Memories - early or general

I remember during wartime being given a wooden fort, made by someone at the factory my dad worked at, I think. Just after the war I had a bagatelle, again made by a workmate of my dad's. Later on, a year or two after the war, my dad got hold of a 'model' airplane, I think it was ex-RAF, the type that they used to drop from the planes to confuse the enemy. It confused me as we could not get it to fly, it was too big and heavy to use for hand launching.

I don't think it was so much being poor but more old fashioned going back to the 1850's. One of my grandmas had a big house, the house covered in ivy, the curtains never closed or open, half-way, the bottom half of rooms in dark stained wood panelling, the ceiling and top half of the room in dark paint. It was scary, dark and dismal, straight from a Dickens book. She only used the one room to live in. The back room held an old loom. I never went upstairs. There were several saucers of water on the window sills, a lot of big fern pot plants. She always sat in a big rocking chair that squeaked every time she moved - never saw her smile, like a picture of a witch, frightened the life out of me, as a kid. The darkest house I ever entered in daylight. Funny but her son's house was almost carbon copy, even though he was a overseer down Keresley pit. Thankfully my mother wasn't like that.

Among my early memories was the reason I never took up smoking! In 1951, my parents got a mortgage for the princely sum of £1,600 to buy a new house in Wyken. Within months of taking on this mortgage, my dad was put on short-time (2-days a week) by the GEC. He was one of the lucky ones - many lost their jobs completely!). I was about four at the time but remember my parents discussing what could be cut from their weekly budgets to pay the mortgage. Discussion focussed on my dad's smoking habit. He tried brands he didn't really like - that didn't work. He tried roll your own - that didn't work. He tried pipe tobacco - that didn't work. So my pocket money got cut. Of course, dad was my hero, and I couldn't understand why he didn't simply stop buying tobacco! That made me very scared of tobacco, and the power it has over good people. We had no idea, back then, of the deaths and diseases caused by tobacco, so I've always considered myself lucky to have been scared off it at such a young age!

I look back on my life as meant to be, I don't regret any part, it all adds up to my experience of life, the pitfalls, the sorrows, the joys, my fads, sulks, anger, what would life be without all this? I can still smell the paraffin oil lamp, see the path down the long garden to the loo, with its broken door and the snow blowing in, with trousers round the ankles, but life was such fun in those days. It was those things that saw me through nights of lonely sentry duty, and the long nights of the shelters, the rationing, and now old age. We aged people have a wealth of experiences that others will never have and can talk about while youngsters sit back amazed. No, I don't regret one little thing.

Ah, the joy of simple things. Somewhere there is a photo of me aged about three in front of the Christmas tree with a handful of shiny screws. I used to stand them on their heads and pretend they were soldiers and play with them for hours, my brother even built me a wooden fort to keep them in. Even today, I still have the habit of standing any odd screws I find on their heads. On a different note we've just stripped the wallpaper off the living room walls ready to redecorate and about half the walls are still covered in green distemper and it shows no signs of coming off so we'll just wallpaper over it again.

I'd forgotten, but now recall what my elders called the "diddlum box". Apparently, this was a money box, probably wooden, that the family kept, whereby members were expected to pay in a certain amount each payday, for future eventualities like a rainy day. It was so-called because it only needed one family member (in my family's case grandfather allegedly, who was a gambler) to illicitly dip into it, in other words diddle it.

Mayjan, you're almost right about a saving bank your mum ran. Why it was called a diddlum? The saver and the banker agreed that whatever the saver saved, say £1 a week, they couldn't take it out for 21 weeks. When the 21 weeks was up the banker would have £21 of the saver's money to hold in safe keeping till it was required. When paying out, the banker would only pay out £20, the other £1 was for them for running the bank. That's how the name diddlum came about. In those days £20 was a lot of money, but also £1 was to be diddled out of.

I used to play tennis on the municipal courts with school friends in the 1950's and have a lasting memory of one occasion travelling to Spencer Park to play, with Doug Smith, John Green and Roy McLanaghan, in Doug Smith's proud acquisition, a 1930s Rolls Royce hearse and us in tennis whites with racquets.

I certainly do. As a young'un, it seemed to be the only name you thought of when toilet paper was mentioned. I can still picture rolls of it on shelves in our family shop, and boxes of it in the storeroom. Medicated was a new word to me. Mick, your description of it is spot on. When I worked in Birmingham, it was in all the company loos (not sure about the directors' toilet though!), described by some as sandpaper. By then, toilet tissue was on the market. Hard and horrible, Izal didn't do what it said on the tin. Not wishing to go into graphical description of its effectiveness, let's just say it was not fit for purpose. It appears it may still be on the market: Izal toilet paper Coronation Street's original name was Florizel Street, but was quickly dropped when somebody at Granada realised it would remind people of bog paper and disinfectants.

Winter childhood memories. Steamed up kitchen windows during a Sunday roast being made and steaming away pots. Having to break the ice on the outside loo bowl. Trying to dry out my gloves and warm the fingers on the coal fire grate. Not being able to move properly in my bed after my mum had pulled over the multiple layers of blankets. Being so excited when it snowed. Being so bored as my Dad watch rugby Sunday!

Hi Gumnut Your "breaking the ice" got me thinking. At our house in Charter Ave, we only had a downstairs outside loo. We had a piece of old carpet over the cistern and mum used to put a candle on the seat to try and stop the tank from freezing.

Hi Mick. We also had what I think was a Bakelite seat, well it was very thick and hard. It sucked out all the heat from the cheeks so you didn't hang around for long. If there was money to spare we had a portable gas heater which was turned on for the evening to stop the freezing. Otherwise it was a stick! When I moved into a home with an inside loo it took me a while not to just sit there enjoying the experience lol.

Anyone remember those parking lights that clipped over your window and you then wound the window up? Plugged into your cigarette lighter socket

I certainly do! When I lived in Cromwell Lane I was friends with the local vicars' son, Howard, who lived in a great old vicarage on the hill in the NE corner of Tile Hill Lane and Banner Lane, now sadly only a memory. The vicars' car was fitted with one but not having a cigarette lighter socket he had fitted a 240v 2-pin plug and socket. Howard and I 'borrowed' the clip-on parking light and to see if it worked tried it in one of the 2-pin house sockets, now discontinued. No light but after a few seconds a huge explosion, which brought Howard's father running from the deep recesses of his study to investigate. Luckily no harm was done, except to the parking light and a blown fuse. We learned that a 240v supply and a 12v appliance don't mix well. This was probably one of the incidents that ended up with me becoming an electrical engineer!

"I certainly do!" So do I. My father had one for his old car. From Halfords. "We learned that a 240v supply and a 12v appliance don't mix well." Reminds me of the stupid 15A sockets in the physics lab at school. Most were set to 12V for the light boxes (an accident waiting to happen). One of the lads mistakenly plugged his box into a 240V socket on the wall. I can still remember an almighty bang like a bomb going off when he switched it on. Luckily, no damage to anyone. But the 12V headlamp bulb wasn't so lucky! "This was probably one of the incidents that ended up with me becoming an electrical engineer!" We have much in common!