Home | A Shout From The Attic
...The Roman Catholics and Anglicans were always catered for, but the rest of the Army’s spiritual welfare was given over to neglect...
Ronnie Bray tells of an occasion when he refused to enter a chapel.
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...There was a rich vein of humour among the soldiers. Probably the humour got us through the hard times. It was observed that the Army was always ‘getting a grip.’ That meant tightening up on discipline. It could be perceived that our lives were getting harder all the time. In reality, the only way to stop things slipping backwards is to constantly keep tightening up...
Ronnie Bray continues his oh-so-readable autobbiography. To reach earlier episodes please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...Being out all night on guard duty imposed obligations on the inhabitants of our hut to seize and deliver all combustible items from whatever source, quickly, quietly, and secretively. It is only from the benefit of fifty and more years that I recognise that we were set to guard the camp, but were actually doing more damage than unlawful trespassers were likely to have done...
Ronnie Bray recalls how a group of young soldiers at a training camp coped with a long hard winter.
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The walls which Ronnie Bray built while serving in the Army all came tumbling down.
Continue reading "The Potman Cometh - Adventures In Sand And Cement" »
...The history of Barton Stacey covers over 4,000 years
with evidence from Neolithic tribes, through Romans,
Saxons, and Normans - and then there was me!...
Ronnie Bray tells how he became a member of X Platoon, learning to drive Army-style.
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...The day was sunnybright, as Indian Summer September days will be. The sky was stunning cerulean blue, and the air heavy with the smell of harvest home. A thousand soldiers stood waiting for the event to begin. The band was doing something musical at the far side of the square, but my attention was drawn to a hatless man in olive drab fatigues, carrying a bucket in one hand and an eight-inch paint brush in the other...
Ronnie Bray brings another insight into "Army thinking''.
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...So that none of us soldiers would ever be out of fashion, the Army kindly employed camp barbers in the camp barbershop, where each soldier was required on pain of death to attend for a scalping every two weeks. The barbers were rejects from sheep shearing stations and it showed. To keep these barbers in the manner to which they had become accustomed, we had a shilling deducted from our pay every two weeks...
But poor Fletcher received little benefit from a visit to the barber, as Ronnie Bray reveals.
You had to be extremely fit to be ill in the Army, Ronnie Bray recalls.
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Life was cardboard, squareness, cleanliness, and routine, routine, routine, says Ronnie Bray about his early life in the Army. "Army life is hell for the lazy.''
Ronnie Bray, continuing his autobiography, tells of an accident while doing a menial task in the army camp where he did his basic training.
...Most of us spent the evening swinging from the ‘A’ frame rafters supporting the hut roof. Looking more like monkeys than young men. We did it to prove what we knew ourselves, that we were immortal and to show that death could not kill us, nor Hell or the fear of it hold us down...
But Ronnie Bray and his fellow army recruits found out that those four-shots-in-a-day were effective.
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...In quiet, solitary moments, when the dust of the day has settled, even the most perverse of personalities may slip into reverie and share the contents of their innermost soul with a good listener. I had religion; most soldiers did not..
Ronnie Bray tells how he became the auditor of the chorus of soldiers' souls
...He viewed our approach with nothing short of disdain, his face speaking unmistakably that he had seen it all before and didn’t like it at all! Like a mighty Army he approached us, gave us the once over – which was a bit like being given the once over with a welding torch, and told us not only that he had reservations about the marital standing of our parents, but also that he doubted whether worse specimens of humanity had ever dared venture on to his parade ground...
Ronnie Bray recalls his first encounter with a drill sergeant on the barrack square.
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...I freely confess that the initial impact the army had on me was more than a little terrifying. I had heard tales and seen moving pictures of soldiers at war, noted the deep camaraderie between service men, thrilled at the glory and glamour of brave deeds done under conditions of ambuscade and bombardment, and thought I might enjoy that kind of thing. Reality was nothing like the picture of worthy soldiers and appreciative NCOs and officers that my feeble mind had created...
Ronnie Bray muses on the nature of Army life.
...At some unearthly hour, a monster entered our barrack room where twenty of us lay deep in the arms of Morpheus. The noise he made was straight from the realm of Satan. Unnerved and terrified we leaped and somersaulted from our beds in various stages of consciousness, to discover the genesis of our discomfiture. It was – strike a minor discord - the Drill Sergeant!...
Ronnie Bray recalls his early days in the Army.
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...I remember almost being run over by a silent camel as I lay on the cooling desert floor by the shore of the Red Sea watching towards the jebels for danger, but failing to hear or see the rider coming from my left in the twilight’s dim, and I recall how still and silent I lay until rider and steed were no more than a dark patch in the Cimmerian curtain of night and I could breathe again...
Ronnie Bray remembers in detail his army service - even though the military authorities failed to do so.
...I took the Queen’s shilling. From that hour, I was hers
to do with me as she willed. I found that she willed a lot
and that she had a lot of help!...
Ronnie Bray begins an entertaining account of his days in uniform - "to jog memories and persuade the medals officer to send me my gongs.''
...There was an air of joyous realisation, exaltation, as the golden sun warmed away five years of care and triumphant sounds spilled into the bright blue air from the bandstand in Greenhead Park. This was a great time to be alive...
Ronnie Bray tells of the coming of peace at the the end of World War Two - and of a much greater peace.
...For a short time, I tasted the sweetness of being regarded as an object of pity, and that was the allure of being a Cinderella Child...
Ronnie Bray tells of a small wartime effort to help children whose fathers were serving in the armed forces or died in the conflict.
Ronnie Bray tells of an "inventive excuse'' which happened to be true.
Ronnie Bray tells of improvised air raid procedures during World War Two.
...I got my first pair of clogs that year. How I loved the ‘clip-clop’ they made as I walked on the sandstone flagstones that paved old Huddersfield. They were particularly impressive on the cobblestone roads. The glorious summer of 1947 was paid for by the atrocious winter of 1947. It snowed froze, snowed again, and froze again. The snow froze so hard that it was possible to walk on the surface of the piled up snow. Wearing clogs with clog-irons fitted caused impacted snow to collect under the clog, often raising it to a height of a foot. I walked tall that winter...
Ronnie Bray recalls the austere years of wartime and its aftermath.
...Decorative iron gates were removed from front and back gardens, railings and balustrades taken down and hauled off with only molten stumps to remind us where they had been. At one fell swoop, the gorgeous artistic ironwork of Victorian Huddersfield vanished overnight...
Ronnie Bray tells of unfamiliar events in a Yorkshire mill town at the onset of World War Two.
...Telegram boys rode bright red bicycles and visited ordinary working-folks’ homes only with bad news. The well off might use them for everyday correspondence, but the poor knew only too well that the shadow of the Telegram boy across the front door window meant that a loved one, husband, father, or son had either been killed in action, or else, and in many ways worse, was missing in action or missing presumed dead...
Ronnie Bray recalls sombre times.
Five-year-old Ronnie Bray had only a vague understanding of the significance of the onset of war.
...The slow rate of passing trade brought out the shopkeeper to sit with us. He ignored Eric and me, but engaged Alfie in animated conversation well within earshot of we two Tykes who were mostly busy wrapping our lips around bottle necks and melting cornets. And that is how it might have remained until it was time for us to press forward on our joyful journey, had not the proprietor asked Alfie where we were from.
“Huddersfield,” said Alfie. The shopkeeper’s response from that moment made Eric and me disgrace ourselves, for he echoed Alfie’s naming of our hometown but pronounced it as “Huttersfield.”...
Ronnie Bray and his friend a driven to boyish fits of uncontrolable laughter by the mispronunication of the name of their home town.
...In childhood, barriers to egress were the symptoms of parental anxieties of what might happen to their ingenuous offspring when abroad in the world without their flawless guidance. They imagined peril in every footstep, blood spilled from amorphous but inevitable accidents, and death standing mockingly in the shadows, beckoning their young with a skeletal finger and skullish grin...
Ronnie Bray recalls the questioning he had to undergo in boyhood before being allowed to go out to play.
Ronnie Bray recalls childhood games from a less-affluent age.
...Wilson Keppel and Betty are among the stars of my younger life, because theirs was one of the greatest gifts that one human being can bestow on another – the Gift of Laughter...
Ronnie Bray recalls with a smile on his face a music-hall trio known as The Sun Dancers - a trio accused by that horrid Nazi propagandist Joseph Göbbels of underminging the morals of German youth.
Continue reading "Göbbels Flunks the ‘Ballet Egyptien’ Test" »
Ronnie Bray reveals to the Epicurean world the delights of a Yorkshire delicacy, mushy peas.
...Music blared over loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling, and a small bar sold small bottles of pop and bags of Smith’s crisps, the only crisps I remember eating until I was much older. Inside each bag of crisps was a twist of waxed blue paper with a pinch of salt inside, to sprinkle on the crisps, clutch the top of the bag and shake to distribute the sale over the crisps. I can still taste them when I think about them, and they have never been bettered...
Ronnie Bray recalls a small pleasure park which provided many hours of joy in a less-complicated age.
Continue reading "Hope Bank - Symbol of the Vanishing Past" »
Ronnie Bray recalls a dark brown polished wardrobe "that maintained silent vigil in the hallway outside the doorway of Nanny’s inner sanctum. Although it was locked, the key, complete with the patina of almost a century of age, stood in its ancient brownness in the lock. In spite of that, it was tacitly understood that it was out of bounds to inquisitive eyes.''
...All my few memories of the all too brief hours spent at the caravan are of sunshine and smiles, as the normal cares of life were for an hour or so, forgotten, and it was possible to see occasional flashes of humanity in those who ruled my life...
Ronnie Bray recalls with affection visits to a village some miles from the Yorkshire industrial town in which he grew up.
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...We always stopped in the middle to stare down into the murky waters. When crossing by myself, I always did the same. As much as an hour could be lost gazing into the stream while considering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything...
Ronnie Bray tells of a passage pf escape.
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...Like most country folks, they could not cut their farming ties and so they kept a pig to fatten and a yard full of hens. It was a small quaint house built of small red bricks made in ancient times. What remained of the farm had that comforting smell of permanence and the tangible memory of deep roots, settled customs, and country manners...
Ronnie Bray recalls a joyous boyhood holiday in County Durham.
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...I have never visited any place where I could not happily dwell, nor where there has been a failure of bliss....
Ronnie Bray continues his engaging autobiography. To read earlier chapters please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...I broke the rifle, which cocked the mechanism, and placed a pellet in the breech, then took careless aim at a sparrow on a branch high in an elm tree. A short, sharp ‘phut!’ and the sparrow fell dead onto the flags that paved the yard. I was staggered and deeply ashamed...
Ronnie Bray recalls his greatest day of shame.
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Ronnie Bray recalls his frustrated attempts at gardening.
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...Some graves were overwhelmed with flowers and other signs of attention, whilst others were forgotten and long-neglected, as if all that knew the person interred in those desolate spots had also passed, leaving none to care or continue to hold them in memory.
Moved by the awful desolation and neglect of these scenes, we busied ourselves taking flowers from graves where there were many and putting them on graves where there were none...
Ronnie Bray tells of his early attempt to right what he saw as an injustice.
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...Although I did not understand death, I had some uncertainty about how 'dead' the departed really were. Childhood was full of spirits, most of them malevolent, lingering around their crumbling tombs. Our play space was the narrow strips of grass between graves. We never walked on graves out of respect for the dead, but most of all from dread fear of them...
Ronnie Bray recalls the day he saw a ghost in the churchyard.
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...Getting my new bike was timely because the urbane Walter Fox and I were planning to take a cycling holiday to Scarborough and brave it under canvas. Planning is probably not the right description for our preparation. We made the decision to go and went...
Delving into his well-stocked storehouse of memories Ronnie Bray tells of a boyhood cycling holiday in Scarborough.
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...One day, I was walking to my home in Fitzwilliam Street from town having decided to go through the Wood Yard, I happened upon an interesting little jute sack tied at the neck. Picking it up and on opening it, I found three dead puppies. They were still warm, so I knew that they had not been dead for long and would not be hard to resurrect...
Ronnie Bray tells of discovering life's harshest fact.
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...I also bought a Foulsham’s book on jujitsu written by Professor Yukio Tani. I was deeply impressed that he had, the book said, disabled twenty armed and determined attackers using the skills he now shared with the readers...
Ronnie Bray tells of early reading days.
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...I deftly struck a match and lit the magnesium strip.
Once it had taken hold it burned with a fierce white light that, when it reached my cocktail, set it alight with a brilliant flash accompanied with the most smoke I had ever seen all at once in a single place...
Ronnie Bray discovered at an early age that he was no alchemist.
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...What a few wires and terminal will do when they are connected and have the right components in their proper places. How the world shrinks as distance evaporates and the far away is brought into our very ears. That is the wonder of radio, and that is one of the major wonders that thrilled me as a boy when I heard a wireless set pour its magic sounds into whatever room was blessed by its presence...
Ronnie Bray recalls the explosive failure when he trying to build his own radio set.
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Ronnie Bray goes exploring on his first bike.
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...Holy Trinity churchyard was at the terrible end of the continuum of infancy inhabited by danger and dread and by the certainty of unseen but powerful entities. It served as first alternative to Greenhead Park for special purposes. It was, above all, the place of the DEAD. Although I did not understand death, I entertained the lingering uncertainty so common to childhood about how 'dead' the departed really were...
Ronnie Bray tells of the wonderful, and sometimes frightening, imaginative world of childhood.
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Ronnie Bray tells of the delights of Dandelion and Burdock and Doctor Dan Holroyd's Drink of Health - two products at the very top of the divine order of beverages.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's story - which sits at the top of the divine order of autobiographies - please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...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...
Ronnie Bray tells of his discovery of the wonderful world of music.
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Ronnie Bray tells a couple of ghostly tales.
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...I like America in spite of its mistakes and the ignorant foolishness of some of its people. I have never understood what we used to call the colour bar, or racism. All arguments against outsider groups are monotonous, repetitive, and lacking scientific or common sense foundations...
Ronnie Bray's early impressions of America were formed by Hollywood films.
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...It was Willie who caused the hysteria by rushing up to the small square image on the white wall, calling out, "It moved! I saw it move! It moved!”...
But did the picture thrown by the Magic Lantern really move? Ronnie Bray recalls fear in the attic.
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...Apart from modern three-piece suite in Nanny’s Front Room, upon whose luxurious tawny-brown uncut moquette cushions I was never invited to rest, the furniture in the house was serviceable but old, and that helped to preserve an atmosphere of the past....
Ronnie Bray tells of homelife during his boyhood.
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Ronnie Bray tells of a short but unforgettable letter from his father.
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...Humanity stands suspended between truth and error, between imprisonment and freedom, between light and darkness, heaven and earth, life and death,,,
Ronnie Bray muses on the meaning of life.
Ronnie Bray recalls the first time he trod the boards.
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...Yet, stories of archers shooting peerlessly at small objects placed on or near a loved one form part of our classical mythology and appear in many parts of the world, the most celebrated being that of William Tell and his son, when, had it not been for Pete’s unreasonable terror, the legend of Ronnie Bray and the pen nib dart might have overtaken the Tell story in modern romance...
Ronnie Bray, writing with vigour and peerless originality, continues his life story. To read earlier chapters please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...Her last words to me, before she hit the side of the first air raid shelter were, “Don’t let go!” I could tell by the panic in her voice, even at that distance, that she was frightened, but already it was too late...
Ronnie Bray recalls what happened when he took René out to teach her to ride a bike.
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...I suppose that in view of the world-shaking events, my dose of ringworm rates low on the Richter Scale. But it does provide meaningful insight into the human condition, affording a way of relating to others on a plane that exposes human hearts to fellowship and love...
Ronnie Bray recalls the year his hair fell out.
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...The blacksmith never acknowledged my presence and I wouldn’t recognise him if I saw him. I went to watch him work. The forge fire was raised to white heat by a huge bellows pumping air through its vast leather lungs. Sparks flew up to the vaulted roof twenty or more feet above street level and scattered their iridescent showers all over without setting anything alight. The light from the forge burned brightest around the spot where the anvil stood on its elm block...
Ronnie Bray recalls sweet boyhood Saturdays - even though there were chores which had to be done.
Ronnie Bray tells of window shopping on his Saturday trips into town.
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...In a few moments, we had stripped our branches of all leaves and many of their twigs, as we pirouetted in our pas de deux of death, felling the little fellows without compassion...
Ronnie Bray tells with great gusto of a war against an army of wasps.
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Ronnie Bray recalls his first love - and the pain of having to become the invisible man.
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Ronnie Bray recalls the windmill man, and a single square of chocolate.
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Ronnie Bray tells with great compassion of a lady who lived in a cellar.
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Ronnie Bray tells of a young man with histrionic leanings.
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...Did I expect him to keep quiet? Probably. He could be heard scrabbling about inside the drawer, no doubt railing against the darkness, and the lodgers who slept in the big attic started asking awkward questions such as, “Have you got a pigeon in that drawer?”...
Ronnie Bray tells of a feathered friend.
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...Only on Sundays were breakfasts cooked from scratch. Sunday was a special day, the day of fried eggs and bacon. Even in my rooftop haunt, I could smell Sunday, as its special aroma drifted upwards through the house. However, on common days, the breakfasts were piled into the ageing Creda cooker the night before to await a flick of the ‘on’ switch...
Though the young Ronnie Bray was to learn that not all breakfasts have to be cooked.
For more of Ronnie's engaging autobiography please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...When I told my Father about it, he said that scabies only afflicted dirty people. That would certainly make me a candidate, for I was a stranger to soap and water, and remained so for a few more years...
Ronnie Bray falls victim to a terriblde itch. To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's life story please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
Ronnie Bray tells of his first experience of dining out Yorkshire-style, which of course meant eating fish and chips.
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...A real treat was a visit to the Beast Market at the bottom end of town. There were two fish and chip shops that had tables downstairs and upstairs where one could take a tray with fish and chips, bread and butter, and a pot of tea, sit, and eat a meal. It was almost too grown up for words...
The young Ronnie Bray goes exploring in his home town and discovers tasty delights.
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Ronnie Bray explains the difference between snickets, ginnels and alleys.
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Ronnie Bray had difficulty in working out the geography of his home town.
Ronnie Bray recalls happy days in the park near his home.
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Ronnie Bray describes what it feels like to be an "outsider''.
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...We had a succession of black cats called Dinky. It was as if when one died, he was immediately reincarnated and returned to his former abode to have another attempt at getting off the wheel of life...
Ronnie Bray recalls the household pets of his childhood days - and the fate of one particular mouse.
Ronnie Bray recalls the fiery night of the Thermogene experiment.
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Ronnie Bray recalls the travelling people who were often seen when he was a boy.
...Blake Lea had a swimming hole. It was not wide, it was not very deep, and it was not long, but for a brief division of its mysterious watercourse, it became spa, lido, watering hole, and gathering place, little more than a step or two outside the real world and its concerns, where, for the space of a sunny afternoon, pains and responsibilities released young boys from their grasp...
Ronnie Bray recalls a place of magical happiness.
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Ronnie Bray enjoyed the yards where poeple lived in his home town.
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...There is little in life better than a rummage through someone’s cast-outs and to discover the very essence of joy in some broken thing...
Ronnie Bray tells of the boyhood joy of exploring the back streets of his home town.
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...From Little Greenhead Park up to Gledholt Road, wound Greenhead Road that sported gracious houses and people who had abandoned Yorkshire vowel sounds. Children who lived there had gleaming new bicycles, matching shoes, and wore hats. I knew that I did not belong there...
Ronnie Bray continues his recollections of the town in which he spent his boyhood.
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Ronnie Bray visualises the home-town streets of his boyhood.
Ronnie Bray continues to delineate the boundaries of his boyhood kingdom.
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...His catchment area was the whole world of need. He understood the imperatives of good physical health and a correct mental attitude - mens sanum in corpus sanum was his watchword. He invented and advocated Positive Mental Attitude long before it became a multi-million dollar business. All sorts and ages of boys were welcome there, and each received Alfie’s individual attention. He tutored each lad with infinite patience and care, dispensing advice like a machine gun...
Ronnie Bray pays tribute to a man who had a big influence on his early life.
...My father’s family had history in Castlegate. 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 his life story. To read earlier chapters please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
Ronnie Bray shares his memories of the Yorkshire mill town where he was born.
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Ronnie Bray recalls the man who ruled the park near to his boyhood home.
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Ronnie Bray's photographic memory records the streets near where he lived as a boy.
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...Above there was the unusual front of Fox’s Dancing Academy. I attended there for two or three Saturday morning shilling's worth before deciding on a common vote that I was not destined to dance. Near there down some railinged cellar steps was the dark domain of Mr Armitage, cobbler...
Ronnie Bray recalls the surroundings of his town-centre home.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's vivid autobiography please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...A short way to Bill Haley’s Fish and chip shop where the best cod was fried to perfection, the chips were from Paradise, and they cost threepence for a huge bagful that I can taste yet and have never tasted better, for all the years I can remember...
Ronnie Bray, gifted with a photographic memory, tells of the street where he lived as a boy.
Ronnie Bray tells of the boundaries of his childhood world.
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Ronnie Bray tells of an enchanting boyhood "playground''.
To read further chapters of Ronnie's autobiography please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/
...A pleasant Saturday morning could be spent at the duck pond with a thrup’nny fishing net on the end of a bamboo pole, fishing for sticklebacks beneath the murky water. Then we would carry them home in a jam jar to die of something or other within the week. The ducks ate the fish we couldn’t...
Ronnie Bray recalls happy and soggy days at the duck pond in a park near his boyhood home.
For earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiographical writings please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray recalls his first venturings into the big wide world.
Ronnie Bray tells of his home town.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I remember with some fondness the otherworldly innocence of children during my own childhood. They lived in another world than grown ups and were, in the main, protected from life’s harsh realities until they were of an age and disposition to deal with them with some level of success. Today’s children live in a world where childhood is denied and innocence does not exist, except in their ability to deal with it...
Ronnie Bray recalls a childhood spent in the age of coal fires, draw tins and fire faeries.
To read more of Ronnie's magical autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
To read more of Ronnie's magical autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...Playing in the yard – that was our playground – assured us of regular interactions with the flagstones and also with the clothes line. There were no rules about the flags, you could hit them as hard as you wished with any part of your body and no one minded.
However, the clothes line was girt about with outlandish mitzvoth setting out what could and could not be done with or to it...
Ronnie Bray tells of days of play fraught with the risk of punishment.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
....Fathers wore clean Macintoshes, mothers wore woollen coats, hats, the children wore Sabbath best, and they sat on their bulging leather or fibre suitcases, strapped together with spare leather belts so as not to burst open before they were opened in the lodgings....
Ronnie Bray recalls childhood holidays.
To read more of Ronnie's autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but she can also be the mother of disaster as Ronnie Bray reveals in this account of a monumental culinary catastrophy.
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Death was never fatal when Ronnie Bray and his friend Pete fought their imaginary battles, inspired by what they had just seen on the silver screen.
To read further chapters of Ronnie's evocative life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...The struggle to get warm and then keep warm occupied a large part of our lives. It was not called The Frozen North for nothing, and our homes were cold cheerless places that sported no central heating. This meant that once we left the room that had the coal fire in it, we walked into a frigidity known only to Esquimaux, polar bears, penguins, and Yorkshire folk, and life expectancy plunged immediately to about twenty minutes...
With a pronouced shiver, Ronnie Bray recalls the chills of childhood.
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In this vivid autobiographical chapter Ronnie Bray recalls the days when horse power really was provided by horses.
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Ronnie Bray recalls the days when his home town in Yorkshire had its own unique character.
Ronnie Bray's hero when he was a boy was a fictional character called Wilson, who always triumphed when he seemed doomed to failure.
...There was no conversation in my childhood home. Only short interrogations and the briefest of answers...
Ronnie Bray introduces a series of chapters on his boyhood which will appear in the forthcoming weeks.
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.
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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.
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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.
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...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.
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...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.
Ronnie Bray recalls school-day swimming lessons - and an embarrassing occasion.
To read more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Do also read his splendid Letter From America columns.
Ronnie Bray recalls the day he put chalk dust on his face and pretended to be ill.
To read more of Ronnie's life story please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his engaging weekly column, Letter From America.
Ronnie Bray recalls wartime privations.
To read earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiography please click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his invigorating Letter From America columns.
Continuing his life story Ronnie Bray recalls the bitter day when he learned why he was not being allowed to sing in a schools concert at the local town hall.
To read further chapters of Ronnie's story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his engaging and entertaining Letter From America series.
Ronnie Bray recalls woodwork lessons in school - and making a Stradivarius-class pipe rack.
To read more of Ronnie's memoirs click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his exuberant Letter From America columns.
Ronnie Bray recalls helping himself to a small supply of books, on "permanent loan'', from the school library.
To read more of Ronnie's life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his sparkling Letter From America columns.
...He was also given to caning the whole class for the misdemeanour of one. He had a very striking style...
Ronnie Bray recalls a teacher with a "striking'' style. For more of Ronnie's life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...We played at omnibuses by putting our little wooden chairs in line. Someone played at conductor and we bought paper tickets with cardboard money. I can still see the golden and copper coloured coins. The printing was not quite centred...
Ronnie Bray is far from rosy-eyed as he recalls his school days. To read further chapters of Ronnie's life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his ebullient weekly column Letter From America.
...The Black Bottom Clown disappeared from sight, and we wandered to our homes musing on what we had witnessed, trying to make sense of the world of grown-ups. They could be so strange. No wonder we didn’t quite grasp who or what our parents were, what it was they wanted us to do, and what it was they wanted from us. Life was a puzzle without a solution...
Ronnie Bray recalls the day when, as a schoolboy, he saw a peformance by a one-man band. For more of Ronnie's life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his engaging Letter From America columns.
Ronnie Bray recalls one of his school teachers, Miss Bessie Saltmer, a kindly lady who smoked Kensitas cigarettes.
To read more of Ronnie's engrossing life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...School was a necessary evil to be patiently borne, but I didn’t know why it was necessary... Ronnie Bray recalls his early schooldays.
For more of Ronnie's life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his vastly entertaining weekly columns, Letter From America.
...The kitchen was full of acrid black smoke that would have done credit to the Coronation Scot steam locomotive pulling forty carriages up a one-in-two incline... And the rabbits could not be blamed for the cause of that smoke, as Ronnie Bray reveals in this tale of what happened when he went to stay with his mate Trevor Lee.
Read earlier chapters of Ronnie's life story by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...I often wished my family could see me swallowed up by one of the sumptuous leather easy chairs, taking tea with her and Vaikai from delicate bone china cups with matching saucers...
The teenage Ronnie Bray becomes the friend of an American boy whose wealthy mother owned a textile mill.
Read more of Ronnie's engaging life story by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his exuberant weekly column Letter From America.
Ronnie Bray tells of a madcap boyhood holiday in Scarborough when his tent was occupied by squatters wearing yellow-and-black striped jerseys.
Fore more of Ronnie's life story, recounted with great good humour, click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his weekly column Letter From America.
...At best it was a sorry sight with two chortling schoolboys circling with their fists in the air and their hearts not in the contest...
Ronnie Bray recalls the day when he was a reluctant gladiator.
Read also Ronnie's ever-surprising columns. Click on Letter From America in the menu on this page.
Ronnie Bray recalls a boy who lived in a house called Royston - a boy whose feet refused to obey Ronnie's well-meaning orders.
To read more colourful episodes of Ronnie's life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his sparkling columns, Letter From America.
...It was a surprise, therefore, to find myself being pushed backwards through the school playground one lunch time by this ginger-haired lad. Surrounded by bloodthirsty boys, calling to see my blood, he poked and prodded me into retreat until he had me trapped in front of the schoolhouse door...
Ronnie Bray recalls a red-headed boy, and a very special baby girl with copper-coloured hair.
To read more of Ronnie's vivid memoirs click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Continue reading "Come Back Derek Harrowby, All Is Forgiven" »
Ronnie Bray recalls how he dealt with a schoolboy bully.
Recalling an incident from his chilhood, Ronnie Bray tells a rollicking tale involving the origin of the human species.
Read more of Ronnie's life story by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his lively weekly column, Letter From America.
Continue reading "How Charles Darwin Upset Gerald Marshall's Father" »
...When smoked in our pipes, briar rejects bought from Woolworth’s for half a crown, it made a dense smoke cloud with a smell like a garden bonfire..
Ronnie Bray recalls his early smoking experiences with his friend Pete West. For more of Ronnie's entertaining reminisences click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
Read also his wonderful Letter From America columns.
...I never saw him but that my heart went out to him in gentle sympathy for the load he would have to bear through his life... Ronnie Bray recalls a boy called Mousey.
"How can one ever say sufficient ‘goodbye’ to a beloved pet who has been one’s solitary friend and keeper of secrets?'' Ronnie Bray recalls the last sad journey of a pet cat, Dinky.
Read more of Ronnie's rich slices of lifetime experience by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his exuberant weekly columns, Letter From America.
Ronnie Bray recalls a boy called Derek Brown - and a callisthenic kick.
For more of Ronnie's rich lifetime memories click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. And do also read his delicious weekly columns Letter From America.
In this slice of autobiography Ronnie Bray recalls a childhood attic adventure into the magical world of the movies.
Read also Ronnie's wise and humorous weekly column. Click on Letter From America in the menu on this page.
...Someone at the little church thought that as Frankie was a big lad, he would be ideal for the position of bellows pumper for the ancient hand-pumped organ. The bellows was located in a small room at the back of the organ, and Frankie would sit on his chair until the hymns were announced and then, springing like a crouching tiger for the handle of the big leather bellows he would pump vigorously until the dying notes were sung, when he would resume his sedentary position to repay his oxygen debt...
Ronnie Bray recalls a school friend, Frankie Knight, a lad who vigorously pumped the organ bellows - for a while.
In this slice of autobiography Ronnie Bray recalls some of the tradesmen who came hawking their services down the street where he lived.
To read more of Ronnie's evocative life story click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his good humoured column Letter From America.
"The little sweet things that did appear were Nanny Bennett’s Jam and Lemon Curd Tarts – both deserving of capitalisation! The tarts appeared from time to time in an old round biscuit tin kept exclusively for holding the confections and enabling them to be dispensed at times divinely appointed. They were lovely!...'' Ronnie Bray tells of tasty boyhood treats.
For earlier chapters of Ronnie's autobiography click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Also read his delicious Letter From America columns.
"Dance halls were where most of what was happening happened...'' Ronnie Bray recalls his youthful days in a dance hall in a West Yorkshire town.
To read Ronnie's autobiography from the beginning click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his superlative Letter From America columns.
Ronnie Bray samples honeycomb tripe and mushroom soup and decides that growing up could be fun.
To sample more tasty helpings of Ronnie's autobiography click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also his richly interesting weekly columns, Letter From America.
... My Ma came a long way behind Nanny in the pecking order. Everyone else got pecked. The hand that held the purse strings ruled the world...
Ronnie Bray continues his life story. To read his autobiography from the beginning click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
And do read Ronnie's versatile and varied Letter From America columns.
"Life with Tommy Scott as a dad was difficult for me...According to the perceived wisdom of the time, I presented something of a challenge and it was not fashionable in those days to have challenging children...''
A step-father "appears'' in Ronnie Bray's young life. To read Ronnie's autobiogrqphy from the beginning click on A Shout From the Attic in the menu on this page.
"I could not say that either my father or mother ever really grew up...''
Ronnie Bray has grim memories of a bullying father. To read Ronnie's autobiography from the beginning click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...At Christmas when the cakes and puddings would be mixed, the best treat was to scrape the basin and lick the wooden spoons. Uncooked cake and pudding mix tastes far better than the finished product...
Ronnie Bray recalls in scene-painting detail his boyhood home.
…Though Granddad imparted no skills to me, left me no pearls of wisdom, did not share his Werther’s Originals, and never took me anywhere, the times he spent talking to me in the cellar sitting room made the brightest and warmest memories, that stand out like oases of reality in a desolate and denying landscape. …
Ronnie Bray describes the unusual arrangements in the house where he spent his boyhood.
To read Ronnie’s entertaining biography from the beginning click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. And do look out for Ronnie’s wonderful and invariably surprising weekly column Letter From America.
Ronnie Bray's mother and grandmother believed their pet animals could understand English. Which resulted in interesting consquences when the Amazon green parrot cried out "The teacakes are burning!''
Read earlier chapters of Ronnie's life story by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. And look out for Ronnie's weekly Letter From America.
...Overall, I did not enjoy school. Too much to remember, too many places to be and too many people to please, many of who appeared incapable of being pleased....
Ronnie Bray continues his life story. For earlier chapters click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. Read also Ronnie's invigorating column Letter From America which appears weekly in Open Writing.
...I went upstairs to bed alone, sometimes, for reasons of which I am not sure, carrying a lighted candle stuck in an enamelled tin candleholder. When I heard my mother come up to the floor below I called out to her so that she would visit me in my bedroom. She did not always come. Sometime she came but never stayed more than a few seconds. She was always busy with some task around the house. I felt so unloved and alone...
Ronnie Bray recalls troubled thoughts from his childhood.
Read earlier episodes of Ronnie's autobiography by clicking on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page. A follow Ronnie's ever-surprising and always entertaining Letter From America column which is posted in Open Writing every Saturday.
...Of an evening, we mostly sat around the fire in the living cum dining room. All the chairs were wooden dining chairs. The floor was covered with linoleum and was bare except for the pegged rung that was in front of the fire. Pegged rugs were formed on a backing of jute sackcloth, pieces of cloth cut from old coats, and dresses were put through holes mad with a wooden skewer. Simple patterns were achieved which made them look attractive, but they were dust traps.... Ronnie Bray recalls his early teen years in quieter, though much itchier, times.
"The windows were set half above and half below ground level, so that even when the sun streamed through the rear windows in the afternoon the room was never brilliant. It could have been cosy, but it never was...'' Ronnie Bray tells of his dreary childhood home.
Entrance to the house in which Ronnie Bray was born was by the back door. Only ladies, gentlemen, and Doctor Hanratty used the front door. In fact, since ladies and gentlemen never called, the Irish physician was the sole ingressor through that hallowed portal.
To read Ronnie's autobiography from the beginning click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
...The only time I remember my dad taking me out one-on-one was when he made a kite for me and took me to the Rifle Fields to fly it. It didn’t fly and we went silently home. I guess that about sums up our relationship... Ronnie Bray recalls his family, and the living room of the house in which he lived as a child.
Read Ronnie's engrossing biography from the beginning. Click on A Shout From The Attic in the menu on this page.
"At Christmas when the cakes and puddings were mixed, the best treat was to scrape the basin and lick the wooden spoons. Uncooked cake and pudding mix tastes far better than the finished product...'' Ronnie Bray remembers the days of bread making and cake baking.
"The room boasted a Pianola that I coveted, a radio that was never turned on, and a gramophone that was never played. The gramophone was driven by clockwork and the sound reproduced acoustically by a steel needle vibrating in the groove...'' Ronnie Bray, continuing his vividly-remembered life story, recalls the room in his grandmother's lodging house which served as her refuge and place of shelter from the world.
"The house I was born in, 121 Fitzwilliam Street, was a lodging house owned and operated by my grandma, known as Nanny. Many of the lodgers were long-term inhabitants. From these, I learned the rudiments of Broad Yorkshire. Later, when I went to school, my dialect would be refined to the point where it would become almost unintelligible by those not from the favoured shire...''
Ronnie Bray recalls the house in which he was born - and the broad Yorkshire dialect which was his boyhood lingua franca.
“The furnishings and appointments of the house where I was born were basic, practical, and sparse. The last gasp of Victoriana offering minimal comfort that served best to remind one of the temporary nature of one’s welcome. I lived there for the thick end of seventeen years without feeling welcome. To feel tolerated was very heaven, but rare…’’ Ronnie Bray, continuing his life story, recalls his childhood years, spent in a boarding house owned by his grandmother.
"We didn’t know about sibling rivalry and I can’t remember feeling bad about my brother and sister or feel they were getting more than their share...'' Ronnie Bray recalls childhood incidents.
"I was born in January 1935. I was a chubby baby, some might say fat – some would say fat! My birth weight was ten pounds and my face was so chubby that I couldn’t get my eyes open. My mother, it is told, cried for two whole days at what fate had dropped in her lap...'' Ronnie Bray, writing with Dickensian gusto, launches into his life story.
Look out on Saturdays (and also in our archives) for Ronnie's splendid weekly Letter From America columns.
Before launching into his fascinating life story, Ronnie Bray recalls some of his childhood perceptions.
"My childhood was like falling through space with no points of contact that had real meaning. It was a free-floating experience without constellation or structure in which I found my own way in a day-to-day nothing that led nowhere. I still feel the draught. I learned not to look people in the eyes or ask questions. Sometimes it hurt to know too much...''
Ronnie Bray looks back on his life as though through a camera's lense. Ronnie has crowded lots of experiences into his years, and his literary gifts enable us to share in them. This is the first episode of what he calls "An autobiography in progress''. Week by week, there will be a further entertaining episode from A Shout From The Attic.
