Sue often told our son of memories that she thought would interest him, and one day he suggested she write them down for future generations. This she did, in 2004, and gave him a copy. After she died, in 2021, I went through her belongings and laptop records and came across these childhood memories. She never intended for them to be published, but I knew it was important to her that these stories should be passed on to future generations. The best way to do that was in book form, and so this year I published them with the title: “A 1950s Yorkshire Childhood”.
The memories are unremarkable, and specific to Susan (as she was then called) but they will strike a chord with anyone who lived in those days of rationing, hand-me-down clothes, and outdoor toilets.
Susan Vickers was born in Bradford in 1946, and lived almost her entire childhood in a back-to-back house in Burdale Place, Lidget Green. She attended Grange Mixed Infants and Grange Grammar School. She continues the story through the youth club, boyfriends, and her first job. It ends with her marriage, in 1967, to me. Truly, the end of childhood!
Interspersed with her own memories are those of her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, all told as though Susan is reliving them, not recalling them from a distant future.
A nightmare, at four years old:
The way to safety was clear in my mind; leap out of bed, pull back the already open door, short sprint across the landing, push open the door of my parents’ bedroom, head down, charge past The Mirror — DO NOT LOOK — race round the foot of their bed to Mum's side and be Welcomed into her Waiting Arms.
Or, the day her mother was taken to hospital after a miscarriage. Not that anyone told Susan that was what had happened. We didn’t talk to children about such things.
Mum and Dad's room was full of morning light which hurt my eyes. The curtains were drawn back, the bed empty and rumpled. A sticky sweet smell lingered, making my nose itch. The noises came again. I tottered over to the window and standing on tip toe saw a little white van pulled up at the kerb. On its side was a red cross. Some men were just slotting a shelf in the back, like I'd seen them do at the bakers. Only on it lay my mother.
Susan remembers her grandfather, Charlie, telling her about the time his wife Doris (Susan’s grandma) had a still-birth.
Ever since I heard the story, I couldn’t look at the cellar steps without seeing the young Charlie carrying the tiny white coffin from his cellar workshop. Even in old age his face was baby-smooth, but not then. I see his grief rising as steeply as the steps. He stumbles, grabs the rail one-handed, cradling the coffin with the other arm; his still-born daughter. Doris will not cry. Just a girl, Charlie, she sighs. Better off dead any day.
Of course, most of the stories are more mundane: first kiss, first boyfriend, the dreaded gymslip at Big School. Walking over The Filla Damsons; watching the Sunbeams at The Alhambra; maypole dancing on a bit of spare ground; walking through bluebells, up past her knees; the Congress Shop on the corner of St Margaret’s Road. The result is a fascinating slice of social history, told not from a distant future, but with an immediacy that brings the reader into her childhood world.
Harvey Tordoff
Copies of the book can be purchased for £7.50 plus delivery at Amazon, or for £7.00 including delivery from harvelanoo@gmail.com (quote “YP Offer”)