大象传媒

prologue ( 1)
It all started when little Arnold entered to world on a lovely summers day in May 1931. There was a howl of protest at the injustice of it All I have been silently howling most of the time since.
The world in 1931 was a very different place to our modern version. I came to realise over the next couple of years, that perhaps my own little bit wasn't so bad after all.
Art deco, tennis, great summers and sparkling frosty winters. Everlasting peace and tranquility... All was as it should be.
or, so I thought !

I knew nothing of the flaws. That came later.
Firstly, we couldn't afford our comfortable lifestyle and it was to change, secondly, there was the little matter of my dyslexia of which I knew nothing and thirdly, but by no means least, there was uncle Adolf in a far away country where they made wonderful toys....... called GERMANY .
But, for now, we will concern ourselves with our comfortable little suburban castle.
It was in a fashionable area well to the north of Manchester.
I didn't miss my playstation because there weren't any.
Our music was provided by a gramophone. A wonderful machine in a mahogany cabinet.
I used to wind it up just to see the turntable whizzing round.
Like most things in our trendy little house, it smelt of ' Mansion Polish @.
My bedroom had a yellow bed with teddy bears
and , on the wall, a depressing picture of a Highland cow standing up to its knees in some awful Scottish bog ! I hated that picture. and I thought that Scotland was coloured sepia ! It gave me a lifelong suspicion of all things Scottish .
The house was a wedding present from grandad Walker. He built it, along with a few hundred more.
The tree lined avenue was called 'Walker Avenue', in honour of the family and , with a glorious flash of inspiration, my parents called the house 'ARNHILL', because of Arnold and Hilda.
So, the nineteen thirties were everything that was good.
Of course, I knew nothing of the depression.
What were cotton mills ? Clouds gathering on the horizon ! We knew nothing about them.
I did however, know a great deal about another world.
I was weaned on tales of Yorkshire. The wonderful life of the rural West Riding where my roots were. 'according to my Dad's family.
I have grown overweight because of my lifelong loyalty to Yorkshire pudding !
North Wales was soon another very special place to me.
The family had a cottage there. My grandad Walker had been damaged during the first war and was told by his doctor to find somewhere where the air was good.
Most air was better than Lanashire's in those days. So, that's how there came to be a family cottage up on a mountainside near Bethesda in North Wales.
He bought it , I was told, for five pounds.
It is now owned by a cousin, but it now has wonderful things like a tap and a toilet !
In those far away times it had a spout running from a stream, shared by nine other cottages.
The toilet was a smelly affair in a stone hut at the top of the garden. A wooden board with a hole in it and a bucket with some strong smelling blue stuff in it.
On a rusty nail, hung a bit of string with some little squares of newspaper.
Their purpose needs no explanation.
I was recently asked " What was the newspaper ?". I knew the answer because that's how I learned most of my reading !
Getting to the loo involved a journey through neck high ( to me ) nettles usually wet.
I could spy through a hole in the drystone wall and see who was filling buckets at the spout, but it was not the place to spend ones spare time !
I spent a lot of summers at Tan y Foel, because I was taken there by various aunts and uncles. My dad only got one weeks holiday each year.
Auntie Elsie taught me how to play golf up on the mountainside, using walking sticks and tennis balls.
One of the marvelous things about 'Tan y Foel', was getting there.
From Manchester, we boarded a long train pulled by a massive steam engine.
I loved ,' and still do', the smell of the steam and hot oil and the sheer power of these monsters. I used to stand as near as I dare and feel the heat from the boilers.

Then, it was time to climb up into the carriage and heave our battered leather suitcases up onto the luggage rack.
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AT THIS POINT , I WILL MOVE ON . I WROTE QUITE A LOT MORE , BUT I WANT TO GET ON THE THE BIG EVENT ! WE MOVED VIA A COTTAGE IN THE COUNTRY TO A HOUSE IN A TOWN NOT TOO FAR AWAY. THE TOWN WAS CALLED ' RADCLIFFE '
HERE, I SOON DISCOVERED WHAT A COTTON MILL WAS ! AND, MUCH MORE !
BUT, LET US MOVE AHEAD TO THE GRAT WAR PART TWO !.

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The adventure begins

Upon arriving back from my holiday, I was met by my mother who, unexpectedly, flung her arms around me .
My uncle was standing in the background with a silly grin on his face, " Well , It's started ".
The war was about four hours old and, I think my mother expected the bombs to start falling any minute !
My own feelings were mixed. I had seen uncle Adolf's soldiers dashing across Poland on the newsreel at the ' ODEON '.
I had been very impressed by hos tanks and dive bombers.
I had seen refugees , trudging along dusty roads trying to find safety.
If we had to do that, I thought , We would have to walk to Scotland !. I didn't much like the idea of walking to a sepia coloured country of bogs and long haired cows !.
I was propelled into the house.
Things had changed. Dad had been busy sticking paper tape all over the windows in little diamond shapes. I thought tat he must know what he was doing , grown ups usually did.
He had also been digging a big hole in the back garden. I did ask him what that was for. He looked serious.
" Its going to be an air raid shelter", he explained. All through the war , it remained nothing but a big hole in the back garden !
It was very useful though. When I was playing with my mates, it was a trench in the first world war ! It gave me considerable prestige, owning my own trench !
Nothing much happened over the next few weeks. Back to school after the holidays.
There were wild tales that some German parachutists had landed. I was even told that the hole in our garden contained an unexploded bomb ! For some time, I lost my fellow trench soldiers.
Then , one day, we were led into the school hall and addressed by Mr Bullock, our headmaster.
" Boys and girls ", he spoke softly.
he indicated a table in the corner of the hall, it was piled high with little cardboard boxes. " Gas masks ", he whispered. " Now, there is nothing to worry about, nothings going to happen. Mrs Hopkins will give each one of you a gas mask according to your age and we will show you how to wear them ".
We lined up to be given our gas masks.
Adjustments were made to the straps and we were shown how to wear them.
They smelled of new rubber and the little window steamed up. I giggled.
As I breathed out, the air flapped and made a very rude noise. All around me, although I couldn't actually see anyone, I could hear little rude noises
" Take them off ", Mr Bullock said rather hastily. We did as we were told.
We had to carry our gas mask everywhere we went.
Also, some time later, we were each given a little red disc made of some sort of hard cardboard.
Mine announced that I was 'LONG A .......
NWTY 299/3 '. We wore them round our necks.
No one bothered to tell us that . If all other means of identification failed, the little disc would prove that I had been...
NWTY299/3 !
Later, we received identification cards .
Oh, and ration cards . All this was of no interest to me. It was later, because I had to get my ration of sweets.
Still, the parachutists and bombs had not arrived.
We all listened to the radio. Our lads in France and Belgium were ready for anything !
What chance had the U boats got ? We had the Royal Navy !
We were told to check our blackout curtains.
My dad became an air raid warden.
He was a male nurse and had started to instruct first aid. Everyone met in the old colliery buildings at Outwood.
I was used as a dummy and became used to being covered in splints and bandages .
Most of the people there were old miners.
Outwood colliery was closed in the very early 1930's.
There was an explosion and some miners were trapped underground.
It had to be sealed off and I was told that it was still burning deep underground.
The old miners were wonderful characters.
They came and sat on a long wooden bench in what had been the pit canteen.
They wore rather old fashioned working clothes. Big cloth caps and coarse looking shirts with no collars. They all seemed to wear waistcoats and heavy working trousers, and they all wore very polished clogs that used to clatter and spark as they walked across the cobbled yard.
They drank ( tea ) from chipped white pint pots.
They all made their tea the same way.
Into a mug, they threw a couple of spoonfuls of tea leaves ' long before the days of tea bags !'. Then, sugar followed by a couple of spoonfuls of 'Carnation ' milk. This was a very sweet, sticky substance that coloured your tea a sort of orange colour and added more sweetness.
Then, they would pour in boiling water from a big black iron kettle that was always bubbling on the coke stove.
The result was something they called ' A brew '.
I came to like this strange stuff.
Most of the old colliers had been in the trenches in the first world war.
They seldom spoke of hat they had seen. Their eyes were often far away and occasionally, they spoke of an old friend who had been killed.
Now of course, they are all long gone, but I consider it a privilege to have known such men.
More and more young men were disappearing as
they got their ' call up' papers.
Two of our teachers went and were replaced by middle aged ladies brought out of retirement. They were very kind to us !
We got news that Mr Calloway ' an old neighbour of ours ', had been killed in action. He had been driving a tank somewhere in Belgium. That seemed to be where most of the young men were going.
I never saw Mrs Calloway again.
I was rapidly beginning to realise that perhaps it was not going to be so easy after all !.
I began to not like uncle Adolf !
We started to see a lot of planes in the sky, and most of us kids soon became experts in recognising them.
" Look, a Blenheim , someone would shout in the playground. " No, its a Beau fighter". someone else would shout. We would watch until the plane had disappeared.
But, by far the most popular were the spitfires ! Each of them contained one of our hero's. Biggles types. We saw a few of these young men in Manchester. Looking back, they were little more than children !
But, they looked amazing to us. Caps worn at a jaunty angle and top tunic button undone. We gazed in speechless admiration at our hero's with brand new wings sewn on their tunics.
One must have noticed my gaze and he grinned at me and gave me a wink ! WOW...
I never forgot that lad.
He would soon be thrown into the battle of Britain. I hope he survived.
Uncle Ken went into the army, soon to be followed by a few more uncles. Slowly at first, we started to notice that we could not buy some things. I never saw an orange for five years.
We had, of course, all the things that our ration books allowed. But, many things just were not in the shops any more.
We were told to only have six inches of water in our bath and to dig up our gardens to grow vegetables.
One thing that really amused me was the fact that my aunties could no longer buy stockings .
They used to rub cold coffee on their legs !
A few even drew a black line up the back with a mascara pencil.
It became fashionable to wear a headscarf and I even saw women wearing overalls as they moved into war production factories !
They sang popular and patriotic songs and often talked about their husbands and boy friends who were away in the forces.
They had a new confidence and determination ! Some even went into the army and air force themselves.
I even saw one young lady driving a tractor on a nearby farm ! She had a cigarette bobbing about in the corner of her mouth.
I found it quite surprising that she still managed to look attractive in an adult sort of way in spite of her knotted headscarf and her overalls !
She waved at me and grinned as she gave me a victory sign.
What really surprised me was the fact that she was pulling a plough behind the big blue iron wheeled tractor and she was making deep furrows in a perfectly good grass meadow !
I asked my dad, and he told me that all farmers were told to grow some potatoes.
There is no doubt that these lasses of the wartime were hero's.
After the war, they were expected to become docile housewives again.
It took many years for them to be regarded as anything but housewives, mothers and perhaps typists. But, I had seen something else !
Uncle Adolf beware !
Aunty Dot, who had always been grandad Walkers secretary and who I had always seen sitting at a typewriter or occasionally
playing tennis, one day took me to a secret place somewhere behind the railway station.
There, standing in the middle of a large patch of weedy and uncultivated land, were a lot of little huts.
Grinning at my bewilderment, She unlocked one of the little sheds and produced some wellingtons and a couple of spades , oh, and some yellow washing up gloves !
" It's my allotment", she proudly announced.
" Dig for victory ".
Of course, I had seen the posters telling us to dig for victory and many others telling us that 'walls have ears' and asking us weather our journey was strictly necessary or not.
But, as I looked over the neat little rows of lettuce, cabbage and onions, my opinion of aunty Dot really took off.
All day, we dug up weeds and planted even more seeds.
I remember thinking that the lady on the tractor would have given the victory sign to aunty Dot ! and, that she would have ploughed up acres and acres for us in no time at all .
Aunty Dot also became a fire watcher. She even got her own tin hat !
Grandad Walker took fire watching very seriously later in the war, when an incendiary bomb lodged itself in the roof of their house. He climbed up and put out the fire !
We were told' or at least, a rumour circulated among us kids, that the Germans were dropping poisoned sweets and little bombs that looked like windmills but would explode when touched !
I doubt the sweets, but there actually were little butterfly bombs.
Among my friends, when we lived at 'Arnhill', in our little art deco home, was a little German girl called Ruth.
We didn't understand each other much, but, I found out during the war, that she was Jewish and that her family had come here to escape from the Nazi thugs !
If I had known ( age five ) maybe I wouldn't
have been so impatient with her attempts to speak English and, perhaps I would have had less admiration for uncle Adolf's wonderful toys ?
We listened to the radio more than ever now.
News didn't seem to be very good.
But, I loved the 'Pop music '.
Such songs as 'White cliffs of Dover' and ' Hang out your washing on the Siegfried line'.
And, the 'ITMA' shows. Now, looking back, it all seems rather innocent and a bit silly, but, we didn't know anything else and it was an escape from the fact that, by now, we were feeling a little bit hungry and
we had long nights of blackout.

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I WILL START CHAPTER TWO OF
' TIN HATS AND TOY GUNS ', SOON.
I HOPE YOU ENJOYED BEING WITH LITTLE ARNOLD FOR A BIT. AND, I HOPE YOU WILL ALLOW ME TO CONTINUE MY STORY. IT HAS LOTS OF FUNNY BITS STILL TO COME. AND, SOME SADNESS.
IF I EVER GET TO THE END ( I HAVE IT WRITTEN DOWN ) A LOT OF PEOPLE WILL SHARE MY SADNESS ABOUT IT ALL...
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THANKS B.B.C.

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