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I remember very vividly the contrasts of those wartime days, the drabness of wet Winter Monday mornings when ‘helping’ Mum with the washing, a full days job in those days with the sink, solid fuel built in copper, blue bag, dolly tub and an enormous mangle. Putting the washing on the line only to have the nearby South Knighton Dyeworks spew black smoke from its 140’ chimney spoiling everyone’s washing with smut was depressing. The sight of the Stokers, stripped to the waist furiously shovelling coal to keep up steam pressure and shining with sweat as they were opening and shutting the firebox doors, in order to keep the works going is as clear today as it was then. The lack of street lighting in the blackout caused some problems and accidents. I recall the trams with their blacked out windows and Mum hurrying us back home from town when the Sirens went, saying that they sounded more like ‘A dying duck in a Thunderstorm’. The smell of the paraffin sellers (Garners) lorry calling at my granny’s house on Sidney Road early on Saturday evenings with its myriad of household items, including aluminium or enamel saucepans, mops, brushes, buckets, rubber soles for shoes and bits and pieces for mending virtually anything. In the background my mind’s eye sees her back door is open with a shaft of almost luminescent light from the gas mantle in the living room and I hear the sound of Granny and Granddad’s ‘Wireless’ giving us the 6 o’clock news from the ‘Home Service’ with either Alvar Liddell, John Snagg or Bruce Belfridge reading it followed by the Football Results. Either before or after the News there would be broadcast ‘In Town Tonight’ preceded by its distinctive introductory music. The paintwork to the houses was predominantly brown and oppressive and I can recall the envy I had of the houses which were painted cream and green and I vowed that when I grew up my house would be painted in that combination of colours. Needless to say my view on décor did change in the subsequent 60 odd years!

Contrasted with this drabness were the Spring and Summer days with Double Summer time when the then less than well manicured gardens were still radiant with colour in spite of the paraphernalia of shelters, sand buckets, stirrup pumps and other necessities of those days littering the yard and garden. Since car ownership was low and use of private cars severely restricted and curtailed, movement of private vehicles was such a rarity that the local children were able to play cricket, football, rounders, hide and seek, hopscotch and numerous other games outside in the road until called in by their parents for bed. The girls in addition to playing some of the boy’s games also performed quite amazing skipping feats which put the boys’ efforts to shame. All these games were being played in the road clearly without fear of vehicles — but always with one eye on the odd adult spoilsport who would be lying in wait ready to rush out when a ball landed in their garden and either confiscate it or worse still cut it in half with a carving knife and sling it back at you! Around the corner on Goldhill Road were a group of lock up garages, two of which were permanently open. These garages were magnets for us all, especially when it was wet, and the graffiti on the walls revealed which boy loved which girl at a particular time, and various poems and limericks some of which were incomprehensible until you had lived a few more years, and some quite funny cartoons. Some of the older boys and girls did indulge in kissing but the risk was always present of being seen by one of the handful of busybodies whose stock in trade comment was: I saw yer both — I’m gooin’ round to tell yer Mams.

Since we lived on the South Eastern extremity of the City in South Knighton, perhaps the starkest contrast was the clear freshness of the fields and woods that were only 300 yards or so away and stretching way across to the then separate villages of Oadby and Wigston Magna. These fields in the Spring and Summer were a positive delight of colour, with an abundance of Celandines, Primroses, Cowslips, Buttercups, Daisies and Dandelions (which we collected in great numbers for our Granny who then made the Dandelions into some delightful but potent home made Wine). One Spinney where we played is now a Nature Reserve, part of Knighton Park and adjacent to what is now the Southern Ring Road of Leicester. This wood was to us kids not merely a SPINNEY; it was big, dark wilderness, a virtual FOREST. Across the fields on the other side of the nearby Racecourse were two ponds, bottomless pits we were warned, which had swallowed horses, carts, and drivers whole, never to be seen again — they were treated with a great deal of awe and respect — and when Drury’s built a housing development there in 1956 these ponds were drained and filled with rubble in a very short space of time we felt a tinge of disappointment that a myth had been shattered, and that the adults had conned us a bit — with the best of motives!

What I can say though is that although we, in common with all the other kids at that time, had very little in the way of material things we may have desired, we did have all the things we needed. Nobody seemed to think they were particularly deprived, since at that time all children were in the same boat, on rationing and very little other than necessities to buy in the shops, even if you had the money and the coupons. We certainly did not go hungry or inappropriately clothed; it must have called for a high degree of sacrifice and home management skills by Mum and Dad to achieve this. Mum placed a great emphasis on personal cleanliness — which cannot have been easy with kids getting grubby and no washing machine to call on, not even a gas boiler, twin tub or a spinner, only a Copper, Sink, Dolly Tub, a massive great Mangle a Tin Bath and no hot water other than that boiled in the Copper or Kettle. Fairy Soap and Rinso was used for Washing Clothes and Lifebuoy or Wright’s Coal Tar Soap for personal washing with the occasional special perfumed soap. One of the things that Mum insisted that Dave and I should be able to do was how to cook and from a very early age we stood with her and learnt the basics. She was very patient with us and it is fair to say that it did stand us in good stead later in life. I remember one of her ‘hobby horse’ sayings — I cannot stand a useless man who cannot look after or feed himself if the occasion arises. I am not having any of my children, boy or girl, being useless in the kitchen, and Dad could certainly put together a good meal when the need arose. Christmas for us was a real event to look forward to, and Dad and Mum did manage very well to give us a good main present and a number of stocking fillers (pillowcase actually). Mum was an excellent and imaginative cook and the food was a delight. It was one day in the year when we could have a bit of cheek to Dad and get away with it! Games, Cards and Monopoly were played in the evening and being allowed to stay up very late suited us until like all kids we became fractious.

Dad was quite a disciplinarian and frequently lost his cool with us (especially with me who tended to have a little more effrontery than was good for me) but when we were ill with the childhood illnesses which were endemic at that time (only immunisation for Diphtheria and vaccination for Smallpox were around then) he did used to sit by the bed and tell the usual childhood stories of Jack and the Beanstalk, Big Claus and Little Claus, The Tinder Box and many other Hans Anderson and The Brothers Grimm Fairy Stories. His vocabulary was colourful and his descriptive narrative was both vivid and grisly where called for — it was almost worth being ill for!

Our maternal Grandmother and Grandfather only lived just round the corner in Sidney Road, and my Granny had the most bizarre and amazing stories about her younger life and the antics of some of the people she knew. We loved to hear them — but even as youngsters we found some of them difficult to swallow. Whenever we snagged or ripped any of our clothes, we knew we would by ‘in for it’ with Mum. However Granny was a very accomplished needlewoman and we would take the damaged item to her and she would mend it with the most amazing skill and dexterity, willingly collaborating in the subterfuge. Sometimes it was quite a while before Mum rumbled that a particular rip or tear had been ‘invisibly mended’ by her own mother! Granddad was altogether quieter but occasionally he would tell us about the first world war (at that time just called ‘the last war’), and how he had to prepare and break in the horses for shipment to France and how sad it was for him and his fellow soldiers, to have to send them off knowing what their fate would be.

In January 1943 my sister Carole was born, a daughter at last, thank goodness, thought Dad, after two helpings of ‘Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog’s Tails’ he was looking forward to a good helping of ‘Sugar and Spice and all things nice’. A little naïve perhaps since he finished up merely with much of the same to add to his woes. I am sure there must have been many times when he wondered if we had all been sent specifically to provoke him, wind him up or just give him a hard time. Dave and I stayed with our Granny and Granddad Brown when Mum was in the Nursing home having Carole. The house itself was clean and tidy with the ubiquitous Victorian knick-knacks and ornaments lining shelves and a black-leaded range, with a lot of the cooking being done in the oven which was part of that range. Again there was no electricity and the radio was run with a High Tension Battery and a Low Tension Accumulator. Although the front room had a gas fire and a three piece suite this was only used on high days and holidays and in common with most homes at that time it was ‘the best’ room, not to be used on an every day basis. During Mum’s stay in the Nursing Home, we slept in a room at Granny’s which had a brass bedstead and had flowered wallpaper which apparently had been hung in 1908! In the back bedroom of the house a crack ran all the way down the wall (presumably done by a blast movement from the November 19th bombing), and snow used to come through the crack and settle on the floor of the room!

When we came back home, another shelter had arrived! This time it was a Morrison Indoor Shelter. These were provided to houses where a young child had been born. The shelter consisted of a square steel framework with a steel roof bolted on the top. It was about table height and I would guess about 6feet x 4 feet. The sides consisted of a detachable steel mesh and the idea was that the family would cram inside this during an air raid. I can never remember it actually being used for the purpose it was designed but merely a place for us to play and an ordinary (or extraordinary) table. About the same time ‘Pig Bins’ arrived. People were asked to put all their vegetable waste, potato peelings etc into these bins which were located every 25 yards or so down the road. I was told at the time that a local farmer was allocated a number of Bins in the neighbourhood and he would regularly empty them and boil up their contents for pig swill. Unfortunately when summer came the bins became an absolute haven for flies and later, wasps, I do vividly remember that whenever Carole was put outside to sleep during the day, the pram was immediately surrounded by flies and insects even with a veil and a sunshade protecting it. My parents felt that clearly this was a health hazard and applied to the local authority for it to be moved to a more suitable location. Bureaucratic comings and goings ensued and reports and arguments took place but eventually the local authority agreed that it should be moved 20 yards down the road in front of some waste ground.

By 1943, being 8 years of age, and no longer eligible for the school bus, I, along with my friends, had to make our own way to school. The fare on the service bus from the bottom of Knighton Church Road was a halfpenny, a purple ticket I recall, However if we walked or ran the 1.5 miles we could use the halfpenny to buy and eat a delicious, crusty and warm cob from Adlard and Rolfe, a bakers on the corner of Avenue Road and Queens Road. Walking back after school, with a cob in our hands, we had a chance to unwind from the strict discipline at school. I recollect there being round cardboard notices in some of the windows of the houses in Queens Road with bold lettering saying CHILDREN’S SHELTER and being fascinated by the beautiful pastel shades used for these notices. We were told to go to a house displaying this notice should there be an air raid whilst we were going to and from school. The expression even got into the skipping rhymes of the girls at that time. The rhyme went; FOR SALE, TO LET, CHILDRENS SHELTER, STIRRUP PUMP. 1943 was also the year that my brother David took and passed his 11plus examination (called the Scholarship then) for entrance to one of the City’s Grammar Schools. He started at the Gateway School in September 1943 and I followed him there in 1946.

Although our milkman had an electric float, the other milkman serving the area had a horse and dray. The local baker also had his goods transported in a wagon pulled by a horse, a lovely natured, docile and friendly creature. Both horses of course were Shire Horses (or as we knew them then, Cart Horses) and occasionally when either of the drivers went into a customer’s house for a cup of tea, one of the local children would unhook the nosebag and place it round the horse’s neck so that the horse could feed from the bag whilst his driver was missing. Naturally the rounds men (in the case of the baker it was a rounds woman) were not happy when they saw what had happened, but they seldom knew which one of the group was responsible. There were a number of good sized local shops on South Knighton/Holbrook Road where most local people were registered for rationed food, and a few smaller ‘corner shops’ a very short distance away. One of these very local shops would have given today’s health inspectors something to get their teeth into. If you were buying vegetables at this shop there was no problem, but anything in the cooked meat, buns, bread or other prepared lines were avoided by many locally. I can recall going in for some potatoes and seeing an open enamel dish with ‘Linnells Potted Meat’ sitting behind a glass fronted counter with flies running about all over it. The shop had numerous fly papers hanging from the ceiling all black with ensnared flies, but there were still plenty buzzing round the shop itself.

It is fair to say that most children, brought up in the South Knighton area were, on account of the number of trees in local wooded, common and wasteland areas, adept at tree climbing. Obviously some trees were more popular than others on account their ease of climbing or the view obtained from them. During the summer holidays there were times when a particular tree would be bristling with local kids of all shapes, sizes and ages. Naturally there were falls from time to time but as far as I know no one was badly injured.

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