Chapter 1
1953

A child is born. Yep that was me on February 28th a healthy 7lb 5 oz squawking bundle.

My parents were living in one room of the paternal grandparent’s house, having been ostracized by my mother’s family for daring to conceive my sister before wedlock. After my birth they were allocated a three bedroomed council house. Better than one room but far from perfect; one fireplace in the living room being the sole source of heating in the entire house. The walls were running with damp and at the age of three months I was hospitalized with pneumonia. After my recovery we continued to live in that same house.

The 1950s a new era after the ravages and ruins of the Second World War that had ended in 1945 but its effects were still felt. There was still rationing of some staple foodstuffs such as sugar and eggs. Sweets had only just been taken off rations. The most important event of 1953 had to be the crowning of a new queen. Queen Elizabeth the second who’s coronation took place on the second of June. The Prime Minister was Winston Churchill presiding over a Conservative government.

Now with the end of the Second World War, the enemy seemed to be the communist East against the capitalist West. However good things were happening too. There was the beginning of rock and roll in the USA with Bill Haley and “Rock Around The Clock”. Meanwhile in Britain, number one was Frankie Laine singing “I Believe”. TV was becoming widespread with more and more families owning a TV or renting in many cases. Commercial breaks started appearing on the TV in the mid-fifties. However TV only showed a moral world where authority was respected and class barriers were still in place. Yes, we were most definitely the working class.

We got our first TV when I was five years old and I remember distinctly watching my first programme ever which was good old Lassie. Our living room was full of kids off the street where we lived, who had come to watch this new phenomenon the TV, in black and white at that time, as colour TV was yet to be invented.

My childhood was spent going to school which was just at the top of our street then playing outside after school. As a street we were all relatively poor we didn’t have a lot of toys or anything like the gadgets of today. Our time was spent playing out in the road as cars were infrequent. We played games such as British Bulldog and “Queenie, Queenie who’s got the ball”. We would tie our skipping rope to the lamppost and stretch it out across the road to play skipping games. We were happy without material things and the time to go home, as every child knew, was when the street lights came on, so the long nights of summer were the best. However, religion still played a big part in everyday life. On Sundays there would not be any kids out on the street. My Sundays were spent going to church on Sunday mornings and sometimes on marches, as my sister and I were members of the Girls’ Life Brigade, a religious organisation. After church we had to remain home, which was so boring.

In the 50s, before health and safety took hold and recycling was a natural occurrence, each house had a small metal dustbin at the front of the house, but in those days, there was not much waste. Vegetable peelings went onto the compost in the back garden to be used for the growth of more vegetables. Milk was delivered in glass bottles which were dutifully washed out after use and put out front for the milkman to collect for re-use.

At the local chippy, fish and chips would be wrapped in used newspapers. Then there were the pop bottles, lemonade etc., not that we had a lot of those in our house. Anyway, we could take the empties to the shop and get a penny back on each bottle. We used to go knocking on people’s doors asking if they had any empties.

“Got any empty pop bottles mister?”

More often than not we were told, “Get out of here pesky kids!” However, we did sometimes get some and used our pennies to buy penny sweets.

We would also go to the chippy and ask, “Can I have a bag of Batter Bits mister?”

This was the remnants of the batter which fish had been fried in. Other than that, there was the bakery where at the close of day you could find stale cakes on show in the window, which you could buy for pennies. Sounds awful now but they never did us any harm. Not forgetting the rag-and-bone man. He used to come around on his horse and cart … Bellowing out … “Any ole rags, any ole raaags!” He would take anything you wanted to be rid of, yes nothing was wasted in those days.

The highlight of our week had to be the Saturday morning pictures. Held at the ABC Cinema it was kids’ morning. My sister and I were given one shilling and six pence, which paid our bus fare and got us into the cinema, and even a little left over for sweets. There would be a compere on the stage before the films came on and he would lead us into singing our membership song. “We come along on a Saturday morning, greeting everybody with a smile … with a smile, we are the minors of the ABC!” The films were mostly a plethora of old black and white cowboys and Indians films.

The 1950s saw the beginnings of sub-cultures amongst teenagers with the Teddy Boys the first of many that would emerge as the years went by. The Teddy Boys were identified by their clothes. They wore long drape jackets, drainpipe trousers and thick crepe soled shoes, and of course the quiff hairstyle. They were looked down on by society generally, and were regarded as something quite evil. With rock and roll taking hold in the mid-50s the Teddy Boys adopted this genre as their own.

When I was about eight years old my father acquired his first car. It was an old Standard Eight. We had so much fun with that old car.

When approaching a hill Dad used to talk to it … “Come on my beauty, you can do it, come on, come on. Okay girls get out.”

So, my sister and I would get out of the car laughing, and we would get behind the car and push it up the hill, clouds of black smoke enveloping us! We thought that it was hilarious. Then there was the time when we went to the seaside for the day. On the way back home, it started raining and the car was letting in the rain in various places. We had our buckets and spades from our day at the beach so we utilised our toy buckets to try and catch the raindrops.

But soon my carefree childhood was going to become marred by darker times.

Chapter 2
Darker Times

The year was 1962 and I was nine years old. As an avid reader I used to read the newspapers that my father would bring home. Little did I know of the horror headlines that I would read. Headlines such as Third World War imminent! Atomic bombs, nuclear weapons. I knew about Hiroshima and the thousands killed there, and now there were weapons even stronger than the ones used in Hiroshima. I was terrified and extremely worried at my tender age, as to what would happen if this war began. Yes, I am writing here about the Cuban crisis which had its beginnings in 1959. Fidel Castro had seized power in Cuba, which under his regime would become a communist country. With its proximity to the United States of America (USA) this caused considerable concern.

By 1960 Cuba had been recognised as an ally by the USSR or Soviet Union of Socialist Republics, or Russia, as it was also known. In retaliation the USA sanctioned exports to Cuba. As time went by Cuba’s relationship with Russia grew closer and trade was established between them. This prompted the USA to close its embassy in Cuba, cutting off any relationship that they may have had.

The year was 1962 and the President of the USA John F Kennedy announced a complete halt to any trade with Cuba. At the same time Russia was transporting nuclear weapons into Cuba. The situation was becoming very tense between Russia and the USA. The placing of nuclear weapons in Cuba by Russia alarmed the USA so much that they sent ships over to place an embargo around Cuba, making it impossible for Russia to transport any more weapons into Cuba. President Kennedy announced to the world on TV that this would not end until Russia removed their weapons from Cuba. Hence the headlines in the papers causing panic and alarm around the world.