Читать книгу If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will - Eric Sykes - Страница 5

On 4 May 1923 I was born, but in giving me life my mother sacrificed her own. Officially recorded as ‘Harriet Sykes, née Stacey, died in childbirth’, cold, clinical and final: cold and clinical yes, but final? We shall see. Although my mother had departed this life, she hadn’t abandoned me. I know this to be true, from instances in my life too numerous to be passed off as mere coincidence, in fact some so inexplicable, so impossible, that they can only be described as miracles. As for my poor father, one can hardly imagine the depth of his despair, the rising panic as his whole world collapsed around him—his beloved Harriet in exchange for this red-faced wrinkled intruder. How was he to manage? He already had a two-year-old son, Vernon, and, good grief, at the time Father was only twenty-three years old, an ex-sergeant in the occupation forces in Germany and now, in this land fit for heroes, a lowly labourer in a cotton mill, which in those early post-war years was no more than being a white slave, the manacles being the need to eat.

Counsellors had yet to be invented, social workers didn’t exist and the Citizens Advice Bureau was not even in the pipeline; but on the plus side, people cared more, and neighbours and anyone else who knew of the tragedy at 36 Leslie Street, Oldham, offered not only their condolences but, more to the point, food, and cast-off clothing; and apparently one old lady offered a kitten. It was heart-warming but it didn’t solve the problem. Before long the cavalry arrived, as my distraught father knew they would, his parents, Granddad and Grandma Sykes, and my late mother’s family, the Staceys, were not far behind.

It must have been a very sombre get-together. What was to be done? Most likely I was asleep at the time, so I can only surmise what happened next. Grandma Stacey was to take Vernon—after all, he was two years old and house-trained—but she refused point blank to take me as well. I discovered many years later that Grandma Stacey had been against the marriage in the first place, and Father was persona non grata in her house. However Mother used to visit regularly with her small son Vernon and ergo he was the only memory of their daughter Harriet had left them, whereas in their eyes I was partly responsible for the loss, and in truth I probably was.

What then should be done with me? My father couldn’t take me with him to the cotton mill every morning and crèches were unheard of in those days. However after a time a solution was found. I was to be deposited with a kind spinster called Miss Redfern who lived in Davies Street, or it may have been Miss Davies of Redfern Street—I didn’t keep a diary in those days. I’m now in my eighties and I still haven’t got round to it.

Of the two years of my displacement I have only vague memories, of my surrogate mother’s house: the smell of furniture polish, and above my cot a huge parrot that squawked incessantly from the time the black cloth was taken off the cage until it was mercifully covered up again at bedtime. It was my constant companion until eventually I was returned to the custody of my father at 36 Leslie Street, much less salubrious, with no smell of furniture polish (we didn’t have enough furniture to warrant the extravagance), but at least it was home. In later years my father told me that neither he nor anyone else could understand what I was babbling about. Hardly surprising, as I’d never learned English, but spoke fluent parrot. At two years old I was incontinent, and still unsteady on my pins, because learning to walk too early was not encouraged in case it led to rickets.

Cataclysmic changes had taken place during my absence at Redfern/Davies’s. My father had married again and already I wasn’t the youngest in the family: I had a little brother, John. He was still only at the sleeping and eating stage of development, but already I’d taken to him. It was the beginning of a close, warm-hearted friendship that was to last a lifetime. Apparently I hovered round his cot most of the day, impatient for him to grow up so that we could play together. When John was twelve months old or there-abouts we’d hold conversations. I would come out with something and when I’d finished he’d wait for a moment or two before the penny dropped that it was his turn to speak, and when he obviously couldn’t he’d gurgle, splutter and blow raspberries, making both of us laugh with sheer joy. It must have been the first time in my life that I laughed—the parrot must have found me a very dull ha’p’orth.

Two or three years later John was growing into a beautiful little boy, and one of the highlights for me was John’s bedtime. Mother cradled him in her arms, then, sitting herself down in the rocking chair, she would begin singing. Softly she sang a hymn, the same one every time, but she didn’t sing the words. It was ‘bee bough, bee bough, bee bough, bee bough’, each word synchronised to each rock, and a gentle patting in the same tempo; she ‘bee boughed’ in an absent-minded voice, staring into space as if I wasn’t there. I don’t think I was jealous, envious, or left out. It never even occurred to me that no one had ever sung me to sleep, embraced me or kissed me; I accepted as a natural progression that in our house I was last in the pecking order, and strangely enough it didn’t bother me at all. Although I was unaware of it at the time, being a non-playing lodger relieved me from all responsibility and I was free to live in the fantasy world in my head, which transcended the hopelessness of the surrounding poverty and deprivation that typified most cotton towns in the late 1920s. Incidentally the hymn that Mother ‘bee boughed’ I discovered years afterwards was ‘O God, our help in ages past’.

Another little incident occurred some months later. Vernon was not with us and John and I were still a-bed. I wasn’t asleep; I’d just heard the front door close as Dad set off for work. Some minutes afterwards, Mother came into our bedroom, clambered over me and lay between us for a moment. Then she turned on her side to cuddle John. The sight of Mother’s back was as if I’d had a door slammed in my face. A few moments went by, and I had an over-whelming urge to put my arm around her, but I was too shy, so I turned my back on her and worried about my pet tortoise, which had been missing for several days. Perhaps I had no need to worry: Dad had reassured me that tortoises hibernated, then, realising that he’d lost me with the word ‘hibernate’, he explained to me that my tortoise had stolen away to a safe place in order to sleep through the winter. Half mollified, I accepted his explanation, although it never occurred to me at the time that it wasn’t yet July. I must have dozed, because when I opened my eyes again Mother had gone and so had John, and I then began to wonder if I’d dreamed about her turning her back on me to cuddle him. I was much too young to understand my silent cry for help, my desperate yearning to belong, to be acknowledged—even a smile would have sufficed.

I must have been about six when I woke up one cold autumn morning feeling different. Somewhere at the back of my mind a hazy thought began to take shape. I had the stub of a pencil somewhere and I could buy a small notebook from the little shop on Ward Street. Then I forgot what these preparations were for, but then suddenly it all clicked into place. It was a brilliant idea: I was going to take down motor-car numbers, and I wouldn’t tell anybody about it because if I did they’d all be at it. I couldn’t wait to get started. Bolting down only half a Shredded Wheat, I dashed upstairs for the stub of pencil, down again, and then out of the door as if the house was on fire, stopping at the corner shop to buy a small notebook, which cost a penny (incidentally my entire fortune), and in less than five minutes I was sitting on the edge of the pavement. No one ever referred to the pavement: they were ‘t’flags’, and the street or thoroughfare was ‘t’cart road’, and so from the shop I ran down to Featherstall Road and sat on ‘t’flags’ with my feet in ‘t’cart road’. Once settled, I opened my little notebook, pencil poised for action—so far so good. My head swivelled from side to side in case I missed a number and I made a mental note that when I’d collected fifty numbers it would be enough.

I wasn’t being over-optimistic: after all, this was the main high-way from Rochdale to Manchester. However, time passed and I reluctantly reduced my original aim of fifty motor-car numbers to twenty. It was coming up to dinnertime and now the cold, gusty wind was beginning to dampen my enthusiasm. I shivered, but sat on, book held stoically in one hand, pencil not quite so poised. I decided to abandon the enterprise if a motor car didn’t appear before the next tram…Three trams later there was one coal cart, wearily pulled by a dozing horse, reins loosely held by a sleeping driver; sometime later a large cart coming the other way, carrying enormous barrels, the heavy load drawn by two off-white, huge beasts, trotting proudly on big hairy feet. Turning my head to the right, I disinterestedly watched yet another tram wrenching itself round the corner from Oldham Road into Featherstall Road to rattle and grind its way down the single track to the loop, where it stopped to allow an ‘up-tram’ to pass in order to join the one track to Royton, and from there made a sharp turn right to Shaw Wrens Nest or to carry on to Rochdale. But alas, there was not a motor car for miles. Pencil, notebook and hands now deep in jacket pockets, feet drumming against the road to coax a bit of warmth back into them, I must have looked a picture of abject misery, and hungry with it, when a voice behind and above me broke into my self-imposed despondency. ‘’Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo,’ and I recognised the brogue of our local bobby or, to give him his full title, Constable Matty Lally. He was an imposing figure of a man, built like a full-grown water buffalo, which gave a great sense of security to the law-abiding and made him a fearful presence in the darker side of the community.

‘What are you doing there, lad?’ he said. ‘I’ve had my eye on you for the last half hour.’

‘I’m collecting motor-car numbers,’ I said, as if I’d been directed to do a survey.

He shook his head sadly. ‘You’ll get piles sitting there,’ he said, and moved himself off.

As I watched him go, the import of his words hit me. When Matty Lally spoke, everybody listened, and hadn’t he just told me I’d get piles? I assumed that he meant that piles of motor cars would be along any minute and my enthusiasm returned. So I renewed my vigilance, having finally decided that one motor car would be enough. How was I, six or seven years old, to know that Matty Lally had been referring to a nasty bottom problem and not piles of motor cars?

However, the enterprise was not a write-off. As I was about to leave, a ramshackle boneshaker turned the corner and trundled towards me. It was moving so slowly that I was able to walk alongside it while taking the number, BU something or other—I forget now, but it’s not important.

We lads who lived in Leslie Street considered ourselves fortunate in having the Mucky Broos right outside our front doors. ‘Broos’ were small hills, and these were ‘Mucky’ because they were just a large expanse of dirt; rare blades of sickly grass struggled to exist and even though the rain was frequent, the soil was worked out—even weeds preferred to take their chances in the cracks on the pavement. Most days the Mucky Broos were just two acres of slippery, glutinous mud, but they had dry periods as well. The area was triangular in shape, bordered at the top end by Ward Street Central School and on the other side by Ward Street itself, with Leslie Street the base of the triangle. Not very inspiring, but the Mucky Broos were our playground. My best mate was Richard Branwood, whose little sister Martha was used when required in a supporting role.

On one occasion we dug a trench and, with poles for rifles, re-enacted the Battle of the Somme. A couple more lads joined us as we leapt out of the trench and then charged towards the imaginary Germans, only to retreat and sprawl on the ground to have our wounds attended to. Martha, the little sister of mercy, knelt by me, stroking my forehead gently, a sad smile on her face. I liked this bit: it left me with a pleasant, warm feeling that I’d never experienced before, and I couldn’t wait to be wounded again when we repeated the whole process. It was exciting, but after a few more sorties we all wanted to be dead, so we all lay spreadeagled in the dirt, exhausted. After a time I raised my head and discovered that it was not only getting dark but Richard and the other lads had gone and, more importantly, so had the nursing staff, so I went as well.

However, that wasn’t the end of the matter. The following morning an irate neighbour called at our house and demanded we fill the trench in, as it was a danger to man and beast. He claimed that on his way home last night he’d fallen in, and he rolled up his trouser leg to show my father a nasty graze. Dad sucked in his breath and sent me off to fill in the trench.

Reluctantly I did as I was told. No more mock battles of the Somme, no more charging over the top—but if the truth were known, what I would miss most of all would be the little nurse with the sad smile stroking my forehead. It was the first time in my young life that anyone had shown me tenderness, awakening emotions in me beyond my understanding but taken for granted by most children.

Fortunately my cup was always half full and never half empty, so in five minutes I had forgotten all about the Somme and I was galloping over the dips and hollows of Texas, pointing my two fingers like six shooters and cleaning up the bad lands. On another day with some of the lads, off-white hankies tucked into the backs of our caps to shield our necks from the pitiless sun, although there wasn’t much of that in Lancashire, we were in the French Foreign Legion and with poles over our shoulders we marched over the burning sands—to us the sands were burning whatever the weather. When we had tired of the desert, we had lots of other pursuits. One of my favourite games was Ducky Funny Whip. How it got this name is a mystery, but we certainly didn’t make it up. A ‘ducky’ is a smooth stone, and there were plenty of them scattered about the Mucky Broos. We each picked one out; the size was immaterial, provided you were strong enough to throw it. Having each found our own ducky, we stood in a queue while whoever was ‘It’ placed half bricks on top of one another to about three feet high, finally putting his own ducky on top. Then the game commenced. One by one we hurled our duckies to try to knock the column of bricks over. When a lucky throw brought the target down, we all picked up our duckies and ran away to hide amongst the dips and slight rises of our Mucky Broos. When ‘It’ had rebuilt his pile of bricks and put his ducky on top, he endeavoured to find someone, and when he did he tapped them and ran back to his column of bricks and cocked his leg over it, and he wasn’t ‘It’ any more. However, if the unfortunate who’d been spotted managed to beat ‘It’ back to the target and knock the column down before ‘It’ could cock his leg over it, everyone ran away to hide again and the process continued. Older people will understand and forgive the dog’s breakfast I’ve made in trying to explain what was, in fact, a very simple pastime, not as mentally challenging as chess but to us urchins infinitely more enjoyable. Ducky Funny Whip was a team game best played when the nights were drawing in, as lying in the shadows made it more difficult for ‘It’.

Dad and most other working men hated Mondays, and looked forward to Friday night and a wage packet; above all Friday was the gateway to the greener grass of the weekend. Naturally young children had a different aspect to the week; we fought to keep heavy eyes open as bedtime approached, because that would end another day, but every morning was a new adventure. However, as for the grown-ups Friday night was our favourite, as for John and me it was our bath night.

First the rumbling in the backyard as Dad lifted the tin bath from the nail on the wall, staggering through the door with it on his back like a tortoise from outer space while Mother closed the door behind him to keep out the cold. There is nothing so soothing and delicious as a warm soapy bath in front of a blazing fire and even when soap got into our eyes it was a small price to pay for this weekly luxury. Once we were out of the bath, everything was warm—the towels, the milk—and best of all we felt clean and shiny. Roll on next Friday. If only we could carry these moments of happiness and contentment into adulthood.

Another pal of mine was John Broome, and when I was a little older his mother kindly gave me an overcoat, grey and much too large. When I wore it, only the top of my head and my feet were visible, but it kept me warm through two winters, when it finally fell to pieces before it could be handed down again.

It was an unwritten law that to qualify for use of the Mucky Broos one either lived in Ward Street or Leslie Street. We regarded it as our private and exclusive play area, and as far as I can remember no stranger ever played there or attempted to take it from us, which is hardly surprising, really, as there were thousands of Mucky Broos in Oldham and ours was well down the list of much sought-after properties. We played cricket in the summer with a pile of coats for the wicket and football in the winter with two piles of coats for the goalposts; an old tennis ball sufficed for both sports. In the soft summer evenings quite a few people in Ward Street sat out on chairs watching our games; folks who lived on Leslie Street stood in the doorways, as they didn’t have the advantage of a pavement on which to place their chairs. For them it was only dirt but to us lads they were an appreciative audience and they spurred us on to ludicrous heights, and we played whatever game we were into with extra panache. We lads were all mentally in an England shirt and the couple of dozen watchers were a packed Wembley.

When it was completely dark, we wandered over to Ward Street for another of our distractions. Whoever was ‘It’ faced the wall of a house and shouted “M-I-L-K, MILK” and at the same time we advanced slowly towards him from across the street. A clever ‘It’ would start slowly with ‘M’ and then rush ‘I-L-K’, whirling round, and anybody caught moving took his place. This game was illuminated by the light from the toffee-shop window, a shop which never seemed to close in case somebody wanted a box of matches or a jar of pickles or even toffees. When we had money we were in the shop like a flash, with a coin on the counter and asking for a ha‘p’orth of ‘all round-the-window’, which meant that the lady took a toffee from each of the boxes on display. When the lamplighter approached with his long pole to touch the gas mantle in the lamp opposite we had added illumination. The game continued until Mother’s high-pitched voice called into the darkness, ‘Eriiiiic’, and sadly that was the end of my night’s entertainment.

Of course it wasn’t all play. I had my day job helping to lay the table and sometimes drying a plate during the washing-up, but my most important assignment of all was being responsible for cutting old newspapers into squares to hang on a nail in the lavatory at the bottom of the garden.

I can’t remember John ever taking part in our rough and tumbles on the Mucky Broos. Although he was now old enough, Mother wanted to keep an eye on him and I was quite happy with this arrangement. After all, John was the centre of her universe and, much as I enjoyed his company indoors, during our games I was glad to be relieved of the responsibility of looking after him. I couldn’t anyway as I was too busy enjoying myself.

Some Saturday mornings Mother gave us tuppence each to go to the Imperial, the picture house better known as ‘the Fleapit’. It wasn’t too far away, on Featherstall Road, almost opposite my numberplate collection station. She gave us tuppence so that we could afford the best seats and wouldn’t have to mix with the scruffbags in the penny seats. John and I had other ideas: we didn’t mind sitting with the ‘untouchables’ so that we had the other penny to spend on toffees.

There was always a cacophony of noise before the programme started, whistles and laughter, and scallywags running up and down the aisles, but the babble dwindled quickly when the lights went down. Usually there was a serial every Saturday morning. The most scary one I remember was called The Shadow. Two men were talking together or, to be more accurate, miming talking together—what they were discussing was written at the bottom of the picture. Then suddenly the music went into low menacing phrases. It wasn’t really an orchestra but a woman at the piano in the pit, and as she pounded out a crescendo the shadow of a hooded person crept along the wall towards the two men. This was nail-biting stuff. We all knew what was going to happen, but nobody closed their mouth. Slowly the shadow raised an arm, holding the shadow of a weapon, to bring it crashing down on the head of the nearest man, who collapsed immediately. His colleague whirled round, drew his pistol and fired at the shadow, which was useless, it seemed, because the shadow, completely oblivious, sidled off the screen. There were, of course, no sounds of gun shots—after all, most films were silent in those days—but the lady pianist was working herself into a frenzy to build up to the ‘to be continued next week’. The lights went on again before the next effort, but conversation was now subdued as The Shadow was discussed.

Sometimes the serial was followed by a comedy, but romance was anathema to us and a couple kissing was greeted with whistles, boos and showers of orange peel being hurled at the screen until the lights went up and the manager walked on stage and immediately we were subdued. He had a rough voice and he threatened us all with expulsion if we didn’t behave. Meanwhile the film was still running, partly behind him on the silver screen but mostly on him as he spoke, and by the time he left the stage the offending scene was well past, or at least indecipherable until the lights went down and the lady pianist began again with sloppy arpeggios. Romantic films weren’t often shown but whenever there was a kissing sequence it invariably provoked this situation. Sometimes I felt sorry for the manager: he probably had to show what he was given, films that a decent cinema would reject out of hand. But we still looked forward to the next Saturday morning.

Already I am now seven years old and still haven’t decided what my career is going to be, although grown-ups always seem to ask me what am I going to be when I grow up. In truth, I haven’t given it a thought—I have enough problems enjoying my childhood.

Wakes Week in the cotton towns of Lancashire was the annual holiday. These holidays were staggered—for instance, Royton’s Wakes followed Oldham Wakes, and Rochdale’s Wakes came after Royton’s and so on, the reason for staggering obviously being so that only one town would be closed down at a time and Lancashire’s cotton production would continue with hardly a hiccup.

Naturally we all looked forward to Oldham’s Wakes. A travelling fair visited Oldham for the week, and the stalls of Tommyfield market were removed and replaced by the fair. The biggest attractions were the roundabouts, with prancing horses moving up and down under garish lights as they whirled round the mechanical orchestra belting out brassy cymbalised melodies; screams and laughter from the dodgems; coconut shies; hoopla stalls; roll a penny. There was usually a boxing booth, outside which two tough, battered characters dressed for the boxing ring stood on a raised platform with their arms folded. Next to them, only half their size but twice their IQ, the barker spoke through a megaphone, announcing that any contender lasting three rounds with either of his roughnecks would receive a pound. Many a brave lad accepted the challenge, and took off his shirt and vest to have his boxing gloves laced while the crowds bustled in to surround the ring. When the place was full, the barker fastened the tent flap and climbed through the ropes to announce the first bout. I was too young to go into the booth, but I asked Dad what went on inside. He shuddered and told me that few of the young hopefuls survived even into round two: most of them, blood-spattered with shocked eyes, were helped from the ring by their mates, and others, more prudent, chickened out before they had a chance of stardom. Dad swore that he would never set foot in a boxing booth again. He said it was a human abattoir and just to watch left him feeling sick and debased. All that remained in my mind was what is an abattoir?

One Wakes Week Dad had an exciting surprise for us. He told us that we were going to Blackpool for four days. To say we were delighted would be putting it mildly. For us Blackpool was our Shangri-La, our fairyland wherein it was Wakes all the year round.

John and I had never been on a train before, so having a compartment to ourselves on the Blackpool train didn’t register until Dad said he thought it would have been crowded during Wakes Week. Mother and Dad sat opposite each other by the window but we didn’t sit anywhere as we were too excited to be still. There were so many things to see: hedgerows whizzing past, meadows dotted with cows intent on cropping the grass, some raising their heads to glance curiously at the train, a black horse in the next field; and in the split second it took to vanish behind us we searched frantically for a white one, which was worth a toffee in one of our competitions that made the journey more exciting, as if we needed more excitement.

Then my father bent towards us and pointed to the horizon, and together we screamed, ‘Blackpool Tower.’ This was the highlight of our journey and we staggered and lurched on to the seats as we began to slow down and soon the train huffed importantly into Blackpool Central station. We were overawed by the sheer immensity of this austere Victorian building, with arches high above the concourse and hurrying passengers alighting from the train. It had never entered my head that there were others besides us making their way to Blackpool, so wrapped up were we in wonder in our own private compartment. As we passed the engine driver, Dad said, ‘Thank you’, and the engine driver, leaning out of his cab and wiping his hands on an oily rag, nodded and winked at John and me, while behind the engine driver a huge sweating man in a singlet, shovelled coal to feed the insatiable appetite of the boiler, his face lit by the glow. I backed out of the station, my eyes never leaving the old train driver enjoying his pipe, and I decided there and then that one day I would drive the Blackpool train.

Dad determined to take us along the promenade so that we could get a closer look at the fabulous tower, but unfortunately as we turned into the Golden Mile we were targeted by the screaming wind, which made progress almost impossible as we made our way to the boarding house. The waves were hurling themselves at the sea walls, flinging white spray into the air that was gleefully accepted by the wind and helped across the road to drench anybody stupid enough to be out on a day like this.

Without hesitation, Dad lifted John into his arms and Mother grasped my hand, and we all staggered into the shelter of the nearest side street. The calm and peace not ten yards from the frantic onslaught of the wind and sea were unnerving. As Dad wiped John’s face with his hankie, a policeman strolled across to us.

‘Been swimming?’ he enquired sarcastically.

Dad puffed out his cheeks and replied, ‘It’s a force-ten gale out there.’

The policeman shook his head. ‘Bit of a blow, that’s all. It’ll be all right tomorrow.’

Well, he was certainly correct in his weather forecast. On the morrow there was no wind to speak of, just the odd gust; but it was quite cold—‘bracing’, the landlady said. So John and I paddled in the pools by the sea wall left by the receding tide. Mother kept a watchful eye on us while Dad took a tram to a place called Uncle Tom’s Cabin to see if any of his mates were there. This was a favourite watering hole and he may well have met someone he knew: after all, it was Oldham’s Wakes Week and visitors to Blackpool would most likely be Oldhamers.

The next day Mother took us down to the Pleasure Ground on the south shore. This was ten times bigger and more awesome than the travelling fairground that toured the Lancashire cotton towns. John and I rolled a penny each down the slots but won nothing, and Mother yanked us away before we got the bug. We had a ride on the prancing horses in between eating candy floss—we didn’t eat any supper when we got home and in fact during that visit we ate enough candy floss between us to stuff a medium-sized mattress. Dad spent the day at Uncle Tom’s Cabin and so we only saw him long enough to say, ‘Bye, Dad.’

On the Wednesday Mother took us by tram to Bispham and I had the feeling that if it hadn’t been too expensive we would have gone as far as Fleetwood, where Dad said you could get the best kippers in the world. Incidentally he wasn’t with us, as he spent the day at Uncle Tom’s Cabin again. On the last day it absolutely threw it down—the rain was unbelievable—and against the rules of the boarding house we were allowed to stay indoors and play draughts and snakes and ladders. We would have played ludo, only we needed four players and Dad wasn’t present as he was at Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By and large we had a marvellous holiday. Even Dad was over the moon, as he’d won a shilling at darts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And so our wonderful few days by the sea came to an end, and now my ambition was to be a train driver on the promenade at Blackpool.

One Sunday Mother got John and me ready and told us that we were going to Grandma Stacey’s for tea. It was the first I’d heard of Grandma Stacey, but in those days little boys didn’t ask silly questions like ‘Who’s Grandma Stacey?’ We took the tram to a much posher part of Oldham, a world we’d never seen, and I remember thinking that the further we travelled the more austere our surroundings were. When we finally arrived at our destination, I was overawed by the quiet, aloof elegance of the Victorian terraces. We were aliens in a land of privilege as we walked furtively uphill to the address of Grandma Stacey.

The front door was opened by an old lady whose bottom jaw trembled as if she was cold, with a long black dress ornamented only by a cameo brooch at her throat and hair swept up at the back and held tightly in place by a large comb. This turned out to be Great-grandma Wilson. She didn’t speak, even after Mother’s ‘Good afternoon’; she just opened the door wider, turned and floated along the passage, to disappear in a room, and after a moment she reappeared and looked at us, whereupon Mother ushered us forward and we went into a more cheerful atmosphere.

A fire was burning brightly in the grate and an old man in a pillbox hat with a tassel was seesawing slowly back and forward in a rocking chair, busily puffing on a white clay pipe, which had a lid on it, his eyes never leaving the burning coals. We three stood around, hardly breathing in case he turned to look in our direction. In front of us there was a table covered by a startlingly white cloth and on it a small plateful of sandwiches and three bowls of prunes. Then the little old lady with the quivering jaw entered with a jug full of hot custard and poured it over the prunes, after which she made a silent exit and we never saw her again on that visit; nor did the old man in the rocking chair interrupt his quiet vigil over the fire. When we’d finished we stood around in silence, which was oppressive and broken only by the hissing and spluttering of the fire and, more dominating, the sonorous ticking of an old polished grandfather clock sneering down at us. Mother said, ‘Well, er…we’ll be off then,’ and glared at us until in unison we said, ‘Thank you for my tea,’ and that was the end of the ordeal.

On the tram going home Mother told us that the old lady was not Grandma Stacey: she was not at home today, and neither was my brother Vernon. The old couple we’d met were Grandma Stacey’s parents, Great-grandpa and Great-grandma Wilson. She also explained why they didn’t speak: it was simply because they were both in their nineties. I must confess that this remark had me puzzled for days. If you were over ninety, were you not allowed to speak? Or, more worryingly, perhaps at that impossible age they’d forgotten how it was done.

Subsequently we went to tea for three more Sundays. On the last visit I think Mother must have taken John to the lavatory for I was left alone with Great-grandpa Wilson, still rocking, still puffing and glaring at the fire. I just stood and watched him. I was good at standing and watching—I’d had enough practice at home. Then Great-grandpa Wilson took the pipe out of his mouth and the old man I’d previously thought incapable of speech broke his silence, but it was as if I wasn’t there—I’d had enough practice at that as well. Taking the pipe out of his mouth, he said, ‘Last night she didn’t come home till after nine o’clock.’ He put his pipe back in his mouth, puffed for a while, took it out again and said, ‘I reckon she’s got a fancy man somewhere,’ and that was the end of what could scarcely be described as a conversation—in fact I wouldn’t have dared open my mouth. I just stood and watched, and his stare never left the fire. Many, many years later, when I was working for my living, Great-grandpa Wilson’s words came back to me, and with a flash of insight I realised that he had been referring to Grandma Stacey, who was seventy-two at the time; and on mulling over those awful prunes-and-custard ordeals I realised that Great-grandpa Wilson must have been born in about 1836. What a wealth of memories must have been staring back at him from the fire! Victoria was Queen when he was young, but did Great-grandpa Wilson know this? After all, there was no such thing as a wireless in those far-off days; he would have been middle-aged before it had been invented. He must have been aware that Prince Albert, Victoria’s consort, was German, but when Albert died an early death and the whole country mourned, how would Great-grandpa Wilson have learned of this tragic event? There were few newspapers and probably none at all in Oldham, which in those days was mostly forest and grassland, and certainly there were no newsagents. Perhaps information was conveyed by the town crier, but then would Oldham have been big enough to warrant such a luxury, and how did the town crier get the news in the first place? Questions, questions, questions. In the middle of the nineteenth century there were no such ‘get-abouts’ as the motor car, trams were yet to come, and there would have been no roads for them to travel on; horses and coaches were the only means of transport and then only for the gentry. To be abroad at night when there were no lights to illuminate the paths was to make oneself vulnerable to rogues and vagabonds. What a rich tapestry of first-hand knowledge stared back at Grandpa Wilson from the fire! I would have sat at his feet just to listen, anything, yet the only time he spoke to me was to slag off Grandma Stacey, his seventy-two-year-old daughter who hadn’t come home till after nine o’clock. What was he afraid of—a highwayman? Oh, what a missed opportunity!

The next time I saw Great-grandpa Wilson was when Grandma Stacey took me by the hand and led me into a quiet bedroom to pay my respects to him as he lay peacefully in his coffin. Other people whom I’d never met stood around in quiet groups, but no one seemed particularly upset. When Grandma Stacey took me back downstairs, a different drama was taking place. I was fascinated as I watched one of the mourners—a large, untidy man in a bowler hat, with a large pointed nose with a large dewdrop hanging on the end of it reluctant to leave home—rummaging in the shelves of a magnificent bookcase, occasionally stuffing his pockets with anything that took his fancy. It later turned out that he was one of the uncles—so my father told me about a week after the funeral. Staring into the fire he said bitterly, ‘Your Great-grandpa Wilson promised me the harmonium.’ As there were only the two of us present, I assumed he was addressing me. After a time he went on, ‘Your Uncle Albert pinched it,’ and, as if to clinch his case, he added, ‘He was seen pushing a hand cart up Waterloo Street and that harmonium was roped on to it.’ I remember thinking, ‘Thank God for Uncle Albert’: the last thing we needed at our house was a harmonium, and Dad struggling to play every night when he came home from work, his feet going up and down on the treadles like a demented cyclist on an exercise bike, his head bowed over a sheet of music he couldn’t understand.

Some days later Dad’s words came back to me. ‘He promised me the harmonium’, he’d said, and he’d stressed the word ‘me’ as if he was entitled to it, but to my knowledge he’d never met the Wilsons or Grandma Stacey; nor did he accompany us for our prunes and custard. More importantly, he hadn’t gone with me to look at Great-grandpa Wilson in his coffin. So why should the old man promise him the harmonium? I gave up there, and I still didn’t know who Grandma Stacey, Great-grandpa Wilson and Great-grandma Wilson belonged to.

Children when I was young were generally predictable. For instance, if we were walking sedately anywhere with a solemn expression on our faces it would be almost certain that we were on our way to school, church or the doctor—in other words a destination that was mundane, dutiful, boring or simply somewhere we weren’t keen to arrive at; but if our target was pleasurable, we ran, and we enjoyed the run, full of excited, pleasant thoughts of where we were going.

So it was with John and me every Tuesday during the summer holidays, when Grandma Ashton baked bread and muffins. From home to Royton seemed to us like miles, and for little legs it was, but we ran all the way, up Featherstall Road, turning left at the Queens, along Oldham Road past Boundary Park Hospital and Sheep’s Foot Lane, which led down to the workhouse next to the lunatic asylum and Boundary Park, the home ground of Oldham Athletic Football Club. We were now halfway to Houghton Street, where the Ashtons lived at the foot of Oldham Edge. As we turned into Houghton Street we could smell the warm loaves and muffins, which gave us a fillip for the last fifty yards. Breathless and flushed, we raced through the open door, John to fling his arms around the knees of Grandma Ashton, who held her arms wide so as not to embrace him in her flour-caked arms.

Grandma Ashton wasn’t thin and austere like Grandma Stacey but dumpy and warm, always with a tired smile on her face, wearied by years of caring, feeding and bringing up her daughters, Auntie Emmy, Auntie Edna and of course our mother, Florrie. Her only son, Stanley, had been killed at Mons during the Great War and I don’t think he had been twenty years old. Grandma Ashton was the rock upon which the whole family depended. Granddad Ashton always seemed to be sitting by the fireplace, even in summer, and like Great-grandpa Wilson, staring into the glowing coals, a lopsided grin on his face.

The fireplace was the focal point of most households then, and even some of the poorest managed to find coal. During the winter our mother and father sat on each side of the grate, us children standing, the gas mantle flickering behind us as the wind whistled malevolently through the keyhole of the back door. Sadly in the present day the fire has been replaced by central heating, paradoxically warm yet heartless, and the fireplace is no longer the focal point of a room. Again regretfully families now sit grouped round the television set and this modern world is no better for the change. In the burning coals you could see whatever picture you wished, but from a television you only get what you are given.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, back to Grandma Ashton’s. Whenever she baked, there was always a small lump of dough for John and me, which we shaped into little men; currants for buttons and eyes, then into the oven with them. I really looked forward to going to Grandma Ashton’s. It was fun, especially once when John and I stayed the night. It was a great adventure, sleeping in a strange bed, and when the night lightened into morning we were yacketing excitedly together when the door opened and Auntie Emmy and Auntie Edna, still in their nighties, sprang into the room, Auntie Edna wielding a sabre. We dived under the covers, shivering with fright, and screaming for Auntie Edna to spare us, while Auntie Emmy was laughing fit to bust.

The memory of that sabre has always fascinated me. I took for granted that it had once been issued to Granddad Ashton. It was the weapon of cavalry; ergo Granddad Ashton in his youth fought his battles on horseback—that is, if he had ever seen action. Perhaps he had been too young for the Charge of the Light Brigade, but surely he must have been in some other battle. Come to think of it, I never ever heard him say anything. In any case, I wasn’t old enough to think of a question.

Apart from John, the only other person I’d ever really taken to was Auntie Emmy. She always looked upon me with kindness and understanding. Whenever I visited the Ashtons with John, Auntie Emmy invariably greeted me with a warm smile, as if we were two conspirators with a hidden agenda, although such a highfallutin philosophy never entered my head, let alone crossed my mind. Auntie Emmy must have known about my real mother’s death; in fact everyone was in the know—except me. I was a rowing boat adrift on a foggy night in the busy shipping lanes of the channel. Perhaps that is why she took a special interest in me, though not, I must add, out of pity, and the rapport between us was genuine.

On one occasion when I had a raging toothache it was Auntie Emmy who took me to the dentist, an old man who must have gained his degree in the nineteenth century when possibly the only dental appliance was a pair of pliers. His surgery was the front room of his house, lit only by two gas mantles. He wore an old cardigan and a shirt fastened at the neck by a stud but with no collar.

Pushing his glasses on to his forehead, he gazed short-sightedly into my mouth. ‘Which one is it?’ he asked.

I looked across at Auntie Emmy.

‘You have to show him,’ she said helpfully.

I was at a loss for a moment. For most people visiting the dentist the toothache seems to disappear the moment they step over the threshold, and so it was with me, and I was afraid that I might point out the wrong one.

Luckily he put his finger in my mouth and waggled a tooth, and the pain was instantaneous. I jerked violently.

‘I thought it was,’ he said complacently, blissfully unaware of how close he’d come to losing a finger.

However, it was a quick, efficient extraction and triumphantly he held out the molar for me to see. There was a dark hole in it, no wonder it had caused me so much suffering. I was delighted and amazed that it had all been so quick and painless. I smiled at Auntie Emmy and was even more amazed when the dentist patted me on the head, called me a brave little man and gave me a toffee—a toffee of all things! He was probably looking forward to seeing me again in the very near future.

When we returned to Grandma Ashton’s, I gave the toffee to John and then we had tea—well, they had tea, but I had to make do with a glass of milk because I was in no condition to eat. But my day wasn’t ended. It was dark when Mother, John and I got on the tram. Mother was between John and me and I was squashed between her and a dozing old man. Why we had to sit there was beyond me; after all, apart from us and the conductor the tram was empty. No one spoke as the tram buckled and clattered up Oldham Road, and then almost imperceptibly the old man closed his eyes and began singing softly to himself in a cracked, tuneless voice. I was intrigued, and I turned my head to observe him more closely. Immediately Mother put her hand under my chin and whipped my head smartly to the front. After a short time I slowly turned to look at him again furtively and what impressed me most was his nose. It was large, round, extremely red and pockmarked, but before I could take a closer look my head was jerked back to neutral. The old man was still singing when we got off and straight away as the tram disappeared I asked Mother what was the matter with him, but Mother was reluctant to answer and I wondered if she’d heard me. Then she said, ‘That’s what you get from eating too much pork.’ This explanation, brooking no argument, knocked me flat. I was so impressed that I never got round to asking about the man’s nose; and it had such a profound effect on me that I avoided pork until I was well into my twenties, although I must have consumed buckets of alcohol since Dad bought me my first half a pint on my sixteenth birthday. The lesson to be learned here is: don’t muck about with the truth when dealing with children.

Now in the year 2003 I’m at my desk wearing headphones as I listen to a programme on the radio. I sit back in my chair staring at the ceiling wherein lies inspiration when, half listening to the disembodied voice from the radio, a man is urging us to clean up our rivers. This doesn’t particularly concern me as I don’t own one but his next remark has my full attention. The voice mentions Manchester Ship Canal. Immediately my mind races back to when I was about ten years old and standing on the bank of the Manchester Ship Canal, clutching a damp towel round my thin white shoulders, my lips blue with cold, teeth chattering like a pair of demented castanets, and looking round occasionally in case there was an approaching bobby, because swimming, splashing about and especially diving or jumping off the lock gates were strictly forbidden. We weren’t too bothered, though. In the event of a constable hurrying towards us, we’d simply jump into the water and swim to the opposite bank, and scrambling out we would pull faces at the sweating arm of the law, the width of the scum-laden, smelly canal protecting us. The police must have been aware of this tactic and wisely kept away—they had better things to do.

Deciding it might be warmer in the water, I was about to jump in when I noticed a small black object floating through the half-open, decaying lock gates. As it moved slowly towards the shrieking, juvenile, splashing mêlée, I was able to see what it was: a poor, dead dog floating majestically along, legs stiff and pointing to the sky. I quickly shouted a warning. I had to shout twice over the hullabaloo, pointing at the dog. When they realised what it was, there was panic as they parted to allow the dog unhindered passage to its Valhalla—just another incident on the turgid Manchester Ship Canal.

Returning to the present, I turn up the volume of my radio to hear the news that now at last the Manchester Ship Canal has been cleansed and purified, oxygenised or whatever, and for the first time in living memory can be enjoyed by the natural inhabitants, fish. But then the marine expert goes on to say, ‘In the old days, anyone found frolicking about in the oil-scummed waters of the canal was unceremoniously hauled out and rushed off to hospital to have their stomach pumped.’ On this note I switch off, and once again stare at the ceiling, recalling the dead-dog incident. It wasn’t unusual—sometimes dead cats, rags of clothing and unmentionables floated calmly along—and when the weather was unusually hot there was always a gang of young herberts splashing about among the jetsam. To my knowledge none of us went down with malaria, typhoid, yellow fever or beri beri. The only real threat was hypothermia, and certainly no one was hauled out and rushed off to the infirmary to have their stomach pumped. I can only assume that in those days our bodies developed an immunity to diseases not yet known to man.

It’s a good job my father didn’t get to hear about my frolicking in the Manchester Ship Canal. He had never chastised me physically before, not even a slap round my bottom, but if he found out he would be driven to break the rule of a lifetime. Luckily for me he never showed any interest in where I’d been, who I’d been with or how I’d managed to rip my jersey. If he’d asked me, I would have answered him truthfully—we lived in a moral climate. However, I was apprehensive that day when I returned home from the Manchester Ship Canal, hair all damp and spiky, that he would say something like ‘Where the dickens have you been?’ and like George Washington I would have to tell him.

One Saturday morning I came running into the house, not because it was cold outside, nor because it was dinnertime. The explanation was simple: I hadn’t been out for more than a couple of minutes and was idly chucking stones at the lamppost just outside when Jack had lolloped out of the ginnel and barked at me. Jack was a wirehaired brindle dog and we had a mutual dislike for each other. He’d never forgotten that I’d once hit him with a stick when he’d had his back to me. He’d been more shocked than hurt and, ashamed of his cowardice, he’d been after me ever since. It was an unfair contest, as he had teeth and could run faster than me. Luckily I wasn’t too far from our vestibule door, but even as I slammed it on his slavering chops he kept up his barking and frantic scratching on the door.

I sauntered into the kitchen.

Mother said, ‘Hark at that! What have you done to him now?’

And taking John by the hand, she brushed past me, opened the door and shooed Jack away, and he went without further argument. While she was gone I noticed a near stranger in the room. It was my brother Vernon, and he was looking at me as if he could smell something nobody else could. My father was sitting in front of the fire, reading The Green Final, a newspaper someone had left in the tram on his way home from work the night before. My father wasn’t actually reading it as he was in the middle of an argument with Vernon, which I had inadvertently interrupted. Vernon was on one of his visits, and he always seemed to upset Dad, who was used to overlookers and managers berating him at work but was definitely against being taken to the cleaners by his eldest son.

‘Dad,’ said Vernon, ‘you don’t understand…’

I didn’t wait to find out what was beyond my father’s comprehension. I’d seen the signs on his face, which was the colour of a Cox’s orange pippin.

I went to Mother and John at the front and listened attentively while she discussed the price of bread with Mrs Turner, our neighbour. I’ve no idea how the battle in the kitchen went, but for the next few days we were three in the bed. By the time Vernon came upstairs John and I were usually asleep, but what I did learn during his stay with us was that his real home was with his Grandma Stacey in a beautiful house where everyone had a chair to sit on at meals and he didn’t have to stand at the table as we did to eat. The way Vernon had always spoken of Grandma Stacey, Great-grandpa and Great-grandma Wilson you’d think they were all closely related to royalty, and his disdain for 36 Leslie Street and all its occupants was plain for all to see. Poor deluded Vernon. It never crossed my mind that if he was related to the Staceys, so was I.

Birthdays came and went like any other day; we neither received nor sent cards, as they were unaffordable luxuries—in fact I don’t think newsagents in our area even stocked them. But Christmas was something else. A few days before the ‘big one’, most houses began their preparations: sagging paper chains of merry colours criss-crossed the room from gas mantle to any other protuberance on the opposite wall, and small Christmas trees, festooned with tinsel and cotton wool, always sprouted in practically every home and certainly where there were children.

One particular Christmas Vernon, John and I had been saving for months to buy a present for Mother. Vernon was now permanently home but much more likeable, so he hadn’t been completely brainwashed and he didn’t argue with Dad as he would have in the past. On Christmas Eve the ‘old ’uns’ had gone out for the evening and with our pooled resources Vernon (ten), John (six) and I (eight) stole out of the house into the darkness of the Mucky Broos. Puffed, we dropped to a stroll by the chapel round by Robin Hill Baths and made an excited final burst up Barker Street to the lights of the shops. It was then that we received our first shock. There was a phalanx of people, almost a solid wall of Christmas Eve shoppers, all in good humour but unfortunately for us impenetrable. The three of us held hands tightly, John in the middle hemmed in by a sea of raincoats, great coats, long jerseys and scarves. To say we were frightened would be an understatement. It was only about seven o’clock and the shops didn’t close till nine. To add to our folly, none of us had any idea what sort of present we were looking for. Panic-stricken, I held tightly on to John’s hand—if I let go I might never see my brothers again. John wasn’t tall enough to see above the midriffs and I wasn’t tall enough to look anyone in the eye. Desperately we tried to retrace our steps—after all, we could always postpone giving a present until Easter—but there was no way out. There was a sudden surge of people behind us and we found ourselves in an ironmonger’s shop. Thankfully it was fairly empty, which was hardly surprising, as nails, baths, hammers and bicycle chains are not at the top of everyone’s Christmas shopping list, but it would do for us: the sooner we got back to the sanctity of the familiar and peaceful Leslie Street the better. Pointing to a saucepan up on a shelf, Vernon asked the price. He seemed to know what he was doing, and John and I watched him, our mouths agape with admiration. Vernon took a knotted hankie out of his pocket and watched the man count out the contents; Mother would have a Christmas present after all.

Our Christmas mornings were predictable yet wonderful. Like most other children on Christmas morning, we woke well before our normal reveilles in eager anticipation of the most exciting day of the year. Our stockings, which had hung over the fireplace the night before, were now at the foot of our bed. Kneeling quickly up in the bed, we took a stocking—it didn’t matter which as they were all the same, each lumpy with an apple, an orange and some nuts. This was only the prelude: there would be more goodies under the tree downstairs. This Christmas morning, when it was light enough, we marched into Mother’s bedroom—she was still in bed but Dad was downstairs lighting the fire—and Vernon and I pushed John forward. He proudly held out the saucepan as we all piped ‘Merry Christmas, Mother.’ After we were dressed, and it didn’t take us long as we all slept in our shirts anyway, as we clattered downstairs we could see the rosy flickering on the kitchen wall reflected from the cheery fire in the grate. Dad hurried upstairs with a cup of tea for Mother and the hurly-burly of another Christmas Day began.

Every year our main present was always a Cadbury’s Selection box, which we joyously received as if it was a surprise, but the real surprise was usually a present we could all share. This year it was a Meccano set, which we pounced upon eagerly because, according to the blurb, with Meccano we could build anything. For the rest of the morning screws and nuts littered the floor as we salivated at the delicious aroma coming from the stove as Mother cooked the dinner. And what a meal it turned out to be: Yorkshire pudding with onion gravy to start with, followed by rabbit, roast potatoes and cabbage. When the table was a ruin of bones, bits of cabbage and dirty plates, we all thanked Mother, who said it was much easier to cook now with a new saucepan. Even to this day I bet that if we were all granted a wish for something to eat our answer would be unanimous: a rabbit.

For the evening party we all went down to Grandma Ashton’s for the traditional fun and games in which we children and the adults took part. When we arrived at 8 Houghton Street, there was already a Christmassy feel about the evening, with laughter, warm spicy smells, holly around the picture of Uncle Stanley, mistletoe in a strategic position over the door, and on the table Mint Imperials, mince pies and, best of all, luscious black Pontefract cakes like the buttons on an undertaker’s overcoat. Cups of tea for the ladies, something stronger for the men; we had sarsaparilla from large stone bottles, which when empty would be filled with boiling water to warm many a cold bed.

The games were the same as last year, but who remembers, and what does it matter? We children were led one at a time into a darkened kitchen; I was the first to go. I was told to kneel, facing a large white cloth, behind which the light of a torch shone through, and was instructed in a sepulchral voice to put my nose against the light and follow its every movement. My nose never left the light, which I followed slowly up the cloth, and as my head cleared the top a cold, wet sponge was slapped into my face, I yelped, everybody in the kitchen laughed and I joined them. John and Vernon both yelped as I did, and I laughed before the grown-ups because I knew what was going to happen. This was turning out to be a really great Christmas.

Gleaming with excitement at the thought of the next romp, the three of us were in the kitchen, which was now lit by candles. Auntie Emmy started to blindfold me, and so I assumed that I was to be first again for whatever was in store. She led me from the kitchen into the front room, where I was helped to step up on to a plank of wood, and again the sepulchral voice informed me what was to happen: ‘You are going on a flight and you must be very brave.’ Already I was trembling, especially when the board I was standing on began to rise up and up and up, until finally I banged my head and the sepulchral voice went on, ‘You have just hit the ceiling, and now you must jump.’ I was petrified: I couldn’t possibly jump down from where I was at the top of the room. But they urged me on, and eventually I took a deep breath and gave an almighty leap. There was a roar of laughter as Auntie Emmy took off the blindfold and the realisation dawned that I had only really been lifted about six inches. Sheepishly I smiled—it was such a simple mind-over-matter diversion. Auntie Emmy had been kneeling in front while I was blindfolded and as the three-foot plank was being slowly lifted by Dad and Joe Waterhouse, an uncle in waiting until he married Auntie Emmy, Auntie Edna had bumped a book on top of my head, which I took to be the ceiling, and the illusion was complete.

Vernon was next. He wasn’t petrified at all and when Auntie Edna banged the book on top of his head, he just smiled and whipped off his blindfold to loud groans of disappointment—he must have remembered last year’s party. John didn’t have a go as he was already fast asleep, and it was time for us to be taken home, leaving the grown-ups to their own Christmas games.

Grandma Ashton’s seemed to be a meeting place for all our relations. I recall evenings when Dad, Uncle Joe and two other men I cannot bring to mind played cribbage for a ha’penny a point. Before the cards were even shuffled, the curtains had to be drawn and the front door locked, as gambling was illegal—such was our respect for the police, which in this present day sounds overcautious, as the players neither lost nor won more than tuppence an evening.

Northmoor Council School, built before the Boer War, was about half an hour’s walk from across the Mucky Broos up Chadderton Road, past a huge black shiny boulder on the left, which was reputed to be a meteorite from outer space, awesome in itself and, even more frighteningly, said to be bewitched and evil. I never walked by it without crossing my fingers, looking straight ahead, although I watched it out of the corner of my eye in case it did something untoward. That was my daily journey to school, my first small step on the road to education, but after that fatuous fanfare I can recall only very little of my early schooldays.

Question: ‘How old were you when you enrolled?’

Answer: ‘Don’t know.’

Question: ‘What was the name of the headmaster?’

Answer: ‘She was a headmistress.’

Question: ‘What was her name?’

Answer: ‘No idea.’

It would be a very dull interview indeed. I remember the headmistress, a motherly, plumpish lady with white hair, for one unforgettable incident. Every morning, first thing, the whole school assembled for prayers, which culminated with a hymn: the headmistress stepped on to a podium, took up her baton and raised it—this was the only still moment of her performance—and then, crash, bang, wallop, we were off…Arms flailing about, she conducted with gusto in a way reminiscent of a flight controller on board an aircraft carrier guiding a drunken trainee pilot down on to the deck. Not only was it fascinating to watch, but on one particular occasion there was a highlight yet to come. So frenetic was her conducting that there was a flash of colour beneath the hem of her frock and a voluptuous red garter made its appearance, slid down her leg and rested round her ankle. We all waited for the other garter to appear, but we were disappointed. Sadly the garter never appeared again and I assumed she had bought herself a pair of braces. That is my only recollection of the headmistress. In fact I cannot bring to mind other members of the staff, even though they stood behind the headmistress at prayers.

I invariably looked forward to playtime, unless it was raining, when I would have to stand shivering under a sheltered bit of the schoolyard with the others who didn’t possess raincoats. No one except the staff was allowed to remain in school during playtime. Worse still, we could see the teachers staring through the rainspattered windows in order to keep an eye on us, steaming cups of tea in their hands, and biscuits. As we watched enviously there was a sound of thunder, but in fact it was the rumbling of a mass of small stomachs at the sight of the biscuits. When the weather was good playtime would be a blessing—a shrieking, screaming, laughing riot of sound, skipping ropes for the girls and tennis balls kicked all over the place by the lads. One of the more popular games was Jubby. Kneeling, we flipped marbles or glass alleys into a small dent in a corner of the school yard and then we—unfortunately I have forgotten what we did then, but we enjoyed it.

Alongside the ‘Jubby bandits’, another line of kneeling ragamuffins played in pairs a game of Skimmy On. This entailed skimming tab cards alternately at two other cards leaning up against the wall. If you knocked one over, you scooped up all the cards that had missed the target: then another card was placed up against the wall and round two was on. To see these lines of ‘skimmers’ and their intense concentration was like observing Northmoor’s version of one-armed bandits in Las Vegas. Incidentally, those tab cards, better known as cigarette cards, came in most packets of cigarettes. They disappeared about fifty years ago, if not more, and as cigarettes are not politically correct I don’t envisage those wonderful educational cigarette cards coming back, more’s the pity.

Another memory of Northmoor’s is when, after school had ended one day, I dashed out into the pouring rain. It was bucketing down and I was in two minds as to whether to run back into school or swim home. I did neither and, ducking my head, I raced across the street, only to find that the pavement was dry. When I turned round I discovered that the monsoon on the other side of the street was still pelting down. I stared at this phenomenon, a solid wall of rain two yards away. After a short time I rushed off home to relate this extraordinary experience. I expected amazement or at least astonishment, but all I got in reply was a bored, ‘It didn’t rain here.’ That’s all I can remember about Northmoor Council School…funny about the garter, though.

Every Saturday morning Dad sent me up to Grandma Sykes to see if she wanted any errands to be done. This was odd, because he and Mother were reluctant to send me on errands at home. Many years later my father told me that he would never send me out on errands because of my woolly-headedness. I would very likely not remember which shop I was going to, and even if I arrived at the right place I would have forgotten why I was there. Why, then, did Father send me to Grandma Sykes to see if she wanted any errands done? It couldn’t be because he disliked her—after all, she was his mother. Perhaps he just wanted me out of the way for a time. When I arrived at Grandma Sykes I asked her about it, but she just smiled, shook her head and sent me off on an errand, which was no answer at all. It must have been preying on my mind, because I went into the butcher’s and asked for five pounds of King Edwards, and by the time I reached the greengrocer’s I’d forgotten the potatoes and came out with a cabbage. Grandma sighed heavily, took the cabbage from me, donned a shawl over her head and we made our way to the shop together. As we walked, she casually remarked that she and Granddad Sykes together with Aunt Marie, Dad’s younger sister, and Uncle Ernest, Dad’s brother, would soon be moving in with us. This information was of such importance that it banished all the other rubbish from my mind.

Two or three days later, the invasion was upon us. They hadn’t far to come, as they lived in Tilbury Street, which ran along the top of Leslie Street. Everything they owned was carried from their house to ours—the cost of a removal van would have been infinitely more than the value of their assets. My father and Granddad Sykes staggered down the path lugging a large double bed, followed by Grandma Sykes and a neighbour edging sideways holding a mattress between them as if inciting the watchers to jump out of their bedroom windows on to it, Aunt Marie, with an armful of blankets and not far behind Uncle Ernest, hidden under a moth-eaten armchair, slipping and slithering in front of me. ‘Every little helps,’ they said, handing me an ashtray—‘A Present from Hastings’—and a three-legged stool which must have been handed down through generations of farmers.

Stanley Taylor, who was walking out with Aunt Marie, lurched along the uneven ground with a ragged, worn-out carpet on his shoulder. Mercifully it was rolled up, and so its threadbare condition was hidden from the critical watchers. As the column made its way to number thirty-six it must have been reminiscent of Dr Livingstone’s first expedition into darkest Africa. Within a few more hours the Tilbury Street house was stripped bare, and that evening the changeover was complete. Granddad and Grandma Sykes, Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernest had finally made 36 Leslie Street their new home.

So now there were nine residents: Granddad Sykes’s family in the front bedroom, and in the back bedroom Dad and Mother in their corner and John, me and Vernon in the bed opposite. Nowadays it would be deemed overcrowding but to Father it was halving the rent.

Our house, like millions of others, had four rooms, two up and two down, but the hub of all this domesticity, the nerve centre, the engine room, was the kitchen, the one room that was communal. Nine of us ate our staggered meals there. Washing up, washing clothes and washing ourselves took place at the sink, which was next to the stove. Breakfast time was the busiest period before the workers left. No one wide awake enough to converse muttered ‘Look at the time’ or ‘Is there any Shredded Wheat?’ It was feverish, like a railway buffet when the train is due in. During melancholy moments I fervently wished we could have our kitchen back and our own bedroom, but almost immediately I would be ashamed of my uncharitable thoughts.

Grandma Sykes was my favourite. Once I returned home from my primary school, stiff-legged, tearful and as far down in the depths of despair as I’d ever been because I’d messed my pants and had been sent home to get myself cleaned up; it was this disgusted dismissal in front of the class that had been the final straw. However, when I entered our front door I was met by Grandma Sykes. She was on her own and when she saw me she wasn’t cross or anything. She just said, ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’ Then she lifted me on to the draining board, and took off my shoes and stockings so that I could put my feet in the sink. ‘By jingo,’ she remarked as she peeled off my pants. ‘What have you been eating? Any farmer would pay good money for this lot.’ In spite of myself I chuckled, and by the time I’d been cleaned and dried, and had half a slice of bread and dripping in my hand, I felt a wave of warm affection for her. I stood in front of the fire, watching the steam rising from my damp, clean pants, and when everybody came home that evening Grandma didn’t utter a word about the drama that had taken place earlier in the afternoon; it was our secret. So as far as I was concerned, I’d be happy for Granny to stay with us for ever.

Granddad didn’t say much. He and Uncle Ernest worked at the same place, and when they came home in the evening, Granddad washed his hands and face at the sink, followed by Uncle Ernest. Then they’d sit down for their supper, which was usually a plateful of baked beans, and as I had eaten much earlier the sight of Granddad and Uncle Ernest slurping their way through those delicious baked beans had me salivating. To be hungry was the norm, but it didn’t help to be constantly reminded of it.

I saw very little of Aunt Marie. She was very rarely home by the time I went to bed. She worked in a shoe shop along with a man called Stan Taylor, and it wasn’t long before they were courting. She never brought him home to meet her parents, but that was understandable—where would he sit? And a meal was out of the question, unless he brought his own. Many, many months later they were married and the mystery man became my Uncle Stan. I met him for the first time at some family gathering or other and I took a shine to him from that moment. I secretly observed him standing in a little group of relatives. He had a perpetual smile on his lips, and occasionally he would nod at something.

The discussion was apparently about Stanley Baldwin, our Prime Minister—I knew that because Granddad talked of little else. Everyone put in his four pence except Stan. He didn’t utter a word, but nodded now and again, raising his eyebrows at something or other. I was waiting for him to join in but he didn’t, and I came to the conclusion that he must be a very wise man who kept his counsel; or to look at it another way he could be stone deaf and couldn’t hear a word anybody said. Anyway, Aunt Marie was the first to spread her wings. When she and Stan married they went to live in a little village called New Longton, not too far from Preston, away from Oldham for privacy but close enough in case of emergencies.

Uncle Ernest was next to go. Still in his mid-teens, he enlisted in the Royal Navy and in peacetime that seemed like a pretty smart move—sailing the high seas, three meals a day, not much pay but regular, and when he’d served his twelve years he’d still be young enough and with sufficient skills to obtain a steady job ashore. So his departure from 36 Leslie Street left only Granddad and Grandma. Two down and two to go, but already I was missing Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernest. Is there anything so fickle as a child’s thoughts?

As a child I was a very sickly specimen. In fact my father told me many years later that a doctor, shaking his head sadly as he looked at me, said, ‘You’ll never rear him.’ Naturally, being but a few months old, I was totally unaware of the doctor’s opinion and I simply continued to live. On the other hand when John came into the world he must have shone like the evening star. He was a beautiful baby, radiant, healthy and, judging by his ever-present smile, comfortable with his surroundings. It was inconceivable that any germ or virus would defile such a perfectly healthy child. Hospitals weren’t full of little ‘uns like John; the wards were more likely to be occupied by people like me. On the other hand, it is all clearly logical if you think about it: what self-respecting germ is going to be satisfied with a stale crust when there’s a leg of lamb on the table? Poor John happened to be the latter, and he was carried off to hospital with scarlet fever. I was mortified, and the atmosphere at home was dark and sombre, as if the gas mantle had gone out and we didn’t have enough for the meter. Weeks seemed like months, but it all ended happily when Mother collected him from hospital, and although it was foggy outside the sun was in our hearts. But it left me with a sobering thought: if scarlet fever could happen to John, was I next in line, and would Dad start worrying all over again if it was possible to rear me?

Illness struck once more, and to everyone’s astonishment it wasn’t me. It was Vernon this time and, more serious than scarlet fever, he had the dreaded diphtheria, which was high up on the mortality list. Why Vernon? He’d always looked pretty healthy to me—after all, he’d virtually been brought up at the Staceys’ on a more balanced diet, too costly for Leslie Street. Prunes and custard don’t encourage diphtheria, so why him? Truthfully if I could have changed places with Vernon I would not have hesitated. I felt better equipped to deal with illness than either John or Vernon.

On that black day the clang of the ambulance bell opened practically every front door in Leslie Street, not out of idle curiosity but because the residents were bonded together by a genuine concern and sympathy for the grieving household. Inside 36 Leslie Street, as we waited apprehensively while a burly ambulance man was upstairs preparing Vernon for his admittance, something extraordinary happened: a little black bird flew in through the open front door into the kitchen, turned and flew out again. My stomach was gripped by a cold foreboding. It was a bad omen. A few moments later, the ambulance man made his way carefully downstairs, carrying Vernon, wrapped in a blanket, his face white and bloodless, and his eyes closed as his head lolled against the ambulance man’s chest. I was convinced that I’d never see Vernon again, but, God be praised, as usual I was being over-dramatic. After some weeks, or it may have been longer, Vernon was cured and discharged from hospital. Dad walked him home and what a joy it was when he arrived! Mother, John and I shared a huge smile of welcome. In those long-forgotten days in the north-west we were certainly not demonstrative, but our faces said it all. We were a whole family again. It had been a harrowing time—first John smitten by scarlet fever, and then Vernon struck down with diphtheria—and the most I could contribute was a runny nose.

Oddly enough for a delicate child, I never saw the inside of a hospital, not even to visit John and Vernon; but I hadn’t escaped completely unscathed. I was laid low for a few days with mandatory mumps, and I must say I quite enjoyed the experience, propped up in the bed with hot milk; and, best of all, Grandma Sykes brought me a comic to read every day, wiped my face with a warm flannel and combed my hair. I’d never had such personal care and attention in my life.

On the day of the doctor’s visit, Grandma Sykes was like a nervous chicken awaiting a fox, plumping up the pillows, giving my face an extra shine, stuffing the comic in a drawer, even running a damp cloth over knobs on the bed rail until there was a rat-a-tattat on the front door. Grandma smoothed her apron and gave me a warning look as if to say, ‘Don’t go away.’

Dr Law was respected by the whole community, where it was generally accepted that he was a fine man. I’d seen him in his surgery a few times—once just to pick up a prescription for cough mixture, and on another occasion when John had pink eye and I went with him—and on each occasion Dr Law was seated behind his desk, which we had to go round so that he could examine little patients without having to bend down. On the two days when he had called at our house about the scarlet fever and diphtheria I hadn’t been at home, and I’d never actually seen him standing up, so when he had to duck his head to enter the bedroom where I was prostrate with mumps I got quite a shock. He was immense, well over six feet tall; his brown hair had an off-centre parting, and he exuded good health and breeding in stark contrast to the pinched white faces of undernourished Lancashire.

As he approached the bed, he spoke in a deep, melodious Irish brogue. ‘And how are you this morning, young man?’

Grandma, following him in, brought up a chair.

‘Thank you,’ he said in a dark velvet voice that made her blush, and he sat down to put his stethoscope on my chest. ‘’Tis a fine morning,’ he said as he listened to my heartbeat.

I nodded, as it was still uncomfortable to speak.

He stood up and, placing his stethoscope in his bag, he said, ‘You’ll do.’ Then he nodded and Grandma saw him out.

When they’d left the room, I slipped out of bed and wobbled over to the window. As Dr Law climbed into his trap, he said a last few words to Grandma, raised his trilby to her, and then slapped his reins on the pony’s rump and clip-clopped to his next patient. Oh, if only I could grow up to be half as good a man as Dr Law.

There was only one drawback to the billeting arrangements. At five thirty every weekday morning, the knocker-up came, a man shouldering a long pole with wire prongs on the end of it with which he tapped on the front bedroom window like brushes on a snare drum to let my father know that it was time to rise and shine. However, Granddad was in the front bedroom now, and so he had to scramble out of bed in his shirt, tippy-toe to the window, push it up and stick his head out to let the knocker-up know that they’d got the message; then, pulling the window down, he tiptoed on the cold oil cloth into our bedroom to wake up my father. This done, he’d tiptoe back to his own still-warm bed, because his place of work was closer and he didn’t have to get up until seven thirty—what luxury!

The services of the knocker-up cost my father a penny a week. Imagine: on those cold, dark, winter mornings, the unfortunate man would have to tap, tap on bedroom windows 240 times a week just to earn a pound, barely enough to keep him out of the workhouse. And by the way Granddad didn’t tiptoe in order to be quiet: if he’d put his feet flat down in winter they might have stuck to the below-zero linoleum.

Talking of shirts: they were the standard sleep attire for males; the ladies wore nighties. We all knew about pyjamas, of course—we’d learned about them from American films. We were aware that the well-to-do brushed their teeth, but a toothbrush had yet to make its appearance in our house or in any other domicile on our patch. Most of the grown-ups ate with false teeth, their smiles a bright uniform plastic. These dentures were heirlooms and, like spectacles, were handed down. Using these was better than having porridge at each meal.

Across the road from the top of Houghton Street where the Ashtons lived was the start of Oldham Edge, a large area of sparsely grassed ups and downs that could have originally been a breakaway from the Pennine chain. It was bisected from the Royton end to the heights of Oldham by a straight road in desperate need of repair possibly, in fact almost certainly, built by the ancient Romans. The whole hilly, hummocky area rose to magnificent views of commercial Oldham. A dozen or more black factory chimneys belched dark smoke straight up on a rare calm day but in a capricious wind all the smoke would suddenly veer at right angles to the chimneys and then move as one in another direction like synchronised smoking. On Sundays, however, there was no such entertainment as the cotton mills enjoyed a day of rest and it was on these days that the workers—the younger ones, that is—got together for their sport on Oldham Edge. In the summer there was cricket, but there were not many matches because of the weather and because flat bits of Oldham Edge were sparse. In the winter there were games of football requiring unknown talents when dribbling along the side of the hill, which had piles of clothing at either end for goalposts.

I once played footie one Sunday when the light wasn’t good and ominous dark clouds had been assembling since early morning until the whole of the sky was black. I can’t remember how the game was afoot when the heavy leather ball flew over my head and before I could pull myself together I was trampled under a stampede of players. There must have been forty or fifty a side on that pitch, and as they were mostly young men wearing ordinary working clothes it was difficult to know who was on the opposing team. How I got involved in the first place, wearing my only shirt and an old pair of off-white army underpants over my own short pants, I’ll never know. Then the ball went over my head again, this time in the opposite direction, and I was faced by a sweating mob chasing the ball. I didn’t hesitate: I joined them. I could have been trampled to death. Then, to make matters worse, the monsoon broke, as heavy a deluge as I’d ever seen. Immediately the pace of the game eased up. It had to, as within a few minutes large areas of Oldham Edge were waterlogged and to kick a ball when it was floating was against all the rules of the game. Everything spluttered to a halt when one of the young bucks picked up the ball and walked disconsolately homewards, and everyone slouched off. It was too late for running and we were all wet through.

Hair plastered to my head, I went as well, but not home. The nearest port of call was 8 Houghton Street. When I knocked on the front door it was opened by Auntie Edna, and straight away she turned to shout into the room, ‘Another survivor from the Titanic.’ I later discovered that I’d turned up at the wrong football match: I should have been enjoying a kickabout with other little boys half a mile away.

Standing on the bed one day, I found that I could just about reach the bulkhead, a small space beneath the rafters, and I was curious to know if anything was stored there. I wasn’t tall enough to see, but by swinging my arm about I came into contact with a leather suitcase. I swept it down on to the bed in a cloud of dust. It wasn’t heavy, and so at first I thought it must be empty, but when I opened it I found an old dog-eared hardback book, with a yellow cover, entitled Tudor Kings and Queens of England. I wasn’t too interested, because my attention was drawn to the lining of the suitcase, which was an old newspaper. I opened it out and my eye was taken by drawings of slim young women advertising dresses buttoned at the neck but with skirts down to the calves—very daring, as the paper must have been at least ten years old and the present year was barely into the 1930s. It had the latest styles, mind you, all priced under a pound, and the most modern handbags from Italy, less than ten bob. There were no photographs in the newspaper just drawings. How I wish now that I’d kept it to the present day, but then again how many things would I have kept had I ‘some power the giftie gie us’ (Robbie Burns). I was just about to close the case and chuck it back when a sudden thought swept through my mind. Tudor Kings and Queens of England? I’d never read a book in my life but there’s always a first time. Taking the book downstairs, I sat on a buffet and flipped through the pages. I realised that it was going to be a stiff test because it contained no pictures.

Chapter One and I embarked on my first literary expedition. Page two, page three—diligently I read every word, not understanding any of them. By dinnertime I was three parts through the turgid, boring kings and queens of England, but with a slice of bread buttered with condensed milk I pressed on. Dad, who was out of work in the depression of the thirties, came home after a fruitless job hunt, took off his cap, coat and scarf and, seeing that I was already eating my dinner, stuck a slice of bread on the end of the toasting fork and held it over the fire. I wished I’d thought of that, but then again condensed milk and toast was unthinkable. I went back to my book. I hadn’t far to go now, and I was devouring the book page by page, reading every word religiously. I even read what some unknown had written on the bottom of page 163: in a spidery hand he’d scrawled, ‘Remind Amy about Saturday.’ I remember turning the corner of the page down in case I might want to read it again. It was intriguing…Perhaps Amy was his intended, or maybe they were already married and what was happening on Saturday? A dance, a football match…Ah, but could the writer be a girl and Amy her best friend? I stared unseeing at the page before me, and then I pulled myself together and concentrated—only a few more pages to go now.

Eventually near teatime I came to the most wonderful part of the book: just two words, ‘The End’. Snapping the book shut I stood up and stretched. I’d been hunched for hours but it had been worth it.

I casually edged towards my father and said, ‘Dad, I’ve just read a book,’ as if I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

He said, ‘What’s it about?’

I stared at him blankly. I was flummoxed. Wasn’t it enough that I’d read it? After all, that was the achievement—surely I didn’t have to understand it as well. On second thoughts it might have been better to have counted the words instead of reading them. Then I could have said, ‘Dad, there are twenty-five thousand, four hundred and twenty-six words in this book, not counting the title.’ I just looked at him. He was staring at me pitifully, as if I was slightly backward, and on reflection I think he had a point.

I can’t ever recollect my father having a serious talk with me or anyone else for that matter. He was a quiet, gentle person and never, ever, did I hear Dad swear, to the day he died in 1972, but if provoked beyond all endurance he always used the same innocent alternative. It was ‘broad lastic’, uttered through gritted teeth. It scared the daylights out of us. I know it sounds innocuous, but throughout my life I probably heard as many expletives as any other veteran, and none as dangerous as ‘broad lastic’ when growled by my father.

He was a man of principles and on election day he would vote Conservative, the only one in a community of staunch, long-live, die-hard Labourites. Dad even put a photo of our local Tory candidate in the front window. This was unfortunate for John and me when on the day before the votes were counted the young sons of Labour supporters came out with rolled-up yellow paper bound by string, which they whirled about their heads, and lambasted us for betraying the working class. However, on the following day all was forgotten and we carried on playing together as if nothing had happened, which was true as the Liberals usually got in.

Every Sunday, while other tired, weary fathers lay a-bed till dinnertime, our dad was preparing himself for his morning’s hobby: he was a campanologist or, in common parlance, a bell-ringer.

Whatever the weather, he would stride across the Mucky Broos to St Mary’s Parish Church, not in his drab, worn, workaday clobber, but completely transformed in black bowler hat, overcoat—always unbuttoned—flapping behind him like an opera cloak, stiff white collar, black tie and highly polished shoes protected by pearl-grey spats, which intrigued me. I can remember watching him fastening them over his shoes, dexterously making them secure with a buttonhook, which he always replaced on the mantelpiece, out of my reach. Every time I watched him going to church my heart swelled with pride, even though I knew that in the lining of his bowler was rolled-up newspaper to prevent it from falling over his eyes, that his overcoat had only one button left and that his shoes once belonged to his father and had more balled-up newspaper in the toes to prevent him from walking out of them in the damp Broos. From a distance he was a real bobby-dazzler, but close up the rag-and-bone man wouldn’t have given him fifteen bob for the lot. Anyway, what do fancy clothes matter? It’s the man inside that drives the engine. Dad looked forward with excited anticipation to his stint in the belfry, just as a keen football supporter will push his way through the turnstiles at Boundary Park to stand for almost two hours on a cold, windy terrace to watch Oldham Athletic.

Arriving at the church opposite the war memorial, he strode over the gravestones, one of which was for a whole family: husband, wife and six children, who all died within a week in the year 1734. What a tragic story behind that! If this was the graveyard, how old was St Mary’s Parish Church? I can imagine my father opening the great front door which led to the stone steps winding their way up to the belfry, ‘Good mornings’ to the seven other ringers, overcoats and jackets on hooks in the corner, sleeves rolled up as they approached their allocated places, a nod from the conductor, and then with a creak and a rattle of the bell ropes the Sunday morning silence shattered by the clamouring of the bells. The opening round was usually reasonable, but then the rot set in and the bells seemed to compete, jostling with each other for a piece of the action. It was as if a mighty hand from above had scooped up all the bells to fling them down to earth, clanging and banging as they bounced down Barker Street.

I don’t wish to sound disloyal, but the bell-ringers cocooned in their sheltered belfry do not get the full benefits of their efforts. I’ve never mentioned this observation to a soul and to all campanologists, in spite of my uneducated criticism; and in fact I would never ever swap the bell-ringers for the soul-less chimes of a press-button carillon. As I was writing this I heard a loud grinding noise: it could have been my poor father turning over in his grave…

Vernon and I were in the old St Mary’s Parish Church choir and John joined us when he was eight years old. Also in the choir was Dad’s older sister, Aunt Mag, and an alto Aunt Marie, Dad’s younger sister, who was the first lady bell-ringer in England. Mother was exempt because she was cooking the dinner. How’s that for a family record? We almost outnumbered the congregation. While Dad and Aunt Marie were bouncing up and down on their ropes, Vernon, John and I were making our way to the church to bring joy and hallelujah to the faithful and this journey by Robin Hill Baths, up Barker Street, and through the Tommyfield market was at times an eerie experience. Every Sunday morning Oldham was a ghost town; it was as if the whole population had been spirited away to a distant planet.

Apart from the battle of the bells, the occasional distant cockcrow and the clacking of our footsteps, all was silent. Walking through a deserted Tommyfield was a depressing experience. The whole area was littered with the detritus of a hectic Saturday night—cardboard boxes, straw, wrapping paper, chip paper—disturbed from time to time by a marauding wind, but on days when it was really blowing the predominant noise was the flapping of the stall coverings, like the sails of a three-master crossing the Bay of Biscay in a force nine. This was bend-forward-and-hold-your-cap weather, which we preferred to the malignant calm as we made our way to church.

As for Saturday night, the market was a cacophony of voices, laughter and the constant shuffle of hundreds of feet tramping through the stalls lit garishly with single electric light bulbs or lamps, blue smoke busily curling through the lights from a chippy or a hot dog stand, candy floss machines for young and old. No two stalls were alike—clothing, footwear, crockery, herbal remedies, cheap jewellery; in fact that little world of Tommyfield market catered for almost everything, and if money was tight many people just shuffled round to enjoy the quick-fire repartee of the vendors. Strange as it may seem, the crockery stall invariably drew the biggest audience. A fat jolly man held a dozen dinner plates, slapping them as he announced, ‘I am not going to ask you five shillings…I’m not even going to ask you four bob,’ and then with a triumphant slap he would launch his punchline, ‘Half-a-crown the lot.’ There was a stirring in the crowd, and after a slight pause there was a surge forward, hands outstretched proffering half-crowns while two assistants busily wrapped dozens of plates in old newspaper. Most of the crowd would not even have house room for a dozen dinner plates, but it was Saturday night and what a bargain! There was more crockery to be had, more people to be had and above all there was entertainment. And now as the dawn of Sunday morning creeps silently over Tommyfield, what a contrast to the night before!

I was getting older by the day; in fact in a couple of years I’d be in double figures, so I should have known better…but my friend Richard and I were up to our old shenanigans after nightfall. It wasn’t brilliant, it wasn’t even funny, but you have to remember that in those days we didn’t have wireless, let alone television. Here’s what we did. We’d reach up and rat-a-tat the door knocker of a house in Ward Street, and then scoot across the cart road, flinging ourselves on the darkness of the Mucky Broos to watch the developments. Someone would invariably open the door, and look up and down the street, only to find it deserted. Then they’d close the door, wondering if they had imagined the whole thing. As I said, it wasn’t brilliant, but when did a bit of mischief deter a child? We took it in turns to rat-a-tat another door and another until the game palled.

It couldn’t possibly go on unchallenged and the more doors we knocked on the closer we were to discovery—and so it was on one particular night. It was my turn to rat-a-tat, which I did peremptorily, but there was no time to cross the street, as the door was opened immediately by a young athletic man. I was almost paralysed, scared out of my wits, and I ran panic-stricken for the corner of the street. Richard was already safe in the anonymity of the dark Broos. My little legs were no match for the confident stride of an angry man, and as I rounded the corner his heavy hand grasped my collar and lifted me off my feet, and I am sure he was about to do me serious damage when a deep Irish voice from the darkness shouted ‘Oi!’. I was petrified, and more so when I recognised Constable Matty Lally. I could have survived a blow but not a custodial sentence. I wasn’t too relieved when Matty Lally advised the man to go back home and leave it to the law. The man went off muttering—no one argued with the law—and when he’d gone I tensed for the well-deserved official wallop; but the policeman bent down to me and whispered, ‘How many motor-car numbers did you get?’ I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was talking about but it was a great let-off.

It wasn’t until I was well tucked up in bed that I connected Constable Lally’s ‘How many motor-car numbers did you get?’ to my motor-car spotting day on Featherstall Road—and I lay there wondering what a remarkable memory he had to recall an incident that must have taken place years ago. It was my last thought before sleep took over and sadly that was the last time I saw my new-found friend Constable Matty Lally.

Dad’s hobby was mending pocket watches. Well-to-do men sported pocket watches chained across the front of their waistcoats—wrist watches were, as yet, an unknown in the cotton towns of the northwest—and so to see Dad bending over a backless watch, eyepiece screwed into his eye socket, was a fairly regular occurrence. But on one particular day he was immersed in a larger contraption with dials along the front. He was peering into the innards of the thing with such concentration that he didn’t notice me. In fact if the house had fallen down he would still have been bent over his work, standing on the foundations. This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds because he was insulated from his surroundings by a large pair of earphones clamped round his head.

‘It’s a wireless set,’ he said, answering my enquiry. ‘A cat’s whisker,’ he added, which left me no wiser—what had all the wires and valves got to do with our Tiddles? ‘There’s something there but I can’t make out what it is.’

‘Can’t you make it louder?’ I said helpfully.

He took off his earphones and pointed through the window at the house opposite, in whose backyard was a tall mast as high again as the house. As far as I was concerned it had always been there, but I had assumed that it was a flag pole, although on Remembrance or Empire Days I’d never seen a Union Jack fluttering from it. ‘He can get signals from all over the world with that: it’s a wireless mast.’

Then he stared into his own little contraption and I noticed one of the valves flashing a feeble light nervously, like a child attempting its first step. Quickly Dad slipped on his earphones and listened excitedly for a few moments; then he took off his headphones and transferred them to my head.

I listened intently, and then with a shriek I yelled, ‘It’s a band, it’s a band.’

A moment of history marking the day I heard magic from the airwaves.

I don’t know how, or from whom, or what day I learned that the one I thought was Mother was not my mother at all, and that in fact my real mother had died when I was born. I couldn’t absorb it at first, and when I did it wasn’t earth-shattering: I took it in my stride. It wasn’t a catastrophe—after all, a catastrophe to a little boy is when he puts his hand in his pants pocket and finds a hole where his hard-earned penny should have been, so the news of my real mother was hardly a tremor on the Richter scale. However, a few days later when Dad and I were alone in the kitchen—it must have been Sunday morning because Dad was shaving at the sink, towel tucked into the top of his trousers as he stropped his razor and then pinched his nose to shave his top lip—taking the bull by the horns, I blurted, ‘Dad, what was my real mother’s name?’

He cut himself and after a ‘broad lastic’ he glanced round and, satisfied that we were alone, he muttered, ‘Harriet.’ Then he took a little piece of paper and stuck it on to his top lip to make the blood coagulate. Next he lifted his face to the ceiling and began scraping under his chin.

Thinking that I’d at last opened the door, I said, ‘What was she like?’ and he cut himself again. Why didn’t he just go to the barber’s?

Exasperated, he put down his razor and sent me out to play, and that was the end of the matter. But I didn’t let go. Every time we were alone together and I approached him he found some excuse to forestall any question. I had to know why it had been kept secret from me for so long but as I cleared my throat to ask, the drawbridge came down with a bang—it was a ‘no-go’ area. Nevertheless in the mess of half-formed thoughts and ideas lurking at the back of my head questions as yet unformed required answers.

A few mornings later, I was luxuriating in bed between sleep and full awareness, John not yet awake by my side, the beginning of a perfect day—when suddenly a roller blind in my head shot up, illuminating my mind. No questions or answers about my real mother but, more importantly, explanations! I knew now why the lady called Mother lavished so much love and attention on John: John was her son and I wasn’t. I now understood why Dad was reluctant to even discuss my real mother: it would have been extremely tactless even to mention her name in front of Mother. His life began again when he married Florrie Ashton. The discovery also clarified the three sets of grandparents—the Staceys, the Ashtons and the Sykes—and here was a troubling thought: would I have to give up the Ashtons for my own kin and join Vernon at Grandma Stacey’s? I shuddered. Grandma Ashton must have known about me for years but she’d always treated me with kindness and affection as John’s best friend. It also made it clear why many people regarded me as an adoption gone wrong—a puzzling thought, but now I knew the reason I was strangely comforted.

Once when Mother was filling in a form to enrol John in something or other, John was at her elbow when she filled in ‘name of applicant’ and wrote ‘John Stanley Sykes’.

‘Who’s Stanley?’ he asked and she told him that Uncle Stanley was her brother who was killed at Mons during the Great War.

She said that most people had a middle name and some people had several names but they were mostly royalty. When she saw that John was still a little perplexed she told him that Vernon had three names as well, Vernon Wilson Sykes—Vernon after his father and Wilson the family name. Apparently when he asked what my middle name was she said, ‘He hasn’t got one’, but with my newly acquired knowledge I knew the reason: all the relatives had been used up and there was no one left for me.

Some days later when John told me all this he said that he didn’t think this was fair, and if I wanted to call myself ‘Eric Stanley Sykes’ he was more than willing to share. I thanked him but said I was quite happy with the name I had. Significantly, though, all through his life I never heard him refer to himself as ‘John Stanley Sykes’, nor sign his name as such, and here is the difference between my two brothers, for Vernon on the other hand was inordinately proud to sign himself V.-Wilson Sykes. Poor Vernon, he had left the Wilson household convinced he was better than the ménage at 36 Leslie Street and unfortunately it was an attitude he carried all through his career. He would take a job convinced that in two years he would become managing director and life, unlike Hollywood, doesn’t work like that.

Not having a middle name didn’t bother me at all, but my subconscious wasn’t wholly satisfied until Joe Waterhouse and Auntie Emmy were married and they christened their only son Eric. God bless you, Auntie Emmy.

It appears that everyone had been party to the secret of my birth, but I wish they’d let me in on it. I wouldn’t have told anybody. One thing is certain: I wasn’t going to give up Granddad and Grandma Ashton. I was now an honorary member the Ashton family and John’s mother was still mine as well, and if I left matters alone things would just carry on as before—and they did: Dad had his bellringing, and Mother cooked the meals, did the shopping, dusted and polished every day. My real mother was forgotten. As the saying goes, you never miss what you’ve never had. But somewhere in the great unknown a young woman called Harriet Stacey had other ideas.

In my exciting days of growing up, technology was desperately trying to keep pace with the introduction of motor cars as they began to proliferate, and for the first time an intriguing method of car control emerged. They were called traffic lights: red for stop, amber for wait a while and green to allow you to drive on. They would not change automatically to accomplish this. A car had to drive over a strip of rubber in the road about five yards before the lights, when the lights would turn to green and the car would drive on. The light would stay green until another car travelling in a diagonal direction went over its own rubber, changing the lights in front of it from red to green and the original lights from green to red. It was an ingenious invention and provided us children with hours of hilarity. On Sunday mornings when Oldham was a ghost town we ran from home to the traffic lights, which were at the bottom of Barker Street on our way to church, so as to have plenty of time to take turns at changing the colours, John jumping on one rubber strip while I stood in Barker Street ready to change the lights back. It was not as much fun as Ducky Funny Whip but it stretched our technical capabilities.

Every time I went out from our front door I only had to glance up to my left to see Ward Street Central School, an elegant red-brick building on two floors. All this austere magnificence I’d taken for granted as I played and romped through my early life. On my first day as a pupil there I could stand in the school yard looking down from a higher perspective and surveying all the familiar places. How small were the houses of Leslie and Ward Streets, and the Mucky Broos were not as vast as I’d thought they were. As I looked down at my old stamping ground I wondered if this was what they called higher education.

The headmaster, Mr Parker, was a tall, thin, cadaverous man with a face reminiscent of the Easter Island statues. We didn’t see much of him most of the time, but when we marched along the corridor we instinctively dropped our voices as we passed his study. The door was never open; it was a room of mystery and the boys who’d been inside weren’t very keen to go in again. If, for instance, the teacher considered your wrongdoing so appalling that three strokes of the strap would be insufficient to fit the crime, you would be sent to the headmaster’s study, with words that were of the same gravity as a judge intoning, ‘You will be taken to a place of execution…’ Luckily in all my days at the school I experienced this ordeal only once.

What started off as an innocent prank led to thoughts of running away to join the French Foreign Legion. We had a teacher called Mr Barker and, as opposed to Mr Parker, he was overweight by many a ton and known to all the school as ‘Fat Barker’. Unfortunately one afternoon while in his class I’d sketched a fair likeness of Mr Barker stark naked with his belly hanging out. In my drawing he was facing a woman also in the altogether, both of them with their hands down by their sides. It wasn’t erotic—it wasn’t meant to be. I thought it was funny and I was proud of the likeness. I showed it to my classmates and in no time at all Fat Barker became aware of the chortles and sniggers, and, spotting the paper being passed on, he intercepted the exchange and ordered it to be brought to him. He glanced at it, and then, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, he looked more closely, and without a word he hurried out, leaving the door open. I peered round at the class and everybody was suddenly interested in their exercise books. Typical, I thought: two minutes ago I was a hero and now I had the plague. Fat Barker returned and with a gesture despatched me to the headmaster’s study. He stood back from the door as I passed him as if I might be contagious. There was no appeal, no call for explanation. He knew that the ludicrous figure was meant to be him; the woman could have been Miss Thomson, another teacher.

When I entered the headmaster’s domain, the great man was looking at the sketch. After a time he folded it over until only the bottom of two pairs of legs were visible, held it out to me and said, ‘Did you do this?’

I whispered, ‘Yes, sir,’ and that was it.

I got six strokes of the leather strap on my hand, but it really didn’t hurt that much. He was getting on in years, and I suspect he did himself more damage in wielding the strap than he inflicted on me. But that was only the corporal punishment. What was so embarrassing, so shameful and degrading, was having my name entered in the punishment book. I had a criminal record already and, good grief, it might affect my job prospects if this became public—even worse should Dad get wind of it. As I returned to the class, Mr Barker was holding the strap and I thought for a minute I was going to get a second helping, but he ignored me and I slunk to my desk, an outcast.

Secretly I was glad that Mr Barker hadn’t administered the punishment himself, as he really knew how to hurt you. I remember in glorious Technicolor my first larruping from him. I forget what I’d done to deserve it but there I was in front of the class while F. B. measured his distance. It was to be the first of three. I braced myself and as the leather came whistling down I moved my hand and he caught himself an almighty whack on his knee. This brought a great smothered snigger from the class and three more strokes were added to my original sentence. As Mr Barker taught a mixed class, we lads had to show a bit of bravado whenever we were about to be chastised. It was unmanly to cry in front of the girls, but to tuck your right hand under your left armpit after the punishment was acceptable. Girls were never punished, and I’m sure they secretly revelled in the spectacle as some poor devil held out his hand for the strap. Is this a trait in women? After all, during the French Revolution they took their picnic lunches and their knitting to enjoy the work of Madame Guillotine…But I digress.

One of the popular myths going the rounds regarding the strap was that a hair from one’s head laid across the palm of the hand would take some of the sting out of the blow. It was worth a go, and I tried it a couple of times, but it didn’t work for me, so I packed it in. Had it been a success I could well have been bald before I left school.

Apart from daisies, dandelions and buttercups, I can’t recall ever seeing any other flower. I wouldn’t have recognised a bluebell if you’d rung it violently into my good ear. Even in Westwood Park the rhododendrons were not a riot of colour; they were in fact a dirty grey from the fallout of the factory chimneys of the cotton mills, which caught me at a disadvantage when some joker or other named a festival Beautiful Oldham. Every year schoolchildren had to paint or draw a daffodil and those judged to be winners had the satisfaction of having their efforts pinned round the walls of Werneth Fire Station. The doors were opened to the proud public, and talented offspring pointed out their own contribution to their parents—in my case ‘Eric Sykes, aged twelve years, Ward Street Central School’. It was a marvellous exhilarating day out, culminating in a walk through Werneth Park all in our Sunday best. The daffodils round the walls were at least all yellow but back in the classrooms where we had all competed it would have been a psychiatrist’s nightmare. Most of us had never seen a daffodil and like a rumour some of the entries were greatly distorted.

I’m not sure, but I think we only had one lady teacher at Ward Street Central, Miss Thomson, blonde, medium-sized but bulging. As I think back she reminds me of Miss Piggy in The Muppet Show. Anyway on one occasion I was kept in class to write out some lines before I was dismissed. Head bowed, I was writing ‘I must not do…’ whatever it was for about the hundredth time, with four hundred more to go, when a shadow fell over me. I looked up and Miss Thomson was perched on the edge of my desk, looking down at me in a peculiar way. She was hot and her make-up was beginning to cake, and little beads of perspiration dotted a faint moustache which I’d never noticed before. After a few moments she said, ‘You have very long eyelashes for a boy.’ I thanked her, she gave me a long peculiar look and, picking up my uncompleted lines, she said, ‘That’ll do,’ and left the room. For some inexplicable reason my mind raced back over the years to when I lay wounded and the little nurse with the sad smile stroked my forehead.

Then there was Mr Wilton. He was our English teacher. I think he enjoyed listening to himself a darn sight more than we did. Well built, he wore a grey suit and for the street he wore a brown trilby with the left side of the brim turned down. I suppose that this was how he imagined a poet would wear his hat. Incidentally, why must we have an English teacher? I could have understood it if I’d been French or Greek but I not only spoke English fluently but could read it as well. Mr Wilson was groaning on about something or other and my interest in the lesson waned. I looked out of the window and my eyes were drawn to our house. One day, noting that the front door was closed, I turned my head to the house in Ward Street, where I made my abortive rat-a-tatting and had my last brush with Constable Matty Lally, and suddenly something extraordinary caught my eye: in the middle of the Mucky Broos two dogs were stuck together, bottom to bottom, trying to run in opposite directions. It was intriguing, and I was wondering what was going on when a woman came out of her house and threw a bucket of water over them, and they came apart, like greyhounds leaving the traps at the races. I turned back towards the blackboard and with a start I almost bumped my face against Mr Wilton’s jacket. He had been leaning on my desk, baffled as I was, no doubt, by the goings-on outside. I thought he was about to discuss it, but I was way off the mark. ‘Sykes,’ he said, ‘I am endeavouring, in my humble, stumbling way, to add a little knowledge to that treasure house above your eyebrows, but as you prefer to ogle lasciviously at a rutting perhaps you’d be more at home in the Zoological Gardens?’

I looked at him in wonder, thinking that to learn English could be an advantage.

Mr Sutcliffe was our sports master, a tidy, tall, black-haired man; it must be said, that in his sports jacket and flannels he looked ideal for the part. It was also rumoured that he played cricket for Werneth Second Eleven, which in my mind only was open to doubt. For one thing, he wore spectacles with lenses as thick as the bottom of a pop bottle, making his eyes look like blackcurrants; also he never seemed to like cricket. When we were all eager to be marched down to where we played our organised games, he would be looking at the sky, hoping for rain, or even bad light, in which case we spent the sports hour in the gym, practising imaginary cover drives, leftfoot-forward off-drives, back on non-existent stumps for an imaginary short ball. We did all this synchronised to a record on a wind-up gramophone, usually of ‘The Blue Danube’.

These exercises in the gymnasium were no substitute for the real cricket, at which Mr Sutcliffe was a semi-pro. Perhaps he was embarrassed to have to shepherd a crocodile of boisterous, happy schoolboys through the streets on the way to the cricket ground. This was in fact a large area of fairly flat ground, with goalposts at either end for footie; and, because there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen, our cricket was played on coconut matting. We didn’t have two ends—in fact I don’t think we had more than four stumps, but that was just right: three for the wickets and one for the bowler. There was only one pad, which was buckled on to the left leg, and if you happened to be left-handed, tough.

Mr Sutcliffe would throw the ball to someone, anyone, and point out somebody else to bat and the game began. Mr Sutcliffe looked on with a bored expression, occasionally glancing at his wrist watch so that he wouldn’t be late getting back to the warm common room. However, in one particular session he took off his jacket, handed it to me and picked up the bat, which I’d laid down while I buckled on my pad. He threw the ball casually to one of the lads, and then he surveyed the fielders, gesturing for them to spread out more. It was obvious that he’d done this before on a much higher canvas. Nodding to the bowler, he took up his stance and we all crouched in readiness. What happened next was like a page out of comic cuts. It was an innocuous ball, not quick, but falling short, and then for some unaccountable reason the ball reared up and caught Mr Sutcliffe on the bridge of his nose. His glasses flew off, and he stumbled back, knocking his stumps over.

‘Howzat?’ screamed the bowler.

Mr Sutcliffe struggled unsteadily and glared myopically around him. The bowler was quick-witted and, seeing Mr Sutcliffe’s glasses on the ground, took the opportunity of merging with the rest of the field.

‘You stupid boy,’ he yelled at nobody. ‘I wasn’t ready. What’s your name?’

There was no answer and when I picked up his glasses and handed them to him he saw that there was no one at the other end. We all knew who the bowler was, but there wasn’t a chance in a hundred that anyone would give him away.

One thing is certain, though: Mr Sutcliffe wasn’t much of a cricketer. Any decent batsman for Werneth would have hooked the ball for six.

That was the end of cricket for the day, and so I didn’t have my turn with the bat. Dissatisfied with the world in general, I limped off, although there was nothing wrong with my foot—my limp was because of the cricket pad buckled on to my left leg, obviously made for someone much taller than me. Ah well, I still maintain it was another century I never made.

Our classes weren’t always mixed. For instance, the boys attended a carpentry class and the girls beavered away at domestic science, mainly cookery. Mr Barker’s class, as I mentioned earlier, was mixed and to my shame I can’t remember any of the girls, not even the one I was passionately in love with, although she didn’t know it. I never approached or spoke to her but I recall following her home to the centre of Oldham, where she disappeared through the back door of a pub, and then with a great sigh I turned round and floated home in a euphoric haze.

My most vivid memory after school finished for the day was watching the staff going home. Mr Barker went hatless, dragged along by the weight of his stomach down Ward Street towards Featherstall Road in order to catch a tram to wherever he was going. The English master, Mr Wilton, would invariably be striding casually twenty yards behind him—perhaps they didn’t like each other. Some of the teachers went the other way to board trams going in another direction. No member of the staff, not even the headmaster, possessed a car. Cars were still a rare sight and an expensive novelty, and teachers, as today, were underpaid; but even so all the male staff managed to wear suits with a collar and tie and Miss Thomson wore respectable frocks.

I may have treated the staff with a levity they don’t deserve. Discipline was paramount and by and large they were all respected, and we pupils had no difficulty in addressing the masters as ‘sir’ and the lady teachers as ‘miss’. Although I wasn’t a credit to the school academically, when I finally left school, like every other pupil I could read, write, add up, subtract and divide. In other words, I had been equipped with the basic skills, preparing me for the next stage of the journey, and thankfully that did not include sex education—that was an adventure to come, as and when the bugle sounded. I have long had a theory that pupils who pass their leaving exams with high marks in every subject may be star pupils but when they face the real world they lose a lot of their sparkle and can be likened to a blind man whose guide dog has left home. On the other hand, many, many brilliant entrepreneurs, artists, writers, etc., proudly boast that their final reports were abysmal, so I wasn’t as upset as my father when he read what the headmaster had written as a footnote to my school leaving report: ‘Inclined to be scatterbrained’. Ho hum, you can’t win ‘em all.

My schooldays were over and presumably I was well equipped to take my place as a member of the working class. First, however, let me sum up the last fourteen years. They were mainly a pleasurable experience, although there were bad times as well, but I haven’t included these simply because I can’t remember them, and to my adolescent mind the bad times invariably happened to other people. For myself there were only two major problems: trying to keep warm during the cold winters which swept across the north-west for several months and staving off hunger, a condition endemic during the depression of the early thirties.

In looking back over my schooldays at Northmoor and Ward Street Central, I am appalled by my lack of attention to my education. For instance, when the history master declaimed that William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066 following the Battle of Hastings, that was the last thing I heard. But in my mind’s eye I saw William beaching the long boat, French soldiers leaping into the surf to storm the beaches yelling Gallic obscenities at the British troops, and King Harold looking up towards a shower of arrows a very silly thing to do—and his ostler, too late with his warning, gasping as King Harold said, ‘Ooh’, and slid from the saddle with an arrow in his eye—‘The King’s copped it.’ And just then I was brought back to the present day as the bell went for us to change classes, but whatever subject, maths or woodwork, my imagination still wove vivid pictures of the tale of the Battle of Hastings, until a geography lesson in which the mention of Mount Kilimanjaro had me halfway up the mountain pursued by Zulus before the bell rang for the end of the day.

So it is hardly surprising that academically I wasn’t exactly a star pupil; in fact wallowed about for most of my schooldays at the bottom of the class. That is except in one subject, art, and the marks I got for this, year by year, were never less than ninety-eight out of a hundred.

During the last week of my school life, parents of the pupils about to enter the uncertain world of work were invited to a half-day visit to the school in order to wander round inspecting some of the projects their offspring had been engaged in. My parents couldn’t be there because Dad was working in the Standard Mill in Rochdale while Mother had taken her old job back in the card room of another mill about three miles beyond Royton. What with their wages plus Vernon’s and soon, hopefully, mine we would be able to afford rabbit every Sunday. Dad usually took a sandwich for his dinner in the factory but Mother fared better. Grandma Ashton cooked something nice and hot, put it in a basin, wrapped the whole thing in a red-spotted hankie and made her way to the tram stop. When the tram arrived, she handed Mother’s dinner to the conductor and he put it on the floor by his feet; then ‘ting ting’ and off went the tram about three miles down the line to where Mother met it, the dinner was handed over to her and perhaps ‘Smells good, missus’ from the conductor and off to Rochdale. This private delivery service occurred every workday, no money, no ‘What’s this, then?’—all smiles, even when it was raining. Oh, what a gentle, caring age we lived in!

To return to parents’ day at Ward Street Central School: as the star pupil in art, I was given a large sheet of rough paper, three feet by two, with carte blanche to paint whatever I fancied. Without hesitation I began to sketch a huge liner thrusting headway through a choppy sea. Parents filed into the classroom to watch my progress. I was completely enraptured—it was turning out to be a good painting. While wiping my hands on a rag, I surveyed my work, wondering if a couple of fish being thrown about would enhance the bow wave. I dismissed the thought as I still hadn’t finished the superstructure. By this time the room was beginning to fill up with parents, and two teachers were enlisted to keep the crowd moving. I was daubing red paint on the paper, creating the first of three funnels, when a man’s hand shot out, pointing to the bows and exclaiming that I’d forgotten to paint in the hole for the anchor. He was loud, and there was a crush of people eager to spot the mistake. I was pushed forward and in flinging out my arm to save myself inadvertently I upset the pot of red paint and my marathon work was over: Michelangelo had fallen off his pedestal and his floating Sistine Chapel disappeared under a spreading red sea. My hopes were dashed; I’d had visions of hanging it over the dresser in the kitchen. Optimistically I thought, There is plenty more where that came from, which just goes to show that you can’t be right all the time.

In fact I was the only one in the school to be offered a scholarship to the Oldham College of Art, but that would have meant an extra two years of schooling, which was out of the question, as we couldn’t afford the luxury. But it didn’t bother me in the least. When I left Ward Street Central School at the age of fourteen I was eagerly looking forward to bringing home a wage packet earned manually in a workman’s overalls.

In 1937 I walked through the gates of Ward Street Central School for the last time, fully equipped to make my contribution to the national debt. It was the same year that Aunt Marie and Uncle Stan were blessed with a child, a daughter Beryl. Our tribe was growing, and apart from my brother Vernon and my half-brother John I now had a beautiful baby cousin.