Home | The Day Before Yesterday
...We didn't feel the cold as we walked to school that evening. Warm winter coats covered all our finery. It looked like Fairyland passing all the gleaming windows. After the party was over we had the fancy dress parade. We all walked around slowly, passing the teachers who were the judges. Thanks to Dorothy, I won first prize, a pretty decorated box with four different colours of note paper and envelopes in it...
Gladys Schofield recalls Christmas festivities.
Gladys Schofield recalls what happened to her Aunty Becky was having to live upstaris, after the ground floor of her home had been flooded.
"Aunty looked out of the window one morning to see how far the water had gone down and saw a snake, an adder, climbing up the drainpipe, trying to reach the bedroom where they were. Quick as a flash she got a shovel of hot coals and threw them out of the window at it. They found it dead after the water had drained away.''
To read earlier chapters of Gladys's engaging life story please click on The Day Before Yesterday in the menu on this page.
Gladys Schofield recalls Whitsuntide parades, and a Waffen Fuffen band.
...But I didn't know what had been decided until almost Christmas. Under my parents' bed was a large bulky object covered by a blanket. I had a peep but dare not show any excitement because it was a secret...
Gladys Schofield recalls Christmastime and the other the "high'' days of her childhood.
...We would gather together in the evenings and play under the lamplight - games of tag or 'What time is it Mister Wolf'. We played in the road with no traffic to worry about, only the odd bicycle passing every now and again...
Gladys Schofield tells of innocent days.
...Electricity had arrived at last and Dad bought a wireless, or radio as it became known as. It had a large speaker which sat on top of another unit. We were the second family in the houses around to get one. Dad peered at the instructions with Charles at his elbow, and the only noise that came out of the thing at first was a loud oscillating screech...
Gladys Schofield continues her vivid account of her childhood years.
...With a jam jar carried by string, we would head for a favourite spot to catch tiddlers - tiny fishes - in a stream which wound its way through a beech forest. This looked so lovely with its fresh green leaves. We needed no net to catch these fish because we had got so expert we just scooped them up into our hands...
Gladys Schofield recalls glorious childhood days.
...All curtains were washed at this time. Carpet squares (no fitted carpets) were lifted and hung over a line, and the dust was beaten out of them with something like an enlarged tennis racket. We had a carpet sweeper, hand-pushed not powered. Two tiny brushes inside did their best to pick up the bits but never did a very good job, hence the good whack with the carpet beater...
Gladys Schofield recalls the rigours of Spring cleaning in an earlier age.
...I played on my own a lot of the time, building an imaginary house for dolls. The walls I made by borrowing some of Dad's books. I could make different rooms this way. I used matchboxes for beds and my dolls cost one penny. They were made of celluloid, similar to plastic. They were about two inches high with moveable limbs, threaded with fine elastic. A shop just up our road sold the little darlings. I don't know why I loved dolls so much, but if I saved two halfpennies, I could buy a dolly. This I often did until I had a little family...
Gladys Schofield recalls the imaginative games of her childhood.
Gladys Schofield remembers the proud days when the song There'll Always Be An England was regularly sung.
Read earlier chapters of Gladys's story by clicking on The Day Before Yesterday was regularly sung.
...We didn't wear shorts. I would be sixteen when I got my first pair. We had navy blue knickers. The legs of these had elastic in them and a pocket for a handkerchief on one leg. We wore white blouses and black pumps (little black canvas shoes that laced up). We did all manor of exercising and being used to walking everywhere, we were very supple...
Gladys Schofield recalls her school days.
Gladys Schofield tells of school bobbies, "crawlers'' and shaved heads.
Gladys Schofield recalls the birth of a baby brother.
To read earlier chapters of Gladys's engaging life story please click on The Day Before Yesterday in the menu on this page.
...Pencils were used for writing, though slates and chalk were still in use in some schools. A handle-operated pencil sharpener worked overtime in a corner of the room and another blackboard, not quite as large as the other, was on a wall at the side. On this was printed the times table up to twelve...
Gladys Schofield recalls schooldays - and a frightening occasion when she could not find her way home.
...I sat down on a rug in front of the fire and proceeded to do this. I tugged at a stubborn little sock, trying to get each toe in the right place. I tugged too hard and my foot shot out in front of me and caught the teapot, that in turn fell onto the hearth, spilling its contents over one of my feet. I can still feel this pain of that moment...
Gladys Schofield recalls childhood disasters.
...Nothing was thrown away that could come in useful. Sheets were always white and were torn into small squares for children's noses when needed, or bandages for sore knees. These were perfectly hygienic because of their constant boiling on washing day...
Gladys Schofield recalls growing up in less affluent times.
While still a young girl Gladys Schofield moved with her family to live in a new council house.
...What a big difference to the one we were leaving. We hadn't thought it strange living in this way with no hot water or toilet facilities on the premises - that was housed in a small hut at the bottom of the garden. Each house was like its neighbour standing in long rows, blackened with smoke from the industrial chimneys and yet a certain pride with their clean scrubbed doorsteps. How many people had been bom and died under the same roof? Plenty, I would say. With transport as it was they didn't have to travel far and any news didn't take long to travel all around the village....
Follow Glady's entertaining life story week by week in Open Writing.
Today we begin the serialisation of The Day Before Yesterday, the autobiography of Gladys Schofield, who was born in a Yorkshire mill town in 1920. She emigrated to New Zealand in 1966, returning to England a year or two ago.
Glady's daughter, Susan Schofield, says: "Mum was born at Golcar, Huddersfield and this is her first book. She took up writing at the tender age of 79, after first writing poems twenty years earlier. She is also a keen artist, taking up oil painting at the age of 69 and winning an award in New Zealand for one of her paintings entitled 'It's never too late to create'.''
Follow Glady's story week by week in Open Writing.
