A winding trip down Memory Lane. (Childhood Memories)

Member Name: GillMN

Product:	Childhood Memories
Date:	01/02/09 (242 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Freedom, safety, knowing the rules.

Disadvantages: Growing up into a less safe world.

Let me tell you some of my childhood memories.
I was born in 1954 in a small village just on the border of Liverpool and Lancashire. Fields and woods surrounded us. As children we wandered far and wide, nobody seemed to worry about where we were unless we didn't turn up for meals.

My Dad worked for the railway at that time and we lived in the Railway Cottages, there were eight or ten of them down a long cinder track off the main village street.

My first memory is of wading in the brook in my new yellow shorts. We were picking water cress for our mums. I was very small, just going on three. I remember falling over backwards and just lying there looking up through the water and thinking I would be in trouble for wetting my new shorts. I must have inhaled the water and passed out because the next thing I knew I was upside down and someone was pressing hard on my tummy. A long way away I could hear my Mum and Nana screaming and shouting. I thought it was because I had ruined my shorts and would get my bottom smacked!

Later on when everyone had calmed down and I had been bathed and put into my nightie I said to my Dad I was sorry that Mum had been upset by me falling in the brook and ruining my clothes. My Dad said that wasn't why she was upset. He said she was upset because she thought I had gone to Heaven. I apparently became a bit indignant at this and said "No, I told her I was going to go to get watercress not to Heaven!" My Mum started laughing and crying again, I went to sleep thinking that grown ups were strange.

I ran away on my tricycle one night because I didn't want a bath. A lorry driver, arrested by the sight of a naked four year old pedalling furiously, brought me back before I had been missed!

My Dad got a new job and we moved to another house not far away. The kids were all playing hide and seek whilst my Mum and Dad packed. I was hiding when one of my friends told me to come out because my Mum and Dad were ready to leave. I wouldn't come out because I thought it was a trick to find me. I didn't half get told off by my Dad when I finally emerged!

I went to school at a very early age. I had been sat on the counter of the village shop when a tall man came in and said hello to me. My mum was getting something off the shelves. I said to the man "I can read!" He said "I don't think so Little One!" and laughed. I insisted that I could read and he held up a newspaper in front of me and told me to read it. I read out "Car factory plans in Halewood." He turned to my Mum and said. "She's ready, bring her in on Monday." My Mum agreed.
Of course, nobody actually explained to me where I was going on Monday, so I spent a fairly worried weekend. I was three and a half years old.

I remember being walked into a room of about twentyfive children nearly all of whom I knew. I was given a little seat which I was delighted with. I was sat near a big round stove which was lovely and warm. It had a pair of navy blue knickers drying on it. I later learned that if you wet yourself you had to wash your knickers under the tap and put them on the stove to dry. My friend in the next seat told me so. I crossed my legs tight.

School was wonderful. The teachers loved us and made everything exciting. They made me want to learn and made it easy for me to do so. The Headmaster, who I had met previously in the shop, was very strict but very fair.
He got knocked out once by one of the bigger girls who threw her bat behind her when the school were playing rounders. While the other two teachers were bringing the Headmaster round, we were busy telling the offending girl that the police were going to put her in prison for killing Mr Roby! Guess whose knickers ended up drying on the stove that day!
When the headmaster eventually sat up he had a huge lump on his forehead. He fished a sweet out of his pocket and handed it to the would be assassin who was crying noisily. "Do try to keep hold of the bat next time." was all he said to her. Then he sent one of us off to make him a cup of tea.

Because it was such a small school we were all mixed together a lot of the time. I had learned to read very early by sitting in on my Dad trying to teach my brother his letters. My brother hated books. I was deemed to have "precocious language skills" so when we were split up I was always put with the older and larger pupils. A school inspector came in one day and having heard us all read etc, declared to the whole class that they must be particularly careful at playtimes to not knock over the dwarf by playing roughly. He smiled at me when he said this. I looked around and I couldn't see a dwarf anywhere. I was quite excited because in my young mind, if there was a dwarf about, Snow White might be here too. I was disappointed to find out that I was the 'dwarf' that he referred to! The teacher put him right and he apologised but I ended up being called the dwarf for years by my horrible big brother.

My Nana saw a note from the Headmaster to my parents that talked about my 'precocious language skills' and she slapped me round my legs because she thought the note meant I had been swearing! (It seems that her language skills weren't precocious enough!)

The school was built of red sandstone and stood next to the church. There was a large yard and a field at the back. At the back of the yard were coal sheds and the toilets. They were the kind of toilets with a wooden board with two holes in side by side. As a little girl I thought that the idea of two people going to the toilet together was very, very, very rude! I didn't realise that the larger hole was for any adult using the loo.

The coalsheds had bright blue doors. I accidentally locked myself in them one day. The Vicar came every Tuesday morning to catechise us, for some reason I was terrified of him. I hid from him in the coal shed and the wind blew the door shut. By the time I was found I was completely black! The headmaster stood me in the sink, stripped me off and with the help of one of the older girls washed me down. A perfectly innocent act which he would probably get arrested for nowadays!

On the first of June every year we all had to climb up one of the oak trees on the school field and hide. Why? Because it was "Oak apple day" of course! A king, (I think it was Charles I ) hid from his enemies in an oak tree and that is what we were celebrating! None of us ever fell out of the trees. I don't know how! After we had succesfully hidden and then climbed down we all drank a toast to the Oak Tree. In lemonade! Happy Days!

May meant Maypole dancing which I loved. We spent most of April practising The children who were too big or too clumsy to dance got to sit on the base of the pole, to hold it steady whilst we cavorted round trying not to strangle ourselves or each other with the long ribbons. We performed our dances at the May Fair. Everyone in the village took part. It seemed like that anyway. If our parents had know that we were all dancing an ancient fertility dance they probably would have fainted!

September meant that many of us would have days off to bring the potato harvest in. You couldn't help until you were eight years and how I envied those who were old enough to go and pick potatoes. When I started picking I was given a 'brat' to wear (a hessian apron) which you held gathered in one hand and threw the spuds in with the other. I felt so grown up and uesful. Most of the kids were allowed to keep the money they earned and I was no exception. I saved my sixpences until I had enough to buy my Mum and Dad some chocolates in a big blue and yellow box. I was so proud. My Dad took the ribbon off the box and put it in my hair. I still have it.

As I grew older the village expanded until it wasn't really a village anymore. The school was swamped with new children from the towns and they seemed very aggressive to us. It was silly really because we had all been brought up on healthy food and work and we towered over the townie kids. We had been tought not to fight and they thought we were 'softies'.
All Hell broke out for a while. Funnily enough, what seemed to sort a lot of the division out was the potato picking. I think the newcomers saw the sheer strength needed. After they tried and mostly failed to keep up with us on the fields, an uneasy truce held.

Looking back it was a real clash of cultures. Liverpool City Planners had decided that Halewood was the ideal place to build overspill housing and the village was swamped physically and culturally. Our fields and woods started to disappear, houses sprang up, our little safe school tripled in size.
Doors had to be locked and my freedom to wander was curtailed.

I had an idyllic childhood really. It felt like I was watched over by everyone, fed in whoever's house I happened to be, chastened by any adult if I was naughty. I think as in most small villages that the adults had a sense of joint responsibility for the kids and each other.

I always had enough to do or be involved with. It wasn't perfect and some very bad things happened to me, overall though I was supported and kept safe whilst I explored and learned and grew. I was very lucky to have that.

Summary: Just a few memories, I hope you have enjoyed them.