A Veritable Pickwick
With little planning and an overloaded bike Ronnie Bray goes on holiday to the "Amazon of the North'', Scarborough.
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With little planning and an overloaded bike Ronnie Bray goes on holiday to the "Amazon of the North'', Scarborough.
...I saw Acker's mother lay about his back somewhat viciously with the flat side of her bread knife as he sat at dinner. She was a big woman and he would be about thirteen. She showed him no mercy. He did not cry or attempt to defend himself....
Ronnie Bray recalls a boy who commanded respect at school, if not at home.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's on-going autobiography please click on the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray recalls how he dealt with a school bully.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's on-going autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray tells of a fellow schoolboy who was cheerful in the face of great troubles.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's on-going autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Some people are ready for kindness and it is wonderful when it arrives on time...
Ronnie Bray tells of a school pupil who was filled with kindness.
To read more of Ronnie's on-going life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray tells of a lad who loved motorbikes.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's life story, a work in progress, please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray recalls a wonderful demonstration of youthful sympathy.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiography, a work in progress, please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Life was too much of a burden for a young lad to bear without challenging authority figures, of which the world was over-populated, and even so simple a thing as asking a question would seem to be “cheeky.”...
Ronnie Bray admits that he was a timid schoolboy.
To read further episodes of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
When Archer came to school in austere war years bearing a banana, all the boys marched in procession behind him.
Ronnie Bray continues his life story.
Ronnie Bray recalls teachers who were liberal in their use of the cane.
Ronnie Bray tells of a wartime court case, at the heart of which was a big lie.
To read more of Ronnie’s absorbing life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Watching Miss Rushworth lean over the balcony to watch morning assembly, I felt a pang of sorrow for her great secret and I know that I was not alone in this. Children in small groups who knew of her sadness talked about her in reverential and hushed tones, but never openly. In some ways, there was a religious tenor to what was felt and said about her and the anguish that we knew her smiling heart was hiding....
Ronnie Bray tells of the great sadness of one of his teachers.
Ronnie Bray recalls his neighbours.
Continue reading "“I Always Knew You Would Amount To Something’’" »
...We would have a drink and some conversation on life’s mediocrities. She was pleasant and even-tempered. Her children were fortunate to have had her for a mother....
Ronnie Bray tells of family links. To read earlier chapters of his life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...When I visited her home, we would have a drink and some conversation on life’s mediocrities. She was pleasant and even-tempered. Her children were fortunate to have such a mother....
Ronnie Bray tells of a favourite aunt. To read more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...After the Second World War, St Luke’s was where they put people no one else wanted. My father’s mother, Lena Willis Bray, ended her days there, not because there was no one who could have cared for her, but because no one would. They said she had thirteen children: twelve of her own and one she rescued from the woman next door who was about to cut the baby’s throat with a carving knife...
Ronnie Bray tells of visiting his grandma in the dreaded workhouse. To read further chapters of Ronnie's autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I have heard that a person trapped in a burning building who realises he is not going to escape, utters long, loud sigh of resignation. I have never been in that position, but I have been faced by a charging grandparent who graduated summa cum laudi from the Genghis Khan School of Charm, and the Sonny Liston School of Gentle Taps. I uttered one of those long sighs just before two of these taps, too fast for the human eye to detect, stung my ear with a speed that would have caught Muhammad Ali off guard...
Ronnie Bray tells how two unjust slaps were the foundations of his benign attitude to children.
To read more of Ronnie's experiences please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Little ears sometimes hear more than they were meant to hear, as Ronnie Bray reveals.
To read more of Ronnie's life story, a work in progress, please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...But then they didn’t know my Nanny. Besides being a cross between Napoleon on a bad day and the worst of Attila the Hun, she was my grandma. A charitable view is that of a woman who had to take control and who never relinquished it. I believe it was simply her nature to take command and give orders. Some people are like that....
Ronnie Bray recalls Sunday teas, presided over by his grandma - and the dreaded bread and butter ordeal.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's expansive life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
"Of her life at the great house, she told many stories. These were frequently recounted in intimate whispers and silently mouthed words as if they were too terrible for our young ears.'' Ronnie Bray tells of his grandmother who once worked as a cook for a wealthy family.
To read more of Ronnie's life story - a work in progress - please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I remember standing at Granddad’s knee asking questions of him. He sat on a kitchen chair at the end of the table, furthest from the crackling coal fire. He knew his place. His answers were thoughtful, usually true, and delivered without haste. No one else engaged him in any discussion. As I grew older, I became aware that some of his answers were works of imagination and fiction...
Ronnie Bray recalls his grandfather with deep affection.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiography - a work in progress - please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray delivered the following eulogy at his mother's funeral earlier this year.
...“Hello.”
“Hello,” she returned, quite cheerfully.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No.” She smiled....
Ronnie Bray, with immense affection, recalls being with his mother on her 90th birthday.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's frank autobiography - a work in progress - please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
Ronnie Bray recalls conversations with his mother, who died at the age of 91 earlier this year.
...I envy those who remember conversations with their mothers as occasions when wisdom and good advice were transmitted. I have no such conversations to remember and report. The longest conversation I recall with her was one on the back steps of 121 Fitzwilliam Street. I asked her where babies came from. I was about twelve or thirteen and I had no clue. She had carried out a large basket of washing to hang on the clothesline in our backyard. Her response was directed at me as she mounted the steps to re-enter the house.
“You know!” she pronounced grimly.
“I don’t.” I retorted, hurt at her dismissal of my earnest question. Her answer was even more shocking and final...
Ronnie Bray recalls the emotion-filled occasion of saying farewell to his mother.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's frank and angaging autobiography, a work still in progress, please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
A parcel of crumbs brought delight to Ronnie Bray when he was serving with the British Army in Egypt.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's story of his crowded life please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray's mother's first and last brush with modernity was to acquire a ballpoint pen in the early 1950s.
For more chapters in Ronnie's life story please visit A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray tells of his mother, the daughter of a cook in service at a mill owner’s home.
A vision of the Saviour brings peace to Ronnie Bray's troubled mind.
When it comes to re-igniting a fire which is on the point of going out do not, whatever else you try, follow the example of the Brays, father and son.
Ronnie Bray continues his life story. For earlier chapters please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Norina made one bid for freedom with the boilerman from the mill where she worked. They fled to Leeds and lived as man and wife for a month before he returned to his wife, and she returned, in the family way, to her family. She gave birth to Janet early the next year. Her mother, Kitty, the former Catherine Marshall, died soon afterwards...
Ronnie Bray tells of terrible and troubling family matters.
For more chapters of Ronnie's searingly honest autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray is the "forgotten son'' when he attends his father's funeral.
To read earlier episodes of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I asked where father was and Norina pointed to the heap of blankets.
Moving them aside, I saw a little old man with long grey hair and an untidy beard. He was drinking a bottle of spirits a day...
Ronnie Bray continues his life story. To read earlier chapters please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I told him that his intemperate language was wasted on me and that I was not to be bullied. He opened a drawer in the table and drew out a long bladed knife. “I’ll knife you.” He screamed and lunged toward me. I hit him on the side of the head and he fell into an easy chair in a sitting position, and was strangely silent....
Ronnie Bray tells of family turbulence. To read more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
...What a shame it is that his dreams were too far beyond his reach to impede his progress towards them even a little...
Ronnie Bray makes contact with his wandering father.
For more of Ronnie's autobiographical words please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
...At the end of the evening, Sam told him to pull his socks up. Father was the baby of the family and not given to taking advice. He replied with an unconvincing grin that his socks were up. They were not...
Ronnie Bray recalls another encounter with his father. For more chapters of Ronnie's autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray tells of biking over the Pennine hills to vist his wandering father.
...I went to the playground’s low wall, from which the railings had been removed, and stood before a smiling man who stood outside on the pavement near the gateposts. He was charming as he introduced himself as my father. I noticed that he had heavily nicotine-stained hands and part of a finger missing. He was very warm and kind and I enjoyed the moment. It held some kind of completeness, some sense of triumph for me. I was not to see him again for another two years...
Ronnie Bray tells of rare encounters with his father. To read more ofd Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
....My father often told me that he had several good ideas for making lots of money – which, he said, he wanted so that he could give it to me (music to my ears), but that he was prevented from making my fortune by lack of capital. Apparently, he had not been introduced to the twin values of continued employment and thrift...
Ronnie Bray confesses that there is much he did not know about his father. To read earlier episodes of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From the Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray tells of his father, a man who was "padlocked'' within himself, fated to stay locked to the end of his days.
...My stepfather, Tommy, was referred to as “Your Dad” and my biological father, George, unflatteringly, as “Your bloody Father!” The only good word I heard about him was when, aimed at my reluctance to dampen my features with soap and water, mother informed me, “Even if your Father had no shirt to his back, he would always wash himself before he left the house!”...
Ronnie Bray recalls the agonising day when he waited for his father.
For more of Ronnie's vigorously recounted life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...My father was George Frederick Bray. I have few early recollections of him that help me to understand what he was really like, except to note that he was often spoken of by grandmother and mother in pejorative terms that were doubtless justified. I did not know that at the time, and often felt wounded by their hurtful remarks about him...
Ronnie Bray paints a word portrait of his father.
To read further chapters of Ronnie's autobiogrpahy - a work in progress - please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
…When I started attending the Mormon Church, a blacksmith who ran an old-fashioned forge, carrying out general smithy work occupied the ground floor. He was a nice man, who was rather deaf. The benefit of this to us was that he could not hear us on our weekday activities. When he closed own, a victim of progress, the premises were cleared out and taken over by a cars sales company. These people complained that our dancing, we loved to dance, made bits of plaster fall onto their cars…
Writing with his customary gusto and enthusiasm Ronnie Bray tells of his early days as a Mormon in his home town, Huddersfield in Yorkshire.
Ronnie Bray tells of youthful links with various churches, and his first enlightening encounter with Mormons.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's engrossing life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
...I was approached by the resident thug demanding to know if I was “religious.” I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he invited me to fight him. To my surprise, I accepted his invitation without flinching...
To be right and please God, it is sometimes obligatory for us to take on the enemy, says Ronnie Bray.
To read more chapters of Ronnie's reminiscences please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
The bat was as heavy and as deadly as a war club, and could double for one when the game turned nasty.
The ball was a genuine cricket ball –a ‘corky’ – that had seen better days, but which was still lethal if it hit the face or head.
The pitch was any more or less piece of ground between the two mammoth brick kilns, and the wicket was chalked on a convenient wall, preferably one without windows.
Ronnie Bray recalls the dangerous delights of playing cricket in the brickyard where he worked as a young man.
For more chapters of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Our day started at 7 am, but because of the odd assortment of people who worked in the brickyards, we rarely had a full team in the brick production shed at start time. Rowley would say, “If I ever come in and find you all working, I’ll die of shock.” He was in little danger of early death....
Ronnie Bray gets a job helping to make bricks.
For more chapters from the book of Ronnie's crowded life please click on A Shout From The Attic on this page.
...The warehouse smelled of wonderful things. Sides of smoked bacon, sacks of Demerara sugar, currants, raisins, and sultanas, and a hundred other spicy smells from goods exposed to the air. Biscuits were packed in big biscuit tins, not wrapped as they are today. Sugar was sold in conical twists of blue sugar paper. Everything was sold loose and weighed out...
Ronnie Bray works for the Co-operative Society as a driver's mate - but not for long.
For more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray, writing with great gusto, tells of the day he set a trap for the paraffin thief.
For more of Ronnie's delectable life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I got the job and started in the dirtiest place I had ever seen. It was a huge foundry, manufacturing some of the biggest castings imaginable. I worked at an iron table, making small cores out of sand...
Ronnie Bray goes to work in a huge ironworks. For earlier chapter's of Ronnie's engaging life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...There was one style, and the coiffure was topped-off by a generous helping of ‘Fixative,’ an early type of epoxy resin that set the hair like Welgar Shredded Wheat. Nor rain, nor hail, nor snow, nor any wind could move the hair dosed with this primitive super-glue...
Ronnie Bray recalls visits to he barber's shop.
To read further chapter's of Ronnie's vivid life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray tells of a Polish exile who sought a better life in England after World War II - and of the night when two callow youths had an embarrassing encounter with White Eagle cigarettes.
For more chapters in Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...All weavers could lip read; it was the only way they could communicate. I never learned to lip read, but I did learn to shout. The obvious benefit to me was that I could sing at the top of my voice all the workday long. I loved it. The elderly lady weavers took to me because I was always cheerful and willing. I fetched sacks of rolled paper weft and placed them next to their machines, singing like Caruso – at least, I was as loud as Caruso...
Ronnie Bray recalls his first job, working in a Yorkshire textile mill. To read more of Ronnie's memories please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray leaves school and goes to work in a local mill.
For more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray recalls a mad boyhood escapade with a "live'' bullet.
For more of Ronnie's extensive and vivid experiences please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...On Saturday nights I paid my shilling, climbed up to the gods – so called from the celestial beings painted on the exalted ceiling a few feet from the top of my head – sat on one of the wooden benches with other poor but equally ardent patrons, and entered the world of entertainment at its very best...
Ronnie Bray remembers the variety stars that he saw on the stage of the Palace Theate in his home town.
For more of Ronnie's life story do please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Music has been for me an escape, a sky-brushing thermal, lifting me on eagle wings above the din and discontent of life, to realms of joy and beauty unspoiled by harshness of word, or meanness of spirit...
In his early teens Ronnie Bray willingly and happily became addicted to music.
For more of Ronnie's engaging life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...When I was rising fourteen, my Dad did something that changed my life. From deep within one of the two large wooden chests that he brought with him when he and mother were married, he produced a crystal set...
Ronnie Bray discovers the wonderful world of music.
To read more of Ronnie's extraordinary life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
...I spun the motor bike round the field, bouncing over the hummocks, having great and reckless fun. And that’s when it stopped. It stopped dead! I hit the kick-start pedal time and time again, but it would not roar into life...
Ronnie Bray was able to ride his first motor cycle for less than a day.
For lots more episodes of Ronnie's engaging life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
... Long live Laurel and Hardy! Long live all those who recognise the sorry condition of the common people,and take a little time to make it better or to help us to laugh at our own suffering...
Ronnie Bray recalls favourite stars of the silver screen, and considers the impact that Hollywood has had on his life.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on his page.
...Westerns let us ride full gallop to wild places with wild people, and the man in the white hat always got the girl, unless he was black-hatted Hopalong Cassidy. Comedies eased my alienation, making me feel good until the feeling wore off somewhere on the way home.,,
Ronnie Bray recalls the influence of Holywood on his early life.
To read more slices of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...The biggest and plushest cinema in town was the Ritz. This was later renamed the ABC which told you nothing about this super theatre. It housed a Wurlitzer cinema organ and we sang along to songs projected on screen. Even self-conscious cinemagoers sang a bit. The Ritz occupied the site of the former cloth hall where my great grandfather sold the cloth he manufactured at his premises in Deighton. I did not know that when I was a devotee of the nearest thing to a palace that most Huddersfieldonians ever entered. The management team was uniformed, authoritative, visibly in charge, and not to be trifled with...
Ronnie Bray tells of being entranced from boyhood by the Silver Screen.
To read more slices of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray, continuing his life story, confirms that there are treasures to be found among things which other folk have thrown away.
To read more of Ronnie’s vivid life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Grandma Lina Willis Bray, the girl from Scarborough, lived in a cellar there at some time and made toffee and fudge that she sold to keep body and soul together in the bad years when Grandfather Oliver Bray was not behaving himself in a civilised and domesticated way...
Ronnie Bray continues to delineate the people and places that marked out the boundaries of his childhood in a Yorkshire mill town.
For more episodes in Ronnie's life please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page
...Somewhere among the wealth and opulence of Edgerton, my Nanny, Margaret Ann Myers, had worked as a cook. Of her life there at one of the great houses, she recounted many stories. These were told in intimate whispers and silently mouthed words as, if they were too terrible for our young ears...
Ronnie Bray vividly recalls his early life in a Yorkshire town, Huddersfield. For earlier episodes of Ronnie's engaging lautobiography please click on A Shout From The attic in the menu on this page.
...Another house to tiptoe past was one on Portland Street, an old dark house with dusty windows, tattered curtains and a garden that never saw a spade....
Ronnie Bray tells of houses which put fear into young hearts.
For earlier episodes of Ronnie's engaging life story please do click A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray, seeing clearly with memory's eye, takes us round the streets of his boyhood in a Yorkshire industrial town.
For more of Ronnie's engagingly narrated life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Above that was Jubb’s grocers, where I got a job as a bicycle delivery boy in the absence of the regular boy and cried my way through several weeks of gloveless November and December frosts that bit my fingers with pain too much to bear without tears...
Ronnie Bray has astonishingly vivid memories of the neighbourhood in which he grew up. for more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...In later years I travelled even past the bike hire man to go to the Savoy cinema, affectionately referred to as “The Cabbage.” The commissionaire, a man who wore a multi-coloured overcoat made in mock military style sufficiently roomy for a family of itinerants and a dog...
Ronnie Bray defines the urban boundaries of his childhood world in a Yorkshire town.
To read more of Ronnie's absorbing life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray recalls the wonders of one of his favourite boyhood "playgrounds'', the local park.
For more chapters of Ronnie's engaging life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...From somewhere behind the shop proper came wonderful aromas as currants, raisins, sultanas, and sides of bacon, smoked and green, each contained in huge, moist jute sacks competed with sticky dark brown sugar from Demarera to fill the shop with the heady scent of good old times and the riches of the British Empire...
Ronnie Bray recalls Co-op shopping during the war years.
For more of Ronnie's reminiscences please visit A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
... Our next call was occasionally at Howarth’s vegetable stall for vegetables and sometimes fruit, then maybe to Fred Wood’s game and poultry stall to choose one of the scores of rabbits hung down, with their heads in little tin buckets to catch the gore, amid pheasants and other gorgeous but motionless colourfully-plumed fowls presenting a Dickensian view of what Christmas should be in times of plenty...
Ronnie Bray recalls shopping trips with his Mum in the Yorkshire town of Huddersfield.
For more of Ronnie's memories please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
When he was a very young lad Ronnie Bray visited Asia. Or could it have been...no, surely not Heysham!
For many more chapters of Ronnie's lively autobiographical words please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
…Perhaps that was the secret of the Circus: the nearness to danger but with little personal risk to the spectators whilst the performers seemed to be always under threat of death or mutilation…
But there came a day for Ronnie Bray when the magic of the circus was extinguished.
For earlier chapters of Ronnie’s experiences please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
..the sons of squaws on adjacent hides being equal to the sons of the squaw on the hippopotamus hide...
Continuing his life story, Ronnie Bray recalls a geometrical joke and a puzzling, inexplicable, shrug-inducing mathematical singularity.
To read more of Ronnie's experiences please lick on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his sparkling Letter From America columns.
A teacher’s animated forefinger dismisses Ronnie Bray from the school choir when his voice breaks.
To read more of Ronnie’s autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray only began to realise what education was all about after he had left school.
To read more of Ronnie's engaging life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.