... and nothing but the truth

A Child Of The 1950's - Part Six

Part Six

Home

Our house was built in 1909 and even at the time, felt very old fashioned. Mum and dad were always decorating it, which made it feel a bit more up to date. Every year they decorated at least one room in the house with wallpaper. Dad hung it up after mum pasted it. They worked well together and did a good job.

We always had a bathroom in our house, just off of the kitchen. I can remember when I was about 9 years old, some of my friends saying to me "We're having a bathroom fitted soon." The government of the time intended that all homes had their own bathrooms to bring the housing up to a decent standard and probably offered a grant for the works. Most homes had outside toilets in their back yards/gardens, but at least had their own toilet and not having to share communal toilets like many in large cities at that time, apparently. I asked my friends how did they bathe, if they had no bathroom? They told me a tin bath was brought inside the house and put in front of the fire and then filled up with hot water, using jugs. Can you imagine it? It seems very primitive now. How lucky was I!

We had a gas boiler in the bathroom which was really dodgy and I think it gave off carbon monoxide! The wind used to blow out the flame sometimes. It made my sister and me feel faint when we were each having separate baths on a couple of occasions and my mother made sure we had a new electric immersion heater as soon as they could afford it. !!! (I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this)!  Ha, ha

My paternal grandparents had a proper plumbed in bath, but it was in part of their kitchen which was just a cupboard or two, cooker and a sink. The bath was covered over with a board and used as a worktop. They still had an outside toilet, but in later years my grandfather put a door on the inside so that they could use it from inside the kitchen. Not very hygienic, but there you go.

There are still many houses in the north of the UK with bathrooms adjoining the kitchen. Houses are not allowed to be built like that now, of course, and who would want to? If a house was built like that originally, it is allowed to stay as is. Our bathroom was like this too. Some people turn one of the three bedrooms into a bathroom, but the house is devalued with one less bedroom.

We used to play in our street, it had ten houses and was a cul-de-sac. We were on the left hand side and we were semi-detached, but the other houses were terraced on the right hand side. The railway ran across the side of our house and the side of the house across the road at an angle. That house was number eight and my friend lived there. We went to school together until we were eleven. We never spoke to one another again after we started going to senior school. He changed a lot at the age of thirteen and I didn't like him after that. It was one of my first lessons, to learn that life doesn't always turn out how you would like it to, but as children we played in the street and had lots of fun.

For years there was only one car parked in the street, which was ours.  Then later on, the father of our friends at the bottom, Jenny and Kay parked his car at the top of our street too.  It was safe to play in the streets at that time, but not now.  Children have a lot less freedom nowadays and you never see children playing in the streets, the cars have taken over and obviously it isn't safe.  I can remember playing in the street until 9 pm during the summer holidays and going in and being ready to go to bed.  I expect we had plenty of exercise and children were not obese.  I can't remember seeing an overweight child at all, certainly not in my school.  This is one of the biggest changes and not for the better, I feel.

We lived in number nine and we had a lamp post right outside our house. All of my life I have lived in a house with an odd number with a lamp post outside. (To make it even weirder my husband says the same)! Now, our last home (apartment) is an even number No. 2. There is a lamp post down on the cycle track quite close, but it's really outside of the next flat. I could have felt we were tempting fate to come here, but I'm not superstitious and we have been very happy.

I loved climbing as a child. We had a small area outside of our front door surrounded by a small wall in which was a front gate. My mother called this little area the 'barton.' My mother used several obscure words not found in the dictionary so I think they were local words only.

Everyone had privet hedging in the 'barton' as privet was very much a plant of that time.  We only had one plant which looked sickly and struggled to survive and should have been pulled out. I think my mother left it as she felt sorry for it! It was in the front area for all the time we lived there.

The wall at the side, which divided us from next door, had a small railing on it and would you believe, a spike in the front! I often climbed on this wall as a small child and once caught my lovely dress on the spike and ripped it. (Girls wore dresses a lot more in those days, although I did wear shorts sometimes). We had a garden at the side and I used to climb over the corner of the front wall. I used to stand on the wall then onto the railing and climb over into the garden and then back again to the front. I did this for years, unnoticed by my parents, until I got too big and lost my confidence. Ha, ha. It was one of my favourite pastimes. There was a shrub in the corner of the garden where I climbed over which was always buzzing with bees in the summer, my mother always called it a 'Golden Rod' but I think it was a Solidago. I kept away from it when the bees were around.

My dad, a clever guy, built his own television set when I was about a year old. It was very small and had a green picture. It was supposed to be black and white. It blew up whilst he was making it and pieces of it flew all around the room. I was sitting on the floor at the time and missed being hurt I am happy to say! My mother was cross with my dad about that. This is not my memory, but I can remember the television set and watching a children's programme on it called 'Rag, Tag and Bobtail' which was a story about a hedgehog and a rabbit and some other critter. The picture of them is etched into my mind. We probably had that 'green' television for a few years.

Later on we had a bigger television set, in proper black and white and we loved it! Saturday evenings in particular were spent watching films. As I always came downstairs after being put to bed, I was often found on my mother's lap watching the television and sucking my poor thumb. I sucked it so much when I was small that it had a large lump on it which went a bit weepy, so I suppose I had to stop whilst it healed up. I sucked my thumb until I was 11 years old.  I also bit my nails until they bled, when I was quite small, but thankfully grew out of that horrible habit. .