A 1950s childhood

My parents were very sociable. Every year, in the week before Christmas, Robinsons Brewery would deliver a barrel of their special mild...

One of my favourite Christmas activities was going to the different fairs, fetes and sales which every local organisation seemed to have...

Time travel is powered by the sense of smell. The scent of cloves instantly carries me back to Nana who is lifting the lid of a pale blue...

The excitement of a 1950s Bonfire Night

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...