The Coventry you will never know

MORE BRIDGE SCHEMES Coventry City Council have a very full agenda at its meeting on Tuesday, and another important bridge improvement scheme will figure in the recommendations. It may be remembered that at a recent meeting the City Council decided, subject to the receipt of the necessary Ministerial grants, to proceed - with the widening of a number of bridges, including that at London Road (adjoining the Cemetery), Tusses Bridge, and Red Lane Bridge. At that time it was suggested that a number of other bridges were in need of similar attention, and among those mentioned was the narrow structure over the railway in Beechwood Avenue, near the Standard Company's Works. From the Coventry Evening Telegraph 23 November 1933

During the 1920/30's people saw Broadgate as between the bottom of Trinity Street and the Burges up to the High Street. You could see the top of Broadgate from the bottom, shops all the way from top to bottom. With no cars in those days people alighted from the buses at the bottom of Bishop Street, outside the Gas Showrooms, and the bottom of Trinity Street, it was a wonderful way to shop. When they built the new Owen Owen's, 1950's, they split Broadgate in two. You could no longer see the top half from the Burges and people no longer got off the buses as they used to, so the Burges died, became more of a bus depot. It was more like closing the shop door, people are more prone to enter a shop if the door is open. Broadgate became a drab walled square with less shoppers. I have no idea about the Coventry today.

Over a century ago Coventry was more Art Nouveau than it will ever be again for almost every family had some form of art, people may not have had schooling and education but they were born into a world of art, in painting, iron work, woodcraft, etc. all around them was art in some form or another, even door knockers, railings had scattered acorn or oak sprigs in their design. My Granny had a large tablecloth about twelve foot square, of silken damask, woven into it was horses, goats and trees, in one corner shows a man with a spaniel at his heels and a very short muzzled gun in his hands, and farm life thus, cleverly brought together. Children on the canal boats were taught to paint, flowers and scenes at a very early age. Boys learnt the tools of carpentry and the kind of wood needed for each and every job, it was a natural thing that was around them, people where more aware of the beauty around them and expressed it in many ways and forms. We only have to look around Coventry, to see the beauty and artistic designs that have stood for centuries to delight us still.

1937 was a great time to be in Coventry, the Livingstone pool opened in 36, the Hippodrome 37, Trinity Street, the new Owen Owen. Cinemas with new colour films, dancehalls and jazz all began to take a larger part in our lives. Education and employment offered more security and choice depending on how hard you wanted to work. People lived better. People tried to shrug off the dark cloud of Europe hanging over us - but alas not for long.

The old world I once knew has long gone. The Coventry accent that was once so common in rural areas has all but disappeared. A time when the world turned at a slower pace and we all had time to laugh. I was standing in Bunty's kitchen with a cup of tea in one hand, crippled up with laughter trying to steady myself with my other hand on a table. I was watching the old dear run around her garden with a stick. She was screaming at the neighbour's tom cat while trying to smack it with the stick, her other hand was firmly pressing down upon her wig that was lifting off her head like a bird escaping from the nest. She was swearing that should not have been heard by any child. It had all started when she brought me a cup of tea for running a errand for her. We were both staring out of the window at her beautiful garden - we both saw what was taking place in her garden. Bunty's cat, a pedigree English Blue called Princess was romantically engaged with next-door's flea-ridden old tom cat. Bunty had protected her Princess ever since the new neighbours had moved in, now she screamed. Bunty had other ideas. The 86 year-old was out of her back-door like an olympic sprinter chasing the amorous Tom. She cornered the hissing tabby against the fence, for a split second the cat was hunch backed, feet splayed, fangs out. She swung her stick at him. The tabby went one way, her wig went the other, and I spat tea all over the table. It was hilarious.

Autumn was coming. You could just feel it in the cool morning air. The season of soft fruits and mellow-misty-mornings had arrived. The sun had lifted majestically from her nightly bath, refreshed for another day. The evacuation scheme had greatly depleted our school numbers and enlistment had depleted our teachers, no one seemed to know what to do with the children left behind at school. The firm of Delrosa had asked schools to let children pick rosehips from the hedgerows, and they had the backing of the government so this golden morning a dozen of us went off to pick rosehips. The path through the allotments led to a long hedge of wild rose damsons and sloes, finches squabbled over the elderberries that shone black and bright like magpies' eyes. A blackbird was busy demolishing a damson. The little rugby ball-shaped orange-red berries, or hips, the syrup made from these vitamin packed berries was welcome in the winter to come. The countryside was a lazy brown colour, and the pigeons were fat. The meadow flowers had turned to seed, mini-miracles that held next year's summer splendour and we had filled the baskets full of the rich fruit. Reluctantly I walked back to school.

You are a very eloquent story teller, Kaga!! Keep them coming!

Why thank you JW, I tell these stories as I lived them, it's a pleasure to me remembering my journey through life, we all live a life that is singular to each and every one of us and our perceptions, our bodies are a map of our experiences and stories from each and everyone of us I find fascinating.

I have no tattoos to show for my life Kaga, not like a lot of people these days. Do you have any?

Dreamtime. Good God, can't bear them, neither can I wear watches, rings, bracelets or hearing aids. Just looked at my old passports. I have been to Oz 8 times, mostly for a month or over, including Rottnest Island - rats with kangaroo legs - 'ugh'. Guess I'm an old stick-in-the-mud. I would miss the seasons, and the green-green-grass of home but Perth is a beautiful city, has the cleanest streets I ever saw.

Good morning Kaga, this little fella is well protected on his island. Not so big in Coventry.

Dreamtime. Thank you, yes he looks a cuddly little thing, and they were quite tame. But not for me.

When I was a child there was a well known company called Singer. They made the best sewing machine in the world. We had a treadle-operated Singer machine. Mother could turn a scrap of material into a suit, and a piece of rag into a dress. Mother would sit in front of the machine and sew, singing away to herself. She only stopped when the neighbour's dog howled louder than she sang. Mother let me sit and treadle away - only years later the skipping rope took its place at boxing sessions, then later the cycle-machine took its place in the gym. Isaac Singer was an American that sent a partner to England, to build the largest sewing-machine factory in the world on Clydebank. The factory employed over a thousand people, mass producing machines. He had a problem getting them to work on time so he built a clock tower that was larger than Big Ben. He also started the first hire purchase plan, for these machines were so expensive that ten of them would have bought a house. The need to keep us kids well clothed made the sewing machine so essential, so some winter evenings would find dad mending shoes at one end of our bagatelle table/dining table and mother at the other end sewing and we (5) kids slotted in wherever possible. This would be the early thirties and we had no idea that one day not far off we would use a booklet to tell us what clothes we could buy.

We are fortunate on the forum to be able to enjoy these memories from Coventry's past, which enlighten us so much about times we didn't experience ourselves The forum has suffered from members who have occasionally, shall we say, let their imagination run a little wild, as opposed to their memories failing them Hopefully there will be many more 'real' stories from you, Kaga, and from other forum members

I believe rosehip syrup disappeared when our prim and proper Coventry education system could not possibly approve kids taking the afternoon off from school to pick rose hips. If you prised open the rose hip bud you had the most awful itching powder ever discovered - and hell if you had it stuck down your neck in class.