Roast Chestnuts
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In the wintertime the streets were lit with gas lamps. There were no automatic switches so a man was employed in the district as a lamp lighter.
He used to go from lamp to lamp with a long pole which he would put into the lamp and pull a switch which would light the lamp. Us kids used to follow him round and as soon as he had moved on to the next lamp we would climb up the lamp he had just lit and put it out. We thought it a great joke to see him having to return a number of times to the same lamp. Eventually he would realise what was happening and put the police on to us but we were always too quick to get caught. During November as the damp night air hung over the city, the smoke from the liner?s funnels along with the smoke from the chimneys used to make really thick fog. There were times when you could not see across a narrow street, but the gang never used to mind, we used to like it, it gave a spooky and mysterious atmosphere. We would gather on the street corner by the Elephant pub where Joe Podesta used to sell roast chestnuts. Joe was an Italian immigrant who spoke pidgin English just like on the films, we loved him and he loved us. We would gather round his hand cart which had a firebox on the top. In this he would roast nuts and potatoes, we would laugh and joke, sing our songs. In the summer Joe?s cart became an ice cream cart, cornets were half a penny and sandwiches one penny, but we were always trying to get a better bargain. One idea we had was to take a cup and ask for a penny worth in the cup, we usually got a lot more that way and then we could share it out. Sharing with your school mates was automatic, on Saturday morning after delivering the newspapers we would meet about nine o clock and set off for the school playing fields about eight miles away, we would call for the latecomers on the way.
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