Open Writing

During the late nineteen forties when goods in the shops were still in short supply, with demand growing due to families being re-united etc., one of the retail methods that grew in popularity was the Catalogue Club. My mother ran such a club with Great Universal Stores. This involved twenty family or friends each paying one shilling (5p) per week over twenty weeks, and one week having the choice of a purchase up to twenty shillings (£1) from the catalogue. For this my mother earned 5% commission. I helped her to run the club by collecting the money and entering it in a ledger book. From this I learnt some basic book-keeping and the multi-page, glossy catalogue was a wonderful source of "let's pretend" on long winter evenings!

After 1947, my father stopped sending me Christmas or birthday presents and our twice a year contact was lost. My mother could not understand this until she found out that he had returned to Shields and was living nearby. She even thought he might come knocking at our door and want to return to the family. She had a very robust reply ready!

He was renting some rooms in the upper part of a house in Dacre Street that overlooked Laygate Lane. I recall passing the house one day in a trolley bus with my mother, when looking out of the window, she said, "Look, there is your father at the window." I don't know what anybody thought who heard her comments, but I saw him several times after that occasion. However, by choice, that was the nearest I ever got to him. He didn't knock at our door and we never met. Records indicate that he lived at Dacre Street with Annie Lamb, who had the audacity to call herself Annie Owen, until 1954. They then disappeared again but turned up in Garwood Street in 1960, when Annie reclaimed her original name.

Apart from birthdays and at Christmas, I never got any letters at our Reed Street address. I was therefore, very surprised when a postman delivered two similar-looking letters addressed to me in February 1949. Opening them quickly, I found them to be two Valentine cards. Each was signed, 'Guess who?' I didn't know the significance of such things and after explaining the meaning, my mother remarked, "You have two unknown admirers." I don't know yet who sent the cards, or how they found my address, but suspect two girls from St Andrew's Youth Club, which I had recently joined. Alternatively, it could have been two local girls, part of a group who often assembled opposite our house, although I doubt if they had the money to waste on a stamp.

Early in 1950, after another minor accident at her home in the Aged Miners' Homes in Marsden Road, it was obvious that my grandmother was so infirm that she was incapable of looking after herself. It is hard to believe that the only source of heat in her house was from a large coal fire and that an eighty-three year old lady was expected to feed the fire with buckets of coal from a coal house. It was this that had caused the accident.

This was a long time before the age of local authority residential homes and it was seen as the family's job to care for their aged. Although we were already overcrowded in our two-roomed flat and my grandmother would have extreme difficulty in managing the stairs, my mother immediately gave up her part-time job and said, "She is coming to live with us." This she did, and as it was not possible for me to move to my sister's because of her growing family — my bed was hastily moved into our living room.

The following months were a very difficult time. My grandmother gradually became so ill that she could not be left for any extended time. I recall the period well, because after school and at weekends, I was expected to 'Granny sit'. This produced many arguments between my mother and me. I did stay in to look after my grandmother, but my mother expected me to give up some of my leisure and recreational activities. I was also in my last term at school and involved in looking for a job. Fortunately starting work at Easter 1950, took me out of the house most of the day. Trying to sleep during the night in the living room, while my mother looked after an invalid's needs in the other room, was not however, a good home environment for my baptism at work.

My grandmother continued to get weaker and weaker during the summer and finally she couldn't get downstairs to the toilet. Improvised facilities were provided in the bedroom and one of my tasks every morning before going to work, was to help my mother lift her up in bed. We continued to live in this very crowded and tense atmosphere until she died in August 1950.

In those days, people who died at home were not removed to Chapels of Rest or undertakers' premises and I soon learnt the smell of death. A local undertaker – very likely from the Co-op — brought a coffin to the house and prepared my grandmother for the funeral. We lived with the coffin in the house for about five days – my mother sleeping in the same room. I continued to sleep in the living room. On the day of my grandmother's funeral, I went to work as normal because we couldn't afford to lose my day's pay.

The New Year celebrations at the turn of the half-century in 1950, bring back fond memories. I was aware that a large crowd gathered at Chichester roundabout on New Year's Eve to 'bring in the New Year'. On this occasion, I decided to join them. At a quarter to midnight, I thought I was going to be disappointed because there were very few people there. Then about five minutes later, everybody in the immediate vicinity seemed to vacate their house, and join the parties of merrymakers on the way home from the local pubs. The place was crowded. Traffic was stopped, hands were joined around the island and crowds sang 'Auld Lang Syne' as the sound of a gun indicated the birth of the second half of the twentieth century. Most people shook hands and wished complete strangers a 'Happy New Year' while others, stimulated by alcohol found other more vocal methods of merriment.

Then, as if by magic, a few minutes after midnight, the crowd disappeared. They returned to their own homes or planned parties – many of them first-footers, carrying the traditional New Year lucky charm -a piece of coal. At a quarter past midnight, everyone had gone, except the two policemen discreetly standing in the doorway of Darlings the Chemist. A stranger would have taken some convincing of the crowds and celebrations that had taken place during the previous twenty minutes. As I made my way home down Reed Street bank, I pondered what the second half of the century might hold for me. I silently vowed that I would work to ensure it was a vast improvement on the last fifteen years.