A 1950s childhood

The start of the school holidays had that special Friday evening feeling. Routine vanished and who knew what the next day might bring....

Somehow, impossibly, my eldest grandson will be moving into his school's top class after the summer holidays. This sparked all the mixed...

‘If you fell in there you’d be dead in two minutes’ said a voice very close to my ear. Instinctively I pulled back although I wasn't in...

When I was seven I was taken to see a film of the Bolshoi Ballet’s production of Swan Lake starring Galina Ulanova. I was enchanted. I...

When my mother told me that my uncle Bert was getting married and that I was to be a bridesmaid, I was ecstatic. I was finally going to...

Not long after my appendix operation, it had been agreed, after much pestering, that I could have my own dog. There had been a few...

Came across this lovely posting in a Facebook group 'Growing up in Cheadle Hulme' EATING IN THE UK IN THE FIFTIES Pasta had not been...

I didn’t see much of the winter games at school when I was five. In January I was rushed into hospital in the middle of the night to have...

My parents had grown up in poverty during the worst years of the 1930s Great Depression. My mother was one of four children and as her...

Before I started school there were some days when essential and time-consuming chores meant that my mother and I couldn’t visit the...

Even in a small community like ours, there was a cinema within walking distance. Cheadle Hulme’s own cinema must once have been quite the...

One of the most memorable features of ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ was the wardrobe portal itself. Its description reminded me...

(My grandparents are wearing dark clothes) Both of my grandmothers lived in St. Helens, Lancashire. Marriage or possibly the need to go...

At Easter each year Nana came to stay. Nana was a devout catholic who did her best to stop me from going to hell by taking me to church...

This is my school photo aged seven. As you can see, school uniform wasn't strictly enforced. I am wearing one of the dresses my mother...

My father was a dedicated newshound. He bought his daily paper and cigarettes on the way to work. On Saturday afternoons he picked up...

The only appliance which could be found in all the houses I knew was the cooker - gas or electric. Our own boasted an oven, four gas...

We had been in our flat for well over a year when my parents decided it was time to cover the endless magnolia emulsion with something a...

Here is Gwen in her Queen's Road Primary School official uniform. (Picture courtesy of Gwen Irving) I took the colour photos when I was...

Like all the other families in our flats we had neither a fridge nor a freezer to keep food fresh.