Ever changing times—Tricia McGill

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 I often wonder what my mother would think if she were to return to the world as it is today. She was born over 130 years ago, so when she was a child there were horse driven buses on the roads of London. A horse drawn vehicle was still delivering the milk, bread and coal, even when I was a child. To her last days, our mother was scared of a telephone and didn’t understand how it could possibly work. It was a struggle for her to get used to her first refrigerator. She reared a huge family and kept them all as clean as she was able without a washing machine. No wonder her hands were wrinkled and her fingers bent with arthritis in her later years. I can recall when I was small that she sat in the armchair some afternoons and said, “I will just close my eyes for five minutes.” And, that was what she did, within minutes she was up and being busy again.

All these thoughts were brought to mind again because of writing my latest book; Crying is for Babies, as the story begins in 1931 when one of my sisters had just begun at school at the age of three. They started early in those days and finished usually at fourteen, when they went straight out into the workforce. There were no kindergartens or creches. If a mum had to work then a neighbour or relative would look after her baby.

My older sisters all worked in the clothing industry as I did eventually, where there would be dozens of machinists slogging away over their sewing machines. How times have changed in that department, you’d be hard-pressed to find a factory in Australia and I guess England, that produces clothing, as every item we buy nowadays is made in China, Bangladesh, or similar.

Our coal was delivered by a coal-man who hoisted a huge bag of coal onto his broad back and then opened the coal-hole in our front step, and shot the contents of the bag down into our cellar. I loved the smell of that little room. The coal had to be then brought up in the coal-scuttle to keep the fire going in the living room. Our mother would bank it up every night before going to bed with coal dust so that it was still smouldering next morning and we had at least one warm room. We could bake potatoes in the ashes, or chestnuts (Mm, I haven’t tasted a roasted chestnut in years) or sit there holding our bread to toast it by the fire.

The younger generation with their spotless homes and gadgets that

perform every task under the sun for them at the touch of a button, or the sound of their voice, don’t know what they are missing. Our whole family would get together around the fire in winter and talk about everything and anything. I’ll bet most families these days do not even spend more than a few minutes just sitting and discussing what is going on in their lives. I know of families who do not even sit together at mealtimes. I’m glad I have these memories to cherish, but what memories will they have—they are mostly staring at their mobile phones and overworking their thumbs. Even in the doctor’s waiting rooms, nobody chats to their neighbour any more as they are all too busy on their phones.

I guess as a writer I shouldn’t condemn computerised gadgets, as I could not live without my PC, but think of how the writers of years ago sat with inkpot and quill and yet managed to pen masterpieces. Even I began by scribbling my stories using a pencil on paper. When graduating to a typewriter, we had no spell-check or in-built thesaurus, which meant we had to ensure our spelling was correct the first time round, especially if we were typing carbon copies, or spend precious time going back over our work to correct any mistakes. There is no doubt the computer makes us lazy, as I tend to rely on it at times to correct me as it saves me time. One thing I have no arguments with is Google—the best thing since sliced-bread was invented. I do not have to leave the PC, get in the car, drive to the library (even though I love the place) and spend hours swatting over research manuals. I do not even have to leave the page I am working on and can have any answer I am searching for within minutes.

One thing my mother would have loved would have been a vacuum

cleaner. Imagine having to take the rugs outside to bash the dust out of them. Later she had one of those carpet sweepers that you push along, but even they did not collect all the dust left behind by many feet. Floors were scrubbed by hand—no electric mops or carpet shampooers back then. The chimney had to be swept by a professional chimney-sweep, unless you had a brother like one of ours who decided one day that he could do a better job. Imagine my mother having to clean up an inch of soot that covered everything in the whole room, including furniture, with no vac!

We certainly have it easy these days, and I love my washing machine, microwave oven, and computer, but not in that order, but there are times when I hanker for the simpler life I knew as a child growing up in the forties and fifties.

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Our ever-changing world as seen byTricia McGill

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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:

https://www.expertskiphire.co.uk/rag-and-bone-man-history-origins

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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