We had diabloes. These too we got from rag men. They were wooden tops made in the shape of an hour glass. We had a long piece of string held by two sticks which when stretched would be about a yard width. We spun the diablo on the string to get a rhythm and then threw it into the air and caught it on the string in its descent, went on spinning and repeated the process. I was a dab hand at this and my father again called me the diablo queen. He always prophesied a broken nose, but he was wrong. Then we had skipping ropes. Fast – slow – fast – slow – double dutch – skip and swing to the right, skip and swing to the left. We went on for hours. We had long ropes (if you had a long rope you were the boss) and with these we played for hours in groups, skipping follow the leader – high and low water. Oh! I wish I were a child again.
We used to draw squares on the ground with thick chalk taken from the pockets of the pit clothes we had to dash. The pitmen used the chalk to mark the tubs. These squares were called boys, and with a hitchy dabber, which we could get from any worker at the bottle works, was pushed around and into the boys with your foot whilst continually hopping. Of course the games were very complicated and the style of hopping was varied, and the marks received for accomplishments were varied so it was very competitive. We could also play a similar game with a ball. So we had hitchy boys and ball boys. We also played rounders and French rounders, and hand ball which was a very strenuous game. Men played this game but theirs was much more fierce than ours. We hit the ball up against a gable end with our hands. The men hit with their fists against a real ball alley which was a properly built very high wall for this purpose. Then we played hidey, but the boys always used to spoil this game. The boys would hide and spring out on us unawares, or sit behind the little yard walls with white sheets over them, swaying and moaning and we thought we had seen a ghost. Then there was Kitty-Kat. Father used to make the Kitty-Kats for my brothers. He would sit on his crocket and whittle away at a piece of wood about seven inches long. The middle part had to have four sides and about an inch or a little more at each end was pointed. The square sides had Roman figures painted on them. The Kitty-Kat was put on the ground and you hit one painted end with a stick and it jumped into the air. You had to catch it in its flight, whack it with the stick and when it fell, the figure on the side uppermost was your score. This too had many complications in the scoring. Nothing was too easy to make one lose interest. You must have noticed by now how little our games cost us.
Well, it is Sunday morning again. How time flies. It is a sunny calm quiet morning and I recall such mornings when I was very young. What quietness and peace. Not a hawker or caller dared come out on a Sunday. Whether people were religious or not they upheld this tradition, not even milk was delivered in those days; one had to go to the farm. We were dressed in our Sunday best and we were not allowed to play games. We could go for walks, but not to the docks Mother used to say. Alas we didn’t always obey her. The docks was such an interesting place to go to, and the dangers Mother pointed out to us seemed just in her imagination. Then we had to tell lies to cover up, and one of the younger children would let the cat out of the bag. We were punished in more ways than one so that curtailed our visits for quite some time. You see the errant young were with us then as well as now and always will be.
Perhaps the crisis over the petrol shortage will clear the roads and give this generation a taste of the bygone quiet days. I am afraid this will not be to their liking, because even in my little backwater spot nobody can work without their radios blaring out noisy music.
Officially it is summer now and our little village is very quiet. I think the majority must be on holidays. I am reminded of summer holidays when I was a child. We ran bare-footed in the fields. Mother did not like this as she said we might cut our feet on broken ‘boody’. This was the name used for broken cups, pots and dishes. They had been thrown into middens, then landed on the dump and eventually spread as manure. But again we did not obey. We tumbled and raced about from morning till night. We had to go home for dinner (this was an order never disobeyed) but after that we could please ourselves. If you weren’t in for the next meal then you missed it altogether. But Mother did allow us to help ourselves to bread, provided we left the pantry shelf as clean as we found it. We used to learn at school ‘bread is the staff of life’, and so it was for us. Water was our main drink, so we could play for hours without bothering anybody because the taps were in the streets.
Winter nights were a different matter. To start with bedtime was much earlier as lamps used up paraffin and that meant money. So as soon as father left for work between 8 and 8:30pm, mother was ready for bed. We children had been safely tucked in for more than an hour. Paraffin was sold from the store cart which came round specially every Friday. It was quite a ritual filling the lamps, cleaning the chimneys and trimming the wicks. We had a big one, ran on the pulley system, in the best room, a standing one on the kitchen table, and small Kelly lamps in the bedrooms. Mother used to check that they were all out by the time she was ready for bed. She never used candles, because she didn’t trust them. We were never allowed to light the fire. Father did that when he came in from work, unless it was very stormy weather when mother would keep it burning all night.
This entailed Mother getting up and down all night long, and as we always had a young baby in the house, Father would only allow it in special circumstances. We seemed to stand the cold much better than this generation. We relied on warm clothes and good nourishing food to keep us warm, and let’s face it, food was much better than it is today. Free range eggs, fresh warm milk, vegetables grown in our own gardens, fish from seas uncontaminated in any way. What more could anyone ask for. People cherished their gardens in those days. All miners’ homes had a big garden attached, but people who lived in rented property had allotments. The garden was their main interest. They worked in them together, and laughed and talked as they dug and planted. They swapped skills, and had flower and vegetable shows. Many kept pigeons as another hobby and summertime was lively and gay. Where I am living now we have only tiny gardens which are neglected by the majority.
It has been my grandson’s twenty-first birthday and the families gathered together to celebrate. I have returned home exhausted but happy, and now I am sitting again with my memories. There were 12 of us in our family when I was young, and each birthday was noted. We gave no presents, no cards, but good verbal wishes. The recipient was excused from any punishment for misdeeds (according to mother’s assessment) for that one day and we had stotty cake with strawberry jam (and a ‘scrat’ of margarine under the jam) which was a great concession. Mother also made currant scones. Jokes and guessing stories flew thick and fast, and there were always ‘made up ones’ which were complete nonsense, like the one my brother asked once “why does a cow look over a wall? Because it cannot look through it?” You know I can never remember the postman ever coming to the Cottages. Birthday cards, Christmas cards or letters were unheard of. There was a post office, which was a tiny dark little place but we never knew how it functioned. We could not tell the sense of a shop which had nothing to display in its windows.
The daughter of the owner was the post girl but we couldn’t fathom what kind of a job she did. Fancy, Mother never received a Christmas card in her life. But when we moved to Seaham Colliery, and the First World War was upon us, we soon found out what the postman did. He worked night and day, delivering letters and telegrams. The post office I spoke of in my young days was not at the Cottages, but in the main street at Seaham Harbour, where we had to do our main shopping.
Even Seaham Harbour was just a small place then but it had three pawn shops. The very poor could not survive without these pawn shops. People pawned all kinds of things during the baff weekend, then redeemed them during the pay weekend if they could. Many lost several possessions in this way. I knew one family that never possessed anything but their table and beds. They sat on upturned boxes, and slept in beds in their day clothes to keep warm. Yet Mother used to say there was more money going in to keep a smaller family than ours, and Mother had a clean, comfortable well run home, so you see, the world can never be equal.
There is a local fair being held today on the village green, 22nd July 1979 and I am taken back over more than seventy years to similar fetes when I was young. Dressed as today in our Sunday best to see the Bicycle Parade, or the Procession of Witness, or the Sunday School Treat. Or the Volunteer Parade, or the Great Flower Show. You see, life was still good even in those days. There was always something of interest, at intervals throughout the year, and believe me we all enjoyed them.
Yesterday was the Durham Miners’ Gala. We never heard of this until Dawdon was built. No doubt it would be held but Durham City was a long way off to the Cottages people, and money was scarce. But when Dawdon was developed it was an unknown thing to miss the Gala. The celebrations started on the Friday night with dancing in the street, and at six o’clock on the Saturday morning the exodus began marching behind the bands waving banners and determined to have a jolly good day. We had never witnessed the like before and our sleepy little village never slept anymore. The band wakened me yesterday about eight o’clock but here was a pitiful little trickle of people following it. Well, Empires come and go and so do lesser things.
I hope the weather holds good for our village fete, as the money goes to charity. That has set me thinking. I can never remember anybody even mentioning anything about the proceeds when I was young. I am wondering now who or what benefited. I have no cause to grumble as I benefited with my happy memories, so I am content.
It’s a lovely morning and a piece of poetry I learned when very young comes to my mind:-
When swallows dart from cottage eaves
And farmers dream of barley sheaves
When apples peep amid the leaves
And woodbine scents the air
We love to fly from daily care
To breathe the buxom country air
To laugh and sing and dance and play
Among the new mown hay.
It must be more than seventy years since I learned that and yet it came unbidden to my mind when I saw all the house martins fly around from their nesting places in the village farmyard. Alas! I never see the swallows now. They were so lovely when I was young and played in the fields begging a ride on the hay carts. Oh to go back to those carefree happy days.
Sometimes my Grandmother (Ganny to us) or my Father’s sister would pay us a visit when it was a fine day. The kettle was put on and the white table cloth brought out. We would have bread and butter with jam (fancy both butter and jam!), teacakes and ginger bread. It was a red letter day. I can picture Ganny now as clear as on those days. A stout old lady with very white hair and a bright pink parting down the centre of her head, a black silk dress and a silk cape all covered in black jet sequins and a tiny little bonnet, with long wide ribbons fastened under her chin. I must show you her photo some day. She was a quiet, sedate little body, the perfect foil to Granda who was a talker of the first degree. “Are you listening Janie?” he would say to her. “Aye so Betty was saying,” was always her answer. I never understood it anymore than you will. She was a dainty clean-looking woman, but my Granda was big with a hairy moustache, long beard and thick long white hair. His body grew too heavy for his legs, but Ganny could trot around until the end.
I am very fortunate in that I live in the end house of a small street with a streetlight shining through the glass of my front door so that my home is never in total darkness. But last night there was no light, and as I often trot around upstairs through the night to ease my aching legs (old age you know) I got to thinking of my life during the First World War. No lights were allowed and the total darkness was terribly frightening. No vehicles carried lights and our homes were completely blacked out. Special wardens patrolled the streets and if the tiniest chink of light was seen, that particular warden would knock on your door shouting “put your lights out”. Some were like jumped up field marshals and nearly bashed the door in to emphasize their authority.