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Manchester, the only place where a submarine has been known to surface at a Bus Stop.

In the early 60s I used to work at KENDALL & GENTS which was alongside Belle Vue railway station. At lunch times we used to go and watch the trains disgourging their passengers heading for Belle Vue Zooalogical Gardens. At times there was a stream of people 5-6 wide all the way from the station up the approach, down Hyde road and into Belle Vue.  We didn't go just to watch the crowds, more the young ladies out to enjoy themselves. It used to be said that if you hadn't been to Belle Vue you hadn't lived. What ever happened? The most mismanaged success I have ever known.

Bob KIRK, Dukinfield, Cheshire

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I remember torn-up newspapers hanging up in the 3 seater loo perched 10 feet above the stream that ran under the outhouse. Our neighbours had theirs perched halfway up the hill in their garden - made it easier to empty!

The experiences I remember from my childhood living in the country as an evacuee - apart from the oil lamps and the radio powered by a lead/acid accumulator - were the walks down the country lanes filled with flowers one seldom sees anymore; looking for birds nests in the hedgerows; the robins, wrens, blackbirds and thrushes.  The excitement of finding an errant hens nest in the hedge and taking the six or so eggs home for tea.  Collecting eggs from the hencoops and getting your hands pecked by the angry hens; the physical effort and smell of mucking out a warm cows byre or the horses stables. All of the various pleasures, sights and smells were denied to my daughters, because we lived in a city, and have also been denied to my grandchildren because they too are being brought up in the city.

As a generation I can't remember us ever considering ourselves to have been disadvantaged by not having those possessions that people who lived 'fairy-tale' lives seemed to have. And now looking back on my childhood, I realize how privileged I was to have had the experiences I did which are now sadly no longer part of the experience of growing up.

I know these times will never return, but at least many of us are fortunate enough to have had the experience, and still have the memories.

Dr. Terry Walker, Ottawa

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I used to read School Friend, the Beano and the Hotspur. The characters in them were great. Desperate Dan, Lettuce Leaf, Dan Dare, The Secret Three, and what about Billy Bunter and Biggles. My toys were a whip and top, and a swing my Grandfather made in the back garden. I could swing so high that I could see in all the surrounding garden’s and the allotments at the back. I also had a dolls house which was my pride and joy. When I was about 8yrs old I got my first set of roller skates. I went every where on them, even to school which was about 4 miles away, as did all my mates. We played outside until 9 or 10 o’clock at night in our street in groups of up to 20 and we had so much fun. I often wonder how many of us are left. We all lived in Alton street, Crewe, and the years were the 1950s. I live in Australia now and my Grandchildren are Aussie. They have a great life but not the freedom I had, mores the pity.

Hazel Newbold, Australia

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My maternal grandmother died when I was but 9 months old, but my mother - now 90 - told me that her mother always kept a pot of tea "on the hod" all day and drank it straight from the tea pot, no milk or sugar. One can only speculate how strong it would be late in the day. Thanks for the "memories", they sure bring back some of mine.

Malcolm in Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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Agassiz, not too far from me on Vancouver Island - compared to Cheshire!  I only fetched up here with a babe under each arm, little money and a lot of hope about 20 years ago.  I have been loving these stories, but I can't quite get the hang of celebrating a lot of deprivation and hardship. It seems a bit awful, sorry to say, and I can only admire the indomitable spirit that makes the best of everything offered. If the kids were happy, that is what counts.  I can't help finding it a little bit sad in Dave's stories where on Christmas Day a parent couldn't do something, anything, that costs nothing, for their children to make a day special. I had to do that, and I'd make something myself from stuff I found for free. Sure wouldn't go down well when they got older though. The kind of poverty where there is nothing to make anything out of for a child on Christmas Day is really beyond my imagination.  The story of the mince pie and weak cup of tea was so poignant, and I know my family was the same then.  They had it very tough and you have to admire the spirit that took them forward.

But for making your own playgrounds, I remember that. I remember High Elm Road in Hale Barnes being built and what fun it was to play amongst all the excavations with the construction materials.  It took so long to build houses brick by brick that the excavations got filled with water when it rained and we could make rafts and be pirates.  We always seemed to be in our wellies and raincoats and come back muddy to be stripped at the door before we could come in. My Auntie made balm cakes and chips for our tea. But by day we had hot baths and warm fires to come home to, and a warm fire and telly before bedtime.

My grandparents and great-grandparents lived in Cheshire in Hale Barnes, and some of the family lived in the Wirral and in Manchester.  My Father started out life with Unilever as an office boy.  His job was to make copies of letters with wooden presses, and be potboy.  He would get sixpence to take a cabby to the post office, but he would run like heck with all the mail to get there in time for the post and put the sixpence in his pocket.

When he was 25 he went to Nigeria for the firm called GB Ollivants, and he spent all his working life there.  On leave he married my mother, and then she launched out on the adventure with him. I was born in Nigeria, in Port Harcourt, and spent my early years there, so missed everything I have been hearing here.  Not only that I went to boarding school when I was old enough so I never got the chance to sit with family and listen to their stories.  I spent one holiday a year in Cheshire, in High Elm Road by the Bollin, where I went for Christmas.  But never enough time to meet all my relatives and hear these kind of stories.  My grandfather was a comedian. All he would tell us about WW1 was that he was in "Alice Sloper's Cavalry", and that the rusty sword in the garage was the one he used to "cut off Arab's ears with."  He was really in the 6th Manchester’s.

Thanks to you all for your lovely memories and the cheerful stories. When you talk of the little pleasures, and how one made do, and how there were fun days out and neighbourly friendship to keep everyone going,  I really feel I am getting back something I missed.

Cherry, Vancouver Island, Canada

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I lived in Wincham opposite the New Cheshire Salt works during the war, they had a test bed for jet engines - no one knew about it - and at night when all was quiet, my bed would lift off the floor and the house vibrate. I grew up thinking everyone's bed rose of the floor, but of course it was when they were testing the engines. I remember Mr. Whittle very well, he lodged at our neighbours house.

Sue

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There is a moment in Autumn when the leaves are all but off the trees, and the ground is coloured like a carpet. A soft wind blows the remainder of the leaves, it looks as though they dance, and suddenly I am transported back to my childhood in Wales. Do you remember walking through the fallen leaves in a nearby park. Such a simple pleasure, all the autumn leaves blown into huge swathes along the paths, and into them we would plough, throwing ourselves with great abandon, then making the piles up again ready for the next jump. The sounds and smells.

No one has talked about gathering huge armfuls of bluebells; walking in the woods through a sea of blue - such a joy to behold. I used to go to a Baptist church, and I remember the 'old men' with their shouts of "Preacher it brother" and their "Amen and Hallelujah's", I guess they would have been the last of the Welsh Revivalists. Learning the old Sunday School songs, 'Wide, Wide is the Ocean', and 'Jesus Bids us Shine'.

Fifty years later, all it takes is to see the wind whip up the leaves, the carpet on the ground and I am back in Wales and a child once more. I have recently planted 15 Birch trees, and some Hazel too, under them are planted Bluebells, Dog Violets etc. I shall have my own Bluebell wood. The older we are the more precious are these things to us.

Phyllis, New Zealand

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I clearly remember the Walls Ice Cream man on his tricycle. I used to save my "Saturday Penny" to buy a Sno-Cream for tuppence. Sno-Frutes were a penny but Sno-Creams were much nicer. The local sweet shop sold ice-cream and if you asked for a "wafer" it depended on whether or not you got the owner or her assistant - the owner always put only enough ice-cream in the rectangular gadget to get a rather thin wafer - whereas the assistant made nice, thick ones. There were Milky Ways for a penny but, if you did the saving-up bit, you could get a Mars Bar for tuppence. Also, talking of comics, etc. - remember ‘The Children's Newspaper’? Considered much more posh.

Pam

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Joan in Oz

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