Childhood Memories

Jan and I were born at The Homestead on 9th April, 1933 on our Mother's 29th birthday. I was born first and was the heavier at around 5lbs. In the early years we were often referred to as 'the twins', or by our cousin Stella, born two days later, as the 'tins!

One of my first memories is of being taken in the push-chair to Edingale, pushed by one of the many 'maids' we had in those days. She was taking us to visit her mother. We only had one maid at a time, of course, and usually they were girls in their early teens, just left school, whom mother would attempt to 'train'.

Some were more amenable to training than others! Some didn't stay long, others got 'the sack' for being lazy, dirty, dishonest or whatever. I remember one who threw my best doll, Nellie, into the toy cupboard under the stairs, and broke her - she was a china doll and double-jointed. I was heartbroken. Another one, Marjorie, who worked for Auntie Sybil, Stella's mother, was a favourite with all of us girls, as she could knit dolls' clothes at lightening speed. She made Nellie an outfit in pink and white wool, knitted together. There was a jacket, a bonnet and a skirt as well, I think. I loved them.

Aunt Izzie lived in Uttoxeter and was awarded the OBE for services to the Blind.

Aunt Ethel, who was next in age to my dad; (she was 9th, he was 10th) came to stay occasionally, always bringing her dog. She was at the time unmarried and expected everyone to dance attendance on her (and the dog!). She didn't tolerate children very well and always had breakfast in bed on a tray, which had to be taken up to her, and she would arrived downstairs well after 10 o'clock, usually just as the kitchen and hall floors had been mopped and were still wet. She and the dog then think nothing of walking all over the floors and messing them up again. The reason I refer to the dog, without giving it a name is because, over the years that she visited, she had at least three different dogs, Whisky, Julia and Mandy. I think they were wire-haired terriers. They all had similar temperaments being rather aloof towards children, just as their mistress was! At mealtimes, when she was there, we children were expected to keep quiet while she told Dad about her work with the council in Middlesex, where she lived. I am not sure, in retrospect, that Dad was all that interested, but he certainly knew enough to pretend that he was! She didn't suffer fools (or children) gladly, and think we all breathed a sigh of relief when she left, not least Mum and Dad.

However, she did have a good side. One time when she came, all the farm cats had colds (or maybe it was cat flu). She immediately made it her business to treat them and get them better. Every morning, we had to round up the cats and hold them while she bathed their eyes and gave them medicines, etc. (She had been a nurse and a health visitor in her earlier days).

Another time, just after Christmas, Evan had had an invitation to a New Years Eve party from the lady who was involved in the treatment of his bad leg. Jan and I had kindly been invited too, and Mother was worried we had nothing suitable to wear - we were about five years old at the time. Aunt Ethel immediately got Dad to drive her to Tamworth to buy some lovely silk material from cousin Bill (who had a drapery shop there), and she set about making us party dresses. Everyone was at her beck and call, helping to get them finished in time for the party. She seemed to thrive on this sort of project - I suspect she got a little bored in our house with its five troublesome children!

Aunt Rose was the other unmarried sister and she lived in Tamworth. Dad would often call in to see her on his trips into town in the car. He generally went into Tamworth once a week on a Friday and Mother would go with him to do the weekly shop. If it was a school holiday time, one or more of us children might go as well. It was quite an occasion for us.

When I was about twelve, after I started at the High School, for some reason I can't remember, I sometimes used to stay with Aunt Rose for a night or two. I found it quite lonely and boring there as I was used to having plenty of playmates at home.

The fourth aunt was Aunt Cis, who lived near Burton. She came over occasionally on a Saturday, and we sometimes went to Tutbury to see her. I stayed there on at least one occasion. Her husband, Uncle Bob Telford, was very deaf, and you couldn't really have a conversation with him, but he was reputed to have been a very clever man, and was said to be related to Thomas Telford, the bridge builder and engineer. Indeed, one of their three sons has the same name. and all of the sons were very clever too, some of them ending up graduates of Cambridge University, and one of them, Robert, becoming a Knight of the Realm.

The youngest of Dad's sisters was Aunt Moll. She had a large family of three boys, and four girls, plus another girl, Rosalia, who had died young. Aunt Moll was married to a vicar, Uncle Fred, and they lived a fairly unconventional sort of life. They would sometimes turn up, without warning, with several children in tow, and Mother would have to rustle up something for them to eat. Just before the war broke out, they invited Mother to go with them to their holiday caravan (and tent) in Watchet, Somerset, taking Jan and me with them. Dad stayed at home looking after Alison and Evan, who were about ten and eight at the time. Gill was less than a year old, so she went to stay with Granny and Grandad at the Post Office.

While we were there, war was declared and Dad drove down with Alison and Evan that same day, to take us home. Other than visiting relatives, that was the only proper holiday we had for years. We never had a holiday because of the farm.

Aunt Moll had a reputation for being a bit eccentric. It was rumoured that when she was seventeen, she had run round the meadow with no clothes on; this was for a bet. All her daughters had names that ended in ia - Maria, Rosalia, Zilia, Gloria and Flavia. Before Victor was born, had he been a girl, he would have been Victoria. But Andrew and Alex, who were in their late teens or more at the time, used to tease her that the names would be Tunis or Tunisia which had been in the news at the time. (Much later at a family funeral, she told Bob, (my husband), that if he didn't go to her funeral, she would come back to haunt him! He made sure he went!).

Most of Dad's brothers visited from time to time too. Uncle Will was the eldest and lived in Lichfield. He had a leather shop as did Uncle Harry in Stafford. Maurice was a draper in Burton-on-Trent, of which town he was Mayor at one point. Ernie, who emigrated to Canada in the 1920s, Albert, Bert and Percy, who lived at Manor Farm, Harlaston, were all farmers, like Dad. Syd lived quite a colourful life as a race-horse trainer. When he visited, he used to hand out half-crowns almost like sweets to us - half a crown was a lot of money in those days, and we thought ourselves privileged. In later years, he came to live in a large house in a nearby village, and Dad started to go to the races with him. It became quite a big interest of Dad's, and he won enough money on one of the Syd's horses, to buy Mum a new three piece suite. The horse was called Clover, and the suite was clover coloured. The suite did great service - it must have lasted fifty years, helped by Dad fitting leather patches on the arms when they became worn. Later, Dad made Jan and me leather shoulder bags, and we and Mother made ourselves lovely leather fur-backed gloves, attending a Women's Institute class, where we were taught by Mrs Smith and another lady, who came from Penkridge, I think.

The school consisted of one big room, where all the children from ages five to eleven were taught by one teacher. This room had a unique smell. I think it was of chalk and dust mixed together. There was a cloakroom for the girls leading out of a door at one end complete with corner wash-basin. The lavatories were outside earth closets. The girls' had two holes in the wooden seat!

The playground consisted of stones and dust- mud if the weather was wet. This was later tarmaced over, but not in my time.

Evan, having a bad leg, often fell over, but got the reputation for 'knowing how to fall'. At the end of the playground, just before you got to the steps leading to the gate, there was a safety rail. This doubled as a superb piece of play equipment - the only piece we had. It was great for somersaulting over.

We played some good games in that playground. Tick, tag, where if you were at the end of a long line of children, you got dragged around much too fast. Then there was 'What's the time, Mr Wolf?', 'Sheep, sheep, come over!', 'Jam-pots', 'Broken bottles', 'Grandmothers Footsteps', and 'Stone Fairy', as well as Hop-Scotch and various skipping games.

Inside the classroom, we seemed to spend a lot of time playing. There was a sack full of lovely glass beads, which I loved to thread, and we had some small, rectangular wooden bricks, which we would stand up like soldiers in a long curving line, then tap the one end and watch them all fall down.

We used to draw with pastels which were very messy and left coloured dust all over you, and we did a lot of 'fraying'. This was unravelling the small square of coloured material supplied by the teacher. We used to draw with pastels which were very messy and left coloured dust all over you, and we did a lot of 'fraying'. This was unravelling the small square of coloured material supplied by the teacher. We used to see who could make the biggest pile of threads quickest. The resulting mounds were supposedly used for stuffing, but what they ever stuffed, we never found out. I suspect perhaps this activity was a ploy to keep us occupied while the teacher dealt with the older children.

As we learned to read, we were allowed to take a library book home each week. From time to time, the County Council van would come to the village to change library books, and one time there was great excitement when we got a new book called 'The Secret of Spiggy Holes', by my favourite author Enid Blyton. This book was a sequel to 'The Secret Island' which I had already read. True to Enid Blyton tradition, these books were basically about four children who lived alone on an island! I couldn't wait for my turn to read 'Spiggy Holes'. I had been a big Enid Blyton fan for several years and had read all her circus books, school books, animal books, Mr. Twiddle, Mr Meddle, Mr. Pinkwhistle, The Faraway Tree, The Wishing Chair, Shadow the Sheep-dog and many others.

Every Friday at home, we got a small children's booklet called 'Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories. It came with newspapers. Jan and I used to rush home from school at dinner time to be the first to get it. Because she could run faster than me, Jan always got there first. Miss Knight got to hear of this, and on a couple of occasions, if I had done good work during the morning, she would let me out a few minutes early so I could get the 'Enid Blyton's', as we called it, first. This magazine always had a picture on the back page for you to colour and send in, in the hope of winning a prize. I often sent it in. Each week I would hopefully peruse the list of winners' names, including a long list of Consolation prizes and Highly Commended, but alas, my name was never among them.

Evan was keen on football at school, but one day he hadn't completed his work, so was told to stay in and finish it while the other boys went out for football. He was so furious that he physically attacked Miss Knight. I can see her now holding him off at arm's length. Jan ran home crying.

On at least one occasion I was late for school, because I was having my knee bandaged. One almost never sees children wearing bandages these days, but back then there was always one or other of us sporting one. Mother used to clean the wound, and if it was a bad cut, would apply a Kaolin poultice to 'draw out the matter', before bandaging it up. The poultice was made by heating the Kaolin, a type of clay, in its tin in a saucepan of boiling water. The hot clay was then spread on a 4 inch square of cloth and covered with another square, like a sandwich. This was then slapped on, red-hot, onto the affected part! It was agony! This process was repeated twice a day for several days.

Another thing we dreaded was if we hadn't 'been'. It was either a spoonful of Syrup of Figs (urgh!) or a piece of chocolate laxative (revolting!), a drink of Senna tea (horrible!) or perhaps a dose of Liquid Paraffin, a clear oily substance which didn't taste of much but the texture was vile.

In the winter, we all took Irridex, which I think was a vitamin and malt extract preparation. This was pleasant tasting so the daily dose was quite welcome. If we had a cough (which I always seemed to have), or a bad chest, we were rubbed with goose greese, saved for the purpose from the Christmas goose. The chest was then covered with a large warmed pad of cotton wool at bedtime. This was very comforting on a cold winter's night.

We often seemed to suffer with bad ear-aches - for this we had warmed olive oil poured in while we lay down on our side to let it soak in. Alison was in hospital several times with ears, nose and throat problems and was usually put on the women's ward at Tamworth Hospital. I got a fright once when going to visit her as her head was all bandaged up.

I suffered from bad coughing fits and the doctor recommended a course of Adexolin capsules. These were basically vitamins, I think, and were very expensive at 6s 8d for a hundred. Not a lot in today's money (about 35p) but a great deal in those days. Dad made a fuss about the cost, and I felt a bit guilty, but he bought them and they helped.

We had all the usual childhood diseases - measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and later, mumps and German measles. When I was nine, there was an outbreak of scarlet fever in the village. I was the third child to get it and had to be taken by ambulance to the Isolation Hospital near Lichfield, where I stayed for a month. Visitors were allowed only on a Sunday afternoon, but you could only speak through a closed window, which wasn't very satisfactory. I was very homesick, especially as, although a few other children from the village were there, none of my own siblings contracted the disease until weeks later, by which time I was home again.

After the month was up, I was still required to be isolated from other children for two more weeks, so the Rector's wife kindly offered to let me stay at the Rectory with her daughter, Veronica, who had been in hospital with me. This compounded my home-sickness, and I use to wander down the long drive to the Rectory gate, and gaze longingly towards home, hoping to catch a glimpse of my family. My only visitor at the Rectory was Granny, who lived across the road at the Post Office. She had also sent me a postcard every day while I was in hospital, but nothing was a substitute for my own family, and I missed them badly. While I was ill I received a shoebox full of odds and ends of toys and so on, collected and sent by my class at school. (I was at Marmion School, Tamworth by then). When I got back to school I somehow was not able to find the opportunity to say thank you for this thoughtful gift. I worried about this for years.

My three sisters all went down with scarlet fever in the summer of that year. Mother was pleased that Alison, aged 12 years, would be in the hospital with Gill, who was only three, and could keep an eye on her. I can picture them now going off in the ambulance together. Our house had to be fumigated after they had gone.

Evan was supposed to do exercises for his leg, but he hated them, and it was a continual battle for Mother, which she usually lost! He wore a leg-iron for many years and walked with a limp, which earned him the nickname 'Peg-leg'. He took this is good part and managed to join in all our sporting activities, with the exception of swimming which, like Dad, he could never be persuaded to try. I had a very lonely time for most of that summer, with none of my siblings at home. I would wonder disconsolately about the farmyard, wondering what to do.

One very hot day, Dad asked me to fetch the cows up for milking. I strongly disliked having anything to do with any of the farm animals. I was very vary of the cattle and pigs and even the sheep. However, I had to go, so I armed myself with a big stick and walked to down to the field. At the gate, I started to call 'C'up, C'up' - (come up - a call all cows responded to) I then went to open the gate to let them through but before I could do so, a cow, crazed with heat, charged at the gate and jumped clean over hit, frightening me out of my wits. I was even more wary after that.

Sometimes Dad used to enlist our help in getting pigs into a truck to be taken to market. They would come out squealing and grunting and trying to run in all directions. My job was to hold up a corrugated iron sheet as a barrier to stop them escaping. I was glad to be on the other side of it! We also had to go down the Glebe with Dad to fetch the bullocks up. I always made sure I kept my distance and had a big stick, in case any of them decide to come my way. I was lucky to escape the chore of milking the cows, which had to be done twice a day - early morning and teatime. Alison and Evan both had to learn how to do this. Alison hated it, and the cows must have sensed this as they wouldn't stand still for her, and she got kicked on more than one occasion. By the time I was old enough to learn, Dad had invested in a milking machine, thank goodness!

One job I did enjoy was 'getting the milk out'. This was a twice a day job, breakfast and teatime, and involved collecting the milk as it passed over the cooler and through the funnel into the churn. We had metal measuring jugs and metal cans. I always gave extra measure. I expect Dad would have been none too pleased if he had found out! Most of the customers collected their own milk, and one time Jimmy Claydon, who lived at the cottage down the road and was about nine at the time, spilled theirs by swinging it round his head. He arrived back at our house and tearfully explained that 'the milk had spilled itself!' One of us children had to take milk up to the cottage opposite Uncle Percy's farm. Mr and Mrs Aumonier (his sister) lived there. They both were both ancient. She had been the village school mistress- (she taught Dad, I think, as well as most of his sisters and brothers), and Mr Aumonier had been an actor and conjuror. He sometimes performed at village fetes and such. Once he made milk come out of Evan's elbow.

Much later, Mother acquired a jersey cow, and we used to make the most wonderful white butter, which she would sell or give away. We had lots of lovely rich Jersey cream too. Mother was very fond of gadgets, as I am, and she bought a butter-making machine. It looked like a pressure cooker but had a wide metal tube coming out of the bottom, which fitted onto the upright shaft of the washing machine. When switched on it gyrated back and forth, and saved hours of toil, trying to make the butter by hand.

Another job we children shared before the days of the electric washing machine was working the handle of the hand-operated one. This was a metal box on legs with paddles fixed onto a vertical shaft which came through the lied and ended in a long handle. You had to push it back and forth to swish the washing around, and we used to take turns, five minutes each. There was a mangle attached to the machine - two rubber rollers, one above the other, through which the washing was fed to extract the water. We took turns at turning this handle too.

Collecting the eggs was another regular job I enjoyed. We would take a basket out and search in all the nests as well as various other places. Some of the hens like to 'lay away' and it could be quite a task locating the eggs.

Every springtime, Dad would purchase about two dozen day old chicks. They were housed in the 'shop' (a building attached to the house that used to be the old Saddlers' shop). The chicks were in a special coop that had to be heated with a paraffin lamp to keep them warm. We invariably lost one or two, but one dreadful year, Dad went to feed them one morning and found the lot dead. The paraffin heater had gone out and the resulting fumes had suffocated all the birds.

We kept rabbits from time to time too, and we once had a little kid goat called Bambi, who loved to chase u and 'bunt' us. This was ok while he was small, but as he grew older it was not so funny and we always kept a wary eye open, ready to run for the gate! The same with the geese who could be very fierce.

We had a lovely old sheep dog called Flossie, who lived in the kennel built onto the house. She regularly gave birth to a litter of puppies, which eventually had to be sold or given away. They too, found their feet, used to chase us in a pack and nip our ankles. Very painful! We tried to jump up onto the outside garden step, out of harm's way, and listen to them yapping and yelping for all they were worth, begging us to come down, so they could have another go at us! Later, we had another sheep-dog, Ben who may have been Floss's pup, whom we trained to jump over the garden gate.

We had lots of home-grown fruit and in their season, harvesting this was another task that kept her busy. Picking redcurrents, raspberries, strawberries, top and tailing 'goosegogs', gathering apples, damsons, plums and pears. The plums attracted the wasps and we were sometimes plagued with them in hot weather. When we had a glut of apples or pears, we put a notice out front of the house - WINDFALLS FOR SALE - 3d a Lb - The fishermen, who came from Birmingham every weekend, and the campers who had built themselves holiday homes in the field across the road, snapped them up, and thought themselves very lucky. They also bought eggs, butter and other goodies when they were available.

Occasionally, we would go 'mushrooming'. This entailed an early morning start, and we would set off with baskets at the ready. Usually we went looking for them in Uncle Percy's fields, as they seemed to grow better there. Sometimes, we found huge horse-mushrooms, which would feed several people.

At Easter time, the village ladies would decorate the church with daffodils and other flowers. We were sent to look out for wild primroses and violets and moss to lay on the church window sills. They were usually found in 'the Spinney', a hollowed out small piece of land just below the White Lion Inn, on the way to Edingale.

When Harvest Festival came round, the church would be decorated with all kinds of fruit and vegetables piled high, and the children who were in the choir would sometimes entertain the congregation with an anthem. One year, we had a special service, with Harry Slaney, who was the Latham children's uncle, and he was a music teacher, came to teach us the Harvest anthem. He was a hard task-master, and we practiced for weeks. He would not allow any talking or fidgeting while we were practising. He even made us put our feet on the floor while we were sitting down, so they didn't make a clatter when we stood up. In spite of his harshness, I think we all enjoyed a job well done.

At one time, Alison had piano lessons from Mr. Slaney, I remember her saying that he rapped her fingers with a ruler if she made a mistake. I don't think she stayed long!

Jan and I had music lessons in Tamworth, she on the piano and I on the violin. Although I would have preferred the piano, the violin wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for the journey on the bus every Saturday afternoon for lessons. The bus was always crowded with shoppers and we rarely got a seat. I had to lift my violin on to the luggage rack, which ran the length of the bus, and above the seats. This was not an easy task for a ten year old, and many an unwary person got a clout from that violin!

At the end of April each year, Stella, Jan and I went out picking wild flowers to make a Maypole. We got someone to nail two pieces of wood together to make a cross to decorate, or we might find an old umbrella, stripped of its cover, which made a perfect frame to tie our flowers to. We came home with armfuls of cowslips, bluebells, ladysmocks, kingcups and buttercups, and set to work constructing our Maypoles. Then, on May 1st, we went from house to house, with our creations, singing:

Maypole day
A very happy day;
Please to remember the first of May.
Dressed in ribbons, tied in a bow,
See what a Maypole we can show.

For this entertainment, people would give us pennies. Except, that is, for Andrew and Alec, Stella's brothers, who, when we were on our way, hid behind the curtains upstairs window with a bucket of water at the ready. We got a soaking, unless we were quick enough to dodge out of the way,

 When a cow had a calf, she produced a very rich milk called 'beastings'. Mother baked this for a pudding. I hated it! I also hated the products of pigs that had been killed. During the war, farmers were allowed to kill, I think, a maximum of two pigs a year for their own use, as meat was strictly rationed. (I think more pigs met their end, but clandestinely!).

The pig killing caused a real upheaval in the house; sides of bacon to be prepared and salted down, black puddings to make, scratchings, brawn, pork pies and even pigs' trotters, tripe and chitterlings (these latter were pig's intestines, I think). There were many chores that we had to help with. I can't remember exactly what we did, but I can remember spending what seemed like long hours doing it! Afterwards, the house was filled with sides of bacon hanging from the beams in the kitchen as well as other unmentionable things, (of course we had no freezer). I wouldn't touch any of it.

When not grazing in the meadow, these horses were housed in the stable adjoining the house. After Dad invested in a tractor and the horses gone, this became a garage for Dad's car and many years later was lent out first to Mr Taylor across the road, as storage for his greengroceries, and then to Eric and Mary Tiso's son, Andrew, as a joinery workshop.

When we got older, Mother would sent us to the hayfield at the Glebe with refreshments for the men. This consisted of hot cans of tea and sometimes sandwiches. It meant a long trek over the fields for us, but the men were always grateful and pleased to see us. Haymaking was hard, strenuous work, especially if the weather was hot, and often it was a race against time before the rains came. The farmers in the village used to lend out their men to help each other with this important job. The machines - elevator, combine harvester, etc. would also be lent out or sometimes hired.

In October half-term, we used to go potato-picking. This meant a long trek up the field, and then we were each allocated a stretch of ground, and when the tractor came round and turned up all the potatoes, we had to gather them into our buckets as fast as we could, to be ready for the next round. I found it very hard work. However, we got well-paid for it. (I think it was 10 shillings a week - equal to 50p nowadays, which seemed a lot then).

We didn't escape from helping in the house either. After every meal there was washing-up to be done. Because the stone sink was stuck in the corner of the kitchen, we used an enamel bowl on the table with a large battered tin tray to put the wet pots on once they were washed. One of us would wash, another dry, and the third would put away in the cupboard, standing on a chair to reach the higher shelves. When we were older we made the job easier by singing the songs that were in the Hit Parade at the time while we worked. We used to try and emulate the Beverley Sisters, who were popular at the time, and like us, two of them were twins. Two of the songs we sang were Sisters and Mocking Bird Hill. We also tried Triplets but that is quite a hard song to sing.

We had a primitive vacuum cleaner, (another of Mother's gadgets), called the Bustier, and Alison, Jan and I took it in turns to clean the two living rooms - the Drawing room and the Little room, as they were known. The kitchen and hall floors were also mopped and scrubbed every day, and the front step was whitened with a hard block of stone-step several times a week. It was a matter of pride to keep one's step sparkling white at all times.

The ashes from the drawing room fire place had to be emptied every day, the fire laid and the coal got in to light it. On Sunday mornings, we three older girls took turns to make a batch of pastry. There was always an apple pie, a dozen jam tarts and whatever else we could squeeze out of a pound of flour. In the winter, it could be icy cold, rubbing hard fat into the flour.

On Mondays, washing day, the machine was dragged out next to the sink and the day-long operation would begin. Washing, blueing, starching, mangling and finally hanging out. There was often a maid or 'woman' to help, but even so, we always had a scratch meal on Mondays. Either cold meat left over from Sunday joint, or tinned tomato soup and rice pudding (put to cook in the oven all morning).

By this time the school- leaver 'maids' had given way to a 'woman'. Only one I remember, Mrs Taft, used to clean the drawing room by brushing it with used tea leaves. She preferred this to a vacuum cleaner as she thought it did a better job. It probably did, but it also raised a lot of dust.

In the summer, Dad used to present each of us with an old knife, which we had to use to get all the grass and weeds out of the cracks in the bricks on the front path and in the back yard. We hated this job as it took hours to do. At that time, there was a water pump in the yard; the water was pumped up and used for various things.

If there had been a lot of rain, the River Mease, which ran along the bottom of the meadow, flooded and the road to Edingale was sometimes unpassable. We found it quite exciting to go and look at the floods. There was a high ridge running along side the Edingale road, with a deep ditch on the other side, and if the floods weren't too deep, you could walk along this ridge with floodwater on either side. I don't suppose Mother and Dad knew we did this!

During the hot summer evenings, we went out to play with the other village children. Often the road was our playground. Here we played French cricket, Bad eggs, and even Hockey, using old walking sticks with curved ends for hockey sticks. These didn't last long due the continual contact with the road! We all played tennis against the wall. There wasn't much traffic about in those days, and if the occasional car come along, we could hear it and see it coming in plenty of time to get out of the way. I played this game for hours on end, making up stories about imaginary friends, against whom I competed - seeing who could keep the ball going longest. It must have done some good, as I managed to make the tennis team at school, and enjoyed playing in the annual house matches, as well as playing against other schools on Saturday mornings.

Sometimes we would up to 'the buildings', (Uncle Percy's farm buildings), to play Hide & Seek or Sardines, where one person hides and the others have to squeeze in beside him as they found him. Or we would play among the hay bales, rearranging them to make tunnels that we could crawl through. This was a highly dangerous activity and it is a wonder that nobody got hurt.

We often played 'Tip-it-&-Run', a form of cricket, in the field opposite our house, and also Rounders -we used to challenge neighbouring villages to matches - Edingale was the sworn enemy - we didn't seem to mind Haunton and Clifton so much.

In the Winter, if there had been a good fall of snow, we sledged in the field. There was a satisfying slope to this field at one end. One Christmas, the three Latham boys got a sledge each in three different sizes from Santa - we got one between us. They were good hand-made wooden sledges, and we got a lot of fun from them.

One year, we children decided to put on a concert for charity. Alison was chief organiser. We made up two country dances (music supplied by us humming). There were a couple of charades, (both guessed too quickly by Aunty Kit); some acrobatics performed by Jan and Margaret Rayner; poems, songs, a play - The Baba-Yaga - and other items. The performance took place in our attic. Lots of people from the village came and supported us and we made a fair amount of money for the charity - £2 something, I think!

Each year, for several years, Miss Lewis, who lived opposite and was a retired English teacher, rounded up willing children and put on a play. I enjoyed this very much. The first year I was cast as Alice (in Wonderland), Gill was the dormouse and Jan the March hare. The next year, Stella took the part of the King's jester in the play of the same name. Once we did an excerpt from Nicholas Nickleby (not so popular), and another year we had a Dramatic competition instead. Most people recited poems and I won first place for mine, which was a called 'Song of the Cornishman' or something similar. I must confess I had little idea what it was about. Gill was only three, but she attempted to recite 'I have a little dog called Tim'. However, she was overcome with shyness in the middle of it and didn't finish. Evan, I remember was still learning his lines when the curtain went up!

On Sundays we went to Sunday school at three o'clock - never very popular. From the age of about fourteen, the Rector, the Rev. Barlow-Leitch, reckoned I would make a good teacher. He put me in charge of a small class of five year olds, at the back of the church. Vic Richardson, one of my former pupils, recently told me I couldn't have been a very good teacher as he never went to church. Certainly I didn't enjoy the job, and when I started my School Certificate year, I made an excuse to give up. The Rector took a fatherly interest in me, and when I got good results in my exams, trotted down to our house, full of excitement, to congratulate me.

Every Sunday evening we went to church where we sang in the choir, while Auntie Kit played the organ. We didn't mind this as all our friends were in the choir. The choir stalls were arranged so that the girls sat at one side and the boys opposite, so that we were facing each other. Sometimes during the sermon which tended to be long and boring, one of us would catch the eye of the boys and then we would get the fit of giggles. Many a time I had to force myself to think of something sad to keep from laughing.

After the service, we would congregate outside the church gate for hours, talking and laughing, until the Rector came out and crossly shooed us away. Then we might go to someone's house; Rou Wallis's maybe, where his mother would make us very welcome, or perhaps ours, where we often played table tennis on the 'Little room' table. It was a bit of a squash with up to a dozen kids in there. In later years, we often watched television in the 'other place' at the Lathams' - not many of us had TV at that time.

Each Christmas Eve, the choir members, joined by a few stalwarts from the village, went carol singing. We tramped all round the village, from one end to the other, and we were treated to mince pies and drinks, at various people's houses. We used to end up in the pub, where we would sing a couple of carols and then pass the hat round. The takings all went to the church, of course.

Until I was about five, our house had no bathroom. The lavatory was an outdoor earth-closet with two seats - a large one and a small one. For toilet paper we used cut up newspaper, hung on a piece of string from a hook on the door. On winter nights, when it was dark, we hated having to go 'across the yar', and would do our best to try to persuade someone to come with us. Our bath was a tin one, which hung on a nail from the wash-house wall. Later, the fourth bedroom on the first floor, was converted into a bathroom and toilet (a chemical Elsan for a while). and the attic was pressed into use as another bedroom. But first it had to be cleared of years' and years' collection of junk. Several large trunks and suitcases, filled with old books, clothes, picture frames, etc. most of which belonged to Dad's large family of fourteen brothers and sisters. We had a big bonfire, and packed the rest up into a corner where some of it remained until the house was cleared after Evan's death in 2007.

We also liked to play the old gramophone in the attic. Dad had acquired this at an auction sale, I think, together with a job-lot of old records. You had to wind the gramophone by hand, between each song, and you also had to change the needle every few records. You could buy a little tin of a hundred needles. If we had run out, we just put an old one in again. At one time, the mechanism of the machine had broken, but we still managed to play it, by taking it in turns to put a finger in the centre of the record and turning it by hand. We got this down to a fine art - exactly the right speed.

When Jan and I were eight years old, we were sent to Marmion school in Tamworth. I felt a bit like a fish out of water at first as all the other children were 'townies', including some evacuees, from Margate and Ramsgate. We had to catch the bus there and back, and this meant we must leave school ten minutes early each day, in order to get to the Dog Inn, where the bus picked us up. On a Wednesday afternoon, we had games with Miss Spink in the playground. She was not our regular teacher and she never remembered to let us go early. I was always in agony of fear of missing the bus.

Mum and Dad must have had a terrible time in the mornings, trying to get us up and in time to catch the bus. None of us were very good 'getters-up'. I remember one day Dad brought Alison a cup of teas in bed, in effort to wake her up. She just went straight back to sleep with the cup of tea in her hand, only waking when it crashed to the floor.

We all kept a look-out for the bus going down to Clifton before coming back to pick up the Harlaston children. Then the cry would go up - 'BUS JUS' GONE DOWN!!' and everyone would rush frantically to try to get to the bus stop before it returned in about ten minutes. The bus stop was outside the Post Office, and sometimes the kind bus driver would see us struggling up the hill and stop; others weren't so kind and we arrived at the bus stop completely breathless, where the bus would be waiting for us! A few times, we had to stop it outside our front door, and this was a source of shame - to me, at least.

Jan and I were six when war broke out. Although we didn't see much of the war itself, only one bomb dropped near us - and that was a mile away, near the railway line, we used to hear the German planes go over, with the characteristic droning sound - quite unmistakeable. We were terrified and used to hide under the dining-room table. The siren would sound, to warn everybody and after what seemed like an age, we would hear the All-Clear. What a relief!

Food was in short supply during the whole six years of the war. We didn't see a banana for years, and when at last somebody procured one, there was great excitement, and people rushed to buy a slice of it for 3d. There were no oranges either, nor any types of fruit that were grown in other countries. Of course, we were luckier than many people as we were fairly self-sufficient. We had our own supply of eggs, milk, fruit and vegetables, though you were not supposed to keep more than your share. Everybody had their own ration book, and had to produce it when buying food. Posters exhorting you to 'DIG FOR VICTORY' encouraged people to grow their own vegetables and fruit. I remember us all having our separate rations of sugar in jam jars, labelled with our names. Some food rationing went on for years after the war was over. When I was at college from 1951 - 1953, a friend of mine, having collected her butter ration on a hot summer's day, dropped it, and it went 'splat' on the ground. No butter for her that week! Only one type of margarine was available and this was sold in a block of greaseproof wrapping. It was hard and unappetising. Ice-cream was virtually unobtainable then, but after the war, I remember the excitement of hearing the ice-cream man's bell and rushing out to buy if we were lucky. The ice-cream man had a sort of bicycle with a small freezer of the front and you could have a cornet for a penny, or a wafer for twopennce, reserved for grown-ups, in our family, at least. On one occasion when the ice-cream man came by, Mother put her foot down and said none of us could have a cornet that day, as somebody had scribbled on the bedroom wallpaper and hadn't owned up! We were disappointed but later, when Jan and I happened to be visiting the Claydons', and told Mrs Claydon were weren't allowed an ice-cream that day, she took pity and bought us one.

Sweets and chocolates were rationed too. You got four ounces one week and two ounces the next, which wasn't much. When rationing ended, people went so mad, buying up all the sweets in the shops, that they had to go back on ration again! Some people also made themselves sick through eating too much chocolate!

Clothes and linen were also on ration, For these, we each had a separate book containing clothing coupons, and we were advised to 'MAKE DO AND MEND!' When our sheets had worn out in the middle, Mum would turn them 'sides to middle' by cutting down the centre and hemming the raw edges; then joining the sides. The resulting ridge down the middle was not very comfortable! All of the women's magazines had ideas for making over old clothes and household linen in order to get more wear out of them.

Every so often a parcel would arrive from a friend of Mother's, who lived in Berkhamstead. Her daughter was only slightly older that Jan and I so she used to pass on outgrown clothing. Unfortunately, there was only one of everything and this caused some tension, as you could imagine. I remember a beautiful pink party dress, a pair of jodhpurs and a pair of roller skates. As Jan had commandeered the jodhpurs, I persuaded Dad to let me send off for a pair of 'land-girls jodhpurs' from the Farmer & Stockbreeder. When they came, I hid them under my mattress!

I am not sure where the furniture was rationed, but it was certainly in short supply, and most of it was 'utility' grade, which meant it had been made as economically as possible. All this must have been a nightmare for our parents, and indeed, everyone else. We were told BEWARE OF THE SQUANDER BUG to encourage us to save things and make the most of them, and we were exhorted to 'KEEP MUM - CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES'. Also, to avoid being ill, or catching colds, we were told 'TRAP THE GERMS IN YOUR HANDKERCHIEF', The latter, we children converted to 'trap the Germans......'

Everywhere we went we had to carry out gas masks. I had a nice black mock-leather case for mine, with a long strap which went over my shoulder.

At school there was an Anderson Shelter and we sometimes had to go down there, with our gas-masks on, to get us used to putting them on and wearing them. They didn't feel very pleasant and it was lucky that we didn't have to wear them for real. Gill, as a baby, had a mask which fitted over her whole body, with holes for legs and arms. This was kept in the corner of the Little Room, and once, one of the cats decided to give birth to a litter of kittens in it! Once she became a toddler, Gill had a Mickey Mouse mask, which was red and had ears. It didn't look like Mickey Mouse to me.

All of the windows had to be fitted with black-out curtains. It was forbidden by law to show a chink of light of any sort at night, and this was strictly enforced. Wardens walked round the village, and if you had even a thin sliver of light showing, they banged on the door, shouting 'Put that light out!' The windows were criss-crossed with sticky tape, like masking tape, so that if they got shattered in a raid, the glass wouldn't fly all over the place.

There was a drive at one point to get people to raise money for the 'WAR EFFORT'. I have memory of a kind of village fete, held in Uncle Percy's buildings. There were all sorts of competitions for children and adults - I remember entering the Wild Flower competition and the Miniature Garden competition, both of which were set out in the main cow shed, (cleaned up a bit!). There were various races for the children, and also games and other entertainments. A large poster was erected on the green outside the church, which had a thermometer drawn on it, with the money target written on it, which the village was expected to raise.

Mum, Dad, Grandad, Auntie Kit, Uncle Percy and many other adults in the village took turns to go on 'air-raid watch', sitting in a car across the fields. They belonged to the ARP - a group which was responsible for Air-Raid Precautions. They had to scan the sky and listen for radio warnings of bomb attacks, among other things. Only one bomb dropped near us, but of course it caused great excitement in the village and everybody went to look at the huge crater it made. The only damage was some broken windows in the nearby house.

Several evacuees were allocated to Harlaston. There was great excitement amongst us children when the time drew near for their arrival. I believe Auntie Kit was in charge of deciding which 'vaccies' went to which homes, and also persuading people to take them. Mother had agreed to have one (our house was pretty bursting at the seams!) and Evan begged her to get a boy - he had had enough of girls, having four sisters! However, this never happened; I am not sure why. Perhaps not as many turned up as expected. Of those that did come, there was a family of three, a mother and two daughters, who had come from Watford, I think. They were billeted on Mrs Northover, a fairly elderly widow. They didn't fit in very well at all, were very unhappy, and only stayed a very short time. Others stayed much longer whether through choice or otherwise I am not sure, but some made Harlaston their home and stayed forever. This was the case of the Rayner family, who lived in a unused barn in the middle of a farmer's field for quite some time, gradually making it more habitable. Mr Rayner died not long after they moved there, and later his widow married Jack Penlington, from the farm. The son, Maurice, lived in Harlaston for the rest of his life, and their daughter moved to Cannock.

John and Jean Lewis came from Liverpool area to live with the three Misses Lewis, who were their father's sister. Jean returned home after a while but John stayed and made his home locally.

I don't remember this personally, but have been told that Uncle Percy allowed one of his barns on his farm to be used as a storage depot for tinned foods and other goods, to be used in case of an emergency. Uncle Percy also was given the job of visiting everyone in the village who had any land, even a small garden, and advising them on what vegetables to grow. Towards the end of the war, some Italian prisoners of war came to work on his farm.

At home, we used to help Mother to preserve runner beans by layering them in big glass jars with salt, putting down eggs in islinglass, salthing bacon, etc. Damsons, plums and other fruit were made into jam to keep us supplied through the year. Auntie Gladys, Uncle Percy's second wife, used to hire a special machine and hold 'canning' days at the Manor, where several people would gather to tin peaches and pears. The fruit was bought in bulk, and the operation would take all day. This was much later, after the war was long over.

Conscription was compulsory during the war, with certain exceptions, one of which was farming. Farming was a reserved occupation, and of course, it was extremely important as our country was largely dependant on home-produced foodstuffs. My cousin Andrew, in spite of living on a farm, was called up at the age of nineteen and lost a leg during the D-Day campaign. I remember him coming home to the Manor, after being released from hospital, and having to be fitted with an artificial leg.

Auntie Kit was engaged to a man who was in a reserved occupation, but he insisted on joining up in the RAF. She and his parents later got a letter to say he was missing, presumed dead. I don't think it was ever discovered what happened to him.

As well as everything else, petrol was rationed, and wherever you went, you would see posters asking 'Is Your Journey Really Necessary?' Because of the importance of their work, farmers were allowed a bit more petrol than most people.

Because there were shortages of many things people needed, a Black Market developed, and some shady characters called 'spivs' always seemed to be able to obtain whatever anyone wanted - at a price! I think there were a lot of 'under the counter' deals going on at the time. 

A few years later, a Belgian family, who had connections with the Ministry of Agriculture, came to stay at the Manor. There were four boys: George the eldest, and his twin brothers, Leon and Victor, who were the same age as Jan and I; and their slightly younger cousin Jean, plus his parents and the older boys' mother. The boys came to stay several times in the following years, and in 1954 Jan and I went to Belgium to have a holiday with them. Since then, we have completely lost touch.

Apart from our own camping exploits, lots of people from Birmingham came to camp in the field opposite our house, and gradually several of them built their own 'huts' and used them as weekend 'homes from home' during each summer. Some even developed little gardens round their properties, and we got to know them all very well. There were the Ellises and the Averys who were related to each other, the Garfields, the Joneses, the Faulkners and some others. At least two marriages and a couple of engagements with the village residents tool place during those years. They all thought Harlaston was a fantastic place, what with the White Lion pub, the fishing and the fresh eggs, fruit and vegetables.

We never went on holiday as a family during the war years, though occasionally some of us Mercer children would stay with relatives, of which we had plenty.

We went to Butterley in Derbyshire to stay with Uncle Albert's son and family. They had two girls round about our age.; to Hinckley where Uncle Bert and Auntie Marion lived; to Amington for a holiday with cousin John and Edith, whose daughter Anne was a little younger. Jan and I were there when a bomb dropped very close by, and John had to carry us from our beds to the under-stair cupboard, where we spent the rest of the night. Later Jan and I stayed with Uncle Harry's family at Doxley in Stafford, and paid several visits to the old Brine Baths there. Their daughter Betty was a very keen swimmer.

Once, I went to Tutbury to Auntie Cis's, when Margaret, her daughter was there with her two young children, Michael and Roseanne. This was soon after Margaret's husband Freddie had died very young. We also went to Skegby, Derbyshire, to stay with cousin Lil and her family. She had two girls a little older than us, and a boy a little younger. Lil painted the two ship pictures which lived in the Drawing Room at The Homestead for nearly eighty years, and are now in my lounge.

We sometimes spent the night at the Manor with Stella, and even more often at the Post Office, with Granny and Grandad and Auntie Kit. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, we would pile into Auntie Kit's bed, and she would read poems to us from A A Milne's books - Now We Are Six, and When We Were Very Young. She also taught us many card games, including Seven, Old Maid, Lexicon and others. She taught us to knit and do embroidery. We learned to do stem stich, lazy daisy, satin stitch, French knots and many others. Once, when it was time to put our work away, I discovered I had sewn the material to my skirt! We knitted gloves on four needles and then decorated them with embroidery stitches. We listened to children's plays on the radio with her, I particularly remember What Katy Did.

She also played the piano and we stood around it singing the songs she taught us; these were songs that were popular during the war, such as 'Hey, Little Hen' and 'Chick, chick chick chick Chicken', both of which were about getting the hens to lay eggs (which were rationed, I think you were allowed about two a week). Another favourite was 'They'll always be an England' and 'Horsie, Horsie'. I think Auntie Kit must have been an absolute boon to Mother, taking us (or some of us) off her hands. She was always the one who washed our hair - in Drene Shampoo, which had a wonderful smell. For breakfast, she often made potato 'floddies'. These were from a recipe book, concocted by Lord Woolton, who was Minister of Food, and was responsible for making sure everyone was properly fed during the war. Another dish she made was scrambled eggs, made from powdered milk.

We sometime sang round the piano with Mother too. She had bought a set of percussion instruments for us and she tried to get us to accompany her round the piano. Alison had a tambourine, Evan had cymbals, I had castanets and Jan a triangle. I can't remember what Gill - perhaps she was too young to take part. We had a book of American folk songs, such as Swanee River and Shenandoh.

We twins spent a lot of time at The Manor with Stella, especially before she went away to school. We used to play upstairs in one of the five bedrooms and sometimes we would stay overnight. One of the bedrooms had a hidden cupboard within the thickness of the walls. The door was wallpapered over to match the wall. (I wonder if it was originally a priest's hole?). Sometimes we went up another flight of stairs to the attic, which consisted of several rather dusty, musty rooms. One Summer, we took over an unused chicken house and converted it into a playhouse. I remember once there was a large hammock-like contraption, built, I think, by Alec and Andrew out of old sacks with a wooden frame round it, so that several children could use it at once.

During these years, Alison had acquired a bike - a sit-up-and-beg. I think this had belonged to Auntie Kit. I was desperate to learn to ride, and persuaded Margaret Claydon, older sister of Jimmy, to teach me on her nice little bike - not nearly so fearsome as the sit-up-and-beg! I was about twelve before I got a bike of my own, and I was very proud of it.

We spent quite a lot of spare time we got listening to the radio. There were some really good programmes on then. Among our favourites were 'Dick Barton - Special Agent' which was on at quarter to seven every evening, occupying the slot now used by 'The Archers'. We also loved some of the comedy shows, such as 'Much Binding in the Marsh' with Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Home, @ITMA - It's that man again - staring Tommy Handley. There was also 'Ray's a Laugh', 'Have a Go' with Wilfred Pickles and Mabel at the table, 'Life with the Lyons' with Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, and of course, the forerunner to Top of the Pops, which was called 'The Hit Parade'. We followed this assiduously every week, and also 'The Billy Cotton Band Show' on a Sunday afternoon. Occasionally, there was a thriller series about a detective called Paul Temple, who I suppose was the James Bond of his day, though perhaps not quite so spectacular. We often had some knitting on the go while listening to all these programmes. Knitting was one of our main pastimes, and we made jumpers and cardigans for ourselves all the time. When I was Harlaston school, up until I was eight, Miss Knight tried her best to teach us to knit, but I was left-handed, I did not find this an easy task, and just used to pass the stitches from one needle to the other and back again. Of course, this was pretty fruitless, as the knitting did not grow at all. I finally mastered the art, with Auntie Kit's help, and after that there was no stopping me.

Before every special service at church, such as Easter Sunday or Harvest Festival, we and some of the other children would congregate at the Post Office and Auntie Kit would get us practising the hymns for the occasion, I found this quite enjoyable.

When we were eleven, Jan and I started at Tamworth Girls' High School, Alison was already a pupil there, and Evan was at the Queen Elizabeth Boys' Grammar School. One the day we were due to start, Jan was suffering from yellow jaundice and could not go, so when I got off the school bus at the Fountain, I walked up Comberford Road to meet my friend from Marmion School, Christine Payne, and we walked to school together. The school uniform was quite strict in those days. We wore a navy blue tunic over a cream square-necked blouse, (which was extremely unflattering), white ankle socks, changed for grey socks in the winter, and a navy blazer. Hats, which were made of velour with a brim and sporting a band in the colours of red, yellow, and black, were compulsory. The older girls did everything they could think of to make these horrible hats more individual and more attractive. Luckily for us, soon after we started, a different style was brought in - a sort of beret, but more shapely. We quite liked it. If you were caught outside school in school hours, not wearing your hat, you got a detention. It was regarded as a quite serious misdemeanor.

Another rule that was quite strictly enforced was not talking in the corridor, and also of course, not running. On our way home from school, while waiting outside the Dog Inn for the bus (we had quite a long walk as our school day finished at twenty to four, while the other schools went on until four o'clock), we sometimes walked down the hill to the fish and chip shop where we bought 3d worth of chips, which we then ate out of the bag. This practice was highly frowned upon at school, so we had to be secretive about it.

It was sometimes a nuisance having to catch the bus home, as it meant we couldn't stay for any after school activities, such as rehearsals for a play. Consequently, 'bus and train girls' never got chosen to take part in these activities. However, we did manage to play for games teams; Jan, in particular, was very good at all games and made the first team regularly.

Apart from tennis, I only made the second team, but I enjoyed our Saturday morning treks to schools in other towns, namely: Lichfield, Sutton Coldfield and Burton-on-Trent.

Our school days were quite happy ones in many ways, though I always looked forward to the long six week holiday in the summer. Summers then always seemed to consist of long sunny days which we could idle away as we chose, but I suppose the weather was really just as fickle then as it is now.

Time often draws a veil over the bad times, and leaves you remembering only the good. Certainly, we seemed to have a near idyllic childhood in Harlaston, as I think many others would agree.