´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Anne Tester. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Childhood ambitions

One of my ambitions was to own a bicycle, a pretty hopeless ambition in those days but when my grandparents came to live with us soon after we moved to the house in Winchester Road one of my grandfather’s possessions was an ancient ‘sit up and beg’ bike! Now, grandparents in those days were not easily influenced by their grandchildren and especially mine. So in order to achieve my desire to own or at lease ride a bike I had to work very hard to persuade him and this I finally did with constant requests and in the process learned a very good lesson in diplomacy.
I also learned to mend punctures, adjust brake blocks and keep an ageing piece of machinery together. But it meant that I had some freedom to ride around the almost traffic free roads and lanes. Up until then all I had to ride was a scooter, bought with coupons from the purchase of tins of cocoa. Today, when I walk along the right hand footpath on Cosby Road towards the Crossroads I see the ‘hills and hollows’ to each house entrance that were there when I was a child. They were excellent for giving added momentum to my ride on my scooter but nothing to compare with the joy of bike rides.

Moving to Secondary School

At the age of eleven I sat the 11 plus examination but for whatever reason, I don’t know, I failed. I suspect this was because of all the upheaval of changing schools and home and being without parents for such a long time. It caused much sadness in the family and off I went to the Secondary Modern School in South Wigston.
It seemed a huge place with large concrete stairs and endless corridors but it was new and light and very well equipped with science rooms, a gym and domestic science rooms. There was only one male teacher who walked with a limp and was therefore not able to join any of the forces. The headmistress, Miss Walker was considered to be very ‘modern’ in her outlook. (I’m not sure how I picked up this piece of information)
We had to wear a uniform of navy tunic, white blouse, tie, navy blazer and beret with a pale blue dress in the summer. The rules demanded that this outfit was worn at all times and there was a rush to discard the beret as soon as we were on the school bus to go home.
One of the differences of the Secondary school was that the pupils came from a wider area than just our village. Those from Cosby, for instance seemed to me to be quite different from children I had know before and they went to and from school on a different bus! There were certainly rivalries between villages and Countesthorpe people would openly refer to those living in Blaby as ‘them Blabies’, especially when people from Blaby filled up the seats on the Countesthorpe bus out of Leicester. Living in Winchester Road, I had some affinity with Blaby and I made friends with several girls from there but of course Winchester Road residents, like all those living ‘over the railway’ were also regarded with suspicion and considered ’snobs’ by the rest of the village. Even within the village there was a divide between the primary schools, one being run by the church and the other by the County authority and they never mixed so the school at South Wigston was quite a new experience in many ways.
It was an all girls school with the boys school in the next section of the building. There was a grassed area between the two where the occupants of each school could survey the other across the space but never mix!
Both schools consisted of two sections, the Modern school on the ground floor and upstairs, the Technical school. Lessons in the Modern school were fairly basic and pupils left there when they were 14 years of age but in the Technical school they were allowed to stay on until they were 15 years old and study commercial subjects such as typewriting , shorthand and accounting.
I moved up to the Technical school when I was 14 years old and stayed until I was 16 years old to take the commercial subjects and a few others for an examination called the E.M.E.U.(East Midlands Educational Union)
I can only remember a few of my lessons in the Modern school. Geography was one that I enjoyed in spite of a tyrant of a teacher and I did get some feeling of success as I did in the cookery lessons which went on for a full day. I did not like the sewing lessons when all our work was done by hand. I struggled for so long making a blouse with a Peter Pan collar out of calico that I can remember the holes that the needle was forced into became quite grubby and I was told off for bad work. It is interesting that as soon as I entered the Technical School I was allowed to use a sewing machine.
( I made some quite respectable pink pyjamas) Singing lessons and P.E. in the gym were also my pet hates although I later excelled at high jump on sports day and jumped for my school at the county games. I was very disappointed because my parents did not come and watch me jump but of course without a car it was probably impossible.
I can remember a visiting speaker extolling the virtues of abstinence from drink and we had to write an essay(called a composition in those days) on the subject for which we received a certificate. My certificate went on the sitting room wall. It stood beside a notice from the Red Cross classes I attended declaring that ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’. My parents must have been very long suffering and never questioned just what value this all was, probably the result of living though the years of the depression and then the war.
One of the benefits of my day long cookery classes was that I was able to bring home food for the family to enjoy and it was then that school took on a more interesting role. We learnt all the baking for Christmas including the icing of the cake, a task I was responsible for long after I left school. It was quite a performance in those days as all the dried fruit had to washed, stoned and chopped and ingredients found as an alternative to those recommended in the recipe books. There were government booklets offering suggestions for alternatives and the school recipes took into account the shortage of certain items. We also learned to make toffee, mint creams and a sort of minty toffee which we rolled in icing sugar and left to set. These were wonderful as there were no sweets in the shops until the end of the war. The first recollection I have of buying sweets was from a little shop in Cosby Road, opposite the College which was run by a Mrs Broom. The actual shop was a kind of annex to her bungalow and is still there although it is now incorporated into the house.

Outings

Partly due to the expense of travel and fear of air raids we rarely went on visits. Just to visit Bradgate Park involved us in a bus ride into Leicester, a walk to the bus station and another ride out to the park. We did go and visit my aunt and uncle and cousin who had moved into Leicester. They bought a house in Gainsborough Road, off Welford Road and to get there entailed a journey by bus to Leicester and a ride in a tram to the terminus at the bottom of their road. The trams had polished and slatted wooden seats with backs that could be turned round to face the other way, a task undertaken by the conductor when the tram reached the end of the track. The conductor also had to unhook and re-connect the connecting rod from the overhead wires with a long pole. Being at the end of the track we were able to observe this which added to the enjoyment of the outing.
The bus service to Countesthorpe ran from what is now the site of De Montfort University and was approached from the town via Newalke Street and under an arch where the Magazine still stands. L24 and L25 were the bus numbers and it was a constant anxiety when catching them (a very appropriate description as they had the habit, as they still do, of escaping whenever possible!) Next to the bus stands there was a parade ground as the whole of that area was a barracks and the activities of the soldiers gave us something to look at as we waited for the bus to turn up.
Going into Leicester was mainly for special shopping or, on rare occasions to see a Walt Disney film at the cinema. There we also caught a glimpse of the action of the war in the newsreels that were accompanied by rousing music.We always went to a daytime showing as the buses to Countesthorpe stopped at 9.15pm. We would emerge from the fantasy world of the cinema into the daylight and bustle of the streets and take some time to adjust.
From time to time there were films of old village life, and silent films too that were shown in the old Village Institute, a mainly corrugated iron building which was on the site of the present Village Centre.
We rarely left home for more than a day but before my grandparents moved to live with us my sister and I stayed in their cottage outside Kirby Muxloe during one summer holiday. It was very remote and had to be reached via a farm track. I recall from that stay my grandmother cleaning the black range and cooking on it, an abundance of mice in the house, lighting by paraffin lamp as there was no electricity and long days wandering around the fields amusing myself by collecting thistle seed to stuff a cushion for my dolls. One day we walked to the shops in Kirby Muxloe which took a fair amount of the day so we took sandwiches to eat in the fields.(It was not considered polite to eat in public).

The end of the war.

To celebrate the end of the war there was a street party which I refused to go to but I can see to this day the place in Winchester Road where it was held. There were tables set out on the grass and lots of flags and food. Games were played by children and adults which I surveyed from my front gate and quickly decided not to join in.
With the fear of attack at an end there was the chance to venture out away from home and we were invited to go and stay with a friend of a great uncle in Brighton who owned a block of flats. Amazingly we were able to journey by train to St. Pancras on our own and were met by my mother’s younger brother and his wife and escorted across London to Victoria station to catch a train to Brighton. The flat in Brighton was very grand and exciting and we learned to use the lift. We had never seen the sea before. We spent the week wandering around Brighton on our own and even walked as far as Rottingdean where there was a home for men who had lost their sight in the war. We saw many of them walking about in the grounds of the hospital.
Our access to parts of Brighton was restricted and I remember being unable to go onto the pier. But what pleasure there was to be able to eat ice cream! It was sold from a mobile cart, pushed into position each day on the sea front. Such had been the effect of the shortages during the war that we thought nothing of rationing ourselves to one plain ice cream (wrapped in thin paper) and one chocolate icecream (wrapped in thicker brown paper). The journey home was not quite as straight forward My uncle forgot to meet us and I proudly led my sister across London on the tube to St. Pancras and back on the train home. All the fuss that accrued as a result of this oversight was lost to me as I wallowed in the pride of my achievement.
I also went to stay with my aunt in Luton and visited London on the train, catching what was called the Workers Train as it arrived in London at about 8.00am and was much cheaper than the fare later in the day. I have vivid memories of the Rosebay Willow Herb (Fireweed) which had sprung up around the bomb ruins next to St. Paul’s Cathedral and the many boarded up buildings. These left a strange impression on me for I had not seen very much bomb damage and of course with no television and few visits to the cinema I had relied on descriptions on the radio.
In spite of the drabness of our cities they were exciting compared with our life at home and London was especially thrilling. We learned to negotiate the Underground and we discovered all the usual sights and parks which were accessible at last. There was a Lyons Corner House near Westminster Bridge which had a marvellous salad bar and was the highlight of the visit because we were allowed to help ourselves to as much as we wanted! This was quite new as restaurants usually had a waiter service and were very ‘stuffy’ establishments.
Looking back on that time I recall that it was very exciting as I began to experience a life beyond my home. For everyone, there must have been a feeling of hope for something better, even though we had to put up with the restrictions of rationing for several more years. How lucky it was for me that this period in time coincided with my growing up.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.