I remember on one of the trips to town seeing men in Thornton Square with large patches on their backs. I particularly noticed them because Mam had impressed on me that patches denoted that you were poor and were the absolute, no no. Here were men not only with patches in the middle of their backs, but also patches that didn’t match their clothes. I seem to remember the patches were lilac coloured. Lilac was a colour never seen on a man in those days.

They were of course prisoners of war and they seemed to be heading towards Aunt Annie’s shop. They wouldn’t be allowed in there with patches. We only called in at Aunt Annie’s shop once, it was very scary. We felt like the old lady, overheard in Sainsburys, who said, “I’ve been abroad; I won’t be going again”. Auntie Annie had a large furniture shop, 'Arthur Hill'. 72 - 76 Commercial Street Tel: 77. ARTHUR HILL SHOP AD HERE

I remember her as a large frightening woman all in black with a lorgnette through which she looked down on us. The one time we visited her brass knocker house in salubria we noticed it didn’t just have a number it had a name, ‘Lyngarth,’ very posh. She was the only person we knew whose house had a number and a name. One day I thought I'd have a house with a name. I'd call it ‘Mullocks End.’

Aunty Annie always made us take our shoes off. She considered us very inferior beasts. When I asked Mam why we had to do this, she mouthed, “Furniture,” from which I concluded Auntie Annie thought we were so unused to furniture we might take fright and start attacking it. Rumours of an incident concerning Dad, a poker and a smashed clotheshorse may have got to her ears. We didn’t stay long; we thanked her (for her hostility) and left.

Mam would tell us that when she was a little girl she used to give her socks away to poor children. Poor children apparently didn’t have socks. Did this mean that Aunt Annie was checking to see if we were poor people and she made us remove our shoes to see if we had complete socks not just the bit round our ankles. Fortunately our socks were complete, they weren’t even darned. Socks were very important to children. You were constantly being told to “Pull your socks up and get on with it” so you had to have socks. If you didn’t have socks to pull up you couldn’t get on with it. You couldn’t start on the path to success. Socklessness and therefore the inability to pull them up apparently held poor people back.

Disguising your socklessness by wearing Wellington boots was all right in winter but suspicious in summer unless you were constantly tiddler fishing. These kids would develop terrible ‘Wellie rash’ a red ring round their calves where the top of the wellie rubbed. The story of Mam giving her socks away was I think meant to convey that even as a child Mam had angelic goodness.

When I returned home, once, without my woolly socks, I informed Mam that I had given my socks to the poor. I got a severe telling off. She said she didn’t believe me and because I'd returned with a red balloon she suspected, no, she knew, I'd swapped my socks for the balloon and the rag and bone man now had my socks. She had a deeply suspicious nature my Mam and so had I never really believed she gave her socks away.

We were told many anecdotes like this. How the neighbours thought she was a snob because she walked with a ramrod straight back. When she mouthed “Snob”, she’d straighten her back, even more, stick her nose in the air put her forefinger level under her nose and flick it forward, as if flicking a drip off. She’d tell us that she walked with a straight back because she’d had nine operations. Lots of operations apparently lead to a straight back I think the stitches probably tightened up and stopped her stooping.

The combination of Mam's straight back walk and the fact that she didn’t speak to anyone made the locals at first think she was a snob. When they realised Dad and she were deaf the attitude of some changed to one of resentment. “Why should they come here and live like us?” I imagine the fact that a deaf couple could bring up a family just like they were doing, was an affront to their abilities. Mam was quite pleased to think any odd behaviour towards her was because people thought she was a snob, that is, better than they were. Being deaf and not knowing your place can be extremely irritating to some folk. One of them showed their feelings by tipping a dustbin full of rubbish into my pram.

Mam told us about the boy on the road whose hair was allowed to grow long and how he was always dressed as a girl, until he was quite old. She didn’t tell us why. We thought that perhaps his Mam wanted a girl not a boy. I later found, that this was sometimes done, as a ruse, to avoid boys being kidnapped by gypsies. Gypsies, apparently, it was believed, only stole little boys. Then there was the woman who cornered a rat. Her husband had to cut it from her throat with garden shears. So was Mam telling us not to corner rats or not to use garden shears to kill them? Did the woman live? We never found out. Dad would re-enact this story by folding his handkerchief into a shape like a rat it had two little ears and a tail. He would put it on his left hand and stroke it with his right hand. The snot rag rat would be still and calm under Dad’s gentle caresses. Then suddenly it would make a dash for his throat. Dad would grab it in the nick of time and put it back on his hand to continue stroking it to calm it down. The tension mounted as we waited for the evil rat to make another dash for the throat. When it did, he’d grab it hard, throw it to the floor and stamp on it vigorously. When it was nice and flat and the drama over he’d pick it up and carefully undo the handkerchief rat without the aid of a fork.

Mam would tell us about the woman who married a black man. As she told it, he’d married her because she had been his nurse and had saved his life. It was as if it was compulsory to do this. It happened in stories so it had to happen in real life. Why else could they be together?

This story was recounted every time we saw this man and woman. He was the first black man I had ever seen and he had a beard. Beards were not the fashion. The only white man I knew with a beard was nicknamed Gillette for obvious reasons. He had a large beard and was scruffily dressed. He seemed to spend most of his time standing in the town bus station quacking like a duck. Despite this duck business Mam said he only saw water twice a year when they took him in for a bath. Some said he suffered from, ‘Shell shock.’ My Mam said he was like this because his wife had left him. Which is interesting because drakes don’t quack when their mates leave. Only ducks quack. Perhaps he felt obliged to take on a female role now his mate had gone.

Nowadays it’s more difficult to spot the seriously bewildered and yonderly talking to themselves. They disguise their affliction by holding a mobile phone to their ears.

I decided that when I grew up I would have a beard. Black men and beards were great. Whenever I asked, ‘Where’s my Mam?” The neighbours always said, “She’s run off with a black man,” It must have been wishful thinking on their part. She always came back before I got the urge to quack and she was always alone. I stopped asking her where she’d been. The stock reply every one used was, ‘There and back to see how far it is”. Mam’s response was more irritating. She just tapped the end of her nose with her forefinger this meant, “Mind your own business”. Sometimes she tapped the side of her nose this meant, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know, I know and I'm not telling you”.

I seemed doomed to only knowing part of what was going on, never to know the full story. Mam always used the anecdotal, partial information method to tell me about the world and to teach me things for example, how to tell the time. She would point at the numbers on the clock and mouth them off from one to twelve. Then, pointing at the number one, she would count up in multiples of five; pointing at each number in turn, till she got to thirty at six o’clock. Then she’d count down in fives from thirty to five at eleven o’clock. Turning to me, she would then nod, signifying, that’s all you needed to know, to be able tell the time.
I'd say, “But how do you tell the time?” She would then repeat the five times table up to thirty and down to five.

I managed to get the hours but not the five times stuff. Consequently I could not tell the time but crikey was I good at my five times table. Eventually it clicked what she was talking about by which time I was fifteen years old and at Hipperholme grammar school.

At that age I still didn’t know the months of the year or the alphabet. I knew the vowels, Mam taught me them in sign language. I was glad she did, it made me appear brighter than I was when the class were asked,
“What are the vowels?” I knew.

No one ever asked if I knew the alphabet.