U3A Writing: When I Was Ten
Nancie Dyson recalls the days when mothers were always at home and weeks arranged themselves in an orderly pattern.
Seventy years ago, when I was ten, the world was a different place.
From the practical point of view, no fridges or freezers. In the summer milk was delivered twice per day in churns and ladled into jugs. The jug was covered with a net cloth with beads around the edge to weight it down. It was then put into a bucket or basin of cold water and put in the cellar or larder.
The butcher called twice a week, and groceries were delivered as per order each week. Everyone had a meat safe, kept in the cellar if you had one, and each home had a stone slab in the coolest place. Running up and down the cellar steps was a daily feature for my brothers and me.
Our mother was always at home. Monday was washday: dolly tub and posser, water heated in a set pot, a wringer with wooden rollers which we helped to turn. Starch was made with boiling water (an awful smell) for Dad’s collars and shirt cuffs. It was then thinned for tablecloths, pillowslips and serviettes. Of course we mustn’t forget the dolly blue. Summer washdays were fine, but winter ones, with clothes round the fire, were dreary.
Tuesday was bedrooms. But the best day of the week was Wednesday, baking day, when a stone of flour was made into bread, cakes and pastries.
Thursday was downstairs cleaning: carpet sweeper, no vacs. Carpet squares, so the surrounds had to be polished, brasses and cutlery cleaned, the windows and steps to be dealt with – and don’t forget the step edges. No need to go to a gym for a 1930’s housewife.
Freedom was something we took for granted – a packet of sandwiches, a bottle of pop, and with big brother in charge we were off for the day. One penny returns to Crosland Moor and playing in Beaumont Park, walking up to Greenhead Park and paddling in the pool and sailing boats, homemade. Barkers Fields was another playground. The world as we knew it then.
Winter was toast around the fire, and if we had had pork, there was the luscious dripping, especially if there was jelly at the bottom – a treat indeed. Turning out the lights and listening to Dick Barton Special Agent or Radio Luxemburg. Dad built our radio, and my brothers and I had crystal sets.
Books were very important, and I was lucky, being the only girl, as I hadn’t to share mine. And I got to read the boys’; they didn’t want to read mine.
I remember one weekend Dad took us on the tram to Longwood, and there in a field were two or three Tiger Moth planes. Flights were 2/6d per person. We watched the lucky ones take off and land, never dreaming that one day we would fly.
The highlight of the year I was ten was being called to the headmaster with three of my classmates to be told that we had passed to go to the grammar school. The down side was that two couldn’t go as they came from large families and their parents couldn’t afford the uniform. In those days we bought our own books. Gordon Brier went to Hillhouse where you could leave at the usual age, which was fourteen. I went to Greenhead. That was when I realised how lucky my brothers and I were.
In 1936-37 where were no votes for women, and lady teachers and civil servants had to retire on marriage. 1939 was to change all that – but that is another story.
