For 2 or 3 weeks, we kids had been collecting newspaper, in sacks. We’d stuff the sack as tight as we could. The more you got in, the more it weighed. When a sack could hold no more, we’d lug it off to Marsden’s scrap yard, in Button Lane, and sell it, by weight, on a huge weighing scale. A well-stuffed sack would usually earn 6d. Occasionally, someone would try to weigh in a brick, or a lump of concrete, but the man on the scales was too clever. He could weigh a sack with his eyes, as you lugged it in. He confirmed it with his hands, and the scales just made it official. If he caught you out, cheating, he confiscated your paper, and your sack, and if you gave him any lip, you’d get a clip round the ear, just to remind you who was in charge. But play fair and you’d get your tanner. This was our normal way of raising funds for the Saturday matinee, or whatever.
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| Weighing the Paper |
But this was for bonfire night, so we took the 6d straight across to the other side of Marsden’s yard, where another man would sell us a small sack of logs, joiners’ off-cuts, scrap wood from a bomb site, or some such. This way, the kids in each yard accumulated a little store of wood, ready for bonfire night.
Come the night, several houses in the yard would contribute a bucket of coal apiece, and what we finished up with, in our little brick hearth, was more like a cowboys’ campfire than a bonfire. But then someone would bring out some spuds to roast, in the hot coals. Mr. Froggatt would appear with a tray of bonfire toffee. Someone else had baked a tray of Parkin. An old lady would apologise for only having a few slices of bread for toasting, and everyone would immediately say how you can’t beat toast from an open fire. After a while, you would realise that the men had acquired bottles of beer, but the women would make them fetch glasses, so the women would get a sup, as well. A couple of women would have a whip round, and fetch bottles of pop from Froggatt’s back door, for us kids, and Mr. Froggatt would throw in packets of crisps, and all the folk in the yard, were like one big family, at party time.
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| Like One Big Family |
Next morning, someone would haul the bricks back to the bomb site, the ashes would be swept up, the empties and the litter cleared away, and everything left clean.
The off-shot kitchen house, on the top side of the midden site, was the home of Bella, our own Wicked Witch of the North. North because she was on the up hill, and north, side of the yard, backing onto a house in Milton Lane, and Wicked Witch because we kids were all terrified of her. Bicycles, tricycles, fairy bikes, and dollies’ prams, scooters, hoops and sticks and bouncing balls, kids and even cats and dogs all gave her a wide berth. Any encroachment provoked an immediate and frenzied response. Short, fat, and middle aged, Bella would sweep out like a large bat, screeching at us to go away leave her in peace don’t knock her milk bottles over don’t rattle her bin don’t drop things down her cellar grate don’t break her windows with our ball don’t bounce our ball on her roof on her kitchen roof on her walls on her steps- and all the while, brandishing the weapon of her choice- sweeping brush, posher, poker- whatever she had happened to snatch up, to threaten us with, in one hand, while clutching her shawl about her with the other.
That was Bella from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday, she was transmogrified. She became a different person. She was just as frightening, threatening, anti social. The difference was that, on Sunday, just for the day, all day, she became a Musical Christian. She was the proud possessor of a harmonium, and on all but the most inclement of Sundays, she would throw up the sash window, open wide her door, and sing hymns, accompanying herself on the harmonium- all day.
All the blessed day, except for the usual niceties and necessities. Her voice and her playing were indifferent average.
I once heard Jimmy Saville expounding the theory that, if you could do something just a little bit better than most people, then they would call you a genius. As an example, he cited an old B.B.C. Light Programme stalwart, Charlie Kunz, a pianist, and said that, although he was just a pub pianist, because he could play, to a modest degree whereas most people listening couldn’t play at all, they used to say ‘He can make that piano talk’.
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| Bella’s and the Midden |
Well, Bella may not have made the harmonium talk, but she certainly made it shout, scream, wail, moan and yodel. She was good on volume, on stamina, and on competition for anything the B.B.C. chose to throw at her. Two Way Family Favourites, Jimmy Clitheroe, Life with the Lyons, Charlie Chester, Ted Ray, Much Binding in the Marsh, Take It From Here, ITMA, and poor Sandy McPherson at the organ of the Chapel in the Valley was just mud under her tracks. They were all obliterated by Bella. With the wind in the North East, you could tune in to whatever you fancied, but what you listened to was Bella.
Next door to Bella lived a family called Mazlin. Their young son, Billy, was a sailor on board H.M.S Amethyst, at the time of the Yangtse incident. The Amethyst was blockaded up the river Yangtse (or the Yangtse Kyang, as we learned from the press) by the Chinese communists, who were threatening to blow her out of the water, if she tried to leave. Meanwhile, the Chinese were planning to take her entire complement into custody, and take possession of the vessel for their own use. The whole world held its breath (well the pink bits did) for several days, awaiting developments. I believe the ship came out under cover of darkness, and running in the lee of an authorised vessel, in the ‘shadow’ of her lights.
I was told that Billy was coming home, and bringing me a banana. They might as well have offered me a bathosphere or a bandicoot, for all the word meant to me. However, with Billy’s safe return, the promised, mysterious banana arrived. It looked like a small, pale green, dismembered finger. I was told it had to be put in a dark cupboard, to ripen, and so it was immured. It probably rotted completely away, because I don’t remember hearing or seeing of it ever again.
I did hear of Amethyst again, only a few years ago. One of Radio 4’s mid-morning Pollyfilla programmes was about ventriloquism. The presenter (I think it was that geezer went round Wales with a stove) was obviously unaware of the source of a particular item of his material. He’d found a clip of Peter Brough (vent) and Archie Andrews(dummy) popular radio show (nobody thought it strange then- vent on the radio) with Brough admiring Archie’s new blazer-
“What shade of blue is that, Archie?”
“It’s my favourite, Brough- Amethyst!”
Huge and prolonged round of applause from the studio audience. Our intrepid presenter then explained that the applause was in recognition of the great difficulty for a vent to say ‘amethyst’. I did write to the Radio Times letters page, but I knew my letter was far too long and rambling, being considerably more informed and probably more interesting than the original programme (Sandy Powell, Francis Coudrill, Arthur Worsley-look at me when I’m talking to you, Son! And who was the feller with Horace, Winnie, and Daisy Mae?) so it almost certainly winged its way to the letters-from-boring-old-farts depository.
Sandwiched between the Mazlins and the top entry is the one house where I fail. I cannot remember a single, attributable fact, so straight across the passage to the last three. First is the house where lived a cousin of Betty’s- Bernard Eckhardt, noted for having most of his upper body covered in tattoos. Next to him lived a reclusive, elderly lady, with a male lodger. The pair cling in my memory by dint of one bizarre incident. The lodger was no particular confidant of our family, so Jane was very surprised when, on answering a knock at our door, late one night, she opened the door to find said lodger standing there, bearing a fully charged chamber pot! He immediately said, in a voice obviously wearied by alcohol-
“See, Mrs. Eckhardt! This is how my landlady treats me!” He then proffered the brimming ‘po’ for her closer inspection. She flinched away, being too taken aback to speak. He, obviously having nothing further to add, after a moment’s silence, turned, and carefully made his way back up the yard. Jane didn’t wait to see where he went, or how successful his trip.
The last remaining corner house was occupied by another cousin of Betty’s- Elsie Garfitt. Her husband, Ernest, was a man who was clearly in love with the sound of his own voice. He always sounded as though he were auditioning for something. Granted, he was erudite enough, well informed, and could be very interesting, in small doses. The trouble was, you usually got him on draught.