Cyril Davies

Born 4 February 1935

Married 14 December 1957

 

Grey, drab, colourless - a world out of depression, a world with little hope - racing towards war. The year 1935. In a low-cost Council housing estate one mile from the banks of the River Mersey, and five from the shipbuilding yards of Birkenhead in North West England, new life is bursting forth this early February. Not yet the new life of the crocus and the daffodil that will shortly abound in the nearby woods and valleys, but the life of a child being born to a young housewife, already the mother of two girls, Violet Davies, and her bricklayer husband Eric.

The name for the expected child was chosen months before, repetitive questions from the girls, Marion now aged five, and Barbara just four, had received the constant answer, Peter! No thought of another girl, no thought of a multiple birth.

The lights burn beyond midnight, a fire burns brightly in the open hearth of the upstairs bedroom, as the activity of the attendant midwife and the expectant mother nears the climax. A head appears, then hand and arm follow pushing the head out of the way. A male child appears, and the participants at this birth realise that there is a second child to follow, pushed aside by this first born - Peter. Half an hour later the yet unnamed twin, another boy, is born. This is his story - Cyril Davies.

The twin boys - born of separate seeds start to take on different personalities right from the start, Peter, fair haired and stocky build favouring father Eric, Cyril dark and slim after his dark-haired slender mother.

Their first birthday arrives with little incident, but as the winter progresses Cyril is taken with pneumonia, and rushed to hospital for emergency treatment. Concern is expressed, only a 50/50 chance of survival is given. A frantic mother seeks assurance and asks if the baby’s chances would be more or less if taken home. The doctors can only say "the same". So mother decides that home is where her baby will be. Her love and devotion, win through - her baby survives.

Those first years are but a kaleidoscope of vague memories for young Cyril, a series of half remembered incidents that are woven into the fabric of life, incidents that help mould a pliable mind and personality into the individual that slowly emerges into manhood.

Another winter in the council house, home to this struggling family. Big sisters take pride in their twin brothers, bring friends home to see their bath time, and to help their mother, heavy with child once more.

Fires are lit, towels spread on the floor in front of the hearth, and the tin bath brought in. Buckets of warm water carried and poured from the laundry ‘copper’ in the kitchen. A ‘spark catcher’ guard is carefully placed around the fireplace for safety, and fresh clothes laid out to air and warm. Bath time is a precious time of fun and sharing for the family.

Increasing tensions in Europe do not seep into the lives of this young family. Their cares are dictated by the daily battles of survival, not the warmongering ravings of a distant dictator and weak willed politicians avoiding confrontation.

Spring bursts forth in colour and beauty as the snows melt, the fields - ploughed and harrowed through the winter, take on the green of new growth of wheat, and barley, oats and corn, and the new birth of twin girls sisters to two year old Cyril.

Dawn to dusk is a constant activity for Vi, feeding, bathing and clothing the babies and toddlers, helped only by the two older girls. The week is regulated and planned, no time off to sit and relax, no time to be concerned at the activities of others. Knitting and sewing, baking and bottling, the nimble fingers ever busy providing for the family. No modern day microwaves or washing machines, just a boiler and dolly-peg for the weekly wash, no spin-drier to ease the burden, but a hand operated mangle beside the kitchen sink, no electric iron to glide across modern fabrics, but a pair of cast-iron ‘irons’ heated on the gas stove, rotated as they cool, and tested on newspaper to ensure they do not scorch the precious clothes.

Her day begins with alarm clock ringing to prepare breakfast and carry-out lunch for Eric. Measuring tea and sugar into twists of newspaper for his billycan at the building sites. Bacon ‘butty’ sandwiches his favourite lunch and ‘saucer’ apple-pies, prepared by Vi the day before, sweeten the day. Six a.m. winter and summer sees the couple hug and part for the day, six days of every week, fifty weeks of every year. Six pm the welcome home, precious moments when children fade into the background, and they savour the company of each other.

The scampering hoards descend rummaging through dad’s lunch-bag, seeking leftovers from his midday meal.

The children grow, becoming more independent as parental supervision lessens. Stepping out into a world which finds itself at war, and the hardships of living becoming harder with the drafting of husbands and sons into the armed forces, and sisters and wives into a land-army, producing food for the nation, or in factories to feed the war machine.

Eric, a soccer player in his youth, and toughened by an outside lifestyle on the buildings is chagrined to find that he is rejected, medically unfit for armed service. A sporting injury years before the culprit, a broken collar bone that had never set.

War brings further hardships and restraints. Rationing of food and clothing, the limiting of travel, the variety of goods in the shops becoming less and less.

This tale is not from personal recollections, but from stories told to me by family members. I was about eighteen months old, just toddling, but not talking very much.

Usually Marion or Barbara would be looking after me whilst playing with their friends. Slowly they became aware that I was missing. For hours they searched for me, recruiting friends and neighbours in the hunt. Still no sign. Then suddenly I appeared, toddling towards them. Repeated questioning was unable to elicit where I had been, until an ice-cream vendor on his bicycle appeared. ‘Baby mere, baby mere’ I said. They looked at me askance. Raby Mere, a popular weekend venue, and the haunt of ice-cream vendors was over two miles away, across bridges, streams, woods, valleys and down lanes. Surely I could not have been there by myself. Unbelievable, but the only possible explanation for the event. To this day, a mere mystery.

Peter and Cyril are now five years old, and Easter brings not only the new Spring, but the start of schooling at the village school. Shepherded by mum on the first day it falls to Marion and Barbara to escort the boys on the mile walk morning and afternoon thereafter.

The summer holidays provide a welcome break from the new routine of school. Singleton’s farm in the lane near the park a principle attraction, with the cows and carthorses in the shippens and stables, chickens in the yards, pigs in the sties, and ducks upon the pond.

Vi, quietly baking in her kitchen, cocks an ear as she recognises a child’s cry of terror and fright carried on the wind from a quarter of a mile away, her child’s cry! Dropping culinary impediments, her black hair streaming behind her and long slender legs striding effortlessly across the fields, towards the source of an offspring in trouble.

Her eyes, sweeping the unfolding vista ahead focus on a group near a cluster of buildings. Jack Singleton is holding her Cyril over the pigs in the sty. Parental protection explodes into anger at the farmer, seeking an explanation for his actions, and the story of children stone throwing at the ducks on the pond does not lessen Vi’s wrath. She is the instrument of justice and punishment in her household, no outsider will usurp that authority.

The long summer days provide the environment for ever new experiences. The fifty odd houses on the estate, the last in the village before the expanse of countryside around, the homes of young families of children, playing and exploring together, a new generation with its nurture controlled and regulated by the effects of war, it’s freedom of expression, and lack of restraint due to that same war, and the absence of fathers soldiering overseas. Food becomes more scarce as the war proceeds, smaller adjacent fields are divided into ‘allotments’ and allocated to each household to grow their own vegetables. Sunday is now ‘allotment day’ digging, planting, cultivating and reaping, supplementing the rationed foodstuffs still available in the shops. A packet of Rowntrees Fruit Gums ample reward for the ‘help’ given to dad.

Air-raid sirens wail, forcing families into wakefulness heralding the approach of enemy bomber formations droning across the night sky. Blackout curtains are thrown back to allow the dim light of the moon to penetrate into the home whilst children are ushered under kitchen tables and into under-stair cupboards for protection from possible bombs, mattresses and blankets off the beds providing scant protection in those early months of war.

A corrugated iron shed is then built in the garden next door, the first of many that are to be built as air-raid shelters, protection from the shrapnel of exploding bombs, the collapse of buildings ravaged by war.

Shared by six families, about twenty-four people, this six foot by ten foot is the haven on many a night when German raiders attempt to penetrate the defences of the local shipyards and the Port of Liverpool across the Mersey, until each family has its own bunker.

"Eric - is that rain?" Vi calls out from inside the shelter during one air-raid attack, as she hears the sound of running water. An hour or so before we had all been ushered into the bunker, and dad had gone through his usual procedure of filling the bath with water in case of incendiary bombs being dropped. Then going outside with the other menfolk who were not away in the war to search the night-skies for activity. This night forgetful of the bath filling and then overflowing throughout the lower floor of the house before running down the steps to the yard outside and threatening the underground shelter. It was a slow process mopping out when no lights could be shown and everything had to be done in the dark.

Yanks! They’re Yanks - American Soldiers. As truck after truck, bursting at the seams with men in uniform, droned into the valley and up the hill towards the deserted golf course, crowds of us waved and raced towards the convoy scooping up coins and gum and bars of chocolate thrown to us by the laughing khaki clad men in the rear.

In no time at all, rows and rows of tents appeared, each housing six soldiers, and wooden huts erected surrounded by rolls of barbed wire. Our village doubled in population almost overnight.

A new status game of collecting American cigarette packets began, swapping and cadging to prove superiority amongst our peers. Our ability to cadge cigarettes for dads, gum and chocolate for ourselves, increased daily.

I stared in dismay, my stomach turning over almost uncontrollably, my heart in my mouth as I looked at the tangled mass on the plate in front of me. Eight years of age and befriended by some American soldiers I had been invited to have lunch in their canteen. A sea of khaki seated at endless tables stretched into the distance around me. I felt small and insignificant seated between these two huge men, and there, served up on a tin plate in front of me was a red and white mixture I had never seen before. Too embarrassed to ask questions, I attempted to eat the uncontrollable writhing mess in front of me with the proffered fork. Tentative at first, I soon found the food quite palatable and enjoyable. Spaghetti was my new experience.

Dawn broke, and the light, brighter and whiter than normal, spread into the bedroom where Pete and I slept together in the old double bed. The room big enough only for the bed and a chest of drawers adjacent to a built-in airing cupboard housing the hot-water tank.

Clad only in one of Dad’s old shirts as a ‘nightie’ we leaped to the window to peer out across the garden and fields beyond. "It’s snowing, its snowing" we yelled, grabbing for pants and socks to race downstairs and get a closer look.

The pristine scene before us gleamed and beckoned, urging us to stamp our footprints into that unblemished blanket of white, to collect and mould and throw balls of snow at one another to roll and sculpture snowmen, fashioned with begloved hands that threshed and banged to regain warmth and circulation before plunging once again into the tingling crisp snow around us.

Small stones and pieces of coal sought for facial features, old rags and clothes to bedeck and dress the created shapes.

Sleds appear as if from nowhere, dragged out of back sheds and unheeded piles of last year’s debris, or the rapid construction of a new sled from packing boxes and strips of metal.

Wrapped against the cold, we trudged across the snow-covered fields through the woods and valley, across the stream to the slopes beyond, dragging the sleds behind.

Venturing only onto the lower slopes at first we would become more daring as the day progressed making longer and longer sled runs down the hills and aiming for the narrow bridges across the half-frozen stream below.

Many a time our aim or control of the sled was at fault, necessitating a rapid roll-off before the sled plunged into the waters below. Wood and bracken gathered to start a fire to keep warm and guard against the eventuality of a soaking.

Children of all ages thronged the slopes, unfettered, outside the control and supervision of adults, a children’s world which developed communication skills and a hierarchy within itself, independent, without need, totally self-reliant. A world which heeded parents in the home, teachers at school, but their peers at play.

"Cyril, we need some coal for the fire!". The coalman had delivered our weekly ration some days before, but the cold winter had meant the fires burning brighter and longer than normal in the open grate in the living room.

Even the pile of logs gathered and cut from the nearby woods had failed to eke out the supply until the next delivery.

Pete and I often went across the fields to the railway track which carried the freight and passengers to destinations beyond our comprehension. These coal burning steam trains, which hooted and belched their way through the cuttings and across the landscape, also provided us with a source of free coal. Having left Birkenhead only minutes before with full tenders of fuel, they often left a trail along the track from the over-full wagons. A tin bucket carried between us could soon hold sufficient lumps of this black gold to keep the home fire burning for another night.

Bath night was Friday night. Our daily ablutions consisted of washing our hands and face, with the occasional dab at a dirty knee. But Friday was different. The fires would be lit or set to draw, heating the water in the ‘back boiler’. A process which took several hours to heat a tankful.

It was no surprise therefore that the bath water was not wasted. Two at a time, and sometimes four at once, went into the bath on the same night, the cleanest first (usually the girls), the water being topped up at each change over to keep it hot. Even Dad would follow us kids sometimes if the water was still relatively clean.

The awe-inspiring facade of Liverpool’s waterfront has greeted many a seafarer, many an immigrant, many a traveller. But to a young child, looking at it across the murky, fog misted waters of the Mersey, it appeared as the fairytale castles of our storybooks, the pied-piper of our dreams, ever calling but just beyond reach. The shipping that plied the river in those days had names that conjured up the tales of adventure in far-off lands, of treasure to be unearthed and wonders to be explored.

My grandfather on my mother’s side had been a marine engineer with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, and when he died Gran had been given a cottage to live in down by the entrance to the Manchester Ship Canal, the inland waterway that took cargo to and from the heart of Manchester. Raw cotton from the Americas coming in, finished materials from the mills of Lancashire out to the uttermost reaches of the Empire. It was the spinal chord that kept the industry of the northwest of England throbbing.

As lads, Pete and I would often walk from our village to see Gran, and to play on the river bank and the canal side, racing alongside the gigantic ships as the barges pushed them into the narrow channel that led into to the loch at the canal mouth, watch in awe as the loch gates closed and the waters rushed in to lift those huge ships up to the canal level, and then move slowly off with their cargoes. Sailors, sunburned, swarthy, bearded and brawny, waving and laughing at these would-be Olympians faltering on the shore, standing and dreaming long after the ships and disappeared into the haze.

Though only a few miles across the river, Liverpool was a journey of exciting, epic proportions, a special treat undertaken once or twice a year, for Christmas shopping or a Pantomime or with Dad to a football match to see Everton or Liverpool play. Mum would oversee our preparations, boots shined, socks pulled straight, hair combed, the lick of a handkerchief to remove a facial smudge mark, and then we were off, a mile long walk to the bus terminus in the village, and the tantalising wait for the arrival of the big double-decker bus that would take us on the five mile journey to Birkenhead and the landing stage for the Mersey ferry boats, with the alluring names of Royal Iris and Royal Daffodil. Ferry boats made world-famous by the songwriters of the sixties, and the Mersey Beat. Then the heaving, rolling ride as the ferry crossed the wakes of the ships and barges entering and leaving the harbours. Seeing the huge cranes and gantries of the shipyards where new ships were being built, or older ships repaired.

Approaching the Liverpool landing stage we could look up and see the Liver-birds atop the majestic Victorian buildings on the river front, miles and miles of warehouses and tidal docks for the tea, tobacco, sugar, cotton, flax and wool, bananas from Jamaica, oranges from Seville, tomatoes from the Canaries, spices for the food processors, copra for the soap makers, oils for the margarine factories, and iron ore for the steel works. Who could foresee that within twenty short years the activity would fade, the warehouses become empty and gaunt, and the shipyards idle. But today it was new, exciting and enthralling.

Disembarking, we raced up the steep slope of the floating landing stage, onto the cobbled forecourt of the river-front, to the hustle and bustle of trams and buses carrying the crowds away into the city centre. The department stores and shops were filled with treasures undreamed of, even during wartime. Life felt good. Today you cannot recapture the experiences of the past, the first taste of the fruits of life. It is but once in a lifetime.

"Hey Ciggy - there’s been a policeman looking for you at your house. He’s been talking to Tommy Sergeant too - it’s about Pickering’s apples".

My heart sank, Pickering had an orchard near the church behind the village school, not too easy to get to without being spotted, and we thought we had been careful.

I was just coming home from my newspaper delivery round when I was met by one of the local lads. Quickly retracing my steps to get out of sight of home I anxiously questioned my informant. As he gave me as much information as he had gleaned, memory came flooding back of when Tommy and I had scaled the cemetery wall and filled our jackets with prize apples from Pickering’s orchard, two days before. Scampering off as swift as jack-rabbits when we had sufficient for our needs, we had slowed to a nonchalant walk when at a safe distance from the scene of the crime, enjoying the fruits of our labour.

Passing the first of the estate houses, we were hailed by two girls asking us where we got the apples we were openly enjoying. Proud of our exploits, we made no secret of the source of our supplies, secure in the knowledge that all evidence would soon be eradicated. "Pickerings!".

How little we misunderstood the intelligence levels of those two awestruck females! As we wended our way home it transpired that these two recipients of our confidence decided that they too could share in the bounty so beneficially provided.

Racing off, they approached Pickering’s orchard without thought to caution or concealment. Stripping fruit from the laden trees, they unhurriedly ate where they stood, lingering where they should have fled. Until the heavy hand of old Pickering fell upon the scruffs of their necks.

"But Ciggy Davies and Tommy Sergeant said we could come here".

A caution from the policeman, when he finally caught me at home, was the penalty for trusting others (or should I say boasting to others!) A lesson was learned - no, not to stop scrumping - stop telling others!.

The cat was sitting proudly on the step at the front of the house, its tail swishing from side to side in contentment, the door standing open, the sun shining down with a pleasant warmth, a light breeze stirring the leaves in the garden.

Crash! A sudden gust of wind had slammed the door, the cat, howling down the path, minus half a tail, and we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, instant Manx Cat was not a common sight.

The baths were open. Long queues formed on the Saturday afternoon to get into the pool. Summer was here and we were going to make the most of it.

Queuing to get in was the first part, then queuing again to hire a ‘cosie’, the navy-blue serge full bodice bathing costume that was still the fashion at that time.

Oh how we hated those, but we didn’t own costumes of our own. When we went to the seaside Mum would put a spare pair of girls knickers on us, nobody knew us there, but here at the baths we were surrounded by school mates. No girls ‘keks’ for us here.

"Whoompf" the explosion reverberated through the dark recesses of the `Otters Bridge’, a long dual tunnel under the railway lines connecting the woods to the parkland beyond. One side of the tunnel carried the stream that bore the illustrious title of the River Dibbin, the other the walking track, used by visitors to the country walks.

Several young girls, caught in the middle of the dark void when the explosion occurred, ran screaming back the way they had entered, straight into the laughing crowd of local boys, just waiting for such ‘entertainment’. Having signalled, to their friends at the other side to drop rocks from the top of the tunnel onto a rail-track fog detonator, perfectly positioned for maximum effect when the girls had entered the tunnel. With the sure aim of consistent practice, those ‘explosions’ could be timed to a nicety.

The Gypsies are back!

A clearing in the small copse between the village and the new bypass road provided an ideal camping ground for the itinerant gypsies that came through the village periodically. The women gaily clothed, selling clothes pegs door to door, the men offering to repair pots and pans, sharpening scissors and knives and seeking other casual work.

"Keep away from the gypsies, they steal children and make them into slaves!" Such warnings only added spice to our adventures, creeping up to the camp site and watching them prepare their meals over open fires. Sometimes we would be bold enough to sidle right up to the fireside watching them wrap hedgehogs in clay to bake in the hot coals. Cracking the clay open and peeling back, so that spines and skin fell away to reveal the tender meat of the flesh. A ready source of fresh meat in those woods and hedgerows.

"Peter, Cyril, Ruby, Joan one for each of you - take them to school now and give them to your teacher".

"What are they for Mum?". We stared at the assortment of small tin boxes mum had prepared with our respective names clearly marked on the top, sealed with tape around the edges.

"They are in case you have to go into the school air-raid shelter and get hungry, there’s a few biscuits and things for you to eat."

Such were the preparations made at the schools. The constant threat of air-raids and possible gas and bombing attacks ensured a state of readiness and practice among all age groups. Gas masks were donned and tested every week, and shelter drill nearly as often.

Years later, well after the war was finished, those small named tins were returned to us. We eagerly opened them to see the treasures inside, amazed that everything was still edible after such a period of time.

She was beautiful, nine years old, we had a new girl in class. I was in love, besotted. I followed her home to see where she lived, watched where she hung her coat in the cloakroom and slipped notes into her pockets during our playtime. "I love you" I wrote and anxiously waited for her reply. Week after week went by without any acknowledgement. She didn’t even notice me when I walked past.

I wonder now if I ever put my name on those slips of paper!

War time rationing pervaded every aspect of family living. Clothing, meat, tea, all of the major foodstuffs, eggs, even for chicken-meal you had to give up your egg ration. If you wanted bed linen you would have to save coupons for weeks, even months. So necessity became the mother of invention. Jam was rationed, and so was sugar, but sweetened condensed milk wasn’t, so that could sweeten your tea or be spread on your bread. At the chemist you could buy tins of blackcurrant preserve, it was more expensive than jam, but no ration coupons were needed. For babies and children under five there was a special ration book which enabled them to have orange juice from the chemist, and bananas from the greengrocer.

Petrol coupons were only available to essential services personnel like doctors or shift workers in the steel industry. The grocery store did not get it’s flour and sugar, as we do today, in one and two kilogram bags, but in large sacks, and then they would weigh it out and bag it as you ordered it. Sugar came in coarse sacking, but flour was in fine white linen-style bags. We would queue up to buy the empty bags, because split, bleached and sewn together they made very good bed sheets.

Knitting wool was also rationed, so it was common practice to undo older garments and then re-knit the wool into new ones. Dad used to buy floor-mop heads, die them and make them into rugs. It was a life of make-do and mend.

After the war, as food and clothing became more plentiful, the factories working again and imports coming in from overseas, the rationing system was slowly discarded. I can remember when bread came off ration, a popular illustrated national magazine had racks and racks of bread as it’s front cover. The ration books were finally discontinued in 1951 or early 1952, more than six years after the war was finished and twelve years after rationing was introduced.

Today’s society is a disposable society, everything comes packaged, and the packing eventually gets to the garbage dump. In wartime Britain it was an environment built around reuse and recycling.

From apple crates to potato sacks, jam jars to soft-drink bottles, everything was stamped with a return value. The flour bags we used for bedsheets were bought from the store at their return value. As kids we would scavenge around to find articles that had been discarded, so as to claim their value from the local store. Soft-drink bottles were a ready source in the summer months when people came from far afield to our woods and valleys for picnics, but would not bother to take their empty bottles away. We would often be disappointed however if the manufacturer was a ‘foreigner’ and the local store wouldn’t accept them.

There was a big campaign in the early years of the war to save paper. At school we were organised to collect old newspapers and take them to the school as a collection depot. I got a germ in my eyes, which caused conjunctivitis, through collecting this waste.

I woke in a panic, I couldn’t open my eyes which were sealed tight with matter that had seeped from them during the night. I was about seven or eight years old a frightened child, crying out for Mum.

With bowls of warm water and cotton-wool swabs, Mum worked on my eyes for almost an hour before they were cleared of the mucus.

Straight off to the doctor for attention, to find that my eyes were filled with a germ multiplying rapidly. It would have caused blindness without immediate attention. Eye drops and bathings were the routine for many weeks to follow. A lasting legacy is the weakness of one eye.

It was Sunday, the fire was lit in the hearth, and set to heat the oven. Mum would bring the rice pudding through from the kitchen to bake when it was hot enough, the gas oven often proving to be too small for a family of eight.

Sometime later Mum came through to check that we had set the table properly. "What’s that noise?" She asked. We looked at her, we couldn’t hear anything, but then a slight scratching noise coming from the oven.

We opened it wonderingly, and out staggered our cat, half cooked alive. It had crept into the oven for the warmth, being trapped when the door was closed. It was lucky for him she came in when she did.

He lost some of his fur but got over it. I don’t think he ever climbed into the oven again.

I’d never seen Mum climb a tree before, but I suppose there is a first time for everything. One of our young kittens had strayed and been chased up a tree near the rail track. It had been up there all night. We were too young to climb up, so Mum had to do it, or the kitten would have been there to this day.

The Clydesdale plough horse needed re-shoeing, so Jack Singleton let us take it up to the smithy in the village.

Just behind the Church Hall was the collection of tin sheds and cobbled yard of the blacksmith. Oh how we liked to watch him work. He would let us pull on the overhead bellows to get the fire all glowing and hot, casting in the metal rods, big tongs grasping, deft hands twisting and positioning on the anvil whilst the hammer rained down beating and shaping and sizing the new shoes.

Lifting the heavy fetlock onto the leather apron across his knee he would wrench and cast aside the old shoes before cutting and cleaning and rasping smooth the hooves of the horse, standing quietly, unheedingly by. Then, one by one the new shoes would be fitted and nailed into place. They shone and gleamed as they struck the cobbles with the distinctive clear ring of new shoes.

Clothing in wartime Britain was scarce, The girls dresses and the our pants would be patched and repaired to extend their life. Ration coupons needed to be saved in order to replace unrepairable items. So a new pair of grey flannelette pants was a rare treat. ‘Only for Sundays, now!’

We went to church in our new clothes, having been told to change afterwards. But friends at play, and slippery banks that made ideal slides, were too much of a temptation. Then, horror of horrors, a big, damp, muddy patch on the seat of my new pants. What would mum say?

I slunk into the house, trying to avoid mum in the kitchen and dad in the garden. I managed to get into the living room before dad came in and sat down. I crawled behind the armchair pretending to read a book by the toy cupboard there. Waiting, hoping, praying that he would get up and go outside again. No such luck. Mum then came in from the kitchen. ‘Cyril, are you there, lay the table for lunch will you!’ I was petrified, there was no way I could get past both of them without them seeing my backside. Slowly I emerged, watching their faces apprehensively. Then trying vainly to run as dad’s hand descended on my arm and dragged me out. The clothes brush was reached for, but it was the back of it that was applied, raising dust clouds from the dried mud, and howls from above.

The ripples slowly spread across the surface of the pond as the water fowl emerged from the rushes at the side, gliding effortlessly away from the small noise that had disturbed her.

We held our breath, gingerly hanging onto the branches of the trees overhanging the water, our eyes searching for the concealed nest of the coot which we had been stalking for the past ten minutes.

"There it is! - there it is!" Yes, just above water level in the tufts of marsh grass nestled five eggs, smaller than a small chicken’s egg, these were the prizes we had been seeking.

Spread-eagled so as not to sink into the mud and water, Cyril gingerly raided the nest, placing the eggs carefully into a piece of old bed sheet used as a handkerchief.

These would make a tasty meal boiled in an old tin-can over a small campfire and eaten with hot potatoes baked in the hot coals. Even as primary school kids, we could make sure we did not go hungry.

"It’s my turn now".

Clambering up into the huge oak tree with it’s large limbs spreading out above the small crowd of youngsters, we were each taking turns on the rope-swing tied to one of the upper branches.

Climbing up into the foliage the next in line would have the rope swung and thrown up to him so that he could stand on the knot tied into the end and throw himself out into space to swing backwards and forwards until the momentum slowed sufficiently for him to jump off, surrendering the swing to the next in line.

Peter’s turn. He had already ascended into the hidden reaches of the branches above, calling for the rope to be thrown up. Catching it as it came within his reach, he began pulling, only to find his progress impeded. Henry Jones, bigger and older than all of us there, had appeared, and decided he wanted a swing on the rope. A quick yank and the unsuspecting Pete catapulted out of the tree with an ear piercing yell.

Once again Cyril marvelled at the speed with which Mum hurdled the back fence and fields to appear at our side, closely followed by Mr. Thurstaton carrying his St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Kit.

Luckily nothing more than a blooded nose and a broken tooth, but did Henry Jones know all about it when Mum had finished with him!

"Hide! Somebody’s coming"

Five nude and semi-nude small boys, not yet in their teens, scampered in and out of the rooms of the deserted and derelict huts that had once been home to the U.S. Forces on the local golf course. Spread around were half dried clothes that had been shed after a soaking.

Nearby, a small lake on which floated a large timber door, a schoolboys dream - a raft! Not half an hour before they had clambered aboard, one to each corner and the fifth in the centre, pushing the craft into the middle of the spread of water with the help of long poles they had cut in the nearby woods.

Serenely enjoying this new freedom they were blissfully unaware of one corner slowly sinking under the weight of one of the heavier boys. Suddenly, water over his ankles, this epitome of British stoicism, erupted into action with a mad scramble to the adjacent corner, his calm, calculating mind, unperturbed by the imbalance now being realigned, causing an increasingly rapid overflow at the new area of this illusory sanctuary.

Titanic shipwrecks floated into the minds of the others as they rushed from side to side before four of the five jumped into the water, floundering towards the banks. Alone, without pole or paddle, stood the one nonswimmer on the now enlightened raft, wet only to the knees, Cyril.

It therefore fell to him to gather wood and light the old rusty stove in the hut nearby, to dry their clothes. It fell to him to distract the two old ladies, gathering firewood, away from the embarrassing nudity displayed in the nearby room, it fell to him to pull Peter’s singeing pants away from the new red-hot stove - a mute testimony to the deeds of the day.

The upper branches of the tall and slender tree swayed gently as the nimble youth scaled into the heights of the canopy of the woods. Aptly nicknamed Squirrel, he ascended higher and higher seeking more precarious hand and footholds until the panoramic view of the access tracks was laid out before him. He was the lookout, the ‘diggy-eye’, entrusted with the task of tracking the movements of the park-keeper, an old man of not so nimble movement, but the wielder of great authority in the form of a heavy gnarled walking stick. It did not do to be caught unawares by this enforcer of the park regulations - No Fires Permitted.

The telltale smoke spiralled it’s way heavenward, wending its way into the leaves and branches until it burst through into the clear blue sky above, an immediate sign of flouted laws.

The habits of the ranger had been studiously examined, the boys knew to a tee how long it would take for him to sight the rising plume of smoke from his hut in the park. How long it would take him to reach them, and how big they could build that fire on the small sandbank in the middle of the stream just out of reach of the ranger’s stick, flailing helplessly in the air, while they laughed and shouted from behind the safety of the ten foot water barrier of the River Dibbin.

It was approaching Christmas again, the year 1940, and the annual search of cupboards and wardrobes, drawers and cubbyholes was on looking for hidden presents. Pete and I pulled open the large drawer of the wardrobe in the girl’s bedroom, heavy and solid.

There, nestling under a layer of summer clothes, packed away for the winter, were two guns. Black barrels and magazines gleaming against the timber brown stocks, we were awestruck, dumb.

"Dad’s going into the Army" we whispered, then called out more loudly racing down the stairs "Mum, dad’s going into the Army, his guns are in the drawer."

"No, he’s just looking after them for somebody" Mum replied. Sure enough, when we continued our toy search the next day, the guns had gone.

Christmas Day dawned, Peter and I woke as normal at Christmas in the dark, feeling for our stuffed stockings and presents. "What is it Pete, what is it?" "It feels like a gun, it is a gun". Rat-tat-a-tat, "Dad’s made us a gun". Our discovery the previous days before were toy guns Dad had just made and hidden from us. Tommy guns that clattered as we turned the handle on the magazine. He was kept busy for weeks after until nearly every kid on the street had one too.

It’s a twenty-niner! The loud boast of the schoolboy as he proudly displayed his prize conker - the horse-chestnut, harvested, soaked in vinegar and slowly heated in the oven to increase its hardness before being threaded onto a piece of string or bootlace.

The trees were laden with the nuts, green and spiky outer case, concealing the shiny round nut inside, inedible to all except horses, but as conkers - status symbols that could outrank all others at this time of year.

The two contestants would face each other, tossing a coin to see who would start. The loser would tentatively hold up his conker, swinging slightly at the end of it’s string, the other contestant would take aim, swing his conker, striking down in an endeavour to smash the other.

If it hit and survived, then it was the other’s turn, until one of them disintegrated into a myriad of pieces. If they were two new conkers, the winner was a ‘one-er’. If either had been in other battles, the scores of the winner and the loser were added together, plus one for this win. A ‘sixer’ smashing a ‘fiver’ became a ‘twelver’. No cheating in this game, status was too important.

The conker season heralded the approach of winter, and the common chestnut. Lumps of wood would be hurled into the huge trees in an endeavour to dislodge the ripening nuts. Collecting and shelling them by the bucketful, we would take them home to store for Christmas, or roast them on the open fires, with potatoes baked in the hot coals. We sat around and swapped tales of adventure, as the flames flickered down and calls from homes drew us away and the night fell silent.

Sunday was a day of devotion and attendance at church, no football to be played, no rough games in the streets. The ruffians of the week became angels - shining faces, slicked hair and a penny for the collection grasped in their hot hands, as they meandered towards the village church for their afternoon Sunday School.

Lunch had been eaten, tables cleared and the children ushered out of homes to give the parents a small respite from their noise and clamouring. Sunday afternoon on this languid summer’s day was the scene of tranquillity far from guile and everyday villainy.

"Let’s get some copra". Cyril and two friends, with nearly an hour to spare before Sunday School was due to start at 3 o’clock, decided to make a profitable investment with the collection money. Scampering onto the ‘bus standing at the terminus by the church hall, they gave up half a penny each to the conductor "Port Sunlight, please".

Port Sunlight, the next village towards the ports of Birkenhead and Liverpool, was the site of Lever Brothers Soap Works, a huge factory complex that had rail tracks and shunting yards full of freight carriages, carriages that went in full of copra - the flesh of coconut crushed for it’s oil content, and came out empty - but not quite!

The full carriages were covered with tarpaulins securely fastened and guarded by security patrols - the empty ones just shunted into the holding yards untended, unheeded, except by these shrewd traders.

Scavenging in and out of the trucks they gleaned piece after piece of the copra until their pockets bulged. Then with a keen sense of timing, raced back to board a return bus, arriving at the church yard in time to sell their ill gotten gains - one penny a handful. The church still got their collection so God wouldn’t mind.

Bows, Arrows and Catapults were our weapons of war.

Constantly searching the woods and hedgerows for suitable materials. A smooth forked branch for the catapult, a long slender springy branch for the bow, short straight sticks for the arrows.

Splitting and binding the shafts, sharpening the points and hardening them in the fire was a necessary part of the craft. Feathers from bird and fowl sought after for the flights. Bending and stringing the bow an art in itself. Did we walk tall when we had perfected the tension and quivered our arrows.

It was spring again and we were about to be invaded.

The woods abounded with bluebells and wild daffodil, the hills were a mass of colour, and the ‘townies’ were going to invade and ravage our territory. Bus after bus, loaded with kids who had no respect for our woods, our flowers, were about to descend and sweep like a flood across the landscape, pulling the bluebells up by the roots until they could carry no more, then, as arms ached on the walk back to the bus, slowly discarding the flowers along the lane-sides, wasted and dying, no longer a proud and a beautiful flower swaying in the breeze, but so much litter rejected and forlorn.

This we determined to defend.

No longer fighting between ourselves, we became bound together against this common enemy - ‘the townie’.

Armed with our newly made weapons, our strength lay in our preparedness and determination. Against vastly superior numbers we could harass and fight a guerrilla war, isolating small groups, capturing and threatening with arrows and catapults, to extract promises to leave our flowers and woods alone. Threats of torture and retribution soon had these invaders whimpering and retreating to the safety of parental supervision, a lesson learned on conservation.

It was den-digging time. The ground had been softened up by the summer rains, time to select new secretive sites, dig into the hillside, avoiding tree roots and create our new den.

Four feet square and three foot deep. Dig out a fireplace and chimney in one wall, a narrow entrance and steps in the opposite one.

The soft heavy clay below the light peaty surface was ideal for digging, our spades cutting cleanly through the plasticine-like material. Light a fire in the bottom to dry out the walls and floor and then line with old sacks and pieces of linoleum rescued from the tip.

Cutting branches to form a roof, we would then pack it with grass and clay before spreading peat and leaf mould on the top to disguise its location. The chimney from the fireplace would be led away from the den site so that any telltale smoke would emerge well away from the entrance. Finally a piece of sacking would cover the access, with dead branches the final disguise.

Secreting candles for lighting we were then ready for the gang meetings held in the early evenings as the warmth of the sun dispersed and the cosiness of fire and companionship drew us together whiling away the eventime before racing home for our beds.

Ears to the ground we lay down on the rail-tracks listening for a distant train. The signals had changed indicating that there would be one along soon.

Several halfpenny pieces were laid out on the rail-track, six inch nails crossed by one inch nails to form the shape of a cross, beside them. We heard the rumble of the train in the distance, the track was flat and straight, the belching smoke of the train appeared on our horizon.

Waiting for as long as we dared we stood at the track-side, then raced half way up the embankment, well clear by the time the train thundered past.

Pouring down the slope as soon as it was past we descended onto our nails and coins, potential miniature daggers to be filed and sharpened, the nails fused together by the weight and heat of the train wheels; a vain hope that the coins may now resemble pennies.

My friend Tommy Sergeant lived next door. He was the youngest in their family with three older sisters. Mrs. Sergeant and mum used to carry pots of tea across the side fence to each other to share, and would often borrow cups of sugar, tea or milk when they ran out.

Tommy’s bedroom window and our bedroom window were only a few feet apart in the terraced council houses, and we would bang on the walls to attract attention and then we would swing comic books across to each other.

The tent was up and Tommy knocked on our back door. Ten-year-old Tommy’s eldest sister was married - and she had a tent that we could use for overnight camping in their garden. Mostly it was for the mischief we could get into. Tonight was such a night.

It was late summer and the apple trees in the various local orchards were dripping with mature, enticing fruit. Watched over by pecuniary-minded owners they were inaccessible by day, but, so we figured, not by night!

Tommy and I had hatched a plan to redistribute the benefits of this plentiful harvest. Camp in the garden, wait until everybody was asleep, and then creep out to raid a small orchard nearby. Foolproof!

After our tea we retired to the tent eagerly going over the details of our plan, impatiently awaiting the setting of the sun on this long summer evening. We were sure we had covered every eventuality and prepared for every need. Torch, hurricane lamp, bags for the apples, warm coats for the chill night-air.

Taking turns to look outside and check the lights in the houses as they went out one by one. Firstly in the downstairs living rooms, then the bedrooms. We lay in silence to ensure that everybody had settled for the night. Slowly, ever so slowly, the world succumbed to the onset of sleep. Silence. And no more so than in that lonely tent in Tommy’s back garden. Silence broken only by the slow measured breathing of two small boys.

 

Prisoners of War - Germans and Italians, climbed out of the army trucks in front of our house. Canteen sheds had been built on the grass patch between the two sides of our avenue. They were here to build new roads and houses taking over the fields as far as the railway, filling in the ponds where the ducks where, levelling the tip which we scavenged for ‘treasure’, destroying forever the fields where we cut and harvested the wheat on the long summer evenings, the old steam engines driving the thresher’s and chaffing machines. The land army girls pitching the harvest into stooks to dry before baling, the children darting in and out playing hide and seek. The field mice scurrying before the machines as their nests were destroyed and exposing them to the marauding cats and dogs.

But we didn’t think of that then, we only saw gangs of men in overalls with big white circular patches on back and legs - ‘Prisoners of War’.

At first there were guards with rifles and tommy guns watching them all the time they worked.

At meal times they queued for their ration - a quarter of a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, mug of water. Day in day out, the same, until they built some kitchens to cook soups and stews.

"Kinder, Kinder, Kommen Sie", Pete and I hesitated then edged towards the German behind the shed.

"Iron Money, Von brot" repeated to us several times whilst a few coins were thrust into our hands. Gradually we understood, he wanted us to buy him some bread from the shop.

Our errands became more frequent, the guards were lax, until eventually only one guard with a pickaxe handle supervised some hundred or so prisoners.

Every day some of the prisoners would bring photo-frames and other nick-naks they had made from scraps of wood and bits of wire, etchings decorated them formed by hot needles delicately burned into the surface of the wood, selling them door to door for a few coins or a cigarette or two.

Now and again we heard that one or two tried to escape, but they were soon recaptured, we lived on the Wirral Peninsula, water on three sides and narrowing to an easily controlled neck some miles away, not too easy to get away from.

Those nick-naks survived long after the war, pleasant memories and works of art wrought from scraps by sensitive men - our prisoners of war.

Christmas Cards piled through the letter-box in the front door.

Eagerly we ripped them open, helping Mum and Dad to string them across the front of the fireplace or to stand on the sideboard.

"It’s here Dad, can I read it out?" Out of the envelope Cyril had pulled a folded piece of old brown paper with string tied around it to form a bow.

"Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas

In times that are cruel and hard.

Although this is only brown paper

It’s here with my kindest regard".

Backwards and forwards year after year this ‘card’ went between Dad and his brother, names being crossed out and rewritten. It nearly became a family ritual.

One of the cows had just calved, and was set aside so that it’s milk could be fed to it’s calf. At first the calf fed itself from the mother and then the milk was drawn off, thick and yellow, and fed from the bucket.

After a few days, the milk, still yellow but not quite so thick, the farmer shared it out between several of us lads, telling us to take it home and tell Mum it was the ‘beasting’.

Mum was delighted and made the best egg custard pie I have ever tasted, with it. Years later I have been amazed that most farmers pour this milk down the drain, unused, unwanted, unappreciated.

We had been in camp on the Welsh moors for four days and we could now have a trip into the local town. The war was over but food was still rationed - it was about 1948 and I was thirteen years old. It was my first holiday away from family and relatives.

Six of us kept together in one group, and, after walking around the town we sought a cafe for our tea. Seated around the table in an upstairs room we read the menu with sinking feeling, then pooled all of our money on the table.

The waitress approached for our order. "Please miss, what can we have for six of us for one shilling and ninepence" I asked.

Bread and margarine, sardines on toast, cups of tea and cakes covered our table. I know Jesus fed five thousand with a few loaves and fishes. A miracle occurred in Llangollen that day for six young scouts with one shilling and ninepence.

The Autumn night was cold and bleak and the wind swept through the deserted cemetery. The path from church to hall wound its way past the cenotaph and the headstones, dark and uninviting. Lights twinkled at both ends. It was Friday. Boys in the church for choir practice, girls in the hall for Guides - a lethal combination.

The high sweet tones of singing quietened, the organ playing ceased, and out of the church doors erupted a dozen urchins bent on mischief.

From amongst the graves they retrieved several large turnips, hollowed and carved into sinister masks, secreted there earlier in the evening. Carefully placing candle stubs inside the masks they lit them and spiked the turnips onto the ends of poles, to produce an eerie sight of bodiless beings floating above the graves. Waiting for the girls who had to pass this way after their meeting, when with wailing and gnashing of teeth, they were rewarded with the panic and consternation of fleeing females.

Youth clubs were part of our life, cubs, scouts, junior lads brigade, church lads brigade, St. John’s ambulance, army cadets and others, uniforms of all colours and descriptions, they came and went according to interest, peer pressure and friend’s activities. Each one provided some amusing or untoward incidents in our lives.

The scouts, had activities like jamborees, and camps, kayaking, and ballet dancing! Ballet dancing? It was coming up for Christmas and the scout troop was to put on a concert at the old people’s home, and, you guessed it, a ballet dance was to be an item. Ballerina dresses and headdresses were made out of net curtains and cloth, socks from the girls ankle socks, and music was made. For weeks we practised prancing across the stage, to the musical strains of the record player, until the great night arrived.

Our embarrassment was assuaged as the curtain rose, the music played and the old-people roared with laughter in the aisles. A great night was had by all.

"While Shepherds washed their socks by night,

All seated on the ground

A Bar of Sunlight Soap came down

And they began to....

Christmas was near, it was time to gather into groups of half a dozen or so, both boys and girls, with old rivalries forgotten, bitter feuds put aside. This was the time of goodwill and cheer, the time to see who could sing the loudest and clearest, and collect the most money.

Stand outside a door, two at once if possible and sing a couple of carols, knock discreetly before singing one more, and knock again. If no response sing once more whilst knocking more loudly. Normally a smiling face would appear depositing small coins into our tin mug or boy’s cap, for later distribution among the singers. "Merry Christmas".

A chalked cross would mark the ‘meanies’ there would be no more singers outside their door that night.

In the final week to Christmas, the Church organised our carols. All stood in the middle of the road singing whilst grown-ups knocked on the doors with collecting tins, and others held the storm lanterns. Later we would go to some toff’s house, be invited inside to sing and be given hot mince pies and cordial to finish off the night.

Many a new alliance was built as boys and girls huddled together in these singing groups. Keeping warm was a good excuse.

Grandad Davies was never mentioned in the house - hadn’t been for as long as I could remember. I know I hadn’t met him.

Coming home from school one day I met this old man on the path outside the house, dressed in a very old ragged overcoat and a black hat, asking if Mum was home and saying he was my Grandad. I was confused. I knew about Grandad Pringle, he had died when I was small, I didn’t have any other Grandads, so who was this man?

He asked me what I liked doing? I told him, collecting stamps and helping down on the farm.

"Did I know my great-uncle Fred who had a farm at Childer Thornton some five miles away?"

"No! I had never heard of great-uncle Fred".

When he had left I asked Mum about him. He was Dad’s father, who had deserted Gran and left her to bring up six children by herself. He was reputed to be a miser, living by himself in the village where Dad came from, and not too far from Gran, but never seeing her.

Dad had forbidden him to come to our house, so Mum told me not to say anything just yet.

Some days later he turned up again, and pulled some old stamps out of his pocket and gave them to me, asking me if I wanted to see great-uncle Fred’s farm and then have tea with him. Mum said it was OK so we arranged for him to meet the school bus that went out that way later in the week. I would be on that.

The farm was bigger and more modern that Singletons’ at the bottom of our road, and they had new milking machines, so that they didn’t have to milk by hand. That was fascinating, I watched them wash down the teats and udders, and push the rubber milking cups onto the cows. The compressor chugged away drawing the milk along the lines from all the cows at once, into the vats for cooling and then bottling. It saved a lot of time and carrying of the buckets of milk around in the shippens.

I met great-uncle Fred and then my new Grandad said that it was time for tea, so off we went, visions of cakes and trifles and fruit flashing through my mind. Walking towards the village we came to a chip shop. "Three pennyworth of chips" the old man said. "Here you are lad, there’s you bus now, Goodbye". I cannot recall seeing him again.

Years later I heard that when he died they found his house full of things he had been hoarding, and in a wardrobe stuffed into old tea packets was over one hundred pounds, quite a sum in those days. That went to Gran.

 

The school yard was thronged with uniformed boys, waiting for the bell to clang its message at the end of lunch break.

In one corner of the yard a scene of frantic trading was going on. Sweets three for one penny, no coupons! For years now sweets had been one of the goods that required ration-books, two ounces per week per person. But one smart trader, about twelve years old, had been busily buying up ration coupons, from other boys needing spending money. Investing his savings in sweets, four ounces at a time so as not to draw attention to his activities, he sold to his mates at a good profit.

The school yard provided a good training ground - nobody mentioned the words "black market"!

War was over and the troops were gone, leaving behind gaunt reminders of their stay.

Spital Old Hall, officers mess for the United States Army was one such place. Huge sandstone walls, three stories high towered over the edge of the park which had once been the Lord of the Manor’s estate. Multi-roomed and derelict, it was now a boy’s ideal playground, if you could overcome the tales of ghosts and hauntings.

The years had not been kind to this old house since the Yanks had departed. Stripped of anything useful. The windows within range of hand-thrown stones or catapulted missiles, were all broken. Whatever could be vandalised, was vandalised - and then we found a way through onto the roof. Oh what a storehouse of new treasures to be sought after. Firstly the large weather-vane which took four of us to dislodge to crash fifty feet to the driveway below, then the bell tower, but that was too difficult, defeating all of our efforts.

Lead in the gutters and copings was a real prize to be melted down and poured into moulds, shot for our catapults, slate tiles and coping stones were hurled to the ground below.

Today I could weep at the waste, at the destruction wrought. My only solace can be that it was abandoned property. We did respect the possessions of others (except apples and the like!).

Left, right, left, right, smarten up now, you can’t let the Queen see you like this.

The time was 1948 and the Queen was coming to Birkenhead to launch the new Ark Royal, and we were to provide a guard of honour for her. Twenty proud members of the school army cadet force.

The great day arrived and we marched down to the route the Royal cars would take standing proudly as she swept slowly by close enough for me to touch. My Queen.

"Bruce, where are you Bruce?" Mum was calling out for the dog as she unpacked a large bone she had brought home.

"Cyril, have you seen Bruce?"

My eyes filled with tears, she had forgotten!

Some days before, our pet mongrel dog had snapped at a young child that lived two doors away. The father, very angry, threatened to call the police unless the dog was put down. Bruce was getting old now and a bit temperamental so mum agreed.

That morning she had asked me to take him to the RSPCA when I came home from school.

Realisation came to Mum when she saw my face. We just burst out crying consoling one another. We had lost a friend.

The best fed lad in school! For six years I had volunteered to be a meals monitor. Council prepared meals were brought to the school every day, dished out by kitchen staff, but ably assisted by the meal-monitors, fetching and carrying and clearing tables. Double dinners and triple puddings were the rule rather than the exception for these volunteers - and it was all free. Our lunch money could be spent in the sweet shop over the road, or the fruit shop in the village. We had it made!

Autumn evenings, when the nights started drawing in after the long summer evenings, we still gathered in groups to play together as it got dark, but not too cold. At the bottom of the road, near the edge of the estate was a park where you used to play football, and a park shed where we could change for the games. At night, away from the street lights, this dark green hut did not allow the penetration of even the moonlight, it was so dark, you could not see your hand in front of your face. Ideal for courting couples or those aspiring to be.

A group of ten or twelve of us, more or less of equal sexes, would sometimes go down there to ‘talk’. The fun was when we swapped partners, not knowing who we were ‘talking’ to. Commonly known as ‘snogging sessions’. Truly harmless fun.

When reminiscing, I am glad we had no television. And the only films we saw were the Saturday matinees with ‘Dick Barton - Special Agent’ or Roy Rogers on Flikka. Our morals were untainted, our motivation pure. Fun was fun.

Pocket money was virtually unheard of, we used to get a penny on a Friday night, but that was not always sure. So odd jobs or regular work was much sought after. Pete and I had a Saturday morning job delivering meat for the local butcher. We each had a bicycle with a large basket on the front and a sign at the cross bar proclaiming ‘Jones - Family Butcher’. Now, even today, I can’t tell the difference between beef, and pork, lamb or mutton, so the docket with the description and the delivery address was all critical. Meat was rationed, and an integral ingredient of the Sunday lunch table. We had important jobs. We received a shilling for our mornings work, a small fortune to us, but this was also augmented by the tips we received from some of our customers. That could be as much as a shilling or more extra. Christmas was bountiful, when we received as much as ten shillings. This was a job to be prized and nurtured.

The roads and lanes that we travelled were not the smooth bitumen and concrete of today, but broken gravel and dirt, as well as cobbled lanes. Handling a bicycle with twenty or thirty kilos of meat in a front loaded basket was not always the easiest thing to do, and it was not uncommon, after propping the bike at a gate post, to return to find meat, wrappers, dockets, and gravel in a different state of relationship than when left some minutes before. Brushing gravel off bloodied meat, deciphering smudged dockets, and identifying sizes and types of meat, tested even my ingenuity. Surprisingly, I can’t remember any complaints.

Summer holidays were stretched from mid July to early September. It was a gorgeous time of year, with work to be found. Most of it was unpaid, we did it for the fun, cutting the wheat, stacking it into stooks, feeding the threshing machines powered by the huge steam engines. Then there was the haymaking, bailing and storing in the barns. Cutting kale and harvesting turnips for the farm animals. Milking the cows, bottling the milk, delivering it around the houses with the horse and trap, even ladling it out from the churn into proffered jugs at some houses.

Then there was delivery of bread, the local baker would load up his covered cart, harness the horse in the cobbled yard, and then we would go around the houses delivering those hot fresh loaves and cakes. We had large wicker baskets to carry the bread in, but wrappings, gloves and washing of hands were not part of the routine, until I met Mrs. Postlethwaite. She examined my hands and finger nails before refusing to accept my delivery, going personally to the cart to select her own bread from the farther reaches of the load. Mrs. Postlethwaite reigns.

Our most lucrative work at this time was spud picking. Gathering the potato harvest, was tedious backbreaking work but it paid a shilling a day. It normally lasted two or three weeks, so it was sought after. The days started early, meeting at the farm, and then clambering onto the straw covered trailer as it was hauled by the tractor along the lanes to the field for that day. Break at mid-morning for a cup of tea, and then on again to midday. It was back to the farm then for the packed lunches we had brought, and to make new friendships and renew old ones. Sitting around in the warm barns, among the straw and the animals fostered a feeling of well being that is hard to replicate.

There were days, of course, when rain prevented work in the fields, we would probably wait around the farm for the morning to see if it cleared up, but then sauntered home to await the next day. Wet days were not pay days, so we didn’t want too many of those.

Waking that morning I had not felt too well, upset stomach and a bit of a temperature, so when mum suggested a day in bed I readily agreed. The war was over, the prisoner-of-war workers had gone, and a construction crew were now in the builder’s shed outside, they were building new houses for the people who had been bombed out of their homes during the war.

Bored, I watched the men coming and going carrying materials and rolls of plans. Mid morning approached and one of the engineers came over to ask mum could she boil some water for their billies. He then saw me peering out of the window, and asked why I was not at school. Some time later he returned laden with coloured pencils, graph and tracing paper, an abundance I had never even seen, let alone possessed. I was ‘sick’ for three more days!

 

There was an old upright piano in the living-room, mum used to play a bit, and the older girls went to piano lessons for a while, but it was mainly used when it was our turn to have the ‘Paloni Gang’ in for the evening.

During the war, and immediately after, groups of neighbours got together to provide their own entertainment. A game of cards, darts or dominoes and a singsong around the piano over a cup of tea - and poloni sandwiches, a kind of pressed meat. These weekly get togethers went on for years afterwards, and were instrumental in organising street parties to celebrate the victory in Europe and later over Japan. Friendships were formed and cemented in those days that lasted a lifetime. War, trouble and tribulations may cause havoc and distress, but they often reveal the best as well as the worst in human nature.

Some years later, I decided I would like to learn to play the piano, lessons were arranged with a teacher in the village, and I dutifully attended every week, practising my scales and studying my theory in between. Isn’t it amazing how boring that can be? It was not too long before the irritation of my teacher was apparent, when she caught me looking over her shoulder to my notes when responding to the questions on theory, and the wrapping of my knuckles with a large blue marking pencil when my fingers struck a wrong note. One day, I was so incensed with this treatment that I grabbed the pencil and struck back.

‘Dear Mrs. Davies’ she wrote, ‘I do not think Cyril should pursue his piano studies any further....’

The Anglican church in the village had the finest peel of bells in the county. Bell-ringers came from miles around to enter competitions there, and the sound of their enthusiasm rang forth throughout the village.

Practice night was Friday night, and coincided with choir practice, so when we were finished we would often climb the high spire to the bell chamber. It was a narrow, steep, dark climb up a spiral stairway of dank sandstone. I can’t recall any of the girls venturing up there.

We would sit and watch the rhythmic action of the ringers, as the time was called. Eight men in all each with his own rope, pulling and releasing on queue, as the melody rang out above our heads. At one side, there was also a set of miniature bells with small cords attached. These could be played by one person, but I only ever saw this happen once. I don’t think many people had the skill for those. Hand bells were also available, where each of the ringers had a bell similar to the old school hand bell, and they made tune with those sometimes.

The rhythmic creak of the oars filtered across the surface of the mere on a warm summer afternoon. A dozen or more of the slender row-boats gliding to and fro as courting couples sought solitude.

Mary, Cyril’s new girlfriend of just a week, was enjoying the scenery around her and the by-play in the nearby boats. Not content to be just a passenger, Mary wanted to have a turn at the oars, so pulling over to the side of the lake, Cyril stood and moved down the boat whilst Mary held onto the branch of an overhanging tree to steady the craft.

Crash! The reverberations of two boats colliding echoed across the water, drawing all eyes to the scene of the mishap, eyes which should have noticed the drifting of their own boat away from the bank, and the ever increasingly precarious angle of Mary as she clung to the overhead branch - until gravity took its course - splash!

Betty was a few years older than me. I was about 16 years old at the time, attending the local Methodist church, and had started going out with a new girlfriend, Mary. Mary lived with her father and grandmother. She also had a younger brother, but he was in an orphanage type home or school in Liverpool, and only came back home on odd occasions. We all knew her as Mary Smiley. Her name was really Smellie, but her father had changed it.

Betty was always trying to arrange our lives, encouraging our relationship, fixing up outings, inviting us to her home for tea. I can remember the first time. Betty lived with her mother, I think her father had been killed in the war, and they were in the bigger private houses just outside our village, on the edge of the next village.

When we had walked to her home, she had a small table laid in the garden, with all the cups and plates ready, and then she brought out the sandwiches. At home our sandwiches were jam, or sometimes egg, or tomato. Betty brought out cucumber sandwiches. I think she had been reading girls stories which talked about people in big houses having cucumber sandwiches on the lawn. I had never had cucumber sandwiches before, and didn’t think all that much of them then, but she was so proud, that we ate them all up and said how delicious they were.

We tried to avoid going there again though.

A day trip to the seaside at West Kirby was attempted at lease once a year. It was only seven or eight miles, but no direct route from home, so it was a walk into the village, onto a bus, and then a train from Birkenhead. To see the sea for the first time in a season, with it’s gleaming sand, and the water gently swirling in as the tide rose or fell. The crowds of people picnicking on the beach or along the promenade. Shops displaying their wares of tin buckets and wooden spades, whirling cellophane windmills in striking colours on bamboo sticks, balloons and coloured sun-umbrellas. There were ice-cream vendors and fairy-floss machines, amusement machines, and swingboats, rowing boats and paddle boats in the enclosures by the pier.

A photographer would be walking around taking candid photographs, another with painted wooden cutout caricatures of the fat lady and man, where you put your face through the hole, and made your own humorous post cards. Views of all the buildings and bays around, or comic cards to make you laugh.

There were sweet shops selling sticks of rock or broken lumps with names all through them. Humbugs and toffees, coated apples on sticks, or just plain lolly-pops. But, sadly, none of this was for us. We brought our own picnic, and shared our own buckets and spades. Dad had his Kodak Brownie camera and took a few snaps. And the water in the fountain was free. We changed our clothes, the girls stripping down to the panties, and we boys, who did not even know that underpants existed, would don a pair of the girls ‘keks’. But what you haven’t had, you cannot miss. We still had fun, with beach cricket and sand castles.

Off from the coast was a small island called, Hilbre. It was a rocky outcrop surrounded by sandbanks, and when the tide was out you could walk out to it, but make sure you left before the tide turned. One time, I decided to walk to Hilbre, and set off as the tide was going out so as to give me plenty of time before it turned. I waded across some of the deeper channels, but, being a nonswimmer, avoided any above waist deep. There was one last channel, however, with a couple of small dories, or lifeboats anchored there, and the water swirled around them. The channel was only about twenty metres across and looked quite safe. I decided to chance it.

Just before getting to the middle I was suddenly swept off my feet by a strong tidal surge, the water was suddenly rushing me along, floundering and trying to find a foothold. Nobody appeared to be aware of my predicament as I was swept along. Beginning to panic, I cried out, but no-one heard, and then I was sweeping past one of the dories, I grabbed at the anchor chain, held and managed to pull myself aboard. It was a good half-hour before the tide had dropped sufficiently for me to attempt to leave my sanctuary. I never got to the island, the shoreline was far more attractive.

Sunday was a day of ritual, house cleaning, lunch preparation, roast meals, cooking and baking of cakes and pies, preparation of jellies and trifles, and a salad type evening meal. Mum excelled herself!

The foundation to the meal was the Sunday joint. Ration coupons were preserved to ensure there was meat on the table on the Sunday. Roast and basted in the oven, some of the potatoes put into the juices to roast too, and the rice pudding cooked at the same time so as not to waste the oven heat. Potatoes and vegetables would be cooked on the stove top and then the gravy would be made using the water from the potatoes and the juice from the meat. A truly splendid meal.

Eight plates, heated above the oven, would be spread out on the kitchen table, and dad would come through to carve the meat. Except today! Mum had taken the meat out of the oven, placed it on the kitchen table, and busied herself with the final preparations. Dad was just getting up to come through when, looking out of the window he saw a large cat racing away with what appeared to be our meat in it’s jaws. With a terrible yell he raced through, grabbing his walking stick on the way, and gave chase. The cat, believing that the succulent meal in it’s mouth was no longer worth the danger it brought, dropped it in the garden and disappeared. Meat could not be wasted, cleaned up it was still served at that lunch table.

Did you have a bully in your class or your street? We did, and I was his target! He would waylay me, chase me, beat me, ambush me, there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid him. He was bigger, older, stronger, faster than! What hope did I have.

I got angry, I turned, he turned, I ran, he ran, faster! But he never troubled me again

There were several orchards around the village, named after their nominal owners. Pickering’s and Marshall’s were the two most popular, therefore the two most secure. Marshall had a small lean-to at the side of his house where he sold his fruit and a few other things like, sweets and biscuits.

I was with a few older boys, they were on bicycles, I was on the crossbar of one of them, and they had decided to raid Marshall’s orchard. To get to it we had to cross a field about fifty or sixty yards wide, and two barbed wire fences in between. Because I was the smallest, I was to keep watch and look after the bikes. Suddenly old man Marshall appeared, I yelled out a warning, and the lads came racing across the field, jumped on their bikes and rode off, leaving me standing there and Marshall’s hand descending on the scruff of my neck.

He dragged me off to his shop, trying to decide what to do with me, and asking who my mates were. I stayed dumb. Customers were coming and going, and he was busy, but I was still there petrified as to what he was going to do. Just then a young woman, about the age of mum came in, it was Marshall’s daughter. ‘Aren’t you Vi Davies’ lad?’ She asked. I was shattered, now mum would get to know, and then I would be for it.

‘What are you here for?’

‘Pinching apples’

‘Did you get any?’

‘No’.

‘Here take this’ she said thrusting an apple into my hand, ‘and don’t do it again’.

I raced off thanking my lucky stars.

Soon after the war began, air-raid shelters were built at strategic places, and then at every home. If there was an air-raid when we were at school, there were the three big shelters which could take fifty or sixty people in each. When we left school to go home, however, there weren’t any public shelters available, so we used to walk up the narrow lane behind the houses in the street, as it was closest to the shelters for the houses.

Whenever there was an air-raid, people would take us into their shelter until the ‘all-clear’ siren sounded. We would often be given a biscuit or a sweet by the grown ups, so we would sometimes dawdle on our way home, half hoping that the bombers would come.

We had three pence burning a hole in our grubby hands. Looking in Sweeney’s window we saw these small boxes of chocolate looking squares. ‘Are they on coupons, Mr. Sweeney?’ All sweets and chocolates were rationed and needing coupons. ‘No!’ He said, ‘just threepence a box’. We parted with our coins, took the box, and ran across into the park to share the chocolate squares out. Eight each for the three of us, and they tasted quite good too. It was a pity we did not know what ‘Laxative’ meant.

Old man Sweeney, gross, overweight, with a perpetual smoker’s cough, and cigarette ash down the chest of his apron, ran the local corner store. He sold everything from candles to kerosine, ice-cream to pistol caps. Underneath the shop was a large cellar, accessed by a narrow stairway from inside, but huge iron gratings, positioned under the big display windows, outside. Often small coins would be dropped by would be purchasers falling into the cellar below.

Being enterprising in fund raising, we would tell Mr. Sweeney that we had dropped some money down the grating. He would slowly descend into the cellar searching for the mythical coins. Most times he would find something there and bring it to us, at others he would simply say that he couldn’t find it. He never did catch on that it was always somebody else’s coins he handed over.

Primary schooling at the small local Church of England facility was relatively uneventful. Peter and I had started there shortly after our fifth birthday, and after the first twelve months, it was apparent that he had more intellectual ability than most of our class mates. Four others were also selected to miss the second grade and move directly into the third. But separation of twins was not to be countenanced, so five became six. Some years later, at grade six of course, progression was halted. Age limits constrained the sitting for scholarship examinations and further educational pathways. Repetition of the final year was mandatory, but provided each of us with an educational advantage.

The scholarship examination for the local grammar school was known as the ‘eleven plus’ derived from the age of the participants. Taken at the end of the school year, it determined the educational streams of the students, either grammar school and possible university if successful. Secondary school for the trades and semi skilled professions for others.

The summer school holidays that followed were constantly interrupted by the stream of letters advising the successful candidates, early advice to the high achievers, more slowly as the scale was lowered. Pete’s advice came early, he was well up the ladder. Then Mum waited daily for that second, hoped for letter. Slowly hope was fading, the letters became less frequent, less than one hundred places were available for nearly a thousand aspirants. The holidays were drawing to a close, uniforms had to be bought for the new schools.

‘It’s here, you’ve won!’ She cried, delightedly ripping open the glad tidings, hugging me and swinging me around. In by the skin of my teeth, I must have received the final advice.

It was late October, winter was approaching, and so was bonfire night. November 5th was the night we lit the bonfires that had been built for weeks before. Branches, logs, old furniture and floor coverings, anything that would burn bright and long. The effigy of Guy Fawkes, who had tried to blow up parliament, was to be burned at the stake. But before that it was dragged around the village, ‘Penny for the Guy!’ We would cry, raising money to buy fireworks.

There would be half-a-dozen bonfires around the village and the competition for the biggest and best fireworks display was fierce. We would support our own fire for the lighting, but then race around the others to see their displays. The fires were always built on a spare piece of ground away from houses, but the fireworks would sometimes fly off in the wrong direction and cause trouble.

The fires would burn well into the night, and even be smouldering the next morning. But the waste was soon cleared by avid gardeners seeking the charcoal and potash for their plants.

Television was not available in the war years. It had been invented, but when the war came it stopped the development of it, and it was not until about five years after the war the sets started to appear. You could tell who had a TV because of the ‘H’ shaped aerial that went up fixed to the chimney on the roof. The sets where only nine inches across, about twenty centimetres, and the picture was black and white, quite often fuzzy and would often roll. I didn’t see television until several years later. People used to sit in darkened rooms to watch, and lots of friends and neighbours would go around. It was quite a joke, that people, when answering the door, would say, ‘Come in, sit down, shut up!’ So as not to miss any part of the programme.

Before television there was only the radio. In England there was only the BBC, the government controlled radio station. Commercial radio was not allowed. There would be regular news times, and drama shows and serials. On a Saturday evening, after all of the sports matches had been played, dad would avidly listen to the results that were broadcast of all the league matches. We kids weren’t allowed to even speak while those results were being broadcast, because quite often the reception would fade at crucial moments.

The radio was battery operated. Not the small dry-cell batteries prevalent today, but large, acid filled, wet cell batteries encased in thick glass. These had to be changed every week. The ‘Battery Lady’ used to come around in a small van, and wore a thick leather apron to protect against the acid. Usually the battery would last a full week, but sometimes it would go flat, and we would have to go to her house to get another one. We had to be very careful carrying it, and she made sure that the top was screwed on properly. It had a wooden carrying handle so as to keep our hands away from the acid.

Every Sunday lunch time there were programmes we like to listen to. Archie Andrews, that was a ventriloquist show, and Tony Hancock in Hancock’s half-hour. That was comedy. Later there was a musical request show for the families separated by the war. It was called Family Favourites. After the war, when lots of soldiers were stationed in Germany, it carried on too.

By the early fifties, there was a commercial radio station in Luxembourg which broadcast in English. And then there were ‘pirate’ radio stations which set up in ships off the coast just outside the territorial waters. Three miles offshore at that time. There was even one in an old fort off the coast. It had been built hundreds of years before when Britain was being invaded by the French and the Spanish. It was also used during the war as a fortress, but then abandoned. But radio listening was virtually a religion, and you got news very quickly. You had to have a licence to have one. That was seven shillings and six pence. The money paid for the BBC.

The newspapers would have the news the next day, but there would not be a lot of pictures. So the newsreels at the cinemas were very popular. There would be a half-hour news show between the two main pictures. Yes there were always two films, the main attraction and the second, shorter one. There would also be a short cartoon feature.

With names like Rialto, Ritz, Lyceum, Gaumont, they were the magnet that drew the crowds to their doors. We would go to the Saturday matinee when they showed serials, and westerns. The queues to get in would go right down the side of the cinema, and sometimes round the back to the other side. It was the only affordable entertainment, especially in the winter. By the sixties, television had taken over and the cinemas died. Turned into Bingo halls. Now they have become supermarkets or large restaurants and clubs.

Easter comes at different times every year. We found it very confusing that Christmas, when Jesus was born, was always on December 25th, but Easter, when He died and rose again kept changing. Sometimes late March, sometimes late April, and any date in between.

What we liked about Easter, was Easter eggs. They were just ordinary eggs really, but mum hard-boiled them and we painted patterns on them, and we ate them on the Sunday morning. When we were older, we could save our sweet coupons. Mum would buy some blocks of chocolate and take them around to a lady in the next street who made big chocolate Easter eggs with coloured icing to seal the joins and put our names on them. They were really special.

Mum and dad would come to church with us on Easter Sunday. The girls would all be dressed up in their spring dresses, and hats and bonnets would be worn, or big ribbons in their hair. The church would be crowded, and in the choir we sang special anthems and hymns. Easter Monday was always a holiday, and there would be motorcycle racing in the hills and valleys around Raby Mere. It was better when Easter was in April, because the weather was warmer, and more flowers were out. But it was always good, because Spring was here.

Most of the toys we had as children were made by dad, or handed down from older cousins. That didn’t matter, we still played with them. When ever we were to go to bed, it was always the cry from mum or dad, ‘put your toys away’. Until we got the Mechano set and the Hornby trains for Christmas.

There were two sets of engines and carriages in the box of trains, one lot was a green engine and freight trucks, the other a red engine and passenger carriages. Pete grabbed the passenger set as his, but mine would go faster and could knock his off the track. He didn’t like that too much, but he wasn’t going to back down.

We would lay out the tracks, with dad helping and showing us how. We would make cranes and bridges with the Mechano set so that both lots of toys were used together. It could take hours to set it up, and then it would be time to go to bed. ‘That’s OK dad would say, I’ll put it away for you’ We could then hear the engines racing around the tracks long after we had gone to bed, or a big new crane would be made in Mechano by the next morning. They were the only toys dad would put away for us.

One Christmas we got a game of Monopoly. We always got up very early on Christmas morning and would take our presents into each other’s rooms, and then down stairs to play with them. With this Monopoly game, the two younger girls played with Pete and I, we didn’t read the rules properly and we were putting houses and hotels on properties when we didn’t own the complete set, and we would put several hotels on a property and multiply the rent. It wasn’t in the rules, but we enjoyed the game. I don’t know who won, probably Pete, because he made up the rules as we went along. And he was the banker too!

As Christmas approached we started to make decorations. We would get sheets of wrapping paper from the butcher and cut it into strips, paint them with our water paints and make them into long chains to be strung across the room. From the corners to the light in the centre, and back to the next corner. Then we would make more to hang around the walls in big loops. Dad had a few special shop-bought ones that were kept from year to year, and some big coloured bells and balls.

Pete and I would go out to the woods to collect holly twigs with their dark green leaves and bright red berries. Chestnuts were also our responsibility. We would find the chestnut trees and throw small logs or stones up to knock them down, carry them home in buckets and shell them. Sometimes mum would buy a bit of mistletoe, and we would try to find a Christmas tree that was not too expensive. At night time we would go around the houses singing carols and trying to raise money for presents.

Christmas was a really special time, we had cordial and a soda siphon to put fizz into it, and nuts and fruit, and boxes of dates. Dad would get his tandem out and take Pete or I on a ride around our uncles and aunts while mum and the girls got Christmas dinner ready.

 

Running and jumping were second nature to us as we were growing, you could almost equate it to life itself. An errand to perform, we ran, steps to descend, fences to traverse or streams to cross, we jumped. There was constant rivalry at the specific ‘jumps’ across the stream in the valley. Achievement was based not only on the length of the jump, but it’s approach run, the relative height of the takeoff point to the landing, and other natural impediments or hazards.

If we were being chased by older boys or even adults, we would head for the most difficult jump we were capable of achieving, and hope that the pursuer would baulk. Even in our early teens we could achieve a four to five metre jumps without a second thought, so you might get wet now and again if you slipped on the wet grass on the approach run, or the bank had broken away and the jump was so much wider. That was the luck of the draw. We could always light fires and dry off quickly.

There was one occasion when I attempted a double jump, over the stream and then another short run to jump over a steel spiked fence. On that one you had to put your foot onto one of the stays to give lift, bang your hands down onto the top rail between the spikes, and then vault over. Unfortunately, wet grass caused my foot to slip on the stay, threw me off balance, and my hand came down on top of the spike. I have the scar to this day.

Joyce, at fifteen, and two or three years older than Pete and I, lived next door. She had a job working for a fruiter in the village. On fine days, so as to save the bus fare, I would walk home from school, about three miles, and spend the money in the village. Normally this would provide a couple of apples or an orange, or a small bag of sweets. But when Joyce served me, I could get a bag full. So I would wait to one side until she was free. She had a beautiful smile and a twinkle in her eye. And those apples always tasted so much sweeter.

Pete and I were standing outside the fruiter’s, and