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You had a full weeks holiday each year at Burnley’s,
we paid sixpence a week into a holiday fund to help with
the loss of pay. When they started paying you for your holidays
we were amazed, and thought the bosses must have gone mad
to pay people for a full week when they were not working.
My dads parents had gone to live at Hunmanby, a village
on the North Yorkshire coast and it was arranged for me
to go for a weeks holiday. My granddad picked me up at Scarborough
Station in his big car, he was not my real granddad, he
had died before I was born and my Gran. had married this
bloke, his name was Joss Mortimer a builder. It was a big
detached house they lived in and-at the bottom of the garden
there was an old railway carriage in which my brother Bob
had his den. One day there was a hell of a bang in the carriage
and my brother staggered out with his face all black and
his eye brows burnt off. Apparently he used to make his
own fireworks, and he was mixing up some sulphur and salt
petre or whatever and the ash from a fag he was smoking
fell into the dish and off it went, he spent the rest of
the day hiding in his bedroom in case the police came round.
Across the road lived my cousin, Henry Crowther, his mother
was my dads sister and she had married Harry Crowther a
rag merchant from Batley, he had an even bigger house and
car and had a motor cruiser at Scarborough. On the rare
occasions when I met him he used to give me ten bob and
on one occasion a £1. I haven’t told you this
before but I had been wearing Henry's cast off clothes since
I came back to my dad, they were very nice but were two
sizes too big for me and sometimes I got my leg pulled about
them.
All these people seemed to speak a different language from
me and were posher than even my school teachers. My gran.
was a smashing cook and made the best meals I had ever had.
The week was soon over, what with trips out with my granddad
to Bridlington and Scarborough and me and Bob walking the
three or so miles to Filey and Hunmanby gap.
On my return home I discovered that the landlord wanted
to sell the house and that we had to leave. Well that was
the end of our posh house with a bathroom as our next home
was a terrace house in Wellington St. Birkenshaw with a
lav. in the back yard, one thing though we had a lav all
to ourselves, at Taylor St. each lav. was shared by two
houses and that caused a few fall outs I can tell you. My
friend Herbert lived at Birkenshaw so we were able to go
out together, I was at an age when girls seemed to become
more interesting, so we went to the dances in the Thomas
Burnley Canteen and at the famous Bert Shutts dance hall
at Bankfoot Bradford.. We had a four mile walk home at the
end of the dance and if you walked a girl home it could
be six or seven miles, life was much more innocent in those
days and if you walked a girl home the most you could expect
was a little kiss and a cuddle, if you were able to go a
little further and I mean a little further it was the highlight
of the week. On most week day nights a gang of boys and
girls used to meet and play games like truth or dare in
Birkenshaw Park. Sometimes local people would complain about
the noise we made and the police would raid us, that was
real fun we used to scream out and run in all directions,
if you were caught they would give you a bit of a clip on
the side of the head and tell you to get off home with the
words "If I ever catch you again" ringing in your
ears.
When I was sixteen I received a letter from the government,
saying that now That I was sixteen I must report to the
town hall at Cleckheaton so that it could be arranged for
me to help the war effort and perform some useful public
service, so I went along in my best suit and after a little
pep talk ended up joining the army cadets. I did not like
the British army uniform, it was of poor quality and design
with a silly tin hat, the Germans looked a lot better.
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