大象传媒

Village Life
One of my earliest remembrances was a convoy of wagons coming through the village to the shooting range what they had on top of the moors at Oxenhope, and another earliest remembrance is going down to the school yard and watching all the ARP people doing the drill and they had brushes as guns and being a child I sort鈥檝e wondered if the Germans came onto the top of Cock Hill with their guns what good were brushes going to be against the guns, which sort鈥檝e frightened me a little bit when I was a little lad!

Family From Liverpool
Another early thing that I remember about is that I had relations living in Liverpool and it was my mothers brothers family and of course the majority of the children were in the war, but there was the wife, my auntie and the youngest daughter which was as old as I was and they came to live with us in the house so they missed the bombs and things in Liverpool, because they lived in Bootle where they were bombing all the houses. I thought it was wonderful when they came to live with us and we all had to double our beds up and various things like that. That鈥檚 one of my memories that I have.

Air Raids
It was fairly exciting for me and when the airplanes used to come over my father used to say, oh them鈥檚 ours or them鈥檚 the Germans. He could tell the difference with the engines, although whether he could or not I don鈥檛 know, but that鈥檚 what he told us! We lived in a house that had no electric, just gas, and we had a cellar and when the German bombers came over we used to get the clothes basket and I can remember taking the clothes basket down in the cellar and sleeping it this clothes basket with candles.

The Germans
In later life I started to think why would the Germans want to bomb Oxenhope, but at the time it felt as if they could really bomb Oxenhope and we were trained to hate the Germans, and everything was the Germans were this the Germans were that. Really I listened to it that much that I didn鈥檛 think the Germans looked like us, I thought there was something wicked and maybe had horns on, I don鈥檛 know. It was the parents and everyone around saying the Germans this and the Germans that.

Rationing
I remember going to the shops with the ration books and my father saying after the war you will be able to go to the shop and get whatever chocolate you want or whatever sweet you want you鈥檒l be able to get but whilst the wars on you can鈥檛 but after the war you can. And I could not take that in, it was impossible that you would be able to go to the shop and buy some sweets because we were limited to what sweets we had. I was the youngest in the family so my parents gave me their sweet rations and I had my own so really I wasn鈥檛 behind the door with the sweets! I remember the chap coming round with an horse and cart with a flat cart and a cover on it and everybody went out when he came and we bought black market meat and eggs. Everybody went out secretly and everybody said that the bobby knew all about it, but it didn鈥檛 matter because he got a leg of it. But whether that was true or not I don鈥檛 know but my parents used to say the bobby knows all about it.

School Life
At school, I remember I didn鈥檛 like school, and I thought it was spoiling my life really, I wanted to be out playing. School was spoiling your life not the Germans. At Oxenhope Church School we had a big air raid shelter in the yard and we had drill. There was no electric in the air raid shelter and we had torches and it was dark and there were no windows and I used to think then, if the bomb hits top of this it鈥檚 gonna kill all the school. What kids think about at that time and it still stuck in my mind. It was a big purpose built shelter, although before we had that we used to go into the cellar. It had a concrete roof about a foot thick I remember that and it had a door at one end and a door at the other end, so I remember that.

Restrictions
Leather was very scarce so we had clogs, everyone wore clogs, and nobody wore shoes. We all wore clogs with irons on them. There was a little man in a shop quite close to the school and if your clog iron came off you could go to Freddie Clogger and get it put back on again. There weren鈥檛 any real restrictions on everyday life, because we never saw anything we only heard the engines. We had a big mill in the village and I used to think that the Germans wanted to bomb this mill, for some reason but that鈥檚 how a child thinks, but now you think why would they want to bomb Oxenhope. My father was wool sorter although he鈥檇 been a soldier in the Somme during the first world war. He came back to wool sorting and he was too old as he had been injured during the war. So they made him go to ammunitions down in Keighley at Keighley lifts, although he would have preferred to have worked down at the dump in Steeton as that鈥檚 where the money was. My mother worked in the mill and that was about all she did, she worked and then she came home. Money was tight, there were no big wages then. It was hard bur having said I didn鈥檛 feel the hardness so I didn鈥檛 feel a lack of anything really. We had enough to eat we didn鈥檛 have pizzas or all that rubbish we have today.

Christmas
Another thing I remember is that at Christmas you had an apple and an orange and maybe a bar of chocolate and that were about it. You put your stocking at the end of the bed and Christmas presents, this chap made me a fort, he was a young chap who worked with my father down in Keighley Mill. I can remember when the father of a local boy was killed, following his capture by the Japanese and he died building the Burma railway and I can remember others saying don鈥檛 be cruel to him because they have just had news that his dad had died. Christmas was wonderful because you had an apple and an orange. This was a time when you didn鈥檛 get these things, it鈥檚 hard to imagine now. I remember school, when I was in the infants a teacher brought a pomegranate in and she took a knife and chopped it in half and took a pin and there was one seed of the pomegranate each and you could hardly taste it although it tasted nice. After the war I got a pomegranate and got a pin out to eat it because I thought that was the only way you could eat a pomegranate. I soon learned that it wasn鈥檛.

During the war, the mayor of Keighley lived in Oxenhope and we all used to go Christmas singing at and he used to stand you all in a line in his house and you had to sing and when you had sung he would give you an apple and an orange, it was wonderful. Christmas was wonderful even the house was decorated, we made our own decorations with newspaper, linking it together. We used to get these apples from Canada at school.

Pop a Lol
I remember you couldn鈥檛 get good pop in fact you could hardly get any lemonade, we used to make nettle beer and all that type of thing, and I remember the ice cream coming. There was no ice cream and I remember it coming to the shop and it was white and it would be just after the war. We used to make Pop a lol. Put a jar of water and you put a piece of spanish in it and shake it up until it makes pop a lol. It looked a bit like beer and I tried once to drink some beer and we didn鈥檛 like it.

Evacuees
I鈥檒l tell you what I do remember quite plainly, the evacuees coming and bringing them round that night and they brought two next door but two to where I lived, to my Auntie Lena鈥檚 and uncle Arnolds they had no children so they took in two children. My mother and father we had the relations living with us from Liverpool so we hadn鈥檛 the room to have them. The next day we got up, the village school was nearly twice the size with all the evacuees and a lot of them were very poor. We were poor in them days but they were much poorer. They were from Bradford, and a good few of them stayed with the people and never went back home, forever after the war. People who didn鈥檛 have children took them in. It is a bit sad looking back.

Entertainment
We used to have dances pretty regular up in the church school. I remember going to the dances with my mother, which was quite good and we all used to go to the dances. They had whist drives as well. Everyone made their own entertainment. It was quite a time really. There seemed to be a lot more snow at that time as well and I remember the really bad winters during the war and we coped a lot better than we do today because the horse used to come round pulling a sledge, but you only saw about two cars a week coming through the village. As a child during the war you could play football, play for an hour and you wouldn鈥檛 be disturbed with anything going down the road, not like today you know.

Industry
Everybody worked within the village in them days, and even if we got snowed in we never had to leave the village for anything. Anything you wanted you could get in the village. Fuel was brought up on the train, and delivered by horse and cart or wagon. Wagons and horse and carts were working together during the war. We were lucky to have that, all we know now are motor cars, but there were a lot of horse and carts. There was a forge at the top of cat steps, Mr Hargreaves forge. I remember walking past it in the winter and seeing this belch of flame coming from it. He used to make barrels for us all to wheel round the streets. It was a piece of metal and it has a handle on it and you run at the side of it. He used to make them for the children. You couldn鈥檛 buy anything you see and there were a lot more homemade presents for Christmas and your birthday so there wasn鈥檛 so much fuss made really. Nobody had bikes and everybody was the same. The iron man got his iron from there was a lot of horses and they needed shoes and all that so he was doing an important job really. I can remember them coming and taking our railings away. They just came and cut them all off.

Recycling
My mother used to make all our own rugs, tab rugs made with a bit of sack which was put on a rack, tightened up and put little bits of material through and made patterns. They were common, everyone had them. I think I still have a hook to make those rugs. Anything that was worn out was used with different colours used to make patterns. My mother wasn鈥檛 much of a sewer but my granny was and she used to cut down all the adult clothes, she鈥檇 unpick them, wash them press them and then make things for us. Stockings and things were very scarce and when they were there they were dear so my mother used to darn all my stockings, and there were that many darns there were no stockings left. Everyone was the same, it wasn鈥檛 as if you were on your own, there were no yuppies or anything like that, we was all poor, everybody stuck together you know. There was a lot of recycling, which is coming back in fashion, we were taught to recycle, the peelings from the vegetables never got thrown away, we made compost from it. Toys in the yard were what you had made yourself, you made bogies which ran around with four wheels on them, and you got an old tyre and a stick and you used to run about with it, that was all you had to do.

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