Did anyone else buy bamboo put flights in and a knotch near the top . Used string with a knot at the end wrap around the the top and launch it Used to do it at horden same place we sledged
Memories are flooding back same place the green ay Horden flying kites was way behind the rest distance wise My brother used to go fishing went and got his fishing rod tied my kite to the line .No one could beat my distance
We used to get dry cleaning bags, fill them to bursting with gas from the gas poker in the kitchen. We'd use a cane to make a cross and suspend a paper cup below it on string. We'd put a candle in the cup that would burn down and light a fuse that went up to the bag. We'd take it all outside, around 11pm just as people were walking back from the welfare. We'd light the candle and let it go. It would get hundreds of feet up then there'd be a massive ball of flame. You'd hear people screaming and shouting while they took cover. The police would arrive and look for debris but, of course, there was none. We did it every Friday at the same time and got away with it half a dozen times. When we had to go to the police station we admitted everything but they couldn't decide what to charge us with so told us to f**k off and not to do it again or they'd knock us about Me Mam did when the gas bill came and I had to give her my paper round money for three months
No problem mate. I like reminiscing. Absolutely loving hearing people's stories. I said in the takeover thread a little while ago, it's like a group of mates, sat in a pub, taking life and everything in-between. I always have crack with old people, the stories they can tell. They've lived a life. I'm glad you felt you could share your cracking memories mate.
I used to go beating in the summer for cash. Loads of us did, brought decent money into the villages. I remember meeting at the farmyard and the farmers son, who also came beating, driving a tractor with a trailor full of about 20 of us on up to the top. The ride down was scary...
Me too. Felt like I was rich from a summer's worth of beating. Kept you fit too. We had a knackered old bus to ferry the beaters around but occasionally, if the bus couldn't negotiate one of the tracks across the fell, you'd see a 5 or 6 beaters clinging to the outside of a Land Rover.
I remember World Cup Willie and also wooden football rattles (wouldn't be allowed nowadays I reckon) Not forgetting Torchy the little battery boy and Bill and Ben
Sitting in my pram with the hood up and there is a string or something with animals on it across the front. Every so often someone would look at me and make strange noises and flick the string to make it bounce. I hated that bloody thing. It was right across my line of sight and stopped me seeing what was going on. Tottering towards my Poe for a widdle prior to going to bed, my little man wrapped in yellow lint after circumcision. My mother pushing me home in a pushchair after a visit to the beach. I asked her if we could go to the beach again sometime. She told me no, because there was going to be a war. What is a war I asked. I soon found out. My first day at school and my mam walking me up Centenary Avenue to the school. It was known as the red road then because it was made with red concrete (pinkish, really). To the right was an army camp bordered with barb wire. That side was also lined with bomb craters - someone suggested the Germans were trying to bomb the camp. It was a Scottish regiment so you couldn’t blame them! Just joking - my grandmother was a Scot. At the left hand side of the road were brick structures which my mam explained were air-raid shelters and if the air-raid siren went while on my way to or from school I was to take shelter in the nearest one and stay there until the all-clear sounded. Around my neck was a length of string, at the end of which was a cardboard box containing a gas mask. That was the only time mam escorted me. All us kids made our own way to and from school after that. A single decker trolleybus was provided to take us to school in the morning, but only the morning. Me mam took me to a public meeting, I don’t know what about, my only memory of it was a man with a red band around his cap humiliating a lass in `R.A.F. uniform. She’d made a comment to the meeting and he made her stand to attention in front of everyone. I felt sorry for her and took an immediate dislike to people with red bands around their military caps that lasted into adulthood. On the way home after the meeting ended everyone else disappears, they must have lived very close nearby, leaving mam and me almost the only ones still making our way home in the dark. Remember that the Blackout was in force and it was pitch black. We only had a torch to light our way, which had to be directed at the ground, and all torches had to be partially masked. I think we were only allowed a gap of 1” - 1.5” on the lense. I’m not sure of the exact rule. Half way down Marsden Road the air-raid sirens sounded. Mam squeezed my hand a little tighter and quickened her pace. By this time the guns had started firing and we could hear the enemy bombers overhead. They had a peculiar pulsating thrumming sound. And very loud. We were level with the Horsley Hill pub when things started pinging of the road and pavement. Mam picked me up and ran to the back of the pub and squeezed me into a corner and there we stayed until the bombers had passed - on their way to Jarrow probably. One night mam went into town to the pictures and was knocked down by a bike, badly injuring her leg. A policeman had invited her into a dark shop doorway so he could have a look at it for her. The dirty bustard! She told him what he could do - and that didn’t involve looking at her leg! We were panicking when she wasnt back when she should have been. She’d had to go to the infirmary for treatment. She took me with her when she went for her next treatment. Apart from the night the market place was bombed Shields isn’t one of the places that is associated with bomb victims, and yet while mam was having her treatment on an upper floor, I looked down onto an entrance hall and corridor packed with beds and nurses to-ing and fro-ing with basins of blood stained water. There were people having their arms or legs put in plaster and others in slings and bandaged heads. It was much more common in those days to see people on crutches, some who were missing a limb. I warned you this would be long, so I’m leaving it for now. Anyone who has valiantly stayed with me up to this point will probably be bored into sleep and going cross-eyed. I may continue at a later date if the response isn’t too vitriolic! There I go again with my threats!
At school dinner time when the coals had been delivered shovelling the whole load through the let (tiny door) facing the backstreet and falling asleep at school in the afternoon
I did but we were posh and used Dowling wood, called them flights and see who could chuck the farthest, 100 yards was about the limit iirc
Good read Sandy, My dad was a Bobby so was in a reserved occupation, I wasn't born until 1949 and we lived in the South bank of the Tyne opposite the shipyards at Walker and the only war related story he ever told us was retrieving the body of a woman from a tree in Hebburn, the bombs had dropped short in an air raid and blew her house out and she ended up stuck in the tree dead poor woman. We used to play in the old air raid embattlements, the guns long gone, one was outside my dad's allotment in Pelaw. Different times.
I remember when you didn't mind ( and even looked forward to ) the adverts coming on the telly. No condescending sickly ''celebrities'' like Schofield and Ruth and Eamon pretending they like stuff-- you could sell products using some chimpanzees and potato eating Martians.
