Our Street was my whole world when I was little

Two rooms made up the ground floor of the house

They were called the front room and the kitchen

In the kitchen there was a bath

Because it was a miners cottage

We didn’t use th bath very much

Because we had to light a big fire to heat the water although I didn’t know that at the time.

Everything was as it was.

We used to play rounders in the middle of the road or the girls would play with skipping ropes.

The boys went to the park and tortured frogs

That’s how it all begins.

I loved our street and the cobbles and the ice cream  man’s  horse.

But underneath there’s always an element of fear

Lying in bed, I was afraid of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs

Why was I afraid when the stairs came up from the kitchen where my mother might be making a cup of tea.

We don’t like to think about the vulnerability of children even when they are not being abused. 

By today’s standards we probably were being abused

Instead they are teased like boys who were told, don’t cry you’re a big boy, you’re two years old. 

I remember the queen’s coronation in 1953 

We had a party with jelly and ice cream at tables down the middle of the road

I didn’t really understand why the Queen matters because we lived a hundred and eighty miles away from London and I thought everything important happened in our town and nowhere else.

I do remember Harold Macmillan saying ,you have never had it so good

I was totally puzzled by his statement what was it we’d never had so good?

Although I did start reading the times when I was 10.

For the previous 2 years I had read The Guardian until one day I asked  my motherat what was rape

She never replied but we changed our daily paper I can’t believe I was reading the times then it’s in ludicrous

There is something that wasn’t talked about much called print hunger where you will read anything even the print on the  soap powder box rather than just gaze around like you do when you’re small

What is so frighteningabout being without something to read?

Is there anything we don’t want to read yes the school textbooks

In our street the top half was covered in tarmac and the bottom half was covered in cobbles

It was because it was the meeting of two different parishes with different financial regulations or should I say different priorities?

Some of the men prefer cobbles, others say we must move with the times the motor car is coming we’ve got to get the roads ready for it

I didn’t like it because I like the little weeds that grew between the cobbles and the bits of tar that you can play within the summer

There was no contest in my mind but they didn’t consult me fortunately

I think cobbles were better for the horses except when they were  wet

No doubt I would have objected to cobbles in a previous era

I suppose I prefer the earth the natural world to the world of pavements and cars.

Thank goodness there were no motorways in the 1950s

We were content with our outdoor toilets and our washes at the kitchen sink.

Partly because we knew nothing else but that and what your mother and father did that was right wasn’t it?

That’s the end for today