It is Halloween time and the children are knocking on the doors for coppers. They come with their turnips hollowed out with candles inside. It is more than seventy years since I did the same. If we could not get a turnip from old Sally at the farm, then we put a candle in a jam jar. Afterwards we would play a game with the jam jar called ‘Jack shine your Maggie’. Jack would hide somewhere amongst the houses and we as a pack would follow shouting “Jack shine your Maggie or the dogs canna follow”. We would see the light shine at the top of the street and we were at the bottom but by the time we followed the light would shine somewhere else and we were puzzled as to how it had got there. If he was a good Jack he could keep us on the run all night. You don’t see the children playing games now as we did. I loved to play marbles with my brothers. We had pot perkers, and iron vengers, and codlins and glass allies. We played shutty-hole for hours at the bottom of the street. Then we played leap frog but the boys could always beat us. I think it was because of our long petticoats.
“Mountie Kittee Mountie Kittee 1-2-3.
Fall off fall off fall off me”.
How many times we have shouted this, boys and girls together. Then the boys would help the girls out with their ring games. We liked certain boys to choose us in the games and give us a kiss. Some we were keen on and some we weren’t. But I have often found that the ones we despised grew to be the best in after years. I read in the Echo this week that our old village school which has served for many years as the Parish Hall is soon to be demolished. Ah well, I’ll disappear too when I am too old.
Today is Armistice Day and I’ve been watching the service on television. I feel so sad. I think we that are old should teach our families to respect these acts of remembrance and what they really stand for. People like myself who have lived through two devastating wars, and are old enough now to remember the miseries of both, dread the thought of another. When I look at my lovely grandchildren, watching them grow up and thinking of what might happen, it makes me worry and wonder. Truly, “the bairns little think what the auld folks are thinking”. But parents should talk to them or answer their questions when occasion arises. All our memorials are in foreign lands so our younger generations have no idea. It is an amazing and very sad sight to see the burial places in foreign lands, and one monument says: – ‘When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrows we gave our today’.
Oh dear God, those lovely lads I knew so well. At least we hope they are now enjoying the peace that passes understanding.
What a cold, miserable November day it is, and the wind is terrible. It reminds me of the November night years ago when the Seaham Harbour lifeboat overturned and her crew was drowned. My family had come to visit me, and while having tea, the rockets sounded. I knew instantly what was happening. I had lived too long beside the sea not to know. I think eight were drowned and the new lifeboat supposed to be unsinkable had not lived up to its name. Tonight is just such a night and as I lie sleepless in my bed my mind travels so far back that I don’t care to remember. But life goes on at a terrifying speed, and the same tragedies recur. I remember lying in bed as a little girl, listening to the roaring sea and the fog horns, but our only worry then was the pits might be idle. My father knew the sound of every boat’s signal as it came into dock. The pride of them all in those days was the Maureen.
Yes, life has changed so much I fail to understand things. For instance, yesterday I had a leaflet pushed through my door which said ‘Have an account with…” Amongst other information was the fact that you would have six months to pay off your ‘account’. What a swanky name for debt: In my young days it was called ‘tick’ or ‘on the slate’, and you were looked down on by everybody. My mother used to say “never ask for tick for if you cannot pay this week you will have no hope next week when your circumstances don’t change”. “She gets things on tick” was said by neighbours of neighbours to smear them. Now if you have no account at one at least, of the huge stores you are a nobody. People brag of their accounts as if it were a pools win. No six months to pay in my Mother’s day. Miss a week and your rations were cut off. I know that I am old fashioned. Nobody needs to remind me of that, but no matter where I go I love to return to my little humble home, and I think of the words of Charlotte Bronte. “Restore to me that tender spot with four grey walls encompassed round”. Home! Yet I like to recall my young days in the home of our family. What pleasures are missed when there is no family. I had three sisters and five brothers. We fought sometimes, perhaps often, but we also had great pleasure. I recall my brothers cleaning their teeth with soot before going to a dance. Yes! Soot.
They would put a little clean cloth round their finger, stick it up the chimney and hey presto! Tooth paste: a little margarine on their hands then rubbed on their hair for hair cream, spit for polish on their shoes, and then a swap round with shirts and ties to match their suits. You can imagine the hilarity of all this, and mother used to sigh with relief when they had gone. The boys were all good mimics so we had another session of fun when they came home again. The boys got great pleasure in frightening the girls. When they knew mother was out somewhere they would get through the upstairs window and stamp hard around the bedroom floors then descend the stairs with heavy tread and in a booming voice shout “I am on the first step – stamp – I’m on the next step – stamp” until they reached the bottom, when they would spring out on us. Of course like all pranks after a time or two they wore thin.
I remember a neighbour’s son from Dawdon came to visit us one evening when home from France on leave in the First World War. He was drunk, and it happened that my sister and I were alone in the house. We didn’t know how to entertain him, and he could talk of nothing but death. Then he developed the theme of how he could murder us, and no-one would ever know, because he would be supposedly ‘at the front’. What a terrible time we spent. It seemed like hours and I cannot remember how it all ended but I know my sister and I talked of it for years. Poor lad! He was as quiet as a mouse in his early years. It must have been his war experiences that affected him.
I have just had visitors. Their only, or their greatest concern in life is their overseas holiday. Will they or won’t they be able to make it. My goodness! I remember when I was very young and Mother and Father were going to Stockton for a half day excursion trip on the Saturday. Would they or wouldn’t they make it? All kinds of things affected the outcome. Would Father have to work? Would the baby be fit to leave? Would there be sufficient money left? Happily they went. What a day! You talk about great expectations. And guess what they brought back for us. A big bag of horhound candy. What would the children of today say to that? But our joy was unbounded. We only got a half penny pocket money once a fortnight and yet we were never allowed to take money from anyone as payment for services rendered. But the love, the joy, the contentment of those bygone days is lovely to recall.
Mind you there was class distinction practiced in those days which astounded me as a young girl. We had moved from my beloved Cottages to Seaham Colliery and I remember going to Sunday night service at the parish church. I was astounded to find I could not sit where I chose. I was moved several times, but being an ignorant country cousin I did not realise why the pews had doors and the seats cushions. They were family pews paid for by the owners. I finally was conducted to one of these seats by a gentleman and it was in a position where I could see all who came into church. Eventually this lady, heavily dressed and veiled, walked in with six children following. They ranged in size from small to tall, I never see a swan with its cygnets on a lake but I remember her entrance. Majesty! But she was just an Official’s wife. You see, our old school served as church for us at the Cottages and we were all on a level, a low one but genuine.
Crises, crises. I wonder how many I have lived through in my life. I never heard the word when I was young. When very young the only crisis in our life was when Father was ill and couldn’t work. But then we left it all to Mother. But the First World War changed everything. They were serious years. Death and destruction, starvation and deprivation, with sharks around growing fat on the black market. We were so bamboozled by it all we couldn’t understand it. What a terrible time it must have been for our parents.
Isn’t this a real hotch potch. But you know tiny things act as triggers and away I fly into the realms of ‘I remember’. One thing is for sure, I am never bored. I am sitting now playing a fanciful game with my ball, because a little boy has just chased his ball down the gutter. I was always playing with a ball up against the backyard wall.
“Bounce ball, bounce ball 1-2-3
Underneath my right leg
Round about my knee
Underneath my left leg
Round my knee again
Bounce ball, bounce ball
Off we go again.”
Of course you had to keep the ball bouncing all the time. Then we threw the ball up and caught it with the right hand, threw again and caught it with the left, entwined your fingers and caught it again., threw it high and jumped astride over it as it bounced, then gave it a hard bounce to see how high it would go before you caught it. Playing with a partner you gave marks if you never missed the ball. My Father called me bally pate.
So I travel on in my memory to my spinning tops. We didn’t buy these, we gave two jam jars to the rag man for a squat fat top called a jenny spinner. Father made our whips out of a round stick, into which he punched a hole about one inch from the top through which he passed the string. You see, our pleasures cost us nothing. We would decorate the tops of the tops with coloured chalks or paper and see whose looked best when spinning.
How this has set me off about games.