A lad, called Stuart told me he lived in a very nice bungalow.
“The rent is fifteen shillings a week”, he said
I said, “That’s very cheap for a bungalow”.
“Yes”, Stuart said, “We call them bungalows but most people like to call them prefabs.”
We lived in Granny Annie’s house at the top of Capel Street The part of the house we occupied was what I would now call an under dwelling. Then everybody called it a cellar. It may have been a cellar but to me it was the best cellar in Rastrick. It had two rooms. One room was completely under ground; this was our kitchen, workshop, coalhole and bathroom, sans bath. Here, over a stone sink, was a single cold water tap. This was our only source of ‘Corporation Pop’ in the house. Next to the sink was a huge iron mangle or wringing machine. A geared wheel turned its two splintering wooden rollers. Wet clothes were squeezed almost dry between them. The mangle has long since disappeared from our homes to be replaced by the spin drier. Along with it have gone such quaint expressions as, “I’ve never laughed as much since Mam caught her tits int’ mangle”. The same accident, with a spin drier doesn’t have the same painful visual appeal.

If you didn’t count the gas cooker, the mangle was one of the only two machines in the house; the second was the clock. I remember Dad bringing the clock home from Kershaw’s and putting it on the mantelpiece. You didn’t need ration points for second hand stuff. He was so proud. This was our first bit of modem technology and it was shaped like Nelson’s hat. He mimed the shape of the hat with his hands. Since this could easily be confused with the shape of two bananas stuck in your ears, he enlarged on the mime by closing one eye and sticking his right hand in his jacket. This made it clearly Nelson’s hat. Not to be confused with a similar mime with the two hands going in a downward arc. This was of course a Dutch person’s hat, which I also hadn’t heard of at the time. The sign for Germans I’ve already mentioned was one finger stuck up on your head like a spiked helmet. A Frenchman was a mime twiddling of a long moustache. If you stuck your thumb in your mouth puffed your cheeks out as if blowing and, looking very serious lifted your elbow up and down that was of course a Scotsman. The sign for Englishman was the sign you’d make if you were confronted by a vampire and you’d forgotten your crucifix. It was your two index fingers held up in a cross; it actually represents St George’s cross.
In the ceiling of our room were mysterious, frightening, rusty meat hooks with bits of whitewash flaking off them. Uncle Wilf had similar, nice clean ones, on his upstairs landing ceiling. I remember once seeing a fitch of bacon hanging there. Along the wall opposite the fireplace was Mam’s pride and joy, the sideboard. It was a wedding present from Granddad; it was a peculiar thing. When Mam saw it in the shop she said she would have it but only if they put bowlegs on it. Where she’d got this idea from I don’t know. So we had a sideboard that looked like it had rickets. We had two armchairs and a sofa. They were very chunky; dark brown, with black bits where the pile had worn off or had been picked off along with dried on whatever. Because of their dark brown, black speckled appearance and huge slab construction they looked as if they were made from great lumps of Christmas fruitcake.

Sitting in these huge chairs was a great pleasure; you could feel down the sides to retrieve other peoples’ lost treasure. All the time thinking about how Granny Annie had come back from Granddad’s funeral to find all the furniture slashed open by someone looking for Granddad’s hidden illegal bookie money; or so Mam said. So you’d push your hand down further because as every adult was prone to say,
"You never know."

Meaning of course you never know what you might find.
The usual, “You never know.” advice was to wear clean underwear when you went out because, “You never know.” Optimists would perhaps think of a favourable sexual encounter but it was the dread of being knocked down on the road and found to be wearing dirty underwear that was meant by this advice. I had to be particularly careful since I wore a vest but I was underpantless. When I saw people taking risks crossing roads I always thought they’d be wearing clean undies. Surely if Mam`s always sent the kids out to play in dirty underwear there would be fewer accidents on the road.
“You never know".
With this thought in mind I would push my hand further through the rough bristly moquette cushions like a vet trying to deliver a baby gorilla. When I lost interest in grovelling down the cushions I would return to grooming the sofa looking for hard bits to pick off. When this reached a satisfactory conclusion I’d start an examination of my short corduroy trousers looking for dried on food or crystallised, snail trail, snot. This was usually deposited on the trousers while saying,
“Look at those stars up there.”
You would point with your index finger upwards making sure it passed your nose wiping the mucus on the side of your hand. This would distract who ever was with you.
Then you’d say,
“Look at those stripes down there.”
Pointing to the ground you’d wipe your hand down your trouser leg depositing there what ever had been dripping from your nose. You don’t see kids now, with what we called candles hanging from their noses. Our street kids were veritable walking candelabras. When they snooked up, the mucus vanished up their noses, like frightened tubeworms under the sea. Dried snot had incredible adhesive powers and picking it off corduroy trousers often removed the nap creating a kind of corduroy alopecia. When Mam spotted this she would buy more mothballs. I think she thought, undercover of darkness, the moths grazed like sheep on the delicious short, grass-like nap.

When I couldn’t find any more crunchy bits to pick on my clothes I’d check the condition of my knee and elbows scabs for crunchy bits to pick. These pleasures are now all in the past. I look forward to them again in the future when I’m an old man spilling my food and falling over.

All scabs and crunchy bits picked, I’d maybe look out of the window at the blank wall across the ginnel, the side of Mrs Jones house. Beneath this window was a rising damp patch, creeping up from the floor, staining the wallpaper with a silhouette that looked like a huge grey mountain. Round the edge of this mountain was a narrow yellow aura as if the sun was behind it. It was in fact a much, much better view than the one through the window. One day after a trip to town, (probably to buy more moth balls) we entered the house to find the view, had dropped off the wall. The damp had parted the wallpaper from the plaster; the plaster from the wall and the view gave up and dropped off.

Very little glue was available in the 1940’s; Gloy, Secotine, LePages and rubber cement were all unsuitable for sticking plaster. Aunt Zillah said she always used Nestle’s condensed milk to stick the tiles back on her fireplace. Having a tile fireplace was very posh; they lived in luxury, in a council house. We pronounced it “Nesels” not “Neslay.”

The damp mountain had shattered into too many bits to be stuck back. The bare wall had to be re-plastered. No sooner was this done than the plaster fell from the ceiling above the door. I think Gran had been stamping in the room above on moths resting on her little stair top rag rug.

The expression ‘Stamping Ground,’ meaning where you abide, may come from stamping on various insect life: blackclocks, (cockroaches), etc., found wandering round your house.

Fortunately when the ceiling fell down I wasn’t banging on the door hook underneath. To explain, whenever I had a screaming tantrum. Dad would take off his big thick brass buckled belt. His trousers didn’t fall down because he wore braces as well. Trouser security was very important.

When serving in India Uncle Clifford was very concerned about trouser security. For complete security I designed extra large thigh cycle clips to prevent insects crawling up your shorts.

Clothes were rationed and many people didn’t have underpants. If they did they had loops that went round the braces to hold them up, these they showed off, for a bit of swank. For all you knew they could have been bits of white tape with no underpants. Some men wore their underpants so high that when they went to buy new one they didn't give their waist size they gave their chest size.

Anyway Dad wore a belt and braces why he didn’t pin his tie to his trousers or better still stitch his shirt to his trouser I don’t know. Did this thought process lead to the invention of the coverall, boiler or siren suit? Knowing his trousers were secure he would wrap his belt round my waist, buckle it up, and hang me on the coat hook behind the door. He’d point a finger at me saying, “Ergogert Whiff” and leave me hanging there till I shut up. Which was not very long I can tell you. He’d take me down, point to the belt, then to the rusty hooks in the ceiling. This was the ultimate threat, “Watch it, or you’ll end up there my lad.” I never did.

Then off to bed in my one-piece pyjamas, that is with the bottoms stitched to the top and a button up flap in the back so you could go to the loo without taking them off. Some said the idea came from teaching trousers the flap was to make access to your bare bum easier for smacking there of. This flap was sometimes called the escape hatch, which seems comical now but in a freezing cold house it was best only to expose the bit that went on the chamber pot or po as we called it. The best idea was to squat and hover slightly above the po. If you inadvertently sat on the super cold rim, it was like being branded with a large red-hot iron from the, “Big 0” ranch. That’s of course if you were lucky and got to use a po. The only po in the house belonged to Granny it was a posing po, a best for show po, so visitor had no doubts we had all the required amenities.

We didn’t sleep in the cellar; we slept on the top floor. Before we set off we had to have hot water bottles not only to keep us warm in bed but also on the long cold journey up stone stairs without slippers. The rubber hot water bottles were about two-thirds full with boiling hot water from the kettle. Then they were held against the chest and by pressing the bottle with the other hand all the steam was breathed out. Before it breathed it back in again you had to quickly screw the stopper back in. It was a strange feeling doing this. The bottle held against your chest it was like expelling your own steamy breath and quickly choking your self before you could breath in. Off we’d go with the bottle’s sides sucked in like Dad's cheeks with his teeth out. On the way the bottle would come back to life swelling up with the
steam left inside. If you overfilled or forgot to squeeze the bottle it would swell up like a sumo wrestler about to burst. Panicking I’d hand the bloated bottle to Mam and she would gently release the stopper, the bottle would breath a sigh of relief and all would be well, so onward and upward we’d go to the top floor.

We had to pass through Granny Annie Shaw’s room on the middle floor. Because it was her house she had the best room. Grannies room was level with Thornhill road so she had the use of the front door. Out of the front door was a small garden. Stuck up, vertical, in the middle of the garden was an earthenware drainpipe. The drainpipe was the chimney from our underground kitchen. Kids dropped things down it, mainly stuff they had about their person usually handkerchiefs or balaclavas. Mam dreaded Bonfire night and the now banned ‘Jumping crackers’. The frog season was not fun because all this stuff fell onto our gas cooker, underneath and sometimes into the food.

I remember standing with some kids by a pond. The water was crammed full of frogs writhing in a mad mating frenzy. One kid John couldn’t understand what was going on. He said to his mate “What’s happening Norman?”
'Knowitall Norman' answered, “It’s a war, they’re having a battle John”. “Why are some on top of each other?”
Norman thought for a moment then said,
"They're carrying off the wounded stupid.”

Mam would always check the pans on the hob for little gifts, dropped from above. One day she showed us the frying pan. Round the edges were crozzled bits of earlier meals. Dad was going through a craze of frying eggs in holes cut in the middle of slices of bread. So the egg and bread were fried together in one lump. He’d seen a butler do it in a film. In the middle of these crozzled bits was a disc of virgin white solid fat. The fat usually cooled flat and unmarked. Mam pointed mysteriously into the pan. You could see the first furtive tiny footprints on the edge of the fat, as if testing the surface of a frozen pond. Finding it safe the footprints then went boldly in a straight line across the fat and off the other side of the pan. It was like looking down on a miniature Arctic. This lonely Captain Oates track of footprints was ominous. A flag stuck in the middle would have completed the illusion. Mam looked down at the single track it wasn’t the usual frog track. It was either a particularly large blackclock (cockroach) or a mouse, but was it alone? She furtively looked from the pan round the cellar. We three formed a protective circle round the pan, like a circled cowboy wagon train, waiting for the Indians. We looked hard and listened; Mam did not fry that day.

When Dad came home from work he was shown the evidence. Dad being a countryman was familiar with tracks and he confirmed it was a mouse. We hadn’t really doubted it was a mouse. Extremely large cockroaches, small badgers, foxes and rabbits hadn’t crossed our minds. Dad knew what to do. He sat up all night in the dim light of a candle, waiting for the mice to wander out towards his irresistible bait of precious Spam. Dad being a skilled huntsman, then bludgeoned the mice to death with his special silent killing device, a Wellington boot. Came the dawn, before we got up, Dad had left for work. Mam entered the cellar kitchen to find the oven door open and in it, the huntsman’s offering. Hanging in a line by their tails, were the dead mice. This apparently would pass as a joke amongst country folk. Mam was screaming, but it wasn’t with laughter.

Uncle Tommy at the market