We all lived at 99, Thornhill Road, Rastrick, Brighouse. The road was a bus route to Rastrick, which wasn’t a problem except on Mondays, which was washday. The women strung their clothes lines, straining with a weeks washing across the main road, only their better stuff was put out on the line. Anything not up to scratch was dried indoors. You had to keep up appearances.

The bus would stop at the barricade of wet washing. The driver honked his horn. All the women would rush into the road and help each other to hold the washing up with the cloths props so the bus could pass under. They wielded the props like the pike men of old and were just as scary. Fortunately the bus was always a single decker. All this was done quite amicably, after all the washing had been hung there long before the bus route started.

Monday was washday but it was accepted that the bus must get through; the dustbin wagon was a different matter. It once turned up on Monday and all hell broke loose, these women were creatures of cast iron habit. Monday was definitely not dustbin day;” Wash on Saturday wash in need, wash on Sunday sluts indeed.” everyone knew that.

You had to wash on Monday and nothing was going to change that routine. The washing was now done and out drying, only rain could make them take it in now. No mucky dustbin wagon was going under it. They were not afraid of burly bin men, as they put it, “Wi noan flayed ut bin men.” The bin men recognised the women’s’ body language; the folded arms across an ample pinafore covered bust. The body language was saying; “Watch it, keep back or we’ll unfold these arms and reveal our even scarier busts.”
The men knew, just touch any one of them their busts and before you knew where you were you’d be up in court for the dreaded offence of ‘Grope’. You don’t seem to hear much about ‘Grope’ now but then it was spoken of in whisper. The ladies arms stayed folded and the dustmen and wagon retreated from the row of threatening elbows.
The women shouted after them, “Sling yer ‘ook barmpots.” That is to say, “Please go away you mentally challenged chaps.” The last defiant cry came from the retreating driver, safe in his cab he shouted, “You’ll be getting a letter.” Back came the women’s instant reply, “You’ll be wasting a stamp.”
The washing won the day and the women carried on, ‘Kalin n’calling’. ‘Kalin’ was gossiping and ‘Calling’ meaning saying unpleasant things about people behind their backs. They savoured their victory while they watched for the next bus or rain.

TWO MATCHSTICK FLICKERS MADE WITH ELASTIC BANDS AND SPRING PEGS
Joke:
Question: “How do you make a lasso?”
Answer:“You nip her bum.”

Fortunately for the neighbours, Mam with her deafness and bad eyesight didn’t have to watch out for buses because she didn’t hang our washing across the road. Our washing was hung across the ginnel at the back of the house. We used gypsy clothes pegs. These were made from two pieces of carved wood held together with a nailed on strip of tin can. These pegs were gradually replaced by metal springed wooden ones. I found that if you took the spring off the peg, the little groove it rested in just fitted a matchstick. With a box of matches and a few dismantled pegs it was possible to join them together.

I made a model of Donald Campbell’s ‘Blue Bird,’ Miss Pring was really impressed. The bit I liked best about washday was bringing in the cloths line. Main taught me how to wind it in a figure of eight loop between my thumb and elbow. The end was wrapped round the middle and pushed through the top loop to hang it up. I thought I looked like a pretty slick cowboy winding in his lasso.

The bit I hated most was folding the cotton sheets. These were all ironed with a flat iron heated on the gas cooker wiped clean with damp, hissing, knitted string dish clart, (Dish cloth). Mam would give me one end of the sheet I’d take a corner in each hand and back away from Mam to stretch the sheet out. Every time I would be holding the wrong corners and there would be a big twist in the middle. Mam would look up to her God despairingly and I would swap the corners over. She never got it wrong. It was always me. We’d pull the sheet taut, fold it in two long ways then in two again. I would then walk to Mam and hand her my end then I’d pick up the end hanging down. She would then fold it in two again before handing it to me to put on the table. I then got the next one. It was all rather like a square dance with only me dancing. It all comes back when I see American soldiers on T.V. folding the flag to give to the widow.

Line from an American Square Dance chant:
"After the clap, change partners."
Which I always thought was a good idea!

The washing was done in the back cellar. On the gas stove would be a saucepan of bubbling primeval glutinous soup, this was boiling salt water in which would be the weeks stiff snotty handkerchiefs softening. Germs had to be given no chance. All the water was boiled on the gas stove and put with the clothes and Oxydol or Rinso soap powder in a galvanised dolly tub. It was then agitated with a posser. Our posser was a stick with a copper bowl shaped thing on the end. Held upright with the bowl at the top it looked rather like an Olympic torch. This copper thing had holes in it so when you plunged it up and down, the water squirted through and it made the soapy water frothier. The action was akin to a chanting native crushing corn in a mortar; only I don’t remember any one singing a happy possing song. Some older possers were all wood and were similar to a five-legged stool with a handle on top to push the stool legs up, down and twist in the tub. This visual image of five phallic shaped legs plunging up and down in a tub full of ladies underwear led to the expression, “He’s as leet geen as a posser ‘ed in a tub full 'o knickers.”
Which roughly translated means; he was more interested in sex than he should be. In other words randy as a rabbit, politely put in the Latin ‘Accensus libidine’.

RINSO AD: "NOT TOO OLD AT SIXTY"

Even at Christmas we couldn’t avoid the obsession with washing, we sang:

"While shepherds washed their socks at night.
All seated round the tub.
A bar of Sunlight soap came down and they began to scrub."

Mam would complain about washing my mucky clothes. She’d hold them up dripping in front of me and shaking three fingers under my nose, would mouth, “Three waters.”
This meant she had to wash the item in three lots of clean water, rub it up and down the rubbing board with a bar of hard soap and rinse it till it was clean. The rubbing board was a wooden frame with a small sheet of corrugated galvanised metal fixed in it.
All the stuff was then put through the big iron mangle and squeezed almost dry. In the holidays when I was tall enough I had to wind the handle. The glamour soon went out of that job. “The kid’s are hard on their clothes,” Mam would say.
None of them ever thought they were wearing them out in the washing. White washing was made to look optically whiter with a hint of blue, put there by using a, ‘Dolly Blue’ in the water. This was a small cloth bag of blue stuff tied on a little stick. I suppose it was a called that because it looked like a little wooden doll with a white crinoline.

The ‘Dolly Blue’ was also used to treat fleabites and bee stings because the ‘Dolly Blue’ was alkali and neutralised the acid bee sting. Wasp stings are alkali so they were wiped with vinegar. We children were always advised not to move and to keep very still when wasps and bees were about. If we did this we were told, they would go away.
Because I had very bright orange hair I tended to attract butterflies, bees and wasps. I think they thought I was some kind of Geranium that needed pollinating. One day a wasp approached me. I remembered the advice and stood still. Because I wasn’t moving I think this confirmed in the wasp’s mind that I actually was a large geranium. The wasp hung around to reconnoiter. I stood very, very still while the wasp circled my head; like the plane flying round the Empire State building in ‘King Kong’. My mouth relaxed and fell open. The wasp, like a spacecraft circling an alien ship, must have thought that’s the entrance and he flew into my mouth. This instantly triggered in me some deep animal feeding instinct and before I could think, I automatically closed my mouth. The wasp realising the door had shut, turned and stung the door. Whereupon I opened my mouth and he flew out. I ran to Granny screaming in agony. My bottom lip was now slowly inflating.
She gripped me firmly by the hand and dragging me into the back cellar picking up the, ‘Dolly Blue’,
“Was it a bee or a wasp’ She said.
I now looked like a plate lipped woman from Africa with a super sulking lip.
“Wathsp, wathsp, wathsp.” I lisped.
“You sure?”
“Yeth, yeth, wathsp.” She put down the ‘Dolly Blue’ and grabbed the vinegar bottle.
It wasn’t real vinegar, no one had real vinegar, it was acetic acid dyed brown. It added some acid flavour but its main function was to drench and kill any thing that was still alive on or in your food.
“Oh no!” I cried and shut my mouth tight but it was no good my lip was stuck out, exposed like a shelf. Granny liberally splashed it with vinegar and picking up the ‘Dolly Blue’ by its stick waved it at me threateningly and said, “Are you sure it wasn’t a bee?”
“Wathsp. Wathsp.” I said, with my lip wobbling as I tried to spit the vinegar off furtively on the “Thsp” in “Wathsp.” I was used to vinegar on my lips Mam used to dab it on my cold sores to dry them up but not in this quantity. Gran was trying to pickle my lip it was like an over seasoned uncooked sausage and getting bigger.
A day later just before I thought I was going to have trouble looking over it, the lip started going down. I was told what a lucky boy I was if I been stung on the tongue it would have swollen and choked me to death. For days I wouldn’t leave the house without a rolled up newspaper.The slightest buzz would send me running in a panic, even the sound of someone walking past in corduroy trousers.

WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER BEE OR A WASP?

Wilf's new book 'My Best Cellar' (his autobiography up to the age of eleven) can now be ordered online. £ 9.99   download book sample here

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