Open Writing

Remembering, looking back in time, maudlin romanticism, nostalgia. Don’t we all from time to time bask in the recollections from days gone by? Snatches of memories drawn from more years ago than we hardly remember. Snippets of childhood days when trolls lived in dark corners of the room, when bogey-men with big googly eyes flitted in and crept around our lives; when night-time shadows on a bedroom wall or ceiling would send one bolting under the bedclothes.

Then the realization, perhaps, that it was Saturday the following morning and away went the earlier fears. The shadows melted and other images filled their places -- plans, schemes, anticipation of two whole days away from school. Noises from outdoors reaching one’s ears, an adult’s world, women gossiping, dogs barking, the steady clip-clop of horses’ hooves on granite sets, the rattle of a handcart, a street-hawker’s cry, a knock on the house door and the shout of “Milk”.

Wilfred Stocks was our milkman. He delivered milk to other houses also, but I think we patronized him because there was some kinship on my mother’s side, so we helped to ‘keep t’ brass i’ t’ family’, not that any of it ever came my way.

Our patronage certainly wasn’t because of Wilfred’s genial out-going manner, that’s for sure. He was a short, stocky and, some might say, surly-tempered man. If so, then we in the innocence of childhood accepted that without question. Grown-ups could be peculiar at times.

Innocence may have been part of our make-up, but we were observant and had learned, what was for us, an important part of that milkman’s timetable. Being well aware that he would arrive at a certain place at a certain time each day and if we rendezvoused with him and, most importantly, found him in a responsive mood -- he never seemed to be in a good mood -- then we might be allowed to ride in his horse-drawn milk float.

Such was the thrill of this possible privilege that a half-mile walk would be made to reach the meeting place. We knew it was half a mile. There was a signpost to prove it at what was known as ‘T’ Junction’, where the High Road met Wakefield Road. There we could pass the waiting time watching trams go by. A horse trough also demanded our attention. Conveniently, there was a gentlemen’s convenience that often proved so, since the horse trough water was very cold.

Permission to board the milk cart was always sought in a polite manner. “Can we have a ride, Mr. Stocks, please?” Plaintive and wheedling, loaded with childish guile, but which on occasion made no impression whatsoever. Even on a good day when Wilfred was magnanimous and did allow us to board his vehicle, we had to do so whilst it was in motion, not that the horse was at full till-up. It would only be making a steady plod at the time, but the driver wouldn’t have dreamed of altering his life pattern on our account. Of course, when we were refused a ride, then the half mile distance home had to be re-traversed on foot. But any feeling of disappointment had evaporated long before we had reached home, and with the optimism of youth we could try again another day. Oh for the resilience of such spirits today.

Dismounting from the float had also to be accomplished whilst the combination was on the move. It passed our house, but its destination was further along.

A ride in that milk cart on a bright summer’s day carried with it the smell of horse mingled with that of souring milk which had slopped from the churns being loaded into the vehicle and also when their contents were transferred to the hand milk cans to be hawked from door to door. But none of this was of interest to us young passengers. We were riding high, seeing life pass by from a lofty viewpoint. There was also the coach whip with its long knotted lash, ensconced in a brass container tube. How we wished to flick that about, but of course never did. Indeed, I have no recollection of ever seeing its owner using it either.

What today’s health officials would have to say -- apart from a gasp and a faint -- I sometimes wonder, should they be able to witness the conditions and methods of yesteryear’s milk preparation.

Stocks’s mistle was a stone-built, single-storeyed low-roofed building, occupying the top end of Hoyle Head Yard. The entrance was a doorway of one cow width, through which we children were never allowed to pass, but might occasionally glimpse some of the strand-ins as we peeked in. Memory tells me there was an aura of gloom about the place, caused by a lack of light, rather like the owner, who might also have benefited from a few windows in his soul.

How the milk was dealt with prior to being canned ready for delivery I have no idea. There is no recall of the presence of hot water or of any kind of cooling system. Yet such processes would be, or should have been, carried out twice daily, since milk deliveries were then made to households both in the morning and again in the evening.

At that time, however, such matters never concerned us. We were more interested in watching the cows coming and going between pasture and mistle. The pasture gateway was barred by the then customary length of three inch diameter iron steam pipe. There was a lot of the stuff about. We were surrounded by mills. For us the pipe provided something to swing from in our idle moments or to blow down and produce a roar from within. Care was needed in this operation, since if someone else was doing the same at the other end of the pipe and being rather quicker off the mark than you were, then as you drew breath you could well end up with a gob full of rust-dust.

The pasture is still visible in my mind’s eye. ‘Stocks’s Field’ we knew it by, an extensive expanse of grassland that reached down a steady incline. The outstanding feature was its undulating surface, broad ripples over the area, long, wide, shallow furrows which, some people said, were caused by the ancient village strip method of cultivation. Whatever the origin, the ripples are long-gone, since the entire area became a Corporation housing estate several years before the Second World War when the policy was to replace infamous slum dwellings with modern housing.

Such an extensive building site served us young ones ideally as an unofficial pleasure ground -- just in the evenings and at weekends, of course, which meant there were times when our Sunday best suffered somewhat. But what of it if one did end up with clay-smeared footwear or stockings caked with sand? The entire area created for us blithe spirits a source of adventure and amusement which more than compensated for the upbraiding one usually received when arriving home in a dishevelled state.

In those days large pits were dug and then filled with lime, this being used for rendering the interior walls of houses. We took great delight in heaving bricks into them, although we rarely saw the missiles land, since if one lingered about at such times there was a good chance of becoming plastered, literally, when the projectile entered the lime. But it was satisfying to hear the ‘glug’ as it struck the soggy mass. It was possible to watch the entry of lengths of conduit -- used for carrying electric wiring in the houses -- this entered in spear fashion, and we found it most rewarding when the lime pit took on a Moby Dick-like appearance.

In houses under construction it was considered daring to shuffle one’s feet across two open joists. There was only a shallow drop into the foundations, but one slip revealed how unyielding the joists were. Even today the thought of such a mishap is sufficient to raise a wince.

Ladders inevitably offered temptation, adventure and access to unusual vantage points. Who could possible resist? Certainly not us.

Surprisingly, the houses still exist, and many of the original tenants were not as colourful as rumour at the time painted them. I don’t know if coal was kept in the bath, which was situated in the kitchen and boarded over to serve as a table. Maybe some houses did have wire netting around the kitchen table legs to keep the hens in. But did one incomer actually fill a matchbox with bugs to prevent her feeling entirely alien in her new home? Gossip had it so.

Today many of those families’ families still live in the area, native born. Yet their memories will not hold the sights, sounds and smells which mine does.

Never will they experience the prospect of cattle grazing that undulating grassland where we in infancy made daisy chains. In that world one could actually hear ‘Bells Across the Meadow’ on Sundays. Now the church is no more. Nor will the newcomers beg from the mills their empty dye barrels for bonfire nights or smell the pungent scent from a dye house on cold and frosty mornings, when vapour drifted in slow, throat-tingling clouds across our school playground. Today’s children won’t use the stems from ash leaves to dislodge Tommy Longlegs from the Primary School wall. The trees are gone.

Beyond another wall from all this lay the park, our other playground. There, slides for children are plastic now, as are the roundabouts. Our slide was more than twice the height of that today -- or so I imagine. Its surface was sheet brass, and we discovered that a zig-zag line drawn with a candle along that metal produced eventually a highly accelerating face, so much so that a catcher needed to be employed to prevent one’s over-shooting. We had ‘Bonnie Bright Eyes’, the recreation ground rocking horse. We also had vandals who shook the top off it and were prosecuted for their labours.

Where now the bell-framed roundabout, the one on which a boy gouged his thigh, courtesy of a bolt end? His leg was padded up for weeks -- all of it!

There was a drinking fountain which would send a jet of water skywards for almost twenty feet if you knew the knack. We did.

We had fun and we were happy.

The people of the estate never witnessed such times. They were never to see the old pit slagheap at the tower end of their housing site, where we would watch older boys ride their bikes amongst the humps and hollows of blue-grey shale. Long before the time of the incomers that area was levelled to create a playing field. Further along, in time, air raid shelters were dug, connecting passageways into which water seeped. So we walked on duckboards through darkened chambers, ideal trysting locations for early adolescents.

Time was passing. Childhood was being left behind. We were growing up, exchanging our primary swing-time for the fickle teenage see-saw with its heartaches, sudden joys and hard-earned lessons. Walking backwards into our futures, bidding goodbye to childhood, happy with its passing. Now, looking on those days, I wonder why we were in such a hurry, why the impetuosity of youth? From this distance in time the land then was one of happy dreams. But that is the fashion of the young. Rarely are they happy for very long with their here and now.

It was Robert Browning who wrote “…a man’s reach should always exceed his grasp….” At times I feel it would be enjoyable to reach back into past years and grasp a few of their happy hours. But that is romanticism.