U3A Writing: A Time Of Simple Pleasures
"My sister and I made scrapbooks,'' says Thelma Brabin, recalling childhood days when children were satisfied wih simple pleasures and never used the word "bored''. "Mine was a mishmash filled with anything and everything which caught my eye. On the first page was a picture of Jesus next to a glamorous Rita Hayworth.''
Cries of “We are bored, Grandma” set me thinking of my simple pleasures during childhood.
My friends and I would sit on the kerbs outside our houses in the cobbled street. What pleasures we had planning our May Day Queen procession. We planned and made things for weeks. Cowboy outfits and nurses’ sets all were brought out, and then pieces of net curtain and any odd bits of crepe paper and ribbons.
The two boys who had bikes would help by decorating the handlebars. A small paper flag would take centre attraction; then crepe paper would be threaded between the spokes.
Then making dolls’ clothes out of small scraps of material from the rag bag. I remember finding one piece big enough to make a marble bag, a proud possession. I didn’t play marbles, but we would swap them with one another. We also swapped comics, books, birthday and Christmas cards. I had quite a collection of these, totalling over 200 at one time.
In winter when the weather forced us inside, my sister and I made scrapbooks. We folded sheets of brown paper down the middle then placed one inside the other, stitching down the centre. We even made our own glue out of flour and water. My sister, being nearly four years older than me, did a better job. Her book was always neat and tidy, filled with glamorous film stars cut from magazines.
Mine was a mishmash filled with anything and everything that caught my eye. On the first page was a picture of Jesus next to a glamorous Rita Hayworth. There was the odd foreign stamp and postcards, as well as pictures cut from the local paper of soldiers and sailors.
When the weather became better we would put concerts on in the back yard, and I remember having a stall at the front of our house to raise funds for the Japanese prisoners of war. This came about because I had an uncle who was taken prisoner at Singapore.
We used to love making toast for tea on our coal fire, using a long toasting fork made of strong twisted wire, another homemade item, a very useful tool made by my dad. And you know toast never tastes as good today as it did then.
Happy days spent sat on the kerb or in someone’s back yard. You never heard the words, “I’m bored.” And to add to that our pleasures seemed to cost nothing. What would parents give for that today!
Bolton U3A
