Bits 'n' pieces!

My sister bought a house on Longfield Road at Back Fair View when she got married in 1966, and it only cost them £90. The back to backs are now demolished and there is some closely mown grass on the banking where they were.

Is the road going up the hill past the new health centre still known as 'Balti', short for Baltimore. Just over the canal on your right where the Boathouse dwelling is, was some large open sheds and a small cottage at the far end. The bloke who lived there we called Tommy Iron and he let us have our bonfire on his land. We scavenged massive old beams full of rusty nails and the site was like a swamp. The ground turned to steam when the bonfire got going. We tied 3 penny bangers together and put burning band between as a fuse so that it would light the blue touch paper when we were well clear. We stuck the bangers in the mud and the triple explosion sent mud flying everywhere.

Parents never bothered what you did (not that we told them and they were too busy to ask in those days), as long as you turned up at meal times.

The difference between then and now is there was a children's world and an adults world and each party knew the difference. We got what we were given and accepted it. Nowadays parents are constantly asking children what they want and never leave them alone for 'safety's sake'. Fancy dragging children round a supermarket, I ask you, we wouldn't have entertained such nonsense and parents wouldn't have wanted us under the feet. Out on the hills or round the streets is where we got our freedom and the imagination that modern youths seem to lack. I look on modern children as prisoners on a life sentence, gaping from the back seat of a car at an outside world that is alien to them and so has to be destroyed.

What memories will they have to look back on?

The chap you call Tommy iron was actually Tommy Higham. In my last post in this thread I mentioned getting engaged to a girl. She was Tommy's daughter called Mary and she died about two years ago. Tommy had another daughter and a son called Neville who lives in the Shade flats. The land where the sheds were was owned by a chap called Douglas England and Tommy ran his scrap yard after finishing driving for Temperley's pipe works. Douglas England also owned about 5 hire cars and myself and Mary used to be able to borrow one if there was one available. We parted when I was in the army.

Grem.

Fimbulwinter wrote : "Fancy dragging children round a supermarket, I ask you, we wouldn't have entertained such nonsense and parents wouldn't have wanted us under the feet. Out on the hills or round the streets is where we got our freedom and the imagination that modern youths seem to lack. I look on modern children as prisoners on a life sentence, gaping from the back seat of a car at an outside world that is alien to them and so has to be destroyed).

Yes, many children, from about age 1, show what they think about supermarket shopping too.
Couldn't agree more with this.

Went past the summit on the way home, I can just remember what I was reading, about the Irish Navis jumping across those high holes, built on top of the tunnel IDIOTS!

I remember that shop, it is now a newsagents.

Was the shop where Cryers newsagent is now? By the market. That looks like a market stall on the left. What date would that photo be then ?

Yes it was Cryers newsagents, they don't own it now though, before that it was the Job Centre. Don't know when the photo was taken but i can remember going in the shop with my mum.

I found that photo was 1958. Wonder if you ate any of the food in the photo, Mollly.
Do you remember eating any fig rolls in 1958?

I see it is advertising Wright's Biscuits and they had a logo --- "Children’s illustrator Mabel Lucie Attwell created the Wright’s logo, a curly-haired boy called Mischief. The Mischief Club existed for children with members getting a collectable badge." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artwork_for_Wrights_Biscuits_(2).jpg

I remember being sent to Duckworth's for some St Ivel cheese but only being young I went in the chemists next door by mistake and felt quite stupid when they said I was in the wrong shop! Can you still get those triangular cheeses from St. Ivel?

Not without a prescription.

caramel wrote:Not without a prescription.

I like that!

caramel wrote:I found that photo was 1958. Wonder if you ate any of the food in the photo, Mollly.
Do you remember eating any fig rolls in 1958?

Don't like fig rolls so i wouldn't have eaten them, but i do remember when buying bacon it had to be cut at number 5 on the slicer or my mum wasn't very happy!

It's nice to remember, you could always buy one of Roger Birch's books to help you.