1935-39
I have only very vague memories of the house in Salford and I cannot now remember the street name. One memory, however, has stuck in my mind to this day and it's as clear now as it was then. I woke one sunny morning to see two strange black shadows silhouetted against the thin curtains of my ground floor bedroom. In my befuddled waking moments they seemed like people wearing huge peaked hats that came to a sharp point at the front. They both appeared to have prominent hunched backs and I could just about hear their muffled voices. To me they were very sinister and frightening. I screamed and as Mum came running in, the shadows moved away. I pointed wildly to the window. Mum pulled back the curtains and flung the window wide open.
“They’re only nuns,” said Mum laughing and then she explained what nuns were.
I had nightmares about those shadowy characters with wimples covering their heads for many years afterwards.
After some months we were allocated a prison-owned house in Waterloo Road closer to Strangeways. In June 1938 my sister Kathleen was born in that house and I can remember running up and down the street shouting triumphantly at the top of my voice to anyone who happened to be listening, “Our Kathleen’s come!”
Mum had a beautiful singing voice and she was always listening to the latest songs on the wireless. My favourite, which I regularly asked her to sing to me at bed time, went like this:
Little man, you’re crying,
I know why you’re blue;
Someone stole your kiddycar away.
Better go to sleep now,
Little man, you’ve had a busy day
Johnny won your marbles;
Tell you what I’ll do:
Dad’ll get you new ones right away,
Better go to sleep now,
Little man, you’ve had a busy day.
You’ve been playing soldiers,
The battle has been won;
The enemy is out of sight.
Come along now, soldier, put away your guns.
The war is over for tonight.
Time to stop your scheming;
Time your day was through.
Can’t you hear the bugles softly say
Time you should be dreaming,
Little man, you’ve had a busy day.
One of my playmates was Tony Cullen, the son of another Prison Officer at Strangeways. Because he was smaller than I, he was always known as Little Tony and I was Big Tony. I can remember very few of our exploits together but I'm told that we were inseparable. One day we caused our respective fathers a great deal of embarrassment. We went to an empty prison house and deliberately smashed quite a few ground floor windows. We were observed! When later questioned by my disbelieving Dad I apparently said, “I only tapped them with my little hammer.” Little boys, especially the sons of Prison Officers, were not supposed to behave like that. I’ve no recollection of what my punishment was for that misdemeanour but each of my parents reminded me of the incident frequently during my early years.
Another of my earliest memories is of an incident that occurred in late-1939. One balmy, sunny day a Spitfire flew low over our house and then zoomed skywards performing a Victory Roll. I was mightily impressed with what I saw. Of course, I didn’t know it was a Spitfire or a Victory Roll but that’s what my Dad told me. I have no means of knowing where the aircraft came from – possibly Speke or Ringway, RAF stations in 1939 but now the international airports for Liverpool and Manchester. I remember shading my eyes as I watched the aircraft disappear into the wide blue yonder.
Shortly after that the family was on the move again and I didn’t see Little Tony again for 15 years. That totally unexpected meeting was to be at a tiny RAF signals unit in Ceylon.
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