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World War 11. Memories of 1939-1945 in and around Bootle, Liverpool
Author Copyright-Joan M.Dyer
Chapter Two
My Grandmother also kept chickens and I was frightened of them too. One day my Grandmother asked me to go up to the outhouse where there was a store of chicken meal and told me to mix some for the chickens and go into the big run and feed them.! The meal was always mixed with any scraps of food from the kitchen. These were usually potato peelings and waste from cabbage or carrots, but very little in the way of edible food. There was none left as rations did not stretch to any waste!! This task caused me tremendous fear and I went very slowly up towards the outhouse. As I mixed the chicken meal it smelt quite tasty and after a while, feeling quite hungry I ate some of it . Then I had to go into the chicken run and this was too scary for me to manage. I stood for ages trying to throw the chickens’ food through the wire fencing or over the top. Most of the food fell on me so I had to open the wire gate and go in. It was very frightening. I did not like to look at the cockerel’s comb which was a horrible red and wrinkled. When he looked at me with his red eyes I nearly died of fright. I tossed the food in one place and ran as fast as I could. I prayed fervently that my Grandmother and Aunts would not ask me to feed the chickens ever again. I was even scared of our cousins’ cat and later also of their Scottie dog. This dog bit my younger brother on the lip so perhaps my instincts were not all so daft after all.
On another occasion my Grandmother said I could walk up to the farm. I seemed to be there on my own and there was no sign of my brothers or cousins. So I set out to the end of the garden slipped into the lane that ran along the side of the field and walked slowly along. Suddenly I stopped dead and felt afraid, yet again. ‘The world is moving around’ I thought. I had heard of this from my brothers. ‘It spins, like a top.’ I stood completely still, rooted to the spot, feeling really frightened. There was a sound whooshing around me and all that green stuff moved sideways. I did not understand. With some considerable feeling of being really stupid I suddenly realised it was the wind blowing across the top of the ‘grass’ (wheat), which was about level with my eyes. Coming from a built up area I suppose I was not used to seeing the wind move anything except rubbish in the street which could be seen on the ground and therefore explainable. The countryside and I were not getting on all that well and I decided I did not like it at all. I wanted to go home to my Mum.
Whether my Grandmother could no longer have three young children to look after or what I do not know. At one point I think we children were separated both from each other and also from our parents. My Father was called up on 12th December 1940. We then went to Mr. And Mrs. Evans who lived not far away at Baldwin’s cottages, Melling. They had no children and I think they looked after us well. They had a big garden and like everyone else they grew vegetables. Brian and Terence must have started school and went to a small school at Melling. For a very short time I remember going there too but probably to meet them out of school. I am not sure if I actually started school there. We used to walk about three miles in all in the summer to and from the Evans’s cottage. We had very few toys and there were many hours to fill. In the summer with the fields and gardens at our disposal we all had a place to play. As far as I know everyone was very kind and allowed us to go where we liked. However, my brother, Terence, once took a cabbage from a field because he was hungry and ate it on one of these journeys. When asked why he had done this he replied “I was hungry’ but he was chastised for his actions and made to do penance. There was no empathy for his situation and no one considered why a boy would need to eat a raw cabbage. I don’t think we were resented in any way as city kids or anything like that. Everyone was short of food so I expect our hunger was part of those years.
Then there was the occasion when my older brother was identified as being a carrier of Diphtheria. My Mother definitely had Diphtheria as she had a tracheotomy scar but I believe this was when she was younger. We must have been tested ( I do not know where or how) for Diphtheria, and Brian was found to be a carrier. An ambulance and the police (or was it some sort of Warden?) came to our house as he had to go into isolation. Terence thought he was being taken to prison or worse. Brian was terrified and ran out of the house to the back garden, jumped over the fence with Terence shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Run, Brian, Run.’ They were both terrified at the time. It may have been for this reason, that is Brian’s Diphtheria Carrier problem, that we were separated from my Mother and each other.
In winter there was the blackout so everything was dark, dark dark. We had candles and we all went to bed early. You could not even play ‘I spy’. My brothers sometimes had a small and inefficient torch and would read a second-hand ‘Dandy’ or ‘Beano’ but the batteries would then go dead. Winter meant you had to play indoors mostly. I think we were playing in the Evan’s attic cutting out and colouring and we all got bored. Someone said ‘Let’s play hairdressers’. I clearly remember saying ‘Only pretend’. My brother Terence picked up the scissors and pretended to snip away at my hair. After a while the snips were a bit close and again I remember saying '‘Only pretend ' again. However it was too late. My very thick plait of hair and I were parted for ever! At teatime I fidgeted this way and that to keep the deed a secret. This was noticed, possibly by Mrs. Evans, and I was told to sit still and then eating my food I forgot anyway. When my Mother found out what had happened, horror of horrors my hair was ruined, as she put it. I had to go to the hairdresser to have the rest cut. When my Grandmother in Bickerstaffe next saw me I had short, very curly hair whereas before I had long thick straight hair in plaits. She was furious with my Mother saying it was dreadful to perm a child’s hair. To her way of thinking the only way I could have got these curls was via a perm, which at the time were very poor products and bad for an adult’s hair let alone a child’s. I think my Dad’s hair was curly but he always kept it very short so was not noticeable. For many years my Grandmother did not really believe I had naturally curly hair.
We must have returned to Bootle, possibly to my maternal Grandmother’s house in Hatfield Road or to council housing in Weaver Street, Walton. We definitely lived in Weaver Street at some point as my Mother in later years often pointed the street out to me when we were on the bus. Anyway, my maternal Grandmother’s home was a Victorian house and our Grandparents definitely held the Victorian belief that ‘children should be seen and not heard’, with a front parlour from which we were banned, except if anyone had been ill. I remember once after not being well her saying ‘Joan, you may go and sit in the parlour but you must not touch anything’. In fact I did touch things and found a kaleidoscope made with black passe-partout and there were mirrors inside. To this day I do not know how they work and what materials made the designs. I shook it and found it puzzling, yet fascinating as to how the pattern changed. I still like patterns today. Only the Welsh Minister ever seemed to actually enjoy sitting in the parlour with a cup of tea. There were pull down blinds which were pulled down against the sun most of the time. There were very elaborate ornaments, some Welsh in origin, not meant for three children to mix with, a wind up gramophone we were never allowed to touch, and the room was kept spotless. I guess it was too much to take on two boys and a girl. However, my Grandmother was always kind to us and there were many times we went there to be given hot Ovaltine and cake and invited to sit on the horsehair sofa! I could tug down my dress which helped a bit but my brothers in their short trousers were driven mad by that sofa. It scratched and was so itchy you could not sit still on it. So she, in her long dresses probably did not realise the misery it caused. We were pretty good children and maybe our fidgeting had given a bad impression of not being able to behave. We were, for whatever reason, not able to stay there.
So once again we were on the move. My Auntie Edith had returned from Maesteg in 1941/2 with our little cousin, Sylvia. My Aunt told me recently that she missed Liverpool and my Mother and could not wait to return after Sylvia was born. Sylvia’s Father was from Maesteg and wanted Sylvia to be born in Wales. So Auntie Edith and Sylvia travelled back from Wales on a train filled with the soldiers going to Liverpool and to War and there were hardly any other civilian passengers. They lived in 217, Little Strand Road, Bootle. Little Strand Road was directly opposite the present day Strand Shopping Centre. I can remember the streets opposite Little Strand Road, across Stanley Road, as Victorian houses with shops interspersed and as you walked away westerly from Stanley Road the streets became very narrow and dark.
Most of the streets in the areas we knew had gas lights with their wrought iron stands and the lamp near the top. Children in the summer used them to make a ‘city swing’ by tying a doubled rope around the cross support near the top, under the lamp itself, and the rope would wind around and around the lamp-post. To sit in the ‘swing’ you separated the double rope and sat on a single rope. There was no seat as such. When you swung on it was when it unwound and then you would swing the other way to get another turn. You had to be careful not to hurt yourself at the end of each turn as either you would knock yourself against the on-coming iron work if you went too fast inwards or you would swing so far out towards the street and traffic on the outward swing and again, if going fast, it was difficult to stop safely. My Mother would not allow us to go into these areas after dark or unaccompanied, calling these streets ‘a den of iniquity’. I expect there was, like anywhere else, a mixed population but there was a bad reputation attached to the area west of Stanley Road and down towards the docks in this central area of Bootle.
Joan M. Dyer. Author’s Copyright. 2004.

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