大象传媒

During my teens, while having a conversation with my father about the Fulwell Club, I mentioned that I could remember climbing down the side of a bomb crater where the club at once stood, before the war. 鈥淵ou could not remember that,鈥� he said staring at me and shaking his head, 鈥測ou were only three years old 鈥� much too young to remember.鈥� 鈥淚 remember the allotment and the greenhouses too鈥� I went on. 鈥淵es you should remember them鈥� cut in my father. 鈥淭hey helped feed us well during the war.

My father must have had a very hard task during the war, in having to go to work, look after the family, and sustain a very large allotment. He was employed as a coal miner doing shift work at the coalface. Being paid by results meant very hard work hacking out square yards of coal which was used as a measure for the amount of his output. He hued with a pick and shovelled the coal from the coalface onto a running belt. All done working on his knees or lying on his back. His meals in the form of jam and bread sandwiches would be eaten underground. This work was very hard and demanding, a very dangerous place to work. After a hard shift still covered in coal dust, he would peddle his bike about three miles to the allotment, have a wash in cold water, work there for two or three hours then back on his bike loaded with vegetables and flowers. He would call in the club, shift permitting, for a couple of pints, barter some veg then back home for dinner. There was little time left for him to socialise with the family, barely enough time to clip us around the ears for being naughty, when my mother complained about us, as she nearly always did. My early memories were that I rarely saw my dad because of the shift work, the club or the allotment and when I did it was a clip along the ears or more likely the belt. I learned a long time later that the punishment he carried out to us was under the instructions of my mother who had to try and control me and the many things I got up to. Looking back I must have been a right handful to manage.

My mother had very hard life as well. Besides looking after 5 children she had to cook and bake most of the food. Bread was hard to come by and expensive, so she had to make most of the bread as well, scones, and stotty cakes. A special day of the week had to be set aside for baking. Washing day was usually on a Monday and because of this she had little time for anything else so our meals consisted of the leftovers from the Sunday dinner, normally referred to as bubble and squeak. Mother would be out of bed early, to light the fire under the big boiler. The remnants of the previous fire would have to be cleaned out, dust, cinders and all. Then the boiler was filled by hand with pails of freshwater carried from the tap down the yard. Sticks and paper were then used to start the fire then with coal on top the fire door was closed which started the draft to fire the coal. When she was sure the fire was burning well she would go upstairs to get us out of bed, washed, dressed and fed. Then it was off to school for us, mother taking the youngest. When she returned she had start the washing as by this time, the water would be boiling. In with the dirty clothes and with a long stick she would lift and push the clothes to make sure each item was properly wet. She cut pieces of a large block of soap; put them into the water together with a blue tablet.

Due to the wartime shortages both of my parents had to make do and mend to help make our lives more comfortable. In the evenings Mother used to make clippy mats from old worn out clothing and any other cloth she could find. She had a large wooden frame, onto which was stretched Hessian or sackcloth. She would tear the rags into strips about three-quarters of an inch wide. These were pushed through the open fabric of the sackcloth close together with a prodder leaving a loop on the topside. Hours and hours would be spent carefully arranging the colours into attractive patterns. When she was finally done we had a lovely mat for our house.

Father also provided drinking mugs and shoes. The mugs were made from old condense milk tins. Handles were made from the lids then soldered onto the can. After a bit of filing and polishing they were ready for use. Most of my shoes were made from the coalmines old rubber belting. I well remember putting my foot on the rubber while my dad drew around it, and then cut it out. After fixing some straps I was out with a pair of made to measure shoes.

We kids had to help with the housework in anyway we could. My tasks, in particular, were to carry the clean water upstairs. As I was only five or six at the time I was not strong enough to lift the full bucketful, I would carry a part filled pail of water up the stairs. Each step was a great effort. I had to use all my strength to lift and then pause to gather my strength for the next step and so on and so on till I had it upstairs the along the landing to a bench. The dirty water had to be carried down stairs to pour down the drain at the end of the yard another one of my duties. The same had to be done by me with the coal up and the ash and cinders down.

Due to my father working down the pit we had a coal allowance. This was delivered by horse and cart and dumped in the back lane. The whole family had to help my father load the one and a quarter tons of coal into the coalhouse. We had to shovel the coal into buckets and carry it into the back yard. The neighbours used to gather around to buy the coal at 2p (6d) a bucket for which they where very grateful.

Ration books were used to control the amount of food, clothes and furniture that people could buy so as to insure that everyone had a fair share. Sweets and ice cream where my special cravings but they where in very short supply. Months would go by without any ice cream or sweets. When the van delivering ice cream or sweets was in the neighbourhood word soon got around and all the children would run to the shops to stand in the queue. It was a matter of luck if the van stopped at that the other particular shop. More often than not it would go on by. After the delivery the shop would be sold out in a few hours. Small blocks of butter, lard and cheese were all that we were allowed for a week. Most people had coupons for clothes left over because they could not afford the prices. These were often traded for food coupons.

Fish and chips where the main diet for lots of families. The fish would be a whole fish some 12 to 15 inches long cooked in beef fat with a pile of chips and some batter.

At the end of the war schools where sent lots of goodies from America and Canada to distribute among the children. I was very fond of the drinking chocolate powder and the sweets. Oranges, apples and bananas were all given out along with the small presents of Toys etc. We would arrive home, our faces covered in chocolate.

Working class people living in those times had a short life expectancy due to disease, dangerous work and living environments. Health care was very low on the agenda for the low-income families. I can still visualise the old Scottish Doctor Metcalf coming to see a very young child who was ill. We were peeping around the door of the room when he arrived. The parents took him to a cabinet, opened the drawer, to reveal the child. The doctor pronounced the child dead, wrote out a piece of paper and was gone.

That doctor was a very hard man who did not like being called out and he let you know that. Medicals done by him would always be a torture as we where treated like animals. Injuries were nearly always treated at home by friends or relatives.

One day while we where playing among the debris of bombed houses I had a severe laceration to my right leg. Jumping from a pile of rubble onto a broken cart was my downfall. The jump was mistimed, the cart tipped and I slid off slitting my leg from ankle to thigh on a sharp piece of rusty metal. Blood, blood, blood everywhere making my way home. The grown ups set to work and cleaned of the dirt and blood then strapped the slit together. It took a long, long time to heal, ending Derek鈥檚 activities for quite some time. The Iodine was the most painful part of the whole episode. The scar from that injury is still clearly visible today.

Another pastime, and a way of making some money, was Winkle Picking. We would walk from Fulwell to Whitburn Steels when the tide was out. Splodging in the cold water and climbing over the slippery rocks in our bare feet was all part of the job. After a couple of hours we had collected a full tin of winkles and would make for the shore. On one occasion we were so engrossed in picking the winkles, having to discern between the edible and the dog whelk that we did not see the tide coming in behind us. Some men in a fishing cobble were heading towards the beach and they shouted at us to make for the shore. It was a good job the sea was calm as we were able to wade up to our armpits back to the shore. We got home wet and bedraggled. My brother got most of the blame for ruining our clothes. We used to pick the winkles on Friday so that we could wash and boil them ready for Saturday. On Saturday afternoon when Sunderland was playing football at home, we would sit on the front step and sell our winkles at a penny a mug full to the supporters as they flocked past. There was always the odd one that would not pay and just walk on. Snails where another item to collect we could earn a few pennies for them to be cooked and eaten by some people.

When the potato season arrived my brother and I would go out to the fields gleaning after the harvest was collected. Hours and hours where spent looking for the odd potato which we sometimes managed to collect enough to fill a small sack. One such day we went to the fields and were watching some prisoners of war harvesting the potato crop. The nearest prisoner signalled us pointing to the new potatoes while the tractor was out of site. He ran over to us and grabbed our sack and quickly hid it under the potato tops. After the tractor past again he filled the sack and hid it. The tractor passed again and he ran over and dropped it over the low hedge to us. Our mother had given us a much prized orange to eat while out. My brother signalled to the prisoner showing him the orange and threw it to him. The smiles and gestures of gratitude he returned us feel proud and made our day.

Just around the corner was Esther鈥檚 fish and chip shop set up in her back room and yard. My brother used to earn a few pennies here washing and peeling the potatoes with an ancient machine. It was simply a large metal tank filled with water into which the bags of potatoes were tipped. A half submerged, barrel like wooden cylinder, covered with bristles was turned by hand using the large handle sticking out the side of the tank. The potatoes were peeled by the scrubbing action of the brushes, slowly rubbing away the skins. This was my brother's job; he had to open a bag of potatoes, lift up the full bag and empty the contents into the tank. Next the handle had to be turned and turned over and over again - seemingly forever. I tried to lift a bag of potatoes but couldn鈥檛 even lift one end. The handle was very hard to turn and needed a lot of strength and endurance. Much to my amazement, Esther could do it effortlessly with one hand. It was frightening to watch her making chips and operate the machine. It consisted of a long handle that when pulled down, pushed the potato through square, razor sharp holes in the bottom plate. She would pick the potato with the left-hand, hold it over the bottom plate and yank the handle down. She let go of the potato just before it was pushed through the cutters. She used to work at an amazing speed; how she never cut off her fingers I will never know.

After supper it was listen to Dick Barton on the radio, if we were good, then of to bed and asleep in no time.

Thinking back today I can't just make up my mind whether it was a good thing on a bad thing to be brought up in those days. Then we had little to eat, no toys or other luxuries of life like soap and toilet paper. But we did respect and treasure what little we had. Now everything is provided for the new generation who don鈥檛 seem to show any respect or value for what they have. Then the life expectancy of the worker would be very lucky to reach retirement age whereas now sky is the limit.

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