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I was born on Saturday 30th July 1930, just before 7:30am, in a house called ‘Strathmore’ on Guinness Straight, Scunthorpe. I was the first born of Kenneth John Ball and Muriel Josephine Ball (nee Webster).

My father was born in Frodingham, Scunthorpe, an the 16th May 1913. He once told me that his only recollection of his father, who was killed at Ypres, was of a soldier coming down the street and entering his house. He was about two years old and didn’t know at the time that this was his father and the last time he was seen alive at home. My mother was born in Crowle, Isle of Axholme, on 13th July 1914.

My first memory of the second world war, although I was too young to realise that is what it was, was going to stay with my mother’s sister, Aunty Edna, and her husband, Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was the Stationmaster at Reepham, near Lincoln. My mother was pregnant with my sister, who was born on 7th November 1942. She had a grumbling appendix so had to stay in Scunthorpe hospital, with a tube in her side, until after the baby was born and she could have an operation to have her appendix removed. I had to stay with my Aunty until this had happened and my mother was well enough to look after both children.

I had three cousins at Reepham, two boys and a girl, all older than me.

I remember it was a beautiful hot summer and we spent many happy hours playing in the paddock alongside the house and on the railwayman’s buggies (like the one’s in the silent films). I remember one particular Sunday taking a doll’s pram for a walk and getting covered in bramble juice whist wearing our Sunday-best white clothes. I used to share a room with my cousin Betty who was about 8 or 9 at the time. We used to talk and sing after we went to bed, when we couldn’t sleep, and I vividly remember counting aeroplanes flying over the house on their way to Germany for the bombing raids and also counting them on the way back. I didn’t realised until much later that there were never as many coming back as there were going out — I was just learning to count. During one of these sleepless times, to relieve the boredom, I remember stripping the paper from the wall by my bed — I wasn’t very popular the following morning!

As autumn approached I was almost old enough to go to school, so I was enrolled at the village school. This was held in one room with the seniors holding their lessons behind a screen in one corner of the big room and two other classes, one infants and one juniors, in opposite corners of this same room. The ‘babies’, which included me, were in a little room, off the big one, in the centre of which was a pot-bellied stove with a big chimney going through the ceiling and surrounded by a fire guard. I remember one particularly cold day, I think it was early in December, arriving at school and finding that all the milk had frozen and the cardboard tops were just sitting on the top of the frozen milk which was standing proud of the 1/3 pint bottles. They were all placed around the lighted stove and we had our milk in the middle of the afternoon when it was all thawed out — which we all thought was very exciting! During this period I also remember rolling a snowball around the paddock and making a wonderful snowman; complete with hat, scarf, gloves and a pipe.

My father, who worked at the steelworks, a reserved occupation, used to come on the bus to see me regularly. He used to write to me and someone used to read his messages to me.

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Transcribed by Alan Brigham, www.hullwebs.co.uk

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