Cobbled Streets and Penny Sweets--Happy Times and Hardship in Post-War Britain

by Yvonne Young

  Nivea cream was Mam’s favourite: she dotted three dollops on her forehead, one on her nose, chin and each cheek. It was massaged into her face like she was making pastry, only she never did that. She used block mascara, which was sold with a little brush – she spat on the brush and scraped it across the black block, then applied it to her lashes. A disgusting practice! Next, she began plucking her eyebrows and I was roped in for this task. She always seemed to ask me to do this when I was on my way out. I wasn’t paying attention during one session and nipped a chunk of skin instead of a hair – she didn’t ask me again after that.

  After going to see a film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mam purchased a black stick with which to give the impression that she had a beauty spot.

  ‘Mam, you’ve got a black mark just above your lip!’

  ‘It’s a beauty spot. Liz Taylor has one and she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.’

  She was easily distracted and pair this with a poor memory and the results won’t be favourable. Mam went through her usual beauty routine of dabbing Nivea, then rushed out to the Co-op. Later in the day, when I called in, the staff were having a right giggle behind the counter and each time I put in my request to be served, they became more hysterical.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘Your mam was in the shop earlier.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She hadn’t rubbed her cream in.’

  More guffawing.

  I could just imagine her standing there like Coco the Clown while they all suppressed their laughter. Local tradespeople, if they shared notes, could have made a comedy series. When the window cleaner was chasing Mam up the street on her way to work one day, she just kept on running and shouted, ‘I will pay you tonight, I’m in a hurry!’

  He kept on chasing, and when he caught up with her, it was to remove a dry-cleaning ticket from the back of her coat.

  As soon as the sun came out, Mam would park her backside in a deckchair in the backyard. Of course, as the sun didn’t come out that often in the North of England, she forgot from one year to the next how to put it up. One day, I watched from the sitting room window as she pulled it about like a cat’s cradle game.

  ‘Ken, come and put this bloody thing up, will you?’

  When the sun went around to the front of the house, Mam never wasted any time and simply upped sticks and sat in the front street. She was the only person among the rows of terraced flats to do this – all the other wives were cooking, cleaning or ironing – and she’d be there until the last sign of sun. There might be a momentary lapse if our massive Manx cat Lucy was fighting a dog in the lane. Lucy ran the walls of the backyards hissing at other moggies and occasionally jumping from a great height onto the back of any passing dog.

  ‘Get in here, you stupid thing!’ Mam would say. Then it was back to the important business of sun soaking. When she eventually came back indoors, she was greeted by the arrangements on the kitchen table. Dad liked to line up the condiment set, cutlery, cups, anything that happened to be there. Mam would get really ratty, ‘Look at him, he’s got everything arranged like a regiment of soldiers!’

  Then she would scrabble everything up. He knew when she was in a fuming temper that it was better to say nothing.

  * * *

  So, I was on my own for that badge. But the next thing on the agenda was a week’s trip to Felton, a little village about an hour’s travelling from Newcastle. A farmer had agreed to allow us Guides on his land with our tents and latrines. We were told there would be the odd cow roaming around, but they wouldn’t harm us. Those of us whose families were not in possession of a car hitched a ride with others more affluent. We were to bring a few changes of clothing, a tin plate and mug. We lasses were split into groups to put our tents up. There was a competition for the first finished, but we came last and were still on with it until it was becoming dark. People who had long since set theirs up, erected the latrines and food tents came to help. The ground sheets slipped out from under the tent and I was terrified of the insects.

  It was just as well that I came from a home where adventures in food preparation were never a priority. I will never forget the taste of battered spam cooked swimming in fat. A girl called Carol was in charge of making the jelly for afters: she was wearing a purple jumper at the time and everyone was picking bits of mohair from the jelly.

  A visit to the toilet during the night was a hazardous affair. On one side there were sloping banks, which led down to a fast-flowing stream; on the other, cowpats to negotiate. Once the deed was done, you were responsible for digging a hole to cover your tracks.

  It was a miserable time, but there were some highlights when we held concerts in the big tent: some singing, joke telling and comedy routines. Someone sang ‘Everyone’s Gone To The Moon’, another reminder of our misery. One younger girl cried for her mother for the first couple of days and was told that she would perk up soon. Until it REALLY began to rain and we were flooded out of our tents.

  The farmer housed us in a barn which had been used to store grain. There were huge orange chutes from the roof, which we had to wend our way past, and straw on the floor. Lasses were continually bumping their heads. I was afraid of the insects in the tent, but this was something else – there were what seemed like hundreds of spiders. This sent the tearful girl over the edge and her parents were called to take her home. How I wished that I had had the foresight to cadge a lift, but this only occurred to me after she left.

  On Sunday, we walked a mile or so into the village to attend the local church service. All of my socks had been ruined by cow shit so I had to borrow a pair from one of the older girls. They were so big, they flopped over my shoes – you might say I had that ‘rural look’ as I resembled a Shire horse. Four of us lagged behind on the way back to camp and a group of village lads on bicycles terrorised us, riding their bikes around us and blocking our way. Then at last it was time to return home, me with a puffy eye from a chute bump and socks beyond washing clean.

  Mam wasn’t about so I invited my friends into my parents’ bedroom to show off her selection of new clothes: a red satin dress with a black bodice, pink flowered shift and a pale blue suit.

  ‘Ooh, that’s lovely!’

  ‘She wears this one when she goes to the Cavendish nightclub.’

  Mam was meeting new friends who went to Grey’s Club, Billy Botto’s and the Picadilly – mostly casino cocktail affairs with cabaret singers. She and Dad hardly spoke to each other through the week. He went to the Westfield Social Club at one end of the road and if she was playing out nearer home, she attended the Milvain Social Club at the other end. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I really began to realise how dysfunctional my parents’ marriage was.

  Mam finally managed to save enough money to buy her coveted china cabinet. It had patterned silver glass on the front and sides held together with ivory melamine. The shelves were of clear glass and she wasted no time in polishing and placing her dinner service and other bits and bobs inside. A little irony there that she polished and cleaned the dining table and cabinet and china within an inch of their lives, but had no time to cook or lay the table.

  * * *

  As I opened the front door at Buddle Road one day, three children stood on the top step. I was eleven years of age and had no knowledge of their existence.

  ‘I’m Kath and this is my sister Lil and brother Billy, we are your cousins.’

  Their mother Beattie was Dad’s sister. Now that explained everything: Mam’s family was known to me, but Dad didn’t keep in touch with any of his. I was made up to know these great kids. They were impressed that I had my own bedroom. The china cabinet must have made an impression too as it stood imposingly full of expensive china which took a year to save up for.

  Being an only child, I was always told how lucky I was to have all of my toys to myself and how I didn’t have to trail younger siblings round with me, but all I really wanted was someone to trail around. One of my fri
ends – Sarah – had a younger sister, who was the canniest little bairn.

  ‘I’ve got to bring our Pauline with me!’ she complained. But I would have loved her as a little sister.

  For me this was a godsend – for the first time I was presented with relatives who weren’t adults.

  ‘While we’re here,’ said Kath, ‘we’re going to visit Mrs Mooney [an old friend of our Mam’s]. Do you want to come?’

  Did I want to come? Of course!

  So, off we went along Buddle Road and down to the bottom of Maria Street.

  ‘I was born there at number 17,’ I said, pointing across the street.

  ‘Yes, we know, our mam lived at number 22,’ Kath informed me.

  Beattie had talked about us and her old neighbours – I had so much to catch up on.

  Kath took charge once more and knocked on the door. A voice from the other side announced that she was on her way and to wait. After the initial introduction, Mrs Mooney invited us into her upstairs flat, walking badly, hauling herself up by way of the banister. She slumped in her chair in front of the fireplace. I was fascinated by a set of false teeth floating in water, they looked huge through the thick glass. Mrs M scooped them up and stuck them in her mouth – they looked considerably smaller out of the solution. Lil was practising her reading skills on the various medications lined up along the top of the fireplace.

  ‘Al… ka… sel… selsa, Philo… san.’

  This drew our attention to other items up there: a blue pot swan with little dried flowers inside, a colourful glass with Blackpool painted around the top and a cream jug from Scarborough.

  Suddenly, Lil blurted out, ‘Bunion lotion!’

  ‘Lil!’ said Kath.

  ‘What’s a carbuncle?’

  We drank our juice and munched down the biscuits Mrs Mooney had kindly offered to us, then left.

  ‘When’s Kenny in?’ Kath asked (she was referring to Dad).

  ‘Oh, about 5.30,’ I said.

  Kath wanted to know if there was somewhere good to play until then, so I took them to Elswick Park. What was known as the ‘low park’ was on Scotswood Road and the top park ran from Elswick Road through onto Armstrong Road. The top park had more to it – a little pond with steps leading into it where you could plodge (paddle), drinking fountains, sculptures, swings, slides, a tennis court, shuggy boat and much more. The witches’ hat roundabout was a lethal weapon. Set in concrete (no safety surfaces in those days), it was a conical structure held up by an iron pole which bobbed about randomly, occasionally crashing into the pole. Lots of kids stood on the wooden plank circular seat, so God help them if anyone’s fingers were in line with the pole, or if an absent-minded child was walking too close to it.

  Dad was pleased to see my cousins and noted how like Beattie Kath was, but he never made any arrangements to see them again or to visit his sister. On the other hand, I was to spend most of that year’s six-week summer holiday at their house at Kinross Drive in North Kenton. It was in a block of flats on the first floor. There was a communal drying room for washing (which was never used) and outdoor lines (again, never used). The house had three bedrooms which were from the landing, as in conventional housing, but the fourth bedroom was enormous as it was above the drying room the same size. Today, the top floor has been removed, the block renovated and sold as private. The green where we used to play is now cordoned off by black metal fencing. It was modern compared to our old Victorian place.

  Beattie was lovely; she was lively and always smiling in spite of making a dinner every day, washing, ironing and keeping home for five adults and three children. At one point, she was also catering for her husband’s friend Sheff (he came from Sheffield) and the McNally family – husband, wife and baby son – who lodged there for a while, and me, of course.

  I could see some eccentricities of my dad in her, but of a much milder nature. She had wanted a new carpet for the landing at the top of the stairs, so she called a salesman to the house. The lad had a large samples book with a wide colour range. Beattie told him that she didn’t have time to look through it, but would decide later if he left it with her. After he left, she proceeded to take the book apart and made her own patchwork creation carpet.

  A widow with two sons, Alan and Jimmy, Beattie lost her husband James in a mining accident. She was married a second time to John McNamara, whose son Michael also lived with them, plus Kath, Lil and Billy, who came along later.

  As Kath was the eldest among us four, she decided the places we went to and the games we played. Trespassers was a favourite: this involved daring someone to pinch a turnip or other vegetable from someone’s garden. Kath’s role was to supervise. Down by the railway track was where posh houses could be found with huge gardens. Billy and Lil were good climbers, so me and Kath stood at the other side of the fence waiting for the bags of strawberries to come sailing over. We felt a hand grab us on each shoulder and were told to be quiet. When Lil and Billy climbed back, the lady of the house had all four of us captive. She told us off and took the bags away – probably made jam with it all.

  Inspired by a deluge of wartime movies on TV, one of Kath’s favourite pastimes was to tell Billy that the doctor’s surgery was a Nazi interrogation room. The people in there were waiting to be questioned, and if he waited, he would be presented with a medal. Poor Billy sat there, terrified; what must have gone through his mind as person after person went in but didn’t come back? Give him his due, as the youngest, he had courage.

  Another ‘wartime’ manoeuvre involved a stake-out at Winthrop’s Laboratory. There were always two guards in uniform outside the gates, the fences were topped with barbed wire. Billy was informed that he would be featured on TV, receive sweets and a medal if he scaled the metal barbed-wire fence, ran to the bottom of the hill and back. This he did and was chased by the guards. He was presented with one of those little silvery Catholic pocket tokens – he always fell for it.

  As a Protestant, I wasn’t expected to go to Confession while I was up there but went along to St Cuthberts on Balmain Road. Billy stayed with Blackie their dog on its lead in the vestibule while Kath and Lil made their way to the two Confession cubicles.

  ‘What will I do?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, just light a candle,’ said Kath, ‘and put some money in the box.’

  When they came out, I was sitting in a pew with a lighted candle in my hand and wax running all over my fingers.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Kath. ‘You’re supposed to put the candle on the stand with the others.’

  She pointed to the glowing array of lights as she and Lil were laughing.

  ‘You say a prayer for someone who is sick or for someone who isn’t here any longer to show that you are thinking of them.’

  I stood up and proceeded towards the door with my candle.

  ‘You can’t take it with you,’ said Lil.

  ‘Why not? I’ve paid for it.’

  ‘It’s got to stay here for the prayer to be answered.’

  ‘But I haven’t said a prayer.’

  This altercation was interrupted by the sight of the church door bursting open and Billy hanging onto the lead while it was wrapped round a parishioner’s leg as she was trying to enter the church. The barking didn’t half make a loud echo in the vaulted building.

  Blackie used to follow them to church every Sunday – he would wait for a latecomer parishioner to turn up and then he was in. They could see him looking from side to side along the pews until he found them. That dog knew his way all around Kenton, he was as rough as us kids. I replaced the candle and we left the building.

  * * *

  We also loved trips to Exhibition Park, which had an old bandstand where we took centre stage to sing ‘Keep Your Sunny Side Up’. Magazine delivery day was exciting too; they popped through the door with the newspaper. Kath took the Bunty and Judy, Billy liked The Beano and The Dandy, Lil chose the Princess and Topper, I had the Mirabelle, but came off well in this as I could read them
all. They collected the comics in a huge pile and once more, Kath had an ‘idea’. At bedtime, us girls shared a king-sized bed and Billy had his own room. When he was asleep, Kath crept to his door with a bunch of comics, which she placed precariously on top of his slightly ajar door. She shouted for him to come into our room and when he pulled the handle, the comics came tumbling down onto his head. After much panic and screaming, Uncle John came rushing up the stairs.

  ‘Pretend to be asleep,’ said Kath, which we did.

  One night, she persuaded Lil to put a white sheet over herself and creep into Billy’s room. Again, much screaming, and Kath gave the same instruction. She probably got all of her inspiration from the comics, but one prank resulted in Lil screaming until she was physically sick. This time Kath passed it off as a nightmare. Kath was given a chicken’s leg from the butcher’s and demonstrated to me how, if you pulled the bone, the claws gripped back and forth. This was amazing to me. I was sworn to secrecy, to tell not a soul. That night when we got into bed, I was instructed to sleep on the outside, pretend to be asleep and Lil to be in the middle. She elbowed Lil, then slowly raised the claw out from under the blanket and pulled the bone. It certainly looked suspicious, with Lil wailing like a banshee and me lying there, comatose. Uncle John came belting up the stairs. He knew something was up and this wasn’t a nightmare, but he couldn’t prove anything.

  We played imaginary games during which Billy requested he be called Oswald. (He would come to regret this.) During an argument we would snap back, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it, OSWALD?’ and he would fly into a temper. It was an unenviable position to be the youngest in the family.