The Village Where They Put The Pig On The Wall To See The Band Go By.
Over the years all three Gornals have had this sobriquet attached to them, often in derision, which is a pity – not that any native would take offence, for we have broad backs – but because it all started as our own private in-joke. But that was so long ago that the reality has largely been lost in the mists of time.
The Pig on the Wall story is true enough, and it actually happened in Gornal Wood (though less favoured places may wish to lay spurious claims.. but I wouldn’t know about that).
The trouble is there are too few natives left to tell the tale, and, of the few there are, too many have none of the actual facts. It did happen a long time ago, before even my seventy-eight years began, but here is the story told to me when I was a little lad by a lady, now long dead, who was actually an eye-witness.
We have to go back to the time when every chapel with any pretension to respectability (and that was all of them) had an Anniversary. That entailed a procession of the faithful around the locality, the whole congregation walking two by two in their very best clothes, and all on their very best behaviour. They would have a banner at the front and a band of music at the rear.
Most all of the denominations, almost all of the four and twenty jarring sects you might say, had a band. Zoar had one, the Methodists on Himley Road had one, and so on.... but there was one exception... The Ranters.
Now here I have to be careful because they weren’t really Ranters, not in the original usage of the term originating in Commonwealth times, no, they were officially Primitive Methodists, but they had been called Ranters since the middle of the nineteenth century, and the name, however unfairly, stuck.
Anyway, the Ranters, being a small and impecunious congregation, had no band, and they felt at great disadvantage because of that. But fate smiled and eventually, sometime in the early 1920s, by a superhuman effort and with considerable ingenuity they managed to muster enough musicians to provide their Anniversary procession with music. All the players were reckoned to be competent and able to read Moody and Sankey at sight, all that is except the bass drummer. By the time they got round to finding a bass drummer the bottom of the Ranters’ musical barrel had been scraped pretty dry. In the end, with a certain amount of misgiving the elders settled on a gentleman (who shall remain nameless) of very short stature. Some unkind folk muttered that stature wasn’t the only thing he was short of, but that is a wicked slur – let’s just say that he was, in the best British tradition, something of an eccentric.
The day of the Anniversary came, the Ranters assembled and set off in fine style past Zoar and the Board Schools up the hill to show the unbelievers and lesser committed Christians of Lower Gornal just how a proper Anniversary procession should be managed. They were heading for Five Ways and all was going wonderfully, the band in fine fettle, playing away fit to bust, when they reached the point where Temple Street swings to the left to become Church Street and the lesser thoroughfare of Humphrey Street forks slightly to the right, though indeed it is almost aligned straight ahead. All of the procession followed the left curve into Church Street........... all that is except the bass drummer who, last of all in the marching band and hardly able to see over the massive drum strapped to his shoulders, marched straight ahead... into Humphrey Street. Serenely oblivious to his solitary state he marched on, banging his bass drum for all he was worth... marching you might say into his own little bit of history.
It was the chap who lived in the first cottage on the right in Humphrey Street (I think his name was Mr Roberts, but I may be wrong) who, seeing this wonderful lone drummer, shot down the garden to the pig sty, pulled his prize porker up the garden, propped his forelegs up on the wall and said to the pig "Theer mah mon, yoh woh see a band like that agin, Ah’ll warrant." Maybe you have to be a Gornal native to see the joke, I don’t know, but it certainly raised a laugh from the onlookers and spread joyfully through Gornal Wood, particularly amongst those not of the Primitive Methodist persuasion.
And that’s the true story. The proof can be found in a photographic postcard made by the Sedgley Chemist, Mr Eggington, who got the owner of the pig to reconstruct the scene by propping his pig’s front feet on the wall for the camera a few days later.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Monday, 2 May 2011
Cargoes on the Cut.
Well, they do say that truth is often stranger than fiction, but what I am going to tell you about is probably going to strain belief almost too far. And in a way that’s why I’m going to put it down, because, incredible though it may seem, it was told to me as an unvarnished truth, and anyway it has touch of magic about it which is all too rare in this prosaic world.
Actually it didn’t happen to me at all, but I was told about it by a person I have no reason to doubt.
I should explain how I first heard the story. My pal, Ken, had relatives in Tettenhall Wood, a place which, if you were used to Gornal Wood, seemed mighty close to being exotic. For a start it was obviously genteel, at least in parts, and there were a lot of grand houses about the place and far more motorcars to be seen. It was on a trolley bus route, which was an excitement in itself, and it had an inland sea in the shape of the great big paddling pool on the Upper Green where a fellow could sail a toy boat and get gloriously wet in the process. So whenever I could I would go along with Ken when he was sent there on duty calls to relatives.
Not that there was anything particularly onerous about that. His relatives were all very pleasant people, homely and welcoming, always ready to feed hungry small boys and never minding when we went off to wander round the village in search of adventures.
It was on one of these visits that Ken’s aunt Mary told us the story.
We had been about to go out on some expedition or other when it came to rain, so we stayed in aunt Mary’s kitchen instead, which was certainly the next best thing to going out because there were always tins of biscuits and buns around the place. Through mouthfuls of lemon bun Ken and I were talking about sailing our boats on the Upper Green pool when his Aunty Mary joined in. She said that when she was a little girl she and her brother Billy had been wild about sailing boats. Their dad made one for each of them out of softwood off-cuts that he brought home from work. Their mother sewed the sails and Billy rigged both boats in a cunning way such that when the boom swung over, it moved the tiller to make the boat keep on course.
We wanted to know if they had sailed their boats on the Upper Green, but she told us that when she was small it was no more than a large muddy pond, not a bit like the smart, concrete-lined pool that Ken and I knew. No, she and Billy had sailed their boats on the canal down at Newbridge. Of course there were a number of hazards, swans and passing narrow boats, to say nothing of the rowing boats that were hired out to the people who flocked out of Wolverhampton for a day out at weekends. The best time for sailing boats was on Sunday mornings when there was hardly any traffic on the canal. So, if they could get out of going to church, that was the time they generally chose.
I don’t really remember how it came about, but after a while poetry came into the conversation. Maybe Ken said something about liking learning poems at school? Anyway, aunt Mary said it reminded her that she had once met a real poet and the meeting was all tied up with model boats. And then she told us this story.
It was summertime, she said that it must’ve been about 1902 because she was just turned six, and very proud of the fact. Billy, who is three years older, and she had managed to escape the house early one fine, sunny Sunday morning taking their boats with them and heading for the canal at Newbridge. They usually stayed pretty close to the old bridge over the canal, the one that is just to the south of the road bridge, because it was handy to be able to nip from one side of the canal to the other to push their boats off if they ran into the bank. This particular morning, when they got to the bridge they found a man leaning against the parapet. He had a pencil in his hand and a large notebook propped in front of him. As they crossed the bridge he said hello and, catching sight of their boats, said how much he liked them and might he have a look. Billy let him have his boat and the man looked at it very carefully, obviously interested. He asked Billy all sorts of questions about the way it was rigged, then he held it up to the sky looking at the hull from both ends and said something about its "fine lines". Billy was impressed. He asked the man if he was a sailor and the man smiled and said he used to be.
Aunty Mary said the man had a nice smile, a bit sad, but then his whole face was a bit sad. He had sad eyes, a broad forehead with a lot of floppy hair drooping over it, a whisp of a moustache on his top lip, and his ears were a bit big. She thought he must be very old, but then at six anybody over the age of twelve looks old. Later on she realised he must probably have been only in his twenties. As grown-ups went he wasn’t very tall and when he stood up straight there was a suspicion of a stoop in the way he stood. On the whole she decided she liked him. He had an easy way of talking to Billy, more chatting to an equal than a grown-up talking to a child, and that was pleasant.
He said very nice things about both their boats and said, if he might, he would like to watch them sailing. Billy said he could come and join in if he wanted but the man said thank you but no, he wanted to get on with what he was doing. Billy asked him if he was writing a letter? The man smiled and said no, he was writing a poem. Neither of the children had ever come across anybody who wrote a poem before. Poems were things that came out of books, things that Billy learned at school, but it never really occurred to either of them that they actually had to be written. Billy said he liked poems and he had almost learned one or two by heart. The man asked what they were; Billy said one was about daffodils and the other one he could nearly remember was sort of prayer, the kind of thing you said before you went to sleep at night. The man smiled and said he thought he knew the one about daffodils, and felt sure that he knew the kind of thing that Billy meant about the other one.
Mary didn’t share much in the conversation. Although the man very kindly tried to get her to join in, she felt a bit shy and, after all, her mother had said she mustn’t talk to strange men. But Billy, being in his own eyes close to man’s estate, had no such qualms; he and the man chatted away in a very jolly fashion about poems and how difficult it was to make words rhyme. It wasn’t very long before Billy got round to asking the man what his poem was about and he was very impressed when the man said it was about boats, well, ships really. Billy asked if he could read it. The man said it was almost finished, there was only one line to go, then he handed it over to Billy. But though Billy was very good at reading he couldn’t manage to make out the man’s handwriting, so he handed it back and said please will the man read it out to them. And so he did.
They didn’t understand all words, at least Billy said later that he did, but Mary didn’t believe him, but they both liked the sound of it and the general feeling and were very impressed to hear a real poet read out a real poem that he’d written himself. Bits and pieces of what he read out stuck in their minds and long after they had said goodbye to the man and gone off to sail their boats they remembered snatches and bits of it.
When they returned to the bridge on their way home the man had gone. Neither of them ever saw him again.
About a year later a student teacher came to the school in Tettenhall Wood. He was a very progressive young man who believed in introducing children to the latest and brightest things. He read bits of Shakespeare to Billy’s class, and also some poetry, and amongst the poetry to Billy’s great joy and amazement was the man on the bridge’s poem. There it was, large as life and printed in a real book. Billy borrowed the book and carefully copied the poem out and within the day he had it off by heart. In time Mary too learned the poem, and when she told us the story she said she still remembered it word for word. It went,
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, Pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
When Mary finished reciting it she smiled at us, took a sip of tea and said "And that’s how Billy and me met Mr Masefield, though at the time we never knew his name, nor how famous he would become. Just think of it, a poet laureate to be, standing on the canal bridge and talking to Billy and me as natural and kindly as you like. It hardly seems possible, does it."
And to my shame I have to confess that even then I thought that it sounded highly improbable, and later on I wondered why on earth she had made up such a story.
But it’s funny how things fall out. Years later, when I was grown up I bought a second-hand copy of Masefield’s collected poems, the Heineman 1926 edition, and there, on page 56, was "Cargoes", by this time a great favourite of mine and one that I could recite, like Ken’s aunt, from memory, a poem almost as well known as his "Sea Fever" and surely as well loved. But this was the first time I had ever seen it printed above the dateline, and that, to my amazement said ‘Tettenhall’!
I was taken aback, I can tell you. Perhaps there was something in Mary’s story after all, maybe she hadn’t made it up. So I set about trying to find out.
It took me some time to piece it all together but, sure enough, John Masefield was close to Newbridge in 1902. He lodged at 141 Tettenhall Road, and worked between January and October as art exhibition secretary at the Wolverhampton arts and industrial exhibition. He should have worked on until December, but the exhibition, which was built in palatial style alongside West Park, turned out to be an expensive white elephant, losing the promoters £30,000 (a considerable fortune at the turn of the last century) in its first six months, so it was closed prematurely to save further loss.
I had remembered Mary’s vivid description of John Masefield, but it was hardly enough. It would have been wonderful to go back to Tettenhall to ask her for every little detail that she remembered. But sadly Mary had by that time been dead for some years, and Billy had died long before her in Flanders in 1916.
Ken and I have often talked about this and kicked ourselves for not paying more attention on that rainy afternoon in that little house in School Road.
But the thing that still puzzles me is how on earth Billy rigged that connection between the boom and the tiller... I never have been able to work it out.
Actually it didn’t happen to me at all, but I was told about it by a person I have no reason to doubt.
I should explain how I first heard the story. My pal, Ken, had relatives in Tettenhall Wood, a place which, if you were used to Gornal Wood, seemed mighty close to being exotic. For a start it was obviously genteel, at least in parts, and there were a lot of grand houses about the place and far more motorcars to be seen. It was on a trolley bus route, which was an excitement in itself, and it had an inland sea in the shape of the great big paddling pool on the Upper Green where a fellow could sail a toy boat and get gloriously wet in the process. So whenever I could I would go along with Ken when he was sent there on duty calls to relatives.
Not that there was anything particularly onerous about that. His relatives were all very pleasant people, homely and welcoming, always ready to feed hungry small boys and never minding when we went off to wander round the village in search of adventures.
It was on one of these visits that Ken’s aunt Mary told us the story.
We had been about to go out on some expedition or other when it came to rain, so we stayed in aunt Mary’s kitchen instead, which was certainly the next best thing to going out because there were always tins of biscuits and buns around the place. Through mouthfuls of lemon bun Ken and I were talking about sailing our boats on the Upper Green pool when his Aunty Mary joined in. She said that when she was a little girl she and her brother Billy had been wild about sailing boats. Their dad made one for each of them out of softwood off-cuts that he brought home from work. Their mother sewed the sails and Billy rigged both boats in a cunning way such that when the boom swung over, it moved the tiller to make the boat keep on course.
We wanted to know if they had sailed their boats on the Upper Green, but she told us that when she was small it was no more than a large muddy pond, not a bit like the smart, concrete-lined pool that Ken and I knew. No, she and Billy had sailed their boats on the canal down at Newbridge. Of course there were a number of hazards, swans and passing narrow boats, to say nothing of the rowing boats that were hired out to the people who flocked out of Wolverhampton for a day out at weekends. The best time for sailing boats was on Sunday mornings when there was hardly any traffic on the canal. So, if they could get out of going to church, that was the time they generally chose.
I don’t really remember how it came about, but after a while poetry came into the conversation. Maybe Ken said something about liking learning poems at school? Anyway, aunt Mary said it reminded her that she had once met a real poet and the meeting was all tied up with model boats. And then she told us this story.
It was summertime, she said that it must’ve been about 1902 because she was just turned six, and very proud of the fact. Billy, who is three years older, and she had managed to escape the house early one fine, sunny Sunday morning taking their boats with them and heading for the canal at Newbridge. They usually stayed pretty close to the old bridge over the canal, the one that is just to the south of the road bridge, because it was handy to be able to nip from one side of the canal to the other to push their boats off if they ran into the bank. This particular morning, when they got to the bridge they found a man leaning against the parapet. He had a pencil in his hand and a large notebook propped in front of him. As they crossed the bridge he said hello and, catching sight of their boats, said how much he liked them and might he have a look. Billy let him have his boat and the man looked at it very carefully, obviously interested. He asked Billy all sorts of questions about the way it was rigged, then he held it up to the sky looking at the hull from both ends and said something about its "fine lines". Billy was impressed. He asked the man if he was a sailor and the man smiled and said he used to be.
Aunty Mary said the man had a nice smile, a bit sad, but then his whole face was a bit sad. He had sad eyes, a broad forehead with a lot of floppy hair drooping over it, a whisp of a moustache on his top lip, and his ears were a bit big. She thought he must be very old, but then at six anybody over the age of twelve looks old. Later on she realised he must probably have been only in his twenties. As grown-ups went he wasn’t very tall and when he stood up straight there was a suspicion of a stoop in the way he stood. On the whole she decided she liked him. He had an easy way of talking to Billy, more chatting to an equal than a grown-up talking to a child, and that was pleasant.
He said very nice things about both their boats and said, if he might, he would like to watch them sailing. Billy said he could come and join in if he wanted but the man said thank you but no, he wanted to get on with what he was doing. Billy asked him if he was writing a letter? The man smiled and said no, he was writing a poem. Neither of the children had ever come across anybody who wrote a poem before. Poems were things that came out of books, things that Billy learned at school, but it never really occurred to either of them that they actually had to be written. Billy said he liked poems and he had almost learned one or two by heart. The man asked what they were; Billy said one was about daffodils and the other one he could nearly remember was sort of prayer, the kind of thing you said before you went to sleep at night. The man smiled and said he thought he knew the one about daffodils, and felt sure that he knew the kind of thing that Billy meant about the other one.
Mary didn’t share much in the conversation. Although the man very kindly tried to get her to join in, she felt a bit shy and, after all, her mother had said she mustn’t talk to strange men. But Billy, being in his own eyes close to man’s estate, had no such qualms; he and the man chatted away in a very jolly fashion about poems and how difficult it was to make words rhyme. It wasn’t very long before Billy got round to asking the man what his poem was about and he was very impressed when the man said it was about boats, well, ships really. Billy asked if he could read it. The man said it was almost finished, there was only one line to go, then he handed it over to Billy. But though Billy was very good at reading he couldn’t manage to make out the man’s handwriting, so he handed it back and said please will the man read it out to them. And so he did.
They didn’t understand all words, at least Billy said later that he did, but Mary didn’t believe him, but they both liked the sound of it and the general feeling and were very impressed to hear a real poet read out a real poem that he’d written himself. Bits and pieces of what he read out stuck in their minds and long after they had said goodbye to the man and gone off to sail their boats they remembered snatches and bits of it.
When they returned to the bridge on their way home the man had gone. Neither of them ever saw him again.
About a year later a student teacher came to the school in Tettenhall Wood. He was a very progressive young man who believed in introducing children to the latest and brightest things. He read bits of Shakespeare to Billy’s class, and also some poetry, and amongst the poetry to Billy’s great joy and amazement was the man on the bridge’s poem. There it was, large as life and printed in a real book. Billy borrowed the book and carefully copied the poem out and within the day he had it off by heart. In time Mary too learned the poem, and when she told us the story she said she still remembered it word for word. It went,
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, Pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
When Mary finished reciting it she smiled at us, took a sip of tea and said "And that’s how Billy and me met Mr Masefield, though at the time we never knew his name, nor how famous he would become. Just think of it, a poet laureate to be, standing on the canal bridge and talking to Billy and me as natural and kindly as you like. It hardly seems possible, does it."
And to my shame I have to confess that even then I thought that it sounded highly improbable, and later on I wondered why on earth she had made up such a story.
But it’s funny how things fall out. Years later, when I was grown up I bought a second-hand copy of Masefield’s collected poems, the Heineman 1926 edition, and there, on page 56, was "Cargoes", by this time a great favourite of mine and one that I could recite, like Ken’s aunt, from memory, a poem almost as well known as his "Sea Fever" and surely as well loved. But this was the first time I had ever seen it printed above the dateline, and that, to my amazement said ‘Tettenhall’!
I was taken aback, I can tell you. Perhaps there was something in Mary’s story after all, maybe she hadn’t made it up. So I set about trying to find out.
It took me some time to piece it all together but, sure enough, John Masefield was close to Newbridge in 1902. He lodged at 141 Tettenhall Road, and worked between January and October as art exhibition secretary at the Wolverhampton arts and industrial exhibition. He should have worked on until December, but the exhibition, which was built in palatial style alongside West Park, turned out to be an expensive white elephant, losing the promoters £30,000 (a considerable fortune at the turn of the last century) in its first six months, so it was closed prematurely to save further loss.
I had remembered Mary’s vivid description of John Masefield, but it was hardly enough. It would have been wonderful to go back to Tettenhall to ask her for every little detail that she remembered. But sadly Mary had by that time been dead for some years, and Billy had died long before her in Flanders in 1916.
Ken and I have often talked about this and kicked ourselves for not paying more attention on that rainy afternoon in that little house in School Road.
But the thing that still puzzles me is how on earth Billy rigged that connection between the boom and the tiller... I never have been able to work it out.
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Billy Fish.
By a little more than fifty years ago I had become no more than a visitor to the village. I still went back as often as I could, because it still felt like home, but the sad truth was that I no longer had any close relatives anywhere other than St James’s churchyard.
When visiting – by this time I was fortunate enough to have a car – I’d park somewhere near the old home and walk through the village just to make sure I still recognised most of it. A Saturday evening walk would invariably end up at The Bush, in Summit Place. It was a pleasant little pub, an Ansell’s house in those days if I remember, with a good landlord (which of course meant he had a good wife, for the lady of the house always set the tone of a pub) who kept a good cellar, which then meant his pipes were always clean and the beer was as sparkling as a mountain stream. The regulars in the Bar were a grand crowd, quietly convivial, hardly anyone under thirty and all known to one another. Nor were they all from nearby streets. Such was the regard in which the pub was held that a goodly proportion of them came from outlying hamlets, Straits, Cotwall End, even the Graveyard, though folk living there had The Red Cow on their doorstep, which was at that time surely one of the best pubs in the known world. It all said a lot for The Bush.
Conventions in village pubs seem to be different now. In the late nineteen fifties you could reckon that a bar full of regulars, all sitting round either on bent-wood chairs or on the horsehair benches against the walls – pints and half pints on little round mahogany tables with cast-iron legs – would be having two kinds of conversation, or just sitting quietly contemplating the eternal verities or wondering at the chances of the Wolves winning away next week. One of those kinds of conversation was the quiet intimate chat that immediate neighbours at the tables would have. When it was going on it produced a quiet, restful sort of background hum. The other kind of conversation happened when someone opened up a subject to general consideration. At the time I’m thinking of a typical opener was the man from Straits saying "Ah saw the big pussycat agin this morning."
Now, if you had been a regular, or even a local, you would have known that the ‘big pussycat’ was a puma, or some other black, large and dangerous member of the cat family that was popularly supposed to have escaped from a private zoo in Sedgley, and was hiding somewhere in the wild woodland and undergrowth that then stretched from the head of the Dingle down to the slopes of what was left of Turner’s Hill Wood. Numerous sightings were claimed and the animal was blamed for the disappearance of several fowl, a cat or two and Billy Stevens’s dog. Though Bill was generally believed to have sold his terrier to a bloke in Cosely and was using the big pussycat’s reputed appetite to save splitting the cash received with his missus, who, having looked after the animal since its birth, would naturally have wanted at least half the receipts.
Anyway, this animal was a topic of general conversation for some time. Whether it actually existed is another matter, for I don’t think there was ever any hard proof either way. Various people in the Bar would comment, or venture an opinion and one night I remember it was reported that Sam’s wife’s sister was in a state of collapse because she had been attacked at the bottom of the Alley by something ‘black and horrible’ on her way back from the Welfare the night before. The chap sitting next to me, who apparently knew what the lady looked like, said quietly that in the matter of her being attacked ‘chance ‘ud be a fine thing’. But I don’t think anyone else heard him, which was a good thing really because Sam’s cousin was in the Bar that night and he did have a short temper.
So the pleasant conversation and equally pleasant silences would carry on, with glasses being replenished across the bar as and when required. There was never any hard drinking though, just a steady supping that gave time for every mouthful of Mild to be thoroughly appreciated.
The only lady to appear in the Bar was the Landlord’s wife who often took her husband’s place behind the beer pulls, lending an aura of feminine charm and a bit of class to the place when she did so. That didn’t mean there were no other females in the pub. Quite the contrary, there was a moderate sized contingent of the fairer sex there, though I never heard of a man rash enough to try to count them. They were all safely enclosed in The Ladies’ Room behind the bar and separated from it by a substantial brick wall that was pierced with a discreet serving hatch which opened from time to time to allow bottles of sweet stout and the odd port and lemon to pass into the unknown interior. Now and again sounds of merriment would filter through to us which, when it was a bit raucous, would make some of the men amongst us look a touch apprehensive, for it was well known that wives had few secrets from one another, and a chap’s reputation might well be being torn to shreds.
And so the evenings passed very happily and quietly until Billy Fish came.
Don’t get the idea that things took a downturn when Billy arrived. Not a bit of it. Quite the reverse. Billy’s arrival was looked forward to for at least two reasons.
The first was that Billy, always wearing a snowy white jacket and scrubbed as clean as a man could be, brought with him a big wicker basket, covered with a fresh white cloth, filled with little waxed paper cups of prawns, mussels and cockles, all cooked to perfection and fit to make the best accompaniment to a pint of mild or bitter that anyone could devise. His stock sold like proverbial hot cakes, but he never ran out of goodies because he had a little van parked outside with reserve supplies should they be needed.
The second reason was that he was the signal for a lot of fun and merry banter. Billy was good natured and exceptionally good tempered, some would say he had to be. He wasn’t exactly half sharp, but he was what was euphemistically called ‘slow’. In a broad south Dudley dialect he would gently reply to all the banter that was thrown at him, denying the suggestion (made in fun, for it was as far from the truth as you could get) that anything in his basket wasn’t absolutely fresh and bought in live that very morning. First he would serve the Bar, then he would go to the Ladies’ Room and look after their appetites. Then he would come back to the bar to cash up, and that was where the fun would really start.
The Bush was at the end of Billy Fish’s rounds. Every Saturday Billy would count out his night’s taking, all in silver and copper, on the bar and the landlord would change it for paper money. This was useful two ways. Billy didn’t have his pockets sagging with a dead weight of metal, and the gaffer had a till full of small change that would save him going to the bank for a week.
While Billy was closely occupied carefully counting and piling his coins, one or other of the chaps sitting close by the door to the passage would quietly pick up his basket and silently take it through to the Ladies Room. By the time Billy was done swapping monies there was no trace of his basket to be seen, nothing but a bar full of innocent faces... and expectancy.
Poor Billy. He would turn from the bar and make to pick up the basket that was now nowhere to be seen "Weers me baskit?" he would ask plaintively, only to be met with "What baskit’s that Bill?" and "I aye sid no baskit, an yoh?" or something like that said between ourselves. Great show would be made of searching for the basket, blokes getting up, moving chairs, looking under the impossibly tiny table that wouldn’t have concealed so much as a single prawn. General mayhem reigned, people asking "What’s it look like Bill?" and Billy, confused, searching vainly and trying to explain what his basket looked like, and nobody understanding and Billy being asked to explain again.
After minutes of this it would dawn on Billy that it might be in the Ladies Room, and off he would rush down the corridor. That was the signal for the serving hatch to be swiftly opened and the basket passed through it back into the bar, where it was replaced in the exact same spot from which it had been taken.
After more minutes punctuated by laughter and squawks of delight from the other room, Billy would return, flustered almost to distraction. Then he would see his basket and transformed into a happy chap again, with beatific smile of gratitude, he’d say "Oh mah werd! Theer it is!" and he would pick it up gently as one might a long lost child. Then he would go off into the night with many a good natured slap on the back and kind words to speed him.
And believe it or not, that’s how it went, with minor variations, week after week. Billy always seemed too daft to tumble to what was going on and the regulars, never tiring of a good joke with no harm done, repeating the formula almost as a ritual.
Then one day I saw Billy standing at a bus stop in Dudley. I offered him a lift and he climbed in beside me. To my surprise he seemed to recognise me. That wasn’t the only surprise. His mouth wasn’t slack, nor was his face vacant, and what had happened to his thick dialect? He thanked me for the lift in as close to received pronunciation as any of us Black Country men can get (somehow you can never lose the double value given to a vowel, no matter how hard you try). I admit I was taken aback. This was no half-sharp shellfish salesman, no indeed. We spent a pleasant journey together talking about all kinds of things in a very grown-up way. I couldn’t keep my curiosity to myself; as he was about to get out of the car I asked him straight out what it was all about? Why the deception? How did he put up with being patronised and made a laughing stock – albeit a well-meaning laughing stock? Billy laughed and said he really believed that Daft Billy could sell a lot more prawns and mussels than Ordinary Billy would. But why? I persisted. Billy smiled and explained that he and his wife were putting the daughter through university and every penny helped.
And that was that. I never told anyone what I knew, nor I guess did Billy expect me to. The charade continued of a Saturday night, just the same, with never a flicker of recognition between Billy and me, though I did fancy a couple of times that he winked at me.
When visiting – by this time I was fortunate enough to have a car – I’d park somewhere near the old home and walk through the village just to make sure I still recognised most of it. A Saturday evening walk would invariably end up at The Bush, in Summit Place. It was a pleasant little pub, an Ansell’s house in those days if I remember, with a good landlord (which of course meant he had a good wife, for the lady of the house always set the tone of a pub) who kept a good cellar, which then meant his pipes were always clean and the beer was as sparkling as a mountain stream. The regulars in the Bar were a grand crowd, quietly convivial, hardly anyone under thirty and all known to one another. Nor were they all from nearby streets. Such was the regard in which the pub was held that a goodly proportion of them came from outlying hamlets, Straits, Cotwall End, even the Graveyard, though folk living there had The Red Cow on their doorstep, which was at that time surely one of the best pubs in the known world. It all said a lot for The Bush.
Conventions in village pubs seem to be different now. In the late nineteen fifties you could reckon that a bar full of regulars, all sitting round either on bent-wood chairs or on the horsehair benches against the walls – pints and half pints on little round mahogany tables with cast-iron legs – would be having two kinds of conversation, or just sitting quietly contemplating the eternal verities or wondering at the chances of the Wolves winning away next week. One of those kinds of conversation was the quiet intimate chat that immediate neighbours at the tables would have. When it was going on it produced a quiet, restful sort of background hum. The other kind of conversation happened when someone opened up a subject to general consideration. At the time I’m thinking of a typical opener was the man from Straits saying "Ah saw the big pussycat agin this morning."
Now, if you had been a regular, or even a local, you would have known that the ‘big pussycat’ was a puma, or some other black, large and dangerous member of the cat family that was popularly supposed to have escaped from a private zoo in Sedgley, and was hiding somewhere in the wild woodland and undergrowth that then stretched from the head of the Dingle down to the slopes of what was left of Turner’s Hill Wood. Numerous sightings were claimed and the animal was blamed for the disappearance of several fowl, a cat or two and Billy Stevens’s dog. Though Bill was generally believed to have sold his terrier to a bloke in Cosely and was using the big pussycat’s reputed appetite to save splitting the cash received with his missus, who, having looked after the animal since its birth, would naturally have wanted at least half the receipts.
Anyway, this animal was a topic of general conversation for some time. Whether it actually existed is another matter, for I don’t think there was ever any hard proof either way. Various people in the Bar would comment, or venture an opinion and one night I remember it was reported that Sam’s wife’s sister was in a state of collapse because she had been attacked at the bottom of the Alley by something ‘black and horrible’ on her way back from the Welfare the night before. The chap sitting next to me, who apparently knew what the lady looked like, said quietly that in the matter of her being attacked ‘chance ‘ud be a fine thing’. But I don’t think anyone else heard him, which was a good thing really because Sam’s cousin was in the Bar that night and he did have a short temper.
So the pleasant conversation and equally pleasant silences would carry on, with glasses being replenished across the bar as and when required. There was never any hard drinking though, just a steady supping that gave time for every mouthful of Mild to be thoroughly appreciated.
The only lady to appear in the Bar was the Landlord’s wife who often took her husband’s place behind the beer pulls, lending an aura of feminine charm and a bit of class to the place when she did so. That didn’t mean there were no other females in the pub. Quite the contrary, there was a moderate sized contingent of the fairer sex there, though I never heard of a man rash enough to try to count them. They were all safely enclosed in The Ladies’ Room behind the bar and separated from it by a substantial brick wall that was pierced with a discreet serving hatch which opened from time to time to allow bottles of sweet stout and the odd port and lemon to pass into the unknown interior. Now and again sounds of merriment would filter through to us which, when it was a bit raucous, would make some of the men amongst us look a touch apprehensive, for it was well known that wives had few secrets from one another, and a chap’s reputation might well be being torn to shreds.
And so the evenings passed very happily and quietly until Billy Fish came.
Don’t get the idea that things took a downturn when Billy arrived. Not a bit of it. Quite the reverse. Billy’s arrival was looked forward to for at least two reasons.
The first was that Billy, always wearing a snowy white jacket and scrubbed as clean as a man could be, brought with him a big wicker basket, covered with a fresh white cloth, filled with little waxed paper cups of prawns, mussels and cockles, all cooked to perfection and fit to make the best accompaniment to a pint of mild or bitter that anyone could devise. His stock sold like proverbial hot cakes, but he never ran out of goodies because he had a little van parked outside with reserve supplies should they be needed.
The second reason was that he was the signal for a lot of fun and merry banter. Billy was good natured and exceptionally good tempered, some would say he had to be. He wasn’t exactly half sharp, but he was what was euphemistically called ‘slow’. In a broad south Dudley dialect he would gently reply to all the banter that was thrown at him, denying the suggestion (made in fun, for it was as far from the truth as you could get) that anything in his basket wasn’t absolutely fresh and bought in live that very morning. First he would serve the Bar, then he would go to the Ladies’ Room and look after their appetites. Then he would come back to the bar to cash up, and that was where the fun would really start.
The Bush was at the end of Billy Fish’s rounds. Every Saturday Billy would count out his night’s taking, all in silver and copper, on the bar and the landlord would change it for paper money. This was useful two ways. Billy didn’t have his pockets sagging with a dead weight of metal, and the gaffer had a till full of small change that would save him going to the bank for a week.
While Billy was closely occupied carefully counting and piling his coins, one or other of the chaps sitting close by the door to the passage would quietly pick up his basket and silently take it through to the Ladies Room. By the time Billy was done swapping monies there was no trace of his basket to be seen, nothing but a bar full of innocent faces... and expectancy.
Poor Billy. He would turn from the bar and make to pick up the basket that was now nowhere to be seen "Weers me baskit?" he would ask plaintively, only to be met with "What baskit’s that Bill?" and "I aye sid no baskit, an yoh?" or something like that said between ourselves. Great show would be made of searching for the basket, blokes getting up, moving chairs, looking under the impossibly tiny table that wouldn’t have concealed so much as a single prawn. General mayhem reigned, people asking "What’s it look like Bill?" and Billy, confused, searching vainly and trying to explain what his basket looked like, and nobody understanding and Billy being asked to explain again.
After minutes of this it would dawn on Billy that it might be in the Ladies Room, and off he would rush down the corridor. That was the signal for the serving hatch to be swiftly opened and the basket passed through it back into the bar, where it was replaced in the exact same spot from which it had been taken.
After more minutes punctuated by laughter and squawks of delight from the other room, Billy would return, flustered almost to distraction. Then he would see his basket and transformed into a happy chap again, with beatific smile of gratitude, he’d say "Oh mah werd! Theer it is!" and he would pick it up gently as one might a long lost child. Then he would go off into the night with many a good natured slap on the back and kind words to speed him.
And believe it or not, that’s how it went, with minor variations, week after week. Billy always seemed too daft to tumble to what was going on and the regulars, never tiring of a good joke with no harm done, repeating the formula almost as a ritual.
Then one day I saw Billy standing at a bus stop in Dudley. I offered him a lift and he climbed in beside me. To my surprise he seemed to recognise me. That wasn’t the only surprise. His mouth wasn’t slack, nor was his face vacant, and what had happened to his thick dialect? He thanked me for the lift in as close to received pronunciation as any of us Black Country men can get (somehow you can never lose the double value given to a vowel, no matter how hard you try). I admit I was taken aback. This was no half-sharp shellfish salesman, no indeed. We spent a pleasant journey together talking about all kinds of things in a very grown-up way. I couldn’t keep my curiosity to myself; as he was about to get out of the car I asked him straight out what it was all about? Why the deception? How did he put up with being patronised and made a laughing stock – albeit a well-meaning laughing stock? Billy laughed and said he really believed that Daft Billy could sell a lot more prawns and mussels than Ordinary Billy would. But why? I persisted. Billy smiled and explained that he and his wife were putting the daughter through university and every penny helped.
And that was that. I never told anyone what I knew, nor I guess did Billy expect me to. The charade continued of a Saturday night, just the same, with never a flicker of recognition between Billy and me, though I did fancy a couple of times that he winked at me.
The Not So Small Small Print.
(Jack is very flattered... but is forced to say...)
I’ve had a surprising number of e-mails from people who have said very nice things about the couple of little stories that I’ve posted already. It really is very kind of them, and I’m very pleased that they found my bits and pieces worth reading.
I’ve even had a very nice e-mail from a university professor who asked very courteously if he could use my piece on two-up, two-down cottages. As you can imagine I felt very flattered and immediately said of course he could. Anything that helps education in any way is wonderful, and the thought that my two-pennyworth might come in handy is just great.
But now I have had two e-mails warning me that something very like my first tale, almost word for word in fact, has very recently appeared in a paid-for publication. Not only have I had not one word from the editor asking my permission, but neither have I had an offer of even a penny piece for the author.
That, in my book, is theft.
I like the idea of anyone enjoying my memories very much indeed, but I don’t much care for the idea that some unworthy skunk is making money out of them without so much as a by-your-leave, or – even more importantly – without paying Jack for the material that has been stolen.
Anyway, it’s now all been taken out of my hands. A very nice publisher, who seems to think there might be some reward in it for both of us, has written to me making me an offer that no OAP in his right mind could refuse, the gist of which is that he will buy FBSRs on everything that I write with a first option to buy full copyright on any part of it, or all of it, should I wish to dispose of my rights permanently. That of course doesn’t stop me sharing my memories with you on this blog, I’ve made sure of that, but he does insist that to protect both of us I must now make it plain that I unequivocally claim copyright in the contents of this blog and must reserve all my rights. Further he says I must say that, without limiting my rights, no part of this blog may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical recording or otherwise without prior permission. He then added, parenthetically, that any infringement will be met will the full force of the law, and that his legal department will be watching.
I told him that none of my friends would dream of doing anything like that, but he said he wasn’t addressing my friends, who he felt sure are all most honourable. What he is doing is warning the fortunately small number of real pirates who cruise the web these days.
Well all this sounds dreadfully formal and I’m very sorry to have to say it all, but apparently we live in a naughty world..........
I’ve had a surprising number of e-mails from people who have said very nice things about the couple of little stories that I’ve posted already. It really is very kind of them, and I’m very pleased that they found my bits and pieces worth reading.
I’ve even had a very nice e-mail from a university professor who asked very courteously if he could use my piece on two-up, two-down cottages. As you can imagine I felt very flattered and immediately said of course he could. Anything that helps education in any way is wonderful, and the thought that my two-pennyworth might come in handy is just great.
But now I have had two e-mails warning me that something very like my first tale, almost word for word in fact, has very recently appeared in a paid-for publication. Not only have I had not one word from the editor asking my permission, but neither have I had an offer of even a penny piece for the author.
That, in my book, is theft.
I like the idea of anyone enjoying my memories very much indeed, but I don’t much care for the idea that some unworthy skunk is making money out of them without so much as a by-your-leave, or – even more importantly – without paying Jack for the material that has been stolen.
Anyway, it’s now all been taken out of my hands. A very nice publisher, who seems to think there might be some reward in it for both of us, has written to me making me an offer that no OAP in his right mind could refuse, the gist of which is that he will buy FBSRs on everything that I write with a first option to buy full copyright on any part of it, or all of it, should I wish to dispose of my rights permanently. That of course doesn’t stop me sharing my memories with you on this blog, I’ve made sure of that, but he does insist that to protect both of us I must now make it plain that I unequivocally claim copyright in the contents of this blog and must reserve all my rights. Further he says I must say that, without limiting my rights, no part of this blog may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical recording or otherwise without prior permission. He then added, parenthetically, that any infringement will be met will the full force of the law, and that his legal department will be watching.
I told him that none of my friends would dream of doing anything like that, but he said he wasn’t addressing my friends, who he felt sure are all most honourable. What he is doing is warning the fortunately small number of real pirates who cruise the web these days.
Well all this sounds dreadfully formal and I’m very sorry to have to say it all, but apparently we live in a naughty world..........
Sunday, 9 January 2011
Cottages
Some things seem to have always been there, so familiar that you take them for granted. It comes as quite a surprise to find that in reality they have all but disappeared. The two rooms up, two rooms down English cottage is for me one of those things. So much a part of the landscape, both urban and rural, all over the place, its plan as familiar and standardised as the Edwardian terrace houses and 1920s three-bedroom, semi-detached house that took its place. In reality, thanks to zealous improvers of public health and overactive town planners, the four roomed cottage began to disappear rapidly in the mid-twentieth century, and now the process is almost complete. Sadly it has mostly been beneath the notice of architectural historians, so is woefully under-recorded. Books could, and should, be written about these cottages, but I doubt if they will be. So it might be as well to jot down a word or two about them.
I have no idea who was responsible for the design of this style of working class dwelling. It was constructed from about 1830 to maybe the early 1870s, though most of them seem to date from around 1840 and for all I know, like Topsy, they just growed. With solid nine-inch external walls of brick on minimal foundations, skimpy structural timbers only just up to their job, simple layout and small footprint, it was cheap to build and therefore cheap to rent or buy. They came either as detached buildings or in rows of anything from a couple of houses to whole street lengths. Let’s take a typical cottage, in the 1940s, still sited beyond the reach of public utilities and looking very much as it had for a hundred years.
If what follows sounds authoritatively definite do not be deceived, there were plenty of variations on the theme. So just pop in the words ‘mostly’, ‘often’ or even ‘sometimes’ to suit your own recollections... if you are fortunate enough to have any.
There were two external doors, one leading directly into the kitchen, which was the back room, and one that opened into the front room. The back room downstairs was always referred to as the kitchen and the front room was simply called ‘the front room’ unless the occupants were pretentious, in which case it might be called the parlour. Families lived in the kitchen, the front room was strictly for high days, holidays and funerals.
The focus of the kitchen was the coal fired range. This was a simple affair made of cast-iron set into brickwork and recessed into the thickness of the chimney breast. The fire bed was wedge shaped, sloping down towards the front where the fire was kept in place by fire bars so that the glowing embers (‘gledes’) had a maximum exposure to the room. The opening to the flue was set back so that the top of the fire was available for cooking. To one side of the flue opening there was a hinged bracket of wrought iron (the crane) which could swing out over the top of the fire. From this cooking pots, frying pans and the kettle could be suspended in their turn by a combination of pot hooks (gaels). A set of these ‘S’ shaped hooks in various lengths hung on the crane when not in use. Kitchen gaels were made of plain iron rod and coloured black, like the rest of the range. The black colour of course did not appear all by itself, it had to be rubbed on by hand and frequently renewed with blacklead (graphite).
Built into the range to one side of the fire, usually the right-hand side, was a small oven. This was heated simply because it was alongside the fire; these original ranges didn’t have complex circulating flues and damper plates, so baking was often a haphazard affair which was not generally resorted to. The oven was more likely to be used for slow cooking stews or keeping food warm. A little above the level of the top of the fire and on either side were the hobs where a stew jar could be kept warm and the ubiquitous kettle lived when it was not hanging above the fire. Usually the teapot lived there as well, keeping warm, with hot water and a few extra tea leaves added from time to time as required. Making an entirely fresh pot of tea was in many households only done each morning or if visitors came to call. The result was that by the time evening came the tea tasted curiously strong and somewhat stewed, which was, when made with sterilised milk, definitely an acquired taste.
Lighting the fire was the first job every morning all the year round. Without it there was no hot water for washing oneself or, much more importantly, for tea. Life without washing was supportable, but without a cup of tea it would be unthinkable.
In front of the fire, its top level with the lowest fire bar, stood a tall trivet on which the dripping pan rested when meat was roasting. A joint would be suspended by a hook, or hooks, from a brass clockwork bottle jack (in turn hanging from a small brass bracket fixed below the mantle shelf, which allowed for adjustment fore and aft to bring the meat closer to or further away from the fire). A bonnet oven could be rested on the trivet for cooking bacon or chops, or any thin piece of meat needing swift cooking.
To one side of the range there would be floor to ceiling fitted cupboards. Because the warmth of chimney breast kept them comparatively dry these housed dry goods - flour, sugar, tea and such.
The kitchen floor, like that of the front room, was made of large, ceramic quarry-tiles, laid directly on the earth beneath, which were generally wax polished to a high gloss and dotted with rag rugs. A scrub-topped table fitted with a small drawer for knives, forks (prongs), and spoons, took up a great part of the floor space. Plain wooden chairs, a high-backed wooden settle, maybe a rocking chair or a rustic splat-backed wooden arm chair, and a five-drawer chest of drawers (as often as not mahogany veneered), filled almost all the available space, which wasn’t much to start with. Coal and fresh water lived in buckets under the table.
This room was the centre and hub of family life. Mother, father, six or seven children and maybe a widowed granny somehow fitted into it to eat, play, squabble and laugh, generation after generation.
The front room also had a range, but this was embellished with brass gaels, and was never, ever used for cooking. It was strictly for heating the room or for show. Between the range and the wall dividing the front room from the kitchen there were two doors fitted with thumb latches. The furthest door closed off the space beneath the stairs which was used for storage. The door nearest the range opened outwards to reveal the staircase which wound upwards clockwise so that climbing the steep steps one turned through 180 degrees to reach the front bedroom. The stairs were open at the top with a rail to stop the unwary falling. The front bedroom often had a small fireplace, but the back bedroom, which was divided by a vertical extension of the wall dividing the kitchen from the front room, did not. The only door upstairs was between the two bedrooms.
The front room mantle shelf was invariably fronted with a pelmet, usually of stiffened velvet, with a bobble fringing running along its bottom edge. But that kind of decorative finish was never used on the kitchen mantle shelf for the obvious reason that vaporised cooking fats from the frying pan, jack roasted meats and the bonnet oven would have condensed out onto and into the fabric in no time at all.
Original window frames and external doors, being subject to wind and weather, as well as fashion, seldom lasted more than the first fifty years, if that. Even so, some survived to show that typically windows were small-paned with minimal opening lights, and external doors, often decoratively panelled but sometimes of board and ledge construction, were fitted with thumb latches, rim locks and blacksmith-made tee hinges.
The two internal doors were more likely to survive for the life of the cottage. They were generally made of vertical boards, close butted and held together with three unbraced ledges. The centre ledge often carried a rim latch, while the top and bottom ledges were fitted with tee hinges, frequently with distinctive ‘penny’ finials.
In some cottages built before the 1870s the internal doorframes were a little wider than today’s 30 inches, allowing the ladies of the house to pass through easily when encumbered with the crinolines they wore for high days and holidays.
Outside the cottage there were outshuts and detached outbuildings of various kinds. One detached building was bound to be the ash closet, privy, necessary or whatever the family chose to call it. It’s siting was a compromise between making it distant from the dwelling for decency and close enough for comfort. On a cold winter’s night it was a brave cottager who made the trip up the garden, resorting instead to the chamber pot kept under the bed. But at other times the privy had its advantages. You could be alone there for a start, though there were some that were fitted with two holes side by side, sometimes three, with a smaller hole set closer to the ground for small children to use. Sociable you might say, but certainly rarely if ever would propriety allow mixed sex evacuations. In fact men rarely shared the privy with each other, it was the ladies and children who tended to go together.
The internal fittings were very simple, a brick shaft as wide as the building permitted fitted with a strong, smooth (always smooth) wooden seat pierced with one or more circular holes. Sometime the holes were fitted with hinged wooden covers. The shaft opened at the rear of the privy to allow the contents to be shovelled out. Except when it was being cleaned out this opening was closed with a wooden cover to keep the draught out. In more rural areas the contents, human waste and ashes from the grate, were trenched into the vegetable garden to serve as a valuable fertiliser. In more urban areas, served by well organised local authorities, a ‘night soil’ collection was provided by a couple of men with a horse and cart who went round emptying privies under the cover of darkness at regular intervals.
Another building, which might serve more than one cottage, was the wash house (in the Black Country ‘weshus’ or ‘brewus’). Set in one corner of its single room there would be a brick construction fitted with a cast-iron ‘copper’, round bottomed, maybe twenty-four inches in diameter and almost as deep with a fire box beneath it. There was usually a stoneware ceramic sink on brick sleeper walls, This was fitted with a plug and lead drainpipe leading outside, but the copper had no drain and had to be emptied with a semi-spherical tin bowl with a wooden handle (a ‘gawn’). The copper, which was fitted with a hefty, lift-off wooden cover, would be three-quarters filled with water and the fire lit at say five in the morning which would mean the water would be boiling and ready to take the washing at six o’clock. The sink was used for rinsing the clothes, or for any scrubbing needed to shift heavy soiling prior to boiling .
After the washing was done the fire was allowed to cool a little, the dirty water emptied out with the gawn, then, after a swift wipe round with a clean cloth the copper was refilled with water and the delicate art of the home brewing of beer begun.
Every family had its own way of brewing with small variations of ingredients and method, secrets jealously guarded and handed down from mother to daughter. Men played little part until the drinking stage. Mostly the end results were somewhere between unbelievably good and ecstasy. Genuine home brew at its best has no competitor and truly defies description in mere words. Fermented in a bread crock (joel) with home-grown barm floated on a piece of toast, bottled with care...... but I’m about to give too much away! Incidentally, the name joel for a terracotta, internally glazed, large pot size has a fascinating etymology; remind me to tell you some time.
Outshuts, frequently small timber additions to the rear of the cottage, could be small lobbies built onto the back entrance of the house proper to give the comfort of another outer door, so that cold air didn’t flood into the kitchen every time someone arrived or departed. If and when the piped gas supply arrived a cast iron gas stove, rented from the gas company, could be housed there. Beyond the lobby some householders built small pantries where food could be kept cooler than in the kitchen, and where, if the luxury of piped water arrived, a sink and a single cold tap could be installed.
Water generally came from a well, either one’s own in the garden or a communal affair serving a group of cottages. The general idea was to sink the well as far as possible from the privy, particularly after the 1832 cholera epidemic when people became aware of the dangers. A water butt fed from roof gutters supplemented the well by providing rainwater for washing and cleaning. Towards the end of the nineteenth century water companies increased their business by installing outside stand pipes, substantial, stubby pillars of cast iron with a cast spout and bucket hook moulded all of a piece, turned on and off with a removable spigot, one of which was issued to each customer. Such stand pipes (known in Gornal, and doubtless elsewhere, as ‘the tap’) stood at the road or lane-side and served a number of households round about.
Alongside rural cottages there might also be a chicken run and a pigsty. If there was enough land, and land was comparatively cheap in the mid nineteenth century, as well as the small flower garden there would be a large vegetable garden and perhaps an orchard.
Does this ill-organised ramble round a cottage make it sound as if the inhabitants were deprived, distressed and depressed? I do hope not, for all those cottagers that I knew were justifiably proud of their neat and sparkling little homes, so scrubbed clean that you could, as they used to say, eat your dinner off the floor. Shining brass, polished glass, gleaming mirrors, unfailing hospitality shown to every visitor, a cheerful fire and a pussy cat on the hearth rug, these were what you would have found. Idyllic? No, of course not, they were damp, insubstantial little places. Those who lived in them needed to work hard and, particularly in times of crisis, have a sense of humour.
Talking of which, just about every cottage had a motto or two framed on the wall. We did; ours read (in black letter intertwined with beautifully embroidered flowers) "Here we Suffer Grief and Pain..... and over the road it’s just the same."
I have no idea who was responsible for the design of this style of working class dwelling. It was constructed from about 1830 to maybe the early 1870s, though most of them seem to date from around 1840 and for all I know, like Topsy, they just growed. With solid nine-inch external walls of brick on minimal foundations, skimpy structural timbers only just up to their job, simple layout and small footprint, it was cheap to build and therefore cheap to rent or buy. They came either as detached buildings or in rows of anything from a couple of houses to whole street lengths. Let’s take a typical cottage, in the 1940s, still sited beyond the reach of public utilities and looking very much as it had for a hundred years.
If what follows sounds authoritatively definite do not be deceived, there were plenty of variations on the theme. So just pop in the words ‘mostly’, ‘often’ or even ‘sometimes’ to suit your own recollections... if you are fortunate enough to have any.
There were two external doors, one leading directly into the kitchen, which was the back room, and one that opened into the front room. The back room downstairs was always referred to as the kitchen and the front room was simply called ‘the front room’ unless the occupants were pretentious, in which case it might be called the parlour. Families lived in the kitchen, the front room was strictly for high days, holidays and funerals.
The focus of the kitchen was the coal fired range. This was a simple affair made of cast-iron set into brickwork and recessed into the thickness of the chimney breast. The fire bed was wedge shaped, sloping down towards the front where the fire was kept in place by fire bars so that the glowing embers (‘gledes’) had a maximum exposure to the room. The opening to the flue was set back so that the top of the fire was available for cooking. To one side of the flue opening there was a hinged bracket of wrought iron (the crane) which could swing out over the top of the fire. From this cooking pots, frying pans and the kettle could be suspended in their turn by a combination of pot hooks (gaels). A set of these ‘S’ shaped hooks in various lengths hung on the crane when not in use. Kitchen gaels were made of plain iron rod and coloured black, like the rest of the range. The black colour of course did not appear all by itself, it had to be rubbed on by hand and frequently renewed with blacklead (graphite).
Built into the range to one side of the fire, usually the right-hand side, was a small oven. This was heated simply because it was alongside the fire; these original ranges didn’t have complex circulating flues and damper plates, so baking was often a haphazard affair which was not generally resorted to. The oven was more likely to be used for slow cooking stews or keeping food warm. A little above the level of the top of the fire and on either side were the hobs where a stew jar could be kept warm and the ubiquitous kettle lived when it was not hanging above the fire. Usually the teapot lived there as well, keeping warm, with hot water and a few extra tea leaves added from time to time as required. Making an entirely fresh pot of tea was in many households only done each morning or if visitors came to call. The result was that by the time evening came the tea tasted curiously strong and somewhat stewed, which was, when made with sterilised milk, definitely an acquired taste.
Lighting the fire was the first job every morning all the year round. Without it there was no hot water for washing oneself or, much more importantly, for tea. Life without washing was supportable, but without a cup of tea it would be unthinkable.
In front of the fire, its top level with the lowest fire bar, stood a tall trivet on which the dripping pan rested when meat was roasting. A joint would be suspended by a hook, or hooks, from a brass clockwork bottle jack (in turn hanging from a small brass bracket fixed below the mantle shelf, which allowed for adjustment fore and aft to bring the meat closer to or further away from the fire). A bonnet oven could be rested on the trivet for cooking bacon or chops, or any thin piece of meat needing swift cooking.
To one side of the range there would be floor to ceiling fitted cupboards. Because the warmth of chimney breast kept them comparatively dry these housed dry goods - flour, sugar, tea and such.
The kitchen floor, like that of the front room, was made of large, ceramic quarry-tiles, laid directly on the earth beneath, which were generally wax polished to a high gloss and dotted with rag rugs. A scrub-topped table fitted with a small drawer for knives, forks (prongs), and spoons, took up a great part of the floor space. Plain wooden chairs, a high-backed wooden settle, maybe a rocking chair or a rustic splat-backed wooden arm chair, and a five-drawer chest of drawers (as often as not mahogany veneered), filled almost all the available space, which wasn’t much to start with. Coal and fresh water lived in buckets under the table.
This room was the centre and hub of family life. Mother, father, six or seven children and maybe a widowed granny somehow fitted into it to eat, play, squabble and laugh, generation after generation.
The front room also had a range, but this was embellished with brass gaels, and was never, ever used for cooking. It was strictly for heating the room or for show. Between the range and the wall dividing the front room from the kitchen there were two doors fitted with thumb latches. The furthest door closed off the space beneath the stairs which was used for storage. The door nearest the range opened outwards to reveal the staircase which wound upwards clockwise so that climbing the steep steps one turned through 180 degrees to reach the front bedroom. The stairs were open at the top with a rail to stop the unwary falling. The front bedroom often had a small fireplace, but the back bedroom, which was divided by a vertical extension of the wall dividing the kitchen from the front room, did not. The only door upstairs was between the two bedrooms.
The front room mantle shelf was invariably fronted with a pelmet, usually of stiffened velvet, with a bobble fringing running along its bottom edge. But that kind of decorative finish was never used on the kitchen mantle shelf for the obvious reason that vaporised cooking fats from the frying pan, jack roasted meats and the bonnet oven would have condensed out onto and into the fabric in no time at all.
Original window frames and external doors, being subject to wind and weather, as well as fashion, seldom lasted more than the first fifty years, if that. Even so, some survived to show that typically windows were small-paned with minimal opening lights, and external doors, often decoratively panelled but sometimes of board and ledge construction, were fitted with thumb latches, rim locks and blacksmith-made tee hinges.
The two internal doors were more likely to survive for the life of the cottage. They were generally made of vertical boards, close butted and held together with three unbraced ledges. The centre ledge often carried a rim latch, while the top and bottom ledges were fitted with tee hinges, frequently with distinctive ‘penny’ finials.
In some cottages built before the 1870s the internal doorframes were a little wider than today’s 30 inches, allowing the ladies of the house to pass through easily when encumbered with the crinolines they wore for high days and holidays.
Outside the cottage there were outshuts and detached outbuildings of various kinds. One detached building was bound to be the ash closet, privy, necessary or whatever the family chose to call it. It’s siting was a compromise between making it distant from the dwelling for decency and close enough for comfort. On a cold winter’s night it was a brave cottager who made the trip up the garden, resorting instead to the chamber pot kept under the bed. But at other times the privy had its advantages. You could be alone there for a start, though there were some that were fitted with two holes side by side, sometimes three, with a smaller hole set closer to the ground for small children to use. Sociable you might say, but certainly rarely if ever would propriety allow mixed sex evacuations. In fact men rarely shared the privy with each other, it was the ladies and children who tended to go together.
The internal fittings were very simple, a brick shaft as wide as the building permitted fitted with a strong, smooth (always smooth) wooden seat pierced with one or more circular holes. Sometime the holes were fitted with hinged wooden covers. The shaft opened at the rear of the privy to allow the contents to be shovelled out. Except when it was being cleaned out this opening was closed with a wooden cover to keep the draught out. In more rural areas the contents, human waste and ashes from the grate, were trenched into the vegetable garden to serve as a valuable fertiliser. In more urban areas, served by well organised local authorities, a ‘night soil’ collection was provided by a couple of men with a horse and cart who went round emptying privies under the cover of darkness at regular intervals.
Another building, which might serve more than one cottage, was the wash house (in the Black Country ‘weshus’ or ‘brewus’). Set in one corner of its single room there would be a brick construction fitted with a cast-iron ‘copper’, round bottomed, maybe twenty-four inches in diameter and almost as deep with a fire box beneath it. There was usually a stoneware ceramic sink on brick sleeper walls, This was fitted with a plug and lead drainpipe leading outside, but the copper had no drain and had to be emptied with a semi-spherical tin bowl with a wooden handle (a ‘gawn’). The copper, which was fitted with a hefty, lift-off wooden cover, would be three-quarters filled with water and the fire lit at say five in the morning which would mean the water would be boiling and ready to take the washing at six o’clock. The sink was used for rinsing the clothes, or for any scrubbing needed to shift heavy soiling prior to boiling .
After the washing was done the fire was allowed to cool a little, the dirty water emptied out with the gawn, then, after a swift wipe round with a clean cloth the copper was refilled with water and the delicate art of the home brewing of beer begun.
Every family had its own way of brewing with small variations of ingredients and method, secrets jealously guarded and handed down from mother to daughter. Men played little part until the drinking stage. Mostly the end results were somewhere between unbelievably good and ecstasy. Genuine home brew at its best has no competitor and truly defies description in mere words. Fermented in a bread crock (joel) with home-grown barm floated on a piece of toast, bottled with care...... but I’m about to give too much away! Incidentally, the name joel for a terracotta, internally glazed, large pot size has a fascinating etymology; remind me to tell you some time.
Outshuts, frequently small timber additions to the rear of the cottage, could be small lobbies built onto the back entrance of the house proper to give the comfort of another outer door, so that cold air didn’t flood into the kitchen every time someone arrived or departed. If and when the piped gas supply arrived a cast iron gas stove, rented from the gas company, could be housed there. Beyond the lobby some householders built small pantries where food could be kept cooler than in the kitchen, and where, if the luxury of piped water arrived, a sink and a single cold tap could be installed.
Water generally came from a well, either one’s own in the garden or a communal affair serving a group of cottages. The general idea was to sink the well as far as possible from the privy, particularly after the 1832 cholera epidemic when people became aware of the dangers. A water butt fed from roof gutters supplemented the well by providing rainwater for washing and cleaning. Towards the end of the nineteenth century water companies increased their business by installing outside stand pipes, substantial, stubby pillars of cast iron with a cast spout and bucket hook moulded all of a piece, turned on and off with a removable spigot, one of which was issued to each customer. Such stand pipes (known in Gornal, and doubtless elsewhere, as ‘the tap’) stood at the road or lane-side and served a number of households round about.
Alongside rural cottages there might also be a chicken run and a pigsty. If there was enough land, and land was comparatively cheap in the mid nineteenth century, as well as the small flower garden there would be a large vegetable garden and perhaps an orchard.
Does this ill-organised ramble round a cottage make it sound as if the inhabitants were deprived, distressed and depressed? I do hope not, for all those cottagers that I knew were justifiably proud of their neat and sparkling little homes, so scrubbed clean that you could, as they used to say, eat your dinner off the floor. Shining brass, polished glass, gleaming mirrors, unfailing hospitality shown to every visitor, a cheerful fire and a pussy cat on the hearth rug, these were what you would have found. Idyllic? No, of course not, they were damp, insubstantial little places. Those who lived in them needed to work hard and, particularly in times of crisis, have a sense of humour.
Talking of which, just about every cottage had a motto or two framed on the wall. We did; ours read (in black letter intertwined with beautifully embroidered flowers) "Here we Suffer Grief and Pain..... and over the road it’s just the same."
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Going for a Pirate
It was all down to Uncle Dan. It would never have happened if he hadn’t sat me down on the settle beside him and told me about pirates by way of a bedtime story. To tell the truth I can’t remember which of them featured that night; probably Henry Morgan, or Black Beard, or maybe Long John Every, but whoever they were I was hooked. I went to bed and dreamt of pirates and thought of little else for days afterwards.
It must have been springtime because when I set out I remember seeing Mrs Bradley’s cottage surrounded by a sea of pink and white apple blossom. I was staying at Granny’s at the time, as I often did. Not that there was anything wrong with home, I was very fond of home, but Granny’s was close by and I had learned how to get there almost as soon as I could walk. Besides, Granny was easy-going – nobody’s fool mind you – but my father was an only child and after my sister died I was her only grandchild, so as you can imagine there was a lot of mileage in staying with Granny.
So there I was, four and a half years old, setting out on my first big adventure. It was very early in the morning and I slipped out before Granny was awake. In a first act of defiance to mark my new way of life I neither washed my face nor cleaned my teeth before I left. I was truly a carefree ruffian in the making!
Barrs Lane wound downwards in a westerly direction between tangled hawthorn hedges. To the left and right there were occasional two-up two-down cottages standing defiantly at angles to the lane, each surrounded by its garden, most of which were a chaotic mixture of old-fashioned flowers and vegetables, set about with apple trees, the odd plum tree and the occasional pear. Halfway down the lane was Ben’s cottage and Ben himself was standing by his gate, peering at the hinges and moving it back and forth with a frown on his face. I drew level and hoped to slip past without him noticing. He was after all a grown-up, a very old grown-up at that (he must have been at least forty-five) and adults could be dangerous, being figures of authority and all.
He must’ve heard me because without turning around he said "Hello little lad, ‘an where’n yo off to, all bright and early?"
"Nowhere."
He turned and smiled at me. "Yo must be goin’ somewhere."
I decided the best policy was to come clean, he was after all a nice old man who was usually willing to listen to me; he even let me feed his rabbits sometimes.
So I plucked up courage and blurted out "I’m gooin fer a pirate."
He looked quite serious, though I could see his eyes were twinkling. "A pirate eh? Well ah’m blessed. We ay ‘ad one of them round here fer some time."
Ben said he was just going off to work and, since it was in the same direction, he’d keep company with me for a bit. And so we set off down the lane together. We hadn’t gone many yards when a thought struck him.
"Ah suppose yo’n got yer eye-patch?"
I hadn’t any idea what an eyepatch might be. Rather guardedly I admitted that I didn’t have an eyepatch. Ben stopped in his tracks gave me a look of considerable surprise. "Yo’n got ter ‘ave an eye-patch my son. Every pirate has one. They’ll never tek yer for a pirate without one."
Well, here was a turn up for the books. I asked Ben if he could let me have one, but he said he couldn’t because he’d given his last one away. He scratched his head and thought for a bit and then said brightly that he thought it was even money my granny would have one. I was a bit doubtful and told him that she never mentioned it. Even so, he said, she was probably my best bet and perhaps we ought to go and ask her. To tell the truth I was far from keen. There would be a very fair chance that authority, in the shape of Granny, would scupper my plans. I told Ben I didn’t really want to see her just then. He said that was all right, I needn’t go in, he’d try to get an eye-patch for me, I could wait outside. So we turned about and retraced our steps.
I hung about the corner of the cottage while Ben lifted the latch and stuck his head into the kitchen. "‘Mornin Lizzie, an yo sid the little lad?". No, she said, she hadn’t seen me but supposed me to be still in bed. Ben explained that, far from being still asleep, I was going for a pirate but had forgotten to take an eyepatch was me. Perhaps she had one handy? I waited for Nemesis to fall but to my surprise, retribution - divine or otherwise - was not forthcoming. Granny said something about not being sure if she had one or no, and then added it seemed a shame that I hadn’t waited until I had had my breakfast.
I hadn’t really thought about breakfast, which was unusual for me. But when you are about important business and your mind is full of derring-do, flintlock pistols, Jolly Rogers and altogether wrapped up with those who go down to the sea in ships and have business in great waters, even breakfast can slip onto the back burner.
Ben asked her what it would have been, this breakfast that I hadn’t bothered to wait for. She said she had a nice brown egg for me, fresh laid that very morning, a plate of bread-and-butter and a nice cup of tea. She went on to say that it was a pity let it go to waste so she’d better eat it herself. I weakened considerably. Sidling up to stand by Ben on the doorstep I said maybe I could delay things until breakfast was over. So that was that, Ben went off to work and I sat down to table.
Breakfast finished, I asked about the eye-patch. A couple of drawers were searched to no avail before Granny said that she really couldn’t spend any more time looking because she had to go to see Aunt Selina. Aunt Selina lived in Ruiton. She was a favourite aunt of mine who usually had a toffee or two in her pinafore pocket. There was a dog there, Spot, a terrier with whom I got on very well, and also cousin Jim who, immeasurably old at fourteen, sometimes let me listen to his crystal set.
I asked if Aunt Selina had any eye-patches. Granny was doubtful, but said there was a chance. Then she said that since it was Saturday morning Jim wouldn’t be at school and he might have one to spare. Perhaps I had better go along with her and find out? It seemed like a good idea, so off we trotted along the field paths up to Ellowes Hall and across to Ruiton. As it happened Jim was at home. We went out to the shed and he showed me the boat he was making. I can’t remember how far he had got with it, though I do recall him explaining what a bowsprit was for and how the sails would work when he had fitted them. I tried very hard to interest him in coming with me to be a pirate, but he was very lukewarm and didn’t seem to find the idea in the least attractive. Nor did he have an eye-patch. He was quite scornful about that, asking why on earth would he want one. Not knowing what an eye-patch was, or what it might be for, I was at a loss and let the subject drop. We had a listen to his crystal set and heard the Midland Home Service. He drew me a sketch of what his boat would look like when it was finished, then we took Spot for a walk down to the four-and-twenty steps and then it was dinner time. I can’t remember what we had, but my aunt was a good cook so it was bound to have been good, plus the fact that she always gave seconds of pudding. All in all it was a pretty good day.
Granny never did find an eye-patch for me. She said she’d look for one next time she went to Dudley, but by the time that happened I was rather taken with the notion of being a cowboy.
Jack Falstaff. Jan 2011.
It must have been springtime because when I set out I remember seeing Mrs Bradley’s cottage surrounded by a sea of pink and white apple blossom. I was staying at Granny’s at the time, as I often did. Not that there was anything wrong with home, I was very fond of home, but Granny’s was close by and I had learned how to get there almost as soon as I could walk. Besides, Granny was easy-going – nobody’s fool mind you – but my father was an only child and after my sister died I was her only grandchild, so as you can imagine there was a lot of mileage in staying with Granny.
So there I was, four and a half years old, setting out on my first big adventure. It was very early in the morning and I slipped out before Granny was awake. In a first act of defiance to mark my new way of life I neither washed my face nor cleaned my teeth before I left. I was truly a carefree ruffian in the making!
Barrs Lane wound downwards in a westerly direction between tangled hawthorn hedges. To the left and right there were occasional two-up two-down cottages standing defiantly at angles to the lane, each surrounded by its garden, most of which were a chaotic mixture of old-fashioned flowers and vegetables, set about with apple trees, the odd plum tree and the occasional pear. Halfway down the lane was Ben’s cottage and Ben himself was standing by his gate, peering at the hinges and moving it back and forth with a frown on his face. I drew level and hoped to slip past without him noticing. He was after all a grown-up, a very old grown-up at that (he must have been at least forty-five) and adults could be dangerous, being figures of authority and all.
He must’ve heard me because without turning around he said "Hello little lad, ‘an where’n yo off to, all bright and early?"
"Nowhere."
He turned and smiled at me. "Yo must be goin’ somewhere."
I decided the best policy was to come clean, he was after all a nice old man who was usually willing to listen to me; he even let me feed his rabbits sometimes.
So I plucked up courage and blurted out "I’m gooin fer a pirate."
He looked quite serious, though I could see his eyes were twinkling. "A pirate eh? Well ah’m blessed. We ay ‘ad one of them round here fer some time."
Ben said he was just going off to work and, since it was in the same direction, he’d keep company with me for a bit. And so we set off down the lane together. We hadn’t gone many yards when a thought struck him.
"Ah suppose yo’n got yer eye-patch?"
I hadn’t any idea what an eyepatch might be. Rather guardedly I admitted that I didn’t have an eyepatch. Ben stopped in his tracks gave me a look of considerable surprise. "Yo’n got ter ‘ave an eye-patch my son. Every pirate has one. They’ll never tek yer for a pirate without one."
Well, here was a turn up for the books. I asked Ben if he could let me have one, but he said he couldn’t because he’d given his last one away. He scratched his head and thought for a bit and then said brightly that he thought it was even money my granny would have one. I was a bit doubtful and told him that she never mentioned it. Even so, he said, she was probably my best bet and perhaps we ought to go and ask her. To tell the truth I was far from keen. There would be a very fair chance that authority, in the shape of Granny, would scupper my plans. I told Ben I didn’t really want to see her just then. He said that was all right, I needn’t go in, he’d try to get an eye-patch for me, I could wait outside. So we turned about and retraced our steps.
I hung about the corner of the cottage while Ben lifted the latch and stuck his head into the kitchen. "‘Mornin Lizzie, an yo sid the little lad?". No, she said, she hadn’t seen me but supposed me to be still in bed. Ben explained that, far from being still asleep, I was going for a pirate but had forgotten to take an eyepatch was me. Perhaps she had one handy? I waited for Nemesis to fall but to my surprise, retribution - divine or otherwise - was not forthcoming. Granny said something about not being sure if she had one or no, and then added it seemed a shame that I hadn’t waited until I had had my breakfast.
I hadn’t really thought about breakfast, which was unusual for me. But when you are about important business and your mind is full of derring-do, flintlock pistols, Jolly Rogers and altogether wrapped up with those who go down to the sea in ships and have business in great waters, even breakfast can slip onto the back burner.
Ben asked her what it would have been, this breakfast that I hadn’t bothered to wait for. She said she had a nice brown egg for me, fresh laid that very morning, a plate of bread-and-butter and a nice cup of tea. She went on to say that it was a pity let it go to waste so she’d better eat it herself. I weakened considerably. Sidling up to stand by Ben on the doorstep I said maybe I could delay things until breakfast was over. So that was that, Ben went off to work and I sat down to table.
Breakfast finished, I asked about the eye-patch. A couple of drawers were searched to no avail before Granny said that she really couldn’t spend any more time looking because she had to go to see Aunt Selina. Aunt Selina lived in Ruiton. She was a favourite aunt of mine who usually had a toffee or two in her pinafore pocket. There was a dog there, Spot, a terrier with whom I got on very well, and also cousin Jim who, immeasurably old at fourteen, sometimes let me listen to his crystal set.
I asked if Aunt Selina had any eye-patches. Granny was doubtful, but said there was a chance. Then she said that since it was Saturday morning Jim wouldn’t be at school and he might have one to spare. Perhaps I had better go along with her and find out? It seemed like a good idea, so off we trotted along the field paths up to Ellowes Hall and across to Ruiton. As it happened Jim was at home. We went out to the shed and he showed me the boat he was making. I can’t remember how far he had got with it, though I do recall him explaining what a bowsprit was for and how the sails would work when he had fitted them. I tried very hard to interest him in coming with me to be a pirate, but he was very lukewarm and didn’t seem to find the idea in the least attractive. Nor did he have an eye-patch. He was quite scornful about that, asking why on earth would he want one. Not knowing what an eye-patch was, or what it might be for, I was at a loss and let the subject drop. We had a listen to his crystal set and heard the Midland Home Service. He drew me a sketch of what his boat would look like when it was finished, then we took Spot for a walk down to the four-and-twenty steps and then it was dinner time. I can’t remember what we had, but my aunt was a good cook so it was bound to have been good, plus the fact that she always gave seconds of pudding. All in all it was a pretty good day.
Granny never did find an eye-patch for me. She said she’d look for one next time she went to Dudley, but by the time that happened I was rather taken with the notion of being a cowboy.
Jack Falstaff. Jan 2011.
About the Elephant
Initially these are memories of a childhood that began in 1934 and was largely spent in the village of Gornal Wood in south Staffordshire. They are concerned with that village and other villages round about.
Being one of those fortunate people who have very clear recollections of their early years (though for the life of me I can’t remember what happened last year, last month, last week, or even yesterday) I am pretty certain that my memories are accurate. However, to be on the safe side I’m enlisting the help of my old friend Nick Harris. We grew up together and he shared a lot of my experiences, besides which he has spent his life scribbling so he knows the ropes and may well be able to round off a few of my sharp corners.
Nick grew up in Sedgley but spent a great deal of time at his Granny’s in Gornal Wood. She lived very close to my own Granny and the two of them were great friends. Nick and I met when we were three or four, eventually went to the same secondary school and shared much of our childhood. So he is well placed to put me right.
Quite a lot of the names will be changed (to protect the innocent as well as the guilty) but the things that happened, the things I saw and heard, I shall try to tell you about faithfully. Maybe there will be a touch of licence in recorded conversations because I can’t be absolutely certain that I remember such dialogues word for word, but they will be as substantially accurate as I can make them.
That’s about it really. The views expressed are my own, and I disclaim all responsibility for any misconceptions I may have had and apologise unreservedly for any offence I may inadvertently give, for none is intended.
The elephant? I’m afraid that there isn’t one, but if I had headed this ‘Foreword’ or ‘Introduction’ you might have been tempted to skip it… I know I would…
Being one of those fortunate people who have very clear recollections of their early years (though for the life of me I can’t remember what happened last year, last month, last week, or even yesterday) I am pretty certain that my memories are accurate. However, to be on the safe side I’m enlisting the help of my old friend Nick Harris. We grew up together and he shared a lot of my experiences, besides which he has spent his life scribbling so he knows the ropes and may well be able to round off a few of my sharp corners.
Nick grew up in Sedgley but spent a great deal of time at his Granny’s in Gornal Wood. She lived very close to my own Granny and the two of them were great friends. Nick and I met when we were three or four, eventually went to the same secondary school and shared much of our childhood. So he is well placed to put me right.
Quite a lot of the names will be changed (to protect the innocent as well as the guilty) but the things that happened, the things I saw and heard, I shall try to tell you about faithfully. Maybe there will be a touch of licence in recorded conversations because I can’t be absolutely certain that I remember such dialogues word for word, but they will be as substantially accurate as I can make them.
That’s about it really. The views expressed are my own, and I disclaim all responsibility for any misconceptions I may have had and apologise unreservedly for any offence I may inadvertently give, for none is intended.
The elephant? I’m afraid that there isn’t one, but if I had headed this ‘Foreword’ or ‘Introduction’ you might have been tempted to skip it… I know I would…
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