But life with Dad was not all cakes and ale.
He worked long hours and would come home in some terrible states;he had a job at Stanlow,working in the new oil refinery.As a welder, he was working on the towers and would be filthy at the end of his shift.Mum gave him little treats because he needed something to cheer him up at the close of day.So,there appeared in our cupboard things that were for Dad only,things in that time of shortages that we had never seen before.
One of them was a tin of Nescafe instant coffee.Jess and I would look at these forbidden things and wonder what they were.
The tin looked nice,with its rich brown and gold lettering,it looked just like something chocolate.
There were just us three kids at home at the time.I lifted the can up to look inside and Jess warned me not to do anything,I was trespassing and could be punished.I told her I was only going to have a look.I opened the lid and saw the shiny,chocolate coloured grains,was it chocolate?
I wet my fingers to have dip.........ughhhhh!It was awful.I snapped the lid back on and put the tin back.
Shortly afterwards Mum came home from Vernons and put us to bed.
I was sound asleep when I was wrenched from my dreams by my Dad, he was holding me by the shoulders,shaking me and asking if I had been in his cupboard.
I can't remember what I said for I was so afraid,he was in a rage,screaming as he pummelled me with blows.I don't know how long the beating lasted,,but when it was over I was bleeding from my ears,nose and mouth.He had shouted that he would leave us again if I was going to behave like a thief.I can remember crying ,holding on to his arms and begging him not to go away again.I was frightened of being fatherless again.
Things were never the same between us after that night, we disappointed each other.
I must tell you a little about our baby sister Bette,she was terribly unlucky in that she was always having accidents,broken bones,sprains and a particularly nasty scald.We had to be very careful for the slightest fall could cause her an injury.
One day our gang was in Sefton Park and we were down by the boat hire place,it was very crowded and, as I made my way to the waters edge,I could see our Bette in the water.It looked like she was swimming for she was face down;there were hundreds of people about and I was so scared of water that I couldn't bring myself to go in to stop her swimming away.
All of a sudden people ran past me to drag her out,she was drowning!!
She was taken away in an ambulance with big sister Jess.When I got home she was already there ,safe and sound ,and I got a telling off for not trying to save her.
But life goes on,and our life was lived mainly in the streets.In spring ,summer and autumn,the family lived outside ,the kids playing their games and their mothers,and some fathers,sitting on the steps ,talking to each other and keeping a watchful on us.Sometimes play would be interrupted by a street singer,bellowing out sorrowful popular songs, cries of "Eres a penny go the next street" would often accompany them.
The Aunt Sally man with his horse and cart,with its barrels of powerful liquid soap,was always a welome caller with the ladies.they would pile out their houses with bottles and jugs to buy this universal cleaner.
The potted ,or pickled, herring man would always do a roaring trade as did the knife sharpener who had wonderful little cart which would unfold into a fullblown grinding machine.All of these visitors had their own cries which would herald their arrival.
Our streets resounded with the noise of life,the shrill cries of children at play,the barrel organ outside the pub,the peddlers calls,and the distant hoots of ships on the river ,the whine of the tramcars electric motors and the clang of their bells embroidered a sound picture that was truly Liverpudlian.
At school I was now in the juniors,the playground seemed enormous,so there was lots of room to run about in.We used to act out scenes from our favourite films at playtime,Cowboys and Indians,Romans and whoever,Japs and commandos,we weren't allowed to play ball games but it was permissable to massacre each other.
At the top of our playground stood the boys and girls toiletsThere were two separate entrances with a dividing wall in the middle.There were little cubicles on either side but instead of separate pedestals,there was one long trough with seats in each cubicle.The trough was spotless white and was flushed through at intervals.I was told ,by one of the older boys, that if I went into the cubicle by the dividing wall I would see the girl in the next loos bottom reflected in the water.I crept in and peered down,only to see the face of a girl looking back at me!!!
The Olympics were held in were held in London in 1948, not that we kids knew anything about them,a man from the middle of our street won a bronze medal at them for weightlifting.His name was Julian Creus and I don't remember him because of his medal win,but because I watched from the pavement as he was carried out of his house on a stetcher to an ambulance and I heard people say"thats Julian Creus, the Olympic champion ." It was years later that I read of his achievement.
The National Health Service came into being in 1948 and with it came hope for all the short sighted and toothless people of Great Britain,was I to young to know about such things?Absolutely not,our close neighbour was both shortsighted and toothless and she was so excited at the prospect of getting both false teeth and spectacles free of charge.
She was a grandmotherly type of lady,easy going and submissive to her husband, he was so uncouth in both appearance and manners,that he would have made Alf Garnett seem like Noel Coward in comparison.
He was a navvy and always bore a 5 o'clock shadow of ginger bristles,his oily flat cap was never off his head and he always ate his meals with one hand curled around his plate.How do I know this ? we shared the same lodgings!
He would keep his head lowered to the plate,snuffling and grunting as he wolfed his food down.
Come the day when Mrs.E is sitting at the table ,replete with new teeth and glasses,her husband hasn't noticed a thing,"What do you think Love?" she said, new teeth and glasses glistening in the gaslight.He lifted his face from the plate,glowered and said "You look like a f*****g 'orse!!"
The last of the great romantics............
div>
1950 was looming over the horizon and maybe the half century would bring even greater changes...........lets wait and see.
BrianD
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