I remember one morning while I was in the parlour asleep with Uncle Ronnie, Mr Thompson from three doors up banged on the door a few times. Nan got up from her bed upstairs and opened the front door. I heard Mr Thompson telling nan that his wife had "gone in the night" and would nan go and "lay her out" Lter I found out that his wife had died during the night and would like nan to wash and prepare the corpse for the funeral men who would be coming later that day to take it away.

There was often or not a large removal type van parked on the waste ground at the bottom of our street adjacent which was Northcote Street. It could have been an Eddie Stobbard hauliers truck. Margaret Guy and her friend Josie Williams, myself and one or two others found this truck a good place to sit on the front engine part and chat. We would sit on the bonnet for hours being shielded from the rain as there was an overhang above the cab. This was a firm favourite of ours to sit and play guessing games and talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up. A few years later I would get my first kiss from Josie during a game of true, dare, kiss, command.

I must also point out that it was at this age that I had a crush on a lad at school as I didn,t remember him being around much. I may have first saw him at the school play centre one night. His name escapes me at this time, Eddie I think. I decided to follow him home one night after we had been to the play centre for our nightly two hour session. Steven Guy from our street was with me and we hid in entries on the way in case he saw us. He was a clean fresh faced lad with a natural tanned skin and rosie red cheeks. His hair was brushed back and Brylcreamed. Perhaps he was so clean and fresh, unlike me who was grubby and skin troubled, that I wanted to emulate him. There was no follow up to this episode of school kid crushes.

I remember that at first I never stayed for school dinners, I always went home at twelve o,clock to have a jam buttie or whatever was going at the time. Lter on I did start staying for the meals on wheels, as we called them because the food containers always came in a van from somewhere. I loved the school dinners. To me there was always a lot of it, and "seconds" sometimes too. I,d never been fed so well in my life. My favourite was cheese pie, and pudding, any suet pudding with hot custard and the skin off the custard too. I usually asked and got this schoolkid delicacy and never left any food on my plate, ever.

Chippie you are an entertaining novelist in the making. Stunning stuff more please.:handclap:

Chippie,
I have really enjoyed reading your story,you made those people come to life,pure magic.Keep that pen working,you've got a real tale to tell.
Thanks for sharing your memories

BrianD

Thank you Jes, but Jes, read the king,s life story ,Brian Daley. He nudged me into putting my rantings on the forum. I,ve been jotting down for ages little bibs and bobs but Brian is like Charles Dickens, just flow off the pen. Each of us does have a lot of tangled memories of our childhood and should be written down before we pass on so our kids and their kids and kids we,ll never see, read the lives we had in our world at our time.

Brian, thank you for your support but I can,t make it a best seller, not with your great works still in its infancy. Part four soon and then???????

Chippie, I have been enthralled reading your memories. Looking forward to the next part.

Hiya Chippie

Wonderful reminiscences, Chippie! :handclap:

Chris

Chippie,
Don't hide your light under a bushel,you have an honest way with words.I could feel that frightened kid running away from the taxi driver,taste that skin topped custard and smell that awful begrimed room.
Write what you feel ,you'll keep us all enthralled.
I look forward to more
BrianD

Many thanks Chris, and Brian will do, cheers

Well in Chippie, you're getting on so get em down - your thoughts that is.

Hey Chippie Brian D is my brother. I am the 'Jess' he talks about lol.

Sorry Jess, Of course he is, it,s my stupid brain, doesn,t click into gear until tea time then clicks back out again. lol

Ged, it,s too cold to get them down at the moment, but come the summer lad, you,ll see...oh my inks run out...... haha

Photos of my area include; The London Stores pub; the right hand aspect of Desmond St. from Heyworth Street, Jim Maxwell,s second shop in; Desmond St looking down from St Benedicts Church; A street party to celebrate either the coronation of hm the queen, or ve day, not sure.

Some more pics including; my sister Babs an I outside May Dreapers shop; me on our step with my uncle (out of the picture); May Dreaper,s shop and Miltons aka Uncle Erics"; and overview from high above the water tower in Aubrey Street.

Some photos from the records office, central library, Liverpool

I,ve just tried to post my final page on here but the screen couldn,t find the page, seven times. In the end I lost an hours work so am going off in a huff.:disgust:

Chippie,put it down to experience,pick yourself up,dust yourself down and start all over again.Your readership awaits,
BrianD

I,m over it now Bri. but can,t do it tonight as it,s not my turn on the computer, will have to wait till tomorrow.

Thanks

:PDT_Aliboronz_24:Chippie, keep it up, I feel as if I am back there in time,
Ernie.

The neighbours that lived in Desmond Street while I was there for seventeen years were not by and large transient people, except for one or two households like the Seagerburgs who went to live in Sweden. Their house was on the opposit side to where ours was and to get over the threshold you had to climb several steps. Some of them originaly had cellars where the coalman each Wednesday morning would throw a hundredweight of nutty slack down the hole or through the door, and leave a dirty, dusty mess where the sack hit the pavement.

There weren,t many households on the south side of Dessy. Starting from the top nearest Heyworth Street was Joe Kitchen whom I never saw at all whilst I was living in the street. I don,t know whether he was a shift worker or whether he just was a very private person. Next came the Speeds whom I remember was a strickly female household who I saw quite regularly either going to the shops or Great Homer Street Market on a Saturday morning and coming back with loads of goodies.
Next to the Speeds was Mrs. Almond was a great character old, bent over, pushing a dirty old pram we used to call a go chair back then. She be dressed in tatty old clothes, stunk to high heaven and talked in a low manly voice which was quite loud for a little old Tilly Mint like Mrs. Almond. I,m afraid, although we had a good respect for her, we kids tended to poke fun at her expence, yes even me. One of my party pieces at family gatherings was immitate Mrs. Almond,s voice. She was quite a scary character, I remember one dark winter,s night going up our street on our side to sit at my friend,s doorstep right at the top. The street was always poorly lit with three gas jets one at the top, bottom and middle, two of which were always burning either low or not on at all due to us kids kicking balls at the glass.
I was in my own thoughts going up our street and I thought I saw a flicker of light a bit further up in the dark. I slowed up trying to focus my eyes to try and see if there was somebody coming down the street or someone lurking there. As I drew nearer a low booming voice echoed over to me, "WILL YOU OPEN MY DOOR?" I nearly wet myself and jumped three feet into the air. It was Mrs. Almond sitting on the steps of her house waiting for someone, anyone, to come past and open her door for her to go in. She was a frequent visitor to the London Store public house as it was the nearest to her. She smoked, drank and swore like a trooper, but for her age, which looked like in the nineties, she could get about. I went over to her calling her name to let her know that I knew her and was a local. Took her key and opened her door, took her arm and helped her up, pushed her pram up and in after her, slammed the door and legged it to my friend,s house where I had a fit of giggles more out of being scared than funny. Now Mrs. Almond,s house was even worst than ours. The nets and curtains looked like they,d never been changed since the Relief of Maferking, the hallway dark and dingy with pieces of dusty cloth flying in the breeze which indicated that her back door was always open, if she had one that is. I couldn,t see any gas jet in her hall but then again I couldn,t see my hand behind my back either! There was always a dirty deserted house smell to her house, as if the inhabitents had gone and left it years ago and had become derelict. Next came Mrs. Boyne, my nan,s friend. She worked as a cleaner in the Collegiate in Shaw Street and one time got my nan a job there with her. One night I went with them and stood around looking up and about I was so amazed at the building and overcome with awe. Next came the Bennetts, Sales, and Smiths, and next to them was my Auntie Louie,s house. Now my Auntie Louie was not really my auntie, but was related to my nan. Nan,s brother married Auntie Louie,s sister and their family used to live in our house before Nan and her husband Charlie moved in there in 1936.
Auntie louie was riddled with arthritis and could only sit in one position. She must have slept, very poorly I thought, in such an uncomfortable way at night and had to call her sons in the night to take her to the toilet which was a chair with the bottom removed and a bucket underneath. Poor Auntie Louie. She had black straight hair and glasses falling down her nose all the time. A yellowy/white complection and gnarled hands and fingers, but she could manage a small newspaper or magazine on a good day. She had three sons, Ronnie who worked in Silcocks who liked his drink and would come home after a few on occassions and try and kiss his mum and tell her he loved her but Auntie Louie would resist and tell him to leave her alone and go and sit down. It was amusing sometimes but on the other hand destressing for Auntie Lou and her sore body. Jimmy was the next son, he was my mentor at one time and taught me how to develope my own rolls of film in their cellar, and made me things out of household packaging just like a one man Blue Peter he was. When I was the required age he got me a job in his firm in Aintree where I reached the grand position of chargehand over a group of lads who were the best in the business, but that,s for another page. John was the youngest son of them all and was the only one to marry later on. One day I went over to Auntie Louies and I found her crying. John had gone out with his friend Mick from the flats at the bottom of our street and hadn,t been about for a few hours. She told me that sh wanted John to take her to the toilet and would I go and try and find him. Well I ran like the clappers to Mick,s house in the flats but got no answer so I ran round to the betting office but they were not there so looked areound the main road to see if I could see them walking along, no sign. I had to go back and tell Auntie Louie that I hadn,t found them. I did and she calmed down a little bit but I was flushed and worried about her and felt sorry for her. Not long after John did appear and I left while the preparations were done. I went home and breathed a sigh of relief.
Not many people knew what Auntie Louie looked like. She would sit at the front door about two hours every year if it was hot and sunny so not many people saw her, it was just someone I knew and talked about often to my friends and neighbours. Next to the Redmond,s (my Auntie Lou,s married name) was the Rickerby,s I mention previously one of which was the local errand boy for Auntie Lou. When they left relatives of The Guys moved there. The guys were living on the opposite side, our side. there was a bombed out site next which happened during the war when two households were wiped out and our football pitch was created. Well that,s the one side of our street.

:PDT_Aliboronz_24:Great, when are you getting by No.5, cheers.

On our side of the street were the Merettsas, the Rooms/Pritchards, the Corless, the Caves, the Amos, the Carsons, the Ferneoghs, the Woods, the Quirks, the Thompsons and grandad Thistlewood.
Now grandad Thistlewood was the second husband of my grandmother,s mother, namely, Ganny who came over from Armagh sometime in the past. She had a brother Thomas Irwin who went over to America around 1885 according to his American obituary column when he was a mere 18 and eventually he founded the First Presbyterian Church in Lawton, Kansas and went on to marry a lady from St. Louis and had one daughter, later dying at the age of 73 in 1943. Ganny also had a sister Mary Ann who also went to America and married a George Washington Mostella. But Ganny came to Liverpool and stayed and married a John Henry Simpson and had three children, John Arthur, known as Uncle Arthur, Thomas Henry, known as Uncle Tom and of course my nan, Lily. I was unfortunate not to have been able to meet my nan,s brother and sister but up to the start of the war one of them lived in number 41 on our side at the very bottom of the street. When the war started he and his family moved to York because he was working on the railway and there was better promotion activities there for him at the time. Uncle Arthur boldly took himself over to America following in his Uncle Thomas,s footsteps and staying with him in Witchita until he could stand on his own two feet. What a nomadic lot our family was, both sides hailing from Ireland and some spreading further afield to America.

It was from here that my nan met grandad and they got married and lived in number 21 until another house in the street became available which was
number 25, two doors away where we now found ourselves in the early 50s.
number 23 was the home of the Emery,s. Mrs. Emery had terrible brown teeth and she would stand at the door eating coal, yes, chunks of coal. Her and her husband were humped back and we used to say, "here,s humpty Emery coming down the street". Next to us was the MacEnernys, the Carsons, the Fowler/Corlass family, and little Emmie was next. She was a beautiful good natured person who would never say boo to a goose, very polite and her smile was worth telling her a joke for. She must have been all of about three foot ten inches in height but was lovely. The howards lived next door to Emmie, their son Thomas never played with us much for some reason and he later died in the Hillsborough Stadium quite a young man. The Iddons were next. Flo died of breast cancer and Ken used to wait on corners trying to get a new wife, (well it takes all kinds doen,t it?) I was looking after his son while he did this every Saturday. The Flans were next, later the Careys and the Guys on the end in the house my nan,s brother had up till the war years.

Only about four of the houses ever changed occupants while I was there.

The leader of the Desmond Street bonfire wood collectors was a lad called Jackie Pritchard who is the Desmond Street hunk in my accompanying photographs. He was about six or seven years older than us kids and was great at organising us all and storing bonfire wood in Auntie Louie,s entry out of the sight of neighbouring street collector,s eyes. We used several entrys so if someone raided our one supply we could always have other supplies in other hideaways. Ricky was a right little tough guy who smoked drank and swore at us all, but he was our leader and we revered him like a god.
There was also relatives of other neighbours who came round to our street with their mams and used to play with us in the street. Also in our street were other groups of kids who were younger than us who stayed in there younger gangs. Sometimes we used to let the younger ones play with us to make numbers up or to be "it" when we wanted someone to come and find us in hide and seek. There was myself, about five of the Guy kids, Raymond Bennett, the Cary lads, Jeff and Steven, and Josie Williams out of the flats at the bottom of our street,made up the bosom buddies of Desmond Street.

If I was not out playing in the street hide and seek, my favourite game, or kick the can or allalio or off ground tick or just tick or Simon says or skipping games with the adults joining in. Sometimes I,d be swinging on the gas lamp with a huge dirty piece of rope somebody would produce from somewhere. I,d be out climbing on walls and just talking with mates. My favourite place to sit and chat was on the top of Auntie Louie,s toilet roof that we called the shed. Next favourite was the sub station roof adjacent to the flats. If not out playing I,d be in Auntie Lou,s watching telivision. We couldn,t have television obviously as we had no electricity, so nearly every night I would be watching the Redmond,s t.v.. I remember seeing the first Coranation Street. My favourite programmes were variety shows like Sunday Night at the London Palladium. I loved detective stories and horrors like Canon, Sherlock Holmes, Hitchcocks films and Dracula type horrors. My favourite cartoon was Popeye. Gran would leave me there watching television sometimes till after midnight. I,m sure that Auntie Louie must have got sick of me being there all the time.

At the top of the street was derelict waste ground with a gate and makeshift roof on. This was a very exciting place to play when I discovered it. It contained old petrol pumps that had been discarded and stored there. I used to climb into the grounds and play amongst them. They reeked of petrol and consequently, so did I. I used to spend time when I saw Harry Haworth going into his garage to stoke his boiler to cook the beetroots he sold in the shop. There were lots of old fruit crates that he used to burn in the boiler, all made of wood. The best and most rugged ones being the Fyffes banana boxes. I,m glad he never asked me to clean his garage out for him when I worked for him as a delivery boy when I turned fourteen. The place was a midden.

I,m leaving my story there for awhile until the social services contact me and I can maybe tell you some background of how I came to have lived and been brought up in my grandparents house and not my mum,s. stay tuned to YO. :hug:

Chippie,my p.c. has been on the fritz for a couple of days,it is still not quite right,but it was good enough for me to read your last chapter.................It was brilliant,the names of those families are as familiar as the ones I knew in the streets of my childhood.You have recaptured the richness of your childhood with a simple honesty,each word ringing with the truth.This is your story,and it is well told.
Thanks for sharing it with us,
BrianD

Thank you Brian, I can still see and feel those people today even though it was over 45 years ago. You can,t grow out of your childhood sometimes.

:PDT_Aliboronz_24:Chippie and Brian, you are both good at writing, my
childhood was similar to both of you, wish I could put down like you do.
cheers Ernie.

Keep it up, Chippie! Great memories! :handclap:

I am printing them out for me owld Mum (age 87) just as I have been doing with Brian's equally wonderful reminiscences. They'll both bring back memories for her I know.

All the best

Chris

Ernie get yer thinking cap on and start writing. If yer don,t yer might find it too late and what will yer great grandchildren think of yer then, eh? Some miserable old sod who went and died an, never left us a bed time story...

dedication to Mrs Chrisgeorge.

Chris, thank you, tell yer old mum that I,ve deicated the first part of my story to her, the first five posts.

I,ve been at my file box today marked "secret life of Chippie" and come up with some more ideas, so stay tuned to YO

:tear:
Getting ready for school each morning I would wash in the brown sink in the back kitchen from the single brass cold tap. There was never a sink plug in this basin ever in all my days there. The back kitchen consisted of a sink and a wooden wash stand. Cobwebs covered the whole of the small window as well as all the corners of the room. The spiders that lived in them were of the round bodied type the size of a contact lens and long spindly legs and of a grey colour. Talking of colour, this room was devoid of it, just cement grey. The cold grey floor was concrete and had no covering on it ever while I was there, or after I,d left. There was never any money for fancy things or luxury items beyond the portals of 25.
The out side toilet almost always had a burst pipe during the winter months and the landlord had to be contacted to send a jobber to come and reweld the lead pipes. Sometimes we would leave a candle burning out there to help stop the pipes freezing but that stopped one year when our toilet door was taken for the bonfire, thereafter we had to do our "business" in the open air and in full view of Molly and Frank whose bedroom window looked into our yard and some of the back windows of our street neighbours from Jasmine Street. I didn,t mind as in those days I didn,t have very much to hide! When the pipes burst water would be coming out for days until the landlord,s men came round to fix the leak or leaks. We had to stifle the flow as best we could with an old item of clothing with string wrapped around. Then we would have to take a bucket of water to flush the toilet if needed.
One day I remember I was crying with terrible pains in my stomach and I couldn,t go to the toilet at all. Nan took me down the yard and sat with me holding my hand until eventually I did go. It took ages and it was very painful but nan was good and looked after me like that.

The room that was called the kitchen was always in darkness for some reason. Although there was a gas fitting in the ceiling, the mantle remained broken and was never replaced and lit. There were two clothes lines across the full width of the room full of clothes always. It was used as a giant wardrobe. The coalman making his delivery to the yard through the house always managed to catch the line on his way through but it was never brought down. There were huge bundles of clothes on the floor in this room which always remained dark and dingy and the windows with ages of grime encrusted on all four panes of glass. There were periods when this room did have some items of furniture but non specifically that I can recall.
There were two floor to ceiling cupboards on either side of the big black fire range. On the hob was a single gas jet (how safe was that?) where most of the cooking and teamaking was done. The fire was lit sometimes at weekends, money permitting, so that some form of Sunday dinner could be cooked. Behind the door going from the hall to the kitchen was a high shelf under the stairs where things were put out of my reach. I got at them one way or another over the years; Chinese fire crackers brought home from the uncles going away to sea, letters, photos, tools etc. were all got at by me and sifted through as I was a right snooper. Over the years I saw some really interesting and at the time, frightening, letters pertaining to my father and mother and the reason why I was living in this Dickensian hellhole which was to be my home through all my schooldays and two years after when I was deemed a man.

Then there was the front room, the main room in the house. This room was lounge, kitchen and bedroom all in one. We ate on a square, two leaved pull out table while sitting on the arm of one of the armchairs. The seats of these chairs were always full of old "Echo" and "Daily Mirror,s" so high as sometimes unable to sit down upon.
The walls were wallpapered in this one room in the house and the pattern changed periodically, maybe three or four times in seventeen years. The fireplace grate was a modern one probably financed by one of nan,s sons after coming home from sea and spending out a bit on their old ma. There was nearly always a cosy fire when it was needed or when finances allowed. The winters were the best with the snow outside a foot deep and the temperatures below freezing, the fire would be halfway up the chimney with a fireguard usually around drying the clothes that had been washed in the wash house at the top of Heyworth Street. The other furniture in this room was a bed settee and a sideboard we called the dresser. Uncle Ronnie and I slept in the make shift bed in later life but early on I mainly slept upstairs with nan in the back bedroom or on the parlour floor by the fire with coats over us. This was probably before the bed settee arrived. I also remember Uncle Bob sleeping on the floor in the front room at one time, he had come back from a long voyage at sea and this was the only room available. The front windows were cleaned by the local window cleaner up and down but he stopped doing them when he never got paid.

The window sills were never painted outside but the front door was. Uncle Ronnie put a hardboard panel over the door once and a full sized triangle done in half beading and painted in maroon. The Yorkshire stone pavement outside the front door was sandstoned periodically to keep it clean.

Up the stairs in our house were two bedrooms, one front and one back entered by a small square about two foot all round we called the landing. Now the stairs had a fascination for me for it had a huge (to me as a child) shelf halfway up and across the whole width. It was dark with loads of things on but I was never able to get onto it and rummage around as it was too dangerous, I might have fallen down the stairs in my attempts to do so. But, now and again I was able, with a stick, to bring some things to the front of the shelf to inspect,but in the end nothing very exciting was ever found. The bedrooms never had wallpaper on them and there were watermarks high up and onto the ceilings from long ago holes on the roof where the water had been coming in but I never experienced any while I was there. I used to pick off flakes of distemper when I used to sleep up there and make patterns on the pinky bare walls revealling the blue distemper from an age before.

In the front bedroom were two beds on bare floorboards, and, across the fireplace which was now rusty but must have once been black and had only ever been lit once I remember when I was taken ill, lay a pencilled or charcoal picture of a long dead relative of ours, so I learned later. My nan told me that he was supposed to have been the first policeman in the Liverpool force to have been been given permission to sport a full face of hair, ie beard and mustache, and you should have seen the fullness of it all. The picture was about three foot high and two foot six across showing this policeman in full uniform. The frame and glass were dirty and the back card coming adrift. There was also a gas mantle fitted to the wall by the window with a finger length fracture in the arm where gas must have escaped ferociously and rendered the shillings (5p) of gas to a mere sixpence worth each time. I often wondered later if this was one of the reasons why we never slept in that room so often. It was by providence that no one was gassed in that room. The mantle was so near to the window probably letting the obnoxious stuff pass out into the street before doing any harm to an occupier sleeping in there. I used to play in this room quite a lot between the ages of five to twelve on the bare boards with a sheet canopy above me playing cowboys and Indians and suchlike.

The back bedroom was where nan and I slept in a huge double bed with a large headboard. I,d remember Lonnie Donnigan singing the song starting "does your chewing gum lose it,s flavour on the bedpost over night?" when I used to go up to bed by the light of a candle as there was no light fitting in the back room at all. The mantlepiece used to be full of candle grease eventually dripping down over the sides and ends like an ice cave,s stalagmites and tites. I use to get a knife and prise it off when it looked like a scene from another planet.

There was a big mound of clothes and papers in this room covered over by a big dirty sheet, just like the ones in the back room downstairs. I found a gas mask, a trilby hat and a photograph of Randolph Turpin amongst other things under this cloth mountain. A dressing table was the only other item of furniture in this room. A small shelf high in one of the alcoves on either side of the chimney breast where I once hid my pet mouse which was discovered and thrown out, was all that was in that cold back room. We took a bucket up each night to save us the discomfort of getting up and going down into the back yard toilet, this was used very frequently by nan and I. I used to wet this bed and grandma almost every night at this time. Then, later on when it was the bed settee in the parlour and Uncle Ronnie who got it, a little less frequent, much to the Ronnie,s delight.

The outside yard where the toilet was situated was where the coal and an old mangle was kept. Years ago before my arrival grandad used to keep racing pigeons here, and even earlier still, a pig. The dust bin in the wall leading to the back entry completed the picture outside the building.

Our neighbours being, as mentioned before, the Emerys on the left and the MacInerneys on the right. Grandad Thistlewood, the second husband of my great grandma,my nan,s mother, lived in number 21, the house where I was to live with my dad when I was seventeen in the year 1969.

The street was dominated at the top by the dark shadow of St Benedicts Church, a local Church of England, on Heyworth Street but entranced in Kepler Street. At the bottom of the street which led into a wide alleyway it entered Breck Road. On this corner lived a local character lived a local character opposite to Mrs. Mudd,s shop, a Mrs. Ellenbogan who had a skin like stretched leather on her face and wore very peculiar clothes more fitting to a Herefordshire farmer,s wife. Apparently her home used to have been a shop many years before.

I remember one incident I was being got ready to go to Auntie Lilys, nan,s only daughter of a brood of eight lads. Auntie Lily had not long been married and had rented a flat in Erskine Street, a long way away towards town. I knew that I,d like the trip being so far away and it would get me away from the street for a few hours, and the rest of the urchins that lived there who would never play with me at that particular time as I was fairly new to the street.
I was being wiped over in the usual way with a piece of grey rag that had previously been torn away from one of the sheets which covered nan and I during the night as we lay in bed together. She used to tell me stories that I loved to hear if the wind was strong one night and blowing through the triangular hole in the window. I often hoped that the window would be fixed so that it wouldn,t be so cold as we both got up to wee in the yellow bucket next to the tiny fireplace. One story that always had me spellbound and would bring tears dripping onto the bolster was "Her Benny," a story about two little urchins scratching a living on the streets of Liverpool years before. They had no mother and father. I think I grew up in my childhood thinking that this was the norm as memories of my mother and father, I must have had a mother and father, faded. Hearing stories like Her Benny made me think that it was the thing that families do, treat the children like dirt or turn them out onto the streets when they didn,t want them. Didn,t that happen to me? Isn,t that why I,m in my nan,s house?
As the tears flooded from my eyes I would slip into the land of dreams and dream childish fantasies. If I had a particularly bad dream about the bogey man one night and I would wake up feeling scared and afraid, there was always nan,s arm across my shoulders, holding me safe from the most horrible fears, and I would feel content again and drift back into slumber, relax my tense little body, and wet the bed.

Ready to go off on the long journey to see Auntie Lily and sitting in my go chair outside our house, all clean and fastened in, impatient to be off; Big Steven from up the entry comes out to play with a long piece of muddy rope.
Nan is making sure that all the doors are locked and that the guard is around the fire. Steven comes over to me and throws the rope over my shoulders as if he is the cowboy and has lassoed an Indian, me. Seeing that I,m not able to play with him he goes back up the entry to his own house.
When nan comes out and sees me covered in mud from the rope she goes spare and shouts and screams at my dirtiness. "It was Steven!" I cried bursting into tears and pointing towards the entry to which the cowboy had galloped. Nan disappears in that direction and is gone a long time while I sit tight in my pram and wait for her return. After what seems like ages she reappears, I get yanked out of the pram, into the house, and undergo another wash and change of clothes.

In no time at all we are off along the roads, looking into lots of shop windows but buying nothing. We soon reach Auntie Lily,s street and nan puts the pram right up against the building and puts the brakes on and unfastens the straps that are holding me in. She presses the doorbell and soon gains entry into the building and carries me up three flights of stairs and stands outside Auntie Lily,s flat.
We are there for ages and drink tea and eat marshmallows and cake. I like going to visit aunties and uncles because I get things I don,t get at home like cake and biscuits and sometimes lemonade.
Eventually it was time to go, so we say our goodbyes and go down all those stairs again. We reached the huge front door, opened it, and found out that our go chair had disappeared. Someone had run off with it while we were visiting for the day. We had a lengthy walk home that day and we were both miffed about losing the pram. I never did get another one but we still went out on long walks together nan and I, she loved her walks right up to the day she died twenty odd years into the future..

I can remember a film Jess and I went to see at the Playhouse when we were kids,it was called "No Room at the Inn".The children in it were without parents,they were'nt orphans,Dad was at the War and I forget where Mum was.Reading your story brought back the memory of how that film made us feel.As poor as we were ,we were sad for those little children.And that is just how your young life comes across to me.You must be made of strong stuff to come through all that unscathed,and I bet your children could not wish for a better father.
You are creating something extraordinary,carry on,
Best wishes
BrianD

Chippie, these memories are so touching, it brings a tear to my eye. :hug:

Brian, I hope to read a lot more from you too. :)

Hi Lindy Lou,
My P.C. breathed it's last on the 1st of November and I have been having a new one built(d'you know I'm on my 3rd keyboard),so I'll be back in the saddle by the weekend.But,hey,you don't get any better than Chippies,I'm on my fourth box of tissues!!!!
Be with you soon ,
BrianD

I am enthralled by these stories and although I remember hard times also, it never fails to touch me when I read of other families hardships, but, as always the humour gets you through doesn't it? Keep up with the stories, I look forward to them everyday. I salute you both Chippie and Brian D:PDT_Aliboronz_11:

Thanks Jess, there will be a shortie from me soon, if not sooner ,just got to clear my thoughts and get up to date with my e mails.:hug:

Growing up in Everton during my infant and primary school years seemed void of sentimentality. The wounds of the war years were not solely received on the battlefield. My mother and father had dumped me at a time of my deep neccessity for love. I was three when I found neither parent available to me and was bereft of both physical and mental parential attention. I may as well have been left on some stranger,s doorstep in a carrier bag;

thank God that abortions were tricky, (old wives tales didn,t work, I,m alive to prove it) messy and difficult to negotiate.

In my most tender years I thought that if left in my mother,s care, I,d have been starved, beaten or even poisoned to death. Anything to get rid of this dirty, crying third mouth to feed.


I grew up wanting desperately to be mothered. Wanting to be liked if I couldn,t be loved. Tolerated if I couldn,t have friendship. An acquaintance if I couldn,t have have acceptability.

Nobody ever told me why I was given away at such an early age. Was I a crying baby? Was I a mistake? Was I even my father,s, and a disgraced feotus within my mother,s womb?

Time has proven a great healer, and, whilst still a teenager and fresh from school, I tracked down the woman they called "my mother" to a large flat in Rock Ferry, a particularly sorded district of Birkenhead.
Throughout my life I,ve recalled a phrase she used that day. On finding that she had no milk for a cup of tea, and volunteering to go looking for a shop that was open to buy a bottle, she called from her doorstep after me,"You will come back...Won,t you?"

It may have been this pitiful remark that helped me through the years to cleanse and heal the unfeeling I had for her for getting rid of me, and giving me to someone else who couldn,t support or afford to keep me in the way that young sons and daughters are supposed to be reared.


Many years later on seeing "mother" on her death bed, surprisingly looking better than I,ve ever seen her in the past. Cheeks rosy and hair brushed back, I thought about the miserably short life that she had lead and the loveless marriage that she must have had to end up alone on a hospital bed with no family all around, holding hands, grieving, mourning the mother she should have been.

I think the most endearing words that I heard at the funeral was, "thank God shes,s gone."


Nobody is supposed to love you like your mum and dad. The love of a partner can fade with time, often it does; But the love of a parent --- or at least of a good parent --- is with you forever. You can,t lose it no matter how selfish or stupid you sometimes might be. And when a parent dies, it is like the brightest light in your life has just gone out, snuffed out at a pinch.
Anyone losing a parent to cancer or Alzeimers knows that it,s cruelty is boundless. In the end these diseases narrow life down to pain, suffering and humiliation.

To see someone you love go through that breaks your heart. When death finally comes, at least you know that the person you loved is free from suffering.

But why is it still so very hard to say goodbye, in an intensive care ward, to a mother that never was? :hug::PDT_Aliboronz_11:



written in 1980 after the Christmas death of my mother.

My heart goes out to you Chippie old boy, just shows that a nice human being can still come of it. Keep up the good work.

My heart goes out to you Chippie old boy, just shows that a nice human being can still come of it. Keep up the good work.

I go along with every thing Ged has said :hug: :PDT_Aliboronz_11:

Chippie
You are a fine example of a good man.
:PDT11

Thanks you guys, but it,s not over yet, have we got a fat lady in the audience please? Still got some more to go yet.

This is me aged four probably, in Auntie Louies

I go along with every thing Ged has ever said, an I love him too :hug: :PDT_Aliboronz_11:


Why thanks Mand ;)

Why thanks Mand ;)


Ha Ha now I know what a ventriloquist's dummy feels like :PDT_Piratz_26:

All i can say is brilliant Chippie:handclap::handclap::handclap::handclap:

Thank you Tony, It,ll be in the News of the World one of these days mate, ha ha:)

I remember the day that I started going to school, Heyworth County Primary. Going up Heyworth Street in my grey shorts and new brown sandals, holding my gran,s hand. I wasn,t scared like some of the other new starters who were crying and having their tears wiped away by concerned mums. I was looking forward to playing and mixing with new friends. I went into the little hallway which served as an assembly point in the mornings, sitting cross legged listening to Mrs. Fisher, who I first thought was one of the girl,s teachers. We never saw the girls at all during our time at the school as they were segregated from us before, during and after, school.

My teacher at the infants was a Miss Wakeman who I liked. We played with plasticene and sand and had rides on our class rocking horse. In the next class a year later, I remember making a paper mache model of a road system with zebra crossings, lamposts and pavements, and little cars were placed on the roadway, and I played with them all morning. I had my first accident in this class running around in the playground I fell over and broke a bone in my little finger of my left hand. I wore a sling for two weeks after.

The next year I was in Mrs. Fisher,s class. I don,t remember much about her other than she was a bit sharp and we were all wary of her. Then there was Mr. Narva and Mr. Drew who was a bit of a stern bugger who loved using the cane. Then there was Miss Lovat who was a well rounded lady who just loved pulling up one of your trouser legs and slapping you hard on the fleshy thigh. She was well worth avoiding when you did something wrong. And finally came Mr. Jones who was a bit of a dodderer but could get right bad tempered and turn quit nasty. Mr. Masheter was our headmaster at the school and not having had him for any lessons, didn,t know what he was like.

There was a play centre at this school for two hours every night with about four or five teachers on duty overseeing us kids playing games of draughts, chess, snakes and ladders, art, games in the hall underneath the school next to the swimming pool which also was used once or twice a week. These teachers must have been very patient and long suffering to work such hours each week. It was in the pool one time when I thought I,d override my fear of water, and try introducing myself to it. I was walking about dithering and splashing a bit try to get used to the gasping feeling of the water getting higher and higher as I gingerly sidled about, when all of a sudden I was pulled under the water and gasped and splashed about in desperate fear, coming up I started moaning and groaning and made my way to the nearest bar round the pool, which happened to be at the deep end, and franticly hauled myself out, much to the amusement of the other kids. I was told to go and get dressed, and not in a sympathetic tone either. I put my glasses on to see who had done such a callous prank on me, and there laughing his blonde haired fat face at me was that little monster from up the entry in our street, Steven, who years before had whacked me with a muddy rope while I was in my go chair. I wanted far away from him as possible so got dressed and ran home.

Two "accidents" in my trousers I remember while at Heyworth Street School. I was so in pain one day that I put my hand up and asked the teacher if I could go to the toilet and the pain in my face must have been evident as she ushered me on my way with waves of her hand. Running across the yard in the playground where the toilets were I cried and made a mess of myself. So instead of going I ran all the way home and cried in fear and embarassment to my nan. This happened in the first two years in the infant section of my education, while the next "accident" was when I was ten in the juniors. It was Miss. "slappy Lovat,s class. I put up my hand to ask permission to go and she ignored me as she was in full stream of a story about something or other which to her was more important than my tummy pains. I started sqirming and uttering quite noises but she refused say something like that there was only twenty minutes left to go in the lesson, I could surly hang on till then. I hung on as long as I could and then...gush...At the end of the lesson I darted out of the room as fast as I could go and left Miss. Lovat the consequences of her refusal. Nothing was ever said about this incident.

Some of the lads in my class in the junior school were Alan Roberts, Alan Rose, John Beesley, Chris Felton, who I believe last time I heard worked in a solicitor,s office; Norman Holmes?, Dennis Higham and Roy Williams. I have since had a photograph sent to me of a class picture with some of these lads on. Some went onto the senior school with me while the rest went to other various schools in the vicinity. I took two eleven plus exams in two different regions because I had a spell in another school in Huyton when the social services got "the family" together for the first time. More about that later when the social services let me in on my early life that involved them.
The eleven plus exam was a test to see had you any chance of being brainy and could go to college or a better educational unit. Good God if I had have been brainy enough to go to college, my guardian, my nan, would have had a screaming blue fit because she wouldn,t have been able to buy me a uniform or any of the trimmings that would have been needed in a better school than the secondary modern that I was destined to go. Apart from the usual uniform, there would have been sports clothes, shirt, shorts and shoes and stockings each year. Also football or rugby gear as well as a good satchel or schoolbag instead of the dufflebag that I took to Prince Rupert with me.

When I was ten I joined the St Benedict Church Choir, not that I felt religious or anything, but it did pay 7/6d about 41p) a month, which was a cool profit for singing like a scalded cat at someones wedding. Needless to say that I only lasted a month, got my 7/6d and left before they found out where the scalded cat was located.

I borrowed Brian Bennett,s bike one night after school rode up our street across the main road into Kepler Street and down over the hump in the road going full throttle at six miles an hour when I found that there was no brakes. I crashed at the bottom of the hill into the raillings next to the Police Station where I was hauled in and had a dressing put on two cuts. One on my split forehead and the other on my right leg. I was whizzed by ambulance with flashing light to the children,s hospital in Myrtle Street where I was more concerned with the little sore on my leg that the dirty big gash that was being stitched on my forehead. I lay there till my Auntie Kitty came to pick me up and take me home. Her being the only one available with any money to get the bus and bring me back on the bus.
I went into assembly late next morning, the day after my accident. Limping down the back steps as the kids were singing a hymn. They all turned to look at me on entering with a bandage round my head and another round my leg. I was the talk of the class all that morning untill they found out how I did it.

Although I was not allowed to leave the street I usually ended up in one of the parks or playground areas within a mile or two of our street. The nearest one was Rupert Lane swing park, which meant crossing Heyworth Main Road which was something really taboo for me. The park in the summer had a punch and judy show in a railled off enclosure which you had to pay 1d (1/2p today) None of us could afford this payment so we stayed outside the raillings and saw and heard it all for nothing. There was also a park attendant here whose job it was to keep the park clean and tidy, and to chase people off the grass. There were signs in all the parks before the 70s to "keep off the grass) We called these attendants "cocky watchmen" after the men who used to look after building sites after the war. The were to make sure nobody pinched the materials and keep playing kids away from the dangerous grounds. Each night they would be found around a roaring fire to keep warm during the colder nights.
When we were in the swing park and swinging high or up the ladder on the slide, we could see into the top storey of the police station of Everton Terrace. We used to pull faces at the policemen working there. The windows looked as bad as my nan,s back ones, could have done with a good clean.

While I was going to Heyworth Street School I remember the death,,already mentioned in my story, of my grandad. He used to come to the house now and again all dirty and whiskers as if he needed a shave. He wore a long dark overcoat that reeked of ciggarette smoke. I,m not sure why he didn,t live at home in the house I was being brought up in as he used to. I think it had something to do with the fact that I saw him kicking my gran and making her legs bleed once. She used to cry in bed of a night when I was sleeping with her. I did too because she was. I remember, Charlie smoked rolled up ciggies and I watched him making them from old stumps he found in the street. Although grandad was absent from the house, when he took ill once, grandma would go to the hospital in the freezing cold and snow blizzards, when she could get the fare to go from somebody. More often than not I would go too as there wasn,t anybody to look after me. It was a long way to Fazackely Hospital and two buses. I wasn,t allowed in the wards in those days being a child. I would sit in a room and read a magazine, well look at the pictures. One night nan came back crying after being away a long time. I asked her what was the matter as I was always upset when grandma cried, I felt afraid and insecure in case I was to go away to someone else to live. "Grandad,s dead." she replied weeping into the grubby piece of rag that once lay on our bed keeping us both warm. On the way home, red eyed, she couldn,t contain herself and must have been thinking of the days together when gran and grandad were happy together. I asked her later how grandad had died and she was quite graphic about it. "He bled from his eyes, his mouth, his ears and his nose, of cancer," she squarked. I was frightened and stayed quiet, thinking my own thoughts, the rest of the way home.

Superb memories to share mate. Thank you.:PDT11

Brilliant Chippie, keep them coming :handclap:

Chippie,
I,m sitting here thinking of that little lad in the waiting room,waiting for news of his Granddad.......................you may have been living in poverty,but you had a lot of love in that old Nan of yours.Your words bring her alive,thanks for sharing those precious moments,
BrianD

You gentlemen are too kind, thank you for your support and response.

As the next one will bring me up to my second school ages from 11 to 15 I must leave my story there for awhile as I intended only to write about my childhood. When I left school at the age of 15 I became the one and only wage earner at home for awhile and so my story must go to the adult stage, which I,ve not prepared to write about just yet.

On saying that I may go backwards a bit and tell about a more recent time in my life when I was working for the mod in Liverpool and the friends I made there.

:hug:

The Guy Family who lived in the end house on our side consisted of the mother and father, Maggie and Billy, and their five kids, Arthur, Jean, Leslie, Margaret and Stephen. Another brother, Tommy, lived opposite them on the other side of the street in number 42 with his wife, Barbara, and their kids, Tommy Jnr., Raymond and Julie. There was enough kids to these two families to play with the rest of us kids in Dessy. The two around my age group were Stephen and Tommy who I associated with more than anyone else in the street.

I remember one day playing outside between our house and Lily Emery,s house next door. We were playing "house," which was a few sheets off someone,s bed turned into a tent. I was the dad, Margaret was the mum, and Lily and Stephen were our kids. There was no water to make a pot of tea so I peed in four cups, which was convenient at the time because I didn,t want to go in to use the toilet. I said to the rest, "Come on let,s have our tea," and we raised our cups. The rest thought that I,d got some lemonade and gulped theirs down whilst I only sipped at mine to see what pee tasted like. There were coughs and splutters all round and shouts of "Oh you dirty get!" And I wasn,t flavour of the month for a week or so after that little escapade.
Margaret said that to drink ones pee was awful and that you would die if you didn,t eat meat right away. She always seemed to know about these things. So I legged it into our house to see if there was any meat around. Ha, meat in our house was like saying there,s snow in hell. Fortunately for me and my longevity that day, there was a couple of cold chops from my uncles tea the day before and I managed to to beg one of these from my nan telling her how hungry I was. I came back out and finished playing with my friends and stayed out until after my uncle came home looking for one of his chops that was for his tea today. There was a bit of an argument about it apparently but it blew over quite quickly. and I lived to see another day.

Another time with the Guys and Lily we were playing "hide and seek." Stephen, Margaret and I were hiding in the flats at the bottom of our street where we had full view of the length of Dessy from one of the stairwell windows. I climbed up onto the sill to open the top part of the frosted window, and my new glasses fell off my nose and crashed to the stone floor and smashed. I was especially upset as I wasn,t to wear them until the first day back at school, which was the following week, but I was so sick of my taped up old ones, I,d put my new ones on. Nan would go mad if she knew I,d worn them for playing out. I went home and swopped them in the case for my old ones. The following week while getting ready for school and my new class, I got my glasses case from the drawer in the sideboard, and, while putting my coat on I "accidentally dropped" my glasses case containing my new specs, onto the floor. Opening them up we "discovered that they were broken" and I would have to wear my old ones until I could get the new ones mended. I was a right scheming swine in those days. I think I had a degree in "How to hookwink my nan."

On another occassion, Stephen and I went for a walk, well an adventure really, and ended up a very long way from home, well it was for two little ten year old lads. We had walked to Great Homer Street and across the very busy dual carriageway towards Scotland Road. Thinking that Scotland Road was very nearly in Scotland and we had walked enough already, we just looked around the street we happened to find ourselves in, and would head back home. We came across a huge desserted yard that looked as if it had housed animals in it as there were bits of straw around and animal droppings. There were large metal hoops halfway up the wall with thick ropes hanging from these. In one corner of the cobbled yard was a huge wooden structure suspended on two wooden beams coming out of the wall. We both climbed up the wooden ladder about seven or eight feet high and went into the room.
There was evidence of pigeons in there, all over the floor was droppings and feathers, and the smell was not very nice. Uninterested in this structure, I climbed down from the far side of the building and went to nose around the rest of the yard in more interesting corners. I heard a terrific rumble and shout behind me and turned to see the pigeon loft upside down on the floor and heard Stephen screaming in fear on the inside. I ran over to get inside to see him crouched in one corner. I lifted him up and scrambled with him outside of the loft and found that his foot had been damaged and he could hardly walk.
It had appeared that when I had got out of the loft his weight had overbalanced the whole thing and it had slid off the beams and toppled over.
We made our way with great difficulty to the nearest hospital I knew which was called " The John Bagot Hospital" in Netherfield Road North. We rang the bell outside as the main door was closed and a man came to see what we wanted. After explaining what had happened and what difficulty we were in, he told us that there was nothing he could do to help and that we would have to go to the children,s hospital towards town or "The Royal" which was a little nearer, but still miles away. So we started off to walk/drag ourselves to town and another hours pain for Stephen. We got there eventually and we were there yet another hour before Stephen came away with a badly sprained ankle and he had to stay off it for awhile. When he got home yet another hour away there was commotion in both our households that we had "gone out of the street and look what happened," and was never to do it again.

Another time in the street the older lads were playing cricket. I not wanting to interupt their game went round the back of the batsman as he made a swing for the ball, which he hit for six and the momentum of the bat struck me on the side of the temple knocking me over and out of the way. About half an hour later there was a lump as big as an egg on my forehead, where before I had cracked it open on my bicycle crash. The lump stayed there for about three weeks.

One fine evening I was sitting on the pavement outside our front door playing with some toy cars. Uncle Ronnie came down our lobby doing an "Alex Young" with a plastic baby,s bottle belonging to my little cousin Sheila, and took a side kick to it with his left foot kicking it towards me and shouting for a goal. Not being too bright in how to handle the situation, I just sat there and took the bottle in the face smashing my glasses. I,m good at this glasses smashing lark.
I could feel an irritation in my eye and had to be taken once again to the children,s hospital to be examined for splinters in my eye. Luckily none were found and I was back home a couple of hours later.

Only one more time do I remember going to the Children,s hospital and that was the time I felt that I had a fish bone stuck in my throat after eating fish and chips. Along I went with my nan, stuck there waiting to be seen, and, eventually having a long metal spatula type instrument plunged down my throat making me gag all the time. The doctor said that he couldn,t see anything down there and sent us on our way home again.

What its like being a child with all the ups and downs and ins and outs of doing childish things. What happy memories one has.........

Chippie mate.

I always said that life comes in four stages :-
(1) Childhood
(2) Teenage years
(3) Adult Hood
(4) Senility (my age).

Could be four chapters in a very good book BUT (as always) we will have to wait a long time for your Chapter Four. :)

Phredd

I don,t know about waiting that long Phredd, I,ve been senile for years mate. ha ha. keep taking the pills. hic

To go forward with my memories I,ve been forced to go backwards a bit. I,ve received the long awaited social services file on me from way back in the 1950s when I was unaware what was happening and why I ended up in the care of my grandmother who was my age now when she took me and my little sister on. Talk about "Her Benny" which used to bring tears to my eyes when my gran used to tell me the story often when I couldn,t get to sleep. Since getting these documents I ,ve been reflecting on my life and my heart and brain has been crying even though the physical tears never came. I haven,t yet sent copies of these documents to my family so this could come as a bit of a shock to many of my cousins over the next few weeks. Over last weekend I had my cousin from Runcorn over to go for a meal and a talk on the family tree and I let them look through the documents and my memories that I,d wrote down in these columns. You could hear a pin drop when the revelations came out of those pages; And the tears flowed afterwards.


The story went that I was taken along with my brother and sister to Rathbone hospital and that we were to be transferred to Olive Mount Children,s home section because nobody came to visit us. We had whooping cough, we were sickly and undernourished, we were ill, and there was nobody to come to see us; nobody cared; nobody loved us; nobody wanted to know wether we lived or died.

My report states that I had to have a t.b. test as my mother had active tuberculosis at that time. I had the test on 11.12.1955. I presume too that my two siblings would have to have the same tests, but I don,t know, I am only privvy to my case. I was to have a b.c.g. needle and would have to attend a chest clinic for a while

There is a note that the social services were active on my/our case as early as February 1955 as I have a letter from "THE CHILDRENS COMMITTEE" stating that they were looking to have me immunised. On the same date there is a form which my mother signed stating that I was in the care of the Liverpool Authority at that time. I was three years old for Christ,s sake and I was in care because my mother didn.t want me; What did I do to be given over to the local authority, were my brother and sister in the same plight I wonder. The form goes on to say that although my mum gave me away, she didn,t approve of me going to a foster family with a view to me being legally adopted, although I could be moved into a private foster home at anytime at the discretion of the children,s committee.

And then there was the copy of a handwritten letter my dad, whom I loved so deeply in my childhood days, not knowing anything about what went on behind the fascade of his welcoming face at the times I saw and wanted his fatherly care and reassurances that I thought I had.
the letter reads;
13.9.1955

Dear Sir,

Could you please advise me on how to get my children in a Liverpool Children,s home. My wife is unable to care for them and they have been in the care of my mother since march, but now, owing to her health she can no longer manage them and I have no other relatives who can help me

Yours truely,

Chippie,s dad


Reading this from an adults view, dad was in the middle of a crisis between his wife, my mother and his mother, my grandmother who was forced to take in his children from going back into care, and was not coping well with the situation. But to ask for us all to be put into a home........when would we see our parents again? Would they soon forget us and we become victims of being institutionalised? Would we lose our love for our parents? Would they care? Would we care? It was coming up to Christmas and we three kids would be travelling afar, away from our homes, from the people who made us but didn,t really want to look after us.

Another letter from my father was sent a week after the first letter, and a little more desperate this time ending with;

"Would you please help or advise me in getting the children placed in the care of a home in Liverpool.

oblige,

Chippie,s dad.

Then the children,s officer,s memo to Brougham Terrace,s children,s welfare committee.

Dear Sir, Chippie
his sister
his brother

With reference to your letter of 28th Feb, I look forward to your information and copy of my officer,s report on an interview with the father of the above named.

yours faithfully,
county children,s officer.

And then the officer,s report on my dad.

31.3.1955

I interviewed Chippie,s dad and he told me that his mother has Chippie and his sister and he pays her 30/- a week for their care. The eldest child is with the maternal grandmother and he pays £3 to his wife who pays the grandmother something out of this for Chippie,s brother,s maintenance. As Chippie,s dad is only earning just over £5 per week, this leaves him 10/- a week to go to Liverpool to see the children each week. Chippie,s dad intends to keep up these payments in the interests of the children as he does not wish them to be taken into care and placed in a home. He told me that he was willing to do anything for the children short of going back to his wife and his wife,s relatives; Under no circumstances would he do this."

The letter goes on to say that the officer interviewed my dad,s superior who upholds the wages and gave my dad a good report.

and another report from the welfare committee about an interview with my mum saying that my mum was prepared for us kids to go into care but now they are being provided for by repective parents, but regular weekly payments must be made for the children,s upkeep and to maintain his wife too.

and a report about an interview with my dad,s mam.

Chippie,s gran is willing to care for Chippie and his sister but she is in possession of a numberof liableous letters from the children,s mother. When Chippie,s dad came home at the weekend she told him if the letters don,t stop she would have to review the care of his children. The children are fond of her and her of the children and I am sure that she would not let them go.
She also intimated that the children,s family allowence was still being drawn by their mother and retained by her.

One last document seems to be a memo from an officer saying that "Chippie,s dad is shirking away from his resposibilities "


Well there you have what I got back after a fight to get them from the social services. A mixed bag of feelings and a melting pot of emotions.

We three kids ended up fostered out so to speak with family most of the time, but my two siblings did go into a home in Yorkshire, all that way and I couldn,t see them. I don,t know how often my dad went to see them, they don,t talk about their care in the home, maybe I can get it out of them bit by bit before one of us dies, and maybe not.


To be continued.................:hug:

Chippie,
I had to keep reminding myself that you were writing of something that took place in the mid 20th century and not,as it seemed,in the time of Charles Dickens.The fact that you have come through all of that and are still sane gives us the measure of your character. You, my friend, have within you a story to make "Her Benny" look like something scripted by Disney.
SIT DOWN AND WRITE IT NOW!!!! We are all waiting ,
Regards,
BrianD

Cheers Brian, I will. I will, sometime. Thanks mate

aaaaaw Chippie mate, thats very sad. i feel for you mate.

You are so brave putting it all down, good luck with it all.

Tony

Thanks Tony, I put it down for the record because I,ve been lied to all my life about my life. Now it,s down there can be no lies anymore, no legends about certain persons being the salt of the earth, and no more covering over the cracks in life,

Will be watching out for you Tony, cheers:hug:

Ok so I didn't pass my two chances at the eleven plus. I was such a mediocre pupil at Heyworth Street School and I can truly say that my school life there was happy and trouble free. I was going to miss the school and half of the kids I grew up with from all round the area, but I wasn,t to know this yet untill well after the six weeks holidays that were looming up. Finishing junior school was a milestone in my life, already the first ten years of my life was over. What would become of me, would I be working, get married, live like the rest of the neighbours in our street? Us kids would discuss these topics as we sat around on the big removal like van parked on the oller at the bottom of our street.

I remember my gran telling me stories of the war years from her point of view. About how that our school was used as an air raid shelter and how they,d had to run all that way up Heyworth Street to get to it. I remember thinking at the time that by the time they got there, there would be planes overhead watching you. In fact one of the stories repeated by a woman who lived in our area was that she was caught in Everton Road during an air raid and that a bomber followed her along the street and verred away from her back to the dockland area. I heard Dora Caseupton tell that story many times in her reminices of her life in later years. My gran used to tell me that my dad had climbed up onto the roof of our school to dislodge an incendiary bomb that had fallen on a full shelter of people. But whether that was a true story or one just to make me proud of my dad or reinforce her love for him, I,ll never know now.

The school holidays were spent in the best ways possible, playing in the entries and ollers and empty houses around our area. I remember several houses that were like gold mines to us kids. One was on the main road, Breck Road and had been stripped of copper wire and doors and fire places. We rooted around some of the junk that had been left and abandoned of life and we found trinkets and pens and documents of all descriptions including photographs of the relatives of those that had lived there. It seemed to me at the time why had these people left legacies of their lives to be pinched and pilfered like this. It seemed like those war films I,d seen on the flix of those people being hounded out of their homes and taken into concentration camps. But Liverpool was a far cry from life like that, why had these possessions been left? Upstairs the bedrooms had been stripped of floorboards and us kids walked across the beams from one wall to another and had great fun playing in that particular house. Then there was the house in Whitefield Road that had been abandoned and in the cellar there was all kinds of army gear all over the place, phones, dials, speakers and petrol cans. We thought that there may have been a shop upstairs where they sold these items or that the owner was a secret spy and had been taken in by the mi5 and this was why the house was empty. Then there was a house in Queens Road a large three story dwelling where we found a stack of "dirty books " but we didn,t know how to make a profit with these items so we just looked through them and went "ooooh" and "yak" and such meanial noises.

Well as I said before I failed the Liverpool Education Committee,s eleven plus and the one from Huyton where I was when the social services got us together as a family for a short time. But I did go to a senior school that I felt comfortable in with some of my mates from Heyworth Street, and we started out together on the road to adulthood.

The school was a sandy bricked affair built about 40s or early 50s. The pupils were sectioned off into competative houses, Scott, Livingstone, Drake and Hudson. I knew about the first three explorers or adventurists, but Hudson?! didn,t know him then or now for that matter. Scott was red, Livingstone yellow, Drake blue and Hudson green. The brainy lads always seemed to end up in Scott while the dimwits were all in Hudson. I selected the Livingstone house and was the house captain throughout my four years in Prince Rupert Secondary Modern School for Boys with two gates, one facing Mill Road where the famous hospital was situated at the end of the road and where twenty years later I was to work and enjoy ten happy years of service under the guise of civil servant. The other gated entrance was in Margaret Street, once well known for its baths where many an Everton son had used to get a good bath in as there we,re not many households with a bathroom in our township.

In the Livingstone House were John Bennett who had become my cousin when my Uncle Albert married his sister Kitty. The whole family had flaming red hair and John was no exception. He was a crackin, lad and always game for a laugh as was Paul Breen and his mischievious grin, Raymond Culshaw who lived next to our old school in Heyworth Street, Tommy Evans a qieter, football crazy Liverpool enthusiast and his mate Billy Milner, Raymond McMahon another flaming redhead who later was to be my neighbour in St Georges Heights about five years later. Bringing up the last member of Livingstone House was a tall lad with ruddy cheeks, and his name was Robert Armstrong.

I,ll have to leave the story here this time as there are four ambulancemen and a cines boxer dog called neddy knocking on the fanlight window. :eek:

Chippie.
I've just read this thread from start to finish.
I don't know how I missed it before.
It was difficult to read at times because of the tears.
If it's any consolation, you were probably better being brought up surrounded by people who did love you, rather than being put into a clinical loveless Children's Home.

In the Scott House was Kenny Alward who would have been better placed in the Hudson House as he let the house down many times, he was always up for a laugh though. Robert Banks loved his football and looked a right tough nut but was a nice lad really. Then there was my mad mate Albert Boyd who used to live in Everton Terrace and had a brother a year or so his senior. He was a smashing laugh but liked Peter Cook and Dudley Moor stuff which I just couldn,t stand when I was in my early teens. We use to hang around together a lot and if there was anything to laugh about you,d find Albert amongst the best of them. I met him in the early 70s when I was living in St Georges Heights and I nearly walked passed him in street; He was sporting a huge mop of afro style hair and a shrunken orange jumper that showed off his belly button, I couldn,t believe that this image was my best mate not a decade before. Talk about the David Bowie style wasn,t in it at all, I was gobsmacked, but he would have been better on the cover of the music album "Hair." Dennis Higham was a quieter, fun loving lad who had no side to him at all and lived on the left side of Heyworth Street in a small back street.
Robert Jacobs was the talk of the class right from the start as he was the most endowed male anyone in our class had ever seen before even at the tender age of eleven. He was to become the captain of our school in the final year, well he would wouldn,t he? while I was his second in command as school vice captain, well I would, wouldn,t I? Robert was a lovely lad, quiet, clean and smart always and the perfect gentleman a school ever had. He and his brother Barry who had a shock of red hair lived in Caird Street. Barry was a year Rob,s junior. I remember that Robert gave me a chemistry set once as a present and I blew a test tube of chemicals up in my bedroom in Dessy. There was such a mess on the wall but it wasn,t noticed amongst all the other mess. Robert and Barry went on to do well in life. Robert is married with two children and has a great career ahead and behind him whilst Barry holds a position in Liverpool that I wouldn,t like to meet in his official capacity.
Paul Kerr was another misplaced middle class lad in our form, but he only stayed a year or so and was off to better climes I thought. George Taylor was a smashin, lad with a goofy smile that reminded me of "Plug" in the Beezer or Topper or one of those comics. And then there was Roy Williams who was the Scott House mascot who should have been in Hudson too. It was in Roy,s house I was first taken when I went down Kepler Street with no brakes on my bike a year or so before. I still have the scars on my knee and forehead as a silent witness to that awful accident.

The Drake House consisted of Barry Cain who I remember swapping stamps with in our first Year, but he never followed us into the second year for some reason. David Connell who lived in Reservoir Street on my route to school and went to live in Cantril Farm in the sixties when his house came up for copulsary purchase by the council. Kenny Culshaw, no relation to Ray in our house, was a small dark haired lad who one sunday went over to New Brighton with me and mooched along the prom and visited the lighthouse and fort. David Grogan was another of my classmates who lived along my route to school and whom I called for now and again when I felt like it. Frank and David Owens, although not related were very good friends together. David was the son of a Liverpool Councillor. In the first or second year he and I fell out for some reason on the playing field in Dwerryhouse Lane and he gave me a punch in the face. I can,t remember what it was all about but we got over it. Robin Murphy was in todays streetspeak, one cool dude who went around in dark sunglasses. He had a celebrity presence about him. He had a pet snake and fed it a live mouse in front of me once, for this reason I kept him at arms length from then on and his presence faded in my eyes. Keith Ramsden was a character always a wide beaming smile on his face and a friendly open personality. George Wilkes was the last person in Drake House and a cousin of the Bennett Familt that lived over the road from me in Dessy. I,ve since contacted him on Friends Reunited and he drinks in the British Legion with my Uncle Bob and only just found out he was related to me.

The Hudson House had all the dross of the class when brains were given out. Where Scott had all the bright sparks - Hudson had all the dim wits. Tommy Jones was tall and lanky and when he got stripped for showers - looked like a nude pin. He also had a body odour like baked beans. Tony Merret was oriental in appearance who always had an item of something to swop with someone. He reminded me of a "fagin type" character who was out "to do business" with everyone. I got a pair of dark blue swimming trunks from him one time, don,t know what I swopped him for them, probably my gran,s false teeth that she only used to seal the crusts on mince pies she made at Christmas. Although I had these trunks for a few years at school they were very itchy and were meant for a bigger person than me in many ways and areas. Danny Peters was the son of a building contractor from Rupert Lane ( lived in Rupert Lane and went to Prince Rupert School) He was quite a tall and beefy lad with a strange grin not unlike Bernie Winters the comedian, for those who remember him. Just looking at this guy brought tears to my eyes. Bringing up the last two souls in the Hudson House were twins Jimmy and Tommy Woods a sort of Kray Twins of Margaret Street. I was to see one of them or maybe a different one each time in the Liverpool Pub in James street many years later when I was working in the city centre in the early 1990s

Well that is the pupils of our class 1a in the first year of our Senior school. I wonder what another fellow pupil would say to describe me if he was doing a story like this. I can think of a few adjectives but I can only guess. Four eyes, freckle faced, freakish---- we will never know

Well a school can only be a school if there are teachers or masters so next time I,ll tell you about the real freaks in the school:PDT_Piratz_26:

Philip, I,ve pm ed you about this so as not to bare my soul in public. But I,m not afraid to cry if I,ve been hurt; And believe me I and my siblings have been hurt, and their story is far greater than mine, far sadder, I don,t know how they can smile knowing their past.

I can only give you a big hug Philip.:hug:

Once again Chippie you amaze me. you are so brave showing us all this, i am total hooked on your story.

I feel i must buy you are beer one day mate

Tony

Thanks Tony, the best part of my story is probably the childhood memories, but there is one part I,d like to share on her with you all about my adult life and it,s very sad. The last year or so of my working life in fact. Its for the not too distant future.

Cheers mate.:hug:

Our teacher Mr Postance was a right sight for sore eyes. To see him for the first time you had to rub your eyes to see if you actually was not imagining him. I mean after coming from a "normal" school with "normal" looking teachers
and then coming to Mr Postance for the first time was an incredable experience.

If I say he looked like Max Wall then that would give your imagination something to play with. Long hair red/fair hair, yellow corded drainpipe trousers, brown corded jacket with leather on the elbows and big black boots, well Coco the clown meets Mr Pecksniff down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. He had a habit of putting his tongue into his cheek when you were talking to him, and staring at you with big doleful eyes. And he wasn,t slim by any means of the word. This is the picture I,ve got after forty four years of last setting my eyes on the chap.

Now when you,ve laughed yourself silly and choked while hiccuping I must tell you what a smashing generous and gentle soul this teacher turned out to be. He was very fair in his dealings with us kids and treated us to the grammophone every now and again bringing with him from home, wherever that was, a rare and precious 78 inch record of his favourite composer or tune
I remember Peter and the Wolf being played and could be heard right along the upper corridor and down the stairs and into the foyer of the toilets once when I needed to go halfway through a particularly long rendition of his five best tunes.
His generousity to us kids had no bounds when he would buy for us a "jammie dodger" if we looked a bit hungry or sad that particular day. Now that was a nice twist to education a lad coming round with a tin of jammie dodgers for us kids to eat with our milk at only 1d each. I was to eat my way through many many many of those biscuits in the four years of my schooling at Prince Rupert Secondary Modern School for Boys, or Margy with a hard g. as we referred to it from the first day on. When through the ensuing years some of my fellow pupils would save up their pennies to buy "loosies" at the corner shop next to the playground, (a loosie being a loose ciggarette taken from a packet of five/ten/twenty wild woodbines) I and most of my pals would be spending our pennies on the moist, strawberry, salty yet sweet delights of the biscuit tin. And may I say in defence of my pals that there was not many lads in my class who did succumb to the dredded weed back in the early sixties. Alas, power in the guise of the vice captaincy of the school did bring me down when I confiscated a lads ciggarettes and told him that I wouldn,t report him in the punishment book but would smoke the ciggies myself. Thinking that this made me feel big and smart and grown up.

All good things come to an end of course and that includes good teachers, and one morning while waiting for our teacher to come into class we were instead visited by the head, Mr Williams; a very tall and grey looking and dressed man with a stern unfriendly and unwelcoming face to us "newbie" and scared looking frail schoolboys; And anounced that our loveable friendly teacher Mr Postance had passed away on the first January (1964) While in the first holiday, Christmas as well, of our first year.

Well we were astounded, gobsmacked and so very sad that this Dickens character of a smashing teacher had given up the Marley,s Ghost and left us poor weakling kids in the hands of the unknown. What had we done to the poor man to warrent an early death like this? were we that bad a rabble that were beyond teaching? Did we derserve to be flung to the mercey of the rest of the company of staff in Margy that some referred to as Teachers?

I can,t for the life of me remember who did take us for the rest of the term but according to my file and my report book it was a certain Eric Whitby who was a younger chap with mustache and grey sports jacket with leather elbow pads. Now we wondered if Mr Postance or Charlie, as he was affectionately known, bequeath those elbow patches to Eric or did Eric come from the same "teacher factory" as Charlie, one never knew. Mr Whitby reached the end of term with no points against him as he was only feeling his way amongst us at that period. So we broke up and had a brilliant summer holiday and started back to school refreshed and yearning to go a step nearer to being old hands in the school

Now going back, we knew that we were not the newbies any more so we could play tricks on the new intake just as we had tricks played on us, like, head down the toilet if we looked cute or soft or stupid. I wouldn,t dare do such a thing myself I,d be too scared the newbie would turn the tables and put my head down the bowl instead, I was such a weedy boy in my grey shorts and black blazer and black front scraped shoes.
Our new teacher was Eric Whitby again and under his leadership my english exam results shot up to a considerable good mark. And the second year whizzed through without much mishap or of any noticeable misfortunes by any of us pupils or teachers. One of my recollections with Eric Whitby was that I asked him to type a forward for a very long composition I,d written after seeing a film at the flix. I was a very impressionable child back in the 60s, I still am today my granmother would argue. Anyway after a week or two I kept asking Mr Whitby had he typed my forward that I had written out for him, and he would reply to the negative each time. Until one day as I was reading a passage in a book, he placed a piece of typed paper on the top of my desk and silently walked off back to his desk and put his head into the Financial Times or Titbits or some other notorious publication. I read the forward I had written and looked up at him in bewilderment. His typed forward was not in straight lines and most of it was spelt wrong. At the end f the lesson I went to him and asked him about it and he just smirked and said that it was what I,d asked him to do and he,d done it. I thought he was mad or something, I couldn,t put that in my composition as a project. We went out and went to our next lesson which was on the same corridor and in the last classroom. We sat down to maths with another Mr Williams and as we sat there for a minute or two, Mr Williams called me out and said he had a message for me. I went to his desk and he handed me a piece of paper on which was written the typed out forward I,d asked Mr Whitby to do for me. Mr Williams told me that someone had left it for me, did I understand? "Yes sir" I beamed, and went back to my seat delighted.

Chippie, very descriptive. Brought a lot of memories of the area, Thank you.

Well Actually Higgins I will put a descriptive walk to school in just for you, from my humble abode through to Margy Street. I remember the walk so well past all the different homes and houses in all the various streets and past the big blocks of sandstone that was the reservoir with its bowling green at the top over the water tanks. What I,d give to take that walk again and smell those smells and try and pick my way through thick pea soupers of fog and the thick deep snowdrifts in winter.:hug:

My school leavers certificate and my class photo prior to leaving. I,ve been advised not to point out the well endowed lad as the others would look inferior against him.:ninja:

Now it,s about time you all knew my name and I,m fourth front from right.:hug:

Yet another Kev ! :unibrow:

I,ve just realised I,ve been on Yo for nearly twelve months now and I haven,t been told to shut up! That must be a Liverpool first!!!!!!!!!

I,ve just realised I,ve been on Yo for nearly twelve months now and I haven,t been told to shut up! That must be a Liverpool first!!!!!!!!!


SHUT UP !

Only kiddin' I like reading your posts.

Once again brilliant reading Chippie:handclap:

Well done Chippie but I take exception to your headmaster claiming your appearance is always excellent :rolleyes:

Another enjoyable read Kevin,how much did you pay the headmaster for that report? Only joking ,keep it up you're making a lot of people happy
BrianD


P.S. Did you get my p.m. last week?

Hey Gedrick, wadderyou mean, you aint seen me in the flesh yet! so how do you know!!!!!:hug:

In Mr Whitby,s class I started doing better. English went from me being 18th in class to 4th in class and maths, well I was a right tinhead in arithmetic. I did,nt know my times tables at all except the five times table which was easy. Other subjects I was interested in and not bad at was German language and science. Physical Education was always a nonstarter with me, I was next to useless in the gym and nearly broke my neck trying to do a somersault on the trampoline and I could never get to the end of walking across the beam. Mind you I did get to see the gym teachers naughty bits when he asked me to hold his legs straight whilst showing the class a handstand. Mr Hardon (didn,t) was his name and was small in all senses of the word.

John Schober was one of the young teachers at the time who took us for science and I loved this topic and took a steady interest throughout the four years in school. I think it helped a lot ifyou could get on with the teacher and liked them and not be scared of them like Ted Makin in the third year. Uncle Ronnie warned me about him. He was a very strict teacher who liked to use the cane a lot and put the fear of God into his pupils.

It was after the summer of 1966 that we were all dreading going back to school to be in Ted,s class. Ted the Terrible, a slight balding man with a half halo of slipped hair round his neck who always wore the same blue suit since we started school till we finished four years later. We were all trembling as we went into class for the first time and we were still trembling when we left for the last time a year later. I got caned a few times in his class but he instilled in me a sort of discipline that at least made me learn my times table and get even better English results.

Life was pretty grim in this period. I couldn,t bring any friends back to our house with the state it was in and they wouldn,t have been allowed in anyway. Any bonds I had made with other pupils had to be either in school and remain in school or go to their house or back to Heyworth Street School,s play centre and socialise there instead.

We started going on trips out in the third year. One day we went to see "The Mikado" operetta in the Royal Court Theatre which not only got us out of the stuffy classroom but showed us a bit of culture of Japan. It turned out to be a very enjoyable day out by me anyway. Most of the other lads didn,t appreciate it as it didn,t have a football in it, or was too prissy, but I followed it quite well and was uplifted by it at the end. I can still remember songs from it now. We went twice I think it was to the Philharmonic Hall to hear various pieces from Mozart and Strauss of which I can,t possibly remember now as classical music always put me to sleep. I,ve got a note that we also visited the Everyman Theatre but can not remember what iconic play we went to see there.

It was the summer of that year that I had saved up enough money from my weekend job as a greengrocery delivery boy at the corner shop of May Dreaper and Harry Howarth, and was allowed to go on the schools summer camp to the Isle of Man. Oh what a trip, I,d never been away from Liverpool up till then and was looking forward to it immensely. I had to buy a tin mug and plate, get a sleeping bag and have fresh clothes to wear.

The day arrived and I was excited as anything, like a kid with a new puppy ready to go on my big adventure to a foreign land, away from home for the first time, what a thrill. The trip over on the Manx Maid was brilliant, no land for hours and a tuck shop on board where there was sweets galore and fizzy drinks. The voyage was like a holiday in itself. A team of staff and lads had gone over the week before to set up camp in a field outside Peel and it was all ready for us when we arrived after getting a bus from Douglas. We were allocated a huge bell tent for about eight or ten of us, and the fun just begun.

I remember the stream where we were to wash in the morning and swim if we could stand the cold running water, the hot mugs of cocoa or drinking chocolate on alternative nights before we settled down for bed, the comraderie with the rest of the boys from the whole school and not just our class, the teachers in their mufti and being civil to us although still clearly in authority, the laughter and tears, the adventures, the days out to see Radio Caroline transmitting illegally in "foreign" waters, The Laxey Wheel, the Calf of Man, Castletown, Snaefell the highest hill on the isle and many more memories of delightful times that come to mind every now and again.

And then there was the bad times.

One of my pals fell over his suitcase and the lock on it cut open his right shoulder ripping his skin wide open and revealing white muscle underneath, yak. He had to be whisked away to hospital right away to be stitched up and made better. It didn,t ruin his holiday though as he was a bright and cheerful soul who grinned it away and got right back into his holiday.

Then there was the night someone in the tent was telling jokes and making fun of the teachers. In the middle of one really dirty joke that a big hairy hand came into the tent from under the flaps and grabbed hold of my head and shouting "Got yer, it,s you, get out now!" everyone fell silent and I got up in me birthday suit and went outside. (well where was I going to get a pair of pyjamas, me who never even had underpants because my gran was so poor) I was asked was it me who was telling filthy jokes to which I relied the negative, so the whole tent had to parade outside till the joker owned up. He or they never did so we all got whacked with a rubber pump or plimsole across the bum and went back to our sleeping bags and never uttered another word that night.

The last bad thing or blot on the holiday was when a group of us went into Peel and visited the castle. Some of the group were rambling over the cliffs and some were swimming and mucking about. One of the lads, George Taylor got into difficulties on the rocks climbing onto a rock near to the cliff. He couldn,t get from the rock back to the cliff and the tide was gushing in all around him, he was scared and began to cry. Some other lads were trying to help but they too were beginning to get scared because of the oncoming gushing swirling current just below them. I was high above them and shouted that I would run for help but fear had gripped me on the cliff and found it very difficult to pull myself up off the cliff to the top. I had frozen in a panic and was mortified that my arms and legs were stuck in fright. I looked at the three boys on the cliff, I looked at the swirling waters, I looked at George in mortal fear and I dragged myself up with all my joints clenched in fear and lay on top of the cliff in relief. After a few seconds I got up and ran, but stopped after a shout from below, "He,s done it, he,s o.k." Crickey I was relieved, but not as relieved as those three lads climbing back up from the cliff and out of danger.

Nothing was said about the incident back at camp, but the following school term there was stories and jokes about it for a few weeks untill we knuckled down into our final year. The last year in school then we would be free to go out into the big wide world and join the workforce and be men.:034:

well written Chippie :handclap: :)

This is a great read. Well done Chippie:handclap: Thanks for sharing it.

Chippy,you're a natural born story teller, I was stuck on that rock face with you ,no shame in being scared ,we're all that at times . Keep it up!
Cheers,