A Redditch Childhood
1937 to 1946
 
By Peter Joseph Taylor
First Impressions My first recollection, with which to start my memoirs, must have occurred sometime in 1940 or ‘41, Dad allowing me to pop my head out of the air raid shelter to see the night sky ablaze. “Coventry’s copping it” according to Dad. Our shelter, immediately to the rear of 27 Studley Road, was a wonderful one. It was brick built with a concrete roof, bunk beds, electrical heating and lighting and a seat made from a cut down barrel. We would all troop down to the shelter in our pyjamas and night-gowns whenever the sirens sounded. I do have vague memories of before this, of sudden cessation of Victoria sponge cakes. Dad was a long distance transport driver, going out into the marvellous world beyond Studley Road and I was always begging him to bring home the ‘goodies’ as he had used to do every Friday evenings when we would have cake for tea. It was a long time before I saw a proper Victoria sponge again.
 
Left: Rene, me and Aunt Beat outside number 27 Studley Road C 1939.
 
Right: Brother John, Mam and me behind number 27.
 
 
 
Left: Me outside number 27 some seventy years later. (With these memoirs in my hand.)
 
 
Our Family I was born on the 10th March 1937 at 27 Studley Road, a house owned by my Nan, a three-bed roomed semi. We lived there, me, Mam and Dad with Nan and my cousin Geoff. Geoff was a son of my Aunt Lou* who had a very big family in one of the first Batchley houses. Granddad Wright, according to Nan a “ne’er-do-well”, died when I was very young. Again according to Nan, by falling down the Parade toilet steps while drunk and breaking his neck. (There were underground toilets on the Parade, between the top of Unicorn Hill and the Smallwood Hospital, in those days.) I used to sleep with my Nan, in the back room, Mam and Dad in the front bedroom and Geoff in the box room.
*Aunt Lou was Mam’s eldest sister with aunt Beat the youngest. (Rene was a close friend of the family and married to Sam Parks, a little round faced man with round glasses. Brother John and me were shipped off to her house in Alcester when Mam was giving birth to the next child.
Studley Road About that time that I was born a large factory began to be erected at the rear of the house, the BSA factory, for the making of the BESA machine guns. My early years were accompanied day and night by the rattle of those guns as each one was tested and they made thousands! From the other side of the town, as a sort of bass accompaniment, came the dull boom of the HDA* (High Duty Alloys) Big Hammer. There is a photo of me sat on my Aunt Beat’s shoulders with the BSA girders rising behind. On the opposite side of the road was a bank, an hedge, then open fields rising to Lodge Farm, owned by Mr. Stanley and his sons, while going down the road, from town, the houses on the L/H side ceased where they do now, Uncle George’s being the last house. Further on there was a derelict farmhouse and then the Monochrome (a chrome plating factory). On the R/H side the houses were intermittent, finishing just after Pinder’s and Danks’s shops. Salt Hill, to Studley, was little more than a cart track, rough and potholed.
*HDA went on to supply the wheels for Richard Nobel’s Thrust SSC sound barrier breaking car.
Pig Killing During the war years nearly every house kept domestic fowl and ours was no exception. About every fifth house kept a pig. The pig, two doors away, was eventually attended to by the pig-killer while I watched over the garden fence. Such squeals! Then the flaming straw heaped on the carcass to burn off the bristles and then the gutting of the pig. Later I was given the bladder. Remember; there were no balls to play with and with the visions of wonderful games, I tried to blow the bladder up with my mouth. I’ve never tasted pig-pee since nor have I the wish to! Brother Derek, when he was about three, was set upon by our enormous white cockerel that sat on his head and pecked him unmercifully.
 
 
 
 
Left: The BSA site (16th June 1938) with the line of elms, beyond, which was to be partially destroyed by a German bomb.
 
 
 
 
 
Below left: The BSA factory under construction and  below: Completed and ready to start production of the BEESA machine gun.
Above: The BEESA machine gun. My then future father in law, Ted Wise, was a gun barrel setter and tester throughout the war. Previously a trained gunner in the Royal Navy and being invalided out of the service in the 1930s be tried to rejoin  when war broke out. But now in a reserved occupation he was refused by two recruiting offices. Eventually the MD of the BSA called him into his office and said “You’re staying here, Ted, that’s final!”
Left: The BSA factory site as it is today. Much of British industry is destined to go this way.
Further Afield Down Studley Road, (on the L/H side coming from Redditch) just before the entrance to the BSA club, was a piece of waste ground which us kids called the Big Back, while the large sports ground behind the houses was called the Little back. Don’t ask me why because I have no idea. Down the R/H side of the sports field was a path that went from the Club down to the footbridge, over the River Arrow, continuing across the fields to St. Peter’s church where I was christened. This footpath was bordered on the R/H side from the club to the river by a line of magnificent elm trees and a little stream. One day, when I was with my brother John in the front garden of number 27, a German aircraft had a go at the BSA, one of the bombs landing in the middle of the line of elms. It destroyed three of them leaving a large crater, which filled with water. The blast tipped brother John out of his pram, ripped out a section of fence and deposited it on top of us. We used to play around this crater, despite warnings from parents that it was ‘bottomless’. Shortly after, us kids decided to that one of the stumps had become a Jerry machine-gun nest with a friend, Donald Danks, as the Jerry machine-gunner. I was the commando who crept up to him and pushed him off, resulting in a broken arm for Don and the fire brigade had to collect him. The crater was gradually filled in by the BSA over a period of years. They dumped what must have been furnace bricks into the hole. Some of the bricks actually floated! I’d never seen floating bricks before. Little did I know that in later life I would be closely associated with them for many years.
 
 
 
 
The BSA club today with the stream that used to follow the line of elms. Below is the BSA mess room. The roof of which was damaged by the blast.
Sports Days Sports days at the BSA ground were great occasions - fancy dress, running, sack races, egg and spoon race, slow bicycle race and a race by work’s fire teams. They had to connect up to a static water tank and send a jet of water at a disc set on a pole to make it spin. As a grand finale, the three teams would send jets of red, white and blue water high into the air, when we would all cheer. Someone made me a cutlass out of a sheet of aluminium so that I could go as a pirate. All our toys were hand made - wooden pistols, wooden Tommy guns with a ratchet for the noise etc. Dad did manage to get me a second hand Fairy cycle when I was about four years old, on which I would pedal manfully down the road towards the BSA club. Unfortunately I had a tendency to topple towards anything that was near me. A dangerous fault when a lorry passed close! Mostly I travelled on the pavement, itself fraught with hazards. Once when passing fat Mrs. Knight, who was gossiping over the garden fence, I fell onto her and pushed her and the fence down. I scarpered, unfortunately the wrong way, and once down the road I daren’t return and remained for hours hiding in the waste ground (Big Back). Fun and Games The waste ground was the next area to play in after I had exhausted the back garden (where I used to make underground fires with a National Milk tin and a bit of pipe, wherein to roast potatoes, always burnt and raw but delicious.) and the bank on the other side of the road where we kids had our ‘treasure safes’. These were cocoa tins dug into the bank and camouflaged. This was where we kept our marlies, fag cards and shrapnel. The waste ground was covered in long grass and burdock bushes. One day we devised a game where we hid in the grass and tried to burn each other out by throwing lighted matches at each other. Good game but not to the liking of the neighbours, who called the Fire Brigade to put out the burning grass. I bet the Fire Brigade was getting fed up with us! Another game I discovered was to collect balls of ‘sticky’ burdock seeds and climb into a small oak tree (still there), which had a branch projecting over the path that led to the BSA club. All men in those days wore hats, either trilbies or caps, and it was a cinch to drop a sticky ball onto their hats as they past underneath. I spent hours doing this and no one ever found out how they got burdock seeds on their hats!
 
Our Collections The Home Guard used to manoeuvre around the area and us kids had great fun following them and imitating them, much to their annoyance. Collecting shrapnel and bullets was another hobby to go with fag cards and marbles. As was, later, American sweet wrappers and cigarette packets. I never managed to taste any American gum, despite saying ‘Got any gum, chum?’ to anyone who looked even vaguely American. I must have caused Mam and Dad some anxious hours by inventing a friendly Yank who fed me the sweets represented by each wrapper that I found or swapped. One that intrigued me was Beechnut chewing gum, which I imagined to be made from beechnuts. There were no beeches anywhere near so I didn’t taste beechnuts until later on in life, when they contrasted sharply with the actual gum! Even Further Afield I must have been adventurous before going to school because when Mam went up town shopping I would leave the house and go and meet her. The first waiting place being the white steps (still there) at the junction of Studley Road and Sillins Avenue, that led to the ‘Rec.’ (the recreation ground) and from there, as I found out later, to St. George’s school. Later I went further up the Holloway to wait for her at the bushy bank just below the Kings Arms pub. Mam used to have a terrible time queuing for everything. Once when I was with her outside Richmond’s fish shop, opposite the present library, she fainted. Mam was always pregnant and Nan’s house was filling fast although the child that followed my brother John, who was christened Robert, died at an early age from internal problems. This was the time John and I were shipped off to Aunt Beat’s house in Alcester. Once, after attending Robert’s* grave in the Plymouth Road Cemetery, Mam gave John and me baskets and we all set to filling them with acorns from the fine oaks trees at the entrance. These we lugged home for our neighbour’s pig. (The one with the bladder!). Every little helped! A bright spot in these sad visits was that Mam would hoist us onto the fence to watch the trains in the station (Where the entrance to car park No.1 is). Years later I read in one of Fred Archer’s books about how a market gardener neighbour of his from Bredon picked up a potato from off the platform. He planted it, sowed the seed potatoes and eventually ended up with fields of “Redditch Platform”. *The grave is unmarked as Mam and Dad hadn’t the money for a grave stone. I can still find the spot after all these years.
 
 
Left: The white steps where I’d wait for Mam at the junction of Studley Road and Sillins Avenue, that led to the ‘Rec.’ They were painted white so they could be seen in the blackout.
 
Above: The bushy bank just below the Kings Arms pub where I would later wait for Mam to come home.
 
Left: What was called the “Thre’p’ny Bit House”, next door to Granny’s house which we used to visit.
 
Below: Granny Taylor’s house down Beeches Farm Drive. Whenever Mam was about to produce another offspring, us lads would be packed off to Granny Taylor’s house.
Going To Gran’s Our other Gran, Granny Taylor, Dad’s Mam, lived in a house down a track that led to a farm just off Longbridge and Grovelly lane’s crossroads, now called Beeches Farm Drive. Behind the house were fields stretching across to the Bristol Road with very little in between except the Austin Works. Whenever Mam was about to produce another offspring, us lads would be packed off to Granny Taylor’s house. The first time this happened, John and me were put up in a high feather bed, where I was overcome with a bad bout of homesickness and cried myself to sleep. Apart from this bad start, going to Gran’s was an adventure. It was a proper country house with an earth closet half way down the garden, an ivy covered little loo that had a very large fruitful damson tree by the side of it, heavily scared with .22 air-rifle pellets. The garden had a pigsty at the bottom, together with a fowl-pen. Granddad Taylor was a tall, spare man with a waistcoat, trilby hat and a walrus moustache who always seemed to be either boiling up pig food or mashing middlings and boiled potato peel for the hens. After work he would sit by the side of the large fireplace, carefully slice up his black shag tobacco and carefully fill and light his pipe. The house was filled with stuffed birds in glass cases and was a bit eerie going up the stairs to bed under the beady-eyed gaze of the barn-owls, hoopoos and sparrow hawks that lined the staircase. In one corner of the living room was a pile of rifles, one of which, a Lincoln-Jeffries, was an eye-opener. It was so accurate that even such a small boy as me couldn’t miss the target (pinned to the fruitful damson tree!). On one wall of the room was a large glass cabinet filled with bullets, cartridges and also a large box of gunpowder. Uncle Ralph, Dad’s youngest brother, once showed me how to roll small paper tubes, attach a stick and fill the tubes with gunpowder to make tiny rockets. A pyromaniac’s delight! Leaving the back garden by the stile in the hedge, we would bear right over the fields to a grassy hill crowned with Scots Pines which Gran called Fox’s Knoll. There we would have a picnic and gambol about in the soft grass. It was here that Ralph showed me how to make a screech by blowing on a blade of grass held between the thumbs. Many years later, returning from the South Birmingham Tech, I drove through the housing estates that now cover the area, and came across Fox’s Knoll - a bare mound of earth, a few sorry pines and a broken pram on the top. A sad sight.
 
 
 
Hospital I also had problems about now, developing mastoids, which had to be removed from behind my ear. Dad managed to beg a car from Strain’s Garage, as I was desperately ill and drive me to hospital in Birmingham. Birmingham was a dangerous place at that time as it was taking quite a battering from bombers. I suffered at that hospital. I remember being very wary of the mask that they tried to fit over my mouth and was tricked by being asked to pretend to hide under the sheets, whereupon, wham! The mask was clamped on my face. I’ll never forget that first suffocating smell. After, the cavity behind my ear was stuffed with yards of bandage and plaster stuck on top. This was the cause of much fiction between me and the nurses as the bandage had to be changed. I fought vigourously to prevent this from happening, as they would tear the plaster off in a quick stroke - very painful when it took your hair with it as well. I usually finished up under the cot, fending off all comers with teeth, feet and fists. I do have a vague recollection of the end of the ward being wrecked and smoking, but not from my efforts. Apart from this small interruption, life was happy, playing wherever we wished. One day, two grown up girls came and asked Mam if they could take us for a walk. They must have been about eight years old. So with John in the pram and me walking they took us down Watery Lane and along the river towards Ipsley Mill, over a very rickety bridge to the mill and back along watery lane. We arrived home with armfuls of sticky buds (horse chestnuts) and pussy willows. Later on this area became part of my playground. School Days The time eventually arrived when I had to attend school. Mam took me to St. George’s (now demolished) and carefully explained how she would pick me up after school. Unfortunately I mistook dinner break for ‘after school’ and waited outside the playground, edging my way across the Rec and eventually home, to Mam’s surprise and teacher’s worry. From then on, knowing the way, I took myself to school and back, across the Rec. or varying the route by going along Sillins Avenue or up the Holloway. School under Mrs. Lewis was very happy. We infants were kept on the girl’s side of the school and had to have a sleep in the afternoon. We lay on mattresses in the hall or playground for a snooze. Later, moving to the boy’s side. Life became much tougher but by then I had learned to cope with braces and buttons and no longer had accidents before I could get my trousers down. Mrs. Collier, the headmistress, was a large, strict woman, much given to rapping one’s knuckles with a ruler, as was the other ogre in my life, Mrs. Johnson. She was a pebble-glassed, frizzle-haired woman with a shrewish temper. We drew with chalk on squares of green lino and filled in patters of our own design on sheets of squared paper. There were also cardboard numbers and letters that we could trace round and we had to recite the alphabet and our times tables. We had to stand in a semi-circle around the desk chanting ‘three fours are twelve, four fours are sixteen etc.’ till we had learned by heart upto the twelve times table. Multiplication, long division and areas were gradually learnt, preparing us for our ‘eleven plus’ which I am sure I took at the age of nine. We learned to read, and write with pen and ink (lightly on the upstroke and heavily on the down), which came out awful in my case, as I was left-handed. The teachers tried to force me into right-handedness by rapping my knuckles when I used my left. Never did learn! The ink was mixed by adding powder to water and distributing around the desk inkwells by the ink monitor, using a sort of miniature watering can and was a coveted job. Milk monitor was another prime perk, distributing a small bottle of milk to each kid twice a day. The toilets were an unappetising place. They were a series of brick cubicles on the far side of the playground with a long trough running through them and boarded over with holes cut in the boards. The trough carried on through the wall into the girl’s toilets and we used to shout up the trough to frighten them. The boy’s urinal was foul, there were only three places, and with all the kids being released at once, we did it everywhere, up the walls etc. The floor was awash with pee. The school heating system consisted of coke-stoves, with an extra large one in the hall, which had a folding screen to divide it into two classrooms. As you can imagine, fuel was very scarce, and at times we would arrive at school on a bitter-cold morning to find the stove cold. Not to worry - Mrs. Collier would get us jumping on the spot, swinging our arms and rubbing our hands - poor compensation after struggling to school, but at least we were indoors. At one time Mrs. Collier started a campaign to make children carry a handkerchief while at school, which was a bit of a problem - we didn’t have hankies, only sleeves and when called upon during assembly to show our hankies, I used to raise my fist, hoping that I wouldn’t be noticed, a ploy that was not always successful, resulting in rapped knuckles. School meals meant a short journey across Beoley Road, past the R. C. School, to the hall behind Mount Carmel Church, where we were served rather unappetising but no doubt nourishing meals. And we had to clear our plates! Filing past Mrs. Collier at the head table to show that we had eaten our food, we would pat our inedible pieces of gristle or thick cabbage stalks into as small a pile as possible, but were many times sent back to consume more of our dinner before being allowed pudding (which were very nice!) John Pulley was the cock of the school, with Ron Clements his rival and there were fights galore. No adult seemed to interfere, so we worked out our own pecking order. I didn’t do too badly, but one day I picked on Dave Browett, a kid with specs. Should be easy, I thought, but he landed me one on the nose which made my eyes water. This caused me to be very wary of our Dave from then on.
 
 
Above left: Dad managed to beg a car from Strain’s Garage, as I was desperately ill and drive me to hospital in Birmingham.
 
Left: St. George’s school is now a housing estate.
 
Above: Mount Carmel church and the hall where we went to to have our dinners.
Playground Games Games in the playground were rough. Apart from marlies, conkers, whip and top (you could send a top through a window if not careful) and fag card throwing we had tig, ‘off ground’ tig (where you could only be tigged if you were on the ground) and chain tig. If you were caught in chain tig you joined hands with the tigger till there was a long chain to catch the rest. Later additions to the chain could find life rather dangerous as the whip effect of fifteen or twenty boys could make the last in line loose grip and send him hurtling into a wall or fence. Hopalong Jinny and Jinny-on-the-Mopstick were two other games. The former consisted of one lad facing the rest and calling out someone, whereupon they both had to hop towards each other with arms folded and try and push each other off balance. If the one that was ‘on’ won then the other joined him and the pair called out another to be pushed. But if the one that was on was pushed off balance, or the lad got through, then the whole crowd would change sides of the playground in one mad, hopping rush, the ‘on’ team trying to push over as many as they could. Plenty of grazed knees. Jinny-on-the-Mopstick had two teams of about six. One of the team stood upright as a brace while the rest of the team formed a line against him, bending down, holding each others’ waists and tucking their heads well in. The other team run up, one at a time, and jumped on their backs, the first one leaping as far forward as he could, the rest following till they were all on the ‘Mopstick’, landing as hard as possible to make the ‘on’ team collapse. (When my son, Pip, tried to introduce this game at his school it was banned for being too dangerous!) One game had much to do with our style of dress. Most boys at that time wore a pair of grey shorts, a woolly jumper with a turned down collar (much like a shirt with a pattern on the collar), a pair of knee length socks, turned over at the top, again patterned, and a pair of hob-nailed boots! These last items, with the standard belted long blue mackintosh, enabled us to have chariot races. One lad crouched down and hanging onto the coat tails of two others and then dragged around the playground to the accompaniment of loud screeches and sparks from his boots! One lethal weapon, which enjoyed a vogue with the boys, was a rubber band pistol. Imagine a piece of wood about 7” long with a nail knocked in about 2” from one end. To the nail end, at right angles to the end of the wood was attached another piece of wood which was held in place by strong piece of inner tube around it and stretched over the ‘muzzle’. The whole thing looked like a pistol. By holding it in your hand and pulling on the nail (the trigger) one could open a gap between the barrel and the butt and insert the end of a rubber band in the gap, which was then gripped tightly and the other end stretched over the muzzle. Creeping up behind another lad, aiming the gun at the soft part behind the knees (we all wore shorts!) and gently squeeze the trigger, ping! Very funny! backswording, Cowboys and Indians and Cops and Robbers filled in the gap between these games. Teams were chosen by counting out rhymes: Penn’orth of chips to grease your lips, Out goes one, out goes two, Out goes another one, And that means YOU! Or Eeney meeny mackeracker, Air eye dummeracker, Chrickerpacker lollipop, A rum pum PUSH! Or One potato, two potato, Three potato, four, Five potato, six potato, Seven potato MORE! Another game was piggyback fighting, but this was stopped, as one lad fell off another’s back and impaled himself on the school railings. He died almost instantly. The fact that the railings were still there was unusual, as other railings in the town had been removed, even the ones round the church. Our railings thereafter had a capping of wood. Other games that were constantly being played were skipping by girls and hopscotch by both boys and girls. Every pavement had a hopscotch grid chalked on it, and the game was played for hours. But the best game of all was played outside the school on Grange Road when ALL the boys of the school divided into two teams captained by the cock of the school and his rival. Someone had acquired one of those faceted glass doorknobs, the ‘jewel’, which was secreted by a member of one of the teams. Everyone met in one great rush in the middle, the team with the ‘jewel’ attempting to break through and the others trying to find and capture the kid with the treasure. Pure screaming chaos! Diet Rationing was very strictly applied during and after the war, but our diet then was, apparently, much better than the present one. Fresh fish such as herrings, smoked fish such as kippers, haddock and tinned pilchards and sardines were available. Also rabbit and offal. The main restrictions were on fat, butter, sugar, meat and bacon. But bread and potatoes were not rationed and everyone was encouraged to ‘dig for victory’ so vegetables played a large part in our daily meals. Much use was made of offal. One of the favourite dishes being liver and onions. In fact many of the dishes from that period, although not available today, remains favourites of mine because they were made at home, had a taste that cannot be replicated commercially: Mam would make faggots out of pig’s fry (liver, lungs and heart) onions, bread and herbs, covered with caul (the membranous fat from the pig’s stomach) which were absolutely delicious. Modern faggots contain pork meat and are actually rissoles. Another dish was brawn, made by boiling half a pig’s head, dicing the meat and moistening with the cooking liquid which set as a jelly. Pressed into a basin to cool, it was sliced for sandwiches and was unbelievably tasty. Try some now from a delicatessen - tasteless. Mom would make chitterlings from the pig’s intestines, attaching one end to the tap and working the length till it was clean. Then boiling and pressing or plaiting. Eaten cold with salt, pepper, vinegar and a piece of bread and marg, it was a lovely meal. Soused herring were also a favourite cooked with onions and vinegar. The herring roes were eaten on toast, while the swim bladders provided a bit of home entertainment, when we would lay them gently on a hot coal and watch them inflate into small balloons before going ‘pop’! Coming home from school to a dish of rabbit stew, followed by suit pudding and treacle was guaranteed to keep the cold out. For snacks we had bread and lard (flavoured with rosemary) or bread and jam (literally bread and jam - it wasn’t till my teens that I could eat bread, butter and jam, it seemed so sickly) No biscuits, no cakes, a packet of Smith’s crisps occasionally when taken to the BSA club, definitely no cream and very, very little chocolate or sweets (2 ounces a week!), made, according to the experts, the wartime generation the healthiest kids this country has ever produced (although we didn’t know it at the time!) Vitamins for kids were ensured by the Government in cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice. My wife remembers roast cow’s heart and tripe and onions as being on her family’s menu, but I’ve never tasted either of these. Other things that were missing from our diet were, of course, E numbers, additives and artificial flavours! Whatever happened to the Pure Food Act, which guaranteed that food was unadulterated? Minor Injuries Apart from the fun and games, I suffered the usual minor bruises and scratches, but two incidents stand out. One when I was running home from school across the Rec with a knitting needle in my pocket. (Why I had this needle I don’t know.) The needle pierced the cloth and stuck in the rear of my left leg, at the knee joint, while my right leg drove it into the joint and wrapped it round my leg. I collapsed on the ground, sick and faint, eventually yanking the needle out and limping home. The other accident, again on the Rec, involved some bars, which we swung on. Running at them full tilt I leapt up to swing on a bar, lost my grip and thudded down on my back, being thoroughly winded and splitting my head open. Once more I staggered home with my coat collar covered with blood. Brothers I can’t recall playing with my brothers except when kept in by the weather, when Mam would let us “play on the beds”. This activity, bouncing and jumping and making “tents”, usually ended up with runny eyes and sneezing. No one knew of “dust mites” then, and anyhow, there weren’t any vacuum cleaners. I do remember taking three of them down Watery Lane. Most of the lane is now buried under the dual carriageway, but some bits are still there further on down the present “Watery Lane”. Anyway, on this occasion, brother Derek, according to Mam “A little so and so”, was acting in character and stamping in puddles. I swung round to clout him and he dodges, unfortunately straight into the path of an Austin Van, which knocked him down and ran over his foot. The concerned driver took him and us to Smallwood hospital, where to everyone’s amazement, he was virtually unharmed. “A tough little so and so” at the best of times! Finding my brothers a gullible crew, and being of an inventive mind, I used to play all manner of tricks on them. A few I can remember. I found during one of my “mooching” expeditions through the house a box containing a few party items (probably pre-war). There were some “exploding cigarette” inserts (small explosive charges that you could insert into the end of a cigarette, which would explode when the heat reached it - pretty dangerous when in those days there were very few filter tips. Imagine dragging on the wrong end and having one of these explode sending half a dog-end up your nose, instant snuff!) And also a couple of balloons. I couldn’t blow up balloons, I wasn’t strong enough but I could fill them from the tap. I devised a trap in the front garden, digging a small depression, popping the filled balloon in and putting a plank onto. I then persuaded Derek to stamp on the plank, whereupon the water shot up his shorts. Thick as two short ones! I did find a balloon in Mam’s bedroom that I could blow up, but when I took it to school, the teacher confiscated it! Another occasion with John, we were down the B.S.A. club, which had a beautiful crown bowling green and tennis courts, both with club houses. The tennis clubhouse had a corrugated asbestos roof and at the back, a host of sparrows nested under this roof. I could just slip my hand in to steal the eggs, and this time I popped one into John’s back pocket. “Let’s play marbles” ”I haven’t got any.” ”Yes you have, I can see one in your pocket.” ”Oh, yes, OH!” The stain proved impossible to remove, and John went round with that mark on his shorts for a year afterward. John was a bit “picky” and refused to eat scabby apples, until I persuaded him that the scabs were chocolate. As he had little experience of chocolate at the time, he believed me and used to eat the scabby parts first saying “yum yum!” One day, Derek, being rightly suspicious of anything I told him, demanded a drink of pop from a Dandelion and Burdock bottle that Mam had filled with vinegar at the Farm Road shop. “It’s not pop, it’s vinegar” “It’s not, it’s pop, I want a drink of pop!” “Ok, have a drink of pop then.” – Glug – glug – choking, wailing, why wouldn’t he believe me? Elm Trees Elm trees were probably the biggest living things in the countryside. To a small lad they seemed capable of hiding all sorts of strange birds in their immense towering branches. On the way across the fields to Greenlands, on a ‘raid’ on Colin Lees and his gang, me and my friends decided that there were savage hawks watching us from a line of elms and crawled for hundreds of yards past the trees! How this was supposed to stop them I don’t know. Later we watched a gang of men fell these trees by hand. They used a big, double handed saw which they swished back and forth. We also found that, when the plough had been close to an elm tree we could pick up the broken exposed roots and smoke them like cigarettes. “Hello, how are you today, fine weather we’re having” like the Toffs on the radio or the flicks. They were foul and acrid to smoke and soon turned you green. Watching Traffic Such was the dearth of traffic during the war years that the only vehicles down our road seemed to be Jamieson’s milk float, pulled by a horse, and the paraffin van, a sort of mobile ironmongers. Mrs. Jamieson, from the farm in the fields at the far end of Oakenshaw Road, sold milk by the dipper from a churn and her horse was closely watched. As soon as it dropped a load it was a race with a bucket and shovel to collect the precious commodity - Dig for Victory! Opposite Arrowdale Road was a local copper’s house, Robinson, I believe. Nearby a couple of us kids made a lot of little men fashioned from clay out of the bank and stood them in a line across the road. We waited ages for a car to come along and knock them over. Eventually the policeman came out and told us to remove them as ‘they might cause an accident’.
 
Left: The local copper’s house as it is today. Now in private hands. All police houses had a crest carved in sandstone above the door as can be seen here.
The Farm Road lads Running down a dingle on the L/H side of what is now St. Bede’s School was a little brook. This then ran alongside the footpath for a while, then under the road and besides Strains garage, then down behind the houses of Farm road. Playing in this brook (forbidden - it was ‘disease-ridden’) introduced me to a new group of friends and to my greatest childhood consuming interest - birds’ nesting and egg collecting. Colin Andrews, Mickey Rollins, Pat Gregory and a few others ranged over all the countryside, from Studley to the Black Soils (now Winyates Green). In other words, now an area covered by Winyates, Matchborough, Park Farm, the then Racecourse fields, Ipsley, Icknield Street and the whole of Arrow valley. All open countryside populated by millions of birds, many more than there are nowadays. Most houses had martin’s nests under their eaves and vast flocks of sparrows fed in the cornfields. I once went gleaning with Nan - opposite Oakenshaw Road, which had a great arch over the entrance saying ‘Greenlands’ Estate’ and a rock unmade road, there was a derelict farmhouse and yard with a large field behind going down to the Arrow, usually sown with wheat. Due to the harvesting methods in use at the time plenty of ears of corn were left to be gleaned by birds, mice and humans. We fed our gleanings to the fowl - eggs were mighty valuable. Spreading My Wings Anyway, to the birds nesting. The farm Road lads usually passed our house on a Sunday morning. I was forbidden to go with them as they were ‘ruffians’ (which was a bit rich coming from Mam, who came from Hill Street, the roughest street in town.), but I’d wait ten minutes and then go out to play, race down the road and catch them up. Progress was usually leisurely but we covered a lot of country. Pigeon’s nests were raided unmercifully, the eggs being thrown down and broken into each other’s hands and eaten raw and fresh, but with other birds it was one egg from the nest. I soon built up a good collection of the common birds’ eggs. We had country names for some of them - pyefinch (chaffinch), scribbling schoolmaster (yellow bunting), nettle creeper (whitethroat), mummy ruff (long tailed tit) etc. We invented birds - ‘French’ blackbirds, those whose eggs were more faintly marked than usual and ‘tree’ and ‘bush’ magpies. One game was to take all the eggs from, say, a blackbird’s nest and swap them with the eggs from a nearby thrush’s nest. The chicks always seemed to thrive! Once we found the nest of a pair of fantailed pigeons high up in the rafters of the derelict farmhouse at the end of Oakenshaw Road, but as they were not wild birds we left them in peace. At the crest of Salt Hill was a footpath leading down to the Arrow. Unfortunately it led past the house of the Howells, which contained some big kids. We would creep past silently but if they spotted us, they would give chase, us little’uns scurrying down the field in a frightened mass. Over the other side of the river there had used to be some small individual chalets dotted around, the remains of lawns and footpath etc. We never went near them, as they held no interest for us, we were birds nesting. We didn’t, in those days, seem destructive, just full of life. I suppose having such a vast playground helped us let off any excess energy that we had. Once after heavy rain, we spotted a moorhen’s nest, with half a dozen eggs in it, floated down the swollen river. We tracked it right into Studley before losing it at the edge of the village. Coming back from these expeditions we often passed St Peter’s church. The Vicar was always asking us to go to Sunday school so we crept past, well down in the road, out of sight. I’d decided Sunday school didn’t rate compared with birds nesting. The Racecourse The other area of activity was fishing for tiddlers in the Racecourse brook. This is the one that now feeds Arrow Valley lake at the north end, but in those days ran through fields, approximately through the present lake. It was clean, clear and full of fish - minnows, sticklebacks and bullheads. The bullheads were easy to catch - we paddled slowly upstream, gently lifting the larger stones which invariably had a bullhead underneath. Stealth was needed to catch the fish with the hands otherwise he would shoot off and then became difficult to spot on the pebbly bottom. The sticklebacks were more difficult and needed a net, being very fast and wary. Myself and John decided that this was too slow and invented a method of trawling that netted huge quantities of fish. We became the grandees of the Racecourse brook! ‘Do you want some sticklebacks? Here you are.’ And where before there were two or three fish in the jam jar, we would fill it, more fish than water! The method involved a piece of open weave sacking, the front edge being placed on the bed of the stream and weighted down with stones while the four corners were held in the fingers and the fisherman standing behind the bellying sack. The other started paddling down the stream, driving the fish before him, just fast enough to outpace the disturbed sediment. The fish would congregate in the sack, when they could be scooped up in one great wriggling mass. Great fun. Rationing Meanwhile the war was still thundering on. The machine guns still hammering away behind the house, Birmingham was still receiving bombs and flares still fell shimmering every night over the ridge towards Henley. What did go on over there? Was it a training area? Decoy aiming point for enemy aircraft? Rationing was tighter than ever but we seemed well enough fed, even if the diet was a bit basic. Mam practiced all the economies, bottling fruit in Kilner jars, making spread from dripping, Oxo and mashed potatoes. We ate sauce sandwiches and apple sandwiches with the grey bread that was unrationed. The rationed goods were in short supply and entailed endless queuing. We also had some very strange additions to our diet: whale meat sausages (lovely), snoek (a type of fish in a tin - yuk!) and the ever-present dried egg, which produced a kind of yellow, rubbery pancake. Our only breakfast cereal at this time was a sort of greyish powder called MOF, which, I believe, stood for Ministry Of Food and which made a greyish gruel - yuk! Flies were a nuisance in those days, probably due to the number of pigs kept in gardens and horses that provided much of the motive power. Any food left uncovered soon became flyblown and Mam had to wash any fly-eggs from any fish or meat that they’d been on. Remember - no fridges! Each room had flypaper hanging from the ceiling. There was no DDT, but we did have a flit gun, a sort of bicycle pump with a can at the end. We also had a stirrup pump, a long handled rake, a shovel and a bucket of sand for putting out incendiary bombs. Being issued with these our house had letters S.P. on the gate.
 
 
Air Raid Precautions The stirrup pump and sand bucket were part of a whole system of safety measures taken by the authorities. Everywhere one looked there was something to remind you that we were at war - our shelter, the S.P. on the gate, the Static Water Tanks dotted around the area, the public shelters - all part of the daily scene. On the way to school, I passed a S.W.T. at the bottom end of the Rec while at the top end were two massive sunken A.R.S. If Mam took me up town, we passed a number of concrete tank obstacles parked in a hard standing opposite my bushy bank, meant to be rolled out across the road in the event of an invasion, while at the top of Other Road there was a further S.W.T. And another A.R.S. on the other side of the road. One really war like object was a tall Flak-tower built on the B.S.A., but at the end of the war, us kids had a chance to explore this structure, from the hut at the bottom, which was still decorated with aircraft recognition silhouettes, up the ladders to the platform at the top, sadly, for us, minus the guns!
 
Left: Site where the concrete tank obstacles were kept.
Aeroplanes The progress of the war didn’t seem to interest us kids. We knew we were going to win anyway so we just kept adding to our collections of shrapnel etc. I knew the names of all the planes in the RAF and Luftwaffe. I was in hospital at the time; it couldn’t have been the mastoid op. That was when I was quite small - probably it was tonsil removal (a fad amongst doctors of the time). Anyway, I lay in bed reciting all the planes that I could remember - apart from the common ones, Spitfire, Hurricane, Wimpey, and so on, I knew planes such as Bristol Beaufort, Westland Lysander, Blackburn Roc and Lockheed Hudson. Dad took me one day to the Vickers works at Stratton St. Margaret. We started out in the dark one summer’s morning to take, I believe, aircraft parts from the Austin to the factory. I loved these early morning starts, with the day brightening, the sun rising and the rabbits in the road. Remember, we were usually the only vehicle on the road. We got to the Vickers and Dad left me at the gatehouse where the works’ police gave me a great big corned beef sandwich and a mug of cocoa. Then! One of them took me to the airfield at the back of the factory where there was a SPITFIRE parked and he sat me in the cockpit! I nearly fainted with excitement. The factory has now been taken over, I believe, by Honda and the airfield is a test track for Japanese cars (ironic?). Somewhere about this time the whole road turned out to wave and cheer as a great armada of planes and gliders thundered overhead. I don’t know whether it was D-Day or Arnhem. I suspect it was D-Day as the planes were heading SW. I did see a film about Arnhem at the pictures and two men who had been there were called up onto the stage prior to the showing.
 
The Pictures Redditch at that date had supported four picture houses - the Danilo, the Gaumont, the Palace and the Select. I don’t think I ever just walked into a cinema, sat down and waited for the film to start. One had to queue, always, and wait till the commissionaire announced that there were, say, two seats in the nine pennies, or room for one standing at the back. I saw films of Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy and so on. Later, when I moved to Batchley, I joined the Gaumont Saturday club. Evenings Around The Fire We had no tele of course but we listened to the radio, Mam would tell us of the days to come when we would all be able to watch cowboy films in our own homes. Winter evenings, after the blackout was fixed, we’d sit looking into the fire and conjured pictures from the embers or listening to the news (and this is Alvar Liddell reading it) or ITMA (Can I do you now, sir? This is Funf speaking). I cried when Tommy Handley died after the war. Mam also told us of tales of her childhood and regaled us with descriptions of cream horns, chocolate éclairs and Swiss rolls. How on earth she had the patience to tell us these tails as she sat darning socks I don’t know. There were by this time loads of socks, and then the washing (dolly and tub, and an enormous mangle that one raised to an upright position by winding the handle then the clothes were fed through the rollers). Loads of socks, loads of nappies and sheets to wash. Brothers were appearing at a steady rate and what with queuing, the cooking and the washing up, I believe Mam should have been heading for the same fate as Nan, her mother, who was an old woman at forty. Mam would also read us stories and sing songs, usually sentimental ones like the one about the two little girls who quarrelled:- I won’t let you play in our yard, You can’t climb our apple tree. Or about a young bride in the castle on her wedding day playing hide and seek who locked herself in a trunk and wasn’t found until many years afterwards. Dad too was always singing to us, but his songs were of the comic variety:- Rag-time Cowboy Joe: I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande, But my legs ain’t bowed, nor my face ain’t tanned.... Or Himazaz:- Down in Pensyltucky where the pencils grow, there’s a little village that you will not know... ... I’m going back to Himazaz, Himazaz a pub next door. The one I liked best was about a strong man:- He’s my brother Sylvest, WHAT’S HE GOT? He’s got a row of forty medals on his chest, BIG CHEST! And the chorus was delivered staccato: Bigger the man, better the fight! Hell-fire, son of a gun! Don’t push, just shove! Home Remedies One evening at the BSA, I was on a swing and being pushed higher and higher by a big kid and became frightened, sliding off the seat and grazing my knees. The two injuries wouldn’t heal, despite Mam’s Germoline and bandages. In desperation she took me to Dr. Dow, who advised leaving them uncovered, when they eventually healed. Very rare, a visit to the doctor, before the NHS, and Mam had a fund of home remedies: Friar’s Balsam, Vick Rub, kaolin poultices (a real terror this! The kaolin in a tin being heated in a pan of boiling water, spread on a flannel and then slapped on the chest- WOW!). Also Thermogene Wadding, a sort of orange coloured medicinal wool, again worn next to the skin, under the vest. Rubbing with a wedding ring treated styles on the eyelid, while sore throats responded to a salt-water gargle. How we survived I don’t know. Summer Outings On summer Saturday evenings Mam and Dad would sometimes take us to the B.S.A. Club and, occasionally, all the way to the Griffon pub. Double summertime meant that it was light until eleven or so and the Club had swings and roundabouts to play on while we consumed our Vimto and crisps. On very special occasions, Dad would take us on the train to Evesham for a day by the river. It was called “The Fisherman’s Line” and what an act of vandalism when they blew up the bridges at Arrow and Wixford - imagine now a cycle trail to Evesham! Redditch I was beginning to explore Redditch. Firstly, as I have said, going to the pictures and then, later, walking around town. There were many fascinating shops and back streets. It also had lots of pubs and cafes. We had a Milk Bar and a Kingfisher British Restaurant and various other cafes dotted around. One shop that sticks in my mind was the Co-op by the Hungry Man pub. In the Co-op (Mam saved the Divi coupons, an early reward system) they had a central cashier and your money and bill were put into a pot and attached to an overhead carrier. The assistant pulled a thing like a lavatory chain and Whing! The pot shot along an overhead cable system to the cashier and shortly afterwards your change returned in the same fashion. There were also about seven or eight fish and chip shops but rarely could we afford chips. It was usually a pennorth of “scratching”. The Return of the Warrior About this time Uncle Doug, Mam’s youngest brother, came home from the war. He wouldn’t tell us much about it but I was tremendously excited to have a soldier in the house. Only one incident did he refer to, when they had to lie low in the desert as Germans passed by in the dark. He bought home an Italian bible and a prayer book, with brightly coloured religious pictures in them and also gave me a belt studded with cap badges. Another thing was a tin of “Iron Ration” chocolate. I coveted this chocolate and managed to persuade him to give me some – It was crumbly and very sweet, like nothing I’d ever tasted before. He also brought a bit of discipline to the house. Dad was missing most of the time and we’d had it pretty easy until then, but Doug wasn’t going to put up with our antics and once gave me a clip round the ear, my first I believe. I was wary of Uncle Doug after that. The Stanleys One could return home from Redditch in two ways, the shortest way down the Holloway or the long way down Millsboro Road and over the fields. Guess which one I used to take. The footpath led past Lodge Farm. Where it crossed the drive to the farm that led up from the Lodge (Where the garage is now, by the shops), one could turn left down this winding sunken drive to reach Studley Road. One day I happened to stop and talk to Robin Stanley, farmer Stanley’s youngest son, who invited me to visit the farm. Now farmer Stanley was a real terror, no one trespassed on his land. He was a large, red faced, loud voiced man, much given to cigar smoking and consequently all this area was new to me. None of the Farm Road gang dared go birds nesting over Stanley’s fields. Apart from the fascination of the farm there was Lodge Pool, a paradise for a lad, hardly fished at all except for one or two privileged people such as my future father-in-law Ted Wise and his mate Curly Davis. And so I started roaming the farm fields and fishing the pool in the company of Robin and his elder brother Keith. We’d dig the brindle worms out of the muck bury and catch giant tench and perch. Smaller fish we put into pools that we made by damming lengths of the small stream that ran at the foot of the embankment. The pool had a pier and also a raft made out of oil drums, which we paddled precariously over the pool. I couldn’t swim! There were two Italian Prisoners Of War who worked the farm and they would swim in the pool. Once we attached a bundle of worms to a three pronged hook and this to a treacle tin and chucked it in. Something took the bait and the tin travelled around the pool for weeks, finally coming to rest in the lily patch. One of the POWs retrieved it one day and there was the skeleton of a small pike on the hook. Two swans had a fight on the far side of the pool, the shallow reedy side and the resulting devastation needed to be seen to be believed. Also, one day, Stanley’s bull William broke loose to get at some heifers that had been delivered. That was exciting, with William rampaging around and Mr. Stanley and the cowman trying to restrain him. We were up in the barn watching the fun below.
 
 
Above: Lodge pool as it is today. Much changed, no Lodge farm and open to the public.
The End in Sight Anyway, the war was obviously drawing to its close and everything was in even shorter supply. I think the sweet ration was two ounces per week, if you could find any. Us kids were reduced to sucking OXO cubes in lieu of! One thing that did seem plentiful, when in season, was the small green sweet apples called doddins. These could be eaten whole. We bought them at a penny a bag from the Post Office by the school. I wonder what happened to doddins? (See DPS) Toys started to appear in the shops at the top of Beoley Road. Small cheap things like a tin propeller that, when forced up a piece of twisted wire flew into the air. Or a triangle of folded paper cardboard that you flicked downwards whereupon a hidden square of stiff paper flapped out with a load bang. The best was a little tin boat that you put a piece of lighted candle into it and it would putter over the water.DPS.htmlshapeimage_44_link_0
 
Left: We bought them at a penny a bag from the Post Office by the school. The Post Office today.
 
Above: Me under the burdock dropping branch.
War’s End The war finished and we had a Victory in Europe (VE) party and later a Victory in Japan (VJ) party with bonfires and what few fireworks that could be found. During the long hot summer evenings we had used to cluster around the open windows of the BSA club and watch the Yanks jitterbugging with the local girls. They paid us back at the VE bonfire by backing a lorry into the car park and showering us with ORANGES! I’d never tasted an orange before. Just think, one day I might have a banana! It was after one of these bonfires I learned two scientific facts. We hung about the embers of the bonfire next day (remember I was a pyromaniac!) and built a fire of our own using some embers and the coke with which the car park was surfaced. Little did anyone know that during the winter of ’47 coke would be queued for. Anyway, I found that pushing a piece of pipe into the heart of the fire, I could light the gas issuing from the end. Later as a metallurgist, I learned about Producer gas. Also I learned that copper is a good conductor of heat because when I grasped the tube to pull it out of the fire, I received a bad burn, which kept my left hand like a claw for some days. (Heavily smeared with Picric Ointment from Mam’s medicinal cupboard.) The lights came on in the streets and when returning from Redditch in the dark with our chips (or scratchings!) we marvelled and laughed at the sight and colour of our faces under the green lights that hung across the Holloway. They lit up the tank traps that were on the opposite side of the road. During the years after the war, fireworks gradually re-appeared in Dyer’s the ironmongers. (Opposite the present library) and the queue would stretch around the corner past the Sportsman pub. We were allowed on half-crown (2/6 (two shillings and sixpence) or 12.5 new pence) box per family. Fireworks were and endless source of fascination to me and I would spend hours re-arranging them in the box, or cutting out paper figures of cowboys, etc., to attach to the jumping jacks, rockets or bangers. One of the lads down the road, Bobby Bayliss, whose dad must have been ‘rich’ (he owned a car, a Fiat Piccolino, which stood on bricks in their drive all during the war) had a £1 box of fireworks. (Eight half crowns to a pound.) The fireworks in those days were quite dangerous, bangers, which could lift you off a milk churn if you popped one in, shut the lid and sat on it. Jumping Jacks and aeroplanes would fly around and at one bonfire a bottle toppled over just as a rocket ignited and hit a lady bystander in the chest, burning her fur coat. Hard Winters, Hot Summers As mentioned before, one of the worst winters of the century was ’47, but the winter prior to that was pretty rough. I remember Studley Road full of snow. Dad had to dig a way out of the house, the snow reached over the bedroom windows. Dad also had to empty the attic of snow that had blown in under the roof tiles, passing buckets of snow out of the front door in a chain. Everyone turned out to dig trenches along footpaths to make some sort of travel possible. There was no vehicle traffic and I went to school along this network of trenches on the Monday morning. I couldn’t see over the top and after an adventurous journey I arrived at school to find someone had beaten me to it. They’d pinned a note on the door saying school was closed. There was a pair of Canadian snowshoes in Fairest’s shop window, which I coveted, but no way could Mam afford to buy them for me, so I made a pair of snowshoes out of boards and grandly walked about on top of the snow. The cold was intense and Lodge Pool soon froze over. Farmer Stanley drove a horse and cart over the pool and let everyone join in the fun. People came from all around and stayed skating and sliding until dark when I remember a bonfire on the ice. Me, Robin, John and Keith were in one corner of the pool busily hacking away at the ice to see how thick it was and after about 6” the water came bubbling up. We had some bad winters with birds lay frozen to death under hedges but we had glorious summers. One morning walking up the hedgerow from the police house to Lodge Farm, half way up the cornfield, I turned and gazed over the valley. It was one of those mornings that seemed to belong to those summers; still, misty, the grass soaked with dew and the sun blazing down promising a wonderful day, my heart thumping with happiness, I stood there singing “Oh, what a beautiful morning”. A romantic, even at that age! One morning such as this I found a sheep on it’s back in the ditch, it’s rear end being eaten by maggots. I ran to the farmer and led him to the sheep, which he drenched with a solution before hoisting it out to recover. Old Stanley looked on me a little kindlier after that.
 
Above: We had used to cluster around the open windows of the BSA club and watch the Yanks. The window has long been bricked up but the lintel can just be seen. Below: Mam in later life at 112 Ashtree Road and younger brother Pip.
Our New Home Brother Pip had arrived, the house was crowded and Mam was carrying again. (Not that I noticed.) Nan, Uncle Doug, Mam, Dad and me. John, Derek, Pip, with Roger about to arrive. I think Geoff had returned home by now. One-day Dad announced that the council had allotted us a new house, one of the first council houses to be built after the war down Batchley. Dad drew a little map showing us how to find the house and John and me set out to see our new home, 112, Ashtree Road. Redditch had a very simple lay out then, the centre of town being a cross roads, one road leading to Alcester, one to Evesham, one to Bromsgrove and one to Birmingham (Which Mam always called Birnigum). Away we went up the Holloway, through the town, down bates Hill and so to Batchley and Ashtree Road, where we viewed our future abode, one of a row of houses planted in a field, with a rough road running in front. A lunch of bread and dripping and a bottle of pop (bought no doubt, from Smith and Spencer or Darvil and Baker lorries that delivered pop around the district) and so back home. I was now just about ten years old, had sat for the High School and a new chapter was opening – the Batchley years. What can I say about the way we lived? I see kids now, surrounded by possessions, but virtually prisoners in their own homes. If I could sum it up in one word, we had FREEDOM. The only people us kids had to fear were the farmers and Germans. We could outrun the one and we knew that we were to beat the other anyway!
 
Mam’s Obituary Some time ago, after our first grandchild, I decided to write down my memories of us kids growing up during the war years, and a lot of those memories revolved around Mam. Most youngsters are very self-centred - as long as we could get up for school to a nice fire and a cup of tea, with our breakfast on the table, and go to school in clean clothes, we didn’t give a thought to where these benefits came from. And these were the days when there were no electric fires or central heating, no automatic washing machines or tumble driers, no supermarkets or convenience food - these were the days of the coal fire, the dolly and tub, the hand wringing and blue bag, the mangle and the washing round the fire. Convenience foods? There wasn’t much food at all and what was allowed on the ration had to be queued for, long hours in endless queues. And Mam still found time in the evening to read us books and tell us tales of her childhood in Hill Street and Mount Pleasant, while darning all our socks. We had darns on top of darns, but Mam was a dab hand with a needle and kept all our clothes neat and tidy. Later on in Batchley, life became a bit easier, with Redditch Steam Laundry taking over the washing of all the sheets and shirts etc., and in-between having babies, Mam went out to work, adding to the family income. And if she couldn’t go to work, the work came to her, and she would be banging away at fishhooks on a fly-press in the corner of the living room, or packing thousands of knitting pins. Redditch relied on people like Mam. Mam and Dad were founder members of the Bridley Moor Social Club - Dad was the first treasurer and Mam could always be persuaded to give a song on the stage, making us squirm if she happened to fix her eye on any one of us and start singing “My Son, My Son”. The Batchley Nightingale. Another nickname she acquired was “Fag-Ash Lil”, though why this stuck so long I don’t know, as Mam and Dad were the first people I remember giving up smoking. Later, things were much easier, with us kids setting up homes of our own and Dad acquired a caravan and they took long holidays at Jasper’s farm near Inkberrow, or toured the caravan Club Sites. Mam’s favourite pastime was to sit in the sun with a book. Although she read a lot, she still got her words mixed up - a real Mrs. Malaprop. Once when telling a friend of a neighbour’s illness, she described how the woman’s husband had come home and found his wife “prostitute” on the bed. And she nearly always used English pronunciation for words like “Grand Prix”. Sadly, even before dad’s first stroke, her mind had started to deteriorate, and his second fatal stroke found her pretty well unable to look after herself. She remained hale and healthy in her body and despite a recent hip replacement after a fall, never complained, but during the last year had virtually left us, unable to speak or recognise anyone. Finally she passed away peacefully. Mam was one of a vanishing breed, and I don’t think we shall see her like again. God bless her. You can follow me beyond Astree Road by clicking HERE. Revised: Wednesday, 20 January 2010Redditchchildhoodandbeyond.htmlshapeimage_52_link_0
 
Above: This is a photo of me stood in the hoar-frosted vegetables on the farm (still in shorts!) holding my Christmas present; a wooden six shooter. Uncle Bob and uncle Ralph used to call me Purple Pete, which I hated. I wanted to be called the Cisco Kid or something like that. In those days all kids wore shorts till they went to the high school and toys were simple. A good imagination was more important!
Most of the lane is now buried under the dual carriageway, but some bits are still there further down the present “Watery Lane”.
Left: All that’s left of the original Watery Lane and below: The new Watery Lane.