Morningtown Ride

When I was was little, I used to listen to the radio much more than I do now - something I will have to redress. I used to spend a lot of time with my Grandma, Grandad and Great Grandad - I loved their house and their company. We used to listen to "Junior Choice" which played songs requested by children for children. Tony Blackburn was the DJ at one point - in fact at the point when his wife left him and I remember him sorrowfully going on about missing his son - I even remember him weeping at one point!! I think they axed the show shortly after that! I think its sad that children don't listen to songs like these any more - Ive selected you a few of my favourites, and if you click on them, you will be transported back to Saturday mornings in the 1960's. What were your favourites?

A mouse lived in a windmill

3 Wheels on my waggon

My brother

Camp Granada

Puff the magic Dragon

Gillygilly Ossenfeffen Katzenellen bogan - by the sea

Jake the Peg

The Ugly bug ball

The Kings new clothes

Haunts from the 80's

Continuing my wanderings around Sheffield on Sunday, I decided to check out a few of my favourite haunts from "When I were a lass".

I wandered through this lovely little garden and remembered the many nights out I had spent in here with my pal who was puking! (It was handy as it had a wall - she had discovered that if you puke over a wall, you save your shoes! - top tip there for the tipminded as Victoria Wood would say!). We thought she was a very light weight drinker - turned out she had Colon Ulcers!

We were "Josephines" girls - the nightclub is now called the Banus??!! We loved the music - lots of Wham and dancing around our handbags in our white stilettos with our big hair, white "Ice cream man coats" with the sleeves rolled up (like Don Johnson in Miami Vice!) hand knitted "cotton tops" (we used to knit these in our lunch hour using "Wendy Capri" wool - my fave knitting yarn of all time), bright blue eyeshadow and a bit of shoulder pad build up!! Gorgeous.

But we would always start the night in here - the Stonehouse and the most fantastic pub ever!! The interior was done out like the old streets in York Museum. We loved it.

I don't know what they use it for these days. I never realised that it was an old lodging house and back in the 1980's I never stopped to consider what a great exterior it had - I was too busy trip trapping inside to look at the twinkly ceiling lights that made you feel like you were drinking your lager and lime in a Victorian street!

Once Round the Lump

After I had written my post about the Adelphi Theatre in Attercliffe, new kid on the blogger Deb left me a comment saying that her family had lived in Attercliffe and her Aunt had written a book about the people that had lived and worked there before it was flattened in the regeneration program. It sounded interesting, and so I trawled Amazon, found it, sent for it and it arrived on Saturday morning. I couldn't put it down. Its a fascinating book featuring many mainly family photographs that tell of how life was living, working, playing and shopping in Sheffield's very industrialised heartland.

Some of the things that Ann writes made my spine tingle. Her intro into the book starts " I always thought that my childhood was a figment of my imagination because there is nothing left of the homes and streets I grew up in."

She goes on to say "There was a culture of full employment and youngsters had lots to do after school. The facilities we had were second to none: Play centres, youth clubs, churches, chapels and all the clubs attached to them. We had cinemas, pubs, sports clubs, a library, a swimming pool, dance halls, snooker halls, and the money to go to them."



The photographs show that houses that we would consider to be slums these day were actually spotlessly clean homes in spotless streets that had no grafitti or litter. Extended supportive families and a strong community that worked together and played together are so evident in the photographs and the writing.

"A bang with the rake on the fire-back would bring the next-door neighbour in for a cup of tea."

Ann asks the question "What went wrong?" Why was poor housing seen as enough reason to destroy a community that was on the whole law abiding and not afraid of hard work" and it got me wondering too. Why, when things should have got better for society, when people were given better housing with indoor bathrooms, central heating etc, did things go downhill so badly?

Looking back, its easy to wear rose tinted glasses and see only the good things, but the good things then were so very good. Life must have been difficult in Attercliffe. The steelworks worked both day and night and the very loud noises must have been difficult to sleep through for a start!

Thank you Deb for mentioning the book to me (tell your Aunt you want commission!!). Its one of the best reads ever.

There is a really good display in Weston park Museum, Sheffield about Attercliffe and it inhabitants too which always fascinates me. Human stories about everyday life, struggles and joys are the best stories ever.

Chocolate Umberella - circa 1959

Last Christmas I wrote this post which mentioned how my mum still had one of the chocolates from 1959 in her box of decorations - and if you read Kathy's comment, she found this very difficult to believe (anyone who knows my mum will not find it so hard to believe!). So I was determined to get it to show you it really does exist. But to do this has been a very delicate operation, because if she thought I was making fun of her, I would be immediately struck from "the will". However, with some very gentle persuasion, as you can see I am now the proud owner of possibly the oldest chocolate tree decoration in the world.

I was thinking today about the Christmas when mum was unable to cook the Christmas lunch. We loved mums roast dinners, and her stuffing was legendary. Mum and dad had never gone out on Christmas Eve before, but it was the year that dad had been made redundant from the Coal Board and he was working for a builder who lived just around the corner. The builder and his wife invited mum and dad round for drinks. I don't think mum really wanted to go, but as I was about 16 years old, I was deemed old enough to look after my brother and sister - off they went. Unfortunately, they sat mum next to the whisky decanter and she came home a little worse for wear.

That year, Santa put all the presents in the wrong sacks!

We children were utterly disgusted and adamant that she wasn't going to spoil the day, so we all piled into mum and dads bed as usual on Christmas morning to open our gifts - she got greener and greener as the smell of chocolate from the selection boxes wafted through the air.

She couldn't get out of bed, and it dawned on us that we would have to make the dinner. I think what finished her off was when my sister went upstairs with the basin full of stuffing ingredients and thrust it under her nose to see if it looked OK!

We all sat downstairs eating our lunch, whilst a disgraced woman lay in bed trying to force down two digestive biscuits and a glass of water. She never went out on Christmas Eve again.

Bringing home the Christmas Tree

I used to love all the American Christmas films and programmes that featured someone (usually the Dad) bringing home the Christmas Tree - walking through New York - usually in the snow. When I lived at home, we always had the poorest excuse for a Christmas Tree - it was about 2 foot tall and a fake one. So one year, the first year that my sister started work, we decided to meet up after work and buy a real tree. We met at a green grocers close to where we caught the bus (yes, we were going home on the bus). We chose our tree - 6foot didn't sound too large! This would have been around 1980, and they didn't wrap the trees in netty bags like they do these days, so we really did look like we were in a Christmas film - I seem to remember a sprinkling of snow too! The bus came, and on we jumped - her carrying the top, me carrying the bottom. We had decided to go to the back of the bus so that we wouldn't be in any ones way with the enormous tree. However, instead of walking down the bus with the base first, we did it top first, which meant everyone already sat down got slapped with at least one branch and stabbed with a few pine needles at the same time.

We of course just dissolved into a fit of giggles on the back of the bus.

Bringing it home in the car just isn't as much fun.