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In my latest work in progress I am dwelling way
back in the past again as I did in Remnants of Dreams, now engrossed in a world far removed from today. This story
is based on the life of one of my four sisters so begins in North London in the
early 1930s when the rag and bone man roamed the dingy streets with his even
dingier cart pulled by his poor old overworked and tired pony. He traded in
mostly old clothes, for the folk back then would have little other that their
cast-offs to trade with for a small amount of cash to tide them over until the
end of the week when the man of the house came home with his pay-packet. Unfortunately,
most women were not as lucky as our mother, and the weekly wage would have been
depleted in a lot of cases by the husband paying a visit to the local public
house on his way home from work. For some obscure reason the rag and bone man
also gave out goldfish in exchange for rags, another thing that featured in
this sister’s young life.
It is most likely that those of you reading this who were born after, let’s say the 50s, have no idea what a rag-and bone man was, so you can find out more here:
This pic is of Upper Street, Islington, circa 1914/16. My family lived nearby in the early days. The sister of my story was married in a chapel along this street.
Another thing that featured in my sister’s
early life, was her wellies (Wellington boots). The pair she owned were
inherited, as most things were, probably from one of our brothers. She
cherished her wellies for the short time she had them before they disappeared,
likely to the pawnshop. The old pawnbroker with his big three brass balls hanging
outside his premises played a large part in most of the everyday lives of all
the families struggling in those early days to make ends meet and put a meal on
the table for their mostly large families. There was no such thing as family
planning advice. The sister of my story was the seventh and I was the tenth and
last. Things were getting a lot better by the time I came along so I was the
pampered baby. Children started school aged three. There were no such thing as
crèches, kindergartens or pre-school. My older sisters and brothers began
working aged fourteen. If a mother was forced to go out to work for some reason
either her mother or a neighbour cared for her baby.
My eldest sister would take the younger
children off in the pram and they would wander the streets and visit the local
park, and at times be away from home all day without fear. The only rule our
mother passed to them, and also to me, was not to take sweets from strangers.
Children played games out on the street, often until darkness fell in winter and
their stomachs began to rumble or until their mothers called them in.
Can you imagine a life with no electricity, so
therefore no washing machine, microwave, or swish oven. Somehow our mother
managed to produce a meal every day for her ever-expanding family on a
crotchety old gas stove. She would wash the girls’ dresses, and also their
socks, each night so that they had a clean frock to wear to school the next
day. Washing was done in the kitchen sink using a washboard, before being put
through the mangle. The tin tub that was brought out weekly for the bathing was
used at other times to soak bed linen. In winter when it was too cold and wet
for the washing to be hung out on the line it was dried in front of the fire in
the living room. Once the children were older they visited the local baths, a
huge steamy place where you waited your turn and one of the cheerful ladies
working there would clean off the scum left by the previous bather.
Our father was a gasman, which meant he went
from house to house to check on the gas meters which had to be fed with coins
or you had no gas to heat the water for cooking or washing. He worked six days
a week and had one week off a year. The bedrooms would get so cold in winter
that they piled every available coat and blanket on the bed, which was usually
shared by three or four of them. On mornings deep in winter, icicles would
decorate the insides of the windows, as there was no such thing as central
heating.
All these stories passed down to me were filled
with the laughter shared and tinged with such a feeling of thankfulness that we
had wonderful parents. Despite their poverty, they never thought of themselves
as being deprived, as everyone was in the same boat back then and just got by.
Between you and me, I believe we were better off. There was no social media,
few glossy magazines, no phones, or TVs, so no such thing as cyber bullying.
The world news was garnered from the newspapers, or newsreels shown at the cinema.
No one owned a car so therefore there was little traffic on the roads except
the buses or the milkman, coalman, baker or as above the rag and bone man. So
there was no such thing as road rage, the scourge of our time as everyone loses
their patience in the traffic hogging our roads each day.
Most families helped each other and knew their
neighbours and their problems. Our mother brought up her large family, who all
turned out to be pretty good citizens, without advice from some woman on the TV
telling her how she should teach her children manners or how to behave. We
learned our manners and respect for our elders from our parents’ example.
Perhaps we all looked back through rose tinted glasses but who cares, I feel
blessed that I have such memories—and blessed that I had a family and parents who
taught me the importance of books.
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