I Was to Be Exchanged For 100 Turkish Delight Wrappers

I was born in an upstairs bedroom of a terraced house, 3 bedrooms, two living rooms, no bathroom, just an outside lavatory! It was in the days when the 'front room' was kept for best and we spent most of our time in the living room, there was no central heating, nor was the kitchen like those of today, being much more like a scullery, but it did have the benefit of a fitted bath!! The toilet was outside - no puppy-soft rolls of loo paper then, quite often it was simply squares of cut up newspaper threaded on a string!

Apologies for the awful image, I really struggled to find anything better,

I was born in the top left room.

It had the advantage that Nana and Grandad lived right next door. Grandad was a retired trawler man - he had a wonderful Yarmouth accent and wore full dentures, which he used to deliberately leave out sometimes, so that he could 'gurn' to make us laugh.





Nana was a tiny, very round woman, she used to wear those old-fashioned wrap-around aprons and was stone deaf. She had been kicked in the head by a horse and was deaf from that day on - so everything had to be written down on scraps of paper for her.

My older brother and I with Omo, the black cat, in the back garden

I was always animal mad, we had a couple of cats - both black, one was called Sooty, the other was Omo. They mysteriously disappeared before we went abroad. We also had a canary which we soon moved on to someone else as it had a very nasty habit of pecking at me.
We were not allowed to have a dog (the house was pretty small) so I was forever borrowing them. This one was Kim.

My glamorous mother on the left, with her friend, Audrey

Audrey owned Kim the black spaniel

Tut, tut, my mother with a cigarette!

Owl aka Ian

In those days babies spent a lot of time outdoors, they would be well wrapped up and put outside in their pram, in all but the worst weather. This bonnie baby is Ian,Owl, he survived the treatment and after years of therapy he is gradually starting to enjoy the outdoors again.

An outing to Cleethorpes Beach!

This photo would have been taken in the late 1950's (pre Ian) and showed my Mother, dark cardigan, my older brother and I, with some friends. We had travelled on the train from Grimsby to Cleethorpes to spend the day on the beach. It was quite a treat, try telling the kids of today that...




A few doors further along the avenue there lived a boy called Richard, he was about a year older than me, he used to walk me to and from school.

Richard was pretty sweet on me and asked my father if he could marry me. Eventually a price of 100 Turkish Delight wrappers was agreed!

Borrowed Image, I couldn't find a 1950's one, sorry!

Poor Richard, he had saved quite a pile of them before we moved away to spend three years in Hong Kong! I was seven years old when we left. I never saw him again.