by Sue Johnston
I never felt that we were going without because everyone was in the same situation. We did not expect to have anything more. It was before we had TV so there were no advertisements telling us what we should want next and even if there had been we didn’t have any money to buy them. Sweets were rationed until I was at junior school and I remember clearly the first day the ration was lifted and we were all given pennies to go and buy some sherbet.
We didn’t have many toys or things to play with, every family had the same board games – Ludo, Monopoly, Snakes & Ladders, and a pack of cards for the adults. My mother would dye her legs with gravy browning and draw a line up the back of her legs to make it look as if she was wearing stockings. I suppose it was a primitive version of fake tanning.
We had a bath once a week. Heating the water for a bath involved lighting the fire, so if the fire wasn’t lit my mother would boil a pan of water and give me a wash with that.
One of these bath days was the day before Warrington Walking Day. The Walking Day is a yearly event that is still being held today, originally it had been organised by churches in the area. It was essentially a parade and there was a fair afterwards and we would receive a few pennies to go on the rides. Everyone in the area took part.
I was very much looking forward to the parade the next day. Mum took some boiling water in a pan, brought it into the bathroom and set it down at the side of the bath. I was faffing around with the plug. As she went to pick up the boiling water, I got in her way and she spilled it all over my foot. I immediately began screaming in pain, my mother panicked and whipped off my shoe and sock, taking the skin with it. I was in agony and absolutely hysterical. Uncle Joe, my friend Valerie’s dad and our neighbour, was passing our house and heard the commotion. He came inside to see what was going on. Seeing me sitting on the mangle, where my mum had plonked me so she could get a better look at my foot, he looked terribly shocked.
‘Ring an ambulance, Joe, please!’ Mum pleaded.
Poor Joe only had one leg but he turned and hopped to the phone box as quick as that leg could carry him.
An ambulance arrived to take me to hospital. I was bandaged up and sent home, and a nurse came round to our house every day to give me an injection. For a couple of months I had to use a wheelchair to get about. It was very painful and quite traumatic. I missed the walk, of course, and was very sad to have to sit at home ailing while everyone else was enjoying themselves.
I was only little at the time but I could tell that my mother was horrified and blamed herself, even though she would say, ‘Why were you messing about like that?’ She was right, it was me messing about that had caused it, but she felt guilty because she was a mother and that’s what mothers do! Poor Mum. I still have that scar on my foot. I have the ugliest feet in the world and getting a scar on one seems to me to be adding injury to insult.
We weren’t Scousers, we were Woollybacks, as the real Liverpudlians used to call us. The term is derived from the time of the industrial revolution apparently, when people from Lancashire and Cheshire used to wear a form of sheepskin. But ask around at a Liverpool football match why they use the term ‘Woollyback’ and they’ll give you a very different reason involving relations with sheep – charming! Even though I have always embraced everything Liverpool has to offer, I have always known I’m not, I’m sad to say, a dyed-in-the-wool Scouser.
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I have so many memories of my childhood that trying to pinpoint the earliest isn’t easy and it seems like such a long time ago! But certainly my fondest early memory is of sitting on my mother’s knee. We were in the living room as Listen with Mother came on the radio. I remember it was on at five to two in the afternoon and I can hear the tinkling intro clearly and the feeling that accompanied it. Here comes our story… I would think.
I felt very encircled by my parents when I was younger, very loved. Mum would nip to the corner shop and say to me, ‘Stand on the chair and watch out for me, I’ll only be a minute.’ So I would stand in the window, watching her as she walked to the end of the road, disappear momentarily and then reappear round the corner again. She wanted me to know she wasn’t going far and that I was safe.
Although I was an only child I never felt that I was on my own. My dad’s family lived nearby in Whiston and my mother’s family were not far off in Warrington and we saw them all the time. My dad was one of six, but that seemed like a small family compared to my mother being part of a massive brood of twelve!
My cousins Pauline and Marjorie, Ena and Millie’s daughters, were like sisters to me when I was younger. Although, I have to say, we didn’t all scrub up in quite the same way. Pauline and Marjorie were always well turned out. Everything was clean and pressed and remained so throughout the day. I started out in the same orderly fashion – my mother would always make sure of it – but as the day progressed I would attract muck of all description, always the first to get grubby and the last in the bath if I could help it. I was a total tomboy and this distressed my mother who, as someone who never stepped foot out of the house without looking immaculate, had obviously hoped for a more kempt daughter. I remember very clearly once being made to walk behind my mother because I had been playing in the mud and she evidently felt I was bringing shame on the family. I couldn’t have been any more than three at the time. The fact of the matter was I was a grubby child. Any bit of dirt, I’d find it. My mother would find me rummaging under seats on the train, surfacing with old cigarette butts hanging out of my mouth. If a bird pooed you could guarantee that it would land on me, and no amount of saying it was lucky would convince my mother that it was fine to parade around with bird muck on your coat. It didn’t bother me that I was thought of as the scruffy one, and I know that my cousins quite enjoyed being the neat ones too.
I think that my tomboy ways may have been a direct reaction to my mother’s assertion that she had always wanted a boy. It was something that she would tell me quite often – ‘You were meant to be a boy’ – as if the fact that I’d popped out a girl was in some way my fault. She even had a name: Michael. There was also the odd comment that led me to believe I was a ‘mistake’ and that she had never intended to be a mother. I think the fact that she came from such a large family put her off having children. Also, this was during the war and it was such a time of uncertainty that I’m not sure the idea of bringing a child into the world was something she and my father even considered. But once she had me she must have realised that this was what she was ‘meant’ to do as she certainly took on the role of matriarch of the house with great gusto.
I don’t mean to sound melodramatic when I say that comments like this made me feel that I was never quite wanted by my mother. It was just the way it was in our house. Of course, it was never addressed by us because in our family we just didn’t talk about how we felt. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to take it to heart; it was something Mum said to try to get me to be better behaved. ‘I’m just telling you for your own good,’ was one of her mottos and she stuck by it. I could never have sat my mother down and said, ‘So, Mum, you say that you wanted a boy instead of me – do you know how that makes me feel?’ She would have shot me down with one of her vinegar looks and told me in no uncertain terms that if she had had a boy he wouldn’t be trying to have conversations like this with her!
As a child I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ in Warrington. It was a large three-bedroom semi-detached that they rented. It had a big bay-fronted window and the house formed an L-shape around the backyard with the dining room, kitchen and back kitchen overlooking it. We always used the back door, never the front. In fact I’m not sure who would have been allowed through the front door as my grandmother wasn’t much for visiting dignitaries. Everyone was treated the same, so I can’t think who might have got their foot through it.
But as large as it was for a semi I could never quite work out how they had managed to fit twelve children and two adults in there when my mother had been growing up. I would go upstairs to the bed
rooms and stand for hours trying to work out where they had all slept. Eventually I asked my mother how the logistics had worked and she replied as though it was obvious, ‘The girls were in one bedroom, the boys in another, of course.’
My grandmother – my mother’s mother – was a large lady and round, with ruddy cheeks and a face that reminded me of a toasted bun. Her hair was grey and pulled back into an untidy French pleat that had strands of grey hair straggling out from all sides as if fighting to escape her hair band. She was a real character who had a healthy disdain for cleaning and didn’t care who frowned upon her for it, something I have to say I think I may have inherited.
She was very capable in other domestic areas though. A self-taught seamstress, she made everything from coats to wedding dresses for an array of customers who would come to the house. Her children acted as a team, the older ones looked after the babies when they came along, wiping, feeding and cleaning. They would pick up the odds and ends of material that lay discarded around the house and would try to keep on top of this industry that my grandmother had created.
My grandmother dressed her own daughters; all six of them immaculately tailored. She used to buy Vogue and copy the designs from there. And when us grandchildren came along she dressed us too. Pauline, Marjorie and I would all be dressed the same, I think we quite liked it – identical, until of course I got myself covered in dirt. All my grandma’s daughters had an impeccable sense of style that they got from her. I also have a huge love of clothes that I attribute to the time I spent with my grandmother. Having handmade tailored clothes from an early age obviously made me sartorially savvy.
As well as sewing my grandma loved to cook and bake. Cooking is also a passion of mine; I love to cook for others but cannot lay claim to my grandmother’s prolific abilities. Her house always smelled of apple pie or custard tarts, or mince on cottage pie days. We would arrive at the house to be greeted with piles of baking – lemon meringue pies stacked next to huge chocolate éclairs that oozed cream. My grandma was a powerhouse of a woman, and looking back I don’t know how she managed to do everything she did. She just seemed to be able to do ten things at once, a skill learned, no doubt, from having to deal with all those kids! My mother and my aunty Millie used to say with great admiration, ‘She was a marvellous woman, our mother.’
My mum’s dad was the strong, silent type. As a small child I found him quite distant towards me, but I wanted to know him and when he did say something I used to sit up and listen, as it was always something well thought out and considered. When he did speak to me he had a knack of making me feel very special. A few years ago I was asked to go on the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? where you delve into your family history. I knew that my grandfather had been from a well-to-do family and had turned his back on his privately educated upbringing to pursue a life on the railways. But here I learned how his own father, my great-grandfather, had dragged himself up by the bootstraps from a life of poverty in Carlisle to being a hotel owner and a man of considerable means. When my grandfather got married, on the wedding certificate under ‘Father of the Groom’, my great-grandfather had written, ‘A Gentleman’ as his occupation. It’s funny to think that this was my mother’s grandfather. I’m sure, hotelier or not, thinking himself a gentleman yet having come from the Dickensian slums of Carlisle would certainly have provoked a few choice words from my mother – it must surely rank as ‘getting ideas above his station’.
The fact that my grandfather then turned his back on this privileged life no doubt caused ructions within his family, but he went off to do a job that he loved. He always had the nickname ‘The Duke’. Whether it was given to him affectionately because of his background or whether it was something that stuck because he was an engine driver and therefore top dog, I have no idea. Anyway, he wasn’t just any train driver I was told as a child: he drove one of the most iconic steam engines in the world, the Flying Scotsman. Not so, the Who Do You Think You Are? programme informed me. He was indeed a steam engine driver but he only ever worked on the west coast and the Flying Scotsman went down the east coast. A childhood belief was shattered by this revelation. However, I did receive a kind letter from someone after the programme aired, telling me that I shouldn’t lose heart. The Flying Scotsman had travelled down the west coast from time to time and may well have been driven by my grandfather. I do hope so – I built any popularity I had at primary school on this connection!
It doesn’t matter, though, as one of my most magical moments in childhood was to do with my grandfather and his steam train – Flying Scotsman or no Flying Scotsman. My mother and I were standing on the platform at Eccleston Park station waiting to catch the train to Liverpool. A steam train soon approached and the train driver was hanging from his cab, whistling to my mother. ‘Margaret!’ he shouted. My mother gave him a disdainful look. Who was this uncouth man hollering at her at the train station?
‘Take no notice, Susan,’ she said, taking my shoulders and positioning me away from the train. As the engine came to a stop we both realised it was my grandfather. My mother quickly changed her tune.
‘Hello!’ she said, suddenly all smiles to her dad. ‘I was wondering who was shouting at us. Come along, Susan.’
We boarded the train and took our seat. It was a compartment, enough to seat six people at the most, with two sets of bench seats facing one another. I sat down on one of the seats. I was only about five at the time so my legs dangled over the edge, half a foot from the floor. I ran my fingers over the heavy weave of the upholstery. There were three pictures of places that the train no doubt stopped at on the wall. The doors and trim were a dark walnut colour and over my head there was a mesh luggage holder. The carriage smelt musty but not old, just grand. I was so excited this was my grandad’s train. No one else’s grandad had a train that I knew. My mother and I sat in the compartment and admired our surroundings. I could have stayed there all week.
When we pulled into Liverpool my grandfather came and got us and brought me to the front of the train where he lifted me up into his cab. He then introduced me to his fireman, the man responsible for shovelling coal into the fire to keep the steam pumping. Grandad showed me all the dials and the wheel and explained what being an engine driver entailed. Of course it all went over my little head as I stood there agog. But I was utterly thrilled that my grandad was the driver of such a big steam train. That bought me a lot of brownie points at school!
One thing that I clearly remember about my grandmother and grandfather’s house was the huge amount of crockery and silver they had, obviously a legacy from the hotel days when my grandfather was a boy. The amount of silver was mesmerising and I would always be returning to the cupboard for a peek, just to see that it was still there. It seemed so precious to my young eyes. There were large coffee pots and teapots, sugar bowls, cruets, cutlery and trays all with Globe Hotel – the hotel that my great-grandfather had owned – stamped on them. This seemed like such treasured possessions to me as a little girl. The idea that we had family silver!
My father’s mother died just before I was born. She never knew my mother was pregnant with me. Everyone always said what a lovely woman she was and I often felt that I had missed out on meeting someone very special. My father’s father lived around the corner from us in Eccleston Park with two of his children, my uncle Harry and aunty May. Just along the road from them lived Aunty Reenie, Uncle Alec and my cousin Alec. About a mile away was Uncle John, Aunty Ada and my cousin Lavinia, and around the corner from them was Uncle Bert and his wife Lynne, and their daughters Catherine and Elizabeth. It sounds like we were all living on top of one another but it just felt normal. Everyone I knew had his or her families close by.
Aunty May was very much part of my life in Whiston. She was a midwife at Whiston Hospital and during the war had nursed injured soldiers. She would come to our house most weekends and she would always have two bags of sweets for me, never one. And as I’m writing this it’s just occurred to me that I do
exactly the same thing. I always buy two of everything, just in case. Just in case of what I’m not sure! But I would seek refuge at her house whenever I was in need of advice or felt that I was in trouble. She was a great listener and I felt that I could sit with her and air my problems.
Aunty May had never married but always wore a little diamond engagement ring. One day I was sitting with her watching TV. Aunty May was the first person in our family to get a television and it was big news when it arrived. Every Saturday I would go to her house and we would watch Six-Five Special, a forerunner of Top of the Pops. As we were sitting there I plucked up the courage to ask her where the ring had come from. She said that it was from a Belgian man that she had met in the war, he was an injured soldier convalescing over here and she was his nurse. When he recovered, he went back overseas with the intention that he would return and they would marry. But he was killed on his return to active service. Aunty May was heartbroken and never married after that. I went to see Aunty May three days before she died, shortly after her ninetieth birthday, and she was still wearing that ring. It makes me sad to think that she lost the love of her life at such an early age and then carried a candle for him until her death. There was never any other man in her life.
I went to Whiston Infants. My infant school teacher’s name was Miss Cross and we would say ‘cross by name, cross by nature’, making sure that she never overheard us as we didn’t want to incur any further wrath than she was already more than happy to dish out. She even looked cross, with her jet-black hair and features that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a crow.